Archive Magazine CD 1995/Archive Magazine CD 1995.iso/text/magazine/volume_05/issue_12

Text File | 1995-06-25 | 213KB | 4,302 lines

5.12
Wow, wow, WOW !!!!
5.12
Well, what else can you say? We are used to Acorn releasing a new
computer every year or two but they have amazed us by releasing twelve,
yes TWELVE, new computers in one go. Well, OK, it’s not twelve entirely
different computers − some are variants with different memory, hard
drives or bundled software but none-the-less it shows that Acorn are
moving into an entirely new gear.
5.12
They are seriously attacking the consumer market with products ranging
from the A3010 Family Solution pack (a 32bit RISC computer at under
£500!) to the A4000 Home Office pack and they are providing extra
solutions for education with the A3020, A4000 and floppy disc A5000s.
5.12
Also aimed at education is the Pocket Book computer (which will also
interest the home user) and the new Acorn Universal Networking File
server software which will considerably enhance the networking
possibilities for RISC-OS machines by providing seamless linking of
Ethernet and Econet systems.
5.12
RISC-OS 3 is here!
5.12
RISC-OS 3 is now available for all Archimedes users. Acorn are obviously
keen that we should all upgrade as soon as possible and so, for a
limited time, the upgrade is available for £50 inc VAT and p&p through
Archive. (The full price will be £90 inc VAT and p&p.)
5.12
A new member of the N.C.S. team
5.12
Welcome to Simon Moy who has just joined the merry band at 96a Vauxhall
Street. Simon, like Adrian Look, is a graduate of the local University
of East Anglia. He will be working for both Norwich Computer Services
and Look Systems. (He seems to know a lot about Psion Series 3 computers
which bear an entirely unremarkable similarity to the Acorn Pocket Book
computer!)
5.12
Simon has joined us at an exciting time − I reckon Acorn are really
going places and we’re happy to be involved. Our contribution, hope
fully, is to get the latest information out to you, the subscribers, so
that you too can be in at the beginning of each new move that Acorn
makes.
5.12
Yours, as ever,
5.12
Products Available
5.12
•    12 new Acorn computers!!!!! Yes, this month, Acorn have launched
twelve new computers as well as some other new products. Actually the
twelve are variants of four new computers (A3010, A3020, A4000 and Acorn
Pocket Book) and the A5000. Here are brief details but for full
technical details, see the enclosed supplement.
5.12
•    A3010 Family Solution is based on the exciting new A3010 computer and
is aimed at the home user. The A3010 uses an ARM250 processor which
gives it 50% more processing power than the current A3000. For £499 inc
VAT you get a computer that will connect to either a TV or a standard
resolution monitor or a multisync monitor. It has two joystick inter
faces (Atari switched-type), 1M RAM, upgradable to 2M, and comes with a
game (Quest For Gold), a wordprocessor (the new version of Easiword −
see below) and an audio training tape.
5.12
•    A3010 Learning Curve uses the same computer as the Family Solution but
is upgraded to 2M of RAM and is bundled with more software and comes
complete with an Acorn AKF40 monitor. For £799 inc VAT, in addition to
Easiword and Quest For Gold, you get a set of Genesis applications and
PCSoft (PC Emulator, by any other name, but now with DR-DOS 6).
5.12
•    A3020 is also an ARM250-based computer. However, in place of the TV
modulator it has an interface for an IDE hard drive and, in place of the
two joystick ports, there is space for networking circuits, either
Econet or Ethernet. The basic A3020 has 2M (upgradable to 4M) and comes
with an AKF40 monitor (see below) for £749 +VAT (£880) or £799 +VAT
(£939) with an AKF18 multisync monitor. There is also a 4M version with
a 60M internal IDE drive (which does not take up the mini-podule slot).
This costs £899 +VAT (£1056) with the AKF40 or £949 +VAT (£1115) with
the AKF18 multisync. (The exVAT education prices of the A3020 computers
are all £100 less than the end user prices.)
5.12
•    A4000 − The A4000 is basically an A3020 in a metal case but with a
larger (80M) hard drive. The A4000 looks very much like a ‘slim-line’
A5000. Like the A3020, it takes just one internal mini-podule. With an
AKF40 standard resolution monitor, it costs £949 +VAT (£1115) or with an
AKF18 multisync, it costs £999 +VAT (£1174). The exVAT educational
prices of the A4000 are £100 less than the end-user prices.
5.12
•    A4000 Home Office − This is a package aimed at the serious home user
and consists of an A4000 system, an advanced wordprocessor (EasiWriter
II from Icon Technology) and Desktop Database from Iota Software. With
an AKF40 monitor, it costs £999 +VAT (£1174) or with an AKF18 multisync,
it costs £1049 +VAT (£1233).
5.12
•    A5000 prices DOWN (and drive sizes UP!) The A5000 is now available in
two formats: the 2M/HD80, similar to the current A5000 but with 80M
drive instead of 40M at £1399 +VAT (£1644) and the 4M/HD120 with 4M of
RAM and a 120M hard drive for £1599 +VAT (£1879). (The education prices
are £1199 and £1399 +VAT respectively.) The A5000 Learning Curve version
is £1699 inc VAT and is based on the 2M/HD80 version. These computers
are still supplied with the AKF18 multisync monitor although some
dealers (including N.C.S.) may be persuaded to trade in an AKF18 against
a more expensive multisync monitor.
5.12
•    A5000 hard-drive-less computers − There are now two A5000 computers
available without hard drives (but with AKF18 multisync monitors). The
A5000 ES has an Econet interface and 2M of RAM and costs £1299 +VAT. The
A5000 NS has an Ethernet interface and 2M of RAM and costs £1399 +VAT.
(The education prices of these two computers are £1199 and £1299 +VAT
respectively.)
5.12
•    Acorn Pocket Book − Acorn have launched a pocket-sized computer
(developed in co-operation with Psion and bearing a remarkable similar
ity to the Psion Series 3). These will have an Archimedes link with
software that will make the Pocket Book appear as a filing system on the
host computer. The cost is £249.95 inc VAT.
5.12
•    AKF40 monitor − Acorn have launched a new monitor aimed particularly
at the A3010 and A3020 computers. It is functionally the same as the new
AKF17 standard resolution monitor with stereo sound output but it has a
tilt and swivel stand. The A3010 and the A3020 are not as deep as the
A3000, so the monitor can be self-standing, behind the computer.
5.12
•    AUN Level 4 Fileserver − The new version of Acorn’s Fileserver
incorporates the Acorn Universal Networking software. The price is £399
+VAT.
5.12
•    10 Out of 10 Maths is the first of a new series of educational
programs from Triple R, the educational arm of Fourth Dimension. Each of
the 10 out of 10 packages, including 10 Out of 10 Maths, consists of six
educational games. Each package will have two manuals − one for the
teachers and one for the pupils. Also, each will come with three sets of
graphics, the idea being that they are designed to appeal to different
age groups. This package covers areas of addition, subtraction,
multiplication, division, fractions, decimals, percentages, estimation,
units and powers. The software also includes a scoring system so that
teachers can see how the pupils are progressing. The price is £25.95
from Fourth Dimension or £24 through Archive.
5.12
•    2067 BC − “A wacky arcade caper, set in a weird era where just about
anything can and will happen. As Terrance Pterodactyl, you’re challenged
to complete your missions to resume life as you know it in 2067 BC.”
This new game from Oregan Developments costs £16.95 (no VAT).
5.12
•    Analogue simulation package − Mijas Software has produced a general
purpose ‘analogue’ simulation package called ArcSimp. It provides
integrators, summers, function generators, trig functions, etc and will
allow you to model all sorts of different systems. ArcSimp costs £50
including VAT and p&p from Mijas and they also sell a demonstration
version for £5 refundable against a purchase of the full system.
5.12
•    Colorgraf 0516 is an 8-pen A3 plotter for £295 (no VAT). It is HPGL
compatible, so as long as you have an appropriate driver such as
DrawPrint & Plot, it represents a very cheap plotting option. It can use
cheap felt-tip pens (e.g. a box of 50 for £2.99 from Asda). These
plotters are being imported from Czechoslovakia by O G Brown, 2 Westend
Villas, Westend Parade, Gloucester GL1 2RY. If you want to do a screen-
dump, software is available from the same source for £35 (no VAT).
5.12
•    Cyber Chess − Fourth Dimension have added chess to their long list of
games for the Archimedes. This is a RISC-OS compliant, 3D simulation
version − with 2D as an option. It implements full chess laws including
en passant, underpromotions and the 50/75 move rule. Cyber Chess is
£49.95 from Fourth Dimension or £46 through Archive.
5.12
•    Desktop Office version 2 − This is a slightly updated version of
Desktop Office from Minerva with a few extra features. The main change
is that it also includes a copy of the new Easiword as well as the
Wordwise Plus look-alike that version 1 contains. The price is £99 +VAT
or £108 through Archive.
5.12
•    Easiword version 2 − The original Easiword was a multi-tasking
Wordwise Plus look-alike and the new version is a First Word Plus look-
alike. The price is £59 +VAT or £64 through Archive.
5.12
•    Geordie Racer − This software from Longman Logotron is based on the
popular BBC School TV series, “Look & Read : Geordie Racer” which is due
for its next broadcast in Spring 1993. The TV programmes are aimed at
young readers aged 7 − 9 years and the software is an adventure game
designed to improve their reading skills. The price is £24 +VAT or £26
through Archive.
5.12
•    Grid Algebra − This is the first Archimedes package produced by the
Open University Centre for Mathematics Education. It provides a dynamic
visual approach to algebra for primary and secondary level teaching. The
program relates horizontal and vertical movements over a grid to the
four basic operations of number. Algebraic expressions are generated by
journeys made over the grid. The price is £25 inc VAT from the O.U.
5.12
•    Molecular modeller − Arachne Software are producing a molecular
modelling package which, when completed, will sell at around £50. In the
meantime, if anyone wants a demonstration disc, they are available from
Arachne for £5 refundable against a purchase of the full package.
5.12
•    Nevryon II − This is an upgrade of the original Nevryon shot-em-up
game from the Fourth Dimension. The main enhancement is the two-player
mode so that you can work together to defeat the aliens. The price is
£19.95 from Fourth Dimension or £19 through Archive.
5.12
•    PlayBack − Risc Developments have produced a real-time mouse and
keyboard recording and replay system called PlayBack. A PD version of
PlayBack is also supplied which can be distributed freely to allow
others to replay the sequences you have recorded. The price is £19 + VAT
from Risc Developments.
5.12
•    RISC-OS 3 is now available for all Acorn Risc-based computers. The
full upgrade will cost £89 inc VAT but, until mid-1993, it will be
available at the special price of £49 inc VAT (£50 through Archive
including postage because the manuals are so very heavy). For this, you
get a set of ROMs, fitting instructions, new Applications Discs and the
full RISC-OS 3 documentation and 3.10 Release Notes.
5.12
Owners of A305, A310 and A440 (not A440/1) will need larger ROM sockets
fitted. These are available as a dealer upgrade for £30 inc VAT.
5.12
Schools (or anyone else for that matter!) wanting large numbers of RISC-
OS 3 upgrades can buy a 10-station set for £399 inc VAT. This includes
one set of discs, one set of documentation and ten sets of ROMs.
5.12
A5000 owners can get an upgrade from RISC-OS 3.00 to 3.10, the latest
release, for £19 inc VAT. This includes the ROMs and the 3.10 release
notes − a 40 page document giving the extra features of RISC-OS 3.10.
5.12
(Knowing what happened when RISC-OS 2 was released, I suggest you send a
SEPARATE cheque just in case demand outstrips initial supply. We will
hold your cheques in the order in which they arrive and send out the
upgrades in strict order. Archive readers are the first to know about
this upgrade, so you can be at the head of the queue if you send a
cheque straight away.)
5.12
•    Saloon Cars De-Luxe Extra Courses Volume 1 − 4th Dimension have now
added an extra courses disc to their De-Luxe Saloon Cars game. It costs
£19.95 or £18 through Archive. (N.B. Saloon Cars Deluxe does not work on
Archimedes computers using Taxan 795 monitors.)
5.12
•    ScanLight Professional − A new version of ScanLight Professional is
now available. It utilises a new model of scanner and although it will
be functionally the same, an A4 flat-bed 300dpi SCSI device, it has a
number of advantages. It is only a little bigger than actual A4 size and
it operates marginally faster than the previous model. Most importantly,
it is cheaper than its predecessor! This new version is £595 +VAT (£665
inc VAT through Archive). It should work with all SCSI cards, provided
the manufacturers have followed all Acorn’s guidelines. (It has been
successfully tested with Oak, Acorn, Morley and Lingenuity cards.) N.B.
This scanner can produce images over 8M in size, so you need to think
carefully about what type of machine you are going to use with it.
5.12
•    SCSI hard drives − We have another supplier for Mac SCSI hard drives
that work out cheaper than their Archimedes equivalents. (The price
advantage of the Mac drives from Frog Systems has decreased so we have
stopped selling them.)
5.12
        Internal    External    Access
5.12
    40M    £230    £320    20ms
5.12
    100M    £375    £465    17ms
5.12
    180M    £500    £590    17ms
5.12
    400M    £890    £980    14ms
5.12
    650M    −    £1340    14ms
5.12
    1000M    −    £1760    14ms
5.12
All the drives come with 5-year warranty except the 40M drives which
have 2 year warranty.
5.12
•    Shareware 48 − The latest Shareware disc is Acorn’s Pascal for use
with their Desktop Development Environment. Full details are on page 41.
5.12
•    Silicon Vision prices drop − Silicon Vision has decided that “to
encourage higher volume sales” it is dropping the price its Archimedes
software. The new prices, including VAT, are as follows, the Archive
prices being in brackets after each one.
5.12
ArcPCB    £125    (£116)
5.12
Solid Tools    £275    (£255)
5.12
Solid CAD    £99.95    (£93)
5.12
FilmMaker    £79.95    (£74)
5.12
Solids Render    £99.95    (£93)
5.12
RoboLOGO    £49.95    (£46)
5.12
RiscBasic Compiler    £99.95
    (£93)
5.12
RiscFORTH Compiler    £99.95
    (£93)
5.12
SuperPlot    £24.95    (£23)
5.12
SuperDump    £24.95    (£23)
5.12
ShareHolder    £125    (£116)
5.12
Datavision    £99.95    (£93)
5.12
These prices supersede the ones we reported last month (which came from
an earlier Silicon Vision press release).
5.12
•    Talking Pictures is “A colouring book that talks” from Wyddfa Software
(£20 inc VAT). This RISC-OS compliant package is a colouring book with
digitised speech aimed at encouraging language development in the under
fives.
5.12
•    Vector 1.02 is now available. This includes the missing text-to-path
feature that RISC-OS 2 users need. It also allows corrupted drawfiles to
be loaded and provides automatic creation of mask substitutes which,
unlike Vector’s own masks, are renderable by other applications.
Existing users can upgrade free of charge by returning their Vector
Applications disc to 4Mation.
5.12
•    Vision Digitiser is a very low-priced video digitiser from H.C.C.S. −
£49 +VAT or £55 through Archive. For more details, see the review on
page 43.
5.12
Review software received...
5.12
We have received review copies of the following: CSVtoText, (more)
Design Concepts fonts, Disc Rescue (we have a floppy-disc-user’s view
but need a hard disc user and preferably someone fairly technical to
have a look at the manual which is very detailed), DrawBook, Geordie
Racer, Grid Algebra, Landmarks Columbus, Landmarks Aztecs, Saloon Cars
De-Luxe (the first reviewer had a 795!), ScreenTurtle, Shareware 46,
Talking Pictures, Touch Type.  A
5.12
Government Health Warning − Reading this could seriously affect your
spiritual health.
5.12
We all tend to take things for granted. In my case it was the hard drive
that held the 20,000 names and addresses on our database − you can read
about its sad demise in the Comment Column on page 8.
5.12
Far more important to avoid is taking people for granted. It’s so easy
in our materialistic society to allow things to take up more of our time
and energy than people. It’s worth doing a regular check. Whether it’s
colleagues, family or friends, ask yourself, “Am I taking so-and-so for
granted?”. If you are, make a point of showing your appreciation or
concern. Do something that will show you care.
5.12
Most importantly of all, are you taking God for granted? Do you think of
Him as a celestial ‘999’ service, only to be contacted when things go
seriously wrong? He’s still there even when we think we don’t need any
help and, paradoxically, it’s when we think we are “all right thank you”
that we are actually most in need of God’s “helping hand”.
5.12
Lastly, do you take your own life for granted? I don’t mean to be
melodramatic but any one of us could be an EX-Archive subscriber
tomorrow! “I’ll get round to thinking about this Christianity lark some
time. I’m just rather busy at the moment.”   Please, don’t leave it
until tomorrow − it may never come!
5.12
Norwich Computer Services 96a Vauxhall Street, Norwich, NR2 2SD.
0603−766592 (−764011)
5.12
4th Dimension     P.O. Box 4444, Sheffield. (0742−700661) (0742−781091)
5.12
4Mation    11 Castle Park Road, Whiddon Valley, Barnstaple, Devon  EX32
8PA. (0271−25353) (0271−22974)
5.12
Abacus Training     29 Okus Grove, Upper Stratton, Swindon, Wilts  SN2
6QA.
5.12
Ace Computing (p9)    27 Victoria
Road, Cambridge  CB4 3BW. (0223−322559) (0223−69180)
5.12
Acorn Direct    13 Dennington Road, Wellingborough, Northants  NN8 2RL.
5.12
Acorn Computers Ltd     Fulbourn
Road, Cherry Hinton, Cambridge  CB1 4JN. (0223−245200) (0223−210685)
5.12
Arachne Software     Orchard Cottage, East Morden, Wareham, Dorset  BH20
7DL.
5.12
CIS    Unit 2a, 436 Essex Road, London  N1 3QP. (071−226−3340)
(071−226−3408)
5.12
Clares Micro Supplies    98 Mid
dlewich Road, Rudheath, Northwich, Cheshire  CW9 7DA. (0606−48511)
(0606−48512)
5.12
Colton Software (p14)    2 Signet
Court, Swanns Road, Cambridge  CB5 8LA. (0223−311881) (0223−312010)
5.12
Computer Concepts (p32/33)    Gaddesden
Place, Hemel Hempstead, Herts  HP2 6EX. (0442−63933) (0442−231632)
5.12
Dabs Press    22 Warwick Street, Prestwich, Manchester  M25 7HN.
(061−773−8632) (061−773−8290)
5.12
DEC_dATA    60 Danes Road, Exeter EX4 4LS. (0392−221702)
5.12
Design Concept    30 South Oswald Road, Edinburgh  EH9 2HG.
(031−668−4518)
5.12
HCCS Ltd     575−583 Durham Road, Gateshead  NE9 5JJ. (091−487−0760)
(091−491−0431)
5.12
Ian Copestake Software (p31)    1 Kington
Road, West Kirby, Wirral  L48 5ET. (051−625−1006) (051−625−1007)
5.12
Keylink Computers Ltd (p10)    2 Woodway
House, Common Lane, Kenilworth, Warwickshire  CV8 2ES. (0926−50909)
(0926−864128)
5.12
Lingenuity (Lindis)    Wood Farm,
Linstead Magna, Halesworth, Suffolk  IP19 0DU. (098−685−477)
(098−685−460)
5.12
Longman-Logotron    124 Cambridge Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge CB4
4ZS. (0223−425558) (0223−425349)
5.12
LOOKsystems (p5)    47 Goodhale Road, Bowthorpe, Norwich  NR5 9AY.
(0603−764114) (0603−764011)
5.12
Mijas Software     Winchester Road, Micheldever, Winchester  SO21 3DJ.
(0962−89352)
5.12
Minerva Systems (p6)    Minerva
House, Baring Crescent, Exeter  EX1 1TL. (0392−437756) (0392−421762)
5.12
Oak Solutions (p21)    Suite 25,
Robin Enterprise Centre, Leeds Road, Idle, Yorkshire BD10 9TE.
(0274−620423) (0274−620419)
5.12
O.U. Maths Education Centre    The Open
University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes  MK7 6AA. (0908−274066)
(0908−653744)
5.12
Oregan Developments    36 Grosvenor
Avenue, Streetly, Sutton Coldfield  B74 3PE.
5.12
Primary Education Services    72 Kimberley
Road, Leicester  LE2 1LF. (0533−733063)
5.12
Ray Maidstone     421 Sprowston Road, Norwich  NR3 4EH. (0603−400477)
(0603−417447)
5.12
Risc Developments Ltd    117 Hatfield
Road, St Albans, Herts  AL1 4JS. (0727−40303) (0727−860263)
5.12
Sherston Software    Swan Barton, Sherston, Malmesbury, Wilts. SN16 0LH.
(0666−840433) (0666−840048)
5.12
Silicon Vision Ltd    Signal
House, Lyon Road, Harrow, Middlesex  HA1 2AG. (081−861−2173)
(081−427−5169)
5.12
SJ Research    J1 The Paddocks, 347 Cherry Hinton Road, Cambridge  CB1
4DH. (0223−416715)
5.12
Spacetech (p13)    21 West Wools, Portland, Dorset  DT5 2EA.
(0305−822753)
5.12
Turcan Research Systems    83 Green
croft Gardens, West Hampstead, London NW6 3LJ. (071−625−8455)
5.12
Watford Electronics    250 Lower
High Street, Watford  WD1 2AN. (0923−37774) (0923−33642)
5.12
Wyddfa Software    3 Preswylfa, Llanberis, Gwynedd  LL55 4LF.
(0286−870101) (0286−871722)
5.12
Computer Concepts
5.12
From 5.11 page 32
5.12
Paul B.
5.12
Hints and Tips
5.12
•    Free Space − (Ref to Archive 5.11 p21) − The call to check the amount
of free space on a disc is ADFS_FreeSpace. On entry, R0 points to the
disc specifier and on exit R0 contains the free space and R1 contains
the size of the largest object that can be created. E.g.
5.12
SYS“ADFS_FreeSpace”,“:0” to free%,largest%
5.12
Change the ADFS to RamFS, SCSIFS or whatever you’re using.
5.12
•    Free space on hard discs − For some time I had been concerned by the
apparent discrepancy between the figures returned by COUNT and FREE for
the space used by files on my SCSI discs. I was aware that COUNT only
counts the actual files and that FREE counts all the space used but I
still felt uneasy and my discs seemed to fill up alarmingly quickly.
5.12
ADFS floppies use 2k for every directory and there is an initial 4k
overhead for the map on E format discs. My impression was that the same
amount of space would be used for each directory in all Filecore
systems, including SCSI, but that the map would take more space
depending on the size of the disc.
5.12
So the first thing I did was to estimate the number of directories on my
120M disc. I make full use of the directory structure to organise my
data, not to any great depth but with some width. RISC-OS encourages
this and, of course, applications are directories too. I reckoned there
were well over 1000 directories on the disc, but at 2k per directory,
this did not account for the difference.
5.12
With a little experiment of adding a directory and looking for the
change in free space, I found that a directory was taking a staggering
28k! This was where the space was going, but why?
5.12
My Oak SCSI card is managed by their SCSIForm program which allows some
flexibility in defining the format of the disc. Having backed-up, I did
some experimenting with the parameters.
5.12
I changed the sector size, but the minimum value for the 120M disc was
512 bytes and, for a 42M removable was 256 bytes. I imagine the lowest
possible value of 128 bytes is only for small discs. Anyway, the changes
I made had only very small effects on space or disc transfer times. The
default is 512 bytes per sector, so I left it at that.
5.12
Next I changed the file allocation size. This defaults to 2k on the
large disc and 1k on the other. The minimum is 256 bytes. The larger
values are chosen, I believe, to speed up transfer times to large files
on larger discs. I did not think this parameter would have an effect on
the structure, but look at the table below. The results were impressive.
For a loss of transfer time of less than 5% I was gaining a saving on
structure of 7 times! There were similar results for the smaller disc.
5.12
    File Alloc’n  (bytes)    2048
    1024    512    256
5.12
    Map Space (k)    57    47
    68.5    124
5.12
    Dir’y Space  (k each)    28    15
    7.5    4
5.12
    Mode 0   (k/sec)    1959    1864
    1864    1864
5.12
    Mode 21  (k/sec)    994    955
    955    955
5.12
I have not delved any further into why more than 2k per directory is
taken in SCSI but the figures suggest 14 blocks are used: 13 are <256
bytes and the other is 512-768 bytes.
5.12
When I settled on a file allocation size of 256 bytes, I recovered about
30M of extra space on the larger disc − about £200 worth, perhaps. Some
of this saving comes from taking much less space for the multitude of
small !Run,!Boot and !Sprites files.
5.12
The only other make of SCSI of card I have access to is a Cumana one in
school, running in a fileserver for 600 users. This too has 1000+
directories. The Cumana SCSIManager program only offers formatting with
default values, so I changed the format using my Oak card and made
similar impressive savings. The disc runs happily with the Cumana card,
as you would expect, but will not dismount. This is no penalty with
self-parking heads.
5.12
I then found an old ADFS hard drive and did the same check, finding that
a new directory takes 12k. RAMFS takes a straight 2k. I would be
interested to know if the same problem applies to IDE discs and what
formatting is possible with other SCSI cards.  Steve Drain, Portland.  A
5.12
Comment Column
5.12
•    Hard drives − Learning the hard way − Hands up all those who used not
to bother taking back-ups of hard drives... until you had a crash and
lost a load of data? Well, we thought we had learned that lesson by
proxy from all the customers who have come to us with their tales of woe
− until it happened to us!
5.12
In the Norwich Computer Services office, we used to back up our main
address database regularly onto a floppy disc. Then when it grew too
large to fit on a floppy, even with compression, we started taking a
removable drive across to the database computer to do the backup.
Gradually we got more and more lazy about backing up because of the
effort of connecting and disconnecting the removable drive from one
machine to another. (We didn’t think we could justify the cost of a
removable drive just for backup.)
5.12
Last week, Ali said, “The drive light seems to be on permanently and the
computer has locked up.”  The drive seemed well and truly dead − we
couldn’t get it to respond at all. Help, panic! When did we last do a
backup? Nearly three months ago!!!!! How big is the database? We have
(or should I say had, before the crash!) nearly 20,000 names and
addresses on it. Arrrggghhh!!!
5.12
We opened up the computer and found that the fan filter was absolutely
SOLID with dust and, not surprisingly, the hard drive was roasting hot.
Again, you see, we don’t follow our own advice − we don’t change the
batteries and fan filters once a year even though we have piles of
annual service kits on our stock shelves!
5.12
Anyway, we have learned our lesson from the episode and, thankfully, the
story has a happy ending. We left the case open and tried to start up
the drive again after it had cooled down for an hour − no joy − still
dead. Then, after another hour (and more fervent prayer!) we tried
again... and the drive sprang back to life! The drive is still going
strong but we have put a removable drive on the computer and are backing
up rather more frequently! (The 42M removable drives are now down to
£425 − a good investment, especially if you already have a SCSI podule.)
5.12
Hard drives are generally very reliable, but DON’T rely on them. Ask
yourself the question, “What would happen if that hard drive died
suddenly and irretrievably?” and if the answer is that you would be in a
mess, do something about it now − don’t learn the hard way!
5.12
•    RISC-OS 3 self-tests − In response to Rob Davison’s comment about the
A5000 startup time on page 13 of Archive 5.11, I would like to give a
description of what the startup/reset self-test involves.
5.12
This self-test, which is performed by A540 and A5000 computers, and
probably the A4, is performed by the motherboard, before the operating
system is invoked. As a result, it cannot easily be disabled. The self-
test involves checking that the Operating System ROM links are correctly
set, and then checking the memory for faults. On an A5000 (and A4), the
floppy drives are then initialised. This was explained in a recent issue
of Archive. If any part of this self-test fails, the floppy disc drive
light is flashed.
5.12
From experience with an A540 fitted with RISC-OS 3.08 (pre-release) and
a number of A5000 systems, I can say that the main delay with an A5000
is the initialisation of the floppy drives.
5.12
Although the self-test takes a number of seconds, it is extremely
useful. Our A540 is currently running its second version of RISC-OS 3.
When we re-installed version 2.01 due to disc corruption problems, we
confused the ROM link settings. As a result, the self-test failed and
prevented use of the machine. This probably protected the ROM chips from
serious damage.  A
5.12
Ace
5.12
From 5.10 page 39
5.12
KeyLink
5.12
New Artwork
5.12
Prolog Explained
5.12
Rob Lucas
5.12
Prolog is a logic-based computer language which allows the programmer to
define rules and facts, and to ask questions, more commonly called
queries, about these. In English, facts are statements like, ‘The sky is
grey’ or ‘The wind is from the West’. Rules are statements like, ‘I go
shopping if the weather is fine and it is Saturday’ or ‘It will rain if
the sky is grey and the wind is from the West’. A rule is characterised
by ‘if’, or its equivalent, connecting some conclusion with one or more
premises.
5.12
When we ask Prolog a query, such as the Prolog equivalent of the English
question, ‘Will it rain?’, Prolog will use the facts and rules in its
database to try to construct a proof that it will rain, and it will
report whether or not it was successful. It will construct a proof by
demonstrating that the query can be logically deduced from the rules and
facts.
5.12
In this example, Prolog starts with the query ‘Will it rain?’ and uses
the rule ‘It will rain when the sky is grey and the wind is from the
west’ to establish that it must satisfy, or know to be true, the two
separate statements: ‘the sky is grey’ and ‘the wind is from the west’.
If these two facts do exist for the Prolog system, i.e. if it has been
told them, then the query is satisfied and the Prolog system will report
this. Here is how such a rule and the required facts may be expressed in
Prolog:
5.12
rain :-
5.12
    wind_is_westerly,
5.12
    sky_is_grey.
5.12
wind_is_westerly.
5.12
sky_is_grey.
5.12
The first three lines constitute the rule, while the final two are the
facts. Given that ‘:−’ is the Prolog equivalent to ‘if’, and that the
comma (,) represents ‘and’, the rule may be read in a way that corre
sponds very closely to the English rule: ‘rain if wind is westerly and
sky is grey’. Similarly, the facts may be read as: wind is westerly and
sky is grey. If we were to enter this rule and the two facts into
Prolog’s database and ask the query ?− rain. i.e. Will it rain?, Prolog
will reply ‘yes’. (Queries always start with ?−.)
5.12
Of course, there is a great deal more to Prolog than this but this
simple method of logical deduction; is very much at the heart of Prolog
and is the only method by which anything, trivial or otherwise, can be
achieved.
5.12
Variables
5.12
We can use variables in rules to make more general statements than the
above. We can express the rule ‘all men are mortal’ in Prolog like this:
5.12
mortal(X) :-
5.12
    man(X).
5.12
Note the use of the variable denoted by the uppercase letter X. This
rule should be read, mortal(X) is true if man(X) is true (or can be
proved). If we have the facts:
5.12
man(plato).
5.12
man(major).
5.12
Then the query ?− mortal(X) will give us first plato and then major, but
no more. This is because Prolog is using what is called the ‘closed
world assumption’. This means that it can only deduce information about
what it has been told. Another important point is that we could make the
query ?− mortal(major). which would use the rule to try and prove the
fact ‘man(major)’.
5.12
Our rules can be very much more complex, allowing for large chains of
deduction to be made. A rule can also have many different parts (more
formally called clauses) that mean it may be satisfied in different
ways. For example we could add the clause:
5.12
mortal(X) :-
5.12
    animal(X).
5.12
If the first clause for mortal should fail then the second clause will
be used automatically as an alternative means of proving mortal.
5.12
Lists
5.12
Prolog has a data structure called a list which is a way of representing
some ordered set of objects. We denote a list by the use of square
brackets. For example, the following line is a fact which has as its
only argument a list of three items:
5.12
example_list([sealing_wax,cabbages,kings]).
5.12
The query ?− example_list(X) will cause X to stand for the list
[sealing_wax,cabbages,kings]. There is a notation provided that allows
us to get at the first element (known as the head) of a list. This uses
the | character to separate the list into its head and tail. For
example:
5.12
?− example_list([H|T]).
5.12
causes X to be set to sealing_wax and T to be set to [cabbages,kings].
Note that the tail of a list is also a list. An empty list, i.e. a list
with no members, is denoted by [].
5.12
We are now in a position to define some very elegant rules for manipu
lating lists. Consider a rule which determines whether an item is a
member of a given list. We might make the query:
5.12
?− member(cabbages,L).
5.12
where L is some list, and require this to be true if cabbages is in L.
To check that an item is the head of the list is very easy:
5.12
member(H,[H|T]).
5.12
This will succeed whenever H is the first element of the list because it
requires H to be the given element and the head of the list being
examined. If this is not the case, we can check the rest of the list
with:
5.12
member(X,[H|T]) :- member(X,T).
5.12
because T is the tail of the list, and using member with the tail as the
second argument will now cause X to be checked as being the same as the
head of the tail, and so on. This is an example of a recursive rule, one
that calls itself, being used on a recursive data structure, one that
can be defined in terms of itself (a list is an empty list or it is an
element followed by a list). This leads to very succinct and powerful
rules. Here’s one for concatenating two lists:
5.12
append([],L,L).
5.12
append([H|T],L,[H|U]):-
5.12
    append(T,L,U).
5.12
?− append([shoes,ships],[cabbages],L).
5.12
L = [shoes,ships,cabbages]
5.12
The first clause reads that the empty list concatenated to any list
gives the same list. I’ll leave it to the reader to try and figure out
the second clause (a hint is that the resulting list must start with the
same element as the first list which is why H appears where it does).
Prolog’s ability to deal with lists of symbols so elegantly makes it an
ideal language for natural language interpretation. The famous Artifi
cial Intelligence program ‘Eliza’ can be coded in less than one hundred
lines. (Eliza mimics the responses of a psychiatrist to a patient’s
input and caused a stir when it was first written because someone was
fooled into pouring her heart out to it. It was originally written in
LISP.)
5.12
Prologue
5.12
I hope that this has given you some of the flavour of Prolog. It’s
impossible to explain every aspect of a language in one short article
but you should have gained some idea of the power and flexibility of a
deductive approach to programming. If you decide to have a go at Prolog
programming, I can guarantee a totally new and rewarding experience
which will make you view all your programming tasks in a new light.
5.12
Rob Lucas works for Keylink Computers Ltd who produce the only (as far
as we know) currently available version of Prolog for the Archimedes.
Rob has agreed to write a series of articles about Prolog on the
Archimedes, in which he will be taking things at a more leisuredly
pace.  A
5.12
Spacetech
5.12
From 5.11 page 22 but with the extra bit as above
5.12

5.12
See the world at the Acorn User Show with...
5.12

5.12
Colton
5.12
From 5.11 page 12
5.12
Hardware Column
5.12
Brian Cowan
5.12
It is usually about this time of year that I give my apologies for the
absence from these pages which is occasioned by the universities’ ‘silly
season’. On reflection, however, it is likely that for the students it
is their, perhaps only, ‘serious season’! Much has happened in the last
few months, so let’s get stuck in with a catalogue of recent disasters
which have befallen some of our computers.
5.12
Senile dementia
5.12
By computer standards, the first Archimedes models are now becoming a
little long in the tooth and some are beginning to show signs of their
age. In my laboratory, we have only ourselves to blame when the
keyboards become encrusted with grime and the monitors have such a thick
layer of dust on the screens that you think the brightness control must
be faulty. This generally happens because a computer can be running an
experiment continuously for many months during which time the byword is
“keep off”.
5.12
Unhappy memory
5.12
A more serious aspect of the ageing process is that some things wear out
and faults do develop. On one old 440 machine, all of a sudden, strange
problems started. This computer was being used to run a particular
experiment and one day it ‘hung up’. The controlling program was written
in Basic but it called bits of compiled Fortran and C code − a mess, I
know, but at least it worked. Or, I should say, it used to! One morning,
an irate colleague intercepted me as I arrived, with the news that the
program would not run. The strange thing was that every other program we
tried worked perfectly. I was convinced that someone had made a change
to the program − as, of course, one can with Basic without having to do
anything so drastic as recompiling.
5.12
I had had a similar problem once before when trying to run a “desktop-
ised” version of a frequently used Fortran program. What had happened
there was that, from the desktop, there was not enough RAM for the
program, but Fortran did no checking; it simply read from and wrote to
memory belonging to other applications − clearly, a recipe for disaster!
The solution was simply to reserve adequate RAM with WimpSlot. The
recollection of that got me thinking about memory allocation. Since the
present program was not running from the desktop I could not use
wimpslot. As a stab in the dark, I entered the desktop and reserved
plenty of RAM for the next task using the task manager. Then I quit the
desktop and ran the program. It worked − and I was hailed a hero!
5.12
Problem solved?
5.12
The experiment was now working but maybe another problem would surface.
Was the system unreliable? What was going on? My colleague was convinced
that there was a hardware problem with the computer; he had written the
original program and so he had faith in that. He was right because when
we changed the computer over (no small job as it involved swapping hard
discs and some rather dilapidated podules) the old program worked first
time with no black magic.
5.12
Not quite
5.12
The next clue to the mystery arrived by accident. We tried backing-up a
disc on the troublesome machine and observed that even using the Q
option, the machine was prompting for multiple disc swaps. It was clear
that the machine could not find the RAM that we knew was there. It began
to dawn on us that perhaps some of the RAM was faulty. So we ran the
RamCheck program in the Software Developer’s Toolbox and, lo and behold,
it told us there was chunk of faulty RAM. What was slightly surprising
was that the task manager indicated 4M of free RAM as did the Basic
start-up line when run in single-task mode. I was reminded of all those
times I had waited impatiently after switching a PC on, while it
laboriously went through checking all its RAM. Maybe it is not such a
silly idea after all. I don’t know whether RISC-OS 3 checks this; I know
it does some checking. (Yes, it does − see the Comment Column on page 8.
Ed.)
5.12
RAM replacement
5.12
So we had some duff RAM − what about changing it? It is difficult to
identify the physical address because all addressing goes through the
MEMC chip. I tried a small machine code program together with a logic
probe on the chips. It was a tedious task, but it looked as if all the
problem was in one chip. They say it’s not what you know, but who you
know − this is very true! I phoned up Martin Coulson at Atomwide to ask
his opinion. Yes, it was possible for RAM chips to fail and, yes, it is
difficult, without the correct gear, to find which chip is responsible.
However, he told me that he had the gear and, in fact, he has developed
an Archimedes trouble-shooter’s probe (I believe under commission from
Acorn) for this very purpose. (It is called an Archimedes post-tester
but is only available for purchase by registered Acorn dealers.)
5.12
I took the machine to Atomwide’s Orpington headquarters for repair.
Essentially, what Martin did was to insert some special test ROMs in
place of the RISC-OS ROMs and plugged in his test probe to the circuit
board. When the computer was turned on, the display on the probe flashed
as the Archimedes stepped through its test routine and, within a minute
or so, the location of the faulty memory chip flashed up. Brilliant! The
faulty chip was replaced and everything was fine.
5.12
Moral
5.12
The moral of the story is that it always pays to deal with a reliable
supplier rather than a “box-shifter”. It is possible for a hardware
fault to develop and faulty RAM might go undetected for quite some time.
5.12
Printer madness
5.12
Now for the next disaster. One of my colleagues is a Luddite. He is
still using the original version of First Word Plus together with the
First Fonts scientific character set. You may recall that the extra
character set is downloaded to the printer where it is stored for use.
This all worked very nicely until disaster number two struck.
5.12
On downloading the fonts, the printer went berserk, printing a few
garbled characters on a page and then ejecting it. This would carry on
until the printer had disposed of about a ream of paper. Originally, I
was blamed for the problem because, in attempting to cure the Luddism, I
had installed an Impression dongle on the machine. However, that turned
out not to be the problem. We changed printers − no improvement. We
checked the CMOS RAM settings − nothing strange there. However, once
again, on changing computers, the problem disappeared.
5.12
Finding the fault was difficult because we needed the printer connected
to see what was happening but the printer just kept spewing out paper.
In the end I hit upon a plan. Using <Ctrl-B>, characters can be sent
directly to the printer. I then typed in ABCDEF, and the printer echoed
@BBDDF. Checking the ASCII codes I had the answer − or at least part of
it. Bit zero was dead − it was always zero. That also explained why the
printer kept ejecting the paper − each line feed (ASCII 13) was being
transformed into a form feed (ASCII 12)!
5.12
I started with my logic probe on the PCB and, as expected, the printer
buffer/latch chip was faulty − bit zero output was high impedance.
Something I had learned from the dead RAM saga was boldness! I took my
side cutters, cut all the legs off the chip, desoldered the remaining
stubs from the board, inserted a new chip and soldered it in place. I
was feeling pretty pleased. I announced that the machine was fixed,
invited an admiring audience, and switched on. Pride comes before a
fall, or so they say. On trying the printer, the same problem occurred,
with pages shooting out all over the place. I checked the replaced IC
and its line zero was dead! What had killed it? Eventually, I discovered
that each of the printer port output lines has an RC network to stop
ringing in the data lines. The ceramic capacitor on line zero had gone a
short circuit. Quite a surprise.
5.12
I replaced the capacitor. Having removed the new IC, I was not going to
be caught again, so I installed a socket for the next one. This time,
when I switched on, everything was OK. I am usually reluctant to suspect
hardware as, in my experience, most faults have their origin in
software. This balance of judgement might change as software gets
better, while machines get older.
5.12
Hard disc deaths
5.12
I don’t know what the expected life span for a hard disc drive is
supposed to be, but we have just laid to rest the third dead drive in
the laboratory. The original Weston Digital drives which Acorn supplied
with the original hard disc upgrades died ages ago. I think there was a
problem with that batch and they certainly did not last long. (A number
have died at 12 months + 1 day! Ed.) However, a Seagate 40M ST506 drive
has just packed up after about two years of service, so perhaps we
should start buying them in bulk!
5.12
We have never actually had a hard disc “crash”. In each of the three
failures, it was the motor drive bearing which had seized-up. This is,
perhaps, not too surprising because one thing which was common to all
three failures is that the drives had been used on machines which ran
for long periods without interruption. In other words they could be on
continuously for months at a time.
5.12
Now there is one school of thought which says that computers are best
left on all the time. In general, I think that makes a lot of sense, as
long as the monitors have either automatic blanking after a predeter
mined time or if they are switched off when not in use. However, there
is still a problem with the hard discs, presumably when the bearings
cool down. Sometimes such seized-up drives can be got running by
repeatedly switching them on and off. However occasionally a bolder
approach is needed.
5.12
The Weston Digital and the Tandon drives had their motors externally
accessible. With these units I was able to poke at the flywheel and
apply some WD40 lubricant to get things moving. This usually gives
another two years or so of life to a drive. Unfortunately, the newer
Seagate drives have the motor inside the sealed housing. In desperation,
I opened one such unit in what I would call a “relatively clean”
environment, lubricated the bearing and resealed the case. This drive
has now been running for a few months with no problem. I have no
illusions that this will last forever but the procedure did enable us to
rescue the data on the disc and we have learned to make regular back-
ups.
5.12
Maybe the answer is in the new generation of IDE drives which can be
configured to have an automatic power-down when they have not been used
for so many seconds. I will have to look into this.
5.12
Floating point acceleration
5.12
There is still no news of Acorn’s floating point accelerator. However, I
have news of two others. The DT Software accelerator using a ‘387 chip
has been written about before. I don’t know whether they are in
existence yet (Nope! Ed.) but the idea is sound and there should be at
least a fourfold speed improvement on floating point operations. The
beauty of this system, as with the Acorn accelerator, is that apart from
the speed improvement, the hardware is not visible to the user because
it simply tales over from the floating point emulator. When I have tried
out the DT product, I will give you my evaluation.
5.12
For those with a serious interest in floating point number crunching,
there is another product − although it is in a rather different price
league. Riverside Machines Ltd produce a range of accelerator boards for
various computers, using the Intel i860 RISC chip. Unlike the ARM,
Intel’s chip was designed with floating point speed in mind and, running
at 40 MHz, it is capable of a staggering 80 Mflops (million floating
point operations per second), which is very much faster than anything
the bare Archimedes could achieve.
5.12
The RM05 board is a double-width podule, plugging into the I/O bus
(although it does not use the coprocessor bus). It contains an i860
chip, a ROM, a clock, various glue chips and a choice of between 2M and
32M of RAM.
5.12
It should be pointed out that this is not a floating point accelerator
in the usually accepted sense. Programs must be written specially to
make use of this hardware and, to this end, the RM05 ROM contains a
Unix-like operating system kernel and there are also various language
compilers available. Depending on the clock speed and the RAM capacity,
these accelerators cost between £2520 and £4500. I hope to be reviewing
one for you within the next few months.
5.12
Portable
5.12
At last the A4 Notebook has been announced. I shall be working abroad
for the month of August and, ideally, I would have liked to have taken
an A4 with me to give it a good going-over. Unfortunately, I could not
get hold of one so I will be renewing my acquaintance with pencil and
paper, while using the odd PC when really desperate.
5.12
From reading the specification of the new machine, my main reservation
is the lack of a SCSI interface, particularly for my Syquest removables.
I understand that one of the “quality” companies will be manufacturing a
SCSI converter which attaches to the bidirectional printer port. This
sounds good but we shall have to wait and see what sort of speed
performance is possible.
5.12
I wonder what Computer Concepts will be doing regarding their dongles. A
portable will be very unwieldly with a dongle sticking out the back. One
assumes the machines will have personalised identification codes so a
dongle-free but still protected version of Impression is a possibility.
5.12
(As we mentioned last month in the preview of Artworks, there is going
to be an alternative to the dongle for Artworks and Impression. Computer
Concepts are intending to make use of the serial number contained in
each A5000 and A4 so that you can have a customised version, which will
then only work on the one computer, as a replacement for your dongle.
Ed.)
5.12
My other concern relates to the mouse. Acorn have stated that they
considered a tracker ball, but decided that three button operation with
a tracker ball is difficult. Well, I have been using a tracker ball for
years and there is no problem at all if the functions of the left and
middle buttons are reversed. It is quite simple to roll the ball with
your thumb while holding down the centre button with a finger to effect
a “drag” operation. I certainly don’t want to carry around a mouse which
is almost as big as the computer!  A
5.12
Small Ads
5.12
(Small ads for Archimedes and related products are free for subscribers
but we reserve the right to publish all, part or none of the material
you send, as we think fit. i.e. some people don’t know what “small”
means and there are certain things, as you can imagine, that we would
not be prepared to advertise as a matter of principle. Sending small ads
(especially long ones!) on disc is helpful but not essential. Ed)
5.12
•    45M SCSI A3000 Hardcard (unused) £325, Cumana 1M ram A3000 £35, PRES
disc buffer A3000 £35, PRES monitor stand £17.50. Phone 0332−701969.
5.12
•    A3000, 2M (can be increased to 4M), serial upgrade, Phillips CM8833
monitor £740 o.n.o. 4M upgrade for A3000 £100. Phone 0943− 878172.
5.12
•    A310, colour monitor, CJE 4M RAM, MEMC1a, 20M drive, PC Emulator 1.7,
5¼ interface, £950 o.n.o. Phone 091−487−6061.
5.12
•    Cumana dual 80 track double sided drive with own PSU £60, WS3000 V21/
23 Hayes modem £50. Phone Jean-Paul Hamerton on 081−693−5647.
5.12
•    Elite (Gold edition), Tactic, Leaderboard, Midnight Tracer, Clips 2,
Tracker, Z88 + accessories. Phone Mike Pargeter on 0462−434061.
5.12
•    Hitachi 672 HP compatible A3 plotter with Worra-Plotter software £130.
Presenter 2 £20. Phone John Savage on 0525−23625.
5.12
•    Micro User magazines, vols 1-4, any reasonable offer. Norton AntiVirus
PC software, unused £65 (was £105). Phone 0727−861835.
5.12
Charity Sales − If you have unwanted software or hardware for Archimedes
computers you could donate for charity, please send it in to the Archive
office. We will sell them at the Acorn User Show in October which is a
more effective way of raising money than doing it by post.  A
5.12
Using the A4 Notebook
5.12
Paul Beverley
5.12
The original notes I wrote about the A4 Notebook were based on a couple
of hour’s use in a back room at Fulbourn Road. Having actually tried to
use an A4 in a real life situation, I have a few more considered
comments to make.
5.12
Generally, I continue to be very impressed − the ability to have
“Archimedes power” with you wherever you go is absolutely brilliant.
However, there are a few niggles that have arisen. There are one or two
things which make life difficult but I have found solutions to some of
them.
5.12
Most of my comments, for obvious reasons, relate to the use of Impres
sion on the A4 but some are more generally applicable.
5.12
Problems in high ambient lighting
5.12
The first and most obvious problem is the difficulty of finding the
pointer and the cursor when you are working in high ambient lighting
conditions. I have a program for enlarging the pointer (I’ve put it on
this month’s program disc) but it isn’t ideal, so if someone can provide
us with an improved version, I’d be very grateful. The hourglass is big
enough but the double-pointer that appears in RISC-OS 3 when you are
dragging files is rather small and is easy to lose in high ambient
lighting conditions so if someone could write a program to change that,
again I’d be most grateful.
5.12
When using Impression in high ambient light, it was particularly
difficult to find the cursor so I edited the sprite file in the
Impression resources directory and blackened up the ‘ptr_caret19’ icon
which is used for the mouse pointer. This makes it more visible as it
moves over the text. However, I couldn’t find any way of blackening the
flashing text cursor itself. Does anyone know if it is possible to do so
without?
5.12
One thing I also noticed was that the lefthand side of the screen is
more strongly lit than the right hand side. Apparently this is because
the side lighting is from one side only. In practice, you soon get used
to it and hardly notice it.
5.12
Screen angle
5.12
It may be because I am tall, but I find that the angle of tilt of the
screen is not ideal. I like to have the screen so that I am looking at
it square on. Unfortunately, the A4 screen will not tip back far enough
for me, so I have had to get used to it being at a bit of an angle. I
could tip the whole A4 backwards a bit but it isn’t very good trying to
type with the keyboard tipped backwards. Indeed, some people would want
to have the keyboard angled forwards which would make the screen angle
even worse.
5.12
Battery manager
5.12
When I first saw the A4, I thought that the battery management on screen
was a little unnecessary − it duplicates the LCD display on the front of
the case, so why bother? However, having used it in a real life
situation, I find it extremely helpful to be able to see out of the
corner of my eye just how much ‘life’ I have got left. It even has an
arrow on it to show whether the batteries are charging or discharging.
This gives you some reassurance when the charger is connected because
you can see that it is actually charging. It also acts as a reminder if
you are using the computer in a situation where you could connect the
charger but haven’t thought to connect it.
5.12
Also, the LCD display only tells you if it’s 20%, 40%, 60%, etc whereas
the battery manager has a scale which gives a more accurate indication
of the battery life. Mind you, you have to be careful after you have
taken the battery pack out. The A4 Welcome Guide says that after taking
the battery pack out you can give the battery manager an estimate of the
charge held in the battery. It also says that you can revise your
estimate but, in my experience, once you have given an estimate, the
‘Estimate’ option is greyed out on the menu. The only way to change the
estimate, it seems, is to remove the battery again. After you have
removed the battery, the LCD display indicates that you have 20% charge
and it stays that way when you try to charge the battery. Then when it
is absolutely fully charged, it jumps straight up to 100%. I was
convinced that the A4 was malfunctioning because I saw that it was
staying at 20% even though it was apparently charging. The answer is not
to take the battery out unless you absolutely have to do so.
5.12
One thing to be careful of here is that, as it says in the A4 Release
Notes, the battery manager can get very confused if you take the battery
out but only for a few seconds. So, if you do take the battery pack out,
leave it out for, say, 30 seconds − and make sure that the battery
charger is not connected while you do so. In other words, give the
capacitors in the battery manager hardware plenty of time to discharge
fully.
5.12
Keyboard problems
5.12
The positioning of keys can cause some grief. The worst change in my
view is that they have swapped the positions of the <caps-lock> and
<ctrl> keys so that the <ctrl> key is down next to the front edge of the
keyboard. (This is the standard position on PC keyboards.) It means that
<ctrl-A>, <ctrl-S> and <ctrl-D>, which I use regularly for editing, are
not easy as to use as they were − neither are <ctrl-X>, <ctrl-C> and
<ctrl-V> for cutting and pasting. If anyone could write me a program
that would reverse the operation of these two keys, I would be most
grateful.
5.12
Those who are used to using smart quotes in Impression will find that it
is now a real pain. The open quotes are where you would expect them to
be (on the close square brackets key) but the close quotes have migrated
down to the bottom lefthand side of the keyboard just next to the
<shift> key because that is where Acorn have put the backslash key.
(Again, this is the standard position on PC keyboards.) Mind you, I
don’t think it’s fair to blame Acorn for this one. If CC had chosen open
and close brackets, with <ctrl>, to perform open and close inverted
commas, all would have been well − perhaps CC could be persuaded to
change this on the next version of Impression?!
5.12
The <delete> key has migrated to the front edge of the keyboard but,
fortunately, the <backspace> key above the <return> key is in vaguely
the same place as <delete> on the traditional Archimedes keyboard and
has the same effect in most applications.
5.12
Some of the <alt> key combinations that you may have become used to
using with Impression seem to work differently on the A4. For example,
the × character doesn’t come from <alt-,> but from <shift-alt-,> and ÷
comes as <shift-alt-.>.
5.12
Using different keyboards
5.12
We have done a bit of experimentation with different keyboards attached
to the A4. It says in the documentation that you need a PC-style AT
protocol keyboard with a 6-way mini-DIN plug − as used on PS/2 compu
ters. However, it doesn’t specifically say that you shouldn’t use the
standard Archimedes keyboard, so we tried one out. It plugs straight
into the side of the A4 and the mouse then has to be connected into the
keyboard instead of the normal mouse-hole on the side of the A4. It
appears to work − certainly, the keys work OK − but there are real
problems with the mouse. When dragging files, they are sometimes dropped
off en route to their destination − which can be a real nuisance at
times. Worse still, in the course of such a movement, it can even pick
up different files as it moves over the top of them. When I rang Acorn,
they confirmed that the A4 is NOT intended to be used with Acorn
keyboards. Never-the-less, you may not want to go to the expense of
buying a PC keyboard and we found that the Acorn keyboard was usable in
Impression, though I wouldn’t risk using the mouse to do any file
manipulation.
5.12
We looked through a PC magazine and found a suitable PC keyboard to try
out. It was a Compaq keyboard for a PS/2 and cost £75 +VAT. There may
have been cheaper ones but this one worked fine and had a good feel −
better than the A4’s own keyboard − though it still has some keys in the
‘wrong place’ as mentioned above.
5.12
The other problem of using external keyboards is that you lose the <Fn>
key. This doesn’t matter for mouse or numeric keypad emulation but it is
a nuisance that you cannot do a <Fn-F9> to invert the video or a <Fn-
F10> to switch off the hard drive. However, the former can be done
before you connect the external keyboard and the latter can be done
through <menu> on the battery manager if it is loaded.  A
5.12
Oak Solutions
5.12
From 5.11 page 4
5.12
The DTP Column
5.12
Richard Else
5.12
I am devoting the majority of this month’s column to a review of two new
hand-held scanners. The effective use of images is a key element within
DTP work, and both these scanners make the job of putting original art
work into a document a lot easier. But first, our regular business...
5.12
Impression Hints & Tips
5.12
Ŷ•    Problems with version 2.17 − If you are having problems with version
2.17 − such as the machine hanging up when you select large areas of
text − don’t blame Impression! Basically, what is happening is that CC
have implemented message-passing via the Wimp for their thesaurus and
these messages are rather large. This is a perfectly valid thing to do
under Acorn’s RISC-OS programming guidelines but not all filing systems
have been written to allow for such large messages and they end up over-
writing areas of memory − hence the crashes. Filing system versions
known to be a problem are:
5.12
    Oak SCSI version 1.11
5.12
    Ian Copestake IDE version 1.13,
5.12
    Serial Port IDE version 1.01, March ’91
5.12
CC say... “If your Archimedes gives problems, contact your Acorn
supplier or the appropriate company. Please do not contact Computer
Concepts − these problems are not caused by Impression but by the filing
system.”
5.12
The Oak SCSI filer 1.11 has been replaced by version 1.16 but this ‘new’
version (actually two years old!) is available through Archive as an
upgrade for £12 inc VAT.
5.12
The ICS filer 1.13 can be swapped for version 1.14 as a free EPROM
exchange from ICS. They also have a completely re-written IDE filer
(version 2) which is available from them for £15 +VAT. The customer
returns the old EPROM afterwards.
5.12
The Serial Port filer 1.01 can be replaced with 1.02 as a free upgrade −
in this case, just send the floppy disc back to The Serial Port and they
will replace it.
5.12
• Using borders − From David Wooldridge comes one of those tips that is
obvious to the initiated but might be new to some users. When choosing a
border in the Alter Frame window (view mode), don’t forget you can see
the various borders by pointing at the white border in the window and
pressing menu. A border picker window opens, allowing you to select from
all the available borders. This tip is in the manual but, as we all
know, not everyone reads manuals − own up, please, if this is new to
you! (Me for one! Ed.)
5.12
The Readers Write!
5.12
• Laser Jet printing with RISC-OS3 − Gerald Fitton (of Pipeline fame!)
has experienced a problem when using RISC-OS 3, !Printers, Laser Jet II
and Impression. He has found that documents in the portrait format print
7 mm out of position on the vertical axis and are offset 5mm to the
right. This occurs even when the page borders are set to 0 mm. If he
increases the latter figure, the print out is further out of position.
As Gerald says, ‘What I need is a minus value for my borders. Help!’ Has
anyone else come across this particular problem?
5.12
• Keeping track of Draw and Sprite files − In Archive 5.9 p37 Steve
Hutchinson was asking advice on keeping track of his Draw and sprite
files and was recommended two viewing applications. There is also an
easy hardcopy method namely !PicList which was on the Acorn User October
1991 disc after being upgraded from the May version. The application
makes a set of sprite “pages” containing any Draw or sprite pictures
that are dropped into it. The pictures are displayed in a grid and are
labelled with their name/path above them. The application is easy to use
from the iconbar having options to:
5.12
•    Set up the size of the “page” (defaults to print size if a driver is
loaded),
5.12
•    Set the number of columns and rows required − depending on the
required detail of each picture,
5.12
•    Set the screen mode for the resultant “pages”,
5.12
•    Choose the path/name format to name each picture.
5.12
You can drop directories onto the icon and several pages are generated.
The pages can be stepped through to view and saved to make a hardcopy of
each page. Alan Wilburn, Hartlepool.
5.12
• Auto destruct! − In the Hints and Tips section of the June edition of
Archive, there was a mention of possible problems with the auto-save
facility of Impression under the title “Auto-destruct!”. Version 2.16
(and 2.17) of Impression does not appear to be as dangerous in this
respect. If the auto-save facility is turned on but with the “With
prompt” switch left off, a prompt will still appear on-screen before the
first time the document is auto-saved.
5.12
This also occurs the first time the document is auto-saved after it has
been reloaded. It is mentioned in the Impression 2.15 release notes on
pages 1 and 3.
5.12
Still on the subject of Impression, I have two problems that readers of
Archive may be interested in:
5.12
Spelling checker − If you check and replace a misspelled word by using
<Ctrl-W> to invoke the spelling checker, this appears to work correctly
except that if you have typed nothing after the word, it also has the
effect of <Ctrl-B> and returns you to basestyle. Obviously the solution
is to always type at least a space after the word before using <Ctrl-W>.
5.12
PrintBJ (the extension module to print draft text) − This makes a
reasonable attempt at interpreting styles as far as different fonts and
font sizes are concerned but seems unable to cope with rulers or effects
that control the position of the text on the page. Tabs it gets
completely wrong, right aligned text is centred, centred text is centred
but using a page width about three quarters of the actual width. This is
using the Canon BJ-10e. I have phoned Computer Concepts who suggested I
wrote enclosing example documents both printed and on disc. This I did
several months ago and have not received a reply. Has anyone else
experienced these problems or indeed found a solution? Nick Edgar,
Doncaster.
5.12
I can understand Nick’s problems and only print out in graphics format.
My method of working for proofing documents is always to print at a
lower resolution − and hence achieve a quicker print out. Users of the
Deskjet 500 have the option of using the draft mode on the printer for
this purpose and leaving the resolution set on the driver unchanged.
5.12
DTP Swap area
5.12
Mike Binks has asked to be included on our “swaps” list − but then makes
a confession. He admits to being unable to “draw with either a pencil or
computer to save my life”. If you would like to share some of your
handiwork with Mike, then contact him at 3 Old Hall Drive, Newton
Stewart, Dumfries and Galloway  DG8 6HZ. This is one way to reach a
wider and appreciative audience!
5.12
Scanners Review
5.12
Scanning is one area where both the hardware and software seem to be
continually improving and where the possibilities for the use of scanned
images within DTP keeps increasing. This month I am looking at two
scanners towards the lower end of the price range. Both will give up to
400 dpi and 256 grey levels. From Computer Concepts there is ScanLight
256, which now uses a Mustek Matador scanner and an updated version of
their software (v2.00). The latter is available as a separate upgrade
for existing users of ScanLight 256 but it should be noted that the new
scanning head allows full width scans at all resolutions including 300
and 400 dpi. The other scanner − Scan 256 − is a new offering from
Watford Electronics and is their first hand held scanner to give 256
grey levels.
5.12
Both packages were tested on an upgraded A400 series machine with 4M of
ram, an 80M hard disc, and with an ARM 3 installed. Although the Watford
Scan 256 has some features that only run under RISC-OS 3, I thought the
A400 machine the most useful one to use for the tests because the
majority of owners are still working with RISC-OS 2. On the same
principle, I produced hard copy via Impression to an Ink Jet printer,
rather than a laser. I also used a variety of images from original
photographs with a wide tonal range to poorly reproduced old maps and
historic climbing pictures! All these were usually scanned either at 300
or 200 dpi and at 256 grey levels. To test the monochrome abilities of
each set up, I used text items taken from various sources.
5.12
Scan 256
5.12
The Watford package comprises the scanner itself, a board to fit into
the backplane, a comprehensive instruction manual and software which
also includes a copy of !ChangeFSI. Installation was straightforward and
took a matter of minutes. First impressions were of a well thought out
package; for example, setting either the resolution switch or choosing
between 256 grey levels and monochrome on the scan head automatically
alters the software setting on screen. There is a good preview window
which enables you to see the image immediately as the scan proceeds. The
choice is between one of four resolution settings (100, 200, 300, 400
dpi) and 256 greys levels (at both full and half width, with the latter
offering a resultant saving on memory), monochrome and two halftone
modes.
5.12
Watford’s innovative approach is seen when an image is scanned in and it
appears in the first of four image buffers. The idea is that you can
then manipulate the image in a number of ways and direct it to another
image buffer. For example, you can have the original scan in buffer one
and an altered version in buffer two. You can then put a different
altered version of either the original image (from buffer one) or the
manipulated one (from buffer two) into buffer three and so on. The
advantage of this method is that various images can be compared and the
most appropriate one saved. However, you do need sufficient memory for
this: even on a 4M machine, you soon run out of memory if you scan
sizeable images at 300 or 400 dpi and at 256 grey levels! Nevertheless,
for the majority of scans, it does offer a very quick and reassuring way
of working. Inevitably, the best work is the result of experimentation
and it is helpful to be able to compare different treatments of the same
image.
5.12
The accompanying manual is well laid out − and it needs to be because
there are so many different ways to modify your image. There’s a
sophisticated brightness and contrast menu which allows manipulation by
directly entering appropriate values for both factors or, alternatively,
there’s an option to display the grey level map and alter the display by
dragging the mouse pointer along it. If you opt for the latter, the grey
levels alter to give an indication of the new map, which I felt gave an
intuitive feel to the whole process. Alternatively, you can choose to
call up the gamma correction box and enter a different value in it.
5.12
The image can be further refined by a staggering array of enhancement
and smoothing filters and edge detection. Additionally, when changing an
image from a grey level one to a monochrome one, you can alter the
threshold value at which the change from black to white occurs, which
provides a number of special effects.
5.12
I have always found that getting the best scan is a time-consuming
activity and experimentation is certainly the order of the day here −
what ‘improves’ a line drawing or a poorly printed image may have the
opposite effect with a good, continuous tone photograph. The software
also provides a neat front end link to !ChangeFSI which also provides
further options for manipulation. However, the examples I used did not
significantly benefit from using it, which is probably a compliment to
the Watford software.
5.12
However, !ChangeFSI does provide one useful feature for users of RISC-OS
2 and that is the ability to rotate the image, although to take
advantage of this you need to save the image as a sprite and drop it
directly onto the !ChangeFSI icon. Unfortunately, you can only rotate
the image by + or − 90 degrees, which will severely limit flexibility at
the present time for most users. This, in contrast to the rest of the
program, is cumbersome, although, to be fair, users of RISC-OS 3 are
able to rotate images and shear them anyway − the latter option serving
to correct any skew present in a scan.
5.12
One final note serves to illustrate the imaginative thinking behind Scan
256 and that is the ability to save images not only as traditional
sprites (although not as sprites within drawfiles − see below) but also
in TIFF and AIM format with the possibility of GIF being supported at a
later date.
5.12
ScanLight 256
5.12
Computer Concepts’ ScanLight 256 has both a new scanning head and new
software to accompany it. It offers two important developments. Firstly,
it will now give full width scans at all resolutions and, secondly, the
software has been rewritten and offers many improvements over the
original version. I always feel that Computer Concepts products are
extremely well packaged and this scanner is no exception. It comes with
two booklets − a smaller one specifically dealing with the Mustek head
and a larger one devoted to general usage with an excellent section,
complete with photographs, devoted to the enhancement options. Installa
tion was similarly a matter of a few minutes with detailed instructions
for all Acorn computers.
5.12
Although you need to select resolution and grey levels on both the
scanner head and on the software separately, and notwithstanding a
preview window of more limited value than Scan256, the ScanLight 256
scores highly in other areas.
5.12
This package offers just two windows, namely an original and an altered
view but it is possible to manipulate an image and then transfer it to
the original window and continue with further work on it. It is wise,
therefore, to save both the original scan and the various intermediate
stages. There are pros and cons to this approach and, whilst you cannot
simultaneously compare a number of variants, memory requirements are
kept to a minimum.
5.12
At the heart of the Computer Concepts software is the commendably clear
toolbox window which offers facilities to rotate the image by any chosen
angle and to sample at various levels (particularly useful with images
taken from non-original sources) and also has enhanced grey map editing
facilities. The latter includes quick methods of altering brightness and
contrast and six grey map presets which serve as a short cut. Further
grey map settings are also provided on disc and you can save your own
settings independently of the image, thus building up a selection of
settings that best suit your work. Computer Concepts have also made
direct editing of the grey map a lot easier because it now has a number
of control points on it. You simply select either a line or a curve
option and drag them as appropriate to alter the grey map. You can then
add to these control points, as necessary, to give a wide degree of
creativity. This takes a little getting used to but, once mastered,
gives an intuitive and flexible system.
5.12
New in this version are a wide range of ‘enhance’ options which are
offered in fine, medium and high versions: grey reflect changes pure
white and black to black, and inverts grey tones; sharpen exaggerates
the boundary between grey tones with blur providing the opposite effect.
Also available are transition detection (a solarization type of effect),
darken and lighten transitions, edge detect and lighten/darken edge, a
‘clever’ sharpen, noise remove and shadow.
5.12
There are two points worth noting here. Firstly, whilst there appear to
be fewer options than with the Watford system, these are logically laid
out and therefore easy to master. Secondly, the effects are not
cumulative, so you can try one and if the result is unsatisfactory, you
can immediately apply another.
5.12
In this new version of the ScanLight software, there is also the ability
to cache the image providing sufficient memory is available. The
advantages of this include a very fast screen update when other windows,
etc are dragged over it and faster copying when using the ‘copy to
original’ facility. Finally, the image can be saved either as a sprite
file or as a drawfile. The latter is actually just a sprite file within
a drawfile but it has the advantage that it can contain information
about the image’s size.
5.12
Computer Concepts v Watford
5.12
I am afraid you will be disappointed if you are looking for an obvious
“best buy”, because it is difficult to make a definitive choice between
these packages. I found that virtually all scans benefited from some
image processing and both packages, in their different ways, produced
excellent final results. I tried to get the best results on screen using
identical images with both Scan 256 and ScanLight 256, and then printed
them alongside each other. In the majority of instances, the results
were virtually identical, and on the few occasions that this was not the
case, I went back and successfully “improved” the poorer of the two
images. This would point to a failure on my part rather than the
equipment! Only in a couple of instances was one scanner significantly
better than the other and, as you might guess, once it was the Watford
one, the other time it was the Computer Concepts system.
5.12
To summarise: Watford’s Scan256 offers good preview facilities, the use
of image buffers (very useful if you have 4M − or more!), the ability to
save in a range of formats and a wide range of options to modify the
original image. Counting against it, for me at least, is the need for
more experimentation before the best results are obtained. Computer
Concepts offers a package that is easy to master, has the ability to
rotate images with RISC-OS 2, has clarity within the menu structure
(including some key short cuts) and has the ability to save in drawfile
format.
5.12
In the final analysis, it is the quality of the image that counts −
trying a variety of images on both packages, I obtained outstanding
results from each. What is pleasing is that this quality can be obtained
for a relatively modest outlay and when you consider that both packages
include such a variety of image manipulation software, I would consider
either a bargain. Scan 256 from Watford Electronics is priced at £185 +
VAT and ScanLight 256 from Computer Concepts is £199 + VAT (or £225
through Archive). Incidentally, registered owners of Computer Concepts’
earlier 256 hand-held scanner can obtain the software upgrade by
contacting CC and quoting their serial number. The cost of £10 + VAT
includes the upgrade disc and new manual and is highly recommended.
5.12
In a future column, I will be looking at scanners from Irlam Instruments
− including their colour scanner based Epson GT-6000 − and discussing
various ways of altering images for use within DTP documents.  A
5.12
Aliens, LookSmArt & SmArtoons
5.12
Ian O’Hara
5.12
Ever since I first saw SmArt, I was hooked on the program and thought it
was great. I did have a problem answering one question concerning it
that was put to me. One advisory teacher said “Yes, it looks great, but
how would you use it in the classroom?” All I could answer was that it
was a superb source of clip art. These three discs do help to provide an
answer as they all contain ideas about what they could be used for.
5.12
Aliens contains data to produce ten basic sorts of inter-galatic alien.
However, with the ability to swap head, legs, arms, tentacles, etc, the
ten basic varieties expand enormously. Two files are provided − one
giving full frontals and the other profiles. There is also a file of
backgrounds ranging from a tropical beach to a city and a lunar
landscape.
5.12
LookSmArt has four files. Dolittle produces a vast array of different
animal heads. It would be great for illustrating what you caught on your
last hunting trip up the Zambezi. Sentiment offers faces with a whole
range of different expressions. Talk draws heads with the mouth
pronouncing various sounds. The last file, Unwanted, is designed to
produce ‘wanted’ posters.
5.12
SmArtoons contains eight files of cartoon animals ranging from a bunny
to a vulture. While the basic type of animal can’t be changed, they can
be put into a very large number of poses. There are also files of trees,
cyclists, a skeleton and two sorts of background. The disc also contains
what I think is the most useful file which is called poser. It is
basically a very up-market match-stick man. You can use this to produce
a huge number of human figures which can be saved, imported into a
program like Draw or Vector, and clothed. It makes “drawing” figures
very easy. You can also put the limbs in some very odd positions.
5.12
Most of the ideas presented with these discs are based around stimulat
ing imaginative writing. For instance, the page of ideas that came with
the Wanted file included a poem about the character depicted. Talking
with one member of the English department, I discovered that this was
almost what she had just finished doing with a year 7 class. She would
have liked to have used the heads and put them together with text into a
DTP package.
5.12
Aliens, SmArtoons and Look SmArt each cost £18 through Archive.  A
5.12
Snippet Upgrade
5.12
Jochen Konietzko
5.12
Since my review of Snippet, the screen grabber / sprite editor, in
Archive 5.7, p60, a new version (2.40) has appeared which contains a
number of enhancements. In this article, I will point out the changes
which have occurred.
5.12
The package
5.12
The disk contains the outline font manager and two copyrighted outline
font families (Montclair and Tabloid), similar to Trinity and Homerton.
5.12
The 50 page instruction leaflet has been rewritten quite extensively.
The authors now take it for granted that you are familiar with RISC-OS
and only explain the particulars of Snippet. One very useful addition is
a second table of contents, showing all the relevant menus, with page
numbers beside each item.
5.12
The program itself has grown by 36k, so that the maximum amount of
memory needed (including both relocatable modules) now is 311k.
5.12
The icon bar menu
5.12
A preferences window has been added, which gives you a lot of control
over the way Snippet starts running.
5.12
The screen grabber
5.12
The only change I can find here is the option to grab a screen with a
time delay. This is nicely done − a count-down timer attaches itself to
the pointer and keeps you informed.
5.12
The sprite editor
5.12
Changes to the editor are in three areas.
5.12
1) The program seems much more stable now. I have so far found no
utility or module which creates a problem when active together with
Snippet.
5.12
2) The operation of the editor has been improved in many small ways. The
active window now has a highlighted title bar; its contents can be saved
by pressing <f3> or <ctrl-shift-f3> in normal or compressed format;
sprites can be moved to other sprite files by dragging; some menus have
been rearranged; there is a key combination which is supposed to free
the machine if Snippet should crash fatally − but because the new
version has (so far) never crashed, I don’t know if this feature works!
One thing which has not changed (I simply forgot to mention it in the
first review) is that nearly every feature can be called up in three
ways − from a toolbox, from a menu or with one of 48 keyboard shortcuts.
5.12
3) A number of powerful new features have been added:
5.12
“ Many operations can now be performed on whole groups of sprites inside
the same sprite file.
5.12
“ Sprites can be rotated and sheared − an angle can be set for any font
(these options are available only in RISC OS 3).
5.12
“ A multi-tasking magnifier can be run as a backdrop. It covers the
whole screen (advisable only with an ARM 3, because the ARM 2 slows down
considerably when the magnifier is active).
5.12
“ Several views of the same sprite can be opened simultaneously (up to
26, depending on the number of other windows on your screen). Each view
can show a different magnification − up to 2400% − and a different
selected colour. Additional views apparently don’t occupy any additional
RAM.
5.12
“ In addition to the two colour boxes (16 or 256 colours respectively)
which appear only when you click on <Adjust>, there is now a third one
which stays on the screen once you have opened it. This window contains
both a 16 colour and a 256 colour palette and can show the desktop
colours, user defined colours or the old BBC colours.
5.12
“ The size of a sprite can be changed in several ways from a menu. There
is now no need to zoom a sprite and use the screen grabber.
5.12
“ The option to fill a screen area (called “Replace colour” in Paint)
now includes graduated fills (256 colour modes only). You choose the two
colours at the ends of the graduation (bottom of the picture above) and
sixteen colours are inserted to give as smooth a blend as possible.
5.12
Here are some examples for the end “colours” black and white:
5.12
Price
5.12
Snippet is produced by 4Mation Educational Resources, 14 Castle Park
Road, Barnstaple, Devon  EX32 8PA. It costs £37.50 +VAT (£40 from
Archive). The price for an update from any previous version is £8.50
+VAT (from 4Mation only). If you send an s.a.e. to 4Mation, you will
receive a working demo (with the save option disabled) free of charge.
5.12
Conclusion
5.12
Snippet is now a piece of software that definitely goes beyond the
official description of a “sprite utility”. It is just the thing for
those who, like me, have to produce pixel graphics occasionally, but
don’t really need one of the big, all singing, all dancing art packages.
In my opinion, it is certainly worth the money!
5.12
(Postscript
5.12
In my previous review, I claimed that Snippet had no 256 colour palette.
This is not in fact true. The reason for this error was that I changed
to a 256 colour screen mode but then looked at a 16 colour sprite
without converting it to the new mode first. Sorry about that!)  A
5.12
Multimedia Column
5.12
Ian Lynch
5.12
I received a letter from Mike Cook this month − can you guess what it
was about? Well, I rang Mike and we had a chat about graphics and
Acorn’s future intentions. The first thing to come out of this is that I
had misinterpreted Mike’s comments on ‘chip set’ and made comments about
‘processor family’. The point he was making was that Apple use com
pletely different support chips for the processor in a Ci compared to a
Cx. Mike interprets Acorn’s concentration on the processor as an
indication that they are only interested in ‘cracking the Unix market’.
He believes that ARM2 was good enough and that the first priority should
have been to redesign VIDC and MEMC.
5.12
Strategy
5.12
Personally, I doubt that Acorn will ‘crack’ the Unix market without
better graphics support since many people use Unix workstations for
graphics modelling and top end multimedia. Acorn must know this. There
has recently been a lot of media coverage of the Apple Newton which uses
an ARM 600 processor. Have you seen how Acorn shares have risen
recently? From 6p to 36p in a few weeks. I am sure this was not due to
the imminent release of the A4! Perhaps Acorn’s interest in processor
development was not such a strategically bad move for the company after
all. It could be that Acorn will earn more via their 40% share in ARM
Ltd than they will from manufacturing RISC-OS or Unix computers. Time
will tell, but if it makes the company more viable, it is likely to be
good for Archimedes users.
5.12
Back to colour palettes
5.12
Mike reckons that £6.50 would pay for the on-board hardware to give a
full and unrestricted 8 bit colour as used in the PCAT’s graphics
enhancer and he does know what he is talking about. The real problem is
software support and file compatibility. I remember Mark Goodall at
Computer Concepts remonstrating over the 16 grey level restriction two
years ago and so Acorn have been very slow to put this right.
5.12
Better late than never
5.12
I have heard some strong rumours about agreement on 24-bit file formats
amongst Acorn and developers and a format for 256 grey level sprites is,
I believe, already agreed. (Perhaps someone could provide details
through Archive.) As Rob Davidson points out, RISC-OS3 has better (if
not perfect) colour support and so all we need now is the hardware.
5.12
Improved video
5.12
What has all this to do with multimedia? Well, as I said last month, it
is all to do with improved video. One striking way that the A310
improved on the BBC B was in the way graphics and animation could be
improved. An A5000 is better than an upgraded A310 with ARM3 because it
is much faster in hi-res graphics modes and therefore is more convenient
to use. I expect that the next Acorn machine (A7000 with an ARM 700 and
16 bit VIDC?) will handle 16 bit stereo sound and at least 15 bit
unrestricted colour from a 24 bit palette, perhaps with a supremacy bit
for keying video captions.
5.12
A broadcast quality screen with 2 bytes for each pixel would take up
800k. With the present methods of using system memory for graphics, at
least 4M of RAM would be needed for practical use and a screen would
consist of 400k ARM words.
5.12
Millipede
5.12
Millipede Electronics have produced graphics boards for Acorn machines
for some time, starting in 1985 on a BBC B. Since then they have moved
on to the Archimedes Prisma 3. Millipede’s boards are used by several UK
broadcast companies providing graphics for the Budget and recent General
Election coverage in some regions and also for TV game shows at home and
abroad.
5.12
The ultimate expansion board?
5.12
About to be released is the Apex Imager which is a 32 bit per pixel
video graphics board designed to meet TV standards. This board will
perform real time colour frame grabbing and broadcast specification
genlock and is aimed at television and video production, colour image
analysis top end presentation graphics and... wait for it...  multime
dia.
5.12
Technical spec
5.12
The Apex Imager board will come as a double width podule and provide a
full 32 bits per pixel RGBK capability. This provides a full 8 bits per
pixel for each of Red, Green and Blue, the primary colours which when
combined provide 16.7 million colours. In addition to this, the 4th 8-
bits provide an alpha channel which provides each pixel with any of 256
levels of transparency. This can be used to determine how two pictures
fade into each other, are overlaid or can be combined. For example,
windows could be moved in front of and behind live video with variable
degrees of transparency and cross fade.
5.12
The spatial resolution of the board is 702 × 575 pixels interlaced which
is the TV broadcast standard. There is an option to use a CCIR601 input/
output interface which would enable linkage to other studio equipment
with images transferred digitally in real time.
5.12
Software
5.12
The board uses an on-board ARM 3 coupled to a local frame store of up to
16M. (A 64M option using ARM600 is likely to be available in the near
future.) The operating system, AGILE has some similarity to RISC-OS and
allows downloading of modules in a similar way. Indeed, parts of RISC-OS
have been licensed from Acorn and extended to 32 bits per pixel. This
familiar operating environment should help encourage software develop
ment in areas such as painting, 3-D graphics, titling and animation.
5.12
Custom chips
5.12
In order to move and manipulate images in real time, four custom
designed P3 (Pixel Pipeline Processor) chips are employed on each board.
These chips are presented in a 208 pin pack and contain 150,000
transistors. At 13.5 MHz it can perform the 54 million pipe-lined
arithmetic operations per second required to support multiple hardware
windows with programmable transparency.
5.12
Costs
5.12
The price of a 16M Apex card is expected to be a little under £4,000
which makes it a very expensive add on for a home user or school. It is,
however, ludicrously cheap when compared to the price and complexity of
the studio equipment it is designed to replace and an even lower cost 4M
option will also be available. Compared to multimedia applications on
Sun and upper end Macs, the combined price and performance of an A5000
with an Apex board fitted is likely to be stunning.
5.12
Designer boards
5.12
In order to satisfy the demand for a lower cost board for design and DTP
applications, Millipede have been working on APEX Designer. Unfor
tunately, a chip specific to this board has caused problems and its
redesign has resulted in a considerable delay. Millipede think that by
the time they get the board into production, VIDC2 may have eclipsed it.
The specification for the board is to display 256 colours from a 24 bit
palette at a resolution of 1280 × 1024 non-interlaced. In addition, 32
bits per pixel at a resolution of 640 × 512 and perhaps 600 × 800 (SVGA)
would be possible.
5.12
Compatibility
5.12
As previously mentioned, the problem with all these boards is file
format and, at best, limited RISC-OS compliance. If Millipede are
seriously concerned that the Apex Designer might be hit by the introduc
tion of VIDC2, perhaps this gives some clues to VIDC2 performance − but
perhaps not, since all this is speculation. Until there is widespread
acceptance of bitmap formats in varying resolutions and RISC-OS support
is guaranteed, video expansion boards will remain a niche market for
specialist applications. Multimedia is set to become a consumer product
via CD-I, and consumers of this and DTP are likely to demand more than
16 levels of grey whether they need it or not. As we all know, marketing
is about customer perception rather than need − otherwise half the
micros in the world would never have been purchased!  A
5.12
Colour Printing on a Monochrome Printer
5.12
Stuart Bell
5.12
This review is based on a program called !Coloursep which was originally
available direct from its author. The rights to the product have been
purchased by Ian Copestake Software. This article should therefore be
considered as more of a pre-view introducing the idea of colour
separations. When the improved version is available, we will provide
some extra comments.
5.12
To send a query to the Help! column and receive, by way of reply, a
review copy of the software that, apparently, was just what I was
looking for, was a quite remarkable experience!
5.12
It started with my ordering some black ink refills for my HP DeskJet
Plus printer from a company called System Insight. A day or so after the
refills arrived, so did their catalogue including details of a range of
coloured inks. With the right software, and the use of cyan, magenta,
yellow and black (or ‘key’) inks (hereafter [C,M,Y,K]), by using
multiple passes of the same sheet of paper through the printer with
[C,M,Y,K] ink cartridges loaded in turn, full colour output from
normally monochrome printers is possible.
5.12
Also, for the production of full colour documents, printers usually
require the [C,M,Y,K] separations, on four separate sheets. (This is an
alternative to providing the separations on PostScript files, using
Expression-PS in the Impression Business Supplement.) These separations
are only in black, so no special inks are needed. However, the logic of
the separation process must still be performed.
5.12
The problem, of course, is the ‘right software’. System Insight could
supply a suitable package for PCs and Amigas but that was all. In the
April Archive, it was hinted that colour separation might be a feature
of Impression III but that’s not expected in 1992. Computer Concepts
tell me that their new Artworks package will definitely offer this
facility but that’s not available yet and, in any case, not everyone
will want to buy it just for colour separation. Hence my Help! request
and then a phone call from Brian Cowan offering to pass on, for review,
a copy of some software that seemed to be just what I was looking for.
5.12
!ColourSep
5.12
This software will take a file produced by any application and produce
the required colour separation. It apparently achieves this by inter
cepting calls made by any printer driver to the ColourTrans module and
filtering the information so that only data relevant to the required
colour [C,M,Y,K] is passed and thus printed.
5.12
The manual (8 page, A6 size), is one of the most impressively presented
documents I’ve yet seen for Archimedes software. Why? Because it’s in
colour, of course! Screen shots are exactly as you’ll see them.
5.12
The manual has five main sections. The first is an introduction to the
concept of [C,M,Y,K] colour separation and the second a description of
how to load !ColourSep onto the iconbar, how to activate it when any
application next uses the RISC-OS printer driver and how to obtain a
preview colour separation on the screen. The manual notes that there can
be problems with !Paint files without a colour palette, because it does
not use the ColourTrans module under such conditions. The actual printed
output will, however, be correct.
5.12
The third section explains how to use four passes of the printhead to
get full colour. It notes that the best results are obtained if the
order is [Y,C,M,K] and suggests that, with the correct colour ribbons,
even dot-matrix printers could be used.
5.12
The next section describes the main menu which offers four options:
Info, Quit, Save Choices and Ink setup, and the final section gives more
details of this last option, Ink Setup, which allows the separation to
be configured for the particular shades of ink which your printer uses.
Each nominal C, M or Y can be calibrated using the familiar RGB bars.
5.12
!ColourSep in use
5.12
The application itself comes on an unprotected disc together with
various !Draw files designed to demonstrate !ColourSep. In addition,
there’s an application, !ColorChrt, which produces an RGB colour chart
as a drawfile which can be saved by dragging its icon to a directory.
5.12
Once loaded, !ColourSep requires only 32k of application memory.
Clicking <select> on the !ColourSep opens a ‘Produce Colour Separations’
window from which a separation of the current screen, in any of
[C,M,Y,K], can be obtained. On loading, ‘K’ is selected, thus showing
black text correctly. Selecting the other colours when you have a
coloured drawfile (or another file such as Impression) loaded causes the
separation for that colour to be displayed on the screen. If the file is
then printed whilst that colour is selected, then that separation will
be printed.
5.12
If decent full-colour images are to be produced, there are three
requirements of the system. The first is the software. !ColourSep seems
to do all that is required. I am encouraged by the fact that Michael
Simpson, who wrote the software, made a number of useful improvements to
the package in the light of my comments and he promises some sort of
free upgrade plan for those who purchase !ColourSep.
5.12
Coloured inks
5.12
The second requirement is that suitable inks are available. Thanks are
due to System Insight who kindly supplied three empty cartridges and
their full-colour printing kit of [C,M,Y,K] inks so that I could review
the software properly. On any system, matching on-screen colours to
those printed is either very hit-and-miss or incredibly complicated and
expensive.
5.12
I doubt if those using this system will expect to be able to fine-tune
it so that a particular shade of, for example, Prussian Blue, will be
printed, rather than any one of the several hundred alternative blues
which high-powered colour DTP systems provide. We are interested,
primarily, in close approximations to fairly distinct colours, printed
boldly and cleanly. The Ink Setup option in !ColourSep allows an
empirical (i.e. ‘suck-it-and-see’) approach to colour matching.
5.12
This aim is achieved. The !ColorChrt application produces an RGB colour
chart with remarkably subtle colours, and other images depend only on
the skill of the artist producing the original image.
5.12
It has to be said that, at £25 each, refilled ink cartridges for [C,M,Y]
are not cheap, although a [C,M,Y,K] pack of inks, with cleaner to allow
the re-use of old black cartridges, at £34.95, is far less costly. Both
Mr Simpson and I have had some problems with cleaning old cartridges. He
comments, ‘In my experience when refilling black ink cartridges with
coloured inks, it is necessary to clean them more than just the once
suggested in the instructions accompanying the refills. I have found
that, after refilling the cartridges, the solvent in the new ink
dissolves any residual black ink left in the cartridge and the new ink
can become seriously discoloured. For this reason, I purchased a 500cc
bottle of Isopropyl alcohol (£2) from my local chemist and used this to
clean the cartridges several times before refilling them. Of course this
is only necessary the first time a cartridge is refilled or if refilling
was unsuccessful due to inadequate cleaning.’
5.12
Although System Insight had provided me with clean cartridges to test
the system, I tried cleaning an old one. The instructions indicate that
the process can be a little messy, with such phrases as, ‘Continue until
ink drips from the cartridge’. Significantly, disposable gloves are
provided. Cleaning fluid is injected into the cartridge from a squeez
able bottle and then expelled by injecting air using the now empty
bottle. During this process, I accidentally released the pressure
between cartridge and bottle, and was rewarded by a spray of cleaning
fluid and ink in the face and over my shirt. My fault, I know, but
beware!
5.12
I had a similar lack of success with injecting the new ink. The
principle is that you use a narrow brass tube to put the new coloured
ink into the cartridge. In an Archive article a while ago, someone
reported problems with trying to refill cartridges with syringes which
had needles too short to reach the sponge inside. I found the same
problem with the tube, in that, once the small volume above the sponge
is full, the ink over-flows. I transferred the inks using my (long-
needled) syringe and all was well. Or rather, it would have been if I’d
used the supplied thin plastic gloves on both hands from the start. The
manual with the inks says that ‘Ink may stain fingers and surfaces’.
That is true but it is an understatement. Ink will undoubtedly stain
fingers! As I write, my [C,M,Y] fingers are quite distinctive, to say
nothing of my apparently blood-splattered mouse!
5.12
You must also be careful that the ‘parking area’ for the cartridge in
the printer is not contaminated by black ink, otherwise the cartridges
with coloured ink will print with a grey tint. Further, bringing out the
colour cartridges from their sealed plastic bags to print a page
requires that you first check that each prints evenly, with no print
holes blocked, before use. Finding one missing line with the ‘K’
cartridge after the [Y,C,M] cartridges have done their job is very
annoying.
5.12
Registration
5.12
The third requirement is that the printer provides accurate registra
tion. In other words, that on each pass of the page it is in the same
place so that the colours are printed in the correct physical relation
ship to each other. (You may remember the early days of colour in
newspapers, when registration often left a lot to be desired, with awful
colour being the consequence!) Spot colour – the use of single colours
to brighten up a document – as on the front cover of Archive, also
requires good registration if areas of colour are to be correctly
aligned with the (usually black) text.
5.12
To test my DeskJet Plus, I produced a complex Impression document with
words in each of C, M, Y and K in turn and printed all four separations
on the same piece of paper but always using black ink. Frankly, I was
quite amazed by the result. The apparently basic paper handling system
on the DeskJet produces surprisingly good registration. Quantification
of the greatest error is difficult; it’s no more than the depth of the
narrowest part of the horizontal bar of a ‘T’ in Trinity font at 12.5pt
font size!
5.12
The !ColourSep manual was printed with a Canon BJ-10e printer and also
shows excellent registration.
5.12
Conclusions
5.12
Manual colour separations on a monochrome printer will always be too
time-consuming for commercial use. Further, the absolute quality will
never be up to producing masters for glossy full colour magazines. For
that type of work, producing PostScript separations for type-setters is
the best method. For small scale work for those without something like
the HP DeskJet 500C colour printer, then !ColourSep offers a cost-
effective solution.
5.12
Between them, !ColourSep and System Insight’s range of coloured inks
offer a technique to produce full-colour output on a standard ink-jet
printer and I have been very happy with the help offered by both
software author and ink supplier. It could even be argued that results
with this system will be better than those obtainable with a DeskJet
500C printer, due to the use of ‘K’ ink to give ‘depth’ to an image and
the greater range of shades available in comparison with existing 500C
printer drivers. The !ColourSep software is device-independent and
should work with any printer driver. The inks are not cheap – but
they’re still a factor of a hundred cheaper than the lowest cost colour
laser printer.
5.12
So, the software is fine and the inks themselves are good. Before I
actually tried cleaning and refilling cartridges, I thought this whole
idea was brilliant. Now, I’m not too sure. I really would have liked to
end on a more positive note but I’m not at all happy about the cartridge
cleaning and filling process. Asking an employee to do it could
conceivably breach the Health and Safety at Work Act. Also, it’s
certainly not my belief that computing in the 1990s should require one
to dress up as if ready for the next thermo-nuclear attack.
5.12
System Insight are at Unit 2, Hertfordshire Business Centre, Alexander
Road, London Colney, Herts  AL2 1JG. (0727−827200)  A
5.12
In line with our policy of allowing suppliers to ‘have their say’, we
have agreed to Ian Copestake’s request that we should print his
comments...
5.12
The above review was based on a very early version of ColourSep given to
Archive in the Spring. We felt readers would be much better informed if
Archive could wait another month for a proper release copy of ColourSep
as published by ICS, but the Editor disagreed. So here is an attempt to
bring you up-to-date.
5.12
The article describes the ColourSep manual in some detail. Please ignore
all this since it refers to a preliminary item which no longer exists.
The same applies to the description of the disc contents. ICS’ normal
upgrade policy will apply to the product (i.e. return your old disc with
four first class stamps).
5.12
We will be happy to supply coloured inks, empty cartridges and other
accessories ourselves but prices have not yet been finalised. The
ColourSep software is £25 + VAT, or £60 for a site licence.
5.12
The ink set-up process in ColourSep is a matter of calibration, not
‘suck-it-and-see’. Please do not suck the ink.
5.12
The concluding comments about ‘absolute quality’ relate to the printing
technology used, not to ColourSep. Current RISC-OS printer drivers can
only produce 256 shades in total. By separating the colours, ColourSep
allows 256 shades per ink colour. The results are far better than those
produced by any other means at present, even if you already have a
colour printer. ColourSep is just as valuable for DeskJet 500C users.
5.12
A key benefit for 500C users is not mentioned at all in the article.
This printer normally produces black by mixing three ink colours. The
result can be a soggy brown. ColourSep supports two-pass printing for
machines like this: one pass for colour and one for black (after
changing to black ink). This brings a big improvement in quality and a
saving in ink costs.
5.12
We expect to be able to supply pre-cleaned empty DeskJet cartridges.
However, cleaning and refilling are tasks which should be well within
the capabilities of most Acorn users. Ink kits are generally manufac
tured in the U.S. where health and safety requirements tend to be rather
strict. The ink will not, as far as we know, blow up in your face, and
the whole process is certainly no worse than changing the average laser
toner. (In any event the plastic gloves supplied are not what we will be
wearing ‘for the next thermo-nuclear attack’.)  A
5.12
Image Discs for Primary Schools
5.12
Alan Wilburn
5.12
Image Discs from Primary Education Services are produced to support a
number of curriculum areas in the Primary School. There are twenty-one
discs containing drawfiles and sprites within drawfiles. Each disc comes
in an A4 transparent folder (for easy storage in a ring binder)
containing a spare disc label to make a legal backup and an information
sheet with a sample of files printed on it. Each disc is £5 +VAT and
£1.50 p&p.
5.12
Uses
5.12
As a teacher, I look for drawfiles that I can use in a number of ways.
Detailed drawings are suitable for enlarging and printing via Poster for
display work and/or teaching diagrams. Drawings of reasonable standards
can be used to illustrate pupil worksheets that I produce and by the
children to add to their written work in Phases 2.
5.12
History
5.12
The Greek disc contains a temple, various columns, chariots, ships and
different soldiers. Romans covers maps of the empire, various toga
styles, soldiers, roads, gladiators and everyday utensils. Vikings has
maps of Britain showing Viking towns, everyday items, a farmstead, a
range of people’s clothing and boats. Most aspects of each era are
touched on, the only noticeable exception being the lack of pictures of
homes.
5.12
Space
5.12
This disc covers the shuttle, rockets, capsules and a spacesuit. There
are sets of files on each vehicle so they can be used for making
sequences of lift-off, docking, re-entry, moon landing, etc.
5.12
Leicestershire
5.12
The two discs are a set of resources for a study of the city and county.
There are a variety of maps covering bordering counties, towns and
rivers of the county. Famous historical people have files as does the
fox. There are some very good files on the coats of arms of both city
and county. Sprite files of the clock tower and statues in Leicester are
included for local study.
5.12
Animals
5.12
Birds of Prey is excellent with a lot of attention to detail in the six
large files with an outstanding picture of a golden eagle (too detailed
to be reproduced in space available). Wild Cats contains twenty files
covering all the big cats both in mono and colour. Farm Animals and Pets
each contain a good cross sectional representation of all the common
varieties. The two disc set on Pond Life covers amphibians, birds, fish,
fleas, insects, plants and a detailed 479k drawing of a common toad.
5.12
Religion
5.12
The six discs in this section are titled Chinese New Year, Diwali, Sikh
Images, Images of Islam and two Christmas discs − one religious and the
other with a secular theme. Each disc sets out to give a set of images
to be used in multi-cultural RI and, in my opinion, manages very well.
The discs deal with the basic ‘feel’ of a different culture, covering
such things as the five religious items of the Sikhs and Islamic designs
and patterns. I do not have a great expertise in the area of different
religions but a contact address is given for backup material and, upon
sending for the catalogue, I found reasonably priced resource material
to cover most religions. The discs in this section contained a lot of
sprites in Draw format which meant they could not be enlarged in a
satisfactory manner but were still suitable for worksheets and within
children’s work.
5.12
Human Body
5.12
The Circulation disc with files on veins, arteries, heart, lungs and
kidneys I found a bit sparse but more files are promised on the
digestive system with a free upgrade available. Skeleton contains
excellent files on the complete skeleton and detailed files on parts of
the body. The Human Body disc covers the ‘soft parts’ of the body
including brain, lungs, heart, bowels and intestines.
5.12
Testing
5.12
I viewed each file in Draw using zoom to look in detail at different
parts and also printed sample files. Three printers were used, an
Integrex colour, Computer Concepts HiRes4 laser and Epson FX100 (136
column) dot matrix. I used Phases 2, whenever possible, to print from as
this is the most common package used in schools. All printouts were very
good with some manipulation of coloured files being required, using
Chameleon, to get the best results in shading for the mono printers. The
more detailed files such as the eagle were very impressive when printed
A2 size on the Epson.
5.12
Marketing
5.12
There has been a recent change in marketing the files − you can now buy
a customised disc for an inclusive price of £15. For £2, which is
deductible from your order, you can get a catalogue containing hardcopy
of the 300+ drawfiles each stating the size they occupy on disc and you
then list the ones you require that will fit on an 800k disc.
5.12
Conclusions
5.12
There was a wide range of quality over the complete set of discs but all
were of an acceptable standard with some outstanding detailed drawings.
Most discs contained drawfiles with just a few sprites and there was a
choice of coloured or mono pictures. In the RI set, the large number of
sprites detracted from their over-all usefulness but they were of
reasonable quality on printout. The range of files on a subject was
reasonably comprehensive and satisfactory. The free upgrade service
means that you can take advantage
5.12
of additions to a disc. The catalogue
5.12
system means you can see the files
5.12
before you buy and order exactly
5.12
what you require. I would
5.12
recommend the
5.12
standard and
5.12
range of
5.12
pictures
5.12
on the
5.12
discs.  A
5.12
Econet Column
5.12
Neil Berry
5.12
Welcome once again to the wonderful world of Econet, where I have been
battling for the last two weeks with a system that just does not want to
work and trying to fit TCP/IP (review coming soon), which is a bit
idiosyncratic for my liking. I must say that Econet is not my favourite
topic at the moment.
5.12
Thank you to all of the people that wrote in about last month’s free
software. I will hopefully deal with the points raised next month, when
you have had chance to try out Alan Williams’ next set of programs which
is contained on this month’s program disc.
5.12
!awSpooler
5.12
This is basically a spooling printer server for RISC-OS. It is intended
to spool to a local hard disc. There is precious little point in
spooling back to the net. (The life of an Archimedes on Econet is bad
enough already without moving your printer data backwards and forwards
three times!) Currently, the software will only work if the printer port
is the parallel port. Inside the application are two banner files
“Banner” and “EndText” which are empty by default. You may like to use
them if you intended to use this printer server to serve a dot matrix
printer to text-printing clients. However, if you intend to use it to
serve a printer to graphic or PostScript generating clients, leave them
empty. One use I have heard suggested is that a large PostScript header
could be put in “Banner” for 6502 clients. Before using the package, you
must edit the !Run file to give the printer that you are using a name.
Currently, it will not prevent other applications attempting to print
while it is despooling a job, and the spooler will not begin to print a
job until it is completely spooled (but what do you expect for nothing).
5.12
!Machines
5.12
This is the Econet version of the machine listing program. It polls all
the machines on your net and then all the bridges and clients on the
other side of the bridges, building up a filer like display of the
different station types. Each station that exists is asked if it is a
fileserver or a printer server. The full info display or interactive
help will show you the version number of the fileserver and the status
of the printer server (Acorn status numbers only in this version), along
with the printer’s name. !Machines is under serious revision at the
current time, to bring it in line with a more filer-like behaviour. A
new version will hopefully see the light of day soon.
5.12
Other minor programs that have been included on this month’s program
disc are:
5.12
!NetChat
5.12
This is a small RISC-OS window which is divided into two. If two Econet
clients agree to talk to each other then the text can flow between the
two programs. It has a rather nasty count down feature while it is
waiting for the other party to reply to an invitation to ‘chat’. This is
a consequence of the fact that the code started life on a Model B about
2½ years ago, and was hastily bashed into shape for the desktop. Alan
says that he is rather embarrassed by the whole thing and that, “the
program could be done a whole lot better, but since I do not have the
time, you’re stuck with it!”
5.12
!Notified
5.12
This is a small utility that displays notify messages in a window
(rather than an error box). It is intended that this be run on machines
where the !awServer is running because it stops the notify command
hanging the desktop and hence the server.
5.12
!NetTime
5.12
Sets the local RTC from the server’s time.
5.12
!NetPrint
5.12
NetPrint is a RISC iX program presented in both binary and source
format. It is used to print from Unix to an Econet printer server. Read
the source for more details. It works with some printer servers but not
all.
5.12
Alan is also currently doing some work with the Broadcast Loader, which
may appear in future editions of this column.
5.12
Product news
5.12
S.J. Research have been busy this year with a number of different
developments within their Nexus system. You can now attach up to twelve
Archimedes machines to one existing Nexus disc sharer. Nexus now also
has a new permanent cabling system, with Nexus routers now available,
reducing cabling and installation costs. MDFS software has just been
upgraded to version 1.06 which will now support the new tape-streamer
and Acorn’s Broadcast Loader, as well as providing various utilities for
Archimedes machines. A new design of Econet bridge is also being
developed in association with Acorn and will hopefully be available
sometime in the new year. It will be based on the original Acorn design
but will feature faster clock speeds, an enhanced user interface,
increased security and a built-in clock.
5.12
Lingenuity are pushing forward with their Cable News software, a multi-
media communication and presentation package. Cable News allows the user
to create a series of “slides” which can then be displayed in any
sequence on your Archimedes. The package is aimed at both schools and
business, offering a fast and effective information dispersal system.
5.12
That’s about it for this month. As before, I can be contacted at: 21
Pargeter Street, Stourbridge, West Midlands  DY8 1AU (no phone calls
please). If you have any comments about this column or would like to
offer some ideas or tell the world about some new simple method of doing
a tedious networking job, then write in and tell me. I can’t promise to
answer all letters individually but I will try to give any subjects
raised an airing on these pages.  A
5.12
Language Column
5.12
David Wild
5.12
I was disappointed to see the note in the July issue of Archive saying
that Acorn had discontinued ISO-Pascal. I can’t really see how they will
make significant savings, except for the production costs of the manuals
− disk reproduction is a fairly cheap operation. Although the Pascal
environment is now rather old-fashioned compared with that supplied with
C, there are no restrictions on what you can do with the system and
there don’t appear to be any significant bugs. I hope that it may be
possible to persuade them to reconsider their decision.
5.12
Perhaps the worst part of the “package” is the manual, which is rather
austere; I did start work on a book about using Acorn Pascal and I think
that I must try again as I have had a number of approaches from people
who have had great difficulty getting started. Many of the problems
disappear once users accumulate experience but it may well be that some
of the extensions, in particular the use of separately compiled modules,
are not used to best advantage. The advent of the DDE package has
changed some aspects. For serious programming it may be better, for
instance, to use objasm to write modules rather than use the limited
built-in assembler.
5.12
One of the advantages claimed for C as against Pascal is the availabil
ity of function libraries covering many of the things that programmers
need to do. I am making a start on rectifying this by creating several
libraries which can be called by Pascal programs. The first of these,
covering string handling, should be on next month’s disc. I had hoped to
have it ready for this month but back trouble stopped me sitting at the
computer long enough to finish the work.
5.12
Recently, I have been using Turbo Pascal for work and one of the
features of that language is string handling. I was interested to see
that one of the how-to-do-it books pointed out that the string functions
were slower than normal array methods. Another problem is that, as with
Basic, it is possible to write programs that will fail at run-time
because the user has created a string which is too long for the variable
in which it is to be put. My string procedures and functions eliminate
this problem while still giving all the functionality of the string
package.
5.12
When I have finished with the string library, I propose to go on to date
and time routines and then some mathematical and statistical libraries
which will include most of the procedures and functions from “Numerical
Recipes” by Press, Flannery, Teukolsky and Vetterling.
5.12
DDE hint
5.12
In developing the string procedure library, I needed to be able to
update a library with several modules at once. There is no “freshen”
option but I found that I could drag all the modules to be replaced into
the detail box, set the radio button to “delete”, click on “run”, then
reset the radio button to “add” and then “run” again and so achieve the
same effect.  A
5.12
Acorn DDE Pascal
5.12
Graham Carter
5.12
In the Language Column in February’s Archive, (5.5 p51), David Wild
reproduced a letter from me in which I made a plea for information on
mixed-language programming from Pascal and on how to access RISC_OSLib
and the shared C library. I also asked why Acorn had not produced a
version of the RISC iX Pascal compiler for RISC-OS. At last Acorn has
answered all my questions by releasing the DDE NorCroft Pascal compiler.
5.12
The DDE Pascal package
5.12
The compiler has been released as PD software (Shareware 48) and, as
such, has a disclaimer stating that it is not an official Acorn product,
so no technical support is available from Acorn or its dealers (see
below).
5.12
The documentation consists of a 40k ReadMe file which covers installation
in the DDE environment and describes some of the features of the
implementation. A sample application is provided, !Balls64, which is a
straight translation from a program provided with Acorn’s C compiler. It
is a useful demonstration of how to make calls to RISC_OSLib. It is
important to note that DDE Pascal is not a standalone package − it is
intended for use with DDE C.
5.12
The compiler uses the same backend as the Acorn C compiler, so produces
similar quality code. It supports full inter-working with C; the
procedure calling standard used is APCS-R, as in the later releases of
C. The internal representation of Pascal data structures has been chosen
to facilitate mixed language programming. For example, all Pascal
strings are 0-terminated, to enable them to be used as arguments to C
functions. It should be easy to inter-work with the Desktop Assembler
but I haven’t been able to try this.
5.12
A DDE frontend is provided and the compiler works with DDT, with some
minor restrictions:
5.12
1.  C syntax must be used in expressions, as this is all DDT
understands.
5.12
2.  DDT cannot access global variables in a Pascal program. This is not
a problem in practice − the solution is to make the entire Pascal
program into one large procedure, effectively making all global
variables local.
5.12
Language extensions
5.12
The compiler is believed to be compliant with the ISO level 1 standard
(it has been run through an old version of the validation suite) and the
following extensions are documented:
5.12
• support for separate compilation via #include and extern declaration,
5.12
• Berkley (Unix pc) extensions,
5.12
• extensions to allow inter-working with C and other languages; for
example, the ability to declare variadic functions to Pascal so it can
call C functions such as printf,
5.12
• low level access functions and type casts.
5.12
I don’t have any documentation on the Berkley extensions; the only non-
standard thing I’ve tried so far is an otherwise clause in a case
statement which worked in the same way as in Acorn’s Pascal release 1
and 2. If I can obtain any further information I will use it to produce
a DTP user guide for the package.
5.12
Other extensions include functions to access command-line arguments,
system date, time and CPU time, bitwise AND and OR, shifts and SWI and
SWIX calls where the SWI routine may be specified as an integer or a
string.
5.12
This version of Pascal can also be used to produce relocatable modules.
5.12
Using the compiler
5.12
Installation entails copying files into the DDE directory and adding a
few lines to a file to enable Make to take the correct action when it
encounters a Pascal file.
5.12
Programs are compiled in the standard DDE fashion by dragging the source
code file icon onto the writable source part of the compiler’s DDE
frontend. When Throwback is enabled, a standard Throwback window is
produced if there are any compile-time errors, enabling SrcEdit to be
invoked to correct the source. There is very little else to say here,
because everything works in the same way as the C compiler.
5.12
To try out mixed-language programming I wrote the following simple C
function:
5.12
void swap (int *x, int *y)
5.12
{temp ;
5.12
  temp = *x;
5.12
  *x = *y;
5.12
  *y = temp;
5.12
}
5.12
and a Pascal program to call it:
5.12
program test (output);
5.12
var
5.12
  number1, number2: integer;
5.12
procedure swap (var x: integer;
5.12
                var y: integer);
5.12
external;
5.12
begin
5.12
  number1 := 1;
5.12
  number2 := 15;
5.12
  writeln (number1, number2);
5.12
  swap (number1, number2);
5.12
  writeln (number1, number2)
5.12
end.
5.12
I then used Make to construct an executable. Everything worked and the
program gave the expected result! When the main program and function are
compiled and linked with the debug option enabled, DDT correctly
displays the appropriate sections of source code.
5.12
Mixed language programming facilities are useful in practice because
some parts of an application may be easier to code in one language than
another. It also grants access to libraries of code developed for a
different language; for example, being able to call RISC_OSLib from
Pascal is a great time saver.
5.12
The object code (AOF file) produced by Pascal must be linked with one of
the libraries supplied with Desktop C, either ANSILib for standalone
code or Stubs, which is the interface to the shared C library. To give
an idea of how much space can be saved by using the shared C library,
the release 2 Pascal compiler produced a 35k executable from a 13k
source; the DDE Pascal executable using the shared C library was only
14k! The ‘squeezed’ image was only 8k.
5.12
Development time is also speeded up considerably when using this
package. Header files are provided to give full and easy access to
RISC_OSLib, and the DDE utilities such as Make can be used to simplify
application production.
5.12
Conclusion
5.12
This really is an excellent package and what’s more it’s free! It is
also a big incentive to buy Acorn’s Desktop C package. The documentation
is sufficient for competent Pascal programmers and the example appli
cation is a good starting point for producing new WIMP applications with
Pascal. Acorn is to be commended for releasing this software into the
public domain.
5.12
Acorn has requested that readers’ attention is drawn to the following
disclaimer:
5.12
“The DDE NorCroft Pascal compiler is provided as is. All information of
a technical nature and particulars of the software and its use are given
by Acorn Computers in good faith. However, Acorn Computers Limited
cannot accept any liability for any loss or damage arising from the use
of this software. This software is not an official Acorn product. No
support of any form can be given by Acorn or any of its dealers
regarding this software.”  A
5.12
HCCS Vision Digitiser
5.12
Stuart Bell
5.12
There is one thing that sets apart the HCCS Vision Digitiser from all
others available for the Archimedes, and that is its price: £49 plus
VAT. The external version for the A3000 is £10 more. It makes little
sense, therefore, to review this product as if it cost £150 or £200. The
question is, what do you get for such a low cost?
5.12
The package consists of a half-width board, a single sheet of instruc
tions and a disc with a Read_Me file and the !Vision application. The
board has a single phono ‘video-in’ socket, expecting 1V p-p composite
video signals. This means the signal produced by most camcorders or VCRs
(with either phono or SCART sockets). Alternatively, closed-circuit or
surveillance cameras could be employed. With a modem and data compres
sion, the cheap video-phone could be very interesting!
5.12
Here is my first small complaint: there is no half-width blanking plate
to go alongside the board on the back-panel. Personally, I would have
found this more useful than the single phono-phono cable which was
supplied. Is this a fair criticism of a £50 board? I think so because,
without it, one end of the board’s back-plate cannot be secured.
5.12
Installation is simple − the instructions describe three versions: both
internal and external boards for the A3000 and an internal version for
the A300/400/540/5000 machines, this latter one being reviewed here.
5.12
Documentation
5.12
The Read_Me file is provided only on the disc. We are told that this is,
“for two reasons − firstly ease of access by the user when actually
using the software and secondly to save paper.” They add that, “!Edit
files such as this can be entered into your favourite word processor.”
Since the file contains many ‘hard’ carriage returns, importing is not
as easy as it suggests!
5.12
The instructions are adequate and recognise current limitations of the
package such as the lack of colour (an upgrade will cost £30 and should
be ready in June) and the omission of provision for users’ own programs
to drive the board – to be rectified soon at minimal cost.
5.12
I’m not convinced about the ‘save paper’ argument and the Read_Me file
seems to be a hurriedly prepared document, complete with the odd
grammatical howler like the possessive “it’s”. A double-sided sheet of
A4 would have sufficed. I can’t see much excuse for its omission.
5.12
In use
5.12
The default mode of the !Vision application (which requires 480k) is
‘continuous’ image grabbing, in which a new frame is displayed about
once every second (ARM3) or two seconds (ARM2). With moving images, the
effect is much like a series of still photographs taken at these
intervals. Images are, of course, in 256 shade monochrome. The instruc
tions note that 256 colour modes (15 and 21) must be used but I was a
little disappointed that !Vision would not work with mode 67, Computer
Concepts’ wider 256 shade mode. I don’t know if any 256 colour modes for
multi-sync monitors would work. Of course, you can resort to your
favourite mode once you’ve grabbed the images.
5.12
The display under ‘continuous’ is what HCCS term ‘low quality’. When
‘process’ is selected, the image is grabbed, converted to ‘high-quality’
and can then be saved to disc as a sprite. The conversion takes about 22
seconds with an ARM2 but only six with an ARM3. A problem is that there
is a slight delay between selecting ‘process’ and the frame being
grabbed for conversion. You need to anticipate the required image by
about three seconds. With a video tape, this is no problem. Grabbing a
live image from the video-out of a TV or VCR could be more
problematical!
5.12
Image characteristics
5.12
The Adjust option allows the contrast and brightness of the image to be
modified, with relative values indicated by a bar-line display for each.
A minor problem for those with monochrome monitors (quite sensible to
use with a mono digitiser, you would think) is that the brightness bar-
line is almost unreadable because the grey shades of the bar and its
border are so similar.
5.12
The saved sprites are 640 x 256 pixels. About the top 10% of the
original image is missing and a very small amount from each side. (Most
TVs lose some of this in any case.) The saved images can then be
imported into !Paint, Impression II or any other painting or DTP
package. The actual image quality is super, as I hope the accompanying
image will show.
5.12
Digitisers or scanners?
5.12
Most people use scanners to get graphic images into their machine. The
resolution is greater – up to 400 dpi, though not all offer 256 shades.
Undoubtedly, the reading-in of logos and printed textual material will
be best done with a scanner. On the other hand, in favour of a digitiser
is the ability to capture 3-D objects (albeit with a camera) and other
video sources, the lack of moving parts and, in the case of Vision, the
cost.
5.12
Conclusions
5.12
I hope that my negative comments won’t be given too much weight. A half-
width blanking plate, a second sheet of instructions and a little work
on the software to weed out a few insignificant wrinkles would make the
Vision digitiser even better.
5.12
No professional user who needs to digitise video images every day will
want to use Vision because of the loss of image at the edges, the
problems of timing an image-grab and, at the moment, the lack of colour.
I guess that these are all the result of careful price-performance
decisions that have resulted in a £50 board.
5.12
However, for the casual user, the Vision board is great value and great
fun, especially if you have a suitable camera. If not, it might be worth
investigating the cheap CCTV camera market. It’s the best £50 that I’ve
spent on my Archimedes in ages. Now, all I need is a really good
printer.
5.12
Vision Digitiser is £49 +VAT for A300/400/5000 version and for A3000
internal. An A3000 external version is available for £62 +VAT.  A
5.12
Lucy Helen Bell, aged 10 months.
5.12
Image grabbed by Vision digitiser from Sony Camcorder ‘video out’
socket.
5.12
The HCCS Vision Digitiser Board.
5.12
Image grabbed from Sony Camcorder by HCCS Vision Digitiser Board!
5.12
Font Workshop − Part 1
5.12
Roger Spooner
5.12
There can hardly be any Archimedes users who have not seen the power and
versatility of the font system we all have. While PCs and Macs rave
about outline fonts, we’ve had them since 1989 (released with Acorn
DTP), including the ability to display text in your chosen typeface at
any size not only on the screen but also on paper. There are also
specialised techniques for improved quality at low sizes; something
which is still unheard of in the popular computing world.
5.12
Lines and curves
5.12
A font is defined by a file (well, two files) stored in your !Fonts
directory. Each font file contains a description of every possible
letter when printed in that font. The computer then draws the shape on
screen (or paper) according to the definition in that file.
5.12
The shape of a letter is defined by a set of lines going round its
perimeter − the edge of the black area. If there is another enclosed
shape within the main one, the inside of that will not be black. Thus,
in the letter ‘a’ in the diagram, the outer shape covers the overhanging
loop at the top, the tail and the outside of the main loop. The inner
shape describes only the hole in the middle of the main loop.
5.12
The outline of a letter, including control points of all the curves.
5.12
The lines are made up of three primitive possibilities. These are linked
together to form the letter. Each part contains one or more pairs of
coordinates and controls how the computer draws the next stage,
considering where it is at the moment.
5.12
The first kind, move, makes the computer ignore where it is currently
and move to a new position. It does not draw any sort of line to get
there. This is used to go from the body of an ‘i’ to the dot, and to
start each letter.
5.12
The second primitive, draw, makes the computer draw a straight line from
the current position to the newly supplied coordinates. This is used,
for example, on the inside edge of the vertical of the ‘a’ shown.
5.12
The third kind, curve, is the exciting one. It includes three pairs of
coordinates and tells the computer to move towards a new point, from the
existing one, under the influence of two other control points. The line
moves towards these control points but never meets them. Curves are used
in all curved surfaces of all letters, oddly enough!
5.12
A simple curve.
5.12
These Bezier curves are something worth appreciating. Although many
people are quite capable of using them in DrawFiles, font construction
requires more careful use. In the diagrams below, you may notice that
only one of them is suitable for use in part of a letter (top left). The
others bend in a fashion which looks unpleasant in whole letters (with
the exception of ‘S’ which deserves all it gets).
5.12
Various curves and their control points
5.12
The rule for good curves boils down to this: If you imagine where the
lines of the two control points meet, is this place beyond both control
points?
5.12
In the top right, the crossover point is easily visible, less than half
way towards each control point from their respective end points, and is
not at all a nice curve. The loop produces two filled areas in a way
which is very difficult to control.
5.12
The bottom right example has its crossover point half way up the left
control point’s line and has a slight change of direction near the right
hand end of the curve.
5.12
The bottom left one crosses behind one of the control points, on the
wrong side of the end point, and is a sort of curve which is rarely used
in fonts − that effect is best done with two curves.
5.12
The top left is a typical clean curve, ready for active service.
5.12
Although this rule may seem unnecessary, following it does make
character design much better.
5.12
Another vital rule for joining several curves together is to ensure that
the control points on each side of the mutual end point go in precisely
opposite directions and are of roughly the same length.
5.12
However big you make the letter, it will still be smooth and, if it is
well designed, you will never be able to see where the lines join.
5.12
Hinting
5.12
The special techniques, referred to above, allow the Archimedes alone to
make the letters look better on screen and at small sizes.
5.12
The first of these, Skeleton lines, ensure that thin parts of a letter
never completely disappear. The second, Scaffold lines, ensure that
symmetrical parts of letters are always the same size.
5.12
These are problems which occur more with small type sizes but are
significant for all users, especially on screen.
5.12
Missed pixels without a skeleton line
5.12
Skeleton lines are always plotted in black even if the distance between
the two edges of the outline is less than one pixel. This means that
thin parts will never completely disappear. In the picture without
skeleton lines (of the top part of an ‘O’) the squares are pixels − they
are filled if the centre of the pixel is within the outline.  This shows
why no pixels are filled around the thin section of the outline. Of
course a slight move up would include more pixels, but you can’t choose
that at this stage. A skeleton line, as in the next diagram, ensures
that some pixels will be plotted − always forming a continuous line at
least one pixel thick.
5.12
Pixels plotted by the skeleton line where
5.12
the outline is too thin.
5.12
Scaffold lines are more difficult but still use the concept of filling a
pixel if its centre is inside the outline.  If you want to print an H,
the two verticals should be of the same width. Not forgetting that the
computer decides whether to plot a pixel based on whether the centre of
the pixel is within the outline, you can see that a pixel could change
from being filled to not filled by an incredibly small movement which
happens to make the outline edge move across the centre of that pixel.
At small sizes, this variation in width is unacceptable.
5.12
Uneven widths without Scaffold lines
5.12
Single scaffold lines ensure the maximum possible width of a section by
moving it slightly to include as many pixel centres as possible.
5.12
Paired scaffold lines are used to maintain the same bar width in each
part by moving parts of the letter less than one pixel sideways.
5.12
Positions adjusted for maximum width
5.12
using scaffold lines.
5.12
Another type of scaffold line is used to help the computer with curves.
It has a tendency to have rows of pixels in a straight line at the
horizontal or vertical parts of a curve, giving it a flattened look. Up,
Down, Left and Right scaffold lines make the length of the part which is
flat against the vertical or horizontal as short as possible thus making
it more look ‘Curved’.
5.12
A long vertical row of pixels,
5.12
shortened by a ‘left’ scaffold line.
5.12
The diagram shows how the left side of an ‘o’ has a column of pixels
which is quite ungainly. If the left scaffold line is linked to the
points, the computer is forced to rearrange the filled pixels, resulting
in a shorter ‘flat’ against the edge.
5.12
In later articles in this series, I shall be looking at: using fonts in
your own programs, designing fonts with FontEd and organising your font
directory.
5.12
(Roger Spooner is the manager of Design Concept. He produces fonts
himself and sells them cheaply in the Archimedes marketplace.)
5.12
This and the following three articles were first published in “Online”
magazine − £1.35 per issue or £15 per year from Micro Guide, 58 The
Square, Newtongrange  EH22 4QE.  A
5.12
Junior Pinpoint
5.12
Hilary Ferns
5.12
Longman Logotron have developed Junior Pinpoint from the full version of
Pinpoint. Their aim was to simplify the program while retaining many of
its powerful features. It is claimed to meet all the data handling needs
in the primary classroom in the UK.
5.12
I suppose we all have certain expectations of what a database should
offer and when Junior Pinpoint came my way for review, I put it to the
test with various questions in my mind. I have been well satisfied with
what I found.
5.12
Is the program ‘User Friendly’?
5.12
All the usual RISC-OS features apply. Menus are kept fairly short and
simple, many things being set up through fairly standard bright-looking
control panels which pop up in response to simple toolbox selections. A
few helpful keyboard shortcuts can be used. The icon bar menu provides a
configuration option where various functions can be disabled according
to the ability of the users. All the intricacies of constructing the
database are hidden. Fields are generally referred to as ‘questions’.
5.12
Is the database easy to set up?
5.12
This is certainly where the program scores highly. You are provided with
a window with a ‘sticky’ toolbox down the lefthand side. The toolbox can
be moved around the screen or closed as required. To start with, you
design a questionnaire, which is your actual database on screen. You
then go to your stack of sheets, and data entry is a simple matter of
typing in the answers in the appropriate places. You are warned of any
unsaved data before leaving a sheet. The questionnaire can also be
printed out and used to collect data.
5.12
The form designer allows questions (i.e. the fields) to be placed
anywhere on the page. You can have text, number, date, yes/no and
multiple choice answers. Opting for the latter type reduces the problems
with spelling errors. The DTP facilities enable coloured boxes, lines,
borders, pictures (sprites & drawfiles), text, headings, etc to be
placed anywhere on the page to give a professional appearance. The form
can be A4 or screen size. Most upper junior children would be able to
tackle the form design but, for younger children, the teacher would
obviously set up the form beforehand.
5.12
Limit on the length of a text field?
5.12
A text entry can extend to 10 lines, each of 50 characters. I can see
this as an obvious advantage in school, where one might want to gather
together the children’s news items, etc. However, the multiple lines
provided for such an answer were rather clumsy when printed out and too
close together for children’s handwriting. I overcame this problem
fairly simply by overlaying the lines with a white-filled box. (The
lines still applied for entering the text on the screen)
5.12
Sorting, searching and calculations?
5.12
To call up one particular sheet in the stack, a search can be made for a
text string, a number or date in any of the fields by clicking on a
toolbox icon. More complex searches and analysis are done by entering
the ‘spreadsheet’. It is not a spreadsheet in the true sense of the word
but is simply a chart displaying the field data in columns, with a small
toolbox at the top of the sheet. The format is pleasingly versatile.
Columns can easily be swapped around, removed or reinstated as required
and the table printed out across the page or any of the columns used for
a graph. Calculations which can be applied at this point to the
numerical data are max, min, total and average.
5.12
Sorting (ascending and descending) on individual fields is excellent
with the option to return to the original order.
5.12
Search criteria are ‘includes’, ‘equal to’, ‘greater than’, ‘less than’
and ‘lies between’. You can easily return to your full set of data.
However, you must remember to either print or save (as a text file) any
valuable search data because, when you close the window, the search is
lost without warning − this could be a bit of a time-waster when doing
fairly complex searches with children. (It would have been nice to see
the method adopted by ‘DataSweet’, where each set of search data is
installed as a separate application on the icon bar and so can be opened
and closed as required.) Also, I could see no way of getting back to the
‘stack of sheets’ view other than by closing the spreadsheet and
reloading the file from the directory viewer. Just a little clumsy for
those occasions when it might be necessary.
5.12
Graphs and reporting?
5.12
A text file can be printed from the ‘spreadsheet’ view, displaying any
user-defined selection of fields and in any order. To produce a more
sophisticated report, you enter the charts section from the toolbox.
5.12
Graphs can optionally be 3D or coloured and displayed with or without a
grid. There is a choice of bar charts, pie charts, scatter graphs and
line graphs. You can plot a field against frequency or percentage or
against another field. For numerical fields, you can choose the
interval.
5.12
In producing the final report, the program is excellent. More than one
graph can be on screen and several dragged to one A4 page. Professional
results can be obtained because the DTP facilities are available on the
graph windows allowing you to edit the labels and resize the graph, as
well as to add text, boxes, lines, etc and import pictures and borders
as sprite or drawfiles. The completed document is saved as a drawfile.
5.12
Limit to the number of sheets?
5.12
Yes. Junior Pinpoint allows only 500 in any one file. However, you can
have more than one file open at a time.
5.12
Is it possible to merge files?
5.12
You are provided with a program called ‘PinImport’. This opens up a
window to which you can drag successive files to merge.
5.12
Can you export data to other databases?
5.12
A menu option is provided to save your data as a CSV (Comma Separated
Values) file, which will load into any database which recognises this
format (e.g. DataSweet). Likewise, CSV files can be imported.
5.12
Is the documentation clear?
5.12
The A4 illustrated booklet comes with a glossy cover and is aimed at
children. It is a step-by-step guide to information handling in general
and, in places, provides the children with things to think about away
from the computer. All the pages are photocopiable, some being intended
for use as individual work sheets. This is excellent but I would have
valued, in addition to this, a shorter guide providing adults with a
quicker ‘journey’ through the program.
5.12
Both the program and the book provide good ideas and examples to get you
going with practical information handling.
5.12
Conclusion
5.12
This is a good program at a very realistic price. I agree with Longman
Logotron’s claim that it meets the data handling needs in the primary
classroom.  A
5.12
Desktop Thesaurus
5.12
Kevin Beales & Rob Wears
5.12
Rob sent in a review of Desktop Thesaurus which was not too favourable
so we asked Kevin Beales to have a look at it too. Let’s hear Kevin’s
comments first...
5.12
I like to use the computer as a creative tool when writing. Instead of
creating my letter, study notes or magazine article on paper first and
then copying it onto the screen, I often sit in front of a blank monitor
and ‘compose’. If I am working on paper and am stuck for ‘the right
word’, I can turn to my trusty Roget’s Thesaurus. However, if I am
composing on the screen, I resent leaving the computer desk and finding
the book when the machine should be able to do it all for me.
5.12
This is where Desktop Thesaurus comes in. It is a fully RISC-OS
compliant program which sits on the iconbar and can be accessed while
running applications like Edit, First Word Plus, Draw, Ovation and
Impression. It will work on 1M with Edit but really needs 2M. The
Wimpslot Max on a 4M machine is 256 and 128 on 2M. It comes complete
with Clib3.75 and !Sysmerge, compressed to 450k on a single disc. It
also comes with a clear, concise A5 manual. The application is not copy-
protected and is easily installed on a hard disc.
5.12
Desktop Thesaurus works simply enough. If I am typing a sermon and want
another word for ‘Pilgrim’, I click on the icon and a small window
appears. I then type the word in the writable icon and press <return>
and see, displayed in the window, some of the 134,160 synonyms − ‘Noun:
Crusader, Traveller’. If I want to go deeper, I can highlight and click
<select> over ‘Traveller’ and will see displayed ‘Noun: Commuter,
drifter, emigrant, explorer, gypsy, hiker, migrant, nomad, passenger,
pilgrim, rambler, representative, tourist, tramp, tripper, voyager,
wanderer, wayfarer.’ Quite a selection!
5.12
If I wish to, I can delve even deeper, by selecting ‘wayfarer’ and
getting even more words and so on. Hopefully, one of them will be the
word I want. Two selectable boxes in the window will take me back either
to the previous list or to my original root word, ‘Pilgrim’. Two arrow
boxes allow me to scan up or down the alphabet through the other 13,777
key words, such as ‘pilgrimage’, ‘pill’, ‘pillage’ and ‘pillar’ in one
direction and ‘pilfering’, ‘pilfer’, ‘pile-up’ and ‘pile’ in the other.
In addition, a facility exists to edit words and to add my own if I have
discovered some obscure one somewhere and don’t want to lose it.
5.12
The next stage is even simpler. Having found my word, I click <adjust>
over it and it appears at the caret location on the screen. Ovation
users will soon be able to update to a version which will ‘hot key’ to
the thesaurus which, in time, will actually be built into Ovation
itself. I understand from John Wallace, Software Manager at Risc
Developments, that discussions are planned with Computer Concepts to see
if similar ‘hot links’ can be arranged with Impression.
5.12
Conclusion
5.12
The acid test of any utility-type program is not the reaction, ‘Oh,
that’s a good idea!’ but ‘Do I use it?’ The answer to this is ‘Yes,
but... ’. Yes, I do use it when, as I described earlier, I am creating
text at the keyboard. If, for some reason, I am writing on paper at my
desk then the book is to hand. So, if you use your computer just as a
means of copying out what has already been written, you will have less
use for this program. However, if your ideas more usually come from your
brain straight through your fingers to the machine, then I would
strongly recommend this simple, but very useful, program.  A
5.12
Rob Wears made many of the same points as Kevin but he also looked at
Desktop Thesaurus from a wider perspective and made some other comments
which are worth adding...
5.12
Serious PC users would be surprised at the need for a product such as
this. Most of their word processors (such as WordPerfect 5.1) are
supplied with a thesaurus as an integral part of the package, and some
even have grammar checkers too. It is so difficult to multitask anything
on a PC that the software packages seem to try to do everything.
However, this has tended to produce packages that are vastly too
complicated for most users and which do some things very badly. When
programming for the Archimedes, RISC-OS has made it so easy to multitask
that the whole philosophy is different. Applications tend to be more
specific and the user can add other applications to provide as many
functions as are needed, providing there is sufficient memory available.
For example, DTP packages are excellent document processors but make
little or no effort to produce graphics of their own − it is so easy to
get a dedicated graphics package to do the job properly. However,
packages such as Impression and Ovation are often used as word proces
sors in their own right and so it would be useful if they had features
such as a thesaurus and a grammar checker.
5.12
Desktop Thesaurus is basically a good package but I do have some
criticisms.
5.12
First of all, 13,777 words might sound an awful lot but it is surpris
ingly easy to think of words which DT doesn’t recognise (e.g.
‘computer’). If this happens, it uses the word that is closest to your
word alphabetically. This may work in some cases but instead of
‘computer’ it offers you synonyms for ‘comrade’ which follows it
alphabetically rather than ‘compute’ which precedes it. This means you
have to think of some synonyms for yourself and keep trying them until
you find a word that DT recognises.
5.12
I realise that this will be the same for all packages which use a
dictionary of keywords but at times it is easier to use the WordPerfect
thesaurus facility via the PC emulator, or even (gosh!) my paperback
edition of Roget’s Thesaurus. Both of these will have a guess at
‘computer’. To make matters worse, when you are offered a choice of
synonyms, my experience is that the choice is not as extensive as that
offered by the WordPerfect or Roget’s thesauri.
5.12
It is possible to extend the choice of synonyms by selecting one of the
initial list and examining the synonyms offered for that. However, this
facility is also present in the WordPerfect thesaurus, and again DT
consistently comes second when comparing the variety of synonyms
provided by the packages. It is possible to edit the data in DT to
include your own words but it does seem to defeat the object of the
exercise − if you already know half a dozen synonyms for your word, you
won’t need to use DT to look them up!
5.12
At present, DT does not make any attempt to find antonyms. This is a
significant omission and will hopefully be rectified in future versions
of the software.
5.12
If DT loses out on its word searching capabilities, you would expect it
to win hands down when it comes to ease of use with other applications
such as Impression or Ovation. Unfortunately, copying a keyword to DT’s
input icon involves selecting and marking the word, using the ‘Save
selection’ or ‘Save marked text’ facility and dragging the file icon to
DT’s input icon. Thus, for all but really long words, it is easier
simply to type it directly.
5.12
Conclusions
5.12
I really wanted to like this product. It would be useful to have the
facility when using Impression. I could even forgive its word finding
limitations if it were more easily accessible (like the spelling
checker). It certainly uses less memory than PC thesauri via the
emulator and it is cheaper. However, in its present form, it is simply
not as convenient to use as my paperback thesaurus, which is even
cheaper! I for one will reluctantly wait for future versions of the
popular DTP packages which might have integral thesauri.  A
5.12
Shareware Disc 45
5.12
John Oversby
5.12
!ArchiType
5.12
!Architype is a typing tutor by David Holden. It takes over the whole
machine but returns to the desktop on completion through a menu. Eleven
lessons are provided to teach touch typing from use of the home keys
onwards and there are exercises to provide practice in typing real text.
My wife has now been using the package for a week and she has made
impressive progress which tells its own story about the value of
!Architype. The exercises are written in !Edit format as resource files
and can be customised according to the needs of the user. This is a
first effort by David Holden and it will, I am sure, be improved as he
receives feedback.
5.12
!Label
5.12
!Label by Raffaele Ferrigno is an address book and label printer. I
found it difficult to use, despite the manual on the disc and it does
not print out on RISC-OS3!
5.12
Clipart
5.12
The biological file contains some detailed pictures of the nervous
system, the skin and other major parts of the human body. These are
generally well drawn with fine, clear detail but some labels are
missing. The chemistry equipment was the least satisfactorily drawn. Why
is the liquid level in the beaker a squiggly line? “Distil” has lines
from the condenser which do not fit flask! Other items include the blast
furnace, pond creatures and transport.
5.12
Middleton font
5.12
The Middleton font is an easy-to-read font for children, satisfactory at
large sizes but a little indistinct at small sizes. It resembles a
child’s handwriting in format with slightly imperfectly formed letters.
5.12
!AcornMsMo
5.12
!AcornMsMo provides modes 20 and 21 for the Acorn multisync (AKF18)
monitor − satisfactorily as far as I could see.
5.12
!DOOK
5.12
For those with RISC-OS3, you may have noted that !Draw produces an
invisible object at the bottom left hand corner to store some of the
attributes of some objects. That is why grouped objects appear larger
than they should. !DOOK removes these objects so that the !Drawfile can
be readily imported into RISC-OS2 !Draw and !Poster without problems. I
had always wondered why the new !Draw produced oddly behaved files!
4Mation have produced a useful application here.
5.12
!GrabMenu
5.12
I produce booklets of instructions for applications such as !Drawplus
and !Tween and I often need to capture the menus for my DTP program.
!GrabMenu does this well. Even more helpful, it will grab submenus too,
with the background as a mask. These are saved as a sprite, which will
need renaming if other menus are to be grabbed because the same name is
used each time a sprite is grabbed. Naming the file on the fly would be
useful here.
5.12
!PickAPic
5.12
!PickApic is a sprite and draw file previewer producing thumbnail
sketches of sprite and drawfiles. The sketch dimensions can be specified
from the program. Its use is obvious when searching files for DTP
pictures and the sketches are clear enough even at small magnifications.
There are programs to preview !Drawfiles but not one for sprites and
!Draw pictures at the same time. Unfortunately, it sometimes crashes for
no apparent reason on my A5000, but with a small number of files gives
good pictures.
5.12
Summary
5.12
This shareware disc represents very good value despite some inadequacies
in the files provided.  A
5.12
Dreadnoughts
5.12
Alan Highet
5.12
Dreadnoughts is a simulation program, from the same stable as Waterloo −
Turcan Research Systems. It allows you to become an Admiral of the Fleet
playing either against the computer or against another player. It comes
in a sturdy cardboard box containing a single disc, a 94 page booklet
and a set of wipe clean maps.
5.12
Many years ago, I played (if that’s the right word) a naval wargame on a
board with small counters for ships and a dice to evaluate the damage
caused by shelling the enemy. This was before the boom in home computers
but even then, I could see the possibilities for letting a machine take
over all the calculations and leave the strategy to the humans and I
even had a half-hearted attempt at trying to write a program myself but
found it more difficult than I thought. With this in mind, I couldn’t
wait to try out Dreadnoughts as it seemed to fit the bill perfectly.
5.12
There are seven scenarios on the disc, two hypothetical but the rest
based on actual events in the First World War. The booklet gives you a
good background to the events surrounding each scenario and suggests
further reading material which may be relevant. There is a good
reference section detailing all the technical information relating to
the ships’ armaments, size, fire-power and range. There is also a
section detailing the various commands and how to use them.
5.12
Getting started
5.12
The graphics screen initially shows you the view from just above your
ship looking out over the bow. You can choose to look in any direction
and from the bridge of any of your own fleet. You can also use a
telescope to identify any ship you may see on the screen. The bottom of
the screen is used to enter the various commands which allow you to send
signals instructing other ships under your command as well as your own
vessel. It displays signals sent by other vessels such as sightings,
damage reports and position. You may also elect to have information
displayed telling you what the computer is doing and this is displayed
below the command window. You can control the helm directly by using the
cursor keys and this is sometimes easier than using the command line.
The graphics are not arcade quality but are still quite good and, during
an exchange of shells, you see the water spouts as the shells fall round
your vessel or, worse still, watch as they explode on deck. There is
also the sound of the shells being fired, flying overhead and exploding
− all in glorious stereo!
5.12
Overall
5.12
I have to say that I was disappointed by the program but this is
probably because it was not what I expected. I would have been much
happier to actually control my own destiny rather than trying to
influence a battle that is almost a foregone conclusion. When playing
another human, the situation was slightly better although the computer
still decided to engage other ships in gun battles without my say-so.
The problem seemed to be that there was no way of giving direct orders
apart from a few exceptions.
5.12
The parser was good, although somewhat limited, but was let down by
having to type all the words every time I wanted to give a command, as
there was no repeat command. This meant that trying to give the same
order to a whole fleet was very time consuming.
5.12
Although the wipe off maps were of very good quality, I would have
preferred to view a map on screen showing the plot of all known surface
vessels. This would have made the task of interception much easier.
5.12
Although this program is a very good technical simulation of historic
naval battles, I feel that what people are looking for (I certainly was)
is the chance to try to better the decisions made by the original
commanders and hopefully reverse the outcome of the battle.  A
5.12
Mah-Jong − The Game
5.12
Geoffrey Dunbar
5.12
Mah Jong originated in China and is like Rummy and Poker − and yet
totally different! It is best played by four people which makes this
computer version a welcome attraction for the solo player. There seem to
be as many sets of rules as players and, for this review, I accepted
those set by the program. Some useful rules were published by EP in
conjunction with the British Mah-Jong Association (ISBN 0 7158 0557 6).
5.12
The game
5.12
Players are named after the four winds, East, South, West and North with
each player taking it in turn to be the ‘Wind of the Round’ (‘East’
first), retaining this title until he loses.
5.12
There are 144 brightly coloured tiles which are shuffled and built into
a square wall. Part of the game’s attraction is its exotic imagery; the
sound of tiles being shuffled is known as ‘the twittering of the
sparrows’ and the wall is to ‘keep the devils out’ which did not work
for whoever wrote the program instructions!
5.12
After the deal, players in rotation (anti-clockwise) take a tile from
the wall, attempting to make sets and then throw away. If a discard
enables another player to complete a Pung (three of a kind) or a Kong
(four of a kind) he may claim this, when the players in between lose
their turns. Completed sets can be exposed on the table or concealed in
the hand, with the latter scoring twice the former. The object is to
collect a ‘full house’ of Pungs/Kongs plus a matched pair, the winner at
the game end being the player with the most money.
5.12
Suits of tiles
5.12
The suits are − characters, circles, and bamboos. There are green, red
and white dragons (four of each), and the four winds (four of each). The
green dragons appeared black in play and the South winds, (which should
be black) were green, which was confusing. There should be both season
and flower tiles but the program simplified the rules and called them
all ‘flowers’ − which worked well enough. After the deal, the human
player is asked to discard his flowers but the message remains whilst
the computer continues, which seems messy. Many pictures have been
simplified to make them more readable which worked well. The program
does not show which are the green ‘bamboos’, for use in special hands,
and so the player has to remember which these are.
5.12
Instructions
5.12
The booklet is comprehensive and clear, despite lack of page numbers and
index. However, the program contains an option to print extra copies of
the booklet in a much better format! The order of explanation makes it
difficult for the non-player (some terms, e.g. ‘Pung’ and ‘Kong’ are
used several pages before they are defined) but the on-screen instruc
tions remedy this. I was disappointed to find grammatical and spelling
errors (e.g. ‘recieved’ for ‘received’, ‘requiements’ for
‘requirements’, ‘too’ instead of ‘to’, ‘conceled’ for ‘concealed’ etc)
and, at one point, it was suggested that a pair could be called a Pung
or Kong!
5.12
The Chinese game has few special hands, whilst the Western game has
many. The BMJA recognises twenty, and all but one are included, plus
twenty others. The program uses all extensively. I would prefer to see
details of these hands separated from the other instructions.
5.12
Set up, loading and saving
5.12
On selecting ‘!EMAHJONG’ (‘E’ for European?) from the desktop, the
program loaded from scratch or with a previously saved game without
problem. The mode is set and so you cannot benefit from having a multi-
sync monitor. However, there were some problems with saving. A file name
eight letters long will save automatically as the last character is
typed − so it had better be right! After save or load, the filename
appears in the ‘save’ box. Confirm this by pressing <return> and the
program locks up terminally. If the disc is full, the program crashes,
returning you to the desktop. Inserting a new disc produces an error
message on the game board instead of the message line, which remains
when play resumes! Attempts to use a full file path produces a ‘bad
filename’ response. Before play, answering various questions gives full
control but the lack of a cursor in some boxes was off-putting.
5.12
The deal
5.12
The computer, using Chinese dice, simplifies the deal whilst keeping the
feel of the original, but deals from the wrong end of the wall! In most
rules, seven pairs of tiles are separated from the opposite end of the
wall, as the ‘Kong Box’ or ‘Dead Wall’, one pair from these becoming
‘Loose Tiles’ for issue during play. When both have been used, they are
replaced from the Kong Box which is the only way these tiles can come
into play. The computer did not form a Kong Box and replaced loose tiles
from the wrong end of the wall but seemed correctly to prevent the last
tiles being taken. The human player’s hand is displayed face up at the
top of the screen, with the others face down beneath. Each player’s wind
is shown against his name and a bar shows the computer’s progress whilst
‘thinking’ − a different colour is used for each player.
5.12
Sorting the hand and discarding
5.12
Tiles are numbered by position across the screen and selection or
sorting is made by mouse (slow) or by entering the position number of
the selected tiles (much quicker). The screen shows the comprehensive
set of commands available. I liked the computer’s declaration ‘Fred has
played an 8 of character’! On one occasion, I had an exposed Pung and
drew the fourth tile from the wall. The hand being built excluded Kongs
but I was not allowed to discard the tile. In the end, I threw away
several partial sets and changed my hand for one which allowed Kongs!
5.12
Play
5.12
Unless a discard will complete a set, the turn starts with a tile dealt
automatically from the wall. If two players want the same discard, the
higher call, in the order Mah Jong, Kong, Pung, should take precedence
although, if two players make the same call, the tile goes to the next
in rotation. In this game, the next player in rotation wins on every
occasion. A strict game is played which forbids ‘dirty’ hands, i.e.
those with Pungs and Kongs of different suits.
5.12
It is normal to identify the tile being discarded which is simulated by
flashing the value on the message line at the top of the screen. The
computer checks all hands (including the human’s) for useful discards −
but only for the hand selected! A discard from another player may form
an unplanned set which could cause a change in the hand being built. If
that set is not permitted in the present hand, you cannot take the
discard, which is frustrating. When you are ‘fishing’ (i.e. need only
one tile to win) you are offered every discard and it might be better if
this option were available throughout although this would slow the game
down considerably and Mah-Jong should be fast!
5.12
Forming sets
5.12
Some Pungs, and all Kongs, should be declared when formed. Although the
program left exposed sets in the player’s hand, this enabled them to be
visible (as they need to be) and it is hard to see how this could be
improved.
5.12
Winning, scoring and settling up
5.12
The first player to achieve a ‘full house’ goes ‘Mah Jong’ and wins the
round. The hands should then be scored, which is complicated! Different
sets score specific amounts (double if ‘concealed’) and the score may be
doubled for various tiles or for special hands. The program caters well
for all of these with few differences from my rule books.
5.12
All pay the winner according to his score and whoever is wind of the
round (first round: East wind) pays and receives double. The losers
should settle up between themselves on score differences which is part
of the fun and it was disappointing that this did not happen, despite
the graphic illustration of money being passed to the winner. Surpris
ingly if a player was fishing, he was paid by the player going Mah­Jong
− which really jarred! To avoid instant bankruptcy, a limit is set for
any hand and here, as for tournaments, the limit is 1,000 points.
5.12
Other features
5.12
Game Status − A series of screens show discarded tiles (easy game only),
those played, the financial status of the players and game timings. On
the roll of honour, which shows highest scores and type of hand, the
position numbers below ten were not padded to line up the display and
one message read “todays score’s” instead of “today’s scores”. After so
much effort to simulate the real game, it seems a pity there has been so
little attention to small points throughout.
5.12
Hands − Comprehensive help on ‘special hands’ is available, including
composition and scores, plus help with the type of hand being developed.
Your tiles are sorted according to the hand selected, and various hands
can be scanned for composition/score, or an individual hand can be
checked by typing its initial letter. Finally tiles can be ‘tagged’ to
find a suitable hand to build.
5.12
Robbing the Kong − If a player with an exposed Pung then picks up (from
the wall) the tile to form a Kong, another player may claim this to go
Mah-Jong and is said to have ‘Robbed the Kong’. The tile could be used
only in a run − but Chows are not recognised! − so this leaves just one
special hand where this could happen. However, it is good to see the
rule being implemented.
5.12
Help − Extensive help is available including tips on how to play,
selective views of the instructions and an option to print these which
worked with my Juki and (after turning on the auto-linefeed) Epson
printers. However, printing cannot be aborted. There is even a table for
doubling scores as required by certain hands but it is unlikely this
will be used as the computer calculates all scores.
5.12
Goulash − These rules apply if no player went Mah-Jong in the slow game
or if this option was selected. Four all-white ‘wild’ tiles are added
although these should replace the four ‘two of bamboos’. Each player
changes three tiles blind with each other player and a kitty is formed
which is awarded, in addition to his score, to the player going Mah-
Jong.
5.12
How does it play?
5.12
I did not test strength of play but the program seemed good without
being daunting. I went Mah-Jong several times but more often I was
beaten by a computer player. Play is fast and the game has an authentic
‘feel’.
5.12
Conclusion
5.12
Despite its short-comings, the game plays well. I liked the authentic
way that the wall was broken in a different place on the throw of the
dice, and the way that the tiles were dealt (correctly) four at a time.
The simplified symbols look good on screen. I didn’t like being unable
to claim some discards and I was disappointed with the lack of inter-
player scoring at the end. The spelling mistakes should be corrected,
and I would like the winner’s hand to stay on the screen until this has
been analysed. The ‘saving’ problems are not serious as you can work
round them.
5.12
In a nutshell, I liked the game, warts and all, and will buy my own
copy. If you want a change from arcade games buy this one!
5.12
‘Mah-Jong − The Game’ from Cambridge International Software costs £21
from Archive. It comprises a wallet with a single disc and a comprehen
sive 36 page instruction leaflet.  A
5.12
C.I.S. were grateful for Geoffrey’s comments. All of his criticisms will
be dealt with as soon as possible and an up-dated version will be
available free of charge in due course. Ed.
5.12
ClearView Hypertext Program
5.12
Peter Jennings
5.12
ClearView, a new hypertext program from DEC_dATA, has just been launched
with the first of a series of low-priced information files intended for
home and educational use. The program comes in a choice of three
different versions, at three different prices. The cheapest is the
quaintly named Evaluation version, a file reader without print or save
facilities, which has been put into the public domain and so is
virtually free. The Standard version can print and save ClearView files
but cannot create documents and costs a modest £10 including postage and
packing but plus VAT. Top of the range is the Advanced version which
allows you to compile your own files using text, sprites, Draw files and
Ace film animations (but not sound) and this costs £50 +VAT. Site
licences are an additional three times the single-user price.
5.12
The first two ClearView files to be issued are Columbus’ First Voyage at
£6.95 and Scientists and Inventors costing £8.95 (both plus VAT). They
each come on a single, unprotected disc accompanied by a second disc
which contains an Evaluation version of the software, full instructions
and a catalogue of DEC_dATA files and other products. The data discs are
very easy to use and written documentation is confined to one side of a
single A5 sheet, with pictures of the subject on the other side. The
simple instructions are illustrated by the six icons used for consulting
the index, moving around the text, inserting a “bookmark” and searching.
5.12
The story of Columbus
5.12
Columbus’ First Voyage is aimed at primary and middle school children
and fits in with the National Curriculum’s Explorers and Exploration. It
tells the story of Columbus, leading up to and including his first
voyage across the Atlantic. The subject is fully indexed and cross-
referenced and is liberally illustrated with pictures, maps and
diagrams. It can be read straight through, as in a book, or the reader
can digress at will, to follow up any of more than fifty topics which
come up in the course of the story and are marked by underlining. For
example, when the Sargasso Sea is mentioned you can, if you wish, leave
the main narrative for a time to find out more about the sea, look at a
map showing its location and an illustration of one of its infamous
seaweeds. There is even a mention of the Bermuda Triangle to put the sea
in its modern context. So, what is basically a history lesson mixes in
some teaching on geography and natural history as well.
5.12
Children will find this is a fascinating way of learning by stimulating
and satisfying their natural curiosity.
5.12
Science and discovery
5.12
Scientists and Inventors is rather different. This is not a story but
the equivalent of a reference book giving brief biographical details and
some pictures of more than three hundred scientists, inventors,
engineers and other men and women who have made important discoveries,
from Archimedes to Stephen Hawking.
5.12
This can be very useful to identify someone’s claim to fame but the
information is brief and, as with all reference works, it cannot contain
everyone you might wish to know about. I looked in vain for Clive
Sinclair but perhaps no-one else in the Acorn-using world has heard of
him.
5.12
Other discs in preparation, or planned for the Autumn, are The Merchant
of Venice and Romeo and Juliet which will contain the full texts, cross-
referenced, with synopses and notes; Human Biology, the four Gospels of
the New Testament, French and German.
5.12
As noted earlier, the data discs come with a free reader but if they are
to be used for more than casual browsing, it obviously makes sense to
buy the Standard version of ClearView which, for the one-off payment of
£11.75 allows you to save and print from all the data discs. Any
“bookmarks” inserted by the user can be saved with the text.
5.12
Write your own files
5.12
Although the data discs so far released are designed primarily for
educational use, the Advanced version of ClearView (version 1.02) puts
you into a different word game with the ability to make your own files
on any subjects, with full cross-referencing and indexing. It is not a
purchase to be made without thought, if only because of the extra cost.
The Advanced version is one of those powerful programs that need some
study before you can get to grips with them.
5.12
The idea is simple. You collect together any illustrations you want,
which can be sprites, Draw files or Ace film animations, then write a
text file with commands in {brackets } inserted at the places where you
want the pictures to appear. The commands can position the illustrations
to left, right or centre of the page or at an exact point within the
text. The document is divided up into topics and these are cross-
referenced and indexed. You can use any fonts (not supplied) in any
styles and sizes and these are listed and numbered in the file then
called by number as required in the text. Finally, the text file is
dragged to the ClearView icon and the whole package is compiled and
appears on screen, in a matter of seconds, as a professional-looking
hypertext file.
5.12
There are only ten commands, with various parameters, but they take a
bit of studying to understand them and would need some effort to learn.
Their use is explained in two ClearView files with the original text
files supplied for reference. There is also a helpful four-page leaflet.
The first two pages are similar in content to the A5 sheet supplied with
the data discs. The third page lists the commands and then shows
examples of them in a text file and their effect when the compiled file
appears on screen. The final page lists the ClearView error messages,
explains their meaning and tells you how to make the necessary
corrections.
5.12
I managed to compile a simple, illustrated file of my own in about half
an hour with frequent references to one of the sample files and it
worked after one small omission had been rectified. The missing command
was indicated by a ClearView error message and a quick look at the
printed notes told me what to do.
5.12
Any program that involves typing in precise commands in curly brackets
cannot be described as user-friendly, particularly for young children or
beginners. The Advanced version of ClearView is more suitable for
experienced computer users who may find it an interesting reminder of
enjoyable days at the keyboard before the WIMP environment came in. It
is worth the effort if you have a serious use for the program.
5.12
The ClearView data discs with either the free reader or the Standard
software can be used by anybody who can click a mouse button. Both discs
are good value at some of the lowest prices for any commercial Archi
medes software. They are cheap enough to be bought by anyone with even
the slightest interest in the subjects.  A
5.12
Presenter GTi
5.12
Basil Davis
5.12
Presenter GTi is the latest incarnation of Lingenuity’s graphical
presentation package. This is a major upgrade with changes in data input
methods, a five-fold increase in graph types and a corresponding
increase in the options available for producing the final product. The
basic Presenter philosophy of two work windows, one for data and the
other for the actual graph drawing, has been retained. The graph data
can be saved as a CSV data file and the graph itself as a !Draw file but
there is now the option of saving a parameter file which contains
details of graph type and options as well as the data. This is similar
to the SID (Software-Independent Data) type format but is actually a
special file type (C4E) with its own icon.
5.12
The package
5.12
The package contains the usual E-Format disc and a well-produced User
Manual containing a concise introduction to basic RISC-OS techniques, a
comprehensive Tutorial with diagrams and a 40 page illustrated Reference
section. The new version is fully RISC-OS compliant and there seem to be
no problems in using it on the A5000. The disc contains the main
application !GTi, a directory !Graphs with 45 example graphs and a
utility !Pres–>GTi, for converting Presenter II data files. The usual
!System and !SysMerge are also included. The master disc is not
protected but, when the program is loaded for the first time, you have
to enter a user name in an installation window. The application occupies
416k of memory, compared with 288k for Presenter II, and this figure
will rise when data is loaded (1M machine owners please note). The
version tested was 1.12 dated 5th February 1992.
5.12
The application operates through two main windows, Worksheet and Graph,
which are A5 size. Each window has its own main menu with slide-off sub-
menus. The Worksheet has been changed from that used in Presenter II and
is now of the spreadsheet type − but you cannot do calculations − and no
limit is given to the number of rows and/or columns. One of the supplied
example files has 257 rows of data. Columns can be labelled alphabeti
cally (A−Z, Aa−Az, etc.) or numerically. The default Worksheet window
has 10 rows and 6 columns with a column width of 7 digits plus decimal
point but this can be altered. Data can be entered by dragging a CSV
file to the GTi icon or onto an open Worksheet window (provided that
there is sufficient space in the default window) or by typing directly
into individual cells.
5.12
It will now cope correctly with zero data values and will accept null or
missing values which are not plotted and can, if so desired, be
identified in the worksheet with a *. Text files created in !Edit with
the data separated by commas or tabs are accepted as CSV files, so there
is no need to use the MakeCSV utility supplied with Presenter II. The
Options menu of the icon allows you to swap rows and columns and to turn
on or off the auto update which allows you to see the changes in the
Graph window (if open in an overscan or wide 16-colour mode). With
direct entry, it is necessary to type labels between double quotes e.g.
“1992” or GTi will read them as values. The way the cursor moves when
you press <return> (the manual refers to this key as <enter>) can be set
as either down or right.
5.12
Entering and editing data
5.12
Editing is pretty much as before and, by selecting the Edit sub-menu, it
is possible to delete, insert, cut, copy and paste any row or column.
There is also an Enter Data window for placing data in a specific cell
with a Label button which, when selected, causes the cell entry to be
read as a label without the need for double quotes. Although you can
have up to four Worksheet windows open at any one time, you cannot
transfer data between windows. At this point you can save the data as
either a CSV or a GTi parameter file.
5.12
The Hotlink option allows dynamic data exchange with spreadsheets such
as PipeDream 3 or 4 but this requires at least 2M of RAM memory.
Provision is made for manual- or auto-update with or without the auto-
save of a !Draw file.
5.12
Plotting graphs
5.12
Graph type range/selection is one of the major changes. Presenter II had
four basic types − Bar, Line, Pie and Scatter. With Bar you had two
options, Stacked or otherwise. With Line you could have data points or
not. Pie allowed you to explode segment and choice of starting point.
GTi has the same four types with an additional one − Area − but the
variants now add up to a total of 31 formats. Bar has eight divided into
two groups of four depending on whether the bars are horizontal or
vertical. These are − Side-by-Side, Overlapping, Stacked and Percentage
Stacked. Line also has eight again in two groups of four − with and
without data points.
5.12
Axes (X/Y) can be linear/linear, linear/log, log/linear or log/log. Area
is a cross between a line chart and a bar chart where the area under the
line represents the data. With more than one data set, the areas are
stacked. Options include linear/linear, linear/log or percentage.
Scatter has four options which are the same as those for Line with data
points. Pie has eight, comprising two groups of four with or without
percentage value labels. The number of exploded segments can be none,
one or all. Pies can be single or multiple. With the latter, a pie is
plotted for each data set with an option where the size of the pie is
proportional to the total sum of that data set.
5.12
The Graph sub-menu brings up a window containing icons representing the
various options with the current (or default) option highlighted. Choice
is made by clicking on the appropriate icon and an OK button and the
graph is rapidly drawn in a separate window. Another innovation is the
use of key shortcuts in that <ctrl> plus the initial letter of the graph
type will bring up the menu for that type − e.g. <ctrl-P> for the Pie-
graph menu. Other key shortcuts are <f3> for Save, <f4> for the Enter
Data window and <ctrl> + (<f1> − <f8>) for the various options available
in the Edit sub-menu.
5.12
(From now on, in the text, the word Chart will be taken to mean a
collection of graphs having the same format and appearing in the same
window.)
5.12
The Graph window has its own main menu which is concerned with ‘fine-
tuning’ the chart. There are two main options windows − General Options
and Data Options. The first deals with margins, spacing (i.e. width) and
overlap (bar charts only), grids, legends, pie chart options and Special
Effects. This latter offers Shadow, 3D and the option of putting values
on bar, line or pie charts. (3D is not available for pie charts). When
the 3D option is used with line charts, the result is a striking new
format Ribbon Charts. The width of the ribbon cannot be varied. With bar
charts, there is the option of starting X-axis labels halfway along the
space occupied by that label giving a neater effect. A box can be drawn
around bar and line charts. Data legends can be horizontal or (stacked)
vertical but can now be dragged to any position with the mouse cursor.
The positions of all other text and numbers are fixed and can only be
altered in !Draw.
5.12
Data Options is mainly concerned with line and scatter charts but, with
the other types, you can select individual data sets, decide whether or
not to plot a particular set and/or change its identifying colour. With
pie charts, you cannot change the colour of any particular segment which
is allocated in sequence from the colour palette − starting with dark
blue (8) and proceeding anti-clockwise to sky blue (15), repeating if
necessary. For the points on line and scatter charts, there is a choice
of eleven different symbols whose size and colour can be varied. There
is also the option of joining the points with a line of chosen colour
and/or thickness. The thickness window is calibrated in point sizes (n/
72“) up to a value of 99 !! A choice of five patterns is available for
the line including solid, dotted and dashed similar to those in !Draw. A
Best-Fit line can be drawn for scatter chart data sets and line charts
(those with values on each axis) or for the grouped data sets. Statisti
cal data about this line can be displayed and the associated y= a + bx
equation added to the line on the chart. If the gradient is negative you
get y= a + −bx not a − bx.
5.12
For titles, legends and axis labels you can now use any font from those
in your !Fonts directory with control of height and/or width, the
default being 12 pt. Trinity Medium. A Try window, containing a lower
case alphabet is provided to show the font at the selected size. Font
choice is global and you cannot have one font for axis labels and
another for data legends. The selected size applies to axis titles and
labels, data legends and chart sub-titles. Chart titles are 4 points
larger (roughly 20%), e.g. 22 pt compared with 18 pt. With Presenter II
only Corpus Medium was available.
5.12
Axis Menu allows choice of thickness (up to 9 pt) and colour (from a
vertical palette). These apply to both axes but, for the other options,
each axis is treated separately. There is Manual or Auto scaling, Linear
or Log. Labels in log format can only be placed at intervals of powers
of ten. With manual scaling, it is necessary to give the data limits.
Label format can be Fixed Point (with chosen number of decimal places)
or Exponential. With the latter, the full mantissa plus exponent is
displayed for every label so it is advisable to keep these to a minimum.
Only integers are allowed for the mantissa so that a value of 2.5 × 10−5
will be displayed as 3 × 10−5. With manual scaling each axis can be
ticked at a chosen interval with the ticks defining grid lines (if
drawn). In the auto mode, the spacing interval is a fixed unit,
dependent on the data range but you can choose how many of these units
there are between labels and/or ticks. For charts having negative value
limits, the intersection point of the axes can be defined. There is also
a !Draw type Zoom provided for close inspection of any part of the
chart.
5.12
The Save option in the Graph menu offers the choice of saving as a !Draw
file or a GTi (parameter) file. Before working on the !Draw file in
!Draw, you should Select All and Group as the various objects have not
been grouped. However, a nice point is that the whole chart is nicely
positioned just clear of the left-hand bottom corner of the print limits
needing no adjustment before printing. (Y-axis titles may possibly be
clipped.)
5.12
Other reviewers of GTi have commented on the lack of a Style option,
where a series of charts can be drawn using the same format, as with
Chartwell and GraphBox Professional. This presents no problem with GTi
and can be achieved in several ways. Make up a chart to the desired
specification and save it as a GTi file. Double-clicking on the file
icon will display the graph drawn to all the selected options and this
window can be moved to the back to display the worksheet window. You can
alter the cell data values and then re-save as a re-titled !Draw file.
Another option is to alter the data values in the GTi file using !Edit.
5.12
Summing Up
5.12
This latest upgrade of Presenter GTi has considerably increased the
scope and friendliness of the application. It will not draw the polar
graphs of Chartwell, the fir-trees of GraphBox Professional or even the
penguins of PipeDream 4 but you can enter data directly and literally
see the graph grow before your eyes. As such, with its user-friendliness
and uncomplicated menus, it should be a very useful piece of educational
software. The only two rivals are the cheaper Chartwell which has
neither direct input nor display of the finished graph, with only
positive integers accepted and no direct editing, and GraphBox Profes
sional which also lacks the spreadsheet input of Presenter GTi, has
somewhat complicated sub-menus and costs £60 more.
5.12
Possible improvements? Well, it would be nice to be able to choose
different font sizes for titles, legends and labels instead of having to
alter them in !Draw. It should not be difficult to adapt the GTi file
set-up to work as a graph style utility.
5.12
Presenter GTi is available from Lingenuity at £69.95 +VAT (£76 inclusive
from Archive). For owners of Presenter II, an upgrade is available (from
Lingenuity only) by sending the master disc plus £37.01 (which includes
VAT and postage). There is a special Educational Price of £62.95 (+VAT
if applicable).  A
5.12
Example of a Ribbon Chart
5.12
(The Company names are purely fictitious)
5.12
Graph-IT
5.12
Rick Thorne
5.12
Graph-IT, from Sherston Software, comes on a single floppy disc. It has
a quick reference guide which shows keyboard shortcuts and a display
panel, and a user guide with very simple to understand and follow
instructions.
5.12
The user guide
5.12
The accompanying pamphlet assumes that the user is relatively new to
computers. It explains the use of the mouse, the directory viewer and
how to install the program onto hard disc. It also gives information
about the fonts available.
5.12
Graph-IT encompasses work required in the Mathematics National Curricu
lum Attainment Target 5 (Handling Data) and would help younger users
(aged 8-11) become familiar with using a data handling system before
they moved on to more complicated programs such as Junior Pinpoint and
KeyPlus.
5.12
Loading the program is straight forward and the directory viewer is
opened. The Graph-IT program, !Fonts, !Scrap and a choice of ten sample
programs are available. These programs are wide-ranging and most are
suitable for use by primary school children.
5.12
When Graph-IT is first installed, the bars on the icon symbol are grey
but they change colour once a graph has been loaded. The size of the
graph can be changed to suit the user and when using bar charts, the
origin can be moved up or down the y axis to allow for negative numbers.
5.12
The toolbox
5.12
Always present on the left of the screen is a toolbox which allows four
graph types to be used: Bar Chart, Pie Chart, Line Graph and Scatter
Graph. There are two editing modes: Edit View and Edit Data which are
both well explained in the user guide. Having a copy of the quick
reference card alongside the computer is extremely helpful because it
shows the keyboard shortcuts. Displays can be seen in both 2D and 3D and
graphs can be moved and resized quite easily by using handles.
5.12
Saving
5.12
Saving a Graph-IT file is simple by using <F3> or via the menu. They can
also be saved as !Draw files for use in other applications by pressing
<F4> or via the Save sub-menu.
5.12
Editing
5.12
Two modes of operation are available. Edit view is the default mode
which allows seven types of change to be made, such as altering the size
of the chart and changing the current layer. Labels text can be edited
and repositioned but needs to be entered individually. This is accom
plished by pressing <Ctrl-T>. Other selections can be made using
keyboard shortcuts, For example, <Ctrl-S> changes text size, <Ctrl-E>
edits selected labels, and so on. The keyboard shortcuts really are
extremely useful and make the program so much easier to handle.
5.12
Edit Data mode has five types of change, such as altering the display
from pie to bar chart. Entering data is done via the Edit Data mode.
Sets of data can be entered into three different layers via the toolbox
and into any of the four types of graph available.
5.12
Every time a graph type is set up, the appearance can be changed by
using the Style sub menu. There are three font styles; Junior, Montclair
and Tabloid. The size of the numbers is calculated automatically and
depends on the size of the graph.
5.12
Printing
5.12
Printing is straightforward. Once a printer driver has been installed on
the iconbar, pressing <Print> key brings up a Print dialogue box and the
user can make as many copies of the graph as required.
5.12
Graphics
5.12
The graphics are colourfully displayed on screen and would really
enhance classroom displays, especially if a colour printer were
available.
5.12
Conclusion
5.12
Because Graph-IT is so easy to use, I would be more than happy for
children to use the program on several machines simultaneously so I am
seriously considering purchasing a site licence. The user guide is
probably the easiest to follow and understand that I have come across so
far.
5.12
I imagine that the authors have produced it for an educational market
and I am sure that many schools will soon have Graph-IT in their
software libraries. I thoroughly recommend the program as a simple-to-
use learning tool that will assist teachers to fulfil at least one area
of the Mathematics National Curriculum.  A
5.12
!Titler and !Sequencer
5.12
Ned Abell
5.12
These two new discs of software from Clares Micro Supplies provide
comprehensive facilities to allow you to make title presentations on
your Archimedes and, if you have a genlock, allow you to key the
computer graphics over video to record them on tape. I use graphics for
clients as I make promotional videos and !Titler came as a bit of a
surprise as I didn’t know it was on the horizon − I was waiting for
Cable News! Up to now, I’ve been using “Presenter Story” and found the
major limitation with that package is that it doesn’t use conventional
drawfiles. !Titler does, so is it going to steal the “headlines”?
5.12
Acorn computers can’t compete in the general video market unless they
have good software and !Titler seems a leap forward in that direction.
5.12
Presentation packages like this could be used for a variety of appli
cations such as information carousels in buildings and schools, point-
of-sale information and in video production or with a video projector
and A4 for portable conferencing, sales and presentations and also
printed out as overhead transparencies. Clares are also using !Titler to
help create demonstration discs for their software range.
5.12
!Titler is serious about what it does and does it well by providing a
desktop selection system for a full screen editing system aimed at the
amateur video maker who wants to add professional-looking titles to his
pictures. Thus it is RISC-OS compliant software and you can quickly
toggle between selection in the desktop and the work area which is whole
screen. Why not fully compatible? Well, this way you see what you design
at the exact position.
5.12
The package comes with two discs, !Titler for creating the individual
screens saved as script files and !Sequencer which takes those screens
and provides a variety of effects for the transition between the screens
as well as adding other interesting facilities. There is also a double
manual of 63 pages for !Titler and 70 pages for !Sequencer. Both
packages are written by Rob Davidson in New Zealand and the versions
tested were 1.08+. I had to refer to the manual a lot as there are many
key shortcuts and, whilst it is well written, it could benefit from a
different style of layout to create more division between topics, making
the information appear less complex.
5.12
You need a reasonable font cache and programs are provided to switch
between font settings for DTP and Titles. The program must “see”
Homerton to produce the Registration page. If you are working off floppy
with limited fonts, this is unrealistic.
5.12
!Titler brings up a simple but powerful graphical window showing fonts,
discs, layout, effects, colours and tools as well as an area to get into
the work window. You can get menus of all the options over each graphic.
Also, a directory is loaded onto the icon bar to allow quick access to
your screen storage file area − a very nice touch. The function keys
provide alternative easy access to the main font effects and there is a
keystrip.
5.12
What you get out of a package like this is only limited by your
imagination so it’s a little difficult to tell you if it will do exactly
what you want. My guess, however, is − mostly − yes!
5.12
Styles
5.12
The starting point for a commercial video product is to aim to blend the
video artwork in with the clients house style of artwork. !Titler comes
with a font manager, Trinity, Homerton and Bullet (a cut-down Dingbats)
fonts and two utilities to allow you to keep your configured Font
settings but allowing bigger settings for big titles. You need to know
that one point = 1/72th of an inch to gauge sizes on screen.
5.12
Titles
5.12
I decided to create a title page and this was simplicity itself. I had a
digitised sprite of the magazine front cover which I exported into Paint
and cleaned up, also creating a second “A” sprite from this image. I
dragged the Archive cover (mode 15) sprite into the !Titler window. This
can be done in two ways, firstly as a sprite foreground object and
secondly to create a background by using <ctrl-B>. Then text was added
over the top. The second “A” sprite was converted via Trace into a
drawfile, cleaned in Draw+, and also put into the window to complete the
title screen. (If you are going to create any presentations, buy !Trace
from D. Pilling which will allow smooth scaling and save disc space.)
5.12
If you do create a drawfile out of several bits then do remember to
group them otherwise !Titler will allow you to separate the image into
its bits! You can scale, move and size all the images within the package
either by the conventional use of <adjust> or by selecting from the
desktop window. The package also accepts input from, and saves to, other
Clares products like Render Bender 2, Pro-artisan, Illusionist and to
“Clear” image format if the PCAT graphics enhancer podule is fitted. It
can also accept other Titler scripts and Atelier files. Priority rights
can be set, so if you have Paint loaded, as well as Titler, a double
click on a sprite file will load it directly into Titler.
5.12
Flags and straps
5.12
A “flag” is in a corner of the screen, either permanently on and
animated, like the breakfast news clocks, or cut up to tell you where
you are.
5.12
A “strap” runs across the screen telling you more detailed information,
usually about the person talking.
5.12
These can also be simply created using Draw to create a rectangle. It is
then possible to use !Titler to edit this one image into different
shapes for the two required effects. In many video applications, these
are placed over moving images and a semi-translucent or “shadow” box
with solid lettering is used. However, colours in Titler have to be
solid, although you can make colours transparent if you are using the
genlock.
5.12
On the screen, the first thirteen colours are fixed allowing the user to
change the palette of the last three but none of these are “shadow”
colours. In general, the colour “picking” could be improved, for
example, the colours are named, not represented. With a variable palette
facility, why are not all the colours variable and then you could see
which you select − I do, however, understand the need to keep default
colours for those with colour blindness problems. I like to work with a
couple of colours but with about three tones of each one.
5.12
When text is entered onto the screen, it can be moved and sized,
justified, underlined and drop shadows selected, if required, in
different colours. Kerning is available if you want it. Another feature
is slowprint which allows letters to appear one after the other on the
screen − that’s a very good feature.
5.12
!Titler allows many different non-overscan modes and provides a few
modules for you, for example 51 − a 256colour 1248 × 288 pixel mode
which gives a large screen area and is very good for video work and
compatible with XAT’s Video Utilities package.
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Other features
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The individual composition of a page with text creates a script file.
For example if you created:
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The Memory Man
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on the first screen, you could save it as “Mem1” then recall it and add:
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Proudly Presents
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a 16Megabyte production
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saving that as “Mem2” and so on creating a whole series of screens to
complete the titles. In the example of building straps and flags, you do
it this way with a basic screen onto which you recall and add different
text or images. It is also possible to save a screen as a format file
which doesn’t save the text but you can use it as a building block for
several screens.
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The beauty of this package is the way it uses conventional file types
for display. I create drawfiles, spritefiles and text in different fonts
on the computer and use each element to produce graphics over video,
logos on labels and also the video library box outer wrapper, swapping
between !Impression, !Titler, !Trace, !Draw+ and !Paint as and when
required − I can even fax examples of titles to clients!
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!Sequencer
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The second disc in the package takes the titler script screens you have
created and puts them into a display order. You set these up in a
window, creating a sequence order with in and out effects to each window
if they need them and, having finished, you save the whole as a file.
However, there is more to this package as it also accepts screens made
from RISC-OS sprites, Ace films and from packages such as ProArtisan,
Render Bender, Atelier and Clear (PCAT graphics enhancer) pictures. You
can also link your sequences with sound played from relocatable modules,
Armadeus, Sound Tracker and Tracker. Having mastered all that, you can
also use the !Sequencer programming language to change your display, to
create repeats or change scrolling speeds, and add your own external
programs into the display sequence.
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There’s a lot of scope here and a lot of thought has gone into making it
comprehensive. I scored this package very highly. What it won’t do yet
is allow you to create roller captions either vertically or horizontally
− yet these are one of the most useful video effects.
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!Sequencer will create run-only copies of your masterpieces for
distribution. Thus, for example, you could create a display carousel for
a store and distribute it to various computers without networking. I’ve
included a demo for the monthly disk. (Save any work before trying to
run it!)
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Conclusions
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These two packages are a goodly step forward for the Archimedes in that
they provide a sensible route for the amateur video maker. I’m sure
there will be further enhancements to the suite. Paul received a letter
from Roy Follett commenting on the demo version of the packages and he
expressed some of my reservations as well as suggesting that similar
results at a cheaper price could be obtained with Atelier (“with less
ease”) and !Slideshow. My problem with !Slideshow was that it only ran
in Mode15 creating a border around my pictures.
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I consider Clares have done a good job for the price. Yes, it could be
cheaper, but authors continue to develop programs for money as well as
interest. Only demand will tell if it is overpriced.
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If you have an interest in good presentation, these are excellent
packages on which to build. Clares make the point that they do have
plans for support packages and enhancements to this software but
remember, if you are using video tape, you will need to buy a genlock.
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If you have a camcorder and like the idea of making more professional
videos or need an eye − catching display, you won’t go far wrong with
these excellent Kiwi fruits.  A
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Sherston Software    Swan Barton, Sherston, Malmesbury, Wilts. SN16 0LH.
(0666−840433) (0666−840048)
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Silicon Vision Ltd    Signal
House, Lyon Road, Harrow, Middlesex  HA1 2AG. (081−861−2173)
(081−427−5169)
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SJ Research    J1 The Paddocks, 347 Cherry Hinton Road, Cambridge  CB1
4DH. (0223−416715)
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Spacetech (p13)    21 West Wools, Portland, Dorset  DT5 2EA.
(0305−822753)
5.12
Turcan Research Systems    83 Green
croft Gardens, West Hampstead, London NW6 3LJ. (071−625−8455)
5.12
Watford Electronics    250 Lower
High Street, Watford  WD1 2AN. (0923−37774) (0923−33642)
5.12
Wyddfa Software    3 Preswylfa, Llanberis, Gwynedd  LL55 4LF.
(0286−870101) (0286−871722)
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Minerva
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From 5.9 page 6
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ICS
5.12
From 5.11 page 20
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