Archive Magazine CD 1995/Archive Magazine CD 1995.iso/text/magazine/volume_6

Text File | 1995-06-25 | 3MB | 68,095 lines

Volume 6 • Nº 1 • October 1992
6.1
Another good month for Acorn
6.1
The response to the launch of Acorn’s new machines continues to be
favourable and there is a lot of new software and hardware coming onto
the market. Indeed, the Products Available section is over four pages
long this month, despite the fact that a lot of suppliers will be
waiting for the Acorn User Show to launch their new products.
6.1
RISC-OS 3.1 is (almost) here
6.1
RISC-OS 3 is now (almost) available for all Archimedes users. Acorn are
‘working on it’ but only seem to be able to get a few sets out each
week. We are working through our back-log of orders, so PLEASE be
patient and try to resist the temptation to ring up and find out when
yours is coming − otherwise we’ll be spending all day on the phone,
talking about the availability of RISC-OS 3.1.
6.1
A(nother) new member of the N.C.S. team
6.1
Welcome this time to David Webb who has just joined the merry band at
96a Vauxhall Street. David, like Adrian Look and Simon Moy, is a
graduate of the local University of East Anglia.  (I hope this makes a
pleasant change from all the usual news of job losses!) David and Simon
have just finished computing degrees at U.E.A. and neither of them had
used Archimedes machines until they joined N.C.S... but they are both
learning very rapidly!
6.1
Come and see us at The Acorn User Show
6.1
All of us will be there at the Acorn User Show (for details, see page
7). Come to Stand 24 and bring your old software and hardware throw-outs
for us to sell for charity − in aid of famine relief. Come and meet the
‘new boys’, Simon and David, as well as the ‘old hands’, Ali and Adrian
− and, of course, the oldest hand of all.....
6.1
Yours, as ever,
6.1
Products Available
6.1
•    1.6Mb Drives for pre-A5000 computers − Arxe Systems have produced an
interface called the Alpha Dual Card. This is a 16 bit SCSI controller
plus a PC standard high density controller. This uses its own filing
system called QuadFS, functionally identical to ADFS. The controller
used also supports 4Mb drives and a future upgrade will provide support
for 3.2Mb ADFS and 2.88Mb DOS discs. The card is available in three
versions with optional external cases for A3000: SCSI Only £89, High
Density Only (inc 2Mb drive) £159 (or £109 without the floppy drive),
Both SCSI and High Density (inc 2Mb drive) £209. (All prices are ex
VAT.)
6.1
• A3010/3020/4000 memory upgrades − We can now get hold of memory
upgrades for the new computers at the following prices: 1 − 2 Mb for the
A3010 is £50, 1 − 4 Mb for the A3010 is £175, 2 − 4 Mb for the A3020 and
A4000 is £100.
6.1
•    A4 Trackerballs − Those (relatively few!) people who have got hold of
an A4 Notebook may be looking for a trackerball alternative to the
mouse. Two have come to our notice so far. The first is a serial port
mouse from PEP Associates. This comes with special software because it
uses the serial port instead of the mouse port.
6.1
The other is a hardware modified Genius trackerball from Atomwide. Both
types clip onto the side of the A4 and can, with practice, be operated
single-handedly but the Genius one uses the mouse socket and so does not
need special software. It is available from Archive for £58. See Brian
Cowan’s comments about this on page 65.
6.1
•    Acorn Ethernet Card III is the new version of the Acorn Ethernet card.
This is improved in various ways and is cheaper! The new price is £149
+VAT or £162 through Archive.
6.1
•    Ancient Egypt − Oak Solutions have produced a package to allow
children to investigate life in the time of the Pharaohs. The material
relates to History Key Stage 2 and Technology AT 5. The package costs
£50 +VAT from Oak Solutions or £55 through Archive.
6.1
•    ArcFAX − There is a new generation of modems that can connect to fax
machines as well as sending data as normal. David Pilling has capital
ised on this and produced ArcFAX which enables one of these modems to be
used as a computer-controlled fax. The software costs £23.96 from David
Pilling. (See Price List for Archive price.)
6.1
•    Archive magazine special deal − Most of the back issues of the Archive
magazine are stored on the first floor of 96a Vauxhall Street (i.e.
above my head as I write!) and we are getting concerned about the
structure of the building. As you can see from the picture opposite, we
need to get rid of a few back copies of Archive. Seriously, one or two
cracks are beginning to appear in the walls and it has been suggested
that we should reduce the load on the upper storey. We are therefore
offering special deals on bundles of Archive magazines: Volumes 1 − 5
for £25 and Volumes 1 − 4 for £22. There are one or two issues that we
are getting low on, so we cannot guarantee that you will get every
single issue. None have run out yet but if you want to be sure of a full
set, send your money in straight away. Also, if we do run out of any of
them, we will give a 50p token for each one that is missing.  This is
definitely not ‘vapourware’ − there will be no waiting − I can per
sonally guarantee that they are “in stock now”!
6.1
•    Artworks is here!!!! − It has been a long time coming but it was most
definitely worth the wait. Artworks is in stock now at £169 +VAT (or
£180 through Archive). This would be good value if all you got was the
Artworks program but included in the package are 14 discs full of fonts
and clip-art. This includes a staggering 220 outline fonts. (You can
tell your PC friends that the screen display is five times faster than
CorelDraw on a 486-50 PC!) For a full review, see page 33.
6.1
•    Battle of the Somme is a multimedia presentation focussing on the
events that occurred around 1st July 1916. The main package is £95 +VAT
from Oak Solutions and there is a Laservision video disc with 35 minutes
of video and 60 minutes of audio which, if bought at the same time is
£50 +VAT.
6.1
•    CableNews is Lingenuity’s presentation package. It was used to create
the presentation graphics for the launch of Acorn’s new machines in
August. It costs £149 +VAT for a single user (£160 through Archive),
£420 +VAT for a site licence for up to ten users, £676 +VAT for up to
thirty users and £575 +VAT for a commercial distribution licence.
6.1
•    Canon BJ10ex price drop − The distribution price of the BJ10ex has
just dropped slightly and CC have echoed that in the retail price of
their Turbo-driven BJ10ex’s. The Archive price has dropped from £275 to
£260. (Actually, I have just pensioned off the 23(sic)-pin Panasonic
1124 dot matrix printer I was using at home and swapped it for a BJ10ex.
I am very impressed with both the speed and the quality of the new
printer and the reduced size is very helpful with a restricted desk
space. If I was doing work at home, I always used to save it on disc and
bring it to work to print out − not any more!)
6.1
•    Canon Colour Printers in stock − The Computer Concepts colour printers
are now available from stock. They are Canon BJC800 printers with CC’s
own Turbo-Driver software that makes them work very effectively with the
Acorn RISC-OS computers. Sadly this is a monochrome magazine but I can
assure you that the output is very impressive − see the review on page
45 for more details. The price, including the Turbo Driver software and
lead is £1895 +VAT (£2,100 through Archive). The ink cartridges are also
available: cyan, magenta and yellow are £22 each and black is £17. The
Turbo Driver software plus printer lead is available separately for £99
+VAT (£105 through Archive).
6.1
•    Chaos is a new game from Matt Black. It is a shoot-’em-up game with
the usual enemy ships and mutants but it has a competitive edge. You can
have player versus player or, with the appropriate interface, you can
have up to four players at once. Chaos is £25 (no VAT) from Matt Black.
6.1
•    Chartwell 1.1 − Risc Developments have released an updated version of
their graphs and charts pack offering various new features including
negative values in bar charts, more flexible handling of data limits and
easier labelling and titling. The price is still £29.95 inclusive from
R.D. and the upgrade is free for existing users.
6.1
•    DeskEdit2 was released on 1st October by Risc Developments. This has
various enhancements including Basic renumber, Basic indenter, program
mer’s calculator and throwback. The price is £31.95 inc VAT and there is
an upgrade for £9.95 inc VAT.
6.1
•    DrawPlus version 2·20 is now available. This supports all of the
objects used by RISC-OS 3 Draw (including transformed text and sprites)
as well as some Vector objects. Text-to-path works under both operating
systems (ROM and disc fonts) and interpolation is available for path
objects. Upgrades are available in the usual way.
6.1
•    EasiWriter II − Icon Technology have upgraded their EasiWriter
document processor with extra features such as mailmerge and single key
case conversion. The price is still the same: It costs £150 +VAT or £160
through Archive.
6.1
•    Freddy Teddy strikes again! − In ‘The Puddle and the Wardrobe’, Freddy
gets in a muddle and steps in a puddle. While helping him out, pre-
readers and early readers will be encouraged in visual discrimination,
logical thinking, sequencing, comparison and memory − and they will have
fun too, I trust. The Puddle and the Wardrobe costs £29.95 +VAT from
Topologika or £32 through Archive.
6.1
•    Fun School 4 has now appeared. (What do you mean, you haven’t finished
Fun School 2 yet?!) It comes in the usual three age levels: Under 5’s,
5’s − 7’s and 7’s − 11’s. They are £24.99 each from Database Publi
cations or £23 through Archive.
6.1
•    IEEE488 interface − Anyone wanting to link an Archimedes to existing
IEEE488 instruments will be interested in Intelligent Interfaces’
IEEE488 interface which comes, complete with software, for £299 +VAT or
£325 through Archive.
6.1
•    Imagery − Palette Studio have created a new image-creation tool which
takes over where Paint leaves off. It provides 256 colour painting and
image processing with support for outline fonts. Imagery contains
various tools for creating artwork from scratch or for processing
existing pictures captured by digitisers or scanners. It costs £89.95
inc VAT from Palette Studio.
6.1
•    Language and literacy for Special Needs − The Xavier Educational
Software Ltd at the Department of Psychology, Bangor University now has
four packages for the Archimedes. Soapbox (£35 +VAT) links spelling
patterns and vowel sounds by using sampled speech, Punctuate (£32 +VAT)
helps with punctuation, ThinkLink (£30 +VAT) aims to help with reading,
memory, classification and sequence and ArcSpell 1 and 2 (£29.50 +VAT
each) provide a wide range of programs to help the dyslexic pupil.
6.1
•    Magpie − Longman Logotron’s multimedia package, Magpie, now includes
facilities for Acorn Replay and CD audio. The upgrade is free to
registered users and the price remains unchanged at £59 +VAT from
Longman-Logotron or £64 through Archive.
6.1
•    Mapper Series software − This has nothing to do with geography but is
edIT Software’s name for their new range of topic-based IT software for
primary schools. The packs currently available are Bodymapper, Weather
mapper and Homemapper. These are £44.95 +VAT each with site licences at
£89.90 +VAT (up to 5) and £134.85 +VAT (5+). There are also French
versions of each of these packs, at the same price each, and other
language versions are being developed. (EdIT also sell a range of
measuring equipment to go with the mapper packs.)
6.1
•    MicroSpell 3 − David Pilling has produced a stand-alone desktop
spelling checker with a 200,000 word dictionary for just £5.99 (or £6
through Archive). Owners of MicroSpell 1 or 2 can have a free upgrade by
returning their discs to David.
6.1
•    Network technical support − SJ Research have published a technical
support hotline number which people can use if they have technical
questions about networking matters. This line goes straight to the
engineers without going through the SJ Research switchboard. The number
is: 0223−414532.
6.1
•    Oh no! More Lemmings! − For those insomniacs who are gluttons for more
punishment, there are now over 100 more Lemmings levels available for
you as ‘Oh no, More Lemmings’. The price is £19.95 Krisalis or £18
through Archive. You need the original Lemmings disc to play the new
levels − it is not a stand-alone package.
6.1
•    PaySYS is a payroll system from KAS Software (also available for BBC/
Master) costing £75.
6.1
•    PC Emulator documentation − The manual for the 1.8 version of the PC
Emulator is available separately at £8 through Archive.
6.1
•    Polyominoes are now part of the National Curriculum and so Topologika
have provided three programs which deal with various aspects such as
tessellation, pentominoes and hexominoes.  Polyominoes costs £29.95 +VAT
from Topologika or £32 through Archive.
6.1
•    Portable is the name of a subscription magazine all about the A4
Notebook and associated products. It costs £15 for six issues. Contact
Ned Abell, ‘Weatherpost’, Hollywell Lane, Bayton Common, Kidderminster.
6.1
•    Printer drivers for Canon LBP printers − Ace Computing now have a
printer driver (£16 +VAT or £17 through Archive) for the Canon LBP range
of printers working through the standard ports (serial or parallel).
This is important because it makes the Laser Direct HiRes4 printer
usable on the A3010, A3020 and A4000 computers, albeit without the high
speed of the Laser Direct interface which will not fit in these newer
computers. You could, for example, sit an LBP4-LD between an A5000 and
an A4000, the one being connected via the video link and the other by a
parallel port cable, and switch between the two by using the printer’s
front panel.
6.1
•    ProDrivers are Ace Computing’s enhanced RISC-OS 3 printer drivers.
They provide full 24-bit half-toned and dithered output, an application
to print automatically to file and then from file to printer as a
background task, and a CMYK colour separation package. This can be used,
for example, to provide full colour prints on mono printers (like ICS’s
ColourSep − see the article last month on page 34 and the comments this
month on page 17) or to enhance the black output from a Deskjet 500C.
ProDrivers are £40+VAT from Ace or £44 through Archive. (Upgrades are
available from Ace for £25 +VAT.)
6.1
•    Removable drives prices DOWN again − Once again, the prices of
removable drives have dropped. The 42Mb drives have dropped slightly
from £455 to £445 but the 84Mb drives have dropped more dramatically
from £670 to £590. The 42Mb cartridges have also dropped by £5 to £65.
We are selling more and more of these drives and are finding that the
number of drives returned because of faults is getting less despite the
increased numbers so it looks as if some of the earlier unreliability
problems have been overcome. However, don’t be deceived, these are OPEN
hard drives and so CANNOT be as reliable as the fixed hard disc systems.
If portability is important or if you are just using them for backup
purposes, they are, in my view, the best thing since sliced bread!
6.1
•    RS423 serial interface − Intelligent Interfaces produce a dual RS423
serial interface on a single half-width podule for the Archimedes. It
costs £199 +VAT or £220 through Archive.
6.1
•    Saxon Life − Oak Solutions have produced a package to allow children
to follow the Saxon invasion of Britain. The material relates to History
Key Stage 2. The cost is £50 +VAT from Oak Solutions or £55 through
Archive.
6.1
•    Sound Lab software − Oak Solutions have produced some more advanced
software for use with their Oak Recorder. Sound Lab allows samples to be
turned into relocatable modules and provides a real-time display with a
spectrum analyser and a simple oscilloscope. The price is £14.95 +VAT or
£18 through Archive.
6.1
•    SparkFS − David Pilling has produced a full filing system for
compressed files. It reads and writes files compressed in a wide range
of formats: SEAarc, PKarc, Zip, Tar, Spark, BtoA/AtoB, Boo, FCET and
UNIX Compress. In addition, there are nine more formats that it will
read but not write. SparkFS is £23.96 from David Pilling. (See Price
List for Archive price.) It is also available from David as an upgrade
from Spark and/or ArcFS. You can have £5.99 off the price for each
program. Send him both discs and you need only pay £11.98.
6.1
•    Special Access Pack − When you buy an Acorn computer, you can buy, at
the same time, a Special Needs pack for £99 +VAT (£105 through Archive).
This includes a hardware expansion card to enable you to link to various
interface units, a disc of special software to provide assistance in
various ways and a copy of a resource book for special needs. For
partially-sighted users, there is a coupon to enable you to get a free
audio tape of the manual.
6.1
•    StartWrite − (nothing to do with children’s shoes) Icon Technology
have produced a word processor ‘for the younger generation’ called
StartWrite. The price is £49 +VAT or £53 through Archive.
6.1
•    Text-to-Braille − Royal London Society for the Blind has produced an
Archimedes application that converts ASCII text files to a Grade 2
Braille file that can then be output to a suitable Braille printer. The
application costs £25 from the Dorton IT Centre, Dorton House, Seal,
Sevenoaks  TN15 0ED. (0732−61477) (0732−63363)
6.1
•    Tiles is the first offering from a new educational software company
called Brain Games. It is a crossword game which is aimed to teach a
variety of skills: strategy, vocabulary, foreign languages, spelling and
arithmetic. The English version is £19.75 and extra language discs will
be available in due course, starting with French and German, hopefully
before Christmas.
6.1
•    TV Fun and Games − HS Software have produced a three-game set of
programs aimed at 5−9 year olds covering areas of the National Curricu
lum including Maths, English, Science and Geography. The price is £22.95
from HS or £21 through Archive.
6.1
•    VISYS is a video cataloguing system from KAS Software (also available
for IBM PC) costing £75.
6.1
•    Whale Facts − This is a multimedia database from Topologika about...
whales!  It includes sound samples and pictures for you to print out
yourself. Whale Facts costs £29.95 +VAT from Topologika or £32 through
Archive.
6.1
•    Wortgut is a German/English dictionary from New Era Software costing
£25 (no VAT).
6.1
Review software received...
6.1
We have received review copies of the following: 2067 BC, Aliped,
Archimedes Games Maker’s Manual, Beginner’s Guide to Wimp Programming,
CSVtoText, DeskEdit2, DTP and Programmer’s Utilities Disc, Gods,
LandBuild (fractal landscapes), Landmarks Columbus, Landmarks Aztecs,
Magpie, MicroSpell 3, Nebulus, Polyominoes, Precision, Science and
Medicine clipart, SparkFS, The Puddle and the Wardrobe, Tiles, Touch
Type (Is there really no one out there who feels able to review this and
Turbo-Type and the two PD typing tutors?), Whale Facts, Wortgut, Yes
Chancellor II.  A
6.1
Government Health Warning − Reading this could seriously affect your
spiritual health.
6.1
“How can a God of love condemn anyone to hell?” is a question which
sceptics often ask of Christians. Well, let me ask the sceptic a
question. If you were God, what would you do with Adolf Hitler? Would
you accept him into heaven? Or what about someone who had molested and
killed a child? Would you accept them into heaven? Well, what about
someone who committed some lesser crime?....
6.1
Our natural sense of justice says that there are some people that God
should not accept. The trouble is, where do you draw the line in
deciding who to accept? Listen to what Jesus says about this... “anyone
who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her
in his heart” and “anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject
to judgement”. (Those two quotes are from that nice “Sermon on the
Mount” thing in Matthew chapter 5.) Tough stuff, isn’t it?
6.1
“Well”, you say, “Jesus’ standards are ridiculously high. Why, at that
rate no one would get into heaven!”  That’s it. You’ve got it. You are
absolutely right.
6.1
Where does God draw the line? He says that if you have ever done, said
or thought anything evil, you don’t deserve to be accepted into heaven.
Hmmm? We’ve got a problem here. How can anyone be acceptable to God if
the standards are that high? If you don’t know the answer to that then
ask someone you know who is a Christian − they ought to be able to tell
you what the solution is − I haven’t got space here to explain it!
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6.2
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Norwich Computer Services 96a Vauxhall Street, Norwich, NR2 2SD.
0603−766592 (−764011)
6.1
4th Dimension     P.O. Box 4444, Sheffield. (0742−700661) (0742−781091)
6.1
Abacus Training     29 Okus Grove, Upper Stratton, Swindon, Wilts  SN2
6QA.
6.1
Ace Computing    27 Victoria Road, Cambridge  CB4 3BW. (0223−322559)
(0223−69180)
6.1
Acorn Computers Ltd     Fulbourn
Road, Cherry Hinton, Cambridge  CB1 4JN. (0223−245200) (0223−210685)
6.1
Arxe Systems Ltd    279B Romford Road, Forest Gate, London E7 9HJ.
(081−534−1198)
6.1
Atomwide Ltd    23 The Greenway, Orpington, Kent  BR5 2AY. (0689−838852)
(0689−896088)
6.1
Bits ’n Bytes (p6)    26 Grenville
Road, Saint Judes, Plymouth  PL4 9PY. (0752−667599)
6.1
Brain Games    Swinegate, Hessle, North Humberside  HU13 9LH.
(0482−649288) (0482−641136)
6.1
Cambridge International Software    Unit 2a, 436
Essex Road, London  N1 3QP. (071−226−3340) (071−226−3408)
6.1
Colton Software (p28)    2 Signet
Court, Swanns Road, Cambridge  CB5 8LA. (0223−311881) (0223−312010)
6.1
Computer Concepts (p40/41)    Gaddesden
Place, Hemel Hempstead, Herts  HP2 6EX. (0442−63933) (0442−231632)
6.1
Database Publications    Europa
House, Adlington Park, London Road, Adlington, Macclesfield, Cheshire
SK10 5NP. (0625−859444) (0625−879966)
6.1
David Pilling    P.O.Box 22, Thornton Cleveleys, Blackpool, FY5 1LR.
6.1
EdIT Educational Software    2 The Crest,
London  NW4 2HW. (081−202−0834)
6.1
HS Software    56, Hendrefolian Avenue, Sketty, Swansea  SA2 7NB.
(0792−204519)
6.1
ICS (Ian Copestake Software)    1 Kington
Road, West Kirby, Wirral  L48 5ET. (051−625−1006) (051−625−1007)
6.1
Icon Technology    9 Jarrom Street, Leicester  LE2 7DH. (0533−546225)
6.1
Intelligent Interfaces Ltd    P.O.Box 80,
Eastleigh, Hants  SO5 5YX. (0703−261514) (0703−267904)
6.1
KAS Software    74 Dovers Park, Bathford, Bath  BA1 7UE. (0225−858464)
6.1
Kudlian Soft    39 Dalehouse Lane, Kenilworth, Warwickshire  CV8 2HW.
(0926−55538)
6.1
Lingenuity (Lindis)    Wood Farm,
Linstead Magna, Halesworth, Suffolk  IP19 0DU. (098−685−477)
(098−685−460)
6.1
Longman-Logotron    124 Cambridge Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge CB4
4ZS. (0223−425558) (0223−425349)
6.1
LOOKsystems (p21)    47 Goodhale Road, Bowthorpe, Norwich  NR5 9AY.
(0603−764114) (0603−764011)
6.1
Matt Black    P.O.Box 42, Peterborough  PE1 2TZ. (0733−315439)
6.1
Minerva Systems    Minerva House, Baring Crescent, Exeter  EX1 1TL.
(0392−437756) (0392−421762)
6.1
New Era Software    204 High Street, Woodville, Swadlincote, Derbyshire
DE11 7DT. (0283−812818)
6.1
Oak Solutions (p22)    Suite 25,
Robin Enterprise Centre, Leeds Road, Idle, Yorkshire BD10 9TE.
(0274−620423) (0274−620419)
6.1
Palette Studio     6c/6d Belgic Square, Peterborough  PE1 5XF.
(0733−344245) (0733−315424)
6.1
PEP Associates    34 Tiverton Way, Cambridge  CB1 3TU. (0223−212251)
6.1
Pineapple Software    39 Brownlea
Gardens, Seven Kings, Ilford, Essex IG3 9NL. (081−599−1476)
(081−598−2343)
6.1
P.R.E.S. Ltd     P.O. Box 319, Lightwater, Surrey GU18 5PW. (0276−72046)
(0276−51427)
6.1
Ray Maidstone     421 Sprowston Road, Norwich  NR3 4EH. (0603−400477)
(0603−417447)
6.1
Risc Developments Ltd    117 Hatfield
Road, St Albans, Herts  AL1 4JS. (0727−40303) (0727−860263)
6.1
Safesell Exhibitions (p7)    Market
House, Cross Road, Tadworth, Surrey KT20 5SR.
6.1
Silicon Vision Ltd    Signal
House, Lyon Road, Harrow, Middlesex  HA1 2AG. (081−861−2173)
(081−427−5169)
6.1
SJ Research    J1 The Paddocks, 347 Cherry Hinton Road, Cambridge  CB1
4DH. (0223−416715)
6.1
Soft Rock Software    124 Marissal
Road, Henbury, Bristol  BS10 7NP. (0272−761685)
6.1
Spacetech (p8)    21 West Wools, Portland, Dorset  DT5 2EA.
(0305−822753) (0305−860483)
6.1
System Insight     Unit 2, Hertfordshire Business Centre, Alexander Road,
London Colney, Herts  AL2 1JG. (0727−827200)
6.1
Topologika    P.O. Box 39, Stilton, Peterborough  PE7 3RL. (0733−244682)
6.1
Xavier Educational Software Ltd    Dept of
Psychology, 37 College Road, Bangor, Gwynedd  LL57 2DG. (0248−351151)
(0248−364412)
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6.2
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6.2
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Computer Concepts
6.1
From 5.3 page 32
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Computer Concepts
6.1
From 5.3 page 33
6.1
Paul B
6.1
‘PLEASE buy some Archive backnumbers before I sink without trace!’
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(Cartoon by Jonathan Dellar.)
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Cartoon here
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6.1
Mouse Mats
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£1.99* each
6.1
Red, Blue, Royal Blue, Silver, or Green
6.1
8 by 10 inches by 5mm
6.1
neoprene with no silk-screening
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includes P&P and VAT.
6.1
6.2
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Send a cheque to:
6.1
Bits n Bytes
6.1
26 Grenville Road
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Saint Judes
6.1
Plymouth
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PL4 9PY
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0752 667599
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*£1.75  each for 3 or more
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mats in one order.
6.1
Safesell Exhibitions
6.1
New Artwork
6.1
SpaceTech
6.1
From 5.12 page 13
6.1
Hints and Tips
6.1
•    Alt characters − On upgrading from RISC-OS 2 to RISC-OS 3.1, I thought
I had lost my ‘×’ character. I eventually found that it had moved from
<alt-,> to <shift-alt-,>. (Even on RISC-OS 3.0 on the A5000 it is still
<alt-,>.) So I investigated all the possible ALTernatives(!). Here are
all the ALT characters I found. They are laid out in QWERTY order but
where no special character appeared, the key is not included in the
list.
6.1
key    ALT    shift ALT
6.1
`    ¬    °
6.1
1    ¹    ¡
6.1
2    ²
6.1
3    ³
6.1
4    ¼
6.1
5    ½
6.1
6    ¾
6.1
9        ±
6.1
r    ¶    ®
6.1
y        ¥
6.1
o    ø    Ø
6.1
p    þ    Þ
6.1
\        ¦
6.1
a    æ    Æ
6.1
s    ß    §
6.1
d    ð    Ð
6.1
f        ª
6.1
z    «
6.1
x    »
6.1
c    ¢    ©
6.1
m    µ    º
6.1
,        ×
6.1
.        ÷
6.1
/        ¿
6.1
I think that is all there is, but if anyone finds any more, let us know.
Ed.
6.1
•    Annual service kit − In answer to Paul’s comment about hard drives in
Archive 5.12, p.8, I’d like to sing the praises of the Alarm application
(on one of the support disks or in ROM on RISC-OS 3). (You will see the
link if you read on! Ed)
6.1
I, too, would have forgotten completely about the annual replacement of
filter and batteries, but for this application (which, thanks to my Boot
file, always resides on the iconbar): When my machine was a year old,
Alarm reminded me of this fact in no uncertain terms, (‘urgent’ alarm,
repeating every hour), so there was very little chance of overlooking
this necessary bit of maintenance. Jochen Konietzko, Köln, Germany.
6.1
•    Apple Laser Writer II NT − Here is some information for anyone wanting
to make a cable link from an Archimedes to an Apple Laser Writer II NT.
The connections are as follows...
6.1
    Archimedes    LaserWriter II NT
6.1
    Pin            Pin
6.1
    2    (RXD)    −−−−    3    (TXD)
6.1
    3    (TXD)    −−−−    2    (RXD)
6.1
    5    (0V)    −−−−    7    (0V)
6.1
    6    (DSR)    −−−−    20    (DTR)
6.1
The Archimedes pins DCD (1), DTR (4) and CTS (8) are all linked
together.
6.1
When using a RISC-OS printer driver you should choose the Serial
connection with 9600 baud rate, 8 data bits, no parity and 1 stop bit.
XOn/XOff protocol should also be used.
6.1
•    DDE Pascal − Some would-be users of DDE !Pascal (on Careware 17) will
have discovered that it won’t function in Computer Concepts’ Compressed
Filing System (CFS), where it generates the error ‘Special field not
allowed in filesystem prefix to OS_CLI’. This means that the command
line interpreter, which is invoked to run the Pascal tool, objects to
some pathname which begins with the prefix ‘CFS#’. The offending
pathname turns out to be the <Pascal$Dir>.Pascal, as assigned into
Alias$Pascal by the !Run file with the apparent function of enabling the
compiler to be located in the application directory. The remedy is to
comment out the line which assigns Alias$Pascal and move the compiler
(i.e. <Pascal$Dir>.Pascal) to your library. This brings the configura
tion into line with that of the C compiler and other DDE tools and
causes ‘*Pascal’ commands to be serviced by default from the current
library without any explicit reference to a filesystem.  Mike Kinghan,
Oxford
6.1
•    DDE Pascal (Careware 17) − The release of the public-domain Norcroft
Pascal compiler for the Archimedes is potentially extremely useful,
since, although ISO-Pascal is very good, it does not interface well with
the operating system. More seriously, programs compiled with ISO-Pascal
do not interface well either.
6.1
The Norcroft system is easy to use and install and does everything that
is claimed of it. Unfortunately, users should be aware of some problems,
especially since Acorn obviously does not wish to maintain the product.
6.1
I have some extra severe tests for Pascal, which I have used to test the
compiler. This shows that the compiler has some errors in the evaluation
of set expressions: the following program failed (printing True rather
than False):
6.1
{4 5 6 4 0 3     3000 }
6.1
{the parameters from the full test which failed. }
6.1
program test (output);
6.1
const
6.1
    ten = 10;
6.1
var
6.1
    i: 1..ten;
6.1
begin
6.1
i := 11; (compilation error here?)
6.1
i := ten + 1; (compilation error here?)
6.1
writeln(‘Error not detected‘) ;
6.1
end.
6.1
The first error is caught at compile-time by almost all Pascal com
pilers, including ISO-Pascal. The second error is caught by almost all
compilers at run-time, and a few at compile-time.
6.1
When using the quit option in the Pascal menu, the system still allows
command line usage of Norcroft Pascal, although the icon is removed.
6.1
The final significant problem is that programs written in ISO-Pascal do
not necessarily compile without the ISO option being set. This is
annoying, since many programs will wish to use some extensions. I don’t
know of any other Pascal compiler for which the extension option means
less (in some cases).  Brian Wichmann, NPL.
6.1
•    Directory size − Regarding the issue on directory sizes, etc in the
hints & tips section, there are a few other points...
6.1
RISC-OS 2 has some problems with certain combinations of disk size and
allocation unit, so beware. The problem usually causes the machine to
hang when entering a directory. I have only experienced this using large
allocation units on small disks.
6.1
The fact that a new dir appears to take 38Kb isn’t the whole story, as I
believe that there is a facility for small files within a directory to
use some of the ‘wasted’ space. However, if you tend to have lots of
directories with few files, space does tend to get wasted.
6.1
The best solution as far as both disk, space and speed is concerned is
to use D format, which uses the ‘correct’ amount of space for direc
tories and hardly anything for the map. (Remember that there are two
copies of the map in E format.) D format disks are also MUCH easier to
recover files from if the root directory or map gets corrupted and files
can never be fragmented (which slows down access). The only disadvantage
is the occasional need to compact but I find this a small price to pay.
I would only recommend E format for non-technical users.
6.1
The same issues will apply to all FireCore based filling systems such as
IDE, etc.  Mike Harrison
6.1
•    Impression/Squirrel − CC’s !Importer (also in their Business Supple
ment) is supplied by Digital Services with Squirrel. Here is some
experience that might help other people.
6.1
Using Squirrel, I created a database with 22 fields. I then tried to
mail merge the resultant report CSV file using !Importer. I got an error
message saying ‘Subscript out of range (Code 6150).’ After some hours of
fiddling, I eventually found that if I reduced the number of fields in
the CSV file to 16, !Importer worked OK. Nick Horn, Thetford.
6.1
•    Second internal hard drive in an A410/1 − I fitted a 40Mb ST506 hard
drive to my A410, thinking it would be more than adequate. However, with
the acquisition of the PC Emulator and the formation of a 10Mb DOS
partition, I was rapidly running out of room. I subsequently purchased a
second hand 20Mb ST506 drive, which I decided to fit internally rather
than buy a p.s.u., case and fan. I thought of making some mounting
brackets but, having seen an advert for a SPACE kit from PRES which
included brackets and all the leads, I changed my mind and went for
that. Price was £38.72 inc VAT. The work involved was to:
6.1
1)    Remove top two podule blanking plates.
6.1
2)    Fit metal brackets to drive using screws supplied.
6.1
3)    Remove the 34 way data cable and replace it with the one supplied,
connecting it to the existing drive and mother board (SK11), leaving
spare connector to connect to the second drive later.
6.1
4)    Connect the supplied 20 way control cable to the spare connector
(SK8) on the mother board, leaving the other end to be connected to the
second drive later.
6.1
5)    Remove the power cable from the psu and existing drive and replace
it with the supplied cable, leaving the spare connector for the second
drive.
6.1
6)    Lead all three cables to the back of the computer and through the
space left by removing the blanking plates and connect them to the
second drive.
6.1
7)    Attach the blanking plates to the metal brackets on the second
drive using nuts & bolts supplied.
6.1
8)    Ensure second drive is set to ‘1’ by changing the appropriate DIP
switch or DS-Jumper.
6.1
9)    Insert the drive through the back of computer until the front of
the brackets rests on backplane connectors (psu side) and the blanking
plates line up with the back of the computer. Screw in blanking plate
screws.
6.1
10)    Once computer is up and running it will have to be configured for
a second hard drive.
6.1
The work was very easy to carry out and the instructions supplied were
very good. The drive then has to be formatted using Acorn’s HFORM
program. The program had to be modified to do the ‘slow’ formatting by
altering the following lines:
6.1
7530 REMmed out
6.1
7540 REMmed out
6.1
7550 REM removed
6.1
7560 REM remove
6.1
Once this was done, the drive formatted with no problems and, using the
PC Emulator’s configure program, I created a 19 Mb DOS partition.
6.1
I would recommend this solution of gaining extra drive capacity if you
have access to a cheap drive and do not mind losing the space of two
half width podules.  Chris Bass, Grimsby
6.1
•    Mah Jong from CIS − If you have recently purchased the Mah Jong game
from Cambridge International Software, you may wish to check for the
presence of a ‘benign’ virus. This can be done by double-clicking on the
!MahJong game while holding the <shift> key down. Choose the ‘Display >
Full Info’ option on the filer window. If the MemAlloc module is larger
that 2608 bytes then your copy is infected and you should contact CIS
directly at Unit 2a, Essex Road, London  N1 3QP or telephone
071−226−3340.
6.1
•    Measuring free space − I would like to say a big thank you to all the
people who wrote in response to my plea for help in finding a way of
checking, from within a program, whether there is enough space for a
file before it is saved.
6.1
The most ingenious suggestion was to use the following commands:
6.1
*FREE {ram:ccc }
6.1
X=OPENUP(“RAM:CCC”)
6.1
REPEAT B=BGET#X: UNTIL B=ASC“=”
6.1
REPEAT B=BGET#X
6.1
 IF B>47 AND B<58 B$=B$+CHR$B
6.1
UNTIL B=ASC“B”
6.1
*SHUT
6.1
to put the free space in the variable B$.
6.1
Some people pointed me to ‘ADFS_FreeSpace’ (also RamFS_FreeSpace,
SCSIFS_FreeSpace, etc.) which can be used with syntax such as:
6.1
SYS “ADFS_FreeSpace”,Drive$ TO Free%,Largest%.
6.1
The same information was given on page 7 of the Archive 5.12.
6.1
Although all these answers have been very helpful, they have also taught
me a salutary lesson, namely that you have to be very precise when
describing your problem: because, although they have answered the
question (and told me things that I did not know) they haven’t actually
told me what I needed to know!
6.1
What I actually want is a filing system independent way of finding out
whether a file with any given path name can be saved. For instance, if
the user of my program indicates (by dragging an icon to a filer window
or typing into a save box) that he wants to save a file with the path
name ‘XXXFS::$....Filename’ and if my program knows how long the file
will be, I want my program to be able to find out whether the file will
fit in the specified place, without knowing in advance whether ‘XXXFS’
stands for ADFS or CFS or SCSIFS or RamFS or whatever. The program also
has to work if a path is not specified and the file is simply to be
saved to the CSD.
6.1
A couple of correspondents have pointed out that there is an SWI called
‘FileCore_FreeSpace’ (on page 1021 of the PRM). However, in order to use
this you have to know the ‘private word’ of the filing system in
question and, so far as I can see, this SWI can only therefore be called
by a filing system module, which is not much use to a mere mortal
programmer!
6.1
I still, therefore, believe that the only generalised way of doing what
I want is to use syntax like the following :
6.1
X%=OPENOUT(Filename$)
6.1
SYS “XOS_Args”,6,X%,Length% TO ,,Allocated%
6.1
IF Allocated% >= Length% THEN ... go ahead and save it.
6.1
This is hardly elegant but it seems to work.
6.1
I understand that RISC-OS 3 will include the generalised SWI that I
want. However, this will not be much use, of course, in a program that
is designed to work in RISC-OS 2 as well!  Hugh Eagle, Horsham
6.1
•    Formatting numbers (continued) − Over the last two months, I have been
following the correspondence on Basic’s number formatting ability (PRINT
and STR$) with some interest. Has the increased size and complexity of
RISC-OS caused the oversight of some of the slightly esoteric but very
powerful features of BBC Basic? One such feature is the @% variable in
Basic. The @% variable controls the format of the PRINT and STR$
functions and much of last month’s discussions could have been settled
by altering the @% variable so that STR$ was formatted in the same way
as PRINT.
6.1
@% is fully discussed in the manuals that accompany the computer under
the PRINT command but I will try to give some useful pointers here. As
with all Basic integers, the @% variable is four bytes long. When Byte 4
(the left-most byte) is zero Basic ignores @% when using the STR$
function (this is the default and the source of last month’s problems)
otherwise STR$ is formatted exactly the same as PRINT. Byte 3 allows the
choice of three different formatting types: 0 − general (the default), 1
− exponent and 2 − fixed. Byte 2 specifies the number of digits printed
and Byte 1 gives the print field width when you use comma separators in
PRINT.
6.1
Our problem arises from two areas: the way computers represent numbers
and the value of @%. At this point, I think it is necessary to take an
aside into the nature of real number representation in computers so, if
you are only interested in how to circumvent Basic’s printing problems,
skip to the end of this article.
6.1
Common advice to novice programmers is not to use real variables unless
you really have to. Speed and storage reasons are normally given for
simplicity but a far more important reason is that real numbers are not
exact in the same way as integers and they must be treated differently.
A classic example is the problem in mathematics of dealing with two
representations of, say, the number one: which could be 1.000... or
0.999.... As far as we are concerned both are the same but if we ask a
computer whether or not they are equal, we find not. This is due to no
fault of the computer or the programmer but the acceptance that
computers cannot store the infinite expressions for real numbers but
must approximate to a number of decimal places and so springs up the
subject of numerical analysis.
6.1
How then do we equate real numbers? Well, we must choose a value for a
zero! That is a number where any number smaller than it we consider to
be ‘as good as zero’. An example for Basic is 10−7, any smaller and the
errors in calculations become significant. So when we want to check
equality of two numbers a and b we use the expression (ABS(a­b) < 1E-7).
If this is true then the two numbers are ‘as good as equal’. (ABS is
used since we are only interested in the magnitude of the difference
between the numbers.)
6.1
The second important point with numbers stored in computers is that they
are stored in binary. Yes, of course, you all knew that but fewer people
are aware how computers store fractions. Much like in decimal when we
have a decimal point, computers use a binary point where the digits to
the right of the point have place values 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, etc. In decimal
there is a problem of representing fractions like 1/3 or 1/6 because the
prime factors of 3 or 6 are not divisible by the factors of 10 (2, 5) so
you get infinite decimal expansions for them. In binary, the problem is
greater because there is only one factor of two (unlike two factors of
ten) so even more numbers have infinite representations (this is why
some people advocate using base 12 instead of base 10 for day to day
life − it makes mental arithmetic so much easier). This means that
simple decimal numbers like 0.6 have an infinite expansion in binary.
6.1
What has all this got to do with printing numbers in Basic? Well, an
appreciation of what is going on when you store numbers will help you
avoid the pitfalls that last month’s contributors highlighted. Now that
we are aware that innocuous looking numbers like 2.1 can have infinite
expansions when stored in binary, it becomes clear that 2.1 × 10 may not
equal 21 but, perhaps, 20.99999999!
6.1
Is there anything that we can do about this? Yes, indeed there is. We
can tell Basic to round off the number to nine decimal places instead of
attempting to print 10 which extends the precision beyond the accuracy
(in general Basic is accurate to nine decimal places unless you are
using the floating point version where I believe 19 is the limit but not
having a RISC-OS 3...).
6.1
Now we come back to @%. At default, @% specifies 9 decimal places but it
only affects PRINT and not STR$ which defaults to ten. To alter this,
all we need to do is set the byte 4 flag in @% to one. Try PRINT
STR$(0.6) and then set @% = &0100090A and try again (by the way, &90A is
the default value for @% whereas STR$ uses &A0A if byte 4 is unset).
6.1
If we want to print money then we can set @% to two decimal places by
&0002020A (remember to set byte 4 to one if you want to use STR$). This
has the added bonus of allowing you to print the number rounded off but
still maintain the extra places for further calculations.
6.1
I hope you can now see the power and simplicity of using @%. My only
warning is that if you wish to use several formats in your program, then
either save the previous @% or declare it as a local variable.  Emmet
Spier, Guildford.
6.1
This subject seems to have opened up quite a debate. Emmet has agreed to
edit any comments regarding rounding errors for us and so if your wish
to add to the debate you should write to him directly. Emmet Spier, 6
Parklands Place, Guildford, Surrey  GU1 2PS.
6.1
•    PC keyboards for A4 − A word of warning − not all PC type keyboards
work on the A4 (or all PCs for that matter!), so take the A4 to the shop
and try before you buy! Reasonable ones can be had for about £40 at some
computer fairs. Note that non PS/2 type keyboards (with the 5 pin DIN
plug) can be used with an adaptor or by changing the plug.  Mike
Harrison
6.1
•    RISC-OS 3 DOS partitions − Because DOS filenames (including exten
sions) are in general longer than the maximum length of a valid ADFS
filename (10), it is not always possible to copy or move DOS files from
hard or floppy discs directly to the ADFS.
6.1
The !MultiFS utility as supplied with the PC Emulator solves this by
allowing you to truncate the DOS filename while the translation process
takes place. Another very useful option (which I often use when copying
files from C programs) is to force !MultiFS to handle DOS extensions as
(hierarchical) directories.
6.1
However, when the filetype of a DOS partition on your ADFS hard disc is
set to ‘DOSdisc’, RISC-OS 3 will display a filer window for the
partition when you try to open the folder, while !MultiFS just ignores
it (i.e. no :C drive on the iconbar.) This is all very nice but RISC-OS
3 doesn’t offer the nice name translation options mentioned above. To
enable !MultiFS to display your DOS partitions, just set their filetype
to ‘data’ before you start !MultiFS. Remember to use the command line
and not the filer menu because the latter doesn’t allow you to change
the the filetype of DOSdiscs. I inserted 3 lines for each DOS partition
in the !MultiFS !Run file to swap between ‘DOSdisc’ and ‘data’ type
partitions when !MultiFS is started:
6.1
    *Filer_CloseDir     <PCe$Drive_X>
6.1
*SetType     <PCe$Drive_X> Data
6.1
directly after setting the system variable <PCe$Drive_X>, and
6.1
    *SetType     <PCe$Drive_X> DOSDisc
6.1
at the end of the !Run file (although the comment tells us not to do
so).
6.1
Unfortunately, there are some bugs in !MultiFS: When you copy to a
MultiFS filer window, you must ensure name translation is not set to
hierarchical or you will end up with wildcards (‘?’) in filenames. When
this happens you must use DOS itself to delete the file because RISC-OS
fails to wipe those objects. Another bug appears if you shut down your
system after using !MultiFS. This results in an error report and a task
manager crash.  Paul Groot, Holland.
6.1
•    Saloon Cars Deluxe − If you are having problems running Saloon Cars
Deluxe, it may be worth knowing that you must have the Font Manager
installed for it to run.
6.1
•    Shareware 44 (Fortran Friends) update − There is a small bug in the
!Fortran77. DesktopF77 program. Line 1400 should read:
6.1
1400 IF INSTR(b$,“rror”) THEN E%+=1
6.1
This allows errors in the code generator part of the compiler to be
detected. Kate Crennell, Oxon.
6.1
•    Zelanites cheat − The following program provides a cheat for
Zelanites. It stops the number of lives decreasing below 9.  Steve
Edwards, Stourbridge.
6.1
 10 REM >:0.$.hints.zelcheat
6.1
 20 REM Archive hints & tips section
6.1
 30 REM (c) S.EDWARDS 1992
6.1
 40 REM infinite lives for Zelanites
6.1
 50 REM ****************************
6.1
 60 REM * When you have run the program the game should *
6.1
 70 REM * then be run as normal. This time when you die  *
6.1
 80 REM * you will have not gone down one life but up   *
6.1
 90 REM * to NINE lives, which stay with you for ever.  *
6.1
100 REM *                          *
6.1
110 REM ****************************
6.1
120 :
6.1
130 DIM store% &400
6.1
140 MODE 0
6.1
150 PROCDisc_op
6.1
160 PRINT‘********FINISHED********’
6.1
170 PRINT
6.1
180 PRINT‘****NOW GET BLASTING****’
6.1
190 END
6.1
200 :
6.1
210 DEF PROCDisc_op
6.1
220 PRINT ‘Put !ZELANITE disc into drive 0’
6.1
230 PRINT ‘   and press a key.’
6.1
240 A=GET
6.1
250 PRINT ‘Loading  sector information’
6.1
260 SYS ‘ADFS_DiscOp’,0,1,&50400, store%,&400
6.1
270 store%?&67=&6A:REM Original code =&2A
6.1
280 INPUT‘Are you are ready to make the change ?’;A$
6.1
290 IF LEFT$(A$,1)=‘N’ OR LEFT$(A$,1)=‘n’ THEN END
6.1
300 IF LEFT$(A$,1)=‘Y’ OR LEFT$(A$,1)=‘y’ THEN
6.1
310   PRINT‘Saving cheat back to disk’
6.1
320   SYS ‘ADFS_DiscOp’,0,2,&50400, store%,&400
6.1
330 ENDIF
6.1
340 ENDPROC  A
6.1
Comment Column
6.1
•    Acorn’s education dealer policy − Acorn have recently changed their
policy as regards selling computers into education. Originally, any
Acorn dealer could sell computers (at the specified education prices) to
educational establishments and Acorn would give the dealer a grant for
each computer sold in order to partially off-set the reduction in profit
margin.
6.1
The Acorn’s policy change recognises that not all dealers are able to
offer the same level of service and that not all dealers have the same
knowledge and experience of Acorn machines. So the aim of the new policy
is to try to ensure that only competent dealers sell into education.
They have therefore laid down some very stringent conditions for
becoming an ‘Education Dealer’. As a reward for satisfying these
conditions, Education Dealers will be able to buy direct from Acorn
instead of having to go through the distributor − Hugh Symons Ltd.
6.1
This will help to keep out the ‘cowboys’ but, sadly, some schools will
find that the dealer who has been supplying them with computers for some
considerable time and doing so to their mutual satisfaction, will no
longer be able to help them. They will be forced to find a new supplier
from Acorn’s list (which I have not yet seen) of Education Dealers.
6.1
What will be the effect on the non-Education Dealers? Well, Acorn have
reduced the dealer discount by 3% of the retail price and (unless they
are already amongst the very few Direct Dealers who have had accounts
with Acorn since the early days) there will be one, and only one, way to
buy Acorn hardware, i.e. through Hugh Symons. If these dealers decide to
continue to supply education (despite having to pay 3% more for the
computers and despite not getting the education grant) there is
virtually no profit in it at all. Indeed, if a school wants a lot of
computer equipment and shops around to find the best deal, non-Education
Dealers would not be able to compete at all.
6.1
At Norwich Computer Services, we have decided that to try to implement
all the education dealer criteria would completely change the nature of
our business. We would have to employ someone specifically to perform
the tasks necessary to meet the criteria.
6.1
Our new policy is that, although we will still sell to schools at the
education price, we will have to charge for carriage and will not be
able to give any discount on quantity. This is sad but it is the only
way we can hope to keep contact with the schools with whom we have an
established link.
6.1
•    Acorn Pocket Books − Acorn say that their Pocket Book computers should
become available in the second week of October. However, they say that,
initially, they will be ‘concentrating on education’ so they will only
be supplying Pocket Book computers through Education Dealers. So, those
Archive subscribers who are in a hurry for a Pocket Book would be well
advised to find out from Acorn who the Education Dealers are, place an
order with one of them and cancel their order with Archive. If and when
Acorn change this policy, we will obviously let you know.
6.1
• Acorn’s new machines − The new range of A30x0 and A4000 computers is
impressive but I’m not sure that Acorn have thought about upgrade routes
for A300/400 owners. It seems impossible to get all but the basic A3010
without a monitor, which means needless expense for those with perfectly
good monitors already. Also, I have an 1987 vintage A310 with 4M, ARM3
and Oak SCSI. The ARM250 may be neat but, being cache-less, it means
that the cheapest Acorn machine which would not be a downgrade from my
current computer is the A5000 2M/HD80 at £1644 plus £100 for the upgrade
to 4M. Surely, Acorn can’t be serious about wanting £1526 for the A5000
ES with 2M and no hard disc? The 40386 price ‘goal posts’ move every
week! We need an A4000 type package with ARM3 power (at no more than
£1000, bearing in mind PC prices) for existing A300/400 owners whose
machines are getting towards the end of their lives. Perhaps the ARM350
(incorporating VIDC2) will be along soon! Stuart Bell, Brighton.
6.1
•    Acorn A4 − I have just read again your various comments about the new
A4 machine. In common with nearly all the Acorn Risc Machines it
certainly sounds like impressive hardware. (I would buy one − if I had
the money!) There are some observations that I would like to make to
challenge Ian Lynch’s article in Archive 5.10 p54.
6.1
1) The old bone of contention about treating educational markets
preferentially. This has always been an unfair practice, given Acorn’s
dependence on enthusiasts and other non-educational computer users.
6.1
2) MS-DOS − It is no good ignoring this operating system. Like it or
not, MS-DOS and its crippled offspring Windows & OS2 are here to stay.
Acorn should have recognised this as a fact and have obtained a licence
to supply MS-DOS in ROM as well as RISC-OS.
6.1
3) Comparisons of the A4 with Macintosh portable is inappropriate − If
we can barely afford to buy Acorn, we would hardly be in the market for
Macs. The real competitors to the A4 are the portable PC Specialists
like Compaq & Toshiba. How about some comparisons in this area?
6.1
4) If the A4 is to be successful, Acorn will have to change their
tactics. I offer the following ideas:
6.1
− Forget about the education market and reduce prices for everybody.
6.1
− Try some head to head marketing against the likes of Dell, Compaq &
Toshiba.
6.1
− Get MS-DOS in ROM and make sure this fact is well featured in the
adverts.
6.1
− Try some value added marketing, including some well known software
bundles e.g. Lotus with the MS-DOS and Pipedream with the RISC-OS. Just
remember the key part this played in the success of the Z88.
6.1
− Consider selling the machine through third parties such as Olivetti
(under the Olivetti name).
6.1
− Try some more modern marketing methods.
6.1
I wish the A4 well − it deserves to be successful. I wish I had one. I
hope that you will publish my comments in order to promote further
discussion. I would be extremely interested in any response from Acorn.
G T Swain, Edgware.
6.1
Ian Lynch replies... G T Swain challenges my article, so I will try to
deal with the points he raises with some reference to what I wrote.
6.1
Giving preference to education − Virtually all computer manufacturers do
this. Rightly or wrongly, Acorn are not particularly different from
Apple, IBM or ICL in this respect.
6.1
I would like to bet that Acorn’s revenue from education sales is
considerably greater than all other areas put together and so, from a
marketing point of view, it would be silly to let this decline. At
present, education probably ensures the existence of Acorn for users
such as Mr Swain not the other way round! I hope that I didn’t give the
impression that Acorn’s marketing effort should stop here, only that it
is important to maintain education sales which are real until volume
industrial sales are more than just wishful thinking. Acorn would like
to achieve volume in all areas but investment reality dictates a more
pragmatic approach. The main market for ARM chips might well be Apple
and its Newton in future. Who knows?
6.1
MS-DOS − MS-DOS has hardly been ignored by Acorn. They have produced
what is probably the best software emulation of a PC on any machine − it
can even access CD-ROM. A 386 card from Aleph One, who cooperated with
Acorn in its development, gives sensible performance. RISC-OS 3 allows
direct read, write and formatting of MS-DOS discs. If the 386 card is
too expensive, ask Aleph One why. Almost certainly it’s due to market
realities. MS-DOS in ROM isn’t a bad idea but it would put up prices
and, in reality, the emulator is too slow for Windows 3 intensive use
even on ARM 3. Personally, I hardly use my PC emulator but I do use file
transfer a lot and my work environment is PC dominated.
6.1
Companies like WordPerfect and Lotus are bigger than Acorn. How do Acorn
get them to port versions of their software to the Archimedes? Pay them?
Then what advantage is there in the Archimedes over a cheap clone? If
you want a cheap PC to almost exclusively run Wordperfect and Lotus, buy
one. Olivetti are in the volume PC market and, like many clone manufac
turers, they are hitting hard times because demand is down in the
recession and there is too much supply.
6.1
The A4 Notebook − I wish portable PCs were the A4’s main competitors. I
am willing to bet that most A4’s are bought by existing Acorn users or
by individual first time users. The Acorn customer is more Mac-like than
PC-like, so a Mac comparison is fair. Most PC portables are bought by
corporates who will not buy anything that is remotely IBM incompatible.
That’s sad but it’s a fact of life. The A4 is expensive but, from a
marketing point of view, fewer high profit margin sales can be more
profitable than high volume low margin sales. Ask Apple. They increased
their market share by lowering prices but reduced their profitability.
High prices are not in the best interest of the user and it is possible
to price oneself out of the market. This is the argument for PCs for
all. Personally, I think the IBM compatibility losses outweigh the
economies of scale advantages or I wouldn’t use Acorn kit. If you do not
think so − buy a PC.
6.1
Marketing − Head to head marketing against Toshiba, Dell et al is, on
the surface, a nice idea if the budget is there. Perhaps £10m to start
with for TV and full pages over a year in all the major newspapers and
the micropress. For a company with a £40m turnover, this is potential
suicide. If it doesn’t work there won’t be an Acorn. Would Mr Swain
stake his house and belongings on such a strategy? I certainly wouldn’t.
It is all very well making statements such as ‘use more modern marketing
methods’ but let’s be specific. What methods and what is the likely
cost-benefit?
6.1
I stick by my views that the following are the way forward:
6.1
−    maintaining high performance at low cost related to identified needs,
through a combination of software and hardware innovation.
6.1
−    identifying markets in which they are realistically competitive.
6.1
−    ensuring better support and training for end-users than their
competitors.
6.1
Education and enthusiasts are well-established niches and Acorn needs to
build on additional niches such as publishing and video editing. In
these latter two, I am far more concerned about relative short-sighted
ness in graphics handling (as per the current debate). Acorn’s meagre
resources must be targeted on focussed areas where there is almost
guaranteed return or they will go under. It is just not realistic to
compete head on with the multi-billion dollar PC world in areas where
PCs are a religion. Ian Lynch
6.1
• Colour printing − In view of ICS’s somewhat belligerent reply to my
article ‘Colour Printing on Monochrome Printers’ in Archive 5.12 p34, I
would like to respond to the points which they raise:
6.1
1. The review was based on a copy supplied directly to me (not to
Archive) by the author. !ColourSep has been advertised by ICS since
early August so, with the lead-times which the ‘glossy’ magazines
require, the ICS version should have been ready well before Archive 5.12
was published − or was it what Byte’s Jerry Pournelle used to call
‘vapourware’ when the adverts were placed. In any case, I kept saying
how good the !ColourSep software is. Why this defensiveness? (I have
asked ICS to say whether !ColourSep is available yet but have had no
response so far, 3rd October. Ed.)
6.1
2. I hope the ICS manual is as good as Michael Simpson’s, with its full
colour screen shots.
6.1
3. ‘Calibration’ is just a pretentious way of saying ‘suck it and see’.
For a new set of inks, with a specific monitor, you will have to make
quite a number of attempts at getting the ink intensities correct before
you can hope that the printed colours will match those on the screen.
Even then, colours are relative, rather than absolute – e.g. based on
British Standard colours or other proprietary colour systems.
6.1
4. Surely it’s self-evident that my ‘absolute quality’ comments relate
to the printing technology used. The whole system is as strong as its
weakest link. Are ICS really claiming that ink-jet printers with
coloured ink and !ColourSep produce better results than any colour
printer, including the £10,000+ devices based on colour copiers which
are now available?
6.1
5. I stand by my comments over the messiness of cleaning old cartridges.
I challenge ICS to perform the following demonstration at the next Acorn
User Show: take three used black cartridges, clean them, fill them with
coloured ink and use them to produce a coloured image, and pay £1 to
charity for every single drop of ink and/or cleaning fluid on the work-
surface or the demonstrator.
6.1
6. When I supplied Mr Simpson with a draft review of version 1.03, many
of my comments were addressed in version 1.05, which he kindly sent to
me, with a detailed two page letter. Surely authors and reviewers can
work together to help refine even the best software in a constructive
manner, without the humour-less defensiveness to be found on page 37 of
Archive 5.12? Stuart Bell, Brighton.
6.1
•    !ColourSep − In response to the article by Stuart Bell in Archive 5.12
p34. I also use the program called !Coloursep which I purchased from
‘System Insight’ along with the coloured ink refills. My setup is for a
‘Canon BJ-10e’. I can confirm most of what Mr Bell has to say about
using this program, but I do think that he labours the point about the
ink cartridges.
6.1
They do need very careful cleaning but as long as you are using the
supplied gloves, this isn’t too messy and the improvement in the final
printout makes it well worthwhile. In fact, I found out by accident that
if you prise open the black cartridge on the side farthest away from the
electrical contact slot, you gain access to the sponge inside and if you
remove it it’s very easy to clean and then dry thoroughly before
replacing it in the cleaned out cartridge and replacing the lid with a
small trace of Bostik glue.
6.1
To be honest, I didn’t do this when I first started and I had endless
trouble with the yellow ink but not with the cyan or magenta inks. This
cleaning process is only necessary when you change colours and should
not therefore be much of a problem.
6.1
It is also very important that you use the correct paper for your
printouts. System Insight sell what they call Colour Enhancement Paper
and I can recommend the use of this paper. However, I have also been
experimenting with other types and one which I like very much is a
glossy white paper obtained from my local ‘Print Shop’ and since the ink
sits on the surface of the paper, the brilliance of the print has to be
seen to be believed.
6.1
All in all, I believe that if small quantities of high quality prints
are what you need, this setup is for you.  Anthony Baker, Warrington
6.1
•    The RISC-OS fiasco! − ‘RISC-OS is available now’, they said. So we at
N.C.S. started an ‘order pile’ for Archive subscribers. On ‘day one’
(27th August) we ordered 200 sets of RISC-OS from Hugh Symons, on ‘day
two’ we ordered another 300 sets and on the next working day (the
Tuesday after Bank Holiday), we ordered a further 500 sets. Today (3rd
October) over 5 weeks later, we have still only received 70 sets out of
the 1,000 sets ordered. Acorn say that very large numbers have been sent
out of their warehouses, so where are they? They are now saying that
‘larger quanities will be shipped from the second week of October
onwards’.
6.1
We have a queue of over 700 Archive subscribers waiting for their copy
of RISC-OS 3.1 plus nearly 200 A5000 owners (we have so far only had 9
sets out of the 250 sets we ordered) so PLEASE don’t phone us to say ‘I
just wondered when I might get my copy of RISC-OS 3.1?’. We will send
them out just as soon as we can but if everyone rings up we will have to
spend all day answering the phone. (Even if everyone rings ‘only’ once a
fortnight, we will be answering 90 calls a day, i.e. one every 5
minutes, just about RISC-OS!)
6.1
Why the delay? Well, there was an error in one of the diagrams in the
fitting instruction booklet which showed the ROMs the wrong way round!
That has been cleared by a single sheet erratum slip, so why is Norwich
Computer Services getting so few sets? I don’t know. I have spoken to
various people at Acorn and at Hugh Symons (the distributor) and I
cannot get any definite delivery dates out of anyone (despite offering
cash with order!).
6.1
•    Secondary cache − I have been taken to task by one or two people for
stating in Archive 5.10 p21 (Comment Column) that Acorn computers use
secondary cache. Of course they don’t. The offending sentence which
appeared as ‘No, Acorn machines feature secondary cache but so do most
high end PCs’ inexplicably reverses the sense of what I actually wrote,
which was ‘No Acorn machines feature secondary cache but most high end
PCs do’. (Oops, sorry about that! Ed.)
6.1
The ARM3 has a 4Kb primary data and instruction cache but off-chip
memory fetches at 12 or 8Mhz while the processor operates at 24Mhz are a
key performance bottleneck of the architecture (along with bus conten
tion between the CPU and video system) which high end PCs routinely
overcome by having 32-256Kb fast cache RAM between the CPU and main
memory, in addition to any primary caches.
6.1
The ARM3 primary cache is said to have a 90% hit rate but that is not
very impressive: if the 10% cache misses take 5 times as long to turn
around then the processor is on slow feed about 38% of the time. To
gauge the impact, consider that boosting the bus speed just from 8 to
12MHz improves the Dhrystone rating of a 24Mhz ARM3 system by around 18%
in mode 12. Neither Acorn nor any add-on vendor offers a secondary cache
upgrade. Perhaps one of the hardware boffins out there would like to
write explaining why not. To my untutored outlook, it has to be easier
than developing a PC emulator card.  Mike Kinghan, Oxford
6.1
•    Spacetech service − I recently purchased one of Spacetech’s FaxScan
kits from N.C.S. It consists of one piece of hardware and two software
applications. One of these allows the Amstrad FX9600AT to be used as a
scanner and the second is called !Directory.
6.1
!Directory allows you to create a directory of memorised telephone
numbers on the Archimedes and to download such a directory to the
Amstrad fax machine. Like all well-written applications, the software
validates the user’s input. In particular, it checks that the telephone
number entered uses only numbers and no letters. I received my Mercury
access code a few days ago and keyed that into the Amstrad; now, in the
Spacetech directory, I had to prefix my long distance telephone numbers
with an ‘M’. Unfortunately the validation routine (because it was
designed to accept only digits) prevented me from entering the capital
‘M’.
6.1
I rang Spacetech and, as they didn’t have Mercury, it hadn’t occurred to
them that ‘M’ was a valid input. They ‘corrected’ the !Directory
application and sent me free upgrade within a couple of days.
6.1
Why should this be worth a ‘Credit where it’s due’ award? The answer is
because Amstrad has withdrawn the FX9600AT − you can’t buy them any more
− so there is no big expanding market for an upgraded version of
Spacetech’s !Directory software. Hence there is no way that the cost
which they incurred in developing the upgrade (albeit a relatively minor
upgrade) can be recovered by new sales. They upgraded the !Directory
software as a pure service to me, maybe their only customer for that
upgrade!
6.1
However, if you have an FX9600AT and the ‘old’ software and you have
added (or may add) Mercury to your BT line, Spacetech will willingly
upgrade your disc. Please send them a label and stamp with your ‘old’
disc. By the way, if you have an FX9600AT or FX9600T but no FaxScan
upgrade then you can buy one direct from Spacetech. They have FaxScan
versions for both the FX1 and FX2.
6.1
I would like to contrast Spacetech’s response with that of Amstrad.
Amstrad gave me a ‘Customer Service telephone number’ which starts with
0898 and is one of those nasty 48p/minute lines. The ‘helper’ on the
customer service line said that he had no more information than was in
the handbook which came with the machine!
6.1
Spacetech are working on other projects for the Archimedes. From my
experience with them I am sure that, if you buy one of their new
products, they will provide you with good after sales service. I
recommend them to you wholeheartedly. Gerald Fitton
6.1
•    Whither Acorn? (again) − So now we know about this year’s new
machines, thanks to the slick work of Paul and co. Very interesting and
quite promising. I think it is very good news that the ARM250 has all
the Acorn special chip functions built in. It should offer considerable
savings in cost (not all being passed on, which is quite sensible for a
while) and even higher reliability rates. Of course, it does not do very
much for the functional power of the machines, but it shows the progress
that has been made in engineering. It is a bit strange to have the A4
launched with old, bulky, discrete chip technology and top performance
rates, when it might have sold better if it were an affordable portable
A3020! I guess it all has to do with timing of decisions, and it shows
how much faster it seems to be to specify silicon and design a board
around it while the silicon is being cut than to shoehorn in the present
chips.
6.1
So, what might we expect of the unannounced power machine to come? Not,
I suspect, the ARM3 built into the same chip as the VIDC2 and everything
else. Lots of 24 bit pixels need a large bandwidth to get the data into
the VIDC. Suppose (to simplify the arithmetic) that the display offers
up to 1024 × 1024 pixels, then the memory requirement is 3 Mb, at 50
read cycles per second. Pretend that the VIDC will only read 24 data
lines out of the 32 available, it has to read 50 × 106 cycles per
second. That is four times faster than the clock speed of the bus of any
present Acorn machine, so it is a tough target. No doubt there could be
fewer pixels, fuller use of the data lines, to say nothing of compres
sion methods, but I conclude that the days of RAM being fully shared
between screen and program/data are now numbered for Acorn power
machines.
6.1
It follows that the more logical integration units will be VIDC,
possibly with extra ‘intelligence’ to handle decompression on the one
hand and ARM/FPU/cache/write store/MEMC on the other. The latter could
be a building block for a parallel processor machine. The IOC-type
functions would be separate. It could be a fast machine, even with all
the extra video information to create and shift about.
6.1
Suppose that we get a ten-fold increase in performance for a tolerable
price, what will it mean for us? There would be less hanging about for
graphics programs to redraw and so-on, for a start. But will we be
getting close to the point where hardware solutions make hand-coded
assembler an unnecessary brain-pain to get instant results? I keep
thinking that it will come and that the clever types at Computer
Concepts will be an endangered species, doomed to ply their trade in the
anonymity of the RISC-OS 4 backroom. Probably it will not happen for a
few years yet, but one day... The solution to the horrible fate will, of
course, be to think up an application which everyone will want to buy
and which demands all the power of the new machines. Multimedia? I doubt
it. Virtual reality? Speech recognition? Possibly. If only I knew, I
could become rich, just selling the idea to the clever people!  Mike
Hobart, Cambridge.
6.1
•    Why didn’t I wait? − I bought my 40M A5000 Learning Curve with RISC-OS
3.0 not long ago at £1799 and now I find that for £1699, I can buy an
80M A5000 Learning Curve with RISC-OS 3.1. Ho hum! I suppose that is how
things go in the computer industry but it’s jolly frustrating. What
makes it worse is that I now have to pay a further £30 to get a debugged
version of the operating system. Why should Acorn make even more money
out of me in this way?  Stephen Proudlove, Bedford.
6.1
(I think that Acorn have done their best to be fair to earlier A5000
owners. I reckon that £30 less the postage, less the dealer margin, less
the distributor margin, less the packaging cost, less the printing cost,
less the cost of the chips doesn’t exactly leave Acorn a vast profit!
Ed.)  A
6.1
Oak Solutions
6.1
From 5.12 page 21
6.1
Techsoft
6.1
From 5.12 page 15
6.1
Archimedes Disc Rescue
6.1
Mike Allum
6.1
(For those of you with less technical knowledge, Mike has also written a
‘primer’ which may be worth reading before looking at the review itself.
The primer appears at the end of this review. Ed)
6.1
Archimedes Disc Rescue is distributed on a single 800Kb “D” format
floppy disc accompanied by a comprehensive 94 page manual. It is a suite
of utilities designed to aid the recovery of lost or damaged files and
directories from hard and floppy discs, and to enable you to repair
common disc defects. Four applications make up the suite:
6.1
• !FixMap − repairs media which report “Bad free space map”.
6.1
• !RepairDir − repairs media which report “Broken directory”.
6.1
• !DiscEd − aids the user in recovering deleted files and repairs media
which report “Bad free space map” and “Broken directory”
6.1
• !Recover − recovers files and directories from media which report
“Broken directory” or “Disc error”.
6.1
!DiscEd and !Recover are the main applications and, in themselves, are
all that you require to repair discs and recover files. !FixMap and
!RepairDir are stand-alone versions of utilities contained within
!DiscEd. They have been split out and simplified to allow the less
experienced user to repair media without having to work through the
relatively complex front-end of !DiscEd. Since they are cut-down
versions they are easier to use but less versatile.
6.1
Compatibility
6.1
All applications are RISC-OS compliant and install on the iconbar when
their file icons are double-clicked. All will run on a standard 1Mb
machine and may be installed onto a hard drive or run straight from the
distribution disc. Support is provided for the !Help application as
supplied on the Apps 1 disc.
6.1
!DiscEd
6.1
!DiscEd contains the functions required to recover deleted files and
repair discs. Essentially the package is a disc editor which allows the
user to browse a disc’s contents sector by sector, and to perform basic
editing functions such as altering individual bytes and exporting or
importing blocks of data. A certain degree of automation is also
included to enable the user to repair the most common disc faults such
as broken directories and bad free-space maps.
6.1
All ADFS formats are supported as standard − this includes other filing
systems such as RAM, SCSI and IDE. Discs from non-Acorn machines may
also be edited but, for these, access to the repair functions is not
allowed.
6.1
Display and basic controls
6.1
Select-clicking or adjust-clicking the application’s icon will open the
sector viewer window and its control panel.
6.1
The sector viewer displays a sector’s contents in hexadecimal and ASCII
− almost the same format as a “*dump” of a file would − excepting that
the display is in a scrollable and re-sizeable window. The control panel
allows the user to navigate the disc by specifying either the track,
side and sector or the absolute disc address. More complex movement
about the disc is controlled by the “goto” menu which allows such things
as locating files by name and finding free space maps.
6.1
Editing
6.1
Individual bytes within a sector can be edited − entry of new values for
bytes may be in binary, decimal, hexadecimal or ASCII. Much as a word
processor can operate on marked blocks of text, this package can operate
on marked blocks of bytes. The user is able to mark a block and export
it, or to import some data to the caret position.
6.1
Export may be either as raw data (pure hex) or as an image of the viewer
window (with addresses and the bytes as hexadecimal and ASCII). Import
is limited to hexadecimal files only.
6.1
Being RISC-OS compliant, Disc Rescue supports in-memory transfer, so
import and export can be made to other applications such as !SrcEdit.
6.1
Searching
6.1
A search facility is included which allows the disc to be scanned for
occurrences of groups of bytes. The search pattern may be expressed in
hexadecimal or as ASCII with magic characters. It may also be limited
between two absolute addresses − defaulting to between the current caret
position and the end of the disc.
6.1
Searches are multi-tasking, so the user may use another application
while the search continues.
6.1
The search pauses whenever a match is found and displays the sector in
which the match was found. While paused, any of the package’s other
operations may be carried out and the search resumed as if nothing had
happened.
6.1
Deleted file recovery
6.1
Due to the way ADFS maintains its directories, recovery is an essen
tially manual task. Recovery is achieved by locating the start and end
of a deleted file, marking these points, and exporting the marked block
to another disc or drive. In the case of files which have been frag
mented, each fragment of the file has to be found and saved in this way
before the whole can be re-assembled.
6.1
As mentioned in editing, above, this may be achieved in-memory using an
application such as !SrcEdit.
6.1
Disc repair
6.1
To check or repair a directory, free-space map or boot sector, the
viewer must be displaying the sector which contains the relevant disc
structure.
6.1
When repairing a directory, each entry in the directory is presented −
in turn − allowing the entry name, length, access, type and date/time
stamp to be corrected as required. When all modifications are finished,
the new directory can be saved to disc.
6.1
Bad map repair is quite different. For the newer ADFS formats, all that
can be done is to swap map duplicates over whereas, for the older
formats, a free space map can be re-generated by scanning the disc.
6.1
Broken boot sector repair operates on hard drives and “F” format discs
only. For this to operate correctly on a hard drive, the drive must have
been “described” to the package beforehand. A description file, known as
a “record”, is loaded into the package by dragging its file icon to one
of !DiscEd’s windows. On a healthy hard drive a description file is
automatically generated each time the package accesses the drive and it
is recommended that at least one copy of this file be saved on floppy
against the day that the drive becomes faulty.
6.1
Discs from other machines
6.1
As long as another machine’s disc format is within the physical limits
of both the disc controller I.C. and the disc drive itself, !DiscEd will
be able to read it. For such a disc to be read, it must be described to
!DiscEd in the same way that hard drives are.
6.1
In this way, DOS, Atari and BBC discs can be edited − but access to the
repair facilities is not allowed since the directory structures of these
filing systems are so different. Record files for popular sizes of these
formats are supplied on the distribution disc.
6.1
In use − bad points
6.1
!DiscEd was used over a period of about 2 weeks with a variety of
simulated floppy disc faults and erased files. All disc faults were able
to be overcome quite simply but deleted file recovery was really only
successful for text files which were not too badly fragmented. Execut
able files were only recoverable if they were stored contiguously.
6.1
However, before judging the package by the last two sentences, the
potential buyer should be aware of the facts. Deleted file recovery on
an ADFS disc is notoriously difficult since, when a file is deleted, the
actual data is left intact but all the housekeeping information (such as
where it starts and how it is fragmented) is totally and irrevocably
erased.
6.1
For this reason, file recovery is a very intensive and manual task but
the package could be more helpful. For example, the Norton Utilities for
the IBM PC offer the ability to undelete files which are fragmented.
Like !DiscEd, NU allows the user to select likely sectors but warns if a
particular sector is already in use by another file.
6.1
It would require no small amount of initial processing time to implement
this sort of feature but I feel that it would vastly increase the user’s
chances of undeleting a file.
6.1
Something else to be aware of (but which is not a fault of !DiscEd’s) is
that MultiFS 1.21, when installed, will be listed as an available filing
system by !DiscEd. The fact is that it will not enable !DiscEd to access
PC discs.
6.1
In use − good points
6.1
Overall, the user interface is well-laid out and uncluttered. Controls
operate intuitively and the ones used most often have been assigned
keyboard short-cuts which speeds up operation considerably for the
experienced user.
6.1
One particularly pleasing feature is the ability to close the view
window, run up other applications (which may even utilise other floppy
discs), and re-open the window as if nothing had happened.
6.1
Another good feature is the multi-tasking search facility which allows
other operations to be performed while it is paused.
6.1
!Recover
6.1
!Recover contains the functions required to recover files from discs
which have media faults. The package is highly automated and supports
hierarchical (recursive) recovery.
6.1
All ADFS formats are supported as standard. Other filing systems such as
RAM, SCSI and IDE may also be accessed. Note! Non-ADFS format floppy
discs are not supported.
6.1
Display and controls
6.1
There is no real display for this package. Save and status message
windows appear as required.
6.1
For recovering files, there are two ways of invoking the application.
The simplest is to drag the affected file’s icon to !Recover on the
iconbar. This pops up a file save icon which, when dragged to a
directory viewer, start off the recovery process. When the object is a
directory, the directory plus all the files in it are recovered − if
possible.
6.1
Alternatively the !Recover icon can be clicked. This produces a recovery
window which contains editable boxes for the filing system, drive, file
start and end address/length, type and title. Filling in these boxes and
dragging the file icon to a directory viewer starts the recovery. (Start
and end address/length will have to be obtained from !DiscEd.) This
method is by far the most controllable but is more complex to drive.
6.1
For whole discs (where the root directory is faulty) menu-clicking over
!Recover on the iconbar pops up a menu which prompts for the filing
system type and drive number. Entering these produces a file save window
which, when dragged to a directory viewer, starts the recovery.
6.1
Automation
6.1
Once recovery has been started, the whole process is automatic. A list
of the files that have been processed is generated, alongside a report
of how many errors were encountered during recovery. Safeguards are
built in to prevent the sickly files from being overwritten by the
recovered versions.
6.1
In use − good points
6.1
!Recover is a real joy to use. It is simple to control, works well and
is truthful about its failures when it has them. The only irritating
feature is that aborting a recovery can take quite a while.
6.1
The manual
6.1
The manual contains less about operation of the packages and more about
how ADFS works. This is quite reasonable since, as has been explained
above, the ADFS format does not lend itself to easy file recovery or
disc repairs.
6.1
The operations part of the manual is as good as any of the manuals
encountered for the Archimedes. Well designed applications require
little documentation, well designed applications in a WIMP environment
require even less.
6.1
The ADFS reference section is ideally pitched for someone like myself
(who has spent many an hour recovering friends’ dissertations from
erased discs!) but would require a little effort for the beginner to
master.
6.1
The index is very comprehensive and all references to other publi
cations, such as Acorn’s User Guides, include page numbers.
6.1
Conclusion
6.1
If you are primarily looking for a package to save data lost on discs
due to media faults then buy Archimedes Disc Rescue now! It is reliable,
easy to operate and is currently the only real choice. If you are
looking for an undeleter − if it’s for anything other than text files −
it may pay you to wait and see if somebody produces such a thing.
6.1
The software was reviewed on an A310 expanded to 4M, running RISC-OS 2.
6.1
Versions !DiscEd (v1.07) !Recover (v1.06) !FixMap (v1.04) !RepairDir
(v1.03)  A
6.1
Archimedes Disc Rescue − Primer
6.1
Before launching into the review, readers with less technical knowledge
may find the following explanation of terminology useful.
6.1
Logical and physical abstraction
6.1
Any storage system, be it disc, tape or RAM, may be viewed logically and
physically. The physical is just that − the parts that you can pick up
and wave about! The logical is how the computer system “sees” the
storage − how it is arranged.
6.1
For example, an Archimedes “D” format floppy is a rotating disc of
magnetically-sensitive plastic which has two surfaces − side 0 and side
1. Invisible − but still physical − are the 80 tracks which are
magnetically “laid” onto each side of the disc, the 5 sectors that each
track is divided into, and the 1024 bytes making up each sector.
6.1
To use an analogy, the disc is two books with 80 chapters, each chapter
containing 5 pages, each page capable of having 1024 characters written
upon it.
6.1
To the computer it seems as if there is a big chunk of storage which is
819,200 bytes (2 × 80 × 5 × 1024) long. Even though there are two
separate disc surfaces (which are, in effect, different devices), the
filing system allows them to be viewed as a contiguous set of
“pigeonholes” addressed from 0 to 819199.
6.1
To take the analogy further, the two books are seen merely as a large
blank area upon which a total of 819,200 characters may be written. The
first place that a character may be written is given the address “0” and
all subsequent spaces are numbered from there. To find a specific place,
only the address need be known − things such as volume, chapter and page
numbers being someone else’s problem. In this case that “someone else”
is the filing system which selects the correct volume, chapter and page
for the computer.
6.1
Directories
6.1
To find a specific piece of data in a book, humans developed the idea of
an index. This efficient and compact method of random access is also
used by disc filing systems. So that the computer may quickly locate
files, an area of the disc is put aside for a directory − which is
merely an index containing a list of filenames and the pigeonhole
address at which their first bytes may be found.
6.1
The filing system translates this address (sometimes known as an
ABSOLUTE address) into track, sector, byte, and side of disc − and
performs all the hard work of driving the head over the disc so as to
read the bytes in the correct order and put them all together into one
file.
6.1
Note that in a heirarchical filing system, such as DOS or ADFS, it is
permissible for a directory entry to be another directory. Any direc
tories thus included are known as “sub-directories” and these may, in
turn, have their own sub-directories.
6.1
File fragmentation
6.1
In older filing systems, files were always stored contiguously − that is
to say that the file would be saved in one piece. Where that file ended,
another would start, and so on.
6.1
This simple method is perfectly adequate until a disc has been used a
bit. When files are deleted the space that they used to occupy is now
available for use by new files. The more a disc is used, the more it
becomes full of holes where old files have been. New files are saved to
the disc in the first available hole that is big enough to take them in
their entirety. However, eventually, the holes will become smaller in
size and greater in number. So there might, say, still be 20 Kb of
storage free, but it could be scattered across 50 or more holes. Then,
since the filing system’s golden rule is to save files in one chunk, it
might not be possible to save a 2 Kb file because no one hole was big
enough to take it even though the total free space was 20 Kb.
6.1
One solution is to compact the disc regularly − causing all the holes to
merge into one big hole by shuffling all the files about. Another
solution is to re-define the way in which the filing system works. In
the E and F formats, the ADFS filing system attempts to save a file as
one contiguous chunk but, if it cannot, it will cut the file up and
place the segments anywhere there is free space.
6.1
Although this system is efficient from the point of view of storage, the
filing system is slowed down by the need to find where all the parts of
a fragmented file are, and then stitch them together in the right order.
The other penalty is that files are no longer guaranteed to be con
tiguous − which can make recovery difficult.
6.1
Free space and file maps
6.1
Older ADFS disc formats maintain a map (or list) of the areas in a disc
where new files can be stored. The newer ADFS formats keep a map of
where files, or bits of them, are stored − along with a list of all
areas of the disc which have defects and, as a result, cannot be used.
6.1
Checksums
6.1
Checksums are used to check that blocks of data have not been corrupted.
A calculation is done on a block of data and the resulting number tacked
onto the end. At any future time, the calculation on the block of data
can be done again and the new number compared with the old. If the two
do not match then the block has been corrupted so the block is suspect
and should be ignored.
6.1
This process is used by ADFS to make sure that certain parts of the
disc, notably the defect map, the free space map and the directories
have not been corrupted since the last time any data was written to the
disc.  A
6.1
Techsoft
6.1
(Second ad)
6.1
From 5.12 page 19
6.1
Colton
6.1
From 5.12 page 14
6.1
Virtual Store Handling in C
6.1
David McQuillan
6.1
Virtual Store Handling (VSH) is a method for fitting larger programs
into store than the space available. For instance, I recently wanted to
run a program from another machine that was almost 4 Mb long. There are
a number of methods for fitting in such large programs but providing VSH
is the one that requires least work by the user. This experience
convinced me of the very real requirement for such a facility on RISC-
OS. This is how the package described by this article started life.
6.1
VSH relies on making it look to the program as if more space can be
addressed than is physically available. At any one time, part of the
program will be in store and the rest will be saved away on disk. If a
part that is not in store is accessed, a part in store needs to be saved
away and the bit needed loaded. For proper VSH a memory controller and
processor design is required that allows this action to happen at
practically any point within a user program. The ARM processor and MEMC
memory controller in the Archimedes machines have a few problems but are
adequate for the task. (The new ARM processors used by Apple are much
better at the job.) RISC-OS however is not designed with VSH in mind so
it is not possible to completely hide VSH from C programs.
6.1
On the Archive monthly disk, you will find a directory VSI_C that
implements VSH for C programs. (VSI stands for Virtual Store Interrupt
and VSI handling is what happens when space that isn’t in store is
referenced.) It is about half way to my target and should be treated
with some caution. I see it as a feasibility proof and way of getting
constructive criticism.
6.1
As it stands, it will allow programs of up to 8Mb to be run using a hard
disk as swapfile. It is straightforward to use for most single tasking
programs and, with a little care, can be used to produce multitasking
applications under the Wimp. It cannot, however, work under the Task
Manager in !Edit. The code is unlimited public domain − if you want to
try producing your own version then good luck! The directory needs to be
copied to a hard disk with 3Mb available before use. See the ReadMe file
for detailed instructions.
6.1
So how does it all work?
6.1
The method is fairly natural and it is easier and gives better store
usage under the Wimp than trying to make everything pageable. A special
linker !vsilink is provided which produces two files !RunImage and
!RunHigh in an application directory. !RunImage runs at 0x8000 like a
normal application and !RunHigh is pageable in an area of up to 8Mb at
0x800000. Each input module is put into one or other of these areas.
Those that need to call RISC-OS directly or have data that is passed to
the system, must go in !RunImage and the ones only using the C library
can go into !RunHigh.
6.1
The main entry must be in !RunImage and one of its first actions is to
call the VSH library to set up a swap file and load !RunHigh.
6.1
The VSH only works for programs and data in user mode. Store is swapped
in and out in page size units − either 8Kb, 16Kb or 32Kb depending on
the amount of memory in the machine.
6.1
Normally, calls between procedures in !RunImage and !RunHigh are fixed
up directly but it is possible to alias calls from !RunHigh. What this
means is that, for instance, a malloc call in !RunHigh can automatically
get pageable space whereas a malloc call in !RunImage gets non-pageable
space.
6.1
For Wimp programs, all the data and sprites that are passed over in Wimp
calls must be in !RunImage. Before Wimp_Poll is called, a special call
must be made to save away the page mapping state and when Wimp_Poll
returns, the memory mapping must be reinstated by another call.
6.1
The future
6.1
I hope to develop this package further so that there will be a module
which handles VSI’s for all applications requiring the service. Using a
module would also, I believe, give better control over the various
places where the page mapping is changed. Also, there should be some
support or a replacement for the Task Manager. After that, it would just
be a question of testing and standardising the interfaces so that they
could be made more dependable.
6.1
VSI handling will, I believe, be an important feature of future
applications on the Archimedes now that more and more people have hard
disks. Besides allowing large programs to be run, it also allows the
pageable space to disappear from store for applications that are just
sitting around waiting for the user to click on them.  A
6.1
Shareware 47
6.1
Edward Hollox
6.1
The latest Shareware disc contains a range of programs supplied as an
archive with Sparkplug provided to decompress them. As usual, full
instructions are on the disc. Decompressing programs from PD discs may
seem a little fiddly, especially if your machine is 1Mb with no hard
disc, but it provides you with better value for money since, naturally,
more can be fitted on to the disc.
6.1
When decompressed, the disc comprises three directories − games, utils
and others.
6.1
Games
6.1
!Bang is a RISC-OS compliant game which, when loaded, installs itself on
the iconbar with a nice smiley face icon. Clicking this icon makes a
window appear in 3D Impression style asking your name and the skill
level required − Easy, Hard or Evil.
6.1
When completed, another window appears with a grid of grey squares, the
number of which depends on the difficulty − the harder the skill level,
the more squares.
6.1
The idea of the game is to find the positions of a number of bombs under
these squares by marking them using <adjust>. If you click <select>
where there is a bomb, the game ends.
6.1
The first click is guesswork but if it is not a bomb, one or more
squares will be uncovered showing a number on each. This number
corresponds to the number of bombs present in the eight surrounding
squares and so, after a few clicks, some suspected positions of bombs
can be marked. When all the bomb positions on the grid have been marked
by deduction from the number squares, providing they are on the right
positions, you have won the game.
6.1
This game is difficult to explain and difficult to get hold of when you
first encounter it but I’m sure that once understood, it is very
addictive. Not the sort of game to while away a few minutes, this needs
serious concentration but, even so, it is an excellent game with good
graphics and desktop implementation. Definitely a game to test a logical
mind.
6.1
!InertEdit is a screen editor for the popular 4th Dimension game
Inertia. I will presume that anyone who reads this part understands the
game, but anybody who doesn’t can read the review in Archive 3.12 p43.
You are instructed by the help file provided to copy the Inertia screens
from the Inertia disc to the !InertEdit file. A menu then takes over the
whole screen and asks you whether you wish to edit any existing screen
or start from scratch. Editing an existing screen is an excellent cheat
but if you want to start from scratch, a lot of planning on a piece of
graph paper beforehand is needed. Designing a new world takes a long
time and you soon get bored with scrawling graffiti on the map − you
have been warned!
6.1
The actual map, unlike the game, is 2D. This makes it far easier to
place the various blocks, selected from the bottom of the screen, where
you want them and, as the author points out, it’s a lot simpler to
program! The height of the brick can be adjusted using the cursor keys
and the current height is shown on the bottom left hand corner together
with the mouse coordinates.
6.1
The designer provides a zoom option (limited to ×2) to save strain on
your eyes, and a save and a quit option which returns you to the desktop
exactly where you left it. If you are very patient, I’m sure a lot of
challenging screens could be designed but the two supplied with the
commercial game contain enough challenges for me!
6.1
!Zoo is an expert system desktop simulation and, as you may expect, it’s
an ‘expert’ on animals. The first thing I noticed was the !Help file
which was only the title of the program and the author’s address.
Although not a complex program, a simple word of explanation would have
been helpful and, anyway, what is an expert system?
6.1
An expert system is a program using techniques of artificial intelli
gence to be used for problem solving and, in some cases, examples of
these systems are used for medical diagnosis. Sounds impressive, doesn’t
it? All this program does really is ask you a series of questions and
tries to determine the animal you are thinking about. If it gives you
the wrong answer, you can tell it a question it can ask to distinguish
between the animal you were thinking of and the animal that the computer
deduced. This question is then written into the data files so that it is
‘remembered’ for future use.
6.1
The data file on animals for this program is small, but could be
expanded using the method above. The presentation is neat, with
Impression-style boxes, but the English used is pretty poor due to the
fact that the author is Italian.
6.1
!Zoo is really only meant to be a demonstrator and needs more work,
perhaps on a different subject, before it could be useful.
6.1
Utilities
6.1
!KeyWindow is a superb program by Richard Hallas. It installs itself on
the iconbar and displays a scrollable keystrip on the screen in a normal
window. The keystrip can be for any of 12 applications including
Impression 2, Rhapsody and Vector but a new keystrip can be created and
saved very easily on screen (maximum is 32 keystrips). The keystrip also
updates itself to whichever piece of software the caret is in, so if you
are running, say, Impression and DrawPlus, you can swap between the two
and the keystrip changes automatically.
6.1
Clicking on the appropriate area on the keystrip will perform that
function in the piece of software that the keystrip relates to − an
excellent idea for people who struggle with menus and always lose the
keystrip.
6.1
A compress option is provided so that all the keys can be viewed on the
screen without scrolling, and it has other useful ideas such as <Ctrl-
Shift-Tab> to toggle the window between the back and the front of other
windows on the screen. This is a really useful piece of software and
worth £3 in its own right.
6.1
!ObjBackup is a program which allows you to specify various directories
and files, store these pathnames in a data file and backup those files/
directories from hard disc to floppies. This would be useful for people
wordprocessing or using DTP since after a day’s work, the same files
could be backed up day after day.
6.1
As it stands (version 0.03) this program is rather simple, with non-
standard desktop colours adding to its garishness (but I’m sure the
template file inside the application directory could be altered using
!FormEd to use more suitable colours). The list of objects can easily be
amended by dragging them to the main window and objects can be removed
from the list. Once the OK button is clicked, the backup starts.
6.1
This could be useful but is definitely not anything special.
6.1
!Typewrite is a simple non-multitasking typing tutor reminiscent of the
Pitman programs on the old BBC ‘B’ which may have been good, but bored
me to tears. It consists of varying exercises of repetitive key
pressing, and has the usual features of time-keeping, mixed exercises
and using special characters. Not very impressive at all − it seems like
a Beeb program transferred to the Archimedes, even if it isn’t.
6.1
!Plinth is a sprite manipulation program which, when given a
‘background’ and a ‘picture’ sprite, places the latter on top of the
former using a plinth. One sprite is dragged to a small window whilst
the other is dragged to the icon on the iconbar. The resultant sprite is
a satisfactory plinth. The height and form of this plinth can be
controlled using the excellent desktop interface and, for people who
need to manipulate sprites a lot, this is a handy program. For the
general user, though, it will one of those programs too good to get rid
of, but which ends up cluttering your discs and never being used.
6.1
Others
6.1
This rather vaguely titled directory is comprised of the programs which
aren’t games or utilities.
6.1
!Tesseract is a display simulation of a four dimensional cube. It needs
the latest version of Clib (0.75) available on Shareware 17.
6.1
Someone significant, whose name I have forgotten, said that our universe
is 3D because three is the minimum number of dimensions needed for life
to survive. 1D is simply a dot, whilst a 2D dog would have its gut
divide its lower body from its upper body. Mathematicians and philoso
phers no doubt have speculated on a 4D world and this program shows us a
4D cube (hypercube or tesseract) through the eye of a 4D being.
6.1
How can 4D be shown on a 2D monitor which can only give the illusion of
3D? To explain this, you must remember that the image on the back of our
eyes is a 2D image, which, when combined with another 2D image from a
slightly different angle, is perceived as a 3D image by the brain. If
you don’t believe me try catching a ball or judging distance with one
eye closed − its more difficult because, since you are seeing a 2D
image, you lose the perception of depth.
6.1
The program shows you the 3D image of the hypercube which would appear
on one of the 4D being’s eyes. Presumably with his other 3D image he
could construct a 4D image, though to produce the two 3D images, he
would perhaps need four eyes, and the interpretation of different
signals from four eyes to produce a 4D image would take a lot of brain
power!
6.1
Rotating the hypercube by mouse, shows the spheres on each corner
rotating and going behind and in front of each other whilst retaining a
solid structure − this becomes confusing after a while.
6.1
This program is smooth and fast and even if, like me, you can’t cope
with the maths, thinking about a 4D world will certainly give you a
headache.
6.1
!Eyes heralds a return to a more down-to-earth topic namely silly little
things that you can put on your RISC-OS desktop. This is another one of
those pair of eyes which follow your mouse around the desktop. If you
have an obsession for novelties, it may be of value but there is a far
better one called !BabyBlues on Shareware 23 whose eyes are much nicer
and follow you around more smoothly.
6.1
!Orbits is a program which traces orbits of various objects though space
obeying the law of gravity and hence mutual gravitational attraction.
The program takes over the whole computer but provides a multi-tasking
front end.
6.1
To the icon on the iconbar can be dragged text data files of various
systems such as a binary star system or object capture. Seven examples
are provided and more can be created by specifying in a text file the
masses, positions and velocities of each object you wish to include.
6.1
The display takes these values and displays the orbits of them − the
graphics are quite smooth but very simple − each mass is just a dot. A
trail option is included so each mass can leave a red trail and
sometimes this produces a pretty pattern.
6.1
One of the most useful pieces, however, has nothing to do with the
actual program. It is a fairly large text file distributed freely by the
Free Software Foundation in the USA and is a licence agreement for the
distribution of PD. This describes, in minute detail, the legal aspects
of PD distribution.
6.1
The actual orbits program is quite fun and could perhaps be used as a
serious simulator but, apart from the RISC-OS interface, has a slight
amateurish feel about it.
6.1
Conclusion
6.1
Another fine disc of PD software from NCS. This has a couple of program
gems on it which are worth the £3 alone. Most of the other programs are
good enough, but not special unless you really need them. This disc may
be more expensive than other PD library’s discs but the quality and
number of programs is much higher.  A
6.1
Artworks − The Review
6.1
Neil Whiteley-Bolton
6.1
(Two months ago, Tord Eriksson did a preview of Artworks. Now that
Artworks is available, we have an actual review. Ed)
6.1
This month’s DTP Column is dedicated to a review of Computer Concept’s
new drawing program Artworks. The review is based upon the final pre-
release version (0.904), though version 1.00 should be available by the
time you read this review. (Available from Archive at £180. Ed.)
6.1
Artworks − The main features:
6.1
Modular, object-oriented design − One of the main (claimed) benefits of
the object-oriented approach is improved reusability/maintainability of
code. The benefit to users in this case would be in terms of how easily
extra functionality could be added to the program.
6.1
Anti-aliased display − Artworks uses on-screen anti-aliasing (as with
the Acorn outline fonts) to provide what is, in effect, a much higher
screen resolution. CC claim a four fold increase in apparent screen
resolution. In use, I found this feature useful for ALL drawings, and
absolutely vital for detailed work.
6.1
24 bit colour with on-screen dithering − The colour information for all
objects is held in full 24-bit representation and displayed on screen
using proprietary dithering techniques to display a full spectrum of
colours.
6.1
The program
6.1
Artworks is supplied on 15 discs and comprises:
6.1
•    Artworks, the program
6.1
•    Utilities including NewModes (as supplied with Impression) and
FlipTop, which replaces the palette icon and provides an easy way of
changing screen modes without having to know the mode numbers
6.1
•    220 (yes, 220) fonts, in RISC-OS 2 format
6.1
•    200 page manual
6.1
•    40 page guide to printing, with colour charts
6.1
•    Quick reference guide, with font listing.
6.1
In use
6.1
New documents are opened in the usual manner, by clicking on the program
icon. Clicking within the window brings up the Toolbox and Infobar. The
Toolbox is a rearrangeable collection of icons representing the
available tools, which are selected by clicking. The Infobar has two
sections. The area on the left provides extra facilities and/or edit
options for the currently selected tool and the right hand section
provides, irrespective of the tool selected, access to the following:
6.1
Undo/Redo facility − Artworks has an almost limitless undo-redo
facility. It is limited only by the size of the redo buffer, which can
be set to any value up to the maximum of 1 Mb. This redo buffer is saved
with the document, allowing anyone with a copy of the file to return to
any point during the creation of the image.
6.1
WYSIWYG variable display quality control − this control varies the
quality of the screen display: 0, the minimum, displays simple wire-
frame outline drawings; 11, the maximum, displays fully anti-aliased
drawings, in full colour.
6.1
Grid locking − clicking <select> on the grid icon locks to the grid,
clicking <adjust>, locks to the grid and shows the grid.
6.1
Layer selection − Artworks supports multiple layered drawings which can
be viewed and edited in isolation, or in conjunction with one or more of
the other levels.
6.1
Artworks, like Impression, allows you to have multiple views of the same
document, these views each having their own scale and WYSIWYG settings.
6.1
Preferences can be set for Artworks, exported drawfiles and PostScript
output from an option on the program menu. Paper options and document-
related Artworks options can be set via a main menu option. These afford
comprehensive control over paper size and colour, measurement units
used, output/export requirements, etc.
6.1
Objects
6.1
Artworks understands three types of objects − lines, shapes and text
(though text could be considered as a special kind of shape) and
provides a number of tools for creating these objects:
6.1
Lines can be created using with the straight ‘line’ tool, the ‘curve’
tool and the ‘freehand’ tool. The first two have their equivalents in
Draw, though the freehand tool is more unusual, in that it records mouse
movements and produces a line which corresponds with those movements
more or less accurately − as determined by a ‘percentage accuracy’
slider control on the Infobar (higher percentage values generate a
smoother line). It is possible to switch immediately from one to another
whilst drawing a line.
6.1
If the ends of one or more lines are positioned sufficiently close, then
Artworks realises that you probably want to join them together and
performs this action for you. Joining the ends of a line makes a shape
and Artworks indicates that this has happened by filling the shape with
the currently selected colour.
6.1
There are three tools for creating shapes: the ‘rectangle’, ‘rounded
rectangle’ and ‘ellipse’, which function in a similar fashion to those
in Draw. Holding down <ctrl> constricts the tools, creating squares,
rounded squares and circles.
6.1
The ‘text’ tool allows, naturally enough, text entry. When the ‘text’
tool is selected the infobar indicates, and allows the user to edit, the
typeface and size of the text. The values can be edited at any time
during and after creation of the text object.
6.1
The ‘colour’ tool allows the line and fill colours for objects to be set
and modified, colours being either selected from an existing range or
‘picked’ using either the HSV (Hue, Saturation, Value), RGB or CMYK
colour pickers. A ‘picked’ colour can be assigned a name and added to
the existing list of colours, allowing the user to select or edit it at
a later stage.
6.1
Manipulation
6.1
Objects are selected by clicking on the object itself, rather than just
anywhere within the bounding box, and whilst this might sound more
restricting, in fact it is a great advantage, especially when a number
of objects overlay each other. Objects can be moved by simply clicking
<select> and then dragging.
6.1
The editing of lines is extremely simple. Segments can be added,
deleted, broken or a point changed from a curve to a corner by clicking
on the line having first selected the appropriate type from the Infobar.
Line thickness, winding rules, end types can all be set effortlessly.
Control points can be dragged around, individually or with multiple
points selected (using <adjust>). On a curved section, the bezier
control points can be dragged around. Multiple selections can be aligned
with respect to each other in various ways, ‘joined’ or grouped
together.
6.1
Objects may be rotated by simply selecting the rotate tool and then
dragging anywhere on the screen. The centre of rotation can be posi
tioned anywhere, although nine useful presets − corners, centres of
edges and the centre can quickly be selected from the Infobar. One of
the beauties of the object oriented design is that effects such as
rotation can be applied to any kind of object. For instance, you can
rotate a line of text, select the ‘text’ tool and click between two of
the letters − and still type and delete text as if it were a line of
text in an Impression document − amazing!
6.1
Objects can be scaled, as with rotate, by selecting the ‘scale tool’ and
dragging. Again, as with the rotate tool, the point about which the
object is scaled can be anywhere (click <adjust>) or one of nine useful
presets. Further, the aspect ratio can be locked, lines scaled with the
object and objects flipped around either axis.
6.1
There are tools for ‘graduated’ and ‘radial’ fill and these are
delightfully simple to use − select the start colour, the finish colour
and then drag an arrow from a point of 100% start colour to a point of
100% finish colour. The arrow does not have to be within the object.
Fills are calculated ‘on the fly’ and the whole process is lightning
fast.
6.1
The ‘envelope’ tool allows objects to be distorted in a controlled
manner − you define the shape of the envelope and the object is
distorted to fit. The effect is almost instantaneous and, as a conse
quence, it is a genuine pleasure experimenting with new effects.
6.1
The ‘perspective’ tool allows for the creation of true 3D projections.
As with all the other tools in Artworks, it is simplicity itself to use
− select the object, then select the ‘perspective’ tool and drag the
corner points. Once a perspective has been applied, its vanishing
point(s) are shown and these can then be dragged around. As you might
expect by now, the changes are reflected virtually instantaneously on
the screen!
6.1
I have left my favourite tool, the ‘blend’, until last. Lines and
objects, irrespective of the number of sections, or the colour, or the
line thickness can be ‘morphed’ or ‘blended’ into each other or into
another blend. The number of intermediate steps can be selected or
modified at any time via the controls on the Infobar. Further, the
original objects remain editable even after morphing − absolutely
amazing!! Morphs, or blends as CC call them, are calculated ‘on the fly’
and thus occupy very little memory. The picture illustrates some of the
effects which are possible with these tools.
6.1
Import/Export
6.1
A great deal of effort has obviously gone into making Artworks compat
ible with programs on other platforms. Artworks can import EPS files and
files from CorelDraw, Adobe Illustrator and Freehand but, what is more,
it can create them as well!! I tried this myself using CorelDraw and
experienced no difficulty either reading the file created in CorelDraw
or producing a file which CorelDraw was happy to accept.
6.1
Sprites and drawfiles can be included in Artworks documents and all
Artworks documents can be output as drawfiles.
6.1
Printing
6.1
RISC-OS printer drivers, including CC’s new colour drivers are naturally
supported and there is full support for PostScript. Spot colours,
individual separations and full separations can be output to any printer
from a dot matrix through to an image setter and also to the screen. For
professional use, there is control over screen angles and density,
bleed, colour fill and over print. Artworks also supports tiling, so
large images can be generated using virtually any printer.
6.1
EPS Dialogue Box
6.1
Overall impressions
6.1
Anybody having read this far will realise that I am extremely impressed
with Artworks. I would heartily encourage everyone to try it for
themselves. It is extremely fast and most actions or updates appear to
be instantaneous. This is extremely important if you are using the
program as a productive tool, as there is nothing more frustrating than
sitting drumming your fingers whilst the program catches up with you.
6.1
The tools are versatile, powerful, well integrated and very easy to use
(I was doing productive work within half an hour of receiving my copy).
Further, the luxury of having the undo/redo facility encourages
experimentation, because the user can be confident of being able to
return to previous state. In addition, we now have full colour output
capability on the Acorn machines and this can only aid the machine’s
acceptance in the professional publishing world.
6.1
In summary, I think Artworks is a wonderful program and I am astonished
that the asking price is below £200 inc. VAT. It is worthwhile consider
ing that a program like this for IBM compatible PC’s would cost close to
three times the price. Also, because of the much larger market, the
software house might expect sales volumes many times greater than CC
will be likely to achieve with Artworks.
6.1
P.S. Artworks, like Impression, is protected by a dongle. I have no
objection to dongles, have never had any problems with any of mine and
would remind those who object so strongly to them, that the alternative
adopted by a number of software houses is to design programs which are
so unfriendly that you need to have the manual to figure out how they
work!  A
6.1
Align objects dialogue box
6.1
6.2
6.1
Drawing illustrating blending techniques
6.1
6.2
6.1
Help!!!!
6.1
•    Artworks Editor − Is there anyone out there who could edit an Artworks
Column for us? It is such an important new piece of software for the
Archimedes that I want to give it as much support as possible.
6.1
•    C Programming − Does a C programmers’ club exist for the Archimedes?
If not, would anyone like one set up? I would be happy to set this up if
there is a big enough response. Please write to me, Shanawaz Basith at
196 Burgess Road, Bassett, Southampton SO2 3AY with any ideas, etc. (No
phone calls please.)
6.1
•    Doctor’s DTP − Is there anyone out there using a medical dictionary
for Impression? If so, could that dictionary be made available to
others? M Strutt, Broad Oak Computers.
6.1
•    DTP editor − Is there anyone who would be interested in the possibil
ity of joining the team of DTP editors? There are three people doing it
at the moment, so they do one article every three months. We would like
one more if we can find someone else suitable. Any offers?
6.1
•    HP Laser Jet IIIP − Does anyone know how to get an HP Laser Jet IIIP
to print to the printer margins, i.e. about 5mm within the edge of an A4
sheet using RISC-OS printer drivers? Nick Horn, Thetford.
6.1
•    RISC-OS editor − Is there anyone who would be prepared to be a ‘RISC-
OS 3 Editor’ for us? In other words, we need someone to whom we (and
Archive readers) could send comments about changes between RISC-OS 2 and
RISC-OS 3 who could then write a (monthly?) column about it. We already
have some information but it really needs someone to read it all through
and interpret it in practical terms to other Archive readers. Any
offers?
6.1
•    TV interference − Does any 300 or 400 series owner have trouble with
their machine interfering with their neighbour’s television? Can it be
prevented? Chris Bass, Grimsby.  A
6.1
Help offered
6.1
•    PickAPic update − The !PickAPic application on Shareware Disc 45 has
now been updated to version 1.05. This has a few bug fixes which makes
the program much more reliable. If you want an upgrade, the author would
be happy to send you one if you send him a blank formatted disc and an
SAE. Contact Hugh Eagle, 48 Smithbarn, Horsham, Sussex  RH13 6DX.
6.1
•    PipeDream and RISC-OS 3 − Recently I have been asked many times
whether PipeDream ‘works’ with RISC-OS 3. The answer is a slightly
qualified ‘Yes’. If you have an early version of PipeDream 3 then you
may have a problem or two with RISC-OS 3. The solution is to upgrade
your copy of PipeDream 3 to version 3.14. The upgrade is free.
6.1
There are no problems with any version of PipeDream 4 but, just for the
record, the latest version is 4.13 and (since 4.10) the charts have been
improved. If you need a free upgrade to 4.13, send both your program and
examples discs to Colton Software. Gerald Fitton.  A
6.1
!Killer and Vprotect
6.1
Rob Wears
6.1
The virus protection program, !Killer (version 1.370) and the Vprotect
virus protection module from Pineapple Software were reviewed on an A310
with RISC-OS 2, 4Mb RAM, ARM3 and an Oak SCSI drive.
6.1
In an ideal world, there would be no need for a package like this.
However, one look at the news should convince you that there are some
really nasty people out there and more than a handful of rather stupid
ones. Somewhere in amongst those groups are the clowns who write
computer viruses. The Acorn range of computers has not been as vulner
able to viruses as certain PCs because the Acorn operating systems have
always resided in ROM. However, we shouldn’t be too smug. There are
several unpleasant viruses out there that will wreck your disc-based
applications and crash your machine if you give them the chance. Various
“disinfecting” programs have appeared over the past couple of years but
most seem to have fallen out of use due to lack of support. In this
area, support is absolutely vital − it is hard to think of anything that
could do more harm than an out-of-date “disinfectant” telling you that
all is well, when it is allowing a brand new virus to infect your
system. I am pleased to say that !Killer comes with a guarantee of
support, at a price.
6.1
The program will be superficially familiar to most Archive readers as a
it is descendent of the original Acorn virus killer, and a recent
version of it was distributed on the cover disc of another Archimedes
magazine a few months ago. The latest version installs itself on the
iconbar in the usual way, but unlike previous versions, it is now
possible to use the software from a write-protected floppy disc. This
will prevent the !Killer application itself being infected. This was
previously not possible because !Killer automatically kept a record of
the discs it had scanned. You can now direct this recording of its
findings to another disc of your choice; this is a good example of
improved security through good software support. !Killer checks to see
if it has become infected and will not load if it finds evidence of
tampering. !Killer then checks whether any viruses are already loaded
and will either remove them or render them impotent in the case of ones
which cannot easily be removed from memory. Error boxes are used to
report any viruses discovered. You will also get a warning from !Killer
if it finds that VProtect is not loaded (or if it was loaded, and has
been removed).
6.1
You can then scan any disc you like, looking for viruses. The only
problem I found with the software was that it couldn’t initiate scans of
!CFS drives directly from the iconbar menu, although it is possible to
do so by pressing <Shift-ctrl-tab> with the mouse pointer in a !CFS
filer window, or by dragging a directory/application to the !Killer
icon. It copes with !Spark and !ArcFS archives without any problems at
all.
6.1
If you decide to scan your latest 512 Mb hard drive packed with PD
software, be prepared to go and make a cup of tea while it scans and
then be prepared to spend a couple of hours reading the report of the
scan − !Killer is a very suspicious chap, and reports just about every
application it comes to! However, there is a (hopefully very short)
section on the infections it actually found and dealt with. You can also
configure !Killer to capture any virus found, presumably so that you can
send it off for further study.
6.1
So do you actually need !Killer? I suppose that really depends on your
level of paranoia, but if you use bulletin boards and large numbers of
PD libraries, I think it would only be a matter of time before you
picked up a virus from somewhere. Similarly, I think networks and
schools should seriously consider keeping !Killer around on a permanent
basis. It should be stressed that discs from any supplier are potential
sources of infection. There is no such thing as absolute security.
6.1
(For example, we have just discovered that the Mah Jong the Game discs
we had in stock had a so-called benign virus which was timed so that it
first appeared on 6th September 1992. If you have bought Mah Jong
recently from anywhere, either check it or get your supplier to check
it! Ed.)
6.1
For a single user, the registration fee is £24 per annum. Pineapple
offer a sliding scale of site licence fees, up to £100 per annum for 10+
machines. In an effort to keep costs down, Pineapple supply only a
single disc with a site licence version. The licensee can then copy the
software onto the appropriate number of machines. Pineapple are
obviously relying on our honesty here, and I think it would be stupid to
disappoint them.
6.1
Pineapple are charging the fees to cover costs, but some people will be
worried that Pineapple are “making money out of software viruses”. Jim
Daniels from Pineapple has given a written guarantee that if the scheme
shows a profit then the prices will be reduced for the second year.
However, if the scheme shows a loss, prices will inevitably have to be
increased − if you don’t pay your fees, it will cost us ALL more next
time.
6.1
I feel that Pineapple have taken a lot on their shoulders acting as a
central focus in the fight against the virus authors; Pineapple are
projecting approximately four disc updates per year, together with all
the work involved in investigating new outbreaks and developing cures.
They are providing a unique and, unfortunately, indispensable service to
the Acorn community.  A
6.1
Banner − Sign Printer
6.1
Peter Jennings
6.1
The first thing you probably ask yourself when loading a newly acquired
program for the first time is, “How easy will this be to use?” (I am
assuming that you will have asked, “Will this program do what I want?”
before you actually bought it!)
6.1
The question about the ease of using Kudlian Soft’s Banner was answered
for me very quickly. It is the easiest and most user-friendly commercial
program I have ever used on the Archimedes. I had got to grips with it
completely within five minutes of loading, with little more than a
cursory glance through the seven-page manual. The second paragraph of
the manual accurately says: “Those familiar with the RISC-OS desktop
will not need to read most of this manual as the operation of Banner is
self-explanatory.”
6.1
Banner (version 1.01) comes on a single, unprotected disc with the
manual inside a plastic folder. It is designed, as its name suggests, to
make long, printed signs. It works by printing the required text
sideways along a continuous strip of fanfold paper or on separate sheets
which can be joined together.
6.1
Type in and print
6.1
At its simplest, the instructions would be: load, click on the Banner
icon to open a window, type in the text and click on a “Print” icon.
6.1
The loading part does include the outline font manager and a printer
driver, if they are not already resident, and of course there is a range
of options which can be set but all the facilities are just as easy to
use.
6.1
A sign can have up to four lines of text with a maximum of 36 characters
on each line. The number of lines is selected by choosing a text size of
“Large” for one line, “Medium” for two lines or “Small” for four lines.
It is not necessary to have text on every line and, in fact, one has to
be left blank if you want only three lines. The text can be centred
horizontally or justified left or right. In the current version it
cannot be adjusted vertically if only three lines are used.
6.1
A single sans-serif font, Jotter, is supplied with the package and this
is the default font used. Other fonts can be added and will be offered
in a sub-menu but only one can be used for each poster. The font can be
changed at any stage in the design process but the change will apply to
the whole text.
6.1
There is an optional preview window which is worth opening at the start
− the text appears in it as you type, with only a short delay, to giving
you an updated, WYSIWYG display of the banner. The window is edged with
a pattern representing fanfold paper sprocket holes but there is no
indication of where the folds come and how many sheet will be needed.
This is a feature which may be added in a future version.
6.1
Shadows and borders
6.1
Shadows can be added, if you wish, with a choice of four directions.
Borders are also available as an option and can be thin, medium or
thick, single, double or treble rectangles, or in four wavy designs.
Borders enclose the whole text area, including any blank lines, so they
are not always suitable for three lines of text because of the addi
tional blank line. Separate colour menus are offered for text,
background and borders but the manual suggests sticking to shades of
grey unless a colour printer is to be used. Colours can be seen in the
preview window but there is no indication on the menus as to which
colours or grey shades are set.
6.1
When printing in black and white do not have the printer driver set to
“monochrome graphics” or contrast between the different shades of grey
will be lost and shadows will print either completely black or not at
all.
6.1
Banners can be saved as text files, complete with all settings except
fonts. They can then be examined in Edit, which is the only way to see
which grey shades are set. A Banner or any other suitable text file can
be loaded by dragging onto the Banner icon or into the text window. If
you want to print a second, different sign without reloading, this is
the only quick way to clear all the previous settings because closing
and reopening the window leaves them unchanged.
6.1
Printing in colour
6.1
Banner can be used to good effect with a colour printer but, although
the manual does not say so, multi-coloured signs can be made with a
monochrome printer if you have some different coloured printer ribbons.
6.1
It is quite simple to line up the same sheets of paper for multiple
printings in different colours. The problems come with centred lines and
a border because the centre and width of the sign will be set by the
longest line being printed. The way to solve this is to set up the
complete sign in the preview window first. If the border is not to be
printed in the same colour as the longest line, count the width of the
border in “sprocket holes” along the edge of the preview window. Delete
the border and print the text then delete the text and reset the border.
Without any text, this will appear as a narrow box but it can be padded
out to the correct size with spaces on one of the blank text lines. A
line which is to be printed separately can be correctly centred by
noting the position of the first letter against the “sprocket holes” in
the preview window for the complete sign. The required number of spaces
can be added at the start of the line when it is retyped for printing.
6.1
Banner is not a program which everyone will need but for schools,
businesses and anyone wanting to make wide printed signs (even for
parties) it is a very good buy at £15 plus VAT (or £17 from Archive).
Primary and secondary site licences cost £20 and £40 respectively from
Kudlian Soft and there are discounts available for bulk purchases.  A
6.1
Language Column
6.1
David Wild
6.1
Since I wrote my last article for Archive, I have bought myself a ‘C’
compiler. This may surprise regular readers who are aware of my opinions
about ‘C’, but I haven’t suddenly gone into the other camp. I bought the
desktop ‘C’ package so that I could get DDE and so be able to use the
new Pascal compiler mentioned in the September issue. (On Careware 17,
not Shareware 48 as I said. Sorry! Ed.)
6.1
I do have one grumble about the ‘C’ package. However, it has nothing to
do with opinions about the language but is to do with the installation
procedures. For some reason, it insists on being loaded to the root
directory and so clutters up my desktop with a number of directories
which are not particularly helpful in normal use. One, for instance, is
the ‘Clib’ directory, to which I am hardly ever going to need direct
access − possibly for library updating. I know that it is a vital part
of the system but it could be hidden away somewhere − rather like the
‘modules’ directory in !System − with the correct paths maintained in
something like the DDE !boot application.
6.1
DDE Pascal
6.1
Now that I have got that off my chest, what about the Pascal compiler?
It seems to be a powerful Level 1 ISO compiler with a number of
extensions. These do not quite correspond with those in the previous
version but it should not be too difficult to convert programs written
earlier. The compiler has “throwback” written in to it so that clicking
on the error report takes you straight to the text editor with the
cursor poised ready for the correction.
6.1
There is no facility for compiling in-line assembly language statements
− I presume that Acorn’s assumption is that you will write such code
using ‘Objasm’ and bring it in at link time. In fact, the loss isn’t all
that great as most of the bits that had to be done by using assembly
language, such as access to the operating system, are provided using new
procedures and functions which are available directly from Pascal or
from RISC_OSLib.
6.1
The only loss for which I have not yet found a replacement is the
provision of ‘static’ variables which could be used for such things as
keeping track of whether a procedure had been called before and so call
an initialisation routine if necessary. It can be done with global
variables but the beauty of the static variable is that it is private to
the procedure or function − and won’t get missed by accident.
6.1
It was in trying to compile an earlier program that I came across one of
the peculiarities of the new. If there is something that it really
doesn’t recognise it stops at that point and then says “garbage after
end of program ignored”. When that happens on the fifth line of your
program it does seem a little abrupt.
6.1
Using the compiler is very simple − as long as you have made the
necessary provision beforehand. Source files must be in a directory
called ‘p’ and there must be a directory, which must be in the same
directory as the ‘p’ directory, called ‘o’ for the object code. The
expectation is that you will be creating applications where the source,
the object and the !runimage will all be stored in the same application
directory. After clicking on !Pascal in the DDE directory, you just drag
the source file from the ‘p’ directory, click on a button to show
whether RISC_OSLib is to be used and click on the ‘RUN’ button. Then, if
compilation is successful, the object code will be put in the ‘o’
directory and a ‘save’ window will appear, allowing you to put the
compiled and linked code wherever you want. For ordinary programs, you
will probably never need the object code again as the only reason for
re-linking will be because of changes to the program and in that case
you will generate new object code anyway.
6.1
The compiler and the libraries provide full support for WIMP programming
but it will take some time to get to grips with the new way of thinking
using events.
6.1
One helpful feature of the compiler is the much improved access to the
command line. This will be very useful in conjunction with the !frontend
module in DDE. I am not happy about using command lines, where the user
has to type everything, because there is no way for the program to check
the validity of commands in time to get changes made. However, this
objection disappears if the command line is being generated by another
program. The DDE programs are good examples of this method and I hope
that we will see many more examples in future.
6.1
Provided with the compiler is an example application !balls64 which
gives an impressive demonstration of what can be done with the compiler.
However, I would have liked to see a couple of simpler examples using
text and simple drawings in windows so that it would be easier to see
how the program statements corresponded with the results on the screen.
6.1
For a program which is virtually given away, it is a remarkable package.
There is, as mentioned last month, a ReadMe file (which is all the
documentation there is) with some useful information. It amused me to
see that several parts of the document assumed that you were already
familiar with ‘C’ and seems to presume that readers will be moving up to
Pascal.
6.1
There is a fierce disclaimer which almost says that no one at Acorn, or
any of their dealers, knows anything about the program and that you are
on your own. I hope that the response will be such that Acorn can be
persuaded to adopt the program officially and issue some fuller
documentation at a reasonable price. Any comments from any other user
will be very welcome and will be included in future issues of this
column.
6.1
“Computer Languages” magazine
6.1
You may remember that I mentioned the Pascal User Group and pointed out
that membership of this group was a good way to subscribe to the
“Computer Languages” magazine. Unfortunately, the supply was very
irregular with three copies arriving at one time. The most recent letter
from the Group said that “Computer Languages” was becoming too expensive
and they were changing to “Program Now”. While there is nothing wrong
with this magazine, it is available from newsagents and it is probably
not worth joining the user group to get it.  A
6.1
Small Ads
6.1
(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)
6.1
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 which is a more
effective way of raising money than doing it by post. Better still,
bring it to the Show (16th − 18th).  A
6.1
•    5¼“ twin 80/40 drives, mono monitor, Epson LX86 printer £520 o.n.o.
Phone John Savage on 0525−23625.
6.1
•    4Mb memory board for A310 Risc Developments, unused, will take RISC-OS
3 chips, costs £320, accept £240. Phone [phone] (day).
6.1
•    A3000 2Mb LC, serial interface, serial link cable & software, Atomwide
VIDC enhancer and AKF18 colour monitor. £599. Phone 0242− 234342 (after
6).
6.1
•    A3000 2Mb, standard monitor, JP150 inkjet printer, external disc drive
interface, serial chip upgrade, First Word Plus, Acorn DTP, other
software also available £750 o.n.o. Phone Steve on 0803−873073.
6.1
•    A3000, 2Mb RAM, Acorn multi-sync monitor, VIDC enhancer, Serial port
upgrade, Learning Curve software, Hot links Presenter, games worth £120.
Offers. Phone 081−898−0447.
6.1
•    A310 +4Mb RAM, manuals & software, £500 o.n.o. NEC multisync + leads,
£400 o.n.o. both for £800. Contact Steve on 071−706−5998 work hours,
otherwise 0734−351654.
6.1
•    A410/1, 4Mb RAM, RISC-OS 3.1, 20Mb drive, Acorn monitor. Original
boxes & manuals. 5¼“ disc interface. Lots of software. Perfect. £745 or
offers. Phone 0582−833937.
6.1
•    A410/1, 4Mb, 40Mb Hard Disc, ARM3, VIDC Enhancer, HiFi Sound Upgrade,
Taxan 770+ LR multisync monitor, Pace Linnet modem (V21/23), DeltaCat
joystick, mouse socket splitter, ArcComm 1+2, First Word Plus 2, 4
games, spare fan filters, all leads, monitor mounted copy holder and
RISC-OS 3. £1200 o.n.o. Phone 0705− 751884.
6.1
•    A410 4Mb RAM, 20Mb hard disc, Acorn multisync monitor £1000. Contact
D. C. Quinn, Norfolk. Phone 0953−83−583.
6.1
•    A440 with 47Mb HD, 30MHz ARM 3, Atomwide VIDC Enhancer £600. Taxan
Multisync 770+ Monitor £150. 200Mb Internal Conner IDE HD £200. Twincom
V32b/V42b Modem £190. Scanlight 256 Scanner £100. Oak SCSI Podule £50.
Phone 0382−738156.
6.1
•    A5000 New Unused − 2Mb RAM, 40Mb HD, with RISC-OS 3.10 and multisync
monitor £1495. Roger 061−799−9845 (eves or w/e).
6.1
•    Acorn (Philips) colour monitor £100, 40MB ST506 NEC 3.5“ 28ms drive
£200, 20MB ST506 Miniscribe 3.5” 28ms drive £100, Atomwide (Avie) ST506
hard drive controller card £100, GEC Datachat V2123 modem,boxed £30,
Prism 1000 V2123 modem £20, Acorn PC Emulator V1.33 £55, Tactic £8,
Stranded! (Adventure) £12, Twinworld £10, U.I.M. £8, Zarch £8, MiG 29
£25. All prices o.n.o. Arthur PRMs offers? Contact Gareth on 0247 457655
6.1
•    Acorn standard monitor £95. Unused Acorn mouse £25. Phone
081−751−2120.
6.1
•    AKF 11 colour monitor: £100; Acorn I/O podule + Midi add on: £75; Opus
Amber IBM monitor, Tilt/Swivel, lead, £45. Phone 0295−711644. Could
deliver.
6.1
•    Atomwide 8Mb memory upgrade for A410/1 or A440. Unused, still sealed.
£250 o.n.o. Phone 0895−630344.
6.1
•    Easiwriter £80, Illusionist £60. Phone 069−77−46786.
6.1
•    Eizo 9060S monitor, £230. Also Quickshot 3 joystick and serial port
joystick interface, £20. Schema spreadsheet, £25. Beebug serial link,
£3. Phone [phone] evenings.
6.1
•    E-Type, Inertia, Arcade Soccer all £5 each. Manchester United,
Apocalypse, Rotor £10 each. Also Manchester United Europe and Interdic
tor II £15 each. Phone Ali on 0382−816555.
6.1
•    Floppy disc interface by Risc Developments for the Archimedes £20.
Phone 03727−40678.
6.1
•    Games: Cataclysm, Enter The Realm, Grievous Bodily ’Arm, Pandora’s
Box, Lemmings; £10 each. Twinworld, Mad Professor Mariarti, Iron Lord;
£6 each. Karma, Worra Battle, Arcade Soccer, PacMania, UIM, Star Trader,
Terramex, Thundermonk, Conqueror, Zarch, Rotor, Ibix The Viking, Repton
3, Dread Dragon Droom; £3 each. Buy the lot for £90!! Phone 0276−20575
evenings.
6.1
•    HP DeskJet Plus ink-jet printer. 2 years old, v. good condition.
Boxed, Manual. £175 o.n.o. Phone Stuart Bell on 0403−253915.
6.1
•    Impression DTP V2.17 with original discs and manual £75. Impression
Business Supplement with original disc and manual £25. Phone
0536−724981.
6.1
•    JP150 printer for your A5000! Usually £276 with a computer. Mine has
never been out of its box, £225. Phone Paul on 0379−852979 (eves).
6.1
•    PC Emulator 1.7 £60, CC Compression £35, Lemmings £10, Pacmania £5,
WS3000 Modem V21/22/23, Hayes £60. Phone 081−698−3772.
6.1
•    Minerva Software: GammaPlot £20, Systems Delta+ £30, Mailshot £15,
Reporter £15, System Delta+ Ref. Guide £15, SigmaSheet £20. Computer
Concept ROMs: InterChart £10, InterSheet £15, InterWord £15, SpellMaster
£20. Phone Rob Brown on 0737−832159 (eves).
6.1
•    Ovation just upgraded to 1.3, boxed, brand new. £60 or 120 000 Italian
lire (inc. shipping). Maurizio Ferrari, Via Pareto 12, 42020 Albinea
(RE), Italy. Fax Italy−522−75904.
6.1
•    Ovation (latest version 1.35S) original discs and manual £85. Phone
0732−454707.
6.1
•    Panasonic KXP1124 24-pin printer, leads, boxed, excellent condition,
£140. Phone 081−886−4040.
6.1
•    Pascal (Acorn ISO release 2) £65, Wiggins & Smith extensions & Risc
User Pascal front-end £25 or will exchange for Illusionist. Phone
0202−884883.
6.1
•    PC Emulator 1.8 £55. Beebug ‘C’ 1990 £30. Hearsay II £25. Acorn 1Mb
RAM for A3000 £20. Phone John Crabtree on 0803 832505.
6.1
•    Prism 1000 V2123 modem £20 o.n.o. 40MB ST506 NEC 3.5“ 28ms Hard Drive
with brackets & cables £200 o.n.o. 20MB ST506 Rhodine 3.5” 28ms Hard
Drive with brackets & cables £120 o.n.o. Atomwide (Avie) ST506 Hard
drive podule new boxed & unused £100 o.n.o. PC Emulator v1.80 £65.
Arthur P.R.M.s Offers? Arcterm 7 £65, Mig 29 £30, Tactic £7, UIM £12,
5.25“ 40/80 Switchable drive plus Archimedes interface £50 o.n.o. Phone
0247−457655.
6.1
•    Scanlight Junior A3000 (internal fitting), immaculate & boxed, £100 or
reasonable offer. Phone John on 0472−600647.
6.1
•    Southampton Archimedes User Group meets on the 2nd Monday of each
month, 7−9pm (term time), at Itchen College, Middle Road, Bitterne,
Southampton. A very informal meeting and new members are welcome.
Contact Ted Lacey on 0703−552475 after 5th Sept. or just come along.
6.1
•    Wanted − 4 slot backplane. Phone Richard on 0264−361475.
6.1
•    Wanted − Acorn analogue/user port expansion podule for A5000. Phone
John on 0472−600647.
6.1
•    Wanted − LaserDirect interface for Canon LBP4 printer. Ruislip, Phone
0895−630344.
6.1
•    Wanted − Wordwise Plus A (80-column). Phone Colin on 0786−61501 (eves,
w/e).  A
6.1
Computer Concepts’ A3 Colour Printer
6.1
John Brocks, Lantern Radio
6.1
For me, the Archimedes started as a hobby some five years ago. Since
that time, I have become completely hooked on the machine and its
various developments. Indeed, the hobby now takes up a good amount of my
professional work. Without the Archimedes, I could never have found the
manpower I needed to produce the volumes of literature needed to win the
8 year contract I am currently working on.
6.1
My company will eventually operate twelve Archimedes in various shapes
and sizes. What’s more, the old problem of lack of software is beginning
to subside. At last, there are competent programs for most purposes and
I find myself using the PC Emulator less and less. If only Acorn would
realise the business potential of their product instead of going down
the education line. (They realise it OK − it’s doing something about it
that’s difficult!)
6.1
Even so, the PC market has tended to remain ahead of the rest in terms
of add-on peripherals. I already have a great deal of admiration for
Computer Concepts for redressing much of this situation with excellent
products such as Laser Direct which, in many ways, is ahead of the PC
competition. In this review I can reveal news of yet another Computer
Concepts product which will help make the Archimedes be taken more
seriously in the business market.
6.1
The Turbo-driven BJC 800 colour printer
6.1
Like many of you, I have seen Computer Concepts’ “The Driving Force”
advertising campaign for many months and have eagerly awaited the
product for a specific application. However, like so many Computer
Concepts’ products, the advertising campaign seemed to be way ahead of
availability.
6.1
Pestering Paul Beverley frequently on the availability of the product I
was disappointed to learn, last month, that there were “software”
problems with the Turbo Driver and the release had been delayed yet
again.
6.1
Taking pity on me, Paul took my case to Charles Moir at Computer
Concepts and requested some help. I am indebted to both for providing me
with a prototype version which I have now been using for several weeks.
My initial concern at receiving a pre-launch version, which may have
some serious bugs rendering the machine unuseable, were soon allayed.
The package is not perfect − but considerably better than expected. In
fact, some other products I have used as a finished article have been
infinitely inferior in development. So far, all of the problems I have
experienced have been surmountable − but more of these later.
6.1
The package
6.1
The parcel that arrived on my doorstep contained a Canon BJC-800 colour
printer complete with four colour ink cartridges, Canon Programmer’s
Manual, Canon Guide to Colour Bubble Jet Printing, Canon User’s Manual,
Computer Concepts’ Turbo BJ-10 printer driver manual, Computer Concepts’
Turbo BJ-10 software disc and printer lead. The latter is important as a
normal printer lead will not work.
6.1
The first thing I did was to find out whether I could get any result
from the machine at all − being a cynic! Much to my relief, I discovered
the machine would work − although early tests were disappointing.
Consequently, I thought that I had better order some spare ink cartri
dges before I got any further. This reaction was based on the view that
they must, surely, be difficult to obtain. The good news is that the
supply of cartridges arrived within two days. The bad news is that Cyan,
Magenta and Yellow cost £20 +VAT (full retail) per cartridge and Black
costs £16.50 +VAT (full retail). (Archive prices are £22 and £17
respectively inc VAT.)
6.1
The Computer Concepts’ manual
6.1
This 14 page document certainly doesn’t look very pre-release at all. It
is a very smart looking colour-bound booklet presented in the same
professional and attractive manner as Impression II. The introduction
explains how the Turbo Driver works, even going into print compression
and print queue techniques − not totally dissimilar to Laser Direct. The
notable difference is that there is no Laser Direct podule needed.
6.1
The booklet then runs through the various dialogue boxes that the BJ-10
printer driver icon produces. Again, these are all very similar to those
used on a Laser Direct. After listing all the options and window
descriptions, the booklet closes with a chapter called “Using Turbo
Driver”. This runs through how to print from First Word Plus and
mentions types of paper that should be used.
6.1
One thing that should be pointed out here is that a lot of the printer’s
other operating instructions cannot be found in this booklet and the
other manuals MUST be read for this. This is particularly the case with
regard to routine maintenance, which is not covered in the Computer
Concepts’ manual, at all. Unlike Laser Direct, the printer’s own
controls are operative on the BJC-800 and numerous functions are
available from them.
6.1
Speed tests
6.1
My overall impression of the machine is that it is very much faster than
expected − but there are reservations. A4 prints out at a staggering
speed − in about 3 minutes for a complex page of colour and text −
freeing the screen in under 2‘30“. If you simply want to print out
letter heads (as I do, to reduce printing costs) the print time is
reduced to 1‘30“. However, A3 is a different story! This is relatively
slow − but anyone who has tried to print out anything sideways from
Impression II will know that it is a much slower process than a portrait
print. Even so, 26 minutes to print out two pages of A4 complex colour
graphics in an A3 format, sideways, requires patience!
6.1
However, this must be looked at in context. The screen is cleared some 5
minutes earlier meaning that you can continue using the machine.
Multiple prints of the same page don’t take much longer before the
screen is freed. The quality of print also needs to be taken into
consideration. The colour result is every bit as good, if not better,
than the equivalent 600 dpi Laser Direct Black and White − with results
excellent right down to sprites reduced to a tiny size.
6.1
It does have to be said, though, that the background printing of a
multiple page print can cause problems. On occasion, whilst transferring
information from disc to disc (particularly compressed CFS files) during
a multiple print, the dreaded “File Core In Use” error message can
appear and the whole system can lock up. Nonetheless, this is an
exception to the rule rather than the norm.
6.1
Print resolution
6.1
As mentioned above, print quality is absolutely excellent. I enclosed a
copy of my company’s sales pack produced with the BJC-800 with this
review when it was sent to Paul Beverley and doubtless he will comment.
(I sure will! John is right, the quality is quite staggering − the
colour is very good and the black text is virtually equivalent to a 600
d.p.i. Laser Direct. Ed.)
6.1
However, to obtain such results requires more than a little trial and
error. My main gripe is that not all colours produce a pure result in
mode 12 or equivalent 12-colour palette. The particular yellow used in
mode 12 produces a very dirty result and I think this should be
corrected on the basis that mode 12 is easier and quicker to use than
other modes − and, in most cases, is quite adequate. This fact has
irritated me enormously as my Eizo monitor and A540 is set up for mode
106 and my VIDC complains in mode 107! Even so, the 256-colour palette
is really the only usable way of utilising this colour printer.
6.1
The difficulties are not as great as I first feared. I have read that
other colour printers and printer drivers produce anything but the
colour you want. This is not true of the BJC-800. Colours produced are
generally much darker − but always of the right spectrum. One can guess
what a lighter colour may eventually look like or use a slightly more
scientific method. My answer to the problem was to print out a screen
shot of the 256 palette and examine the difference. I would recommend
this idea to any serious user − perhaps as the first exercise. You
simply choose to use those colours that reproduce well on the printer.
If there were an easy way of editing the colours used in 16-colour
modes, that we help greatly. Until then, I will have to use 256-colour
modes. (I think Artworks, which is now available, may offer some help
with this problem. Ed.)
6.1
The other advantage of the BJC-800, over some other printers, is that it
does utilise black ink. This means that no approximations (which often
produce dark brown − rather than black) are needed. In some ways, the
black text effect is more pleasing than that produced on a Laser Direct.
I have to say I often have to resist the temptation of using the bubble
jet in preference to the Laser Direct on the grounds of cost!
6.1
Both the Computer Concepts and Canon manuals try and persuade you that
you really should use special artwork paper. My answer to that is
“poppycock”! I can’t imagine that any special paper is really needed
unless you are printing heavy colour overlays or scans/photographs. I
remain sceptical that thick coated art paper would actually improve
results, in any case.
6.1
Like a boy with a new train set, I tried printing a variety of difficult
sprites as soon as I had worked out the palette differences. On balance,
I would say that ordinary photocopy paper was actually better than the
good stuff! Colour overlays generally don’t cause problems, in any case.
Red text on yellow being an exception − which produces nasty runs.
However, my ordinary paper was far less susceptible to the problems than
the art paper provided − in all three of the head “pressure” settings!
6.1
Colours on art paper look much brighter and richer − but somehow rather
unrealistic. Ordinary photocopy paper results look faded by comparison −
but somehow more realistic. I can imagine a casual onlooker commenting
on the brightness of art paper − yet passing by photocopy paper results
because they look natural. You pays your money and takes your choice −
just don’t feel obliged to pay for the expensive stuff. (I personally
feel that the “brighter” colours you get on the special paper are worth
the extra money but obviously, it’s a matter of taste. Ed.)
6.1
Maintenance
6.1
As mentioned at the beginning of this review, the Canon BJC-800 has a
number of options available completely separate from those mentioned in
Computer Concepts’ manual. This came to light when, after some 300
copies, I discovered that some thin white lines were appearing on my
prints. Panic set in and I re-read the Computer Concepts’ manual − but
without any joy. I then referred to the Canon manuals and discovered the
various cleaning options available on the print menu of the printer
itself. At first, I have to say I was hoodwinked into the manual’s
answer that the most serious cleaning method “flushing” was necessary.
It sure did the trick and fixed the white lines. However, I was
perturbed that the Canon manual told me “flushing” should be used
sparingly as it uses copious quantities of that all-expensive ink! They
are absolutely correct, flushing required me to change all four of my
ink cartridges!
6.1
There are two other less stringent methods of cleaning called “Cleaning
One” and “Cleaning Two”. One mode is invoked every time a new ink
cartridge is inserted, in any case. When white lines have appeared
subsequently, I have used “Cleaning One” which has been quite sufficient
and uses less ink. Other panel controls on the printer allow various
other options such as test prints which provide grid prints and colour
tests. The grid tests demonstrate just how clogged your jets are prior
to deciding to do a cleaning program. The colour tests demonstrate just
how much colours can run into each other on the paper you are using! The
latter would be useful for the serious user wanting to decide on a type
of paper.
6.1
The only other frequent maintenance required is to change the ink
cartridges. This is so easy you can almost look forward to it (if your
bank balance allows). You simply have to open a flap, pull out the empty
cartridge and insert a new one. I am not the most dexterous of people
and yet I have found it impossible to deposit any ink on myself. Indeed,
as the expression goes, a child of five could do it! The ease of
changing cartridges must be one of the most endearing features of this
printer and must have been designed by Canon’s bank manager! It seems
that at least one cartridge needs to be replaced after several hundred
copies of A3 printing.
6.1
Conclusion
6.1
If you are looking for a serious colour printer for your Archimedes, I
would suggest that there is no real alternative to the BJC-800. Sadly,
Computer Concepts are not paying me to say that as I have had to shell
out the full retail price. Despite that fact, there is no doubt that I
am impressed.
6.1
As I mentioned earlier, I find it annoying to have to use a 256-colour
mode in order to get the best colours for the printer − but perhaps
someone can offer a solution to this?
6.1
Despite this, experimenting pays dividends and the results are satisfy
ing, to say the least. I cannot understand why this software is not on
the market yet. (It is! We have them in stock now!!! Ed.) I have not
encountered any major bugs − unless Computer Concepts are trying to
overcome the palette problems. Even if they are, I would have thought
most users would be prepared to wait for the upgrade.
6.1
A4 is surprisingly fast. A3, sideways, is disappointingly slow. Yet the
best things in life come to those who wait. The manual recommends that a
minimum of 4Mb RAM is needed for the Turbo Driver. I feel that anything
less than an A5000 with 4Mb RAM would provide disappointingly slow
results. Even my A540 with 16Mb RAM doesn’t make this product especially
quick. Furthermore, colour translations of existing black and white
material can treble the space taken up by old files. This must have some
bearing on the practicality of going colour!
6.1
My final word is that I can’t imagine anybody saying that the full A3
print isn’t breathtaking − speed is unlikely to make up for near artwork
quality. Please Computer Concepts hurry up and release this product on
the general market with Artworks − so that the Archimedes can move into
the next generation. After all, the BJC-800 must have been produced for
Artworks, in the first place?  A
6.1
Charles Moir of Computer Concepts adds... The point John makes about
colour palettes is a good one. This whole area of colour calibration is
very complex and something that currently no computers have sorted out
properly. However there are some basic points that might be worth
noting.
6.1
a) No colour printer can reproduce anything like the primary colours
possible on a monitor screen. This is basically because screens are
florescent and light transmitting whereas printers are reflective. Some
of the worst examples are red, green and blue. The latter always prints
very purplish.
6.1
b) Since full four colour process printing has the same problems, it is
correct that the BJC800 accurately reflects this. Indeed, we see one of
the main uses of this printer as a proofing device for full colour work
− so it is more important to reflect accurately the four colour process
work than the screen colours.
6.1
c) By adjusting the screen palette, it is possible to alter the screen
colours to match those on the printer. Indeed ArtWorks is supplied with
a new screen palette for this very reason. This therefore enables you to
have screen colours matching printed colours.  A
6.1
Basic Compilers − The Next Generation
6.1
Emmet Spier
6.1
For quite some time now there have been two Basic compilers on the
market for the Archimedes. With the advent of a version three of both
ABC from Oak Solutions and RiscBasic from Silicon Vision it is time to
look at them afresh.
6.1
Basic is a notoriously difficult language to compile and this is not
helped by the design and evolution of BBC Basic. With any normal
compiled language, you must follow a very strict syntax, declaring
everything before you use it. Those unfamiliar with compiled languages
may be surprised to find out that this is actually of great benefit
because the compiler can then pick up on all sorts of silly mistakes
made by the programmer. Basic, being interpreted, is forgiving and will
happily execute error-ridden programs so long as the current line makes
sense − missing ENDIFs, variables spelt incorrectly and contorted
structures rarely generate errors.
6.1
Why compile?
6.1
So why do you want to compile Basic programs? Well, other than compre
hensive syntax checking, in general, compilers provide faster and
smaller programs than an interpreted language. This is because the
source code is converted into machine code only at compile time rather
than every time the line is executed.
6.1
With the Archimedes, however, a few extra considerations must be taken
into account. Firstly, Basic is in ROM, so tokenised Basic programs are
normally much smaller than their compiled counterparts and, secondly,
Basic has an optimised set of floating point operations whereas the
compiled code depends on the slower floating point emulator until the
long awaited co-processor arrives (and at what cost?).
6.1
If you are expecting the new releases to provide you with a compiled
Basic that permits EVAL then I am afraid you will be disappointed. Even
Silicon Vision that once said it would allow EVAL has dropped the claim
which, I have to admit, is of no surprise and of no discredit to
RiscBasic.
6.1
When deciding to write a compiler for Basic on the Archimedes, the
designer has two options, either define a Basic type language or try to
implement BBC Basic as we know it. The ABC (Archimedes Basic Compiler)
insists on a stricter form of Basic whereas the RiscBasic compiler
attempts the harder path of compiling (almost) anything written in Basic
V 1.04.
6.1
Archimedes Basic Compiler
6.1
ABC is supplied on one disc with a clear and comprehensive 80 page
spiral-bound manual. The compiler is accompanied by two utility
programs, one to send Basic programs to the Basic editor and one to send
Basic programs to !Edit. To install ABC onto a hard disc, you drag the
ABC application into your programming directory along with the examples
directory and the utilities, if you wish. You also need to update your
system directory with ABClib, the shared Basic library! If you are using
floppies, all that is required is a backup of the distribution disc
where there is ample room for development.
6.1
In use
6.1
Double clicking on the ABC icon puts ABC on the iconbar with a tidy and
simple user interface. To compile a Basic program you drag the file from
a filer window onto the ABC icon and then drag the object file from the
save dialogue back to a filer window. A small window will pop up
indicating how far the compiler has got while the computer happily
multi-tasks − albeit with a significant performance degradation.
6.1
If no errors are encountered, ABC pops up a summary window containing a
few interesting facts. Once this window is closed, the compiler returns
all the memory it took, back to the WIMP pool. If the ‘X-Ref’ flag was
set before compilation started, the compiler opens a window with a
multitude of options which allow you to create a profile of the program.
The complete set is comprehensive although somewhat hard to understand
but the window’s switches allow tailoring of the information provided
when the save dialogue is dragged to !Edit − all very smooth!
6.1
If there are errors in the file then ABC pops up a largish window which
contains the line number and type of error but no indication of exactly
where on the line the error occurred. The compiler will try to guess
what was intended and, if it can, the error is called a warning and
clicking on OK will continue compilation; if the error was unrecover
able, compilation terminates. With any warning or error, the window
provides an option to enter the Basic editor at the erroneous line but
there is no neat method of return. The programmer must save the file
(typing the appropriate path if the CSD is not set) and then quit Basic
− not so smooth!
6.1
There is no method of compiling the program and just logging all the
errors to a file which can then be ploughed through in your own time.
This is a shame since I prefer to use !Edit which is ideally suited to
such an approach (unlike the ARM BE).
6.1
With reference to !Edit, it must be said that the Basic to Text
converter provided, although proficient, is a bit slow and the Basic to
ARM BE works well but I have seen PD versions that make return to the
desktop easier.
6.1
Compatibility
6.1
All in all, the compiler’s user interface is very neat − but what of the
actual compiler? As I said before, ABC defines a Basic type language.
This is not as bad as it sounds; most of Basic V is provided for but
there are a few major differences.
6.1
ABC insists on well structured code. You cannot jump out of loops;
procedures must be terminated and for each loop initiator there must be
only one terminator. These are all very sensible things that you should
be doing already! The most serious difference between ABC and Basic V is
how they handle variable scope.
6.1
In small programs, this causes no problem but in larger programs with
lots of variables to be passed between procedures, this can cause hours
of trouble if the program has not been designed for ABC.
6.1
When you locally define a variable in Basic, any subsequent procedure or
function calls will use this new variable, instead of the global one,
until the defining procedure has terminated. ABC uses a different rule;
a local variable is only valid in the defining procedure − any subse
quent calls use the global variable whether or not they have been called
from the defining procedure. In any normal compiled language, these
subtleties cause no problem because declarations make variable use very
clear but Basic does not. Fortunately ABC’s cross referencer points out
any problems of this type which, more often than not, are solved by
extending the parameter lists of the procedures.
6.1
Missing from ABC are all the extra array operations added since Basic
IV. I find these entertaining to use (especially recursive functions
using local arrays as parameters) but local array operations are, by
their very nature, inefficient on memory and program speed.
6.1
The last major omission is that ABC does not permit either indirected
parameter passing or some of the more sophisticated indirected variable
accesses. In particular, this makes WIMP programming slightly trickier
although it is not an insurmountable problem.
6.1
Variable types
6.1
ABC’s divergence from strict Basic V allows it to excel in the control
of variable types. In Basic, you can have either real, integer (%) or
string ($) variables but ABC goes one stage further and permits three
types of real variable matching the types provided by the floating point
emulator. Single-precision, double and extended can be used by the
appropriate choice of the last character of the variable name. With a
compiler directive, you can choose any final character to set the type
of a variable or set all real variables to integer! This flexibility
allows intermediate results to be calculated in a high precision
variable, with the final result stored in a lower precision saving
memory without the cost on accuracy.
6.1
Another compiler directive allows the programmer to check to see if the
floating point emulator is used in the program. This is of great
importance to users with commercial plans since the floating point
emulator must be licensed from Acorn.
6.1
Assembler
6.1
ABC includes a full ARM code assembler which assembles at run time. This
seems odd because the whole idea of a compiler is to avoid such jobs at
run time and indeed the manual advises that code is assembled separa
tely, then loaded into a memory block reserved by the compiled program.
One ought to add that there are advantages of the run time approach
(e.g. conditional assembly).
6.1
Modules and libraries
6.1
ABC permits the creation of the full set of module types along with an
interesting form of extension library module. The manual is well written
on this tricky subject and provides good examples. I will discuss the
new type first.
6.1
Under ABC, you can create a module that allows any program compiled
under ABC to call procedures and functions in the module just as they
were, with a few exceptions, in the program itself. This allows the
splitting up of a large program so that it take less time to compile as
well as providing a method of creating your own shared Basic library!
6.1
Anything that compiles under ABC can be put into module form as an
application, utility or service module. The service module is the most
interesting type because not only can you implement *-commands but you
can also write SWI handlers. Yes, I agree (along with the manual!) that
this sounds rather silly − SWI handlers must respond very quickly or the
computer will seize up. However, they can be fun and they add an extra
level of prototyping to Basic − which is my language of choice when I
design ARM code programs.
6.1
Optimisations
6.1
ABC has several compiler directives to speed up its object code. Some
are sensible ones like not bothering to pre-initialise local variables
or forbidding GOTOs but there is one contentious one. The NoEscapeCheck
directive provides a significant performance benefit by not checking the
escape condition unless the program is receiving input from the keyboard
(INPUT, GET, etc). This means that programs will not stop when <escape>
is pressed unless the Basic program checks the escape condition (not
hard using an OS_Byte command). This directive will be discussed later.
6.1
The RiscBasic Compiler
6.1
RiscBasic is also supplied on one disc but with a considerably thinner
manual (the pre-release manual had 40 pages and needed some reorganis
ation) justified by the fact that RiscBasic is (almost) fully Basic V
compatible. Installation on a hard drive is easy − just drag all the
files from the RiscBasic disc into your programming directory. With
floppies, you just backup the disc. My only reservation is that, as
currently written, the !Run files assume the location of the ‘Library’
directory. This is something that is easily fixed and may well be just a
pre-release problem.
6.1
RiscBasic requires over half a dozen working directories to store
intermediate or information files creating a rather messy working
directory and really needing to be placed in a directory of its own.
6.1
In use
6.1
There are three ways to use RiscBasic: from the command line, from an
iconbar menu based system and from what they call a DDE (Desktop
Developers’ Environment). This bears no relation to Acorn’s DDE! Having
left the command line with Arthur, I initially picked the DDE because it
provided the greatest position-independence of the three systems.
6.1
The DDE system has a complete set of switches in a neat dialogue box
which control all the options of the compiler. Dragging a Basic (or
text) file to the iconbar will bring up a save dialogue after which
compilation will commence. The computer does not multitask but opens up
a command window into which various pieces of information, about how
compilation is progressing, are printed. If compilation is successful,
clicking on any mouse button returns you to the desktop with your new
object file. All this is fairly smooth unless there is not enough memory
in the task slot, in which case the RiscBasic compiler abruptly
terminates.
6.1
If errors are found, either a list of errors is printed out (and sent to
a spool file if you wish) or the compiler offers you the option of
entering either !Edit or the Basic Editor at the first erroneous line.
There is no way of stepping through the error list, so although this
method shows potential, it was discarded quickly. To RiscBasic’s credit,
the spooled error list speeds up bug hunting considerably when working
in the desktop.
6.1
The compiler can also generate a cross reference list which is much
easier to understand than ABC’s but not nearly as comprehensive.
6.1
All of this sounds very easy but, with the DDE, you have to keep going
back into the RiscBasic directory structure to get at these files.
6.1
Alternatively, the command line interface provides flexibility with the
placement of files but then the short cuts of the large directory
structure are required. The menu interface is a halfway house and,
although cumbersome to use (all those paths to type in), it provides the
easiest way to set up a tailored environment so long as you keep all
your Basic files in the same place. It must be said that the interface
of RiscBasic still has the feel of a command line program.
6.1
Compatibility
6.1
Silicon Vision claim that, apart from the EVAL command, all Basic
program keywords and usage should work − if not, there is a bug in the
compiler and it should be reported for correction − some claim!
Essentially this is correct. More often than not, RiscBasic would
happily compile whatever I gave it with almost no alterations. The only
problem was that the ! indirection operator must be word aligned causing
the necessity to rewrite code sections with the ? operator.
6.1
RiscBasic has an extended form of the VAL keyword that permits number
entry in hexadecimal (or any other base for that matter) reducing the
requirement for EVAL even more.
6.1
Of great use is the ‘debug’ switch which includes line number informa
tion in the program. This makes debugging much easier and is something
missing from ABC (which probably needs it more than RiscBasic).
6.1
Variable types
6.1
RiscBasic only allows one type of real variable in an entire program.
This is selected at compile time by a switch and is either single or
double precision. This is a bit of a shame because the use of extended
precision in compiled programs goes some way to sweeten the loss of
speed when using the floating point emulator.
6.1
RiscBasic allows all the Basic V array operations and pleasantly
surprised me when I compiled a favourite little program of mine. This is
the calculation of the inverse of a matrix using the co-factor method −
a hopelessly inefficient algorithm but a marvellous demonstration of the
flexibility of Basic V using a recursive function call with local arrays
decreasing by one order each time − it compiled and worked first time.
6.1
Assembler
6.1
The RiscBasic assembler operates at compile time and adds some very
useful extensions. The assembler has two major benefits over Basic V.
Firstly you can load the address of a variable into a register by simply
using the following notation :-
6.1
ADR R1,*basic_variable
6.1
with which you can then load the contents into a register. This ability
becomes even more exciting when used with the floating point extensions
allowing ARM code programming of the floating point instruction set.
Unfortunately, the pre-release manual did not contain details on the
floating point instruction set.
6.1
Modules
6.1
The pre-release manual was not very well written on the subject of
modules (it really warranted a separate section) but with the examples
all became clear. Only one class of module can be created providing star
commands but I must say that for all of ABC’s choice, this is the only
genuinely useful type.
6.1
Optimisations
6.1
RiscBasic recognises that when permitting almost any form of Basic
construction, there must be a speed penalty. To overcome this problem,
the ‘Turbo’ directive, once selected, makes RiscBasic insist on fully
structured code (the kind ABC requires anyway) with one significant
additional constraint on nested FOR loop constructions. Although ‘Turbo’
mode can be turned on and off during compilation, the compiler does not
do this for you nor does it explicitly tell you that there is a problem.
6.1
The RiscBasic compiler provides an interesting optimisation called
constant folding. Basically this takes any variable that is solely used
as a constant and hardwires the value into the code allowing neat code
writing without loss of performance. Since both compilers permit the
definition of constants, I feel that this optimisation is one of these
tricks that is designed to run benchmarks fast but provides little
benefit in real code.
6.1
Speed comparisons
6.1
Below is a set of standard benchmarks which I include for completeness.
Personally I do not give them much credence but they do make for
interesting reading.
6.1
All values are speed factors compared to RMFaster Basic (i.e. the higher
the better).
6.1
    Basic    RiscBasic    ABC
    ABC NoEsc
6.1
IntMath    1.0    6.3(33.3)    4.6
    7.4
6.1
RealMath    1.0    0.4    0.6    0.6
6.1
    Basic    RiscBasic    ABC
    ABC NoEsc
6.1
TrigLog    1.0    0.3    0.3    0.3
6.1
GrafScrn    1.0    1.7    1.6    1.8
6.1
TextScrn    1.0    1.1    1.1    1.1
6.1
Store    1.0    1.0    1.4    1.4
6.1
Sieve    1.0    31.9    6.3    18.8
6.1
Tak    1.0    14.8    12.0    23.7
6.1
6.2
6.1
The only benchmark that RiscBasic’s constant folding effected was
IntMath (number in brackets) but this should be discounted since one of
the variables in the tiny loop is kept at a constant value. Sieve and
Tak indicate that the compilers can speed up Basic, and ABC receives a
significant performance boost with NoEscapeCheck on (Sieve is array
intensive and Tak is function call intensive).
6.1
A few timings of what I would describe as ‘real’ tasks will probably
make the performance benefits clearer. I have used double precision and
RiscBasic’s fold command (which, in my experience, is of marginal
benefit) as well as any appropriate directives that speed up each
compiler.
6.1
The first program I looked at was my multitasking WordWrap application.
This word wraps an entire file in the same manner as !Edit. All
processing is carried out in memory blocks while the computer multi
tasks. In this test, I word-wrapped a 19k text file on an unencumbered
mode 12 desktop, the timings are approximate.
6.1
    Time (s)    File Size (Kb)
6.1
Basic    38.1        16
6.1
RiscBasic    6.0        47
6.1
ABC    5.5    (+8%)    25    (53%)
6.1
ABC NoEsc    4.7    (+22%)    23
    (49%)
6.1
As you can see, there is a significant performance boost with the
compiled programs and this would be passed on to the user in the form of
a smoother desktop. In this test I could have reasonably used NoEscape
Check because the desktop disables escape anyway.
6.1
The next test program is a Basic version of my CoreWar game. This
single-tasking program uses memory accesses as well as being fairly
procedure intensive. Begin a simulation game, speed is of the essence
and again the compilers come out glowing (the higher the better).
6.1
    Cycles per second    File Size
(Kb)
6.1
Basic    45        4
6.1
RiscBasic    283        32
6.1
ABC    324    (+14%)    11    (34%)
6.1
ABC NoEsc    340    (+20%)    11
    (34%)
6.1
As a matter of interest, the C version of CoreWar runs at about 550cps
and a hand-written ARM code version at 650cps.
6.1
Although both of these programs are computationally intensive, neither
are of the mathematical sort. To add a bit of balance, I thought I would
try two of Brian Cowan’s favourite programs:- the PI calculator (integer
arithmetic) and the fast fourier transform (real arithmetic). All times
are in seconds.
6.1
    Pi (1000 places)    FFT (1024 point)
6.1
Basic    147.8        3.67
6.1
RMfaster Basic    116.2
    2.90
6.1
RiscBasic    17.2        3.21
6.1
RiscBasic Turbo    −
    3.20
6.1
ABC    15.7    (+9%)    2.44
    (+31%)
6.1
ABC NoEsc    11.7    (+47%)    2.39
    (+34%)
6.1
ABC NoEsc + chk    11.6    (+47%)
    2.41    (+33%)
6.1
Using ABC’s NoFloat directive, I managed to remove three mistaken uses
of floating point numbers (division using / instead of DIV) in the PI
program. In the ABC ‘NoEsc + chk’ tests, I added a call to OS_Byte 126
in the central loop to test the escape condition. Not only did this give
me a fully responsive escape key but actually increased the PI programs
speed. (The only reason I can think of for this is an accidental
improvement of code’s word alignment.) In my experience, adding an
escape check hardly alters the speed of the code. ‘Turbo’ mode could not
be used in the PI program because of the nature of the FOR loops.
6.1
What can be seen by all these test programs is that for computationally
intensive tasks of any sort either of the compilers provide significant
gains.
6.1
Summary
6.1
To be honest, I was pleasantly surprised by both of these compilers. Not
only did they work but to my surprise, they actually made my Basic
programs go faster − much faster. Neither is it obvious which one is
better. (I have added some percentages into the tables above which
compare ABC and RiscBasic. They seem to give ABC the edge on speed and
compactness of code. Ed.)
6.1
In general, I found that ABC generated files to about half the size of
RiscBasic. (Even when the ABClib module was added, the total size was
still always smaller.) However, RiscBasic compiled a program in roughly
half the time of ABC but then ABC has the advantage that it is multi-
tasking. ABC generated marginally faster code (even without disabling
escape) but RiscBasic was far more compatible with Basic V.
6.1
All timings were carried out on an A410 and, from information supplied
by Silicon Vision, when the compiled code is run on an ARM 3, the
performance boost is smaller (about 3/4 of the ARM 2’s).
6.1
I think that what will tip the balance one way or another is how happy
you are with the differences from Basic V. You will not be able simply
to compile any old Basic file with ABC − more often than not, signifi
cant alterations will be required to fix scope usage. However, if you
write a Basic program with ABC in mind, this should be no problem.
RiscBasic provides a method of speeding up all your old and new programs
without having to change your programming style.
6.1
It might be of interest that both companies use their Basic compilers
for commercial applications. For instance, ABC compiled Genesis and
RiscBasic compiled SolidTOOLS.
6.1
In line with the release of the new Acorn computers, both compilers have
come down to very fair prices. At one time, I would advise Acorn C
instead of a Basic compiler but with C now over £240 even its speed,
library(?!) and portability advantages do not justify its cost to the
home user.
6.1
ABC is available from Oak Solutions at £99.95 +VAT (= £117.44) and
RiscBasic is available from Silicon Vision at £99.95 inc VAT. (Archive
prices are £105 and £93 respectively.)  A
6.1
Psion Series 3 Link
6.1
Richard Oldman
6.1
With all this talk of Acorn Pocket Books (which are still not available
at the time of writing!), Psion 3 owners may be feeling a bit left out,
so here is an article about cable conversions to connect the Psion 3
Link to the Archimedes running the PC Emulator.
6.1
There are many Archimedes owners who are also fans of the excellent
Psion hand-held computers. DataPaks for these machines are quite
expensive, so a useful and cheap way to back up your essential data is
to store it on floppy discs via your Archimedes. To do this it is
necessary to buy a serial link from Psion to connect the two machines
together and this comes with software for either a PC or an Apple
Macintosh. Unfortunately for the Organiser II, the PC software does not
work on the Archimedes using the PC Emulator. There have been various
programs written for the Archimedes and the Organiser II which enable
you to store that data but most of them do not provide the same
facilities as the PC link program produced by Psion.
6.1
Psion have now released the new Series 3 pocket-size computer which has
a 3 Link, Psion’s own serial link, enabling very comprehensive communi
cation with, once again, a PC or a Mac. The PC program that comes with
the 3 Link runs on the Archimedes using the PC Emulator but is not
actually able to establish the vital communications link for two way
working. Acorn, Psion and anyone else you ask will tell you that this
communication is not possible. This is a great shame because you are
missing out on some very good, custom written software for the Series 3.
However, all is not lost because the PC software will run and communi
cate fully with the Archimedes if the problem of the non standard serial
port on the Archimedes is addressed. The 9 pin ‘D’ plug (female) on the
end of the 3 Link is obviously wired for a PC, so all you need to do is
to change the connections in the plug to the required pin configuration
for the Archimedes. Unfortunately these plugs are sealed so you will
have to make up a short extension lead to carry out this conversion.
6.1
The lead
6.1
To make the conversion lead, you will need to purchase two 9 pin ‘D’
plugs, one male and one female, two metalised ‘D’ hoods (9 way) and a
length of 9 way screened cable for RS232 use. The diagrams at the top of
page 57 show how to make the connections between the two plugs. The IBM
to Archimedes conversion diagram being the one to follow for making your
connections. The other information in the table is just for general
information.
6.1
The diagram at the bottom of page 57 simply reflects the wiring
instructions above but with wire colours allocated (the colours in your
lead may be different) and the line usage indicated for those who are
particularly interested.
6.1
Software considerations
6.1
It is not necessary to change the baud or data settings on the Archi
medes for the MCLINK program to work. However, since I only use the
serial port to communicate with my Series 3, I have changed these to
reflect the default settings on the Series 3. If you want to, it is
quite simple to do using the *Configure command as follows:-
6.1
*CONFIGURE BAUD 7
6.1
*CONFIGURE DATA 5
6.1
followed by <ctrl-break>. You can check the settings by typing *STATUS
which should now reflect the new settings.
6.1
‘BAUD 7’ sets the rate to 9600 and ‘DATA 5’ sets the data to word length
8 bits, odd parity and 1 stop bit.
6.1
If you get the PC Emulator up and running and then, at the ‘A>’ prompt
put your Psion PC link software disc in drive A (drive 0) and type
MCLINK<return>, you will find you have all the facilities of the MCLINK
program. At the top left of the screen it should say ‘Status : Link
Established’. If it doesn’t, you probably have not turned on the link on
the Series 3. (See the Psion information that comes with the Link on how
to do this.) You should also make sure the Series 3 has not turned
itself off whilst you weren’t looking! Using the link puts an additional
load on the batteries in your Series 3 so use a power supply if you have
one.
6.1
I have tested the lead by transferring my Agenda file from the Series 3
to my Archimedes and then sending it back again but with a different
name. Using the Archimedes to copy the file ‘Agenda’ from the Series 3
to the root directory on the disc type
6.1
COPY  REM::M:\AGN\AGENDA.AGN  LOC::A:\
6.1
To transfer it back but with a different name, say ‘TEST’, type
6.1
COPY LOC::A:\AGENDA.AGN  REM::M: \AGN\TEST.AGN
6.1
which puts it back in the Series 3’s internal memory in the AGN
directory. If you try this it should appear on the Series 3’s system
screen underneath the original Agenda.
6.1
Now let’s try the other way around. Put a blank PC formatted disc in
drive ‘A’ on the Archimedes. Everything else is now done on the Series
3. Press the SYSTEM button and close down all open files and appli
cations (they are shown in bold). You will not be able to close the TIME
application. Now press the CALC option on the function key strip. It
should select it but not go into it as the application is closed. Press
the PSION key together with <C> to bring up the copy file window or use
MENU and select the Copy File option. Wait a few seconds for the copying
window to appear. Using the cursor keys, move down to the third line ‘To
file : Name’. Type:-
6.1
REM::A:\
6.1
Move down to the fifth line ‘Sub-directories’ and change it to ‘Yes’.
Now press <Enter>. The whole of the Series 3’s internal memory will now
be backed up on the floppy disc in drive ‘A’. It is not really a good
idea to back the internal memory up in the root directory of the disc.
For example, when you do it in a real situation, create a new directory
called ‘internal’ for the internal memory or SSD1 for a flash pack. The
command for backing up the internal memory would then be
6.1
REM::A:\INTERNAL\
6.1
Remember that it is running under the emulator, so all the operations
will be slow. The Psion software disc also contains a file called
MCLINK.DOC (a README file). This file is important because it contains
lots of information as to the different commands available and their
syntax. You can transfer the MCLINK.DOC to an Archimedes disc using
!MultiFS and then dump it to your printer or load it into a word
processor for reformatting and printing. If you cannot transfer it to an
Archimedes disc go back to being a PC and at the ‘A>’ prompt type
6.1
COPY MCLINK.DOC prn
6.1
which copies the file to your printer, assuming you’ve turn it on.
6.1
All the tests I have done show the MCLINK program works fully with PC
Emulator versions 1.34 and 1.70 on my A410. A3000 users would have to
make sure they have the serial chips fitted. I do not have access to an
A5000, so I cannot confirm whether the link will work on that.
6.1
A program called MCPRINT which is also supplied by Psion with the Link,
is intended to route your printing through your Archimedes to your
printer. However, this does not seem to work correctly under the
Emulator. I have tried it from the word processor but I get some strange
results. I have not, as yet, worked out why. In any case, it is very
easy to write a short program on the Archimedes to carry out this rather
simple function so I shall not waste any more time on it.
6.1
I have supplied a list of the parts required. For those not able to get
the parts easily, I have included the parts reference numbers for Maplin
Electronics who operate a postal service. If anyone is not happy to make
the lead up themselves, I would be prepared to do it for a price of £10
including postage. However, I am not a commercial organisation so please
allow 28 days for delivery.  A
6.1
Parts list
6.1
1 × D_Range 9 way plug (Maplin No. RK60Q)
6.1
1 × D-Range 9 way Socket (Maplin No. RK61R)
6.1
2 × Metalised D Hood 9 way (Maplin No. JB68Y)
6.1
Multi-core screened cable 9 way (1 metre length) (Maplin No. XR27E)
6.1
You will also need a small soldering iron and some solder.
6.1
Maplin Electronics can be contacted on 0702−554161 (24 hour service).
6.1
Pin 1    Not used
6.1
Pin 2    −     Pin 2
6.1
Pin 3    −    Pin 3
6.1
Pin 4    −    Pin 4
6.1
Pin 5    −    Pin 5
6.1
Pin 6    −    Pin 8
6.1
Pin 7    −    Pin 7
6.1
Pin 8    −     Pin 6
6.1
Pin 9    Not used
6.1
6.2
6.1
IBM PC
6.1
Archimedes
6.1
Wiring instructions
6.1
PipeLine
6.1
Gerald Fitton
6.1
Possibly because last month’s Archive came out earlier than usual I
missed the deadline! (Yep, sorry about that, Gerald. You’ll have to
blame Acorn for springing the news on us of the new machines. Ed.) This
is not the article which I had intended for last month but a new one
about creating Charts in PD 4; I wanted to wait until RISC-OS 3 was
released before starting on Charts so this is my earliest opportunity.
6.1
However, first of all, a couple of items from contributors. You may find
the first, about Owner Read only Access, useful even if you don’t have
PipeDream.
6.1
Owner read only access files in RISC-OS 2
6.1
Albert Kitchenside sent me the following two items which I have only
marginally edited:
6.1
I came across the following problem by accident, fortunately without the
loss of any data, when using PD 4.12. I am now reporting on PD 4.13 and
have also looked at the problem in PD 3. To see what happens in another
application, I have also looked at the effect in Ovation. The problem
has more serious potential repercussions in PD 4. I commented to Robert
Macmillan who said that it appears to happen only under RISC-OS 2 and
not under RISC-OS 3.
6.1
The problem in PD 4
6.1
If a saved file is given Owner Read only access, i.e. R/ in the
directory window with full information, and a re-save is attempted, the
file is reduced to zero content before the PD error message “Cannot
write to file” appears. Closing the error message window and the File
save dialogue box, it is then possible to close the file window without
a further error message warning, providing the file has not been edited.
So there is a risk, albeit very small, of loss of data, if you do not
have a back up.
6.1
With Public Read only access, /r, the problem does not arise because the
error message “Access violation” appears and the file is not reduced to
zero content.
6.1
The problem in PD 3
6.1
There is a minor problem only here because the access to the file is
changed to Owner Read-Write, WR/, in both cases quoted above and the
file is then updated. This is not consistent because the file should not
be available for updating.
6.1
Comments
6.1
I wrote to Robert Macmillan about this problem and his comments on PD
4.13 were:-
6.1
“On RISC-OS 2, I get ‘Cannot write to file’ and the file that exists
gets changed to 0 bytes, thus losing what was there before. However, my
document in memory stays as modified, so it still warns me to save
before quitting.
6.1
“On RISC-OS 3, I get ‘Cannot write to file’; the file on disc stays
unmodified and the file in memory stays modified.
6.1
“From this I conclude that, using RISC-OS 3, everything is fine. On
RISC-OS 2, I can only blame the filing-operating system, I think,
because if the file is not allowed to be opened it shouldn’t be throwing
data away.”
6.1
He did not comment on PD 3 but I cannot understand why the effects in
versions 3 and 4 would be different if this arose solely due to RISC-OS
2 and I think it must also be due to the PD interface with the operating
system.
6.1
As a point of interest, I decided to look at what happened in another
application and chose Ovation. In this application, if you try to re-
save a file which is Owner Read only, there is an Ovation error message
“Cannot open file <file name>. Not open for update”, the saved file is
not apparently affected. However, the file has been opened, in spite of
the error message, and is left opened so that you then get further error
messages that the file is open. Hence, if you then change the access to
Write and Read and repeat the save command, the error message from
Ovation is “Cannot write to file <file name>. File open”!
6.1
Conclusions
6.1
There is a small risk of loss of data if you are not careful in PD 4
with trying to save to files having Owner Read only access. In PD 3, the
file security is lost since the access is changed to Read-Write.
According to Robert Macmillan, this does not happen under RISC-OS 3.
There may be other effects in different applications. You have been
warned.
6.1
Booting the A4
6.1
On the Archive disc this month, you will find a directory called
PipeDream.A4Booting. It contains the ‘Booting’ sequence used by Jonathan
Brown with his newly acquired A4 (RISC-OS 3.10). The directory contains
a file, [ReadMe], which explains the how and why so that you can make
your own ‘improvements’.
6.1
Another contribution to the disc by Jonathan is the directory PipeD
ream.Sprite22 which contains high resolution versions of the PD 4
sprites and Jonathan’s hints about installing them. A set of Acorn high
resolution sprites is provided by Acorn with RISC-OS 3 but Acorn’s files
do not contain sprites for PD.
6.1
Both Jonathan and I would welcome contributions to this discussion.
6.1
PipeDream 4 bug?
6.1
Jonathan also reports a bug but I can’t reproduce the effect he has. Can
you? Jonathan says:
6.1
I have also, I regret to say, detected a bug (Aargh!!) in PD 4 − but
only a small one. When a PD 3 file is double-clicked without PD 4 having
been previously loaded, PD 4 loads in but the window for that file does
not appear. The file does, however, appear in the Documents sub-menu on
the Icon bar. This only happens with files that have not been saved
under PD 4. This happens on both the A440/1 and the A4 (RISC-OS 2.00 &
3.10 respectively), so it probably isn’t a clash with the operating
system. I suspect it is a problem within PD itself as the line
6.1
SetMacro Alias$@RunType_DDE Run <PipeDream$Dir>.!Run %%*0
6.1
in the !Boot file presents no problems.
6.1
If you have any theories please let me know.
6.1
RISC-OS 3 and PipeDream
6.1
Recently, I have been asked many times whether PD ‘works’ with RISC-
OS 3. The answer is a slightly qualified “Yes”. If you have an early
version of PD 3, you may have a problem or two with RISC-OS 3. The
solution is to upgrade your copy of PD 3 to version 3.14. The upgrade is
free.
6.1
There are no problems with any version of PD 4 but, just for the record,
the latest version is 4.13 and, in the last few versions, the charts
feature has been improved. If you need an upgrade then send both your
program and examples disc to Colton Software,
6.1
‘Charts from the beginning’
6.1
Warning! − Apart from the [ReadMe] file, do not attempt to load and run
any of the other files in the Charts directory of the Archive monthly
disc from your master copy of that disc!
6.1
Why is this? Colton Software’s hot linked graphics package operates by
saving copies of chart files back to disc. The original file we have
supplied will be over-written. For that reason, I strongly suggest that
you work with back up copies of the files in this directory rather than
the originals.
6.1
I suggest that, if NCS haven’t done so, you should write protect your
Archive disc by opening the write protect tab. If the hole is open then
you will be unable to write to the disc. An error message from your
operating system may suggest to you that having your disc write
protected is a mistake. I suggest that you do not open the write protect
tab but that you copy the files either to your hard disc or, if you have
sufficient memory, then use a RAM disc. Because the files are saved
every time the data is modified, you need to load and save at speed. A
RAM disc is faster than a hard disc which in turn is faster than a
floppy.
6.1
Creating a RAM disc
6.1
Place the pointer over the icon which is at the right hand end of the
iconbar (on earlier machines this icon was a ‘fancy’, slanting upper
case A but, on the latest machines, it is an acorn) and tap the mouse
Menu (middle) button. Select ‘Task display’. Near the bottom of the task
display window you will find ‘RAM disc  0K’ (meaning zero Kilobytes −
not ‘correct’). Place the pointer just to the right of ‘0K’ and (using
<select>) drag this out to some suitable value such as ‘64K’. A RAM icon
will appear on the left of the icon bar; it can be treated exactly as a
disc icon − indeed, you have created a RAM disc. The information stored
in a RAM disc is lost when you switch off the computer so, before
closing down, make sure that you have copied the files you want to keep
from the RAM disc to a ‘proper’ disc.
6.1
RISC-OS printing
6.1
Although charts make pleasant pictures on a monitor, the result wanted
by most users of charts will be ‘hard copy’ − printed output!
6.1
You cannot print charts with PipeDream printer drivers but only with
RISC-OS printer drivers. Before you continue, make sure that you know
the difference. Because you can print charts only with a RISC-OS printer
driver, the example files in the Charts directory (but not the [ReadMe]
file) have been saved with the ‘Printer configuration − Printer type’
set to RISC-OS rather than the more usual Parallel.
6.1
RISC-OS printing takes longer than PD printer driver printing (typically
RISC-OS printing takes 5 to 10 minutes per A4 page) but, without RISC-OS
printing, you will not be able to print charts.
6.1
I find the RISC-OS output from the so called ‘9-pin’ printers disap
pointing because of the large dot diameter. Dot matrix printers with 24
pins are substantially better and bubble and ink jet printers are better
still, only marginally poorer than laser printers.
6.1
If you have RISC-OS 3, you will have been provided with a suitable
printer driver as part of that operating system. If you have RISC-OS 2
but you do not have any printer drivers then I suggest that you upgrade
to RISC-OS 3.
6.1
Outline fonts
6.1
The charts generated by PD 4 include text. The numbers which appear
along the axes of graphs are text as are the named ‘categories’ (more of
which later) which appear along the ‘x-axis’ of bar charts. Although you
can select any of your typefaces, the default used by Colton Software is
Acorn’s proprietary Homerton font.
6.1
You will not get very far with the PD 4 charts package if you do not
have Acorn’s outline font manager and, at least, the Homerton font. So
where do you get these from?
6.1
If you have bought a RISC-OS 3 machine or upgraded from RISC-OS 2 to
RISC-OS 3 then your purchase will include both the outline font manager
and some outline fonts (including Homerton). If you intend to upgrade
from RISC-OS 2 to RISC-OS 3 then, when you buy RISC-OS 3, you will find
that a (new) font manager and the Homerton (and other) fonts are built
into the RISC-OS 3 ‘chips’.
6.1
RISC-OS 3.10 is available now (Well, sort of! Ed.) at about £50 so I
suggest that, rather than spend money on an outline font starter kit and
printer drivers for use with RISC-OS 2 at a cost of about £50, you may
prefer to spend the money on RISC-OS 3. I strongly recommend buying
RISC-OS 3 rather than ‘upgrading’ your RISC-OS 2 system.
6.1
Even if you have RISC-OS 2, printer drivers and some outline fonts, I
still recommend that, if you are ‘serious’ about using PD 4 Charts, you
upgrade to RISC-OS 3. Colton Software have told me that PD 4 has been
‘optimised’ for RISC-OS 3. My experience is that using PD 4 with RISC-
OS 3 is noticeably ‘smoother’ and quicker.
6.1
Finally, on outline fonts, on the more recent issues of Colton Soft
ware’s PD 4 Examples disc you will find a version of Acorn’s outline
font manager which is suitable for use with RISC-OS 2 (but not with 3).
However, you will not find any outline fonts RISC-OS 2 printer drivers
to go with that font manager. If you are in the position of not having
Acorn’s Homerton font and if you do not intend to upgrade to RISC-OS 3
then write to me and I will advise you how best to overcome your
shortage so that you can use PD 4’s charts.
6.1
PipeDream 4 − Version 4.13
6.1
Today is the 28th August 1992 and, as I write, the latest version of
PD 4 is 4.13. This version is not ‘bug free’ but the bugs remaining are
not serious. Colton Software do intend to release another version − but
not yet. Upgrades to version 4.13 are available free of charge but only
from Colton Software. If you do not have version 4.13 then send both
your Program disc and (this is important, especially if you intend to
stick with RISC-OS 2) your Examples disc to Colton Software asking for
the latest version.
6.1
Many of the improvements to PD 4 between version 4.10 and 4.13 have been
to the way in which PD 4‘s charts operate. If you do not have version
4.13, some of the facilities which I refer to later in this article
either do not exist or do not work. Please upgrade your version to 4.13
before writing to me and complaining! It is partly because I was waiting
for the charts to ‘stabilise’ and partly because I wanted to assess
whether to advise you to upgrade to RISC-OS 3 (with fonts and printer
drivers) that I have delayed the launch of this ‘Charts from the
Beginning’ series.
6.1
Recent issues of the Examples disc contain the latest RISC-OS 2 versions
of the CLib (C library), FPE (Floating point emulator), Colour and
Outline font manager modules. Unless you have RISC-OS 3, you should copy
these onto your system disc. Don’t copy them if you have RISC-OS 3!
6.1
Homerton font
6.1
On this month’s Archive disc and, on other discs, the files in direc
tories containing charts will be in Homerton font (later charts
directories will include files in Trinity font).
6.1
If you send me contributions to PipeLine which include charts, I shall
be most grateful if you will keep the [ReadMe] file in system font and,
for now, the application files in Homerton. Later, I will probably
extend the range of typefaces used in charts applications to include
Trinity but I am reluctant at the moment to include Selwyn or NewHall
since many subscribers to PipeLine will be using Dingbats (instead of
Selwyn) and NewSchbook (instead of NewHall). Error messages will be
generated and the text in the chart will appear on screen in system
font, probably at the wrong scale, and a printed version will look a
real mess.
6.1
Charts
6.1
The time has come to try out a chart. The figure opposite is a mode 12
screen shot which I shall use by way of example. The files are on the
Archive monthly disc.
6.1
The PD 4 package will produce the traditional “x-y” graphs but, for this
simple exercise, I shall use a bar chart mainly because the bar chart is
the default option built into PD 4 by Colton Software.
6.1
In the directory, Charts, on the Archive monthly disc, you will find the
files [Timing_1], [Timing_2], [Timing_1C] and [Timing_1D]. PD chart
files behave differently from ordinary PD files but they do not have a
different Acorn filetype number and so they appear in a directory viewer
having the same icon as other PD 4 files. In order to distinguish a
chart file from an ordinary PD 4 file, the convention I am using is that
a file with _C as a suffix is a chart file. This convention of an
underline followed by an upper case C is also used by Colton Software
and I recommend it to you.
6.1
The file [Timing_2] is a close copy of the file [Timing_1] but it is not
hot linked to a chart and you can experiment with it. The file
[Timing_1D] is a file in !Draw format to which I shall refer later.
6.1
If you have the monthly disc, double click on the [Timing_1] file to
load it. The chart [Timing_1C] will be loaded into slot [Timing_1]A14. I
have scaled the chart to 130% of its full size so that it fits across a
72 column screen.
6.1
The only font used in [Timing_1] is Homerton. For rows 2 to 11 the font
is 10 point with a 12 point line spacing. The chart which is loaded into
[Timing_1]A14 also uses the Homerton font. If you do not have Homerton
then the system font will be used and the document will probably look a
mess!
6.1
This chart does not have a title or units and I realise that this is bad
practice but I shall explain how to add these later.
6.1
The data consists of the Names of five people in column A, the time in
minutes which they took to get to work Yesterday and Today in columns B
and C respectively. The bar chart shows the time taken yesterday in red
and today’s time in yellow.
6.1
Place the pointer in slot C10 (Sheila’s time for today ) and change the
value from 23 to 80. You will find that the (modified) file [Timing_1C]
will be saved (overwriting the original file) and the yellow bar
corresponding to Sheila will grow. Restore the value in [Timing_1]C23 to
23 and the file will be saved again and the chart will be drawn again.
6.1
The file, [Timing_1], has been sorted on column A (in alphabetical
order). Mark the block A6C11. Execute the command <Ctrl-BSO> (Block
SOrt) on column B first in Ascending order. You will find that the hot
linked chart will be redrawn with the largest bar at the right when the
data is sorted in Ascending order on column B.
6.1
It is more usual to display bar charts in descending order from left to
right. Execute <Ctrl-BSO> again but this time remove the blue star from
the Ascending order box so that the data is sorted in descending order.
Now sort it again into alphabetical order on column A. Notice that the
chart is not only drawn on the screen but is saved to your disc or RAM
disc each time the data is changed.
6.1
Change Bill to William. The chart is saved and then drawn only when you
move the cursor from slot [Timing_1]A6 and not before.
6.1
Creating the charts
6.1
You can now repeat the way in which I made this chart. Make sure you
work with a backup copy of the files. Load [Timing_2]. Look at the
expression in slot [Timing_2]A14 and you will see that the name of the
chart you have to create is [Timing_2C]. I have left out the @ in this
line so that PD will not give you an error message that the chart cannot
be found. Place the cursor at the start of row 14 and then tap <F8> to
delete the name of the chart.
6.1
Drag the pointer from A6 to C11 to mark the data. Then execute the
command <Ctrl-CHN> (CHart New) or alternatively click <menu> and run the
pointer through Chart and click on New Chart. You will create a bar
chart which PD will provisionally called [Chart1]. Place the pointer in
the [Chart1] window, press <menu>, run the pointer through Save, change
the name to [Timing_2C] and drag the icon into the directory window
containing the backup copy of [Timing_2].
6.1
Place the pointer in slot [Timing_2]A14 and click <select>. Drag the
file [Timing_2C] into the [Timing_2] window. The bar chart will be drawn
at 100% with its top left corner in slot A14. Place the pointer in
[Timing_2]A14, click <select> and edit the line @G:Timing_2C,100@ to
read @G:Timing_2C,130@ so that the bar chart is enlarged to 130% size.
6.1
If you wish, you can close the window containing what was [Chart1] and
is now called [Timing_2C] by clicking on the close window icon.
6.1
Finally, save the modified [Timing_2]. To prove that all is well, close
the [Timing_2] window and load it again. If you have succeeded, you will
find that the chart loads and is hot-linked.
6.1
I’m not sure if it’s a ‘bug’ or not but sometimes I find that, on
reloading, the chart is not hot-linked. If this happens, save every
thing, quit PD from the icon bar and double click on [Timing_2C]. This
second time, from a ‘cold start’ the hot link will be active (well it is
for me).
6.1
Over to you
6.1
If you have succeeded in creating this ‘default options’ chart, you may
like to experiment and see if you can ‘improve’ the chart. As I implied
earlier, I am not particularly proud of the file [Timing_1C] as it
stands. Apart from missing text (such as title and units) which requires
larger margins (from the Options menu), I would like to see the bars
narrower so that there is a gap between bars. I would prefer the ‘3D’
turned off and would like settings (from the Gallery − Bar sub menu)
such as Bar size 60% width and 60% overlap. All these are achievable
from within PD but will have to await another tutorial. The file
[Timing_1D] has been Saved from PD in !Draw format and, as an illustra
tive chart, I think it is approaching a “Merit” standard. You’ll have to
wait for another tutorial to ‘discover’ the way to achieve a
“Distinction” standard using PD’s hot-linked charts.
6.1
Please let me know how you get on and, if you have real trouble
producing the type of chart you want, write to me enclosing a disc file
of your data and I will try to help you.
6.1
Finally
6.1
We now have a fax attached to our telephone answering machine. You can
try sending us a fax on 0 793 723 347 but you might have problems if
we’re switched to the answerphone and not able to switch it over to fax
in time. We can’t afford a separate dedicated line for the fax at the
moment!  A
6.1
Hardware Column
6.1
Brian Cowan
6.1
I mentioned in the last issue that I was going to be working in an
overseas university for the month of August. At that stage I didn’t have
my A4 and I decided that carrying a full-sized Archimedes machine was
out of the question. So I was suffering from severe ARM deprivation.
Imagine my surprise then, on returning, to discover that Acorn had
announced not one but four new machines in umpteen different configura
tions! I knew that something was in the pipeline but this has really
astounded me. I am not going to repeat the information given in the
recent Archive supplement on the new machines but a few points are worth
examining in considering what all these developments imply for the
future.
6.1
The ARM250
6.1
The idea of integrating the functions of the various members of the ARM
family chip set into a single package is excellent. This fits in very
well with the general philosophy that Acorn have adopted in developing
the ARM products. While enhanced performance comes from the improved
technology allowing a clock speed of 12MHz (a 50% increase) remember
that the CPU does not have a RAM cache. In other words, this is an ARM2
system rather than ARM3. In considering what might happen in the future,
the ARM250 could be enhanced in a number of different ways: RAM cache,
floating point hardware, etc, etc. My real surprise is that the A4, with
its severe space (and power) constraints was developed without using the
ARM250. However, I am glad they did because the ARM3 systems still have
the edge where performance is concerned. The new machines are aimed at
the bottom end of the market, although here I suspect that the prices
still don’t make them competitive enough.
6.1
Prospects for older machines
6.1
I must confess to being apprehensive whenever I hear of new Acorn
machines being released. I have a considerable investment in the older
models and I don’t want them to become outdated. The main concern is
that software houses may not continue to support old hardware when newer
features become available. Along these lines, I had a sneaking fear that
RISC-OS 3 might never appear for the older models. I know that it has
been coded to exploit the RAM cache of the ARM3 to the full and I have
heard rumours that it runs rather slower than RISC-OS 2 on ARM2
machines. We shall soon know, but the appearance of the ARM250 means
that the cache is not to be regarded as an essential requirement for
software producers.
6.1
A recent letter to me from a reader pointed out that an A540 running
RISC-OS 3 was a pretty impressive machine; I quite agree although,
currently, I await the arrival of the release ROMs. (So do several
hundred other Archive readers! Ed.) The two areas where the machine is
lacking (as are the older machines as well) are the high capacity floppy
disc drives and the bi-directional printer port.
6.1
The letter goes on to point out that there is a floppy drive upgrade
produced by Arxe Systems (although I have yet to see this), but it
requires the use of one of the precious expansion slots. The problem is
that the old 1772 disc controller chip cannot be used and somehow access
must be gained to the required signal lines. This is most conveniently
done through a podule socket; it certainly can’t be done from the
existing 1772 output. However, since the required circuitry is not all
that much I am sure that “fudge” solutions are possible, by connecting
to existing chips, etc. This sort of product might well appear in the
future, particularly when you consider that the new high density filing
system software is contained in the RISC-OS 3.1 ROMs.
6.1
The lack of bi-directional printer port in the older machines does not
seem to excite so much interest but I think people should give it
serious consideration. The newer machines all lack in the interfacing/
expansion area when compared with the older models so I am sure that the
printer port is going to become very important for hardware expansion in
the future. Just look around at what exists in the PC world. Adaptors
from “Centronics” to SCSI, IEEE488, etc, etc. abound. In fact, you can
find adaptors from the bi-directional printer port to almost any
communication standard. The A4 has very limited expansion capability,
although the new machines are a little better. So, with the new style
printer port, there is a ready-made range of hardware at competitive
prices and ready for use. All we need is the software. I feel that a
good high density disc drive interface should also include a bi-
directional printer port as well. If it did not use a podule slot, it
would be very attractive indeed. What a pity the 1772 disc controller
chip is soldered in!
6.1
The real answer to all this is an add-on board which contains the same
(industry standard) interface chip, providing high density floppy disc
interface, IDE interface, bidirectional printer port, etc. If this were
designed to use all the new code in the RISC-OS 3 ROMs, this could
provide full compatibility for owners of the older machines.
6.1
Floating points
6.1
This topic seems to be a regular feature of this column, with the same
moans being aired ad nauseam. I have no news about either of the two
third-party floating point units. However, it appears that the Acorn FPA
chip is well on the way and should be selling for a reasonably attrac
tive price. The A5000 has a socket just waiting for this chip but it
seems that 540 owners will have to trade in their CPU card for one
containing the FPU. I had hoped that it could be fitted to existing
cards but that looks unlikely. For owners of ARM2 machines, there will
be combined ARM3+FPU upgrades. Let’s see who is the first to produce
one! Hopefully, there will be an option to upgrade the old ARM3-only
add-ons.
6.1
PC matters
6.1
I have been using my Aleph One PC card for some time now. The software
support has now reached a reasonable state, permitting either operation
in a RISC-OS window or single-tasking. The mouse driver problems have
been sorted out and, all in all, I am quite pleased with the product. A
little-known interesting feature of the PC card is its sound capability.
We all know that the sound support of the PC Emulator is pretty
pathetic. Well, the PC card has all the correct hardware and there is an
audio output which simply needs to be connected to the Archimedes
internal audio input.
6.1
I am just in the process of installing a ’387 coprocessor − remember
that the Config’ file must be altered to tell the machine about its
presence. I hope to be testing some fairly serious software soon and I
will let you know how I get on. Unfortunately, most software I am
interested in seems to come on high density discs. This is a pain (see
my comments above) but perhaps using my A4 with the imminent RemoteFS
will be the answer.
6.1
The other day, I was running some DOS software and I was thinking how
well it was going, when I realised that my 386 card was in another
machine! The fact is that the software emulator is still improving in
leaps and bounds. Admittedly, the software I was running was pretty
elementary, but I am impressed! The latest version (1.81) has EGA
graphics and I understand that some of the display code has been
substantially speeded up.
6.1
What is going to happen with the Emulator in the future? I pose this
question for a number of reasons. Firstly let’s consider the CPU
emulation. Without going into technicalities, essentially the software
is pretending to be a “sort of” 8086 microprocessor. Admittedly, later
versions of the software also include emulation of an 8087 floating
point coprocessor, but we are still talking about bottom-of-the-range
hardware. It has always been the rule that DOS software is downward-
compatible; that is why it is mostly so useless. Well I have news for
you. Windows 3.1 (which is far superior to version 3.0) needs at least a
’286 CPU, so it won’t run on the Emulator − you will have to use a
hardware card. My guess, however, is that if the Emulator is still being
developed, then emulation of a more up-market CPU will have to be in the
pipeline.
6.1
The other thing to consider is WindowsNT. This is Microsoft’s direction
for the future and it is essentially their attempt at portable software
(rather like UNIX is supposed to be). As I understand it, this looks
very much like Windows, so those users will be happy about using it. I
don’t understand fully how the software portability is supposed to work;
presumably it is all written in a sort of C and each CPU/machine has its
own approved compiler. If Acorn are going to go down this road, they may
call a halt to further PC Emulator work.
6.1
The A4
6.1
Yes, I do now have my A4! And I am delighted with it. My immediate
reaction to the machine includes two complaints. Firstly the mouse. This
is simply incredible − do the Acorn bods really expect people to be
happy carrying around and using a mouse almost as big as the rest of the
computer. (Come on, Brian, that is a slight over-statement! Ed.) There
were garbled comments about the difficulty of using a trackerball with
three buttons, and the A4‘s manual explains how you can run the mouse
over your leg in a confined space. I know you can do this; I did it for
a few years before discovering the trackerball. I am really sold on
trackerballs. One reason is obvious: there is no room on my cluttered
desk for a mouse; that is why I became expert at running it on my leg!
So when I thought I would like an A4 I started investigating the Minnie
Mouse situation.
6.1
Pure Genius
6.1
As usual, those boffins at Atomwide were two steps ahead of me. There is
a small trackerball which is absolutely ideal for the A4: the Genius
HiPoint, so-called “smart mouse”. It clips to the side of the A4 (above
the keyboard next to the hinge so as not to obstruct the disc drive) and
Atomwide have rewired the connector so that it plugs directly into the
mouse socket underneath.
6.1
The Genius is a strange looking object, looking rather like a quarter of
a circle. The ball is at the centre and a shaped bar around the curved
surface provides “select” and “adjust” functions. A separate button at
the other side of the ball is the “menu” key. Your hand (well, my one
actually) fits beautifully around the assembly. With the middle finger
along the select/adjust bar, your thumb can roll the ball or click the
button for a menu. The whole thing is a triumph of ergonomics. If you
are left-handed, it could be fixed on the other side of the keyboard
(with a longer lead) and also rotated through ninety degrees if
required.
6.1
Finally, I should comment on the manner of fixing. The clip holding the
trackerball to the computer case is not all that sturdy − but that is
deliberate − a knock will dislodge the thing rather than breaking it, or
the computer case. At first, I was sceptical of the strange-looking
object but, within half an hour, I had become a firm convert − I really
recommend this one. (Available at £58 through Archive.)
6.1
SCSI interface (the lack of)
6.1
This is my other complaint. Most of my work is stored on SyQuest
removables. This has proved the most convenient method for carrying
material between home and work, as well as transporting data between
machines in the lab. So, at the moment, I am back to using floppies with
the A4. Clearly one could obtain access to the IDE bus which should
support a further hard disc − but this is not SCSI − or we shall have to
wait for something using the printer port. At the moment, most of the
usual companies seem reluctant to consider add-on expansions other than
by the “legal” hardware connections. Hopefully, as time goes on, we will
see a change of heart. As well as a full speed SCSI interface, I would
like to have an 8Mb memory expansion. The lack of facility for an FPA is
unfortunate but I can live without it.
6.1
Strange features
6.1
The keyboard layout takes a bit of getting used to. I really miss the
F11 and F12 keys. F12 is often used in conjunction with other keys − for
example, you now have to press <F2> with three other keys at the same
time to shut down the computer. One very strange feature is the “\”
character in DOS when using the PC Emulator. DOS users will know that
this slash is very important as it is used as the directory delimiter −
as “.” is used in RISC-OS. I was most distressed to discover that in DOS
the \ did not work but, purely by chance, I found that the hash key #
gave the required character. I tracked the problem down to the need for
the UK keyboard driver (as the Release Note actually tells you!).
However, if you are going to install the driver from your AUTOEXEC.BAT
file, you must note that the command is different for different versions
of DOS. Also, make sure the relevant command is issued after the path to
DOS has been specified.
6.1
One other puzzling feature is that my machine seems to hang-up from time
to time. This can be very distressing, particularly if there is unsaved
data. It might well be that the machine is just doing some
“housekeeping” because, after a minute or so, one regains control of the
pointer. I don’t know what is happening − maybe I am doing something
stupid. Has anyone else had similar problems?
6.1
An important feature of a portable is the battery life. The A4 has
clever battery management support but I would like some more informa
tion. As yet, I don’t know how long a fully charged battery will last.
Also, is it better to use a floppy or the hard disc if power consumption
is critical? It does seem that the most power-hungry part of the machine
is the screen illumination − you are advised to turn this as low as
possible.  A
6.1
PD Column
6.1
David Holden
6.1
Firstly, here are two items that may be of interest. I have heard of
another disk magazine with a major difference from the others. The
magazine is called ‘Lunchtime’ and I gather that the contents will cover
every topic except computers(!). I shall try to get hold of a copy and
pass on some more information. Meanwhile if you are interested it costs
£2 per issue and is available from 203 London Road, Chesterton,
Newcastle ST5 7HT.
6.1
The second is a new library called ‘Res Publica’. It’s Italian but I am
sure that there are many Archimedes owners who either speak Italian or
would be happy to grapple with the language barrier for a new source of
PD material. A demo disk costs 5,000 lira and is available from
Christian Ghezzi, via B. da Urbino 2, 20035 Lissone (MI), Italy. Since
the letter was written in very good English, I don’t think you will have
any trouble being understood if you write for a demo and catalogue.
6.1
New music
6.1
Vince Hudd of Soft Rock Software has released a ‘computer album’ of
music titled Winds of Change. The ‘single’ which consists of three
‘tracks’ is available from PD libraries. The full package costs £1.99
from Soft Rock Software. I’m always willing to encourage people like
Soft Rock who release cut down versions of their games to libraries so,
for the next few weeks, if you send me (not Archive!) two first class
stamps and a blank formatted disk I’ll return it with a copy of the PD
version which is called White Lies.
6.1
PD ray tracing
6.1
There is now a variety of ray tracing programs available from PD
libraries. The first was QRT (Quick Ray Trace) and more recently the
Persistence of Vision package has been widely acclaimed. I’ve just
received a new program called RayTrace which looks very powerful. It’s
command line driven so probably most useful to those who want to produce
artwork for games, etc. My artistic prowess (or lack of it) is well
known so I’m not really qualified to pronounce on the merits of these
packages but if there is anyone who has tried them, or has the expertise
to do so, and would be prepared to give a more informed opinion, I would
like to hear from you.
6.1
The best language for PD programs?
6.1
(It’s at times like this that I feel it appropriate to remind readers
that the views stated within the pages of Archive do not necessarily
represent those of the editorial staff. If you want to disagree with
David, I suggest you write direct to him, not to the Archive office.
Thanks. Ed.)
6.1
I have had several letters recently from people who want to write PD
programs for the Archimedes and one question that keeps cropping up is
what language to use. There is always controversy over which is the
‘best’ language. There is, of course, no such thing. Every programming
language has advantages and disadvantages, and these also vary according
to the type of computer and the strength of the individual version of
the language. Many people seem to feel that they will not be taken
seriously if they write in Basic.
6.1
The Archimedes possesses a powerful and fast version of interpreted
Basic. Because of its superb OS interface via ‘SYS’ and ‘FX’ calls there
is very little that can’t be done with Archimedes Basic and because it
is so simple to use, you are much less likely to have obscure bugs in
your code. There is often no advantage in using compiled languages for
simple programs unless speed is essential. Basic programs are easy to
write, easy to maintain and easy to debug. Sensible programmers never
make things more complicated than necessary.
6.1
Possibly one reason that people don’t like writing in Basic is that it
is so easy for others to look at their program code. There is a PD
application called ‘Basic-M/C’ which takes a Basic program and puts a
header on it to call Basic and Run the actual program. The whole thing
is then disguised as absolute code. This seems to have become quite
popular recently.
6.1
Compiled languages
6.1
Personally, I don’t like compiled Basic very much. On a PC, it is
different because there is no common Basic interpreter (except perhaps
GWBasic which is almost useless) so some sort of compiler is essential
if you want to write portable programs. The disadvantage of compiled
Basic is that the programs tend to become extremely large. This isn’t
really a fault of compiled Basic but of Basic compilers. A true compiled
Basic is a subset of the Basic language which can be compiled into tight
code. The best only include the code for the ‘keywords’ which are
actually used so the code can be fairly short. It’s amazing how few
keywords are necessary to write quite extensive programs. There are,
however, no compiled Basics for the Archimedes. The Basic compilers
available, although excellent, accept (almost) the entire range of
keywords and syntax with the aim of being able to compile almost any
program. The inevitable consequence is that they produce bulky code.
Another disadvantage is that most of the compiled Basic programs I have
seen don’t seem to do any ‘garbage collection’ so that, as they operate,
they seem to grab more and more memory and never return it to the Wimp
Pool.
6.1
‘C’ is the language that Acorn suggest for Archimedes applications. For
utilities, I think this is a mistake. C is very powerful but has some of
the disadvantages of compiled Basic. On a multitasking computer,
programs should ideally be as frugal with memory usage as possible. Even
a 4 Mb machine will run out of memory if they are not. C programs have a
habit of becoming rather large. This is OK for main applications which
will probably be run alone or with only one other but not so good for
small utilities.
6.1
As an example, the text editor Twin was written in Assembler before any
compiled languages existed for the Archimedes, (in fact, even before the
Archimedes itself existed). It is about 28Kb long. Edit is written in C
and is considerably less powerful but needs 160Kb. I have a PD utility
program written in ‘C’ which is 87Kb long. An equivalent, almost
identical, written in Basic takes just 12Kb and, in use, appears just as
fast.
6.1
One advantage of C is that there is a vast library of PD source code
available for PC programs. This can often be converted to the Archimedes
much more quickly than writing the program from scratch. First Word Plus
originated on the Atari ST, was re-compiled for the PC and then for the
Archimedes. This advantage has greatly diminished with the introduction
of RISC-OS and the use of more powerful versions of C such as C++ on
other computers but quite a large portion of a program can often be used
with little modification.
6.1
The same comments could be applied to Pascal which is widely used on
PC’s although not so popular on the Archimedes. True Pascal isn’t
actually a normal compiled language. It’s a sort of halfway house where
the compiler produces a ‘pseudo code’ which can be interpreted and run
very quickly from library routines. This makes it very much faster than
Basic because the pseudo code is written to suit the way that computers
want to do things and not the way that humans want to write programs. It
normally produces ‘tighter’ code than C although is not as fast. Once
again, portability is now being diminished by the use of Turbo Pascal
which is nearly as fast and powerful as C but as easy to use as Basic.
6.1
The main reason that professional programmers write in languages like C
is not because they are necessarily better but because it makes it
quicker for them to re-compile for other computers if required. They
also build up a large library of routines and it makes sense to write in
the language for which these routines are intended.
6.1
I would suggest that if you are looking for something quicker than Basic
but not as expensive as C then you should investigate the language
‘Charm’ available from David Pilling for £5.99 (or £6 from Archive). I
purchased a copy recently and although I’ve not had time to give it more
than a brief examination, I would suggest that it would be a good (and
cheap) alternative to C. Since much of the syntax appears similar, it
would probably be easy to move up to C later if you needed something
more powerful.
6.1
I think the best answer to the question of which language to use is to
find the one that suits your style of thinking. I started programming on
a KIM II computer (and if you can remember the KIM you must be as
ancient as me) (Guilty! Ed.) which meant hand coding by punching in 6502
code on a numeric keyboard, not even an assembler. If anyone had told me
that within a few years I would own computers that counted RAM in
megabytes and were probably more powerful than the mainframes of that
time, I would have found it difficult to believe. I am always amazed at
how easy it is, using any of the modern languages, to write programs
that can do almost anything. So don’t worry about what language to use,
pick the one that you like and learn to use it well. I’ve been writing
in BBC Basic for years and I often find people who can make it perform
tricks in ways that would never have occurred to me.
6.1
The greatest enjoyment in writing programs is when you discover an
elegant method of making the computer perform a task. That’s one of the
reasons there are so many PD programs that really don’t do anything
particularly useful, such as the ‘demos’ that all libraries have in
profusion. The fun was not actually performing the task but in finding a
way to do it. Sometimes, when I first see a program, I wonder why anyone
bothered to write it. Then I look at the code and see some wonderfully
compact or elegant algorithm and realise that’s what it’s all about.
Programs can sometimes be solutions for which the author couldn’t think
up a suitable problem. While people derive enjoyment in this way from
actually writing programs, there will always be PD, because programs
have to do something, so although the fun might be in the writing, there
is no reason why the product can’t also be useful to someone.
6.1
Please keep writing to me at the usual address − 39 Knighton Park Road,
Sydenham, London  SE26 5RN.  A
6.1
Multimedia Column
6.1
Ian Lynch
6.1
“IL ’92” has more significance than this year’s version of my initials.
It stands for Interactive Learning ’92 and is an annual conference
organised by the ubiquitous John Barker, editor of InsideIT. In the
context of Acorn’s recent marketing initiatives and new product
releases, the reaction to their presence at IL ’92 was perhaps the most
significant feature of the conference and so it is the dominant subject
of this month’s column.
6.1
Big names
6.1
IL’92 is supported by most of the big names in the multimedia computer
industry − Philips, IBM, Apple, Commodore and, of course, Acorn. The
format of the conference was a series of seminars in a large lecture
room with video projector, quality audio systems and technicians in
attendance. Various stands were also available to enable the customers
to “have a go” with a variety of the latest toys.
6.1
Conference or trade show?
6.1
I must admit that although this conference has been an annual event for
eight years, this is the first that I have attended. Part of the reason
for this is that it is in Edinburgh, it is expensive and, until
recently, I was more interested in technical developments than in
marketing issues and presentations.
6.1
Considering that the conference was focussed on interactive learning,
there were very few practising teachers present (probably reflecting the
cost) and, in my view, this was a major weakness. There were many
influential people including Margaret Bell, the new Chief Executive of
the National Council for Educational Technology but a very dominant part
of the population were representatives of hardware and software
companies. This leads one to speculate about the purpose of such a
meeting. I suspect that the manufacturers were there as much because
they have a history of attendance and want to see what the opposition
has to offer as to get any real interaction with potential customers.
Most of the company representatives I talked to could not discuss the
learning implications of the technologies they were pedalling in any
sensible way and this is why I question the title.
6.1
Double standards
6.1
One of the strangest things about a conference entitled Interactive
Learning was the complete inability of the majority of the speakers to
use interactive techniques successfully in their own deliveries.
6.1
Not so rosy Apples
6.1
Apple’s presentations were bad − which is unusual for them and one
wonders whether they would have been so complacent with an industrial
audience. One speaker extolled the virtues of QuickTime and how there
was a huge library of video clips just waiting for teachers and
developers. He then went on to show some clips which were completely
irrelevant to his talk and the majority of his presentation was talking
to text on a large screen. If this tool is so easy to use and there is
such an abundance of material why couldn’t he put together a decent
presentation?
6.1
There are two issues here. Firstly, there is more to designing interac
tive applications than the raw technology − specific skills are needed.
Secondly, despite the fact that it is becoming easier, putting together
a half hour quality presentation takes several hours of planning. I
would say it is better not to present at all than to make a pig’s ear of
it.
6.1
Big Blue
6.1
IBM took a different approach with “Ultimedia”. (John Patten would
deduct 2% for spelling before they started!) They gave an industry
standard presentation using digital video sequences of Hush Puppies and
Ski-Sunday on a £3000 workstation − very professionally presented.
Unfortunately, they were not addressing shoe salesman or Jean-Claude
Killy. Sorry, boys, education and training are not the same industry as
selling shoes and, by the way, you were in Scotland not America so all
those American accents are culturally completely out of place. To add
insult to injury, the presenter said that he was hoping that attending
these events would bring enlightenment to his superiors so that they
would take education more seriously. Incredible! If we customers make
enough fuss the manufacturer might condescend to give us some thought.
And we think Acorn have got marketing problems!
6.1
Philips
6.1
We witnessed the first ever public showing of full motion video for CD-I
before it was flown out to Europe. James Bond in action on a video
projector was looking good but we will have to wait for interactive
applications. Steve White gave his usual presentation with the little
risqué asides. David Anderson’s after dinner speech did not quite work.
Another one who misjudged his audience. Sexist comments are not suitable
in mixed company!
6.1
ICL
6.1
I did not attend the ICL presentation but ICL are worth a mention
because they have a marketing push into education. Am I the only one for
whom their education name, CLASSICL, conjures up an image of the dated
and obsolete technologies associated with the Greeks? A nice pun but an
indication that whoever thought it up was not aware of the images that
it might project to aware IT users, familiar with multitasking operating
systems and RISC technology.
6.1
Acorn
6.1
So what about Acorn? Well, they weren’t perfect − Peter Talbot was
replaced as a speaker at short notice by Roger Brodie who had a frog in
his throat. Most of his presentation was text based on Cable News − but
at least he was professional, generally relevant to learning and he used
a multimedia application in his delivery rather than the OHP used by
some.
6.1
Malcolm Bird backed by Roger Wilson provided a winning combination for
two reasons. Firstly, the delivery was to a very high standard using a
variety of graphics audio and moving pictures. Malcolm took value for
money as his theme and the appropriateness of state of the art technol
ogy given this constraint. This was then related to applications of
direct relevance to teaching and learning. Secondly, Acorn showed that
they were committed by sending several of their most senior staff to a
conference on August Bank Holiday. John Barker, the event organiser,
proclaimed it the best presentation of the conference on more than one
occasion.
6.1
Eidos
6.1
Dr Stephen Streater gave a presentation of the Eidos video editing
system with a very thorough explanation of the issues associated with
digital off-line editing. He also fell into the trap of far too much
text-based material and he talks rather too quickly and quietly at
times. However, I felt he was more sympathetically received because he
was obviously a very clever “techie” rather than someone in marketing
and the product did something which was obviously useful rather than a
technical gimmick. In fact, it’s fair to say that the audience were
“gob-smacked”. Here was a simple-to-use system based on a standard
desktop computer which would not only digitise video in real time but
pack it into half the space of !Replay without much loss in quality.
This means that almost three hours of video could be packed onto one CD.
Eidos will produce !Replay compatible films so it will soon be possible
to reduce the cost of digitising films for use in !Replay by a factor of
100.
6.1
A watershed
6.1
To me this conference could well represent a watershed for Acorn, not
because of its World significance but because it is the first time I
have experienced such a level of pro-Acorn feeling in a multi-company
arena. It is as if we have reached a critical mass where people are
ready to accept that the ARM technology is here to stay.
6.1
Roger Wilson was awarded the ‘man of the year’ prize by Chris Roper,
managing director of Longman Logotron. Chris pointed out Roger’s many
achievements and how, from a technical perspective and in relation to
British education, they were more startling than those of billionaire
Bill Gates of Microsoft. Several people said that Acorn provided the
most cost-effective multimedia solutions and there was a lot of interest
in the new machines.
6.1
Digital video has arrived. Admittedly, a little flaky in quality but it
will improve, and it looks as if many IV laser disc applications will be
moved to CD-ROM. I have every confidence in the technical abilities of
Roger Wilson and Stephen Streater to surpass current achievements and so
if there is a choice between CD-ROM and Laservision, now is the time to
back CDs.  A
6.1
Econet Column
6.1
Neil Berry
6.1
I would like to begin with a warning for anyone who is currently
installing Econet hardware, specifically cabling. A few months ago, an
article by was published in Archive, where Richard Gates (Archive 5.8
p61) complained about the flimsy nature of the plastic IDC insertion
tool, and that it easily fractured after a small number of uses, and
that a screwdriver might be a better solution. However, after receiving
a letter from Malcolm Fraser, I am reminded that this is a rather
dangerous thing to do.
6.1
When the cable is inserted into the junction box, the cable’s insulation
is parted by two carefully aligned blades, which make the electrical
contact. If the incorrect device is used to insert the cable, there is a
considerable danger that these blades will become damaged and no longer
provide a good contact with the cable. Econet is a very tolerant system
and can take quite harsh installation and use, but in these days of
large data files and widespread use of Archimedes, small faults tend to
show up much more quickly and faults concerned with intermittently
faulty cable can be a network manager’s worst nightmare.
6.1
High quality professional tools to do this job are available from R.S.
Components, from simple £15 tools, all the way up to £300 production
devices. This range of expense may seem excessive but the extra money
spent initially, more than makes up for the otherwise lost time (and
hair replacement treatment) when you come to try and trace an intermit
tent fault on your network! Richard’s article is definitely worth a
second read, as I think anyone involved with Econet could relate to the
problems mentioned.
6.1
(Actually, the article was by-lined as “Geoff Gates” instead of Richard
Gates − I think I had Geoff Capes in my mind. Sorry about that, Richard!
Ed.)
6.1
ClassNet
6.1
The main bulk of the column this month is devoted to looking at the new
release from Oak Solutions. On the 3/4 July, at the AccessIT conference
in Nottingham, Oak Solutions launched their new high performance
Archimedes networking system − ClassNet. The main difference between
Econet and ClassNet, is its use of thick or thin Ethernet, or fiberoptic
cable systems, thus providing it with a good deal of compatibility with
pre-existing industry standard cabling systems. The firmware provided
with the system presents the user with a standard Econet type interface
and is compatible with existing Level IV file servers and printer
spoolers, so that it builds on existing technology found in schools and
other establishments. Perhaps the biggest attraction of the new system
is that it has REAL data transfer rates of around 600Kb per second,
which is 40 times faster than Econet and nearly twice the speed of ST506
hard discs.
6.1
Network configuration
6.1
The cabling for the new system consists of a backbone and spur con
figuration, with the main cable runs (the backbones) consisting normally
of Thick Ethernet cable and the spurs being Thin Ethernet cable. In
order to link separate networks together, perhaps in different depart
ments or buildings where cable runs are very long, fibre optic cable may
be used to optimise the system. As this type of network is very similar
to the multi-drop system used by Econet, it should be a simple matter to
wire the ClassNet system alongside the existing Econet system, even
using the same trunking! One of the reasons for the speed of the network
is that the backbone and spur network configuration optimises network
performance by separating local network traffic, preventing unnecessary
information from saturating the whole network, preventing thrashing.
6.1
Existing Econet networks with BBC computers may be connected to the new
system via a gateway package which simply converts between Econet and
Ethernet protocols, allowing BBC computers to transparently access any
fileserver or other service, located anywhere within the network. Even
though ClassNet uses an Ethernet cabling system, it is not possible to
‘plug into’ another PC based Ethernet system, without the use of another
gateway, such as Acorn’s TCP/IP, allowing access to PC and or UNIX
machines.
6.1
ClassShare
6.1
Launched in conjunction with ClassNet, is the new ClassShare system,
allowing a number of machines to share the ClassRom hard disc system,
thus reducing the load on the fileservers. The ClassRom units are
usually discrete hard disc units, or suitably altered A5000 internal
drives, with each drive being partitioned into an applications area and
a general access read/write ‘scratchpad’ area. ClassRoms may be used as
stand alone discs, allowing a high degree of security from hacking and
viruses, by virtue of its password protected read only area.
6.1
ClassRom units may also be used as a shared system, allowing a small
number of users without the use of a fileserver, to access the ClassRom
unit remotely from a cluster of machines. Users are presented with two
disc icons on the desktop and simply access either their own area, or
applications, by clicking on these icons, just as if using a local disc.
Network managers are able to do management work remotely, on any
fileserver or ClassRom connected to the network, and are also able to
back up any hard disc anywhere on the network, onto a tape streamer. CD-
ROMs may also be used across the network, utilising special memory
cacheing techniques to maximise performance and minimise delays in
access and read/write operations, traditionally associated with CD-ROM
units.
6.1
Is it worth it?
6.1
Obviously the main attraction to any institution looking into buying
this system, is the sheer speed of operation, which is hardly surpris
ing, with quoted speeds in excess of some local hard disc units. The
other major advantage of the system over Econet is the improved security
offered, by having certain disc sections as read only to every user,
apart from the network manager. Unfortunately, I think that the
attraction of Ethernet, whilst also allowing downward compatibility with
Econet, and being a very good concept does not work economically. To
obtain the quoted data transfer rates over a multiple Archimedes
network, you first have to install new Ethernet cable to serve all of
the computers and have a ration of four computers to every ClassRom
unit, which means that, in a room of only twelve A3000 machines, you
will need to spend just short of £3,000 to maintain the advised ratio of
ClassRoms to computers. Admittedly, this will give you greatly improved
performance and the promise of greater reliability but what about the
question of internetwork compatibility between ClassShare clusters and
industry standard UNIX, XENIX and Novell type networks? If you intend to
link your group of twelve Archimedes computers via their new Ethernet
network to a PC system, you still have to purchase a package such as
TCP/IP to enable you to have a gateway into the UNIX world, for example.
At just over £1,000 for a site licence version of TCP/IP, you are now
talking in the region of £4000 to connect up your twelve A3000s, and
that doesn’t include the cost of the cabling. Also, you need to remember
that you cannot plug an Ethernet cable straight into the back of your
Archimedes and you need a ClassNet interface for each machine, at an
educational price of £150 (£200 non educational). This now means that,
assuming you already have your Level 4 fileserver and twelve A3000
machines, and excluding the cost of cabling and installation, the whole
set up would cost you in the region of £6,000. It is obvious even from
the simple calculations above that you will have to think very carefully
indeed before trying to swap over your existing networks.
6.1
I do like the new package from Oak Solutions but, as I have outlined
above, I am not entirely sure whether this is a step in the right
direction. I think you also have to weigh up very carefully how much you
need the increased speed of the Ethernet system and look at the cost and
decide if you need the supposed ‘outside world’ compatibility which
could be just as easily achieved on one machine over TCP/IP (installa
tion review coming soon).
6.1
More information and a free wall chart about the whole package can be
obtained from Oak Solutions.
6.1
Line jammed error?
6.1
If your network is continually crashing with the ‘Line jammed’ error, it
could be a rather nasty bit of non-standard memory manipulation,
distributed on an Amiga disc. The problem may be particularly prevalent
on a network that has BBC machines on it. Because of the rather
sensitive nature of the issue and the potential havoc that could be
caused by certain less-than-helpful school members, I will only tell
people what is happening, and how to fix it, if they send me a stamped
addressed envelope, with an accompanying letter − on official headed
note paper!
6.1
Next month.....
6.1
Next month I am going to discuss what I feel is the future for Archi
medes networking, with the release of all of the new hardware products
from Acorn − particularly the AUN Level IV fileserver. I also hope to be
printing a short series of articles about the installation and use of
Acorn’s TCP/IP suite and perhaps giving out some more software. I would
be very interested to receive any correspondence about the software from
Alan Williams, particularly !awServer.
6.1
As usual, 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 a new simple method for doing a tedious networking job, write in
and tell me about, so that I can make you famous. I can’t promise to
answer all letters individually but I will try to give any subjects
raised an airing on these pages.  A
6.1
Keynote
6.1
John Oversby
6.1
There is now a plethora of databases for computers, most providing a
wide range of searches and sorts, graphing routines, statistical
analysis and field calculations. Anglia TV produced Key for BBC systems
and then KeyPlus for the Archimedes range. Keynote has been produced for
primary schools, to provide a simple introduction to databases.
Datafiles produced using Keynote can be used on the full KeyPlus system
and some of the simple KeyPlus files can be analysed using Keynote.
6.1
Modes of operation
6.1
Keynote uses the same application to view a datafile, or to create or
amend a datafile. Change from one mode to another is made by a menu
selection from the icon bar after installation but before a file is
loaded or created. A configure option offers choices such as locking the
mode of operation (so that it could be locked to the view mode to
prevent users changing a datafile during searching) and the use of a
password. It is also possible to restrict other choices so that pupils
would only see one type of graph available, to remove the danger of
choosing an inappropriate graph. This could be useful for younger
children starting to use a database but as they progress further options
can be added.
6.1
Data entry
6.1
Five methods of data entry are available, Count, Record Card, Choices,
Standard and Time Log.
6.1
Count datafiles have two fields, automatically labelled “Type” and
“Total”. Data is entered in a tally chart form. There are 32 categories
available with display in the form of a bar chart or a pie chart, chosen
as the datafile is constructed. The configure option for saves defaults
to the $ directory on a floppy disc in drive 0, but can be changed to,
for example, a sub-directory called “$.keynote.files” on a hard disc.
This was not made particularly clear in the manual. As files are
changed, in the amend mode, they are continually updated without warning
so it is vitally important to use copies of files from the very
beginning.
6.1
Record Card datafiles also contain two fields, a words field and a
picture field. Pictures can be in Sprite or Draw format.
6.1
Choices datafiles take the form of a words field with up to 63 choice
fields, each of which can take up to 16 categories. Choices are made
from a selection constructed at the time of datafile creation. During
data entry, all that is required is a mouse click in a box, followed by
a confirmation. It is possible to set the package so that the next entry
is either the next field or the next record. This offers the opportunity
for a child to enter multiple records referring to himself at one
sitting or for the members a whole class to enter data, such as shoe
size, one after another.
6.1
Standard datafiles are more comprehensive, combining Count, Record Card
and Choices with the addition of a variety of choice formats such as
words, numbers, multiple choice and date. An option to record a position
on a diagram or map is also available in the Standard format. Diagrams
and maps can be Sprites or Draw pictures and, as the data is entered,
its position can be plotted instantly on a map, emphasising the
relationship between data entry and display. The pictures are displayed
by dragging onto the Keynote icon.
6.1
Time Logs are used to enter data at fixed time intervals, decided at
time of entry, and a secondary (hidden) field of time values is made so
that a line chart can be plotted subsequently.
6.1
Data analysis
6.1
In the view mode, there are options to find, display and sort records or
produce graphs. The operation of the find section depends on whether
data has been entered as free text or in a choices mode, but if a map
has been used, drawing a box around the section of interest will select
just those points in that box. This makes it easier to make searches for
those who find text difficult such as very young children or those who
speak English as a second language.
6.1
Pie chart, bar chart, line graph, Venn diagram and Carroll diagram
displays are provided. The latter was new to me and is used to display
relationships in a datafile, such as whether there is a correlation
between blue eyes and blond hair. Searches must be carried out first to
determine numbers and these can be entered in boxes as in the diagram.
Finally, the user can select whether all the records or selected records
are in use as graphs or further searches are used. Graphs can be
outputted as Drawfiles. Why is there no alternative output for the
datafile, in text format, for example, so that pupils could use DTP
packages such as Phases or Impression Junior to print out their work?
6.1
Data capture sheets
6.1
To assist children in recording data, an extra application is provided
to print data capture sheets, using outline fonts if required, with the
teacher proving heading and footing text. One deficiency of the program
is that the sheet can only be seen if imported into Draw, or printed
out. However, the standard of presentation of the sheets, with boxes for
ticking and sections for writing in text, was very high. I would use
these extensively. Since they can be saved in Draw format, they can
easily be edited to exclude data not needed at that time or to add
pictures and other information.
6.1
The manual
6.1
This was the least satisfactory part of the package. I am used to the
operation of KeyPlus but even though I used the example datafiles on the
Keynote disc and re-read the manual several times, it still took me a
long time to get used to the way Keynote operated. I feel that the
manual should be re-written in a tutorial form, with plenty of pictures
showing what should be on the screen at each point. Details of the
operation of each section should be in a reference section at the back.
The sample worksheets would be difficult for teachers to use with
classes as they are cluttered with notes to the teacher. It needs a
pupil introductory booklet, liberally illustrated in view of the target
age range of primary school pupils. Finally, Anglia TV should consider
the production of a training video as a more effective tool for
developing its use in the classroom. In an age where we use the best
technology for database work, why are we still stuck with boring text-
based manuals?
6.1
Summary
6.1
Keynote competes with other packages such as the excellent Pinpoint. It
has potential and it also has the secure base of existing KeyPlus
datafiles as a start. The ability to use maps for presentation and data
searches is a great advantage and should be exploited even further. The
manual should have been aimed more at those who have limited knowledge
of IT and serious consideration should have been given to alternative
methods of training users in the operation of the package.
6.1
Keynote is available from: ITVA, 6 Paul Street, London EC2A 4JH. The
cost is £27.50 + VAT for a single copy and £40 +VAT for a primary school
site licence.  A
6.1
Fonts Workshop − Part 2
6.1
Roger Spooner
6.1
All Archimedes fonts are stored on the computer itself, rather than in
the printer or elsewhere. Inside your !Fonts application directory are a
number of files describing the shapes of the letters in detail. FontEd
is Acorn’s program for editing these shapes, allowing you to design new
fonts or change existing ones.
6.1
Font Files
6.1
The !Fonts application contains lots of sub-directories, each containing
files describing the fonts.
6.1
6.2
6.1
Part of the directory structure of !Fonts
6.1
In the first diagram, you can see that the directory structure is
identical to the Font names: Wherever the operating system finds an
IntMetrics file, it counts that as a font.
6.1
The IntMetrics file describes the sizes of each of the letters − the
bounding box which is a rectangle giving the limits within which the
specified letter will appear (definitely not outside it) and the caret
offset, defining how wide the letter is. When the computer is working
out the length of a sentence, or how many pages a document occupies, it
can get all the information it needs from the IntMetrics file.
6.1
The Outlines file contains the shapes of the letters. For each character
there are a number of hinting lines (scaffold and skeleton lines) and
the shape of the character’s outline. It is this that you spend most of
the time editing in FontEd.
6.1
Loading a Font
6.1
First, you need FontEd itself. I recommend version 0.27, available from
many sources including PD libraries. (It’s available on Careware 7. Ed.)
6.1
Hold <Shift>, then double click on the !Fonts icon. Enter any of the
directories you want and find an Outlines file. If using a version
before 0.27, you should check that this is in the current and only font
directory (in Font$Path). Double click on the Outlines file, then wait
as FontEd displays all the characters. You can work immediately but it’s
fun to watch them appear.
6.1
6.2
6.1
Before going any further, it’s important to realise that FontEd is an
experienced user’s program. Don’t expect it to help you too much. In
particular, be careful which mouse button you press, (<adjust> or
<select>) because they do not have the same effect.
6.1
Now, double click <select> on the character of your choice. A window
will appear showing the shape in outline, with small green blobs where
each corner or end point is. In a professionally made font, there will
also be horizontal and vertical scaffold lines going right across the
window. Despite what I said in my previous article, scaffold lines are
much the lesser of the hinting features, even though they are more
difficult to implement both for the designer and the programmer. Thus
some fonts do not have scaffold lines.
6.1
6.2
6.1
Adding Lines
6.1
To change the location of an existing point, move to its green dot, then
drag it with <adjust>. This will make the point move and the two lines
connecting to it will move to follow.
6.1
To insert a new line section in the existing character, drag from one of
the existing green points with <select>. This creates a new line: one
end is at the original green point, the other with the mouse, and it is
inserted in the outline. This is important because any font character
must contain a closed loop of lines; every line must be joined to
something at both ends. To create a completely new line connected to
nothing, drag from anywhere else. This will be a skeleton line, because
they do not have to be in a loop − they normally form a chain with open
ends. In fact, skeleton lines must not be in a closed loop, otherwise
the section becomes part of the outline of the character, probably
causing strange results.
6.1
Whenever a previously unclosed line is connected to another, FontEd
bleeps to tell you. To do this, drag it very close to the other.
Unfortunately, in the design of fonts, you do sometimes end up with two
points which are in the same place but are accidentally unconnected.
This can be resolved, albeit inefficiently, by dragging with <adjust> on
each point without moving it. If there are two unconnected points there,
they become linked.
6.1
Precision
6.1
If you were designing a new font, it would be useful to have some way of
aligning points with each other and even across fonts. This is not
directly possible but a number of underhand techniques are available.
6.1
Firstly, you can select ‘Display-Coords’ from the Skeleton window’s
menu. This gives you the coordinates of the pointer, when dragging, in
font Design Units. If you are going to use these, it would be as well to
use round numbers like 400 for the height. It makes the on-the-spot
arithmetic easier!
6.1
To gain consistency across characters is more difficult and involves
creating scaffolds.
6.1
Scaffold Lines
6.1
First of all, place skeleton lines at the appropriate height or width
(using the coordinate display). Using these, create scaffold lines (from
the menu, choose Scaffold−New Global−H-Scaffold or V-Scaffold for
horizontal or vertical). Drag the scaffold out to the right width using
the blobs on the end, then press <Escape> to get out of Scaffold mode.
6.1
Once you have all your scaffolds in one character (maybe SPACE if
designing a new font), go to the main FontEd window and drag with
<adjust> to any character box you want to inherit your new scaffolds.
For characters which have not been created yet, double click on their
little box first. The characters will then all have scaffolds in exactly
the same place, ready for alignment of the actual outline.
6.1
You can delete the skeleton lines used originally if you don’t want
them.
6.1
Deleting lines
6.1
Point somewhere along the length of the line to be deleted, click
<select> briefly, then select Delete from the menu. Similarly, deleting
Scaffold lines is done by clicking on its blob and selecting Delete.
6.1
How do I do a curve?
6.1
When you create a new line, you will notice that it is always straight.
Also, all lines, whether straight or curved, have control points about ¼
of the way along. These are dummy control points for straight lines but
you can make the line a curve simply by dragging these (with <adjust>).
Great care is required in the use of bezier curves to make them look
good in fonts. The previous article described how to keep curves clean:
Imagine the crossing point of the lines from the end points to the
control points of the curve, as shown by the dotted line below.
6.1
6.2
6.1
If this crossing point is between one of the end points and its control
point (as in the diagram), the curve won’t look nice. The crossing point
should be beyond both control points.
6.1
To turn a curve back to a straight section, choose ‘straighten’ from the
menu when that line is selected.
6.1
Hinting
6.1
It is also important to hint a new font. This means adding skeleton
lines and then scaffold lines. Ideally, this should be done after
completing each letter and not left until the very end.
6.1
Skeleton lines run through the middle of the black section of a
character, especially where it is thin. This line will always be
plotted, regardless of the outline thickness. As in the diagram, it
should be placed within the outline and going to the tips of any points
or corners.
6.1
6.2
6.1
The skeleton line does not need to be precisely placed except at the
tips and it must never go outside the main outline.
6.1
The skeleton line is just a normal line, or sequence of lines, except
that they are not closed into a loop as the outline is.
6.1
Scaffold lines ensure that the maximum line thickness is used and that
it is regular and symmetrical. First of all, place scaffold lines on the
vertical and horizontal line sections by moving to the point you want to
be optimised, then choose Scaffold. New Global−V­scaffold or H­scaffold
from the main menu. V­scaffolds are two lines which should be placed on
the left and right edges of the vertical part of a line and similarly
H­scaffolds go on a horizontal part, as shown in the diagram below.
6.1
6.2
6.1
The light lines are the two edges of the scaffold lines: one pair at the
top, one pair down each side and one pair at the bottom. Each reinforces
a vertical or horizontal section.
6.1
Next, curve scaffold lines can be used: Where a bezier curve bulges out,
it can be badly plotted. Use a Left, Right, Up, or Down scaffold line to
protect curves which bulge in the named direction, as below.
6.1
6.2
6.1
Scaffold lines can be selected (and moved) by clicking (or dragging) the
green blob at the edge of the window. This turns the line red and shows
any outline points which are linked to it in red also. To add or remove
points, click on them at this stage or drag a rubber-band box round a
set of points. To disconnect many points, choose Scaffold−Disconnect
from the menu. The end points at both ends of a curve of interest should
be linked to a scaffold line for it to work.
6.1
To unselect the scaffold line, press <Escape>.
6.1
To pair two scaffold lines together, for example the two sides of an
‘H’, select one by clicking on its blob, then hold <Shift> or <Control>
and click on the blob of the other scaffold line. There is a hierarchy
which you can use, of parent and child lines, to link them together. The
colours of the blobs change to indicate the state of a line.
6.1
Live links
6.1
A great way to save time when creating some characters is to copy parts
of old ones. This can be done either by dragging an existing letter’s
little box in the font window to another box, or by Live Links. While
the former copies the shape for you to edit, the latter stores only the
number of the character being copied. If ever it wants to know the
shape, it looks at that source at the time that it wants to plot it.
Thus copying an ‘e’ into an accented é means that any alterations to the
normal e will be reflected immediately (in the é).
6.1
To make a live link, drag a character box to another while holding down
<Shift>. To delete one such link, do it again but holding down <Ctrl>.
You can then link in the accent, and the new letter is finished in
seconds.
6.1
To move linked sections, open the skeleton window for the new character
and click once at any unimportant place. Then, using the cursor keys
will move the linked section around without affecting any real outline
sections. If there is more than one link, only one will move. Click
again in the window’s background to cycle through them.
6.1
Character widths
6.1
It is important to set the width of each character, of course. Only
experience can tell you exactly how wide to make it, but it must be done
by following Width from the skeleton window’s menu. Enter a number in
design units, probably around 400. Clicking with <adjust> means that the
menu remains visible and you can alter it easily.
6.1
There will be more about good design in the fourth article of this
series.  A
6.1
Minerva Business Accounts Package
6.1
Dave Wilcox
6.1
There is nothing like jumping in with both feet is there? I use an A410
for graphic design work at a small printing company and, in my wisdom, I
suggested that the accounts could also be put onto this machine − “No
problem!”, I hear you cry.
6.1
The package
6.1
The package that was chosen was the Minerva suite − as the title of this
article suggests. This package, like all Minerva packs, is nicely
presented; it comes in a loose-leaf binder enclosed within a box. The
package is made up of five parts:
6.1
− Order Processing/Invoicing
6.1
− Sales Ledger
6.1
− Purchase Ledger
6.1
− Stock Management
6.1
− Nominal Ledger
6.1
Each part will cost around £85 each plus VAT or you can obtain the full
package for a discounted price dependent on the dealer. You are free to
choose which of these five parts you will use. Once chosen, these parts
can be used independently or combined into one package. However, the
true versatility of the package is only realised when the individual
modules are linked.
6.1
The instructions for the software average approximately fifty pages per
pack − not too heavy for most users and they appear to cover all the
salient features. The main point stressed within the first few pages is
to work through the tutorial sections. I agree with this completely −
you cannot jump straight in and use this package.
6.1
Installation
6.1
First, take a backup of all of your master discs and put them away
safely. The software will backup via the Risc commands or the desktop.
To combine the programs, you require considerable disc space − a small
set-up like mine currently occupies 1.5M. All the discs will run
independently as there is an accounts system on each disc. Create a
directory called accounts on your hard disc and copy across, from the
first floppy disc, the !Accounts directory. Once this is installed, open
this directory on the hard disc. In turn, open !Accounts on each of the
other floppies and copy across the blue directory folder for each part
i.e. Nominal, Stock, Purchase, Sales and Invoicing. Use the Sysmerge
application to update your current system, if necessary. Finally, create
a directory within your accounts folder called !AccData. The program is
now installed on your hard drive. I have successfully installed this
package on both ADFS and SCSI discs and have encountered no problems
running the software to date. I have not tried it under the IDE system.
6.1
To start the system, you double click on the !Accounts icon which loads
it onto the icon bar. To initialise the system, you now drag the
!AccData file onto the Accounts icon on the iconbar. You will then be
prompted to create data files for the packages you have installed.
6.1
Setup
6.1
To start the program simply click on the iconbar icon. Accounts will
take then over the machine. Although it is run from the desktop, it is
not, at present, multi-tasking − perhaps this will happen in the future
versions as !Accounts uses only 224k of memory on loading.
6.1
Invoicing module
6.1
You now have to set up the programs as you wish them to run. The first
part that I attempted to configure was Invoicing. I was happy that this
was the first because the manual says that if you meet problems, you
should dump the setup and start again. I did this numerous times, as I
recall, though I did the same the first time I tried to set up System
Delta cards.
6.1
The only problem I came across on this setup was the delete field
option. This did not seem to work and I know not why. I therefore
suggest careful planning of the fields you require prior to their
installation on the card. This system is very versatile in this respect,
I have managed to set up the invoicing to match our existing invoice
forms. However, I have had to change the printed forms to a blank grid
in which the system can print its own field headers. This is not a
problem, however, as anyone interested can order their next batch of
invoice forms minus the text headings. The invoice section will produce
hard copies of orders/invoices to various destinations, i.e. Despatch
Note, Customer Copy, Office Copy, Invoice and Copy and you can change
these titles if you wish. Each copy is printed as a separate sheet, so
if you use NCR sets, you will have to change.
6.1
One nice aspect of this invoicing system is that you can store a
database of your suppliers and customers and you can assign customer
discounts, stock item discounts or combinations of both. These can be
entered as a cash discount, percentage discount or conditional discount.
The conditional discount uses the standard basic structure for defini
tion − e.g. if 1000 items supplied x% else y%, etc. These, when entered,
are subsequently put onto the invoices by the program, totally transpar
ent to the user unless you wish to overide the specified discounts
manually. There are also six configurable VAT rates in order to allow
for changes of mind by the tax-man, zero rate or export or any other
titles you may wish to enter.
6.1
Stock module
6.1
The stock management section of the software is easily set up with your
initial stock items and, as you progress, the program keeps this
updated. Facilities are available for items to be returned to stock, if
incorrectly supplied or left out if defective. Credit notes can also be
generated for returned goods. The Stock Management system can also be
used to advise on the ordering of items to replenish the stock. In
calculating this, the lead time for an item is taken into account along
with the turnover of the item. There is also the facility to enter onto
each stock card the details of any suppliers of the item, their current
charges and the date of the last quoted item price.
6.1
Ledger modules
6.1
The next part to tackle is the ledger systems, i.e. Nominal, Purchase
and Sales. As with the other modules if you work through the set up
routines as prompted by the machine and follow what you are doing in the
manual, you should have little trouble. Once the ledgers have been set
up, you can use the parameter options to go back and link all the
modules together, thereby interlinking all the data. Once the programs
are linked and running, you can enter your data daily in numerous ways
as business progresses. The nice part of this system is the reporting
facilities, including individuals’ account reports, VAT reports, bad
debtor reports, stock reports, to mention but a few.
6.1
Conclusion
6.1
Once you get to grips with this software, it would seem to make an
admirable job of a complex task. The screen is well laid out and not
unpleasant to work with. I would like to see it multi-task though so the
machine could be used to greater potential. There is, however, work
still going on at Minerva on this package. To emphasise this, the title
bar is marked next to the version number, ‘Unfinished’. I would
certainly recommend anyone thinking of computerising their office to
have a good look at this package.
6.1
Business Accounts modules cost £99.95 (inc VAT) each. All five modules
can be bought for £399.95 (inc VAT). They are available through Archive
for £90 and £350 respectively.  A
6.1
New Era Software    204 High Street, Woodville, Swadlincote, Derbyshire
DE11 7DT. (0283−812818)
6.1
Oak Solutions (p22)    Suite 25,
Robin Enterprise Centre, Leeds Road, Idle, Yorkshire BD10 9TE.
(0274−620423) (0274−620419)
6.1
Palette Studio     6c/6d Belgic Square, Peterborough  PE1 5XF.
(0733−344245) (0733−315424)
6.1
PEP Associates    34 Tiverton Way, Cambridge  CB1 3TU. (0223−212251)
6.1
Pineapple Software    39 Brownlea
Gardens, Seven Kings, Ilford, Essex IG3 9NL. (081−599−1476)
(081−598−2343)
6.1
P.R.E.S. Ltd     P.O. Box 319, Lightwater, Surrey GU18 5PW. (0276−72046)
(0276−51427)
6.1
Ray Maidstone     421 Sprowston Road, Norwich  NR3 4EH. (0603−400477)
(0603−417447)
6.1
Risc Developments Ltd    117 Hatfield
Road, St Albans, Herts  AL1 4JS. (0727−40303) (0727−860263)
6.1
Safesell Exhibitions (p7)    Market
House, Cross Road, Tadworth, Surrey KT20 5SR.
6.1
Silicon Vision Ltd    Signal
House, Lyon Road, Harrow, Middlesex  HA1 2AG. (081−861−2173)
(081−427−5169)
6.1
SJ Research    J1 The Paddocks, 347 Cherry Hinton Road, Cambridge  CB1
4DH. (0223−416715)
6.1
Soft Rock Software    124 Marissal
Road, Henbury, Bristol  BS10 7NP. (0272−761685)
6.1
Spacetech (p8)    21 West Wools, Portland, Dorset  DT5 2EA.
(0305−822753) (0305−860483)
6.1
System Insight     Unit 2, Hertfordshire Business Centre, Alexander Road,
London Colney, Herts  AL2 1JG. (0727−827200)
6.1
Topologika    P.O. Box 39, Stilton, Peterborough  PE7 3RL. (0733−244682)
6.1
Xavier Educational Software Ltd    Dept of
Psychology, 37 College Road, Bangor, Gwynedd  LL57 2DG. (0248−351151)
(0248−364412)

Volume 6 • Nº 2 • November 1992
6.2
RISC-OS 3.1 is on the way!
6.2
Sorry for the delay over RISC-OS 3.1 and thanks very much for bearing
with us. Acorn say that the A5000 upgrades are coming through very
slowly (so please continue to be patient) but that they are producing
about 2,000 sets a week of the full upgrade. On 26th October, the M.D.
said they had outstanding orders for only 6,000 so if my calculations
are correct, by 22nd November (allowing a few days for carriage)
everyone who has an existing order with Norwich Computer Services,
should have received it. (Please read the next paragraph very
carefully.)
6.2
If you haven’t got yours by 22nd November please ring us OUTSIDE OFFICE
HOURS. There will be a message on the ansaphone saying whether or not
Acorn have reached the target. If they have then ring us during office
hours to find out why your copy has not turned up. If they have not got
there, PLEASE don’t ring us, ring them! Thank you.
6.2
Products Available
6.2
•    10 out of 10 English − Another of Triple R’s educational packages is
now ready. This package consists of six games said to cover ‘ten
essential areas of English and aims to reinforce the traditional values
of the language’. Children’s progress is monitored automatically, so you
can see how they are getting on! The price is £25.95 from Fourth
Dimension or £24 through Archive.
6.2
•    486 card − Aleph One have released a 486 card for the Archimedes at
the same price as the old 386, £495 +VAT (£545 through Archive). The
price of the 386 card has dropped to £395 (£440 through Archive). The
memory upgrade to 4M is £110 through Archive as is the numeric coproces
sor. There is now some special Windows driver software for £25 +VAT (£28
through Archive). This uses the Archimedes CPU as a graphics co-
processor for the PC, accelerating Windows displays ‘by up to 20 times’.
The driver software is free to all existing owners − contact Aleph One.
6.2
•    A4 Trackerball − The trackerball for the A4 Notebook that PEP
Associates are producing was mentioned last month but we now have some
pricing information. If you already own a Trackman Portable, you can buy
the cables to connect it to the A4 and the necessary software from PEP
for £19 + VAT. If you want the trackerball as well as the software and
cables, it will cost you £45 + VAT and for the full pack, which includes
carrying case plus a whole load of connectors and adaptors for use with
other PCs, it will cost you £95 + VAT.
6.2
•    Acorn Assist is the title of Acorn’s latest scheme to help teachers,
lecturers, educational support staff and those in full-time further
education. Anyone in that category can buy:
6.2
A3020 (2M FD) + AKF40 monitor    £780
6.2
A3020 (2M FD) + AKF18 monitor    £830
6.2
A4000 Home Office (2M HD80) + AKF40    £1049
6.2
A4000 Home Office (2M HD80) + AKF18    £1099
6.2
A5000 L’ng Curve (2M HD80) + AKF18    £1499
6.2
A4 Notebook (4M HD60)    £1799
6.2
JP150 printer (until 31/12/92)    £210
6.2
(All prices include VAT.)
6.2
If you would like any of these, ring us and we will send you an
application form. Get your school/college/etc to stamp it and send it in
with a cheque for the required amount and we will put you in the queue
and supply a computer as soon as possible.
6.2
(We have A5000s in stock but all the other computers are still in very
short supply, so if you want one, I suggest you get a cheque into us as
soon as possible.)
6.2
•    Ancient Greece − Chalksoft have produced a package designed to help
with National Curriculum in History − CSU5 for Key Stage 2. With it, you
can ‘visit’ seven important times/locations and learn about life in
Ancient Greece. The cost is £25 + VAT from Chalksoft.
6.2
•    ArcFS2 − Software42 have produced an update to the compression filing
system ArcFS. The price is £20 with no VAT because Software42 are not
VAT registered.
6.2
•    ArcTrack is a RISC-OS compliant satellite tracking program. Features
include simple updating of keplers (with elements from the packet
network), multiple satellites and multiple footprints, constant display
of satellites in range and time of next AOS or LOS. ArcTrack is
available for £20 inc VAT from Amsat-UK.
6.2
•    BibleMaster − At last, Hodder and Stoughton have released their (PC
Emulator version) BibleMaster program in two versions: The New Interna
tional Version is £35 (£32 through Archive) and the version with both
Good News and NIV is £60 (£55 through Archive).
6.2
•    CADet is Minerva Software’s new CAD program. It includes a multitask
ing plotter driver and has ‘many features not normally found in a CAD
package at this price, including on-the-fly snaps for ease of accurate
drawing’. The price is £149 + VAT from Minerva or £160 through Archive.
6.2
•    Canon BJC800 colour printer price drop. These amazing new A3 colour
printers, reviewed last month (p45) have dropped in price from £2,100 to
£1,800 − still a lot of money, but you get a lot of printer!
6.2
•    ColourCard is Computer Concepts’ graphics accelerator card. It
provides higher resolution graphics with less flicker (i.e. higher
refresh rates) than an unaided Archimedes and, by using a secondary
video frame-store, uses less processor time for the display leaving more
processor power for the Archimedes to use on, say, improving the redraw
speed of your art package. In 16 and 256 colour screen modes, all the
colours are selectable from 16 million hues so that, for example,
scanned images can be seen on screen in 256 true grey levels. The card
costs £249 (+£6 carriage) + VAT from Wild Vision or Computer Concepts or
£280 inclusive through Archive.
6.2
•    DBEdit is 4Mation’s new multitasking desktop Basic editor − which also
edits Obey, Command and Text files. The program is written in machine
code for speed. It operates on Basic programs in tokenised form, making
it possible to edit programs of more than 500 Kb on a 1 Mb machine. The
price is £30 + VAT from 4Mation or £33 through Archive.
6.2
•    DTP and Programmers’ Utilities is a disc of utilities for DTP and
programming(!) from Software42. The price is £15 with no VAT because
Software42 are not VAT registered.
6.2
•    Engineering software − Richard Fallas & Associates have produced a
range of software for (civil) engineering applications. Storm provides a
modified rational method of stormwater analysis. Highway offers
horizontal alignment design of roads, straights, arcs and transition
spirals plus hierarchical networks of spurs. Vertcur is concerned with
the vertical alignment design of roads. Plotwise provides control of
plotfile output to allow pausing, tracing, partial re-plots, etc. Other
programs and PipeDream spreadsheets are also available. For full
details, ring or fax Richard Fallas on 0296−770555. (These applications
complement the programs for structural analysis of 2D frames and grids
from Vision Six.)
6.2
•    Enigma is a compression filing system with security facilities from
Electronic Solutions. The cost is £59.95 + VAT.
6.2
•    Eureka − Longman Logotron’s spreadsheet application is due to emerge
from its long gestation period at the end of October, so it should be a
‘product available’ by the time you get this magazine. Features include
over 150 built-in functions, graphs and charts on-screen styles with box
shading and colours, multiple sheets with file linking, user defined
functions and function macros plus import and export facilities in a
wide range of formats. The price is £119 + VAT or £130 through Archive.
Site licences are also available.
6.2
(It sounds as if we shall have to have a Eureka-Line to complement
PipeLine. If anyone can think of a better name and/or is prepared to
have a go at editing the column, please let me know. Ed.)
6.2
•    Food for Thought is a four disc set of clipart with a food-related
theme. It comes complete with full documentation about using Draw −
indeed, one of the discs contains a tutorial. The price is £16.95 + VAT
from Sherston Software.
6.2
•    Helix Basic is back − PDK Technologies have taken over Helix Basic
from Craddock Computing and it is available again now for £99.95 inc VAT
or £92 through Archive.
6.2
•    Help3 consists of a tutorial manual, a disc and a quick reference
card. The aim of the package is to introduce people to using the
Archimedes computers in general and RISC-OS 3 in particular. The price
is £9.95 (no VAT) from Sherston Software.
6.2
•    Joysticks and utilities are available from Electronic Solutions. If
you want to use different types of joysticks with the Archimedes then
contact them for full details.
6.2
•    LandBuild is a 3D fractal landscape program from Software42. The price
is £15 with no VAT because Software42 are not VAT registered.
6.2
•    Mac CD-ROM drives − As with the Syquest drives and, more recently,
fixed SCSI hard drives, we have gone to Apple Mac suppliers for CD-ROMs.
The ones we have found are relatively speedy Chinon drives at £480 inc
VAT. These can be run on Morley or Acorn SCSI cards by using CDFS/FSCSI
(£22 through Archive) or on Oak SCSI cards by buying their new ROMs. The
good news is that these drives come with four free CD-ROMs − the bad
news is that they are in Mac format so, unless someone has some suitable
software, you cannot actually use them!
6.2
•    Memory upgrades for A3010/20/4000 − We now have stocks of all the
memory upgrades for the new computers. A3010 1−2Mb is £50, A3010 1−4Mb
is £175, A3020 2−4Mb is £100 and A4000 2−4Mb is also £100.
6.2
•    MicroDrive Designer − CIS’s MicroDrive now has a course designer.
(You’d be amazed how many people think MicroDrive is a car racing game!)
You can create your own courses from scratch or edit existing golf
courses. The price is £39.95 from CIS or £37 through Archive. (I have a
review which I hope to fit in next month − I just couldn’t fit it in
this time.)
6.2
•    PipeDream Books − Two books to help you with PipeDream are now
available from Colton Software. The first is Getting Started with
PipeDream 4 (for spreadsheets and charts). This costs £3.95 from Colton.
The second book which includes a disc is a Teacher’s Introduction to
Spreadsheets using PipeDream 4. This is £5.95 inc VAT from Colton
Software.
6.2
•    Revelation imagePro is Longman Logotron’s name for their successor to
Revelation2. New features include: load drawfiles onto page, colour-
shift enhanced, marks and tools menus amalgamated, new grey-shift
dialogue, improved image processing and various other improvements based
on user feedback. The price is £139 + VAT or £150 through Archive. Site
licences are also available.
6.2
•    RISC-OS 3.1 − The supply of RISC-OS 3.1, even after two months, is
still VERY poor, particulary the A5000 version. This is presumably
because Acorn think it more important to concentrate on those who are
still using RISC-OS 2. At the Acorn User Show, I (and quite a few
Archive subscribers!) made some strong comments to Acorn about the way
they were favouring those dealers who buy directly from them over those
who, like N.C.S. have to buy through a distributor. I don’t know if it
has done any good, but in the last week or so, the supply has improved
slightly, so most of you should, I hope, have your RISC-OS 3.1s before
Christmas. (STOP PRESS: See inside front cover for latest situation.)
6.2
•    Shareware and Careware prices down − We have decided to drop the price
of Shareware and Careware discs and also the monthly program discs.
Because of the large amount of money raised for charity by the Careware
discs (around £10,000 per year) we are only dropping the price from £6
to £5 but the Shareware and monthly program discs are dropping to £2
each. This is done on the basis that, generally, people buy two or more
discs at a time. So, although selling one disc at £2 hardly covers
costs, selling two or more at a time is more viable. We decided it was
too complicated to have different prices for one-off purchases, so it
will be a straight £2 per disc from now on.
6.2
(Those who have purchased monthly program discs in advance will be
granted one extra disc for every two they have outstanding, excluding
this month’s disc. So, for example, if you are booked up for all of
volume 6, There is no need to do anything about this − it will happen
automatically and you will be informed when your last disc is being sent
out to you.)
6.2
•    SmArt files − Two more SmArt files are available from 4Mation for use
with their SmArt Filer software. They are Fiddles and Drums − which is
exactly what it says − and Fantasy which has dragons, wizards, trolls,
etc. Each pack is £16 + VAT from 4Mation or £18 through Archive.
6.2
•    Spell no longer ‘Micro’ − David Pilling’s spelling checker, now
version 3, has changed its name from MicroSpell to just Spell. The price
is still £6 through Archive. For a comparative review, see page 19.
6.2
•    TableMate is a table-making utility which takes data in CSV, SID or
its own data format and allows you to lay it out neatly. It is particu
larly useful with Impression Junior which doesn’t have its own table
facilities. The price is £21 (no VAT) from Dalriada Data Technology.
6.2
•    Tasker allows you to convert any non-WIMP application so that it
multitasks on the Archimedes. The cost is £34.95 + VAT from Electronic
Solutions.
6.2
•    VGA monitor utilities are available from Electronic Solutions for
£9.95 + VAT. These utilities are designed to allow you to get the most
out of your VGA monitor and maximise compatibility with applications and
games which usually only accept standard monitors and multisyncs.
6.2
•    WindowEd is a multi-document template editor for RISC-OS. Features
include: up to eight template files in memory at once; windows, icons
and sprites can be grabbed from other applications; ‘toolbox’ allows you
to move, scroll and resize windows that do not have the necessary
gadgets; timed auto-save; full support for Interface module for 3D
effects. The application comes with utilities: Hotspot to magnify area
around the mouse pointer; wastebin; Mouselock which locks the mouse to X
or Y axes; Command which allows *commands to be executed from within the
desktop. The whole package, including documentation, is available from
Armen Software for £35 including VAT and carriage or £32 through
Archive.
6.2
Review software received...
6.2
We have received review copies of the following: Ancient Greece, CADet,
Chaos (game), CSVtoText, Desktop Office II, Easiword II, Food for
Thought, Getting Started with PipeDream4, Help3, Imagery, Landmarks
Columbus, Landmarks Aztecs, Polyominoes, Precision, Punctuate, Revela
tion imagePro, Soapbox, Teacher’s Introduction to Spreadsheets using
PipeDream 4, The Puddle and the Wardrobe, ThinkLink, Tiles, TV Fun &
Games, Whale Facts, Yes Chancellor II.  A
6.2
6.3
6.2
Norwich Computer Services 96a Vauxhall Street, Norwich, NR2 2SD.
0603−766592 (−764011)
6.2
4th Dimension     P.O. Box 4444, Sheffield. (0742−700661) (0742−781091)
6.2
4Mation    11 Castle Park Road, Whiddon Valley, Barnstaple, Devon  EX32
8PA. (0271−25353) (0271−22974)
6.2
Abacus Training     29 Okus Grove, Upper Stratton, Swindon, Wilts  SN2
6QA.
6.2
Ace Computing    27 Victoria Road, Cambridge  CB4 3BW. (0223−322559)
(0223−69180)
6.2
Acorn Computers Ltd     Fulbourn
Road, Cherry Hinton, Cambridge  CB1 4JN. (0223−254254) (0223−254270)
6.2
Aleph One Ltd    The Old Courthouse, Bottisham, Cambridge  CB5 9BA.
(0223−811679) (0223−812713)
6.2
Amsat-UK     94 Herongate Road, Wanstead Park, London E12 5EQ.
(081−989−6741)
6.2
ARMen Software     Laxton House, Milton Road, Oundle, Peterborough  PE8
4AQ. (0832−273444) (0832−273259)
6.2
Atomwide Ltd    23 The Greenway, Orpington, Kent  BR5 2AY. (0689−838852)
(0689−896088)
6.2
Cambridge International Software      Unit 2a, 436
Essex Road, London  N1 3QP. (071−226−3340) (071−226−3408)
6.2
Chalksoft    P.O. Box 49, Spalding, Lincs  PE11 1NZ. (0775−769518)
6.2
Coin-Age Ltd     23 Cooper Street, Nelson, Lancashire BB9 7XW.
6.2
Colton Software (p22)    2 Signet
Court, Swanns Road, Cambridge  CB5 8LA. (0223−311881) (0223−312010)
6.2
Computer Concepts (p40/41)    Gaddesden
Place, Hemel Hempstead, Herts  HP2 6EX. (0442−63933) (0442−231632)
6.2
Dabs Press     22 Warwick Street, Prestwich, Manchester  M25 7HN.
(061−773−8632) (061−773−8290)
6.2
Dalriada Data Technology    145 Albion
Street, Kenilworth, Warkwickshire  CV8 2FY. (0926−53901)
6.2
David Pilling    P.O.Box 22, Thornton Cleveleys, Blackpool, FY5 1LR.
6.2
Design Concept     30 South Oswald Road, Edinburgh  EH9 2HG.
(031−668−2000)
6.2
Electronic Solutions    Ceralyn,
Maindy Croft, Ton-Pentra, Mid Glamorgan. (0443−430355)
6.2
Fisher-Marriott Software    3 Grove
Road, Ansty, Warwickshire  CV7 9JD. (0203−616325 / 366748)
6.2
HCCS Ltd     575−583 Durham Road, Gateshead  NE9 5JJ. (091−487−0760)
(091−491−0431)
6.2
i³     Unit J1, The Paddock, 347 Cherry Hinton Road, Cambridge  CB1 4DH.
(0223−413717) (0223−413847)
6.2
ICS (p32)    1 Kington Road, West Kirby, Wirral  L48 5ET. (051−625−1006)
(051−625−1007)
6.2
Icon Technology    9 Jarrom Street, Leicester  LE2 7DH. (0533−546225)
6.2
Longman-Logotron    124 Cambridge Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge CB4
4ZS. (0223−425558) (0223−425349)
6.2
6.3
6.2
Computer Concepts
6.2
From 5.12 page 32
6.2
Computer Concepts
6.2
From 5.12 page 33
6.2
Paul B.
6.2
Beebug / Risc Developments
6.2
New /1
6.2
Hints and Tips
6.2
•    3D icons for RISC-OS 3.1 − Here are some tips for those of you who
upgraded from RISC-OS 3.00 to RISC-OS 3.10 (and for anyone else who is
interested in a fancy desktop).
6.2
If you have used the fancy 3D-like window borders on your A5000, you
will probably have noticed that, with RISC-OS 3.1, the borders will not
install properly. This is because RISC-OS 3.0 programs used the
‘IconSprites’ command to install the wimp’s tool sprites (i.e. borders),
while in RISC-OS 3.1 there is a new command to install user defined
window tools:
6.2
*ToolSprites <spritefile>
6.2
This is, I think, because the border sprites are now held in a separate
sprite area for faster redrawing. So, the only thing you have to do is
to change the command ‘IconSprites’ into ‘ToolSprites’ at the appropri
ate places in your files. Note that you can also re-install the default
window tools by entering ‘ToolSprites’ on the command line.
6.2
The small utility I use to install enhanced icons (a modified version of
!SetIcons), shows another minor modification of RISC-OS 3.1. It is now
assumed that some icons have the same dimension. For example, some
border elements are painted from two sets of sprites − one that is
normally used and one that is used when you select this particular
border element. If corresponding sprites within these sets are different
in size, you will see that some parts of the elements are not painted
when you select them. To overcome this problem, you can adjust the sizes
with !Paint.
6.2
For those programmers who liked the Impression-style dialogue boxes,
there exists a module called ‘Interface’. This module takes care of most
of the code to generate fancy icon borders. RISC-OS 3.0 has some in-
built extras to achieve the same thing without the need to insert extra
lines of code into your program. (The programmer only has to define some
validation strings which contain the information to generate the desired
effect.) However, because the validation string command syntax was
essentially the same as the syntax used by the Interface module, there
were sometimes problems when using the Interface module with RISC-OS
3.0.
6.2
After I installed the new RISC-OS 3.1 ROMs, I was surprised to see that
my own (RISC-OS 3.0!) programs didn’t have fancy borders any more. After
some experimenting with the validation strings, I discovered that the
command syntax is now different from the syntax used by the Interface
module. To be more specific, RISC-OS 3.1 makes use of ‘r<int><colour>’
(where <int> is a number between 0 and 8 and <colour> is a WIMP colour
number), instead of ‘b<int>, ...’. This modification probably has been
made to overcome the incompatibility problems with the Interface module.
The simplicity with which you can use this prompts a question: Why don’t
the ROM based applications like Draw use this facility? I guess this is
just another ‘Acorn-mystery’.  Paul Groot, Holland.
6.2
• Editing paper sizes in RISC-OS 3 − If attempts are made to edit the
paper sizes contained within the standard RISC-OS 3 printer driver
files, it will be found that any changes made to the Text Margins
section will revert to 0 when the window is closed, even if Save
Settings is selected. This is due to a bug, but can be rectified by
editing the paper files directly.
6.2
Editing any of the paper sizes results in a new file called PaperRW
being generated in the Printers application directory. This file can be
modified using Edit. Make sure that the Printers application is not
running (i.e. Choose Quit from the iconbar menu if it is). Find the
!Printers application (normally in the App1 directory) and open it using
Shift-double-click. Open the file called PaperRW by Shift-double-
clicking on it. Scroll down the file until you find the name of the
paper setting which you defined or modified. It will look something like
’pn: Fanfold A4’. At the bottom of the set of numbers relevant to this
paper setting are five values (called tb, tt, tl, tr, th) which
correspond to the text bottom, top, left and right margins and the
height (in lines) respectively. Alter the values from 0 to your required
numbers and save the file. When you re-run the Printers application,
your paper sizes will be rectified.  Simon Moy, N.C.S.
6.2
•    How NOT to treat your SCSI hard disk − A few weeks ago I found a new
way to get rid of all those files that clogged my external hard disk(!)
6.2
Every verify I did showed up one questionable sector, so I decided to
map it out as defective. The *Defect command applies only to ADFS, so I
browsed through the SCSI disk’s manual and, finally, found what I was
looking for (or so I thought).
6.2
Morley supply their hard disks with a formatter application which,
amongst other things, can add defects to a list. There is a warning that
a low level format would result in total loss of data but, later in the
description, an option was mentioned to decide whether or not to do the
low level format while running the application.
6.2
This led me to believe that clicking on ‘No’ would keep my data intact −
alas, I was wrong!
6.2
The Morley hotline informed me that I had in fact done a high level
format which wipes out the information about the addresses for each
file. As the passage in the manual could be misunderstood, they very
kindly offered to restore my data for me free of charge (just p&p).
(Great service!!)
6.2
However, it was not to be: I forgot to inform them that I use Computer
Concepts’ Compression on most of my files and this, I was told later,
encodes the files in such a way that retrieval becomes virtually
impossible.
6.2
I learned two things from my self-made disaster:
6.2
1) Even the excellent Compression is not proof against all kinds of
fools.
6.2
2) 800 Kb floppy disks are just not good enough as a backup medium! I
shudder at the thought that I will have to feed 112 floppies into my
machine, once the hard disk returns from England.
6.2
As a consequence, for future backups I have ordered a 20Mb floptical
drive from Morley, to be sent as soon as it is able to read and write
Acorn floppy formats.  Jochen Konietzko, Köln, Germany.
6.2
•    Humour in RISC-OS 3.1! − You will be pleased to hear that humour still
exists within Acorn. If you load ‘Resources:$.Resources.
Switcher.Templates’ into the template editor, FormEd, you get an
interesting message.  Knut Folmo, Norway
6.2
•    Loading multiple Impression documents − If you want to load a number
of Impression files at once, just select them (with rubber band dragging
on RISC-OS 3, if you like) and drag them down onto the Impression icon
on the iconbar.
6.2
• Memory size from Basic − In Basic, there is no specific way to find
out how much physical memory is fitted to the host machine. However, it
can be calculated using a SWI call as in this example:
6.2
10 SYS “OS_ReadMemMapInfo” TO PageSize%, NumOfPages%
6.2
20 TotalMemory% = PageSize% * NumOfPages%
6.2
30   REM This value is in bytes
6.2
40 Total% = TotalMemory% / 2^20
6.2
50   REM This value is in Mbytes
6.2
Simon Moy, N.C.S.
6.2
•    More RISC-OS 3.1 Alt Characters The current A5000 Welcome Guide
mentions some additional Alt-key characters. These alt-keys don’t
actually produce a character themselves, they just set up an accent, so
that the following character is changed into an accented character. This
only happens if the accent is suitable for the following character.
6.2
For example to type an ‘e’ with an acute accent (é): Whilst holding down
the Alt key, press and release <[>. Release <alt> and the press and
release <E>. Thus:-
6.2
Alt-[  E      é
6.2
Alt-]  E      è
6.2
Alt-;  E      ë
6.2
Alt-’  E      ê
6.2
Alt-,  N   ñ
6.2
Alt-.  A      å
6.2
Alt-/  C      ç
6.2
The only other Alt-key character missing from the previous list is Alt-
hyphen which gives character 173, which, in the Acorn fonts, looks
exactly like a normal hyphen, but is often different in fonts from other
suppliers.  Simon Moy, N.C.S.
6.2
• MS-DOS 5, PC Emulators and the Archimedes keyboard − (This excerpt
from a reply to an Archive reader’s letter may prove useful to others.)
The cursor keys do not work correctly with the PC emulators due to a
bug. They will not work properly with either QBasic or DOS Edit. They
can be used to move around the text but, to select text, you must use
the cursor and editing keys which are mapped on the numeric keypad (as
on a normal PC AT-style keyboard). Therefore, when inside the editors,
make sure that NumLock is off and use <shift> and the following keys (on
the numeric keypad):
6.2
6.3
6.2
AMOUSE.COM is fully compatible with MS-DOS 5. However, as with all PCs,
you cannot display the mouse pointer at the DOS prompt. Also, not all PC
programs support the mouse. However, if the AMOUSE command is present in
your AUTOEXEC.BAT file and the program you want to use accepts a mouse
(e.g. QBasic, EDIT and DOSSHELL), you must start the appropriate
application first and then select Connect Mouse (by pressing <menu> over
the PC emulator window) if you are running the emulator from a window in
the RISC-OS desktop. If you are using the emulator under Single Task
mode, the mouse should automatically connect itself. (If the mouse does
not connect itself automatically when running the emulator under Single
Task mode, then this is a further bug in the PC emulator.) Typing AMOUSE
at the DOS prompt or selecting Connect Mouse from the window’s menu will
not display the DOS mouse pointer, as DOS itself does not support a
mouse. If you do this, the RISC-OS pointer will disappear (because
control has passed to DOS) and you must press <menu> on the mouse to
relinquish control from the emulator back to RISC-OS.  Simon Moy, N.C.S.
6.2
• Pound sign problems − The pound sign has always been a difficult
character to print and display on the screen. To make the pound sign
appear in the PC Emulator, press and hold <alt> and type 156 on the
numeric keypad. When you release <alt>, the pound sign will appear.
6.2
If you are printing a file as text (i.e. from Edit or PipeDream for
instance) then the pound sign will print as a hash (#). You can reverse
this by using a hash symbol in your text in place of the pound sign,
although it is important that your printer is set up with a UK character
set − see the DIP switch settings for your specific printer. If you are
printing a file produced using bitmaps (e.g. Impression) then the pound
sign will print correctly anyway. Basically, any program which defaults
to printing on the screen using the system font will print characters as
plain text − there is a section on plain and fancy text in the RISC-OS
User Guide.
6.2
By the way, does anybody know why you can’t access the pound sign
(either from the keyboard or <alt-156>) in a Task Window under RISC-OS
3.0?  Simon Moy, N.C.S.
6.2
• RISC-OS 3.1: A310 − There is a problem when fitting RISC-OS 3.1 to
A310 machines fitted with the Arcram 434 ARM3 + 4Mb upgrade from Watford
Electronics. It causes the machine to hang on power-up. Replacement PAL
chips and more information are available from Watford Electronics on
0923−37774 (Fax: 33642).  Simon Moy, N.C.S.
6.2
• RISC-OS 3.1: SCSI drives − There may be problems accessing the SCSI
drive using the HCCS Hard Card interface with RISC-OS 3.1. Contact HCCS
for details.  Simon Moy, N.C.S.
6.2
• Rotated fonts and sprites using Laser Direct − With the advent of
RISC-OS 3.1, there are problems with printing rotated text and graphics
using the currently existing RISC-OS 2 printer drivers such as that
supplied with Laser Direct. To overcome the problem, transform the text
or sprite to any angle in Draw, make sure that the item is selected and
choose the Convert to Path option from the Select submenu. This will
allow rotated text or sprites to be printed correctly using the RISC-OS
2 printer driver supplied with Laser Direct. This does not mean that it
will work with all RISC-OS 2 printer drivers − you will have to
experiment! Steve Costin, Ramsgate.
6.2
•    TV interference − In response to Chris Bass’ enquiry in Archive 6.1
p36, here is a general procedure which covers almost all cases:
6.2
1. Does the computer interfere with your own TV, when it is as close/
closer to your computer than your neighbour’s TV is? (On either side of
a party wall they could be less than 1 m apart!)
6.2
If YES, go to 2. If NO, go to 3.
6.2
2. Does the interference disappear when the computer is 3 m or more from
the TV?
6.2
If YES, agree with your neighbour to move your computer and his TV so
that they are more than 3 m apart. If moving them apart is inconvenient,
you could try sticking cooking foil on to the party wall (under the wall
covering, eventually). You need a minimum of about 2 m by 2 m, and there
is usually no point in earthing it, but you could try the effect.
6.2
In some types of building, your computer might be too close to your
neighbour’s TV aerial, in which case moving them apart is the best bet.
6.2
If NO, the computer may be faulty. Many dealers may not be able to cope
with this type of fault, so you, or your dealer, should contact Acorn
with a FULL description of the problem.
6.2
3. If NO to question 1, your neighbour’s TV has either an inadequate
aerial or inadequate ‘immunity’. (This is a technical term describing
‘resistance to electromagnetic disturbances’.) An inadequate aerial
usually also gives ‘fuzzy’ pictures and/or ghosts (outlines of images
displaced sideways). The aerial itself may be OK; the fault may be in
the downlead. They tend to fill up with water and deteriorate after a
time. A new aerial (and downlead) is quite inexpensive, even a large
one. If the aerial is not the problem, the manufacturer of the receiver
should be contacted, either directly or through the TV dealer or rental
company, regarding the probable lack of immunity of the TV. Manufac
turers (of TVs and computers) are quite concerned about this at present,
because of an EC Directive on the subject.
6.2
4. If all else fails, the DTI Radio Investigation Service will look at
the problem and give advice but there is a fee of about £21 involved.
The Service has much information and experience of such problems and
their cures, including private information about know immunity problems.
For Lincolnshire, the address is (or was) PO Box 2500, Nottingham NG8
3SS. The head office is at Waterloo Bridge House, Waterloo Road, London
SE1 8UA. A book, ‘How to improve Television and Radio Reception’ is/was
available from the Service, and gives a good deal of information on
interference problems (some of it technical).  John Woodgate, Rayleigh,
Essex.  A
6.2
Beebug / Risc Developments
6.2
New /2
6.2
Minerva
6.2
From 5.12 page 6
6.2
Comment Column
6.2
•    Archive subscription list growing − I am pleased to report that,
during the last six months, we have had 12% new subscribers and have
welcomed back a large number of subscribers who had let their subscrip
tions lapse some time earlier.
6.2
As you will see, for the second month running, we have had to produce an
80 page edition of Archive to fit in all the material we are being sent.
This is increasing the production and distribution costs so the pressure
to increase the subscription price of Archive is growing. I know that
‘comparisons are odious’ but it may be worth doing a comparison with
Risc User as they are our direct rivals. Compared with Archive’s £17,
the Risc User subscription is £19.90 (but only £18.40 to renew for a
further year) but that is for the new larger size, colour format. Here
are some figures for comparison of the two Volume 6, issue 1’s which may
be of interest.
6.2
                               Archive    Risc User
6.2
Pages (inc covers)    84    72
(inc 24 in colour)
6.2
Issues/year    12    10
6.2
Adverts    9¼    19½ (inc 10 for Beebug)
6.2
Text + pictures    71    51½
6.2
Ave words/page    700    630 (660
last month)
6.2
If we continued at this rate for a full year, that would put Archive at
590,000 words and Risc User at 320,000. Even at 68 pages, instead of 84,
Archive would still produce about 460,000 words per year − perhaps I
will increase the subscription rates after all!
6.2
Actually, each of those is likely to be an over-estimate of how many
words you get per year because it is based on the number of words in a
complete page of text and doesn’t take account of the space taken up by
pictures and diagrams. Having checked Archive 6.1, I find the Impression
tells me it has a total of 48,012 words in it which, multiplied by 12
issues would put it at something like 576,000, so I wasn’t that far out.
6.2
Anyway, do you think I should increase the Archive subscription to, say,
£19? Ed.
6.2
•    Charity Bring & Buy − Many thanks to all those who brought or sent
hardware and software to sell in aid of the African famine appeal at the
Acorn User Show. As a result, we will be sending £1,800 to aid famine
relief. Well done, everyone!
6.2
•    Upgrading your Archimedes − I was very pleased to read all the
information about the new machines from Acorn. The range appears to be
good, but I am sure that one point will dismay a number of A3000 users
and the manufacturers of upgrades such as Hardcards. None of the new
machines has an expansion port similar to that of the A3000.
6.2
I can understand this with the new A3010 and A3020, but surely the A4000
needs some expansion potential if it is to be the serious home user’s
machine. It would make sense to have space for one full-sized card or
podule in the A4000 − or at least an external port similar to that of
the A3000. It may be possible to get round this deficiency via the
bidirectional parallel port, otherwise it looks bad for those interested
in using SCSI devices on anything less than an A5000. I know that there
are Syquest drives available to run off the bidirectional parallel port
on PC’s but are there any similar CD-ROM drives or Flopticals?
6.2
Acorn may think that those wanting an expandable machine will go for an
A5000 anyway but they are WRONG. Many people buy a machine that is
adequate for their needs but then find that, over the years, they want
to add a number of extra features to their computer without having to
replace it with a new machine. The A3000 expansion port makes this
possible to an extent and, with some of the add-ons available from Wild
Vision and others, two or three expansion cards can be added to an
A3000. The new machines appear to be far more limited in their potential
for growth.
6.2
There will be many A3000 users such as me who will be rather confused as
to how best to upgrade and disappointed that there is no obvious upgrade
path at less than the cost of an A5000. I have a multisync monitor and
external SCSI hard disk (Oak WorraWinnie). If I could buy a 4Mb A5000
without hard drive or monitor that would probably be my best bet,
depending on the price, but Acorn insist on selling the complete
package. (Try talking nicely to your local Acorn dealer or to N.C.S. −
some dealers will do a deal! Ed.) If I could plug my SCSI interface onto
the back of an A4000 or A3020 that would be a very attractive option,
but this cannot be done.
6.2
Should I stick with my A3000 and have Atomwide upgrade it to ARM3 and
4Mb? This is cost-effective compared to buying a new machine, and I
could put the savings toward a Syquest, floptical or CD-ROM drive, or
possibly a 386PC card, but there are disadvantages. No high density
drive, no bidirectional parallel port, an old and modified machine that
may be of doubtful reliability and an extra £50 for RISC-OS 3.1. Is an
A3000 with an ARM3 significantly faster than the new ARM250 machines?
(On pure calculations, yes, you would notice a difference, but on screen
update there is nowhere near as much difference in speed. Ed) If it is a
lot faster, this may be enough to settle the matter for me.
6.2
We should make it clear to Acorn that they must make upgrading reason
ably painless for established users, and I know from a number of my
acquaintances who have been using Archimedes for several years, that
there is a fair bit of disquiet. The core of this is Acorn’s policy of
insisting on selling complete systems, i.e. computer plus monitor. (I
agree entirely and have already made my representations to Acorn about
this. Ed.)
6.2
There are many established Archimedes users who want to buy a bare
machine to which they can transfer their existing peripherals. Also, I
question the sense of insisting on selling an excellent computer such as
the A5000 with a fairly low quality monitor. (I have moaned at Acorn
about that too! Ed.) Acorn’s badged multisync is OK for someone on a
fairly tight budget, but it does not impress when compared with many of
the excellent monitors in regular use in the business world. A demon
stration of an A5000 with a badly set up monitor can be off-putting when
compared with a Mac or PC, and a poor first impression can be hard to
overcome. By all means make a low price multisync monitor available, but
sell the computer and let the purchaser decide what type of display best
meets his requirements and budget.
6.2
An article about possible upgrade paths for users of the older Archi
medes models would be of value to many Archive readers.  Alan Angus,
Blyth, Northumberland.
6.2
(Would anyone like to have a go at writing such an article? We can
supply any technical information you need. Ed.)  A
6.2
Pallette Studio
6.2
New artwork
6.2
Spacetech
6.2
From 6.1 page 8
6.2
Fonts Workshop − Part 3 − Font Directories
6.2
Roger Spooner
6.2
Your fonts, as explained in previous articles, are stored in Font
Directories. The main one is probably called !Fonts. There may or may
not be others − and you may or may not want others.
6.2
If you store fonts in several directories, it means you do not always
have access to all of them. This has the advantage that programs work
faster, some will work rather than crash and you will be able to find
the one you want more quickly. On the other hand, it prevents you from
gaining free access to them − why should that happen if it’s not
essential?
6.2
The Font Path
6.2
The Archimedes Outline Font Manager module, supplied with the Learning
Curve, all DTP programs and on the cover of the October 1991 BBC Acorn
User Magazine, is the program which makes our fonts what they are.
6.2
The Font Manager uses a system variable, Font$Path, to indicate where it
can find your fonts. Whenever a program asks for a list of the fonts, it
looks in the directory given. Acorn, with the release of Acorn DTP in
1989, seemed to suggest that it was possible to have only one directory
indicated in this variable but, as with all variables ending in $Path,
it is in fact possible to have many. In early 1990, I wrote a small
application, !MoreFonts, which allows you to add more font directories
to the existing list. This was also a font directory itself, so it added
the fonts it contained to the whole set, if they were not already
present. It is supplied free with all font orders from Design Concept.
6.2
Although !MoreFonts uses some complicated commands to make sure that it
does not confuse the computer, it is possible to write your own using
only a couple of lines of typing.
6.2
Floppy discs
6.2
Many users only have floppy disc drives (i.e. no hard disc). Although
systems like this are quite useable, they do severely limit the number
of fonts you can use easily. With all the public domain material
available, plus home-grown italics, a font directory can easily consume
a couple of megabytes − far more than you can fit on one disc. Thus it
is often wise to put the fonts into groups according to the occasions on
which you will use them: classic fonts for text, Bold fonts for posters,
silly fonts for clip art design, etc. With these divisions, it is easier
to find the ones you want all on the same disc.
6.2
Hard discs
6.2
On hard disc systems, several font directories can still be useful. As
mentioned above, fewer fonts make it easier to find the one you want
(from a shorter list) and some programs, including the distribution
version of !Edit for RISC-OS 2, will crash completely if there are more
than about 32 fonts. Thus it can be useful to keep only the best of the
classic fonts (Trinity and Homerton) available for universal use, then
supplement them with other groups when using other programs. The method
for several directories is the same as for floppy discs, except that it
is more important to have no two font directories with the same names.
6.2
Reloading old files
6.2
When you create a document, be it in Impression, Draw, or anything, you
will only be allowed to use fonts which are currently available.
However, when you re-load a file, you may have a different set of fonts
installed from those you had when you created it. Thus the program may
not be able to cope. Different programs respond in different ways.
6.2
Draw will display text for any unknown fonts in the System Font,
rescaled to the right size (although it looks very wide). No warnings
will be issued unless the text is in a text area object.
6.2
Impression will announce that some fonts are not available, then will
use Trinity Medium instead. Note that Trinity should be available for
this, and Impression will get angry if it’s not.
6.2
In any case, you should be careful not to print any document unless you
have all the required fonts available. It’s your responsibility.
6.2
Antique ideas
6.2
GST, who wrote Acorn DTP and the same program on other computers, have
decided in their wisdom to break most of the rules. Thus they make
special use of the old variable, Font$Prefix, which is no longer
significant, and they have a configuration file for Acorn DTP which
lists all of the fonts. If the fonts available do not match this list,
an error is reported. The program does not crash, thankfully, but it
does not correctly cope with the concept that it should accept whatever
fonts it is offered.
6.2
Moreover, if you allow someone else to load one of your DTP documents
and they have set up their dtp_config file differently, you will see the
wrong fonts in use. No other program, to my knowledge, has managed to
cram in so many mistakes and design faults.
6.2
If you want to have several font directories where they may or may not
all be available, and you have to use ADTP, I recommend that you modify
the dtp_config file to include all the fonts you own. Thus it will
reduce that list to all those available when you run the program, rather
than having several versions of the program, each set up for one
combination of font discs, as some vendors recommend.
6.2
Grouping the fonts
6.2
There is little help available for deciding which fonts to put together.
All I can suggest is that you base the decision on the times when you
will be using them and thus the programs that you will be using them
with. A master font selection would also be advisable, containing at
least Trinity Medium which is the standard and, arguably, the best font
available. Programs with anti-aliased fonts in the windows often use it
and many default to it in the absence of the one they want (e.g. KeyCaps
from Design Concept).
6.2
Creating a directory
6.2
To make a font directory, proceed as follows:
6.2
¬ Make sure you have enough space on the disc you are going to use −
with hard discs, this should be no problem.
6.2
­ Create a directory, with a pling (!) at the start and with a name
which describes the fonts to be collected, e.g. !ClassicFn or
!MoreFonts. Note that there is a limitation on the name length.
6.2
® Hold down <shift> and enter the directory. Do the same for the
directory where the fonts are coming from, on whatever disc, and copy
the sub-directories with names like Trinity and Ainslie across to the
new directory. With floppy discs, you may want to use the RAM disc as an
intermediate stage, to save disc swapping.
6.2
¯ Using Paint, design or copy a sprite (size 34×34 in mode 20 or 34×17
in mode 12) as the icon for the directory. You could use screenshots to
pick a sample letter from Draw. The name should be the same as the
directory name, except for capitals. Save this in your directory as
!Sprites.
6.2
° Using Edit, create an Obey file and type the following:
6.2
IconSprites <Obey$Dir>.!Sprites
6.2
RMensure FontManager 2.42 Error Please find !Fonts first.
6.2
Set Font$Path <Font$Path>, <Obey$Dir>.
6.2
Sound 1 383 150 5
6.2
N.B. The Set line is all one line, right up to the dot. Be sure not to
put any spaces after that dot. The RMensure line is also all one line up
to the end of the first.
6.2
± Decide: If you want this directory to be activated whenever you open
the disc window containing it, save that file from Edit as both !Boot
and !Run in your directory.
6.2
If you want it to be included only when you double click on the icon,
save it as !Run only.
6.2
The new font directory is now ready for use. Close all the windows, then
open the one containing your new directory (eg. click on Drive 0 if
using floppies). The computer should make a high bleep noise (a happy
noise!) and there will be your icon above your directory. To see if they
are indeed added, press <F12>, type FontCat and then press <return>. The
computer should list all the fonts, including the ones in the new
directory.
6.2
Each time you double click on the icon, it will add itself to the font
list. If it is already there, it will not cause any serious problems but
may slow the machine down sometimes, so it is important not to overdo
that.
6.2
This system requires the computer to have seen the real !Fonts before
continuing. This should be no problem. On a hard disc, put that in the
root directory alongside !System. On floppies, you can either have the
two on the same disc (make sure yours comes later alphabetically) or
have !Fonts on the program disc. Seeing !Fonts makes the OS load the new
Font Manager module.
6.2
It is also important that you select all your font directories before
loading the software, as most programs will only ask the OS what fonts
are currently available when they start up.
6.2
Conclusion
6.2
With this arrangement you can have directories for each font foundry,
each style, each program or whatever. Carefully placing them on a hard
disc means that you can ignore them but (for example) the longer set
will only be used if you are using Impression, not if you are just using
Draw. Alternatively, keeping them all together means you can double
click on all those you want before starting anything.  A
6.2
Spell Checkers – Some Comparisons
6.2
John Jordan
6.2
Practically all WP/DTP applications now have spell checking facilities
but, just as the main programs themselves are different, so are their
spell checkers. Because some checkers are more convenient to use than
others, I thought it might be of general interest to compare a few from
the point of view of the user. I’ve little idea how they ‘work’. Of
course, there are several other doubtless excellent programs which
incorporate checkers, but the ones listed are those which I personally
have used.
6.2
What’s a good spell checker?
6.2
In my view a good checker should:
6.2
1.        Accept ‘Top Bit Set’ characters, i.e. é, ü, ß, etc.
6.2
2.    Have an editable Main dictionary.
6.2
3.    Include checking of one and two letter words.
6.2
4.    Be case sensitive.
6.2
5.    Include ‘extra features’ if possible.
6.2
    These features could include (a) Checks for word word repetition. (b)
Checks for two spaces and replacement with one if required. Search and
Replace can be used, but I think a spell checker could conveniently do
it too. (c) Support for foreign languages. Important if you need it! (d)
Foresight Mode, i.e. it guesses the word you intend to type after only a
few letters have been entered. (Spell has this.)
6.2
How do they compare?
6.2
The table below shows the main features of several spell checkers. Not
all possible comparisons have been made and some may think the number of
words in a main dictionary is important.
6.2
Well, apart from doing an awful lot of counting, I don’t really have the
facts. Also, I share the view that simply to include a large number of
words in a dictionary is by no means a good thing. It’s easier to get a
(wrong) word accepted because the ‘misspelling’ happens to be correct
for another word.
6.2
Because of this, Gerald Fitton tells me he’s now compiling his own
dictionaries more or less as he goes along – from his own writings. Then
all the words he commonly uses will gradually be included. With this
approach, I should think an easily editable main dictionary would
definitely be advantageous.
6.2
If you want a bit of fun and can dump the contents of a dictionary as a
text file, spell check one dictionary against another. You’ll see the
amount of rubbish(?) is phenomenal.
6.2
The checking of one and two letter words is mentioned and some may
wonder if it’s possible to misspell these words. Yes, and mistype them
too! One reason I like to be able to check these is because I’m very
likely to type ‘i’ instead of ‘I’. Now, to catch that sort of error you
need a checker with an editable main dictionary as well as the ability
to deal with words of one letter e.g. Ovation or Spell.
6.2
Please bear in mind that we don’t have to accept the suggestions from
spell checkers. So don’t worry about postcodes or Roman numerals.
6.2
There is a method of editing PipeDream’s main dictionary without the
very lengthy dumping out of the whole lot. In brief, Gerald Fitton says
you rename the main dictionary as a user dictionary and then edit that.
Change it back to the main dictionary afterwards. Take the precaution of
first saving the original, of course.
6.2
AMFSpell
6.2
Both AMFSpell and Spell are separate spell checkers which are not
incorporated into any particular WP or DTP program.
6.2
In use, AMFSpell is installed on the iconbar and a text file is checked
for errors simply by dragging it on to the AMFSpell icon. Various
preferences may be set and an individual word may also be checked via a
menu click on the icon. With the reservations mentioned in the table,
this utility works well and, at a cost of only £1.75 from APDL, it’s
great value.
6.2
Spell
6.2
Like AMFSpell, Spell may be used to check a completed text file. In
addition, it may also be used interactively with (I think) any WP/DTP
program. It can thus function to a large extent as a substitute for
native spell checkers. For example, it is possible to use it in
conjunction with Impression’s own checker to give a near perfect
combination. Programs which don’t have their own spell checker, e.g.
DeskEdit, are obvious candidates for Spell.
6.2
Generally, I like to use all checkers interactively and when using Spell
this way, I prefer to have the Foresight Mode ON. Then, if a word is
queried, corrections are easily made there and then as the ‘nearest’
words appear in the Foresight window. This might be important to some
users because, although Spell may be used interactively, it can’t
correct a file in quite the same way as a native checker. Just as with
AMFSpell, you need to save a separate, corrected text file. However,
Spell appears to be ‘fully RISC-OS’ and allows in-memory transfers, so
there’s no problem.
6.2
In additional, the checker in Spell is apparently very similar to the
one in Ovation and both can conveniently share the same dictionary.
6.2
To summarise, Spell is a program with several useful features not found
in even some top WP/DTP packages. It is wonderful value for only £5.99
from David Pilling (£6 through Archive).
6.2
Speed and guessing abilities
6.2
I didn’t try to compare the speeds of checking as all appear adequate.
However, to see which was the best guesser, I got Impression, Ovation
and EasiWriter all running together with the same misspelled words.
Impression definitely won here and seems to incorporate some sort of
‘sounds like’ feature. In a separate test, I also compared the guessing
qualities of AMFSpell and Spell and found the latter was better.
6.2
Conclusions?
6.2
It’s difficult to pick an outright winner because it is difficult to
know quite how to compare and weigh the different features. Perhaps I
could say that my ideal checker would (a) be as easy to use as Ovation
(b) guess as well as Impression (c) handle foreign languages, even just
one word, as easily as EasiWriter. If you need a separate checker,
perhaps as a supplement, Spell would be hard to beat.
6.2
Final note: I do hope no-one will choose a WP/DTP program solely by its
spell checker. Impression’s too good for that!  A
6.2
WP/DTP Program    Top Bit Set    Case
Sensitive    Main Dictionary    Foreign
    Words of
6.2
or Spell Checker    Characters
    Editable    Languages    1 & 2
Letters
6.2
Impression    (V2.16)    No (Note 1)
    No? (Note 1)    No    ?    No
6.2
Ovation    (V1.35S)    Yes    Yes
    Yes, easily    (Note 2)    Yes
6.2
EasiWriter2    (V2.01)    Yes
    Yes    No (A pity!)    Yes, easily
    Yes
6.2
PipeDream4    (V4.13)    (In User
Dict.)    No    Yes (Note 3)    ?
    Yes
6.2
Spell    (V3.03)    Yes    Yes    Yes, easily
    (Note 2)    Yes
6.2
AMFSpell    (V1.75)    (In User Dict.)    No    No
    ?    Yes
6.2
Notes relating to the table:
6.2
Note 1. Computer Concepts say they are bringing out a version which will
accept top bit set characters. Surprisingly, they also say that the
present version is case sensitive. Really? (The abbreviations dictionary
certainly is case sensitive but not the spelling dictionary, I don’t
think. Ed) Also, they claim that wrongly spelled one and two letter
words are easy to spot. Sorry, but I don’t agree on this either.
6.2
Note 2. Both Ovation and Spell are by David Pilling who says that
foreign languages may be used with either. Just use a file of foreign
words. Presumably, this approach could be used with other checkers but,
for EasiWriter, special foreign language dictionaries are already
available.
6.2
Note 3. At the risk of roaming into Gerald Fitton’s territory, one way
of getting the PipeDream spell checker to accept accented characters is
to create a User Dictionary with ‘Latin 1’ as the language. You will get
a bleep when accented words are typed – even if they’re in the User
Dict. However, if they exist in that dictionary, they will be accepted
on checking.
6.2
Small Ads
6.2
(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)
6.2
Charity Sales − If you have unwanted software or hardware for Archimedes
computers that you could donate for charity, please send it in to the
Archive office. We will sell them through this column.
6.2
•    A3000 2Mb RAM Acorn m/s monitor, VIDC enhancer, serial port, Learning
Curve, Hot Links Presenter + games worth £120, £525 o.n.o. Phone
081−898−0447.
6.2
•    Acorn Desktop C version 4, new, unregistered, ordered for cancelled
commercial project £180 o.n.o. Phone Pete on 0663−733027.
6.2
•    Graphbox Professional never used £65. WorraCAD £45. CC fontpacks Avant
Garde + Bookman £12 each. Phone Chris on 0276−20575 after 6.
6.2
•    Pipedream £30, UIM, Alien Invasion, Apocalypse, PacMania, Zarch £7
each, Lemmings £10, Interdictor £10, Euclid £30, HardDisc Companion £15,
Artisan £15, or £120 for lot. Star LC 200-24 pin Colour printer as new
£145. Phone Andy 0254−771656.
6.2
•    RISC-OS 2 PRM’s, as new, £50. Phone Andy after 8 p.m. on 081−675−5972.
6.2
•    Star XB24-10 printer hardly used £150. Star LC24-10 printer, good
condition £75. Phone 0902−734351.  A
6.2
Colton Software
6.2
From 6.1 page 28
6.2
HCCS Colour Vision Digitiser
6.2
Bob Potter
6.2
In Archive 5.12 p43, Stuart Bell reviewed the HCCS Vision Digitiser.
HCCS has now released the colour version, together with a colour upgrade
for the earlier version. This review is of the new colour digitiser, not
the upgrade. It was tested on an A310 with 4Mb RAM and on an A5000, also
with 4Mb.
6.2
The package arrived from HCCS by return of post and contained the
half­width board, a single sheet of installation instructions and a disc
with the !Cvision application, the Read_Me documentation file, and a
sample picture entitled ‘lake’ (included on the monthly disc). As with
the mono version, the board has a single phono socket for 1V p-p
composite video input. The board appeared well made and cleanly
soldered.
6.2
The installation instructions were easy to follow and installation was
straightforward. There are instructions for the internal and external
versions for the A3000, and for the internal A300/A400/A5000 version. I
agree with Stuart Bell that the failure to provide a half-width blanking
plate is unhelpful to people who have not accumulated a drawer full of
such bits and pieces.
6.2
Using the digitiser
6.2
The !Cvision application installs on the iconbar, and clicking on this
opens a window which displays a ‘continuous’ image from the video
source. Modes 15, 21 and 28 can be used for colour images. If you only
want monochrome, you can also use modes 12, 20 and 27. Attempting to use
any other mode means that the window is not redrawn. This ‘continuous’
image is low quality mono and updates about once a second on an ARM2 and
about twice a second on an ARM3. The update is slightly slower in the
higher resolution modes.
6.2
Clicking with <menu> over the Cvision window brings up a menu with seven
options. Selecting ‘Process’ converts the low quality image on the
screen to a high quality monochrome image. ‘Grab frame’ grabs the frame
present at the video input when it is selected and then processes the
image in the same way as ‘process’. Both these options take about 11
secs on an ARM2 and about 4 secs on the A5000. If you are using a still
picture source then ‘Continuous’ and ‘Process’ are fine. For moving
images it is better to use ‘Grab frame’ while viewing the video on a
separate screen.
6.2
The ‘Colour1’ and ‘Colour2’ options process the frame in the frame store
to give colour images. ‘Colour2’ is much higher quality but takes longer
to process, particularly on an ARM2 machine − about 8 minutes in modes
21 or 28. ‘Colour1’ only takes 2 minutes. This is where an ARM3 machine
is a real advantage. ‘Colour1’ takes 30 secs and ‘Colour2’ 105 secs on
the A5000. ARM3 add-on boards with a faster clock would be even faster.
HCCS quote 24 secs and 90 secs respectively.
6.2
Because the frame is retained in the frame store, it can be re­processed
to get the effect you want. The ‘Adjust’ option allows you to change
contrast, brightness and colour saturation.
6.2
6.3
6.2
This can be done while the image is being processed and so the effect
can be seen immediately. The image is processed from top to bottom and
the changes only take effect from the level where they are made. It is
not necessary to wait for the whole frame to be processed. Clicking on
the menu with <adjust> keeps the menu on screen, and the current process
can be switched off and re­processing started from the top of the frame.
6.2
Image quality
6.2
Once you have the image you want, it can be saved as a sprite. Unfor
tunately, there is no way that the frame store can be saved, so frames
cannot be re­loaded for processing within !Cvision. However, the saved
sprites can be loaded into an application such as !ChangeFSI for further
processing. Scaling and sharpening can enhance the image quality as can
be seen from the examples on the monthly disc. The sprites are saved
with their palette.
6.2
The image size is 640 × 250, although in the multiscan modes, the sprite
is 640 × 500. The error transfer technique used by HCCS does a reason
able job of this expansion in the 256 colour modes. You lose the top and
sides of the image and so you need to allow for this when setting up a
camera or choosing an image to grab. The installation sheet includes a
voucher for £5 off the price of a 500 line upgrade (to be retailed at
£40) which will still further enhance the quality of the images you can
obtain.
6.2
Conclusions
6.2
The quality of colour images that can be obtained using this Colour
Vision digitiser is remarkable, particularly at the price of £79 + VAT
for the internal version or £92 + VAT for the external version. (The
Archive prices are £86 and £100 respectively.) If the upgrade to the
monochrome digitiser is as good, it is well worth the additional £30.
For me, the quality of images was limited by the video equipment I was
using rather than the digitiser. Camera focus is important and transfer
from tape rather than direct video degrades the input. Despite this, the
results I obtained are excellent. I can’t wait to get the 500 line
upgrade!  A
6.2
Help!!!!
6.2
• Amiga IFF files? − Can anyone tell me the format of the BODY data in
an Amiga IFF file. I need to create some Hold And Modify files for a
friend’s computer. James Riden, 294 Cyncoed Road, Cardiff CF2 6RX.
6.2
•    Cross-32 Meta-Assembler − Almost a year ago now someone sent me a
review of Baildon Electronics’ Meta-Assembler. Unfortunately, I lost the
name of the author and did not want to print it without the name. Is the
author still out there? Will he/she own up to it, please, as I would
like to print it. Thanks. Ed.
6.2
• Floating point unit errors? − Raymond Wright is experiencing a strange
problem using the WE32206 FPU on an A420/1 with version 3.2 of the FPE.
He is using Acorn Fortran 77 Release 2 to compile and run source code
which carries out numerical integration. It compiles and links with no
errors but, on running, it sometimes crashes with the message:
6.2
Uncaught error trap 80000202
6.2
                pc: 11823CD7
6.2
      registers at: 00071FC4
6.2
(Error number 800E01)
6.2
The program runs perfectly on an IBM RS60000 workstation. He can find no
reference to the error numbers and would welcome some information on
them. Can anyone help? R D Wright, 217 Park Barn Drive, Guildford,
Surrey GU2 6EX.
6.2
•    More technical articles − One of the most frequent suggestions we get
for improving Archive magazine is to have more technical articles −
programming and hardware. I agree that it would be good to have more
such articles. Is there anyone out there interested in doing something
in that area? If so, drop us a line with your suggestions. Ed.
6.2
•    Problems with RISC-OS 3.1? − If you have had any problems with RISC-OS
3.1 − either installing it, running it or with clashes with other
software and hardware, please write in to us to let us know − and if you
have found a solution, tell us about that too. (If you send more than a
paragraph of text, a disc would be appreciated and would be returned in
due course if it has your name and address on it.) Hugh Eagle has agreed
to do a compilation of the problems and solutions. We have put in a few
RISC-OS 3 hints and tips this month but, from next month, they will be
sent to Hugh who will compile and edit them for us. Ed.
6.2
•    Software needed − An organisation called Compaid is seeking to help
stroke patients with speech impediments and, having a limited budget,
they are looking for people to donate software and hardware that are no
longer being used. Please could you send them (via Archive) any of the
following: Sound sampling equipment, sound synthesis, SFXM, Vox Box,
Speech synthesis and analysis. They would also appreciate DTP and games,
etc. Please mark your donation ‘For Compaid’. Thank you. Ed.  A
6.2
An APEC Card Hardware Project
6.2
Francis Crossley
6.2
Some years ago, I developed an interest in data analysis using the fast
Fourier transform because of the work I was doing. I was then using a
BBC Model B but having since changed to the Archimedes, I had to provide
my own parallel port.
6.2
I used the Apec prototype board from Atomwide to which I fitted a
versatile interface adapter (VIA) and a 25 way D-type socket. At first,
I thought I would put an analog-to-digital converter on the Apec board
to make a transient recorder but, since I also wanted some analog signal
conditioning, it was simpler to use a second board in its own case.
6.2
The Apec prototype board plugs into the Archimedes backplane and has
room for a number of integrated circuits. Eight data lines and four
address lines (all buffered by the Apec board’s own interface circuits)
are available, together with a number of control lines. Archimedes
allows 4Kb of address space for each podule. The Apec hardware uses the
bottom 2Kb of address space for the software in RAM or ROM and the upper
2Kb is divided into four 512 byte blocks, each block being accessed by
the read or write line so that devices with separate read and write pins
can be used. (The 6522 VIA is slightly different and the change
mentioned below is necesary.) The Apec board can be bought with either a
ROM containing the software or a RAM. In the latter case, the software
must be loaded before the podule can be recognised by RISC-OS, this
software is supplied with the board or the user can write it.
6.2
To make a parallel port a VIA (or something similar) needs to be
soldered to the board and connected to the eight data and four address
lines, the system clock, the reset line, the Apec read and write lines.
I buffered the system clock using part of a 74HC04 hex inverter to avoid
loading the clock line too much. I did not use the interrupt facility
since it was not necessary. I connected the 16 pins for the two ports,
the four controls pins, the clock, +5V and −5V to a 25-way D-type
connector to maximise the utility of the VIA. I used a D-type connector
so that screened connecting cable could be used to reduce interference.
It is screwed to the plate at the rear of the computer making a very
firm arrangement. This type of connector is not the most convenient as
its pins are staggered and do not match the regular array of holes in
the Apec board, some careful bending is necessary to make it fit. An idc
connector does not have this disadvantage.
6.2
The VIA that I used is a CMOS 6522 which will accept a 2 MHz clock. It
has two sets of output pins, eight bits wide, known as ports A and B,
two pairs of control pins and two counters which can be used as timers.
There is also a serial to parallel convertor but we are not concerned
with this part. As the 6522 VIA uses a chip select and one R/W pin, the
track to pin #1 of U6 on the Apec board was broken (not pin #12 as in
the manual) and pin #1 connected to 0v. Read #0 is now active for reads
and writes and the R/W line sets the direction of transfer for the VIA.
6.2
To make the VIA perform in a particular way, it needs to be programmed
by placing suitable values in some of the 16 registers accessed by the
four address bits. Six registers are of importance in this project.
6.2
1. Data direction register − There are two but only the one for the A
port is needed. Port B cannot be used because eight bits are not
available as bit 7 is already in use for timer #2. Each pin can be
individually programmed as input or output − in this case, all are input
pins.
6.2
2. Peripheral control register − This sets the way the four control pins
are used. Two pins are read only and are used to read the FIFO full and
empty flags. The other two pins can be read or write − here they are
output pins and are used to send the read FIFO and the reset FIFO
signals.
6.2
3. Auxilliary control register − This controls how the timers operate −
in this case timer #2 must produce a square wave at bit 7 on port B.
6.2
4. Interrupt flag register − This consists of eight flags which are set
by events such as the control pins receiving signals, etc. An interrupt
can also be produced although not used in this project. Reading the
appropriate flags shows when the FIFO is full or empty.
6.2
5. Timer registers − Two registers are used for setting the values for
the high and low bytes of the timer. The values required are calculated
knowing the highest frequency of interest. The timer output must be at
twice this freqency. The high byte is ‘frequency DIV 256’ and the low is
‘frequency MOD 256’ .
6.2
Programming the VIA seems to be formidable because it is a complex
device but the values required are not too difficult to deduce using the
data sheets. (Ed wrote a series of six articles in Electronics &
Computing Monthly about using the 6522 VIA in June − November 1984. Can
it really be that long ago?!?!)
6.2
The transient recorder consists of a variable attenuator and operational
amplifier, an analog to digital converter and some memory. DC bias can
be applied to the amplifier so that the voltage presented to the AD
converter is never negative and never greater than 2.5 V or so. To
simplify setting the gain and DC offset, a two colour LED (red and
green) is used. When correctly adjusted, the LED will be unlit but a
negative voltage lights the green LED and over-voltage lights the red
one. A yellow colour indicates that the amplitude is too large and is
going negative. This function is performed using two comparators, one
with 0V as the reference and the other using the AD reference voltage.
6.2
The AD converter (ZN439) is an 8 bit converter performing one conversion
in a minimum of 5 microseconds (depending on the applied clock fre
quency). The converter can be connected so that it performs continuous
conversions − setting the read pin low applies the digital code for the
analog voltage of the last conversion to the output pins. To avoid the
overhead of collecting samples under software control − and with a 5 µs
conversion time, there is very little time to do this anyway − a FIFO
ram (first in first out) is used to collect 2048 8-bit values using
hardware control. A monostable, controlled by the VIA in the Apec board
to enable sampling at the correct frequency, is used to produce a write
enable pulse for the FIFO. During this pulse, the clock pulses from the
Archimedes are gated to enable reading the AD converter. This data is
written to the FIFO. A little extra logic is necessary to help the major
components talk to each other at the correct time. Reading the FIFO when
it is full uses software since the time constraints are much reduced.
6.2
Software
6.2
In order to use the parallel port, the podule must be recognised by the
operating system. If the ROM version of board is in use, it probably is
already recognised − I use a RAM version, so am not certain. For the RAM
version, the Apec initialisation program is run. This originally asked
for the podule number and name of the source file but since they are
both constant in my system, I wrote the correct values into the program
(it is written in BASIC so that part was easy). Typing ‘*podules’ gives
the following message:
6.2
*Atomwide Prototyping Expansion Card 1.30
6.2
The Apec board can now be used.
6.2
The first part of the transient recorder program sends the correct
values to the VIA’s registers to implement the functions outlined above.
Apec supplies SWI type commands to write and read the podule. In Basic,
a read command would be:
6.2
SWI “APEC_Read”,slot,userblock ,offset TO ,,,value
6.2
where slot is the podule number 0 to 3, userblock is the block of memory
where the VIA is located, (if read #0 is used, this block is 0), offset
is the address of the VIA’s register and will be in the range 0 to 15,
and value is the name of the variable where the data is to be placed.
6.2
Writing a value uses a similar command:
6.2
SWI “APEC_Write”,slot,offset, block,value
6.2
where the variables have the same meaning as before but value is now the
data to be written.
6.2
Other commands are provided for reading or writing a block of data and
there is one to set the speed of operation or ‘Sync’ if the 6522 is
being used, I would use this one first and then the write commands.
6.2
It does not matter in which order the registers are written but
numerically is logical. As soon as the timer low byte is written, timer
#2 produces its square wave. The FIFO is then reset and data collection
by the transient recorder starts. The program then loops while it looks
at the FIFO full flag. When the FIFO is full, the program sends a low
signal to the FIFO read pin, the data is read and placed in an array,
the read pin is sent high and this sequence is repeated until 2048
values have been collected. It might be thought possible to look at the
FIFO empty flag and to stop transfering data when empty but the FIFO
will continue to be filled as long as the full flag is not asserted.
However, if reading the FIFO takes longer than writing to it, samples
will be missed giving incorrect data. My program displays the data as a
graph and enquires whether the data should be saved and if so under what
name. Since the data is in bytes it is saved as bytes. This data can
then be used by other programs. The program is written in ‘C’ because,
having written programs in Fortran and Pascal, I decided to stick to one
language, ‘C’ !
6.2
At the moment, only 2048 values are collected but it is possible, by
reading the half full flag of the FIFO, to start emptying it while it is
still being filled, emptying being halted if the empty flag is asserted
− but this has not been tried yet. To enable reading the half full flag,
I would need to program port B so that one of its bits would need to be
an input, as I have used up the four control pins.
6.2
The transient recorder can be used to collect samples of a signal for
analysis by methods such as the Fourier transform which presents the
signal in terms of its frequency components. In my case, a signal might
be from a teleprinter received on a short wave radio. After Fourier
transformation, a graph of the new values shows two peaks corresponding
to the two tones used by the transmitter, probably a radio amateur.
Information can be deduced about the strange noises heard on the amateur
bands (no, not about the amateurs themselves!).
6.2
This probably is not the place for a circuit diagram or a more detailed
description of the use of the major components but if any reader wants
more information I shall be happy to oblige. Please send a stamped
addressed envelope. My address is 156 Holmes Chapel Road, Congleton,
Cheshire  CW12 4QB.  A
6.2
Government Health Warning − Reading this could seriously affect your
spiritual health.
6.2
“The trouble with you Christians is that you are always trying to tell
other people what is right and what is wrong. It’s OK to have your own
private views about God and morality and things as long as you don’t try
to push those ideas onto other people. We live in a pluralist society so
we have to accept that we all have different views. Tolerance, that’s
the thing!”
6.2
“But are you saying that there is no such thing as right and wrong? Is
it all a matter of opinion?”
6.2
“Oh no, of course some things are absolutely wrong − like murder, for
example.”
6.2
“So would you say that killing someone in war is wrong? Is that murder?
Or what about abortion? Is that murder? How do you decide what is right
and what is wrong?”
6.2
“Well, in a modern, civilised society, we don’t allow some person or
group (especially a religious group!) to dictate to us what is right and
what is wrong. We get together and discuss things rationally and come to
a democratic decision about what is right.”
6.2
“But why should something be any more right just because the majority of
people in a particular country at a particular time in history think it
is? And what happens when two countries disagree about what is right?!”
6.2
What I have tried to show in this little dialogue is that talking about
right and wrong is actually meaningless without some sort of frame of
reference. Also, it seems to me that when a country bases its laws on
what the majority (of those who shout loudest?) think is right, the
natural tendency is for moral standards to drop − we all do what we
think is good in our own eyes. It’s much easier for a government to do
what is ‘popular’ rather than what it believes is ‘right’ (whatever that
means).
6.2
I know I am in the minority here, but the (biblical) Christian view is
that God made the world and He made us. He knows how we can best run our
society in such a way that freedom, love and justice can prevail, so if
we listen to what He says is right and wrong, we stand a chance of
improving our society.
6.2
In Noah’s day, the majority of people said, “We don’t need God to tell
us what’s right and what is wrong − we can run our own society. Flood?
What flood? Oh, so God says there is going to be a flood, does he? Ha,
ha, ha! Noah − you’re off your head! There isn’t going to be any flood.”
6.2
Remember, the majority isn’t always right!
6.2
Damage, theft and snoop protection for key files and directories. Drag-
and-drop with password to secure or release. Secure objects are
encrypted, and while !IronMask is installed on your system, they cannot
be opened, copied, moved, deleted, overwritten, or given any different
filetype or attributes.
6.2
£59.00 all users.
6.2
6.3
6.2
The only link editor for BBC Basic compilers. Now, for  the first time,
reusable library code can be automatically included in compiled Basic
programs.
6.2
£39.00 single user. Enquire for site prices.
6.2
No VAT. Prices include postage. Send or phone for further information or
factsheets.
6.2
6.3
6.2
The DTP Column
6.2
Richard Hallas
6.2
At the time of writing, the Acorn User Show (an event I am looking
forward to greatly) is less than a week away. This year’s show really
does sound as though it’s going to be a large and exciting one, even
better than last year’s, which was pretty impressive in itself. All this
activity can only be good news for Acorn users in general and Acorn in
particular, especially with the recent introduction of the new low-end
machines and RISC-OS 3·10.
6.2
Incidentally, I now have RISC-OS 3 fitted to my A440/1 and, despite the
supposedly limited numbers of available upgrades, I was able to get a
copy without any appreciable delay. Despite a few irritations it is
operating reliably and is a very worthwhile upgrade. My personal
favourite feature is the improved font manager − an amazingly slick
piece of software. You can rotate and skew text to your heart’s content
in Vector and it still displays with anti-aliasing.
6.2
Better still, it is much faster than previous versions. The worst hang-
over from RISC-OS 2 from my point of view is that the LaserDirect
printer driver won’t print rotated text and sprite files. There will be
a new version of this driver in due course, naturally, but it will be
some time before it appears. Anyway, with Artworks also finally
available, things are looking much healthier for serious Acorn users;
let’s hope the current trends continue.
6.2
News and Views
6.2
• Graphics Card:  In conjunction with Wild Vision, Computer Concepts
should by now have launched a new graphics card. Full technical details
are not available at the time of writing but the essentials are as
follows: the card will take the form of a single width podule which will
receive the standard Acorn screen information as input and send an
output to the monitor via its own socket. As a result, it will be
compatible with all existing Acorn modes and many others will be
supplied with the card. Priced at £249, it is capable of driving up to
1120×840 pixels in 16 colours with a screen refresh rate of 60 Hz or
800×600 pixels in 256 colours with a definable palette. The definable
palette is the only real colour advantage this card has over the
standard screen modes but, realistically, this is all that the majority
of users are going to need.
6.2
Despite all the hype, 24-bit colour is overkill for most people; more
important is the availability of large screen modes without flicker, and
these are what this card will provide. Apparently the card can support
the standard modes at rates of up to 90 Hz and even the biggest modes
will operate at similar speeds to an unexpanded mode 19 (multisync with
4 colours).
6.2
This sounds pretty impressive; I personally use a custom mode which is
similar to mode 20 but with a graphic resolution of 864×616 (108×77
characters). This is a super size for the desktop but the screen flicker
is noticeable, as is the loss in speed over smaller modes. I hope to be
able to try out one of these cards in the near future and see how much
difference it makes. Like a quality monitor or an ARM 3, this is
probably one of those upgrades which, once you have bought it, you
wonder how you ever managed without it.
6.2
• Impression 2·18:  The new version will probably be available by the
time you read this, although it wasn’t going to be ready in time for the
Show. It is primarily an upgrade with Artworks users in mind, as it
offers two new enhancements: the ability to render Artworks files
directly, and the removal of the 256-font limit. As Artworks is supplied
with 220 outline fonts, it naturally seemed a bit silly that Impression
could only handle an extra 36 faces. Impression users should note that
there has been a change in Computer Concepts’ upgrade policy from this
version of Impression. Since the upgrade is mainly for Artworks users’
benefit, it will be free to them, but if you are not an owner of
Artworks, there will be an upgrade fee − probably around £10.
6.2
• PMS2:  Some firm news at last about the new version of the music
typesetting program: PMS2 will definitely be released at Christmas. It
is likely to be available in four versions: commercial, non-commercial,
PostScript and non-PostScript, and will range in price from £175 for the
basic non-PostScript version up to the £500 for the full-blown system.
Upgrades from PMS1 will probably be £50. Contrary to previous informa
tion, it will not be a ‘drag notes in a window’ style program, but will
take a (backwards compatible) text input file as did version 1. There is
a viewing window, but it is for checking only. However, the general
approach is more helpful than PMS1 and the overall quality of output has
also been improved over the previous version.
6.2
Needless to say, PMS2 has many new facilities, including the addition
(for printer driver and drawfile output) of all the features which were
previously only available to PostScript users, as well as comprehensive
drawing commands and other features. I have been bug-testing PMS2 for a
couple of months now and can say that it is very flexible indeed − there
is really very little that it won’t do.
6.2
• Poster 1·6:  4Mation has announced that a new version of Poster is
available, with numerous enhancements. The DrawPrint application, which
allows Poster and drawfiles to be printed across several sheets of
paper, is included with both the full package and the upgrade, and
Poster’s enhanced features include: text area creation, compressed file
load and save, increased speed in various areas, 256 line, fill and text
colours as opposed to 16 in previous versions, text to path facility,
zooming centred on the pointer, RISC-OS 3 facilities to rotate text and
sprites, and various other more minor improvements. The upgrade costs
£15+VAT (£17.62) unless you bought Poster within the last six weeks, in
which case it is free. Registered users should have received an upgrade
form by now.
6.2
•    Risc Developments’ Desktop Thesaurus − a new version has been produced
which has 17,392 keywords and 181,705 synonyms. The user interface has
been improved by providing a scrollable keywords list. The upgrade is
free − just send your disc back to Risc Developments.
6.2
Hints, Tips and Letters
6.2
A combined selection this month, since the hints and tips stem from
letters I have received recently.
6.2
• Key Window / Impression problem:  I am grateful to Jack Evans of
Bristol for pointing out this problem to me, particularly since I am the
author of the program in question. Key Window (available on Shareware 47
– see review in Archive 6.1 p31) is a program which displays keystrips
in a window, and the strips update themselves as you move the caret
between tasks.
6.2
The problem is that if you have Key Window running at the same time as
you are editing a document in Impression which is set to auto-save, the
auto-save doesn’t work. You can still save manually of course, but this
is something which is easy to forget about. The solution is easily
effected, if not very satisfactory. You have to de-select ‘Sense caret’
in Key Window’s Options menu. Unfortunately, this will prevent Key
Window from changing keystrips as you move between applications. If you
use Impression’s auto-save a lot, and want to disable Key Window’s
interference permanently, you can edit the !Run file to disable the
‘sense caret’ option via a system variable. Full instructions for doing
this are provided in the file.
6.2
Users may be interested to know that I have just started work on version
2 of Key Window, and am re-writing it from scratch to make it a much
better program with enhanced facilities. I intend to approach Computer
Concepts about the problem, to see if a satisfactory solution can be
found. Other programs with auto-save facilities, such as Ovation and
Vector, do not appear to suffer from the problem.
6.2
• Protecting Impression files:  Charles Martin from the Isle of Wight
has been having a few problems with some Impression ‘template’ files –
empty documents with standard formats. He wants to make them Delete- and
Write-protected via the filer’s Access menu but has found that setting
the files (which are, of course, in the form of application directories)
to ‘locked’ does not protect their contents. Similarly, opening the
directories and choosing ‘Select all’ does not have the desired effect.
6.2
This situation actually applies to all applications and directories, not
just Impression files. However, under RISC-OS 3, the Access menu is
completely redesigned and works much better, so the problem only really
affects RISC-OS 2 users. The difficulty arises because of the distinc
tion that the filer makes between directories (be they normal
directories or application directories) and actual files. This is one of
those ‘features’ of RISC-OS 2 which needs a bit of care.
6.2
Under RISC-OS 3, if you select a directory or application directory
(such as an Impression file) and set it to ‘Protected’, the filer will
protect all the files within it, no matter how many sub-directories
there are. Under RISC-OS 2, however, it will only set the status of the
directory itself. You therefore need to open the directory, select all
the files within it and set their attributes via the Access menu.
However, there is a further complication: if the selection of files
contains any directories, the process will be upset − the directories
need to be deselected first.
6.2
Under RISC-OS 2, to protect an Impression file, you would need to open
it up, choose ‘Select all’ from the filer menu, deselect any directories
in the selection by clicking on them with <adjust>, and finally set all
the files’ attributes via the Access menu. Then repeat the process for
each of the directories which you had deselected (‘MasterChap’,
‘Chapter1’, etc). There is simply no point in protecting the directories
themselves, since it is impossible to delete a directory which contains
locked files, and locking a directory (under RISC-OS 2) does not affect
the access status of the files within it in any case.
6.2
All in all, it’s probably easiest to upgrade to RISC-OS 3!
6.2
• Applause for Ovation:  A highly enthusiastic letter about Ovation has
been received from Tony Greenfield of Birmingham. He has the following
to say:
6.2
“[Ovation] does just what I had hoped for and more. The manual is
brilliant! It is a work book on DTP, quite good enough as an introduc
tion to the subject to beginners and as an encouraging tutorial for more
experienced users. I found it much more useful than First Impression. I
have learnt much about Impression II and much about how a manual should
be presented. I wonder if the reason that there are not many hints and
tips on using Ovation [in Archive] is because the user manual is so
clear? (It may also have something to do with the relative numbers of
people using the two packages. Ed.) There are many features which I like
about the program. In fact, there is not very much missing – I wonder
if, for most people, Impression is not really required − after all, it’s
more expensive than Ovation. I’m sure that, for schools who have yet to
purchase a DTP package, Ovation would be a must better buy than
Impression, for many reasons − perhaps most of all for the ease of use,
and I guess it would be easier to learn than Impression.”
6.2
Tony goes on to list various features which he likes in Ovation, notably
its wide range of effects such as word underline, small caps and
tracking, and its system of basing font styles on one family name, so
that changing the base family will also alter the italic and bold fonts.
6.2
I would certainly agree with Tony’s comments about the manual, which is
indeed a very helpful document, although I think Impression is the
easier of the two to learn, as Ovation has a quite unwieldy menu
structure. Perhaps the quality of the manual really is the reason why we
haven’t received more tips on using the program from readers. Anyway,
things are set to change from this month in Archive, with the advent of
Maurice Edmundson’s dedicated Ovation column. (We also have a new DTP
editor, Ray Dawson, whose first column will appear next month.) For
further comments about Ovation, see my Ovation/Impression comparison
article which follows on page 33.  A
6.2
Oak
6.2
From 6.1 page 22
6.2
ICS
6.2
From 5.12 page 31
6.2
PipeLine
6.2
Gerald Fitton
6.2
The major topic this month is PD4 custom functions but first, here are a
couple of other points.
6.2
PipeDream 4 bug?
6.2
Jonathan A I Brown reports a ‘bug’. I can’t reproduce the effect he has.
Can you? Jonathan says:
6.2
I have also, I regret to say, detected a bug (Aargh!!) in PD4 − but only
a small one. When a PD3 file is double-clicked without PD4 having been
previously loaded, PD4 loads in but the window for that file does not
appear. The file does, however, appear in the Documents sub-menu on the
iconbar. This only happens with files that have not been saved under
PD4. This happens on both the A440/1 and the A4 (RISC-OS 2.00 & 3.10
respectively), so it probably isn’t a clash with the operating system. I
suspect it is a problem within PipeDream itself as the line
6.2
SetMacro Alias$@RunType_DDE Run <PipeDream$Dir>.!Run %%*0
6.2
in the !Boot file presents no problems.
6.2
If you have any theories please let me know.
6.2
Custom functions − an introduction
6.2
Fashions change. A few days ago, I needed to look up an article in an
early issue of Archive. It was most noticeable that a much larger
proportion of the content of those early issues consisted of Basic
programs than do more recent ones. Much more space is now devoted to the
use of packages such as Impression, Vector, Revelation and, of course,
PipeDream than to writing programs in Basic. There was something most
satisfying about writing a short program in Basic and running it
successfully. Perhaps even more satisfying was to use the Basic
assembler to create a working machine code routine!
6.2
I think part of the attraction was that, after typing RUN, the computer
‘took over’ and, somewhat like the wheels of God, it ground its
inexorable way through the program, creating myriad coloured patterns or
executing almost uncountable calculations with awesome speed. As I came
to use data processing packages more and more, what I didn’t realise was
that I was missing one of the most attractive features of a computer
system. That was its ability to accept only a small amount of data and
then, by following simply expressed rules, to perform what, manually,
would be a painstaking exercise in accurate calculation, at a speed that
could only be described as ‘exhilarating’ and, finally, to output the
‘answer’ with unfailing accuracy − or not, as the case might be!
6.2
Let me illustrate what I mean with an example. A Basic program I wrote
many years ago for the BBC Micro took, as its input, a date (day, month,
year) and the output was the day of the week. At that time, I had been
asked to teach “Computer literacy” to highly qualified ‘mature’ students
who had never used a computer before. If I had to choose one single
application which encouraged those Managers (etc) to ‘play’ and so
interact with an ‘IT System’ then that ‘Day of the Week’ program would
be my selection!
6.2
(By the way, on the Archive monthly disc, you will find a directory
called DutchCal. It has been contributed by one of our Dutch readers and
it is a version of an everlasting calendar which, originally, I wrote
for PD2. It does not use custom functions.)
6.2
By writing PipeDream 4 custom functions, I am now rediscovering that
thrill. Don’t get me wrong, I know that word processing is the most
‘popular’ use of modern PC systems but, let’s face it, WP systems need a
lot of data input, do relatively little ‘processing’ and produce a
fairly predictable output. Now, with a ‘Day of the Week’ custom
function, you can input the day of your birth and find out if you are
“Full of Grace” (Tuesday’s child) or whether you have “Far to Go”
(Thursday’s child). Much more exciting!
6.2
With your help, I am hoping to provide a custom function for calculating
Easter Sunday (for any year from about 5A.D.) on the Archive monthly
disc issued next month (December 1992). Finding the date of Easter
Sunday has a rather more intricate algorithm than finding the day of the
week. I believe that it is the first Sunday after the first full moon
after the Spring Equinox. Traditionally (i.e. manually) the date of
Easter is calculated using, as intermediate variables, a Golden Number,
a Sunday Letter and an Epact, all with appropriate look up tables which
can be found in the Church of England Prayer Book. In older records of
the birth, marriage or death of individuals, or in the records of
important events, the dates are often related to the nearest ‘movable
feast’; the dates of all these ‘moveable feasts’ can be found once you
know the date of Easter.
6.2
There is another complication which needs to be considered. In the UK,
we changed from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in 1752 by leaving
out 11 days between the 2nd and 14th September 1752. Other countries
made the change earlier, many in 1582. If you have any comment or
contribution to make (for example, do you know whether Easter was
celebrated simultaneously on the continent and in the UK between 1582
and 1752) then I shall be most pleased to hear from you.
6.2
Anyway, back to my main theme − even if you not a teacher trying to
interest pupils or students, you too will find that “Custom functions
are fun!”. Many spreadsheet packages (yes, even those for IBM compat
ibles) now include a ‘custom function’ facility (often called ‘macros’ −
but unlike PipeDream’s macros). To use the custom function facility, you
need to learn the custom function programming language. Teachers have
the problem that today’s students have little or no formal training in
the programming skills needed to write such custom functions. My advice
about programming is that you should learn a set of conventions (a
subset of the constraints of the programming language) which encourage
‘good’ programming. Only after becoming master of these ‘rules’ should
you break them knowing that you need speed or efficiency which cannot be
achieved by sticking rigidly to them.
6.2
Custom functions and Command files
6.2
One thing I must clear up from the start is that custom functions are
different from command files. Custom functions did not exist in PD3 but
command files (called ‘macros’) did. Command files consist of a sequence
of PipeDream commands such as <Ctrl-CGS> (Cursor Goto Slot) and <Ctrl-
BM> (Block Move). They can be used to add or delete rows and columns −
even to load and save documents. Custom functions cannot be used to move
blocks around within a document nor indeed to change the ‘shape’ of a
document in any way. However, what you can do with them is to process
the data which already exists within the slots of a document (or within
a set of documents) in more intricate ways than can be done simply with
the ‘standard’ functions provided. Just like any standard function such
as (A1 + A2) or the more complex lookup(A1,B1B10,C1C10), a custom
function is ‘called’ from a slot and the ‘result’ of executing the
function is returned to the slot from which it is called.
6.2
Calling custom functions
6.2
Let’s have a look at a custom function at work. In the screenshot
opposite, you will see two PipeDream documents. The first, [AddOne], is
an ‘ordinary’ PipeDream document. The second [c_AddOne] is the custom
function.
6.2
You can use any valid file name for a custom function document but, so
that I can recognise which PipeDream files are ‘ordinary’ documents and
which are custom function documents, I have prefixed all my custom
function documents with c_ (a lower case c followed by an underline). I
suggest that you follow this convention; it is recommended not only by
me but also by Colton Software.
6.2
Concentrating first on [AddOne], it contains only two ‘active’ slots,
A3, which contains the number 2 and B3 which contains the ‘call’ to the
custom function.
6.2
The custom function ‘called’ from [AddOne]B3 is not a spectacular custom
function. The ‘result’ returned to the slot [AddOne]B3 is (A3 + 1), one
more than the number in the slot [AddOne]A3. If you have the monthly
disc, change the value in [AddOne]A3 a few times and convince yourself
that the value in [AddOne]B3 is always 1 more than the value in
[AddOne]A3.
6.2
Now let’s have a look at the contents of slot [AddOne]B3. Place the
pointer over [AddOne]B3 and click <select>. The formula line does not
show the simple, non custom function way of adding 1 which would be
(A3 + 1); instead it shows the formula used to ‘call’ the custom
function, namely [c_AddOne]one_more_than(A3). Because I have positioned
the cursor in [AddOne]B3 whilst taking the screenshot, this formula
appears in the formula line. Before looking at the custom function
document, [c_AddOne], let’s have a look at the formula used to call the
custom function in more detail.
6.2
The ‘calling’ formula is in three parts:
6.2
The first part − [c_AddOne] − is the name of the dependent document
which contains the custom function. A custom function document such as
[c_AddOne] can contain more than one custom function. Indeed, it is
desirable to ‘split up’ large, exotic custom functions into a set of
smaller custom functions (stored within the same ‘c_’ document) in the
same way that it is usually desirable to split up a long program written
in Basic into more easily digested PROCs and FNs.
6.2
The second part − one_more_than − is the name of the custom function
within [c_AddOne]. If you look at slot A7 of the document [c_AddOne] you
will see that − one_more_than −, the name of the custom function,
appears after the word ‘function’. Another convention which I recommend
is that the names of custom functions should be totally in lower case
(no capitals). The reason is that lower case and upper case function
names are equivalent (unlike Basic procedures) and PipeDream converts
upper case letters in the custom function names to lower case anyway!
6.2
The third part − (A3) − is the single piece of data which is passed to
the custom function for processing. To be more accurate, [AddOne]A3 is
the slot reference of the data passed to [c_AddOne] for processing. The
data passed to a custom function in this way is called a ‘parameter’. A
parameter is a ‘sort of’ variable which has a ‘fixed’ value within the
custom function but can be varied outside the custom function. As we
shall see in a later article, it is possible to pass more than one
parameter to a custom function. Indeed, you can pass as many different
parameters as you wish to a custom function but, if you want to pass a
large amount of data, rather than use many parameters (a rather
cumbersome method), it is better to pass a range of slots, or an array,
as one single parameter.
6.2
Returning the result
6.2
‘Calling’ the custom function − [c_AddOne]one_ more_than(A3) − from slot
[AddOne]B3 returns the result of the processing to the slot from which
it was called, [AddOne]B3. Although the result can be returned to only a
single slot, this does not mean that you can return only one value from
a custom function! You can return many values to one slot by returning
an array to the calling slot. This array can then be expanded using
set_value (range,slotref) where ‘slotref’ contains the array (and the
calling function) and where ‘range’ is the range of slots containing the
expanded array. We shall return to examples of this tactic another day.
6.2
Sequence
6.2
This topic is concerned with the order in which the commands are
executed. Every sequence must have a start and a finish.
6.2
In a large number of spreadsheets, you must choose whether to recalcu
late along the rows (one at a time, starting at the top and running from
left to right along each row) or down the columns (one at a time
starting with the left most column and working down each column from top
to bottom). In PD4 recalculation takes place in an order which is called
“natural”. Essentially, with “natural” recalculation, every slot can be
regarded as part of a chain and the calculation proceeds along the chain
in such a way that slots which depend on other slots are processed last
no matter where they are located within the document. When a slot is
changed in PD4, only those chains which are affected are recalculated.
6.2
Custom function documents are different from ‘ordinary’ PipeDream
documents. In a PD4 custom function document, the default sequence is
that commands are executed, one at a time, down a single column. The
start is identified by the command − function − and the end is identi
fied by the command − result.
6.2
The custom function
6.2
What we haven’t looked at yet is the custom function itself to see how
it adds one to the parameter and returns the ‘result’. There are only
two ‘active’ slots in the custom function document [c_AddOne] namely the
two slots A7 and A8.
6.2
Let’s look at the commands in detail and see how they process data.
6.2
Row 7 − ...function(“one_more_than”,“parameter :number”)
6.2
In this custom function, the ‘4ProL’ command − ...function − has two
arguments. The first argument is the name of the custom function, −
“one_more_than” − note that the name is included in inverted commas. The
second argument is the one and only parameter passed to the function.
The name of the one parameter passed to − [c_AddOne] − is − parameter −
and its ‘type’ has been declared (after the colon) as a number. Because
of this declaration, if you try to pass anything other than a number to
this function, an error will be generated. If you want to pass a number
sometimes and, say, a string on another occasion, you do not have to
declare the type of variable.
6.2
Try typing Fred (without and then with inverted commas) into [AddOne]A3
and you will find that the error message − String not expected − is
returned to slot [AddOne]B3. You will find the error message foreshor
tened in the body of the [AddOne] document. If you want to read the full
error message then click the pointer in [AddOne]B3, then on the formula
button (the italic f just to the right of the PipeDream 4 logo) and
finally run the pointer through the first menu option − Slot ‘B3’ − Slot
value − and you will see the full error message displayed. This
technique is particularly useful when long error messages are generated.
6.2
Row 8 − ...result(@parameter+1)
6.2
The command − ...result − terminates the sequence of commands and
returns a value to the slot from which it was called, [AddOne]B3. Note
the @ sign preceding the word − parameter − and that the inverted commas
have gone. The @ sign ‘goes with’ the word − parameter − try
...return(1+@parameter), it gives the same result.
6.2
Try changing ...return(@parameter+1) to ...return (@parameter+2). You
have to do this in the formula line of [c_AddOne]. Even after you have
modified the custom function, the number 3 in the slot [AddOne]B3 does
not change. To make that change, and indeed if you want to check whether
you have introduced any ‘bugs’ (errors in programming) in [c_AddOne] you
must ‘run’ the custom function by ‘calling’ it again from the document
[AddOne]. The simplest way of doing this is to place the cursor in slot
[AddOne]B3, move the pointer to the formula line and click on
[c_AddOne]one_more_than(A3). Finally, click on the green tick to the
left of the formula line. When you click on the green tick, the custom
function will be called and the new ‘result’ will be returned to
[AddOne]B3.
6.2
Over to you now
6.2
As your first exercise in writing custom functions, try to recreate the
pair of documents, [AddOne] and [c_AddOne]. Only when you have succeeded
are you ready to continue! If you have problems then type <Ctrl-O> to
check that you have suitable default options in your custom function
document. In particular, it is advisable to set the <Ctrl-O> − New slot
format − to Numbers. Secondly, note that the three dots which precede
the word − function − appear automatically in slot [c_AddOne]A7 and do
not appear in the formula line. You do not type the three dots anywhere;
just type the expression − function(“one_more _than”,“parameter:number”)
− into a “number” slot and press <return>!
6.2
Summary
6.2
A custom function is a sequence of commands which start with a −
function − command and end with a − result − command. Once there is a
custom function within a document, the whole document is a custom
function document. Custom function documents behave differently from
‘ordinary’ documents − but they do not have a different filetype!
6.2
Parameters can be passed to custom functions. They must retain their
identity and value throughout the custom function.
6.2
Finally
6.2
If you wish to write to me, the contact address is that of Abacus
Training which you will find on the inside back cover of Archive.  A
6.2
Nº 62 Honeypot Lane
6.2
Simon Anthony
6.2
For those of you who know BBC TV’s children’s animation ‘Pigeon Street’,
Nº 62 Honeypot Lane has something of the same style. It has the same
cuteness, the same general goodnaturedly mood and the same target age
group.
6.2
62 Honeypot Lane (or ‘62’ as I shall call it from now on) is a pictorial
trip for children through the changing interior of a modern family semi-
detached house over a one year period. You can choose the month, the
day, even the hour in this little world. By using the mouse to click
your way through the rooms you get to know the house plan and begin to
learn a bit about the people and pets who live there. As time goes by,
things change inside and outside the house. It gets dark at night,
people go to bed, it might rain or snow or it might not. Leaves fall
from the trees and plants grow in the garden. If the family hamster has
escaped, it can be found running around the kitchen or in its home
behind the fridge or in bed, where it sometimes wears a night cap. (See
what I mean by cute?)
6.2
Each room is beautifully drawn in full colour and so is everything in
it. Nearly every aspect of a scene can be investigated. Just by clicking
on it, a short message is displayed at the bottom of the screen
describing the object under the pointer. The text is in an easy-to-read
font, white on black, which stays displayed until you either leave the
room or click on something else.
6.2
62 from Resource comes as a single disc with a few covering notes which
provide help and even a degree of entertainment. The program is full of
jokes to keep the teacher happy as well as the pupil enthralled − these
jokes are indicated in the written notes. It is supplied either in a
single user format, which is copy protected, or in an unprotected site
licence version. My first review copy came with a built-in time bomb
which went off after a ‘play by’ date had passed when the computer over
wrote something and killed the program. This is a very clever way of
providing protection, but as I had only had the disc for one day this
proved to be a bit of a pain for review purposes. So, I called Resource
and they sent me a site licence copy almost by return.
6.2
Niggles
6.2
During the brief life of the first disc I found one bug which was the
occasional loss of the bathroom, replaced by a second copy of
“Elizabeth’s bedroom” in which she was sleeping at the time − 25th
December. The second disc didn’t reproduce this error so it may have
been corrected.
6.2
The site licensed version was easy to install on the hard drive of an
Econet network of A3000s at my college. Unfortunately, as the only way
to leave the program is via a hard break, this logs off the network.
6.2
Although it is not the intention of Resource just to teach language
skills, it is unfortunate that certain of the information text lines do
not exactly correspond to the objects indicated. For example, the
pictures ‘Grandma and Grandpa’ would be better called ‘pictures of
Grandma or Grandpa’. Also a Christmas cactus plant is just called a
‘Christmas cactus’ even though there is space for the word ‘plant’ as
well. A poor reader would then have more of a chance to work out what
the computer is talking about and a better reader should not feel
patronised by the fuller description.
6.2
Also, I wonder why is there no fridge in the kitchen? It is possible to
enter the kitchen from behind one (via the mouse/hamster hole) but it
looks just like an ordinary kitchen cupboard from the front. It is,
however, labelled ‘fridge’ when it is clicked. The Christmas decorations
are labelled ‘No information’ which looks like another accidental
omission. My biggest concern is over the supermarket bill which is
pinned to a notice board in the kitchen. The paperwork says (but it is
not clear from the program) that ‘only one end is shown’. Only seeing
the end with the total and not being able to add up all the items makes
the maths works out very badly to say the least. I found a student deep
in confusion trying to do the sums.
6.2
How does it work?
6.2
62 does not need to multi-task. Double clicking on its icon starts the
program with a frontispiece showing the copy number and version type.
The emulation begins on January 1st at 4pm by showing the outside of the
house where a ‘For Sale’ sign is up. The bottom of this screen provides
the time travel facilities, hour, day and month, forwards and backwards.
These work intuitively (as does the whole program). The house is empty
of everything but fixtures and fittings but as the days roll by, the
family move in and things really get going. The dates wrap around to the
same January 1st which forces the family to put the house up for sale on
the 30th December. It is a pity that the year starts at 1st January. If
it began in mid April, the New Year could be covered, people sell houses
more often in the spring after all. This is a very (very) minor grumble
− in fact the only one I have apart from the few bugs mentioned above.
6.2
Why you should buy it
6.2
Even if you don’t have children, 62 is a delight to use and reuse. If
you do have kids, you won’t get a look in until they are sent to bed. My
students have to be levered out of the computer room as there is always
something new to discover and be delighted by. The humour, the care to
detail, the presentation and the ease of use make the program approa
chable by all ages.
6.2
62 teaches the use of the mouse, reading skills, directions, object
recognition and cause and effect relationships like where did the
vulture come from? Grandma and Grandpa ‘escaping’ from their old
people’s home is a nice touch. The family is based on a standard white
middle class stereotyped well-to-do model − but then Resource had to
choose something and this does as well as any. In the printed notes,
Resource admit and apologize for this limitation.  A
6.2
Merge and Mask
6.2
Tord Eriksson
6.2
Have you ever tried to use Draw to make striped text? Have you tried to
use a mask, to mask off part of a drawing or sprite? It is not imposs
ible, but with Vector it is just a couple of minutes work. (Version 1.03
is needed for RISC-OS 2 users if you don’t have DrawPlus!)
6.2
The ingredients
6.2
First we need some text and turn that into objects with the text-to-path
tool:
6.2
6.3
6.2
Then we need something to put the text onto, in this case a square:
6.2
6.3
6.2
After having ungrouped the text, we merge their paths and get a grey
object with holes in it:
6.2
6.3
6.2
The rest is very simple indeed. We put a dark square under the text and
make a copy of a thin square, place them on the square and interpolate
the bars in between, using the interpolate tool from the Special menu:
6.2
6.3
6.2
This is then placed under the mask with the text and we have our striped
text:
6.2
6.3
6.2
If you want to do more complex things, it is now possible to use
experimentation with copying, merging and skewing the graphic object or
setting the mask to white with white lines. It is all up to your
imagination and patience:
6.2
6.3
6.2
An easy and fun way of doing unusual graphics!
6.2
Anyone wanting to correspond with me please write to: Tord S Eriksson,
Övralidsg. 25, S-422 47 Hisings Backa, Sweden.  A
6.2
Impression and Ovation Compared
6.2
Richard Hallas
6.2
Several readers have expressed an interest in an article which compares
the features of these two packages and this is a response to their
request. It is not my intention to produce a buyers’ guide; obviously,
everyone has their own reasons for wanting such a package and I cannot
say that one is better than the other for any particular purpose; it all
depends on what you want to do.
6.2
Personally, I like and use both packages but my tendency is to do all my
letter-writing in Ovation and my more serious work in Impression. This
is purely because I have been using Impression for much longer, and to
use both programs for the same purpose would be somewhat confusing.
There is no reason why I could not use Ovation for more serious work
than writing letters but it does highlight the fact that Ovation is
perfectly capable of being used as a good word processor, which is also
one of Impression’s selling-points.
6.2
I shall begin by providing a table of features for the two packages,
although I shall make some more specific comments afterwards. The
versions compared are Impression 2·17 and Ovation 1·35S
6.2
6.3
6.2
Features    Impression    Ovation
6.2
General Features
6.2
Multiple documents    Yes: maximum
15    Yes: maximum 6
6.2
Multiple views of documents    Yes: maximum
4    No
6.2
Closed documents remain in memory    Yes    No
6.2
Documents can be larger than memory    Yes    No
6.2
Definable start-up document    Yes
    Yes
6.2
Document info (no. of words, pages, etc)    Yes: very
extensive     Yes
6.2
View options    Presets or 1 − 975%    Presets or 1
− 500%
6.2
24-bit colour handling & RGB/CMYK/HSV    Yes
    RGB only
6.2
Line-drawing facilities    No
    Yes
6.2
Index & Contents compilation    Yes    No
6.2
Spelling checker    Yes; with good options    2Mb+
6.2
Hyphenation    Yes†    2Mb+; good options
6.2
Hotlink to a Thesaurus package    In a future
version    Yes
6.2
Style sheets    No    Yes
6.2
Retroactive styles    Yes
    Yes
6.2
Show Clipboard feature    No
    Yes
6.2
Find text    Yes    Yes; good options
6.2
Insertion of page number, date & time    Yes
    Yes
6.2
Page rulers    Yes    Yes; with guidelines
6.2
Auto-deletion of unused pages    Yes    No
6.2
Multi-tasking screen redraw    Yes    No
6.2
Printing Options
6.2
Mail merge facility    Only with
Supplement    Yes
6.2
Portrait/Landscape printing    Yes
    Yes
6.2
Pamphlet/Galley format    Pamphlet
only    Yes
6.2
Choice of pamphlet sizes    Yes
    Fixed by page size
6.2
Print even/odd pages only    Yes
    Yes
6.2

6.2
Separate scale for X and Y axes    No
    Yes
6.2
X & Y Printing offset    No
    Yes
6.2
Fit copies of same page on one sheet    Yes    No
6.2
Fit more than one page on one sheet    Yes
    Only pamphlet, etc.
6.2
Crop marks    Yes    No
6.2
Draft printing    Yes    Yes
6.2
Reverse printing order    Yes
    Yes
6.2
Collate copies    Yes    Yes
6.2
Can print without pictures    Yes
    Yes
6.2
Can centre pages on sheet automatically    Yes     No
6.2
Reflect pages    Yes    No
6.2
Pause between pages    Yes
    Yes
6.2
Text & Style Effects
6.2
Kerning    Horizontal & Vertical    Horizontal
only
6.2
Tracking    No    Yes
6.2
Underline    Yes    Yes
6.2
Double underline    Yes†    No
6.2
Word underline    No    Yes
6.2
Strikeout    Yes†    No
6.2
Choice of Underline/Strike line colour    Yes†    No
6.2
Superscript/Subscript    Yes
    Yes
6.2
Text styles linked to base font    No
    Yes
6.2
Inverse text    No (only by changing background)    Yes
6.2
Small capitals    No    Yes
6.2
All capitals    No    Yes
6.2
Title style (capital on every word)    No
    Yes
6.2
Condensed/Expanded text    Yes
    Yes
6.2
Any font aspect ratio    Yes†
    Yes
6.2
Font colours: foreground and background    Fore- and
Background†    Foreground only
6.2
Keep titles with body text    Yes†    No
6.2
Lock text to invisible linespace grid    Yes†    No
6.2
Definable leadering string    Yes†    No
6.2
Line spacing/leading    Yes
    Yes
6.2
Single or double line spacing    No
    Yes
6.2
Space above/below paragraph    Yes†
    Yes
6.2
Vertical and horizontal rules linked to text    Yes    No
6.2
Multiple styles in a single paragraph    Yes    No
6.2
Can start a new line within a paragraph    No
    Yes
6.2
Can have rulers without defining styles    Yes
    Yes
6.2
Word-wrap on/off    No    Yes
6.2
General Frame Options
6.2
Guide frames    Yes    No, but ruler guides
6.2
Repeating frames    Yes    No
6.2
Local frames from master page    Yes    No
6.2
Multiple columns within frames    No
    Yes (main frame only)
6.2
Embedded frames (which flow with text)    Yes    No
6.2

6.2
Grouped frames    Yes    No
6.2
Nested frames    No    Yes
6.2
Coloured frame backgrounds    Yes
    Yes
6.2
Snap to guide frames/guidelines    Yes
    Yes
6.2
Snap to other frames    Yes    No
6.2
Frame outlines on/off    Yes
    Yes
6.2
Frame borders    Draw format    Sprite
format
6.2
Different borders for each edge of frame    Yes    No
6.2
Ability to colour and resize border    No
    Yes
6.2
User-definable borders    Yes
    Yes
6.2
Text flow around both sides of frames    Yes
    No; one side only
6.2
Definable text repel outside frame    Yes; one
value per edge    Yes; only one value
6.2
Definable text repel inside frame    Yes; both
vert. & horiz.    Yes; only one value
6.2
Frames can be locked in place    Yes    No
6.2
Easy duplication of frames with offset    No
    Yes
6.2
Transparent frames    Yes
    Yes, but inflexible
6.2
Graphic Frame Options
6.2
Can link the same graphic between frames    Yes
    Yes
6.2
Precise positioning of graphic within frame    Yes    No
6.2
Can rotate sprites    Yes
    RISC-OS 3 only
6.2
Can rotate text in drawfiles    RISC-OS 3
only    RISC-OS 3 only
6.2
Separate X and Y scales for graphic    No
    Yes
6.2
Lock aspect ratio of loaded graphic    Yes    No
6.2
Fit graphic to frame    Yes
    Yes
6.2
Fit graphic to frame, retaining aspect ratio    Yes
    Yes
6.2
Master Page Options
6.2
Number of master pages    Unlimited
    One per chapter
6.2
Different left/right pairs    Yes    No
6.2
Vertical rules between columns    Yes    No
6.2
Changes to master pages immediately
6.2
    reflected in the document (retro-active)    Yes    No
6.2
File Options
6.2
‘Return’ stripper for loaded text    Only with
Supplement    Yes
6.2
Load 1st Word Plus    Yes, via
loader module    Yes
6.2
Load Basic, Acorn DTP, View,
6.2
    InterWord, Wordwise+    Yes, via
loader modules    No
6.2
Load C source, CSV, PipeDream,
6.2
    Rich Text Format, WordPerfect, WordStar    Only with
Supplement    No
6.2
Revert to last saved version of document    No
    Yes
6.2
Auto-save    Yes; optional prompt    Yes
6.2
Save marked text    Yes; optional styles, etc    Yes
6.2
Save text story    Yes; optional styles, etc    Yes
6.2
Save graphic    Yes    Yes
6.2
Save stylesheet    No    Yes
6.2

6.2
Spelling Checker Facilities (See also page 19)
6.2
Size of dictionary (both can be expanded)    60,000 words
    62,000‡
6.2
Continuous spell-checking    Yes
    Yes
6.2
Check single word/entire text    Yes
    Yes
6.2
Other checking options:    Entire text/
from cursor    Current story
6.2
Spell-checker extra features:
6.2
    Guess nearest word    Yes; two
methods    Yes
6.2
    Browse/Find word in list    Yes
    Yes
6.2
    Add/Delete word    Yes    Yes
6.2
    Ignore word    Yes; separate dictionary    Yes
6.2
    Solve anagram    Yes    No
6.2
    Display total number of words in dictionary    No
    Yes
6.2
    Export dictionary as text    Only user
dictionaries    Yes (including main)
6.2
User dictionaries associated with documents    No
    Yes
6.2
Updated dictionary prompts for saving    No (but
auto-saved on quit)    Yes
6.2
Dictionary of words to ignore when checking    Yes    No
6.2
Abbreviation dict. with expand-as-you-type    Yes    No
6.2
Hyphenation dictionary    Yes
    Yes
6.2
Hyphenation exception dictionary    Yes
    Yes (but supplied empty)
6.2
Definable minimum word-length for hyphens    No
    Yes
6.2
†  Impression can only provide this if it is defined in a ‘style’; not
as a stand-alone effect.
6.2
‡  Ovation’s dictionary is compatible with (and can be extended by)
David Pilling’s MicroSpell 3, which costs only £6 and contains over
210,000 words.
6.2
•    In the Impression column ‘Only with Supplement’ means that the feature
is only available to purchasers of the Impression Business Supplement.
6.2
•    In the Ovation column, ‘2Mb+’ means that the feature is only available
to users with 2Mb or more RAM. Ovation comes with all the features
provided but some features will not be available if there is only 1Mb
RAM in the computer.
6.2
This table is necessarily rather unwieldy, as both programs have an
enormous range of facilities. At least it should be possible to answer
most questions of comparison by looking under the relevant heading in
the table.
6.2
There are a number of points worth making which the table cannot put
across. First of all, Impression is very fast and responds as fast as
you can type. Whilst Ovation could hardly be described as slow (try
comparing it with Acorn DTP...) it is noticeably more sluggish than
Impression. The most irritating aspect of this is that you can click
with the mouse to position the caret in a word, and if you move the
mouse away before the caret has moved, it may follow your movement and
appear in the wrong place − a minor point but one that frequently
catches me.
6.2
One big difference between the programs is the way they handle files.
Ovation uses standard files, whereas Impression uses application
directories containing many files and sub-directories. Both have their
advantages. With Impression files, you can extract graphics without
loading Impression. If a file becomes corrupted, you have more chance of
saving at least some of it and, most importantly, there is no limit on
file size, because parts of the document can be swapped in and out of
memory. Therefore, you really can produce a whole book as one file if
you so wish. The real disadvantage of using this method (apart from only
having a 9-character filename to play with instead of 10) is that it is
very wasteful of disc space. Even if you save a totally blank document
from Impression, it will take up at least 8Kb on the disc. Ovation files
are much more efficient, which is one of the main reasons I like to use
Ovation for writing letters.
6.2
One thing which irritates me about Impression is that if you have used a
font in a document and subsequently remove it, the file will still have
reference to the font (even though it isn’t used), and the computer will
put up an error box when you reload the file, stating that the font
cannot be found if it is no longer installed in the system. It seems
impossible to remove references to old fonts when this happens. However,
this is a trivial point which will probably not affect most users.
6.2
In terms of printing, there is little to choose between the two for
everyday work, although Impression has the edge with its ability to
print several pages on one sheet, space permitting, with crop marks if
desired. This makes the production of sheets of (perhaps numbered)
tickets delightfully simple. For professional colour work, Impression is
certainly much the better of the two in that it has comprehensive colour
selection facilities in RGB, HSV and CMYK models, and works with 24-bit
colours internally. However, this is probably overkill for most users.
6.2
In relation to larger-scale work, Impression can (as mentioned above)
handle documents of unlimited size and it is therefore very helpful that
it has full contents and indexing facilities. These features are totally
absent from Ovation, and make Impression the only choice for big
documents such as books.
6.2
Judging by the table of features, it would seem that both programs have
broadly similar capabilities and ranges of features. Of course it’s not
as simple as that. There are a few features in Impression which really
stand out over Ovation and make it well worth the extra money if you
need them. One of these is the unlimited document size. The other two
most important facilities are the ability to use an unlimited number of
styles within one paragraph and to combine styles (See my comment at the
end Ed.), and the extremely flexible master page system which is retro-
active; that is, if you make a change to a master page, all the pages in
the document which are based on that master page will change too.
6.2
There are various other useful and powerful frame options which I find
invaluable, particularly the embedded frame option which allows you to
have graphics flowing in amongst the text. It is also possible to group
frames in Impression, like grouping objects in Draw. Ovation takes a
different approach: if a frame falls wholly within another frame, it
becomes a ‘child’ of the outer parent frame so that moving the outer
frame will move all its dependent inner frames. This is slightly less
flexible than Impression’s grouping but is much quicker and easier to
use.
6.2
Ovation has just one frame feature which is missing in Impression,
although it is a fairly major one: the ability to have multiple columns
in a single frame. Although it is, of course, possible to create columns
with separate frames, Ovation’s clever feature means that if you resize
the multi-column frame, the columns it contains will also resize
themselves proportionally.
6.2
As to the available text effects, it is Ovation which wins here. It has
a very wide range of useful effects, and some of those which are
available for immediate use in Ovation, are only available in Impression
within styles, such as font aspect ratio. Whilst this does not matter as
such, it is a nuisance to have to define a new style just to use a
simple effect once. A particularly good effect for titles which Ovation
has is ‘Small Caps’, which prints all lower-case letters as smaller
versions of the capital letters. I wish Impression had this feature.
6.2
Another useful capability which Ovation has is ‘Tracking’, where the
amount of space between letters is altered. This is like kerning applied
over a range of letters. This is available only as a local effect,
though; there are no programs currently available for Acorn machines
which apply letter spacing as an integral part of their justification
procedures. (If you want to see the effect of tracking, look at the new
format of Risc User. Although it is still produced on Macs, using Quark
Express, it does use tracking. I personally prefer justification to be
done by adding spaces between the words only and not between adjacent
letters − but look at Risc User Volume 6, Issue 1 and judge for
yourself. Ed)
6.2
Impression, on the other hand, does have vertical kerning which I have
found invaluable in the past. For example, I sometimes need to produce
mathematical formulæ, but not often enough to warrant the purchase of
Equasor. I have found that using the horizontal and vertical kerning in
combination with EFF’s Maths fonts has allowed me to produce some very
complex formulæ (including such things as sigma notation) which look as
if they had been done with a specialist program.
6.2
A major difference between the two packages is the way in which they
handle fonts. Impression simply presents the usual font list, with
submenus for the different styles. Ovation, on the other hand, weeds out
the font names into groups it can differentiate between in terms of
Regular, Italic, Bold and Bold Italic (regardless of whether they’re
really called Medium or Book, Italic or Oblique, or whatever) and
presents just the base-names in the menu. You select one of these family
names as the font and the Bold or Italic attribute (or combination) can
be applied as an effect. Whilst this method you cannot see exactly which
fonts are available to you, it does have the enormous advantage that you
can simply press <Ctrl-Shift-I> to toggle the italic version of whatever
font you are using and, what’s more, if you have defined a style, then
changing the font name will also change all the italic and bold font
variants.
6.2
The final major difference in approach concerns frame borders. Ovation
simply uses sprites and some perfectly respectable borders can be
produced this way; the borders can also be resized and re-coloured.
However, sprite borders do not compare well with Impression’s drawfile
borders when it comes to anything fancy. Although Impression cannot
resize or re-colour its borders, they can be of very intricate design
and always print to the best resolution of the printer. What’s more, you
can have a different border on each of the four sides of a frame − this
can produce some excellent effects and is very useful for quick and easy
drop-shadows using only one frame. Of course, there are already hundreds
of extra borders available for use with Impression.
6.2
Other differences between the two programs are more subtle. The range of
facilities Impression provides for handling frames and text repelling
are extremely comprehensive; so much so that they may not often be
needed by many people. It’s nice to have them there but for the most
part, Ovation’s less extensive features in this area are perfectly
adequate. Sometimes though, it will not do exactly what you want − which
is almost never the case with Impression.
6.2
Ovation does, of course, also have some line-drawing capabilities,
whereas Impression does not provide any drawing facilities whatsoever.
The line tool is very useful for putting arrows on diagrams, for
example. Impression has a system of horizontal and vertical rules, which
are good for making tables and separators but are not much use for
anything else. You can use Ovation’s lines for drawing tables, of
course, but if your text moves, you have to move the lines manually.
Impression, on the other hand, moves the rules automatically.
6.2
Ovation is currently the only DTP/word processing package to have a
companion thesaurus program: Risc Developments’ Desktop Thesaurus. This
is a stand-alone program (so it could be used with Impression) but it
does provide a hotlink with Ovation so that a single keypress will bring
up a list of alternatives for the word under the caret. This works very
well indeed and it is just as if the thesaurus were part of Ovation
itself. Despite some slightly negative comments about this thesaurus in
a previous issue of Archive, I have found it to be a very convenient and
useful little program, especially as my ‘real’ thesaurus is at the
opposite end of the house from the computer room. Impression will gain a
similar feature when Computer Concepts launch their own product, but
this will not be for some time yet.
6.2
So, which to buy? It all depends on your budget and what you want to
produce; both packages are very solid and reliable, and both have a
generous range of features. A major concern for many will be the price
difference: from Archive, Impression costs £180, whereas Ovation costs
£110. I have recently come into contact with two different opinions
concerning Impression: one is that it is the only proper DTP package on
the Archimedes; the other is that it is overpriced in comparison with
Ovation. Neither view is fair. Firstly, Impression is a serious,
professional piece of software of a quality comparable to programs
costing over four times its price on other machines, so it can hardly be
accused of being overpriced. Secondly, Ovation is also an extremely high
quality product which is well worth consideration.
6.2
In the final analysis, Impression is the more professional and capable
of the two, and the one that I personally prefer; it will probably
succeed in doing whatever you want it to do. This is not to denigrate
Ovation at all; it does not have Impression’s most powerful features but
it will be ample for the majority of users. At £110, it is also
exceptional value for money, and I have no hesitation in recommending
it. Prospective buyers should not worry about getting an under-powered
program.
6.2
If you are looking to produce professional colour work, large documents
such as books and brochures, or you want the extremely comprehensive
range of features (or even if you simply want outstanding speed) then
you are looking at Impression. On the other hand, if you know your needs
will not stretch to the dizzier heights, Ovation will probably be
perfectly adequate. Both packages come with good supporting material,
not least excellent manuals (although Ovation’s might have the edge
here). However, in the presentation of the programs themselves,
Impression certainly wins. Its design has had a lot of attention to
detail put into it, and the on-screen presentation is extremely slick.
It also has a nice, clear and simple menu structure. Ovation’s menu is
quite cumbersome and its windows are rather sloppily laid out. However,
these are purely cosmetic points. I do not wish to come down particu
larly in favour of one product over the other, because both are
excellent, and which to buy really depends on your budget and intended
use. Do try to see a demonstration of each before deciding.  A
6.2
(Now it’s the Editor’s turn to add his two-penny-worth!... I think it is
important to be clear about the differences in the way that the two
programs deal with styles. Although I have never used Ovation, it uses
the same style philosophy as Macs, which I used for several years before
DTP on the Archimedes came of age.
6.2
I found the Impression philosophy difficult to get used to at first
after the Mac but, once I had gone through the un-learning/re-learning
process, I could see considerable advantages. Let me try to explain the
difference between the two philosophies.
6.2
In Ovation, a style is a complete description of the characteristics of
a paragraph, covering every factor that could be changed. In Impression,
on the other hand, a style refers to a change in one or more of the
characteristics of a piece of text. (Only the Base Style has to have a
full description of every possible variable aspect of the text.)
6.2
So, in Ovation, a given paragraph can only have one ‘style’ so that any
variations within a paragraph have to be done by using local styles
(what Impression calls ‘effects’) which therefore cannot be changed
globally later − each occurrence has to be edited individually.
6.2
In Impression, any piece of text can have any number of styles superim
posed on it (remember that an Impression ‘style’ only describes a change
in one or more characteristics and is not a full description as is an
Ovation ‘style’). This means, for example, that you can have a style
called ‘rule off’ whose sole characteristic is that it adds a rule-off
line of a certain thickness after the paragraph. Now if you have, say,
five basic styles of paragraph in a document, any of them can be ruled
off by simply adding this style. Using the Mac/Ovation method, you would
have to have ten different styles, each of five basic styles with and
without rule-off.
6.2
Having so many styles would be cumbersome, so you probably would not do
it that way but would, perhaps, do it as a local style. The trouble is,
if you then decided that the rule-off lines were too thick, you would
have to go through them all and change them individually. No doubt Mac/
Ovation users will have an answer for this particular example but the
same sort of thing can be applied to a whole range of features that you
might want to vary. For example, I have two styles called ‘no space’ and
‘top’ which simply reduce the space below and above a paragraph,
respectively, to 0pt. So, again, I don’t need separate styles for each
of the different types of paragraphs with and without a space after
them. Also, if I want to change the overall layout, simple style changes
will alter the whole of the document.
6.2
The other major difference in style philosophy is that Ovation styles
can only apply to complete paragraphs (which are defined as anything
between two CRs, so it includes title lines and even blank lines)
whereas Impression styles can apply to any area of text − even down to a
single character. This means that even effects such as bold, italic,
super-script, etc are in fact editable styles. So, having created a
document, I could decide that all superscripted characters should be in
a different font − one change on a style sheet and all the superscripts
in the whole document are changed.
6.2
Even single carriage returns can have a style in Impression! What is the
point of that, you ask? To illustrate this, look at the format of this
listing:
6.2
10 FOR N%=1TO10
6.2
20 PRINT “HELLO WORLD”
6.2
30 NEXT N%
6.2
(I have deliberately exaggerated the inter-paragraph spacing so that you
can see that the first two lines have no space after paragraph and the
third line has a standard inter-paragraph space.)
6.2
On the Mac, I used to have a ‘ProgText’ style with no space after
paragraph and a ‘ProgTextEnd’ style which was based on ‘ProgText’ but
had 6pt after paragraph. So I would mark the first two lines and make
them ‘ProgText’ and then mark the last line and make it ‘ProgTextEnd’.
6.2
In Impression, I have one style, ‘Program Text’, not two, and I make one
style insertion to achieve the above result! How? I drag from the
beginning of the first line to the end of the third line (i.e. not to
the beginning of the following paragraph) and press <ctrl-shift-f7> and
that’s it. The reason this works is that the carriage return on the last
program line remains in base style and this maintains the spacing
between the two paragraphs.
6.2
I think, as I said, that this is more difficult to understand than the
Mac/Ovation method but, once you have mastered it, it is simpler to put
into practice and much more flexible in use.
6.2
Some will argue that they don’t need Impression’s speed and flexibility
but, in my view, it’s like having an ARM3 processor − the ARM2 was quite
acceptable once but, having got used to using an ARM3, there is no way
you would change back again! Ed.)  A
6.2
Using Ovation
6.2
Maurice Edmundson
6.2
Ovation is a high quality, professional DTP package and document
processor from Risc Developments and it has recently been extended and
enhanced. In my view it ranks amongst the best in its class especially
in terms of processing power per pound! The Editor has agreed to allow
me to edit an Ovation Column for the next few issues of the magazine
which, hopefully, will be useful for old hands and newcomers alike. If
you have any hints and tips or queries concerning the use of Ovation, I
shall be pleased to hear from you c/o N.C.S.
6.2
I won’t give an overview of the software but rather cover examples of
its use in specific instances. Suffice it to say that it is a frame-
based system which is as effective for writing day-to-day letters as it
is for publishing an illustrated manual or book. (If you are unfamiliar
with Ovation, I recommend that you write to Risc Developments − address
inside the rear cover − and ask for a copy of the demonstration disc,
mentioning this column in Archive. Please enclose £1 to cover costs of
production and postage.)
6.2
One of the nice features of Ovation is the useful tool box window always
in view at the lower left of the screen. The chapter and page number are
visible at a glance − particularly useful when working on a long
document or book. The frame tools for text and pictures are instantly
accessible and there is a superb line drawing tool which I will cover in
more detail later. The linkage tool enables text to flow exactly as
required, however complex the layout of the frames. I hope to give
examples of using this at a later stage and perhaps you will be able to
add to them.
6.2
Ovation comes with eight fonts mostly based on classical font styles:
6.2
Bookmark (Serifed face based on Bookman)
6.2
Chaucer (Script similar to Zapf Chancery)
6.2
Curator (Monospaced as in Courier)
6.2
Paladin (Serifed face modelled on Palatino)
6.2
SwissB (Sans serifed face similar to Helvetica)
6.2
SymbolB (Symbols, greek letters, etc.)
6.2
SystemB (Scalable look-alike to the mono-spaced system font in the
Archimedes)
6.2
Vogue (As Avant Garde − useful for small children and in primary school
work)
6.2
The main menu allows selection of a font plus choice of size, style,
position, etc. There are two distinct methods, (1) by means of a set of
pre-designed styles which you have chosen for regular use throughout the
document, called “paragraph styles”, and (2) by a group of options which
you can use at any time within a document without having to set up a
particular style in advance. These are called “local styles”. This dual
system is easy to use and gives great flexibility. A point not to
overlook is that in Ovation “paragraph style” refers to any block of
text which ends with a carriage return. It could therefore refer to just
one word or a whole paragraph. Hence, a paragraph style can be used for
headings and sub-headings since these invariably occupy a line to
themselves, with a carriage return at the end. It is also used to define
body text − the style in use for the main body of the writing. If you
want to modify one or several words within a line of text, use local
styles.
6.2
Adopting a planned routine simplifies the task. Here is an example for
inserting a local style. Suppose you want to change the word “slant” in
this sentence, to be 18 point italic Vogue. Use the mouse to highlight
the word, then call up the main menu and slide across from ‘Font’. A
window appears listing all the fonts currently in your !Font directory.
Select Vogue using <adjust> (a tick will appear to the left) then from
the main menu slide along ‘Size’ and choose 18pt again using <adjust>
(there is also an option to have any point size you want) and finally
from the main menu slide along ‘Style’ and select italic. This final
choice should be made with <select>. If you had required bold italic,
then you would have chosen bold with <adjust> and finally italic with
select. The rule is that the final choice (using <select>) confirms all
the choices made and clears the menu window. ‘Format’ is always chosen
and selected separately.
6.2
It is helpful to customise your copy of Ovation so that it starts up
with all the features which you prefer to have available immediately. My
preferences are as follows: (I am assuming Ovation is on a hard disc but
floppy disc users can easily amend the descriptions to suit.) Load
Ovation then click on the iconbar icon and select ‘New Document’. Now
select all the various parameters. In my case, I have chosen A4
portrait, top margin 15mm, bottom margin 20mm, left and right margins
12mm, one column. (With one column, ‘gutter’ is irrelevant since, in
Ovation, it means the gap between columns.) Clicking on OK then brings
up the first blank document window. Now make a choice of the fonts and
styles which you feel will be most used in general documentation.
6.2
Ovation comes with 12pt SwissB allocated for Body Text. Now I prefer a
serifed font for Body Text since, at sizes around 10pt − 12pt (which the
main text usually is), I feel that a serif font is more legible.
Therefore, I select ‘Paragraph Style’ from the main menu and, in the
‘Define Style’ window, click on ‘Edit Style’. Clicking <menu> brings up
the font choices. I choose Paladin; 11pt; normal text; using <select> at
the end to confirm the choices and finally clicking on OK to save the
selection. Finally, from ‘Format’ I choose left (if you prefer tidy
right margins choose justify) and click on OK again. For the moment, all
other parameters are left as given. They are all visible in the large
lower window of the dialogue box.
6.2
It is useful to have one or two other typefaces ready within paragraph
styles suitable for headings and sub-headings. They aren’t often used in
correspondence, but odd jobs are always coming along where it is helpful
to have them handy. eg. 18pt sans-serif bold centre-justified for main
headings and 16pt sans-serif bold left-justified for sub-headings. Click
on ‘Edit Style’ and then on ‘New’ in the ‘Define’ window. This brings up
the dialogue box in which you enter the name of the new style say Main
Head. Ignore the line “Based on . .” since it is not helpful here. Click
on OK. The new name is now written into the styles box and is high
lighted. Using <menu>, bring up the font choices window and slide along
Font to select SwissB as previously described. Repeat for Size − 18pt
and Bold using <adjust> until the last one. After the last selection,
all your choices will be visible in the lower window. Go back to
‘Format’ and choose Centre. Finally click on OK to fix all the choices.
When you next call up Paragraph Styles, you will see two − Body Text and
Main Head. Repeat the whole process to obtain a third called Sub-Head
using 16pt. bold SwissB, formatted left.
6.2
We now use another of Ovation’s useful features − the StyleSheet − but,
in this case, one given a special name. From the main menu select ‘File’
and then ‘Save Stylesheet’. Clear the writable box and enter the name
‘Default’. Bring up the !Ovation application on the hard disc and open
the application directory window by clicking on the icon with <shift>
depressed. Now drag the new Stylesheet icon into this window so that the
file ‘Default’ is saved there. From now on, when Ovation is first
loaded, it will bring up your own customised document window with all
your styles in place ready to go.
6.2
Other style sheets can be saved, suitably named, in a disc directory
(labelled, for example, “Masters”) with any combination of page layout,
type styles, etc. you wish. Thus a library of stylesheets for different
jobs can be saved and any one brought into play as required by selecting
it once Ovation is loaded onto the iconbar.  A
6.2
Hardware Column
6.2
Brian Cowan
6.2
Fax facts
6.2
The Computer Concepts’ FAXpack has a most impressive specification.
While I am sure the price represents very good value for money, the
price is really such that only “serious” users can afford it. And,
unfortunately, I cannot count myself in the list of such serious people.
However, I do possess a modem and I always thought that, given the right
software, this should be able to transmit and receive fax documents.
Readers may have seen the recent advertisements from David Pilling for
his ArcFax software pack − I thought my luck was in. I wrote to Mr
Pilling, asking him if my modem was suitable for his software. His
answer was most informative.
6.2
In short, you need a special type of modem for fax operation, and my
Miracom WS3000 is not suitable. It appears that fax and data modems work
according to different standards. Data modems commonly support the Hayes
AT command set. Mr Pilling explains that fax/data modems extend this to
“Class 1” and “Class 2”. Currently, ArcFax supports Class 2 but it is
expected that it a Class 1 driver will appear soon. Although my WS3000
modem is not suitable, there is an increasing number of cheap fax/data
modems available, aimed at the PC market. So, if you want to use the
ArcFax software, which seems good value at £23.96, then you must be sure
to purchase a Class 2 fax modem. If anyone has experience of one of
these, perhaps they will let me know.
6.2
A4 comments
6.2
I continue to be thrilled by my A4. It still hangs up for a rest from
time to time − does any one else have this problem? You will be
surprised at my reason for liking to use a portable in general and the
A4 in particular. It is not so much the portability but the silence! I
had become used to a computer with a noisy fan and a Syquest with an
even noisier one. Reference to the Syquest is really not fair because it
is simply that, at the moment, I can’t use a Syquest on the A4. However,
the silence is wonderful.
6.2
I suppose things will change when I receive my beta test version of
RemoteFS but, as yet, it has not arrived. However, particularly for
people with access to more than one ARM computer, this looks as if it
will become an essential piece of software.
6.2
Last month, I questioned the lifetime of the battery. It appears that
this is supposed to be between two and a half to three and a half hours.
For the first few days I was using the machine unplugged, but I soon
learned not to do that. I have now made myself a long extension lead for
the power connector (some 3m. long) and I can now sit comfortably
watching the television or whatever while I tap away. If you are
planning on making such a lead, do ensure the current capability is
adequate. I guess there is a difference whether it is just used for
trickle charge or not.
6.2
A problem that I still have not got sorted is using an external monitor
and switching between internal and external screen. The manual is not
all that much help although there are a few comments on the Release
Note.
6.2
As was noted in the review of the A4 in Archive, a serious problem is
the disappearance of the pointer when it is moved fast: particularly
Impression’s movable caret. The problem of the awkward position of the
delete key is, I think, reduced drastically in RISC-OS 3, where the
(conveniently placed) backspace key performs even more of the functions
of the delete key. I would really like some more responsive implementa
tion of the keyboard mouse emulation, but I don’t know what!  A
6.2
Cross-Fire
6.2
Jahinder Singh
6.2
Cross-Fire by 4th Dimension is described as a ‘highly addictive classic
arcade action’ game. The object of the game is to shoot anything that
moves and collect bonuses − all based around a grid type battle arena.
At times, the number of menacing aliens can become quite formidable.
However, at your disposal is an awesome array of fire power.
6.2
There are three types of bombs that you can fire − normal bombs, Split
bombs and Regen bombs. These have different strengths; a normal bomb has
the strength to kill the most basic of alien type known as a Henry,
whereas a Regen bomb is about five times stronger. A Zap wipes out every
alien currently on the sector. Both the Regen bombs and Zaps are
collectable, with a maximum of nine at any one time.
6.2
Extra fuel bonuses are also collectable − activation of the shields is
only possible if you have enough fuel. The shields give you an inde
structible shimmering layer of blue energy. An area of the screen known
as the ‘Status Panel’ keeps you constantly informed of the number of
bombs currently held, fuel remaining, etc.
6.2
The opposition
6.2
X-Fire features a number of different types of alien that come after you
with the sole intention of making your life difficult. The following
briefly describes some of the enemy:
6.2
Henry − The Henry is the least of your troubles. It has no fire power or
armour but it can be a problem in large numbers.
6.2
JCB − These are slower than Henries, but they take a different approach
in tracking you down. They are indestructible from the front due to
heavy armour.
6.2
Pod − These move around very quickly and apparently randomly. When
terminated, they release four more aliens.
6.2
Miner − These rocket across the screen in one direction leaving a trail
of deadly mines in their wake. (Warning!  There can be several mines on
top of one another!)
6.2
Unknown Aliens − Towards the later stages of the game, other alien life
forms exist.
6.2
Bonuses
6.2
There are variety of bonuses that can be picked up to increase your
chances of survival.
6.2
Cross fire − This allows you to fire in all four directions at once.
While in effect, you do not have to specify a firing direction.
6.2
Rapid fire − This doubles your fire rate.
6.2
Split bombs − This gives you substantial fire power, these bombs release
three normal bombs when they fly past a junction.
6.2
It is possible to combine these three bonuses, the result is WIPE OUT.
6.2
Double score − Guess !
6.2
Indestructible − Shields are activated for ten seconds, rendering you
indestructible, without using any of your fuel reserve.
6.2
Fuel − Increases fuel reserves by about a quarter.
6.2
Reflector shields − This gives you rotating shields that reflect alien
bombs.
6.2
Additional Regen bomb and Zap bonuses are also available.
6.2
The package
6.2
The game comes in an attractive plastic case which contains two discs
and an eight page manual. The game will run on all Archimedes machines
and installs in the normal manner.
6.2
Conclusions
6.2
X-Fire is a good shoot-em-up game and certainly presents a good
challenge. The graphics are good, with some excellent special effects.
Its specification includes, 256 colour mode 13 graphics, up to 200
objects on screen and lots of high quality sampled sounds. It is
available through NCS priced at £24.  A
6.2
Language Column
6.2
David Wild
6.2
Pascal Language Forum
6.2
The day I posted the article for the October issue of Archive, I came
home to find a letter telling me that the Pascal Language Forum was
being wound up in November because of lack of support. In many ways I’m
not surprised, as established languages don’t really need support
groups. My main reason for joining was to get the magazine ‘Computer
Language’ and when this was dropped I was already thinking of not
renewing my membership.
6.2
DDE Pascal
6.2
I have continued experimenting with this program and have been able to
find out one or two more features which are not really covered in the
documentation.
6.2
I have been able to produce static variables, but only in an external
module, and I haven’t yet found any way of giving them initial values.
Such a method would be useful and especially so with boolean variables
that can record whether or not a procedure has already been called and
start an initialisation routine if not. What I have done instead is to
use a string variable and test if it is equal to some value which is not
likely to be in memory by accident (such as ‘first’) and then assign
that value before subsequent calls. While this works, it is not ideal
and I notice that ‘C’ itself, with which this compiler is closely
associated, allows for the initialisation of variables and arrays. If
anyone has worked out how to do it I would be very pleased to hear from
them.
6.2
I compiled some procedures as external modules and combined them into a
library using the !Librfile utility. When I entered the name of the
library against the ‘libraries’ option on the compiler menu, I found
that the compiler would not find the library ‘plib’ even if it too was
specified. This did seem rather awkward but I found that if I dragged
the library into the same box as the source to be compiled, everything
worked properly. You don’t actually need to put the code into a library
as you can drag individual ‘aof’ files into the compiler in exactly the
same way but the library method is tidier.
6.2
Creating a module is very easy but the way it is done is slightly
different from ISO-Pascal. The relevant routines must be declared twice,
once as an ‘extern’ routine with the full parameter details, and again
where the body of the routine comes in the code. According to the rules,
you don’t need the parameter details again but it is helpful for
maintenance if you put them in as a comment. An example module is:-
6.2
procedure centrestring(stname : packed array[one..stlen : integer] of
char;length : integer); extern;
6.2
procedure centrestring{“paraindent” On} array[one..stlen : integer]
of char;length : integer)};
6.2
   var
6.2
      i : integer;
6.2
   begin
6.2
    for i := one to (length - stlen) div 2 do
6.2
      write(output,‘ ’);
6.2
      for i := one to stlen do
6.2
        write(output,stname[i])
6.2
   end; {centre string}
6.2
When you compile a program, the object code goes automatically into the
‘o’ directory, while the linked program is presented in a save box for
you to put where you want. However, if you are producing a module, and
ask for the ‘compile only’ option, the object code is presented in a
save box instead. In both cases, the default save is to the main
directory in which the ‘p’ and ‘o’ directories are found. It is not
difficult to edit the file name to include the ‘.o.’ but it would have
been useful if the compiled code still went into the ‘o’ directory by
default.
6.2
I have managed to use several of the functions from the ‘C’ library and
found that they worked correctly although there were one or two
interesting discoveries. Some of the ‘C’ functions are defined to work
on strings and so I tried using the Pascal extension ‘string’ type and
found that the functions gave an error because of a type mismatch. To
eliminate the error, I had to define the data as ‘packed array[1..n] of
char’ as you would do in ISO-Pascal. The ‘C’ character functions worked
correctly on Pascal ‘char’ types and should be very useful for many jobs
which involve text processing.
6.2
Someone wrote to the Editor saying that he was getting the message
‘library plib is corrupt’ and that he was unable to clear it. When I
spoke to him, it turned out that he was using release 3, not 4, of the
‘C’ compiler − I can only presume that this was the cause of the
problem. He argued, quite reasonably, that the linker ought to link any
modules which conform to the correct format but there does seem to be an
exception here. Once again, if anyone can shed any light, I would be
very pleased to hear from them.
6.2
I noticed the remarks, and sample program, from Brian Wichmann in
Archive 6.1 p10 and can confirm that there is no set type checking on
integers. If you find any other instances of the compiler not working
correctly, please let me know and I can keep a list of problems and
possible solutions for them. It is rather disappointing that Acorn are
so defensive about the compiler: presumably someone was paid to write it
and would like to be proud of it. I wouldn’t expect to do better than
get my money back for any compiler that was unsatisfactory, so they are
not likely to get massive claims! It might be better if we were asked to
pay a reasonable price and get some support.
6.2
Illustrating C
6.2
In Dillon’s the other day, I came across a copy of ‘Illustrating C’ by
Donald Alcock; published by Cambridge University Press at £12.95. This
is the latest in the series of language books written, and illustrated
by Alcock. I have started to work my way through it and, although it
isn’t converting me into a ‘C’ user, I am sure that I already have a
much better understanding of the language than I had before.
6.2
The book has many example programs, with a little screen illustration
for each showing the output, and I think that it ought to be very
valuable for anyone having to learn ‘C’ from scratch.
6.2
Not unreasonably, I have typed some of these programs in and compiled
them. One of the earliest programs in the book caused me some problems
and I would like to know why. The program is:-
6.2
#include <stdio.h>
6.2
#include <math.h>
6.2
int main(void)
6.2
{p , Rpct, R, M;
6.2
  int N;
6.2
  printf( “\nEnter: Principal, Rate%, No. of yrs.\n);
6.2
  scanf(“%f %f %i, &P, &Rpct, &N );
6.2
  R = Rpct / 100;
6.2
  M = P * R * pow(1+R,N)/(12*(pow(1 +R,N)-1));
6.2
  printf(“\n£%1.2f,@%1.2f %% costs £%1.2f over %i years”,
6.2
P,Rpct,M,N);
6.2
  printf(“\nPayments will total £%1.2f,12*M*N);
6.2
  return o;
6.2
}
6.2
I had two problems. Firstly, it wouldn’t compile until I brought the
‘pow(1+R,N)’ out to a single variable on a previous line and there were
messages about lack of precision, although the answer was correct.
Secondly, when I looked in the ‘C’ manual, I noticed that the ‘pow’
function was defined as ‘double’ rather than float and so I changed the
program to suit and then found that I got answers that were much too
big. What did I do wrong?  A
6.2
Monochrome Mug Challenge
6.2
Robert Chrismas
6.2
What’s black and white and stands out in a crowd?
6.2
Colton Software was showing an exciting new product at the Acorn User
Show. Occupying pride of place on their busy stand was a pyramid of
‘Word’ mugs.
6.2
With these mugs, Colton Software have shown a complete disdain for the
24-bit colour controversy. They have gone to one-bit colour − black with
white lettering. As Colton say ‘White on black to stand out in a crowd’.
One delighted spectator exclaimed ‘just like the old BBCs’. (Hands up if
you want an apostrophe before the ‘s’.) Is Colton playing the nostalgia
card?
6.2
The mugs have the same striking design back and front − ideal for left
handers. It is the first time I have seen an attempt to protect a logo
both as a trade mark and with copyright legislation.
6.2
6.3
6.2
By a strange coincidence, the lettering on the mug spells out ‘Wordz’
which is also the name of the new word processor which Colton is
developing (less than £100, available first quarter 1993). ‘Drank from
the mug, now try the program’ − the paperback and the film are both
scheduled for ‘the second quarter of the 21st century’.
6.2
They say that the mug, available now, is 100% WYSIWYD (what you see is
what you drink), RISC-OS compatible, bug free when washed, definitely
ozone friendly and a snip at £2.85 inc. VAT and pp. All of which is
true, but I’ve been using it for a week now and I haven’t even seen the
high score table yet.
6.2
There is also a cheap plastic key ring, which I tried to lose on the
underground but couldn’t, and a plastic bag with laterally opposed
handles and a generous internal storage area which comes in a fetching
lifeboat crew orange (should come in handy if ever I need to flag down a
passing helicopter).
6.2
The pre-release version of the word processor looked very attractive,
but if the name is anything to go by, the spelling checker won’t be much
cop.
6.2
Provided I get to review it, I’ll give £5 to any charity Colton care to
name for every £1 under £100 (inc VAT? Ed) which Wordz costs.  A
6.2
Pesky Muskrats
6.2
Rob Wears
6.2
If you are one of those people who enjoys deliberately directing those
hapless Lemmings to their doom, just for the pleasure of hearing them
squeak, then this game will probably appeal to you. The problem with
Muskrats, we are told, is that they breed like, well, err.... muskrats,
actually. To be honest, I’ve never heard of anything that breeds as well
as these creatures, who simply have to pass each other in the street...
and there is a small baby Muskrat (complete with nappy) bounding along
between them! They make locusts look like complete amateurs. Your job is
to prevent a Muskrat population explosion by preventing them from
breeding. Of course, the only Muskrat that doesn’t breed is a dead
Muskrat, so you will have plenty of fun attempting to massacre the happy
chappies before the population explodes.
6.2
The game is supplied on two discs which are copy protected. Coin Age
include a notice in the packaging saying that they will replace a disc
free of charge should it become faulty for any reason whatsoever
(presumably including its inadvertent use as a coffee mug place mat).
However, the game will not load onto a hard disc and I find this
irritating because the game involves some serious disc swapping between
levels but, in view of the investment Coin Age must have in the game,
attempts at protection are understandable.
6.2
The game does not multi-task, but that is not really a problem. The
opening titles include the instructions, and a severe warning about
software piracy, but these can be skipped once you know what you’re
doing. The quality of the graphics and sound is excellent.
6.2
The game itself is played on a password and level basis, with each level
having three sub-levels to be completed before the next password is
given. The only difference between the sub-levels is that the initial
number and speed of the Muskrats increase. You are given a limited
supply of bottles of poison, bombs and bricks with which you must
massacre the Muskies. Initially, there’s plenty of poison to go round
and the game seems quite dull. However, that changes rapidly as the game
progresses. Suddenly there is nowhere near enough poison to go round and
you must use the bombs (which blow up scenery but not Muskrats) and
bricks to direct the Muskrats to some lethal part of the scenery (such
as a large heavy dinosaur). When killed, the Muskrat squeaks and a
little Muskrat ghost floats up to the top of the screen.
6.2
Each screen is timed by a small fly evading a large lizard at the bottom
of the display − when the fly gets eaten, your time is up. It might all
sound a bit dull, but placing the bricks is quite tricky, and blowing up
the scenery can leave tiny, almost invisible pieces behind which still
act as obstructions to the Muskrats. To make matters worse, periodi
cally, a caped SuperMuskrat whizzes across the screen and spoils your
aim by moving the cursor.
6.2
There is plenty of frustration, challenge and dark humour to keep people
interested but I cannot help but feel that the game lacks that vital
something that will make it a runaway success. For me, it is spoiled by
an unnecessarily complicated user interface, typified by the cumbersome
method of weapons selection. This consists of selecting a menu (pausing
the game automatically) and choosing from one of three options. If you
choose the bricks, fine − you can keep on laying bricks until you run
out. However, you have to go back to the menu every time you want a new
bomb or bottle of poison and this makes the game rather disjointed. It
also requires a frustrating number of mouse clicks to move the game on
between sub-levels and if you complete two sub-levels easily but die
three times on the third, you have re-enter your original password and
go through the first two sub-levels again.
6.2
Comparisons with Lemmings are probably inevitable. If you can afford to
buy both, do so as both have their own particular charms. If you can
only afford one, my choice would be Lemmings.  A
6.2
(More) Design Concept Fonts
6.2
Dave Wilcox
6.2
Font families are items we never seem to have enough of. Up until now,
the only company really producing ornate fonts has been the Electronic
Font Foundry who, as of August, were charging £10 (minimum) for a font.
This is disregarding their August sale prices where they were giving a
50% discount on selected fonts.
6.2
Enter Design Concept. This Company has started to compete with EFF with
one very distinct advantage − their costing. Fonts are now easily and
cheaply available to everybody. Design Concept charge £2.50 for any one
font followed by £1.50 for every additional member of the same family.
(Site licences being available at twice the cost of the fonts, if
required.)
6.2
Your choice
6.2
You have a choice of the following currently available fonts:
6.2
Acropolis, Ainslie (Med., Med.Oblique, Bold, Bold Obl., Ultra, Ultra
Obl.), Beacon (Med., Med.Obl.), Celtic (Med., Med.Obl., Bold, Bold
Obl.), Chinese, Copperplate (Light, Med., Bold), Diamond, Flip, Goffik,
Hobart (Med., Demibold, Obl., DemiBold Obl.), Katiyo (Med., Med.Obl.,
Bold, Bold Obl., Ultra, Ultra Obl.), Khut (Med., Med.Obl.), LCD (Med.,
Med.Obl.) Penny (Med., Med.Obl.), Scrawl, Sparta (Med., Bold, Obl., Bold
Obl.), Subway, Tron (Med., Med.Obl.), and Trust (Med., Solid, Med.Obl.,
Solid Obl.).
6.2
Here are some selected examples of some of the above:
6.2
6.3
6.2
What you get
6.2
When you order your fonts, your disc is constructed with your selection
of fonts placed into a directory called ‘!MoreFonts’. This directory is
written to run under RISC-OS 3 as an independent font directory. If,
like most of us, you still have RISC-OS 2, just transfer the fonts out
of !MoreFonts into your own fonts directory − !Fonts.
6.2
It would appear to be dependent upon the disc space available and the
amount of money you spend, what else appears on this disc. Design
Concept have a selection of cheaply priced utility programs, PD items
and two directories of Impression text files, one describing the design
of fonts (as per Archive’s new series of articles), the other giving the
instruction manuals for their software. (The latter is only available if
you spend over £30 or are the holder of a site licence.)
6.2
The fonts themselves
6.2
The majority of these fonts are ornate in design and, as such, are only
designed for use normally in one-line displays rather than for body
text. All fonts are designed to work fully with the Acorn Font Manager
and no problems were encountered loading them into any application. Once
loaded, the fonts are fully scalable, being designed with skeleton
lining ensures there is little loss of definition in the fonts when
reduced to the smaller sizes. Many of these fonts also use the scaffold
ing feature which helps to keep a balanced and symmetrical shape to
characters.
6.2
The majority of the fonts have the special characters defined. As some
of these sets have been improved from earlier versions, perhaps the full
set of most will follow in due course. Design Concept do stress in the
front of their catalogue that these fonts are NOT PostScript compatible
but, on the A5000, they can be used as such on local PostScript printers
by using !FontPrint. (This is now available on all Acorn 32-bit computer
using RISC-OS 3.1 − if you can get hold of it! Ed.)
6.2
Conclusion
6.2
Design Concept is, in my view, a company to keep an eye on. They have
some good products, with an increasing range to choose from. They have a
good and realistic price structure and there is now no reason for anyone
to struggle to obtain good fonts whatever their budget.  A
6.2
The Crystal Rain Forest
6.2
Hilary Ferns
6.2
This is from Sherston Software and is described as a ‘Mathematical
Adventure into Logo’. It is aimed at middle to upper junior children
(Y5-6) and provides an excellent, stimulating introduction to Logo and
other similar languages.
6.2
The program takes over the full screen but returning to the desktop is a
simple matter of pressing <Ctrl-Q> at certain points during the
adventure. The graphics and sound effects are good and all writing on
the screen is in a clear font which is provided on the disc. Eight logo
challenges are provided during the course of the adventure, some of
which also include simple concepts of shape and algebra.
6.2
Although the main storyline is purely fictional, (the aim is to find
magic crystals to produce a medicine to cure the king and so save the
rain forest from destruction by the ‘cut and run’ gang), the setting for
the adventure is a tropical rain forest and the package could be
introduced in the classroom as part of a rain forest topic.
6.2
An excellent Teachers’ book is provided which gives clear instructions
for using the program and lots of ideas for further work across the
whole curriculum.
6.2
The program continues across four discs and all except the key disc can
be copied to either hard disc or floppies. The key disc is always needed
to start the program and contains the Crystal Logo language. (A backup
copy of the key disc can be obtained from Sherston for a small charge.)
The program runs perfectly adequately from floppies, there being clear
prompts to change to the next disc in the sequence. A further disc is
needed to save the children’s work.
6.2
The icon on the iconbar provides a teachers’ set-up menu, and the
program can be started at any stage in the adventure. Each child’s place
can be saved to disc until next time, thus obviating the need to finish
the whole program at one session. It is therefore easy to just load the
Crystal Logo program without doing the actual adventure.
6.2
Crystal Logo provides a set of commands including the ‘Build’ command to
define your own routines. The idea is to draw crystal shapes but of
course the language can be used to produce any design, picture, etc. The
pictures can be coloured very simply by clicking on your choices and
then saved as sprites so that they can be imported into other programs.
6.2
Any of the screens in the program can be printed, as well as the logo
designs. The program uses RISC-OS printer drivers but this is where I
had problems. Using a Star LC10 colour printer with the appropriate Ace
printer driver, it would not print, but with my Hewlett Packard Deskjet
with appropriate driver, it did!
6.2
I then contacted Ace Computing and Sherston Software, both of whom were
most helpful. Apparently all version 2 printer drivers will work, as
will all version 3 drivers (A5000 only), but not version 1 printer
drivers. Since the majority of schools probably have version 1, this is
not good news. (There is no version 2 of the LC10 driver.) However,
Sherston are in the process of upgrading the program to iron out a few
minor bugs and have assured us that the new version will provide for all
printer drivers. So, when ordering, be sure to check which version you
are getting!
6.2
With the printing problem resolved, I would thoroughly recommend the
program for use in the classroom and the home. Logo has an important
place in the IT National Curriculum and Crystal Rain Forest presents
this in a new and exciting way which is greatly appealing to children.
6.2
(This review was based on The Crystal Rain Forest Version 1.00)  A
6.2
6.3
6.2
6.3
6.2
Econet Column
6.2
Neil Berry
6.2
As promised last month, I have decided to enter the precarious area of
predictions − specifically about the future of the Archimedes within a
networked environment.
6.2
It has, in the past, looked as if Econet was here to stay and the Acorn
machines would be ‘trapped’ within their own little world of non-
standard networking protocols. ‘That’s no longer the case!’, I hear you
cry but, if you stop to think for a moment, you will see that we are
perhaps not as far advanced as you may have thought.
6.2
Obviously, we are no longer in the dark ages, using Level I and II
fileservers running from floppy discs on BBC micros or Atoms, but there
are still a large number of institutions that use Filestore systems.
This is now becoming less and less common, with the coming of the most
excellent Archimedes but, even now, most Archimedes are restricted in
their use by the very thing that joins them together − Econet cable.
6.2
On many modern PC machines, Novell Netware is used as the controlling
protocol, over an Ethernet network and the high speed cable, driven by
Ethernet cards. The simple network protocols allow very rapid communi
cation between machines and fileservers. One problem with Econet has
always been the use of Acorn’s own complex in-house protocols which,
while not complex when compared to many modern systems, were cumbersome
to use properly, and drastically restricted the data transmission rates.
Even now, on a network that only has Archimedes machines on it, the
fastest mark space ratio is 1:4 which equates to a data transfer rate of
200kHz, which is slow by anybody’s standards in this day and age.
6.2
There are lots of systems available now such as Nexus, etc, that will
allow very high data transfer rates, and Level IV improves things no
end. So, what’s the problem?
6.2
Well, the main problem, as I see it, is the amount of existing invest
ment in Acorn Econet based networking. Most Econet installations reside
in educational institutions and there are limited funds available for
computing hardware and software. So, when a school has installed a large
scale Econet cabling system, it is virtually impossible for it to change
over, wholesale, to a faster system such as Ethernet, or even Nexus. The
sheer costs involved make many people simply dismiss them as impossible
dreams.
6.2
Level IV is a step in the right direction but it still uses Acorn’s
original protocol system and, more importantly, Econet cable. However,
if you are able to have a ratio of about five machines to every Level IV
server, the speeds available over such a short network distance are
quite reasonable.
6.2
I wouldn’t like anyone to think that I am picking on Acorn in this
article but they are the originators of the Econet system and so I feel
that much of the attention should be directed towards them, although
many other companies who jumped on the Econet bandwagon have, perhaps,
just as much to answer for.
6.2
I must make it clear at this point that I have always enjoyed using
Acorn computers and not until the last few years have I found the
networking system particularly restrictive. The simple fact of the
matter is that, with the coming of the Archimedes computers, Acorn have
now really plumped for the serious end-user market which expects very
high performance machines with the ability to link them in such a way
that it matches the performance of the machine and Econet or Econet-
based products simply do not allow this.
6.2
Cross-system compatibility
6.2
At this point, it would be worth thinking about cross-system compatibil
ity within the ‘serious machine’ market. Until very recently, computing
giants such as IBM and DEC have cornered the markets for this type of
machine and the hardware that links them all together. IBM, of course,
had their MS-DOS standard which, in my opinion, is possibly the most
cumbersome and unhelpful operating system ever devised.
6.2
(As the old joke says: How many IBM engineers does it take to screw in a
light bulb? None. They just let Marketing explain that “Dead Bulb” is a
feature!)
6.2
Be that as it may, the fact is that IBM have dominated the scene for so
long now, that people have really given up the idea of trying to produce
anything themselves. Only recently have newer smaller companies come
into the fray − Apple, for example, which, even though it is now a large
company, still has a small company ethos.
6.2
Acorn has now entered this market with the introduction of its ARM-based
machines and success has mainly been built on the radical and innovative
design and use of the RISC chip. This is demonstrated (with ironic
overtones) by the fact that Apple has now invested in the same RISC
computer technology − for its portable range of computers. (IBM are
working on RISC systems, too! Ed.)
6.2
All of this means that, until very recently, anyone who wanted to
communicate with other machines had to use an IBM protocol system, no
matter how badly conceived it was in the first place. It is now becoming
very obvious that UNIX is rapidly taking over as the industry standard
operating system, which is presumably why Acorn released the R140.
6.2
Acorn have released their own multi-tasking version of TCP/IP, which
really looked as if it would become the inter-network communication
standard. Even this looks like being overtaken by OSI (Open Systems
Interconnection) which is basically an ‘enriched’ version of TCP/IP and
which will be fully downwards-compatible.
6.2
A good concise explanation of OSI was given in Ian Lynch’s article in
Archive 3.9 p25 under the title “Connectivity”. As Ian states in his
article, Acorn must be prepared to embrace these open standards or die,
and they must also be prepared to price their machines very carefully to
avoid losing out to the larger computer manufacturers.
6.2
Acorn seem to have started going in the right direction with the release
of AUN (Acorn Universal Networking) which has been launched under their
open networking strategy. AUN provides a RISC-based gateway onto a
campus-wide network of Ethernet machines, using a RISC-OS computer as a
gateway. A new version of Acorn’s Level IV fileserver software has also
been optimised for Ethernet support.
6.2
Broader user base
6.2
Now that Acorn (and a number of other manufacturers) have decided to go
the way of standard networking practices, Archimedes machines will
obviously appeal to a wider audience, including users in business and
higher education. These users have different ideas and standards that
they expect of a computer system − high levels of security being one of
them.
6.2
The security on Acorn’s and S.J.’s fileservers has not been of the
highest quality − although, to be fair, it hasn’t needed to be so for
use within a school networking environment. However, now that the
Archimedes is entering the big wide world, these factors must be taken
into consideration.
6.2
Whether we like it or not, there are already very well-defined security
structures used by all of the other major manufacturers. To offer any
real competition, the Archimedes must be able to conform to these or be
so far in advance of them that everyone is able to see the advantages of
the Archimedes system. The former is obviously the safest route but, as
we all know, the Archimedes is quite an amazing computer, and it would
not come as any great surprise if Acorn plumped for the latter option.
6.2
Now that the Archimedes is recognised more and more by existing PC
users, it would be a good idea if, amongst the plethora of new Archi
medes variants, Acorn were to bring out a machine that was aimed
exclusively at the PC convert market. It should have a dedicated
Ethernet interface, an 80486 co-processor with floating point compat
ibility, as well as the PC Emulator, linked to a version of TCP/IP that
would sit in the machine’s ROM and be available at any time. There might
also be some software available with the machine such as file transfer
programs and translator programs in the same vein as John Kortink’s
excellent piece of software.
6.2
Well, I think that that is quite enough of my ramblings for the moment.
I must stress that all of the above are my own personal views and do not
necessarily represent those of Paul Beverley or Norwich Computer
Services.
6.2
New products
6.2
A new company called i3 (pronounced i-cubed), formerly known as PSI
Systems Innovations, have just released a product called ‘EtherLan 200’
for the new A3020 and A4000 computers. i3 are better known as design
consultants involved with the supply of third party hardware products
for the Archimedes. They also design ASICs (Application Specific
Integrated Circuits). In essence, the EtherLan 200 offers connection to
10Base2 and 10BaseT − “Cheapernet” and “Twisted pair” − with an optional
adapter for 10Base5 − “Thick Ethernet”. From the information I have
received, this looks like quite an exciting development and I’m hoping
to get my hands on one of these units to test out more fully. In the
meantime, if you would like any more information, contact i3 on
0223−413717 or fax them on 0223−413847.
6.2
Next month.....
6.2
Next month will hopefully see the start of the series on the installa
tion of TCP/IP into a large system of computers and mainframes, trying
to simplify some of the more complex operations that need to be carried
out.
6.2
As usual, 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 a new simple method for doing a tedious networking job, write in
and tell me about it. I can’t promise to answer all letters individually
but I will try to give any subjects raised an airing on these pages.  A
6.2
The Pocket Book − Further Information
6.2
Simon Moy
6.2
Following the ‘release’ (I use the word cautiously) of the Acorn Pocket
Book and the article in Archive’s ‘Vision of the Future’ supplement
(over two months ago! Ed), many people have enquiried about its
compatibility with the Psion Series 3, what software is supplied with it
and the availability of the various peripherals. When the Pocket Book
becomes available, the A-Link and the OPL Editor should be released at
the same time − with other less important software following on later.
6.2
This article is intended to answer some of the questions that have been
asked since the Vision of the Future supplement appeared. But first, a
recap...
6.2
A recap
6.2
The Acorn Pocket Book is a rebadged Psion 3 with different host software
and Acorn’s own GUI operating system (which is not RISC-OS compatible).
It is aimed at the education market, and the accompanying software
reflects this. There are many Psion 3 features missing from the Pocket
Book and A-Link specifications. However, it is because these products
are being aimed squarely at the education market that Acorn (in their
infinite wisdom) do not consider certain applications or hardware add-
ons necessary. This still doesn’t explain the lack of a diary on the
Pocket Book. After all, how many school-children do you know who don’t
need a homework diary?
6.2
The Pocket Book has space to fit two MS-DOS format RAM cards (known as
Solid State Discs), each with a capacity of up to 2Mb. These are
available in two types: RAM SSDs which have a Lithium battery built in
and allow deletion of data as if they were a normal disc, and Flash SSDs
which are cheaper, but only allow the user to erase all of the data in
one go. Data can be flagged as deleted, but it will still take up space
on the disc until reformatting occurs. The Pocket Book has 256Kb of RAM
and a set of applications in ROM. External expansion is provided by a 9-
pin mini-DIN socket which is the output from a very fast (1.56 Mbit/s)
serial port. This allows connection to either of the serial links −
Acorn’s ‘A-Link’ or Psion’s ‘3-Link’ − or to a parallel link to allow
the Pocket Book to be connected to a parallel printer.
6.2
A link (sic!)
6.2
The A-Link is a separate package from the Pocket Book and costs £49.95
inc VAT. This price includes desktop software which allows the Pocket
Book to appear as a filing system on the Archimedes’ screen. Physically,
the A-Link is a small black box about 10×2.5×2.5 cm with two leads
moulded into the casing − one with a Pocket Book/Psion 3 serial
connector and the other with a 9-pin D-type socket. The Pocket Book and
the Psion 3 already have the driver software for the serial port built
into their respective ROMs, so nothing extra is required for them.
6.2
Good news for everyone is that the the Pocket Book and the Psion 3 are
compatible in just about every way, including the use of their respec
tive serial port connections. The Psion’s 3-Link works with the Pocket
Book, and the A-Link works with the Psion 3. However, Psion’s 3-Link
includes PC or Mac software, depending on which version you buy. (N.B.
Make sure that you buy the correct one as there are hardware and
software differences between the Mac and PC versions.) This software
obviously cannot be used under RISC-OS. The software for each link is
not available separately and so, to use the Pocket Book or the Psion 3
with a PC or Mac and an Archimedes, (using the original software) you
have to buy both links.
6.2
The A-Link and the 3-Link also have hardware differences, so the
software for one link cannot be used with the other. This does not
prevent you from using the A-Link under the PC Emulator without the
relevant RISC-OS software − the A-Link is fully RS232C compatible and so
you can use the Pocket Book through the A-Link using communications
software under the PC Emulator. However, this isn’t strictly true in the
case of the 3-Link as the Archimedes serial port doesn’t follow the
usual RS232/RS423 wiring specifications. Thus, you can only use the 3-
Link to connect a Psion 3 or a Pocket Book to the Archimedes running the
PC Emulator if you make a few wiring changes (details in Archive 6.1
p55).
6.2
The software with the A-Link includes a BBS script language facility (as
with the 3-Link) but I haven’t been able to find out whether it includes
such features as X- and Y-MODEM facilities. Once installed, it offers an
iconbar filing system with menu options such as Info, Open $ and Quit.
The filing system opens a filer window allowing file transfer between
the core applications on the Pocket Book/Psion 3 and the Archimedes. The
only restriction is that open files cannot be transferred. One further
facility allows it to translate between Latin1 and DOS character sets
during the transfer operation.
6.2
Software
6.2
There is a great deal of confusion about the availability of software
and its compatibility with the Psion 3 and the Pocket Book. The latter
comes with five applications and a ‘Desktop’, selectable from the touch-
sensitive keys just below the screen. Because the software in the Pocket
Book is aimed towards the educational market, it has been altered from
the original Psion 3 software. The essential differences are as follows:
6.2
Application    Pocket Book    Psion Series
3
6.2
OS interface    Desktop (ROM)    System (ROM)
6.2
Wordprocessor    Write (ROM)    Word (ROM)
6.2
Database    Cards (ROM)    Data (ROM)
6.2
Clock & alarm    Time (ROM)    Time (ROM)
6.2
Calculator    Calc (ROM)    Calc (ROM)
6.2
Spreadsheet    Abacus (ROM)    Sheet
6.2
        Option (SSD)
6.2
Spellchecker    Included (SSD)    Option (SSD)
6.2
    No Thesaurus    With Thesaurus
6.2
Diary planner    Agenda
    Agenda (ROM)
6.2
    Option (SSD)
6.2
World dialling    World
    World (ROM)
6.2
& time zones    Option (SSD)
6.2
Programming    OPL run-time only    OPL (ROM)
6.2
    OPL Editor as     (Editor & run-
6.2
    option on SSD    time)
6.2
Many of the applications are data-compatible but not necessarily
functionally compatible. For example, Sheet and Abacus can use each
other’s data but are not fully compatible with the more complex
functions. Similarly, World and Agenda (which should be available soon)
should carry out compatible functions but will not be exactly the same
as the Psion versions.
6.2
The OPL/w editor and translator will be the same as the Psion version
and the run-time system which is included with the Pocket Book is also
the same. This means that all Psion OPL programs will run on the Pocket
Book without requiring the actual editor. This is useful as the editor
is fairly expensive at £69.95.
6.2
One other software change is the DTMF dialler. Acorn have said that if
this becomes available at all, it will not auto-dial telephone numbers.
This is a shame because the speaker built into the Pocket Book/Psion 3
was widely hailed as being the best and loudest on any hand-held machine
and it was designed with the auto-dialler in mind. The Pocket Book
renders it virtually useless except for the occasional warning beep. If
it exists on the Psion 3, I see no reason for it not to be included on
the Pocket Book.
6.2
Other information
6.2
Unlike the Atari Portfolio, the Pocket Book cannot support different
language configurations on the keyboard or screen − this is unfortunate
from the European perspective. There are two character sets built in:
Latin1 and DOS. but no other character sets are included because of a
lack of ROM space. Presumably, someone has already produced (or will
produce) a program which allows other character sets to be used.
6.2
There is a fair amount of Psion 3 software available via the usual PC
public domain sources. This can be downloaded from the PC into the
Pocket Book or Psion 3 using one of the serial links. Hopefully, the
Acorn shareware market will pick up on this as both the Psion 3 and the
Pocket Book have large gaps in their software markets.
6.2
The file transfer facilities on the Pocket Book are very good and,
because it has a multitasking operating system, it can handle file
transfer operations while other applications are running. The only
problem encountered so far is that files with filenames that include
‘top-bit-set’ characters − i.e. characters which are not available from
the keyboard without using a function key − do not transfer properly. On
the Pocket Book, these extra characters are produced using <ctrl>
followed by a three-figure number corresponding to the character code
required. They do not correspond (in general) to the <alt>-nnn charac
ters that are available from the Archimedes keyboard so it would pay to
avoid using them in filenames.
6.2
The educational viewpoint
6.2
The omissions from the Pocket Book specification seem to me to be rather
patronising towards those currently in our education system. Children
are becoming technically aware at younger and younger ages. You often
hear comments such as, “I can’t operate the video recorder but my six-
year old can.” Many younger children have a great deal of knowledge
about computers and, as a result, their computer needs become more
demanding as time goes by. If the Pocket Book is tailored towards the
entire age range of students, from primary school up to university (as
the advertising blurb says it is) then why aren’t such things as the
dialling function and a diary included? Furthermore, what is the
rationale behind including a spreadsheet but not a thesaurus? I would
have thought that, for most students, the latter was far more important,
especially considering the current ‘trendy’ lack of interest in correct
English grammar.
6.2
Conclusion
6.2
The Pocket Book remains an excellent machine (despite I have said
above!) and has enormous scope to be a market leader in hand-held
computers. My only hope is that Acorn will drop the price of the OPL
editor so that youngsters can start programming the facilities which are
currently missing from the Pocket Book/Psion 3 software market. Most
programmers start at an early age and, if Acorn want this product to
succeed in the educational marketplace, they have to market it with a
more professional outlook.
6.2
The Psion 3 is tailored towards the businessman and the Pocket Book
towards the student but the needs of the two are converging as computer
literacy increases amongst young people. The Pocket Book needs to be
simple enough for younger children to use but it must also have the
power of the Psion 3. In essence, it should be tailored towards today’s
technological whizz-kids − i.e. anyone from the age of five upwards!  A
6.2
Starch
6.2
Alan Highet
6.2
Starch (£14.95 from Dabs Press or £14 through Archive) comes on a single
disc encased in a plastic CD case with a single page detailing the
storyline and explaining the controls. The cover picture does little to
stir the imagination and Alien Images should give some thought to
employing an artist to design future covers.
6.2
My first complaint was that the program would not run from any filing
system other than ADFS unless you press <shift-break>. Although this is
not a great problem, I do think that nowadays programs should run with
just a double click and should return you to the desktop, leaving other
programs intact, something else that is not possible with Starch.
6.2
The storyline of this arcade game has you controlling two managers of a
large laundry firm which has fallen behind on its quotas. You have to
help Harry and Dave catch up by working all night to clear the backlog
before their boss Mr. C. Ash sacks them. In one-player mode you control
Dave with the computer playing Harry and both characters work at the
same time on a three-dimensional screen.
6.2
The controls are rather difficult to master because you have to move in
the four directions across the floor as well as being able to jump. The
keys selected are not the easiest to use and there is no way to alter
them although there is the undocumented choice of one player being able
to use a Voltmace joystick. It would have been nice for the other types
of joystick to have been supported as it would have made the two-player
mode simpler.
6.2
The game involves collecting your quota of laundry bags and performing
various operations on them. On level one, you simply drop them down a
chute while on level five you have to iron them with each level
involving a longer sequence of button pressing and lever pulling to
accomplish your task. On completing the five levels, you start again at
level one with an increased quota. Occasionally, a little bouncing ball
appears and touching this will either increase or decrease your quota by
two which sometimes can be extremely useful.
6.2
I reached level five very easily, even with the awkward controls,
because I found it easiest to let the computer player perform the
various tasks and then take the bag from him and finish the task myself
so decreasing my quota to zero. However, on starting on level one again,
I found it almost impossible to reach my quota in the time allowed
because there just weren’t enough laundry bags delivered.
6.2
Conclusions
6.2
This game has not got what it takes to catch on because I didn’t find
the urge to play it “just one more time”. The graphics are reasonable
and the figures move smoothly. The sound was adequate and although the
music could be turned down, there was no way of turning off the
digitised speech or sound effects. I tried turning off the internal
speaker but the program turned it back on again so I was left with not
being able to play the game in the evenings for fear of waking my
daughter.
6.2
The speech appears at the end of each level and consists of the boss
either telling you you’ve done well or more likely telling you that you
are fired and a henchman opening a trap-door under your feet. It was
very amusing the first few times but it became boring very quickly.
6.2
There was a score for collecting and delivering the bags and other
little tasks but I was puzzled by the fact that no matter how hard I
tried, I always scored less than the computer even if I collected my
quota of bags and he collected none. Still, it didn’t matter too much as
there was no record kept of the high score table. There was a daily high
score but this only appeared if you reached a high enough score to enter
and it was never shown again.
6.2
Overall, I was disappointed with the game and would not recommend it for
long-term playability.  A
6.2
ThinkSheet
6.2
Robert Chrismas
6.2
ThinkSheet is a RISC-OS compliant Outliner program from Fisher-Marriott.
It costs £39+VAT or £89+VAT for a site licence.
6.2
Outliners
6.2
Outliner programs are supposed to help us to think and to communicate
more effectively.
6.2
Prose (sentences and paragraphs of ‘Good English’) is a wonderful means
of communication, but it has its limitations. We certainly do not think
in prose and it is often hard to turn a tangle of linked ideas into an
essay.
6.2
A word processor forces us to write our thoughts in order − a kind of
list of ideas. We explain connections, use sub-headings, footnotes and
all sorts of other clues to indicate the relations between ideas, but
the more complicated the connections, the harder this becomes.
6.2
Outliners arrange ideas in a tree structure rather than a list. They
encourage us to think and to write ‘top down’. Each idea is described by
a ‘chunk’ of text − it might be just one word or a whole paragraph. A
chunk can have additional chunks attached to amplify or explain it.
6.2
6.3
6.2
Outliners arrange chunks of text in a tree structure
6.2
6.3
6.2
The ThinkSheet manual emphasises its educational uses but outliners can
help many activities which require clear thinking: planning a holiday,
describing a Bridge bidding system, analysing a poem or making a
shopping list.
6.2
Appearance
6.2
Some Outliners look rather like word processors − lines of text, with
only the indenting or paragraph numbering indicating the structure of
the data. Thinksheet seems more like a cross between a word processor
and a hyper-media package.
6.2
Documents are divided into pages which the manual rather unhelpfully
calls ‘screens’. You enter text on ‘cards’. Each screen can hold a
number of cards. Attached to each card is a small keyhole icon. A click
on the keyhole opens the screen for that card.
6.2
6.3
6.2
6.3
6.2
Output
6.2
ThinkSheet saves files in its own format but documents can be displayed
on screen, saved as text or printed with a variety of layouts.
6.2
In ‘connected text’, all the cards on each screen are joined together in
paragraphs. The ‘list’ format starts each card on a new line. A
‘numbered list’ numbers and indents lines to show which level they are
on − this is the most common outliner layout. ‘Text in boxes’ represents
the layout you see on the screen.
6.2
Ease of use
6.2
ThinkSheet is intuitive and easy to use. To create a new card, you click
on the screen. To edit a card, you click on the card. Entering text on a
new card or editing an existing one is just like using a word processor.
You change the position of a card on the screen by dragging it. Linking
cards to screens, and changing links, is simple and quick.
6.2
The program seems easy enough for the majority of junior school children
to use with no more than the usual difficulties (“Sir, Sir! Katherine’s
eating a mouse”). However, its usefulness is not restricted to this age
range.
6.2
Other features
6.2
The clipboard is used to move cards between screens or documents. A card
on the clipboard keeps any screens which are attached to it, so whole
sections of the tree can be moved around. The clipboard shows the first
few lines of any card it holds − I found this very helpful.
6.2
You can search for a word or phrase. Wild cards are allowed. The search
displays all the matching cards. Then you can click on a card to move to
the screen on which that card appears.
6.2
ThinkSheet will display menus and prompts in foreign languages. Welsh,
German, Spanish and French were available the review disc.
6.2
Card layout
6.2
The cards are 20 characters wide. They are arranged in three columns on
the screen. Cards can be positioned to make simple tables. I found this
useful for some documents but, for long paragraphs of text, a ‘line’
based outliner would have been better. Perhaps, for later versions,
Fisher-Marriott might consider allowing cards to be one, two or three
columns wide.
6.2
The program tries to keep the card layout tidy by aligning the top edge
of each row of cards. If you make cards longer or shorter by editing
their text, the program keeps alignment. You can arrange the cards with
gaps. There were times when a card I had moved was auto-tidied (no it’s
not in the dictionary) to the wrong position but by juggling other cards
I always managed to get the layout I wanted in the end.
6.2
The manual
6.2
The manual is clear and well presented. There are about fifty A5 pages
with plenty of section dividers.
6.2
Most program effects can be selected in three ways, from an icon on the
screen, the menu or the function keys. The manual covers these separa
tely and is inclined to repeat itself.
6.2
The program allows some actions which the manual does not explain. For
example, cards can be dragged onto the title of a screen to move them up
a level and ordinary text files can be imported by dragging them onto a
screen. It is good that the program works in such an intuitive way that
you can discover new facilities by accident. However, it must be a
limitation in the manual that it does not mention them.
6.2
At the back there is an index/glossary. Some words have one sentence
definitions as well as a reference to a page number. This seemed a good
idea. Some important words were omitted. Given that the manual uses the
word ‘screen’ in an unusual way, I was surprised not to find it in the
index.
6.2
Uses
6.2
The manual says that ThinkSheet was originally designed to help analyse
existing text. An example document, ‘Kubla’ illustrates this. The manual
claims that it was during development that the authors realised that
ThinkSheet could be used creatively, getting ideas down on cards, then
thinking about how they are organised.
6.2
The manual includes a section showing that ThinkSheet is appropriate to
a very wide range of national curriculum attainment targets, “from level
2 to level 10”. ThinkSheet could be considered “wherever questions of
organisation, structure and combining information arise”. It is a
reflection on the national curriculum that good educational programs are
seen in terms of the attainment targets they satisfy.
6.2
The emphasis in the manual on educational uses is probably sensible
marketing but ThinkSheet could have many applications outside the
classroom. This is one of those programs with a range of applications
only limited by the imagination of the user.
6.2
Use a hyper-media package instead?
6.2
Hyper-media documents allow all sorts of effects which make them good to
look at but hard to create. Less experienced users can find that
thinking about the way the program works gets in the way of thinking
about their subject. You have to plan hyper-media documents carefully if
you do not want to spend a lot of time altering them.
6.2
With ThinkSheet it is easy to bash in a few ideas, then think about how
they are connected. You could just as easily use ThinkSheet to plan a
hyper-media document as to plan a trip to the hyper-market.
6.2
Problems/Limitations
6.2
The program had problems displaying a few of the example documents. The
‘Numbered List’ display was scrambled on some documents. Other documents
had overlapping cards. On a couple of occasions, cards disappeared when
they were re-positioned and once ThinkSheet became so mixed up as to
claim that I was on level −2. I tried to duplicate these problems with
my own documents but could not, so I suspect that the problems lay with
the files which may have been created with an earlier, more bugged,
version of the program. (What a gracious reviewer you are, Robert! Ed.)
6.2
‘Line based’ outliners are usually able to show just the first ‘n’
levels so that you can have an overview without all the details. The
nearest that ThinkSheet comes to this is to output the top level ‘in
boxes’.
6.2
It does not seem possible to have multiple views of the same document.
6.2
Conclusion
6.2
I have always been keen on outliners − the last program I gave up using
on a PC was PC Outline. ThinkSheet looks a bit odd after that but it
does the job. I may even be beginning to prefer the ‘sheets’ and ‘cards’
layout.
6.2
The documentation emphasises educational uses, but ThinkSheet can have
applications outside education. Organisers work for me − I think most
people would find one useful.
6.2
ThinkSheet is particularly easy to use. It had problems with some of the
example documents, but when I was creating my own documents it felt
solid. I have only seen a few other outliner-type programs for the
Archimedes but, of those I have seen, this is the best.  A
6.2
each screen can hold a number of cards
6.2
6.3
6.2
 1. In Xanadu
6.2
6.3
6.2
    A) Foreign-sounding name
6.2
    B) Evokes far-away places
6.2
    C) More romantic than Birmingham
6.2
    D) Never heard of it, so no idea where it is
6.2
    E) Is it real or fairy-tale?
6.2
6.3
6.2
 2. did Kubla Khan
6.2
6.3
6.2
    A) Alliterative, romantic-sounding
6.2
    B) Vaguely Arabic, so reminder of Arabian Nights
6.2
6.3
6.2
 3. A stately
6.2
   ......                       a numbered list
6.2
6.3
6.2
              +———————————+
6.2
              | In Xanadu            |
6.2
              +———————————+
6.2
6.3
6.2
+———————————+  +———————————+
6.2
|    Foreign-sounding  |  |    Evokes far-away   |
6.2
| name                 |  | places               |
6.2
+———————————+  +———————————+
6.2
+———————————+  +———————————+
6.2
|    Never heard of it,|  |    Is it real or     |
6.2
| so no idea where it  |  | fairy-tale?          |
6.2
| is                   |  +———————————+
6.2
+———————————+
6.2
                          +———————————+
6.2
                          |    More romantic than|
6.2
                          | Birmingham           |
6.2
                          +———————————+
6.2
6.3
6.2
6.3
6.2
text in boxes
6.2
The PCATS Graphics Enhancer
6.2
Roger Spooner
6.2
The PCATS Graphics Enhancer, originally sold by The Serial Port and now
by QD Computers (I think it is now a Company called Vertical Twist!
Ed.), is an improved colour device. It allows the picture on your
monitor to display colours in a palette of 16 million, with up to 64
thousand on screen at once.
6.2
The card has two main pieces of hardware. There are a number of clock
crystals, allowing the video image to be sent out at any rate from 8
million bytes per second to 36 million. This allows screens with
resolutions of up to about 900×650 although there is no specific limit.
There is also a new colour palette chip, providing all the new colours.
6.2
Installation
6.2
It is a single width podule and fits, to the best of my knowledge, on
any Archimedes. It also has a flying lead to connect to a set of pins on
the main computer board. The whole thing is easy to plug in if that set
of pins exists on your computer but some computers have been sold with
only a set of holes in place of the actual pins. If this is the case,
the computer will have to be modified by a competent, or confident,
engineer.
6.2
The installation manual is good, describing where to find the pins on
each model of machine, and how to get them the right way round.
Installing the podule part is as easy as normal. There is a small cable
to connect the old monitor output to a socket on the podule, and the
monitor connects to the podule. This causes no problems.
6.2
There are a number of *Configure options which need to be set in trust:
one must be set to 0, when it is already 0000000. It then becomes
10001111. Beware of sub-standard software such as old games or modules;
they can overwrite these values in the CMOS ram, wasting a lot of time
as you try to correct them.
6.2
The monitor will not work correctly until the *Configure options have
been set.
6.2
Software
6.2
The GE podule contains enough software on board to allow the monitor to
work, so you only need to load more if you specifically intend to use
the new modes. Software which supports them, such as Illusionist from
Clares, does not require any extra software to be loaded, so it is not
necessary to have a hard disc from which to boot.
6.2
There are two main applications supplied with the package. !ModeEdit is
an excellent product for defining and saving new modes. It has its own
file format which can contain many mode definitions and which is easy to
run from a boot file. Thus all your favourite modes can be tweaked and
the new ones loaded whenever you boot the machine. For example, I have a
wider mode 20 with a slightly higher refresh rate.
6.2
!ColPicker is not quite so carefully written but serves well in allowing
you to select the individual colours for the palette entries. You can
drag the Red, Green and Blue components up and down with the mouse, type
values or use the Hue, Saturation, Colour, Value or the Cyan, Magenta,
Yellow, Key models. I found it easy to modify some small details I
didn’t like, such as the absence of a Cancel icon.
6.2
It is possible not only to set individual entries but also to copy
groups around and smooth a sequence from one colour to another. Thus you
can make a clean greyscale in a few seconds by defining black, white,
and smoothing between them. You can also save palettes for later re-use.
6.2
A new version of the ColourTrans module is supplied, although all later
version will also work. This means that all standard software will run,
in the desktop, in the enhancer modes. Draw is especially useful for
designing colour advertisements − with a suitable palette, you can get a
precise idea of the colours you are using − graduated colour fills will
never be the same again!
6.2
Programmer access to the device is excellent, including SWIs for setting
individual palette entries, setting blocks of them, reading them and
telling if you are in an enhanced mode.
6.2
So many colours!
6.2
Unfortunately, you have to pick the colours for the desktop yourself.
This means that a graduated colour fill is easy to cater for but full
colour pictures can be a bit tricky and rarely look good in the desktop
in enhancer modes.
6.2
Any software with explicit support for the GE will of course work fine,
generally picking palette entries itself and keeping things neat. Thus
LoadImage, free from Design Concept, will allow you to see a Clear file
picture in full colour on the desktop by swapping the palette from its
current value to that for the picture when you move inside its window.
6.2
Illusionist supports the GE properly, apart from a bug, meaning that
pictures can be rendered in the ‘best’ 256 colours, which it picks
itself. The picture can then be saved as a Clear file, ready for loading
full screen into LoadImage or through Translator or Creator (by John
Kortink) to many other file formats.
6.2
The most commonly used modes are those which allow the desktop to run,
like 103 and 126. These, as said above, allow all desktop programs to
run in them, providing a great boon for those wanting real colour. These
modes have any 256 colours from a palette of 16777216, although one must
be black.
6.2
It is also possible to use modes with 4096 or 65536 colours on screen at
once. These do not have a palette but allow 4 bits per colour, or 5½
b.p.c. where the values stored in memory go directly to the DAC. Thus
you have the full normal Archimedes palette, or slightly more than that,
but you cannot choose the colours. Because each pixel on the monitor is
made from 3 or 4 pixels in memory, combined on the podule, you cannot
use normal software in these modes. Anything which uses them must plot
each point 3 or 4 times, once for each primary colour (and a
combination).
6.2
Magic crystals?
6.2
The GE also has a number of crystals to set the clock speed. This
controls the amount of information (colours × pixels × refresh rate)
getting onto the screen per second. The higher this goes, the slower the
computer gets, both in main processing and in drawing on the screen, but
you do get more detail. These crystals include 24MHz, 25.175 MHz, 32MHz
and 36MHz. Any divide-down on these can be used down to 8MHz, so you
could have a 2 colour mode with 200×100 resolution and a 40Hz refresh
rate, allowing the computer to run at practically full speed.
6.2
You can also install new crystals for up to 40MHz, allowing incredible
resolutions.
6.2
Summary
6.2
The PCATS Graphics Enhancer is well worth the money (about £180) if you
need to compose DrawFiles with a certain set of colours, feel a need to
use Illusionist or have your own software which requires full colour
such as, for example, a full colour 3D graph or map plotter (well, up to
5D or maybe even 6 dimensions really!)
6.2
It does not support all 16 million colours on screen at once (in the
desktop) in a 1280×1024 pixel mode, being refreshed at 70Hz. In that
respect it is a little lacking but it is an tremendous improvement on
the existing VIDC.
6.2
A multisync monitor is just as much of a necessity as it ever was (Acorn
should never have recommended anything else) because you can’t have lots
of pixels on a cheap monitor.
6.2
Hopefully, the colour problem will be officially sorted sometime but it
could be more than a year before Acorn get a new VIDC out. In the
meantime, this conforms to what standards there are and does it well.  A
6.2
FX2 − Graph Plotting Package
6.2
Ken May
6.2
Thanks to Steve Ellacot, I have managed to find a software package that
allows me to plot every conceivable graph that is needed to cover an
advanced level course in pure mathematics. The program allows you to
express functions in cartesian, polar or parametric form, and all
equations are entered in standard algebraic format. For three years, I
have been searching for such a program and at long last it is now
installed on my hard disc. It employs the various features of RISC-OS
and is completely compatible with the Acorn range of computers. It is a
superb package and is very easy to use. The package is called fx2, is
published by Silica Software Systems, Mallards, Lower Hardres, Canter
bury, Kent, CT4 5NU and costs £59 at the time of writing.
6.2
fx2 not only plots graphs but is also capable of carrying out the
following calculations: Area under curve, Volume of revolution, Length
of curve, Surface area of volume, Mean value, Root mean square value,
Centroid of area, Centroid of volume, Moment of inertia about x-axis,
Moment of inertia about y-axis.
6.2
Also under calculations, the following may be evaluated: Gradient of
curve at a given point, Equation of tangent, Equation of normal, Maxima
and minima, Roots of equations using Newton-Raphson.
6.2
Graphs may be overlaid and also, for a given set of parameters, families
of curves may be plotted. When graphs are overlaid, each graph is drawn,
by default, in a different colour. To obtain the best results on your
hard copy, the colour of each graph must be set to black on the overlay.
There are four choices of accuracy for plotting a graph, namely
‘coarse’, ‘Medium’, ‘Good’ and ‘Excellent’. The following examples
illustrate the high quality of the graphs that can be obtained by using
this package and so the accuracy of each graph has been set to
‘excellent’.
6.2
6.3
6.2
Example 1
6.2
Here we have plotted the graph of y = (x − 1)(x − 5), its tangent y = 4x
− 20 and its normal 4y = − x + 5 at point (5,0). This is achieved by
overlaying the three individual graphs. By selecting point (5,0) and by
clicking on the icon buttons ‘equation of tangent’ and ‘equation of
normal’, in the results-differentiation window, the appropriate
equations will appear in the inner window.
6.2
However, there is a minor accuracy problem as the tangent y = 4x − 20 is
evaluated as y = 4x − 19.9985584 and the normal 4y = − x + 5 as y =
− 0.25001812x + 1.2500986.
6.2
6.3
6.2
Example 2
6.2
This is a graph of the function y = (x + 1)/((x − 1) (x + 3)). The graph
has two vertical asymptotes x = 1 and x = −3 which have to be overlaid
onto the graph. The problem is that, in Cartesian coordinates, there is
no facility to plot vertical lines. This is overcome by switching over
to polar coordinates and so x = 1 becomes r = sec q and x = −3 becomes r
= −3sec q. I have suggested that a vertical line option be added in
later versions of fx2. One has a choice of expressing 113q in degrees or
in radians. It may be necessary to change the scale factor along the x
and y axes in order to produce a respectable looking graph.
6.2
Example 3
6.2
In the Graph options window, one has a choice of being able to plot the
inverse of a given function. Unfortunately, it is not possible at
present to overlay the graph of the inverse of a function onto the graph
of the function.
6.2
As the full effect of plotting the inverse of a function cannot be
achieved without the overlay facility, there is little point in
illustrating this property.
6.2
Example 4
6.2
This is an example of using Polar coordinates by setting the format to
Normal and the Axes to Polar in the input window. In this window, you
are given the choice of expressing the angle in degrees or in radians
and there is an option to allow negative ‘r’. Unfortunately, a cartesian
frame is displayed rather than an initial line. There is a problem with
plotting points and, regrettably, the circle in polar coordinates is an
ellipse on both the screen and the hard copy. Finally, parts of some
leaves of the rose, in the vicinity of the pole, are missing and the
ends of the leaves lie on an ellipse instead of a circle. A variety of
graphs are illustrated below.
6.2

6.2
a) The circle r = 10cos(q − p/3)
6.2
6.3
6.2
b) The cardiod r = 5(1 + cosq))
6.2
6.3
6.2
c) Limacon of Pascal r = 6 + 4cosq
6.2
6.3
6.2
d) The five-leaved Rose r = 10cos5q
6.2
6.3
6.2
Example 5
6.2
This shows a set of five vertical lines at intervals of two units from x
= 2 to x = 10. Notice that the line x = 10 is broken and incomplete as
it is on the screen display. These vertical lines were plotted using the
polar equation: r = a.sec(x) where a = 2 to 10, step 2
6.2
Example 6
6.2
Graphs of functions which are expressed parametrically are illustrated
here. Note that the flaw in the bottom right of the second occurred in
the plotting of the curve before the asymptote was overlaid. Also, the
asymptote y = −x − 2 had to be inputted as y = −x +2 because inputting y
= −x − 2 caused the asymptote to pass through point (0,2) which is
clearly an error.
6.2
6.3
6.2
a) Epicycloid x = 4cos(t) − cos(4t)
6.2
y = 4sin(t) − sin(4t)
6.2
6.3
6.2
b) Folium of Descartes x = 6t/(1 + t3)
6.2
y = 6t2/(1 + t3)
6.2
6.3
6.2
c) The Trochoid x = t − 1.5sin(t)
6.2
y = 1 − 1.5cos(t)
6.2
Conclusion
6.2
As there are few people that are aware of the existence of fx2, the
publishers have had very little, if any feedback. It is not surprising,
therefore, that there are a number of problems to be solved before it is
perfected. All of the problems that I have highlighted in this article
have been passed on to Silica Software Systems who were most grateful.
They said that they would try to solve most of these problems, if not
all of them, before they release the next version of the program.
Despite its current faults, I am sure that fx2 is a package that every
mathematician using a RISC-OS system has been waiting for − I am very
impressed.
6.2
I have also made a few suggestions for improvements, namely:
6.2
i) an option to select the style of a line e.g. continuous, dotted, dot-
dash, dash.
6.2
ii) an option to shade defined regions
6.2
iii) an option to plot derived functions
6.2
I sincerely hope that fx2 gains the recognition it deserves.  A
6.2
Brian Cowan, our expert on matters scientific adds: Yes, fx2 is an
impressive product replete with facilities. As Ken says, it is most
suitable for A level mathematics students; for that, I am sure the range
of options is ideal. Earlier versions of the product were rather
temperamental and often crashed my machine but these problems seem to
have been solved. It is a matter of taste, but one thing I did not like
(but which Ken clearly does ) is that formulae are entered in a sort of
algebraic form with powers, for example, as raised indices. I would much
prefer input in a pseudo-Basic or Pascal format so that complicated
formulae can be created in a text editor or those generated from another
program (such as a curve fitter) can be entered with ease. Also, I would
like the facility of parametric curves. All in all, this is a good
product but I would reiterate the point I made in a recent review of
Scientific Software (Archive 5.6 p51), where I encouraged people to have
a good look at what PD software was available in this area before
parting with real money.  A
6.2
Newton − A Logo Microworld
6.2
Malcolm Fraser
6.2
Newton is a suite of programs written in the Logo language. You need
Archimedes Logo to run Newton, and as far as I am aware, Longman
Logotron are the only publishers of a full implementation of Logo for
the Archimedes. (What about Silicon Vision’s RoboLogo? Ed)
6.2
Newton aims to provide a simulation of the way in which forces act on
bodies, as described by the laws given by Isaac Newton in the Seven
teenth Century. This means it deals with the area called mechanics in A
Level Mathematics and Physics. Unlike many simulations, it is designed
to allow users complete control over the problems investigated, rather
than give examples to be examined passively. In the authors’ words it is
designed “to encourage the exploration of forces”.
6.2
Before reviewing the software, it may be helpful if I briefly describe
the Logo language. (There is a review of Logotron Logo in Archive 1.11
p50.)
6.2
Logo
6.2
If you have already encountered Logo, it is quite likely that you will
have used it to create drawings using ‘turtle graphics’. A triangular
dart called a turtle starts in the middle of the computer screen. It can
be moved using a number of commands and can leave a trail on the screen,
drawing simple or complex shapes. The language needed to draw shapes
such as squares, triangles and so on, is very simple, and children of
junior school level can quickly learn to write programs to produce
drawings of houses and other shapes.
6.2
To give the flavour of the language, the listing below is the first Logo
program which many people encounter. It is designed to draw a square on
the screen, and Figure 1 shows the result of running this program, with
the turtle finishing in the bottom left corner, where it started. The
Logo procedure is:
6.2
TO SQUARE
6.2
REPEAT 4 [ FORWARD 100 RIGHT 90 ]
6.2
END
6.2
The distance is in arbitrary units but the turn is in degrees. Once the
procedure has been typed in, it is run by typing SQUARE.
6.2
Simple procedures can be used as building blocks to produce more complex
shapes. For example, Figure 2 was produced by writing the procedure
PATTERN which in turn uses SQUARE:
6.2
TO PATTERN
6.2
REPEAT 8 [ SQUARE LEFT 45 ]
6.2
END
6.2
The designs produced can be complex but quite beautiful − for example,
spirals and snowflake curves. Anyone who is interested should try to
find a copy of ‘Turtle Geometry’ by Harold Abelson and Andrea diSessa
which starts off with simple ideas but goes on to tackle difficult
problems in geometry. (Some parts of the book can be heavy going
mathematically though and the version of Logo is not quite the same.)
6.2
The language can be used in other ways as well. An article by Alan Angus
in Archive 4.10 p41 described a program which tests students’ ability to
describe sequences of numbers algebraically, using the ability of Logo
to process lists of numbers. Some aspects of Logo are derived from the
artificial intelligence language, LISP, so it is possible to use Logo in
ways which have nothing to do with turtle graphics.
6.2
The Microworld
6.2
Newton is a collection of procedures which make the turtle obey Newton’s
laws of motion. These procedures add new words which can then be used in
Logo programs written by teachers or students, just as SQUARE was used
in PATTERN above. Briefly, the commands allow you to give the turtle a
velocity and a mass, and then to apply forces and observe the results.
6.2
You then have the opportunity to investigate what happens in situations
which would be difficult or impossible to set up in a laboratory. For
example, if you push a disc sitting on a frictionless surface, it will
move along the surface in a straight line until something else is done
to it. In practice, we cannot set up this experiment as there are no
completely frictionless surfaces in real life. On the computer screen
the situation is different and the turtle will keep going in a straight
line. It may disappear off the screen unless something is done to alter
its motion.
6.2
In order to get an idea of how planets move in the solar system, we
might want to look at a simpler problem such as one planet moving round
a star. What happens if this planet is nearly as massive as the star? Is
it possible to have a planet orbiting around two stars? There are two
ways to answer these questions. Either you try to carry out calculations
to solve the problem (which means that you have to understand the theory
in the first place) or you provide all the starting information to a
computer and let it calculate and display what happens. An advantage of
the second approach is that you get to ‘see’ the situation develop
rather than just get a number or an equation as a result.
6.2
Newton provides the procedures needed to set up models and then
investigate these and other problems, and to change details as you wish.
It should also give students a better understanding of the ideas of
mechanics through experiment rather than just learning the mathematical
tricks and techniques needed to answer specific questions.
6.2
Using the Newton package
6.2
The software comes with a 49 page manual which begins with a section on
how to prepare a working disc and use it with Logo. At this stage, a
working knowledge of ‘Startup’ files is helpful. The single user version
of Logo is copy protected so I do not think it is wise to attempt to
copy the Newton files onto the master disc. Setting up Newton to work
with the site licence version of Logo should be straightforward. The
manual then describes briefly, but clearly, the Logo words (primitives)
available when using Newton.
6.2
If you are not familiar with Logo and the extensions which come with
Logotron Logo, you may find setting up the microworld a little tricky.
If you want to use two turtles, for example, to carry out the star and
planet experiment then the ‘TURTLES’ extension must be loaded as well.
This can be done automatically using a short program but some previous
experience of Logo is a definite advantage in setting up the software
for the first time.
6.2
A section on classroom ideas follows and this is the most important part
of the manual. To begin with, there are some straightforward examples
which take you through getting the turtle moving in particular direc
tions at constant velocity. Almost immediately, some questions are
raised which you can decide whether to follow up or not. The first
questions are straightforward but solving them is easier if you use
commands not yet introduced. As an example, Newton produces one snapshot
of the path and position of the turtle every ‘second’ but it is easier
to answer some questions if the time interval is reduced by changing the
time ‘unit’ used in calculations. It is left to you to find the best
setting by trial and error.
6.2
The next step is to give the turtle a push by applying forces and
investigating how it behaves. At this point, the tutorial speeds up and,
very soon, you are setting up models of a ball in flight, a ball
bouncing on a floor and falling parachutes. By this stage, you need to
be able to write quite complex Logo procedures in order to solve some of
the problems. In order to follow up some of the suggestions you will
have to set up and process ‘lists’, a data structure which Logo took
over from LISP.
6.2
The manual concludes with a number of suggested projects, including
setting up a model which shows how a ball moves when you include the
effect of air resistance (going beyond the simple treatment usually
found in A Level courses), finding the best angle at the bottom of a ski
jump and investigating what happens when two balls collide.
6.2
Newton in practice
6.2
It is clearly stated in the manual that the Classroom Ideas chapter is
exactly that. You should not work through each part slavishly but rather
investigate any problem which you find interesting. For example, you
might take a problem from a text book and attempt to set it up on the
computer using the Newton commands. (Many simulations used in the
classroom set up a closed situation with limited scope for making
changes. For example, a simulation of gas in a jar might let you change
the temperature or pressure but not the forces between molecules or the
types of collision. Newton goes far beyond this in flexibility.)
6.2
However, in order to set up a model, you need some understanding of the
underlying principle. For example, you need to know that air resistance
increases as you fall faster when you start to model the effect of using
a parachute. Then you must translate this into Logo procedures and
instructions. Mathematics and physics teachers will find the first part
straightforward but I suspect that, at present, many would feel less
confident about the second stage. Students may find the reverse true!
There is increasing use of Logo in schools, and some A Level students
will already be familiar with Logo, which means they can concentrate on
the mathematics and physics involved.
6.2
The authors assume that you are familiar with basic Logo. If you are
not, you will need to spend some time learning the rudiments in order to
use Newton. As the you work through the manual, comments become ever
more brief, giving only hints on how to solve some problems. This does
mean that you need to spend some time translating problems into a Logo
programs, particularly when becoming familiar with the software.
6.2
I feel it would be essential to have some starting material to introduce
students to Newton, as they may not have a full grasp of mechanics when
they start using the package. I would have liked to see some sample
worksheets or more worked examples included in the manual, to help build
up familiarity with the software. The problems in the manual could
provide a good starting point if information were given about the
expected behaviour in some cases, so that users could check their
results and build up confidence.
6.2
It is quite easy to start producing simulations of complex problems with
a little practice. I suspect that anyone with an interest in this
approach to learning about mechanics would soon make the effort to learn
the language and programming skills necessary to use the package. I
found that using the program gave me some different perspectives on ways
to approach the subject and at the same time, my grasp of Logo improved
as I worked on the problems in the manual and also examined the Newton
programs themselves.
6.2
Quibbles
6.2
There are a few areas where I believe the package could be improved. All
of these except the last are quite minor points, and the first two could
be solved using straightforward Logo programming.
6.2
There should be a more detailed guide to setting up a working disc, or
transferring the programs to a hard disc, and a description of the way
in which a Startup file can be used to ensure that necessary Logo
extensions are loaded would help new users. It would also be a good idea
to specify the directory structure which the Startup file expects to
find when loading the files, and how this can be tailored to individual
requirements.
6.2
The manual has instructions for the Archimedes and for the RM Nimbus
version following each other. I can understand the economic logic of
producing one manual to cover both versions but it is irritating at
times to have to pick out the relevant parts only. Also, some of the
Nimbus options could be implemented on the Archimedes as well with
little extra work and some help for the less experienced user would have
been useful.
6.2
One of the example programs (describing a bouncing ball) sometimes halts
with an error message when it comes to the bottom of the screen. This is
a nuisance rather than a serious problem, and I suspect that it is due
to Logo itself rather than Newton.
6.2
The importance of choosing a sensible unit of time is mentioned but I
feel that more detail should have been given for anyone who is trying to
use the package independently. In some problems (planetary motion, for
example) if the default time unit is used, the path which the turtle
takes bears little relation to what would happen in the real world. If
students try the settings given in the manual they will find the planet
goes shooting off the screen rather than following an elliptical orbit
around the centre. I feel that an example worked out in detail is almost
essential here to help students grasp the rather subtle (in some cases)
effects of the approximation.
6.2
Conclusion
6.2
Newton is written for a small market. It is most likely to be bought by
schools for A Level Mathematics classes, but only if at least some staff
have previous experience of Logo programming. I would recommend this
package strongly but with the caution that ‘What you get out of this
depends on what you put into it.’ If you are prepared to investigate the
possible uses of the package (and to prepare additional material for
students if you intend to use the package with a class) and have some
experience of Logo, it will be well worth the effort to work with the
programs. Alternatively, mathematics students with some experience of
Logo could use Newton for independent study to build up experience with
the physical ideas involved. Any efforts made to work with Newton will
be repaid in an increased understanding of the mathematics involved.
6.2
The package is well produced but not expensive at £19 plus VAT (£21
through Archive). A secondary school site licence costs £57 from Longman
Logotron. (Logo itself costs £65 through Archive.)  A
6.2
Figure 1
6.2
Figure 2
6.2
Review of Pendown Plus
6.2
Hilary Ferns
6.2
Pendown Plus from Longman Logotron is described as the ‘big brother’ of
Pendown, the now popular wordprocessor for schools. The major additions
to the software are a mailmerge facility, table editing with simple
mathematical functions, extended dictionary facilities, booklet, label
and draft printing, master pages and chapters, and font find and
replace. Improvements have also been made to many existing facilities.
6.2
The software comes on a single unprotected disc and can be installed on
a hard disc or run from floppy. The utilities !Wordlist, !Table and
!Mail are separate applications on the disc. These could be put onto
another disc if you are using floppies, thus making room for extra fonts
on your Pendown Plus disc. The program comes with only two fonts,
Trinity and Corpus, with their medium, bold and italic variations, for
the benefit of RISC-OS2 users. (RISC-OS3 already has them). Separate
font directories are provided for RISC-OS 2 and RISC-OS 3.
6.2
The documentation is an easy-to-follow A4-sized guide which takes you
through the toolbox and menus step by step. For the more experienced
user it acts as a handy reference.
6.2
The version I received for this review was 1.13. All went very smoothly
until I investigated the ‘New Chapter’ facility. With only a few words
in the existing chapter, creating a new chapter lead to the program
crashing with irretrievable loss of work. I contacted Longman logotron
who were extremely helpful and kindly replaced the program with the
latest version (1.18), and I am delighted to say I have found no
problems. (Apparently only a limited number of version 1.13 were
released for sale, and that version also had a problem with !Address
List and !Table not launching properly on a 1Mb machine.)
6.2
Getting started
6.2
The program loads in the standard RISC-OS way. The style of the initial
page depends on the default document called ‘Style’ which is saved
within the Pendown Plus directory. This can be edited according to
personal preference.
6.2
There is a toolbox at the top of the screen with clear, self-explanatory
icons. There is a small menu associated with the iconbar, and standard
pop-up screen menu with submenus. At first I was a little concerned
about the menus being rather long and confusing for many younger
children; but then I found the ‘Configure’ dialogue box which enables
you to turn off any number of toolbox and menu items, the latter
completely disappearing from your menu lists. Unavailable toolbox items
appear as greyed out icons. This makes the program extremely versatile
and suitable for a wide range of users. There are many useful keyboard
shortcuts which can be learnt, to prevent constant tracking through
submenus.
6.2
When loading a document, you are given the choice of overwriting the
existing document or merging it by inserting it at the caret position or
as a new chapter. A document can be saved in its entirety or just a
block selection, either as a Pendown Plus file or as ASCII text. Pendown
files can be loaded into Pendown Plus but not vice versa.
6.2
Rulers and margins
6.2
The Ruler icon can simply be dragged from the toolbox to the appropriate
place on the page to insert a new ruler at the current line. There is
also a vertical ruler, and both rulers can be shown in inches, centime
tres or picas. Margins and Tab stops (to a limit of 16) are set for the
current ruler by dragging coloured arrows across the horizontal ruler at
the top of the page. This all seems to be particularly user-friendly.
6.2
Graphics
6.2
The second toolbox icon toggles into Graphics mode to enable imported
pictures (sprites or drawfiles) to be moved and resized, but not rotated
or edited. Text does not automatically flow round a picture but by
inserting a new ruler at the appropriate position, the right or left
hand margins can be dragged to create a space for the picture. This is,
in fact, a very simple procedure allowing fairly precise placing of text
and pictures on the page.
6.2
Text editing
6.2
From the Edit menu you have access to a Find and Replace dialogue box
which may be simple or complex depending on the configuration. There is
also a ‘Block’ menu − the selected block can be moved or copied to the
caret position, deleted or moved or copied to the ‘bin’, which is like a
clipboard. An ‘insert’ option allows automatic date and page numbering.
6.2
Many changes to text are achieved through dialogue boxes which pop up
from toolbox selections. Most of these dialogue boxes have a section
entitled ‘scope’, offering the choice between ‘Current line’, ‘From line
down’, ‘Whole document’ or ‘Marked block’. I like the consistency in
this. In this way, font styles, leading and justification can be varied
throughout the document. The latter offers left, right, centre and full
justification and a final option entitled ‘zonal’, whereby part of a
line can be to the right, part in the centre and a third section to the
right. Text colour, underline, superscript and subscript can be selected
when required. Lower case letters can be changed to capitals and vice
versa, with the option to retain a capital for the first letter of each
word. You can also toggle between insert and overwrite modes. Using the
‘font change’ option, all occurrences of a particular font style in the
document can be changed.
6.2
Pages and chapters
6.2
Any page size can be defined and the view on screen scaled from 50 −
150%.
6.2
A simple ‘turn to page’ box allows quick access to any page in a long
document. New chapters are easily created at any point, with each
chapter optionally having separate master pages for odd and even pages.
It took me a while to grasp the master page editing. Headers and footers
can be placed on the master page but the size and positioning of them is
governed by the margins and tab stops on the vertical ruler. The margins
on the document are not set automatically to coincide with the master
page and, at one point, I found myself overwriting the page number as my
document text area was encroaching into the footer area. Practice (and
reading the instruction book!) makes perfect, as they say!
6.2
Printing
6.2
All printing was achieved straight away without any fiddly setup
procedures. Two versions of the print dialogue box are available, the
simpler one providing the choice between ‘current page’ or ‘whole
document’, and allowing multiple copies. A more complex box extends this
choice to any number of pages, with the additional options to scale any
page to fit your printer paper, rotate any page through 90° and scale
it, and also a ‘Double pages’ option which will produce an instant
booklet (A5 on A4 paper). This was very simply done and I can see that
it has excellent potential for use in junior schools. I tried all these
options most successfully on both dot matrix and HP Deskjet printers. It
also offers a draft print for dot matrix printers.
6.2
Spelling
6.2
The spelling checker offers continuous checking, or the option to check
a single word, a section or the whole document. (The latter is a very
slow process.) Suggestions for unrecognised words are given and the
dictionary can be browsed. Words can be added to the dictionary.
6.2
New dictionaries can be created using the !Wordlist utility which can
also be very useful as a stand-alone program. It acts like a database,
within which lists of words can be searched, sorted, grouped and also
searched for anagrams and subgrams. Any text file loaded into Wordlist
will be converted to an alphabetical word list with frequencies
recorded. Clicking on any word in a list will insert it at the current
caret position into any text processor (including Draw).
6.2
Mailmerging
6.2
Again, it is all very simple. A CSV (Comma Separated Values) file can be
created using any text editor or database and imported into Pendown Plus
by dragging it into a dialogue box.
6.2
 !Mail is a very handy little address database, accepting and creating
CSV files. Sixteen fields are already named, with four more which are
user-definable. You can use as few or as many as you like, but Surname
must be included. It provides simple sort and search facilities on
selected fields, and will print out labels.
6.2
Tables
6.2
The final utility supplied on the disc is !Table, which is a simple
spreadsheet program. (Data is freely interchangeable as CSV files
between this and Junior Pinpoint, or Pinpoint, within which you could
carry out further calculations or produce charts and graphs). Tables of
varying size can be created. Individual cells can contain text or
numbers, all of which can be justified within the cell, and the final
table saved as a CSV file or Drawfile for importing into Pendown Plus
(or other DTP program). As a drawfile, it can optionally have the grid
printed. Within Table, rows and columns can be moved or interchanged,
totals and percentages can be calculated and up to four decimal places
displayed.
6.2
Conclusion
6.2
Pendown Plus is an excellent user-friendly program. As a wordprocessor,
it is extensive, although you must remember that it is not a desktop
publishing program and lacks the flexibility of page layout provided by
frame-based programs. Its ease of use does not limit the program’s
ability to produce professional looking documents. The remarkable thing
is its suitability for such a wide age range, right through primary and
secondary schools and beyond, to Mum or Dad in the office. (We haven’t
tried it out on the grandparents yet !)
6.2
At £85, Pendown Plus would be pricey if all you were getting was a
wordprocessor. (Pendown is £58 through Archive.) However, together with
Mail, Table and Wordlist, Longman Logotron have come up with a very
useful suite of programs at really quite a good price.  A
6.2
The Oldham Overlay Keyboard
6.2
Rick Thorne
6.2
Drop it, thump it, spill tea on it − the Oldham Overlay Keyboard is
extremely robust and can withstand the rough treatment to which children
may subject it. With its rounded edges, the beige coloured overlay
keyboard is lightweight compared to the Concept Keyboard Company’s
better-known product.
6.2
The Oldham Overlay Keyboard is for use alongside the regular keyboard
and to run it with an Archimedes three items are needed:
6.2
1) A user port, which does not come as a standard fitting on an
Archimedes but is easily added at any time;
6.2
2) Paper − A3 paper which goes on the overlay keyboard, either as self-
made or published overlays;
6.2
3) Software that allows the overlay keyboard to communicate with the
computer. The Oldham Overlay Keyboard is compatible with existing
software.
6.2
There are 128 programmable touch-sensitive rectangles in a grid 16 × 8.
At the top of the keyboard there is a strip of hidden function keys
which allow options to be concealed. These are controlled by an on/off
key situated away from the overlay which helps avoid the problem of keys
such as Print/Finish being accidentally pressed. When a key is pressed,
a beep is heard and an LED lights up briefly. It has a built-in switch
interface which allows very young children, or older pupils with special
educational needs, to use single switch programs. When the switch
interface is in use, the overlay keyboard is disabled.
6.2
Software
6.2
There is already a substantial library of useful software supporting
various areas of the curriculum. Most of the software is for use in
early learning situations and for children with special educational
needs and most has been written for use with BBC ‘B’ and Master
computers. However, Northwest SEMERC have developed a variety of
programs such as My World, Conform and Phases #2 for use with the
Archimedes.
6.2
The package
6.2
The Oldham Overlay Keyboard is available for £120 and comes with an
order form offering considerable discounts on a variety of software and
a Q.E.D. lever switch, on a one-off basis. A booklet, “The Overlay
Keyboard” by Jenny Taylor is also included in the package. It gives an
overview of some of the ways overlay keyboards have been used in the
educational field, details of 60 popular programs, and examples of how
they have been used in various areas of the curriculum.
6.2
Conclusion
6.2
The Oldham Overlay Keyboard is a versatile resource for schools. It
makes access to the computer easier in all areas of the curriculum
because teachers can use published overlays or they can create their own
to match the class project or activities that allow the individual to
work at their own level. Considering its impressive appearance and
extremely competitive price, I think we may see an end to the Concept
Keyboard Company’s monopoly of overlay keyboards. The need to fit a user
port to the computer is an added expense but I doubt whether it will
deter prospective buyers.  A
6.2
LOOKsystems (p5)    47 Goodhale Road, Bowthorpe, Norwich  NR5 9AY.
(0603−764114) (0603−764011)
6.2
Minerva Systems (p12)    Minerva
House, Baring Crescent, Exeter  EX1 1TL. (0392−437756) (0392−421762)
6.2
Oak Solutions (p28)    Suite 25,
Robin Enterprise Centre, Leeds Road, Idle, Yorkshire BD10 9TE.
(0274−620423) (0274−620419)
6.2
Palette Studio (p15)    6c/6d Belgic
Square, Peterborough  PE1 5XF. (0733−344245) (0733−315424)
6.2
PDK Technologies    4 Meadow Way, Ampthill, Bedfordshire  MK45 2QX.
(0525−403541) (0525−403541)
6.2
PEP Associates    34 Tiverton Way, Cambridge  CB1 3TU. (0223−212251)
6.2
RESOURCE     Exeter Road, Doncaster  DN2 4PY. (0302−340331)
6.2
Richard Fallas & Associates    Shakespeare
Court, Grendon Underwood, Bucks  HP18 0ST. (0296−770555) (0296−770555)
6.2
Risc Developments (pp6/11)    117 Hatfield
Road, St Albans, Herts  AL1 4JS. (0727−40303) (0727−860263)
6.2
Sherston Software    Swan Barton, Sherston, Malmesbury, Wilts. SN16 0LH.
(0666−840433) (0666−840048)
6.2
Silica Software Systems    Mallards,
Lower Hardres, Canterbury, Kent, CT4 5NU
6.2
Software 42    109 Ferry Road, Hullbridge, Essex  SS5 6EL.
6.2
Spacetech (p16)    21 West Wools, Portland, Dorset  DT5 2EA.
(0305−822753) (0305−860483)
6.2
The Serial Port     Burcott Manor, Wells, Somerset  BA5 1NH. (0243−531194)
(0243−531196)
6.2
Turing Tools (p14)    149 Campbell
Road, Cowley, Oxford  OX4 3NX. (0865−775059)
6.2
VisionSix Ltd    40 Royal Oak, Alnwick, Northumberland  NE66 2DA.
(0665−510682) (0665−510692)
6.2
Wild Vision     15 Witney Way, Boldon Colliery, Tyne & Wear NE35 9PE.
(091−519−1455) (091−519−1929)
6.2

Volume 6 • Nº 3 • December 1992
6.3
Positive Feedback
6.3
The comparisons we did last month between Archive and another well-known
Archimedes subscription magazine drew quite a bit of feedback from
readers. Now, as anyone who runs such a publication well knows, people
are usually much quicker to put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard) to
complain than they are to make positive comments. I was particularly
pleased, therefore, that the majority of the feedback was very positive.
6.3
The message that came over loud and clear was, “Don’t increase the size
from A5 to B5” and “If you need to increase the price, feel free − we
think it’s worth it”. We didn’t get a single letter asking us not to
increase the subscription rate. (I can see you’re all kicking yourself
now and wishing you’d written to say, “No increase, please”!)
6.3
So, by popular request... no, that’s not fair... because of the
increased cost of printing and posting the issues that have 80 pages
instead of 64, we are going to increase the subscription from £17 to
£19. However, the increase won’t take effect until 1st February 1993.
Any £17 subscriptions received before then will be honoured even if they
are sent in before they are actually due.
6.3
Negative Feedback
6.3
N.C.S. had a stand at the Computer Shopper Show last month and, quite
frankly, it was very depressing! “Is it a ’486?” was about the only
question some “shoppers” knew how to ask. We told them that it was based
on a “RISC processor” which Acorn had been using in their computers for
nearly six years now. We also told them that IBM and Apple are now
beginning to try using RISC chips in their computers. But then they
asked the price... ...and walked on to the next stand!
6.3
It wasn’t all negative, though. The few who stopped long enough to see
the computers in action were actually quite impressed. The high point
was a conversation with a gentleman who had been working on the Computer
Shopper advice stand. He was an ex-A310 owner about to buy a “486DX
50MHzPQXWZ” (or something!) “because Acorn have been left way behind”.
We showed him Artworks and Impression running on an A540 + CC graphics
card + Eizo T560iT at 1600 × 600. He was absolutely amazed at the speed
− “You’ve restored my faith in Acorn”, he said!
6.3
Wishing you all a very Happy Christmas,
6.3
Products Available
6.3
•    A4 Notebooks − At last, we have cleared all the back orders of A4
Model II’s and can now supply them direct from stock. However, the A4
Model I’s, the hard drive-less version, are still on what we call the
RSN list − available ‘real soon now’!
6.3
•    Ace colour ProDriver − Ace have produced a version of their ProDriver
for the Hewlett Packard DJ550C colour printer. The price is £47 inc VAT
from Ace or £44 through Archive.
6.3
•    Acorn AKF17 monitors − Acorn have some AKF17 standard resolution
monitors that they are trying to get rid of. They are brand new monitors
as supplied with the A3000’s. They don’t have a tilt-and-swivel stand
but otherwise they are functionally similar to the newer AKF30’s and
40’s. The price will be £150 including VAT and carriage from Archive.
6.3
•    Acorn Pocket Books − Acorn have changed their policy about Pocket
Books. Non-educational dealers are now going to be allowed to sell them.
In fact, we have several Pocket Books in stock.
6.3
•    Acorn Pocket Book accessories − Acorn say that the Pocket Book
accessories will be available at the end of November, i.e. before this
magazine is published. However, I suggest you ring us to check avail
ability before sending orders. The items that we know about are: A-Link
at £46, parallel printer link at £28, 128Kb RAM disc at £74, 256Kb flash
disc at £65, 512Kb flash disc at £111, OPL Editor at £65 and the mains
adaptor at £15. All these are VAT inclusive Archive prices.
6.3
•    Arcventure II − The Egyptians − Sherston Software have released their
educational package aimed at 2nd and 3rd year juniors who are studying
Egypt. The children join a simulated archaeological dig to see what they
can find buried beneath the sand. The price is £29.95 +VAT from
Sherston.
6.3
•    Automatic embroidery − TechSoft UK Ltd have produced a system which
combines a Poem 500 computer controlled embroidery machine and Archi
medes software called, Arc Embroidery. The system allows images created
as Draw files to be embroidered directly onto a variety of materials
(cotton cloth, felt, denim, jersey, etc) in an area up to 90 × 90mm and
with a variety of user-definable stitches such as satin, ribbed, zig-
zag, etc. The user can also control pattern size, stitch length, fill
density, fill direction, etc. The software even prompts the user for
thread changes as required. The price, including the software, is
£749.95 + VAT.
6.3
•    Battery-Pack for BJ10ex − If you are using a BJ10ex with an A4, you
can make the printer portable too by buying a battery-pack costing £46
through Archive. This is trickle-charged from the normal power supply
and allows the printer to be completely free-standing.
6.3
•    Budget games − Arcade is a set of four RISC-OS arcade games costing
£5.95 (no VAT) from David Ramsden, 7 Chevet Lane, Wakefield, West
Yorkshire WF2 6HN. Drop Rock is a Repton-type game from Soft Rock
Software for £3.49 (no VAT). Winds of Change is ‘an Archimedes album’
for £1.99 (no VAT) also from Soft Rock Software.
6.3
•    Canon BJ200 − Canon have now produced an updated version of their
BJ10ex − the BJ200. This is functionally similar to the BJ10ex but
faster − and it includes a cut sheet feeder as standard. Computer
Concepts are producing a version of their Turbo-Driver software for it.
The price of the software will be £49 +VAT from CC or £53 through
Archive. The printers themselves are available from Archive for £340 inc
VAT.
6.3
•    CD-ROM mastering − EESOX offer a low-cost CD-ROM mastering service.
The cost can be as low as £150 for the first master and £50 for
successive copies. These masters can then be used for mass production
later, if required.
6.3
•    CD Simulator is a package to simulate the operation of a CD-ROM to
help you in creating and testing your own CD-ROMs. The software costs
£129 +VAT also from EESOX.
6.3
•    Colour cards − Two more colour cards are now available. SpeedGraph is
produced by Evolution Trading Ltd in Switzerland (available through MAPS
Ltd in the UK) and costs £350 (DM 950, sFr 900) all inclusive. It
provides 1024 × 768 in 16 colours (chosen from 4096) and up to 800 × 600
in 256 colours (restrictively chosen from 4096) and up to 1024 × 768 in
4096 colours for the display of static pictures. StateMachine G8 Plus is
£249 +VAT (a recently reduced price) offers 1280 × 1024 in 4 colours,
1152 × 900 in 4 colours and 1152 × 848 in 16 colours on monitors that
offer a 64 kHz or greater line rate. For professional work, StateMachine
also offer the G8 Professional which provides 768 × 576 CCIR PAL. This
costs £349 +VAT.
6.3
(At the Computer Shopper Show, CC put one of their cards in my A540. It
gave me, amongst other modes, 1600 × 600 in 16 colours on my Eizo T560iT
with the computer still going at full speed. That will make a huge
difference when it comes to laying out the magazine. I can’t wait to get
a production model. Ed.)
6.3
•    Colour driver upgrade − Risc Developments have an upgrade to their
500C driver which will also now work with the DJ550C colour printer. The
price is £15 + VAT + £2 carriage from Risc Developments.
6.3
•    Courses galore − Broad Oak Computers have extended their range of
computer courses. They now offer BBC Basic V Programming, C Programming,
Impression II, Pendown, Pipedream, Schema and WIMP Programming in BBC
Basic.
6.3
•    Cyborg is an arcade-style, multi-location adventure game in which you
don your cybertronic exo-skeletal suit(!) and face the terrors of an
unknown planet. The price is £25.95 + £1 postage from Alpine Software.
6.3
•    Eureka NOT available − We said last month that Eureka was ‘due to
emerge from its long gestation period at the end of October’. This was
based what Longman Logotron’s press and telephone advice. However, they
are now saying that they can ‘see no reason why you should not have it
before Christmas’. We will NOT be mentioning Eureka again until it
really is a ‘Product Available’!
6.3
•    Fervour is an action game from Clares. You roll a ball along intricate
pathways with holes to be avoided and bonuses to be picked up en route −
each level must be done within a set time limit. You can even create
your own levels. The price is £24.95 from Clares or £23 through Archive.
6.3
•    Guardian (version3) is a virus killer that is ‘capable of killing all
known Archimedes viruses’. This is available free of charge from Digital
Phenomena and is also on this month’s program disc. A technical support
and advice service is also provided free of charge on a Viewdata system
(7E1) on 0705−871531.
6.3
•    HP Deskjet550C colour printer − Hewlett Packard have produced an
improved colour printer based on their popular DJ500C. The DJ500C has a
carriage that takes a single cartridge, either a black cartridge or a
colour one. The disadvantage of this is that if you are using the colour
cartridge, blacks come out a muddy colour. (It is possible to get round
this by using colour separation software but it means changing cartri
dges and passing the paper through the printer twice.)
6.3
The new 550C, however, has both a black cartridge and a colour cartridge
on the carriage. With appropriate driver software (such as Ace’s
ProDriver mentioned above), the colour cartridge will automatically be
used for the coloured bits while the black cartridge is used for the
blacks − so the blacks really are black. The Archive price of the 550C
is £590. (The Archive prices of the other HP Deskjet printers have been
reduced. The DJ500 mono is now £380 and the DJ500C is £480.)
6.3
•    Impact the Database is Circle Software’s new database which has
mailmerge links to Impression. It also provides direct data import and
export, simple data selection filters, multiple indexing and label
printing. The price is £58.69 inc VAT from Circle Software.
6.3
•    IronMask − Turing Tools have produced a password-controlled file
security system for RISC-OS machines. Files shielded by IronMask are
immune from RISC-OS filing operations − they cannot be opened, run,
copied, moved, deleted or renamed. The price is £59 (no VAT) from Turing
Tools.
6.3
•    LinkWord is ‘a new concept in language learning’ from Minerva. It is
based on (human) memory techniques to enable you to learn a new language
‘2 to 3 times faster than conventional methods’. It is available in
three languages − French, German and Spanish and costs £39.95 +VAT per
language from Minerva or £44 through Archive.
6.3
•    Masterfile 3 − Risc Developments have released a new version of their
Masterfile database so that it is now RISC-OS compliant. The price is
£49 + VAT + £2 carriage from Risc Developments.
6.3
•    Monitor stands − We have found a source of monitor stands for A3010
and A3020 computers − in the appropriate colours. They include a slot at
the right for the floppy drive and on the left to enable you to get at
the reset button. They cost £20 each through Archive.
6.3
•    NetView is a network utility program that allows an Archimedes station
to view the screen of another BBC, Master or Archimedes on the network.
The price is £34.99 (no VAT) from Sanjay Pattni, Flat 11, 86 Ifield
Road, London  SW10 9AD.
6.3
•    New titles from G.A.Herdmann Educational are Chemical Spectra at
£19.99 (no VAT) and DTP Images discs 12 and 13 at £8.99 each (no VAT)
which consist of clipart for science teachers.
6.3
•    Populous − Krisalis’ latest arcade adventure game for the Archimedes,
Populous, is now available. The price is £29.99 from Krisalis or £28
through Archive.
6.3
•    Rhythm-Bed is a full-blown drum sequencer from Clares costing £49.95
or £46 through Archive. Percussion tracks can be built up on screen,
played by the application through the Archimedes’ own sound output or on
a MIDI instrument. The percussion sequence can also be transferred into
other applications such as Rhapsody.
6.3
•    RISC-OS 3.10 − If you remember, Acorn’s Managing Director said (or
implied) on 26th October that Acorn would be fulfilling all our back
orders of RISC-OS 3.1 for RISC-OS 2 machines within three weeks. We are
happy to say that we have now had enough to fulfil all back orders.
(However, this does NOT apply to RISC-OS 3.1 for A5000 users − these are
still in short supply.) We have a few left as free stock but it might be
better to ring to enquire about availability before sending in an order
because demand continues to out-strip supply.
6.3
•    Sound Engineer is EMR’s application for handling sound samples. It
provides envelope shaping, full use via MIDI, re-pitching, etc. Sounds
can be played through its control panel, via a keyboard window or
through a MIDI instrument. Its features include threshold recording, cut
& paste, auto-looping, 3D FFT printout, direct disc playback, harmonic
wave generation plus spectrum analyser, oscilloscope and amplitude
displays. The cost is £59 +VAT from EMR.
6.3
•    TextAid is a set of utilities for manipulating text. It can be used
alongside other RISC-OS packages and provides user-definable macros,
conversion between CSV, TSV and text. It also has the ability to insert
printer control-codes. It costs £9.95 inclusive from Rheingold
Enterprises.
6.3
Review software received...
6.3
We have received review copies of the following: Ancient Greece, Arcade,
Chaos (game), CSVtoText, Cyborg, Desktop Office II, Drop Rock, Easiword
II, Fantasy + Fiddles & Drums (SmArt files), Fervour, Help3, Impact,
NetView, Oh no! More Lemmings, Polyominoes, Precision, Punctuate,
Soapbox, TextAid, The Puddle and the Wardrobe, ThinkLink, Tiles, TV Fun
& Games, Whale Facts, Yes Chancellor II.  A
6.3
Government Health Warning − Reading this could seriously affect your
spiritual health.
6.3
“Christmas comes but once a year... ” ...thank goodness! There are more
family break-ups and suicides at Christmas than at any other time of the
year. Why? Well, I suppose that, for the lonely, Christmas is a time
when everyone else is with friends and family − which accentuates their
lonliness. And for those with family problems, having to spend time with
family can be just what they don’t want to do!
6.3
I often think life would be much easier if it weren’t for... people! It
takes such an effort sometimes to build relationships with other people.
Why should we bother? Well, surely it’s because the only truly satisfy
ing things in life come from good relationships with other people.
6.3
The trouble is that developing relationships is SUCH hard work. That’s
true − and what’s more, the Bible tells us why it’s such hard work. It
suggests that unless we get our relationship with God right first, we
really don’t stand much chance of getting our relationships right with
other people. If you want to know how you can get your relationship with
God right, ask a committed Christian − I’m sure they’ll be please to
share the Good News of CHRISTmas with you − the greatest gift of all
time!
6.3

6.3
Norwich Computer Services 96a Vauxhall Street, Norwich, NR2 2SD.
0603−766592 (−764011)
6.3
Abacus Training     29 Okus Grove, Upper Stratton, Swindon, Wilts  SN2
6QA.
6.3
Ace Computing    27 Victoria Road, Cambridge  CB4 3BW. (0223−322559)
(0223−69180)
6.3
Acorn Computers Ltd     Fulbourn
Road, Cherry Hinton, Cambridge  CB1 4JN. (0223−254254) (0223−254260)
6.3
Aleph One Ltd     The Old Courthouse, Bottisham, Cambridge  CB5 9BA.
(0223−811679) (0223−812713)
6.3
Alpine Software    P.O.Box 25, Portadown, Craigavon  BT63 5UT.
(0762−342510)
6.3
Atomwide Ltd     23 The Greenway, Orpington, Kent  BR5 2AY. (0689−838852)
(0689−896088)
6.3
Broad Oak Computers     High Street,
Hatfield Broad Oak, Bishop’s Stortford, Herts.  CM22 7HE. (0279−507727)
6.3
C.I.S.    Unit 2a, 436 Essex Road, London  N1 3QP. (071−226−3340)
(071−226−3408)
6.3
Circle Software     33 Restrop View, Purton, Swindon, Wilts  SN5 9DG.
(0793−770021)
6.3
Clares Micro Supplies    98 Mid
dlewich Road, Rudheath, Northwich, Cheshire  CW9 7DA. (0606−48511)
(0606−48512)
6.3
Colton Software (p5)    2 Signet
Court, Swanns Road, Cambridge  CB5 8LA. (0223−311881) (0223−312010)
6.3
Computer Concepts (p40/41)    Gaddesden
Place, Hemel Hempstead, Herts  HP2 6EX. (0442−63933) (0442−231632)
6.3
Cream PD     38 Baunton, Cirencester  Gloucester  GL7 7BB.
6.3
Dalriada Data Technology (p31)    145 Albion
Street, Kenilworth, Warkwickshire  CV8 2FY. (0926−53901)
6.3
David Pilling     P.O.Box 22, Thornton Cleveleys, Blackpool, FY5 1LR.
6.3
Digital Phenomena     104 Manners
Road, Southsea, Hants  PO4 0BG.
6.3
EESOX     5 Hillfield Road, Comberton, Cambridge  CB3 7DB. (0223−264242)
6.3
Electronic Font Foundry     Granville
House, 50-52 Upper Village Road, Ascot  SL5 7AQ. (0344−28698)
(0344−872923)
6.3
EMR Ltd     14 Mount Close, Wickford, Essex  SS11 8HG. (0702−335747)
6.3
Evolution Trading AG     Industries
trasse 12, CH-3178 Bösingen, Switzerland. (010−41 +31−747−6531)
(+31−747−6596)
6.3
G.A.Herdman     43 Saint Johns Drive, Clarborough, Retford, Notts DN22
9NN. (0777−700918) (also 0777−700918)
6.3
Hands-On Midi Software    3 Bell Road,
Cosham, Portsmouth, Hampshire. PO6 3NX
6.3
ICS Ltd (p39)    1 Kington Road, West Kirby, Wirral  L48 5ET.
(051−625−1006) (051−625−1007)
6.3
Klein Computers     Hasslocherstrasse 73, D-6090 Ruesselsheim, Germany.
(010−49−6142−81131) (81256)
6.3
Krisalis Software     Teque House,
Mason’s Yard, Downs Row, Moorgate, Rotherham  S60 2HD. (0709−372290)
6.3
Longman-Logotron     124 Cambridge Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge CB4
4ZS. (0223−425558) (0223−425349)
6.3
LOOKsystems (p31)    47 Goodhale Road, Bowthorpe, Norwich  NR5 9AY.
(0603−764114) (0603−764011)
6.3
MAPS Ltd     P.O.Box 2841, 87 Vivian Road, Harborne, Birmingham  B17 0DL.
(021−428−2696) (021−428−2696)
6.3
Minerva Systems     Minerva House, Baring Crescent, Exeter  EX1 1TL.
(0392−437756) (0392−421762)
6.3
Morley Electronics     Morley
House, Norham Road, North Shields, Tyne & Wear  NE29 7TY. (091−257−6355)
(091−257−6373)
6.3
Oak Solutions (p26)    Suite 25,
Robin Enterprise Centre, Leeds Road, Idle, Yorkshire BD10 9TE.
(0274−620423) (0274−620419)
6.3
PEP Associates    34 Tiverton Way, Cambridge  CB1 3TU. (0223−212251)
6.3
Ray Maidstone     421 Sprowston Road, Norwich  NR3 4EH. (0603−400477)
(0603−417447)
6.3
Rheingold Enterprises    17 Ingfield
Terrace, Slaithwaite, Huddersfield  HD7 5BJ. (0925−210657)
6.3
Risc Developments (pp6/10)    117 Hatfield
Road, St Albans, Herts  AL1 4JS. (0727−40303) (0727−860263)
6.3
Sherston Software     Swan Barton,
Sherston, Malmesbury, Wilts. SN16 0LH. (0666−840433) (0666−840048)
6.3
Software 42     109 Ferry Road, Hullbridge, Essex  SS5 6EL.
6.3
Soft Rock Software     124 Marissal
Road, Henbury, Bristol  BS10 7NP. (0272−761685)
6.3
Spacetech (p32)    21 West Wools, Portland, Dorset  DT5 2EA.
(0305−822753) (0305−860483)
6.3
State Machine     75 Upper Wellington Street, Luton, Bedfordshire  LU1
5AA. (0582−483377) (0582−480833)
6.3
Techsoft UK Ltd (p9)    Old School
Lane, Erryrs, Mold, Clwyd  CH7 4DA. (082−43318)
6.3
Turing Tools     149 Campbell Road, Cowley, Oxford  OX4 3NX. (0865−775059)
6.3

6.3
Computer Concepts
6.3
From 6.2 page 40
6.3
Computer Concepts
6.3
From 6.2 page 41
6.3
Paul Beverley
6.3
Colton
6.3
New Artwork
6.3
Risc Developments (1)
6.3
New Artwork
6.3
Hints and Tips
6.3
•    A3010 joystick ports − several A3010s have been returned to Acorn with
complaints of faulty joystick ports. They are not faulty. The A3010 is
the first Archimedes to have a built-in digital (i.e. Atari-style)
joystick port and because of this, many of the games already available
do not cater for digital joysticks. This is a fairly major problem and
hopefully someone will soon produce some sort of patch (either hardware
or software) which allows digital joysticks to be used in place of the
more common proportional joysticks (such as the Voltmace Delta). Until
then, two sources of information about digital joystick interfaces are
The Leading Edge and Beebug.
6.3
•    A4 Portable Guide − on page 31 of this guide, the pin-out diagram for
the AKF18 monitor is slightly incorrect. Pins 13 and 14 (horizontal and
vertical sync) have been reversed.
6.3
•    Artworks & Impression dongles − There appears to be a clash between
these two dongles when using an A5000 and a JP-150: printouts appear
with spurious information across them. Computer Concepts say that the
problem only occurs between A5000s and JP-150 printers and add that they
are looking into the problem.
6.3
•    Banner-making − I have just seen, in Archive 6.1, a review of a
program called Banner.
6.3
If you own a printer which takes fanfold paper, there is an alternative
way for making banners. (By the way, fanfold paper does not need
sprocket holes if you are careful about the line-up and select friction
feed, so normal paper rolls can be used. For example, the Colourjet 132
users can print banners in this way.)
6.3
The print margins on all the Acorn printer drivers are user-definable
and as long as you want to print out banners shorter in length than A0,
extending the appropriate print margin and setting Draw to A0 landscape
will normally allow satisfactory banners to be produced. (Changing the
print margins is described in the manuals; change only the height of the
page to whatever you wish and leave the width alone.) If print margins
are shown, keeping to these will ensure that none of the picture is
lost.
6.3
The additional flexibility of Draw, especially in conjunction with the
drawfile utilities (!FontFX, !DrawBender, etc) would, in my opinion,
offset most of the ease of use of Banner, except perhaps in primary
schools.
6.3
Note that the printer should not be set to skip perforations, or
problems will result, but I have had no difficulty in printing banners
on an Epson LX and even a Colourjet 132 in this manner.
6.3
For those requiring longer banners, !Draw½ and, I believe, !Draw+
(Careware 13) allow an option to set the work area to the print margins,
which will then enable them to use the longer pages which the printer
driver can handle but, again, for a banner you should set the page to be
much taller than normal in the printer driver and edit the display in
landscape mode. I have used this to produce banners several metres long.
6.3
I am sure Banner is a very useful package and I have not attempted to
use it but I would be unwilling to spend £15 when the same effect seems
to be available from the software supplied with the machine and
Careware.   Andrew Garrard, Cambridge.
6.3
•    Banner-making again − Recently I needed to print up a large banner for
a meeting, and wondered how I should go about it. Of course, I could
always have bought ‘Banner’ for £15 but, for a once off job, I thought
this just a touch extravagant. This set me thinking... Impression can
define master pages as big as you like... hmm... This is what I did, and
it works!
6.3
1.    Open a new document in Impression
6.3
2.    Create a new Master Page (Custom Job) − Width: 1000 and Depth: 210
6.3
3.    Return to the document and set the Master Page in Alter Chapter
6.3
4.    Set the Font Size to 500
6.3
5.    Type in “Hello World!” or whatever
6.3
6.    Set the printer driver page size to − Height: 1000 and Width: 210
6.3
7.    Set the Impression Print Dialogue to print sideways, and fire away
6.3
Warning − this is not ‘printer ribbon friendly’... in fact, it is
positively ‘printer ribbon hostile’!  Philip Lardner, Co. Wicklow,
Ireland.
6.3
•    CC BJ10ex Turbo Driver − It seems that the only method of using the
Turbo Driver with the PC Emulator is to load !BJ10e and quit it again
before loading the emulator.  Chris McIntosh, Blackheath.
6.3
•    Programming the Serial Port (Vertical Twist) graphics board − On the
monthly program disc is a series of programs which, in themselves, do
nothing much. However, they show how the 65000 colour modes can be
accessed from Basic and C.
6.3
They mainly show how to draw lines, circles and fill shapes. Most do not
need any interaction. Fill requires five mouse selections to create to
outline − the sixth should be inside the box.
6.3
Lines − just move the mouse and press <select> to change colour.
6.3
15_120ASM converts mode 15/21 sprites to mode 120. Copy the sprite image
to the floppy’s root directory before running. It’s not very fast. Jim
Bailey, Sunderland.
6.3
•    Squirrel update − Digital Services have upgraded Squirrel from version
1.07. Currently, Squirrel is being supplied with the original V1.07 disc
and manual and a V1.20 upgrade disc. A new manual is due out soon and
Digital Services will send all existing Squirrel owners this new copy
providing they have registered.
6.3
•    VIDC enhancer & RISC-OS 3.10 − There can be problems using very early
Atomwide VIDC enhancer hardware with RISC-OS 3.10. It appears that if
the enhancer is software switched, RISC-OS 3.10 will automatically
switch it on which prevents the computer from starting up correctly. To
solve the problem, you have two choices: (a) at the command line, type
*FX 162,&BC,&80 and switch your machine off, then on again, to check
that the command has worked (full details are on page 14 in the RISC OS
3.10 release note) or (b) return the enhancer hardware to Atomwide with
£5 and they will modify the hardware so that it works correctly.
6.3
•    Vision Digitiser. As I concluded in my review of the monochrome
version of this product (Archive 5.12.42), the package is amazing value
for money. However, the supplied software is a little basic. Further
more, Robert Golightly at HCCS tells me that the software module
(promised in the !ReadMe file) to provide * commands and SWIs for users
to write their own programs has a priority below that of the 512-line
upgrade, and is not likely to appear in the near future.
6.3
All is not lost, for the software – at least the monochrome version – is
written using Basic’s in-line assembler, and so can be modified by the
careful user.
6.3
For example, as it stands, the !Vision application always demands 450Kb
of memory. For those with 1M machines, or those who like to multi-task
it with other memory-demanding applications, it would be useful to be
able to reduce this. Examination of the code reveals that a 320Kb screen
buffer is reserved, whatever screen mode you are using. 320Kb will be
needed for mode 21, but only 160Kb for modes 15 and 20, and 80Kb for
mode 12. If you haven’t a multi-sync monitor and want to save 160Kb of
memory when using !Vision, change the following lines of a copy of
!RUNIMAGE, having first checked that the first line of the !Run file
shows that you have Version 1.0, dated March 1992.
6.3
  130 DIM M% 210000
6.3
 8650 BNE mode_error
6.3
23260 EQUD 163840
6.3
23460 FN_work (163840)
6.3
Then amend line 2 of !Run to read:
6.3
wimpslot -min 288K -max 288K
6.3
I’m working on other possible improvements to the software, such as mode
67 compatibility, but it occurs to me that others might be doing the
same. If you are interested in participating in an informal user-group
for the Vision Digitiser, please send an SAE to Stuart Bell, 23 Ryecroft
Drive, Horsham, West Sussex RH12 2AW.  A
6.3
TechSoft
6.3
From 6.2 page 19
6.3
TechSoft
6.3
From 6.2 page 15
6.3
Risc Developments (2)
6.3
New Artwork
6.3
Using RISC-OS 3
6.3
Hugh Eagle
6.3
Many thanks to all those who have sent in material about RISC-OS 3.10.
Hugh has done a lot of work for us in collating all this information, so
read it carefully, check it out on your own systems and let us know if
you find solutions to some of the problems and/or see more problems.
This kind of information is very valuable indeed in terms of helping
other people who have to go through the same learning curve as you, with
the new operating system.
6.3
I think it would also be good to send in a few ‘I hadn’t realised that
you could... ...but it makes life much easier’comments.
6.3
By the way, as at 28/11/92, N.C.S. actually has the £50 upgrades in
stock although A5000 owners will still have to be patient, I’m afraid.
Ed.
6.3
(Throughout the column, references to RISC-OS 3 mean RISC-OS 3.10 unless
otherwise stated. HE)
6.3
After ‘The Long Wait’ and an acute dose of ‘Bent Pin Anxiety’, I had, to
cap it all, ‘The Hunt For The Missing Apps 1 Disc’. After all that, I
was quite surprised to find that the machine actually worked when I
turned it on!
6.3
Reconfiguring it so that it ran as well as it did before the upgrade,
was quite a fiddly process. The main hint I would give to anyone who
hasn’t yet done the upgrade is: watch your Fontmax settings!
6.3
•    In the Memory section of !Configure don’t be misled by the illustra
tion on page 94 of the manual. You can not safely leave the “Font cache
limit” setting at zero and expect the operating system to default to a
sensible limit as you can with most of the other memory settings. Unless
you set “Font cache” to a reasonably large amount, you must set a larger
“Font cache limit”. (On a 4Mb machine, I have them set to 128Kb and
512Kb respectively.)
6.3
•    If you have a multisync monitor, read the bit on page 119 (in the
section on screen modes!) when deciding what settings to use for anti-
aliasing and cached bitmaps in the Fonts section of !Configure.
6.3
•    Keith Lowe adds − Where the upgrade instructions tell you to hold down
the Delete key until the power-on self-test has been completed, they
mean don’t release the key until text has appeared on the screen!
Otherwise your old configuration will still be there and that can cause
no end of confusion!
6.3
•    Ed Harris encountered problems in installing the user fit ROM carrier
board from IFEL to his A310. IFEL were very helpful in providing advice
and when Keith was still unable to track down his mistake, they sorted
it out and returned it by return with only a nominal charge to cover
their costs. Many thanks to IFEL.
6.3
•    Mark Lambert reports problems trying to install RISC-OS 3 in an A310
fitted with a Watford 4Mb RAM upgrade (the second edition with a
vertical daughterboard holding the processor). Watford have told him
that a simple wire link is required on the RAM board but, as yet, they
have not told him the exact details. Does anyone happen to know the
details of the link required?
6.3
•    Steve Hutchinson writes: I was assured that it was quite simple to do
the necessary hardware upgrade to my old A440. In the event, I managed
it without hiccup but it was not quite so simple. I had to remove the
main circuit board from the case − which means unplugging loads of
things in my machine with all its upgrades. If you haven’t reasonable
electronic experience, think twice!
6.3
And is the upgrade worth it? For 1Mb or floppy disc only users, the
answer must surely be yes. It must be a godsend to have the standard
applications, plus fonts, plus modules, all in ROM. For hard disc owners
.... well, what do you think? Some readers have no doubts.
6.3
Ed Harris, for instance, writes: All in all, I have found RISC-OS 3.1 to
be a great improvement on an already excellent operating system (RISC-OS
2) and well worth the cost of the upgrade. However, I wonder whether
others share my disappointment that the improvements were not more
dramatic? Perhaps now is the time for us to begin to compile a Wish List
of things we would like to see in RISC-OS 4.
6.3
Why not send your thoughts either to Archive or to me at the address at
the end of this column?
6.3
Most programs work well in RISC-OS 3
6.3
Robert Macmillan of Colton Software has written to point out (further to
Gerald Fitton’s comments in the Pipeline Column of Archive 6.1) that not
only do all versions of Pipedream from 3.10 onwards work in RISC-OS 3,
they all work better with RISC-OS 3. This is because RISC-OS 3 has the
latest versions of system software built in and these perform better
than the old versions supplied with RISC-OS 2. In particular, the font
manager is much, much faster and the benefits of having the fonts built
in make it possible for floppy disc users to make good use of fonts
without inordinate disc swapping.
6.3
Robert suggests that Archive should publish a table showing which of the
most popular software packages work, and which don’t work or need
upgrading. Judging by the number of needless phone calls he has been
receiving, this would be of great benefit to users considering the
upgrade to RISC-OS 3.
6.3
I think the drawback with this idea is that although most people will
report that most programs work perfectly well (and the list could
potentially fill much of the magazine) some programs that do work well
for most people seem to cause problems for some others.
6.3
However, I do agree that it is important to emphasise that most programs
do work and so, to set the ball rolling, I confirm that, from my limited
experience and that of my friends, the following generally seem to work
well:
6.3
    all the standard Acorn applications
6.3
    Impression 2.17 (but see below)
6.3
    Poster 1.21
6.3
    Artworks (all versions)
6.3
    Vector
6.3
    TWO
6.3
    Squirrel
6.3
    Pacmania
6.3
    E-Type
6.3
    Twin World
6.3
    Lemmings
6.3
    Gods
6.3
Programs that need minor modifications
6.3
•    Sigmasheet (Minerva) must have FPEmulator in the same directory, even
though that module is in ROM. (John Waddell)
6.3
•    First Word Plus release 1.1 − As my current word processor is First
Word Plus release 1, I was worried by the assertion in the release notes
that this was unuseable under RISC-OS 3.1. This happily proved not to be
the case. If colour 14 within the WIMP palette is redefined, the menus
become legible. I have created an obey file to invoke 1WP (on the
monthly program disc) which loads a modified palette on entry and
restores the default palette on exit. Using this, I have experienced no
problems running 1WP. (Ed Harris)
6.3
•    DiscTree does not work correctly under RISC-OS 3. Oak Solutions are
working on the problem.
6.3
•    InterWord – My copy of InterWord has its own directory in the hard
disc root directory. It runs in 65Tube, which isn’t where it used to be
under RISC-OS 2, and appears under a different name. To get InterWord
going again, copy the new App2.!65Tube.!RunImage to the InterWord
directory and rename it as 65Tube; it should now be sitting alongside
!IWord in that directory. In the I/WORD.!IWORD.!RUN file, insert the
following line after Set Interword$Dir <Obey$Dir>:
6.3
RMLoad ADFS::HD4.$.IWORD.65Tube
6.3
(where HD4 is the name of the hard disc). Double click on !IWORD in the
usual way to start it.
6.3
A similar method should apply to single floppy machines by substituting
the appropriate floppy name for that of the hard disc above. (Ken Cowap)
6.3
•    Holed Out – I have a boot file on the hard disc which sets up the
machine with some applications on the iconbar and some more on the
pinboard. The golf game “Holed Out” finds this environment disagreeable
and won’t start. The following gets it going:
6.3
*CONFIGURE DRIVE 0
6.3
*MOUNT :0
6.3
    <shift-break> (machine re-boots to bare-bones iconbar)
6.3
    Click Drive 0 icon to get “Holed Out” filer
6.3
    Double click !Boot
6.3
Terminate the game with:
6.3
    Shift/Break
6.3
*CONFIGURE DRIVE 4
6.3
*MOUNT:4
6.3
    <ctrl-break> (machine re-boots to populated iconbar, etc) (Ken Cowap)
6.3
•    Chocks Away – The flight simulator Chocks Away isn’t quite so fussy
about a populated iconbar and will generally start normally. However, if
it does object, it may help to try a <ctrl-break> followed immediately
by <escape>, which re-boots to an unpopulated iconbar, then double click
on !Chocks. (Ken Cowap)
6.3
Other program problems
6.3
Mike Williams has supplied a list of programs that he has found don’t
work under RISC-OS 3.1:
6.3
    Ground Control Teletext Adaptor (At the A.U.      Show, Ground Control
said they weren’t      aware of any problems. HE.)
6.3
    Clares’ Arcade Games
6.3
    Quazer
6.3
    StarTrader
6.3
    Arcendium
6.3
    Corruption
6.3
    Terramex
6.3
    Boogie Buggy
6.3
Ed Harris has found several public domain applications that have failed
to run:
6.3
    Mandelplot (garbage on screen − machine      locks)
6.3
    ChartDraw (“illegal window handle” error)
6.3
    Hyper (“illegal window handle” error)
6.3
•    Computer Concepts admit that ShowPage does not work with RISC-OS 3 and
say that they have no plans to get it working with RISC-OS 3. There just
is not the demand for this product to make it worthwhile doing the
upgrade which is more like a complete re-write for the new operating
system.
6.3
Denis Fox reports problems with:
6.3
•    Impression (2.17) and LaserDirect (2.05) work much more slowly, even
with Fontsize set to 256Kb and Fontmax to 512Kb. There are regular poor
printouts, sometimes with patterned effects in what should be black
areas, hang ups when transferring lots of text between documents and
continual error messages when printing. (I have a similar setup but have
not noticed any deterioration in performance. HE.)
6.3
To help the speed, I suggest you try NOT using the ROM fonts − then you
can have Quick Text switched on. To do this, add a FontRemove
Resources:$.Fonts. in the !Fonts.!Boot file before the FontInstall
<Obey$Dir>. command.
6.3
I have once had the patterned effect in black areas but quitting and
restarting the printer driver cleared it. Ed
6.3
•    Multistore V11 not printing with a Star LC24-200. (At the AU Show,
Minerva said there may be problems with earlier versions and that users
experiencing such difficulties should contact them quoting their version
number. HE.)
6.3
•    Scanlight Plus 256 not working at all. (There are no known problems.
Are you sure you have a power supply connected to the board? You do need
the p.s.u. connected even on the A5000. Ed.)
6.3
•    A number of people have had problems (mainly “illegal window handle”
errors) with versions up to 1.07 of my PD application PickAPic. I found
that there was an error in the code that only occasionally caused
problems in RISC-OS 2, but caused the program to crash quite often in
RISC-OS 3, presumably because of a change in the way the window manager
numbers its windows. Anyone who wants an upgrade to the latest version
please write to me at the address at the bottom of this column. (Hugh
Eagle)
6.3
•    Droom – I can’t get Droom to work. It reports “Not enough system
sprite memory” whether I use Memalloc and the *Spritesize command (this
used to work in RISC-OS 2), or the new *ChangeDynamicArea command, or
whether I set the System sprites slider in the Task Manager window.
(Hugh Eagle)
6.3
•    Compression − Computer Concepts have informed me that the release note
for version 3.10 is slightly too pessimistic when it claims that
Compression (up to version 1.10) does not work on RISC_OS 3.10. What
apparently happens is that sometimes when you compress a directory with
several files, the last file, instead of being processed, produces an
error message. It can then be compressed singly. (In the first two weeks
of working with the new OS, I have had no trouble with Compression, so
the problem appears to be marginal. HE) (Jochen Konietzko)
6.3
•    Impression and the Pinboard − Can anyone tell me why the Pinboard has
such problems with Impression documents?
6.3
When I drag a compressed document onto the desktop, the next reset will
produce an error message “Sprite does not exist”. Without Compression,
the document does appear on the desktop but the Impression icon is
replaced by the standard application icon. (Jochen Konietzko) (I seem to
have no difficulty with Impression icons on the Pinboard in my
Compression-less setup. HE)
6.3
•    PC Emulator (version 1.6) – I applied the patch to my copy of the PC
Emulator (Version 1.6) and changed the filetype of the DOS partitions to
DOSDisc as recommended in the release notes. I then found that the
machine locked whenever I ran the emulator, even after a <ctrl-break>.
Things worked perfectly, however, after the machine had been powered off
and restarted. (Ed Harris)
6.3
•    Trouble with !FontFX − It has already been documented, at least twice,
that !FontFX will not run under RISC-OS 3 and the suggested “fix” is to
reset Font$Path using *SetMacro. Having done this, I still can’t get it
to use the Trinity and Homerton fonts supplied in ROM. To get round the
problem, I have renamed the original RISC-OS 2 versions OldTrinity and
OldHomertn and installed them in my !Fonts directory on disc. Now
choosing these from the fonts list in !FontFX works beautifully. So far
there have been no side effects!
6.3
It occurs to me that the problem may be that !FontFX is looking for
files called IntMetric and Outlines (there are lots of references to
these names in the !RunImage) whereas the files in ResourcesFS are
stored as IntMetric() and Outlines(). The real answer would be for the
program to be amended to accept either version of the filenames. I shall
speak to DataStore to find out if they intend to make the necessary
alterations. (Tom Harkness)
6.3
The release notes say that FontFX must be more recent than 4.31 to work.
My version, 4.08, works fine so long as you don’t use ROM fonts. If you
do try to, it reports ‘Can’t find outlines’ and promptly exits from the
iconbar! All other fonts seem fine, even from multiple directories.
(Steve Hutchinson)
6.3
•    Ovation – Ovation meets a problem or two with RISC-OS 3 despite its
recent update (version 1.35S). If text is indented (e.g. at the start of
a paragraph) and is also justified, the correct format is presented on
screen but when printed, the indented line projects to the right beyond
the text frame. It is understood that Risc Developments are working on
this. Also, if Ovation encounters a faulty outline font (e.g. containing
a zero-width character, not uncommon in some PD fonts) it puts out an
incorrect error message saying that the font cache is full. This bug is
more likely to be purely Ovation’s rather than in conjunction with RISC-
OS 3, but hasn’t been resolved as yet (except of course by ensuring that
outline fonts are fault-free). (Ken Cowap)
6.3
•    ArcDFS – Since fitting the RISC-OS 3 upgrade, ArcDFS no longer works
correctly and consistently comes up with error messages. This causes me
great problems since, throughout our group of companies, we possess some
50+ Acorn BBC units ranging from the old BBC Model B’s (yes, they’re
still going strong after eight years of service) through to Master
128’s.
6.3
We are only just moving on to Archimedes and to maintain our wealth of
information accumulated on our Beebs, I am transferring files from DFS
to ADFS via a set of external 5¼“ disc drives I have had connected to my
A3000. This has worked perfectly in the past with complete surfaces of
DFS discs being transferred to ADFS in seconds. Without ArcDFS, I am
left with only one solution − to *MOVE individual DFS files to 640Kb
ADFS discs using a Master Series Computer and then transferring these
640Kb discs to the Archimedes. Clearly, this is a retrograde step after
the convenience of ArcDFS.
6.3
I have been in contact with Dabs Press and, although they are aware of
the problem, they could not tell me whether or not they were going to
make the necessary modifications to their software! I sincerely hope
they receive a large enough response from their users to persuade them
to produce an upgrade for this product. (S. J. Furnell)
6.3
•    !Alarm – A couple of tricky little bugs exist in the new Alarm
application. I’ve already reported these to Risc User and trust they
will advise Acorn in turn. If the Repeating Alarm facility is used to
operate, say, every first Monday of every month, it malfunctions when
the next month comes up to December. It advances a year instead of a
month, going from November 1992 to December 1993.
6.3
Perhaps less important, but still a nuisance if you want to use it, is
the bug in the automatic BST to GMT facility. It refuses to accept
entries for two different years such as were needed at the recent change
on 25th October. Before that date, it should have been in order to enter
6.3
    BST starts on Sunday 28th March 1993 at 01:00
6.3
    BST ends on Sunday 25th October 1992 at 01:00
6.3
but Alarm invalidates such an entry by altering the “starts” date to be
earlier than the “ends” date. If one capitulates and enters the two real
changeover dates for 1992, (hoping that Alarm will calculate forward
into 1993) Alarm does indeed respond with a date in 1993 but only about
11 months ahead, on 1st March 1993. There is a fundamental difficulty
for the programmer here. The changeover date doesn’t, as far as I know,
follow a properly defined rule and tends to be arbitrary. I suspect that
the programmer intended to issue a reminder to the operator 11 months
after the last change so that the true date, known by then, could be
entered. However, the algorithm obviously needs re-examination. (Ken
Cowap)
6.3
Can readers (or the manufacturers) offer any advice on how to overcome
problems with these programs (or any others that have proved
troublesome)?
6.3
Hardware problems
6.3
•    Oak SCSI “Free Space” display – My Oak SCSI hard disc won’t use the
new ‘Free Space’ window but uses the old RISC-OS 2 ‘stop-everything-and
press-space’ window. The Release notes suggest that SCSIFiler will fix
this for the Acorn SCSI card, but it doesn’t appear to for my Oak
(v.1.16). Any thoughts? (Steve Hutchinson) (The solution to this was
explained in Archive 5.5 p40. Ed.)
6.3
•    Digitisers, SCSI and the RS232 port – I managed to get RISC-OS 3
fitted to my faithful A440 only to discover that my Technomatic
(Brainsoft) Multipod Professional digitiser not only does not work with
RISC-OS 3.10 but the computer will not work with the podule fitted.
Richard Brain says that he was not aware of a problem and there are
currently no plans for an upgrade, but he will have a look when he gets
time to see if an upgrade is possible. In the meantime, I have no video
digitiser, no stereo digitiser and no extra RS232 ports.
6.3
I mentioned the problem to Malcolm Banthorpe and he tells me that his
Pineapple digitiser is now “unwell” with RISC-OS 3.10. I wonder whether
there are some differences in the way that podules download their ROM
modules and initialise under RISC-OS 3.10?
6.3
I also hear rumours that people are experiencing interrupt problems with
SCSI interfaces causing data loss on the RS232 port (interrupts not
returning quickly enough to avoid loss of incoming data on the port).
Apparently, uncached Morley cards may be particularly prone but I have
no first hand experience. It certainly fits in with Malcolm Banthorpe’s
experience on his digitiser which seems to be suffering from an overdose
of interrupts. (Tim Nicholson)
6.3
Laser Direct RISC-OS 3 printer driver?
6.3
It seems barely credible, but a whole year after RISC-OS 3 was first
released, the Rolls Royce of Archimedes printers still lacks a RISC-OS 3
printer driver. For many purposes this doesn’t matter, but rotated fonts
seem a bit pointless if you can’t print them out, and users with more
than one printer would like to be able to access their LD using the
Print Manager.
6.3
Readers have been getting contradictory explanations from Computer
Concepts: one was told that they’ve been too busy writing Artworks,
while another was told that Acorn haven’t given them a printer driver
specification yet! (There’s an element of truth in both. Let’s just say
that it is a non-trivial task to write a printer driver to work with
Acorn’s Print Manager. Ed.)
6.3
Other printer problems
6.3
•    Epson MX100-III – My printer is an ageing Epson MX100-III. Using the
standard settings provided by the Acorn printer driver, I find thin
lines can disappear. e.g. the staves in a Rhapsody score. Using the
highest resolution setting (120 x 216 dpi dithered) produces an
excellent standard of output but 1.5 to 2 times slower than the RISC-OS
2 driver (at a resolution of 120 × 144 dpi). (Ed Harris)
6.3
•    Print buffering – I have an Archimedes 420/1 expanded to 4Mb memory,
with twin Cumana 5¼“ disc drives and recently equipped with ARM3 and
RISC-OS 3.1. Ever since I installed RISC-OS 3.1, I have had a problem
with printing. I use Impression most of the time but the same problem
arises with Draw, Acorn DTP, DrawPlus, etc, etc. I shall put the problem
in the form of a question: What is the point of a printer buffer that
does not release control of the machine back to the user until the print
job is finished?
6.3
I wrote to Acorn as follows: Whatever setting I use for PrinterBuffer
Size, it just does not seem to make any difference. I have 4Mb of memory
and use Impression a great deal. Sometimes I set the PrinterBufferSize
as high as 512Kb but the computer does not return control to the desktop
until the document is completely printed. Under RISC-OS 2, I used a
printer buffer program and found that I was able to work on a new
document within a minute or two of sending the previous one to the
printer provided the buffer was set high enough to accommodate all of
the data being sent to the printer. Now the machine is always tied up
until the printing is complete. How does one get the printer buffer to
work? I use *Configure PrinterBufferSize to set the size of the buffer.
Is there another command that I can use to make it operational and is it
possible to turn it off (*Configure PrinterBufferSize 0Kb sets it to the
default of 1Kb) and use one of the many printer buffer programs that are
available?
6.3
Acorn (Peter Dunn) replied: “Although the printer buffer does work in
that data is passed into the buffer, control is not released back to the
user until the print job is finished.”
6.3
I have tried RMKilling the BufferManager but that stops all data being
sent to the printer.
6.3
I have devised a work-around but it is a little long-winded:
6.3
1. Have two versions of the chosen printer driver on the iconbar and
make them active.
6.3
2. Set one (F) to send the data for the printer to a file on the hard
disc and set the other (P) to send the data to the parallel or serial
printer.
6.3
3. Select (F) by clicking on it and ‘print’ the document. A file called
Printout will appear on the hard disc.
6.3
4. Change the name of the file called Printout to, say, Printoutx.
6.3
5. Select (P) by clicking on it and drag Printoutx onto the Printer icon
that is yellow.
6.3
The file will now print in the background and control is instantly
returned to the user. Step 4 is not strictly necessary but is useful if
you are printing longish documents and wish to, as it were, stack them
ready for sending to the printer. If one does not change the name to
something unique, there is a danger of overprinting one file with
another. Instead of the hard disc one may, of course, use a floppy or
RAMFS.
6.3
This is quite a laborious work-around when one has a printer buffer
built in (so one would think) to RISC-OS 3.1. A better arrangement must
be possible and so I should be grateful for any hints or tips the
readers can give. (M. P. Ireland)
6.3
•    Epson FX-105 – The driver for the Epson FX-85 does not work with the
Epson FX-105 even though the printer manual suggests that they are
virtually identical apart from the carriage width. The printout is
always aligned along the left hand side even when it is supposed to be
centered, etc. Furthermore, large letters, being sent in several
separate lines, are often incorrectly aligned from top to bottom. When I
raised this in my letter to Acorn, they replied as follows:
6.3
“The Epson FX-105 does not support the ESC $ (remove leading white
space) options supported by the FX-85 but does however support NLQ text
printing. The decision by Epson not to support ESC $ in its newer
printers has only recently come to light when testing the Epson LX-100.
We have written a driver for the LX-100 which I am sure you will find
works correctly with your printer.”
6.3
A copy was sent to me and I can confirm that it does indeed work. (M. P.
Ireland)
6.3
•    Bug in !Printers − If you configure two printers of the same type
(e.g. a 300dpi HPLJ-2 and a 150dpi HPLJ-2) then delete the first one,
!Printers crashes with an address error. (Mike Williams)
6.3
•    LaserJetII printer driver and Qume Crystalprint Series II – My problem
concerns the LaserJet II printer driver. Quite simply, I always get an
extra blank sheet for every page printed. Also stray characters appear
in the left margin. The Qume CrystalPrint Series II printer is very
similar to that used initially by Computer Concepts for their Laser
Direct series, but mine isn’t a Laser Direct model.
6.3
In the early days of RISC-OS 2, I vaguely remember I had a similar
problem that was solved only when Acorn (fairly quickly) brought out
another printer driver.
6.3
In my efforts to solve the problem, I’ve tried lots of things – like
changing margins, etc, etc. I’ve had long discussions with Gerald
Fitton, too. From him, I know that others have plenty of problems,
though perhaps not quite like mine. The silly thing is that all was OK
with the RISC-OS 2 driver but, despite the impression given in Risc
User, neither of us thinks that RISC-OS 2 drivers can be used with RISC-
OS 3. Is this correct, I wonder? If they can be used, that would be a
good temporary solution. (John Jordan)
6.3
•    Getting the page length right – After quite a number of abortive
attempts to set the page length for 12 inch fanfold paper, I finally
found out that any changes I make become effective (at least on my
combination of machines) only after I have saved all changes, quit and
then reloaded the printer driver. (By the way, the correct setting for
my Fujitsu DL1100 printer, using the Epson LQ860 emulation is, for some
inscrutable reason, 12.309 inches, 72 lines). (Jochen Konietzko)
6.3
•    Panasonic KX-P1124 – Probably my most difficult problem was with the
printer drivers. The old RISC-OS 2 drivers just have to be abandoned −
they merely generate an error message. My printer happens to be a
Panasonic KX-P1124 (24-pin dot matrix, monochrome) but Acorn haven’t
seen fit to include any Panasonic printers at all. Though they blandly
say that one of the others will probably be near enough, in fact, it
requires a considerable amount of research to be confident that the
range of control codes is (a) sufficient to fully exploit the machine’s
capabilities and (b) doesn’t contain any alien codes to cause unwanted
results. At the end of the day (or several!) I reduced the probables to
two, the Epson LQ860 and the NEC P6+ (despite the fact that both
machines are colour printers). I had misgivings about the NEC which
includes, in its control code repertoire, some which started with 28
instead of the old familiar 27 (Escape). The matter was finally clinched
when I was able to question an Acorn representative at the Acorn User
Show. He told me that quite definitely I should use the Epson LQ860. So
this I do, and without any problems so far. I haven’t even edited out
the control codes for the colours − the driver is used, unmodified. (Ken
Cowap)
6.3
Where are the hare and the tortoise?
6.3
Can I get the hare and tortoise icons that came with my ARM3 back on the
iconbar? Or do I have to tell people that if they want E-Type to go at a
playable pace they have to press <F12> then type “Cache off” then press
<return> twice before running it?! (I just use
6.3
RMEnsure Arm3Icon 0.9 Run scsi::4 .$.<leafname>.!Arm3
6.3
 in my !boot file and... hare presto! Ed.)
6.3
Programmers’ Reference Manual
6.3
At the Acorn User Show, a “beta” copy of the new PRM was on sale in
photocopy form for £120. The final version will apparently be available
“in the first quarter” of 1993. It is about 50% bigger than the RISC-OS
2 manual and will fill six volumes. From my brief inspection, it looks
as if it contains quite a lot more explanatory material than its
predecessor. I was told that neither the price of the final version nor
details of the trade-in arrangements (if any!) have yet been fixed.
6.3
Various hints and tips:
6.3
•    Problem with Impression dongle − You can’t write to a printer when the
Impression dongle is fitted unless you have run the Impression appli
cation first. (Mike Williams)
6.3
•    Summer time blues − Some C programs (e.g. PVray) get the time wildly
wrong when *BST is configured. (Mike Williams)
6.3
•    Bug in !SciCalc − It gives wildly inaccurate results to the <±>
function for some values, e.g. if you enter “1<Exp>56” then press <1/x>
to give “10E−57” then press <±> you get the surprising result: “10E−58”.
If you press <±> again, you get “10E−41”. (Mike Williams)
6.3
•    Where did this file come from? − There are quite a few ways in which
<adjust> clicking can be very helpful. I’m sure you all know that
<adjust> double-clicking a directory opens it and closes the parent and
that using <adjust> to close the directory opens up the parent. You may
even know that clicking the close icon with <adjust> while holding down
<shift> actually opens the parent without closing the directory. What
you may not have noticed is that you can do the same with (some)
applications. With most applications, it seems, <adjust> double-clicking
a file loads the file and closes the directory from which it came. (I
think this is a function of the Filer and is therefore true for all
applications and files. HE.) Then, if you click in the close box with
<adjust>, holding <shift> at the same time, the directory from which the
file came appears on screen without the file disappearing from view.
With Impression, however, there is no need to hold <shift> as well −
just using <adjust> on the close box brings up the directory viewer in
which the file is saved.
6.3
Oh, and I’ve only just discovered that if you draw a window’s scroll bar
with <adjust>, you can move about in both x and y directions! (Paul
Beverley)
6.3
•    Rubber-banding − Those who have gone straight to RISC-OS 3 without
reading the manual (like Ed!) may not have noticed that you can use
rubber-banding to select a group of files. So instead of <adjust>
clicking every individual file you want to select, you can click
<select> in the space between two file icons and, as you drag, a red
bounding box appears which you can release when it is over the files you
want. Using <adjust> instead of <select> simply adds files to those
already selected but note that if you go over a file that is already
selected, it is then de-selected. (Paul Beverley)
6.3
•    SerialDeviceDriver module − On an A5000, never unplug the module
called “SerialDevice Driver”, as the following strange things will
happen. After a power off/on the machine will boot up but, during
booting, an error message “Error from Task Manager” will appear and
there is only a “Cancel” button to click on. Then the boot up is
finished correctly but no Taskmanager is present! It will only reappear
if you double-click on any file with the new Desktop filetype (&FEA),
even if this is 0 bytes long! In addition, the Taskmanager will not
function correctly in all cases: try to get an “!Edit Task Window” now.
Bug or not? (Carsten Bussman)
6.3
•    Double-clicking into Basic − On my first machine (which was killed by
my dealer while trying to fit a SCSI hard drive) I was able to enter BBC
Basic V directly by double-clicking into the system’s start-up message
window (“RISC-OS ... initialising”). This does not work with my current
machine (Serial no. 1009939); I don’t know why. This was a nice feature
which I’m missing now, so why isn’t it implemented in all RISC-OS 3
ROMs? (Carsten Bussman)
6.3
•    Inserting path names into !Edit − Try dragging any file or directory
into an !Edit window while pressing the Shift key. This will give the
file’s pathname. (Carsten Bussman)
6.3
•    “Menu Area Full” error in FormEd – Captain K. J. Tompkins reports the
error “Menu Area Full (Internal code 6560,1)” from his version of
!FormEd. This is probably because he has one of the earlier versions of
this program which only allows limited space for building its menus and
is defeated if there are too many fonts installed. If so, it is fairly
easy to cure: in the Basic program called !RunImage inside the !FormEd
directory there is a line that reads something like:
6.3
DIM menufree% &1800: menuend% = menufree%+&1800
6.3
(this is at line 790 in the version I’m now looking at). If each of the
two &1800’s is replaced by &2000, so that the line reads:
6.3
DIM menufree% &2000: menuend% = menufree%+&2000
6.3
 the program should work.
6.3
(Note: this hint does not apply to all versions of FormEd) (Hugh Eagle)
6.3
•    Filer_Run syntax − it seems that the command
6.3
*Filer_Run <App$Dir>
6.3
(where App$Dir is a system variable set to the name of an application)
doesn’t run the application as you might expect. What it does is to open
a filer window on the application’s directory with “<App$Dir>” (not the
actual pathname) in the title bar.
6.3
The following syntax, however, does seem to work:
6.3
*Set Alias$FR Filer_Run <App$Dir>
6.3
*FR
6.3
*UnSet Alias$FR
6.3
(this is equivalent to the old trick that used to be needed in RISC-OS 2
to open a directory viewer with *Filer_OpenDir). (Hugh Eagle)
6.3
•    *FontRemove syntax − The FontRemove star command seems to be very
fussy. You have to tell it the name of the directory that you want to
remove in exactly the form in which it is included in the Font$Path
system variable. For instance, if you want to remove
RAM::RamDisc0.$.!Fonts. from Font$Path you must type
6.3
*FontRemove RAM::RamDisc0.$. !Fonts.
6.3
including both the disc name (RamDisc0) and the full stop at the end.
(Robert Chrismas has sent in a handy application called !FontsCut which
lists the directories currently included in Font$Path with numbers
beside them and all you have to do is type in the number corresponding
to the directory you want to remove. This is included on the monthly
program disc.) (Hugh Eagle)
6.3
•    Configuring Shift Caps − In the Caps lock section of the Keyboard
window of !Configure, the effects of “Caps lock on” and “Shift caps”
seem to be reversed. In other words, selecting “Caps lock on” means that
holding down <shift> reverts to lower case whereas selecting “Shift
caps” means that you get upper case regardless of whether <shift> is
held down or not. (Hugh Eagle)
6.3
•    Mouse button codes – If you enter and run the following simple Basic
program:
6.3
REPEAT
6.3
  MOUSE X,Y,B
6.3
  PRINT TAB(10,10)B
6.3
UNTIL FALSE
6.3
then watch what number is displayed on the screen as you press the
various mouse buttons you will see:
6.3
no button    0
6.3
Select       4
6.3
Menu         2 for an instant, followed by 0
6.3
Adjust       1
6.3
The behaviour of the menu button has changed from RISC-OS 2, I think.
Those programs that are interested only in detecting whether the button
has been clicked won’t be affected, but the change can cause problems
for programs that want to detect whether the Menu button remains held
down. Luckily, there is a simple solution: the function
6.3
INKEY(-11)
6.3
will return the value TRUE however long the Menu button is held. (Hugh
Eagle)
6.3
•    Getting Art Nouveau to run – Hands up those who remember Art Nouveau?
Well, this excellent old program has one quirk, namely that you have to
hold down the menu button while you move round the menu tree until you
make your selection. So, because of the changed functioning of the mouse
button (see above), it doesn’t work in RISC-OS 3.1 unless you make a
slight modification. In the Basic program called ArtNouveau from the
directory ANfiles at line 30950 in my version there is a line that
reads:
6.3
WHILE stayopen AND mbut=2
6.3
I have found that altering this to:
6.3
WHILE stayopen AND INKEY-11
6.3
restores the program to health. (Hugh Eagle)
6.3
•    Using a TaskObey file to display a message – The new filetype
“TaskObey” is useful if you want the !Run file of an application to pop
up a message in a window without halting the whole system. You might use
this for instance to display a warning to change the setting of your
printer. Thus, to display “This is a message” in a window, create a file
called, say, Message containing:
6.3
Echo This is a message
6.3
set the filetype to TaskObey and include, in the application’s !Run
file, the line
6.3
Filer_Run <Obey$Dir>.Message
6.3
If you had set the filetype to Obey, the message would pop up moment
arily then disappear before the application loaded. (Hugh Eagle)
6.3
•    Deskboot files and the Pinboard – The User Guide explains how to
create a !Boot file to boot the computer in your desired configuration.
It adds that, when saving the !Boot file, information to start up
applications produced before RISC-OS 3 is not saved automatically. To
get round this, it explains how to rename the !Boot file as Deskboot and
to incorporate it in a !Boot application. It goes on to explain how to
edit the Deskboot file, either to remove or to add lines as necessary.
6.3
If you use the Pinboard as I do, some icons will be changed on a regular
basis. For example, I have regularly used files which change each month.
If the Deskboot file is saved each time the Pinboard is changed, a
certain amount of what the User Guide calls “hand editing” would have to
be done each time a change is made, to remove or add relevant
instructions.
6.3
There is an easy solution. Set up your Desktop once and save the
Deskboot file. Then click <menu> over an empty space on the desktop and
save the Pinboard settings in the Pinboard file in your root directory.
Now drag your Deskboot file into !Edit (or Shift-double-click on it) and
delete all the lines which begin “Pin”. Alter the line “Pinboard” or
“Pinboard -Grid” to read “Run Pinboard” or “Run Pinboard -Grid”.
6.3
Future changes to the Pinboard setting now need be saved only to the
Pinboard file in your root directory. (John Waddell)
6.3
Ken Cowap warns that a DeskBoot file can easily be unnecessarily
cluttered if, for instance, there are a number of unwanted items on the
screen when it is made. This will incur a penalty in the time taken to
boot up − his started at two and a half minutes before he trimmed it
ruthlessly.
6.3
•    ADFS buffers − According to Acorn’s telephone help line, the bug which
made it advisable to configure the adfs buffers to zero has been fixed!
(According to Computer Concepts, unless the buffers are configured to
zero, it is vital to dismount disks before removing them for good from
the machine, because otherwise there may be trouble later.) (Jochen
Konietzko)
6.3
•    OS_Byte calls and the serial port – I use my A3000 for many purposes,
one of the more important being as a terminal to our mainframe computer.
The software for this I have written myself in Basic. After the upgrade,
my terminal program wouldn’t work. It would not accept characters from
the serial port. I tried using the serial port utility module supplied
with the upgrade, but this did not help.
6.3
After a lot of experimenting, we finally discovered that if we changed
all the *FX calls for SYS “OS_Byte” calls, then the program would work.
It still puzzles me why two supposedly similar commands should give
different results! (S. J. Furnell)
6.3
•    Z88 Filers – The Release Note says that the !Z88 filer supplied with
Pipedream requires interactive filing to be off. You’ll be pleased to
know that David Holden’s !Z88 filer (Careware 7) suffers from no such
problems. (Steve Hutchinson)
6.3
•    Programs that call machine code from Basic – An application I used a
lot, !BPrint (Risc User) wouldn’t run with RISC-OS 3, and the cure for
this may well apply to other applications organised in a similar layout,
i.e. using a central Basic program calling a separate piece of machine
code. The cure was to re-assemble the code under RISC-OS 3; obviously
there is some small difference between its assembler and that of RISC-OS
2. In this particular application, its “ancestor” (the program developed
over a period of time), a program called FileList from vol.2 issue 5 was
rerun to produce the assembled file BLIST which was substituted for the
original. (Ken Cowap)
6.3
•    Mode number conflicts – A program for plotting Mandelbrot diagrams
failed with RISC-OS 3 and the manner of its failure may indicate a cure
for others. This particular program called a Mode 40 which didn’t exist
under RISC-OS 2 but which was specially designed and provided with the
program. RISC-OS 3 of course does have a native Mode 40 and a clash
between it and the “special” gave rise to the error report. The cure was
to rename the “special” to a mode number outside the range provided with
RISC-OS 3, in this case Mode 50. (Ken Cowap)
6.3
•    Setting !Alarm options – This is a minor matter, unless you are trying
to set your own !Alarm display format in a !Boot file. This you do with
a Set Alarm$Options line (p136 App Guide). The quotes are omitted. This
is my (working) line:
6.3
Set Alarm$Options -format “%z24:%mi %zdy.%zmn.%zyr”
6.3
If you use a !Boot file and !Alarm, put it in to see my favourite
display format! (Steve Hutchinson)
6.3
Miscellaneous comments
6.3
•    Surely a ‘grown up’ operating system shouldn’t say, “Disc error 10 at
:0/00000000” when you try to read an unformatted disc?
6.3
•    It seems strange that !Configure requires you to press <return> after
typing into a writable icon. This is not normal RISC-OS convention.
6.3
•    It’s a shame that they didn’t manage to squeeze some suitable backdrop
sprites onto one of the RISC-OS 3 discs. Those who have access to
Windows 3 might like to know that its wallpaper bitmaps seem to work
very well on the RISC-OS 3 Pinboard, and it is very easy to transfer
them from an MS-DOS floppy, via !ChangeFSI (on the Support disc), into
sprite format on an Archimedes disc. The file called “leaves.bmp” makes
an excellent seasonal backdrop (I’m writing this in October!).
6.3
Alt-key combinations
6.3
The last couple of issues of Archive have contained lists of Alt-Key
combinations in RISC-OS 3.1. To complete the picture I would add:
6.3
To get accents ( ´ ` ¨ ^ ° ¸ ) on their own, press the appropriate Alt-
key combination (e.g. Alt-[ for a ´ ) then the space bar.
6.3
Alt-Spacebar gives a “hard space” or “non-breaking space” (the sort you
put between “NR2” and “2SD” if you don’t want Archive’s postcode
“NR2 2SD” to be split over two lines.)
6.3
I have put a diagram of the keyboard showing the Alt-key combinations
below, and I hope that Paul will put the drawfile on the monthly program
disc.
6.3
Incidentally, I am a bit puzzled about the character (code 173) that is
produced by the Alt-hyphen combination. What’s it for? I thought at
first that it was the “soft hyphen” that is described on page 109 of the
Impression 2 manual, but I now see that this is produced by Ctrl-hyphen
(this character – code 31 – is normally invisible but indicates a
preferred place for breaking a word with a hyphen at the end of a line;
it works even if the hyphenation module is not present). By contrast,
character 173 is, so far as I can see, always visible (as a hyphen if
the font follows the Acorn standard) but its effect is to prevent a word
into which it is inserted ever being broken over the end of a line even
if hyphenation is switched on. Am I correct in describing it as a “hard
hyphen”? (Well, I can think of one application. Suppose you want to use
a word like “pray­ers” where you deliberately hyphenate the word to
refer to the people doing the praying. In that case, if it were an
ordinary hyphen, the word might get split at the end of a line. Using a
‘hard hyphen’ avoids the split. Ed)
6.3
The upgrade again
6.3
Finally, I thought it would be good to take a slightly light-hearted
look at the subject as we hear the experiences that Rob Wears had in
fitting and using RISC-OS 3 on an A310...
6.3
I finally managed to get my grubby mitts on the RISC-OS 3 upgrade at the
Acorn User show, and arrived back home with that odd mixture of terror
and excitement that comes from having to take the lid off the machine.
I’ve fitted one or two things in the past, like the soldered 4MByte RAM
upgrade, but no matter how many times I do it, it’s still a bit like
performing neurosurgery on a close friend. Will Archie pull through,
Doc? Actually, fitting was a lot easier than I’d thought. I used the
IFEL carrier board, as their memory upgrade has proven so reliable. My
only source of concern was the discrepancy between their fitting
instructions and the ones supplied by Acorn which alluded to changing
links on the mother board. I followed the IFEL guidelines, which had the
link changes on their board, and waited anxiously for the machine to
explode when I switched it on. No problem, apart from the fact that I
bypassed the desktop and ended up at the command line. Still, the
desktop was easily accessible with a simple “*” command.
6.3
The hard drive icon was where it should be (and no longer jumped around
when I mounted or dismounted the disc!) and I am pleased to say that I
encountered no problems with the Oak SCSI board (version 1.16 of SCSI
driver).
6.3
I couldn’t resist the urge to delve into the Apps directory, and here I
encountered my first problem. Initially, I couldn’t get !Edit to load
from Apps and was greeted with the wonderfully informative message ‘File
“Basic” not found’. Fighting the sudden tide of panic (“It wouldn’t work
at all if the ROM legs were snapped off, idiot!”) I checked the module
list via the command line and found that I was apparently the lucky
owner of the one set of chips which Acorn had shipped without putting
Basic on board first. I was about to fall on my soldering iron in
despair when I thought of checking the status of the system modules
using *ROMModules and found that the Basic module was unplugged. I
reinitialised the module, and !Edit worked fine. There, that wasn’t too
bad − the hair will probably grow back and nobody will notice the
teethmarks on the manual....
6.3
Incidentally, the ARM3Support module was also unplugged and therefore
the *Cache command wouldn’t work, but I’d got the hang of things by now,
and pressed on happily. I then UNPLUGged the modules that I thought I
wouldn’t need (old habits die hard) like the Econet and NetFS modules −
each unplug command was greeted with the comment “xxxx module not found”
yet a subsequent check revealed that the module had been unplugged
correctly − odd! Archie hadn’t behaved like this before his lobotomy. It
was a bit unnerving, like suddenly finding the Queen Mother skateboard
ing down your front drive.
6.3
I then set about gingerly reconstructing the !Boot option for the hard
disc, feeding the bits to my new Archie in small, digestible chunks.
Compression (version 1.10) and !Spark both worked fine, after I
remembered not to set the “Newer” option for copying. However, Archie no
longer likes the “OS_UpdateMEMC” call which I had used to speed up the
ROMs. This is now treated with the same degree of horror as if I’d just
offered it deep-fried weevil for tea, and the machine has to be kicked
out of its sulk with a hard reset. I initially and unjustly blamed the
old OSSys module, but this actually seems to be fine and is the only
real survivor from my old collection of useful bits and pieces − have
they STILL forgotten to put a *SYS command in?
6.3
The next little gem was the “ChangeDynamic Area” calls which are
automatically saved in the desktop !Boot file − these override the CMOS
RAM settings and I couldn’t work out why the system sprite area remained
so large despite all my efforts to shrink it. And remember, Gentle
Reader, not to save the !Boot file in a Compression directory because,
despite what they all say, those teethmarks in the manual do show! On
the brighter side, I found that the configured startup language was not
the desktop, which explained Archie’s new enthusiasm for the command
line. The number for the configured language of your choice is now
obtained by counting down the list of modules − how simple. Not a
mention of alchemy or the Black Arts. Good grief, if it’s that simple,
anybody will be able to do it...
6.3
The !FontsPlus application caused some frontal headaches (actually,
these may have been caused by sudden and repeated violent contact
between the forehead and the monitor) as I could not persuade it to
recognise the ROM based fonts. Off it went to the great filestore in the
sky, and back I went to using multiple directories with original names
(!Fonts, !Fonts2, !Fonts3, !Fonts4, etc.). How quaint!
6.3
On to some serious computing. Impression works! (Actually, I cheated. I
got the upgrade from those nice CC people at the show). And there are
more screen modes available from startup, and a *WimpMode command to
simplify my DTP !Boot sequence. On the down side, I have found printing
to be a bit of a pain − my old !PBuffer application doesn’t work anymore
and even making the PrinterBufferSize HUGE using *CONFIGURE doesn’t seem
to do anything. However, there are many more options available for
printed output. I can even get 360×360 dpi on the Panasonic and it only
takes about 30 minutes a page!
6.3
I seem to have more space on the hard disc now. I used to have lots of
little applications that I’d collected over the years which now have
their functions in ROM, such as SetType, FileFind, StickyBD and
ShutDown. Being ruthless, and having no more need for them, I erased
them completely. Who knows, one day, I might even erase the backups of
the backups.
6.3
So am I sorry to have upgraded? Not at all. It was just that the scale
of the change surprised me. I suppose that the change was more compli
cated because I had my system set up exactly the way I wanted it, and
had to restructure virtually the whole hard disc. It was just as
traumatic as upgrading from Arthur to RISC-OS2 had been, but I’m very
pleased with my new machine. Of course, 3.1 goes into 310, and it may
even be 100 times better!
6.3
(Actually, this has an important moral − if Rob had followed Acorn’s
instructions and done a <delete-power-up> in the first place, he
wouldn’t have had half the problems he did. Ed.)
6.3
And finally ...
6.3
Send your comments, suggestions, queries, complaints, hints and tips
either to me, Hugh Eagle, at 48 Smithbarn, Horsham, Sussex  RH13 6DX.  A
6.3
The characters shown in bold are produced by pressing the relevant key
in conjunction with either the Alt key on its own or both the Shift and
Alt keys:-
6.3
e.g.     to type ¢ hold down Alt and press the C key
6.3
    to type © hold down Shift and Alt and press the C key.
6.3
The characters indicated by an arrow are intended to be used in
conjunction with other keys to produce accented letters; in each case
the accent is only produced if the Alt-key combination is followed by an
appropriate letter: e.g. to produce é you first type Alt-[ then type e.
If you want the accent on its own, follow the Alt-key combination by
pressing the spacebar.
6.3
Alt-<hyphen> produces a “hard hyphen” (character 173)
6.3
Alt-<spacebar> produces a “hard space” (character 160)
6.3

6.3
Small Ads
6.3
(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)
6.3
•    A3000 external drive buffer (Beebug) £20. ArcDFS £12. Phone
0502−565568.
6.3
•    A3000 RISC-OS 2, 4Mb RAM, serial port, Acorn DTP, Phillips CM8833
monitor & stand. £650. Phone 0235−813557.
6.3
•    A3000 2Mb RAM, socketed ARM2, RISC-OS 3.1, VIDC enhancer £500, 45Mb
Hardcard £299, PRES A3K6 second drive i/f £20, PRES A3K4 double exp. box
£39, Learning Curve s/w (proceeds to charity) £100. Phone Barry on
0332−701969.
6.3
•    A310M, colour monitor, PipeDream, Graphic Writer, etc, £500. Gordon
Walbridge on 0305−782623.
6.3
•    Acorn Desktop C comprising Acorn Desktop Development Environment and
ANSI C release 4. As new and unregistered £160. 0272−736237.
6.3
•    Amstrad FX 9600T fax machine £175. Tandy FP215 flat bed plotter £149.
Integrex Colourjet 132 printer with new cartridges and paper £299. Phone
Stuart on 0792−204519.
6.3
•    Beebug 5¼“ disc interface, 40 track drive, DFS reader software and 50
5¼” discs. The lot for only £50 + p&p. Phone 0332−557751.
6.3
•    CC ROM/RAM podule with 6 × 32Kb RAM and 1 × 8Kb RAM and battery-
backup. £50 o.n.o. Phone Thomas on 45+31−67−89−00 (Denmark).
6.3
•    CC Turbo driver for BJ10ex never used (unwanted present) £35. Phone
Chris on 081−856−4732.
6.3
•    Digitising tablet TDS LC12 professional quality tablet with a 12“⇧×12”
active area, 4 button puck, p.s.u. and software to use instead of a
mouse in Draw, etc. £110 o.n.o. Phone 0903−265727 eves.
6.3
•    Flexifile £40, Acorn DTP £35, First Word Plus 2 £30, Inertia £5, E
Type £5, Bug Hunter/Moon Dash £5, Arcpinball £10, Mad Prof. Mariarti £8,
Pipemania £8, Nevryon £8, Elite Gold £20, The Last Ninja £15, Star/
Epson/Citizen Colour Printer Driver £10, Panasonic KX-P1081 Printer £40.
Phone 0277−625613.
6.3
•    FontFX £2, DrawBender £2, Glimpse £3, Help Companion £3, Mad Prof.
Mariarti, Pacmania, Arcade Soccer, Fish, Fireball II £5 each, FunSchool
2 (u6) £6, (6-8) £6, Droom, Personal Accounts, Interdictor 2, Apocalypse
2 £10 each, PenDown £25. Phone Dave on 081−292−6870 (eves).
6.3
•    Games. Chopper Force £15, Star Trader £3, Pacmania £3, Worra Battle
£3, Terramex £3. Phone Chris on 0276−20575 after 6pm.
6.3
•    Laser Direct Qume + 2 spare toner cartridges, vgc + latest software,
£600. Phone Ray on 081−864−7208.
6.3
•    Morley 1Mb RAM (upgradable) for A3000, £40. PRES podule case £5. Acorn
ADF32 medium res colour monitor, £50 + carriage. Micro User 1.1 to 10.2
(complete), most in binders, £10 + carriage. Input (complete) in
binders, £10 + carriage. Phone Pete on 0603−897511 or CompuServe
70374,207.
6.3
•    Multipod podule for Archimedes A300/400 series. Includes serial port,
video and sound digitiser/analog port and 3 ROM sockets all for £60.
Phone Clive on 0908−661980.
6.3
•    PC emulator V1.8 £50, Poster V1.4 £25, Lincad Drawing program V1.45
£25, Beebug Hard Disc Companion V2.0 £20, Beebug colour printer driver
£7. Phone 0536−724981.
6.3
•    Pineapple colour digitiser hardly used, accept £150 (cost £232). Also
Leading Edge joystick interface (A5000 compatible) plus 2 Superpro
joysticks, unused £45 (cost £62). Phone 0278−751317.
6.3
•    Risc Developments memory board (4Mb) for A310. Will take RISC-OS 3.1.
Unused £95. Phone 0423−565997.
6.3
•    Scanner − Watford Mk I hand scanner, up to 400 dpi, £60. Beebug 5¼“
disc interface Mk II, £20. Phone Alex on 0705−526800.
6.3
•    Schema V1.18, boxed with manuals. £50 o.n.o. Phone Mr I Mackay on
081−969−7294.
6.3
•    Shinwa CPA80 printer £50; Impression Business Supplement £20; Games −
Elite, Swiv, Zarch, etc. Phone Rob Wears on 021−384−4152.
6.3
•    Sony 3000p video camera. Ideal for video grabbing! Powered from VCR or
simple 12v supply. Only £100 o.n.o. Contact Bob Ames 071−477−8275 day or
0487−814227 eves, w/e.
6.3
•    Wanted 4 to 8Mb upgrade for A410/1. Interested in almost anything,
even just a circuit diagram that I can build myself. Phone Thomas on
45+31−67−89−00 (Denmark).
6.3
•    Wanted, ARM3 processor and Impression II. Phone 0332−557751.
6.3
•    Z88 in case with custom rechargeable system, extra RAM, PC/Acorn link
EPROM, Parallel printer cable, Comms link EPROM, magazines £175. Phone
0452−618742.
6.3
Charity Sales − The following items are available for sale in aid of
charity. PLEASE do not just send money − ring us on 0603−766592 to check
if the items are still available. Thank you.
6.3
(If you have unwanted software or hardware for Archimedes computers you
could donate for charity, please send it in to the Archive office. If
you have larger items where post would be expensive, just send us
details of the item(s) and how the purchaser can get hold of them.)
6.3
A3000 1Mb upgrade £30, First Word Plus 2 + Study Guide £30, Diet Manager
£5, A4 Forms Designer £5, Hearsay £15, Pace Nightingale modem (300/300,
1200/75) £25, Artisan Support Disc £5, ArcTiculate £15, !Help − Intro to
Archimedes £5, Snippet £10.  A
6.3
Oak Solutions
6.3
From 6.2 page 6
6.3
Music Column
6.3
Stewart Watson
6.3
The range of music software available for the Archimedes has been
expanding at a fairly acceptable rate over the last couple of years.
Although there is unlikely ever to be the same volume of packages
available as there is for the Atari ST or PC compatibles, we should take
comfort from the fact that the general standard of software for the
Archimedes is consistently high.
6.3
Music packages fall into three general categories:
6.3
1.    Packages using the internal sound chip for backing tracks and
sound effects for programs
6.3
2.    Sequencing software, usually using MIDI keyboards and expanders
6.3
3.    Music scoring software
6.3
Some programs overlap two, or even all three, categories but, when
buying software, it is essential that you keep in mind its primary use.
For example, although a notation package might have sequencing facili
ties, it is unlikely to have all the facilities found in a dedicated
sequencer. Below I’ve listed some of the major packages and commented on
their current states of development.
6.3
Shareware
6.3
There are now stacks of music files available from the various shareware
suppliers. Most of these are Tracker files, many of which are ported
across from the Amiga. Tracker players, of which there are several in
the public domain, are all that is required if you want to play Tracker
files. (Tracker itself is required if you want to write files.) Cream PD
specialises in supplying Tracker files − £1.00 for a catalogue which
contains some useful Tracker utilities, including a Tracker player, and
some nice demos. Tracker itself can be obtained through Archive for £47.
6.3
MIDI files
6.3
At the other end of the spectrum from shareware tracker files are Hands-
On Midi Software, who supply chart hits and classical pieces in MIDI
file format at about £6 for a chart hit or £12 for a classical piece.
These pieces are professionally sequenced and highly recommended. A
demonstration disk is available for £5.95. If you order any of these, be
sure to specify Archimedes and Midi file type 0 or 1.
6.3
Electro-Music Research
6.3
Mike Beecher’s company, EMR Ltd (Elecro-Music Research), was one of the
first to produce music software for the Archimedes. Mike is still going
strong and waxing as eloquent as ever. Studio24+, a sequencing program,
is now up to Version 3 and has a massive number of new features
including improved scoring, CD-ROM control, multiple reels, MIDI
instrument list, reverberation control, etc. I’ll look at Studio 24
Version 3 in depth in a future article.
6.3
Sound Engineer, which should be released by the time you read this, is a
totally rewritten and revamped version of SoundSynth − a program used
with a sampler podule or the internal sound chip to create sounds.
6.3
EMR have a whole suite of music packages for the Archimedes and further
information and a catalogue of all the available programs can be
obtained from Electro-Music Research.
6.3
Clares
6.3
Clares came later onto the scene but have made rapid progress. They now
have Rhapsody II, a score writing package; Armadeus, a sampler;
ScoreDraw which converts Rhapsody files into drawfiles; Vox Box, another
sound creation program; and the newly launched Rhythm Bed, a drum
sequencer. These are all available from Clares Micro Supplies.
6.3
I believe that they are about to announce the launch of a real-time
sequencer.
6.3
Scorewriter
6.3
The score writing package with the most flexibility is undoubtedly
Scorewriter. Unfortunately, the price of flexibility is user-unfriendli
ness. I vividly remember the first weekend I spent with Scorewriter − I
almost threw the computer out the window! However, once you have
mastered ScoreWriter, it is an absolute joy to use.
6.3
Scorewriter can be obtained from EMR or the author, Philip Hazel 33
Metcalfe Road, Cambridge CB4 2DB. There is a completely new RISC-OS
version which will work from the desktop, available around Christmas. It
is tremendous, but not for the faint-hearted.
6.3
Longman-Logotron
6.3
Longman-Logotron, well known for their involvement in Education, have
just released Notate Version 1.2a. This has added real-time record
facilities to Notate, together with some other extra features. One of
the big pluses of Notate is the number of template files provided with
the program to save the user time in setting up.
6.3
Inspiration
6.3
Inspiration is a 250 track high specification sequencer, originally by
Pandora Technology but now marketed by Amp Sound. It has attracted a
fair following, and its files can be transferred to Rhapsody for
printing. Unfortunately, it comes with a dreaded dongle.
6.3
Summary
6.3
As you see, the amount of software available is steadily growing and the
quality is improving. As long as Acorn pursue a sensible pricing policy
and manufacturers follow a sensible protection policy (which in my book
does not include dongles), the market for both hardware and software
should continue to grow apace.  A
6.3
Help!!!!
6.3
•    A4 concept keyboard wanted − Has anyone got an old A4-sized concept
keyboard (for a BBC B  computer − not an Archimedes) they don’t want?
It’s for a downs syndrome lad whose parents work for a Christian charity
and are therefore not too flush for cash? If so, please ring Paul
Beverley at the Archive office or Dave Carlos (a friend of their family)
on 021−777−8957.
6.3
•    Amiga formats − Does anybody know of an application that allows the
use of Amiga-formatted discs with an Archimedes? Contact Graham Crowe at
Droitwich High School, Ombersley Road, Droitwich  WR9 0AA.
6.3
•    Draw to Paint − How can I convert Draw files into sprites? Roger
Darlington, Manchester.
6.3
•    Impression − Some DTP packages don’t actually include graphics files
within the document but simply contain a pointer (filename) to where the
graphic is being stored. Impression does not work in this fashion; every
component of the document is contained in the document’s ‘application
directory’. In general, I am sure this is the most sensible thing to do.
However I have a problem. I keep the letters I write at work on disc and
I am running out of space. Each letter contains a copy of the College
crest, whose drawfile occupies about 10 Kb, or 5 Kb if compressed − this
is often much larger than the text content of the letter! Is there any
way for the Impression document directory to hold just a reference or
pointer to the crest? I know that a solution would be to store just the
text story of the documents, but that would be rather inconvenient. Any
other solutions?  Brian Cowan.
6.3
•    JPEG − Does anyone know how to get “JPEG”, a PD JPEG image conversion
program, to work under RISC-OS 3.1? Or is there another PD JPEG program?
Roger Darlington, Manchester.
6.3
•    Missing charity discs! − At the Acorn User Show, Martyn Diplock bought
a second hand copy of System Delta Plus version 2. Unfortunately, there
were no discs in the box − just the documentation! If you are the person
who donated the software and still have the discs, could you possibly
send them to Martyn at 162 Willingdon Road, Eastbourne, East Sussex?
(Martyn said that the £20 he paid could stay in the charity pot − which
is very generous of him − but it would be nice to get him a working
version of SDPlus 2.) Thanks. Ed.
6.3
•    Serial port speed − Does anyone know of a way of getting a serial port
working on an A410/1 at more than 19,200 baud?  Philip Lardner, Co.
Wicklow, Ireland.
6.3
•    Stolen computers − Watch out for an A420 serial number 1004092 and an
A3020 serial number 1010239 − they were stolen from Bromsgrove School!
If you see them, please inform the police a.s.a.p.
6.3
•    TableMate − We sent someone a copy of TableMate for review but forgot
to record who it was! Would that person own up as we have a new up-dated
version to send you. Thanks. Ed.
6.3
•    Wordwise Plus − Is there anyone in the Milton Keynes area who could
help a disabled lady with getting Wordwise Plus programs working on her
BBC Master? We asked for help some time ago and a gentleman responded
and was very helpful. Unfortunately, he has moved to London! Contact
Marjorie on 0908−607012. (Please allow time for her to get to the phone
and answer it as she is not too mobile.) Thanks. Ed.  A
6.3
PD Column
6.3
David Holden
6.3
Anyone who is interested in Archimedes PD will probably have heard of
Data Stream. What you may not know is that it has recently moved. It’s
now run by Phil Coleman and the new address is 34 Norbreck Close, Great
Sankey, Warrington, Cheshire WA5 2SX. If you want to know more then send
£1 for a catalogue.
6.3
PD prices
6.3
Many PD libraries are having a hard time at the moment. Costs are
rising. For example, thanks to the recent devaluation I now have to pay
an extra £6 per hundred for discs. Since libraries are ‘small busi
nesses’, like others in that class we are expected to help the high
street banks recover from the consequences of their bad decisions by
paying high charges. Most people who have only personal bank accounts
probably don’t realise that when you have a business account you not
only pay a quarterly service charge but also 60−70p per transaction.
This is one of the reasons why libraries normally give credit notes
instead of refund cheques. A 50p refund cheque could cost the library
about £1.20 by the time the bank charges are included.
6.3
The newer libraries have been cushioned from this because most banks
offer free banking for the first year for a new business, but this time
has now run out for those which started up last year and they are
beginning to feel the pinch.
6.3
One way of bypassing bank charges for small orders is to avoid cheques.
The problem is that, unlike the old £1 note, coins tend to be rather
obvious and also heavy. Postal orders are not only inconvenient for the
sender, who must go to the Post Office to purchase them, they also
involve a premium.
6.3
There is one item which is small, light and is as good as cash − stamps.
Most Archimedes PD libraries are not large enough to employ a Post
Office franking machine, so we all use vast quantities of first and
second class stamps. All the libraries that I have spoken to would be
happy to accept, for example, £1 in stamps instead of a £1 cheque for a
catalogue.
6.3
As a result of these general increases in costs I expect that some
libraries will soon be increasing their prices. Many have been trying to
operate selling discs at £1 each. If you don’t allow anything for
overheads or your own time, it is just about possible to cover net costs
at this price. Remember that sending a disc doesn’t just involve the
cost of a disc, a stamp and a disc mailer. There is also the wear on
your computer, printer consumables, the occasional dud disc, letters and
free discs to Authors, and so on, which all form part of the basic
overheads of running a library. And that’s before we get down to less
obvious things like paying for virus detection software, extra hardware,
and, of course, bank charges.
6.3
Prices down
6.3
It’s not all bad news on the price front. As announced last month in
Archive, the price of the ‘Shareware’ PD discs has been reduced to £2
and the Careware to £5. This has prompted me to reduce the price of
A.P.D.L. discs as well. From now on, they will be priced at £1.50 each,
with one free disc of your choice for every five purchased in place of
the previous percentage discount scheme.
6.3
Maastricht
6.3
I hope I still have your attention. Just that one word may be enough to
make you skip the rest of this article.
6.3
I’m not going to get political but until now it’s been almost impossible
to find out exactly what this is all about. Everyone is talking about it
and almost no one, including the politicians, has actually read it. I
have a copy on disc and so if you want to discover what it really says
then send £1 (or four 1st class stamps, of course), to me at the address
below. Don’t just listen to what the politicians tell you it means, read
it for yourself and make up your own mind.
6.3
Disc compression
6.3
Most consumers of Archimedes PD will be aware of ArcFS used by almost
all PD libraries. What you may not be aware of is that there is a
similar Shareware program available for the PC. This is invaluable for
PC Emulator users because unlike the expensive commercial options,
Stacker and SuperStor, it works fine on floppies and you can mix
compressed and uncompressed files on the same drive and directory. The
program is called SLIM and since it’s not American, most PC Shareware
libraries have never heard of it.
6.3
As with ArcFS, you need to compress the files first and then the
resident portion of the program, normally loaded in your AUTOEXEC.BAT
file, decompresses them ‘on the fly’ as you load them. The decompression
is so fast that you probably won’t even notice it is happening using the
Emulator. This often makes it possible to run programs from a single
floppy disc that would otherwise need either a hard disc or lots of
swapping.
6.3
Ray tracing again
6.3
Another new program has appeared. This is called DBW Render and looks
like the best yet. It was ported from the Amiga and the version that I
have also contains the ‘C’ source code.
6.3
I’m still hoping that someone will offer to do a comparative ‘in depth’
review of the various PD packages because there are now several
available and they all have different good and bad points.
6.3
Authors’ association?
6.3
Possibly as a result of the things I have been writing recently in this
column, there seems to be an awakening interest in the concept of
Shareware amongst PD authors. I have received several letters asking if
there is any sort of association for Archimedes PD/Shareware authors
and, if not, why not?
6.3
It certainly seems like a good idea. The Association of Shareware
Professionals has done a great deal to promote Shareware for PC’s and
something similar on a smaller scale dedicated to promoting and
improving the quality of PD and Shareware for the Archimedes would be a
good thing.
6.3
I don’t mean a cosy club or an ideas forum but a genuine association
whose members would be obliged to conform to certain standards, whether
for Shareware or PD. If anyone thinks that this would be a good thing
then please write to me and I will try to put any interested parties in
touch with one another. What I won’t do, as has been suggested, is to
actually form an association because something like this should be
formed by a group of equals and not by a single individual who then asks
others to join. If enough people think it’s worthwhile then I would
certainly wish to be actively involved and will do everything that I can
to help.
6.3
Like the A.S.P. it would probably also involve participation by
libraries so I am also hoping for comment from them.
6.3
Please keep writing to me at the usual address − 39 Knighton Park Road,
Sydenham, London SE26 5RN.  A
6.3
Dalriada
6.3
New artwork
6.3
Look Systems
6.3
From 6.2 page 5
6.3
Spacetech
6.3
From 6.2 page 16
6.3
Hardware Column
6.3
Brian Cowan
6.3
Sound from the PC cards
6.3
In a previous issue, I mentioned that that the Aleph One PC card was
capable of producing correct PC sound when connected internally to the
host Archimedes’ audio circuitry. This prompted Philip Draper to write
in and ask how to make the connections. Information is available in the
Sound Application Note from Aleph One, but for those interested, I
include some more details.
6.3
You need two 20cm lengths of wire, preferably different colours, with
0.1“ female sockets at each end, looking something like this:
6.3

6.3
One end will plug into the sound output pins of the PC card as shown
below. Be sure to note which is the “hot” line and which is ground.
6.3

6.3
The other end of the cable plugs into the computer’s “Auxiliary Audio
Connector”. This consists of two rows of five pins located on the main
circuit board towards the rear of the computer, close to the headphone
socket. The connector has different identification numbers for different
Archimedes models. On the 440 it is labelled PL2, as it is on the 410/1
range. However, the set of pins is denoted by LK9 on the 540 machines
and LK3 on the A5000 models. Also, note that the order of the numbering
of the pins is reversed on the A5000. Pin 5 is the hot line and pin 6 is
the ground.
6.3
I have indicated on the accompanying diagrams the location of the
connector for these four models; unfortunately I have been unable to
look inside any of the others.
6.3

6.3
Make sure that the ground line from the PC card goes to the ground line
(pin 6) of the computer board and the output line from the PC card goes
to the input line (pin 5) of the computer board. If everything is
connected correctly, your Archimedes will be capable of producing good
quality PC sound. This may be tested using the sound commands of a DOS
version of Basic or by playing one of the many PC games. I have found
the sounds produced by some games quite impressive − particularly when
compared with the tuneless grunts produced by the PC Emulator.
6.3
I have also indicated on the PC card diagram the arrangement of the
links for the RAM configuration. There are three links present on the
board when 1Mb of RAM is used; the diagram shows this. If you are
upgrading to 4Mb (by exchanging the eight RAM chips for 1Mb×4 80ns ZIP
DRAMs), the middle link must be removed.
6.3
387 chips
6.3
Philip mentioned that there was a (relatively) cheap 387SX chip
available from a firm called Datrontech in Aldershot, manufactured by
ULSI (sic) in California. He says that the chip comes with a disc to
demonstrate how fast it goes, and that the improvements are impressive,
although not quite as large as to a “real” PC. My guess is that the
video emulation is still the bottleneck.
6.3
Incidentally, I know that these third-party manufacturers of PC chips
are causing somewhat of a headache for the bods at Intel; they are
losing quite a lot of business. I have a relative working in Intel’s
future products department where what we would call the ‘586 (they call
it Pentium, a name which can be protected) and the ’686 are being
developed. He explained to me that the pirates certainly cannot copy the
silicon design of the chips: this is copyright. Thus while the cheap
chips should implement all published behaviour, there may well be
inconsistencies in some of the undocumented features. I know that some
people have had problems using 387 chips from particular manufacturers
(on real PCs) and this is the explanation.
6.3
Coprocessor algorithms
6.3
While we are on the topic of 387 chips, I would like to use this column
for a request for information. Some time ago, I read in Byte magazine
about the Cyrix range of maths coprocessors for the PC. As I understand
it, these are marketed as 387, or whatever, replacements, but the
internal mathematics is performed in a revolutionary way so that
calculations of transcendentals, for instance, are done very much
faster. Does anyone know in what way the Cyrix algorithms differ from
the more conventional ones? The description in the Byte article seemed
equally applicable to the traditional coprocessor chips. Perhaps it is
just a question of hard-wiring versus microcode − I don’t know. Any
ideas?
6.3
Quality graphics
6.3
Philip goes on to make one final comment in his letter, taking me to
task for doing the latest version of the PC emulator “a bit of an
injustice” in relation to the VGA colour implementation. As the new,
enlarged emulator manual says, VGA is fully emulated. Some of the 256
colour displays can be most impressive.
6.3
Emulator future features
6.3
In one way, though, the emulator is still lacking. As Mike Harrison has
pointed out to me, there is still no support for PC software that drives
the printer and serial ports directly, even on machines with the ‘new’
hardware, which is exactly what the PC software is expecting to drive
(so no emulation is required). This would be almost trivial to implement
and it would enable one to use such things as PC dongles. This must be
implemented in future versions of the emulator. Mike would then be able
to use his Seiko label printer on the A4, but this omission prevents it
working.
6.3
Hopefully, soon there will be a ’286 emulation so that Windows 3.1 can
be run.
6.3
’486 cards
6.3
Aleph One are now also producing PC486 cards. As with the ’386, these
come with a choice of one or 4Mb of RAM. The CPU is a Cyrix ’486SLC
which is pin-for-pin compatible with the ’386SX. However, as with a
regular ’486, it has a 1Kb on-chip RAM cache and a few more instruc
tions, specifically related to the cache. Unlike the full-blown ’486
chip, however, but like the ’486SX, there is no built-in floating point
coprocessor. Also, as with the ’386PC card, there is a socket on the
board for this. I am fortunate enough to have one of these cards but I
await the arrival of the FPU before installing it. I understand that the
performance should match a ’386 running at 50MHz! With the soon-to-be-
released Windows drivers, this should be quite an impressive product.
There is also CD-ROM support provided with the software.
6.3
RAM waste
6.3
I now have 4Mb of RAM in my PC386 card. I need to have this amount of
RAM (the maximum the card will support) so that I can run some large
Windows applications. So far, I have not quite got them running yet but
one thing is patently clear: it is a gross extravagance to have 4Mb of
RAM tied up solely in the service of the PC card. What is needed is for
some well-meaning individual to write the code to use this memory as a
RAM disk when the ’386 CPU is not being used. I believe something along
these lines was done for the BBC Master 512 card although I am not sure
if it ever saw the light of day. There is the complication of what
happens to the “disk” if the ’386 is subsequently turned on, but I am
sure that could be sorted out. If such a software application were
available, I am sure the 4Mb option would be more attractive for many
users.
6.3
RAM as virtual RAM
6.3
There is also a converse side to this argument. Windows makes extensive
use of virtual memory, by swapping chunks of data between RAM and disc.
So, fundamentally, you should never require more than 4Mb of PC RAM
(which is the limit on the present Aleph One PC cards). However, the
swapping will slow the system down. A solution is to configure one of
the “hard disc partitions” to be the Archimedes RAM filing system. Of
course, this is slower than direct on-card RAM but it is faster than
hard disc operations.
6.3
There are a number of limitations to this scheme however. Firstly, the
maximum size of RAM disc allowed by RISC-OS is 4Mb. Secondly, for some
reason the DOS FDISK command recognises that it is not looking at a real
disc and so it will not initialize the partition. What you must do is to
create a 4Mb partition on disc and initialise and format it before
copying it to RAM. Thirdly, there is the limitation of two hard disc
partitions so now you only have one left. However, if the RAM disc is
drive C, containing the DOS files, then the operation is blindingly
fast.
6.3
Ideally, a compressed version of the drive C (containing only DOS and
the empty swap area) could be stored in the PC application. This could
then be decompressed and loaded into the newly created RISC-OS RAM
filing system as part of the PC card’s boot sequence.
6.3
Also, such a scheme would provide some means of virus protection since
the DOS operating system is always freshly loaded from disc and the disc
need never be written to. In this way, the virtual RAM is provided by
real RAM from the host computer.
6.3
A4 report
6.3
So far, two readers have written to me reporting problems with their A4
machines hanging up in a manner vaguely similar to mine. Are there any
others out there? I suppose one consideration is that there are still
not many A4s around. Funnily enough, I have not had a hang for some time
(except on one occasion when the machine would not turn on). The only
explanation I can think of is that, in my initial euphoria, I was using
the A4 in the bath, (Archimedes would be proud of you, Brian! Ed.) in
traffic jams driving to work and in boring meetings. However, having
seen how rapidly the battery discharges, I now almost always use it
connected to the mains − using my long extension power lead. Maybe hang-
ups only occur with battery-only operation.
6.3
One reader found that his machine seemed to freeze after turning it on.
The other reader stated that his problems were particularly when using
the floppy disc drive with the PC emulator. His problems went away when
he switched off interactive file copying.
6.3
Portable patches
6.3
Quite a few of the common complaints concerning features of the A4 can
be alleviated with small software patches, often using relocatable
modules or sprite files. One may, in this way, change the functions of
various keys, alter pointers, etc. In the September issue of Archive,
Paul mentioned that he had created an enlarged screen pointer and
blackened up the Impression, pointer caret. I am sure other A4 users
must have written code for these machines. If there is demand, I will
collate any offerings to produce an A4 utilities shareware or careware
disc. Mike Harrison has made the point to me that it would be more
sensible if the display blanking, and the hard disc spin-down, were
inhibited when external power is plugged in. He might produce some code
to do this.
6.3
I have created an Impression function key strip for the A4 and I include
it on this month’s magazine disc. This is an Impression document and
readers will be able to edit it to create function strips for their
favourite applications. It is quite wide and utilises the facility of my
Laser Direct printer to print quite close to the edge of the paper −
beware!
6.3
CPU choice
6.3
I had been wondering why Acorn did not use the ARM 250 in their portable
machine. It seemed to me that that would provide the ultimate in size
reduction. Certainly performance would be reduced and expansion options
would be severely limited (although no one so far seems prepared to make
either an 8Mb RAM upgrade or a SCSI interface). However, there are also
VIDC considerations. Apparently the ARM 250‘s internal VIDC does not
provide access to the extra video lines necessary to drive the port
able’s LCD display.
6.3
New VIDC launched
6.3
Talking of VIDCs, the much-rumoured new VIDC chip has been officially
launched by ARM Ltd. It is known as the VIDC20 and Acorn have stated
that they will be using it in “future machines”. One wonders how this
will sit in relation to the various video enhancer boards now appearing.
I just hope that the owners of the older machines do not get left
behind. Computer Concepts have the right idea with Artworks (and
presumably Impression) supporting 24 bit colour, but not demanding 24
bit hardware to be present. (See press releases below. Ed.)
6.3
Sinister genius
6.3
I was raving, in the last issue, about the Genius tracker ball as an
alternative to the common mouse. I explained that Atomwide have rewired
the connector for connection to the A4 and that the assembly clips
nicely on the right hand side of the A4‘s case. Of course, left-handed
people (of whom there are a larger proportion than average in the
computer world) would clip the thing to the left side of the case. They
would then find that the lead was not long enough, the pointer moved in
the wrong direction and <select> and <adjust> were interchanged.
6.3
Never let it be said that there is prejudice in the computer world
against minorities; there is now a special version of the Genius for
left-handed people which has a longer lead specially wired so that the
pointer moves in the correct directions and the buttons have their
expected functions. This is quite a sensible thing to do and the
sinister (Latin for left − sorry, my joke!) Genius is easily distin
guished by its longer tail.
6.3
Incidentally, I did not seriously consider using the other tracker ball
(the one from PEP Associates) as this one uses the serial port. That
would use special software, it would tie up the serial port (probably
most required for a modem) and it just seems a complicated way of
solving a simple problem. After all, if the mouse port is provided, one
may as well use it.
6.3
FPU news
6.3
The latest news is that Acorn’s FPU chip should be released in the
“second quarter” of 1993. I understand the tape-up is completed and that
ARM Ltd will be commencing manufacture soon. First samples should be
available by the end of this year − but not to the public.
6.3
ARM3 + FPU upgrades
6.3
In a recent Hardware Column, I set out a challenge: who would be the
first company to sell an ARM3 upgrade board for the older machines which
included a socket for the FPU. Well, Simtec Electronics (0772−812863)
have come up with the goods, and at a reasonable price: £175 plus VAT.
They are selling an upgrade board containing a 25MHz ARM3 with an empty
socket so that when the FPU appears, it can be plugged in directly. It
is a beautifully made product with a proper plug (as on the Aleph One
ARM3 upgrade) which fits into the vacated ARM2 socket. The acid test
will have to wait for the appearance of the FPA chip although, of
course, then one will need the relevant software to support it. However,
I am not sure what the licensing situation for the FPA support software
will be. My guess is that the actual chip will cost between £75 and £150
but one may well have to purchase the software from Acorn (in the form
of a cut-down floating point emulator) on top of this.
6.3
Users of Acorn’s old floating point coprocessor card will recall that it
was necessary to provide software support for the floating point
operations which the actual FP chip still did not do. I understand that
the new FPU chip is remarkable in a number of ways. On the positive
side, the speed increase in its floating point operations is supposed to
be quite staggering − of the order of 1,000 times. On the negative side,
all it does is the elementary operations of addition, subtraction,
multiplication and division. Transcendentals and scaling of numerical
arguments to their proper interval are still done with the software
support by splitting them up into the elementary operations and passing
them to the hardware.
6.3
SCSI cards
6.3
There is an increasing selection of SCSI cards available for the
Archimedes owner. I have experience of using three: the standard Acorn
card, Oak’s SCSI card and the model produced by Lindis. The adverts
emphasise two main features: speed and the possible existence of an on-
board RAM cache. However, from experience, there is another considera
tion of importance, namely the software and the implementation of the
SCSI filing system.
6.3
My A540 came with an Acorn SCSI card. This functioned very well − after
all, the Acorn card sets the standard. However, I was disappointed with
with various features of the Acorn interface when using SyQuest
removable discs. Firstly, there was no real support for removable hard
discs and secondly, the various formatting programs laid down slightly
different boot sectors. In particular, the Oak card’s formatter writes
information of particular use to removable discs. I found the Oak
interface so much more convenient in use that I don’t use the Acorn card
any more. The lesson here is that the software/firmware is important to
consider when deciding which card to purchase. It should, however, be
emphasised that only the Acorn card (to the best of my knowledge) can be
used if one is running Unix.
6.3
Although I have not seen it, there is now an interface card from Arxe
Systems which combines a SCSI interface with support for a high density
floppy disc drive. I am sure that the hardware is superb; what remains
to be seen is how its software functions.
6.3
High density floppy interface
6.3
Last month, I discussed that there were rumours of a high density floppy
disc drive interface which was sufficiently small, and cleverly
designed, that it did not take up a podule slot. Michael Lowe has
written in to say that he saw the advertisement in the April 1992 issue
of Acorn User. It was from a firm called Evolution Computer Ltd,
announcing a HD interface and drive for £85. Unfortunately, Michael has
been unable to contact the company at either of its advertised
addresses. Do any of our readers have any further information? (The
address of Evolution and its UK arm, MAPS Ltd, are in the Factfile at
the back of the magazine. Ed.)
6.3
The bidirectional printer port
6.3
Regular readers of this column will know that I have been extolling the
virtues of the PC compatible bidirectional parallel printer port. I
mentioned in the last issue the range of peripheral devices in the PC
world which are available for connecting to such a port. I omitted to
mention tape streamers and I have now discovered hard disc drives and
even floppy drives which can be connected directly to this port. On a
PC, one of these devices would appear as an ordinary “drive” and the
software is designed to keep things as simple as this.
6.3
Mike Harrison has been looking into the software situation from the
Archimedes end, for using the printer port of RISC-OS machines with the
new hardware, as I mentioned above, in connection with the PC emulator.
He was rather disappointed by the apparent lack of software support in
RISC-OS 3.1 for driving the PC type interfaces at anything other than
the standard addresses. The only obvious provision for this seems to be
for an alternative IDE controller.
6.3
RISC-OS 3.1 upgrades
6.3
The operating system upgrades are now available and there are various
versions. The cheapest is the A5000 upgrade kit, and readers may be
wondering whether they can use the chips from that kit on the other
Archimedes machines. The answer is that you could in theory but by doing
so, you would be specifically breaking Acorn’s licensing agreement − and
it would be taking unfair advantage of them. The £20 you pay for the
A5000 upgrade is for the upgrade from RISC-OS 3.0 to RISC-OS 3.10 and
NOT from RISC-OS 2.0 to RISC-OS 3.10. Using the A5000 version on other
computers would be akin to borrowing a copy of version 2.10 of Impres
sion in order to get CC to give you a version 2.17 when you had only
ever bought Impression version 1.
6.3
ARM 3 upgrades and RISC-OS 3
6.3
Under RISC-OS 2, if you installed an ARM 3 upgrade to one of the ARM 2
machines you needed to run a special software application to turn the
cache on. This is all taken care of with RISC-OS 3 which includes cache
control in the operating system. I found my various Aleph One ARM 3
upgrades and the one from Simtec (mentioned above) all functioned
perfectly when their machines were upgraded to RISC-OS 3.  A
6.3
A press release from Acorn about the new VIDC chip... Acorn has welcomed
the announcement from Advanced RISC Machines Ltd of its VIDC20 video
controller which has been designed to meet the needs of a wide range of
video systems, from power-sensitive portable computers through to
desktop multimedia workstations and from graphics accelerators to games
systems.
6.3
This versatile controller can display at up to 16 million colours at
VGA, Super VGA or XGA levels of resolution. Its low power architecture
will drive the LCD screen of a portable computer directly whilst
preserving battery life. It can be used to generate up to 32 bits per
pixel at data rates of up to 160Mb/s.
6.3
As well as providing a programmable display system, the chip also has
sophisticated audio support. The device is fully compatible with the
previous VIDC capabilities, providing up to eight channels of stereo
sound. For higher quality multi-media applications requiring both sound
and vision, the design provides a straightforward interface to dedicated
sound controllers.
6.3
Acorn Computers’ Technical Director, Malcolm Bird confirmed that Acorn
was fully involved in the specification for ARM’s new graphics control
ler with a view to it being used in future products. “The VIDC20 is one
in a new series of high performance chips from ARM Ltd that keeps the
ARM component set at the forefront of cost effective technology. We are
leading the test validation programme for the device and anticipate
including it in future generations of computers”, he said.
6.3
Here are parts of a press release from ARM Ltd that give more technical
details about the new VIDC chip... ...the VIDC20 is a high performance
video controller that consumes very little power (typically 0.3W)...
...other features include a hardware cursor, programmable pixel rates
and an on-chip sound system.
6.3
VIDC20‘s low power architecture will drive the LCD screen of a portable
computer directly, whilst preserving battery life, using a patented 16-
level grey scale algorithm to give high quality picture rendition.
However, VIDC20 is also capable of directly driving a colour CRT,
allowing the same portable computer to use a colour monitor on the desk
without additional components. The power management techniques ensure
that functions not in use, such as the video digital to analogue
converters (DAC) and sound DACs do not consume power. In addition, the
on-board palette has been segmented so that only one eighth is enabled
at any one time.
6.3
VIDC20 was designed with the needs for higher levels of display
resolution in mind. The chip can be used to generate 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 and
32-bits/pixel formats at data rates of up to 160Mb/s. The on-board 8-bit
linear DACs give a total of 16 million possible colours at rates of up
to 100MHz and drive doubly terminated 75R lines directly. The inclusion
of an on-chip phase comparator, when used with a voltage controlled
oscillator (VCO), allows a single reference clock to generate all of the
frequencies for any display mode.
6.3
VIDC20 also supports a hardware cursor in all of its modes − high
resolution, interlace and LCD. By offering cursor support on-chip, the
designer benefits from higher performance and lower software overhead
resulting in a better “look and feel” for the user. The cursor is 32
pixels wide, an unlimited number of pixels high and can be displayed in
4 colours from its own 28-bit wide palette.
6.3
As well as providing a programmable display system, the chip also
supports two different sound systems. An on-chip system incorporates an
8-bit µ-law DAC providing up to eight channels of stereo sound. A 32-bit
serial sound interface output enables the connection of external CD
DACs. The on-chip sound system makes the development of powerful, yet
low chip-count, X-terminal controllers straightforward. For higher
quality multi-media applications requiring both sound and vision, the
design provides a straight-forward interface.  A
6.3
ICS
6.3
From 6.2 page 32
6.3
Language Column
6.3
David Wild
6.3
I was very interested to see Gerald Fitton’s remarks, in the last issue
of Archive, about the vast reduction in the amount of time spent
programming these days. Partly, I suppose, this is because software
packages have become much “cleverer” and many of the tasks for which we
would once have written programs can now be done inside a package. This
is probably one of the reasons why the language ‘APL’ didn’t take off in
the way that many of its supporters hoped. Many, though not all, of the
clever facilities for manipulating blocks of data are available in
practically every spreadsheet there is.
6.3
I have written several Turbo Pascal programs at work recently but all
they did was to take the report output from a database package and alter
the format to correspond with that required by the mainframe program to
which the file has to be sent. Although the programs have quite a lot of
detail in them, the only computation in the old sense is the production
of record counts and file totals.
6.3
Another problem these days, especially with the rise of WIMP usage, is
the amount of work required just to be able to accept some data and
print the results. With compiled languages such as ‘C’ and Pascal, there
may be very much more programming in providing a test environment for a
function than there is for the function itself and this can be a
disincentive if there is no compulsion to do the work.
6.3
Something that can help to restore your appetite for programming
experiments is a language like Scheme which is a modern version of LISP.
Ray Burcham, who is in charge of distribution of Scheme in this country,
has sent me a newsletter which says that a WIMP version of Scheme will
be available for the Archimedes in February, and it will cost only £5
more than the present single-tasking version. As this costs less than
£50, it is a very reasonable way of adding to your repertoire. While it
is not a language in which you can write programs for distribution, it
is a marvellous environment for developing algorithms. You can modify
functions “on the fly” and test them by just typing a call with the
appropriate data.
6.3
A recent article in one of the computing weeklies talked about prototyp
ing. The author warned that, although it had many advantages in showing
users what could be done to respond to their needs, it was very
important to ensure that sloppy code from this stage did not get through
to the production phase. A language like Scheme could be very helpful
for this as the algorithms would have to be recoded in one of the
compiled languages anyway.
6.3
One or two readers have already responded to my plea for help in my last
article. Being a ‘C’ novice, I had not appreciated the way the ‘scanf’
statement was specific to a data type, and I am very grateful for the
explanations.
6.3
Michael Kinghan of Oxford wrote a letter, which Paul has put in the
Comment Column on page 44, taking me to task over several aspects of my
article. I must apologise for the typing mistakes in the example program
and can only say that this was caused by typing it quickly without
sufficient checking. When I tried the program I didn’t think that it was
worth keeping and it was only when I came to write the article that I
realised that I could ask you for help and so had to retype it.
6.3
I still don’t understand why the ‘C’ libraries need to be at root level,
and this would still be the case if they were Pascal libraries. Except
for very occasional updating, there seems to be no need for me to get at
them and I would rather they didn’t clutter up the desktop when they are
not needed. What I would have liked was for the installation routine to
ask me where I wanted them to be put, and I would have said in the
directory “languages” with something like the path statements used by
programs like Impression to set the correct root.
6.3
There was no particular disappointment at not making the ‘C’ routines
work with Pascal ‘string’ types; they did work with variables defined as
‘packed array of char’ so I was quite happy with that − perhaps I did
something wrong and I’ll try again sometime.
6.3
It was not the ‘Plib’ library which I dragged in with the file to be
compiled but my own library, and this turned out to be quite convenient
as I could drag ‘aof’ files as well without creating libraries. I
certainly didn’t alter the value of ‘P:’ as the ‘Plib’ library was
linked in again as soon as I took my own library out of the libraries
list. This is another area for experiment but I did get my program
compiled and working satisfactorily.
6.3
I would still like to hear of a method for initialising static vari
ables, and details of any other problems such as some of the ‘ISO-
standard’ functions not working if extensions are enabled. I certainly
like the new compiler and hope that someone will write a proper manual
for it eventually.  A
6.3
Comment Column
6.3
•    Acorn’s marketing policy − I was interested to see the comments by G T
Swain and Ian Lynch (Archive 6.1 p16).
6.3
I, too, get a little tired of the advertised discounts for education. No
one minds a discount for quantity but your current advert for teachers
of a £200 discount on the A4 I find distasteful. Ian quite rightly
points out enthusiasts are an important market niche but they must not
be insulted. They have to use their own hard cash which comes from an
overtaxed income.
6.3
MSDOS. Acorn ignore this at their peril. When I bought my Archimedes, it
represented good value at the price, compared with the PC market. A
small premium on the price was understood and accepted. Today this has
all changed. With the price of a ’486 having fallen to a quarter of what
it was, the competition is fierce and the premium is becoming too high.
6.3
Once upon a time, everyone I worked with had BBC model B’s and then
Masters. The company I work for, a major airline, is working hard to get
everyone computer-minded. Needless to say, all the seminars that the
company have given revolve around PC machines and Windows. Of all the
people I work with, only three that I know of, have Archimedes; all the
rest have junked their BBC’s and bought ’386s or ’486s.
6.3
Many of my colleagues ask me what to buy. What am I to say? We have a
requirement to run some in-house PC programs and the industry standard
is rapidly becoming a ’486 with DOS 5 and Windows 3.1.
6.3
‘Windows is awful’, I hear everyone cry! You know that and I know that
but try telling someone who doesn’t know what a window is. He wants the
comfort of major software packages and something that is ‘standard’. Let
us not delude ourselves.
6.3
The PC Emulator. If you need to fiddle with some text processing on the
side this is fine. As I have said, I have to run an in-house PC program
every month, which takes 15 to 20 minutes to give a result. Every time I
alter the data, even slightly, it’s another 20 minute wait. A slow ’386
takes 3minutes, a ’486 barely takes 30 seconds.
6.3
‘Buy a PC’, I hear Ian say. This is fine and certainly cheaper than the
Aleph expansion card, (even after the price reduction) but what next?
Microsoft are not standing still. They know the shortcomings of their
software and it will change. If I bought a ’486, I would end up selling
my Archimedes and it will be one less customer for Acorn.
6.3
A4 Notebook. I would dearly love to have one, as I could make a great
deal of use of it. However, I can buy a good spec ’486 and a good spec
’386 notebook for almost the same price as the A4. You can see why I
think the premium is getting too high. How can a non-business enthusiast
justify another £2,000, not to mention all the insurance costs, for a
second computer?
6.3
Finally, the headmaster of my son’s school pointed out to me that, as
IBM PC’s are the industry standard, that is what is used in his school.
It is hard to dismiss this logic, particularly with today’s prices of
PC’s.
6.3
If Acorn junked the PC Emulator and supplied the A5000 with an Aleph One
’386 expansion board as standard, the Archimedes would become exceed
ingly attractive.  Eddie Lord, West Sussex.
6.3
•    Battery changing − I recently changed the batteries on my A420 − they
had been in for two years. When I switched on, the hard disc would not
work − the LED just came on and stayed on. In the end, I discovered that
firming in the HD data cables brought it back to life. I tested the old
batteries which gave 5.0A short circuit current and the battery tester
declared their condition as ‘good’!
6.3
The moral of the story? Well, firstly, I don’t think it is necessary to
change the batteries every year as suggested in Archive. Secondly, when
things go wrong, try the obvious things first, like firming the cables.
G Wilcockson, Saffron Walden.
6.3
•    Error messages − Having seen the amusing error message in Archive 6.2
page 8, I thought I might as well send you this one:  ‘Warning! Stray
debugging code detected. This machine will self-destruct in ten seconds.
Awooooga! Awooooga!’.
6.3
I found it in the Impression II file ‘Impress. Resources.uk’ and I have
only been able to make it appear by altering the error message code to
something like ‘InTi:’ and then selecting ‘Document − Info...’ from the
main menu. Note, you will have to restart Impression for it to load the
new message file ... Well I thought it was amusing...  Philip Lardner,
Co. Wicklow, Ireland.
6.3
•    Flopticals − As a back up medium, these seem ideal to me, particularly
as the prices will fall. (Discs are already down to £15 each). I chatted
to the man from Morley, who told me that floptical drives have a piece
of code written into the drive software that prevents them being used
without a software key − built into the SCSI board. Can I use an Acorn
SCSI board? − “no” Morley said. Why not? “Talk to Acorn” they said.
After much to’ing and fro’ing I got nowhere until I talked to Hugo of
Serial Port fame.
6.3
He confirmed the software lock problem and promptly showed me a
Floptical working on an A540 with Acorn SCSI board. Serial Port provide
a program that does the unlocking and allows the use of the Acorn SCSI
board. They indicated that this is available separately so that the
Floptical can be sourced elsewhere.
6.3
I look forward to next year’s Acorn User Show − definitely worth a
visit.  Eddie Lord, W. Sussex.
6.3
•    Impression Junior upgrades − Trick or Treat? Archive has stated (e.g.
4.2 p33) that Computer Concepts will upgrade Impression Junior to
Impression 2 “for the difference in cost”. Please note that this is not
the £90 difference in Archive’s advertised prices but £117.50, the
difference between Computer Concepts’ list prices. I probably would not
have purchased Impression Junior if I had known this to be the case, and
feel tricked into forking out an extra £27.50 needlessly. Instead, I
probably would have gone for the full package in the first place. I had
been contemplating this for a while before Impression Junior came along,
only being put off by the unpalatable dongle.
6.3
Having said that, Impression 2 is a treat to work with and I am pleased
that I have the full version. Impression Junior lacked just the features
I wanted. Am I overly suspicious in asking myself whether this was by
chance or design?  John Savage, Leighton Buzzard.
6.3
(I would assume it was by design. If I were supplying a cut-down version
at a cut-down price, I would keep the best features for the full
version, wouldn’t you? Ed.)
6.3
•    Language Column − David Wild in his last two Language Columns has
appeared to be having some aggravation with Desktop C and Desktop
Pascal.
6.3
October issue: David was disgruntled with the Desktop C installation for
placing a number of directories under $, rather than somewhere more out
of the way: “...for instance... the ‘Clib’ directory, to which I am
hardly ever going to need access...”
6.3
It may help him to reflect that his position is atypical. He has bought
a £240 C Development platform in order to write Pascal programs. One can
understand why he would like the C compiler’s resources to keep a low
profile, and also understand why they don’t! The Desktop C installation
creates four top level directories and their placement seems suitable
from a C programmer’s perspective. $.CLib, of which David specifically
complains, contains the Standard C Library (.o) and its headers (.h). To
C programmers, the Standard headers represent an online implementation
manual that is guaranteed to be true; so they like to have them handy (I
keep Clib on my Backdrop). The same goes for $.Risc_OSLib which contains
the RISC-OS Library and its headers.
6.3
David’s idea that the offending C directories might “hidden away
somewhere... with the correct paths maintained in... the DDE !Boot
application” is feasible and has been implemented. For the DDE C
compiler, the correct paths are maintained in (none other than) the DDE
!Boot application in the assignments to C$Path and C$Libroot. The
resources can be placed anywhere, as long as these variables point at
them. This works for DDE Pascal too. The only C resources it uses are
Stubs and Risc_OSLib and it looks for them on C$Path by default.
6.3
November issue: David could not get the Pascal compiler to find the Plib
library when he specified a library of his own in the Libraries option
of the compiler menu − not even when he specified Plib at the same time.
He was obliged to drag Plib onto the compiler dialogue. I have to report
that I am unable to reproduce this bug. Plib resides in <Pascal$Dir>.o,
and the link step finds it there automatically as long as P: remains set
to <Pascal$Dir> − and the !Pascal.!Run file sees to that. I have linked
my own development library, as well as Stubs, with Pascal programs via
the Libraries option without any hitches. I suggest that David has
accidentally or mistakenly assigned some path to P: in the course of his
experiments which does not, in fact, contain the Plib library. This
seems powerfully indicated by the fact that if P: is correctly set,
specifying P:o.Plib in the Libraries option, as David says he did,
causes that library to be included twice at linktime − because it is
included by default. The linker responds with a “duplicate file ignored”
warning which David would probably have mentioned had he seen it.
6.3
November issue: Disappointment with C Library functions that “are
defined to work on strings”. When called with Pascal string arguments,
the compiler threw a type mismatch error. The arguments had to be
redefined as packed arrays of char. I have not been able to reproduce
this difficulty either but, without David’s code, I cannot determine
just what he did. The following Pascal program calls two string
functions from the Standard C Library with Pascal string arguments.
Maybe it will make everything clear:
6.3
program bigears;
6.3
function strcmp(s1: string; s2: string) : integer; extern;
6.3
(* The Standard C Library function strcmp() compares s1 with s2
6.3
   returning an int less than, equal to or greater than 0
6.3
   according as s1 is less than, equal to or greater than s2 *)
6.3

6.3
procedure strcpy(s1: string; s2: string); extern;
6.3
(* The Standard C Library function strcpy() copies s1 to s2 *)
6.3

6.3
procedure compare(s1: string; s2: string);
6.3
begin
6.3
    writeln(‘s1 = ’,s1);
6.3
    writeln(‘s2 = ’,s2);
6.3
    if strcmp(s1,s2) = 0 then writeln(‘s1 = s2’)
6.3
    else writeln(‘s1 <> s2’);
6.3
end;
6.3

6.3
procedure noddy;
6.3
var   s1, s2 : string;
6.3
begin
6.3
    s1 := ‘Mike’;
6.3
    s2 := ‘Kinghan’;
6.3
    compare(s1,s2);
6.3
    strcpy(s2,s1);
6.3
    compare(s1,s2);
6.3
end;
6.3

6.3
begin
6.3
    noddy;
6.3
end.
6.3
November issue: Problems with a little demonstration program from Donald
Alcock’s “Illustrating C”. The program is supposed to calculate interest
payments given a principal, an annual rate and a term. (a) Desktop C
died trying to compile it until calls to the power function pow() were
pulled from their original context. (b) Then it issued “lack of
precision” warnings but produced correct results. (c) Lastly, David
noticed that the power function is defined for double-float arguments,
while the program passes merely floats; but when he corrected this the
results were preposterously huge.
6.3
(a) This is a bug in the compiler’s elimination of common subexpres
sions. It needs to be reported to Acorn: I will leave that to David. To
explain, the compiler is trying to make good the inefficiency of Donald
Alcock’s code where he calculates the (very expensive) function
pow(1+R,N) twice within the same expression with identical values. The
compiler wants to hoist this calculation out and perform it just once
before evaluating the expression. Usually it succeeds but occasionally
it bites off more than it can chew.
6.3
There are two remedies. The efficient one is to do what David says he
did and eliminate the common subexpression by hand. The slack one is to
code #pragma no_optimise_cse at the top of the program. This just
disables common subexpression elimination. CSE optimisation does not
seem to be a strong point with the current C compiler. Back in the
spring, I reported another bug to Acorn that had the same cause. I had
been using the compiler for about 6 months before being bitten but it is
second nature to me not to code common subexpressions in the first place
because they are wantonly inefficient: I raised the bug by deliberating
using common subexpressions to detect signed integer overflow in certain
special cases. CSE problems very rarely cause the compiler to ‘abnormal
end’, as in David’s tale; but be grateful when they do! What I got was a
clean compile and a program whose behaviour was inscrutable nonsense.
Nonsense, moreover, that I could not reproduce in the debugger...
because the debug compile option silently disables CSE optimisation. To
anyone who doubts they have the strength for experiences like this, I
recommend they always enforce #pragma no_optimise _cse and rely on the
optimiser between their ears. Just one more bitter word on this topic:
the C manual (p378) prescribes the relevant directive as #pragma
nooptimise_cse. That is wrong: no_optimise_cse is right.
6.3
(b) The warnings do not signify lack of precision. They say “lower
precision in wider context <operator>”, and mean that an arithmetic or
logical context is forcing values to widen in order to balance the
operands to <operator> (i.e. to bring them to a common type). These
complaints are caused by Donald Alcock’s casual coding, in which both
integer constants and float variables are used as operands to double
float arithmetic. The warnings are saying: “If you really want wider
types at this point why don’t you say so?” If 12 and 1 are changed to
12.0 and 1.0 respectively they will be parsed as double float in the
first instance: declaring the float variables as double instead gets rid
of the remaining warnings.
6.3
(c) There is no need to ensure that arguments to the pow() function are
declared as double rather than float. The precision warnings make it
clear that this is not the problem. The C maths functions are all
defined for double float parameters and compilers automatically promote
float arguments to double. (The nuisance in fact lies in the difficulty
of doing single float maths when that is all you want.) The absurdly
huge results obtained by changing the float variables to double are
caused by neglecting the corresponding changes that need to be made to
the format specifiers in the scanf() function. These were left as “%f”,
which means “read a single precision (32-bit) float”, when what we now
want to read is a double precision (64-bit) float; so single precision
values are copied into the high-order words of double precision
variables giving garbage quantities that naturally tend to be big.
Change “%f” to “%lf” in the scanf() function − that means “read a double
float” − and the program is again correct.
6.3
A parting word to the editor: Can I stress the importance of correctly
transcribing program code for the magazine? Most of the folk who type in
listings are beginners and they can be baffled and frustrated by
transcription errors that they can’t understand. The dozen or so
statements in David’s program as published contain several errors that I
assume were introduced by transcription, since any of them would have
prevented David from compiling the program. There is no substitute for
getting program code in machine readable form and leaving it unedited
throughout the publication process. If you have to transcribe or edit
it, it really should be rekeyed and compiled from early proofs, and the
very least that should let you sleep at night is to have it proof-read
by a programmer in the relevant language. Here is a rendering that will
compile spotlessly and execute correctly IF YOU DON’T CHANGE IT:
6.3
#include <stdio.h>
6.3
#include <math.h>
6.3

6.3
int main(void)
6.3
{p , Rpct, R, M, power;
6.3
    int N;
6.3

6.3
    printf(“\nEnter: Principal, Rate, No. of yrs.\n”);
6.3
    scanf(“%lf %lf %i”, &P, &Rpct, &N);
6.3
    R=Rpct/100;
6.3
    power=pow(1.00+R,N);
6.3
    M=P*R*power/(12.00*(power-1.00));
6.3
    printf(“\n£%1.2f,@%1.2f %% costs £%1.2f over %i years”,P,Rpct,M,N);
6.3
    printf(“\nPayments will total £%1.2f\n”,12.00*M*N);
6.3
    return 0;
6.3
}
6.3
Mike Kinghan, Oxford
6.3

6.3
(OK, I’ll try to do better next time. David Wild, in the Language Column
on page 42, accepts some of the blame, too. Ed.)
6.3
•    Magic Moments by Richard Fallas... Paul has a problem. The weight of
Archive is (almost) literally pressing on his shoulders because of the
vast numbers of back-issues stored over his and his gallant staff’s
heads.
6.3
He is, understandably, concerned that the floor might not be capable of
providing continued support to all the unread pearls of wisdom accumu
lated above. Can we help? Yes! Buy back-issues. Can the Archimedes
(sorry, Acorn-acronymous-processing-machine) help? Possibly.
6.3
Let’s see if we can provide some reassurance by using the computer.
First of all, a bit of general background to what makes a floor stay up.
The floor is likely to be constructed of softwood joists (i.e. beams)
placed parallel to each other and spanning between two walls (let’s say
175mm × 50mm at 400mm centres spanning 3m). The capacity of the joists
is limited by several factors, e.g. shear and bending capacity,
deflection, etc. The most important two in domestic cases are likely to
be bending and deflection.
6.3
The job required of the joists is to carry the load above, but what
load? Well, there is the weight of the floor itself called the Dead
Load, likely to be of the order of 0.5 to 0.6 KN/m2. That reads “kilo
Newtons per square metre” − remember Isaac being bopped on the head by
an apple? A Newton is 100grammes x 9.81 m/s2 i.e. about ¼ lb, i.e. about
1 apple!
6.3
Next comes the Live Load, i.e. anything which can be removed. This has
to cover Archive staff, their furniture and the odd magazine or two they
leave lying around! In normal domestic cases, 1.5KN/m2 is used for
design.
6.3
A slight digression now: different types of building material are
considered in one of two ways for design, namely Safe and Ultimate. In
steel, for example, stresses used are those at the ultimate state, i.e.
when the beam buckles or bends in failure. Loads are factored up to
achieve an overall Safety Factor. Timber, by contrast, is currently
designed using Safe Working Stresses but with the actual loads expected.
The two methods give similar, but not identical, answers.
6.3
As this is a timber floor (we think) we will use the loads as they are
and restrict our stresses to “Safe” values. Here we have more variables
which affect our calculation: number of members acting together,
duration of load, type of wood, moisture content, etc, etc. Generally,
however, we can say that good softwood will safely sustain a bending
stress of 5.3N/mm2. This can be increased by 1.1 as we have several
joists acting together.
6.3
So to a design (or more accurately analysis)... Maximum Bending Moment
of a uniformly loaded beam is given by w × l2 / 8 (load per m times span
squared over 8). Bending Stress of a rectangular beam is given by
Bending Moment / Section modulus, z, where z = b × d2 / 6 (breadth times
depth squared over 6).
6.3
If you are still awake, you will see that we need to compare these
various elements in some way to see if Paul is now sitting with a pile
of rubble around him. Perhaps the best way is to calculate Moment of
Resistance and hope it is greater than Applied Moment. This is OK for
one case with all the variables known. If, however, we want to find what
the capacity is, with possible sizes, spacing and spans, etc, a
spreadsheet is an obvious way forward. Included on the monthly program
disc is a PipeDream template file which offers a means of altering the
variables and giving immediate results.
6.3
To pursue the one example, however, the sum goes as shown in the box at
the foot of the page.
6.3
If the values are as I have guessed, Paul now has a means of assessing
the risk of working downstairs. The template gives deflection values
which I won’t go into here. Of course, the example assumes uniform
loading and I know Paul has moved his magazines close to the walls. This
is too complex to deal with here but if he sends me a sketch with layout
and dimensions, I would be happy to check it further for him. The
template is able to cope with a distributed load which only applies to
part of the joist. Meanwhile, I hope this brief discourse into
Structural Engineering on the Archimedes has been of passing interest.
Anyone care to explore Nuclear Fusion or Relativity for us?
6.3
(That was an interesting aside − thanks, Richard. The template, plus
instructions, are on the monthly program disc. The magazines? Well, I
chickened out. I hired an industrial storage unit and moved the excess
magazines out. The removal company who did all the hard work reckoned
that they moved about 4½ tons down the stairs and out of the loading
bay. Now that’s what I call a weight off my mind!! Ed.)
6.3
•    Pocket Book article addition − It would appear that there has been
some confusion about the hardware information in the Pocket Book article
from Archive 6.2 p61. The following is an excerpt from a letter by Chris
Parker:
6.3
“... the paragraph which discusses hardware differences seems to imply
that you can only use the 3-Link with an Archimedes if you run the PC
Emulator and make a few wiring changes.
6.3
“... you only need to make wiring changes and run the PC Emulator if you
want to run the...PC or Mac software supplied with the 3-Link. My Series
3 is connected to the serial port of my Archimedes with no wiring
changes. To transfer files from the Psion to the Archimedes, I use a PD
program called ‘DownLoad’... by Emmet Spier. To transfer files and OPL
Source Code from the Archimedes to the Psion I use the one-liner
Filer_OpenDir serial: cunningly disguised as an application.
6.3
“... the Psion does not appear as a filing system on the Archimedes but
files transfer in both directions...”  Chris Parker
6.3
•    Reviewing standards − I must say that I’m not too happy at the way in
which some of your review writers start their reviews. They often do not
clearly state what they are writing about. A typical example is the
review of Starch in Archive 6.2 page 64.
6.3
I may be teaching my grandma to suck eggs but the first paragraph of any
review should inform the reader of the name of the product, what it IS,
i.e. hardware or software, briefly what it is supposed to do, how much
it costs and who manufactures it. The second paragraph should outline
some of the ‘amazing’ features, or lack of, that make it such a
worthwhile buy, or why you wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole. It
should then go on in an informative fashion about the pros and cons of
the product and wind up with a brief conclusion which should summarise
the most important points made in the body of the review. It is the
editor’s job to cut out all the waffle and leave the reader in a
position to compare the product against similar ones. All too often,
Archive reviews fail miserably to do this and I for one do not have the
time to read badly written reviews. Perhaps you could give potential
reviewers an outline of how a review should be written, or print an
article in Archive to this purpose.  Philip Lardner, Co. Wicklow,
Ireland.
6.3
Thanks, Philip. Your comments should help to point reviewers in the
right direction. The article on page 57 should also help. Ed.  A
6.3
Actual Live Load (say) : 1 Archive = 120g approx. ( = 1.2N)
6.3
Area = 0.21 × 0.15
6.3
hence for 1m2, “Archive” Load = 1.2/(0.21 × 0.15) = 38 N/m2/mag.
6.3
if in piles 20 magazines high, Archive Load = 0.76 KN/m2
6.3
if in piles 40 high, Archive Load = 1.52 KN/m2 (i.e. our Limit)
6.3
Applied Moment = (1.52 + 0.6) × 0.4 (spacing) × 3 × 3 / 8 = 0.954 KN.m
6.3
Moment of Resistance = 5.3 × 1.1 × 50 × 175 × 175 / 6 × 106 = 1.48 KN.m
6.3
hence,.....     M. o. R. > App. M. equals happiness.
6.3
Ovation Column
6.3
Maurice Edmundson
6.3
To my surprise, in the November issue of Archive a number of contribu
tors had cogent things to say about Ovation. Richard Hallas’ comments
were especially useful and many of the points he made are those I plan
to deal with more fully in this and later articles.
6.3
Text frames, picture frames and lines in Ovation are referred to as
“objects” and this option in the main menu leads to an object sub-menu
with a dozen tools for manipulating them in one way or another. The
labelling of these tools is automatically changed according to the
nature of the object selected. They give the user great flexibility when
planning a document.
6.3
However, before giving some examples of use, I want to refer to the View
option in the main menu and to the two choices Show Rulers and Units.
Usually you will probably find millimetres (mm) a suitable choice for
units, but you can also choose inches (“ or in) and points (pt). Ovation
uses units in an intelligent way. If you have globally selected mm with
the Units option but, at some stage, in your work, you require one
dimension in points, then by entering the numerical value followed by
pt, Ovation will correctly interpret this temporary special value in
points. Similarly, if you add ” or in after the number, it would assume
these to be inches. This is a great help in some situations and I will
give examples later. For now, I assume the Units are mm and Show Rulers
is selected so that on screen, there is a ruler marked in centimetres
and millimetres around the left and top borders of the document window.
6.3
If you are inserting a frame or line into the document, the ruler
assists in placing it at the correct position and also in drawing it to
the correct size. Once the frame tool is highlighted, short red markers
on the ruler show exactly where the mouse pointer is and hence where the
top left corner of the frame will be. As the mouse moves and the frame
is opened, these red indicators move and you can judge the width and
height of the frame quite accurately. Final adjustments can be made in
one of several ways. For accuracy to a fraction of a millimetre, not
only for the size of the frame but just where it is on the page, select
Modify Frame from the Object menu and write all the dimensions in the
dialogue box. If visual accuracy is sufficient, once the frames are on
the page and of a suitable size, with the mouse pointer over the frame,
clicking <adjust> will permit the frames to be slid very quickly about
the page into what you judge is the best layout. If <shift> is pressed
at the same time, the movement is constrained to the vertical or
horizontal. For these moves, the mouse pointer is replaced with a “move”
symbol.
6.3
The rulers also permit adding guidelines to the page and, providing the
feature is ticked, in the Object menu, frames and lines will snap to
guidelines when drawn close to them. (Used in the chess board example
below.)
6.3
I will make brief mention of a couple of special points about picture
frames which we will probably return to again in a later article. When a
sprite is loaded into a picture frame, with the pointer over the
picture, pressing <select> moves the picture within the frame but does
not move the frame. Draw a small text frame inside the picture frame (a
nested frame), prepare a suitable font and type in the caption to the
picture. With the pointer over the caption press <adjust> to position it
accurately; with the pointer over the picture, press <adjust> to move
the picture into position on the page. The nested caption moves with it
and retains its correct relative position. This method is better than
writing the caption externally beneath the picture.
6.3
The Modify Frame option also has a write-box for varying the angle of
the picture within the frame. Entering 70 would tip the picture
backwards by 70° and entering 320 would tip it forwards by 40°. Rotation
of sprites and draw files is only possible if you have RISC-OS 3.1 and
then may only be printed if your printer (such as directly driven
lasers) can cope with rotations.
6.3
If <shift> is pressed just before drawing a frame, it will automatically
be drawn as a square whatever size you wish to make it. If you start to
draw a frame and then feel you have started at the wrong point,
returning the mouse pointer to the point you started from and releasing
<select> will annul the frame (or press <Escape> at any position); the
frame can be started from another point immediately. A border (one of
many styles supplied or make up your own in !Paint) can be added to the
frame.
6.3
A very important tool in this versatile list, is the Duplicate Object
function. A worked example will best illustrate all the things I have
described. Consider the design of a chess board. Guidelines will also be
helpful in this exercise. They will assist with the final border around
the whole board. Open a document window with the rulers visible, and
move the mouse pointer on to the top ruler. Press <select> (or <adjust>)
and the vertical guideline appears. Slide this to the 20mm point and
release. Repeat along the side ruler to give a horizontal guideline 20mm
down. Snap to Guides in the Object menu should be ticked.
6.3
Draw a picture frame exactly 20 × 20mm where the guidelines intersect.
(Remember pressing <shift> forces a square). Select Duplicate Frame from
the Object menu. The following default dialogue box appears.
6.3

6.3
We are going to position all the white squares on the page. First create
the top line of white squares. The “number of times” will be 3 (we have
1 and require 3 more). We do not want any vertical offset but we want
the top left corner of each duplicate square to be positioned two square
widths away from its parent, i.e. its own width plus the width of the
intermediate black square. Therefore set horizontal offset to 40mm.
Click on OK and they appear as if by magic! Repeat for the left hand
vertical column. Here the vertical offset is 40mm and the horizontal
offset is 0mm. Now duplicate each of the top line squares downwards in
threes. Next duplicate the top left corner square once with 20mm
horizontal and 20mm vertical offset. Here is a view of a portion of the
screen at this stage.
6.3

6.3
Finally, duplicate this square in threes horizontally and vertically and
all the white squares are completed.
6.3

6.3
Returning to the top left corner, duplicate once with a 20mm horizontal
shift and then, from the Modify Frame dialogue box, change its colour to
black or grey.
6.3
This square is then duplicated in exactly the same way as the white
squares, to fill the chess board with the black squares. Because we have
used picture frames, if you have chess-piece sprites, they can be loaded
into the sq uares as required. Their size (scale) can be adjusted from
the Modify Frame dialogue box by changing the values in the two write
slots called X-scale and Y-scale. Now add guidelines exactly along the
right hand and lower edges of the board. so that the whole board is
framed with the guidelines. Draw one large picture frame around the
whole board, allowing it to snap to the guidelines. From Modify Frame
give it a border 2mm thick and make the frame transparent.
6.3
In cold print, all this may sound a little tedious and complicated but I
have put it forward as an exercise to illustrate the great versatility
of the Ovation frame system and, in practice, the whole chess board can
be drawn in a few minutes. From the View menu select Hide Guidelines to
check all is well before printing. This is a reduced view of part of the
printout from my ArcLaser.
6.3

6.3
The Duplicate Object function is ideal for producing all kinds of
tickets, membership cards, compliment slips and so forth. It is even
possible to produce numbered tickets, without too much trouble. Since we
are duplicating an object, not just a frame, everything contained within
the frame is duplicated as well. To assist with the final cutting of the
printed A4 sheets, it is best to choose ticket sizes which fit the sheet
exactly, not forgetting that outside margins of around 8 mm represent
the print limits for most printers.
6.3
I give an example of a numbered membership ticket to illustrate all the
techniques. I shall make it 105mm × 74.25mm which will give eight per A4
page and they will be very easy to guillotine along the major axes into
individual tickets. Use New Document to define a page with 8mm margins
all round. If you do not require numbered tickets, work on the Document
page. If you do require numbers, everything that follows is carried out
on the Master page. Near the top left corner draw a text frame about
85mm × 55mm a few mm inside the main frame. Add a 0.5mm border then
modify the frame to exactly X=8mm; Y=8mm; W=89mm; Ht=58.25mm. This will
not only make the frame the correct size but move it right into the
corner of the main frame. When borders are drawn around the outside of
frames, their dimensions are increased by the width of the border all
round. This must be taken into account when duplicating frames with
borders. In this instance, had the frame been placed in the corner
before the border was added, you would have been given an error message
saying that there was not enough room for the border. (It must remain
within the main frame.) Every ticket will have an 8mm wide margin all
round.
6.3
Now using suitable fonts, fill in the ticket with the required text.
Here is an example:
6.3

6.3
If numbering is not required, the frame is duplicated once to the right
(horizontal offset=105mm) and three times down (vertical
offset=74.25mm). Save it! then print as many pages as required to
complete the job. If numbering is required, proceed as follows. You have
to prepare a “numbers” document which, once done, can be used over and
over again. Open a new Ovation document with (say) 6 columns. Choose a
font and a style for the numbers e.g. 14pt. Homerton Bold. Starting at
the top of the first column type in numbers of three digits from 001 to
999 (or if two digits will suffice, from 01 to 99) with a carriage
return between each one. Hence we create a numbers list similar to the
following. (Save it!)
6.3
(How about using Basic to generate the numbers:
6.3
*Spool RAMFS:numbers
6.3
FOR N=1TO1000
6.3
PRINT N
6.3
NEXT
6.3
*SPOOL
6.3
Then load the file and do a bit of search & replace to get rid of
leading spaces and to add leading zeros for numbers less then 100. Ed.)
6.3

6.3
On the ticket, draw a small text frame where the number is to appear, of
such a size that it will just hold one of your three digit numbers. In
my sample, the number frame is 11mm × 8.25mm The corner ticket, which is
our template, is now complete. Duplicate it across and down as described
previously. Use the link tool to direct the text flow from number frame
to number frame starting top left, down the left hand tickets, up to the
top right and down to the bottom right. Return to the document page.
Delete the blank page to obtain the new page with all the tickets on it.
Save it! Put the caret anywhere in the main frame, then holding down
<return>, allow the document to accumulate as many pages as you need,
e.g. If 64 tickets, assemble 8 pages. Finally, starting with page 1, use
the link tool to link the bottom right number frame to the top left
number frame on page 2 and repeat this for all eight pages. From the
numbers document, use the Edit function to copy the first 64 numbers.
Then paste them in to the tiny frame on the top left ticket on page 1.
All the other 63 numbers will flow into the correct tickets. Print the
document. The above may sound rather long winded but it is surprising
how quickly a set of tickets for a modest size club can be printed.  A
6.3
Fonts Workshop − Part 4
6.3
Roger Spooner
6.3
In the second article, Using FontEd, I described how to use Acorn’s font
editing program. I covered loading a font, moving points around,
creating and deleting things, live links, scaffold lines and so on.
However, there was little on how to design a pleasant looking character
set. I hope to cover that here.
6.3
Balance
6.3
Making a font where you can recognise the letters is easy. The problem
is how to make one which is clean and balanced − one which hangs
together well. This can be a very difficult task, not because of the
tools but because of the discerning eye of the reader.
6.3
To assist with this, though, it would be helpful to have some consistent
standards throughout the new font. A number of methods can be used,
including a framework of straight lines, a measurement of line thickness
and a comparison of widths.
6.3
A basic framework
6.3
To start with, it is important to design all the letters with a
consistent idea of scale and position. This is not easy on a plain white
background, so I do the following:
6.3
Think a little about your new font. Consider the typical height-width
ratio and the normal thickness of both horizontal and vertical lines.
6.3
Starting with a completely blank font window, open the skeleton window
for space. You will see a small red cross near the bottom left.
6.3
Create a horizontal scaffold line level with it and going up for the
thickness of a horizontal line segment. Do the same a bit to the right
of the red origin point (50 units) and set its thickness to the typical
vertical line thickness.
6.3
Create similar scaffold lines at about 300 along and 400 up. The precise
details are up to you.
6.3
These lines form the outside edge of the basic letter. It may be that
nothing is close enough to be worth linking properly but they help align
your work consistently.
6.3
Duplicating the framework
6.3
Once the scaffold lines are made, they should be copied (by dragging the
character box in the font window with <adjust> from one box to another)
so that the scaffold lines are inherited. Do not copy it everywhere; you
will want to add more scaffold lines to characters like B which can then
be copied from there to E and F. Be careful not to move any scaffold in
any character except the one where it was created. When you do move
scaffolds, all characters with copies of the same are also altered. If
you do have to move it, you may want to Make Local the line in question.
6.3
Designing the shapes
6.3
You can start designing actual letters immediately after setting up the
initial framework of scaffolds. You may choose to start on A, or perhaps
a simple letter like I, and then move to H, E, F, B, D, etc. It’s up to
you.
6.3
Be careful to keep the line thickness methodical, using the thickness of
the scaffold lines and perhaps using the shadow of another character
behind the one you are designing (drag its little box into the skeleton
window with <select>).
6.3
It is customary to make curves go out beyond the guiding lines. Thus an
O finishes below an I, and starts above it.
6.3

6.3
This is a very small variation, but it makes a world of difference.
Without it, curved characters look distinctly small by comparison to the
straight ones.
6.3
Regulating line thickness
6.3
It is difficult to get the line thickness right all the time. It is
certainly easiest when the line is horizontal or vertical, and so I
recommend that the end points of curves are at those limits. (Although
they are at 45° in the Acorn fonts, these were probably done by a
machine). Even with them at the top and bottom, you may still need to do
some arithmetic. This would involve turning on Display.Coords and
dragging a point nowhere. As you drag it, the coordinates (in design
units) are visible. With them, you can ensure that everything is how you
want it.
6.3
It is customary to make the lines thinner when horizontal. Where two
lines meet, it is sometimes necessary to dig into one to make the shape
distinct. The shape can be quite severely deformed before the reader is
actually bothered by it. This is shown in the ‘r’ of Homerton.Black,
where the curving part gets unusually thin as it joins the vertical.
6.3

6.3
This merely serves to accentuate the curved shape.
6.3
The good curve
6.3
Although you may be getting bored of it by now, it is worth pointing out
again what makes a good curve.
6.3
Imagine the crossing point of the lines from the end points to the
control points of the curve, as shown by the dotted line below.
6.3

6.3
If this crossing point is between one of the end points and its control
point (as in the diagram), the curve won’t look nice. The crossing point
should be beyond both control points.
6.3
As with contour lines on a map, outlines, be they curved or straight,
should never cross. Although it will be plotted correctly, you can be
assured that the shape is a compromise − you should really put more
effort into designing the shape carefully.
6.3
You should also keep the number of lines in a character to the minimum.
If you allow a program like Trace to do an outline of a scanned
character, it will probably come out with dozens of line sections. This
is not good for real fonts as it takes longer to plot, uses more disc
space and is more messy. Anyway, scanning should never be part of the
process of font design!
6.3
Live linking, the method for putting parts of several characters
together to form another like é, should be used wherever possible: a
colon should be a proper copy of a dot combined with a live link of a
dot (the latter moved up). An i should have a live linked dot (which
won’t get linked when you come to ï) and so on. You may want to do the
apostrophe without links, as that will save you from effort with double
inverted commas, and the polarised inverted commas.
6.3
Difficult characters
6.3
(I can think of a few! Ed.) Some characters are easy enough to create by
just drawing the outline immediately. The letter I, for example, is
often just a rectangle. With others like ‘&’ though, the complexity of
varying thickness and crossing lines means that you have a brain melt-
down while trying to figure out the outline positions and joins.
6.3
To solve this problem, you can do the skeleton lines first. These should
follow the exact shape of the letter (as compared to doing them later
when they just need to be inside the outline), including correct curves
and positions. Note that the skeleton runs through the middle of the
shape, so don’t go right to the edge of the intended outline.
6.3
You can then adjust the skeleton with ease before trying to put the
outline round it and can therefore be fairly sure that it’s right before
you go to too much trouble. Look at the red line in the Full Char window
to be sure of the shape.
6.3
Finally, just drop the outlines in, being careful to make them start and
end in places which will allow you to join them to lines going the other
way easily.
6.3
Widths
6.3
It is also important to keep the width of each character precise. Make a
stab at it, then save the file, load it in to something like KeyCaps
(from Design Concept) or Draw and take a long hard look at whether each
character looks well spaced compared with every other characters. Don’t
be afraid to go up to really big sizes like 1000 pt if needed − you’re
not on a PC now! If you do need to make an adjustment, remember it can
be to the left as well as to the right.
6.3
To change the space to the left of a character, select any scaffold
line, link all the character’s points to it (drag a big box round them
all), then hold down <Ctrl> and press <Left> or <Right> (¬ or ®). This
will move all the linked points 16 units in the given direction. Then,
press <F9> to unlink the points from the scaffold and relink the correct
points.
6.3
Because the width of the previous character specifies where the origin
of this one goes, you can control where the black actually starts by
moving the shape in relation to the origin.
6.3
Hopefully it will soon be possible to specify the gap between every pair
of characters (i.e. thousands of numbers) individually, using kerning
pairs. Thus you will be able to get the spacing exactly as you want it.
In the mean time, it’s not too difficult to create a spacing which suits
pretty well everyone.  A
6.3
A Little OOPS
6.3
Jim Bailey
6.3
Smalltalk was originally both an operating system and a language; on
modern computers it can be considered just a language. It is an Object
Orientated Programming System (OOPS) and was developed at Xerox Palo
Alto Research Center during the 1970s. In 1980, a graphical front end
was developed resulting in Smalltalk 80 upon which current versions are
based.
6.3
The hardware required then was regarded as advanced; a 16 bit processor,
80 to 100Kb of memory, 5 or 10Mb hard disc, a high resolution mono
display and a three button mouse. At that time, an average home micro
had about 48Kb of memory and an 8 bit processor (6502, Z80) e.g Apple
II, PET and TRS80 Model I. The software consisted of 6 to 12Kb of
machine code to implement the interface to the hardware and to set up a
basic Smalltalk system. The bulk of Smalltalk, about 300Kb, was written
in Smalltalk itself. Modern Smalltalk systems can be very much larger.
6.3
Smalltalk is totally object orientated; everything in Smalltalk is an
object. Programming is done by defining Classes and creating Objects
from them. Classes become part of Smalltalk; thus programming actually
alters Smalltalk itself; Smalltalk is your program.
6.3
Classes define what an object can do. Most other languages are command
driven. In Basic, the command “PRINT item” calls a routine which
examines “item” and decides if it knows the type and how to print it; if
it’s not one of a limited number of types then PRINT fails. In Small
talk, the object “item” is sent the message “Print” and it is up to
“item” how it interprets the message. If the programmer is not happy
with the print method, he can rewrite “items” Class definition to his
own satisfaction; try that in Basic. All the Classes in Smalltalk can be
rewritten; but care must be taken when altering the basic Classes as an
error in these could make the system unuseable i.e. a total crash.
6.3
Variables in Smalltalk have only one type; they are all Objects. A
variable can start life as an integer, change to a string then become an
array. To become side-tracked for a moment − what is an array? An array
is usually a group of similar items such as strings but in Smalltalk,
only Objects exist, therefore only arrays of Objects can be created. An
Object can be anything that a Class defines; therefore an array of four
Objects can consist of an integer, a string, a sprite and another array.
6.3
Creating Classes can be done from scratch but the usual method is to
define a Class as a sub-class of an existing class which already does
most of what is needed and to define only the new methods needed. A sub-
class can do anything its parent Class(es) can do. A Class can be a sub-
class of a sub-class and it inherits all the methods of all its parent
classes.
6.3
Smalltalk for the Archimedes is expensive − over £400. The cheapest is
for DOS which costs under £100. For those who wish to try out OOPS,
there is a public domain version called Little Smalltalk. This was
written for UNIX-based text-only systems; and is written in C. It was
ported to the Archimedes several years ago. The version I have was
ported by Smalltalk Express to run under Arthur! I have converted it to
Standard C and it now runs as a normal application. It is still text-
based but I have added additional features to access more of RISC-OS.
6.3
Reference: A Little Smalltalk by Timothy Budd ISBN 0-201-10698-1.  A
6.3
Mad Professor Mariarti
6.3
Stephen & David Sloan (aged 11 & 10)
6.3
This is a rather old game from Krisalis ported directly from the Amiga.
It is a platform and ladders game and comes in a small box, not unlike
that of Lemmings, with a cartoon-style picture on the front. It has a
couple of screenshots on the back, with the scenario in a few different
languages. Inside the box are the game disk and a small leaflet which
tells you the scenario again, the controls and the loading instructions
for the Amiga and Atari ST (groan!). The scenario goes along these
lines... You have built some laboratories without planning permission. A
few of your machines have turned mutant and have taken over the labs and
are running around outside frightening people. The mayor isn’t too happy
about this and wants you to shut down the labs − if you don’t he will
send Dr. Headbender to lock you up in the local asylum.
6.3
The game
6.3
At first when we inserted the disk with auto-boot configured, we got an
error message telling me that the boot file was for Arthur users only.
We returned to the desktop and loaded the game from there. When you load
up there is a screen almost matching that on the front of the box and
then the same picture with the word ™‰‘mad’ bouncing up and down. There is
also a good tune playing and if you don’t press space for a while, you
will come to a screen with instructions and credits and a better part of
the tune will play.
6.3
The keys are <Z> for left, <X> for right, <P> for up, <L> for down and
<space> for fire although they are fully redefinable by pressing <ctrl-
D> during the game. Pressing fire will bring you to the first game
screen where you can choose which laboratory you want to visit first.
There are five labs to be shut down: Chemical Research Lab, Computer
Science Lab, Space Rocket Development Lab, Biological Observations Lab
and the Mystery Lab. They can be shut down in any order except that the
Mystery Lab cannot be entered until the rest have been shut down. To
choose a lab you must get to its entrance by climbing, walking or
jumping and jump in the middle of it. There are no adversaries on this
screen but trying to walk off the edge of the screen will cause you to
be booted back on again.
6.3
The labs all have good cartoon-like graphics and excellent tunes but the
foreign language versions are not available on the Archimedes. To close
down the labs, you have to reach an almost inaccessible switch using
equipment to help you on your way through to it. You will need to get
certain items of equipment in order to get other bits of equipment that
enable you to shut down the lab. Some of the puzzles are quite humorous
− for example, there is one where you need to get some milk and some
cereal and put it in the microwave and then eat it to stop yourself from
freezing when you go outside onto the roof.
6.3
You have to fight your way through mutants using your trusty spanner to
destroy or freeze them so that you can get past − although they come
back after a while. There are different mutants on every level and they
all take varying amounts of shots depending on the weapon you have. They
look like ordinary objects that have been brought to life. For example,
you can find a mutant disk in the Computer Lab or a mutant calculator in
the Space Rocket Development Lab. You also have to watch where you jump
because there are certain things like electric sockets and boiling
liquids that kill you in a variety of ways.
6.3
Dotted around the labs are tokens that look like coins spinning round.
Once you have collected enough of these you can trade them in at a tool
vendor to get upgraded weapons. The weapons are listed here from least
to most effective: Spanners, Screwdrivers, Bolt-gun, Fireball-thrower,
Laser-gun and Virus-killer.
6.3
Problems
6.3
There are a few slightly irritating problems and one very big problem.
Firstly, it takes over thirty minutes to play so it isn’t the game for
starting five minutes before work! Also, it takes over half a minute to
start playing again after the end of one game (even more if you don’t
know the correct <space> sequences). The one major problem with the game
is that it is too easy. To complete all the levels it only took us a
total of six hours playing.
6.3
Conclusion
6.3
The graphics and music are excellent and you can even get the tunes to
play in the desktop. It is very addictive and the concept is good.
Although it is rather too easy, it is reasonably good value for money.
We would certainly recommend it to younger people but even older people
should not brush it aside. It is probably the second best platforms game
for the Archimedes after Chuck Rock. There have been rumours about Mad
Professor Mariarti 2 coming out and, if it does, we won’t hesitate to
buy it. Mad Professor Mariarti costs £19 from Archive.  A
6.3
Preparing Material for Archive
6.3
Paul Beverley
6.3
In order to speed up the preparation of the magazine, it would be
helpful if contributors could try to follow a set of guidelines − what
you might call the “house style” of Archive.
6.3
Disc format
6.3
The text you send in can be in any disc format you like: 3½“ or 5¼”, E,
D or L format − even MSDOS if you really have to!
6.3
Wordprocessor / DTP format
6.3
We can cope with almost any WP/DTP format but, for preference, we would
like Impression since that is the application we actually use when
producing the magazine. If you do have Impression or Impression Junior,
let us know and we will send you a sample document with the styles on
it.
6.3
House style
6.3
For those of you who produce a lot of printed material, I know it’s
difficult to change your style but, if at all possible, I would like
people to prepare their articles for Archive with a particular “house
style”. I’m not talking about your style of writing − your turn of
phrase, etc − I mean the way you lay it out. A few examples will show
you what I mean.
6.3
Headings
6.3
If you look at the title of this article, you will see it is in titles,
i.e. initial capital letters for the main words. The section headings,
however, only use an initial capital letter on the first word − except
where the word would have a capital anyway, like “Impression” or
“Archive”, e.g. “How to use Impression”.
6.3
Indents
6.3
There is no need to create indents, either with spaces or tabs. This is
dealt with automatically by the “styles” used in Impression. Thus, if
you have a couple of lines of program to insert in the text, as for
example:
6.3
 10 REM> WonderProg
6.3
100 PRINT “This is a load of rubbish”
6.3
110 GOTO 100
6.3
What you should send in as text is just:
6.3
 10 REM> WonderProg
6.3
100 PRINT “This is a load of rubbish”
6.3
110 GOTO 100
6.3
I then give it styles which set the typeface and add the indent. If you
had already given it indents by adding your own spaces, I would have to
strip them out otherwise I would get a double indent.
6.3
Tables
6.3
If you have tables within the text and you lay out the data in column by
using spaces, it can cause problems. Remember that what looks OK in
mono-spaced type looks funny when set in a proportionally-spaced
typeface.
6.3
Thus...
6.3
Brown   6.5   13.6   11.11
6.3
Alliss  2.3    9.6   88.88
6.3
Mummy   1.1   11.1   99.99
6.3
may look OK when separated by spaces but if you put that into propor
tionally spaced text, you get:
6.3
   Brown   6.5    13.6   11.11
6.3
   Alliss  2.3     9.6    88.88
6.3
   Mummy   1.1    11.1    99.99
6.3
If you want to use spaces to print it out, that’s fine − I then just use
search & replace to change multiple spaces into tabs. However, if you
can present it using tabs, it makes my life easier.
6.3
If you are using Impression and set up a table using a ruler, remember
that the text has to fit, if possible, into a normal column width. Also,
please don’t leave the names of any new rulers as ‘Ruler1’, ‘Ruler2’,
etc. Use your own name or some code word, like ‘Lynch1’, ‘Lynch2’, etc.
The reason for this is that when you paste text from one document (your
article) into another (the magazine) if a style of the same name exists,
it maintains the definition specified in the destination document, so
you will lose your carefully set out tabulations.
6.3
Abbreviations
6.3
I try, as far as I can, to use standard abbreviations and I try to be
consistent. Here are some I use:
6.3
a.m. (with full stops)
6.3
Basic (not BASIC − I’ve changed my mind on this one!)
6.3
e.g. (with full stops)
6.3
i.e. (with full stops)
6.3
Kbytes or just Kb (not K and not k or kbytes. Yes, that’s a change to
make it consistent with Mbytes.)
6.3
Mbytes or just Mb (and not M)
6.3
p.m. (with full stops)
6.3
RISC-OS (not RISC OS, Risc OS, RISCOS, etc)
6.3
Please refer to the computer we all know and love as an Archimedes, not
an Arc or an Archie.
6.3
Archive references
6.3
When referring to articles in previous issues, the convention is to use,
e.g. Archive 3.4 p45.
6.3
Spell-checking
6.3
If possible, please run a spell-checker over your text before sending it
in. (This may seem obvious but you would be amazed at the number of
people, even those using Impression, who don’t bother.)
6.3
Other spelling conventions that I like to stick to are: program (unless
it’s a TV programme), iconbar, filetype and drawfile.
6.3
Dashes and hyphens
6.3
A hyphen is the character on the keyboard between the zero and the
equals sign and is the thing used in hyphenated words − e.g. RISC-OS −
whereas dashes are produced as <alt-153> or from the !Chars application
and are used for separating bits of text − as used earlier in this
sentence. On !Chars, (in Trinity, anyway) it’s the third of the dash-
like characters − under the letter y. If you are using system font then
it’s the underlined d, again under the y. In Impression, you can use
<ctrl-shift-hyphen>.
6.3
To save all this hassle, all you need to do is to use a double hyphen
where you want a dash.
6.3
Describing keyboard actions
6.3
The conventions we use in Archive magazine to represent keyboard and
mouse actions are best illustrated by a bit of meaningless sample text:
6.3
If you want to press the return key (no angle brackets on return) or one
of the other keys I would tell you to press <return>, or to press <N>,
<Y> or <?>. To start up, press <shift-break> and use <ctrl-shift-f5>
(use f5, not F5) or double-click on the icon (<select> is assumed if you
don’t mention which mouse button) but click <adjust> (not “the right
hand button”) if you want to add something to the selection. In
PipeDream we have control sequences like <ctrl-BSE> for searching which
actually means pressing <ctrl-B> and then <S> and then <E> while holding
down <ctrl>. For convenience, we put them all together in one set of
angle brackets.
6.3
Comments on English style
6.3
One of the common errors that I have to correct is that you should never
use a preposition to end a sentence with. And you should never start a
sentence with a conjunction like “and” or “but”. But people do! However,
it is OK to use “however” to start a sentence. Also, you can use “also”
to start a sentence.
6.3
As a general rule, writers tend to make their paragraphs too long. It
makes the text easier to read if it is broken up into smaller logical
units. Also, it is good to use (short) titles at regular intervals to
make the structure of the article easier to appreciate. This is helpful
for busy people who haven’t time to read every word of every article and
just want to find the bit of a review that declares itself to be the
“Conclusion”.
6.3
Writing reviews
6.3
If you are writing a review, it is important to think yourself into the
position of the person reading the review who has never heard of the
product. If they are thinking of buying a copy, they need to know, at
the very least, what the item is, how much it costs and who the supplier
is. It is also useful if you can mentioned the version number of the
software under test so that people can see whether it is the current
version that was being tested or an earlier version.  A
6.3
Turbo Drivers and the BJ10ex
6.3
Alan Murdey
6.3
When I saw the initial advertising campaign, back in June, I realised
that this is what I was looking for. I have had my Archimedes computer
for over a year and had managed to carry on RISC-OS printing with my old
Epson FX80, but the time had come to upgrade my printer. I had experi
ence of using LaserDirect HiRes at work but knew that I could not
justify the cost of a laser printer for use at home.
6.3
I had heard about the Canon bubble jet printers − the BJ10ex won “Best
Printer” in the Computer Shopper awards, and the TurboDrivers sounded
like a useful tool to speed up printing. Unfortunately, the product was
not available at the time of the first adverts − Computer Concepts were
apparently having problems with the software, and the release date was
put back several times.
6.3
I received a demo page from Computer Concepts, which was simply stunning
− it really was as good as laser quality. To convince myself, I had to
wet my finger and drag it across a corner of the page to prove that it
was printed with ink and not laser toner!
6.3
Finally, I brought my BJ10ex with cut-sheet feeder and TurboDriver. The
BJ10ex and cut sheet feeder came with their normal multi-language
instruction books, and the printer was soon set up, and ready to go.
6.3
Now to the TurboDriver. In the box comes the TurboDriver software
(V2.07) on one disk, an A5 instruction manual, a !Fonts disc containing
Corpus, Trinity and Homerton font families, and a 1.8m printer cable.
6.3
Installation of the software is simple. It is recommended that the
software is transferred and run from a hard disc. Once !BJ10e is on the
iconbar, printing is easy and quick. A print queue is held in the !BJ10e
application directory on the hard disc, so the once the program has
created a printfile in the queue, the printing continues in the
background freeing up control of the machine to allow further work to
continue. Clicking <select> over the !BJ10e icon produces the status
window:
6.3

6.3
Once desktop control has been handed back, this window will display the
size of the buffer. Clicking on Flush will stop printing, clear the
buffer and eject the paper being printed. A second click stops the paper
being ejected.
6.3
Background printing can be performed by using the TurboDriver to create
a Printfile which can then be dragged onto the printer icon. I think
that printing directly is just as quick.
6.3
!BJ10e will look very familiar to anyone who has used LaserDirect. The
dialogue boxes are very similar and offer the same facilities.
6.3
Useful features, again from LaserDirect, include a warning if the
printer is unable to receive data, because it could be off line or out
of paper. In RISC-OS3, you will be informed if the printer is switched
off or out of paper.
6.3
Text files can be printed by dragging them onto the printer icon. These
files are printed out in the font chosen in the Preferences dialogue box
which is called up by clicking <select> over the printer icon.
6.3
Preferences can be changed just for one session or saved permanently as
default settings for the next time !BJ10e is loaded.
6.3
I have not done any comprehensive tests but I printed a simple business
letter on my ARM2 machine. It was a PipeDream file with a graphic file
as a header, and it took only 30 seconds before control of the desktop
was handed back. Then, having created a queue of 142Kb, it took a
further 120 seconds to complete printing.
6.3
TurboDrivers will not work with the Star SJ48. Although it appears
similar to the Canon BJ10, it does not have the compatibility with Canon
BJ130e, which TurboDrivers use. Computer Concepts have included a
hardware protection, as the TurboDriver software will only work with the
special cable provided, due to the way that the data is passed to the
printer.
6.3
A problem with bubble jet printing is that the paper is sprayed with
tiny droplets of ink that must dry. My experience is that the ink dries
very quickly with text, but blocks of blacks and greys in graphics take
some time to dry. It may be possible to see that the paper is wet when
it emerges from the printer. Once the ink has dried, it can only be
smudged by a wet finger, not just by normal handling, e.g. folding over
a letter before placing it in an envelope.
6.3
Choice of paper is important because some papers will deal with the ink
better than others. So far, I have found that reasonable quality 80gsm
copier paper gives good results. Some papers allow the ink to bleed into
adjacent fibres, giving the printed page an untidy appearance. Other
people I have spoken to suggest the cheapest copier paper is best.
6.3
The Driver will not print rotated text under RISC-OS3, so some users
will be disappointed by this. However, I gather that this can be worked
around by use of FontDraw, supplied with Impression or DrawPlus.
Hopefully, Computer Concepts are working to produce a fully RISC-OS3
compatible driver. Also, they have yet to complete the RAM printing
option, where the print queue is held in RAM. This is only recommended
for users with 4Mb of RAM, with at least 1024Kb of free memory. This
option can be used now by changing the default directory for the Print
Queue to the RAM filing system.
6.3
It is possible to spot the difference between the output of the
bubblejet printer and a laser printer, but if you want laser quality at
less than a third of the price of laser printer, then have a look at
TurboDrivers and the BJ10ex. Also they could make a perfect portable
printing option, if you have an Acorn A4 − all you need is a battery-
pack costing £46 through Archive.
6.3
In conclusion, I think that I have moved from the slow lane to the fast
lane of printing using my BJ10ex and TurboDrivers. I no longer have time
to go away and make a cuppa, while my old dot matrix printer slowly
churns away at RISC-OS printing. Congratulations to Computer Concepts
for another excellent product.  A
6.3
PipeLine
6.3
Gerald Fitton
6.3
Next year Easter Sunday will fall on 11th April. In the year 2000, it
will be on the 23rd April and the 16th April 1066 was an Easter Sunday!
How do I know − I have a custom function which tells me so.
6.3
I want to spend some time this month making a few comments about using
RISC-OS 3 printing from PipeDream (hereinafter called ‘Pd’ because the
abbreviation ‘PD’ has other connotations. Ed) but first a few words
about Wordz, Colton Software’s new word processor, and then something
about Easter.
6.3
Wordz
6.3
Colton Software intend to release Wordz early in 1993 (probably in
January 1993) at a price of “less than £100”. I have been assured that
registered users of Pd (3 or 4) will be offered a discount on the list
price so, if you think that you just might buy it, make sure you are
registered with Colton Software. You don’t need a registration form to
register. Just send them a note quoting your name, address, registration
number and, if you can remember it, where you bought it! At the same
time, ask to be put on their list for the “Special launch offer” of
Wordz. If you are a subscriber to PipeLine then mention that too. There
is no obligation to buy, so you might as well get your name on the list.
6.3
Published features
6.3
The handout I have from Colton Software includes the following comments.
Wordz contains all the usual features of a word processor such as
WYSIWYG outline fonts, cut and paste, search and replace and user
dictionaries. In addition, it contains many Impression-like features
such as styles and effects, rulers, a variety of tabs (left, right and
centre align) and margins and multi-column layout but without the frames
of Impression. Wordz will accept files in Pd format (and many other
formats).
6.3
Wordz will accept graphics files. These are embedded in the text and so
move with it as the file is edited. Tables can be constructed in Wordz
or imported from Pd. Different styles (including column boundaries) can
be applied to different parts of the same table.
6.3
I quote: “Wordz is the first of a family of applications . . . . all
family members have live data linking”. My interpretation of this
statement is that there is more to come − but I wonder what?
6.3
Wordz does not come with any fonts because it is assumed that you will
have outline fonts either from another application or bought as a
starter pack. Note that a font manager and a starter set of outline
fonts, printer drivers, etc are supplied with RISC-OS 3.
6.3
The handout says that background RISC-OS printing will be included. If
it is, this will save a lot of time.
6.3
My experience
6.3
I have what is described as an “alpha release” version of Wordz. As a
word processor, it is nearer to Impression than Pd. It is totally
WYSIWYG with regard to text sizes, page layout, graphics, etc. I am
pleased to be able to dispense with the frames of Impression, place text
and graphics anywhere and drag the borders of the object around
afterwards.
6.3
For example, when I want to change the margin of a block of text, I just
mark the block (by dragging) and then drag the margin. The block of text
reformats immediately. If I want to change the font in any way such as
Homerton to Trinity, or change to bold or italic, then I just mark the
block and select the font (or attribute) from a menu.
6.3
The size of the paper (where the edges are) is shown on screen. One of
the reasons I often used Impression rather than Pd was because, with Pd,
I wasn’t sure where the edges of the paper were.
6.3
One of the things I’ve not liked about Impression for letters is that
the graphic of my letter heading is saved in every Impression document.
Impression documents use up a lot of disc space. In the past, for
letters, I’ve used Pd and put my letter heading (12Kb) in my
!PipeDream.Library directory. The main reason is that I can get more
letters on a floppy disc that way. I’ve already started using Wordz
because one copy of an often used graphic can be kept in a Library
(defined as being on a Path) or on my Letters floppy and used for all
letters, fliers and mail shots.
6.3
When it comes to defining styles or adding effects, Wordz wins hands
down over Impression for speed and flexibility. Mind you, the reason I
like it is that, in Wordz, it’s all done with the mouse on the screen −
you see it happening as you do it rather than using the textual
interface of Impression. I know (because you’ve told me so) that some of
you prefer not to use the mouse. If so, you may prefer defining styles
in Impression.
6.3
Laying out tabulated data in Wordz is much easier than having to play
with rulers (and styles) in Impression. If you switch on the Wordz grid
(you can switch it on just for the part of the tabulated data you are
reorganising) you can drag the borders of individual cells left and
right or up and down until the data fits the space available in the best
possible way. In Impression, I would have had to define a multitude of
different styles (or rulers) and there’s always the problem that
something somewhere else might move when I didn’t want it to. With Wordz
I can happily lose track of how many different rulers I have had to use
to ‘fit’ a difficult table into a tight space.
6.3
The future
6.3
Information about Wordz is scarce, so I can’t be sure exactly what it
will do when it’s released. However, from what I’ve seen and from my use
of the “alpha release” version, I like it better than Impression...
6.3
(a)    because it gets away from frames − it uses the whole page
6.3
(b)    because the effects are much easier to apply − with the mouse
6.3
(c)    because it doesn’t gobble up disc space
6.3
(d)    because I can see what’s happening on screen as I use the mouse
6.3
I am sure that spreadsheets and charts created in Pd and loaded into
Wordz will be hot linked. This means that I will be able to use Pd files
(including custom functions, charts, etc) as dependent documents of a
Wordz document. Having created the structure of my application (i.e. a
Wordz document supported by Pd tables and charts), I will be able to
print from the Wordz document with the assurance that comes from seeing
the layout of the page (including the borders) on the screen while still
being able to modify it through the hot linked Pd spreadsheets and
charts.
6.3
One problem that I have with software is coming to terms with the idea
that my favourite package begins to look dated just as soon as I begin
to feel that I’ve mastered it. Do I stick with Pd, Impression and
DrawPlus or do I get something new and have to go through the painful
and time consuming process of learning how to use it?
6.3
I’m glad I changed from Wordwise to Pd and from Acorn’s DTP to Impres
sion. If Wordz fulfils its promise, I think I’m going to change from
using Impression to using Wordz as the document from which I print − but
it’s too soon for me to be sure yet. If I do decide to go for Wordz, one
thing which I must be able to do is to port across my old Impression
documents into Wordz without having to do too much work on them
afterwards.
6.3
Let me know if you have any specific questions you want answered about
Wordz, particularly if it is to do with the Pd − Wordz link and I’ll see
what I can do.
6.3
Easter
6.3
Writing custom functions is fun! Don’t get me wrong, I know that word
processing is the most ‘popular’ use of modern PC systems (and, having
used one, I wouldn’t like to be without it) but, let’s face it, WP
systems need a lot of data input, do relatively little ‘processing’ and
produce a fairly predictable output. Now, with a ‘Day of the Week’
program you can find out if you are “Full of Grace” (Tuesday’s child) or
whether you have “Far to Go” (Thursday’s child). Much more exciting!
Why? I believe that custom functions are more exiting to use than WP
packages because the ratio of processing (by the system) to data input
(by you) is much higher and because the output is less predictable!
6.3
Finding the date of Easter Sunday has a rather more intricate algorithm;
I believe it is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the
Spring Equinox and it ultimately bears some relationship (via the Jewish
feast of the Passover) to the date of the tenth Plague of Egypt (see
Exodus for further details). Traditionally (manually) the date of Easter
is calculated using, as intermediate variables a Golden Number, a Sunday
Letter and an Epoch, all with appropriate look-up tables.
6.3
In older records of the birth, marriage or death of individuals or in
the records of important events, the dates are often related to the
nearest ‘movable feast’; the dates of all these ‘movable feasts’ can be
found once you know the date of Easter. For example, in the year that
Columbus sailed off to America, 1492, Easter Sunday was on the
22nd April. If you are a genealogist or historian, knowing the date of
Easter can be important. If it is important to you (or someone you know)
then using a custom function to find the date of Easter can be fun! Why?
Because, generally, it would take too long to calculate the result
manually and you would be left wondering if the result was reliable.
6.3
On the Archive monthly disc is my attempt to write a custom function for
finding Easter Sunday for any year from about 5AD onwards. I have had
helpful advice from over a dozen people and I expect more advice to
come. However, I must single out for special mention Brian Edwards,
Nigel Kinsella and Danny Fagandini. The algorithm is not as elegant as I
would like − but it works. As written, it assumes the Julian calendar
until 1582 and the Gregorian calendar thereafter (but the year can be
changed by amending one line of the custom function). In the UK, we
changed from Julian to Gregorian in 1752 by leaving out 11 days between
the 2nd and 14th September (i.e. the 2nd September 1752 was followed by
the 14th September 1752) so, between 1582 and 1752 my algorithm doesn’t
apply to the UK! If you have any comment or contribution to make as to
whether Easter was celebrated simultaneously on the continent and in the
UK between 1582 and 1752, I shall be most pleased to hear from you.
6.3
I had thought of including the custom function as text this month but I
have decided to wait until those of you who take the monthly Archive
disc have written back to me with improvements!
6.3
RISC-OS 3 printing
6.3
Now, let me turn to RISC-OS printing. Pd uses RISC-OS printer drivers in
a slightly different way from many other packages. For example, if you
RISC-OS print a Landscape page from Paint, Draw or Impression, all
calculations about where to print are based on an origin at the bottom
left of the ‘page’. Pd uses the top left of the page as its origin.
6.3
Of course, provided that you have the ‘correct’ page length and margins,
it doesn’t matter whether you use the bottom left or the top left as
your origin but, if you have either the margin or the page length
slightly wrong, you might be hard pressed to discover how to put it
right! On this subject, many page printers ‘stretch’ the paper slightly
as it passes through the rollers so that the paper is about 0.5% larger
than your printer thinks it is!
6.3
My advice about setting up your printer driver is to do so in Draw
rather than in Pd since, if you get that right, you will probably be OK
for Impression, Wordz and Pd. On the Archive monthly disc is a file in
Draw format called [Rectangle] to print out from Draw.
6.3
You will need to copy onto your ‘Printers’ disc (or your hard disc if
that is what you use) a directory called !Printers, another called
!PrintEdit and a printer definition file for your printer − mine is
called [LasJet-II] so, where I write ‘LasJet-II’ you will have to
substitute your own printer definition. Make sure that RISC-OS is
recognising these copies of your applications (and not the originals) by
double clicking on !Printers and on !PrintEdit.
6.3
If the version of !Printers which appears on the iconbar says LasJet-II
(instead of !Printers), click <menu> over the icon and click <select> on
printer control. When the printer control menu appears, click <menu> on
it and remove your printer definition.
6.3
Double click on the file [LasJet-II] and a printer definition editor
window will open. The fifth row is the paper x-offset and the sixth row
is the paper y-offset. You may have to fine tune these as I describe
below but, for now, just a word of warning; strange things happen if you
make them zero or very much different from the paper size graphic
margins (see below). To save an amended printer definition, click <menu>
over the printer definition editor window and run the pointer through
save followed by clicking <select> on the OK box.
6.3
Having saved an amended printer definition, you have to load it into the
printer control window (see above) by dragging the [LasJet-II] file into
the printer control window. Note that your printer will not use the new
paper x-offset and paper y-offset unless you remove the printer
definition from the printer control window and load (by dragging) the
amended version saved from the printer definition editor window! I don’t
think it is easy to get the sequence of ‘actions’ right first time and
there is little indication of the values of the offsets you are using!
6.3
The paper size window is accessed by clicking <menu> over the installed
(on the iconbar) !Printers icon and clicking on Edit paper sizes. When
the paper size window opens, click on the right arrow just to the right
of the dialogue box at the end of the first row (called paper size
name). Select a suitable paper size such as A4 (Generic DP). You can set
the top, bottom, left and right graphics margins from the paper size
menu. Remember to click on the OK box.
6.3
Your amended graphics margins will not be saved to disc until you save
choices from the !Printers icon (use <menu> over the !Printers icon to
find Save choices). The default paper size and its graphics margins are
completely independent of the paper x-offset and paper y-offset referred
to above! The paper size and graphics margins apply to all printer
definitions that you may load (by dragging) into the printer control
window.
6.3
Another word of warning. Do not set the graphics margins to zero or
unpredictable things will happen!
6.3
What I have found in Draw is that as I increase the graphics top margin
my [Rectangle] file is printed lower down the page. As I increase my
paper y-offset the [Rectangle] file is printed further up the page. The
‘correct’ setting is such that the [Rectangle] is printed on the
(physical) page at the coordinates shown on the screen in Draw and that
the graphics top margin and the paper y-offset are about equal and both
(approximately) equal to the physical ‘margin’ at the top of the paper
where the printer will not print.
6.3
One problem I had initially is that, if the paper y-offset is larger
than the graphics top margin, the ‘extra’ push upwards that I wanted
didn’t happen. I discovered that by slightly shortening the page (from
297 mm to 295 mm) in the paper size window and reducing the graphics
bottom margin to compensate, I could achieve a slight upward reposition
ing of the printed [Rectangle]. This artificial shortening of the
(logical) page also stopped my printer feeding out an unwanted page from
Impression.
6.3
I was fortunate with my graphics left and right margins in that I set
both of them and my paper x-offset (all three) to 5 mm and my
[Rectangle] file printed on the paper exactly where it appeared on the
Draw screen, so I am not sure about the inter-relationship between these
three parameters. However, there is no doubt from a quick test that both
the graphics left margin and the paper x-offset have independent
effects!
6.3
Now to Pd. My tests show that if you get the [Rectangle] file printing
correctly in Draw, Pd will print out (using the RISC-OS 3 drivers) where
you think it should! By this I mean that if you use a zero Pd top margin
and a zero Pd left margin (use the <Ctrl PY> command to open the window
for making these settings) then a graphic which is placed in slot A1
will print with its left top point at the paper x-offset and paper y-
offset position. I think that Pd does not make use of the paper size
graphic margin settings but only the paper offset values.
6.3
In conclusion
6.3
I don’t know about you but I found setting up the RISC-OS 3 printer
definitions and paper size very difficult. I have received more requests
for help on this topic than I have received for a long time! I’m still
not sure that I’m doing everything the ‘right’ way. I keep thinking that
it ought to be a lot simpler than it is. If you have anything to
contribute to this discussion, I shall be most grateful if you will
write to me at the Abacus Training address which is on the inside back
cover of Archive.  A
6.3
Bestform − DTP Formulae Editor
6.3
Lothar Böhler
6.3
Bestform is a fully RISC-OS compliant editor for mathematical formulae
which costs £49 (+VAT) from Klein-Computer in Ruesselsheim, Germany.
6.3
How to use it
6.3
Like every RISC-OS application, Bestform is started by double-clicking
on the icon in the filer window. It then puts an icon on the iconbar
which, when clicked, opens one (or several) windows. The window shows
the usual red caret at which your typed text will appear. When the text
becomes too large to fit in the window, it will be enlarged (quite
usual). By clicking <select>, you can position the caret, by clicking or
dragging <adjust>, or dragging <select>, you can mark a block − still
usual, except that sometimes some experience is needed to select exactly
the desired block. Furthermore, you can select a block, i.e. a sub-
formula, by double- or triple-clicking on one of its components. As may
be familiar from Edit and the new Draw of RISC-OS 3, the marked block
can be deleted (with <ctrl-X> or by choosing the related Menu entry), or
copied (<ctrl-C>) or moved (<ctrl-V>) to the caret position. You can
even copy or move between different windows, save the selected block or
load a file at the caret position. This is a great advantage over most
other programs that use their own system of move/copy/delete − one has
to learn anew − and many are not as elegant or powerful.
6.3
There is another unusual thing. With each of function keys F1 to F4, one
of four different fonts can be selected. As default these are Trinity
and Mathgreek, each in plain or italics. You can set it up to choose
four different fonts, if you wish.
6.3
Creating formulae
6.3
The most important parts of a formula are the easiest to create in
Bestform − indices and exponents. Just press cursor-down and the caret
is in the index-position or cursor-up for exponents. With page-down/up
you can toggle between these positions and even ‘walk’ around the
variable or sub-formula to enter a front index or a front exponent. To
get the caret back to the original position, just press cursor-right.
6.3
Other structures are available from several pop-up windows, which are
either opened by choosing the relevant menu entry or by pressing the
correct function key. You can either first choose the structure and then
fill in the components or select a block and then choose a structure. In
the latter case, the selected block will be used as one component. Any
structure can be removed anywhere by selecting the smallest block that
contains the structure and choosing ‘DEL’ from the relevant pop-up
window.
6.3
What structures are available?
6.3
There are a lot of structures available, arranged in four groups:
brackets, big operators, structures and attributes. Each group has a
pop-up window which can be opened with a function key (F5 − F8). There
are ten brackets and a special type which allows combinations of the
other ten brackets for the left and the right side. (See example below.)
By choosing no bracket for one side, you can get single brackets.
6.3
Among the big operators are: sum, integral, circle integral and product
operator − each available either with limits above and below or limits
as subscript/superscript. Also, there are root and/or union, intersec
tion and other big operators − a total of seventeen.
6.3
The pop-up window “structures” contains three types of fraction (normal,
double, slanting), over- and underwrite, over- and underbrace and
matrices (!). Over- and underwrite are very useful e.g. in equations,
you may overwrite the equal sign with a short comment. Parts of a larger
formula can be commented very pleasantly by using the overbrace
facility. The matrices are perhaps the most powerful feature of Bestform
(and the most painfully lacking facility in Equasor). Conceptually, a
matrix in Bestform is just a rectangular structure of up to 9 by 9 sub-
formulae. You can use matrices for nearly everything: normal matrices
(enclosing them in brackets), determinants, vectors (when using 1-by-n
matrices), equation systems (using 3-by-n matrices), case distinctions,
etc. There is a built-in matrix editor for deleting, inserting, copying,
moving and formatting rows and columns.
6.3
As ‘attributes’ there are: back and forward arrow, tilde, point, double
point, accent, and under- and overline. All attributes can span a whole
sub-formula. Except for the point attributes, they are all enlarged
automatically to the length of the sub-formula.
6.3
What about additional characters?
6.3
There are 36 arrows, 23 comparisons, 17 sets, 19 operators and 26
special signs. These are not part of an outline font but are defined as
draw objects (as well as the big operators and structures already
mentioned). This has the disadvantage that, on the screen, they are not
plotted with anti-aliasing. However, there are several advantages: they
do not need any font cache; you can easily add your own signs by
defining them with Draw; and they are drawn much faster because it is
not necessary to calculate a bitmap. This is especially noticeable when
a sign or operator is needed in a new size (e.g. because you have
entered a big operator in the index). With Equasor, it is very likely
that you will see the hourglass for several seconds, but this never
happens with Bestform.
6.3
Finally, there is another window for entering Greek letters. (A Greek
outline font is included with Bestform.)
6.3
Additional features
6.3
Version 1.1, which I possess, supports printing. Unfortunately, it does
not work with the new RISC-OS 3 printer drivers. An attempt to print
caused a total system crash (error message: “font handle out of range”)
which was not even recoverable with Quitter (a utility which kills the
current task when it hangs) and destroyed my first version of this text
− what a shame! (So you can see how much this program impressed me, as I
wrote this review all over again). With the old printer driver, printing
seems to work perfectly well.
6.3
In a special window, you can choose the four fonts which are accessible
through F1−F4 and the size of the normal text, the index text and the
second index text. The third and further indices have the same size as
the second.
6.3
Bestform has no special filetype. It always saves its files as draw
files. To be able to reload and reconstruct the formula from the
drawfile, it saves it together with so-called tags. So you can save the
formula directly (RAM-to-RAM) to other programs, e.g. Draw or Impression
and back again! Unfortunately, some programs do not cope with tags
(shame on them − they are defined and explicitly allowed by Acorn) so
Bestform also supports saving without tags.
6.3
Comparison with Equasor
6.3
Bestform is a very powerful formulae editor with all the features one
needs (I guess) when editing a formula. I think this program is a reason
to forget TeX and Equasor. It is much easier to use than the former and
much more powerful than the latter. As Bestform is quite similar to
Equasor, I will compare these two but note that I only possess Bestform
and not Equasor, which I only know from some demonstrations. So, if I
should make incorrect comparisons, please do not blame me too much. (I
have asked Brian Cowan to comment from his knowledge of Equasor − see
below. Ed.)
6.3
Of course, not everything is perfect with Bestform. For example, I am
not quite sure how systems of equations should be entered. You must
create a matrix, which has then to be formatted: left column right
justified, mid column centered, right column left justified. This is a
bit annoying but you can create an empty matrix with the correct
formation, save it and use it again and again. One possible problem is
that it cannot create matrices larger than 9 by 9. If you need larger
equation systems, you must either create a matrix of matrices, or split
the system into several parts which are then rearranged in Draw or
whatever DTP program you use. So, the method used by Equasor seems to be
more straight-forward but, on the other hand, with Bestform’s method you
can be sure that your equation system is always perfectly formatted and
that rows do not overlap − no matter what heights the different rows
have.
6.3
I was really disappointed with Equasor as far as speed is concerned.
Entering a sign or operator in a new size, deleting rows and displaying
the Greek font window usually activate the hourglass whereas, with
Bestform, all these things happen immediately. (Could the Equasor demo
have been done with too small a font cache? Brian seems to think
Bestform is slow − see below. Ed.) This is because Bestform does not use
fonts for its signs and operators but draw objects and sprites − the
latter only in the pop up windows of course, not for displaying or
printing formulae! On the other hand Bestform always redraws the whole
window when something is entered. This is not very pleasant, if you have
typed in a large equation system, because redrawing is not very fast
(unless you have an ARM 3).
6.3
Another disadvantage of this system is that the operators, signs, etc
are less pretty and easy to read because they do not gain from the anti-
aliasing of the font manager. Everybody should decide for himself how
important this is − for printing, anti-aliasing is not used anyway.
6.3
Equasor supports four or five different sizes of indices whereas
Bestform supports only three, but is it sensible to make the indices of
third and fourth degree smaller and smaller?
6.3
Bestform unfortunately crashes on some occasions. How often does Equasor
crash? I do not know because I have no real experience with it.
6.3
With Bestform, you cannot create several independent formulae in one
window and position them. Also, printing does not work with RISC-OS 3
printer drivers but these are not real disadvantages because it is most
likely that you will export the formula to a DTP program where you can
arrange and print as you wish. Here Bestform has the advantage that
there is no need to save the formula separately for further editing −
you can reload the formula as a drawfile directly from the DTP program
(if it supports this feature).
6.3
Furthermore Bestform is much easier to use, especially in the case of
creating indices or exponents.
6.3
Finally, Bestform beats Equasor in terms of the range of facilities
available: attributes spanning whole sub-formulae, under-/over-brace,
arrows which can easily be connected, vectors, matrices and case
distinctions. I have seen an advert for Bestform with at least a dozen
(sensible) formulae of which Equasor could only create one!
6.3
Conclusion
6.3
Though Bestform is not perfect (what program is?) it is, in my opinion,
the best for editing formulae (not only on the Archimedes either). It
has a lot of facilities, is fast enough for convenient working, is very
easy to use and is the same price as Equasor.  A
6.3
Brian Cowan adds: I think that Lothar Böhler’s review of BestForm is
very fair. I agree with most of the points he makes. However, having
tried an earlier version of BestForm (version 1.0) I found many problems
with it and I returned to using Equasor. I will not detail these
problems as it is likely that most have been rectified in version 1.1.
Assuming this is so, then BestForm will have the edge on Equasor and I
might well be changing in the future.
6.3
While BestForm follows the conventions of Draw and Edit for dealing with
selected objects, Equasor follows the conventions of Impression. Thus
Equasor is more intuitive for Impression users. With Equasor, the
characters from other fonts are not entered from the keyboard but by
mouse with a “symbol picker” like !Chars. You can have many more than
four fonts, which is useful. This is a serious drawback of BestForm.
6.3
The treatment of subscripts and superscripts is different for BestForm
and Equasor. As Lothar explained, with BestForm, you simply move the
cursor up or down but, with Equasor, you must select a region to which
the subscript or superscript is to be applied. This is slightly more
inconvenient but the result can look better.
6.3
Equasor has its own filetype and objects can be saved either as Equasor
files or as drawfiles. The Equasor file is essentially the drawfile
together with tags (rather like BestForm files). Programs such as
Impression accept Equasor files but since, as Lothar mentions, some
programs do not like drawfiles with tags, the bare drawfile format is
then useful.
6.3
The real area where BestForm wins is in the range of structures
available. In particular, the lack of matrices in Equasor is a serious
omission. I generally produce matrices by creating parts in Equasor,
saving them as draw objects and then combining them using Draw but this
is rather tedious.
6.3
I found BestForm to be slower than Equasor in use. I was particularly
annoyed by BestForm re-drawing the window after each character is
entered. I also had BestForm crash my machine from time to time.
However, Equasor also occasionally crashes but it never hangs the
computer; it just kills itself. I have certainly found Equasor to be
much more reliable.
6.3
Equasor allows for many equations on one page. This can be useful if you
want a number of equations bracketed together on a page but it can also
be useful for another reason. In Impression, each graphic frame, such as
an equation, is stored as a separate file. However, there is a limita
tion on the number of files which may be stored in a directory. I once
lost an entire document by exceeding this quota. A solution recommended
by Computer Concepts is to have all equations in one large file and then
to open up different windows on different parts of the page. You
certainly can’t do that with BestForm.
6.3
I was hoping that a new version of Equasor would be appearing, rectify
ing the various omissions; that now seems unlikely. For anyone who
already has a DTP package and who wishes to use it for scientific or
mathematical work, I think Bestform is the natural choice. The file
number limitation can be overcome either by splitting a document into
smaller parts or by using one of the disc compression systems where all
files are stored in a single archive file; the number of files in such a
compressed “directory” has no limit.  A
6.3
Princeton High Resolution Monitor
6.3
Andrew Ferguson
6.3
I have owned an A3000 and a Phillips CM8833 colour monitor for the last
three years. The CM8833 is a good monitor but it does not allow you to
take full advantage of large desktop screen modes on the Archimedes. In
order to use these screen modes, you really need to have a ‘better’
monitor.
6.3
The Archimedes can be used with four different types of monitors,
standard, multiscan, SVGA and high resolution (monochrome). The User
Guide shows a list of screen modes (Appendix D in my manual) and the
monitor types that support them. A multiscan monitor offers the largest
choice of screen modes but the same modes are available on a Super VGA
(SVGA) monitor if you use the Watford SVGA VIDC Enhancer.
6.3
I recently purchased a Princeton Ultra 1400 monitor for the sum of £245
including VAT, (I believe that this is by far the cheapest SVGA /
multiscan monitor on the market). The monitor’s specifications are as
follows:
6.3
Tube         14 inches diagonal, 0·28 dot pitch, black matrix tube
6.3
Video bandwidth    45 MHz
6.3
Resolution    Horizontal: 1024 dots, Vertical: 768 (SVGA)
6.3
Sync Signals    TTL positive or negative, composite or separate
6.3
Synchronization    Horizontal 15 − 36.5 kHz autosynchronous
6.3
        Vertical 45 − 120 Hz autosynchronous
6.3
The monitor has a 15 pin VGA connector on the rear and was supplied with
cables for an IBM PC Compatible and a Commodore Amiga. The PC cable
supplied is a 15 pin male to female VGA cable and a 9 pin to 15 pin
adapter cable. Do not fall into the trap of using the supplied PC 9 pin
cable adapter, as the PC VGA ports are not pin compatible with the
Archimedes. Having said this, the supplied 15 pin cable should work on
the A5000 and the A4, as the RGB port is the same as on a PC. Watford
Electronics can supply a 9 pin to 15 pin adapter cable for the Archi
medes for £15. (Or £12 through Archive!)
6.3
The monitor has a very sharp picture and has all the picture control
buttons on the front of the monitor. The controls allow you to change
the vertical and horizontal position / size. It also allows you to
change the brightness / contrast and text colour (which can be useful
with the PC Emulator).
6.3
Without a VIDC adaptor you can use the monitor with the built in VGA and
multiscan modes. However, for serious use you need a VIDC enhancer (I
bought the SVGA VIDC Enhancer, but the Princeton may work with an
ordinary MultiSync VIDC adapter).
6.3
A VIDC enhancer is a small card that speeds up the clock speed of the
VIDC. The SVGA card provides additional oscillators of 25.175MHz and
36MHz to give faster line rates. As the VIDC is working at a higher
clock rate, it can manage ‘larger’ screen modes i.e. Mode 102 (1152×480
at 16 colours), compared with Mode 12 (640×256). As you can see, these
screen modes are much larger and take more processor bandwidth to
refresh. In practice, this means that if you do not have an ARM3
machine, the large modes may be too slow to use.
6.3
The VIDC comes with a disc of utility programs, a small daughter board
for the computer and comprehensive instructions.
6.3
On the A3000 installation is straight forward. The case has to be opened
and the keyboard and floppy disc drive removed. The daughter board is
fitted onto links LK28 and LK29 and two probes are connected to the
external expansion connector. The only problem that I experienced was
with the power connection. You have to unplug the red power spade and
connect to the motherboard as in the diagram.
6.3

6.3
As you can see from the picture the original Power Lead connects at a
45° angle and, if like me, you have a Serial Port sampler/midi card
attached to the Econet socket you will have problems. Watford have
suggested that I bend the original connector so that it fits under the
sampler/midi card. I haven’t tried this yet as it could obviously break
the power connector.
6.3
If you do not feel confident to attempt the installation, the manual
suggests that your local Acorn dealer, or Watford Electronics, can fit
the board for you. There will be a small charge for this service.
6.3
Once it is fitted, you can turn on the machine and if you fitted
everything correctly, the desktop should appear as before. In order to
use the new modes and facilities of the VIDC Enhancer, you need to use
the supplied software.
6.3
The disk comes with 4 applications, !Define, !ModeSel, !Tweaks and
!VIDCMods.
6.3
!ModeSel − This application allows you to select any RISC-OS wimp mode
(including the new VIDC modes). To use the program you need to select a
base monitor and a large selection of common monitors are included, e.g.
Aries VGA, Eizo 9060S and 9070S, NEC 2A, 3D and 4D, Taxan 775 and 795.
The Princeton is not included and to cater for other monitors, modules
for ‘Base’ monitors are provided. These are:
6.3
BaseVGA:        640×350, 720×400, 640×480 VGA mode monitors
6.3
Basesuper:        640×350, 720×400, 640×480 & 800×600 VGA mode monitors
6.3
BaseTV:        15.625kHz line rate, 60.080Hz refresh rate TV monitors
6.3
BaseSync15:    15kHz+ line rate multisync monitors
6.3
BaseSync20:    20kHz+ line rate multisync monitors
6.3
BaseSync30:    30kHz+ line rate multisync monitors
6.3
After experimenting with various monitor modules, I selected a TX-14H8BT
module.
6.3
This gives access to about 55 screen modes which includes all suitable
Acorn RISC-OS modes, Computer Concepts !ExtraModes and the Atomwide VIDC
Enhancer modes.
6.3
!Tweaks − This is a superb utility that allows you to move the displayed
image on the monitor’s screen. One of the problems with multiSync / SVGA
monitors is that, as they lock onto a new frequency following a mode
change, the top left hand corner of the screen display moves. So
changing mode means that you can no longer see all of the screen and you
have to use the monitor controls to adjust the display. This is a
nuisance, especially if the monitor adjustment switches are on the back
of the monitor.
6.3
With !Tweaks you should never have to touch the monitor control buttons
because, every time you change mode, you can select the screen perfectly
centred. In order to do this, you use a Real Time Move option, which
allows you to move the screen display by moving the cursor keys until it
is centred. You can save the screen mode. As far as I am aware, this
facility is not available on any of the other VIDC enhancers.
6.3
!Define − If you do not like any of the 55 supplied screen modes, you
can change them or create new screen modes. You can select the number of
rows and columns, the number of colours (2, 4, 16 or 256), the clock
speed and VIDC rate. (I have not really used this utility as I am quite
happy with the existing modes.)
6.3
!VIDCMods − This is an application which is similar in nature to the
!System folder. It contains modules holding all the screen modes for the
monitors supported by the other applications.
6.3
Conclusion
6.3
I am very impressed with the Princeton monitor. For the price, it is
superb and its features are comparable with monitors costing twice as
much. The resolution is very good and it is great having large screen
modes.
6.3
However, I have just turned my ARM3 off and the computer is very
sluggish in Mode 21 (640×512 256 colours). You may want to consider
upgrading to an ARM3 before you use these screen modes. With an ARM3,
this monitor is a real bargain.
6.3
I am also impressed with the Watford SVGA VIDC Enhancer. This is worth
buying for the !Tweaks utility alone, especially if your monitor
controls are on the back on the machine.
6.3
However, there are problems if you have a Serial Port combined midi /
sampler card. I also did not like having to keep changing applications
to define screen modes and then tweak them. I would hope that, if there
is a new release of the software, then one application would be produced
which combines the three existing applications.
6.3
Supplier details
6.3
I bought the monitor for £210 + VAT from Sudbury Electronics, 771 Harrow
Road, Sudbury, Wembley, Middlesex HA0 2LW. (081−908−1888) (Fax:
081−904−8002)
6.3
Additionally, other dealers can be found by contacting Princeton Graphic
Systems, Norfolk House, Great Chesterford Court, Great Chesterford,
Saffron Walden, Essex  CB10 1PF (0799− 30963).  A
6.3
EFF Scientific and Mathematical Fonts
6.3
Brian Cowan
6.3
Scientific or mathematical writing requires either a dedicated scienti
fic DTP product such as TechWriter (to be reviewed in a future issue) or
a general-purpose DTP program, such as Impression, together with an
equation generation tool such as Equasor or BestForm (see the review on
page 65). However, for presentable scientific manuscripts, an essential
requirement is a good set of fonts. Both Equasor and BestForm are
supplied with the MathGreek fonts from Electronic Font Foundry, which
comprises an upright and an italic style, while Techwriter comes with
font family called MathPhys which is very similar to MathGreek and is
also produced by EFF. There are two other relevant fonts from the EFF
stable, known as MathScript and MathLogic. Examples of all these fonts
are shown in the tables.
6.3
MathGreek
6.3
There are a number of important points to appreciate about the MathGreek
fonts. There are actually two versions of this font and, unfortunately,
Equasor and the version of BestForm I have both use the earlier version.
You will see from the tables that the new MathGreek font contains an
enhanced collection of symbols and so it is rather more useful. However,
you will also observe that the position of some of the characters has
changed; their ASCII codes have been altered. This means that expres
sions composed with the older version of the font may print out as
nonsense when using the new fonts with the same name. In fact, this is
the explanation of why some of Computer Concepts’ adverts for Equasor
showed gobbledigook equations containing hearts and other strange
characters.
6.3
Another feature of MathGreek is the ten characters at the left hand edge
of the tables on the bottom two lines. These characters have negligible
widths so their effect is to over-type the character which follows it.
The usual use for such symbols is in adding accents to foreign language
text but in the scientific context, this allows one to create frequently
used objects such as ãx, Ài , âv, án, etc. The difference between the
set on the two lines is their height; the upper set are higher.
6.3
Initially, I had a big moan about the lack of one particular physical
symbol that I seem to use a lot, namely Planck’s (other) constant which
is written as an h with a slash through it. Then I discovered these
“over-typing” characters and the production of äh became trivial; no
longer did I have to use extensive kerning to combine the regular h with
the _ bar.
6.3
My only unsatisfied requirement here is for bold Greek characters.
However, it is worth pointing out that the common Trinity font has a
Greek mu, and Trinity (both Roman and italic) comes in a bold flavour,
thus providing the characters µ and µ. We shall have to wait for a full
bold Greek alphabet; when that will come, I don’t know.
6.3
MathPhys
6.3
I only came across this font when I received my review copy of Tech
Writer and, initially, I did not scrutinise it sufficiently to
appreciate that this was another product from EFF. Then I noticed the
logo and discovered some of its interesting features. To my joy,
Planck’s constant is there as ⇩, and also there are now over-typing
arrows so that vectors can be represented as år, for example. Another
major addition is the multiple integral signs † and ‡. The MathPhys font
comes in Roman and italic styles but, again, there is no bold. Signifi
cant losses are the real and imaginary symbols ½ and ¼.
6.3
MathScript and MathLogic
6.3
The MathScript “curly” characters such as H and L will be of use to
physicists. I tend to use these a lot in quantum mechanical equations.
However, the straight open characters like r will be of more use to
mathematicians. Interestingly, one mathematical symbol (which “enhanced”
Archimedes users might recognise), namely », the Hebrew letter aleph,
must be found on the MathGreek font.
6.3
The set of logic symbols is quite extensive. However, for usual
scientific applications, the range of inequalities, etc on the other
fonts is fine. All in all, it seems that almost everything you could
need is somewhere. The only thing I would like (apart from bold Greek)
which, as yet, does not exist is the facility for producing fractions
with a horizontal bar. This is useful for clarity in equations. It would
actually be quite easy to do this using one set of normal “width”
characters, for the numerator, say, and a set of “zero width” characters
for the denominators.
6.3
An important point to appreciate is that EFF have deliberately avoided
being restricted by the PostScript character sets.  This has resulted in
a much more versatile collection of fonts.  For dot matrix printers, and
particularly for Laser Direct printers, this is no problem at all.  Of
course, with the utilities of RISC-OS 3, outline fonts can easily be
downloaded to PostScript printers.
6.3
EFF are to be congratulated on the superb range and quality of their
scientific fonts.  A
6.3
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6.3
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6.3
    €    Ŵ    ŵ    ◰    ☓    Ŷ    ŷ        ⇦    ⇨    ⇩    ⇧    …    ™    ‰
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    –    —    −    Œ    œ    †    ‡    fi
    fl
6.3
         !    “    #    $    %    &    ‘
    (    )    *    +    ,    -    .    /
    0    1    2    3    4    5    6    7
    8    9    :    ;    <    =    >    ?
6.3
    @    A    B    C    D    E    F    G
    H    I    J    K    L    M    N    O
    P    Q    R    S    T    U    V    W
    X    Y    Z    [    \    ]    ^    _
6.3
    `    a    b    c    d    e    f    g
    h    i    j    k    l    m    n    o
    p    q    r    s    t    u    v    w
    x    y    z    {| }    ~
6.3
    €    Ŵ    ŵ    ◰    ☓    Ŷ    ŷ        ⇦    ⇨    ⇩    ⇧    …    ™    ‰
    •    ‘    ’    ‹    ›    “    ”    „
    –    —    −    Œ    œ    †    ‡    fi
    fl
6.3
         ¡    ¢    £    ¤    ¥    ¦    §
    ¨    ©    ª    «    ¬    ­    ®    ¯
    °    ±    ²    ³    ´    µ    ¶    ·
    ¸    ¹    º    »    ¼    ½    ¾    ¿
6.3
    À    Á    Â    Ã    Ä    Å    Æ    Ç
    È    É    Ê    Ë    Ì    Í    Î    Ï
    Ð    Ñ    Ò    Ó    Ô    Õ    Ö    ×
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6.3
    à    á    â    ã    ä    å    æ    ç
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    ð    ñ    ò    ó    ô    õ    ö    ÷
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6.3
MathGreek (old version)
6.3
MathGreek (new version)
6.3
MathPhys
6.3
MathScript
6.3
MathLogic
6.3
SFXM − Sound Effects Maker
6.3
Peter Smith
6.3
!SFXM is the fully RISC-OS compliant Sound Effects Maker from Cambridge
International Software. It actually comprises two applications − the
Sound Effects Maker itself and a waveform editor, !SFXED.
6.3
At the time when I saw that the package was available for review, I was
writing an Archimedes version of Geordie Racer for Longman Logotron. I
was facing a serious dilemma, because the sounds I could easily produce
on the Archimedes were inferior to those which I had been able to create
for the original BBC model B version! SFXM sounded like just what I
needed, so I was on the telephone to Norwich Computer Services like a
shot!
6.3
The version which arrived a few days later is not the package I am
reviewing here, although the software itself is substantially the same.
I found the original documentation confusing and unhelpful. The copy
protection also caused some headaches before I realised that the review
copy had not been given the name that the protection routine was
searching for!
6.3
Nevertheless, it was clear from the examples provided, that this was a
highly versatile package capable of producing a tremendous range of
sounds and effects. The software was also very robust, and the ‘Sound FX
Editor’ (!SFXED) was the most versatile sound wave editor I had seen.
After some hours of frustration, I phoned C.I.S. It turned out that they
had received other adverse comments and were busy re-writing the manual.
6.3
After several months, the new version, with the documentation in draft
form, arrived. This time, the software protection routine (you have to
type in your name, and each disc is uniquely numbered) was completed
without fuss, and I was then able to transfer the software to my hard
disc.
6.3
The new manual is a vast improvement on the original so if you have the
old (32 page) manual, I suggest you get in touch with C.I.S. and request
an upgrade.
6.3
Making sound effects
6.3
So, how does it all work? Well, the basic idea is that you are given a
number of predefined and user-defined waveform and envelope generators,
plus some modifying tools like filters and delays, which you link
together to produce an output waveform. You can also start with any
sampled waveform and use the tools to modify it.
6.3
Everything is reasonably intuitive. There are a total of 16 ‘objects’
which generate or modify the waveform. These, and the wires which
connect them, are placed or dragged around the screen in typical RISC-OS
fashion. Alternatively, the different functions can be selected from the
usual RISC-OS menu structure but as this exactly duplicates the
facilities of the toolbox attached to the left of the sheet window,
there would seem to be little point. Saving a sheet is performed with
the usual save dialogue box which is selected from !SFXM’s iconbar menu.
6.3
When you have completed your ‘sheet’, you click on the calculate tool
and, after a delay which is never disturbingly long, the resultant wave
form appears in an !SFXED window and a ‘Keyboard’ window also appears:
6.3

6.3
At this point, you can hear what your waveform sounds like, as the
keyboard allows you to play notes in a three octave range. This can be
extended to eight octaves in conjunction with the function keys.
6.3
The waveform can now be further edited using the most comprehensive set
of editing tools I have seen. These include fade in or out; echo;
reverb; and silence, which is surprisingly useful for getting rid of
those annoying little blips which often seem to occur at the end of a
sample.
6.3
Samples can be saved in Tracker, Armadeus, DSEdit or EMR format.
Alternatively, the raw data can be saved or the sample converted to a
standard relocatable module. The sound sample can be converted between
linear signed and unsigned, and logarithmic form. The editor can, in
fact, be used alone − for example, to edit sound samples grabbed through
sampling hardware such as the Oak Recorder. It is not possible to undo
most of the effects but you can always get back to the original waveform
by recalculating it from the sheet.
6.3
Happily, this software comes with permission to use any samples created
in public domain or commercial software, without charge, CIS simply ask
for acknowledgement within the documentation or software which seems
very reasonable to me. (This contrasts notably with Oak Solution’s
approach to the software supplied with their Oak Recorder. I bought one
when they first came out, only to discover that the module supplied
which allowed the samples to be played was copyright!) (The solution is
to buy their Sound Lab software which produces relocatable modules − but
that costs a further £18 through Archive. Ed.)
6.3
My main complaint with the original manual was that it left me com
pletely in the dark about how I could use the package’s undoubted powers
to create my own sound effects in anything other than a completely
random trial and error fashion. The new documentation goes quite a long
way to addressing this problem, by giving examples of the way in which
the different generating and modifying tools can be used. The examples
are often cross-referenced to the 37 example sheets which are provided
on the disc. Also provided on the disc I received, were 25 sound effect
sample sheets, and 64 instrumental sample sheets. I understand that many
more than this will be supplied with the production version. C.I.S. are
currently working on a sampler board which will link to !SFXM and will
work through the serial port of the new A3010. (It will therefore work
on the A3020, A4000 and A5000, presumably. Ed.)
6.3
What I most want to be able to do, is to use the computer to create the
sound effect which I have in my mind. I do not believe that this is an
easy objective and I think I will go on experimenting for some time
before I am quickly able to get close to the effect I want. However, I
do think this is an excellent tool for learning about the generation of
sound, and with the new version of the documentation, this is by far the
best tool I have to help me.
6.3
The cost of this package is £49.95 from C.I.S. or £46 through
Archive.  A
6.3
ClassPrint
6.3
David Leckie
6.3
Printing with a RISC-OS driver over Econet can cause severe problems due
to the limited bandwidth of this network. Any RISC-OS printer driver
produces a program for the printer in its own control language. Now,
with the exception of the PostScript driver, this will always describe a
bit image whether it be text or graphics that has to be printed.
6.3
This results in a very large amount of data having to be passed from the
client station to the network printserver. If more than about two
stations try to print simultaneously, the bandwidth of the network is
exceeded and “Not Listening” messages start to appear. If a class of
twenty want to print even a single A4 page from Impression, it can take
many hours, if not days, to achieve.
6.3
ClassPrint is an attempt to help overcome these problems by utilising
the speed of a Laser Direct printer at the printserver end and compress
ing the data at the client end. It has been produced jointly by Computer
Concepts and Oak Solutions though it is marketed only by the latter.
6.3
As Computer Concepts’ Laser Direct printers have previously been
reviewed in Archive 4.11 p2 this review will concentrate on the
facilities offered by the ClassPrint software. ClassPrint consists of a
small but quite adequate user guide and a single disk containing the
software. The software consists of Spooler, an application similar in
appearance to the Level 4 Spooler application. This is run on the
printserver along with PrinterHR and a modified versions of CC’s
PrinterHR is run on the client machine. Versions are supplied for the
LBP-4, LBP-8 and the now-discontinued Qume Laser Direct printers.
6.3
The hardware requirements are:
6.3
Client:    Any A-series machine on Econet. Memory requirements depend on
the application that uses the printer driver. 1Mb is sufficient for
Paint/Draw, etc. Impression is tight on 1Mb so 2Mb is recommended.
6.3
Server:    Any A-series computer connected on the Econet with 4Mb ram and
a hard disc with several Mb free. Though not recommended, this print
server can also function perfectly satisfactorily as a Level 4 file
server. An ARM3, while not essential, is certainly desirable. Laser
Direct printer which can be used simultaneously as a normal Laser Direct
printer and as a Laser Direct server.
6.3
For the following tests, the hardware/software configurations shown
below were used:
6.3
Client:    20 A3000s with 2Mb of ram and a 128Kb font cache configured.
Floppy drive only. Fonts etc taken from floppy not the network. New
Econet modules installed. RISC-OS 2.
6.3
Server:    A310 with 4Mb ram, ARM3, Laser Direct hi-res card, Canon LBP-4
printer, 100 Mb Quantum SCSI drive with 50Mb free. RISC-OS2. The Print
Server was also running Level 4 file-serving software but no file-
serving demands were made during the timing tests.
6.3
Before installing the above system, the printserver software had been
Spooler (supplied with Level 4) and the printer an Epson LX400. The
older, but quite standard, 1.xx version of !PrinterDM was used by the
clients, at the highest resolution.
6.3
These sets of tests compare the time taken to print CC’s sample ‘News’
document from Impression II. The times shown below are not just until
control is regained by the client but are as recorded when the printout
is produced. Times are mins and seconds.
6.3
Printer        To Spool    Total to
Print    File Size
6.3
Laser Direct        N/A    0m 43s
    272Kb
6.3
(as standard)
6.3
Laser Direct        1m 53s    2m 26s
    271Kb
6.3
(as Print Server)
6.3
LX400 (1st client)    4m 53s    9m
17s    564Kb
6.3
LX400 (2nd client)    4m 53s
    13m 45s    564Kb
6.3
With a dot matrix printer, printing can start before spooling finishes,
giving the 1st client a quicker printout. With subsequent clients the
queue has built up. The longer time is the more realistic.
6.3
It can be seen that using ClassPrint makes network printing a realistic
proposition. Using a dot matrix, at the very best, one printout every 14
mins is all that can be hoped for. In practice, not even this can be
achieved due to “not listening” messages when several stations try to
print simultaneously. However, there are still some problems with this
software.
6.3
Problems
6.3
•    There is no way that a simple text printout can be produced because
!EmulateLQ, as supplied with Laser Direct, will not work over a network.
This means that software such as First Word Plus or any software that
uses a VDU 2 will not print. i.e. it must print via a RISC-OS driver.
PipeDream will work perfectly with the RISC-OS drivers but its own
drivers will not work. To get a listing/printout from a Basic program,
the output has to be spooled, tidied up in Edit then dragged to the
printer driver. Pascal source, prepared in Edit, is OK but sample run-
time needs to be spooled, tidied in Edit, then printed.
6.3
•    The Spooler application from Level 4 will not co-exist with the
ClassPrint spooler. Thus, if some stations on the network need a simple
text printout, e.g. a listing, and others want the Laser Direct printer,
two separate print servers are required. Pupils become rapidly confused
when they try to select different print servers. (This problem may have
been overcome with AUN.)
6.3
•    There is no method of putting a header with the client station’s I.D.
or station number on the printout. This can cause confusion in identify
ing pupil’s work, especially when all the work is similar.
6.3
•    On occasions, an error message, “No room in shared area” appears. This
happens chiefly while printing with a long queue. Oak Solutions have
investigated this but believe that the problem lies with CC’s part of
the code. A re-write to overcome this problem is planned but is not
imminent.
6.3
•    The client software is designed only to install if the printserver is
running. This is desirable but it can lead to the following problem.
When the client software is run, it searches the network, including
other networks across bridges, for a server called laser. It then checks
that the Laser Direct controller module is present in this machine.
However, included in the Level 4 Spooler application is a logical
printserver called Laser. (Presumably, this is to serve an HP Laser Jet
printer.) This could be anywhere on the network but, on occasions, it
may find this server before the correct one and will then, naturally,
fail to find the controller module and generate an error message. The
solution to this problem, once diagnosed, is easy − just rename the
Level 4 logical server to say Laser_3.
6.3
•    Another similar problem occurs when two ClassPrint servers are run on
the same network. Again, while installing on the client machine, the
software searches the network for a server called Laser. However, there
is no way of knowing which server it will find. In our case, it
sometimes failed to find the server a few metres from it but found one
on another network two bridges distant. Printouts were thus directed to
the wrong server. This can be solved by editing the choices file inside
the spooler applications to say Laser1 and Laser2 as there is no menu
option to rename a print server.
6.3
•    A large number of stations (10-20) still cannot print a large file
simultaneously without errors, but, due to the speed of the system, all
that is required is to spread the start of printing.
6.3
(Oak Solutions are aware of these problems and are working on the ones
that are caused by faults in the software. Ed.)
6.3
C         onclusion
6.3
Laser Direct is a good product. It does what it is supposed to do and it
does it well. The real problem lies not with ClassPrint itself but with
the lack of bandwidth on Econet. It is a good attempt to overcome these
problems. In our case, it has transformed the horrendous problem of
network printing into a situation that, while not perfect, is adequate.
If the problems of simple text printing, the clients I.D. and the “No
Room in shared area” can be overcome, and if menu options can be
included to rename servers, ClassPrint will be an excellent product. The
guide should also include a “trouble shooting” section!
6.3
ClassPrint costs £79.95 +VAT from Oak Solutions or £87 through
Archive.  A
6.3
ArcFS2 versus SparkFS
6.3
Tim Nicholson
6.3
Archive filing systems with some form of data compression have been
around for a while now, principally in the form of Compression from
Computer Concepts and ArcFS by Mark Smith. Enigma is due out soon which
promises data compression and encryption protection but in the meantime,
David Pilling has entered the scene with SparkFS, a filing system
implementation of his popular Spark archive utility, and an upgrade to
ArcFS in the form of ArcFS2 has been released by Software 42. Both these
packages are similarly priced and claim to offer similar facilities, so
how do they compare?
6.3
The packages
6.3
ArcFS2 comes on a single floppy disc together with some utilities,
including a PD read-only version of the application, and release notes.
It occupies 53Kb of disc space with 17Kb for the associated Info
application. The thirty-one page manual is either a good photocopy or a
bad DTP printout, and contains not only a tutorial and guide to basic
operation of the application, but also useful sections on such matters
as using the system with limited memory, differences between operation
with RISC-OS 2, RISC-OS 3 and RISC-OS 3.10, and a list of supported
*commands. The package is supplied in a video library case which is big
enough to let the floppy rattle around alarmingly and too small to take
the manual without folding it.
6.3
SparkFS comes on a single floppy together with the latest copies of
Spark and Sparkplug and the usual release notes, etc. SparkFS occupies
some 344Kb of disc space, of which 199Kb is recoverable on your working
copy if you are content to limit the range of archive formats which you
wish to handle. It is packaged in a purpose-made vinyl-backed wallet
together with a “properly” printed manual of 28 pages which includes a
history of the various archive formats SparkFS understands, a descrip
tion of supported *commands and a list of error codes/messages.
6.3
The facilities
6.3
ArcFS2 provides an archive filing system utilising file archives of
filetype_DDC. It supports various compression algorithms, none, Pack
(where only consecutively repeated bytes are compressed) or 12 to 16 bit
LZW compression of the Crunch or Compress variety. Each has its own
merits of speed and memory requirements. “Garble” password protection is
available and this is independently settable for different objects
within one archive. Improvements over the original version include speed
and the number of archives “open” at any one time. A separate utility
called ArcFSInfo is provided to enable archive statistics to be viewed.
This utility has its own icon on the right of the iconbar which is in
addition to the ArcFS2 icon on the left(filer) side of the iconbar.
6.3
SparkFS likewise provides an archive filing system but may utilise a
variety of archive formats including (currently) those found on other
hardware platforms including PC’s and the Mac. I say currently because
SparkFS is written as a series of modules, each one designed to handle a
particular format, and a core filing system module which is format
independent. Thus if a new format comes along, upgrading is simply a
question of obtaining a new format specific module. Also, formats which
are currently read-only may be upgraded to read/write if there is
sufficient demand to make it worth the author’s while. Currently
supported archives are, read-only:- ARJ, LZH, McStuffitt, PackdDir and
Zoo. Read and write:- Spark files_DDC, Spark directories (a new animal,
similar to CFS directories), PK arc, Zip and Tar. For those who have
never heard of half of these, the manual gives a short potted history.
For those who never need to know, the irrelevant modules can be deleted
from the working disc, saving up to 199Kb of space.
6.3
SparkFS also supports a large range of file conversion facilities,
primarily of use to those wishing to send 8bit data down 7bit channels
(e.g. viewdata systems). Of the various standards around, SparkFS can
handle uucode (from Unix), atob, FCET, boo and HQX. Again, the manual
explains the various formats to those unfamiliar with them. Compression
options depend upon archive type but for Spark file or directory
archives, they are:- None, Squeeze, Squash, 12 bit Crunch and 12 or 16
bit compress. Encryption may either be “Garble” or DES, which is
supposedly a very secure algorithm, as used by NASA, and may be applied
to individual objects within an archive. Archive statistics are obtained
by control-dragging an archive to the filer icon rather than needing a
separate utility, but are not as comprehensive as ArcFS2’s.
6.3
In use
6.3
A double click loads ArcFS2 on the left (filer side) of the iconbar.
Thereafter any archives can be treated just like any other part of the
filing system. A preferences window can be selected on the iconbar for
setting encryption, compression type and miscellaneous options. These
preferences may be saved as the default settings or used “just for now”.
The iconbar menu allows creation of new archives, manual compaction of
existing archives which have had files deleted from them, and facilities
for opening the root directories and parent directories of open
archives, or closing archives and, finally, quitting the application.
6.3
Once an archive has been opened, ArcFS2 keeps a note of it. If the
window is closed it may be easily reopened or the directory in which the
archive exists reopened using the Open $/parent facilities in this menu.
This is a useful way of avoiding cluttering up the desktop with too many
open windows. ArcFS2 refers to archives by their leafname and thus will
not allow two archives of the same name but different paths open at the
same time. Also, if an archive is deleted or moved but not closed first,
it will still appear in the list of open archives. Attempting to Open $
produces a window showing the “contents” of the archive, but attempting
to use the contents gives a ‘file not found’ error. This is slightly
annoying and can lead one to think one has archives which no longer
exist! When an archive has been created it is not automatically opened.
This must be done by double clicking on it.
6.3
Since ArcFS2 is written as a module, it uses the module area for its
workspace. The manual warns of the need to ensure enough free space in
this area and gives a table of memory requirements and the procedure to
adopt depending on whether RISC-OS 2 or RISC-OS 3 is being used.
Contrary to the instructions in the manual, I had to adjust the module
area memory allocation to avoid running out of memory with large files
even with RISC-OS 3. This became an annoyance when it happened halfway
through an operation and I had to start again.
6.3
A separate utility, ArcFS2Info, is provided to show statistics of an
archive dragged to it. It gives information about original file size,
compressed file size, compression type, read/write status and compres
sion ratio (compressed file size as a percentage of original). Whilst
this is a useful utility, I think it is a shame that one needs another
icon on the iconbar (mine is always too full anyway).
6.3
SparkFS’s iconbar menu is shorter than ArcFS2’s containing only Info,
New Archive, Choices, and Quit. Choices is the equivalent of ArcFS2’s
select option on the archive bar and leads to a preferences window
containing options for archive type, compression type, default temp
file, archive modules loaded, max memory SparkFS may grab and options
relating to UUcoded files. Encryption settings are dealt with in the
statistics window opened by Control-dragging an archive to the iconbar.
6.3
One big difference between the two applications is the use of workspace
memory. As noted, ArcFS2 uses the RMA, while SparkFS is configurable.
One option uses the system sprite area, others use memory claimed from
the operating system. SparkFS will use as much memory as it needs, up to
its allowance as set in ‘max’ in the choices window. If that is not
enough, it will use a Temp directory which, as supplied, is set to
<Wimp$ScrapDir> but this may be altered to any convenient location
including RAMFS. Using a Temp directory does slow things down a bit but
it means that SparkFS can handle big files more readily than ArcFS2
without running out of memory.
6.3
The New archive option allows one to specify the type of archive and
name and then it is created in the usual way of dragging to a filer
window. New archives are automatically opened after creation. Clicking
<select> on the iconbar provides a short cut to this menu option.
6.3
Spark file archives are compatible with those of Spark and similar to,
but not entirely compatible with, ArcFS2 files. Spark directories are a
new form of archive similar in structure to CFS directories. They are a
pseudo-application with a Data directory containing the actual archives
as individual objects. The default Sprites file is the familiar
lightning flash on blue but can be customised to whatever you fancy to
aid the identification of an archive.
6.3
Directories are more robust than files since each item is a discrete
entity. If files are deleted, the archive does not need compacting and
recovery should be easier after a disc fault. The down side is a
slightly bigger overhead reducing the compression efficiency. Once an
archive has been created, there is no necessity for the iconbar front
end of SparkFS and the Quit option allows for quitting of the front end
only or of the Filer too.
6.3
The lack of Open $/parent is not really a problem with RISC-OS 3 since
the Pinboard facility can be used to keep the number of open windows
under control whilst keeping archives accessible. As with ArcFS2,
archives may be opened by double clicking on them or dragging them to
the iconbar. Shift-dragging performs conversion operations, the options
depending upon the source object type. Spark files can be converted to
Spark directories and vice versa. Applications and directories can be
archived directly without the need to create the archive first and
binary to text (and back) conversions are handled in this way.
6.3
Performance
6.3
In order to compare the speed of the two packages, I set them to work on
a Squirrel database of 1,352,716 bytes which I know to be readily
compressible. The reason for the choice was twofold. Firstly, it enabled
me to do timings with a stopwatch without introducing significant
reaction timing errors and secondly it would show up any weaknesses in
the memory management of the applications. It is a real use which I do
weekly, at least, and sometimes daily. For the test, I used a standard
ARM2 A440 RISC-OS 3.10 with ST506 hard disc, creating the archive/
unpacked data on a RAM disc from the source object on the hard drive.
This was designed to keep hard disc access down to a minimum and so
reveal the speed of the processing algorithms. The compress 12 algorithm
was used in all cases and the compressed archive size was about 30% of
the original data. (The time taken to copy the file directly from the
hard drive into the RAMFS was 9.5s.)
6.3
    Spark    SparkFS    ArcFS2
6.3
create archive    ~120s    38s  (1)
    40s *
6.3
        46s  (2)
6.3
        56s  (3)
6.3
unpack archive    ~90s    22s  (1)
    38s *
6.3
        33s  (3)
6.3
Notes:    (1) using memory mode, max dragged out to
                        accommodate largest file
6.3
        (2) using Temp Directory in RAMFS:
6.3
        (3) using <WimpScrap$Dir> on :4
6.3
 * initially ArcFS kept running out of memory in RMA until I used the
task manager and dragged it out to as much as I could. This is not as
the manual says it should be under RISC-OS 3.
6.3
All filer operations were verbose but in the case of option (1) did not
actually appear for reasons I am unsure of. It is interesting that
almost as much time is saved switching from RAMFS to memory as from
<WimpScrap$Dir> to RAMFS which must indicate the filing system overheads
in read write operations even if they are to RAMFS. The saving is of the
order of the raw transfer time from :4 to RAMFS! Subtracting the raw
data transfer times from the above figures gives a processing time of
around 30s to pack and 20s to unpack (30s for ArcFS2) around 1.3 Mb of
data. An ARM3 would presumably reduce these times further. This means
that for more modest operations, the processing overheads will not add
unreasonably to disc operations, e.g. unpacking a 100Kb file should only
take an extra couple of seconds.
6.3
Compatibility
6.3
ArcFS2 will happily read Spark File archives created by Spark or SparkFS
but it declares them as read-only and will not add to them. A utility to
covert them is supplied with ArcFS2 or they may be simply dragged to a
new archive. It cannot read Spark directories.
6.3
SparkFS declares ArcFS2 archives as read-only if one attempts to write
to them. Attempting to read the archives caused SparkFS to crash with
memory errors and trying to quit SparkFS sometimes caused the computer
to hang up. This seems to be because the Spark module has got corrupted
and will not die when asked. This is a problem because, when faced with
a file_DDC archive, there appears to be no way of knowing which
application created it. For ArcFS2 this is not a great problem but for
SparkFS it could cause an embarrassing crash. Apart from this problem
SparkFS can handle a great many more formats than ArcFS2 so it would be
nice if this little hiccup could be fixed. It is interesting to note
that the two archives created by the two applications from the same
source were different sizes, the ArcFS2 file being some 1580 bytes
bigger.
6.3
Conclusion
6.3
These two packages are similarly priced. For my usage, the memory
management options of SparkFS compared with ArcFS2’s limitations on
handling large files make it my first choice. For more modest use, this
would not be a problem. However, there would still be the other areas
where SparkFS scores over ArcFS2 − no separate icon cluttering up my
iconbar just for archive statistics, not limited to one archive format
only, and all the file conversion options. I would like to have a read-
only PD version that I can leave on the machine at work.
6.3
ArcFS2 is smaller and, for those with problems of space, this may be
important but this difference is not great if one cuts down on the
archive options of SparkFS. ArcFS2 comes with a read-only version which
is PD, there is no equivalent in SparkFS and Sparkplug is getting long
in the tooth now. It is incredibly slow by comparison and can’t handle
directory archives. Apart from the distribution aspect of providing a
read-only version, there is an element of protecting software against
unauthorised tampering, obtained by using archived applications and a
read-only de-archiver, so how about it, David Pilling?
6.3
From the initial presentation of the packages, through to the facilities
provided and the way they are implemented, SparkFS comes out a clear
winner for me. ArcFS2 is a notable improvement to the earlier version
and those familiar with it may prefer to stay with the style of
something they are used to, whilst gaining the benefit of the enhance
ments. Both packages come with a discount for those upgrading, but
SparkFS comes with a double discount for those with both ArcFS and
Spark. This can make it even better value for money. For those with
twice as much to spend, there is still Computer Concepts CFS and, round
the corner, is Enigma (with what facilities? and at what cost?) but, at
the moment, SparkFS wins on price and performance.
6.3
ArcFS2 is £20 (no VAT) from Software42 and SparkFS is £23.96 from David
Pilling or £23 through Archive.  A
6.3
Rheingold Enterprises    17 Ingfield
Terrace, Slaithwaite, Huddersfield  HD7 5BJ. (0925−210657)
6.3
Risc Developments (pp6/10)    117 Hatfield
Road, St Albans, Herts  AL1 4JS. (0727−40303) (0727−860263)
6.3
Sherston Software     Swan Barton,
Sherston, Malmesbury, Wilts. SN16 0LH. (0666−840433) (0666−840048)
6.3
Software 42     109 Ferry Road, Hullbridge, Essex  SS5 6EL.
6.3
Soft Rock Software     124 Marissal
Road, Henbury, Bristol  BS10 7NP. (0272−761685)
6.3
Spacetech (p32)    21 West Wools, Portland, Dorset  DT5 2EA.
(0305−822753) (0305−860483)
6.3
State Machine     75 Upper Wellington Street, Luton, Bedfordshire  LU1
5AA. (0582−483377) (0582−480833)
6.3
Techsoft UK Ltd (p9)    Old School
Lane, Erryrs, Mold, Clwyd  CH7 4DA. (082−43318)
6.3
Turing Tools     149 Campbell Road, Cowley, Oxford  OX4 3NX. (0865−775059)
6.3

Volume 6 • Nº 4 • January 1993
6.4
All change!
6.4
More changes are taking place at the Archive office. During the
Christmas holidays, we will, hopefully, have completed the installation
of our new telephone system to improve the service we offer to sub
scribers. In particular, we will have a special Technical Help phone
number that will be released in confidence to subscribers to our
Technical Help Service.
6.4
Archive BBS is born again?
6.4
A few weeks ago, the hard drive on the Archive bulletin board suffered a
fatal crash. We tried to give it the kiss of life but to no avail. We
decided, therefore, that it was time we re-vamped the BBS. We have
installed some new phone lines here in the office (the old board was run
from Adrian’s home) so 745932 is no longer available. The new number
will be 0603−766585. We hope to get the system up and running again very
soon but please bear with us.
6.4
The new board will have a new emphasis. We are hoping that its main use
will be as a technical forum. To this end, all discussions which can be
classed as just ‘passing the time of day’ − i.e. using the BBS just for
fun − will be discouraged. We will try to put all the latest Careware,
Shareware and Program Disc software up on the board as soon as it
becomes available. We will also try to check the mail daily (Monday to
Friday) to ensure a good turn-around for your technical queries.
6.4
In case you haven’t accessed the Archive BBS before, you will need some
scrolling terminal software (not Viewdata) with the data format set to
8n1 and the speed at up to 2400 baud. There will be two lines at first
but if the board gets enough use to justify it, we will install a third
line and put a higher speed modem on it.
6.4
More staff !?!
6.4
Our third major change this month is another new member of staff! We
will soon (we hope) be welcoming Vera Cooke as our new Business Manager.
She is currently in a job that has a 3 month notice period and they are
hanging onto her until the very last minute but we hope she will start
here some time next month.
6.4
I trust that, as a result of these and other changes, Norwich Computer
Services will continue to grow and improve the service it offers to the
Acorn 32-bit community.
6.4
With best wishes for 1993,
6.4
Products Available
6.4
•    Aldebaran − In this new game ‘that shows what the Archimedes is
capable of’, you explore twelve fractal planets, fight off various
enemies and save a star from destruction. It is produced by Evolution
Trading in Switzerland and is available in the UK through MAPS Ltd for
£34.90 inc VAT.
6.4
•    Aleph One PC card under £400 − While stocks last, we have some Aleph
One 386 1Mb PC podules for £395 due to over-stocking just before the 486
appeared on the scene! (We are having to sell these at a loss!!)
6.4
•    Archive price rise − As we said last month, the price of the Archive
annual subscription (12 issues) is increasing from £17 to £19 as from
1st February 1993. All subscriptions received before that date will be
honoured even if they are not actually due. The new overseas rates are
£26 for Europe, Australia/N.Z., etc £37 and the rest of the world £34.
6.4
The Technical Help Service is also going to be increasing from £10 a
year to £15 a year. However, this is to reflect the fact that we are
installing a dedicated Technical Help Hotline. The main NCS phone line
is usually fairly busy, so we will issue THS users with a special
confidential phone number which they can ring to get solutions to their
technical problems. We are hoping the line will be open by the end of
January and all holders of a current THS subscription will then receive
a letter informing them about the new service.
6.4
•    Atomwide VIDC enhancer − Atomwide have stopped producing their VIDC
Enhancer and have released the VIDC Plus software into the public
domain. This is now available as Careware Disc 18 (£6 to subscribers −
see below). We have also been given permission by Atomwide to get
another company to make them for us (in any case, the enhancers and hope
to have some VIDC enhancers made up shortly. This will allow us to
fulfil existing orders and to continue to supply enhancers in future.
6.4
•    BBC Acorn User Show − In April 1993 (15th − 17th) Safesell Exhibi
tions, who have been responsible for the London Acorn User Shows, will
be organising an Acorn User Show in Harrogate at the International
Exhibition Centre. This has come out of the fact that the London
exhibition has been taken over by Acorn themselves and will, from 1993,
be The World of Acorn. We hope that Norwich Computer Services will be
represented at both exhibitions.
6.4
•    Careware Disc 18 − This disc contains the public domain version (1.61
16-Mar-92) of Atomwide’s VIDC Plus software. This supports a host of
monitors giving a wide range of extra modes for all A-series computers.
There are two versions of the software on the disc:
6.4
The A540/A5000 version does not need any additional hardware and
supports the following monitors: Eizo 9060, Eizo 9070, Eizo F550i, Eizo
T560i, HP-D1187, MicroHL, PanaSync, Quadram (AKF 18), Taxan 1095, Taxan
770, Taxan 775, Taxan 795, Taxan 875, Taxan 970.
6.4
The A400/A3000 version must have the Atomwide VIDC enhancer hardware to
support the following monitors: Eizo 9060, Eizo 9070, HP-D1187, MicroHL,
PanaSync, Quadram (AKF 18), Switcher, Taxan 1095, Taxan 770, Taxan 775,
Taxan 795, Taxan 875, Taxan 970.
6.4
•    Chatter is 4Mation’s new comms package. This is a full RISC-OS
compatible program providing ANSI, Viewdata and Teletel display
protocols, and Campus 2000, X, Y and Z-modem transfers. The price is
£37.50 from 4Mation or £35 through Archive.
6.4
•    Desktop Tracker − This is Leading Edge’s RISC-OS compatible version of
their Tracker software which allows you to enter your own music and
sounds, and also to play existing Tracker music of which there is a lot
available in PD libraries. If you have a Midi interface, you can play
the tracker tunes through a Midi instrument. Desktop Tracker is £69 inc
VAT from Leading Edge or £63 through Archive.
6.4
•    EFF fonts − There is now a range of over 500 RISC-OS 3 fonts available
from EFF. They have also dropped the price of their RISC-OS 2 fonts by
30%. The new fonts have automatic kerning so that, for example, the word
“AWAY” transferred into RISC-OS 3 fonts would automatically come out as
“AWAY”.
6.4
•    Eureka! − I have a real live copy of Eureka in my hands. It is
available NOW.
6.4
•    Game Maker’s Manual − For those who want to write their own games for
the Archimedes, this new book will provide some of the basics to get you
started. The price is £14.95 from Sigma Press or £14 through Archive.
6.4
•    Games galore − There are various games for the Archimedes that we have
missed out on along the way. The following have now been added to the
Archive games list:
6.4
Black Angel, the 3D space combat simulation from 4th Dimension is £32
through Archive.
6.4
Chopper Force, the 3D futuristic helicopter simulation from 4th
Dimension is £32 through Archive.
6.4
Galactic Dan is a 3D arcade adventure combat game from 4th Dimension and
is £24 through Archive.
6.4
Gribbly’s Day Out is an arcade action game from CoinAge. This is £24
through Archive.
6.4
Krisalis Compendium which includes Mad Professor Mariarti, Terramex,
Pipemania and Revelation (the game, not the art package!). This is £28
through Archive.
6.4
Lotus Turbo Challenge 2 the driving game from Krisalis with a Turbo
Esprit or Lotus Elan is £24 through Archive. (This is currently making
life a misery for the adults of the Beverley household − “If you don’t
come for lunch now I shall switch the so-and-so computer off!”)
6.4
Omar Sharif’s Bridge is a bridge game from Krisalis including on-line
help for £28 through Archive.
6.4
•    Hawk V9 Mk II − Wild Vision have produced a new version of their well-
established Hawk V9 digitiser. It is now a single width podule which
saves a podule slot (Mk I was a dual width podule). The software has
been upgraded to offer a live display window in the desktop. The grabbed
video picture is then displayed with full dithered colours. There is
also a special mono format useful for preparing material for monochrome
DTP work. It comes with fully RISC-OS compliant software providing an
“extensive range of image scaling and enhancing options” allowing
sprites produced to be dragged straight into whatever desktop appli
cations you are using. The price is now £269 +VAT from Wild Vision or
£305 through Archive.
6.4
•    IDE internal drives − Yes, we’re finally succumbing to pressure to
stock internal IDE hard drives for the A3000 (and A3010). We want to
assess which we consider to be good enough quality and low enough power
consumption to be a reasonable risk for putting into a computer without
a fan. If readers have a drive they would like to recommend from their
own experience, let us know. If suppliers would like us to consider
their IDE drives, they too should get in touch with us to arrange a loan
of one of their units for assessment.
6.4
•    Joystick interface − The new Leading Edge Joystick Mk2 is now
available. It plugs into the printer port and takes two Amiga/Atari type
joysticks. With the software provided, it claims to be able to be used
with “virtually any piece of software”. It includes a switch so that the
interface does not have to be removed in order to use the printer port
as normal. (I tried it with an Artworks and an Impression dongle hanging
off the back and they worked fine.) It is compatible with all Acorn 32-
bit computers and with RISC-OS 3.1. The price is £38 through Archive.
6.4
•    Landmarks Civil War − The latest in Longman Logotron’s series of
Landmarks packages is Civil War. The price is £24 +VAT from Longman
Logotron or £26 through Archive.
6.4
•    Midi Tracker − This software from Leading Edge allows you to play
existing Tracker music, of which there is a lot available in PD
libraries, through a Midi interface to a Midi instrument. It gives you
the ability to add keyboard setups, several being pre-defined. Midi
Tracker is £19 inc VAT from Leading Edge or £18 through Archive.
6.4
•    Midi Interface − This is Leading Edge’s Midi interface. It has Midi in
and out, conforms to Acorn’s Midi standard and is cheap! Midi Interface
is £42 inc VAT from Leading Edge or £40 through Archive. The other
advantage/disadvantage is that it does not take up a podule slot but
uses the Econet interface. The Midi in and out sockets are on short
flying leads that plug into the Econet socket.
6.4
•    Midi Sampler Interface − This is a combination of a Midi interface (as
above) and an audio sampler. Again, it has Midi in and out on flying
leads and an audio plug for the sound input. It can sample up to 50 KHz.
(If you are wondering who would want to sample frequencies that high,
Leading Edge assure me that someone is using one of these samplers for
his research into bat sounds!) The Midi Sampler Interface is £94 inc VAT
from Leading Edge or £88 through Archive.
6.4
•    Picture it! − This is an object-oriented drawing package aimed at
education. It takes drawfiles as objects and allows pupils to make
drawfile pictures by combining the objects and then colouring them,
arranging them and even animating them. The price is £29.95 +VAT for a
single user or £49.95 +VAT for a site licence from Appian Way Software.
They also do topic disks at £8.50 +VAT each. These include buildings,
ships, birds, clothes (4 volumes), mini-beasts (2 volumes), dinosaurs,
transport and Christmas. You can, of course, make up your own sets of
objects from any source of drawfile clipart.
6.4
•    SCSI cards and drives − We are now stocking Leading Edge’s SCSI cards
plus their 80Mb SCSI drive solutions for the different Acorn 32-bit
computers.
6.4
For A300/400 there are 80Mb drives with standard podules: Internal 8-bit
£405, internal 16-bit (i.e. a faster interface) £460, external (which
has its own p.s.u.) 8-bit £555, 16-bit £605.
6.4
If you just want the SCSI card, the 8-bit version is £105 and the 16-bit
version is £145.
6.4
For A3000 owners, there is a Hardbox which is an 80Mb drive in a metal
box with its own p.s.u. that attaches to the external interface. This is
available as 8-bit at £485 and 16-bit at £530. There is also an 8-bit
Turbo external version at £605. This uses a separate external cased
drive with its own p.s.u. which links via a cable to an internal 8-bit
interface. The interface has extra hardware that makes it rather faster
than the standard 8-bit SCSI interface − though not as fast as the 16-
bit interface.
6.4
If you just want a SCSI card, the internal A3000 8-bit version is £105,
the external A3000 8-bit version is £115 (including case) and the 16-bit
external version is £155 (including case). The 8-bit internal turbo
version is also £145.
6.4
There is also a special version of the 8-bit internal (non-turbo) SCSI
card which includes a User Port. This is £150. This is particularly
useful for schools, for example, where they want to use something like a
concept keyboard or an interface box as well as having a hard drive.
6.4
Another option for A3000 owners is to buy an empty hardbox with its own
p.s.u. You then buy your own SCSI interface (not necessarily a Leading
Edge one) and a 3½“ SCSI hard drive and put it all in the hardbox. This
costs £125 for the box and p.s.u.
6.4
N.B. ALL Leading Edge SCSI cards are CD-ROM compatible, i.e. they do not
need any extra software, whether in ROM or on disc, in order to connect
to CD-ROMs. (The 16-bit card is £145 which, if you need to use CD-ROM
compares very favourably with the Morley 16-bit card at £160 plus £22
for the CDFS filing system.)
6.4
•    SpySnatcher is Topologika’s latest addition to their range of classic
text adventures. Your job is to help MI7’s chief, known as ‘Z’, to
unearth a ‘mole’. The price is £15 inc VAT from Topologika. (Send to
Topologika for their free Adventure Games catalogue.)
6.4
•    TechWriter − Icon Technology’s TechWriter builds on their successful
EasiWriter wordprocessor and adds mathematical typesetting with the
addition of a fully integrated WYSIWYG equation editor. The price is
£250 +VAT from Icon or £270 through Archive.
6.4
Review software received...
6.4
We have received review copies of the following: Ancient Greece, Arcade,
Chaos (game), Drop Rock, Fantasy + Fiddles & Drums (SmArt files), Help3,
Impact, NetView, Oh no! More Lemmings, Polyominoes, Precision, Punc
tuate, Soapbox, SpySnatcher, The Puddle and the Wardrobe, ThinkLink,
Tiles, TV Fun & Games, Whale Facts, Yes Chancellor II.  A
6.4
Government Health Warning − Reading this could seriously affect your
spiritual health.
6.4
As you will probably have gathered from the last few month’s editorials,
Norwich Computer Services is expanding quite rapidly at the moment. Why
are things going so well for us in the midst of a recession? Is it
because we try to run the business on Christian principles? Does God
somehow favour us because we pray about business decisions before we
make them? Do we get special divine business guidance?
6.4
Well, I don’t think God shows any favouritism towards us but I do think
that if a business is run in the way that God (in the Bible) says is
best, it will tend to flourish. This business is not immune to the
difficulties of the current economic climate but I believe that if we
seek to bring honour to Him by the way we run our business, He will, in
one way or another, look after us. I have seen the truth of this over
and over again in the years I have been in business. Trust Him − He
won’t let you down!
6.4

6.4
Norwich Computer Services 96a Vauxhall Street, Norwich, NR2 2SD.
0603−766592 (−764011)
6.4
4th Dimension     P.O. Box 4444, Sheffield. (0742−700661) (0742−781091)
6.4
4Mation    11 Castle Park Road, Whiddon Valley, Barnstaple, Devon  EX32
8PA. (0271−25353) (0271−22974)
6.4
Abacus Training     29 Okus Grove, Upper Stratton, Swindon, Wilts  SN2
6QA.
6.4
Acorn Computers Ltd     Fulbourn
Road, Cherry Hinton, Cambridge  CB1 4JN. (0223−254254) (0223−254260)
6.4
Aleph One Ltd     The Old Courthouse, Bottisham, Cambridge  CB5 9BA.
(0223−811679) (0223−812713)
6.4
Appian Way Software Ltd     Old Co-
operative Buildings, Langley Park, Durham  DH7 9XE. (091−373−1389)
(091−373−0731)
6.4
Arachne Software     Orchard Cottage, East Morden, Wareham, Dorset  BH20
7DL.
6.4
Atomwide Ltd     23 The Greenway, Orpington, Kent  BR5 2AY. (0689−838852)
(0689−896088)
6.4
Avie Electronics     7 Overbury Road, Norwich. (0603−416863) (0603−788640)
6.4
Clares Micro Supplies     98 Mid
dlewich Road, Rudheath, Northwich, Cheshire  CW9 7DA. (0606−48511)
(0606−48512)
6.4
Coin-Age Ltd    23 Cooper Street, Nelson, Lancashire BB9 7XW.
6.4
Colton Software (p7)    2 Signet
Court, Swanns Road, Cambridge  CB5 8LA. (0223−311881) (0223−312010)
6.4
Computer Concepts (p32/33)    Gaddesden
Place, Hemel Hempstead, Herts  HP2 6EX. (0442−63933) (0442−231632)
6.4
Dabs Press      22 Warwick Street, Prestwich, Manchester  M25 7HN.
(061−773−8632) (061−773−8290)
6.4
Electronic Font Foundry     Granville
House, 50-52 Upper Village Road, Ascot  SL5 7AQ. (0344−28698)
(0344−872923)
6.4
Evolution Trading AG     Industries
trasse 12, CH-3178 Bösingen, Switzerland. (010−41 +31−747−6531)
(+31−747−6596)
6.4
ICS Ltd (p16)    1 Kington Road, West Kirby, Wirral  L48 5ET.
(051−625−1006) (051−625−1007)
6.4
Icon Technology     9 Jarrom Street, Leicester  LE2 7DH. (0533−546225)
6.4
    (or Mike Glover on 057−286−642)
6.4
Krisalis Software     Teque House,
Mason’s Yard, Downs Row, Moorgate, Rotherham  S60 2HD. (0709−372290)
6.4
Lambda Publications     194 Cheney
Manor Road, The Green, Swindon SN2 2NZ. (0793−695296)
6.4
Leading Edge     376 Meanwood Road, Leeds  LS7 2JH. (0532−621111)
(0532−374163)
6.4
Longman-Logotron     124 Cambridge Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge CB4
4ZS. (0223−425558) (0223−425349)
6.4
LOOKsystems (p19)    47 Goodhale Road, Bowthorpe, Norwich  NR5 9AY.
(0603−764114) (0603−764011)
6.4
MAPS Ltd     P.O.Box 2841, 87 Vivian Road, Harborne, Birmingham  B17 0DL.
(021−428−2696) (021−428−2696)
6.4
Mijas Software     Winchester Road, Micheldever, Winchester  SO21 3DJ.
(0962−774352)
6.4
Minerva Systems     Minerva House, Baring Crescent, Exeter  EX1 1TL.
(0392−437756) (0392−421762)
6.4

6.4
Computer Concepts
6.4
From 6.3 page 40
6.4
Computer Concepts
6.4
From 6.3 page 41
6.4
Paul Beverley
6.4
Hints and Tips
6.4
•    Refilling BJ300/330 Ink Cartridges − The cartridges have a “soak up”
pad in them as well as the ink sachet so if the pad is black and full of
waste ink you can’t refill them! or can you? This is how to do it.
6.4
Split the cartridge along the seam and lift off the top. It is only
lightly tacked together so its quite easy to prise apart.
6.4
(The next bit is messy so use disposable gloves so you do not get ink
over your hands.)
6.4
Lift out the ink sachet (keep it the same way up) and then the pad and
wipe clean the cartridge. Dispose of the pad in a plastic bag, trying
not to get too messy.
6.4
I used kitchen roll for the new pad. Cut about 12 pieces to the size and
shape of the pad then place in the cartridge, now place the sachet on
top. Keep it the same way round to make sure the needle hole lines up
with the needle in the printer.
6.4
That’s what the safety flap is for that drops down when you remove the
cartridge so you don’t jab yourself.
6.4
Replace the top of the cartridge, securing it with just a couple of
drops of glue so it can be removed again, it is now ready to be filled.
6.4
I took the advice of Stuart Bell (Archive 4.5 page 7) and used Quink
Permanent Black @ £1.70p for 54ml. The sachet takes 40ml, so don’t over-
fill it. Obtain a 20ml syringe and 21 gauge needle from your chemist. (A
20ml syringe is about the best as larger ones tend to be very
expensive.)
6.4
Carefully fill the sachet making sure the needle goes in the same hole.
If you make another hole, air can get in and cause problems.
6.4
Don’t forget to wash out the syringe and needle afterwards.
6.4
So, at the cost of approx £1.70p plus the syringe and a few sheets of
kitchen roll, you now have a refilled ink cartridge which would normally
cost about £10 to refill and between £15 − £20 for a new one.
6.4
If any of you wonder what the soak up pad is for, when the printer is
switched on, ink is jettisoned through the nozzles to clean them and
this then runs down into the cartridge.
6.4
•    D-type connector problems − In Archive 4.8 p7, there was a tip about
taking the washers from under the hexagonal pillars of the D-type
connectors. I think it is worth re-stating it for those readers who
missed it. My A310 was in a ‘not working’ state the other day − it
refused to produce any green. I checked that the two screws holding the
D-plug into the socket were tight and checked out the monitor and lead
which worked fine, but still no green. A few days later, I remembered
the tip, removed the washers and the green returned.  Les May,
Rochdale  A
6.4
Small Ads
6.4
(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)
6.4
•    A5000 4Mb, 100Mb HD, Panasync C1381 Multisync monitor £1395. HP
DeskJet 500 printer £250. All immaculate condition, boxed, manuals, etc.
Phone 0782−771914 or 412515 ext 4034.
6.4
•    Acorn DeskTop Publisher £40. Minerva GammaPlot £20, System Delta+ £30,
Mailshot (for SD+) £15. Games: Nevryon £8, Powerband £8. CC ROMs (for CC
ROM/RAM podule): InterChart £10, InterSheet £15, InterWord £15,
SpellMaster £20. Phone 0737−832159 evenings.
6.4
•    Acorn monitor, medium resolution, boxed, complete with cables, £100.
Phone Michael Rutland on Basingstoke 0256−881338 evenings.
6.4
•    Atomwide ARM3 + RISC-OS 3.10 upgrades, £150. Syquest 44Mb removable
SCSI drive, new, £350. Eizo 9060SZ low radiation monitor, as new, £400
o.n.o. Phone Ian on 0245−325205.
6.4
•    CC BJ10ex Turbo Driver never used, unwanted present, £35. Contact
Chris on 081−856−4732.
6.4
•    IFEL 2Mb RAM board (upgradable to 4Mb), with MEMC1A chip for A310,
£90. Acorn ROM podule with optional RAM chips, £25. Impression Junior
£40. Phone 051−606−0289.
6.4
•    Oak 16-bit SCSI podule for A5000. Unused, still sealed, with utilities
disc and manual, £70. Phone 0302−722781 after 6.
6.4
•    Wanted − Reasonably priced s/h mono monitor for word-processing on an
Archimedes. Phone Des Woon on 0255−880257.
6.4
•    Z88 notebook computer, 128Kb RAM pack, adaptor, charger, cover,
leather case, ‘Z88 Magic’ book and BBC transfer kit, £150 o.n.o. Phone
Frank Mulholland 0734−875181 (office hours).
6.4
Charity Sales − The following items are available for sale in aid of
charity. PLEASE do not just send money − ring us on 0603−766592 to check
if the items are still available. Thank you.
6.4
(If you have unwanted software or hardware for Archimedes computers you
could donate for charity, please send it in to the Archive office. If
you have larger items where post would be expensive, just send us
details of the item(s) and how the purchaser can get hold of them.)
6.4
Hearsay £15, Pace Nightingale modem (300/300, 1200/75) £25, Artisan
Support Disc £5, ArcTiculate £15, !Help − Intro to Archimedes £5,
Snippet £10, Screened printer data cable £1 per metre.  A
6.4
Colton
6.4
From 6.3 page 5
6.4
Oak
6.4
From 6.3 page 26
6.4
Using RISC-OS 3
6.4
Hugh Eagle
6.4
I hope that all who have ordered RISC-OS 3 upgrades will have received
them by the time this issue is published and that those who have been
waiting to make up their minds about upgrading will have been suffi
ciently encouraged by now to go ahead. There will be considerable
advantages to all Archimedes users if we all use the same operating
system: above all programmers will be able to use the new improved
features without having to worry about backwards compatibility.
Inevitably, this column will tend to contain quite a lot of negative
material about difficulties that some people have had, but it is
important to appreciate that most upgraders have had very little real
trouble (some inconvenience, perhaps, but not insuperable problems).
There are genuine advantages in RISC-OS 3, most programs work well and I
believe that most users are pleased with it.
6.4
The deadlines for the December and January editions of Archive have been
concertina’d close together (because of Christmas, etc) so there has
been no time for any reactions to the first RISC-OS 3 column. However,
contributions have continued to arrive in response to the original
request – several more problems, criticisms, etc but also some interest
ing hints & tips.
6.4
Please send anything that you think may be relevant either to Archive or
to me, Hugh Eagle at 48 Smithbarn, Horsham, Sussex  RH13 6DX.
6.4
Fitting the chips to an A310
6.4
The upgrade to my A310 with an IFEL carrier board was quite straightfor
ward, with the help of good instructions. IFEL recommend that you remove
the motherboard, as a fairly good pressure is required to insert the
carrier board. I encountered no problems but the soldering of three
wires from the carrier board on to the legs of a chip, is not for the
faint hearted. (Memories of my Beeb days came flooding back). (Roger
Power.)
6.4
Configuring for a SCSI hard drive
6.4
The configure application is OK apart from the settings appertaining to
my Oak SCSI filing system. I have overcome this by a separate !Config
Obey file that I run as well as Configure and which reads as follows:
6.4
*configure drive 4
6.4
*configure filesystem SCSI
6.4
*SCSI
6.4
*configure SCSIDrive 4
6.4
*OPT 4,2
6.4
This is obviously only needed after a factory reset which shouldn’t be
very often. Unfortunately, at the moment it is, as further problems have
now occurred. Namely my Impression doesn’t read the Dongle all the time
and appears to require a factory reset. This is only since the arrival
of RISC-OS 3.1 and I have yet to find out whether or not the Dongle (or
maybe even RISC-OS 3.1) is at fault. Obviously I have checked all the
connections over and over again. (Roger Power.)
6.4
(Roger, I suspect it’s more likely to be a hardware problem on the
p.c.b. after fitting the I.F.E.L. ROM upgrade in your A310. There are no
problems, that we know of, with dongles. Ed.)
6.4
5¼“ floppy drive
6.4
My external 5¼“ floppy drive is too slow for my Archimedes, with the
result of the heads chattering alarmingly. I had previously got round
this problem with the command *Configure STEP 3 6. However, RISC-OS 3.1
does not appear to accept this, only STEP 3 3. Can anyone help, please?
(Roger Power.)
6.4
LaserDirect printer driver
6.4
(Incidentally, Computer Concepts have told me that “RISC-OS 3 compatible
printer drivers should be available around the middle of next year. This
will cover TurboDrivers, FaxPack and LaserDirect” HE)
6.4
In RISC-OS 2, I solved the problems of using a LaserDirect printer on a
machine to which a parallel printer is also attached, by including a
simple driver in an application which resides on the iconbar and does
lots of idiosyncratic things which suit my personal use of the machine.
The driver stores data dragged to it in a buffer and outputs it to the
dot-matrix line by line on each Wimp_Poll with reason code 0. This
enables me to leave the LaserDirect on the iconbar. If I want to print
some text or Basic, the data is dragged with <shift> held down,
otherwise the data is presumed to represent an address, which is
formatted for the 9-line labels with which, by default, the printer is
loaded. This is very handy, because I can drag the address directly out
of a DeskEdit or Impression window. My beef is that my routine orig
inally tested for a connected printer, thus:
6.4
DEFPROCChPr:*FX5,1
6.4
VDU2,1,0,3
6.4
SYS“OS_Byte”,152,3 TO ;f%: f%=f%AND2
6.4
IFf%=0SYS“OS_Byte”,145,3
6.4
*FX5,5
6.4
ENDPROC
6.4
Thus, if the 0 byte inserted into the printer buffer is still there, the
printer is not on and the data are output to screen via a command
window; otherwise, they go to the printer; f% being the determining
flag. Now, I can understand that it is an enhancement to RISC-OS to wait
if the printer is off, but I find it is wholly unacceptable that the
machine is locked up by so simple an event. The OS_Byte no longer works,
since presumably the machine is stuck at the end of line 3200! Now, the
RISC-OS driver is not stopped by such an event, but multitasks happily
waiting for the printer to be switched on. Clearly some routine is
available to deal with the situation; why could the release documenta
tion not give a clue?
6.4
I have had to abandon the routine temporarily because, if I wished to
display a file on screen, the printer was incidentally tested first.
This is no longer possible, unless I validate <escape> with *FX229
before calling the routine and reset on exit; this means exiting via the
error handler, however, and is one of the more difficult parts of Wimp
programming, I find! Any suggestions? (Mick Day.)
6.4
LaserDirect and ROM fonts
6.4
As mentioned last month, the current version of the Computer Concepts’
LaserDirect printer drivers are not fully RISC-OS 3 compatible. Thus
they will not cope with the extra features of Draw such as rotated text
or sprites. Furthermore, they will not find all of the fonts in the ROM-
based resources filing system. In particular, the italic versions of
both Homerton and Corpus are not seen. It is necessary to have the old
copies of the Homerton and Corpus fonts installed in the disc !Fonts
directory. (Brian Cowan.)
6.4
(I find that if I try to print these fonts from Impression, it refuses
to print but does allow me to carry on, whereas Draw locks up the
machine. If this is a printer driver problem it makes Computer Concepts’
apparent lack of interest in bringing out new drivers all the more
frustrating. If they do appear in “the middle of next year” that will be
about 20 months after the original release of RISC-OS 3! HE)
6.4
Dot matrix printers: formfeeds
6.4
I have yet to find a way of stopping the RISC-OS dot-matrix printer
driver from issuing a concluding formfeed when a short piece of text is
dropped on the icon and printed. I prefer to control such things myself;
any ideas? or am I, after all, an idiot? (Mick Day.)
6.4
DFS discs: don’t try “free” space
6.4
Put a DFS disc in drive 0 and click; the error window tells you it is an
unrecognised format. However, if you put a DFS disc in drive 0 and click
on ‘Free’ you will crash the machine with ‘File core in use’ rearing its
ugly head! Couldn’t the existing disc checking routines have been
invoked before plunging into the ‘Free’ sequence? (Mick Day.)
6.4
Naming the RAM disc
6.4
RISC-OS 2 used RAM:$ as the prefix on the RAMdisc filer window and
Filer_OpenDir worked with it quite happily. However, you had to find out
by trial and error what discname to use in order to get sense out of,
e.g.
6.4
SYS “RamFS_FreeSpace”,“RamDisc0” TO room% : IFroom%>X% room%=0 : ENDPROC
6.4
Acorn could have detailed this irritating time-waster somewhere (like
the PRM). Now, I appreciate that RAM::RamDisc0.$ is generically the
correct format to use in the Acorn file system protocols and clicking on
the icon in RISC-OS 3 opens a window with that title. For backwards
compatibility, *Filer_OpenDir RAM:$ still works; jolly good. However, if
your software issues the command and you have already opened a window,
RAM::RamDisc0.$, from the iconbar, you get a second window identical in
all save the title, RAM:$! (Mick Day.)
6.4
Operating system version
6.4
The PRM tells us that SYS“XOS_Byte”,0,0 prints the version string: so it
does. However, SYS“OS_Byte”,0,1 TO ,A is supposed to return the OS
version number in A but it does not seem to do so. RISC-OS 2 and RISC-OS
3 on my machines both return 6 (the SYS number for OS_Byte)! However,
SYS“XOS_Byte”,0,0 TO A does return, in (A+4), the address of the version
string, so it can be extracted in the time-honoured manner. (Mick Day.)
6.4
MS-DOS: file extensions and formatting
6.4
The MultiFS utility is not required in RISC-OS 3; DOS discs and DOS
partitions on hard discs may be read directly with the new operating
system. I think that what Acorn have done is to integrate MultiFS into
the machine’s filers as an Image filing system. However, I cannot obtain
all the old facilities of MultiFS. In particular, it is not clear
whether the hierarchical method of dealing with file extensions can be
used; this was particularly useful. Also, I see that you can copy the
boot sectors from one DOS disc to another from the command line using
*CopyBoot, but I don’t know if this can be done from the desktop as an
option while formatting. Does anyone know? (Brian Cowan.)
6.4
Compression
6.4
CC have told me that there is a bug in version 1.10 of Compression which
can cause a corruption if a file is dragged between a CFS window and the
corresponding uncompressed filer window. If this is not done, Compres
sion should work OK. (Brian Cowan.) (See also the comment by Jochen
Konietzko in last month’s column.)
6.4
Wish list for RISC-OS 4 (R. W. Darlington)
6.4
•    When I use Name Disc from desktop, I want to see it display the
present disc name in the writable icon. (With my setup it does display
the name of the hard disc but not that of a floppy! HE)
6.4
•    When I copy across a group of files from one directory to another, I
want to see the Filer check that there is sufficient disc space for the
copied files to fit before it starts to copy them. (Also, in the case of
D format discs, that the disc won’t need compacting.)
6.4
•    I want to see it copy a group of files from one disc to another a
little more intelligently than it does at the moment. I wish to see it
write all the directory information in one go, then write all the files,
instead of continually moving the heads across the surface of the disc
for each little file it writes to disc, which takes it an age!
6.4
•    When I Set Type from Desktop, I want to see a list of possible
options, along with their icons, like !SetType by Emmet Spier.
6.4
•    In !Edit, I want to see an option to ‘Select All’.
6.4
•    In !SciCalc, which uses BASIC64, I want to see it display figures to
the full precision of the Basic, 18 significant figures or so and not
the 10 displayed at present. Also, I want to see it display exponents
like this “×1018” and NOT “E18”. I also want to see an option to select
engineering or scientific notation.
6.4
•    When deleting columns at the far right hand edge of a sprite, it
deletes too many columns.
6.4
•    If I save a sprite (using !Paint) of just one pixel in height (any
length?) and colour it a different colour than desktop grey, then when I
use this sprite to create a backdrop using the !Pinboard, not only does
it take an incredible amount of time to draw the backdrop, it also uses
the wrong colour. It comes out in desktop grey! Is this a problem with
!Paint or !Pinboard? (Or is the user making unreasonable demands? HE)
6.4
•    In the Set Copy Options, I want to see an option whereby it can be
made to ask for confirmation only if a deletion is being made, rather
than just an access request or a copy command.
6.4
•    Now that some fonts are inside RISC-OS 3 itself, I want to see a
configure option to set the desktop default font to other than the
system font.
6.4
•    I also want to see a new MODE equivalent to MODE 31 in every way
except that the pixel units are set such that all icons and everything
on screen appears half the size. Or, do the same for MODEs 18, 19, 20,
and 21.
6.4
•    When I insert a disc with a foreign format, e.g. an IBM formatted
disc, into the drives, I want to see a little more obviously that it is
a foreign format. Why not have the window header in a different colour,
e.g. red! Or do it some other way if you must, but make it immediately
obvious that it is not a native format disc.
6.4
•    When a window now goes off screen and the bottom right-hand ‘size’
control is grabbed, the window increases in size upwards when it should
not. (Isn’t this one of the intended improvements in RISC-OS 3? HE)
6.4
Pinboard backdrop sprites
6.4
R. W. Darlington has also sent in a collection of 74 sprites suitable
for tiling the backdrop, a voice module (which sounds to me as if it
might have been generated not a billion light years from the Sirius
Cybernetics Corporation) and some suggested modifications to the !Boot
file which will sound the voice module and display a different backdrop
each time the computer is re-booted.
6.4
The modifications to the !Boot file read as follows:
6.4
RMEnsure PinVoice 0 RMLoad PinVoice
6.4
CHANNELVOICE 1 10
6.4
SOUND 1 &FFF1 60 160
6.4
WimpMode 31 :REM to suite my sprites
6.4
Run ADFS::HD4.$.PinSp.RenSprites
6.4
Pinboard
6.4
Backdrop -T ADFS::HD4.$.PinSp .Sprit01
6.4
This assumes that the PinSp directory contains the backdrop sprites and
an Obey file called RenSprites which simply cycles the sprite names and
reads as follows:
6.4
Rename ADFS::HD4.$.PinSp.Sprit01 ADFS::HD4.$.PinSp.Sprit00
6.4
Rename ADFS::HD4.$.PinSp.Sprit02 ADFS::HD4.$.PinSp.Sprit01
6.4
......
6.4
Rename ADFS::HD4.$.PinSp.Sprit00 ADFS::HD4.$.PinSp.Sprit74
6.4
Screen blanker configuration
6.4
Does anyone know which *configuration command sets the blank out time,
or where this appears in the *Status data. I can set it using Acorns
!Configure program in the Apps directory, but cannot find it elsewhere
for use by a star command. (Roger Darlington.)
6.4
*Filer_Run syntax
6.4
My tip last month about using *Filer_Run with a variable application
name was unnecessarily convoluted. Although *Filer_Run <App$Dir> doesn’t
work, *Filer_Run <App$Dir>.!Run does.
6.4
Fitting RISC-OS 3.1 to Computerware/Avie/Atomwide RAM upgrades
6.4
The new RISC-OS ROMs are easily fitted into the four sockets provided on
the main RAM board. The ROMs should be fitted as described in the
instructions supplied with the RISC-OS upgrade.
6.4
Locate the two links on the RAM board and swap the jumper to position B
for both.
6.4
Locate LK12 on the main PCB, this is just under the RAM PCB where the
cable enters from the left. There should be two links placed in the
east-west postion. Remove these links and replace them in the north-
south position.
6.4
LK12 is not always fitted and exists as a pair of PCB tracks on the
topside of the main PCB. These can be cut using a small sharp knife. The
new links can then be made on the underside of the PCB using tinned
copper wire and a soldering iron − as shown below.
6.4
A310 Issue 1 PCB’s do not have LK12 fitted at all and require more
difficult modification. Please contact Avie for assistance.
6.4
The fitting of RISC-OS 3 will be performed by Avie for £6.50 + VAT −
this charge is simply to cover return carriage.  A
6.4
•    ABC Compiler − I’ve followed the discussions in Archive about the
relative merits of the RiscBasic and ABC compilers with interest
(Archive 6.1 p49). I don’t feel that there is much weight to the
argument that ABC is compiling a language different from Basic V. The
differences are quite small. The evening I received the ABC package, I
got a program of over a thousand lines running with the compiler in
about an hour which included writing some code to initialise several
arrays and removing some redundant code. When I write programs under the
Basic V interpreter, I just take the differences into account.
6.4
My major grumble is that even when I bought the ABC package a year ago,
it had a minor bug which shows itself sometimes when the object code
icon is dragged to a directory − it requires the machine to be reini
tialised. An upgrade to the latest version, which presumably will have
corrected this bug, will cost me £40, which I think is a bit steep if
it’s only the bug fix that is any help to me.  Les May, Rochdale
6.4
•    EasiWord 2 up(?)grade − I did have version 1.07 of Minerva’s EasiWord
and, after seeing the adverts for the WYSIWYG version, EasiWord2, I
decided to go for the upgrade.
6.4
Now, I do not know anything about 1st Word Plus, so the fact that
EasiWord2 was similar conveyed nothing to me. However, when I tried this
new version, I was niggled to find that I couldn’t print without a RISC-
OS printer driver being installed.
6.4
What was much worse was the fact that I could no longer send control
codes to my printer! Horror of horrors − I had lost the ability to print
in double height and in a choice of seven colours on my old Epson
LQ2500+. Let readers be warned!
6.4
I wrote to Minerva and expressed my dismay about their new package. They
very kindly invited me to return version 2 for a refund or part
exchange. I took up their offer and they even gave me a new package of
their old EasiWord 1.07. Well done, Minerva!
6.4
So, before you upgrade, be sure that it actually is an UPgrade for your
purposes.  Keith Lowe, Pickering
6.4
•    Scheme − If Sue Lawley asks me which book I want to take to a desert
island, without hesitation I will have to say ‘Structure and Interpreta
tion of Computer Programs’ by Abelson and Sussman. I reckon that after a
few years of studying it without any distractions, I would know how to
set about programming a computer. The language used by these authors is
Scheme, a stripped down, elegant and refined version of Lisp.
6.4
If you think Lisp is just an acronym for ‘Lots of Irritating Single
Parentheses’, think again. With even a simple parentheses-matching text
editor as supplied with EdScheme, that bogey disappears and you quickly
come to realise that the apparently strange syntax of Lisp-like
languages such as Scheme is in fact a very consistent and clear way of
expressing a computer program. Indeed, just as we in Britain are used to
seeing a Pascal-like pseudo-code used to express a fragment of code, US
books aimed at the academic community often use Lisp for the same
purpose.
6.4
I had read about the first third of the Abelson book before taking the
plunge and buying EdScheme. What arrived was the Scheme optimising
incremental compiler and associated editor on a single disc, a thinnish,
100 pages plus, User Guide and Reference Manual, and a thick, 300 pages
plus, Schemer’s Guide. This package is, in fact, a complete programming
course at a total cost of £60 plus p&p.
6.4
The guide is aimed rather firmly at the late secondary school market and
starts with a deceptively simple approach to programming by asking the
programmer to construct pencil and paper machines capable of performing
given tasks. Even when programming has been introduced, the guide
continues to use the ‘machine’ diagrams alongside the Scheme code.
6.4
This approach has much to commend it. We are familiar with the idea of a
machine which carries out some operation on the raw materials fed into
it. Cans of beans are constructed from a supply of beans and empty cans.
The filled cans are transported as a package but, to make use of them,
we need another machine, a can opener, to open the package and get at
the contents. Much of Scheme programming is concerned with building the
machines to construct packages of data, machines to check their contents
and machines to open up the packages and make use of the contents.
6.4
One quickly comes to realise that within those intimidating parentheses
is the name of a machine which carries out some operation and the names
of items upon which it operates. That applies to arithmetic operations
too, so the label for the operation comes before the operands, so called
Polish or pre-fix notation.
6.4
By chapter 3, you are being asked to write an interpreter to add
fractions (try that in Basic!) and have been introduced to the concepts
of data abstraction and recursion. On the way, you have visited some
slightly eccentric ways of representing numbers in Lisp which, though
really of historical interest only, do force you to sharpen up your
programming skills. Gradually, a mental tool box is built up containing
procedures for selecting, removing, counting, substituting and reversing
elements in lists. The inner workings of the interpreter, ‘The Scheme
Machine’, are explained in chapter 5.
6.4
The machine analogy is explored further in chapter 6 and the problems of
handling infinitely large objects in chapter 7. As a finale, a game is
developed in the last chapter which embraces topics like artificial
intelligence and object-oriented programming.
6.4
Scheme seems to me to be one of the best kept secrets of the computing
world. This implementation is inexpensive and, though not multitasking,
can be entered from the desktop and cleanly exits back to it. It is
hoped that a RISC-OS compliant version will be released during 1993
though the cost will be slightly higher. This will enable Scheme to run
at the same time as other applications and allow code to be dragged into
a Scheme window and compiled. At present, there do not seem to be any
plans for a version which enables the user to create, close or resize
windows from Scheme, though the Macintosh version allows this to be
done.
6.4
I have learned a lot from my experiences with Scheme. Even when
programming in Basic, it has forced me to ask questions like, ‘If I
store data in this way, how much of the code which accesses this data
will I have to rewrite if I decide I want to store my data in a
different way?’ My appreciation of the virtues of a highly consistent
syntax, with few exceptions, has made me more critical of other
languages to which I have access. It has also made me realise just how
much code I have to write which has nothing to do with expressing how I
want the data to be operated on (my model) but is necessary just to tell
the machine how to do it. I think I’m a better programmer for having
taken the time to study Scheme.
6.4
It has also left me with a profound sense of despair. When I was
involved in education, I consoled myself with the notion that, for all
its faults, the A level system produced students who were much better
educated than a High School student in the USA, where the EdScheme
package has its origins. Yet Scheme seems to have made a negligible
impact in this country, probably because those who control education
believe that so long as we can produce GKOs (pronounced Geckos) −
Glorified Keyboard Operators − everything will be all right. With that
in mind, the decision has been taken to ignore the discipline of
programming and concentrate on IT − whatever that is. I think we are
making a big mistake.
6.4
EDScheme is available from Lambda Publications at a cost of £60 plus
£2.50 p&p. A 300 page copyable Resources Pack and a Teacher’s Guide is
also available at additional cost.
6.4
 Les May, Rochdale.  A
6.4
Comment Column
6.4

6.4
Spacetech
6.4
From 6.3 page 32
6.4
ICS
6.4
From 6.3 page 39
6.4
Creating Signs and Printing Posters
6.4
Tord Eriksson
6.4
There are many ways of printing a drawing bigger than the paper your
printer can handle − at least three offerings from 4Mation, two from Oak
Solutions and one from Ian Copestake.
6.4
Three in 4Mation
6.4
All the 4Mation printer routines are fairly similar whether it is
Poster, Vector or DrawPrint you are using (DrawPrint is part of the
Chameleon 2.00 package, the version with fountain fills − upgrades are
£12.50 from 4Mation.)
6.4
If using DrawPrint, you simply drop the drawfile on the DrawPrint icon,
in Vector you use the printer setup menu and in Poster you just select
print − after a couple of seconds’ hesitation, you get a miniview of the
file in question with the paper size plotted on top of the drawing. You
simply click over the parts of the drawing you are not interested in and
off you go. To access the menu you press <menu> over the iconbar icon or
by dragging a drawfile on to it (See Oak below!).
6.4
Overlap and butt marks are optionally available in Poster and DrawPrint
and printout speed is very similar. Both prints 4Mation’s compressed
drawfiles, Poster files and, of course, normal drawfiles.
6.4
Vector’s printer routines naturally handle the effects unique to it
(such as Radiate) excellently. Most of the time it works as well as the
others but at times it seems hesitant to start printing. (I have no
explanation for this!)
6.4
DrawPrint, again!
6.4
Unfortunately, one of the products from Oak is also called DrawPrint.
(This led to some misunderstanding between Paul and me!) It uses exactly
the same icon and behaves in a similar manner. The Oak offering does not
have the option of overlap marks, nor can you cross out those parts you
are not interested in, something I missed because it is a waste of time
and paper to print blank pages!
6.4
Page size is either selected from a short list of A sizes (A0 to A3),
printer page size or custom. The menu is accessed by either clicking
<select> on the iconbar icon or by dropping a drawfile onto it.
6.4
There are two more utilities on this disc, called DrawPrint&Plot, a
plotting program and a font manipulator similar to FontFX (more about
these later!).
6.4
Placard from Ian Copestake
6.4
Placard comes with a typically flimsy Copestake manual, (like an English
newspaper which lacks staples or glue to hold it together) but it is
well laid out and contains all the necessary information.
6.4
In contrast to those above, you cannot click to choose what areas to
print or not to print, you activate “Numbers” and each paper, that makes
up the full poster, will get a little number. These numbers are then
included in a list, so if you want to print out papers 1, 2, 3 and 6,
you just fill those numbers in: “1, 2, 3, 6” of you could write “1-3, 6”
or “1-3 6” − it doesn’t matter.
6.4
Mr J. McCartney of Shifnal has written to me, via Archive, and said that
Placard does not like DrawPlus files. I haven’t used Draw for a couple
of years, but I have had no trouble with DrawPlus files (my version of
DrawPlus is 2.10). Even Vector files work flawlessly (Vector is 1.00
presently), if saved in Draw format. Has anyone else had problems? If
so, check that you have the latest versions of DrawPlus and Placard.
6.4
The information Placard writes on the overlap areas (the name of the
drawing, page number and other useful information like “Attach to page
12”) is not available on the 4Mation offerings. It is quite useful at
times but it takes some time to do it. This information can be reduced
to a minimum by changing the settings.
6.4
First round
6.4
The DrawPrint utility from 4Mation wins − it has few thrills and is easy
to use, even without a manual. The advantage with Oak’s DrawPrint is
that it can handle just about any size of page and that you can choose
the size of the final print at printing time. Nice!
6.4
Placard seems to be designed with schools in mind and the program is a
bit of an overkill for normal use. It also crashed Impression when
started up together with both DrawPrints. (Stupid of me, I know, but I
prefer well-behaved software that doesn’t ruin my reviews!)
6.4
4Mation’s ‘clicking’ method for choosing which pages to skip is much
easier than the Placard method − it took me ten tries to realise that I
had to click on the Numbers icon before I could enter any numbers!
6.4
DrawPlot and ArcSign
6.4
These two utilities from Oak Solutions, that comes free with DrawPrint
(confusing isn’t it?) are gems in their own right.
6.4
Does not plot dotted lines
6.4
First the plotter driver: This will work with almost any plotter that
understands HPGL commands, no matter if it is serial, parallel or on
your network. Again, you can set the size of the finished work and you
can set a number of options as you wish: Filled text, outline text,
filled areas, page orientation, pen speed, origin, which pen to use and
its width and colour and so on.
6.4
In short, it is a very competent program that can reproduce almost
everything in a drawfile, except dotted lines and text in columns.
6.4
Create signs
6.4
ArcSign, according to the iconbar info box, “creates signs”. Well, so
does Poster and this is certainly not as powerful a program as that.
FontFX is the program that comes to my mind, and this little utility
manhandles text in a similar fashion, setting it in circles or in
straight lines, etc.
6.4
However, there is one improvement over FontFX that I first came across
in ArtWorks and that I immediately took to heart. Computer Concepts call
it the perspective tool. This is an instant moulding tool that works by
making the four corners of the selected area individually movable, the
draw object being distorted in the process. An example explains it
better − let’s start with a leaning and rotated text:
6.4
By just moving the four corners of the selected area you can get this:
6.4
It couldn’t be much easier. There are two restrictions to this program:
It only accepts around fifty fonts (each variation, such as bold or
italic, counts as one font) and it gets stuck when you clear the drawing
window with “Delete All” − it always leave one object on the board!
Otherwise, you have to reboot the utility to continue. Hopefully, this
will be corrected in later versions (1.00 tested).
6.4
Final round
6.4
There is no clear winner, as usual. For schools, Poster is the natural
choice, as it is very helpful in telling you in which order you should
assemble your poster from your printed pages. Vector produces equally
good results, except for gigantic prints, as there is no custom size
option.
6.4
4Mation’s Chameleon with DrawPrint, and Oak’s DrawPrint&Plot with
ArcSign, both cost less than £40 and the printer drivers are fairly
similar. For the user of plotters there have been few available plotter
drivers (GammaPlot and Super-Plot come to mind) and they all cost around
£40, so you could say you get DrawPrint and the excellent ArcSign
absolutely free when you buy Oak’s DrawPlot.
6.4
For those without plotters, I would recommend either of the DrawPrint
utilities, ArcSign and Chameleon are both very good programs.
6.4
P.S.
6.4
In my last review, I promised to answer any letters but said that SAEs
(Self-Addressed Envelopes) would help. I didn’t mean they should have
Swedish stamps on them! (I always assumed that SAE stood for Stamped
Addressed Envelope − but perhaps I’m wrong. Ed.)
6.4
Yours, from overseas: Tord Eriksson, Övralidsg. 25:5, S-422 47 Hisings
Backa, Sweden.  A
6.4
Angled and rotated text is as easy as it is with FontFX − if not easier!
6.4

6.4
By manipulating the selected area box, many unusual effects can be
obtained very quickly! This one took less than a minute!
6.4

6.4
This gives some idea of ArcSign in action. The primary menu looks quite
like FontFX’s, the additional Options menu is, like the program, simple
but does a very competent job. The selected area with its unusual
operation is visible immediately below.
6.4

6.4
ArcSimp − Simulation Software
6.4
Jochen Konietzko
6.4
What it’s not ...
6.4
As a physics teacher, I still use my old BBC Model B just for one
purpose: To run the classic simulation package Dynamic Modelling System.
So, when I heard about ArcSimp, I hoped that it would turn out to be
something like a desktop version of DMS. I couldn’t have been more
wrong.
6.4
... and what it is
6.4
ArcSimp can do the same things as DMS − and lots more − but its approach
is radically different. What it does is simulate an analogue computer.
6.4
The program needs 480 Kb of RAM and, when you run it (from floppy or
hard disk) by double clicking and then clicking again on the iconbar,
you will see two windows, the main and the tool window. The latter gives
you a choice (in version 1.52) of 33 modules which can be combined in
the main window through ‘drag and drop’.
6.4
The modules range from elementary ones like Sine and Integrator to very
complex and wholly mysterious ones which were, I am told, written to the
specifications of ArcSimp users and then included in the general
library.
6.4
Here the manual should spring into action but, unfortunately, it doesn’t
even hop!
6.4
It starts by addressing readers who have never heard of control systems
and simulations (there is an example of someone who tries to keep the
light at his desk just right for reading throughout the day and night).
The physical handling of the various elements of the program is then
described quite clearly but the rest of the manual simply consists of a
list of modules (called function blocks), with descriptions such as:
6.4
    Sample −
6.4
    Input I1 & I2
6.4
    Output −
6.4
    I1 when I2 was last + ve, ELSE zero.
6.4
ArcSimp is obviously aimed more at university people who deal with
differential equations, analogue computers and the like all the time,
rather than at school teachers. Small simulations (like the motion of a
pendulum) are very easy to achieve but, for anything else, a thorough
knowledge of such things as Laplace transformations and Bessel equations
is indispensable.
6.4
A very basic example will show how ArcSimp operates − see the window
below.
6.4
In the main window (upper left) are the actors − two ‘sine’ function
blocks. The properties of each function block (here amplitude, frequency
and phase) are defined, and then one decides how to link them and which
blocks to display.
6.4
In this example, the sine and cosine functions draw their graphs and
give their values in the lower half of the picture. I have squared both
functions and added up the results. This gives the straight line in the
lower left (sin2x + cos2x = 1).
6.4
In addition, there is the graphics window on the right, where a small
‘wheel’ has been told to take its horizontal movement from the sine, its
vertical movement from the cosine. This causes the wheel to move in a
circle around the point which I have placed at the center of the
movement and then linked to the wheel with a ‘rubber band’.
6.4
Limitations
6.4
Models can be as complex as the programmer can make them; the only
limits are available RAM and time. (Each function block needs about 640
bytes and takes 0.4 milliseconds to run on an ARM3 which means that, on
an 8 Mb computer, roughly 1000 blocks could be connected but, a single
result would then take about half a second to compute (yawn!). Typical
simulations are said to contain about 100 blocks.
6.4
Price
6.4
ArcSimp is produced by Mijas Software and costs £50. There is also a
demo version − restricted to 10 blocks − for £5, refundable when you buy
the full version.
6.4
Conclusion
6.4
ArcSimp is extremely powerful, yet (as far as the handling of the
software is concerned) very easy to use. If you have the necessary
mathematical knowledge, I can highly recommend it. If you don’t, but are
still interested, it might pay to have a look first at some relevant
literature, such as ‘Modern Control Theory and Application’ by
S.Shinners.  A
6.4
Mijas say that the manual will be improved, in later releases, by adding
more pictorial explanation. They have also done some tidying up of the
Wimp interface to make it more user-friendly. Ed.
6.4
Display Technology
6.4
Roger Spooner
6.4
The Archimedes is generally a good computer system. Unfortunately, it
has been condemned by an old-fashioned video display system. This
article discusses what is wrong with the current system, what other
people use and what could be done instead.
6.4
There are a few graphics enhancers available for the Archimedes. These
fill various market niches but it would require a major effort from
Acorn to bring the graphics quality up to something ‘good’.
6.4
The Good Old Days
6.4
On the BBC micro, the screen memory was the same as the main computer
memory. This meant that the higher resolution graphics that were used,
the less memory was available for programs and data. In fact, up to 20Kb
of its 32Kb was used for the screen display. For each of the 163,840
pixels, there was one binary bit of memory which indicated whether it
was to be colour 0 or colour 1. A video chip, the 6845, in combination
with a palette chip, converted the 1’s and 0’s into the colours on the
screen, like black and white, or blue and cyan. The image was not
compressed because it was accessed so fast. The memory was also faster
than the processor, so the video chip took the image from memory on the
‘off beat’ of the clock, and the processor only accessed it on the ‘on
beat’. Thus they could both run at full speed and the only problem was
the lack of total memory.
6.4
1987
6.4
With the release of the Archimedes in 1987, there was plenty of memory
(between 512Kb and 4Mb) and the same resolutions were used. Thus, 20Kb
was an insignificant amount but could be used to store an adequate image
in the same way. More modes were also designed which used up to 320Kb of
memory in the same way. These, and those which we can’t have, are the
ones causing the problems.
6.4
Unfortunately, with the Archimedes, the processor is as fast as the
memory, so whenever the video system wants access to it, it has to hold
up the processor and perform DMA; Direct Memory Access. This means that
the more bytes used for the screen, the less time is available for the
processor. This can, sadly, get quite serious.
6.4

6.4
The processor shares memory with the video system on the Archimedes.
6.4
Eating up bandwidth
6.4
It seems that in mode 21, the all-singing all-dancing mode with
640×512×256 (X×Y×Cols), you end up consuming 77% of the processor time
just displaying the screen. In other words, the processor is denied
access to the memory for 77% of the time, and it just has to wait. This,
combined with the increased number of bytes which have to be altered to
display something of a certain size on the screen (e.g. clearing the
screen which uses 320Kb) means that things go much slower. (This applies
to the ARM2, but with the ARM3’s onboard cache, there is a lot less
speed loss. Ed.)
6.4
Dual port memory
6.4
To avoid holding up the processor with video memory accessing, it is
possible to use ‘dual-port’ memory. This has the advantage that the
processor can still write to the screen memory using all of its power
and might, and the video system can read as much as it likes without
affecting the processor bandwidth. The second port of the memory is
read-only and it must be read in sequential order (not random access).
This causes no problem for display systems.
6.4
The remaining problem is that the main processor is still having to
write to the entire memory array, so to clear the screen, it may consume
large fractions of a second (1/10th perhaps) and thus delay other
operations which may be going on (like thrashing the hard disc).
6.4

6.4
Dual port memory allows access to some of the memory by two devices.
6.4
Even further away
6.4
The solution to this is to keep the video image in a different memory
bank, accessed through a video processor. Thus, to draw a line on the
screen (regardless of the resolution), the central processor (CPU) says,
‘Draw a line from here to here’, by sending a message. The CPU then
proceeds immediately with its work and the video system works out which
bytes of its own memory have to be altered to perform the operation. Its
memory will also be dual port because there is no point in slowing it
down unnecessarily. Thus, the CPU simply issues a request for a graphic
operation and is otherwise completely unbothered by the screen.
6.4

6.4
A video processor takes almost all the weight off the CPU.
6.4
There is a slight problem with displaying sprites; these involve large
chunks of memory and are therefore somewhat unwieldy to send. This can
be solved by leaving it in the main memory and telling the video system
‘There is a graphic command for you at this address in main memory’. The
video processor then looks there, finds the coordinates of the line, the
whole sprite, or whatever, and plots it at its own speed. It gets it
from memory using DMA so as not to trouble the CPU as much.
6.4
Colour
6.4
The other problem hitting us, other than the ever-falling amount of
processor time, is the lack of colours. This is easily solved by using a
better video chip; one which can take three bytes (well, more often
four) and can turn this into a signal for each of the red, green and
blue monitor guns to provide a precise 24 bit colour. The fourth byte is
either ignored or used as a transparency mask for genlocking. This
method allows for any of the 16 million colours to be used as there is
no palette to restrict it. The technique does, of course, use more
memory than we have available now but that is easily solved.
6.4
Alternatively, a palette can be maintained for 256 entries. This would
use the same amount of memory as is currently available, but you (or the
software) would be able to choose which colours you had. This does exist
now in the PCATS Graphics Enhancer, amongst others, (which I reviewed in
Archive 6.2 p68) but it is not popularly supported and it still can’t do
lots of pixels.
6.4
What else is available?
6.4
At the top of the heap is Silicon Graphics, selling workstations whose
processors are in boxes bigger than the one your whole computer came in,
and which sell for about £60,000. These have 1280×1024×16M screens which
can (with an unknown amount of extra software), do full anti-aliasing of
the whole screen. This means not just the text but everything visible. I
saw it doing a wireframe model at about 2 frames per second in this
anti-aliased mode and the pixels were totally invisible. It could also
do normal images at about 100 frames per second.
6.4
Typical good X-window workstations have 1024×768 screens with a full
palette of 256 from 16M colours. Some cost as much as £5,000. (Mind you,
I gather that there are now PCs available that now offer 1024×768 with a
full palette at around £1,000. Ed)
6.4
What’s the problem?
6.4
Of course, all this costs money and circuit board area. The computer
companies are not keen on using equipment which may cost literally
dozens of pounds to attain this quality.
6.4
Well, it would be a major effort to include this sort of technology but
it is commonly available in the Unix workstation market. We are
currently stuck with a real problem; Archimedes users can have neither
colour nor resolution which are up to modern standards.
6.4
G8Plus Graphics Card
6.4
Mike Hobart
6.4
When I bought an A310 for my laboratory about five years ago, it was the
fastest machine around for any sensible price (and had next-to-no useful
software). I believed that it was pretty clear that such a powerful
platform would attract good software writers but there was a strong
feeling among the lemmings (sorry, my colleagues) that maybe we should
have bought a PC instead, so we paid extra for a Mk I NEC Multisync
monitor because that, at least, would be useful for any alternative
computer. The PC never happened, but Impression, Artworks, Pipedream,
DrawPlus and Vector all did. So did a SCSI drive, extra memory and RISC-
OS 2 and the programs multitasked. And the wonderful, fast machine got
slower − so we bought an ARM3. Then we bought a VIDC enhancer and the
screens were big and beautiful − and the machine got slower again. If
this sounds familiar, help is at hand in the form of two (at least)
competing graphics enhancer cards.
6.4
What they do and roughly how
6.4
Both the G8 series of cards from State Machine and the ColourCard from
Computer Concepts make a copy into their own RAM of the screen memory
which, on the Archimedes itself, is used to feed the VIDC. The chips on
the cards then process the contents of their RAM into analogue signals
for the monitor. Both cards have the ability to use a wide variety of
palettes, produce 256 grey levels on screen, to refresh the screen at a
high rate which eliminates flicker and to do so without making extra
demands on the main memory bus. I have the G8Plus, not the Colour Card
so I won’t try to compare them but just give you my views of the G8Plus.
6.4
The benefits
6.4
As you will have gathered, the benefits are high screen resolution
modes, a wider range of palettes than VIDC can support, high refresh
rates and a reduced demand on the data bus. The VIDC is clocked to only
25 frames per second and this completely rejuvenates the computer’s
performance. The display really is superb and rock-steady, and the new
palettes are a bonus. The effects on sound production of reclocking VIDC
with an enhancer are eliminated.
6.4
The package
6.4
The G8Plus card seems well-made, densely packed with modern-looking
surface-mount ICs. Even the ROM bearing the software has a couple of
tiny ICs lurking beneath − so take care with your software upgrades! I
have had one, so I can vouch for the efficacy of registering your
ownership. State Machine obviously mean to provide continuing support.
The G8Plus card sports two external connectors: 9-pin (standard
Archimedes) and 15-pin D. Also supplied is a ring-bound manual,
registration card and the genlock lead. It was all heroically well-
packed!
6.4
Installation
6.4
You require RISC-OS 3.1 and a slot on a backplane. It is hard to imagine
that owners of standard resolution monitors will benefit from these
cards unless they want the palettes. If you own a very old machine, the
genlock connector on the motherboard will need to be completed with an
IDC header, so serious soldering skills will be required. Thereafter,
installation is simple enough, just involving attaching a flying lead to
the genlock, and some rune typing at the command line. It helps if you
have a copy of your monitor’s instruction book so that you can choose
the right parameters without too much experimentation.
6.4
The software (version 1.3) installs itself in the Resources filing
system, popping up when you click on the Apps icon of RISC-OS 3. It
offers choosers for resolution (see screenshot) and for palettes.
6.4
The manual is very clear, if obviously not written by English scholars.
It has a very informative introductory section on the principles of the
device.
6.4
In my case, there were some hassles with installation, and I can commend
State Machine’s helpful telephone advice. The problem was a poor
connection on the genlock (“my” end), leading to some dramatically
repulsive palettes.
6.4

6.4
Limitations
6.4
RISC-OS 3 supports 24 bit colour descriptions but also only allows a
maximum of 480Kb for screen memory. Consequently, there is the inevit
able trade-off between number of pixels to be displayed and the
precision of the colour information for each. Then there is a whole
science of actually rendering the colours on screen and, even worse, on
paper. Make no mistake, true 24 bit colour on screen is expensive and
the G8Plus card is a compromise tailored to reality. Games enthusiasts
will probably be worse-off with a card, as many use standard TV modes,
and some may do “naughty” things.
6.4

6.4
Conclusion
6.4
If you have a similar history to mine of paying for presentation
performance with diminished speed performance, or if you need good sound
as well as vision, or better palettes including 256 greys or to say
“goodbye” to screen flicker, then you have a choice: purchase a graphics
card (two or three to choose from) or await the hypothetical “new
machine” whose (?) VIDC20 was covered in last month’s Archive. Either
G8Plus or ColourCard will cost £249+VAT (or £280 through Archive) and
are now available. The new machine will cost ???? and be available ????
(I heard a rumour that it would have a 60MHz Inmos RISC processor in it
to drive the graphics controller as well as, obviously, an ARM-
something-or-other as the main processor.) I suspect that most of us
will covet but not afford.  A
6.4
CC’s ColourCard
6.4
Charles Moir
6.4
Charles Moir of Computer Concepts has very kindly written a rather more
technical explanation of how the CC graphics card works...
6.4
The ColourCard graphics enhancer works by indirectly mapping the VIDC
video memory into another off-board 512Kb video frame store. The
important point about this is that the video memory still appears to be
memory-mapped into the ARM address space so that existing software will
work unchanged.
6.4
(In my view, graphics boards that do not offer memory-mapped solutions
are not going to be practical since a large amount of the OS and
application code has been written assuming direct access to video
memory. If a graphics board has its own memory, not addressable by the
ARM, all the OS graphics code and a number of existing applications
would have to be re-written to run on another processor. Even if this
other processor were an ARM, it would still be impractical since so much
code, i.e. the font manager, sprite module, draw module and kernel
graphics, expect to use other OS facilities such as memory management.)
6.4
The main limitations of the current VIDC are that (a) it does not offer
high enough resolutions − it is not clocked fast enough for that, (b) it
does not offer a fully programmable palette (in the days of VIDC design
it was too expensive to implement the 768 byte look-up tables on chip)
and (c) it does not support dual-ported video memory. This last point
means that, at the higher resolution modes, the VIDC needs to read so
much memory, so quickly, that it has to hold up the main processor
memory accesses. This is more important with an ARM2, but even with an
ARM3, you can’t help but notice that, for example, mode 28 runs rather
slower than mode 27. Lastly, it does not offer true colour screen modes
such as 15 or 24 bits-per-pixel.
6.4
The ColourCard overcomes all these restrictions. It uses an Inmos video
controller that can be clocked close to 100MHz (compared with 36MHz for
newer VIDCs). This chip also offers a fully programmable palette for the
256 colour modes so that each of the 256 colours can be selected from
16.8 million, and it offers support for 15bpp true colour screen modes
where each pixel can be one of 32,000 possible colours.
6.4
By clocking the video controller at such high rates, it is possible to
offer very high resolution video modes such as 1152×848 or, more
conventionally, 1024×768 with 16 colours, and it can do so at flicker-
free refresh rates of 65Hz or more. Since RISC-OS works just as well in
2:1 aspect ratio screen modes, such as mode 12, we can offer a resolu
tion of 1600×600 pixels in 16 colours for an absolutely huge desktop −
this has to be seen and experienced to know what a difference this makes
to the Archimedes). (Amen to that! I’m using 1600×600 to edit this
article and lay out the magazine and it’s wonderful! Ed.) The maximum
256 colour resolutions possible with this amount of video memory are
800×600 pixels or 1152×424 pixels. Since the palette of colours is fully
programmable, all 256 colours can be set, for example, to levels of grey
which is perfect for working with greyscale scanned images.
6.4
Lastly, and visually most impressive, are the true colour screen modes.
Two of the true colour modes offer resolutions of 576×424 or 800×304
pixels. They are called true colour modes since there is no palette
involved, the values stored in each pixel directly control the colour −
five bits for each primary R, G and B − making a total of 32,768
different shades. True photographic quality colour images are possible.
6.4
Unfortunately, the desktop doesn’t yet work in 15bpp screen modes.
However, Acorn and Computer Concepts are working on this. In the
meantime, it’s easy to access the modes from Basic or your own programs
and software can be written to take advantage of the modes. For example,
we supply a simple preview utility called !Clearly for use with Clear-
file 24-bit images. A new version of ArtWorks is soon to appear that
offers full-screen true-colour preview in the 15bpp modes. (I have seen
some of these images displayed on my T560iT and they are absolutely
stunning. Ed.)
6.4
While some high end graphics systems offer 24 bits per pixel displays,
it is my belief that the advantages of the extra colours are easily
outweighed by the disadvantages. It may seem strange but 24 bpp modes
usually require twice the memory of 15bpp modes. 24 bpp modes nearly
always use one word (4 bytes) per pixel instead of two for 15 bpp. They
just use three bytes and throw one byte away. This means that, for a
given amount of video memory, 24bpp modes would be half the resolution
of 15bpp modes, or twice as much memory would be needed for the same
resolution, which costs twice as much and takes longer to update.
Lastly, by dithering 15bpp modes, it is possible to produce images that
are visually indistinguishable from 24 bpp ones. If you’ve seen some of
the example PhotoCD images we supply with the ColourCard, you’ll agree
it’s difficult to imagine better quality.
6.4
The ColourCard dramatically reduces the load put on the Archimedes
memory and so increases the speed of the computer. (To be more accurate
it doesn’t decrease the computer speed at the higher resolutions but the
net effect is the same.) Using a little-known feature of the Genlock
connector on the computer pcb, it is possible to copy the VIDC memory
across to the ColourCard video memory. By copying the data across far
more slowly than the normal VIDC requirements, the bandwidth loss is
reduced. In fact, the ColourCard updates only around 12 times a second.
In normal use, this is hardly noticeable, since updating the screen a
dozen times a second is still plenty fast enough to give all the
necessary visual feedback when, say, typing text into a word processor.
(Don’t confuse the screen update speed with the screen refresh rate. The
ColourCard refreshes the screen at 60Hz or more, so you don’t get any
flicker.)
6.4
The only drawback of updating the screen contents 12 times a second is
that it is not really sensible to run animation software (e.g. Replay)
in ColourCard modes. There is a straight trade-off between update speed
and computer speed. The faster you update the screen the slower the
computer runs.
6.4
Lastly, the ColourCard offers a video pass-through. This means that,
when not in one of the ColourCard modes, it passes the video signal
straight through from the standard Acorn video output to the monitor.
This guarantees compatibility with all software − even naughty software
that controls VIDC directly. Without video pass-through, it would be
either necessary to emulate all Acorn screen modes (not easy) or
disconnect the monitor every time you changed modes.  A
6.4
ColourCard versus G8Plus
6.4
Paul Beverley
6.4
Finally, here are Paul Beverley’s first impressions of CC’s ColourCard
and the State Machine G8Plus for general DTP work. (We have asked Neil
Whiteley-Bolton to look at the cards from the point of view of someone
doing colour printing work.)
6.4
Most of the advantages of the ColourCard that Charles has described
apply to the State Machine G8Plus so I will just concentrate on the
differences between the two rather than raving on about the advantages
of both. Are they worth £249 +VAT or £280 through Archive? (Both are the
same price and both are available through Archive.) Let me put it this
way, if they were twice the price, I would still have bought one for my
own use. (I am not saying at this stage which one I have chosen to use.)
6.4
Video switching
6.4
As Charles has said, the ColourCard switches automatically between the
Archimedes’ own video output and that from the new controller. This is
done by taking the video output via a short cable into the back of the
ColourCard. The other socket on the card is the output signal that goes
to the monitor.
6.4
The G8Plus card ignores the Acorn output and generates its own output
for all the modes − the Acorn ones as well as the new ones. This,
according to State Machine, provides a potential improvement in quality
because the signal does not have to go through an electronic video
switch. I have no way of assessing whether this is at all significant −
to my eye, the signal looked pretty good on both cards. One practical
difference, though, is that with the CC card, the final output going to
the monitor is provided on a 15-pin socket. Users of the older machines
(A300/400/540) will therefore have to get a 9-15 pin adaptor but CC
offer one free of charge if you send off the voucher that comes with the
card. The G8Plus has two sockets on the back, 9-pin and 15-pin, so you
just use whichever is appropriate.
6.4
Another difference relating to the video-switching is that, as Charles
said, without switching, you have to simulate all the Acorn modes as
well as the new modes. On some monitors, this can actually be an
advantage. On my T560iT, modes 12 and 15 come out as a ‘letter-box’
modes − the maximum attainable height is less than half the full height
of the screen. With the G8Plus, this has been re-programmed so that I
get an almost full-screen display. However, it does mean that ‘naughty’
software that accesses the VIDC directly will not work on the G8 card.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t only apply to games even some ‘professional’
packages such as Cable News use direct VIDC access.
6.4
15 bpp colour
6.4
Another difference is that the ColourCard offers 15 bpp colour modes but
these do not work in the desktop − you have to use special software.
When I started talking to CC and State Machine about the relative merits
and de-merits of this, I rapidly got out of my depth and decided I would
leave it to Neil Whiteley-Bolton. All I will say is that both companies
were able to produce some absolutely stunning demonstrations of colour
pictures on their respective cards. Very impressive, but not relevant
for the kind of DTP work that I do.
6.4
Speed
6.4
The G8Plus updates the screen about 25 times a second instead of 12½ as
with the ColourCard. This means that, on an ARM3 machine, the processing
speed will be reduced by about 2−3% (State Machine’s figures) compared
to the ColourCard. With an ARM2, the reduction is about 10%. Funnily
enough, in actual use, I prefer the G8Plus. The reason is that, with the
ColourCard, I am rather more aware of the screen update, e.g. moving a
window across the screen gives more visible ‘tearing’ of the image, so
it feels slower even though it is actually slightly faster. This is
obviously a subjective view.
6.4
(CC say that they can re-program their card to update at 25 times a
second and will offer that as an option if people prefer it.)
6.4
Setting up
6.4
When setting up the two systems, I had a few problems with the Colour
Card − though this should now be documented so that those who try it
later will find it easier. My T560iT, needs a VIDCmode module (now on
Careware 18, thanks to Atomwide) to make it work properly with any of
the Archimedes computers. Also, both State Machine and CC have had
problems (now solved) with these newer Eizo monitors. CC have provided a
special modes module on disc that will make it work properly. Unfor
tunately, it took me quite a lot of messing about before I discovered
that, because it uses the normal Acorn modes, (a) you have to continue
to use your existing VIDCmodes software, (b) the VIDCmodes module has to
be fired up by your boot file before the ColourCard modes software and
(c) you have to configure ‘mode’ to a standard Acorn mode, say 27, even
if you want to configure ‘wimpmode’ to one of the new modes. Otherwise,
it starts in a new mode using the ROM module but then refuses to load
the new CC module from disc because it is already in a CC mode.
6.4
The relevant section of my boot file looks like:
6.4
Run <Obey$Dir>.VIDC.T550iT
6.4
Run <Obey$Dir>.CC.Eizo560
6.4
Configure WimpMode 117
6.4
Configure Mode 27
6.4
Mode selection
6.4
Both cards come with an application that provides a way of selecting
modes from a table showing the resolution and number of colours. They
are very similar in the way that they operate except that the G8 one is
in ROM so it is always available via the Apps directory. Although it is
an advantage to have it in ROM, it does mean that updates, should they
be needed, would involve a ROM upgrade.
6.4
One thing to watch with the G8 application is that it mentions, for
example, a 1600×1200 mode. However, if you look, it says on the window
that it is the “Logical Resolution”. This means that 2:1 pixel modes
(marked by an oblong in the selection window of both manufacturer’s
applications) have a physical resolution of half what it says in the
vertical direction. CC have chosen, instead, to quote actual resolution
on their selection table rather than logical resolution.
6.4
One neat trick that CC have done with their mode selection program is
that by clicking the icon on the iconbar in different ways, you can
switch between different numbers of colours at the same resolution. This
is very helpful in applications like Artworks where, for speed, you
might work in a lower colour mode, switching to more colours for the
occasional preview or colour check.
6.4
As you may have guessed, I have chosen to use the G8 Plus rather than
the ColourCard though it was a close-run thing. Whichever one you
choose, I don’t think you will be disappointed. If you are interested
mainly in the colour side of these new cards, it may be worth waiting
for Neil Whiteley-Bolton’s comments.  A
6.4
(I’m not basically disagreeing with what Roger says, but don’t you think
that the VIDC20 mentioned last month (pp 35−38) bodes well for the
future? Ed.)  A
6.4
Aliped
6.4
Alan Highet
6.4
Aliped, £14.95 from Dabs Press or £14 through Archive, is a graphics
adventure played on a sideways scrolling screen where you play the part
of wing-footed Aliped roaming the castle to find the antidote to the
spell which prevents you marrying princess Natasha.
6.4
The scrolling area takes up a quarter-screen area in the centre of the
screen and is surrounded by the control area consisting of thirteen
icons. Clicking on these with the <menu> button allows you to load or
save a game or leave the game entirely. The other ten icons control the
actual play.
6.4
To progress through the game, you have to collect various keys and
objects which will all help you. To pick these items up you can use your
<select> or <adjust> mouse buttons which mimic Aliped’s left or right
hands, each of which can be chosen to throw, drop, pick up or activate
an item. Obviously, there are more than two items to use so you also
have a backpack which enables you to store items when they are not in
use and also enables you to swap hands.
6.4
The mouse is used exclusively to move around the board although control
is also possible with the keyboard. The controls take some getting used
to but enable a quick passage around the board. When using the keyboard,
changing the use of the hands can be achieved using the function keys, a
point not mentioned in the instructions.
6.4
Good mapping is of the essence as there is a lots of backtracking
required to negotiate your way around the castle and the screens all
look the same although the room name is displayed at the top of the
screen.
6.4
You have five days to accomplish your task (in fact, you can save and
load a game five times) and after that you have to start again.
6.4
I have to say that although the graphics are good, and clever use is
made of stereo sound to guide you around, I didn’t find the game had
what it takes to hold my interest and even with the solution in front of
me, I found it difficult to reach the end.  A
6.4
Saloon Cars Deluxe and Extra Courses
6.4
Martin Thorpe
6.4
This article is a review of the deluxe version of Saloon Cars, and the
associated Extra Courses Volume 1. Both of the programs were written by
Andy Swain for the Fourth Dimension.
6.4
The programs are supplied in a video case-style box containing various
pictures of the game in action. The box claims compatibility with all
Acorn RISC-OS computers and the ability to use a hard disk, ARM3 and 2Mb
of memory. Two features carried over from the old program, to quote the
box, are an inability to provide a realistic simulation of a full time
office job and the lack of a coffee-making facility. Fortunately,
neither of these prove to be disastrous failings.
6.4
I ran Saloon Cars Deluxe and the extra courses on an Archimedes A540
(running a pre-release version of RISC-OS 3) and an Archimedes A440 (old
model) with ARM3. Both of the computers have Eizo multiscan monitors
with scanning ranges similar to the Taxan 795, and SCSI hard disks. The
hard disk installation program coped perfectly with both hard disks.
6.4
Having installed the game on the hard disk, I double-clicked on the
!Saloon icon. The copy-protection system asked me for the original Disk
1, which I found to be a slight annoyance. Remember to save any work you
have on the desktop, as the only way I could find of quitting Saloon
Cars Deluxe was to press <ctrl-break>.
6.4
The game introduces itself by showing a view from the inside of a lorry
similar to those used by the Formula 1 teams, as the rear door/ramp
opens. If enough memory is available for the 2Mb version, the car
proceeds to drive out of the lorry and away down the race track. The
loading screen appears to have been pre-generated and, unfortunately,
the loading screen car graphics are not as good as those in the actual
game.
6.4
(The manual states that the 2Mb version will be loaded automatically if
there is enough memory. I found that I had to drag the Task Manager
‘Next’ slot up to at least 1536Kb to use the 2Mb version.)
6.4
Pressing any key loads the game. The player file which was last in use
is loaded, or the !Automatic file is loaded if there are no player
files. The race track picture is shown briefly and then the main menu is
displayed. It would be nice to be able to study the track picture at
length at this point, as you can when loading a new track from the
course menu.
6.4
The first option is ‘Demo Mode’. The first time I selected this option,
I was rewarded with a corrupted display. This was due to my using VGA-
compatible display modes on the monitors, and Saloon Cars suspension
system, which bounces the display about! I was able to produce a
replacement mode 13 module which will make Saloon Cars work on any
multiscan monitor (including the Taxan 795). This module is on this
month’s magazine disk, with instructions for use.
6.4
Having loaded the replacement mode 13 and Saloon Cars, I selected the
Demo Mode again. This produced a demonstration of Saloon Cars. Unlike
some demonstration options, the demo driver in Saloon Cars is quite
good. You can return to the main menu from the track at any time by
pressing <Q> and <F12>.
6.4
The next option is ‘Race Menu’. Selecting this option provides four
options and a return to the Main Menu. ‘Solo Practice’ puts you on the
start grid of your selected track, as the only car. This gives you an
opportunity to struggle around the track, free from any other cars
intent on running you off the road.
6.4
‘Normal Practice’ lets you practice on the track with other cars. In
Normal Practice, you start in the pits and must drive out onto the
track.
6.4
‘Race’ puts you in for the qualifying sessions of the race. This is
achieved by selecting ‘Enter Race’. ‘Hot Tweaks’ allows you to modify
the car’s brakes, clutch, engine, gearbox and tyres.
6.4
‘Tune Gears’ has the same effect as ‘Hot Tweaking’ the gearbox. It
allows you to change the gear ratios, as described in the manual.
6.4
The third option on the Main Menu is ‘Player Menu’. This allows you to
create new player files, and to change the various names and nicknames.
6.4
The fourth option, ‘Course Menu’, lets you select a new course, load a
course disk and see the best four lap times for the selected course.
6.4
The ‘Money’ option lets you hire a new mechanic, perform the ‘Hot
Tweaks’ described above or buy a new car, customising it as you go. Be
warned − buying a new car is an expensive business.
6.4
The ‘Control Menu’ lets you select how the car is controlled − mouse,
keyboard, joystick or a steering wheel and three pedals described in the
manual. The DIY wheel and pedals should provide the most realistic
control, especially with the throttle control. I did all my testing
using the mouse.
6.4
Driving
6.4
As in any car, the first thing to do is start the engine. This is
accomplished by holding down <S> for several seconds. The car starts in
neutral, so select Drive (the default car is an automatic) by pressing
<D>. Release the handbrake with <H> and apply the throttle. The best
advice I can give is to use the practice track and potter around the
track for several laps getting the hang of the controls. I would suggest
you then proceed to Silverstone and enjoy some of the long straights and
tight bends. If you have a violent impact, your head moves forwards,
hits the steering wheel and blood goes everywhere − if that happens, you
know you’re dead!
6.4
When (if) you feel confident enough to race, select the Normal Practice
option and get used to driving with other cars. Then you can enter a
race and qualify in as high a position as possible.
6.4
When driving, you can use as much throttle as you like on straight
sections but do as the Formula 1 drivers do and enter the bends on the
outside, aim at the inside point of the track and continue to the
outside.
6.4
This line reduces skidding to a minimum. If you want to overtake, try to
place the other driver on the inside of the track, then accelerate past
him on the ideal line, forcing him to slow down.
6.4
Saloon Cars takes a great deal of practice but I wasn’t able to get very
far in the time available for the review. Despite this, I was extremely
impressed with both the gameplay and the finish of the product. The
graphics in the game are excellent and the sound adds atmosphere to the
game. It is a great improvement over the original program.
6.4
I would like to see Saloon Cars modified to be compatible with multiscan
monitors. This could be achieved by doubling the VIDC clock rate and
updating the screen every 2 frames (i.e. having two WAIT commands
instead of one.)
6.4
The Fourth Dimension is promising a Formula 1 simulation which will
integrate with Saloon Cars. This should be available later this year and
if it is anything like Saloon Cars Deluxe, it should be extremely good.
6.4
Extra Courses Volume 1
6.4
The Extra Courses Volume 1 disk provides simulations of Donnington Park,
Oulton Park and a Seaside track, to add to the simulations of Silver
stone and Brands Hatch. These add greatly to the enjoyment of Saloon
Cars Deluxe and provide for a more varied racing season.
6.4
I would like to see simulations of some of the continental racing
circuits such as Monaco and Indianapolis. Perhaps some of the more
popular circuits will be supplied with the Formula 1 upgrade. How about
it, Fourth Dimension?
6.4
Saloon Cars Deluxe costs £34.95 (an upgrade is available from 4th
Dimension for the original version), and the Extra Courses are £19.95.
Both of these are well worth the money! (Archive prices are £32 and £18
respectively.)  A
6.4
2067 BC
6.4
Alan Highet
6.4
After a couple of average opening screens and a nice piece of music, the
start of the game has you controlling a cute pterodactyl called Terrance
who flies around the prehistoric landscape carrying out various
missions.
6.4
There are eight levels and the first has three missions, as does the
second, and in between are bonus levels helping you to amass points.
6.4
Terrance starts with a certain amount of energy and a finite amount of
time to complete each mission but these aren’t his only enemies as there
are a host of flying insects and birds all intent on seeing his demise.
Along with that there are volcanoes shooting lava, caves dripping lava,
spear throwing cavemen and even flying fish! However, Terrance isn’t
completely helpless as he can pick up various items such as rocks and
drop them on his assailants. This takes some practice as all the objects
follow gravitational law and so, if you are moving when you release the
object, it will continue in flight for a short time before heading
earthwards. If the aim is true, the insect or bird will fall to the
ground leaving something behind. In most cases this will be a treasure
which, if swallowed, increases your score and elicits a ‘Lovely!’ vocal
response from Terrance but beware − occasionally, a bottle of poison is
left which is obviously fatal.
6.4
The controls are easy and simple, letting you travel left and right and
flap your wings which makes you rise. The only way to go down is to stop
flapping (what else!) and, again, gravity is mimicked so a delay occurs
before Terrance heads down. The only other keys are to let you pick up
and drop objects and to enter the passages between levels.
6.4
Make sure you try picking up other things as they are all useful at some
point. The graphics are good with parallax scrolling adding realism and
smooth sprite movement. The sound effects are minimal but are right for
the game, adding to its playability without becoming annoying. All the
puzzles are quite logical and the sense of humour is good throughout the
game. I won’t reveal too much but after solving the pulley problem, take
a look at the bushes at the start of level 1, mission three. It’s also
worth playing the game every day as the graphics aren’t always the same
especially around the end of December. The later levels do not have any
special missions but there a lot of problems to get past, if you want to
finish the game.
6.4
Overall, I liked the game which starts off at a fairly simple level and
the difficulty increases steadily making it very playable. There are
password facilities for all levels and my only real criticism is that
the game reloads after you have been killed and it does take some time
although the copy I used would run from a hard disc, or a ram disc,
which speeds it up.
6.4
As to its longevity, some friends came to stay for the weekend and their
son, Dominic, spent almost the whole weekend playing the game and when
he was called, the reply was always ‘Just one more go!’ so I think that
says it all.
6.4
2067 BC costs £16.95 (no VAT) from Oregan Developments.  A
6.4
Artworks Column
6.4
Michael Carter
6.4
Welcome to the start of what is hoped will be a regular new Archive
column, devoted to Computer Concepts’ Artworks, the new ‘graphics
illustrator program for the Archimedes’.
6.4
I don’t know whether there will be a need for a column, but as with all
regular columns within Archive, it depends on your contributions to make
it successful.
6.4
Ideally, the column will (1) provide a forum for the exchange of ‘hints
and tips’ to enable all users to obtain the maximum productivity from
Artworks, (2) maintain a ‘help line’ to enable users to overcome
problems, (3) describe drawing styles and techniques using the variety
of tools and (4) discuss the pitfalls and joys of colour printing.
6.4
(To save magazine space, in future I’ll use AW for Artworks and CC for
Computer Concepts.)
6.4
Getting started
6.4
One of the initial hurdles, for many people, is to justify purchasing
what must be one of the more expensive software packages for the Acorn
machines. For at £180 (from N.C.S.) one has to dig deep. Commercial
organisations, on the other hand, will wonder why it’s so cheap,
considering the veritable cornucopia of tools which the AW package
contains. Wherever you fit in, if you need to produce illustrations, AW
will be more than powerful enough, yet it is easy enough to ‘get
started’ − although I say that with some reservations which I will
mention later.
6.4
Hardware
6.4
The hardware platform used will have serious repercussions on your
budget. 2Mb of RAM is CC’s quoted minimum. I have found that even 4 Mb
is a squeeze especially when using other programs, such as Impression.
Floppy disc systems can work, but with major reservations (see below). A
multisync monitor is essential, not just for clarity of the drawing, but
to read the text CC use in the info bar alone. I did use a standard
monitor to test AW, but my eyes suffered horribly as a result. Anyway
the EC’s January 1993 directives make standard monitors obsolete!
6.4
Artwork’s program suite
6.4
Upon opening the AW box, you are confronted with two program discs, five
discs of artwork, eight discs of RISC-OS 2 fonts, three manuals, a
dongle and a dangle. All the fonts and AW itself are compressed. The
programs and utilities supplied are:
6.4
    • !Artworks − the drawing program
6.4
    • !ConvPrint − PostScript to AW text importer
6.4
    • !FlipTop − screen mode change utility
6.4
    • !NewModes − larger screen modes
6.4
    • !System − new system modules
6.4
    • !FontInst − Font decompressor & installer
6.4
    • ProcessPal − screen palette
6.4
    • Five discs of example artwork
6.4
Most are self-explanatory, others will be discussed another time, but
three items need some thought. The AW package is a huge suite of
programs and data. Some thought is also necessary on how it can be set
up on your system, what fonts you should use and the learning curve
involved.
6.4
Where to put it?
6.4
The easiest part was using AW decompressor program which, once given the
details of where AW files and modules were to end up, just got on with
it. On a hard disc, it is very slick!
6.4
The AW program itself is 704Kb in size. As CC state, you may remove some
modules from the program to save disc space. Even so,where does one put
all the fonts?!?
6.4
Fonts
6.4
The fonts are a huge problem area. AW comes with 220 fonts. Many are
headline fonts, as one would expect. In total, uncompressed, we are
talking of 6Mb of disc space, just for these. With all the other fonts
available, the sheer number of fonts is beginning to get difficult to
organise. Added to this there is a severe problem with the Font Manager.
It cannot cache more than 250 font variants at any one time. Some
programs set an upper limit of 255 fonts, some behave themselves and
ignore any extras but others do unspeakable things − even crashing the
computer!
6.4
CC do say that it is undesirable to have all these fonts on your hard
disc. Having said that, I loath the thought of hunting through floppies
just to find a particular font and, on a network, this would be very
tiresome.
6.4
!FontInst
6.4
In a valiant effort to find a solution, CC have supplied !FontInst. The
idea in theory is that, for any given document, you transfer the
compressed fonts to a new font directory and use it as normal. Another
document may require a different set. You modify the font directory to
suit, deleting those not required. Simple? I’m afraid not.
6.4
Most programs, if they load a document and cannot find the font
required, change it to some base default (Trinity or Corpus). To return
the document fonts, it may be necessary to reload the complete program
and data file.
6.4
So how does one avoid this? One method is to have the Drawing data and
required Fonts together on a floppy or removable hard disc. (I can see
removable hard discs becoming even more popular.)
6.4
Another method is to have a separate note of a document’s fonts and
fiddle with the font directory, making sure other programs do not crash
through doing so. A far from elegant solution. (Where is Roger Spooner?
I’m sure he would have a solution! Ed.)
6.4
Where to put the fonts?
6.4
My solution ignores CC’s advice − I’ve put the AW fonts onto a hard
disc, along with others, grouped in styles. They are compressed using
ArcFS as this normally resides on my iconbar. I re-compressed the fonts,
placed the font archive inside the Font directory and then altered the
Font !Run file to open the archive and then add the fonts to the
FontList as required. With each document, I save a text ReadMe file
listing the fonts used. I can then read this before loading any new
document and add any necessary fonts to the FontList.
6.4
Unfortunately, floppy-disc-based users are going to find it less and
less practical to use modern software like AW and multiple fonts without
much disc swapping. Hard discs are no longer a luxury but more of a
necessity − just witness the huge size of programs in the PC world, e.g.
2.6Mb for Deluxe Animation alone − and Acorn software and data is
beginning to follow this trend. I would suggest that it is well nigh
impossible to run AW from floppy disc.
6.4
The learning curve
6.4
Other articles have described AW but little has been offered about how
quickly one may start drawing. I read with interest reviewer Neil
Whiteley-Bolton (Archive 6.1 p35) stating that within half an hour he
was doing productive work. I would like to suggest that for many,
including employees of commercial organisations, that is rather an over-
simplification.
6.4
The day after I received my AW package, I sat down with the computer on,
manuals in my lap (sorry EC but it’s too heavy for my copyholder) and
plenty of tea. It took me one working day to set up AW on the hard disc
and to go through the manual. Yes I know, I could have started drawing
sooner, but with a package as comprehensive as AW, I reckon it’s time
well spent in the long run.
6.4
In a commercial environment, the time I took would be quite acceptable
and realistic. A large time factor was reorganising the hard disc to
hold the fonts. Students will, of course, not have organisation problems
and it should take supple minds only a short while to understand AW’s
fundamentals.
6.4
Finally, it’s over to you
6.4
To make the Artworks Column work, we need items from readers with
experience of various aspects of AW. Let us know how you manage your
fonts. Someone, somewhere must have the answer. (How about it Acorn, why
only 250?!)
6.4
Have you discovered something which we could all benefit from, then let
us know, so that your pearls of wisdom can be passed on. A one line
comment or a page full, it makes no difference − please share it with
others. Remember it may be obvious to you, but not others. Just look
back through past issues of Archive to see what I mean.
6.4
My opinion!
6.4
AW is just the tool Acorn graphic illustrators have been patiently
waiting for. Am I happy with it? Yes! From an artist’s point of view CC
have created a highly intuitive program which makes the creation of
artwork for publishing and others areas, a pleasure. What’s your
opinion?  A
6.4
(Since Michael started work on this column, he has had an accident and
injured his back. Hope you are soon back on your feet again, Michael.
The result of this is that he is not able to continue doing the column.
Is there anyone who would be able to take up the mantle? It would
involve collating ideas and suggestions and producing a column,
hopefully monthly, to pass on the information gained. Give me a ring if
you are interested. Ed.)
6.4

6.4
PipeLine
6.4
Gerald Fitton
6.4
This month, we have a couple of requests for help, some home spun
philosophy and printing PipeDream (and other) files with the new RISC-
OS 3.10 printer drivers. There’s plenty here for you even if you don’t
have PipeDream so, this month at least, you won’t be disappointed.
6.4
The future
6.4
Paul Beverley has asked me “Wither PipeLine? Is it going to become Pipe-
Wordz?” The quick answer is “Yes!” but I’m not sure I want to change the
name of my column from PipeLine to Pipe-Wordz yet. The reason is that I
don’t know the names of the other members of the Wordz family and, when
I do, Pipe-Wordz might be inappropriate!
6.4
Regular readers of this column will be used to seeing a little home-spun
philosophy tucked away here and there. From your letters, I see that
several of you empathise with the sentiment I expressed in last month’s
Archive, “my favourite package begins to look dated just as soon as I
begin to feel that I’ve mastered it.” Although I was referring to
exporting my data files from Impression to Wordz, my correspondents seem
more interested to know how they will benefit if they export their files
from PipeDream to Wordz! I suppose I ought to have thought of that − but
I’ve just got used to PipeDream, so the idea that I might want to use
something better instead (the Wordz family) came as a shock!
6.4
I suppose that, when I work it out, although I have invested time in
getting to know PipeDream, and many of you will have invested money, the
truth is that nothing, not even PipeDream 4, is forever. My consolation
is, as I’ve said before in this column, that the data contained within
my Wordwise files have been useful to me long after I stopped using a
BBC B (or Master) and long after I stopped using Wordwise. Why? Because
I was able to export the data to PipeDream on the Archimedes. I need the
information in those data files whatever new package I decide to use in
future.
6.4
When I work it out, I discover that, when costed in any reasonable way,
the time and effort which I put into the creation of those data files −
say handouts for students − that notional cost far exceeds the value of
the package and even the hardware. I remember saying to a company I was
advising about ten years ago that the hardware and software they had
just bought became obsolescent the day it was installed − but that what
they will still be using in ten years time (on a new machine with new
software) is the data which they were about to start entering into that
obsolescent system. What would be important to them was to be able get
the data out and into the next system! (Actually, their system was so
non-standard that, five years later, it was going to cost more to get
the data out than to install a new system!) Your comments about
exporting data files from PipeDream to the Wordz family (together with
Paul Beverley’s “Whither PipeLine?”) have brought home to me my own
prejudice towards using PipeDream for ever!
6.4
So, whither PipeLine? I hope that, in this PipeLine column we can help
each other to export files from Impression, from 1stWordPlus, from
Graphics Writer, from EasiWriter and even from PipeDream into the family
of Wordz packages and then learn how to get the best out of your
investment in such an ‘upgrade’. Nevertheless, I have a sentimental
attachment to PipeDream and I don’t want to abandon it!
6.4
Compression
6.4
In answer to many letters, let me assure you that PipeDream files can be
put through Compression; however, it’s hardly worth it. PipeDream files
are compressed by PipeDream and trying to compress them further won’t
have a lot of effect. I think that Compression is fairly intelligent and
doesn’t attempt to compress files which might finish up longer than they
started.
6.4
Draw to Paint
6.4
Why have I been asked how to convert drawfiles to sprites so many times
this last month? My reply has been “Load the drawfile and then use the
Snapshot utility from Paint (or use ScreenGrab)”. You can always trim a
Paint file by using the Paint tool called Copy (it looks like a camera)
with the Export option enabled. Save the portion of the sprite you want
to keep to a directory window.
6.4
Football
6.4
Philip Tolhurst’s daughter is a keen supporter of Tottenham Hotspur. He
has created a database of the matches played in the Premier League and
now wants to use the results from the individual matches to create a
‘hot linked’ league table. For example, one of his records reads across
five columns of a row:
6.4
    Date    Home Team    Away Team
6.4
15 Aug 1992    Arsenal    2
Norwich City    2
6.4
What Philip wants is to use these rows of results to create a standard
league table (as shown in many newspapers) with matches played, won,
drawn and lost as well as goals for and against with a final column for
points. He wants the league table ‘hot linked’ so that, as extra match
results are typed in, the league table is updated automatically.
6.4
If you are interested (even if unable to help) then Philip is most
willing to let you have a disc copy of his version of the database.
Please contact him at 29 High Street, Lode, Cambridge, CB5 9EW.
6.4
DataBase
6.4
Roger King has written to me with a problem which involves changing the
format of a database. He has a number of records in a format similar to
the one below (four columns) with one record per row:
6.4
Col A  Col B  Col C  Col D
6.4
What he wants to do is to change it to a format which uses two rows per
record but with only three columns:
6.4
Col A  Col B  Col D
6.4
            Col C
6.4
Roger does not want to type all the records again but wants way of
transferring the data from his ‘old’ database to the new one. I have a
very messy solution which uses a lot of memory using the index(,,)
function. We would welcome a simpler solution. Please write to me if you
have any ideas.
6.4
PipeDream and RISC-OS 3.10
6.4
All versions of PipeDream 4 and all but the earliest versions of
PipeDream 3 are totally compatible with RISC-OS 3.10. In fact,
PipeDream 4 works ‘better’ (faster, more smoothly, etc) with RISC-
OS 3.10 than with RISC-OS 2. I strongly recommend anyone who has not
upgraded to RISC-OS 3.10 to send £50.00 to NCS at the Archive address
and get one as soon as possible. (They are now actually in stock. Ed.)
6.4
Date function − @D@
6.4
Have you just fitted RISC-OS 3.10 and found that the date function, @D@,
of PipeDream now returns a date in April or May 1994? We’ve received a
lot of correspondence about this, as have Colton Software. One corre
spondent writes, “I’ve changed the date using !Alarm, from Basic, from
the command line and directly into the CMOS RAM but I can’t get @D@ to
give the correct date!”.
6.4
There is a simple answer. When you install RISC-OS 3.10 you must execute
a ‘Power on <delete>’ to clean up the CMOS RAM. If you do this, the @D@
problem will be solved. (To execute a ‘Power on <delete>’, hold down the
<delete> key whilst switching on the computer. Make sure that you
continue to hold down the <delete> key until all activity has ceased −
don’t be tempted to release the <delete> key too soon.)
6.4
It’s no good trying to use the !Configure utility to save your con
figuration settings because when you reload them after a ‘Power on
<delete>’ exactly the same (inappropriate) CMOS settings are restored.
To obtain a permanent solution you have to execute the ‘Power on
<delete>’ and then use *Configure from the command line or the
!Configure utility, section by section, to restore your desired *Status.
6.4
Printing problems
6.4
Many correspondents are having problems printing PipeDream files using
the new RISC-OS 3.10 drivers. A common one is the ejection of a blank
page after every correctly printed page. The usual advice is to shorten
the page using Edit paper size. Although this does cure the problems of
some there are still those for whom it does not. I have received a
letter from someone who had tried everything (so he said!) without
success. Then, since all else had failed, he decided to read the
installation notes! He had not executed a ‘Power on <delete>’; he did so
and his blank page problem went away! (If only people would read the
manuals, it really would save a lot of grief for us too − the Technical
Help Service would be far less well used! Ed.)
6.4
Others are not so lucky. However, I have sent to some of you who have a
laser printer which emulates the HP LaserJet, copies of my LasJet-II
PrntDefn file and my !Printers file (containing my Paper size defini
tions). For some, using my files has solved their printing problems.
6.4
One more hint. Try printing a PipeDream file without the Impression
dongle. If removing the dongle solves your problem (after a ‘Power on
<delete>, etc) then get in touch with Computer Concepts. It did help one
of my correspondents − he received a replacement dongle by return!
6.4
On the Archive monthly disc, you will find my files in the PipeLine
directory. You can also obtain them by writing to me at the Abacus
Training address enclosing a blank formatted disc, an address label and
return postage.
6.4
The KX-P1124 printer
6.4
My laser printer PrntDefn files will not work with a dot matrix printer
but I can send you a disc copy of Ian Williamson’s files (send me a
disc, etc). He recounts his story in the following paragraphs which I
include here as an example of problems arising from trying to set up the
RISC-OS 3.10 !Printers package to print PipeDream (and other) files. I
include my own comments in square brackets.
6.4
Introduction
6.4
I have recently fitted RISC-OS 3.10 to my A410 and had considerable
difficulty setting up the printer driver so that my Panasonic KX-P1124
printer would print and advance correctly to the top of form, with 12
inch fanfold paper. The printer was either stopping short or ejecting
nearly a whole extra page.
6.4
This article describes my experience and how correct printing was
eventually achieved. To the expert, I may be exposing my ignorance and I
am shamefaced about the time I wasted and the number of trees I have
destroyed trying to sort out the problem. My only consolation is that I
heard that others have had similar problems, including Gerald. Hope
fully, this article may help those who are still struggling.
Incidentally, I had also heard that there may be bug(s) in the printer
driver code; whilst that may or may not be true, I cannot use that as an
excuse for my problems because I eventually got my printer to print
correctly and I have resolved to read the User Guide very carefully in
future.
6.4
PrintEdit
6.4
Despite the large number of printer drivers in the Printers directory on
the App 2 disc, would you believe there was nothing for Panasonic
printers! The Panasonic KX-P1124 is compatible with the Epson LQ-2500,
which was not in the App2.$.Printers.Epson directory but apparently is a
sub-set of Epson LQ-860 colour. I did not know that when I started, and
I was at first confused by the colour modes, but I chose to produce my
own printer driver based on Epson LQ-860 colour.
6.4
Having double clicked on the file icon, I was pleased at the ease with
which I could find my way around the editing windows. The instructions
on PrintEdit in the Acorn Applications Guide were easy to follow. First,
I changed the printer description, class, type etc, and then went
through each of the graphics modes in turn and switched off the colour
options.
6.4
Out of interest, I had a look at the printer escape sequence (Acorn
calls them Dump strings) for both text and graphics modes. Apart from
the fact that I could not understand some of the graphics mode dump
strings or, to be more accurate, reconcile some with the printer manual,
I was puzzled that I could not find escape sequences for either Set or
Release skip perforation, in either text or graphics mode. I thought
this would be important because I use 12 inch fanfold paper and have my
KX-P1124 set up so that it skips perforation. As it happens, this is
crucial − but more of this later.
6.4
I saved the printer definition, file name KX-P1124, with the original
paper X and Y offsets.
6.4
!Printers
6.4
Having loaded !Printers, I dragged the printer definition into the
Printer control window and the printer icon changed from grey to
glorious technicolor with the name KX-P1124. I clicked <menu> on the
icon and selected Edit paper sizes. At this point I repeated what I had
successfully done with PrinterDM. Thus I set up paper name User with the
following dimensions:
6.4
Paper size:    Width 210mm, Height 279.4mm
6.4
Graphics margin:    Top 2mm, Bottom 0mm
6.4
Text margin:    Height 66 lines, Top 2 lines, Bottom 2 lines
6.4
(I have not quoted the left and right margins here because they are not
pertinent to the problems I had been experiencing or to this article.) I
am using 12 inch fanfold paper which is 210.0 × 304.8 mm, (8.27 × 12
inch), and have set my KX-P1124 to skip perforation (1 inch), which is
why I had set up the paper height to 279.4 mm (11 inch). Likewise, I had
set the text height to be 66 lines.
6.4
I selected OK on paper sizes. Next I clicked <menu> on the printer icon,
selected Configure and selected Paper User, 180 by 180 dpi resolution,
and Mono, small halftone quality, and then clicked on OK. Finally, I
saved my choices via the printers icon menu.
6.4
The next time I double clicked on !Printers, I was pleased to see an
icon with the name KX-P1124 and the paper size I had saved. That was the
easy part, my troubles started when I tried printing.
6.4
Printing from within PipeDream
6.4
I had done all the obvious things, loaded my RISC-OS printer driver onto
the iconbar, and from within PipeDream set the Printer config Printer
type to RISC-OS, and clicked on OK. When I printed a page of text in
14 pt Trinity, part of the page was missing and the printer stopped
about an inch short of the top of form position. I increased the paper
size and was then horrified when text was printed over the perforation
and the printer ejected an extra page. I was startled because I had
successfully printed it several times before with !PrinterDM (on RISC-
OS 2).
6.4
Incidentally, I was also rather distressed that it now took far longer
to print than before, despite the fact that I had fitted ARM3 and
increased the memory to 4 Mb RAM at the same time as fitting RISC-
OS 3.10. I had also upgraded to PipeDream 4. Thus it seemed as though I
had spent a lot of money to get grossly degraded performance and was not
best pleased.
6.4
(I eventually sorted this out and have achieved quicker printing than
before the upgrade, but not dramatically! The other thing I resolved was
that in future I would fit only one new item at a time, otherwise there
is too much to learn at once and too many chances of getting something
wrong.)
6.4
Draw
6.4
In desperation, I phoned Colton Software and Robert Macmillan suggested
I use Draw to sort out the setting of the printer, since it would show
the limits of the paper chosen. He suggested I draw a rectangle and
start with a paper size much smaller than used, then change the paper
size, margins and offsets to see what happens. As it happens I chose to
use DrawPlus because it can show the X and Y coordinates.
6.4
Initially, I tried printing a square from within DrawPlus but found it
took such a long time to print that I decided just to draw a line at the
top and bottom of the page. That certainly speeded things up, but I
still wasted hours and piles of paper! [I use a file I have called
Rectangle which is included on the Archive monthly disc. Also I used 75
dpi for speed. GLF]
6.4
I experimented with Y offset, paper size and graphic margins: I kept a
note of all the values, including the positions of the lines at the top
and bottom of the page in DrawPlus. After printing each page, I measured
the positions of the lines at the top and bottom of the page, and the
position of the paper relative to cutting edge. The printer either
stopped short by between 8 mm and 25 mm, or ejected the paper by
approximately 250 mm. I could detect no correlation between any of the
settings and the distance that the paper stopped short or overshot. 8 mm
was workable but not good enough, so I tried to gradually reduce the
shortfall and then suddenly it would overshoot; what was most dis
concerting was that I could not get it to repeat the previous 8 mm
shortfall, despite resetting the computer.
6.4
Problems printing text files
6.4
At this point, I decided to look at the ReadMe file in the
Printers.Epson directory on the App 2 disc and loaded it into Edit and
pressed <print> to get a hard copy. Although I had come to expect
problems with graphics printouts I was startled to find that there
appeared to be a problem with page lengths and offsets in the text mode
as well.
6.4
After experimenting with different paper sizes, I concluded that
!Printers disables the skip perforation command of the printer, although
I could find no reference to that in either the User Guide or, as I
explained above, by examining the list of escape sequences in the
Printer definition editor. I found that the physical paper length had to
correspond exactly with Height in the Paper size box, and the Height in
number of lines in the text margins box.
6.4
Y offset
6.4
I had measured the Y offset using Top_Left in accordance with Acorn’s
instructions and found it to be between 9.5 − 9.8 mm. I had previously
set this value in the Paper Y offset box in the Printer definition
editor. Incidentally, I had found that the Y offset value that was
actually saved was of the order of 0.07 mm less than I had put into the
box: there seemed to be some rounding (to number of points?) but I never
worked out what was happening.
6.4
On the Panasonic KX-P1124, there is the facility to advance the paper
exactly to the perforation to enable it to be torn perfectly; this means
that printer head is at the top of form position. The consequence of
this is that the Y offset value measured by Top_Left gives misleading
(irrelevant?) information. Setting this value in the Paper Y offset box
shifted all the printing down the page by that amount. This is what I
would have expected, but I understand Gerald Fitton has the opposite
effect with his LasJet-II. [Yes, I confirm that with my laser printer
the effect is in the opposite direction. GLF]
6.4
That is not necessary with the KX-P1124, so I decided to reduce the
value drastically: but because of a comment from Gerald Fitton that
unpredictable things happen with a zero offset, I chose to set the Y
offset to be equal to one dot pitch, 0.14 mm vertical. Again, after
saving this value, on reloading the Printer definition file into the
editor I found that the Y offset had actually been saved as 0.07 mm.
6.4
My printer definition file, KX-P1124, is included on the Archive monthly
disc. Instructions for loading it into the Printer control window are
given in the ReadMe file.
6.4
With this printer definition, I set up the following values for 12 inch
(fanfold): Paper height to 304.8 mm, Text height to 72 lines and the Top
and Bottom text margins 0 and 6 lines respectively. This gave a full
page printout with a skip over the perforation in the right place.
6.4
Correct graphics printing
6.4
At this point, I noticed that the RISC-OS User Guide p.73 states that
the Text height is used to tell the printer how long the paper is for
both text and graphics printing. This point was hidden in the section
headed Text margins and there is no mention of it in the section headed
Graphics margins: I had originally skipped this section because I was
not interested in printing text with the RISC-OS printer driver.
6.4
As mentioned above, I had already set the Paper height to 304.8 mm and
Text height to 72 lines for 12 inch (fanfold) paper, and I set up the
graphics margins and the DrawPlus file as follows:
6.4
Paper Y offset: 0.07mm, Paper Height: 304.80mm
6.4
Graphics margin: Top 0.40mm, Bottom: 25.00mm
6.4
Draw file Top: 304.00mm,   Bottom: 28.00mm
6.4
After printing, the paper advanced correctly to top of form! The Top
Graphics margin was set to 0.4 mm, again to have a small value, but also
to enable the Bottom Graphics margin to be set to 25 mm to approximate
the 1 inch skip perforation. It worked perfectly!
6.4
My paper settings for 12 inch (fanfold) paper are given in the Paper
definition file, PaperRW, included on the monthly disc. It should be
copied into the !Printers application directory viewer before loading
Printers; instructions are given in the ReadMe file on the disc.
6.4
Printing from within PipeDream
6.4
After all this, I was delighted and relieved that printing a Text_font
file from PipeDream with the RISC-OS printer driver worked perfectly. I
was also delighted to find that, with the margins I had chosen,
PipeDream works out the page length at 66 lines with 10 pt font size and
a 12 pt line height. I wanted to have the ability to print documents
with this font size and get the same page layout as when using PipeDream
printer drivers and the KX-P1124 resident fonts; that way I could save
time by draft printing.
6.4
I have found that PipeDream does make use of the paper size graphics
margin settings when printing with the RISC-OS printer type, and not
only the paper offset values: this is at variance with what I believe
Gerald Fitton has found with LasJet-II. [Correct. I find that the X and
Y offsets are used by PipeDream. GLF]
6.4
Conclusions
6.4
You must set the paper height to the exact paper paper height. Also the
text height in number of lines must correspond exactly with the paper
height.
6.4
!Printers cancels skip perforation if you have it set on your printer.
Thus, to achieve the same effect as skip perforation, you must allow a
large bottom margin for both text and graphics.
6.4
Ignore the information given by Top_Left. This is because you are likely
to have your printer set up with the top of form in line with the paper
cutter (with fanfold paper in the KX-P1124 at least), and the printer
starts printing immediately. Thus, set Y offset to a very small value
e.g. 0.14 mm (this will save to 0.07 mm).
6.4
Lessons I’ve learned the hard way
6.4
Don’t try to do too much at once, i.e. only make one change to the
hardware or software at any time.
6.4
Read the User Guide very carefully and look for information in unlikely
places. Don’t assume you know it all!
6.4
Thanks Ian for sharing your experiences − I hope they will prove useful
to others.
6.4
Contacting PipeLine
6.4
Although my telephone number is getting known to you (it is not
published in Archive at my request), I would prefer you to write to me
rather than telephone. The address is on the inside back cover of
Archive. If you have something substantial then I would like a disc file
with an example so that I can see exactly what it is you mean.
6.4
You will generally get a reply within a day or two unless I am com
pletely stuck. In those cases, I often send a copy of your disc to
Colton Software for comment and advice. Please be patient.  A
6.4
The DTP Column
6.4
Richard Else
6.4
Following my review of hand-held scanners in Archive 5.12, I had hoped
to be able to review two of Irlam’s colour scanners for this month’s DTP
column. The company have offered to loan me the equipment in question,
but despite a number of phone calls and letters, they have still not
materialised. I will keep my fingers crossed that they will still
appear, because interest in colour printing is certainly a developing
area.
6.4
Poster Review
6.4
Back in Archive 3.11, there was a review of an early version of Poster
(v1.02), and in the intervening two years, 4Mation have undertaken
further development, so I thought it would be useful to look again at
this innovative program. It seemed most beneficial to undertake a full
review for those not familiar with it but have noted the main points of
the recent upgrade (see insert) for existing users. This review is based
on an A440, ARM3 and RISC-OS 3.
6.4
I, and no doubt others, might have overlooked Poster under the misappre
hension that it was a program allowing the printing of posters comprised
of a series of smaller sheets. Indeed, I seem to recall the original
advertising fostering this view but, in fact, this is just one of the
many facilities provided by Poster.
6.4
As with other 4Mation applications, the program needs to be initialised
by typing your name or other identification and this is then embedded
into the master disc, after which it can be freely copied onto hard
discs, etc. Reflecting their educational background, all 4Mation
products are priced to include a site licence.
6.4
What do you get?
6.4
The package comes on three discs with disc 1 containing the main
program; two fonts; a set of moulds and paths (of which more later); a
useful utility entitled NoFonts (which removes any fonts previously
resident in the program) and for RISC-OS 2 users, there are System and
System merge folders. Disc 2 contains an additional 18 fonts and over 20
examples of borders in drawfile format, whilst disc 3 has additional
examples of moulds and an extensive range of clipart ranging from
symbols to animals. This wealth of pre-existing material, together with
an excellent manual and a series of worksheets (which may be photocopied
− presumably for school use) mean you can get Poster up and running with
the minimum of fuss. You may wish to take 4Mation’s advice and not try
everything at once!
6.4
For new users, some familiarisation is necessary because whilst some of
the menu dialogues look familiar from Draw (options of line colour,
width, pattern, type of join etc), other choices are more usually found
in text-based programs. What is fascinating is the way Poster (working
in some instances alongside Draw) can handle text, sprites and bit-
mapped images in a powerful way and also offer an unparalleled number of
printing options. Much of Poster is based around paths and moulds: the
former is a single line along which text can be made to flow; the latter
is either two or four lines between which either text or objects are
shaped. The mould option is a powerful one requiring some care in use
(particularly in the way lines are created to form the mould), but the
manual explains this very clearly with copious illustrations.
6.4
What does Poster offer?
6.4
Text may be created and edited within the program and there are a number
of ways of doing this. For example, larger passages are best inserted
with the text area option, where options exist to justify, set line
spacing and, very usefully, define the number of columns. Text can also
be made to follow any path or moulded into a variety of shapes;
facilities are offered to justify, slant or add shadows. This so-called
‘plastic text’ has an alterable x:y ratio and may have its size or width
adjusted to fit the full length of a path. You can, if necessary, hang
the text below a line, print it back to front and/or upside down!
6.4
Objects can also be made to follow paths or shaped by moulds. This
sounds simple but can be used to produce some stylish effects. It is not
easy to describe this in print but placing, say, a flower within an arc
not only produces an exciting result, but this resultant image can be
resized, rotated and moved with ease.
6.4
Style is a concept used by Poster − it is an easy method of defining a
number of parameters that include line width, colour, pattern and how
those lines start and end. There are two particularly interesting
features: any changes are shown instantly in a preview window and
previous styles, even from other documents, can be retrieved and used
again.
6.4
Borders will be familiar to users of other DTP packages. These are
stored in Draw format and 77 borders come with the package, covering
almost all needs. It is possible to design your own and the manual
provides detailed instructions. However, with commendable honesty, it
does warn that this is a job requiring some patience and determination.
6.4
Put it all together...
6.4
That brief overview describes Poster’s main points but, as with other
packages, it is the combination of facilities that often really
impresses. How does Poster rate in this respect? Personally, I found
that I needed to adjust to a program that handled both text and graphics
with such ease. Once I had fully understood its scope in this respect,
it became possible to produce a wide variety of interesting graphics.
Initially, I was also worried that the program was only able design a
single page, although it does have the enormous advantage of allowing
the page to be virtually any size. Also, in fairness, the usual
facilities of multiple views and document scaling are implemented. The
most important factor, as far as I was concerned, was the ease of layout
which makes it especially appropriate for newsletters and similar
publications.
6.4
First the bad news
6.4
However, as might be expected, there also some niggles. For example, the
width of text columns appeared to be defined not by a menu option, but
by the amount text in the frame. (I was also worried about spelling when
creating large blocks of text, but discovered that David Pilling’s Spell
will work when entering all types of text.) Similarly, you can only
check the positioning of boxes by counting up the grid squares − some
form of measurement would have been helpful. With the mould facility,
inexperienced users need to be careful about the order in which lines
are drawn. The first time I tried a simple example, I drew the top line
first with the following result:
6.4
I then tried again drawing the bottom line first and achieved success:
6.4
However, the package comes with over sixty existing moulds, so this will
not trouble many users. Finally, and possibly most importantly for some
prospective purchasers, Poster offers a number of facilities also
present in other programs, so does it offer enough extra to justify its
price tag of £104.58  (£95 through Archive)?
6.4
And the good news...
6.4
The answer, I think, is a virtually unqualified ‘yes’. It is an easy
package to use, particularly in terms of its layout facilities. I found
the visible line grid is an especially valuable feature. Moving objects
around to make the desired page layout could not have been easier. In
fact, it is this user-friendliness that has converted me to the package.
Moreover, resizing the Poster window automatically does the same to the
document, so the whole page is always kept in view. I think Poster
offers more facilities within one package than any of its rivals and I
found the ability to combine both text and graphics was what really set
it apart. If you need the elaborate printing options, then the price
becomes even more competitive.
6.4
And finally...
6.4
Two final points − firstly, by their very nature, Acorn-based products
tend to be used by both youngsters and adults alike, and Poster offers a
range of facilities that would be equally applicable to school-based
project work as to professional DTP. Secondly, a number of companies
supplying products for the Acorn range offer a personal service that is
virtually unheard of on other platforms. I often check companies out
before buying their products to see how they compare in this respect.
From my telephone calls to 4Mation (in the first two calls, I remained
anonymous!) I have no doubts about the quality of their after-sales
backup and advice − which makes Poster a real winner.  A
6.4
Help!!!!
6.4
•    Amstrad Notepad − Does anyone know how to link up to the Amstrad NC100
Notepad? Is the IBM link supplied usable on Archimedes?  Barry Wilson,
Lewes and S Hasselton, Abbots Langley.
6.4
•    Copyright issues − Is there anyone who could give us some sort of
explanation about the copyright and intellectual property rights
situation in relation to fonts? It would be good to put something in the
magazine about it. Thanks. Ed.
6.4
•    IDE drives − Would anyone be bold enough to say which makes of IDE
drive work as a second drive on the A5000? We decided we didn’t want to
pronounce on the issue but people do ask us which drives they can use,
so is anyone prepared to tell us which drives they have used success
fully and/or which ones have caused problems? Thanks. Ed.
6.4
•    Music typesetting − I am trying to develop an application (to be
released as Public Domain) which will take Rhapsody files (and possibly
Maestro files) as input and will output the music in drawfile format. I
have a working prototype of the program and if anyone would be inter
ested in helping me to test it, find the bugs and improve it, I should
be very grateful for the help.  Hugh Eagle, Horsham
6.4
•    Packet radio − Has anyone written/used/know of the existence of any
software for driving a packet radio modem (preferably a PK232) other
than through a PC emulator? Nick Perrott, 23 Wynnstay Road, Mt. Eliza,
Victoria 3930, Australia.
6.4
•    Technical articles − We have said before that we’d like some more
technical articles. Well, Dr Chris Johnson has offered to write
something but he wants to know what you would be most helpful. Why not
drop us a line with the sorts of things you would like to read about?
Ed.  A
6.4
New features of v1.6 onwards
6.4
• Text areas can be created & edited within Poster − originally this had
to be done within Edit
6.4
• DrawPrint is a new utility enabling Poster and drawfiles to be printed
over any number of pages. This should be of particular interest to
educational users.
6.4
• Compressed files may be saved and loaded into Poster. These files are
compatible with Vector and Chameleon. Whilst on compatibility, Fountain
Filled objects from Chameleon can be moved, scaled and rotated in
Poster.
6.4
• Extra features for RISC-OS 3: text and sprites can be rotated and
flipped, and RISC-OS 3 fonts can be used for putting text on paths or in
moulds.
6.4
• Line, fill and text colour selectors have been expanded from 16 to 256
colours, with 256 shades of grey.
6.4
• The program is said to be faster in many respects, although I could
not check this.
6.4
• Text objects can be converted to path objects.
6.4
• The limit of ten posters with eight views on each has been removed.
6.4
• Other smaller modifications affecting menu options; full view; saving
choices, zooming, etc have been made.
6.4
Registered owners should return disks 1 and 3 directly to 4Mation. The
upgrade costs £15 + VAT. If you’ve bought the package fairly recently,
please contact 4Mation − your upgrade may be free!
6.4

6.4
Fonts Workshop − Using Fonts from Basic
6.4
Roger Spooner
6.4
The Archimedes font manager is a beautiful piece of programming which
allows you to use all sorts of fonts in your work. Normally, people only
use them inside applications like Draw or Impression, but (as I will
show) it is easy to use them in your own software. With just a few SWI
commands, you can set up and start displaying text in any font at any
size on screen, or even on the printer if you want.
6.4
A program outline
6.4
We will need a program to work on. I’ll use a clock which displays the
time somewhere on a black screen. (To get into Basic, press <f12>, type
BASIC and press <return>.) To enter the program, type AUTO, and to quit
from that press <escape>. Many other commands like LIST and SAVE are
beyond the scope of this article.
6.4
Using fonts
6.4
There are a number of functions which a program using fonts will have to
use, and a few that it may want. As this is a completely original
Archimedes facility (the BBC Micro did not have a Font Manager), it has
been written with the future in mind. It is free of restrictions on the
colours (at the program level), as you can define the colour of the text
appears as a 24 bit colour number. You can also let it use whatever
screen or printer resolution you have, so you are not restricted to
640×256 or whatever.
6.4
The first thing to do is to find out what fonts are available. If you
know which you want, you can ask for it immediately but you should
beware of it not being available, perhaps using ‘X’ SWI calls (which I
won’t go into here). SYS “Font_ ListFonts” is the command for finding
the names of all available fonts. In RISC-OS 2, it insists that you look
at the list starting at the top and going down to the bottom. Thus you
should beware that there may be more fonts available than you can store.
The demonstration program continues to call the SWI, but does not store
more than the maximum number of fonts.
6.4
Parameters to Font_ListFonts are:
6.4
R1=pointer to buffer for name
6.4
R2=count (0 for first call)
6.4
R3=pointer to path string or -1 for default
6.4
On Exit:
6.4
R2 = updated counter
6.4
The next thing required is to pick a font. That is up to you or the
user. The clock program picks one at random from those whose names it
remembers. This must then be selected with SYS “Font_FindFont”. This
call tells the computer which fonts you are going to be using and at
what size. It returns numbers, like file handles, to refer to them. It
does not actually allow you to write immediately.
6.4
Parameters for Font_FindFont are:
6.4
R1 = pointer to font name
6.4
R2 = X point size × 16
6.4
R3 = Y point size × 16
6.4
R4 = X resolution (or 0 for default)
6.4
R5 = Y resolution (or 0 for default)
6.4
On Exit:
6.4
R0 = font handle number
6.4
From the parameters, you will see that you can easily make the width
different from the height but it’s best not to do so.
6.4
You can Find as many fonts as you like, so long as you remember what
their handles are. The computer will keep them in memory for as long as
they are ‘found’.
6.4
Next, choose one and select it as the current font. Only one can be
current at any time but there is no problem in swapping them round
quickly or frequently. This is done by using SYS “Font_ SetFont”
6.4
Parameter for Font_SetFont
6.4
R0 = handle of font to select
6.4
With a font selected, it is still necessary to choose the colours. This
can be slightly difficult because the current palette is not necessarily
good for anti-aliasing. Because of this, you can ask the ColourTrans
module to do it for you. This (which must be loaded for the clock
program) is able to read the palette and decide which colours should be
used. It has a call specially for choosing font colours when you know
the 24 bit colour you want: SYS “ColourTrans_SetFontColours” is the one.
A note about colours: The 24 bit palette entries are given in hexadeci
mal as &BBGGRR00 so there are 2 digits each of red, green and blue. In
hexadecimal, this gives the full range. Do note the 00 on the end. This
is reserved for future use (transparency, probably). Full strength in
any colour is FF, half is 80 and none is 00 so white is &FFFFFF00,
strong blue is &FF000000 and black is &00000000.
6.4
Parameters for ColourTrans_SetFontColours
6.4
R0 = font handle or 0 for current
6.4
R1 = background palette entry
6.4
R2 = foreground palette entry
6.4
R3 = maximum anti-aliasing (0-14)
6.4
On Exit:
6.4
irrelevant
6.4
Finally, we are ready to draw the text on the screen. This is done with
SYS“Font_Paint” which simply draws your text on the screen (or printer
if that’s where it’s going). This takes the text, the coordinates and
some option flags. It will draw the text using all the features already
defined such as colour and size.
6.4
Parameters for Font_Paint:
6.4
R1 = pointer to string to write
6.4
R2 = flags, 1<<4 for OS coordinates
6.4
R3 = X coordinate
6.4
R4 = Y coordinate
6.4
There is also a complicated series of control codes which can be
included in the text to change effects as you go but that is beyond the
scope of this article.
6.4
You can call Font_Paint as often as you like, so if you initialise all
the previous commands, you can use this one alone from there on until
you stop.
6.4
To finish using a font, you must declare it no longer needed with SYS
“Font_LoseFont”. This means it can be released from the font cache
memory and the file containing it is closed.
6.4
Parameter for Font_LoseFont
6.4
R0 = Font handle.
6.4
There are also a number of other commands you can issue to help with
more complicated operations. Only a couple can be covered here but they
include the ability to find the width of a string of text, and even tell
you how much you can print inside a certain width. This is done with SYS
“Font_StringWidth”.
6.4
Parameters for Font_StringWidth:
6.4
R1 = pointer to string
6.4
R2 = maximum X offset in millipoints
6.4
R3 = maximum Y offset in millipoints
6.4
R4 = ‘Split’ character (e.g. Space) or -1
6.4
R5 = Index of character to terminate by
6.4
On Exit:
6.4
R1 = pointer to last examined character
6.4
R2 = X offset after painting string
6.4
R3 = Y offset (of cursor) after painting
6.4
R4 = number of ‘split’ characters painted
6.4
R5 = index in string to last OK character
6.4
Another SWI that is of interest is SYS“Font_ ConverttoOS” which
translates millipoints into theoretical pixels. This allows much easier
calculations for most of us:
6.4
Parameters for Font_ConverttoOS
6.4
R1 = X value (millipoints)
6.4
R2 = Y value (millipoints)
6.4
On Exit:
6.4
R1 = X value (OS units)
6.4
R2 = Y value (OS units)
6.4
Well, after all that heavy load of information, here’s the program.
Improvements like multisync monitors are up to you!
6.4
REM > FontClock
6.4
REM by Roger Spooner © 25/7/92
6.4
REM to demonstrate use of the font manager
6.4
PROCinitialise
6.4
PROClistfonts
6.4
ON ERROR PROCerror
6.4
REPEAT
6.4
  newfonttime%=TIME
6.4
  handle%=FNrandomfont
6.4
  REPEAT
6.4
    PROCshowclock(handle%)
6.4
    PROCwait
6.4
    PROCunshowclock(handle%)
6.4
  UNTIL TIME>newfonttime%+1000
6.4
  handle%=FNlosefont(handle%)
6.4
  CLS
6.4
UNTIL FALSE
6.4
END
6.4

6.4
DEFPROCinitialise
6.4
REM  Sets up variables that matter
6.4
maxfonts%=100
6.4
MODE 12
6.4
*RMensure ColourTrans 0.51 RMload System:Modules.Colours
6.4
OFF
6.4
DIM fontname$(maxfonts%)
6.4
DIM buffer% 256
6.4
FOR i%=0 TO 15
6.4
  VDU19,i%,16,i%*16,i%*16,i%*16
6.4
NEXT i%
6.4
textx%=300:texty%=500
6.4
ENDPROC
6.4

6.4
DEFPROClistfonts
6.4
REM  This procedure prepares an array and lists all the
6.4
REM  font names into it.
6.4
index%=0
6.4
fonts%=0
6.4
WHILE index%<>-1
6.4
  SYS“Font_ListFonts”,0,buffer%, index%,-1 TO ,,index%
6.4
  IF index%=-1 AND fonts%=0 THEN PRINT“No fonts available!”:END
6.4
  fonts%+=1
6.4
  REM Increment total font count
6.4
  IF fonts%<=maxfonts% THEN fontname$(fonts%)=$buffer%
6.4
  PRINT $buffer%
6.4
  ENDIF
6.4
ENDWHILE
6.4
CLS
6.4
PRINT“You have ”;fonts%;“ fonts.”
6.4
IF fonts%>maxfonts% THEN fonts%=maxfonts%
6.4
ENDPROC
6.4

6.4
DEFPROCerror
6.4
IF handle%<>0 THEN handle%= FNlosefont(handle%)
6.4
PRINT REPORT$;“ (error ”;ERR;“)”
6.4
END
6.4
ENDPROC
6.4

6.4
DEFFNrandomfont
6.4
index%=RND(fonts%)
6.4
size%=RND(10)+10  :REM from 11 to 20
6.4
size%=size%*16    :REM 1/16th point
6.4
SYS“Font_FindFont”,0,fontname$ (index%), size%,size%,0,0
6.4
 TO handle%
6.4
SYS“Font_SetFont”,handle%
6.4
textx%=RND(1000)
6.4
texty%=RND(900)
6.4
=handle%
6.4

6.4
DEFPROCshowclock(handle%)
6.4
SYS“ColourTrans_SetFontColours”,
6.4
handle%,&00000000,&FFFFFF00,14
6.4
text$=TIME$
6.4
SYS“Font_StringWidth”,,text$,1E8, 1E8,-1,1E8 TO ,,xoff%
6.4
yoff%=size%*1000/16
6.4
SYS“Font_ConverttoOS”,,xoff%,yoff% TO ,xoff%,yoff%
6.4
IF textx%+xoff%>=1240 THEN textx%=1200-xoff%
6.4
SYS“Font_Paint”,0,text$,1<<4, textx%,texty%
6.4
SYS“ColourTrans_SetGCOL”,&80808000
6.4
RECTANGLE textx%-20,texty%-20,xoff% +40,yoff%+40
6.4
ENDPROC
6.4

6.4
DEFPROCunshowclock(handle%)
6.4
SYS“ColourTrans_SetGCOL”,&00000000
6.4
RECTANGLE FILL textx%-20,texty%-20, xoff%+40,yoff%+40
6.4
ENDPROC
6.4

6.4
DEFFNlosefont(handle%)
6.4
SYS“Font_LoseFont”,handle%
6.4
=0
6.4

6.4
DEFPROCwait
6.4
LOCAL t%
6.4
t%=TIME
6.4
REPEAT UNTIL TIME>t%+100
6.4
ENDPROC  A
6.4
Rhythm-Bed
6.4
Stewart Watson
6.4
The latest music package from Clares is Rhythm-Bed, a stand-alone drum
sequencer. It enables the user to create percussion backing tracks using
either internal voices or a MIDI instrument which can then be run from
Rhythm-Bed or from Rhapsody or Serenade (the forth-coming sequencer
program from Clares).
6.4
The package
6.4
Rhythm-Bed comes in the usual Clares’ package which contains a single
disc and a 52 page A5 manual.
6.4
The manual
6.4
The manual is, on the whole, clear and concise − the instructions on
getting started are particularly good. There is a tutorial section which
goes through the various functions of the program in a systematic and
methodical fashion. A strange omission is that of a keystrip, as the
function keys are quite extensively used. There are also a good number
of hot keys which make life easier for the operator. I’ve included a key
strip drawfile on the monthly program disc. The sequencer mode, in which
bars are chained together to form songs, is one feature which I do feel
needs more explanation in the manual.
6.4
The disc
6.4
On the disc, you will find a read_me file, the main application folder,
a system folder and the system merge application, a directory of drum-
kits, a directory called Voxbeat which contains five relocatable module
drum-kits, and a directory of short, but impressive, demos.
6.4
Using Rhythm-Bed
6.4
The program uses a grid system for entering and editing scores. Entering
sounds is done simply by clicking on the required boxes with <select>
and deleting is done with <adjust>. There are fifteen volume levels,
which are shown in shades of grey, so a reasonably high resolution mode
is required − a 256 colour mode is recommended.
6.4
As well as step-time editing, there is a facility to record from a MIDI
keyboard in real-time. This is very similar to that found in Rhapsody,
so anyone familiar with Rhapsody should find Rhythm-Bed simplicity
itself to use.
6.4
Within minutes of loading the program for the first time, I had
constructed a rhythm track, saved it as a MIDI file, loaded it into
Rhapsody and was able to record into Rhapsody over the Rhythm-Bed
backing track.
6.4
There are basically two modes of operation − an 8-voice mode, for use
with internal voices, and a 64-voice mode for use with external Midi
equipment. However, the window in 8-voice mode is still 64 boxes deep
and I do feel that this is something which could have been tidied up.
6.4
Demos
6.4
The Midi compatible drum-kits provided are for a Casio CT660, Roland
E35, Roland E70, Roland U20 and Yamaha QY10. These are easily editable
to whatever other keyboard or sound module is available. The Rhythm-Bed
demonstration files are all very short and don’t really do the program
justice. They can either be played in pattern or sequencer mode −
something I don’t think is mentioned in the manual. As many people make
a snap judgment about a program on the strength of its demos, I do feel
that a couple of hours work to add a stunning demo track would not have
been wasted. I’ve included an alternative demo for inclusion on the
monthly program disc.
6.4
Summary
6.4
As a rhythm sequencer, Rhythm-Bed does about all you could wish for.
However, I’m not sure who this product is actually aimed at because a
full blown sequencer should surely have its own facilities to set up
rhythm sequences. Then again, there are probably quite a number of users
of Rhapsody who might want the facilities of Rhythm-Bed but not of a
real time sequencer. If you use Rhapsody and want to improve your
rhythmic accompaniments, Rhythm-Bed is for you.
6.4
Rhythm-Bed is available from Clares Micro Supplies at £49.95 inc VAT
(£46 through Archive).  A
6.4
The Draw Module
6.4
Roger Spooner
6.4
The Draw module may sound like the application !Draw, which we all know
and love, but it is actually a deeper part of the computer; one which
allows programmers to plot complicated shapes on the screen or printer.
It is used by !Draw to render (plot) the paths and by the Font Manager
to create sprites of characters defined as curves.
6.4
What can it do?
6.4
The Draw module takes a description of a path: a sequence of instruc
tions to move, draw straight or curve to new coordinates, and plots it
on screen, or in memory. It can either draw the lines themselves or fill
the area inside. It uses the currently selected colours and does not
consider things like text or sprites at all. It will send the output
either to a buffer in memory, for some commands, or more likely to the
screen. This is often redirected to places like a sprite, especially for
font cacheing, or to a printer to print.
6.4
Some commands
6.4
The Draw module really only has one command: Draw_ProcessPath which can
do any of the Draw functions. It is easier, though, to split this up
into a few others:
6.4
Draw_Fill will draw on screen the filled interior of the given path.
6.4
Draw_Stroke will draw the line round the edge of a path.
6.4
Draw_StrokePath produce a path which it saves in memory, having
partially processed things like line width and scaling.
6.4
Draw_FlattenPath will turn each curve into a series of straight lines,
and save it in memory as a path.
6.4
Draw_TransformPath will move or scale the path according to a transfor
mation matrix and will then put it in memory.
6.4
These commands are in decreasing order of complexity; Draw_ProcessPath
will do anything and the remaining ones will do just some of the
operations, saving time later. Most of the commands have a similar
structure, so I’ll describe only Draw_Stroke.
6.4
A path buffer
6.4
A path is stored in an area of memory, a buffer. Each piece of informa
tion is stored in a 4 byte word and the coordinates are Draw Units,
where 256 draw units equal one OS pixel.
6.4
A typical path might be:
6.4
2          Move command
6.4
1000             X coordinate of move
6.4
1000             Y coordinate of move
6.4
8          Draw straight command
6.4
10000            X coord to draw to
6.4
1000             Y (from move position)
6.4
6          Curve (3 points follow)
6.4
10000            X of control pt 1
6.4
10000            Y of control pt 1
6.4
1000                 X of control pt 2
6.4
10000            Y of control pt 2
6.4
1000                 X of end pt
6.4
1000                 Y of end pt
6.4
0          End of path
6.4
0          Dummy parameter
6.4
So the Draw module goes through each command, collecting the right
number of coordinates after each.
6.4
A command in detail
6.4
Draw_Stroke is a SWI command. It can be used from Basic as SYS
“Draw_Stroke” followed by these parameters,
6.4
R0 contains a pointer to the buffer in memory containing the path.
6.4
R1 is the fill style. This decides whether an area with two parts of the
path round it is filled or not. I will use 0, the default.
6.4

6.4
A non-filled interior: your choice!
6.4
R2 points to a Transformation Matrix in memory. It can move the output
round the screen, for example to accommodate the Zoom setting and scroll
bar position of a window. I use 0, to plot it straight out (no matrix).
6.4
R3 is the Flatness. This controls how curved the curves are and hence
how slowly they get drawn. This is in Draw units; the resultant line
must always be closer to the exact curve than the given number, so the
larger this is, the more jagged the curve. 0 means default. The
recommended value is about 1 real pixel.
6.4

6.4
A flatness of 15000 gives rough curves
6.4
R4 is the line thickness, in Draw Units. 0 means ‘thinnest’. Something
like 100 would come up as a dotted line as it is thinner than one screen
pixel, and 2000 is a nice thick line, about 4 pixels wide.
6.4
R5 contains a pointer to the line cap and join specification. This,
sadly, has to be defined, so you need a buffer of 16 bytes which can
contain, at its simplest, 2 in the lowest byte. In summary, this is Join
Type (Mitre, Round, Bevel) in byte 0, Leading Cap in byte 1, Trailing
Cap in byte 2, Mitre Limit in bytes 4−7, Cap Size in bytes 8−15.
6.4
R6 is a pointer to the dash pattern buffer, or 0. Briefly, it is: 0
(word), numbers of elements until repeat, then the length of each
section (black then white) of each piece.
6.4
What?
6.4
All that sounds rather complicated, but it isn’t. The difficult ones can
be ignored and the important ones are easy. Most SWIs use some or all of
the same parameters, e.g. Draw_Fill does not require a line thickness.
6.4
The transform matrix, although interesting, is too complicated for us.
6.4
The program below, when run, allows you to define a path and then shows
it to you. You should click once, then press <L>, then click a few times
round the screen. You will see a yellow line appear − this is your path.
Pressing <C> makes the next part a curve (involving 3 clicks) and <M> is
a move. When you click <adjust>, it will redraw and thicken the path
then quit. It’s not much fun on its own but it has potential for
development!
6.4
REM > DrawDemo1
6.4
REM To show use of Draw Module
6.4
REM LEN 1992 Roger Spooner
6.4
MODE 12      :REM change to 20 for multisync
6.4
OFF          :REM disables cursor
6.4
PROCinit     :REM sets up variables
6.4
PROCdraw     :REM designs line
6.4
thickness%=2000 :REM thicker line
6.4
PROCfill     :REM draws thick
6.4
END
6.4

6.4
DEFPROCinit
6.4
REM initialises variables
6.4
maxpts%=100
6.4
DIM dx%(maxpts%),dy%(maxpts%), dt%(maxpts%)
6.4
DIM pathbuff% 1024
6.4
DIM joinbuff% 16
6.4
joinbuff%!0=2
6.4
joinbuff%!4=0
6.4
joinbuff%!8=0
6.4
joinbuff%!12=0
6.4
points%=0
6.4
pathtype%=2:REM move
6.4
flatness%=250:REM for curves
6.4
thickness%=0
6.4
MOUSE ON
6.4
PROCinfo(“Click at point or (L)ine, (C)urve, (M)ove”)
6.4
changed%=TRUE
6.4
nowpt%=1
6.4
ENDPROC
6.4

6.4
DEFPROCdraw
6.4
REM defines nature of shape
6.4
REPEAT
6.4
REPEAT
6.4
k%=INKEY(0) AND &DF
6.4
CASE k% OF
6.4
WHEN ASC“L”
6.4
pathtype%=8:PROCinfo(“Line selected”)
6.4
WHEN ASC“C”
6.4
pathtype%=6:PROCinfo(“Curve selected”)
6.4
WHEN ASC“M”
6.4
pathtype%=2:PROCinfo(“Move selected”)
6.4
ENDCASE
6.4
MOUSE msx%,msy%,msb%
6.4
PRINTTAB(0,1);“x=”;msx%;“ y=”;msy%
6.4
;“    ”
6.4
UNTIL msb%<>0
6.4
IF msb%=4 THEN
6.4
nowpt%=points%
6.4
CASE pathtype% OF
6.4
WHEN 2
6.4
PROCinfo(“Moved to ”+STR$(msx%)+“,” +STR$(msy%))
6.4
dx%(nowpt%)=msx%*256
6.4
dy%(nowpt%)=msy%*256
6.4
dt%(nowpt%)=pathtype%
6.4
nowpt%+=1
6.4
PROCreleasemouse
6.4
WHEN 6
6.4
PROCinfo(“Curving to ”+STR$(msx%)+ “,”+STR$(msy%)+“. Click on
6.4
 Control 2”)
6.4
dx%(nowpt%)=msx%*256
6.4
dy%(nowpt%)=msy%*256
6.4
dt%(nowpt%)=pathtype%
6.4
PROCreleasemouse
6.4
PROCgetmouse
6.4
PROCinfo(“Curving to ”+STR$(msx%)+ “,”+STR$(msy%)+
6.4
“. Click on end.”)
6.4
dx%(nowpt%+1)=msx%*256
6.4
dy%(nowpt%+1)=msy%*256
6.4
dt%(nowpt%+1)=-1:REM ‘this is not new path element’
6.4
PROCreleasemouse
6.4
PROCgetmouse
6.4
PROCinfo(“Curved to ”+STR$(msx%)+“,” +STR$(msy%))
6.4
dx%(nowpt%+2)=msx%*256
6.4
dy%(nowpt%+2)=msy%*256
6.4
dt%(nowpt%+2)=-1
6.4
nowpt%+=3
6.4
PROCreleasemouse
6.4
WHEN 8
6.4
PROCinfo(“Drawn to ”+STR$(msx%)+“,” +STR$(msy%))
6.4
dx%(nowpt%)=msx%*256
6.4
dy%(nowpt%)=msy%*256
6.4
dt%(nowpt%)=pathtype%
6.4
nowpt%+=1
6.4
PROCreleasemouse
6.4
OTHERWISE
6.4
ERROR 99,“Unknown path element
6.4
type ” +STR$(pathtype%)
6.4
ENDCASE
6.4
points%=nowpt%
6.4
CLS
6.4
PROCbuildpath
6.4
PROCfill
6.4
IF pathtype%=2 THEN PROCinfo(“Now please use (L)ine or (C)urve”)
6.4
ENDIF
6.4
UNTIL msb%=1
6.4
IF points%=0 THEN ERROR 99,“No points entered!”
6.4
REM adjust pressed
6.4
ENDPROC
6.4

6.4
DEFPROCinfo(m$)
6.4
PRINTTAB(0,0);m$;TAB(79);“ ”
6.4
ENDPROC
6.4

6.4
DEFPROCgetmouse
6.4
REPEAT
6.4
MOUSE msx%,msy%,msb%
6.4
PRINTTAB(0,1);“x=”;msx%; “ y=”; msy% ;“    ”
6.4
UNTIL msb%<>0
6.4
ENDPROC
6.4

6.4
DEFPROCreleasemouse
6.4
REPEAT
6.4
MOUSE msx%,msy%,msb%
6.4
UNTIL msb%=0
6.4
ENDPROC
6.4

6.4
DEFPROCbuildpath
6.4
LOCAL nowpt%,ptr%
6.4
ptr%=0      :REM memory location
6.4
nowpt%=0    :REM current point no.
6.4
GCOL 0,1
6.4
WHILE nowpt%<(points%)
6.4
CASE dt%(nowpt%) OF
6.4
WHEN 2
6.4
pathbuff%!ptr%=dt%(nowpt%)
6.4
pathbuff%!(ptr%+4)=dx%(nowpt%)
6.4
pathbuff%!(ptr%+8)=dy%(nowpt%)
6.4
ptr%+=12
6.4
nowpt%+=1
6.4
WHEN 6
6.4
pathbuff%!ptr%=dt%(nowpt%)
6.4
pathbuff%!(ptr%+4)=dx%(nowpt%)
6.4
pathbuff%!(ptr%+8)=dy%(nowpt%)
6.4
ptr%+=12
6.4
nowpt%+=1
6.4
pathbuff%!(ptr%+0)=dx%(nowpt%)
6.4
pathbuff%!(ptr%+4)=dy%(nowpt%)
6.4
ptr%+=8
6.4
nowpt%+=1
6.4
pathbuff%!(ptr%+0)=dx%(nowpt%)
6.4
pathbuff%!(ptr%+4)=dy%(nowpt%)
6.4
ptr%+=8
6.4
nowpt%+=1
6.4
WHEN 8
6.4
pathbuff%!ptr%=dt%(nowpt%)
6.4
pathbuff%!(ptr%+4)=dx%(nowpt%)
6.4
pathbuff%!(ptr%+8)=dy%(nowpt%)
6.4
ptr%+=12
6.4
nowpt%+=1
6.4
OTHERWISE
6.4
PRINT“Unknown path element ”+ STR$(dt%(nowpt%))+“ at
6.4
 entry ”+STR$(nowpt%)
6.4
PROCshowarray
6.4
ENDCASE
6.4
ENDWHILE
6.4
pathbuff%!ptr%=0
6.4
ptr%+=4
6.4
ENDPROC
6.4

6.4
DEFPROCshowpath
6.4
i%=pathbuff%
6.4
end%=FALSE
6.4
REPEAT
6.4
PRINT !i%
6.4
i%+=4
6.4
UNTIL i%>(pathbuff%+100)
6.4
ENDPROC
6.4

6.4
DEFPROCshowarray
6.4
FOR i%=0 TO points%+1
6.4
PRINT dt%(i%),dx%(i%),dy%(i%)
6.4
NEXT
6.4
ENDPROC
6.4

6.4
DEFPROCfill
6.4
GCOL 0,4
6.4
SYS“Draw_Fill”,pathbuff%,0,0, flatness%
6.4
GCOL 0,3
6.4
SYS“Draw_Stroke”,pathbuff%,0,0, flatness%,thickness%,joinbuff%,0,0
6.4
ENDPROC  A
6.4
Ovation Column
6.4
Maurice Edmundson
6.4
The line drawing tool
6.4
The line drawing tool, together with the object manipulation techniques
described in last month’s column, make form design and printing a
relatively simple task. I am secretary of a small group which meets once
a month, and I find that a members’ grid for such things as register of
attendance, subscriptions, library loans and so forth, is a useful
document to have. The grid is printed on an A4 sheet. There is a main
heading at the top of the sheet and, a little further down, a space for
the title of the sheet, e.g. subscription list, register, etc. An
alphabetical list of names is listed down the left hand side, and the
grid fills the rest of the page. A (fictitious) example is shown here:
6.4

6.4
Bring up the default document page. Give the main frame a 0.25mm border
(Object Menu). From the View option in the main menu select Show Rulers.
These are helpful to have on screen for form design. I drew a text frame
along the top to take the name of the group and a heading for the
current sheet − in this example the register of attendance for 1992-3.
Then the grid was drawn using the line drawing tool.
6.4
Most of the operations for frames also apply to lines. The tool box
always returns to the text insertion tool after using any of the other
tools. To activate a previously drawn line whilst the text insertion
caret (the large black one as opposed to the small red one) is in the
window under mouse control, move it slowly across the line until it
suddenly changes to the standard mouse arrow. At this point click
<select>, and the red handles will be seen at each end of the line
showing that it is active. Moving the pointer to either handle will give
the re-size tool for lengthening or rotating the line and using <adjust>
will allow the line to be slid about the page into other positions.
6.4
Click on the line tool in the Ovation tool box. As with frames, keeping
<shift> pressed restricts the line being drawn to the horizontal or
vertical. Holding down <shift>, draw a line across the full width of the
page just below the text frame. Press <return> as often as necessary to
bring the caret to the line where you wish to print the first name in
the list of members. Typing a 10pt character may help. Now use the line
drawing tool with <shift> depressed to draw a line across the page just
a little above this letter, i.e. you are ensuring that the type will be
at or very near the centre of the grid spaces. (In practice, I find this
precaution is rarely necessary. The type nearly always lines up
accurately anyway!) Make this line 0.5mm thick so that it will stand
out. This choice is made from the Modify Line option in the Object menu.
Here is the dialogue box:
6.4

6.4
The default thickness is 0.25mm. Note that you can choose various line
styles, with or without endcaps, by using the radio buttons and you can
define the position and length of the line accurately just as is
possible with frames. Since the start and endpoints of the line can be
chosen, the slope too is under the user’s control.
6.4
We have to duplicate this line once again but with carefully chosen
parameters. As the names will be typed in the left column, the spacing
of the lines must match the point size of the type, otherwise they will
rapidly get out of step with each other as we move down the page. Also
if we printed all the horizontal lines 0.5mm thick the effect would be
too dark. We need thinner lines for the rest of the page.
6.4
(With some printers, for example a dot matrix printer, the thickness of
the lines cannot be varied as subtly as when using inkjet or laser
printers. To some extent therefore the fine tuning of line thickness
which I am describing is more appropriate for the second group of
printers.)
6.4
Correct line spacing, however, is necessary whatever the printer type.
Ovation, with its intelligent use of dimensions, makes this task
straightforward. If the printed names are to be typed in with 10pt type,
and allowing 20% leading, this gives a spacing from one line of print to
the next of 12 points. However, in a grid of the kind we are construct
ing, it will be more appropriate to have double line spacing. Therefore
we require the lines to be 24 points apart. There is no need to change
the global Units setting to points; it is left at the default setting of
mm.
6.4
From the Object menu, choose Duplicate Line and fill in the dialogue box
(shown last month) to duplicate once with a vertical offset of 24pt and
zero horizontal offset. After duplication, the new line remains high-
lighted so choose Modify Line and select a width of 0.2mm. Now choose
Duplicate Line again and write in 20 times (or whatever), zero horizon
tal offset, and a vertical offset of 24pt. All the horizontal lines will
be filled in correctly spaced. A word of caution − there is no global
“undo” function so make sure your values are correct before duplication
takes place.
6.4
We use similar techniques to complete the grid with the vertical lines.
Holding down <shift>, draw the first upright as a full line leaving
enough space for the longest name. Duplicate it once, and modify this
line to a dotted line 0.2mm thick. Now duplicate this across the page as
many times as necessary to fill to the right margin, with a spacing of
say 10mm. The form is now complete.
6.4
Check that the text you are using is 10pt. Bring the text caret to the
first line and type in the first name. Pressing <return> twice will move
the caret to the correct position on each line for subsequent names.
From the View option in the main menu select Hide Guidelines, and check
on screen that the form is correctly drawn with no missing borders or
lines. Save it, and it is ready for printing.
6.4
The examples given here and in last month’s column should have indicated
how versatile and useful are the frame and line drawing tools for
producing all kinds of tickets, lists, bill-heads, class-lists, mark-
lists and so on. However, I must conclude with an apology. In spite of
taking (as I thought) every precaution to prevent a mistake occurring,
the first column (in the November issue) gave flawed details of how to
set the font parameters for Local Styles and for Paragraph Styles. In my
description concerning Local Styles, I said that Format had to be set
separately from the other parameters. There is a way of avoiding this,
enabling all four functions to be set without losing the window. The
secret is to use <adjust> on Format first of all. So click <adjust> on
Format and then move upwards to the other three in turn, (in any order)
using <select> for the final one. When <select> is pressed, the fonts
are cached and applied immediately at the highlighted text. When
choosing the same four functions in the Paragraph Style window, the
order of choice is immaterial. The commands are stored but no cacheing
takes place at that time.
6.4
One or two queries have arrived on my desk and I shall do my best to
answer them next month. A Happy New Year to all Ovation fans!  A
6.4
Molecular Modelling
6.4
David Kent
6.4
I have been a dedicated supporter of Acorn computers since I bought a
BBC B about twelve years ago. In all the years of defending the BBC B
and then the Archimedes against PC pests (“...well, just how many
wordprocessors and spreadsheets do you actually need then?”), there was
only one bit of software I coveted from the PC world. That was a tool
for modelling and manipulating molecules.
6.4
At last, not one but two molecular modellers have been released for the
Archimedes. One is being marketed by Scottish Schools Equipment Research
Centre (SSERC) and the other is a release by Arachne Software (whose
logo, not surprisingly, is a spider).
6.4
The packages
6.4
SSERC: Chemical Modeller V2.0 contains:
6.4
•    a mini jewel case containing a single disc with the application and
example directories of molecules (38) and ring fragments (20)
6.4
•    photocopied joint teacher guide and pupil guide on A4 paper stapled in
one corner obviously intended for producing worksheets, plus a 37-page
photocopied instruction manual on A4 paper, stapled in one corner
6.4
•    green and red coloured gels for use with stereo view option
6.4
Cost: £50 +VAT with a site licence at £80 + VAT
6.4
Arachne: Molecular Modeller V3.04 contains:
6.4
•    single disc containing the application, plus !Scrap, !System,
!Sysmerge and two directories containing fragments (6) and molecules
(16) respectively.
6.4
•    24 page A5 tutorial booklet plus a high quality 33-page A5 manual.
6.4
•    green and red coloured gels for use with stereo view option
6.4
•    keystrip
6.4
Cost: £5 for a demo disc and manual, deducted from the cost of the full
version: £39.50 + VAT.
6.4
Upgrades and extras
6.4
Arachne says that it intends to follow the same philosophy as Computer
Concepts, offering upgrades at nominal or no cost. SSERC will contact
users when a new release is available and will offer upgrades at a
‘nominal cost’.
6.4
The authors of both modellers promise discs of molecules in the near
future, priced at about £10 each. SSERC is about to release three discs
each containing 200 compressed sprites of molecules in a variety of
display types. They are also developing extra discs of fragment and
molecule data files including biochemicals. Biochemicals in particular
will be welcome given that they usually contain several hundred atoms.
6.4
What is a molecular modeller?
6.4
A molecular modeller has two basic functions. One is to construct
computer models of molecules and the other is to manipulate the
resultant models. Each modeller will be described in terms of how
molecules are built and how the view can be manipulated in terms of
rotation, translation and zooming and how it can be saved and printed.
This covers the minimum basics for building the molecule and setting up
the desired view. Some of the more advanced options will then be
examined.
6.4
The SSERC Chemical Modeller is being developed by Advanced Processor
Research. It was written in Fortran and with PCs in mind. It has been
compiled for use on the Archimedes in native mode and therefore does not
need the PC emulator. Its PC origins are very apparent since it doesn’t
use the desktop, taking over the whole machine. It runs in mode 15 and
requires at least 900Kb of memory and therefore needs a 2Mb machine. An
ARM3 machine is recommended. The program has a very definite PC look and
feel. Chemical Modeller is targeted more at the university user as is
apparent from the great array of more advanced options it offers. It
should prove to be very useful at A-level for a variety of jobs ranging
from diagram creation through to the exploration of a number of more
advanced molecular characteristics. I suspect that most students would
find it hard to use interactively to explore structures, stereochemistry
and so on because of its comprehensive range of options and because of
the unhelpful manual.
6.4
Unfortunately, the author does not seem to have heard of SI units. The
program expects energy to be in kcals and length in angstroms. Although
it is not particularly difficult to convert to the SI units, kJoules and
nanometres, it does complicate things when trying to use the modeller as
a teaching tool with A-Level pupils.
6.4
Arachne’s Molecular Modeller is multi-tasking and conforms to all RISC-
OS conventions. The program occupies 640Kb and again an ARM3 machine is
recommended. It uses SI units. Molecule creation is very simple but,
having created them, the modeller offers only a limited range of further
options. It allows animations and the measurement of bond lengths and
angles. Pupils would find the modeller friendly and easy to use to
explore the basic shapes of simple molecules.
6.4
Building a molecule
6.4
SSERC − Chemical Modeller − After a basic introductory screen, you are
presented with a menu screen offering a number of options. The cursor is
a small flickery cross. All the program menus are presented as permanent
lists down the left-hand edge of the screen. Clicking on the Create
option opens a blank screen and another menu. From this screen you
create your molecule. Options available allow you to build a molecule,
atom by atom, or to use a very extensive selection of pre-prepared
aromatic rings. Atoms are chosen from a reasonably comprehensive list
but you have to know which version of the atom you want. For example,
single, double and triple bonded and aromatic carbon atoms are included,
as are five varieties of nitrogen atom. However, only diagonal and
tetrahedral sulphur and tetrahedral phosphorus are offered. The list is
less comprehensive than that available in Arachne’s Molecular Modeller.
6.4
After an atom is chosen, you click on the atom to which it is to be
bonded and it is added to the molecule. You cannot add more atoms than
the normal valency number of the target atom but the program doesn’t
stop you adding fewer. A useful, quick option for finishing alkanes is
ADD H’s which fills any unused bonds with hydrogen atoms.
6.4
When the molecule is complete, a scaled, colour-coded stick bond version
is displayed. The molecule can now be manipulated in a variety of ways.
The view can be rotated about the three orthogonal axes. It is possible
to zoom in or out and move the molecule around the screen. All manipula
tions are done on the stick version of the molecule.
6.4
The display options offered (in increasing ‘realism’ of view) are: bond
only, bonds with atom numbers or with element symbols, ball and stick
(using solid, open or hatched circles), dot surface, space-fill and van
der Waal’s surface. A final option produces a stereo view using a red
and a green stick bond or space-fill display. By wearing green and red
filters in front of your eyes, your brain is tricked into ‘seeing’ a 3D
view of the molecule. This view can be rotated and the effect is
convincingly 3D. The simple space-fill uses solid-colour spheres of
covalent radius, whilst the van der Waal’s view gives a full-blown
space-filled view of the molecule but more slowly. This is a very
comprehensive set of display options. Chemical Modeller has the option
to switch hydrogens off in a view so that the main backbone is clearer.
It is possible to give an illusion of perspective to the molecule.
6.4
Arachne Molecular Modeller − In comparison, the Molecular Modeller is
very easy and intuitive to use (or is it that the WIMP is just more
familiar?). Double click on the application icon to load the program or
onto a molecule file to load the program displaying that molecule. There
are draggable rotation bars along the bottom and right hand edges of the
work area which can be used to rotate the molecule at any time.
6.4
Creation of a molecule is simple. A Tool Window (as in Draw) is
available. All manipulation and building is done on the one screen and
the toolkit remains displayed at the side of the work area. Word-
processor-style cut, copy and paste facilities speed up the creation of
larger molecules
6.4
Elements are chosen from a display of the Periodic Table. The table
includes the bulk of the elements in the first four periods and includes
a wider range of atoms than Chemical Modeller. Atoms are positioned on
the screen in roughly the right positions by clicking. Bonds are created
by clicking on the two atoms to be joined. Single, double, triple and
aromatic bonds are available. Unused bonds (e.g. when only using three
bonds on a nitrogen atom) are treated as lone pairs when the molecular
shape is being calculated. Even when alkanes are being produced it is a
rapid process to add the hydrogens. At this point, the molecule will
look far from correct. Unfortunately, many molecules will still not look
right even after the program has altered their shape.
6.4
Wrong angles = wrong shape!
6.4
There is no limit to the number of bonds an atom can have, but adding
too many produces molecules which never settle down in the shape
optimisation part of the Molecular Modeller. The program iteratively
calculates the correct bond lengths and bond angles for the molecule. If
a particularly strained molecule is made, it can wander about the screen
at this stage because each attempt to improve the angle makes the length
worse and vice versa. In fact, I couldn’t make molecules with more than
four bonds to the central atom settle down. SF6 and PCl5 were close to
the ideal shape but never quite got there as they wandered slowly round
the screen. In fairness, these two structures cannot be built in
Chemical Modeller without using the keyboard to enter crystallographic
data directly − which is definitely not a job to be undertaken lightly.
The program really only managed to predict the correct bond angles for
small molecules like water, carbon dioxide, ammonia, etc. Chain alkanes
were also OK but cycloalkanes and aromatics were wrong. This inability
to get the molecular shape right is obviously a fatal flaw for a program
whose job it is to predict the shape of molecules!
6.4
Displaying the molecule
6.4
The display options offered are very similar to Chemical Modeller. There
are bonds only, bonds with element symbols, ball and stick (using solid
or open circles), simple space-fill (called quick-fill) and van der
Waal’s surface (called space-fill). A final option produces a stereo
view using a red and a green display. There are a number of options to
give some perspective to the molecule.
6.4
Saving and printing
6.4
In the Chemical Modeller, all images are printed using the program’s own
printer drivers. RISC-OS printer drivers are not supported and the
quality of the printouts does not do justice to the displays − not on my
24-pin dot matrix printer. However, the displays can be saved as
sprites, and so they can be edited if necessary and then printed from
Paint or a DTP package. All sprite displays take up 160Kb regardless of
how big or small the molecule is or which display style is used. Sprites
are saved as Sprite-A, Sprite-B, etc. It is a great pity that the
program cannot save drawfiles. SSERC is vigorously encouraging the
author to add this feature and to make the front end of the Chemical
Modeller more Archimedes-like!
6.4
The Molecular Modeller can save molecules either as sprites or as
drawfiles. Printing utilises RISC-OS printer drivers. Four print options
are offered: crude (but fairly quick), and dark, light and white
backgrounds. Drawfiles of space-filled molecules are created by
overlapping a large number of filled circles. The molecule is built up
from the back to the front so that the merged ‘spheres’ really look
merged. The drawfiles are very much smaller than the equivalent sprites
for small molecules. For a molecule containing 14 atoms, the drawfile of
a space-filled view was 24Kb compared with the spritefile at 117Kb. When
saved as a stick model the drawfile was only 348 bytes long! With larger
molecules, savings are less or even negative! For comparison, a space-
filled view of buckminsterfullerene containing 60 odd atoms was 153Kb
for the drawfile and 114Kb for the spritefile.
6.4
I will ask Paul to see if he can fit two examples (caffeine and a fat)
on the monthly program disc.
6.4
Other Options
6.4
The SSERC Chemical Modeller offers a comprehensive selection of very
useful options which more than compensate for the less flexible front
end it presents. It will calculate and display the electronic charges on
each atom. This can be viewed with colour coding or with numerical
values. This option could very useful when teaching about bond polaris
ation, electronegativity or when looking at the effect of substituent
groups on the reactivity of the benzine ring. Two or more molecules (for
example, methane and chloromethane) may be built and their charge
distribution compared.
6.4
Bond lengths and bond angles can be measured easily. In each case, the
appropriate atoms are chosen by clicking with the mouse. The program can
superimpose two molecules so that differences between them can be seen.
A least mean squares method is used to calculate the best fit. This view
can be made to flick from one molecule to the other so that the
differences can be seen even more clearly. Chemical Modeller can also
calculate the ‘best’ shape of the molecule by minimising its energy.
Like many of the advanced features of this modeller, it is not very
friendly in use, but is very powerful.
6.4
The Chemical Modeller can calculate torsional angles within the
molecule. This is the angle between two planes or axes and can be used
to measure twisting within a molecule. This could be useful to demon
strate stearic crowding. This option can also be used to show internal
rotations within the molecule, though it is a bit of an awkward to set
up.
6.4
It can handle ionic structures like sodium chloride. It is necessary to
type in crystallography data from the keyboard. It would also be
possible to create molecules like SF6 and PCl5 by this method if you
have access to the appropriate data. (I could not get Arachne’s
Molecular Modeller to create ionic structures because of its assumption
that any ‘unused’ bonds within an atom are to be treated as lone pairs
of electrons. This obviously changes the actual bond angles and
therefore Molecular Modeller insisted on making the linear Na-Cl-Na
ionic bonds in sodium chloride bend to about 109°. Still, it does call
itself a molecular modeller.)
6.4
Chemical Modeller also has a number of options which are really too
advanced for A-Level use. If you do not know what they are, then it is
unlikely you would want to use them anyway! They include two dimensional
energy contour maps (Ramachandran Maps), stearic congestion calculations
and dihedral angle calculations between two arbitrary planes in the
molecule.
6.4
Arachne Molecular Modeller − Arachne can produce a variety of simple
animations of the molecule by rotating it around one of the three
orthogonal axes or an arbitrary axis specified by the user. Small
molecules can be rotated in real time but larger ones require a ‘film’
to be made to animate smoothly. Unfortunately, these animations films
cannot be saved and so have to be calculated each time. This can be
quite slow for a large space-filled molecule. The animations are very
smooth. The real time animations are particularly useful because the
angle step and axes can be altered as the molecule rotates.
6.4
Conclusion
6.4
Both programs have their strong points and their drawbacks. Buying the
two together would still be cheaper than an equivalent PC program, and
with the cheap upgrade policy offered, when the glitches are smoothed
out, you would be left owning a very powerful set of tools.
6.4
Arachne have made modelling very easy indeed. However, before the
program can be used for A-Level work, the problem of getting the correct
shape for all molecules will have to be sorted out. There is an energy
minimisation option in the shape calculation menu but it is ‘greyed out’
and is not mentioned in the manual nor the tutorial. Presumably this
aspect of optimising a molecule’s shape will be added as an upgrade in
the future. Perhaps this option will solve the ‘wandering molecule’ and
bond angle problem. It would be very nice to see the ability to handle
ionic structures added as well.
6.4
The SSERC Chemical Modeller is not as friendly to use but does have a
very wide range of very useful features. Its drawbacks are its non-SI
handling of units, its inability to save drawfiles and a restricted
range of atom types in the quick build section. Perhaps the biggest
problem is the manual which is positively user-hostile! It is vital that
it is rewritten with lots of step by step examples and clear, simple
explanations of some of the more advanced ideas. After several attempts,
I still could not add extra atoms to a completed structure at a later
time. I also found it almost impossible to predict which internal
rotation I was choosing in the energy contour section. If the author is
willing to sort these points out and perhaps make the program look a bit
more RISC-OS like, then he is onto a real winner. The price is a
fraction of the equivalent PC modellers.  A
6.4
Castle Life
6.4
Charles Hill
6.4
The contents of the Castle Life pack are: manual, 12 worksheets, startup
disk with !System, !GenLib and !Browser and the Castle Life disc with
the !Castle application.
6.4
Introduction
6.4
The package is designed to allow exploration of a medieval castle and it
is based on Barnard Castle in County Durham. It contains pages on castle
architecture and plans as well as pages on various aspects of life in
the castle. Oak Solutions claim that it addresses Key Stage 3 Medieval
realms, Britain 1066−1500 and especially Castles and Cathedrals 1066 −
1500. Oak also claim Technology Attainment Target 5 − IT capability −
this is rather obvious! It also helps to meet the requirements for
database and simulation use detailed in the programme of study for the
History National Curriculum.
6.4
Although I am not a historian, I have reviewed the package with the
involvement of my children aged 5, 7 and 9 who enjoyed it, particularly
the eldest who has a keen interest in history and found his way to the
more obscure pages long before I did!
6.4
Setting up
6.4
The start up disc is used to load the !Browser application. When
!Browser is installed on the iconbar the !Castle application is dragged
onto it. I ran the software both from floppy disks and from hard disk on
an A5000 without any problems. Installation and startup procedure are
clearly detailed in the manual. The !System. modules directory had
nothing newer than available elsewhere for some time − the inclusion of
!SysMerge would have made the checking easier.
6.4
The manual also refers to a !Palette icon on which to double click −
this was not on either disk. I found that mode 27 was not suitable as
the page windows were never full size making scrolling necessary, modes
12, 15 and 20 worked OK although the flicker is a little irritating
after being used to mode 27.
6.4
The pages
6.4
These are clearly listed with brief notes in the manual. The pages
include plans of the castle (some labelled), views of the castle at
different dates and from different directions, construction of towers
and walls and methods of siege (including animations), the interior of
buildings within the castle and a number of pages detailing various
activities such as music, archery, falconry, knights and armour,
cooking, spinning, forging, etc. Some of these are attractively animated
− although medieval music played by a computer sounds a little strange!
Perhaps a sound sample would have been better here. One or two frames
were a little difficult to get to at first (e.g. the dovecote) but it
was OK once you knew which tower to click on.
6.4
The worksheets
6.4
These are designed to be used both on and off the computer. Some, such
as the plans, are specific to Barnard Castle, although one sheet showing
views at different dates did not correspond with all the dates on the
screen; some are loosely related to the castle life including working in
the castle, coats of arms, illuminated writing, medieval games and there
is a castle design kit − probably better copied onto card − and a map
showing the distribution of castles in England. The worksheets are
clearly set out and my 9 year old son had no difficulty with the ones
that he attempted. I am pleased to see activity sheets which can follow
on without the need for a computer.
6.4
Using Castle Life
6.4
As with other Genesis applications, my children and I found the package
easy to use and attractively presented. The text on the introductory
pages should not prove difficult for a junior school pupil but large
amounts of text on some pages might cause difficulty for poor readers at
secondary level, especially as reading from a screen is probably more
difficult than from a textbook. Initially, I found the lack of labelling
on the first plan diagram annoying. However, having used the package
more and having seen children using it, I can see that the package is
designed so that pupils can explore on their own and find their own way
through the castle. There are labelled plans further into the package
which could be used to fill in a worksheet which could then be used for
a more structured exploration. This would also encourage the transfer of
ideas from screen to paper. On pages with animation, it was generally
appropriate and added to the interest of the pages. (I have commented on
the music above!) The date discrepancy between the worksheet “How the
Castle Changed” and the page on screen did cause some confusion. Most of
the worksheet activities are probably relevant to Year 7 and 8 pupils
and perhaps also younger, rather than older, pupils and they do seem to
cover a range of ability.
6.4
A page printed out well using a HP Deskjet 500C printer. The colour
rendition was accurate but the choice of colour for text and its
background on screen in some cases might cause legibility problems and
anyone wishing to print out many pages might need to edit pages in
Genesis to improve the colour contrast between print and background.
6.4
Oak claims that pages can be edited in Genesis II or Genesis Plus, so
keeping backup copies of the software would be highly desirable if
pupils have access to such editing facilities!
6.4
The Find option available from the iconbar menu might be useful in some
cases and seemed to work well. However, with floppy disks, it took a
considerable time to find and load an appropriate page.
6.4
Conclusion
6.4
At £50 plus VAT for what is effectively a site licence and copiable
documentation, this seems a worthwhile package and good value for money.
As an IT coordinator, I shall certainly encourage my History colleagues
to use it!  A
6.4
Southern Printers’ Buildings Drawfiles
6.4
Dave Wilcox
6.4
A new name has entered the world of drawfile clipart − Southern Printers
which is run by Steve and Karen Southern. Their new disc is one covering
the topic of buildings. The cost is £9 inclusive.
6.4
What you get
6.4
For £9, you get a disc containing 46 drawings of buildings ranging from
terraced houses to elaborate castles. These files are compressed using
Spark from David Pilling. The PD decompression program, Sparkplug is
also included on the disc. In another directory, called ‘Bits’, are some
useful component parts that were used in the construction of the
drawings. Altogether, the files amount to approximately 1.5 Mb of
drawings.
6.4
Drawings
6.4
The main drawings have been created using Vector from 4Mation. Appar
ently, you gain extra space with this program if you use the path merge
facility. This has been done to the main drawings, so if you don’t have
Vector, editing these drawings can be a complicated process. This is
another reason for the inclusion of the Bits directory on the disc.
Personally, I still use DrawPlus and this lends itself nicely to using
the Bits directory because it is a simple matter to make a library from
it. It then becomes a quick and easy matter to design a building for
yourself.
6.4
What else is available?
6.4
There are, currently, three discs available from Southern Printers, all
of which are available only by mail order. They are SP1 and SP2 which
contain general drawings which fall into no specific categories and SP3
which is the buildings disc under review here. The prices are SP1 −
£5.50, SP2 − £9 and SP3 − £9. (SP1/SP2 ordered together are £12.50.)
6.4
Conclusion
6.4
If you require a drawing of a building and are not artistically minded
or simply don’t have enough hours in the day, this is the disc for you.
The drawings are precise, tidy and pleasing to the eye. If you wish to
see for yourself, before you buy, you can obtain printed samples from
Southern Printers − simply send them a stamped address envelope
requesting sample sheets.  A
6.4
Screen Turtle
6.4
Hilary Ferns
6.4
The thought of using turtle graphics in the primary classroom fills many
teachers with anxiety and children with confusion. It is encouraging to
see programs coming onto the scene to make this a ‘friendly’ area of the
curriculum. You may have come across Topologika’s ‘Teddy’s Playground’
for younger children and Sherston Software’s ‘The Crystal Rain Forest’
for the older juniors, both of which are good introductions to turtle
graphics. I consider ‘Screen Turtle’ from Topologika to be an excellent
follow up to these. Its main aim is not to present adventures or puzzles
as Crystal Rain Forest does but simply to provide the environment for
the children to explore turtle graphics on the screen.
6.4
Getting started
6.4
The program comes on a single disc, accompanied by an A5 instruction
booklet, a thinner booklet of classroom ideas and a few worksheets. The
latter are also provided as drawfiles on the disc so that they can be
edited to your own requirements. A separate card is provided with
details concerning registering and loading the program. Once the disc
has been registered by typing in a name in response to a prompt, a
backup copy can be made to use as the working copy. The program can be
run from floppy or hard disc.
6.4
Screens are saved in a compressed form to save disc space, but even so,
there is very limited space on the disc if you want to keep all the
example files as well but you can, of course, move the drawfiles off the
disc. A further way to free more disc space is suggested by eliminating
the title screen from the startup sequence.
6.4
The program loads in the usual way but takes the user out of the Desktop
environment. During the loading process, you are prompted to load a
printer driver if you wish. I was pleased to see that the program makes
use of the usual RISC-OS printer drivers, and I got good results on both
a Star LC10 colour and an HP Deskjet. The screen display is simple but
enhanced by the use of ‘plinth’ effects. Two ‘modes’ are provided:
‘Command mode’, in which the typed commands take immediate effect, and
‘Define’ mode which is used to build procedures. In ‘Command’ mode, you
can choose a screen layout with a large graphics area with only two
lines of text at the bottom, or a slightly reduced graphics area with a
six line text window. In ‘Define’ mode, where you can build your own
procedures, the text window is down the lefthand side of the screen.
6.4
Communicating with Screen Turtle
6.4
All the commands and their permissible abbreviations are listed and
explained in the booklet. However, I felt that a few step by step
tutorials would have been useful for the absolute beginner. Several
versions of each command are accepted. For example, ‘FORWARD’ can be
written as ‘FD’, ‘FOR’, ‘FORWARDS’ or ‘AHEAD’. I should imagine that you
would need to agree on a version for use in the classroom and stick to
it. Several of the common commands are available through the function
keys − for which a keystrip is provided. The program will accept any
mixture of upper and lower case input. (It actually converts any lower
case commands to upper case.)
6.4
If Screen Turtle doesn’t understand your input, it will either tell you
so by a printed message or make an intelligent guess by looking at the
beginning of your command. In ‘Command’ mode, the program will take each
command as you type, putting a tick beside each when it has been
accepted. I found this most helpful, particularly at times when I was
moving around the screen with ‘pen up’.
6.4
Commands
6.4
All the usual turtle graphics commands are available via the keyboard,
and the turtle moves smartly round the screen. Some of the more complex
sequences are rather slow but can be speeded up quite significantly by
‘hiding’ the turtle. Building nested ‘REPEAT’ loops in Logo can often be
confusing and this is made simpler by starting each line in the loop
with a ‘>’ character. The nested loops then use ‘>>’, ‘>>>’, etc which
helps to keep track of loops.
6.4
‘ERASE’ is a very useful little command which erases everything you
‘draw’ over. A clock is supplied as an example. At each tick, the last
line is deleted to give the appearance of the hand moving onwards. This
is not the same as setting the pen colour to the background colour; in
such cases, the lines will still be there and so will respond to any
subsequent ‘FILL’ command.
6.4
Building and saving procedures
6.4
One of the great strengths of any turtle graphics program is in its
ability to ‘build’ up a list of commands to produce your own procedure.
Terminology becomes important here. ‘Word’ is used rather than
‘Procedure’, recognising that any such defined routine can be called
with a single word. This seems quite a logical term to use in the
classroom, although I found it a little confusing at first. To ‘Build’ a
word you go into ‘define’ mode. Each line of the ‘word’ is entered from
the keyboard, and the mouse is used to select ‘Run’, ‘Step’, ‘Clear’,
‘Print’, etc from a menu.
6.4
There are one or two minor problems concerned with editing and then
running nested repeat loops while in define mode. These are addressed in
the instruction booklet and are simply remedied by clicking on ‘Run’ a
second time. However, it is a little annoying at first.
6.4
Words built up at any one session can be saved as a file. Existing words
in memory can be deleted and a new file loaded from disc. If any of the
new words loaded have the same name as any already in memory, the
incoming ones will be suffixed with an ‘x’. This seems quite a reliable
method. However, when you quit the program you are only asked ‘Are you
sure’. No direct mention is made of unsaved work.
6.4
As well as saving words, it is possible to save a ‘Screen’ − i.e. your
completed picture. These are saved in a compressed form and you can then
use the ‘TurtleConvert’ program provided on the disc to unpack them so
that the resulting sprites can be exported for use elsewhere. The
screens provided on the disc are mazes of varying complexity. They are
all fairly plain but, with a little imagination, could be edited in
‘!Paint’ (or other mode 12 art package), to provide interesting topic-
based mazes.
6.4
Further refinements
6.4
‘UNDO’ is a useful command which works on up to ten of the recent
commands.
6.4
Variables can be set using ‘MAKE’ or ‘LET’.
6.4
A logical AND is provided by embedded ‘IF . . .THENs’.
6.4
Random numbers are catered for with the RANDOM command.
6.4
A grid can be used to make some drawing processes easier. The lines of
the grid are 100 screen units apart.
6.4
Colours can be added in two ways. You can use the FILL command with the
turtle inside the area to be filled or you can use PAINT mode, where the
mouse is used to click on each area to fill. (This is a very ‘Un-Logo-
like command but it is very useful.) One slightly annoying thing about
the latter method is that once an area is filled, you cannot change it.
Instead, you have to go back to the unfilled version and start filling
your picture all over again.
6.4
‘HEADING’ turns the turtle a defined number of degrees from North − this
is a useful command to include in a classroom topic concerning naviga
tion or map work. ‘VECTOR’, ‘MOVE’ and ‘DRAW’ all require a knowledge of
the screen coordinates.
6.4
Finally, text can be placed anywhere on the screen in system font, by
using either the ‘LABEL’ command, which places it at the turtle
position, or the ‘TYPE’ command which uses the mouse.
6.4
In conclusion
6.4
This is an excellent program, fulfilling the need for an ‘easy to
learn’, but fairly extensive, turtle graphics program in the junior
classroom. (Perhaps at £44 the price is a little high for this kind of
program for many primary schools.)  A
6.4
Brian Kerslake of Topologika, saw a copy of the review so here are some
comments in response....
6.4
From my experience of Screen Turtle being used in schools, I would say
that when Hilary describes the ‘command modes’, she has omits the mode
which kids seem to find most useful − when the text window is down the
left hand side of the screen − just as it is in Define mode.
6.4
Hilary asks for a step by step tutorial. In my opinion, the worksheets
which she describes elsewhere (and which we supply on disc as well as on
paper) are just that.
6.4
It is true that when you quit the program, although Screen Turtle asks
you if you’re sure you want to finish, it doesn’t directly remind you to
save unsaved work. We will implement this in future versions.
6.4
Hilary wishes that the PAINT command allowed her to change the colour of
an area she had already filled. So do we, but we couldn’t implement this
and make it work on a 1 Mb machine along with all the other facilities.
6.4
I strongly disagree with Hilary’s comment on the price. It is almost
half the cost of other Logos, and we include a site licence giving
schools the right to make as many copies as they wish. Other publishers
charge at least double for site licences. We think the price is about
right. Brian Kerslake, Topologika.  A
6.4
Omar Sharif’s Bridge Program
6.4
John Wallace
6.4
The game is supplied in a cardboard box containing one diskette, a slim
Archive sized manual, a registration card and a card giving loading
instructions for the Archimedes. This starts by stating there should be
three icons and the user should double click on the ReadMe icon. There
is only one icon and no README icon. Not a good start! The card goes on
to say that the disc may be copied to, and run from, a hard drive and
used without the need for the original 3½“ disk to be present as a key
disk. That is not true, the original disc must be in the drive for the
program to be used!
6.4
The game has been converted from the DOS/Atari/Amiga version and the
manual covers only those versions. There is no information about which
of the many features are available on the Archimedes. By trial and
error, I think that only the Alt-key combinations are available.
6.4
So what can it do? It will bid using either the “Acol” or “5 card Major”
system and it understands “Stayman” and “Blackwood” conventions. The
deals may be random dealt, manually entered or recalled from disc. The
computer can play any or all of the other hands. The default is random-
deals with the computer playing the West, North and East hands.
6.4
This program is not intended to teach people how to play bridge. There
is a brief synopsis of the rules and of the history of the game in the
manual but it very wisely states that “...it is not a comprehensive
guide to all the facets of the game”!! It does provide some tutorial
hands on the disc and if you play these, you are only permitted to play
the cards it expects. If you fail three times then you are told which
card to play and briefly why you should play that card.
6.4
<Alt-P> brings up a menu that allows you to save the current hand to
disc as a text file including the bidding and scoring. There is a write-
to-port option which I assume is intended to send the output to a
printer but nothing happens on my machine.
6.4
The main playing screen is a green background divided into nine areas by
yellow lines. The centre area is the main playing area with the hands
displayed top, bottom, left and right as you might expect. The four
corner areas are used for information. Bearing in mind that it is
presumably in mode 12, the quality of the cards and the presentation is
good.
6.4
Once you have made your selections, the main screen is displayed with
only the South cards face up. The cards for any hand can be revealed or
hidden by using <Alt-W>, <Alt-N>, etc. We are now introduced to the
digitised voice of Omar Sharif announcing who is to start the bidding
and I thought it sounded quite reasonable. The bidding and game play is
best controlled by using the mouse to click on the card or bid (only
<select> seems to do anything). Alternatively, the keyboard may be used
as described in the booklet. Illegal bids are ignored. Omar then
announces the final contract and who is to lead. After the opening lead,
the Dummy’s cards are revealed.
6.4
I have only had a few hours with it so far but the game play seems
reasonable. When I get time, I will investigate it thoroughly and report
back. Once you start play, the worst feature of the game is revealed. At
the end of each trick Omar solemnly says “That was good play” if you win
the trick or “That was not quite right” if you lose the trick − even if
you lose it to the Ace of trumps!! This gets incredibly wearing after a
while! Surely it should be possible to provide the comments only when
the play is thought to be below or above par? Once the bidding has
started, one cannot exit from the game other than by pressing reset.
6.4
So what is my overall first impression? On the plus side, I can now do
simple bidding and play a game of bridge on my computer, but as a
spokesman for the keen duplicate bridge player and dedicated Archimedes
user, I think we deserve better. I would like to see a conversion from
one of the dedicated bridge playing computers with many more bidding and
playing conventions. Also, it would be good to have an option to use
mode 20 for people with multisync monitors.
6.4
On the minus side, I think the conversion from the DOS version could
have been a lot better. I object strongly to having to put the original
disc in every time, what’s the point in having a hard disc? Omar’s
comments at the end of every trick must be removed.
6.4
Omar Sharif’s Bridge is £29.99 from Krisalis Software or £28 through
Archive.  A
6.4
Oak Solutions (p8)    Suite 25,
Robin Enterprise Centre, Leeds Road, Idle, Yorkshire BD10 9TE.
(0274−620423) (0274−620419)
6.4
Oregan Developments     36 Grosvenor
Avenue, Streetly, Sutton Coldfield  B74 3PE.
6.4
Ray Maidstone     421 Sprowston Road, Norwich  NR3 4EH. (0603−400477)
(0603−417447)
6.4
Risc Developments    117 Hatfield Road, St Albans, Herts  AL1 4JS.
(0727−40303) (0727−860263)
6.4
Safesell Exhibitions     Market
House, Cross Road, Tadworth, Surrey KT20 5SR.
6.4
Sigma Press     1 South Oak Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire  SK9 6AR.
6.4
Southern Printers     47 Drake
Road, Willesborough, Ashford, Kent TN24 0UZ. (0233−633919)
6.4
Spacetech (p15)    21 West Wools, Portland, Dorset  DT5 2EA.
(0305−822753) (0305−860483)
6.4
SSERC     24 Bernard Terrace, Edinburgh, EH8 9NX. (031-668-4421)
6.4
State Machine     75 Upper Wellington Street, Luton, Bedfordshire  LU1
5AA. (0582−483377) (0582−480833)
6.4
Topologika     P.O. Box 39, Stilton, Peterborough  PE7 3RL. (0733−244682)
6.4
Wild Vision      15 Witney Way, Boldon Colliery, Tyne & Wear NE35 9PE.
(091−519−1455) (091−519−1929)
6.4

6.4
(Very) Silly Competition
6.4
At the Archive Christmas Luncheon, we had Christmas crackers with the
usual groan-making jokes. One of the ‘jokes’ left all twelve of us
completely bewildered.
6.4
The first person to write in and explain why it is supposed to be funny,
will receive a free Archive mug. If your explanation makes us laugh, we
may even send you two! Anyway, here goes...
6.4
Definition of fish: The only animal that keeps growing after it’s dead.
6.4
How’s that for an obscure joke?!  A
6.4

6.5
The future of Acorn looks good
6.5
The BETT Show had a very healthy Acorn presence with lots of new
software and some important new hardware − see “Products Available” and
“The Ultimate Expansion?”. (The latter will give a new lease of life to
the A3010, 3020 and 4000 machines.) Judging by the way Acorn’s shares
rose so steeply this month, I suspect there is something else in the
air. And the recent 1% drop in interest rates can only help the consumer
market, too.
6.5
The future of Norwich Computer Services?
6.5
It is ironical after the comments I made in the “God-slot” last month
but N.C.S. is currently suffering the most difficult cash flow problems
it has ever faced. Taking on extra staff and setting up new phone
systems and our new demonstration area and service centre has been
something of a drain on our resources. (This is all so that we can try
to qualify on Acorn’s Educational Dealership criteria.)
6.5
We have just launched the Archive Words Discs (see Products Available).
For example, if you want (almost) all the Hints and Tips ever published
in Archive on a disc in Edit format, it is available now. Load up the
file, search for the hint you want and then look it up in the relevant
magazine. I am finding the facility extremely useful − I don’t know why
I didn’t think of it before. If you think you might find such a disc
useful, can I ask you to buy it from us sooner rather than later − you’d
be helping to keep us afloat!
6.5
Thanks for all your support. Enjoy the magazine − it’s another 80-page
one!
6.5
Yours,
6.5

6.5
Products Available
6.5
•  A3010 digital joystick software − At last the A3010 joystick ports can
start being used properly! The Leading Edge have just released a
software package which allows the digital joystick ports on the A3010 to
be used correctly. The A3010 “Joymaster” enables the built-in joystick
ports to be used with games not specifically written to support Acorn’s
Joystick Standard. It allows custom design of joystick and keyboard
controls, and includes a unique “mapping” feature which allows a
joystick to emulate keystrokes or mouse controls. In practice, this
means that it should work with just about any game written for the
Archimedes as well as having the capability to work in the desktop. Also
included with the package are several pre-defined joystick mappings
designed to work with many of the more popular games. The Archive price
is £28. For those of you still in the dark about joysticks and the
supporting software and hardware, we hope to be giving some help in next
month’s Archive.
6.5
•  A3020/A4000 Econet upgrade − HCCS have beaten Acorn to it − they now
have an AUN-compatible Econet upgrade available for the A3020 and A4000
for £39 +VAT (£43 through Archive). There is an Econet cable sold
separately for £10 +VAT (or £11 through Archive).
6.5
•  ABC of Art is a set of clipart drawn using Artworks and available in
Artworks or Draw format. The first in the series has nine illustrations,
Aborigine, AC_Cobra, Acorn, Aeroplane, Aerosol, Alsatian, Arches, Arrows
and a letter A. The price is £8 inclusive from J Jeffery, Tideways,
South Road, Bream, Somerset  TA8 2SE.
6.5
•  A Beginner’s Guide to Wimp Programming − Martyn Fox has written a 180-
page book which sets out to explain wimp programming (in Basic) from the
very beginning. The price is £14.95 from Sigma Press or £14 through
Archive. If you want a disc to save you typing in all the programs
yourself, you have to write direct to the author and send £3.95. The
name and address is given in the book.
6.5
•  Aldebaran − This new game mentioned last month is now available
through Archive for £32.
6.5
•  Ancestry upgrade − Minerva have produced a new version of Ancestry
which, amongst other things, allows on-screen preview of the sideways
print mode. Also, the key-disc copy-protection system is no longer used.
Send your master disc plus a cheque for £11.75 to Minerva.
6.5
•  An Eye for Spelling is an educational program providing a visual
approach to spelling. It contains 3,500 words which are aimed at
children in the 5−11 year age range and are grouped according to letter
patterns. An Eye for Spelling is £35 +VAT (including a site licence)
from ESM or £38 through Archive.
6.5
•  Arc Embroidery price drop − Techsoft’s computer embroidery package
(see review on page 61) has dropped in price from £749.95 +VAT to
£699.95 +VAT. (This may be because they now have competition − see page
7.)
6.5
•  Archive Monthly Program Discs − We get asked, fairly regularly, about
the Archive monthly program discs. Basically, all they consist of is any
programs and data files that are referred to in the magazine plus any
other bits and pieces that come our way. We sometimes use the disc to
send out updated versions of PD software, we try to put on it updates of
the ArcScan magazine data for Archive (Shareware 7) and, in future, we
will try to fit on the updates to the Archive Words Discs for Hints &
Tips and Products Available, i.e. the text of that month’s H & T and
Products Available columns in Edit format. The discs are £2 each. You
can buy them individually or the whole of the current year for £24 − I
realise that this is not a discount, but ordering them in advance is a
convenience for you and extra admin for us!
6.5
•  Archive Monthly Program Disc Index − If you want to know what the
monthly program discs actually contain, the most up-to-date list we have
is an Edit format index which appears on the Archive Products Available
Words Disc (£2) − see opposite.
6.5
•  Archive Words Discs − A number of people have asked if we can supply
Archive magazine in machine readable format. Thus far I have resisted
the pressure for copyright reasons. However, I recently created some
Edit files of the text of all the Archive magazines that were created on
the Archimedes − i.e. from Archive 4.5 onwards. (Prior to that they were
produced on Apple Macs.) I have found it extremely helpful to be able to
load up one file of text containing all the words of, say, volume 5
(2.6Mb of text!) and search through for some reference or other. These
files are now permanently on my pinboard. I have therefore decided to
release these files for sale on disc. They are:
6.5
Words  4.5 − 4.8  £2
6.5
Words  4.9 − 4.12  £2
6.5
Words  5.1 − 5.6  £2
6.5
Words  5.7 − 5.12  £2
6.5
Words  6.1 − 6.4*  £2
6.5
Please note the licence conditions of these discs − they are only for
sale to those people who already own copies of the magazines to which
they refer. We are not asking for proof of purchase but are trusting
your honesty. The alternative to this licence condition would be to sell
the discs for, say, £5 each to make them comparable with the cost of
buying the magazine but this we did not want to do. N.B. If you want the
back issues of the actual magazines, they are all still available at
special prices: Vols 1−4 at £22 and Vols 1−5 at £25.
6.5
 *Volume 6 will have to be on three discs (assuming we continue to
generate these 80-page issues!) as there is too much text, even when
compressed, to fit onto two discs. Volume 5 just squeezes onto two discs
in compressed format.
6.5
N.B. The Edit files are so large that you need a 2Mb machine to un-
compress the files from the individual discs. If you then want to
combine, say, all of volume 5, you will need a 4Mb machine.
6.5
•  Archive Products Available Compilation. This goes right back to the
very beginning of Archive’s life because we took the trouble, for our
own purposes, to go back to the issues that were produced on the Mac to
collect all this information. We find it very useful to have all this
information in a single file. If we want to know, for example, if there
has ever been a product that dealt with electronic circuit analysis, we
just load up this file and search for the appropriate words. Also
included on the disc are lists of the contents of the Shareware,
Careware and Archive monthly program discs in Edit format. This disc
costs £2 from Archive.
6.5
•  Archive Hints & Tips Compilation. This is another extremely useful
compilation for anybody who uses an Archimedes machine − I don’t know
why we didn’t think of doing it before! These discs contain all the
Hints & Tips columns plus some of the specialist hints & tips columns
like Impression, First Word Plus, RISC-OS 2 and RISC-OS 3. As with the
Products Available Compilation, it goes right back to the beginning of
Archive. The way we envisage them being used is that you load them into
Edit, search for the word(s) you are looking for, identify which
magazine contains the hint you want, then go and look it up in the
actual magazine. These Edit files contain no formatting and the sections
that were transferred from the Apple Mac may contain inaccuracies and
some program segments are missing, so please refer to the original text
in the magazine. These discs are £6 each.
6.5
They are:
6.5
Hints  Vols (1 − 4)  £6
6.5
Hints  Vols 5 & 6  £6
6.5
Hints  Vols (1 − 6)  £10
6.5
(The Hints 1−6 disc is only recommended for use on machines with 2Mb or
more as it will not un-compress into a 1Mb machine.)
6.5
•  Archive Shareware & Careware Compilations − We have just realised that
those who own removable drives might wish to get hold of PD software in
bulk! We have therefore produced two compilation removable discs. All
the Archive Shareware discs (over 40 all together) have been put onto
one 42M cartridge. This disc is £75. All the Archive Careware discs (19
so far) have also been put onto a single 42M cartridge. The cost is £100
and, of this, £75 covers the cost of the media plus duplication and £25
goes to charity.
6.5
•  Artroom CD-ROM − Matt Black have produced a CD-ROM version of their
Image Club clipart library (Archive 5.11 p2). For £295 +£2 p&p (no VAT),
you get over 4,000 clipart images, all in EPS format, that can be loaded
directly into ArtWorks.
6.5
•  BookMaker − BookMaker is a DTP program that allows teachers and pupils
to produce storybooks. It allows you to manipulate text and graphics and
its features can be tailored by the teacher to the age and ability of
the pupils. The price is £49.95 +VAT from RESOURCE for a single user
licence. This price includes the BookWorm application which allows
BookMaker books to be replayed a page at a time or as an animation.
6.5
•  BookStore is an educational program aimed at children in Key Stages 1
& 2. It provides a framework for children to write, store and retrieve
book reviews. BookStore costs £39.50 +VAT (including a site licence)
from ESM or £43 through Archive.
6.5
•  Careware 18 − Atomwide have released the software for their VIDC
Enhancers into the public domain. We have made it available on Careware
18 and added various other utilities for monitors. (We hope to have the
VIDC Enhancer hardware on sale again soon.)
6.5
The rest of the disc contains: iconbar mode number display, extended
screen modes for the Sony CPD-1402, mode 108 which provides 1024×448
pixels & 16 colours @ 59Hz, mode 112 for the Acorn AKF18 m/s monitor,
VIDC enhancer modules for NEC 3D, tweaked PC emulator modes for NEC 3D,
extended screen modes (76-102) for NEC 3D, mode creation and editing for
pre-A5000s with AKF18, module for modes 0-15 for use on an A410 with an
AKF18 monitor, alternative to Atomwide’s VIDC enhancer software. The
price is £5 from Archive.
6.5
•  Careware 19 − This disc contains a range of utilities for graphics
file conversion (much of which used to be on Careware 13) and some
statistics software. The price is £5 from Archive.
6.5
Graphics utilities consist of the latest versions of: !CGM->Draw (2.60),
!Draw->CGM (1.10), !Draw->EPS (1.10), !Draw->Met (1.00) (Draw to OS2
Metafiles), !Dxf-CGM (1.00), !Plotter (1.30) which allows drawfiles to
be plotted to a SketchMate A4 plotter, !Creator (1.13) which converts
sprites to GIF, TIFF, AIM and PBM and !Translator (6.45) which converts
various graphics filetypes to sprites.
6.5
The suite of stand-alone statistical utilities written in Basic consists
of: Transfer to/from PipeDream/Edit/ASCII text, graph drawing/plotting,
histograms, area under curve, half-life calculation, mean, deviation &
variance calculations, T-tests, regression analysis, linear regression,
F-test, Wilcoxon signed rank test, Mann-Whitney U-test, Spearman
correlation, chi², Fisher exact test, Kruskal-Wallis, Friedman, sample &
survival stats, covariate analysis, one-way independence tests, two-way
independence test, Altman-Bland test, predicted & PC calculation.
6.5
•  Choices is an educational utility that allows students to do a wide
range of activities by selecting images. Preferences can be expressed as
well as giving right answers. It uses still or moving images, sprites or
drawfiles and allows jigsaws to be made. Teachers can modify existing
activities (four discs of resources are included) or create their own
activities. The price is £35 +VAT from Widgit Software.
6.5
•  ClearView hypertext utility (mentioned in Archive 5.8 p2)  has dropped
in price to £29.95 inc VAT from DEC_dATA.
6.5
•  Clipart − Software42 have three discs of clipart on offer at £15 per
disc, inclusive. They are 1−Electronics, 2−Animals and Birds, 3−People.
6.5
Bright Ideas have produced eleven discs of clipart: 1−General,
2−Transport, 3−Costumes, 4−Entertainment, 5−Bugs to Slugs, 6−Road Signs,
7−Sports Equipment, 8−Sports Figures, 9−Dinosaurs, 10−Symbols, 11−Tools.
These discs are £8 +VAT each from Desktop Projects.
6.5
•  Courses, various − The ARM Club are arranging various courses on
topics such as music, games, teaching for teachers(!), Impression,
PipeDream, Squirrel, Genesis. For details, contact Dr Nick Evans, 19
Woodberry Way, London  N12 0HE.
6.5
•  Craftshop 1, Craftshop 2, Jigsaw and Jiglet from 4Mation have all come
down in price. Each is now £19.95 +VAT from 4Mation or £22 through
Archive.
6.5
•  Cyborg the arcade-style, multi-location adventure game from Alpine
Software (mentioned in Archive 6.3 p3) is now available through Archive
for £24.
6.5
•  DDE Pascal upgrade − Acorn have upgraded their (PD) DDE Pascal to
version 4.10. The main changes are that several bugs have been fixed,
forward function declarations now work, range checking on assignment has
been added, the optimiser has been improved, the predefined type ‘Error’
has been renamed ‘OS_Error’ as ‘Error’ caused name clashes with some
programs and ‘input’ and ‘output’ can now be used explicitly without
declaring them in the program header (except when compiling with -ISO).
6.5
If you want the updated version you can either buy another copy of
Careware 17 at £5 or send your old Careware 17 back with a donation to
charity and we will upgrade it for you.
6.5
•  Desktop Folio − ESM have reduced the price of their word-processor/DTP
package to £64 +VAT (£70 through Archive). A site licence is available
from ESM for £180 +VAT. They also now have five curriculum packs for use
with Desktop Folio. The subjects are: World War II, Christmas, Space,
Maths and Editors. The latter is a set of material for anyone designing
newspapers, magazines, etc. These packs are £22.50 +VAT each (including
a site licence) from ESM.
6.5
•  Eizo prices up − As from February 1st, the price of Eizo monitors has
risen slightly. The 9060 has gone up to an Archive price of £550, the
F550 to £980, the F750 to £1650, the T560iT to £1500, and the T660iT to
£2100.
6.5
•  Expanded keyboard − Northwest SEMERC have produced an expanded
keyboard for use on Archimedes computers. It works with A300, A400,
A540, A3000, A4000 and A5000 (although the A3000 needs an interface unit
fitted inside the computer). The keyboard comes complete with a
perforated steel key guard which enables users with poor motor control
to rest their hands thus avoiding unwanted key-presses. For those who
find multiple key-presses (e.g. <ctrl-V>, etc) difficult or impossible,
there is an electronic control which allows ‘sticky keys’ to be used,
i.e. <shift>, <ctrl> or <alt> can effectively be held down while another
key is pressed − all with single key-presses.
6.5
•  Fades is an addition to Silica Software Systems’ art package, Flare.
It adds a carousel facility to allow you to build up a rolling display
of Flare pictures or other sprites. The complete pack of Flare + Fades
is £29.30 (or £22 for education) and the upgrade to add Fades is £7 if
you send your original disc back to Silica.
6.5
•  Gestalt 2: Money & Shopping is an educational program from Basing
Educational Software. This desktop application is aimed at primary and
special needs and allows pupils to deal with coins and notes to exact
quantities and to deal with rounding up. The price is £30 +VAT from
Basing.
6.5
•  Gestalt Number is a set of six educational programs for primary and
special needs pupils dealing with counting, number recognition,
sequencing, categorization, number bonds and multiplication. The price
is £50 +VAT from Basing Educational Software.
6.5
•  Granny’s back! − Those who remember Granny’s Garden from the BBC B
days will be pleased to hear that 4Mation have re-released it as a 4-
disc set for the Archimedes. The plot is the same but it has all new
graphics. Granny’s Garden is £24.50 +VAT (£27 through Archive) and there
is a site licence (£49 +VAT) and a Granny’s Garden Resource Pack (£10
+VAT) also available from 4Mation.
6.5
•  HiVision Digitiser − HCCS have produced a colour digitiser in their
Vision range that digitises at 508 line × 720 pixel. You will need 2Mb
minimum to run the software and 4Mb is recommended. The A3000 version
(internal) is £129 +VAT (£145 through Archive), the A3000 version
(external) is £142 +VAT (£160 through Archive), the standard podule
version (A300/400/5000) is £129 +VAT (£145 through Archive), the
MicroPodule version is also £129 +VAT (£145 through Archive).
6.5
•  Ixion − This is a futuristic 3D adventure game from Software42. The
price is £25 inclusive from Software42.
6.5
•  Joysticks interface − Magnetic Image have produced (yet another)
joystick interface. However, this is unique in that it has four digital
joystick ports and supports joysticks with a second fire button −
something that other interfaces don’t do. The package consists of a
software module and a hardware dongle for the printer port which has a
trailing lead to the four-port interface box. This dongle is a ‘through
connector’ allowing you to connect the printer at the same time and it
has a switch to allow you to select between the printer and the joystick
interface. There is even a second fire button for each port in case your
existing joystick doesn’t have one. As with all joystick interfaces,
there are some games that just don’t support joysticks and it is worth
checking before you buy games. Price is £34.95 from Magnetic Image.
6.5
•  Kepler is Spacetech’s satellite orbital predication software. This
RISC-OS application costs £29.50 inc VAT from Spacetech.
6.5
•  KidPix is an art package aimed at children in Key Stages 1 & 2. This
costs £37.50 +VAT from ESM or £41 through Archive.
6.5
•  Label Printer is a utility from Software42 for designing labels using
sprites and drawfiles and printing them onto tractor-feed mounted
labels. The price is £15 inclusive from Software42.
6.5
• Linguist is a computerised foreign language dictionary currently
containing 18 languages: Afrikaans, Cornish, Chinese, Danish, Dutch,
Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Irish, Italian,
Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Welsh. Linguist
consists of a dictionary, a quiz/game and an ‘automatic dictionary look-
up’ which allows you to drop a text file onto it and, by doing a trans-
literation, it will give you a vague idea of the text’s content although
it will obviously not be a proper translation of the text.
6.5
Linguist is available from Bits ’n Bytes for £30 inc VAT. This includes
all 18 languages and more are currently being added − the price includes
a free upgrade to the new languages as and when available.
6.5
•  Masterfile 3 − Risc Developments have released a new version of their
long-standing database in Archimedes format. The price is £49 +VAT from
Risc Developments.
6.5
•  Mitre Software − Owners of DiscTree and/or TimeWatch need to know that
Mitre Software has ceased trading. However, until 30th June 1993, you
can get your software upgraded to make it RISC-OS 3 compatible free-of-
charge. To do this, send your original system disc together with an
S.A.E. to the address at the back of the magazine.
6.5
•  My World 2 − This is an upgraded version of the application produced
by Northwest SEMERC which allows children to manipulate drawfiles. New
screens include Goldilocks and an improved version of Teddy screen for
infants as well as Make a Town for juniors. Secondary school students
can use My World for Electronics pictures and to investigate Pythagoras’
theorem. For Key Stage 3 foreign language students, there is Dessin and
Grandeur. New functions include screen-linking for story-telling,
rotate, re-size and flip objects, and pop-up windows for access to
further libraries. It costs £28 +VAT and there are over 18 My World
resource packs available. The original, simpler version of My World is
still available at £18 +VAT from NW SEMERC.
6.5
•  Noot is an animation package for education from 4Mation. It is
particularly aimed at pre-school, infant and junior to provide “a
stimulating environment for language development”. The price is £45 +VAT
(£48 through Archive) for a single user. Additional key-discs at £10
+VAT and a site licence at £90 +VAT are available from 4Mation.
6.5
•  Parish Magazine is a clipart and text collection from DEC_dATA. It
consists of three discs of clipart plus a disc of the full text of the
King James Version of the New Testament. The price is £19.95 inc VAT
from DEC_dATA.
6.5
•  PenDown Etoiles − the French version of Longman Logotron’s educational
word-processor is available now. Intended to complement the 5 year
Etoiles French course from the BBC and Longman, it is aimed at Key
Stages 3 and 4 for Modern Foreign Languages. It includes a 72,000 word
French dictionary. The price is £54 +VAT from Longman or £58 through
Archive. Longman also do a site licence for £330 +VAT and there is an
upgrade licence for PenDown and PenDown Plus licence holders.
6.5
•  Perspectives − Techsoft have produced a new 3D design package which
allows wireframe drawings to be created in any of three orthographic
windows, the result being displayed in the fourth window. It can
instantly change from 1st to 3rd angle. The pictorial view can be
isometric, oblique or perspective and the perspective view can be
rotated and zoomed. There is also a special stereo viewing mode for use
with the special glasses provided and the view can be rotated to allow
you to view the object from any direction. Perspectives is £45 +VAT from
Techsoft for a single copy or £75 +VAT for an educational site licence.
6.5
•  PlayBack is Risc Developments’ mouse recording software. It allows you
to create demonstrations of programs that run in the desktop. PlayBack
costs £19 +VAT from Risc Developments.
6.5
•  Podd − This well-known character from the BBC educational world has
now made it into Archimedes format. This is a language-development
program aimed at Key Stages 1 & 2 − and it’s also good fun! Podd is
£27.50 +VAT (including a site licence) from ESM or £30 through Archive.
6.5
•  POEM Embroidery System − Commotion have produced a computer embroidery
system based on the same POEM500 personal embroidery machine as used by
Techsoft. Commotion’s price, including “Poetry” software is £699.95
+VAT. Poetry accepts sprites and drawfiles but also has its own built-in
art package. (The software is ready now, but not the manual. We will
review it when it does become available.)
6.5
•  PowerRouter is an add-on to Silicon Vision’s ArcPCB. It takes an
ArcPCB design in “rat’s nest” form and generates a multi-layer routed
design using “100% rip-up re-try” techniques. The price is £195 incVAT
from Silicon Vision. (ArcPCB is £125 inc VAT.)
6.5
•  PrimeWord − Minerva have released their new word processor aimed at
educational users. It is a font-based wordprocessor with spelling
checker and dictionary. It can import graphics into the text and the
package is configurable to make it suitable at different levels within
the school. The price is £59 +VAT (or £64 through Archive) or £236 +VAT
for a site licence from Minerva.
6.5
•  QuickShow − This is an ‘easy-to-use’ slide show presentation and video
titling package from Desktop Projects Ltd. The price is £25 +VAT from
Desktop Projects.
6.5
•  QuickSound − Desktop Projects Ltd have produced a utility for handling
sound samples. It allows you to load, play, convert and resave samples.
It takes Armadeus and Tracker samples and can produce modules for use in
other applications. You can also apply special effects to the sound
samples. The price is £10 +VAT from Desktop Projects.
6.5
•  QuickTile − This utility, also from Desktop Projects Ltd, allows you
to print posters from drawfiles and sprites. It works with any RISC-OS
application and will automatically generate crop marks on the individual
sheets that make up the whole poster. The price is £25 +VAT from Desktop
Projects.
6.5
•  Repton is back − So now we are up to Repton 4! Superior Software have
just released ‘Ego: Repton 4’ which provides 30 levels of play and, on
each level, you have to build up a jigsaw puzzle of a famous person or
place by collecting pieces scattered around the level. The price is
£24.95 from Superior or £23 through Archive.
6.5
•  Satpack 1 is a satellite orbit prediction package from Unilab. The
price is £20.23 +VAT from Unilab.
6.5
•  ScreenPlay is Widgit Software’s framework program to help children
create animated stories incorporating pictures, text and sound. It is
aimed for primary use and also for older pupils (or adults) with
learning difficulties. The main pack consisting of an introductory demo
disc, a story disc, a resources disc and a severe learning difficulties
disc costs £35 +VAT from Widgit. They also have a training video for
teachers which can be hired for 5 working days for £2 +VAT or purchased
for £10.50 +VAT.
6.5
•  SCSI cards for CDROM use − We said last month that the Leading Edge
SCSI cards all had CDFS built-in. This wasn’t quite true. The CDFS is
supplied on disc and is not in ROM as it is on, say, the Morley SCSI
card. You have to load the CDFS from disc within your boot file.
6.5
On the subject of CDFS, you should note that all new Morley SCSI podules
will contain the CDFS in ROM and the price remains as it was − £160 for
the uncached one and £220 for the cached one. Anyone who has an existing
Morley SCSI card can get a new ROM from Morley for £15 +VAT.
6.5
•  Sherston Software − From now on, we will be selling the educational
programs produced by Sherston Software. Here is a list of those that we
have already mentioned and/or reviewed in the magazine:
6.5
Title                       Archive Price   Reference
6.5
Arcventure Romans  £32  6.3  p2
6.5
Arcventure Egyptians  £32
  4.9  p2
6.5
Christmas AllSorts  £18
  5.3  p49
6.5
Crystal Rain Forest  £43
  6.2  p58
6.5
Food for Thought  £18  6.2  p3
6.5
Graph-IT  £21  5.12  p63
6.5
Help3  £9  6.2  p3
6.5
Hilighter  £49  6.5  p71
6.5
Split an Image  £18  5.11
  p30
6.5
Viewpoints  £43  4.11  p52
6.5
There are four other Archimedes packages which Sherston produce (and
which we will be selling) that haven’t yet had a mention in Archive.
6.5
Animated Numbers is for children aged 3 − 6 and has three activities
illustrating the numbers 1 to 10. The price is £23 through Archive.
6.5
Badger Trails is a multimedia simulation about badgers. As well as the
computer program, the pack includes a video showing the discovery of a
badger sett and the setting up of a hide to observe the badgers. The
price is £38 through Archive.
6.5
Connections is designed to support infant maths and number work and is
aimed at 5 − 8 year olds. Children simply have to alter the contents of
each window to make the connections true. The price is £30 through
Archive.
6.5
Splash is an art package specifically designed for young children. (This
should not be confused with Splosh from WECC − which is also an art
package for young children!) The price is £22 through Archive which
includes a free site licence.
6.5
•  Special Needs Trackerball − Northwest SEMERC have now produced a
trackerball which will give access to mouse-controlled software for
people with poor motor control. It includes a guard to act as a hand-
rest for the user to avoid unnecessary ball spin or button pressing.
There are also special buttons to produce double-click and drag effects.
The price is £269 +VAT from NW SEMERC.
6.5
•  Spheres of Chaos, the inter-galactic shoot-’em-up game from Matt Black
as mentioned in Archive 6.1 p3, is now available through Archive for
£23.
6.5
•  Snippet 2 − The new version of 4Mation’s Snippet (see 5.12 p37) has a
new price − £37.50 +VAT from 4Mation or £40 through Archive.
6.5
•  Splosh is an art package specifically designed for young children ‘but
with features for everyone’. The introductory price from WECC is £19
+VAT which includes a free site licence.
6.5
•  Talking books − Sherston have just released the first of their Talking
Books series − Naughty Stories. These feature recorded human speech and
allow the children to move from page to page listening to the story at
the click of a button. They can even ask the computer to repeat words
they are unsure of. The first three stories are: Billy the Bothersome
Bully, Doris the Dotty Dog and Edwina’s Energetic Elephant. They are
£9.95 +VAT each or £11 through Archive.
6.5
•  Teletext adaptor software − With the new teletext franchise for ITV
and Channel 4, the multitasking teletext software from Ivoryash Ltd no
longer works 100% because of the change of format. Existing customers
can receive a free upgrade by returning the original disk and a stamped
addressed label to Ivoryash Ltd. The current price for new customers is
£25 inc VAT and p&p.
6.5
•  Through the Dragon’s Eye is a Look and Read Adventure from Longman
Logotron. It is intended to link with the BBC Schools’ Television
program of the same name. The price is £24 +VAT through Longmans or £26
through Archive.
6.5
•  Time-Traveller are ESM’s history packs aimed at children in Key Stage
2. There are currently five packs at different prices − Britain since
the 1930s and The Victorians are £32.50 +VAT each from ESM or £35
through Archive, Trade & Industry and Medieval Realms are £39.50 +VAT
each from ESM or £43 through Archive and the fifth pack is Time
Traveller Personal which is basically a shell into which you can put
your own history − local history or whatever. It comes with a sample
data disc for history from 1891 to 1990. This costs £37.50 +VAT from ESM
or £41 through Archive. The price of each pack includes a site licence.
6.5
•  TOM the Computer Simulator − This is a computer simulator for use in
Computer Science or Electronics courses. It is a desktop application
that allows you to simulate a processor with 48 bytes of memory. You
program it by poking machine code instructions into the various
locations and watch the program counter and accumulator as your program
runs. This application costs £29.95 +VAT (or £99.95 for a site licence)
from Keylink Computers.
6.5
•  Ultimate Expansion System − This is an expansion system for ALL Acorn
32-bit computers. It is such an important new product that I have
devoted a whole article to it − see page 11.
6.5
•  Vanguard Clipart Volume 1 − This is a “new kind of design resource for
DTP users” from Matt Black. It consists of 50+ images designed to be “as
versatile and attention-grabbing as possible”. As well as the images on
disc, you get a 12-page booklet with an index of the clipart plus design
ideas, hints & tips, etc for getting the most out of Impression,
Artworks, Draw, etc. This first disc has images relating to “fantasy,
tools and stationary” (sic). The price is £14.99 + £2 p&p (no VAT) from
Matt Black.
6.5
•  WolfPack − This is a flight simulation game from Software42 set in
World War 3. The price is £20 inclusive from Software42.
6.5
•  Wordz − Colton Software’s new wordprocessor (as described in the
PipeLine-Z column this month − see page 21) is now in stock. The price
is £99 + VAT (or £105 through Archive).
6.5
•  Xword is a desktop crossword puzzle program from David Ramsden. It
includes 50 cryptic puzzles for you to solve plus some rudimentary (his
word) programs for entering and editing your own puzzles (maximum 20 ×
20 letters). Send £5.95 to David Ramsden at 7 Chevet Lane, Wakefield
WF2 6HN.
6.5
Review software received...
6.5
We have received review copies of the following: Ancient Greece, Arcade,
ArcTrack, Bright Ideas Clipart, Chatter, Choices, Drop Rock, Ego:
Repton4, Fantasy + Fiddles & Drums (SmArt files), Flare + Fades, Impact,
Ixion, Label Printer, Landmarks − Civil War, Linkword (Spanish), PenDown
Etoiles, Perspectives, Picture It!, Precision, Punctuate, QuickShow,
QuickTile, SatPack 1, Soapbox, Software42 Clipart, Splosh, SpySnatcher,
The Puddle and the Wardrobe, ThinkLink, Through the Dragon’s Eye, Tiles,
Whale Facts, WindowEd, Wolfpack, Xword, Yes Chancellor II.  A
6.5

6.5
Government Health Warning − Reading this could seriously affect your
spiritual health.
6.5
So, you tell me that Christianity is a man-made myth. Well, what
alternative plan can you offer me to rescue mankind from the mess it is
sliding into?
6.5
Let’s work on the assumption that God doesn’t exist and assume that man
is basically good so that all we have to do is to educate him and
improve the systems of government and then all will be well. Come on,
who are you trying to kid?! Look around you − at Northern Ireland, the
former Yugoslavia, the Middle East, Somalia (need I go on?). Look at
what mankind is doing to itself. Think about the ecological mess we are
making of this planet. Think of the over-population. Think of the way we
are over-using natural resources. How long will it be before the whole
world system falls apart?
6.5
Open your eyes and face the facts − the world is in a mess and what
solution can you offer for these mega problems? Better education? Better
government? Well, of course, these things will help but at the heart of
almost every problem is man’s basic selfishness and greed. “I/we
want...” “It’s my/our right...” The heart of the problem is the problem
of the human heart!
6.5
Oh, we educated, “nice” people don’t go around killing people or causing
ecological disasters but, be honest, do you find it easy to be more
concerned about other people’s welfare than your own? We all know the
theory that it will be better for mankind as a whole if we look after
each other but even “nice” people have a problem with selfishness to
some extent.
6.5
If I were God, I wouldn’t just let mankind stew in its own juice − I’d
go down there, get involved and show them that there is a better way.
I’m not... ...but He did. God came to earth in Jesus and not only showed
us how to live an unselfish life but, much more importantly, gave us the
fundamental cure for the cancer of human selfishness. What is the cure?
Sorry, I’ve run out of space − ask a Christian!
6.5

6.5
Norwich Computer Services 96a Vauxhall Street, Norwich, NR2 2SD.
0603−766592 (−764011)
6.5

6.5
4Mation   11 Castle Park Road, Whiddon Valley, Barnstaple, Devon  EX32
8PA. (0271−25353) (0271−22974)
6.5
Abacus Training   29 Okus Grove, Upper Stratton, Swindon, Wilts  SN2
6QA.
6.5
Ace Computing   27 Victoria Road, Cambridge  CB4 3BW. (0223−322559)
(0223−69180)
6.5
Acorn Computers Ltd   Fulbourn
Road, Cherry Hinton, Cambridge  CB1 4JN. (0223−254254) (0223−254262)
6.5
Aleph One Ltd   The Old Courthouse, Bottisham, Cambridge  CB5 9BA.
(0223−811679) (0223−812713)
6.5
Alpine Software   P.O.Box 25, Portadown, Craigavon  BT63 5UT.
(0762−342510)
6.5
Apricote Studios  2 Purls Bridge Farm, Manea, Cambridgeshire  PE15 0ND.
(035−478−432)
6.5
Baildon Electronics   1 Fyfe
Crescent, Baildon, Shipley, W Yorks BD17 6DR. (0274−580519)
(0274−531626)
6.5
Basing Educational Software   6 Long
Street, Gerlan, Bethesda, Gwynedd  LL57 3SY. (0248−602402)
6.5
Bits ’n Bytes   26 Grenville Road, Saint Judes, Plymouth  PL4 9PY.
(0752−667599)
6.5
Calligraph Ltd  53 Panton Street, Cambridge CB2 1HL. (0223−461143)
(0223−316144)
6.5
Clares Micro Supplies  98 Mid
dlewich Road, Rudheath, Northwich, Cheshire  CW9 7DA. (0606−48511)
(0606−48512)
6.5
Commotion   Redburn House, Stockingswater Lane, Enfield  EN3 7TD.
(081−804−1378)
6.5
Colton Software (p20)  2 Signet
Court, Swanns Road, Cambridge  CB5 8LA. (0223−311881) (0223−312010)
6.5
Computer Concepts (p19)  Gaddesden
Place, Hemel Hempstead, Herts  HP2 6EX. (0442−63933) (0442−231632)
6.5
David Pilling   P.O.Box 22, Thornton Cleveleys, Blackpool, FY5 1LR.
6.5
DEC_dATA   60 Danes Road, Exeter EX4 4LS. (0392−221702)
6.5
Design Concept  30 South Oswald Road, Edinburgh  EH9 2HG.
(031−668−2000)
6.5
Desktop Projects Ltd   Unit 2A,
Heapriding Business Park, Ford Street, Stockport  SK3 0BT.
(061−474−0778) (061−474−0781)
6.5
E.S.M.   Duke Street, Wisbech, Cambridgeshire  PE13 2AE. (0945−63441)
6.5
HCCS Ltd   575−583 Durham Road, Gateshead  NE9 5JJ. (091−487−0760)
(091−491−0431)
6.5
ICS Ltd (p10)  1 Kington Road, West Kirby, Wirral  L48 5ET.
(051−625−1006) (051−625−1007)
6.5
Ivoryash Ltd   14 Perwell Close, Bredon, Tewkesbury, Gloucester  GL20
7LJ. (0684−73173)
6.5
Keylink Computers Ltd  2 Woodway
House, Common Lane, Kenilworth, Warwickshire  CV8 2ES. (0926−50909)
(0926−864128)
6.5
Krisalis Software   Teque House,
Mason’s Yard, Downs Row, Moorgate, Rotherham  S60 2HD. (0709−372290)
6.5
Longman-Logotron   124 Cambridge Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge CB4
4ZS. (0223−425558) (0223−425349)
6.5
LOOKsystems (p24)  47 Goodhale Road, Bowthorpe, Norwich  NR5 9AY.
(0603−764114) (0603−764011)
6.5
Matt Black   P.O.Box 42, Peterborough  PE1 2TZ. (0733−315439)
6.5
Minerva Systems   Minerva House, Baring Crescent, Exeter  EX1 1TL.
(0392−437756) (0392−421762)
6.5
Mitre Software   26 Creechurch Lane, London  EC3A 5BA. (071−283−4646)
6.5
Morley Electronics   Morley
House, Norham Road, North Shields, Tyne & Wear  NE29 7TY. (091−257−6355)
(091−257−6373)
6.5
Northwest SEMERC   Fitton Hill CDC, Rosary Road, Oldham  OL8 2QE.
(061−627−4469)
6.5
Oak Solutions (p14)  Suite 25,
Robin Enterprise Centre, Leeds Road, Idle, Yorkshire BD10 9TE.
(0274−620423) (0274−620419)
6.5
P.R.E.S. Ltd   P.O. Box 319, Lightwater, Surrey GU18 5PW. (0276−72046)
(0276−51427)
6.5
RESOURCE   Exeter Road, Doncaster  DN2 4PY. (0302−340331)
6.5
Risc Developments   117 Hatfield
Road, St Albans, Herts  AL1 4JS. (0727−40303) (0727−860263)
6.5
Sherston Software   Swan Barton,
Sherston, Malmesbury, Wilts. SN16 0LH. (0666−840433) (0666−840048)
6.5
Sigma Press   1 South Oak Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire  SK9 6AR.
6.5
Silica Software Systems  Mallards,
Lower Hardres, Canterbury, Kent  CT4 5NU. (0227−700279)
6.5
Silicon Vision Ltd   Signal
House, Lyon Road, Harrow, Middlesex  HA1 2AG. (081−861−2173)
(081−427−5169)
6.5
Software 42   109 Ferry Road, Hullbridge, Essex  SS5 6EL.
6.5
Spacetech (p40)  21 West Wools, Portland, Dorset  DT5 2EA.
(0305−822753) (0305−860483)
6.5
Superior Software   P.O. Box 6,
Brigg, S Humberside  DN20 9NH. (0652−658585) (0652−657807)
6.5
Taylor Lambert Advertising  Tanner’s
Court, Brockham, Surrey  RH3 7NH. (0737−844044)
6.5
Techsoft UK Ltd  Old School Lane, Erryrs, Mold, Clwyd  CH7 4DA.
(082−43318)
6.5
Unilab Ltd   The Science Park, Hutton Street, Blackburn BB1 3BT.
(0254−681222) (0254−681777)
6.5
WECC   Manor Hall, Sandy Lane, Leamington Spa  CV32 6RD. (0926−413741)
(0926−413748)
6.5
Widgit Software  102 Radford Road, Leamington Spa  CV31 1LF.
(0926−885303)
6.5

6.5

6.5

6.5
Paul Beverley
6.5

6.5

6.5

6.5
   SEMERC’s expanded Keyboard
6.5

6.5
ICS
6.5
From 6.4 page 16
6.5

6.5
The Ultimate Expansion System?
6.5
Paul Beverley
6.5
This isn’t really a review as such − more an extension of the Products
Available column. However, I feel that the subject, HCCS’s Ultimate
Expansion System, is so important that it is worthy of a separate
article.
6.5
The two problems
6.5
(1)  We have had quite a few queries recently from subscribers whose
Archimedes computers are full with four podules. They ask whether anyone
makes an expansion box that will allow them to have more than four
podules on an A300/400/540/5000. The answer, sadly, is ‘no’. The reason
is that the electronics of the podule interface will not tolerate cables
of more than a few cm in length.
6.5
(2)  Anyone thinking of buying one of Acorn’s latest batch of computers
− A3010, A3020 or A4000 − will be only too aware of one major limitation
that these three computers share. They can only take one single internal
mini-podule and, unlike the old A3000, cannot take an external podule.
6.5
How, you may ask, could Acorn make what seems to be such a short-sighted
design decision? Well, the story is that they were hoping that third
party suppliers would produce a range of add-ons that use the bi-
directional parallel port (or the serial port). Then the single internal
podule could be used for a SCSI interface which would give access to a
whole range of other (albeit more expensive) devices.
6.5
So, when we are advising cusomers about buying, for example, a DTP
system, we offer an economy system using a BJ10ex inkjet printer and,
say, an A4000 or even an A3010. However, as soon as the customer thinks
in terms of a Laser Direct printer, the price shoots up and not just by
the difference in price between the two printers. Laser Direct is not
available as a mini podule, so you need a machine, like the A5000, that
will take standard-sized podules... ...or that used to be the case...
6.5
The solution
6.5
HCCS have made the most of the increased electronic miniaturisation
available these days and introduced the ‘MicroPodule’. Standard
Eurocard-sized podules are about 17cm × 10cm, minipodules are 16cm ×
7cm, while the new MicroPodules are only 8cm × 5cm − slightly smaller
than a credit card. This means you can mount two MicroPodules side-by-
side onto a standard-size podule and up to three MicroPodules side-by-
side on a minipodule.
6.5

6.5
The MultiPodules
6.5
HCCS are making carrier podules which they have called ‘MultiPodules’.
The MultiPodule for the A300/400/540/5000 computers (part number: K3410)
costs £39 +VAT (£43 through Archive) and takes, as I have said, two
MicroPodules.
6.5
For the A3010, there is an entry-level MultiPodule (K3110) at £41.70
+VAT (£46 through Archive) which provides a user port and allows the
connection of two MicroPodules.
6.5
If you want a hard drive in your A3010, you can have a minipodule that
will fit two MicroPodules and carries a 20Mb IDE drive and a user port
(K3132) for £271.49 +VAT (£303 through Archive) or with a 30Mb drive
(K3133) for £297.02 +VAT (£330 through Archive) or with a 60Mb drive
(K3136) for £399.15 +VAT (£445 through Archive).
6.5
As soon as you expand a MultiPodule by adding a hard drive or a
MicroPodule, you ought really to add a power supply and fan. If you buy
a hard drive version, as above, the power supply and fan are included as
part of the package. If you need to buy them separately, they come as
K3150 which will cost £30 +VAT (or £33 through Archive).
6.5
The A3020 and A4000 have space internally for an IDE hard drive, so
there is no need to use up valuable podule space. For these computers,
there is a MultiPodule (K3210) which will take up to three MicroPodules
and has a user port as well. It costs £39 +VAT or £43 through Archive.
6.5
(There will also be an A3000 version of this which is an identical
podule but you need an extension cable to enable it to fit properly with
the A3000’s existing cabling.)
6.5
The MicroPodules
6.5
The success of this venture depends on the number of different
MicroPodules available. HCCS themselves have started to produce their
own range of MicroPodules and are obviously going to be producing more.
However, they are also talking to other third-party suppliers with a
view to licensing other podules for production at MicroPodule size.
6.5
HCCS MicroPodules
6.5
There are four HCCS MicroPodules that can, at the time of writing, be
classed as ‘Products Available’. The SCSI MicroPodule costs £99 +VAT
(£110 through Archive) and is an 8-bit interface which includes CDFS as
standard so, as well as using it to access hard drives, including
removables, you can access CD-ROM drives. This isn’t a 16-bit interface
but unless you are dealing with large SCSI drives, the speed of data
transfer is going to be limited by the drive and not the interface. You
can run Acorn Replay through one of these podules, although only at 12
frames per second.
6.5
The Colour Vision Digitiser MicroPodule costs £79 +VAT (£88 through
Archive). This is the standard resolution Vision Digitiser (see Archive
5.12 p43 and 6.2 p23).
6.5
The HiVision Digitiser MicroPodule costs £129 +VAT (£145 through
Archive). This is a colour digitiser that digitises at 508 line × 720
pixel. (You will need 2Mb minimum to run the software and 4Mb is
recommended.)
6.5
The Laser Express MicroPodule costs £249 +VAT (£278 through Archive).
This provides the hardware and software needed to link directly to a
Canon LBP4 laser printer that has a video interface fitted.
6.5
Starter Packs
6.5
If you want to buy a MicroPodule but don’t want a hard drive, you will,
as I have said, need a power supply and fan. To keep the initial cost
down, HCCS are doing three Starter Packs as follows (each consists of
the MicroPodule plus a power supply and fan):
6.5
The HiVision Starter Pack (K3140) is £149 +VAT (£166) through Archive.
The Laser Express Starter Pack (K3141) is £269 +VAT (£300) through
Archive and the SCSI Starter Pack (K3142) is £119 +VAT (£133) through
Archive.
6.5
Podules under development
6.5
During the course of 1993, HCCS are hoping to release MicroPodules for:
Analogue input (almost ready and priced at £29 +VAT or £32 through
Archive), MIDI/Sound Sampler, Serial, Ethernet and Colour video out
(which will be useful for output to video recorders or large display
monitors).
6.5
Third-party MicroPodules
6.5
HCCS are currently in discussions with Computer Concepts about the
production of MicroPodule versions of Laser Direct and ScanLight. HCCS
are also hoping to find a company who could make a PC MicroPodule.
6.5
Not all standard-size podules will squash down onto a MicroPodule − it
depends on the chip count, of course. However, there should, hopefully,
be a number of other interfaces appearing in MicroPodule format over the
coming months.
6.5
The implications
6.5
A number of important implications occur to me as I consider HCCS’
innovative podule project:
6.5
A300/400/540/5000 computers could (in theory at least) have up to eight
podules. I say ‘in theory’ firstly because there aren’t eight different
podules available yet. Secondly, for most of us, it isn’t a case of
starting from scratch. We already have a number of standard-size
podules, so adding various MicroPodules mounted on MultiPodules isn’t
quite such a clear option for financial reasons − but in a new
machine... !
6.5
A3000 owners can also benefit from these new systems. There is no
reason, as far as I can see, why any of the boards originally intended
for A3010/3020/4000 shouldn’t be used in an A3000.
6.5
Schools will, I think, be particularly pleased to see HCCS’ new
developments. The fact that a user port is available as well as various
MicroPodules is a great plus − the ability to link to concept keyboards,
interfacing boxes, etc comes, therefore, at no extra cost and without
taking up a podule slot. The combination of user port and multiple
serial ports means that these interfaces are ideally suited for special
needs applications. Also, being able to move MicroPodules around between
machines, including between standard-size podules and minipodules will
make life much easier because of the increased flexibility. (They are
also considerably easier to get in and out than minipodules!)
6.5
If you own an A3010, you don’t have to use a MultiPodule with an IDE
internal drive. You could, instead, buy a three-way MultiPodule and use
one of your three MicroPodule slots for a SCSI interface. Then you could
put an external SCSI drive onto the computer − perhaps bigger and faster
than the IDE drives.
6.5
Conclusion
6.5
Am I over-stating the importance of MicroPodules? Only time will tell
and it will obviously depend on how well other podule manufacturers pick
up on the idea.
6.5
I think that Acorn should be extremely grateful to HCCS − the increased
flexibility provided by MicroPodules makes A3010, A3020 and A4000
computers much more attractive and can only serve to increase their
sales, albeit occasionally at the expense of the sale of an A5000.  A
6.5

6.5
Oak Solutions
6.5
From 6.4 page 8
6.5

6.5
Hints and Tips
6.5
•  A4 pointer loss − Using Impression on an A4, it is very easy to lose
the text pointer. If the pointer is somewhere over the text, it takes
the form of a caret and is very difficult to see. The simple solution is
to click <adjust>. This marks a block of text and your pointer is at one
or other end of the block! Ed.
6.5
•  Ace printer drivers − Many people have asked about the differences
between Risc Developments’ printer drivers and the Ace Computing drivers
(including the Pro-Drivers.) In practice, the standard Ace drivers (£17)
and Risc Developments’ drivers (£23) are the same. However, the Pro-
Drivers (£44) are somewhat enhanced: they support full background
printing, true 24-bit colour, half-toning, dithering and colour
separations. Ace Computing have also recently upgraded their DJ500C
driver to include facilities for the DJ550C. Simon Moy, Archive.
6.5
•  Background printing with RISC-OS printer drivers − Yes it is possible!
RISC-OS printer drivers are capable of printing in the background far
better than third party software due to the fact that the ROM printing
routines are designed to multitask. However, this is not documented and
requires a particular way of printing. Set your printer driver to print
to a file (choose Connection from the Printer Control menu, select File
and enter a pathname to a temporary file). Print the file in question by
the normal method for the application in question − this bit doesn’t
multitask! When it has finished, reset the driver to print to the
parallel (or serial) port. Find the temporary printout file and drag it
on to the printer icon on the iconbar. The printer will begin printing
and you will have full control of the machine. If you are using a RAM
disc or a hard disc, you shouldn’t notice any slowing down at all. Simon
Moy, Archive.
6.5
•  Dating − I can never remember what the time is and so, in common with
a lot of others, I used to have the date and time on the iconbar. This
was not completely satisfactory as it was frequently obscured by
windows. Browsing in the User Guide, I discovered that you could alter
the format of the command line prompt and have the date and or time
displayed before the *. You can do this with:
6.5
SetMacro CLI$Prompt <Sys$Time>, <Sys$Date> *
6.5
This went in my boot file. Now whenever I want the date or time all I do
is, <f12>, read the date and time and press <return>.  Edward Naish,
Gwynedd.
6.5
(On RISC-OS 3, all you do is press <shift-f12> to bring the iconbar
forwards and then <shift-f12> to put it back again. Ed.)
6.5
•  Draw to sprite conversion − In answer to Roger Darlington’s plea in
Archive 6.3, several people gave us the “obvious” way of converting
drawfiles to sprites − you display the drawfile on screen and use the
screen grab facility within Paint to create a sprite. (This emphasises
again the need for a ‘This is Obvious But...’ column, as mentioned in
the Help!!! Column this month. None of the ‘experts’ at N.C.S. thought
of it. Ed.)
6.5
One other solution was mentioned... Drawfile to sprite conversion can be
done with the program Revxtra which is supplied with the Revelation
package. However, this is a copyright program and I don’t know of any PD
equivalent.  Ted Lacey, Southampton.
6.5
To add to that... If you have Revelation ImagePro, you can just drop
drawfiles onto a Revelation picture and save it out again as a sprite −
no need for a separate program.  Gabriel Swords, Norwich.
6.5
•  Easiword − The printed effects (bold, italics, etc) only start working
if you go into !Printers configuration window and, in the Options−Text
Quality, select NLQ rather than No Highlights which is the default.
Steve Hutchinson, Gloucester.
6.5
• Filename dragging − If you have version 1.21 of Edit, you can shift-
drag any object into an edit window and the pathname of the object
appears at the cursor position. This is just the job for constructing
command files. Avoid all those typing errors!
6.5
I read in another magazine that this facility is only available in OS3.
This is not the case, although it does not work with version 1 of Edit.
Edward Naish, Gwynedd.
6.5
•  Fun School − All of the Fun School series (3 and 4) have now been
upgraded to work with RISC-OS 3.10 although some tweaks are still
necessary. For the Fun School 3 range, it is necessary to start in mode
15 before running the programs. In the Fun School 4 range, you will need
to RMKill any VIDC enhancer modules that are running as these cause the
music and graphics to work too fast. Simon Moy.
6.5
•  Inserting RISC-OS (or any other) chips − With the recent introduction
of RISC-OS 3, many Archimedes computers are being returned to dealers
with the pins of the ROM chips damaged. Here is how to avoid that!
Usually, ROM chips are delivered with the pins looking like this...
6.5

6.5
They will not go into the computer’s ROM sockets with the pins splayed
out like this.
6.5
Before handling the ROM chips, make sure that you are not carrying a
static charge. This is easily accomplished by touching an earthed metal
object. You will need a flat area to work on − a formica-topped table is
ideal. Grasp each end of the ROM chip with finger and thumb of both
hands, so that the sharp ends of the ROM pins are facing you horizon
tally. Place the bottom row of pins onto the formica table top and press
down gently but firmly and move the body of the ROM slightly towards
you. Repeat this operation until the pins are exactly at right angles to
the chip body. Turn the ROM over and repeat the above exercise. You
should now have a ROM with the pin layout like this...
6.5

6.5
With the chip just above its socket and the chip notch orientated with
the diagram supplied with your computer, insert one side of the chip
pins slightly into the corresponding side of the socket. Once you are
sure that all pins on that side do align correctly then lower the other
row of pins into the other side of the socket. Again make sure that all
the pins are aligned and then press the chip completely home.
6.5
If you have been unfortunate enough to have broken a pin off of a ROM
chip, there is a solution providing that a small amount of pin is left
on the chip. You will need a “turned pin”, wire-wrap header socket with
the same number of pins as the damaged ROM. Before inserting the damaged
chip into this socket, cut down each pin of the header socket to about
4mm length. Insert the damaged ROM into this socket, and with a very
fine-tipped soldering iron solder a jumper wire from the damaged pin
directly to the empty socket on the header. Once this has been achieved
do not ever remove the ROM from this socket. The completed assembly may
be mounted with care into the original ROM socket. I have repaired
several ROMs by this method.  Mike King, Guernsey.
6.5
•  JPEG − Under RISC-OS 3, JPEG only works providing the hourglass is
switched off. This can be carried out by inserting the SWI call SYS
“Hourglass_Off” at the appropriate place.  Marc Evans.
6.5
•  Paper for inkjets − Daler Superline paper produces excellent results
on my Canon BJ10ex − I bought it a long time ago, so I hope it’s still
available.  S Freeman, Middlewich.
6.5
•  Printer drivers − RISC-OS 3 printer drivers assume that there is
enough “scrap” space on a disc to store any temporary files during a
printing operation. In practice, a hard disc is assumed. If you have a
system without a hard disc, then !Scrap can be either on a floppy disc
or a RAM disc. If there is not enough space for the temporary printout
file, !Printers will crash with no warning. To avoid this, keep !System
and !Scrap on a separate disc on their own. Simon Moy, Archive.
6.5
•  Standard crest in Impression letters − In Archive 6.3 p28, Brian Cowan
asks how he can save floppy disc space with his Impression letters where
he has a college crest, the drawfile of which  takes up 10Kb of memory
per letter − much more than the text − and he fills a floppy disc with
such multiple copies of the crest.
6.5
Surely the answer is to have an empty frame in the standard letter file
into which he drags the drawfile of the crest. All he has to do is to
remember to drag the drawfile whenever he starts a new letter and drop
into the frame a simple dummy drawfile − a single square or circle will
do − that will occupy far less space, before saving to disc. If he needs
to re-load and re-print the document, all he has to do is drop a copy of
the crest in again − surely not a fag. The crest and dummy drawfiles can
be held on the pinboard.  Steve Kirkby, Sutton. (Well, it was his idea
modified by Ed.)  A
6.5

6.5
Help!!!!
6.5
•  ½“ Tape Drive − Has anyone successfully attached a ½” tape drive unit
to an Archimedes?  J.R.Thorn, Cardiff.
6.5
•  Archive Words Disc search routine − Having produced Edit files for
Hints & Tips, etc within Archive (See Products Available, page 3) it
would be very helpful if we could have an application that would search
an Edit file looking for the occurrence of one word and then check if
another word occurred within, say, 1Kb, 2Kb or 4Kb of that first word.
The idea would be that we want to find, say, a hint about margins on
printer drivers. There would be a lot of references about ‘printer
drivers’ and a lot about ‘margins’, so we want to be able to find a
reference to the one in proximity to the other. Anyone fancy writing
such an application? Has anyone already got such an application? Or
perhaps there is even some clever way to use Edit’s amazingly complex
search facilities directly? Ed.
6.5
•  Beginners’ Column − Are you amongst those who feel that Archive caters
only for the experts? Would you like to see more articles for beginners?
If so, are you prepared to help? Could you write (even a paragraph or
two) about something fairly basic that you didn’t understand but now do?
6.5
I have asked many times in the pages of Archive for people to write
articles for beginners and only  had the occasional article offered but
perhaps there is a better way of going about it. How about writing in
and asking those simple questions that you don’t want to admit you don’t
know the answer to? The answers could then take the form of a Hints &
Tips for Beginners.
6.5
Again, though, it’s up to you. If you don’t write in asking questions or
offering answers, this just won’t happen. The huge success of Hugh
Eagle’s RISC-OS 3 Column is evidence of what happens when people
respond. So how about it? Oh, and by the way, would anyone fancy editing
this column? If not, we’ll edit it in-house as it is something for which
we have had so many requests. Ed.
6.5
•  Bell sounds − Has anyone got any good bell-sound modules? Or is anyone
prepared to take a tape recording of bell sounds and turn it into sound
modules for me? B.J.Edwards, 46 Tilsworth Road, Beaconsfield, Bucks  HP9
1TP.
6.5
•  CD-ROMs − Does anyone know if it is possible to buy a cheap SCSI CD-
ROM as advertised for use with a PC and put it on an Archimedes SCSI?
Also, is it possible to use the Kodak PhotoCD on an Archimedes?  John
Harris, Romford. (In theory, any SCSI device should work on an Archi
medes SCSI interface, but has anyone actually tried a cheap PC CD-ROM?
As far as PhotoCD is concerned, you had better read the Multimedia
Column on page 63. Ed.)
6.5
•  Cleaning a clogged DeskJet cartridge − I have found that sometimes the
DJ’s “Clean” routine will fail to open a clogged nozzle. In this case a
bit of Propanol-(2) [isopropyl alcohol] is most effective. All you have
to do is pour about three millimetres depth of the liquid into a glass
and then dip the cartridge into it for about a minute. This will clean
out any blockage. As it also dilutes the ink near the nozzles, you
should then immediately print something (like the power on self-test).
Jochen Konietzko, Köln, Germany.
6.5
•  Clipart wanted − Does anyone have a picture of an overhead projector
with a screen in the background? Paul Johnson, 10a Harborough Road
North, Northampton  NN2 8LU.
6.5
•  DeskBoot files − If you use any commands in your deskboot file which
Acorn considers to be exotic (such as loading a German keyboard driver
module), the file which is produced automatically will not reflect
these.
6.5
I have therefore found that the safest way to modify my boot file is to
copy the old one to a safe place, do the modifications to the desktop
which I want to see at the beginning of a session, create a boot file
from the iconbar Save desktop boot icon and then just copy the relevant
lines into my original file.  Jochen Konietzko, Köln, Germany.
6.5
(I drop the new desktop boot icon straight into !Edit, load up my boot
file and copy the relevant bit into that file and re-save it. I use this
most often when I want to add things onto the pinboard. Ed.)
6.5
•  Econet Column − Neil Berry has felt that he has done a fair stint as
Econet Column Editor and that it is time for a break. Thanks for all
your hard work, Neil. Is there anyone out there brave enough to pick up
the mantle? It’s not an easy column to write as it is such a broad
field. Perhaps a group of people could be formed to prepare the articles
− even to produce a column once every two months would be good as it’s
hard writing things by committee! Do get in touch if you think you might
be able to contribute in some way. Thanks. (By the way, I have a load of
material gleaned from the BETT Show that will start anyone off who wants
to have a go.) Ed.
6.5
•  Education Column − There have been various requests over the months
for an Education Column. We had a speculative article that Martyn Wilson
wrote for us (Archive 3.8 p41) − it brought a little bit of response but
not enough to start a series. Is there anyone willing to have another
go? Three years on, there may be enough enthusiasm to get something
going. Any offers? (Again, I have a load of material gleaned from the
BETT Show that will start anyone off who wants to have a go.) Ed.
6.5
•  Inkjet paper − Does anyone know of any fanfold paper that is suitable
quality for use with inkjet printers?  Steve Rymarz, Norwich.
6.5
•  Review quality − Your comments about how reviews should be written
(Archive 6.3 p59) were helpful, but I’d like to add that reviews should
indicate the level of expertise needed for the product. How clear is the
manual for someone who is getting into that particular area for the
first time?  Robert Craig, Finchley.
6.5
 •  Tablemate − Did we send a copy of TableMate out to one of our
subscribers for review? If so, we haven’t any record of who it was. If
that person could contact us, we have some more info about the product
we’d like to send you. Ed.
6.5
•  TIFF files − Ray Dawson is using Creator to produce TIFF files from
black and white (scanned) sprites. However, Creator produces colour TIFF
files. Does anyone know how to produce mono TIFF files from sprites?  A
6.5

6.5
Help Offered
6.5
•  Impression to bromide − Anyone looking for a service for outputting
Impression files to bromide should contact Taylor Lambert Advertising.
They charged me £3.50 +VAT per A4 page (min charge £15) and they were
very helpful − they seemed to know all about Impression, Draw, etc.
Paul Cayton, Guisley.
6.5
•  Spectrum emulator − If anyone would like a Spectrum emulator, Carsten
Witt has one which has data transfer on 232/423 i/o port, screen module,
LOAD and SAVE in Spectrum Basic but executed on Acorn ADFS. Contact
Carsten at Rostockerstr. 5, D 4353 Oer-Erkenschwick, Germany. (Phone
010−49−2368−57910.)  A
6.5

6.5
PipeLine-Z
6.5
Gerald Fitton
6.5
I have decided to devote this month’s PipeLine column exclusively to a
review of Wordz. Even if you’re an ardent PipeLine fan, I’m sure you
won’t be disappointed.
6.5
The availability of Wordz
6.5
Wordz is a new word processor from Colton Software. I have been
fortunate enough to obtain a copy of the software but, as yet, no
handbook. By the time you read this, it will have been launched at the
BETT Show on the 20th January 1993.
6.5
Price
6.5
The price is £99 + VAT (£105 through Archive). However, until
12th March 1993, registered users of PipeDream (3 or 4) can buy Wordz
direct from Colton Software at £59 + VAT. You still have time to
register your PipeDream!
6.5
Easy to use
6.5
Unlike too many software users, I generally ‘read the book’ before
trying to use a new piece of software. The documentation I have is
rudimentary, a ReadMe document and a few printed sheets. However, I was
determined to get to grips with Wordz and I was pleasantly surprised at
how easy it was to use. I think this was because most of the ‘commands’
did exactly what I anticipated they would. Possibly all I will gain from
the documentation is that I will find a few hidden extras.
6.5
The button bar
6.5
The button bar runs along the top of the window. If you place the
pointer over one of the icons, a ‘helpful message’ appears in the
‘Status line’ immediately below the buttons. For example, when I took
the screen shot below, the pointer was sitting over the S button. The
‘Status line’ tells me that if I were to click on that button I would
‘access’ the style dialogue box. Similarly Copy, Cut, Paste, Save, Print
and some other features are accessible through the button bar.
6.5
The button bar and status line are major features of the user interface
which make Wordz so easy to use. As I said, I haven’t got the handbook
so I haven’t worked out how to do it, but one of the handouts says that
the button bar is configurable.
6.5
Imports
6.5
I dragged text files from Edit, Impression, Wordwise and even PipeDream
(using the Paragraph option) into Wordz; the text appears in Wordz in
the default style.
6.5
I dragged both Draw and Paint pictures into Wordz. They appeared in
Wordz where I expected. Clicking on the picture results in a Draw like
box with ‘grab handles’ which allow you to stretch the picture in any
direction. Dragging ‘works’ exactly as a user of Draw would expect.
Something not so obvious is that the picture can be ‘pinned’ to the page
by double clicking on its top left grab handle. If you don’t pin it to
the page then it moves around with the text. The logo ZLine in the
figure is a graphic which I imported into Wordz, stretched and slightly
repositioned.
6.5
Pictures can be ‘Referenced’ (that is stored on disc separately from the
Wordz document) or saved as part of the Wordz file. I prefer the former
because then I can use the same picture (say a letter heading or logo)
for every Wordz file. Impression stores my letter heading (12 Kb) in
every document and so uses up disc space much more quickly than
PipeDream (see Brian Cowan’s comment about disc usage in Archive 6.3
p28).
6.5
The table is rather more interesting than it first appears. I created
that fifteen cell table in PipeDream and saved it in CSV format directly
into Wordz (without saving it disc). It appeared in Wordz as a small
three by five table with every ‘cell’ surrounded by a border. I had to
delete the top and left border of the empty top left box (where my
annotation line from “Tables can be created or imported” begins). I had
to get into the ‘Box’ sub menu to do that. I wanted to centre the text
in the second and third columns so I dragged the pointer from the top
left to bottom right (from “Height in inches” to “9”) to mark the block
I wanted to centre, clicked on the third button of the button bar and
the text in all ten ‘cells’ centred.
6.5
Styles and effects
6.5
If you are familiar with the concept of styles and effects, for example
from using Impression, you will find applying, creating, changing and
even deleting styles easy.
6.5
When you click on the S (for Style) button and choose the ‘Change’
option, you will be presented with one of about half a dozen screens
such as that shown in the second figure. You can click on one of the
buttons on the left to reveal different sub menus. The one shown in the
second figure is the Text. Applying effects to a marked block of text is
executed through the same set of sub menus.
6.5
Tables
6.5
Bearing in mind Colton’s experience of writing PipeDream, I would expect
that tables within Wordz would be impressive and, indeed, they are. For
example, the bottom margin of a cell grows downwards automatically as
you type more text into it and every cell of a table can be sized
individually. These two features alone must make Wordz the easiest
package in which to create and adjust those difficult-to-fit tables.
6.5
If you create a table then you create a style. This style can be changed
through the Style menus. Changing an individual cell is treated as an
effect.
6.5
Unfortunately, I was wrong in December when I said that tables in Wordz
were hot-linked from PipeDream. They’re not hot-linked.
6.5
Labels
6.5
If you want address labels, these too can be created as a style and
loaded from a CSV format database. PipeDream has an option to save in
CSV format, so label printing from a PipeDream database is easy.
6.5
Other features
6.5
Paper margins are shown on screen but you can select a non-standard
size. The spell-checker has a ‘best guess’ feature and user dictionaries
can be created. Copy, Cut and Paste work exactly as you would expect;
mark a block and click on the button. Bold and Italic can be effected
from the button bar as can Save and Print.
6.5
Future developments
6.5
Colton Software have said that Wordz is the first of a set of software
which will feature Dynamic Data Transfer. So what does that mean?
Regular readers will know that I like to digress a little before getting
to the point − so here we go.
6.5
Single-tasking
6.5
Under the single-tasking operating system, Arthur, ‘Integration’ meant
separate packages which could exchange data. You had to save data to
disc from one package (say a spreadsheet) and reload it into a second
package (say a word processor).
6.5
Then Colton Software launched PipeDream 2. It was a single package
combining the features of a word processor, spreadsheet and database all
within the same document. With it, even under a single-tasking operating
system, the user could include ‘live’ spreadsheet tables in a word
processed document.
6.5
Multi-tasking & In-memory transfer
6.5
Almost everyone with an Archimedes upgraded from Arthur to RISC-OS 2
because RISC-OS 2 allows multi-tasking. With a multi-tasking operating
system several packages can be running in memory simultaneously.
Furthermore, RISC-OS 2 encourages the export of data from one package to
another by the process of ‘in-memory transfer’. For example, you can
drag a drawing from a Draw window into an Impression document without
saving the Draw document to disc.
6.5
Dynamic data transfer
6.5
When creating PipeDream 3, Colton Software took advantage of in-memory
transfer to introduce ‘dependent documents’. When you have more than one
PipeDream document in memory, you can link them together so that one
reads data from the other. This dependent document form of in-memory
transfer is dynamic; change the data in one document and the change is
communicated to the other automatically.
6.5
PipeDream 3 is hot-linked, to other packages such as Lingenuity’s charts
package, Presenter. If data in a PipeDream 3 spreadsheet is changed, the
chart in the Presenter window changes automatically. This feature relies
on the automatic in-memory transfer of data triggered by a change in the
exporting document (i.e. PipeDream initiates the export of data to
Presenter).
6.5
PipeDream 4 took the concept of dynamic data transfer further by
including its own hot-linked Charts package and custom functions.
6.5
The Z Set
6.5
With a multi-tasking operating system such as RISC-OS 2 or 3, complete
integration within a single package is unnecessary and, some would say,
undesirable (see below). What is required is that the data must be
dynamically transportable from package to package.
6.5
‘The Z Set’ is my name (I don’t know theirs) for the new suite of
packages being developed by Colton Software. The first member is Wordz,
a word processor; the second will be a spreadsheet package. Other
packages such as a database are under construction. All will feature
dynamic data transfer (hot-links) and a common user interface.
6.5
I see The Z Set as a series of packages in which every document created
with any package of The Z Set can be a dynamically dependent document of
any other member. I imagine The Z Set as a Super PipeDream with all the
advantages of full integration but without the structural constraints
inherent in PipeDream which arise from trying to fit a word processor
into the cell based structure of a spreadsheet. By writing separate
packages, each member of The Z Set can be optimised for its own purpose
while supporting dynamic data linking with other members of the Set.
6.5
Colton Software have promised “a common user interface” which will
ensure that, having learned the user interface of one of the packages
(probably Wordz), you will find that subsequent packages will work
exactly as you expect!
6.5
With the expertise they have gained from such PipeDream features as
dependent documents and dynamic data transfer, Colton Software are in a
uniquely knowledgeable position to bring to the Archimedes market such a
set of fully integrated packages.
6.5
Finally, as I have said before, it is data unique to you which is far
more valuable to you than platforms (hardware) or packages (PipeDream).
I am confident that The Z Set will feature data file formats that have a
high degree of portability to packages outside The Z Set and, maybe,
outside the Archimedes range of computers. I believe that the time I
invest in creating my own data will be invested safely in The Z Set.
6.5
Whither PipeLine
6.5
Paul Beverley has asked me whether this PipeLine column is going to
become Pipe−Wordz. I think the quick answer is “Yes − but PipeLine-Z and
not Pipe-Wordz”. I hope that you’ll still enjoy reading it and writing
to me!  A
6.5

6.5
Computer Concepts
6.5
New artwork
6.5

6.5
Colton Software
6.5
New artwork
6.5

6.5
Using RISC-OS 3
6.5
Hugh Eagle
6.5
I’ve received such a flood of letters in response to my first column
that I probably won’t have time to refer to them all. I apologise in
advance if I don’t use your contribution; I am very grateful for them
all and will try to use them next month. In the meantime, please keep
the hints, tips, comments, suggestions, etc flowing.
6.5
A number of the problems mentioned only seem to affect a few users and
may result from unusual combinations of circumstances which could be
difficult to diagnose. If you think you might be able to help by talking
directly to the people affected, please let me know and I will put you
in contact.
6.5
Fitting the Upgrade
6.5
Several people have commented favourably on the service they have
received from dealers. IFEL has been mentioned a number of times. Nik
Kelly was specially impressed by Simtec’s facilities.
6.5
Götz Kohlberg received his upgrade surprisingly quickly but then had to
wait several weeks for the fitting instructions for his carrier board.
When the instructions arrived, he found the IFEL carrier board very easy
to fit, taking only about 20 minutes. He didn’t have to remove the
backplane or take out the main board.
6.5
Programs That Do Work
6.5
Microdrive – A number of people have noticed that, while the new version
requires you to keep the program disc in the floppy drive while you play
the game, the new courses work with the original program which will run
properly from a hard disc.
6.5
Others – various people have reported that the following work without
any problems:
6.5
FontFX 5.05 (latest upgrade, free from Data Store, recognises the ROM
fonts)
6.5
Flexifile 1.04
6.5
Eureka (has someone found it?)
6.5
Home Accounts
6.5
SigmaSheet
6.5
Arcendium (R. E. Leo says he finds it works, contrary to the report from
Mike Williams in December)
6.5
ArcScan III
6.5
DiscTree 2.30
6.5
Art Nouveau (Tim Nicholson says he uses it a lot, and doesn’t need the
fix I gave two months ago.)
6.5
Investigator 2 works on an A310, but not an A5000.
6.5
Elite (although Raymond Wright says that it did once seize up after
about an hour’s play, which had never happened in RISC­OS 2.)
6.5
Arc-Comm
6.5
Fortran 77 (Acorn)
6.5
Acorn DTP
6.5
Speech!
6.5
Frances Obee is keen to know whether her most used programs will work:
Pendown Plus, Atelier, Prime Art, Chocks Away and Extra Missions, Elite,
Saloon Cars, and Man Utd. Europe. (I can vouch for two on her list: Draw
Plus v2.12 and Lemmings.)
6.5
Richard Burnell says that a small modification will make version 1.00 of
!Define (the Watford VIDC screen mode definer) work: add to line 17760
of !RunImage ELSE tk%=FALSE so that it reads:
6.5
IF INKEY(−256)=162 THEN tk%=TRUE ELSE tk%=FALSE
6.5
Rob Brown says that the original version of Quazer supplied by the
author Julian Rockey, not Impact Software or Fourth Dimension, needs the
screen memory to be set to exactly 160Kb.
6.5
He also says that Corruption and Jinxter will only work with the very
old version of the Shared C Library supplied with the games. You need to
RMKill the RISC­OS 3 version and RMLoad the old version from disc. (He
recommends that you quit any application that uses the Shared C Library
first!)
6.5
He adds that you can run Terramex by first ensuring that “Free” memory
is at least 400Kb then using the command *Run Terracode.
6.5
Programs that May Need to be Upgraded
6.5
From the hints I have received, the general message seems to be that if
a program doesn’t work (and this is more likely to apply to older
programs, especially games) it is worth contacting the supplier or the
manufacturer because they can often supply upgrades (sometimes for quite
nominal sums).
6.5
Among those that have been mentioned are:
6.5
Arcade 3 games compilation from Clares
6.5
Artisan, Artisan 2 and ProArtisan
6.5
Interdictor
6.5
a number of Fourth Dimension games (but Boogie Buggy is apparently
incompatible with an A5000, according to Rob Brown.)
6.5
Droom
6.5
Avon/Murdac (adventure compilation from Topologika)
6.5
ChartDraw, GraphDraw and KeyStrip (excellent PD applications from Chris
Johnson).
6.5
Fonts
6.5
Colin Singleton points out that, although Electronic Font Foundry are
selling (more expensive) “RISC­OS 3” fonts, the old ones work perfectly
well. The only difference is that the new ones have automatic kerning
information built in (for the use of programs that know how to use it).
6.5
Alan Gentle warns that the way FontMax settings are defined has changed.
They used, in RISC­OS 2 to be quoted in pixels, but in RISC­OS 3 are now
quoted in points. The maximum point size for anti-aliasing seems to
refer to the apparent point size on the screen. Thus to make sure that,
say, 15 point text displayed at 130% is anti-aliased he has to set the
appropriate FontMax to 15×1.3, i.e. at least 20.
6.5
David Shepherdson reports that DrawPlus version 2.00 cannot convert
Trinity, Homerton or Corpus to paths and suggests using Draw to do the
conversion and “saving” the result into DrawPlus. (The same seems to be
true of version 2.12. A possible alternative would be to ignore the ROM
fonts and load those you want into a disc !Fonts directory.)
6.5
Marc Evans recommends, contrary to Acorn’s instructions, keeping the
!Fonts directory in a sub-directory, not the root, to save memory and
time if you are not using the disc fonts. (I would suggest you only do
this if you are sufficiently experienced to understand the
implications.)
6.5
John Winter says that Impression (2.17) and LaserDirect (2.05) work as
well – if not faster – with FontSize set to 128Kb.
6.5
(For more on fonts and LaserDirect see the section headed LaserDirect
further on in this column!)
6.5
Filing Systems
6.5
IDE drives
6.5
R. D. Attwood noticed that the hard disc icon on his iconbar had “IDE 4”
underneath it rather than “IDEDisc4”. On trying to access the disc, he
got an error box with “Bad free space map”. Watford Electronics have
advised him that he needs another chip (cost £16) for the hard disc
podule.
6.5
D. T. Software recommended alternative courses of action for one
customer whose IDEFS wouldn’t work with RISC­OS 3.10: either (a)
reformat the hard disc using the formatter supplied with the system or
(b) fit a replacement EPROM incorporating a work-around for a “marginal
infelicity in the way RISC­OS 3 mounts discs.”
6.5
SCSI drives
6.5
C. Purvis has an A3000 with an external 5¼“ floppy drive and an Oak SCSI
external interface (fairly old). When he turns his computer on, the SCSI
icon is to the right of the RAM disc’s and when clicked on gives a “Bad
drive” error. He then runs the following file from a floppy:
6.5
*Mount 4
6.5
*RMLoad $.!System.Modules. SCSIFiler
6.5
*RMReinit SCSI
6.5
*RMREINIT SCSIFiler
6.5
*RMReinit SCSIFS
6.5
*ADFS
6.5
after which the SCSI icon disappears from the iconbar. If he then
presses <shift-break> to reset the computer, SCSIDisc4 appears at the
left end of the iconbar and all is well.
6.5
It has been suggested to me that he needs a new ROM on his SCSI
interface. Can anyone confirm this?
6.5
(One thing we have noticed with the Oak SCSI interfaces is that after a
<delete-power-up>, the SCSIdrive configuration is set to 0 and not 4.
What then happens is that the first time you click the hard drive icon,
it says “Bad drive” but then if you click again, it works OK. The
solution is simple: press <f12> and type Configure SCSIDrive 4 <return>
and then do a <ctrl-break>. I think you will find that all is well after
that. Ed.)
6.5
Mike Williams says the Shutdown routine won’t complete unless he has all
his various SCSI drives mounted, so he has to put a disc into his
removable disc drive and spin it up just so that the system can dismount
it for him! He therefore ignores Shutdown, but asks whether there is a
recommended way of safely shutting down a system such as his?
6.5
Mike has also found that if, after switching off, he changes his mind
and switches on again his computer gets stuck half-way through its
initialisation sequence. Is this a RISC­OS 3 feature, a hardware fault,
or just because he didn’t shut down nicely?
6.5
Using “Free space” viewer on SCSI drives
6.5
(This hint from David Lenthall was originally published in Archive 5.5.)
6.5
If choosing the “Free” option from a SCSI drive icon gives an old RISC-
OS 2 style textual report and you would prefer to get the new RISC-OS 3
window with sliders, include the following line in your boot file:
6.5
Set Alias$Free ShowFree -FS scsi %0
6.5
Séan Kelly’s alternative solution (which works beautifully with his A440
and Oak SCSI interface, driver version 1.16) is to copy the SCSIFiler
module from Applications Disc 1 into his !System.Modules directory and
to add the following line to his !Boot file:
6.5
RMLoad SCSI::SCSIDisc4.$.!System .Modules.SCSIFiler
6.5
ArcDFS / DFSReader
6.5
In response to S. J. Furnell’s problem with ArcDFS mentioned in Archive
6.3 p14, Keith Raven recommends !DFSReader on Archive Shareware 31. This
needs one slight adjustment: in line 210 of the !RunImage Basic program,
there is a SYS call that is expected to return 0, 1 or 2 to indicate
whether large or small icons or full directory information are selected
for directory windows. Under RISC­OS 3 this actually returns 64, 65 or
66. If the next three lines of the program are adjusted to reflect this,
it seems to run perfectly. (Richard Burnell suggests adding a new line
instead:
6.5
215 a=a MOD 64
6.5
to achieve the same effect.) (Keith wonders how many similar minor
changes between RISC­OS 2 and RISC­OS 3 will come to light.)
6.5
The Wakefield Acorn Computer Group writes:
6.5
Regarding S. J. Furnell’s problem with ArcDFS there is some good news
here. (These errors are liable to occur when you click on the drive icon
to display a directory window.) The most common error is ‘Bad drive’ and
you can overcome this simply by Naming the disc with a blank name, i.e.
press <space> and then <return>. The ArcDFS Name option is selected via
the ‘Misc’ menu option, followed by ‘Name disc’.
6.5
This doesn’t cure the other (less common) error which is ‘Buffer
overflow’. In that case, the only option seems to be to use the command
line, i.e, press <f12> to get a ‘*’ prompt or bring up a task window
with <ctrl-f12> and type DIR DFS: (not *DISC as you might expect),
followed by DIR :1 to select drive 1, (if required), then CAT for a
directory listing, etc. You can then use the manual *COPY command to
move files around, e.g.
6.5
Copy DFS::1.$.Index ADFS::HardDisc4.$.Junk.MyIndex
6.5
copies a file called $.Index on the DFS drive 1 into the $.Junk
directory of an ADFS hard disc, renaming it MyIndex in the process.
6.5
You can just as easily copy onto SCSI, IDE and RAM discs of course. Note
that you should use *COPY and not *CopyDFS. The very good news is that
operations such as Format, Backup and Verify work fine, as they don’t
need to display a directory!
6.5
5¼“ discs
6.5
Peter Prewett has been horrified to find that since upgrading to RISC-
OS 3 he can no longer read any of his 5¼“ discs (which he uses for
backing up his hard disc) via his Watford interface. He has tried
resetting the step rate to 6 without success. Luckily, he can still read
discs from his BBC via a DFS to ADFS file transfer.
6.5
Gordon Lindsay-Jones also reports problems with his Watford buffer which
used to work well under RISC­OS 2. Can anyone help? (Have you asked
Watford?)
6.5
Richard Wells initially found that the Beebug DFS Reader refused to work
under RISC­OS 3, but he has now found that if he runs the Commands
utility from the Support disc first then it will run.
6.5
Richard also says he configures his 40-track 5¼“ drive (drive 1) with
6.5
*Configure Step 12 1
6.5
and comments that perhaps
6.5
*Configure Step 6 1
6.5
would work for 80-track discs. He says that to restore normal step delay
you should use
6.5
*Configure Step 3
6.5
In response to Roger Power’s query last month, Howard Snow points out
that the syntax is
6.5
*Configure <Step delay> [<drive>]
6.5
Rather confusingly, the information on the step delay given by *Status
is just the step delay for each of the drives, so if drive 0 is
configured to the normal delay of 3, after typing *Configure Step 6 1
*Status would give Step 3 6.
6.5
W. N. Rodger has written with a similar hint and also suggests that
perhaps all floppy drives on a system have to be set if any one is to be
changed.
6.5
Mr Rodger has also noted that he has to leave his Cumana switchable 40/
80 track drive switched to 80-track before selecting Format DOS 360Kb to
format a 40-track MS-DOS disc. When he then runs the PC Emulator, he has
to switch the drive to 40-track to read the disc he has just formatted!
6.5
Compression
6.5
S. R. Freeman reports that, when using Compression version 1.10 with his
A400/1, if he launches an application from CFS and subsequently quits
CFS without first quitting the application, the computer can hang.
Otherwise he has no problems with it.
6.5
Mike Kinghan says that his system hangs when he tries to kill any CFS
filesystem from the iconbar. He only has to do this, however, in order
to free up the Filecore when shutting his machine down. Now he uses the
operating system Shutdown routine (via <shift-ctrl-f12>) instead and has
no problems.
6.5
Mike also observes that “it is not a clever wheeze” to compress CFS
files using the !Squash application supplied with RISC-OS 3. This will
report a gratifying reduction in the logical byte count but when the
actual size of the new file is checked, it will usually be found that
the file has got larger. (Has anyone found a use for !Squash?)
6.5
Dave Livsey has been told by Computer Concepts, in response to a query
about CFS’s use of a temporary file as an intermediate step in the
decompression process, that they “ ... are working on an upgrade to deal
with this ... ”
6.5
Marc Evans says CFS version 1.10 has problems with large jobs – 10
Mbytes, for example – and suggests turning off interactive filer
operations during a large compression, otherwise you may lose files.
6.5
He also writes: Filer_Run can be used in an alias to run CFS’d files
directly from the normal Filer window. To perform this trick, issue the
command:
6.5
Set Alias$@Runtype D96 !Filer_Run CFS#%0
6.5
and just double click on the file to load it.
6.5
Confusing MS-DOS and ADFS discs
6.5
Marc Evans warns that if you regularly use both DOS and ADFS floppy
discs, it is easy to get confused about which is which. You can easily
find yourself copying to a DOS disc thinking it is ADFS; file and
application icons appear in the destination window just as normal and
you can be none the wiser (apart from the copying being rather slower)
until you run out of space after 720Kb.
6.5
Disc corruption
6.5
Keith Raven has experienced two strange floppy disc faults since
upgrading. After deleting the font manager from a PD fonts disc (E
format), he found that three letters from one font had disappeared
although the disc was otherwise intact and verified OK. He was able to
load the font into !FontEd successfully for patching. The other problem
was a “broken directory” on a D format disc, just after deleting a
couple of redundant items (including a !System directory) left over from
RISC­OS 2. The disc verified properly, but a disc sector editor showed
two chunks of continuous Ns in sector 1 (on track 0 head 0). He has
noticed that ADFS buffers is set to 8 (the default?) and wonders whether
there is still a bug there.
6.5
(We reported two months ago Acorn’s telephone help line comment that the
bug which made it advisable to configure the ADFS buffers to zero had
been fixed. We also reported Computer Concepts’ claim that, unless the
buffers are configured to zero, it is vital to dismount disks before
removing them for good from the machine because, otherwise, there may be
trouble later. Does anyone have any proof either way?)
6.5
XOB Remote Logon
6.5
Raymond Wright says that XOB Remote Logon, which allows a BBC Micro or
another Archimedes to access a hard disc attached to an Archimedes via
Econet, is in trouble. He thinks that it is not loading binary files to
the correct locations in the BBC’s memory.
6.5
Printing!!!
6.5
(This seems to be the area that is causing the greatest grief. If anyone
thinks he knows the answers, please get in touch! A number of people
have commented favourably on the Ace drivers. Perhaps, if the people at
Ace think they have got printing sussed, they might be able to help with
some of these problems.)
6.5
(Funnily enough, Tony Cheal of Ace Computing was hoping to write us an
article about printer drivers. As I well know, when you are running your
own business, things can get very hectic. Anyway, if you do get time,
Tony, your fans are waiting in eager anticipation! Ed.)
6.5
Printer buffer
6.5
Several people have commented that the printer buffer doesn’t work
properly. Can this be true or is it that we don’t understand how to use
it properly?
6.5
Richard Burnell says that if he configures the buffer to, say, 300Kb and
tries to print a draw file with lots of text, the computer hangs and not
even the escape key works. (He owns a KX-P1081 dot matrix printer.)
6.5
Mike Kinghan writes: The RISC-OS 3 feature that I had longed for most
was background printing. Running off a manual on my LaserJet II under
RISC-OS 2 could monopolise the computer for half a day. How annoying
then to discover that prints executed from familiar applications are not
automatically run in background under the new OS. A partial remedy,
however, is to use the new Print Manager’s capability to substitute a
file for any installed printer. First take the Printer Control option
from your printer’s iconbar menu. Then select the Connection dialogue
and nominate a file of your choice in place of the installed printer.
This will make applications write to that file when they think they are
printing, and they will do this much more speedily. At your convenience,
redirect the printer connection to your physical printer and drag your
print files to the printer icon. Now they will be printed in background,
allowing you to get on with your work. (But what a palaver! Surely there
must be a simpler way?)
6.5
Change in printer initialisation behaviour
6.5
T. J. Bennett uses First Word Plus version 1 with an A3000 and a Citizen
Swift 24. In order to make best use of this combination, he has written
a !Boot file which redefines screen characters using VDU23 and also
defines some characters not available in the standard printer character
set as download characters to the printer. He has also modified his
printer driver. This all worked in RISC­OS 2, the printer buffer
allowing the booting process to continue to completion whether the
printer was on line or not. In RISC­OS 3, however, the !Boot will not
finish until the printer is connected, switched on and on line. (“A
giant step towards the Neanderthal,” Mr Bennett comments.) He has tried
setting PrinterBufferSize to ridiculous sizes with no discernable
effect, also RMASize and SystemSize. Does anyone have any suggestions?
(I wonder if this problem is related to that described by Mick Day last
month – see Archive 6.4 p9.)
6.5
Mr Bennett has noticed that there is a limit to the amount of data in
the printer driver for defining each character (contrary to what the
manual says) so this cannot be used as the source of download character
data.
6.5
Disc swapping
6.5
Peter Prewett reports that, after loading the !Printer application on
the iconbar and then loading Impression Junior, whenever he tries to
print, he is required to insert the floppy disc from which he loaded the
original printer application. He says he “tried loading system and scrap
from the printer and other discs, none of which makes any difference.”
(My suggestion is that the problem is a misunderstanding of the purpose
of the !Scrap application: the result of running this is simply to tell
the computer that the disc it is on is the place to store temporary
“scrap” files. Thus by “loading” !Scrap from a floppy you tell the
computer to use that floppy for temporary storage during operations like
printing. If you have a hard disc, it is best to copy !Scrap onto its
root directory and to ensure that the first thing you do each time you
turn the computer on or reset it is to open a Filer window on that root
directory so that the location of !Scrap will be “seen.”)
6.5
Peter goes on to comment that system and scrap files are difficult to
use and must be made totally transparent to the end user. “Nobody should
have to set up the computer with these files as it is certainly not
user-friendly.” Does anyone want to volunteer to write a user-friendly
article about system and scrap files? Does anyone have any ideas about
how these might be better organised in a future version of the operating
system?
6.5
Mono greyscales (!?)
6.5
A number of people have noticed that the so-called “mono” option in the
RISC-OS 3 printer drivers actually produces grey scales when rendering
drawfiles (although sprites are printed in black and white as might be
expected).
6.5
LaserDirect
6.5
I may have given the impression in the December column that it is
impossible to print rotated text out of a LaserDirect. John Winter has
pointed out that this can be done fairly easily by creating the text in
Draw and using the Convert to path menu option; this will then print
like any drawfile. Furthermore, the rotated text can be imported into
Impression, again just like any drawfile.
6.5
John Winter has also found that in order to run the RISC­OS 3 !Printers
application after using a Computer Concepts RISC­OS 2 driver, you have
to run the following * commands (either at the command line or in a Task
window or in an Obey or Command file):
6.5
*RMKill PDriver
6.5
*RMReinit PDriver
6.5
Several more people have reported problems with the quality of print
from LaserDirect printers. Michael Lowe says he has considerable
problems printing sprites, mostly incorporated into Impression docu
ments: black areas are often patterned, grey areas sometimes don’t print
and occasionally the whole of the text area breaks up giving a granular
appearance. However, the worst thing, he says, is the unpredictability
of the behaviour.
6.5
There may, however, be an answer to this (but no solution until the new
drivers appear sometime this year, with luck): Computer Concepts have
written to Tim Powys-Lybbe saying: “We are now(!) aware of a problem
with the combination of our LaserDirect drivers 2.05 and RISC­OS 3.1.
The first Landscape page will print correctly, but on subsequent prints,
black output will be speckled. This only occurs when QuickText is off.
6.5
“I would recommend that you turn on QuickText. If necessary, you should
install RISC­OS 2 versions of Corpus and Homerton into your !Fonts
application on disc. If you get a speckled output, changing printing
resolution or reloading the driver will restore a black image.
6.5
“The next release of our drivers should clear up this problem.”
6.5
Tim’s comment is that the output and the problem is a little worse than
their letter concedes.
6.5
(And the problem also occurs fairly predictably on the BJ10 Turbo
Driver. Ed.)
6.5
Alan Gentle recommends inserting a FontRemove statement in the !Boot
file, removing the ROM fonts, and to add Corpus, Homerton and Trinity to
the !Fonts directory on disc, i.e. the boot file should end:
6.5
FontRemove Resources:$.Fonts.
6.5
FontInstall <Obey$Dir>.
6.5
(N.B. the dots at the end of each line are significant.)
6.5
Alan also says Computer Concepts have sent him an update of PrinterLD,
version 2.05s (10-Aug-1992) which seems to work OK!
6.5
When I started printing from Artworks, I found that the greyscales at
600 dpi were rather distinctly graduated. At 300 dpi, the gradation is
much smoother but the individual colours have a much dottier appearance.
On CC’s recommendation, I have found that 600×300 using Screen 2 gives a
good compromise.
6.5
On the question of how long the upgraded printer drivers are taking to
produce, CC said (in a letter dated 17th December 1992): “We have only
just received the source code (we’d have preferred proper documentation,
but there isn’t any) from Acorn. All our drivers require significant
changes to allow full RISC­OS 3 compatibility. Since the RISC­OS 2
drivers work with RISC­OS 3, their conversion is not a priority.”
6.5
Printing after Artworks
6.5
Roger King has found that, after printing from Artworks, computers need
to be switched off (<ctrl-reset> is not enough) before using new
applications that need to print hard copy. If this is not done, spurious
fine horizontal lines of about 4mm length are scattered throughout the
printed page. Has anyone any clues about this?
6.5
Unwanted form feeds
6.5
G. T. Smith’s means of preventing his Brother (Epson FX80 compatible
printer) from spewing out extra pieces of blank paper was to load the
driver into !PrintEdit, delete the formfeed code “12” from the End of
Text Job and to add ESC“8” (“ignore paper empty”) in the Start of Job
line.
6.5
Unwanted line feeds in First Word Plus
6.5
Dave Livsey suggests that the printer driver needs doctoring to remove
the extra line feed that it sends to the printer. Can anyone give
details?
6.5
Editing printer drivers
6.5
G. T. Smith says that he made the mistake of assuming that, having
copied his modified printer driver onto his hard disc, !Printers would
find it and the modification would take effect, but it didn’t. He says
you need to load !Printers onto the iconbar and re-install the driver by
dragging it into the Printer Control window from the !Printers menu.
6.5
Tim Nicholson says that if you change the configuration settings of a
printer which is not the currently selected one (i.e. its icon is greyed
out), then the next time you print, the print manager uses the driver
you have reconfigured not the selected one.
6.5

6.5
PC Emulator
6.5
Mike Small has found that PC programs such as Tetris run first time but
when they get to the point where they ought to re-load, i.e. when he
“dies”, he gets the messages:
6.5
M2ExHandle abort - Bad Entry Sequence
6.5
*CD \Tetris
6.5
FileCore in use (Error number &108A0)
6.5
*Tetris
6.5
He is using version 1.34 of the emulator, patched in accordance with the
Support instructions. (He assumes that the altering of the filetype of
the DOS partition to DOSDisc doesn’t apply to him because he uses
floppies.) He has a user port and MIDI on a basic A3000. Does anyone
have any ideas?
6.5
Nik Kelly finds that his Quick Basic editor scrolls at a useful speed
now that he has an ARM3 and RISC­OS 3, but has found that the freebie,
QB, that comes with MS-DOS 5, does not read his .BAS files.
6.5
He also says that his real-time clock is now always wrong (using PC
emulator 1.6 and MS-DOS 3.3) and asks why?
6.5
Richard Burnell says that version 1.81 of the emulator won’t read Atari
format discs with RISC­OS 3.10 and asks when the new version of the
emulator is due for release.
6.5
Miscellaneous Hardware Tips
6.5
Ground Control teletext adaptor
6.5
Mike Williams found that his problem with this was a hardware problem
and nothing to do with RISC­OS 3. He had changed to an A5000 and there
is a subtle difference in the hardware of the printer port. Ground
Control are offering an upgrade to a podule version − but he doesn’t
know where he is going to find a fifth podule slot!
6.5
SCSI podule and MIDI board conflict
6.5
Richard Burnell found that his Vertical Twist A3000 Econet MIDI/sampler
board would not work with his 8-bit Lingenuity SCSI podule because they
were competing for use of fast interrupts. Version 2.45 of the SCSI
firmware is now available and the MIDI port now works fine. (This
doesn’t sound like a RISC-OS 3 problem to me, but I will include it
anyway!)
6.5
Pineapple digitiser
6.5
The problem Tim Nicholson mentioned in Archive 6.3 p15 was cured by the
addition of an “extra decoupling capacitor”.
6.5
Brainsoft expansion card
6.5
Tim Nicholson reported (Archive 6.3 p15) that this didn’t work. Raymond
Wright says he thinks his works OK, but he has had problems with the
software in RISC­OS 2, some of which have righted themselves in
RISC­OS 3! (The sound module still seems to want to hog all available
memory, though.)
6.5
Maths co-processor
6.5
Raymond Wright says there is no built-in support in RISC­OS 3 for the
maths co-processor card so he still has to load FPEmulator 3.2 from
disc.
6.5
Impression dongle
6.5
Roger Power’s problem mentioned last month turned out to be a defective
dongle (apparently it was one of the very early ones), which CC have
replaced.
6.5
G. T. Smith had a similar problem and while he was waiting for a
replacement dongle it was suggested that he should try “shorting all the
pins of the dongle with a piece of earthed kitchen foil.” Apparently it
worked! (I suggest you only try this if you are confident you know what
you are doing.)
6.5
Roger King reports that he had a problem with both laser printers and a
Deskjet 500 ejecting blank sheets of paper with spurious characters on
the first line of the new page, especially when printing from PipeDream
4 documents. When the Impression dongles were removed the problem went
away.
6.5
Keith Raven agrees that there is something strange. Once, after
switching off the computer and restarting, he tried printing from Basic
using <ctrl-B> but the computer locked up as if the printer wasn’t on
line. Loading !Printers and trying to print from !Edit caused the system
disc to run and the iconbar to flash but no output. Loading Impression
then caused most, but not all, of the previously “printed” output from
!Edit to arrive at the printer. However, he could not repeat this. Since
he had previously used the printer successfully in similar circums
tances, he wonders if the problem might be something to do with printer
initialisation.
6.5
Miscellaneous Hints & Tips
6.5
Screen modes
6.5
Peter Prewett says that mode 31 “flashes fast” on his A440/1 with an
Eizo 9060s Multiscan. He also says that mode 27 will not run on an A310
with an NEC Multiscan. (I also find that mode 31 is unusably flickery on
my Taxan 770 Plus, but surely one of the purposes in giving us such a
wide variety of modes is to give each user a greater chance of finding
some that suit his own particular monitor.)
6.5
Marc Evans recommends non-multisync users to use mode 35 as their
configured mode because it gives a bit more room to work in without
decreasing resolution in the way mode 16 does.
6.5
Desktop Boot files
6.5
Colin Singleton has been puzzled to find that, after creating a Boot
file and rebooting, a number of applications that were running at the
time he created the Boot file failed to start up. The reason for this is
that only “RISC­OS 3 aware” applications will be inserted automatically
into a !Boot file. (Apart from any other reason, the operating system
needs to be able to find out where on disc each application was loaded
from and it can’t do this unless the application is programmed to be
able to tell the operating system when asked. Originally, RISC­OS 3
applications weren’t programmed to behave in this way.)
6.5
If you want your Boot file to run an older application (including, for
instance, current versions of Impression) you have to edit !Boot and add
the appropriate instructions by hand. To do this (assuming you have
already created a Desktop Boot file), load !Boot into !Edit (the quick
way is to <shift-double-click> on it) and you will probably find a
number of lines reading “Filer_Boot ... ” followed by some reading
“Filer_Run ... ”. Immediately after these, add another line reading
“Filer_Run ” followed by the full path name of the application, and
repeat for each application you want to run. The process is described in
more detail in the User Guide starting at page 112.
6.5
Colin Singleton has also tried, as the manual suggests, creating two
!Boot files so that he can switch at will from one “world” to another.
However, when he tries to run them he gets a message “You cannot have
two copies of !Alarm at once.” Does anyone have any suggestions?
6.5
When Götz Kohlberg had created a Boot file and tried rebooting, he got
an error message: “not enough memory or not within desktop world”.
(Could this happen if the configured “language” is not Desktop? (Number
10 in RISC-OS 3.))
6.5
Control of ARM3 cache
6.5
Götz Kohlberg found that the *Cache on command turned the cache off and
*Cache off turned it on! He also found that when he installed the Aleph
One hare and tortoise module, the effect of clicking on the iconbar
icons was also reversed. His work-around for this problem is to include
*Cache on as the very first command in his !Boot file and to include the
command *Cache off immediately before the line that runs the !Arm3
application.
6.5
ROM modules
6.5
R. D. Attwood asks how he can find out which modules are in ROM so that
he doesn’t duplicate them in the system directory on disc. Simple: press
<ctrl-f12> to open a Task window and type RomModules at the star command
prompt. A list of modules in the system ROM and in the ROMS on any
podules installed on the machine will scroll past. To read the list and
print it or save it: bring up the Task window menu and choose the
“Suspend” option then treat the contents of the window just like any
other Edit window.
6.5
To see what else is in ROM ...
6.5
... bring up the menu over the Apps icon on the iconbar and choose the
“Open ‘$’” option. You can now explore all the resources stored in ROM.
6.5
Toolsprites
6.5
Several months ago, the Archive monthly disc included a nice collection
of “tool” sprites designed to smarten up the appearance of window icons
(including things like 3D-effect sliders that look pushed-in when you
drag them). I found that the original set didn’t quite work properly,
but that simply by adding one extra sprite (“blicon22”) copied from a
similar set on a recent Acorn User disc, I got a set which seems to work
fine. This set is on this month’s program disc in a file called
“Win3Tools”. To use it, I suggest you copy it into your !System
directory and include the command
6.5
ToolSprites System:Win3Tools
6.5
in your !Boot file. (Note: this file only includes “22” definitions for
“square-pixel” high resolution modes.)
6.5
Shift key behaviour
6.5
R. D. Attwood has found his left shift key giving a ¤ symbol. On
investigation, he has found that under the key there are two contacts:
one gives ¤, the other £. The !IntKey module on the Support disc seems
to solve the problem but, as he says, it should not be necessary to run
this. Has anyone any ideas?
6.5
Shift-double-clicking into editors
6.5
Marc Evans says that if you shift-double-click on a file to load it into
an editor, the editor can be confused about what filetype it is and can
save an Obey file as Text. (This doesn’t seem to happen with !Edit, but
it does with !StrongEd II. Without the PRM, I can’t be sure but I would
guess that what is happening is that a shift-double-click causes the
Filer to broadcast a message inviting applications to load the file as
if it were a text file. If !Edit picks it up, it presumably then reads
the directory information to find out what the filetype is, whereas
!StrongEd carries on assuming it is a text file. I wonder what other
editors like DeskEdit do?)
6.5
Fix for SciCalc
6.5
Colin Dean, one of the authors of SciCalc, has written in with a fix for
the bug in the +/− operator mentioned in Archive 6.3 p18.
6.5
The +/− operator should always change the sign of the currently
displayed value, unless you are in the middle of entering an exponent,
in which case it should change the sign of the exponent. In practice, it
can produce bizarre results: e.g.
6.5
enter   display
6.5
1E13  1E13
6.5
+/−  1E-13
6.5
=  1E-13
6.5
+/−  3E-30
6.5
The last displayed result should be −1E−13!
6.5
To fix this alter the lines that read:
6.5
5340 IF entry$=“0” THEN entry$= FNtobase(dreg)
6.5
5350 IF base%=1 THEN
6.5
5360 IF (INSTR(entry$,“E”)=0) OR (F%=TRUE) THEN
6.5
to read, instead:
6.5
5340 IF F%=TRUE THEN entry$= FNtobase(dreg)
6.5
5350 IF base%=1 AND F%=FALSE THEN
6.5
5360 IF (INSTR(entry$,“E”)=0)THEN
6.5
Copying a directory into itself
6.5
You can’t any more! (Marc Evans says.) (For those who don’t remember the
heady days when RISC­OS 2 was young, one of its features was that it was
quite easy to fill a disc by recursively copying a directory into
itself!)
6.5
Unplugging !Configure
6.5
!Configure can be unplugged if you do not want the machine altered −
useful in a school situation! (Marc Evans)
6.5
Bug in BASIC64
6.5
A. G. Rimmer reports that there is a fault in BASIC64 in that the format
specification given by @% frequently behaves incorrectly for fixed
format (but not for E or G format). This is illustrated by the following
program:
6.5
10 REM >Double precision test
6.5
20 @%=“F30.2”
6.5
30 PRINT; “With @% = &”;STR$~(@%);“:”‘
6.5
40 REPEAT
6.5
50 INPUT “Number input: ” x
6.5
60 PRINT “ prints as ” x
6.5
70 UNTIL FALSE
6.5
This produces the following output:
6.5
Number input: 102.63
6.5
prints as 1.03E2
6.5
Number input: 1234.5678
6.5
prints as 1.23E3
6.5
Number input: 12.25
6.5
prints as 12.25
6.5
Number input: 0.16
6.5
prints as 1.60E-1
6.5
Acorn have acknowledged the fault and have told Mr Rimmer that there is
no work-around or fix for this problem at the moment.
6.5
Limited precision of SciCalc’s display
6.5
Mr Rimmer also observes that, whereas SciCalc calculates using floating
point numbers with 52 binary digits, which are equivalent to 15.7
decimal digits, you can only input decimal numbers with up to 10 digits
plus a two digit exponent and the program can only display results with
10 significant figures (and 3-digit exponents up to the maximum possible
308). What is wanted is a display for both input and results of a 15 or
16 digit mantissa plus an exponent of up to 3 digits (up to the limit of
308).
6.5
Again Acorn has acknowledged the limitation but has said that a version
with extended display is not available. (I wonder whether Colin Dean
might be able to help?)
6.5
Legible menus in 1st Word Plus
6.5
In Archive 6.3 p12 there was a hint on altering the palette for First
Word Plus release 1.1 so that the menus are legible. This involved a
special Obey file. Gordon Lindsay-Jones suggests a different solution.
He first changed colour 14 to black and saved the altered palette in the
Library directory on the 1wp disc. Before he runs 1wp, he opens the
Library window and double-clicks on this palette, then when he finishes,
he opens the menu on the iconbar palette icon and selects Default to
restore the palette.
6.5
(Mike Williams says version 0.01 of First Word Plus works fine!)
6.5
Using RMFaster
6.5
Mike Williams points out that C programs run much faster if you perform
*RMFaster SharedCLibrary and, similarly, programs that use the FPE a lot
(e.g. ray tracers) will benefit from *RMFaster FPEmulator. Under
RISC­OS 2, these modules were loaded from disc so always ran in RAM. In
RISC­OS 3, we can choose whether to put them in RAM for speed or leave
them in ROM to save memory.
6.5
Draw crashing
6.5
A number of people have had !Draw crash out on them but luckily it saves
work in progress as a valid drawfile in the Scrap directory before it
exits. Therefore, you should be able to recover your work by opening
!Scrap (shift-double-click on its icon), then opening the directory
called ScrapDir inside it.
6.5
Wimp drag and double-click defaults
6.5
Mike Williams finds that settings of 5 for WimpDoubleClickDelay and 10
for WimpDoubleClickMove make detailed work in !Draw much more manage
able. He wonders if anyone knows how to set them exactly like they were
in RISC­OS 2.
6.5
Mouse menu button behaviour
6.5
In response to my tip in Archive 6.3 p19, Tim Nicholson says his mouse
menu button still returns a continuous 2. I then wondered if it was my
tracker ball that was at fault so plugged in my clapped out mouse, but
no: both mouse and tracker ball still return 2 for a moment then 0 when
the menu button is held down. Tim wonders if the mouse response is
configurable.
6.5
Opening a root directory without running all the !Boot files (and
avoiding viruses)
6.5
Tim Nicholson points out that just as control-double-clicking on a
directory icon opens a filer window on the directory without running the
boot files of all the applications in the directory, control-double-
clicking on a drive icon does the same for a root directory. As he says,
this is jolly useful for inspecting discs of unknown origin if you
suspect they might contain viruses.
6.5
Keys that don’t work
6.5
Tim Nicholson says that he “keeps losing his Caps Lock button” and
occasionally <ctrl-shift-f12> doesn’t work. Is this a problem with an
application? (Or has he been dropping his porridge into the keyboard,
again?)
6.5
Task manager
6.5
(Tim Nicholson warns: before trying this save all your work!) Try
clicking <menu> over the Task Manager and choosing the Info option, then
click <menu> in the grey area where it says NAME: VERSION: AUTHOR:.
(Don’t get too excited.)
6.5
Alarm
6.5
Colin Singleton writes, in response to Ken Cowap’s comments on !Alarm
(Archive 6.3 p15): “I think he is wrong in claiming that it contains a
malfunction, but it is certainly less friendly than it might be. It does
indeed appear to insist that the start and finish dates are in the same
year when setting summertime, so you cannot set Off Oct 1992 and On
March 1993. Since we have now finished with BST for 1992, this is not
now a problem.”
6.5
He has found that after setting the two dates for 1993, the Alarm file
contains three dates, the third date being 7th February 1994. He
presumes that at 1 a.m. on that day, an alarm will go off to remind him
to set the summertime dates for that year! Does anyone know what the
date is for?
6.5
Change in behaviour of !Boot files
6.5
Under RISC­OS 2, J. Lageu used to protect directories using the
principle that, whenever a directory was opened, all the boot files in
it were actioned (unless, I think, a sprite with the name of the
application had been loaded into the Wimp sprite pool). He finds that
RISC­OS 3.10 on an A5000 only sees the !Boot file the first time it
“sees” the application. I wonder whether it is possible to tell the
operating system to forget that it has seen the application?
6.5
JPEG
6.5
Steve Dommett has written, in response to Roger Darlington’s query in
Archive 6.3 p28, to point out that there is a very useful implementation
of JPEG included in !ChangeFSI on the Support Disc. The required files
are cjpeg, djpeg and JPEGinfo (which provides instructions). !ChangeFSI
will read JPEG files in the same way as other file types but will need
plenty of spare space on the !Scrap disc. He has converted many sprites,
saving megabytes of disc space, with no appreciable loss of quality.
6.5
Peter Sturdy adds that if you want to use JPEG from the command line, it
is helpful to add the following lines to your !Boot file:
6.5
Set Alias$cjpeg <Obey$Dir>.cjpeg %%*0
6.5
Set Alias$djpeg <Obey$Dir>.djpeg %%*0
6.5
JPEG files can then be manipulated from a Task window without changing
directory or moving the files into the Library directory.
6.5
(The point of JPEG is that it gives much greater savings in filing space
but the compression process is not completely reversible so the
decompressed image will not be identical to the original. For sprites
this doesn’t normally matter.)
6.5
Directory catalogue display
6.5
Raymond Wright has found an irritating change in the display of a
catalogue listing (outside the Desktop): on an 80 column screen you only
get three columns of files instead of 4 and in a 40 column mode you only
get one. Can there be a good reason for the change, he
asks?
6.5
Two Questions
6.5
Backup and the “next” slot
6.5
If you back up an 800Kb floppy with the “Next” slot set to the standard
640Kb, the backup will take two passes. In order to make the computer
copy the whole disc in one go, you have to set the Next slot to more
than 800Kb. Can it be told to use more than the current Next slot if the
memory is available?
6.5
Icon dragging from filer windows
6.5
There is a configuration option (which I can’t find now that I want it!)
that instructs RISC­OS 3 “aware” applications to drag the whole icon
rather than just an empty square box when saving a file. Why on earth
isn’t the Filer programmed to do the same when you drag an icon from a
Filer window?

6.5
Improvements over RISC­OS 3.0
6.5
Paul Skirrow lists the following improvements:
6.5
•  after a Shutdown the Restart button works properly and restarts the
Pinboard correctly
6.5
•  the ADFSBuffers configuration now works correctly and speeds up disc
access significantly (although there may still be a problem in 1Mb
machines).
6.5
•  Paint handles 256 grey scale sprites correctly and also 256 colour
sprites can have any of their colours changed independently (I’d
appreciate an article on the changes in colour handling in RISC­OS 3 –
starting with the basics like the points mentioned here.)
6.5
•  an HP Laserjet / Deskjet bug has been cured.
6.5
•  there is a new X, Y offset facility in the printer driver system,
separated from the “paper margins” (which now specify which area the
printer driver should allow printing in, although it would make more
sense to set the top left values to be the same). Paul says this could
have some other benefits: you should be able to specify negative offsets
to indicate that the printer must move the print head some distance to
actually reach the paper, which might be useful when printing on labels.
Unfortunately, there is a bug: the X, Y origin is not stored and always
defaults to zero! (My mind goes numb when I read this sort of descrip
tion. Can anyone help with an idiots’ guide to printer margins?) (Gerald
Fitton, in Archive 6.4 p39, admitted to not really understanding how it
all worked but gave an empirical approach in his PipeLine column. Ed.)
6.5
•  Printer drivers now set the page length from the “number of text
lines” specification, and a number of other printer problems have been
cured.
6.5
•  Starting up is quicker (10 seconds quicker on an A5000).
6.5
•  Some useful extra screen modes are provided.  A
6.5

6.5
Oh No! More Lemmings
6.5
Emily Down (age 12)
6.5
They’re back! Just when you thought you had reached the safe house,
another consignment of suicidal rodents comes so-lem-nly marching out
from the Krisalis mental hospital, to be turned to tomato ketchup...
unless, of course, you generously guide them safely to a good
psychiatrist.
6.5
Basics
6.5
For those of you who Haven’t Got A Clue, here is the basic outline of
the game: tiny green-haired simp-lem-inded zombie-like creatures fall
from a hatch at the top of the screen. It is your job to manoeuvre them
past all the perils of the level, preferably without pulping too many,
and arrive at the safe house with the required percentage of lemmings
still intact, all to the sound of happy tunes and splatting lemmings. To
help you achieve this, you can turn them into climbers, diggers,
bombers, blockers and lots more.
6.5
I tested this version on an ARM 3 A440/1 with RISC-OS 3.1 and a 2 Mb
A3000, both with standard resolution colour monitors, and here are my
discoveries...
6.5
New e-lem-ents
6.5
The Lemmings are the same, of course, even to the point of keeping the
same hairdresser. They still seem determined to jump off cliffs and
drown, but this time there are extra possible deaths like an icicle
which splits them in half or a snake which strangles them. These provide
yet more gory entertainment for any psychopathic lemming-killer who
wishes to watch. The few new dangers are more imaginative and the amount
of blood seems to have increased but it is a pity that more of the old
perils haven’t been replaced.
6.5
There is not a lot of originality in the di-lem-mas − they are fundamen
tally the same as before, although with different scenery − even though
some levels do take a lot of thought. There are some new ideas but it is
basically more of the same.
6.5
There is a whole new set of tunes to assist your progress to the neuro-
surgeon − some good, others even more tedious than the worst of their
predecessors. The graphics are of the same high quality, with plenty of
blood!
6.5
Lemford Christie
6.5
Superlemming is another new feature: he moves about twice as fast as a
normal lemming, making an easy level twice as difficult. Don’t let him
splat − he is needed for the 1996 Olempic team!
6.5
Problemmings
6.5
Unfortunately, the Lemmings cannot be speeded up by pressing the f9 and
f10 keys together, a useful feature of the previous version. The tunes
can be extremely boring (the less said about Three Blind Mice the
better!) and difficulty levels are not really right for the average
player: Any person investing in Oh no! would probably at least have
started the Tricky levels in the original, so the Tame levels (equiva
lent to Fun) are pointless. However, once the levels start getting
difficult, they get harder too quickly and a lot more levels that take
some brain power but are not impossible are needed.
6.5
Implemmingtation
6.5
Oh no! is supplied on a single disc in a glossy (but rather flimsy)
cardboard box along with a minimal instruction sheet. However, before it
can be used, you need an original Lemmings disc.
6.5
When running the game from floppy, you must insert the old Lemmings disc
each time you load it. This can rapidly get annoying. Luckily, the game
can be run from a hard disc and although you must still insert one disc
for copy protection purposes, it is a great improvement on having to
search for two floppies.
6.5
Conclusions
6.5
So is it worth the £19.95 price tag (or £19 through Archive)? Apart from
the occasional new hazard, and superlemming, there is really very little
new. If, however, you have completed Lemmings and still want more, these
extra levels are your answer, even though it would probably be pointless
for you to do the Tame levels.  It is worth thinking hard about the
value before you buy, and I would only recommend it to hardened
Lemmings players.  A
6.5

6.5
Small Ads
6.5
(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)
6.5
•  47 Mb ST506 hard drive out of A440/1. Sell for £100 or swap for
unregistered copy of Squirrel. Phone Gary on 0322−662222 (eves).
6.5
•  A310 with col mon, MEMC1a, 4 slot b’plane, 5¼“ disc buffer, RISC-OS
3.10 £350. Oak SCSI 45Mb internal hard drive with 16 bit podule £250.
Phone Keith on 041−634−1938.
6.5
•  A310 with med. res. colour monitor, 4Mb, MEMC1a upgrade, interfaced
5¼“ twin 80/40 drives, serial link. Quality software and games. £700
o.n.o. Phone 0572−821313.
6.5
•  A440 with 4Mb, 45Mb Oak SCSI, Acorn colour monitor, A/wide VIDC
enhancer, RISC-OS 3.1, £600. May split. Phone 0252−542431.
6.5
•  A440 with 4Mb RAM, 20Mb hard disc, RISC-OS 2, good condition, £299.
Phone 0733−67185.
6.5
•  A410/1 with 4Mb, 40Mb IDE internal hard drive, RISC-OS 3.10, manuals
and various software. £900 o.n.o. Phone David Lenthall on 071−703−5675.
6.5
•  A5000 LC, two 40Mb IDE drives, RISC-OS 3.1, NEC Multisync II,  RO2
PRM’s, software inc Archive and Risc User discs, Careware, Shareware and
D Pilling, other software inc Impression, PipeDream 4, Hearsay II, PC
Emulator V1.8.  Will split.  Worth £3500, accept £1500 o.n.o.  Phone
John Collins on 0455−272585.
6.5
•  A5000 LC with 4Mb RAM, 80Mb HD, RISC-OS 3.1, colour monitor, cost
£1599, offers welcome, sell without monitor. Also, Quantum 245Mb 9mS IDE
3.5“ low profile drive, unused, bought in error. Cost £539, offers
welcome. Oak 16-bit SCSI Interface board, Syquest 44Mb external
removable drive with cartridges. Look Systems Disk Rescue package also
available. Contact Richard 0784−443494 (day) 0784− 434927 (eve.)
6.5
•  Acorn DTP £39 o.n.o., First Word+ (release 2, inc extra Epson LQ
drivers), £29 o.n.o. − or £60 for both. Phone 0457−863351.
6.5
•  Acorn DTP £40. Minerva Gammaplot £20, System Delta+ £30, Mailshot (for
SD+) £15. Games: Nevryon £8, Powerband £8, Terramex £5. CC ROMs (for
ROM/RAM podule): InterChart £10, Intersheet £15, InterWord £15,
SpellMaster £20. Phone 0737−832159 evenings.
6.5
•  Acorn I/O podule with Midi add-on, £60. Amstrad SM2400 V22bis modem
£60. Phone 0397−704361.
6.5
•  CC Turbo Driver for BJ10ex, registered in my name, £35. Phone
0684−573098.
6.5
•  Digitiser, Techno-I, 25-bit resolution, SVHS upgrade, single-width
podule, £150. Phone 0463−75251.
6.5
•  Karma £7.50. Archimedes standard colour monitor (with sound channel),
v.g.c., no problems, original packing, £65. Phone 0483−575870.
6.5
•  Original Acorn User and Micro User discs: AU 1989 (complete), 1990 (10
discs), 1991 (complete); MU 1990 (10 discs), 1991 (complete). 56 discs
for £50 +p&p. Contact Colin on 0786−461501.
6.5
•  RISC-OS 3.10 upgrade (ALA31) unused with manuals, £40. Also unused,
Acorn DTP £30, PC emulator (V1.7 with DR DOS 5) £50 and First Word Plus
V2, £25. Phone 0561−62452 evenings.
6.5
•  Scanlight Plus hand held scanner, latest software (v2.01), £100. Phone
Chris on 0276−20575 after 6pm.
6.5
•  Simis Flight Sim Toolkit − £25, 1st Word+ v.2 £40, Acorn DTP £60,
Break 147 and Superpool £15, Chocks Away Extra Missions £8, Saloon Cars
£10, Pacmania £5, Genesis Plus £35, PC Emulator v.1.7 £45. All orig
inals, accept nearest offer. Phone Shan on 0703−677669 evenings.
6.5
•  Tape Backup. Oak high speed 150Mb tape drive with Oak SCSI interface
and 8 tape cartridges, £600 o.n.o. Also Oak CDFS software and ROM
upgrade, £20. Phone Chris on 0276−20575 after 6pm.
6.5
•  Wanted − ARM3 processor and sheet feeder for Panasonic 1124 printer.
Phone 0332−557751.
6.5
•  Wanted − Command set for Tandberg TCD3800 ¼“ SCSI tape drive. Also any
software to run it from Oak SCSI card. Chris Walker, 16 Finderne Drive,
Wymondham, Norwich  NR18 0HU.
6.5
•  Wanted for charity work: BBC B/128/Master with disc drive. Phone K.
Miller on 0734−731538.
6.5
•  Z88 with 125Kb extra RAM, Archimedes link, printer link, case, mains
adaptor, manual and programmers guide to operating system, £150. Phone
Tony Cowley on 0473−780298.
6.5
•  Z88, little used, with handbooks, leads, etc, £150. Phone Andy Cameron
on 0227−832196.
6.5
•  Zoom Modem V21, V22, V22bis, with fax send facility, £75 o.n.o. BJ10e
CC Printer driver £32. Phone Mike Roscoe on 081−579−0607.
6.5
Charity Sales − The following items are available for sale in aid of
charity. PLEASE do not just send money − ring us on 0603−766592 to check
if the items are still available. Thank you.
6.5
(If you have unwanted software or hardware for Archimedes computers you
could donate for charity, please send it in to the Archive office. If
you have larger items where post would be expensive, just send us
details of the item(s) and how the purchaser can get hold of them.)
6.5
Arcade Soccer + White Magic £4, Arcticulate £6, Arctist (art package)
£3, Astro (space exploration) £3, DJ500C Printer Driver (Risc Dev) £10,
EMACS (D Pilling) £2, Fan for A310 £5, First Word Plus (v1) £3, !Help −
Intro to Archimedes £2, MicroDrive (golf) £5, Inter-Sheet on ROM £5,
MicroDrive Extra Courses Vol1 £4, Pace Nightingale modem (300/300, 1200/
75) £15, Saloon Cars  £10, Serial interface for Panasonic KX-P1080,
1091, 1092, 1592 or 3131 £4, System Delta Plus Ref Guide £3, UIM £4,
Wordwise Plus for Archimedes (disc version) inc manuals £8, Z88 + 128Kb
ram + serial link + carry case + mains adaptor, virtually new, £120.  A
6.5

6.5
Thanks, Lemily, for an excellemt review. Ed.
6.5

6.5
ArtWorks Column
6.5
Trevor Sutton
6.5
I am pleased to take over this column from Michael Carter and wish him a
speedy recovery. This month’s column has been produced very quickly in
order to include the latest information from Computer Concepts. I hope
to adhere to Michael’s aims for the column and expect to see it evolve
into a lively interchange of ideas over the coming months, as ArtWorks
(AW) develops and as more people “dig deep” and buy it.
6.5
ArtWorks 1.10
6.5
CC have announced the first upgrade to AW which should be available by
the time you read this. AW 1.10 provides full support for the 15bpp
ColourCard screen modes as described in Archive 6.4 p25.
6.5
CC’s press release states that other new features will include better
image support. For example, there are new facilities for colouring
greyscale sprites, displaying scanned sprites at half intensity (ideal
for tracing) and editing sprite palettes. This should be good news for
all you clip artists.
6.5
AW 1.10 is available free of charge to all existing registered users.
Simply call CC and quote your serial number.
6.5
Impression 2.18
6.5
This latest version of Impression should also be available by the time
you read this and will incorporate the ability to render AW files
directly. It will now be possible to simply drop the AW file icon over
the frame. AW picture rendering offers distinct advantages over standard
drawfiles:
6.5
•   full on-screen anti-aliasing of the complete drawing
6.5
•   memory savings for drawings that contain blends or graduated fills
6.5
•   better PostScript printing quality of graduated colour fills
6.5
•   faster picture rendering
6.5
•   better screen image quality
6.5
Also of interest is the fact that CC are to make AW rendering technology
available to third party companies so that other developers may
incorporate AW pictures in their applications. This should help
encourage clip artists to choose AW.
6.5
Impression 2.18 is available, I am pleased to say, as a free upgrade to
users of both Impression and AW. Call CC and quote both serial numbers.
If you don’t own AW, there will be a charge of £10 + VAT.
6.5
ArtWorks clip art competition
6.5
CC have announced a new competition with a Canon BJC800 colour printer
worth more than £1800 as first prize. (I’ll have to have a go for that!)
Other prizes include £100 vouchers and to all whose work is ultimately
included on further AW clip art discs, there will be £10 vouchers. Call
CC for an entry form.
6.5
Fonts
6.5
The saga of how best to store the AW fonts will, I fear, continue and
everyone will have his or her own solution. In addition to these outline
fonts, many people will already have a considerable font list. There is
something of the stamp-collecting bug about font-collecting and AW
provides a veritable album.
6.5
I include here Gerald Moxon’s approach to the problem.
6.5
This is the way I solved it on my 40Mb hard disc. Like most people, I
keep !Fonts in the root directory of the hard disc, so that AW,
Impression, PipeDream and DrawPlus can get at the fonts automatically. I
just have the fonts which came with Impression in !Fonts, plus AvantG,
BookM and Watson from AW.
6.5
First of all, I set up an ordinary directory called Fonts+ on the hard
disc, with a number of sub-directories inside it called a, b, etc.
6.5
Next, I loaded !FontInst from AW disc 2 − I found out the hard way that
you should not run this utility from the hard disc. Then I loaded the
contents of all the AW fonts discs beginning with “a” into !Fonts. I
read a book while this was happening... Then I shifted the fonts
directories beginning with “a” into the sub-directory called a in
Fonts+. Finally, I had to delete the fonts from the right-hand window in
!FontInst, until it told me that once again only 27 fonts were installed
in !Fonts. By the time I had read a couple of chapters of my book, all
the 220 fonts were tucked away safely in sub-directories labelled a to
v, at the cost of 6Mb of hard disc space.
6.5
This way, if you decide you are going to use certain fonts in a
document, you just drop them into !Fonts before you load the appli
cation, and delete them afterwards − only from !Fonts, of course.
6.5
Gerald’s solution certainly works and gives fairly quick access to all
the fonts but personally I value space on my hard discs, there are some
fonts which I would hardly ever use and there are some that I just don’t
like. Four 1.6Mb floppies will take all but a couple of the AW fonts,
without compression, and organized alphabetically, but that is just my
personal choice. I have to admit, though, to having a small directory on
my internal hard disc of some of my particular favourites. Buying AW
meant that I could finally dispose of all my graphic pens and Biorst
font has meant the italic pen is now in the bin.
6.5
(This is the font that Trevor is talking about −- it’s called Biorst.
Ed.)
6.5
The problem of fonts being unavailable when files are reloaded is a
difficult one. The only efficient solution is, I feel, to convert fonts
to paths before saving, this simply means that text must be rewritten if
editing is required.
6.5
Blends
6.5
The blend tool in AW has a similar effect to Interpolate and Grade in
the newer versions of Draw. It can give some beautiful effects
especially when blending between different colours. Gerald Moxon has
found a very practical application for its use.
6.5
I have found the blend tool immensely useful for designing grids − a
40×40 grid can be drawn in minutes. Sometimes, however, it can be
frustrating trying to hit the part of the target object accurately
enough to activate the blend. One solution is to start off with fat
lines in, say, 4pt. This makes the whole operation much easier. Then the
blend can be restored to lines of the required thinness.
6.5
Many thanks, Gerald, for that idea. I have used it in a similar way and
in conjunction with the alignment facility to produce multiple boxes.
6.5
Text and Edit
6.5
In my early days with the Archimedes, I used Draw in conjunction with
Edit to produce single pages containing blocks of text and graphics –
DTP the hard way! Now, Impression has thankfully removed this need.
However, AW can function very well as a single page document processor
and the text handling is a joy compared with Draw. Just try writing
something in Edit with different line lengths and with a few extra
returns here and there. Now save your work directly to an AW page. It
will appear in AvantG.Book at 32pt initially but full control over each
line is possible. Change the font, change the size, edit the wording or
apply any of the effects that AW has on offer. It is possible to import
directly from Edit in the font, size and aspect ratio of your choice.
Initially, you may find that AW does not do this properly. My solution
is to choose the font in the normal way at the size I want and then
write something to the page. The text from Edit will then load as
required. This might be a bug and I will talk to CC about it.
6.5
So, what of the future?
6.5
I look forward to receiving your letters, whether they be hints,
problems or wishes for future versions of AW. (The recent Archimedean
contained a list of some of these.) I have just two final questions for
you. A good friend of mine is left-handed and chooses, quite naturally,
to use the mouse in his left hand. The problem is that some of the hot
key combinations are difficult to access comfortably. Particularly
tricky is the very useful <shift-alt> combination which is only active
on the left of the keyboard. Do you have a solution for this, or is it
one for CC? Perhaps we need a lateral inversion!
6.5
Would anybody else like <ctrl-Q> and <ctrl-W> to zoom quickly in and out
as does Draw?  A
6.5

6.5
Comment Column
6.5
•  Aleph One “486” PC card − When Aleph One released a 486 card for the
Archimedes at the same price as the old 386, I was quite impressed. Does
this mean that we get five times as much PC power for the same price?
Well, no, not quite... read on.
6.5
The processor that Aleph One are using is not, in fact, what the PC
literate passenger on the Clapham omnibus calls “a 486”. It is not the
486DX but a Cyrix Cx486SLC unit. This processor lacks certain major
hardware elements that underpin 486 performance:
6.5
− The 486DX has an integrated hardware floating point unit; the 486SLC
has none.
6.5
− The 486DX and SX have an 8Kb primary cache; the 486SLC has 1Kb.
6.5
− The 486DX and SX have an integrated memory management unit supporting
burst-mode (accelerated sequential) memory fetches; the 486SLC has none.
6.5
− The 486DX and SX have 32-bit i/o bandwidth; the 486SLC has 16-bit i/o
although it has 32-bit internal paths, like the 386SX.
6.5
How do Cyrix see their way to calling this item a 486? Well, it runs the
full 486 instruction set, which is a slightly larger than 386 set.
6.5
The Cx486SLC has some tricks all of its own that certainly boost its
performance beyond that of a 386, as follows:
6.5
− The 1Kb primary cache helps significantly.
6.5
− There is a 16-bit hardware multiplier that out-performs the Intel
instruction by a factor of 8.
6.5
− There is a 5-stage instruction pipeline that achieves 1-cycle
execution.
6.5
Thanks to these speed-ups, Aleph One’s customers can expect the 25MHz
486SLC to deliver around 2.5 times the raw power of the 25MHz 386SX that
was formerly the only option. That is even better than they could
theoretically expect from a 33MHz 386DX. However, it is short of what
they would get out of a 25MHz 486SX. Anyone who was thinking in terms of
heavy duty number-crunching will be disappointed. There is no DX and no
co-processor. There is a still a maths co-processor socket on the Aleph
One board, but filling it is a £99 +VAT optional extra.
6.5
The commercial point of the 486SLC is that it is faster than the 386SX
but pin-compatible with it. That lets Aleph One manufacture the new card
just by sticking 486SLCs in the holes where 386SXs were stuck
previously.
6.5
(Mike included some comparisons here with the Watford Electronics’ 386SX
card but I do not feel it is fair to compare a commercially available
product − indeed, we have them in stock − with a product that isn’t even
available yet. Watford have been advertising them since October 1992.
When I spoke to them about availability, they said it would be ready ‘in
about a month or so’. Ed)
6.5
The Cx486SLC only became available last spring and is far the most
powerful CPU that Aleph One could have used without scrapping the 16-bit
expansion board on which they have lavished their design and development
effort. Three cheers for it and three more for them − as long everybody
knows what it is and what it is not.
6.5
What about pricing? Well, £595 (+VAT) today gets you the Aleph One 486
PC card with 4Mb RAM. For exactly £54 more, you could possess a complete
25MHz 486SX PC with 4Mb RAM, 64Kb secondary cache, 14“ super VGA monitor
and 80Mb hard disc. Then on top of your £595, you need the PC emulator
1.6 or later so if you haven’t already got it, that’s another 95 quid.
Mike Kinghan, Oxford.
6.5
(OK, if all you really want is a cheap, throw-away PC, then buy one.
What we are looking at here is a way of getting the best of both worlds,
MS-DOS and RISC-OS, in one machine. It’s a fact of life that if you want
the best, you usually have to pay for it!
6.5
Mike also quoted some PCW benchtest results but I have not included them
because I think they can be misleading. This is partly because there is,
as yet, no test for the use of Windows software. I suggest that if you
are being forced to use Windows software, you try out a PC card with
Aleph One’s special Windows driver software. You can, in fact, try-
before-you-buy because Aleph One have some 20MHz 386 cards that they are
prepared to loan to potential customers. Then, remembering that the
25MHz 486 will give you about 2½ times the speed, you can judge whether
this is the right product for you. Contact Aleph One for details. Ed.)
6.5
(Also, look back to Products Available, if you missed it, for some
interesting developments on the PC podule front.)
6.5
•  Archive house style − I changed from ‘k’ to ‘Kb’ and ‘M’ to ‘Mb’
because I was taken to task over the idea that you cannot have a
thousand nothings − you have to have both a multiplier and a unit. Now I
am being taken to task by several readers because I am using ‘Kb’ and
not ‘kb’. The SI multiplier is, apparently, ‘k’ and not ‘K’. I would
have thought it more logical to use K, M, G etc for multipliers and m,
µ, n, p, etc for sub-multipliers. I suppose they will tell me that the
‘K’ of kilobytes will get confused with the ‘K’ of Kelvin but who in
their right mind would think I was writing about Kelvin-bytes?! Do I
really have to change again ? Ed.
6.5
•  Calligraph Arclaser 300-6 − Ever since I got my Archimedes, I had
fancied getting a laser printer − to do justice to the quality of the
fonts and drawfiles. I managed to save up sufficient funds and, with a
little help from my bank manager, was ready to buy one. I wrote to both
Computer Concepts and Calligraph asking for up-to-date information and
asking questions on points I was unsure of. Calligraph replied by return
of post. In the end, Calligraph and I had three exchanges of questions
and answers before I bought my Laser. CC have still not replied.
6.5
I ordered my printer about a month before Archive decided to stock them,
which didn’t exactly please me when I saw the price difference(!) but,
by then, I already had the laser printer and it was working hard for its
keep. I posted my order off on a Friday and the laser printer arrived
Wednesday mid-morning. The instruction books are good and explain
clearly how to set up the printer − though it took me two hours to get
it all done as I did not want to damage anything. The toner and drum are
packed separately and have to be installed. The first time is difficult
but, once you have done it, it does seem a lot easier.
6.5
The toner cartridges are said to last for 7,000 copies, depending on the
coverage of the page. The economics of the printer mean that it should
cost about 20 − 25% as much as a Canon inkjet to run − which is another
reason I went for it. It can be used with Impression, Junior, Ovation,
Edit, Draw(plus), etc using the supplied printer driver. Although it is
only a 300 d.p.i. “engine”, I am very pleased with its printout quality.
6.5
Paper jams have occurred, but they are fairly straight forward to clear.
I’ve found that if the paper is crumpled at all it is better not use it
in the laser printer − use it for your dot-matrix printer or typewriter
instead. Printing of the page takes over the computer for the duration −
it is not possible to print a page then do something else with the
computer − but the wait is quite brief. There is also an Epson LQ
Emulator supplied which allows listing of programs or simple printouts
from other programs.
6.5
Using the Arclaser with applications such as Impression or Draw could
not be simpler. Just create your masterpiece then either follow the menu
structure to the print option or press <print> and that’s it!
6.5
I’ve now got RISC-OS 3.1 which comes with Trinity, Homerton and Corpus
built in the new ROMs, and the improvement in preparation times is quite
impressive.
6.5
Having upgraded from a BBC ‘B’ with Wordwise Plus to the Archimedes,
finally with a laser and Impression, I now find it much easier than even
Wordwise on a dot-matrix printer. Highly impressed!  David Shepherdson,
Ilkley.
6.5
•  Computer waste? − Do you ever think about the waste when you discard
your empty toner cartridges? Con-Serv have recently started a “Toner
Recycling” scheme. Consumers send their toner cartridges back and for
every thirty that they receive, Con-Serv will buy an acre of threatened
rain forest.
6.5
Con-Serv are supporting the “Programme for Belize”, an environmental
charity who are working with the Belizean government on a program to
secure 250,000 acres of tropical rain forest for eco-development.
6.5
Because the cartridges are recycled (i.e. with new toner) they are also
cheaper than normal cartridges. Con-Serv give a one year immediate
refund/replace/repair guarantee on all of their products which include
printer ribbons and inkjet cartridges amongst other recycleable
consumables. They can be contacted on 0734−886600. Alternatively, return
your cartridges to us so that we can send them in bulk as Con-Serv have
provided us with reply-paid envelopes.
6.5
•  Omar Sharif’s Bridge − I found John Wallace’s article good reading
(Archive 6.4 p63). I agree that for £30 you should get some Archimedes-
specific instructions. However, what John hasn’t discovered is that if
you move the mouse to the top of the screen then press <menu>, you get
‘drop-down’ menus. These include, mercifully, the ability to turn off
the ‘That was not quite right’ comments. It also allows you to leave the
game or to pass over boring deals. I find the program very addictive
though it is better at playing the cards than at bidding.  Neil Dunford,
Walton-on-Thames.
6.5
Cain Hunt also discovered about these menus (but says you can click with
<select> to get them). He notes that it tells you about these menus in
the PC documentation but since the interface is so different from the
normal Archimedes user interface, Krisalis really should have put in
some Archimedes documentation. He also says...
6.5
You can have a ‘partial’ speech option where Omar tells you the
contract, who is to lead, etc but without the banal comments. The menus
allow you to skip to the next hand (perhaps looking for better cards) or
back to the main menu. You don’t seem to be able to change the bidding
system without re-loading the game.
6.5
The bidding and playing algorithms don’t cheat! i.e. you can upset their
communication in the bidding or try a finesse − whereas some bridge
computers ‘know where the cards are’. As an average player, I quite
enjoy the program since it often bids aggressively and does some vicious
card play.  Cain Hunt, Cambridge.
6.5
•  PCs again − I would like to reply to Eddie Lord’s comment in Archive
6.3 p43 on PCs and the “industry standard”. Here in Cyprus, the only
Acorn dealer we have doesn’t even keep Acorn machines in stock, but has
lots of PCs. Purchasing an Acorn machine requires him to make a call to
Lindis in UK and then we wait for two or three months until a machine
arrives. I could buy a top-of-the-range 486 complete with loads of
bundled pirated software, Windows 3.1, FoxPro, etc, for £600 or less. As
a teacher of IT, I would though, dispute the claim that PCs are the
“Industry Standard”, and dismiss it as a self perpetuating myth.
Firstly, what is meant by a standard? Is there, for example, a standard
car? A computer is merely a machine designed to do a job. You would not,
after all, enter a Land Rover into a Formula 1 race.
6.5
Acorn produces machines aimed at specialist markets. Education is one of
these, and the headmaster of Mr Lord’s son’s school does not appear to
know what he is talking about. IT is about concepts and ideas which
apply to all makes of computer. As for teaching a “standard”, what will
be the “standard” in the “big wide world” when Lord Jnr leaves school? I
very much doubt if it will be MS-DOS based.
6.5
Eddie Lord bought an Archimedes several years ago but he does not state
the model. At my school we have fourteen A310s and several other later
models of Archimedes including A5000s and an A540. Only one A310 has
ever died on us − the rest soldier on despite the lack of Cyprus-based
support. To upgrade one would cost £200 or less for an ARM3, £50 for
RISC-OS 3 and about £100 for extra RAM. A VIDC Enhancer would add about
another £30. This would bring any one of my five year old A310s up to
scratch for a model investment. How easy would it be to upgrade a five
year old PC in a similar manner? One might argue that it would not be
worth it as it would be as cheap to replace the machine − but then that
is what the consumer society is all about. That is another debate
entirely and one that many people would dismiss as naive or irrelevant,
conserving resources is itself a factor that needs to be taken into
account, especially when educating the young.
6.5
Finally, the cost of software must itself be commented on. Though, as
stated earlier, I have access to unlimited pirated software, sold over
the counter by all dealers here (Windows 3.1 for £15 for example), I
still stick to original Archimedes material. Cost in a more honest
country must be a major factor, especially for home users and education.
I wonder if the “people” with whom Eddie works use original software...
Simon Beaton, Cyprus.
6.5
•  Questions you always wanted to ask (but never dared). I had a letter
recently from a subscriber who said he was confused about the terms
‘ARM3’ and ‘RISC-OS3’. He used to think they meant the same, so could I
explain them for him? My first reaction was amazement that someone
should not know the difference − but then I realised what an unreason
able attitude that was. If someone had just started using Archimedes
machines, why should they know the difference. In case there are others
with the same question in their minds, here is the answer I gave...
6.5
The ARM chip is the processor at the heart of the Archimedes computers
and RISC-OS is the operating system − a whole series of computer
programs which do the “house-keeping” for the computer − running the
desktop, etc. The ARM3 is the latest high-speed version of the ARM chip
and RISC-OS 3 is the latest version of the operating system. They are
both acronyms: ARM = Acorn RISC Machine, (where RISC = Reduced Instruc
tion Set Computer) and RISC-OS = RISC Operating System.
6.5
If you have questions you always wanted to ask and never dared because
they seemed too simple, please ask them and we will answer them in the
magazine − perhaps that’s one answer to my plea for a Beginners’ Column.
6.5
By the way, before you ask, let me try to explain RISC − Reduced
Instruction Set Computer... The trend in computing has always been to
make more and more complex processors that can do more and more complex
things with just a single instruction. However, some clever person (I’ve
no idea who, sorry) looked at the way processors were being used and
found that 99.9% of the time these complex processors were using the
simple instructions. They therefore decided to see what would happen if
they made simpler processors instead. If they are simpler, they can be
cheaper to make and they can run faster. The way it has turned out,
because of the way Roger Wilson and Co designed them, they are also
easier to program. (A bit over-simplified, Roger, sorry... )
6.5
If anyone else has things they want explaining or is prepared to send in
explanations of things that they once found confusing, we’d be happy to
hear from you. Ed.
6.5
•  SparkFS/ArcFS − I have recently received an upgraded version of
SparkFS (1.18) from David Pilling in response to my review. In this
version, he has fixed a number of bugs and added some features. He also
pointed out a couple of errors that I failed to spot when checking the
copy.
6.5
Firstly my errors, I mentioned that SparkFS can handle Mac style
McStuffit archives. There is no such thing − in fact, the McStuffit
module handles the following Mac formats, Packit, Stuffit and Compactor.
When describing the DES encryption mechanism an extra A slipped itself
into NSA (=National Security Agency) and turned it into NASA. When
describing the operation of ArcFS2, I stated that archives were not
opened automatically when created. This, of course, depends upon a
setting in the preferences window which I rather glossed over.
6.5
Now the improvements, SparkFS now correctly recognises ArcFS archives
and provides conversion facilities to and from this format along with
the others already available, I’ve checked it and it seems to work OK.
There is an auto quit option which loads the application and then quits
leaving the modules active − useful for saving space. Improvements have
been made to the LZH and Zip modules. In particular, Zip Deflate is
supported and, at 16 bits, this promises the fastest and (depending on
source code) greatest compression of all the options. SparkFS now
supports the OS3 image filing system, this means that File Archives are
effectively treated as directories within the base FS (ADFS, IDEFS,
etc), e.g. instead of
6.5
SparkFS#ADFS##Winnie.$.archive.
6.5
file
6.5
we get
6.5
ADFS::Winnie.$.archive.file
6.5
which is much friendlier. I hear rumours that ArcFS2 also now supports
this option but have no first hand information, having had no feedback
from Mark Smith since the review.
6.5
As is usual with DP software, upgrades are available by returning the
original disc with return postage paid.  Tim Nicholson, Cranleigh.  A
6.5

6.5
Programming the WIMP (continued)
6.5
David Ramsden
6.5
This article is a follow-on from the ‘Creating a RISC-OS Application’
series written by Darren Sillett for Archive (4.8 p40, 4.10 p52, 4.12
p41 and 5.5 p49).
6.5
I was recently programming the WIMP for my CrossWord application using
this series in Archive as a basis and, in the process, added new
procedures and functions to the WimpLib Basic library which are
described below.
6.5
Menu procedures and functions
6.5
There are several new procedures and functions available as follows :
6.5
PROCadd_indirected_menu_buffer(menu%,  pos%, string%,length%,valid%)
6.5
This procedure gives an easy means of adding a string buffer to a
writeable menu item created using FNcreate_menu. The parameters passed
are the menu handle, the menu item position, an area to hold the string
and its size (created using a DIM, e.g. DIM save% 40 would give a 40
character long writeable entry for holding a save filename). Finally
valid% allows you to specify the validation string for the writeable
entry. Use -1 if you do not know anything about validation strings.
6.5
PROCcolour_menu_item(menu%,pos%, foreground%, background%)
6.5
By using this procedure a menu can be given a coloured effect in place
of the default black text on white background. Foreground% and
background% are numbers between 0 and 15 which correspond to the colours
shown when you click the !Palette icon on the iconbar.
6.5
FNcreate_colour_bar
6.5
Calling this function will create a colour bar as seen in !Paint,
!FormEd, etc for use in your own application.
6.5
Icon procedures and functions
6.5
The extra facilities available are both status setting and also status
returning procedures and functions.
6.5
PROCicon_flag_set(window%,icon%,bit%)
6.5
This will set the required bit in the icon’s status flags. So, for
example, sending bit%=2 would set the icon’s border.
6.5
PROCicon_flag_clear(window%,icon%,bit%)
6.5
This procedure is the reverse of the previous one.
6.5
FNicon_flag_check(window%,icon%,bit%)
6.5
This function will return a value of TRUE if the specified icon flag is
set and FALSE otherwise.
6.5
PROCicon_redraw(window%,icon%)
6.5
Calling this procedure will cause the icon to be redrawn and hence
reflect any change to its contents.
6.5
PROCicon_foreground_colour(window%,icon%, colour%)
6.5
This procedure changes the colour of the icon to that specified by
colour% which should be a number between 0 and 15 as with the menu
colour set.
6.5
PROCicon_background_set(window%,icon%, colour%)
6.5
This is as above but for background colour.
6.5
Window functions
6.5
The functions in this group must be called by <window_handle%>=FN as it
is necessary to delete and then re-create a window to alter its flags.
6.5
FNwindow_colour_set(window%,part%,colour%)
6.5
The part% variable corresponds to the byte controlling the colour in the
window’s definition block. For example, 34 is the work area foreground
byte.
6.5
FNwindow_flag_set(window%,bit%,flag%)
6.5
This call will alter the window status flags. If flag% = TRUE then the
flag will be set. Conversely, when flag% = FALSE the flag will be
cleared.
6.5
And finally...
6.5
Finally, there is one further new function which does not come into any
of the above categories. Its purpose is to create the familiar message
window containing a warning that you have unsaved data, for example, and
do you really want to quit.
6.5
FNquery(message$,title$)
6.5
The message is the warning you wish to issue and the title is the string
for the window title e.g. “Warning from !CardEd”. The value returned
depends on whether the OK or cancel box was clicked in response to the
query. The value returned will be 1 if OK was selected and 2 if the
cancel box was clicked.
6.5

6.5
DEF FNquery(message$,title$)
6.5
!wimp_block% = 0
6.5
$(wimp_block%+4) = message$ + CHR$(0)
6.5
SYS “Wimp_ReportError”,wimp_block%, 19,title$+CHR$(0) TO ,click%
6.5
= click%
6.5

6.5
DEF PROCadd_indirected_menu_buffer (menu%,pos%,string%,length%
6.5
,valid%)
6.5
LOCAL buffer%
6.5
DIM buffer% 12
6.5
buffer%!0 = string%
6.5
buffer%!4 = valid%
6.5
buffer%!8 = length%
6.5
menu%!(28+24*(pos%-1)) = &84
6.5
menu%!(36+24*(pos%-1)) = &7000101
6.5
menu%!(40+24*(pos%-1)) = buffer%!0
6.5
menu%!(44+24*(pos%-1)) = buffer%!4
6.5
menu%!(48+24*(pos%-1)) = buffer%!8
6.5
ENDPROC
6.5

6.5
DEF PROCcolour_menu_item(menu%, position%,foreground%,background%)
6.5
menu%?(39 + 24*(position%-1)) = foreground%  OR  background%<<4
6.5
ENDPROC
6.5

6.5
DEF PROCicon_foreground_set(window%,
6.5
icon%,foreground%)
6.5
wimp_block%!0  = window%
6.5
wimp_block%!4  = icon%
6.5
wimp_block%!8  = 0
6.5
wimp_block%!12 = 0
6.5
wimp_block%?11 = foreground%
6.5
wimp_block%?15 = 15
6.5
SYS “Wimp_SetIconState”,,wimp_block%
6.5
ENDPROC
6.5

6.5
DEF PROCicon_background_set(window%, icon%,background%)
6.5
wimp_block%!0  = window%
6.5
wimp_block%!4  = icon%
6.5
wimp_block%!8  = 0
6.5
wimp_block%!12 = 0
6.5
wimp_block%?11 = background% << 4
6.5
wimp_block%?15 = 240
6.5
SYS “Wimp_SetIconState”,,wimp_block%
6.5
ENDPROC
6.5

6.5
DEF FNicon_flag_check(window%,icon% ,shift%)
6.5
LOCAL result%
6.5
wimp_block%!0 = window%
6.5
wimp_block%!4 = icon%
6.5
SYS “Wimp_GetIconState”,,wimp_block%
6.5
IF wimp_block%!24 AND 1 << shift% THEN
6.5
    result% = TRUE
6.5
  ELSE
6.5
    result% = FALSE
6.5
ENDIF
6.5
= result%
6.5

6.5
DEF PROCicon_flag_clear(window%,icon% ,shift%)
6.5
wimp_block%!0  = window%
6.5
wimp_block%!4  = icon%
6.5
wimp_block%!8  = 0
6.5
wimp_block%!12 = 1 << shift%
6.5
SYS “Wimp_SetIconState”,,wimp_block%
6.5
ENDPROC
6.5

6.5
DEF PROCicon_flag_set(window%,icon% ,shift%)
6.5
wimp_block%!0  = window%
6.5
wimp_block%!4  = icon%
6.5
wimp_block%!8  = 1 << shift%
6.5
wimp_block%!12 = 1 << shift%
6.5
SYS “Wimp_SetIconState”,,wimp_block%
6.5
ENDPROC
6.5

6.5
DEF FNcreate_colour_bar
6.5
LOCAL colour_bar%,loop%
6.5
colour_bar% = FNcreate_menu(“Colours,0,1,2,3,4,5,
6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15”)
6.5
FOR loop% = 0 TO 3
6.5
  PROCcolour_menu_item(colour_bar%, loop%+1,7,loop%)
6.5
NEXT
6.5
FOR loop% = 4 TO 8
6.5
  PROCcolour_menu_item(colour_bar%, loop%+1,1,loop%)
6.5
NEXT
6.5
PROCcolour_menu_item(colour_bar%, 10,7,9)
6.5
PROCcolour_menu_item(colour_bar%,11 ,1,10)
6.5
PROCcolour_menu_item(colour_bar%,12 ,1,11)
6.5
PROCcolour_menu_item(colour_bar%,13 ,7,12)
6.5
PROCcolour_menu_item(colour_bar%,14 ,1,13)
6.5
PROCcolour_menu_item(colour_bar%,15 ,7,14)
6.5
PROCcolour_menu_item(colour_bar%,16 ,7,15)
6.5
FOR loop% = 36 TO 408 STEP 24
6.5
    colour_bar%?loop% = colour_bar%? loop% OR 8
6.5
NEXT
6.5
= colour_bar%
6.5

6.5
DEF PROCicon_redraw(window%,icon%)
6.5
wimp_block%!0 = window%
6.5
wimp_block%!4 = icon%
6.5
SYS “Wimp_GetIconState”,,wimp_block%
6.5
SYS “Wimp_ForceRedraw”,wimp_block%!0, wimp_block%!8,wimp_block%!12,
wimp_block%!16,wimp_block%!20
6.5
ENDPROC
6.5

6.5
DEF FNresize_window(window%,x1%,y1% ,x2%,y2%)
6.5
wimp_block%!0 = window%
6.5
SYS “Wimp_GetWindowInfo”,,wimp_ block%
6.5
SYS “Wimp_DeleteWindow”,,wimp_block%
6.5
wimp_block%!4  = x1%
6.5
wimp_block%!8  = y1%
6.5
wimp_block%!12 = x2%
6.5
wimp_block%!16 = y2%
6.5
SYS “Wimp_CreateWindow”,,wimp_block% +4 TO wimp_block%!0
6.5
SYS “Wimp_OpenWindow”,,wimp_block%
6.5
= !wimp_block%
6.5

6.5
DEF FNwindow_colour_set(window%,part% ,colour%)
6.5
wimp_block%!0 = window%
6.5
SYS “Wimp_GetWindowInfo”,,wimp_ block%
6.5
SYS “Wimp_DeleteWindow”,,wimp_block%
6.5
wimp_block%?part% = colour%
6.5
SYS “Wimp_CreateWindow”,,wimp_block% +4 TO wimp_block%!0
6.5
SYS “Wimp_OpenWindow”,,wimp_block%
6.5
= !wimp_block%
6.5

6.5
DEF FNwindow_flag_set(window%,flag% ,shift%)
6.5
!wimp_block% = window%
6.5
SYS “Wimp_GetWindowInfo”,,wimp_ block%
6.5
SYS “Wimp_DeleteWindow”,,wimp_block%
6.5
wimp_block%!28 = wimp_block%!28  OR  1<<shift%
6.5
IF NOT flag% wimp_block%!28 = wimp_ block%!28  EOR  1<<  shift%
6.5
SYS “Wimp_CreateWindow”,,wimp_block% +4 TO wimp_block%!0
6.5
SYS “Wimp_OpenWindow”,,wimp_block%
6.5
= !wimp_block%  A
6.5

6.5
Music Column
6.5
Stewart Watson
6.5
This month, I will look at two packages − Studio 24Plus from Electro
Music Research and Notate from Longman Logotron.
6.5
Studio 24 Plus version 3
6.5
Studio 24 has been around for some years now − in fact, almost as long
as the Archimedes. Some of the early versions were rather rough and
primitive, but so were the early Archimedes word processors and document
processors. Studio 24 Plus has undergone many transformations during the
intervening years until we reach the latest version 3.0b, which is dated
9th September 92.
6.5
Education
6.5
EMR are well known for their work in education, and sometimes this must
be a mixed blessing, as education software is often visualised by those
who have only seen early versions of BBC B programs as being of
indifferent quality. Many of the programs now written for education are
of an extremely high, professional standard and can happily compete with
those programs written for business use.
6.5
Protection
6.5
Rather than a dreaded dongle, EMR have gone for a key-disc protection
policy. When the program is first loaded, you are required to type in
your name and reference number, which is then encoded on the program
disc. When the program is subsequently loaded, a key-disc must be
inserted in drive 0 before the program will run, from hard disc or
floppy disc.
6.5
Robustness
6.5
A sequencer is an extremely complicated piece of software and early
versions of Studio 24 Plus suffered from occasional hang-ups which,
according to Sod’s law, always seemed to happen at the most inconvenient
moments. I have used this latest version for several weeks now, at least
four or five hours every day, and have had absolutely no trouble at all.
6.5
Pattern v Track-based
6.5
Studio 24 Plus is a pattern-based sequencer. That means that you record
pieces of music in chunks (patterns) and then chain the patterns
together to form a song. Each pattern can have its own time signature,
key signature, etc, and when chained together, can be transposed or
cropped as required. A track-based sequencer, on the other hand, works
in a similar manner to a multi-track recorder − you build up your piece
by recording on long parallel tracks. A pattern-based sequencer can be
used as as a track-based sequencer by simply using one pattern − but
remember to save your composition as a song from the files window or you
will lose several of your file attributes like remote keyboard attrib
utes, title, etc.
6.5
Features
6.5
New features in version 3 include CD-ROM control, up to 999 parallel
reels of 24 tracks, real-time mixing and reverb control from the mixing
desk, real-time tempo input, improved scoring page, direct link to
Scorewriter, MIDI instrument lists and drum lists including MIDI mapping
functions, a clipboard track maker, etc. There are too many features to
cover in one article, so I will concentrate on certain features each
month, hopefully in a bit more depth, starting with the most obviously
useful.
6.5
!S24_SetUp
6.5
On the system disc next to the main application directory, !S24_V3, is
another directory named !S24_SetUp, the contents of which are automati
cally loaded on starting up the program. It is well worth customising
the contents of !S24_SetUp sub-directory, UserFiles, to suit the
equipment you use most frequently.
6.5
MIDI instrument list
6.5
In the UserFiles directory, you will find several files including one or
two MIDI lists which you can edit to your own requirements. To do this,
load Studio 24 Plus then <shift-f3> to bring up the default MIDI
instrument list. Then alter the voice preset voices and numbers to your
own keyboard set up, rename it and save it into the !S24_SetUp UserFiles
directory. Your own list will now be loaded automatically the next time
you load the program. You can keep, or remove, unwanted instrument lists
if you wish but it is tidier to remove them from the UserFiles direc
tory.  Each time you wish to insert a voice change, all you need to do
is to <shift-f3>, scroll through the MIDI list, then <select> when the
required voice is highlighted. This saves having to memorise voice
numbers or having to consult manuals for voice numbers.
6.5
Mapping
6.5
An extremely useful feature of the MIDI instrument list function is that
you can remap one MIDI list to another automatically. This is useful if
you move files from one instrumental setup to another, or if you
exchange files with friends with different sound equipment. You need a
copy of the instrument list from the person who prepared the music file.
To each voice name and number on this list you add your own instruments
with voice numbers. If you now change <off> to <on> at the top middle of
the instrument list, all the original voices will be remapped to your
own setup. This takes a bit of time to set up, but the long term time
saving can be colossal.
6.5
Drum list
6.5
You can perform exactly the same operations to customise and remap drum
lists. Once again, there are one or two examples supplied and I have
included a couple more for inclusion on the monthly program disc.
6.5
Metronome
6.5
I now set the metronome channel to the rhythm channel and set the voices
to bass drum for beat one and snare drum for the other beats. I then
sequence all the melodic parts before recording the rhythm. This I find
easier than either recording the rhythm first, or using a short looped
rhythm pattern which has later to be deleted.
6.5
Conclusion
6.5
Since the early years of the existence of the Archimedes. EMR has had
the music field virtually to themselves but now other companies, Clares
and Longman Logotron in particular, are also producing high quality
music software. Clares are due to produce a major new sequencer,
Serenade, and it will be interesting to see how it compares with Studio
24 Plus. However, EMR have produced, in my opinion, one of the major
software packages for the Archimedes and Studio 24 Plus version 3
compares favourably with any similar product for any machine, having an
enormous number of editing features and facilities for customising the
set-up procedure to the user’s own requirements.
6.5
Studio 24 plus V3 is available from Electro-Music Research for £249
+VAT. An upgrade from Studio 24 plus Version 1 costs £140 +VAT.
Upgrading from Version 2 depends upon which version of version 2 you
have: from version 2a-e costs £89.01 +VAT, from version 2 f-h costs
£68.91 +VAT and from version 2j costs £60.10 +VAT. If you are not sure
which version you have, load Studio24 and click <menu> then follow the
info arrow − your version number will appear in the window.
6.5
Notate version 1.2
6.5
Longman Logotron have just released an updated version of their
excellent music notation program Notate. For a review of Notate version
1, see Archive 5.4 p37. The new version has several new features, the
most important of which is probably real and step-time input, from a
screen keyboard or from a music keyboard via a midi interface. Other
features include endless loops, increased resolution, improved MIDI file
handling and extra options in choices dialogues.
6.5
Record setup
6.5
The record setup has a comprehensive list of options. Input can be in
real-time or step-time, from a MIDI keyboard on any channel or from a
keyboard which appears on the screen in any one of five sizes. The
metronome can be an internal voice, pitched or unpitched, or any MIDI
note on any MIDI channel.
6.5
Options
6.5
One very useful features is to be found under options <f10>, where you
can specify the removal of either long or short rests. Anyone who has
ever done any music notation from real time input will have noticed that
none of us play as accurately as we think we do − and many notes get
slightly clipped. This feature allows you to remove all the short rests
that are inserted to fill the gaps we leave − or, in extreme cases, to
remove all rests.
6.5
Summary
6.5
As a straight-forward notation package, Notate has been very well
thought out. There are just one or two omissions which I feel are worth
noting. The excellent chord facility will only allow one chord per bar.
I find this limiting. Also, there are no first and second time bar or
D.C. or D.S. facilities. If you can live with these minor limitations, I
can thoroughly recommend Notate as an extremely powerful and user-
friendly program.  A
6.5

6.5
Micro Trader
6.5
Wallace Butt
6.5
I first had a version of Micro Trader, an Accountancy Package, two years
ago. At that time, it was a translation of a BBC Micro version. It was
then rewritten and made RISC-OS compatible. Since then it has been
greatly improved and I understand that the purchasers of the RISC-OS
program have since received a free upgrade. Version 1.18a, which is the
subject of this review, is satisfactory.
6.5
Editing is very similar to !Edit which can also be used effectively from
within the program. The designated date is entered automatically but
easily altered as needed. Money entries are, as usual, pound based, i.e.
you put in the decimal point, if necessary, otherwise round pounds are
assumed.
6.5
The package is constructed in modules, which are sold separately. If you
use an accountancy package just to control your purchases, or to control
your credit sales, either or both of these modules are useable without
using the module for the nominal ledger.
6.5
Instructions
6.5
The instructions are in a loose-leaf, hard-bound handbook which makes
for easy updating.  They are indexed by sections with card interleaves
which assist in finding your way around. It is likely, however, that
once you have become familiar with the package, reference to the well-
illustrated handbook will be infrequent.
6.5
Purchase ledgers
6.5
The setting up of records for suppliers with whom you have a credit
account, or with whom you deal regularly, is simple. A code is set up
which is illustrated in the handbook by examples using numbers. I prefer
to use a mnemonic, such as BT for British Telecom or ARC for Archive.
However, if you choose this option, I suggest, because of case sensitiv
ity, you will find it easier to keep the CapsLock on. The same screen
gives the address of the supplier, details of the main settlement
discount, together with the settlement period, the total balance and the
Aged Debts, split into the current amounts and those outstanding for
one, two and three-or-more months.
6.5
The instructions for completing the record of invoices received are easy
to follow and are in a logical sequence. If you do not know the account
code, there are browse and find facilities. Both the code and the name
of the account are shown on the screen. Until you accept the details on
the screen as being correct, you can go back and adjust any entries you
have made. There is a warning given to <return> on the account code,
after you are satisfied that you have the correct account shown on the
screen. If you are using a stock control module, the goods being sold
can be entered by using the stock code.
6.5
I suggest to my clients that they number invoices they receive consecu
tively and file them in that order. To assist towards that end, I would
have liked an automatic numbering of invoices received here. (The author
points out that a new batch number is provided each day and says that
most of his customers have found that sufficient.) I would also like a
facility for entering the VAT inclusive amount of an invoice and I
understand that this is being considered for a possible future upgrade.
However, as the majority of goods supplied on credit are usually shown
as Net and VAT, this may not be a problem. There are adequate facilities
for recording discounts, both for each line of an order and for early
settlement which is set separately for each supplier. There is also
provision for recording the immediate payment of the invoice by cash,
cheque or direct debit.
6.5
If you wish to allocate the contents of an invoice to more than one
Nominal Account, it is necessary to split the invoice and enter each
part separately.
6.5
Payments to settle invoices not cleared at the time of entry of the
invoice, involves entering the amount being paid and any discount
claimed. Payments are allocated either to the cash account or to the
main bank account, even if you have more than one bank account set up.
There is no provision for allocating payment to a particular invoice.
You can record the receipt of cash from a customer with whom you have an
account, a facility which is not catered for in some other packages.
6.5
There is provision for a “Raise statement” routine which ensures
“...that any invoices in the current month and those from last month
will always be available on disc, while overdue items will be included
on a statement, printed out by the period end (routine), and then
removed from the disc. It is then up to the user to check that any
overdue accounts receive proper attention.
6.5
Detailed reports of the current position of any account can be viewed on
the screen and, if required, printed out by any printer driver which has
been loaded on the iconbar.
6.5
Credit notes
6.5
These are dealt with very similarly to invoices, any differences being
adequately documented.
6.5
Non account purchases
6.5
These would normally be dealt with from the Nominal Ledger cash expenses
program in the Nominal Accounts Module. This allows you to pay for goods
and services bought by cash or cheque from sources with whom you do not
hold an account. If you are not using a nominal ledger module, I suggest
you create an account called “Sundry Suppliers” and treat these
purchases as if they were a normal account.
6.5
VAT
6.5
There are provisions for ten VAT rates which is adequate to separate
zero rated, non-vatable transactions, vatable goods purchased from a
non-VAT registered source and EEC suppliers. This still leaves room for
multiple VAT rates should this ever become necessary.
6.5
If you are not registered for VAT, the default VAT code is “0” which is
initially set at Nil VAT, thus saving you having to tell the program
separately that every item you buy, is to be treated as a non-VAT item.
6.5
From 1st January 1993 it is intended that ‘Micro-Trader’ will comply
with all the new VAT requirements for the single market including the
new layout of the VAT Return and printing the compulsory EC Sales
Listing (ESL) report. Existing users who need that facility will be able
to obtain an update. There is no provision made for VAT Cash Accounting.
6.5
Alterations
6.5
One feature in this package which most accountancy packages will not
allow, is the use of negative entries. This may raise some eyebrows but,
used carefully, it can be helpful. It is an established practice that
for any machine accounting package to be accepted, alterations of
substance cannot be made without a full record being shown, which is why
there are so many safety nets provided. Mistakes can still occur.
6.5
Consider the following case. You have received goods as follows:- Net
£123.00 + £21.52 VAT and you may find that instead, you have entered and
accepted an invoice for £132.00 + £23.10 VAT. To correct this, you can
prepare a further dummy invoice under the same reference number as the
original (and filed with it) marked “Correction” for £-9.00 and £-1.75
VAT. Your records will be correct for you to pay and the VAT Inspector,
your Accountant, and the Tax Inspector will be able to see what has
happened.
6.5
Sales ledger
6.5
I have dealt with the purchase ledger fully and most of these remarks
apply, with the necessary adjustments, to the sales ledger. Automatic
numbering of sales invoices is available.
6.5
A particular feature of the program is the control which the user has
over Reports and Invoices. For instance, several different invoice
layouts can be used. The description column has word processing
facilities which can be very useful for entering details of the work
done in a service type business. Instructions are also provided as to
how to use your copy of Impression to add that little extra something to
invoices and this facility is available for all reports. I have not used
this facility and therefore cannot comment on it.
6.5
If you are using a nominal ledger, all receipts are posted to the cash
account and then cash and cheques are banked in the usual way from that
account.
6.5
Statements can be printed which show the analysis of amounts outstanding
into current, over one, over two and over three months.
6.5
Nominal ledger
6.5
There has been a very real attempt to take the mystery out of setting up
the nominal ledger and I commend it. If the instructions are carried out
systematically, it is possible for a person who has virtually no
knowledge of accounting principles to set up the system. It will,
however, take time. In the handbook, there are check-lists for setting
up each ledger, as well as period-end and year-end. These check-lists
are well worth using.
6.5
The setting up has been automated. It follows therefore that, if you are
starting from a known position, which you have recorded, you should be
able to set up the nominal ledger. If, however, you are not sure of your
starting position and you want to have the benefit of knowing what you
are spending on your various expenses, I suggest that, with this or any
other system, you should seek professional advice from an accountant for
setting up the nominal ledger.
6.5
Final accounts
6.5
Besides a Trial Balance, the program will generate Final Accounts and a
Balance Sheet from the Nominal Ledger. As supplied, the Trial Balance is
designed to print zero entries. If this is not required, advice on how
to make the alteration is included in the support services, or if you
wish the modification to be made on disc, then this can be done at a
reasonable price. (This service can also be used for reports & invoices
to your own design.)
6.5
Stock control
6.5
This is fully integrated into the system and is automatically updated
for any relevant transactions. There are provisions for movements,
writings off, returns, etc. The use of any stock control system depends
very much on how well and how easily the various items of stock are
identified.
6.5
Payroll module
6.5
This module is still to be released. It is expected to be ready by the
new tax year on 5th April 1993.
6.5
Mailer module
6.5
This can be used as a stand-alone module for address labels or for
sorting your stock records into alphabetical order or mail-shots.
6.5
The database included has twelve fields which is adequate for these
purposes and is sufficient to provide a card index for, say, membership
records of a club. (But please consider the Data Protection Acts.)
6.5
There is a Tutorial, showing how the Database operates.
6.5
Conclusion
6.5
I can recommend this program as being useful to any small business,
providing that business does not wish to use the VAT Cash Accounting
System. Personally, I would have preferred to see standard use of 136
character wide reports, especially for the audit trail, where it is set
so that each entry takes up two lines. (The author tells me that he has
received no request for this modification which takes into account the
fact that most users have an 80 column printer.) I should also have
liked to see the entries consecutively numbered for reference. This does
not, however, affect the user so much as his accountant.
6.5
The program is protected by a code which is supplied in response to a
’phone call and is a number computed according to the name of your
business.
6.5
If you think that you may be interested in any of the items mentioned in
this review, a free demonstration disc is available. This is described
as “A fully working copy of the program, but does not save. It contains
demonstration data files that allow the full facilities of the program
to be seen. It will also print reports using example documents.”
6.5
The cost of Sales Ledger, Purchase Ledger, Nominal Ledger and Stock
Control is £79.75 + VAT each module or £279 + VAT for the complete
package. The Mailer Module is £49.95 + VAT. The cost of the Payroll
Module is to be announced.
6.5
The system comes with 30 days unlimited telephone support. After that,
unlimited telephone support is provided for £34 + VAT per annum.
6.5
The demonstration disc and the program are available from PRES Ltd who
can be contacted on 0276−72046, fax 0276−51427.  A
6.5

6.5
Fonts Workshop − RISC-OS Printer Drivers
6.5
Roger Spooner
6.5
The Archimedes has been blessed with a decent operating system. This
includes the ability for application programs to use all known printers,
without each program catering for each printer. This is done by
communicating with a standard type of ‘printer’ program which produces
output specially suited to its own printer. Each printer then needs only
the correct printer driver, and all software will work with it.
6.5
Despite common rumour (particularly in Risc User magazine) these printer
drivers are not hard to use. I will describe a simple page to print,
including some text and simple graphics.
6.5
SWI commands
6.5
The printer drivers are modules in the operating system. They are loaded
from disc normally and you will probably have one for each type of
printer. All programs communicate with them by the standard OS commands
called SoftWare Interrupts. These allow you to pass small amounts of
information directly, pointers to memory containing more, or to set up a
certain state of affairs in the machine.
6.5
Principles of printing
6.5
The printer driver requires that you perform a number of operations in a
certain order. This basically means describing the page, then it prints
it. I will cover only a brief outline of a simple page and will allow
you to adapt it to your own use. The font manager calls were described
in last month’s article.
6.5
The style of redrawing is intended to be very similar to the window
redrawing style, so it should be easy to produce 100% wysiwyg appli
cations by using the same piece of programming to redraw each.
6.5
The printer driver generally claims all the graphics commands which
would normally draw on screen. This means that you can draw the image
easily − in the same way as drawing the contents of a window.  It also
means that you must not update the screen while the printer driver is
active.
6.5
When sending coloured images to the printer, it is important to use the
ColourTrans module to select a colour. This is done in the example
program, where you use SYS “ColourTrans_SetGCOL”, &BBGGRR00 to choose
the nearest approximation to the colour triplet of Blue, Green and Red.
The number is hexadecimal.
6.5
To multi-task while printing, you can disable the printer driver while
you call Wimp_Poll, but that is beyond the scope of this article.
6.5
To start the printing process, you may like to tell the user the name of
the printer selected. This is helpful in preventing confusion.
6.5
You then claim the printer for your use, to prevent other programs from
getting in the way.
6.5
Next, tell the printer driver that you are starting and describe the
outer limits of the area used. This is often the size of an A4 sheet.
6.5
The printer driver is able to have several different rectangles on the
page, each containing different material. This is not suitable for parts
of the contents of a single page, so the next stage is just a loop. You
keep redrawing the page on the screen, considering some special rules
about colour, until you are told to stop. The printer driver intercepts
all the graphics commands and stores them instead. When you are finished
it makes up the image of the page and prints it.
6.5
Finally, you declare that you will not be talking to the printer any
more.
6.5
The SWIs themselves
6.5
I will describe briefly the SWIs needed for the printer driver but the
best way to understand them is to play with the demonstration program at
the end of the article. I assume use of Basic since that is the easiest
language to demonstrate.
6.5
SYS “PDriver_Info” TO ,,,,n$
6.5
This returns the name of the printer suitable for displaying to the
user.
6.5
SYS “PDriver_SelectJob”,file%, title$+CHR$0 TO oldjob%
6.5
This selects your job, identified by a file handle which is open to
‘printer:’ and tells you what, if any, job was already active.
6.5
SYS “PDriver_GiveRectangle”
6.5
This describes the rectangle you will be using in size and position. It
points to a rather complicated block of memory which is shown in the
example program.
6.5
SYS “PDriver_DrawPage”, copies%, buff%, 0 TO more%,, rectid%
6.5
This tells the printer driver to print copies% of the page you have
described. On return, it describes the rectangle in buff% and tells you
if you need to render the picture any more. The rectangle described in
buff% can be ignored, as can the rectangle id, if doing a simple print
as we will here.
6.5
SYS “PDriver_GetRectangle”,,buff%  TO more%,,rectid%
6.5
This will show that you have finished drawing the page and are willing
to draw it again. The rectangle can be different (e.g. bands going down
a page for a dot-matrix printer) so you can print only the part that is
required if you want to be that careful.
6.5
SYS“PDriver_EndJob”,file%
6.5
This tells the PDriver that you are completely finished. After this you
should close the file to printer: so that other programs can then use
it.
6.5
Real life printers
6.5
Some printers have quirks of their own, e.g. LaserDirect printers prefer
not to do vdu primitives like CIRCLE; they convert it to a Draw module
path of Bezier curves and then draw that. This means that it can be
quite slow, sometimes taking half an hour to print a page. The solution
is to use few circles and more straight lines which convert more
quickly.
6.5
Other problems I came across include the LaserJet driver kicking up a
fuss about the sprite at line 760. If this happens to you, just remove
the line with OS_SpriteOp in.
6.5
The example program
6.5
That covers just about all the words there are, so here is a program to
print a simple page on the paper including some text and graphics. Feel
free to adapt it, with reference to the previous article on displaying
text in outline fonts, to display whatever you want. This includes
lines, filled colours, sprites and text.
6.5
REM > TestPage
6.5
REM © Roger Spooner 10/8/92
6.5
MODE 12
6.5
DIM wb% 1024
6.5
DIM pb% 512
6.5
REM reserved space for general work buffers
6.5
PRINT‘“RISC-OS printer driver demonstration”’
6.5
@%=&0100090A
6.5
maxx%=180*8.4
6.5
REM maxx% is the far right margin.
6.5
REM Calculated using inches
6.5
REM Establish if printer is
6.5
REM available, and exit gracefully if not.
6.5
SYS“XOS_SWINumberFromString”,, “PDriver_Info”,wb%,100 TO ;flags%
6.5
IF (flags% AND 1) THEN PRINT“Printer driver not installed.”:END
6.5
SYS 6,229,0 TO ,oldesc%
6.5
SYS“PDriver_Info” TO ,,,,n$
6.5
PRINT“Printing on your ”;n$
6.5
REM Allow ESCAPE to be pressed
6.5
printer%=OPENOUT(“printer:”)
6.5
IF printer%=0 THEN PRINT“No access to printer”:END
6.5
SYS“Hourglass_On”
6.5
title$=“Test Page”
6.5
SYS“PDriver_SelectJob”,printer%, title$+CHR$0 TO oldjob%
6.5
LOCAL ERROR
6.5
ON ERROR LOCAL RESTORE ERROR:SYS “PDriver_AbortJob”,printer%:
SYS“Hourglass_Smash”: CLOSE#printer%:VDU4,7:
6.5
REPORT:PRINT“ @”;ERL:END
6.5
wb%!0=0:REM left x
6.5
wb%!4=0:REM lower y
6.5
wb%!8=maxx%:REM right x
6.5
wb%!12=2500:REM top y
6.5
wb%!256=1<<16:REM transformation table: fixed point  bytebyte.bytebyte
6.5
wb%!260=0:REM so wb%!256=1. These values just indicate
6.5
 ‘no scaling’
6.5
wb%!264=0
6.5
wb%!268=1<<16
6.5
wb%!512=0
6.5
wb%!516=0
6.5
SYS“PDriver_GiveRectangle”,1,wb%, wb%+256,wb%+512,&FFFFFF00
6.5
REM Described limits of required printing area
6.5
SYS“PDriver_DrawPage”,1,pb%,0,0 TO more%,,rectref%
6.5
REM Finished describing whole page.
6.5
WHILE more%<>0
6.5
REM loop while it wants more
6.5
SYS“Font_FindFont”,,“Homerton.Bold” , 36*16,36*16,0,0 TO fbm%
6.5
SYS“ColourTrans_SetFontColours”, fbm%, &FFFFFF00,&00,0
6.5
SYS“Font_SetFont”,fbm%
6.5
text$=“Test Page”
6.5
SYS“Font_StringWidth”,,text$,1E8, 1E8, -1,1E8 TO ,,xoff%
6.5
SYS“Font_ConverttoOS”,,xoff%,0 TO ,xoff%
6.5
centrex%=(maxx%/2)-(xoff%/2)
6.5
SYS“Font_Paint”,,text$,1<<4, centrex%, 1900
6.5
SYS“Font_LoseFont”,fbm%
6.5
SYS“Font_FindFont”,,“Trinity. Medium.Italic”,14*16,
6.5
14*16,0,0 TO bf%
6.5
SYS“ColourTrans_SetFontColours”,bf% , &FFFFFF00,&00,0
6.5
SYS“Font_SetFont”,bf%
6.5
text$=“for Online Magazine”
6.5
SYS“Font_StringWidth”,,text$,1E8 ,1E8, -1,1E8 TO ,,xoff%
6.5
SYS“Font_ConverttoOS”,,xoff%,0 TO ,xoff%
6.5
centrex%=(maxx%/2)-(xoff%/2)
6.5
FOR c%=&7F TO &FF STEP 4
6.5
SYS“ColourTrans_SetGCOL”,(c%<<24) OR (c%<<16) OR (c%<<8)
6.5
RECTANGLE FILL 400,c%*10-1080, maxx%-800,40
6.5
NEXT
6.5
SYS“ColourTrans_SetGCOL”,&00000000
6.5
RECTANGLE 400,190,maxx%-800,1320
6.5
SYS“ColourTrans_SetGCOL”,&FFFFFF00
6.5
RECTANGLE FILL centrex%-50,1480, xoff%+100,60
6.5
SYS“Font_Paint”,,text$,1<<4, centrex%, 1500
6.5
text$=“by Roger Spooner”
6.5
SYS“Font_StringWidth”,,text$,1E8, 1E8, -1,1E8 TO ,,xoff%
6.5
SYS“Font_ConverttoOS”,,xoff%,0 TO ,xoff%
6.5
centrex%=(maxx%/2)-(xoff%/2)
6.5
SYS“Font_Paint”,,text$,1<<4, centrex%,800
6.5
SYS“Font_LoseFont”,bf%
6.5
SYS“Wimp_BaseOfSprites” TO romsprites%
6.5
wb%!0=1
6.5
wb%!4=1
6.5
wb%!8=1
6.5
wb%!12=1
6.5
SYS“OS_SpriteOp”,256+52,romsprites% ,“error”,maxx%/2-34,1650,0,wb%,0
6.5
REM Now find out if more renderings are required.
6.5
SYS“PDriver_GetRectangle”,,pb% TO more%,,rectref%
6.5
ENDWHILE
6.5
REM Close various links and exit.
6.5
SYS“PDriver_EndJob”,printer%
6.5
RESTORE ERROR
6.5
SYS 6,229,oldesc%
6.5
CLOSE#printer%
6.5
PRINT“Finished.”
6.5
SYS“Hourglass_Off”
6.5
END  A
6.5

6.5
Desktop Basic Editor and DeskEdit 2
6.5
Peter Jennings
6.5
When Risc Developments (Beebug) brought out the first version of
DeskEdit, in September 1991, it took over the functions of Edit, the
Basic Editor and a C editor, with added trimmings, in one application.
Further improvements followed over the next year to culminate in the
greatly enhanced DeskEdit 2 now on offer. Coinciding with this is some
new software from 4mation, DBEdit (Desktop Basic Editor), which appears
to cover much of the same ground and is in the same price range. So how
do they compare?
6.5
There has already been a full review of DeskEdit in Archive 5.4 p63
which is worth reading by anyone unfamiliar with this utility. The
reviewer then called it “a wonderful piece of software... ...that
deserves to be on everyone’s iconbar”. In this review, I will concen
trate on the enhanced version’s new features.
6.5
DeskEdit 2.02
6.5
DeskEdit (version 2.02) costs £31.95 including VAT with a site licence
costing £146.88. Earlier versions can be upgraded for £9.95 and the
return of the old disc. It comes with a copy of Acorn’s Find application
(a stand-alone multi-file text finder), on a single unprotected disc in
a stiff, plastic covered, folder. Packed with it are an excellent new
71-page manual, a folded double-sided A4 size quick reference card, a
booklet containing a page of release notes and four more pages detailing
the new features, and the largest function key strip I have ever seen.
This provides five lines of commands for each key by using the function
keys with <escape>, as well as with the more usual combinations of
<shift> and <ctrl>. It is extended to include <print>, which makes it
too big to go into the plastic holder fitted on the earlier Archimedes
models. It can be trimmed at the bottom and stuck into a spiral-bound
keystrip pad and, although it protrudes at the right, it will not get in
the way of the other strips if it is put on the lowest page.
6.5
The use of <escape>, which has also been teamed with various other keys,
helps to make up a bewildering number of combinations which are far too
many to be learned. In time, some of the more frequently used ones will
stick in the memory but getting to grips with this software will mean
much searching of the large folded reference card and the 61 entries on
the outsize f-key strip. This is just a comment − not a complaint that
the software has too many features!
6.5
Built-in toolkit
6.5
The most notable addition to the earlier versions is a built-in toolkit
with eleven new options. These include a number of Basic program
utilities, among them a renumber feature which will also perform a
partial renumbering on a marked section, a customisable indenter which
automatically inserts spaces after IF-THEN, FOR-NEXT and similar
structures, or at the start of each line if Listo 1 is selected, and a
facility to expand standard Basic V abbreviations as you type them in.
There are also a procedures and functions lister, a programmer’s
calculator, multi-purpose browsers and a complete help file of Basic
keywords. Empty help files are provided for C, which can have the Acorn
help data copied in, and for text. All three files can be customised to
have the user’s own notes and reminders added.
6.5
The facilities provided by the browsers take up all five combinations of
<f2>. Each DeskEdit window can have up to two browser windows displaying
lists of finds, shown as complete lines with the find string highlighted
in red. Clicking on any line in the browser window will take the caret
to the corresponding string in the source. Rather oddly, if the find
string appears more than once in a line, the line is repeated that
number of times in the browser window, each with a different occurrence
highlighted.
6.5
Throwback implemented
6.5
Throwback is now implemented and this allows certain tools and utilities
to pass messages which DeskEdit displays in a special window. Acorn’s
DDE release C compiler, the ARM assembler and the Find application all
make use of it. Clicking on a line in the throwback display will
automatically locate the file concerned, load it into DeskEdit if it is
not already there and put the caret on the appropriate line.
6.5
An optional extended save feature makes it possible to save page
settings and other information automatically with the file. When the
file is reloaded, it will then be set up exactly as you left it, with
the cursor in the same position and complete with wordwrap, insert or
overtype, tabs, format width, auto indent and markers. The Undo buffer
can also be saved, if required, making it possible to check through
everything you did during the previous editing session.
6.5
Backup saves, which can be the extended type, can now be made to a
different disc, on another drive, without opening a filer window or
changing the file’s original pathname.
6.5
DBEdit
6.5
4Mation’s DBEdit, which costs £35.25 including VAT (£33 from Archive),
and with no extra charge for a site licence, also comes on a single disc
but this time is protected. It is necessary to initialise the disc by
entering the owner’s name before it can be installed on a hard disc or
otherwise copied. Packed with it, in a plastic folder, are a clearly
written and well illustrated 38-page manual, a registration card and a
“feedback” form inviting comments and suggestions from users. A function
key strip is not included although the F keys are used and are listed in
the manual. Two additional utilities are supplied: QuickWord, which
provides a window of Basic commands which can be clicked on to insert
individual commands into a program, and SetCol which inserts the correct
colour command for any shade clicked on in a multi-coloured window.
These are also practical illustrations of how other programs can be made
to communicate with DBEdit, which is explained in the manual.
6.5
When comparing DBEdit with DeskEdit the first, superficial, similarity
noticed is the design of the desktop icons. Both have a scroll with a
diagonal pencil and the letter “B”. In fact, the letter varies on the
DeskEdit icon according the the type of file loaded and this reflects
the big difference between the two programs. DBEdit was designed
specifically for editing Basic programs. It was initially created to
satisfy the requirements of 4Mation’s team of programmers in New
Zealand, who wanted a Basic editor which was both small and fast. The
DBEdit manual says it supports Basic, Command, Obey, PostScript and Text
file types but the support for PostScript and Text is little more than
the ability to load and read them. Entering text has to be done the hard
way as there are no line wrap or formatting facilities.
6.5
Colourful REMs
6.5
On the presentation side, DBEdit scores with easily customisable colours
which can be toggled through in a Profile Options window to set title
foreground, background and highlights; work foreground and background;
comment text and highlighted text. It is nice to load a program and see,
for example, all the REMs picked out in a contrasting colour.
6.5
Another feature I like is that the loaded program can be quickly run,
without saving, by a simple <ctrl-R> or a menu click. This makes it easy
to alter a program and do a trial run without changing the original
version. Rather irritatingly, Basic programs have their line numbers
stripped on loading and are saved with new line numbers incremented by
one, instead of the customary ten or the user’s own preference. There
is, of course, an automatic renumbering if any lines are inserted and if
the outmoded GOTO has been used it will have its line reference
correctly adjusted.
6.5
DBEdit offers eight different ways to carry out searches. I was a little
sceptical about the claim that its incremental search was “the fastest
search around” but seeking (sic) was believing. It can actually find a
word before you have finished typing in the search string. You begin by
pressing either <f8> for forward search or <f7> to search backwards and
the caret changes colour to indicate that you are no longer in edit
mode. You then start typing the word you want to find. Immediately, you
have typed the first letter, the caret moves to its first occurrence and
the line it is on changes colour. As you continue typing, the caret
jumps on to whatever string that matches what you have typed so far,
until the caret is soon moving along the correct word as you finish
typing in the letters.
6.5
Another useful feature is text file sorting which can speedily put a
list into alphabetical order.
6.5
Among DBEdit’s other options are the use of macros; the simple creation
of active indexes, with up to nine being displayed at the same time;
undo and undelete; a selectable number of automatic backups, with
incrementing numbers added to the file name, and error message throw
back.
6.5
Which to choose?
6.5
At present, neither DeskEdit nor DBEdit has one useful feature from the
original Acorn Edit application: the ability to create a task window. I
like to use this for indexing discs by cataloguing them into the window
which can then be printed out and/or saved as a text file.
6.5
If you want a program solely for editing Basic, DBEdit and DeskEdit are
both excellent. DBEdit has a couple of nice touches that DeskEdit lacks
and if you need it for school use, its free site licence makes it
considerably cheaper. It also uses about 200Kb less memory than DeskEdit
which may be a consideration on 1Mb machines. Otherwise, DeskEdit, with
its more comprehensive facilities for editing text and C files, offers
rather more and at a slightly lower price for the single user.  A
6.5

6.5
Transfer2
6.5
Alan Highet
6.5
For those of you who haven’t come across the original version of
Transfer, it is a utility which allows you to capture text from a
writable icon and transfer it to another writable icon. In effect, this
allows you to transfer the contents of save dialogue boxes or, more
usefully, the contents of some database records. The program comes from
Apricote Studios and was developed to be used alongside Prophet, their
combined stock control, invoicing and accounts package, which was
reviewed in Archive 5.8 p31. Although Transfer is very handy, I didn’t
find many uses for it − but Transfer2 is a much more useful package.
6.5
It still transfers text from one writable icon to another but now a
window appears with the captured text displayed so that you can edit the
text before moving it. The other major enhancement is the ability to
drop a saved file from a text processor, database or spreadsheet
directly onto the iconbar icon where it will appear in a window. It can
be edited here or it can be dropped into another package. It is meant to
transfer CSV or TSV files and there is an option to specify the field
and record separators along with the number of fields in a record. In
reality, it seems to transfer anything you drop onto the icon − which
has some interesting results.
6.5
There are many uses for the package but one I’ve found extremely useful
is its ability to transfer formulae from PipeDream cells. If you have
ever tried to copy cells in PipeDream you will find that unless you
protect each expression, the cell references will change to suit the
formula’s new location. By using Transfer, the formula is transferred
intact and, by changing formula to text and saving as a CSV file, entire
blocks may be transferred from one file to another.
6.5
Transfer runs from floppy disc but, like most utilities, it really needs
to be installed automatically from hard disc making it instantly
accessible and, as it only uses 32Kb, this is quite feasible. All in all
a very good program which I use every day.
6.5
Stop Press: The good news is that Apricote have given Transfer2 even
more functionality. You can now load virtually anything into it, from
anywhere. You can then manipulate it in various ways and spit it out
again − almost anywhere. This is getting to be a very powerful appli
cation for anyone fiddling with data. Apricote found it particularly
helpful when they were translating data from a PC application (Sage, I
think) into an Archimedes one. The data loaded into Transfer, was forced
into a fixed number of fields, and transferred back out again into
Prophet. Oh, the bad news? To reflect the increased functionality, the
price has just gone up to £14.95 (£14 through Archive). Ed  A
6.5

6.5
Arc Embroidery
6.5
Paul Beverley
6.5
This is a review of Techsoft’s Arc Embroidery which is a complete
computer embroidery system including a computer-controlled embroidering
machine that links to the serial port on your Archimedes plus the
software necessary to control it. Without knowing anything about
embroidery (which is what qualifies me to write this review!), you can
turn sprite and drawfiles into finished embroideries in a whole range of
different colours.
6.5
What’s the basic idea?
6.5
The idea of Arc Embroidery is that you take a piece of cloth about 12cm
square and secure it in a plastic frame which then clips onto the
embroidery machine. You can then take a coloured sprite or drawfile and,
by using the software, specify which particular type of stitch is to be
used for each of the different colours in the picture. Then, having told
the computer to start the embroidery, all you have to do is to change
the colour of the thread as and when you are prompted by the program.
6.5
The colours of the drawfile don’t need to relate to the actual colours
of the thread used. You could, for example, do the embroidery in a
single colour, simply using the colours to designate those parts of the
pattern that are to be embroidered using particular stitch types, sizes
and directions.
6.5
The potential
6.5
As a non-technical (in embroidery terms) person, I can say that it is
extremely easy to produce some very effective embroideries. Our
Christmas dinner table had embroidered name labels in festive colours
and my 12-year old son, Jonathan, drew and embroidered a Christmas tree
and the Archive logo as it appears on the front cover of the magazine.
6.5
The range of stitches available includes satin stitch, mesh, zigzag,
ribbed, rising and falling. You can set the stitching length and the
pattern length in millimetres and the filling density in lines per
millimetre. The stitching can either be done vertically or horizontally
and you can even get the computer to be intelligent about it, selecting
horizontal or vertical depending on whether the shape to be embroidered
is long and thin or short and fat. Thus a single style could be set for
a rectangular border so that the top and bottom edges would automati
cally be sown with vertical stitches and the sides with horizontal
stitches.
6.5
Other facilities include the use of a double layer of stitching so that
satin stitch in one direction can be covered by a layer in the other
direction. There are also some ‘advanced options’ such as ‘pull
compensation’ and ‘reversing fill’ which can be altered from their
default settings once you know what you are doing. (The only one we used
is mentioned in the next section.)
6.5
The limitations
6.5
As the documentation points out, you can’t just take any old sprite or
drawfile and expect to turn it into a stunning embroidery. For example,
sprites which use graduated fills produced by dithering techniques could
not be expected to be embroidered effectively. Also, you cannot take a
small sprite and expect to blow it up into a large embroidery − the
pixels would be embroidered faithfully but it would not look very
effective.
6.5
The main limitation with the use of drawfiles relates to the overlapping
of colours. If you want to draw a red ring, for example, you could draw
a red-filled circle and put a white-filled circle on top of it. This
looks fine on the screen but if you try to embroider such a drawfile, it
would embroider the red circle and then put a white circle over the top
− not exactly a classic embroidery technique! One way round this,
suggested in the manual, is to use Paint to take a sprite “snapshot” of
the file as displayed on the screen.
6.5
Another major limitation (in case you were thinking in terms of doing an
Archimedes version of the Bayeux tapestry!) is that the maximum size of
the embroidery is about 9cm × 9cm. The samples we did were done on
pieces of material about 18cm square but you can, apparently, embroider
on a garment such as a T-shirt by holding the bulk of the material out
of the way. You can even buy an adaptor which will allow you to
embroider on a sock − the adaptor has a guard that holds the rest of the
sock out of the way while the embroidery is being done.
6.5
One problem which appeared to be a limitation turned out to be a “read
the manual” job! On many of our embroideries, we were getting various
gaps in the stitching − the apple which we were asked to embroider as
part of the tutorial, will act as a suitable example to show you what
was happening.
6.5

6.5
To fill this shape with horizontal stitching, it starts at the bottom of
the shape and works its way up towards the top. When it reaches the V in
the top it continues up the left hand side and then, to finish the
‘fill’, it goes to the top of the right hand side and works downwards.
Unfortunately, when we tried it, the two bits of filling didn’t quite
meet, leaving a gap where the material shows through the embroidery
silk.
6.5
I continued to think of this as a limitation of the system until I
started reading the manual in a bit more detail in order to write this
review. Then I came across ‘reverse fill’ under ‘advanced options’. Here
it points out that with some more ‘stretchy’ materials, you may get a
gap because the filling algorithm that is used by default sometimes
fills upwards and sometimes downwards in order to increase the speed and
reduce the number of joining threads criss-crossing the embroidery. If
you switch off the reverse fill option, filling is always done in the
one direction and the gaps disappear.
6.5
When we tried to embroider a sprite file of Donald Duck, we discovered
another limitation. You have to choose a picture that doesn’t have too
many complicated different areas of colour. When Arc Embroidery got
going on DD, it first sowed all the black bits. What came out was
nothing short of a black mess! What happens when the computer does an
embroidery is that it sows one area, does a fastening stitch and then
moves over to another area of the same colour, starts with a fastening
stitch and continues from there. When you have finished the whole
embroidery, you have to cut off the bits of thread that join the
different areas of colour. If, as in this case, the areas of colour are
too complicated, there are so many joining threads that it is almost
impossible to see which are the joining threads that need cutting off
and which is the embroidery.
6.5
Documentation
6.5
There are two manuals provided, one for the POEM 500 (which frequently
refers to the Apple Mac) and one specific to the Archimedes. The 23-page
POEM manual gives general safety information, specification of the
machine, component overview, accessories list, how to set up and use the
embroiderer, advanced embroidery, maintenance, trouble-shooting and a
list of extra accessories you can buy.
6.5
The 24-page Arc Embroidery manual covers the specifically Archimedes
parts of the system including installation, connection to the computer
and specific elements of the Archimedes software which it covers in
quite some detail. It also includes a tutorial which suggests that you
work on a sample drawfile provided on the disc. It takes you through the
setting up of the drawfile in the on-screen “frame” − which represents
the plastic frame in which the material is held − and setting the stitch
type, direction and size for each of the colours. Then it gets you to
output the data including changing threads. We didn’t get the threading
quite right at first but that was because we only followed the threading
instructions in the POEM manual and didn’t notice the extra comments
about threading that Techsoft made in their manual.
6.5
Conclusion
6.5
I seem to have ended up with rather more under the heading of
‘limitations’ than of ‘potential’ − that is probably very unfair. To
anyone interested in creating embroidered pieces, this is an extremely
powerful tool. Once you are aware of the limitations and can choose
suitable subjects for embroidering, you can produce a lot of material
very quickly. One subscriber who called in at the office while we were
playing with the machine said that someone had been using one at the
Boat Show and was charging £5 a time to embroider name badges for boat-
owners. (Now let’s see... 40 badges a day for four days... hmm, if the
complete system costs £699 + VAT, we could just about pay for it.) Err,
does anyone want personalised T-shirts doing at the Spring Acorn User
Show?  A
6.5

6.5
Multimedia Column
6.5
Ian Lynch
6.5
CD-I − Has it a future?
6.5
At a time when Acorn shares are reaching new highs, digital video and
CD-ROM are beginning to realise some of their early promise. Have you
seen the Phillips posters implying that you are only using half of your
TV without CD-I? It’s interesting that the Phillips half is more than
50% of the cost and most people probably wouldn’t value it at 50% of the
cost! CD-I is designed as a consumer product, like the Sony Walkman, but
it hasn’t had the same appeal so far and I can’t see “Sierra Man” being
converted from channel-hopping between ‘Sky Movies Plus’ and ‘A Question
of Sport’ to finding his own way through an animated version of the
Encyclopedia Britannica. Perhaps CD-I will survive as an up-market games
platform or in training and education but unless prices fall drasti
cally, I can’t see it as a mass appeal system in any other form.
6.5
An American company, 3DO, plans to use an ARM Ltd chip (VIDC20?) in a
revolutionary new games console which will play music and video from
CDs. Tandy have produced a Windows based console based on a 286 with
seeming intentions to compete with CD-I, so perhaps familiar keyboard
computers have had their day?
6.5
Computers, consoles or books?
6.5
As far as education is concerned, computers still have a lot to offer
because of their versatility in the variety of input (try putting a
sound sample into a CD-I player) and the ability to transfer modified
information. I recently had an encounter with a networked CD-ROM system
on a PC which the student used to find a map of Australia and some text
about Adelaide. Unfortunately, there appeared to be no way of printing
the map, let alone transfer it to another application, and the text
could only be printed in the form on the screen. In my view, the student
would have been better off using a colour atlas and encyclopedia. The
graphics would certainly have been better in the book and she would
probably have found what she needed more quickly. In short, application
design is crucial to multimedia success and it has to relate to the
purpose of the application.
6.5
Important features for digital video
6.5
In the computer world, digital video is still in its infancy and it also
adds significantly to costs but as with many applications there is
greater scope to start by satisfying specialist needs and then to
broaden the market. The flexibility and ease with which users can
construct and edit applications including digital video, may prove
crucial to its worth, certainly in the education and training markets.
6.5
!Replay wishes
6.5
Replay is the best known digital video on the Acorn platform and some of
the first commercial products − encyclopedia/picture dictionaries,
incorporating digital video on CD-ROM, are now on sale. There is no
doubt that Replay is a worthy competitor for Quicktime on the Mac or for
the offerings that I have seen running under Windows 3.1 without DVI
hardware assistance. However, there are some limitations which could
restrict Replay from realising its true potential. For example, it is
currently expensive to produce Replay movies and movies must be edited
before they are digitised.
6.5
Ideally, it should be possible to produce digital video quickly, easily
and at low cost. To realise the true potential of digital video, it
should be possible to edit sequences and to add computer graphics and
link effects. In short, we want all the features of an editing studio on
a desktop computer with the ease of use of a document processor.
6.5
Enter Eidos
6.5
Roger Wilson isn’t the only innovator in the digital video field on the
Acorn platform. Dr Stephen Streater of Eidos plc has used a different
method but is able to digitise video in real time and edit digitally
too. What is more, Eidos digital video takes up significantly less
storage than Replay.
6.5
Off-line editing
6.5
Eidos are fundamentally interested in digital video for off-line editing
and it has developed a product similar to Replay but with many more
facilities aimed at this market − in particular, real-time capture and
editing as well as a variety of effects to join video sequences together
and also to incorporate films in Ace format. The immediate question is
why two different compression systems have arisen in what is really a
very small market. Advocates of Replay will say that Replay films are
better quality but the Eidos demonstrations I saw last summer were not
too different and I am told that the quality has been improved further
recently. On the other hand, Replay movies are able to play in any
screen mode whereas Eidos movies (at least on my last viewing) were
restricted to one mode though they do play in windows in the desktop.
The issues of which is best are complex and possibly difficult to
resolve because both products are being improved and both are limited by
the 8-bit video system and RISC-OS.
6.5
Practical digitising is expensive
6.5
At present, the only practical solution to producing one’s own digital
Replay video, is to send video to Uniqueway and they will convert it to
Replay films at a cost of £100 per minute. You will also only get the
clips you send in the form you send them. In other words, any editing
has to be done before digitising. Apple have cheap (about £500) boards
which will capture video and produce Quicktime films on the spot. What
Replay needs is real-time capture and an ability to edit the films in
digital format. This is exactly what Eidos provide but an Eidos editing
machine is currently very expensive compared to the prices that
traditional Acorn users are used to and Eidos films are not in the same
format as Replay. Eidos are primarily interested in the professional
video market and so, although it would be possible to make Eidos films
playable through Replay, this has not yet been done.
6.5
Irlam hardware, Eidos software
6.5
Irlam instruments are producing a low cost board which is scheduled to
be launched at BETT ’93. This will allow about 4 minutes of video to be
stored on a 120Mb hard drive from where it can be compressed to Replay
format at 12 frames per second. Eidos software and greater compression
rates will enable this board to digitise, compress and store more video
more quickly and full editing is also possible. In theory, Eidos can
provide a very flexible digital editing system and charge whatever they
like for the software since it is already developed. A complete package
for home or school digital editing is feasible at under £500.
6.5
Video or DTP?
6.5
It seems to me that it wouldn’t take too much effort to get the Eidos
and Replay systems together in order to more than match what Apple are
doing with QuickTime. It may well be that Acorn should concentrate their
efforts on becoming a video standard rather than battling the commercial
DTP markets which Apple already have sewn up. Unfortunately, both video
and DTP will require VIDC20 in a commercially available machine before
Apple will need to worry.
6.5
PhotoCD
6.5
Talking of DTP, another multimedia product, Kodak’s PhotoCD looks set to
revolutionise low cost colour publishing. PhotoCD allows 35mm film to be
processed onto a CD-ROM which can then be used to store 100 very high
quality images (3072 × 2048 pixels at 24 bits per pixel). Since each
image is also stored at lower resolutions, (128 × 192 pixels, 256 × 384,
512 × 768, 1024 × 1536)  it would be possible to use a low resolution
representation on the screen with a low overhead on local storage and
processing and only use the high resolution image at the time of
printing. Any scaling or image manipulations are performed locally on a
low resolution image and are therefore quick. However, the effect is
transferred to the high resolution version for printing or display. This
is the principle behind OPI or Open Pre-press Interface which is a new
standard in the publishing world. The PhotoCD system is not expensive. A
disc costs about £5 which works out at about 50p an image. There is no
need for a scanner or massive hard discs or multi-Mbytes of memory to
deal with full colour A4 colour images.
6.5
Kodak images are encrypted and compressed in a proprietary format and
Kodak require a licence agreement which, at this point in time, is not
available in the Acorn world. However, Acorn have announced an agreement
with Kodak which includes the porting of the Kodak Photo CD Access
Developer’s Toolkit to RISC-OS. Acorn will upgrade the CDFS to allow
machines to read Kodak PhotoCDs and, no doubt, Computer Concepts will
revise Impression to provide a version of OPI. As we are all aware,
software takes time to be developed and I would be surprised if Kodak
Photo CD was available on Acorn machines as a commercially available
application much before the summer − Impression 3 with OPI must be a bit
further on still. An A540 with a capability of using OPI and including
24-bit colour bit-maps in PostScript files which will go onto IBM or
Apple format magneto-optical discs or Syquests is what the DTP sales
people need for the professional market − far more so than 24-bit colour
displays. There is also a desperate need for colour bit-map manipulation
software equivalent to PhotoShop on the Mac. With the plethora of art
packages on the Archimedes it can only be the lack of support for 24-bit
colour in the PostScript printer driver and uncertainty about file
formats which prevents this work being done.  A
6.5

6.5
ArcFax
6.5
Philip Green
6.5
Users of MS-DOS computers have, for quite a while now, been able to send
and sometimes also receive fax messages through the modem they also use
for contacting bulletin boards. Until recently this facility was not
available to Archimedes users. Computer Concept’s FaxPack goes part of
the way towards redressing this inequality but I understand that the
FaxPack podule cannot, at present, replace the modem normally used for
data communication.
6.5
When I read in Archive’s Products Available section about ArcFax, I
checked with my dealer what the part exchange value of my (not very) old
modem would be if I were purchasing a class 2 fax modem. Class 2 is the
minimum requirement for use of ArcFax as yet but David Pilling is
working on a class 1 modem driver. My dealer’s offer was very reasonable
and so I decided to give it a go.
6.5
ArcFax is supplied with two floppies and a very clear 39 page manual
(predictably produced with Ovation) in a sturdy A5-size plastic holder
for £23.96 inc VAT (£22 through Archive).
6.5
Installation entails altering your RISC-OS 3.10 printer application to
include the ArcFax printer data or loading a separate !PrinterAF RISC-OS
2 printer driver. The manual describes in ample detail what steps must
be taken to accomplish it.
6.5
ArcFax is not copy-protected and can simply be dragged to the hard disc
(not only ADFS − my SCSI caused no problems either) and works from there
without any of the vexatious checks on whether or not the “original”
floppy has been seen that are common to some commercial software.
Indeed, David Pilling advises purchasers of the package to make a backup
copy of the discs for everyday use and clearly relies on his pricing and
upgrade policy and well-known support to users to discourage piracy.
6.5
After installation, or straight from floppy, if you don’t have a hard
disc, ArcFax must be run and the printer driver loaded. The icon appears
on the iconbar, and the task manager shows that 288Kb of RAM is in use.
From any application that can print using RISC-OS printer drivers a file
can be “printed” in the normal manner after you’ve made the ArcFax
printer driver active.
6.5
A TIFF file is created on disc and the ArcFax TXBatch window is opened
showing all the files currently in it. A file can be viewed and/or
allocated to a telephone number/group of numbers. One and the same file
can even be addressed to several different numbers on the fly. The user
can set the number of attempts to send a file, if not immediately
successful, and the interval between the attempts. Faxes can also be set
for transmission at a later time (e.g. when the phone rates are lowest).
6.5
At all other times, ArcFax just sits on the iconbar and waits for
incoming calls. After a set number of rings (configurable by the user of
course) ArcFax answers the phone in readiness for an incoming fax.
However, if you want to use another package that works via the serial
port, ArcFax can be told to ignore signals via the serial port and it is
also useful if you can tell other software not to react to the serial
port while you’re using ArcFax.
6.5
How does it work in practice?
6.5
I sent a diagram with plenty of small text and thin lines which arrived
in very good condition at the destination, impressing all who saw it. I
also sent five versions of a full screen sprite, one for each of the
five configuration settings of the printer driver from Mono, small
halftone to Grey, dithered. The resulting TIFF files varied in size from
70Kb to 370Kb as the detail increased and the result at the receiving
end was, of course, evident. I also sent a message back via a fax
messaging system running on the mainframe at work, as well as a couple
of test pages from our laser printer. These I also sent from one fax
machine to another within the office to compare results.
6.5
The first difference I noticed when sending the test pages was in the
time required to send a fax. The two test pages took 199 seconds in
‘normal’ mode and 368 seconds in ‘fine’ mode to the Archimedes but only
84 seconds and 143 seconds respectively to the other fax machine. This
may well be due to the fact that the Archimedes’ serial port cannot be
driven any faster than 19,200 baud. With the modem working at 14,400
baud and all the while compressing the data to about one quarter of the
original size you would, ideally, have to drive the serial port at
57,600 baud to get the best possible transmission speed. I have read
messages from Hugo Fiennes on the bulletin boards to the effect that he
is producing a podule that will offer two extra serial ports with a
maximum speed of 115,200 baud on each port.
6.5
The received faxes are every bit as good as those printed on the real
fax machine. Various options are available for processing the files and
they can be saved as sprites if desired. One obvious advantage over
several MS-DOS packages is that received faxes can be rotated. This can
save a lot of neck ache if people send you messages fed upside down into
the sending machine!
6.5
ArcFax also includes its own script language resembling C as far as
syntax is concerned but having a few C++ extensions. Thirteen pages of
the manual are devoted to its use but this is beyond the scope of a
review. The manual also details how the supplied class 2 modem driver is
built up.
6.5
To be able to write this review, I had to invest in a faster modem than
the one I had − but that is already proving worthwhile thanks to the
extra speed with normal data communications. This one works at up to
14,400 baud and has V42bis and MNP10 so data that has not been pre-
compressed is transferred over the line at almost 1,900 characters per
second!
6.5
The October 1992 issue of PCPlus had a special report on buying a fax
modem for MS-DOS machines and the table on page 416 of that magazine
shows several stand-alone fax modems with class 2 capabilities that
should work well with ArcFax. I was surprised to read from one adver
tiser in PCPlus that about 80% of their modems were Hayes compatible and
therefore not BABT approved! I don’t know whether it’s true that Hayes
compatibility precludes BABT approval but you should be aware that BT
and Mercury (and telecommunications companies outside the UK) do not
allow you to connect unapproved hardware to their networks.
6.5
Last but not least: the second disc of the ArcFax package contains a
large number of drawfiles that can be used as eye-catching and/or
amusing fax cover sheets.  A
6.5

6.5
Ovation Column
6.5
Maurice Edmundson
6.5
Several correspondents have written with various comments and queries
concerning the recently introduced mail merge facility in Ovation and
this month I will look at this option in some detail. My main experience
so far has been with a small circulation of about 22 names in which I
had to vary the name and address and the opening “Dear...” to suit the
recipient. I was using Ovation version 1.35S. I also found that I could
amend the database structure to cope with most of the issues raised by
the correspondents − but read on!
6.5
Mailmerge
6.5
My style sheet for letters includes three frames; one holds my address,
the other two are blank and intended for the date and the addressee
respectively which are normally entered at the time of writing, the date
of course by using <ctrl-insert>.
6.5
The list of names and addresses has to be in CSV (comma separated
variable) format. This format can be output from a number of databases
including Risc Developments’ own recently released Masterfile III.
Alternatively, the address list can be composed using Ovation itself or
Edit. Open a document window and type in the names and addresses with a
carriage return after each record i.e. one record per line. In the case
of a simple, straightforward database, as in my first example below, the
quotes can be omitted and the fields separated by a single comma. If any
field contains spaces or other textual punctuation, the situation is
very different but, for convenience, I will leave this aspect until
later. For ease of glancing down the name list, I prefer to have the
surname as the first field. The list should look something like:
6.5
Barlow,Mr.,J.W.,22 Sedgemore Drive,Bolton,BO5 6XU
6.5
Jones,Mr. & Mrs.,P.,47 Abbey Road, Bury,BU16 9AA
6.5
Evans,Mr.,P.T.,21 Park Road,Blackburn,BB45 6SA
6.5
When the list is complete, choose “Save as Text” with a suitable
filename. Later, when merging, this file will be dragged into the
Ovation Print window. You will see that the fields I have chosen are:
Surname, Title, Initials, 1st address line, 2nd address line, Post Code
− six fields per record and matching fields in each one. Thus, if I
prepare the master letter (fig. 2) using <ctrl-I> to enter each command,
it will print correctly as was shown in figure 1.
6.5
The release notes remind you to allow sufficient space for the fields to
replace the merge commands. The page is re-flowed throughout as the
merged text is inserted.
6.5
More sophisticated databases
6.5
The above example is rather artificial. In most lists of addresses,
there will be variations in the number of fields in the records. This
can completely upset a mail merge unless the user understands the
principles built into the merge code, and carefully plans both the CSV
file and the master letter. Ovation version 1.35S has a bug where, in
some circumstances, the command itself e.g. “[merge6]” or whatever, is
printed in the letter. Risc Developments tell me they have now elimi
nated the bug and they have also modified the code slightly to conform
to the following rules:
6.5
1. Within a record, a pair of quotes or a single comma will be taken to
mean an empty field.
6.5
   “field1”,“”,“field 3”, etc. or field1,,field3,
6.5
In neither case will anything be printed for the blank field 2 nor will
later fields be shunted up to take its place. It is felt that this will
give the greatest versatility to the mail merge option.
6.5
2. If a field includes spaces or textual punctuation, the leading and
final quotes are essential.
6.5
   “field1”,“field2 ,”,“field3 ,”
6.5
3. If a field includes quotation marks, a third set of quotes is
required to tell the program what is intended. For example if field 3 is
[“The Pines”, ] and it is followed by a blank field, then the record
must be “”“field”“ ,”,“”. The first quote is the CSV code to the
program. The next two are the way of telling the program to print a
quote sign and similarly for the two at the end. Then comes a space, a
text comma and finally the single quote for the “end of field” code to
the program. The final pair of quotes in the example is a blank field.
You will probably find that your database exports CSV files which obey
these rules.
6.5
Now let us consider a mailmerge with a more realistic database of
addresses. I have taken the examples from one of the correspondents.
First of all, I want to merge the name of the town in the body of the
letter. For this to work, the town field must always be the same number,
e.g. the 5th. field so that [merge5] can be inserted in the text of the
master letter. Also some letters, but not all, require an insertion
within the text e.g.: “N.B. 10% discount for prompt payment”.
6.5
The principle is to keep to a strict order of fields in all the records
but, where extra fields are required which would upset the address
sequence, these must be the last field(s) in the record. (In practice
each record has a line to itself, ending with a carriage return but this
could not be done here within the width of a column.)
6.5
“Barlow ”,“Mr. ”,“J.W. ”,“22 Sedgemore Drive”, “Bolton”,“BO5 6XU”,“”,“”
6.5
“Williams ”,“Mr. & Mrs ”,“P.A. ”,“ 47 Abbey Road”,“Bury”,“BU16
9AA,”“”The Pines“”, “,”“
6.5
“Evans ”,“Mr. ”,“T.P. ”,“21 Park Road”,“Blackburn”, “BB45 6SA”,“”,“N.B.
10% discount for prompt payment”
6.5
The second record has an extra address line (“The Pines”) which could
not be placed in its normal position or it would have pushed the town
field out of sequence. It is placed at the end as field 7. Thus, in all
the records, field 7 will be an address line which can be called and
merged where it belongs or it will be blank.
6.5
The third record has a blank field 7 after the post code whilst field 8
is the special message. This will be blank in those records where it is
not applicable in the letter. All the other records are similar to one
or other of these three examples. Every record should end with a
carriage return. The “master” letter is shown at the foot of this page.
6.5
When writing to business concerns, e.g. to “Norwich Computer Services”,
this too tends to upset a mailmerge since it throws the records out of
kilter again. I think the best solution is to have two databases, one
with private names and addresses, the other with business names, in each
case the records matching field by field.
6.5
To finish of this month’s article, here are a couple of other points of
interest.
6.5
No fault of Ovation’s
6.5
In Archive 6.3 p14, Ken Cowap, describes two problems which he attrib
utes to bugs within Ovation. The first concerns incorrect output when
the first line of text is indented, in a fully justified paragraph. I
have not had this problem using either the ArcLaser or the NEC P7 dot
matrix printer, both of which print the text correctly. Enquiries have
revealed that the trouble lies with some of the printer drivers supplied
by Acorn and how they handle a text string when it is preceded by a tab
or spaces. It is one of a small collection of bugs that Acorn say they
will look into as soon as possible.
6.5
Ken’s second point concerns a “font cache full” error message which he
attributes to fonts which have some design short-comings. Again I am
informed that this message is not one issued by Ovation so it must be
being passed back from the Font manager.
6.5
There are other printing matters waiting to be answered which I hope to
deal with next month.
6.5
Ovation version 1.37
6.5
The version of Ovation in which the mailmerge “bug” referred to earlier
has been cured, and which observes all the protocols I have described in
this column is 1.37 and should be available by the time you read this.
Risc Developments tell me they will be happy to exchange version 1.35S
for the newer version free of charge but would welcome a stamped
addressed envelope or label for the return disc.  A
6.5

6.5
PD Column
6.5
David Holden
6.5
I have recently experienced a problem when ordering Shareware discs from
PC libraries which is unlikely to be encountered on the Archimedes PD
scene but which, nonetheless, I feel readers should be warned against.
6.5
The trouble arose when ordering a series of Shareware discs over the
telephone using a credit card. When my order arrived, in each instance,
I found that I had one or two extra discs which were not requested and
for which I had been charged. In one case, a four disc set was mysteri
ously added to my order.
6.5
The first couple of times it happened, I assumed that it was simply a
mistake, but when it started to become a habit, I investigated further
and discovered that all the companies that were making this ‘error’ were
associated.
6.5
When I complained I was, of course, offered a refund if I returned the
unwanted discs, although this was not done with a good grace. The
company at first maintained that I must have ordered the program in
error. Eventually, when I insisted, it was also agreed that they would
refund my postage costs but by this time I was beginning to realise that
these ‘accidents’ were too common to be unconnected.
6.5
The lesson is one that I have learned in the past but frequently forget.
When dealing with PC Shareware libraries you should remember that they
are not anything like the various Archimedes PD libraries. They are in
the business to make money! Experience has taught me that if you deal
with a library that offers cheap discs you get late delivery, out of
date versions, missing files, disc errors and now, it seems, unwanted
extra discs.
6.5
There are several PC Shareware libraries that I could recommend to
anyone who is interested, but in each case they charge over £2 per disc.
I suppose I should take my own advice and give up trying to save a few
shillings because it has always proved a false economy.
6.5
Impact database
6.5
I have just obtained a copy of a new database from Circle Software
called Impact. The thing that makes this different is that it is
distributed by a variation on the Shareware principle.
6.5
The ‘freely available’ version is fully functional except for one item.
You can’t create your own custom databases but are limited to the simple
‘name and address’ sample. You can, of course, create your own files but
you can’t alter the standard format. You can go through the motions of
designing your own to see how it is done but you can’t actually create
the file.
6.5
Impact can import and export data in Acorn standard CSV format so it can
interchange data with most other programs, including PipeDream. It also
has a feature which enables it to perform mail merging with Impression.
Otherwise it’s a fairly standard desktop database and anyone who tries
it shouldn’t have any problems working out how to use it, even though
the documentation supplied with the distributable version is rather
sparse.
6.5
If you decide, after trying it, that you like Impact, you just telephone
Circle Software, credit card at the ready and they will give you a
special personal code number which will ‘unlock’ the extra features.
Alternatively you can, of course, write to them. You then get the full,
printed, manual which is the only other thing that is missing.
6.5
It’s not quite the regular Shareware approach but it’s a lot better than
conventional marketing and Circle deserve praise for at least dipping a
toe in the water, even if they weren’t prepared to jump in at the deep
end with ‘proper’ Shareware. So far as I can tell from the documenta
tion, there doesn’t seem to be any limitation preventing someone using
the restricted program indefinitely, provided they are happy with the
simple format provided.
6.5
StrongEd
6.5
I would like to mention the PD text editor StrongEd by Guttorn Vik. The
earlier versions of this program were, frankly, not very good, but
StrongEd II is certainly to be recommended.
6.5
This is a desktop text editor with quite a few nice features. It can
edit Basic programs as well as plain text, and can also cope with
various LF/CR combinations of line terminators. Many of its features,
such as Basic program editing, ability to use wordwrap, proper use of
tabs, etc. have been incorporated into the new Edit included with RISC-
OS 3, although StrongED still has many advantages.
6.5
One nice idea is Strong Help. This is really a separate Hypertext style
application which gives help on a variety of subjects. The trouble is
that the help texts included are too brief to be of much use. The only
section that I have found of use is the list of VDU commands.
6.5
Personally, I have never felt at home with StrongEd, although I have
tried to get to grips with it more than once. I don’t like the choice of
function keys used and it isn’t possible to change them. The author has
also failed to provide any proper documentation and has only supplied
instructions via Strong Help. Admittedly, the data for this is in the
form of a text file so you can view and/or print it easily, but it is
simply too short. A program of this complexity deserves a manual, and I
confess that it is this lack which originally made me pass over
StrongEd.
6.5
I realise that this is an area where not everyone will agree with me −
some people are quite happy with interactive help − but I like something
that I can print out and lay on the desk beside me as I work. The
correspondence I received when I last mentioned this subject indicates
that I am not alone in this and the most common reason why people don’t
bother with PD or Shareware programs appears to be poor documentation.
6.5
Don’t be put off if my reaction to StrongEd seems rather negative. It
really is an excellent package. It’s just that text editors and
wordprocessors are highly personal things and it simply doesn’t fit in
with my preferences. Most people find it strange that I still use Twin
as my favourite editor. I like its completely uncluttered screen, superb
Search and Replace, and sheer speed which simply cannot be matched by
anything which runs within the desktop.
6.5
If you want something that’s better than Edit, especially the RISC-OS 2
version, but not as memory hogging as Risc Development’s DeskEdit,
(StrongEd uses less that 100Kb), then give StrongEd a try − you may well
find it exactly what you need.
6.5
New Dawn
6.5
Regular readers may recall that some while ago I looked at two disk-
based magazines. Since that time, some others have appeared but, until
now, I haven’t seen anything with which I was particularly impressed. I
was therefore rather pleased to be sent a copy of the first issue of a
magazine called New Dawn, produced by a group of enthusiastic Archimedes
PD authors known as Quantum Software.
6.5
There are two reasons why I am impressed with New Dawn. Firstly it is
free. Unlike all the others, it is freely available from good PD
libraries for their normal fee. As this is usually about £1.50, this
makes New Dawn about half the price of the rest. The second reason is
the content. This disc held more ‘real’ material than any of the others
I have seen. Not only are the articles well worth reading with a
contribution from well-known games writer Tom Cooper among others, but
there are two games on the disk as well, and these were written
especially for the magazine.
6.5
So far, I have only seen the first issue. It is always possible that the
authors may not be able to keep up the initial high standard − we’ll
have to wait and see.
6.5
If you would like to know more about New Dawn, I will send you a copy of
the first issue if you send me four first class stamps, or £1, at the
address below.
6.5
(Stop Press: David just rang to say that New Dawn Issue 2 has just
arrived and, if anything, it is better than the first issue. He can make
Issue 2 available on the same basis as Issue 1. Ed.)
6.5
Please keep writing to me at the usual address − 39 Knighton Park Road,
Sydenham, London SE26 5RN.  A
6.5

6.5
Three Multimedia Packages Compared
6.5
Robert Chrismas
6.5
A multimedia document is like an electronic book. It has two main
advantages over an ordinary book.
6.5
1)  As well as the usual words and pictures it can present music,
sound, animations, etc.
6.5
2)  The pages can be linked in complicated structures. Ordinary books
contain footnotes and appendices because writers want to go beyond the
simple sequential organisation of the pages.
6.5
It is exciting to read Ian Lynch’s beguiling articles describing the
latest developments in multimedia but most people who want to create
their own multimedia documents are faced with a fairly limited choice of
software. On the Archimedes, three commercial packages have been
available for some time: Genesis, Magpie and Hilighter.
6.5
Genesis
6.5
Genesis has gone through at least two generations, Genesis and Genesis
II. Genesis Plus, the version which comes with the Learning Curve, is
basically a cut down version of Genesis II. Genesis Plus lacks some menu
options, has a smaller manual and does not include the Browser appli
cation. The lack of a Browser is particularly surprising since Oak
Solutions will send you a free copy if you ask for one.
6.5
Genesis has always aimed at being the most powerful multimedia package.
It can present a wide variety of filetypes which Oak Solutions fre
quently expands. Genesis offers more features than its rivals and it
allows much greater control over the appearance of the pages. If you
want a particular effect, you can be pretty sure it is possible to do it
in Genesis.
6.5
An important feature of Genesis is the use of script files. Each window
is described by a script file which is written in a kind of programming
language. Script files can be edited to produce many different effects.
One command in a script file can issue OS commands so other programs can
be started from buttons in a Genesis document.
6.5
It is possible to write multitasking programs using just the script
language. Although it is not as versatile as a conventional high level
language, it is much easier to write a multitasking program in Genesis
Script than in C or Basic.
6.5
If you are thinking that it is not worth reading any further, think
again. Because it is powerful and complex, Genesis is not easy to use.
It is quite easy to get started with Genesis but it takes time to get
the best from it and you will certainly need to read the manual
thoroughly in order to understand the more advanced features.
6.5
The manual is heavy going. The text is often unnecessarily obscure and I
do not think that it is very well organised. I often reached the end of
a section with more questions than I had before. The information is
there, but not always where you would expect to find it. By the end, I
could do all that I wanted but there are often several ways of doing the
same thing and I was not always sure that I knew which way was best.
6.5
A sentence taken out of context can sound worse than it is but I cannot
resist quoting my favourite. Under the heading “What happens to
resources” the first sentence reads “The resources of the buttons
described in the shared script are neither copied to !Genlib nor made
shared.” Does it help if I explain that a ‘Resource’ is a single file (a
sprite say) and that it can be stored in three different ways,
‘locally’, ‘shared’ or in a ‘library’?
6.5
Genesis was written by people with hard disks. If you do not have a hard
disk, you may try keeping the Genesis applications on one disk, fonts
and system on another and your document on a third.
6.5
Linking pages in Genesis II
6.5
You will quickly find that Genesis loves these floppy disks. It wants to
see them all, all the time.
6.5
The ‘Please insert ...’ messages soon become unacceptably dense. You can
use a RAM disk or try putting your document on the same disk as the
Genesis application but this will limit the size of your documents.
6.5
Magpie
6.5
Longman has recently released Magpie version 1A.30 (interesting
numbering system − hexadecimal?) This version extends the range of files
which Magpie can present to include replay and CD audio.
6.5
Magpie is not as flexible as Genesis. There is nothing like a script
language and some of the options which Genesis has are not available in
Magpie. I particularly missed a fairly simple feature which only Genesis
offers − the ability to lock frames onto a grid. Without a grid, the
creation of symmetrical, ‘regular’ pages took much longer. Text
formatting was also a bit limited with no options to centre or fully
justify text.
6.5
On the other hand, there are some very good ideas. I particularly like
the way page references can be ‘relative’ or ‘absolute’ (my terms). The
advantage of ‘relative’ references is that you can insert or delete a
frame in a sequence and the sequence will still be shown in order
without you having to alter any links. Another good feature, ‘skeleton’
pages, make it much easier to create a number of similar pages − they
will occupy less space as well.
6.5
When a new page is opened by a button, the button can optionally leave a
‘marker’. A marker is a special button which will take you back to the
page you came from. This allows you to create ‘subroutines’ of pages
which can be ‘called’ from different places in the document. At the end,
the user can be instructed to click on the marker to return to the point
where he/she called the subroutine.
6.5
With Genesis, any graphic or text item can be linked to another page and
any object can act as a button. Magpie distinguishes between items,
which it displays, and buttons, which lead to other pages. If you want a
click on a picture to select a new page you have to place a transparent
button over the picture. However a special option allows items on a page
to appear, or disappear, only when they are clicked on. This is much
easier than creating a new page.
6.5
Magpie makes use of a special contents window which shows how the pages
are organised. Pages must be created in the contents window before any
buttons can be linked to them. The contents window helped me to keep
track of the structure of documents. A menu on this window would have
been helpful because the icons were not as obvious to me as the
designers might have hoped.
6.5

6.5
Magpie contents page
6.5
There are lots of excellent features in Magpie. You can probably do all
these things and more in Genesis using the script language but if you
can do something in Magpie, you can do it comparatively easily. I did
not have to spend much time thinking about whether I could achieve an
effect, it was either possible and fairly straightforward or not
available. It is hard to say just why, but Magpie feels ‘solid’. I did
not expect it to give me nasty surprises and so far it has not done so.
6.5
Hilighter
6.5
With Hilighter Sherston did not aim to produce a package which was as
powerful as Genesis or Magpie. Instead they designed it to be easy to
use. The quick reference card, which is one side of A4, really does
contain all you need to know. Because there are fewer options, you can
create pages very quickly but with less control over the finished
result.
6.5
The distinguishing feature of Hilighter is its use of ‘highlight pens’
to indicate page links. On each page you can mark areas with up to nine
different coloured pens. Each colour can be linked to another page. So,
for example, on page 1, the areas marked in red can all be linked to
page 3. On other pages, of course, the red colour might be linked to a
different page. When you mark an area you see the highlight colour, but
the highlights can be made invisible when the document is viewed by a
‘user’.
6.5
Highlights have two obvious advantages. It is very easy to link a number
of different areas on one page to another page. If you had a piece of
text about Hampshire, it would be easy to mark all the occurrences of
the word ‘Winchester’ and have them all linked to one explanatory frame.
In the other programs, you would have to create several buttons or
linked frames. Secondly, the areas do not have to be rectangular. So you
could mark the areas of highland on a map without having to cover it
with lots of rectangles.
6.5
However Hilighter does have some drawbacks. It can only handle text,
sprites and drawfiles. You cannot edit text on the page − when you
select the text area, a new text window opens and it is only when you
close this window that you see the changes you have made on the page.
6.5
I found a few of minor bugs. On one occasion, Hilighter crashed out with
‘Flex memory error’. All the pages I had created were intact when I
restarted and loaded the file again. It loaded a mode 28 sprite with the
wrong aspect ratio. You can re-scale it by eye but without a grid, it is
hard to get it right. Marking an area near the top of a page with a
highlight by moving the pen up and down off the title bar can produce
areas of solid colour (they go away when the page is reopened).
6.5
The most serious problem for potential users in education will probably
be the disk copy protection. Pity the poor primary school teacher who
has one computer in the classroom and no use for a site licence. The
possibility of damaging master disks adds one more source of stress to
an already over stretched professional. A note in the manual says that
an unprotected single user version is available from Sherston and that
you can contact them for details.
6.5
Hyper
6.5
An honourable mention should be given to Hyper, a PD program available
from Archimedes World. Hyper will support text, sprites and drawfiles.
Buttons can also issue OS commands, so a button can run another program
which provides some special effect. Hyper is also very easy to use.
6.5
The garish colours used for the windows are not RISC-OS standard and
Hyper will not work on my A5000. I suspect that there is a window or
icon definition which is not RISC-OS 3 compatible. If you come across a
copy which works on RISC-OS 3, it’s well worth the price of a PD disk.
Perhaps you would also let me know about it, I would like to give it a
proper review.
6.5
What types of files can they handle?
6.5
Genesis: Text, Word (editable when browsing), sprite, Draw, Maestro,
sampled sound (some), Splice, Tween, Mogul, Euclid. My version does not
have CD audio control or Replay but Oak say Genesis II will.
6.5
Magpie: Text, sprite, Draw, Maestro, sampled sound − Armadeus and
Armadillo (Magpie also includes sound sampling software which works with
these two cards), Notate, CD Audio, Replay.
6.5
Hilighter: Text, sprite, Draw
6.5
I am not sure how useful the more esoteric filetypes are. It seems fun
to include things like Replay and Euclid objects but they will not have
many practical applications unless (until) you have the facility to
create your own files. I have a massive library of clip art sprites but
when I need one to suit a particular job, I usually end up scanning or
painting it myself.
6.5
If you are producing a document to do a particular job, rather than just
playing, you will want specific Replay sequences. Suppose your document
is about ‘Arts and Crafts’, how easy will it be to get a replay file of
someone knitting or a hand loom in operation?
6.5
Storage
6.5
The three commercial programs use different methods to organise their
files.
6.5
Hilighter documents are application directories. Inside the directory
there is a file for each page. A page file contains an overall descrip
tion of the page including information about which areas have been
marked with highlights. The size of a page file depends on the size of
the page and the number of highlights used. About 2Kb seems typical but
I managed one screen sized frame which required about 6Kb. Text is also
included in this file but all the drawfiles and sprites for the document
are stored in ‘Draw’ and ‘Sprite’ sub-directories. A graphic which is
used on several pages will only be stored once. This is the only economy
of space − none of the files are compacted. I expect Hilighter could
handle documents compacted with Compression or ArcFS but I have not
tested this.
6.5
Magpie stores the whole document in one file. Some kind of compaction
algorithm is used.
6.5
Genesis uses an application directory. The script and all the ‘resource’
files for a page are stored in one compacted file. If a ‘resource’ is
used by several pages, it can be stored in a separate file shared by all
the pages.
6.5
All the programs are able to export objects from a page so that you can
use them in other packages. I had a minor problem saving a sound sample
from Genesis − it took three goes because I kept getting a save window
without any file icon.
6.5
Stand alone
6.5
With all three packages, you can distribute documents for other people
to view. Both Magpie and Genesis have document reader applications which
you can give away with the document, provided you make no charge.
Hilighter has an option which makes a document ‘independent’. The
document then becomes a complete stand-alone application. Making a
document independent increases its size by about 50Kb. As with the other
packages, you are free to give away stand-alone documents but you must
obtain permission (and probably pay a fee) if you want to sell them.
6.5
An example document
6.5
I thought it would be interesting to create the same document with each
of the packages. My example document had three pages. There was a 2Kb
drawfile, an 80Kb sprite, about 400 bytes of text and, where possible, a
sound sample.
6.5
The results were:
6.5
Genesis − 75Kb including a 21Kb sound sample
6.5
Magpie − 51Kb including a 33Kb sound sample
6.5
Hilighter − 98Kb without a sound sample
6.5
Since I have had about the same amount of experience with each package,
the time it took to create the documents may give some indication of
user-friendliness.
6.5
Genesis took 70 minutes, which included a long diversion because my copy
of Genesis would not replay the sound sample I had intended to use and I
had a bit of a fight extracting a replacement sample from an example
Genesis document.
6.5
Magpie took 25 minutes.
6.5
Hilighter took 30 minutes.
6.5
I think with a bit more practice, I could now produce all the documents
more quickly. The Genesis document looked the best at the end but even
with more practice with Genesis, I do not think I could beat 30 minutes.
6.5
I had naively assumed that all sound samples were the same. Now I notice
that there are different filetypes. Perhaps someone who understands
these things could write an article about different sorts of sound
samples.
6.5
Conclusion
6.5
It depends what you want. Genesis is the most powerful but it is not as
easy to use as the other packages (and that is putting it charitably).
Hilighter is the simplest package, more limited than the others but easy
to use, the highlights are a novel idea and it is cheaper than the rest.
Magpie is less versatile than Genesis but it has a useful mix of
features which are easily accessible.
6.5
Your choice will depend on the kind of documents that you intend to
create. There are circumstances in which each of these packages would be
the best choice. However, since few readers will have had the chance
which I have had to try all these packages, it seems only fair to state
my preference. I expect to be using Magpie the most. At the moment, I do
not want to do anything which requires the power of Genesis but I do
want to use some music and I don’t need the worry of a disk I cannot
back up. I was also influenced by my subjective ‘feeling’ that I was
‘most comfortable’ using Magpie.  A
6.5
Highlighter   Sherston Software − £45 +VAT
6.5
Magpie  Longman Logotron − £59 +VAT
6.5
Genesis II  Oak Solutions − £129.95 +VAT
6.5
(Archive prices: £49, £64 and £135 respectively)
6.5

6.5
    Hilighter tools
6.5

6.5

6.5
Cross-32 Meta-Assembler
6.5
Roger Sewell
6.5
I purchased version 2.1c of the Cross-32 Meta Assembler from Baildon
Electronics some four months ago − and obtained the copy with serial
number 13. Despite the strange suppositions some people have about this
number, I have been very impressed with this product and would thor
oughly recommend it to anybody who needs to assemble machine code for
some other processor on their Archimedes.
6.5
A cross-assembler is a program for converting assembly language
instructions for processor A (the target processor) into binary machine-
code for processor A. The unusual feature of a cross-assembler is that
it runs, not on processor A, but on some other type of processor B. In
this instance, an ARM2 or ARM3 in an Archimedes computer.
6.5
Whilst a cross-assembler is one specially written to assemble, on the
host processor, code for a specific type of target processor, the term
‘meta-assembler’ is used here to mean one which is written to do the job
for (theoretically) any target processor. It does this by requiring, as
input, not only the assembly language program to be translated, but also
a table of information about the translation process for the specific
target processor to which the assembly language program relates. Whilst
the assembly language program, unfortunately, still has to be written
specially for the combination of the job to be done and the target
processor, the translation table need only be written once for each
target processor.
6.5
Thus, for example, Cross-32 can be used to assemble 8086 assembly
language into 8086 binary machine code or to assemble TMS320C10 assembly
language into TMS320C10 machine code, or many others. The tables
required for a wide range of processors are supplied with the program;
thus you are buying, not a program for a single target processor, but a
ready-made program for many different target processors, with the option
of writing tables for further target processors if you wish.
6.5
I bought Cross-32 for the specific purpose of assembling code for the
TMS320C30, a processor not included on the list of those with pre-
written tables. My experience with Cross-32 therefore reflects what, I
imagine, must be amongst the most difficult jobs to undertake with it −
because I had to write the translation table myself.
6.5
TMS320C30 is a digital signal processor with floating-point multipli
cation possible in 60 ns, with other operations being done in parallel
at the same time. As it has specific floating point instructions, it
also uses floating point constants in its assembly language. This
provided the only major difficulty in writing the translation tables.
6.5
Installation
6.5
This couldn’t have been easier. Cross-32 is provided on a single floppy
disc accompanied by a 66-page A5 manual in a ring-binder. Copying the
relevant files into a directory worked first time.
6.5
I belong to the school of computer users that recommends reading through
the manual from cover to cover during the first week of use. I find this
leads to optimum familiarity with the features of the product. I
therefore cannot comment on how easy it would be to use Cross-32 if you
are somebody who believes in not reading the accompanying documentation.
Suffice it to say that Cross-32 runs from either the desktop or the
command line and that, as a conservative believer in using a keyboard
for talking to computers, I always use the command line!
6.5
Translation table writing
6.5
The manual suggests that three or four hours should suffice for writing
the translation table for a new target processor. I found this a very
optimistic estimate and would guess that it could take more like two to
three days to get a correctly working translation table written from
scratch.
6.5
The instructions provided on writing a translation table are easily
understandable by anybody likely to be wanting to use the program.
Numerous examples are provided to clarify any point necessary. It is
perhaps worth mentioning that Cross-32 originated as a program for a
host processor other than the ARM, and has been ported to the ARM by
Baildon Electronics. I think that they have probably had to extend the
translation table syntax to make it possible for Cross-32 to assemble
for the ARM as a target processor, because the syntax of the ARM’s
assembly language is unique (as far as I am aware). It therefore follows
that it is possible that a new target processor’s assembly language
might not fit into the range of possibilities that Cross-32 can handle.
However, it is likely that minor modifications to the target syntax (in
other words changing the rules of the target processor’s assembly
language) would lead to the same instructions being written in a way
that Cross-32 could handle.
6.5
In the case of the TMS320C30, it became clear that it would be easier to
write a short translation table if some such minor modifications to
syntax were made − and the tables I wrote therefore required one to
write LDI ADA,AR4,1,R0 i.e. load R0 from the address in AR4, adding 1 to
AR4 afterwards (ADA standing for Add Displacement After), instead of
LDI *AR4++1,R0 which means the same thing in orthodox TMS320C30
assembler language. However, I think it would have been possible to
write tables to handle the orthodox syntax (possibly more slowly) had I
particularly wanted to do so.
6.5
Assembly
6.5
To write the program to be assembled, you can use a word-processor in
non-formatting mode − or a straight text editor. Then, to assemble it,
all you do is issue a command such as:
6.5
  C32 Progname −l ListFile −h HexFile
6.5
(or you click a mouse on the appropriate icons). An example program of
mine that consisted of 1055 lines (23 Kb) and required three passes,
because of phase errors caused by programming style, assembled in 33.4
seconds. However, the speed is obviously going to depend to some extent
on the target processor being used and how the translation tables have
been written.
6.5
Unlike some assemblers designed for use on one system, Cross-32 can only
provide output in terms of an executable file, albeit in a variety of
formats; it cannot (at least, not in the version I have) provide files
that can be used as input to a linker. It would, however, be very easy
to write a Basic program to digest the symbol tables at the end of the
listfiles of a number of assembled programs and then output a file that
could be automatically included as part of the input to a second round
of assembly to achieve a similar effect.
6.5
The only bug I found, caused incorrect functioning when the output file
was temporarily turned off by an assembler directive. A phone call to
Baildon resulted in an agreement of the existence of the bug the same
day and a new disc arrived in the post within five days. The new version
didn’t do quite what I hoped it would under the same circumstances but
it did do what its programmers had intended! In the end, I wrote a Basic
post-processor program to cause the effect I wanted.
6.5
Execution
6.5
Then came the biggest difficulty I encountered in using the program −
and it was nothing to do with any problems in Cross-32! After assembling
some software for the TMS320C30 and blowing it into EPROMs, I found that
the processors stopped what they were supposed to be doing after about
25 instructions and jumped to a non-existent address. The problem turned
out to be that the data sheet that Texas Instruments had supplied on the
TMS320C30 contained a number of errata in the table of binary opcodes
corresponding to each mnemonic. A letter to TI produced a revised
version of the data sheet which contained corrections to the old errors
and a number of new ones! The reason I mention this is to make the point
that, when writing new translation tables, it is vital to be sure that
the information on which you are basing the tables is accurate!
6.5
Conclusion
6.5
For the Archimedes user who is building hardware using processors other
than the 6502 or ARM, Cross-32 is a must. At only £175 +VAT, it saves
the purchase of either a range of specific cross- assemblers or indeed
another computer, based on the target processor in question. After-sales
service from Baildon is excellent.  A
6.5
Humble apologies to Roger who sent in this review almost a year ago now.
I lost track of who had sent it in and only recently realised its
ownership ! Anyway, better late than never! Ed.
6.5

6.5
Music Typesetting on the Archimedes (2)
6.5
Richard Hallas
6.5
I had originally intended that this would be a series of articles
comparing the relative merits of Scorewriter/PMS, Rhapsody II +
ScoreDraw and Notate. Then I decided instead to approach the subject in
a less constraining way and simply review each package on its own
merits, with perhaps some extra comparative comments along the way.
6.5
I looked at PMS in Archive 5.11 p37 but I have decided not to cover
Notate at all because it is not really a ‘music typesetting system’ −
printing out is just an added extra that it happens to be able to do (as
with RISC-OS 3’s version of Maestro) rather than being one of its main
features. However, I must say that I consider Notate to be an absolutely
excellent tool for its intended educational purpose. (For my full
review, see Risc User 5:6.) (Or see Stewart Watson’s comments in his
Music Column on page 50. Ed.) Since the release of version 1·2 of
Notate, with its added Record facility and increased range of note-
values, it has become an even better program.
6.5
Notate has a range of hardcopy facilities including portrait and
landscape printing and a choice of overall sizes. However, the output is
based only on sprites and the system font and is restricted by the
limited range of symbols available within Notate scores. It serves its
purpose admirably as a tangible result of students’ efforts but no-one
would dream of seriously trying to set music with Notate. It could be
useful in schools by allowing students to play their compositions in
small groups, but as a printing tool in its own right, it’s a non-
starter.
6.5
Rhapsody II/ScoreDraw
6.5
On its own, Rhapsody is broadly similar to Notate, in concept at least,
and I do not intend to cover it here in any great depth − there have
been plenty of reviews already (e.g. Archive 4.12 p56 & 5.3 p51).
Whereas Notate is aimed squarely at education, Rhapsody is aimed at
general users and has a much wider range of musical features, not least
the better quality musical layout with proper sloping-beamed groups,
several notes per stave vertically, optional underlay text and various
ornaments. Standing alone, Rhapsody’s printing facilities take a
definite second place to its playback features. Like Notate, it produces
printouts with sprite-based graphics and the system font.
6.5
Enter ScoreDraw
6.5
This program is intended to be used alongside Rhapsody to produce better
quality printouts. It can take Rhapsody files or, with the later
versions of Rhapsody, it can receive a score directly from Rhapsody
itself. The advert says that Rhapsody II and ScoreDraw together “form
the heart of a complete Archimedes-based music publishing package”,
producing printed results of a “true professional publishing quality”.
These are pretty impressive claims, so can they be substantiated?
6.5
It is important to realise that ScoreDraw on its own does nothing. You
must first have Rhapsody (or at least a collection of Rhapsody files) in
order to make any use of it. Files can be dragged onto its icon for
processing, or direct in-memory transfer can be used. Rhapsody provides
a ScoreDraw menu item which leads to a formatting box identical to that
used for standard printing from Rhapsody itself. Various options can be
set up here (such as size and orientation) and when OK is clicked,
ScoreDraw takes over.
6.5
ScoreDraw really does integrate seamlessly with Rhapsody. Sending a
piece into ScoreDraw is just like using the standard Format option
(except for being a bit slower). Rhapsody lets you scroll between pages
whereas, in ScoreDraw, the pages must be viewed singly − but this is no
great disadvantage. ScoreDraw presents a menu similar to that of
Rhapsody’s print preview window but with various other options to
control formatting and layout. It is possible to choose time signature
format, bar numbers, stave label style, page numbers and the different
fonts used for titles, dynamics and other text. An added advantage of
using ScoreDraw is that not all staves have to be selected, so simple
part extraction is possible. It is even possible to save the selection
as a new Rhapsody score.
6.5
There is also a zoom facility, which is handy because the on-screen
presentation of the score is pretty poor at standard size, with stave
lines of varying thicknesses. This is, of course, due to the inherently
low resolution of monitors and is not a limitation of the program. As
with Rhapsody’s own internal printing facility, ScoreDraw can print out
directly once you have made your various choices about layout. However,
much more usefully, it can also save the pages as individual drawfiles.
6.5
What ScoreDraw does when presented with a Rhapsody file is to convert it
directly, just as you see it in the Rhapsody window, into a drawfile.
However, it also does a little bit of tidying up, such as converting the
individual notes of triplets (each of which has a 3 over it in Rhapsody)
into groups with a single triplet marking, as convention dictates. It
also converts the associated text into outline fonts of your choosing.
Once you have decided on your layout and saved the pages as drawfiles,
the rest is up to you.
6.5
From Score to Draw
6.5
Supplied with ScoreDraw is a library of musical symbols in the form of
drawfile objects − seventeen of them to be precise. They consist of up-
and down-facing slurs, crescendo and diminuendo hairpins, an acciac
catura note, three types of appoggiatura, up- and down-bow marks, spread
chord and trill extension marks, single-note tremolo marks, dal segno
and coda markings and an x-notehead. These symbols are not available in
Rhapsody itself and so they must be added to the drawfile manually after
using ScoreDraw.
6.5
It is a great pity that Rhapsody does not use hairpins as such − rather,
it uses a text-based representation which is ignored by ScoreDraw. In
addition, Rhapsody makes absolutely no use of slurs (phrase marks). This
is, of course, perfectly understandable but it does mean that position
ing of all such markings (with the exception of ties, which Rhapsody
does use) has to be done manually in Draw. Since slurs and hairpins are
just about the most commonly used musical symbols (excepting the notes
themselves), this is a tedious task to say the least.
6.5
I suppose ScoreDraw cannot be a mind-reader and cannot anticipate where
you want the slurs to go. However, I would have thought that, given a
bit of leeway, it could have had a go at placing a few hairpins by
analysing the crescendo and diminuendo information in the Rhapsody
files.
6.5
“Fully professional output”?
6.5
Clares advertise ScoreDraw as being able to take a Rhapsody file and
produce fully professional output from it − but it does depend how
“professional” you want to be. I earn my living by producing musical
scores, so that is what “professional” means to me. So, for me, the
question is whether I could use ScoreDraw in a professional environment.
6.5
You could argue that it is entirely possible to produce a fully
professional piece of printed music using nothing except Draw − laying
every line, note and symbol by hand. It is also possible to paint an
entire room with a toothbrush but no-one would ever do it! The point is
that the tools you use must be appropriate for the given task.
6.5
ScoreDraw does enable you to convert a Rhapsody file into a drawfile for
higher quality output. However, if you wanted pieces of music, typeset
by ScoreDraw, to be accepted by traditional music publishers, a lot of
careful editing would be necessary.
6.5
It seems to me that ScoreDraw, by its very nature, cannot do all that a
dedicated music publishing package ought to be able to do. For instance,
the dynamics which appear in ScoreDraw’s layout are put in exactly the
same places as they are in the original Rhapsody window. They are a bit
too small and, more often than not, collide with other musical symbols
such as notes or beams. I’m sure something could be done to make their
positioning more sensible.
6.5
More importantly, ScoreDraw does not attempt to improve the layout of
beamed groups of notes and so forth. These are often perfectly adequate
in Rhapsody and therefore continue to be fine in ScoreDraw. However, in
more complex cases of beamed groups, or in the situation of pairs of
quavers, etc, which span a wide interval, the beaming applied automati
cally is far from adequate. Unpleasantly steep gradients of beams appear
in the latter cases and, in the former, you often find that the beams
are too far away from the notes.
6.5
The setting of music is a supremely subtle art, with many quite complex
rules which are not known to the average person (or even to the average
musician). Some of the most complex of these rules apply to beaming −
ScoreDraw appears to ignore many of them.
6.5
For general use, ScoreDraw produces a perfectly acceptable result and
the minimum the user can get away with is to move the mal-positioned
dynamics and add the necessary slurs and hairpins but what about Clares’
advertised claims for ScoreDraw? Whilst I cannot say that they are not
valid (you are publishing music and it can be to a professional
quality), I think they are rather stretching the point. I don’t believe
that anyone could make a living by trying to use Rhapsody and ScoreDraw
to do music publishing − in the way that they could earn a living by
using Impression for doing DTP − it just takes too long.
6.5
Although Rhapsody itself is a good, full-featured program, it is let
down by a very cumbersome and slow system for the actual entry of music.
(It could learn a lesson or two from Notate in this respect.) There is
no doubting its overall capabilities but entering an entire piece in
Rhapsody, converting it through ScoreDraw and doing the bulk of the
subsequent editing in Draw, strikes me as a pretty daunting prospect.
And what happens if you want to make some alterations later which
involve changing the layout of the piece? Because of the nature of the
system, you must go through the entire Rhapsody-ScoreDraw-Draw process
again and do all of the drawfile editing again.
6.5
Conclusions
6.5
Whether ScoreDraw will fulfil your needs depends entirely on how much
music you want to publish and how complex that music is. If all you want
to do is print the occasional piece, or if you want to make better
quality printouts of your Rhapsody files, then ScoreDraw is the thing to
buy, and it will serve its purposes perfectly well.
6.5
Quite apart from the question of editing facilities, in the case of more
complicated notation, there are very many things which Rhapsody/
ScoreDraw simply cannot do. It is a fantasy to think that you could
publish any given piece of music using this combination, except by
drawing lots of things by hand. What ScoreDraw gives you is a bare-bones
drawfile transcription of your Rhapsody file and the rest is up to you.
6.5
What it boils down to is that if Rhapsody itself can handle the
complexity of the notation you are using, then so can ScoreDraw.
However, music notation is like the English language: full of complexi
ties, exceptions to rules, flexibility, unpredictability and subtle
nuances. Flexibility and accommodation of the user’s intentions are the
two most important attributes that a music-setting package needs.
6.5
Going back to PMS, discussed in the last article, and comparing it with
Rhapsody/ScoreDraw, a conceptually different approach is in evidence.
PMS was specifically designed for typesetting − it gets things right, it
is endlessly flexible and it will typeset virtually anything you want,
given a few minor restrictions. On the other hand, it is, as I have said
before, extremely unfriendly to the novice or non-musician and will not
(currently) play anything back for you. (Stop Press: PMS now includes
playback facilities, I am told. Ed.)
6.5
By contrast, ScoreDraw is geared towards the non-professional user of
Rhapsody. Certainly, it is perfectly capable of producing professional
results for small pieces or musical examples in books, magazines and
journals − indeed, it has already been used for just this purpose.
However, if you want to typeset larger and more complex pieces with it,
it simply won’t measure up to the task, which is why I said in the last
article that PMS was the only choice for professional music printing.
6.5
ScoreDraw is an extension of Rhapsody rather than a publisher in its own
right. Whilst Rhapsody’s facilities are fine for its intended purposes,
there is no way it can deal with all ‘real-life’ musical situations −
and ScoreDraw is constrained by Rhapsody’s facilities. For less
intensive or amateur use, however, it is fine and it can produce very
acceptable results indeed. It is also much easier to learn to use than
PMS. The steep learning curve involved in getting acquainted with PMS is
certainly not justified unless you are really going to make full use of
the system.
6.5
I am grateful to Dave Clare for supplying the Rhapsody-ScoreDraw-Draw
version of the Londonderry Air illustration, which is used as supplied
(i.e. without editing of beams, etc by me). (The associated Rhapsody
file is on this month’s disc.)  A
6.5

6.5
Sorry, that was all I could fit in! Ed.
6.5

6.5
You can put two MicroPodules
6.5
side-by-side on a
6.5
standard-size podule.
6.5

6.5
You can put three MicroPodules
6.5
side-by-side on a minipodule.
6.5

6.5
Laser Express MicroPodule
6.5
“slightly smaller than a credit card”
6.5

6.5
Three MicroPodules in an A3020
6.5

6.5
Two MicroPodules plus a Hard Drive
6.5

Improved Service to Education?
6.6
The aim of Acorn’s educational dealership criteria is to improve the
service given to educational establishments. That is also our aim, too.
However, unfortunately, at this present time, Acorn say they are unable
to grant education dealership status to Norwich Computer Services. We
have made efforts to improve our service and have re-applied in the hope
of being accepted in the future.
6.6
In the meantime, I regret that we cannot offer full educational discount
to educational establishments unless they either send cheque with order
or pay invoices within seven days of delivery.
6.6
Staff Changes
6.6
After almost four years, Ali Don is moving on to higher things. She is
getting married soon and will be living in Abingdon. (Her fiancé works
for Research Machines!) She has worked tremendously hard to build up
Norwich Computer Services. Thanks, Ali. We wish you well for the future!
6.6
Vera Cooke, whom we appointed as Office Manager in November, has worked
out her 3-month notice period in her previous job and has started work
here at 96a. Welcome on board, Vera!
6.6
The editor who is now older, greyer and (hopefully) wiser is still,
6.6
Yours as ever,

6.6
Products Available
6.6
•   2067BC − This arcade adventure game from Oregan Developments’ which
was reviewed in Archive 6.4 p31 is now available through Archive for
£18.
6.6
•   16 bit per pixel upgrade for G8 Plus − With the introduction of the 16
bpp Replay de-compressor from Acorn, State Machine have released an
upgrade for their G8 colour card that allows full animation
compatibility in the new 32768 true colour modes.
6.6
As well as offering a variety of animation-compatible true colour modes,
24 bpp clear files can be loaded which are converted and displayed
automatically by a new !TrueView application. !TrueView allows panning
and scaling of images larger than the screen and will cope with all
formats of clear files.
6.6
Along with !TrueView, the new !ARMovie application licensed from Acorn
Computers Ltd is included along with some sample clear files.
6.6
This upgrade allows 25 frames per second animation in true colour at
medium resolutions. The new modes available are 576×424, 800×300 and a
50 frames per second update, 384×288, which can be double buffered for
flicker free animation. With this upgrade, 16 bpp digitisers will be
able to offer high quality real time preview modes without dithering.
6.6
The upgrade is available when purchasing the G8 card for an extra £30
+VAT. As a special offer to existing G8 users, the 16 bpp upgrade is
available for £20 +VAT including p&p and new software.
6.6
A further enhancement to the G8 allows all TV broadcast modes (modes 12,
13, etc) to be displayed at full-size on any monitor. All G8 cards now
include this feature as standard and any existing users of the G8 that
require full screen TV broadcast modes (e.g. to play Interdictor on VGA
monitors) can be upgraded for £10 +VAT including return postage. Note
that this upgrade is included with the 16 bpp upgrade.
6.6
•   Amateur radio software − Steve Hunt (G3TXQ) has a selection of amateur
radio software available for the Archimedes. A morse tutor, an antenna
designer, frequency prediction and filter design programs are available
on a compilation disc priced £9.95 (inc VAT and p&p). For details, send
an S.A.E. to Steve Hunt, 21 Green Street, Milton Malsor, Northampton NN7
3AT.
6.6
•   Archivist − Oregan Developments’ data management system is now up to
version 4.7. Extra features include store/display sprites, drawfiles and
text, play Symphony/Maestro/Tracker files, Impression Impulse link,
Specific label printer and enhanced reports generator. Anyone with
version 4.00 or later can upgrade free of charge from Oregan by
returning their registration cards. Anyone with an earlier version can
upgrade for £5 direct from Oregan. Archivist is now available through
Archive for £32.
6.6
•   ArtWorks Viewer − This software allows ArtWorks files to be viewed on
Archimedes computers that don’t have ArtWorks installed. Since it can be
distributed without charge, it is an ideal way of passing on ArtWorks
files. The images can be loaded using the ArtWorks Viewer and,
furthermore, they can be examined in more or less detail by zooming in
and out. The Viewer is now included in the ArtWorks package and a free
copy can be obtained on request by calling Computer Concepts.
6.6
•   Balloons + The Zoo is Freddy Teddy’s latest adventure encouraging
children with counting and addition. It costs £30 +VAT from Topologika
or £33 through Archive.
6.6
•   Broadcast Loader − This product is no longer available as its
facilities are contained as standard in the new operating system, RISC-
OS 3.1.
6.6
•   CASA update − There is now a RISC-OS 3.1 version of CASA (Computer
Assisted Structural Analysis). Because of the different way that RISC-OS
3 handles integers, it needed a re-write of the software, the result
being that the program now needs a minimum of 2Mb to run it. Please note
also that CASA is available only from W. C. Smith & Associates and NOT
from Vision Six Ltd. (Only the name has changed − the address remains
the same.)
6.6
•   Christmas Adventure − (Slightly unseasonal, sorry!) Help Father
Christmas to find his map and ensure that the children get their
presents. This adventure game from Storm Educational Software is aimed
at children aged 5 to 8 and should help them in reading, mapping, memory
work and decision-making. The price is £25.99 from Storm or £24 through
Archive.
6.6
•   ColourCard updates − In my comparisons of the Colourcard and the
G8Plus (Archive 6.4 p27), I said that I preferred the 25Hz screen update
speed which the G8 offered despite the fact that this slightly reduced
the processor speed. Well, CC have now released a free software update
for the ColourCard which gives users the option to configure the screen
update speed to 25Hz, rather than the default 12Hz. This software-only
upgrade is available free on request from both Computer Concepts and
Wild Vision (but not from Norwich Computer Services).
6.6
Another development of the ColourCard is a new (external) A3000 version
of the board. This is now available as an option at the time of purchase
or as an upgrade kit for existing owners. Wild Vision say that it can be
fitted by the individual but that a number of people may prefer to have
a local dealer do the fitting. If you have an existing card and want to
fit it onto an A3000, the fitting kit can be obtained from Wild Vision
for a handling charge of £8.50 +VAT. This applies to boards that say
“Issue 2” on them but if you have one of the very early Issue 1 boards,
you will have to return it to Wild Vision for updating and the handling
charge will be £10 +VAT.
6.6
•   Concept keyboard − Northwest SEMERC have now produced an A4 version of
the Oldham Overlay Keyboard (a concept keyboard by any other name). This
A4 board is an exact scaled down version of the A3 board so that
overlays can be reduced or enlarged on a photocopier for use on either
keyboard. The educational price of the A4 keyboard is £115 +VAT from NW
SEMERC.
6.6
•   Curves software pack − This is a set of eleven programs from
Topologika aimed at junior and middle school children but it also
enables GCSE students to explore complex curves and loci. The pack
includes the programs and a 90-page book entitled Curves. It contains an
audio tape with stories and other educational material and a 48-page
activities book. The complete pack costs £40 +VAT from Topologika or £43
through Archive.
6.6
•   Digital Symphony − This is a Soundtrack Editor from Oregan
Developments which is said to be fully Amiga compatible. Its features
include built-in sample editing, standard musical notation display, 40
special effects, importing of Maestro and OctaMED files, fully Midi
compatible, CD quality sample playback rate, track size only limited by
memory size, flexible cut/paste options and global search/replace/
exchange. Digital Symphony costs £49.95 all inclusive from Oregan
Developments or £48 through Archive.
6.6
•   Eizo 340iW − Eizo have just launched an excellent new monitor which
can be used on the Archimedes computers. It is a flat screen, 15“
monitor with electronic control − just like the more expensive 17” Eizos
(F550i and T560iT). This means you can program it to get the best size,
position, shape, etc for each of the different modes you use. It has the
same dot pitch as the 9060 − 0.28mm − which means that the screen in
made up of more dots and therefore gives a better resolution. I have
tried it with a G8Plus graphics card and I can display (in the 1600 ×
600 dot mode) a double page A4 spread, such as the Archive magazine and
read and edit the text perfectly well!
6.6
There are two other improvements of this monitor over its predecessors
(apart from its more ‘modern’ styling). Firstly, the power cable and the
video cable are in a recess under the back of the monitor so they don’t
stick out and add that extra 2 or 3 inconvenient inches to the depth of
the monitor. Secondly, Eizo have introduced a power-saving feature
(that’s the ‘W’ in the model name). If you use a normal software screen-
blanker, this will reduce consumption to about 80% but then if, after 3
minutes, the monitor sees that there is still no (blue) signal coming
from the computer, it shuts down to a standby mode which reduces power
to about 10%. Then after a user-selectable time (5 to 60 mins) it drops
further to a 7% power consumption level. Then as soon as you touch the
mouse or keyboard and restore the video output, the monitor comes back
to its normal display.
6.6
The price? Oh yes, I nearly forgot. For the extra 1“ in screen size,
plus electronic control, plus power saving, you only have to pay £120
more than the 9060, i.e. its Archive price is £670 inc VAT and carriage.
6.6
•   Fanfold paper for inkjets − Following a request for any company that
supplied fanfold paper for use on inkjet printers, Mike King of Guernsey
came up with Inmac Ltd of Runcorn, Cheshire. (Phone 0928−579000, Fax
0800 611116) Apparently they supply fanfold paper in the following
sizes: 280 × 210 (£16.90), 305 × 210 (£17.90), A4 (£19.95). The prices
are per 1,000 sheets but do not include carriage.
6.6
•   Faxpack − CC have finally implemented the long-awaited FaxPack file
transfer and answering machine features. The new software also includes
an option to transmit faxes through the Mercury Network, for users who
already subscribe to Mercury. The software and EPROM upgrade is
available free on request. (Computer Concepts will do the upgrade if
customers feel nervous about changing the EPROM themselves.)
6.6
(I’ve just had a thought! How many Archive contributors have got
FaxPacks? If I set one up out-of-hours, you could file-transfer articles
to me. If you are an Archive contributor and would be interested in
doing that, perhaps you would let me know. Thanks. Ed.)
6.6
•   Look and Listen − This is a series of five educational programs from
Brilliant Computing aimed at encouraging children to be more aware when
crossing the road. It appears that a fundamental requirement of safe
road use is an awareness of sound, which direction it is coming from and
if it is an incoming or an outgoing source. These games use the high
quality stereo sound output of the Archimedes to develop sound
discrimination and awareness. The price is £25 +VAT from Brilliant
Computing.
6.6
•   Numerator Workcards − This is a FREE 54-page A4 workbook for use with
Numerator. It provides a set of activity sheets providing ideas for
using Numerator in the classroom from beginners to more advanced users.
Registered Numerator users may obtain a free copy by ringing the Longman
Logotron sales desk on 0223−425558.
6.6
•   Masterfile 3 − Risc Developments’ database is now available through
Archive for £54.
6.6
•   Myth of Moby Dick − This is an adventure game with maths, geography
and language elements. It is suitable for special needs as well as
mainstream pupils. The cost is £30 +VAT from Topologika or £33 through
Archive.
6.6
•   PipeDream price drop − PipeDream3 is now £79 +VAT (£85 through
Archive) and PipeDream4 is £129+VAT (£140 through Archive).
6.6
•   Round the World Yacht Race − This is an extensive project package from
Storm Educational Software based around a computer program but with
program guide, study notes, flow chart and a map of the prevailing winds
and currents. It is aimed at 9+ year olds and develops skills in
science, maths, geography, science & technology and encourages role
play. The price is £34.99 from Storm or £32 through Archive.
6.6
•   Smart Alex − Brilliant Computing have produced an interesting
educational program in which children can ‘talk’, via the keyboard, to
Alex (who can be male, female, caucasian or coloured), encouraging them
to talk about feelings, emotions and expressions. The price is £25 +VAT
from Brilliant Computing.
6.6
•   Smudge the Spaniel − This consists of three educational programs from
Storm Educational Software aimed at Maths and English for children aged
4 to 8 years. This involves early learners in counting, reading, writing
and ordering. One of the programs reinforces addition and subtraction
and should encourage language development. The programs have options to
suit a range of ages and abilities. The price is £25.99 inclusive from
Storm or £24 through Archive.
6.6
•   Squish − This is a transparent sprite compactor designed for use with
existing applications. It is aimed at publishers who are running out of
disc space or want to speed up sprite loading. This is designed for use
by software developers or “technically aware” users. For more details,
contact Ian Sowden of Honeypot.
6.6
•   Stock Pack − Topologika have produced a content-free stock control and
simple accounting pack aimed at education − secondary or F.E. levels.
Handle 450 products and 250 customers − and make sure you get the VAT
correct. This costs £40 +VAT from Topologika or £43 through Archive.
6.6
•   Teletext on AUN networks − XOB have produced a version of their
Teletext serving software which is AUN compatible. It runs from a Morley
Teletext adaptor and provides Teletext access to all machines on the
network, Ethernet or Econet, across bridges and through gateways. The
cost of the site licence is £154 +VAT from XOB.
6.6
•   TextAid − Rheingold Enterprises’ utilities for manipulating text which
can be used alongside other RISC-OS packages has grown in scope and
(slightly) in price. It is now £12.95 inclusive from Rheingold
Enterprises or £12 through Archive. (We have a long and favourable
review which we hope to fit in next month’s magazine. It does seem to
offer a wide range of facilities − which is why we have added it to the
Archive Price List. Ed)
6.6
•   The Spoken Word − This is a new educational package from Wyddfa
Software aimed at National Curriculum AT 1 and 21 at level 1. It aims to
encourage an understanding of the spoken word and to stimulate an
interest in reading. The child can produce bright pictures, the colours
being shown with their written names and different objects can be
selected from their written names and/or from an outline drawing. The
computer responds aloud by naming both the chosen colour and the object.
The software costs £20 inclusive from Wyddfa Software.
6.6
•   Ultimate Expansion Confusion − HCCS’s Ultimate Expansion System is
very impressive but a little confusing to work out what’s what. We
didn’t help by introducing a couple of mistakes into the information we
gave. (Our excuse is that the article was produced at very high speed
after the BETT Show.) First of all, we got the pricing of the Starter
Packs wrong on the Price List − that wasn’t too difficult to spot
because the prices of the micropodules were quoted as being identical to
the Starter Packs. The Archive prices were correct in the article, viz:
HiVision Starter Pack £166, Laser Express Starter Pack £300 and SCSI
Starter Pack £133.
6.6
However, what the article did get wrong was the description of what you
actually get in a Starter Pack. i.e. you get the micropodule plus a
power supply and fan, as stated, but you also get the multipodule to put
it onto − so it really is very good value for money (although HCCS say
these are introductory prices). If you take the SCSI podule, for
example, and add up the micropodule plus multipodule plus p.s.u., it
comes to an Archive price of £110 + £43 + £33 = £186. Compare that to
the Pack price of £133 and you see that you get a £53 saving!
6.6
Please note too that you MUST tell us which model of computer you are
putting the podules into as the Starter Packs are different for A3000,
A3010, A3020, A4000 and ‘the rest’. Also, because there are so many
different permutations and combinations, we cannot guarantee to hold
them all in stock, so the turn-around for orders may not be up to our
usual (hopefully high) standard. If you are in a rush, you will have to
forego the Archive discount and go direct to HCCS.
6.6
•   Used floppy discs − We have a large number of used floppy discs, some
of which have hardly ever been used, e.g. PD discs that had the wrong
label on. We have reformatted them and are making them available for
charity at £20 for 50 discs.
6.6
Review software received...
6.6
We have received review copies of the following: Aldebaran, Ancient
Greece, Arcade, ArcTrack, Badger Trails, Choices, Granny’s Garden,
Insight, Ixion, Landmarks − Civil War, LinkWord − Spanish, Numerator
Workcards, PenDown Etoiles, Picture It!, Precision, Punctuate,
QuickTile, SatPack 1, Screenplay Training Video, Smudge the Spaniel,
Soapbox, Splash, SpySnatcher, Squish, The Puddle and the Wardrobe,
ThinkLink, Through the Dragon’s Eye, Tiles, Whale Facts, Xword, Yes
Chancellor II.  A

6.6
Government Health Warning − Reading this could seriously affect your
spiritual health.
6.6
The murder of 2 year-old James Bulger has sent shock-waves around the
UK. My 14 year-old son thought about it in terms of the 2 year-old son
of some family friends and two of his own young friends and drew the
obvious parallel. His reaction? “Oh, Dad”, he said, “That’s sick!”.
6.6
What should our reaction be? Surely, the problem is much bigger than the
individuals involved in this one case, albeit a particularly horrific
crime. We can’t just rant and rave against those who are accused of
having perpetrated this murder − we have to ask what we, as a sick
society, can learn from it.
6.6
“We must crack down on crime!” says one public figure. “There should be
less sympathy for the criminals and more insistence on the moral values
that we expect people to uphold.” says another.
6.6
I don’t pretend to have an immediate solution but I do offer an analysis
of the problem. It’s not my analysis, I hasten to add, but the bible’s
analysis. See if you think it sounds plausible.
6.6
Suppose for a moment that God does exist and that He created the world,
including mankind. Presumably, therefore, He ought to know how
individuals in society can function best. The bible teaches plainly and
unequivocally that a stable family based on a husband and wife in a
loving, life-long committed relationship to one another is God’s ideal
for mankind.
6.6
How does the UK measure up to that ideal? Obviously, there are people
who hold to that ideal but the vocal majority says, “Personal freedom is
the most important thing. I should be free to do what I like... as long
as I don’t harm anyone, of course. No-one has any right to tell me how
to live my life. I will have whatever relationships I like.”
6.6
What I have to say is not a very popular message but I believe it to be
true... If society says, “We don’t need God’s standards. We can organise
things our own way without reference to Him.” then it is on the slippery
slope. If we as a society and as individuals turn our back on God and
His standards then we will reap what we sow.
6.6


6.6
Norwich Computer Services 96a Vauxhall Street, Norwich, NR2 2SD.
0603−766592 (−764011)

6.6
4th Dimension    P.O. Box 4444, Sheffield. (0742−700661) (0742−781091)
6.6
4Mation    11 Castle Park Road, Whiddon Valley, Barnstaple, Devon  EX32
8PA. (0271−25353) (0271−22974)
6.6
Abacus Training   29 Okus Grove, Upper Stratton, Swindon, Wilts  SN2
6QA.
6.6
Ace Computing   27 Victoria Road, Cambridge  CB4 3BW. (0223−322559)
(0223−69180)
6.6
Acorn Computers Ltd   Fulbourn
Road, Cherry Hinton, Cambridge  CB1 4JN. (0223−254254) (0223−254262)
6.6
Brilliant Computing    FREEPOST,
P.O.Box 142, Bradford, BD9 4BR. (0274−497617) (0274−497617)
6.6
CIS     Unit 2a, 436 Essex Road, London  N1 3QP. (071−226−3340)
(071−226−3408)
6.6
Circle Software    33 Restrop View, Purton, Swindon, Wilts  SN5 9DG.
(0793−770021)
6.6
Clares Micro Supplies   98
Middlewich Road, Rudheath, Northwich, Cheshire  CW9 7DA. (0606−48511)
(0606−48512)
6.6
Colton Software (p27)   2 Signet
Court, Swanns Road, Cambridge  CB5 8LA. (0223−311881) (0223−312010)
6.6
Computer Concepts (p11/22)   Gaddesden
Place, Hemel Hempstead, Herts  HP2 6EX. (0442−63933) (0442−231632)
6.6
David Pilling    P.O.Box 22, Thornton Cleveleys, Blackpool, FY5 1LR.
6.6
Design Concept    30 South Oswald Road, Edinburgh  EH9 2HG.
(031−668−2000)
6.6
HCCS Ltd    575−583 Durham Road, Gateshead  NE9 5JJ. (091−487−0760)
(091−491−0431)
6.6
Honeypot    Exeter Road, Wheatley, Doncaster  DN2 4PY. (0302−340331)
(0302−328735)
6.6
ICS Ltd    1 Kington Road, West Kirby, Wirral  L48 5ET. (051−625−1006)
(051−625−1007)
6.6
Iota Software Ltd   St John’s Innovation Centre, Cowley Road, Cambridge
CB4 4WS. (0223−421542) (0223−421543)
6.6
Krisalis Software    Teque House,
Mason’s Yard, Downs Row, Moorgate, Rotherham  S60 2HD. (0709−372290)
6.6
Longman-Logotron    124 Cambridge Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge CB4
4ZS. (0223−425558) (0223−425349)
6.6
LOOKsystems (p15)   47 Goodhale Road, Bowthorpe, Norwich  NR5 9AY.
(0603−764114) (0603−764011)
6.6
Mijas Software    Winchester Road, Micheldever, Winchester  SO21 3DJ.
(0962−774352)
6.6
Minerva Systems    Minerva House, Baring Crescent, Exeter  EX1 1TL.
(0392−437756) (0392−421762)
6.6
Morley Electronics    Morley
House, Norham Road, North Shields, Tyne & Wear  NE29 7TY. (091−257−6355)
(091−257−6373)
6.6
Northwest SEMERC    Fitton Hill CDC, Rosary Road, Oldham  OL8 2QE.
(061−627−4469)
6.6
Oak Solutions (p28)   Suite 25,
Robin Enterprise Centre, Leeds Road, Idle, Yorkshire BD10 9TE.
(0274−620423) (0274−620419)
6.6
Oregan Developments   36 Grosvenor
Avenue, Streetly, Sutton Coldfield  B74 3PE.
6.6


6.6
‘James’ of Cambridge University, please read the Help Column. Ed.

6.6
Techsoft
6.6
New artwork
6.6
(or 6.3 p9 if it doesn’t arrive in time!!)

6.6
Hints and Tips
6.6
•   Applications launcher − When working on various tasks on my
Archimedes, I often find that I need to launch more than one
application. For example, I have a wide selection of regularly used
clipart stored in Library format within Draw Plus. These clipart items
form regular input while using Ovation or Impressions. Therefore, when
working on DTP materials I will, on most occasions, be running Draw Plus
as well. The following ‘Pseudo Application’ was therefore devised to
automate the launch of the required cluster of applications (in this
case Ovation & Draw Plus).
6.6
Begin by creating an application directory (i.e. one where the name
begins with a !) with a name to suite the task cluster (e.g. !DTP).
Within this you need to create a !Boot and a !Run file, both Obey files,
using !Edit. The !Boot file only needs to contain the single line ....
6.6
IconSprites <Obey$Dir>.!Sprites
6.6
while the !Run file should contain the following...
6.6
IconSprites <Obey$Dir>.!Sprites
6.6
Desktop -FILE <Obey$Dir>.
6.6
FileLaunch
6.6
In each case, the IconSprites command directs the system to the !Sprites
file for the pseudo-application while the Desktop command in the !Run
file instructs the system to execute a series of commands held within
the file called ‘FileLaunch’.
6.6
Again within !Edit, create a new textfile, to be called ‘FileLaunch’. It
is the contents of this file that will determine which applications are
to be launched by your pseudo-application. For example, the following
will launch both Ovation and Draw Plus as well as opening the directory
viewer to my ‘Files’ folder and my Draw Plus Library folder. The exact
contents being dependent on the organisation of your own system.
6.6
Filer_CloseDir ADFS::4
6.6
ADFS::4.$.MoreApps.!Ovation
6.6
ADFS::4.$.!DrawPlus
6.6
Filer_OpenDir ADFS::4.$.Files
6.6
Filer_OpenDir ADFS::4.$.Files. DrawLibs
6.6
Save this as ‘FileLaunch’ within the pseudo-application.
6.6
The final job is to create an appropriate sprite to represent your new
pseudo-application. This should be 34 × 17 units in size. For mine, I
have merged the small display icons from Ovation and Draw Plus. Once all
is completed, double clicking on the application will, as if it were a
normal application, launch the specified applications and open the
required directory viewers.
6.6
Although this was initially developed on a hard disc based system, it
can be just as useful to floppy based systems. For example, it can be
set up to launch an application along with an appropriate printer driver
or launch a collection of floppy disc based utilities. For users still
working with Risc-OS 2, if the application is given the name !Boot and
placed on the root directory, with the drive set to *OPT 4 2, it gives
many of the same basic facilities as the new Desktop Boot of RISC-OS
3.10.
6.6
NOTE: This system does not effect the normal action when you double
click on an applications file. This will, as always, launch its own
application and load in the file clicked on.  Mike McNamara, Dunstable.
6.6
•   ArcLaser 1.68 and PipeDream − With ArcLaser installed, PipeDream
(3.14) won’t print using its own driver. It is necessary not only to
quit ArcLaser but to RMkill the LQEmulator module.  Richard Torrens,
Cambridgeshire.
6.6
•   BJ10e/ex with CC Turbo Driver − Under Risc-OS 3/3.10 there is a
conflict between the Turbo Driver and the new !Printers system. If you
contact CC, they will tell you to issue the following from the * prompt
....
6.6
RMKill PDriver
6.6
RMREInit PDriver
6.6
A far more elegant way is to place these two commands within the !Run
file of the !Printers application. They should be added immediately
before the line which reads ....
6.6
RMEnsure PDriver 3.16 Error etc
6.6
You will now be able to switch between the two systems without further
problems!
6.6
Mike McNamara, Dunstable.
6.6
•   Dongle problems − Various people have found that, on occasion, they
cannot print from other applications when using an Impression or
Artworks dongle. The situation seems to be worse under RISC-OS 3. The
(temporary) solution is to run Impression or Artworks and quit it. All
should then work OK. (Hint offered by various readers.) (For more
discussion, see the Comment Column on page 18.)
6.6
•   FoxPro version2 − Anyone who has tried to run FoxPro version2 under
version 1.8 of the PC Emulator will have found that it does not work. If
you still have an earlier version of the Emulator, try using that
because it is said to run under some of the earlier versions.  David
Wild, Hemel Hempstead.
6.6
•   Pocket Book power supply − Maplin sell a 300mA regulated transformer
for £8.95 (+£1.20 p&p) which will do the same job as the Pocket Book
mains adaptor and more besides. Maplin’s code is YB23A and the
polarisation should be negative at the tip at 9V.
6.6
You cannot format Flash SSDs above 256Kb unless the Pocket Book is
connected to an adaptor.  Apparently, the Flash SSDs require 12-15V when
formatting.  Mark Goodwin, Worcester.
6.6
(N.B. You can’t just use any old transformer for the PocketBook and we
can’t, of course, be held responsible for any damage which occurs if a
particular power supply does not work. We still cannot get the Acorn
Pocket Book mains adaptors but are buying some Psion ones which we will
be able to sell at the same price − £15 inclusive. Ed)
6.6
• Printers, margins, etc − I disagree with the statement in Archive 6.5
p37 that the X Y origin is not stored. There seems to be a fundamental
lack of understanding in this area. If you want a full explanation, I
will do one but, in brief, the offsets should be set using the technique
described in the readme file in the Printers directory using the TopLeft
printer file. Paper margins should then be set to be at least as big as
the X Y values, then when the printer tries to print, it says to itself,
“left margin 20mm (say) so I have to move the printer head 20mm before I
start printing. Ah, but wait a minute, the print head is already Xmm
from the edge, so I only need to move another (20 − X)mm before I start
printing.”
6.6
The same is true for Y. None of the default definitions I have looked at
are anywhere near right which doesn’t help. BJ330 printers auto sense
the left hand edge of the paper so goodness knows what happens then!
Tim Nicholson, Cranleigh.
6.6
•   Scrap file − Floppy disc users may be pleased to know that the
Wimp$Scrap file, used for in-memory transfer, does not have to be on a
physical medium. I have included the line:
6.6
Set Wimp$Scrap RAM::RamDisc0.$ .ScrapFile
6.6
in my !System.!Boot file. I have configured the machine to automatically
create a RAM disc on switching on and have since avoided much disc
swapping. The !Scrap folder can be avoided, though the Printers (RISC-OS
3) application needs to see it. It can be placed inside the Printers
directory, and the line:
6.6
Obey <Obey$Dir>.!Scrap.!Boot
6.6
included near the beginning of the !Printers.!Run file.  Robert Fuller,
Basingstoke.
6.6
•   !Squash − This program is a side product of the new printer drivers −
the printer definition files are held in squash format. If you change
the filetype of a printer definition file to Squash (filetype_FCA) and
drag it into Squash, it will be unsquashed. Loading into Edit will
reveal a file not unlike the old OS2 PrDataSrc files, although the
graphics data is held differently. RISC-OS 3 requires the definition
files in the unsquashed format. PrintEdit will happily edit files in
either format but always produce Squashed output.
6.6
•   Squirrel and Compression − If, like me, you routinely run your
Squirrel tables from a Compression window, you may eventually get an
error message, “Bad File Format”. If you then open the table’s
directory, you will find that some of the files inside show the white
File_xxx icon.
6.6
Setting the filetype to Squirrel’s DB7 format, will still result in an
error message.
6.6
Here is what Digital Services told me: There is − they think − a bug in
Compression, which causes this effect very intermittently. The thing to
do then is to set the filetype to CFSlzw and then uncompress those
files.  Jochen Konietzko, Köln.
6.6
•   Symbolic links − If you want to have a program in more than one
folder, it is easy enough to store the program once and then create a
link to this program in other folders. In RISC OS 3.1: load !Edit and
create a new Obey file. Shift-drag the program into this window. Save
the Obey file where you want to have the link. Then a double click on
the link-Obey file executes the original program. This works with any
filetype − not just applications.  Thomas Goseberg, Germany.  A

6.6
Music Column − Desktop Tracker
6.6
Stewart Watson
6.6
Desktop Tracker from Leading Edge is based on the earlier Tracker
application but has many enhancements. I phoned Leading Edge, who were
extremely helpful, and was told that Desktop Tracker is not an update,
but a complete rewrite. The package comes in a sturdy A5 folder
containing an A5 ring bound manual, a key strip, the main program disc
V1.03, a tunes disc and two discs of samples.
6.6
Protection
6.6
The program disc is not protected but when first delivered does not
include the save routines. To receive your full version of the software,
you register your purchase with Leading Edge, who send you the complete
version with all the features contained in the manual, with your name
and address encoded on the disc. The main program requires 320Kb to run.
6.6
Readme
6.6
The readme file on the program disc contains the latest information on
the program, including six alterations to the key strip, four additions
and two changes. I’ve made the appropriate changes and included a
drawfile keystrip for inclusion on the monthly program disc.
6.6
Manual
6.6
The manual looks very good, and all the necessary information is there.
The layout is good, with plenty of diagrams to illustrate the various
features of the program. One small quibble is that I’m not convinced
that all the chapters are in the best possible order. For instance, the
chapter on hard disc installation appears near the end, in Appendix C.
That apart, it is a well-presented document, complete with a detailed
index.
6.6
Appendices
6.6
The manual has several appendices, the first of which is a step by step
introduction to entering music into Desktop Tracker. I had one problem
here, in that no matter what I did, I found that the <home> key could
not be persuaded to move the cursor as it should. Everything else went
according to plan, and entering notes is rather like entering notes in
step time into a sequencer − the entry method might appeal more to non-
keyboard players though there is a MIDI option available.
6.6
Pull-out sheets
6.6
Pages 97 and 98 of the manual (one double sided A5 sheet) has a copy of
all the keyboard related functions, including the function keys, plus a
diagram of the pitches associated with the various QWERTY keys. This is
printed on cardboard and will be a boon to all those who don’t like to
spend a lot of time consulting manuals. A copy of these two pages is
provided on pages 99 and 100 in case of accidental loss.
6.6
The program
6.6
I’ve listed below some of the additional features in Desktop Tracker.
6.6
− More effects have been defined to allow greater compatibility with the
Amiga SoundTracker
6.6
− Full desktop editing facilities, including a simple sample editor
6.6
− Sustain, as well as repeat loops, can be defined in samples
6.6
− Larger samples can be loaded in (memory limited)
6.6
− 256 events per pattern
6.6
− 256 patterns can be written
6.6
− 4 effects per event
6.6
− Virtually unlimited tune length
6.6
− Up to 16 voice polyphony
6.6
The program disc
6.6
The main program disc contains the following applications:-
6.6
!SysMerge & !System
6.6
!DeskTrack − the main application
6.6
!DTTBars − displays a bar graph “spectrum analyser” on the screen
together with a display of which voices are playing.
6.6
!DTTContrl − allows various system parameters for Desktop Tracker to be
changed.
6.6
!DTTConv − used to convert SoundTracker or Tracker files into Desktop
Tracker files.
6.6
!DTTJuke − a Desktop Tracker player routine
6.6
!DTTScope − displays an oscilloscope display of a voice that is being
played
6.6
!DTTSounds − a sample converter that allows samples to be taken from
other programs and converts them into Desktop Tracker format.
6.6
!ReadMe − latest information on changes since the manual was printed
6.6
Using Desktop Tracker
6.6
When you load the program, after the obligatory title page has
disappeared, two windows appear on the screen and the program installs
itself on the iconbar. Window one is the main editing window, in which
notes are entered and edited, and window two is the player window which
controls the various playing options of the program. I found the default
colours a bit dark but the options menu on the main program icon allows
you to customise the colours to your own taste.
6.6
Note entry
6.6
The note entry procedure is fairly straightforward, because the QWERTY
keyboard is used as a three octave music keyboard. Just select the
required track, load a sample you wish to use, then type in the required
notes. There is also the option of entering monophonic lines from a MIDI
keyboard, provided you have an appropriate interface, and this does make
life a lot easier. Unfortunately, the facility to output via MIDI is
missing at the moment.
6.6
The tunes disc
6.6
The tunes disc contains eight example files demonstrating only some of
Desktop Tracker’s abilities. I was disappointed that they had not
included a 16 track demo, as Leading Edge claim that Desktop Tracker is
the first such program capable of running sixteen concurrent tracks. I
suspect that the rush to get the program released meant that this was
overlooked.  There are, of course, a multitude of public domain tracker
files available which can be converted into Desktop Tracker file format
and which you could use a starting point for building your own library
of files.
6.6
Sample discs
6.6
The two sample discs contain 131 sampled sounds and there is sufficient
variety, from Flute to AhYeah! or Yam-Death1, to meet most people’s
requirements. Tracker files can be loaded in and the various samples
used can be stripped out, giving users access to a vast collection of
sounds at a nominal cost. The sounds provided are in Notes and
Percussion directories in disc 1, and Musical, Orchestra and Voices
directories, on disc 2. Any of the sounds provided can be modified and
re-saved using the facilities in Desktop Tracker.
6.6
Conclusion
6.6
This is a very interesting product capable of sophisticated musical
applications. The facilities provided are comprehensive and there is a
vast store of tracker material available in public domain libraries. The
fact that no other equipment is necessary, makes it an attractive
starting package for those interested in music on a low budget, and many
more experienced musicians will find many uses for the features
provided.
6.6
Desktop Tracker costs £63 through Archive.  A

6.6
ArtWorks Column
6.6
Trevor Sutton
6.6
I am now beginning to find the tools and hot keys in AW very natural to
use. In fact, on returning to Draw, I find myself reaching for some of
AW’s key combinations. On my visit to BETT,  I mentioned to CC the
usefulness of the <ctrl-Q> and <ctrl-W> in Draw. This was carefully
noted and so I am hopeful. I have always found CC to be good listeners.
6.6
ArtWorks 1.100
6.6
Yes, version 1.100, it looks like a very long wait then for version
2.000!
6.6
Though I have had this version of AW for just two days, I have checked
the problem with rom based fonts like Trinity and Homerton and they will
now rotate and print correctly. Though support for the colour card is a
main feature of this upgrade, there are some facilities which will
appeal to everyone.
6.6
There is little point in going into great detail because good manual-
style notes are included with the discs. I will briefly summarise the
extra facilities with a few suggestions as to their use. This will form
an addendum to the full Archive review of AW. (Archive 6.1 p33.)
6.6
Outline-only printing is supported and it works in an intelligent way,
using white rather than no fill, to replace colours. This means that
deep layers do not show through. This is useful for quick prints and for
small prints of images as reference material. Painting by numbers is, as
CC suggest, a possibility! Tiling has been changed and has become more
logical. So all you bill-posters will no doubt be happier.
6.6
A useful feature for tracing work is that background layers are now
tinted 50% towards white. So it is much easier to see a black or
coloured line as you work over a background image. I may, at last,
attempt that relief map. There is now a Sprite info box which is
available either from the Object menu or <shift-f1> (not <ctrl-f1> as it
suggests in the notes). Process allows sprites with a range of colours
to be edited and Contone allows monochrome (or two colours with
intermediate shades). So your black and white scans can now, with ease,
become glorious sepia.
6.6
One of the most significant features of this version is undoubtedly the
support for the colour card and I was stunned by some of the images from
AW which I saw displayed at the BETT exhibition. At present, the new
modes do not work within the Archimedes desktop environment and so AW
takes over the whole screen and the image can be magnified or reduced.
6.6
There is a new version of the FlipTop application which now provides
detailed information about the current mode including processor speed,
refresh rate and an interesting comparison with the previous mode. Some
useful palettes are available and the irritating countdown in
QuickChange, which turned choosing modes into an arcade game, has been
removed.
6.6
A new application, !AWviewer, is included which simply displays AW
files, allowing zooms and WYSIWYG. This can be freely distributed with
your own AW files to make people jealous or perhaps encourage them to
buy the program. It’s a shrewd move on the part of CC.
6.6
Impression 2.18
6.6
This is now available and the support for AW files seems to work well
and with a WYSIWYG option in the Misc menu. This means outlines of
images can be used to speed up redrawing.
6.6
Palettes
6.6
Choosing colours in AW can be a little hit and miss, especially if you
are ultimately aiming to print your work to one of the many ribbon,
inkjet or even bubblejet or laser colour printers. It helps, of course,
to print a few samples and I have found the clipart accompanying the AW
package to be useful. It is possible to save the palettes for each of
these clips separately − some of them give a vast and unuseable list of
colours. Just try the ColourMap file from AW Disc 3 and have a look at
the palette. It is clear, from conversations with CC at BETT, that more
usable palette layout and accessibility are being considered. The
facility to pick up a colour already in use (as in most painting
applications) will, I hope, soon be implemented. Mr T.M. Smith has
written to say that he is currently working on a palette of flesh tones.
Perhaps useful palettes could be shared? I have submitted a 256 Paint
palette for inclusion on the monthly disc. This is large but gives
groups of shades in a fairly usable order.
6.6
Customising AW’s toolbox
6.6
At first, I wondered why anyone would want to change the original
toolbox layout in AW. I realise that, with the potential of extra
modules, this is an important facility but there was a feeling of power
having all the tools instantly available in a block. However, I have
just decided to experiment with the re-ordering of the toolbox. My aim
was to produce a layout similar to that of Draw.
6.6
Using <adjust> dragging allows icons to be swapped, while <adjust>
dragging off the toolbox adds the tool to a group − only sensible groups
of tools are possible. A menu pointer appears when the pointer moves
over a group of tools. The single width toolbox is an option from the
Choices − ArtWorks option from the iconbar menu.
6.6
So my links are as follows:
6.6
− Curve tool − Straight line tool, Freehand tool
6.6
− Rectangle tool − Oval tool, Rounded rectangle tool
6.6
− Flat fill tool − Linear fill tool, Radial fill tool
6.6
− Scaling tool − Rotate tool
6.6
− Zoom tool − Push tool
6.6
− Blend tool − Envelope tool, Perspective tool
6.6
− Text tool
6.6
− Select tool
6.6
Once an alternative tool is selected, it moves to the toolbox. This
facility shows much forethought and will no doubt be vital when we have
Hatched fill tools, Trace tools, Sprite manipulation tools, etc! You
might not like the end result but it’s worth a try!
6.6
Rulers in AW
6.6
Mr J. Jordan sensibly suggests a route to producing rulers in AW.
Drawing them in a background layer and saving the file as the DefDoc in
the Auto directory. This would give a default background layer with
rulers. I welcome this suggestion − perhaps someone could draw some and
offer them for the Archive magazine discs.
6.6
Printing
6.6
Mr Smith found that printing from AW to his HP Deskjet 500C produced
colour banding in graduated fills and blends. However, after purchasing
the Ace RISC-OS 3, 24 bit Pro-Drivers, the quality improved
dramatically.
6.6
The printer driver for the Deskjet also provides improved printing on a
Citizen Swift when the appropriate printer definition is loaded. (That
was a good discovery by my friend Charlie!)
6.6
Steve Hutchinson has sent in some observations of printing problems
(along with other useful information which I will use for further
columns). He says...
6.6
I have tried to produce a few items using the Fit Lots option − for
example, a prayer bookmark. I change the page setup to a Custom size,
70mm wide by 148mm high. This will give me six bookmarks to an A4 page.
The manual says to reduce the scaling in the Print Dialogue box, a
little, to allow for the margins, which I do; 97% gives ‘Fit Lots (6)’.
However on printing out, AW hasn’t taken the margins into account. It
positions the six copies based on the left bottom corner and I lose
anything too near the bottom. If it centred it, as Impression does, all
would be well. If it isn’t going to centre it properly, it should allow
Print Lots (6) with 100% scaling.
6.6
I have not used this facility yet. Any comments?
6.6
Fonts again
6.6
Steve Hutchinson offers some different ideas for font organisation.
6.6
Reading Michael Carter’s comments on the fonts supplied with Artworks,
what I want is an automatic version of !FontInst. That is, a program
that looks at a document before it loads it, to discover the required
fonts and then loads those that are not in the current FontList. It
could do this from the HardDisc or archived directory, or even by asking
for the right floppy disc, if it kept a record of where the fonts were.
It sounds like the next version of !FontDir to me − how about it Adrian?
(Watch this space! Ed.)
6.6
Thanks Steve. Perhaps someone will solve our problems. I have found,
though, that after either Impression or AW has failed to find a font and
replaced it with their choice, the correct fonts can be included by
subsequently loading the appropriate font directories.
6.6
Coda
6.6
As in a musical piece, this section will form a tailpiece to the column.
It will sometimes offer questions to be answered and perhaps even
provoke discussion.
6.6
AW is a package which encourages creativity. The trouble is, we computer
folk enjoy the technology too much. Let us therefore have some
suggestions for experimentation or your favourite special effect. Which
blends or fills work well for you? Have you tried curve stitching?  A

6.6
CC
6.6
new Artwork

6.6
Safesell
6.6
new Artwork

6.6
SpaceTech
6.6
From 6.5 page 40

6.6
Comment Column
6.6
•   AKF18 monitor problems? − I recently purchased a Acorn Multiscan
Monitor type AKF18 for use with my A3000. I found, however, that it
would not display correctly in the mode 20/21 multiscan modes.
6.6
I telephoned Acorn Customer Services for assistance, only to be told
that they do not provide Technical Support over the telephone. I then
wrote to Acorn explaining, in detail, my problem. After about four
weeks, the following response was received:
6.6
“It is possible, by means of an adaptor, to attach the AKF18 monitor to
an A3000. It was never designed to be used with this computer and
therefore compatibility problems such as those described in your local
letter will arise.”
6.6
My local dealer’s comments were that he was not aware of this problem.
Need I say any more to potential purchasers than YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
D West, Maidenhead.
6.6
In our experience, it is possible to get AKF18 monitors working OK on
pre-A5000 computers. If you have problems, it’s probably worth getting
Careware 18 − it has some utilities which will help. Ed.
6.6
•   A-Link limitations − It seems that the A-Link for the Acorn Pocket
Book will only work on RISC-OS 3.10 and not on 3.00. (Apologies to A5000
owners still waiting for an upgrade. Ed)  P Hooper, Norfolk.
6.6
•   ArcFax & Hayes/BABT-approved modems − What Philip Green says in his
review of ArcFax is not true − there are several BABT-approved Hayes
modems. I have a Pace Microlin which is definitely Hayes and has a green
sticker. I believe the US Robotics (née Miracom) are approved and they
are Hayes as well.
6.6
David Pillling tells me that he is about to start a revision of ArcFax
incorporating feedback from users. I believe it will also incorporate
support for third party serial ports which will help overcome the
bottleneck in the Archimedes native port.
6.6
I think that the reason for the time difference between sending and
receiving faxes may in part be due to the fact that a real Fax machine
is having to scan and compress on the fly whereas, when sending via
ArcFax, that part of the job is already done. Some Fax modems can only
transmit at 9,600 baud whilst receiving at 14,400. Others work at 14,400
both ways and, more commonly, at 9,600 both ways. If you are buying a
modem, it is worth checking out its performance. All the BABT-approved
units I have come across seem to be 9,600 only. As yet, it is only the
unapproved ones that seem to be capable of 14,400.  Tim Nicholson,
Cranleigh.
6.6
•   Archimedes in the Arabian Gulf − In this far-flung outpost of
Archimedian society, it is sometimes difficult to maintain the stimulus
and interest which is greatly enhanced by magazine editorial and comment
such as provided in Archive. (I wonder if the same letter will appear
elsewhere?! Ed) There are at least four personal users of Acorn RISC
machines in Abu Dhabi that I know of plus the english-speaking junior
schools in Abu Dhabi and Al Ain and interest in Acorn machines is
growing all the time. If any Archive member has been “posted” or is
considering a posting in the Arabian Gulf and would like to correspond,
I would be most happy to hear from them. Graham Howard, c/o ADGAS,
P.O.Box 3500, Abu Dhabi, UAE.
6.6
•   ArcSimp upgrade − As I write this (early February), Mijas Software
have updated their simulation software ArcSimp to version 1.55. Several
bugs have been fixed and some improvements to the WIMP interface make
the handling even better than before.
6.6
In addition, they have put a new example simulation onto the disc, which
shows some of the scope of the program: The acceleration of a
“performance car” can be manipulated by changing the setup of the gear
box (number of gears, transmission ratios). Registered users should, by
now, have received their free upgrade.
6.6
The next major revision (version 2.00) with a new, more detailed manual,
has been announced for “probably the first quarter of ’93”. If this new
manual is carefully done, it will be a real boon.  Jochen Konietzko,
Köln, Germany.
6.6
•   CD-ROMs − Now that CD-ROMs are becoming more popular, I am tempted to
look across to the PC world. There, games are often available on CD-ROM,
whilst in the Acorn market all we can get are art files. Now, I am sure
that games manufacturers will be reluctant to make game CDs until the
demand is there, but I also feel that some people will be reluctant to
buy a CD-ROM drive until the supply is there. Which came first, the
chicken or the egg? Neil Walker, Norwich.
6.6
• Ceramic Solutions − The Colton pottery team have done it again. To
celebrate their 5th Anniversary they have produced another mug.
6.6
“So what’s new?” cry dedicated Colton watchers. Precisely nothing I am
afraid − same conventional open top, closed bottom circular cross
section; same vertically aligned handle. OK there are now three colours.
My A level class scratched their befuddled heads and asked, “Is that one
and a half bit colour?” No lads, it’s not. See you all next year.
6.6
Steve, the director of computer-based learning, was quick to recognise
an opportunity, “write them a good review and tell Colton you want to
review two more.” In our budget, mugs come under ‘consumables’.
6.6
The decoration might be described by graphic designers as “a broad
frieze of penguins” − but it would only be described in this way once,
since few things annoy the folk who hang around listening to graphic
designers so much as weak puns.
6.6
Colton, keen to emphasise the power and ease of use of their new word
processor chose to advertise Wordz at the BETT show with a word
processed year planner. Good try, but will it do letters? Now that I
have described the mug as ‘nothing new’, I suppose I will find out
because they will probably write to me asking for their free mug back.
Robert Chrismas, Gosport.
6.6
•   Compression, version 1.17 is an upgrade worth installing: Compression
is now fully RISC-OS 3 and 3.10 compatible, so that it can also be
included into a boot file without difficulty.
6.6
In addition, there is a very useful new keyboard short cut. Simply
pressing <Ctrl-Insert> opens the “other” directory window (Compression
or normal), which is particularly valuable if you are somewhere deep
inside the directory tree and want to compress or decompress a file.
Jochen Konietzko, Köln, Germany.
6.6
•   Credit where credit is due − When I wrote (Archive 6.2, p8) about my
experiences with my SCSI hard disc, I expected to get it back within the
next week or so.
6.6
When it still had not arrived after more than two months, in
exasperation, I phoned Morley. It turned out that they had sent the disc
long ago and a subsequent check was able to trace it up to the point
where it left the UK, then it vanished.
6.6
Rather than wait for the insurance company to act, Morley decided to
send a replacement straight away. This arrived within ten days but,
somewhere along the way, someone had obviously used the parcel for
target practice because there was a big hole in the side. Most of the
Styrofoam chips had vanished and the drive had suffer a head crash!
6.6
This prompted Morley to send a third disc (a newer model − mine was no
longer available − they wrote “hope you don’t mind”) and to compensate
me for the long wait, they even threw in (free of charge) a new EPROM
for their SCSI podule which contains CDFS (someone obviously remembered
I had asked about this a while ago).
6.6
Now that is what I call service!  Jochen Konietzko, Köln, Germany.
6.6
•   Dongle problems − On occasions, I find that I cannot print from other
applications until I have run Impression and quit it and when I recently
used a Canon BubbleJet, instead of my own LaserDirect, I experienced the
same problem. Perhaps I can offer the following explanation.
6.6
The Impression dongle contains various circuits which need power. The
power is obtained by rectifying two data lines from the Archimedes’
printer interface (D1 and D8) and two lines from the printer (SLCT and
NACK); the rectified voltage is stored on a capacitor and powers the
dongle. In normal operation, Impression activates the dongle every time
it is run but if Impression has not been run there is no guarantee that
power will be delivered to the dongle. (This also seems to be more of a
problem on RISC-OS 3.1. Ed.)
6.6
D1, D8 and NSTB from the computer and BUSY from the printer are buffered
on the dongle by one of the ICs, so no power on the dongle means no
output to the printer. Also, the BUSY line from the dongle to the
computer stays high, telling the computer that the printer is busy and
unable to take any input. The printer data stays in the Archimedes,
which then freezes up, waiting; this is an un-delightful feature of
RISC-OS 3.1 which doesn’t seem to let its buffers fill before hanging.
6.6
(Incidentally, people with old dongles will discover that on the newer
Archimedes machines, the bidirectional printer interface will not work
from printer to computer as CC did not wire up all the pins between the
connectors.)
6.6
The DIY solution of shorting pins together on the dongle may work
(although I can’t see why it should) and it shouldn’t damage anything
but it isn’t really the answer. Affected users should write to Computer
Concepts demanding a better solution e.g. (1) Computer Concepts write a
short module which will ‘exercise’ the dongle, or (2) redesign it, or
(3) use a more sensible method of software protection such as
installation routines which burn-in registration codes provided by CC on
the telephone − quite a common method on PC software.  Seán Kelly,
Leighton Buzzard.
6.6
•   RISC-OS 3.1 upgrades − Here is what we wrote in the Price List last
month...
6.6
I am sorry to say that the position with regard to A5000 RISC-OS 3.1
upgrades has still not resolved itself. (It’s now nearly 6 months since
I placed the order with the distributor!) In fact, Acorn have just told
us that they have sent out more A5000 upgrades than they have made
A5000s.
6.6
So what has happened to these upgrades? I’ll tell you where I think they
are. Owners of pre-A5000 computers have bought them − they have ignored
Acorn’s licence conditions and have installed them in non-A5000
computers to save themselves £30 a set.
6.6
In other words, a number of selfish people have taken advantage of
Acorn’s goodwill in allowing A5000 owners to have 3.1 chips virtually at
cost and have thereby left bona fide A5000 owners without their 3.1
upgrades.
6.6
Here is a response from a reader...
6.6
I read with interest your comments in the latest Archive about the
shortage of RISC-OS 3.10 upgrades, but was very puzzled by your comments
about people “breaking the licence conditions” by fitting these upgrades
to older machines; I have checked the licence and there is no such
condition!
6.6
I’m sure that Acorn aren’t stupid − if they didn’t want the upgrades to
be fitted to older machines then they would have imposed some definite
conditions, rather than relying on goodwill and people’s “honesty”.
6.6
Could you please check the licence conditions? I can see none that
people would be breaking through buying A5000 upgrade packs. Indeed, the
printed manual and extra delivery expense make me wonder if Acorn makes
any more profit on the full upgrade packs compared with the A5000 packs.
6.6
Given that the number of ROM sets coming into the country is limited, it
strikes me that Acorn has got to make the decision whether it is more
important to upgrade users from RISC-OS 3.00 to RISC-OS 3.10 or from
RISC-OS 2.0x to RISC-OS 3.10. That is surely the true reason for the
shortage of A5000 upgrade packs?
6.6
I, too, have checked the licence agreement and the reader is correct
that there is nothing which specifically refers to its use (or
otherwise) on any other computers. I’m sorry that I didn’t check my
facts properly but I still maintain that it is taking advantage of
Acorn’s goodwill. Ed.
6.6
•   The Good, The Bad and the Pocket Book − A short story by the non-
technical partner in a computer household.
6.6
The Bad (Sad) News − sold our old faithful (much modified) BBC B.
6.6
The Good News − bought a Pocket Book (from NCS).
6.6
The Bad News − NCS had not received any stocks of A-links or power
packs.
6.6
Weeks Later − The Good News − the A-link arrived.
6.6
The Bad News − it needs RISC-OS 3.1, not 3.0! We don’t have 3.1 on our
A5000 and neither does any dealer in the country it appears!
6.6
The Good News − a kind friend offers the use of her A5000 (that has the
upgrade) to transfer the now bulging files on the Pocket Book.
6.6
I arrive complete with A-link, software and manual. The coffee comes out
and resigned faces show they expect they are in for a long evening.
6.6
The Even Better News − it worked first time! Ten minutes later, all the
files are transferred and we enjoy a pleasant evening swapping stories
about Acorn and the non-availability of items.
6.6
“Well ...?” was the comment on my return home. “All done. Easy.” I reply
with a grin.
6.6
Now to transfer the word processing files in Edit into First Word Plus.
He sits and tries different ways − I get out the manual! Unfortunately,
it was not written for a ‘normal’ person like me. I read out the
instructions for ‘Importing text from plain text editors’. I read
exactly and he types in as I speak, presses <return>, clicks on boxes,
etc but all to no avail. (“Give it to me, you’ve misread something.” The
usual mutterings follow.)
6.6
WHY didn’t it work − because the instructions are not exact. You have to
realise that, because you clicked on <End of File Replace> during the
first operation (and it’s never mentioned again) you should do it every
time. Well, I didn’t realise. To my non-technical brain, if it doesn’t
say do something then you probably shouldn’t do it!
6.6
It’s that kind of problem in the manuals that make your average computer
user (and I mean that word USER − they want to USE it for a particular
purpose) give up using an expensive and very useful tool.
6.6
**********
6.6
The Pocket Book is great, easy to use and very useful for taking notes
in meetings, reminding you of appointments, telling the time, having an
address book database; all in a smaller space than my Filofax.
6.6
However, its biggest bonus is then to transfer those meeting minutes,
lecture notes, etc into another document or DTP publication.
6.6
(The same will apply to using the spreadsheet and database but I haven’t
got that far yet.)
6.6
So, come on Acorn, make life easy for the likes of me. Give me the ‘bits
and pieces’ that I need to make everything work together. Also, remember
that we are all not technically minded (nor have hours to spend
‘fiddling around’) and make the manuals a bit more USER friendly.
6.6
**********
6.6
The Bad News − NCS still haven’t received the power packs and as for the
RISC-OS 3.1 ......
6.6
Sue Hooper, Martham, Norfolk.
6.6
(We have got some Psion mains adaptors but have still only received less
than 100 of the 250 sets of A5000 RISC-OS upgrades that I ordered on 1st
September. Ed)
6.6
•   When is a K not a k? − Following on from the comments last month about
kb and Kb, I have been informed by more than one reader that K is an
accepted (though not SI-approved) unit meaning 210 i.e. 1024. This then
distinguishes it from k which is 103. (Mind you what distinguishes 106
(M) from 220 (M)?) Well, I think I’ll stick as I am with Mb and Kb. OK?
Ed.
6.6
•   Wish list for a new Acorn machine:
6.6
Modular design. Have memory boards (inc MEMC) on a daughter board (like
A540).
6.6
CPU (and socket for FPU) on daughter board. Also make the CPU much
faster.
6.6
Graphics card with VIDC20 or better including 512Kb or more of its own
dual-port memory.
6.6
Memory upgrade to go to greater than 4Mb as on an A540. (Yes I know
about 8 Mb upgrades for 400 series but Acorn don’t produce them.)
6.6
Built-in IDE controller to save a podule slot. (I’d prefer built-in
SCSI! Ed.)
6.6
More than four expansion slots − one option would be to have them
vertically stacked. This would, however, preclude full-width podules,
e.g. I/O podule, and would also make the case taller − not in keeping
with Acorn’s current style. (Chris hadn’t seen the February magazine
when he wrote this. I think Ultimate Expansion System may be one answer.
Ed.)
6.6
Again, as per the A540, a hefty PSU.
6.6
I²C lines brought out on a separate connector. I have to lose the use of
one podule connector because I use a Morley Teletext adaptor which uses
these lines.
6.6
The idea behind these suggestions is that the machine can easily be
upgraded as and when different parts become available. It might also
make manufacture easier and therefore cheaper. For example, Acorn could
simply have a plain mother board and plug in an ARM2, ARM3 board or
ARM600 board depending on the customer’s specification. The same applies
to the graphics system, with a choice of VIDC or VIDC20. The dual port
memory would allow the VIDC 20 to use higher resolutions and colours
without loss of speed.  Chris Walker, Norwich.  A

6.6
News Flash ... Ethernet and Econet ...
6.6
   Get Teletext
6.6
                on all stations
6.6
                           of an AUN Network

6.6
The XOB Teletext Server is the only AUN compatible teletext server.
6.6
It will deliver teletext pages to stations on Econet and Ethernet
networks, over bridges and through gateways.
6.6
The server is multi-tasking and RISC OS compliant on Archimedes series
machines. It allows pages to be saved as sprites so that graphics may be
incorporated in published reports. Pages may be saved as text as the
basis for newspaper articles. Pages may also be saved in viewdata
format.
6.6
Terminal software is also supplied for BBC-B and Master series machines.
6.6
   Site Licence: £154.00 (ex VAT)
6.6
   XOB, Balkeerie, Eassie, Angus  DD8 1SR.  Tel. [phone].

6.6
!System and !Scrap – A Beginner’s Guide
6.6
Richard Hallas
6.6
After Paul’s plea last month for article for beginners, I thought I
would have a go at explaining !System and !Scrap. If you try to run
them, nothing appears to happen, so why do we need them and what are
they for?
6.6
All that is needed here is a little basic understanding of how the Acorn
operating system works. RISC-OS is what is known as a ‘modular’
operating system, which means that it is comprised of lots of small
components, each of which has its own function: these are modules. You
can check this out by pressing <f12> (after which a star should appear
at the bottom of the screen) and typing HELP MODULES. Press <return>,
and a long list of titles will scroll up the screen. These are the
components from which the operating system is built up − each has a
version number and date next to it. Most of the names will be self-
explanatory, such as “Font Manager” for looking after the outline fonts,
and “Hourglass”, which takes care of the egg-timer pointer shape you see
when an operation takes a long time. (If you want to return to the
desktop at this point, press <shift> to allow this list to continue to
its end and then press <return> again.)
6.6
The point about modules is that each is a self-contained set of routines
which is only used when needed. Different teams of programmers were
responsible for writing the different modules at different times and
many modules have undergone revisions since they were first created,
either to improve their facilities or to correct mistakes, or both.
6.6
One of the really nice things about RISC-OS is that if a module has been
revised since its original inclusion in the operating system, a copy of
the updated version can be loaded from disc. For example, the copy of
the Font Manager built into RISC­OS 2 is a very early version which
cannot cope with the now standard outline fonts. Therefore, RISC­OS 2
applications which use outline fonts have to make sure that a more
recent version of the Font Manager has been loaded from disc. What’s
more, it is also possible to load additional modules from disc to extend
the facilities of the operating system.
6.6
!System
6.6
!System is a directory tha   t contains
later versions of some of the modules built into the operating system.
It also contains copies of extra modules that provide facilities which
may be needed by certain applications but which are not built into the
operating system.
6.6
An example of one of these is a module called “Interface Manager”. Many
applications, especially ones in the public domain, have nice-looking 3D
buttons and borders. (Impression was the first application to use this
style, although the effects are created by its own proprietary system.)
To provide this effect, the Interface Manager module is needed and so
when you load an application that uses it, the application will try to
make sure that the module is available. First it checks to see if the
module has been loaded already and then, if not, it tries to find a copy
within the !System directory.
6.6
If your computer does not know where your !System is located, you will,
at this point, get an error message along the lines of “System resources
cannot be found”. This is why it is important to let the computer know
where there is a copy of !System when you first switch it on. If you
have a hard disc, !System should be located in the first directory to
open when you click on the hard disc icon.
6.6
All that is needed to tell the computer where !System is located, is to
open a directory containing it. To be doubly sure, you can double-click
on !System to ‘run’ it. This has the effect of telling the computer that
you really want it to use this particular copy of !System. This is
useful if you have used a floppy disc which has a copy of !System on it,
and you want to make sure the computer is not using that copy of !System
by mistake.
6.6
The last point illustrates why it can be confusing to have more than one
copy of !System available. The computer can only know about the location
of one !System at once, so you should have your own working copy into
which you copy all the latest modules as you receive them. An
application called !SysMerge from Acorn will make the process of
updating modules in !System very straight forward.
6.6
If you do have an out-of-date module in your !System, you may get a
slightly confusing error message when you try to run an application. It
may say something like, “You need Clib 3.75 or later”. Clib, which is
short for Shared C Library, is a module which is needed by applications
which were written in the ‘C’ programming language. The error message
simply indicates that the copy in your !System is out of date and the
application you are trying to use needs some facilities provided by a
later version of the module. A copy of the relevant version will
probably be supplied with the application, in which case you can either
use the !SysMerge utility to update your !System.
6.6
(If you prefer to “see” what is going on, you can open up your !System,
by holding down <shift> while double-clicking on it, open the Modules
sub-directory that is inside it and copy the module into it yourself.)
6.6
If the updated module has not been provided with the application, you
will probably be able to get a copy from a local Acorn dealer or by
buying Shareware 17 from Archive.
6.6
There is one very important point to bear in mind when you have just
updated a module. If the old version of the module is loaded (and in
use) when you load the application which needs the newer version, the
computer is quite likely to crash. For this reason, you should save all
your work in progress, update your !System and then reset the machine.
6.6
So, to summarise: !System is simply a place to keep updated and new
modules. The computer must know where it is located so that it can load
the modules when it needs them.
6.6
!Scrap
6.6
!Scrap uses the same icon as !System but is, if anything, slightly more
mysterious. As with !System, you should only have one copy of !Scrap
available, and opening a directory containing it (or double-clicking on
it) will tell the computer where it is located. The computer often has
to write things into !Scrap, so those of you with a hard disc drive are
at an advantage. If !Scrap is on your hard disc, the computer can write
things to it without you knowing or having to insert the floppy disc
containing it.
6.6
The precise purposes of !Scrap are slightly less well-defined than those
of !System, but basically it has two uses. One is to facilitate the
smooth running of the system when transferring data and the other is to
provide a ‘safety net’ if an application crashes. If you open up !Scrap
(by double-clicking on it with <Shift> held down) you will see that it
contains a directory called “ScrapDir”. This directory will probably be
empty but it may contain one or more other directories, or perhaps a
file.
6.6
When you use two applications together, such as a drawing program and a
desktop publisher, you may want to save data from one program into the
other. You may perhaps drag a picture from the drawing application into
a graphic frame in the DTP package. When this happens, the drawing
program may send the graphic directly into the DTP package using the
computer’s own memory (direct memory transfer) or it may save the
picture to disc and tell the desktop publisher to load it. If the latter
method is used, the drawing program will save the picture into !Scrap.
The desktop publisher will then load the picture from inside !Scrap,
display it in the frame and delete the disc copy. All this will be
transparent to the user but if something goes wrong and the drawing
program crashes (say), you may find that there is still a copy of the
drawing inside !Scrap.
6.6
The second purpose of !Scrap is to provide a place for applications to
save data if they crash unexpectedly. For example, RISC-OS 3.1’s built-
in copy of !Paint is not particularly reliable and can quite easily
crash in the middle of editing a large sprite file. However, it has the
redeeming feature of often saving the edited file before it quits. If
you look inside !Scraps’s “ScrapDir” directory, you may find it contains
another directory with the name “Paint” which, in turn, contains the
file you were working on when the program crashed. If you leave your
!Scrap untended, you may find that it occasionally acquires other
directories when applications crash and save their data inside it. It is
important, therefore, that you do not keep !Scrap on a write-protected
disc or the computer will not be able to work properly.  A
6.6
Thanks, Richard. If anyone else feels there is a subject they could
explain clearly for the uninitiated, get in touch with me or with Laura
Handoca, our new Beginners’ Column editor. Ed.

6.6
CC
6.6
From 6.5 page 19

6.6
PipeLine-Z
6.6
Gerald Fitton
6.6
It is the help readers of this column give each other (rather than my
monthly words) which makes PipeLine-Z such a success. Here’s an
example...
6.6
DataBase
6.6
In the January 1993 PipeLine column, I included a request for help in
changing the structure of a database. I have had several replies which
involve the use of !Edit. Let me start by reminding you of the problem
which was posed by Roger King. Roger has a number of records in a format
similar to the one below (four columns) with one record per row:
6.6
   Col A  Col B  Col C  Col D
6.6
What he wants to do is to change it to a format which uses two rows per
record but with only three columns:
6.6
   Col A  Col B  Col D
6.6
               Col C
6.6
Roger does not want to type all the records again but wants a way of
transferring the data from his ‘old’ database to the new one.
6.6
I received many replies which used variants of the same basic technique
of combining the features of PipeDream and Edit. However, I would like
to give special mention to Howard Snow and to Bruce Brown who exchanged
discs and ideas with Roger King.
6.6
On the Archive monthly disc you will find disc versions with the details
of the conversion procedures recommended by Howard and Bruce.
6.6
Bruce summarises the advantages of using the combination of PipeDream
and Edit to solve database manipulation problems.
6.6
1. Nearly all databases and word processors can export data as ASCII.
(CSV is also very useful when numbers and text are involved.)
6.6
2. PipeDream is marvellous for getting tabbed ASCII files into columns
which allows the order of the data, both fields and records, to be
changed at will using block moves and sorts.
6.6
3. Virtually any search and replace operation can be carried out in
Edit. This applies particularly to RISC-OS 3 Edit and SrceEdit which
have the more versatile Wildcard option as well as Magic characters.
6.6
If you have more examples of using a combination of PipeDream with some
other package (such as Edit or Basic) then please send them to me.
6.6
Upgrades
6.6
Wordz was launched at the BETT Show in January 1993 as version 1.00. I
now have version 1.01 and I’ve been told that version 1.02 is just
around the corner.
6.6
This brings me round to asking you to write to me with your views about
software upgrades. Rather longer ago than I care to mention, I read for
a degree in Applied Mathematics at Imperial College, London. One of the
extra curricular courses I attended was about publishing the result of
research work. The course started with fundamentals such as grammar,
spelling, the use of the word “respectively” and the (still much
misused) apostrophe − but it also included a series of lectures on the
topic “When to Publish?”
6.6
This topic was introduced in the form of the question, “Should you
publish some unfinished research to ‘get in before the competition’ or
should you wait until you’re certain you’ve explored every aspect of the
subject?” Many times, when I was in industry, I had an invention not
quite ready to patent and deliberated, weighed the odds of being pipped
at the post and thought about my college lectures.
6.6
Releasing software for sale is not quite the same problem as publishing
research but it has similarities. A large package such as Squirrel,
Impression, PipeDream or Wordz requires many hours of development (and
expenditure) in advance of any revenue. With such a package, it is
almost impossible for the software team to write the program in such a
way that it is ‘guaranteed’ to be bug free. (Mind you, I have read a
Defence Specification which goes a long way towards developing a
philosophy, based on set theory, which might lead to a method of writing
programs which are guaranteed to be bug free!)
6.6
In addition to delaying release dates because of known or potential
bugs, programmers are notorious for wanting to add a new feature or
wanting to improve the method of implementing an established feature
(ease, flexibility, speed). So, when do you release the software for
sale? The answer is definitely not to wait until it is completely bug
free and when the package has all the features that it is possible to
think of − for that day, like tomorrow, never comes!
6.6
From what I have seen, Colton Software, like so many other software
suppliers, wait until a package is ‘useable’ rather than ‘perfect’
before releasing it. My experience of them is that, when they release
software for sale, they are aware of things which could be improved but
they honestly believe that purchasers will be able to get good use out
of the package as it stands at version 1.00.
6.6
So, let’s accept that it would be unreasonable to delay the release of a
version 1.00 because desirable features are not yet implemented or
because of minor bugs known or potential. When the package is improved
who should pay? There is a cost involved in providing upgrades and
someone something has to pay it. Should that be the customer, the
distributor, the dealer or the software house? So that you don’t get
your mind locked into the current set of conventions, let’s consider one
possible scenario which might prove popular in some sectors!
Distributors (such as NCS) take a profit margin on the original sale.
Should they pay the software house for the extra work involved in
upgrading the package but pass the benefit to their customer free of
charge? Should the customer pay? Should the software house keep
supplying free upgrades for ever?
6.6
I notice that the most recent upgrade to Squirrel is free but, if you
want to make use of the new features, you will have to buy a new
handbook for about £15. The latest version of Impression, version 2.18,
will cost you about £10 if you want to upgrade.
6.6
I am a great believer in the concept of controlling Cash Flow (rather
than mere Profit) as a method of keeping a company financially healthy.
In times of economic expansion, my insistence on projecting Cash Flow as
well as ultimate Profit has been treated with suspicion (and even
ridicule) by some of my colleagues in industry but, in a time of
recession, Cash Flow (and not Profit) becomes the criterion for
survival! (Funny you should mention that, Gerald − we nearly learned
that the hard way last month! Ed.)
6.6
All links in the software distribution chain need positive cash flow if
they are to thrive and prosper. There is negative cash flow to the
writers of packages during its development, positive cash flow during
the sale but further negative cash flow every time a free upgrade is
supplied to the user.
6.6
So here’s my question to you. “How should upgrades by financed?” Should
it be the software house, the distributor, the dealer, the user or some
combination of all these people?
6.6
If you have an early version of Wordz, send both your program and your
examples disc to Colton Software for a free upgrade to what will
probably be version 1.02. It will save Colton Software administrative
costs if you include a self addressed label (and a stamp) with your
discs.  A

6.6
Colton
6.6
From 6.5 page 20

6.6
Oak
6.6
From 6.5 page 14

6.6
Principles of Desk Top Publishing − Part 1
6.6
Mike McNamara
6.6
In my role as a college lecturer, I run regular introductory courses in
DTP. In these, I am often asked whether anyone could learn to use DTP.
The simple answer to this is ‘yes’ but then, this is not really the
right question. What they should have asked is ‘can anyone learn to use
DTP to good effect?’. The answer to this is far less clear-cut, although
still basically ‘yes’, or more accurately ‘yes if’. The aim of this
article is to look at some of these ‘ifs’.
6.6
An interesting side-effect of the power of the Archimedes is that a very
high proportion of its users have access to DTP. This is due to the
simple fact that Impression and Ovation are designed to be used for both
DTP and word processing, while on other systems like Macintosh or IBM
these two tasks require two packages. Through being able to combine the
two into one package Archimedes users have very cost-effective access to
high quality DTP software. Combine this with the ease of access to all
Archimedes software through RISC-OS and the temptation to exploit the
full potential of the software is irresistible.
6.6
However, power has its risks (no pun intended). Having access to
professional DTP software does not turn you into a professional DTP
user, any more than access to word processing turns you into a best-
selling writer. DTP is far more than simply combining text and graphics
and adding a few fancy headings. DTP is a design process and needs
considerable thought. If you already have a design background then you
are well ahead of the game. If not, then be prepared to invest a little
time to learning some basic principles. Unfortunately, there are no set
rules to good design. If there were then they would be built into the
software and we could all produce perfect results every time. What may
be considered good design today will be old hat and cliched by tomorrow.
Design is an aspect of fashion and, as with any fashion, it changes with
time.
6.6
There are a few basic principles that can help guide us but, at the end
of the day, trust your own judgement. If you like the look of what
you’ve produced then go for it. Don’t be afraid to use the work of
others to help develop your own ideas.
6.6
Suck it and see!
6.6
The first, and possibly most important, of these principles is to
experiment. Get into the habit of trying out ideas − not on the computer
but on paper. The reason for working on paper first is quite simple. If
you work directly on the computer then your creativity will be led, at
least in part, by the software you’re using. The less familiar you are
with the software, the more restricted your ideas will become.
6.6
By working with pencil and paper, you can let your creative ideas take
over. Work as quickly as you can. Allow one idea to follow another and
don’t discard any. I tend to find that the faster I work, the more ideas
I seem to get. Don’t try to be too precise but work in rough concepts −
use wiggly lines to represent the text and simple cartoon or stick
characters for graphics (see below).
6.6
Once you have a collection of possible designs, you can then select
those which seem most effective and/or pleasing, and refine these. From
the paper you are then ready to move to the computer and use the power
of the software to bring your final idea(s) to life.
6.6
When playing with design ideas, never lose sight of the purpose for
which the materials are being designed. Here you need to remember that
the design is going to play a direct part in the success, or otherwise,
of the message you are trying to present. For example, complex, fancy
layouts take time to read. They are not therefore suited to situations
where the reader needs to get the message quickly.
6.6
The more material you put onto the page, the darker and more crowded the
page becomes. A darker page (less white space) looks more intimidating
to the reader. A ‘darker’ page design may be more appropriate for a more
formal message while something like a party invite comes across better
when ‘lighter’. It’s all a matter of balance and this is something that
you develop a feel for with practice. The degree of ‘darkness’ or
‘lightness’ of the page can be effected by many aspects of your design.
The most obvious of these is simply the amount of material you try to
fit onto the page. The closer things crowd together, the darker the
effect. On top of this, your selection of font, font leading, margin
sizes, text alignment, columns, gutters, etc will all play a part. If
some of these terms don’t mean anything to you − DON’T PANIC − I shall
be expanding on them, and a number of other topics, in later articles.
6.6
For now, get your pencil and paper out and start playing around with
ideas. It may even help to start a scrapbook of other people’s work −
company cards, advertising flyers, brochures, price lists, letterheads,
etc. These can provide invaluable inspiration, sparking off all sorts of
new ideas for your own work in the future.
6.6
Above all, don’t be afraid to experiment. Rejected ideas are not
failures. They are simply inappropriate for the particular task at hand.
They may well provide you with valuable ideas for later projects.
6.6
In the best teaching tradition − we learn through our mistakes; and
looking back at some of my own earlier work, I’ve made quite a few!
6.6
Frame power
6.6
To end this month, I would also like to draw your attention more closely
to the ‘frame’ within DTP. Those of you already familiar with DTP will
inevitably understand the basic concept of the frame. For the newcomer a
little explanation is in order.
6.6
Anything placed onto the page within a DTP package is placed within a
frame. In both Ovation and Impression these frames need to be created
before the item they are to contain can be imported or created. A frame
can contain either text or graphics and may in turn contain other frames
(not necessarily of the same type). Thus, you might create a graphic
frame, place within it a picture and then, again within the graphic
frame, create a text frame to hold a caption.
6.6
Therefore, for anyone getting into DTP it is essential that you spend
time getting to know how to create, move, refine and fill frames. Until
these skills are mastered, all other aspects of the DTP environment will
appear all but impossible to control.
6.6
However, frames are far more important to the DTP user than simply as
the containers for items on the page. The creative and imaginative use
of frames opens up vast new areas in page design.
6.6
To begin with, if you find that the effect you are trying to achieve is
proving somewhat complex, consider splitting some of the element between
frames and then altering the interaction of the frames.
6.6
or example, how do you create the effect of a Drop Cap (as shown at the
start of this paragraph)? If you try to do it with a single block of
text within a single text frame − you can’t. When you start to think in
terms of multiple frames, the task is fairly simple − simply remove the
initial letter from the paragraph and place it in a frame of its own.
Increase its size as you require and then move it into the appropriate
position.
6.6
For even finer control, make the initial letter frame passive. By
default a text frame will repel the contents of other, closely
associated, text frames by a set distance. A passive frame has had this
repel action switched off, thus allowing the contents of others to flow
over it. Now create a third, empty frame, with the repel still on and
size it to move the remainder of the paragraph as required. You should
also find here that frames sit not only alongside each other but also in
front of or behind others. Thus you may need to alter this order to get
the final effect.
6.6
Next month: Fonts and Format − Some guidelines on how to select the
right font for the job and how these selections and the layout format
you choose can change the image of the message you put across.  A

6.6
F

6.6
Help!!!!
6.6
•   Colour printers − Does anyone have access to both a Canon BJC800 and
an HP Deskjet 550C? We need someone to do some side-by-side comparisons
of speed and output quality. Any offers? Ed.
6.6
•   Genesis/Magpie Column? − The Multimedia Column covers some of the
broader issues of Multimedia but perhaps there is scope for a Genesis/
Magpie Column? Does anyone have any contribution to make to such a
column and/or fancy helping to edit it? Ed.
6.6
•   ‘James’ of Cambridge University − Thanks for your letter. I would like
to be able to reply but you didn’t given me an address. I don’t have a
‘solution’ but I think it might help to discuss it. Ed.
6.6
•   LinTrack − With this pre-RISC-OS program, when it is used under RISC-
OS 3.1, the printing slows down considerably. It seems as if the output
via the serial port takes place one command at a time rather than
continuing until the buffer fills up. A PCB layout which used to take 3
hours to plot now takes 10 hours! Can anyone help, please? Or is there a
newer PCB layout to which I can transfer existing LinTrack layouts?
(Sorry, I’ve lost track of who asked the question. Ed.)
6.6
•   Strategy games − At present there are very few strategy games for the
Archimedes. Does anyone want to help in writing games of this type,
either PD or ‘professional’? Contact David Jones, 160 Hazelwood Drive,
St Albans, Herts  AL4 0UE.
6.6
•   Spreadsheet Column − Chris Johnson has offered to edit a Spreadsheets
Column. Since PipeDream is well covered, I suspect this effectively
means a Schema/Eureka Column. If you have ideas, hints & tips,
questions, bugs, etc, write to Dr C A F Johnson, Chemistry Dept, Heriot-
Watt University, Riccarton, Edinburgh EH14 4AS. (It would probably be
helpful to state the version number of the program you are using.) His
E-mail address is CHECAJ @ UK.AC. HERRIOT-WATT.CLUSTER or  CHECAJ @
UK.AC.W.CLUST.  A
6.6
Help Offered
6.6
•   Circuit diagrams − I have been using DrawPlus for drawing circuit
diagrams for some time now. If anyone would like a library of symbols,
please contact me. Richard Torrens, 30 Reach Road, Burwell,
Cambridgeshire  CB5 0AH.
6.6
•   Digitising sounds − In response to B J Edwards’ request in Archive 6.5
p17, Dave Shepherdson would be happy to try to digitise any sounds that
Archive readers would like transferring into module form. Send an audio
tape, formatted disc and return postage to Dave Shepherdson, 3 Tarn
Villas, Cowpasture Road, Ilkley  LS29 8RH.
6.6
•   Impression to bromide − Anyone looking for a service for outputting
Impression files to bromide should contact Taylor Lambert Advertising.
They charged me £3.50 +VAT per A4 page (min charge £15) and they were
very helpful − they seemed to know all about Impression, Draw, etc.
Paul Cayton, Guisley.
6.6
•   Spectrum emulator − If anyone would like a Spectrum emulator, Carsten
Witt has one which has data transfer on 232/423 i/o port, screen module,
LOAD and SAVE in Spectrum Basic but executed on Acorn ADFS. Contact
Carsten at Rostockerstrasse 5, D-4353 Oer-Erkenschwick, Germany. (Phone
010−49−2368−57910.)  A

6.6
Ovation Column
6.6
Maurice Edmundson
6.6
Pamphlet printing & book production
6.6
Two recent additions to Ovation are the pamphlet printing and the galley
printing modes. I was pleased to see these enhancements appear,
especially the former, since a good deal of my output is produced in A5
format, ranging from one folded A4 sheet (4 pages) to multiple sheets in
booklet form. I have also had a long letter followed by a telephone
conversation with a reader who was fairly new to the Archimedes and to
Ovation and was hoping, when he had gained more experience, to produce
books to professional standards. Perhaps there are others with similar
interests and ambitions.
6.6
If you are preparing material which will be sent to a commercial printer
for production in booklet form, then almost certainly work would be
carried out on A4 sheets in the “normal” way. Perhaps I could return to
this in a later column. For the moment, I want to concentrate on how to
produce copy which will be printed from the Archimedes using the
pamphlet mode within Ovation.
6.6
Whatever you are preparing, if you intend to use pamphlet printing, it
must be typed on an A4 page. Ovation will automatically reduce this in
size to A5 and rotate the pages into the landscape position. From the
File menu, select <Print Setup> and in this dialogue box, highlight the
Pamphlet button. This removes the highlight from the paper orientation
buttons. Now obtain the Print dialogue box, highlight <Even Pages> and
print. Pages will be printed on one side of the paper in correct
sequence. For the second run, highlight <Odd Pages>, feed the pages in
the same order as for the first run, but turned over so that the second
side will be printed. It is an easy process. If you use a sheet feeder,
keep an eye on the printer to ensure it doesn’t pull through two sheets
instead of one by mistake.
6.6
One other point to note is that, because of the 70% reduction in size,
this must be allowed for during the preparation of the document.
Margins, font sizes, pictures, etc should all be larger on the screen
than is required in the final pamphlet.
6.6
The folded A4 sheet is the simplest document and the easiest to make.
Any four successive A4 document pages can be printed in pamphlet mode.
One or more of these can be blank but the print will always produce a
leaflet with the outer right hand page as page 1 progressing to pages 2
and 3 inside the fold and page 4 on the rear outside. Producing a larger
booklet is a different matter, requiring much more preparation and I
should like to look at this technique in more detail.
6.6
There are several ways in which Ovation might be used for book
production. One could produce a Style Sheet incorporating the various
formats for the book − its title pages, contents pages, font styles,
etc. (A style sheet can contain more than one Master Page.) Every new
book would use it as the starting point. Some people prefer to start
each chapter afresh as a new document with its own Master Page and only
combine them when the task is finished. My preference is to prepare a
set of document pages with suitable master pages along the lines of the
first model quoted above, saved not as a style sheet but as a (blank)
Ovation document. The reason I hold to this preference is that printing
a book involves double pages, and with the need to keep all page entries
as page-pairs, I feel my template method is simpler, especially for
someone relatively new to Ovation.
6.6
On screen, the double-sided pages of the book may be viewed in one of
two ways. First with alternate pages scrolling upwards one after the
other, each one filling the whole screen (the default mode). Second, by
selecting <Show double pages> from the View menu, with each pair side by
side. If <Fit in window> is also selected, they can be viewed together
which is useful for checking but probably too small for typing.
6.6
Preparing the template
6.6
From the iconbar menu, choose <New Document>. This dialogue box appears
and the values I have chosen are suitable for a trial book.
6.6

6.6
Making the inner margin slightly wider has two advantages: as a rule,
extra width is required for the binding at the fold; also it is easy to
see at a glance on the screen whether the page is a right or left hand
page. Select <OK> and obtain the new document page. This single frame
right-hand page will be used for the Title pages and the Contents pages
but for the main text pages I will consider the more complex case where
pages have two columns of text like this magazine.
6.6
Glance at the bottom left corner of the tools panel and verify that you
have 1/1 − chapter one, page one. Type at the top left of the page the
word “Title” for reference. Press <Enter> on the key pad; the next page
comes into view and the caret is passed to the top left. Type “Reverse
of title page”. Scroll the page up the screen with the scroll bar and
check that the indicator reads 1/2. From the Page menu choose <New
Chapter − after the current chapter>. On the new page of the new chapter
(2/3), type “Contents”. Press <enter> again to get the caret to the top
of the next page (2/4) and type “reverse of contents page”.
6.6
We now want a third chapter with modified master pages. Obtain another
new “chapter -after” indicated by 3/5. Use <adjust> on the page menu for
<Show Master Pages> (3L) then select <Page Guidelines>. You now have a
similar dialogue box to the New Document box pictured above. Modify it
to give in addition, Header = Footer = 12mm; 2 columns; gutter = 6mm.
<OK>. The new two-column Master Page appears. Hide the Master Page but,
as yet, the document page has not adopted the new style and is single
frame. Select <Delete Page> from the page menu and get this dialogue
box:
6.6

6.6
Remembering that we have always to work in pairs of pages, we must
delete two pages not one. These are pages 5 to 6. When these go, they
are instantly replaced with two more pages, containing the two columns
we require. In fact, only page 5 comes on the screen. Use <Enter> twice;
on the first press the caret goes to the top of column 2 and on the
second press it goes to the top of the left column on page 6.
6.6
At this stage, your book consists of a right hand page for the title and
its reverse, a right hand page for the contents and its reverse and the
first two pages for the text of chapter 1 (although to the computer,
this is chapter 3).
6.6
Preparing the fonts
6.6
Now prepare the paragraph styles for the book. Of course, you can make
amendments later but it is useful to have the main selection already
defined in the Style Sheet. Firstly, select and edit Body Text. This
might be 14pt Trinity Normal, justified, with the other parameters as
already set. (Remember 14pt on screen will become 10pt when printed).
Then Main Heading, e.g. 24pt SwissB bold, centre aligned with 6pt Space
after; Sub Heading, 21pt ditto left aligned with 4pt Space after; Small
Head say 18pt Trinity bold, left aligned with 4pt Space after. Using the
“Space after” facility gives just the required degree of separation
between the heading and the paragraph. Spacing by always using carriage
returns is bad practice − a left over from the manual typewriter.
6.6
Using the prepared template
6.6
It is wise to divide even a small booklet into chapters. Chapters are
easier to keep tidy as they go through several re-writes and other
editing. Text never flows across chapters.
6.6
All is now set to begin writing. Using appropriate fonts, enter the
details on the title page and its reverse if required. I suggest you
keep the contents page free for the time being, using it mainly as a
notepad to keep a check on the various chapters as you write the book.
From the first text page show the master pages in order to fill in the
headers and the footers, once on a left hand master page and once on its
right hand counterpart. (When selecting master pages, it is always the
left one which appears first.) Activate the header frame, choose from
Paragraph styles, HeaderL and enter your text, e.g. Chapter 1. Setting
the scene. It will be aligned to the left of the frame. Move to the
footer frame and, using the same style, press <insert> to start the
automatic page numbering system. Type the word page in front of the #
sign if preferred. Scroll to the RH Master page and repeat the procedure
using HeaderR for the text style.
6.6
Hide the master pages and you will probably find that on the document
page, the footer shows the wrong page number. From the page menu select
<Modify chapter> to get the following dialogue box. Here you can choose
the starting number, 1 in my example. You will also appreciate that if
you want an Introduction at the beginning of the book which is not to be
included in the main page numbers, you can have these pages numbered
separately in Roman numerals.
6.6

6.6
There are obviously many other hints and tips to be covered about book
production which I can return to again. In the meantime, I would welcome
your comments.  A

6.6

6.6

6.6

6.6

6.6

6.6

6.6

6.6

6.6
Dear Mr. Evans,

6.6
My address permanently typed here.

6.6
23 February 1993

6.6
Mr. J. W. Barlow
6.6
22 Sedgemore Drive
6.6
Bolton
6.6
BO5 6XU

6.6
Fig. 1

6.6

6.6

6.6

6.6

6.6

6.6
 Dear [merge2] [merge1],

6.6
[merge2] [merge3] [merge1]
6.6
[merge4]
6.6
[merge5]
6.6
[merge6]

6.6
Fig. 2

6.6
Universal Widgets Ltd.
6.6

6.6

6.6

6.6
Dear [Merge2][Merge1],
6.6
I shall be visiting [Merge5] during the second week of April. I have a
number of new lines which I would like to discuss with you and I hope to
bring along a sample of one of these which I believe will be of
particular interest to your business.  You will find details of the
present state of your account on the enclosed invoice.  it would be
helpful if you could let me have your cheque within the next week or so.
[Merge8].
6.6

6.6
I look forward to meeting you once again,

6.6
Tom Jones (Area 5)
6.6
8 Lindhurst Road
6.6
London NW7 9ZA
6.6
Tel: [phone]

6.6
15 February 1993

6.6
[Merge2][Merge3][Merge1]
6.6
[Merge7][Merge4]
6.6
[Merge5]
6.6
[Merge6]

6.6
With apologies to Maurice, these three figures were missed out of last
month’s Ovation Column. Ed

6.6
C From Basic
6.6
Thomas Down
6.6
Users of the Archimedes series computers are very lucky in that they
have a very powerful structured version of the Basic programming
language built-in. However, it is not perfect: it is not really suitable
for speed-critical tasks (unless you are experienced enough to use the
built-in assembler) and its support for RISC-OS windows is virtually
non-existent, except at the very lowest command level (SYS calls).
6.6
Due to these failings, many programmers decide to change to another
programming language. Although there are several alternatives on the
Archimedes, by far the best supported, at least up until now, is C. So
it was this that I chose to use.
6.6
Compilers
6.6
Before you can begin programming in C, you need a special program, known
as a compiler, to translate the program (written as a text file) into
machine code. There are two available on the Archimedes. I will look at
each separately.
6.6
The cheapest option is available from Risc Developments (Beebug C). It
comes in an Impression style box with a ring-bound manual and two discs.
It runs without problems on anything from a 1Mb A3000 upwards, although
you may have trouble compiling large WIMP programs on a 1Mb machine. It
runs fine, although rather more slowly, from floppy discs. When loaded,
it installs a single ‘big C’ icon on the iconbar. At first, the program
looks much the same as Edit but it has a compile option on the menu.
This opens a window displaying the compiler’s progress. The system works
quite well but somehow lacks the overall professional appearance of
Acorn’s offering. It also suffers from occasional crashes which can be
very disconcerting. It does, however, include a built-in assembler,
similar to (although slightly less flexible than) the Basic Assembler.
6.6
The alternative is marketed by Acorn themselves, although it appears to
be written by a company called Codemist. It is fully compliant with the
ANSI C standard and will be referred to as ANSI C from now on. This is a
really professional system which has been used to write many of our most
popular programs. Version four is supplied on four discs, together with
Acorn’s DDE environment. The whole system is efficient and business-
like, allowing you to write both applications and (with the help of a
separate utility) relocatable modules. It also comes with a debugger
which makes it much easier to find subtle bugs in major programs. The
only real drawback is the price − around three times that of Beebug C.
Also it requires a higher system specification − 2Mb of RAM and a hard
disc are needed to use the system seriously.
6.6
Comparisons
6.6
I do not usually like to rely on speed comparisons but I could not
resist trying one simple benchmark test. The following comparisons
relate to the dhrystone benchmark which tests string handling and simple
integer manipulation. They were run on an ARM 3 A440/1 with IDE hard
disc and RISC-OS 3. All timings were done in mode 35 (larger screen,
standard resolution, 16 colour).
6.6
Beebug C
6.6
Time to Compile − 15 seconds
6.6
Dhrystones/Second − 7705.3
6.6
Size − 6580
6.6
ANSI C v4
6.6
Time to Compile − 4 seconds
6.6
Dhrystones/Second − 7714.3
6.6
Size − 20420 (squeezed to 6847)
6.6
The results of these comparisons are quite surprising. There is no real
speed difference and the cheaper compiler produces more compact code.
However, the difference is not so significant when the ANSI C code is
compressed with the squeeze utility supplied and results may well be
different for larger programs.
6.6
Editors
6.6
Both these compilers are supplied with a program editor which allows
dynamic error correction (called ‘throwback’ by Acorn). This means that
any errors found in your program when compiling are displayed in a
window. When you click on an error, the editor automatically moves to
the particular line.
6.6
Both the supplied editors provide much the same features as Edit but I
find that, except for the error-correcting facilities, they provide very
little help when writing large amounts of C program. A much better
solution is to use DeskEdit 2 (also from Risc Developments).
Surprisingly, this only provides dynamic error correction with Acorn’s
compiler! This seems a very strange policy, to say the least.
6.6
Learning the lingo
6.6
Having bought a compiler, before you can use it seriously, you really
need a tutorial guide to the language. There are a number of these
around but the one I used was ‘The C Programming Language’, written by
the language’s inventors, Kernighan and Ritchie (usually known as K&R).
This book contains an extensive reference section as well as the
tutorial. However, there are many other books available and they are
probably just as effective.
6.6
When working with C, you will soon realise that it is a very small
language, only providing basic commands. A lot of the functionality
(including all I/O) is provided by a ‘library’ of standard functions,
which are available to all C programs.
6.6
Fully structured
6.6
C is a highly structured programming language, encouraging the use of
separate functions wherever appropriate. Even the main program is a
function (called main()). GOTO is supported, but instead of specifying a
line number, the name of a tag in the program is given. However, its use
is not encouraged unless it is really needed. On a more positive note, C
allows variables to be grouped together into objects called structures.
This can make data storage in programs far tidier.
6.6
The language also allows large programs to be split into a number of
files. Once compiled, these files are linked together into a single
application. Both compilers include a so-called ‘make’ utility which
helps the management of multi-file programs by examining the date stamps
of the files, and re-compiling any files which have changed. The ANSI C
linking program also allows a program to be linked together into several
overlay files which are automatically loaded from disc when needed,
allowing the development of very large programs.
6.6
Command line only
6.6
As you work your way through your chosen C tutorial book, you will soon
notice the lack of any form of support for graphics in the basic C
standard, let alone access to the window environment. The closest you
can get to this, while still only using standard commands, is a program
running in an Edit task window.
6.6
To do any form of machine-specific work in C, you must use a second
library. Under ANSI C this is called RISC_OSLib. With Beebug C, it is
split up into several parts but the functions provided are the same.
6.6
The easiest operations within RISC_OSLib are the so-called BBC-style
graphics commands. This part of the library provides all the missing
graphics commands, even using the same names as Basic. However, the real
power of the library comes in the way it can be used to produce a
window-based application. When your program initialises, you simply tell
the library which function to call when a particular event occurs. For
instance, there will be a function which is called when the iconbar icon
is clicked and another to handle selections from the menus.
6.6
The library also provides a number of ‘special’ windows where most, or
sometimes even all, the WIMP programming is done for you. A ‘dbox’ is a
simplified window which only contains icons. The handler function for a
dbox is told which icon has been clicked. All you need to program
yourself is a ‘switch’ statement (equivalent to Basic’s CASE) containing
the code to be executed when each icon is clicked. This system makes it
simplicity itself to implement something like the Print... dialogue box
in Impression.
6.6
Another special is the txt (sic) system (supported only by Acorn C).
This allows easy display of text in a window and, when used with another
part of the library, allows full editing too! However, my personal
favourite is the ‘saveas’ command. When this is called, a full save box
appears on the screen. All you need to do is specify a function in your
program to be called when the icon has been dragged to a directory
viewer.
6.6
Getting started
6.6
All this may seem very complicated but, with the help of a good example
application, you can quite quickly pick up the basics. You really do
need an example though, preferably a ‘real’ application. I used David
Pilling’s Chess game (which was proudly advertised as including full
source code) to good effect.
6.6
Once you have overcome the initial learning period, the C library offers
an extremely convenient approach to writing C programs, as is proved by
the number of applications written using it.
6.6
I have included on the monthly program disc a very simple example of how
the dbox module can be used to write a simple window-based application.
Implementation of graphics windows is a little more complicated but it
is still easier than using SYS calls from Basic.
6.6
The future
6.6
Since the launch of the Archimedes, Acorn have developed their compiler
(and the library with it) through four major releases − and it seems
unlikely that they will stop here. Anyone who has had a good look at
RISC-OS 3 will probably have noticed that there is a RISC_OSLib
directory in the resources. Closer examination reveals that the
RISC_OSLib code is included in the ROM SharedCLibrary (which previously
only contained ANSI standard functions). Although this does not
currently appear to be available to programmers outside Acorn, when the
files required to use it become available, this could considerably
reduce the size of WIMP programs.
6.6
Secondly, Acorn are now apparently working on a C++ compiler. This is a
variant of C which has become popular on many other systems. It provides
a simple form of object-orientation (see Archive 6.3 p55, A Little
OOPS), by allowing functions to be defined within structures. This means
that these special structures can be considered as individual objects,
accessed by calling the functions within them. So the internal layout of
data within a structure becomes irrelevant. This can make program layout
much tidier.
6.6
Conclusions
6.6
If you want to do some serious WIMP programming, it is well worth
investigating C as an alternative to Basic. Before you start, you have
to consider which compiler to use. Although ANSI C provides a much
better, more stable, development environment (and a faster compiler),
there is very little difference in the compiled code. So you really have
to consider whether your greatest priority is price or the general
stability and ease of use of the development system.  A

6.6
Calling all Puzzled Beginners...
6.6
Laura Handoca
6.6
You may have noticed a paragraph on p17 last month concerning the
development of a beginners’ hints and tips column. Well, this is going
to appear in all its glory in the next issue of Archive.
6.6
For now, I just want to outline how I would like this column to develop.
There will be occasional special articles on common problems or useful
techniques. Two such items that are presently in the pipeline concern
!System and !Scrap folders, and the use of Edit and Draw in combination.
(The first one has already come out of the pipeline − see page 23.  Ed.)
6.6
In general, however, the plan is to publish readers’ questions and
answers. “Beginner” covers a fairly wide range of abilities, so I hope
the column will cover a broad selection of topics. Therefore please do
write in, however basic you think your query is.
6.6
“What sort of questions?”, I hear you cry. The answer is just about
anything which you don’t understand or don’t know how to do:
difficulties with printers (hands up, if you’ve never experienced any!),
strange error messages, etc − almost anything can be a problem if you’re
as computer-illiterate as I am!
6.6
I must emphasize that although I’m editing this column, I’m also a
beginner having only been an Archimedes user since August last year, so
don’t be afraid that I will laugh at your ‘obvious’ questions. I
probably won’t know the answer myself. I am fortunate in having a very
good friend who is extremely knowledgeable about Acorn computers but I
know that without his help I would have come unstuck on numerous
occasions, so don’t be embarrassed to ask if you’re stuck!
6.6
Please send any questions, tips or ideas for articles for this column to
me at the address below. Hopefully, the next issue will reflect the
bulging mailbag I am expecting. Remember, this column is for your
benefit, but it will only work if you join in.
6.6
Laura Handoca, Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, Department of
Zoology, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PS.  A

6.6
PD Column
6.6
David Holden
6.6
It is often suggested to me that I should publish a list of Archimedes
PD libraries. I have not done so because, as a PD author, I normally see
libraries from the ‘other side’ and so the criteria by which I judge
them is rather different from that used by most people. However, what I
will do is explain one of the factors by which I judge libraries,
although I expect that this will flood my doormat with letters from
people that disagree.
6.6
The first thing that places a library high on my list is if they have
ever written to me. This is not just for egotistical reasons. I have
been a PD author from the earliest days of the Archimedes and I have yet
to find a library that does not have some of my programs. Most PD and
Shareware authors are constantly updating and improving their work,
myself included. A good library should, of course, be aware of this fact
and try to obtain the latest versions. Most authors are particularly
concerned about this because we don’t want old versions of programs in
circulation, particularly if they contain bugs which have since been
eliminated. Many now include a condition in their distribution licence
saying that the program may only be distributed by libraries which have
been given permission. This ensures that the author knows where to send
updates.
6.6
One of my programs which contains this condition is Architype. Now (and
this is my ego speaking) I don’t think that any PD library worthy of the
name could exist without a copy of Architype − certainly anyone who is
involved with Archimedes Shareware or PD should be aware of it. So far
only one major library has actually written and asked for permission to
include it and this is The Datafile.
6.6
For a library to offer good service to its customers, it must also offer
service to authors. One of the reasons that I was happy to take over
A.P.D.L. was that it was a library that had always followed this
principle. Building up a catalogue of PD and Shareware programs is not a
‘once only’ job. It is a continual process of updating discs. I am in
regular contact with over a hundred authors and I am constantly updating
discs, yet I am aware that there are probably later versions of many
other programs that I do not have. Very few libraries publish the
version numbers of the programs in their catalogue. Quite often when a
version number is shown, I am aware of several later ones.
6.6
Clipart
6.6
There are now quite a few companies selling discs of clipart. I have
been looking at some of these commercial offerings recently and have
noticed that a lot of it is taken from PC public domain discs and
converted to Archimedes sprites or drawfiles.
6.6
There is nothing technically wrong with this. If work is declared public
domain then the original author no longer has any claim upon it so there
is no bar to anyone else using it for profit. What I would urge you to
do is to examine some of the material available from PD libraries before
you spend money on the commercial discs. I have some discs of clipart
which were obviously taken from the same PC PD source as certain
commercial discs that I have seen. The biggest difference is that the
discs that I have contain about 50% more material and a lot more trouble
has been taken over the conversion. So check out the PD libraries first
− you might be pleasantly surprised.
6.6
F18 Hornet II
6.6
I am writing this two days after my February Archive arrived and already
I have had a lot of requests for the New Dawn disc magazine. Since the
response to all of the offers I have made has been very high, I shall
continue to make them whenever I discover something out of the ordinary
that I think is worthy of your attention.
6.6
This month’s disc is coincidentally from one of the authors of New Dawn.
It is a flight simulator created using the SIMIS Flight Simulator
Toolkit called F18 Hornet II. This is rather similar to Interdictor but
a lot cheaper. It is actually Shareware, and regular readers will be
aware that I am always eager to encourage Archimedes Shareware authors.
The ‘PD’ version is fully functional and you can obtain a copy from good
PD libraries or in the usual way by sending four first class stamps or a
cheque for £1 to me at the address below. The registered version comes
on two discs and is normally available direct from the authors for
£7.50. It has various additional features including extra missions.
6.6
Please continue to write to me at the usual address, 39 Knighton Park
Road, Sydenham, London SE26 5RN  A

6.6
Language Column
6.6
David Wild
6.6
I am sorry that this column has been absent for the last two months;
various problems have got in my way. Apart from minor illness, the most
important one has been a hard disc failure and, of course, I didn’t have
backups of several important files. A whole month was spent slaving away
with Adrian Look’s disc editor searching for relevant files. It’s an
obvious case of not following the principles I have taught for years and
I certainly don’t want to go through that again.
6.6
You will see, within future issues of Archive, what seems to be a
promising series on ‘C’ for beginners. The first article has, among
other things, a comparison of the ‘C’ compilers available for the
Archimedes. It would obviously be inappropriate for me to recommend one
but I would emphasise that you should pick a compiler carefully if you
are going to do a lot of programming. Make sure that the one you buy
fits with your way of working and don’t be tempted to buy a different
one just to save money; the consequences will stay with you for a lot
longer time than you will feel the extra cost. At the same time, if the
cheaper one suits you best don’t think that the dearer one ought to be
better.
6.6
In one of this month’s Acorn magazines there is a correspondent
regretting the fact that ‘C++’ is not available for the Archimedes and
suggesting that the inability to port programs from other machines will
have serious consequences. While I am always pleased to see new
languages becoming available for the Archimedes, I am not totally
convinced that we need a lot of programs transferring from other
machines. What is much more important is that we maximise data
compatibility. Among the reasons for buying an Archimedes are programs
such as “Impression” and “Artworks”, which will do things that cannot be
done on a PC for anything like the same price.
6.6
Now if Impression can import data from the popular PC word processors, I
can offer to produce DTP output for someone by saying “stick it on a
disc and send it to me” without their needing to know what program I am
using. Equally, a program like “Squirrel” ought to be able to read dBase
files, at least, and possibly those from the more popular other
databases. If this is possible, I can provide services and be judged by
my results: ordinary users are not likely to ask, beforehand, which
program I use and if the result is good enough they are not likely to be
worried that it wasn’t a standard PC program. We must remember that most
computer users are not enthusiasts and are only interested in the
results produced.
6.6
I was taken to task recently for my comments about ‘C’ on the desktop
because I didn’t like to see it at the top level. It’s not because it is
‘C’; my ideal desktop would have directories for things like these
articles, the jobs I do for work and the newsletter which I produce for
a society which has nothing at all to do with computers. One of the
glories of a system like RISC-OS is that it frees us from the tyranny of
the “Wordstar Directory”. I have spent many hours going through a
wordprocessor directory trying to find a particular file, where someone
is not entirely sure of the name, or where there is a need to “weed”
some of the files which are no longer needed. Archimedes users can
create a directory for the task in hand and include all sorts of file in
it − Impression, Draw, PipeDream, etc. With fewer files, we have less
trouble in naming them and, when the task is over, we can copy the whole
directory on to a floppy disc for storage. I can do the job of looking
after the data files but I would like the computer to do the tedious job
of finding the actual tools I need.  A

6.6
Small Ads
6.6
(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)
6.6
•   40MB ST506 drive, brackets & cables £120, Atomwide (Avie) ST506 drive
podule unused £75 o.n.o., PC emulator (1.80) £70, Arcterm 7 £55, MiG 29
£30, UIM £10, Twinworld £10, Guild of Thieves £10, Tactic £7, 5¼“ 40/80
Switchable drive plus interface £50 o.n.o. Arthur P.R.M.s Offers? Phone
0247−457655.
6.6
•   A310 with 4Mb RAM, 40Mb hard disc, ARM3, VIDC enhancer and software,
£600. Phone 0744−58404.
6.6
•   A440/1, ARM3, 50Mb drive, 4Mb RAM, £490. Software and extras £100.
Will split. Phone Sheffield 0742−724554.
6.6
•   A5000 4Mb RAM, Acorn multisync, Learning Curve with PC Emulator v1.8,
£1400. Acorn Desktop C £150. Clares Illusionist £50. CC Compression £25.
Risc User complete £30. Archive complete £30. Beebug complete £30. v21/
22/23/22bis/42/42bis MNP 4/5 modem, Terminals Plus, Arch to Hayes lead,
£150. All for £1700. Phone 081−698−3772.
6.6
• Acorn AKF30 14“ monitor. Free to an educational establishment, £10
otherwise. Phone 0483−766729 (eves).
6.6
•   CC Scan-Light 256 (original version for A300/400) £90; 2nd 3½“ drive &
fascia for A300 series £45; Pro Artisan £30. Phone 0388−537412.
6.6
•   Multistore 2 £90, Presenter 2 £10, Hotlink £15, Showpage £80, Archway2
£50, MultiFS £20, ALPS Creator £15, Powerband £5, E-Type Designer £5,
Holed Out Designer £5, Masterfile II £5, FWP v1 £5, Beebug 5¼“ interface
£10, !Help guide £4. Write to D Bell, 2 Braes View, Shieldhill, Falkirk,
FK1 2EB.
6.6
•   Ovation 1.35S £49 o.n.o. Phone Tom Johnson on 9752−556684.
6.6
•   PC Emulator V1.34 with DR DOS 3.41 and PC DOS 3.30. Offers to Chris
Walker on 0953−604255 (eve).
6.6
•   PC Emulator 1.8 £70, Numerator £40, Clares Archimedes Toolkit £5,
Droom £10, Interdictor £15, System Delta Plus £30, Dreadnoughts £20,
Cartoon Line (without case) £15, The WIMP Game (without case) £10, C-
Front (For C release 3) £10. Phone 0286−870101.
6.6
•   Phillips Monochrome (green screen) monitor £20 (buyer pays postage),
External 5¼“ 80/40 track disc drive with PSU and 310 interface £20,
Archway 2 £25, Spellmaster for Z88 £15. Phone Joe Gallagher
081−986−4442.
6.6
•   RISC-OS 3.10, boxed and unused, £35. Beebug 5¼“ disc interface, 40
track drive, DFS reader software and 50 5¼” discs, the lot for only £45
o.n.o. +p&p. Phone Derby 0332−557751.
6.6
•   Star LC200 Dot Matrix Printer, little used, £110 o.n.o. Phone
0732−454707.
6.6
•   Tape backup. Oak high speed 150Mb tape drive with 8 tape cartridges,
(total cost new over £900), for sale £399. Phone Chris on 0276−20575
after 6.
6.6
•   Wanted − “Designer Castles and Medieval Villages” by Data Design.
Phone Eddie on 0342−714905.
6.6
•   Wanted − Sheet feeder for Panasonic KX-P1124. Phone Derby 0332−557751.
6.6
Charity Sales − The following items are available for sale in aid of
charity. PLEASE do not just send money − ring us on 0603−766592 to check
if the items are still available. Thank you.
6.6
(If you have unwanted software or hardware for Archimedes computers you
could donate for charity, please send it in to the Archive office. If
you have larger items where post would be expensive, just send us
details of the item(s) and how the purchaser can get hold of them.)
6.6
Arcticulate £5, Arctist (art package) £3, EMACS (D Pilling) £2, Fan for
A310 £5, First Word Plus (v1) £3, MicroDrive (golf) £6, Inter-Sheet on
ROM £5, Saloon Cars £10, Serial interface for Panasonic KX-P1080, 1091,
1092, 1592 or 3131 £4, System Delta Plus Ref Guide £3, UIM £4, Wordwise
Plus A (disc) inc. manuals £8.  A

6.6
The DTP Column
6.6
Richard Hallas
6.6
Impression 2.18
6.6
Although announced in my last column (Archive 6.2 p29), Impression 2.18
has just started to be shipped as I write. Although, on the face of it,
there don’t seem to be very many improvements, the ones that have been
implemented are significant and useful, and they required some fairly
major internal changes to Impression − which is the reason for the
delay. Version 2.18 is the release which brings Impression into line
with ArtWorks and it has three major enhancements:
6.6
• It will render ArtWorks files directly, along with sprites and
drawfiles. Some of ArtWorks’ code is now built into Impression, so
ArtWorks files will be rendered much more quickly than drawfiles on the
screen.
6.6
• It can now cope with more than 255 fonts. This is primarily brought
about by the fact that ArtWorks comes with over 220 fonts but the
improvement will benefit any user who has a lot of fonts.
6.6
• Most significantly, for non-ArtWorks users, is the fact that the
spelling checker will now accept top-bit-set characters, i.e. those in
the range of ASCII 128−255. This range contains all the accented
characters, diphthongs and ligatures, so it will at last be possible to
include words like ‘mediæval’, ‘naïve’ and ‘files’.
6.6
Owners of both Impression and ArtWorks can upgrade to Impression 2.18
for free, as before. However, there is an upgrade fee of £10 +VAT if you
don’t own ArtWorks. (Upgrades are only done through CC.)
6.6
PMS version 2
6.6
Further to the comments made in my Music Typesetting part 1 article
(Archive 5.11 p37), there have been some very significant changes made
to PMS. It has been completely rewritten as a multitasking desktop
application, and many of the restrictions of version 1 have been
removed. The printout quality has been dramatically improved, largely
due to a much higher quality pair of outline fonts now being supplied
with the package.
6.6
The principle of operation is still the same: you still have to write
your own text files of musical “commands” which PMS then processes, but
now everything happens in the desktop, and the music is displayed in a
window from which you can print, save drawfiles or – for the first time
– play the scores. The playback facilities are intended simply for
proof-hearing purposes and are therefore of Maestro-type quality.
6.6
Some of the main improvements and new features of version 2 are as
follows:
6.6
• Better quality printed output and full desktop compliance with music
appearing in a window.
6.6
• Playback facilities for proof-hearing purposes.
6.6
• Full drawing facilities implemented as ‘procedures’. The drawing
facilities provide variables so that your shapes can accommodate
whatever notes or chords they are ‘attached’ to. You can therefore build
up libraries of esoteric shapes if you need them, and use the shapes as
often as you wish with only one definition.
6.6
• Greater flexibility of slurs, ties, hairpins, underlay and other text:
better positioning, more options, etc.
6.6
• New markings for dynamics, time signatures, etc.
6.6
• Facilities for creating incipits.
6.6
• PMS now works to a resolution of one thousandth of a point, as opposed
to one point in version 1.
6.6
Generally, version 2 can do everything that version 1 could but more
easily and flexibly. There are too many improvements and extensions to
list here. Files are broadly compatible with version 1, although some
small changes will be necessary to print old files successfully. If you
are a PMS1 user, an upgrade to version 2 is available for £50, and if
you make good use of the program, this is money well spent.
6.6
PMS2 exists in two basic versions: PostScript and non-PostScript. Apart
from the extra printing facilities of the PostScript version, the two
programs’ capabilities are identical. If you are going to use either
version of the program in a professional environment, then you need to
buy a commercial licence, which doubles the price: non-PostScript
version £175 (commercial £350); PostScript version £250 (commercial
£500). The PostScript versions are capable of driving typesetting
machines directly. The basic non-commercial non-PostScript version is
available from EMR, but all four versions are available directly from
the author, whom you should contact for details: Philip Hazel, 33
Metcalfe Road, Cambridge CB4 2DB. (0223−65518)
6.6
Printing problems with LaserDirect and RISC OS 3·1?
6.6
I think a lot of us are suffering at the moment from the effects of
upgrading to RISC-OS 3·1. Many users have complained of occasional poor
quality prints, with black areas being rendered by the LaserDirect as
grey-scale and of poor quality text appearing.
6.6
The fault is intermittent, but there is a work-around: if you find that
the problem has occurred and your LaserDirect has produced a nasty
print, open up the printer setup window and change the resolution. This
will clear the faulty printing state. Then switch the resolution back to
however you want it. The problem only surfaces after one print has been
made, so you can always be sure that your initial print will be all
right.
6.6
The faulty printouts only happen when Quick Text is switched off, so to
stop the problem occurring completely, switch the Quick Text option ON
and save the settings. Of course, you then have the problem that if you
use any RISC-OS 3 format fonts (either the built-in ones or those from
EFF) in your documents, you will have to switch Quick Text OFF again and
hope for the best, because the LaserDirect drivers do not as yet know
how to deal with the new format fonts. (CC have just released 2.09 which
improves the situation. Ed.)
6.6
A plea
6.6
Colton Software have furnished the DTP Column with a copy of their new
word processor, Wordz. If you have any DTP-related queries or hints and
tips regarding this application or, of course, Impression and Ovation,
do share them with your fellow readers. The postbag seems to have been
quite empty of late. In order for this column to be interesting and
relevant, we need to know what interests you and what you want to read
about. If you have some practical advice to share, so much the better!
6.6
Wordz Review
6.6
Further to Gerald Fitton’s preview last month, this is a review of the
full version (1·01) of the new word processor. Wordz has been in the
pipeline (sic!) for several months now; so what does yet another RISC-OS
word processor have to offer?
6.6
Wordz arrives in a gaudily coloured cardboard box containing a disc
wallet of the same shrieking orange, and a pleasant blue spiral-bound
manual. Installing the software involves typing in your name, which is
written into the program along with a unique serial number. Your name is
then immortalised in the Info box, but the software can otherwise be
backed up freely. This is surely the best possible method of software
protection, and is of no inconvenience to anyone except a pirate.
6.6
The manual is quite hefty at around 175 pages, but much of it is
unnecessary for the simple reason that Wordz is so straightforward to
use. A lot of the manual is devoted to very simple step-by-step
explanations which are ideal for absolute beginners, although I found
that they sometimes verged on the pedantic. An experienced user will
find that there is a lot of very basic material to wade through before
any useful information is found, which is a pity; however, the manual is
well written (despite a few minor inaccuracies) and is extremely well
presented and printed, with a decent index and some very good contents
pages.
6.6
Two discs are provided: one contains just the main program, whilst the
second contains a wide variety of examples and exercises. It is assumed
that the purchaser already has the outline font manager and some fonts,
as none are provided. The examples disc contains some excellent support
material, including a general-purpose application to tabulate plain
ASCII files. There are files relating to tutorial sections of the
manual, as well as some sample tables and styles for your own use and
experimentation, and demonstrations of various aspects of Wordz’
facilities. Finally, there are also a couple of very nicely presented
1993 year planners ready to print out.
6.6
Using Wordz
6.6
Clicking <select> on the iconbar icon doesn’t immediately open a fresh
document in Wordz, as you might expect it to. Instead you are presented
with a list of templates contained within the application and you must
select one of these as the basis of your new document. This is actually
a very handy system, although I would also have liked the option to open
a default template straight away (perhaps by clicking <adjust> instead).
You can easily build up a library of often-used document formats and
save them away inside Wordz itself so that they don’t clutter up your
work directory. Of course, since they are templates, you can’t
accidentally overwrite them by forgetting to rename your document before
saving it.
6.6
The document window is subdivided into several areas, many of which can
be turned on and off independently. At the top is the button bar which
provides handy shortcuts to many of the features. Below it is a status
line. This shows helpful messages when you point at the buttons and,
more usefully, it also displays the word count and dynamic readings as
you alter the position of tabs, etc on the ruler. There are both
horizontal and vertical rulers available and, in addition, you can turn
on column and row borders which contain large numbered labels in the
manner of a spreadsheet. These can really be quite handy, as clicking on
a row heading (each of which corresponds to a paragraph) will highlight
the whole paragraph to which it refers, and dragging the bottom of any
row label will resize it and modify the space after the paragraph. The
column headings work in a similar way, although you will normally only
have one column of text: Wordz has no proper facilities for creating
multi-column pages. The column headings come into their own when
creating tables.
6.6
The table facilities provided within Wordz are really splendid and
enormously flexible. Creating a table couldn’t be easier: simply open
the table box, enter the number of rows and columns you want and click
OK. The table appears in the text straight away and, by dragging the row
and column borders (or the margin markings on the rulers), the cells can
be dragged to whatever size you want. It’s even possible to alter the
widths of individual cells within a table, making them different from
the cells below and above them. Cells can contain as many lines of text
as you want, and styles can be applied to the whole table or to
individual cells. Extra highlight boxes can be added, in different line
styles and colours, both around and within cells, and individual cell
borders can also be turned on and off. (In fact, the box styles are
available to paragraphs too, so it’s an easy matter to put a box around
a piece of text.) It’s very difficult to think of tables that Wordz
couldn’t handle, and the speed with which really complicated tables can
be created is very impressive.
6.6
Another innovation of Wordz lies in its handling of graphics. You simply
drop your graphic onto the page and it immediately attaches itself to
the text, so that if you add more text above the picture, it will move
down the page to accommodate it. However, it is also possible to attach
the bottom of the picture to text independently of the top. This means
that not only can images flow along with the text (in the same way as
embedded graphic frames do in Impression), but you can also enter text
within the picture, and it will stretch itself vertically to accommodate
whatever you type. This is a really clever approach to the problem of
adding fancy borders to a non-frame-based text processor, to name one
simple example.
6.6
You can also place pictures in front of or behind the text. Imported
graphics can be turned into background images, filling the page behind
the text, which is good for stationery. When saving a document, the
graphics used within it are normally saved as well, but you can,
instead, opt for Wordz to reference the original disc files which the
graphics came from. This makes documents less portable, but can
potentially save an enormous amount of disc space. If you later decide
you want to save the graphics within the document, there is a simple
menu option to let you do so. Once on the page, the graphics can of
course be resized and dragged around, although there is no means of
rotation or precise positioning, and no attempt is made to reformat or
even repel text: you have to look after all that side of things
yourself.
6.6
Text handling is generally very good and resembles Impression rather
than Ovation with respect to styles, although in some ways it is like a
cross between the two. Whilst not being as flexible as Impression’s
style system, Wordz’ styles can be overlaid freely which makes them more
powerful that the whole-paragraph style system of Ovation. It combines
its Impression-like styles with Ovation’s clever application of Bold and
Italic to any font as attributes in their own right. Another clever new
feature is a ‘regions’ facility in which the styles in use in a
highlighted area can be investigated one by one, and individually
removed if necessary.
6.6
The button bar provides quick access to styles and effects, and the only
difference in use between the two is that you have to give a name to a
style before you define it. In fact, you can change your mind whilst
defining an effect and make it into a style after all. In terms of
what’s available and how you set it up, styles and effects are identical
and use exactly the same selection window.
6.6
This selection window is another extremely well designed aspect of the
application. It provides a set of radio icons down the left hand side
corresponding to text options, spacing, colours, etc. Clicking on one of
these, changes the contents of the window to enable you to alter your
chosen aspect. Each radio icon has a little green indicator next to it
which lights up if you change anything, so you can immediately see which
areas have been modified – a very nice touch which is surprisingly
useful.
6.6
One other icon on the button bar is worthy of a mention: the View
Control, represented by a pair of glasses. Clicking on this opens a
window with a host of options. The expected percentage zoom entry box is
there, along with a few handy presets and a ‘fit to screen’ button.
There is a New View button which allows you to open as many windows onto
your document as you wish, and you can choose whether to display the
full page, the printing area only or just the main text area (excluding
headers and footers). Unusually, in addition to the New View option, it
is also possible to split any windows to show different areas of the
document at once. You can create a vertical split for viewing two sides
of a wide table, a horizontal split for comparing two areas of a
document, or even both together! This creates an amazing array of window
controls, as each split can be dragged around, and the sub-windows
scrolled independently of one another.
6.6
Headers and footers
6.6
Being a word processor rather than a frame-based desktop publisher,
Wordz lacks such refinements as master pages and multiple text areas on
one page. You are limited to the single text story which flows from one
page to the next. However, a system of headers and footers is provided
and these are about as flexible as they could be. By default, their
contents repeat from page to page as you would expect and you can add a
‘live’ page number if you wish. However, you can alter them part-way
through the document and resize them freely at any point. It is even
possible to restart page numbering at any number, so chapter creation is
perfectly feasible.
6.6
Printing
6.6
Wordz’ printing facilities are reasonable without being as extensive as
Impression or Ovation. RISC­OS drivers are used, although it is possible
to produce a fast draft print in conjunction with a special page
template. There is no portrait or landscape setting as such, because
this falls under the page setup heading, and you choose orientation at
the same time as picking paper size, margins, etc.
6.6
The initial print box just has a copies box and a whole document or
range selector. However, there is also a button marked Extra, and
clicking on this leads to a second print window with more extensive
options. This window lets you print even or odd pages only, and select
collated printing and reverse order. You can also print ‘two up’, with
two pages appearing on one sheet of paper. There is also a Pamphlet
button associated with this option which sets up Wordz to print pages in
the correct order, side by side, on single sheets which you can then
staple together to make a properly numbered booklet. There is no control
for sizing the printout and, unlike Impression, it is not possible to
fit more than two pages on a single sheet at once.
6.6
However, Wordz has one really excellent innovation in its printing
facilities and this is the range box in the extended print window.
Rather than the usual two boxes for page ranges, Wordz provides a
multiple line entry area into which you can type detailed printing
instructions, including blank pages. This allows you to set up prints in
the most flexible way possible, especially in conjunction with the Two
Up option. For example, you can enter “4 6−9 11” to print pages 4, 6, 7,
8, 9 and 11, and you can include B for Blank to indicate empty pages: so
“B 1” in combination with the Two Up option would print page 1 to the
right of a blank page, which is correct for pamphlet printing. In fact,
all that the Pamphlet button in the print box does is to set up the
range box for you automatically (as well as making sure Two Up is
switched on). This ranges box is such an excellent idea, I’m surprised
no-one else has implemented it before. Something similar would be
absolutely ideal in Impression.
6.6
Of course, such facilities as a word count and find and replace are
provided, as is a spelling checker of around 55,000 words, which I
believe is PipeDream compatible. Therefore, all the basic facilities you
would expect from a word processor are present. The manual states that
the kerning information built into RISC-OS 3 fonts is used
automatically, although when I compared some text in a Wordz window with
the same text in a Vector window with kerning manually switched on, this
did not appear to be the case. No doubt this problem will be corrected
but I was disappointed that no actual kerning option was provided in the
program.
6.6
I was also slightly disappointed that there weren’t a few more advanced
text handling facilities available. Naturally all the standard effects
are available but some of the more exotic effects available in
Impression and, more particularly, Ovation were not available. I am
quite a fan of small capitals in titles, and Ovation is currently the
only package to offer them, as well as a number of other effects such as
tracking. The RISC-OS world is still waiting for a word processor or DTP
package that can do its own automatic inter-letter spacing. Wordz has no
facilities for looking after footnotes, which is a shame.
6.6
Conclusion
6.6
I basically like Wordz very much. It’s very nicely presented, extremely
well designed, and the adverts’ claims about ease of use are not
exaggerated: it really is extremely quick and easy to master. All the
features it contains are very well conceived and implemented; my only
concern is that it doesn’t do quite as much as it might. The price is
reasonable but competes directly with Ovation and so I have to ask if
you are getting similar value for money. Wordz is a straightforward word
processor whereas Ovation is a full DTP package. Traditionally, in this
situation, you would expect the word processor to be better of the two
as a writing tool, but the Archimedes being the machine it is, Ovation
is in fact just as good a word processor as Wordz, and better in some
ways because it has a bigger range of text effects and better page
layout facilities.
6.6
In Wordz’ defence, it is a lot easier to use than Ovation, and if you
have much need for the table creation facilities then it’s obviously the
one to go for. Of course, it’s also possible to create tables in Ovation
but they’re an awful lot harder to set up, and they don’t flow with the
text. Wordz’ style system is also a lot friendlier and more flexible
than Ovation’s.
6.6
There is another consideration too: Wordz is the first in a series of
packages which will integrate together, the next release being the
spreadsheet, Resultz. Presumably, combining these packages will result
in a product that is greater than the sum of its parts; the Wordz manual
hints at a couple of things to do with spreadsheets imported from
Resultz. I hope that Colton Software will continue to develop Wordz and
add a few more exotic features in future releases because I feel that,
overall, it is slightly under-powered at the moment.
6.6
If you want a word processor that can do sophisticated page layout, you
are much better off looking at Ovation for a similar price. However, as
a word processor in its own right, Wordz is excellent and if you are
more interested in being able to integrate some different packages
together, or you’re after sophisticated table creation, or if you simply
want a very easy to use word processor, then Wordz is well worth a
look.  A

6.6
NetView
6.6
Glynn Parry
6.6
As a teacher of IT using a bridged Econet network, split over two
teaching rooms and an office and consisting of thirty Archimedes A310/
A3000 machines served by an ARM3 upgraded 310 running Level 4, I was
intrigued by the potential of this piece of software.
6.6
Initial impressions
6.6
!Netview arrives on a single disc with a short (9 page) pamphlet
documenting its features and method of operation. Unusually, it also
comes with a password that is hand-written on a slip of paper inside the
disc wrapper. This password was not, as I expected, a form of copy
protection/software registration but simply controls access to the
software itself and, for this reason, it is changeable by the user (and
should, in fact, be changed immediately by the user, for network
security reasons).
6.6
Setting up
6.6
Installation is simply a matter of dragging the file to a suitable
directory and, in operation, the software appears fully RISC-OS
compliant. The file is run by double-clicking whilst logged onto an
Econet network and entering the current password (this is case-
sensitive). Changing the password involves choosing the ‘password’
option from the application menu and typing in the old password,
followed by the new password twice. You then save it using ‘save
options’.
6.6
In use
6.6
The software allows the Network Manager to view the screen of any user
currently logged onto any part of an Econet network that you may be
logged onto. It also allows you to send notify messages simultaneously
to multiple selected logged-on users. Notify messages may be GS Trans
(*echo-ed) or sent direct. In either case they end up in an error window
on the users’ machines if the users are working in the desktop. To help
you, the software also allows you to obtain a list of machines currently
connected to your network. I was very quickly able to obtain screen
images of several users logged onto our thirty-station Econet network,
each within their own window and each updating at 10 second intervals.
“Wonderful”, I thought, “I can now see Jonathan using his computer for
the preparation of electronic graffiti, I can send him a message warning
him of the consequences, and dissuade him from undesirable usage.” − or
words to that effect! On further investigation, it rapidly became
obvious that although the software was doing exactly what it was
supposed to do, there were obvious limitations to this kind of activity,
some serious, others merely frustrating.
6.6
Problems arising
6.6
1)    The Notify statements are received by the user in the standard
error box and this forces the user into positive action to cancel it
before they can proceed with their own work and then the message is
lost. This is not ‘friendly’ as it can kill the flow of ideas. A pupil
in full flow on a major piece of examination course-work is not going to
appreciate this kind of disruption to their activity. A module should be
supplied to intercept this and put it into a text window from which it
could be saved for reference or dealt with as a * command to be acted on
directly (dependent on whether the message is sent GSTrans-ed or not).
This would allow the class teacher to, for example, send messages to
preload software and specified files into groups of machines before a
class arrives.
6.6
2)    More than one or two active views updating frequently on our ARM2
machines prevents the Network manager from making any sensible use of
other software at the same time as Netview partly because of the
continued “egg-timer” activity, and partly because each update from
Netview brings that window to the front, often hiding your own working
window. I was unable to test this with ARM3, but I would not expect the
situation to be substantially improved − Econet bandwidth and
transmission rates being potentially the major limiting factors.
6.6
3) Looking at any user’s machine with Netview whilst it is involved in
any processor intensive activity initiates a “station not listening”
error and a lot of egg-timer activity on the Network Manager’s machine
and (more seriously) either causes similar activity on the user’s
machine, prompting the users to perform a <ctrl-break> and restart
(which spoils the point of the software!) or worse still causes the
user’s machine to “lock up” − recoverable by nothing short of a <ctrl-
reset>. The same occurs if your machine is doing anything moderately
processor intensive − even typing this review into Impression with
Netview windows active, was sufficient to crash four users’ machines
simultaneously − one using Revelation ImagePro, one using Vector and
another doing no more than typing a letter home using Impression. This
occurs even when viewing single machines. I was not able to test its use
with BBC machines, as our only Beeb acts as a network Teletext-server
not as a net user.
6.6
The documentation does warn that ‘viewing a station is a delicate
process’, that it ‘may fail for a number of reasons’ and it may
‘occasionally crash the remote machine’. The author of the software also
includes a disclaimer absolving himself from any responsibility for any
loss of data or other undesirable occurrences and he recommends not
viewing stations which are carrying out any critical activity.
Unfortunately, if you know what is happening on the stations, you have
no need for this kind of utility.
6.6
On the plus side, if these problems could be overcome, I can see this
kind of utility becoming indispensable − for example, a phone call from
a department with a request for help could be responded to without
putting the phone down − just Netview the screen and advise!
6.6
Even better would be the possibility of using the Notify facility in
conjunction with software on the user’s machine to receive and use the
Notify commands. It would then be possible to operate directly on the
remote user’s machine to deal with the problem and to see and check the
results of the changes on the view on your own screen.
6.6
On balance though, the problems mentioned above are non-trivial − indeed
frequently fatal − and I cannot therefore recommend this software for
serious network use in its current state.
6.6
I have one final concern for when it does work properly. What happens
when a pupil or other network user gets hold of this software and uses
it to view your ‘confidential’ work, such as pupil reports, exam
preparation, etc, etc?
6.6
Netview is £34.99 (no VAT) from Sanjay Pattni, Flat 11, 86 Ifield Road,
London  SW10 9AD.  A

6.6
Fonts Workshop − RISC-OS 3 Fonts
6.6
Roger Spooner
6.6
With the release of RISC-OS 3, Acorn have taken the opportunity to
upgrade the fonts which the Archimedes machines use. This means a new
font manager module, version 2.98 and a new set of font files, version 8
(although you won’t see that number).
6.6
There are a couple of real differences which will affect users and,
apart from that, the files are just different.
6.6
There are also some changes in the Font Manager module to improve it in
several ways.
6.6
Kerning tables
6.6
It is now possible to control the spacing between any two characters
specifically, as compared to the previous option of defining the width
of any one character and hoping that it fits with most purposes.
6.6
As in the diagram, the letters A and Y do not normally go together very
well; both have been designed to go beside something like an I and are
therefore given a width assignment appropriate to their widest point.
When put together, they appear very far apart.
6.6

6.6
Spacing for the widest part of letters.
6.6
Kerning tables allow for a general width to apply to most uses, and a
set of specific widths relating to certain combinations of letters. Thus
the spacing for A followed by Y will be more like that in the diagram
below; I have included three widths each for the letters; the top,
middle and bottom parts. Thus the letters can be brought together until
any of these levels touch. Of course, the kerning table could contain
spacings calculated by hand or by any mechanical means.
6.6

6.6
In this case, it is the lowest thirds which have touched.
6.6
More characters
6.6
The new font files can now contain far more characters, if required.
This can go up to 768. Thus, most conceivable characters including
foreign, greek, symbolic and other character sets can all be included in
the same font file. In practice, this is more likely to include a few
hundred characters at most. I do not know the mappings for which
positions to use, nor how to make the later positions appear.
6.6
Future proofing
6.6
The files include some surplus information space which could be used in
the future for other details which are not known yet.
6.6
Encodings files
6.6
There is a new set of files which describes which positions in the font
file are mapped to which characters. There is a list of names of
characters including A, B, C and space, exclam, quotedbl which describe
all the known characters. Thus, for fonts which have been transferred
from other formats, it would be easy to map the characters around so
that they appear when you press the right key, without the pound sign,
say, being in position 163 in the font file. There can be as many sets
of encodings as required.
6.6
Linear links
6.6
I am unsure as to whether the files prohibited this before but it is now
definitely possible to include several copies of one character in
another. Previously the dots on i’s were copied from the full stop, but
it was not quite so easy to make a colon (:) of two full stops, and much
more difficult to get an ellipsis (¼). It is now possible to link
several dots, or whatever, into the same destination character.
6.6
Font file names
6.6
The font files now end in 0 typically. This is the alphabet number,
ready for use with other encodings files. Thus in a normal font
directory will be IntMetric0 and Outlines0 instead of the old names.
6.6
The Font Manager
6.6
A number of changes have been made to the font manager module which sits
in memory. This is supplied in ROM in RISC-OS 3. It has a number of
changes to make it even easier to enjoy.
6.6
Individual cacheing
6.6
With the old font manager (2.44, etc), when a program tried to display
one letter, a whole group of 32 would be loaded from disc and processed.
This involved turning the outline shapes to bitmaps (pixel patterns) and
then anti-aliasing them at the right size. This could take a long time,
often long enough to notice and sometimes as long as ten or twenty
seconds. This is now no faster, but it is organised differently; when a
character is requested for display (and if it is not already cached and
ready), memory will be allocated for the 32 characters of that block,
the outlines file will be loaded, but only the one character will be
processed. It will be stored in its cached form and displayed
immediately. When other characters in the same block are requested they
will be taken from the loaded outlines file to the cache quite quickly.
The effect of all this is to make characters appear within fractions of
a second. The whole page will appear no quicker, but it looks as if
something is happening.
6.6
As the page is drawn, it accelerates, finding that more and more
characters are already available and do not need to be processed at all.
6.6
Reformed memory management
6.6
When a font is requested, memory for it is allocated in the Font Cache.
This is not released until the font is declared no longer required. The
use of this varies depending on the software; Draw declares all fonts
‘not needed’ immediately after use but Impression keeps them until you
remove the document. This leads to a larger font cache and more ‘font
cache full’ errors.
6.6
Rotation
6.6
The new font manager can also perform arbitrary fixed matrix
transformations on the fonts. This means, in real terms, that it can
stretch or squeeze the fonts and rotate them.
6.6
T1ToFont
6.6
Also supplied with RISC-OS 3 is an application called !T1toFont. This
converts fonts from PostScript type 1 format to Archimedes format, ready
for normal use. It is somewhat temperamental and requires a file for
each font (AFM) which is often not supplied as Macintosh users do not
require it. Nevertheless, it is a useful program if you do have access
to other sources of fonts.
6.6
FontPrint
6.6
Also supplied is !FontPrint, an application to send an Archimedes font
from disc to a local PostScript printer. This then occupies memory in
the postscript machine and allows it to print in your favourite fonts.
It will work in school situations where the printer is available by wire
but not where the user wishes to print by disc to a PostScript bureau
(because the transfer of the font is bi-directional).
6.6
The effect on the end user
6.6
All this new technology has a couple of significant parts:
6.6
The software does tricks with the old font files, e.g. FontFX and
LaserDirect in QuickText mode will not work with the new fonts. FontFX
is stuffed and LaserDirect can be put into normal ‘slow’ mode.
6.6
The single character cacheing is much more pleasant to watch; it seems
to display the picture much more quickly without the ugly delays and
hourglass.
6.6
You may find the ‘Font Cache Full’ error annoying, depending on the
circumstances. This is unfortunate but it does reduce unnecessary
discarding of important cached fonts.  A

6.6
Five Typing Tutors
6.6
Evelyn Grant
6.6
In this comparative review, I shall be looking at five touch typing
tutors of various prices:
6.6
Touch Type   Iota   £46 (Archive)
6.6
Turbo Type   CIS   £23 (Archive)
6.6
Fast Type   Sword Software   £19.95
(Sword)
6.6
Architype   Shareware 45   £2 (Archive)
6.6
TypeWrite   Shareware 47   £2 (Archive)
6.6
Three basic principles must be observed when learning to touch type:
6.6
• Do not look at your hands/fingers.
6.6
• Use all your fingers − on the correct keys.
6.6
• Repeat each level until you are competent and then move on (a system
of continual repetition and extension).
6.6
All the programs attempt to encourage these principles but some more
effectively than others.
6.6
Posture
6.6
Bad posture and technique may lead to repetitive strain injury. I was
concerned that none of the programs start by emphasising the importance
of posture and technique of movement. Although this was covered in some
of the documentation, particularly Fast Type’s, it was not given
sufficient prominence. These programs are not a substitute for a typing
course with professional supervision and instruction.
6.6
Speech and sounds
6.6
Two of the programs ‘say’ the letter you need to type next. This is
helpful for partially sighted users but the speech cannot keep up with
faster typing speeds and ends up sounding like Donald Duck. In any case,
a classroom full of machines talking to their users would do wonders for
Aspirin sales! Touch Type sensibly recommends the use of headphones.
6.6
Some of the programs use a metronome sound effect, whose speed can be
increased as progress is made. This can be helpful but the idea that all
keyboard strokes should be strictly rhythmic lost favour some time ago.
The accent now is on accuracy and fluency.
6.6
Touch Type
6.6
This is a talking RISC-OS compliant program.
6.6
The lessons are well organised, paying special attention to common key
combinations, and also giving equal weight to less common keys such as
‘q’, ‘z’ and ‘x’, giving the learner the opportunity to achieve maximum
dexterity.
6.6

6.6
Touch type keyboard window
6.6
The keyboard on the screen highlights each letter, indicating ‘right’
and ‘wrong’ key depressions, and a ‘Hands’ window shows which finger you
should use.
6.6
There is a clear display showing your rate of progress and the
characters which you need to practice more to achieve a high rate of
accuracy.
6.6
The concept of ‘dragging’ the exercises from the directory may be
difficult for learners who have little experience of the desktop but,
once mastered, presents few problems.
6.6
I found Touch Type to be very satisfactory as a teaching program,
enabling users to progress at their own rate, yet still achieving full
potential on the keyboard. There was one technical problem. Removing the
disk then quitting the program without closing any windows causes Touch
Type to crash out and leave you with the dreaded ‘FileCore in use’
error. This may have something to do with Iota’s disk protection.
6.6
Turbo Type
6.6
Turbo Type puts an icon on the iconbar. When you click on the icon,
Turbo Type mono-tasks − pressing <escape> takes you back to the intact
desktop. This is another talking program.
6.6
The exercises are divided into ‘Beginners’, ‘Intermediate’, ‘Advanced’
and ‘Numeric’ (on the numeric keypad). The range of exercises appear to
cover all abilities and allows more experienced users to improve on
keyboard manipulation and accuracy.
6.6
The ‘Beginners’ exercises follow the standard “Home Keys” method. After
each exercise the program displays the typing speed and accuracy rate.
The exercises for more advanced users are well designed and should build
a high level of speed and accuracy. A separate application !TTEditor
allows you to create your own exercises.
6.6
I am not sure whether it is the speech or the protection but this
program takes ages to load.
6.6
Fast Type
6.6
Fast Type is RISC-OS compliant and it supports !Help. It does not talk
at the moment although a ‘voice’ option is indicated in the menu. The
keyboard window does not change to show which key is next which
unfortunately encourages users to look down at the keyboard, rather than
maintaining a watch on the screen.
6.6
A finger in the ‘Hands’ window changes colour to show which finger you
should be using. This is distracting in the middle of an exercise. It
would be better if there was an introduction explaining how each key in
the exercise should be fingered.
6.6

6.6
Fast Type on the desktop
6.6
The lesson structure was good, based on traditional typing lessons.
Progression is only possible when an exercise is completed. However, the
content of the lessons was very basic. A great many more lessons
offering wider use of different keyboard combinations are needed to make
this a useful program.
6.6
The manual contained a number of spelling mistakes and grammatical
errors.
6.6
Archi   type
6.6
Architype puts an icon on the iconbar. When you click on the icon it
mono-tasks. A menu option allows you to return to an intact desktop.
6.6
There are two different practice methods, lessons and exercises. In the
lessons, you are presented with one letter at a time from a list of
letters. In the exercises, you have to copy a short passage.
6.6
The staccato-like way in which the keys were presented in the lessons
was very difficult, despite being highlighted on the keyboard as well. I
was also dismayed to find that some of the home keys, namely ‘a’ and ‘;’
were considered to be of little importance and thus rarely displayed in
the initial lessons.
6.6

6.6
A completed exercise
6.6
The lessons do not end − the user must press <escape> when he/she has
had enough. Presenting the keys individually without any warning of what
key is coming next did not encourage grouping and the development of
fluency.
6.6
Architype could be used to provide basic instruction in the use of the
keyboard, but it is not suitable for training touch typists.
6.6
TypeWrite
6.6
This is a mono-tasking program which looks like an up-dated BBC program.
6.6
There is a good introduction which gives details of fingering and a
well-designed keyboard chart which is used throughout the program.
6.6

6.6
The user can choose the number of times an exercise needs to be
repeated, thus regulating their own learning.
6.6
There are not enough exercises and the only way to add new ones is to
change the program. Like the previous Shareware program, this might do
to become more familiar with the keyboard but it will not teach you to
be a professional touch typist.
6.6
There are a number of punctuation and spelling errors in the
instructions, and the program uses the Memalloc module.
6.6
(Many thanks to Robert Chrismas, my colleague and fellow lecturer, for
his technical assistance in the preparation of this review.)  A

6.6
Getting Started with PipeDream4
6.6
Charles Hill
6.6
Getting Started with PipeDream4 (for Spreadsheets and Charts) is a 32
page booklet costing £3.95 + p&p from Colton Software (or £2.95 per copy
for 30+ copies).
6.6
Content
6.6
The booklet contains a step-by-step guide to setting up spreadsheets and
producing charts. It has a format similar to the PD4 Tutorial but is
somewhat simpler to follow. It starts at a lower level and is only
concerned with using PD4 as a spreadsheet. The Getting Started section
includes loading, printing and saving, moving around the screen,
entering numbers and formulae, relative and absolute references, editing
slots and altering slot displays and operations on blocks. A section
called Charting includes drawing and changing charts, adding and
removing data to/from charts, printing and saving charts and editing
saved charts. Further sections include formatting of spreadsheets and
charts, functions, naming slots and ranges, sorting and fixing columns
or rows.
6.6
Comments
6.6
This is a useful booklet and a valuable introduction for those wishing
to use PD4 as a spreadsheet.  Even though it seems to start off at a
simpler level than the Tutorial (which I also think is very user
friendly) it does seem to progress further than the Tutorial but in easy
stages. The booklet is also very well set out and clearly illustrated. A
few minor niggles include the lack of an index (although this is hardly
fair as it is intended as a tutorial not a reference book and the
contents list is very detailed), the lack of a mention that charts can
be further edited in !Draw (although this can be inferred from the
information that charts are saved as drawfiles) and in the section on
functions, the explanation of the Lookup function made reference to
slots which were not illustrated and so made the section difficult to
follow. For an experienced PD4 user, there is probably little in the
booklet’s content which could not be gained from the PD4 Tutorial or
Reference manuals − the booklet’s strength is in its ease of use, not
its comprehensive coverage of all spreadsheet and chart options.
6.6
Getting Started with PipeDream4 (for Spreadsheets and Charts) has been
published as part of the “Computer-based Modelling across the
Curriculum” project by AU Enterprises and NORICC.  A

6.6
Using RISC­OS 3.1
6.6
Hugh Eagle
6.6
“Don’t blame it all on RISC-OS 3!” Archive staff have, on a number of
occasions recently, given this advice to Archimedes users. “But it has
only happened since I changed to RISC-OS 3...” Yes, but that doesn’t
mean it’s the fault of RISC-OS 3. Often it’s a hardware fault that was
set off by fiddling with the p.c.b. of an old computer − or, as in some
of the cases in Hugh’s column this month, it is caused by a change in
configuration that occurred when you did a <delete-powerup> (or because
you didn’t do one!). The final reason is that you haven’t read the
manual − if I had a pound for every time I have had to give advice that
was basically, “Read the manual”... Ed.
6.6
Once again I’ve been nearly overwhelmed by the flood of correspondence.
However, do keep the letters coming, please; I’ll try to use them all in
due course, I promise! My address remains: 48 Smithbarn, Horsham,
Sussex, RH13 6DX.
6.6
Paul says, “Try to be brief”, so I’ll get started.
6.6
Programmers’ Reference Manual
6.6
I was told at the BETT show in January that the new PRM will be ready in
“the second quarter” of 1993.
6.6
Programs and hardware that work
6.6
Some additions to the lists of previous months:
6.6
− Chocks Away
6.6
− Conqueror
6.6
− DrawBender
6.6
− “Most 4Mation software”
6.6
− TaskAnsi (from David Pilling) (However, Tord Eriksson adds that you
may want to upgrade it anyway to take advantage of enhancements.)
6.6
− Scanlight Junior 256 (it “seems to thrive”)
6.6
− Pendown and Pendown+
6.6
− PC emulator (“the oldest” version)
6.6
− Pineapple Digitiser (another confirmation that it works, contrary to
the report in Archive 6.3 p15)
6.6
− XOB Remote Logon (Correction!) Ray Wright has found that the problem
he reported last month (Archive 6.5 p29) was in fact a fault in his BBC
Micro, and that Remote Logon works fine. Apologies to XOB.
6.6
− Acorn DTP (Needs to be patched using the Patch from the Support disc.)
6.6
Problem programs
6.6
ShowPage − Tord Eriksson says this “works fine so long as there is no
on-screen text! Not much use for ShowPage therefore, you might say, but
some stunning graphics are possible as shown by the examples supplied
with the program.”
6.6
Atelier − Andrew Campbell has found that Atelier causes his A5000 to
hang whether he uses RISC­OS 3.0 or RISC­OS 3.10. (The sequencer loads
but not the main program. He has tried old modules to no effect.)
However, Atelier does still run on his A3000 after the upgrade to
RISC­OS 3.10.
6.6
The following have been reported as not working:
6.6
Fun School 4 (Under 5’s)
6.6
Satfoot (a satellite tracker from AMSAT-UK)
6.6
Copy Opts (“a handy little utility”) − Tord Eriksson has problems using
his version of ArcFS and the Pinboard: if he glues an arc’d directory to
the Pinboard then tries to open it, the computer freezes! (Perhaps this
is a problem that has been solved in a more recent version of ArcFS.)
6.6
Tord has also found that Ballarena works perfectly but messes up all the
configuration settings (so see the section below called “Saving the
configuration” before you run it!)
6.6
Tord says that he made Powerband work by “editing out lines 430 and
following setting up the voices, and a line further on checking the
voices.”
6.6
Some games, like 4th Dimension’s Saloon Cars, crash with a
“WindowManager:Sprites24” error. What is a “Sprites24” anyway?
6.6
!Psion
6.6
Chris Dawson says that the Psion to Archimedes data transfer program by
Mark Taylor (v 1.65) no longer works with his Psion II. He has tried
everything he can think of, even three different re-wiring
configurations that he has seen. Can anyone help?
6.6
Interrupt (Archive Shareware disc no. 6)
6.6
M. P. Sawle has, up to now, made good use of the Interrupt module, with
the commands *RMLoad Intmodule and *Interrupt 0 in a loading file to
enable subsequent access to the command line with <ctrl-@> from within
both Basic programs and the original version of First Word Plus.
6.6
Having installed RISC­OS 3.10 he finds that:
6.6
•   within Basic programs: <ctrl-@> still works, but <Esc> has the same
effect and this takes priority over the normal programmed effect of the
Escape key at the time.
6.6
•   within First Word Plus: <ctrl-@> works but he cannot return to 1wp
properly (sometimes the current document is lost), also two presses of
<Esc> take him to the command line but the document is always totally
lost.
6.6
•   Lemmings won’t run unless he RMKills the Interrupt module first.
6.6
Can anyone help?
6.6
Investigator II works on the older machines, but not on the A3010/A3020/
A4000/A5000 (presumably because the hardware is different).
6.6
LaserDirect and ROM fonts
6.6
The reason why LaserDirect (and presumably the Turbo Drivers) have
problems with the Corpus and Homerton Oblique fonts in ROM is that the
Outlines files for these fonts do not contain full descriptions of the
letters but simply contain cross-references to the related upright
fonts. (Because these two fonts are simply slanted versions of the
upright fonts, not proper “italic” fonts, all the new font manager needs
to know is where to find the outlines of the upright fonts and what
angle to slant them at.)
6.6
So far as I can tell, it is not necessary to disable the ROM fonts (with
a FontRemove command in the !Boot and/or !Run files of !Fonts) and
include full descriptions of Corpus, Homerton and Trinity on disc (they
would need about 250Kb); I have found that Impression and LaserDirect
manage perfectly well if I just include the following sub-directories in
my !Fonts directory on disc:
6.6
Corpus.Bold.Oblique
6.6
Corpus.Medium.Oblique
6.6
Homerton.Bold.Oblique
6.6
Homerton.Medium.Oblique
6.6
(the files add up to 108924 bytes).
6.6
Turning anti-aliasing off
6.6
Tord Eriksson finds that a, ä and å are rather difficult to distinguish
with anti-aliasing on, so he turns it off by setting FontMax1 to
FontMax5 all to 0, except FontMax 3, which determines the maximum size
of font that is cached and which he sets to 200.
6.6
Replacing the system font
6.6
R. W. Darlington’s prayer in Archive 6.4 p11 has been answered! Rob
Davison has sent in an application (included on this month’s program
disc) called !DeskFonts, which will allow you to replace the system font
on the desktop with an outline font of your choice.
6.6
Electronic Font Foundry RISC­OS 3 fonts
6.6
Colin Singleton thinks that last month’s comment may have been a bit
unfair to EFF in referring to their new fonts as “more expensive”. He
suspects that the old fonts have been reduced in price and the new ones
introduced at the previous price of the old.
6.6
What is “kerning data”?
6.6
Colin Singleton says that he had read about this several times before he
found out what it meant. Kerning is the process of adjusting the space
between letters so that they look more natural. A common example is the
word AWAY. When printed like that, the letters appear too widely spread,
but with kerning the word can be made to look like AWAY. (I have
exaggerated the kerning to make it more obvious.) This can be done
manually in applications like Impression.
6.6
The RISC­OS 3 font manager provides the facility for automatic
adjustment of the spacing between any pair of letters, but in order for
this to work firstly the font has to contain a “kerning table”
indicating the preferred spacing for each possible pair of letters and
secondly the application has to be aware of this facility and to make
the appropriate calls to the font manager. (Archive 5.11 pp5/6 give
details of the font manager calls, showing how you can use them in your
programs.)
6.6
Kerning tables are built into the ROM fonts as well as the newer fonts
from EFF (and other suppliers?) I don’t know which applications use
them; presumably newer versions of Impression, etc. will.
6.6
Filing systems: SCSI
6.6
C. Purvis’s problems (icon in wrong place, “bad drive” error, etc – see
6.5 p26) have been solved by a new ROM for his SCSI podule, supplied
free of charge by Oak.
6.6
Tord Eriksson at first had problems that sounded similar to C. Purvis’s,
then happened to find that his SCSI drive had been “set to 0” and after
“resetting to 4” everything worked perfectly. (I explained this last
month, p27. Ed.)
6.6
Philip Lardner, who has a Brainsoft SCSI podule, is having great
difficulties in copying, moving or deleting files to, from or in the
root directory. It generates all sorts of error messages such as: “Can’t
create ‘SCSI::SCSI.$’ ... ”. Philip has found that he can get round the
problem by copying via the RAM disc and deleting using a trash-can
application but he would obviously be interested in a proper “fix”. (I
don’t know whether it might be relevant but he has put “Set Alias$Free
ShowFree -FS scsi %0”, as recommended last month, in his !Boot file in
order to activate the free space window.)
6.6
Philip has also found that his PC Emulator 1.8 sometimes suddenly hangs
the machine either during or shortly after booting up, or after quitting
the emulator.
6.6
HCCS HardCard 45
6.6
Barry Thompson says this needs a ROM and PAL change by HCCS costing £10
plus VAT.
6.6
IDE
6.6
John Birchenough was initially unable to access his Risc Developments
IDE disc drive. However, with a third (free) replacement ROM fitted in
his podule, it is now working!
6.6
Allan Woods says that the tip given last month for getting the Free
Space window to work with SCSI drives doesn’t work with his Risc
Developments IDE drive. Bernard Perry says he knows someone with an ICS
IDE drive with the same problem. Has anyone got any ideas?
6.6
Barry Thompson says the early Orion IDE drives do not function and
wonders whether the new proprietors at Orion are going to support them.
6.6
Watford 5¼“ drive interface
6.6
Gordon Lindsay-Jones has found that his problem is not with his Watford
buffer, as reported last month. The buffer worked properly with another
disc drive. However, he is still trying to find out what is wrong with
his drive.
6.6
Printing − HP Paintjet, Draw and Poster
6.6
Christopher Price (Sidcup) is having constant problems trying to print
from the RISC­OS 3.10 version of Draw and Poster 1.21 via an Ace printer
driver (he doesn’t know which version) to an HP Paintjet on his A420.
The printer appears not even to acknowledge Draw and refuses to output.
With Poster he gets output sometimes, though white text generally
appears black and the printer “seems to bug out if the artwork involves
clipart” imported from elsewhere. Can anyone help?
6.6
Carriage returns and linefeeds
6.6
Philip Woodward uses a bubblejet printer and often prints direct (i.e.
not via a RISC­OS driver). He finds that if he makes the slightest
error, such as trying to print a non-existent file, when he next tries
to print, everything gets printed on one line. Does anyone have any
suggestions?
6.6
BJ-330
6.6
Tord Eriksson has had numerous difficulties printing on his Canon BJ330.
Using the LQ-860 driver is agonisingly slow (it makes four passes for
each line) and it sometimes gives stripes in graphics areas. He also had
a printer head (costing £200!) written off as a result of a “printout
crashing.” Also he finds that printing can abort before the job is
finished – if he uses 180×180 dpi there are no problems but with 180×360
or higher just part of the page gets printed. He comments that the
printer driver seems to work differently in that it now seems to
calculate the entire bitmap before starting printing and he wonders if
he now needs more than 4 Mbytes just to print an A4 page. Any hints or
tips would be very welcome indeed!
6.6
Tord asks if there is any Archive reader who has tested the plotter
version of the BJ-330.
6.6
Non direct drive laser printers
6.6
Tord also asks for suggestions about laser printers that work well with
RISC­OS 3. Direct drive lasers are out of the question because all his
podule slots are full! What printer drivers exist for Canon laser
printers that use Canon’s own page description language? (How about the
Ace Pro-Driver for LBP4/8 at £44 through Archive?)
6.6
Printing in the background
6.6
Tord Eriksson says that the tip in Archive 6.3 p16 about having two
printer drivers loaded is impossible: if he loads a second !Printers the
first is erased. However, I think he has misunderstood the point: you
should only run !Printers once, but within that application you should
have two drivers loaded and active. (See p62 of the RISC­OS 3 User Guide
for details.)
6.6
Keith Matthews spells out the procedure in more detail: you should drag
two copies of the appropriate printer driver into the Printer control
window of !Printers. Then click <menu> over the Printer control window,
choose the Connection option and connect the first driver to a suitable
file, then give the driver a name ending in ‘f’. The second copy should
be connected to the printer and named with a ‘p’. When the printer
manager is subsequently loaded, two icons appear: the first is selected
by default, so applications will “print” to the file. To produce hard
copy as a background task, just drag the file icon onto the “......p”
icon (you don’t need to select it first.) (I still maintain this is a
ridiculous palaver: why isn’t there a setup option whereby you can tell
the print manager to print first to a file and then automatically send
it to the printer?)
6.6
Keith points out that (although he hasn’t tried queueing printouts) the
printer queue window provides one queue for each printer icon.
Obviously, print image files would have to be created under different
file names and you would need a hard disc to accommodate them all.
6.6
LaserDirect and Turbo Driver news
6.6
Michael Lowe has received a copy of version 2.09 of the LaserDirect
driver which has fixed the speckling problem (see Archive 6.5 pp30/31).
6.6
Computer Concepts have also told both him and Dave Leckie that RISC­OS 3
drivers “are under development and might be available as early as April
but the amount of work involved shouldn’t be underestimated.” Presumably
these will handle rotated text and sprites and work under the RISC­OS 3
printer manager. (Dave Leckie notes, however, that CC have said that
they will not support RISC­OS 3.0.)
6.6
Using a RISC­OS 3 driver after LaserDirect, etc.
6.6
In Archive 6.5 p30 there was a tip that, in order to use a RISC­OS 3
driver after using a RISC­OS 2 driver such as LaserDirect, ArcLaser or
the Turbo drivers you should use the two * commands:
6.6
RMKill PDriver
6.6
RMReinit PDriver
6.6
Maurice Edmundson has pointed out that a convenient place to put these
commands is in the !Run file of !Printers before the first of the
RMEnsure commands.
6.6
Saving paper size settings
6.6
Acorn have advised that there is a fault in RISC­OS 3.0 whereby, if you
alter the page sizes and save them, the new settings are not saved. The
work-around is to <shift-double-click> on !Printers then load the file
PaperRW into !Edit, manually change the settings then save the altered
file. This bug has been fixed in RISC­OS 3.10.
6.6
First Word Plus driver for Deskjet 550C?
6.6
Can anyone supply a printer definition file (Barry Thompson asks)?
6.6
PC Emulator
6.6
John Birchenough’s emulator, version 1.7, will only access the internal
drive A. Even when he makes the default drive B or C, the computer
insists on having a disc in drive A and then operates on the contents of
that drive. Also, it always asks for a disc to be inserted in B even
though it means A. He tried the patch supplied on the Support disc, but
that refused to work with a version higher than 1.6. He has also tried
changing his Config.sys file with variations of the Driver.sys and
Drivparm commands but to no effect. Can anyone help?
6.6
Is RISC­OS 3 faster or slower?
6.6
Some think one, some the other! A number of people have commented that
the machine seems to take longer to redraw the desktop screen or to go
through its initialisation routine. Relying on memory, it is obviously
difficult to tell. Raymond Wright says Pipedream 3.1 appears to take
longer to get spreadsheets loaded. He finds that, initially, he gets a
screen full of zeros which are slowly replaced by real data. (I wonder
if this is because of the way he has got it set up? Robert Macmillan
from Colton said – see Archive 6.3 p12 – that all versions from 3.10 on
work better in RISC­OS 3.) Raymond is sure that RISC­OS 2 was quicker
but he’s not going to reinstall it just to find out.
6.6
Ken Gardner has, however, done just that. He did some controlled timings
before updating to RISC­OS 3.10 and reverted back to RISC­OS 2 to
confirm the anomaly that he found. The timings are as shown below
6.6
For the tests, ADFS buffers were set to zero for both RISC­OS 2 and
RISC­OS 3.10. When Ken changed ADFSBuffers to 2K the time to read the
serial file fell from 48 secs to 19 secs but the Multistore random
access read only dropped from 176 secs. to 170 secs. This is a logical
result but it prompts Ken to ask why we have been instructed to set
ADFSBuffers to zero when this gives so much slower a result than in
RISC­OS 2. Can anyone tell us for sure whether there is a bug or not?
(Is there a danger of losing data if the Buffers are set to a non-zero
value?) (Yes, but only on a 1Mb machine. In 3.11, this has been improved
over 3.10. Ed.)
6.6
Miscellaneous Hints & Tips
6.6
How to avoid continual disc swapping,
6.6
and more on !Scrap files
6.6
Philip Woodward recommends that, on a floppy-disc only system, if you
have several discs for different classes of work and include a !Scrap
file on each, don’t forget to click on the !Scrap icon when you insert a
new disc. If you do forget, you will find that whenever you load a
printer driver, or try to print a drawing, the operating system will ask
you to insert some other disc which has no apparent relevance.
6.6
Draw crashing
6.6
Philip Woodward finds, like a number of others, that Draw crashes quite
frequently reporting an “address exception” error. Does anyone know if
there is anything he can do to avoid this? The error message goes on to
say:
6.6
preserving files in <Wimp$ScrapDir>.Draw before exiting.
6.6
This means that !Draw will attempt to save the work-in-progress as a
file called Draw in the scrap directory. (If it is successful, you will
be able to retrieve the file by opening that directory and double-
clicking on the drawfile icon to run !Draw again and load the file in –
after first making a backup copy of the file if it is important. To find
where the scrap directory is, press <ctrl-f12> to open a Task window and
type the command *Show Wimp$ScrapDir)
6.6
Positioning drawings imported into Draw
6.6
Philip Woodward has also found that, whereas in the RISC­OS 2 version of
Draw, one could superimpose a previous drawing (e.g. one saved on a RAM
disc) in exactly the position it originally occupied in the window by
setting the grid lock on and dragging the file onto the new drawing and
positioning the pointer at the bottom left of the window, this no longer
works. The minimum bounding frame of the old drawing is placed with its
bottom left corner at the mouse position, regardless of the original
position in the old drawing. To reproduce the RISC­OS 2 behaviour, you
have to put something, such as a dummy rectangle, at the bottom left
corner of the old drawing’s window.
6.6
Alarm options
6.6
Philip Woodward has pointed out that, if you include a line in your
!Boot file to set Alarm$Options, you must include % in front of each of
the -format parameters (see Applications Guide p137 for details). Also,
you must put the format string in quotes (which is not, perhaps,
emphasised sufficiently strongly in the Manual.) In both these respects,
it differs from Edit$Options, Draw$Options, etc.
6.6
To illustrate the point, consecutive lines in !Boot might read:
6.6
Set Alarm$Options -format “%w3 %z12:%mi %m3 %zdy”
6.6
Set Edit$Options B12 M99 L1 D
6.6
To get the Alarm$Options to take effect, you also have to choose the
“User defined” option in the Alarm setup window (choose the Setup...
option from the iconbar menu.) It’s not clear from the manual but I
assume that the choice of this option is saved in the CMOS RAM so
doesn’t have to be included in the !Boot file. It’s all a bit confusing,
isn’t it?
6.6
Arm3 hare and tortoise icons
6.6
I didn’t have enough time last month to try out Götz Kohlberg’s tip
(Archive 6.5 p33) about the hare and tortoise module. Now I have, and
I’m totally confused! Whatever combination of commands I use, I seem to
be unable to get the machine to boot up with the cache on without the
hare and tortoise swapping jobs. One thought I’ve had is that I might
swap the names of the hare and tortoise icons inside the !Arm3.!Sprites
file. (Another thought is that perhaps you’re meant to click on the hare
to get the machine to go faster, and that this never worked properly in
RISC­OS 2!) Help!
6.6
Faster filer operations
6.6
If you click <menu> over a filer operation window (e.g. the window that
pops up when you copy files which keeps you informed of progress) and
choose “Faster”, screen update will be less frequent and the filer
operation will be faster. (Marc Evans)
6.6
Copying a large directory to floppy
6.6
If you run out of space when copying a directory or application to a
floppy, insert a new disc, rename it with the same name as the full disc
and click on “Retry”. (Marc Evans) (Someone else has already suggested
that but when I tried it, it said “ambiguous filename”. Ed.)
6.6
<Shift-select> on toggle size icon
6.6
If you click <shift-select> on the toggle size icon, the window will
open as far as it can without obscuring the icon bar. (Marc Evans) (This
seems to depend on the application. Draw windows behave as described,
but Impression windows don’t.)
6.6
False sprites on the Pinboard
6.6
Marc Evans’ Pinboard seems to get confused over icon sizes and sprites
under certain conditions. For instance, it sometimes makes icons three
times bigger and uses the wrong sprites. Tord Eriksson says that in mode
78 (from Computer Concepts NewModes?) some icons disappear, some hide
behind others and some appear twice; a single click on each one restores
peace, but should he have to? Has anyone else found this?
6.6
Configured modes
6.6
Marc Evans has found that *Configure Mode and *Configure Wimpmode seem
to be interlinked – whatever one is configured to the other one follows.
He used to have Mode configured to 0 to save memory when outside the
Desktop, but can’t anymore.
6.6
Tord Eriksson had great problems until he discovered that you can’t
“configure” a non-standard mode. If you want to start up in, say, mode
78 from the Computer Concepts Newmodes module, you have to include in
your !Boot file first a command to load the NewModes module then a
*WimpMode 78 command.
6.6
Icon button types
6.6
A comment for WIMP programmers is that when icons have the double click
flag set, they invert at the first click and group with adjust (like
Filer icons). To get around this, your program must trap for any icon
clicked on and unset the selected bit. (Marc Evans)
6.6
Saving the configuration
6.6
Mike Williams finds that the configuration file saved by !Configure
doesn’t cover all the things he needs to restore after having attempted
to run a rogue program that changes the configuration. He has therefore
built himself a command file containing all the *Configure commands
required to get back to normal plus *RMReinit commands for all the
modules. He created it by doing
6.6
*Spool cfgfile
6.6
*Status
6.6
*ROMModules
6.6
*Spool
6.6
then editing the resulting file into the correct syntax and changing the
filetype to “Command”. (The pukka way of creating such a file is not to
use the pre-RISC-OS *Spool command, but to press <ctrl-f12> to open a
Task window, type Status, <return>, ROMModules and <return>, then press
<menu>, choose the “Unlink” option and save the contents of the Task
window.)
6.6
Several years ago, Risc User published a program called !CMOS_Edit which
allows easy saving and reloading of all the CMOS settings. This seems to
work fine.
6.6
Opening sub-menus automatically
6.6
Richard Hallas has noticed that, if you choose the “Open submenus
automatically” configuration option, then if the pointer is resting to
the left of the “parent” menu item (in the space where a tick would
appear) when the submenu opens it appears on top of the parent menu
rather than to its right. Also, moving around a single menu with several
submenu pointers can have some peculiar effects: sometimes the submenu
pointers are ignored, and it is even possible to have two copies of the
same submenu open.
6.6
Preventing access to !Configure and !Alarm
6.6
Last month we gave the hint that you can prevent users from interfering
with the configuration by unplugging the !Configure module so that they
can’t access the !Configure application. In Acorn’s education newsletter
Arc, there is a hint that you can do the same with !Alarm.
6.6
Opening a directory without booting
6.6
Richard Hallas reports that, if you open a directory with <ctrl> held
down to stop the Filer executing all the !Boot files inside the
applications within the directory, then copying, renaming or deleting
files will cause the directory to be booted unless you remember to press
<ctrl> again.
6.6
Also, if you open a directory with <ctrl> held down and then copy an
application out of it to another directory, then (assuming the Filer has
not already seen the !Sprites file for the application) a “!Sprites not
found” error will be reported. This doesn’t have any ill effects: it’s
just a nuisance.
6.6
Various Matters Arising
6.6
Screen blanker (Archive 6.4 p12)
6.6
Keith Raven has found (in p163 of the User Guide) that *Blanktime sets
the time (in seconds) before the screen goes blank. *Blanktime 0 turns
the screen blanker off. (What I would like to know is: does the
operating system provide any easy means of firing up a graphical routine
as an alternative to the blank screen?)
6.6
Shift key behaviour (Archive 6.5 p34)
6.6
John Woodgate suggests that the £/¤ key may be acting as if it were
pressed as well as the <shift> key. He suggests cleaning with iso propyl
alcohol or proprietary switch cleaner. (For details on how to clean a
keyboard, see 5.1 p25. Ed.)
6.6
Solid sprite dragging (Archive 6.5 p36)
6.6
Barry Thompson writes that the way to turn this on is to use the *
command *FX162,28,3 (It seems really weird to me that a feature like
this, quite a selling point one would have thought, has been implemented
in such a half-hearted way!)
6.6
Spaces in *Set commands
6.6
Brian Fielding has found that whereas in RISC­OS 2 you could use spaces
in *Set or *SetMacro, RISC­OS 3.10 does not allow you to do so:
6.6
SET PipeDream$Path ADFS::Dream_ file.$.,<PipeDream$Dir>.
6.6
was permissible in RISC­OS 2 but you must use
6.6
SET PipeDream$Path ADFS::Dream_ file.$.,<PipeDream$Dir>.
6.6
in RISC­OS 3.10.
6.6
Locked directories in ROM/RAM podule
6.6
Brian Fielding also reports that if you create a New directory in
Computer Concept’s ROM/RAM podule, it creates the directory with a lock.
This lock cannot be removed and the directory can never be deleted
except by re-initialising the Podule.Other problems occur when copying
files into directories on the Podule but these can be ‘SKIPed’. He has
written to CC about this but they have no plans to alter the podule
software to work fully with RISC-OS3.  A

6.6
Timings for various operations (RISC-OS 2 v RISC-OS 3.10)
6.6

6.6
      RISC-OS 2   RISC-OS 3.10   relative
speed
6.6
      (secs)   (secs)   RO3.1 : RO2
6.6
Read a serial file to a string array (50,000 items)   25.4
   48.4   half as fast
6.6
Sort 50,000 strings (using Armsort)   8.0
   8.0   same
6.6
load and sort a Multistore file (2,400 items):
6.6
   load   166   176   slightly slower
6.6
   sort   221   214   slightly faster
6.6
   total   387   390   same
6.6
Print a Draw file (with 32Kb buffer in printer)
6.6
   release computer   500   239
   twice as fast
6.6
   release printer   533   289
   twice as fast
6.6
Mandelbrot (recalculate Clessidra)   90.3
   90.5   same
6.6


6.6
Landmarks − Columbus
6.6
Hilary Ferns
6.6
Columbus from Longman Logotron is one of the latest in the Landmarks
series of educational programs. It deals with life on board one of
Christopher Columbus’ ships on a voyage of discovery.
6.6
The program comes with an excellent pupils’ book, with photocopiable
sheets, which could be used as a basis for further work on the topic. A
board game idea is also included, to further reinforce ideas about life
on board ship with the explorers. The teachers’ book provides notes on
how to run the program for Archimedes, IBM and Nimbus, a few suggestions
for classroom use, cross-curricular links and keystrips.
6.6
The program loads and installs on the iconbar in the usual RISC-OS way.
Clicking on the icon opens two windows side by side, as in all other
Landmarks programs. The right hand window always contains a monochrome
picture of the present location, (Please, please, Longman Logotron,
could you possibly start using detailed colour pictures in these
programs?) and the left-hand window contains the dialogue. The user
interacts with the program by typing questions into this window. The
conversation can be saved as a named textfile (provided “File on” has
been typed) and so can be printed out using a standard RISC-OS driver.
6.6
At the start of the conversation, we are introduced to Pedro, a young
boy on the Santa Maria, with Christopher Columbus as Captain. He is
referred to in the program as Captain Colon, the Spanish name which he
took for the voyage. Function keys can be used to ask some of the common
questions like “What can you see?”, “Where are you?” and “Describe. . .”
Other function keys give direction commands such as “Go forward”, and
“Go aft”. A useful simple plan of the ship is provided in the pupils’
book showing Port, Starboard, Forward and Aft.
6.6
Thinking about the right questions
6.6
Initially, I became frustrated by the answers given to my questions.
Often the answers were totally irrelevant to what I was asking. I soon
realised that the answers are probably chosen by searching through the
question for a keyword. For example, I asked Pedro the following:
6.6
“Describe the cooking pot.”
6.6
“It is a large pot in which our food is cooked.”
6.6
“What food do you cook ?”
6.6
“I have many jobs on the ship. I turn the glass and ring the bell, sweep
the deck, help to cook our meals, serve the officers, check the rigging
... ”
6.6
(This was the same answer which was given for “What do you have for your
meals?” and “What are your jobs?”)
6.6
“How much dried meat do you eat each day?”
6.6
“Thursday”.
6.6
Eventually, while I was still near the cooking pot, I asked “What is
your food for today?” To this Pedro came up with a sensible and
interesting answer.
6.6
I also learnt that a sensible strategy is asking Pedro to describe only
the things he can see in any given location. Several times I was told “I
don’t know” or “You ask so many questions − let us speak of something
else.” However, once I got the idea of wording my questions carefully,
it was really quite good fun and I started feeling part of the scene,
coming away having gained some knowledge about Pedro’s life on board. In
fact, my 11 year old son got the hang of it with very little guidance.
He simply started off by using the function keystrip, very soon getting
some sense out of the program. He climbed the rigging with Pedro and
later found it rather unfair that Pedro was often left with the maggot-
infested biscuit!
6.6
The passage of time
6.6
The program is linked with real time, by using the setting of the
computer’s clock. Simply a gimmick, you may say, but I think it really
does help to make Pedro seem more real. Pedro remembers who he has been
speaking to and each time you go back to using the program, he demands
to know if he is still talking to the same person. If there is a long
silence from you, he asks if anyone is still there and eventually gets
fed up with waiting, signing off with “Farewell”. This can actually be
rather annoying, as you find yourself having to reload the program. This
happens even if you are using another program meanwhile, i.e. the
program still continues to flow even if it is not the current window on
screen. When you join Pedro again on day two, land has been sighted.
Pedro goes ashore with the landing party, and the exploration of the
island begins. Therefore it is important to speak to Pedro on two
consecutive days to get all the possible information out of the program.
I was a little annoyed that once ashore, I could find no way to instruct
Pedro to go back to the boat − I can only assume that it was the wrong
time of day for this to happen. On the third day Pedro says that he is
too busy to speak and the program automatically resets to the beginning,
ready for Pedro to introduce himself to someone else. At any time you
can do this manually by typing “Reset”.
6.6
So what use is the program?
6.6
I assume these programs were never intended to be exciting adventures in
the same way as many home computer games, and I feel it would be unfair
to make comparisons in this area. In the home, quite honestly, its use
is limited, and I would not recommend it for anything other than
classroom use, where it provides an interesting interaction between the
children and Pedro on board Columbus’ ship. At times one really can
begin to feel part of Pedro’s world. I can see the program fitting quite
nicely into classroom topic work. I would perhaps use it as an
introduction to the topic, taking Pedro’s information as a launch pad
for further study. Pedro could almost become a part of the classroom.
One could ask the children “Have you asked Pedro about that?” or “Has
anyone spoken to Pedro yet today?” Lower ability readers and writers
would obviously have more of a problem, and be limited to questions
which are programmed into the function keys. However, I would not rule
it out for Special Needs use. The children do have to be accurate in
their typing and spelling in order for the questions to make sense to
the computer. Generally suitable for Years 5 & 6.  A

6.6
MicroDrive 2 / MicroDrive Designer
6.6
Jochen Konietzko
6.6
Since my review of the MicroDrive golf simulator (Archive 5.11, p34),
things have changed a lot − there is a new, improved Version 2 and also
a course designer!
6.6
Version 2.1: The package
6.6
Except for the number 2, nothing has changed on the outside cover − even
the names of the seven courses are identical. Inside, there is one (very
welcome) difference: The manual now describes every detail of the game
briefly yet comprehensively on five pages of text, plus a table of
contents.
6.6
Installation
6.6
Installation on a hard disk has stayed the same but running the game
from a hard disk is slightly different, as now there is a copy
protection − the master disk must always be present, as a ‘key’, when
the game is first started.
6.6
The game has grown slightly − together with the five extra courses, it
now occupies 560 Kb when Compression is used, or 1480 Kb in uncompressed
form.
6.6
The game now needs 460 Kb to run, and too little RAM is reported by way
of the usual error message. However, the programmer has done something
rather nasty to make sure that the game will find enough room for
loading. Irrespective of the available memory, MicroDrive always sets
the font cache to zero.
6.6
Playing the game
6.6
The game is basically still the same as in Version 1 but a number of
changes make it even more attractive. The status window has been
redesigned so that the screen seems bigger.
6.6
The three pictures opposite show a view in Version 1 and the same view
in Version 2, before and after a club has been chosen.
6.6
As you can see, the scenery has been subtly changed between the two
versions. (By the way, the old courses disk seems to work perfectly with
the new master disk.) Note the different positions of the flag in the
two Version 2 screen shots, which were taken in different rounds.
6.6
The player sprites have been modified slightly (they now ‘hunker down’
before putting) and the most important change of all − there is now a
Quit option!
6.6
Price
6.6
MicroDrive is produced by Cambridge International Software. The update
from Version 1 costs £9.95 and Version 2 (World Edition) is priced at
£34.95 (or £32 from Archive).
6.6
Conclusion
6.6
I am not quite sure about it being a ‘Version 2.1’. The amount of change
makes this new game appear to me more like Version 1.2 or 1.3 − still, I
have no complaints.
6.6
MicroDrive is now just as I wanted Version 1 to be. The only additional
improvement I would like to see is an increase in sound effects (bird
song?). However, there is one improvement which no Archimedes game can
have − the latest version of Links, the high-end PC golf simulator, has
Super VGA graphics which are very nearly photo-like in their quality. In
the world of the Archimedes, such pictures are simply not possible.
6.6
Subjectively....
6.6
Those of you who read the review of this game in October’s Archimedes
World, may wonder if Duncan Evans and I were writing about the same
game! This shows how much the personal preferences of a reviewer
influence his conclusions. When you read such an article, you should
therefore try to read between the lines, to see whether the reviewer has
the same tastes as you.
6.6
The main point at issue seems to be the number of gadgets and gimmicks
one expects to see. MicroDrive tries to come as close as possible to the
atmosphere of a real life round of golf, so it makes perfect sense that
there is no glut of statistics as in most American simulators, no
surveyor’s staff which you can move around the course to get exact
distances, no option to view the course from the perspective of the
flying ball, no... etc.
6.6
If you are expecting all this paraphernalia, then MicroDrive must indeed
appear as an ‘out of condition, under-powered lightweight’, as Mr. Evans
puts it. If it’s straight, undiluted golf you are interested in, then
MicroDrive is for you.
6.6
MicroDrive Designer
6.6
Packed in a colourful cardboard sleeve, the designer comes with an
excellent instruction leaflet − 22 pages, table of contents and lots of
screen shots. The manual includes hints for successful course design and
even classifies the available trees (names and regions where they grow).
6.6
The disk contains the designer itself, a file which you need to create a
new empty disk for your own courses, and several example files.
6.6
The example horizons are especially helpful because it is much easier to
modify a 3200×16 sprite than to create it from scratch.
6.6
As with the game itself, the designer can be installed on a hard disk
but the original disk must be present for a few seconds during loading.
6.6
Using the program is simplicity itself. You choose the general
properties of your course, such as the speed of the greens and the depth
of the bunkers, then you start on the individual holes.
6.6
A number of icons lead to various windows from which you can pick (by
‘drag and drop’) 24 kinds of trees and bushes, 48 different greens, 48
shapes of bunkers, etc. All these objects can be scaled and flipped at
will, giving an almost infinite number of variations.
6.6
The icons in the picture mean Quit, Trees, Greens, Tees, Water, Bunkers,
Fairway, Rough, Playing, Viewing, Flag positions, Orientation (this
decides the lay of the hole in relation to the horizon), Description,
Measuring/fixing the par, Landscaping, Out of bounds. In all, 159
objects may be placed on each hole.
6.6
One thing which must be done is landscaping − otherwise, you get ‘Error:
No billiard tables allowed in this simulation’! You can see the result
of this activity on a three dimensional grid.
6.6
Price
6.6
The MicroDrive Designer costs £39.95 from CIS or £37 from Archive.
6.6
Conclusion
6.6
It’s great! There is just one problem − as with a powerful, easy-to-use
art package, the Designer is a tool which is only as good as the
individuals who use it.
6.6
Our very first hole was finished (or so we thought) in about ten
minutes. Unfortunately, it proved to be unplayable because we had placed
a ravine across the fairway − it was so deep that, if the ball dropped
into it, it was impossible to get it out again! Chastened by this
failure, we stuck to Rob Deacon’s hints (‘Make a plan of your course on
paper ... aim for realism ... ), and the course developed very nicely.
6.6
After one weekend of hard work, we have now fine-tuned our first course
to such an extent that we are satisfied − at least for the time being.
After all, as Rob writes, ‘Some of the best courses in the world are
still getting minor tweaks 100 years after they were first
constructed!’  A

6.6
Version 1

6.6
Version 2 − Before selecting a club

6.6
Version 2 − After selecting a club

6.6
Lotus Turbo Challenge II
6.6
Neil Walker
6.6
Lotus Turbo Challenge (henceforth LTC) is one of the latest conversions
by Krisalis. It was tested on an A310, with 4Mb of memory and a hard-
disc.
6.6
The plot
6.6
LTC became well known on other formats as one of, if not the best
driving game ever seen. In it, one drives a Lotus Elan and a Lotus
Esprit. The choice of car is made for you depending upon the course on
which you are driving − there are eight courses. The cars can be driven
with either manual or automatic gears.
6.6
The aim of the game is to drive the car from the start to the finish,
passing through checkpoints on the way. If you do not reach the
checkpoint within a certain time limit, your attempt is over and you
must try again.
6.6
LTC was designed as a game and not as a driving simulation. Therefore,
contact with other cars, rocks and all other manner of objects will
merely slow you down and push the car away from the object.
6.6
One and two player modes are available. In one-player mode, the whole
screen is dedicated to the one car whereas, in two-player mode, the
screen is split in two, allowing the two players to race against each
other.
6.6
The Archimedes
6.6
LTC comes in a box, containing a bag in which there are two discs, an
instruction booklet and a registration card.
6.6
LTC can be installed onto a hard-disc but uses the key-disc method of
protection. This means that one disc does tend to lie about on the desk.
However, Krisalis say that any disc which fails will be replaced free of
charge. The key-disc is looked at once only, when the game is started.
6.6
Not having seen LTC on other formats, I cannot make comparisons of that
type but as it is similar, in some respects, to E-Type, I will make a
brief comparison between the two.
6.6
LTC is controlled by the keyboard or joystick, whereas E-Type uses the
mouse. I personally find the keyboard the easier of the two to use, but
that is a matter of opinion. To control the car, five keys are needed
(which can be redefined). These are : Left, Right, Up, Down and Fire.
Left and Right are obvious, Up and Down control the gears in a manual
while Down works as a brake in the automatic and Fire works as the
accelerator.
6.6
Both Vertical Twist and RTFM joystick types are supported and the
controls outlined above still apply. However, it is possible to switch
the effects of Up and Fire, in order to make pushing the joystick
forward work as the accelerator.
6.6
Whilst the graphics on E-Type are good, those on LTC are even better,
and the same is true of sound. The cars are instantly recognisable −
they are clear and well-defined. Backgrounds are excellent and provide
an interesting alternative to watching the road − if you dare to take
your eyes off it! The sampled speech and the engine noise are very good.
There is also an excellent metallic chink if a collision should occur.
(Even if the car is made of glass-fibre!)
6.6
The one thing that is very clear about LTC is the speed. It is fast −
very fast. After playing it for a couple of days, I loaded up Saloon
Cars. Suffice it to say that Saloon Cars, which I used to think played
at a reasonable speed, now seemed slow.
6.6
Bad news for ARM 3 users, however, as Krisalis say the cache should be
turned off, to reduce colour split flicker. However, I don’t think the
game would be playable if it was much faster!
6.6
Unfortunately, the gameplay is too easy, and I completed all eight
scenarios within a week. Within a fortnight, I had driven from start to
finish on several occasions. Even so, the two player mode means that the
life of the game is extended, as you get the chance to force the
competition off the road!
6.6
There are a few small things that irritate but aren’t major enough to
say that the game is poor. Firstly, on the last two stages, there are
bonuses. These lie on the road, in the form of coloured spheres. To
collect them, one should drive through them. However, I tend to find
that the game is rather temperamental as to whether or not it says that
I have collected them. Secondly, on the desert course there are
occasions when it is possible to ‘lose’ the engine noise. Finally, when
I finish the game, which I’ve done more than once now, there is no
screen telling me that I’m brilliant at the game. I personally like such
screens, as it creates a sense of satisfaction.
6.6
Conclusion
6.6
LTC is a very good game. It offers a fun alternative to the hard-core
simulators and lets you hit objects as fast as you like, without being
told that you just ‘died horribly’! However, my main criticism would be
that, as already stated, the game is too easy.
6.6
LTC is available from Krisalis for £24.99 and through Archive for
£24.  A

6.6
Desktop Office 2
6.6
Dave Wilcox
6.6
Desktop Office 2 is the latest update from Minerva for their Archimedes
equivalent of the BBC Mini Office Suite. The package is £99 + VAT or
£108 through Archive. (Desktop Office 1 owners can upgrade from Minerva
for £20 + VAT.)
6.6
The package
6.6
This new version of Desktop Office comes on two discs. The first is the
Desktop Office package, comprising DTOWord, DTOSheet, DTOBase, DTOChart
and DTOComms. These are accompanied by the as usual !System and
!Sysmerge. There is also a useful utility called !Flasher.
6.6
On the second disc is EasiWord. This word processor has been included by
Minerva, apparently as a replacement to DTOWord. Both discs have an
accompanying manual. The DTO manual is spring bound and sectioned for
easy reference to each program. The EasiWord manual is a folded, stapled
book. Both manuals have a tutorial section giving a brief outline of
each program and a reference section with more detailed explanations.
Both manuals are well thought out and easy to use. This is all packaged
in a cardboard folder, just slightly smaller than A4.
6.6
The programs
6.6
It is possible (and advisable) before running these programs, to backup
the original discs. This can be done with the desktop backup facility as
neither disc has any copy protection. On first running the Desktop
Office suite, you could be forgiven for thinking you had in fact
received version 1. For reasons best known to Minerva, the Desktop
Office suite is version 1.08 and EasiWord is version 1.02. A check with
Minerva revealed these to be the latest versions of DTO. However,
Easiword itself is currently on version 1.03. The programs are RISC-OS
compliant, so double-clicking the program loads it onto the iconbar and
clicking the loaded icon enters the program.
6.6
Before going into detail about the programs, several points were raised
in earlier Archive reviews of Desktop Office. If you wish to read these
they were published in Archive 4.1 p40 and Archive 4.2 p55. Reference
was made to Easiword in Archive 3.9 p2 and there is a full review of
Easiword also in this issue − see page 73. For those who do not have
these earlier issues, here is a brief summary:
6.6
DTOWord is said to be a Wordwise look-a-like which had no printer driver
routines and therefore used embedded codes. There was no spell-check
facility and no word count. Also DTOChart output (sprites) could not be
loaded.
6.6
DTOSheet was deemed to be too small, the maximum sheet size being 32 ×
64 cells. It was not possible for labels to overflow the cell size and
was restrictive as far as built-in functions were concerned, only having
basic arithmetic and about ten predefined functions.
6.6
DTOBase had one main complaint − it only had one search facility,
‘search anywhere in field’.
6.6
DTOChart was unable to put a title to a chart or to label the axes.
Output was saved in sprite format which is memory hungry.
6.6
DTOComms was deemed to be adequate and workable.
6.6
EasiWord, not then included with Desktop Office, was another Wordwise
look-a-like and was also without spell-check facilities. So what’s new?
6.6
DTOWord
6.6
This program is still a Wordwise look-a-like. When I had a BBC B, this
system was good but, with the power and capacity of the Archimedes, it
is now rather antiquated. This is obviously a view shared by Minerva,
hence the inclusion of EasiWord. For those that still wish to use this
program, however, it is easy to use. Double click on the icon to load
the program onto the iconbar. Click on this icon to enter the program. A
window opens to show part of the current work page. Pressing menu over
this page gives the normal options expected for a word processor
package, i.e. editing, selection and file operations. The most necessary
option in this menu is the command option which allows the easy entry of
embedded commands within the document e.g. underline, bold or printer
output commands. You cannot incorporate graphics into your text.
6.6
DTOSheet
6.6
The maximum size of the spreadsheet in this version is now 55 × 99 cells
and the program has been enhanced considerably. It is still not possible
to exceed the cell size with labels but other complaints have been
tackled. The spreadsheet now has some twenty built in functions
including the normal geometric, mathematical and statistical functions
normally expected in such a package. The toolbox is comprehensive and
allows easy selection of justification settings and auto cursor movement
settings. Paper, ink and negative number colour settings are also easily
selected. Entered data can be saved out as a spooled text file, CSV file
or ASCII text file. This choice gives a format suitable for most other
Archimedes packages that handle data, including the other members of
this suite.
6.6
DTOBase
6.6
The search facility, or lack of one, was the major complaint with
earlier versions of this package. Minerva have put this to rights with a
vengeance. You can now search the database on any of the fields or a
combination of the same. You can also include the normal logic operators
within search definitions. The package has been restricted in card size
− you are allowed 32 fields per card and each field can be up to 78
characters long. Fields are easily defined and can easily be positioned
on the card. The overall database size is only restricted by the size of
the media on which the file is stored. As a database is usually
concerned at some stage with names and addresses, Minerva has included a
special print section devoted to producing labels from a file.
6.6
DTOChart
6.6
As with the other parts of this package, some of the earlier complaints
have been put to rights and others have not. You can now enter chart
titles and axis headings easily from a menu. Data is usually entered in
the form of a CSV file produced via DTOBase or DTOSheet but you can
enter data directly if you wish. From this data, you can produce a Bar,
Line, Scatter or Pie Chart. These charts can have up to three sets of
data displayed. The resultant chart is still saved as a sprite file.
6.6
DTOComms
6.6
This program was reported as working to a satisfactory standard in
earlier versions − I found the current version did the same. For those
people spoilt by Hearsay, or the like, this program appears, on first
loading, a bit sparse to say the least. It opens with a blank window, no
tools of any sort being visible. All actions and settings are performed
by pressing <menu> over the comms window or the iconbar icon. Line
settings are set from the iconbar with baud rates from 50 to 19,200.
Parity, stop bits, and data bits are set with radio buttons. Also, the
interpretation of line feeds and carriage returns are selected from this
menu.
6.6
In the comms window, you have a choice of two terminals − ANSI or
TVI925. These will give access to most private boards and others such as
Telecom Gold. For those with Hayes compatible modems, you can enter the
Hayes commands in the comms window, e.g. autodial. Configuration
settings can be saved out as script files for future setting, or can
then be modified in Edit for auto log-on, password entry, etc. It must
be stressed that this is a basic comms package.
6.6
!Flasher
6.6
This is a nice little utility. Basically, if you have several
overlapping windows open, the window with the input focus will have a
flashing cursor instead of a steady one. Also, if this window is out of
view and the cursor is therefore not visible, click on the iconbar icon
and the target window will come to the front, and the cursor will drift
to the caret location. This application has been around for some time,
written in 1990, but I must confess it is a new one to me and is now a
full time resident on my iconbar.
6.6
EasiWord 2
6.6
This wordprocessor is a clone of First Word Plus 2. A lot of people say
that this program is now getting a little long in the tooth. I leave
that for debate. EasiWord has some of the rough edges smoothed slightly
and most of the alterations appear to be cosmetic. From the iconbar it
is possible to set preferences for auto loading of the dictionary and/or
3D icons. When the program is run, the page opens with white paper
surrounded by a grey border. The top ruler is displayed showing the
default ruler settings with green markers for tab stops and limit
markers. Tabs are set/unset by double-clicking <select>. If double-
clicked with <adjust> they step through left tab, right tab, centre tab
and decimal point tab.
6.6
The main menu is the same as First Word Plus only laid out differently.
EasiWord types in black text with merge commands being in green − better
than the grey and light option of First Word Plus.
6.6
A nice touch to this program is the ruler scope display available down
the left side of the page. This option shows how far a ruler format
covers and therefore how far-reaching any ruler changes will be.
6.6
Mail-merging in this program is simplified considerably − all you need
to do is to load your document with its embedded merge commands, drag a
data file into the window and the resultant documents for each entry in
the data file are produced − a lot simpler than First Mail.
6.6
There is a spell-check facility included, with a dictionary of some
50,000 words. You cannot, however, incorporate pictures into the
documents produced with EasiWord, as you could with First Word Plus 2.
6.6
Problems?
6.6
I have only come across one problem with this suite of programs and that
is the old favourite of printer compatibility. I am using a Canon BJ300
running under RISC-OS 3.1. There is a driver available for the BJ but
this package requires the driver to be Epson compatible. The BJ driver
apparently is not. This means using the Epson LQ860 driver and changing
d.i.p. switch settings when changing driver − not the best method.
6.6
Conclusion
6.6
This package gives the impression of being a ‘jack of all trades, master
of none’. DTOWord, I feel, is now obsolete. With regards to putting
drawings into your documents, there are mixed views. I tend to the one
that if you want this facility, you really should get a DTP program.
EasiWord was obviously designed to follow this trend and, as such, is
designed for entry and manipulation of text, and this it does quite
well.
6.6
The other programs in this package also do the job they were designed
for, but could always be improved upon. The programs are not designed
for the person who wishes to create an enormous spreadsheet with
multiple graph outputs for a major company’s yearly trade report but for
the small user with restricted input and output needs it is fine.
6.6
Overall, this package is the size and price that should appeal to the
home user, school user or small business user (although I have
reservations about its suitability for this latter group). They have a
short learning curve and therefore enable the user to obtain a finished
product reasonably quickly and with little pain.  A

6.6
Fervour
6.6
Richard Rymarz
6.6
Fervour, written by Andrew Hersee, published by Clares and costing £23
through Archive, is a good game. It has certainly grabbed my attention
and since most of my time is spent writing reports and balancing budgets
with little time for playing games, it was a pleasure to review this
piece of software.
6.6
The game
6.6
I will not waste time outlining the plot surrounding the game. Suffice
it to say that Fervour is an extremely hot planet and your job is to
retrieve oxygen from its surface.
6.6
What matters is the gameplay and this is the major attraction of
Fervour. Basically, it updates a very enjoyable game on the BBC a few
years ago called ‘Spheres of Destiny’. The idea is to guide a spherical
droid along what the story line tells us is a series of ‘bands of
varying pure energy’. These look like space motorways constructed of
coloured rectangles which disappear into the distance. At later levels
they curve, making control particularly tricky. (The display is very
attractive with scrolling stars in the background which move very
effectively in relation to your droid adding to the impression of three
dimensional depth and speed.)
6.6
Most of the fifteen colours of squares subject your droid to effects
such as adding bounce credits, extra lives, score bonuses, instant
stopping, speeding up, automatic bouncing, extra time, etc. Four lives
are given to complete each level with unused ones being carried forward
to the next one. Lives are lost in three ways: by falling off the
spaceway; falling into one of the black holes or runing out of time. The
first two are accompanied by some digitised speech which squeaks, “Oh
no!”. When a level is completed a password is given and you very quickly
move onto the next level. Occasionally, you are asked to type in your
name for the high score table.
6.6
On-screen information includes your score, the number of bounce credits,
number of lives, the time limit and the distance covered along a route
indicated by a yellow horizontal bar. At the top is a message bar which
is fully editable. The game takes up about three quarters of the screen
with about half of it actual playing area.
6.6
Installation
6.6
Fervour does what, to my mind, all games should do. After registering
the disc (an excellent way of protecting software), booting it shows
five applications: the game itself, an application to maximise memory
allocation for 1 Mbyte users, another to help with the kind of monitor
you have and two that affect any joysticks present.
6.6
Clicking on the game application results in five more applications, four
of which are groups of games. These are defined as Beginner, General,
Puzzle and Fast. Selecting any one installs the game on the iconbar.
Clicking <menu> brings up a very comprehensive menu which allows you to
set music and sound-effect levels; use of keys, mouse or joysticks;
definition of keys; and function key information. The internal speaker
can even be switched off. Having set this information, clicking <select>
runs the game. Pressing <f12> stops the game and returns the user to the
desktop with all information present. This is a joy to use.
6.6
Editor
6.6
The final application !Blanklev can be used to create your own group of
levels. Everything can be personalised using a comprehensive list of
tools. The user is taken through the process by the written tutorial.
For those who wish to create devious puzzles for their friends, the
process should not be too difficult.
6.6
Conclusions
6.6
Fervour has tremendous gameplay, 256 colour graphics that are speedy and
slick, user defined options, a well written wire-bound manual, full use
of the desktop and a comprehensive editor. What more could a game
contain? Well, if I were to be ultra-critical, I would have liked two
things: use of the full screen and a more interesting, though not
necessarily spectacular, ending when a level is completed. However,
Fervour is a game that contains that vital ingredient − the I-must-have-
one-more-go factor.  A

6.6
DeskJet 500C Printer Drivers Revisited
6.6
Jochen Konietzko
6.6
Acorn’s RISC-OS 3.10 comes with a printer driver for the HP Deskjet 500;
colour, however, is not supported. I therefore bought the three printer
drivers which, according to articles in Archive, might be suitable for
the 500C. These are: Risc Developments’ Colour Printer Driver and the
Ace ProDriver (earlier versions of both were described in Archive 5.7, p
15), and also ICS’s ColourSep, version 1.00, 01-Sep-92 (see Archive
5.12, p 34 and 6.1, p 17).
6.6
The Colour Printer Driver
6.6
Risc Developments send a disk without a printed manual; it contains a
RISC-OS 2 printer driver, PrinterDJ, and Acorn’s Merge application so
that the existing RISC-OS 3 driver can be modified for colour.
6.6
Running Merge simply adds the options ‘colour (small halftone)’ and
‘colour (dithered)’ to the driver’s Quality menu.
6.6
This enables the PrData file for the Deskjet C to be installed giving
the ability to print in 256 colours.
6.6
The ProDriver
6.6
Ace Computingsends its product in a CD sleeve. Inside is one disk and a
9-page instruction leaflet − short but so far I have found all the
information I needed.
6.6
The disk is jam-packed with software:
6.6
− !Printers, to replace the standard RISC-OS 3.10 printer driver (a
modified RISC-OS 3 driver, version 0.33, with the Ace of Spades on the
application’s icon and a different iconbar icon showing, I think, a
LaserJet),
6.6
− AutoSpool, which triggers spooling via the printer queue,
6.6
− PrintSeps, ver. 1.01 (more about this later),
6.6
− PrData files for the DeskJet 500C, the PaintJet and the PaintJet
XL300,
6.6
− five drawfiles for fine-tuning the printer driver,
6.6
− some example files for the Ace Projector.
6.6
!Printers offers all the options of the original and, in addition, six
colour qualities − ‘colour’ and ‘24 bit’(!), each in ‘small halftone’,
‘large halftone’ and ‘dithered’).
6.6
The one big problem which the DeskJet 500C presents is the way it
produces shades of grey in pictures by mixing cyan, magenta and yellow.
This means that a colour like the desktop’s grey usually has a most
noticeable (brownish or greenish) tinge!
6.6
This is where PrintSeps springs into action. It gives you a degree of
control over colour handling. The most effective way of printing out
pictures which contain areas of grey or black is to print everything but
the black content using the three colour cartridge (PrintSeps does the
colour separation), then the black content (called Key) in a second go.
6.6
(It must be said, however, that the problem of obtaining decent grey
shades can be minimised even without colour separation simply by finding
the right paper; I have sent some printouts to Paul, and I think he will
agree that the difference between the various papers is bigger than that
between one-pass and two-pass printing on the best quality paper!) (Yes,
I can confirm that. Ed.)
6.6
Running a sheet of paper through the printer two or more times is no
real problem because the DeskJet’s registration is quite good. Even
colour photos work out very well. (Just make sure that the stack of
paper in the in-tray is pushed flat against the back wall; then align
the top sheet carefully with the rest of the paper before each go.
6.6
Print the black content last because it makes the paper particularly
soggy, so that, if you don’t wait long enough for it to dry, it can
stick to the sheet below, which ruins the registration.)
6.6
It is also possible to print out each colour individually, thus giving
full four colour separation. Prints can all be black, for a professional
typesetter, or in colour. In addition, you can choose Spot or No Spot,
which singles out one RGB shade for printing or not printing, and you
can define a ‘special’ shade which will appear on each colour
separation, giving you cut or alignment marks.
6.6
There is not, unfortunately, an option to change the intensity of the
printed colours − yet. I have been told that Ace may produce an update
in three to four months time, after a current project has been
concluded.
6.6
ColourSep
6.6
Unlike PrintSeps, ColourSep from ICS does offer the option to change the
printer’s colours. In a way, ColourSep does not quite fit into this
article, as it is not a printer driver in its own right but, like
PrintSeps, it works as an add-on to an existing driver. This means that,
to print pictures in two passes on the DeskJet 500C, you will also need
a colour printer driver.
6.6
My first impression was rather less positive than Stuart Bell’s: ICS
were certainly correct, when they advised Archive readers (Archive 5.12,
p37) to ignore Stuart’s description of handbook and disk − the program
now arrives in a transparent plastic breakfast bag which contains an ICS
catalogue and price list, one disk and a manual − of sorts! It is not in
colour and it is extremely sketchy.
6.6
To give just one example, ColourSep has an option ‘Normal Key
Substitution’ but all the manual has to say about this is that it should
always be switched on for maximum quality, using as much black and as
little coloured ink as possible.
6.6
What I would like to know is: Why is it there? What circumstances would
make it advisable to switch it off? If there are no such circumstances,
why didn’t they eliminate this option?
6.6
All in all, the manual is quite inadequate for a powerful application
like ColourSep.
6.6
The disk, too, has become leaner − unlike Stuart’s version, it now
contains only one drawfile.
6.6
Luckily, operation from the iconbar icon is more or less self-
explanatory and the program does its job quite well. Stuart has given a
detailed description of the program in his articles; now there is an
added option to create a CMY separation for printers like the Deskjet
500 C; each colour of this separation can be manipulated in just the way
Stuart described for the single colour separations.
6.6
There is one comment I would like to make on Stuart’s articles: He moans
just a bit about the way in which you have to ‘suck it and see’. Well, I
asked an acquaintance of mine, who works as a professional printer for
an illustrated magazine, for his opinion. He laughed and asked simply
‘Just why do you think I have had to have several years of training
before I could work in this job?’, and then he mentioned some of the
many points which make colour printing far from trivial:
6.6
− different colour monitors often show the same colours quite
differently (anyone can see this effect in big TV shops which have a
whole wall full of TV sets all showing the same program),
6.6
− printing uses subtractive colour mixing, cathode ray tubes use
additive mixing,
6.6
− CMYK offers only a (relatively small) subset of all those colours
available in the RGB system − and the RGB colours in turn are just a
subset of all visible colours,
6.6
− and, and, and, ...
6.6
I think that, all things considered, ColourSep truly does a very
creditable job and, with a decent manual, it could become quite a superb
program. The only problem I have found is in producing complex 24-bit
graphics; sometimes there seems to be a slight hitch in the cooperation
between ColourSep and the ProDriver.
6.6
Conclusion
6.6
If all you need is colour for an occasional highlight in a text, the low
price Beebug driver is probably quite sufficient.
6.6
If you want more colour options, and especially if you sometimes work
with a 24-bit graphics package (like Artworks, or even just like Draw!),
it has to be the ProDriver.
6.6
If you also want to have control over the way the colours appear on the
paper, ColourSep, together with one of the other programs, should prove
a good if rather expensive buy.
6.6
Of course, if you don’t have a colour printer yet, the very best
alternative probably is to wait a few more months until the four colour
DeskJet 550C has dropped sufficiently in price. (There are already two
drivers available for this new model.)
6.6
Prices
6.6
The Colour Printer Drivers are produced by Risc Developments Ltd at £15
+ VAT.
6.6
ProDriver is produced by Ace Computing and it costs £44 from Archive.
6.6
ColourSep is produced by ICS (Ian Copestake Software) and costs £25 +
VAT.  A

6.6
EasiWord 2
6.6
Robert Chrismas
6.6
EasiWord 2 is a word processor from Minerva. A version of EasiWord is
supplied with Family Solution and Learning Curve A3010 packages. The
review copy of EasiWord 2 (version 1.02mw) has some features, including
mailmerge, which are not present in the A3010 packages. EasiWord 2 is
available from Archive for £64.
6.6
If EasiWord 2 had to be summed up in less than ten words, they might be
‘Like First Word Plus but with RISC-OS printing.’ There is a bit more to
it than that, but users of First Word Plus will soon feel at home with
EasiWord.
6.6
People use word processors in different ways. Some just use one to write
letters and other simple documents. For more ambitious documents, they
may enter the text on a word processor first, but then use a DTP package
for the end product. Other people want a word processor which can
produce large, good looking documents on its own. EasiWord is aimed at
the first type of user.
6.6
Like First Word Plus, EasiWord uses the system font with bold, italic,
underline, superscript and subscript effects. Rulers can be inserted
anywhere in the document. Rulers have a left and right margin with left,
right and centred tabs. The print pitch can be set to condensed, elite,
pica or expanded. There are the usual editing and searching features and
there is also a 50,000 word spelling checker.
6.6
The manual
6.6
The manual is a 76 page A5 booklet. A rather solemn passage at the
start, advising the reader to read it carefully ‘to avoid possible
confusion’ and a sentence with ‘sectioned’ as the verb (‘This manual has
been sectioned for ease of use ...’) rather put me off.
6.6
It is written in an earnest style and there are only 32 illustrations.
However, it covers all you need to know and, in any case, users familiar
with other word processors, and with RISC-OS, should not need to refer
to it often.
6.6
Editing
6.6
Unlike First Word Plus, text is reformatted as soon as you edit it or
alter a ruler. Fully justified text is shown correctly on screen.
6.6
The Acorn guidelines for editing say that programs should behave like
Edit, with a separate marked block and cursor. This advice has been
energetically criticised by Computer Concepts (for example in The
Archimedean Issue 3) and Impression uses a different editing system
which allows either a cursor or a marked block but not both. EasiWord
lets the user select either model, using the preferences menu option.
Neither option supports Edit’s distinctive movement of the cursor when
you scroll the window.
6.6
Computer Concepts say of Impression “once a region ... has been
selected, it is replaced by any subsequent text entry ... this is one of
the most useful editing features ...” (Archimedean Issue 3). In the
EasiWord manual it says that “many people find this disconcerting ...”
Accordingly, an option on the EasiWord preferences allow this “useful
editing feature” to be disabled.
6.6
This is the first program I have seen which allows the user to choose
the editing model. Teachers may find it hard to cope with different
copies of the program configured in different ways, but we seem able to
manage computers with different configurations. This is a very useful
feature − I think we will be seeing it in other programs.
6.6
Files
6.6
EasiWord reads and writes files in First Word Plus format. It can also
handle plain text files. Text files are saved in ‘paragraph’ format with
carriage returns only where you have typed them. This makes transferring
files to DTP programs simpler.
6.6
Problems and limitation
6.6
I know that no-one is likely to want all the effects switched on at once
but when I tried it, EasiWord crashed. It does not happen every time but
I have managed to repeat the problem.
6.6
The ability to interface with the interactive help program is a good
feature but if you go through the menus to ‘Edit ruler’, the interactive
help flickers between two different messages. It is a minor point but
this happens every time and it should have been corrected.
6.6
Open menus do not automatically disappear when you enter text. This is
another minor point but it is disconcerting until you get used to it.
6.6
The only way to centre a line of text seems to be to create a new ruler
with a centre tab in the middle. Of course, you could just use the space
bar and centre it by eye.
6.6
The headers and footers have left, centred and right aligned sections.
When they are printed, the length of the ruler is taken into account but
not the position of the left margin. The program seems to assume the
left margin is always set to the left edge of the page. If the left
margin has been moved in, the headers and footers are not aligned
properly with the text.
6.6
In any word processor, there will be a problem with headers and footers
if the document has more than one ruler. Which ruler is to control the
headers and footers? As far as I can see, the best solution is to give
headers and footers their own ruler.
6.6
When you printed with First Word Plus, there was an option ‘Left margin
offset’ and ‘Alternate left margin’ which allowed you to have different
left margins on alternate pages. This is useful if you want to put pages
back-to-back and need one wide margin for binding. You might do this
with rulers, but since each page would need a different ruler, it would
be tedious.
6.6
To be fair, the ‘Left margin offset’ does cause problems when people are
using First Word Plus. Many students set the left and right margins so
the document looks right on screen. Then when they print, the default
left margin offset pushes the whole lot eight more spaces to the right
and the print ends up on the right hand sprocket holes. They will not
have this problem with EasiWord.
6.6
I often wanted to have a section with an indented ruler, then to
continue with the same ruler I had before. It seems impossible to copy a
ruler, so I have to create a new ruler manually with the same settings I
used before.
6.6
EasiWord does not know anything about hyphens. It does not offer you a
chance to hyphenate words and it does not split words at hyphens.
6.6
You cannot have footnotes.
6.6
I think that a preference which selects 3D or 2D icons is not so much
user-friendly as user over-familiar.
6.6
Menus
6.6
There are three different menus for the document window. The ‘main’ menu
appears if you click over the document. If you click <menu> over the
border on the left side of the document window, you get a menu which
determines whether page breaks or ruler scope are displayed. Clicking
over the ruler opens a menu which lets you create tabs or edit the
ruler. The last two menus are different but they both have the title
‘Ruler’. I do not think this accords with Acorn’s guidelines.
6.6
Mailmerge
6.6
There is a mailmerge facility built into EasiWord but it has fewer
features than the separate First Mail application which came with First
Word Plus. The most serious limitation is that data files for
mailmerging must be in Desktop Office, Multistore or Flexifile format. I
was not able to test mailmerging very thoroughly but the example files
worked. The example was a 1Kb letter with a 12Kb data file. Alarmed at
the quantity of paper this would use, I sent the output to a RAM disk.
Imagine my surprise when I found that the output was less than 4Kb, just
three letters. I am sure all the zeros in data files are important!
6.6
Printing
6.6
EasiWord uses the standard RISC-OS printer drivers. Since it uses the
text printing options, RISC-OS 2 users will need printer drivers version
2.44 (or later). The printer driver must be set up properly but this
should be no problem because the manual gives details of the right
setting.
6.6
Thanks to a well-designed page layout window, there is no need to
remember which is the ‘header margin’ and which is the ‘top margin’ any
more.
6.6
Conclusion
6.6
EasiWord 2 has a limited range of features but it is easy to use,
comparatively cheap and it does not use much memory. RISC-OS printing
and instant reformatting make this a better word processor for the
Family Solution and Learning Curve packages.
6.6
However, it does not give owners of First Word Plus many reasons for
spending over £60 and, of course, there are now users who have no use
for what they will see as a ‘no frills’ word processor.  A

6.6
Composite picture showing the different EasiWord menus which appear
6.6
when you click on the ruler, the document or the left margin.
6.6


6.6
Nebulus
6.6
Gareth Bellaby
6.6
Nebulus is a game from Krisalis with a somewhat unusual story line.
Someone has been building towers in the sea without planning permission,
and you must knock them down by climbing to the top of each of them.
6.6
Although the game comes in a large box, there is only a single disc and
a short two-page manual inside. The program is well behaved. It runs by
double-clicking on the program directory and it returns you to the
desktop leaving other programs intact when you finish playing. The game
is copy-protected and will not allow a backup to be made but it can be
installed on a hard drive and used without the need for the original
disc.
6.6
The game has elements of both platform and arcade games. The towers are
round and shown from the side. You start at the bottom of each tower
having arrived in your submarine. The towers are covered with various
ledges, tunnels and lifts and you have to find your way up a tower using
the lifts and the doorways through the middle of the tower. Some of the
ledges dissolve when you stand on them and some slippery ledges will
push you left or right. Furthermore, not all of the tunnels lead in a
helpful direction.
6.6
To make things difficult, each tower is also inhabited by a number of
different creatures. For example, there are bouncing balls which can be
destroyed by shooting snowballs at them. These balls will also start to
bounce down the tower once your get close to them. All other creatures
in the game are indestructible. However, as you move up the tower,
creatures lower down the tower are removed. On each tower there is also
a pesky robot which, every so often, sweeps around the tower near to
you.
6.6
One of the features of the game is that none of the creatures or traps
directly kill you, they merely knock you off your current ledge
hopefully onto the ledge below. Only if you fall into the sea do you
lose a life. When you enter the final door at the top of the tower, a
destruction sequence is set off. There is a time limit placed on getting
to the top of each tower. The game is fast paced but it can be paused.
6.6
Once a tower has been destroyed, you travel in your submarine to the
next one. During this time, you have to try to catch fish by shooting
air bubbles at them. Each fish caught gives a time bonus for the next
tower. To my great irritation, music plays during this intermediate
sequence and it is not possible to turn off the music without silencing
the game completely.
6.6
You start the game with three lives. Up to two extra lives are gained as
you score points. (The manual does not point out that there is any limit
on the number of extra lives gained.)
6.6
The manual is also lacking elsewhere. For instance, the keys used for
movement are not specified in the manual (‘P’ for up/enter door, ‘L’ for
down, ‘Z’ for move left, ‘X’ for move right and the space bar to fire.)
These keys can also be redefined. Whilst the process for redefining the
keys is simple, the new definition cannot be saved to disc and so, if
you want to use an alternate layout, this must be specified each time
that you reload the program.
6.6
The game cannot be saved. If you run out of lives, you have to begin the
game again from the start. This lack of a save function seems to be a
consequence of the copy protection, since the manual warns that any
attempt to write to the original disc will corrupt it. This also means
that the high score table is not saved between games.
6.6
The graphics are nothing spectacular and I found the colour scheme on
one of the towers painful to my eyes.
6.6
Nebulus is not an easy game and it has some interesting puzzles. If you
like a fast game which tests your reflexes then Nebulus may be for you.
However, for my taste, the game has too great a degree of luck and
relies too heavily on the manual dexterity and speed of the player. I am
afraid that I ultimately found the game to be more irritating than
enthralling. For instance, if you fail to carry out the correct sequence
of actions it can become impossible to make it up the tower.
6.6
If I were to compare it to Gods, another game just released by Krisalis,
I would rate Nebulus a very second best choice. The game is priced at
£25.99 (£24 from Archive).  A

6.6
Naughty Stories
6.6
Joe Gallagher
6.6
A familiar sight in many infant classrooms is that of a group of
youngsters huddled around a tape recorder following a story with the aid
of an audio cassette. As well as promoting listening skills, it provides
an alternative to an adult sharing a book with an child. Of course,
there is no substitute for the real thing but sufficient adults are not
always to hand to provide this sort of experience. Taped stories do have
their drawbacks, especially for younger readers. The pace is dictated in
advance and they can lose their place easily if they miss the audio cue
which indicates when to turn the page. Also, there is no guarantee that
the child is following the text in the way that the teacher might wish.
6.6
Talking books
6.6
The concept of the computer as a talking book is an attempt to address
some of these problems. The idea is that the computer mimics the actions
of an adult reading with a young child by telling the story while
pointing to the text in question. Up until now, the only examples that I
have come across have been very americanised ones on the Apple Mac. The
six stories in the Naughty Stories suite from Sherston Software are the
first of the genre to reach the Archimedes.
6.6
They each come on a single disc accompanied by an instruction sheet and
the book of the story. The books are perhaps the weakest part of the
package. This is not altogether surprising as colour publishing is an
expensive process and at the asking price of £9.95 per story, one
shouldn’t expect too much. Nevertheless, I did rather fear the worst
when I opened the package up. The books themselves were a bit flimsy by
today’s standards and the titles sounded as if they were made up by a
ten year old who had just discovered alliteration: Doris the Dotty Dog
and Terry’s Tricky Trainers to name but two. While none of them are
potential candidates for the Kate Greenaway Prize, the stories come over
surprisingly well on the computer. My personal favourite is the highly
moral tale of Billy the Bothersome Bully − a nasty piece of work, if
there ever was one, who has a decidedly sinister but fetching laugh.
6.6
Ease of use
6.6
Sherston use a key disc approach to protection. This means that,
although you need the original disc when you start up the program, you
can remove this and use a copy throughout the rest of the session. This
does not apply to those establishments which have purchased a site
licence and the program does run much faster from a hard drive as each
page is loaded separately from disc.
6.6
When it starts up, you are offered the option of switching to mode 15.
It is obvious that considerable thought has gone into tailoring the
screen layout for young children. The programs use simple on-screen
buttons and are straightforward enough for most five year olds to
navigate their way through the story.
6.6
On each page there is an arrow to advance a page and one to go back a
page. To have the text read to you there is a button in the shape of an
ear and to see animation, or hear sound effects on a page, you just
click on the eye icon. Individual words can be sounded out merely by
clicking on them and that’s about all there is to it. It is an
exceptionally easy to use program.
6.6
My only reservation was that each action required a fairly clear,
positive click. As a result, the first word of each page tended to sound
a bit slurred and it was fairly easy for very young fingers to become a
bit trigger happy when moving through the program so that whole pages
could whizz past unread. I should add that this only happened with the
youngest of my guinea pigs − one aged three and a half. The program can
be configured by the teacher (or parent) to turn off the option which
allows the whole page to be read. When you do this, the child is
encouraged to click on only those words that are unknown. Individual
words which are clicked on by the user, can be recorded in a logfile to
enable the adult to monitor the progress of the reader.
6.6
In use
6.6
The recorded speech comes over as a bit gravelly but is sufficiently
clear for its purpose and the scanned illustrations are bright and
attractive. The stories are quite short running to eight pages each and
are based around simple themes which appear to have been chosen mainly
for their potential in terms of animation and sound effects. Several
teachers, who had a chance to look at the software, were a bit doubtful
as to the content of the stories but all testified to the ease of use
and popularity of the programs amongst the children. Sherston are to be
congratulated on squeezing so much in terms of sound and animation on to
one floppy disc and producing a very capable program which will run on
even the minimum hardware set up. The programs deserve to sell well.
6.6
Conclusion
6.6
I think it is possible to be over harsh as regards the literary quality
of the stories. However, if Sherston could secure, at reasonable cost,
licences to produce talking book versions of some of the more popular
early years story books, they could have a runaway success on their
hands. Inspection copies of the stories are available on approval for 28
days and are certainly worth a look.
6.6
Naughty Stories are available from Sherston Software Ltd at £9.95 +VAT
per disc or £49.75 for all six programs in the suite. (£11 each or £55
for all 6 through Archive.)  A

6.6
Impact the Database
6.6
Dave Wilcox
6.6
Impact, the database, is a program released by Circle Software. The
first version of this program was seen in September 1992. Circle
Software appear to pay attention to customers wishes as the program has
been updated twice since the original release (ver. 1.05) and we now
have version 1.07 which, from the enclosed text file, is enhanced
considerably from the earlier versions. Registered users may upgrade
free of charge by returning their disc with return postage. This program
is priced at £49.95 + VAT (£58.69).
6.6
The package
6.6
The program comes on one disk containing the application, !System,
!Scrap and !SysMerge. The System directory contains nothing new, having
versions of CLib 3.75 and FPEmulator 2.80. The manual is a 50 page A5,
folded, stapled book. It is written in plain English with a lot of
snapshots of windows to demonstrate relevant points.
6.6
The software
6.6
Circle Software have approached circulation of this software in a novel
way. To use the program fully, your name and a valid security code must
be entered via the icon bar menu, by selecting the ‘Register’ option.
6.6
If you have a ‘paid for’ retail copy, you may obtain your security code
by calling Circle Software and registering it.
6.6
If it is a free demo version, it may be converted to a fully working
version by calling Circle Software and quoting your credit card number
in payment of the full retail price. The instruction manual will be
forwarded by post.
6.6
Alternatively, you may write enclosing your credit card authorization,
cheque or postal order, etc, and the serial number of your copy. Your
security code and instructions will be sent by return of post.
6.6
Once the software is registered, there is no copy protection so you can
make yourself a working copy using the desktop backup facility. The
program can also be copied straight onto a hard drive. If you do install
it onto hard disc, it is possible to edit the !Run file to point to the
Directory/ies where you wish to store the data files. The default is to
store data files within the application in a directory ‘DataFiles’.
Inside this directory is one example file of names and addresses.
6.6
Database creation
6.6
This has to be one of the most refreshing points of this program − it is
so simple. To start the program, double-click on the icon. This in the
normal RISC-OS fashion, installs the icon onto the iconbar, taking 160Kb
of memory. Pressing <menu> over the icon gives you several options
including create. Clicking on create will open two windows, one being
the default card, set out as graph paper, the other being a toolbox for
selection of field types, borders, boxes, etc.
6.6
From the toolbox you have a choice of six field types − Money, Date,
Number, Integer, Text or Flag. There are three other tools available −
Legend, Box and Database Name. Creation of the card layout is now a
matter of dragging the required boxes to the desired layout on the card.
The legend option is for tagging boxes to remind you which field is
which. It is an editable text field and is dragged in a similar manner
to the data fields. The layout can be fine-tuned by using the menu
options or by dragging box sides with <adjust>.
6.6
It is here that thought must be put into the layout and construction of
the card because, as with numerous other packages, once the card is
created, it is not possible to add or delete the fields, although it is
possible to rearrange the layout. If you find out later that you need a
new field, you will have to set up a new database and export data from
the old file into the new file.
6.6
Once you are satisfied with the layout, give the database a name in the
editable text field and click on ‘OK’. The usual RISC-OS type save
window opens and if you click on ‘OK’, the database is saved into the
default directory within the application. If you prefer, the icon can be
dragged to another directory as normal.
6.6
Viewing and editing files
6.6
Viewing or editing existing databases is also a simple matter. To gain
access to your databases, simply click on the iconbar icon. This opens
the edit window and, from here, it is an easy matter to use menus to
open databases, set indexes and filters, enter data and delete records
or a whole database. All selection options are carried out by the mouse.
6.6
At first, I thought that it might be nice to have the database files
execute by double-clicking on them as with Impression. However, having
worked with this package and having set the paths for the database
directories, I do not feel this is really necessary now − the chosen
method is adequate.
6.6
Index and filter options
6.6
As you would expect with a database application, you can sort your data
into an order or select certain entries from within it that fulfil your
chosen criteria. Let us first look at the filter option. A filter is
created from the iconbar icon and can be simple or compound in nature.
The filter requires a unique name and the database name with which to
work. This filter can be applied to any of the entry fields and can
perform tests of =, <>, >,<, range and partial match. The test data is
entered and an option for case match set as required.
6.6
The compound filter has a second filter field for combining simple
filters together and has test choices of And, Or, Nor, Xor and again has
case sensitive choice. This process can be continued to combine compound
filters with other filters to achieve even finer control over your data.
As with other options, the majority of choices are made from menus with
the mouse. This gives a reasonable control over selection of cards.
6.6
Once selected, these cards can then be indexed. Indexing is really
another term for sorting. These cards can then be sorted on any of the
fields and can incorporate one of the filter options if defined. This
resultant selection of cards is then viewed in this sorted order. A
simple mouse selection will take you back to viewing in numerical entry
order if so desired.
6.6
Exporting data
6.6
Data is exported using the export option from the iconbar. This data can
be selected using any filters or indexes you have, to select a special
set of cards. From these cards, you can then select which fields you
wish to incorporate into the export. Once these have been selected you
have options of tab or comma separation, quoted text fields, carriage
returns and line feeds. Once selected, there are two output styles, text
and CSV files. The usual save box is present and icons can be dragged to
other directories or applications if in-memory transfer is acceptable.
6.6
Importing data
6.6
Data can be imported into Impact from other applications which save data
in a CSV format and TSV format. Importing data is selected from the
iconbar icon again. This opens a window where you are asked to set the
separators used in the file to be imported, and to set whether quotes
are used around the text fields. The file is then dragged onto the
window and the file is read into the database.
6.6
Merging data
6.6
This application has the facility to use the Impulse II module from
Computer Concepts. Basically, documents can be created within Impression
and <merge> commands set to take date from the Impact database. There is
a handy view option available so that output can be checked prior to
printing. Data can also be output for use in the First Word Plus mail
merge application, however before using the resultant data file, it will
need to be set-typed to text.
6.6
Conclusion
6.6
This package is not aimed at the business user who would require reports
from his data, but at the small business, club, school or home user. It
is very friendly and easy to use and so is quick to learn. It cannot
store graphics data. One major omission, in my opinion, is in the
movement through the database. There is no option to move to the start
or end of the database or to jump to a specific card, be it by number
entry or slider entry. This would cause little problem on a small
database but could be infuriating on a larger one. Having said that,
this is a pleasing package to use. I hope Circle Software keep on
improving and expanding it.  A

6.6
Rheingold Enterprises   17 Ingfield
Terrace, Slaithwaite, Huddersfield  HD7 5BJ. (0925−210657)
6.6
Risc Developments    117 Hatfield
Road, St Albans, Herts  AL1 4JS. (0727−840303) (0727−860263)
6.6
Safesell Exhibitions (p12)   Market
House, Cross Road, Tadworth, Surrey KT20 5SR.
6.6
Sherston Software    Swan Barton,
Sherston, Malmesbury, Wilts. SN16 0LH. (0666−840433) (0666−840048)
6.6
Spacetech (p16)   21 West Wools, Portland, Dorset  DT5 2EA.
(0305−822753) (0305−860483)
6.6
State Machine    75 Upper Wellington Street, Luton, Bedfordshire  LU1
5AA. (0582−483377) (0582−480833)
6.6
Sword Software    58 The Square, Newtongrange, Midlothian  EH22 4QE.
(031−663−0888)
6.6
Taylor Lambert Advertising   Tanner’s
Court, Brockham, Surrey, RH3 7NH. (0737−844044)
6.6
Techsoft UK Ltd (p6)   Old School
Lane, Erryrs, Mold, Clwyd  CH7 4DA. (082−43318)
6.6
Topologika   P.O. Box 39, Stilton, Peterborough  PE7 3RL. (0733−244682)
6.6
W. C. Smith & Associates   40 Royal
Oak, Alnwick, Northumberland  NE66 2DA.  (0665−510682) (0665−510692)
6.6
Wild Vision   15 Witney Way, Boldon Colliery, Tyne & Wear NE35 9PE.
(091−519−1455) (091−519−1929)
6.6
Wyddfa Software   3 Preswylfa, Llanberis, Gwynedd  LL55 4LF.
(0286−870101) (0286−871722)
6.6
XOB (p21)   Balkeerie, Eassie by Forfar, Angus  DD8 1SR. (0307−84364)
6.6

6.6


6.6
Paul Beverley
6.6

Authorised Acorn Education Dealers
6.7
As you have probably gathered, just after the last magazine went to the
printers, Acorn decided that Norwich Computer Services had, after all,
fulfilled the necessary criteria to be appointed as Education Dealers.
So, what difference will it make?
6.7
First of all, we should be able to give better service to our customers
because we are now buying computers direct from Acorn. Also, we are
getting warranty repairs done by them which should improve our turn-
around time on repairs.
6.7
Secondly, we are intending to improve our service to education
customers. In particular, I have been spending time recently getting to
grips with the huge (and growing) range of networking products available
for Acorn machines. Dave and Simon are currently at Acorn Computers on a
three-day course learning all about installation and maintenance of
Acorn networks.
6.7
If any schools and colleges want quotations for anything from software
site licences to complete networks of Acorn computers, just ring our
Education Hotline.
6.7
Improved Acorn Assist-ance
6.7
Acorn have improved the terms of their Acorn Assist scheme which helps
academics, teachers, students and education support staff to buy Acorn
computers. If you want details of the new, lower prices, just give us a
ring and ask for an Acorn Assist pack.
6.7
Archive seems to be getting earlier!
6.7
You may have noticed a slight tendency for Archive to come out earlier
in the month. This is a deliberate policy and it will continue over the
next few issues until it is coming out around the middle of the month
prior to its cover date. This means that advertisers and contributors
need to get copy into the office by about the first of the month for
inclusion in the following month’s issue.
6.7
Spring Acorn User Show
6.7
Come and see us at the Spring Acorn User Show in Harrogate on April 15th
− 17th. If you want us to bring anything to the Show for you − to save
carriage − all you need to do is send in an order as normal but state
clearly that it is for collection at the Show. For orders over £250,
deduct £10 for the carriage charge saved. For smaller orders (but over
£100) deduct £5 carriage. This is only going to work if your orders
arrive by Thursday 8th April, i.e. you need to send off your order today
to avoid disappointment.
6.7
If you have anything we can sell for charity, bring it with you − BBC or
Archimedes − all will sell.
6.7
See you at the Show!
6.7

6.7

6.7
•   Ace Printer Drivers − To clarify the situation about the different
drivers available, here is a list of the two types, Standard and
ProDriver, with notes on which work on RISC-OS 2 and 3. The Pro-Drivers
work on RISC-OS 3 only.
6.7
Ace RISC-OS Standard Printer Drivers
6.7
(Archive price £17 each)
6.7
Canon PJ1080A (RISC-OS 2 only)
6.7
Canon LBP4/8 (RISC-OS 3 only)
6.7
ColourCel (RISC-OS 2 only)
6.7
Epson JX compatible (RISC-OS 2 only)
6.7
Epson ESC-P2 (RISC-OS 3 only)
6.7
HP DJ500C/550C/PaintJet (RISC-OS 2 & 3)
6.7
Ace RISC-OS 3 ProDrivers (RISC-OS 2 only)
6.7
(Archive price £44 each)
6.7
Canon LBP4/8
6.7
Epson ESC-P2
6.7
HP DJ500C/550C/PaintJet
6.7
Shell for Acorn printer drivers (ProDriver A1 upgrade) (Archive price
£27)
6.7
(Epson ESC-P2 refers to Epson’s newest printer code standard so it
applies to Epson’s latest printers such as the Stylus 800. It is
downwards compatible so it can be used with all Epson compatible
printers within the limitations of the facilities of each given
printer.)
6.7
•   Advance is Acorn’s new integrated software suite. It runs on RISC-OS
3.1 machines (1Mb or more) and provides word-processor, spreadsheet,
database and graphs package. The WP has some DTP-like facilities as well
as the usual WP facilities, including a 60,000 word spell-checker, and
can, of course, take output from the other programs in the suite.
6.7
Advance is aimed particularly at education and Acorn have involved some
educationalists in the development of the suite. (You may see a certain
similarity between these programs and existing applications because
Advance was a joint effort between CC, Clares, CRM, Iota and Acorn.)
6.7
The pricing is fairly complex. The single user version is £99 +VAT (£105
through Archive), the site licence for primary schools is £199 +VAT
(£215 through Archive) and the secondary school site licence is £499
+VAT (£520 through Archive). By Acorn’s definition, primary includes
special needs schools but all other schools, including middle schools,
will have to pay the secondary school price.
6.7
Acorn also do an Off-site Disc Pack for £99 +VAT (£105 through Archive).
This is a set of ten key discs, allowing  pupils and staff to use
Advance on their computers at home. However, it may only be purchased by
schools with a licence.
6.7
•   Badger Trails price increase − Sherston Software have increased the
price of Badger Trails from £35 to £39.95 +VAT. The Archive price is now
£44.
6.7
•   Budget games − David Ramsden’s Arcade, which is a set of four RISC-OS
arcade games costing £5.95 (no VAT), is now also available as four
separate games at £1.99 each from David Ramsden, 7 Chevet Lane,
Wakefield, West Yorkshire, WF2 6HN. The games are Chomper, Intruders,
RockSmash and Armageddon.
6.7
•   Bulletin is a bulletin board system from XOB for use over Econet. It
provides the usual bulletin board services including electronic mail,
special interest groups and closed user groups. This fully RISC-OS
compliant software runs on any Archimedes, supports up to 1,500 users
and comes with a site/network licence for £69 +VAT from XOB or £75
through Archive.
6.7
•   Dabhand Guide to Impression − Anne Rooney has written a 400+ page
guide to Impression with 23 chapters attempting to cover all aspects of
using Impression from getting Impression installed on your computer to
the finer points of using the Impression Business Supplement. It costs
£14.95 through Dabs Press or £15 (including postage) through Archive.
6.7
•   DrawHelp − This isn’t a new product but it is a helpful introduction
to Draw, produced by Sherston Software. As we are now stocking their
products, it is available through Archive for £15. (£15.95 through
Sherston.) It was written for the RISC-OS 2 version of Draw but serves
as an introduction to the RISC-OS 3 version as well, even though it
doesn’t cover the newer features.
6.7
•   Epson Stylus 800 − A new inkjet printer has been released by Epson. It
seems comparable with the Canon BJ200 but the ink doesn’t seem to run as
much on cheap paper so it gives a crisper printout. It can be driven
from standard RISC-OS drivers but, for best effect, use the Ace Pro-
Driver. The Archive price is £330 or £370 if bought with the Pro-Driver.
This compares with the Canon BJ200 at £355 on its own or £393 with the
CC Turbo-Driver.
6.7
•   FirstLogo − Longman Logotron have produced a version of Logo for use
with primary schools children. It aims to provide an environment where
children can experience computer-based problem-solving as required by
the National Curriculum. The price is £24 +VAT from Longman Logotron (or
£26 through Archive) for a single user or £72 +VAT (£78 through Archive)
for a primary site licence.
6.7
•   Graphics on the ARM − This is a new book by Roger Amos − a 400+ page
guide to various aspects of graphics on the Archimedes range of
computers. It covers such things as fonts, Draw, Vector, 3D graphics,
Paint, art packages, image processing, ray-tracing, animation and
mathematical and abstract graphics. It costs £14.95 through Dabs Press
or £15 (inc postage) through Archive.
6.7
•   HCCS 16-bit SCSI cards − HCCS sell a 16-bit SCSI card which includes
full support for CD-ROM. These cost £99 +VAT or £110 inclusive through
Archive.
6.7
•   IronMask 2.0 Multi-User Edition − IronMask 2.00 is a major upgrade of
Turing Tools RISC-OS file security system, providing password-controlled
access to important files and directories. IronMask 2.0 supports up to
63 PIN identified users plus an administrative superuser. The superuser
is identified at installation and is responsible for adding and removing
subsequent users. Any signed-on user has the ability to “shield” or
“unshield” files by means of a private key. Shielded files are
completely inaccessible to file-handling operations until they are
unshielded using the original key. Automatic time-out guards an
unattended IronMask session from opportunist entry.
6.7
IronMask 2.0 Multi-User Edition is available from Turing Tools for £65
(inclusive) for installation on one computer or £195 (inclusive) for
unlimited use on a single site. Educational site licences are available
at a discount, available by individual arrangement.
6.7
IronMask 1.2 continues to be available as IronMask 1.2 Personal Edition,
at the reduced price of £49 inclusive. IronMask 1 customers can upgrade
to IronMask 2.0 for £10 on application to Turing Tools.
6.7
•   Memory upgrades down − HCCS have reduced the prices of their memory
upgrades for the new A3000/4000 computers. A 1Mb upgrade for the A3010
is now just £35 inc VAT through Archive and the 2Mb upgrades for A3020/
4000 are £70 inc VAT through Archive.
6.7
•   MIDI files − A company called Words & Music has translated a large
number of MIDI files into Archimedes format. There are three volumes of
classical music, one of ragtime music and one of drum tracks. The discs
are £10.95 each (no VAT) or you can buy all five discs for £48.75.
6.7
•   NetChat − NetChat is a network communication system providing machine
to machine interaction over Acorn networks. Amongst other things, it
allows users to communicate with each other by a conferencing system
which provides for simultaneous conversations between several users.
Messages may be typed directly into a ‘conversation window’ or pre-
prepared text files may be sent by simply dragging them onto the NetChat
icon. The core NetChat module also allows files, applications and
complete directories to be passed between machines even in the absence
of a fileserver.
6.7
There are also facilities that allow the keyboard of one machine to
control directly a remote machine or to allow operating system commands
to be sent to a remote machine, permitting modules and programs to be
run on one machine from another machine. You can also get a snapshot
view of another computer’s screen. To show the realtime interaction,
there is an Othello game played by users on different machines.
6.7
A site licence for NetChat costs £84 +VAT or £92 through Archive.
6.7
•   NetManage − A new piece of software has appeared from Australia which
will be of great help to Network Managers. NetManage, from Suitable
Software, is a network management tool for use on AUN over Econet or
Ethernet. It allows you to create and maintain user password files on
Acorn’s Level 3, Filestore and Level 4 fileservers. The price is £50 (no
VAT) from Suitable Software in the U.K. or $125 in Australia.
6.7
•   On-site warranty − Acorn offer on-site service and warranty on all
their new computers: A3010, A3020, A4000 and A5000. You can choose 1-
year or 3-year warranties and the cost depends on the type of computer
and whether or not it has a hard drive. The Acorn monitor you purchased
at the same time is included in the warranty. These warranties have to
be purchased at the time of purchase of the computer or within 30-days
thereafter. The prices are: 1-year A5000 − £39.95 (£37 through Archive),
1-year A3010/3020/4000 £29.95 (£28 through Archive), 3-year A5000 −
£79.95 (£74 through Archive), 3-year A3020HD and A4000 £59.95 (£60
through Archive) and 3-year A3010 and A3020FD £49.95 (£46 through
Archive).
6.7
•   Optima is NW SEMERC’s new hypermedia database. It allows users to link
words, pictures and sounds so that you can create talking books,
branching stories, adventures and viewdata systems. It costs £18 +VAT
from NW SEMERC.
6.7
•   Parallel port SCSI adaptor − Atomwide have produced a SCSI adaptor
which plugs into the bidirectional printer port of the new machines. The
price is £49.95 +VAT (£55 through Archive). See Hardware Column on page
55 for details.
6.7
•   Phases 3 − NW SEMERC have released the latest version of their RISC-OS
word-processor for children aged 5 upwards. With its extra facilities,
Phases 3 still only costs £18 +VAT.
6.7
•   Pocket Book / Psion 3 products − We have increased our range of
products for the Pocket Book and reduced the prices of some of the
memory products.
6.7
   Acorn   Archive
6.7
Parallel Link   £29.95   £28
6.7
RAM Disc 128Kb   £79.95   £74
6.7
RAM Disc 512Kb   −      £138
6.7
RAM Disc 1Mb   −      £278
6.7
Flash Disc 128Kb   −      £37
6.7
Flash Disc 256Kb   £69.95   £65
6.7
Flash Disc 512Kb   £119.95   £93
6.7
Flash Disc 1Mb   −      £185
6.7
Flash Disc 2Mb   −      £278
6.7
OPL Editor   £69.95   £65
6.7
Mains Adaptor   £14.95   £15
6.7
•   RiscCAD Junior is a 2D draughting system which provides a wide range
of draughting facilities, all working in the RISC-OS environment. The
Junior version of RiscCAD is available now for £80 +VAT from Davyn
Software. A Professional version should be available by the time you
read this and will cost £130 +VAT.
6.7
•   S-Base is Longman Logotron’s exciting new database. It is not just a
straight database but has a database language called S (what else?)
which allows you to write your own procedures and mini-programs using an
Edit-like editor for program editing. S-Base comes with a template
editor, with Draw-like tools for creating the layout of your databases.
It can handle a range of data types including integer, FP, string, date,
time and you can even define your own data types. It can also handle
large objects like sprites or Replay files. The personal version costs
£99 +VAT (£105 through Archive) and the developer’s version costs £199
+VAT (£215 through Archive). With the developer’s version, you can
create databases which can be compiled and then, once compiled, can be
run independently of S-Base. The resultant databases cannot be edited
but they come with a royalty-free version of the S runtime system, so
you can give away or sell the database as you wish.
6.7
(We are hoping to use S-Base to create an all-singing, all-dancing
database for the Archive office and we hope to install it on the network
as soon as the S-Base network version becomes available! We are
certainly going to need an S-Base Column in Archive. Is anyone
interested in running it for us? Ed)
6.7
•   Serenade is a desktop MIDI sequencer from Clares. It provides 16-track
record and playback, keyboard capture, transpose, quantise, full editing
facilities, guitar chord input, etc. Serenade costs £135 inc VAT or £125
through Archive.
6.7
•   SideShow is a video-titling package from Computer Concepts distributed
with the Wild Vision Chroma-Genlocks. It functions around Draw and
thereby acts as a medium for overlaying drawn objects, sprites and/or
text onto video. It offers sequencing of screens with blanking, looping
and scrolling. It will not be sold as a stand-alone package but existing
owners of Chroma-Genlock boards can upgrade their ChromaText software
free of charge through Wild Vision if they do so before 30th June 1993.
The Chroma-Genlock package costs £259.68 including VAT and carriage or
£240 through Archive.
6.7
•   SyQuest removable drives − There is now an alternative version of the
SyQuest 84Mb removable drive. The older versions would read 42Mb discs
but could not write them but the new drives can read and write both
sizes of discs. This is a great bonus to anyone who is likely to want to
exchange data between sites. The new drives will cost £670 instead of
£590 for the older version.
6.7
•   Teletext on AUN networks − XOB’s Teletext serving software, mentioned
last month, is now available through Archive for £169.
6.7
•   Ultimate Expansion expansion − The range of HCCS’s Ultimate Expansion
system is increasing − and dropping in price. There is now a User Port/
Analogue Port Starter Pack for £79 +VAT (£88 through Archive). The A3010
20M Ultimate 2-slot multipodule has dropped from £303 to £250 (Archive
price) and the 60M Ultimate 2-slot multipodule has dropped from £445 to
£335 (Archive price). The SCSI starter Pack has dropped from £133
(Archive) to £100 and the Archive price of the SCSI micropodule has
dropped from £110 to £77.
6.7
•   WordSearch − If you want to make up a word-square (words hidden in
various directions within a matrix of letters) then Davyn Software can
make life easier for you. For £17 +VAT, they offer WordSearch which
takes an Edit file of words and creates a word-square for you.
6.7
Review software received...
6.7
We have received review copies of the following: Arcade, ArcTrack,
Choices, Dabhand Guide to Graphics on the ARM, Dabhand Guide to
Impression, Insight, Landmarks − Civil War, LinkWord − Spanish,
Masterfile 3, NetManage, Numerator Workcards, Optima, Picture It!,
Precision, Punctuate, QuickTile, SatPack 1, Screenplay Training Video,
Smudge the Spaniel, Soapbox, Splash, SpySnatcher, Squish, ThinkLink,
Through the Dragon’s Eye, The Spoken Word, Tiles, WordSearch, Xword, Yes
Chancellor II.  A
6.7

6.7
Government Health Warning − Reading this could seriously affect your
spiritual health.
6.7
“Man is just another animal − more intelligent, perhaps, but basically
no different.” Really? Take a look at the newspapers! Is there any other
animal capable of such atrocities as homo sapiens? Even the young of the
species demonstrates the ability to torture and kill its own kind. We
are the only animals capable of totally destroying its own environment
through greed and self-interest. Then, on the plus side, we could name
amazing individual acts of heroism, self-less devotion and dedication.
6.7
No, I don’t think we’re “just another animal”. There is such a thing as
“good” and such a thing as “evil”. We all know which comes more
naturally and I don’t mind admitting − I need help!
6.7

6.7
Norwich Computer Services 96a Vauxhall Street, Norwich, NR2 2SD.
0603−766592 (−764011)
6.7

6.7
4Mation    11 Castle Park Road, Whiddon Valley, Barnstaple, Devon, EX32
8PA. (0271−25353) (0271−22974)
6.7
Abacus Training (p18)   29 Okus
Grove, Upper Stratton, Swindon, Wilts, SN2 6QA.
6.7
Ace Computing    27 Victoria Road, Cambridge, CB4 3BW. (0223−322559)
(0223−69180)
6.7
Acorn Computers Ltd    Fulbourn
Road, Cherry Hinton, Cambridge, CB1 4JN. (0223−254254) (0223−254262)
6.7
Aleph One Ltd    The Old Courthouse, Bottisham, Cambridge, CB5 9BA.
(0223−811679) (0223−812713)
6.7
Alpine Software    P.O.Box 25, Portadown, Craigavon, BT63 5UT.
(0762−342510)
6.7
Atomwide Ltd    23 The Greenway, Orpington, Kent, BR5 2AY. (0689−838852)
(0689−896088)
6.7
Clares Micro Supplies    98
Middlewich Road, Rudheath, Northwich, Cheshire, CW9 7DA. (0606−48511)
(0606−48512)
6.7
Colton Software (p33)   2 Signet
Court, Swanns Road, Cambridge, CB5 8LA. (0223−311881) (0223−312010)
6.7
Computer Concepts (p13/14)   Gaddesden
Place, Hemel Hempstead, Herts, HP2 6EX. (0442−63933) (0442−231632)
6.7
Dabs Press    22 Warwick Street, Prestwich, Manchester, M25 7HN.
(061−773−8632) (061−773−8290)
6.7
Davyn Software    The Workshop, off Princess Street, Sandal, Wakefield,
WF1 5NY. (0924−254800)
6.7
HCCS Ltd    575−583 Durham Road, Gateshead, NE9 5JJ. (091−487−0760)
(091−491−0431)
6.7
ICS (p26)   1 Kington Road, West Kirby, Wirral, L48 5ET. (051−625−1006)
(051−625−1007)
6.7
IFEL    36 Upland Drive, Plymouth, Devon, PL6 6BD. (0752−847286)
6.7
Ivoryash Ltd    14 Perwell Close, Bredon, Tewkesbury, Gloucester, GL20
7LJ. (0684−73173)
6.7
Krisalis Software    Teque House,
Mason’s Yard, Downs Row, Moorgate, Rotherham, S60 2HD. (0709−372290)
6.7
Lambda Publications    194 Cheney
Manor Road, The Green, Swindon SN2 2NZ. (0793−695296)
6.7
Longman-Logotron    124 Cambridge Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge CB4
4ZS. (0223−425558) (0223−425349)
6.7
LOOKsystems (p25)   47 Goodhale Road, Bowthorpe, Norwich, NR5 9AY.
(0603−764114) (0603−764011)
6.7
Matt Black    P.O.Box 42, Peterborough, PE1 2TZ. (0733−315439)
6.7
Minerva Systems    Minerva House, Baring Crescent, Exeter, EX1 1TL.
(0392−437756) (0392−421762)
6.7
Morley Electronics    Morley
House, Norham Road, North Shields, Tyne & Wear, NE29 7TY. (091−257−6355)
(091−257−6373)
6.7
Northwest SEMERC    Fitton Hill CDC, Rosary Road, Oldham, OL8 2QE.
(061−627−4469)
6.7
Oak Solutions (p17)   Suite 25,
Robin Enterprise Centre, Leeds Road, Idle, Yorkshire BD10 9TE.
(0274−620423) (0274−620419)
6.7
Oregan Developments    36 Grosvenor
Avenue, Streetly, Sutton Coldfield, B74 3PE.
6.7

6.7

6.7
Paul Beverley
6.7

6.7
Small Ads
6.7
(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)
6.7
•   128Kb RAM disc for Psion 3 or Acorn Pocket Book, as new, supplied with
new battery, £55. Phone Mark on 0905−754277.
6.7
•   2Mb RAM upgrade (Watford) for A310 £70, 5¼“ 40/80 drive with p.s.u.
£35, 5¼” interface (Beebug) £9. Phone 050−587−3581.
6.7
•   50Mb SCSI Quantum Pro-drive inc mounting brackets, £100. Phone
0908−648894 eves, w/es.
6.7
•   A5000 RISC-OS 3.1 upgrade (unused) £10, A3000 serial kit £10, 1Mb for
A3000 £10. Phone 0780−54537.
6.7
•   A3000 2Mb RAM, Acorn colour monitor, Lingenuity 8 bit SCSI card, £550.
Phone 091−460−2031.
6.7
•   A3000 LC, 4Mb, RISC-OS 3.10, HCCS Hardcard 45, ARM3, Double 40/80
track disc drive, Scanlight 256, Philips 8833 monitor, lots of software
including E-Type, Holed Out, clipart, Interdictor 2, Wonderland, etc.
Excellent condition. Cost over £2200. Will accept £1000 o.n.o. Will
split. Phone 0522−529630.
6.7
•   A410/1, 4Mb RAM, 40Mb IDE HD, RISC-OS 3.10, manuals and loads of
software, £900 o.v.n.o. £1000 o.v.n.o. with Acorn multisync monitor.
Phone 071−703−5675.
6.7
•   A5000 40Mb hard drive, 4Mb RAM, RISC-OS 3.10, PC Emulator v1.7,
Impression Junior, DeskEdit, Masterfile II, InterWord, InterSpell and
InterSheet (all on disc), Enter The Realm. ST506 hard drive (for A400
etc). Phone Coventry 0203−410047.
6.7
•   A5000 4Mb RAM, Acorn multisync, Learning Curve + PCEm 1.8, software,
discs, magazines, books, etc, £1200. Phone 081−698−3772.
6.7
•   Acorn AKF11 standard monitor for Archimedes, v.g.c., original packing,
buyer collects, £35. Phone Raymond Wright on 0483−575870.
6.7
•   Acorn DTP with clipart £40. Beebug Star/Epson colour printer driver
£8, Minerva GammaPlot £20, System Delta+ £30, Mailshot (for SD+) £15.
Digital Research DR DOS 5.0 (for PC Emulator) £20. Nevryon £8, Powerband
£8, Terramex £5, Computer Concepts ROMS (for CC ROM podule) InterChart
£10, InterSheet £15, SpellMaster £20. Phone R A Brown on 0737−832159.
6.7
•   Eizo 9060SZ low radiation monitor, as new, £300 o.n.o., Phone 0245-
325205.
6.7
•   Epson LQ800 24 pin dot matrix, tractor feed and single sheet feeder, a
few new ribbons. Offers to Chris Johnson, 7 Lovedale Grove, Balerno,
Edinburgh, EH14 7DR. (031−449−3869)
6.7
•   Flexifile database, £45. First Word Plus release 2, £28. Acorn DTP
£28. Beebug disc interface for A310/A440 + DFS reader £28. Chocks Away
Compendium, Drop Ship, Real McCoy 2, Conqueror, Break 147 £50. Details
051−606−0289.
6.7
•   Free Juki 6100 daisywheel printer + daisy wheels and ribbons (collect
or pay carriage). Phone Chris Johnson on 031−449−3869.
6.7
•   Impression Junior (vers 1.17 Nov 92) £42 post paid. Phone 0203−418064.
6.7
•   ISO C development system v1.7 (Risc Dev.), £50. Phone 09467−23275.
6.7
•   PC386 4Mb podule with co-processor and latest software. Half price at
£325. Phone John on 0373−813336.
6.7
•   Roland (MIDI) MT-32 Multi Timbre Sound Module £125 o.n.o. (over £400
new) quick sale. Casio (MIDI) HT-700 keyboard £75 o.n.o. (over £200
new). Both items for £150. Phone 0487−740601 6−7pm and weekends.
6.7
•   Redundant Econet gear inc clock box, 8 Econet boards, sets of leads,
Econet boxes, terminators and cable. Offers to Chris Johnson, Department
of Chemistry, Heriot-Watt University, Riccarton, Edinburgh, EH14 4AS.
6.7
•   Star LC200 Colour dot matrix v.g.c., little used, £80. Phone
0732−454707.
6.7
•   Wanted − C compiler for 2Mb A3000 to write modules and WIMP
applications. Acorn C release 3 or later will do, possibly with desktop
front end. Phone Alun Moon 0773−570235.
6.7
•   Wanted − PipeDream 4. Phone 0203−410047.
6.7
•   Watford Hand scanner, £65. Repton 4, £12.50. Clares Illusionist £35.
Phone 06977−46786.
6.7
Charity Sales − The following items are available for sale in aid of
charity. PLEASE do not just send money − ring us on 0603−766592 to check
if the items are still available. Thank you.
6.7
(If you have unwanted software or hardware for Archimedes computers you
could donate for charity, please send it to the Archive office. If you
have larger items where post would be expensive, just send us details of
the item(s) and how the purchaser can get hold of them.)
6.7
Arcticulate £5, EMACS (D Pilling) £2, MicroDrive (golf) £6, Saloon Cars
£10, Serial interface for Panasonic KX-P1080, 1091, 1092, 1592 or 3131
£4, System Delta Plus Ref Guide £3, Wordwise Plus for Archimedes (disc
version) inc manuals £8.  A
6.7

6.7

6.7
Hints and Tips
6.7
•   Configuring the main Edit window − The RISC-OS 3 version of Edit makes
no provision for preferences concerning the size and the place on the
screen of a newly opened Edit window.
6.7
However, this can easily be rectified. If you run Edit from your hard
disc, the Templates file can be edited according to taste. The nice
thing is that, even from the hard disc, Edit still occupies the same RAM
space (64 Kb on a 4 Mb machine).
6.7
Here is what you do: drag the Edit application from the Apps directory
to your hard disc, click <menu> on the Apps icon, then <select> to open
the root directory, open the Resources directory and copy the three
files inside the Edit subdirectory into your new Edit application. (For
Acorn newcomers, you open an application directory by double clicking
while holding down <shift>.)
6.7
Then drag the Templates file on to the iconbar icon of FormEd (an
application available from N.C.S. on Shareware 20) and drag the Text
window (the one which is filled with a web of diagonal lines) into the
desired position. Save the edited Template file.
6.7
If you always use Edit, don’t forget to change your configuration so
that, after power-on, the correct version of Edit is loaded.
6.7
Jochen Konietzko, Köln, Germany
6.7
•   Faxpack − Did you know that if you manually dial 0336−400−445 and
then, at the prompt, select ‘Receive Fax’, you will receive a 24 Hour
Surface Forecast Chart from The Met. Office. It is very useful if you
want to know what the weather is going to do. Dial 0336−400−401 for the
Marine Index Page of all the forecasts and charts that are available.
Although it is a bit expensive (calls are charged at 36p per minute
cheap rate and 48p per minute at all others times) I find them
invaluable. This only works with FaxPack v2.00 − with earlier versions,
it causes “A Line Error occurred” fault. Steve Monks, Tobermory.  A
6.7

6.7
Comment Column
6.7
•   Acorn compiler doped? − I am puzzled by Thomas Down’s findings for
Acorn C compiler v4.0 (“C From Basic”, Archive 6.6 p35).
6.7
I agree with his figures for Beebug C. However, for Acorn ANSI C 4.0, I
get a Dhrystone rating of 14,749 as opposed to his 7,714. That is for
mode 35 on an ARM3 with an 8MHz bus, as in Thomas’s tests. There is no
file i/o, so the hard disc spec is not relevant.
6.7
Clearly Thomas did not run the same program as I did to test the
compiler. I am certain about that because the compiled size of my
executable was 9,212 bytes compared with 20,420 of Thomas’s. That means
I find both the code size and the speed better than the statistics that
were published for the Acorn compiler by a factor of 2:1.
6.7
I assume that Thomas built the Acorn executable himself rather than use
one that already existed with the right name in the right directory. Did
he ensure that any pre-existing executable and .o files were deleted
beforehand or that the source files were all touched with the Make tool?
I assume that the tests used the official Dhrystone benchmark source
files version 2.1 for C, author Reinhold P. Weicker 1988, exactly as
supplied with both of the compilers.
6.7
There will be readers who are contemplating the purchase of one of these
C compilers. What are they to think? It is exactly as if a motoring
journal were to report that car A, which costs 3 times as much as car B,
has twice the fuel consumption and the same top speed, while there are
motorists testifying that the dearer model has much the same fuel
consumption and twice the speed.
6.7
Thomas Down replies...
6.7
It seems that I made a mistake when compiling the benchmark program for
my C from Basic article. The problem stems from the fact that I used the
same working directory for compiling both versions of the program.
Having produced the Beebug C executable, I created an ANSI C Makefile
then ran the DDE Make utility. It correctly decided that the Beebug C
object files (half compiled program) were up-to-date, i.e. their
datestamps were later than those of the source files, and therefore
decided to move straight on to the link stage. This resulted in a final
program compiled by Beebug C but linked by Acorn’s linker. I use the
‘summary’ option for text output when using Make, so it is not at all
obvious what the system is doing. In a future version of the DDE, it
would be nice to see an indication of which files Make has decided to
ignore.
6.7
The correct figures are:
6.7
Beebug C
6.7
Time to compile − 15 seconds
6.7
Dhrystones/second − 7705.3
6.7
Size − 6580
6.7
ANSI C v4
6.7
Time to compile − 10 seconds
6.7
Dhrystones/second − about 14,500
6.7
Size − 9212
6.7
I apologise to Acorn for the mistake. However, as I said in the article,
I don’t think that artificial speed comparisons should be relied upon
too much. In particular, it is worth noting that a considerable
proportion of the execution time of a WIMP program may be spent on
window management and graphics commands which are provided by RISC-OS
and are therefore independent of whichever compiler you use. The two
compilers suit differing needs and so would-be programmers should choose
one to suit their requirements and budget. Thomas Down.
6.7
•   Omar Sharif’s Bridge Program − As promised, I have done some
investigation into the bidding and play. To do justice to this would
take up a complete edition of Archive! As that is not realistic, I have
made a considerable number of recorded hands available and created a
!ShowHands application. This puts up an empty window, onto which a
recorded game can be dropped to display the hands, the bidding and the
card play conveniently all together on the screen. I hope Paul can find
room on the monthly disc for it all. (Check the Price List to see if I
managed to fit it in! Ed.)
6.7
In Archive 6.5 p45, Cain Hunt says ‘... it bids aggressively and does
some vicious card play.’ My personal opinion is that the bidding tends
to the ludicrous and the card play to the suicidal!
6.7
Note: in all cases, I bid the South hand and the computer bids the
hidden W, N and E hands. First, two extreme bidding examples:-
6.7
Hand   : ACOL_27
6.7
Dealer : West                                     Card play:-
6.7
                    S: T 4 3 2                    −−−−−−−−−−−
6.7
                    H: A J T 6                    6D 2D AD 3D
6.7
                    D: T 8 6                      KC 8C 7C AC
6.7
                    C: 7 3
6.7
                                                  Rest Claimed
6.7
       S: A 7                  S: K Q J 9 8 6 5
6.7
       H: K Q 3 2              H:
6.7
       D: Q J 9 5 3            D: K 4 2
6.7
       C: 9 8                  C: A 5 2
6.7

6.7
                    S:
6.7
                    H: 9 8 7 5 4
6.7
                    D: A 7
6.7
                    C: K Q J T 6 4
6.7

6.7
 Bidding:-    W  N  E  S                         Result:-
6.7
              —————                         ———————
6.7
              1H -  2S -                         E/W  12 tricks
6.7
              3D -  -  -                         N/S  1  tricks
6.7
Why isn’t the computer bidding 4S as East? I noticed that the ‘5 Card
Major’ file was 50% longer than the ‘Acol’ file, so I thought it might
be more sensible.
6.7
Hand   : 5CARD_04
6.7
Dealer : East                                     Card play:-
6.7
                    S: 6                           ——————
6.7
                    H: 8 5 4                      AS 4S 6S 3S
6.7
                    D: K 8 7 4 2                  KS JS 4H 5S
6.7
                    C: J 9 6 2                    2S QS 2D 7S
6.7
                                                  9C AC 5C 4C
6.7
       S: Q J 4                S: 9 7 5 3         9D 6D 3D KD
6.7
       H: Q J 9                H: A K 3 2         6C QC KC 7C
6.7
       D: A Q 5 3              D: J T 9           8S 5D 7D 9S
6.7
       C: 8 7 4                C: A Q             JC TD 3C 8C
6.7
                                                  JD TS QD 4D
6.7
                    S: A K T 8 2                  AD 8D 2H TC
6.7
                    H: T 7 6                      9H 5H KH 6H
6.7
                    D: 6                          AH 7H JH 8H
6.7
                    C: K T 5 3                    3H TH QH 2C
6.7

6.7
 Bidding:-    E  S  W  N                          Result:-
6.7
              −−−−−−−−−−                          −−−−−−−−−
6.7
              1D 1S 3D -                          N/S  6  tricks
6.7
              3H -  7D -                          E/W  7  tricks
6.7
              -  -
6.7
No, it is not more sensible! Other than the opening bids, the only other
difference I have detected is that 1N in Acol is 12-14 points but in the
‘5 card major’ the 1N is, I think, 16-18 points.
6.7
Note:− During the few hands I have played with this program, I have seen
more Grand Slams bid (and none made!) than in 20 years of competitive
duplicate bridge.
6.7
Finally on the subject of bidding:-
6.7
Hand   : ACOL_01
6.7
Dealer : South                                   Card play:-
6.7
                    S: K Q J 6 4                 −−−−−−−−−−−
6.7
                    H: K 8 7 6                   5C QC KC AC
6.7
                    D: 4                         JC 2D 4C 2C
6.7
                    C: A J 6                     4H 2H 3H 6H
6.7
                                                 6C 2S 3D 3C
6.7
       S:                      S: A 9 7 5 2      3S 7C JS AS
6.7
       H: 3                    H: Q J 4          QD KD AD 4D
6.7
       D: A T 9 7 5            D: Q J 6 2        TD 4S JD 8D
6.7
       C: K T 9 8 7 3 2        C: 5              6D 5H 5D 7H
6.7
                                                 JH 9H 7D 8H
6.7
                    S: T 8 3                     8C 6S QH 8S
6.7
                    H: A T 9 5 2                 9C QS 5S TH
6.7
                    D: K 8 3                     TC KH 7S TS
6.7
                    C: Q 4                       9D KS 9S AH
6.7

6.7
 Bidding:-   S  W  N  E                         Result:-
6.7
             —————                         ———————
6.7
             -  3C -  -                         N/S  3  tricks
6.7
             3H -  5D db                        E/W  10  tricks
6.7
             -  -  -
6.7
Not seeing the other hands I passed the 5D!! bid. The only sensible bids
for North are 4H or pass, as partner has already passed. If the dealer
had been West so that South had not yet bid, the best bid for North is
4C, which shows the club control and agrees Hearts by implication.
6.7
So I decided to investigate further by manually entering the hands and
then trying different vulnerabilities and dealers. The first thing I
discovered was that the vulnerability made no difference to the bidding
and, in fact, it is not displayed while one is doing the bidding! I then
decided to try opening the hand as South with the following result:
6.7
 S  W  N  E
6.7

6.7
 1H -  2S -
6.7
 3H -  4N -
6.7
 5D -  5N -
6.7
 6D -  6H -
6.7
 -  -
6.7
So yes, the program uses Blackwood but it does not understand it!
Instead of signing off in 4H when the 5D reply shows there are 2 Aces
missing, it presses on with 5N! Finally, as South (with West as the
dealer) I tried a double for take out after the 3C bid. North passed!
The booklet states:-‘The computer uses many complex bidding strategies,
and it may deviate from the rules in certain situations.’ And how!!
6.7
Finally, one example of play:-
6.7
Hand   : ACOL_29
6.7
Dealer : East                                    Card play:-
6.7
                    S: A 6 4 2                   −−−−−−−−−−−
6.7
                    H: Q T 2                     4H 3H QH AH
6.7
                    D: 4 3 2                     6C 3C 5C 9C
6.7
                    C: T 9 2                     2H 5H 9H KH
6.7
                                                 AC 2C 7C 4C
6.7
       S: Q 8 3                S: K 9 7          JC TC KC QC
6.7
       H: K 7 3                H: A 8 5          KD TD 5D 2D
6.7
       D: A 7 6 5              D: K 9 8          8C 5S 6D 3D
6.7
       C: A J 5                C: K 8 7 6        8D JD AD 4D
6.7
                                                 8S 2S 9S TS
6.7
                    S: J T 5                     JH 7H TH 8H
6.7
                    H: J 9 6 4                   6H 3S 4S 9D
6.7
                    D: Q J T                     QD 7D 6S 7S
6.7
                    C: Q 4 3                     JS QS AS KS
6.7

6.7
 Bidding:-    E  S  W  N                        Result:-
6.7
              −−−−−−−−−−                        −−−−−−−−−
6.7
              1N -  3N -                        E/W  7  tricks
6.7
              -  -                              N/S  6  tricks
6.7
The deep finesse of the 6C by East at trick 2 is very costly because it
is almost certain to lose (the 9 T and Q can beat it) thus settling for
just 3 tricks in clubs if they break 3 − 3, while there is a 66% chance
of the JC making, giving 4 tricks. Additionally, it loses tempo by
permitting E/W to set up 2 Heart tricks while they have the AS as an
entry.
6.7
Have a look through the hands on the monthly program disc and see what
you think! At least 50% of them are random deals and the others are set
up to see what the computer would do. John C. Wallace, Crawley.
6.7
•   IFEL DIY memory upgrade − My machine is one of the early 305s and so,
over the years, I have upgraded it − it now has two disc drives, MEMC1a
and 2Mb of memory. I decided on the IFEL 2Mb option as it is cheap, DIY,
highly regarded by the reviewers and came with a MEMC1a and all at
education reduced prices!
6.7
The upgrade from the 305’s ½Mb to the 310’s 1Mb had been a simple plug-
in-the-chips job. Unfortunately, that ease made the second memory
upgrade a very daunting prospect. If you have a machine with a similar
pedigree (i.e. was once a 305) then beware! The IFEL upgrade demands the
removal of all the 310’s RAM sockets, the cleaning of the holes and the
resoldering of the undamaged chips back where they came from. That is
sixteen chips. Otherwise, the new upgrade board won’t fit above the old
RAM!
6.7
My machine has a removable disc drive bar, which made life easier when
getting the main board out. But once I had got it out, I had to find a
way to work on it. My method was to use my Workmate! I used several
sheets of corrugated cardboard on either side of the main board and very
gently closed the Workmate jaws on the resulting expensive sandwich.
This held it firmly enough to work on. I needed a temperature-controlled
soldering iron, a solder sucker, a chip extraction device (two nails and
a screwdriver), precision pliers and nerves of steel. But, after an
entire afternoon’s soldering, it was done.
6.7
It is essential that you follow the instructions exactly. I did not.
That is possibly why it took me two days to get it working. If I had
done everything in the suggested order, I would have been able to check
the machine during the upgrade. But I couldn’t. Cutting the memory
decoder from the board may have been my problem. It didn’t work after
that. Multiple phone calls to IFEL saved the day. I was talked through a
series of fault-finding tricks until my oscilloscope finally found a
broken track, on part of the computer I hadn’t even touched! Without
IFEL’s help I would still be looking.
6.7
So, if you are handy with an iron then have a go. Do not try using a 25
watt iron or it’s byebye computer. I did, but I got away with it! The
machine is now a delight to use and the upgrades work perfectly. Had it
been a 310 to start with, life would have been much easier with only
three chips to shift. Just my luck, but then it could be worse, it could
be an IBM!
6.7
Thanks IFEL.  Simon Anthony, Nottingham.  A
6.7

6.7
Image Club Clipart Library Volume 24
6.7
Hutch Curry
6.7
Matt Black is marketing a comprehensive range of Clipart for the
Archimedes range of computers. There are apparently 24 volumes, each
containing a large number of compressed drawfiles spread over a number
of discs. This review is based on a small and supplied selection of the
200+ images in Volume 24. This volume is entitled ‘Science & Medicine’
and is supplied as a boxed set of 5 discs costing £34.95 (plus £2.00
post & packing). The images cover the following subject areas:
6.7
Anatomy
6.7
Headings
6.7
Health Care
6.7
In The Lab
6.7
Living Things
6.7
Physical Sciences
6.7
Planet Earth
6.7
Symbols
6.7
From the images supplied for review, I would have to conclude that both
the quality and utility is variable. Some of the images are very good −
such as the ones shown on this page. However, some of the images are
very pedestrian and offer little more than what is available as PD on
some of the bulletin boards. As a general comment, I would note that the
best of these images are very stylish with a lot of nice shading. This
has, however, been done at the expense of some of the minute detail that
one might expect in technical or anatomical drawing. Because of the
variable quality of the material and the limited selection supplied for
review, I would be unwilling to recommend anyone to spend what is a
substantial amount of money without at least getting a full listing of
the library contents to satisfy yourself that there is enough material
to justify the expense.  A
6.7

6.7
CC
6.7
From 6.6 page 11
6.7

6.7
ArtWorks Column
6.7
Trevor Sutton
6.7
It seems that the version of AW which CC rushed to me, i.e. version
1.100, was an early version of the upgrade and that the latest version
is 1.12, so I hope you have all received this upgrade by now.
6.7
Hatched fills
6.7
Colleagues and friends who use vector graphic programs like AW, Draw or
Vector know that I have a long-standing desire for hatched and textured
fills. Perhaps it is my love of maps or possibly a throwback to the days
when I used rub-down textures along with the rub-down lettering.
Remember those occasions when you ran out of n’s and had to cobble one
up with a spare m and a razor blade? Outline fonts and low-priced
printers have done away with my need for rub-down lettering but I would
like to be able to produce hatched areas or dotty areas. I have used
these effectively with some of my natural history illustrations and
would welcome them in AW.
6.7
I have recently seen hatching on the Archimedes with the new CAD
packages from Minerva so come on CC, there’s a challenge for you!
6.7
I did, however, find a way to produce a hatched effect and this could be
explored or developed. I will describe the process and would welcome any
refinements!
6.7
My initial aim was to produce text which had a hatched shading. This I
did as follows:
6.7
1. Draw a rectangle − this appears in black.
6.7
2. Write some text which will fit into the rectangle.
6.7
3. Make the text into a shape from the Lines/Shapes menu.
6.7
4. Place the text over the rectangle and <select> both.
6.7
5. Now the clever bit! Choose Join shapes from the Lines/Shapes menu.
6.7
6. You have created a mask (see p.71 of the manual).
6.7
7. All you need to do now is produce a blend from one line to another
which will fit behind the rectangle. This is the quickest way of drawing
many oblique parallel lines.
6.7
8. Move this over the text and send it to the back.
6.7
9. Finally, choose white for the fill colour of the rectangle.
6.7
10. The same technique can be used for filling an area.
6.7
The example below shows both text and an area with single and double
hatching.
6.7
Printer dialogues!
6.7
Steve Hutchinson writes with what he suggests are minor points regarding
printing...
6.7
If there is no printer driver loaded, AW doesn’t tell you − it just
doesn’t respond to pressing <print>. This is important to me because, if
I load LaserDirect with my !Boot file as I used to, it prevents me
loading !Printers (RISC-OS 3.1 version). So, at present, my !Boot file
doesn’t load a Printer driver automatically.
6.7
Secondly, the Print Dialogue doesn’t tell you which printer it is going
to use. With RISC-OS 3.1 allowing multiple drivers to be loaded ready, I
would have thought this would be an important reminder. I usually check
it in Impression, as I print drafts at 300 dpi and masters at 600 dpi on
LaserDirect.
6.7
Perhaps there is some room for improvement in the way AW performs here
or at least some consistency with Impression.
6.7
File transfer
6.7
Steve does, however, offer praise where it is due...
6.7
ArtWorks gets a few bonus points from me in the file transfer realm. I
needed to send some large drawfiles (Holiday Club publicity) to the new
leader who is Mac-based (he’ll learn one day!). I used Artworks to load
the drawfile and convert to Illustrator format which he could read into
Freehand. It took a while and made a huge file, as it converted all text
to paths. It filled more than two IBM 720Kb floppies. My friend didn’t
believe it would work, but it came up perfectly, even with the correct
colours.
6.7
Roy Robinson of Birdtech has also converted files successfully, this
time to CorelDraw format. I will say more about this in the section on
printing.
6.7
If anyone else has any experience of import or export of AW files,
please share it with us.
6.7
Modes
6.7
Which mode do you prefer to use? More often than not, I work in mode 28.
Steve Hutchinson has other ideas...
6.7
One of my biggest problems with AW has been deciding which screen mode
to use. I usually use mode 102 for Impression but this is only 16
colours, so graduated fills don’t look very good. However, going to any
256 colour screen makes for a much smaller desktop and much more
scrolling around. This is a case for getting a ColourCard, I suppose.
(Is there no end to my computer shopping list?!) !FlipTop helps a lot in
seeing what is available and switching quickly between modes.
6.7
One thing that alarmed me, was printing in AW from mode 102. The screen
flickered and seemed to change alignment, but all was well afterwards.
CC Technical Dept say that mode 102 takes up more processor bandwidth
than any other so, because the processor is busy printing the Artworks
file, it is stopped from refreshing the screen. No harm is done and the
computer speeds up. Perhaps this is obvious to many but it was news to
me. Roger Spooner’s Display Technology article helped to clarify a lot
for me (Archive 6.4 p21). The printing certainly seems quicker from
ArtWorks than with Draw.
6.7
Printing
6.7
I have had several comments following my mention of the Ace printer
drivers in last month’s column.
6.7
Roy Robinson, whose company Birdtech offers a scanning and printing
service, kindly made several prints from AW to illustrate the benefits
and disadvantages of the various combinations of hardcopy which are
available for the Archimedes. He showed me some superb examples of
printing to the HP Deskjet 550C, one of which was printed via CorelDraw.
The file was exported from AW to CorelDraw and then printed to the
Deskjet via its own driver. This gave a beautiful rendering of the tints
and shades with almost an airbrush effect in places. This does show me
that Archimedes printer drivers still have a long way to go. Having said
that, the printing was painfully slow − I mean, well over an hour! This
is clearly not a viable commercial option for Birdtech.
6.7
Many people have expressed their disappointment at the banding effect
which graduated fills produce on output to a printer. I drew a billiard
ball using a radial fill which I then printed. I include a scanned
example of the printout. It is just about clear enough to show the
banding effect (which I call doughnutting!) The 24-bit facility with the
Ace drivers avoids this.
6.7
Coda
6.7
I hope to hear from more of you in the coming months. The CC competition
closing date is getting nearer and so all those brilliant ideas may then
be shared. I know that I won’t win but I hope that the winner produces
artwork which is exciting, creative and shows few hallmarks of that
tempting traceable background layer!  A
6.7

6.7
24-bit small halftone
6.7

6.7

6.7
Colour small halftone
6.7

6.7

6.7
Abacus Training
6.7
New artwork
6.7

6.7
Spreadsheet Column
6.7
Chris Johnson
6.7
Welcome to the first of what I hope will be a regular series of columns
for Archive magazine. It currently has the general title of Spreadsheet
Column, on the assumption that we shall be covering all aspects of
spreadsheets, other than PipeDream. However, the content of the column
will be determined ultimately by your good selves, so send me as many
comments, hints, bug reports (real or perceived) as you can. This first
column will be brief, mainly because I did not appreciate fully the lead
time for production of the magazine.
6.7
Eureka
6.7
I have been using Eureka since the middle of December and have been
pleasantly surprised at its ease of use. I know there is a full review
due on this application, so I will save my general comments until I have
seen the review. Paul has sent me a couple of things related to this
spreadsheet which are worth mentioning and I will add something of my
own.
6.7
Memory
6.7
Eureka, in common with all other spreadsheets I have seen, takes up a
lot of memory. On my machine, it grabs 1088 Kb (i.e. more than a
megabyte) before a sheet is even loaded. Therefore, even a 2 Mb machine
could well be short of memory. J A Brook found that one of his sheets
would not print due to insufficient memory but subsequently was amazed
to find that if the printer driver application was removed from the
iconbar, it printed normally.
6.7
This is an aspect of the RISC-OS printer drivers that is not always
appreciated by the user and is worth re-emphasising. When you double
click on the !printers application, an icon is installed on the iconbar.
What the user does not see, (unless you press <f12> and type <help
modules> or simply <modules>) is that a module called pdriverXX, (where
‘XX’ may be ‘ps’ for the postscript driver, or dm for the dot matrix
driver) is installed in memory. It is this module that does all the work
of actually printing. The application installed on the iconbar is simply
a multitasking front end to enable you to set the configuration of the
printer driver or to swap from postscript to dot matrix, for example.
Once you are satisfied with the way the printer application is
configured, you can safely quit from the iconbar. The pdriver module
remains active until “rmkilled”. The printers application takes 160 Kb
on my machine, which can be reclaimed by quitting the application. So,
the moral is, if you are short of memory for any purpose, try quitting
the !printers application to improve the situation. The same should
apply to any third party printer driver application, although the actual
memory saved may be much smaller.
6.7
Array formulae
6.7
Mr Brook also found a problem with the use of the IF operator. He wanted
a formula which would divide the contents of one cell by those of
another cell, as long as the latter cell was not zero. He tried
something along the lines of
6.7
=IF(B10>0,(A10/B10),)
6.7
This generated an error (I hazard a guess it was #VALUE! but Mr Brook
does not say). He worked around the problem by specifying the actual
cell using the $ operator. (For those not yet in the know, the $ symbol
is used when replicating cell formulae to denote a specific cell address
which must not change.)
6.7
I think this problem is similar to one I took a while to fathom out,
which again involved the IF operator. I was doing something similar to
Mr Brook. I had a sheet of student laboratory marks and was using the
ISBLANK operator to find out how many experiments had been completed, by
summing the remaining blank cells without a mark entered. I could not
get my formula to work, and ended up trying various example formulae
lifted directly from the reference section of the manual on the IF
operator but none of those worked either! They all resulted in the
#VALUE! error.
6.7
I then had to resort to thumbing through the manual for inspiration. The
manual is very good in some respects − it has an excellent tutorial
section and an extensive and detailed reference section, BUT IT HAS NO
INDEX.
6.7
While perusing various sections, I became aware that there appeared to
be a distinction between formulae and array formulae. The normal
procedure for the entry of data or a formula into a cell is to type the
contents and then press <return>. This enters a value or a formula. If,
on the other hand, you press <ctrl-shift-insert>, you enter an array
formula. The manual (p. B­12 in my copy) refers to this as an Array-
Enter operation. The only visible difference is that the application
automatically encloses the formula in curly braces  for you. (You should
not add or remove curly braces from the formula yourself.) It does not
appear to be clearly stated in the manual when you should use one or the
other. I have found that, in most cases involving the IF operator, the
calculation only works if you enter the formula as an array formula. It
appears that even when the IF statement is returning only one value, the
intermediate results are still treated as arrays of data.
6.7
Printing
6.7
Back to printing again. Printing a sheet is very simple. You either
follow the main menu file>print or press <print>. As in Impression,
there is also a page setup dialogue box to control certain features of
the print, such as headers and footers, whether the grid lines are
printed and so on, although it is raised by a separate menu item. These
selections will become defaults for the sheet when it is saved and
reloaded. You can print all of the sheet or a selected range of pages.
6.7
How do you print selected portions of the sheet? A review in a certain
other magazine stated that it could not be done. This is certainly not
true but all does not appear to be as it should be − or is it me? You
can select multiple sections of the sheet in the standard Eureka way
(not necessarily standard RISC-OS way). The first selection is made by
dragging with <select> held down. Further selections can be added by
dragging with <ctrl-select>. To print these selected parts you must
first invoke the main menu and go to Options­>Set print area and click
(while your selection or multiple selection is still highlighted).
Nothing appears to have happened. However, if you now follow the main
menu selection Formula>Goto...> you will raise a dialogue box which may
or may not have a list of named areas. If nothing is shown, try clicking
on the icon “show all areas”. You should find “Print_Area” is now in the
list. Either double-click on the entry “Print_Area” or click once to
highlight it and then click on OK. The most obvious happening is that
the area(s) you previously had selected are highlighted once again. If
you now select print in the normal way, only the selected areas will be
printed. When the sheet is saved, the print area is saved as well.
Whenever you wish to print the same selected area again, you simply
follow Formula>Goto...> as previously, before selecting print.
6.7
Now we come to the problem. It is certainly true to say that only the
selected areas are printed but they are printed in exactly the SAME
position as they would be if the whole sheet were printed. Thus, in one
case, I have a list of names at the left of the sheet, lots of marks to
the right and finally the grand total at the far right. When just the
names and grand total are printed, the names appear down the left of the
first sheet, then a completely blank sheet is printed, and the totals
are printed down the middle-right of a third sheet! Has anyone managed
to get it to print widely separated selected bits on the same sheet of
paper? I have had to work around it by moving the grand total to become
the second column, rather than the far right column. (Why not just copy
the names column to the column to the left of the Grand Total? Ed.)
6.7
How to contact me
6.7
I can be contacted in a number of ways. My postal address is: Chris
Johnson, 7, Lovedale Grove, Balerno, Edinburgh, EH14 7DR.
6.7
If you have access to JANET (Joint Academic Network), you can use E-
mail. Note that a couple of typographical errors crept into last month’s
announcement of this column. The correct address is either
6.7
   [e-mail]    or, in full,
6.7
   [e-mail]
6.7
If you have a complicated problem for which you are requesting help, if
it concerns Eureka, which is the spreadsheet that I am currently using,
it would be useful to actually send a copy of the sheet on disc
(assuming the contents are not too confidential). The disc would be
returned later (if you enclosed return address and stamp).
6.7
Start those reports flooding in.  A
6.7

6.7
PipeLine-Z
6.7
Gerald Fitton
6.7
I must thank you for all the many letters I’ve received from you this
month. However, the large volume has meant that, once again, I seem to
have got behind with replies. I’ve had to delay some responses and
abbreviate others. As usual, requests for help get a high priority but
feedback and comments from you, whilst not responded to immediately, are
much appreciated and of great interest. Bear with me; you will get a
reply eventually!
6.7
This month the theme is ‘Questions’ rather than ‘Answers’.
6.7
Acorn User Show
6.7
We’ve been asked if we’d like to use a corner of Colton Software’s
stand. As the Harrogate Show is during the second week of my holiday
from my ‘day job’ at College, we’ve said “Yes please!”. This time I’d
like to do a little preparation in advance so, if you’re likely to be at
the Show and wanting a demo of how to do something, or to ask a
question, then it would help if you drop me a line (or better still, a
disc) and I’ll do a bit of homework beforehand.
6.7
PipeDream prices
6.7
As reported in Archive 6.6.4 the prices of PD3 and PD4 have been
reduced. If you wish to upgrade from PD3 to PD4 then you can do so by
sending your master PD3 disc to Colton software.
6.7
In earlier volumes of Archive, I am on record as having said that I had
been assured that the price of the upgrade from PD3 to PD4 would not
fall during its lifetime. Well, the price of upgrading from 3 to 4 has
been reduced so I’ve been asked whether I was wrong, misinformed or
whether the advent of The Z Set augurs the end of PipeDream? What a
question!
6.7
I turned the question back on some of the correspondents who asked the
question, and the responses from PD3 owners varied from “PD3 does all I
want so I’ll stick with it” to “I’m going to ‘leap frog’ PD4 and go
direct to Resultz and the rest of The Z Set”. PD4 owners generally
didn’t answer! − I wonder why?!
6.7
I’m sure that there will be many who will take advantage of the reduced
cost of upgrading from 3 to 4 but my mail bag indicates that there are
many more who are considering The Z Set alternative. This alternative
approach has been made financially attractive by Colton Software. They
are offering Wordz at a substantially reduced price to both PD3 and 4
users but you can take up this offer only from Colton Software direct
and not through your usual or original supplier. Furthermore, I have
been assured that, if you buy Wordz, you will be able to buy Resultz at
a discount (but again only direct from Colton Software) and that a
similar marketing policy will be applied to the database.
6.7
If you write to Colton Software for a Resultz leaflet, you’ll find that
the specification for Resultz includes everything that PD4 does as a
spreadsheet. This includes custom functions, named variables, string
handling functions, arrays and, of course, charts. I’ve been told that
the Charts package is even better and more extensive than the PD4
version.
6.7
Paying for upgrades
6.7
Archive 6.6 has been out only a few days and I am receiving a torrent of
mail about this. I’d better not comment on the replies just yet except
to say that some customers express great loyalty to NCS and its optional
Technical Help service − “£15.00 per year and well worth every penny” is
a common remark. However, here’s another thought phrased as a question.
How many purchasers of Resultz (and the Z database) will there be who
have not already bought Wordz? Will there be a place for dealers and
distributors (such as NCS) to sell Resultz?
6.7
Here is yet another cryptic question that I have been asked by one of my
many lucid readers − this time a reader of this PipeLine column who does
not have PipeDream. First he asks, “When is an Upgrade a New Product?”
Then, much later in his letter he asks, “When is a New Product (merely)
an Upgrade?” I will try to explain what he means by his questions. In
the context of the rest of his most attention-grabbing letter he is
implying that there are software houses (I hasten to add that they are
in the PC world and not Archimedes) who get fed up with (or can’t stand
the negative cash flow resulting from) handing out free upgrades to
customers who are not contributing cash to finance the further
development of the product. The company discontinues developing their
product under the old name and they put on the market a new product
which some people might describe as a further developed version of the
old one! If customers of the ‘old’ product want to ‘upgrade’ then they
have to pay for the new product.
6.7
Toolbar for PipeDream
6.7
You may noticed that Wordz has a ‘button bar’ of the most often used
commands such as Bold, Justify Text, etc. I have been asked if something
similar exists for PipeDream. The answer is that you can make your own
‘button bar’ as a set of PDCmdFil (macros) such this.
6.7

6.7
On the Archive monthly disc, I have included both PD3 and PD4 versions
of these macros. If you have contributions to such a PipeDream button
bar, please send them to me on a disc.
6.7
I have included new versions of two ([Quote] and [Ligatures]) that have
appeared before. [Quote] converts single and double quotes into smart
quotes. I have added ’phone to the PDCmdFil in the PD4 version.
[Ligatures] combines separate f i to a joined fi and f l to fl. (By the
way, does anyone know how to stop the dialogue boxes appearing after
each search and replace?)
6.7
Provided that you have set a global font, the two PDCmdFil (macro) files
called [Homerton] and [Trinity] will enter those font changes into your
document at the cursor. Some of you will have these on <Ctrl-Shift-Fn>
function keys but, if you have been converted from key short cuts to
using the mouse, you will find these two PDCmdFil a useful alternative.
6.7
To see what is inside a PDCmdFil, you do not double click on it − you
must drag it to the PipeDream icon on the iconbar. You can save such a
PDCmdFil in the ordinary way using <Ctrl-FGS> or by clicking on the
PDCmdFil called [Save] from this directory.
6.7
If you have RISC-OS 3.10, you might want to keep some of the contents of
the Toolbar directory on the PinBoard for easy access.
6.7
Fonts
6.7
I have received many letters about Wordz. A problem which I didn’t
expect to arise as often as it has is the display and printing of
Trinity and Homerton fonts. It seems that many of you are still using
the ‘old’ bit-mapped font manager and don’t have any Outline fonts − or,
if you do, then they don’t include Trinity and Homerton! Not having
Outline fonts will cause you problems in Wordz now and in Resultz later.
6.7
My strong and even forceful recommendation to you is to upgrade to RISC-
OS 3.10 rather than buy the so-called ‘Starter pack’ of (RISC-OS 2)
fonts. The RISC-OS 3.10 chips have new, kerned versions of Trinity and
Homerton built-in and the price of the RISC-OS upgrade is about the same
price as the font starter set.
6.7
Importing graphics into PD4’s charts
6.7
This is more of a question than an answer. I find that sometimes I can
successfully import a drawfile into a live PD4 chart but sometimes it
all goes wrong for me. On the Archive monthly disc, I have included a
Charts directory and the puzzle is “How do you import the drawfile
[ExtraText] into the chart [Timing_1C] without converting the Chart file
into a drawfile?”
6.7
Styles in Wordz
6.7
The figure below, shows a Wordz file called [TestDoc] and two WordzTem
(template) files each containing four ‘working’ styles (and one style I
don’t use). If you have the Archive monthly disc then you can follow
this brief tutorial much more easily by using those files. The three
files are in the directory called Styles. If you don’t have the monthly
disc then you’ll have to make do with the explanation and screenshots
below.
6.7

6.7
The file called [TestDoc] uses the set of styles held in the template
called [ZLineT]. If you read the text below, you will see that the four
working styles are called ZLBase, ZLHeading, ZLByLine and ZLSubHead.
6.7
The template file [ZLOutDenT] contains styles of the same name but with
different definitions. When I drag the template [ZLOutDenT] into the
open [TestDoc] window, the style definitions of [ZLOutDenT] replace
those of the same name in [TestDoc] and the result is shown above right.
6.7

6.7
You will see that the text is in a different typeface and at a larger
point size, the rulers for each style are different and the document
projects a totally different ‘feel’. You can put it all back the way it
was by dragging the template [ZLineT] into [TestDoc].
6.7
I have always wanted to be able to do something like this in Impression
but I’ve never been able to make it work for me. Oh dear! Now I’m going
to get lots of letters explaining to me how it can be done in
Impression! Don’t be put off by my feelings of apprehension. If you know
how to do this in Impression, I’d like to hear from you.
6.7
Open the box!
6.7
This is a spreadsheet problem. No prizes for the correct answer but you
might become famous − I’ll mention your name in this column!
6.7
You are a game show contestant and, through sheer brilliance, you have
won the right to open one of three boxes. One of the three contains the
Star Prize, the other two contain Booby Prizes. The game show host knows
which box contains the Star Prize but, of course, you don’t.
6.7
You choose a box and tell the game show host and the worldwide audience
of your choice. In accordance with the rules of the box-opening
procedure, the host opens one of the other two boxes which he knows to
contain a Booby Prize! At this stage, the rules allow you to stick with
your original choice or change to the other unopened box.
6.7
The question you have to answer is “Would changing to the other unopened
box improve your chances of winning?”
6.7
Now, I don’t want to hear of your inspired guesses or a whole load of
conditional probability theory. What you have to do is to construct a
spreadsheet which simulates many runs of the ‘Open the Box’ procedure
and use the result to ‘prove’ your answer to the question.
6.7
Here’s a hint. My son once told me that I’m not a ‘Computer person’. His
definition of a ‘Computer person’ is someone who starts counting (or
labelling boxes) with zero instead of one! Label your boxes 0, 1 and 2.
Use the statistical function rand() to decide which box contains the
Star Prize, which box you have chosen and which box is selected by the
game show host. If you use one row of the spreadsheet per trial, you can
total about 100 rows to determine the better strategy.
6.7
To swop or not to swop? That is the question.
6.7
Logos on Wordz labels
6.7
Before I start on this section of my monthly discourse, the current
version of Wordz is V 1.03 and two of the enhancements from V 1.01 are
that graphic handling is improved and V 1.03 will do mail merge!
6.7
You can load a CSV file of text into a Wordz label document and generate
labels. What I have been asked is how to put a graphic such as a company
or club logo onto each label. The answer is to make multiple copies of
the graphic in !Draw (or !DrawPlus), one copy, in the ‘right’ place, for
each label. Save the drawfile and then load it into a blank Wordz
document. Convert the multiple graphic file into a Backdrop. I suggest
that you print out the Wordz file onto plain paper at this stage to make
sure the graphics are correctly positioned.
6.7
Load in your CSV file (from PipeDream?) into the Wordz document and, if
all goes well, the labels you make will each contain your graphic.
6.7
German dictionary
6.7
Paul Beverley sent me a German dictionary by Jack Wright. (Fame at
last!) I include it on the monthly disc. There is also an Impression
version − but I’ll leave that to another contributor!
6.7
Visible hard space
6.7
There are three files in the HardSpace directory of the monthly Archive
disc: Hardspace and Standard (which are BBC font files) and ReadMe (a
PipeDream file).
6.7
[ReadMe] is a test file containing the following text:
6.7

6.7
Double click on [HardSpace] and you will get a screen containing the
hard space, as shown below. You can put it back the way it was by double
clicking on [Standard].
6.7

6.7
By the way, the [Standard] BBC font included on the monthly disc also
includes System font bit maps for the ligatures fi <Alt-158> and fl <Alt-
159>. If you have these fonts as part of an early operating system then
you’ll find that these ligatures did not have the correct bit maps.
6.7
Help − Family trees
6.7
Derrick G Porter would like to correspond with anyone who uses PipeDream
for genealogy. If you write to me, I’ll send your letters on to Derrick.
6.7
Resultz and Wordz
6.7
Although Colton Software will be able to tell you a lot about Resultz
and show you some of the things it will do, Resultz will not be on sale
at the Harrogate Show.
6.7
If you have an early version of Wordz, you will be able to get it
upgraded at the Show. Bring along both your Program and Examples disc. I
have a copy of the latest Examples disc and the number of directories
has roughly doubled. If you can’t wait, or if you’re not going to the
Show, send your discs in a MailLite 00 to Colton Software for a free
upgrade. It will reduce administrative costs and help speed up the
return of your discs if you enclose a self addressed label and, if you
live in the UK, please include a 24p (or 18p) stamp.
6.7
Dictionaries
6.7
PipeDream and Wordz dictionaries are identical in format. You can
transfer your PipeDream user dictionary to become two Wordz user
dictionaries (one for words having an initial capital letter). Although
I’ve managed to do it, let me make it the subject of my penultimate
question: Can you explain to our readers (with a worked example) how to
split your PipeDream user dictionary into two?
6.7
Finally
6.7
Despite the fact that all contributors give their services to Archive
for free and regardless of my remarks about receiving a torrent of
letters, I think I’d get withdrawal symptoms if they stopped − so please
keep them coming in. If your problem or comment would benefit from an
example on disc, please send me a disc rather than a long (ambiguous)
explanation.
6.7
I’m looking forward to meeting many of you at the Acorn User Show in
Harrogate.  A
6.7

6.7
ICS Ltd
6.7
New Artwork
6.7

6.7
Upgrade Options for A300 and A400 Owners
6.7
David Ramsden
6.7
With the rash of new Acorn machines which have appeared over the past 18
months or so, owners of the older style Archimedes systems have been
faced with the dilemma of how to upgrade. Should they go for one of the
newer micros or wait for Acorn’s new all-singing all-dancing machine
incorporating the new chips announced by ARM Ltd and possibly upgrade
their old machine during the wait? Being faced with this conundrum
myself and having missed out on one of the cheap A5000 base models which
were available from various sources last month, I had a detailed look at
the options available.
6.7
A30x0 series machines
6.7
These are the new entry-level Acorns aimed primarily at schools and the
home education market. They are equipped with the new ARM250 processor
running at 12 MHz which, in practical terms, means they run 50% faster
than existing ARM2 systems. Also, with their compact all-in-one box
design, they take up less desk space.
6.7
A4000 series machines
6.7
These use the same ARM250 processor used in the A30x0 but come in a
three box design similar to the A5000 but not as high. These micros are
aimed at the serious home user and there are attractive software bundles
available. For more detailed information on the A30x0 and A4000 see the
Archive supplement ‘Vision for the Future’. (Copies are still available,
free of charge, from the Archive office. Ed.)
6.7
The main drawback with both these machines seems to be the lack of scope
for hardware upgrades. Neither can be fitted with an ARM3 to speed up
the processing resulting in what will probably be a downgrade from an
ARM3 fitted A300/400 though I suspect the change in performance
fluctuates from mode to mode. (If there is anyone out there who has
access to the hardware to do some speed tests, it would make interesting
reading.) Another hardware restriction is that the new Graphics Cards
launched by Computer Concepts and State Machine are incompatible though
a third card has been announced which claims compatibility but is not
yet available.
6.7
In addition to this, Acorn, in their wisdom, have decided to stick with
the single mini podule expansion slot for both machines. This first saw
the light of day with the A3000 and never really caught on. Fortunately,
third party products are starting to appear which get round its
limitations − see the Ultimate Expansion System article in Archive 6.5
p11.
6.7
A5000 series machines
6.7
The A5000 is the current Acorn flagship (leaving aside the A540 which is
now looking a bit of curate’s egg) and, as such, offers the greatest
processing power. However, as Mike Cook observed in Acorn Computing,
these machines have been around for a while now and I think that it is
reasonable to expect a new power machine sometime later in 1993 or early
1994 making use of the newly announced VIDC20 graphic controller and the
latest ARM processor. (But the latest rumours suggest that it will have
a price of around £3k. Ed.)
6.7
If you decide to wait to buy one of the new power machines, what options
are there for your present machine?
6.7
Display
6.7
This is an area where Acorn machines have started to look a little dated
compared with the PC world. Enter Computer Concepts and State Machine.
Both these companies’ offerings vastly enhance the display standard, in
terms of resolution and colours available. These cards have been
described in recent Archives, so I’ll leave it for you to read up these
articles for further information. One thing worth mentioning again, I
think, is the speed acceleration that these cards offer which is not
being advertised greatly.
6.7
Everyone who has upgraded from a normal TV style monitor to a multisync
will have noticed the drop in processing speed when using their newly
acquired hi-res modes. This is due to the ARM processor and VIDC video
controller fighting over control of the data bus. When the VIDC has
access, the ARM has to sit around twiddling its transistors until it has
finished. The more pixels on screen, and the greater the number of
colours, the more time the video controller takes on the data bus. On
the A300/A400, the bus runs at 8MHz (cf. 12MHz on all new machines)
which, in multisync modes, is mainly used by the video system − hence
the drop in processing speed. Both the Colour Card and the G8 Plus allow
the ARM to run at full speed whilst simultaneously giving the greatly
improved display. The overall effect is an almost constant speed
performance, regardless of screen mode, and an improvement in speed
which is particularly relevant to ARM2 users in hi-res modes.
6.7
Processing speed
6.7
The main option here is to buy an ARM3 processor with its fast on-board
ram cache. RISC-OS has been optimised to make use of the 4Kb of memory
available on the chip and the desktop benefits greatly, as do users of
the hi-res modes.
6.7
For maths-intensive applications such as a spreadsheet or CAD, a
floating point co-processor will increase performance significantly. At
the moment, the ARM chips, unlike the i486DX found in PC’s, the
forthcoming Intel Pentium and the high performance versions of
Motorola’s 68000 family, cannot handle non-integer numbers. Instead, a
software emulator is present which provides the necessary functions but
with a large speed cost. The official ARM Ltd. floating point
accelerator (f.p.a.) is not yet commercially available.
6.7
However, Aleph One and IFEL have produced a new version of their ARM3
upgrade which has a socket for the soon-to-be-available(?) f.p.a.,
making it an attractive option for people upgrading to an ARM3. Finally,
the original Acorn FPU for the A400 series machines is still being
advertised by some dealers. It is very expensive for what you get, in my
opinion, it is incompatible with the ARM3 and it will shortly become
obsolete when f.p.a. becomes available.
6.7
Storage
6.7
Those of you with long memories will remember the original A440 with its
20Mb ST506 hard drives. Thankfully, this format has now been superseded
by IDE and SCSI drives. IDE drives came to the Archimedes from the PC
world where they are the standard format. These are simple plug-in-and-
go single unit drives and tend to be cheaper than the SCSI alternative.
6.7
SCSI interfaces can be used to connect to devices other than hard drives
− flatbed scanners, for example. This is an industry standard interface
used widely on Apple Macs and has plenty of support. A single interface
can support multiple drives including a removable option which makes for
very easy transfer of data between machines, as well as removing the
need for a tape-streamer for backup. There are now a variety of
interfaces on the market ranging from 8-bit to cached 16-bit devices for
where speed is of the essence.
6.7
Monitors
6.7
With the trend towards higher resolution displays and Acorn’s policy of
selling A5000s bundled with a multi-sync monitor, it is likely that, for
serious work such as DTP, spreadsheets, etc, a high resolution monitor
will become more of an essential and less of a luxury. Having used one
of the high resolution desktop modes, it is unlikely that you’ll want to
return to the old 640×256 mode. I speak from experience here − having
borrowed an Eizo 9060 and then gone back to the standard Phillips CM8833
the difference is enormous and has certainly moved a new monitor further
up my priority list.
6.7
There are a various options available for anyone seeking a higher
resolution display. Probably the cheapest is to buy a VGA monitor
compatible with the Archimedes. VGA is one of the display standards in
the PC world and Acorn has provided a VGA mode with 640×480 resolution.
I’d suggest that you buy the monitor through an Acorn dealer and not be
tempted by the low prices on offer in the numerous PC magazines. These
prices are usually proportional to the service received and very few PC
dealers have ever seen an Acorn machine, so it could be a recipe for
disaster.
6.7
The other high resolution option is to buy a multisync such as the Eizo
9060. Multisync monitors have fallen in price greatly in the last few
years and a high quality multi-sync will be a good long-term buy. One
thing to have in mind when deciding on your monitor, is that the trend
is toward higher and higher resolutions with more colours. It is
interesting to note that the adverts for the new Graphics Cards state
that some resolution require higher scanning rates than some multisyncs
are capable of − so check before buying.
6.7
(One comment I would make here is that some dealers are selling Acorn
computers with what they call “SVGA” monitors. If you are offered one of
these, ask what the dot-pitch is. One dealer’s 14“ “SVGA” monitor has
0.39mm dot pitch − the same as the Acorn 14” multisync, AKF18. Now, the
width of a 14“ monitor screen is about 280mm, so that means there are
just under 700 dots across the screen. SVGA is 800×600. You have been
warned! Ed)
6.7
Price
6.7
One final word − not about computers but about the fall out from Black
Wednesday when Norman (‘no devaluation’) Lamont was finally forced, by
the markets, to see sense, and the pound fell by 15-20% against major
currencies. This has, in effect, made an imported piece of equipment
more expensive in Sterling terms. I noticed that some monitor prices
rose last month, probably as result of the fall in the pound. The
previous few years have tended to see the price of computer hardware
fall (look at what the price of an old A310 will buy you now − even
before allowing for inflation!) but it is my guess that the recent
devaluation will cause prices to stabilise or even rise on imported
computer goods when the economy starts to pick up and retailers are able
to pass on the increases which they cannot at present. If this is the
case, there is nothing to gained by waiting and certainly for items such
as monitors, is as good a time as any to buy. Was Ed. given any reason
for the price increases on the monitors?  (Yes, I was told about the
dollar exchange rates − the same reason that the removable cartridges
and drives have just gone up in price and the same reason that Acorn
have just reduced their dealer margins. Ed.)  A
6.7

6.7
Molecular Modelling Update
6.7
David Kent
6.7
Recently Paul sent me a PD Molecular Modeller by Simon Kilvington. What
I am writing here is not really a review but briefly lists the
facilities that the modeller has at the moment. The disc contains the
application called !Mole and a directory containing 14 examples and some
conversion programs.
6.7
!Mole can display monochromatic skeletons, colour coded skeletons, ball
and stick, space-filled and VDW surfaces with the user choosing the dot
density. There is an option to create a crude 3D effect called ‘pseudo-
rendering’ and the hydrogen atoms in a molecule can be turned on and off
for clarity.
6.7
The program can save drawfiles of everything except pseudo-rendered and
VDW surface molecules. Sprite files can be saved for all views. A
particularly exciting option is the built-in ray-tracing program which
produces excellent quality 3D effects. The output from this can only be
saved as sprites.
6.7
The molecule can be rotated and moved in a “Mover” window and created or
edited in a fairly comprehensive “Editor” window. A limited set of atom
types is available at the moment but the user can create more, though
these are limited to a maximum of four bonds.
6.7
At the price(!) this is an unbeatable program. Support for Simon in the
form of cash might encourage him to develop it further!! Some of the
possibilities that he is considering include the calculation of minimum
energy conformations, molecular flexing and calculation of bond
vibrations.
6.7
As mentioned in the Help!! Column, Simon is willing to send a copy of
his program to anyone who will send him a blank, formatted disc and an
SAE. Write to him at 18 Bullar Street, Newtown, Southampton, SO2 0NH.  A
6.7

6.7
PD Column
6.7
David Holden
6.7
I (or rather APDL which is virtually the same thing) will be running a
competition for the best Archimedes PD, Freeware or Shareware program.
First prize is £100 from APDL and Archive magazine has offered five
runner-up prizes of £20 worth of NCS vouchers. The prize offered by APDL
is the minimum amount that will be awarded. If the number of entries is
great and of a high standard, I may offer more than one prize.
6.7
The main aims of this competition are to help stimulate interest in PD/
Shareware and to give some encouragement and financial reward to
authors. Hopefully it will also incite authors to get down to some
serious work on that exciting idea that they have been meaning to get
around to for the past year or so. I know from my own experience that
some outside stimulus is often required to get a project off the ground.
It is also a way of trying to repay some of the hard work of people
without whom APDL and all the other libraries could not exist. I try to
do this in various other ways already but I hope that this will further
help to show my appreciation.
6.7
Almost any type of PD, Freeware or Shareware program can be submitted.
They can be complete applications, productivity tools, utilities, games
− in fact, anything at all. Don’t be put off by thinking that your
comparatively insignificant utility doesn’t stand a chance of winning.
Remember that there are five secondary prizes. They need not be
completely new programs. Updated or improved versions of existing
programs with additional features will also be eligible.
6.7
All entries must be submitted by the author. For a full copy of the
rules and conditions and some guidelines on the criteria by which
programs will be judged, send a blank 800Kb disk with a stamped self
addressed label to me at the address at the end of this article, not to
Archive magazine.
6.7
What is PD?
6.7
Although this column is entitled ‘PD’, that is only because it is the
shortest of all the possible titles. I try to cover the entire range of
software which is not distributed through the usual commercial outlets.
It could be called the Public Domain/Shareware/Freeware/Crippleware/
Demo/etc column but that doesn’t have quite the same ring.
6.7
What is becoming obvious is that a lot of people have little idea what
Public Domain really means. In the USA, it is a precisely defined legal
term. It means that the author has renounced all rights to the program
and has placed it ‘in the public domain’. There is no such absolute
definition of the term in the UK. What we call ‘PD’ would normally be
defined elsewhere as ‘Freeware’. The difference is that, with Freeware,
the author retains the copyright. He/she may allow the program to be
freely copied and used without charge but does not renounce all rights
to it. I have made this point before but it is a very important
distinction and so worth repeating.
6.7
Very little of what we see declared by the author as PD actually is PD.
I don’t think that I have seen more than half a dozen programs that
could be placed in this category. Almost all programs that contain some
sort of message saying ‘this program is Public Domain’ then go on to
totally negate the effect by adding conditions. You cannot add
conditions if the program is truly PD. Once you have declared it to be
PD, it isn’t ‘yours’ any more − it belongs to everyone. The addition of
any conditions to such a declaration actually reinforces the author’s
copyright and places the program in the ‘Freeware’ category.
6.7
For all practical purposes, as far as the end user is concerned, there
is very little difference. However, there is a great deal of difference
to the author, and I am always surprised that people who write programs
and allow them to be distributed don’t take a little more trouble over
establishing or renouncing their copyright.
6.7
New text editor
6.7
For some time, the most popular PD/Shareware text editor has been
StrongEd. However, I have recently discovered another editor that I
consider to be superior. This goes by the unlikely name of Zap. Like
StrongEd, it is very much faster than Edit and has all the usual
features. Also like StrongEd, it has a ‘proper’ cursor which can be
easily seen and not the silly caret used by many others. It has lots of
additional features, a very good search/replace and undo, and most
functions are available from either menus or keyboard shortcuts. It has
one feature that I find particularly useful. Almost all the keys can be
user-defined. This is a real boon to people who use more than one editor
because you can drastically shorten the learning curve by making the
editor work the way you want it to rather than needing to learn a whole
new series of keys.
6.7
Another interesting idea is that Zap can not only edit text files. It
can edit any type of file in binary (byte or word) format or as
disassembled machine code instructions. The only fault that I could find
with Zap is that it edits Basic programs in tokenised form rather like
the Basic editor. The program is displayed like text but it is held in
memory in tokenised form and this means that when editing a Basic
program, Zap operates as a line editor. Many people actually like this,
but I prefer to edit Basic programs as text. Fortunately, Zap uses
special modules for different types of file and I am promised by the
author that he intends to write one which will convert Basic programs
to/from text as they are loaded and saved, which is the method adopted
by the latest version of Edit. Zap is already very good, and once this
has been done, it might even tempt me to stop using Twin.
6.7
Translator problems
6.7
Recent versions of John Kortink’s Translator, Creator and GreyEdit
programs would only work with RISC-OS 3.1 and not with either versions 2
or 3.0. I have just received the latest versions of all three programs
in which this bug has been fixed and I am now assured that they work
with all versions of RISC-OS. If you do have earlier versions of any of
these three programs, I am offering to update any older versions for
Archive readers free of charge. I am prepared to do this because I think
that they are all extremely useful programs and also because they are
Shareware and, as regular readers will know, I am always keen to promote
good Shareware programs.
6.7
To take advantage of this offer send a disk with an existing copy of one
or more of these programs on it to me at the address at the end of this
article. Enclose a self addressed label with a stamp for return postage.
I will only supply you with the latest versions of programs which you
already have, so don’t forget to put copies of the programs you want
updated, on the disc.
6.7
Shareware thesaurus
6.7
Another new program and the subject of this month’s ‘special offer’ is a
Shareware desktop thesaurus by Ian Palmer. This is based on Roget’s
Thesaurus and hence gives a great deal of information on each chosen
word, not just a list of equivalents. It comes in two versions, Mini
Hound and Word Hound.
6.7
Mini Hound is supplied on a single floppy disk and can be used without a
hard disk. It has a dictionary of around 30,000 words which is nearly
double the number provided with Risc Developments’ Desktop Thesaurus
(costing £22.32). Like any program which keeps data on disk files, it is
a bit slow when run from a floppy disk, although still perfectly
useable, but if you have sufficient spare memory, you can run it from a
RAM disk when it is lightning fast.
6.7
Word Hound is much larger and comes on five 800Kb disks. You must run it
from a hard disk where it will consume over 4Mb. Not only does it have a
much larger dictionary but it has many other extra features.
6.7
Mini Hound and Word Hound are both Shareware and registration for either
costs just £5 and entitles you to use both programs.
6.7
For a copy of Mini Hound send four first class stamps, or a cheque for
£1, to me at the address below. If you want the full five disc set which
comprises WordHound, I will supply this as a special offer to Archive
readers for just £4.
6.7
Contact me at: 39 Knighton Park Road, Sydenham, London SE26 5RN.  A
6.7

6.7
Oak
6.7
From 6.6 page 28
6.7

6.7
Principles of Desk Top Publishing − Part 2
6.7
Mike McNamara
6.7
Just about every new DTP user I’ve worked with has suffered from EFIS
(Excessive Font Infatuation Syndrome).
6.7
A couple of years ago, during a period when new computer viruses were
appearing all the time, I produced an April Fool article which was
circulated throughout the college. It discussed the discovery of a
particularly disruptive little virus called EFIS which, unlike any
other, infected the user rather than the computer. Those infected found
themselves switching from one font to another without warning. The text
they were writing would suddenly go bold or italic and all sorts of
other strange effects would creep in. The presentation may have been for
fun but the underlying message was very serious indeed.
6.7
The college had not long installed a substantial number of Apple
Macintosh computers (yuck!). Users were therefore being confronted with
full WYSIWYG software and increasing collections of fonts. Tutors (and
students) were then being presented with pages of text written in all
sorts of fancy fonts with liberal smatterings of italics, bold, outline
and all mixtures thereof. To put it bluntly, the college was suffering
from a severe bout of EFIS.
6.7
These users had quite simply become infatuated with these new toys and
had completely missed how much effect their uncontrolled use was having
on the materials they were producing.
6.7
I lost count of the number of pieces of work handed in, by very proud
students, as they had ‘done them on the computer’, entirely in italics
or using a font like Vogue.
6.7
Fonts
6.7
Fonts are very powerful tools in DTP design. Each font has been designed
for a particular reason and is suited to particular types of use. Using
the right font in the right place can increase the effectiveness of the
message immensely. Use the wrong font and the message may be lost
completely.
6.7
How then do you select the ‘right’ font? To begin with, you need to
consider the materials you are producing. If they are to be formal, or
carry information to be taken in a formal way, then use a formal font
selection. In this article I have limited myself to two fonts − Homerton
and Trinity − using Homerton for headings and Trinity for the main text.
This is a very common design selection for this form of written
material. Homerton is a Sans-Serif font, i.e. its letters are simply
formed with no additional flourishes to their ends. This makes it very
strong and effective for headings. Trinity on the other hand is a Serif
font. The serifs are intended to help lead the reader from letter to
letter, and from word to word, thus making the reading of large blocks
of text easier and less stressful. The use of the more fancy, or what I
call the fun fonts, should be fairly strictly limited to very specific
situations.
6.7
However, the selection of font is only part of the equation. You will
also need to take into account the effects of font size, column width,
leading, kerning, etc. All of these can be used to alter the overall
effect of the type on the page.
6.7
Leading
6.7
Consider the text that you have been reading. The bulk of the text is in
Times, plain, 10pt with 12pt leading and fully justified.
6.7
This paragraph, however, although in the same font and at the same size
as the rest has had the leading increased to 14pt. Leading refers to the
amount of space left clear between successive lines of text.
6.7
By default, it is generally set to 120% of the font size but can be
altered freely (as now where it has been set to 10pt) within most DTP
packages to give more or less ‘white space’.
6.7
The terminology here has come directly from the print industry where
this effect was achieved quite simply by inserting more, or less, thin
strips of lead between the lines of type. When referring to the way the
leading has been set we use terms like ‘10 on 12’ or ‘10 on 14’ where
the first value is the font size and the second the leading. Where the
leading and font values are the same (as in 10 on 10) the text is said
to be ‘set solid’.
6.7
Next, we have the font size to consider. This needs to be balanced to
suit the column width in which the text is to flow.
6.7
Make the font size too large and the text looks over-powering and may
clash badly with other settings, such as the justification, leaving
large, ugly gaps as here.
6.7
Make the font too small and the reader may well get lost trying to move
from line to line, not to mention the fact that it is simply far harder
to read small type. Furthermore, it darkens still further the appearance
of the page.
6.7
Justification format
6.7
This then leads us neatly on to the form of justification being used. In
all the text so far, we have been using full justification. This, by
adding extra spaces along the line, presents a straight left and right
margin on the text. It also has the effect of darkening the page while
being perceived as a very formal, ‘professional’ style of presentation.
6.7
One disadvantage is that it makes it a little more difficult for the
reader to move from line to line. This can be overcome by formatting the
text to ‘left align’. Here the text is only straight down the left
margin. If you are using narrow columns, it is advisable to stick to
left align.
6.7
In some situations you may wish to use ‘right align’, as used in this
paragraph. While it can be effective for specific situations, be aware
that for many readers it will be very difficult indeed to follow the
text from line to line. Use this for effect, not for major blocks of
text.
6.7
Finally, you have the option of formatting the text to the centre. As
you can see here, when used within columns for large blocks of text, it
does not produce a pleasing effect. In the right place, this give a
nice, balanced, feel to the text and can be exploited to great effect.
6.7
In each of the above, you should also be able to see the effects these
formats have on the ‘lightness’ of the printed page. It should also be
fairly clear that, when used in the wrong place, these formats can
destroy the effectiveness of the material being presented.
6.7
Kerning & tracking
6.7
For fear of stating the obvious, a font is made up of a collection of
individual characters. However, what may not be so obvious is that these
characters include blank space as well as the visible, printable,
character. This gives the space which surrounds each character, keeping
letters and lines apart. As already discussed, the degree to which lines
of text interact can be altered by changing the leading. Kerning and
tracking can be used to alter the amount of space between characters.
6.7
Kerning is used to alter the distance between specified letter pairs.
Take, for example, the word WAY. If you look closely, you will see that
each letter stands separate from the others. This has the effect of
spreading the work too much. By altering the kerning WAY becomes WAY.
The individual letters are drawn in (negative kerning) to give a better
‘feel’. Similarly, you can increase the kern, as in WAY. Tracking, on
the other hand, is used to alter the spread between letters across whole
words, or marked blocks, regardless of what letters are adjacent to each
other.
6.7
NOTE: In Ovation, although the menu system correctly offers kerning and
tracking, they both seem, in some circumstances, to do the same thing −
i.e. they both alter the tracking. In Impression, you also have the
extra option to alter the vertical tracking − a little like altering the
leading but offering some very interesting possibilities. As with all
these things, the best way to find what these option offer is to play.
Try things out − experiment!
6.7
E.g.
6.7

6.7

6.7

6.7
In the above example (with Ovation) the text was entered as two lines
‘Leading, Kerning &’ and ‘Tracking’. The T of Tracking was set to 72pt
with the rest of the word set to 36pt. The kern between T & r was set to
−90ems with the rest of the word tracked to 20em. Finally, the line
‘Leading, Kerning &’ was set to 14pt, tracked to −25em with leading set
to −40pt. A TAB was then set to line it to just after the T of Tracking.
6.7
As I hope you can see, these are powerful tools and worth a little
effort.  A
6.7

6.7
Leading, Kerning &
6.7
Tracking
6.7

6.7
Music Column
6.7
Stewart Watson
6.7
Digital Symphony from Oregan Developments, is a Tracker-type eight-
channel sound-sequencing package based completely in the RISC-OS desktop
environment.
6.7
The package comes as three discs and a manual in an A5 folder. Oregan
have gone for a Serial Registration number protection system which I
feel is a good compromise, in that it protects the supplier without
inconveniencing the customer.
6.7
The manual
6.7
The manual is comprehensive, though a bit dated in style. It reminded me
very much of manuals for programs for the trusty old BBC computer, which
tended to be wordprocessed and printed using the system font. Having
said that, it is very thorough and the content is clearly laid out,
starting with simple explanations of the main terms used.
6.7
Terminology
6.7
It might be of assistance to explain one or two of the main differences
in terminology between Tracker type programs and other sequencer
programs, such as Studio24 Plus and Inspiration.
6.7
In tracker programs, a pattern is a series of notes played, one at a
time and one after the other. A sequence is a group of patterns played
simultaneously. A track is a whole song. In conventional sequencers, a
track is a series of notes, or chords, played one at a time, one after
the other. A pattern is a number of simultaneous tracks and a sequence
is a number of consecutive patterns made into a song. So you see that
the same terms have totally different meanings according to the software
being used. Confusing isn’t it?
6.7
Samples
6.7
A sound sampler is a device used to record a digital version of an audio
sound into memory. This digital information can be saved and used in
music packages as sound samples. Sound samples can be used in both
tracker and other types of program.
6.7
Program disc
6.7
The main program disc contains three directories − the main !Symphony
application folder, a player module and a files folder, containing four
demonstration Symphonies. The version being reviewed is version 1.10,
14th December 1992.
6.7
Resource discs
6.7
Resource disc 1 contains two folders − one has files created with
Maestro which have been converted into Symphony format and the second
contains four Symphony demonstration pieces.
6.7
Resource disc 2 contains another two folders, one containing conversions
of OctMED files and the other with 48 sound samples for use in your own
‘symphonies’!
6.7
Loading
6.7
When the main program is loaded, two icons appear on the iconbar − a
compact disc icon for the main program and a slider with three coloured
buttons. Moving the slider to the red light position stops any sound
output from Symphony. In the yellow position, Symphony has priority for
sound output when running in the desktop. In the green position,
Symphony has total control over sound and you can run Symphony files
instead of in-game music.
6.7
Main features
6.7
Among the main features of Digital Symphony are:-
6.7
Maximum 4095 patterns
6.7
Maximum 5095 sequence positions
6.7
Maximum 64 sampled instruments
6.7
Written in pure ARM code
6.7
Fully Midi compatible
6.7
Built-in sample editing suite
6.7
Foreign file import/export facilities
6.7
Fully multitasking custom windows
6.7
Flexible cut and paste options
6.7
Saving
6.7
Tracks can be saved as Symphonies, with the option of using a packing
routine which compacts tracks to 2/3 their normal size, Archimedes
Tracker format, Amiga ProTracker format or as relocatable modules. A
useful feature is the ability to output details of the current file as a
text file, including information about the number of patterns used, a
printout of the sequence, details about each sample, effect and pattern.
6.7
Creating a pattern
6.7
To create a pattern, you simply open the edit pattern window − the event
number, the note number, the instrument number and the effects applied
to the notes can then be entered and edited.
6.7
Individual patterns can be saved, and unused patterns can be
automatically removed to save memory. Each pattern can be displayed on a
standard music score and any selection made in the pattern editor also
shows up on the score. The score page is, however, fairly rudimentary
and is not one of the program’s best features.
6.7

6.7
Sound editing
6.7
The in-built sound editing suite offers the usual facilities you would
expect from a sample editor, but a useful feature is that effects can
also be tested on samples by selecting the effect and its value in the
sample editor window.
6.7
Control desk
6.7
Control over the current track is the usual tape recorder style control
desk which provides control of tempo, number of tracks playing, as well
as the usual controls: start/stop, rewind, etc.
6.7
Sequence mode
6.7
A sequence is built up by selecting patterns from the pattern list and
placing them in the required position. Parts of sequences can be cut,
copied and pasted. Parts, or all, of any sequence can be saved as a data
file for use in other tracks.
6.7
Latest version
6.7
The latest version of Digital Symphony includes two support utilities.
One is for converting Amiga files in Med, OctaMED and OctaMED Pro
formats. The other is a converter which allows Maestro files to be
loaded into Digital Symphony and have effects added and to be edited as
any other Digital Symphony track.
6.7
Conclusion
6.7
Digital Symphony is a well constructed program which is intuitive to
use. The screens are well laid out and the manual contains all the
relevant information. It looks good on the screen, it feels good to work
with and, most importantly, it sounds good!
6.7
If you want to create relocatable modules for use in games, or are
content to use the internal sound chip for music creation, Digital
Symphony is highly recommended. However, even if you don’t fall into
either of the above categories, you will almost certainly derive a great
deal of pleasure from just playing with the excellent facilities
provided at little more than the cost of some games.
6.7
Digital Symphony is available from Oregan Software Developments at
£49.95 (inc VAT) or £46 through Archive.  A
6.7
Using RISC­OS 3.1
6.7
Hugh Eagle
6.7
I know that RISC­OS 3 has caused some problems, but to claim, as one of
my correspondents does, that the upgrade from RISC­OS 2 to RISC­OS 3 has
caused “more incompatibilities than the upgrade from 8-bit to 32-bit
machines” is taking things just a teeny bit too far. People will be
blaming Acorn for the performance of the England cricket team next!
6.7
I have recently set up an A4000 from scratch. It comes with the
operating system and the RISC­OS 3 Apps already installed, and
everything is beautifully logical and straightforward. If you stick to
up-to-date software and use a standard printer in a straightforward way,
everything is perfectly simple to use. On the strength of this
experience, I have no doubt that, for new machines and new users,
RISC­OS 3 is a considerable step forward. (The A4000 Home Office also
comes with a good wordprocessor, Easiwriter, and with the very easy-to-
use Desktop Database installed and ready to run. It’s a very far cry
from my A310, which was configured to start up on the command line and
it took me two hours to find out how to get to the “desktop”!)
6.7
As for us hardened upgraders, the question whether it was worth the
hassle is harder to answer. Perhaps Acorn should have waited until the
new operating system was more thoroughly tested before they released it,
but then they would have been criticised for keeping us waiting. Perhaps
they should have incorporated more radical improvements, but then the
incompatibility problems would doubtless have been far greater. In this
situation, they couldn’t win!
6.7
Anyhow, rather than complaining, we should direct our thoughts towards
the changes we would like to see next time round. I am accumulating a
number of suggestions for the RISC­OS 4 wish list which I hope to come
back to in a future column; please let me know if you have any to add.
6.7
Enough of the waffle, and on with the business ...
6.7
I am afraid that, again, I haven’t had time or space to use all your
contributions. I will in due course. Many thanks for them all.
6.7
Printing
6.7
Paper X and Y offsets and margins
6.7
This subject seems to have caused a lot of confusion, not least, I
imagine, because there is no reference to the Paper X and Y offsets in
the manual. (These were added after RISC­OS 3.0, I think, and seem to
postdate the manual, although they are mentioned briefly on page 20 of
the RISC­OS 3.10 Release Note.)
6.7
Before I go any further, I feel I should point out that this is a
technical area that the vast majority of users (who are happy to use the
supplied drivers and page settings) never need bother about.
6.7
The following explanation is based on contributions from Bruce Brown and
Tom Hughes and on some of the Read_Me files inside !Printers. It is also
based mainly on experience with HP Laserjets, although most of the
principles should apply equally to most other printers. I hope I have
got it right ...
6.7
The purpose of the Paper X and Y Offsets is to tell the printer driver
which part of the paper the printer is physically capable of printing on
or, in other words, to define where the printer will print if it is told
to print at the top left corner of the paper. These are set via the
!PrintEdit application. The Top and Left Margins, by contrast, define in
which part of the paper the user wants graphics to be printed. These are
set via the Paper Size window in the !Printers application. (It is these
that determine where the grey border appears when you choose the “Show
paper limits” or “Show print borders” option in Draw, Impression, etc.)
6.7
When the printer driver is asked to start printing at the top left
corner of the area defined by the margins: (1) first a printer reset
code is sent, then (2) the start of job codes are sent to the printer,
(3) the printhead (or the imaginary cursor in the case of a laser
printer) is told to move to the top left of the printable area (which,
if the X and Y offsets have been properly defined for the particular
printer, will be the same as the place which they define – i.e. point A
in the diagram below), (4) the printhead will then be moved down by
(Top margin − Y offset) and towards the right by
(Left margin − X offset) to point B, (5) the page will be printed.
6.7
If either of the margins has been incorrectly defined to be less than
the equivalent offset, i.e. so that the formula in (4) gives a negative
result, it will be ignored and the cursor will not be moved at all in
that direction.
6.7
How do you find out what the X and Y offsets should be? If it’s not
clear from your printer manual, the file called TopLeft in the Printers
directory on Applications disc 2 (together with the instructions in the
Read_Me file) might help. Alternatively, you could try deliberately
setting X and Y greater than the margins, so that the cursor movement in
(4) defaults to zero (as explained) and the top left of the image will
be printed at the default printhead position.
6.7
Under RISC­OS 2 only the “margins” could be defined and, for practical
purposes, these had to be set to match the physically printable area.
One of the advantages of the new approach is that if you only want to
print on a small part of the page you can set very wide margins and the
printer driver won’t waste time trying to print nothing (i.e. lots of
white space) in the unused area.
6.7
According to Archive 6.5 p37, Paul Skirrow has suggested setting
negative offsets to force the printer to start printing near the middle
of the page when, for instance, printing labels. Arithmetically this
will achieve the right effect, but not in the intended way! What you are
supposed to do is leave the X and Y offsets unchanged and increase the
margins.
6.7
What will happen if you try to set the margins to less than the paper
offsets? Bruce Brown says you must not do so, because this will cause
the driver to send more data to the printer than it can handle on one
page. The Printers.Read_Me file says that if you do, and if you then try
to print something right up to the top left of the margins, the image on
the paper will be shifted down and to the right of where it is supposed
to be, since you have tried to get the printer to print on the section
of the paper that it physically cannot print on.
6.7
The Printers.Read_Me file also notes that the paper offsets can be
negative. Apparently, the natural print position of some printers is
above the top and/or to the left of the top corner of the paper.
6.7
Contrary to what has been said in this column before, you can apparently
set the X and Y offsets to zero.
6.7
Owen Smith says: “You may be caught out by the way !PrintEdit stores the
paper offsets. Having changed the offsets in the main window, you then
have to open up every graphics resolution one by one and click OK in
each of them and then save the new printer definition file. This is
because the paper offsets are stored in the per graphics resolution data
(in pixels) and the graphics resolution data is encoded when OK is
clicked in the graphics window.”
6.7
Background printing
6.7
It doesn’t work – and that’s official!... I’ve been sent a copy of a
Technical Information news sheet from Acorn, which says: “The printer
buffer module supplied as part of RISC­OS 3 does not work correctly.
Even though the buffer has been configured to a large size, e.g. 2
Mbytes, the buffer module waits for the printer to complete its print
job before returning control to the user. Acorn is currently looking
into this problem and details will be made available if a fix is
produced.”
6.7
Jochen Konietzko, however, wonders what all the fuss is about. He
writes: “On my machine, an A410/1 (ARM 3), with the Ace ProDriver and
the HP DeskJet 500C, there is no problem at all! All I have to do is
configure a sufficiently large printer buffer. I’ve just tried it again
and, with a buffer of 1Mb, I can work in a database with just a slight
reduction in speed.”
6.7
The only reason I don’t use this option is that, unlike the font cache,
it is not possible to drag the task manager slider for the system heap/
stack below the limit set by the configuration of the buffer, so that
the memory is lost completely until a reset.
6.7
My standard setting for the printer buffer is 128 Kb, because that does
not slow printing down (with a 1024 Kb buffer, printing takes about 25%
longer than at 4 Kb, even if I don’t touch the keyboard at all) and yet
I have a kind of “emergency multitasking”; at least, when I decide to
cancel an Impression printout, the button responds almost instantly.
6.7
If I have to print several copies of a text, the print from a file is
better, anyway, because then the printer doesn’t try to hog all
available RAM.”
6.7
Perhaps the reason he has no problems is that the Ace ProDriver doesn’t
use the Acorn buffer module.
6.7
LaserDirect and TurboDrivers
6.7
Computer Concepts say that version 2.09b is now available as a free
upgrade to registered owners, as an interim measure. This fixes a few
minor problems (e.g. the patterning effects and the problems with
sprites with palettes attached) but is not a full RISC­OS 3 version. “CC
have a team working on the printer drivers but the amount of work
involved should not be underestimated – it’s going to take a couple of
months yet.” (This was written on 11th February.)
6.7
Printer driver space requirement
6.7
Acorn advises that you can reduce the amount of disc space taken up by
!Printers by removing (if you have a dot matrix printer) the following
directories from within the !Printers directory: lj, ps and PDumpers.
6.7
Checking if a printer is online
6.7
Acorn also warns of a problem that sometimes affects programs originally
written for the BBC micro. If these use the command ADVAL(-4) to check
if a printer is on- or off-line, this can cause the computer to crash
because the program will not be able to understand the information
returned by the command.
6.7
Problems with VDU2 printing
6.7
Roger Power has used a Basic program for years, which now refuses to
print, causing the computer to hang as if the printer had not been
switched on. The program just has a VDU2 command to cause the screen
output to be sent to the printer and doesn’t use any printer driver. (I
wonder if this problem might be connected to the one mentioned in the
previous paragraph?)
6.7
He then successfully printed a listing from Basic, using <Ctrl-B>, but
when he entered the command:
6.7
VDU2:PRINT TAB(10,5)“Archive” :VDU3
6.7
the word “Archive” was printed on the next line down in the first
column. In other words, the TAB was ignored.
6.7
He has an HP Deskjet 500C. (He normally uses a ProDriver and has no
problems with that.)
6.7
Richard Torrens uses Calligraph’s ArcLaser so doesn’t have a RISC­OS 3
driver installed. He also has a Basic program which uses VDU2 and worked
OK under RISC­OS 2, but now gives an error. He says the solution is to
type
6.7
Unset PrinterType$1
6.7
before entering the program (which doesn’t run in the desktop) and reset
on exit from the program.
6.7
1st Word Plus driver for Deskjet 550C
6.7
Barry Thompson has an answer from Acorn to the question he posed last
month: since the Acorn JP150 printer is an HP Deskjet compatible, use
the 1st Word Plus driver supplied on the JP150 support disc. This driver
also works with Laserjets. This driver supports all the printing effects
from 1st Word Plus but will not support the printing of graphics.
6.7
Programs That Work
6.7
The following programs have been reported as working without any
problems:
6.7
Fun School 4 (Under 5’s) – a new version works with RISC­OS 3
6.7
Manchester United Europe (Peter Young’s son thinks the football plays
faster)
6.7
Intersheet II
6.7
Wordwise A Plus
6.7
Mah Jong, The Game (the latest version – but Peter Young found that it
needed deleting from his hard disc and reloading before it would accept
keyboard input)
6.7
Hard Disc Companion from Risc Developments (but Peter Young has found it
to be much slower)
6.7
Thesaurus from Risc Developments
6.7
Chess, CrossStar and Spell from David Pilling.
6.7
It is interesting to observe that all but two of the programs that
Frances Obee asked about (Archive 6.5 p25) have been reported as working
fine. Of the other two: some problems with Atelier were mentioned last
month but I imagine that the publishers of a leading program such as
this must be able to supply a fix if one is needed; and Prime Art hasn’t
been mentioned at all and I imagine no news is good news.
6.7
Dave Wilcox has sent in a huge list of games that work, which serves to
illustrate two points: first, that most programs do work and second,
that lists of this kind are likely to lead to contradictions since he
reports some programs as working which have previously been reported as
giving trouble.
6.7
Rob Brown has begun compiling a database showing which programs work
(showing version numbers) and reporting compatibility problems that he
is aware of. So far, he has only included programs that he is familiar
with, and already the list is far too long to include in the magazine so
Paul is going to include it on the monthly magazine disc. If you have
anything to add to his database, his address is “Valtanee”, Brighton
Road, Lower Kingswood, Tadworth, Surrey, KT20 6UP.
6.7
Program Problems
6.7
David Holden has offered a couple of tips which may help you to get
programs working, especially demos − which seem to be the biggest
offenders.
6.7
Many demos speed up the system ROMs so that they can run faster. If it’s
a Basic demo, try looking for:
6.7
SYS “Update_MemC”,64,64
6.7
If you find it, either remove it or ‘REM’ it out. This call won’t work
with RISC-OS 3 and will make the computer hang. Symptoms are a complete
lock-up − even the mouse pointer won’t move.
6.7
Another is that the old minimum abbreviation for *CHANNELVOICE was
‘*CHA.’ and for *BASIC ‘*BA.’. These no longer work and require more
letters to be properly identified. There is a utility on one of the
RISC-OS 3 Applications discs which is supposed to cure these problems
but his experience is that this doesn’t always work, so you might need
to actually change the program.
6.7
David adds that RISC-OS 3 is also less tolerant of sloppy disc
identifiers, so filenames should always have a full filing system/path
name.
6.7
He also says that many programs give problems when Acorn’s !Alarm
application is running. This seems to be denied by everyone at Acorn but
it is a fact that he has verified for himself. This applies to a lot of
commercial software as well, so it isn’t just a PD problem but something
that !Alarm is doing. If you normally use !Alarm then try again without
it. If that solves the problem there are plenty of PD equivalents.
6.7
David also points out that many PD programs appear to be written in
machine code because, when you look in the application directory, you
see the ‘Application Code’ icon instead of a ‘Basic Code’ icon. However,
these programs are quite often not written in machine code or a compiled
language but have been disguised by a PD utility and are in fact Basic.
This doesn’t matter unless you want to make one of the changes described
above.
6.7
To restore this type of code to normal Basic, first load it into Edit.
If you have RISC-OS 3 Edit, you just need to hold down SHIFT and double-
click on the program icon to do this, if not you will need to drag the
program icon to the Edit icon. Don’t do anything to the original, but
work on a backup copy in case anything goes wrong. Now look at the first
line of the program. If it is disguised Basic, you will see the words
‘Basic -quit’ somewhere in this line. To change it back to normal Basic,
look for the first [0d] in the file − this will normally be at the end
of the first line. Delete everything up to but not including the [0d] so
that it becomes the first character in the file. Now re-save the file
and change its filetype to Basic (&FFB). If you now try reloading the
program into Edit (assuming you have the RISC-OS 3 version) you should
find that you have a normal Basic program to which you can make the
required changes.
6.7
One cause of compatibility problems that I have found is that !SparkFS
is, by default, configured to use the system sprite area for workspace.
Some older programs expect to have this all to themselves. In these
cases, a simple *SNEW command can help to get the program running.
(Obviously you must first make sure that SparkFS has saved any work-in-
progress!)
6.7
Dave Wilcox writes: “This is probably stating the obvious but, if you
have a hard disc system and normally boot up on the hard disc, it may
help to get games working properly if you configure the machine to Drive
0 instead of the Hard Disc and press <reset>. Also, before starting to
play a game, it is a good practice to open the drive holding the !System
directory, so that it enters the !System path into memory. Also, with
some games, it may be necessary to switch off the cache for ARM 3.”
6.7
Dave Wilcox also says that the following will NOT work under RISC-OS
3.10:
6.7
Powerband Mk2   (4th Dimension)
6.7
Saloon Cars      (4th Dimension)
6.7
Rotor      (Arcana)
6.7
Fireball      (C.I.S.)
6.7
Interdictor I (ver 1.01)   (Clares)
6.7
Corruption      (Magic Scrolls)
6.7
Thundermonk   (Minerva)
6.7
Ibix the Viking   (Minerva)
6.7
Brain Drain      (Minerva)
6.7
Grid Lock      (Minerva)
6.7
Freddy’s Folly   (Minerva)
6.7
Superior Golf & Const. Set   (Superior
Software)
6.7
Filing Systems
6.7
No floppy or hard drive icons?
6.7
Acorn advise: first of all, check that you have the correct number of
drives configured! Secondly, newer machines (A5000 onwards), on startup,
check to ensure that the configured drives are connected and if a drive
is not connected properly its icon may not be displayed − so check the
cable connections to the floppy drive.
6.7
ICS IDE hard drive
6.7
David Shepherdson found that, after he upgraded his A3000, his hard
drive didn’t work. Baildon Electronics, who are the service centre for
ICS, quickly fixed it. He adds, “In fact, as I also have a Calligraph
Laser Podule fitted, this also messed up my hard disc and Baildon fixed
that as well.”
6.7
Watford 5¼“ interface
6.7
Gordon Lindsay-Jones wrote to Watford (as Paul Beverley suggested) about
his problems with their buffer and has had no reply. He has come to the
conclusion that it does not work with RISC­OS 3.10! Can any readers help
by telling him which buffer(s) do work, please?
6.7
SCSI filer
6.7
Seán Kelly has discovered that his tip (Archive 6.5 p27) does not always
work. He writes: “Please allow me to apologise and to explain a proper
way to make the free space window work with SCSIFS.
6.7
“Originally, I advised adding a command to load the new SCSIFiler module
to the desktop boot file. This did work, but only − I have since
discovered − because my desktop boot file was also creating a RAMFS
disc. This forced the initialisation of the replacement module.” He
suggests that the answer is to split the boot process into two stages so
that the SCSI filer is initialised before the desktop is entered. (Tim
Nicholson confirms this.)
6.7
To do this first, rename the existing !Boot file as Deskboot, say, and
create an application directory called !Boot in the root directory and
move the Deskboot file into it. Then create an obey file called !Run
inside !Boot containing the following commands:
6.7
RMLoad SCSI::4.$.!System.
6.7
Modules.SCSIFiler
6.7
Desktop -file <obey$Dir>. Deskboot
6.7
(replacing 4 by the appropriate disc name).
6.7
If you want to smarten up the appearance of the !Boot application, you
can copy the sprites file_fea and small_fea from Resources:$.Wimp.
Sprites into a !Sprites file inside !Boot and rename the sprites !boot
and sm!boot.
6.7
The above is the approach which is also recommended on page 16 of the
RISC­OS 3.10 Release Note. An alternative way of achieving the same end
is (1) to rename the existing !Boot file (the one that contains all the
Filer_Boot and Filer_Run commands, etc) DeskBoot, say, (2) to copy it to
a safe place like the !System directory, (3) to create a new !Boot file
in the root directory, (4) to move into this new file the command to
RMLoad the SCSIFiler module and to add the command:
6.7
*Desktop -file SCSI::4.$.!System.DeskBoot
6.7
(replacing 4 by the appropriate disc name). To my mind, this way is
simpler because it avoids the necessity for creating sprite files,
renaming sprites, etc.
6.7
The $.!Boot.!Run file (under the Kelly/Acorn approach) or the !Boot file
(under mine) can now also be used to load or initialise all sorts of
things before the desktop is started − e.g. extra mode modules, virus
protection, ROM speed up programs, etc.
6.7
Miscellaneous Hints & Tips
6.7
Newlines in !Run files
6.7
P N Cousins says that if there is more than one linefeed at the end of
the !Run file of an application, if he tries “to use the menu button on
the icon” the machine locks up. I presume that he means that, if you
choose the Quit option on the iconbar menu, the application won’t quit.
This is something that I have noticed from time to time. (Invariably,
when it has happened to me, simply pressing <escape> has put things to
rights.) However, I have tried adding newlines galore to the ends of
!Run files without being able to repeat the phenomenon. Can anyone tell
us what is happening?
6.7
On page 16 of the RISC­OS 3.10 Release Note there is a cryptic
instruction that you should not enter any newlines after the second line
in a particular two-line !Run file. I wonder if this is connected.
6.7
Ian Hamilton says that, according to Acorn, Obey files with blank lines
aggravate what he calls a bug which can cause applications not to return
from their Obey files. He suspects that this may be the cause of the
problem that was blamed on Compression in Archive 6.5 p28.
6.7
Newlines at the end of !Boot files
6.7
P N Cousins also says that you must have a newline at the end of a !Boot
file or else the last line will be ignored. So, if you find that an
application which ought to be run by your !Boot file but isn’t, this
might be the answer.
6.7
Hiding the Apps in Resources
6.7
We have mentioned in a previous month that you can hide !Configure and
other ROM-based applications from prying eyes by typing *Unplug
!Configure (or whatever). Acorn advise that, if you do not want users to
see the Resources filing system, you can remove it from the iconbar by:
6.7
*Unplug ResourceFiler
6.7
Setting up an application
6.7
Tim Powys-Lybbe offers the following hints based on how he sets up
applications (using Impression as an example).
6.7
The technique I use is to construct an outer directory to hold (a) the
filer of work for the application and into which outer directory I also
place (b) the application as delivered from the supplier. I copy (c) the
!Sprite file from the application, give the outer directory the same
name as the application and make the !Run file do various things
including opening up the directory of working documents, the application
itself and then back up the working documents on exiting the
application. The !Boot file is more or less copied from the application
though you do need to choose a different system variable name for this
outer directory. (I just add Top to the application’s system variable
name for its directory.)
6.7
I have had several problems getting this working on RISC-OS 3, though
the end result is far better as I now have control over where the
directories open on the desktop and I get a nice clean view of the
Impression start-up picture.
6.7
1. Extension of Filer_OpenDir command
6.7
This command, which opens up a directory on the desktop, otherwise known
to Acorn as a filer, has been extended in RISC-OS 3 to allow you to
decide both where you want to place the filer on the desktop and how
large it is to be (the user guide gives details). For example, in the
!Run file, to open up Impression:
6.7
Filer_OpenDir <ImpressTop$Dir>. Templates 1000 700
6.7
This places the Templates filer with its top left at 1000 OS units
across the desktop from the left and 700 OS units up from the base line.
Acorn define 180 OS units as 1 inch on the screen though this must
presumably depend on the size of the monitor. You will have to
experiment with values for the directory position to get it where you
want on your desktop.
6.7
You can add information about the width and height of the directory by
adding two more numbers:
6.7
Filer_OpenDir <ImpressTop$Dir>. Templates 1000 700 1200 130
6.7
The third number is the width of the directory and the fourth number is
its height. In mode 39, 130 OS units high just accommodates a single row
of the large icon size. (Isn’t the height of an icon, in screen units,
mode-independent?)
6.7
2. Opening an ArcFS directory
6.7
I have had some correspondence with Mark Smith, the ever-helpful author
of this excellent package, and have at last found how to make ArcFS
directories open up from within the !Run file. It is done in two stages,
first:
6.7
OpenArchive <ImpressTop$Dir>. Documents
6.7
Documents is the name of an ArcFS archive that is stored within the
Impression outer directory. Note that ArcFS should already be on the
iconbar for this Open_Archive command to work as it is an ArcFS module
command; you can of course start up ArcFS from within this same !Run
file.
6.7
The second command is:
6.7
Filer_OpenDir ArcFS#Documents:$ 600 1400 1800 260
6.7
The syntax is fairly obvious if you look at the top of the directory for
your archive once it is open!
6.7
3. Backing up to a floppy
6.7
I have a little application tagged on to the end of the Impression !Run
file to cause a back up of the Documents archive after exiting
Impression (or any other application I hasten to add). With RISC-OS 2 it
would work with:
6.7
*COPY <ImpressTop$Dir>.Docu-
6.7
ments :0.Documents
6.7
In RISC-OS 3 this produces an error and one must use instead:
6.7
*COPY <ImpressTop$Dir>.Docu-
6.7
ments ADFS::0.Documents
6.7
Setting up Pinboard without a hard disc
6.7
Brian Fielding has developed an interesting use of the Pinboard, which
he says is especially useful for those without a hard disc:
6.7
After ‘playing’ with RISC-OS 3 for a few days and realising some of the
benefits of the PinBoard, which are obviously more beneficial if you
have a Hard Disc, I worked out a mechanism to fully utilise the PinBoard
so that, when the system was first booted, it would contain all the
applications I would want to access.
6.7
The mechanism described below will display the Applications and when an
icon is double-clicked the appropriate disc will be requested and the
application will be loaded.
6.7
This should be read in conjunction with Chapter 7 of the RISC-OS 3 User
Guide, “Desktop Boot Files”.
6.7
Setting up pseudo-applications
6.7
For each application you wish pinned to or loaded onto your pinboard,
set up a pseudo-application as follows:
6.7
Copy the application, say !AppName, to an empty disc and, using <shift>
and double-click <select>, display the contents of the application.
6.7
Delete all files and directories except !Boot, !Run and !Sprites.
6.7
Edit !Boot to contain the four lines, in the order given:
6.7
IconSprites <Obey$Dir>.!Sprites
6.7
Set AppName$Dir ADFS::DiscName. $.!AppName
6.7
Set Alias$@RunType_fff Run <AppName$Dir>.!Run %%*0
6.7
Set File$Type_fff FileName
6.7
AppName is the name of your application e.g. PipeDream
6.7
DiscName is the name of the disc containing the original application.
6.7
fff is the application’s FileType. (This line should be present in the
original !boot file. There may be other Alias$@RunType_fff lines and
these should also be left.)
6.7
FileName is the Filetype name, e.g. PDream. (This is not essential.
Again there may be others and should be left if desired.)
6.7
Note: <Obey$Dir> must only be used as a pathname to !Sprites. The full
pathname to the original Application must be established, including the
disc name.
6.7
Edit !Run to contain (or create an Obey file):
6.7
Run <AppName$Dir>.!Run
6.7
Do not alter !Sprites. Copy !AppName to your Desktop Boot Disc. Add the
following lines to the !Boot file on your Desktop Boot Disc
‘DskTopBoot’. (See note below if using a RAM disc.):
6.7
Filer_Boot ADFS::DskTopBoot.$. !AppName
6.7
Pin ADFS::DskTopBoot.$.!AppName 100 300
6.7
100 300 represents the position on the PinBoard. With the origin at the
bottom left of your screen, this represents 100 units to the right and
300 units up. Your next application should be placed at 300 300. You
can, of course, pin your applications anywhere on the board.
6.7
If you wish your application to be ready for use, use ‘Run ...’ instead
of ‘Pin ...’.
6.7
RAM disc available
6.7
Unfortunately, the above will require you to load the Boot disc each
time you load any application.
6.7
If you have sufficient space available in memory, create a RAM disc of
at least 64Kb. You need, on average, 7 Kb per application.
6.7
Prepare as above but copy your pseudo-applications to a directory, say,
PseudoApps, on your Boot Disc.
6.7
You will then need to modify your !Boot file as follows:
6.7
Ensure you have a large enough RAM disc.
6.7
Change DynamicArea -RamFsSize 64K.
6.7
Add the line
6.7
COPY ADFS::DskTopBoot.$. PseudoApps.* RAM::RamDisc0. $.* ~CQR~V
6.7
Modify both the Filer_Boot and the Pin (or Run) lines from
‘ADFS::DskTopBoot’ to read ‘RAM::RamDisc0’.
6.7
Notes
6.7
Ensure that you have configured the system to boot from Disc by loading
your Boot disc and executing *Opt4,2 in command line mode.
6.7
Some applications, e.g. Lemmings, are set up to delete RAM disc on
startup and tidy up when QUITed, e.g. UnSet Directories. These should be
altered:
6.7
For Lemmings, the file !Lemmings.!Run should add | at the start of the
line TequeMen and Unset Lem$Dir.
6.7
If memory is a problem, the amount of RAM space can be reduced by adding
a line Delete RAM::RamDisc0.!AppName.!Sprites after the corresponding
Filer_Boot line. This will approximately halve the required space.
6.7
If you have sufficient RAM disc space, it would be helpful to place
!Scrap in it.
6.7
ROM/RAM podule available
6.7
If you have a ROM/RAM podule, with battery backup, then setting up the
pseudo-applications onto the RAM will make application selection much
more user-friendly.
6.7
If you have a ROM/RAM podule, make this your Boot system. Simply follow
the above but change ‘ADFS::DskTopBoot.’ to ‘RFS:’ and remember, in
Command Line mode, to:
6.7
*Configure FileSystem RFS
6.7
*RFS
6.7
*OPT4,2
6.7
*ADFS
6.7
Examples
6.7
The monthly program disc has examples for disc, RAMDisc and for the ROM/
RAM podule.
6.7
Matters Arising
6.7
Backing up in one pass (Archive 6.5 p36)
6.7
Put the following command in your !Boot file:
6.7
Wimpslot -next 800K
6.7
Solid sprite dragging (Archive 6.6 p61)
6.7
(This gets even more bizarre!) Would you believe that, to turn sprite
dragging off, your new friendly operating system requires you to issue
the following commands?
6.7
SYS “OS_Byte”,161,28 TO ,,R2
6.7
R2=R2 AND 253
6.7
SYS “OS_Byte”,162,28,R2
6.7
(Thanks to David Shepherdson for that!)
6.7
!CMOS_Edit: WARNING!
6.7
Bruce Brown warns that, although !CMOS_Edit can be used as I mentioned
last month (Archive 6.6 p60) to save, load and view the CMOS RAM
effectively, if you use the Edit and Update feature, you will be in
trouble. This is because Acorn have now implemented the (previously
reserved) checksum byte at the end of the CMOS RAM. When you “Update”,
!CMOS_Edit will overwrite the correct value with the old incorrect
value. Since the checksum routine is relative, it will then always be
wrong until the power on/delete routine is performed. Until then,
whenever you startup, the operating system will find that the checksum
is wrong and will use default settings rather than those stored in the
CMOS.
6.7
!CMOS_Edit is easily fixed to overcome this: look in the !RunImage
(Basic) file for the loop which writes the values to CMOS RAM and change
the loop counter from 0 TO 239 to 0 TO 238. Leave the loops for saving
and loading alone − they obviously must load and save everything as
previously.  A
6.7
Help!!!!
6.7
•   Archway − I returned my red disc to Simtron because it was faulty but
they will not send me a new one!! Could anyone please help by sending me
a copy of theirs? Call Roger on 0727−851140 (eves) or 0895−233909 (day).
6.7
•   BBC model B needed − Has anyone got an old BBC B computer, perhaps
with a duff keyboard, that they don’t want? We would be happy to pay a
few pounds for one. Ed.
6.7
•   BDS 630/8 laser printer − Is there anyone out there who has a BDS 630/
8 laser printer and has worked out some sort of RISC-OS 3.10 printer
driver for it? Please contact Paul Hooper 11, Rochford Road, Martham,
Great Yarmouth, NR29 4RL, Phone 0493−748474.
6.7
•   Econet Column − Is anyone interested in helping (in however small a
way) with the preparation of an Econet Column? Dave Emsley of 746
Manchester Road, Stocksbridge, Sheffield S30 5EA has offered to
coordinate things, so get in touch with Dave if you think you can help
in any way.
6.7
•   GNU C/C++ compiler − If anyone would like to help in the beta testing
of a GNU C/C++ compiler for the Archimedes please contact Simon Callan,
2 Malden Road, Borehamwood, Herts WD6 1BW or on E-Mail at [e-mail].
6.7
•   Panasonic KX-P1081 − Can anyone supply a RISC-OS 3 driver suitable for
printing text and graphics on a 1081?  Peter Jennings, St Albans.
6.7
•   Programming help needed − A school in North Norfolk needs some help in
programming. It is not a complex task − it could be programmed in Basic.
The project is related to a publicly available database they have
produced for a local marina. There is some money available to pay for
the time used in doing the programming. A local person would be best so
that you can see the project as it has been developed thus far but it
could be done at-a-distance. If you are interested, Ring Roger Bird at
Sheringham High School on 0263−822363 or fax him on 825907.
6.7
•   RISC-OS compatibility list − Rob Brown has started to compile a
comprehensive list of applications that do and don’t work on RISC-OS 3
and whether they install on hard disc. If you can help by feeding him
information about different applications, write to him directly: R A
Brown, Valtanee, Brighton Road, Lower Kings Wood, Tadworth, Surrey, KT20
6UP, or write via Archive, if you prefer. His list thus far is on this
month’s program disc in PipeDream, Edit and Impression format. (The file
is a table with 11 columns, so the Edit file is almost unreadable − it
will have to be loaded into a spreadsheet or WP or DTP package and
formatted to make it readable.) We will re-publish the information on
the monthly disc from time to time as it is updated.
6.7
•   Science software − I should be interested to hear from anyone who has
produced any software for Chemistry or indeed for any natural science
topic. We have quite a lot of our own (physical) chemistry related
software here, although some of it is rather specialised. I would be
happy to release some of this as PD or shareware but it would be nice if
a complete disc could be made up with a wider range of software on it.
Anyone who contacts me and sends a disc is welcome to a selection of
programs on the understanding that my own are at A level or at the
higher education level. Those who actually send a piece of their own
software will get a larger selection in return! Contact Chris Johnson,
Department of Chemistry, Heriot-Watt University, Riccarton, Edinburgh,
EH14 4AS.  A
6.7
Help Offered
6.7
•   More molecular modelling − Anyone interested in molecular modelling is
welcome to have a copy of the modelling program I have written. Send a
blank formatted disc and an SAE and I will send you a copy. Simon
Kilvington, 18 Bullar Street, Newtown, Southampton, SO2 0NH. (See the
mini-review on page 29.)
6.7
•   Walschaerts Valvegear for steam locomotives. Numerical solution (for
Archimedes) available on receipt of a 3½“ disc and s.a.e. to WB Hall,
High Raise, Eskdale, Cumbria, CA19 1UA (09467−23275).  A
6.7
Just Yoking!
6.7
Tord Eriksson
6.7
For flight simulator buffs, using a mouse to mimic a control yoke or
joystick is definitely not the ideal solution.
6.7
True analog joysticks needs specially written software and an analog-to-
digital interface and, because Acorn deleted the BBC-type analog port on
the Archimedes range, they cost a lot of money. One possible alternative
joystick is the Delta Cat Mouse Eliminator that plugs directly into the
mouse connector. However, it is an odd contraption and I have had little
success with it. Some swear by it, though.
6.7
Enter the Mouse Yoke
6.7
Just in time for Christmas, a package arrived from Simis, the flight
simulator company. It contained a “Mouse Yoke” made by a US company
called Spectrum. It cost £24.95, all inclusive, from Simis. If you want,
it can be upgraded to a “Mouse Wheel”, a steering wheel, for $19.95 plus
p&p, direct from Spectrum in sunny Colorado.
6.7
The mouse is strapped back-to-front onto the Mouse Yoke, whose body is
secured to the table with a clamp.
6.7
The idea behind this entirely mechanical device is to turn your mouse
into a yoke, or steering wheel, by strapping your mouse on top of the
yoke shaft (see illustration).
6.7
Unpacking
6.7
The package contained one manual, a “Quick Start” leaflet, a
registration card, a “Mouse Wheel” voucher and the disassembled yoke.
The yoke comes in four parts: a plastic shaft, a plastic yoke, an
aluminium clamp and an extruded aluminium body. The latter has one hole
for the shaft, a slit along the top (for the mouse ball to make contact
with the shaft), an elastic strap (called a ‘seat belt’ by the
manufacturer!) and a receptacle for the clamp. No software is included.
Everything is very high quality, heavy duty and very, very black.
6.7
Assembly
6.7
It is very easy to assemble the yoke − force the shaft into the yoke,
clamp the body to your table, fit the mouse under the strap with the
“tail” and buttons pointing towards you and push the shaft into its
hole.
6.7
Yoking with a MiG-29M
6.7
There is no fighter aircraft I know of that ever used a yoke but it is
common on commercial and other multi-engine aircraft, like the Boeing
747 or the British Aerospace Jetstream. Older multi-engine aircraft
usually used a wheel, sometimes huge, and some modern ones use a tiny
joystick.
6.7
First of all, you will notice that the key “Z” comes in handy to centre
controls. You might have to fiddle with the mouse’s sensitivity.
6.7
According to the MiG-29M manual, keys 1, 2, and 3 are used to change the
sensitivity, but I can’t notice any difference. I usually set the
controls to very sensitive and fly with autostab on, until I need to
fight other aircraft or attack ground targets.
6.7
Compared to real controls, it is just as sturdy but the friction and
delay are missing. The main problem is reaching the buttons on top of
the mouse and the fact that they are reversed − <select> becomes
<adjust> and vice versa − but you easily get used to it.
6.7
If your mouse is too insensitive, you might run out of elevator, but
that is easily corrected by increasing the mouse step setting. If you
want, you can always add a *Configure mousestep n to the MiG-29M’s !Run
file, so your Mouse Yoke automatically gets the right feeling.
6.7
A warning for table tops that are not perfectly horizontal. If you let
go of the yoke, it tends to slide out of the body as the friction is so
low!
6.7
Conclusion
6.7
I think my money was well spent, as it is usable for other simulations,
like E-Type and Chocks Away, and will function on practically any
computer using a mouse. My very stiff old A3000-style mouse did not work
very well and optical mice are also useless but the newer Acorn mice
from Logitech work very well indeed!
6.7
It has a nice finish, good construction and a well-written manual
(mainly for PC and Mac users) − what else do you need? The only addition
you might like to make is a second mouse and a mouse cable splitter, so
you don’t have to fit the mouse each time you want to go for a spin! Or
you might try fitting switches to the yoke itself, as in a real
aircraft, and rewiring your spare mouse’s buttons to the yoke’s.  A
6.7
Quest For Gold
6.7
Myles Thorne
6.7
Krisalis Software Ltd have capitalised on the fact that the Olympic
Games were held during last summer by introducing an Olympic Games
simulation program. The game is supplied on two disks which are copy-
protected but replaceable if proved to be faulty.
6.7
The game
6.7
The purpose of the game is to win medals in five events: 100m sprint,
110m hurdles, javelin, high jump and long jump. A series of heats leads
to the finals in each event and then medals can be won.
6.7
The game itself has three aspects:
6.7
Management
6.7
The player manages ten athletes and is responsible for training them to
win the medals. This can be achieved through a programme of training
relevant to the events. The performance of each athlete depends on how
well the player has put together the athletic attributes: agility,
power, strength, speed and stamina coupled with skilful use of the
mouse.
6.7
Arcade only
6.7
This is the simplest way of playing the game as training of the athletes
is not required. The player uses already trained athletes who are not
gold medal prospects − but it is a good way of learning the game.
6.7
Full simulation
6.7
This gives the player control of the other two sections of the game and
an opportunity to create a squad of world class athletes who could make
a clean sweep of the medals.
6.7
I would advise players to start with the Arcade mode until they have
more knowledge of the game and have learned how to use the mouse to its
greatest effect.
6.7
Famous British athletes such as Colin Jackson, Steve Backley, Fatima
Whitbread, Dalton Grant, Kriss Akabussi, Sally Gunnell and John Regis
are featured in the program but it is possible to select a team from 17
different nationalities.
6.7
Conclusion
6.7
The more proficient you get, the more fascinating Quest for Gold
becomes. Allow plenty of time to play the game as it will keep you
engrossed for hours, trying time after time to improve your previous
performance.
6.7
The only criticism I have is that once the game is mastered, there are
no further challenges and winning, in some events, becomes easy. The
program itself has one of the best information leaflets for a game I
have ever seen with easy-to-understand advice from loading the game to
winning the medals. Whether you like athletics or not, I think ‘Quest
For Gold’ is a worthwhile addition to your collection.  A
6.7
Oak
6.7
New − coming in the morning “before 9.00 a.m.”
6.7
Colton
6.7
From 6.6 page 27
6.7
SpaceTech
6.7
From 6.6 page 16
6.7
 TextAid − Text Processing Utilities
6.7
Ian Williamson
6.7
This article is about (and written with the aid of) TextAid Version
1.26. TextAid is a multi-tasking application which has been designed to
work with other applications on the Archimedes Desktop, in order to
provide text handling facilities that are not normally available to
them. The application is fully compliant with RISC-OS 3.1.
6.7
Main features of TextAid
6.7
Up to 20 Macros can be defined which can be inserted into any document
or writable icon with input focus. Quick macros can also be selected and
date and time can be inserted.
6.7
Text can be transferred from any text icon or window title bar to a
document or writable icon with input focus.
6.7
Printer control codes to produce printing effects such as Bold,
Underline, etc, can be inserted in documents created in Edit and similar
editors which do not provide printer control facilities.
6.7
CSV and TSV files can be converted to text files and vice versa. Text
files can be converted from other systems with options to strip out
control codes and convert top-bit-set characters to 7-bit characters.
6.7
Getting started
6.7
Starting TextAid in the usual way puts an attractive icon on the right-
hand side of the iconbar. Clicking <menu> over the iconbar icon displays
a menu with eight options: Info, Open window, Increment 1, Increment 2,
Define codes, Hot keys, Warning and Quit.
6.7
Open window option leads to a sub-menu with five further options:
Macros, Codes, Quick macros, Transfer and Convert. Apart from Quick
macros, each of these refers to one of TextAid’s windows and provides
one of the application’s facilities. Choosing one of these options
toggles the corresponding window open or closed; it is ticked if a
window is open. A nice feature is that clicking <menu> over any of
TextAid’s windows displays a menu with four options: Info, Open window,
Save macros and Clear macros. Open window gives the same five options as
obtained from the iconbar menu; Save macros and Clear macros are only
active from the Macros window and are greyed out from the other windows.
6.7
Increments 1 and 2 set the initial value and step size of two
independent numbers which can be inserted into the macros, for paragraph
numbers for example, and which increase in value each time the macro is
used to insert a string into the text.
6.7
Define codes option leads to a dialogue box which enables the user to
define the control codes for five printer functions: this is described
later.
6.7
Macros
6.7
TextAid’s main window is called Text macros. On the right-hand side of
this window are twenty writable icons arranged in two groups of ten, and
each is capable of holding a text string of 80 characters.
6.7
To the left of each writable icon is an icon containing a red arrow;
clicking <select> on this inserts the text string at the caret position
in the document you are working on. Alternatively, by clicking <adjust>,
text can be deleted before insertion of the text string. This only works
for editors which use <ctrl-X> to delete marked text. This can be
disastrous, so TextAid gives a warning first, but the warning can be
turned off from the iconbar menu.
6.7
Macros can also be inserted into a dialogue box but just clicking on an
arrow will not work because the box disappears when you do so. I am
pleased that an alternative method has been provided for those
circumstances. If you move the pointer over the red arrow for the macro
and press <alt>, the macro is inserted just as if the arrow had been
clicked. I think this is a very useful feature, especially for inserting
strings into search and replace dialogue boxes, and it works very well
with both Edit and PipeDream.
6.7
TextAid also recognises a few special character sequences which may be
included in a macro string. All of them start with the vertical bar
character “|” and accept upper or lower case letters.
6.7
|D inserts the current date
6.7
|T inserts the current time
6.7
|F followed by a single digit inserts a function key code, i.e. |F1
calls key f1 of the application that has input focus.
6.7
|M followed by a two digit number inserts one of the other macros
6.7
|N inserts a new line
6.7
|I inserts an increment figure, i.e. |I1 inserts Increment 1 etc, where
the initial value and step size are set from the iconbar menu, as
described above.
6.7
With these special character sequences TextAid can add remarkable
flexibility to your editor, word processor or DTP application,
especially if you also use the hot key option, described later.
6.7
All 20 macros can be saved as a standard text file (filetype &FFF).
Different sets of macro files can be used for different purposes, giving
great flexibility when using other applications.
6.7
You can load macros by dragging a macro file onto the iconbar icon, or
onto the Text macros window. Any text file may be loaded in this way,
and overwrites any macros already in TextAid without giving any warning.
An existing macro file can be edited in the Text macros windows, but
this is tedious if you want to change the order of any of the macros. It
is easier to use a text editor such as Edit. Alternatively, you can
click <menu> over TextAid’s main window, select Clear macros and start
again in a blank window. When you do this, TextAid will give a warning
and ask whether you wish to proceed.
6.7
Quick macros
6.7
TextAid provides two ways to access macros quickly without having the
main window open on the desktop. You can either open a Quick macros
window from the Open windows sub-menu, or switch on Hot keys from the
iconbar menu: I have used both and find them both useful.
6.7
The Quick macros window contains twenty numbered icons and four further
icons labelled Date, Time, Inc1 and Inc2. By clicking on any of these
icons, you can insert various macros at the caret or insert the current
date or time or incremented numbers 1 or 2.
6.7
Although PipeDream has an excellent facility for inserting Date, which I
use when I want the value to be updated automatically, I find it quicker
and easier to use TextAid to insert a value that does not change.
6.7
A very useful feature of Version 1.26 is the new option called Hot keys.
When this option is selected, macros can be inserted into the text with
a single keypress. For example, pressing <alt> plus one of the function
keys <f1> to <f10> inserts macros 1 to 10, and pressing <shift-alt> plus
<f1> to <f10> will insert macros 11 to 20. The toggle on/off facility is
provided in case any other applications use these key combinations.
6.7
As a dedicated PipeDream user, I thought this was a very intelligent
choice, since neither PipeDream 3 or 4 use <alt> with any of the
function keys. I have used all the <shift>, <ctrl> and <ctrl-shift>
function key combinations plus some of the other darker grey keys to
carry out various PipeDream commands, so I was delighted to be able to
use <alt> and <shift-alt> function key combinations: I used them
extensively to insert oft repeated words and strings, such as “TextAid”
and “RISC-OS 3.1”, whilst writing this review.
6.7
Printer Control Codes
6.7
TextAid enables printer control codes, or escape sequences, to be
inserted into the text that you are writing in Edit, SrcEdit and similar
editors, to produce specific effects when the text file is sent to the
printer. This feature should not be used with sophisticated document
processors such as PipeDream as very strange things are likely to
happen.
6.7
TextAid is set up to provide the following printer functions: bold,
superscript, italic, underline and subscript. Each printer function has
an On and Off icon. The codes are set out in this order on the Control
codes menu, which I find rather curious; I would have thought that a
more sensible order would have been underline, bold (or vice versa),
italic, and finally superscript and subscript. Apparently the default
order was chosen so that the short codes for bold, italic and underline
would be the same as DeskEdit: this would be useful for anyone moving up
to DeskEdit, since any Edit documents with codes inserted would still be
usable. The order in which the codes are set out is a matter of personal
preference, and it is a simple matter to alter the order if you wish.
6.7
At the top of the Control codes window is an icon labelled Escape, to
enable you to insert additional control codes, e.g for different fonts
or character pitch. At the bottom of window is a pair of radio buttons
labelled Shortcode and Literal.
6.7
If the Shortcode icon is selected, a single non-printable ASCII
character (top-bit-set) is inserted in the text, which will act as a
marker and will be expanded by the RISC-OS printer driver to the full
escape sequence during printing. The TextAid handbook gives very clear
instructions about how to set up both RISC-OS 2 and RISC-OS 3 printer
drivers to interpret these shortcodes.
6.7
I am quite certain that I have correctly edited the character mappings
of the RISC-OS 3 printer definition of my Panasonic KX-P1124 printer to
insert the codes to switch the required printing effects on and off, but
!Printers will not correctly print a document with shortcodes inserted
in the text. I fear this is yet another problem with !Printers; so far
as I am aware it is not a problem with TextAid.
6.7
If the Literal icon is selected, the full escape sequence is inserted in
the text. It is possible that you would often insert the full code
sequence, especially if you want to send your document to someone else,
since an ASCII text with full printer codes can be used by anyone.
6.7
The only thing you have to remember is that if you format the text with
wordwrap, which is now a standard feature of text editors such as Edit,
inserting either the shortcode or the full code sequence will upset the
format. I have found that it pays to complete your text and obtain the
text format you want, without inserting any printer codes; then turn off
wordwrap and finally insert the codes you require.
6.7
TextAid defaults to Epson compatible codes. You can change the printer
control codes for your printer, or the order in which they are set out.
The Define codes window provides five writable icons for the names of
the printer functions (maximum 10 characters). To the right of each
printer function name is a pair of writable icons into which you type
the on and off printer control codes for your printer. Unlike some
applications, TextAid does not have the flexibility to allow you to
insert the control codes in different formats: the decimal value of the
Escape code and printer code symbol have to be used, separated by
commas.
6.7
Transferring text
6.7
The Transfer option of TextAid enables text to be transferred from text
icons or window title bars. At first, I was a little sceptical about the
usefulness of this feature of TextAid, but I rapidly found it to be very
useful indeed. Text can be transferred in one of two ways: via the
Transfer window allowing you to edit the text, or directly from icon to
caret with one keypress.
6.7
Choosing the Transfer option from the Open window sub-menu opens a small
window with two icons labelled Transfer in and Transfer out, and a
writable icon long enough for 80 characters. Clicking on the Transfer in
icon changes it to Waiting... ; i.e. waiting for you to transfer text.
Click over the icon or title bar containing the text you want to
transfer and the text will appear in the writable icon, but truncated if
it is longer than 80 characters.
6.7
It is also possible to transfer text directly from a document editor if
the editor can save a marked section of text as text file. You drag the
text file icon from the save dialogue box directly onto TextAid’s
Transfer window. This enables text to be transferred from a document to
a writable icon belonging to another application, which is virtually
impossible to do by any other method. The text can be edited in the
Transfer window, if required, and transferred out to the caret by
clicking on the Transfer out icon.
6.7
Text can also be transferred into a dialogue box, but just clicking on
the Transfer out icon will not work, because the box disappears when you
do so. I have found that an alternative method works, as it did with
Macros, although it is not documented in the handbook. Move the pointer
over the Transfer out icon and press <alt>.
6.7
If you do not need to edit the text, an alternative transfer method is
provided which is extremely easy, and I have found that you do not even
need to have the Transfer window open. All you have to do is position
the pointer over the icon or title bar containing the text you want to
transfer and press <alt-insert>. To delete text first, just press <alt-
delete>. Again, this only works for editors which use <ctrl-X> to delete
marked text, and TextAid gives a warning. No warning is given when text
in a dialogue box is deleted first.
6.7
I think this is a very useful feature, especially for inserting long
path names from filer or application title bars without having to type
the whole name or, more importantly, without making mistakes. For
example, in PipeDream I like to use the Files Option dialogue box to
give my document a title which is the same as the complete path name;
that way I can insert it in a header or footer, or at a suitable point
in the text, as a method of identifying the document and hopefully
recovering it from my filing system at some date in the distant future.
6.7
I have also found it useful to copy a complete equation from the Edit
expression box of PipeDream in text form as part of an explanation in
the same or another PipeDream document. Despite my dedication to
PipeDream, which has its own perfectly adequate procedures, I find this
is so much easier to remember and do using TextAid.
6.7
Convert
6.7
TextAid enables CSV and TSV files to be converted to text files and vice
versa. Some text files from other systems can also be converted for use
on Archimedes, with options to remove control codes and convert top-bit-
set characters to standard 7-bit ASCII characters. This can make the
transfer of files from PC word processors easier, although TextAid does
not set out to be anything more than an aid.
6.7
The Convert file window has a set of five radio icons: CSV to text, Text
to CSV, TSV to text, Text to TSV and Text to text. At the bottom of the
window, two icons, LF and CR-LF, are used to select the line separator
when converting to CSV/TSV.
6.7
To convert a file, you drag the file icon onto the Convert window. After
a pause, a standard save box opens with an icon of the appropriate
filetype and the pathname of the original file. You may change the file
name and save the file in all the accepted ways. I found it quite
convenient to be able to drag the file icon into Edit or PipeDream,
rather than save it to a directory first. TextAid will only accept text
and CSV files with the correct filetype, and will save with the
appropriate filetype. TextAid accepts any filetype when converting from
TSV, but checks to see if there are any tab characters in the file. If
there are none, an error will be assumed and warning given. As there is
no filetype for TSV files, these will be saved untyped.
6.7
I have not checked the Convert facility of TextAid as thoroughly as some
of the other aspects of the application, because I do not have a wide
variety of different file types to convert, or suitable applications to
verify the conversion. However, I have found it quite useful to be able
to edit files from different applications, from a PC for example, that I
have not been able to read before.
6.7
Quibbles
6.7
The keyboard and mouse are not disabled whilst text is being inserted
into a document or dialogue box, from either a Text macro or the
Transfer window. Thus if you type anything or press a mouse button too
quickly, the transferred text will obviously be garbled, or something
worse might even happen. It is not really fair to suggest that this is a
shortcoming of the application because TextAid is providing facilities
not normally available under RISC-OS, and this is a small price to pay
for that flexibility, but you do have to be careful.
6.7
The only other small quibble I have is that TextAid does not have the
flexibility to allow you to insert the printer codes in different
formats. However, this is not a real issue, because anyone who has
survived an encounter with often abstruse printer handbooks, and knows
enough about the arcane art of printer codes to dare change any, should
be able to cope with almost anything!
6.7
Documentation and support
6.7
The documentation is given in a 14 page A5 booklet. Although short, it
is easy to follow and perfectly clear how to get the best out of the
application.
6.7
The handbook suggests that if you have problems, you should phone and
discuss them. My experience is that the author is very quick to correct
problems − there were a few with the original review copy. He also seems
very receptive to new ideas and keen to incorporate them if possible − I
made a few suggestions that were rapidly added. (I had better finish
this review quickly before he includes any more and it gets any longer.)
6.7
Conclusion
6.7
So far as I can tell, TextAid works well with Edit, PipeDream and even
Draw and DrawPlus. I have used most of its facilities successfully with
all those applications, although some facilities are obviously not
applicable to all of them. I have very few quibbles, and I think it is
worth every penny, whichever text editor, word processor or DTP package
you are using. It’s also worth having for transferring text from title
bars, or into dialogue boxes, of any application. In short, I strongly
recommend TextAid − get it, you won’t regret it.
6.7
TextAid, priced £12.95 inc VAT and p&p, is supplied by Rheingold
Enterprises. (Now available from Archive at £12.)  A
6.7
Hardware Column
6.7
Brian Cowan
6.7
It is certainly the case that, as time goes on, there are more and more
products which exploit the power and potential of the Archimedes. It is
as well, however, to keep an eye trained on the PC world to know what
products are available. If it can be done on a PC, it must be possible
on an Archimedes. I am referring here particularly to all manner of
devices which can be connected to a PC printer port. On this front there
is good news, as I will recount below.
6.7
A4 connectivity
6.7
Although I am very happy with my A4, there is one general area where it
falls down. I refer to its expansion capability (or, should I say, the
lack thereof). The main problem is that I can’t connect my Syquest
removable hard disc drive to it. Well now there are two products which
have come to my aid − both from Atomwide. Although my initial interest
was related to the A4, these products have much wider application.
6.7
RemoteFS
6.7
This is a product so brilliant in conception that one wonders why it was
not done before. The idea is that you connect two or more machines
together and then the computers can access each other’s disc drives.
There is a choice of communication link; at present you can use the
serial ports, the bidirectional parallel printer ports of the newer
machines, or Ethernet. RemoteFS comes with the appropriate leads for
serial or parallel port interconnection.
6.7
My initial use for this was to connect my A4 to my Archimedes 540 using
the serial port. What I wanted to do was to access my SyQuest from the
A4. There is a straightforward installation procedure, where the
RemoteFS software is loaded onto both machines. This places a delightful
picture of a lorry on the filer side of the iconbar. From the menu, you
then select the transport medium; I clicked on serial. Then you select
which drives of the “server” machine you want available to the “client”
machine. When the devices are selected on a client machine, each remote
drive appears on the iconbar as a disc drive on the lorry. You can then
treat these as ordinary drives, reading and writing − if these options
have been configured.
6.7
I discovered that using two machines, each could act as a server for the
other. So, using my A4, I could access the SyQuest while, at the same
time, my daughter could load a game from the A4 to be played on the
A540.
6.7
More importantly, using the A4 as a server for the A540 or any of the
older machines means that high density floppy discs can be read from and
written to. This is particularly important when using DOS products,
where the 1.44 Mb discs seem to be the norm. At the moment there is a
slight problem using RemoteFS to access floppies, as it looks for disc
names rather than at a specified drive. I hope this will be changed in
the future.
6.7
A particularly important feature of RemoteFS is the modular nature of
the program. Modules for different transport media can be written and
added in a straightforward manner. So far, I have not received the
Ethernet module, but it should arrive soon. It is probable that other
modules will also be produced in the future, perhaps using the User Port
of the Acorn I/O boards.
6.7
RemoteFS is a doddle to install and to use. I still haven’t seen the
manual − but it is a highly intuitive RISC-OS application and thus
hardly needs a manual. At a price of £49.95 +VAT (£55 through Archive),
it is a real bargain. Anyone who is fortunate enough to own or have
access to more than one Archimedes computer should have one of these.
6.7
Parallel port SCSI adaptor
6.7
Atomwide’s other new product is a SCSI adaptor which plugs into the
bidirectional printer port of the new machines, including the A4. The
price of this is also £49.95 +VAT (£55 through Archive). Physically, the
hardware consists of a ‘dongle’ case which plugs into the printer port
and the other end connects to your SCSI device. The software, which
comes on disc, comprises a SCSI filer and a formatter for high level
formatting, which will also interrogate the connected SCSI devices.
6.7
Physically, the dongle is a modest-looking object, and I did not have
terribly high expectations of it. After all, the SCSI is cobbled to the
end of a printer port and it only has an eight bit bus. I screwed the
dongle into my A4 and connected the other end to my SyQuest and switched
on. I have to say that I was AMAZED. The access time for the SyQuests
felt no different from usual. So then I did some rough speed tests which
seemed to indicate that there is negligible speed penalty in using this
SCSI adaptor. (I will do some more careful tests and report back next
month.)
6.7
Although I have no complaints about the software, I do have a ‘wish
list’. I use Oak SCSI interfaces which are not quite standard. When you
change a removable disc, the new disc name appears under the hard disc
filer icon. When you dismount a disc, the drive spins down and unlocks
its door. Even though these facilities are not part of Acorn’s SCSI
standard, they make life much easier and I wish that this SCSI adaptor
would provide these options.
6.7
PC card performance
6.7
A review in another magazine looked at the performance of Aleph One’s PC
cards and compared them with the PC emulator on the one hand and real
PCs on the other. The conclusions bore out my own experience, that the
PC cards are superb in every area except one. I refer to disc access. I
ran some tests to check what I had suspected for some time. I copied a
3.7Mb file, within DOS, from one directory to another. This took 98
seconds using a PC card and 40 seconds using the PC emulator. Of course,
with the PC card, the fact that everything has to go through the podule
bus and two-way communication is bound to cause a certain amount of
indigestion. But the test is a realistic one. When running Windows in
virtual mode, the virtual memory is on the hard disc and chunks of
memory will be paged in and out all the time: bidirectional traffic on
the podule bus. I know that Aleph One are looking into this.
6.7
Of course, if you want to run Windows 3.1 then you have to use a PC
card, as the Emulator does not emulate the required ’286 or above CPU.
My suspicion is that Acorn have now stopped further work on the Emulator
project. I think that ’286 emulation is unlikely.
6.7
Coming back to the speed question, I can encourage PC card users with
the news that there will soon be a hardware upgrade which will provide
some 50% speed increase on all cards. It simply involves the replacement
of two chips on the card and the upgrade will be provided at a ‘nominal’
cost. It will be supplied as standard on new cards.
6.7
Colour cards
6.7
I was tempted by all the publicity to have a look at the two graphics
cards: the Colour Card from Computer Concepts and the G8 Plus card from
State Machine. These are both impressive products, with very similar
performance and at the same price. However, one point I had not
realised, is that you need a good quality monitor to reap the full
benefit of either. In particular, it is vital that the monitor will
support high scan frequencies. I found that the 50kHz maximum frequency
of my two Eizo 9070S monitors was not sufficient for the high resolution
modes that I wanted to use.
6.7
The main difference between the G8 and the CC card is that the G8
generates all screen modes, while CC’s card has an analogue switch to
pass through the old Archimedes modes. The advantage of generating the
modes is that you can ensure they are all rock-steady and full screen −
which they aren’t on all monitors but the disadvantage is for games,
some of which will not work properly with the G8 Plus as it stands. My
daughter would not allow me to keep the G8 card in my computer at home!
6.7
(If you want Acorn modes, you can get a video switch from State Machine
or simply *KillG8 and take the output direct from the computer. Ed.)
6.7
The G8 card has all its software in an on-board EPROM. On boot up, the
software is then loaded over and the applications are installed in the
Resources filing system. This is all invisible to the user, which makes
operation quite painless. The disadvantage is that software upgrades
require a new EPROM and I must confess to being a little surprised at
the price State Machine is asking for these. This is in marked contrast
to Computer Concepts’ policy of free disc upgrades.
6.7
(I think Brian is confusing software upgrades which are free even though
they are EPROMs and the hardware upgrade offered recently, which offers
16 bit per pixel on the G8 Plus. Ed.)
6.7
What tipped the balance for me was the astounding quality of the 24-bit
colour sprite included on the CC disc; it is really quite remarkable. I
would suggest that Computer Concepts write a ‘screen saver’ program
comprising a 24-bit colour slide show. That would certainly cause a
stir. I know that this would require loads of disc space, but presumably
JPEGG compression could be used.
6.7
The final point in favour of the CC product is the expectation of a
custom mode designer for use with the colour card. I have not seen this
yet, but creating my own screen modes will allow me to exploit the
potential of the colour card to the full.
6.7
(Sorry to keep interrupting but “24-bit” is actually 24-bit ‘dithered
down’ to 15-bit. This is also available on the upgraded G8 Plus and is
also absolutely stunning − show it to your PC friends and watch their
faces! If you want to see a similar demonstration on the G8 Plus, send a
couple of blank formatted discs to State Machine. Finally, they too are
working on a mode designer − we’ll have to see which one is released
first! Ed.)
6.7
BJ-200 bubble jet printer
6.7
The publicity for the new Canon BJ-200 printer has been quite tempting.
I already use an LBP4 Laser Direct in my office and an unexpected
windfall in the form of a new research contract meant that I could buy a
printer for use at home which was better than my trusty Epson LQ-850. I
could not really justify the purchase of another LBP4 and the BJ-200
seemed most attractive.
6.7
I decided to buy the printer and Turbo Driver from Computer Concepts. I
was not really sure if I required the Turbo Driver but it seemed
sensible to purchase it with the printer. The Turbo Driver comes with a
special printer cable. I was surprised at this but eventually I realised
that this was part of Computer Concepts’ protection policy; the data
lines are scrambled by the driver software and unscrambled in the lead.
6.7
Installation should have been straightforward. I had a problem in
loading the printer driver from Compression. I never sorted out what the
problem was, but loading from an uncompressed drive cured all problems.
With a few trial runs, everything was perfect. Unfortunately, my trial
runs exhausted the supply of special high quality paper provided with
the printer!
6.7
After a while I decided to try the Acorn printer driver. The advantage
of this is that it is a true RISC-OS 3 printer driver, unlike the Turbo
Driver which does not support all of the new facilities of the upgraded
operating system. If you want to use the ‘scrambling’ printer lead, CC
supply a module for this on the Turbo Driver disc. The disadvantage of
the Acorn driver is mainly in the speed of printing − particularly the
time to release control of the computer. The other negative point is
that the configured page size is not right and a strip is missing at the
bottom of the page. This is fairly straightforward to rectify but it
takes time, paper, ink and patience. It all goes to highlight the
professional way that Computer Concepts provide a product that is
polished, tuned and perfectly adjusted. It creates such a good
impression if things work correctly first time.  A
6.7
Maurice Edmundson
6.7
This month I will look at a number of miscellaneous items which are
related to, and follow on logically from, last month’s coverage of
pamphlet and book production.
6.7
Transferring paragraph styles
6.7
One of the small but useful facilities in Ovation is the ability to
transfer styles from any Stylesheet to a new document. This can save the
tedium of having to define the paragraph styles afresh when starting up
a document which does not have a ready prepared style sheet of its own.
Once you have built up a small collection of stylesheets which, by
definition, will be the ones you are most likely to use, each will
contain a set of defined paragraph styles which can be entered into any
new document at any time.
6.7
To do this, first ensure that you have, on disc, the stylesheet holding
the paragraph styles you want to include in the document on the screen.
Open the paragraph style edit window and drag the stylesheet icon from
the disc into this window. Ovation will ask if you want to overwrite the
existing styles and you have the option to discard (i.e. go ahead) or
cancel. The purpose of this warning is to alert you to the fact that if
any of the new styles have the same name as those already there, the
latter will be overwritten by the new ones and lost.
6.7
Since BodyText is always present in every set of styles the new one will
always overwrite the old. If they are both the same, this does not
matter but if the new one is different, it will take precedence. It is
all too easy to overwrite a useful main heading called “Main Head” with
another useful one having the same name. The moral is to label your
styles, at least in your stylesheets, with names which do not duplicate
each other. I would even recommend a Stylesheet called “Textstyles” used
for no other purpose than to load a set of paragraph styles into every
new document as it comes along. Unwanted styles are easy to delete in
the edit window.
6.7
Are you making the best use of all the styles available? Have another
look at the style menu. For example, situations arise from time to time
where Title, Small Caps and Word U.Line are useful. (An example of the
use of Title is mentioned below.) Many of the features in the Style menu
can be combined. For instance, you could have small caps, italic, bold
with underline − if you wanted such a thing! In a news-sheet type of
publication or a poster, a large heading may be improved by either
slightly condensing or slightly expanding the text by varying the
horizontal scale, (Style menu) depending on the space to be filled.
Kerning has a similar role where the space between selected letters can
be varied and a very useful extension of this is Tracking.
6.7
Kerning and tracking
6.7
Words in a heading may look better if the space between some of the
letters is either made fractionally wider or narrower. Consider the word
6.7
WALL
6.7
Kerning allows the gap between the W and the A to be slightly reduced.
Position the caret between them, make Kerning = −30 and you will observe
the gap closing. Positive values increase the space.
6.7
I frequently write to my small granddaughter who lives abroad. I use the
18pt Vogue font but the letters often appear to be too crowded together
for a small child, so I mark the paragraph and introduce Tracking of
about 9%. (90/1000 em). In the style menu, the word “Kerning” changes to
“Tracking” when a string of text is marked. Every space between every
letter in the string is increased or decreased by the same amount.
6.7
Preparing an index for a book
6.7
When you have written your pamphlet or book, it is often desirable to
create an index. There is no automatic technique for producing an index
in Ovation but, as always, one can make the most of the features which
are provided in order to achieve this end. What is required is a list of
words, paragraph headings and so forth extracted from the pages of the
book, complete with page numbers, which can be sorted into alphabetical
order and entered into the columns of the page(s) of the index chapter.
6.7
I think one golden rule is not to attempt to construct an index until
the book is well and truly finished. It is the last act! Plan your index
carefully. Do not be tempted to include rather trivial references to a
topic. Keep to the main one where the readers will find information
which will take them forward. For example, the word “Font” may occur on
many pages but an index reference like this:
6.7
Font  2,12,17,25,36,41,59,87
6.7
is not much help to anyone. One might put the main page reference in
bold or italics, or one could split the reference into sub-sections such
as Font (design) 17 and so on. Best of all, weed out the unnecessary and
keep to the important references only.
6.7
In constructing the index, one possibility is to browse through the
pages of the book making a list of references, either jotting them down,
or typing them into !Edit on screen at the same time. By coincidence, as
I write, the March issue of Risc User magazine has an article by David
Spencer describing a program which will then sort the list and convert
it into an Index for loading into any other document. The code for the
program is on the Risc User monthly magazine disc.
6.7
However, it is possible to use Ovation itself in a way which is
reasonably straightforward and gives the desired result. The principle
is to construct a user dictionary to hold the choice of words and pages,
export this as a text file and finally import it into the index chapter
of the Ovation document. The dictionary automatically gives the
alphabetic sort.
6.7
First add an extra chapter to the end of the book with two or three
columns on the page so that text will flow from column to column. If
most index references will be limited to one or two words, three columns
will work quite well. Add a header frame to take the title INDEX. From
the bottom of the main menu move across from Spell to get the sub menus
as in the diagram.
6.7
You will see that I have created a new user dictionary called “Index”.
Now load this dictionary (middle sub-menu) only, ensuring that neither
the main index nor any other is loaded. Return to the first page of the
book, open the Spell window once again and select <Check Story>. The
dictionary dialogue window will appear and the first word on the page
will be highlighted and also appear in the write slot. If necessary,
highlight the Browse button to bring up the (empty) Index window. Slide
the whole Spell Check window to the top of the screen so that it will
not interfere with browsing through the book.
6.7
If you want the first word included in the index, type a figure 1 at the
end of the word then click on the ADD box and you will see it entered
into the dictionary window as “Firstword1”. If you wish, you can now go
through each page word by word by clicking on the CONTINUE box (too slow
and tedious) or by pressing <return> (or <enter>) − here the marker
moves rapidly along the words until you release the key. Stop on the
next reference you want and add it to the dictionary, then continue as
before. If you overshoot, you must clear the write slot and write the
word in by hand. You cannot go backwards in the text. Each time, before
you add the word to the dictionary, type the page number at the end of
the word. No spaces allowed. If the reference is two words such as
Master Pages, when Master is in the write slot, type in Pages and page
number without spaces, i.e. MasterPages4.
6.7

6.7
The quickest way of all and the only feasible one for a longer book is
as follows. As before, when you select <Check Story>, the first page
will be selected with the first word highlighted and waiting in the
write slot of the Index dictionary window. Search by eye down the page
for the reference you require, moving through the book page after page
by scrolling pages in the usual way. When you find a reference, place
the caret at the end of the word. Now select <Continue> in the dialogue
box. The word may be entered into the write slot or it may be the
previous word, in which case click <Continue> again. Once the word is in
the slot, add the page number without spaces. Select <Add> and you see
the word entered.* Click <Continue> again then search by eye for the
next reference and repeat the process. Note that if a word has already
been entered into the dictionary, it will not be loaded into the slot a
second time. It must be typed in with the new page number. The latter
then makes it a different word as far as the dictionary is concerned and
it can be added. *(N.B. Use of the adjust button is possible here −
refer to the manual.)
6.7
When you have finished, you will have a dictionary containing all the
words for the index along with their page numbers. They will also be
sorted in alphabetical order. Return to the Spell sub-menus and select
<Edit>.
6.7
The Edit window allows you to browse through the words, deleting any
unwanted ones, adding a missed page number or reference, etc. Finally,
by clicking <menu> over this window, you can export a text file to disc.
Label it “Index” once again. Bring up the index chapter of your book on
screen and import this text file into the top of column one. The words
will flow down from column to column. To finish the job, you have to tab
the page numbers out from the words into a tidy column of their own.
Using the default tab value, this usually means two or three presses per
word. You will also have to add a space to separate double words. Mark
the columns and from the Style menu select <Title>. All the words will
be given a capital initial letter − I think this looks neater.
6.7
Hints and tips and comments from other users are always welcome.  A
6.7
Ovation Column
6.7
CADet
6.7
Dave Wilcox
6.7
The Acorn 32-bit computers are extremely fast, thus establishing
themselves as leaders in the graphics and drawing market, with numerous
packages being available to paint or draw. To date, several attempts
have been made by various establishments to produce a package suitable
for creating and reproducing technical and engineering-type drawings. I
have only seen a few of these packages − all transpositions of PC
packages and all of which appeared to have drawbacks of some sort. The
latest release from Minerva is ‘CADet’ − a 2D draughting package priced
at £160 through Archive.
6.7
What you get
6.7
As we have come to expect from Minerva, this package is nicely presented
in the usual blue box and ring binder. The manual is clear and concise
and consists of 130 pages. I have only one gripe in this respect, there
is no title on the spine of the book or the box, as there is with
several of Minerva’s packages. This is only a minor oversight but a
cumbersome one if you wish to shelve the packages for future reference.
6.7
The software is supplied on one disc which contains the program itself,
an A3 plotter driver, sample drawings and sample drawing libraries.
There is a System, Scrap and SysMerge to update your system, if
necessary.
6.7

6.7
The package
6.7
When you load the program, you obtain the expected icon on the iconbar,
and also a bar at the top left of the screen which is CADet’s message
bar, from where the program requests or gives information as required.
To enter the program, click on its icon on the iconbar. The window you
get is, to all intents and purposes, the same as a draw window minus the
tools but with a status bar across the top.
6.7

6.7
From left to right the icons represent the following: the active drawing
tool, the active snap, the current pen colour, the current line type or
text font, the current line end markers and the current layer name and
number.
6.7
If you click on the active tool icon the drawing toolbox (bottom left)
opens up. These are along the same lines as Draw tools but they are
further enhanced. To use the tools as set by default, select them with
<select> to change their setting select, with <adjust> for a further
menu.
6.7
Each of these menus also gives you the option of pinning it to the board
for temporary changes to be made easily. The first two tools are the
line or curve draw − the sub menu of each gives the option to close the
lines (i.e. join start and end points). The next three are the
rectangle, circle, and polygon draw. These have various ways of drawing
the shapes from opposing vertices, centre point to vertex, centre to
edge or, for circles, two point and three point. The next tool is the
Arc tool which is as versatile as the circle tool − you can define the
arc in numerous ways.
6.7
The next icon represents the Library tool which works along the same
lines as the Library in DrawPlus. It is easy to use, easy to create and
you can import it into other drawings − an excellent feature. Next is
the text icon and because this is designed to work with plotters under a
HPGL driver, the program has its own text system which gives you four
styles of text − plain, roman, bold and gothic. I personally have no
problem with this as I like plain text on drawings, but some people
would prefer to have access to Acorn fonts. (A way round this is to save
as a drawfile and modify the drawing in Draw and print it out via a
standard printer driver.)
6.7
Next is the point mark. This places a vertical and horizontal line cross
on a specific point of reference, e.g. centre point of a circle. These
points are not printed on the final drawing and are designed to be used
for construction purposes. Area fill is next with seventeen different
fill patterns available for sectioning or map building.
6.7
The next tool is the dimensions tool − a neat addition. Select the start
point and end point and the dimension bars are drawn. As the drawing is
to scale, the appropriate length is automatically entered to the
required number of decimal places − a nice touch. This is followed by a
circular copy, select your item, e.g. a nut, select the number of copies
in 360° and, hey presto, there they are. The last tool is the select
tool which has the same function as in Draw, etc.
6.7
By clicking on the second icon from the left you can open a second
toolbox − the active snap box.
6.7

6.7
This toolbox gives you the most control I have seen over the alignment
of drawn items. From left to right, you have the following snap options,
the first two are the grid snaps, standard and orthogonal; next are the
drawn snap points, snap to end point, mid point, bend, object, centre,
quadrant, point, perpendicular and tangential. The power of this tool
comes from the fact that numerous types of snap may be selected at the
same time.
6.7
The last three buttons give you control of how the co-ordinate system is
to work. You have the choice of entering absolute values in relation to
x=0, y=0 (the bottom left corner of your page), relative movement from a
selected point or polar movement. The position/measurement is shown in
the field at the end of the bar, which can be edited manually for
insertion of precise measurements for absolute, polar or relative
movement.
6.7
Returning to the status bar, we still have three more areas: pen colour,
line/text style and layer.
6.7
Pressing <menu> over the pen colour gives you, as expected, the choice
of colour for your drawing pen. There are eight colours selectable and
one extra item − ‘self’. This is used by the library feature to maintain
the colours used in library items when imported into a drawing, instead
of defaulting to the current pen colour.
6.7
Next is the line/text type. This gives you a menu of different line
patterns and fill types, arrows at either end or both ends of lines and
access to the automatic fillet option. If text is the selected entry
mode, you have the choice of font as mentioned above − with size,
justification and an italic angle option.
6.7
The layer option is the final selection − for users of DrawPlus, this
works in an identical manner. You have a choice of 32 layers available
and can select which are visible at any time, allowing complex drawings
to be constructed without cluttering the screen. Construction lines can
be on one layer, measurements on another, complicated cross sections on
another and so on.
6.7
An oversight?
6.7
Although this package is a very well thought out, there is, sadly, one
major omission − there is no elliptical tool. At first, I first I
thought I could draw a circle and possibly drag it but you cannot do
this because the edit feature will only allow you to change the radius
and then only numerically in an editable field. One possible solution,
to draw a somewhat elliptical shape, is to use the arc tool set to 360°.
Perhaps Minerva could consider the addition of this feature in future
editions. I think the circle option of Draw would be preferable combined
with a constraint key for circles as in Artworks perhaps − we shall see.
6.7
Conclusion
6.7
The benefits of the extra tools available in this package far outweighs
the omission mentioned. This package makes an admirable job of what it
was designed for.
6.7
A lot of Minerva packages come in twos − and this is no exception. CADet
is the smaller of the two but its big brother, ‘PROCAD’, is still to be
released.  A
6.7
Using RISC-OS 3.1
6.7
Using RISC-OS 3.1
6.7
 Cyborg
6.7
Naomi Hunt (aged 13 yrs)
6.7
Cyborg is a new action game from Alpine Software; it costs £25.95 and
needs a 2Mb machine in which to run. It arrives attractively presented
in a video-cassette sized box that contains three discs and a 12 page
instruction booklet. The booklet describes the story-line, presents the
loading information and moves on to playing details. It also includes a
hints section and details of a competition, the prize for which is an
original piece of artwork specially commissioned for Cyborg.
6.7
The game
6.7
The story-line is that you have crash landed on an alien planet −
Arallax IV − and need to recover Xylenium crystals to get your ship
going again. You put on your GalCorp cybertronic suit and step out into
an unknown world.
6.7
The game comprises eight levels which, unusually, alternate between fast
“shoot-‘em-up“ arcade levels and adventure levels which require some
careful thought. You need to complete one level and obtain a password
before moving on to the next level, although you can move straight to
Level 2 if you want to practise your adventure skills. However, to
qualify for the competition, you will need to have worked your way
sequentially through all levels. Your performance on earlier levels can
effect what happens to you on a later level.
6.7
I was given a reviewers’ information sheet which included various
passwords but, unfortunately, these did not apply to the version of the
game I had; so I was unable to progress beyond Level 1 in the time
available! My observations are therefore based on playing Level 1
(arcade) and Level 2 (adventure).
6.7
Cyborg takes quite a long time to load from floppy disk and I was glad
to be able to install it on my hard disk. Whilst the game is loading,
some rather boring music is played. When you’ve been “exterminated” as
many times as I’ve been, and have had to re-load each time, the tune
becomes pretty tiresome.
6.7
The Level 1 display comprises a view of the outside world occupying
about half of the screen area; the remaining area is taken up with an
array of status indicators. I found the display rather cluttered, so
that some essential indicators (such as the energy bar) were difficult
to read. A lot of this display is purely cosmetic and I felt that a
number of indicators could have been eliminated in exchange for a bigger
view of the playing area.
6.7
Level 1 action takes place in a desert landscape where you have to
destroy aliens on scooters, using your laser weapon. Some of the aliens
you miss release bombs which sap your energy if they explode. Some of
the aliens you hit release energy capsules which you can retrieve using
your tractor beam. You will have to learn to switch very quickly from
your laser weapon (clicking <select>) to your tractor beam (clicking
<adjust>) and back again. The idea is to fight your way through a
variety of alien weaponry, without exhausting your energy supply, until
you have destroyed the final weapon and captured a crystal. You will
then be given a password. The graphics on Level 1 were adequate, but not
brilliant.
6.7
I enjoyed the level 2 adventure section better, although the graphics
could be improved here, too, and I thought the font was rather
uninspiring.
6.7
Conclusion
6.7
I found the arcade level much too hard for me. Even with the reviewers’
instructions provided, I could not complete level 1; nor could my dad,
although my brother (aged 16) eventually managed it. I realise that
games have to be a challenge but after many hours what started out as a
challenge turned into frustration!
6.7
I think that Cyborg is quite a good attempt at mixing arcade and
adventure action but it falls short of the best arcade games and the
best adventures, and is unlikely to satisfy the real ‘addicts’ in either
camp. For those who enjoy a real challenge (and who have lots of
patience) the arcade levels alone should provide hours of
entertainment.  A
6.7
Creator
6.7
Simon Anthony
6.7
Creator is an arcade games designer from Alpine Software. My hope, when
I asked to review it, was that it would allow me to write at least
reasonable shoot-em-up games within the first week of it arriving. The
plan was then to use Creator in a classroom situation. I was to be
disappointed. This might have been because my ambition was set too high
or it may have been the fault of Creator. I hope this review will allow
you to judge for yourself.
6.7
The initial impression on receiving the package is one of drabness − the
two-tone-blue box cover looks as if it was printed by a rather old dot
matrix printer but the manual looks well presented. The package includes
two discs and two games demos produced using Creator. I would have
expected them to show the product in its best possible light. I hope
this is not the best that Creator can do! The games sprites are as drab
as the packaging and the game play is as old as the hills.
6.7
But, is any of that relevant? Well, in as much as it put me in a bad
mood, which made me put the discs back in their box, then yes. Later, I
returned and started to read the tutorial. The manual’s 50 pages are
very clear and a definite ‘must’ − the tutorial section especially. This
is more than usually important because it is only when you know what the
demos are demonstrating that you can begin to see the power and scope of
Creator.
6.7
The Creator menu is the way to start building the game structure plan. I
would have to regurgitate the manual to explain all the facilities and
techniques offered here − they are wide-ranging and very detailed. This
comment is two-edged because the greater the detail, the greater the
opportunity for confusion. I think a few screen shots here will be of
help. The menu is displayed giving access to the Options window. This is
just one of the many windows which let you control every aspect of the
final game’s appearance, controls and behaviour. Perhaps the easiest
window to explain is the Design window.
6.7
This controls one of the more obvious aspects of the game − the bits
which appear on the game’s screen. The Design window lets you set up
where the objects go, what they are, how fast they move (or don’t), what
layer they appear on and which attack wave they appear in. Yes, this is
an arcade game designer. The Sprites window is shown here displaying the
demo sprites from a Breakout game on disc two.
6.7
This next set of windows shows how to set the final shape of a wave, the
path of your attacking baddies and the noises they make as they fly
around. Background music is supplied on the discs − this will play ad
nauseam if you so desire. Any sound-tracker type tune can also be used.
As mentioned, the facilities are wide-ranging and the possibilities for
error in setting them up are endless and so I have yet to create a
better demo than theirs but it has to be possible with all this control.
6.7
The Event window (below) offers control over what can hit what and what
happens if it does. Apart from designing the sprites (which you have to
do with !Paint), this is the most enjoyable part. Together with the
sprite design, it is also the most important stage in defining the
playability of the finished product, so take your time and all should be
well.
6.7
Everything you can think of in an arcade game is implementable, but that
leaves all the arty bits, such as designing better sprites, down to you.
If the Creator demos and the presentation of the manual had as much
effort lavished on them as on the program itself, the task of deciding
how good Creator really is would have been very easy indeed.
6.7
If you are not very good with !Paint, or don’t even know what a Sprite
is, then don’t buy this package. If you can use !Paint with ease and
have no problems in working out how the levels in Draw Plus operate and
if you have some idea of what is meant by “Put (0) in (lives)” then you
will be able to use Creator. Even then, don’t expect to manage much
during the first sitting and don’t think that Creator has done all the
work of making your mega-game. There is a great deal of time and effort
needed to create something worthwhile − even with Creator’s invaluable
help.
6.7
It is said that everyone has one book inside them just waiting to be
written. If the same is true of arcade games then, with Creator, your
game could finally see the light of day.  A
6.7
Flopticals for ADFS − A Mixed Blessing
6.7
Jochen Konietzko
6.7
Ever since I first read about the development of 21Mb floptical drives,
I have waited impatiently for their arrival in the Acorn world.
6.7
Floptical drives are, basically, 3½“ floppy drives for DD and HD discs
but with an extra. Coupled to the magnetic heads there is a laser which
is used for the (transparent) floptical discs which contain, in addition
to the magnetic coating, extremely densely packed optical servo tracks
that the laser follows.
6.7
This makes it possible to position the drive’s heads so precisely that
it can currently handle 1245 tracks per inch, compared to 135.4 TPI on a
conventional floppy − in other words, 753 instead of 80 tracks per side
− giving it a vastly increased storage capacity.
6.7
Misinformation
6.7
So, when I read last summer that Morley were developing software which
would enable these new drives to access ADFS discs, I phoned them
immediately and asked if their new product would be able to replace the
internal floppy drive of my A410/1 completely. They told me that it
could. (But read the rest of the article! Ed) I made quite sure it was
understood that I wanted a drive which could not just access HD discs
(making it unnecessary to buy one of the new drives used in the A5000)
and floptical discs but also that it should do everything my current
drive 0 could do. Then I placed an order with Morley.
6.7
In addition to the things I had been told over the phone (all of which,
I have since learned, were without Morley’s official seal of approval),
I read about tests of floptical drives, connected to PCs, in a number of
German PC magazines.
6.7
(Morley are unhappy that I should be using all these bits of information
in my article, because they feel that a review should only compare the
reality of a product with the official claims made by its producer.
However, I think that it is quite legitimate to compare this reality
with what is theoretically possible, because only if you know how good a
product could be will you be able really to judge how good it actually
is.)
6.7
Anyway, in early February, the drive finally arrived (bliss!). Here is a
report on my first experiences with it.
6.7
The package
6.7
The drive (made by Insite Peripherals) arrived, together with a SCSI
cable, in a well-padded package. There was no documentation whatsoever.
6.7
Installation
6.7
Luckily, installation of the drive proved to be quite straightforward −
just remove the old drive, replace it with the new one, remove the three
termination resistors on the SCSI podule (this was mentioned in the
manual which arrived last year with my SCSI hard disc) and connect drive
and podule.
6.7
When I had run the SCSI_Conf application to log the new drive into my
system, three icons (SCSIDrive 0, 4 and 5) appeared on the iconbar. My
external hard disc was now drive 5 and clicking on 4 brought up an error
message. A phone call to Morley yielded the information that this icon
is used for the floptical discs.
6.7
These icons have not yet been perfectly thought through. If, immediately
after you insert a disc,  you accidentally click on the wrong icon, the
disc will be regarded as unformatted. Even if you then click on the
correct icon, the error message will usually still appear and you will
have to take the disc out and push it in again before the drive will
accept it.
6.7
First steps
6.7
My first acquaintance with the drive 0 icon brought several nasty
surprises. It can not format floppies, nor can it read or write DOS
discs nor, for that matter, Atari discs − MultiFS also does not appear
to work. So much for replacing the floppy drive!
6.7
I will now have to dish out the additional money for an external floppy
drive casing and find a space for that drive on my already cramped desk
− exactly what I was trying to avoid!
6.7
The floptical discs arrived already low level formatted, but ADFS
couldn’t read them − they had to be initialised first. Once I had
realised this (no documentation!) and had loaded the SCSI_Form
application, the whole process only took about 55 seconds per disc. This
was without verification, which takes several minutes. A full low level
format takes about 22 minutes.
6.7
Strangely, the disc label claims “21 Mb”, the Morley invoice states “20
Mb” and the Free window gives a total of 19 Mb. Even re-formatting with
the largest available block size still gives only a reading of 19 Mb,
though according to the formatter, the size is 20864 Kb (20.38 Mb).
Apparently, Acorn round this down, to be on the safe side. Also, a
number of other factors (to do with map and directory structures) reduce
the available space still further.
6.7
Just for the record, the unformatted capacity of a VHD floptical disc is
25.7 Mb.
6.7
A nice feature is the name below the iconbar icons. When a disc is read
into drive 0 or 4, the name of that disc is displayed.
6.7
Performance
6.7
One of the advantages of floptical drives mentioned in all the tests in
German PC magazines was an increase in speed when handling conventional
floppies, because the new drives spin at 720 rpm compared with the 300
rpm of a normal floppy drive. So, I did some tests to see if this speed
advantage applied to Acorn, too.
6.7
First of all, I ran a speed test and then I copied a disc with 775 Kb of
compressed files to and fro, did the same thing with one 775 Kb file
(using the *create command) and timed two applications. I chose Eureka
because Longman Logotron save files to disc in a compressed format
(491 Kb on disc turn into 1088 Kb in RAM) and the RISC-OS 3 printer
driver because it takes quite a long time to load for such a small
program.
6.7
Speed test results
6.7
The results are, of course, specific to my own system since I did the
tests in my own usual working environment (with a VIDC speed-up mode
which uses 31% of the CPU, unless you use the “Faster” option which
would typically reduce the times by 20 to 25%). However, judging by my
experiences over the first few weeks, I think that they show the
relative speeds of floppy and floptical drive reasonably well.
6.7
Alas, the speed proved to be disappointing. A look at the table will
show you that access to floppies is actually slower through a floptical
drive than through a conventional drive.
6.7
Speed is one of the things I did not talk to Morley about. I simply took
it for granted that a piece of hardware equipment would show the same
behaviour in different environments. This, obviously was wrong − either
the floptical drives spin Acorn discs at the same speed as a floppy
drive or the peculiar way Acorn’s filing system operates makes access
times and transfer rates quoted in other contexts completely
meaningless.
6.7
An additional (small but cumulative) disadvantage is that the floptical
drive has to perform some internal organisation (even if it is just
connected to the power supply) the moment you insert a disc. If you push
in an empty formatted floppy and click <menu> at the same time, the
iconbar menu will take about 3.5s to appear − the empty root directory
takes about 3s to pop up. For an empty floptical disc, the times are
both about 15s. All successive clicks on the icon work without
noticeable delay.
6.7
Another − avoidable − delay occurs every time you reset or shut down
your machine. If the drive contains a floppy, its LED will be on for
about 2s on each occasion. If you forget to leave a disc in the drive,
the light will flicker dimly for 30s on reset and for 60s (!) on
shutdown, this time followed by an error message “unable to access
media”, even if the drive has been empty all through the session.
6.7
Making backups
6.7
Making backups is a real pleasure. Currently, I have about 50 Mb which
need backing up (the PC emulator contains only a few major programs
which can easily be installed from floppy), and with just six
flopticals, I now have two complete backups. Both the daily incremental
backup and the weekly total backup are now so simple that I actually
bother to do them!
6.7
The only slight drawback is that none of my backup applications accept
the floptical drive as destination. I have had to divide my root
directories into three equal parts for the three discs and do the
incremental backups simply with the “Newer” option.
6.7
Running protected software
6.7
I have got two games which need the original floppy disc. MicroDrive can
be installed on a hard disc but the floppy has to be inserted for the
first few seconds of play. When running the game from the hard disc, the
floppy is not found. Running from the floppy seemed to work OK at first,
but when the floppy was checked, the drive emitted such ugly noises that
I reset my machine immediately.
6.7
The Chocks Away disc can’t be read at all − there is just a message
“Disc Error 03”.
6.7
Morley say ...
6.7
I had several long telephone conversations with Morley. At first they
told me that the ADFS floptical drives would never be able to access DOS
discs or to format either ADFS or DOS discs but after I pointed out how
much this reduced the value of the drive for all non-A5000-owners, they
changed this statement to, “There will certainly be an upgrade
eventually.”
6.7
This has since been confirmed in writing. Let’s hope that “eventually”
will be soon!
6.7
By the way, I am told that the drive can read and write high density
discs (in Acorn format). As I have no HD discs formatted for ADFS at my
disposal, so I can’t comment on this claim.
6.7
Price
6.7
I bought my drive (internal version without podule) from Morley for £349
+VAT. The Archive price is £400 inc VAT and carriage. (The external
version is £490 through Archive.) Floptical discs cost £15 to £20 +VAT
each (£29 inc VAT through Archive or £115 for 5 = £23 each inc VAT). (If
anyone can find a source at the price Jochen suggests, let us know! Ed.)
6.7
Conclusion
6.7
At the moment I am rather disappointed with this drive because it
fulfils only a few of my expectations (which, admittedly, had been
high).
6.7
A5000 owners who are looking for an easy way to back up complete hard
discs, and who can install it as a second internal drive, should be well
satisfied. However, if you only want a backup medium, I feel that
Syquest removable hard discs would be a better buy, seeing that they are
in the same price range as the floptical, and have bigger and − when you
look at the price per megabyte − cheaper discs (at least in Germany).
6.7
(At Archive prices, the drives are cheaper − £445 for a Syquest 42Mb
instead of £490 for the 20Mb, but the extra discs are more expensive −
£75 for 42Mb cf £29 for 20Mb. The other comparison is speed − in terms
of raw data rate, the Syquests speed test at 590 Kb/s whereas the
flopticals can only manage 116 Kb/s)
6.7
(I have read that Insite are planning to launch a 40 Mb floptical drive
at the CEBit Computer Show but even if the Morley software can be
quickly adapted to the new format, the removables with their 88 Mb discs
would still have the edge.)
6.7
This, surely, should be added motivation for Morley to improve their
floptical software very soon, in order to widen the scope of their
drives!
6.7
On a more general note, my frustration clearly demonstrates one thing.
You should never rely on anything of importance which you are told over
the phone. If I had asked Morley to put all the claims in writing, the
person I spoke to would surely have checked his facts, and I would at
least have known what to expect.
6.7
My experience also points up the danger of talking to a supplier when
their product is still being developed.
6.7
Postscript
6.7
Morley have once again shown their class. Because my decision to buy the
drive had been made partly on the basis of incorrect information, they
offered to take it back and give me a full refund! After due
consideration, I have decided to wait for that software upgrade.  A
6.7
   Operation   Hard Disc   ADFS 0
   SCSI  0 (800Kb)     SCSI 4
(21Mb)
6.7
   speed tester (average)   785 Kb/s   25
Kb/s   ?   116 Kb/s
6.7
   mixed files (775Kb)
6.7
   writing to hd   −   71.8
   74.8        76.2 (!)
6.7
   reading back from hd   −
   129.5        224.6 (!)   72.4
6.7
   deleting   20.2   75.2   102.5
   41.6
6.7
   one file (775Kb)
6.7
   writing to hd   −   53.4
   56.8   25.1
6.7
   reading back from hd   −
   72.5   126.5   26.3
6.7
   deleting   approx. 1   3.8
   4.5   3.2
6.7
   Eureka
6.7
   reading from hd   −   36.9
        94.1 (!)   25.4
6.7
   loading onto iconbar   4.8
   24.0   22.5   8.9
6.7
   Printers
6.7
   reading from hd   −   81.1
       153.8 (!)   53.5
6.7
   loading onto iconbar   9.5
   22.3   22.8   17.3
6.7
   compressing with CFS   18.4
   134.5        217.6 (!)   75.9
6.7
   loading onto iconbar (CFS)   15.1
   29.1   31.2   24.9
6.7

6.7
The A-Link
6.7
Mark Godwin
6.7
This review is based on experience of using the A-Link with a Psion
Series 3. Therefore, references to ‘Series 3’ can generally be read as
‘Pocket Book’.
6.7
As you may be aware, the A-Link is an Archimedes ‘version’ of the 3-Link
which allows the Series 3 to talk to PCs and Macs.
6.7
The hardware of the A-Link is boxed in an oblong container (90 × 30 ×
20mm) with a socket at one end and a flying lead at the other. The
software is on a single floppy disc and the manual is curiously thin.
6.7
The flying lead plugs into the 1.54 Mbits/sec serial interface in the
side of the Series 3, and the socket connects to a long lead with a plug
for the Archimedes.
6.7
Within the A-Link is the communications hardware and the Series 3
software. On the disc, you get the !PocketFS application and the usual
!SysMerge and !System applications.
6.7
Making the link
6.7
In order to ‘make the link’ you must first select the REMOTE option from
the Series 3 system menu and set it to ON with a baud rate of 9600 and
then run the !PocketFS application. Beware, users of ARCterm7 − if you
have been using this prior to running PocketFS, you may well get the
message ‘Serial Device in use’. To solve this, quit ARCterm7 and kill
the ARCterm_7 module.
6.7
The link is now made − both machines are continually exchanging data to
prove to each other that they are still connected.
6.7
When PocketFS is not in use, valuable processing power is being wasted
on the link, so a feature to turn the link on and off, similar to that
on the Series 3, would have been very useful. Another way of reducing
this processing overhead (but increasing the transmission time) would be
to reduce the baud rate but unfortunately PocketFS resets it
automatically to 9600. The fixed baud rate also prevents you from
solving transmission problems with long cables.
6.7
The conversion viewer
6.7
If you click <select> on the PocketFS icon, after a period of time, a
viewer will appear displaying three columns. These columns represent the
columns on the Series 3 for the applications Word, Data and Spread.
Listed in these columns are all the files for these applications which
are directly available from the root of the internal, A and B drives.
6.7
If you drag a file name from one of these columns to the filing system
viewer, the file will be converted from Series 3 format to an Archimedes
acceptable format and saved in that viewer. The Archimedes format is
selected by pressing <menu> over the relevant column and picking the
desired file prior to copying. The conversion process goes both ways in
that certain files dragged from the Archimedes to the column will be
converted to the Series 3 format.
6.7
When copying files this way, the Archimedes does not multitask and takes
rather a long time for relatively small files. This is a shame because
the Series 3 is multitasking all the time, regardless of what is
happening on the link and Archimedes.
6.7
When I copied my first file to the Series 3, I encountered a problem
that was reported as ‘File name is too long’. The actual error occurred
because the destination directory did not exist on the Series 3.
6.7
As I keep the memory on my Series 3 free for program use, I have no
directories on the internal drive. The PocketFS configuration for the
files listed under each column looks at the internal drive followed by
drives A and B. When listing files, it handles missing directories but
when you save a file on the Series 3, it uses the the internal drive.
The sequence and presence of these paths is important, which is not what
the manual states.
6.7
An obvious problem arises if you want to be able to select any one of
the drives on the Series 3 for saving data. To do this, you will have to
modify the number of columns listed, so that you get one column per
application for each drive. To do this for DATA, WORD and SPREAD would
require nine columns. A better solution would be to divide the top of
the column into three parts, one for each drive with the configuration
only specifying the path relative to the drive. All you would then do is
drop the file on the desired drive in the relevant column.
6.7
I have not mentioned that the number of columns, the files listed and
the conversion is under user control. However, there are no details on
how to create your own conversion module and the parameters are entered
via the use of a text file. It would have been easier to perform this
operation by selecting directory paths on the Series 3 by ‘dragging’ and
to be presented with a list of conversion modules currently available
(rather like fonts). Considering the Pocket Book is aimed at children/
schools, therefore the link as well, this seems a bit cumbersome.
6.7
The iconbar menu and filer viewer
6.7
After clicking menu over the PocketFS icon, you will see a menu
containing Information, Character set, Open ‘$’, Dismount and Quit. The
first and last need no explanation, the second opens up a conventional
filer viewer, the third specifies what should happen to the characters
during conversion and the fourth removes all PocketFS viewers, forgets
about the Series 3 catalogue information and terminates the link
correctly.
6.7
Selecting Character set brings up a further menu with two options,
namely Latin1 and DOS. Latin1 will cause a conversion to/from Latin1 and
the Series 3 DOS format, whereas DOS will leave the characters as they
are.
6.7
Selecting Open $ will open the root directory on the Series 3 and
present you with a normal filer window containing four directories A, B,
C and M. Where A and B are the drives A and B, C is the A-Link link
firmware and M is the internal drive. Filer operations do multitask but
the time given to other tasks is so small that you may think it is not
multitasking.
6.7
I would have preferred an option to select which viewer was presented
when you press select over the icon. As it stands, you get the
conversation viewer but I would have preferred the standard filer
viewer.
6.7
When using the standard filer viewer, all the file options are present
but the manual gives you some warnings on the access options, copy
options and time stamps which differ in operation slightly between the
two machines. These do not present any problems but make sure you read
the notes.
6.7
Timings
6.7
In order to be fair, I performed some tests on the time taken to copy
files from different sources to a RAM disc. I was copying 24 files which
totalled 49.3Kb.
6.7
The obey file was used to copy files in a non-multitasking environment
and the ‘Comms’ figures were produced by using ARCterm 7 and the Y-Modem
protocol at 9600 baud.
6.7
From this we can see that PocketFS is slightly faster than Y-Modem,
considerable more reliable than ARCterm 7 and obviously slower than a
hard disc. The release note with the A-Link does mention the importance
of modes for ‘older’ machines − by this, I think it means ARM2 machines.
6.7
The difference in timings between PocketFS and the hard disc can be
attributed to the serial port and the difference between the obey file
copy and desktop copy is the time given to other tasks in the desktop.
6.7
Differences between A-Link and 3-Link
6.7
The main features of the A-Link are that it is about £20 cheaper than
the 3-Link, it only allows file control from the Archimedes, filer
operations multitask, it has a file-conversion feature and only supports
a baud rate of 9600.
6.7
The bi-directional file control with PCs allows the Series 3 to open
files on the PC as if they were on one of the Series 3 drives. It is a
shame that PocketFS does not support bi-directional file usage and that
it does not support execution of a program in the PocketFS viewer to run
on the Series3.
6.7
I also performed some tests on the compatibility of the the different
hardware (A-Link and 3-Link) with the different software (PocketFS & PC/
Mac version). If we forget about the non-standard serial interface on
the Archimedes and just deal with the hardware in between the two, the
results were interesting.
6.7
Both pieces of software work with the A-Link, but PocketFS will not work
with the 3-Link. On closer examination, it does not appear to be a
hardware difference but just a software difference within the A-Link
itself. It appears that a few features have been added to the existing
3-Link code to support/limit the features when connected to the
Archimedes.
6.7
Conclusion
6.7
I use my A-Link all the time − it has made my life a lot easier by
providing an Acorn standard viewer for file options. Despite my
reservations listed below, the A-Link is a must because there is nothing
else which interfaces between these two machines the ‘Acorn way’.
6.7
However, the following summaries should be noted:
6.7
1. I was disappointed in its performance (speed, error messages, non-
multitasking conversion and special constraints to achieve a decent
performance).
6.7
2. I thought the conversion part of PocketFS was very ‘tacky’. Changing
the configuration may present some problems.
6.7
3. If you have both the filer window and conversion window open while
using the filer window, file operations could taker longer and even
fail.
6.7
4. Certain filer SWIs are not supported by PocketFS, but have not been
documented.
6.7
5. There is information on how to create your own conversion modules.
6.7
6. It does not support bi-directional file usage.
6.7
7. You cannot run programs on the Series 3 from the PocketFS viewer.
6.7
8. The baud rate is fixed (only a little niggle).
6.7
Next month
6.7
Next month I will take a look at the first of two pieces of software
contained within the A-Link firmware which are not documented. These
pieces of software are for use on the Series 3 and Pocket Book.
6.7
The first one I will cover is the character terminal emulator with file
transfer facilities followed, the month after, by details on how to use
the script editor, translator and syntax of available commands.
6.7
These two additional pieces of software, which are also present in the
3-Link, appear to be exactly the same and make some of the above
failings less important.  A
6.7
Genesis/Magpie Column
6.7
Paul Hooper
6.7
Welcome to the first Genesis/Magpie column, which I shall be editing.
First of all, a little about me − I am one of that rare breed of ‘House
Husbands’ but I am also a mature student at the University of East
Anglia, studying English History and Landscape Archaeology. I am married
to a Primary School teacher and have a daughter who is at high school.
Thus the use of IT within Education is dear to my heart and I would like
to prompt the use of Genesis and Magpie not only at home but also at
school. I have been using computers for nearly ten years, first on the
old Spectrum, then a BBC ‘B’ before upgrading to an A5000 in December
1991.
6.7
Swap Shop
6.7
One of the first things that I would like to instigate is the swapping
of Genesis/Magpie databases. I’m sure that, like me, you have compiled a
couple of databases but have little time to compile more. So what I
would like to do is swap, on a ‘two-for-one’ basis, any databases that
you have compiled. To this end, if you have a database that you are
prepared to swap, send it to me with an SAE and I will send you two by
return. Please don’t send any of the examples provided by companies, as
these are copyright − they must be your own work. Now, because both my
databases are over 500Kb each, you will also need to send me a spare
blank disc. As I receive these discs, I will compile a Genesis/Magpie
database with a list of what we have and put a copy on your disc. I will
also publish a list in Archive if the editor is willing!
6.7
Format
6.7
Some of the other things I would like to see in the column are hints and
tips on the use of Genesis/Magpie and how you make use of the programs.
Any questions on Genesis and Magpie can be sent to me and I will do my
best to answer them. I would also like to prompt discussion on all
aspects of the programs. For instance, I have used the word ‘database’
for the results of Genesis/Magpie. This may seem a little demeaning for
what is, after all, a program in its own right. Genesis uses
‘application’ for its databases but this doesn’t really reflect what the
program can do. What do you think?
6.7
Confession
6.7
I have used Genesis a lot − all versions − but until a few weeks ago, I
had not even looked at Magpie. Rest assured, I will be using it during
the next few weeks, to familiarise myself with it and will also be
trying to convert my existing Genesis applications into Magpie format.
Has any one else tried doing this before? If so, do please let me know
of any shortcuts that you have come across.
6.7
Write to...
6.7
Send your brickbats, databases(?), hints and tips for Genesis/Magpie to
Paul Hooper, 11 Rochford Road, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk  NR29 4RL.  A
6.7
Which Art Package for Knitting Patterns?
6.7
Barbara Logan
6.7
Barbara sent us this article as a straight comparative review of
Artworks and Vector. Before you read it, you should be aware that, in
some ways, it isn’t a fair comparison. The conclusion is that, for
preparing knitting patterns, Artworks is not much use. But please don’t
read this as an article damning Artworks − it is just saying that isn’t
the best tool for this particular job. I am publishing the article,
never-the-less, because Barbara’s comments may help others who are
thinking about what to use for this or a similar purpose and it does
highlight things that Artworks and Vector are good and bad at doing.
Ed.
6.7
For some time now I have been using an Archimedes to produce the working
diagrams for knitting patterns and embroidery charts. There were a
number of art programs available but for my type of work the object-
oriented program is much better.
6.7
Below is an example of the drawfile of an embroidery chart. This chart
has only six colours and is very small but even this is made up of over
500 objects. Some of the larger charts have to be done in sections, each
section having over 5,000 objects and needing more than 25 different
symbols to represent the various colours.
6.7
I use an A5000 with 4Mb of memory and, of course, RISC-OS 3. The PD
program DrawPlus has proved very useful in the past but had some
drawbacks, such as the inability to edit text. When I heard that
Computer Concepts were bringing out Artworks, I thought that it would be
exactly what I wanted and eagerly waited for its release... and waited
and waited...  In the meantime, Vector from 4Mation was put on sale, so
I decided to treat myself and get both.
6.7
This comparison of the two programs is a very personal one based upon
the use to which I put the packages. Others who have a different use for
their software could have a very different view.
6.7
Getting started
6.7
Both programs proved easy to install. When trying AW, I needed to
consult the manual (at least the Rough Guide) before I could get to
grips with even the basic drawing. I expected it to be like Draw to use
but there are considerable differences. If you are drawing a shape, the
line will not fill unless it is changed into an object. This cannot be
done in the initial drawing. The line has to be selected then the end
point placed over the start point. All irregular shapes have to be made
in this way. Even after using the program for a while I still find it
irritating. It has also taken time to adapt to the idea that a tool
should be highlighted when selecting an object in order to act on that
object. I still try to rotate selected objects by using the mouse and
the adjust button.
6.7
On the other hand, using Vector was just like using Draw or DrawPlus and
hardly needed any help from the manual at all except for the special
features like Replication and Radiation. This gave Vector a big
advantage at the beginning as I could start using it for work straight
away.
6.7
Copying on a grid
6.7
When an object is copied in Draw (or AW) it appears a little below and
to the right of the original object. This is also true of Vector but if
the object is small and the grid is set to a suitable distance, the copy
will lock onto the grid. This means that, by using the key short-cuts, I
can draw a diagonal line of very accurately placed symbols in a very
short time. The ability to have a choice of four grid setting to each
drawing is also a big plus for Vector. To place objects in AW each has
to be copied, picked up with the mouse while holding down the left Alt
key and then positioned. It does not seem to make much difference
whether the copy key (new object offset) or the duplicate key (new
object on top) is used.
6.7
Layers
6.7
I use a separate layer for each colour symbol, one for the grid and
another for the construction lines. Both programs can hide the different
layers but AW only allows editing of all the layers or of the current
layer only. The Vector system is both easier to use and has the facility
of allowing any of the layers to be edited, hidden or locked. I usually
work with the grid and extra guide lines locked but with the current
layer and other symbol layers available. If I find an incorrect symbol
(quite likely on a large chart) I can alter it without changing layers.
Also, an object edited on a different layer stays on its original layer
unless brought specifically to the current layer.
6.7
Text
6.7
This is where AW score heavily. The text is easy to handle and edit. AW
can produce just about every fancy effect that I can imagine and then
some. Experimenting is a joy. In Vector, the text handling is quite
adequate, although one of the more irritating features is that you have
to go through the menus twice in order to change both the font and the
size. There aren’t even any key short-cuts available.
6.7
Hot keys
6.7
Am I the only person who likes to use the keys? Both AW and Vector have
some odd ideas about what constitutes a suitable candidate for a key
short-cut.
6.7
Vector has a wonderful short-cut for ‘select’ − pressing <space> toggles
from the current selection to ‘select’ − but there are no key-presses to
change fill or line colours. ‘Mask’, which I have never yet used except
when experimenting, is on the easily accessed <f7> key but the key to
access ‘Text’ is <shift-f9> which is very difficult for a right-hander
to access without using two hands. The single keys <f4> and <f9> are not
used at all! I like to work with my right hand on the mouse and press
the keys to change settings, etc. My preference is for single functions
keys for the most common actions such as Line, Curve, Move, Text,
Colour, etc and <ctrl> + letter or key for the less used actions. As a
right-hander, I would also prefer the combinations to be towards the
right side of the keyboard.
6.7
AW hot-keys are even worse and they have not even bothered to include a
keystrip amongst all their clip art! Keys <f4>, <f5>, <f6> and <f7> are
not in use at all and how often is it necessary to press <f10> in order
change the display of the short-cuts? None of the <shift-fx> keys
(possible with one hand) are used but <ctrl-shift-fx> keys are used
quite extensively. To use any of these requires two hands which surely
defeats the purpose of hot keys in an art package. The only place where
it should be necessary to use both hands is where some safeguard against
accidental use is required, such as <shift-ctrl-Z> which deletes the
whole drawing.
6.7
The library (only available with Vector)
6.7
This is the ability to hold a selection of objects (they can be grouped)
ready for immediate access. Different libraries can be saved to disk and
loaded. Each item in the library is named and they are called up from a
window where they can be displayed and selected. They are held in
alphabetical order which makes finding items easy. I store the symbol
for each colour in the library under its colour name and save a separate
library for each chart.
6.7
If the grid is on, objects inserted into the drawing from the library
are centred on a grid point. This can be very useful. For example, I use
symbols from the Dingbats Font (supplied with Impression) because they
take less memory than drawn shapes. After a character is stored and
retrieved from the Library the centre of it locks on the grid instead of
the lower edge as would be usual for text. This means all the symbols
are correctly placed in the centre of the grid square.
6.7
Speed
6.7
The speed of screen refresh is very fast in AW. The ability to display
only in wire-frames, of course, make working on a complicated drawing
even faster. Unfortunately, the work I am doing is all in black and
white and this feature is not applicable. Vector is slower and I get
round this, to a certain extent, by doing the large charts in sections
and then assembling them into one large chart as a new file. Saving in
the Vector format seems slow, much slower than saving as a drawfile, but
does save all the layer information so I put up with it.
6.7
Re-loading a drawfile is also much faster than re-loading the equivalent
Vector file. This is not true of AW. I loaded a very large chart in Draw
format into AW and found it took over 9 minutes! The same file loaded
into Vector in approximately 7 seconds. Perhaps my system is wrongly set
up but not as far as I am aware. Has anyone else found the same problem?
6.7
Special features
6.7
Again, the features I use are the ones applicable to my own work and not
necessarily the ones others would find useful. Firstly, when drawing the
initial grid, I have found the ‘Replicate’ feature in Vector to be
ideal. I draw one vertical line then use the horizontal replicate to
repeat the line the required number of times (35 in the example) and
spaced to match the grid. I then do the same for the horizontal lines. I
can also use the horizontal, vertical or matrix replication whenever I
have a block symbols to fill in.
6.7
AW does not seem to have quite the same facility. I can use the blend
tool to produce the correct number of lines or symbols but it takes much
more time adjusting them so that they fall exactly on the grid. In both
cases, I have to convert all the blend and replications into objects in
order to import the chart into Impression.
6.7
Conclusion
6.7
Although I had read several reviews of both programs and seen a
demonstration of AW, it was not until I actually tried them both that I
realised how much difference there was between them. The particular job
I am doing does not need the facilities provided by AW such as the
graduated fills and the text manipulation, good though they may be. The
Library facility alone would strongly influence me towards Vector. I
suppose it’s a case of ‘horses for courses’ − if you know what your
course is, be sure you get the right horse!  A
6.7
Figures with the cache on (ARM3 at 30MHz)
6.7
Source of files −>   PocketFS   H-
Disc   Comms
6.7
Obey file, mode 12   74s   1s
   Not possible
6.7
Obey file, mode 15   76s   2s
   Not possible
6.7
Desktop, mode 12   80s   4s
   87s
6.7
Desktop mode 15   92s   15s   †
6.7
Figures with the cache off (ARM2)
6.7
Source of files −>   PocketFS   H-
Disc   Comms
6.7
Obey file, mode 12   75s   2s
   Not possible
6.7
Obey file, mode 15   79s   5s
   Not possible
6.7
Desktop, mode 12   89s   13s
   99s
6.7
Desktop mode 15   126s   50s
   264s    †
6.7

6.7
† This sometimes worked, but every attempt had many CRC/checksum errors.
6.7

6.7
Eureka
6.7
Brian Cowan
6.7
I think that Eureka must be one of the Archimedes products most widely-
advertised before its release. The launch was delayed, so the question
must be: was it worth the wait? On balance, my answer is yes.
6.7
Other spreadsheets
6.7
In the past, I have purchased almost every spreadsheet produced for the
Archimedes, starting with Logistix which was a single-tasking PC port.
It was very clumsy to use, rather like many of the older DOS programs. I
toyed with Matrix-3 but never actually purchased it. This also was a
single-tasking product but it was more responsive and smoother in
operation. It was written specifically for the Archimedes.
6.7
Then came RISC-OS and the multi-tasking products. Schema was much
publicised, and although relatively powerful, it did not live up to
expectations. It was staggeringly slow at loading files, something which
Archimedes users had not previously experienced. I used it a little, but
eventually I gave up − I simply can’t tie up a computer loading files!
There was one upgrade for Schema but it was not particularly exciting.
It is a pity because I think Schema had a lot going for it − but what
counts is the manufacturer’s commitment to the product. That was
negligible with Schema.
6.7
So then I expected PipeDream to be the solution. Colton’s commitment to
PipeDream can certainly not be doubted, and Gerald Fitton’s Pipeline
column is an excellent source of information and help. However, at the
end of the day, I found PipeDream, with all its quirks, awkward and non-
intuitive. It did not satisfy my requirements.
6.7
Spreadsheets in general
6.7
I accept that my general dissatisfaction with the existing range of
spreadsheets is my problem rather than that of the spreadsheets. Most of
the manuals explain that the main use for spreadsheets is in financial
matters but I have absolutely no interest there. What I want to do is to
handle experimental data, to process it and to display it. Also, I
expect to use such products for numerical simulations. My applications
are fundamentally scientific. The problem is that spreadsheets are not
really aimed at that market.
6.7
This was dramatically brought home to me when I stayed at another
university where they used PCs and were running Quatro Pro to process
their data. It was explained that this was the most suitable product
available and how fantastic it was. However, in operation, I found it
very clumsy − it was worse than the worst Archimedes spreadsheet!
6.7
Enter Eureka
6.7
I therefore approached Eureka with limited expectations. It is modelled
very closely on the very popular PC spreadsheet, Excell, but this
actually works in its favour. Longmans have obviously studied the other
spreadsheets around to see how they work, what is needed, and how they
should function. As you will realise, I was put off by the statement in
the manual that the main use for spreadsheets is in the financial arena,
but I persevered.
6.7
The manual
6.7
Longmans have a tradition, being a long-standing publisher, of producing
manuals of exceptional clarity. In this respect, something seems to have
gone wrong concerning Eureka. The manual is in three parts: the main
section comprises a tutorial and reference guide and this is followed by
a brief reference guide. Finally, there is a further reference section
describing all the functions. To my surprise, there was no index and, to
my utter amazement, when I asked Longmans about this, my question was
answered with a question, “Why do you need an index when the function
reference is in alphabetical order?”
6.7
In use
6.7
Installation is the same as any well-behaved RISC-OS application:
clicking on the Eureka application directory installs it on the iconbar.
Clicking on that icon opens up a spreadsheet window − well, two windows
actually. As with most spreadsheets, data is not inserted into a cell
directly, rather it is typed into a data entry window and only when
<return> is pressed is the information passed to the selected cell.
Personally, I don’t like this. I would prefer the option of entering
numerical data directly into the selected cell. However, I accept that
there could be ambiguities: whether the cell contains a simple number, a
number as the result of a formula, or a string.
6.7
The spreadsheet window is interesting. Although it looks like a regular
RISC-OS window, in reality it is not. The program has its own window
manager which provides some extra functionality. The window can be split
horizontally or vertically. This is very useful in a spreadsheet.
Although the usual RISC-OS facility of multiple views on a document is
somewhat similar, with a split window the rows and columns still line up
− very clever!
6.7
The full features of outline fonts and different styles can be used in
the cells or groups of cells, and this means that very presentable
tables can be created. It goes without saying that the sizes of the
cells can be changed very easily by dragging them out.
6.7
Graphics
6.7
On all the spreadsheet packages I have seen, the graphics support has
not been quite what I would have liked. In Eureka, there is the full
range of bar charts, pie charts and other y-against category graphs.
Furthermore, the graphics are linked to the spreadsheet, so that
changing a number on the sheet immediately changes the graph. There are
facilities for changing the appearance of the graphics but here I found
the manual not very helpful. The main graph type that I use is the
scatter graph. Only one type is provided; I would have liked to see
options for putting various curves through the points. As expected,
graphics can be exported as drawfiles for inclusion in DTP work.
6.7
Functions
6.7
There is a generous selection of functions available. There are calendar
functions, financial functions, and maths functions galore. Unlike
PipeDream, there is no support for complex variables and functions, but
I am not sure how useful that really is. On the other hand, Eureka has a
host of matrix functions and you can (memory and time permitting) invert
and obtain the determinant of a square matrix of arbitrary size. By
contrast, PipeDream will only do this for matrices of dimension up to
3×3.
6.7
Macros − the absence thereof
6.7
A severe minus is that the current version of Eureka does not support
macros. This is strange. All good spreadsheets should allow for macros,
and in fact there is a filetype reserved for Eureka macros. I hope this
means that this omission will be rectified in the next release, which
should be some time in 1993. (The four-page colour advert that appeared
in September 1992 stated that Eureka had “user-defined functions and
function macros”. Ed.)
6.7
Conclusion
6.7
I have great hopes for Eureka. Of all the spreadsheets I have used, I am
happiest with this one and I will stick to it. It seems ideal for
educational purposes and for financial applications. There are certain
gaps in the scientific area but, in that area, there is nothing better.
I recommend it, and at a price of £119 + VAT (£125 through Archive) it
is good value for money.
6.7
Postscript
6.7
I am delighted to hear that Chris Johnson of Heriot-Watt University
Chemistry Department is going to edit a spreadsheet column. Many readers
will know that Chris is the author of the superb PD suite of graph-
plotting programs. It is likely that Chris will discuss precisely those
points, namely scientific applications, which are usually neglected. We
might even see versions of Chris’s programs which link to Eureka. Graph-
plotting and curve-fitting would integrate very well and fill a big gap
in present spreadsheet facilities.  A
6.7
File Transfer − BBC to Archimedes
6.7
Peter Smith
6.7
This is a comparative review of two pieces of software which can
transfer files between DFS or ADFS operating systems on the BBC and
Master computers, and the Archimedes. The software in question is
Transfer from Watford Electronics, and MultiLink from IvoryAsh.
6.7
Both these programs do actually perform the tasks they set out to do and
both are fully multitasking RISC-OS compliant applications. They both
transfer data between the computers via a cable connecting the serial
ports. However, they perform their transfers at very different speeds
and the approach taken by each application is quite different.
6.7
Background
6.7
I started programming commercially on the BBC micro about ten years ago.
In the intervening years I have written, and had published, a
considerable number of educational programs. Every one of these has
started life on the humble BBC Micro. I often have to convert these
programs to run on either the Archimedes or the Nimbus. In either case,
the first step is to get the BBC files across to the Archimedes where
all my utilities to manipulate code and images live.
6.7
With the A3000, I used a utility from Risc Developments to perform the
transfers. However, when I upgraded to an A5000, this utility failed to
work, and a call to Risc Developments informed me that they had no plans
to upgrade it. I was desperate for a replacement utility which would
work with my A5000. I didn’t particularly care if it was single or
multitasking, as long as it worked with any kind of file, was reasonably
bug-free, could transfer files in both directions and performed the
transfer reasonably quickly. A little research revealed two possible
programs that might help, and these are the products reviewed here.
6.7
!Transfer from Watford Electronics (v 2.0)
6.7
This comes with minimal instructions, a serial cable and single floppy
disc. The software consists of two applications !Install and !Transfer.
6.7
To allow the two computers to talk to each other, the BBC computer needs
to have a program loaded too. Running !Install takes you through the
process of transferring the BBC software from the Archimedes. Once this
file has been transfered, it can be saved to a BBC disc for future use,
thus simplifying the setting up procedures in later sessions.
6.7
Once the BBC micro is set up, all the action takes place from the
Archimedes. Transfer application is loaded and this installs itself on
the iconbar in the usual way. Clicking on its icon brings up the
following window.
6.7

6.7
The default operation is ‘Catalogue disc’ and clicking on ‘Go’ brings up
a window displaying the files available on the current BBC disc:
6.7

6.7
This window is not interactive but it is for information only. Although
the window has a close icon, you cannot, in fact, remove the window with
its close icon. It is removed only when you quit the program from the
iconbar. As well as the BBC file name, this window gives the information
on each file. This is the information that would be displayed with a
*INFO command on the BBC, i.e. load and execution address, file length
and the number of 256 byte sectors which the file occupies on the BBC
disk.
6.7
To transfer a file from the BBC, you click inside the ‘BBC File Name’
editable field, and enter the filename. Select ‘Receive’ from the
operations box and click on ‘Go’.
6.7
You get two indications of how the transfer is progressing, via a green
bar on the Archimedes Transfer window and via a counter on the BBC.
Unfortunately, the transfer progresses extremely slowly. On my A5000, I
used the highest available transfer rate of 9600 baud and my 20 Kb test
file took 9 minutes 45 seconds to transfer. I used this as a test since
I often need to transfer *saved screens of this size. It is also the
maximum file size that most people will need to transfer.
6.7
By my reckoning, 9600 baud (bits per second) is 9600/8 or 1200 bytes per
second. So a 20 Kb file should take (20 × 1024 / 1200) or just over 17
seconds to transfer.
6.7
Now I will admit that this may be a simplistic view and there may be
good reasons why this ideal cannot be reached in practice. However, the
actual transfer corresponds to a real transfer rate of only 280 baud and
does seem very slow. I tried selecting a slower baud rate of 4800 but
this made no discernible difference to the actual transfer rate.
6.7
As Transfer is truly multitasking, you can get on with other jobs while
the transfer takes place. In practice, however, I find it makes a great
difference to my work efficiency if I don’t have to wait around for
things to happen − which, of course, was part of the reason I bought an
ARM 3 computer in the first place!
6.7
The filename from the BBC file appears in a standard RISC-OS save
dialogue box, and this can be dragged to a suitable directory for
saving. Unfortunately, you only get one go at this and if an error is
encountered, such as trying to save to a directory with insufficient
room, you have to transmit the file all over again!
6.7
Transferring files to the BBC is a similar process to that described for
transferring to the Archimedes. You can either type in the path name of
the Archimedes file, or drag the file into the appropriate editable
fields within the transfer application window. Again, at a 9600 baud
setting, the transfer takes much longer than expected but is quicker
than receiving. My 20 Kb test file took about 6½ minutes in this
direction.
6.7
Quitting the application from the iconbar occasionally locked up the
machine. Pressing <escape> produced a ‘channel’ error message and then
control was returned with the application removed from the iconbar.
6.7
!MultiLink from Ivory Ash (version 2.03)
6.7
This also comes with minimal instructions and a single floppy disc. A
suitable serial cable can be purchased separately. The software consists
of a single application and a ReadMe text file.
6.7
The initial setting up procedure is similar to the Watford utility. If
you try to run the software without reading the instructions and
correctly configuring the BBC micro, a message appears in a task window
telling you to type two * commands on the BBC and try again. The
Archimedes then downloads the necessary BBC software which, again, you
can save to a BBC disc for future use.
6.7
When the BBC software is installed, a floppy drive icon appears on the
iconbar and then this BBC drive operates very much like any other disc
drive connected to the Archimedes. You click to open a directory on the
BBC disk, and the directory viewer displays all the files found in the $
directory. If files exist within other directories, the directories are
shown and these can be opened in the usual way. MultiLink tries to
interpret the kind of BBC file and attach the appropriate icon to it.
6.7

6.7
Transfer of files is carried out in exactly the same way as you would
copy a file from one directory or filing system to another on the
Archimedes. You just open the appropriate filer windows, highlight the
file, or files, to be transfered and drag them to your chosen
destination directory.
6.7
The transfer rate is fixed at 9200 baud and, although this is not
achieved, the actual transfer rate is very respectable. My 20 Kb test
file took just over 1 minute to transfer from the BBC to the Archimedes
and just under 1 minute in the other direction. The progress of the
transfer is indicated on the BBC micro as a succession of dashes, each
of which represents 256 bytes of the file. Clicking <menu> over a file
icon within the BBC files directory gives a short but useful range of
options which give information about the file and allow it to be renamed
or deleted.
6.7

6.7
Service!
6.7
In researching this software, I have noticed another difference between
the products, and that is in the service I have received. Because of my
need to transfer large files quickly, I checked the transfer speeds with
the two companies by telephone before ordering.
6.7
The person I spoke to from Watford quoted the maximum baud rate and
reassured me that their software would meet my needs; the man from
IvoryAsh offered to send me a copy of the software with an invoice, so
that I could either send him the money or return the software if I found
it unsuitable.
6.7
The first package I received from Watford contained an old non-
multitasking version of their software, together with the wrong
connecting lead. I returned this and was then sent the correct software
and lead. I returned the entire package two months ago asking for a
refund as the actual transfer rates made it unsuitable for my needs and
did not approach the quoted figures. Despite a follow up letter a month
later, I am still waiting for a response from Watford.
6.7
My experience with Ivory Ash was somewhat different. The software
arrived two days after my initial enquiry and it worked well. It did,
however, contain two small bugs which did not affect file transfer but
could cause the machine to hang in certain circumstances. I quickly sent
off my money, with a note informing the company of these bugs. I
recently received a new version of MultiLink from Ivory Ash with the
bugs removed.
6.7
Conclusions
6.7
There is no doubt in my mind that the MultiLink software from IvoryAsh
wins hands down. It is very much faster than the Watford product, about
nine times faster in uploading from the BBC, and over 6 times faster at
downloading from the Archimedes. I also find it much more intuitive −
the BBC disc drive is, after all, just another drive and MulitLink
treats it as such.
6.7
Transfer from Watford Electronics costs £17.63 for an A3000 or £18.80
for an A5000 version. Prices include a serial transfer lead. VAT is
included but postage is extra.
6.7
MultiLink from IvoryAsh Ltd costs £24.95 including VAT and postage.
Serial lead is extra.
6.7
Note that you will need to have the two serial chips fitted if you are
using an A3000.  A
6.7
Rheingold Enterprises    17 Ingfield
Terrace, Slaithwaite, Huddersfield, HD7 5BJ. (0925−210657)
6.7
Risc Developments    117 Hatfield
Road, St Albans, Herts, AL1 4JS. (0727−840303) (0727−860263)
6.7
Sherston Software    Swan Barton,
Sherston, Malmesbury, Wilts. SN16 0LH. (0666−840433) (0666−840048)
6.7
Simis Ltd    Headley House, Headley Road, Grayshott, Surrey, GU26 6TU.
(0428−605833) (0428−607791)
6.7
Spacetech (p34)   21 West Wools, Portland, Dorset, DT5 2EA.
(0305−822753) (0305−860483)
6.7
State Machine    75 Upper Wellington Street, Luton, Bedfordshire, LU1
5AA. (0582−483377) (0582−480833)
6.7
Suitable Software    136 Carter
Street, Fordham, Ely, Cambridgeshire, CB7 5JU. (0638−720171)
6.7
Suitable Software    8 Jane
Court, Lenah Valley, Tasmania, Australia 7008. (+61−02−285−448)
6.7
Techsoft UK Ltd (p8)   Old School
Lane, Erryrs, Mold, Clwyd, CH7 4DA. (082−43318)
6.7
TJ Reproductions (p7)   Unit 42,
Sapcote Trading Centre, Dudden Hill Lane, Willesden, London, NW10 2DJ.
(081−451−6220) (081−451−6441)
6.7
Turing Tools    149 Campbell Road, Cowley, Oxford, OX4 3NX. (0865−775059)
6.7
Watford Electronics    Jessa House,
Finway, Dallow Road, Luton, LU1 1TR. (0582−487777) (0582−488588)
6.7
Wild Vision    15 Witney Way, Boldon Colliery, Tyne & Wear NE35 9PE.
(091−519−1455) (091−519−1929)
6.7
Words & Music    26 Newark Drive, Whitburn, Sunderland, SR6 7DF.
(091−529−4788) (091−529−5327)
6.7
XOB    Balkeerie, Eassie by Forfar, Angus, DD8 1SR. (0307−84364)
6.7
(All values except for the speed tester are in seconds, taken by hand
with a stop watch. The times with an exclamation mark were taken twice
because I felt that they couldn’t be correct.)
6.7

How was Harrogate?
6.8
We have just got back from the Acorn User Show in Harrogate. It was
great to be able meet some of the Archive subscribers for whom Wembley
is a bit too far to travel − and also good to see again some of the
regulars who would come to the Acorn User Show wherever it was!
6.8
I was leaving some space here on the inside front cover of the magazine
in case there were any marvellous new products launched at the Show that
everyone ought to know about. There were some new things but nothing
that won’t wait until next month’s Products Available column.
6.8
I must give a big thank you to Dave and the lads from Arcade BBS! There
was a group of Arcadians meeting together for a meal at the end of the
last day of the Show and they very kindly offered to help Dave, Simon
and myself take down the stand and pack it all into the van − we’d have
been there an awful lot longer without you − thanks very much!
6.8
Lost mail !
6.8
On the morning of 31st March someone stole the mail sack that the Post
Office van delivered at 96a Vauxhall Street. We have no way of knowing
what letters and/or cheques we lost in the robbery so if you have not
received a response from Norwich Computer Services at the speed to which
you have become accustomed and you think it was sent to us around the
end of March, please give us a ring to see if we have actually received
it. Thank you and we are sorry for the inconvenience.
6.8
Best wishes,
6.8

6.8
Products Available
6.8
•    10 Out of 10 Early Essentials − Following on from 10/10 Maths and 10/
10 English, 4th Dimension have produced 10 out of 10 Early Essentials
which is for the under 7’s and provides programs that develop concepts
of shape and colour, numbers, alphabet, science, tables and bonds,
logic, algebra, time, properties and words. All this for only £25.95 or
£24 through Archive!
6.8
•    Acorn Multimedia Expansion Unit − This is a metal unit containing a
CD-ROM drive but with space for a second drive unit. It comes either
with or without a SCSI interface and the interface is either an 8-bit
internal podule for A3000/4000 machines or a 16-bit standard-width
podule for other Archimedes computers. The prices are £599 +VAT with a
SCSI interfaces and £499 +VAT without. (The dealer margin on these is
very small, so the Archive prices are not discounted − £590 and £705
including VAT and carriage.)
6.8
If you have your own SCSI card, you need to be sure that it has the CDFS
included and that it is at least version 2.13. Also, this version of
CDFS need RISC OS version 3.10 or later.
6.8
The cabling on the unit is long enough to put it alongside the computer
or you could put it on top of or underneath the computer, subject to a
maximum loading of 16kg.
6.8
The unit will take two internal SCSI devices. One of them must be a 3½“
unit, entirely enclosed, and the other a 5¼” half-height unit with an
external fascia or a 3½“ in a 5¼” cradle. Having an external fascia
allows for the use of removable media such as SyQuests or magneto-
optical devices although some of the MO units are physically too long to
fit in the case.
6.8
If you want a power amplifier for the sound output, this can also be
fitted internally.
6.8
You should note, however, that the internal p.s.u. will only have enough
spare capacity for ONE unit in addition to the CD-ROM, i.e. one extra
drive or a power amplifier. Also, if you add an extra unit, you will
need to fit a fan − for which space and fitting points are provided.
6.8
•    Acorn Options − This is a scheme by which schools and colleges can
obtain Acorn computers on a rental scheme. Capital expenditure is tight,
so this scheme provides a way of getting hold of the latest in computer
technology without large up-front payments. Acorn Authorised Education
Dealers such as Norwich Computer Services can supply Acorn computer
equipment and the educational establishments pay a quarterly rental over
three or five years. At the end of that period, it may be possible for
schools to maintain title of the equipment but the terms have still to
be finalised. In any case, considering the rate at which technology
moves on, it might be better to think in terms of a three or five year
replacement cycle for computers. It is also possible to add more
equipment to the rental scheme as the years go by. For more details,
ring Norwich Computer Services’ education hot-line.
6.8
•    Archive binders − More price rises, I’m afraid! The latest batch of
binders have gone up in price, so we are now having to charge £6 each.
(Does anyone know of a manufacturer we can try who might be cheaper?
Ed.)
6.8
“These binders are too small!” We have been told that, with the ever-
increasing thickness of the Archive magazines, people are having
difficulty fitting them into the binders! Admittedly, it is getting more
difficult to fit them in but it is often because people are not fitting
them correctly. The idea is that only the front and back magazines have
their rods fitted into the holes. The other ten rods should be put into
the slot. The only reason they have so many holes is so that you can use
different holes during the course of the year as the binder fills up.
6.8
•    Archive Monthly Program Discs − For the benefit of new-comers to
Archive, let me explain about the monthly program discs. These discs
contain any of the data which contributors send in each month that are
relevant to their articles. For example, last month we included a list
(contributed by Rob Brown) of items of software that were or were not
compatible with RISC OS 3. If there is not much material that needs to
go on the disc, in a given month, we try to find some PD software or
some other useful information that we can add ourselves.
6.8
If there is a particular month’s disc that you want to buy, they are
available at £2 a disc. You can order these discs in advance, again at
£2 each or at £20 for a full year, i.e. 12 discs.
6.8
•    ArtSchool − This is a painting program for new computer users. Drawing
tools can be temporarily excluded by a teacher or parent using a
separate program so that the user is not confused by too many icons. It
has a built-in help facility and, for the more advanced user, the 256
colour modes can be used with graduated fills and cycling colours. The
price is £29.95 inc VAT from Micro Studio or £28 through Archive.
6.8
•    BattleChess from Krisalis Software is a chess game with a difference.
As well as being able to play chess against a human opponent or against
the computer, you get the benefit of some very impressive animation
sequences when a piece is taken. The price is £25.99 inc VAT from
Krisalis or £24 through Archive.
6.8
•    Careware and Shareware − This month we have two new Careware discs and
three new Shareware discs. The graphics conversion utilities on Careware
19 have grown somewhat so that the statistics routines have had to be
transferred onto Careware 20. If you want an update of Careware 19, just
send the old disc back.
6.8
Careware 20 − SkyView v1.01 is an excellent ‘sky simulation’ program by
Nigel Hawkes for use by the naked eye astronomer. Any part of the night
sky can be examined and information is available on most celestial
objects. Also on the disc is the suite of stand-alone statistical
utilities written in Basic by Bob Richards, listed in Archive 6.5 p4 as
being part of Careware 19.
6.8
Careware 21 consists of clipart produced by Steve and Anne Bruntlett −
various drawfiles on a religious theme plus some scanned drawings.
6.8
Shareware 48 is a demo version of !G-Draft 1.0, a 2D CAD package
including various example CAD drawings and some symbol libraries.
6.8
Shareware 49 has various graphical demos in Basic, a suite of desktop
utilities, some Draw utilities for PCB layout work, a ‘presentation’
utility to display multiple drawfiles in succession, a desktop utility
to calculate ‘best-fit’ data, an excellent 2D graphing tool allowing
multiple graphs to be built up using text file data, a useful desktop
mathematics/learning tool covering bar graphs, Euclidean algorithms,
factorization, fractions, greatest common divisor, least common multiple
and prime number search.
6.8
Shareware 50 contains ProTrack and associated files from Gil Damoiseaux
& Bernard Jungen. This utility allows SoundTracker and ProTracker files
to be played. It includes several facilities for monitoring and
modifying the tunes.
6.8
•    Christian clipart − Ian Gooding has a range of about 30 discs of
Christian clipart in sprite, drawfile and Artworks formats. The discs
are £7.99 each plus £2.50 p&p per order. For a full catalogue, write to
Ian Gooding, 18 Larksfield, Covingham, Swindon, SN3 5AD.
6.8
•    Courses Galore − You can now combine computer training courses with
some site-seeing in a beautiful part of the U.K. − the Norfolk Broads.
Norwich Computer Services is going to be putting on some training
courses here in Norwich. You can choose the type and price of your own
accommodation from a list (which we will provide) of hotels and guest
houses as well as camping and caravan sites.
6.8
We are hoping to start this summer, but what we need to know fairly
urgently, is:
6.8
(1) What subjects should we cover? Applications such as Impression,
PipeDream, PinPoint, PenDown, Vector, Squirrel, S-Base, PC Emulator,
Revelation, Magpie, etc? Beginners courses, e.g. Introducing RISC OS?
Programming, e.g. BBC Basic V or C or WIMP Programming?
6.8
(2) How long should the courses be and when? e.g. mid-week or weekend?
How about a Bank Holiday weekend with course work on Saturday and
Monday, leaving Sunday as a day of rest?
6.8
Tell us what you want and we will see what we can arrange for you.
6.8
•    DataPower, Iota Software’s new ‘easy-to-use’ database, is available
now. It is RISC OS compliant, uses outline fonts and has features which
include unlimited length of field, unlimited number of fields in a
record, unlimited number of views of a database, has multi-line text
field-type which accepts an unlimited amount of text. It offers
mailmerge and WYSIWYG labelling. It offers a range of graphing
facilities and can be used over a network. The price is £149 +VAT (£160
through Archive) for a single user, £347 +VAT (£375 through Archive) for
a site licence for up to 10 machines and £599 +VAT (£650 through
Archive) for an unrestricted site licence.
6.8
•    Double-life ink cassettes − We are now stocking double-life black ink
cassettes for the Deskjet 500s. Standard cassettes are £18 and double-
life are £25. (We haven’t tested them, so we cannot guarantee that
“double” actually means what it says!)
6.8
•    Eizo prices up again − Because of the strength of the Yen against the
Pound, monitor prices are going up again. The 9060SZ is now £600 (these
are also in short supply), the F340i-W is £720, the F550i-W is £1020,
the T560iT is £1560 and the T660iT is £2260. The Taxan 795 has also gone
up in price to £640.
6.8
•    Ethernet interfaces − EtherLan 100 is an A3000 version of i³’s
EtherLan 200 interface. The EtherLan 100 costs £220 +VAT although there
are educational prices. Ring i³ for details.
6.8
•    FontWay is a font managing application from XOB (which works only with
RISC OS 3.10 onwards). This allows you to set up pre-selected sets of
fonts and add and subtract fonts easily. It also gives you a font-
viewing window. It costs £16 +VAT from XOB or £18 through Archive for a
single user licence. A site licence is £64 +VAT from XOB or £72 through
Archive.
6.8
(Keeps your eyes peeled for an extremely powerful font filing system
that should be available soon from another software house. It even
allows you to drop an Impression or Artworks document, for example, into
its window and it will automatically select and load the fonts needed!
It sounds too good to be true! Ed.)
6.8
•    Karma − We have had some enquiries recently about the progress of
Karma. We are extremely sorry to have to report the death of one of the
two programmers, Rick Delarre, in a motorcycle accident recently. We do
not yet know how this will affect the future of the project but if we
get any further news, we will let you know. We would like to express our
sincere condolences to Rick’s family and friends.
6.8
•    Knowledge Organiser 2 − Clares have released an updated version of
their Knowledge Organiser which is a free-form text database. Clares
describe it as being “relational” and say that the search engine is
“more powerful than any yet seen”. The price is £99.95 inc VAT or £93
through Archive.
6.8
I have had a chance to play with KO II and am writing a review of it for
the magazine. It seems to be an extremely versatile and powerful
application and I am hoping to use it to create and distribute an
Archimedes hints & tips database. Clares are providing us with a licence
so that we can distribute the read-only version of KO II with the hints
& tips database − watch this space! Ed.
6.8
•    Microvitec Cubscan 1440 − Microvitec have now produced a 14“ multisync
monitor aimed at the Archimedes market. It has the same resolution as
the Eizo 9060 with dot pitch of 0.28mm and scans from 15 to 40 kHz but
it is rather cheaper. The Eizo 9060 has just gone up to £600 whereas the
Cubscan 1440 will sell at an Archive price of £480. The scanning range
is slightly higher at 40kHz compared to the 9060’s 38.5 kHz but it
shouldn’t make much practical difference. It also has the advantage over
the 9060 of having electronically control picture positioning. It senses
the different signals that come in and sets up the screen to a preset
position which you can program into it. These presets only apply to the
size and position of the picture and not to the huge range of parameters
that can be preset on all the Eizo monitors from the F340iW upwards.
6.8
If it costs £120 less than a 9060 and has electronic position control,
are the days of the 9060 numbered? Well, we put the Cubscan 1440 next to
a 9060 to compare them. First of all, although the dot pitch is supposed
to be the same, the 9060 is definitely clearer when viewing small text
and secondly, we feel that the styling of the Cubscan leaves a lot to be
desired − but that is obviously a lot more subjective than the picture
clarity. Also, the control of the Cubscan has no audible or tactile
feedback − you just press a button and watch the screen shrink or grow.
Is the 9060 worth £120 more? Hmmm, it’s difficult to say − I think it is
too much of an individual decision to make any general pronouncement
about it.
6.8
•    NetChat − This is a real-time electronic mail and peer-to-peer file-
space sharer, mentioned last month as being available from Archive for
£92. What we forgot to say was that it was produced by XOB − sorry about
that!
6.8
•    NetGain for Ethernet − Digital Services have launched a new product
that speeds up loading times on Level 4 Fileservers using Ethernet. Data
rates can be increased markedly and application loading times
correspondingly reduced. This costs £200 for the server pack and the
first ten machines. Additional 10 station packs are £100 +VAT from
Digital Services.
6.8
•    North Sea is the latest curriculum datafile from Anglia Television.
For £22 +VAT, you get a 28-page workbook and a datafile disc. This is
for use with KeyPlus version 2.5 or later.
6.8
•    PassMan IV − This is XOB’s password management software. It provides
facilities on Level IV fileservers to view and set users’ passwords,
boot option, free space, etc. PassMan IV costs £49 +VAT from XOB or £54
through Archive.
6.8
•    PC386/486 cards for A3020/4000 − Acorn are now selling PC cards for
the A3020 and A4000 computers. The costs are £275 +VAT (£310 through
Archive) for the 1Mb PC386 and £499 +VAT (£560 through Archive) for the
4Mb PC486 card. (In case you are wondering, these cards are supplied to
Acorn by Aleph One − there is still no sign of the long-lost Watford
Electronics’ PC card.) The 486 price includes the Windows driver
software which speeds up Windows applications.
6.8
•    !Perform − This is a utility, normally supplied with Clares’ VoxBox,
which allows up to twelve Rhapsody scores to be played in sequence.
Clares have very kindly released it into the public domain and it is
available on this month’s program disc.
6.8
•    ProCAD − This is the professional version of Minerva’s CADet 2D
draughting package. Facilities include multiple drawings, fast zoom and
pan, 32 layers, BS308 automatic dimensioning, ruled line and graphic
fills, user-designed symbols, multiple line types, four plottable fonts,
bill of material type reports, roll-back undo, on-the-fly snaps, import/
export of DXF, advanced construction tools, CSV import, multitasking
plotter driver. The single user price is £495 +VAT (£535 through
Archive) and a site licence for up to 30 machines is £1580 +VAT from
Minerva.
6.8
•    QuickType is a touch-typing tutor that allows the teacher to set up
exercises tailored to the pupils rather than being limited to the
exercises specified by the programmer. This costs £32 +VAT from XOB or
£35 through Archive. A site licence is £99 +VAT from XOB or £108 through
Archive.
6.8
•    RemoteFS is now available. Atomwide’s inter-computer communication
software was described by Brian Cowan last month (Archive 6.7 p55). It
is now available for £49 +VAT or £53 through Archive. For that price,
you get the software plus a serial lead and a parallel lead although you
should remember that the parallel lead will only work on the newer
computers with the bidirectional parallel port (A5000/4000/3020/3010).
The serial cable will work on all Archimedes computers although the
A3000 must have a serial port upgrade fitted (£21 through Archive).
6.8
•    Removable drive price up − The price of 42Mb removable drive has
followed the general upward trend of imported goods. The new Archive
price is £485. The cartridges are still £75 each and the 84Mb drives
remain at the price stated last month of £590 for the standard drive and
£670 for the enhanced version that writes as well as reads the 42Mb
cartridges.
6.8
•    Sherston software prices up − There has been a small across-the-board
rise in prices of all Sherston’s software. New prices are as per the
Archive Price List.
6.8
•    SimCity − Krisalis Software have produced an Archimedes version of
this famous city-simulation game. It is claimed to be the best-selling
computer game ever with sales in excess of half a million copies
worldwide! The price is £34.99 inc VAT from Krisalis or £32 through
Archive.
6.8
•    SUMthing − From the same author as Droom and Dust comes SUMthing, a
maths program with a difference. Thee six different programs in the pack
involving placing numbers in order, number sentences, reading numbers,
digital roots and number bonds. It can be set up for the individual’s
particular level within National Curriculum levels 2 to 4 and the
pupil’s work is recorded for the teacher to check later. It is aimed at
Maths AT2 & 3 at Key Stage 1 & 2. It costs £19.95 +VAT from RESOURCE or
£22 through Archive.
6.8
•    SuperMon II is XOB’s Network Manager’s utility which allows you to
monitor and control remote stations. It lists logged-on users and
stations, opens any directory on the network, has a digital clock,
calculator, protect facility. With it you can log off selected stations,
halt and restart stations, view and/or blank remote station’s screens,
send text messages, force commands on remote machines and zap
(irreversibly!) software running in a remote machine. SuperMon II is £89
+VAT from XOB or £98 through Archive.
6.8
•    Switch − This is a new game from Soft Rock Software (whose motto is
“software on a shoestring”!) costing just £3.49 inclusive. It is “best
described as an on-going puzzle”. From the description, it sounds like a
glorified Tetris.
6.8
•    TechnoDream is here − What was going to be Nevryon 2 has now appeared
as TechnoDream published by Superior Software. The price is £24.95 or
£23 from Archive.
6.8
•    Topographer − Dave Clare writes, “Due to the tragic death of Ricky
Delarre, Clares Micro Supplies have delayed the release of Topographer.
The Clares team found working with Ricky a very rewarding experience. He
was a very professional programmer who took a pride in his work.
6.8
Topographer was literally hours away from being finished. It is a
reflection of Ricky’s popularity that his colleague, Ian Robinson, has
immediately stepped in to complete Topographer so that it can be
released as a fitting tribute to Ricky.
6.8
He will be missed by all at Clares, and his death is a great loss to
everyone in the Acorn world as well as to his family and his wife,
Jayne.”
6.8
Review software received...
6.8
We have received review copies of the following: ArcTrack, BattleChess,
Choices, Crossword, First Logo, Insight, Ixion, Landmarks − Civil War,
NetManage, Numerator Workcards, Picture It!, Punctuate, SatPack 1,
Screenplay Training Video, Soapbox, Splash, SpySnatcher, Squish,
SUMthing, Switch, ThinkLink, Through the Dragon’s Eye, The Spoken Word,
Switch, Tiles.  A
6.8
Government Health Warning − Reading this could seriously affect your
spiritual health.
6.8
“You Christians are so negative. We have, as a society, just about
managed to shake off the manacles of the Victorian attitude to sexuality
and you are trying to restrict us again. We have won the freedom to have
whatever loving relationships we want to, gay or straight, casual or
permanent, young or old and you are trying to restrict us to a life
sentence in a monogamous, straight marriage. No thanks!”
6.8
I’m sorry you think I’m negative − but I’m going to be negative again.
In case it has escaped your notice, we have, in the UK today (a)
increasing teenage pregnancy rates, (b) increasing abortion rates and,
in particular, increasing teenage abortion rates (OK, you’ve won the
‘freedom’ to have abortions but are abortions ‘good’ for mothers?), (c)
increasing rates of Aids-related diseases and death, (d) increasing
divorce rates (OK, you’ve won the ‘freedom’ to have divorces but are
divorces ‘good’ for the adults or for the children involved?) and (e)
increasing child abuse.
6.8
Now let me be positive (if a little personal). I don’t have any personal
experience of the ‘freedom’ of casual relationships but I can speak from
experience of the first twenty years of a life-long (hopefully!),
committed, Christian marriage. I would say that the physical aspect of
the relationship is really wonderful and, if anything, it gets better!
The reason for that, in my view, is because of the security we feel in
the commitment we have to each other and to God.
6.8
It depresses me no end to see the example we give to our teenagers.
Instead of teaching them the beauty, sanctity and wonder of sex within
marriage we tell them to use a condom.
6.8
Norwich Computer Services 96a Vauxhall Street, Norwich, NR2 2SD.
0603−766592 (−764011)
6.8
4th Dimension     P.O. Box 4444, Sheffield. (0742−700661) (0742−781091)
6.8
4Mation     11 Castle Park Road, Whiddon Valley, Barnstaple, Devon, EX32
8PA. (0271−25353) (0271−22974) Mike Matson 0825−732679
6.8
Abacus Training    29 Okus Grove, Upper Stratton, Swindon, Wilts, SN2
6QA.
6.8
Acorn Computers Ltd    Fulbourn
Road, Cherry Hinton, Cambridge, CB1 4JN. (0223−254254) (0223−254262)
6.8
Aleph One Ltd     The Old Courthouse, Bottisham, Cambridge, CB5 9BA.
(0223−811679) (0223−812713)
6.8
Anglia Television      Education
Department, Anglia House, Norwich, NR1 3JG. (0603−615151) (0603−631032)
6.8
Architype Software    54 Parkes
Hall Road, Woodsetton, Dudley, West Midlands DY1 3SR.
6.8
ARMen Software     Laxton House, Milton Road, Oundle, Peterborough, PE8
4AQ. (0832−273444) (0832−273259)
6.8
Atomwide Ltd     23 The Greenway, Orpington, Kent, BR5 2AY. (0689−838852)
(0689−896088)
6.8
Clares Micro Supplies     98
Middlewich Road, Rudheath, Northwich, Cheshire, CW9 7DA. (0606−48511)
(0606−48512)
6.8
Colton Software (p11)    2 Signet
Court, Swanns Road, Cambridge, CB5 8LA. (0223−311881) (0223−312010)
6.8
Computer Concepts (p21/22)    Gaddesden
Place, Hemel Hempstead, Herts, HP2 6EX. (0442−63933) (0442−231632)
6.8
Dabs Press     22 Warwick Street, Prestwich, Manchester, M25 7HN.
(061−773−8632) (061−773−8290)
6.8
Dalriada Data Technology     145 Albion
Street, Kenilworth, Warkwickshire, CV8 2FY. (0926−53901)
6.8
David Pilling (p7)    P.O.Box 22,
Thornton Cleveleys, Blackpool, FY5 1LR.
6.8
Desktop Projects Ltd     Unit 2A,
Heapriding Business Park, Ford Street, Stockport, SK3 0BT.
(061−474−0778) (061−474−0781)
6.8
Digital Services    9 Wayte Street, Cosham, Portsmouth PO6 3BS.
(0705−210600) (0705−210705)
6.8
Emerald Publishing     P.O.Box 324,
Cambridge, CB1 3HB. (0223−355399)
6.8
HS Software    56, Hendrefolian Avenue, Sketty, Swansea, SA2 7NB.
(0792−204519)
6.8
i³     Unit J1, The Paddock, 347 Cherry Hinton Road, Cambridge, CB1 4DH.
(0223−413717) (0223−413847)
6.8
ICS (p12)    1 Kington Road, West Kirby, Wirral, L48 5ET. (051−625−1006)
(051−625−1007)
6.8
Iota Software Ltd    St John’s Innovation Centre, Cowley Road, Cambridge,
CB4 4WS. (0223−421542) (0223−421543)
6.8
Irlam Instruments    133 London Road, Staines, Middlesex TW18 4HN.
(0895−811401)
6.8
Krisalis Software     Teque House,
Mason’s Yard, Downs Row, Moorgate, Rotherham, S60 2HD. (0709−372290)
6.8
Longman-Logotron     124 Cambridge Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge CB4
4ZS. (0223−425558) (0223−425349)
6.8
LOOKsystems (p31)    47 Goodhale Road, Bowthorpe, Norwich, NR5 9AY.
(0603−764114) (0603−764011)
6.8

6.8

6.8
Paul Beverley
6.8
Drop Rock
6.8
Ulf Svensson
6.8
Drop Rock for £3.49 from Soft Rock Software comes on a single disc.
Double click on the program icon and the game takes over the whole
screen. If you have a hard disc, you can install the program without any
problem. Press <escape> if you want to quit and you are back to the
desktop.
6.8
The game
6.8
In this game, you have to go through 40 screens and collect scrolls and
jewels. There are safes in each level that contains scrolls. To collect
these scrolls, you must get all the keys on that screen and avoid
falling rocks and yellow devils. The devils in most cases can be guided
into cages and they turn into scrolls which you can collect. The score,
and how many lives you have left, is displayed at the bottom of the
screen.
6.8
Conclusion
6.8
The graphics are quite simple. It is similar in concept to Bobby
Blockhead but lacks complexity, which would make the game more fun to
play. I tried some levels several times and managed to collect some keys
before I was killed by a falling rock. The game was not very addictive −
maybe it would have been more fun on a BBC B? This game is not
stretching much of the Archimedes’ capabilities − which I think a good,
addictive game on this machine has to do if it is to be reasonably good
value for money.  A
6.8
David Pilling
6.8
New artwork
6.8
SpaceTech
6.8
From 6.7 page 34
6.8
Ovation Column
6.8
Maurice Edmundson
6.8
Draft Printing
6.8
This facility was added to version 1.36 and later and is intended for
those who use a dot matrix printer. When a dot-matrix printer is used in
the graphical mode for printing higher quality WYSIWYG output, the
slowness is tolerable, but where a rapid draft of the text is wanted,
the printer must make use of its normal, usually Epson emulation, fonts
and speeds. If the screen document uses proportionally spaced fonts, the
formatting will probably be disrupted in the draft mode print. Often
this does not matter. All you want is the text for checking. Layout in
the draft copy is not so important but if you want to minimise the
differences from screen to paper, the Ovation draft mode can help.
6.8
A special style-sheet has been designed which makes use of a mono-spaced
font called SystemB (supplied) which, of course, must be in your !Fonts
directory. Two style sheets are provided on the Work Disc, one for A4
paper and the other for the slightly larger Letter size. The draft print
option can be selected in the Print menu.
6.8
Preparing for draft printing
6.8
One possibility is to type a new document from scratch into the special
draft style sheet, make the draft print and amendments as necessary,
then when you are satisfied, re-load it into your own style sheet or
document and modify it to its final WYSIWYG style.
6.8
Alternatively if you have already prepared your document in its final
form, save it as a text file. Then you can re-load it into the draft
mode style sheet, where it can be tidied up on the screen, and the
layout modified to suit the available draft codes for bold, italic,
subscript etc. The fast draft print will then match it in both layout
and style.
6.8
Printing large documents
6.8
Sometimes one wants to print a sheet which is larger than A4, such as a
news broadsheet or a poster. Ovation allows you to do this. The page is
divided and printed in parts, which are pasted together using a slight
overlap to make the finished sheet. The technique is called “tiling”.
6.8
In attempting to write down my (admittedly limited) experience I soon
realised that the great variation between printers and the way they
handled the margins, etc meant that no single description would be
applicable to all of them. So I outline below only the principles which
must be adopted for the tiling process.
6.8
I will consider the rather extreme case of a news sheet or poster equal
in area to four A4 sheets i.e. size A2, 420mm × 594mm. In Ovation, we
can construct a document page of this size and then print out the four
quadrants on A4 sheets of paper which will paste together into the full-
sized sheet, either as a one-off or as a master for photocopying. The
finished sheet will be slightly under-size depending on how much overlap
we have at the joins, and this is mainly governed by the minimum
distance the printer can print to the edge of the page.
6.8
This minimum is not necessarily the same on all four margins. For
example, a dot matrix using single sheets might be able to print to
within 8mm on the sides, to 12mm on the bottom but only to 25mm along
the top. This dimension is governed by the gap between the print head
and the feed rollers or bail bar. On the other hand, a laser printer or
bubble jet might be able to print to within 8mm all round. Obviously, if
a margin is 25mm wide on a sheet that has to be pasted over the edge of
another one, this 25mm will have to be cut away if the text is to
continue seamlessly from one sheet to the other. The finished page will
be shorter by the sum of the margins.
6.8
Your printer parameters should have been set in the printer drivers.
They are not modified for this exercise − as far as the printer is
concerned, it is still printing onto A4 sheets.
6.8
The widths of the outer margins on the finished poster are under your
control and these, coupled with the print limits just described, will
help you to decide how large to make your new document page. If the
outer margins are, say, 25mm then, provided the total of the print
margin in any one direction is less than this, you can construct a
document page which, on screen, is full A2 size. Otherwise, it would
have to be smaller. This is rule number 1. If the sum of the print
limits in either the vertical or the horizontal directions is more than
the outer margin on the finished sheet, the overall document page in
that direction has to be shorter by at least the difference.
6.8
The wide outer margin can absorb the unwanted print margins provided
rule 1 is obeyed. In the diagram, sheet D will be pasted on to flap x on
sheet A. Sheets B and C (not shown) will be pasted onto flaps y after
they have had their left margins trimmed away. Provided (z + x) is less
than w, you can make your new document page on screen, full A2 size. It
will help you to understand this point and also help in deciding what
co-ordinate X/Y offsets to use if you mock up a guide page before
designing your newsheet or poster. Open a New Document window from the
iconbar menu and select the overall size and the outer margins. I made
the margins 20mm and the overall document 420 × 594mm. My print limits
are 8mm on all sides. On the new page, which is now more conveniently
viewed at 50% reduction, draw in centre lines and other guides using the
line tool as in the diagram. Select <Show rulers> for convenience, and
also <Show margins> (both in the View menu). The area to be printed will
show in white and all the rest will be grey. By default you will
probably get the bottom left quadrant white (D).
6.8
From the File Set Up box (File menu) enter the new X/Y coordinates. They
have to be negative. To start with, you can enter X = 0mm; Y = −297mm.
6.8
Now modify these until the white area just touches the guide lines on
sector A. Check that it also overlaps the outer margins. (If not, you
will have to start again with a smaller document page.) Make a note of X
& Y. These are the values to use for the final document. (Typically in
this quadrant, with my printer they were X = −8; Y = −291.) Repeat the
process for the other quadrants. You can do a trial print on the test
page to check that all four sheets line up correctly.
6.8
Now design the news sheet on exactly the same size page as the guide
mock-up. Carry out the above procedure one quadrant at a time, using the
noted offsets in each case. Trim the unwanted margins and paste the four
together on the flaps left for this purpose. They should closely match
with smooth joins.  A
6.8
Colton
6.8
From 6.7 page 33
6.8
ICS
6.8
From 6.7 page 26
6.8
Comment Column
6.8
•    Fun School 4 − My daughter and I reviewed FunSchool 3 (under 5’s) for
Archive. We were, on balance, in favour of the program despite several
reservations, so I decided to buy FunSchool 4 for Lisa.
6.8
The reservations I had in the original review (5.8 p66), apply to this
set of programs, in particular about them being incoherent in their
style − and I still do not like being told to imagine I had a Commodore
and use those controls!
6.8
The “fit-all” manual, there is a long list of computers supported − with
the notable lack of any mention of the Archimedes. The only mention of
it being an Archimedes version is in a loose-leaf insert. This gives the
user a very bad feeling about the program even before he starts to load.
6.8
Within the programs, there is a remarkable lack of standardisation in
the controls used. Sometimes it seems properly designed, with everything
done with the mouse but sometimes cursor keys are used and sometimes the
space bar is used to give movement down through the menus and to change
the pointer position on the screen!
6.8
Occasionally, use is made of the function keys, to allow teachers or
parents to move up and down levels for instance, but these do not work
with all the sections in the program. This is very odd − you would have
supposed if it were possible to implement this facility in one section,
it would have been provided in all the others! This just emphasises the
inconsistent nature of the set of programs − to call them a “suite” is
rather optimistic, for that implies some coherence in design, appearance
and use, which these sadly lack.
6.8
I have some thoughts about the ability requirements of the specific
tasks compared to the age range stated; but that sort of criticism
invites comment about the abilities of the children concerned, so I
shall try to remain objective. Suffice it to say that the tasks vary
considerably in the expertise needed for the child to achieve
satisfaction − after all, that is what it’s all about, isn’t it?
6.8
Specific problems which we encountered included: In the section called
Opposites, where the child has to choose from a set of words made
available, it would appear that the programmer is not an english-
speaker. Would you say that the opposite of “Act” is to “Hide”? How
about the opposite of “Hope”? Would you choose “Fear”? The opposite of
“Sense” appears to be “Numbness” and “Skilful” is paired with “Stupid”!
6.8
Needless to say, there are far better pairs of words that could have
been chosen, with better effect − it was at this point Lisa said that
the computer was stupid and we abandoned that part of the program with
disgust while I explained the first principle of computers (Garbage in
Garbage out), i.e. the computer is only as clever (or stupid) as the
person who wrote the program.
6.8
After the highest level, some sections of the program automatically
return to level 1, whereas others return to the top level. This is very
confusing. One section, on successful completion of the level,
progresses to the next level but, as it does so, the next question
appears briefly on the screen only to fade out as part of the change to
the next level! This sort of bad programming should have been weeded out
at the development stage and indicates the slack nature of the
presentation.
6.8
The review was carried out on a 4M A3000 with standard colour (Philips)
monitor, but none of the FunSchool programs behaved properly on my
office hi-res multisync which uses MonitorType3. I didn’t want to
reconfigure it to MonitorType1, so I can’t comment on the program’s
suitability for hi-res monitor types.
6.8
Conclusion: barely worth £20.  Bob and Lisa Ames, Huntingdon.
6.8
•    G8 Graphics Card & Sampo Alphascan Monitor − I have recently upgraded
my 440/1 system from the original standard monitor to a 14“  multiscan
with a G8 graphics card from State Machine, and I am most impressed with
the results. I can now comfortably use a resolution of 1024 × 768 giving
a much larger desktop using every millimetre of the screen and, with a
screen refresh rate of 72 Hz, the display is rock steady with no
apparent flicker. The monitor I selected was a Sampo KDM-1466 AlphaScan
plus costing £304 inc VAT from Evesham Micros. The total cost of the
upgrade therefore was just under £600 which I consider a bargain.
6.8
The G8 card has some advantages over its rival from Computer Concepts,
the main one being that it allows me to keep my standard monitor plugged
into the normal video socket and instantly revert to the standard
display if necessary for mode 12 games. (You can actually do the same
with the CC card. Ed.) Since the G8 emulates the low resolution modes, I
can also display mode 12 at full screen on the multiscan which would not
be possible with the CC card. (It is now! CC have produced software to
do it. Ed.) Also the G8 gives you a choice of 15 or 9 pin video sockets
so there is no hassle with extra leads to suit your choice of monitor.
(Yes, OK, with the CC card you do have to get an adaptor if you have a
lead with a 9-pin plug on it! Ed.)
6.8
When selecting a monitor to use with the G8 card, there are two
important specifications to check. The first is the dot pitch. For a 14“
screen, this should be no more than 0.28 mm. This allows a maximum
resolution of 1024 × 768. Anything higher than this needs a larger
screen. The second specification to check is the line-scan frequency
range. For full use of the G8 card, a range of 30 − 60 kHz is needed,
the following table shows why:
6.8
Resolution    Screen refresh    Line
frequency
6.8
640×480 (VGA)    60 Hz    31.5 kHz
6.8
800×600 (SVGA)    72 Hz    48.0 kHz
6.8
1024×768    72 Hz    59.0 kHz
6.8
70 Hz seems to be a magic figure for the screen refresh rate. Above
this, the flicker totally disappears which makes 72 Hz well worth
achieving. Monitors such as the Taxan 770 and the Eizo 9060 have a lower
line-scan range with a maximum of less than 40 kHz and therefore cannot
achieve these high refresh rates.
6.8
The Sampo 14“ monitor referred to above, although very good value, has a
few snags. The main one is that, in some modes, the display cannot be
expanded to cover the whole screen, so you are left with a narrow black
border. Also, the controls, although front-mounted are a little small
and fiddly to use. I don’t personally find this much of a problem as I
rarely have any need to change modes. The Taxan 795 costs over £100 more
but is better in both the above respects.
6.8
I would like to applaud the technical support that State Machine
provide. I rang them on several occasions while searching for a suitable
monitor. Each time, I was quickly connected to the same friendly expert
who was willing to discuss technicalities at whatever level and length I
needed. I wish them well and hope they succeed.  Mike Lane, Stockbridge.
6.8
•    Squirrel − Gerald Fitton’s recent aside in PipelineZ (6.7 p21) about
software upgrades and when to release versions, etc was a well-reasoned
piece which I wish some software developers would take to heart.
Confident in the supplier’s ability to provide upgrades when the
inevitable bugs surfaced, I have happily bought early versions of some
major packages. I knew that, by the time I became familiar with the
package, most of the major bugs would have been ironed out.
6.8
Unfortunately, my experiences with Digital Services and Squirrel have
not been of that ilk. I bought Squirrel (v1.07) around October 1991. I
soon found that, although the package had promise, there were several
nasty bugs which generally made the package less friendly than it ought
to have been. I was not unduly worried since Digital Services claimed to
be working on fixes for all the bugs I had brought to their attention.
They already knew about most of them, although one or two were new to
them.
6.8
However, time dragged on, and on. Problems which were an annoyance when
I was getting used to the package were proving to be real stumbling
blocks and Digital Services could still not give a date for release of
an upgrade to fix at least some of the problems. Eventually, of course,
version 1.21 came out with not only the bugs fixed, but many lovely
enhancements.
6.8
It is obvious that Digital Services combined bug-fixing with enhancing
the package. Indeed, their stated policy is “to produce infrequent major
upgrades, rather than bug-ridden, frequent, minor upgrades.” Whilst this
may be a sensible approach when releasing enhancements I do not believe
it is in the best interests of users to leave them without fixes for
significant bugs.
6.8
It would seem that Digital Services fell into the trap of starting to
make enhancements before having a stable enough base from which to work.
Presumably, they did not want to spend time fixing bugs in sections of
the software which they intended to rewrite anyway. The bugs would get
fixed in the upgrade so why do double work?
6.8
However, in taking this approach, they inevitably extended the period
that customers had to wait for fixes. I for one would rather have the
fixes as soon as possible, even if this delayed the release of
enhancements. And I would have been prepared to pay a small sum to help
offset the extra development costs.
6.8
By adopting Digital Services’ approach, you risk alienating your user-
base who are fed up with waiting for the fixes. I hope Digital Services
will reconsider their approach to upgrades because I believe it is
letting down their products badly. I am glad that they have finally come
up with the goods in the case of Squirrel but I am extremely wary of
buying any other product from Digital Services, lest I should experience
a repeat of the Squirrel saga.  Tim Nicholson, Cranleigh.
6.8
•    The truth about OCR? − “Great”, I thought when I saw the cover of the
May Acorn User, “OCR has finally arrived on the Archimedes − and for
under £60!” Turning to page 21, I started to read Mark Moxon’s article.
6.8
Mark tells us that there are now three contenders in the Archimedes OCR
race. Risc Developments is set to release its package “within the next
few months”, Irlam Instruments released Elucidata several months ago
(but it still only seems to work well with an expensive high resolution
scanner) and a new company, Neurotron Software, is working on a product
called Optical. It sounds as if Iota, who did some initial development
work on an OCR program, have more-or-less given up on it, preferring to
concentrate on other products. (I confirmed this in a conversation with
them at the Acorn User Show in Harrogate.)
6.8
The main body of the article concentrates on Risc Developments’, as yet
unnamed, package. After using a pre-release version, Mark reckons that
the results were good but I would like to examine Mark’s claims and
perhaps bring a dose of reality into his assessment.
6.8
In a passage of 6,000 characters, i.e. about 1,000 words, the OCR
process apparently made “only” 84 errors − 98.7% accuracy. However, if
you work it out, that is about one word in ten that was in error − and
all those errors have to be spotted and corrected!
6.8
In terms of speed, he says that it can read 1,200 characters per minute
which is about 200 words per minute. He compares that with the speed of
a “decent typist” at 40 wpm and says that the OCR “wins hands down”.
6.8
Mark then admits that if you add time for setting up the scanner
contrast, doing the scanning and correcting the mistakes, it brings it
down to more like 30 wpm.
6.8
So how does that work out for the passage in question? Let’s look at
those speeds...
6.8
1,000 words at 30 wpm = 33 minutes
6.8
1,000 words at 200 wpm = 5 minutes
6.8
So the OCR took only 5 minutes and the setting up and editing took 28
minutes. Not having access to a pre-release copy of OCR, I cannot say
how long the contrast setting and scanning would take. However, I set up
a 1,000 word passage, containing 84 errors of the type mentioned in
Mark’s article and gave it to three guinea-pigs − Vera Cooke, Simon Moy
and Dave Webb. I asked them to spot and edit out as many errors as they
could find and the results were:
6.8
    Spotting    Editing    Total    Errors Found
6.8
  A:    8 mins    12 mins    20 mins    54
(64%)
6.8
  B:    12 mins    13 mins    25 mins    68
(81%)
6.8
  C:    24 mins    16 mins    40 mins    84
(100%)
6.8
(I’m not going to tell you who is who!)
6.8
If you compare that with Mark’s 28 minutes for the editing and setting
up, it makes you realise that he must be pretty good at proof-reading
and editing − but that’s not surprising since he is an experienced and
professional Technical Editor.
6.8
What conclusion do I draw from this? First of all, don’t under-estimate
the time, effort and inaccuracy associated with editing the OCR’d text −
we’re not all budding Technical Editors.
6.8
Secondly, 98.7% accuracy sounds impressive but you ought to think in
terms of percentage inaccuracy to get a better judge of an OCR package.
I would say that 1.3% inaccuracy is really quite poor − you need to be
well down below 1%.
6.8
Thirdly, you need to realise that Mark’s test was carried out on text
from the Acorn User magazine which uses a fairly standard typeface − and
it was produced using Acorn computers! If you take any old book down off
the shelf, you may well find that the OCR doesn’t recognise the typeface
and ends up with several percent inaccuracy − which would be totally
unuseable. It would be much quicker to re-type it.
6.8
Admittedly, you can “teach” the OCR a new font but, to do that, you have
to scan and identify every individual alphabetic character, upper and
lower case, numeric, punctuation − and all that in plain, italic and
possibly bold − literally hundreds of characters. Mark doesn’t say how
long that would take!
6.8
The other factor in this (which Mark admits) is that the more fonts the
OCR “knows”, the longer it takes to do the OCR. So some skill would be
needed in recognising the font type and selecting the font types for the
OCR to try to match.
6.8

6.8
Mark Moxon sees Risc Developments’ OCR as being both quicker and cheaper
than hiring a typist. I have to disagree. Whether you agree with me or
not, I hope that I have introduced an air of reality into the euphoria
of the Acorn User article.
6.8
It is my view that Acorn software developers have a long way to go
before they produce really viable OCR such as is available for PCs. Why
do you think that OCR packages on the PC are so expensive despite the
huge potential market? They have whole companies dedicated to writing
OCR programs.
6.8
If you can afford a high quality scanner and Irlam Instruments’
Elucidata software, you will have a usable system. If you want to spend
“less than £60” on an OCR package, don’t inflate your expectations or
you may be sadly disappointed!
6.8
Paul Beverley.
6.8
(By the way, if you reacted as I did when you first saw that it was Mark
Moxon who was hailing the advent of Risc Developments’ OCR, you can
relax! Although Mark used to be employed as by Risc User, he was
recently appointed as the Technical Editor of Acorn User so I don’t
think he can be accused of writing what we call “advertorial” i.e.
advertising under the guise of editorial comment.)  A
6.8
Help!!!!
6.8
•    Barcode − Has anyone got any experience of using barcode readers on
the Archimedes? Or of writing barcode? Does anyone know if it would be
possible to fit one of the PC-type keyboards, that have built-in barcode
readers, onto an Archimedes? If you have any information, please let us
know or let the Archive office know.  Glynn Parry, Dauntsey’s School
(0380−818441)
6.8
•    BJ10ex − Can anyone provide more information about control codes? The
manual is a bit thin! Also, can anyone help on getting it to work with
FWPlus not using LQ mode?  Paul Pibworth, Gloucester.
6.8
•    Conner IDE drive − Does anyone have any data on the Conner CP3044
drive used in the A5000? What do the jumpers on the back do, e.g. “H/S”,
“ACK” etc? Nick Chalk, 9 Clementson Road, Sheffield, S10 1GS.
6.8
•    Disc-based Archive magazine − Anyone interested in starting a disc-
based Archimedes magazine, contact James Riden, 294 Cyncoed Road,
Cyncoed, Cardiff, CF2 6RX.
6.8
•    Gear calculations − Has anyone written a program to calculate the
gears required (from a pre-determined list) to cut metric and imperial
threads on a model engineer’s lathe, giving the closest combination and
any error?  Brian Cocksedge, 0730−812341 ext 5059 evenings.
6.8
•    Impression borders − Is it possible to put more than 40 borders in
Impression? There are numbers for 256 but 40 seems to be the maximum.
Any ideas, anyone?  Mike McMilan, Reading.
6.8
•    LabelMaster Plus − Does anyone know if LabelMaster Plus was ever made
RISC OS compliant? Will !LM+ work with RISC OS 3.1? Has anyone
successfully exported data from !LM+ to another package?  Tim Hicks,
Deal.  A
6.8
Hints and Tips
6.8
•    A5000 serial port problems − Several of you will have experienced
problems with dead or dying serial ports on their A5000s. Acorn are
aware of problems on early A5000 p.c.b.s and have a fix for them.
However, there are still some problems with static. Until Acorn find a
solution, the best we can do is take suitable precautions. (1) Use
braid-screened cable and connect the braid to the connector shells at
both ends. Also, never connect a cable when the machine at either end is
switched on. Always switch on both devices after the cable has been
connected.
6.8
•    Filer_CloseDir − On my 4Mb A3000, I like to open ‘related’ windows to
various programs and then close them again when finished, by using
Filer_OpenDir <pathname> <position> and Filer_ CloseDir <pathname>
respectively. I put these commands in the !Run file of !BJ10e Turbo
Drivers, one before the command to run !Runimage and the other after.
Readers should be warned that the command Filer_CloseDir clashes with
CC’s Turbo Driver (v2.09b) when using their Compression filing system
(CFS) (v1.17). If the Turbo driver is loaded first and then CFS, you
will find that, when trying to quit the Turbo Driver, it goes into an
error loop with SWI &43303 not known and only a <ctrl-break> or <reset>
will release the computer so you lose all unsaved files, etc. No problem
occurs when they are loaded in reverse order or when Filer_ CloseDir is
deleted from the !Run file of !BJ10e.
6.8
Does anyone know whether any other programs clash with Filer_CloseDir?
Brian Cocksedge, Midhurst.
6.8
•    Filofax printing − We had a letter printed on a piece of Filofax paper
which proved that you can do so with a Canon BJ200 with CC’s Turbo
Driver software using a custom page size of 95 × 165 mm. If you use
Impression (II or Junior), it shows the print area so it is easy then to
create a suitable frame and choose a small typeface (say, 8 pt) and view
the page at 200%.  Brian Stewart, Nairn.
6.8
•    Inkjet printing − When inkjet/bubblejet printouts need a relatively
large amount of ink, the paper can become a little wrinkled. To remove
the wrinkles, pass the paper through a laser printer by printing a blank
page. This calendars the paper to its original smooth finish.  George
Foot, Oxted.
6.8
•    Laser toner cartridges − The first sign you get that a laser toner
cartridge is about to run out is a line down the paper which is
obviously very low on toner. If you “rock the cartridge gently”, you may
be able to spread the toner out sufficiently to get a few more sheets
out of it. Try rocking first but then eventually, try shaking. Beware,
if you shake too soon, you can end up with toner all over the place!
Colin Singleton, Sheffield.
6.8
•    ShowPage confusion − It has been said within the pages of Archive that
“ShowPage does not work with RISC OS 3”. This is not entirely correct.
It will not work with RISC OS 3 fonts, i.e. those which have their own
kerning tables, and it will not work with RISC OS 3’s ROM fonts.
However, if you want to use ShowPage, all you need to do is to replace
the in-built fonts (Corpus, Homerton and Trinity) with ones within your
own font folder and included a FontRemove command to remove the ROM
fonts.  A
6.8
Oak Solutions
6.8
From 6.7 page 17
6.8
Genesis/Magpie Column
6.8
Paul Hooper
6.8
Cistercian Abbeys − Review
6.8
This Genesis application is designed for Key Stage 3 and 4 and as an
introduction to the Medieval Core study unit. It covers the middle and
early high school range. As the name implies, the emphasis is on the
Cistercians but the other orders are given a few lines each. It was
tested on my A5000 with 2Mb by both myself and my sixteen year old
daughter.
6.8
The application
6.8
After an opening page and the instructions, you move on to the main
menu, the heart of the application. This allows you to move around the
application, investigating the abbey buildings, the organisation of the
abbey, Saint Benedict and many other subjects. Clicking on the monk
himself will provide you with an outline of his day, and you can follow
his movements around the abbey buildings. You can also investigate the
main buildings by clicking on either a three dimensional view or a plan.
6.8
The glossary provides help with difficult words and the database
provides information on almost all known abbeys in Britain with an
option to plot them on a map, although the size of the dot used means
that this is not very accurate. You can search for all the abbeys in
your area or even particular orders. The screen shots will give you some
idea of how this works, and because you can export the database in CSV
format, you can also investigate in a more advanced database. (I
exported it to Key Plus and managed to save the result although I
haven’t attempted to plot the Abbeys on a map yet!)
6.8
If you have a CD-ROM drive, you can also play a series of tracks from a
named CD through the computer. For lesser mortals like me you have to be
content with some Maestro files. There are one or two niggling problems
with my copy of the program. For example, on the ‘Jobs’ page there is a
blank frame which I think should have an illustration of an illuminated
manuscript. Also, I found that when I tried to get the page on ‘Health’,
all I got was an internal error message, but neither the machine nor the
program seized up. By the time you read this, these problems should have
been cleared up.
6.8
The grey backdrop on the program looks very good on screen and provides
a continuous thread throughout the program but it does make the printout
of a page more difficult to read. This can be overcome using the Genesis
editor and a little thought.
6.8
Conclusions
6.8
This is an excellent little application which can and should be used as
the basis for the exploration of monastic life. The ability to export
draw and sprite files from the pages can provide ready-made clip art
which can be incorporated into other work. It is a must for any school
which wants to explore this topic. Cistercian Abbeys is available from
Oak Solutions for £45.00 including a site licence, photocopiable
worksheets and teachers’ handbook.
6.8
Genesis/Magpie conversion
6.8
Having rashly offered the two-for-one-swap last month I thought I had
better convert my existing Genesis applications to Magpie binders. This
I found surprisingly easy. All I had to do was to have both programs
running at once, create a Magpie page which resembled the Genesis page
and, using the resources extraction on Genesis, drop the ‘Save as’ icon
directly into the frame or onto the Magpie page. Hey presto! The text/
drawfile/sprite appeared in the correct place and I saved the Magpie
page. It was then just a matter of going back and setting up all the
links and the conversion was complete.
6.8
Feeling pleased with myself, I thought I would write a Magpie binder and
convert it to Genesis. Out came the Magpie manual and I soon had a
Magpie binder ready for conversion. I set up both applications on my
iconbar and created a blank Genesis page and exported across a sprite.
Then I discovered that you cannot export text from Magpie. Drat!
Luckily, I had used Edit to put most of the text into Magpie and I still
had most of these on disc so I was able to import them into Genesis. So
be warned!
6.8
Magpie hints
6.8
When using Magpie to make a carousel, you can set any sound samples or
music to start automatically as soon as the page is opened. However, if
you hide the speaker button by making it transparent, it fails to play.
The way to overcome this is to place the button on a text or sprite
frame and then put it behind the frame using the Pushdown tool.
6.8
You can create sub-sections within sections of Magpie binders, but to do
this you need to alter the configuration of your copy of Magpie. Click
on the Magpie icon whilst holding down <shift> and open up the
directory, drag the file labelled !Run into Edit and add -h to the last
line of the file. this should then read as follows:
6.8
Run “<Magpie$Dir>.!runImage”
6.8
-g60 -r120 -a -h
6.8
“<Magpie$Language>”. %*0
6.8
Save the !Run file and from now on you can create sub sections. You can
also compact binders if you add the parameter -c between the -a and -h.
The !Run file does contain instructions on how to do this.
6.8
Genesis hints
6.8
You can use the shared resources index to create your own customised
buttons. First create your buttons in Draw or Paint and then drop them
into a frame on a page. Call up the Frame menu and click on the Shared
option and your button will be moved to the shared area. The next time
you require your button, click <menu> over the Genesis icon, select Show
Resources and just drag the required icon into the frame.
6.8
The Swap Shop
6.8
As I am writing this on the day April’s Archive dropped through my
letter box, I have yet to receive any applications/binders, but I note
that there is an appeal from Chris Johnson for Science software in the
Help!!! section. Now this is an ideal subject for either Genesis or
Magpie, so if you have written any send them to both Chris and me and
wait for the bumper bundle to come back.
6.8
Finally
6.8
Send your applications/binders, hints or questions on Genesis or Magpie
to Paul Hooper, 11 Rochford Road, Martham, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, NR29
4RL. Telephone 0493−748474.  A
6.8
Computer Concepts
6.8
From 6.7 page 14
6.8
Computer Concepts
6.8
From 6.7 page 13
6.8
Using RISC OS 3.10
6.8
Hugh Eagle
6.8
Encouragement for the faint-hearted!
6.8
Peter Young says that he is not only electronically illiterate but also
notoriously clumsy and so he left fitting the upgrade for over three
months. When he finally did dare to do it, he found it a lot easier than
he had dreaded − he broke nothing and it all worked first time. The only
worrying bit was changing the links, because the diagram was not clear
but a quick call to the suppliers (Beebug) soon put him right. So his
advice for others is: don’t be scared!
6.8
RISC OS 3.11
6.8
Newer machines and upgrades are now being shipped with version 3.11 of
the operating system. Barry Thompson says that this clears up a NetUtils
problem which occurs when computers equipped with RISC OS 3.10 are used
on a network. The problem was that if you opened or extended a file
longer than 64Kb, anything beyond 64Kb was filled with null characters.
Existing network users can obtain a module (NetUtils) from their local
Acorn dealer.
6.8
Comparing the 3.11 and 3.10 Release Notes, the only other differences I
could find were the following brief notes:
6.8
•    DOS partition size – DOSFS cannot be used with DOS partitions of 32Mb
or larger.
6.8
•    Acorn Lisp – you must issue a *FX 13,11 command before loading Acorn
LISP.
6.8
•    Inspiration – versions of Inspiration up to 1.03 will not run with
RISC OS 3.10 or later.
6.8
(I gather that 3.11 also improves the situation with the ADFSbuffers
problem. On a 1Mb machine with 3.10, you are still advised to set
ADFSbuffers to 0. This is no longer necessary with 3.11. Ed.)
6.8
Programs that work
6.8
Mah Jong, The Game: Peter Young reports that the problem he mentioned
last month was caused by an inappropriate *FX call which he had inserted
in the !Run file – so there seems to be nothing wrong with Mah Jong
itself.
6.8
Hard Disc Companion: Peter Young says that setting an IDEFS cache (see
below) has speeded this up considerably.
6.8
Ovation: In Archive 6.3 p14, we reported a problem with the printing of
indented lines from Ovation. Ken Cowap has now received a new version of
the program (version 1.37S) which, amongst other things, specifically
cures this particular problem. He says the problem turned out to be due
not to Ovation but to the RISC OS 3 printer drivers. Although Acorn
acknowledged this, they saw no immediate possibility of a fix, and Risc
Developments very commendably undertook to rewrite part of Ovation.
6.8
Program problems
6.8
Aldebaran: Atle Mjelde Bårdholt says that you must quit all application
tasks first (enter the Task display and Quit all tasks including
Pinboard), then run the game and it will install itself on the iconbar.
He says another solution is to exit the desktop and then type
*!Aldebaran at the command prompt. (Surely, Aldebaran is one of the most
recent games. Can it be true that it doesn’t run from the desktop?)
6.8
Atle Mjelde Bårdholt also says that old Minerva games generally
reconfigure your machine. To avoid this, skip the !Boot file and click
on the next file in the sequence (e.g. in Hoverbod BS1 and in Missile
Control Title).
6.8
Ralph Gibbons finds that Break147 doesn’t work and would like to know if
there is a fix.
6.8
Mike Cook of Musbury Consultants repeats the point made by David Holden
last month: one reason older programs may not work is that the
abbreviations for some * commands have changed (e.g. *CHA. used to be
*ChannelVoice but is now *ChangeDynamicArea). Running the Obey file
Commands on the RISC OS 3 support disc is supposed to help but if that
doesn’t, he suggests editing the program. This affects the PD sample
player !DSedit and his own !Sample.
6.8
Mike Cook also says that another change in the new operating system
resulted in the sampling part of his software not working. This also
affected the real time sound manipulator !Echo and the !Scope storage
oscilloscope. Any readers with the original programs can send him a disc
for a free upgrade. His address is 5 Helmshore Road, Haslingden,
Rossendale, Lancashire, BB4 4BG.
6.8
Last month, we listed Powerband and Saloon Cars as not working. Rob
Brown says that Fourth Dimension can supply RISC OS 3 compatible
replacements (for £2 per program, he thinks).
6.8
Don’t forget that Rob Brown would welcome any contributions to his
compatibility chart, periodic updates of which will be included on the
Archive monthly program disc. His address is “Valtanee”, Brighton Road,
Lower Kingswood, Tadworth, Surrey, KT20 6UP.
6.8
Printing
6.8
“VDU 2” printing
6.8
David Holden says that, although VDU 2 printing still works with
RISC OS 3, it appears to monopolise the computer until printing is
finished. He has noticed that a couple of his programs that used to
multi-task, no longer do so and BBC emulator programs take a lot longer
to return control to the operator, even if using a printer buffer.
6.8
Printer buffering
6.8
Are the points in the previous paragraph perhaps connected to the non-
functioning of the RISC OS 3 printer buffer mentioned last month? Or are
there further problems? Has anyone got a fix for it or them? The
questions seem endless!
6.8
Ralph Gibbons used to find a printer buffer routine (written by Anton
Calver and on Careware 5 & 7) very useful under RISC OS 2. Does Anton
read Archive? Has he updated his routine to run under RISC OS 3?
6.8
BJ330
6.8
In answer to Tord Eriksson’s plea (Archive 6.6 p56), Brian Cocksedge
recommends the Computer Concepts Turbo Driver (£53 through Archive).
This produces much quicker printouts. The printer should be set to IBM
emulation (he understands this gives a better quality printout). The
stripes in graphics areas are a feature of the BJ printers due to minor
mechanical errors in the feed mechanism and the momentum of the print
head.
6.8
To print A3, as well as setting the paper size in the printer
preferences window, you have to tell the printer the size. Brian does
this by sending “Esc,C,99” to the printer via a small Obey file
containing the commands:
6.8
*FX 138,27
6.8
*FX 138,67
6.8
*FX 138,99
6.8
LaserDirect
6.8
Steve Hutchinson experienced the same spurious lines that Roger King
reported in Archive 6.5 p31. He was told by CC that this was due to the
LaserDirect card not being happy in its podule slot. Rearranging podules
solved it for him.
6.8
Photocopying via LaserDirect
6.8
Tim Powys-Lybbe received version 2.09b of the LaserDirect software,
which cleared up the problems with print quality. However, his scanner
will now not do a photocopy at all, reporting (even with 3 Mb free) that
there is not enough free memory to do a photocopy. If he reverts to
version 2.05a, photocopying continues to work fine.
6.8
Disc drives
6.8
Speeding up an IDE drive
6.8
After he upgraded to RISC OS 3, Peter Young initially found his IDE
drive (with a Beebug interface) to be very slow but eventually
discovered that setting an IDE cache speeded things up considerably. The
command to set it is:
6.8
*Configure IDEFSDirCache 16k
6.8
Before he created the cache, Peter was getting strange messages like dir
“@” not found when he specified directories at the command line with
references like $.xxx... rather than IDEFS:: IDEDisc4.$.xxx.... Since he
is now religiously using full pathnames, he doesn’t know whether
creating the cache might have solved the problem.
6.8
Peter says he still doesn’t really know whether what he wants is a cache
or a buffer. Can anyone throw any light on exactly what they do and what
the optimum sizes are for each in different circumstances? (Since
configuration options are provided, presumably one is expected to use
them, but when and how?)
6.8
SCSI discs
6.8
Andrew Shell encountered the same problems as Philip Lardner (Archive
6.6 p56) with copying, moving or deleting files to, from, or in the root
directory. By resetting his configuration so that *Status reads:
6.8
    SCSIFSDirCache     16k
6.8
    SCSFSdisks         1
6.8
    SCSIFSDrive        4
6.8
    File System    SCSI
6.8
(and using !Configure to set “SCSI hard discs” to 1) he thought he had
solved the problem. All now seems to work correctly so far as saving,
copying and deleting are concerned. However, when he tried the Find
command on the !FONTS directory he got a sequence of finds reading
“...!Boot.!FONTS”, “...!Boot.!FONTS.!FONTS”, ... ,
“.....!FONTS.!FONTS,!FONTS”, etc. He also had a similar problem with the
Stamp command. Does anyone have any solutions?
6.8
SCSIFiler and Set Alias$Free
6.8
Following the hints in past months involving these, P. N. Cousins would
like to know: what is the SCSIFiler module for and how does the Set
Alias$Free hint (Archive 6.5 p27) work?
6.8
Tim Nicholson has noted that using the SCSIFiler module (as recommended
in Archive 6.7 p44 and elsewhere) has the added advantage that it gives
the interactive window for Verify and reads the disc name at start-up
and shows the name under the iconbar icon.
6.8
5¼“ drive interfaces
6.8
Gordon Lindsay-Jones has found, with the help of his dealer, a
replacement for his Watford interface: the one from Risc Developments
works and is, he feels, a superior product. Apart from other advantages,
it has seven switches with which to set the external drive
configurations and comes with instructions on the settings required.
6.8
D. S. Allen and Philip Foster have both written to say that the Watford
interface can be fixed by cutting some wires! D. S. Allen knows of “two
people that have cut the right hand two wires (as viewed facing the
computer front) of the cables from the Watford board to the computer
board and also the one from the Watford board to the internal disc
drive. Both drives work all right after this.” Philip Foster describes
the solution as “cutting through the two end wires (furthest from the
red marker wire and next to the 20 pin removable PAL ROM) of the ribbon
cable running from the mother board to the interface board.” He adds
that “as this is clearly a somewhat irreversible act” he would suggest
ringing Watford to confirm before you do it.
6.8
Miscellaneous hints and tips
6.8
Use of the Copy key
6.8
Richard Torrens writes: “We all know that, in a writable icon, <Copy>
deletes the character to the right of the caret. Did you know that
<Shift-Copy> deletes to the end of the current word and <Ctrl-Copy>
deletes to the end of the current line?”
6.8
How much space for a desktop program?
6.8
P. N. Cousins would like to know how you know how much memory you need
to use when writing programs that run under the desktop. In my
experience, allocating too small a WimpSlot can lead to some most
perplexing error messages, so I would certainly like to know if there is
a foolproof answer. My solution is trial and error: first I estimate how
much space is needed for the program code plus variables and workspace
for sprites, etc, then I set the WimpSlot somewhat larger than my
estimate and repeatedly reduce it (32Kb at a time) until the program
crashes. Not very scientific, but it generally works.
6.8
Miscellaneous
6.8
All these hints are from Rob Davison:
6.8
I have a couple of lines in my application !Run files like this...
6.8
SET Titler$RiscOs3 yep
6.8
RMENSURE UtilityModule 3.10 SET Titler$RiscOs3 nope
6.8
...and near the start of !RunImage, something like the following:
6.8
DIM block% &C00
6.8
SYS “XOS_GSTrans”,“<Titler$RiscOs3>”,block% ,&C00 TO,,l%
6.8
block%?l%=&0D
6.8
IF $block%=“yep” THEN newos%= TRUE ELSE newos%=FALSE
6.8
SYS“XOS_CLI”,“UNSET Titler$RiscOs3”
6.8
•    There are several other configuration options which are not accessible
in !Configure that allow you to setup your system more exactly in the
area of double-click delays, etc.
6.8
One of the more interesting ones which may be useful to those people who
are new to RISC OS, is WimpMenuDragDelay which sets the time in 1/10
second units for which menu activity is disabled after a menu has been
automatically opened. This enables the pointer to move over other menu
entries without cancelling the submenu. To change it, you need to use
the command line (remember that thing?) Syntax:
6.8
*Configure WimpMenuDragDelay <delay>
6.8
•    There is an in-built rolling credit list of all the people involved in
the creation of the Operating System. It is accessed by bringing up the
‘info’ dialog box for the operating system (accessible from the task
manager menu) and clicking with <menu> on the characters ‘t’ ‘e’ ‘A’ and
‘m’ in that order in the string ‘© Acorn Computers Ltd 1992.’ If nothing
happens after a couple of seconds, re-open the menu and try again.
6.8
(Click with <menu>? − that’s against Acorn’s guidelines surely?!)
6.8
However, if you just bring up the dialog box and click <menu> off any of
the icons (e.g. on the grey window background) then the Task Manager
aborts and the only way to recover a normal machine is to press <ctrl-
reset>. (Oops!)
6.8
Boot-up options
6.8
An item on Peter Young’s wish list for RISC OS 4 is the ability to call
different !Boot sequences by pressing user-defined keys at power-on. I
agree that it would be useful to have this built into the operating
system. However, it is already quite easy to achieve a similar result. I
know that some people find Ian Copestake’s !TWO very useful for this
purpose. Alternatively, you can “do it yourself” without too much
difficulty. Assume, for example, that you have saved two Desktop boot
files called Plain and Fancy in a directory called BootFiles. Then
create a Basic file in the root directory called !Boot reading as
follows:
6.8
CLS
6.8
PRINT‘’“Choose one of the
6.8
following sets of
6.8
Boot-up preferences“‘’
6.8
PRINT“   1.  Plain”
6.8
PRINT“   2.  Fancy”
6.8
PRINT‘’“Type 1 or 2”
6.8
A$=GET$
6.8
CASE A$ OF
6.8
 WHEN “1”:OSCLI(“Desktop -File $.BootFiles.Plain”)
6.8
 WHEN “2”:OSCLI(“Desktop -File $.BootFiles.Fancy”)
6.8
 OTHERWISE: OSCLI(“Desktop”)
6.8
ENDCASE
6.8
There are numerous variations on this theme. You can use negative INKEY
values to test for a key being held down rather than waiting for a
keypress with GET$. If you like, you can put Plain and Fancy in, say,
the !System directory instead of creating a new directory, or you can
rename the Basic file !Run, create a directory called !Boot and move
!Run into it along with Plain and Fancy.
6.8
Obviously, you can adapt this idea to suit your purposes, but beware of
pressing R or <Delete> when you switch the computer on, since these will
reset your configuration!
6.8
Splitting the boot sequence into two parts like this was recommended
last month for making sure that the SCSIFiler module is properly
installed before the desktop is initialised.  It also opens up a number
of other possibilities....
6.8
It has always seemed to me that the usefulness of the facility for
automatic saving of desktop boot files is limited (a) because they tend
to get cluttered up with unnecessarily opened directories and booted
applications, and (b) because they omit necessary things like virus
protection modules, extra screen modes, etc. Problem (a) can be reduced
by making sure that you only open those directories that you want open
and boot those directories that you want booted before you save the
desktop boot file (the equivalent of Plain or Fancy in the above
example); (b) can be solved by following the two-stage approach and
putting the more technical bits in a hand-crafted pre-desktop !Boot
file, which you will probably not want to change very often, while the
desktop boot file is left simply to run applications, open directories
and fire up the pinboard.
6.8
So far as I can see, you will still need to do some hand-editing of the
desktop boot file if you want a non“-RISC OS 3 aware” application to be
booted or run automatically. Alternatively, you can get an application
to auto-boot by having the desktop boot file automatically open the
directory that the application is in. Furthermore, you can get the
application to run automatically by editing its own !Boot file to run
the !Run file.
6.8
Tim Nicholson notes that you must also split the boot sequence into two
parts if you want to follow the suggestion in the March Acorn User for
altering the desktop initialisation banner.
6.8
In Archive 6.5 p33, Colin Singleton reported problems with trying to
switch from one “world” to another by double-clicking on a second boot
file. He has concluded that you must reset the computer first, since
running the second boot file doesn’t clear memory first: it simply tries
to add the applications listed in it to those that are already running.
6.8
Finally, to end this section on boot files, a quote from Colin
Singleton, with whom I have a lot of sympathy: “The autoboot facility is
not much use if it does only half the job. I need to be able to
understand what it has produced and to patch it up accordingly. I might
as well carry on using my old boot file, which is what I am doing. The
new feature is useless (and very confusing) for those users who do not
know how to build a boot file. Perhaps in time all software will be
‘aware’ of boot files, then the feature will be useful.”
6.8
ARM3 too fast for Watford scanner (?)
6.8
Mr A. Shell found that, after he upgraded to RISC OS 3 and installed an
ARM3, his Watford Electronics Hand Scanner 1990, Issue 2 (using a Geni
Scan-4500) stopped working. However, he has found that after entering
the command *Cache off, the scanner works perfectly. When the scanning
is finished, *Cache on  speeds the processing up.
6.8
Zooming in Draw
6.8
When I acquired Artworks, I thought one of its neatest features was the
ability to use the mouse to mark the area into which you want to zoom.
Now, I have found while reading the manual (Applications Guide p48) that
Draw does just the same – in fact, it goes one better, because you don’t
need to select a zoom tool first, you just hold down <shift> and drag
with <adjust>. To return to your previous scaling you use <Ctrl-R>; the
manual also describes various other hot-key combinations to adjust the
scaling.
6.8
Turning CapsLock off
6.8
Peter Young has a few old, and some not so old, programs which will only
take upper case input, and putting *FX202,1 into the !Run file meant,
with RISC OS 2, that he didn’t have to remember to press capslock first.
In RISC OS 3, this call seems to turn off keyboard input entirely,
though it occasionally produces input different from what is typed for a
couple of presses before it crashes the machine.
6.8
I think, if I have interpreted the Programmers’ Reference Manual
correctly (pages 511-512 in the RISC OS 2 manual), that the correct code
to turn capslock off while leaving the other keyboard settings unaltered
is *FX 202,16,239; the command *FX 202,16 will turn capslock off but may
alter some of the other settings.
6.8
What *FX 202 does is to alter the “keyboard status byte”. If the command
is given in the form *FX 202,R1,R2 then R2 controls which bits of the
status byte are changed and R1 supplies the new bits. In technical
terms, the new value of the status byte is made equal to
6.8
(the old value AND R2) EOR R1
6.8
Therefore, to force a particular bit in the status byte to adopt value n
(either 0 or 1) you leave that bit unset in R2 and made equal to n in
R1; to leave a bit unchanged you set it in R2 and unset it in R1.
6.8
Capslock is controlled by bit 4 (the one with value 16), so to set it
(thus turning capslock off) you use the values 239 (= 255 minus 16) and
16 for R2 and R1 respectively.
6.8
The shortened form of the command, *FX 202,R1 has the same effect as *FX
202,R1,0
6.8
(It’s not clear to me why *FX 202,1 should have worked either in
RISC­OS 2 or on the BBC.)
6.8
Editing !Run files
6.8
Peter Young asks if one is allowed to amend the !Run files of commercial
programs. My answer is that there is no reason at all why you shouldn’t,
so long as you know what you are doing. You could, for instance, include
a command to turn capslock off (see above) or a command to run a printer
driver automatically. Some programs allow you to change preferences by
setting up system variables in the !Run file. In RISC OS 2, some people
even amended the !Run file of Acorn’s !Edit to make it run on a system
with lots of fonts.
6.8
ROM Speed
6.8
Seán Kelly writes that the old ROM speed up trick still works on some
computers with RISC OS 3.1. On an Archimedes, the ROM speed can be read
with the following Basic lines:
6.8
SYS “OS_UpdateMEMC”,0,0 TO R%
6.8
PRINT (R% AND &C0) DIV &40
6.8
The lowest speed is 0, the highest 2 − the MEMC data sheet defines a
value of 3 as ‘not meaningful’ although it appears to have the same
effect as 2. The speeds are not absolute, but depend on the computer’s
memory clock speed. On old A440, RISC OS 3.1 selects a value of 2, so no
speed up is possible, but on an A5000, a value of 1 is set by RISC OS
3.1 and changing this to 2 increases the machine’s speed by about 5%.
6.8
The ROM speeds can be set by using:
6.8
SYS “OS_UpdateMEMC”,&00,&C0: REM slowest, speed 0
6.8
SYS “OS_UpdateMEMC”,&40,&C0: REM speed 1
6.8
SYS “OS_UpdateMEMC”,&80,&C0: REM fastest, speed 2
6.8
These lines are included as programs on the monthly program disc,
together with the short program called ACK which, on Seán’s un-sped-up
A5000, executes in about 1 second. Double-clicking on one of the speed
changers followed by ACK will show how the different speeds affect your
computer. An A5000 appears to run at speed 2 with no problems. Program
Speed2 can be automatically run by !Boot, providing a slight performance
boost to A5000s.
6.8
RMFaster-ing
6.8
Seán Kelly also reports that *RMFaster on certain modules, such as
Basic, can produce a useful increase in speed for applications that read
the ROM a lot. Without an ARM3, the speed increase can be very large −
with the cache off, he has found Basic programs that run over 30% faster
with Basic in RAM. With the cache on, the increase tends to be about 5%,
so RMFaster-ing on an ARM3 machine is really a waste of memory unless
time is really important.
6.8
Interestingly, both ROM speed-ups and RMFaster-ing only produce a slight
speed increase, typically 5%, on an ARM3 machine. This appears to show
that the cache’s hit rate is very high.
6.8
Also on the program disc ...
6.8
Also on the monthly program disc are a number of utilities from Rob
Davison: SmoothM – a relocatable module which averages mouse coordinates
and is ideal for use in pixel-based art packages such as Paint or
Artisan. To use it, double click on the module and enable averaging with
the command *SmoothON. To restore normal use, enter the command
*SmoothOFF. This module is public domain and is, in fact, based on an
article which appeared in Archive 1.5 (February 1988) by Malcom
Banthorpe.
6.8
SolDrag and NormDrag are short programs to turn solid sprite dragging on
and off.
6.8
Tools and 22Sprites are modified toolsprites and high resolution icon
sprites.
6.8
Some Bugs
6.8
First, from Rob Davison:
6.8
There are quite a number still in the operating system. Most are very
obscure, but some are quite serious and one may be slightly embarrassing
to Acorn! Hopefully, they will do a ‘RISC OS 3 Extras disc’ to fix the
more important ones.
6.8
•    Impression style icons − There is a serious bug in this part of the
window manager. If the application you are writing uses a dialog box
similar to the in-built applications (e.g. Edit) when quitting, but
including the new style icons, the operating system reports an abort on
Data transfer after the application has quit. The solution is to close
and delete all windows yourself and call Wimp_Poll enough times to
ensure that they have all gone before quitting.
6.8
•    Paint − Load the application and repeatedly create 256 colour sprites
of 128x64 pixels. Paint bombs (usually) when the sixth sprite is created
with an ‘Unrecoverable internal error SpriteExtend: Bad pixel
translation table’.
6.8
The only good point is that your file is preserved in Wimp$ScrapDir
before Paint dies.
6.8
The problem mentioned in Archive, where the name in the save dialog box
is corrupted in some circumstances, still exists.
6.8
•    !Edit − This is a fairly worrying one (R. W. Darlington has found
similar problems). Edit has had the same bug since its first release in
RISC OS 2.00. Sometimes, the text window is not redrawn properly and the
caret can appear to be on a different line. Text is deleted or inserted
at the wrong place and it can sometimes be quite a while before you
realise what is going on. I encounter this problem much more now because
of the excellent facilities for editing Basic programs. If Acorn can’t
get windows to redraw correctly in all circumstances, what chance do the
rest of us have? (Quick fix: press <f12>, <return>, <return> before
doing any major editing.)
6.8
•    Operating system bugs − I have one (and only one) 800Kb ‘E’ format
disc which works and verifies fine on RISC OS 2.00 whereas RISC OS 3.00
and 3.10 absolutely refuse to look at it and tell me ‘Disc not
formatted’.
6.8
I have managed to get the dreaded ‘Abort on Data transfer’ while using
interactive file copying but only under extreme provocation. It was much
more common in 3.00!
6.8
There is another problem where, if you set the MOUSE RECTANGLE to allow
the pointer off the left of the screen and then record button clicks,
the y-coordinate is set to −1 with the first returned button click. E.g.
6.8
*POINTER 1
6.8
MOUSE RECTANGLE -1000,-1000,2000 ,2000
6.8
MOUSE TO 100,500
6.8
REPEAT
6.8
MOUSE x%,y%,b%
6.8
PRINTTAB(0,0);“x=”;x%;“  ”
6.8
PRINTTAB(0,1);“y=”;y%;“  ”
6.8
PRINTTAB(0,2);“b=”;b%;“  ”
6.8
UNTIL b%<>0
6.8
END
6.8
Run this and move the pointer off the left of the screen. Click a button
and the displayed y coordinate changes to −1 regardless of the last
position. (The solution is to do another mouse read immediately after
the UNTIL and use the values returned from that.)
6.8
Next, from Seán Kelly:
6.8
!Paint has two bugs related to deleting rows and columns in sprites. The
first is that when columns to delete are selected by dragging right with
the mouse, it is not possible to delete the rightmost column of the
sprite (no matter how far it is zoomed in). The second is that, when
dragging rows to delete downwards, the topmost row (where the operation
was started) is not deleted.
6.8
If there is data in the RAM filing system, RISC OS 3.1 complains if you
attempt to leave the desktop by selecting EXIT from the task manager
menu, although the RAMFS is not affected.
6.8
Sometimes, a RAMFS filer window stays on screen when the RAMFS has been
killed.
6.8
Finally, from R. W. Darlington:
6.8
When I load so many items on the iconbar that it has to scroll to reach
opposite ends and I then delete an item from the middle of the list, I
sometimes finds that as well as the deleted one disappearing, other
icons disappear leaving only their names. Also, all the directory icons
and application icons disappear from directory viewers leaving only
their names as reminders as to what is there.
6.8
In !Paint, when I try to x-scale or y-scale a sprite, I find that it
takes one column off the right hand edge and puts it at the left hand
edge.
6.8
Has anyone else experienced these or other bugs?
6.8
Matters Arising
6.8
Alarm (switching between GMT and BST)
6.8
(Archive 6.3p15 / 6.5p35) Colin Singleton confirms that the alarm set
for 1 a.m. on 7th February 1994 is to remind you to set the BST on and
off dates in 1994.
6.8
Don’t worry: you don’t have to stay up to catch this alarm: it will come
up when you next switch the computer on.
6.8
Ken Cowap has sent in a description which he hopes will complement the
rather brief instructions in the Applications Guide (p132) on this
rather convoluted facility:
6.8
When this option is selected, Alarm will automatically switch between
GMT and BST times on the dates you specify. Click on the arrows to
change the time, day, month and year.
6.8
Entries must be for one calendar year only even though the “BST starts
on:” date may already have passed. Any such past date will be ignored
but must be entered nevertheless.
6.8
As the changeover dates are liable to undefined variation from year to
year, Alarm will issue a warning during the month prior to that of the
next year’s first expected changeover.
6.8
The warning will be recorded in the Alarm Browser Window as “Application
alarm set by Alarm”, and the dates/times of valid changeover(s) will
still be activated. These alarms appear in dark grey and cannot be
selected. When the warning is activated, a message appears saying: “The
dates for entering and leaving BST are no longer valid and should be
reset as soon as possible.” and two options are offered: “Reset them
later” and “Reset them now.” The warning will be repeated automatically
at 24 hour intervals until “Reset them now” is selected and the dates
and times are reset.
6.8
Ken warns that anyone wanting to experiment by setting the system clock
into the future should take care to back up their alarms first, since a
“move into the future” will activate and lose all alarms set to go off
before that date. Also note that there is a long delay accompanied by
unexplained hourglass activity before the warning notice appears.
6.8
Impression dongle
6.8
(Archive 6.5 p32) Colin Singleton has been assured by Computer Concepts
that shorting the pins of the Impression dongle can do no harm.
Switching the computer off while Impression is running can cause
problems. Apparently, the reason is that Impression continually checks
that its dongle is present and, if it happens to be checking when power
is lost, the dongle is liable to receive a burst of static which renders
it inoperable. This will drain away if you leave it for a time (perhaps
a few hours) but the quick cure, according to CC, is to short the lines
to each other using a small coin rubbed against the rows of male pins.
Colin recommends removing the dongle from both the machine and the
printer first.
6.8
Getting the hare and tortoise into step
6.8
(Archive 6.6 p59) Jim Nottingham has written in response to my plea...
“the solution is to fire up the computer in slow mode with a *Configure
Cache off command and run the !Arm3 application in the Boot file. This
brings up the computer with the cache on and the hare on the iconbar. If
you want the computer to boot up with the Arm3 cache off, add *Cache off
to his Boot file after running the Arm3 application.”
6.8
Well! I must be completely dense. I’ve tried to follow these
instructions to the letter. I have typed *Configure Cache off at the
command line (and *Status confirms that the cache configuration is
“off”) and I have a !Boot file (file type “Desktop”) the first two lines
of which read:
6.8
Filer_Boot ADFS::Four.$.!System
6.8
RUN system:!Arm3
6.8
When I boot up, the cache is off and the tortoise on the iconbar. When I
click once on the tortoise, the cache is turned on, but the tortoise
stays. When I click a second time, the hare appears but the cache is
turned off. Adding Cache on as the next line of the !Boot file doesn’t
seem to help. What do I do next (apart from swapping the names of the
two icons as I’ve suggested before!)?
6.8
Pinboard backdrop sprites
6.8
In Archive 6.4 p12, R. W. Darlington gave a suggested modification to
the !Boot file which results in a different backdrop being shown each
time the computer is reset. His method causes the available sprites to
be chosen in strict rotation. Geoffrey Rimmer has suggested a variation
of the same idea which would choose one of the sprites at random.
6.8
Assuming, as before, that there are 75 sprites called Sprit00 to Sprit74
in the directory PinSp, his suggested code is:
6.8
Set S$ <Sys$Time>
6.8
SetEval S$ S$ RIGHT5
6.8
SetEval NN STR(VAL(S$ RIGHT2 + S$ LEFT2)MOD 75)
6.8
If LEN(NN)=1 Then SetEval NN “0” +NN
6.8
SetEval Tile$Name “Sprit”+NN
6.8
Pinboard
6.8
Backdrop -T ADFS::4.$.PinSp. <Tile$Name>
6.8
Finally ...
6.8
Page 140 of the User Guide says that the example commands to set
Alias$@PrintType and Alias$@RunType variables must have trailing spaces.
Does anyone know why?  A
6.8
Supermarket − In Four Languages
6.8
Alex Thomas
6.8
This review is a language teacher’s perspective on the ‘Supermarket’
language programs produced by New Era Software in four languages
(English, French, German and Spanish).
6.8
Surely, I thought, this must be every modern language teacher’s dream
software for the Archimedes. Just think of the realistic situations set
against the background of shopping in a supermarket which could meet the
demands of the National Curriculum (Modern Languages and IT) and the
GCSE syllabuses. This disc must, I thought, deal with asking for
particular items, quantities, containers, problems at the checkout,
queries about the bill, breakages, complaints, special offers, coupons,
shoplifting, advertising, job vacancies − the potential is tremendous.
6.8
With my mind buzzing with such expectations, I was eager to try out this
program with a class, so I sat down after school to run through it and
plan some meaningful tasks. I was hoping to use the German version, so
that was where I started. I needed to enter the shop name and a message
to go on the till receipts − everything was in German, so I was feeling
very positive about the program. (The function keys are used for accents
in all the languages.) The next screen asked for information about what
is bought, the price, the amount tendered, method of payment − still all
in German, as are the print commands, etc.
6.8
Having entered some information, I printed it out − a very basic till
receipt with my list of items and prices, which are totalled with the
amount of change calculated and my message from the first screen (thank
you). It was much the same as all those till receipts I have brought
back from various trips in recent years, except that at least the pupil
has to enter the items bought and understand approximately twenty items
of vocabulary which appear on the screen for each “customer”.
6.8
I began to plan tasks for my beginners using the printouts. One pupil
could produce one and the others ask questions to find out the prices.
We could produce them for different shops and compare prices.... but
then, I have a cupboard full of attractive, colourful supermarket
advertising leaflets from Germany, in class sets, surely it would be
better to use them!
6.8
I decided to go back to the program to see what else it has to offer
which the GCSE sets could use. I pressed “clear” to see what happened −
the chance to enter another list of items and prices! Since the computer
totals the prices and works out the change, you can’t even work on
complaints at the checkout, except by pretending that the wrong price
was entered.
6.8
There is no list of acceptable items, so there is no spellcheck, it
accepts complete nonsense − an item is any set of letters, a price any
number. There are no graphics, no variations on the basic layout and
content, nothing which will interest the pupils or give them a sense of
achievement, unless the teacher spends hours devising speaking tasks
based on till receipts.
6.8
Is it worth taking the whole class to the computer room to produce a
till receipt, or devising a flexible learning lesson with a variety of
small group activities so that this program can be used on the one
computer in my room? No, definitely not. I have some much better ideas
based on my wide selection of realia!
6.8
The program’s handbook suggests many sophisticated possibilities using
product files and bar codes which may be valid for teachers of
Technology, etc to develop. However, as a language teacher, I have not
yet found the time to work on these areas which seem to have little to
do with communication, verbal or written. In case I was too hasty in my
rejection of this program, I decided to use it with a class anyway. The
first pupil (below average year 9) got to the printing stage and said
“Now what?” − “That’s all it does”, I replied. He returned to his group
to do the structured oral tasks I had set up, showed them his till
receipt and the rest asked, “Wouldn’t it be quicker if we just wrote one
out miss?”  A
6.8
A-Link’s Hidden Software
6.8
Mark Godwin
6.8
Last month, I reviewed PocketFS. This month I aim to explain the
‘hidden’ software within the A-Link for use on the Series 3 and the
Pocket Book. I have tested it on the Series 3 and am assuming that the
menus will be the same on the Pocket Book.
6.8
In addition to the necessary support software to drive the link, the A-
Link also contains two pieces of software that can be used on your Psion
Series 3.
6.8
The first piece of software is a simple but useable terminal emulator
which allows you to configure the serial port and send/receive data.
6.8
The second is a script editor and translator. These scripts, when
translated, can be executed from within the terminal emulator.
6.8
This month I will concentrate on the terminal emulator and printer
support and, next month, will explain the script processor/translator.
6.8
The Terminal software
6.8
The terminal software (‘COMMS’) resides on drive C of the Series3. In
order to use it, you will need to use the ‘install application’ option
from the system menu.
6.8
Once it is installed and selected, you will be using a simple 80 × 25
character terminal. As the Series 3 screen is 38 × 8, you will have to
use the cursor keys to view the parts which are hidden.
6.8
I will now explain all of the menu options starting with the main menu.
As you may know, you can use key combinations (displayed against each
menu item) to get straight to the option. The special symbol that
proceeds these combinations is known as the Psion or Acorn button
(bottom left) depending on the machine.
6.8
Pressing <menu> will display the main menu with the following options:
File, Edit, Transfer, Names and Special.
6.8
Selecting one of these will produce other menus with the following
options:
6.8
File − gives you Execute script, Save settings, Load names and Save
names.
6.8
Edit − gives you Pause screen, Clear Screen, Bring in and Bring margin.
6.8
Transfer − gives you Protocol, Transfer, Receive and Capture.
6.8
Names − gives you Insert name, Delete name, Modify name and Password.
These options are linked to scripts which will be explained next month.
6.8
Special − gives you Port, Handshakes, Translates, Hangup and Exit.
6.8
Finally, selecting one of these options will result in the following:
6.8
‘Execute Script’, ‘Load names’ and ‘Save names’ will be explained when I
detail the Script editor and translator.
6.8
‘Save settings’ allows you save you current configuration (e.g. baud
rate, bits/word, parity, etc). It is worth mentioning that the settings
are saved as a script.
6.8
‘Pause screen’ stops the transmission of data to the Series 3 by using
the control lines on the serial port. This gives you time to read the
text as it comes arrives.
6.8
‘Clear screen’ does just that.
6.8
‘Bring in’ works in the same way as all the other applications. It
allows you to copy highlighted text from any other application to the
current cursor position within the comms screen but not from the comms
screen to other applications. Word-wrapping can be set by use of the
‘Bring margin’ option which allows you to specify at which column words
should be wrapped onto the next line.
6.8
‘Protocol’ will allow you to choose one of the communications protocols
below. In order to see the complete range, press <tab> or use the cursor
keys to cycle through them.
6.8
Protocols:
6.8
ASCII (no protocol), XModem 128byte CRC, XModem 1Kb CRC, XModem 128byte
checksum, YModem 128byte, YModem 1Kb, YModem-G 128byte, YModem-G 1Kb.
6.8
Explaining each of the protocols is beyond the scope of this article.
Suffice to say that most communication software and bulletin boards use
these protocols and that XModem allows you to send just one file while
YModem sends a group of files.
6.8
I should point out that using YModem on the Series 3 will only allow you
to use a group of files from the same directory.
6.8
‘Transmit’ will be present you with a file selection box which you can
navigate to select the file(s) you wish to send. If you are using YModem
and wish to send a group of files, you should press the plus (+) key
over the files you want − these will be ticked. If you make a mistake,
the minus (−) key will deselect them and remove the tick. Once this is
complete, press <enter> once to accept the files and again to start the
transmission.
6.8
A window will now appear detailing the file being sent and how much has
been done (a block count). When the files have been transmitted, it will
display the message, “Send OK”.
6.8
‘Receive’ works in a similar manner to transmit, except that you select
a directory for YModem receive and a file name for all other types.
6.8
This directory or file name is where the received data will be placed.
6.8
‘Capture’ allows incoming data to be saved to a disc file on the Series
3. Selecting this option for the first time produces a dialog box
allowing you to specify file name, drive, whether the file should be
appended or not and how to show the control codes. Selecting this option
for the second time will stop the capture and close the capture file.
6.8
The option for show control codes is either yes or no, where “yes” will
notate the control codes as <$0B> (in text) for chr$(11) and “no” will
leave it as received (in hex).
6.8
‘Port’ presents you with a dialog box containing five selectable
entries. These will allow you to configure the serial port on the Series
3 to match that of the attached computer/device.
6.8
− The first entry is ‘Baud Rate’ which allows you select a baud rate of
300, 600, 1200. 2400, 4800 or 9600. The baud rate applies to both input
and output.
6.8
− The second entry is ‘Data bits’ which allows you to select how many
bits will be used for the data. You can select from 5, 6, 7 or 8.
6.8
− The third entry is ‘Stop bits’ which allows you to specify either 1 or
2 stop bits.
6.8
− The fourth entry is ‘Parity’ which allows you to select either None,
Even or Odd as the required parity.
6.8
− The fifth option allows the Series 3 to ignore the parity.
6.8
‘Handshakes’ presents you with a dialog box containing four means of
handshaking. These are either set to yes or no in any combination to
meet your own needs. You may use Xon/Xoff, RTS/CTS, DSR/DTR and DCD.
6.8
‘Translates’ presents you with a dialog box containing three options
which basically dictates how the Series 3 will translate the enter key,
backspace key and whether local echo is required.
6.8
‘Hangup’ will attempt to hang up the phone by dropping the DTR line for
3 seconds. Most modems will comply with this.
6.8
‘Exit’ leaves the Comms application and returns you to the System
screen.
6.8
Parameters required to link the Series 3 to your Archimedes
6.8
Below are the parameters I use on my Series 3 to speak to ARCterm 7.
6.8
   Port, Baud rate   : 9600
6.8
   Port, Data bits   : 8
6.8
   Port, Stop bits   : 1
6.8
   Port, Parity    : None
6.8
   Port, Ignore parity : Yes
6.8
   Handshakes, Xon/Xoff : Off
6.8
   Handshakes, RTS/CTS : On
6.8
   Handshakes, DSR/DTR : Off
6.8
   Handshakes, DCD   : Off
6.8
   Translates, Local echo  : On
6.8
   Translates, Enter key   : <$0A><$0D>
6.8
   Translates, Backspace key : <$08>
6.8
How to use you the A-Link as a serial printer driver
6.8
This is another feature not mentioned in the PocketFS manual and I can
only assume that it will work on the Pocket Book. However, parts of what
I am about to explain may exists in the Pocket Book manual or in the OPL
manual (when the OPL editor/translator is purchased).
6.8
On the main system menu is an option called ‘Special’ which has within
it an option, called ‘Printer Setup’. Selecting this will display a
dialog box containing five options. We are only interested in the first
three, which allow us to select ‘serial’ as the printer type and then
its configuration. The configuration should be set to the same as the
terminal detailed above.
6.8
With that now set, the A-Link can be used as a serial printer driver.
6.8
Most applications on the Series 3 have an option of print and this will
simply print to the printer (previously defined), in this case a serial
printer.
6.8
If you have the OPL editor/translator, you can use commands within your
programs to print directly to the printer. As we are dealing with the A-
Link, I will only detail how to use the serial features.
6.8
Printing from within OPL is achieved by the use of LOPEN, LPRINT and
LCLOSE. When using OPL to print, the options from ‘Printer Setup’ are
ignored.
6.8
LOPEN is used to open the printer device for output and, in this case,
it would be LOPEN “TTY:A”. This has now set up the serial port with 9600
baud, no parity, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit and RTS handshaking.
6.8
In order to print, you simply use the LPRINT command in the same way as
the PRINT command except that LPRINT goes to the printer and PRINT goes
to the screen.
6.8
When you have finished with the printer, you must use LCLOSE or nothing
else will be allowed to access the serial port.
6.8
If you want to change the configuration of the serial port from within
OPL you will have to use the below procedure. This must be executed
immediately after the LOPEN.
6.8
PROC SerSet:(Baud%, Parity%, Data%, Stop%, Hand%)
6.8
Local Frame%, Parms%(6), Temp%, Err%
6.8

6.8
Rem Baud; 1=50, 2=75, 3=110, 4=134
6.8
Rem    5=150, 6=300, 7=600, 8=1200
6.8
Rem    9=1800, 10=2000, 11=2400,
6.8
Rem    12=3600, 13=4800, 14=7200,
6.8
Rem    15=9600.
6.8

6.8
Rem Parity; 0=None, 1=Even, 2=Odd
6.8
Rem Data; 5, 6, 7 or 8.
6.8
Rem Stop; 2 or 1.
6.8
Rem Hand; 0=RTS, 3=Xon + RTS,
6.8
Rem      4=None, 7=Xon, 8=RTS + DTR
6.8
Rem    11=All, 12=DSR, 15=Xon + DSR
6.8

6.8
Frame%=Data%-5
6.8
If Stop%=2 :Frame%=Frame%OR16 :ENDIF
6.8
If Parity% :Frame%+Frame%OR32 :ENDIF
6.8

6.8
Parms%(1)=Baud% or (Baud%*256)
6.8
Parms%(2)=Frame% or (Parity%*256)
6.8
Parms%(3)=(Hand% and 255) OR $1100
6.8
Parms%(4)=$13
6.8

6.8
Err%=IOW(-1,7,Parms%(1),Temp%)
6.8
If Err% :RAISE Err% :ENDIF
6.8
ENDPROC
6.8
So far, what I have detailed will allow the Series 3 to send print data
via the A-Link. You can either connect the end of the A-Link, intended
for the Archimedes, to a serial printer, or use a program that runs on
your Archimedes to copy data from the serial port to the parallel
printer port.
6.8
For those of you who do not feel up to the task of writing a program, I
intend to do one which will be given to Archive to administer however
they think best.
6.8
Next month, I will detail how the script editor and translator.  A
6.8
PipeLine−Z
6.8
Gerald Fitton
6.8
Thank you for all the many interesting letters I have received. Don’t
think I’m complaining but, here’s a way you can help me to help you. If
you need advice on a problem, please create an example (that I can work
through) and send it to me on a disc. Sending me a disc helps in many
ways. Firstly, by trying to run your file I can see immediately whether
I get the same effect or whether your problem is related to your ‘set
up’. Secondly, if it is something about the way you are using a package,
I can modify your file and show you, using your example, how it can be
done. Thirdly, if the problem is a feature or bug in the package, I can
send a copy of your file with my comments to Colton Software; they too
much prefer a disc file example of a problem. Fourthly, I find that, in
nearly all cases, the easiest way to demonstrate to you the solution to
your problem is to send you a disc containing a worked example. If I
have to create the example from a blank sheet then it does take more
time and, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong here, but I’m getting fewer
and fewer of my own discs back when I send them out with worked examples
on them!
6.8
Finally on this subject, please send your disc in a MailLite 00 (or
similar) rather than a paper envelope because, as the post gets more and
more automated, the percentage of damaged discs is increasing. Push your
disc to the bottom of the bag, wrapped in your letter or compliments
slip to keep it in position, and put the postage stamp at the other end
of the bag. A blank self addressed label will help and, if you live in
the UK, then return postage (18p or 24p) will help reduce the mounting
costs of supplying the service which so many of you find useful,
interesting and helpful.
6.8
Whilst on the general subject of Help, I am thankful to those of you who
have expressed your willingness to help others with particular types of
problem from RISC OS printing to work sheets for students. If you are
willing and feel able to help in any specialist area then please drop me
a line.
6.8
PD command key combinations
6.8
In PipeDream, you can completely change the whole of your Ctrl key
combinations to suit your own set of acronyms. Keith Matthews has been
working hard on this for some time and you will find the results of his
work to date on the Archive monthly disc. The files supplied by Keith
include ones for you to print out with the complete key combinations and
the PDCmdFil which will set up your machine to use those key
combinations. He invites your comments.
6.8
Wordz version 1.03
6.8
Those of you who bought Wordz direct from Colton Software should have
received a letter notifying you of the latest version of Wordz. If you
have not received such a letter (maybe because you bought your Wordz
through a retail outlet and then didn’t register your purchase with
Colton Software) then here’s what you should do to obtain your free
upgrade. Send both your Wordz Program and Examples discs back to Colton
Software in a Mail Lite 00 together with a self addressed label and, if
you live in the UK, an 18p or 24p stamp. In particular, they request
that you do not place any sticky tape on the disc and that you do not
seal the bag with a large number of staples. The Examples disc contains
about twice as much material as the original issued with version 1.00
and, when you get your upgrade, it is well worth reading since its
contents help clear up many of the difficulties experienced by users of
the earlier versions.
6.8
Apart from some general clearing up of a few ‘bugs’, version 1.03
improves on 1.02 with two new features.
6.8
The first is that you can turn off automatic kerning of RISC OS 3 fonts
so that your document looks as though it was created with RISC OS 2
fonts. By the way, I think that Wordz is the only package which uses the
kerning tables of the RISC OS 3 fonts. Is that so? The Archive editor
uses Impression to create the Archive magazine so, if he wants to kern
the first two letters of Wordz then he or I have to kern manually to
move the W closer to the o as in Wordz.
6.8
The second is that Wordz 1.03 includes links to the Risc Developments’
Desktop Thesaurus. If you have the Thesaurus on the iconbar, you can
find a synonym for the word at the cursor and return it to your
document. Already I’ve been asked (by many of you) if it is possible to
use the WordHound thesaurus instead. At present, the official answer
from Colton Software is “No” but I’ve always found them willing to
listen so, if you want to prove that the demand for linking to WordHound
is there, please write to Colton Software with your views. (I don’t mind
you writing to me as well.)
6.8
The upgrade from 1.01 to 1.02 included mailshots, user dictionary
browsing and more Ctrl key short cuts. The demo disc, which some of you
have used to try out Wordz, corresponds to version 1.01.
6.8
Hyphenation
6.8
You can insert a soft hyphen in a Wordz word by holding down <Alt> and
tapping the hyphen key. Generally, a soft hyphen will not show on screen
(nor will it print). However, if your word is at the end of a line then
it will split at the soft hyphen.
6.8
Dictionaries
6.8
PD and Wordz dictionaries are interchangeable. In PD, you can ‘dump’
dictionaries in ASCII format, you can select and remove individual
words, and you can create specialist user dictionaries. I find it easier
to ‘play with’ my Wordz dictionaries using PD than to do so in Wordz.
6.8
Removing styles in Wordz
6.8
Applying styles in Wordz may require different key presses and mouse
clicks from Impression but the same principles apply to both packages.
You mark an area of the document and then apply the style. The style
which you apply overlays all styles previously applied to that area. If
there is a conflict, the most recently applied style is used.
6.8
Let me give you an example, with three screenshots, which might have
been taken from Wordz or Impression. There are two styles, the first is
a Base style and the second is a Right style that has a slightly
different left margin. The default, screen 1, has the base style applied
to all five lines. I then mark lines two, three and four. I apply the
Right style to those three lines of the document to obtain the layout of
screen 2.
6.8
I then discover that what I really want is the layout of screen 3! In
Impression, I would mark line three and remove the Right style from that
marked block. In Wordz, after marking line three, I might apply the Base
style to just that line (or do something more complicated that we’ll
come to later).
6.8
Although there is no difference between Wordz and Impression on screen
nor when you print it out, there is a difference in the structure of the
document. In Impression the ‘Region’ containing the Right style (lines
two, three and four) has been split into three regions (the three middle
lines) and the Right style has been removed completely from line three.
In Wordz, the Region containing the Right style remains intact (the
three middle lines) but line three has been overlaid with the Base
style.
6.8
On the Archive monthly disc, you will find a directory called Styles
which contains a Wordz file called [ZLine] in the form shown in the
screenshot screen 3. If you don’t have the monthly disc then, to follow
through the next part of this tutorial, you will have to create such a
file from the instructions above.
6.8
Place the cursor in line three. Don’t be tempted to mark any block.
Press <Ctrl-R>. You will find yourself with the layout of screen 4. Note
that a ‘Region’ is marked automatically by Wordz and at the top left of
the screenshot it reads “Region: Style ZLBase” (my Base style). You will
also see on screen 4 a sub menu called Region. Click once on ‘In’ and
you will produce screen 5. Study the screenshot and notice that the
region marked consists of the three lines to which we applied the Right
style (I called the Right style ZLineRight). If you click on ‘In’ once
more you will produce the layout of screen 6. You are ‘In’ as far as you
can go because the ‘In’ is ‘greyed out’!
6.8
I hope that the short exercise of the previous paragraph shows you how
Wordz handles styles by overlaying one style over another. The most
important point for you to realise is that line three ‘contains’ three
styles and not one. The three styles, from the innermost outwards, are
the Base style, the Right style and a second application of the Base
style which is the topmost style. A good analogy is to think of the
styles as layers of paint. First the Base style is washed over all the
document, then the Right style is painted over the middle three lines.
Finally another coat of the Base style is painted over the third
(middle) line. It is important that you realise that Right is not
scraped off the middle line but painted over with Base!
6.8
In Impression documents produced by a reasonably proficient user, you
would find that the ‘paint’ had been scraped away from the middle line
by Deleting the Right style and so revealing the Base style underneath.
6.8
So, how do you remove styles in Wordz? Well, you can only remove a style
from the whole of a Region because Regions cannot be ‘split’. What you
can do from the layout of screen 5 is to click on Remove to remove the
Right style from the marked region. If you do that, you will find that,
although the Right style is nowhere in the document, the Base style has
been applied twice to line three. Have a look at screen 7 and you’ll see
that ‘In’ is not ‘greyed out’. If you click on ‘In’ then you’ll find
that the whole document is marked in inverse video and the Region has
the Base style!
6.8
To stretch my painting analogy beyond practicality, you cannot remove
parts of a layer of paint but only the whole of the layer or nothing.
When you clicked on Remove (in the previous paragraph) you gently
‘lifted’ the painted Base style on line three, scraped away the middle
layer of Right style, and then ‘dropped’ the outer layer of Base style
back over the Base undercoat! If you have the Archive monthly disc then
have a look at the file [ZLine2].
6.8
Anyway, what do I recommend? Firstly, plan your document to use Styles
rather than Effects. Secondly, it is better to split a large Region into
three rather than (lazily) overlay another style into the middle of the
region. Yes! I realise that it means having to remove a style from a
large region and then applying it piecemeal to the parts where you want
it. Be ruthless about removing styles. In my tutorial example, it would
have been better to apply the Right style separately to lines two and
four (two regions) rather than apply it as one Region to lines two,
three and four and be forced into making corrections such as a second
application of the Base style to line three.
6.8
You may think that the example I have given is trivial and that I’m
making too much of the problem. I agree that, in my example, either
method could be used efficiently but that is not the case in more
complicated documents having many styles. Also, bear in mind that
everything that I have said about styles can be repeated but referring
to different effects on small overlapping regions. You must be even more
ruthless about removing effects than about removing styles! For example,
I received a disc file in Wordz format and I think my correspondent had
been trying every font he had! Every new font had been painted over the
previous font using a new effect without using <Ctrl-R> to remove the
old effect. Add to this complex structure, the fact that some regions
included a carriage return and others didn’t, and you will appreciate
that when inserting new text in the middle of the document, it sometimes
appeared in a totally unexpected font to the utter disbelief of my
correspondent!
6.8
Finally
6.8
I have a ‘day job’ teaching at the local college and I work several
evenings a week, so trying to telephone me either day or evening will
more than likely lead to disappointment. Send me a letter or better
still a disc and you’ll get a ‘thought out’ reply and probably a worked
example. I know it takes a bit longer than a ‘Hot Line’ but it’s what I
and (because the reply is given in depth) many correspondents prefer.
6.8
If you need instant help on the telephone then there are two
possibilities. The first is to subscribe to Norwich Computer Services’
Technical Help Service at £15 (I receive good reports about it) and the
second is to ring Colton Software on 0223−311881.  A
6.8
Screen 1
6.8
Screen 2
6.8
Screen 3
6.8
Screen 4
6.8
Screen 5
6.8
Screen 5
6.8
Screen 7
6.8
Wortgut
6.8
Dave Morrell
6.8
Wortgut is described as a topic-based German­ English, English­German
dictionary for home, office or classroom. It comes from New Era
Software. I have no experience of office work so cannot comment on its
suitability for that.
6.8
The dictionary loads in the normal RISC OS manner and sits quietly on
the iconbar. It has not caused any problems with any program I have had
running whilst it was in the machine. It has interfaced quite happily
with Ovation, Impression and PipeDream.
6.8
Clicking with <select> on the iconbar icon gives a window containing the
main dictionary work area.
6.8
The radio buttons towards the bottom of the window change from the
English/German to the German/English variation. This also applies to the
iconbar menu.
6.8
Typing a word into the writeable icon containing the cursor and pressing
<return> gives the translation in the box underneath.
6.8
The larger box below gives extra information about the word and
sometimes an example of how it is used.
6.8
If, like me, you are prone to typing errors, or even spelling errors,
the large window above the word gives the part of the dictionary in
which the word can be found.
6.8
Clicking <menu> over the main window gives a quite long menu of topic
groups into which the dictionary is split. These topics include people,
home, school, travel, etc and if one of these is selected, only the
relevant part of the dictionary is loaded. Any of these topics can be
selected and then printed out or saved from the iconbar menu.
6.8
The complete dictionary contains about 2,500 words. This compares rather
poorly with my Collins College Dictionary which contains about 110,000
translations. It is, however, very easy to add new words, delete words
and change existing words. These can all be saved back into the main
body of the dictionary, into the relevant topic set.
6.8
In use
6.8
During the last two years, I have been attending a German conversation
course at a local night school. All the homework from this course I have
done on the computer. Using the Collins Dictionary often lost my train
of thought. Using Wortgut, the translation, if available in the
dictionary, was there instantly. Speed was very impressive. I found it a
joy to use. Eventually, I will increase the vocabulary contained in the
dictionary up to the level of a paper dictionary.
6.8
WortGut will also set up four of the function keys to give the German
characters ä, ö, ü and ß with the shifted keys giving the capitals. This
I do not use, having already adapted a public domain program (similar to
Polyglot) to do this for me.
6.8
For individual use, I was very impressed with this program. I am not too
sure how well it would fit into a classroom situation. To be at its most
useful, it needs to be used by an individual, or very small group,
working on a single computer or network station. How many schools have
the necessary equipment in the IT department for each user to have
access to a computer individually? I cannot see this situation being
better in a language department. This does not mean that the program has
no use in schools. If a language department has a computer, this
program, and its sister language dictionaries, could well find a place.
I think they would be useful in any school that offers foreign
languages, especially considering the price of £25 (no VAT) which
includes a site licence.
6.8
Linking with other programs
6.8
Wortgut will link with several other programs, such as word processors,
DTP packages, etc. The manual gives two methods but I could only get one
of them to work.
6.8
“To take a word from ‘Wortgut’ into another program, either: 1. Point to
the word in the dictionary and Drag it to the other program.
6.8
or: 2. Click the Adjust button when the word is in the entry window.
This will place the word at the caret position.”
6.8
I could only get the first method to work with Impression, Ovation,
PipeDream and Edit. The manual does advise checking these methods before
using them for a large amount of data.
6.8
Conclusions
6.8
Overall, I like this package for personal use very much. I can see
advantages in using it in an educational environment. I would like to
see more vocabulary contained in the dictionary but I regard this as a
minor point as it is so easy to add extra words and meanings. If a
package of this type is required, I can recommend this one.  A
6.8
Learning the Hard Way
6.8
Tord Eriksson
6.8
I am one of those people who do some of the dumb things in life, so I
thought that others might learn from my mistakes. My two hard drives,
both Seagates, were getting just too full for comfort and I had never
made a backup − I couldn’t face the idea of backing up over 120Mb of
data onto floppies.
6.8
My bank account is never healthy these days but I decided that I could
just about afford a SyQuest drive. (Mac versions are easily available in
this land of Apples, but no Acorns.)
6.8
Enter the SyQuest
6.8
With a rather empty bank book, I returned from town with my SyQuest 44Mb
removable drive, some connectors, cables and a smile on my face. This
would be a simple operation − just make a new cable and connect the
Tantech-made external SyQuest box to my old Oak interface and the two
Seagates in the Oak box. A child could do it!
6.8
My A3000 now had four boxes: a Datatronics modem, the SyQuest, the two
Seagates in an Oak box and an old 5¼“ floppy drive. Four boxes are just
too many, so I decided to take the two Seagates out of their box and
make an extension to the SyQuest box so that all of the SCSI drives
would be together in one assembly. Fitting the Seagates on a thick
aluminium plate took care of the cooling, plus having painted the 45Mb
drive black with special heat-emissive paint.
6.8
The already black 82Mb Seagate 1096N drive never gets over 25°C anyway,
so no worries. This is a much nicer drive than the older 157N drive.
It’s as fast in mode 15 as it is in mode 0, and only slightly slower in
mode 21. The 157N is noisy and slower than a floppy at mode 21 (57Kb/s)!
6.8
When it was finished, I had a very elegant arrangement with the two
Seagates hiding side by side behind the SyQuest. I turned on the power
and waited for the drives to come on line...
6.8
The Seagate saga
6.8
For the last 12 months, I have had the two Seagate drives mounted
vertically − not a recommended practice! When I tried to run it in the
horizontal position, the 1096N refused to boot − but this problem
disappeared when I turned the box onto its end.
6.8
Now, with hindsight, I realise that this should have spelled danger and
prompted me to back up the drive immediately. I was going to do it, with
the help of the SyQuest, after a year on borrowed time. As I had to take
out the terminating resistors, I had to disassemble the Oak box anyway,
so I didn’t think much about the rearrangement, one way or another. Most
of my artwork and texts were on that drive, including an article for Air
International, that I was working on − plus some texts for Archive, of
course!
6.8
I found out that the 1096N was consuming an amazing amount of current
but, being more modern, it still booted. So I tried disconnecting the
(what I thought was) healthy drive and tested the old drive alone (they
used the same p.s.u.). No problem − but they would not work together.
6.8
I disconnected the old drive and tested the newer 1096N alone. Suddenly,
frantic noises but no hum from a spinning disc. Belatedly, I tried to
mount the drive vertically again. No use! As a last, desperate solution,
I connected the SyQuest’s p.s.u., as it is a much heftier power supply.
(The Oak unit could barely manage 2 volts with the sick drive
connected!)
6.8
The most expensive sight I have ever seen, when it comes to computers,
was the acrid smoke which came billowing from the dead drive’s belly.
The only help which an expert on stuck Seagates could offer was a
recommendation to give it a heavy jolt − no joy!
6.8
I had so very nearly done my backups before the crash... Rats! Not
trusting the other Seagate one bit, I went back to the shop and bought
another drive, digging even deeper into my savings.
6.8
Discs galore
6.8
The only drive available at short notice in the shop, a Mac specialist,
was a 170Mb Conner − a very unassuming drive, half the height of the
Seagates. I soon had it fitted onto the lid of the Oak SCSI external
podule and connected to the podule with an inch-long ribbon cable.
6.8
It’s twice as fast as the Seagates and it consumes very little power −
its 5V drain (less than 300 mA) is so small that it could be run by the
A3000’s power supply. The trouble is that it needs 12 volts, too, so I
use the old Oak p.s.u. which is now vastly over-sized.
6.8
The Conner has many power-saving features − which is not surprising as
it normally lives in the more expensive versions of the Apple Power
Books. It powers down when you dismount it and automatically mounts if
it is requested by any program, such as ArcFax or Impression. I have had
no problems when saving to disc with a dismounted drive, as the disc is
mounted automatically but to be on the safe side, it’s better to turn it
on by clicking, before trying to scroll a long text. If you access a new
font or scroll across an illustration, with the drive dismounted, you
are bound to end up in trouble as the font manager doesn’t want to wait
for the drive. Saving and rebooting usually solves the problem. If you
do not change fonts or size and have no illustrations there is no
problem!
6.8
Disc speeds
6.8
All hard drives seem to come from Singapore these days − at least mine
do, including the SyQuest box. How quick the two younger Singaporeans
are is best shown by comparing with the four year old Oak-supplied
Seagate drive − also a native of Singapore. Using Oak’s classic
performance test, in modes 0, 15 and 21, the results were quite
revealing.
6.8
Type of drive:     Mode:    0    15
    21
6.8
SyQuest 44Mb,    590    588     365
    Kb/s
6.8
Conner 170Mb    1122    1116     689
    Kb/s
6.8
Seagate 157N, 45Mb,    659
    607    57    Kb/s
6.8
The Conner is a clear winner, being over ten times faster than the
Seagate in mode 21 and the SyQuest is a steady performer, if no speed
wizard.
6.8
Epilogue
6.8
Four lessons from this adventure:
6.8
If your hard disc starts to misbehave, back up immediately! This is the
easiest lesson to forget and the most important to follow. I didn’t do
so and have had to pay dearly for it. Sometimes it’s enough to reformat
the drive, as any defective sectors will be mapped out. Remember to back
up before that or your files will be lost for ever!
6.8
Never mount hard drives in the vertical plane − they should always be
seated horizontally.
6.8
By using a low-power, but very fast, Conner drive, you can have silent
computing, as it can be powered down by dismounting and doesn’t need a
fan. It gets 10 out of 10 for speed, silence and portability.
6.8
The SyQuest drive is excellent for backing up. It is a 5¼“ drive with a
very sturdy aluminium disc, it consumes a lot of power and generates a
lot of heat and noise. My box has a noisy fan and the drive is quite
noisy too, so dismounting does not help a lot! For general ease of use
though, it gets 10 out of 10!
6.8
If you need a new SCSI drive, I can heartily recommend both types but
please remember to back up in good time!  A
6.8
ArtWorks Column
6.8
Trevor Sutton
6.8
This particular column has been prepared in haste. Several factors
conspired to make its conception difficult, the main one being the lack
of a computer. Well, not exactly a complete and utter lack − I did still
have my sparkling new Acorn Pocket Book, though that was the reason why
my faithful A5000 required a trip back to Cambridge! My A5000 is, as it
happens, a very early version and it seems that the serial port was
incompatible with the A-Link and therefore the Pocket Book. This ruined
my chances of composing AW columns in traffic jams, dull meetings or
episodes of sun-bathing! I realised very quickly that sending my Pocket
Book down to Norwich Computer Services was totally out of the question
so a solution had to be found. The solution was most humbling and held a
lesson for all of us with lots of memory and big hard drives.
6.8
AW on the A3020
6.8
I was fortunately able to borrow an A3020 (from my wife) and was
determined to connect all the dongles and just see whether AW and
Impression could be run effectively from floppies. Impression 2.18 takes
just 496Kb with some module area taken for Impulse and the Spelling
module and so writing this is fairly painless, but what of AW?
6.8
Well, of course, the first job was to install it to a floppy disc. I
decided to use a 1.6Mb disc as this would be available to users of the
A3020. I didn’t quite manage to get everything and a System directory
loaded, so I settled for just AW. I was able to run it without any
problems and I printed successfully. This is a credit to CC and Acorn
when one considers the competition from other computer companies. These
use vast disc space and have a considerable memory requirement. I am
running at this moment (albeit without a few AW modules) both Impression
and AW. Having outline fonts in ROM makes this a viable option though it
is unlikely that many people would need to multitask these applications.
6.8
In conclusion, most people who own and use AW and Impression are, I
think, very likely to have hard drives and increased memory. However, if
schools with A3020s are wondering if it would work, well, it does!
6.8
I would be pleased to hear from anyone with more experience than I have
with other Acorn machines and AW. The only real challenge to AW seems to
come from other Acorn software.
6.8
AW − ‘The Rough Guide’
6.8
Several people have written and spoken to me about the ‘Rough Guide’
booklet, now included along with the other manuals with AW. I, too,
bought AW as soon as it became available and the booklet containing
sample print-outs of the fonts proved to be a draft document. If that is
all you have, I recommend that you write to CC and ask them for the
‘Rough Guide’ booklet which is a useful introduction to all the
facilities of AW. Similarly the ‘Commercial Printing Guide’ gives useful
support for colour separation techniques and approaches to professional
printing. I had to ask for my copies, so make sure that you get yours
too!
6.8
The power of rotation
6.8
After selecting an object using the rotate tool, AW places a target
point in the centre of the chosen shape. This allows rotation similar to
dragging the ‘top right handle’ in Draw. However, AW offers a powerful
variety of alternatives. By dragging the target point with <adjust>, the
centre of rotation can be changed, X and Y positions are given on the
info bar.
6.8
There is also a series of 3 by 3 buttons (described as blobs in the
rough guide!) on the info bar which allow rotation about accurate
positions.
6.8
I have found these very useful for creating fancy borders. Just draw one
corner, find a suitable central point, then copy with <ctrl-K> and
rotate through 90°. Do this a couple more times and then join up the
corners with straight lines.
6.8
Coda
6.8
Well, this month we have a short piece and one of the conspirators
mentioned above is Aphrodite. For those of you who do not enjoy cryptic
comments, I will point out that my Pocket Book will be in Cyprus for the
next two weeks and I only wish it had a version of AW too! Please keep
sending in your comments − you should have more time now the deadline
for the AW competition has passed.  A
6.8
Small Ads
6.8
(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)
6.8
•    A310 4Mb RAM, ARM3, RISC OS 3.1, 40Mb ST506 Hard disc, Brainsoft I/O
podule, Joystick, software, Taxan 770 monitor, £700 o.n.o. Euclid +
Mogul £20. Acorn ANSI C v3 £20. Karma Flight Trainer £10. Acorn PRM v2
£20. Archive issue 1 to current, £20. Phone 0272−498531 after 6pm.
6.8
•    A4 model II (4Mb, 60Mb HD) mains adaptor, manuals, software, soft
case, mouse £1780.  5½“ disc interface, manual and software £15. 5½”
floppy for BBC or Archimedes with interface £20.  PC Emulator (V.1.82)
£60. Euclid £30. Superior Golf, Trivial Pursuit, Interdictor (un-
opened), TurboType typing tutor, £8 each. Phone Basingstoke 0256−467574.
6.8
•    A410/1, 4Mb RAM, 20Mb Hard disc, colour monitor, ARM3, RISC OS 3,
external floppy interface, 9 pin dot matrix printer, £1000 (o.n.o.).
Phone 051−734−5989 after 4pm.
6.8
•    Aleph1 PC386 4Mb podule with Cyrix co-processor and Windows software
(v1.0), £325. Oak 150Mb tape drive with 8×150Mb tape cartridges, offers.
Phone Chris after 7pm on 0276−20575.
6.8
•    Computer Concepts Colour Card, £200. Revelation Image Pro £100. Eureka
£85. PinPoint £65. Squirrel £95. All latest software. Phone 0923−820651
after 8pm.
6.8
•    Hearsay II, never used, £40. Investigator v2.0, never used, £14.
Snippet v1.0, £15. Poster v1.04, £25. Also RISC OS 2 PRM, £25 + postage.
Phone Chris after 7pm on 0276−20575.
6.8
•    Helix Basic. Offers or swap for Beebug ‘C’. Phone 0366−501001.
6.8
•    PC Emulator 1.8, unopened, £70. BBC B Acorn teletext adaptor £50.
Phone 0684−73173.  A
6.8
Eureka! − Excel 3 for the Archimedes?
6.8
Mike McNamara
6.8
My first reaction on seeing Eureka was ‘Hey! this looks like Excel 3 for
the Archimedes!’. (See for yourself from the illustrations.) Excel 3,
for those of you who are not familiar with PC or Mac software, is one of
the leading spreadsheet packages for these machines and is produced by
one of the biggest software companies, namely Microsoft (of Windows
fame!).
6.8
The initial comparison with Excel 3 comes from the way in which Eureka
presents itself when launched. The extended title bar with its edit bar,
style menu and ‘quick select’ icons (also used, I notice, in Wordz) is
strikingly reminiscent of Excel 3, where many of the more commonly
needed functions are represented by icons along the top of the
application’s window. New to Eureka, however, is the ability to move
this section independently of the worksheet itself, as a separate
window.
6.8

6.8
Eureka
6.8
Having been struck by these visual links between Eureka and Excel 3, I
naturally approached my initial examination of Eureka on the basis of
‘how deep does the likeness go?’. To my surprise and delight, the
likeness is a great deal more than skin deep. Eureka carries with it the
same basic feeling of being designed for the user, rather than by the
programmer. In the main, it allows you to do things in the way you would
most naturally wish to do things.
6.8

6.8
Excel 3
6.8
Furthermore, the controls and effects available in Eureka are so similar
to their counterparts in Excel 3 that users of Eureka could quite
happily buy one of the many books dealing with the basics of Excel 3 and
use them to support their use of Eureka. The likeness therefore begs the
question ‘Is this RISC OS, Mac-OS or Windows 3.1?’. In the main, RISC OS
conventions have been followed, with some notable exceptions such as,
for example, where dialogue boxes contain a ‘Cancel’ button. According
to Acorn, using <select> on this should abort any selections made and
close the dialogue, while using <adjust> should abort any selections but
keep the dialogue open. In Eureka, the <adjust> feature has not be
implemented and acts in the same way as clicking Select. In fact, all
the normal <adjust> effects that I tried, failed to do what they should
− all doing the same as <select>.
6.8
In many areas, the facilities of Eureka fall short of their Excel 3
counterparts in scope, versatility or variability. In some cases,
however, they exceed Excel 3. For example, where, in Excel 3, the Fill
option offers only Fill Right and Fill Down, Eureka also offers options
to Fill Left and Fill Up (Oops! Just found these hidden within <Shift> &
‘File’!). In Excel 3, you have an option to set the format of a cell to
‘Wrap’ where text entered into the cell will wrap to the width of the
cell, as if it were a mini wordprocessing area. However, Excel 3 has a
fairly small limit to the amount of text that can then be entered into a
single cell (about 256 characters) with larger blocks of text having to
be placed into separate ‘text frames’ placed on top of the worksheet. In
Eureka, this limit doesn’t seem to apply or is, at the very least, much
greater. Once entered, the cell contents can then be formatted both
horizontally and vertically.
6.8
Unfortunately, and particularly given the arrival of RISC OS 3.1, cell
contents cannot be rotated as they can in Excel 3.
6.8
One of Excel 3’s most powerful features is the way it handles the
production of graphs from worksheet data. Eureka too offers some
impressive plotting options although they are considerably less
extensive than those in Excel 3. Missing are the 3D options and along
with them options for rotation of viewing angle. Also missing is the
ability to plot data from rows or columns not side by side on the
worksheet − a rather major omission. In both packages, you can mark
several unconnected cells or cell ranges by pressing <Ctrl> while
clicking on or dragging through cells. In Excel 3, it is then possible
to plot these to a graph. Eureka will not allow this which means that if
you have, say, a column of headings followed by several columns of data,
you would need to do rather too much cutting and pasting if you wanted
to plot each column of data against the same column of headings.
6.8
OK, so Eureka and Excel 3 have a great deal in common, but can they
share data? The simple answer to this is a resounding YES! Although,
rather strangely given its obvious pedigree, Eureka can neither export
nor import Excel 3 files directly. Both packages are, however, able to
read and write files in Lotus 1-2-3 WKS or WK1 format. Using WK1, I was
able to move some fairly complex worksheets (complete with text, numeric
data, formulae and named cells) back and forth with no problems at all.
6.8
If the Excel 3 worksheet contains additional Excel 3 graphic elements,
such as text boxes, lines, rotated text, etc, you will find these
elements missing when the file is imported. In one test file, areas of
the Excel 3 worksheet had been outlined and the background shaded grey.
Although these effects did not come over in the imported WK1 format
file, they were very easy to recreate in Eureka, using an almost
identical process to that used in the original Excel 3 format. With the
additional option of saving in CSV, it should also be a simple task to
move data to almost any PC or Mac (not to mention Archimedes)
application you might want to use.
6.8
The similiarities with Excel 3 are quite extensive but it might be
fairer to compare it with the spreadsheet module within Microsoft’s
Works for Windows package, as this is, in effect, Microsoft’s own
reduced feature version of Excel 3. And, like Eureka, probably its
greatest loss is the lack of the Macro, Macro Recorder and Macro Button
facilities. These allow you to ‘program’ regularly used routines and, if
you wish, link them to a ‘button’ (icon) placed into the worksheet.
Hopefully, the rumours that Eureka 2 might include such facilities are
true, as this would elevate an already excellent package to new heights.
6.8
One further loss in Eureka is the ability to save worksheets as part of
a ‘Workgroup’. Both Excel 3 and Eureka, as with many other spreadsheet
packages these days, allows cell references between different
worksheets. The ability to save as a Workgroup in Excel 3 means that,
when re-loading, all the component worksheets are loaded automatically
(including macros if they exist). In Eureka, such collections of
worksheets would have to be loaded individually by the user.
6.8
To finish, I have one rather curious observation to make with respect to
printing Eureka worksheets. Having imported and reformatted a file from
Excel 3, I proceeded to print it to my Cannon BJ10ex, via CC’s Turbo
Driver. On screen, all elements of the worksheet appeared as required.
However, when printed, some cell contents were truncated (missing the
last few characters) and some of the cells containing values were
printed as #### strings. This string is used to indicate that the cell
contents are too large for the cell width setting. I thought that the
whole idea of a WYSIWYG display was to ensure that, once the screen
display is as required, the printout would follow suit. Can anyone
explain why this does not seem to follow in Eureka?
6.8
Eureka is certainly a move in the right direction towards being Excel 3
for the Archimedes. So much so, in some respects, that I cannot help but
wonder if Microsoft might have something to say about it. Maybe those
wishing to buy Eureka would be advised to do so fairly quickly, before
Microsoft’s legal team get wind of it! (Only joking....... I hope!).  A
6.8
A Dabhand Guide to Impression
6.8
Robert Chrismas
6.8
‘The Definitive Guide to the Premier DTP Package for Acorn Machines’
says the front cover. Well, who would buy a book which described itself
as ‘Quite a Good Guide to Impression’?
6.8
The Dabhand Guide to Impression is Published by the Dabs Press. It costs
£14.95 and there is a support disc that you can get from Dabs that costs
£2 inclusive.
6.8
Surprisingly readable
6.8
The Dabhand Guide to Impression is written by Anne Rooney who also wrote
‘The RISC OS Welcome Guide.’ She has written a number of other books for
Dabs Press including one of my favourites, ‘Archimedes First Steps’.
6.8
She probably blushed when she saw the blurb on the back cover which
claims that the guide ‘will help you get to grips with Impression so
that you can use its power to create the documents you want’ − fine
promise, leaden prose.
6.8
The content and the appearance of this guide make it surprisingly
readable. Computer manuals are not supposed to be light reading. Long
passages of technical information written with the style of a Brussels
bureaucrat can be pretty daunting. Anne Rooney has the happy knack of
writing technical material in clear attractive english. This is enhanced
by the page layout: a single, fairly narrow column of text with generous
leading (the space between the lines) and wide margins.
6.8
Contents
6.8
The first few chapters introduce Impression and explain how to set up
the discs and get started. Chapter four has an outline of Impression’s
main features. It describes how they are covered in the later chapters.
6.8
Next comes the main part of the book containing detailed descriptions of
different aspects of Impression. As well as the ‘mainstream’ subjects,
styles, frames, master pages, etc, it includes topics like creating an
index, hyphenation, uses of !FontDraw, enhanced graphics features,
importing and exporting files (find out how to import files from
Ventura, conserving styles and format) and multi-chapter documents.
Printing is covered in special detail − there are sections on
downloading fonts to a PostScript printer and preparing files for
imagesetting.
6.8
The chapter of examples was disappointing. The business stationery for
Aardvark Earth-Moving Equipment would have been suitable for a staid
firm of chartered accountants.
6.8
It is followed by an excellent chapter on the Impression Business
Supplement which also included useful advice on different systems of
colouring and arranging for professional printing.
6.8
Differences between RISC OS 2 and RISC OS 3 are explained wherever they
are relevant.
6.8
Not a tutorial
6.8
The guide book is not a tutorial. You are not expected to work through a
series of exercises. You will not find many passages with a list of
instructions of the ‘now drag the second tab ... notice that ...’
variety. There are more general descriptions like, ‘There are two ways
you can remove any items from the ruler. You can drag items from the
ruler and drop them ...’ The emphasis is usually on why you would choose
to do something. A typical passage starts ‘Sometimes you may want to
group several frames together so that ...’
6.8
A natural way to use this book would be to read half a chapter or so and
then to try out what you have learnt on the computer by making up some
tasks for yourself.
6.8
Whether you find this style more helpful than a conventional tutorial,
which expects you to use the computer every few minutes, probably
depends on your personality. I like to learn by sitting and thinking, I
would certainly have enjoyed learning about Impression from this book.
If you prefer to learn by doing (teacher’s cliché) you will probably get
on better with Stephen Ibbs’ ‘First Impression’ (reviewed Archive
5.1p17).
6.8
There is, however, some tutorial material on the support disc (see
later).
6.8
You can’t please everyone
6.8
Neither a conventional tutorial nor the more reflective style of the
Dabhand Guide would satisfy some users. One of my neighbours recently
bought a computer − a 286 grey. He was new to computing, so I went round
to help him set it up. I planned to show him how to connect the bits and
to explain a bit about parking hard discs, using Gem and so on. I found
that he expected to print three letters that same evening. It was like
someone who turned up for their first driving lesson and said ‘teach me
to drive by showing me how to get to Liverpool’. (We did print his
letters, but there are better ways to get started.)
6.8
Organisation
6.8
Anne Rooney has tried to arrange the chapters in the order that a
typical user might need them. However, she has also tried to group
together related material. An example of the problems which these
incompatible aims create appears in one of the early chapters called
‘Starting Work’. Since starting work involves entering text, this
chapter also includes a description of !Chars and a discussion of the
importance of distinguishing between the letter O and the number zero.
Most beginners would be content to leave these niceties, at least until
after they had learnt to save and to print.
6.8
When I reviewed ‘First Impression’, I said that ‘hasty personalities’
might find it hard to wait for section seven to learn how to change the
font. In the 450 page Dabhand Guide, you must wait until page 261 to get
to the chapter on printing. I do not now think this a fault. In any
book, half of the chapters come after the middle!
6.8
Pages fell out
6.8
My copy of this book has made a couple of journeys through the post in a
jiffy bag. However the cover was not badly marked, so I was surprised
when some of the pages fell out.
6.8
Other publishing aberrations include an errata sheet with a corrected
table of contents and a diagram which was omitted from the text.
6.8
Support disc
6.8
The book does not assume you have the support disc. The disc contains
all the example documents referred to in the text, including a mail
merge example for owners of the Impression Business Supplement.
6.8
Tutorial files
6.8
There are some tutorial files which are completely independent of the
book. They comprise five main documents dealing with Word Processing,
Effects, Styles, Frames and Master Pages. These are more conventional
tutorial material. Each document starts with an estimate of the time it
will take. These files only occupy 200Kb so they can only cover some
features. However, the lessons cover a sensible range of topics and they
seem well thought out.
6.8
The most annoying trait of the files was the way, whenever I loaded one,
Impression complained that it had not seen the Newhall font. None of the
files seemed to use Newhall.
6.8
Conclusion
6.8
The Dabhand Guide to Impression is very readable. It begins with
instructions for readers who have never used Impression before but it
includes many advanced subjects in its comprehensive contents.
6.8
The guide is not organised into tasks like a tutorial. It spends as much
time explaining why you might want to do things as it spends on
explaining how to do them. I enjoyed reading it but some people might
prefer more step-by-step instructions. Experienced users could keep it
to look up the features of Impression which they do not use regularly.
6.8
Provided it keeps its pages, £15 is a reasonable price for a book. If
you buy it to learn Impression, buy the support disc as well − the
tutorial on the disc is worth £2.  A
6.8
Image Discs for Primary Schools
6.8
Alan Wilburn
6.8
Image Discs are sets of clipart produced by John Beattie of Primary
Educational Services to support curriculum areas in the Primary School.
I reviewed the first twenty-one discs in Archive 5.12 p37 and, to save
repetition, I suggest you look at that for information on my testing,
judging criteria and general information on packaging, marketing, etc.
This time I am reviewing the new release of thirteen discs which are
mainly black and white drawfiles, some with greyscale shading from
ArtWorks which, in my opinion, give the best results in DTP with the
equipment available to the average person and school.
6.8
Birds
6.8
There are thirteen very good, detailed drawfiles about Sea Birds in
realistic positions covering the most common. There are Black/Common/
Herring Gulls, Terns and others including Shag, Cormorant, Avocet and
Sandpiper.
6.8
Garden Birds are covered in thirteen detailed drawfiles plus two
outstanding duplicates in colour. The most common species are
represented including Crow, Black Bird, Blue Tit, Chaffinch, Sparrow,
Robin, Swallow and Thrush.
6.8
Birds of Prey 2 has seven detailed pictures of: Buzzard (illustrated),
Long Eared and European Eagle Owl, Goshawk, Hobby, Peregrine Falcon and
Spotted Eagle all of which are of a high standard.
6.8
Animals
6.8
On the Domestic Cats disc are fourteen files mainly of pedigree cats and
not the common moggy. Some of the breeds covered are: Burmese, Egyptian,
Blue and Chocolate Point and Sphynx.
6.8
The Endangered Species disc has thirteen files plus three duplicated in
greyscale colour. Water animals are represented by the Dolphin, Otter,
Sea Cow, Seal and Whale. Land animals feature Bison, Elephant, Polar
Bear and Rhino amongst others.
6.8
The twelve Animal Skeletons on the disc are detailed and shaded in, to
give a 3D view and cover, among others reptiles, bird, cat, elephant,
rhesus monkey and a seal. My reference books confirmed that the
skeletons I could find appeared to be accurate (I have no expertise in
this area). The teacher in me would have liked identical pictures of
fully-fleshed animals to compare with the skeletons but I imagine this
would require another disc.
6.8
History
6.8
The Tudors disc has nine files on clothing including separate items and
people. There are two detailed drawings, one line and the other shaded,
of Henry VIII and drawings of three of his wives. The rest of the disc
contains files on plants and a few household items.
6.8
Victoriana has eight files on fashion, five on lamps and the other
sixteen mainly covering everyday items. Fashion has four drawings of
women in a variety of everyday dress, Ms Bloomer and a crinoline basket.
Three men are depicted in casual day dress, formal frock coat and
working class (a locksmith). Transport is covered by a baby carriage,
bone shaker, penny farthing, automobile, The Rocket and an excellent
detailed drawing of a fire engine. Pictures of the Albert Hall, a
gramophone, a mangle and Disraeli are some of the other files.
6.8
Victorian 2 contains 22 files on a number of categories. Household items
are represented by a brooch, statue, bath, phone, sewing machine, wash
basin and stand. Street items are: pillar box, postman, peeler, house
and hansom cab. Industry and Trade items include a mine shaft, Telford
Bridge, a viaduct and a Tea Clipper. Famous people are present in the
form of W G Grace, Florence Nightingale and Queen Victoria.
6.8
General
6.8
The House disc is mainly for Special Needs but I could see many uses for
it, one being to prepare customized work in My World (Archive 5.4 p36).
The files would be also be useful in Picture It. There are two
directories Objects and Rooms. Objects contains files of items seen in
the home such as: apron, frying pan, strainer, mug, toothbrush and
towel. Rooms contains thirty files of furniture including: bath, chest,
fridge, fireplace, TV, sofa and sink. The drawfiles are shaded and are
ideal for classroom use as they can be printed out at large sizes (they
are very impressive at A3 and A2) for wall display or used in personal
picture dictionary lists. They are obviously ideal for rebus work which
could be tailored for individual children across the primary range and,
with one of the applications to print large pictures, can be large
enough for wall display or as individual work sheets.
6.8
The European Community disc contains directories for each country and an
EEC map puzzle where coloured overlays and names have to be placed onto
an outline map. Each directory contains the flag, simple information
sheet (easily added to for your specific requirements) and pictures of
objects/places representative of that country. As an example, Denmark
has files on 17th Century House, a Viking Longboat and the “Mermaid”.
6.8
Flags of the World contains 181 coloured flags in the following
directories: Africa, Americas, Asia, Australasia and Europe. The four UK
flags are included, as are the flags of islands such as Alderney and
Sark. At the time of going to press, all those I checked were correct
but I would think upgrading, with the prevalent World conditions, is
akin to painting the Forth Road Bridge.
6.8
The Planets disc contains three directories. The Solar System contains
three files showing relative sizes and orbits. Two are quizzes where you
have to place the given name against the correct planet. The Planet
directory contains nineteen files of all the planets viewed from space
in b/w and colour. Spacecraft has six files including Saturn 5, Apollo
and the Shuttle.
6.8
Update
6.8
Circulatory System from the first set has been upgraded with additional
files and digestive system files added. To obtain your upgrade for this,
or for any other disc, return your master disc to P.E.S. with £1 p&p.
6.8
Conclusions
6.8
I was very impressed with the standard of the drawings. I did not see a
single one that I thought mediocre and most were highly detailed and
impressive. I strongly recommend them for classroom use and to other
users who need this type of clipart. At £5 +£1·50 p&p (+VAT) these discs
are good value for money. If you want to see before you buy, sending £2
(refunded on first order) to P.E.S. will get a catalogue of all
drawfiles, from which you can buy a customized 800Kb disc full of files
for £15, if you wish.
6.8
An example of a coloured image picture can be seen as the centre piece
of the current Art Works advert. This is a coloured version of the fire
engine from the Victoriana disc.  A
6.8
It’s a Revelation...
6.8
Gabriel Swords
6.8
Last month I looked at Imagery, a paint program designed to take you
from where Paint leaves off to somewhere just short of professional.
This month I am looking at Revelation ImagePro, a program in another
league − and so it should be − it costs rather more! If Imagery starts
where Paint left off, ImagePro starts where Imagery left off.
6.8
The first thing you notice is the box it all comes in. With its dark
blue and orange colouring, the Longman logo and slip-out A5 manual, this
box has been designed to look professional. It’s a bit of a
disappointment then to find that the manual only takes up about one
tenth of the space available to it! Oh well, at least there’s room for
upgrade materials. Never mind, you won’t be disappointed for long as
soon as you start to use the program.
6.8
What you get is: three 800Kb discs with main program, loads of tutorial
material, colour samples, an 82 page manual, registration card and the
usual !System, !SysMerge and !Scrap.
6.8
The manual is divided into four sections; Getting Started, Essential
Skills, Menus in Detail and Guided Tours. I was very impressed with both
the layout of the manual and the inclusion of notes and examples to help
explain some of the functions.
6.8
Getting started
6.8
Getting Started shows you how to load, set screen mode, adjust the mouse
settings for left or right handed use and choose options for keeping the
menu displayed (as per Macs) or hidden (as per RISC OS). Essential
Skills 1 introduces you to page creation. The default page is roughly 9
× 7cm but you can go down to 4.5 × 4.5cm, or in my case up to 49 × 48cm,
or any size in between − including a button to give you a full screen
picture automatically. Additionally, if you have a printer driver open,
you can set the page size to correspond to a full sheet of printer
paper, either tall or wide. Essential Skills 2 takes you through some of
its basic structure, including the ability to ‘tear off’ menus and leave
them scattered around the screen. Essential Skills 3 gives details of
loading, saving and printing. You can load sprites or drawfiles either
to the Revelation icon or straight to the page − I had no problems with
either, including scans. Drawfiles are converted to sprites.
6.8
Tools
6.8
The next 42 pages take you through the menus in detail − so here goes...
The Tools Menu contains twelve basic tools, plus a host of accessory
options associated with each tool. Crayon produces a continuous line in
the current colour or motif. Brush does the same but as a series of
blocks − square or oval. Spray ‘sprays’ a colour or motif. With each of
these tools it’s possible to alter the density of the image, change the
size of line, spray, square or oval and lock the direction the tool will
follow − up, down, left or right. The same applies whether you are using
a colour or motif.
6.8
At this point, it’s probably worth explaining what Revelation means by a
motif. Motifs are created when you cut an area from a page using the
scissors or knife tool, or from other applications using the ‘Cutout’
function from the icon menu. Once you have a motif active, you can
‘paint’ with it in the same way you would a colour. Here’s a piece of
clip art I prepared earlier...
6.8
You can do the same with a scanned photograph − the results can be truly
amazing! There’s a motif menu where you can save motifs you have created
− once they are saved, you can open the motif directory and see
‘thumbnails’ of the directory contents. You can also turn them into
patterns, randomise them or dither them.
6.8
The Fill Roller fills an area with a colour or motif. Again, there are
several options associated with the fill, allowing you to fill to a
boundary, fill everything, create a graduated fill, or even fill shapes
with active motifs.
6.8
DrawPen lets you draw lines freehand or using any of the pre-defined
shapes which appear on the tools menu when drawpen is selected. Among
the pre-defined shapes are: square, rectangle, triangle, parallelogram,
circle, ellipse and regular polygon. These can be in outline, or filled
with colour or motifs. The line thickness and fill density can also be
altered.
6.8
Scissors and Knife let you cut areas with varying degrees of accuracy.
Once cut, they can be pasted back into the picture with paste tool, or
‘painted’ with crayon, brush, spray, fill or drawpen. If you choose
Paste, you can also take your image and flip it horizontally or
vertically, scale it, rotate it or blend it into the page background. In
256 colour mode, you get even greater control over the type of blend,
and degree of blending, by use of a blend graduation editor.
6.8
With the Effects tool, you can trace, edge, blur, sharpen, dither or
create mosaic patterns with your image − the last two options are only
available in 256 colour mode. Sliders allow you to alter the degree of
any effect. A Ruler option allows precise measurement of distances using
X, Y co-ordinates and angles either in a clockwise or anti-clockwise
direction.
6.8
Inside the Motif Menu there’s an option for Text − clicking text opens a
dialogue box into which you type your text and choose size, font, and
whether to apply kerning, etc. Once you’ve OK’d it, the text box
disappears and your piece of text becomes a motif.
6.8
In the Page Menu, there’s a Zoom slider with eight presets from ×¼ to
×8; an Undo function − though it only has one ‘undo’; a New View so you
can work on a ×8 view and see it alter at ×1 view; and there’s Save and
Print.
6.8
Also there, tucked away quietly and greyed out − unless you’re in 256
colour mode − are Colour Shift and Grey Shift. ImagePro really excels in
its ability to deal with colour and greyscale. It supports RGB and CMYK
via the colour shift dialogue box − sliders allow you to alter the
amount of each colour, producing some quite interesting results. The
whole feel of an image can be changed depending on what you do with
these sliders. Effects can be applied globally, selectively or by using
one of the tools from the tool menu. You can also adjust the contrast
and colour saturation.
6.8
Using the grey shift allows you to change the look of black and white
photos or improve the quality of poor images. There are eight pre-set
greyscale profiles and a grid panel which can be modified to create new
ones.
6.8
The final section of the manual is made up of three Guided Tours. Tour 1
deals with image-making and colour processing; Tour 2 deals with colour
separations; Tour 3 deals with using measures. The tours are illustrated
in the manual as well as on disc, so you get a real ‘hands on’ feel to
them.
6.8
Conclusion
6.8
The thing I really like about ImagePro is the fact that it assumes you
might want to do something ‘professional’ with it − unlike some other
Archimedes programs I could mention! You can use it to ‘paint’ some very
imaginative pictures, tidy up clipart, produce better looking scans and
photos and even print four-colour separations. The manual is good −
there’s plenty of advice and examples to help you see how different
functions can be used. It’s easy to use and has just about everything
you could ask for in this kind of program. My only gripes (and this
first one is a little unfair) are that it does nothing to help me
produce PostScript files for my local printer − I still have to use
ExpressPS, Acorn Printer Drivers... and keep my fingers crossed! It
would also have been nice to have had some keyboard shortcuts. Apart
from that I really do like it.
6.8
According to Longman Logotron, Revelation ImagePro will work on any
RISC OS machine with 2Mb of memory, though RISC OS 3 is recommended. If
you want to use all the features, especially colour and grey shift,
you’ll need to work in a 256 colour mode.  A
6.8
Scanned clip art Pasted, part Sprayed and Brushed
6.8
Tools menu with Brush selected
6.8
Motif menu
6.8
Main menu
6.8
Status display
6.8
Page menu
6.8
TV Fun & Games
6.8
Richard Rymarz
6.8
Fun & Games is produced by HS Software and costs £22.95 (£21 through
Archive). There are three separate programs on three discs which,
according to the advertising blurb, ‘makes the most of the Archimedes’
sound and graphic capabilities’.
6.8
Kevin’s Quiz
6.8
This program is designed to practise the basic number skills of
addition, subtraction and multiplication. What eventually transpired was
quite a surprise. Having placed the disc into the disc drive and clicked
on the !HS icon, the program took some time to load. Eventually, a
rather garish (but appropriate) screen presented itself. The top half of
the screen showed Kevin himself, a very cool customer indeed, sitting at
his desk with a pile of questions in his hands. The desk alongside him
was empty. The lower half of the screen displayed six characters −
including Tommy Cooper.
6.8
There were a number of buttons allowing the teacher to choose the type
of problem, the difficulty level, the number of questions and whether
speech is used. On the desk panel were three slots for names and
underneath each one a score card and timer. I was instructed to enter my
name. This I duly did and then I had to choose a picture. I became Tommy
Cooper and was soon sitting at the desk.
6.8
Another weird character soon joined me and as soon as I had entered the
third, Kevin’s picture moved fairly convincingly and he shouted (my
internal speaker was turned on fully) the first question in the most
extraordinary Birmingham accent that I have ever heard. I typed in the
answer which my character also yelled in a similar fashion. Having
recovered a second time, I found that the other characters did the same.
Furthermore, I discovered that if time ran out, the question was offered
to the other players. Upon completion of the quiz, we were asked to “Hum
along with Kevin”. A weird rendition of the ‘Blue Danube Wale’ finished
what for me was a strange and amusing experience.
6.8
All in all this was great fun. Not only were basic skills being
reinforced but three children could use the program at once − great for
busy classrooms.
6.8
Gnomework
6.8
This time I was ready. I double clicked on the now familiar HS icon and,
after another longish wait while the program loaded, was greeted with
virtually a full screen picture of a garden. In the centre sat a very
rustic looking gentleman with a garden fork. In the corner was a gnome
who I soon learned was called Gerald. To the left of the screen were
three lifts. Along the bottom were the usual HS buttons which allowed me
to set the skill and game level. Another button allowed me to include
speech and another to end the game. Sadly, there was no button to switch
off or adjust the sound level of the music.
6.8
Being ambitious, I tried game one at its simplest level. Soon the
gardener was telling Gerald, in appropriate rustic tones of course, to
collect certain items in the garden such as fruit, animals and flowers.
Clicking on the item had Gerald scampering across the garden with his
wheelbarrow, collecting it and then delivering it to the lifts. When he
had deposited it, some of his mates pulled on the rope to lift the item,
making room for another one. Upon completion of the game, noisy music
accompanied some acrobatic movements of these helpers (at this point I
wished I could have turned down the volume).
6.8
Gnomework is a sorting, counting and matching activity, accompanied by
speech and animation. It has a wide range of games and levels that
should suit younger children. However, it has one quirk: it does not
allow input from the numeric keypad and why oh why can’t the music sound
level be adjusted?
6.8
Weatherman
6.8
Weatherman has already been released as a stand-alone program. Those who
already own it can return it and receive all three programs for £14.95.
6.8
Weatherman allows children to create weather maps, answer questions
about the weather, reinforce directional skills and name the countries
within the United Kingdom. Types of weather can be configured and the
skill and game level set. Speech is effectively used as the animated
weather forecaster states the kind of weather in different parts of Gt
Britain − North, South, East and West. (Later levels include the
secondary directions as well.) This time a north country accent is used.
The children choose the appropriate symbol and place it in the correct
region. More difficult levels may require two instructions to be carried
out and mistakes are taken into consideration. When a game is completed,
the ‘show’ button allows the forecast to be run again − this time
without interruptions. Finally, there is an option to save the forecast
as a sprite. This can then be transferred to any other application.
6.8
Weatherman is a useful program to help younger children to understand
weather types. It has limited use but would bring an element of fun to a
project on weather which, of course, is a major component within the
National Curriculum.
6.8
Conclusions
6.8
All the programs take over the whole screen. This does not matter much
but when I finished the program and clicked on ‘End’, I was not returned
to the mode I was in when I loaded the program − it left me in mode 15.
Furthermore strange things happened to the text in this review. Being
cautious, I had saved my work and, after re-booting my machine, all was
well but this is a little irritating. The documentation is adequate but
produced, pamphlet style, on an ordinary piece of photocopying paper.
6.8
The programs themselves at a little over £7 each represent very good
value for money. They were fun to review and, when I tried them with
groups of children aged between 6 and 9, I had problems dragging them
away − they loved them. All three are well suited to the target age
group of 5 to 9 and I thoroughly recommend them.  A
6.8
Principles of Desk Top Publishing − Part 3
6.8
Mike McNamara
6.8
In Part 1 of this short series, I commented on the importance and
central role played by frames in the DTP process. This month, I wish to
return to this topic and examine, in more detail, just why this is the
case.
6.8
To begin with, as indicated in Part 1 of this series, ALL items within
the DTP page are placed within frames. For this reason, if for no other,
the DTP user must be able to manipulate frames − create them, move them,
resize them and fill them. However, their value to the DTP designer goes
a great deal further than this simple ‘container’ role. To illustrate
this, I would like to refer you back to the last section of Part 2 of
this series. (Archive 6.7 p35)
6.8
The explanation which followed described how this could be achieved
using the leading, kerning and tracking facilities of DTP software.
However, the same effect can be achieved in a far simpler way, as
follows ....
6.8
Create three new frames.
6.8
Into one type ‘Leading, Kerning &’
6.8
Into the next, type ‘racking’
6.8
Into the last type ‘T’
6.8
Size the text in each as required.
6.8
Make each frame ‘passive’
6.8
    i.e. Transparent & No repel
6.8
Move the frames to give the desired effect.
6.8
In Impression, it is then advised to create a fourth frame to surround
the first three, place it behind the first three and then group all four
frames together. In Ovation, you should begin by creating a large enough
frame to contain the main three. These must then be created within this
‘parent’ frame. In both cases, the user will then be able to move all
parts together, should that be necessary.
6.8
This fairly simple example should begin to show the real power of the
frame within DTP. In many cases, quite complex effects can be achieved
within a single frame, using mixtures of sizes, leadings, kernings, etc.
In almost all cases, however, splitting the material up into more than
one frame can make the task very much more simple (and, as it happens,
more flexible!).
6.8
And finally ....
6.8
To end this short series, let me give a reminder of the value of
‘Defined text styles’ and ‘Master pages’. On their own, the use of
‘Defined text styles’ enables the user to standardise the presentation
of text throughout a document. For this article, for example, I have
three main defined styles.
6.8
Base Style: for the bulk of the text and set to Trinity.Medium, 11pt on
13, fully justified.
6.8
Indent: based on Base Style with a 3mm left margin indent.
6.8
Sub­Heading: for the short topic headings in Homerton.Bold, 11pt on 13,
left align.
6.8
In Ovation, these styles are applied to full paragraphs and any one
paragraph has only one style. In Impression, styles can be used
collectively (more than one style applying to a given section of text)
and do not have to apply to whole paragraphs. Either way, the time taken
to define a collection of text styles makes the subsequent DTP process
far more efficient.
6.8
As for master pages, these are used to define the basic structure of any
subsequent pages generated. Thus, the master page will define the size
of the page, its margins and columns. In addition, any other items
placed on the master page will become part of the ‘template’ for new
pages. This is then used to generate items which are to appear on all,
or most, of the pages within the document, such as page-numbering,
headers and footers, etc.
6.8
Over the course of time, most DTP users will build a collection of
master page definitions covering the page formats commonly used. Again,
Ovation and Impressions approach this differently. In Ovation, you have
‘Save Stylesheets’ which allows you to save files containing master page
and defined text style information, while in Impression, you have the
‘Edit, View Master Pages’ giving access to a collection of numbered
master page definitions. (Why haven’t CC used named master pages − a far
more logical and user friendly approach?) In both cases, the user can
then have their most commonly used document format as the default when
the software is launched.  A
6.8
               Leading, Kerning &
6.8
Tracking
6.8
Let the frame ... ... take the strain!
6.8
By using the power of the frames in DTP, the user is very often able to
achieve far more flexible effects.
6.8
Chopper Force
6.8
Robert Fuller
6.8
Chopper Force was released by The Fourth Dimension last autumn, and
costs £24.95 (£23 through Archive). Along with other Fourth Dimension
games, the first disc of the two is copy protected, so cannot be backed
up. A small manual is included, which contains a minimal amount of
information and does not really do justice to the game.
6.8
This is the first helicopter simulator game to be released on Acorn
machines, and differs from those on other computers by the fact that the
player takes the role of a police, not a military, pilot. You take the
place of a new recruit, working in an area in which a group of
terrorists operates. They have a wide variety of equipment, including
jets, cars, anti-aircraft guns, tanks and seemingly limitless
helicopters. This all leads to a highly unbelievable plot but a very
interesting game.
6.8
There are two modes of flight. Hover mode gives a great deal of
manoeuvrability but is very slow. The cursor keys are used to turn and
change altitude. The second mode uses the jet engine which is fixed to
the back of the helicopter and, like traditional flight simulators, is
controlled with the mouse. Even in jet mode, the helicopter does not
travel as quickly as a fighter plane and cannot, for obvious reasons,
fly upside down. This makes it easier to control than Interdictor II,
for example.
6.8
Anyone who has seen advertisements for the game will know that the whole
screen is used to view the outside world, although there is a small box
containing messages from the control centre and other helpful
information. The radar is transparent, being superimposed on the bottom
corner of the playing area. The only problem with this is that the blips
on it are black so that, when flying over a road or other dark surface,
enemy aircraft are effectively invisible to you. A little more careful
planning on the designers’ part could have avoided this.
6.8
The missions can range from simply destroying a target vehicle to
transporting a vital piece of equipment across country. They become
progressively more difficult to achieve, though the skills needed are
introduced gradually. I expect to complete a mission on the third or
fourth time of trying it, but some people will possibly be able to
progress through the game much more quickly than this.
6.8
There is a lot of attention to detail in this game; some nice touches
are the traffic lights on the road which change periodically, the sheep
which can be heard to baa if you are close enough to hear them, and a
scrolling textual message on the side of a building. The sounds are also
quite detailed but are not of a very high quality (although a pair of
external speakers helps matters considerably).
6.8
The one major problem with the game is that too much time is spent in
travelling to the target for each mission. It can take up to five
minutes in real time to get to each target point, and it is almost
guaranteed that an opposing helicopter or two will arrive on your tail
somewhere along the way. There is no automatic pilot mode and, at high
speeds, concentration must be kept all the time to avoid going off
course.
6.8
When the action does come, it is fast and furious. Most combat takes
place at very short ranges, as it is easiest then to hit the vulnerable
rotors or engine of the opponent. Different enemy aircraft employ
different tactics, although it is soon possible to learn how best to
deal with each one. Probably the most fearsome adversaries are homing
missiles, which can lock on to you if you fly above one hundred feet on
certain missions.
6.8
I cannot really comment on this game’s ‘lastability’, as The Fourth
Dimension have avoided mentioning anywhere how many missions there are.
From my experience, the game develops well as it goes on, and I cannot
see that it would become monotonous. After some levels, you can be
awarded with a promotion, or extra equipment (such as access to
satellite pictures of the area). There is also a competition based on
achieving the highest score on completion of all the missions.
6.8
This game is very playable − my only reservation being that it takes so
long to complete, with relatively short periods of action. I am someone
who has never been able to accomplish anything on either of the
Interdictors, and yet I picked up the basics of this in minutes. Even
so, I do not think that more experienced players would be bored, as
there is such variety in it.
6.8
I would have no qualms about recommending this to anyone who enjoys
flight simulators, or who would like to purchase one. I have spent many
hours playing Chopper Force and would say that it is good value for
money compared to many other games on the market. It is the first time I
have seen playability successfully combined with vector graphics − it is
a game for PC owners to envy.  A
6.8
S-Base
6.8
Brian Barr
6.8
S-Base is the new database application from Longman Logotron of
Cambridge. It seems to be part of a second generation of databases
written for the Acorn 32-bit machines. It arrived in a sturdy
reinforced, glossy, white cardboard box with a somewhat highly coloured
(some might say garish) logo on the front. Inside are two volumes with a
combined total of some six hundred pages. The first is a Tutorial Guide
and the second a Reference Manual. A sticker marked “Personal Edition”
festoons the spine of the box, indicating which of the three versions
has been purchased. Also enclosed are the three system discs which
contain the operating software.
6.8
Installation
6.8
On opening the Tutorial Guide, I found installation instructions which
were brief and to the point. “Hard disc users should create a separate
directory for S-Base and copy the contents of the supplied discs into
this directory.” The manual also states that floppy disc users can also
use the programs but a hard disc is recommended. After the programs were
copied, the !System was upgraded to the latest version using the
supplied !SysMerge program.
6.8
Concepts
6.8
Double clicking on the !S-Base application brings up the usual icon on
the iconbar. This simple introduction belies the complexity and
flexibility of what was to be found later.
6.8
Clicking on this icon brings up a dialogue box marked “New Application”.
This gives a clue to the main concept behind S-Base. It is not merely a
card-index system for entering and storing names and addresses, but an
application-generating environment. The system is based around the
creation of “resources” which can be tied together to form a whole
program that uses S-Base as an operating system. A resource can be
anything from a screen with boxes, windows, arrows and text, to font
styles, data types and file formats. The system has thirteen types of
resources in all, which are used to construct an application.
6.8

6.8
Resource List Viewer
6.8
Tools
6.8
Each resource has an in-built editor to control its construction, and
numerous screens are presented to define each resource. Many readers who
program their machines will be aware of the ubiquitous Acorn
application, FormEd which is used for creating templates, or screen
layouts, for new programs. The template editor built into S-Base, makes
FormEd look primitive. Designing screens is now pure pleasure as all the
tools required for lining up boxes and placing text correctly are at
your finger tips. You can even work on several boxes (or icons) at once.
Other tools include text editors that operate virtually the same as
!Edit and “Pop up” dialogue boxes for specifying parameters used in each
resource. If all of this sounds complex, it is! There are several
features, however, which provide a short-cut to creating some resources.
6.8
Flexibility
6.8
This is where S-Base comes into its own. Each application that you
create can have programs attached to it to make it do something. The
programs are a series of commands written in a language called “S”. This
language has some three hundred commands in its vocabulary and the
majority of the reference manual covers the explanation of these
commands. S is very C-like in its construction and if you are a C
programmer, I am sure you will feel at home. The system also supports a
resource called a handler. These handlers are mini programs that are run
when the user clicks in one of the boxes in your new application. If the
box was marked “Save”, its handler would issue the relevant commands to
output to disc the contents of what is to be saved.
6.8
RISC OS compatible
6.8
This is an understatement, as S-Base uses the RISC OS environment to the
full. The style of keypresses and mouse handling follows Acorn’s style
conventions to the letter. The rule seems to be that if you want to do
something, then you can. I had some programs that I had written in Basic
and wanted to see if I could edit the screen templates using S-Base’s
template editor. I found no problems at all in importing the original
templates and then re-exporting them back to my Basic application.
6.8
Examples
6.8
The supplied discs contain several example applications that show how to
construct an application of your own. Indeed, you can even use these as
a basis for a new program. The tutorial explains how to create an
“address book” and takes you step by step through its inception,
construction and completion. The manual recommends that you read through
most of the text before starting any real programming and, as it is
about 250 pages long, you are in for several nights of bedtime reading.
6.8
Conclusion
6.8
I am very excited by this new program as it seems to do everything
anybody would ever need in a database. My only worry is that quite a bit
of knowledge of the system is required before you can put together even
your first address book or philatelic catalog and this may put some
people off.* S-Base comes in three versions, personal single user for
£99 +VAT (£105 Archive price), S-Base for developers at £199 +VAT (£215
Archive price) and S-Base for developing network applications at £299
+VAT (£325 Archive price). You also need a network site-licence to run
S-Base applications on a network. It costs £299 +VAT (£325 Archive
price) for an education S-Net Server licence and  £600 +VAT (£650
Archive price) for a business S-Net Server licence. S-Base for
developers contains a “run-time” compiler for producing stand-alone
applications that can be sold by the developer without any further
royalty payment to Longman Logotron. All I will say is that I am
ordering my developer edition of S-Base from Archive straight away.  A
6.8
 * Longman are aware of this problem and have an S-Base 2 at a late
stage of development which provides a high level method of “painting”
applications. The S-Base code is generated automatically but can be
modified manually later if you have the necessary S-language programming
skills. Ed.
6.8
TableMate
6.8
Ray Dawson
6.8
Those of you who, like myself, have spent hours fiddling with Impression
II’s unfriendly tablemaking facility can now breathe a sigh of relief.
Also, Impression Junior users can now enjoy a facility so far denied to
them.
6.8
TableMate is a new application from Dalriada Data Technology, designed
to help make professional looking tables for Desktop Publishing, word
processing and graphic design. It produces tables in Draw format, as a
text file, or in the Impression Data Definition Format, (DDF), ready to
drop into Impression documents.
6.8
The software reviewed was version 1.04b with a pre-release 16-page draft
photocopied manual. In spite of being draft, the manual was explicit and
easy to follow. A keystrip was provided in the form of a drawfile on the
disc. A proper manual will be supplied with the final version. No copy
protection was incorporated.
6.8
First Impressions
6.8
The application installs itself on the iconbar with a Draw-based icon
and consumes 224Kb of memory, although this figure does increase when a
large number of columns and rows are used. At the same time, a window is
opened showing the default ruler called Standard.
6.8
Clicking <menu> on the iconbar shows Info, Configure, New and Quit
options. Configure allows you to select the ruler units to either inches
or centimetres, but not points. New brings up a new table window − after
asking for confirmation about discarding the previous window.
6.8
In the table window, the ruler is shown above the window display area
which contains one cell of a table with the caret positioned ready to
make the first entry.
6.8
At this stage, I decided that a look at the documentation might be
useful. Basically, if you press <tab>, another column is created the
same size and to the right of the one you are in and pressing <return>
creates another row below. Keyboard shortcuts are also available to
create rows or columns before or after the caret position. There is no
restriction, apart from memory, on the number of rows or columns that
you may create.
6.8
Editing
6.8
Pressing left and right cursor keys moves the caret between cells
horizontally, and the up and down cursor keys move the caret vertically
between rows.
6.8
Text may not flow across column boundaries but the column may be as wide
as you require it to be. A cell may be more than one row high to
incorporate several lines of text by hiding the line bounding the bottom
of the row(s).
6.8
The column widths can be altered by moving the pointer over the
adjoining line between cells it changes shape to show the directions of
change available. Dragging with <select> or <adjust> decides which
column will change and the width can be altered to an invisible grid of
1/24th of an inch. You cannot change a cell width on one line only. All
changes affect the whole of the column that the cell is in. Unlike
tables in Impression, a cell boundary must coincide with a column line.
6.8
Rulers from the Ruler Menu may be assigned to a highlighted row and new
rulers may be created. Columns in any ruler may be joined together to
make a wider column or they may be deleted, although deletion affects
the whole column and not just the cell in that ruler. Each row may, if
you wish, have a different ruler, although it is not possible to assign
more than one ruler to a row.
6.8
Text entered in a cell formats to the tabs on the current ruler, which
is displayed at the top of the window. The tabs change between left,
right and centre justified by dragging them to the relevant point above
the cell. Decimal tabs may be added by dragging the icon above the ruler
onto the ruler above the relevant cell, and removed by clicking <adjust>
on them.
6.8
Menus
6.8
Menu options include editing of columns and rows and the usual copy,
move and clearing of selected areas. The Style menu allows you to change
the font name and size and also allows you to hide the ruleoff below the
current line. The default font may be defined by editing the !Run file.
The Ruler menu, apart from letting you select and delete rulers, also
gives you the facility of joining or splitting designated columns, but
only in a created ruler and not the default.
6.8
Tables may be saved as a TableMate file, a drawfile, or as a DDF file
for importing directly into Impression. The drawfile facility will be of
particular interest to non-Impression users.
6.8
TableMate can load its own files, Comma Separated Values (CSV), or
Software Independent Data (SID) allowing you to create tables from your
database or spreadsheet.
6.8
Keyboard shortcuts are used for most functions and conform to the
RISC OS standard, where applicable.
6.8
Conclusion
6.8
I found the application very easy and intuitive to use and a quick way
of making up tables for use in Impression II. Although I found the
column editing facilities slightly restricting, these are easily carried
out in the style editing facility within Impression II. Impression
Junior users, (versions 1.14 and later), will be especially interested
as previously they have not had a table facility at all.
6.8
The application is based on rulers rather than styles as styles cannot
be altered in Impression Junior. Although this does impose a certain
amount of restraint on Impression II users, it is the only way that the
one application can serve both. This, and the cell boundary restriction
mentioned above, are more than compensated for by the ease with which
all other table-making functions are carried out.
6.8
The software has been well tested, with no obvious bugs, and comes from
a well-established software writer, George Buchanan. He has listened to
users of the application in different specialist areas, including
education and the desktop publishing field and has managed to
incorporate their requirements in an application that is extremely
versatile. Some compromises have inevitably had to be made to encompass
both Impression II and Impression Junior users, but both should be more
than satisfied with the facilities offered.
6.8
Price
6.8
TableMate is available from Dalriada Data Technology for £21 (no VAT
chargeable) in single units. Site licences are available for schools and
other organisations.  A
6.8

6.8
    General Election Results
6.8
    Year    Tory    Labour    Lib.Dem.
6.8
    1983    46.0%    27.0%    25.0%
6.8
    1987    42.3%    32.0%    22.0%
6.8
    1992    43.0%    36.5%    18.5%
6.8

6.8
Food for Thought
6.8
Peter Thomson
6.8
Food for Thought is a nicely presented package of clipart and two fonts
from Sherston Software and costs £16.95 +VAT.
6.8
The clipart is almost all based on a food theme, with files of kitchen
equipment and food. These are split into bakery, dairy, fish, poultry,
meat, vegetables and fruit. There are over 120 objects in total.
6.8
I was slightly disappointed that a package of four discs did not contain
a bigger selection of clipart. Instead, the same drawings are repeated
three times: as coloured objects, as grey shaded objects and as black
and white objects. There is an advantage to this approach, in that the
grey shaded and black and white objects print well in black and white
but the colour has more appeal to children using the clipart.
6.8
High quality
6.8
The drawings are mostly of high quality with a lot of care taken in
their construction. This is well illustrated by part of a bunch of
grapes and a microwave cooker.
6.8
Out of perspective
6.8
The perspective of many of the objects could have been improved (see
below) so that they would fit together in a scene. The variation here
detracts from an otherwise very useful selection.
6.8

6.8
Fonts included
6.8
The two fonts included with this package are called Lamont and
Montclair. Both will be useful additions to my font library.
6.8

6.8

6.8
Tutorial
6.8
The guide book is well presented, mostly covering the use of the program
Draw and illustrating most, but not all, of the clipart. Disc 4 is
labelled as a tutorial disc and groups together copies of those files
that are used as examples by four A5-sized work cards. I particularly
liked the teddy bears’ picnic although I looked in vain for a jar of
honey to add to the scene.
6.8
Other scenes included on the disc are a kitchen, which hides a dining
room behind the far wall, and two settings for a dining table.
6.8
Conclusion
6.8
I will make a lot of use of this package to illustrate a series of food-
related worksheets. It has also helped in the design of my Christmas
party invitations. I have no doubt that this clipart will appear in many
of the children’s work and will save us all a lot of time.
6.8
It is good value for money.  A
6.8
SmArt − Fantasy & Egypt
6.8
Ian O’Hara
6.8
For those of you who haven’t, as yet, come across SmArt or read my
previous reviews, it is described by 4Mation as a linked graphics
system. In simple terms, it is a program which allows you to make
changes to a picture in order to produce new ones. The pictures can then
be saved as drawfiles.
6.8
In addition to the files which come with the program, there are discs on
particular topics. Fantasy and Egypt are two of the newest members of
this growing range of topic discs.
6.8
Fantasy contains eight files based around the theme of “Dungeons and
Dragons” type fantasy. The files consist of three types of goblin, a
wizard, elf dragon and two weird beasts. The goblins you will probably
recognise from the early SmArt adverts that appeared in the press. They
are fun and range from one that looks like a pirate to others in armour
and wellington boots. Unfortunately, the other files left me rather
disappointed. All one could change about the dragon was its head and
tail. No chance to have it curled up on a hoard of treasure or flying
through the night.
6.8
One problem with this disc is that the topic is very broad and the disc
small. I personally would rather have seen a smaller number of files but
with more choice in each file. The beasts could have done with the
alien’s treatment, ie just two files on the disc, but with a very wide
choice of different aliens. The pictures themselves are of a very high
standard − the dragon is shaded rather than a flat colour.
6.8
The Egypt disc is directly targeted at National Curriculum Key Stage 2
History. There is one very large file (780Kb) on the disc divided into
five sections; Ancient Egypt, Buildings, Hieroglyphs, Object and Tomb.
The Ancient Egypt file, unfortunately, is just the title screen and so
is not really a useful section. The buildings include the pyramids,
sphinx and a couple of temples. I think that potentially the most
interesting thing in this section is the pillar. This comes in a number
of styles and can be saved out as a drawfile. Load this into Draw or
Vector and you can make up your own temples and other buildings. The
Objects are just various objects from ancient Egypt such as a Scarab, a
bust of Nefertiti and the mask of Tutankhamen. Apart from adding
information, the objects cannot be changed. This section acts rather
like a bank of clipart for pupils to use.
6.8
Now enter the tomb if you dare and manage to survive the curse. The
walls are covered with pictures of the various gods. Initially, all the
pictures are of Anubis but this is easily changed and one gets a choice
of Isis, Osiris and Horus. Each god or goddess can be customised. You
can even have a real live mummy on the wall, complete with curlers,
beater and ciggie. (The author has a fine sense of humour.) Also inside
the tomb are various objects such as a chair and a sarcophagus. The tomb
does offer quite a lot of scope for customisation.
6.8
The last section, hieroglyphs, I can imagine children really enjoying.
You are presented with a stone tablet onto which you can place 32
different hieroglyphs. Writing messages in hieroglyphics is great fun. I
have found one problem with this though − the colours chosen (light and
dark sand) do not give much contrast when printed. Even getting rid of
the stone background does not improve matters much. To give the
impression that the hieroglyphs are carved, 4Mation have superimposed
the light sand image over the top of a dark brown one. The only way I
managed a decent printout was by saving the picture into Draw or Vector
and getting rid of the lighter image. I would have thought this a little
complex for the average primary school teacher to cope with − and that
is who the disc appears to be aimed at. It might have been better to
forgo the nice effect on the screen to get a good printout.
6.8
There are discs of Egyptian clip art about, but the one main advantage
that smArt has is that each child can modify the basic picture and
produce their own unique picture. I would certainly recommend that any
teacher who has to cover this topic has a close look at the SmArt Egypt
disc.
6.8
(SmArt files are £18 each through Archive and you need the SmArt Filer,
which costs £59 through Archive, to enable you to use them.)  A
6.8
SmArt Modern Languages Pack
6.8
Alex Thomas
6.8
This is a review by a Modern Languages teacher with basic IT skills!
6.8
The pack contains a number of examples of SmArt files in different
languages, most of which are used in the normal way. The menus show all
items in the target language although, for some reason, the main
headings in the first menu e.g. “Objects” are in English, while the
subsequent sub-menus are in the appropriate language.
6.8
The “Meals” software allows the user to set a meal at a table. The menu
items are in the appropriate language (French, German, Greek, Hebrew,
Italian, Portuguese, Spanish or Turkish) and the foods used vary
according to the chosen language. The “Labels” software has the same
format and content but the menu items are in English. The meal and table
can then be labelled in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese or
Spanish. Thus, by combining the two pieces of software, it is possible
to produce a picture of a meal and table in any of the above languages
and then label it. Blank labels can be attached to each object so that
the pupils can then write in the vocabulary.
6.8
The other pieces of software I had at my disposal were actually more
interesting and useful. These were entitled “Leisure”, “Faces” and
“Homes” and were available in French and German. All the items on each
disc are listed in the appropriate language (see contents lists below).
On opening each file, a given picture appears on the screen, e.g. if you
load the German “Leisure” disc and click on “Ansichten”, you get a
picture of a view with sky, hills, foreground, etc.
6.8
There are then two methods for working on this picture. Either you can
bring up the main menu and select “Objects” (A) which in turn produces
an extensive sub-menu (B) from which one specific item can be selected
producing a final more specific sub-menu (C). This method is most useful
for the Modern Languages teacher preparing tasks based on this software,
as it presents the entire list of vocabulary available for any one file.
However, it is rather too detailed for many language learners and often
presents too much new vocabulary at a time.
6.8

6.8
The alternative method of working on the initial picture is perhaps more
appropriate for the students to use, particularly if they are at an
early stage in their language acquisition. By clicking over a particular
section of a picture, the small sub-menu for that section is displayed,
e.g. if you click over the hair “Haare” of the picture produced on the
“Faces” file, you get a sub-menu which lets you choose hair-colour,
type, style, etc. Students have some chance of actually acquiring the
small number of words used to describe hair, whereas there is no way
they can acquire all the possible words for all the categories listed on
the main sub-menu (B) and the specific sub-menu (C).
6.8

6.8
Using SmArt files in modern language teaching
6.8
As a teacher of German and French in a state comprehensive school, I am
always looking for attractive and interesting materials for pupils of
all abilities. These discs certainly satisfy that requirement. The
pictures are attractive and colourful, the software is easy to use and
accessible to all students, whatever the level. The pictures produced
provide instant pleasure and the language is not a barrier to success in
creating new pictures − I tried the “Meals” package in Turkish and could
create the desired meal and table setting without knowing or
understanding one word of the menus − simply by trial and error. In
terms of language acquired, this possibility is definitely a
disadvantage, as it means that we, as teachers, have to create tasks
which cannot be completed by trial and error without any record of what
the student did to complete it.
6.8
However, there are many language activities which can be devised in
conjunction with these files, such as simply “find the French / German
for” worksheets, a written description which the student has to read and
then reproduce as picture (e.g. er hat braune Haare, etc), a print-out
of a picture created by the teacher or another student which has to be
reproduced, leading to a written description, two different pictures
produced by two students, which they can then compare (seine Haare sind
länger, etc) or asks questions about (Hat er lange Haare? etc) or, once
the students are very familiar with the vocabulary in a file, they can
write a description for which another student then has to produce the
matching picture.
6.8
It is possible to use these programs to practice a particular language
structure or point of grammar. Obvious ones are adjective endings (often
used in the menus), prepositions plus the dative (German), perfect
tense, comparatives, superlatives, question forms, imperatives and
pronouns. Some areas of vocabulary are repeated frequently, so they
should be well-known, e.g. clothes, colours, parts of the body,
household objects, etc. Some files are not what they seem! On the
“Leisure” discs, the file entitled “Auf Urlaub” / “En Vacances”, which
you might expect to be a holiday scene of some kind, is actually a
picture of a boy wearing holiday clothes which can be changed.
6.8
Conclusions
6.8
I can think of many speaking, reading and writing tasks which could be
based on these files, but the major disadvantage, as far as the teacher
is concerned, is the preparation involved. This could be speeded up if
there were a booklet with copies of all the menus and sub-menus, instead
of having to work through them all on the computer to prepare an
activity. Just as language teachers need tape transcripts to prepare
listening activities, so we need software transcripts if we are to be
attracted to the use of IT in the classroom. Language teachers are used
to preparing activities in detail, using a limited area of vocabulary or
a particular language structure, and we need an overview of all the
material so that we can select what we want to use and how, and so that
we can assess what the students produce. Our IT specialist managed to
make print-outs of what was on the screen (attached) for me to use, but
I, along with most language teachers, do not have that level of skill.
An accompanying transcript would enable many more teachers to use these
files, which students really enjoy (even my low ability year 9 set!) and
which have the potential to stimulate a wide range of language learning
tasks and activities.  A
6.8
Contents
6.8
Leisure:    Views    Homes:    Household
items
6.8
    On holiday        Kitchen
6.8
    Camping        Bedroom
6.8
    Objects        Room
6.8
    Barbecue        At home
6.8
    Boy
6.8
    Small girl    Faces:    Face
6.8
    Older girl        Profile
6.8
    Mother
6.8
    Ships    Meals:    One file for each of
6.8
    Swimming pool        eight
languages
6.8
    Beach        (listed in para 2)
6.8
Splosh
6.8
Bob and Lisa Ames
6.8
Splosh is an art package for younger users of the Archimedes computer.
This review of Splosh Version 1.07 (20 Nov 1992) was carried out on a
4Mb A3000 (RISC OS 2) with SCSI hard disc, CD ROM drive and CM8833
monitor. The compatibility was also checked with a similar system, but
with an AOC multisync monitor. We weren’t able to test it on RISC OS 3
but, from the presence of a !Scrap file on the disc, we assume that it
is compatible.
6.8
Contents
6.8
The review copy of Splosh came as a program disc with an extra disc of
picture files. Both discs were “on-body” printed with the logo and title
Splosh and WECC’s logo − I prefer the on-body printing as it avoids all
possibility of labels peeling while in a drive − something which has
happened too often in the past, especially with cheaper labels. (I have,
in fact, started to supply discs for student use with small labels which
don’t fold over − this helps the labels stay on the discs.) An eleven
page manual with good quality printed cover − no doubt partly designed
with Splosh. Simple instructions are given to help installation onto
hard disc − and the plea to save student work onto floppies and not to
hard disc is well founded. The effort of cleaning out hard discs is
rarely rewarded because, the moment it is done, the plea comes for that
item “which I left by accident on the workstation” − now wiped of
course!
6.8
Some example palette files are included. This idea lends itself very
well to colour coordinated designs, for the same palette can then be
used for several items. The Archimedes palette utility is used to change
the colours, so that, for example, sixteen shades of green may be
selected for a tree picture. Picture files are notorious for eating up
disc space, and Splosh files are not much different. However, the size
of files compared to Draw should be carefully monitored − my 3.5Kb text
file in Draw translated to 94Kb in Splosh! The average non-text file in
Splosh seems 51Kb long.
6.8
Lisa, just 5 years old, opened the envelope to find the two discs and
manual; along with an introductory letter from WECC with a contact
number. The letter describes the package as being for the young, the new
to Archimedes and for those with special (learning) needs − although it
may be used by older people too! Indeed, I found it to be like a cut
down, but colour, Draw; and so very simple to use. In fact, drawfiles
may be loaded into Splosh for colouring, as may other sprite files. Both
are scaled and centered to fit the painting area on loading − there is
no manual control.
6.8
Hard disc
6.8
I don’t use the suggested menu system for a hard disc, so a new folder
was called Splosh, inside which I copied all the files from the two
discs. There is no copy protection. (I find this easier than other
approaches − it keeps applications and their files together.) At first,
I forgot to include the Jotter font in my Fonts directory − the
resulting error message “missing variable” didn’t help much.
6.8
Features
6.8
Splosh installs on the iconbar and, once open, shows the painting area
with the tools permanently down the right side. (Draw’s tools are
optional, on the left.) There is also a colour palette bar along the
bottom of the picture. Tools are all similar to Draw and consist of a
brush size selector, spray can /brush /roller (for fills), a grid lock
icon, circle, rectangle, rubber banded triangle and straight line tools.
There is also a text selector, (default uses the supplied font, Jotter)
and an Undo tool which, if used twice, Undoes the Undo. The Undo only
Undoes the very last action − there is no Edit control, though mistakes
can be covered by painting over with the background colour. Unlike Draw
there is no paper size control, or paper orientation control. The
pictures are always landscape, the shape of the monitor, and so are
printed that way too. Pictures or objects cannot be scaled or magnified.
6.8
Painting is performed with <select> − held down for continuous lines,
clicked for dots. However, even mild movements of the mouse renders dots
rather than lines. The brush size selector and the brush tip indicate
the colour in use. The size increments in 24 steps.
6.8
Text is typed in from the keyboard. Before <return> is pressed, it can
be changed in size, moved or the font changed. Text size is selectable
between three presets, or user selected. The size ranges from 10 to 400,
where just two letters fill the page. The grid lock can be changed in
size also. These last two are called advanced features. Other functions
are accessed by use of <menu> over the picture area. Menu entries are
Save, Print, Font selection (Name & Size) & New picture. The way to load
a file seems to be to drag it either to the Splosh icon on the iconbar,
or to the painting area. (If there is existing work, the user is asked
if it should be saved.)
6.8
Lisa then took over, as suggested by a slight change in tone in the
manual, and away she went. I introduced the tools in stages; her first
efforts were concentrated on dotty pictures, then she easily went on to
the use of shapes, drawing thick borders round her earlier work;
concentric frames, different colours giving the effect of depth.
6.8
Printing
6.8
A range of RISC OS2 printer drivers are supplied; !Printer -DM, -IX, -
LJ, & -PS but notably not -DJ (for Deskjet). However, I used the -LJ
which is nearly DJ, especially for graphics, and the results were as
expected; colours rendered as different (darker) patterns of dots.
6.8
My attempts to cause a clash failed. The program coexisted happily with
Draw, Edit, PipeDream, etc. My office computer with AOC multisync showed
no problems with Splosh, even with mode 16 and monitortypes 1 or 3. I
have many fonts in my directories − Splosh had little trouble with such
a large number; the only problem was the time it took to load the fonts
when Font Name menu option was selected, but then I was expecting that −
Draw can’t cope at all!
6.8
The future?
6.8
Access to the program is very easy, as it is written in Basic, just 415
lines. Presumably, as Splosh comes from an educational centre, upgrades
will incorporate features at the request of users, but I hope it doesn’t
get too complicated − the appeal is in the simplicity. However, I would
like to see a few things: the usual RISC OS window is not complete − all
the right side icons are missing from the painting window − size,
scroll, etc. It is not possible to move the painting area window, to see
a directory viewer, or cover the iconbar − although the “back” icon does
work. A copy facility would be nice − the manual’s cover was, after all,
produced with such a facility.
6.8
Problems
6.8
The painting area can be closed, and reopened. Only trying to quit from
the iconbar causes the SAVE dialogue box to appear. (The usual short cut
to delete the entire existing file name <ctrl-U> is mentioned.) If you
are saving work and, after deleting the default filename “Splosh”, you
insert, say, “LISA1” and press <return>, you get the usual warning
dialogue box which states “to save drag Icon to directory display”. If
the OK box is clicked, the default filename reappears! This overwrites
previous files that have the name Splosh without warning which caused us
to lose quite a bit of work. It took us quite some time to spot, because
other programs I have used (e.g. Draw) are rather more helpful and
remember the replacement filename.
6.8
We did spot one serious fault. After showing a painting to Mum by double
clicking on the filename, something Lisa has learned by trial and error,
we found that the new picture option didn’t behave properly. (I had
radically changed the palette − I discovered young people generally
prefer bright colours to eight shades of grey.) The colour bar and
palette showed one set of colours, the brush and size icon followed, but
the colour actually painted was totally different (in fact, it followed
the old displayed sprite’s palette). This was quite confusing. However,
I am told by WECC that is a RISC OS problem. I was also told that the
spotty effect when painting lines at speed will be addressed “in the
next version”; it seems there are moves afoot to produce a secondary
product, which will have more advanced features, while retaining the
simple version. I consider that very sensible.
6.8
Conclusion
6.8
The price of £19 +VAT from WECC (including a free site licence) seems
reasonable. I could use it as a simple border-making tool for notices,
and for quick cartoons for a newsletter − quite easy to grasp and very
quick and easy to use. That is, if I can get my computer back from
Lisa!  A
6.8
SoundLab and QuickSnd
6.8
David Shepherdson
6.8
I shall start this comparative review with SoundLab. This is the updated
software for the Oak-Recorder (reviewed in Archive 5.8 p78) and is
available through NCS for £18. To use it, you do really need to have the
original Oak-Recorder. The new software arrived in a padded envelope on
a single disc with slim-line booklet. Oak have been very nice to us and
allow the user to make a back-up copy and it can also be very easily
installed onto hard disc. The software supplied was version 1.31.
6.8
The microphone plugs into the Printer Port on your Archimedes and will
fit into the back of a dongle. One problem I ended up with was that I
kept forgetting to re-connect my printer so I now use a data transfer
switch unit!
6.8
SoundLab in use
6.8
The basic idea of SoundLab is that it allows you to speak into the
microphone and “sample” your own voice or other sound effects, such as
your favourite stars from the TV.
6.8
To use SoundLab, simply double-click on the filer icon then click on the
new iconbar icon. This gives you a Sample window in which your samples
are displayed. There is also a toolbox on the left for recording,
playing and zooming in or out for greater detail of the sample. By
default, clicking on the Record toolbox icon starts the recording
immediately, with a two second duration.
6.8
As with the original software, this is recorded at 9,900Hz, although now
this can be altered to any value between 4,000Hz and 10,500Hz. Higher
values mean better quality but also more memory is required to store the
result.
6.8
Problems?
6.8
I have found that there is quite an audible click at the beginning of a
recorded sample. This can sometimes be edited out − though not easily.
It is not a result of the data switch because using the old software on
the same sample does not produce such a click. I’ve even taken the
sample with the older software (Oak-Recorder), edited out all blank
areas and saved the result into SoundLab and, lo and behold, the click
returns. However, once converted to a sound module, providing you have
edited out all blank spots, the click is not heard.
6.8
By zooming in, you can see the sample is much more detail, then simply
mark the start of it and listen to your selection. If necessary, delete
this, re-mark the start and continue until the annoying click has been
removed.
6.8
You may also find that the two seconds duration means a blank or even a
hiss at the end of the sample. Again, this can be removed by marking,
listening and deleting the selection. Your sound sample will probably
need some editing regardless of the source.
6.8
Recording options
6.8
You have the option to set the length of time of the recording but
remember that each second of a sample uses around 10Kb of memory. You
can also alter from Instant Recording to Triggered Recording. On the
former, as soon as you click on Record, sampling starts, while with
Triggered Recording, it waits until either you slide the on/off switch
on the microphone or there is a loud noise which causes recording to
start.
6.8
Once you have your sample, to hear it in its entirety, simply click on
Play. Unlike the old software, you can now stop the sample being played
by clicking on the Stop toolbox icon. You can alter the playback rate in
a similar way to the recording rate. By following the menu to playback,
you can change the Hz rate. Basically, if you playback at a higher rate
than it was recorded at, the sample will be played faster and at a
higher pitch, while if it is lower, the resulting sample will be slower
and deeper.
6.8
Loading and saving
6.8
Previously, you had to save samples in Armadeus format but you now have
the option to save your sample as a standard Voice Module. Loading is
also different now − by double-clicking on an existing Armadeus sample,
it loads it into SoundLab. However, if you were to drag it into the
Sample window, the new sample would be merged with the existing sample
at the point where a special target cursor is placed. In this way, you
can add one, or more, samples to an existing one.  The target cursor is
also used to copy or move selected parts of your sample.
6.8
Apart from the much needed “Save as Module” option, another new part of
the software is the Real Time Display. You can choose to display either
or both of two graphical displays as your sample is played. One shows
the amplitude and the other is a spectrum analyser.
6.8
Rather than record your voice, you can opt for an oscilloscope display
or even a VoicePrint display. In my earlier review of Oak-Recorder, I
did mention a couple of points where I felt Oak could have been a little
more helpful. I am very pleased to see that, with SoundLab, my comments
have been noted and there’s a couple of pages on how to play an Armadeus
file sample from disc or RAM as well as the Voice Module creation.
6.8
As a point of interest, you are not actually restricted to your own
samples. If you have Armadeus or get a disc of (PD) Armadeus samples,
you can also load these and play around with them or make Voice Modules
for use in your own programs, etc. Because of the way SoundLab plays the
samples, the Tuning setting of your computer makes no difference,
although it will once it is converted to a Module. So you may need to
reset your Tuning, if it has been altered, either by yourself or by a
program.
6.8
QuickSnd
6.8
The other item I looked at was QuickSnd from Desktop Projects (£10 plus
VAT) − it is advertised as the perfect companion for Oak-Recorder. The
copy I have is Version 1.00 and I bought this as soon as it was
released. The idea behind this piece of software is to allow you to
load, play, convert and resave sound samples from Armadeus or the Oak-
Recorder as Voice Modules. However, it does much more than that.
6.8
Again, the disc may be backed-up or installed on a hard disc. The manual
is a text file on the disc and there are also a number of pre-recorded
Armadeus samples on the disc.
6.8
Loading and saving options
6.8
Unlike SoundLab, QuickSnd also allows you to load “Sound Synth”, Tracker
and Raw Data files. You may save as Armadeus, Tracker, Module, Utility
or as Raw Data.
6.8
The Tracker sample needs to be a sample, not a Tracker Tune.
6.8
The Module is saved as a normal Voice Module, just as in SoundLab. I
used the same sample in both SoundLab and QuickSnd and the resulting
Module was very similar in size.
6.8
The Utility option is claimed to be unique to QuickSnd. Saving in this
format allows it to be run as if it were an OS command from disc.
6.8
The explanation in the manual for Raw Data is that it is useful for
exporting samples to other computers. This may be so but it is also
ideal for acting on or creating samples for use in the Playfields
Coconizer.
6.8
QuickSnd in use
6.8
To use QuickSnd, load it into your computer, then drag an Armadeus
sample, (or Tracker/Sound Synth/Raw Data) which causes a small window to
open. This shows a vu-image display. To play it, click <select> over the
window. To stop the sample, click <adjust> over the window. Unlike
SoundLab, if the Tuning on your computer has been altered, you may find
the playback unintelligible. If so, press <f12> and type *TUNING 0 and
press <return> twice, then try again. Having this problem on my own
computer I have made the necessary amendments to my copy and have
informed the author of this possible problem and he has already been in
touch to say that he agrees and hopefully it will be corrected in future
copies. Having said that, it is unlikely that you will need to alter the
tuning anyway, it’s only awkward souls like me who do such things!
6.8
If you are trying to listen to a Data sample, such as one from
Coconizer, it will probably sound awful! If so, click <adjust> to stop
it, then click <menu>, go down the menu to Convert and select Log to Lin
which converts the sample to “linear signed” as needed by QuickSnd.
(Don’t forget to convert it back with Lin to Log before re-saving it for
use by Coconizer.) The speed of such conversions is very impressive.
6.8
Apart from the extra types of samples that QuickSnd can cope with, both
loading and saving, the other big way in which it scores over SoundLab
is in the effects sub-menu.
6.8
Special effects
6.8
In addition to being able to alter the replay rates, in a similar way to
SoundLab, you can reverse the sample, instantly. If you reverse it by
accident, just reverse it back again − it’s as quick as that. By
altering the replay rate, you may speed up or slow down the sample,
while by re-sampling the sample (without a microphone), you can alter
the size of the sample without changing its speed.
6.8
The effect I enjoyed most was the Echo option. By clicking on Echo and
clicking on the radio buttons, you can select how much or how little
echo is added to your sample. Once Echo has been added, you may also
find that the playback volume is reduced slightly. However, if you use
the MaxVol effect, the program will, if possible, boost the volume up a
bit.
6.8
There is also a VIDC option which, when ticked, is supposed to allow
samples to run at the correct speed on a VIDC enhancer machine. Not
having a VIDC enhancer myself, I cannot comment on that but by ticking
the VIDC option, I did find that the sample ran a lot slower!
6.8
Keyboard option
6.8
All the above applies to Version 1.00 of QuickSnd but Paul has just sent
me Version 1.01 which seems to be the same apart from a new option on
the vu-level window’s menu − “Keyboard”.  Clicking on Keyboard brings up
a new window with the representation of a piano keyboard showing note
letters against the keys. When you click over a key, white or black, it
plays your sample. The further left on the keyboard, the slower and
deeper the sample sounds, the further right, the faster and sillier it
sounds!
6.8
There is also an Auto Key option which is supposed to play the sample at
the keyboard just by moving the mouse pointer over the keys without
clicking. Somehow, I managed to confuse the program at one point and
reverse this action. Mind you, it was only the once and I did have both
Draw and DrawPlus running at the same time.
6.8
How do they compare?
6.8
I’ve created voice modules from both, using the same sample, and the
results are quite similar in size. The difference, I believe, is due to
the different length of the messages put in by the different software.
6.8
Overall, if you’ve got the Oak-Recorder and you want the facility to
create Voice Modules, then QuickSnd is the best. When you add in the
effects that QuickSnd offers and the option to create Utilities, to
alter Coconizer sounds, and Trackers too, the balance goes in QuickSnd’s
favour − also, QuickSnd is about half the price of SoundLab!
6.8
However, if you want to be able to merge samples, or you want to have
options such as Oscilloscopes and Voice Prints, upgrade to SoundLab. For
the best of both worlds, get them both! The speed and extra effects that
come with QuickSnd are excellent not to mention the extra formats it can
deal with and, at under £12, it’s a bargain!  A
6.8
DrawBook − Budget DTP Utility
6.8
Peter Jennings
6.8
The purpose of Emerald Publishing’s DrawBook (v1.04) is succinctly
summarised in the first paragraph of its 15-page User Guide. It says:
“DrawBook enables you to use Draw as a simple desktop publishing
package. It makes it possible to add header and footer text, including
page numbers, to a group of pages created with Draw and print them in
sequence. You can also use DrawBook to print a batch of Draw files one
after the other without needing to send each one to the printer
separately.”
6.8
This is not a program which pushes back the frontiers of computing and
enables you to use your machine for some new purpose. It was developed
specifically to help schools using Draw for simple desk top publishing
and its purpose is to automate processes that can already be done
manually.
6.8
DrawBook, which comes on a single unprotected disc, costs £15 +VAT (or
£16 from Archive). Site licences are free to schools but they must
register with Emerald Publishing to help prevent illegal use. With the
program there is a six-page sample file, called Egypt, which has text
and pictures about hieroglyphics, and a tutorial text file.
6.8
Designed in Draw
6.8
The pages for your “book” (which can, of course, be a magazine or any
other publication) have to be designed in Draw as separate files. These
can, as usual, include other drawfiles, sprites and text. They are then
dragged into a DrawBook window where headers and footers can be set and
made to generate running page numbers if required. The headers and
footers can be positioned at the left, right or centre of a page at a
chosen distance from the top or bottom.
6.8
Earlier versions of DrawBook suffered from not having a way of showing
the position of the headers and footers in relation to the other text or
illustrations before the page was printed and they could too easily be
accidentally superimposed. The current version has solved this problem
by adding a preview option.
6.8
The pages are printed out in the order they appear in the DrawBook
window but they can be rearranged and pages can also be deleted, copied
within the book or exported. A page copied inside a book window keeps
its original file name and produces the odd sight of two or more
identical icons with identical names in the same directory. If you
already have a version of DrawBook earlier than 1.06 it is well worth
exchanging it for an upgrade with the preview facility. This will cost
only £1.50 from Emerald Publishing, to cover post and packing, and the
return of your old disc. Existing DrawBook files made with the earlier
versions need to be converted for use with the upgrade and a program to
do this is now supplied on the disc.
6.8
Easy to use
6.8
DrawBook is a modest little program, deliberately limited to adding
headers and footers, with page numbers, and batch printing of files.
Emerald Publishing say they do not want to complicate it with further
features as they believe a main advantage is that it is easy to use and
performs a simple, but necessary, function.
6.8
It can be useful within the intended educational field and anyone else
with an occasional multi-paged illustrated document to produce could
also find it a time-saver and cheaper than buying a DTP program.
Otherwise, I feel that its facilities are too limited and not innovative
enough to be of general use. If there are only a few pages to compile,
it does not take much longer to add the headers and footers and drag the
files to the printer individually.  A
6.8
CSV to Text
6.8
Jochen Konietzko
6.8
Architype Software have produced a neat little utility for, as the name
suggests, the conversion of CSV (Comma Separated Value) files to Edit
files.
6.8
The output can be extensively configured, as you can see in the
Configuration Window and the Main Window.
6.8
There are two restrictions:
6.8
•    The maximum number of fields that CSVtoText can accept is 50. Files
with more than 50 fields have to be edited before being imported into
CSVtoText.
6.8
•    The program always puts each field into a different line. It is not
possible to convert a CSV table into a tabulated table.
6.8
On the whole, the program works very well although the error messages
could be somewhat more informative. For example, the separator between
fields with numbers is “Comma” and between fields with text is “inverted
commas, comma, inverted commas”. If a field itself contains inverted
commas, this makes trouble for any converter. CSVtoText’s reaction is
the error message “End of file (internal error code 10790)” and the file
is saved as Data instead of as Text.
6.8
Other than that, I have no complaints.
6.8
CSVtoText is produced by Architype Software and costs £5 for home users
and primary schools (£3 each for 10 or more copies) and £9 (£6 at 10+)
for business, secondary schools and higher education.
6.8
This report is based on version 1.01, 14-Jun-92.  A
6.8
WindowEd
6.8
Thomas Down
6.8
This is a review of WindowEd, a new RISC-OS window template editor
costing £35 from Armen Software (£32 through Archive). I have tested
version 1.13 (dated 8th September 1992) on an A440/1 with RISC-OS 3.1,
but it should work on any RISC-OS computer. It is, primarily, a
replacement for Acorn’s FormEd program (supplied with Acorn’s Desktop C
and also available in the public domain, e.g. Shareware 20) but it
provides considerably improved functionality.
6.8
A brief history of templates
6.8
As anyone who has ever tried writing even the simplest of WIMP programs
will know, the blocks of data which control the creation of windows and
icons are extremely complex. Luckily, Acorn realised this early on in
the development of RISC-OS, and provided a simple (by WIMP standards!)
method of loading window definitions from disc. It is these definitions
− known as template files − which WindowEd is designed to create and
edit.
6.8
What you get
6.8
WindowEd is supplied, along with several utilities, on a single disc.
Also supplied are two manuals, one for the utilities and one for
WindowEd itself. Both manuals seem to be produced with Impression and
are generally of a good standard. Unfortunately, the staples used for
binding the main manual are only just big enough, so it must be handled
with some care.
6.8
There are four utilities − a dustbin, a magnifier, a desktop star
command utility and a program to lock the mouse pointer to move only
horizontally or vertically. None of these is a particularly new idea,
but they all seem well implemented. Two of them − Hotspot and Mouselock
− could be useful in aligning icons in your templates.
6.8
In use
6.8
When loaded, WindowEd briefly displays a copyright message, then
installs its icon on the iconbar. Unlike FormEd, WindowEd can cope with
several different files simultaneously. This is useful if you want to
reuse a single window from an old template file. The content of each
loaded file is displayed in a filer-like window, with an icon for each
window definition within the file, in much the same way as Paint. Window
definitions can be created in two ways. Firstly, a blank window can be
created, looking much the same as Edit’s text window. Alternatively, any
window currently displayed on the screen can be ‘grabbed’, complete with
all the icons within it. Either way, the window must be given a name
which is used when your program wishes to access the templates.
6.8
Editing
6.8
To edit a window, you double-click on its icon in the ‘directory-
viewer’. The window then appears on screen, exactly as it will be when
displayed in normal use, except that non-icon graphics (i.e. anything
that is drawn by the program itself) are replaced by a cross-hatching
pattern.
6.8
Up to this point, WindowEd is much the same as FormEd. However, as soon
as any editing is attempted, the main differences become obvious. Gone
are the long and cryptic editing menus that characterised FormEd. They
have been replaced by new dialog boxes. At first, these look complicated
but each option is well labelled and there is more detailed information
about the function of each option in the manual.
6.8
Having used the program for some time, my only quibble about these boxes
is that it can be quite hard to find the option you need. I feel that
Armen Software should consider an alternative approach to structuring
them − perhaps involving a number of separate dialog boxes editing
different aspects of window and icon behaviour.
6.8
Also, it would be useful to be able to apply changes to a group of
icons, instead of having to alter each individually. Fortunately, this
is not a major problem, since it is easy to make copies of existing
icons.
6.8
While using the program, I have found only one bug: when using the
colour picker, clicking on any of the buttons which should close it (OK,
Cancel or the window close box), produces a (non-fatal) error. Although
this does not make the program unuseable (since colours can be set in
another way), it is irritating and I would like to see it fixed in the
next version.
6.8
Tools in the box
6.8
An extremely useful feature of WindowEd is the toolbox, designed to
allow scrolling and resizing of templates which have had their scroll
bars edited out. However, the various tools can be applied to any
window, irrespective of its owner. This ought to be supplied as a
separate utility.
6.8
The main program also includes a useful sprite viewer. This is extremely
helpful if you need to check the names of sprites before inserting them
in your templates.
6.8
Interfacing
6.8
WindowEd uses 3D icons throughout and provides the option for your own
programs to use them too, via Simon Huntingdon’s Interface module. The
module is supplied but, unfortunately, no documentation is included.
Although this is available through public domain libraries, many people
have not got it, so I would like to see a copy supplied. Better still,
the border type could be set graphically from the ‘edit icon’ dialog
box, removing the need to type complex text strings for each of the
icons which needs the borders.
6.8
Conclusions
6.8
For beginners, WindowEd’s self-explanatory editing dialog boxes are a
huge improvement on FormEd’s menus. To make it even easier to get
started, the manual contains an excellent tutorial explaining how to
create a simple set of templates. The manual also refers to an example
application with which to test the templates you produced in the
tutorial. Unfortunately, this was not supplied on the review disc. I
have contacted the program’s author but, so far, have not received a
reply.
6.8
More experienced users will appreciate the numerous extensions provided,
as well as the generally more friendly and consistent approach of
Armen’s offering.
6.8
This is an extremely useful package that will make the development of
windowed front-ends far easier. It definitely ranks alongside DeskEdit 2
as a vital tool for the serious programmer.  A
6.8
Have Pocket Book, Will Travel
6.8
Trevor Sutton
6.8
I always felt that to have a small computer which could up and download
programs would be exciting and perhaps even useful.
6.8
The Z88 proved to be far too cumbersome and the keys had that rubbery
feel which failed to inspire confidence. The Acorn Pocket Book seemed to
be an attractive solution.
6.8
I realise, of course, that it will never run ArtWorks or Impression and
any thought of Revelations or Rhapsodies are quite out of the question.
No Lemmings here I might add, though, perhaps there is a chance of
chess. (A chance of chess??!!)
6.8
I was, however, charmed by the prospect of writing to something smaller
(yes, smaller) than my diary and then passing it to my main computer for
printing or whatever. Well, it didn’t quite work out like that so, all
you eager beavers who bought early A5000s, beware − it might not happen!
My serial port was not happy with the A-Link and the machines failed to
communicate. I found this frustrating, as you might imagine, and so off
went my A5000 for a fix! Meanwhile, back at the Pocket Book I was
becoming more and more (and more) impressed.
6.8
Abacus, the spreadsheet, is very powerful and conversions between it and
PipeDream have been made. (I borrowed an A3020 to make the A-Link
connection.) The word processor does its job economically and, after a
suggestion from our local Acorn dealer, I created a 2-year diary (via
Abacus) which takes just 14Kb. Into Cards, the database, I managed to
export a file containing all the birds of the Western Palearctic.
“Where?”, I hear you call! Never mind about that, it does constitute
over 800 records. The file takes 38Kb of memory. I then needed an
address book and so another 12Kb was taken for my 90 card address
database.
6.8
Just then, frustration set in − the A3020 had to go back to its owner!
So what should I do? No ArtWorks, no Impression! I went back to my
dealer, only to be convinced by Paul Scott of Resource Facilities that
what I really needed was the OPL Programming Language for the Pocket
Book. (This is now available from NCS for £65.) I realised that evening,
that Shareware for the Pocket Book was indeed possible. For, after
playing with some of the Basic-like language of OPL, I thought to myself
that it would be relatively easy to write useful applications in Edit.
These could be downloaded via the A-Link to Write on the Pocket Book and
thence transferred using the Pocket Book’s Bring command into the OPL
editor. This can then be translated and subsequently run. It works! I
did it after borrowing the A3020 again.
6.8
This suggests that OPL programs could be written in Edit, then easily
saved and shared as text files. These can then be downloaded via the A-
Link as described above.
6.8
The potential for Archimedes/A-Link/OPL/Pocket Book shareware is,
therefore, very great.
6.8
So, come on, write me a diary or a game or a sophisticated vector
graphic program. (Well, it is April the first, as I write, and I am
suffering from ArtWorks withdrawal symptoms!)  A
6.8
!Help3 − Guide to RISC OS 3
6.8
Peter Jennings
6.8
Those of us who worked our way up from the BBC B and the Master found it
quite a leap when we reached the Archimedes and were faced with the
intricacies of RISC OS. For anyone coming into computing with the new
range of Acorns, RISC OS 3 must seem rather bewildering. To help them,
Sherston Software have published !Help3, a 100-page book by David
Eccles, aimed at guiding the newcomer through the “jargon and mystery”
in easy steps.
6.8
The book, which is a stapled paperback with a glossy cover, comes in a
soft plastic folder accompanied by a quick reference card and a disc and
is priced at £9.95, with no VAT payable (£9 through Archive).
6.8
The reference card has a labelled illustration of a directory viewer, a
mouse, a filer menu and its display options and some of the main RISC OS
icons. The disc is for use in working the exercises in the book and
contains copies of some of the Acorn RISC OS 3 resources plus a few
Sherston drawfiles and sprites.
6.8
Easy-paced
6.8
The book, sub-titled “An introduction to the Archimedes range of
computers and RISC OS 3”, is written as an easy-paced tutorial, assuming
no prior knowledge and just enough ability to have plugged the various
components of the computer together. After the introduction, it starts
with instructions for switching on − a reassuring beginning that nothing
is being taken for granted.
6.8
The first illustration in the book shows how the screen should look
after powering-up and there is also advice on what to do if this has not
been achieved. Then comes two pages of explanation about the mouse,
followed by two pages on the keyboard, all suitably illustrated. Discs
and formatting get ten pages of detailed explanation to complete a
thorough grounding before the reader is finally introduced to the WIMP.
6.8
This lengthy and detailed introduction to the computer, sets the style
for the whole book. Everything is clearly explained in simple terms and
well illustrated on almost every page. The easy pace led me to think, at
first, that some of the information was being skimped. But it was soon
clear that it was being spread out, for easier assimilation, rather than
omitted. For instance, the first time a writable icon was introduced,
the instruction was to change the default name by first using <delete>.
There was no mention of the quicker <ctrl-U> method for clearing the
default wording but this was then explained a couple of pages later when
dealing with the next writable icon.
6.8
Extra detail
6.8
Throughout the book, there are numerous examples of where a little extra
detail is added to help the beginner on his or her way. For instance, an
explanation of screen modes ends with a note that some applications
which provide a printout, may use a mode which gives a poor screen
display. This, it explains, is to save memory which can then be used for
the printing process and it reassures that the appearance of the work on
screen will not affect the quality of the printout.
6.8
This is then followed by seven pages about fonts, with illustrations of
them, and nine more on printing. The book concludes with a chapter on
the purpose and use of the supplied applications.
6.8
This is by no means a full list of the subjects covered but all are
given similar, clear and detailed, treatment.
6.8
Anyone who has been confidently using RISC OS 2 will not need this book
to upgrade to RISC OS 3 as its intention is to simplify rather than add
to the massive documentation already supplied by Acorn. This it does
very well, to provide a clear and comprehensive introduction to Acorn
computing. If you have any doubts about using an Acorn RISC OS computer
(other than programming it) !Help3 should solve your problems and will
be a tenner very well spent.  A
6.8
Noot
6.8
Richard Rymarz
6.8
Noot is the latest program from 4Mation catering for all ages. !Noot
itself is meant for younger children and !Nootpad is intended for older
students and adults. Together, they form a suit of programs to produce
and run animations.
6.8
The package
6.8
Noot costs £45 +VAT (£48 through Archive) and is presented in a rather
flimsy plastic wallet in which there are six discs. Disc 1 contains the
!Noot and !Nootpad applications and some Tracker music files. The other
five discs contain a selection of interesting, ready-made Noot files.
Disc 1 has to be initialised and can be copied to hard disc but, as is
increasingly common with many programs today, it has to be present each
time the applications are started. This is contrary to most other
4Mation products where a site licence is included in the cost. Noot
licences cost £45 but extra master discs can be bought for £10 each. For
another £10, there is a Noot art disc containing 120 compressed
drawfiles of pictures from the packaged Noot files.
6.8
There is a well-produced manual containing simple instructions to run
Noot files, a Tutorial explaining how to use Nootpad, a section on
creating static and animated pictures, a reference section and two
appendices. Finally, there are two booklets accompanying the Noot files:
‘Power’ and ‘It works like this’. All in all, the documentation is very
comprehensive.
6.8
!Noot
6.8
Having followed the instructions carefully, I loaded !Noot, happily
discovered that it was a fully RISC-OS compatible, and double clicked on
the file on Disc 5 called Playroom (I am a primary school teacher). I
was greeted by some chirpy music and a picture of (guess what?) a
playroom. Ten toys lay scattered on the floor each with a blank box
beneath it with an arrow pointing to the right. Clicking on the arrow
resulted in some instructions appearing in the blank box: What could I
see? I entered ‘teddy’ and pressed <return>. The scene changed and Teddy
sprang to life running in and out of his cave winking happily. The box
also accepted ‘teddy bear’, ‘brown bear’, ‘bear’ and even ‘cuddly toy’.
(It also accepts ‘Yogi Bear’.) Other toys behaved in their own
delightful ways.
6.8
Clicking <menu> on the picture brought up a window from which the
picture could be saved as a sprite and used in other applications, a
‘Full Screen’ option and a Remote Control bar. The latter is very useful
since it allows the music to be toned down and even silenced (Yippee!).
It also allows the animation to be stopped and stepped forwards and
backwards, one frame at a time. This is useful for seeing how an
animation works and also allows screen saving of different frames.
6.8
Other interesting files for primary school children include ‘Farm’ where
children discover what animals and machinery are used on a farm and
‘Dweek’ and ‘Dweep’ who are cute characters created, I believe, from
4Mation’s ‘Smartoons’. These characters move and act in a number of ways
which the children have to discover by entering verbs in the dialogue
box. This is an excellent way to learn about synonyms and antonyms and
reminds me of a very popular program called ‘Podd’. Anyone who used and
enjoyed Podd will love these cute characters.
6.8
Upper primary and lower secondary school children (Key Stages 2 and 3)
will find the files on ‘Power’ and ‘How it works’ useful as well as
using !Nootpad to create animations themselves.
6.8
!Nootpad
6.8
Having enjoyed the enclosed files, I decided to produce a simple and
attractive animation myself. So, on to !Nootpad and the tutorial.
6.8
The program loads onto the iconbar in the usual way and a new file is
created by clicking <select> on the !Nootpad icon. It is then dragged
into the directory to which the file is to be saved. The first two pages
of the Nootpad open and guess what − it looks like an opened note pad
with pages numbered 1 and 2. Page 2 is entitled ‘Title Page’ which gives
the option of having a title or not and the amount of time it is to be
displayed. Page 1 displays the contents of the title page which has to
be a drawfile (picture or text) and allows the user to select a tracker
music file and its duration.
6.8
Pages 3 and 4 are always displayed when a word (or words) is to be
entered. A drawfile that may or may not be animated is dropped into the
appropriate box and music can be added. As instructed by the manual, I
dropped a picture of an elephant into the box and entered the
appropriate text. I moved on to the next two pages.
6.8
Pages 5 and 6 allow what the manual terms recognised input − words that
will be included in the Noofile’s word list; while pages 7 and 8 require
a sentence that will answer unrecognised input.
6.8
Recognised words and their pictures are displayed on pages 9 and 10. The
drawfile is dropped into the box to match the word and one of two kinds
of movement applied. Further options include the number of times an
animation will move, whether a foreground or background is to be added
and the time between each cycle.
6.8
Further pictures and words can be added on pages 11 and 12, 13 and 14
and so on. Each word list can have up to 12 items so that other words
for ‘bus’ such as ‘omnibus’ can be used. Associated adjectives can be
included such as ‘small bus’, ‘little bus’, ‘red bus’ or even ‘little
red bus’.
6.8
Upon completion, a file can be saved as a source file so that it can be
edited or as a completed Nootfile to be run in !Noot.
6.8
Other features
6.8
More pictures can be added in Draw, Vector or Poster format as long as
the pictures are A5 landscape. This ensures that drawings in the
Nootfile window remain in proportion.
6.8
Other facilities include the ability to alter grammatical accuracies
such as ‘a’ and ‘an’, a large section on using ready-drawn or original
pictures for animation and a quick reference section.
6.8
I followed the tutorial and had few problems. I soon had an elephant
nodding its head, waggling its tail and shaking its trunk. However, the
real test was to create a Nootfile myself.
6.8
The real test
6.8
Without reference to the manual, I managed to create a simple file which
was dealt with recognising a parrot. Any drawfile can be used and with
the huge number of drawings available from various sources, there is no
need to be an artist to use !Nootpad. Just use a ready-made drawfile and
off you go. I forgot about the page size restriction but soon rectified
it by dropping the picture into !Draw and re-scaling it. Feeling quite
pleased with myself, I decided to try a piece of animation. Having
already seen ‘Dweek’ and ‘Dweep’, I turned my attention in another
direction. Could !Nootpad be used for ‘serious’ purposes?
6.8
Animated graphs
6.8
I wondered whether I could produce some animated graphs which could show
my declining disposable income for 1993. I created some simple graphs
using !PipeDream, edited them so that only the relevant information was
displayed (the manual is quite helpful, giving tips on lining up
drawfiles, Vector files, etc), linked them together and dropped them
into !Nootpad. Before long, I had a series of 3D bar graphs shooting up
and down like some demented sound tracker program playing the Flight of
the Bumble Bee. I managed to slow down the animation remembering that
the delay in the Nootpad is measured in centiseconds. However, it worked
and I felt quite pleased with myself (although my bank balance still did
not look any healthier).
6.8
Conclusions
6.8
Noot is different and, although there are other animation programs using
vector graphics (!Picture It and Tween spring to mind), the ease with
which the user can produce simple or complex animations must make it a
success. I loved the program and shall use it in my school with all age
groups. I am sure that more imaginative and skilled users could extend
its use beyond the classroom.
6.8
Noot is the latest in a long line of excellent draw-oriented packages
from 4Mation. Those familiar with Chameleon, Smart, Poster and Vector
will expect something a little different and Noot will not disappoint
them.  A
6.8
Gods
6.8
Alison Eagle & Luke Hares
6.8
The object of this game is to guide a Greek “hero” in his quest for
immortality, searching through a lost city for treasure and keys. The
game needs quick reflexes in dodging enemies and throwing weapons at
them, and considerable ingenuity in solving various puzzles such as how
to get past obstacles or which combination of switches you need to throw
in order to open a trap door.
6.8
Alison’s comments first:
6.8
It is a very exciting game and I found that I could not ‘put it down’
until I had had at least two goes.
6.8
However, I did find that the instructions were not very clear. One
problem is that it can get quite confusing at times and also it would
help if you knew what the mission was.
6.8
I would recommend the game for anyone who could keep calm and not freak
out when surrounded by monsters or whatever they are!
6.8
My friend and I both agreed the sound effects are very good especially
when the hero is killed or when he is killing a monster.
6.8
The music at the beginning is very good and mysterious.
6.8
Now Luke’s comments:
6.8
There is a lot to be said for Gods. As a platform style arcade
adventure, it is good. The game play is slick and fast and the animation
is excellent. The problems usually consist of taking the right object to
the right place and can often be solved by trial and error. Graphically,
the game is very impressive in the traditional Bitmap Brothers’ colour
scheme of grey and brown. The main sprite is well animated and grunts
satisfactorily when climbing ladders and taking hits. The enemies are
many and diverse with my particular favourites being some of the variety
of fliers.
6.8
On the whole, Gods is a large and satisfying game, so large that even
with the password facility, a lot of time is spent repeating areas that
have already been completed if you should fail to complete a level. The
game gets progressively harder and is soon very challenging. I enjoyed
it and would recommend it to anyone who likes this style of game.
6.8
On the down side, the manual is not very clear on some things and it can
get a bit laborious from time to time.
6.8
For those who are unfamiliar with the Archimedes games scene, Krisalis,
the company which produced Gods, has specialised in converting to
Archimedes format some of the more successful games which were
originally designed for other computers (Amiga, etc). In our experience,
the quality of the Krisalis games has been uniformly very high and we
can highly recommend this one. It costs £24 from Archive.  A
6.8
Word Hound
6.8
Jim Wylie
6.8
Word Hound is a desktop dictionary (over 30,000 entries) and thesaurus
(over 33,000 keywords) with over 60,000 indexes and almost 100,000 words
and phrases in total. It connects superbly with many DTP and word
processing packages including Impression, Poster, Edit, First Word Plus
and EasiWord. I currently use version 1.17 running on an A440/1 (RISC OS
3.10) but have observed it working on A5000s and A540s and it also works
just as effectively with RISC OS 2.
6.8
The package comes on five discs and can only be operated from a hard
disc as it needs 3.5Mb. (On the desktop, Word Hound works happily with
192Kb of memory.) You can add to the dictionaries, make up your own or
even set the colours for each window to your own specifications.
6.8
Word Hound has been designed to allow two-way communication with other
applications, including using a special software link. This uses the
Impulse II module to connect with Impression where words can be passed
efficiently between two applications using a combination of hot keys.
6.8
In use, Word Hound resides on the iconbar, accesses the user-specified
dictionaries and works within three windows which automatically close
after a word has been transmitted to the host application. The first,
bypassed if using Impression, allows you to type a word to be found in
the search and accepts the use of wildcards and even a ‘sounds like’ if
you can’t spell (like me!). The main selection window now pops up,
giving the option of the word’s definition or the thesaurus keywords.
Selecting the definition by using the mouse gives you the very detailed
dictionary whereas selecting a keyword brings you to a full page of
possible replacement words or phrases, each in lists of verb, adverb,
etc.
6.8
Once you have made your selection, one mouse click and the word, or
phrase, replaces that chosen in the main document. It could not be
easier.
6.8
I strongly recommend this piece of software, no matter what your skill
with words is.
6.8
How much does all this cost? If you just want to get the discs to try
it, you will have to find someone with a copy or a PD library that
stocks it. (David Holden is offering to supply it − see the PD Column
last month − Archive 6.7 p32. Ed.)
6.8
It is classed as a piece of Shareware and there is a registration fee of
£5 (£10 for a site licence) if you decide you want to use it seriously.
Having paid that money to the author, Ian Palmer, you also get some
extra tools for use with WordHound. If you want to register at the same
time as getting the software, you can send Ian five blank formatted
800Kb discs (or three 1.6Mb discs) with the registration fee, plus £1 to
cover administration, and he will copy the software for you. i.e. send
Ian the blank discs with either £6 or £11.
6.8
Word Hound is available from Ian Palmer, 40 Birch Crescent, Aylesford,
Kent, ME20 7QE.  A
6.8
Badger Trails
6.8
Hilary Ferns
6.8
This is a fascinating educational pack with an environmental theme. It
consists of a video, a short story book and the computer program, which
can all be used sequentially or as separate entities. There is also a
map and instruction book to accompany the program, with ideas for
further topic work.
6.8
The half hour video shows the discovery of a remote badgers’ sett in a
wood in Gloucestershire. It shows the building of a hide to observe and
film the badgers in their habitat, and is a lovely educational tool in
its own right, providing lots of interesting information about badgers.
There are some lovely shots of the badger family coming out to feed. A
short story book imagines the situation from the badgers’ point of view
and turns it into an adventure to be continued by the children, either
by writing a story or by working through the computer program. One of
the young badgers has been accidentally driven away while asleep in the
back of a horse box and the program allows the children to imagine life
as a young badger, no more than 1 metre long and 40cm high, trying to
find its way home to its sett.
6.8
Two discs are supplied: the main work disc and a protected key disc
which is always needed to start the program running. You can leave the
adventure at any time by pressing <ctrl-Q> and you can save your
position to continue another time. Many of the screens can be printed
out during the adventure using standard RISC-OS printer drivers.
6.8
The program is easy to use; it is one of those programs that you can
just sit down to and get on with. It loads onto the iconbar but, when
running, it takes over the whole screen. The design is of the same high
quality, and very similar to, both Viewpoints and The Crystal Rain
Forest. (All of these are by Simon Hosler.) The top half of the screen
is a bird’s eye view of the countryside, which automatically scrolls as
the little badger scuttles around in response to N, S, E, and W
direction commands. The layout and order of tasks are the same each time
the program runs, but the available foods vary. It is up to you how
often you check your senses for the whereabouts of food, drink or
danger, at which point the screen display changes to show what you can
see, hear, smell, feel and taste. Apart from thinking about how to
survive, the main skill involved in the program is map-reading.
6.8
On your travels, you often see ducks on the water or a couple of rabbits
quickly scurrying past, perhaps with a fox in hot pursuit. To make the
scene even more realistic, the farmer appears with his gun and there is
a barking dog. These things were all fascinating at first, but a little
frustrating subsequently, as the interruptions slowed down the badger’s
progress. Also quite slow are the times when the badger stops to dig,
eat or drink. However, the badger is remarkably sweet, and you
definitely become determined to help him find home, carefully avoiding
the road and many other dangers. By the end of the adventure, I am sure
children will have thought fairly carefully about how man, encroaching
upon the countryside, can be such a threat to wildlife and about
predator-prey relationships.
6.8
I would be keen to include the whole multimedia pack in topic work to
enhance teaching of parts of the Programme of Study in both Geography
and Science. There is also a lot of language and art which could come
out of such a topic. Generally, it has great potential for use in the
primary classroom at all ages, and I thoroughly recommend it.
6.8
Badger Trails costs £39.95 +VAT from Sherston Software or £44 through
Archive.   A
6.8
Whale Facts
6.8
Richard Rymarz
6.8
‘Whale Facts’ is a “multi media, multitasking disc-based encyclopaedia
with artist-drawn pictures and sampled sounds” about cretaceans (whales,
dolphins and porpoises). It contains a booklet explaining how to get the
best out of whatever computer system you have, explanations on how to
use the program including searching, saving and printing information and
how to use the quizzes. There is a set of six A3 worksheets which
contain written information, activities and tasks which could easily be
used at Key Stage 2 and early Key Stage 3 in schools.
6.8
The software is fully multitasking and consists of three discs: disc 1
contains Longman Logotron’s !MagpieRead, system folder, !Sysmerge and a
Primary Font: disc 2 contains Whalefacts; and disc 3 contains the
quizzes. The whole package was produced with the help of ‘Friends of the
Earth, Liverpool’, costs £29.95 +VAT from Topologika (or £32 through
Archive) and is distributed by Topologika Software.
6.8
Whale Facts
6.8
After clicking on the MagpieRead application, the Whalefact file can be
loaded. A title page opens with a hand-drawn picture and an impressive
digitised sound of a sperm whale. All the pictures are drawn sprites and
are reasonably impressive. Clicking again on an arrow leads to the index
page from which can be chosen a large variety of facts from whale
groups, (there are two main species − toothed whales and Baleen whales)
to feeding habits, beaching problems and conservation issues.
Altogether, there are sixteen chapters allowing children to move freely
between them. The Magpie browser is very easy to use.
6.8
Worksheets
6.8
There are six worksheets, the first of which helps to distinguish
between mammals and other groups in the animal kingdom. It offers
information, asks questions, encourages information gathering and gives
ideas for language work. This is particularly helpful for a busy teacher
who could quickly use or adapt them thus providing lots of ideas for
cross-curricular work. Sadly, sheets 2 and 3 were missing from the
review pack; sheet 4 looks at whales in detail; sheet 5 encourages the
children to act like a whale using the senses that are highly developed
in whales and sheet 6 looks at the whale’s intelligence in detail. They
are all very impressive − much thought must have gone into their
preparation.
6.8
Quizzes
6.8
There are three quizzes which add an element of fun to the suite of
programs. The first one is a language recognition quiz where five clues
are given for a particular species and the children are asked to guess
from a choice of three. The second quiz is similar except that it
concerns recognising pictures. The last has seventy questions which are
quite detailed. All in all, they add an extra dimension to the programs
and there is even a separate scoring program which could be used for all
sorts of activities.
6.8
Conclusion
6.8
Whalefacts cannot be used in isolation. It will be highly suitable in
schools as a basis or extra dimension to a topic concerning the
environment, mammals or the animal kingdom. Like most good, theme-based
educational software, work away from the computer is just as important
as the program itself.
6.8
The program is a good way of showing how Magpie can be used to create
useful information files. It uses text, pictures and sound fairly
effectively and should encourage schools who have the full version to
attempt their own folders. Of course, with Magpie, the children could
extend the Whalefacts data bringing it fully up-to-date.
6.8
Providing that children are interested and inspired by an appropriate
topic, Whalefacts will be warmly received by pupils and teachers alike.
On this basis, I would recommend Whalefacts as a useful addition to a
school’s software library.
6.8
Finally, Topologika state that 5% of all royalties from the program will
be given to ‘Friends of the Earth, Liverpool’ to continue their work.  A
6.8
Micro Studio Ltd    22 Churchgate Street, Soham, Ely, Cambridgeshire.
(0353−720433)
6.8
Microvitec Ltd    Bolling Road, Bradford, BD4 7TU. (0274−390011)
(0274−734944)
6.8
Minerva Systems     Minerva House, Baring Crescent, Exeter, EX1 1TL.
(0392−437756) (0392−421762)
6.8
New Era Software    204 High Street, Woodville, Swadlincote, Derbyshire,
DE11 7DT. (0283−812818)
6.8
Oak Solutions (p18)    Suite 25,
Robin Enterprise Centre, Leeds Road, Idle, Yorkshire BD10 9TE.
(0274−620423) (0274−620419)
6.8
Primary Education Services    72 Kimberley
Road, Leicester, LE2 1LF. (0533−733063)
6.8
RESOURCE     Exeter Road, Doncaster, DN2 4PY. (0302−340331)
6.8
Risc Developments     117 Hatfield
Road, St Albans, Herts, AL1 4JS. (0727−840303) (0727−860263)
6.8
Sherlock Rehab Data
    Rehabsenteret, N-1450 Nesoodtangen, Norway. (47−09−912926)
(47−09−912045)
6.8
Sherston Software     Swan Barton,
Sherston, Malmesbury, Wilts. SN16 0LH. (0666−840433) (0666−840048)
6.8
Software 42     109 Ferry Road, Hullbridge, Essex, SS5 6EL.
6.8
Soft Rock Software     FREEPOST
(BS7978), Westbury-on-Trim, Bristol, BS10 7BR.
6.8
Soft Rock Software     124 Marissal
Road, Henbury, Bristol, BS10 7NP. (0272−491634)
6.8
Spacetech (p8)    21 West Wools, Portland, Dorset, DT5 2EA.
(0305−822753) (0305−860483)
6.8
State Machine     75 Upper Wellington Street, Luton, Bedfordshire, LU1
5AA. (0582−483377) (0582−480833)
6.8
Superior Software     P.O. Box 6,
Brigg, S Humberside, DN20 9NH. (0652−658585) (0652−657807)
6.8
Topologika     P.O. Box 39, Stilton, Peterborough, PE7 3RL. (0733−244682)
6.8
WECC     Manor Hall, Sandy Lane, Leamington Spa, CV32 6RD. (0926−413741)
(0926−413748)
6.8
XOB     Balkeerie, Eassie by Forfar, Angus, DD8 1SR. (0307−84364)

So what’s new?
6.9
As you will see from the size of the Products Available column this
month, the breadth and depth of products supporting Acorn’s 32-bit
computers is growing apace. Many readers will be particularly pleased to
see that the RISC OS 3 PRMs are available at long last. We have them in
stock now.
6.9
We haven’t heard any more rumours about a new machine being released but
when one (or more?!) does appear, we’ll try to maintain our reputation
of getting the technical facts out to you before any of the other
magazines.
6.9
Archive Team increases
6.9
This month, we welcome another new member into the Archive team. Dawn
Robinson will be joining us at the beginning of June. Dawn will be
looking after the mail order and will be replacing Vera as the ‘happy
smiling voice’ who answers the phone... in the mornings, anyway. Vera
will then be able to spend more time on things like visiting local
schools and arranging training courses. She will also be trying to find
out more about what you, the Archive readership, actually want from the
magazine and from Norwich Computer Services. Watch this space....
6.9
Bye for now,
6.9
Products Available
6.9
•    A3000 rechargeable batteries − There seems to have been a world
shortage of A3000 rechargeable batteries. They are needed because some
of these batteries do fail in course of time. We have some available now
at £7 each.
6.9
•    A3000 cases − We also have a few complete A3000 plastic cases − upper
and lower parts − but with no sticky labels on them. They are available
from Archive, while stocks last, for £20 per complete case.
6.9
•    A3020 Discovery Pack − Acorn have just launched a new computer package
aimed at Primary schools. The idea is to provide a system that teachers
can plug in, switch on and go! It includes software pre-installed on the
hard drive, instructions for beginners to RISC OS and curriculum
material and guidance on classroom use. The idea is that even teachers
who consider themselves complete beginners or who are currently only
familiar with BBC Bs and Masters can have confidence to get started with
a 32-bit system and the best and most up-to-date software.
6.9
The package consists of an A3020 with hard drive plus Acorn’s Advance
(WP/spreadsheet/database/graphing − see the review on page 33);
Sherston’s Crystal Rainforest which is an adventure simulation and Logo
application (see 6.2 p58); Longman’s Magpie multimedia authoring system
(see 6.5 p71) incorporating Acorn’s Replay full motion video utility;
two primary fonts and an application to re-size the mouse pointer. There
is also a Magpie application installed on the hard drive which
introduces the user to the Discovery system and to Acorn’s education
support network. It includes a couple of Replay video clips.
6.9
The pack also includes teacher support materials which introduce the
software and offer practical advice to teachers on integrating IT into
standard classroom activities. The guide includes project frameworks and
examples of children’s work produced using the software in the Discovery
Pack. It also includes appendices covering the National Curriculum in
England and the Scottish 5−14 Curriculum, mapping the software in the
Pack to curriculum targets.
6.9
You also get a heat-sensitive mouse mat which reveals hidden pictures
(the mind boggles!), an audio training tape introducing the desktop
environment and the use of the operating system, a two-year academic
wall-planner, a copy of the educational software/hardware directory and
vouchers giving discounts on educational software and peripherals from
eight companies who specialise in primary education.
6.9
The price is £1149 +VAT = £1350 including a standard resolution monitor
but as an introductory offer, Archive subscribers can have a multisync
monitor instead for an extra £30.
6.9
•    A5000 fan quietener − If you are fed up with the noise of the A5000
fan, here is the answer. There is now an A5000 version of Ray
Maidstone’s famous fan quietener. They are £21 through Archive.
6.9
•    A540 RAM price down − The bad news is that Atomwide are no longer
supplying 4Mb RAM upgrades for the A540 (they were much cheaper than
Acorn’s version). The good news is that Acorn have dropped the price of
their RAM upgrade. They are now £299 inc VAT or £280 through Archive.
6.9
•    Acorn Education Directory − Acorn and APA Multimedia have combined to
make the Education Directory available as a CD-ROM. The directory gives
a listing of the huge range of software and hardware available for Acorn
32-bit computers. The CD-ROM costs £29 +VAT from APA Multimedia Ltd and
this price includes a site licence.
6.9
•    Acorn Multimedia Units − Just to say that although they were supposed
to be available when we mentioned them last month, they didn’t quite
make it. Anyway, we now have them in stock.
6.9
•    Acorn multisync monitors − To clear stocks, we are selling Acorn AKF18
multisync monitors at £270. (We sold quite a lot of them last month but
still have a few left − give us a ring if you are interested.)
6.9
If you want to buy a multisync at the same time as an A3010, A3020 or
A4000, you can have it for the price of standard resolution monitor
(again, while stocks last).
6.9
To use the AKF18 with pre-A5000 computers, we advise using a VIDC
enhancer (available once again through Archive − see page 10) and the
software on Careware 18.
6.9
 •    Almanac − This is a Desktop Organiser from Stallion Software. It
features dairy events, anniversaries, job scheduler, correspondence
logging, address book, linking between entries and filtering. Almanac
costs £60 (+£2 p&p) +VAT from Stallion Software.
6.9
•    Annual Service Kit − I thought it would be good to remind owners of
A310/410/420/440 machines about changing fan filters and batteries.
There are two reasons for the reminder. The first is that I have just
discovered that if your batteries give up the ghost, when RISC OS 3
tries to start up, it will fail the start-up test and you will think
your computer has suffered some terminal illness. Secondly, Acorn have
just increased the dealer price of the fan filters by 273% (yes, the new
price is 3.73 times the old price)! So when our current stock is
finished, we will have to increase the price of the annual service kits
(fan filter + batteries) from £3 to £6! (I think it would be better to
buy the batteries from your local shop and vacuum your existing fan
filter and wash it in a mild soapy solution. Ed.)
6.9
•    Archive Arcscan files − Readers may not be aware that if you have a
copy of ArcScan III from Beebug (£14 through Archive) you can buy a copy
of our Shareware Disc 7 which has the (virtually) up-to-date files for
the six volumes of Archive magazine. These files have been prepared
faithfully, month by month for many years now by Eric Ayers, one of our
longer-standing Archive readers. Thanks very much, Eric!
6.9
We have been asked why we don’t put the ArcScan files on the monthly
program disc every month. This is partly because Eric needs time to
prepare them. The magazine is finalised and goes to the printers on a
Tuesday, the Price List is finished and goes to the printers on the
Thursday, (I collapse in a heap on Friday) and the magazine goes out to
subscribers on the Tuesday so there isn’t a lot of time to get the
ArcScan files prepared! We do put updates on the monthly disc every now
and then when there is enough space. However, at any time, you can send
in your Shareware 7 disc and have it updated with the latest Arcscan
files − a pound for admin would be appreciated but isn’t obligatory.
6.9
•    ArcScan III − Risc Developments’ database now has datafiles for all
Acorn’s manuals, including the RISC OS 3 PRM and also Acorn’s DDE and
the Fortran compiler documentation. ArcScan III is £12.81 +VAT or £14
through Archive.
6.9
•    Arcventure III − The Vikings − Sherston Software have released their
educational package aimed at 7−11 year olds who are studying the
Vikings. The children join a simulated archaeological dig at Coppergate
in York (Jorvik). The price is £31.95 +VAT from Sherston or £35 through
Archive.
6.9
•    ARM3 price drop − We still have some of the ARM3’s (for the pre-A5000
computers) that do not have a socket for a floating-point accelerator
chip so we are selling them off at £180 each (while stocks last). If you
want one fitted into an A3000, it costs £265 but that includes the cost
of collecting your computer, removing the ARM2, mounting a socket,
putting in the ARM3 and sending it back to you.
6.9
•    AutoCopy − Anyone having to copy large numbers of discs will be
pleased to hear about Look System’s latest product − AutoCopy. This is a
multitasking application for use with our Xpress autoloaders (see
overleaf for special offer) or the new budget autoloaders (also see
overleaf) or with the Ventuno copiers that we used to supply. It will
copy a large range of disc formats, e.g. DFS, ADFS, MS-DOS, etc.
6.9
There are four copy modes which allow AutoCopy to cater for a wide
variety of disc duplicating needs. These are source copying (one master
disc, many copies), backup copying (many master discs, many copies),
image copying (one disc image, many copies) and batch copying (many disc
images, many copies) − a disc image is a copy of a master disc which has
already been read into memory or stored on another medium such as a hard
drive. If required, disc images can be compressed when memory is
limited.
6.9
When discs are copied, they are formatted, copied and verified in a
single pass to improve the speed of throughput. However, if quality
assurance is the most importance factor, discs can also be verified in a
second pass.
6.9
If required, Archimedes disc ID’s can be updated and user functions that
are written in Basic can also be added to extend AutoCopy’s facilities.
The AutoCopy software costs £350 from LOOKsystems.
6.9
(A text file of the complete specification of AutoCopy is included on
the monthly program disc.)
6.9
•    Auto-loading Disc Copier − Any day now (we hope!) we will be getting a
new budget-price auto-loading disc copier. The price is less than half
the price of the Xpress copier that we have been selling for several
years now. Admittedly, it will only handle 3½“ discs but if you don’t
need to copy 5¼” discs, you can save yourself over a thousand pounds!
The price is just £1150 inc VAT through Archive compared with £2750 for
the Xpress copier (but see the special offer below). This price includes
(a) software to enable it to run on a PC compatible computer, (b)
single-tasking software for use with Archimedes computers and (c) a
serial cable to connect it to an Archimedes computer.
6.9
If you want to run it on an A5000, you really need a floppy drive
extension cable (£18) as the cable is a bit too short to plug directly
into the socket on the main p.c.b. If you only want to copy up to 800Kb
Archimedes and 720Kb PC formats, you can run it on one of the old
Archimedes machines (A310/410/420/440/540) but you will need an extra
hardware interface and cable costing £50 through Archive. If you do want
to copy 1.6Mb and 1.44Mb (PC) formats and you don’t want to tie up an
A5000, it will be possible to use an A3010/3020/4000 but it needs some
work doing on the auto-loader software and maybe even a bit of a fiddle
on the hardware but we haven’t finalised this. (If you are interested,
ring us and we’ll let you know how far we have progressed with it.)
6.9
The single-tasking software allows you to do basic copying but if you
want multitasking software with all sorts of batch copying facilities
then Auto-copy from LOOK Systems is £350. (LOOK Systems works in the
same office building as Norwich Computer Services − although there is no
financial link between the two companies (!) − so we can dispatch
AutoCopy at the same time as the autoloader if you send one cheque for
£350 made out to LOOK Systems and another to Norwich Computer Services
for £1150 plus whatever interface/cable you want.)
6.9
•    Autoloader special offer! £1,000 off! − We have an auto-loader in
stock that is six months old although it is virtually unused. It was
returned by a customer because of the length of time we took to develop
the interface that it needs to be able to work with one of the older
Archimedes computers (i.e. pre-A5000). With the coming of the ‘half-
price’ Autoloaders (see above), we suspect that this Xpress copier would
be difficult to sell at or even near full price! We have decided to cut
our losses and sell it at £1750 instead of the full £2750. This is a
complete price including cables, interface and single-tasking software.
This autoloader can also copy 5¼“ discs if a suitable drive is purchased
(costing £320 through Archive).
6.9
•    Axis − This is a shoot’-em-up game set in a maze filled with tanks,
gun emplacements and end-of-level bonuses. In later levels, there are
‘cloaked’ tanks, electric fences and other hazards that make finishing
the game quite a puzzle. It costs £24.99 inclusive from TBA Software.
6.9
•    BASIC VI manual − Acorn have now reprinted the BASIC manual but have
included features relating to BASIC VI. The Archive price is £20
including p&p.
6.9
•    BBC Master128 is no more! − Acorn say they have ceased production of
the Master128 because of rising costs and difficulty of supply of
certain parts. Acorn still have some in stock which should provide
enough to supply orders for a few months to come.
6.9
•    Blood Sport − Matt Black have produced a budget-priced game (£9.99 +£2
p&p, no VAT) which will appeal to “fans of the beat-’em-up genre”. It is
a martial arts simulation for one or two players.
6.9
•    CardMania is a two-disc pack from C.I.S. with four card games − Gin
Rummy, Chinese Patience, Two-pack Clock Patience and Cribbage. It costs
£19.95 from C.I.S. or £18 through Archive.
6.9
•    Careware disc pricing − Because of increase in costs of overheads, we
have reluctantly had to increase the amount that we charge for admin on
Careware discs. This means that of the £5 which you pay, £2 (less the
VAT) goes towards admin leaving £3 to send to charity. Hitherto, we have
effectively been subsidising the charity payments by only taking out £1
of the £5.
6.9
The amounts raised for charity through Careware and charitable sales of
secondhand equipment through Archive have been 1989/90 − £19,625, 1990/
91 − £17,847 and 1991/92 − £13,005. In our 1992/93 year, we have so far
raised £11,781 but the accounting year runs to the end of June.
6.9
Our grateful thanks go to Archive subscribers from the various charities
that have benefitted over the last few years.
6.9
Don’t forget that if you have old Archimedes hardware or software that
we can sell for charity, all you have to do is send it in to the Archive
office. Thanks.
6.9
•    CD-ROM drives − Cumana have launched a new CD-ROM drive which has a
double-speed mode and is able to handle multi-session PhotoCDs. The 600
series drives offer an average access time of 295 ms and a maximum data
transfer rate of 307 Kb/s. Its 256Kb buffer enhances the performance of
the drive. It also comes with software to play audio CDs. The price is
£429 +VAT to education (education price through Archive is £515 inc VAT
& carriage) or £609 +VAT to the end user (£590 inclusive through
Archive).
6.9
(The Chinon standard speed drives we have been selling for a while now
are on offer at the moment at £420 inclusive through Archive.)
6.9
•    Chemistry is a budget package for Chemistry teachers from a new
software house called PTW Software. For £15 inclusive, the package
includes a site licence. The contents of the package are a screen font
which includes subscripted numbers as used in chemical formulae, 150Kb
of drawfile clipart and an application which is based around the
periodic table of the elements.
6.9
•    Christian clipart − We mentioned Ian Gooding’s Christian clipart last
month and it drew quite a lot of interest. Ian has extended the range a
bit further. The titles available at present: (1) Christmas Story; (2)
Christmas Symbols; (3) Easter − story of death & resurrection, symbols
of new life; (4) Harvest; (5) Christian Symbols − the rest of the church
year; (6) Money, Poverty & War; (7) Environment − pollution, factories,
forests; (8) Mission & World Scene − missionary, global and Third World
issues; (9) Baptist History & Membership; (10) Apologetics − questions &
sceptical views, proofs for God; (11) Evangelism; (12) Lifestyle − vices
and virtues, stress and the rat-race; (13) Banners − pictures with blank
areas for text, billboards, animals, people; (14) Borders; (15)
Editorial Flair − pencils, telephones, sissors, arrows, stars; (16)
Illuminated Letters; (17) Adults & Youth; (18) Children & Families; (19)
Celebration − parties of all kinds, food, fun; (20) Music − instruments,
players, singers, musical notes; (21) Leisure − outings, sport,
gardening & flowers; (22) Weddings; (23) OT Stories − from Adam to Amos;
(24) NT Stories − Gospels and Acts; (25) NT Parables & Sayings; (26)
Bible Maps − Holy Land, Temple; (27) History, Prophecy & Bible Study −
charts, outlines, fulfilments, Bible books; (28) OT Background &
Archaeology; (29) NT Background & Archaeology; (30) Sideliners − figures
who shout messages from the sidelines, speech bubbles; (31) Good News
Bible OT stories from the Books of Moses; (32) GNB OT stories from rest
of OT; (33) GNB NT stories up to Holy Week; (34) GNB NT stories from
Holy Week through Acts; (35) GNB texts from the OT, each text with
illustration; (36) GNB texts from NT, each text with illustration. The
clipart is in sprite, drawfile and Artworks formats. The discs are £7.99
each plus £2.50 p&p per order. For a full catalogue, write to Ian
Gooding, 18 Larksfield, Covingham, Swindon, SN3 5AD.
6.9
•    Compose World − This is described by its publisher, Expressive
Software Products, as a musical exploration program. Phrases of music
are represented by pictures or words and these phrases can then be built
up, block by block. It is Midi compatible and can be used by all ages
from 5 upwards. It includes a phrase editor so that you can build up
music from note level − although no musical notation appears anywhere.
Compose World costs £48 +VAT from ESP. This price includes a site
licence.
6.9
•    CSVtoText − This application (which was reviewed last month on page
71) has been updated and improved as a result of user feedback. Also,
the rights to the program have been transferred to Dabhand Computing who
will be selling it at £15 +VAT.
6.9
•    Dragonball − This is an Arkanoid look-alike from TBA Software. It is
said to retain the look-and-feel of the arcade game. It costs £15.99
inclusive from TBA Software.
6.9
•    DTP booklet (free!) − The report that Archive commissioned into the
relative merits of Macs, PCs and Archimedes computers for doing DTP is
still available free of charge to subscribers − or indeed to anyone who
is interested! In the year since it was first published, the prices have
changed quite a bit so we have printed an update to the comparative
prices table and include that as an extra sheet in the booklet. Because
the comparison is of general interest, I have printed a copy of it in
this issue − see page 15.
6.9
•    EMU for Acorn machines − Cumana have launched a new multiple interface
for A3000/3010/3020/4000 computers. The Expandable Multi-Use interface
is designed to allow seven different interfaces to be connected to the
single mini-podule expansion slot. The baseboard, which comes complete
with user port, can be upgraded to accommodate IDE, Midi, analogue, SCSI
and Cumana’s own Companion interfaces. The baseboard and user port costs
£51.02 +VAT (educational price £49 +VAT) from Cumana.
6.9
•    E-Numix is a mathematical strategy game for one or two players,
specially designed to aid and enhance the manipulation and processing of
numerical equations and calculations. It involves a ‘Scrabble©’-like
board. You are given a random set of numbers in each turn and, playing
either against the computer or another player, you have to gain control
of the board and obtain the highest possible score. E-Numix costs £24.95
from C.I.S. or £23 through Archive.
6.9
•    Foundation Calligrapher − This is a writing tutor package from Design
Concept for use in primary schools. The idea is that it illustrates on
the screen the motions required for each letter to be formed. It takes
place slowly enough for the children to copy the motions. It uses a
special font designed for the ‘Foundation of Writing: LetterForms’
Scheme. Foundation Calligrapher costs £15 from Design Concept and
requires at least one member of the Foundation font family to be
available, costing £8. (Carriage on all orders is £2. No VAT is
charged.)
6.9
•    Full Phase is the latest in a series of Phases packages from Northwest
SEMERC’s. It is a talking wordprocessor (the speech can be switched
off!) enabling young pupils to combine text and graphics. Talking WP has
been shown to be a very powerful tool, particularly in helping children
with dyslexia. Full Phases includes a word list facility so that
children can pick up words from a list on screen and place them in their
text. The word lists are editable by the teacher or parent. It can also
be used with an Oldham Overlay Keyboard. Full Phases is available from
Northwest SEMERC for £28 +VAT +p&p.
6.9
•    Genup Lite − This application from APA Multimedia allows you to
compile your Genesis applications to become “fast, small, network
compatible and fully indexed”. It consists of a compiler and run-time
code, a fast indexer allowing users access to the Genup Lite
‘Supersearch’ facility, example applications and !Bookmark − a utility
allowing users to mark resources for later use. Genup costs £79 +VAT
from APA Multimedia Ltd. There is an education price of £49 +VAT and
they also do site licences.
6.9
•    GreyHawk is a grey-scale video digitiser aimed at DTP users. Most
colour digitisers can only provide 16 or 64 grey-levels but this
dedicated grey-scale digitiser produces full 8-bit (256 grey level)
images. It makes use of CC’s ScanLight Plus software with all the image
manipulation that it provides. The real-time screen display is in 16-
grey levels but ColourCard (or G8/16) owners can display the full 256
grey levels and Impression II users can get simulated 256 grey levels by
using enhanced graphics (dithering). The half-width podule has a BNC
input socket and takes signals from any PAL composite source. The
GreyHawk digitiser costs £99 (+ £6 carriage) +VAT from Wild Vision or
£115 through Archive.
6.9
•    Guardian Professional − Digital Phenomena who launched a PD virus
protector called Guardian3 (available on Archive program disc 6.3) have
now produced a commercial version with a range of extra utilities
including a disc sector editor. Even with all the extra utilities, it is
still only £9.95 (inclusive) from Digital Phenomena. They also do an
educational site licence for £24.95.
6.9
•    Humanoids & Robotix − Remember Defender on the BBC Micro? Or Minerva’s
Orion on the Archimedes? Well, C.I.S. have produced a Defender look-
alike called Humanoids.
6.9
Robotix, on the other hand is a shoot-’em-up, with you in the middle of
the screen being attacked from all directions by various robot-like
creatures.
6.9
The two come together on one disc for £19.95 from C.I.S. or £18 through
Archive.
6.9
•    Image Animator − This application from Iota Software allows you to
drop sprites or drawfiles onto a film window, frame by frame, until you
have a complete cartoon. You can edit sections of the cartoon, splice
it, etc. The price is £69 +VAT or £75 through Archive. A site licence
version is available for £199 +VAT or £210 through Archive.
6.9
•    Image Gallery − This is a CD-ROM with over 1,100 high quality colour
images, each stored twice, at full size and at reduced size to allow
quick previewing of the images. The images cover a wide range of subject
including transport, animals, plants, people and buildings. The disc
comes with Archimedes search and retrieval software to aid you in
finding the picture you want. The price is £45 +VAT from Eesox.
6.9
•    KeyCount − Anglia Television have produced a spreadsheet/graphs
package for use in primary schools. It comes complete with a disc of
example sheets to show the possibilities within the classroom of a
spreadsheet application. It is linked with the Key-series and Keynote
datafiles can be loaded straight into KeyCount. It costs £32.50 +VAT
from Anglia Television. They also have a range of site licence prices.
6.9
•    Killerbugs is a space-invaders look-alike from C.I.S. The graphics and
sound effects are very good. The price is £19.95 from C.I.S. or £18
through Archive.
6.9
•    Landmarks Elizabeth I − Longman Logotron have released another of
their Landmarks history series. This time it’s Elizabeth I. The price is
£24 +VAT from Longman Logotron or £26 through Archive.
6.9
•    Mac SCSI drives − The pricing on SCSI drives fluctuates rather a lot
but currently we can do the following drives, listed below. (The prices
in brackets include Morley SCSI podule − uncached for drives up to 200M
and cached for 560Mb and 1Gb. You can compare prices with the Morley
drives below.)
6.9
    80Mb Internal − £260  (£420)
6.9
    120Mb Internal − £340  (£500)
6.9
    200Mb Internal − £460  (£620)
6.9
    560Mb Internal − £840  (£1060)
6.9
    1000Mb Internal − £1040  (£1260)
6.9
    80Mb External − £390  (£550)
6.9
    120Mb External − £470  (£630)
6.9
    200Mb External − £590  (£750)
6.9
    560Mb External − £970  (£1190)
6.9
    1000Mb External − £1170  (£1390)
6.9
These are all fast, good quality drives so they represent very good
value for money.
6.9
We also have one 245Mb external Atomwide drive available for £650.
6.9
•    MineHunt − This is a game for the PocketBook! (The first one?)
Identify the squares that are clear or contain a mine. MineHunt is
available for £5 inclusive from Dawes Computer Consultants Ltd.
6.9
•    Mini Expansion Adaptor − Pineapple Software have produced an interface
that provides a 16-bit external podule slot for A3000/3010/3020/4000. On
the A3000, it gives you a second external connector and on the others it
will allow A3000-type external podules to be fitted. You should note
that it only provides access to the 8-bit bus not the full 16-bit bus.
Pineapple say, “There are a number of products that will only run on the
A3000 by using the external socket, and this new card will enable most,
if not all, of those products to work with the newer range of
computers.”
6.9
•    Monthly Program Disc − Although I try to put a list of the contents of
the monthly program disc on the Price List, I thought it might be useful
to mention each month what was on last month’s disc! So, on the May disc
(6.8) were: (1) PipeLine Column files, (2) ROM speed test programs, (3)
Perform − Rhapsody file player, (4) SmoothM − a utility for mouse
movement averaging for use in art packages and (5) some modified
toolsprites and high resolution icon sprites.
6.9
•    Morley SCSI drives − There has been some re-pricing of the Morley SCSI
drives. These come complete with SCSI interface.
6.9
    40Mb Internal − £340
6.9
    80Mb Internal − £510
6.9
    240Mb Internal − £740
6.9
    40Mb External − £430
6.9
    80Mb External − £590
6.9
    240Mb External − £810
6.9
•    Parallel port SCSI adaptors − Atomwide have produced a second version
of their parallel port SCSI adaptor. Their Mono/SCSI interface (£55
through Archive) simply provides a SCSI interface through a
bidirectional parallel port (i.e. A3010/3020/4000/5000 and A4) but does
not allow for using a printer or a dongle on the same port. The newer
Printer/SCSI interface which is £79 +VAT from Atomwide or £83 inclusive
through Archive, has two connectors, one for SCSI and one giving the
through connections needed for a printer. This also means that you can
connect a dongle in series with the printer connector − which was a
major frustration with the earlier Mono/SCSI interface. Another first
for Atomwide! (See the File Transfer article on page 55 for more
details. Ed.)
6.9
•    Payroll Manager − Silicon Vision have produced a RISC OS application
to handle payroll functions including the latest budget changes.
Features include weekly/monthly wages, book or percentage values, wage
slips, cash breakdown, P14/P60, pension deduction, holiday pay,
selection for tables A, B or C, etc. The price is £99.95 inc VAT from
Silicon Vision.
6.9
•    Photopia is an image processor from C.I.S. It allows you to manipulate
256-colour images (not 16-colour) and offers such features as colour
swap, solarize, negative, convert to 64-colour, convert to B&W, colour
invert, brightness, saturation and contrast control, greyscale, anti-
alias, wash, pixellate, linear fade, radial fade, mirror (X and Y), 180°
rotate, ripple effect and more besides. It costs £14.95 from C.I.S. or
£14 through Archive. At that price, it represents an excellent
introduction to image graphics.
6.9
•    PrimeWord − Minerva have launched a font-based RISC OS wordprocessor
aimed at the primary school market. It is configurable so that it can be
used at a range of different levels and can handle multiple documents
and multiple views per document. Frequently used commands and features
are accessed directly via a button bar. PrimeWord costs £60 +VAT from
Minerva (£65 through Archive) and there is a primary site licence for
£90 +VAT (£100 through Archive) and a secondary site licence for £240
+VAT (£265 through Archive).
6.9
•    Real McCoy 4 − The Fourth Dimension have released the fourth of their
Real McCoy series of games compilations. This one contains Grievous
Bodily ’ARM, Galactic Dan, X-Fire and Cataclysm. It costs £34.95 inc VAT
from the Fourth Dimension or £32 through Archive.
6.9
•    Revelation 2 price drop − The price of Revelation 2 has dropped to £76
+VAT or £82 through Archive. The CD-ROM version is £99 +VAT or £107
through Archive. The price of Revelation ImagePro is £139 + VAT or £150
through Archive. It was the ImagePro version that was reviewed by
Gabriel Swords last month but Revelation 2 includes a very large
proportion of the features of the ImagePro version, so for just over
half the price, it is well worth considering.
6.9
•    RISC OS 3 Programmer’s Reference Manuals are here! − The long-awaited
RISC OS 3 PRM’s are now available from stock at Norwich Computer
Services. The full price is £99 (zero VAT) but they are so heavy that
the Archive discount is more than swallowed up in carriage charge. The
Archive price therefore is £100 inclusive of carriage.
6.9
The manual has been totally restructured to take account of the
differences between programming for RISC OS 2 and RISC OS 3 and is now
over 3,000 pages long − almost double the size of the original PRM.
6.9
The manual is contained in four bound volumes plus an additional index
volume. They are ‘perfect’ bound, not ring bound, sadly! They are held
in a cardboard library case so that they will be self-standing on your
bookcase or shelf − if it’s strong enough to take the weight − 7.2kg! It
will also include a newly revised RISC OS Style Guide, available from
the autumn. (Those who buy the new PRM before this date will be sent a
copy of the Style Guide as soon as it is available.)
6.9
As an added bonus, Acorn we have included many programming examples in
the text, and there are also detailed sections describing ways to
exploit the various aspects of programming for RISC OS.
6.9
•    RISC OS 3 Programmer’s Reference Manual as an upgrade − Upgrades for
existing owners of the RISC OS 2 PRM are available for £59, plus £4
postage and packing, from Vector Services. Cheques should be made
payable to “Acorn Direct” and the index front cover of the old manual
only should be sent as proof of ownership of the RISC OS 2 version.
6.9
•    Sea, Trade & Empire is Anglia Television’s latest set of curriculum
datafiles for use by schools who are using Key, Keynote or KeyPlus. It
is aimed at History Key Stage 3, Britain 1750 to 1900 and costs £22 +VAT
from Anglia Television.
6.9
•    Serpents is an arcade action game with over forty levels of “non-stop
arcade action, some easy, some tricky and some positively mind-bending
with a combination of speed and puzzle elements.” It bears some
resemblance to Pacman but the object you direct around the maze is a
worm-like being of variable length and it has to eat or be eaten by
other similar animals. Serpents costs £19.95 from CIS or £18 through
Archive.
6.9
•    Small Steps is a package from Resource aimed at primary and special
needs. It breaks down each National Curriculum attainment target in
Small Steps and helps you with its administration and record-keeping.
The first pack is available now: English, Maths and Social Development
levels 1, 2 and 3. It costs £99 +VAT for a single user and £199 +VAT for
a site licence. A second pack covering History, Geography, Technology,
Music and Art at the same levels is in preparation. It will cost £49
+VAT for a single user or £99 +VAT for a site licence.
6.9
•    SongBook is a set of original and educational songs from EMR based on
their Storybook sets. These are aimed at 3 to 10 year olds and special
needs pupils. Each set of five songs costs £24.95 +VAT from EMR.
6.9
•    SuperSnake is another budget arcade game. It is an up-to-date version
of the ever-popular snake game. It has 20 levels for you to cope with
and even has a two-player option so that you can pit your wits against a
friend instead of the computer. SuperSnake costs £4.99 inclusive from
Digital Phenomena.
6.9
•    Talking PenDown is our second talking wordprocessor this month.
PenDown, which is well known in the education world, is now available
with speech facilities added. The complete package, which needs no extra
hardware, costs £64 +VAT or £69 through Archive. Existing PenDown users
can upgrade for £32 +VAT by contacting Longman Logotron directly (site
licences can be upgraded for £64 +VAT).
6.9
•    Taxan 789 − Thanks to Mike Lane (see Comment Column on page 50) the
Taxan 789 has been brought to our notice as a good monitor to use with a
G8/16 or a ColourCard. It has a dot pitch of 0.28mm (same as 9060 and
Cubscan 1440) but its frequency scanning range is 30 to 60 kHz, which
means that it can cope with some of the higher resolution 256 colour
modes that the other monitors can’t manage. Also, it is cheaper! The
Archive price is £440 (cf £600 and £480 for the 9060 and 1440
respectively).
6.9
•    The Hacker − This is the only currently available competitor to Games
Wizard. This software from Doggysoft allows you to change the number of
lives, find passwords and so on. It sounds as if it needs a bit of
technical know-how to use for creating your own cheats but it comes with
ready-made cheats for well over fifty games. It costs £5 inclusive from
Doggysoft (but cheques should be made payable to “A Clover”).
6.9
•    Time-Traveller are ESM’s educational history packs. The latest one to
be released is aimed at children in Key Stage 3. It is entitled The
Making of the United Kingdom and covers 1500 to 1750. It costs £39.50
+VAT from ESM or £43 through Archive. The price includes a site licence.
6.9
•    Topographer is the latest release from Clares. It is an innovative
piece of software that allows you to draw 2D maps in Ordnance Survey
style and then create a 3D picture of the terrain viewed from any
position − sounds a wonderful aid for geography teaching amongst other
things. The price is £79.95 inc VAT or £75 through Archive.
6.9
•    Training courses − Minerva are now offering a one-day Artworks
training course at their training centre for £110 +VAT.
6.9
(We haven’t had much response to our offer of putting on courses here in
Norwich. Unless we hear from you soon, we’ll have to drop the idea. You
can phone in your requests if you prefer.)
6.9
•    VIDC Enhancers − Put the flag out! We now have stocks of VIDC
enhancers again so that A310/410/420/440 owners can have some improved
video modes and can use monitors that don’t run down to the low
frequencies that mode 12, etc use − e.g. Eizo F340iW, F550iW and T560iT
or Taxan 795, 789, etc. We have been able to keep the price down to £28
but that does not include the software that runs them. That has been put
into the public domain by Atomwide and we have put it on Careware disc
18 which costs £5 (of which £3 goes to charity).
6.9
•    WIMP Programmer’s Toolkit is Risc Developments’ collection of twelve
programs for the development and debugging of Wimp programs. It now
includes Acorn’s FormEd program supplied under licence. It costs £19.95
inc VAT from Risc Developments.
6.9
•    WIMP Programming for All is the title of a relatively new book (but
now revised to relate specifically to RISC OS 3) from Risc Developments
written by Lee Calcraft and Alan Wrigley. It costs £12.95 and there is a
disc at £4.95 which contains all the programs listed in the book.
6.9
•    Woodland is a CD-ROM from APA Multimedia. It has “thousands of pages
of detailed information” including sounds samples, which provides an
exploration of British woodlands and their bird, animal and plant life.
It is optimised for use across networks and comes with a network site
licence. Woodland costs £150 +VAT from APA Multimedia Ltd.
6.9
•    Woodland Junior is a floppy-disc version of Woodland from APA
Multimedia. It is installable onto hard disc and requires 6Mb of free
space. It costs £79 +VAT from APA Multimedia Ltd and is upgradable to
the full version. There is an education price of £49 +VAT and they will
also do site licences.
6.9
•    Words Disc − The Archive Words Disc for issues 6.5 − 6.8 is now
available, price £2.
6.9
•    Zool is a new arcade game from Gremlin Graphics. Zool is, apparently,
a Ninja of the Nth dimension who is “an interstellar cosmos dweller,
quicker than a flash and sharper than the seven samurai”! Whatever he
is, Zool is certainly the “game of the moment” in the Beverley
household. (I used to think we only had two children but the average
number of children in the house at the moment is about four or five and
the power-amplified Zool-assisted output of the Archimedes sound system
has to be heard to be believed!) Zool costs £25.99 from Gremlin Graphics
or £24 through Archive.
6.9
Review software received...
6.9
We have received review copies of the following: Acorn Education
Directory CD-ROM (e), ArcTrack & SatPack 1 for comparison (see comment
on page 51), ArtSchool (ea), Axis (g), BookStore (e), CardMania (g),
Chemistry (e), Choices (e), Christian Clipart discs 5 & 15, Compose
World (em), E-Numix (e), First Logo (e), Full Phase (e), Games Wizard
and The Hacker for comparison (g), Humanoids & Robotix (g), Insight (e),
Ixion (g), Joysticks Interfaces: Leading Edge and Magnetic Image for
comparative review (g), KeyCount (e), Killerbugs (g), Mini Expansion
Adaptor (H), Numerator Workcards (e), Picture It! (e), Punctuate (e),
Real McCoy 4 (g), Screenplay Training Video (g), Sea, Trade & Empire
(e), Serpents (g), Soapbox (e), Splash (ea), SpySnatcher (g), Squish
(u), SUMthing (e), Switch (g), ThinkLink (u), Through the Dragon’s Eye
(e), The Spoken Word (e), Tiles (e), TimeTraveller − 1500−1750 (e),
TimeTraveller − Britain since the 30s (e), Woodland CD (e), Zool (g).
6.9
e=Education, h=Hardware, m=Music, g=Game, u=Utility, a=Art  A
6.9
Norwich Computer Services 96a Vauxhall Street, Norwich, NR2 2SD.
0603−766592 (−764011)
6.9
4th Dimension     P.O. Box 4444, Sheffield. (0742−700661) (0742−781091)
6.9
4Mation     11 Castle Park Road, Whiddon Valley, Barnstaple, Devon, EX32
8PA. (0271−25353) (0271−22974) Mike Matson 0825−732679
6.9
Abacus Training    29 Okus Grove, Upper Stratton, Swindon, Wilts, SN2
6QA.
6.9
Acorn Computers Ltd (p13)    Fulbourn
Road, Cherry Hinton, Cambridge, CB1 4JN. (0223−254254) (0223−254262)
6.9
Aleph One Ltd     The Old Courthouse, Bottisham, Cambridge, CB5 9BA.
(0223−811679) (0223−812713)
6.9
Anglia Television      Education
Department, Anglia House, Norwich, NR1 3JG. (0603−615151) (0603−631032)
6.9
APA Multimedia     Unit 8, Henley Business Park, Trident Close, Medway
City Estate, Strood, Rochester, Kent, ME2 4ER. (0634−295222)
(0634−710193)
6.9
Atomwide Ltd     23 The Greenway, Orpington, Kent, BR5 2AY. (0689−838852)
(0689−896088)
6.9
AU Enterprises Ltd     126 Great
North Road, Hatfield, Herts, AL9 5JZ. (0707−266714) (0707−273684)
6.9
Avie Electronics     7 Overbury Road, Norwich. (0603−416863) (0603−788640)
6.9
CIS     Unit 2a, 436 Essex Road, London, N1 3QP. (071−226−3340)
(071−226−3408)
6.9
Clares Micro Supplies     98
Middlewich Road, Rudheath, Northwich, Cheshire, CW9 7DA. (0606−48511)
(0606−48512)
6.9
Colton Software (p24)    2 Signet
Court, Swanns Road, Cambridge, CB5 8LA. (0223−311881) (0223−312010)
6.9
Computer Concepts (p17/18)    Gaddesden
Place, Hemel Hempstead, Herts, HP2 6EX. (0442−63933) (0442−231632)
6.9
Cumana Ltd      Pines Trading Estate, Broad Street, Guilford, GU3 3BH.
(0483−503121) (0483−503326)
6.9
Dabhand Computing     5 Victoria
Lane, Whitefield, Manchester, M25 6AL. (061−766−8423) (061−766−8425)
6.9
Dabs Press     22 Warwick Street, Prestwich, Manchester, M25 7HN.
(061−773−8632) (061−773−8290)
6.9
Dawes Computer Consultants    1 Chartist
Piece, Staunton, Gloucester, GL19 3RU. (0452−840053)
6.9
Design Concept     30 South Oswald Road, Edinburgh, EH9 2HG.
(031−668−2000)
6.9
Digital Phenomena     104 Manners
Road, Southsea, Hants, PO4 0BG.
6.9
Doggysoft     7 Blackhorse Crescent, Amersham, Bucks., HP6 6HP.
6.9
EESOX    5 Hillfield Road, Comberton, Cambridge, CB3 7DB. (0223−264242)
6.9
EMR Ltd     14 Mount Close, Wickford, Essex, SS11 8HG. (0702−335747)
6.9
E.S.M.     Duke Street, Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, PE13 2AE. (0945−63441)
6.9
Expressive Software Products     Holly Tree
Cottage, Main Street, Strelley Village, Nottingham, NG8 6PD.
(0602−295019)
6.9
Gremlin Graphics Ltd     Carver
House, 2−4 Carver Street, Sheffield, S1 4FS. (0742−753423) (0742−768581)
6.9
ICS     1 Kington Road, West Kirby, Wirral, L48 5ET. (051−625−1006)
(051−625−1007)
6.9
Ian Palmer     40 Birch Crescent, Aylesford, Kent, ME20 7QE.
6.9
IFEL     36 Upland Drive, Plymouth, Devon, PL6 6BD. (0752−847286)
6.9
Iota Software Ltd    St John’s Innovation Centre, Cowley Road, Cambridge,
CB4 4WS. (0223−421542) (0223−421543)
6.9
Krisalis Software     Teque House,
Mason’s Yard, Downs Row, Moorgate, Rotherham, S60 2HD. (0709−372290)
6.9
Lambda Publications     194 Cheney
Manor Road, The Green, Swindon SN2 2NZ. (0793−695296)
6.9
Longman-Logotron     124 Cambridge Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge CB4
4ZS. (0223−425558) (0223−425349)
6.9
LOOKsystems (p41)    47 Goodhale Road, Bowthorpe, Norwich, NR5 9AY.
(0603−764114) (0603−764011)
6.9
Matt Black     P.O.Box 42, Peterborough, PE1 2TZ. (0733−315439)
6.9
Minerva Systems     Minerva House, Baring Crescent, Exeter, EX1 1TL.
(0392−437756) (0392−421762)
6.9
Morley Electronics     Morley
House, Norham Road, North Shields, Tyne & Wear, NE29 7TY. (091−257−6355)
(091−257−6373)
6.9
Northwest SEMERC     Fitton Hill CDC, Rosary Road, Oldham, OL8 2QE.
(061−627−4469)
6.9
Oak Solutions (p23)    Suite 25,
Robin Enterprise Centre, Leeds Road, Idle, Yorkshire BD10 9TE.
(0274−620423) (0274−620419)
6.9
Pineapple Software    39 Brownlea
Gardens, Seven Kings, Ilford, Essex IG3 9NL. (081−599−1476)
(081−598−2343)
6.9
PTW Software     72 Frosthole Crescent, Fareham, Hampshire, PO15 6BG.
(0329−281930)
6.9
RESOURCE     Exeter Road, Doncaster, DN2 4PY. (0302−340331)
6.9
Risc Developments     117 Hatfield
Road, St Albans, Herts, AL1 4JS. (0727−840303) (0727−860263)
6.9
Sherston Software     Swan Barton,
Sherston, Malmesbury, Wilts. SN16 0LH. (0666−840433) (0666−840048)
6.9
Silicon Vision Ltd (p14)    Signal
House, Lyon Road, Harrow, Middlesex, HA1 2AG. (081−422−3556)
(081−427−5169)
6.9
Stallion Software Ltd     Arundel
House, Arundel Road, Camden, Bath, BA1 5JX. (0225−339090)
6.9
State Machine     75 Upper Wellington Street, Luton, Bedfordshire, LU1
5AA. (0582−483377) (0582−480833)
6.9
Suitable Software (p27)    136 Carter
Street, Fordham, Ely, Cambridgeshire, CB7 5JU. (0638−720171)
6.9
Suitable Software     8 Jane
Court, Lenah Valley, Tasmania, Australia 7008. (+61−02−285−448)
6.9
TBA Software     24 Eastgate, Aberystwyth, Dyfed, SY23 2AR. (0970−626785)
6.9
Topologika     P.O. Box 39, Stilton, Peterborough, PE7 3RL. (0733−244682)
6.9
Watford Electronics     Jessa House,
Finway, Dallow Road, Luton, LU1 1TR. (0582−487777) (0582−488588)
6.9
W. C. Smith & Associates    40 Royal
Oak, Alnwick, Northumberland, NE66 2DA., (0665−510682) (0665−510692)
6.9
Wild Vision     15 Witney Way, Boldon Colliery, Tyne & Wear NE35 9PE.
(091−519−1455) (091−519−1929)
6.9
Paul Beverley
6.9
Hints and Tips
6.9
•    Anti-aliased fonts − I find that anti-aliasing on a standard
resolution monitor gives a far too blurred image. My hint is to use the
outline version of the System font at an unexpanded point size. A bit of
experimentation is needed to get it right if you habitually use the
screen at some scale other than one to one but when you get it right,
the result is a nice fast, clean and clear font on any DTP or
wordprocessing package while you work on the text. Remember to change
the font to your preferred version for the final print. I am afraid I
can’t remember where I obtained the Outline System font.
6.9
On my Pentoms game, I changed the transfer coefficients to sharpen up
the edges of my fancy fonts but that does not work well/at all on
RISC OS 3. Is there a way of getting a program to automatically check
which OS it is running under so that I can disable this facility where
it won’t work? Or is there another way of sharpening RISC OS 3 fonts?
Yes I know about turning off anti-aliasing but that is not quite the
same thing at all − bits of the letters are missed if you do that.
Simon Anthony, Nottingham.
6.9
• Backing up in one pass − The “Next” slot in the Task Manager can be
set from a !Boot file in RISC OS 3 to make backing up and copying of
full 800Kb discs occur in a single pass. Use the command
6.9
WimpSlot -next 864K
6.9
inside your !Boot file.  Barry Thompson,
6.9
Alternatively (for RISC OS 2 owners) you can allocate more memory to the
Next Task slot by issuing the Wimp_SlotSize SWI call from Basic. All
that you need is a Basic program containing the line:
6.9
SYS “Wimp_SlotSize”,-1,<slotsize>
6.9
where <slotsize> is in bytes (e.g. use 65536 for 64Kb.)
6.9
Simon Moy, NCS.
6.9
•    !Boot files are not strictly necessary within applications. They use
up disc space and slow down the opening of windows (especially over a
network). If an application’s !Boot file only contains the IconSprites
command, then this can be moved to the !Run file, and the !Boot file can
be deleted. The only effect is that the application will not show the
correct icon in the filer window until the application is actually run.
Keith Harja, Derby.
6.9
•    Gods passwords − On this month’s program disc is all you need for
getting the passwords for Gods. Andrew Ferguson, London N15.
6.9
•    Mono TIFF files − In reply to help for Ray Dawson in Archive 6.5 p18
for producing mono TIFF files from B&W scanned sprites. I have used
!MakeTiff version 2.00 by John Kortink to do exactly that. I examined
the resulting Tiff file using Graphics Workshop (under the emulator) and
Translator, and they both showed the converted sprite as a B&W image.
Chris Bass, Grimsby.
6.9
•    Symbols for Impression − When using Impression, or even more so
Junior, it can sometimes be tedious to find a desired symbol from a font
such as Dingbats. Therefore, I have created a number of text files which
can be dragged into any Impression document. The format for such files
is “® ”, without the quotes. This returns the type to its default size,
selects the desired font, inserts the character with ASCII code 174 and
resets the font to its default. N.B. The space at the end is essential.
This is so that one can do a <ctrl-right> to end of text. Without this
space, the font is not reset. I have given a number of pre-prepared ones
to Paul for inclusion on this month’s program disc.  Neil Walker,
Norwich.
6.9
You need to be very careful with this one. I tried it on Impression 2.19
and it gave an internal error and Impression bombed out! This was
because I didn’t have the symbol font in my system. I tried it on
version 2.17 and it complained politely that it didn’t have Symbol font
and let me carry on. I presume that the difference is because
Impression, from 2.18 onwards, has no limit to the number of fonts it
can handle so that part of the code must have been changed. Don’t say we
didn’t warn you! Ed.
6.9
•    Testing printers’ on-line status − Here is a way of testing whether
the printer is on- or off-line:
6.9
 10 *FX 3,10
6.9
 20 PRINT CHR$(0);
6.9
 30 a = INKEY(20)
6.9
 40 a = ADVAL(-4)
6.9
 50 *FX 3,0
6.9
 60 *FX 21,3
6.9
 70 IF a <> 1023 THEN
6.9
 80    PRINT “Printer not on line”
6.9
 90 ELSE
6.9
100   PRINT “Printer on line”
6.9
110 ENDIF
6.9
120 END
6.9
Paul Ribworth, Gloucester
6.9
•    Using high density discs − Until the advent of the A5000, all
Archimedes computers had an 800Kb 3½“ disc drive so the problems of
different disc densities didn’t really arise. With the introduction of
the new A3000 and A4000 series, 1.6Mb drives are becoming more common
and some users are trying to save a few pence by formatting normal
density discs to 1.6Mb.
6.9
Users of BBC and Master computers learned that there is no point in
paying extra for 80 track discs as the cheaper 40 track were actually
identical. The same is NOT true of 800Kb and 1.6Mb discs. The magnetic
coating on high density discs uses finer particles than the coating used
on standard (double density) types. This is designed to accept higher
signal levels without distortion. When the higher capacity format is
used, the drive automatically uses a stronger magnetic field to imprint
the data on the discs surface.
6.9
Sometimes, good quality normal density discs can accept this level but
it does represent a severe overload. Even if all appears well at the
time, the larger particles used in the normal density coating are
frequently unable to retain the high level of magnetism required so it
can leak away in time making part of the data unreadable.
6.9
Also, you should not use high density discs in a normal density drive if
they have previously been formatted to 1.44 or 1.6Mb. The lower flux
levels used for the normal format may not be able to completely erase
the earlier data. This can then ‘break through’ and corrupt data saved
later at the lower flux levels used with the smaller format. It may
sometimes take more than a month for this to happen. So don’t be fooled
into thinking that everything is OK just because all seems to be well
when you first format the disc. Many Archimedes users who have
‘borrowed’ preformatted 1.44Mb discs from work to use in their 800Kb
drives have experienced this problem.
6.9
There is no reason why you cannot use a NEW high density disc at 800Kb,
it will just be more expensive.
6.9
Because of this, it is obviously useless to do what used to be common
practice with the old 40/80 track discs, namely try to format them to 80
tracks and if it didn’t work use them for 40 track. Once you have
attempted to format an 800Kb disc to 1.6 or 1.44 Mb there is no going
back. I have had some success using a tape head demagnetiser to
completely wipe out data on 800Kb discs which had been formatted to
1.6Mb so that they could be reformatted to 800Kb, but not everyone has
one of these.
6.9
PC drives all have a sensor which detects the extra hole in a high
density disc and won’t allow you to specify the wrong format. For some
reason, Acorn didn’t implement this feature on the Archimedes although
the detector is present on all high density drives. It is therefore
possible, by accident, to format a normal density disc to 1.6Mb. On a
PC, to do this you need to drill a hole in the case of the disc so it
can’t happen unintentionally.
6.9
The most pernicious thing about this problem is that it can lead you
into a false sense of security. A normal density disc may format
perfectly to 1.6Mb and, for months, everything will appear to be well.
Then suddenly some of the data may become slightly corrupt, although the
disc may not actually appear to have any errors.
6.9
If your data is precious enough to be worth saving, it’s worth the extra
few pence that the proper discs cost. The only time that I have known
people use normal density discs successfully as high density was with
expensive branded discs costing about £1.30 each. As this is
considerably more than the price of unbranded high density discs, it
seems a foolish risk to take.  David Holden, Sydenham.  A
6.9
Acorn
6.9
New Artwork
6.9
Silicon Vision
6.9
New Artwork
6.9
(Allow it to go over the running heads and footer if appropriate.)
6.9
Replace with DTP sheet 1
6.9
Replace with DTP sheet 2
6.9
CC
6.9
From 6.8 page 21
6.9
CC
6.9
From 6.8 page 22
6.9
But the awkward so-and-so’s want it resetting with new words. I think
the words opposite should fit!?!?!
6.9
Beginners’ Column
6.9
Laura Handoca
6.9
Laura has compiled some questions Q and some hints H from readers. They
are supposed to be for beginners, but I learned one or two things as I
was editing this column! If you feel you can answer any of the questions
and/or fancy writing a short article about any subject that beginners
might appreciate, write in to Laura via the Archive office. Thanks, Ed.
6.9
Q. Logical operators − An explanation of the use of logical operators
could be very helpful in relation to spreadsheets (IF, AND, OR). As an
example, I used to have a breakdown of running costs using Intersheet on
the BBC Master; a row could contain a cell which showed the result of
dividing the mileage in another cell on that row by a number of litres
of petrol. If the number of litres were nil, the formula would
ordinarily fail with an error message − ‘division by zero’. This was
easily overcome by the use of ‘IF’. The formula was changed to ‘IF
litres=0, 0, original formula’. This put a zero in the cell if there
were no litres to use as a divisor, otherwise it calculated the miles
per litre. For reasons which are beyond me, the IF construction doesn’t
seem to work this way in Eureka. No matter what I do, I either get
‘Error in formula’ or else ‘Type conflict in reference expression’. If I
understood the use of this function better, as well as AND and OR, I
could make better use of the program. [J. A. Brook]
6.9
H. Eureka − It doesn’t say so in the manual, but Eureka needs a minimum
of 1024Kb free in order to work. So if, like me, you have a Boot file
which starts the machine with a Printer and Alarm on the iconbar, any
attempt to load the program simply comes up after much whirring and
wheezing with the message ‘Fatal error; initialization failed’. At any
rate, that’s the effect on an A4000 with a hard disc. Dropping the
BJ10ex driver, allowed me to start up in Eureka but when I tried to
chart some figures, up came another error − ‘not enough memory’.
Quitting Alarm let me create a chart, but then I promptly ran into an
error in the manual. This states (page A-39) that to resize the Chart
Window, you should put the pointer on the lower left hand corner, press
<select> and hold and the Window Sizer icon will appear. It will do
nothing of the sort. You have to put the pointer on the lower right hand
corner. It’s a small point, but infuriating when you are trying to get
to grips with something new. [J. A. Brook]
6.9
Q. Boot files − I have an A3000 which I usually use with either Ancestry
or PipeDream 4. From time to time, I see references to Boot files of
which my knowledge is negligible and for which I have not seen any use
to date. Recently, I have upgraded to RISC-OS 3.10, added a hard disc
and CD ROM, and I think there may be some benefit from a Boot file. For
example, initiation for the CD ROM requires minimum setting for Screen
Memory, System Heap/Stack, Module One, Font Cache, and System and
Sprites as well as recommended mode. To run, it requires double clicking
on the Fonts, System and Disc icon. I feel sure that all these
requirements could be met by a Boot file and would appreciate guidance
on how to do it and exactly what is required. [Peter Paddison] [I think
you’ve hit on a beginner’s sore point here; the mere mention of ‘Boot
file’ returns my computer confidence to zero. But never fear − coming
up, hopefully in the next issue, will be an article on this very topic.]
6.9
H. Sprite printing − If you have difficulty printing sprites from inside
Paint (I get dozens of line feeds and then the picture is split across
the perforations) export the sprite into Draw and, making sure your
printer driver is loaded, choose ‘show paper limits’. Then, if you
select your sprite, you can move it about the paper and alter its size
and proportions as you wish. Get it just right and then print. [Edward
Naish]
6.9
H. Moving files − I know that this is covered in the manual but it may
be worth a mention to save someone the trouble and the wasted time!
Should you wish to move files from one floppy disc to another, don’t be
tempted to use the move option as this will involve numerous disc swaps
(and, of course run the risk of loss if the power should fail or some
other ‘nasty’ befall you). As the manual suggests, copy the files and
then delete the original ones afterwards; it’s safer and much quicker,
especially when memory is a little scarce! [Graeme Wallace].
6.9
H.  Desktop Boot files, and the simplicity of saving them, make setting
up your machine much easier. However, one hazard of the simplicity is
incorporating unwanted items in the file. The problem is that the
operating system remembers application Boot files from all sorts of
sources, floppies included. As a result, your machine may boot up
demanding to see some obscure floppy (last seen on that pile, or was it
somewhere else??). The best way to avoid this is to do only the minimum
software installation before you save the desktop Boot file. Also, drop
the file into Edit to check it out before committing yourself. [Graeme
Wallace] [If this is still gobbledygook to you, store up this valuable
advice until later, when you will have read the ‘Beginners’ Guide to
Boot’.]
6.9
H. Creating a 32 bit application from a simple Basic program: although a
Basic program can be run from the command line, it is much neater and
relatively simple to create a single tasking application to run the
program by double clicking its icon from the desktop.
6.9
1) Create a new application directory on your disc starting with ! (so
the computer knows that it is as application) e.g. !Program.
6.9
2) Open this directory (<shift> and double click on !Program).
6.9
3) Copy the Basic program into this new directory and rename it
!RunImage (This is the generally accepted name for a Basic program
within an application.)
6.9
4) Create a !Run file − to do this, load Edit and, from the iconbar
menu, choose <create> and <obey>. Then type:
6.9
Dir <Obey$Dir>
6.9
Run <Obey$Dir>.RunImage
6.9
Save this into the new directory as !Run.
6.9
5) Use Paint to give the application its own icon. Use mode 12, select a
sprite size of 34 pixels wide and 17 pixels high. Select <mask> and
<palette>. When you have designed it, give it the same name as the
application but, in lower case, e.g. !program and save it as !Sprites.
6.9
6) Finally, create a !Boot file − as before, use Edit, <create> and
<obey> and type:
6.9
IconSprites <Obey$Dir>.!Sprites
6.9
Save this into the directory as !Boot.
6.9
Thus, when the application is opened, it contains !Boot, !Run, !RunImage
and !Sprites. The application should show your newly designed sprite on
the desktop and double-clicking on this will run the Basic program. This
technique is suitable for running programs self-designed, typed in from
a magazine or indeed a favourite BBC program if it is in Basic and will
run without an emulator. [David Marshall] [I’m reliably informed (I
hope) that on one of the RISC-OS Applications Discs is an example
showing how to set up an application that will run a Basic program which
needs the BBC emulator.]
6.9
Q. Acorn DTP − When using Acorn DTP, I sometimes get:
6.9
No stack for trap handler:
6.9
error 80000003,pc=
6.9
00000028: registers at
6.9
0006DC1C
6.9
What does this mean? It really confused me and everything seizes up. It
usually happens when I’ve got a document of about four pages with lots
of drawfiles in it. The way I found to combat it was to switch off the
machine completely and start again, then to load the printer driver I
needed. Then I went into the Task Manager and pulled Next (under the
Applications) as large as it would go. I then finally loaded my DTP file
as usual. This seems to work, but what happens with bigger documents, I
have no idea. [Sue Hooper] [The only light I can shed on this is that it
has probably tried to access some memory it wasn’t allowed to use. If
it’s a really persistent problem, try asking Acorn about it!]
6.9
Q. Desktop − Though this is a re-statement of the obvious... If you have
a couple of windows on screen at once which overlap each other so that,
say, the vertical sliders of the bottom window aren’t visible, then you
can still scroll the bottom window vertically by clicking <adjust> on
the horizontal slider and moving the mouse up and down. [Steve Monks]
6.9
Q. Professional printing − I do some desktop publishing (with
Impression) and feel that I am not making the best use of my commercial
printer because I don’t really understand what he does with my material.
What is a bromide and what is the difference between this and a
negative? Why does my printer charge me more to print from a disc
(PostScript file on IBM format disc) than from a jaggy 24-pin printout?
I think that an idea-to-paper guide of what goes on would be most
illuminating. [Christine Shield] [Hear hear! Please, does anyone out
there who has a deep and intimate knowledge of professional printing,
feel they could write an article for beginners? We’d love to hear from
you.]
6.9
Q. !System − How do you know which version of !System you are using? I
cannot find a version number anywhere on it. How do you know when Acorn
update these files? In my opinion, they should send an updated disc to
all their customers! [R. J. Carpenter] (See Simon Moy’s answer below.
Ed.)
6.9
Q. Hard disc management − My hard disc is now full. I have been saving
some space by rigorous culling and by moving some older archive material
to floppies, but could really do with a longer-term solution. What are
my options, with the advantages and disadvantages of each? [Christine
Shield] [An article from someone on the best ways to do mundane things
such as hard disc organization, backing up, and compression of files
would be nice. Any volunteers?...]  A
6.9
!SysMerge and updating !System
6.9
Simon Moy (N.C.S.)
6.9
Let me try to answer R J Carpenter’s question about !System. In fact, it
doesn’t matter which version of !System you have. It’s the contents of
the !System directory that count. !System itself only acts as a way of
telling the computer where to find the really important files which are
stored in the Modules directory inside the !System application
directory.
6.9
The concept behind these modules was described by Richard Hallas in
Archive 6.6 p23. They are essentially there to provide extensions and
updates to the operating system modules (the computer’s ‘house-keeping’
programs) already stored in your computer. (Press <f12> and type Modules
to see a list of these.) As with any computer system, software for the
Archimedes is constantly being updated and improved. Because of this,
Acorn and third-party vendors periodically introduce updated or
completely new modules.
6.9
These new modules are normally supplied in a !System directory when you
buy a new application. Most applications also include a program called
!SysMerge. This program aids the updating process by looking in your
existing !System directory, comparing them with those on the new disc
and adding or updating any modules as required.
6.9
If you buy a new application that comes complete with a new !System
directory and a copy of !SysMerge, double-click on !SysMerge to start
the process. Drag your existing !System directory into the window that
appears. Finally, drag the new !System into this same window and
!SysMerge will update any modules that require updating and add any
modules that are missing from your current !System directory.
6.9
As well as third-party vendors supplying new modules, Acorn periodically
update their own modules. These are normally only distributed to Acorn
dealers and with new software products. As a result of this Norwich
Computer Services created Shareware 17 some time ago. This contains
several commonly-updated and required modules and the !SysMerge
application. It is updated periodically and for those people who already
own a copy, discs can be sent back to us for updating, although we do
request a small charity donation for this.  A
6.9
Language Column
6.9
David Wild
6.9
EdScheme
6.9
One of the things which was put on one side because of my disc problem
was a letter from Lambda Publications, telling me that there is now a
fully RISC OS compliant version of EdScheme. The program is fully multi-
tasking with full use of the mouse within the editor. Edit files can be
dropped into the window and graphics output can be saved as a sprite
file.
6.9
This new version costs £50, including postage or £60 including the book
“The Schemers Guide”. An (English) “Teachers Guide” is available for £5
while an (American) “Teachers Resource Pack” with several hundred pages
of exercises, examples and quizzes costs £25.
6.9
Ray Burcham of Lambda Publications tells me that most interest has so
far come from Germany but I feel that, at the price, it is well worth
trying for anyone with an interest in functional programming, especially
now that the Acorn LISP has now been discontinued and is not being
replaced.
6.9
Add-on programming
6.9
A feature which seems to be becoming more popular is the idea of being
able to write separate procedures for use with specialist software.
Artworks, from Computer Concepts, talks of additional tools being
supplied by other programmers and the Squirrel database offers the
possibility of interaction with modules written in ‘C’ or, presumably,
in the latest version of Pascal.
6.9
I haven’t seen any specifications for the Artworks tool interface but
the notion certainly seems to have useful implications. Writing a whole
program from scratch can be a rather daunting affair but supplying a
single tool module might be well within the capabilities of many more
programmers. It also raises the prospect of potential users advertising
for modules which they need rather than needing to wait until Computer
Concepts can fit it into their schedule.
6.9
I did get a copy of the leaflet from Squirrel about their extension
facilities and I must say that I was rather disappointed, as it didn’t
really seem to tell me anything. My view is that a leaflet like that
should make you feel that the thing advertised will give you
opportunities that you don’t have now, even if it doesn’t tell you how
it all works. I would certainly like to be able to add validation
routines to a database in ways that cannot be pre-programmed by the
software house. It is obviously easy to provide “list” validation, as
almost every database package does that. It ought not to be too
difficult to provide “file” validation, where the acceptable values are
those in another file, but I think it would be very difficult to provide
a pre-written method of validation where the acceptable values vary
according to the values in another field in the same record.
6.9
I have just bought S-Base, from Longman Logotron, and am still
struggling with my first attempts at creating a database. If the program
sells successfully, there could be many opportunities for programmers to
write sub-programs in the ‘S’ language, which seems to be a mixture of
constructs from Basic, Pascal and ‘C’. Anything that promotes
programming on the Archimedes must be a good thing for all readers of
Archive.
6.9
Bits and pieces
6.9
Has anyone found out how to initialise a static variable in the new
version of Pascal? You can do it in ‘C’, and this Pascal compiler uses
the ‘C’ compiler, so there ought to be a way.
6.9
I was very interested in the program which came with the April issue of
Risc User for adding applications to the Resources filing system so that
they appear in the Apps icon on the iconbar. My ideal system would allow
you to “register” applications in this way and further encourage a move
to “Job-based” directories rather than those associated with specific
software. (Re-designing the operating system is easy when someone else
has already done the hard work!)  A
6.9
Oak Solutions
6.9
From 6.8 page 16
6.9
Colton Software
6.9
From 6.8 page 11
6.9
NetManage
6.9
Dave Emsley
6.9
This is effectively the first of Dave’s Networking Column. It takes the
form of review articles of two network supervising packages, NetManage
from Suitable Software and Network Supervisor from AU Enterprises Ltd.
Dave starts with NetManage.
6.9
The task of Network Managing is quite a long and drawn out process. Each
student will require access to the public areas of the network and to an
appropriate area of the network for saving data of their own, the
contents of which need to be structured in a way that is user-friendly
and provides access to !Scrap and other essential files. Any utility
which helps reduce the stressful task of managing a network has to be
worth considering.
6.9
I first saw NetManage demonstrated at BETT 93 on the Acorn stand and it
drew an instant crowd of desperate Network Manager’s all seeking to know
if it would do what they needed. Some of the questions asked prompted
the thought in my head “Why would you want it to do that?”. Because each
Network Manager has different requirements of their management software,
all I can really do is to say whether the software does what I need in
my situation. As I only have access to a Level 3 fileserver, I cannot
comment on how it might work with a Level 4 arrangement.
6.9
First impressions
6.9
The package contains a very plain and unpretentious looking 60 page,
stapled, manual. It was covered in a loose book plastic cover with a
single 800Kb disc inserted into the back of it. As I don’t have a
network at home, I opened the unassuming document and actually started
to read it (something I must admit I don’t normally do, other than to
check on how to back it up!).
6.9
Documentation
6.9
Having used this piece of software, I would say that the documentation
is required reading. There are several very important things to note
before you start to use the programs.
6.9
The first section, entitled “Before you start”, has in it “....network
managers should have a sound knowledge of the processes involved in
managing user accounts on AUN servers and have thoroughly read and
understood the user manuals supplied with their file server.” I don’t
think even the people who wrote the file server manuals understand them!
6.9
The guide gives an example of how a user might set about creating a
working disc, having told you not to use your original. The suggested
working disc has !Printers and !Edit on it. At the end of the setting up
section is a small warning to read the section on user configuration
before proceeding. This is one of the most important parts, particularly
if you intend doing your management from a 1Mb machine.
6.9
The application allows you to set maximum numbers of users in a group,
maximum number of primary users and maximum number of open fileservers.
If these are set ridiculously high, it could cause problems and hang the
machine. Once the system has been configured, it is necessary to quit
the application before using the network. This is documented − but well
hidden.
6.9
There is no index but this really is not a problem as the contents pages
at the front enable the user to find the appropriate sections quickly
and easily.
6.9
Using NetManage
6.9
Once I had created a working disc, configured the system and reloaded
NetManage, I made a copy of the password file, (you can’t be too
careful!) then proceeded to use NetManage. Before using it, the Password
file has to be opened.
6.9
Once opened, the password file has to be searched for a group of users.
The name can include wildcards and all users can be collected by using
the standard wildcard ‘*’.
6.9
One minor niggle here is that once the search has been completed, the
search window should disappear − but it doesn’t!
6.9
The search is quite quick and once it has been performed, the password
file is displayed in a window with icons for the groups and users. These
icons are different depending on privilege.
6.9
This is part of our password file. I have blacked out the system users,
in case any of our students read this. The users Fax and Boot are
locked, users Nine and Gallery are normal and there is a group called
NINE.
6.9
Creating users
6.9
The creation of users is extremely easy, a menu option brings up a
window and single users can be created.
6.9
Using the same window, a text file of users, for example: Six.User1,
Six.User2, Six.User3, etc can be created, simply by dragging a text file
to this window.
6.9
The application also allows the network manager to create the necessary
file structure at the same time as creating the user. This is done by
dragging the necessary contents for the URD to the window. I did this
and clicked create.
6.9
This then created the users but didn’t copy the URD! I removed the users
and their directories, which it had created and then, as a last resort,
read the manual. It requires Reset to be clicked on with <adjust> to
make defaults “sticky”. I did this, recreated the users and it worked
perfectly − a new group of user identities, directories and associated
directory structure created in a relatively short time, certainly
quicker than if I had manually created them all.
6.9
Management of users
6.9
The most obvious management tasks occur at the academic year end, namely
the transfer of tutor group 7ZSa to 8ZSa etc. The easiest way of doing
this so far has been to rename year group Seven as Eight, remove the
year 7 users, i.e. Seven.ZSa, etc and create users Eight.ZSa, etc.
NetManage can allow the manager to copy and move users from one group to
another, in exactly the same way as with files − simply click and drag,
or hold down <shift> to move.
6.9
I tried this and it worked although it did not delete the previous URD,
only copied it and unfortunately it generated an error. I phoned
Suitable Software and reported this to an answering machine. That
evening, on arriving home, a message from Suitable Software was waiting
on my answering machine and, later in the evening, they called back and
we spent some time discussing the application. The response was very
encouraging and they pointed out one or two of the features of the
software that I hadn’t previously encountered. Three days later, I
received another call from Suitable Software saying that they had
rectified the bug and asking if I would be willing to test the new
version thoroughly. That is what I call a rapid response!
6.9
Additional features
6.9
The application has far more features than I have gone into in this
review. The password file or sections of it can be saved as text or CSV
files. CSV files can be used to update the password file, individual
users can be examined and allocated space, etc.
6.9
One of the most useful of the facilities is the ‘tickle’ feature. A
collection of users can have their URDs worked on by simply creating an
obey file of instructions. These are then carried out as if issued from
the URD − a very powerful utility.
6.9
Problems
6.9
Other than the niggles I mentioned earlier, there are a few more things
I would like this application to do. I have detailed them to Suitable
Software who were very keen to hear any constructive ideas. My main
suggestion was that the System user names should not appear unless
specifically configured to do so.
6.9
Summing up
6.9
The documentation for this application is well-written but cheaply
produced. I don’t intend this to be a criticism − far from it − there is
no need for a tool like this to have an expensive, glossy, spiral bound
tome with it. All a Network Manager needs is a simple booklet as
supplied.
6.9
This is an indispensable piece of software for any network manager. It
saves time and solves many of the problems associated with managing a
network of user accounts. As the use of the network grows and more users
demand more space, the opportunity to ‘tickle’ a group of users is going
to be vital.
6.9
NetManage is available for £50 (no VAT) from Suitable Software (UK).  A
6.9

6.9
Network Supervisor
6.9
Dave Emsley
6.9
Having reviewed NetManage I felt that the Network Supervisor collection
of utilities had a lot to live up to. The Network Supervisor is a suite
of utilities each doing a specific task.
6.9
As I said with respect to NetManage, whilst I realise that each Network
Manager has different requirements of their management software, all I
can easily do is to see if the software does what I need in my situation
with Level 3.
6.9
First impressions
6.9
The package consists of an A5 folder with a very thin, glossy sixteen
page manual and a single 800Kb disc inserted into the pocket inside the
front cover. I checked to see if it was copy-protected in any way,
backed it up, write protected the original and stored it safely. The
suite consists of six applications, some of which are not specifically
for the network manager. This information is adequately demonstrated by
the table at the front of booklet:
6.9
Application    Privileged    Logged On
6.9
!NetManage    Yes    Yes
6.9
!NetPass    No    Yes
6.9
!NetProt    No    No
6.9
!NetUser    No    Yes
6.9
!NetUserEd    Yes    Yes
6.9
!Protect    Yes    No
6.9
The booklet gives a clear warning not to let people without System
Privilege have access to some of these applications.
6.9
!NetManage
6.9
According to the blurb in the booklet “...it performs various
housekeeping operations, such as setting station numbers, setting the
server clock, setting the user free space, listing current users and
listing machines on the network. It can send messages to, or log off,
single users or all the users.”
6.9
It sounds useful. After loading it up, the icon appears on the iconbar,
as you would expect. Although there is no action if the icon is clicked
with <select>, clicking with <menu> gives the possible options.
6.9
All of these are very easy to use and virtually self explanatory. Just
one little thing I don’t like was that, to use this application, you
must be logged on as a privileged user. The Set Free Space option then
comes up showing, as a default value, which user you are logged on as. I
would prefer that this came up blank.
6.9
The ‘Current Users’ option is very useful, it provides a list of users
who are logged on and the machines they are logged on to :
6.9
Again that same niggle, the name of the privileged user is displayed.
Why? From the above screen, clicking <menu> makes it possible to Notify
a user, or All users, Log off a user or group of users (Level 4 only,
greyed out on Level 3), and save the data as a text file. The Notify All
and Notify functions arrive at the appropriate station preceded by “From
manager (nnn.sss) :” and “From manager :” respectively − a really nice
touch.
6.9
!NetPass
6.9
This application allows users to change their current password. It
installs itself on the iconbar and a click with <select> opens the
window to allow the password to be changed. It is a simple and user-
friendly application but why install it on the iconbar? Surely all the
application needs to do is open the window, allow the password to be
changed and quit on completion. Also, the application doesn’t allow for
double-entry validation − a major omission, I feel.
6.9
!NetProt
6.9
“...prevents the user receiving unwanted messages.” Yes, it does. This
application installs on the iconbar and if clicked toggles from
unprotected to protected. Personally, I would have liked an icon change
rather than just the word change. This is an ideal application for use
on the fileserver (Level 4) to prevent notify messages hanging it up.
The suggestion in the booklet is that this application could be
available to all, but doing that prevents the use of the Notify and
Notify All functions from !NetManage.
6.9
!NetUser
6.9
“... gives details of the current user’s view of the network.” This
piece of software provides a good deal of information, none of which is
necessary! The information available is only about the current user,
i.e. the one you are logged on as.
6.9
If it were able to step through the users and provided this information
about each, that would be great, or if it allowed me to enter a user
name and then provide the information, that would be good too. As it
stands, it is a piece of software I could do without.
6.9
!Protect
6.9
“...prevents users interfering with the file server whilst it is
running.” Actually, this is a very useful piece of software. It prevents
any student trying to use the fileserver as a computer. At the start, a
logo appears for about 10 seconds, then disappears and the screen
display blanks. If the logo appeared every 20-30 seconds then this would
discourage any possible use of the file server computer as people would
be able to see that the machine was, in fact, switched on and not
waiting to be used. When combined with !NetProt this will ensure
relatively safe operation of a Level 4 fileserver (I believe).
6.9
!NetUserEd
6.9
Just under half of the booklet is devoted to NetUserEd. It installs on
the iconbar and clicking with <select> opens the default file server’s
password file. This is wholly text-based and provides the information in
a straight list, as below:
6.9
From this position, the information can be saved as a text file, users
can be deleted, edited and created.
6.9
Creating or deleting a group of users can be done by creating a text
file and dragging this to the Create User window. This is very
straightforward and easy to do. The same applies to deleting user
groups. The option exists to save passwords and, on Level 3, this is
essential to make any changes permanent. One facility that is missing,
and which I would consider to be very important, is the ability to
create users with a predetermined URD and for this URD to be copied into
all newly created users’ URDs. It does, however, offer the option to
wipe the URD on deletion.
6.9
There is one problem which I keep encountering although this is not a
criticism aimed solely at this particular suite of applications. If one
application is already running and you double-click to load it again, a
second copy of the same application is loaded. This could easily be
prevented and, in my view, any application which does not need multiple
copies of itself should ensure that this does not occur − this should
form part of Acorn’s style guide.
6.9
Summing up
6.9
This is a useful suite of applications, although the application NetUser
seems to me to be fairly useless. Comparing Network Supervisor with
NetManage, from Suitable Software, I feel that NetManage is better
overall as it provides the facility to create URD structures at the same
time as creating the users and has the facility to ‘tickle’ users’
directories. I would like access to both ideally but given a choice, it
would have to be NetManage.
6.9
Network Supervisor is available for £50 (+ £2 p&p) plus VAT from AU
Enterprises Ltd.  A
6.9
Small Ads
6.9
(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)
6.9
•    A310 4Mb RAM, ARM3, RISC-OS 3.1, 40Mb ST506 Hard disc, Brainsoft I/O
podule, Joystick, software, Taxan 770 monitor, £700 o.n.o. Euclid +
Mogul £20. Acorn ANSI C v3 £20. Karma Flight Trainer £10. Acorn PRM v2
£20. Archive issue 1 to current £20. Phone 0272−498531 after 6p.m.
6.9
•    A4 model II (4Mb, 60Mb HD) mains adaptor, manuals, software, soft
case, mouse £1780. 5¼“ disc interface, manual and software £15. 5¼” disc
drive to suit BBC micro or Archimedes with interface £20. PC Emulator
(1.82) £60. Euclid £30. Superior Golf, Trivial Pursuit, Interdictor
(unopened), TurboType, £8 each. Basingstoke 0256−467574.
6.9
•    A410/1, 4Mb RAM, 20Mb hard disc, colour monitor, ARM3, RISC-OS 3, Ext.
floppy interface, 9 pin dot matrix printer, £1000 (o.n.o.). Phone
051−734−5989 after 4p.m.
6.9
•  Acorn DTP with clipart £40. Beebug Star/Epson colour printer driver
£8, GammaPlot £20, System Delta+ £30, Mailshot (for SD+) £15. DR DOS 5.0
(for PC Emulator) £20. Grievous Bodily ’ARM £8, Nevryon £8, Powerband
£8, Computer Concepts ROMs (for CC ROM podule) InterChart £10,
InterSheet £15, SpellMaster £20. Phone 0737−832159 (eves).
6.9
•    Aleph1 PC386 4Mb podule with Cyrix co-processor and Windows software
(v1.0), £325. Oak 150Mb tape drive with 8×150Mb tape cartridges, offers.
Phone Chris after 7pm on 0276−20575.
6.9
•    Computer Concepts Colour Card, £200. Revelation Image Pro £100. Eureka
£85. PinPoint £65. Squirrel £95. All latest software. Phone 0923−820651
after 8p.m.
6.9
•    CVision (TV) digitiser £50, A310 Beebug 5¼“ drive adaptor £20. Phone
0553−675676 after 8p.m.
6.9
•    Hearsay II, never used, £40. Investigator v2.0, never used, £14.
Snippet v1.0, £15. Poster v1.04, £25. Also RISC-OS 3.0 PRM, £25 +
postage. Phone Chris after 7pm on 0276−20575.
6.9
•    Helix Basic. Offers or swap for Beebug ‘C’. Phone 0366−501001.
6.9
•    Pace Dual 40/80 track 5¼“ disc drive, no p.s.u. £30. Phone Laura on
0865−271289.
6.9
•    Panasonic KX-P1124 dot matrix printer, cable, vgc, £150. Herewith the
Clues £10. Corruption £5. Phone Gary on 061−724−4129 after 8p.m.
6.9
•    PC Emulator 1.8, unopened, £70. BBC B Acorn teletext adaptor £50.
Phone 0684−73173.
6.9
•    PRES disc expansion card (A3000) with DFS ROM & 40/80 drive & p.s.u.
£65, Gods, Chocks Away, Saloon Cars, Interdictor 1 & 2 £10 each, FWPlus
£30, Acorn DTP £30. Phone 0745−583930.
6.9
Charity Sales − The following items are available for sale in aid of
charity. PLEASE do not just send money − ring us on 0603−766592 to check
if the items are still available. Thank you.
6.9
Colony Rescue £3, Mad Professor Mariarti £2, Revelation (the game) £2,
Terramex £2, Arcade Soccer £2, White Magic £2, Drop Ship £2, PowerBand
£3.
6.9
(If you have unwanted software or hardware for Archimedes computers you
could donate for charity, please send it to the Archive office. If you
have larger items where post would be expensive, just send us details of
the item(s) and how the purchaser can get hold of them.)  A
6.9
Help!!!!
6.9
•    Archimedes to Mac transfer − It should, in theory, be possible to read
and write a Mac-formatted 42M (or 88M) removable disc on an Acorn
machine. Has anyone done it? Would anyone be prepared to have a go?
Mike Maguire, Aukland, New Zealand.
6.9
•    BBC educational software − This is a plea from a Christian educational
organisation. Has anyone got any BBC (not Archimedes) educational
software that they don’t need any more? If so, could you send it to Dave
Roberts, 24 Pauli Lane, Baildon, Bradford, BD17 7LQ, please? Thank you,
Ed.
6.9
•    C-programming − We have had some requests for articles about using C
to program the Wimp environment. Any offers?
6.9
•    Crystallographic colouring books − Now is the time to raid your
children’s (or grand-children’s) toy cupboard in a good cause. The
British Crystallographic Association (BCA) wants to encourage children
to appreciate the principles of symmetry using ‘Colouring Books’ of
patterns built up on the principles of plane groups, or to use 2 or 3D
‘Construction Kits’ which demonstrate ways to tile the plane or build
space-filling models. There may also be some simple micro-computer
programs which encourage exploration of pattern design.
6.9
The BCA Council has asked me to report to them in November 1993, listing
available materials, and how they might be used.
6.9
I am asking Archive readers for help in this project. Please send me
your suggestions for suppliers and what projects the BCA might support.
Since I work in a research laboratory, I would be particularly pleased
to hear from teachers who may already be using such materials in their
courses. If any of you have contacts in other countries, I would be
interested to learn how they teach their children to enjoy
crystallography.
6.9
Please send suggestions and information to: Kate Crennell, Rutherford
Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, Didcot, Oxon, OX11 0SE. Tel: 0235− 446397.
Fax: 0235−445720. Email: KMC@ UK.AC.RL.ISISEŷ.
6.9
•    Draw/text utilities − There is an increasing range of utilities around
for creating and modifying Draw objects. However, to the best of my
knowledge, there is nothing available for easily producing, in Draw
format, complex text objects which might incorporate subscripts,
superscripts and different fonts, etc. Any ideas or any offers? Brian
Cowan.
6.9
•    Hard disc problems − I recently had a catastrophic failure of the SCSI
hard disc system on my 30-month old A540 (one of the originals).
6.9
One day I turned it off in working order, after my usual *SHUTDOWN
command, and next day, when I came to turn it on, I got the dreaded ‘Bad
Free Space Map’ message. So when I had clicked ‘Cancel’ and got a
desktop without a hard disc icon, I tried *SCSI and *CheckMap from the
command line. This immediately gave ‘Bad Free Space Map’ without even
accessing the disc.
6.9
I then found my original copy of SCSIDM and tried to verify the disc.
Then it read just once from the disc and the computer hung. I had never
tried using SCSIDM before but this did not seem right. I then tried to
format the disc (confident that my backups were in order), but with the
same result as verifying.
6.9
It seemed most likely that the disc had died completely, so I took it to
my local Acorn repairers who quickly confirmed my diagnosis − they could
get no life out of it either, though they did find that the disc was
spinning OK. We agreed that they should replace the disc.
6.9
The system then all worked and there would be no interesting story if
they had not then tried my old dead disc on an external SCSI system. It
also worked fine!
6.9
So what was the problem? Have you ever heard of a similar happening? My
local firm said that they were continually replacing dead hard discs but
had never found a problem with a SCSI interface, and of course they (and
I) had tried wiggling the connections before starting an expensive
replacement exercise.
6.9
Is there any way such symptoms could be caused by software? The evening
before the failure I had spent the time looking through Archimedes World
monthly discs from the last 6 months of last year; this often gives me
(apparently) minor problems because the discs contain archived data and
seem to need ArcFS even when I think I have unpacked them onto my hard
disc.
6.9
Some of the games and demos seem to cause havoc on an A540 but never
before one as bad as this. Usually, pressing <ctrl-break> fixes it. I am
not the first to have such problems, Mr M. Chandler of Surbiton, Surrey,
writes (Archimedes World, Feb 92, p. 58) “... Shortly afterwards,
however, the computer’s 40Mb hard disc refused to work and had to be
sent off for repair...” Sounds familiar?
6.9
Have any Archive readers met such a problem? If so, what should I have
done to rescue my hard disc? I’ve now got a fine new hard disc, which
has been working beautifully for the last two weeks, but the last week
in March was both traumatic and expensive.  Kate Crennell, Didcot.
6.9
•    Impression and graphics − Some time ago I asked if anyone knew of a
way of “pointing” to a graphic in Impression rather than storing it in
the document’s application directory as a drawfile. The problem was that
multiple copies of my College crest were eating up valuable disc space.
One suggestion was to leave blank frames and just drop the graphics in
before printing.
6.9
The perfect solution occurred to me recently. (In true Archimedes
fashion, the flash of inspiration happened while I was in the bath!)
What I needed to do was to turn the crest into a character of a new
font. I did this with David Pilling’s Draw to Font utility. However, an
error occurred when I tried to use the character in a document. It seems
that complex characters can contain too much information to be rendered
by the font manager. Any ideas how I might get round this?  Brian Cowan.
6.9
•    Qume Express − Does anyone out there own a Qume Express laser printer?
If so, I have three spare A4 paper trays that you can have for next to
nothing. In July last year, I ordered a Qume Express dual bin laser
printer from Calligraph.
6.9
I also ordered three spare paper trays from another company which came
within a few weeks. The laser printer, however, is “not quite ready...
there are a few problems with the software”.
6.9
Now I gather that these Qume Express laser printers are never going to
be available in direct drive form! I’m stuck with these paper trays so
if anyone wants them, let me know. Ed.  A
6.9
Advance
6.9
Robert Chrismas
6.9
Acorn’s Advance consists of four programs:
6.9
     • a word processor
6.9
     • a spreadsheet
6.9
     • a database
6.9
     • a graphs package
6.9
The manual calls these programs ‘tools’. Although the tools were written
by different developers they have been designed to work together, to
share data and to look and feel similar to one another.
6.9
Each team of programmers has been able to concentrate on just one or two
tools. The word processor is by Computer Concepts, the database and
graphs by Iota and the spreadsheet by Clares/CRM.
6.9
Designed by a committee?
6.9
It could have been a disaster but it seems to have worked.
6.9
Of course, one of the benefits of RISC OS is that all legal RISC OS
applications have a great deal in common, and the use of standard
filetypes, text, sprites and drawfiles, makes it easy to transfer data
between programs. Advance, however, does offer a little more
integration.
6.9
All the Advance tools share the same clipboard. To transfer data between
two packages, you would normally have to save from one application into
the other. In Advance, you can copy or cut a selection and immediately
paste it into one of the other packages.
6.9
All the tools use the usual keyboard short-cuts for cut, copy and paste.
The use of other keys has been standardised wherever possible. For
example, both the spreadsheet and the database use <f7> for ‘sort ’ and
<f8> sends the selected data to the graphs package. No doubt a good deal
of thought has gone into choosing sensible short-cuts. If other software
developers take this ‘standard’ into account when they assign keys,
users will benefit. On the other hand, this is just the sort of subject
which attracts partisan argument: ‘No, no, swap case must be <ctrl­J>
because ...’
6.9
An attempt has been made to give all the dialogue boxes a similar
appearance. All the tools use the same dialogue boxes for tasks like
scaling the window or selecting colours. However each tool has its own
print dialogue box − this exception is curious but not troublesome.
6.9
One application
6.9
The contents of the Advance directory include, if there is space on the
disc, ‘application’ directories for all the tools. The tool directories
look like applications but they will not work on their own. When Advance
is started, a small, 64Kb program puts the Advance icon on the iconbar.
This program controls the tool programs.
6.9
To start a new piece of work, you use the iconbar menu to create a
document of the right type. The appropriate tool program will be loaded
if it is not already running.
6.9
Each tool requires between 400Kb and 450Kb just to start, with about
another 150Kb for the spelling checker. The ‘minimise memory’ option on
the iconbar menu will remove from memory any tool which does not have a
window open.
6.9
Computer requirements
6.9
On a 1Mb machine, only one tool can be used at a time. You will need at
least 2Mb for comfort. Advance requires over 1Mb of disc space. You can
run it from two 800Kb discs, but a hard disc or at least a 1.6Mb floppy
is more convenient.
6.9
Advance will only run with RISC OS 3.1 (or later). When it is installed,
Advance reads the unique machine serial number built into RISC OS 3.1
and writes this into its software.
6.9
I was concerned that this method of protection would prevent owners from
using the program on a laptop as well as on their main machine. I also
thought it would present problems when users upgraded their machines. In
fact, Advance will run on another machine but with a permanent warning
window. However the licence for a single user clearly says ‘... one
stand-alone Acorn computer system ...’.
6.9
The installation process involved first running Advance so it could read
my machine number, copying it to my hard disc and then copying the word
processor tool into it. I thought this was a bit laborious but when I
complained about it to a friend I was told that a) this was trivial
compared to the sort of thing you had to do on his PC, and b) a program
which would fit on just two discs could not be any good.
6.9
Altering the page layout
6.9
The Word Processor
6.9
The Word Processor is based on Impression Junior. The most significant
difference is in the way frames are handled. There is an ‘Alter Pages’
dialogue box which creates fixed frames. It is similar to the ‘New
Master Page’ dialogue box in Impression. There is no ‘new frame’ menu
option but dragging a graphic onto a document creates an embedded frame.
As in Impression, the size of an embedded frame is limited by the size
of the text frame which contains it.
6.9
The content of the header and footer frames will normally repeat on
every page but they can be changed.
6.9
To start a mail merge, a CSV file is dragged onto the ‘mailmerge’
dialogue box. Then the ‘headings’ from the CSV file can be embedded in
the document. When the mail merge is carried out, the resulting
documents can be viewed on screen and individual documents can be edited
before printing.
6.9
The most disconcerting feature of the word processor (to an Impression
user, at least) is that it does not look like a Computer Concepts
program. There are no 3D dialogue boxes and when a window is closed the
document is removed.
6.9
The Spreadsheet
6.9
Some users may find the absence of a script language, matrix functions
and imported graphics a limitation. However, the spreadsheet offers all
you need for most tasks and it is easy to use. The cut and paste
options, which work very much like those on a word processor, are very
convenient. The size of columns and rows can be adjusted by dragging the
borders and a double click in a row or a column border alters its size
to accommodate the largest entry.
6.9
Graphics cannot be imported but spreadsheets can be made visually
attractive in other ways. Each cell can have its own font and font size,
colour, background and cell borders. Print boundaries are shown in the
cell borders and these boundaries are adjusted if you alter the print
scale.
6.9
The Database
6.9
The database has a simple ‘flat file, card index’ structure. As is usual
with this sort of database, the user defines the fields while creating
the card layout. A user definable grid can be switched on to create a
tidy card layout.
6.9
Fields can be text, integer, real, date, boolean or graphic. Graphics
can also appear on the card layout.
6.9
The package looks very much like Iota’s Datapower.
6.9
Report generation is a pleasure. You start with the card layout and, by
deleting and dragging fields, create the new layout you require. Page
and document headers and footers can be defined. When the report layout
is completed, the report window shows each page just as it will be
printed.
6.9
The Graphs Package
6.9
Tables from the database and spreadsheet can be sent to the graphs
package by pressing <f7>. Data can also be loaded into the graphs
package in CSV format. The graphs are not hot-linked. Like the database,
this package is from Iota.
6.9
Documentation
6.9
The packages comes in a standard 3 litre box. There is a manual, a
project guide and four discs. Advance occupies two of the discs and the
other two discs have example files.
6.9
The manual is comprehensive and well written. It is organised as a
tutorial. The index is a help but I felt that an additional summary
booklet would have been useful. Even if you are familiar with a package,
you can find yourself wondering if it has a particular feature, and how
to use it.
6.9
For example, I wanted to export a graphic from the database. The only
reference I could find in the tutorial was to saving a whole card as a
drawfile. In fact, the database will export a graphic, using Wimp$Scrap
to transfer it to another application. I found out how to do it by trial
and error.
6.9
Four pages near the end of the manual form a table, showing the keyboard
short-cuts for all of the tools.
6.9
The graphs package
6.9
One of the data discs contains the files described in the tutorial in
various stages of completion, so you do not need to work through the
whole thing to try out something near the end. The other disc has data
files you can used in the projects.
6.9
The projects are well thought out. They are suitable for a variety of
ages and cover a range of topics. Acorn has shrewdly avoided any mention
of the National Curriculum.
6.9
At the back of the manual are 30% discount vouchers for Schema 2,
Impression and DataPower.
6.9
Help for learners
6.9
All the programs use Acorn’s interactive help. This is an excellent way
to support new users but the messages must occupy a lot of memory. It
would be good if more experienced users could switch off the help
message and reclaim the memory.
6.9
Advance’s menus can be edited. The manual explains how to remove items
using !Edit. It suggests that you might wish to do this to make it
easier for learners or ‘to impose a house style on Advance documents’.
6.9
Problems
6.9
Have you noticed how reviews in magazines which carry lots of
advertising never mention any bugs? Sometimes, I wonder whether the
writers have tested the programs or just read the advertisements.
Archive reviews are generally more honest (although I would have liked
to have been told about the bugs that there were in the early versions
of Wordz!).
6.9
Advance 1.00 comes with a release note which includes warnings about a
few problems − it calls them ‘points to watch out for’. None of them is
serious enough to deter a sensible user and it is much better if
developers tell us about potential problems, rather than trying to keep
quiet about them. Most problems with programs can be avoided by
following the rule: ‘save before doing anything silly’.
6.9
In a month’s use, I have managed to crash Advance just once, trying to
create an odd record layout on a computer with very little free memory.
My first attempt to do a mail merge failed − the program claimed I had
not used any of the fields from the CSV file. I tried it again and I
think I used the same steps as before but this time it worked perfectly.
6.9
Summary and conclusion
6.9
Advance is a collection of software tools: word processor, database,
spreadsheet and graphs package.
6.9
There is a little more integration than you would get from different
packages. The tools have a sensible combination of features. None of the
tools is quite as powerful as you would expect a stand-alone package to
be but they include all features which a non-specialist would expect.
They are intuitive and easy to use.
6.9
Advance requires RISC OS 3.10 and at least 2Mb for comfort.
6.9
I suspect that most potential education customers are already committed
to a word processor, a database and perhaps a spreadsheet. They will
have already invested heavily in site licences, staff training and the
development of teaching materials. Presumably, Acorn reckons there is
still some growth in that market.
6.9
If you do not have a word processor, a database or a spreadsheet,
Advance is an excellent way to get all three for about the price of
one.  A
6.9
Advance Pricing − The single user version is £99 +VAT (£105 through
Archive), the site licence for primary schools is £199 +VAT (£215
through Archive) and the secondary school site licence is £499 +VAT
(£520 through Archive). By Acorn’s definition, primary includes special
needs schools but all other schools, including middle schools, will have
to pay the secondary school price.
6.9
Acorn also do an Off-site Disc Pack for £99 +VAT (£105 through Archive).
This is a set of ten key discs, allowing pupils and staff to use Advance
on their computers at home. However, it may only be purchased by schools
with a licence.
6.9
Advance Column − Robert has kindly agreed to act as editor for an
Advance Column to share hints and tips, ideas, questions, frustrations,
etc, etc. Write to Robert through the Archive office or directly to him
at 8 Virginia Park Road, Gosport, Hants, PO12 3DZ.
6.9
Creating a card layout
6.9
Editing a card
6.9
Designing a report
6.9
Graphics on the ARM Machines
6.9
Hutch Curry
6.9
I must admit to having been taken aback by this book by Roger Amos when
it arrived for review. From the title, ‘Graphics on the ARM Machines’, I
was expecting a book about the nitty-gritty of graphics programming with
lots of techniques, example code, hints and tips and so on. A quick
inspection of the table of contents showed me the errors of my
expectation. I had to then set aside my self-inflicted disappointment to
be able to evaluate fairly what the book is actually about and not what
I expected it to be.
6.9
According to the author, Roger Amos, this book is designed to provide
both an overview of the graphics capability of the Acorn ARM machines
and an introduction to the fundamental principles of computer graphics.
I would add that the overview of the graphics capability of the Acorn
machines is primarily an examination of much of the available software
which allows the user to create and manipulate graphical images. The
intended audience is therefore the much more numerous computer and
software users rather than the programmers and developers.
6.9
The first chapter provides a very good and enjoyable introduction to
computer graphics explaining with clarity the differences between the
two basic graphic types − pixel and vector. This is then followed by an
excellent chapter explaining the principles of vector graphics using
many worked illustrations from Draw. The author claims that this chapter
is not meant to be a user guide to Draw as it does not cover all aspects
of Draw. However, I think that most users would benefit by using this
chapter as a tutorial for Draw. I thought this was far and away the best
part of the book.
6.9
Fonts and their manipulation
6.9
The next two chapters provide extensive and detailed information about
the Acorn outline fonts, the font editor, FontEd, and programs for font
manipulation. Much of the first of these two chapters is spent
illustrating the use of FontEd to create and/or modify outline fonts.
This is information that is generally not available and, as such, would
be of great value to those users wishing to apply their creative
energies to font design. (FontEd was on the Archive disc 6.2. Ed.)
6.9
The second of the two chapters concerned with fonts examines the use of
commercially available programs to add to the features of Draw. Many of
these programs are concerned specifically with various types of font
manipulation such as stretching, rotation and shadowing. The chapter
describes in some detail the font manipulation packages FontFX from the
Data Store; Fontasy from Ian Copestake Software and Type Studio from
Risc Developments. The chapter also covers three other general drawfile
manipulation programs − DrawBender from Ian Copestake Software,
Chameleon 2 from 4Mation and Placard also from Ian Copestake Software. I
found this chapter useful as an indication of the potential of vector
graphics to produce a myriad of interesting, bizarre and beautiful
effects.
6.9
Vector graphics
6.9
The next chapter considers advanced vector graphic packages which
provide features in excess of those provided by Draw − yet retaining
some compatibility with Draw by retaining the ability to read and write
drawfiles. The packages examined are DrawPlus (a PD program by Jonathan
Marten − on Careware 13), Vector from 4Mation and ArtWorks from Computer
Concepts. The chapter briefly describes each of these packages,
highlighting their strengths and weaknesses. From the point of view of a
prospective purchaser, the chapter may provide information to assist in
deciding which package to purchase.
6.9
The book’s consideration of vector graphics is completed with two short
chapters − one on rendering objects in three dimensions (describing
Euclid from Ace Computing) and the other on constructing drawfile
objects from Basic (using DrawAid from Carvic Manufacturing).
6.9
Pixel graphics
6.9
The bulk of the remainder of the book is concerned with pixel graphics.
The first of these chapters describes the essential features of pixel
graphics and examines Paint as an example of a pixel-based graphic
program. This is another excellent chapter, using many worked
illustrations from Paint that would serve as an excellent tutorial for
many users.
6.9
The next chapter examines three commercially available art packages each
offering facilities in excess of those offered by Paint. However, each
of these packages retains compatibility with Paint by using standard
sprite files. The three programs examined are ARCtist from the 4th
Dimension, Art20 from Tekoa Graphics and Revelation 2 from Longman
Logotron. The chapter describes each of these packages in some detail,
highlighting their various strengths and weaknesses. The author has
carefully catalogued the many special features and effects found in each
of these apparently competent packages. As in the case of the chapter
comparing vector graphic software, this information should assist a
prospective purchaser in deciding which package to obtain.
6.9
The last two chapters on pixel graphics are respectively concerned with
obtaining sprites from various sources and basic image processing. The
sources considered for sprites are by use of scanners, video digitisers
and clip art libraries. The sections on scanners and digitisers provide
a good introduction to these technologies for the novice. Similarly, the
section on image processing describes the basic rationale and methods of
image conversion, manipulation and processing using Roger Wilson’s
ChangeFSI for illustration.
6.9
To complete the book, there are short and succinct chapters on
converting pixel graphics to vector graphics, ray tracing (with a
comparison of four ray tracers), simple animation, mathematical graphics
(such as the Mandelbrot set) and an epilogue for the future and a number
of appendices containing some useful technical information.
6.9
Conclusion
6.9
I found the book enjoyable, easy to read, informative and useful in
places. I was particularly impressed with the tutorial chapters on Draw
and Paint. I think that the book would almost certainly be a worthwhile
read for most Archimedes users as the range of topics covered is so
vast. The price of the book is £14.95 from Dabs Press (or £15 inc p&p
through Archive) which seems about the going price for the few
Archimedes books that there are.  A
6.9
S-Base and Relational Databases
6.9
Tim Powys-Lybbe
6.9
S-Base is advertised as being fully relational and it even says in large
characters on the side of its box that is “The Integrated Relational
Database Solution for RISC OS”. Now, I am not a relational database
scholar but I have been working with such for a number of years and hope
by now that the basic concepts have sunk in! My concern then is to open
a discussion about what a Relational Database should be able to handle
and whether S-Base can do so.
6.9
In principle, a relational database consists of a set of flat files that
are usually called tables (not to be confused with S-Base’s “tables”
which serve a totally different function). Each table contains data
about one aspect (entity) of the application and the tables have been
designed so that they can relate this data together, hence the use of
the word ‘relational’.
6.9
A very simple example of this can be constructed for a warehouse. It
stocks goods, has a known set of customers, receives orders for delivery
and delivers them. As part of handling all the transactions it will have
records of:
6.9
1.    The products it stocks (and their prices and the numbers in stock
and the stocks on the way to the warehouse, etc).
6.9
2.    The customers it delivers to (and their addresses, financial
status, invoice address, discount, etc).
6.9
3.    The orders on hand for delivery of products to customers.
6.9
This is readily translated into file structures; and again, in order to
simplify the S-Base tasks even further, the following are the most
elemental contents of those files:
6.9
    Table    Field
6.9
    Product    ID
6.9
        Description
6.9
    Customer    ID
6.9
        Name
6.9
    Order    Order No (ID)
6.9
        Customer ID
6.9
        Delivery date
6.9
        Product ID
6.9
        Quantity ordered
6.9
In relational terms, the fields are called columns and each entry in the
table is called a row (‘tuple’ to the real programmers). So the table
can be printed out to look like a table of data on the printed page.
6.9
The above tables are readily constructed in S-Base.
6.9
Then some tasks that the warehouse administrator would expect to perform
are:
6.9
1.    Update the product catalogue.
6.9
2.    Update the customer list.
6.9
3.    Enter orders.
6.9
4.    Print off the orders due for delivery today, or tomorrow.
6.9
5.    Report the quantities ordered over a period of time by customer.
6.9
Note that I have not included any mention of deliveries, pricing,
invoices, stocks, replenishment; these are merely practical additions to
make a core usable and they would make the principles of this relational
database more difficult to understand. (People pay millions of pounds
for a fully functional warehousing and delivery system, and that means
man-centuries of work.)
6.9
In fulfilling these tasks, the following functionality is required of S-
Base:
6.9
1.    Ability to maintain a simple, stand-alone table, such as the
product and customer tables.
6.9
2.    Ability to enter the customers and products into orders by
browsing only on the tables of customers and products.
6.9
3.    Ability to convert the entered details to the format required of
the orders table. (They browse for the customer name but the orders
table, for economy of space, contains only an internal ID, to which the
name must be converted.)
6.9
4.    Ability to write a report that relates two tables together,
combining information from both and selecting data from one table
according to a criterion in another (“How many orders did Sainsbury’s
place last month?”, etc).
6.9
I have established that S-Base can do all of these − but how well?
6.9
It is very obvious that S-Base is designed primarily for single table
applications. The data-entry cards and the report formatting are
particularly easy for single tables and, in my experience, particularly
hard for multiple, related tables. So the first functionality,
maintenance of simple tables, is easy and seems quite fast. The second
functional area, of browsing only for legitimate values, was
surprisingly good as this snapshot should show, after I had just clicked
on the Customer Browse icon:
6.9
The third functional area, writing to the orders table, from a
combination of an entry and the browse from second and third tables,
again was not over-difficult, though much poring over the manuals was
required.
6.9
It is the last functional area that I found most difficult. The “select”
command is limited in the extreme. There is none of the elegance of SQL,
as in the following code which might be used to get a report of all
orders for delivery to Boots:
6.9
select a.order_no, b.customer, a.del_date, -
6.9
c.product, a.quantity -
6.9
from orders a, customers b, products c -
6.9
where a.cust_id = b.id -
6.9
and a.prod_id = c.id -
6.9
and b.description = “Boots”
6.9
This SQL code only produces those records and data that it has been
asked for and can be quite fast from this economy of effort. The only
way I could get S-Base to produce the same result was to bring in every
record of the orders file, check it had not been deleted and that it was
for Boots and finally, repeating for each selected record, get hold of
the customer and product names from the relevant files. I cannot believe
that this will be anything other than slow when I have files loaded up
with a reasonable amount of data.
6.9
However, this sort of relational operation can certainly be done,
opening up a whole host of flexible applications previously denied to
the Archimedes user. (I have not mentioned the strong graphics
facilities that S-Base has, which should enable some very pretty
applications to be made, if the illustrations in the manual are any
thing to go by. However, this was not my immediate objective.)
6.9
In the course of this fairly intensive use of S-Base and of its manuals,
I found one mistake and almost certainly one bug. The mistake is on page
125 of the Tutorials manual where you should attach a “find record
press” handler set instead of a “find record” one. The bug is the
occasional report that an “else” had been found with no preceding “if”;
this was not true! I suspect that the problem was caused by the fact
that the programs had a succession of “if-then-else” clauses which
confused the interpreter. Further, I found date comparisons extremely
difficult − it would not recognise a statement of the form “if date1 >
date2 ...” . However, as a first publication of a major new product,
this is a commendable achievement to give me so little trouble.
6.9
Two hints
6.9
Always put the field length on cards, with this suffix to the
“expression” of :−12 where the minus means left justified and 12 means
12 characters. Failure to do this means you may only be able to enter
one character into the field.
6.9
Get your sprites into the screen mode you are using before putting them
in the sprite container. S-Base does not seem to handle the colours
correctly in moving from a 16 to a 256 colour mode.
6.9
And finally...
6.9
In forthcoming months, I will keep you informed on how I have got on
with converting my much larger applications to S-Base. More to the
point, I will pass on how I overcame the difficulties I had even with
this trial application. If Paul can give it the space, my demonstration
application will be on the monthly disc. (I can, and it is! Ed.)
6.9
I would welcome contributions to this Relational Database debate as it
is a major aspect of computing that seems ill-understood in the Acorn
community. And will those who really know what I am talking about please
forgive me both for my simplifications and for any ignorance of core
principles?
6.9
In the meantime, send in your problems and hints for inclusion in this
column, either to NCS or to me at Rosewood, Church Road, Winkfield,
Windsor, Berkshire, SL4 4SF.  A
6.9
Education Column
6.9
Solly Ezra
6.9
Now that Acorn has granted NCS the sobriquet “educational”, it is
fitting that Archive should have a relevant column. I am happy to be the
coordinator of this column.
6.9
Aims
6.9
There are three obvious aims of such a column:
6.9
1.    To inform its readers about the availability of relevant software
− and required peripherals as necessary.
6.9
2.    To make critical assessments of educational software.
6.9
3.    To discuss topical issues relating to the use of Archimedes
computers at various levels in education.
6.9
If you have any further suggestions of what our aims should be, do let
me know.
6.9
Good educational software?
6.9
Perhaps we should begin by listing the attributes of good educational
software. I will make a few suggestions to get us started. These I have
posed as questions.
6.9
 a.    Is it immediately attractive?
6.9
 b.    Is it user-friendly?
6.9
 c.    Is it sparing in its use of RAM?
6.9
 d.    Has it a clearly stated aim or purpose?
6.9
 e.    Has it got quick start-up routines with unambiguous menus?
6.9
 f.    Is it entertaining? (!)
6.9
 g.    Has it got easily accessible set-up menus for teachers and
parents?
6.9
 h.    Has it got instructions that are set out as precisely as cooking
recipes?
6.9
How do these match up with your experience, ideas or sentiments? There
are many more that you would like to add to the above. If so, please
write to me.
6.9
I have been working in the field of education all of my professional
life, latterly in SEN (special educational needs). I have seldom been
satisfied with the quality of the software available. Some of it
consists of a few pretty screens put together, a few words here and
there and a bit of jargon.
6.9
Software of real quality which sets out to improve the child’s
understanding, to improve basic skills, improve the ability to analyse,
improve the ability to make deductions, etc, without being
condescending, are few and far between. A great deal of effort seems to
have been spent on presentation − yes, this is very necessary − perhaps
more should be spent on content.
6.9
A program that is simply a substitute for a text book seems to me to be
a waste of time!
6.9
While I have not been using words of praise, nothing said so far
gainsays the fact that there are some really excellent programs
available these days. (Which programs do you think are most worthwhile
and why?)
6.9
I maintain that programs that simply present the user with facts should
never be classified as educational. They have a relevance in other areas
but are only peripheral to our concerns here.
6.9
Archimedes computers are, arguably, the best computers. Unfortunately,
many teachers haven’t got the foggiest idea of the real potential of
these machines and do not use them to their best advantage − thus many
children lose out. What advice would you give to teachers for getting
the best out of their Archimedes computers?
6.9
What is education anyway?
6.9
I will end this introductory column by asking us to look at the meaning
of the word ‘education’ and then to examine programs in the light of
that definition and personal experience. Perhaps you will see that a
great deal of the software currently available leaves a great deal to be
desired − or am I being too severely critical?
6.9
Whether you agree or not with any of the sentiments expressed, please
put pen to paper, or finger to WP, and send me your thoughts.
6.9
Archive has carried many reviews of programs that are classified as
educational. The conclusions have varied from complimentary to the
mildly critical. I look forward to the time when a statement like,
“Archive Educational Supplement says...” will carry with it the same
weight as the saying, “the Oxford dictionary says...” (Solly is giving
away our secrets here! We are thinking about doing a separate
publication − a bit like the T.E.S. − well, not very like the T.E.S.,
just distinct from the main magazine. What do you think? Write to me or
Solly. Ed.)
6.9
If you have experience of a program that you would like to share with
us, please do write to me with your views and experience of the program.
6.9
Write to me, Solly Ezra, at:  35 Edgefield Avenue, Barking, Essex IG11
9JL.  A
6.9
Ace Computing’s PROdrivers
6.9
Ian Williamson
6.9
This review is about the PROdriver system of printer driver applications
by Ace Computing. The PROdriver system comprises three main items:
!Printers, !AutoSpool, !PrintSeps.
6.9
The PROdriver system is designed for RISC OS 3 and supports a wide range
of printers: HP PaintJet/XL, DeskJet 500C/550C, Canon LBP4/8 and Epson
ESC-P2 (£44 each through Archive). It can also be bought in the form of
a printer driver “shell” into which you can load the standard RISC OS 3
printer driver definition files, so any printer you are using with the
standard RISC OS 3 printer drivers can be used with the PROdriver shell
(£27 through Archive). Features of the suite of applications include 8/
24 bit colour, CMYK and spot colour separation, and automatic background
printing.
6.9
!Printers Version 0.33 (10 Apr 1992)
6.9
!Printers is an updated version of Acorn’s !Printers. It has been
modified so that the Printer Options Quality Selection window of the Bit
Image Printer Configuration will show 24-bit options: small halftone,
large halftone and dithered. This is only useful if your printer is
capable of colour printing. Mine is not, so this review is, in that
sense, regrettably incomplete.
6.9
The brief notes point out that the 24-bit output will only work
correctly if the application you are using directs all its colour
generation calls via a module called ColourTrans. Furthermore, that the
application must not cache the results from these calls during the
printing process. Apparently, !Paint breaks both these rules, so its
output will be incorrect, but you can get round this problem by loading
the sprite file you wish to print in 24-bit colour into Draw. The output
will then be correct and you also have better control over positioning
on the page.
6.9
As you may have noticed, I had previously contributed to Gerald Fitton’s
PipeLine and wrote about my problems with Acorn’s !Printers and
Panasonic KX-P1124 printer. I eventually solved my problems but, in the
process, I consulted with Tony Cheale of Ace Computing, who confirmed my
suspicions about the shortcomings of Acorn’s RISC OS 3.1 printer driver,
!Printers, and explained that he was attempting to overcome them. So far
as I can tell, he has succeeded − the updated version seems an
improvement.
6.9
!AutoSpool Version 1.01 (4 Oct 1992)
6.9
!AutoSpool is a program which will trigger automatic spooling via the
Printer queue and which can turn background printing on and off.
6.9
As I cannot yet afford to upgrade from my clockwork dot matrix printer,
I have, for some time now, been looking for any software that would
enable printing to take place in the background. My attention was
finally caught by Ace Computing’s advertisements for PROdriver − this
appeared to be what I was looking for. In fact, !AutoSpool does exactly
what I wanted.
6.9
When loaded, the !AutoSpool icon looks like a printer printing to disc
instead of paper, with the word ‘Spool’ below it. This is good
representation of what happens: the application you are using prints to
disc, then control is handed back to the computer and this enables you
to do other things while it continues to print from disc in the
background. All this happens automatically.
6.9
If you click <menu> on the AutoSpool icon, you will see three options,
the usual Info and Quit, plus Spool marked with a tick to indicate that
background printing is turned on. AutoSpooling is turned off by clicking
against the Spool option. When you do that, the iconbar icon is greyed
out, and has the word ‘Off’ below it.
6.9
The !ReadMe message on the PROdriver disc points out that the facility
to do automatic spooling via a file is only really viable with a hard
disc, and should only be used on short documents. Since an A4 page of
text in monochrome requires about 200 Kb of disc storage, you can see
the reason for that advice − you could very rapidly run out of disc
space.
6.9
In operation, !AutoSpool writes into a sub-directory called
ScrapDir.Printers of the !Scrap application. For example, whilst
printing a single page Wordz document, there are two files in Printers
which amount to 180 Kb, but at the end of printing that directory is
empty. For a typical single page document, control is passed back after
approximately 15 seconds, but !AutoSpool does not, of course, speed up
the printing process − that is limited by the printer itself.
6.9
If your Archimedes has enough RAM, it is worth setting up a RAM disc
with at least 200Kb per page of text, copying !Scrap to RamDisc and then
double clicking on !Scrap so that !AutoSpool uses the RamDisc rather
than the hard disc. I evaluated !AutoSpool on an A410 upgraded with ARM3
and RAM increased to 4 Mb, and I set up 600Kb of RAM disc. In this case,
spooling is very much faster − control is passed back after 5 seconds
for a typical single page document but, as before, printing is not
speeded up.
6.9
!PrintSeps Version 1.0 (04 Oct 1992)
6.9
!PrintSeps is a program which can change which colours are actually
printed. The icon on the iconbar consists of the letters CMYK. If you
click on the icon, the letters C M Y K are highlighted in turn,
underlined with a bar of the appropriate colour and accompanied with the
words Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key respectively. The sequence of
options is completed with No Key and Mixed. These options can also be
selected via the menu.
6.9
The menu also allows the following additional options: User, Spot, No
Spot and Special. For each of these options, there is a further sub-
menu. For instance, User allows any combination of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow
and Key and the selection is indicated by the appropriate letters below
the icon. Spot, No Spot and Special require the R, G and B levels to be
specified.
6.9
Like !AutoSpool, !PrintSeps also works transparently. As before, I
compared its operation with !AutoSpool using !Scrap directory on both
the hard disc and the RAM disc. You may be wondering why I would be
interested in evaluating !PrintSeps without a colour printer, and you
have a point, but I could at least assess how easy it was to use, and
what impact it had on the print time. I wanted to subject it to a fairly
tough test, so I used a display from a Mandelbrot set, which I loaded
into Draw and magnified until it completely filled the paper limits,
281×203 mm.
6.9
Using !Scrap on the hard disc and selecting Key for !PrintSeps and Grey,
Small halftone Quality for the Printer Options, I found that control was
passed back to the computer after 37 seconds, and printing carried on in
the background for 8 minutes: the two files in the !Scrap.ScrapDir
.Printers directory amounted to 344.5 Kb. Using !Scrap on RamDisc for
the same conditions passed control back within 15 seconds. Whilst the
printing seemed to take forever, I cannot complain about the time taken
to pass control back to the computer − so far as I can tell, the action
of !PrintSeps does not add noticeably to this time.
6.9
Conclusion and suggestion
6.9
I was very pleased with !AutoSpool and Ace Computing’s improved version
of !Printers. I was also very impressed at how easy !PrintSeps was to
use, and consider that the cost of PROdriver is reasonable.
6.9
However, I have a suggestion to make. I am sure there are still many
people who are frustrated by the length of time their fast Archimedes is
tied by up by a slow dot matrix printer and may not need colour
separation. Thus I would suggest that Ace Computing consider supplying
!AutoSpool and updated !Printer without !PrintSeps, as a lower cost
package. Either way, I think PROdriver is worth buying: Ace Computing
have produced a very PROfessional product.
6.9
RISC OS 3 PROdriver is available from Oak Solutions, (with whom Ace
Computing have merged), price £54 (Archive price £44). It may also be
worth considering the RISC OS 3 PROdriver Upgrade, which allows a
standard driver to have extra functionality (other printers) added at a
later date, price £36.37 (Archive price £27).  A
6.9
First Steps with JPEG
6.9
Stuart Bell
6.9
Various references have already been made in the Using RISC OS 3 column
to the “JPEG” compression routines supplied on the new Support Disc.
This article is an attempt to introduce the concept of JPEG to Archive
readers who may have found the on-disc documentation for !ChangeFSI and
the cjpeg and djpeg routines a little daunting. If there is sufficient
interest, and Paul likes the idea, then “Second steps with JPEG”, etc
might follow! But first a warning: I’m no JPEG expert. I can read
documentation and can experiment but the inner workings of the JPEG
routines are beyond me. This article is for would-be JPEG users, by a
JPEG user.
6.9
Larger, ever larger
6.9
In the bad old days of computing, we used 160Kb floppy discs, (100Kb on
the old BBC drives! Ed) and having used cassette tape prior to that,
thought they were wonderful. Now, our multi-megabyte hard discs fill up
with alarming speed! Enter disc-compression techniques. In general, most
information can be compressed on disc because common and repeating
patterns of data can be stored in a more efficient manner. Computer
Concepts’ excellent Compression package uses this principle, and I have
found it invaluable in the past 18 months. Compression works with any
file and because that might include programs, it must decompress data
exactly back to the original form. This limits the compression ratios
that can be achieved to about 2:1, or perhaps 3:1, with sprites.
6.9
In contrast, the JPEG technique is optimised for ‘photographic’ images,
i.e. sprites. Furthermore, the compression–decompression sequence is
‘lossy’, which means that some picture detail is lost in the process.
The degree of loss can be controlled by the user; the greater the
acceptable loss, the smaller the resultant compressed files will be.
JPEG, incidentally, stands for “Joint Photographic Experts Group”, a
body set up in the USA to produce an industry standard for still picture
compression and storage. The theory is that, with an agreed file format,
one company’s decompression program can read the file produced by
someone else’s compression program.  An independent JPEG group has
produced PD versions of the software, and this is the source of the
files on the support disc.
6.9
JPEG under RISC OS 3
6.9
Whilst there is, I understand, a commercial JPEG product for Acorn
machines, I intend to focus on what is freely available, or at least
shareware. Before going any further, let me demonstrate the benefits of
JPEG for anyone who wants to store large sprites, and has a finite
amount of disc space at their disposal.
6.9
Rule number one for all sprite manipulation is to start with the best
possible original image. Few processes can add quality to a picture and
most, like JPEG, reduce it, however slightly. I started with one of the
demonstration images supplied by HCCS to show the benefits of the hi-
resolution version of their Vision digitiser. It is a 720 × 508 pixel
sprite, in 256 colours. I then compressed it using the JPEG programs,
using a variety of ‘quality’ settings, producing files that were between
40% and 10% of the size of the original. They were then decompressed,
and the images compared. I was, quite frankly, amazed. With the best
output medium available to me – a 300 dpi HP LaserJet IIP+ printer – the
images of the whole sprite were indistinguishable. In A5 landscape
format, I would defy anyone to identify which had taken 357Kb of disc
space, and which less than a tenth of that!
6.9
I therefore took a small part of the images, cropped them with !Paint,
enlarged them under Impression to 300% of ‘normal’ size, and compared
again. The results are shown to the right. The original 720 × 508 pixel
sprite is shown first, so that you can see the area from which the
samples are taken. It would be futile to print the different versions
full size, as they would appear the same when printed.
6.9
Conclusions
6.9
Initial results suggest, first of all, that at low levels of
magnification, JPEGed files are almost indistinguishable from the
original versions. Secondly, when magnified, even the higher quality
files are slightly inferior. Thirdly, even the file 10% the size of the
original will produce images that are acceptable for many applications.
(Of course, this will depend on the particular sprites concerned. It’s
quite conceivable that the ‘10%’ version of some sprites will be
unacceptable. That’s why the ‘quality’ parameter is user-definable.) In
principle, instead of an 800Kb disc storing two large sprites, or even
four or five with Compression, use of JPEG allows perhaps 20 or 25 on
one disc. The gains for hard disc users (who might otherwise be limited
to 100 sprites in 40Mb of disc) are similarly impressive. The “Experts”
have done an expert job!
6.9
JPEG in use
6.9
First, the bad news: Not only are the JPEG routines that are supplied on
the Support Disc only directly usable from the command line, but they
require the original sprite in a non-RISC OS format, and de-compress
JPEG files to a non-RISC OS format! The next bad news is that you need a
file in an intermediate ‘P6’ format before the JPEG compression program
cjpeg can be used. Finally, although the !ChangeFSI documents say that
it can produce ‘P6’ format files, I couldn’t work out how! So, I used
the shareware program !Creator (Careware 19) to produce the ‘P6’ format
file first (select ‘PBM’ and ‘PACKED’ from the CREATE sub-menus.) This
creates a huge file (1Mb for my 357Kb sprite). Likewise, I couldn’t work
out how to force !ChangeFSI to produce the JPEG file from the ‘P6’ file,
and so, from the command line (press the F12  key from the desktop) I
typed:
6.9
cjpeg -Q 25 infile outfile
6.9
when infile is the “P6” format file produced by !Creator, and outfile is
the JPEG format file. Details of the cjpeg and djpeg commands are in the
document file, JPEGinfo, contained in the !ChangeFSI application on the
support disc. The ‘Q’ parameter (make sure it’s upper case) and the
following ‘25’ define the quality of the saved file.
6.9
The good news of this process is that !ChangeFSI will take JPEG files
and convert them back to RISC OS sprite files automatically. (Make sure
that you’ve selected the required output mode first.) You finish with a
file the same size as that with which you started, but with the quality
rather reduced.
6.9
However, the whole point of JPEG is not image processing, but image
storage. At the mid-point of the process described above, we managed to
store a 357Kb sprite, in JPEG format with a ‘Q’ of 25, in 32Kb of disc
space!
6.9
If someone can tell me how to do all the above just using !ChangeFSI –
and preferably all from the Desktop – then I’d be most grateful. In the
meantime, if you’d like to share experiences of using JPEG under RISC OS
3, with the software described above or otherwise, then I’d be glad to
hear from you, via the Archive office. Who knows, we might end up with a
JPEG column!  A
6.9
Above are (top) the original sprite, then the sprites compressed with
JPEG, with ‘Q’  = 85, 65, 45 & 25.
6.9
The sizes of the JPEG files – holding the whole picture, not just the
area shown above – are 357Kb, 137Kb, 74Kb, 50Kb and 32Kb respectively.
6.9
Comment Column
6.9
•    A5000 advantages? − While using an A5000 recently, borrowed from our
local school to evaluate the merit of upgrading my A340 (five years’
service and the only problem has been the mouse to keyboard connector!),
I was struck by two ‘features’.
6.9
Firstly the screen, which was an Acorn multisync. Acorn must be joking!
This screen is hopeless! It is fuzzy and cannot be adjusted (as far as I
could see) to occupy anything like the available tube space. I use a
Taxan 770 and found myself preferring to use the old slow machine,
simply because the A5000 display was so poor. Acorn are doing themselves
a serious disservice by bundling such an inferior monitor with their top
machine. Does it even comply with current Health & Safety regulations?
6.9
Secondly the noise! I have made do without hard disc for five years
quite happily and have never added many podules, hence have no fan. Does
the inclusion of one hard disc warrant the wind tunnel that is provided
in the A5000? Subjective comment from my wife was that “the IBM at work
is nothing like as noisy”, and she’s right! A fan quietener would be a
must for me. (£21 through Archive.)
6.9
So was I persuaded to get a new machine? ’Fraid not! I rang IFEL instead
and obtained an ARM3 (with FPA connector) by return, which was a doddle
to fit, and I have now rejuvenated my old machine’s performance to
(nearly) match the new. That says a lot for the quality of the original
A310. Imagine a five year old PC compared to this year’s offerings!
6.9
I will wait for the ‘next’ machine before replacement.  Richard Fallas,
Buckinghamshire.
6.9
You can buy A5000s with better monitors but at a cost. The AKF18s are
cheap multisync monitors − you get what you pay for. We still have at
least one ex-demo A5000 available at £1290 − without monitor!!! We might
even throw in a free fan quietener if that is a problem. Give me a ring
if you are interested. Ed.
6.9
•    Broadcast Loader − As mentioned two months ago, the Broadcast Loader
is no longer available as an Acorn product. This is because the
facilities it provided, for speeding up the delivery of files over
Econet, are available within RISC OS 3.1. But what do RISC OS 2 users
do? Well, the official answer is that they will have to get either
RISC OS 3.1 in all their machines or upgrade the fileserver to AUN for
which Broadcast Loader is unnecessary. Ed.
6.9
•    CASA update − The frame and grid analysis application CASA has
recently been tweaked to ensure compatibility with RISC OS 3.10. While
doing this, Neale Smith the author, took the opportunity to enhance the
front end to provide more data entry features to assist with structure
creation and loading definition, plus enhancing and polishing existing
features.
6.9
I have seen v1.50 which is not fully ready for release, but can report
that the range of new features is extensive (three pages worth of brief
descriptions!). The package really is now a structure editor of some
distinction. Many items that were at the top of my wish list are
included and there are many more that I will find useful, as well as
some that I can’t imagine using at all!
6.9
CASA is a program that I use with confidence and is now an essential
part of my Archimedes armoury. Contact W.C.Smith and Associates for a
release date on the new version.  Richard Fallas, Buckinghamshire.
6.9
•    Mac versus Acorn − Why are Archimedes users, in general, so reticent
about broadcasting the superiority of their machine, when Mac users are
so insistent on proselytising for their system? I think it’s just that
Archimedes users just don’t know how much better than the opposition
their machines actually are. They find their computers easy to use and,
as they get to know them better, they find short-cuts which make their
use of the computer more and more efficient. They get a feel for the
design of the user interface and, in particular, the use of the adjust
button. They can often guess a short-cut without ever having been shown
it or having read about it. However, they have read that WIMP systems
are what make computers easy to use so, unless they have experience of
other WIMP computers, they assume that they are all as easy to use as
the Archimedes.
6.9
Certainly, I was guilty of this mistake until recently when, sadly, I
was forced by ‘the powers that be’ to install and (try to) use a network
of Macs for teaching courses in computer literacy, spreadsheets,
wordprocessing, databases, DTP, etc. They had first tried to force PCs
on me but I resisted and tried to educate them about Archimedes machines
− to no avail. In the end, I had to succumb to Macs. (The deciding
factors seemed to be that the decision-makers had never heard of
Archimedes before moving into education and that the Mac dealer lied and
said delivery would be two days when it actually took two-and-a-half
weeks. The Acorn dealer, being an Acorn-sort-of-person, actually
admitted that delivery would be a couple of weeks.)
6.9
“Oh well”, I thought, “the Mac is just like an Archimedes with an
American accent, isn’t it?”
6.9
How wrong can you be! I now think that PCs would have been better. OK,
MS-Windows isn’t up to the standard of MultiFinder System 7 but at least
I wouldn’t have to put up with the disgusting smugness of Apple
afficianados who are convinced that everything Mac is best and that it
would be good for British education if the Americans drove the remaining
British computer suppliers to the wall.
6.9
It wouldn’t be so bad if they were just being unpatriotic, but were
right. What makes it so awful is that they are unpatriotic and dead
wrong. The Mac, even under the much-vaunted System 7, is at best a cruel
parody of the elegance and ease-of-use of even RISC OS 2, let alone
RISC OS 3. The system is totally crippled by its one-button mouse. (Read
the file on the monthly program disc for details of an exciting new Mac
product!! Ed)
6.9
I could go on for many pages about the way that basic mistakes in the
Mac’s design mean that the user has much more work to do on a Mac than
when performing the same operation on the Archimedes. Just a few general
points will have to suffice.
6.9
The Mac’s user-interface is not nearly as thorough-going and consistent
as the Archimedes’ in using the desktop analogy, so you are far less
likely to guess what to do and find that you were right. A system of
DOS-SHELL-like file-pickers is maintained alongside the Archimedes-like
directory viewers, to no good purpose. It just means more to learn,
constant uncertainty among learners about which approach is needed to
perform which task and inconvenience for the expert in swapping between
them when required.
6.9
(This is a very important point. On the Macs, you drag files from
directory to directory and you can start up a file from a directory
viewer but then when it comes to saving, you have to pick them off a
menu structure. In some applications, the menu doesn’t even show you all
the files in a particular folder but only the ones it thinks you might
need!
6.9
I started with Macs and moved to Archimedes and then have had to try, on
occasions, to go back to Macs. I can assure you that this consistency of
approach − drag-it-to-where-you-want-to-put-it − is much easier for
beginners than file-picking off menus. You no longer have to try to
visualise the file hierarchy − you can see it on the desktop. OK, menu-
operated file-saving might have been helpful with the original tiny Mac
screens but now that you can have decent amounts of information lying
about on your desktop, dragging is by far the best way. Ed)
6.9
The lack of an adjust button means that short-cuts which, on the
Archimedes, can be done one-handed, on the Mac either don’t exist or
require one hand on the mouse and one on the keyboard. Also, those that
exist don’t have the logical pattern that lets Archimedes users learn
them quickly and even guess new ones.
6.9
Finally and most importantly, the lack of a menu-button means that there
is always a menu on screen, and that means that the Mac has to keep
guessing which program you want to talk to, and about which window,
about which object in the window and, in the case of programs with
multiple main menus, what you might want to do to it. So, the Mac has to
have concepts such as current program, active window, etc. It has to
keep guessing which program you want to be the current program, etc and
it often seems to get it wrong!
6.9
If you want to talk to a different window, you have to do something to
make it the current window; you can’t just start working in it, as on an
Archimedes. So the first click in a window is always ignored and you
have to click again to do what you thought the first click should have
done! (Not even MS-Windows is so stupid!) The overall effect is that,
whatever the technical definitions, the Mac just doesn’t feel like a
multitasking computer to anyone who has experienced an Archimedes. Its
OS is more like a task-switching system.
6.9
What is more, the windows belonging to the current program automatically
come to the front whether you want them to or not − you aren’t allowed
to position anything in front of the current window. So when these
windows come to the front, they obscure other windows you wanted to look
at while working on the first window − then you have to move them all
round again! (Compare that with the elegance of moving windows around by
using <adjust> so that they stay at the same level on the desktop! Ed.)
6.9
On the Archimedes, within a day of setting up the machine, I knew what
the effect of each mouse-click I made would be. Despite using a Mac
continuously for seven months now, and even after conducting controlled
experiments in the hope of finding a simple underlying pattern that I
could explain to my students, I am still frequently surprised and
annoyed almost to the point of violence by the shuffling of windows that
ensues when I click somewhere on the Mac screen.
6.9
Against all this, a more musical ‘boing’ on start-up and Impression-
style editing of writable icons are but a small compensation.
6.9
In my case, it is all too late; I will just have to resign to get away
from these infernal machines. But I do think that any Archimedes users
who find themselves in the situation I did should be warned that it is
worth fighting tooth and nail to avoid having Macs foisted on them − as
I am sure they would if threatened with PCs.  Dr Ken Butcher, Croydon.
6.9
•    Matt Black’s Image Club Clipart − Hutch Curry’s review of Image Club
Volume 24 (Archive 6.7 p12) would have discouraged me from buying any of
Matt Black’s clipart had I not already bought three-quarters of the
volumes already! Mr Curry certainly qualified his observations by making
it clear that he had only seen a small selection of the total library
and advised readers to obtain a full listing before purchasing.
6.9
Having purchased 18 of the 24 volumes and used them extensively, I would
encourage you to forget the world of PD clipart with its ad hoc quality
and usefulness and write directly for a copy of Matt Black’s catalogue.
This costs £5, refundable against the purchase of your first volume. You
will discover a real wealth of high quality images in the catalogue and
you can see what you are buying − which is exactly what Mr Curry
recommends.
6.9
Image Club is a Canadian firm, and their 24 volume library is well
established in the PC world. I operate in the PC environment as well as
the Archimedes world and I work with other PC clipart − I would say that
the Image Club Library is streets ahead of the PC rivals.
6.9
We are fortunate that Matt Black has spent much valuable time and effort
in making this clipart available to Archimedes users at an affordable
price. Matt Black will provide you with a very friendly and helpful
telephone and postal service − they despatch orders by return of post.
John Hancock, Berlin.
6.9
•    Monitors for use with the G8/G16/ColourCard − With apologies to Mike
Lane whose comments I incorrectly edited last month (page 14), I want to
repeat part of what he said − the corrected section is shown in bold.
Ed.
6.9
The Sampo 14“ monitor referred to above, although very good value, has a
few snags. The main one is that, in some modes, the display cannot be
expanded to cover the whole screen, so you are left with a narrow black
border. Also, the controls, although front-mounted are a little small
and fiddly to use. I don’t personally find this much of a problem as I
rarely have any need to change modes. The Taxan 789 costs about £100
more but is better in both the above respects.  Mike Lane, Stockbridge.
6.9
Thanks Mike for pointing out about the 789 − I didn’t know it existed.
It is indeed a very economical monitor for use with a G8/16/ColourCard.
We have now corrected this omission and added the 789 to the Archive
Price List at £440. Compared to the 9060 at £600 and the Microvitec
Cubscan 1440 at £480, it represents very good value for money. Ed
6.9
•    OCR revolution? − I agree entirely with your comments about OCR
(Archive 6.8 p15). To make OCR workable, you need good recognition
software coupled with a spelling checker of high sophistication − even
then, there will be frequent whimperings for intervention.
6.9
If OCR on other platforms is so efficient − now that it has been around
for a while − why don’t commercial typesetters use it instead of
laboriously re-keying manuscripts?
6.9
(By the way, I was amused by the cover of Acorn User which illustrated
The Book of Micah being magically OCR’ed into an A410/1 with no keyboard
and being turned into a Thesaurus!)  Bruce Goatly, London SW19.
6.9
•    Omar Sharif’s Bridge Program − I have just received a letter from a
reader, Cain Hunt, who claimed that setting the ‘SPEED’ function to a
value of 1% improved the game’s play. I am sorry to admit that I had not
thought of testing this ‘speed’ function! I immediately re-read the
booklet which says:- ‘This option allows you to speed up or slow down
the computer’s thinking time.’ Unfortunately, it does not seem to
improve either the bidding or the card play. Even if the hand has no
points, or only one card in the suit lead, it has exactly the same
delay! I assume that it is there to allow more time for the player to
assimilate the bidding and play and not to control the skill level, what
a shame!
6.9
I have only tested the hands I described in last month’s comment column.
On this month’s disc is a directory ‘hands’ which has all the hands from
last month’s disc but stripped of the bidding and play so you can
experiment for yourselves. Each hand is preceded by a ‘H_’ to show this
(e.g. H_Acol_27). I also include an elementary Basic program
‘Strip_Hand’ (plus a ‘ReadMe’ file) which overcomes the problem that the
card layout cannot be saved separately unless South is dealer!  John
Wallace, Crawley.
6.9
•    “RISC OS”? − I am pleased to see that Archive has at last come into
line with Acorn’s official spelling of “RISC OS” − I have always felt
that using “RISC-OS” was bad practice. However, Archive was not alone...
“Risc OS” is the standard form in Acorn User, Acorn Computing AND was
used in a letter I received recently from a senior manager at Acorn(!).
Most software houses are now talking about “RISC OS” but I have noticed
“RISC-OS” from Circle Software (following Archive’s lead!), “RiscOs”
from Expressive Software and even “RISCos” from Stallion Software.
6.9
These comments were from an Acorn dealer, wishing to remain anonymous!
Ed.
6.9
•    Satellite programs − When I ordered some bits from Archive last month,
I expressed some curiosity about !SatPack1. I was hoping it might be
helpful in finding out where to point satellite dishes for optimal
reception of satellite TV. My reception of satellite TV and of BBC radio
services via Astra over here in Holland is sometimes below standard and
I thought this may have been due to my DIY installation of the dish.
Paul sent me the SatPack1 package and the related package ArcTrack and
asked me to review them both.
6.9
Unfortunately, I realise that I am not qualified to judge the merits or
otherwise of these packages as they are intended for science departments
of schools or professional satellite trackers.
6.9
I can tell anyone interested that SatPack1 is a rather straightforward
‘port’ of a BBC B package with the same purpose, i.e. to find and to
trace moving satellites such as weather satellites and the Hubble space
telescope. It gives information on how to deal with the Doppler effect
on radio signals from such satellites as they pass. No mention is made
of geostationary satellites (all TV satellites are in a geostationary
orbit). Of course, the mathematics involved is not too esoteric for the
BBC B but the display is not up to the standards we now expect on the
Archimedes.
6.9
ArcTrack also plots and displays the passage of various satellites but
is a fully RISC OS compliant package and benefits considerably from
being displayed on a multi-sync monitor.
6.9
Both programs allow new and/or updated satellite orbit information (such
as interested parties can obtain from specialist press and bulletin
board systems) to be input.
6.9
I have returned the packages to Norwich so if anyone feels up to doing a
review of them, please contact Paul.
6.9
•    Service with a smile − I bought a scanner from Risc Developments but
when I plugged it into the IFEL 4-slot backplane on my A310, the icon
for my Morley 100Mb SCSI drive disappeared from the iconbar. I wrote to
all three companies for assistance. IFEL replied immediately with the
offer of a new backplane to try to eliminate the problem. I took up the
offer but to no avail. But that’s a 10 out of 10 for IFEL’s service.
6.9
Risc Developments just replied to say that they were not aware of the
problem but that they had only checked the scanner with the Acorn and
Oak SCSI podules.
6.9
Morley had not encountered the problem but promised to look into it if I
sent them the scanner. This I did and was delighted when they sent it
back with some new software for the SCSI controller card. 10 out of 10
for Morley’s service.  J.J.Woolsey, Market Drayton.
6.9
It is useful to hear about the level of service that different companies
give. We do get several letters commenting on the high quality of IFEL’s
service and Morley also get the occasional plaudit.
6.9
There is, however, one large company that comes in for more criticism,
in terms of service, than any other. Some people say they have had
excellent mail-order service but so many people have had bad service
that if customers specifically ask about ordering things from them, we
always advise against it. I have a typical letter in front of me from
Colin Wood dated 3rd May which I could publish but won’t, for fear of
getting into legal wrangles − I don’t have the time or the energy! Ed.
6.9
•    Th_inking about printers − I use Canon BJ 300/330 ink refills from
Graphic Utilities which are sold in twin packs in this country by H.C.S.
Global Computer Supplies (Freephone 0800−252 −252). The packs are also
available for HP printers and work out at approximately 50% or less than
new cartridge prices. The containers are concertina-type collapsible
bottles with a syringe-type spout for easy filling. If the hint about
replacing the soak-up pads (Archive 6.4 p5) is adopted, then a much
‘greener’ black print should result. I have not tried the Quink
Permanent Black but this would appear to be even more economic as long
as the ink doesn’t cause problems. I assume that if the ink is
permanent, it may not be water soluble and therefore may cake up on the
printer head.  Mike McNamara, Reading.
6.9
•    Word Hound − Ian Palmer (of Word Hound fame) has written to tell us
that there is a slight problem with version 1.20 of his excellent
program. Apparently, all the obey files are missing an important part.
For example, ‘!Builder’ has a line ‘Run Builder’ which should read ‘Run
<Obey$Dir>.Builder’ − the other five are similarly afflicted. If you
can’t fix the problem yourself, you can send a disc plus 50p to Ian and
he will send you version 1.21.
6.9
At the same time you might like to consider two new data suites that Ian
has available to registered users. There’s ‘The Computer Hacker’s
Dictionary’ and ‘The CIA World Factbook’. The former is a kind of
dictionary of computer hacker terminology − 1,800 entries in all! Did
you know, for example, that ‘mess-doss’ is a derisory term for MS-DOS,
as is ‘mess-dross’, ‘mush-dos’, and ‘domestos’? You didn’t? Well there’s
more where that came from. The CIA World Factbook was compiled by the
CIA and contains information about most countries of the world − all you
do is type in a country and up comes a scrolling window with almost
everything you needed to know about it. Although some of the information
is out of date − M Thatcher is no longer PM, for example − it’s still a
useful source of reference if you want some background statistics on the
population, economy, land use, etc of particular countries.
6.9
Both are available by sending the relevant number of discs to Ian and
50p for p&p (£1 for outside U.K.). The CHD requires one 800Kb disc while
the CIA suite needs two (or one 1.6Mb disc) − all discs should be
formatted, but otherwise blank.  Gabriel Swords, Norwich.
6.9
•    “You read it first in Archive!” − We have had some criticism of the
advertising campaign we used recently in some of the Archimedes
magazines. The adverts pointed out (correctly) that Archive was the
first magazine to publish full technical details of the A5000, the A4
Notebook, the A3010, A3020, A4000 and the Acorn Pocketbook. The
criticism was that we may claim to be first at telling people about the
computers but we are rarely the first to tell people about other new
products. In our defence, I would like to explain Archive’s policy on
new products.
6.9
As you will know, the column that deals with new products is called
“Products Available” − this is our deliberate policy. We try to make
sure that we only give details about products that are actually
available − or that will be available by the time the magazine gets into
the hands of the readers.
6.9
To illustrate what happens, one company sent us a press release, which
we received on 12th March, saying that their A3000 User/Analogue/Econet
card would be available at the end of March so we could have got it into
the April Archive magazine and been first to tell the world. The colour
photograph they sent us was published in the May edition of various
other Archimedes magazines (i.e. published early/mid April). However,
when we rang the company in mid April (i.e. two weeks after they said it
would be available), they said that the interface would be available in
‘about three weeks’. Three and a half weeks later, I checked and was
told they would be available in ‘about two weeks’. As I write (two weeks
later still) they say it is available... but not with the Econet option.
The full version will be ‘about  two weeks’!
6.9
Another company’s press release dated 29th March announced a MIDI/User/
Analogue Port card and implied that it was available. Enquiries in early
April were given ‘end of April’ as an availability date and enquiries on
6th May were greeted with ‘about four weeks’. (I’ll let you know when
both these products are actually available!)
6.9
These aren’t isolated examples and I am not singling out these companies
as being any worse than any other. I am simply saying that we are going
to stick to our policy of only publishing details of products as and
when they are actually available. (However, the saga of the release of
Eureka illustrates one flaw in operating this policy − just because
someone says over the telephone that something is available NOW, it may
not be true!)  Ed.
6.9
(See also the saga of the dual bin laser printer mentioned in the Help
Column on page 31. We put it in Products Available in June 1992 and it
has been “nearly ready” ever since!!)  A
6.9
Hardware Column
6.9
Brian Cowan
6.9
PC card speed
6.9
I mentioned in a previous article that Aleph One would soon be providing
a speed-up modification for their PC cards. At that stage, I thought it
would just comprise a chip change. However, I now understand that some
track alterations are required. Thus it appears that the boards will
have to be returned for the upgrade to be installed. There is still no
indication of the likely cost but I am informed it will be ‘nominal’.
6.9
The main speed penalty I find is in communication between the PC card
and the Archimedes; that is, data transfer across the podule bus. It is
precisely this which should be improved, perhaps by a factor of two or
more, by the new modification. I eagerly await an upgraded card so that
I can report on this. It is possible that another speed increase will
come from an unlikely source....
6.9
MS-DOS 6
6.9
The latest version of MS-DOS from Microsoft is finally here. MS-DOS 6 is
a most impressive product, containing many additions which previously
were provided by third-party companies. It is difficult to believe that
previous versions of DOS did not have a disc defragmentation utility −
what we would call *Compress. This is vital when running Windows as the
virtual memory swap area fits in the largest contiguous area of disc
space.
6.9
DOS 6 also provides a facility called Double Space which is essentially
a disc compression filing system. It looks rather like the third-party
product called Stacker. I am not sure how the compression actually works
but it appears that an entire ‘virtual’ drive is stored in a single
file. This is accessed as drive C, for example, while the real drive C
is re-labelled H (for host). The compressed drive C then appears as a
file called DBLSPACE.000 on the real drive. Things are not quite that
simple, however, as there are two other small files called DBLSPACE.BIN
and DBLSPACE.INI as well.
6.9
This could have speed consequences for PC card users. Since the speed
bottleneck in disc access is in getting the data across the podule bus,
when Double Space is used, only approximately half the amount of data
traverses the bus for a given transaction. This means that the effective
speed could be doubled, if there is negligible speed overhead in
performing the compression and decompression. Surely a 386 or 486 should
be able to cope with that. However, at this stage I have not made any
serious measurements.
6.9
I have not been able to read the compressed DOS file from within
RISC OS. I thought that maybe SparkFS could cope with it but I was
wrong. It thinks the file is a TAR archive but it appears to contain
nothing! Hopefully SparkFS simply needs a new compression module to
accommodate this.
6.9
As yet, I have only installed DOS 6 on my A4 so I have not been able to
try it out with a PC card. The problem is that the software comes on
high density discs, so it can’t be installed immediately on the 300/400/
500 series machines. Fortunately, there is an arrangement whereby
Microsoft will supply other disc capacities (at no extra cost) and I am
waiting for my 720Kb discs to arrive.
6.9
DOS surface discs
6.9
There is another development in PC card software with implications for
disc storage. It is possible, with the later versions of software, to
configure a SCSI drive to be an entire DOS surface. In that case, it is
as if the disc were a real DOS disc (like a floppy) rather than a single
contained file. The real advantage of this is to allow users of
removable discs (such as SyQuests) on PCs to be able to use them on an
Archimedes with a PC card as well. However, since this means bypassing
the Archimedes filer side of things, there could be a modest speed
improvement as well.
6.9
New generation software
6.9
There is a new version of the PC card software under development at the
moment. This will make operation (particularly configuring the system)
much simpler. The software will recognise whether the CPU is a 386 or a
486, which is convenient if you carry a PC SyQuest from machine to
machine. The new software also includes a utility which I have been
wanting for ages. Since there is no longer the requirement to own the
Acorn PC emulator, a means must be provided for creating DOS partitions
on hard discs. The utility provided to do this also allows the
initialisation of these partitions. In other words, it will, if you
wish, perform Fdisk and Format as well. The version I saw would not
create bootable partitions; you could not simulate Fdisk /s. Hopefully,
this facility might be included.
6.9
Parallel to SCSI converter
6.9
In the last Hardware Column, I reported my initial impressions of the
Atomwide Parallel to SCSI converter. At that stage, I had a ‘wish list’
of features I wanted to see incorporated. Most important was support for
removable discs. I am happy to report that there is a new version of the
software which provides this and renames the drive icon each time a disc
is changed. This makes operation much simpler although it still does not
spin down the disc on dismount; that would be really neat. So far as I
am aware, only the Oak SCSI interface provides this.
6.9
I understand that the new software will be shipped with the converter.
Anyone wanting an upgrade should send their old disc back to Atomwide
with a stamped and addressed envelope.
6.9
Other limitations of the present version of the converter are that you
can’t use a parallel printer or dongle with it. There is a new version
of the hardware under development which provides three “output” sockets:
one for the SCSI bus, one for a dongle and one for a printer.
Understandably, the complete assembly will be somewhat larger.
6.9
In my previous discussion of the Parallel to SCSI converter, I promised
to discuss comparative speed tests. In reality, such things depend
strongly on the actual drives used and people having different hardware
setups may not achieve (or exceed) the speed results I might report. I
have been using the converter for some time now and the important
conclusion I have reached is that using my A4 there is negligible
difference between the speed of access of the internal IDE drive and a
SyQuest removable SCSI drive through the converter.
6.9
Whither SCSI?
6.9
The significance of IDE is indicated by its other name, AT-Bus. The idea
is that an IDE device can be connected (almost) directly to the bus of a
PC clone machine. For that reason, IDE is the interface of choice for PC
owners and bulk sales mean lower prices. I am sure that Acorn made the
right choice in adopting IDE as standard rather than SCSI on the A5000
and now the A4000 range of machines. It should, however, be remembered
that an IDE interface will only support two daisy-chained devices and
the setting of the option links can be a nightmare! (Too right! Ed.)
6.9
“Serious” users will probably continue to use SCSI as the interface of
choice. But with the divergence of the bulk market and the serious
market, I am worried that the small price differential between IDE and
SCSI drives might increase. Some hardware suppliers have stopped selling
SCSI drives. I think we should watch this carefully.
6.9
Incidentally, not a lot of people seem to know this, but I believe there
is a 3½“ SyQuest drive on the market and this comes with an IDE
interface. (I have enquired a bit about this new drive and have found
one or two interesting facts. First of all, it is 105Mb, probably
formatting down to about 100Mb. Secondly, although the medium is 3½”,
the case is somewhat larger and, yes, you’ve guessed it, it needs a 5¼“
slot. To be fair, these are only rumours at this stage as they aren’t
actually available yet. I’ll keep you informed. Ed.)
6.9
In SCSI’s favour, I should point out that there is a new PC printer port
specification which includes SCSI as well.
6.9
RemoteFS and Ethernet
6.9
I have now used the Ethernet transport module with RemoteFS. There is
really nothing to say about it apart from the fact that you can have a
number of machines interconnected, and it works superbly. All in all
RemoteFS is a great product. It is a really neat idea and I don’t know
how I could do without it.
6.9
And finally. . . . . .
6.9
At the risk of being (even more of) a bore, there is no news of the
floating point chip. (The latest I heard was “probably end of June”.
Ed.) I can’t believe how this seems to have dragged on. Perhaps Acorn
(or is it ARM Ltd?) have forgotten the project. Or perhaps it is because
everyone is busy with a new machine. We will have to wait and see!  A
6.9
File Transfer Solutions
6.9
David Webb (N.C.S.)
6.9
Those very clever people at Atomwide have come up with a number of new
products recently that come under the heading of ‘file transfer’. In
this article, I will be concentrating mainly on RemoteFS but also
ranging more broadly in the file transfer area.
6.9
If you want to move/copy a file or single small(ish) directory from one
Acorn 32-bit computer to another, it is very easy to use a floppy disc.
However, once the data size outgrows 800Kb (or 1.6Mb) you will soon
become tired of swapping discs and getting the Please insert disc
“MyFloppy” message. The frustration is even worse when the files have to
be taken to the second computer, modified and then copied back to the
first computer. You will then have copies of the file(s) on both systems
and the chance of making mistakes over which is the latest version
increases considerably. Do you know the feeling? You spend half an hour
editing a file and then you realise that this is last week’s version and
that the version you edited last week is on the other computer?
Arrrgghh!!!
6.9
In an office or school environment where you are using a network, the
problem would seem to be non-existent. In fact, the problem only changes
form. If the data to be transferred is a large directory, partition or
the entire contents of a hard disc, Econet is going to be impracticably
slow even if the transfer has exclusive use of the network. Ethernet
would be more practicable but other users are going to suffer a
considerable drop in performance during the transfer. If these overheads
are acceptable, the network is convenient since the transfer medium is
already in place.
6.9
Enter the removable hard drive...
6.9
A very useful device for large file transfer is the SyQuest removable
hard drive. The cartridges can hold quite large chunks (42 or 84Mb) of
data and can act as a working buffer while data is modified before
copying changes back to the host. As with the floppy solution, this gets
somewhat tiresome if cartridges have to be moved frequently between
machines. A single SyQuest drive can be moved from machine to machine as
long as they both have SCSI controllers, but this can be an expensive
option if no other SCSI device is used on either machine.
6.9
...and the parallel port SCSI interface
6.9
A recent development from Atomwide, the parallel port SCSI adaptor, has
made this solution a far more reasonable choice. The device can be
fitted to any computer with a bi-directional parallel port (i.e. A5000,
A3010, A3020, A4000 or A4) and can easily be carried around between
machines, eliminating the need for each to have its own SCSI controller.
It comes in two forms, one called a Mono/SCSI adaptor which just
provides the SCSI interface and the other called a Printer/SCSI adaptor
which provides both a through-connector to a printer (and/or a dongle)
and also the SCSI interface.
6.9
This, coupled with a SyQuest removable drive, represents a very
effective solution for large file transfer and for backing up hard
drives. However, it still remains a cumbersome one in instances where
small files are to be transferred frequently or where modifications are
to be echoed on both computers.
6.9
A new concept: RemoteFS
6.9
The problems we have talked about are reduced to a minimum if you can
provide a way whereby one computer can have read/write access to the
storage system in another computer. RemoteFS makes this possible. It
effectively allows one computer to act as a file-server to a
neighbouring computer − acting like a local fileserver.
6.9
To describe the operation of RemoteFS, we need some new concepts: server
(or host), client, transports, exports and imports. The server (or host)
is the computer whose storage media are to be accessed by a remote
computer. The computer doing the accessing is referred to as the client.
The transports are the media by which transfer takes place − the current
possibilities with RemoteFS are: parallel link, serial link (both of
these are supplied with the cabled version of RemoteFS), Ethernet (TCP/
IP or AUN) or Econet (available in the Network version). The exports are
the portions of filing system on the host computer which are made
available to the client. The imports are, similarly, a selection of the
available exports that the client chooses to access.
6.9
RemoteFS in use
6.9
The application must be installed on both the client and the server
machine and the two roles must be nominated explicitly in the setting up
of RemoteFS. The application is first installed on the server machine
where it appears on the iconbar as a rather cute truck.
6.9
You then decide which parts of which of the host’s filing systems are to
be exported. An export can be anything from a single file to a whole
disc or partition. A number of exports can be created, shown and
modified in a viewer akin to the printer control viewer of the RISC OS 3
printer drivers.
6.9
Once the exports are specified, you can decide which transport to use,
depending upon the machines to be connected. The parallel transport will
only be available on those machines fitted with the bi-directional
parallel port (although it cannot be used while a Computer Concepts’
dongle is installed). All the Archimedes computers will allow the use of
the serial link although this will not work on RISC OS 3.00 (RISC OS 2
or 3.10 and later are needed), and the old A3000s need the serial
interface fitting. The serial transport option offers a choice of baud
rates (which must, of course, be configured the same at both ends of the
link).
6.9
Once the physical link appropriate to the transport has been completed,
the client must then also run the RemoteFS application and select the
appropriate transport. Clicking on a transport from the Imports menu
option presents a directory viewer on the contents of the exported
directory. The import is represented on the iconbar as a filing system
with a truck icon − but this time the truck is carrying a hard disc!
Further trucks appear for other imports. The client can use the import
as they would any other filing system.
6.9
Security
6.9
For many uses of RemoteFS there isn’t a security problem, in that the
user sets the exports to contain exactly what he wants the client to
access. However, with certain files and directories, it makes sense to
give the client more restricted access than is available to the user on
the host machine. If the export gives its client the same access as the
owner, it is possible for the client to modify and/or delete any (or
all!) of the files in the export. Fortunately, access by the non-owner
can be restricted in various ways − in particular, the export can be set
to be read-only or read-write. The host machine can also set an alias
name for each export and it is this name which then appears under the
loaded truck icon rather than the true filename or pathname.
6.9
Networked RemoteFS
6.9
You may be wondering why there needs to be a network version of RemoteFS
when networked computers may happily share and exchange data anyway.
However, it is in the nature of networks that common data is centralised
and under central control and security, while stations have full control
only over their private space on the server (and their own local
storage). The management, security and server space overheads can make
large file transfer quite impracticable if all traffic must go through
the server. The network RemoteFS gives server status to a non-server
station which can then selectively export files from its own filing
system or from its private area of the network fileserver.
6.9
RemoteFS in action
6.9
The first copies of RemoteFS arrived at NCS on the morning that it
became necessary to swap the roles (and therefore the hard disc
contents) of two A4000s. Physically swapping the drives was the sledge-
hammer solution, otherwise I had two options: use the parallel SCSI plus
SyQuest combination or use RemoteFS. I decided that I would try using
both, because it would provide an interesting comparison.
6.9
RemoteFS proved to be pretty intuitive to set up and I used the parallel
transport since both machines had bi-directional ports. The transfer
involved the entire contents of a hard disc at around 890 items, 9Mb
total. The transfer took just less than 20 minutes. The same operation
was carried out using the SyQuest and parallel SCSI. This took 8 minutes
to copy the contents to a removable disc and about another 8 minutes to
copy back onto the other machine. However, there was some time taken to
move the drive over to the second computer and configure it. So,
allowing for the inconvenience of the latter, they were quite close,
even though actual data transfer speed was higher on the SCSI. Bear in
mind though that two-way transfer would require either two drives or the
drive being moved at least twice between the computers.
6.9
The RemoteFS package
6.9
Anyone who has seen the LapLink package for the PC will know what to
expect from RemoteFS. The package includes both the parallel and serial
cables, the application on a floppy and a thin, stapled A4 user guide.
The guide does its job but one gets the feeling of a beta test document.
The quality of the instructions is fine − it is the presentation that is
lacking. Having said that, the manual is only really needed on the first
couple of runs through the set up procedure. Beyond this, it provides a
reference for the command line support and a description of how the
program works at module level. A very sensible discussion of compressed
files concludes the guide.
6.9
Conclusion
6.9
Anyone with an A4 and a desktop machine at home or at work (or both)
will find RemoteFS invaluable − possibly essential − for transferring
data and for backing up. For the service engineer or systems manager at
a site with multiple Archimedes computers, RemoteFS will soon find its
way into the toolkit that is taken everywhere, in a way that a removable
hard drive or tape-streamer never could.  A
6.9
Genesis / Magpie Column
6.9
Paul Hooper
6.9
The NON-Learning Curve?
6.9
Talking to an old friend the other night, I discovered that he was an
A3000 owner and had bought ‘The Learning Curve’ pack, which includes
Genesis Plus. I asked what use he made of Genesis and he informed me
that he had ‘never got to grips’ with it. I sent him some applications
by post and he rang me the other night to say that he was going to have
a fresh look at Genesis as he didn’t realise the power of the program.
6.9
So where is this leading? There must be many people out there with
Genesis Plus who have not really examined the program. If you are one,
why not get out your copy and have a fresh look? You don’t need to be an
expert programmer to make use of Genesis and although the manual is
heavy going, it does have a reasonable index.
6.9
Magpie/Genesis adventures
6.9
One of the ideas that has been around in my mind for a long time is that
either of the programs would be an ideal way to write an adventure
program. You can present the player with a series of options rather than
trying to work out what they are going to type in on the keyboard. Each
option could lead to a different page and the page could include
graphics and sound effects. Before I try my hand at this, has anyone
tried it or has anyone any ideas for adventures? If you have, give me a
ring or drop me a line with an outline.
6.9
Magpie hints
6.9
When making a carousel, be careful of the time you put into the
preferences box. If you make it too low, it becomes difficult to stop
the carousel using the menu button. A way to overcome this, to enable
you to edit the page, is to select any tool apart from browse − this
will stop the carousel.
6.9
Genesis hints
6.9
In Genesis II, one of the most useful buttons is Dlink (see page 147 of
the manual). It provides not just one button but two − the first is a
‘Previous’ button which has normal effects and the second is a ‘Next’
button which connects you with the next page. If you wish to customise
the buttons, just drop a new sprite onto the buttons and you have a
double link connected to the two pages next to it.
6.9
Before starting to create a new Genesis or Magpie application, sit down
with pen and paper and plan ahead. Work out a story board and the way
each of the pages is connected and try and get linking pages next to
each other thus making use of Dlink or Previous/Next page. Work out a
sketched story board with ideas noted on it and try to make use of
‘skeleton’ or ‘Another’ pages as much as possible. Then assemble all the
graphics and text that you need into one directory, start Magpie or
Genesis, create your skeleton pages and the job is done.
6.9
Optima − A New Entry
6.9
This program describes itself as ‘An introduction to multimedia’ and is
produced by Northwest SEMERC. It comes in a plastic bag with a single
disc and a 25-page A5 ring binder manual and includes an adventure, a
blank book and a guide to the Optima menu system as sample programs. A
function key strip and a couple of fonts are also included. Also in the
pack that I received for review were a couple of demo programs on a
separate disc.
6.9
Using Optima
6.9
Optima loads onto the iconbar and has a default of No_Name. Clicking on
this icon opens your first page. To place a picture, just drag it onto
the page. Then comes the first surprise − when you try and drop the
picture, it remains attached to the pointer and moves around the page as
you move the pointer. While the picture is still attached, it can be
altered, using <f1> to <f6> to make the picture bigger, smaller, taller,
shorter wider or thinner. Once you are satisfied with the size and
position of the picture, a single click releases the picture and places
it on the page. To alter the picture, you need to ‘pick it up’ by
clicking on it and then you can re-size it or even delete it.
6.9
To place text on to a page, just press <f11> and a caret appears,
attached to the pointer. Type in your text and again you can alter the
size using the function keys. A single click will again position your
text on the page and a click will allow you to alter and re-size your
text.
6.9
Sound samples can be fixed to either text or pictures. This allows you
to have some text written on screen and also spoken via a sound sample.
6.9
The order of text or pictures can be changed using <f7> to <f11> which
allow you to position pictures at the back or front or nearer or further
away.
6.9
Main menu
6.9
Using <menu> over the open page, reveals a menu which has five options −
Show Page, Print, Save File, Edit page or Clicks. Show Page allows you
to move directly to any page via a sub-menu. Print and Save do just
that.
6.9
Using the final two options, you can toggle between ‘Clicks’ which
allows you to set up links between the pages and ‘Edit’ which allows you
to create new a page, copy it, rename, clear or delete it. The most
useful option is ‘See Pictures’. This takes you to the picture bank. All
the pictures used by the program are stored here and can be extracted by
selecting them and dragging them to a directory.
6.9
All the normal options are there. Background colours can be changed and
this includes transparent. You can link pages via buttons or text or
pictures. Links can be highlighted as the mouse pointer passes over
them. Star commands can also be used within pages. The menus can be
disabled thus preventing any alteration of pages. Pictures can be
mirrored, turned upside down, made to fill the screen and copied.
6.9
The manual
6.9
This is well written with good screen shots. It is printed sideways
which allows you to have it open, propped up while you work on the
program. It has no index but, with only 25 pages, it doesn’t take a
moment to find out what you want. With such a short manual, it will be
easy for the busy teacher to come to grips with it.
6.9
Conclusion
6.9
The measure of any program is how easy is it to use and whether it does
what you want. Bearing in mind that this program is aimed at primary
schools, it is certainly easy to use. The concepts of bigger, smaller,
taller and shorter are easier to grasp than talking about text height or
re-sizing pictures. Using the function keys for the commands saves going
through two or three submenus − which can be confusing for children.
6.9
Optima can certainly produce good results. The inevitable ‘Solar System’
example on the disc is better than the equivalent Magpie or Genesis one,
with some good clipart in it. Optima is less flexible than Magpie or
Genesis but the power of those two programs is not really required in
the primary school. As an ‘introduction to multimedia’ for the younger
child, it is excellent.
6.9
One omission, which would have made the program even better, is the
ability to import text files. For me, one of the advantages with Magpie
or Genesis is that I can make a series of notes at my local library or
on site on my Pocket Book and then import them directly into an
application. With Optima, all text must be entered directly into the
page. This prevents children working in their favourite word processor
and then importing the results.
6.9
The clincher for most schools will be the price. Optima costs £18 plus
VAT and postage and packing. At that price, it almost counts as
Shareware! Northwest SEMERC is also promising a series of resources
discs which, if they are priced like Optima, will certainly make this
popular with schools.
6.9
The Multi-Media Swap Shop
6.9
Included on this month’s disc is the updated catalogue of applications/
binders. I have included !MagpiRead which will allow everyone to examine
the sample pages even if they have no access to either of the programs.
My thanks go to John Pugh who has sent me three excellent binders
covering insects, the solar system and the weather. Is there anyone else
who has some binders to swop?
6.9
And finally...
6.9
Send your applications/binders, hints or questions on Genesis or Magpie
to Paul Hooper, 11 Rochford Road, Martham, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. NR29
4RL. Telephone 0493−748474.  A
6.9
Polyominoes
6.9
Brian Wichmann
6.9
This is a program marketed by Topologika for use by school children from
the age of 9 up to GCSE examination age. It is sold as a site licence
for schools, rather than being aimed at individual sales. The name
polyominoes is a mathematical term for a polygon made by joining a
number of squares together. Although the underlying mathematics can be
quite advanced, the program and the features of polyominoes used really
just constitute a computer-based jigsaw system. Hence it is certainly
suitable for the target age range. The main programs are based upon
polyominoes with five or six squares − in fact, there are 12 polyominoes
made of five squares and 35 made of six squares.
6.9
The disc contains three programs as follows:
6.9
Puzzler: Here a set of polyominoes is provided, together with an area
containing the same number of squares. The puzzle is to position the
shapes into the area provided. The snag is that there is no guarantee
that a solution exists! This seems quite different from the conventional
school approach in which questions have solutions (like jigsaws). Also,
even when there is a solution, it can be quite challenging to find,
requiring several attempts, best undertaken by backtracking.
6.9
Tessellator: Here, an unlimited set of polyominoes is provided and the
task is again to fill an area. This is much easier than Puzzler, but can
still take some time to complete.
6.9
Hexmaker: This is virtually a single puzzle which, in principle, could
be remembered from previous attempts. The problem is to construct all
the 35 polyominoes made from six squares. It uses a different screen and
input mechanism from the last two games.
6.9
All three components are fun and educational. The user is taught to
handle shapes, including left-to-right reflection and rotation by means
of the mouse. In principle, the puzzles could be undertaken by means of
pieces of cardboard but the use of the computer is both quicker and more
fun. Obviously, some mistakes which could be made by students using
cardboard are corrected instantaneously on the computer.
6.9
One potential problem is that of access to enough computers to make it a
feasible class tool. Copyright free worksheets are provided to aid
manual work but this would seem to lose a key advantage of using the
computer. The ability to print current positions for the first two games
means that a mixture of computer and manual use is possible.
6.9
The program is interesting and challenging. However, one must wonder
whether this use of an Archimedes is cost-effective, bearing in mind the
fact that some of the puzzles could be undertaken with just paper and
cardboard.
6.9
Polyominoes costs £29.95 +VAT from Topologika or £32 through Archive.  A
6.9
Using RISC OS 3.10
6.9
Hugh Eagle
6.9
More encouragement for the faint-hearted!
6.9
Stuart Bell says: “Having read the RISC OS Column for the past few
months, I approached the upgrade with caution, afraid of all sorts of
installation and compatibility problems. I guess that by the nature of
the things, it’s those people who encounter problems who write in,
thereby giving a false impression of the true situation. So, if you’re
still with RISC OS 2 and thinking about upgrading, be encouraged.
Installing RISC OS 3 on my A310, including removing the main board and
installing the IFEL ROM carrier board took about an hour from start to
finish, and I experienced no unforeseen problems.
6.9
“Having been warned of problems with Compression 1.1, I de-compressed
all files first. I await the free upgrade from CC. There is the reported
problem with early versions of Font-FX and that’s in hand.
6.9
“A couple of warnings, though: As well as powering up with <Delete>
depressed, also make sure that you’ve re-connected the keyboard first.
(Don’t laugh – it could have been you! That cost me several minutes of
panic.) Secondly, alter the Font Size figure before loading your first
Impression document, which otherwise can take several minutes to load
with a 32Kb buffer.”
6.9
• Avie Electronics 4Mb A310 upgrade − The following information has come
from Avie: LK12 should be altered to 1-3 and 2-4. Issue 1 PCBs do not
have LK12 and require modification as follows:
6.9
Option 1: pins 2 and 24 on all of the ROMs are to be swapped. Remove
pins 2 and 24 from each ROM socket by bending them up. Join pin 24 on
all ROMs to GND. Join pin 2 on all ROMs to LA18 on IC28, pin 18.
6.9
Option 2: remove pin 2 from each stamped socket on PCB and strap a wire
between the pins and LA18. Likewise, pin 24 can be strapped to GND after
removing the pins in the stamped sockets.
6.9
Hardware problems
6.9
Watford Electronics ARM3 − When Colin Wood fitted a Watford Electronics
ARM3 upgrade to his A410 it didn’t work. “The screen flashed red/blue,
but no beep. Just dead.” As he had recently fitted RISC OS 3, he decided
to replace the RISC OS 2 chips and everything seemed OK, but when he put
the RISC OS 3 chips back, again it didn’t work. Watford’s help line
couldn’t help, so he returned the ARM3 and since they were (again) out
of stock he cancelled his order and got most (but not all, apparently)
of his money back. Another ARM3, from CJE Micro’s, worked first time.
6.9
Watford A310 RAM upgrades − Watford Electronics say that they are aware
that their early A305/310 RAM upgrades do not work with RISC OS 3 but
they do not have any solution. They simply recommend that you buy one of
their newer RAM upgrades instead because they do work with RISC OS 3.
Fortunately, IFEL have stepped into the breach. They can offer new PAL
chips to plug into the Watford boards that will solve the problem. These
PAL chips are £3 +VAT each from IFEL and you need to state whether you
have the 2Mb or the 4Mb version. (This refers to the upgrades that
consisted of two PCBs with a ribbon cable along the RHS of the machine.)
6.9
Program problems
6.9
QuicKey clash − J. Nichols reports that, if QuicKey is loaded from
within a !Boot file, it can remove the *Opt 4,2 status from the booted
disc resulting in a disc which no longer runs a !Boot file.
6.9
!Edit – Following last month’s reports of a “bug” in Edit we now have
the following from Tom Rank: “There seemed to be a rare problem with
Edit the other day; my text (exported from Ovation) was displayed in a
most corrupted way, with a large amount of blank screen to start with
and then disintegrating words. I thought it was a problem with Ovation.
However, when I tried to show it to John Wallace of Risc Developments at
BETT, the file displayed without problems, as it did back on my own
machine the next day. Any idea why?”
6.9
Fun School 4 (for the under 5s) – Tom Rank found that this ran under
RISC OS 3.00 but not 3.10, but Europress Software supplied an updated
disc very promptly which now works.
6.9
Freddy Teddy – Topologika supplied a new version to Tom Rank on the spot
at BETT!
6.9
Ovation – Tom Rank says you are urged to obtain 1.37S (dated 17 January
1993). This overcomes the saving with <F3> problem – which really was a
problem, so do upgrade. They have also restored the ‘select all’
shortcut − but only if you use the right-hand <Ctrl> key along with A
(to avoid the problem of catching <Ctrl-A> instead of <Ctrl-S> or just
<A>).
6.9
This version also contains three new printing options, not documented:
Fit, Centre and Registration marks. These should be self explanatory,
but Tom is not quite sure about them!
6.9
Break147 and SuperPool – D. S. Allen got these to work using the
information provided by David Holden in the April column. He writes: “In
Break147 there is one Basic program called !Snook which contains the
line
6.9
 90SYS 26,64,64.
6.9
A REM statement in front of the SYS will cure the problem and the
program will then run under RISC OS 3.1.
6.9
“Similarly, in SuperPool there is a Basic program !Pool in the Data
directory in which line 60 has the same SYS 26,64,64 statement.
6.9
“Note that to make these changes, people will require the read/write
version of Mark Smith’s excellent ArcFS program.” (Or, presumably, an
equivalent utility such as SparkFS.)
6.9
Superior Golf / Construction Set – We reported in Archive 6.7 p43 that
Dave Wilcox had found that these did not work in RISC OS 3.10. Rob
Brown, however, says he has had no problems with them.
6.9
Corruption – Rob Brown says that this can be made to work by modifying
its !Run file to kill the RISC OS 3 Shared C Library module and load the
very old version of the module supplied with the game. To do this,
include at the beginning of the !Run file the line:
6.9
RMKill SharedCLibrary
6.9
and then add at the end of the file the following two lines:
6.9
RMKill SharedCLibrary
6.9
RMLoad SharedCLibrary
6.9
to remove the old version and reload the RISC OS 3 version of the
module. He points out that it may well be advisable to Quit any other
applications that may be using the RISC OS 3 Shared C Library module
before running the game.
6.9
Freddy’s Folly – Rob Brown advises that this game contains a !Run file
(in Basic) which includes an automatic ‘auto-configuration’ of the
computer’s memory as well as setting up a number of initial program
parameters. The various auto-configuration elements should be deleted
from this file. A further complication is that the disc is copy
protected, but it should be possible to rename the original !Run file
(to say !RunOLD) and re-save a new !Run file containing only the initial
program parameters. He also advises that the game assumes that the
default disc drive is 0. For users with a hard disc this can easily be
set by typing:
6.9
    Drive 0
6.9
at the command line (accessed by pressing function key <F12>) before
starting the game. Alternatively, the game’s !Run file can be
appropriately amended by including the “<Obey$Dir>” command.
6.9
NOTE: the advice on Corruption and Freddy’s Folly is included in the
program compatibility chart which Rob Brown has compiled and which has
been included on the Archive monthly program disc. He will welcome any
information which will help him to make the chart as comprehensive and
up-to-date as possible. His address is “Valtanee”, Brighton Road, Lower
Kingswood, Tadworth, Surrey, KT20 6UP.
6.9
Aldebaran – (see Archive 6.8 p23) Atle Mjelde Bårdholt has contacted the
author and has learned that, on his A310 with IFEL’s 2Mb upgrade, he has
to add 8Kb to the WimpSlot values in the !Aldebaran.!Run file (from
624Kb to 632Kb). Then everything works fine. He says this might be due
to the RAM upgrade: Aldebaran seems to work fine on any other Archimedes
with RISC OS 3.1. He adds a final bit of advice: “Get a copy!”
6.9
Printing
6.9
Printing to file
6.9
Tom Rank has found that the hint from Simon Moy in Archive 6.2.7 about
editing the number of text lines seems redundant under RISC OS 3.10, and
that printing to a file (at least with the Epson LQ-860 driver) resulted
in a printout which aborted with an “address exception at &038B5BE0”, a
frozen printer and an incomplete document (the last few millimetres were
lost). This is particularly irritating as printing to a file is the only
way, apart from buying a direct laser printer or a CC Turbo Driver, to
avoid the long wait for print out. (How about using the PROdriver shell
for use with Acorn drivers? See the review on page 43. Ed.)
6.9
Using fanfold paper
6.9
Tom Rank comments: “Feeding single sheets into a printer soon becomes a
pain, but sheetfeeders come expensive, so A4 fanfold paper seemed a good
idea (even though it’s about four or five times more expensive than
better quality photocopy paper at a discount stationer!). However, with
RISC OS 3.00, I could never get the settings right, so the print always
crept up or down the page until it crossed the fold. With RISC OS 3.10,
I’ve finally got it to work, whether by fluke I’m not sure. Using the
LQ-860 printer driver with my Epson LQ-550 printer, the correct settings
from the paper sizes menu are: top margin 8mm and bottom margin 15mm;
save these with a name like ‘A4 Fanfold’ and the margins can be
automatically set each time. These settings seem to work OK with single
sheets too.”
6.9
Filing Systems
6.9
Beebug 5¼“ disc interface
6.9
Stuart Bell writes: “I got my Beebug 5¼“ disc interface (date 1989) to
work by setting the step rate for an 80 track double-sided drive to 12ms
(lower values may well work; I’m just cautious), and whereas RISC OS 2
worked with “Ready” (switch 6 on the interface) supplied by the on-board
PAL, RISC OS 3 works more reliably with it passed through from the
drive.”
6.9
Dismounting between filing systems
6.9
According to Mike Sawle, applications which frequently switch between
filing systems seem to require the *DISMOUNT command before selecting an
alternative filing system in order to ensure correct execution. Common
error messages are Ambiguous Disc Name and Bad Error Block.
6.9
Miscellaneous Hints & Tips
6.9
•    Faster copying, etc. – Rob Davison recommends that if there is nothing
else you want to do when copying files, then click <Menu> over the filer
action window and choose ‘Faster’.
6.9
•    In the midnight hour – Atle Mjelde Bårdholt found that, whenever he
switched his computer on between midnight and 1 a.m., a day was added to
the internal clock. He then found that this seemed to be caused by the
presence in his !Boot file of the command *Set Sys$Year 1993 (which he
had included because he has some programs that set the year back to
1988). When this command is removed, the midnight hour problem goes
away. Does anyone know the reason?
6.9
•    Fan filters and the A5000 – Tom Rank found that, although magazines
mention the need to change the filter from time to time, there was no
mention of how to do this and on fitting the RISC OS 3.10 upgrade he
could see no filter anyway. Is there one, he asks? The Acorn
representative at BETT told him that the design of the machine made it
superfluous; he couldn’t quite follow why, but it was something to do
with the direction of airflow.
6.9
•    Flippin’ objects in Draw – Having travelled all the way from
Derbyshire to the Acorn User Show, Tom Rank “asked the man on one of the
other magazines’ stall if there was an equivalent in Draw to the ‘flip’
option in Paint, as it’s sometimes useful to turn a picture round to
face the other way. The expert, although helpful about other items,
couldn’t tell me, but my son revealed the following tip, which he said
he thought was obvious. Must talk to him more often....
6.9
“To flip an object in Draw, select it and, from the ‘transform’ menu
(RISC OS 3), set x scale (or y scale or both) to −1 (minus 1). This also
works in the RISC OS 2 version of Draw but there the ‘transform’ option
is chosen from the Select menu.”
6.9
•    Lost lines in Edit − Eric Ayers has found that double-clicking on
large text files to load them into Edit has caused several lines to be
missing from the middle of the text. Apparently, this does not happen if
he drags the files to the Edit icon on the icon bar. Any ideas?
6.9
•    More fonts in RISC-OS 3 − Gary Atkinson of KudlianSoft recommends the
following additions to the !Fonts.!Boot and !Fonts.!Run files to enable
one or more separate font directories to be added to and removed from
the font path simply by double-clicking on the fonts application
directory.
6.9
The !Fonts.!Boot file should be amended as follows:
6.9
| Boot file for !Fonts.
6.9
| Nothing happens if you put this in | a RISC OS 2 machine except that
6.9
| the !Fonts sprite is set up − this | means that, when a RISC OS2
!Fonts
6.9
| directory is seen the !Boot file
6.9
| will not be run; double clicking
6.9
| on the appropriate !Fonts will
6.9
| force installation.
6.9
|
6.9
| Take care when merging RISC OS 2
6.9
| fonts with these (RISC OS 3) fonts
6.9
| - many fonts are contained in the
6.9
| RISC OS 3 ROM and thus do not
6.9
| appear in !Fonts; normally you
6.9
| should not copy the corresponding
6.9
| RISC OS 2 fonts!
6.9
Iconsprites <Obey$Dir>.!Sprites
6.9
RMEnsure FontManager 2.89 Obey
6.9
| The next command boots up your
6.9
| normal font directory
6.9
FontInstall <Obey$Dir>.
6.9
SetEval MoreFonts 0
6.9
The !Fonts.!Run file should be amended as follows:
6.9
| !Run file for !Fonts,
6.9
| version 1.05 (20-Aug-91)
6.9
RMEnsure FontManager 2.89 Error These fonts are for use with
6.9
 RISC OS 2.12 or later
6.9
|Obey <Obey$Dir>.!Boot
6.9
| The extra *FontInstall means that,
6.9
| if you double-click the Fonts
6.9
| directory, all such directories
6.9
| will be re-searched for any new
6.9
| fonts.
6.9
SetEval MoreFonts MoreFonts EOR 1
6.9
IF MoreFonts=1 THEN FontInstall <Obey$Dir>. ELSE FontRemove <Obey$Dir>.
6.9
|FontInstall
6.9
The !Boot file is only run on the first time that the filer sees the
!Fonts application, hence the initialisation of MoreFonts to zero. Every
time the directory is double-clicked, the !Run file will toggle the
value of this variable between 0 and 1. This is done in the line:
6.9
SetEval MoreFonts MoreFonts EOR 1
6.9
If the value is 1, the FontInstall command adds the new directory to the
font path and initialises all of the fonts. If the value is 0, the
FontRemove command removes the temporary font directory from the font
path.
6.9
If you require more than one spare directory, you will need to use
different variables, such as MoreFonts2 or FancyFonts.
6.9
In practice, it is better to have a directory called fonts inside your
!Fonts application which contains your preferred normal fonts at switch-
on, and a directory called spare (for example) which contains the set of
fonts that you wish to switch in and out. Then in your !Boot file, the
FontInstall command becomes
6.9
FontInstall <Obey$Dir>.fonts.
6.9
and the IF...THEN statement in the !Run file has <Obey$Dir>.spare. in
place of the two occurrences of <Obey$Dir>. .
6.9
Miscellaneous Comments
6.9
FontEd
6.9
When Tom Rank spoke to an Acorn representative he was told that they
were not contemplating the release of FontEd and that it is NOT public
domain. An early version got there by mistake via SID and it really
ought not, he said, to be distributed by PD libraries.
6.9
The Acorn representative acknowledged that Acorn were unlikely to do
anything about this situation, as it was “only an early version and
won’t work on RISC OS 3”. According to Tom this is partially true; a
friend of his has had problems with version 0.28, but at least some of
the time it runs on an A5000. However, he observes that it is a pity
that Acorn actually seem to be discouraging anyone else from working on
fonts. (There is a version of FontEd on Careware 7, released in May
1990, but it has been updated since then. Acorn haven’t objected,
presumably because of the charitable aspect. Ed.)
6.9
Screen blanking during floppy disc access
6.9
Stuart Bell writes: “Many things are very much more elegant in RISC OS 3
but with one notable exception. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw
what happens to the screen during floppy disc accessing. Whether my ARM3
cache is dis- or enabled, in mode 24 the screen either flashes or is
blanked when loading, saving or formatting. If RISC OS 2 didn’t need to
do this, why is it allowed now? (It did, in fact, happen in mode 21
under RISC OS 2 – HE.) Some re-coding is needed, even if the resultant
code is a little slower. More significantly, who was the Acorn person in
authority who thought that it is acceptable in 1993 to produce a
computer which professes to be a ‘world-beater’ which, when using floppy
discs, looks like the Sinclair Spectrum (or was it the ZX81?) reading
from cassette tape circa 1983? This just looks so tacky. I know that
serious use demands a hard disc, but first impressions count for a lot,
and a lot of demonstrations will be on floppy-based A3010’s. This is not
good enough, Acorn.”
6.9
Basic program compaction errors
6.9
R. W. Darlington writes: “I am writing on a matter of utmost urgency.
6.9
“There seems to be a growing urge amongst programmers to use a program
compactor on Basic RunImage files. Unfortunately, I know of no Basic
compactor program that does not exhibit a certain disastrous fault.
6.9
“If, for instance, a Basic program contains any floating point or pseudo
variables followed by a Basic keyword or statement, then when it is
compacted and the space between the variable and the keyword is removed,
that line will generate an error.
6.9
“For instance, if the program contained the line
6.9
10 IF TRUE THEN VDU7
6.9
which when compacted becomes
6.9
10IFTRUETHENVDU7
6.9
the lack of space between TRUE and THEN will generate an error.
6.9
“The same is true for any line containing a floating point variable:
6.9
10 ha=TRUE
6.9
20 IF    ha    THEN    VDU7
6.9
will crash when compacted because of a lack of space between ha and
THEN.
6.9
“I have come across numerous examples of RunImage files which have these
errors in them. One of them is Acorn’s new RISC OS 3 !SciCalc. Others
are new versions of Translator and Creator.
6.9
“Please can you draw Archive readers’ attention to these problems as
soon as possible? Or, if any reader knows of a Basic compactor that does
not produce these errors, please can they let us know where it may be
obtained?”
6.9
Matters Arising
6.9
Setting Caps Lock (*FX 202)
6.9
Unfortunately, the advice I gave last month about using *FX 202 may have
been a bit confusing because, after explaining that Peter Young wanted a
command to turn Caps Lock on, I then described how to turn it off! The
command to turn Caps Lock on, leaving the other settings unchanged, is
*FX 202,0,239.
6.9
The shortened form *FX 202,32 should turn Caps Lock on, but may have
side effects.
6.9
Note also that, to make sure that the LED indicators are correctly
updated after a *FX 202 command, it is a good idea to follow it with the
simple command *FX 118.
6.9
The bits of the keyboard status byte have the following meanings:
6.9
    bit    value    meaning
6.9
    0 (1)    0    Alt off
6.9
        1    Alt on
6.9
    1 (2)    0    Scroll Lock off
6.9
        1    Scroll Lock on
6.9
    2 (4)    0    Num Lock on
6.9
        1    Num Lock off
6.9
    3 (8)    0    Shift off
6.9
        1    Shift on
6.9
    4 (16)    0    Caps Lock on
6.9
        1    Caps Lock off
6.9
    5 (32)        (“Normally set”)
6.9
    6 (64)    0    Ctrl off
6.9
        1    Ctrl on
6.9
    7 (128)    0    Shift enable off
6.9
        1    Shift enable on
6.9
(This information is taken from the RISC­OS 2 Programmers’ Reference
Manual.)
6.9
Boot-up options (Archive 6.8 p26)
6.9
Peter Young has suggested that it might be better to use INKEY$ with a
delay of, say, 5 to 10 seconds instead of GET$ so that, if nobody
presses a key, the computer will continue with the boot file after a
short delay.
6.9
Unexpected messages from IDE filing system (Archive 6.8 p24)
6.9
Peter Young (who has a Beebug IDE interface) has confirmed that, even
after creating space for a directory cache, he still gets unexpected
messages unless he uses full pathnames. For instance, if he starts with
the commands
6.9
*DIR IDEFS::IDEDisc4.$.BASIC.B
6.9
*CAT
6.9
he gets a catalogue of the subdirectory ‘B’ as expected. However, if he
uses the abbreviated pathname instead:
6.9
*DIR $.BASIC.B
6.9
*CAT
6.9
he gets a catalogue of the directory ‘BASIC’ even though the heading of
the directory listing correctly says that the CSD is IDEFS::IDEDisc4.$.
BASIC.B. The computer’s confusion is further demonstrated by the fact
that if he then enters:
6.9
*DIR ^
6.9
*CAT
6.9
it replies Directory ‘@’ not found.
6.9
‘Interrupt’ module (Archive 6.6 p55)
6.9
In March, we reported M. P. Sawle’s request for help in getting the
Interrupt module (Archive Shareware disc 6) working under RISC OS 3, but
since then neither he nor we have heard anything. Does no-one else use
this module? Can its author help?
6.9
Wish List for RISC­OS 4
6.9
Now that the flood of comments, tips, etc about RISC OS 3 is beginning
to abate, I thought this might be the time to debate what changes or
improvements we would like to see in the next version of the operating
system. So, here are some suggestions to set the ball rolling. Please
let us know what you think: Do you agree or disagree with what is said
here? What would you like to add? Would you perhaps prefer to leave well
alone!? Send your comments either to me, Hugh Eagle at 48 Smithbarn,
Horsham, Sussex, RH13 6DX.
6.9
Götz Kohlberg has contributed a number of interesting suggestions
(Comments in italics are mine – Hugh Eagle) (But I’ve added some! Ed):
6.9
First of all the backdrop must be improved and some nice backdrop
sprites should be included on a disc. (Windows is vastly superior in
attention to this sort of detail − not only backdrops but also
screensaver graphics and a host of other things right down to basic
features like the appearance of the desktop itself. Some may argue that
this kind of thing is superficial gloss but I think it is important to
make the computer as fun and appealing as possible.)
6.9
The Ramdisc also needs major enhancements like automatically adjusting
its size to the amount actually needed. Also, the files on the Ramdisc
should be compressed, so that even less space is needed. (Why limit
compression to the RAM disc? Why not have an option to allow full
automatic compression of any disc, including the hard disc?)
6.9
What I also miss is a filer function like on the Atari. There, after
changing a disc, you only have to press <Esc> to get the new directory
shown. Also all the icons for each disc drive (both floppies and hard
discs) should show the current disc name.
6.9
The Printer queue should allow the printing of a variable number of
copies of each file. Now only  one copy per file is possible so that I
have to include more copies of a file if I want more copies printed. A
counter within the queue would be better, especially for laser printers.
6.9
A Quickformat option should also be included. (Reformatting is often
more convenient than deleting a lot of directories and files but would
be much quicker if the formatting process only involved rewriting the
maps and the directory entries. This would only take a matter of seconds
instead of nearly 90sec. for a full format. (Another point about
formatting: the operating system should check first to see if the disc
is already formatted and if so prompt for confirmation.)
6.9
(Somebody doesn’t read their Archive thoroughly enough and hasn’t
learned the easy way of erasing a full disc − take a blank disc and use
Backup from the menu on the filer − the full disc is blanked in a couple
of seconds! Ed.)
6.9
The error messages of the filer should be in a clear speech − not ‘Disc
error :0 at 00000000’. Also some Basic errors should be given their
textual meanings.
6.9
The Pinboard should be improved. Acorn have had plenty of time to
develop a better one and there are a number of good examples to follow.
(The Pinboard menu might include a “Quick save” option which would
overwrite the last Pinboard file that was loaded with a file containing
the new settings. If you were happy to use this option, you wouldn’t
have to open a directory viewer or type in a path name.)
6.9
Other suggestions (contributors’ names in brackets)
6.9
•    MS-DOS filenames – PC-DOS / MS-DOS filenames should be shown in full,
not with their heads and tails chopped off in the “large icons” Filer
display. (Paul Skirrow)
6.9
•    Long filenames – On the subject of filenames, how about long,
meaningful filenames? (Does there need to be any limit to the length?)
(Hugh Eagle)
6.9
•    Intelligent use of filetypes – I’ve long wondered whether it might be
possible to allow different files with the same name but with different
filetypes (in other words, the filetype would effectively be treated as
an extension to the name, rather like in MS-DOS). I wonder what the pros
and cons would be? If the idea is a non-starter, perhaps at the very
least the Filer could be programmed to refuse to overwrite a file with
another with the same name but a different type without prompting for
confirmation first! (I speak as one who has inadvertently overwritten a
program, the result of many hours’ labour, with a hastily produced
sprite file!) (Hugh Eagle)
6.9
•    Backup – This should be more intelligent and only copy those parts of
the disc that are occupied, as it did in RISC OS 2.00. (Presumably this
is to cut down on viruses and ‘interesting’ things being left on discs
which could be found by sector editors). (Rob Davison) (’Scuse me but it
IS intelligent − that’s why my disc-blanking hint, mentioned opposite
works so well. Ed.)
6.9
•    Pre-emptive multitasking – the operating system should make it
possible to interrupt applications that hog the machine. (Philip
Lardner)
6.9
•    Background printing – If it’s not possible to make all applications
run in the background then at the very least make this work for
printing! (Nearly everyone!)
6.9
•    Draw − (1) The toolbox should include icons for Gridlock on/off, Grid
on/off ... (R. D. Attwood)  (2)  ... and an option to turn Autoscroll on
or off (R. D. Attwood)  (3) I suggest that the preferences should allow
a font other than the System font to be chosen as the default (HE)
6.9
•    Documentation – Acorn should make documentation for the new operating
system available on disc as they did with the RISC OS 2 ISV doc but as
they failed to do with RISC OS 3. They could make a modest charge for
the disc and still make a small profit. The documentation could be
fairly sparse so no-one would be put off buying the manuals when they
eventually appeared and programmers could make use of all the new
features much sooner. I imagine that it would only take someone a couple
of hours with Edit to make Acorn’s internal change documentation ready
for this (by cutting out all the interesting bits no doubt!) and they
would do a great service to all the enthusiasts who enjoy programming
their computers. (Rob Davison)
6.9
•    Manuals – The order of the manuals should be reversed so that the more
technical parts of the manual come at the end. (It seems absurd that the
Applications Guide which is likely to be of more general interest is
printed after the technical User Guide, and the Welcome Guide is surely
not the place for off-putting details of monitor connections!) (HE)
6.9
•    On-line Help – The quality, quantity and consistency of on-line help
need a lot of improvement. Windows-style on-line manuals, with hypertext
features, should be included as a matter of course. (Of course, these
will need large amounts of disc space, but they could be made optional.)
Also, the Apple idea of “balloon help”, where a small amount of help is
popped up where the pointer is, seems a big improvement on Acorn’s
window at the bottom of the screen which can easily get hidden behind
several others. Furthermore, all applications should provide both kinds
of help as a matter of course. Currently, some of the best Archimedes
applications are help-less: Impression has none, Artworks has a function
key for it but still has none, and even the applications supplied in
Acorn’s Home Office pack fail to use the Help facilities! (HE)
6.9
•    Basic – This should support the floating point assembler op-codes. If
Acorn’s FPA is so wonderful (and it should be, considering the time it’s
been in appearing) (latest news is “probably end of June” − Ed) why
don’t they give it some support in Basic ? (Rob Davison)
6.9
•    Saving the Desktop state – Somehow the process of saving the desktop
state needs to be made more user friendly. For instance, it would be
useful to be able to ask for the applications and windows which are
currently in use or open to be run or opened along with the current
Pinboard state when the machine is next turned on, and to do this by a
quick and easy process (a single hot-key combination or menu selection,
without having to open any directories). This should be separate from
the existing boot-up process (and not overwrite the !Boot file) and
should avoid booting every application that has been “seen”. Also, when
saving a Deskboot file, you should be given the option of deciding
whether the directory window that you have just opened to save it in
will be opened again when the machine is rebooted! (HE)
6.9
•    Alarm – This should include an option to set off an alarm periodically
before the effective date: e.g. if my anniversary is on 30th June I
should be able to set it to warn me each time I switch the computer on
in the preceding fortnight! (HE)
6.9
•    Streamlining the upgrade – There should be an installation program
which would intelligently preserve the relevant parts of the old
configuration so that we don’t have to rebuild the whole thing from
scratch. For example, this could make a note of things like monitor
type, memory allocations, fontmax settings, mouse speed and so on and
store these in the new configuration. Also, it could examine your old
!System and !Fonts for modules and fonts that you are likely to want to
keep and put them into the appropriate new directories. It might also be
possible to have a stab at predicting the contents of your !Boot file by
looking at your old one, e.g. the modules it loads and the applications
it runs (although I realise that this would be more difficult).
Furthermore, before the installation is started, the program could
usefully save the old configuration, in case you change your mind and
want to revert to good old RISC OS 3! (HE)  A
6.9
PipeLineZ
6.9
Gerald Fitton
6.9
I do enjoy reading and learning from the correspondence you send me. I
don’t know if it’s the Spring, the advent of Wordz or the Spring Show in
Harrogate, but I’ve received considerably more correspondence for
publication than usual so I’m trying a new strategy. If I don’t, the
Archive Editor will probably mark some blocks in my text and follow that
with <ctrl-x>!
6.9
The monthly Archive disc
6.9
I’ve said before that I receive a fair amount of correspondence from
readers of PipeLineZ who don’t use PipeDream. Much of that
correspondence arises from my controversial remarks and questions – so
here’s a subject which interests me and on which I’m sure you’ll have
ideas. What proportion of Archive readers take advantage of the Archive
monthly disc? How do you feel about magazine discs in general? Should
the magazine be priced so that every subscriber receives a disc or
should the disc be supplied as an optional extra at an additional cost?
6.9
As an experiment this month, I am moving more material than usual from
the PipeLineZ column to the Archive disc. Let me know whether you want
me to move further in that direction. (Before Gerald sent in this
Column, I had already decided to change the price of a one-year
subscription to the monthly program discs from £24 to £20. Ed.)
6.9
The Harrogate Spring Show
6.9
I don’t know if it’s just Jill and me, but we found the Spring Show had
a quite different feel about it from the Show at Wembley last October.
It’s difficult to find a single cause but we found it even more
enjoyable than previous Shows. One of the things which pleased us is
that people we saw early in the day had time to return. I’m sure we
found them more relaxed and they were delighted to have a general chat
rather than a brief Hello, Goodbye and off to the next stand!
6.9
Colton Software (and hence Norwich Computer Services) have reduced the
price of PD 4 and, as a special Spring Show offer, they reduced it even
further. As a result of the ‘bargain offer’, I found myself
demonstrating the features of PD, to a far greater extent than I had
anticipated, to people who didn’t have it but knew about it. It would
seem that PD has the reputation of being the definitive spreadsheet (and
hence highly desired) but, when the recommended retail price was around
£200, it wasn’t the sort of package you would call an ‘impulse
purchase’! The price reduction has brought PD 4 within the budget of
many who previously regarded it as too expensive. I believe that what I
saw at Harrogate heralds a new lease of life for PD 4 (in spite of the
impending launch of Resultz − see below). If this is so, maybe we can
get Colton Software to clear up a few of those remaining ‘obscure
features’ which I think of as bugs and add a few more desirable features
from our Wish Lists!
6.9
Under the guise of being a Colton Software ‘demonstrator’, I had a
chance to ‘play’ with a pre-release version of Resultz. Although I tried
to explain to those who enquired that I hadn’t used Resultz before the
Show, I think that those to whom I spoke didn’t believe me. Resultz
looks like and behaves like a mixture of Wordz and PD, so I was at home
with it immediately, clicking on the italic f to find all the functions.
6.9
One noticeable difference between PD and Resultz is that in the latter,
slots, like paragraphs in Wordz, can be any (rectangular) shape. For
example, rows do not have to be on a fixed vertical spacing; every row
can have a different height! To understand one of the ‘new’ features of
Resultz, it is necessary to distinguish between rows (which have row
numbers as in PD) and ‘lines’ within a slot. Text wraps around to a new
line (but stays in the same slot) when you reach the right hand end of a
slot; the slot (and the whole row containing that slot) grows downwards
by a line. If you change the width of a slot containing wrapped around
text, the text automatically reformats to match the slot width. If you
press <Return> then, as happens in Wordz, you start a new paragraph in a
new slot on the next row. You can think of the paragraphs as being
numbered slots of many lines.
6.9
A more interesting feature is that slots can be of any width. The width
of say, slot B3, can be different from the width of slot B2. In fact, B3
can be as wide as B2, C2 and D2 put together! C3 does not have to be
below C2, it can be under D2.
6.9
The latest information I have on a release date for Resultz is June 1993
with a Resultz demo disc a week or so behind the full version. Resultz
demo discs are not free but, if you want to try one out as soon as
they’re available then let me (or Colton Software) know.
6.9
French dictionary
6.9
Jack Wright has produced another foreign language dictionary. His
earlier one was a German to English dictionary (on Archive 6.7 monthly
disc). This time it’s a French to English dictionary which you’ll find
on the Archive monthly disc in the directory French2Eng. It contains
over 11,000 French words in a 218Kb PD two column file. I had thought
that it might be possible to invert the dictionary so that it could
become an English to French dictionary just by doing a sort on column B.
I then discovered that the word “to” was used too often at the start of
all the English version of the verbs. There must be a way of automating
the removal of the word “to” so, if you’ve any ideas then I’d like to
hear from you (and I guess Jack would as well).
6.9
One of our contributors is working on an idea for using a Thesaurus
package (but without the original words) as a means of finding
translations for foreign words. If you have any ideas or files you wish
to contribute then I will pass them on.
6.9
Friday 13th
6.9
First a quick summary of the problem: Every 400 years (since 1752) our
calendar repeats itself. As an example of what I mean, in 1992,
Christmas day is on a Friday – 400 years into the future, 2392, it will
be on Friday again. In fact, the calendar for 2392 will be an exact
replica of the 1992 calendar. In the same way, 2393 will be a replica of
1993. During these 400 years, there will be 4800 months
(400 × 12 = 4800) and every one of them will have a 13th. More of these
13ths fall on a Friday than any other day of the week. The conclusion is
that a 13th is more likely to be a Friday than any other day of the
week.
6.9
Colton Software are offering a small prize (a PD, Wordz or Resultz mug –
but not the Penguin mug) and I am offering fame (if not fortune) if you
can produce a proof that 13ths are more likely to be a Friday. Can you
find the frequencies for all the days of the week (Sunday to Saturday
inclusive)? (We’ll throw in a couple of Archive mugs, too. Ed.)
6.9
Brian McDevitt’s solution is on the Archive disc. He describes his
method as a ‘brute force’ demonstration of using a custom function. He
says:
6.9
“It is based on the custom function “day_of_ week” in the sheet
[_friday] which finds the position in the week (starting with Sunday as
1) for any date supplied to it in PD format. If result() returns “wday”
instead of “pos”, the function will name the day but this option should
not be used in the present exercise, as “fridays” expects “day_of_week”
to return a number.
6.9
“Function “fridays” uses “day_of_week” in a double loop to cycle through
the thirteenth day of each month for each of 400 years, keeping a
running total for each day of the week. The distribution of frequencies
is the same whichever year is used as the start:
6.9
   Sunday = 687
6.9
   Monday = 685
6.9
   Tuesday = 685
6.9
   Wednesday = 687
6.9
   Thursday = 684
6.9
   Friday = 688
6.9
   Saturday = 684
6.9
   Total = 4800
6.9
“Assuming 400 year cycles repeat themselves, as Gerald suggests, Friday
will always be ahead of the game, having one more 13th than Sunday and
Wednesday. Thursday and Saturday have fewer 13ths than any other day.
6.9
“Running the 400 year cycle on my A440 ARM 3 takes just over an hour.
Before (or instead of!) tying up your machine for that long, have a look
at one of the “snap...” sheets which give snapshot end results for
different start years. You might then like to try editing slot A19 in
“_friday” making the figure 399 something more reasonable (like 5).
Running the sheet “frid” will then show the thirteenth of each month and
score for each day clocking up for (in this case) six years. The sheets
are linked to each other both ways, so clicking on the function sheet
“_friday” will also start things going.”
6.9
Gamble02
6.9
Open the Box! The ‘problem’ was stated in the April 1993 Archive as
follows:
6.9
You are a game show contestant and, through sheer brilliance, you have
won the right to open one of three boxes. One of the three contains the
Star Prize, the other two contain Booby Prizes. The game show host knows
which box contains the Star Prize but, of course, you don’t.
6.9
You choose a box and tell the game show host and the worldwide audience
of your choice. In accordance with the rules of the box-opening
procedure, the host opens one of the other two boxes which he knows to
contain a Booby Prize! At this stage, the rules allow you to stick with
your original choice or change to the other unopened box.
6.9
The question you have to answer is “Would changing to the other unopened
box improve your chances of winning?”
6.9
I have received a good spreadsheet solution from Bruce D Brown which you
will find in the directory called Gamble02.Brown on the monthly disc.
6.9
There are many mathematical problems for which it can be proved that an
analytical solution is impossible. Perhaps the classic is finding the
five solutions of a quintic (fifth power) equation. In previous
centuries mathematicians have always used ‘numerical methods’ to solve
these ‘difficult’ problems. Such numerical methods have become popular
since the advent of the computer. Mathematicians now devise and run
computer programs, much in the same way as Bruce has done with this
problem. Of course, there is an ‘Analytical’ solution to the problem of
opening the box but many people, some of whom are mathematicians, have
difficulty in believing the answer.
6.9
I did receive a well-reasoned argument (but not a spreadsheet) from
Jonathan Ormond. His solution used the usual ‘conditional probability’
method but without the usual (difficult to understand) formula. It was a
very good piece of reasoning without any mathematical jargon and comes
up with the correct answer which is “Swop boxes to double your chance of
winning the star prize.”
6.9
Now, you might not believe Jonathan. If you don’t then try Bruce’s
spreadsheet method or even try the experiment ‘manually’ about ten or
twenty times. Even with such a small sample (10 or 20) you’ll soon find
that your chances of winning the star prize improve from 1 in 3 to
2 in 3 if you swop from your first choice to the unopened box (the one
not selected by the host).
6.9
Hidden columns
6.9
By reducing the width of a PD column to zero it ‘disappears’. Elwyn
Morris points out the benefits of using hidden columns in PD. He says:
6.9
“Many of my documents are ever growing and constantly revised in the
light of new information gleaned. By having one, or more, columns (which
can later be made invisible by making them of zero width) with coded
references therein, subject matter can be sorted into groups or into
logical sequence, even when each entry is simply written in haphazardly
below the one previously entered. At the touch of a button, my often
inconsequential jottings turn themselves into fully-fledged lecture
notes! I believe there was a program published some time ago which
actually made a great feature of sorting random ideas into some sort of
pattern, yet this facility is free within PD. Further, a SUM or DCOUTNTA
of various aspects can be appended which updates as new information is
included. None of this is either a database or spreadsheet in the true
sense, but it is invaluable to me.”
6.9
Elwyn asks, “Does anyone else use PipeDream in this way?”
6.9
Pamphlets
6.9
Francis W Aries explains how he prints pamphlets using Wordz. He says:
6.9
The first essential is to ensure that the printer you have will fill the
maximum area on paper with a drawfile which fills the maximum area
between paper lines on the screen. This is another story but I use a
drawfile such as [Rect4] (on the Archive disc) which just fills the A4
frame on the screen and is not too hard on the printer for tests. The
4cm corner squares allow the use of a ruler to check the printed result
whether it appears on paper or not. My printer is an Integrex CJ Series
2 which emulates the HP Deskjet 500C.
6.9
Loading the file
6.9
A most useful file to turn into a pamphlet form is the Wordz Release
note which is issued with your copy of Wordz. Mine is 1.02 and the file
is about 10Kb in length. [The current version of Wordz is version 1.03 −
GLF]. Double-clicking loads the file and you will notice it is three
pages in length.
6.9
Customising the display
6.9
When an A4 page is reduced to A5, everything is reduced to about 70% of
its original size, so the first thing you need to do is to increase all
Styles by this amount. Select BaseLetter, click on ‘S’ on the button
bar, highlight ‘heading’ on the list of styles, click on ‘change’, click
on ‘height’ of text and then use the change arrows to increase the
height from 14 point to 17 point. By trial and error, I found that 17
point was the largest that would limit the document to four pages.
Clicking on ‘OK’ will change the BaseLetter style to the larger type.
6.9
Select Heading and SubHeading and (because the height is highlighted)
increase the point size by about 20%. There is no need to change the
height of the text for those styles which are not highlighted.
6.9
Printing as a Pamphlet with the printer on the iconbar and ready for
use, click on the printer icon on the Wordz button-bar. On the dialogue
box revealed, click on the ‘extra’ button and a new dialogue box is
shown. Click on the ‘Pamphlet’ button and the display in the pages box
will change from 1 − 4 to 4,1 and below that, 2,3. Delete 2,3. The
remaining buttons to be ‘lit’ are ‘both’ and ‘two-up’. Click on OK, and
pages 4 and 1 will be printed on one side of the paper. Repeat the above
two paragraphs of instructions this time deleting 4,1. The same sheet of
paper is inserted and pages 2 and 3 will be printed. Folding along the
centre line produces an A5 pair of sheets to keep with the ‘Wordz’
manual.
6.9
PeakMath
6.9
Standard National Curriculum Attainment Targets in Maths have a somewhat
political flavour at the moment. A contributor who wishes to remain
anonymous has sent in a set of files which will be of interest and value
to anyone using the Peak Maths set of ‘books and worksheets’. These too
are on the Archive monthly disc.
6.9
Usage3
6.9
John Marsh has sent me some spreadsheets which gives an ongoing account
of usage and cost of Electricity and Gas used from day to day by just
entering the present meter readings. The spreadsheet will fit neatly
onto A4 size paper using condensed 17 cpi pitch. This too you will find
on the Archive monthly disc.
6.9
Wordz wish list
6.9
Cain Hunt, amongst many others, has asked me if I’d be willing to
coordinate a ‘Wish List’ for upgrades to Wordz. The quick answer has to
be “Yes!”.
6.9
On the Archive monthly disc, you will find a directory called WishList
which contains some of the correspondence between myself and Cain. I
have removed Cain’s address from the files but otherwise they are
intact.
6.9
Cain has written to Colton Software with his Wish List and later he
comments that quite a few of the points he raised have been ‘corrected’
or embodied in version 1.03 of Wordz. Colton Software do listen to what
you say to them about their packages, so keep writing.
6.9
Finally
6.9
Thanks again for all your letters and discs. Please let me know whether
this month’s experiment of moving material from words in this column to
files on the Archive monthly disc meets with your approval or not.
Remember, space in the magazine is limited.  A
6.9
Master of Sim City, USA
6.9
Tord Eriksson
6.9
I have always thought it would be good to become mayor of my own city,
but nobody else seems to think I should. The second best option is being
supreme ruler of Sim City, a simulation from Krisalis under licence from
the creator, Will Wright, and Maxis. The program comes complete with a
teacher’s guide and an instruction manual. It works from the hard disc
but it needs to see the original disc each time it starts.
6.9
Old favourite
6.9
For the users of US-originated computers, this is a game/simulation that
has been around for some time but for us Acorn users, it’s brand new.
The box, probably US-made as well, is therefore illustrated with
screenshots from every conceivable computer, except Archimedes.
6.9
Basically, you build an American town and try to balance taxes,
investments and services as effectively as you can. As it is very
American, hospital services are private but transport, including trams
and roads, are public. Also, without a police station in each little
corner of the town, you are soon swamped by crime. You plan where the
power station should be situated, where polluting industries and
commercial areas are to end up, and where roads, fire department and, of
course, the police should be sited.
6.9
As your town grows, you can add more power stations, a harbour or an
airport, or plan new housing estates or commercial blocks. Plans cost
£100 per block, a harbour £5000 and a coal-fired power station £3000. I
think this “£” business is rather silly, as a pound sterling in 1900
(the year in which the game world starts) is not the same as today’s
little coin...
6.9
There are a number of ready-made scenarios, including Tokyo with
Godzilla (I wonder what teachers think of that?!), Hamburg during
Bomber-Harris’ excesses or Rio de Janiero during a flood caused by
global warming.
6.9
To be able to get to grips with the simulation, it is recommended that
you start from scratch with a simple town (default name is Heresville)
and the setting at ‘easy’. And remember to turn the disasters off, as it
is rather dicey, even without them!
6.9
Multitasking, almost perfect...
6.9
It multitasks with Impression, which I am using as I write this,
together with various other applications with no problem whatsoever.
(Mind you, the first time I tried to quit Impression, with Sim City
running, the entire computer froze and my almost bicentennial town
disappeared into oblivion! You have been warned!) Otherwise, it’s quite
happy with 640Kb of RAM, not counting the screen, so it ought to run on
an unexpanded machine.
6.9
Grumbles
6.9
The game takes a long time to get going, even on an ARM3-equipped
machine like mine. The most serious flaw, to my mind, is with the
scroll-bars/toolboxes. The toolboxes are inside the scroll-bars along
the lefthand side. That might seem a good arrangement, but if your town
is on the map’s righthand edge, you cannot make the window smaller than
full size or you lose the icons! To make matters worse, there are no
keyboard short-cuts. You have to move the sprite sideways to see the
toolbox to activate the buttons. Using mode 74 makes anything except
full-size unnecessary (and the scroll-bars are then superfluous) but
what about the poor mode 12 users?
6.9
The Sim City iconbar icon can also lead you into trouble. If you
accidentally close all windows, it asks you, “Do you really want to
start a new city?” but if you say “No”, it just exits and your current
game is lost! I think this needs a thorough rethink by the programmers
at Krisalis...
6.9
Windows
6.9
There are four windows that you can open and interact with: Map, which
you use to move the Edit window to where you want, Budget where you
decide on the town’s finances, and Evaluation, where the Gallup boys
decide if you are doing a good job, if the population is growing, etc.
In addition to these there is a very neat Graph window. This shows you
the statistics from a period of between 10 and 120 years showing
population, crime, pollution, finance, industries and commercial
enterprises. This is excellent, but I would really have liked a zoom
facility on maps, the edit window and especially the graph.
6.9
I would have liked the Edit window to be movable with the scroll-bars.
If it is at its maximum, the size of a mode 12 page, you have to use the
Map to drag the Edit window around, because your city will surely become
bigger with time. This makes mode 12 extremely frustrating to use (CC’s
mode 74 is so much better − you can have both windows open, side by
side, with the Graph below, all at once).
6.9
Playing the game
6.9
Depending on your stamina and interest, you can start from scratch or
load a ready-made town, with built-in catastrophes, such as floods,
Godzillas, earthquakes, tornadoes, fires and air crashes, either
selectively or all at once! If you forget to insert the original disc
when you start from hard disc (or if you don’t have an original disc for
any reason!) it starts with all these perils at once − a novel form of
copy protection − you can play, but you won’t survive for long!
6.9
To run the game from scratch (in either slow, normal or fast mode), in a
16 colour mode, you have to have no other pressing business! To develop
a fair-sized city at any level of simulation (easy, medium or hard) it
takes a simulated 120 years at least, or more than a real day, even in
fast mode on an ARM3 machine!
6.9
There is an options menu and if you then set the game to auto-budget, it
will look after itself as well as it can, unattended. It’s great fun to
build your dream city and see it crumble due to your ineptitude or the
disasters you have added!
6.9
It’s not very realistic, with skyscrapers and manufacturing industries
being built instantly, to be torn down the next month and replaced a
month later with its twin! However, if you think of the houses as
companies growing, faltering or going bust, it becomes more plausible.
6.9
Police stations and fire stations are always the same, even if you have
no money to spend on their maintenance or their crews! The power
stations (nuclear or coal-fired) do not need any roads to transport
their fuel! Very odd! And where are the cooling towers? Probably the
coal is piped into the plant from off the gaming area, after having been
converted to methane gas and used in gas turbines?!
6.9
Sewage
6.9
Why are there no sewerage systems to take care of fluid pollution? And
why no sewage treatment plants? A game that has detailed maps of
pollution levels ought to include a sewerage system and a way to fine
offending industries and house owners.
6.9
Why are there no schools, courts or other public service buildings, or
are they commercial too? And why is it that you can live quite happily
without a fire brigade?
6.9
To nit-pick further, the traffic seems to be responsible for just too
little of the pollution, which I presume is aerosols and gases mainly,
as the industry and power stations are blamed for it all! Instead, heavy
traffic leads to highway shootings being reported, including screams.
How many citizens in the real world get shot anywhere due to traffic
jams each year? (Tord, you obviously don’t read about life in USA in
1993. Such shootings are not uncommon. Ed.)
6.9
Is this a simulation of a plausible town, or just a very, very slow
arcade game?
6.9
Conclusion
6.9
From what I have said so far, you might think I don’t like Sim City but
you would be wrong, utterly wrong! It’s one of the most compelling
simulations I have ever seen and as the tiny graph shows so clearly,
this is ruled by mathematical chaos and nothing else.
6.9
At no time is the development of the town a foregone conclusion. You are
bound to have to keep adjusting the tax rate every so often, even if you
set the game to auto-budget, because the economy is always getting out
of hand, just as in the real world. 7% tax seems to be the level to aim
for, but at times you have to jump to 10% − or 4% to keep your citizens
happy.
6.9
The main difference between Sim City and the real world is that our
taxes pay for schools, health services, social services, libraries,
water works and the waste disposal systems, government, defence and
pensions, in addition to the services included in this game.
6.9
So go forth and enjoy Sim City! Bulldoze the town’s hospital and build a
nuclear power plant in its place, build the world’s most awkward tram
system or build your ideal town, with cars, power stations and other
smelly things miles away. Or build a tiny town with just an airport?!
Try it and be amazed!
6.9
The manuals are clearly written and well laid out, even if they are
without colour and not really durable enough for prolonged school use.
Whether Sim City could fill a purpose in social sciences teaching, I am
not in a position to judge but as a demonstration of chaos, it’s
excellent − even without Godzilla and similar disasters!  A
6.9
Longman-Logotron     124 Cambridge Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge CB4
4ZS. (0223−425558) (0223−425349)
6.9
LOOKsystems (p41)    47 Goodhale Road, Bowthorpe, Norwich, NR5 9AY.
(0603−764114) (0603−764011)
6.9
Matt Black     P.O.Box 42, Peterborough, PE1 2TZ. (0733−315439)
6.9
Minerva Systems     Minerva House, Baring Crescent, Exeter, EX1 1TL.
(0392−437756) (0392−421762)
6.9
Morley Electronics     Morley
House, Norham Road, North Shields, Tyne & Wear, NE29 7TY. (091−257−6355)
(091−257−6373)
6.9
Minerva Systems     Minerva House, Baring Crescent, Exeter, EX1 1TL.
(0392−437756) (0392−421762)
6.9
Morley Electronics     Morley
House, Norham Road, North Shields, Tyne & Wear, NE29 7TY. (091−257−6355)
(091−257−6373)
6.9
Northwest SEMERC     Fitton Hill CDC, Rosary Road, Oldham, OL8 2QE.
(061−627−4469)
6.9
Oak Solutions (p23)    Suite 25,
Robin Enterprise Centre, Leeds Road, Idle, Yorkshire BD10 9TE.
(0274−620423) (0274−620419)
6.9
Pineapple Software    39 Brownlea
Gardens, Seven Kings, Ilford, Essex IG3 9NL. (081−599−1476)
(081−598−2343)
6.9
PTW Software     72 Frosthole Crescent, Fareham, Hampshire, PO15 6BG.
(0329−281930)
6.9
RESOURCE     Exeter Road, Doncaster, DN2 4PY. (0302−340331)
6.9
Risc Developments     117 Hatfield
Road, St Albans, Herts, AL1 4JS. (0727−840303) (0727−860263)
6.9
Sherston Software     Swan Barton,
Sherston, Malmesbury, Wilts. SN16 0LH. (0666−840433) (0666−840048)
6.9
Silicon Vision Ltd (p14)    Signal
House, Lyon Road, Harrow, Middlesex, HA1 2AG. (081−422−3556)
(081−427−5169)
6.9
Stallion Software Ltd     Arundel
House, Arundel Road, Camden, Bath, BA1 5JX. (0225−339090)
6.9
State Machine     75 Upper Wellington Street, Luton, Bedfordshire, LU1
5AA. (0582−483377) (0582−480833)
6.9
Suitable Software (p27)    136 Carter
Street, Fordham, Ely, Cambridgeshire, CB7 5JU. (0638−720171)
6.9
Suitable Software     8 Jane
Court, Lenah Valley, Tasmania, Australia 7008. (+61−02−285−448)
6.9
TBA Software     24 Eastgate, Aberystwyth, Dyfed, SY23 2AR. (0970−626785)
6.9
Topologika     P.O. Box 39, Stilton, Peterborough, PE7 3RL. (0733−244682)
6.9
Watford Electronics     Jessa House,
Finway, Dallow Road, Luton, LU1 1TR. (0582−487777) (0582−488588)
6.9
W. C. Smith & Associates    40 Royal
Oak, Alnwick, Northumberland, NE66 2DA., (0665−510682) (0665−510692)
6.9
Wild Vision     15 Witney Way, Boldon Colliery, Tyne & Wear NE35 9PE.
(091−519−1455) (091−519−1929)
6.9
PD Column
6.9
David Holden
6.9
I recently offered the latest versions of Translator, Creator and
Greyedit and, as you will probably be aware, all of these programs are
shareware in the strictest sense of the word. A lot of people sent
copies to me for a free upgrade but I wonder how many of these people
had actually sent their registration fee to John Kortink? I know that a
few have done so but I suspect that it’s not a very high proportion.
6.9
The most common excuses for not sending the registration fee for a
shareware program are that either it doesn’t quite do what you want (and
you’ll register when it does) or else that you never really use it. If
you fall into this latter category then why did you want the latest
version? If you don’t use it, why can’t the older version be the one you
‘don’t use’?! If you are part of the former group, remember that no
program ever does exactly what you want. If you wait until it’s 100%
perfect before you register, you’ll wait forever.
6.9
Utilities like these, and other very good shareware programs such as
WordHound, will disappear if enough people don’t register. I know from
my own experience how disappointing it can be for a shareware author not
to receive registrations. It’s not just the money − it’s the recognition
of your work. When no-one seems to appreciate your program, it doesn’t
take much persuasion to sell your application to a commercial
distributor for a paltry sum. Then, a few months later, it appears in
the shops in a pretty shrink-wrapped package priced at about ten times
the registration fee!
6.9
If you took advantage of my offer or have any other shareware programs
which you haven’t yet registered, ask yourself this question. If
something happened to the only copy which you possessed, would you
bother to replace it? If you can truthfully answer ‘no’ then you really
don’t need to register. If you would immediately try to get a
replacement, I suggest that you are basically using pirated software −
that’s what an unregistered shareware program in regular use actually
is.
6.9
I don’t want to see shareware authors crippling their programs in a
futile effort to force users to register. I hope this exercise will make
you think about the advantages of a healthy shareware market and your
responsibilities if you use the programs. Now, stop waiting for the
program to be perfect and send the money!
6.9
Disc not returned?
6.9
I still have a few discs which were sent to me for updating. These are
from people who didn’t enclose a stamp for return postage or who didn’t
include either a return label or their name and address. One or two just
wrote their address on the disc label, stuck it in an envelope and sent
it to me without either a stamp or a brief note! If you are one of
these, then write to me again including a stamp and a self-addressed
label and I’ll return your disc.
6.9
Posting discs
6.9
One thing demonstrated by this affair is how careless some people are
when sending discs through the post. The modern 3½“ disc is a lot
tougher than the old 5¼” variety but it still needs a certain amount of
protection. Just putting it into a normal envelope is asking for
trouble.
6.9
The easiest packaging to obtain and to use is the ubiquitous jiffy bag.
These are expensive to buy singly so the most sensible thing to do is to
keep one or two of the ones sent to you. Almost everyone receives
something in these at one time or another. Provided you open them
carefully, they can be reused many times. Not only will this save you
money but it also means that somewhere in the world another tree isn’t
being chopped down just so that you can post a disc! (If you bought the
monthly program disc from Archive, you’d have a regular supply − Paul
buys them by the thousand. I gather it is now only £20 a year, instead
of £24, for 12 discs.)
6.9
The main problem isn’t that the disc is likely to suffer damage from
external action but that by moving about inside the envelope it either
wears a hole in the packaging (aided and abetted by the Post Office
sorting machinery) or, more often, the metal slide catches on a part of
the envelope and is damaged.
6.9
(I would say that one in four discs arriving at NCS in ordinary
envelopes is damaged. If the metal slide is at all damaged, I remove it
to avoid damaging my floppy drive. A few pence paid on a jiffy can save
a few more pence for a floppy disc... and pounds for repairing a floppy
disc drive! Ed.)
6.9
If you don’t have a suitable-sized jiffy bag, there are two other
alternatives. The one used by many people is to sandwich the disc
between two pieces of thin card. These should be cut so that they just
fit inside the envelope and serve to protect the disc from outside
damage with the additional advantage that the pressure exerted upon the
disc stops it from sliding about.
6.9
Another method that I have found perfectly satisfactory, and a lot less
bother, is to use an A4-folded-in-three size envelope. The type which
opens at the end is best. Just drop the disc into the envelope and push
it down to the bottom. You will find that it’s a snug fit. Now, before
you seal it, fold the envelope in half. You will discover that the flap
can be folded over and stuck to the ‘bottom end’ of the envelope,
leaving you with a neat package almost exactly the size of a 3½“ disc.
If you are sending a letter with the disc then fold it around the disc
for added protection.
6.9
It’s not quite so easy if you only have the type of envelope that opens
along the top because you will need to fold it in half and stick it with
tape but it still works.
6.9
I have used this method many times and have never, to my knowledge, had
a disc damaged. Even if you need to buy the envelopes especially for
this purpose, they are a lot cheaper than jiffy bags. (At my local post
office, a size 00 jiffy bag costs 10p, so it’s not really a lot to pay,
is it, when you think that the stamp costs 18p or 24p? Ed.)
6.9
Competition
6.9
Things have been a bit slow so far and although I have received a few
entries and enquiries, I feel sure that there must be a lot more good
programs out there. Don’t be put off by thinking that you don’t have a
hope of winning. You certainly don’t stand any chance at all if you
don’t enter. Please write, enclosing a blank disc, and ask for the entry
conditions. I am extremely anxious to find a good home for both the cash
and the £20 vouchers, so even if you don’t think your program is a great
masterpiece, it may impress me and win you something worthwhile.
6.9
Special offers
6.9
The discs which I have been offering each month have proved very popular
and I hope that they have served to convince waverers that there are
some very high quality programs available as shareware and public domain
(as well as some rubbish, as even I am forced to admit). However, some
people have been treating these as a ‘back catalogue’ which was not my
intention. I hope to continue with this practice and so before things
get out of hand, I shall make it a rule that each offer extends only
until the next issue of Archive is published. I know that time can
sometimes pass very quickly and that readers in Australia and other far-
away places obviously get their copy a lot later so I’m not going to be
absolutely rigid on this but if you want a disc that I am offering,
remember it’s meant to be on offer for that issue of Archive only.
6.9
Persistence of Vision
6.9
I have mentioned this superb ray-tracing program before but, although
it’s not new, if you are interested in this subject and haven’t tried
it, you should certainly do so. It would seem to be the equal of many
commercial programs and, in some respects, superior. This month’s offer
is therefore a copy of PoV with the latest version of the !Model scene-
designer and a few example files for the usual price of £1 or four first
class stamps. If you can accept high density discs then for £1.50, I
will supply the program on a 1.6Mb disc with nearly 90 example files for
you to try.
6.9
Contact me at 39 Knighton Park Road, Sydenham, London, SE26 5RN.  A
6.9
Spreadsheet Column
6.9
Chris Johnson
6.9
I am now beginning to receive letters about spreadsheets, as yet only a
trickle, but they all contain something of interest. Thanks to all who
have taken the trouble to write. All the items I have been sent so far
have referred to Eureka. It may well be that this column becomes simply
the Eureka column.
6.9
Some general points on Eureka first. Almost everyone who has written to
me has been pleased with the overall performance and general results
obtained from the application, albeit usually with some reservations or
qualifications. It is a little early to decide what patterns are
emerging, especially in view of the fact that a significant fraction of
these qualifications result from comparisons with other spreadsheet
packages (e.g. PC or Mac) and may be very subjective.
6.9
Some writers have sent me copies of correspondence they have had with
Longman Logotron (LL). While I cannot comment directly on these, it is
clear that LL are keen to receive feedback from users in order to
enhance their software. In this connection, for users who do not wish to
write directly to LL with their suggestions, I am willing to act as a
clearing house.
6.9
As mentioned in Brian Cowan’s review (Archive 6.7 p75), a new version is
due to be released in the not too distant future. It will not only have
a number of significant enhancements, especially in the area of
printing, but will also have additions to the current manual and include
the long-awaited index. I can only add my personal comment that,
although I have been rather lukewarm in the past about the usefulness of
spreadsheets for my own purposes, the more I use Eureka, the more I like
it.
6.9
Printing
6.9
Back yet again to this topic which I raised last month. I must thank
Derrick Baker for a long letter which included some very well presented
printouts of a sample spreadsheet, demonstrating how easy it is to
produce very professional hard copy of DTP quality directly from Eureka.
Among other things, Derrick explained how to print selected parts of a
sheet without any gaps appearing between the selections and it is
obvious when you know how!
6.9
All you need to do is to mask out the inner sections of the sheet which
you do not wish to print by using the Hide Column and Hide Row
facilities (pp A-31 and A-32 of the Eureka manual) and then set the
overall boundaries for printing using the Print_Area definition facility
as described in last month’s column. I have been unable to find a
reference to this anywhere in the manual.
6.9
Let me expand a little on this. A range of columns (or rows) can be
selected in the usual way, by dragging with <select>. The Hide option is
then accessed from the Worksheet main menu by following Format -> Column
Width or Format -> Row Height (or <ctrl-shift-f3> or <ctrl-shift-f4>) to
open the appropriate dialogue box. One simply clicks on the icon
labelled Hide and, after a short pause, the selected columns (or rows)
disappear from the display and the gap is closed up. Once all the
unwanted areas have been hidden, the overall print area can be selected.
6.9
After the hard copy has been produced, it remains only to remember to
Unhide the hidden columns or rows. This is accomplished simply by
selecting a range of cells within which the hidden area is and then
going through the process outlined above, but in this case choosing
Unhide which is now, of course, selectable. The hidden area is
redisplayed.
6.9
Sorting
6.9
This is a topic which has apparently caused some confusion with several
users. The sort facility is a good one, with up to three levels of sort.
When performing a sort, if only one column is selected (e.g. in order to
sort by rows), then that column ONLY is sorted. The other columns remain
unaffected. This is clearly correct but can cause confusion. Only cells
within the selected area will be rearranged by the sort. To sort whole
rows (or columns) the whole row must be selected.  The sort itself is
always determined by the contents of the specified columns (or rows), up
to three.
6.9
Naming areas
6.9
If you intend regularly to sort the same area, it makes sense to make
use of the facility to Name and then Goto specified areas. Page B-8 of
the manual describes how you can name formula and cell references. One
thing you must remember is to precede the formula, or cell references,
with the equals sign, otherwise an error will be generated. In my
version (1.00), there appears to be a small bug in the editing the
writable icon of the define name dialogue box. While the copy key will
delete forwards, the delete key raises the delete rows and columns
dialogue box each time it is pressed, although the character to the left
of the caret is actually deleted as well.
6.9
Entering lists of data
6.9
This can be accomplished in more than one way. If you select the range
of cells first, then each time you press <return>, the next cell (either
to the right or down) will be activated ready for data entry. Note that
this process wraps around, i.e. if <return> is pressed when in the last
of the selected cells, the active cell will become the first one
selected. If a block is selected, rather than a single column or row,
then the active cell moves down the first column, and then the second
column, and so on. See pp A-12 and A-13 in the manual.
6.9
An alternative method is to use the arrow keys rather than <return> to
enter the data into the cell. In this case you do not need to select a
range of cells. The value is entered when the arrow key is pressed. The
next cell in the direction corresponding to the arrow key used is then
activated. This means that you can enter data to the left or upwards if
the need arises. One thing to remember − if you have entered edit mode
(by clicking to place the caret in the writable icon in the cell edit
window or by pressing <f2>) rather than entry mode, the second method
will not work, since the arrow keys move the caret in the string of
characters being edited instead. It is necessary to use <return> in this
case. The legend “entry” or “edit” is shown in the cell editing window
to remind you which mode you are using.
6.9
Charts
6.9
We have not had much about the graphs and charts side of Eureka so far.
Those of you who have tried to chart more than one set of figures will
have found that it is only possible if the sets of data are in adjacent
rows or columns. This appears to be a shortcoming of the current version
but the ability to chart non-contiguous sets of figures will be included
in the update mentioned above. However, until it arrives, you need to
think about the layout of your spreadsheet if you wish to use the
charting facility, or you will have to copy, or cut and paste the data
to get it adjacent. (J. A. Brook)
6.9
How to contact me
6.9
My postal address is: Chris Johnson, 7, Lovedale Grove, Balerno,
Edinburgh, EH14 7DR.
6.9
If you have a complicated problem for which you are requesting help, or
providing the solution, and it concerns Eureka, it would be useful to
send a copy of the sheet on disc (assuming the contents are not too
confidential!). The disc would be returned later (if you enclosed return
address and stamp).
6.9
Start those reports flooding in!  A
6.9
Sim City from Krisalis is here seen displaying four different windows on
a mode 74 screen: In the foreground is the budget window, immediately
behind it the graph, showing the crime rate in black, then the edit
window to the left and the map window, in City Form mode, to the right.
6.9
The 1945 Sim City evaluation says it all:
6.9
I am not, sad to say, the most successful mayor ever. Even if there has
been a slight population increase in the last year, business is slow and
the town hall is short of funds to pay the hard-working police.
6.9
To run a budget is always difficult, and not least while playing Sim
City. Higher taxes lead to less commerce but better services. Which
should you choose? Note that transport needs 100% or your roads start to
crumble very quickly indeed!
6.9
The Options menu. The game will run more or less automatically, but not
very successfully, if you select auto-budget. Sounds consists mainly of
women screaming and roars from Godzilla!
6.9
Factfile − Archive prices
6.9
SyQuest removable drive (42Mb)    −
£485
6.9
                            42Mb cartridges    −
£75
6.9
SyQuest removable drive (84Mb)    −
£670
6.9
                            84Mb cartridges    −
£120
6.9
Parallel Port Mono/SCSI adaptor    −
£55
6.9
Parallel Port Printer/SCSI adaptor    −
£83
6.9
RemoteFS (serial & parallel cable)    −
£53
6.9
Network RemoteFS    −    t.b.a.
6.9
Sorting a spreadsheet
6.9
The BJ200 is a brand new black and white desktop printer from Canon, the
market leaders in inkjet printing. This is a high speed, high resolution
printer ideally suited to the Archimedes range of computers.
6.9
Computer Concepts supply the BJ200 with a special version of their
TurboDrivers − the fastest printer drivers available for the Archimedes.
The printer includes a built-in 80 page sheet feeder. The price for the
printer with TurboDrivers is just £275 + vat (+p&p) − a full £100 less
than the recommended retail price.
6.9
At 360 dpi, the BJ200 offers significantly higher resolution than other
300 dpi inkjet printers and at faster than 1 page per minute for a full
page of graphics (or 3 pages per minute for plain text). It is also
faster than other printers in its price range. And being an inkjet
printer, it is quiet when printing.
6.9
The BJ200 with TurboDriver is the perfect answer to those users seeking
the best quality prints in the least possible time, without going to the
expense of a laser printer. In fact, we guarantee this is the fastest
high quality printer available for less than a laser printer, or your
money back.
6.9
NEW LOWER PRICE.....                     £275 + £10 p&p + vat (£334.87)
6.9
Government Health Warning − Reading this could seriously affect your
spiritual health.
6.9
There have been some interesting responses to the comments I made last
month, but to prove that Christians aren’t “always going on about sex”,
I’m going to talk about something different − love.
6.9
The trouble is that in the mind of twentieth century man (and woman,
too, I suppose), love is almost always associated with romance and/or
sex − and we are the poorer for that narrow view.
6.9
If you want to know what real love is then the bible has the answer. It
talks about many different aspects of love but all of them have the same
strand running through them − that of commitment within a relationship.
Again, this is something we have lost out on these days. The bible tries
to show that true love (including the feelings that are part of love)
can only really flourish if it is protected by the armour of commitment.
6.9
This is true in married love, of course, but it can be equally true of
friendship-love. By this, I mean that two people, whether of the same or
opposite sex, can have a deep friendship and be committed to helping,
supporting, understanding and, yes, loving one another. The trouble is
that people assume, almost automatically, that such a relationship must
have a sexual level to it. Rubbish! If anyone thinks that then they
don’t know what love really is!
6.9
So what is real love? Well, look at the way God loves us and is
committed to us, and you’ll find out. He loved us so much that he was
prepared to come into this messy world and live as one of us. What is
more, he (that is Jesus − God in a human frame) loved us so much that
even though he was totally innocent, he was prepared to die a horrific
death for us − now that is REAL love!
6.9
(How could Jesus’ death be, in any sense, for our benefit? Wasn’t it
just pointless, innocent, unjust suffering? No, not at all! It was a
very significant death. Why? No space left − you’ll just have to ask
someone you know to be a committed Christian − they should be prepared
to tell you.)
6.9

An exciting future?
6.10
Part of my job as editor of Archive is to get as much information as
possible about Acorn products, past, present and future, and communicate
it to you, the reader. I also have to assess the mood in the industry
and try to give a prophetic edge to my comments. So, how does the future
look?
6.10
There are lots of new processors being developed by ARM Ltd − the links
with Apple, 3D0, Sharp and now Texas Instruments can only help to
provide the revenue to keep Acorn in the forefront of development work.
So it doesn’t need much of a prophetic gift to say that Acorn are
working on a new range of machines. The question is, what and when?
6.10
The ‘obvious’ time for Acorn to launch a new range of machines would be
at the Acorn World Show in October − the first show actually ‘owned’ by
Acorn. A nice idea, but my gut feeling is that they will announce things
like the new ‘look and feel’ desktop (which no-one is supposed to know
about but which has already been seen in magazines and used in
demonstrations at some of the regional Acorn events). And it wouldn’t
surprise me if they made some sort of moves on the monitor front −
making themselves more compatible with the rest of the microcomputer
world.
6.10
It’s always dangerous to make predictions, but my guess is that we won’t
see the next batch of new machines until the beginning of 1994. If I’m
wrong, I’ve no doubt someone will let me know!
6.10
I hope you enjoy another bumper bundle of information in this month’s
magazine.
6.10
With best wishes,
6.10
Products Available
6.10
•    1st Paint − Keyboard Technology have produced an art package aimed at
Primary Schools. 1st Paint has all the normal art drawing functions you
would expect, including access to a picture library, editable colour
palette and a choice of eight patterns and eight picture stamps. 1st
Paint costs £35 +VAT from Keyboard Technology.
6.10
•    A3010 IFEL upgrade − IFEL have produced a 4Mb upgrade for the A3010.
This costs £107 +VAT from IFEL or £120 through Archive.
6.10
•    A3010/3020/4000 Technical Reference Manual − This is now available and
in stock. It includes a full system description, parts list, network
interface specifications and circuit diagrams for all the computers.
This costs £29.95 from Acorn or £33 including carriage through Archive.
(N.B. Despite the price of this compared with the A4 TRM, it actually
contains a much larger amount of information. The contents of the A4 TRM
weighs about 600g whereas the A3010etc TRM weighs over 2½kg!)
6.10
•    A4 Technical Reference Manual − The TRM for the A4 is now available
and in stock. It includes a full system description, parts list, monitor
adaptor cable specifications, expansion bay details and circuit diagrams
including main pcb and Econet pcb. This costs £65 from Acorn or £64
including carriage through Archive.
6.10
•    A4000S − Acorn and Northwest SEMERC have combined to release a system
for special needs based on the A4000. The hardware is extended with a
Cumana EMU expansion unit and a user port, and there is software pre-
installed on the hard drive: Phases #3, My World, Choices, GridIT and
Screenplay plus clipart including pictures and symbols for keyboard
overlays. The education price of the A4000S is £899 +VAT including an
AKF18 multisync monitor. There is an upgrade pack available for existing
A4000 owners costing £119.50 +VAT.
6.10
•    A5000 improvement − The 4Mb/120Mb version of the A5000 has been
increased in specification at no extra cost. It now has a 160Mb hard
drive and the price remains at £1599 +VAT (£1879 through Archive).
6.10
•    Amazing Maths − This is a competitive educational program from
Cambridge Software House. It is based on mental maths work and provides
practice on number bonding, multiplication, division, addition and
subtraction. It is concept keyboard and touch screen compatible. The
price is £19.95 +VAT from CSH.
6.10
•    Archimedes Disc Rescue − Anyone who has been “rescued” by LOOKsystems’
package will be able to testify to its value but you really need to buy
it before things go wrong − think of it as an insurance policy. It was
reviewed by Mike Allum in Archive 6.1 p23 and Gareth Long is working on
a more in-depth review at the moment which we hope will be published
soon. Archimedes Disc Rescue costs £35 inc VAT through LOOKsystems and
is now available through Archive for £33.
6.10
•    Archive Monthly Program Disc − This month it contains: material from
Genesis/Magpie Column, two JPEG applications, PipelineZ bits, C multi-
threading demo, ARM cache on-off application, “How to write for Archive”
document plus some Artworks material if it arrives in time.
6.10
•    Archivist Professional − This data management system from Oregan
Developments’ has been upgraded again, this time as ‘Archivist
Professional’. This now offers a card index for text, figures, graphics
and sound. The cards will also accommodate complete text files, limited
only by computer or disc memory and these, like the graphics and sound,
are stored in the file as resources which can be exported into other
applications. Selections of cards with a common theme can be compiled
into subsets. The price is £44.95, with a site licence available at £50,
and upgrades from version 4 at £10 and version 2.4 at £15.
6.10
•    Artworks Renderer − If anyone is developing an application and wants
to allow it to display and print Artworks files, you can get a copy of
the Artworks rendering software, plus documentation, from Computer
Concepts. (Artworks has currently sold over 5,000 copies plus over 100
site licences!) However, before you publish an application using CC’s
software, you have to obtain a licence from them. There will usually be
no charge for this licence, especially where the application promotes or
supports the use of Artworks but they reserve the right to set a charge
for the licence or to withhold the licence altogether, at their
discretion. For example, I doubt that they would grant a licence to
someone using it to help them write an art package!
6.10
CC are also preparing documentation (currently 250 pages and rising!) on
how to implement further Artworks modules (see David Wild’s comments
last month, p22). This will cost you £10 +VAT for the necessary source
code plus the manual as an Impression document on disc.
6.10
•    Auto-loading disc copier − We gave information last month about the
new budget (3½“ only) auto-loading disc copier. The copier costs £1150
inc VAT and comes with very basic software. The LOOKsystems’ AutoCopy
software is multitasking, very sophisticated and easy-to-use but it
costs £350. However, we have worked out a deal whereby you can buy the
two together for £1350 instead of £1500, i.e. the software is almost
half price. This is fortunate because we have realised that the single-
tasking software that comes free with the auto-loader only works on the
pre-A5000 computers and doesn’t seem to work properly on RISC OS 3!
6.10
•    Canon BJ200 price drop − Canon have reduced the price of the BJ200
(some HP prices went up last month!) so that the BJ200 on its own is now
£340 through Archive and the BJ200 with TurboDriver is available at £380
through Archive. (The BJ200 is actually cheaper if bought directly from
CC. This is because they buy in such large quantities. However, they
won’t give any dealer discount on this particular model − or the BJ230.
Their price, including the TurboDriver, is £335 inc VAT & carriage.)
6.10
•    Canon BJ230 − Canon have also just released an A3-sized printer
similar to the BJ200 and not much higher in price. The BJ230 on its own
costs £390 through Archive and the BJ230 with TurboDriver is available
for £430 through Archive. (The BJ230 is actually cheaper if bought
directly from CC. Their price, including the TurboDriver, is £387 inc
VAT & carriage.)
6.10
•    Canon BJC800 price drop − Canon’s A3-sized colour printer is now
available for £1650 through Archive or £1700 including the CC
TurboDriver and lead.
6.10
•    C User Group − C programmers may be interested to know that the C User
Group UK is forming a sub-group to concentrate on issues relating to C
users in the Acorn world. Membership of the parent group is £12 (or £5
for students) and an extra £5 for membership of the Acorn sub-group.
Contact Bob Docker, 4 Lexfield House, 75 Highbury New Park, London, N5
2EY.
6.10
•    Darryl the Dragon is a new problem-solving adventure program for
younger users (key stages 1 & 2). If you enjoyed Granny’s Garden, you
will love Darryl the Dragon. Darryl has caught a cold and lost his fiery
breath which, being a good dragon, he uses to cook his food, warm his
bed at night and toast marshmallows for his friends. Will you help him
to collect the things he needs to make his breath flame again? The
single-user version is £19 +VAT (£21 through Archive) and a primary site
licence costs £39 +VAT (£42 through Archive). There is also a set of
Activity Sheets available from 4Mation for £10 +VAT.
6.10
•    DBEdit upgrade − 4Mation have produced an enhanced version of DBEdit
incorporating many of the suggestions of existing users. The version
remains at £30 +VAT (£33 through Archive) and existing users can upgrade
free of charge by sending their master disc back to 4Mation. The new
version contains a ReadMe file with documentation for the extra
features.
6.10
(They don’t ask for an S.A.E. or paddibag but since they are offering a
free upgrade, I think it would be a nice gesture. It would show that we
appreciate their generosity and encourage them to continue that policy!
Ed.)
6.10
•    !DrawPaint − In response to the plea for an easy way of converting a
drawfile into a sprite, the Derbyshire Support Centre for IT (DESCIT)
has told us about !DrawPaint. It is an application that loads onto the
iconbar. It allows you to drag a drawfile onto it and it provides a
spritefile icon for dragging to a filer window or straight into another
application. This utility costs £10. Send cheques payable to “Derbyshire
County Council” to Pam Winn at DESCIT.
6.10
•    Fast PC Emulator − A new product has just come on the market to
compete with Acorn’s PC Emulator. The Faster PC Emulator is hand-coded
in ARM assembler and claims to offer the following advantages: faster
graphics handling, more accurate sound implementation, support for some
Tandy video modes (useful for games), on-line configuration
modifications allowed. (It sounds almost too good to be true when you
think of the man-hours of work Acorn have put into their Emulator over
the years!) The cost is £19.95 including p&p. Send your cheque (made
payable to D.J.Lawrence) to: !FasterPC, 33 High Street, Farnborough,
GU14 6ES. N.B. It requires an Acorn ARM computer running RISC OS 2 or 3,
minimum 2Mb RAM and MS DOS or DR DOS.
6.10
(We have a copy for evaluation and it looks as if it should be thought
of as a ‘second string to your bow’ rather than as a complete
replacement for Acorn’s PC Emulator − but perhaps I shouldn’t pre-judge
it before the full review. Ed.)
6.10
•    Fonts galore − Monotype’s quality typefaces, previously available on
other computer systems, are now available for the Archimedes.
LOOKsystems are supplying these fonts for Acorn RISC OS computers and
have just released their first pack of 100 fonts for £95 (inc VAT, UK
postage paid).
6.10
Adrian Look, explains, “The PC and Mac platforms have just experienced
‘the TrueType revolution’ − type foundries can supply typefaces in
TrueType format and thus avoid using Adobe PostScript with its
accompanying royalties. As a result, font prices have fallen
dramatically with TrueType fonts costing less than a tenth of their
PostScript equivalents.
6.10
These changes have made it much more viable to convert fonts into
RISC OS format. By releasing Monotype fonts, we will transform the range
and quality of typefaces that are available for the Archimedes... and
they will be better value for money!”
6.10
Fonts include: Goudy Text, Lombardic Capitals, Bembo, Poliphilius,
Blado, Dante, Goudy Old Style, Janson, Baskerville, Garamond, Platin,
Platin Expert, Century Old Style, Century Expanded, News Gothic,
Rockwell, Arial, Gill Sans, Braggadocio, Headline, Matura, Mercurius
Script, Neographic, Onyx, Palace Script, Pepita, Perpetua, Swing, 20th
Century, Zeitgeist Cameo.
6.10
The fonts are supplied in either RISC OS 2 or 3 format including
scaffolding and kerning pairs (RISC OS 3 only). Skeleton lines are not
yet provided but will soon be available as a free upgrade. 100 Monotype
fonts (Pack 1) will cost £95 from LOOKsystems or £90 through Archive.
6.10
•    F.R.E.D. − This is a new arcade game from Software42, said to be “the
ultimate arcade puzzle game”. F.R.E.D. costs £20 from Software42.
6.10
•    Gemini is a matching pairs game from Cambridge Software House. It has
three levels of difficulty and you can put in your own sprites to make
up your own games. It is touch screen compatible and costs £29.95 +VAT
from CSH.
6.10
•    HP Deskjet 510 − The HP Deskjet 500 has been replaced by the DJ510. It
is basically the same except that it is faster in text mode (which most
Acorn printer drivers don’t use anyway!). Still, it works out cheaper
than the DJ500 − partly because we have found a cheaper supplier. The
Archive price is £360 instead of £390. You can run it with the Acorn
printer drivers but for extra speed and improved features (on RISC OS
3.1) use the Ace PROdriver (£44) or the new TurboDriver mentioned below
(£53 including cable).
6.10
•    HP Deskjet 1200C − Hewlett Packard have just released an A3 colour
inkjet printer which works out somewhat cheaper than the Canon BJC800,
currently priced at £1650. The Archive price is £1390 inclusive. You
would be well advised to run it on RISC OS 3.1 and buy an Ace PROdriver
(£44) or the new TurboDriver mentioned below (£53 including a printer
cable).
6.10
•    HP ‘Portable’ Deskjet 500 − Hewlett Packard have just released a
portable Deskjet printer, presumably to rival the Canon BJ10ex (and the
new 10sx). All I have been able to find out about it so far is the
price. We can sell it without sheet-feeder for £300 or with a sheet-
feeder for £350.
6.10
•    HP Laserjet 4L − You can now get a 300 d.p.i. laser printer for £670
inc VAT and carriage. Hewlett Packard have recently launched the
Laserjet 4L. You can run it with the Acorn printer drivers but for extra
speed and improved features, on RISC OS 3.1, use the Ace PROdriver (£44)
or the new TurboDriver mentioned below (£53 including a printer cable).
6.10
•    IronMask 2.1 − IronMask 2.1 is an upgrade of Turing Tools RISC OS file
security system, in response to users’ comments. IronMask 2.0 customers
can upgrade to IronMask 2.1 by returning their master disc to Turing
Tools.
6.10
•    Jackbox is a jack-box version of Holdfast’s Joypad computer keypad
(see below). It provides switch inputs via ¼“ jack sockets for each for
the cursor and fire buttons equivalent to the Joypad. It has a standard
Atari style digital joystick connector and can be used with the Leading
Edge Joystick Interface (£38 through Archive). The Jackbox costs £25
+VAT from Holdfast Computing.
6.10
•    Joypad is a computer keypad which is “friendlier and tougher than a
mouse”. It is particularly designed for children and special needs
users. It has a standard Atari style digital joystick connector and can
be used with the Leading Edge Joystick Interface (£38 through Archive).
The Joypad costs £21.27 +VAT from Holdfast Computing.
6.10
•    My First Words − This is an “innovative way of helping children to
read” from Cambridge Software House. It aims to help 4 to 7 year-olds to
make up and print their own sentences. It is content-free (i.e. you can
put in whatever words you want to use) but comes set up with sample
files from the GINN 360 reading scheme as used by many primary schools
in the U.K. The price is £29.95 +VAT from CSH.
6.10
•    Multimedia Encyclopedia − Hutchinsons have now released the full
RISC OS version of their encyclopedia CD-ROM. This now includes over
1,500 photographs plus illustrations, maps and textual data and over 250
sound clips. It has over 25,000 articles, thousands of cross-references
and hundreds of tables all classified under six headings: Aspects of
Society, History, The Arts, Places, Life Sciences and Science &
Technology. It is published by Attica Cybernetics Ltd and is priced at
£149 (+£5 p&p) +VAT.
6.10
•    Numero 62 is a multi-language version of Nº62 Honeypot Lane from
Resource aimed at primary school work in a whole range of subjects. It
is based round the idea of exploring and discovering the routines and
relationships that exist within a household through a year. At the press
of a key you can switch between English, French, German or Spanish.
Numero 62 is £35 +VAT from Resource or £38 through Archive.
6.10
•    PAL + SVHS encoder − Pineapple produce an adaptor that takes the RGB
output from the Archimedes and creates a PAL encoded signal. There is
also a socket so that you can have a normal RGB monitor connected at the
same time. These are £69 +VAT from Pineapple or £75 through Archive.
There is also a version that has an SVHS output as well as the PAL
output. This can be very useful if you’ve got a TV or video with an SVHS
socket. This version is £79 +VAT from Pineapple or £86 through Archive.
6.10
•    Paradroid 2000 is Coin-Age’s conversion of the Amiga game of the same
name. It is a droid-based shoot ’em up with a certain amount of
strategic thinking needed to enable you to complete each level
successfully. The price is £25.99 from Coin-Age or £24 through Archive.
6.10
•    Pre-formatted 1.6Mb discs − For the benefit of floptical owners, we
are offering pre-formatted 1.6Mb discs − £17 for 10. (This is because
Morley flopticals can read and write 1.6Mb discs but not format them.)
6.10
•    re-Print − (This is a product coming in September.) T-J Reproductions
are offering some help for professional and semi-professional designers
using Archimedes and trying to “interface” with commercial printers. T-J
are producing re-Print which is part magazine, part reference manual,
part training guide and part DTP support group. This is being set up as
a result of T-J Reproductions’ experience of running a DTP bureau for
Archimedes users. The annual cost will be £68 (zero VAT) from T-J
Reproductions (£58 if received by 31st July). It may be that you have
something to offer − if so, get in touch with them and start the mutual
support going as soon as possible.
6.10
•    Sand Harvest − This is a computer-based role-play simulation for
geography and IT at key stages 3 & 4. In it, you experience the
difficulties of life in the Sahel. The three roles to be played are
nomad, government officer and villager. The cost of Sand Harvest,
including teacher’s and pupil’s guides, is £68.15 (inclusive) for a
single-user version and £103.40 for a site licence from CWDE Software.
6.10
•    ‘Say-it’ language tutors − Bits ’n’ Bytes are producing a series of
discs for different languages aimed to provide language listening
practice. Each disc has digitised speaking of the words in the given
language and you have to say which of four possible translations is
correct. You can choose whether the foreign word is just spoken or also
appears in written form on screen. We have so far seen !Dis-le (French,
two discs), !Dilo (Spanish) and !Sprich (German) but there are others
including !Gong-che (Chinese!) and all of them are being distributed by
Bits ’n’ Bytes on a shareware basis. Write to them for full details.
(Readers in the Netherlands and Germany, may like to know that they also
have an English-Dutch version and an English-German version.)
6.10
•    Symbol Collection − Widgit Software have released a collection of
1,000 drawfile symbols comprising most of the Rebus Glossary which can
be used to provide pre-reading aids for early learners or literacy aids
for adult learners with special educational needs. The Symbol Collection
costs £25 +VAT from Widgit Software.
6.10
•    Taxan 789 LR monitor (again!) − We have tried out the 14“ Taxan 789LR
(LR just stands for low radiation) at Mike Lane’s suggestion and it does
indeed work very well with the State Machine colour cards. (We haven’t
yet had a chance to try it on the CC Colourcard but we’re pretty sure it
will be OK.) In a mode like 1024×768, it is very clear and very
noticeably better than the Acorn multisync and even the Eizo 9060 looks
a little fuzzy by comparison. The 9060, despite being rather more
expensive) does not go up to such high horizontal frequencies as the 789
and so it cannot manage 256 colour modes at some of the higher
resolutions.
6.10
If you try to push up to 1152×848 (16 colours) or 1152×424 (256
colours), the 789 displays it OK but it is obviously beyond the
resolution of the tube and so the quality suffers. If you reckon that
the picture is 260mm wide (measured) and the dot pitch is 0.28mm, that
suggests about 900 dots horizontally so there is a limit to what you can
expect the monitor to do. Certainly, although you can display the
1600×600, 16-colour mode, it isn’t very enjoyable to use because the
monitor obviously is working beyond its capabilities.
6.10
Still, at £440 for the monitor + £280 for a G8 or ColourCard (or £314
for G16), the Taxan 789LR represents a very cost effective way of
getting a significant improvement to the video output of the Archimedes.
The next step better would be the 15“ Eizo F340iW at £720 and the
improvement in display quality, though noticeable, is not that
significant for the extra £280. The main difference is that you get a
wider range of adjustments and that it is micro-processor controlled, so
you don’t have to keep fiddling with the controls − this is a very
significant factor if you are someone who changes modes a lot.
6.10
If you want higher resolutions, you really have to go up to 17“ or 20”.
I am hoping to try out some of the Taxan 17“ and 20” monitors so that I
can compare them with the Eizos whose prices have gone up so much
recently − Taxan’s prices actually went down on 1st June!
6.10
If you want to use the Taxan 789LR without a colour card, A310/3000/410/
420/440 owners will need a VIDC enhancer (£28), Careware 18 software
(£5) and a 15/9-pin adaptor (£12) as the computer is 9-pin and the
monitor has a fixed lead with a 15-pin plug. So the total is
£440+28+5+12 = £485. Owners of A5000/3010/3020/4000 won’t need the VIDC
enhancer or the adaptor but they will need the Careware 18 software,
i.e. £445 total. The A540 doesn’t need the VIDC enhancer either but it
does need the Careware 18 software and the 15/9-pin adaptor, i.e. £457
total.
6.10
If you want to use a Taxan 789LR with a colour card, all you need is the
monitor and the card. There is no need for any extra adaptors, etc.
Remember, too, that the colour cards are standard size podules and
therefore will not fit in A3000/3010/3020/4000 although they will work
on the A3000 if you have an external case to put it in.
6.10
(By the way, we still have one or two Acorn multisync monitors for sale
at £270. The same applies as for the Taxan 789 in terms of VIDC
enhancers and adaptors. In fact, strangely enough, the plastic cases of
these two monitors, all except for the screen surround, are identical −
it must have come from the same case manufacturer and been made in the
same mould!)
6.10
Although I have waxed lyrical about the Taxan 789, you need to be aware
that it is only monitors like the Eizo 9060 and the Microvitec 1440 that
will work properly with all games. The reason is that they have a
frequency range that goes down low enough not to need a colour card or a
VIDC enhancer to increase the frequency. Some games use ‘illegal’ poking
of the video controller to increase their speed and those that do so
will not work on the colour cards and some of them won’t work with a
VIDC enhancer either.
6.10
•    Turbo Driver range grows − Computer Concepts have launched two more in
their series of TurboDrivers for improving the quality and speed of
printer drivers for RISC OS 3. The Hewlett-Packard TurboDriver can be
used with Deskjet, Deskjet Plus, Deskjet 500, the new Deskjet 510 and
the colour printers: Deskjet 500C and 550C (also, presumably, the new
DJ1200C). This also includes a version for Laserjet printers. CC claim
“initial tests show that the TurboDrivers print and return control
anything between three to ten times faster than either the Acorn drivers
or the Ace PROdrivers” (Quite a claim! We are going to have to get
someone to check it out for us! Ed.)
6.10
The second new TurboDriver is for the Epson Stylus 800. This one is
claimed to return control to the user “five times faster than the Ace
PROdrivers”.
6.10
The new TurboDrivers will handle full 24-bit colour separations and
offer “PostScript-like control over half-tone screens, i.e. programmable
screen types and screen angle, screen density, etc. The drivers cost £49
+VAT from Computer Concepts or £53 through Archive. (N.B. They require
RISC OS 3.1 or later and 2Mb RAM minimum.)
6.10
•    TV Adaptor − Acorn sell an adaptor that will take the RGB output from
an Archimedes and produce a UHF signal that you can plug straight into
the aerial input of a TV. The quality of the signal is obviously limited
by converting the signal to UHF but if a TV is all you have then it is
very useful. The TV adaptor is £59 +VAT from Acorn or £65 through
Archive.
6.10
•    Vector upgrade − 4Mation have now released Vector version 1.1 which
has a number of extra facilities added at the request of existing users.
The upgrade is £10 +VAT from 4Mation if you send back your Vector
application disc. Extra features include: graphics level control
(controls the amount of detail shown on screen), auto-save options, more
mask options, text-to-path on multiple objects, rotate/skew/scale/
transform about origin, overlay lines, auto layers and keyboard short-
cuts. The price of the new version remains the same − £85 +VAT or £92
through Archive.
6.10
•    Viking Library − Widgit Software have produced a resource pack
comprising over 250 symbols, with their accompanying words, to help
children read and write about Vikings. It costs £12.50 +VAT from Widgit
and is for use with their language, communication and literacy package,
From Pictures to Words, which costs £35 +VAT from Widgit.
6.10
•    Virtual Golf is Fourth Dimension’s new golf game. “No more power
meters − you control the swing by moving the mouse.” Gordon Key’s latest
golf game is based on the Wentworth course and has features including:
up to four players, strokeplay, matchplay, six tournaments, animated
course maps, auto-caddy, replays, game-saving, course viewing options,
practice options and driving range. This new game costs £34.95 from
Fourth Dimension or £33 through Archive.
6.10
•    World Development Database − This database provides social and
economic statistics on 129 countries in computerised form for use with
either KeyPlus or Grass databases. The pack includes geography and maths
coursework material. It costs £30 +VAT for the KeyPlus version and £25
+VAT for the Grass version and is produced by CWDE Software.
6.10
Review software received...
6.10
We have received review copies of the following: 1st Paint (e), An Eye
for Spelling (e), AppFS (u), ArcVenture III − The Vikings (e), ArtSchool
(ea), Axis (g), BookStore (e), CardMania (g), Choices (e), Crossword
(g), !Dis-le, !Dilo & !Sprich (e), !DrawPaint (u), E-Numix (e), F.R.E.D.
(g), Frontier 2000 (e), Games Wizard and The Hacker for comparison (g),
Gemini (e), Humanoids & Robotix (g), Insight (e), Killerbugs (g), Mini
Expansion Adaptor (h), My First Words (e), Numerator Workcards (e),
Numero 62 (e), Sand Harvest (e), Screenplay Training Video (g), Sea,
Trade & Empire (e), Serpents (g), Soapbox (e), Splash (ea), SpySnatcher
(g), Squish (u), Switch (g), Tiles (e), TimeTraveller − 1500−1750 (e),
TimeTraveller − Britain since the 30s (e), Virtual Golf (g).
6.10
e=Education, g=Game, u=Utility, a=Art, h=Hardware, m=Music.  A
6.10
Government Health Warning − Reading this could seriously affect your
spiritual health.
6.10
There are two men lying in hospital beds, both seriously ill, both
expected to die very soon. One is in a private room surrounded by mounds
of fruit and flowers and has a string of relatives and friends visiting
him. He is being cared for by private nurses and attended by a string of
top specialists. The other man is rather less “rich and famous”. The
question I have is... Which of the two is better off?
6.10
It’s a silly question really because when you face death, no amount of
money and “influence” makes any difference. It also serves to remind us
of the ultimate statistic − ten out of every ten people will die some
time during the course of their life!
6.10
But what about these two men? Could one be “better off” in any way?
Well, just suppose that God didn’t exist and suppose that when we die
there’s “nothing but worms”. If that’s the case, we might as well...
“Eat, drink and enjoy yourself, for tomorrow you may die!”
6.10
But what if God does exist and what if there is some sort of reckoning?
6.10
I know that some people will accuse me of trying to frighten people into
becoming Christians but if what Jesus said is true, the consequence of
ignoring the ultimate question of “what happens when I die” is VERY
serious. Let me illustrate this from Jesus’ own words...
6.10
Jesus said, “I have come into the world as a light, so that no-one who
believes in me should stay in darkness.” (John 12 v46). People can
accept that sort of statement − it shows what a “nice” person Jesus was.
But read on to verse 48 of the same chapter − Jesus also said, “There is
a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; that
very word which I spoke will condemn him on that last day.” You see it’s
important to listen to everything that Jesus says and not just the
“nice” bits − otherwise we get a distorted picture. According to him
there is a reckoning and it’s on the basis of the response we make now
to what Jesus has told us (and shown us by his life) about God.
6.10
Norwich Computer Services 96a Vauxhall Street, Norwich, NR2 2SD.
0603−766592 (−764011)
6.10
4th Dimension     P.O. Box 4444, Sheffield. (0742−700661) (0742−781091)
6.10
4Mation     11 Castle Park Road, Whiddon Valley, Barnstaple, Devon, EX32
8PA. (0271−25353) (0271−22974) Mike Matson 0825−732679
6.10
Abacus Training    29 Okus Grove, Upper Stratton, Swindon, Wilts, SN2
6QA.
6.10
Acorn Direct     13 Dennington Road, Wellingborough, Northants, NN8 2RL.
6.10
Acorn Computers Ltd    Fulbourn
Road, Cherry Hinton, Cambridge, CB1 4JN. (0223−254254) (0223−254262)
6.10
Aleph One Ltd     The Old Courthouse, Bottisham, Cambridge, CB5 9BA.
(0223−811679) (0223−812713)
6.10
Atomwide Ltd     23 The Greenway, Orpington, Kent, BR5 2AY. (0689−838852)
(0689−896088)
6.10
Attica Cybernetics Ltd     Unit 2,
Kings Meadow, Ferry Hinksey Road, Oxford, OX2 0DP. (0865−791346)
(0865−794561)
6.10
Bits ’n Bytes     26 Grenville Road, Saint Judes, Plymouth, PL4 9PY.
(0752−667599)
6.10
Cambridgeshire Software House    7 Free
Church Passage, St Ives, PE17 4AY. (0480−67945) (0480−496442)
6.10
Clares Micro Supplies     98
Middlewich Road, Rudheath, Northwich, Cheshire, CW9 7DA. (0606−48511)
(0606−48512)
6.10
Coin-Age Ltd     23 Cooper Street, Nelson, Lancashire BB9 7XW.
6.10
Colton Software (p11)    2 Signet
Court, Swanns Road, Cambridge, CB5 8LA. (0223−311881) (0223−312010)
6.10
Computer Concepts (p23/24)    Gaddesden
Place, Hemel Hempstead, Herts, HP2 6EX. (0442−63933) (0442−231632)
6.10
CWDE Software     1 Catton Street, London WC1A 4AB. (071−831−3844)
(071−831−1746)
6.10
Dalriada Data Technology (p27)    145 Albion
Street, Kenilworth, Warkwickshire, CV8 2FY. (0926−53901)
6.10
DESCIT     Chatsworth Hall, Chesterfield Road, Matlock, DE4 3FW.
(0629−580000, extn 6863) (0629−585588)
6.10
Holdfast Computing     Strode
House, Strode Gardens, Alveston, Bristol, BS12 2PL. (0454−411126)
6.10
IFEL     36 Upland Drive, Plymouth, Devon, PL6 6BD. (0752−847286)
6.10
Keyboard Technology     Unit 3,
Gordon Road, Loughborough, LE11 1JX. (0509−610706)
6.10
Leading Edge    376 Meanwood Road, Leeds, LS7 2JH. (0532−621111)
(0532−374163)
6.10
Longman-Logotron     124 Cambridge Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge CB4
4ZS. (0223−425558) (0223−425349)
6.10
LOOKsystems     47 Goodhale Road, Bowthorpe, Norwich, NR5 9AY.
(0603−764114) (0603−764011)
6.10
Minerva Systems     Minerva House, Baring Crescent, Exeter, EX1 1TL.
(0392−437756) (0392−421762)
6.10
New Era Software    204 High Street, Woodville, Swadlincote, Derbyshire,
DE11 7DT. (0283−812818)
6.10
Paul Beverley
6.10
Help!!!!
6.10
•    3D0 − Does anyone know of any companies developing software for the
new 3D0 machine? Willing ARM programmers are offering their services.
Contact Matthew Spencer, ARM Software Programming, 58 Milton Road,
Polygon, Southampton, SO1 2HR.
6.10
•    Dentists admin program − Are there any Archimedes-using dentists out
there? Mike Matson of 4Mation has just been out to Iceland and found
that they have an excellent program there for keeping dental records
including ‘mouth maps’ (or whatever you call those sheets that show the
shocking state of each decaying tooth!) plus treatment notes and
appointments. If any dentists would be interested in using the program
in this country, drop Mike a line c/o 4Mation or ring him on 0825−732679
(except that he’s out of the country until 3rd July).
6.10
•    Menu Online Help − I have been experimenting with the ANSI C “help_”
commands. Although they work as described for dialogue boxes, I have had
no success with menus. I would be pleased to hear from anyone who can
offer assistance.  Richard Simpson, Farnborough.
6.10
•    Modems for Archimedes − There is a dearth of practical information
about what modems are suitable for use with the Archimedes. If people
could tell us which modems they are using, with what leads and with what
software, that would be most helpful. Ideally, I would like something
with fax facility and to be capable of V32 as there are some bulletin
boards now that only operate on V32. Michael Clark, Christchurch, N.Z.
6.10
•    Parallel port tape streamers − Has anyone written, or know of, any
software that can be used on any of the increasing number of cheap
parallel port tape streamers available for the PC market? Of particular
interest to me is the Trakker 120Mb, currently available for around £259
+VAT − a lot less than SCSI equivalents.  G.A.Smith, Rainham.
6.10
•    Radius monochrome monitors − Has anyone had any experience running
Radius monitors on Archimedes?  Tord Eriksson.
6.10
•    Reading Mac discs − If, as you say in your comparison of Macs, PCs and
Archimedes last month (p16) there is a PC program for £175 that reads
and writes Mac discs on a PC, is there any chance that it might work on
an Archimedes via the emulator? If so, what is the software and where do
I get it?  Bill Richardson, Elgin.
6.10
•    Scanner or digitiser? − Rather than use a CC Scanlight 256 to scan A5
sheets of print at 7 or 8 point, how feasible is it to use an HCCS
colour digitiser and a Sony Video 8 camera for the same job and how
large are the resulting files?  Francis Aries, Herts.
6.10
•    Scientific software − Chris Johnson would like to thank all those who
responded to his request for scientific orientated software, made in a
previous issue of Archive. He is in the process of putting together a
couple of discs of some of the material which authors wished to be
placed in the public domain. He hopes to reply individually to all those
who responded and return their discs with some example software on, as
time permits.
6.10
He would still like to receive more scientific software to add to the
collection and extend the range. There were, for example, very few WIMP
based applications.
6.10
•    Watford Graphics Tablet − Does anybody know of a fix for using the
Watford Graphics Tablet under RISC OS 3? Please contact Dave at NCS.  A
6.10
Ovation Column
6.10
Maurice Edmundson
6.10
I’m sorry I missed the June issue. I have been enjoying a trip abroad
visiting my family.
6.10
Using Ovation for family trees
6.10
I have had a most interesting letter from Mr. Aneurin Griffiths of
Trefin near Haverford-West regarding his use of Ovation for printing out
family trees. Seeking out one’s ancestry and constructing family trees
has become a popular activity in recent years, and a number of software
packages have been published to assist with this task. Mr. Griffiths
makes use of one such program, called “Family History” published by
MicroAid. I have not used this myself but since I feel his account will
be of interest to other readers, I will pass on his letter more or less
as he sent it to me. There are one or two interesting and ingenious tips
which he has devised which might have useful applications in other
Ovation documents.
6.10
“Family History” is a program which helps you to organise ancestral
information. Details are entered into the program in terms of families
with data such as date of birth, date of marriage, where married, date
of death, etc. together with notes relating to the individuals concerned
− occupations, residence, qualifications and so forth. Finally, there
are facilities for entering the links between the families. The program
can then print out a form of family tree with the earliest generation on
the right and the descendants towards the left. Mr. Griffiths uses this
to construct another pictorial tree in Ovation with a traditional layout
on an A3 sheet in landscape format. He uses an A3000 computer linked to
a Canon BJ130E bubble jet printer.
6.10
Preparing the page
6.10
The first task is to select the landscape A3 page from the New Document
option on the iconbar menu. A border of suitable thickness is chosen
(Object menu) and added to the main frame. Extend the paragraph styles
list to give three new type faces, e.g. “Names” using Trinity, 10pt
normal text. (Alternatively modify the Base Text to this style, since
this will become the main type face for the document.) “Details”, say
8pt Homerton for adding information about the person such as the dates
of birth and death; “Symbol”, 18pt Homerton for providing an = sign of
the correct size. All three are formatted centre with adjustments to
“space before” as described later.
6.10
Scroll the page until the lower left corner is filling the screen. Draw
a small text frame close to the edges of the page and modify it so that
in position and size it has integer dimensions − not vital but can be
useful as things develop. In my own experiments, (with a main frame
having 12mm margins) I made the values in the Modify Frame dialogue box
X=15mm; Y=254mm; Width = 40mm; Height=18mm. Now from the Duplicate Frame
option in the Object menu, duplicate it 10 times horizontally, with a
horizontal offset of about 3mm. This creates a stack of overlapping
frames, each of which can be selected in turn and slid to any position
on the page by using <adjust>. They will be used to enter the names and
the details such as dates of birth, etc. Here is an example:
6.10
Now repeat this process for another stack of smaller frames but before
duplication, enter into the first frame an “equals” sign, adjusting the
font size to create a sign of appropriate height and width for the
document (I decided on 18pt). The frame should be such that the = sign
is exactly the same depth below the top of its frame as is the name in
the ancestor frames. This makes for easy alignment when constructing the
tree and can be achieved by a judicious use of ‘space before’ when
defining the fonts in the paragraph styles window.
6.10
Construction of the tree
6.10
The otherwise empty A3 document page now has at its lower left corner, a
bank of empty frames for later use with family names and a similar bank
of smaller frames containing the = symbol. From the View menu select
<Show Rulers> and from the Object menu select <Snap to Guides>. The
construction of the tree can now go ahead, making full use of both
vertical and horizontal guidelines to assist with the layout. Position a
guideline across the page where the family names are to appear, making
allowance for the fact that the name will appear slightly below this
line, as described below.
6.10
Activate the top frame of the stack, type in the name and dates, etc,
then slide it into position using <adjust> so that the top edge snaps to
the guideline with the frame hanging down. Repeat for the = symbol frame
and then again for the next name. Provided the text and symbol were
positioned at the same depth in their frames as recommended earlier, all
the text will be aligned horizontally, but some adjustment may be
necessary to balance the names on either side of the =. This is easily
achieved by either sliding the whole frame or by using <select> on the
right hand edge of the text frame to adjust its length; the type
continually adjusts itself to a central position.
6.10
The link-lines between families, ie. the “branches” of the tree, are
drawn using the line tool, again making use of guide lines for
convenience. Remember that holding down <shift> whilst drawing these
will ensure that they are truly horizontal or vertical, as the case may
be, the diagram, although not to scale, illustrates the principles.
6.10
Mr. Griffiths technique makes good use of a number of Ovation’s special
features, and I particularly like the idea of stacking frames in
advance. This could have applications elsewhere, e.g. for constructing a
questionnaire which consists of questions of varying length with an
answer box at the end of each question. With a stack of frames tucked
away in the corner, a box can be slid rapidly into position after each
question is typed on the page. Its length can be adjusted in situ. In
this example, the boxes would be empty but framed.
6.10
I would welcome correspondence from other readers about any hints and
tips they have devised when using Ovation. Write to me at N.C.S.  A
6.10
William OVATION
6.10
1894 − 1936
6.10
=
6.10
Oak Solutions
6.10
From 6.9 page 23
6.10
Colton
6.10
From 6.9 page 24
6.10
Hints and Tips
6.10
•    Altering Impression frames − Here is another one of those hints that
everyone but me probably knew about all the time: If you want to change
the attributes of several different frames, (like making them all
transparent) all you do is click on the first frame, call up Alter frame
(with <ctrl-f10>), make the changes and then click OK with <adjust>
instead of <select>. This keeps the Alter frame dialogue box on screen.
Then click <select> on the next frame to be changed and make the change
in the Alter frame dialogue box which is still there on screen. This
speeds things up no end.  Jochen Konietzko, Köln, Germany.
6.10
•    Background printing − Various comments in Archive have suggested that
you need the Ace PROdriver in order to get background printing. However,
Keith Sloan’s PD program !Spooler (on Shareware 24) works with a
Panasonic 1124 + Impression II on RISC OS 3.11 − cheaper than using a
PROdriver!  Chris Dawson, Derby.
6.10
•    Disc storage boxes − Looking for new disc storage boxes? Look no
further than your local Supermarket or D.I.Y. Superstore! I have
recently purchased the Module 2000 Box and Lid (Ref. no’s. Unit 2 and
Lid 2) manufactured by Addis, the plastic kitchen accessory
manufacturers. The size of the box is 450×190×127.5mm and comes in
various colours. The combined cost of the box and lid recently was £4.78
and it holds approximately 144 discs. (I have arranged them in four
rows, each holding 36 discs). What is more, it is made in Britain, like
the Acorn Archimedes, and better in style and strength. Give me Addis
any time!  Timothy Brown, Kent.
6.10
•    Floptical drives − I offer the following as ‘Hints’ arising out of the
fairly extended process of getting my floptical drives to work (with
much help from Morley), in the hope that they will be useful to other
new owners.
6.10
The drive will not work at all with older ROMs fitted to the SCSI
interface board − you need version 1.12 at least. If you already have a
SCSI hard disc (or other SCSI peripheral) there should be no termination
resistors in the floptical drive. They are easily removed but you have
to remove the drive from its case first − they are close to the ribbon-
cable connector on the underside of the drive.
6.10
The drive is recognized as two devices. The 21Mb disc counts as a hard
disc and appears as SCSIDrive5 in my case (as I already had a SCSI
drive), while the facility for reading and writing to ADFS discs counts
as a floppy drive. I could not get the floppy device to be recognized at
all using the SCSI_conf program on Morley’s support disc, but had to do
it manually, using: *configure scsifslink 0 2 (followed by a reset).
This gives a ‘floppy’ icon called SCSIDrive0. (My drive arrived set up
as SCSI device 2 − you would need to modify the configure command if it
was set up to be another number.) There is no conflict between the SCSI
and ADFS floppy drives, although they are both called 0, and anyway the
computer will not allow you to call the SCSI floppy drive 1 if there is
no SCSI floppy drive 0.
6.10
The writing under the SCSI drive icons changes from the drive name to
the disc name when a disc is mounted. This is potentially confusing
until you know about it, because the default name of the 21Mb disc is
the number of the drive. I got into even worse confusion because I had
tested the Floptical on its own, so the disc became labelled “disc4”.
When I restored the real SCSI hard disc as well as the Floptical, I got
an error message saying there was a conflict of disc names.
6.10
By the way, since the floptical drive will not format discs, does anyone
know of a source of high-density floppies formatted ADFS 1.6Mb? Philip
Draper, Borehamwood.
6.10
In view of this problem with flopticals being unable to format 1.6Mb
discs, we are offering pre-formatted discs at £17 for 10. Ed.
6.10
•    Pocket Book battery connections − The middle battery connector on the
Pocket Book/Psion 3 does not allow the use of AA batteries with indented
positive and/or negative terminals (e.g. Ever Ready’s rechargeable
cells.)  Paul Bisonnette, Otterfing, Germany.
6.10
•    SigmaSheet does not return to the desktop neatly. If programs such as
Ovation are running, their Alt-key combinations will be lost when
SigmaSheet returns. To solve this, amend the SIGSHEET program as
follows. Look at the end and find DEFPROCexit and change it to read:
6.10
DEFPROCexit
6.10
*FX 4
6.10
ON:*FX 225,1
6.10
*RMReInit InternationalKeyboard
6.10
IF INKEY−2 : END : ELSE *Quit
6.10
John Waddell, Renfrewshire.  A
6.10
Small Ads
6.10
(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)
6.10
Unfortunately, last month I re-printed the previous month’s small ads by
mistake. Sorry about that! So this month is rather longer than usual...
6.10
•    40Mb ST506 Hard Disc (Watford) and card (for A300/400) £120, Watford
Hand Scanner £60, Watford SVGA Enhancer £30, 4 slot backplane £10,
Voltmace joystick £6, Midnight Tracer £20, ArcScan with Library disc 1
£13, DeskEdit (v1) £12. Phone 0453−832897.
6.10
•     A3000 Learning Curve 2Mb, colour monitor, £450 o.n.o. Phone
0634−721447.
6.10
•    A3000 2Mb, manuals, software £350. PipeDream3, Fish, Pawn, TwinWorld,
Artisan, Holed Out, £10 each. Repton3, Casino, Maddingly Hall, Talisman,
Prof Mariarti, Plague Planet, No Excuses, Topologika adventures,
Jinxter, Microdrive, Superior Golf, £5 each. Z88 + mains adaptor £75.
Phone 0227−374172.
6.10
•    A3000 (4Mb), twin 3½“ drives, monitor and stand, Voltmace joystick,
£650. RISC OS 2 PRM, £20. A3000 Technical Reference manual £15.
Interdictor, Real McCoy, Real McCoy 2, Powerband, Nevryon, £8 each.
Phone 0256−27355.
6.10
•    A3000 upgraded with RISC OS 3 and ARM3. Colour monitor, external SCSI
Hard drives 20Mb Seagate and 50Mb Quantum. Multitude of original
software including Impression II, Pipedream 3, Poster, Jigsaw,
Compression, Cyber Chess, etc + 100 discs, many full of software. All
for £950. Contact John Crabtree on 0803−832505 (state personal) anytime.
6.10
•    A310, 4Mb RAM and software, £300. 40Mb hard disc drive + controller
£140. ARM3 upgrade £80. Acorn multisync £180. Phone 0744−58404.
6.10
•    A310, RISC OS 3.1, Acorn colour monitor, ARM3, 4MB RAM, 48MB SCSI HD +
card, £600, CC ROM/RAM Podule £20, 4 podule backplane £20, First Word
Plus £30, Acorn DTP £20, DR-DOS 5.0 £20 Phone Russell on 031−666−1565.
6.10
•    A4 model II (4Mb RAM, 60Mb hard disc), 6 months old, as new, £1780. PC
Emulator v1.82) £50. Euclid 3D modelling £30. Superior Golf, Trivial
Pursuit, Interdictor (unopened), £8 each. Phone Basingstoke 0256−467574.
6.10
•    A4 Notebook 4Mb/60Mb for sale, due to change in school policy. Very
good condition, £1299 o.n.o. Further details from Pip Cartwright, IT
coordinator, 0603−860505.
6.10
•    A410/1, 4Mb RAM, 40Mb IDE, RISC OS 3.10, Acorn Multisync monitor,
manuals, Learning Curve and other software, £950 o.n.o. Phone
071−703−5675.
6.10
•    A440/1, RISC OS 3.11, Acorn colour monitor, 4Mb RAM, 40Mb IDE HD +
interface, £800. Phone Russell on 031−666−1565.
6.10
•    A5000 4Mb/40Mb, RISC OS 3.10, 18 months old, excellent condition,
boxed, manuals, etc. £975. Acorn PocketBook, 2 months old, £145 o.n.o.
RISC OS 3.10 upgrade with manuals, £25. Phone 0782−771914 or 412515 Ext
4034.
6.10
•    Acorn Desktop Publisher £40. Beebug Star/Epson colour printer driver,
£8. GammaPlot £20, System Delta+, £30. DR-DOS 5.0, £20. Nevryon £8,
Powerband £8. Computer Concepts ROMs InterChart £10, InterSheet £15,
SpellMaster £20. All originals. Phone 0737−832159 (evenings).
6.10
•    Acorn DTP, £25; First Word Plus 2, inc disc of Epson LQ drivers, £25
(or £40 for both). Phone 0457−863351.
6.10
•    Acorn Floating Point Co-processor, £250 o.n.o. Chartwell £15. Phone
0925−811420.
6.10
•    BJ200 printer with CC Turbo Driver. New in March, hardly used, cost
£351, will sell for £251, buyer collects from Cambridge. Phone
0223−351308.
6.10
•    Compression £15. TWO (ICS) £5. DeskEdit2 £15. Rhapsody2 £20. Forms
Designers £5. (All originals with handbooks). A3000 1-2 Mb expansion
board (Atomwide) £20. Phone Ernie on 0493−740557 eves.
6.10
•    EMR MicroStudio v1.0 and Music Disc set (cost £79). EMR StoryBook and
Story Book Set 1, £40 (cost £70). Both are brand new and unregistered.
Phone 0302−722781 after 6.
6.10
•    Panasonic KXP1124 24pin dot matrix printer v.g.c. Friction, tractor
and sheet feed with original box and manuals, £120 o.n.o. Multistore II,
£180 o.n.o. Phone 0778−394−235.
6.10
•    PC Emulator, latest version, unregistered, unused. Bargain £60 +p&p.
RISC OS 2 PRM, £30+p&p. Phone 0952−613619.
6.10
•    PC Emulator v1.7 £25, Drop Ship £9, Holed Out £9, Arcticulate £9,
Break 147 and Superpool £15. Phone Ben on 0392−367009.
6.10
•     Psion Organiser II Model XP, 32Kb Datapak, 32Kb RAMpak, 16Kb
Datapak, Mains unit, manual £85. Phone 091−536−2066.
6.10
•    R140 workstation, including Unix 4.3BSD, X11, X.desktop, Fortran/C,
RISCiX manuals, Programmers Reference Manuals vols I and II, 4Mb RAM,
47Mb hard disc, Ethernet card, Taxan 770+ monitor, £1500 o.n.o. Phone
0895−230826.
6.10
•    Reconditioned A300s, each with backplane, fan and new mouse. 1Mb with
RISC OS 2 £275. 4Mb with RISC OS 3.1 £475. Hard drive with interface
from £150. Phone 0736−63918.
6.10
•    RISC OS 3.1 upgrade (ALA31), complete and unused with all manuals £30.
Also unused, First Word Plus 2, £20. Phone 0561−362452, evenings
(Scotland).
6.10
•    Series 3/HC/Pocket Book items: 128Kb RAM disc with new battery £55,
Series 3 Link £50, Spell Checker & Thesaurus £40. Phone Mark on
0905−754277 after 6.
6.10
•    Swap my Z88 for working Acorn hardware, e.g. HiVision Digitiser
(standard podule) or hard disc; both with cash adjustment. Z88 has 128K
RAM and 32K EPROM, case, Parallel/Serial cables, PC/Acorn link, eraser,
mains adaptor, manuals and magazines. Or sell outfit for £140, buyer
collects or plus postage. Phone Chris on 0424−211400 (Sussex) after 6pm.
6.10
•    System Delta+ v2 £5. Datachat 1223 Modem and lead £35. Phone
0223−629868.
6.10
•    Taxan 795 14“ Trinitron Multisync, ex cond, £300. Phone 0276−38905.
6.10
•    Two 105Mb SCSI 3½“ half height fast drives, 12ms with 64Kb cache.
Beebug DFS buffer. Interword, Intersheet, Spellmaster, Pacmania, Zarch,
Enter The Realm, Accodata serial buffer. Phone Coventry 0203−410047.
6.10
•    Wanted − A5000 + multi-sync (£1200), Aleph One PC card (£300). Cash
waiting. Contact M Spencer, 58 Milton Road, Polygon, Southampton, SO1
2HR.
6.10
•    Wanted − Acorn A4 Portable with hard disc and 4Mb RAM. Phone Bristol
0272−736237.
6.10
•    Wanted − Artisan 2, preferably upgraded for RISC OS 3.1, but not
essential. FWPlus printer driver for HP Deskjet 500C that makes use of
elite, condensed and expanded text, possibly colour. A PRES or Oak
monitor stand and expansion box for A3000, for floppies and hard drives.
Write to: Peter Young, 20 Racecourse Lane, Northallerton. North
Yorkshire. DL7 8RD.
6.10
•    Watford Hand Scanner in good working order £75. Phone 0392−79727.
6.10
•    Watford Hand Scanner (mkII) for A400/A5000 £99. Voyager (=Magic) modem
for Archimedes or BBC £19. Black dial telephone £10. Phone Francis on
0582−833937.
6.10
•    Z88, 128Kb RAM, parallel printer cable, topper, mains adaptor,
carrying case, PC Link II with Archimedes cable, two books − “Z88
Computing” and “Using your Z88” + full set of Z88 Eprom magazines in
binders. £175 the lot. Phone Alan on 0227−622153.
6.10
•    Z88 Laptop +128Kb RAM, mains power supply, case, manual + two books,
copies of user club magazines, printer cables and BBC cable and software
link. Phone Southampton 0703−433223.
6.10
Charity Sales − The following items are available for sale in aid of
charity. PLEASE do not just send money − ring us on 0603−766592 to check
if the items are still available. Thank you.
6.10
10 out of 10 Maths £5, Apocalypse £5, Arcade Soccer £2, Colony Rescue
£2, Drop Ship £2, Genesis (from Learning Curve) £5, Granny’s Garden £10,
Ibix the Viking £2. , Interdictor 1.0 £3, Karma Flight Trainer £2,
Kitchen Plan £2, Micro English £2, Money Matters £2, PC Emulator (1.34)
+ DR-DOS 3.41 £20, RISC OS 2 PRM £25, Tactic £2, Terramex £2, The Wimp
Game £5, Twin World £4, White Magic £2.
6.10
(If you have unwanted software or hardware for Archimedes computers you
could donate for charity, please send it to the Archive office. If you
have larger items where post would be expensive, just send us details of
the item(s) and how the purchaser can get hold of them.)  A
6.10
Comment Column
6.10
•    Basic program compressing − I read the article on Basic crunching this
month in Archive and it got me thinking about a subject which makes me
very disappointed. A large number of people think that the speed gain by
crunching comes from the shortened variable names, therefore when they
write programs, they use short, non-descriptive variable names in their
coding, thus making it hard to read, debug and so forth. While doing
some experimenting a few months ago, I discovered that there is no
reason to use short non-descriptive variable names with Basic V. The
program looked like this:
6.10
PRINT “The program starts now...”
6.10
time%=TIME
6.10
FOR i_am_here_to_test_this%=1 TO 1000000
6.10
The_Rain_in_Spain_On_The_Moors1%=2
6.10
The_Rain_in_Spain_On_The_Moors2%=4
6.10
The_Rain_in_Spain_On_The_Moors3%=0
6.10
The_Rain_in_Spain_On_The_Moors3%= The_Rain_in_Spain_On_The_Moors1%
+The_Rain_in_Spain_On_The_Moors2%
6.10
NEXT
6.10
PRINT (TIME-time%)/100;“ seconds.”
6.10
The output of this program is 39.95 seconds with a cache on a A440.
6.10
Program 2 looked like this:
6.10
PRINT “The program starts now...”
6.10
time%=TIME
6.10
FOR i%=1 TO 1000000
6.10
a%=2
6.10
b%=4
6.10
c%=0
6.10
c%=b% + a%
6.10
NEXT
6.10
PRINT (TIME-time%)/100;“ seconds.”
6.10
Again the output of this program is the same, 39.95 seconds.
6.10
When the program was crunched, the third example is thus:
6.10
PRINT“The program starts now...”
6.10
a%=TIME:FORe%=1TO&F4240:b%=2:c%=4: d%=0:d%=b%+c%:NEXT
6.10
PRINT(TIME-a%)/100;“ seconds.”
6.10
The output of this is now 31.72 seconds, shaving 8 seconds off the time.
The speed increase comes from the placement of the colon and the lack of
spaces in the coding. It seems that this is caused by the fact the
entire line is interpreted once.
6.10
For the fun of it, I compiled the program in example number 1 using Risc
Basic and execution of the program only took 2.85 seconds. If one can
afford the 20Kb overhead, I think this is the best way to get a speedy
program.
6.10
The only exception to the replacement of the long descriptive variable
names is in the use of SYS calls. The speed gains are mind-boggling.
Consider this example:
6.10
PRINT “The program starts now...”
6.10
time%=TIME
6.10
FOR i%=1 TO 100000
6.10
SYS “OS_ReadMonotonicTime” TO centiseconds%
6.10
NEXT
6.10
PRINT (TIME-time%)/100;“ seconds.”
6.10
The execution of this program took 35.01s.
6.10
By simply replacing the “OS_ReadMonotonictime” with &42, which is the
numeric value of ReadMonotonic time, execution drops to a staggering
3.92 seconds. The problem is that the program is unuseable if it needs
to be re-read. However, by simply adding a REM to the new coding:
6.10
PRINT “The program starts now...”
6.10
time%=TIME
6.10
FOR i%=1 TO 100000
6.10
SYS &42 TO centiseconds%:REM Mono-tonic Time
6.10
NEXT
6.10
PRINT (TIME-time%)/100;“ seconds.”
6.10
The program again becomes readable and this program takes only 4.43
seconds to complete giving an increase of 8 times better performance
than the original.  Mike Smith, Plymouth.
6.10
•    DTP service − T-J Reproductions offer an excellent professional
printing service to Archimedes users. They can supply an information
pack on request which contains details for people wishing to use DTP to
present their work.  Brian Webber, Hendon.
6.10
•    Eizo T560i monitor + CC colour card − I ordered a ColourCard directly
from CC after I had seen one in operation at a local Acorn exhibition at
the end of last year. It finally arrived on 18th December. I installed
it on my A540 (driving an Eizo T560i) without difficulty. I soon
established that the most useful modes to me were 114, 122 and 117 for
general purpose work (1024×768, 1152×848 and 1600×600). All are 16
colour and the values are for graphic resolution only. A special module
from CC was used (vers 1.08 for the Eizo560).
6.10
All went well until about the end of December when I found that mode 114
was losing lock at the beginning of the frame, affecting about the top
20%, this being pulled about 2 to 3 cm to the right, decreasing as the
frame progressed until it was again correct.
6.10
This only happened when the monitor had been running for half an hour or
more. A further hour caused mode 122 to be similarly affected. When it
occurred, the onset was sudden and complete.
6.10
The effect could be reversed when cold air was blown through the monitor
casing. Careful investigation with RS Components’ freezer narrowed the
problem down to C28 and IC21. (C28 is the timing capacitor for one part
of a dual monostable IC21, type 74LS221.) The Eizo monitor worked
perfectly when the colour card was removed and seemed to be within
specification according to my measurements.
6.10
I contacted Tom Bonham of Technical Support at Eizo Corporation. He was
very helpful but firm. He would not let me buy, or release to me, a
circuit diagram of the monitor. Nor would he discuss the function of
these and nearby components.
6.10
All service work must be undertaken through them at a charge of £50
(probably a minimum) if outside guarantee and outside specification. As
I considered that the monitor was within specification, I declined. He
suggested the problem was caused by the colour card failing to produce
line synchronisation pulses during the flyback period.
6.10
I next contacted Mr Nigel Star of Wild Vision (CC’s partners in this
project). He agreed with Mr Bonham’s diagnosis but could not offer any
simple solution. He has offered to write a new module for me which would
give the monitor more time to synchronise at the start of each frame.
Unfortunately, I would then lose the top 20% of each frame.
6.10
This problem is probably common to both Wild Vision and State Machine as
I understand they both use the same video output device. (I use a G8Plus
on a T560iT and it does have the same problem but only in mode 12. Ed.)
6.10
Desperation time. The colour card offers facilities that are too good
not to use, so I started to trace the circuitry and calculated (and
measured) the monostable timings.
6.10
Solution. I placed a 220pF capacitor in parallel with C28, and all
problems disappeared! It seems that, as the temperature rose, the value
of C28 decreased or the internal leakage current of IC21 increased.
6.10
Very Important Warning. The printed circuit board in the T560i uses
surface mount components, so specialised equipment is needed to safely
undertake any work on it. This is NOT work for the enthusiastic amateur.
It may, however, point the way to a solution to anyone else who has
encountered a similar problem with this monitor and colour card.
6.10
I do feel that Eizo Corporation is misguided in its policy of not
releasing circuit information to a bona-fide customer and engineer.
David Coppen (just for the record... BSc, CEng, MIEE).
6.10
•    Nasty phone calls! − How would you like it if someone kept ringing
your phone number and asking if you were Norwich Computer Services?
Well, the gentleman who has the Norwich phone number 766659 certainly
doesn’t. Apparently, if you ring 7666592, instead of 766592, it ignores
the last digit. I sent him a couple of free Archive mugs as a sweetener
but I don’t think he was too impressed! So, if subscribers could be
extra careful when dialling 766592, I’m sure he would be most grateful.
Thanks. Ed.
6.10
•    Products Available?! − Do you remember the illustration I gave last
month (p52) to show why we at Archive try to insist on Products
Available actually being products available? I mentioned a product which
was said to be available ‘at the end of March’ − then, in mid April, it
was to be ready ‘in about three weeks’ − in mid-May, it was said to be
ready ‘in about two weeks’. As I write (mid-June) it is ‘going into
production now’ and will be ready ‘in about three or four weeks’! The
same company has another product which was going to be available ‘in
mid-April’ which, in mid-June, is also ‘about three or four weeks’ away.
Exactly the same prognosis applies to another product of which they
said, in mid May, ‘we have launched...’.
6.10
I’m sorry if you think that I am labouring the point but it does make
life difficult for those magazines which try to give accurate
information about Products Available.
6.10
•    What’s in a name? − Well, quite a lot if it’s your name and some
stupid editor gets it wrong in his magazine! With apologies to Mike
McMillan of Reading, the two contributions he sent in last month on
pages 19 about moving files and 52 about ink cartridge refilling got
attributed to Mike McNamara and Graeme Wallace. Sorry about that − we do
try to give credit where it is due. Ed.
6.10
•    Which machine is King? − Every now and then computer magazines are
wont to print articles bashing the opposition − well, it would be a
little odd if they praised the opposition too highly!
6.10
At work, I regularly use a variety of machines including Unix work-
stations, PCs, Archimedes and Apple Macs. The reason I use all these is
that we choose the best system for each job. And what is the most
significant factor in this? We reckon it’s software, peripherals and
inter-connectivity − in that order. Also, we have to consider what
everybody else uses for a certain task. If we go our own way too much,
we could have skills and data transfer problems.
6.10
I would like to see the debate move on from ‘my widget is better than
yours’. How about, my platform has a better choice of budget/mid-range/
quality image origination tools? (Some contributions do say this sort of
thing − they just seem to get swallowed up by the bits and bobs
variety.)
6.10
For instance, did you know that Archimedes and PCs can very easily be
linked into, and share data files with, a Unix network, but that it is
both traumatic and expensive to do so with Macs?
6.10
Mac’s running Photoshop and Quark Express are the de facto standard in
repro’ houses. How does the Archimedes square up to this? How many
Archimedes systems (or PCs) can cope with 50Mb (yes, 50!) image files −
that’s the size of a 24 bit A3 image at 300 dpi. (Does anyone really use
files that big? Ed.)
6.10
How much software specifically designed for primary schools is available
on anything other than the Archimedes?
6.10
How many non-PC machines have databases packages of the standard of
Dbase IV, FoxPro and Paradox?
6.10
If you need raw power, how does the opposition square up to Unix
workstations in price/performance?
6.10
Of course, the next step on from here is to talk about how easy it is
for a software or hardware developer to produce or port products of each
category to a particular platform, and then to sell them when he has
finished.
6.10
What we want to see is each platform making serious commercial efforts
to encourage and enable software and peripherals appropriate to various
application areas and, by offering the inter-connectivity, to enable
users to pick and choose horses for courses more easily.
6.10
If we argue only about bits and bobs then, lawyers permitting, all
computers will end up looking the same and that would be boring.  Tim
Hubbard, Oxford.
6.10
Thanks, Tim, that’s a really helpful starter for a constructive
discussion. If anyone has anything to say on this matter, drop me a line
− with the text on disc, too, if you want it considered for publication.
Thanks, Ed.
6.10
•    WindowEd − Further to the review of WindowEd (6.8 p71), I have been
using this program for some time and agree with most of what your
reviewer said. However, I must point out that the Interface module which
WindowEd uses is now obsolete since its functionality has been included
in RISC OS 3.1 in a considerably easier-to-use form. Armen Software must
dispense with Interface and provide a graphical method of selecting 3D
icon styles if their software is not to have a serious gap.  Richard
Simpson, Farnborough.  A
6.10
JPEG Column
6.10
Stuart Bell
6.10
There was a massive response to my article, “First Steps in JPEG”
(Archive 6.9 p45), so here’s the first of what may become a regular
feature.
6.10
Trevor Attewell faxed the Archive office to point out that Irlam
Instruments’ AlterImage package also offers a JPEG facility. He comments
that it’s simply a matter of dragging file sprites around the desktop.
Three quality settings are available, ‘low’ giving files about 10% the
size of the original. Trevor is also impressed with the quality of such
small files.
6.10
Better with 24-bit
6.10
Mike Williams made a number of useful comments: First, JPEG really
shines with 24-bit colour images; he finds that, for 256 colour images,
JPEG isn’t much better than GIF compression, and the latter is much
faster. Also, for cartoon-type sprites (i.e. large areas of single
colour), JPEG doesn’t do very well, and the restored images can show
colour fringing along the edges of single-colour areas. To illustrate
his comments, he quotes the following figures:
6.10
24-bit TARGA file:    960Kb
6.10
SPARK compressed:    386Kb
6.10
JPEG (24-bit) file:    41Kb
6.10
whereas for an Acorn (8-bit) file:
6.10
Mode 21 sprite:    320Kb
6.10
SPARK compressed:    111Kb
6.10
GIF file:    109Kb
6.10
JPEG (8-bit) file:    77Kb
6.10
Hints & Tips
6.10
Cain Hunt wrote in with two discs full of demo files, having had ‘great
fun’ compressing files since my last article. He offers the following
tips: Firstly, using !Creator to produce GIF files rather than PBM files
saves an awful lot of disc space, and cjpeg will happily read them.
6.10
Secondly, he shares my findings about the lack of image degradation with
medium quality sprites. He uses the HiVision digitiser and continues the
‘family snapshot’ emphasis of my review of the original !Vision (Archive
5.12 p.43) with pictures of a toddler ‘playing’ the piano, with a “Q”
setting of 25. Relative file sizes are 357Kb (195Kb with Compression)
and 21Kb. The A5 laser prints are indistinguishable (but see Tom Kirby-
Green’s comments below).
6.10
Thirdly, Cain comments that, “Since JPEG files are so compact, it is
slightly unfair to compare their quality with files 4 to 10 times as
big. As an exercise, I tried reducing the image in size using the
scaling function in !ChangeFSI so that the CFS file of the image is
about the same size as the JPEG files. This produced files 11% and 31%
of the original image area. Comparing the re-expanded versions of these
files with equivalent sized JPEG files, the JPEG images win hands down!”
6.10
And finally from Cain, a warning: “The kind of image also makes a
difference. On disc 2 there are JPEG and original images of The Great
Shepherd and a raytraced image (produced with QRT). The scanned photo
does very well (the JPEG documentation suggests that real life images
compress well) but the Raytraced image is awful − even Jpeg75 which is
the same size as the original file under CFS.”
6.10
Image quality
6.10
We are always going to have problems illustrating image quality on the
printed page, but we’ll try! Below is first a small section of the
original ray-traced image, at about four times ‘normal’ size, and then
the same section (above) which has first been JPEGed with “Q” at 75
(normally a value high enough for superb quality), and then de-JPEGed
again.
6.10
Cain kindly sent his letter on disc, as well as on paper (as did Mike
Williams). Thank you, gentlemen – perhaps others might take the hint!
And, since I’m a sucker for the family album, here’s “PlayItSam” –
simply to show how useful JPEG can be – for the 21Kb and 367Kb files are
indistinguishable on an A5 laser print.
6.10
Desktop JPEGging
6.10
C. de Gelder wrote from the Netherlands to point out that there is no
need to use !Creator to generate the P6 format file. The !ChangeFSI
documentation shows how to do it from the command line, and it can even
be done from the desktop, “even if it’s a little tricky.” The process
involves modifying the Template file in !ChangeFSI using FormEd.
Apparently, an error message is given when !ChangeFSI is run from the
desktop, but it still works. The JPEG file is then produced from the P6
format file. I’m glad to hear that the process can be accomplished
without recourse to !Creator, but there are even better solutions to my
problem – read on!
6.10
“Never mind the quality...”
6.10
Tom Kirby-Green wants to raise the question of how we measure the loss
of quality inherent in the JPEGing process. He suggests that 300dpi
laser printers do a bad job of reproducing 256 grey scale images, and
continues... “It’s my guess that if Stuart had carried out comparisons
with enlarged areas on screen, he would have seen a very noticeable
difference... ...I don’t mean to sound overly critical but from my
experience with using JPEG when viewing on screen, the quality reduction
can be very noticeable. Stuart might also like to try this out with
colour images, where the effect can be even more noticeable. All this is
not to devalue JPEG – just to warn that if it is used within, say,
multimedia, the user should be aware that the reduced quality is
noticeable.”
6.10
Please do take note of Tom’s warnings! I don’t think that I overstated
the power of the JPEG algorithms, because the loss of quality on ‘normal
sized’ screen displays of the sprite in question was very small. As with
the printed versions in the article, screen displays of enlarged areas
do show some loss of quality, and the printed versions in Archive are
very similar to the equivalent screen display. It all depends what
you’re using the images for. If I were displaying them on an 8 foot high
‘video wall’ of monitors, I’d forget JPEG. However, for small scale use,
on screen or paper for DTP, the quality will be far better than that
obtained simply by using some brute force technique to reduce the
storage requirements of the image, like Cain Hunt’s experiments with the
‘scaling’ option under !ChangeFSI. As Tom also mentions, one of the
‘tricks’ that JPEG uses is to remove colours that the human eye is not
particularly sensitive to, and it also knows about the eye’s inability
to distinguish adjacent similar colours. Even so, however clever the
techniques, it remains an inherently ‘lossy’ system. As the cliche
reminds us, “There ain’t such a thing as a free lunch” – but this ‘meal’
is a better bargain than most!
6.10
Two desktop JEPGgers
6.10
Last time, I complained about the relative user-un-friendliness of
!ChangeFSI when it comes to using JPEG. I recounted the rather complex
procedures that I’d had to employ to get round them. Neil Hoggarth wrote
pointing out again that !ChangeFSI will produce P6 files, but not from
the desktop, because the writeable icon only accepts numeric values.
More importantly, he has written a front end to !ChangeFSI to produce
JPEG files from sprite files. He calls it !JFIF. It’s a public-domain
utility that must be installed in the same directory as !ChangeFSI, and
a single line must be added to the !Boot file of that application.
Effectively, it forms a desktop interface to the JPEG routines contained
in !ChangeFSI, and very effective it is, too. Thank you, Neil. !JFIF
will appear on the Archive monthly disc.
6.10
!JPEGit
6.10
Thomas Down, presumably having encountered just the same problems, has
also done something about it, producing !JPEGit as an application which
modifies !ChangeFSI to solve all the problems which I mentioned last
time.
6.10
If !ChangeFSI has been modified by !JPEGit, when you run !ChangeFSI, it
places two icons on the iconbar. One is used to ‘JPEG’ normal sprite
files; the other to, among the usual options, uncompress JPEG files back
to Acorn sprite format. As with !JFIF, everything can now be done from
the desktop. Choices about the compression process, such as the
“Quality” factor can be changed, and (unlike !JFIF) saved, from the
desktop.
6.10
Thomas has produced two versions of !JPEGit, one is public domain and
the other is shareware with a £3.50 registration fee. The PD version
will be on the Archive monthly disc. The shareware version offers:
entropy optimisation for greater compression; a fast mode option which
can give a considerable improvement in speed; automatic opening of the
choices box before each compression job and automatic generation of
comprehensive reports.
6.10
!JFIF or !JPEGit?
6.10
It’s certainly too early for a proper evaluation. Both packages work,
and work well. But both crashed, or rather, I suspect that the
underlying !ChangeFSI routines crashed, when there wasn’t sufficient
memory available for the conversion process. Trying to use !JPEGit again
after freeing more memory crashes the whole machine.
6.10
Both have one or two rough edges in that !JPEGit keeps offering its
“Save” window when you’re pointing at files in the directory, and !JFIF
does not get rid of its “Save” window properly. The single-icon front
end of !JFIF is a little neater (except that clicking ‘menu’ gives
‘JTIF’, not JFIF!). On the other hand, !JPEGit allows options (e.g. the
default “Q” value) to be saved, and it also produces files of the type
‘jpeg’, with a nice J icon, rather than JFIF’s less informative files of
type ‘data’. But for those interested in the workings of RISC OS, Neil
even supplies the ‘C’ source code to !JFIF.
6.10
Both Neil and Thomas have produced, very quickly, two very useful
utilities. Next month, I hope to include a comparative test of !JFIF and
the two versions of !JPEGit. In the mean time, both provide excellent
front ends for the JPEG routines in !ChangeFSI, and that can only
encourage its use on Acorn machines. So why didn’t Acorn give us a
decent front end in the first place?
6.10
But what’s the use of JPEG?
6.10
When all is said and done, JPEG is no more than a means to an end – the
economic storage of large sprite files. I use it in the following way:
Having bought a !Vision digitiser, I enjoy grabbing images off my
camcorder and then printing them out for use in letters and notes. Many
images I store for repeated use – a kind of digitised family album. To
store lots of 157Kb images would soon eat up disc space, but 20 to 25Kb
(with “Q” at 25) is rather better! For images a few inches across,
produced on a 300dpi laser printer, there is no perceptible loss of
quality.
6.10
In practice, because I use Compression, the actual savings are nowhere
near as great, but if you haven’t got Compression, JPEG will be very
attractive, if not essential. It is well worth using Compression with
standard sprite files (remembering that there is no image loss), but I
was very interested to find that one of the Compression-ed JPEG files
was larger than when not using Compression. This seems to confirm the
efficiency of the JPEG process, in that !cfs was unable to find any
redundancy in the stored image. The lesson may be to access JPEG files
through the normal, not the !cfs, disc directory.
6.10
Cross-platform portability
6.10
One of the claimed strengths of JPEG is that because it is an ‘industry
standard’, JPEG files produced on a PC compatible should be readable on
a Mac, and so Acorn machines should be able to share data similarly. An
additional advantage is that images which would be too large for 720Kb
(or even 1.4Mb) PC format floppies will, when JPEGged, fit onto that
most portable of media quite happily. Also, print shops who are geared
up for PC or Mac file formats should be able to read and print Acorn
JPEG files. I say “should”, not because I have any reason to doubt that
such a process would work, but simply because I’ve never tried it. Have
you used JPEG files to move data across different platforms? Did it
work? Please let me know.
6.10
And finally. . .
6.10
On the monthly disc, you will find !JFIF and the public domain version
of !JPEGit, both with documentation. Additionally, there will be a
number of JPEGed files, submitted by this month’s correspondents and
which illustrate some of the points which they made.
6.10
Lastly, how about an informal competition for the most interesting image
(judged quite subjectively by me) which can be JPEGed into 32Kb of disc
space (not using an other compression technique as well!) Any (non-
copyright) source, any input technique, totally arbitrary judging, and
no prizes whatsoever, except for seeing your image (space permitting) in
print and/or on the monthly disc.
6.10
Until next month, comments about JPEG, your favourite “<32Kb images” and
experiences of !JPEGit and !JFIF will be gratefully received, via the
Archive office.  A
6.10
CC
6.10
New artwork
6.10
CC
6.10
From 6.9 page 17
6.10
(About Scanners)
6.10
A Pair of CD-ROM Drives
6.10
Jim Bailey
6.10
This was intended to be a review comparing Cumana’s CD-ROM package and
the Mac package sold by Archive but, as I will explain, problems arose.
My system consists of an A5000 with a Lingenuity SCSI podule and an
external 200Mb SCSI hard drive.
6.10
I ordered from Cumana at the Acorn Show in October and asked Paul if he
would like a review. He agreed but also requested that I did a
comparison with the Mac CD-ROM which he would send on loan.
6.10
The hardware
6.10
The Cumana drive is a Sony drive with an internal power supply; the Mac
is by Chinon and the supply is a separate large black brick. On the
front of each is a headphone socket with volume control, the rest is
similar to a floppy drive. On the back are two female SCSI connectors, a
power switch and a pair of stereo phono sockets for connection to a hi-
fi system.
6.10
The Mac drive came supplied with one caddy and a disc head cleaner.
Cumana supplied three caddies and a pair of self-powered mains speakers.
The head is self-cleaning. The manual is for a previous version and
needs to be rewritten for the current drive.
6.10
Both come with a SCSI cable but if you already have a SCSI drive you
will need a daisy chain cable. I did order one for Cumana with my drive
but it was not supplied. (I wasn’t charged for it!) Fortunately, I
managed to buy one from a local Acorn dealer.
6.10
When I first received my drive, I had problems with running some of the
CDs. I was able to test the drive on a Cumana SCSI podule and the
problems disappeared. I rang Lingenuity and was advised that they would
ring back with an answer. They did not but, the next morning, I received
in the post a replacement ROM which cured the problems − excellent
service.
6.10
Speed
6.10
I tested for speed by writing a small Basic program to load in a large
file of 1,975Kb. Both drives gave the same result of 148 Kb/s, about 5½
times slower than the internal 40Mb IDE disc on the A5000. As regards
seek time, the Chinon appeared slightly faster but as files on CDs never
become fragmented, this makes little difference when it comes to using
the drives.
6.10
Compatibility
6.10
The Cumana drive handled everything as one would expect it to. It played
music CDs with the supplied !CDPlayer; this worked on both podules. The
Mac drive, however, was a total failure as far as the Archimedes is
concerned. Often when a RISC OS CD was inserted, this drive would read
the disc, pause for a few seconds then eject the disc. If the disc is
re-inserted several times it will eventually remain there; PC CDs were
not rejected. Also, I have a copy of Acorn’s Replay CD-ROM which I
obtained free from the Acorn stand at the Acorn User Show. The Mac drive
would only run these at 12½ frames per second; at 25 frames per second
there were longer pauses and the picture would jump forward. I checked
with Cumana and they advised that Chinon drives had problems with Replay
files.
6.10
Mac CD-ROMs
6.10
The CD-ROMs supplied with the Mac drive are of no use to the Archimedes
user. The Archimedes  sees the Mac directory as a single large file.
6.10
Cumana CD-ROMs
6.10
The Cumana discs are a mixed bunch. Three are RISC OS and three are
CDTV/PC format. What follows is a short review of each disc.
6.10
Revelation 2 (RISC OS)
6.10
Revelation 2 has been previously reviewed and I will just limit myself
to what is actually on the CD. Both Revelation 2 and !REVXTRA are
supplied. Also there are four Magpie files with a Magpie reader. These
files are used to demonstrate some of the features. This is more
effective than using the manual. The rest is a set of directories
containing about 64Mb of sprites. This may seem a lot but it means that
the CD is about 90% empty. The sprites cover a number of fields but I
found this to be the weakest part of the package.
6.10
Hutchinson Encyclopedia (RISC OS)
6.10
This is a machine readable copy of the encyclopedia which you can buy in
your local bookshop. It appears to be identical as far as the
information contained. I do not like this product at all; it has a great
many facts but insufficient information. There is very little depth.
Many of the references are only a few lines long and comprehensive
references appear rare.
6.10
Searching the indices has its problems. Try searching for a date or a
number and the program crashes with a fatal error − not enough memory.
Giving the program more memory does not make any difference. Searching
for a word in either the title or word index is slow. If the word is not
in the index then usually the nearest word is highlighted; but often the
search just continues and continues and continues. The longest I gave it
was 10 minutes before I reset the system. This is the only way out,
there appears to be no way to abort the search.
6.10
Also, scrolling through the indices is too slow. The program does not
appear to do any buffering and reads the CD at every change. Also it is
not possible to find the end of the index by pulling the scroll bar down
with the mouse. The best is well short of the end and you have to resort
to clicking too many times before the end is reached. You cannot use
search with “zz” because of the problems previously mentioned.
6.10
There are two other search routines which do not appear to have this
problem and accept phrases as well as single words and the speed is much
more acceptable − most of the time. The simple search handles a single
phrase whereas the complex version allows AND/OR and can restrict the
search to the text, title, category or any combination of these. After
the search is completed, a list is displayed and a choice can be made or
each can be seen by clicking on the next item tool. If there are too
many then the search can be refined and then repeated.
6.10
Many selections will contain cross references and clicking on the link
will take you to the relevant text − sometimes. I have not studied this
encyclopedia in detail as it is not a product for casual reading but
some of the short-comings I have found are:
6.10
The reference for Neil Armstrong has a cross reference to the Apollo
project but when the link is clicked on, you are presented with the God
Apollo.
6.10
Accelerated freeze drying:- see AFD... but then you get...  AFD:-
Abbreviation for accelerated freeze drying, a common method of food
preservation. See also food technology.
6.10
Equity link under law finds the theatre’s EQUITY union.
6.10
Dictionary of The Living World
6.10
(RISC OS with Replay)
6.10
This is much like the Hutchinson Encyclopedia; many references but no
real depth; but this is sold as a dictionary not an encyclopedia. There
are 108 film clips (versions for other computer apparently also have 50
longer movies according the the box), 256 pictures and 81 sound clips.
The clips appear mainly to have been taken in zoos, I am sure that there
must be films available of all of these in the wild. One movie of the
Aardwolf can only be classed as a movie because the bushes in the
foreground move. The animal appears to be asleep!
6.10
The movies are in a separate directory and the supplied ARM Movie Player
can be used to view them without running DOLW.
6.10
The Bible, Sherlock Holmes and Shakespeare (non-RISC OS)
6.10
These are all of a similar nature. The text is broken down into
directories for each book (Holmes) scenes (Shakespeare) or chapters
(Bible) and the illustrations are in a separate directory. The same
programme, with amendments to cover the differences, is used for each CD
but when I received them two ran but one, The Bible, crashed. I
telephoned Cumana who advised me to reduce the number of fonts
available. I did so and the program ran − but as it was based on the
same program as the other two there must be a better solution.
6.10
To correct the !Runimage in !Bible, change these line to read as
follows:-
6.10
2600 DIM mb% 5000 :REM menu data block
6.10
2610 DIM md% 5000 :REM menu block containing indirected data
6.10
These programs are not very robust. I had regular crashes and the search
functions only worked sometimes. For example, if the search was for
“Jesus” and “wept”, the search failed but if the search order is
reversed then the search is successful. (Must be related the the
frequency of occurrence of the two words. Ed.)
6.10
Searches can be made for up to five single words but not phrases. The
search “to” “be” “or” “not” found 16 scenes in Hamlet but crashed
immediately afterwards. The Sherlock Holmes CD has music on it but if
the music is still playing when you next access the disc, there is a
contest between the music and the data; neither wins and a reset is
necessary. This CD also has a quiz for each book.
6.10
Conclusion
6.10
My advice is that unless you would actually buy the CDs supplied with
the drives, I would look around for the cheapest drive without any CDs.
Even cheap CDs which you will never use are expensive. The government is
encouraging schools to buy CD drives but for the home I cannot find any
applications that would make users rush out to buy a drive. For
professional writers, there is one CD-ROM which would make a drive
essential i.e. the Oxford English Dictionary − but that costs more than
the drive. Acorn have now brought out their own CD drive which is a
double speed Sony drive capable of reading photo CDs. I would recommend
buying this type of drive.
6.10
(Oh dear! This makes us look rather stupid. We fell into the trap of
thinking that a CD-ROM was a CD-ROM. We have removed the Chinon drives
from our Price List and would agree with Jim’s recommendation to
consider the alternative of the Acorn Multimedia Unit, costing £590 − or
the Cumana 600 drive, which we also sell. This also costs £590 or £515
for education.
6.10
This means that I now have two Chinon CD-ROM drives for sale with free
Mac CDs discs! We would be prepared to sell them for £300 each although
the original price was £480! This is just so that we can get rid of
them. If anyone knows of a school who would be interested, please let me
know as it would be nice for a school to benefit from our mistake.
Ed.)  A
6.10
Dalriada
6.10
New artwork
6.10
(Please expand for best use of space.)
6.10
Perspectives
6.10
Peter Thomson
6.10
This is a simple interactive 3D drawing package from TechSoft UK Ltd
that allows the user to create wire-frame images of solid objects.
6.10
I have found that using this program is a most effective method of
displaying and teaching the relationship between the lines of a drawing
and the object that they represent.
6.10
Views
6.10
Perspectives will show the three orthographic views, i.e. the plan,
front and side elevations of an object, in first or third angle
projection. It will also display isometric and oblique views as well as
a 3D view with full perspective.
6.10
3D − Stunning!
6.10
Three pairs of glasses are supplied with the package − each with one
green filter and one red filter. The display is drawn in these two
colours as two slightly different images from viewpoints about 10cm
apart. The brain of the observer is able to combine these images to
produce a 3D view of the object. The 3D view gains a stunning
perspective when seen through the coloured glasses. The 3D image can be
rotated in both horizontal and vertical planes and displayed against a
black background.
6.10
Standard toolbox and menu
6.10
The program is controlled with either a toolbox displaying icons or a
written menu in a very similar way to the Draw utility. I found both
methods so close to the Acorn standard that I did not need to read the
manual in order to make good use of the program.
6.10
A clear manual
6.10
The manual provides five tutorials that guide the first time user
through the program. It does assume that the user is familiar with the
orthographic method of drawing a 3D object and can understand the use of
coordinates in three planes to locate points in space. I found it easier
to start by playing with the program and drawing approximate shapes of
objects rather than placing them in precise positions as suggested by
the tutorial. The reference section gives a clear description of the
options available but, again, a prior understanding of orthographic
projection and 3D coordinate planes is useful.
6.10
Tools and options
6.10
This program offers a smaller range of drawing options than Draw but the
options act in a very similar way. The drawing options will produce open
or closed lines, rectangles or polygons and circles. Only straight lines
are used − the circle is a many-sided polygon − and the end of each
straight line is a control point that can be selected and moved or
processed.
6.10
The process option performs its transformations round a fixed process
origin but you can move the complete drawing to change its relationship
to the process origin before performing a transformation. Parts of a
drawing can be flipped, rotated or scaled in any plane. The selected
parts can be copied to produce a separate group of lines or extruded so
that each new point remains connected to its original.
6.10
A group of points can also be swept round the process origin in all
three planes, with each point linked to the previous copy. All sweeps
are a full 360 degrees.
6.10
There are also zoom options and grid based options and the display can
be saved as a drawfile.
6.10
Drawbacks
6.10
I found only one drawback in that there is no option to group lines to
form a smaller object that will retain its identity within the main
design. Once two groups of lines overlap within a drawing, it is very
difficult to reselect all the points for only one of those groups. It is
not possible to merge objects from previous drawings.
6.10
Conclusion
6.10
This is an excellent program for illustrating the teaching of basic
methods of technical drawing.  A
6.10
ArtWorks Column
6.10
Trevor Sutton
6.10
I am still receiving plenty of correspondence about printing. Perhaps,
one day, the concept of an electronic gallery displaying computer images
on wonderful high resolution monitors with hardware capable of
displaying more colours and shades than the human eye can handle may
happen − it could even be linked with Midi music machines assaulting our
other senses. Until that time, most of us will probably want to commit
our artwork to paper in some way or other so I still expect to receive a
good number of letters discussing printers, the drivers and AW. Do keep
them coming because the large variety of printers and drivers means
different solutions to different problems.
6.10
I begin this month’s column with an experience from Tord Eriksson whose
name must by now be familiar to Archive readers.
6.10
Dithering ArtWorks − Tord Eriksson
6.10
Having read about others having problems with printing ArtWorks files, I
might have found the solution and its called dithering.
6.10
This screenshot shows !ArtWorks info box and the square, looking more or
less like it eventually was printed.
6.10
To test my idea I made a Mac-style square with ArtWorks (see above) and
saved it as a drawfile. This I then loaded into any program I could
think of: Vector, Poster, Chameleon2, Fontasy, Placard, TypeStudio,
4Mation’s DrawPrint, Oak’s DrawPrint (crashed first try as it couldn’t
find any resources applying to SWEDEN, even if the error message said it
would default to UK!) and the slowest of them all, ArtWorks.
6.10
I used a Canon BJ-330 for printout and the RISC OS 3.10 Bubblejet
printer driver. This can be set to various resolutions (I used 360×360
dpi) and five different print modes: mono, large halftone and small
halftone; grey, large halftone, small halftone and dithered. Mono,
naturally, can’t handle any greys at all, so I tested my normal small
halftone and the dithered setting. All programs used managed very well
in printing the square but, in grey halftone, it looked more like an
archery target than a smooth fluid wash from grey to black. Using
dithered mode, everything changed − the colour changed almost perfectly
from grey to black, more or less like the screen shot above. (Although
the result from ArtWorks is slightly different from that of Vector and
the others in that it is less even, looking a bit like a halo around the
moon, it is very pleasing compared to the first result!
6.10
This is how the ArtWorks file looks when loaded into Vector. Clearly
visible are the concentric “rings”.
6.10
Conclusion
6.10
When printing an ArtWorks file with gradual fills, or when using
Chameleon, remember to use the dithered setting! This setting reproduces
flat greys as an unruly pattern of dots, so use it only when there is a
must!
6.10
Hopefully this little tip will help others, including our ArtWorks
editor!
6.10
Thanks to Tord for these tips. It is interesting to repeat here that I
find the large halftone setting works best with the BJ10ex. So, keep
sending in your results and then perhaps we can have a summary of all
the best methods of printing from AW in a future column.
6.10
Alphabetic Art
6.10
I was interested to receive two discs from Andy Jeffery entitled the ABC
of ART. Not surprisingly, they were discs A and disc B. They contained
work presumably drawn using AW and saved in AW format compressed using
Spark and therefore it is possible to use either Sparkplug (included on
the discs) or ArcFS to unpack them. The quality of the drawings is very
high and is the equal of anything on the clipart discs accompanying AW.
The cost of each disc is £8 (inc. postage).
6.10
Disc A contains thirteen AW files all beginning with the letter A and
are as varied as Alsatian, Aborigine and Angel. Some of the files
contain a number of images and the really useful ones are possibly the
different letter A’s and the Arrows. Disc B contains just nine AW files
but the Butterfly file has four pictures and the Plants_B file has six
plants. Similarly there is a file of letter B’s and some Borders. To be
a bit pedantic, they are not actually borders but corners which, if you
were very clever, you could make into borders. (See AW column in Archive
6.8.)
6.10
You will get a feeling of the high quality of the work from the
examples. However, a columnist would not be a columnist if he wasn’t
allowed a few minor criticisms. Firstly, I am doubtful of the idea of
alphabetic discs as it gives no real unity to the work. I guess the
xylophone on the X disc is going to be a very big file indeed. People
would, I think, prefer topic-based discs and am sure that the
illuminated initials alone would sell very well as a pack. If you think
about it, you would have to spend £208 to get the whole alphabet! So,
come on Andy, how about a botanical disc with the common wild flowers?
6.10
My only other comment is perhaps unfair to Andy as it applies to most
ArtWorkers and I include myself here. Perhaps it should have been a
Coda! Hand-tracing of scanned or digitized images is beautifully simple
in AW and much of the graphic work I have seen is probably done that
way. If I am wrong, I apologise and am even more impressed by the skill.
However, it is often possible to recognize the images from which
drawings are made. Those images were conceived and created by someone
else, either photographically or by hand, so should we use them without
some kind of acknowledgement. This, I realise, is controversial so let’s
have your comments.
6.10
The discs are available at £8 each from: ABC of Art, Tideways, South
Road, Brean, Somerset, TA8 2SE. (Cheques payable to Andy Jeffreys,
presumably.)
6.10
Disc C should be available May/June 1993 and subsequent discs will
follow at two monthly intervals.
6.10
Font filing
6.10
In my column in Archive 6.6, Steve Hutchinson suggested the need for a
new version of FontDir to solve the problem of providing the correct
fonts for each document. Our Ed. said, “watch this space”. Several
solutions were offered, but it looks like Adrian Look has come up with
the goods − a new font filing system is soon to be released by
LOOKsystems. I received a demonstration version and it should be the
answer to most people’s problems. I expect that a full review will
appear elsewhere in the magazine but from an AW point of view, the best
feature is that dragging an AW (or Draw or Impression, etc) document
into the Font Directory window will cause the document to be scanned for
any fonts used. These fonts will then be made available − automatically.
It also supports a variety of previews to remind us what the fonts look
like. The system can also support extendable Font partitions up to 512Mb
in size and capable of storing over 5900 font families. That should just
about satisfy most people I know!
6.10
Coda
6.10
Because vector graphics programs like AW can produce such crisp work, we
will always be striving to produce the best possible printed results.
This is becoming more significant with the graded fills, 24-bit colour
and ever-increasing grey scales. We are moving closer and closer to
airbrush quality results and without all those messy nozzles to clean
out. Let us have some more ideas on how you use AW and some examples of
your work, if possible, to demonstrate techniques.  A
6.10
S-Base Column
6.10
Tim Powys-Lybbe
6.10
After the long but successful travail of getting S-Base to perform as I
thought a relational database should, I was confident that I would have
no problem transferring over my names, addresses and telephone numbers
database to S-Base. This addresses database started many years ago in
ViewStore on my recently deceased B (crocodile tears), graduated for a
few weeks to System Delta and has been reasonably happy for some years
now in Data-Ease under the PC Emulator. It had moved before and would
move again.
6.10
I must digress for a few words on the subject of Data-Ease. It is my
current standard of comparison for a stand-alone relational database
system. While it is solely text-based, it has one of the easiest card
“painting” tools I have come across and makes very light work of
creating a relational database. Further, it regularly wins competitions
for speed of creation of new systems. On a 386 PC it is fast but under
the Emulator it creaks along somewhat and will not print directly to a
Laser Direct.
6.10
I have now transferred the data from Data-Ease to S-Base and devised
most of the facilities I want. S-Base is far faster than Data-Ease under
the Emulator but that is not surprising. The other achievement is that
the find and look-up facilities on S-Base, particularly the Selector,
are vastly superior to Data-Ease, once they have been developed, of
course − what a struggle that was! S-Base may be powerful but is not
easy!
6.10
The task that I reckon to be the most difficult is that of transferring
data out of your current database and into S-Base. The S-Base facilities
are limited unless your current database will export in CSV, Comma
Separated Variable, format. You can only export one table at a time from
your original database. The steps, for each table, are:
6.10
1. Print out the precise definitions of all the fields of each table in
your current database. Most database systems have a facility to do this.
6.10
2. Create a file in S-Base with exactly the same definitions. Note that
you will not be able to include any of the look-up facilities that were
in the definitions for your current database.
6.10
3. Export from your current database, using whatever means it permits,
though it must not have any coding or compaction.
6.10
4. Load the exported file into Edit and see what it consists of. (All
very easy so far, by comparison with what is to come!) The object is to
convert it to records that have:
6.10
(a) inverted commas at the start and end of each text field and none if
a numerical field,
6.10
(b) commas between each field,
6.10
(c) line feed at the end of each record, including the last record.
6.10
You are likely to find all sorts of entries in the file such as 1,0[0d].
The answer is to use Edit’s Find and Replace facility with the Magic
characters switched on.
6.10
I exported my data from Data-Ease in the only format that looked
feasible, DIF, which appeared in Edit with one field per line and
looking like:
6.10
“Fleet”[0d]
6.10
1,0[0d]
6.10
“Aldershot”[0d]
6.10
where “Fleet” and “Aldershot” were two successive fields. To convert
this to CSV, all the characters between “Fleet” and “Aldershot” had to
be replaced with a comma. This was done in Edit by typing:
6.10
\x0D\n1,0\x0D
6.10
in the “Find” box and a bare comma in the “Replace with” box and with
Magic characters turned on. \x0D stood for Carriage Return, ASCII 13,
shown by [0d] in the source file; \n was for the line feed.
6.10
The inter-record marker of BOT had to be eliminated and left merely as a
new line.
6.10
5. Finally, this has to be pulled into S-Base. The Read-me file within
S-base gives the basic information on how to import a CSV file; I used
the following procedure successfully:
6.10
| Import a csv file, to add to
6.10
| the existing file
6.10
|
6.10
def proc import_csv(file_name,imp_name)
6.10
local fd
6.10
  fd = @openin imp_name
6.10
  import csv def fd, file_name
6.10
  while !(@eof fd)
6.10
|     Next line only works for the
6.10
|     file’s literal name.
6.10
    import csv fd, address_list
6.10
    create file_name
6.10
  endwhile
6.10
  close fd
6.10
enddef
6.10
In this S-base procedure, “file_name” is the name of the S-Base file
into which the data is to be put and “imp_name” is the full ADFS (or
whatever) name of the source CSV text file. However, the “import”
command will not accept variables for S-base file names (this took not a
little time finding out...) so I had to commit the solecism of using the
real file name of address_list within the procedure, hoping that at some
time in the future Longmans would rectify this little feature.
6.10
But it worked and the data was ported to S-Base!
6.10
Delete button
6.10
One necessary feature of record manipulation that was strangely left out
of the tutorial database was that of Delete. It is relatively simple:
add a Delete icon to the base card template, make it into a field on the
Format and give it an S-Click handler set with a handler of:
6.10
delete file_name,recnum  record}
6.10
if @recordcount file_name > 0 {records in the file?}
6.10
    adding_rec = FALSE
6.10
    recnum = @tof(file_name,0)
6.10
    load file_name,recnum
6.10
else   {prepare to add a new one}
6.10
    adding_rec = TRUE
6.10
    recnum = 0
6.10
    zero file_name
6.10
endif
6.10
card set element ahandle,file_field
6.10
if adding_rec then card set protect ahandle “add”,“find”
6.10
,“delete”
6.10
proc setup_arrows(file_name)
6.10
card update ahandle
6.10
Obviously complications arise if you are trying to delete a record
that is referenced in a related file but the above will suit most
purposes. The “file_name” is the same variable as before, “file_field”
is a variable for the first field in the card and in which the cursor is
to be placed when a record is opened. Other variables are as in the
tutorial database.
6.10
Next month
6.10
That’s all for this month but on my list of things to write about in
the future are:     Radio icons (Yes/No), Browse lists, Deleted records &
printing, Comparing dates, Use of RETURN in a procedure, Iconbar icon &
menu, Menus & mouse keys, Selecting reports.
6.10
I have also completely proceduralised the processes of using related
files to be browsed for data for entering up a main file. While this is
not simple, it gives very fast and pleasing effects. I’ll hope to get
this on a later program disc.
6.10
But this is a column for all of us: let me know what you have found
about this package so that I can pass it on. Write via Archive or direct
to me at Rosewood, Church Road, Winkfield, Windsor, Berks, SL4 4SF.  A
6.10
Serenade
6.10
Stewart Watson
6.10
Serenade from Clares is a multitasking 16 track music sequencer with a
host of features and ‘an intuitive user interface’. The package,
enclosed in the usual Clares folder, consists of a manual, a program
disc and a resources disc.
6.10
Program disc
6.10
The program disc contains the main application which needs to be
initialised the first time it is loaded but thereafter loads directly
onto the iconbar. In addition to the Serenade application are a !System
folder, a !Max application which maximizes available memory, if
necessary, and a ReadMe file containing up-to-date information on the
latest version of the program.
6.10
Set-up
6.10
Serenade is fully multitasking, so will run alongside Rhapsody and
Rhythm Bed, for example. Also on the program disc is a directory of
patches for setting up Serenade to run with a variety of different
manufacturers’ products, including setups for Yamaha, Technics, Roland
and Ensoniq. By default, Serenade uses a General Midi configuration but
this can easily be changed by dragging one of the other configurations
onto the main screen. To customise a setting for any non-standard
equipment, there is a file provided which can be edited using any text
editor such as Edit.
6.10
Resources disc
6.10
The resources disc is purely an examples disc containing three
directories of examples (Classics, Drums and Rags) and an information
file from Words and Music who provided the demos.
6.10
No internal voices
6.10
Unlike Notate and Rhapsody, Serenade does not use internal voices, so
if you want to hear your work you need a Midi keyboard or expander. It
would be possible to work without a Midi input device (Midi keyboard,
guitar, etc) but to input scores using the mouse could be rather
tedious. The lack of internal voices is a minor omission − it is quite
useful to be able to add sampled sounds into a score from time to time.
I suspect the reason is that, because it is possible to sync Serenade to
Rhythm Box, the programmer was using the Archimedes internal voices for
percussion sounds, something that it is rather good at. It will
therefore be possible to load samples into Rhythm Box and trigger them
from Serenade, if necessary.
6.10
Three modes
6.10
On loading the program, you are presented with the main screen which
consists of a large grid with a function panel down the left hand side.
The top three icons represent the three modes of operation within
Serenade, Edit/Draw, Play/Record and Cut/Paste & Transform.
6.10
Edit/Draw
6.10
Notes are displayed on a grid which is subdivided into bars and beats.
Lines of varying length are used to represent note values in relation to
the piano keyboard. By default, only one track is shown at a time but it
is possible to change the display to show all sixteen tracks at once.
Notes can be drawn and edited in the grid but it is obviously easier to
enter notes from a Midi keyboard or other controller.
6.10
Record/Play
6.10
The second icon changes the toolbox under the grid to a set of tape
recorder-like controls. It is worth noting that a track must be set to
record in the track sheet before recording can take place. This is a
useful device for ensuring that you don’t accidentally record over
previously recorded work. It is also possible to lock tracks so that it
is impossible to record over them.
6.10
It is from Record mode that Rhythm Box can be synchronised to Rhythm
Bed.
6.10
Cut/Paste & Transform mode
6.10
In the third mode, blocks can be marked, cut and pasted and
manipulated as in a text processor.
6.10
Track list
6.10
Clicking on the T icon in the function panel opens up the Track Sheet
window.
6.10
In this window you can select the voices and Midi channels for the
various tracks. Tracks can be muted, made solo, recorded and locked. It
is also in this window that tracks are quantized and transposed.
6.10
Guitar window
6.10
One of the most exciting innovations in Serenade is the guitar window.
Clicking on the guitar icon in the function panel opens a window showing
a guitar fretboard and a set of default chords. Chords can either be
selected from those supplied or made up by clicking on the fretboard.
6.10
Event list
6.10
The event list window offers an alternative method of editing
individual notes, program changes, etc. The information in the edit
window can be searched, specific values transformed and new events
added.
6.10
Notation
6.10
Files can be exported to and imported from Rhapsody but tracks do need
to be quantized first so that Rhapsody can interpret the note lengths
correctly.
6.10
Files
6.10
Files can also be imported from and exported to other sequencers and
computers in Standard Midi file 1 format.
6.10
Hot keys
6.10
When I opened the package, I was surprised at the lack of a function
key strip but though function keys are not used (other than f3 − save),
there are key short-cuts for some operations, especially in cut and
paste mode. I understand that later versions will make substantially
more use of keyboard short cuts.
6.10
Midi generator
6.10
The Midi Control Generator window, gives you complete control over all
nine Midi control devices over all 16 Midi channels, enabling you to add
effects like modulation and portamento. The window looks like a mixing
desk, each channel having its own slider. There is also the facility for
taking up to eight snapshots of the position of the sliders.
6.10
Manual
6.10
The manual is clearly laid out with copious illustrations. All the
icons found on the screen are displayed and clearly explained in the
manual. One extra bonus is the Midi Jargon Buster section which
explains, in simple language, the most commonly used Midi terms.
6.10
Verdict
6.10
Serenade looks good, feels good, sounds good and is a joy to use. The
back up of a reliable supplier means that potential users can buy with
confidence, knowing that software support is available. Clares are
operating a sensible policy of free upgrades. The version I had for
review was 1.00 but I understand from Clares that they are already onto
version 1.05 and I hope to be able to test that before the next issue of
Archive.
6.10
Conclusion
6.10
Serenade fills a gap in software provision on the Archimedes, in that
it is capable of importing from and exporting to other sequencers and
other computers. Clares have a real winner on their hands, and the
program has been well worth the wait. Serenade is available at £135 from
Clares Micro or £125 through Archive.  A
6.10
A-Link Communications − Scripts
6.10
Mark Godwin
6.10
This is my final article on the Series 3 communication software
supplied with A-Link.
6.10
As with all other applications, Script will have to be installed − and
remember that it exists on drive C (A-Link firmware). Once it is
installed and selected, you will have the same menu options as the OPL
editor which is also similar to the word processor.
6.10
For those of you who do not have an OPL editor, I will explain the
differences between WORD and SCRIPT menus. Off the main menu of WORD and
SCRIPT, the first three sub-menus (File, Edit & Scan) are the same. The
fourth sub-menu on WORD (called Word) has been replaced on SCRIPT with
Prog and their are subtle differences in the Special sub-menu. Sub-menu
Prog has as options Translate, Run, Show error and Indent.
6.10
Translate − This option is used to convert the text version (source
code) of the script to a format the Series 3 can easily use (object
code).
6.10
When you have finished keying the script, you must Translate it before
it can work. If the translation completes with no errors, you will be
given the option of executing it, otherwise it will produce an error
message and place the cursor on the relevant line.
6.10
Run − When the script has been translated correctly, this option is
used to execute it. When it is executed, it will actually be run by the
COMMS application. When the script ends/terminates, you will be left in
the COMMS application.
6.10
Show error − This is used to repeat the error message created by the
last translate.
6.10
Indent − This allows you to structure your scripts so the layout looks
correct. This function is more valuable when you have structured
commands, which the script does not.
6.10
When this is selected, you will be presented with a window and two
options: Screen spacing & Autoindent. Screen spacing allows you to
select the number of characters inserted at the current cursor when
<tab> is pressed.
6.10
Autoindent can be turned on or off. If it is selected, it will cause
an automatic tab on the next line when <enter> is pressed. The tab
position selected is based on the first non-blank character on the
previous line. So if, on the current line, the first non-blank character
is character 15 and then you press <enter>, you will automatically tab
to the 15th character on the new line.
6.10
The sub-menu, Special, has three differences, these being ‘Outline’,
‘Pref.’ and ‘Password’. ‘Outline’ is present but does nothing.
‘Password’ is not on the menu. ‘Pref’ will present you with a window and
the options ‘Bold characters’ and ‘Character width’.
6.10
If ‘Bold characters’ is selected, all characters on the screen are
shown in bold. ‘Character width’ can either be mono-spaced or
proportional. (Monospaced characters are all the same width, whereas
proportionally characters have varying widths, so an ‘i’ would take up
less width than a ‘W’.)
6.10
General
6.10
Parameters for the following commands will be identified by square
brackets ([]), e.g.
6.10
SEND [parm]
6.10
Labels, when coded, are in the form of label name followed by a colon,
e.g.
6.10
Label:
6.10
To put more than one command on a line, the first command should be
followed by a space, a colon and then the second command, e.g.
6.10
DRAIN :STOP
6.10
Commands may be in any combination of upper and lower case and comment
lines start with an exclamation mark. When a script stops running, you
will be placed in the terminal emulator, as this actually runs a script.
6.10
Supported commands
6.10
The commands available are limited in comparison to ArcTerm7 but never
the less are useful. Until I got the A-Link, I made use of scripts with
the 3-Link to backup all of my data. The commands can best be broken
down in to six sets: Hardware control, Character control, File control,
User interaction, Execution control and ‘Other’.
6.10
Names
6.10
Before I explain the available commands, I must explain the use of
NAMEs which I mentioned in my last article. NAMEs are like variables in
a program. You think of a NAME and then assign a value to it. These
NAMEs, when used in scripts, will be replaced by the values assigned to
them.
6.10
The values assigned to a NAME can contain upper or lower case and can
be up to 64 characters long. The NAME itself can only be 16
alphanumerics long and must start with a letter.
6.10
NAMEs fall into one of three categories: ‘String’, ‘Non-string’ and
‘Reserved’. ‘Reserved’ then breaks down into STRING and CONTROL, but
beware not to confuse ‘String’ and STRING.
6.10
‘String’ NAMEs are used in strings and these are restricted to SEND
and SENDWAIT. For this type of NAME to be recognised when coded, it must
be between < and >, e.g.
6.10
SEND “ATD<BBSphone>”
6.10
In this example, BBSphone is the NAME which would be assigned a phone
number.
6.10
‘Non-string’ NAMEs are used in the place of strings, but not between
quotes. These are used in place of filenames and in place of strings for
the INFO and ALERT commands, e.g.
6.10
TRANSMIT Filename,“XMDM”
6.10
In this example, Filename is the NAME that would be assigned with the
name of a file, e.g.
6.10
INFO Message
6.10
or
6.10
ALERT Message
6.10
In these examples, Message is the NAME that would be assigned with the
text you wished displayed.
6.10
In addition to the names you supply, six STRING NAMEs (s1, s2, s3, s4,
s5, s6) and four CONTROL NAMEs (c1, c2, c3, c4) have been reserved for
specific commands.
6.10
STRING NAMEs are assigned values by the QUERY command (explained
later). Briefly, these NAMEs are assigned a value through an input
window. They can then be used like ‘String’ and ‘Non-string’ NAMEs.
6.10
CONTROL NAMEs are used with the ON command (explained later). These
NAMEs are given a numerical value which decrements and is then tested by
the ON command. This simple operation allows you to perform loops. These
cannot be used in place of ‘String’ and ‘Non-string’ NAMEs.
6.10
In order to assign/modify/delete a NAME’s value, you must use the
NAMEs option from the COMMS application main menu. This same menu allows
you to add a password to the names file for use with the PASSWORD
command (explained later) and to prevent other people from using them in
the COMMS application.
6.10
When a NAME has been assigned, it will retain its value until you
amend it. If you process one or many scripts, these values will be
present in all of them.
6.10
Hardware control
6.10
Commands in this section are CONNECT, HANGUP, RESET and SETUP.
6.10
CONNECT [time] GOTO [label] − This will wait [time] half seconds for a
connection to be made with the ‘other end’. If the connection is not
made within this time, it will branch to [label], otherwise it will
continue with the next instruction, e.g.
6.10
CONNECT 20 GOTO again
6.10
This will wait 10 seconds for a connection to be made. If it is not
made it will go to ‘again’.
6.10
HANGUP − This will cause the modem to hang up. This is achieved by
dropping the DTR signal for 3 seconds which will cause the modem to drop
the DCD and hang up.
6.10
RESET − This will set all the parameters back to their original
settings. I have never used this command and cannot say what the
original settings are. The manual suggests that you might use this
command before a setup command.
6.10
SETUP ([commands]) − This command is used to set certain communication
parameters. When this command is issued, it will only affect the
parameters you specify. Any not specified will be left unchanged.
6.10
The following sub-commands are available for use with this command:
BAUD, DATA, STOP, PARITY, HANDSHAKE, FAIL, ECHO, NEWLINE, BACKSPACE or
TIMEOUT. These commands are enclosed between brackets, followed by an
equal sign, the value, a space and then separated by a colon, e.g.
6.10
SETUP(BAUD=9600 :DATA=8)
6.10
BAUD − [9600, 4800, 2400, 1200, 600, 300] − Specifies the transfer
speed in both directions. Only one of these values may be used.
6.10
DATA − [7,8] − Describes the length in bits of the word. Only one of
these values may be specified.
6.10
STOP − [1,2] − Details the number of stop bits. Only one of these
values may be specified.
6.10
PARITY − [NONE, ODD, EVEN] − This sets the type of parity in use. Only
one of these values may be specified.
6.10
HANDSHAKE − [NONE, XONXOFF, RTSCTS, DSR, DCD] − Any number of these
values may be assigned, indicating what types of handshaking can be
used. If more than one is used, it should be separated by a comma, e.g.
6.10
SETUP(BAUD=300 :HANDSHAKE=DSR, DCD)
6.10
FAIL − [NONE, DCD, DSR, PARITY] − Any number of these values may be
assigned, in the same fashion as HANDSHAKE. By specifying a value, it
will cause the script to stop if that problem occurs. However, if you
are using one of the ON ‘error’ conditions (explained later) this will
allow them to work and trap that error.
6.10
ECHO − [ON, OFF] − Details the state of local echo. Only one of these
values may be specified.
6.10
NEWLINE − [values] − Read notes below on how to specify.
6.10
BACKSPACE − [values] − Read notes below on how to specify.
6.10
TIMEOUT − [value] − 0 or the number of half seconds.
6.10
When specifying what should be transmitted for a NEWLINE or a
BACKSPACE, you can use any combination of character or character codes
enclosed between quotes. Character codes are used for commands, such as
‘enter’ (i.e. “<$0d>” or “<13>”) or ‘enter’ and ‘line feed’ (i.e. “<$0d>
<$0a>” or “<13><$0a>”, etc.) and one of the typically used backspace
values (“<8>” or “<127>”).
6.10
Character control
6.10
Commands in this section are WAIT, ON REPLY, SEND and SENDWAIT.
6.10
WAIT [time] − This will cause the script to wait [time] half seconds
before it continues.
6.10
ON REPLY [text] GOTO [label] − This command can only be used in
conjunction with the WAIT command.
6.10
While the WAIT command is waiting, this command will check incoming
data to see if it matches [text], if so it will branch to [label]. If
the match is not made, it will carry on with the next instruction when
the WAIT’s time is up, e.g.
6.10
WAIT 10 (ON REPLY “text” GOTO ok)
6.10
If you wish for more than one value to be matched, you can repeat the
ON REPLY command within the brackets, e.g.
6.10
WAIT 10 (ON REPLY “text” GOTO ok
6.10
ON REPLY “another” GOTO oops
6.10
ON REPLY “yet another” GOTO end)
6.10
The matching will occur anywhere in the text being sent (so to check
for “on” would match with “on”, “only”, “communication”, etc..) and is
case dependent. While in operation, all data sent to the Psion will be
thrown away as the checks are being made.
6.10
SEND [text] − This command will send [text] to the receiver.
6.10
Unless the text is followed by a semicolon, it will have a line feed
added to it (as specified by the SETUP command) and if you want to send
the contents of a NAME field then enclose the NAME in <>.
6.10
The actual value sent for a line feed can be changed on the Psion by
using the “Translates” option on the “Special menu” if the SETUP command
is not used, e.g.
6.10
SEND “Fred”;
6.10
This would send the text “Fred” but would not append it with an enter
key, e.g.
6.10
SEND “<password>”
6.10
This would send the text attached to the NAME password and append it
with an enter key, e.g.
6.10
SEND “logon”
6.10
This would send “logon”, appended with an enter key.
6.10
SENDWAIT [time] [mess],[test] GOTO [label] − This command is a
combination of SEND, WAIT and ON REPLY, but with one difference: the
branch to [label] is made if the text [test] is not received before
[time] half seconds. So...
6.10
SENDWAIT 20 “logon”,“id” GOTO fail
6.10
ok: ..... id was requested ....
6.10
Is the same as;
6.10
SEND “logon”
6.10
WAIT 20 (ON REPLY “id” GOTO ok)
6.10
GOTO fail
6.10
ok: ..... id was requested .....
6.10
File control
6.10
Commands in this section are CAPTURE, EXISTS, NEXISTS, RECEIVE and
TRANSMIT.
6.10
CAPTURE [filename] OFF DEBUG APPEND − Firstly, DEBUG and APPEND are
optional parameters, which are explained later and you can only specify
[filename] or OFF, not both.
6.10
This command will cause all data sent to the Series 3 to be copied to
the given filename. The incoming data is still available for you to use
with other commands.
6.10
When specifying the file, you can also specify the complete file path
but if the file path is omitted it will be placed in the “\SCO”
directory, e.g.
6.10
CAPTURE “Audit.log”
6.10
or
6.10
CAPTURE “LOC::A:\BBS\Audit.log”
6.10
If you wish to terminate the capture, you use OFF, e.g.
6.10
CAPTURE OFF
6.10
If the specified file exists, it will automatically be overwritten but
you can use APPEND to add this new data to the end of this previously
created file, e.g.
6.10
CAPTURE “Audit.log” APPEND
6.10
When data is being written to the capture file, it is written out
exactly as it was received. DEBUG will display invalid values as hex, so
a character code of 7 would be <$7> and <$F> would be character code 15,
e.g.
6.10
CAPTURE “Audit.log” DEBUG
6.10
DEBUG and APPEND can be used together.
6.10
EXISTS [filename] GOTO [label] − This command is used to check if the
given file ([filename]) exists. If it does, the it will goto [label].
6.10
NEXISTS [filename] GOTO [label] − This is similar to EXISTS except the
goto is executed if the file does not exist.
6.10
RECEIVE “[filename/path]”, “[protocol]” − This command is used to
receive one or more files. Bear the following in mind as a lot of the
detail here will also be relevant for TRANSMIT.
6.10
The different values that [protocol] can have are as follows;
6.10
XMDM − XMODEM checksum (128 byte)
6.10
XMCRC − XMODEM CRC (128 byte)
6.10
XM1K − XMODEM CRC (1Kb)
6.10
YMDM − YMODEM (128 byte)
6.10
YMDMG − YMODEM/G (128 byte)
6.10
YM1K − YMODEM (1Kb)
6.10
YG1K − YMODEM/G (1Kb)
6.10
ASCII − Straight binary (no protocol).
6.10
In the case of XMODEM, ASCII and single file YMODEM transfer, you need
to specify the complete filename for the data being saved.
6.10
In the case of YMODEM multi-file transfer, you need to specify the
file path where the files are to be placed, e.g.
6.10
RECEIVE “LOC::A:\BBS\”,“YM1K”
6.10
TRANSMIT “[filename/path]”, “[protocol]” − This is the same format and
parameters as RECEIVE. When specifying single file transfer, you must
supply the full name.
6.10
Multi-file transfer is possible, but file selection is limited to wild
characters. To send all the files in a given directory you would code
this: TRANSMIT “LOC::A:\BBS\*.*”,“YM1K”. To send all image files, you
would code TRANSMIT “\APP\*.IMG”, “YM1K”. You cannot specify filenames
uniquely or tag them to send as a group.
6.10
User interaction
6.10
Commands in this section are ALERT, BEEP, INFO, MENU, PASSWORD and
QUERY.
6.10
ALERT “[message]” − This will display the [message] on the screen
until you press <escape> to continue.
6.10
BEEP [duration],[pitch] − The [duration] is specified in 1/32 of a
second and the pitch can be calculated from the following: KHz = 512/
(value+1) The higher the value, the lower is the pitch. Middle C is
about 523Hz when rounded and would have a value of 978 (rounded).
6.10
INFO “[message]” − This command will display the given [message]
temporarily in the bottom right hand corner of the screen.
6.10
MENU “[title]” (“[option 1]” GOTO [label1] “[option 2]” GOTO [label2]
“[option 3]” GOTO [label3]) − This command will display a menu on the
screen with up to six options available. If an option is selected then
the GOTO associated with that option is executed. If <escape> is
pressed, the menu is removed and the script continues with the next
instruction.
6.10
Each option, and the title, may have up to a maximum of 30 characters,
e.g.
6.10
MENU “Comms menu” (
6.10
“Receive data” GOTO RECV
6.10
“Transmit data” GOTO TRAN
6.10
“Protocol” GOTO SETUP)
6.10
PASSWORD − This command will ask for the password attached to the
current names file to be entered.
6.10
If the names file does not have a password, nothing happens but if it
is incorrect, the script will terminate.
6.10
QUERY “[title]” (“[option1]” [var1] “[option 2]” [var2] “[option 3]”
[var3]) − This command will allow up to 6 variables (s1,s2...s6) to be
assigned values. When this is executed, a window will appear with the
specified [title] (up to 30 chars) and up to 6 lines. Each line can
contain an [option] text (up to 20 chars) and the required variable
(which can accept up to 64 chars).
6.10
The variable names s1 to s6 are the only names that can be used but
they can appear in any sequence, e.g.
6.10
QUERY “Sign on” (
6.10
“Phone number:” s1
6.10
“User id:” s2
6.10
“Password:” s6
6.10
“Capture file:” s3)
6.10
In this example, s1, s2, s3, & s6 will be assigned values when <enter>
is pressed. If <escape> is pressed, the script will stop and the query
dialog removed. Because s1 to s6 are reserved, any future script will
pick up the previous script’s values but as soon as a QUERY is executed,
they are set to blanks. Use of these reserved names was described
earlier.
6.10
Execution control
6.10
Commands in this section are CALL, EXIT, GOTO, ON and SET.
6.10
CALL [script name] − This command, when executed, will terminate the
current script and start to execute [script name]. When [script name]
ends, control is not passed back but the script ends.
6.10
EXIT − This will terminate the current script.
6.10
GOTO [label] − This command is used to amend the sequence of your
program. On execution, it will continue processing from [label].
6.10
ON [condition] GOTO [label] or ON [condition] OFF − There are four
[condition] situations that can be used with this command.
6.10
If the condition is met, script execution will continue from the
[label] given by GOTO.
6.10
Three of the four conditions can be grouped under errors/failures.
When one of these occur, the GOTO is executed.
6.10
Condition=SEND FAIL − If a SEND or SENDWAIT cannot transmit the data
within the TIMEOUT time (part of the SETUP parameter), the SEND FAIL
error will be raised, e.g.
6.10
ON SEND FAIL GOTO Serror
6.10
Condition=LINE FAIL − This will occur if the phone line is lost during
a connection and either FAIL=DSR or FAIL=DCD was specified in the SETUP
command, e.g.
6.10
ON LINE FAIL GOTO Lerror
6.10
Condition=PARITY FAIL − This will occur if a parity error occurs and
FAIL=PARITY was specified in the SETUP command, e.g.
6.10
ON PARITY FAIL GOTO Perror
6.10
For the latter three conditions, the use of ON [condition] OFF will
stop these errors being checked for, e.g.
6.10
ON SEND FAIL OFF
6.10
or
6.10
ON LINE FAIL OFF
6.10
or
6.10
ON PARITY FAIL OFF
6.10
The final condition to explain is the use of control NAMEs (mentioned
earlier).
6.10
These control NAMEs are assigned a numerical value which decrements
and is then checked by the ON command. If the control NAMEs is non-zero
then the GOTO is executed, otherwise the script will continue, e.g.
6.10
ON c1 GOTO repeatit
6.10
SET [control name]=[value] − This command is used to assign one of the
control NAMEs with a value, e.g.
6.10
SET c1=5
6.10
‘Other’
6.10
There is only one command in this section and that is DRAIN. This
command will empty the receive buffer.
6.10
Finally
6.10
All my articles were keyed in on my Series 3 and spell-checked with
Psion’s spell checker. These were then copied to my Archimedes and
translated to text by PocketFS. If you put your mind to it the Series 3
is capable of ‘many’ things!  A
6.10
Genesis/Magpie Column
6.10
Paul Hooper
6.10
Doing up buttons!
6.10
Before you think I’ve finally cracked up, I had better explain that I
am going to devote most of this month’s column to the subject of buttons
in Genesis. The correct use of buttons is what makes Genesis so
powerful. Buttons are not just the sprite/drawfiles that you create, but
also the script and actions that go with them.
6.10
New buttons
6.10
In last month’s tips, I mentioned the use of the DLink. This gives you
a NEXT and PREVIOUS button on a page. The sprites for this are placed
into the shared resources area, so it is a simple matter to replace them
with sprites of your own: click <menu> over a Genesis application icon
and open the ‘Show’ submenu, click on ‘Resources’ then copy your sprites
into the window. Make sure that you name both the sprite and the sprite
window with the name NEXT or PREVIOUS. Next time you use DLink, your own
sprites will be used. On this month’s disc you will see two video-style
buttons which can be used in place of the sprites supplied.
6.10
A few weeks ago, whilst compiling an application, I realised that the
DLink was insufficient for my needs and what I required was a Dlink but
with up and down buttons rather than next and previous. Using the
Genesis Script Language, I created a UDLink which has the same effect as
Dlink, giving two buttons which turn to the next or previous pages. This
is how you can do it: Modify the video style ‘next’ sprite and produce
both an ‘up’ and a ‘down’ button. Then save these into the shared
resources area. Drag the ‘Empty’ action button in !GenLib into !Edit and
type in:
6.10
DEF FRAME “Up”
6.10
SPRITE “up”
6.10
RIGHT 96 64
6.10
ACTION PREVIOUS
6.10
END FRAME
6.10
DEF FRAME “Down”
6.10
SPRITE “down”
6.10
LEFT 96 64
6.10
ACTION NEXT
6.10
END FRAME
6.10
Save the action script, then next time you require it, just drop it
onto your page. The script and the buttons are on this month’s disc.
6.10
Family tree
6.10
Using a modified form of the above, allows you to create a family tree
button. The trouble with sprites is that, if you increase their size
they become ragged and they can only use the system font. The way to
overcome this is to use !Draw and create just the wording that you
require on the button. Then using the ‘empty’ button again, type in the
following:
6.10
DEF FRAME “Dad”
6.10
DRAW “Father”
6.10
FGCOL 7
6.10
BGCOL 11
6.10
LEFT 192 64
6.10
BORDER
6.10
ACTION PREVIOUS
6.10
END FRAME
6.10
DEF FRAME “Kids”
6.10
DRAW “Son”
6.10
FGCOL 7
6.10
BGCOL 11
6.10
RIGHT 128 64
6.10
BORDER
6.10
ACTION NEXT
6.10
END FRAME
6.10
The two drawfiles are called “Father” and “Son” and are saved in the
shared resources area of your application. Again these are on the
monthly disc.
6.10
Return to menu!
6.10
The ‘Home’ button provided in !GenLib returns you to the title page
but I find this of limited use. Normally, when I compile an application,
there is a menu page with a series of options which the viewer can
choose. This is not the title page but normally around page 2 or 3. Once
I have set up this menu page, I set up a script and button which will
return me directly to the menu page. For example:
6.10
DEF FRAME “Return”
6.10
SPRITE “return”
6.10
SIZE 96 64
6.10
ACTION GOTO “1”
6.10
END FRAME
6.10
In the above example, the menu is on page 1 and the sprite I am using
is called ‘Return’. Now once you have created this button, just drop it
onto any page and you have an instant button to return you to the menu.
It is a simple matter to combine the ‘return to Menu’ button with the
DLink to provide three video style buttons on the same page. On the disc
is a button called VTLink, (Video Triple Link) which will do just that.
It has been modified so that all the sprites come out at the correct
size and the border is switched on.
6.10
Menu buttons
6.10
To round off this section on Genesis buttons, one way which you can
improve your menus or words in text frames that you wish users to click
on is to make them stand out. On the disc is MenuButL (Menu button
long). This uses sprite LongBut2 as a background, with a text frame
placed on top of it in which you can place your own text. This can be
dropped onto any page as long as you have saved LongBut2 in the shared
resources area. The script language for this is shown below:
6.10
DEF FRAME “BackgroundSprite”
6.10
SPRITE “LongBut2”
6.10
FGCOL 7
6.10
BGCOL 0
6.10
SIZE 640 96
6.10
BORDER
6.10
END FRAME
6.10
DEF FRAME “TextFrameBlank”
6.10
TEXT “text0”
6.10
STYLE “Trinity.Bold.Italic”
6.10
SIZE 320
6.10
FGCOL 8
6.10
SIZE 512 96
6.10
END FRAME
6.10
If you have any buttons you use a lot, please send me a copy to enable
me to pass them on to others.
6.10
Magpie buttons
6.10
Buttons in Magpie operate in a different way. The button is only a
graphic and each button has to be programmed with its own action. They
cannot be given action statements like those in Genesis. In Magpie,
there is no shared resources area. In Genesis, this shared resources
area is saved in the application. In Magpie, the buttons are in !Magpie
or !MagpiRead itself. So if you customise your buttons and wish to send
your binders to someone else, you will need to send them a copy of your
buttons as well. These then need to be placed into the ‘Buttons’ sprite
file window within !Magpie or !MagpiRead.
6.10
One advantage of this is that if you only intend to use one or two
types of buttons within a binder, you can eliminate from your copy of
!Magpie the buttons that you are not going to use. This will save you
working through the alternatives when you are setting up your binder.
!MagpiRead can also be modified in this way using only the buttons that
are required by the binder it is reading, saving disc space.
6.10
Magpie buttons are always sprites − they cannot use drawfiles. Yet
with a little thought, you can create a ‘Menu Return’ button which will
take you back to the menu page. Just create a sprite in the ‘Buttons’
sprite window and you can use this to move to the menu page. If you send
the application to anyone, make sure you include a copy of !MagpiRead
with the sprite added. The other alternative is to create a sprite or
drawfile and drop it onto each page and then create a transparent button
over the file.
6.10
Swap shop
6.10
My thanks go to Elaine Jones for her Genesis application on the design
of equipment for disabled people. If there are any CDT teachers who
would like a copy, just send me a disc and I will provide you with a
copy and !Browser which will enable you to use the program without any
need for Genesis. The only thing I would ask in return is that you
provide Elaine with some feedback. To save disc space this month, the
list below shows the applications that are available now. (M for a
Magpie binder or G for a Genesis application)
6.10
    Oxburgh Hall − G (800Kb and 1.6Mb versions)
6.10
    British Birds − G M
6.10
    Insects − M
6.10
    Solar System − M
6.10
    Weather − G M
6.10
    Medieval English Churches − G M
6.10
    Designing Disability Equipment − G
6.10
The following are in preparation:
6.10
    Owain Glydwr
6.10
    The History of Chartism
6.10
    Modern Fighters
6.10
    Wroxham Junior Farm
6.10
    Harvest in the past
6.10
If you want any of the above, all you need to do is send me one (or
more!) of your applications which we can add to the catalogue and
include a blank disc for each application that you require.
6.10
Finally
6.10
Next month, I hope to be looking at the way each of the programs deals
with sound samples. If you have any particular points on this or any
other query about Genesis or Magpie, just drop me a line or disc to:
Paul Hooper, 11 Rochford Road, Martham, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. NR29
4RL. Phone: 0493−748474.  A
6.10
Printer Drivers For Beginners
6.10
Tim Nicholson
6.10
With the advent of RISC OS 3.1x, Acorn have provided, in !Printers, a
potentially powerful and flexible printer driver system. Unfortunately,
it can also cause much grief and confusion when trying to set it up
properly. This is due to a number of factors including incompatible
default settings, poor documentation and quirks of the software.
6.10
The RISC OS 3 manuals contain a couple of chapters describing
!Printers and the associated printer definition file editor !PrintEdit.
Unfortunately, they do not lay out the information in a way that leads
you step by step through the processes necessary to set up your system
from scratch. This article attempts to correct this omission. It is
based on a combination of information contained in the manuals and
poking about in the software to see what makes it tick.
6.10
I have experimented with a cut-sheet bubblejet printer, an Epson
compatible dot matrix printer using continuous feed, fanfold stationery,
and a Laserjet II compatible printer. Since the results I have found
differ little between the types of printer, I will describe matters in
general terms, and indicate differences where they occur. My remarks do
not relate to PostScript or direct drive laser printer drivers which
both work somewhat differently.
6.10
What you need
6.10
In order to make a start, you will need the following to hand: !Draw
(found in the Apps folder on the iconbar), working copies (as opposed to
the originals) of !Printers, !PrintEdit, (supplied on the Apps1 disc),
Top_Left and a printer definition file that suits your printer, obtained
from the selection available in the printers directory on Apps2. The
Readme files in the printers directory give a good indication of which
driver to use with your printer if you cannot find one that matches
exactly. This should at least get you started and provide some usable
graphics modes.
6.10
Because definition files cover a range of printers with common
software but differing mechanical layouts, it is unlikely that you will
be able simply to install the required definition file and produce
perfect results without a little tweaking. There are two main areas that
will almost certainly need attention. One is the printer’s X and Y
offset settings which are part of a printer definition file and the
other is the paper margins/paper size parameters which are stored within
the !Printers application.
6.10
A working copy of !Printers will contain a number of definition files
within itself − there is one for the default settings of !Printers, one
containing the combined definitions of all the printer types that
!Printer currently knows about, and several paper size files. These
files are all in textual form and may be edited directly by the very
bold but it is more usual to make use of facilities within !Printers and
!PrintEdit to modify the various parameters. These changes, however, do
not always take effect immediately unless special precautions are taken.
This can be one of the biggest sources of confusion and bafflement when
trying to set things up.
6.10
Finding your printer’s limitations
6.10
As supplied, !Printers contains no printer definitions at all and so
the first job is to give it a definition file. Double click on your
working copy of !Printers − after a while, a grey printer icon should
appear on the left hand side of the iconbar. The grey icon indicates
that there is no active printer definition.
6.10
Click <menu> over this icon and select [Printer control...]. A Printer
Control window should now open. Into this window, drag your chosen
printer definition file − the window will display details of the printer
definition you have installed. A new coloured icon should also have
appeared on the iconbar with the printer name underneath it. By default,
the definition should be active and set up for parallel connection. If
this is not to your requirements, use the [Configure...] and
[Connection...] sections of the Printer Control menu to modify the
connection to what you are using (e.g. serial). Also, in the same menu,
set the paper size to be that which you will be using if the default A4
is not appropriate. Don’t forget to click OK after making changes rather
than just closing the window with the close icon.
6.10
The RISC OS 3 User Guide is reasonably clear up to this stage although
I do not recommend that you load more than one printer definition file
until you have really sorted out the first one and become familiar with
the set-up procedure. If you are using a printer which has several
emulation modes, check that any internal switches in the printer are
correctly set up to be compatible with the printer definition file you
are using − your printer manual should give guidance on this.
6.10
Ensure that your printer is connected, switched on and loaded with
paper. You are now ready to drag the Top_Left file to the printer icon
on the iconbar. A small inverted L should be printed in the top left
hand corner of the paper. If your paper is blank, don’t panic. It means
one of two things − either you have one of the few printers whose
default print origin is off the edge of the paper, and therefore has
negative offsets or, more likely, your printer mode does not support
graphics accessed by the “ESC,K” control code sequence which Top_Left
assumes. Laserjet II and Deskjet 500s can fall into this category. If
you find yourself in this situation, simply refer to the section below
on checking paper margins and use the drawfile to obtain an estimate of
how much you need to trim the X and Y offsets from their current values.
Remove the sheet of paper from your printer and put in a safe place
while I make a small digression into the mechanics of printers(!)
6.10
Printer mechanics
6.10
All printers, be they typewriter-derived, like dot matrix and bubble
jets, or laser printers, need to be able to locate the paper securely
whilst doing whatever they do to get ink onto it. This means that most
cannot print over the entire area of the paper and so have unprintable
areas alongside each edge of the paper.
6.10
The top and bottom areas are a function of the printer mechanics and
vary from printer to printer. They do not depend on the size of paper
used, except perhaps for laser printers. A similar argument holds for
the left and right unprintable areas, except that this is a function of
paper width as well as printer design. It is usually possible, by means
of internal switch settings and computer control codes, to further limit
the actual printing area of a printer. Therefore, no matter what margins
may be set up in computer software, there will be areas that the printer
will not print on.
6.10
The Top_Left printout gives an instant indication of a printer’s
default top and left unprintable areas. This information is required by
!Printers to ensure that it locates its output on the paper correctly.
It is also required by you when setting up paper margins in the Paper
size window because it is imperative to ensure that any top and left
margins set here are at least as big as the printer’s unprintable areas
and, preferably, slightly larger.
6.10
When working with fanfold paper, you need to decide between the
convenience of having the perforations located at the tear-off bar,
which necessitates a large top margin, and wasting an extra sheet either
side of your wanted printout. The extra sheet means that you can set the
perforations near the print head, and have a small top margin. Once you
are familiar with matters, you can have paper margins and a printer
definition set for each option.
6.10
Modifying the definition file
6.10
In order to modify your printer definition file to the values you have
just discovered, it is necessary to start the !PrintEdit application by
double clicking on it. This application does not install on the iconbar
but opens a Definition Editor window. Drag your printer definition file
into this window − after a pause, all the blank boxes should be filled
in and at least some of the Text modes: boxes will cease to be greyed
out.
6.10
The Paper X offset: and Paper Y offset: boxes are the main items of
interest. These figures should be modified to the values obtained by
means of a ruler applied to your Top-Left printout. Remember that X is
the left margin and Y the top. Before saving this modified definition,
it is necessary to make a couple of other changes. One is to avoid
confusing !Printers and the other to avoid confusing you. Change both
the Printer type: and Printer name: boxes to something else e.g. Canon
bubblejet2 and bubblejet2 respectively.
6.10
Click <menu> over the window and save your modified definition file
under a new name. !PrintEdit should update all the graphics modes
contained within the definition before saving the new file. In the
!Printers Printer Control window, open the menu over the line containing
your previous definition and select Remove. The window should be blank
once more. You may now drag your new file to the Printer Control window
which will then contain a line with your new definition name in it. As
confirmation, the printer icon on the iconbar should have your new name
on it.
6.10
IMPORTANT, do not be tempted to Remove your first driver from
!Printers and then load in your modified file without having changed the
Printer type: name as instructed above. If you do, !Printers will simply
reactivate the old definition you “removed” and the changes will not be
implemented! You have been warned.
6.10
Ensure that you have the correct connection and paper size set and
select Edit paper sizes... from !Printers iconbar menu. Set the top and
left graphics margins to sensible values which, at a minimum, are
slightly bigger than X and Y as set in the printer definition file.
6.10
Checking paper margins
6.10
To test out the modified definition, you need to make up a test file
in Draw. Open a Draw window and select Misc−Paper limits−Show. Ensure
that the paper size is the same as you are using (say A4), or the next
size up. Turn on Grid lock and Show. Select a fill colour of light grey
and the box drawing tool, (the one above the T). In the top left hand
corner, draw a box with its bottom and right edges aligned with the grid
major axes and big enough to overlap into the margins. Do a similar
thing with the other 3 corners, aligning the respective edges to grid
lines. Select text mode, place the cursor somewhere in the middle of the
paper and type in “THIS WAY UP”. Save this file somewhere as, say,
“Margins”.
6.10
To print out this test drawfile, drag it onto the iconbar printer
icon. You should now have a piece of paper with four grey boxes printed
near the corners. The inside edges of these boxes should have a thin
solid black line along them, the outside edges should be grey. The
distance between the top of the paper and the top of the grey boxes
should be equal the top margin setting in the paper sizes... window and
the distance between the left edge of the paper and the left edge of the
grey boxes should equal the left margin setting.
6.10
If you were unable to use Top_Left to set up your offsets, or there is
still an error, and your top margin is too small, it means that your Y
offset is too big. (If you set a margin of, say, 2cm and a Y offset of
1cm, the printer driver knows it only needs to move down another 1cm
before it starts printing. If, however, the real figure is only 0.5cm,
the printout will start 0.5cm too high).
6.10
Similar arguments apply to the left margin, but this is also dependent
on how the paper is loaded. With form-fed paper, or a cut sheet feeder,
the margin will be much more consistent than single sheets loaded into a
printer. It should, however, be correct to within loading tolerances.
6.10
If either figure needs adjustment, it’s back to !PrintEdit to adjust
the offsets. Remember though that while Top_Left gave us absolute
figures for X and Y, we have now measured an error in the settings and
need to trim the figures. Do not forget to generate another new name for
this further revised definition before saving to a new file.
6.10
Note that the X and Y figures entered in !PrintEdit are subject to
rounding errors, as are the paper margins. Setting the margins slightly
bigger than the X and Y figures ensures that the software does not get
confused into thinking that a margin is smaller than an offset.
6.10
Setting the right hand margin is a question of making sure that it is
greater than your printer’s physical limitations for the size of paper
in use. A measured value greater than that set, is indicative of too
small a setting but you need to allow for the possibility of lateral
misalignment of the paper with cut sheet printers. A good indication is
that the total margin width is the same as the total of the settings of
left and right. A usual figure for the right margin would be to make it
the same as the left for symmetry.
6.10
Problems at the bottom
6.10
The bottom margin is a little more tricky. If it is too small, you can
get the problem of spurious extra form-feeds or the bottom of pages
being printed at the top of a separate sheet, even when there appears to
be room on the current sheet for the printout. The reason for this is as
follows.
6.10
When !Printers has sent a line of graphics information to the printer,
it sends a -line end string-. This string will normally end with a line
feed. When !Printers has finished sending all the graphics lines for one
page, either because it knows it has reached the bottom margin, or
because it has run out of data to print, it issues -form feed- followed
by -page end- strings. Therefore, !Printers must be able to send the
whole of the last line of graphics, followed by a line feed and a form
feed, before either a cut sheet printer registers it is out of paper, or
a continuous feed printer has calculated that it has started on a new
sheet of paper. The limiting case is when the final line feed just
causes either condition to be true. In this case, the final form feed is
executed on the next sheet of paper causing a blank sheet to be
generated. As a consequence of this, the minimum acceptable bottom
margin will be equal to the printer’s standard linefeed amount (usually
1/6th inch).
6.10
With continuous stationery printers, there is also the perforation
skip setting which causes the printer to skip past the perforations
without !Printers knowing anything about it. There are two ways round
this problem. Either disable perforation skip on the DIP switches on
your printer, or amend your definition file to include a string to turn
this off before commencing any printing. Unless you are familiar with
editing printer definition files to a greater depth than discussed here,
I recommend using the DIP switches. Perforation skip is a safety net for
when raw text data is sent directly to the printer without going via any
sort of printer driver. There is no real need for this kind of operation
with RISC OS 3 and so it is never really necessary to have it switched
on.
6.10
There is one other source of incorrect form-feeding with continuous
stationery. This will occur when the text height setting (in lines) does
not match the paper size. This is because, before printing commences,
!Printers sends a set up string to the printer to tell it how long the
paper is that it is using. Since !Printers passes this information to
the printer in units of lines, it obtains the information from the text
height setting. This problem is only likely to occur with non-standard
paper lengths, e.g. labels. Most printers work on a basis of six lines
to the inch at their default spacing, so use this ratio to calculate the
correct text height figure to insert.
6.10
Tidying up
6.10
By now, you should have a workable printer definition file which
enables !Printers to format output correctly onto your paper, without
clipping any of the printable area. Not only should the margins be
correct but the inside edges of the boxes should be the correct distance
from the paper edges. Note that Draw defines the paper origin as the
bottom left hand corner whereas the printer origin is the top left hand
corner.
6.10
There is one last thing to do before you have finished customising
your version of !Printers and that is to save a copy of your definitions
within !Printers itself. This is so that each time you start !Printers,
it will already know the definition you have just created and it will
start up with your preferred paper size, print resolution, etc.
6.10
At this stage, you may decide to change the names you have used to
describe the printer definition you have modified. If so, reload your
modified file into !PrintEdit and change the printer type: and printer
name: to something meaningful. Remember that the type is what is listed
in the Printer control window and the name is what is displayed on the
iconbar. Resave your definition file to a safe place, Remove the
previous definition and drag this final version into !Printers’ Printer
control window. Check that the default paper sizes, connections and
print resolutions are correct for you and finally use Save choices on
the iconbar menu. The next time you run !Printers, it should come up
ready to print without further adjustment.  A
6.10
Talking Pictures
6.10
Simon Anthony
6.10
Wyddfa Software has produced a package aimed at very early learners.
It is subtitled “the colouring book that talks” and that is exactly what
it is.
6.10
It comes in an A5 plastic folder with two discs and a slim manual (in
my draft review issue). On cataloguing the first disc, you find the main
application, TalkPic, a stencil-making application (to create your own
pictures), a Font directory containing the Anwen font, the various parts
of the System package, one talking screen (Baby), a white mode 0 sprite
to use as a blank and the sound samples associated with the screen
called “baby”.
6.10
The second disc holds more screens and their sounds. These sound
samples take up over 700Kb of that disc which only leaves room for four
screens, so the ability to make up your own screens is essential − as is
the ownership, and proficiency in use, of a sound sampler.
6.10
Talking in use
6.10
Double clicking on a talking screen will, as you would expect, load
the application and that particular screen. If you are not already in a
256 colour mode, (15 for example) an error window is generated,
prompting you to change. Being multitasking, it does not change mode
automatically because this could disturb other desktop applications. In
order to prevent the child’s random clicking syndrome from killing the
application (and anything else that is available) the multitasking
aspect can be locked off. Unfortunately, I have yet to find a way back
into the desktop on RISC OS 2 from there, other than by a hard reset. In
RISC OS 3.1, pressing <shift-f12> will tuck the screen behind the icon
bar which lets you get at the save and quit features.
6.10
If you click on parts of the drawing without having first selected a
colour, the Archimedes will remain silent. If you click on a colour (not
white initially) you will be able to hear dulcet female tones
pronouncing the colour (as you click on it) and the name of the bit you
want to colour. I labour this point because if you do it the other way
round, you could think something is wrong when nothing happens.
6.10
It is possible to re-colour any area you wish and there is also a
rubber facility which toggles between the last two coloured states. The
rubber does odd things to the text box. The addition of such a box is
irreversible although the text itself, and its colours, can be altered.
The text is displayed at a lighter tint than the box colour, which is
user-selectable in the normal way. These lighter tints are not available
for the main screen which is a pity. Once coloured to perfection, the
picture can be saved as a sprite for printing.
6.10
Looking at Talking
6.10
Should you not heed the advice to use a 256 colour mode, the colours
which are displayed down the left of the screen will not match the
verbal descriptions. With 256 colours to choose from, a menu of only 13
colours including black (very dark grey), white and light grey is a bit
drab. The choice of indigo is also rather odd. I know there are only a
few names with which to differentiate colours but only one shade of
green is a real limitation here. “Light green” could surely have been
used as a spoken name as they do include a beautifully enunciated “pale
blue”.
6.10
The use of the additional adjective “light” with the existing colours
and names could have doubled the colours and halved the extra size
needed in terms of sound samples. The arrangement of the colours is also
a bit dull for my tastes although younger users don’t seem to mind.
There is a black-on-white line drawing in the colouring area but the
amount of detail possible is limited by the need to get a pointer tip
into it to colour it.
6.10
New things to talk about
6.10
Each flood-fillable area has a name defined by its co-ordinates. These
are held in a text file associated with the uncoloured sprite in a
combined file known as the “stencil”. That is why an application is
required to create a new Talking Picture. Starting with the supplied
blank sprite, which is the correct size and in the only acceptable mode
(0), the technique is to load it into Paint or some other package and
either paint on, draw (if in Draw) or dump on (by using the “Paint with
Sprite” option of Paint) a simple black outline for eventual colouring.
By using the stencil’s assigned co-ordinates, the areas which can be
given names (and coloured) are entered into a text file along with the
co-ordinates and the sound sample file needed to ‘speak’ it. The new
sprite and the text file can now be merged via the stencil utility and,
hey presto, a new talking picture is born.
6.10
And finally...
6.10
There are two things to think about when you buy a piece of
educational software: What do you want it to teach and will it do the
job better than any alternative for a reasonable price? To answer the
second question first, it costs £20 (inc VAT) from Wyddfa − which is not
a lot − but a paper colouring book is cheaper.
6.10
If the idea is to keep the child quiet and happy, Talking Pictures
does its job very well. Children are not likely to get hooked on this
sort of program and neither are they going to learn a lot about
colouring, spelling or reading that couldn’t have been gained from the
paper alternative. However, Talking Pictures is clean, quick and easy
for the child to use and is an excellent way to de-mystify computing for
a very young person. Unless you are a talented artist and/or programmer
with access to a sound sampler, you will quickly run out of things to
colour in and words for it to speak.  A
6.10
ProCAD Review
6.10
Richard Fallas
6.10
ProCAD has recently been released by Minerva as the full-blown follow-
up to CADet, which was reviewed in Archive 6.7 p61. It costs £495 plus
VAT (£1580 +VAT for a site licence), and will run on 2Mb machines and
upwards under RISCOS 2 or later. Some features are, however, only
available under RISC OS 3.10. The program is supplied with a (standard?)
Minerva boxed ring binder containing the manual. Two 800Kb discs are
provided; one featuring ProCAD and also PlotterA0, which is a plotter
driver for ProCAD files; the other providing various drawing, symbol and
report examples. ProCAD may be backed-up or installed on a hard disc.
The version provided for review was v1.01 but this was upgraded to v1.02
during the course of the review.
6.10
The competition
6.10
The price tag puts this application at the top end of CAD (and almost
all other) packages for the Archimedes. The only other comparably priced
package that I am aware of is Delphain’s DelCAD which is currently
priced at about £450 (originally circa £1500). Oak Solutions’ PDT
originally cost around £300 but is now nearer £150. I have only briefly
seen DelCAD, at the NEC three years ago, and hence have only a vague
recollection of its capabilities. PDT is much more familiar as I have
used it to produce many drawings over the past four years or so.
6.10
Lower in price are several other offerings, namely WorraCad, G-Draft,
Autosketch, Techsoft Designer and Minerva’s own CADet which are all
priced below £200. My list includes only general CAD packages as opposed
to 3D, Circuit Board and Art-based programs. (Apologies if I have missed
anybody out!)
6.10
In the PC world, prices are somewhat different − although there has
been a noticeable reduction of some of the major players. AutoCad is
currently around £3000 but there are a number of programs around the
£500 mark including FastCAD, Generic CADD and Drafix which ProCAD
superficially resembles. Note, however, that serious PC (and workstation
users) seldom make do with a bare CAD package. Specialist enhancements
which add features, e.g. Architectural Extensions, are commonly used and
add to the effective cost. It is also worth noting that AutoCad and
FastCad can both be enhanced with additional (third party) facilities
being available as if they were part of the main application. This
extendability is of considerable importance.
6.10
The price of ProCAD gives some idea of the importance of the
application, not only to Minerva, but also to Acorn as well. If programs
of this level of sophistication are being written, it shows confidence
in the platform. The other side of the equation is that if ProCAD sells
well, so will the platform. This will increase the exposure of both in
the ‘real’ world outside of education. It is my sad conclusion that
Acorn have not yet succeeded in convincing industrial purchasers (and PC
software developers) that they are worthy of con-sideration. I hope this
is changing. Minerva are keen to sell systems and given that, for some
potential customers, a CAD program may be the only package they ever
require for that particular computer, this should be attractive provided
the software is sufficiently capable and is well supported.
6.10
Review objectives
6.10
I was very pleased to be asked to test the software, because finding a
comprehensive, time-effective CAD system continues to be something of a
passion (and a Holy Grail) for me. I had actually seen ProCAD at beta-
test stage and was keen to see how it had matured. However, there is
necessarily a limit to what can be achieved in a review of this sort.
You, the readers, will want differing levels of information. I, as a
tester, have to get to grips with the package as well as I can in a
short space of time, digest that experience and relate it, if possible,
to other existing programs. With an application as complex as ProCAD,
this is bound to be uneven. Nevertheless, I take the task seriously
because I have noted some pretty vague and superficial ‘reviews’ of
recent software releases which frankly don’t reveal much useful
information about the subject.
6.10
Minerva are pretty up-beat about ProCAD, and claim a good level of
interest among AutoCad users at the recent CADCAM show. I will attempt
to assess their success from one user’s point of view. If the review is
relatively lengthy, I hope this will be excused as I believe ProCAD is
an important development.
6.10
User interface
6.10
In common with WorraCad and CADet, the control of ProCAD is through
RISC OS icons and windows, with a control layout similar to CADet.
Button bars are provided for Tool and Snap selection in addition to
standard menus and keystroke short-cuts. Several Snap and Tool options
have been added to the CADet choices. Function key definitions add to
the multiple selection methods. Each drawing window is naturally
sizeable, as per Draw, and various parameters may be set via the iconbar
menu ‘Preferences’ option. The appearance of the buttons is fine; more
importantly they function well and 3D feedback is well implemented.
Several of the tool buttons have dialogue boxes (accessed via the adjust
button!), and these I found a little fussy and sometimes unclear
however, they can be ‘pinned’ onto the screen which is useful.
Coordinate information is provided on the Snap button bar in a box which
is writeable when appropriate.
6.10
Multiple views of the drawing may be open at one time, with an
overview window and a tiling option to arrange them on the screen if
required. Each window has a status bar at the top which shows tool,
snap, pen and colour, line-style, layer and text class information.
Moreover, adjustment of several of these may be made by clicking on the
status bar itself which I found very convenient. Pen and line-styles may
be set in this manner. Sub-menus may be kept open by depressing a pin
icon, although screen clutter quickly becomes a problem. I really must
get a colour card and try all this at 1280 × 1024 resolution!
6.10
Sensibly, many of the keystroke shortcuts emulate Draw, including the
use of <Shift-SEL> for mouse-controlled zooming. I would, however, like
to see more functions added to the keystroke list as using RISC OS menus
over a complex drawing window can be very tedious. There are some blanks
in the Function Key series so perhaps these can be utilised? (Minerva
tell me that you can actually edit and add keyboard shortcuts − see the
manual page 202. Ed)
6.10
Snap-based drawing
6.10
Minerva make great play of the snap-based nature of the program, and
rightly so. New elements can be made to attach to selected points on
existing entities, e.g. endpoint, midpoint, centre, point, projection,
grid, tangent, perpendicular, etc, as well as specifying absolute or
relative coordinates in x-y or polar form. Snap selection is easy and
may be altered during the creation of an entity as required. Cleverly,
several snaps may be operative at once and the computer clicks
discreetly as each possible snap is encountered. There is no appreciable
delay in the action of the snap box, which makes for very rapid
selection. Feedback is provided in the status bar as to which type of
snap is being offered, where more than one button has been depressed.
6.10
Fundamentals
6.10
ProCAD’s authors have made a deliberate policy of relating the drawing
file to the ultimate output, i.e. a piece of paper. Several output
formats are supported, e.g. Draw, DXF and Print but I assume that most
serious users of CAD software want hardcopy via a plotter, or its modern
raster equivalent. HPGL dominates this approach and is based entirely on
integer data. This means that the smallest unit a plotter has to contend
with is 0.025mm which it considers as 1 unit. Minerva have, therefore,
bound the concept of paper size implicitly to the drawing being created.
There is considerable logic in this. Firstly, speed of redrawing is
particularly fast, because of the integer maths being used. Obviously,
decimals are available but only down to a certain level, and zoom ratios
are thus limited. It is an approach, however, which is totally different
from most other CAD packages, particularly PDT which utilise floating
point arithmetic and hence have an effectively infinite zoom potential.
6.10
Speed
6.10
To give an indication of speed of redraw, a complex drawing was
converted via DXF file from PDT to ProCAD. Approximate redraw times
(excluding recalculation in PDT) were as follows (The (Z) columns
indicate use of zoom):
6.10
    PDT    PDT(Z)    ProCAD    ProCAD(Z)
6.10
ARM 2    31 s    9 s    3 s    12
s
6.10
ARM 3    11 s    3 s    1.5 s
1.5 s
6.10
Recalculation is carried out in PDT to maintain parametric
relationships but can be suppressed if required and is not required for
zooming in and out or panning. In the example above, Recalc added 8
seconds to the effective redraw time with an ARM 3. ProCAD doesn’t have
a Recalc equivalent and hence appears significantly faster. There is,
however, a significant factor for ARM 2 users which is not so obvious
when the drawing is at high zoom ratios. With an ARM 2 processor, ProCAD
slows down considerably in this state and the redraw time increased some
fourfold, whereas PDT speeded up! This phenomenon is interesting as it
suggests that the ProCAD redraw is well optimised for the ARM 3 cache.
Oak obviously use a fast checking algorithm to exclude items outside the
field of view. Minerva warn users to reduce objects to smaller
subdivisions to improve zoom redraws but I’m not sure how practical (or
necessary for ARM 3 users) that is. However, it can be seen, that ProCAD
is very quick and that is crucial to all CAD users. I do not have access
to AutoCad on a fast PC but suspect that the machine would have to have
a fairly exotic specification to approach this sort of redraw
performance.
6.10
On the down side, this integer based system limits the relational
accuracy. For many purposes, it works acceptably well e.g. ends of
lines, midpoints and coordinates all snap ‘accurately’. I encountered
problems with large radius arcs, however, particularly in creating
tangent arcs. Here, ProCAD would not get me closer than about 1mm (as
plotted) to the theoretical intersection of one arc. Being used to the
uncanny precision of PDT this was disappointing and reveals a weakness
which also emerges if successive manipulations/transformations are
carried out.
6.10
Novel features
6.10
There are a number of novel features which add to the useability of
the program. Clever (and partially parametric) symbol implementation
means that symbol libraries may be maintained with efficient storage of
multiple copies of each symbol in the drawing file. Symbols may be
scaled on entry or converted to standard groups, and thence entities,
for individual editing if required. Also unusual is a report facility
which enables interrogation of a drawing file for the occurrence of
certain groups identified by items of a specified ‘text class’. Entity
and area fills are available but require care in the selection of
relevant bounding entities. Break points may need to be created to
achieve the expected results. Cut-outs of areas of a drawing may be made
for copying or enlargement as a detail.
6.10
Four internal fonts are provided, and I was very impressed to see the
inclusion of !Font capabilities. RISC OS 3.10 users have full rotational
control of any outline font, and text produced may be converted to
groups and (pattern) filled as required. Text may be entered in lines,
in paragraph form or via ASCII files. Also provided is a configurable
Undo buffer which got me out of trouble more than once, as I was able to
retrace my (maladroit) steps.
6.10
Another dimension
6.10
Add to this the more standard options to replicate entities in
circular, linear and ‘follow item’ arrays, fillets, chamfers, parallel
lines and various geometric extensions and it is clear that ProCAD is
well-endowed with drawing aids. Dimensioning is also well catered for,
and I particularly liked the option to add text to any dim before final
confirmation. Dimensioning is another area, however, where a choice has
had to be made. Dims are not associative, i.e. they do not alter if the
entity which they describe is subsequently altered. Nor can they be
edited (as dimensions), i.e. they must be deleted and recreated.
6.10
This gives me some doubts. PDT (being fully parametric) recalculates
all dims which are based on parametric points. Changing drawings is
therefore a dream − provided it is set up properly in the first place.
PC FastCAD is not parametric but if a selection including a dimension is
stretched, the dimension is updated. Similarly, WorraCad maintains
dimensions associatively after editing. ProCAD, by contrast, creates the
dimension based on the entity (using snaps) but henceforth considers the
dim to be merely a group which can subsequently be ungrouped and changed
at will.
6.10
The dimension text value, however, is not updated. On talking to
Minerva about this, they suggested that altering dimensions ought not to
be too laborious, and that some ‘associative’ systems are not immune
from problems. I’ve never had problems with PDT in this regard but nor
does PDT give the same flexibility of drawing enhancements. What I would
have preferred to see, however, is dimensions being identified as dims
in the file structure, such that they could be edited in turn to the
updated snap point, but retaining style attributes which can be tedious
to recreate. Potential users will have to consider the relative
importance of this facility to them.
6.10
All users will want control over scales and units and there are
comprehensive facilities for these. Of interest is the facility to input
a value with a letter suffix which ProCAD will attempt to interpret
according to the known unit definitions. Expressions may also be
entered, many of which function according to text class associations. I
particularly liked the ‘Select by’ options which permit clever
permutations of selection for subsequent manipulation and editing.
6.10
Wish list
6.10
As always, this user wanted more than was provided and would like to
see some or all of the following:
6.10
new snaps    − mid point between two points
6.10
    − at distance on chosen arc
6.10
    − at distance on chosen line
6.10
new dims    − arc length
6.10
new info    − angle of line
6.10
    − arc length
6.10
    − layer of item
6.10
new text    − align with existing line
6.10
new arcs    − tangent to arcs or line/arc directly (not via fillet)
6.10
I would also like the select mode to be configurable to remain active
after editing. At present ProCAD tries to anticipate my needs by
changing to the appropriate draw mode of the item last edited. I would
also like the main drawing window to become immediately active after
selection of a layer (or other sub-menu option) but currently a click is
needed to reactivate the drawing window.
6.10
Connectivity
6.10
Any CAD program must have access to other CAD system resources. ProCAD
is well provided for in this regard, as DXF and Draw import and export
are all included. Initial problems with DXF import of points have been
resolved in v1.02, as have some extraneous lines which appeared using
v1.01. A scale factor for DXF import is suggested based on destination
paper size, for altering or acceptance before translation and I found
the system now works well.
6.10
Drawfile passing in both directions is also very good, although I
would like to see use made of Draw’s thick line capability. A pen-size
table could be used to create monochrome drawfiles whose line
thicknesses corresponded to the pen/colour combination in ProCAD. This
would provide users of laser and inkjet printers with very capable, if
small, raster-based plotters. I have actually written a routine to
process HPGL files to achieve this effect but it would be nice to do it
on the fly and it should not be too difficult to implement.
6.10
Also provided is a clever means of file creation using CSV files in
ASCII format. This seems quite comprehensive and allows spreadsheet or
Basic-based drawing creation for cases of complex geometry or where
similar drawings of differing dimensional/text content are required.
This goes a long way towards offering a pseudo-parametric capability but
does require the setting up of template files/programs for each required
drawing. I see this facility as being of considerable importance because
third party suppliers will be able to offer specialist enhancements to
ProCAD, albeit indirectly, and as such, should be of similar application
to AutoLisp in AutoCad. What is not evident is whether ‘internal’
enhancements may be added by third party software houses (or Minerva
themselves) as modules, such that the new functions are available as
menu/icon selections.
6.10
The manual
6.10
A good tutorial section starts off what is a clear and well-printed
manual. Appendices give adequate detail of the file structures and
related information, and most aspects have been covered. I don’t think
the index is at all adequate, however, being more in the nature of a
reverse contents page, and several areas of the manual were covered in
less depth than I would have liked. In particular, editing was not
covered in sufficient detail. Further tutorial information would be of
assistance to many users, and Minerva could help by updating (by disc
file?) this section as user feedback (and confusion!) is forthcoming.
6.10
User productivity
6.10
Can ProCAD speed up drawing production? This might be more of a
philosophical question really − is CAD appropriate for the task in hand?
Not all drawings are appropriate candidates, and good old manual
drafting still has its place, thank goodness! Also, using any CAD system
can subtly alter the style of the user, along the path of least
resistance. I’ve seen many CAD drawings (particularly architectural)
which are nothing like as presentable as their hand-drawn equivalents.
6.10
ProCAD does offer a number of aids to ensure that drawing style may be
assisted, rather than controlled by, the software. Creation of a user
symbol library is a must here but this will take considerable time and
thought. Learning any new system is a matter of faith; unless you let go
the crutch of what you know, you will never fully realise the new
program’s capabilities but this can take a long time, so be warned! Do
not embark on a new job (to a tight budget) with a new CAD package but
rather ease yourself in gently without time being critical. Ultimately,
the yield will justify the effort of learning and I’m sure ProCAD will
be a productivity aid. Mechanical and production drawing in particular
are likely to be highly appropriate applications.
6.10
Problems
6.10
ProCAD crashed twice in use with a ‘fatal error’ message. The Autosave
option helped reduce the pain here but it does reveal the need for
further error-trapping. Converting symbols to groups and attaching
radial dimensions to arcs caused my crashes. I also experienced some
anomalies with text slant angle on plotting − I suspect that PlotterA0
may be responsible. PlotterA0 certainly wasn’t happy with paragraphs of
text created using the vertical bar character, as all subsequent
plotting was rotated through 90 degrees. No doubt Minerva will be
working on these difficulties and any others that emerge. Also, as noted
earlier, care is needed with some snaps where geometric complexity seems
to lead to accuracy problems (particularly arcs). Dimension arrows on
the ends of arcs do not accurately align with the arc, and large radii
seem to be excessively jagged on the screen, i.e. more than screen
resolution.
6.10
Files are backwards compatible, with a polite suggestion, on loading
old files, that a new version is saved. I experienced some problems with
this, however, which Minerva will no doubt resolve − in particular, the
Plotter_A0 seems sensitive to file version.
6.10
Conclusions
6.10
Is ProCAD the complete CAD answer − the “only CAD package you’ll ever
need”? Unfortunately, for me, the search for the Grail goes on. I was
impressed by the program but its lack of accuracy in certain
circumstances would limit its use for me and I have to admit to
preferring associative dimensions. For example, when laying out
bellmouths to roads, if curves do not intersect precisely, the resulting
drawing looks poor and any dimensional feedback must be suspect.
6.10
Many potential users, however, will find it matches their draughting
needs rather better. If your need is for rapid manipulation of drawing
elements and good embellishment facilities (fills, fonts, etc) then this
program may well meet all your requirements.
6.10
I have been waiting for PDT to be improved in certain areas in which
ProCAD excels − but so far in vain. If even a few of ProCAD’s facilities
were available in PDT, I would be a happy man. As it is, neither offers
me quite enough in terms of ease of use and drawing productivity tools,
together with reliable precision and parametric associations. Obviously,
I’m looking for an elusive beast! Perhaps the way forward is to use both
as appropriate.
6.10
I note that Oak Solutions have recently upgraded WorraCad and they
have plans for a souped-up PDT ‘sometime’. I will check these out as and
when but in the meantime ProCAD offers the most comprehensive drawing
program I have yet seen on the Archimedes. If Minerva continue to listen
to users and actively continue development and polishing of the product,
I am sure it will establish itself as one of the ‘heavies’ in the
Archimedes world.  A
6.10
Electromagnetic Compatibility
6.10
Barry Haines
6.10
I have read a number of comments about interference emanating from the
Archimedes and the only solution I have seen suggested is to use Baco-
foil as wallpaper. I though it would be helpful therefore to give some
information about electromagnetic compatibility. Most radio frequency
interference (RFI) occurs in the VHF & UHF parts of the spectrum and
simply covering a wall with foil will probably have little effect. The
solution would be to stop it at source which means modifying the
computer or switching it off altogether!
6.10
As I use my Archimedes for remote imaging, I needed to screen as much
as possible to minimize the interference to sensitive receivers. The
suggestions given in this article could reduce levels by as much as 60 −
80dB but, for most people, this would be more than would be needed.
6.10
Identifying the source
6.10
Basically it’s just a case of slowly un-plugging things until the RFI
goes away. I would recommend first trying the keyboard as this throws
out dreadful interference. To my surprise, things like the printer, VDU,
serial and mains lead had little effect and neither had the SCSI I/O as
long as the disc was not being accessed.
6.10
Keyboard
6.10
First remove all screws to remove the bottom half of the case and then
all mounting screws on the PCB to remove the top. Apply a nice thick
coat of Nickel-screening paint to the inside. (RS & Maplin do spray
paint.) Earth the metal plate to the PCB and if you are up to soldering,
make up a new lead using four-way individually-screened cable. The plug
is a miniature DIN which can be obtained, as well as the cable, from
Maplins.
6.10
If you are nervous about replacing the cable, try wrapping it in Baco-
foil. I also replaced the mouse lead but this had little effect.
6.10
Podules
6.10
This will vary from podule to podule so it may well be a case of suck
it and see.
6.10
The Oak SCSI and MR45 hard disc did not cause too much RFI but to
minimize any effects, I mounted the hard disc under the computer and Z-
folded the excess ribbon cable before wrapping it in Baco-foil.
6.10
The one podule I did have trouble with was the Spacetech weather
podule and this was due to an earth loop because of an inadequate earth
to the input phono socket. The solution is to run a stout length of wire
from the i/p earth pin on the phono socket to the earth tag on the
backplane (0V i.e the one with the black lead from the PSU). I also feed
the i/p lead a couple of times through a ferrite ring but this will only
reduce the interference by a few dB’s.
6.10
Computer
6.10
Most of the interference radiates out between the podules at the back
and is especially noticeable if the Econet option is not fitted.
6.10
The best method is to screen the back with copper shim or Baco-foil.
First cut the shim to completely cover the back with about 3 inches to
fold under the bottom. Next remove all screws to the podules and case
including the three underneath then, holding the shim in position, rub
it to obtain an impression of all connectors and mains outlets etc.
Using a scalpel or razor blade cut out the impressions so the shim
mounts flush with the back then, using a scriber or dart, make a small
hole for all the screws and re-assemble. Then fold the excess under and
fit the three screws underneath.
6.10
It would be best not to cover the ventilation holes on the side of the
case but if this is a problem, mount the screen with a gap for the air
to escape and hopefully most to the radiation will get reflected back.
6.10
Conclusions
6.10
Although these modifications will not completely cure the RFI, they
should solve most problems. To obtain even lower emissions, the
Archimedes would probably need to be located in an anechoic chamber.
6.10
I used indoor aerials for weather satellite and amateur radio and,
prior to these mods, both were unuseable but now, apart from a couple of
spot frequencies (harmonics of the clocks), most interference comes from
a PC several doors away.
6.10
Although I have made reference to Baco-foil, this is purely to
describe the stuff you put your roast in and not any trade name.
Preferably, the thick strong stuff but if you are rich then I would go
for the copper shim (0.002 − 0.005“).
6.10
Finally, these labels that state the equipment complies to EEC or FCC
EMC rules and regulations are about as reliable as a promise from a used
car salesman.  A
6.10
Diction(ary)
6.10
Simon Anthony
6.10
‘Diction’ is the name which New Era Software gives to a product which
is not just a list of words but a real, albeit limited, multitasking
dictionary. This is a modest package at the modest price of £15. It
comes on a single very under-filled disc which includes a copy of
!Scrap. Because of Diction’s intuitive simplicity, the manual is not
essential reading, nor is it a great task to read, being short and to
the point.
6.10
Diction is aimed at early or slow learners as well as at more advanced
readers and so the provision of both the correct spelling and a single
line explanation of each word helps correct the main problem associated
with a mere spell checker − that of context. Diction still leaves the
eventual choice of word up to you but the short definition is displayed
directly below the word.
6.10
The only way to check or look up a word is by typing it directly into
the find window. Diction can cope with mixed case input and preserves
the case as far as possible in the replaced word. There are two ways in
which to copy a corrected word into your text. Either select your text
window and then click <adjust> on the word in Diction’s find window or
drag the find window and drop it in the target window directly. (For
fun, I dropped it into a filing window and, to my surprise, created a
one word textfile.)
6.10
Have a guess
6.10
Even though !Diction is a very small application, its size belies its
power. For example, when asked to find the word frig it showed fig, frog
and rig − which is a good selection for a two second search. It
describes frog as an amphibious animal which is unequivocal enough for
me: I then asked it about amphibious. “No words found”, it said. This is
because the words and their meanings are held as separate entries in
Diction’s database of 6,000-odd target words. We can expect some
instances like this as there are many occasions where words used in a
description may themselves not be in such a small dictionary − which is
a pity.
6.10
Where a word has several meanings, two or more descriptions are
included. Right is in three times, right_1 being ‘correct’, right_2 the
rather obscure comment, ‘one’s due’ and right_3 being ‘side’. Making
comments about the descriptions and exclusions could be thought
invidious but what is a dictionary if not its descriptions? Further,
some of the exclusions do seem to be a bit arbitrary.
6.10
To give one further example, Lie_1, ‘not tell the truth’ does not have
a matching description of ‘not telling the truth’ for ‘Lying’, which
only shows ‘stretched out’. For a poor speller such as myself, this is
an important omission. Fortunately, there is an ‘add word and
definition’ facility with which anyone can put that right (up to the
memory size or access time limits).
6.10
The dictionary target words are stored in compressed form but each
description is held in full and so any new word takes up much more space
than in a straight-forward checker. The problem of the data file getting
too large for the disc is a long way off at the moment, as it is only
174Kb. The extra words needed to tackle the recursive explanation
problem may rapidly have filled the space but I think the main reason
for the small word list is that the entire program, data files and all,
runs within main memory where it uses 224Kb − quite a lot in a 1Mb
machine. On top of that, it runs mainly in Basic. As an example of the
power of Basic in RISC OS, this is remarkable but if the data file had
been much larger, the response speed would become a real factor.
6.10
A few niggles
6.10
There is no ‘check file’, ‘check document’ or ‘check as you type’
facility, but then Diction is a dictionary and it can be used as a
rudimentary Thesaurus if you’re pushed − a spell checker can’t do that.
I also have a grumble about the name of the application. There is always
a problem in giving long names to programs when only 10 letters are
available, (nine if you include the ! character). The name !Dictionry
might have been a better choice (even though it is spelt incorrectly)
because !Diction suggests that the application has something to do with
enunciation.
6.10
To conclude, to finish, complete...
6.10
New Era have no doubt spent a lot of time and money in producing
Diction, so it is a pity that the result is spoilt for want of a ha’pth
of a really quick assembler. If it ran at full ARM speed, it could have
been given a much fuller list of words and better descriptions. As it
is, the content looks as if it has been designed to aid early readers up
to mid-teens and each user will have to make his own decision as to how
well this choice has been made. For my own use, it’s just too limited
but for £15 (inc VAT) it is not bad value for money.  A
6.10
Granny’s Garden
6.10
Alan Wilburn
6.10
Granny’s Garden is a 2.6 Mb graphic adventure for children and is
designed to run on a 1Mb machine. The four discs containing the program,
!System, !Fonts and !4Tune come in a clear plastic wallet, along with a
registration card and a twenty-page A5 manual.
6.10
History
6.10
Before dealing with the program details, I will cover the history of
the program to clear up some questions which will already be in the
minds of teachers and some parents who will have heard about it from
their children. Granny’s Garden was one of the first graphic adventure
programs on the BBC B, 10 years ago, and became the yard stick for the
programs that followed.
6.10
The program took hold of the imagination of teachers and pupils alike,
with stories of teachers unable to complete sections and, in
desperation, phoning colleagues/advisors for help at 2 a.m. The new
program is identical to the original but the full graphic and animation
capabilities of the Acorn machines have been implemented. There is no
sound because of memory constraints, so you will not get the witch’s
cackle − a CD-ROM version, with sound, will be available in the future.
6.10
The manual
6.10
The manual leads you very effectively through getting the program
running and the various options available. Setting up instructions for
loading onto a hard disc are on the disc in a ReadMe file. The manual
also contains a story to be read to a class to introduce the story and
set the scene. There is a brief outline of the adventure, answers and
passwords for adults (very useful for teachers doing a quick scan of a
program). There are two suggestion sections, one on how to use the
program and the other, four pages of related activities away from the
computer.
6.10
Getting started
6.10
The program is protected and has to be initialised and your name/
school added to the program for future identification and then it can be
backed up and put on a hard disc, if available. In use, the program is
started from Disc 1 which then asks for the correct disc to be loaded.
In the case of hard disc use, Disc 1 has to be in Drive 0 as a ‘key’ to
enable the program. !System and !Fonts are provided to make the program
self-supporting, but you can use your own !System and any fonts you own.
!4Tune gives an annoying, repetitive tune via a Sound Tracker, separate
from the main program, to allow it to run on a 1Mb machine.
6.10
Story outline
6.10
Six children have been kidnapped and you are invited to look for them
with the help of a magic raven. You are taken to a number of locations
and have to solve problems to find the six children. If you make certain
choices, the witch comes and sends you back to the beginning. There are
four places which have to be explored and completed in sequence. As each
is completed, a password is given so the locations do not need to be
revisited. At the Woodcutter’s House, you have to solve a simple puzzle
and explore the rooms. At the Giant’s Garden, you have to enlist the
help of a variety of animals to overcome obstacles. In the City of
Dragons, you have to capture four baby dragons. The Land of Mystery has
to be fully explored using a map to collect information and articles.
6.10
Each of the locations is very well drawn and there are numerous
animations via NOOT which are very well done. I was particularly
impressed by two of the baby dragons, one bouncing on a pogo stick and
another using a catapult, firing stones out of the screen, giving a very
good 3D effect. Each location has to be explored and decisions made to
solve a number of problems. Recording ability and logical (and some
lateral) thinking are necessary to complete the adventures − I have
found three pupils to be the ideal number, as this leads to more
discussion to sort out problems.
6.10
Controls
6.10
There are a number of controls to set a variety of options. The
optional sound tracker music has a full range of sound levels via a
menu. The Granny Icon provides choices for the font and size to be used,
a screen size option and restart. Within the program is the facility to
export a screen as a sprite and a remote control facility where the
screen movement can be paused and stepped forwards and backwards.
6.10
Conclusions
6.10
I found the program to be very good, with excellent graphics and
animation. I would recommend its purchase even if you have the BBC
version, because the enhanced version is a definite improvement. It is
difficult to suggest an age range for the program as I know of Reception
classes who use it as a class or group activity and Secondary slow
learners of 14/15 who have enjoyed and gainfully used it − an age range
of 10 years.
6.10
Resource Pack
6.10
To extend the activities connected to the program, there is a resource
pack available. This consists of an Art Disc of pictures and 24 activity
sheets for photocopying, in a plastic wallet.
6.10
The activity sheets are to extend the range of activities away from
the computer and are not aids to solving problems within the adventures.
So, if you have used the program before, you will find previous
worksheets you have produced still applicable. Each sheet is well
designed and laid out in a clear and satisfactory manner with good
pictures and borders where applicable. The sheets cover topics such as
homes (animal and human), diary and explorer’s log pages.
6.10
There are recording sheets for personal details, descriptions of
people, places, holidays and for placing adverts. There are four sheets
connected to map work utilizing the map from the adventure. Amongst
other things, the remaining sheets concern assessment tests for good or
bad witches, making spells and drinks, a witches menu and letter.
6.10
The Art Disc contains five directories covering:− Buildings (7),
Creatures (14), People (9), Scenes (6) and Vegetation (6), all in
coloured drawfiles. All the main characters/locations in the program are
covered in the files. I found the pictures to be well drawn and
coloured. These files should provide a very useful set of pictures that
can be used in children’s work, work-cards or printed in large formats
for display work. Unfortunately, I found that they did not print out
very well on my Epson FX100 and LaserDirect printers. The difference in
grey scales between colours and shadings were such that, on printout,
there was poor definition − I would have to edit colours in !Chameleon
to make reasonable use of them.
6.10
Conclusions
6.10
I would suggest that you try printing one of the drawfiles to see if
your printer gives reasonable results, before buying, otherwise I do not
see much use for them in DTP and display work. If the printout is
acceptable, the whole pack would be a useful addition to the program.
6.10
Granny’s Garden is £24·50 +VAT from 4Mation (£27 through Archive). The
GG Resource Pack is £15 +VAT from 4Mation.  A
6.10
Landmarks − Aztecs
6.10
Joe Gallagher
6.10
Several programs from the Landmarks series of historical simulations
have been reviewed in the pages of Archive magazine in the past. For
those new to the series, each Landmarks program presents a simulation of
a meeting between pupils and a child from a particular historical epoch
and/or geographic location. The encounter consists of a dialogue which
takes place, in real time, over a period of three days.
6.10
Several reviews have expressed reservations about the programs and, in
the light of this, it was with some apprehension that I took delivery of
a review copy of Aztecs. My guinea pigs were a group of year 5 and year
6 children who had already been working around the theme of the voyages
of discovery.
6.10
In this simulation you meet Jade Doll, an Aztec girl, who is your
guide on a tour of the city of Tenochtitian, capital of the Aztec
Empire. The year is 1519 and Montezuma, the emperor, is at the height of
his powers.
6.10
Documentation
6.10
The program comes on a single disc and installation on a hard disc
presents no problems. Longman Logotron insists that the work on the
computer should be seen only as a part of the overall topic and this
view is reflected in the documentation which comes with the program. The
software is accompanied by two guides: one for the teacher and the other
for the pupils. These are standard with all the programs in the
Landmarks series and, as we have come to expect from Longman Logotron,
are produced to a high standard. The teacher’s guide provides an
overview of the program as well as relating the learning outcomes to
National Curriculum attainment targets. The pupils’ guide provides a set
of useful activity sheets related to themes which may arise from the
simulation.
6.10
Most of the criticisms centre around the fact that the Archimedes
versions are no more than straight ports from the Nimbus and IBM ranges.
Indeed, it is true that there is no more than a minimal acknowledgement
of the facilities offered by the Acorn range of computers. Although the
program is RISC OS compliant and runs happily within the desktop
environment, for all the difference this makes, it might as well be a
single tasking program. I can only echo the comments of earlier
reviewers on this issue.
6.10
We were running the program on the school’s A5000 and there was no
perceptible difference between the standard of the graphics on Acorn’s
flagship and those of the school’s obsolete Nimbus PC186 range. Still,
there were no complaints on this score from the children.
6.10
More importantly, I was impressed by the way the program picked out
some customs and aspects of Aztec life which the children had touched
upon in their own research of the topic and allowed these themes to be
investigated at a deeper level. There were some animated flashes of
recognition amongst the children as Jade let slip some reference or
other about her life and some of the rather strange customs of her
people. The program has a very useful option of enabling the dialogue to
be recorded for later retrieval so that it may be edited or printed out.
This enabled the children to concentrate on the program without the need
to make copious notes.
6.10
Technical shortcomings
6.10
As a way of consolidating existing learning and stimulating new areas
of research, the Aztecs provided a valuable, alternative resource to
textbooks. Reading about a culture cannot compete with hearing about it
from someone who was there. However on the technical front, the
weaknesses still remain.
6.10
The children were rather puzzled that Jade didn’t seem to know whether
she was a boy or a girl. When Jade had taken us to the priest’s house,
one of the children asked her to go in. To our surprise, she announced
that it was quite a way away and promptly took us back to her family’s
turkey run on the chinampa!
6.10
The slow update of the text screen is very frustrating and this, in
conjunction with the way that the program stores the user’s keypresses
while answering your previous question, did cause problems on occasions.
While it might detract from the illusion of a live conversation, it
would perhaps be simpler to dispense with the typed response altogether
or at least provide options to speed it up or switch it off. I’m tempted
to suggest that hypertext links for significant words or phrases would
be helpful for younger or less able children but this might be getting
away from the “Dungeons and Dragons” feel of the program.
6.10
Landmarks the CD?
6.10
Nevertheless, while on the subject of bells and whistles, the
Landmarks series would provide an ideal vehicle for showing off some of
the multimedia capabilities of the Archimedes. There are sadly few
affordable CD applications for the Archimedes which one could describe
as real musts for primary schools. Longman Logotron has dabbled in CD
media already, producing a CD version of Revelation. Now, a CD version
of Landmarks with high resolution graphics, sound and video clips − that
would really be something to write home about!
6.10
The Aztecs costs £19.95 + VAT from Longman Logotron or £26 inc VAT
through Archive.  A
6.10
Using RISC OS 3
6.10
Hugh Eagle
6.10
I have hardly had any letters this month − the most exciting
development has been the arrival (with a publication date of December
1992!) of the Programmer’s Reference Manual. If you have got a copy and
find new things in it which you think might be of general interest,
please share them with us by writing to Paul Beverley at Archive or me
at 48 Smithbarn, Horsham, Sussex, RH13 6DX.
6.10
Programmer’s Reference Manual
6.10
First Impressions
6.10
It’s very heavy (Paul says 7.2 kg but my bathroom scales say 14½ lb –
they’ve obviously been designed to flatter!)
6.10
The number of pages has increased by nearly 50%, but it has still been
fitted into four volumes plus a thin but convenient booklet containing
the indexes. A separate Style Guide is going to follow later in the year
when Acorn have had time to revise it. (This is intriguing – does it
mean that Acorn are considering substantial changes to the recommended
style of RISC OS applications?)
6.10
Since the new volumes contain an average of about 800 pages each they
are obviously very fat. Just as the RISC OS 2 PRM followed the RISC OS 2
User Guide in being spiral bound, the new books conform with the shape
and “perfect” binding of the RISC OS 3 User Guide and Applications
Guide. Luckily it seems to be possible to make them lie open on the desk
(their sheer size helps here!) without breaking their backs. So,
provided the binding proves to be strong enough to stand up to intensive
use, the new format should be satisfactory.
6.10
The manual is basically quite similar to its predecessor. It describes
the operating system in great detail, starting with basic concepts such
as SWI calls, vectors and interrupts, then moving on to the kernel of
the operating system (modules, memory management, keyboard input, VDU
output, etc.) before dealing with the various modules which have been
added to the operating system. The sections follow a common pattern: a
brief introduction and overview, followed by technical details in
narrative form and then the full details of each of the relevant
operating system calls (SWI calls, *-commands, etc). In many cases,
quite detailed programming hints are also given, sometimes accompanied
by program listings to illustrate particular points.
6.10
The new edition has been updated to take account of changes in the
operating system up to and including version 3.11, and some extra
explanatory material has been added. The increase in size is a bit
deceptive. For example, the number of pages occupied by the section on
VDU drivers has increased by 46 (over 25%) but the actual content has
scarcely changed. What has happened is that the new page shape and
format seems to hold slightly fewer words so several descriptions of OS
calls which filled a page in the RISC OS 2 manual now spill over to the
top of a second page. There is therefore a lot more white space.
6.10
In fact, the degree of change in the parts of the manual covering the
more well-established features of the operating system (especially the
kernel) is fairly limited. Where OS calls have been added or changed,
the manual reflects this (and helpfully spells out the differences
between different OS versions) but alterations to the explanatory
sections are generally minor. Additions that I have noticed are a brief
explanation of sprite “save areas” (the old manual was very mysterious
on this subject), a new section on using sprites with 256 entry palettes
and several pages setting out extra guidelines on memory usage.
6.10
The main areas of expansion, not surprisingly, are those where there
has been most change in the operating system or where additional modules
have now been integrated with it:
6.10
    •  Filing systems
6.10
    •  The desktop (Wimp, etc.)
6.10
    •  ColourTrans
6.10
    •  Fonts
6.10
    •  Printing
6.10
    •  Internationalisation
6.10
    •  Networking
6.10
    •  Shared C library
6.10
The main subject index has also more than doubled in length and is
much better than the feeble effort in the RISC OS 2 PRM, although it
still seems to me to be very skimpy for a manual of this length and
complexity.
6.10
Who should buy it?
6.10
As its name implies it is definitely for programmers. Although there
is a lot in the manual that non-programmers might find interesting, by
way of background reading on how the software works, it is not likely
that they would find it of much practical use.
6.10
Not all programmers will want it. It is possible to write advanced
programs using only the information provided in the User Guide and in
the reference manuals for Basic and other programming languages.
However, if you want to write multitasking Wimp programs, or programs
that are going to work satisfactorily with different filing systems, or
programs that use outline fonts or manipulate Draw format data, amongst
many other examples, then you will need to take advantage of the more
sophisticated and powerful features of the operating system. For this,
you will need more information about how the operating system works,
together with technical details about the multitude of SWI calls. There
are other books that will take you quite a long way in this direction,
and a lot can be learned from magazine articles and other people’s
programs. However, I imagine that most people with a serious interest in
programming will soon find a need for the PRM.
6.10
If you already have the RISC OS 2 PRM should you upgrade? If you want
to use the features that are new in RISC OS 3, then there is no doubt
that the answer must be ‘yes’. However, programs written for RISC OS 2
should continue to work satisfactorily and, in many areas, the
differences between the two versions of the operating system are not
very dramatic, so it is possible that you could continue to get by with
the old manual. Perhaps the answer depends on how aware you are of its
limitations.
6.10
If you are in any doubt about buying the new manual, I strongly
recommend having a good look at a copy before you decide.
6.10
The manual costs £100 including carriage from Archive. If you have the
RISC OS 2 version you can upgrade for £59 plus £4 postage and packing by
sending the “index front cover” of the old manual as proof of ownership
to Acorn Direct. Cheques for the upgrade should be made out to “Acorn
Direct”. (The address really IS in the FactFile − sorry I forgot it last
month. Ed.)
6.10
Program points
6.10
•    QuicKey – Last month (Archive 6.9 p 61), we reported a problem
with this program. Ian Copestake has written to say that this problem
was cured by an update released in April 1992 – over a year ago! – and
was caused by a bug in RISC OS 3. He says that customers can always
obtain minor updates like this by returning their original disc plus £1
worth of postage stamps (or a reasonable overseas equivalent). He also
asks if contributors can check that they have up-to-date versions before
reporting problems.
6.10
•    Fourth Dimension games – A. H. Hunt had a problem with Black Angel
(“one of the casket segments was missing at the Planet Valve (23%)”) but
this was rectified by 4D immediately. He also says that Break147 and
Saloon Cars run (for him) without any problems.
6.10
However, Arthur Taylor found that the hint by D. S. Allen in Archive
6.9 p62 on Break147 and SuperPool didn’t work for him. Perhaps
significantly, the relevant line of the Basic program was line 100 not
line 90 in his copy, and also his program wasn’t compressed but was
heavily protected. (I wonder whether the version of Break147 which A. H.
Hunt has would work on his machine, and whether Fourth Dimension can
supply it?)
6.10
•    Rotor − This game from Arcana does not work on RISC OS 3 and
Arcana have, apparently, gone bust. Fortunately, Superior Software have
bought out the rights to the program and sell it as part of their “Play
it Again, Sam 1” compilation. Apparently, if you send your Arcana
version of Rotor to Superior with a cheque for £10, they will send you a
copy of Play it Again, Sam 1.  John Waddell, Renfrewshire.
6.10
•    Recommended programs (which do work) – Arthur Taylor strongly
recommends Simon Burrows’ FontsPlus: he has created four fonts
directories and with FontsPlus on the iconbar he can choose to have all
or none of them active (if none, the ROM fonts are still available); if
he doesn’t load FontsPlus, then they are all available “... simple as
that!”
6.10
He says that other PD or shareware programs that seem to work fine
with RISC OS 3.10 include: DiskBase v0.65, DiskCat v1.50 (disc
cataloguers), FuncKeys v2.02 and KeyWindow v1.40 (keystrips and keys
from the desktop) and a super neat new mode changer from Dave Thomas:
!Mode v1.03 – it can store up to 8 modes in a small desktop window and
seems very well behaved.
6.10
•    Watford scanner − In Archive 6.8 p27, we reported problems with
the Watford Handscanner (1990, issue 2). Apparently, there is an upgrade
to the software (version 1.1) available from Watford.  D Webb,
Cumbernauld.
6.10
Disc drive problems
6.10
•    360Kb PC discs − Richard Fallas writes: “While trying to transfer
data to the hard drive of an old PC recently, I discovered that there
are no hard and fast rules about compatibility with 40 track discs.
Previously, I had used my switchable 40/80 track 5¼“ drive (with Beebug
Interface) under the emulator, having set up a suitable device in the
config.sys file. This no longer works under RISC OS 3.10, so I tried to
transfer directly.
6.10
“The disc format was correctly identified and the files written (with
switch set to 80 track) without hitch, but the PC didn’t want to read
them (using copy *.*), although it would give me the directory listing.
6.10
“Being stubborn, I tried again, saving and copying file by file. This
worked... sometimes! The longer the file the greater the chance of a
glitch, but eventually I got all the files across. This worked on files
up to 75Kb in size, so persevere!”
6.10
•    IDE drives – Arthur Taylor advises that you should not assume that
the IDE support built into RISC OS 3 will work with an IDE drive that
has been added to a pre-A5000 computer. He found with his IDE drive
supplied by DT that he had to set the number of IDE discs to zero in
!Configure and then run DT’s setup, after which he had no problems.
6.10
•    ST506 drive fitted to an A3000 – Tony Flaherty was interested to
read of the hardware problem experienced by Colin Wood (Archive 6.9 p61)
when fitting a ARM3 to his A410, since he has recently experienced a
similar problem with his A3000. He writes:
6.10
“I have a basic ARM2 machine with RISC OS 3.1 and an Orion 2 Mb
upgrade.  I recently added an external 20 Mb ST506 hard disc using an
ex-PC MFM drive and an Acorn external controller. The drive and a
suitable power supply/fan sit in a home-made expansion box.  I suffer
the usual A3000 problems with regard to the oxidation of the memory
connectors.  The hard disc also tends to generate defects if the system
is powered down in an abnormal way (i.e. not <ctrl-shift-f12>).
6.10
“My problem was symptomatically the same as Colin’s in that,
initially, the system froze completely while I was editing a First Word
Plus document eventually forcing me to press <reset>. The screen flashed
red then blue with no further action − a power down produced the same
results, I tried this several times to no avail. Finally in desperation,
I opened the box but nothing looked out of place (no charring or loose
leads).  I powered up the machine and this time all was well, however,
when I verified the disc 20 or defects were reported, when these were
added to the disc’s defect list, using *DEFECT, some of the files within
the first Word Plus application directory where corrupt and this had to
be restored from a backup.”
6.10
Tony wonders, therefore, whether Colin Wood’s assumption that his
problem related directly to the ARM3 upgrade was correct.  Could the
problem lie with RISC OS 3.1?  Does anyone have any views on this?
6.10
Other matters arising
6.10
•    Cache control − In response to the comments about difficulty on
RISC OS 3 with hares, tortoises and ARM3s, David Percival has sent in an
application that controls it properly. It evens notices if you have
typed in a cache-on or cache-off command or have executed one within a
program and it still displays the correct icon on the iconbar!  David
Percival, Swanley.
6.10
•    Redraw problems (Archive 6.8 p29) − A problem of incorrect screen
re-drawing in !Edit was mentioned. Tim Nicholson has had the same
problem with Deskedit! He says it seems to be a particular problem with
unformatted text that only has carriage returns/line feeds as paragraph
breaks and nowhere else. Since both pieces of software have the same
problem, he wonders if the bug is in the SharedCLib? Has anyone else had
the same problem?
6.10
•    Printing after Artworks (Archive 6.5 p31 and 6.8 p24) – Roger King
reported a problem with spurious fine horizontal lines about 4mm long
scattered throughout printouts when printing from another application
after printing from Artworks. Steve Hutchinson found that putting his
LaserDirect podule in a different slot (as recommended by Computer
Concepts) solved this problem for him. Unfortunately, this didn’t work
for Roger. However, he has now found a cure: after printing from
Artworks, select “Queue control” from the printer icon and then select
“Flush buffer”. He observes that it would seem that Artworks is leaving
something “nasty” in the printer buffer, although a CC representative
with whom Roger discussed the problem suggested that Acorn’s printer
drivers might be at fault.
6.10
•    Photocopying via LaserDirect (Archive 6.8 p24) – Tim Powys-Lybbe
has got version 2.10 of the LaserDirect printer driver which works quite
satisfactorily and he has no more problems “photocopying” from Scanlight
Plus.
6.10
He adds cryptically that “some things may not print totally as one
would expect in Paint or Scanlight Plus, particularly their positioning
on the page, but putting them into Draw or Impression totally solves the
problem.”  A
6.10
PocketFS Problems
6.10
Mark Godwin
6.10
After producing my review on PocketFS, I have recently come across a
few serious problems.
6.10
These problems all stem from the naming convention used on a PC and
Series 3, which makes use of file extensions. This extension acts like
the Archimedes filetype in uniquely identifying a type of file, but the
result is that a PC name is actually 11 characters (omitting period),
whereas the Archimedes is 10.
6.10
Unfortunately, there is no ideal answer to these problems but, in my
opinion, the solution implemented by PocketFS has some serious flaws.
6.10
Problem 1
6.10
The extension is sometimes used to identify the file uniquely, i.e. a
file called TEST could be a directory or end with extensions PIC, TXT
and DAT, e.g.
6.10
TEST.PIC
6.10
TEST
6.10
TEST.TXT
6.10
TEST.DAT
6.10
Unfortunately, the Archimedes cannot have a file or directory with the
same name, even if they are different types. The way PocketFS overcomes
this problem is to append a numeric count to like names. For my example,
you would see TEST, TEST000001, TEST000002 & TEST000003. If you now copy
these files to another disc on any device (even the Psion) the file
extension is lost.
6.10
To make matters worse, if you now copy these files back to the Psion
you will end up with two files TEST and TEST0000. The names are
truncated from 10 to 8 characters, so TEST000002 and TEST000003 would
not be copied as their new name would be the same as TEST000001 (when
truncated).
6.10
It does not take a genius to work out that if you back up your Psion
using PocketFS, you cannot restore it. You have to painfully copy each
non-unique name across one at a time and then rename it using the Psion.
Also, before you can rename it, you must have already made a note of its
extension before you copied it. This can also be a problem because these
names are not necessarily in the same order on the two machines.
6.10
Problem 2
6.10
The second problem with PC filenames is the use of characters that are
invalid on the Archimedes (such as @, &, $, etc..).
6.10
Unfortunately, the character ‘&’ is not translated, and the characters
‘$’ and ‘@’ appear as the same character on the Archimedes. What makes
this situation worse is that the translation only works in one
direction, Series 3 to Archimedes. This really adds to the problem
detailed above for backing up your data.
6.10
A solution to this problem would be to allow the user to specify what
characters are translated and to allow it to work in both directions. So
if you specify that ‘@’ on the Series3 should be translated to ‘~’ on
the Archimedes, it would be clever enough to work out that transferring
files the other way would convert ‘~’ on the Archimedes to ‘@’ on the
Series3.
6.10
Problem 3
6.10
PocketFS will examine certain file extensions on the Series 3 and
convert them to filetypes on the Archimedes and vice versa. This means
that on either machine, the opposite machine’s file identity is kept
through this translation table. Unfortunately, this list is fixed and no
support for extending it is given. Their solution to this problem is
adequate but would have benefited from allowing the user to increase the
file extension to filetype ‘table’.
6.10
Another solution to this problem and the ones above would be to append
the data of the files copied from the Series3/PC with their original
name and extension and then give these new files a unique filetype on
the Archimedes. This unique filetype could then be used by all
applications to cause interrogation of this appended data to see what
the original filetype (on the Series3/PC) was. This could even be taken
further by ADFS supporting this filetype and using this name and
extension in all filer operations. In this way, PC names could exist on
the Archimedes without altering the current directory structure.
6.10
This concept, I believe, is already in use with Compression (produced
by Computer Concepts) for holding the original Archimedes filetype
before it was compressed and the filetype changed to ‘CFSlzw’.
6.10
Problem 4
6.10
The last problem is only a small one. A PC directory is theoretically
endless whereas the Archimedes has a limit of 77 files. So you have to
be careful about selecting all the files in a Psion directory for
copying. There may be too many.
6.10
One further point
6.10
One other feature which could save a lot of time is the option for the
Archimedes to refresh its copy of the Psion directory for each of the
drives on the Psion, preferably independently. Currently, you have to
dismount the Psion and then open one of the viewers again.  A
6.10
Pocket Book / OPL Column
6.10
Mark has offered to be a centre for information interchange about the
Pocket Book and, more particularly, OPL programming. If you have any
ideas, questions, hints, OPL programs, etc, send them to Mark at 5
Bearcroft Avenue, Great Meadow, Worcester, WR4 0DR. However, please
don’t automatically assume that Mark will reply to all your letters. As
with all our specialist editors, Mark is doing it for love, not money.
Mark will answer letters as far as possible, but if he gets inundated,
we need to bear with him. Ed.
6.10
Time-Sliced Multi-Threading in C
6.10
Richard Simpson
6.10
A number of modern operating systems, such as Sun’s Solaris 2.x and
Microsoft’s Windows-NT, provide support for multi-threading. Although
RISC OS does not provide any specific support for this very useful
programming technique, the ANSI C compiler does allow you to achieve a
limited form of it.
6.10
What is multi-threading?
6.10
I will assume that you are familiar with the concept of multi-tasking,
where execution appears to occur simultaneously in several different
programs. Multi-threading is a finer grained version of the same idea,
where execution appears to occur simultaneously at several different
points in the same program. Each point of execution is known as a
thread.
6.10
The progress of threads is often controlled by external factors such
as the availability of I/O resources or interrupts and they are thus
very popular in real-time applications. I believe that on the
Archimedes, thread execution can only be controlled on a time basis
(although it may be possible to do something with Signals), hence the
title of this article.
6.10
The alarm functions
6.10
The alarm functions provided as part of the RISC OS library are the
basis of this multi-threading scheme (not to be confused with the ANSI C
alarm function).
6.10
The two most important of these are, alarm_ timenow which returns the
current monotonic time and alarm_set which does what its name suggests.
6.10
The syntax of alarm_set is:
6.10
typedef void (*alarm_handler)(int called_at, void *handle);
6.10
void alarm_set (int at, alarm_handler proc, void *handle);
6.10
The upshot is that a call to alarm_set will set an alarm for a given
time. When that time is reached, a function which you have specified
will be called and passed an item of data which you have defined. An
example may serve to make this clearer:
6.10
void bell (int now, void *handle)
6.10
{clang , %s\n“, (char *) handle);
6.10
}
6.10
main ()
6.10
{. 6.10
    alarm_set (alarm_timenow + 100, bell, (void *)
6.10
“WAKE UP ! !”);
6.10
    . . .
6.10
}
6.10
When alarm_set is called, it will return almost immediately, but one
second later (100 centiseconds) bell will be called and print “Clang
Clang, WAKE UP ! !”.
6.10
Bell is called by the automatically generated event handling code and
will therefore only occur immediately after a call to event_process. You
must call event_process frequently if your alarms are to go off near
their requested times. There is no danger of a thread being called
whilst another function is executing, and because of this, our thread
code does not have to be re-entrant. If an alarm is set for a time which
has passed, the function will be called at the next available
opportunity.
6.10
The value returned in variable ‘now’ is the time at which bell was
called and will be greater than alarm_timenow + 100 if execution of bell
was delayed.
6.10
The clever bit
6.10
How does this enable us to produce a thread? The answer is to use a
form of recursion. If a function calls alarm_set and gives itself as the
alarm_  handler function, it will get called again some time later and
continue to do so indefinitely thus forming a separate thread. So, if we
modify our previous bell function to:
6.10
void bell (int now, void *handle)
6.10
{clang , %s\n“, (char *) handle);
6.10
    alarm_set (now + 50, bell, handle);
6.10
}
6.10
Then after the initial 1 second delay, bell will print its message
every ½ second. Of course, we do not have to have an initial delay, if
you dispense with the “+ 100” in main, then the thread will start
immediately.
6.10
Thread timing
6.10
There are two ways to define the delay until the next invocation of
the thread function. One is to add to the start time contained in now
(as above), and the other is to add to a value returned by
alarm_timenow. It is very important to use the correct one, and this
depends on the application.
6.10
The former case will cause the thread to execute a known number of
cycles in a given period. I have used this, for example, to display a
count-down clock. The thread executes once per second, decrements a
variable and displays the result. Problems will occur if a significant
delay results (e.g. due to the desktop being suspended). When
multitasking resumes, the thread will execute almost continually until
it catches up with real time and this can produce a very considerable
CPU load. Such threads need a mechanism to discover when they are more
than a few seconds behind and jump some cycles.
6.10
The second solution (using alarm_timenow) avoids the problems above
and is preferable in most cases where precise timing is not required.
6.10
Multiple threads
6.10
The real power of threads becomes clear when you consider that one
function can be used for any number of parallel threads. All you need to
do is call it from outside a number of times with a different item of
data passed as the handle on each occasion. For example:
6.10
alarm_set (alarm_timenow, func, (void *) &a);
6.10
alarm_set (alarm_timenow, func, (void *) &b);
6.10
These two lines will launch two threads, one working on variable a and
the other on b.
6.10
There is also no need for each thread to cycle at the same speed, or
even a constant speed. Many of the threads which I have written alter
their cycle time depending on the importance of the data they are
processing and even the current CPU loading.
6.10
If a function is part of more than one thread, be very careful about
using static local variables.
6.10
Getting data in and out of threads
6.10
By far the best way to get data in and out of a thread is to declare a
structure and use the address of that structure as the void handle.
Since the structure is passed by name, data can be transferred in both
directions.
6.10
If you wish to address all invocations of a given thread rather than
an individual one, global variables can prove useful.
6.10
Stopping a thread
6.10
If a thread can reach its own decision on when to die, all it has to
do is not call alarm_set before returning and that will be the end of it
(remember to free any malloc-ed memory though).
6.10
If you wish to kill a thread from another function, the best technique
is to have a “die now” flag in its data passing structure. The thread
should check this on each invocation and stop if it is set.
6.10
It is also possible to use the alarm_removeall command. This removes
any outstanding alarms with a given handle.
6.10
An example
6.10
What follows is the simplest thread demonstration that I could come up
with. You must provide it with a template file containing a template
called text. The simplest way to do this is to copy
Resources:$.Resources.Edit.Templates. I have not included any way of
halting the program, so you will have to stop it from the Task Manager.
6.10
/* Threads - Simplest possible thread demo program */
6.10
#include <stdio.h>
6.10
#include “alarm.h”
6.10
#include “event.h”
6.10
#include “flex.h”
6.10
#include “res.h”
6.10
#include “resspr.h”
6.10
#include “template.h”
6.10
#include “txt.h”
6.10
#include “wimpt.h”
6.10
txt a_text; /* Global pointer to window */
6.10
static void threads_thread (int called_time, void *handle)
6.10
{= (int) handle;
6.10
   char message[30];
6.10
   sprintf (message, “Hello, I’m a %d second thread.\n”, delay);
6.10
   txt_insertstring (a_text, message); /* Write string to window */
6.10
   txt_setdot (a_text, txt_size (a_ text)); /* Move cursor to end */
6.10
   alarm_set (alarm_timenow () + delay * 100, threads_thread, handle);
6.10
}
6.10
int main ()
6.10
{control”) ;
6.10
   flex_init ();
6.10
   res_init (“threads”);
6.10
   resspr_init ();
6.10
   template_init ();
6.10
   alarm_init ();
6.10
   txt_show (a_text = txt_new (“Threads”));
6.10
   alarm_set (alarm_timenow (), threads_thread, (void *) 2);
6.10
   alarm_set (alarm_timenow (), threads_thread, (void *) 5);
6.10
   alarm_set (alarm_timenow (), threads_thread, (void *) 11);
6.10
   while (TRUE) event_process();
6.10
   return (0);
6.10
}
6.10
Conclusion
6.10
Multi-threading is a programming technique which looks set to become
increasingly popular, especially in real-time applications. RISC OS does
not yet provide support for full multi-threading, but the tricks which I
have outlined provide a passable imitation.
6.10
Next time you write a real-time program, try using threads. You will
be surprised how easy and effective they can be.
6.10
Reference
6.10
C.J.Northrup, It’s a multi-threaded world, Byte, May & June 1992.  A
6.10
Beginners’ Column − !Boot Files
6.10
Laura Handoca
6.10
Q. What is a !Boot file?
6.10
A !Boot file contains commands responsible for setting up your
computer in the way that you want it every time you switch it on or do a
<ctrl-reset>. It is worth noting that “booting up” your computer does
not necessarily imply using a !Boot file. The computer has a default
start-up sequence − adding a !Boot file simply tells the computer to
modify its start-up procedure to fit your specifications.
6.10
Q. Where do I find/put it?
6.10
The !Boot file should be placed in the root directory of the default
disc (i.e. your hard disc, or a floppy you keep for “booting up”). For
the sake of convenience, the rest of this article is written assuming
that you have a hard disc. If you don’t, the root directory referred to
is always the one on your “booting up” floppy.
6.10
Q. What can it do?
6.10
It essentially allows you to “personalize” the way in which your
computer sets itself up. You can specify the following things:
6.10
1) Which applications (if any) you want to run
6.10
2) Which mode and palette you use
6.10
3) Allocation of memory
6.10
4) Which (if any) directory viewers are opened − for instance, it is
frequently useful to have the root directory opened automatically to
save you having to click on the relevant disc icon.
6.10
5) The appearance of your pinboard, i.e. whether you want applications
“dropped” on the pinboard, or pretty backdrop pictures installed.
6.10
This is by no means a definitive list but it covers the basics, which
is all beginners really need to know. Once you have grasped the way in
which the !Boot file system works, it is easier to work out more obscure
commands.
6.10
Q. Is there only one !Boot file?
6.10
No. Each application may have one, though it is not vital (see Archive
6.9 p 20), just as all applications have a run file. However, the !Boot
file associated with an application contains only commands for running
that program, so you shouldn’t fiddle with these until you have
graduated from beginner status, or unless you are specifically told to
in an upgrade. The !Boot file we are concerned with here is the one in
the root directory, since that affects the basic computer setup.
6.10
Q. How do I create a !Boot file?
6.10
[N.B. The following explanation only applies if you are using RISC OS
3. Creating a !Boot file in RISC OS 2 is more difficult since there is
no pre-defined method of saving the current setup of your machine as a
file, so you have to type in lots of commands. If you have RISC OS 2 and
need some help, try reading the manual and if you still don’t
understand, write to me. If there is sufficient demand, I will do an
extra article dealing with it. Basically the procedure in RISC OS 2
consists of saving a file of type “Obey” from !Edit that contains the
commands you wish to have executed. You will also need to type
*Configure Boot at the * prompt, as well as executing the lines
concerning the disc and filing system given below.]
6.10
There are two steps involved in creating a !Boot file: setting up the
computer and saving the !Boot file. I will deal with the latter part
first, since it is very simple.
6.10
If you click <menu> over the Acorn on the far right of your iconbar,
you will see an option called “Desktop Boot”. Moving over the arrow
brings up a standard “save” window, with the filename automatically
“!Boot”. Underneath is a box with an option for “Autoboot”, which you
should select (make sure there is a star in the box); this ensures that
the computer will try to run the file every time you start up the
computer. The !Boot file icon can then be dragged to a directory, the
same as any other file or application. Although the main !Boot file is
in the root directory, it is sometimes useful to save it elsewhere,
particularly when editing your !Boot file (see later).
6.10
So much for the mechanics of making a !Boot file: how do you make it
do the things you want? In RISC OS 3, this is generally very simple.
Just follow this procedure:
6.10
1) Switch on the computer or perform a <ctrl-reset> to ensure nothing
else is running.
6.10
2) Set up the machine in the way that you want it to appear, i.e. run
the required applications, set the memory allocation (using the task
manager), mode, palette, etc. Make sure you don’t do anything
unnecessary, such as running an application, deciding you don’t want it,
and quitting it again, since this will clutter your !Boot file. It is
worth spending a little time at this stage working out a plan of
campaign, even to the extent of scribbling down a list of things to do,
before resetting the computer and doing it “for real”. Once you have set
everything up as you want it, simply select the “Desktop Boot” option as
described above and save the !Boot file in the root directory. This
saves the current set-up of the computer as a file.
6.10
In theory, this should now work, but you ought to check the settings
of the default filing system and default drive. To do this, go to the
command line prompt (Press <f12> or bring up a Task Window), and type at
the * prompt:
6.10
    *status drive
6.10
This will tell you which drive number the computer will automatically
look at to find the !Boot file. If you are using a hard disc, this
should normally be “4” whereas if you are using a floppy for booting up,
it should be “0”. If this is wrong, (e.g. says “0” when you want to boot
up from the hard drive) use the command:
6.10
    *configure drive <n>
6.10
You will then need to repeat this procedure for the file system to be
used. Type:
6.10
    *status filesystem
6.10
You should know what filing system you are using − this will usually
be ADFS but if you are using a drive that has been added to your machine
it may be IDEFS or SCSI. If you have the wrong one, type, e.g.
6.10
    *configure filesystem SCSI
6.10
Finally, assuming the current disc and filesystem are the two you have
just configured, type:
6.10
    *opt 4,2
6.10
This sets up the disc such that the computer will try to “*Run” your
!Boot file as opposed to “*exec’ing” it, “*load’ing” it or doing
nothing. (This is mainly a throwback to the days of the BBC B etc.)
6.10
From now on, when your computer is reset, the !Boot file will
automatically be run for you. If, for any reason, you do not want the
!Boot file to be run when you switch on or <ctrl-reset>, hold down
<shift> while the computer is switched on or reset.
6.10
Q. How do I edit my !Boot file?
6.10
You will almost certainly find that, over a period of time, you will
need to modify your !Boot file, perhaps to include a new package you
have bought. In order to edit your !Boot file, you need to understand
what it contains and why.
6.10
Once you have saved your !Boot file, load it into Edit (or any other
desktop editor you happen to use). You can do this by double-clicking on
its icon while holding down <shift>. You will see a variety of types of
line. For instance, if you have set particular memory allocations using
the task manager, you will have lines of the form:
6.10
    ChangeDynamicArea -Fontsize 128K
6.10
If you have specified that the root directory opens automatically, you
will see a line something like:
6.10
    Filer_OpenDir adfs::IDEDisc4.$ 2 918 712 232 -sn -si
6.10
The “-sn” and “-si” refer to size of icons and the sort order of the
files in the directory (i.e. sort by name using small icons here).
6.10
Then there will be an assortment of lines such as:
6.10
Filer_Boot Resources:Apps.!Alarm
6.10
Filer_Boot adfs::IDEDisc4.$.Fonts
6.10
The purpose of these is to tell the computer where to find an
application, so that it can recognize file types without the relevant
application having been run. This is easier to explain using an example.
Let’s say that I somehow managed to set up my !Boot file without the
line:
6.10
    Filer_Boot adfs::IDEDisc4.$. Datastuff.!Squirrel
6.10
Since !Squirrel is not in my root directory, the computer won’t “see”
it when I boot up, even if my root directory is automatically opened. If
I then open a directory containing a Squirrel file, the file icon will
appear blank. When I try to load the file (double-click on the icon) I
get the error message “No run action specified for this file type”.
However, if I add the above line to my !Boot file, the file will have a
Squirrel icon and double clicking on it will load Squirrel.
6.10
There will then be a section concerned with the mode and palette. e.g:
6.10
    Wimpmode 27
6.10
Set this to the mode you find most comfortable to work in. Then:
6.10
    Desktop SetPalette (followed by a string of characters)
6.10
Then you may find a section specifying which applications to run.
These will be of the form:
6.10
    Run adfs::IDEDisc4.$.Toolkit. Spellcheck.!Spell
6.10
If you have set out the backdrop in any way, i.e. dropped icons onto
it, or created a backdrop sprite, there will be some lines starting with
the word “Pin”. To set up a backdrop sprite, drop a sprite file onto the
pinboard and choose one of the “Make Backdrop” options from the menu
obtained when the pointer is over the file. When the !Boot file is saved
the relevant line will be present. The sprite file does not need to
remain on the pinboard.
6.10
You can edit the !Boot file in one of two ways. Either type in new
commands following the pattern of the existing ones, or use a second
!Boot file. The latter method may be better if you are not sure of what
to type. Again, it is easiest to explain by giving an example.
6.10
Imagine you have just bought Artworks and since you do a lot of
drawing, you decide to modify your !Boot file to install Artworks on the
iconbar ready for immediate use. Reset your computer (as you did for
creating the initial !Boot file), run Artworks, and save a new !Boot
file somewhere other than the root directory. Alternatively, drag the
!Boot file icon to the iconbar and drop it onto the !Edit icon. This
will load it into !Edit without it being saved anywhere on disc (this
can be a useful technique in many situations with most types of file).
Of course, in order to do this you will need to have opened another
directory, but it doesn’t matter this time.
6.10
Load (i.e. press <shift> and double-click on the icon) both the new
!Boot file and the main one into your text editor (e.g. !Edit). Find the
line relating to running Artworks in the new file, and copy it into the
main file. Save the main file and delete the new one. If you now reboot
your computer, you should find Artworks installed on the iconbar.
6.10
Complications and points of confusion
6.10
1) You may find that not all the applications you have run when
preparing your !Boot file appear when you next start up the machine. The
probable cause is that they were written before RISC OS 3 and don’t know
about the new operating system. The only way to make these work is to
type in the relevant line in the !Boot file, following the pattern
explained above. The easy way to do this is to type RUN and then hold
<shift> down and drag the application into the Edit window. This
automatically enters the full pathname of the application for you.
6.10
2) Setting up the !Alarms application... There seem to have been
numerous problems with this, so either no-one reads the manual or else
the manual is unclear. I don’t want to explain the whole of !Alarm here
− there are 12 pages devoted to it in the manual, and at least some of
it makes sense! I am really concerned here with how you incorporate a
particular set of alarms you have created into your !Boot file.
6.10
Basically, once you have sorted out the selection of alarms you want,
and the set up of !Alarm (e.g. the format of the time display on the
iconbar), save an Alarm file somewhere relevant. You then need to save a
temporary !Boot file which you can load into !Edit. Find the lines which
refer to !Alarm, and copy them into your main !Boot file. They will look
something like:
6.10
    Set Alarm$Options -timeout “10” -weekwork 62 -format “%z12:
6.10
%mi %pm. %we %zdy%st %m3”
6.10
    Run Resources:$.Apps.!Alarm adfs::IDEDisc4.$.Library.Alarms
6.10
The first line refers to the format of the “clock” on the iconbar. The
second one tells the computer to run the !Alarm application, loading up
the alarm file you have just saved. This is the bit at the end of the
second line, i.e. “ADFS::IDE-Disc4.$.Library.Alarms”. You should beware
of the fact that your alarm file won’t be loaded up automatically unless
it appears in the !Boot file; simply being saved in the root directory
is not enough. An alarm file is essentially like any other file; the
computer does not know to chose any specific file unless you tell it to
do so!
6.10
For the more ambitious
6.10
The !Boot file does not need to be a file, it can also be an
application directory called !Boot. This can contain a !Run, !Boot,
!Sprites file etc, as with any other application.
6.10
When the !Boot application is run, the !Run file will be executed
first. This happens before the Desktop is started up and can be useful
since some things are better done at this point. You can put a line in
the !Run file that will start up the Desktop, using a file of the type
we have been discussing in the rest of the article (but change the
filename from !Boot“ to something else!) to set up the Desktop to your
preferred specifications. A suitable line might be:
6.10
    Desktop -File <Desktop boot file>
6.10
N.B. This Desktop boot file is NOT the one called !Boot in the !Boot
application directory. That !Boot file is only responsible for setting
up things to do with the !Boot application, NOT the setup of the
computer. In theory the “<desktop boot file>” could be called anything
and saved anywhere; in practice it is most convenient to keep it in the
!Boot application directory.  A
6.10
Spreadsheet Column
6.10
Chris Johnson
6.10
Schema
6.10
Don Lewis has sent me a long letter on the subject of Schema in an
attempt to redress the balance of the column a little. Brian Cowan’s
article in the April issue has prompted him to say a few things in
favour of Schema, which he thinks is a most under-sung spreadsheet. Don
writes...
6.10
“I can compare Schema with Brian Cowan’s description of Eureka, and
the only facility that he lists that is not shared by Schema seems to be
the automatic alignment of split windows (although this can be done
manually with little effort and any settings are preserved after a
reload). All other features of Eureka that he mentions are present and,
in addition, the manual has an index! It has  window splitting
vertically and horizontally (both together and there seems to be no
limit on the number of views); full outline font facilities in cells or
blocks; row and column size changes by dragging; a good selection of
functions including matrix arithmetic − I do not know how powerful in
comparison and, being a physiologist instead of a physicist, my demands
will be less than his.
6.10
I accept that Schema is quite slow to load, but a little careful
planning of the day reduces that problem. Its tendency to crash for no
apparent reason adds to the problem as well as being a major drawback in
itself. Saving to disc, however, is fast enough and I do this frequently
to avoid losing major changes in a spreadsheet. Loading is especially a
problem if you use the facility to reference a cell back through a chain
of other spreadsheets − but this is a very useful facility, and if a
crash occurs with one sheet in use the others often remain available.
6.10
One trick that I have learnt concerns restructuring a sheet. I have
had to divide sheets that have become too large and, at first, simply
deleted a block of rows or columns. To my surprise, I found that the
stored file was no shorter even after reloading and resaving. It seems
that old data is retained. This is easily overcome by deleting the data
in the block (with <ctrl-X> rather than <ctrl-W>) before erasing the
rows or columns.
6.10
One great advantage of Schema is its macro facility (which Eureka
seems not to have). (Eureka 2 apparently does − see below for news of
its imminence. Ed)  It is very easy to use because it is a sub-set of
Basic rather than some obscure set of unintelligible symbols (Logistix).
Also, there is a simple access to SYS commands.
6.10
You can also use quite complex Basic commands in cells if you want to
avoid a Macro. This has to be on one line but it is possible to use ‘:’
separators as in Basic. I have not yet found the limit to the length of
such a command (which does not seem to be discussed in the manual). One
problem with Macros is that you are liable to lose parts or get a
garbled version after reloading if too many are used together but this
only seems to happen when developing them rather than using them to
analyse data.
6.10
The graphics are rather limited and are aimed more at attractive
commercial presentations rather than detailed scientific graphs for
publication. Graphs do not update automatically but redrawing is quite
quick. Schema offers three levels of graphics commands, and the lowest
level (Basic-like with a few simple windows facilities) allows very easy
development of specialized packages. I think I have (or can) incorporate
all the features of the best IBM graphics packages − I have used FigP
and Harvard Graphics. I have not attempted to add the facility to mix
several graphs on one sheet but it is so easy to do a montage in Draw −
which is necessary anyway to rotate text for vertical labelling of the
ordinate.
6.10
The other advantage quoted for Eureka is the level of commitment of
Longmans. Clares initially referred one of my queries to the authors of
Schema, and I found the latter very helpful on this and other occasions
when I wrote directly. I have been told that they are working on a major
revision that will take care of the loading speed and provide more
extensive graphics facilities. I believe this has been much delayed
because it involved substantial rewriting, but a version should be
available soon for trials.”
6.10
Thanks Don − perhaps this will be the catalyst to prompt other users
of Schema to write.
6.10
Eureka
6.10
Before I start on the technical side, Paul tells me he has received a
press release from Longman Logotron which states, “Eureka 2 is now
available”. When I rang them, Longman Logotron said that it would
actually be available “in about two weeks” (8/6/93). The good news is
that the price is not increasing and registered users will get their
upgrade free of charge − send in those registration cards, quickly.
6.10
Printing
6.10
John Wallace, of Longman Logotron, has been kind enough to set the
record straight on printing selected areas of a sheet. He writes, “When
printing out a selection from a worksheet, first select the area(s)
required. Next, choose ‘Option−>Set print area’ which creates a name in
the name list called ‘Print_Area’. When you go to print, the selection
made at the time ‘Set print area’ was chosen will be printed out. You do
not need to go through ‘Formula−>Goto...−>’ first each time. The option
to print checks to see if the name ‘Print_Area’ is defined and, if so,
uses it. To see the name definition, either press <ctrl-N> with the
worksheet selected or choose ‘Formula−>Define name...−>’, which opens
the ‘Define name’ dialogue box.”
6.10
This means that, if you subsequently want to print the whole sheet,
you must either delete the name ‘Print_Area’ from the name list or, as I
sometimes do, rename it, so that the program no longer finds the name
‘Print_Area’ when it checks.
6.10
Memory problems
6.10
A number of users are having difficulties using Eureka on a 2Mb
machine, because of its voracious appetite (in Archimedes terms) for
memory. Some of the manifestations of memory shortage are unexpected.
For example, J.A.Brook normally uses mode 27, but because memory was
getting tight, he changed to mode 12, and carried on working for a while
before saving the sheet. On a subsequent occasion, he attempted to load
the data back in while in mode 27 and, to his horror, the sheet appeared
on screen but all the cells were blank! However, when he then changed to
mode 12, all the cells immediately filled with their original contents!
6.10
I have tried a few tests on my machine (a 4Mb A5000, and so the page
size is 32Kb), with version 1.0 of Eureka. When installed on the
iconbar, Eureka takes a slot of 1088Kb. However, it also takes 64Kb of
RMA during the installation process. (It does not appear to claim this
permanently, so after installation it can be reclaimed by dragging the
RMA bar in the task manager display.) Loading a 43Kb sheet, causes the
wimp slot to be extended by 64Kb, the slot now being at 1152 Kb. What I
have also noticed is that when the menu is accessed and a dialogue box
is created for the first time, the wimp slot is extended by another
32Kb, so the slot is now at 1184Kb. It is little wonder that memory is
tight on a 2Mb machine. If the sheet is closed, the wimp slot is not
reduced below the 1184Kb size.
6.10
I believe that one of the areas that LL are working on is memory
management and slot size. However, I think we have to accept that the
more features an application has, the more code is going to be needed.
Anyone who has installed applications on PCs or Macs will be aware of
how much code can be involved on these platforms. PC applications make
frequent use of overlays because of memory constraints (i.e. only part
of the program is in memory at any one time).
6.10
Closing sheets
6.10
A few users have been puzzled by the way that, when you lose a sheet,
Eureka sometimes seems to retain the sheet in memory and sometimes not.
Eureka treats the close boxes on the worksheet and the control bar/edit
box differently. If you click on the close box of the worksheet, then it
is closed AND removed from memory (a dialogue is opened if the sheet has
been modified and not saved). If, however, you use the close box on the
edit window, the sheet is simply removed from the screen and can be
reactivated from the iconbar menu (following Window−>), when a list of
all sheets closed in this way is displayed. This is somewhat similar to
the “new view” option in Impression. Page A−55 of the manual summarises
the ways sheets can be closed.
6.10
Default fonts
6.10
If you are tired of continually setting the font to your favourite
style, and you almost always use the same outline font in your sheets,
it is possible to change the defaults used by Eureka. It is necessary to
edit the !run file of the application. (Keep a backup of the original in
case you do something silly! Open the !Eureka application directory by
double clicking on it with <shift> held down and load !run into Edit or
a similar editor. Near the end of the file, you should find something
like the following.
6.10
| Default setup for RO3, ARM3 and VGA.
6.10
| Set Eureka$WinLibSystemFont : +font=Homerton.Medium +size=12
6.10
| Set Eureka$WinLibDialogFont : +font=Homerton.Bold +size=10
6.10
| Set Eureka$WorksheetFont : +font=Homerton.Medium +size=10
6.10
As supplied on the master disc, each of these lines has the vertical
bar at the start. This means that it is treated as a comment and
ignored, so the system font is used as default. Using your working copy
of the application, if you remove the comment bar and resave the file,
the font named will be used as default next time Eureka is started. You
can also change the name and size of the font to your favourite (using
the exact font name). Do not change the format of the lines or insert or
delete spaces. You can choose only to use an outline font for the work
area of the sheet or also for dialogue boxes and windows, depending on
which comment bars you remove. Note that some of the changes will only
be apparent when you create a new sheet, since old sheets will remember
the old default font.
6.10
The first line above implies that these defaults are suggested for use
with ARM3 machines, but the newer ARM250 machines are much faster than
the ARM2 machines and should cope with the extra load on the processor.
In the final analysis, it is the user who decides what is acceptable in
terms of speed of screen update and so on.
6.10
Window tool sprites
6.10
John Wallace (of Longman Logotron) points out that one of the
commonest questions he is being asked is, “Eureka uses its own window
tool sprites, but I have my own window tool sprites. Can Eureka use the
new window tool sprites?” He writes “The answer to this question is, I’m
pleased to say, yes, if the user has version 1.04 of the software.
6.10
All that is required is for the user to copy the sprite file ‘Tools3D’
into the !Eureka application directory. When run, Eureka will use the
new 3D window tool sprites in preference to the default standard window
tool sprites.”
6.10
How to contact me
6.10
My postal address is Chris Johnson, 7, Lovedale Grove, Balerno,
Edinburgh, EH14 7DR; I can also be contacted by e-mail as
[e-mail] .clust if you have access.
6.10
I am happy to receive anything in connection with spreadsheets, hints
or tips, problems, solutions to problems, or just requests for help.
What would also be of interest is examples of unusual uses of
spreadsheets.  A
6.10
The Puddle and the Wardrobe
6.10
Hilary Ferns
6.10
This pack is aimed at children at pre-school level and the lower end
of the infant school, and comprises two separate programs. Each program
comes on its own unprotected disc. The discs may be copied for use on
other machines within the establishment. (It cannot be installed on a
network.) Additionally, the pack contains a few worksheets for colouring
and some simple concept keyboard overlays.
6.10
The programs load by double-clicking in the directory viewer, but do
not load onto the iconbar. They both take over the whole screen, which I
think is an advantage for young children. Throughout both programs, the
mouse control is simple, but they also support the Concept Keyboard (as
for the BBC), which can be linked via Acorn’s midi or i/o podule.
6.10
A poem is the basis for ‘The Puddle’, explaining how Teddy ‘Got his
brolly in a muddle’ and ‘Stepped into a great big puddle.’ The poem does
not appear in the program but is provided as an introductory activity in
an A5 black and white booklet, together with the song version.
6.10
The screen is clear and colourful, with bold pictures, but the
graphics, although adequate for the purpose, are not quite as
sophisticated as in many recent RISC OS programs. Freddy Teddy is seen
walking through the rain, with sound effects, holding his umbrella and
when he falls in the puddle, the children need to remember the colour of
all five items of his clothing in order to hang them on the line to dry.
If an incorrect choice is made, Teddy will appear briefly to remind
them. The time that he remains on the screen is determined by options
set on the teachers’ page. Teddy has quite an infectious laugh when the
task is successfully completed.
6.10
In ‘The Wardrobe’, the children choose between the gardening, the
snow, the paddling pool or the bathroom scenes. The task is then to
choose five suitable items which must be taken in the correct order.
Again, the pictures and colours are bold and there are one or two sound
effects. Quacking ducks appear in each scene, even in the bath!
6.10
The attractive thing about the programs is their simplicity and ease
of use for young children, each offering only one simple task. Another
bonus is that they could form a part of many different cross-curricular
classroom topics, including work about teddybears, colours, clothes,
types of materials, weather, etc. There are lots of places where they
would fit in quite naturally. However, their use is limited to the very
young. (I understand that ‘The Playground’, is another Freddy Teddy
game, introducing logo-type commands, and would seem to be a suitable
sequel.)
6.10
The Puddle and the Wardrobe costs £29.95 +VAT from Topologika or £32
through Archive.  A
6.10
PipeLineZ
6.10
Gerald Fitton
6.10
Thanks for your letters, problems, discs, words of praise, criticisms,
etc. Once again, because of the quantity, I am including many of the
details on the Archive monthly disc. Because of deadlines, it is too
early to know whether you approve of this transfer of information from
written word to disc. Let me know and I’ll fall in with your wishes.
6.10
Wordz labels
6.10
The directory Labels on the monthly disc contains copies of
correspondence I’ve had with Steve Harratt.
6.10
He wants to print a logo of his camera club on each of the 18 labels
of an Avery 3 by 6 label sheet. The essence of the solution is to make
18 copies of the logo as a drawfile and then paste the DrawFile into
Wordz as a backdrop. The names and addresses are then entered as a CSV
file (originated in PipeDream) and dragged into a Wordz document as a
table of labels.
6.10
The monthly disc contains Steve’s example worked out in full.
6.10
A school project
6.10
The following is an edited letter I received from Alan Jackson of New
Zealand. Please contact him directly for further information about this
project.
6.10
“Dear Gerald, During our winter School holidays, I was going to take
three 16 year old boys to a three day equestrian event. The organiser of
the event was planning to do the admin on Viewsheet and came to us, in
advance, for advice. We decided to produce the results using PipeDream.
6.10
The whole event would be spread over three days, Day 1 being dressage,
Day 2 the cross country and Day 3 the show jumping. The organisers
needed daily totals as well as a running total. We used the opportunity
to stretch some of our keener and more able students and it turned out
to be a three and a half day job in the field, and several sessions
after school in the planning.
6.10
There were three competing age groups and we treated them on separate
sheets, the sheets for Senior and Intermediate were identical in
structure.
6.10
Needless to say we made some silly mistakes, like having an enormous
sheet which we tried to move around quickly. We would have been better,
I think, to delete and save a large block of results (say for day 2 when
there was a large number of scores for each fence) and then re-insert
them for the final scores before the end of the last day.
6.10
Fortunately, the board for the Laser Direct arrived in the lunchtime
post on the day we departed for the event at 4pm and we were able to
produce the printout extremely quickly indeed.
6.10
At the end of each day, we produced the daily tally and at the end of
the event we did produce the results we were asked for inside 10 minutes
of the final presentation, so that competitors could buy a full copy of
their own and their team’s results before they left for home.
6.10
The header page we used to form the cover of the results booklet was
created on Impression using their equestrian logo (scanned on Scanlight
Junior and pixel-edited in !Paint) and the new borders from Computer
Concepts.
6.10
It was a good way to get to know PipeDream, good practical work for
the boys involved, (we were able to give credits for internal assessment
in the Computer Studies course), useful public relations for the School
and the fastest set of results that this event had ever had in its
twenty odd years. I think that some schools in UK might be able to use
the idea and perhaps make some money for new school equipment by using
their equipment and selling their services.
6.10
Feel free to circulate the sheets so that they might form the basis of
some improvement for other sporting events.
6.10
Alan Jackson, 77 Hull Street, OAMARU, New Zealand. ([phone])”
6.10
Electricity usage
6.10
Mr B R Merridan has sent me what he describes as “quite a simple
electric chart calculator” which you will find on the Archive monthly
disc together with an explanation of how to use it.
6.10
Help
6.10
R J Darby asks for help with a couple of problems for which he has
provided disc examples. I have transferred his files to the Archive
disc. If you have a solution, could you contact him directly, please?
6.10
Mr Merridan also asks for help with the following: “Has anybody any
ideas how parts of the grid can be left out of titles, etc? As you will
see by my spreadsheet, the headings all have grid lines running through
them.”
6.10
My reply included the following remark. In PipeDream, it is not
possible to selectively delete the grid. In the past, I have used a
separate graphic to produce a grid but this is a very fiddly job and I
don’t recommend it. Of course, it would be possible to use a combination
of Wordz and PipeDream to do exactly what you want but PipeDream and
Wordz are not hot linked! Resultz will be hot linked to Wordz and the
PipeDream spreadsheet should be easily ‘ported’ into Resultz. Maybe that
is the long term solution!
6.10
Mr Merridan’s second problem reads: “I have a Hewlett Packard 500C
printer, RISC OS 3, a 40Mb Hard disc and 4Mb of RAM. I would like to
know how to do a screen print and how do I get it to print in colour −
in simple terms please.”
6.10
My reply: To ‘screen print’ from the Archimedes first you need to
capture your screen as a sprite. You do this by loading the application
!Paint and ‘grabbing’ the whole screen as a sprite. The sprite can then
be printed from the !Paint application or, if you wish, loaded into a
different application (such as PipeDream) and printed from the other
application.
6.10
So far as printing in colour is concerned, you need a colour RISC OS
printer driver suitable for your printer. Generally, these are provided
by the suppliers of the printer but, if you have RISC OS 3, then one of
the colour printer drivers supplied by Acorn should ‘work’ with your
printer.
6.10
Printing bar charts
6.10
Michael Sawle suggests that there should be an option in PipeDream 4
to print the bars of the bar charts in shades of grey. Does anyone know
how to arrange to do this? His second problem is that he wants to print
the names of the bars in the centre of each of the bars. Can you help?
6.10
Custom function monitoring
6.10
Andrew Murray has developed a custom function which monitors custom
functions. He says:
6.10
“The enclosed material may be useful to any of your members who are
involved in developing Custom Functions for PipeDream 4. It provides a
convenient facility for displaying custom function parameters (and other
values) within a custom function program under development. It consists
of a set of custom functions in the document [c_o], including a function
“example” designed to demonstrate the facilities provided, which is
invoked from the document [Example].”
6.10
The functions created by Andrew are on the monthly disc in the
directory CustomChck.
6.10
Premier league
6.10
Philip Tolhurst (amongst many others) would like some help with a
spreadsheet of football league results. All the files are on the Archive
monthly disc in the directory Football.
6.10
Nested ifs
6.10
I have been asked many times how to do away with nested Ifs. One such
questioner is C G Hillier of the Mark Rutherford School whose nested If
looks like the following few lines:
6.10
if(K57=18,8,if(K57=17,8,
6.10
if(K57=16,7,if(K57=15,7,
6.10
if(K57=14,7,if(K57=13,6,
6.10
if(K57=12,6,if(K57=11,6,
6.10
if(K57=10,5,if(K57=9,5,
6.10
if(K57=8,5,if(K57=7,4,
6.10
if(K57=6,4,if(K57=5,4,
6.10
    ))))))))))))))
6.10
The quick answer is to use a custom function which uses a lookup
table. The directory WineList on the Archive monthly disc is a typical
example for which I developed such an approach for an Australian reader,
Ian Masterton. You might find it useful if you have this kind of
problem.
6.10
ChartArt
6.10
On the Archive monthly disc is a directory called Bridge. It is a
light hearted attempt to make the Chart facility of PipeDream 4 produce
pictures. The function in the Bridge directory produces a likeness of a
suspension bridge! Robert Macmillan of Colton Software is offering a
small prize for any (reasonably good) ChartArt!
6.10
Finally
6.10
In their uncompressed form, the PipeLineZ files on the Archive disc
amount to about 300Kb. The text of this article is about 10Kb so you can
see that there is much more on the disc than I could ever include in
print in the magazine. Please let me know your reactions to this
strategy. Would you prefer one or two items dealt with in depth in the
magazine or do you prefer this new strategy of more blanket cover with
details on the disc?
6.10
Please let me have your contributions, problems, solutions and letters
on disc so that I can more easily make them available to others without
having to re-key. The Post Office are chewing up more of our post than
they used to so please use a Mail-lite (or similar) bag and ensure that
no part of the disc is under the stamp or I might have to rebuild a
broken disc in an attempt to read it. Like the Archive Editor, I am
having to remove the shutter mechanism completely from too many discs
that have been hit by the franking machine! Also, please don’t put any
sellotape on the disc shutter − it is almost impossible to remove
cleanly.  A
6.10
DTP & Programmers’ Utilities Disc
6.10
Hutch Curry
6.10
Software 42 have released a disc of utility programs ostensibly
designed to assist the programmer and/or DTP user. The supplied disc
contains six programs and costs £15. A site licence is also available
for £30. The version available for review was incomplete as the manuals
were not supplied. There were, however, text files on disc with complete
instructions. The contents of the disc are as follows:
6.10
Broadcast (Version 1.10)
6.10
Broadcast is a utility to display standard RISC OS draw and sprite
files at the PAL broadcast display quality of 625 lines at 50 Hz frame
rate with 2:1 interlace. This corresponds to a digital resolution of 768
× 576 pixels with a 4:3 aspect ratio. The primary use of Broadcast is to
transfer images from the Archimedes to video tape or other video sources
via either the monochrome composite video output or a colour PAL encoder
card (available from third party suppliers).
6.10
Additionally, Broadcast can be used to display sprites from multi-scan
monitor modes on a normal monitor and to obtain the highest quality
display of drawfiles possible on a normal monitor. Images are displayed
using the maximum of 256 colours currently available on the Archimedes,
with additional colour enhancement from the supplied application
CTenhance (see below). However, as CTenhance is apparently not
compatible with RISC OS version 3.1, I was unable to judge its merits
when used in conjunction with Broadcast.
6.10
Broadcast was easy enough to use in each of its modes. To be honest, I
had never previously wanted to transfer images from the Archimedes to
video tape. Having now done so, I don’t think I will have much future
use of this facility. I expect that for others this may be a ‘useful’
utility.
6.10
ComndCTRL & CommandC (Version 1.10)
6.10
Command Control (ComndCTRL) is a utility program providing an easy and
flexible way to use *-commands from the Desktop without having to resort
to f12 and the keyboard. Many *-commands are provided in the companion
CommandC application. Clicking on this application will open two viewers
containing configuration (CFG) files. The viewers are named Internal for
RISC OS *-commands and External for command line programs/utilities. Any
of these configurations can be loaded and installed on the iconbar by
double clicking on them. As different parameters need to be set for
different commands, there is a facility for entering parameters from the
menu of each command.
6.10
One of the nicer features is the ease with which additional commands
can be created and saved for later use. In general, I thought this was
the most useful of the utilities and it is now always to be found on my
iconbar.
6.10
CTEnhance (Version 1.0)
6.10
CTEnhance stands for ColourTrans Enhancement and is a module and
RISC OS front end application designed to greatly increase the number of
colours which can be represented by the ColourTrans module. The
ColourTrans module is used by many RISC OS applications to represent 24
bit RGB colour values on the limited palette available with the current
Archimedes display system. Current versions of ColourTrans (0.52 & 0.62)
work by selecting the closest colour to the desired 24 bit RGB value,
which can be found from the current palette. This gives a fairly good
representation in 256 colour modes, but very poor results in modes with
less colour, especially in two colour modes where only black or white
can be used. CTenhance allegedly increases the number of colours in all
modes by using a technique of error diffused dithering.
6.10
I use the term allegedly as I was unable to get CTEnhance to work
sensibly. With RISC OS Version 3.1 there appeared to be some essential
incompatibility between ColourTrans and CTEnhance as all the greys and
black went to the same mucky dark grey. Menus became dark rectangles
with no visible text. Undeterred, I then tried CTEnhance on a RISC OS 2
machine and − although there were no untoward effects, I was unable to
get it to do anything very obvious. The problem may have been due to my
lack of understanding on what I should do. However, if that were the
case then the supplied documentation is clearly inadequate.
6.10
GraphTask (Version 3.0)
6.10
GraphTask is an application to provide a Graphic TaskWindow as an
extension to the Edit taskwindow concept. GraphTask allows the full use
of graphics, whilst preserving the ability to run true RISC OS tasks at
the same time. According to Software 42, Graphtask is aimed at the
enthusiast programmer who is able to write small non-wimp programs, and
would like them to run in a window on the desktop, but does not have the
time or the expertise to tackle the complicated RISC OS windowing
operating systems calls. Additionally, GraphTask should appeal to anyone
who has a desire or requirement to run pre-RISC OS Archimedes programs
or BBC (Model A, B, Master, Compact or Electron) programs.
6.10
Most Basic and machine code programs can be used in a Graphic
Taskwindow as long as they:
6.10
Are not proper RISC OS windowing programs.
6.10
Do not directly access the screen.
6.10
Do not try to re-configure the machine.
6.10
Do not claim operating system vectors or use interrupt code.
6.10
Do not try to leave the desktop, (65Host or PC emulator).
6.10
Eight bit BBC computer programs which require 65Host will not work but
65Tube can be used to run Basic or 6502 assembler programs in a Graphic
Taskwindow. 65Tube can be entered by typing *EmulateTube from within a
taskwindow.
6.10
Programs which try to redefine the cursor keys or action (OS_Byte 4 /
*FX4) will run but not always function correctly, e.g. Arm Basic Editor.
Programs which use multiple screen buffers to improve graphics updating
will run, but will not always give the correct display in the Graphic
Taskwindow.
6.10
GraphTask should be easy to use. It starts in the usual manner by
double-clicking on its icon − it then installs itself on the iconbar.
Compatible programs can then be run within a Graphic Taskwindow by
either dragging the file to the iconbar icon or opening a new task
window and using the command line. However, dragging of files from
filing systems other than SCSI or ADFS (such as SparkFS or FlopFS) threw
up continual path errors. Once it was loaded, I found that only about
80% of the programs I tried worked successfully with an acceptable level
of graphical output. In addition there is, of course, a speed penalty
for running in a Taskwindow. This seemed excessive and would put me off
its regular use. For example, the Finsbury benchmarks, which ran as a
single task in 0.87 seconds, took 117 seconds in the task window. A
simple graphical benchmark of point plotting went from 0.39 to 11.34
seconds by running it in the task window.
6.10
For those of you who are particularly interested in this sort of
Graphic Taskwindow, you should be aware of the existence of a public
domain application called VMode by Brian Brunswick that fulfils the same
role.
6.10
PrintCTRL (Version 1.10)
6.10
PrintCTRL has been designed for the Star LC10 colour, and other
printers in the Star range, to provide comprehensive printer
configuration and background text file printing. According to the
documentation, the program will also work both with colour printers that
provide Epson JX/EX emulation and with most Epson compatible monochrome
printers. All printer command codes are contained in a resource file
which can be altered by the user to suit non-standard printers.
6.10
PrintCTRL can be used either with applications which output to the
printer in text mode or from the desktop directly. When printing text
files from the desktop, printing is done in the background (other tasks
continue running). PrintCTRL can also be used to set up the printer
before any printing is done, selecting various printing styles not
normally available.
6.10
As I do not have access to a Star or other compatible colour printer,
I was unable to assess how well PrintCTRL performs in colour. However, I
was successfully able to use the program with an elderly 8 pin Kaga
(Epson FX compatible) printer. I was able to modify the file of printer
codes to provide very effective control over all selectable aspects of
the printer such as font selection, type size and so on. The background
printing of text files was a definite plus.
6.10
SWIStat (Version 1.01)
6.10
The SWIstat application provides information on the activity of all
SoftWare Interrupts (SWI’s) occurring in your machine. From my own point
if view, this was far and away the most interesting program in the
suite. According to Software 42, it is intended for programmers who wish
to debug or improve the efficiency of their program’s interface with the
OS, or their own modules. It does this by showing exactly which software
interrupt calls are being made, when and in what quantity.
6.10
When started, SWIstat installs itself on the iconbar. Clicking on this
icon will open the main window. This window contains information on all
the currently installed modules in the machine. Each module that
provides SWI’s has its own entry, giving its name and a value and a
graphic display of this value, similar to the bars used in the Task
Manager’s window. The value is either the total number of SWI calls
handled by modules since the application was first installed in the
machine, or the number of calls handled in a set time period.
6.10
Clicking on any of the module names will display a sub-window for that
module. The contents of the window are similar to those of the main
window, except that the number of calls (totals or per interval) for
each SWI that the module provides are displayed. The first entry is the
total for the module, as is displayed in the main window.
6.10
In use, this application worked faultlessly and provides a fascinating
insight into what is going on behind the scenes in your Archimedes. It
is very revealing to look at what the operating system is getting up to
when the machine is switched on and supposedly doing nothing.
6.10
Conclusion
6.10
I think that Software 42 have actually misnamed this suite of
programs. I spend the vast majority of my waking hours either
programming or using DTP. I do not believe that any of these programs
will actually be useful to me in either of these pursuits. This is not
to say that none of the programs are useful. However, I think that the
programs will be found to be of use (or not) equally across the range of
Archimedes users. Because of the problems with some of the programs, I
cannot enthusiastically recommend that everyone should rush out and buy
a copy. But if you do, I am sure that you will find sufficient utility
to justify the expense.  A
6.10
Northwest SEMERC     Fitton Hill
CDC, Rosary Road, Oldham, OL8 2QE. (061−627−4469)
6.10
Oak Solutions (p12)    Suite 25,
Robin Enterprise Centre, Leeds Road, Idle, Yorkshire BD10 9TE.
(0274−620423) (0274−620419)
6.10
Oak Solutions     Broadway House, 149−151 St Neots Road, Hardwick,
Cambridge, CB3 7QJ. (0954−211760) (0954−211760)
6.10
Oregan Developments     36 Grosvenor
Avenue, Streetly, Sutton Coldfield, B74 3PE.
6.10
Pineapple Software    39 Brownlea
Gardens, Seven Kings, Ilford, Essex IG3 9NL. (081−599−1476)
(081−598−2343)
6.10
RESOURCE     Exeter Road, Doncaster, DN2 4PY. (0302−340331)
6.10
Risc Developments     117 Hatfield
Road, St Albans, Herts, AL1 4JS. (0727−840303) (0727−860263)
6.10
Software 42     109 Ferry Road, Hullbridge, Essex, SS5 6EL.
6.10
State Machine     75 Upper Wellington Street, Luton, Bedfordshire, LU1
5AA. (0582−483377) (0582−480833)
6.10
Techsoft UK Ltd     Old School
Lane, Erryrs, Mold, Clwyd, CH7 4DA. (082−43318)
6.10
T-J Reproductions     Unit 42,
Sapcote Trading Centre, Dudden Hill Lane, Willesden, London, NW10 2DJ.
(081−451−6220) (081−451−6441)
6.10
Topologika     P.O. Box 39, Stilton, Peterborough, PE7 3RL. (0733−244682)
6.10
Turing Tools     149 Campbell Road, Cowley, Oxford, OX4 3NX.
(0865−775059)
6.10
Widgit Software     102 Radford
Road, Leamington Spa, CV31 1LF. (0926−885303)
6.10
Wild Vision     15 Witney Way, Boldon Colliery, Tyne & Wear NE35 9PE.
(091−519−1455) (091−519−1929)
6.10
Wyddfa Software     3 Preswylfa,
Llanberis, Gwynedd, LL55 4LF. (0286−870101) (0286−871722)

An Exciting Future? − Part 2
6.11
I promise that I didn’t know anything about Acorn’s new ARM700 machines
(see the Hardware Column on page 19) when I prophesied last month that
Acorn would not be releasing any new machines at the Acorn World Show.
It looks now as if the new range of machines won’t be available until at
least Spring next year.
6.11
When these new machines are released, Acorn will have an extremely
powerful platform but the real question in my mind is how much will they
be able to draw alongside the PC world. As anyone will know who is
trying to sell Acorn computers into the big wide world, “Is it PC
compatible?” is the death knell of many a sales conversation. So, will
these new machines be able to run WindowsNT as well as RISC OS 4? At the
very least, they must have a 486 card as an internal option as they do
at the moment on the A4000. Will there be tie-ups with some of the big
PC hardware and software companies? I hope so.
6.11
Vision for the Future − Part 2
6.11
In fact, when Acorn announced that the theme for the Acorn World Show
(October 26-28) would be ‘Vision for the Future’, I immediately thought
I had got my prophecy wrong. If you remember, the last ‘Vision for the
Future’ was when Acorn launched the A3010/3020/4000 and the Pocket Book
− I was drooling at the thought of another whole new range of Acorn
machines when the news of the ARM700 machines broke. Drat! Never mind,
1994 will be an exciting year, anyway!
6.11
Last week, I received a visit from Kevin Coleman who is managing the
Acorn World Show. It was obvious from our conversation that Acorn are
certainly intending to make this show ‘different’. They are trying to
attract all sorts of different target audiences, spreading over
education (obviously), home and business users. However, I think the
most significant thing that emerged was that Acorn are working on ‘tie-
ups’ with various big companies − I cannot give any details yet but, as
they say, “Watch this space...” (I can say that among the names being
bandied around include Kodak and Psion − I wish I could say more but
I’ll have to wait until next month.)
6.11
Pocket Book Push
6.11
Acorn are making a big push this summer on the Pocket Book. They have
just launched Schedule, the diary/calendar/appointment book (see the
review on page 15). The lack of a diary was one major factor that caused
people to decide in favour of a Psion 3 − or not to buy one at all.
Although the price of Schedule is £50, and the Pocket Book £250, Acorn
are doing a special summer offer so that you can buy a Pocket Book plus
Schedule for £220. (This offer is available through Archive.)
6.11
Yes, I am excited about the future with Acorn!
6.11
Products Available
6.11
•    10 Out of 10 Maths (Algebra) is the second maths pack from Triple R,
the educational arm of Fourth Dimension. This package covers patterns,
sequences, formulae, graphs, equations, inequalities and symbols. It
covers Curriculum Attainment Target 3 (Algebra) and has material and
levels suitable for children aged 6 to 16 on Key Stages 1 to 4. The
price is £25.95 from Fourth Dimension or £24 through Archive.
6.11
•    £50 off the Pocket Book price − During the summer, Acorn are offering
£50 off the price of the Pocket Book. So you can buy a Pocket Book from
Archive for just £200. The educational package consisting of eleven
Pocket Books plus an A-Link is £1699.50 +VAT. (£1990 inc VAT through
Archive.) Both these offers last until 30th September. What is more,
Acorn have created the ‘missing link’! The almost universal comment
about the Pocket Book is “Why no diary?!” and so...
6.11
•    Acorn Schedule is a new application on SSD ROM for the Pocket Book. It
includes a diary, personal organiser, calendar and timetable. The normal
price will be £49.95 inc VAT but there is a special introductory price
of £19.95 (£19 through Archive) until 30th September.
6.11
•    !AppFS is a network application which speeds up the delivery of
applications to the users. A site licence costs £100 +VAT from Angelsoft
Educational although it is going up to £130 +VAT on 1st September.
6.11
•    Astro upgrade − Topologika have released version 2 of Astro. This is a
set of interactive programs for exploring Earth in Space, i.e. it deals
with the solar system, seasons, the moon, comets, spacecraft, etc. Astro
2 costs £37.50 +VAT including p&p or £41 through Archive. The upgrade
from 1 to 2 costs £8.50 +VAT including p&p from Topologika.
6.11
•    CD special prices − Cumana are offering CDs at special prices up to
the end of December 1993. Their World of Number discs aimed at Key
Stages 3 & 4 are all £59 +VAT + carriage each (£66 through Archive):
Number Games & Short Tasks, Perspectives, Picture Gallery and Who Stole
the Decimal Point? The four-disc set of Creepy Crawlies, Dictionary of
the Living World, Grooves and Image Warehouse is £149 +VAT + carriage
(£164 through Archive) and the Space Encyclopedia is £39 +VAT + carriage
(£44 through Archive).
6.11
•    Champions is a games compilation package from Krisalis. It consists of
World Class Leader Board (golf), Manchester United, World Championship
Squash and World Championship Boxing Manager. This compilation costs
£29.99 from Krisalis or £28 through Archive.
6.11
•    ColourBurst from State Machine is a full CCIR PAL, television and
video recorder compatible graphics card. A new facility of the
ColourBurst is the ability to display a full interlaced overscan TV
mode. This is double the vertical TV resolution currently attainable
with the Archimedes. ColourBurst could therefore be very useful where
access to a large TV type monitor is available.
6.11
ColourBurst provides all of the facilities of the G16 while adding:
larger desktop modes, larger ArtWorks and TrueView preview modes (with
1Mb of on-board memory the desktop can be previewed in up to 1152×848 in
256 colours and ArtWorks can use the 800×600 16 bit per pixel modes);
direct recording to video; on-line broadcasting in 256 colours at
768×576 and other resolutions (the optional PAL genlock expansion allows
the ColourBurst to be synchronised to any external RGB, PAL or S-Video
source); an on-board expansion system to allow various options to be
added without taking up any more expansion slots. The options to be
available during July include: A simple sync genlock, an RGB bandwidth
limiter, a composite PAL and S-Video encoder, a full PAL genlock
expansion and an internal RGB video switch for the A540 and A5000.
6.11
ColourBurst costs £475 including VAT & carriage or £440 through Archive.
6.11
•    Demon’s Lair − This is Fourth Dimension’s new isometric arcade
adventure. A friendly dragon has been chained up by an evil demon and
you and your people are being terrorised by all sorts of nasties. Your
job is to destroy the demon and free the people before their supply of
food runs out. Demon’s Lair is £25.95 from Fourth Dimension or £24
through Archive.
6.11
•    DrawAid − This application, which allows you to create drawfiles from
within Basic programs (reviewed in Archive 5.1 p57) has now been
upgraded to version 2. The new version has been speeded up and now
allows the use of outline fonts. It is fully multitasking on RISC OS 3.1
and can produce multiple drawfiles from a single Basic program. Further
enhancements include additional drawing procedures, procedures to handle
sprites and to input data from CSV files. Extended colour facilities
have also been added allowing definition of any of 16 million colours in
the drawfile. The application comes with fifty varied examples ranging
over topics such as barcode production, gear wheel drawing and the
plotting of mathematical functions.
6.11
Carvic Manufacturing have increased the price from £10 to £12(!) (no
VAT) It seems to be excellent value at that price. DrawAid 1 users can
receive a complete new package of DrawAid 2 by returning their master
disc plus £6 to Carvic.
6.11
•    Eizo monitor prices rising again − We have just been told by Eizo UK
that the prices of their monitors are going up again on 1st August
although they don’t say by how much. So if you are thinking of buying an
Eizo monitor, I suggest you get on the phone to Norwich Computer
Services a.s.a.p.
6.11
•    Electronics magazine database − M. Kay has produced a set of ArcScan
data files covering four electronics magazines for the three years Jan
1990 to Dec 1992. This covers Practical Electronics, Everyday
Electronics, Maplin Electronics and Everyday with Practical Electronics.
Send a cheque for £5 to Mike Kay, 69 Cobnar Road, Woodseats, Sheffield,
S8 8QD.
6.11
•    Ethernet interfaces − Risc Developments’ Ethernet cards are all now
available. They are doing an A3000 mini-podule version for 10base2 (£139
+VAT) and an A5000 half-width podule (£139 +VAT) which also has a
connector for 10base5. There are also internal Ethernet interfaces
(10base2) for the A3020/4000 so that the minipodule slot is still free
for other purposes (£159 +VAT). If you are looking at using 10baseT,
twisted pair Ethernet, Risc Developments have a standard podule version
(A5000 etc) which is also £139 +VAT.
6.11
•    Eureka 2 is now available. It is said to have “over 100 enhancements
and exciting improvements over the first release”. All registered users
will receive a free upgrade and the price remains at £119 + VAT or £130
through Archive. When Chris Johnson gets his upgrade copy, I expect he
will be able to fill us in with a few details.
6.11
•    Floating point accelerator − At long last, the FPA is available and in
stock at Norwich Computer Services. The price is £99 +VAT or £107
through Archive. It can be fitted as standard into A5000s but the only
other users who can take advantage of it at the moment are owners of
ARM3 upgrades that have an FPA socket on them and owners of the later
issue A540s which have an FPA socket on the processor card. Owners of
older A540s (like me) can get a a free upgrade done by “your local Acorn
dealer” (good news!) but the upgrade board won’t be available until the
autumn (bad news!). Brian Cowan has done some initial tests on the FPA
in his Hardware Column on page 18 and made some technical comments about
it. Also, if you want more technical information, you can get a 62-page
data booklet through Vector Services (Acorn Direct) in Wellingborough
for £10 inclusive.
6.11
•    Gothic and Medieval Fonts and Decoration − The Datafile have released
a three-disc set of fonts and artwork. It consists of five outline fonts
plus some Draw fonts plus some Draw clipart for decoration purposes. The
pack costs £31.50 inclusive from Datafile.
6.11
•    HP Deskjet 1200C − (I’ll try to get it right this month...) Hewlett
Packard have just released an A4 (NOT A3!) colour inkjet printer. The
Archive price is £1390 inclusive. The advantage over the 550C is that it
runs at roughly twice the speed and offers a 600×300 dpi enhanced mode.
It has 2M RAM as standard, upgradable to 26Mb! It is also fully Laserjet
AND PostScript (Apple) compatible − the parallel Centronics interface is
standard but others are available as options. For Archimedes use, you
would be well advised to run it on RISC OS 3.1 and buy an Ace PROdriver
(£44) or the new TurboDriver (£53 including a printer cable) when it is
available.
6.11
•    Imagine upgrade − Topologika have released version 2 of their art and
maths pack, Imagine. Imagine 2 has three gallery discs and includes a
free site licence. It costs £47.50 +VAT including p&p or £51 through
Archive. The upgrade from 1 to 2 costs £11 + VAT including p&p from
Topologika.
6.11
•    Krisalis Collection is an arcade games compilation package from
Krisalis. It consists of Mad Professor Mariarti, Revelation, Terramex
and PipeMania. This compilation costs £29.99 from Krisalis or £28
through Archive.
6.11
•    Letters is an educational package from Oak Solutions aimed at Key
Stage 1 English. It provides a fun way for children to learn their
alphabet. It costs £45 + p&p +VAT from Oak Solutions.
6.11
•    Midi / User / Analogue interfaces − Morley Electronics have introduced
some new cards which provide a Midi interface as well as the user and
analogue ports. They are still selling their user/analogue card
(minipodule) for A3000 series computers (£49 +VAT or £53 through
Archive) but now they have a minipodule that has Midi (in, out and
through) as well as user and analogue (£57 +VAT or £62 through Archive).
If you want a standard podule version, the analogue/user port is one
half-width podule (£49 +VAT or £53 through Archive) and the Midi add-on
for it (£35 +VAT or £38 through Archive) is a separate half-width podule
linked by a cable. It can be placed above or by the side of the other
podule for flexibility.
6.11
•    Oak Logic is Oak Solutions’ new package designed to allow logic
circuits to be designed and tested on screen before being made. When you
have created your circuits with logic gates, inputs and outputs plus
astables and indicator lamps, you can watch the logic states change and
generate a truth table. Oak Logic is £99.95 + carriage + VAT from Oak
Solutions or £110 through Archive.
6.11
•    OakPCB − The latest version of Oak Solutions’ PCB and schematic design
software supports up to four-layer boards plus solder mask and drilling
layers, it allows tracks to intelligently attach themselves to pads, it
uses outline fonts and allows import and export of drawfiles. The new
version of WorraCAD is £99.95 + carriage + VAT from Oak Solutions or
£110 through Archive.
6.11
•    Oak Recorder 2 − Oak Solutions have upgraded their Oak Recorder. The
new version includes the SoundLab software sold separately for users of
the old Oak Recorder for £19.95 +p&p +VAT (£22 through Archive). The
other two improvements are a better microphone and the fact that the
microphone is plugged into a socket so that other sound sources can plug
into the interface ready for sampling. The price of Oak Recorder II is
£39.95 + carriage +VAT or £48 through Archive.
6.11
•    PhotoLib − Matt Black are now selling the PhotoLib CD which contains
over 4,000 colour photographs in compressed J-PEG format. The CD
contains pictures with a whole range of different themes and there are
also CDs of pictures on individual themes. PhotoLib CD costs £299 from
Matt Black (no VAT).
6.11
•    Pocket Book/Series 3 goodies − There is now a wealth of programs and
add-ons available for the Pocket Book and Psion 3 computers. Some of
these applications have been around for some months (bear in mind that
the Series 3 has been around for some two or three years now). Useful
books include First Steps in Programming the Psion Series 3, Serious
Programming on the Psion Series 3, Introduction to Using the Psion
Series 3 and Graphics Programming on the Psion Series 3. Software
includes a Spell Checker & Thesaurus (OK, so the Spell Checker isn’t
much use, but this includes a 100,000 word dictionary and 660,000
synonym thesaurus!), the Berlitz Interpreter which translates over
28,000 words between English, French, Spanish, German and Italian,
Personal Accounts & Expenses, Professional Finance (interest rates, IRR,
depreciation) and Finance Pack 3, Psion Chess, Games Pack 1 (seven
arcade games), Games Pack 2 (six strategy games), Games Pack 3 (five
assorted games), Series 3 Tools (an excellent suite of utilities to help
manage your computer) and Time Base Solo which helps to schedule your
time. Finally, there is an excellent black aluminium desk stand which
tilts the Pocket Book/Series 3 forward making the screen easier to read
and the keyboard more accessible. Please contact us for prices and
further details. Also note that, as yet, it is not guaranteed that all
of these programs will work on the Pocket Book.
6.11
• Pocket Book Assistants − A company called Portable Software have
produced a range of software ‘assistants’ to the Series 3 range: Timing
Assistant helps you plan, time, record and enjoy how your time is spent
(their sales pitch, not mine!); Banking Assistant puts you in control of
your business, private or international cash flows; Text Assistant lets
you assemble documents without lots of typing (basically, it consists of
a suite of libraries of predefined styles and sentences to allow you to
build up letters and documents easily); Sales Assistant is a small
business or mobile trader’s dream − order processing and customer care
on a Pocket Book! Finally, there is Data Assistant which is provided
with all of the previous assistants, except Banking Assistant. This is a
suite of utilities to extend the built-in data filing system. Again,
contact us for further details and prices.
6.11
•    Primary Nature is an educational package from Oak Solutions aimed at
Key Stage 2 Science covering hedgerows, pond life and food chains. It
costs £45 + p&p +VAT from Oak Solutions.
6.11
•    ProSheet − Silicon Vision have produced an affordable spreadsheet
aimed at education. ProSheet has all the standard spreadsheet functions
plus statistics, trig and Boolean functions. It has a hot-linked
graphing facility with 3D graphs with rotate and tilt options. Other
features include fixed and FP numerics, calculator pad and outline font
support even on an individual cell basis. It works on a 1Mb machine.
ProSheet costs £39.95 +VAT or £44 through Archive. At last, it looks as
if we have an economically priced, full-function spreadsheet.
6.11
•    S-Base Developer Plus is now available, as is S-Net Server. S-Base
Developer Plus (£299 +VAT or £325 through Archive) allows the user to
develop and compile applications into stand-alone programs which then do
not require S-Base. They can run as single user applications or, when
loaded into S-Net, can be served to multiple users over a network. S-Net
licences are available for business (£600 +VAT or £650 through Archive)
and education (£299 +VAT or £325 through Archive).
6.11
•    Sleuth, Risc Developments’ economy OCR program should be available by
the time you read this. The program is ready but the packaging isn’t
quite finished − it should be finished by the end of July. The cost is
£49 +VAT + £2 carriage from Risc Developments. (Sleuth was previewed in
May Acorn User and commented on in Archive 6.8 p15 and 6.9 p50. We hope
to have a full review as soon as it is available.)
6.11
•    Special needs keyboard − Special Access Systems have produced an
expanded keyboard for computer users with poor motor control. The
keyboard has a nylon-coated steel case which acts as a keyguard. It has
a built-in LCD display which enables the user to program the keyboard’s
special functions including key delays, sound effects and ‘sticky keys’
for producing those awkward key combinations which we so easily take for
granted, e.g. <shift-alt-,> for a ‘×’ character. The keyboard costs £475
+ p&p + VAT from Special Access Systems.
6.11
•    Turbo Drivers (RISC OS 3.1) − CC have just sent us the first fully
RISC OS 3.1 compatible Turbo Driver. This is the Canon driver which will
cope with BJ10, BJ20, BJ200, BJ230, BJ300, BJ330 and BJC800. (At the
time of writing, the HP drivers are still not ready − I said they were
last month − sorry to mislead you. I will let you know when they are
ready. There seem to be one or two technical problems.)
6.11
•    User / Analogue / Econet interface − Risc Developments have produced a
card that provides a user port and an analogue port on A3000/4000
machines. The cost is £44.95 +VAT. It has an optional Econet interface
which brings the price to £79.95 +VAT. This means that, in an A3020 or
an A4000, a standard Ethernet interface could be added to the machine
thus making it into a gateway between the two network standards. There
is an A5000 version of this board but, because of lack of space on the
backplate, the Econet is provided as a cable to connect to the existing
Econet connector. The prices are the same as for the A3000 versions.
Both interfaces include a boot ROM for AUN so that there is no need to
run AUN up from disc at switch-on.
6.11
•    Video Splitter − If anyone wants to have more than one monitor running
on an Archimedes computer then a company called Scene Double have just
the thing for you. These splitters, which are UK manufactured, have a
very wide bandwidth and will easily cope with the output even from a
colour card. It is an external box with its own power supply and has a
cable to link into the back of the computer. It has outputs which can
then feed into four different monitors or other video devices. We have
had one in the office to try and it works fine. The Scene Double
splitter costs £299 +VAT or £325 through Archive.
6.11
•    Visual Backup is Dabhand Computing’s hard disc backup program. It aims
to make the backup process as interactive as possible, most operations
being based around a directory tree viewer. Visual Backup costs £49.95
inclusive from Dabhand Computing or £46 through Archive.
6.11
•    WordBank − Topologika have released an application which lets you
‘collect’ words, and their meanings, in English, Welsh, French or
German. You can display your word sets alongside your story in your own
WP or DTP application, click on a word and it is inserted into your
story. Wordbank costs £25 +VAT + p&p from Topologika or £30 through
Archive.
6.11
•    WorraCAD upgrade − Oak Solutions have updated WorraCAD in various ways
including giving it a new icon-based user interface and also support for
ellipses. It maintains it high accuracy, its ability to produce drawings
larger than A0 and can export in Draw format. The new version of
WorraCAD is £99.95 + carriage + VAT from Oak Solutions or £110 through
Archive.
6.11
Review software received...
6.11
We have received review copies of the following: 1st Paint (e), An Eye
for Spelling (e), AppFS (u), ArcVenture III − The Vikings (e), ArtSchool
(ea), BookStore (e), CardMania (g), Choices (e), EdScheme LISP (el), E-
Numix (e), Frontier 2000 (e), Games Wizard and The Hacker for comparison
(g), Gestalt 2 − Money & Shopping (e), Gestalt 2 − Time & Fractions (e),
Humanoids & Robotix (g), Killerbugs (g), Letters (e), Mini Expansion
Adaptor (h), Primary Nature (e), Programming books: Wimp Programming for
All, Beginner’s Guide to Wimp Programming & Archimedes Game Maker’s
Manual, Screenplay Training Video (g), Sea, Trade & Empire (e), Serpents
(g), Soapbox (e), Splash (ea), SpySnatcher (g), Squish (u), Switch (g),
Tiles (e), TOM computer simulator (e) (6.5 p9), Visual Backup (u).
6.11
e=Education, g=Game, u=Utility, a=Art, h=Hardware, m=Music,
l=Language.  A
6.11
Government Health Warning − Reading this probably won’t have any effect
on your spiritual health.
6.11
Well, perhaps people who complain about my ‘God-slot’ are right. Perhaps
it is inappropriate in a technical magazine. Perhaps it’s only
Christians who read it anyway − mind you, judging by the number of
complaints about it on Arcade Bulletin Board at the moment, someone must
be reading it!
6.11
One reader wrote me a lovely letter saying how much he appreciated my
editorial comments each month... and couldn’t they be extended right
down to the bottom of the page. Is that subtle or what?!!!
6.11
P.B.
6.11
Norwich Computer Services 96a Vauxhall Street, Norwich, NR2 2SD.
0603−766592 (−764011)
6.11
4th Dimension     P.O. Box 4444, Sheffield. (0742−700661) (0742−781091)
6.11
4Mation     11 Castle Park Road, Whiddon Valley, Barnstaple, Devon, EX32
8PA. (0271−25353) (0271−22974) Mike Matson 0825−732679
6.11
Abacus Training    29 Okus Grove, Upper Stratton, Swindon, Wilts, SN2
6QA.
6.11
Acorn Direct     13 Dennington Road, Wellingborough, Northants, NN8 2RL.
6.11
Acorn Computers Ltd    Fulbourn
Road, Cherry Hinton, Cambridge, CB1 4JN. (0223−254254) (0223−254262)
6.11
Angelsoft Educational     35 Heol
Nant, Swiss Valley, Llanelli, Dyfed, SA14 8EN. (0554−776845)
6.11
Carvic Manufacturing    Moray Park,
Findhorn Road, Forres, Moray, Scotland, IV36 0TP. (0309−72793)
6.11
Chalksoft    P.O. Box 49, Spalding, Lincs, PE11 1NZ. (0775−769518)
6.11
Clares Micro Supplies     98
Middlewich Road, Rudheath, Northwich, Cheshire, CW9 7DA. (0606−48511)
(0606−48512)
6.11
Colton Software (p14)    2 Signet
Court, Swanns Road, Cambridge, CB5 8LA. (0223−311881) (0223−312010)
6.11
Computer Concepts (p20/26)    Gaddesden
Place, Hemel Hempstead, Herts, HP2 6EX. (0442−63933) (0442−231632)
6.11
Cumana Ltd      Pines Trading Estate, Broad Street, Guilford, GU3 3BH.
(0483−503121) (0483−503326)
6.11
Dabhand Computing     5 Victoria
Lane, Whitefield, Manchester, M25 6AL. (061−766−8423) (061−766−8425)
6.11
Dabs Press     22 Warwick Street, Prestwich, Manchester, M25 7HN.
(061−773−8632) (061−773−8290)
6.11
Database Publications    Europa
House, Adlington Park, London Road, Adlington, Macclesfield, Cheshire,
SK10 5NP. (0625−859444) (0625−879966)
6.11
Datafile    71 Anson Road, Locking, Weston-super-Mare, Avon, BS24 7DQ.
(0934−823005)
6.11
Data Store     6 Chatterton Road, Bromley, Kent. (081−460−8991)
(081−313−0400)
6.11
David Pilling    P.O.Box 22, Thornton Cleveleys, Blackpool, FY5 1LR.
6.11
Eizo UK Ltd     Unit 7, Genesis Business Park, Albert Drive, Sheerwater,
Woking, GU21 5RW. (0483−757118) (0483−757121)
6.11
EMR Ltd     14 Mount Close, Wickford, Essex, SS11 8HG. (0702−335747)
6.11
E.S.M.     Duke Street, Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, PE13 2AE. (0945−63441)
6.11
ICS Ltd     1 Kington Road, West Kirby, Wirral, L48 5ET. (051−625−1006)
(051−625−1007)
6.11
Krisalis Software     Teque House,
Mason’s Yard, Downs Row, Moorgate, Rotherham, S60 2HD. (0709−372290)
6.11
Longman-Logotron     124 Cambridge Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge CB4
4ZS. (0223−425558) (0223−425349)
6.11
Matt Black     P.O.Box 42, Peterborough, PE1 2TZ. (0733−315439)
6.11
Morley Electronics     Morley
House, Norham Road, North Shields, Tyne & Wear, NE29 7TY. (091−257−6355)
(091−257−6373)
6.11
Oak Solutions (p13)    Broadway
House, 149−151 St Neots Road, Hardwick, Cambridge, CB3 7QJ.
(0954−211760) (0954−211760)
6.11
Portable Software     P.O.Box 244,
York, YO2 2YU. (0904−633918)
6.11
Ray Maidstone (p25)    421
Sprowston Road, Norwich, NR3 4EH. (0603−400477) (0603−417447)
6.11
Risc Developments     117 Hatfield
Road, St Albans, Herts, AL1 4JS. (0727−840303) (0727−860263)
6.11
Scene Double     2 Glendale Avenue, Edgeware, Middlesex, HA8 8HG.
(081−958−3639) (081−958−3639)
6.11
Silicon Vision Ltd     Signal
House, Lyon Road, Harrow, Middlesex, HA1 2AG. (081−422−3556)
(081−427−5169)
6.11
Software 42     109 Ferry Road, Hullbridge, Essex, SS5 6EL.
6.11
Special Access Systems     4 Benson
Place, Oxford, OX2 6QH. (0865−56154)
6.11
State Machine     Unit 4, Stopsley Business Centre, Stopsley,
Bedfordshire, LU2 7UX. (0582−483377) (0582−480833)
6.11
Topologika     P.O. Box 39, Stilton, Peterborough, PE7 3RL. (0733−244682)
6.11
Watford Electronics     Jessa House,
Finway, Dallow Road, Luton, LU1 1TR. (0582−487777) (0582−488588)
6.11
Paul Beverley
6.11
Help!!!!
6.11
•    CAAD − Is there anyone who would have a contribution to make to my
research work on CAAD? (Computer aided art and design.) Has anyone got
any CAAD up and running? Contact me, Steve Bruntlett, at De Montfort
University, The Gateway, Leicester, LE1 9BH. (0553− 551551)
(0553−577199)
6.11
•    Comparative articles − Now that the range of Archimedes software is
getting quite comprehensive, it would be really helpful to have some
survey-type articles comparing, say, the range of available WP and DTP
packages. Any offers? Ed.
6.11
•    Complete Wordwise Plus Handbook by Paul Beverley (who?) − Has anyone
out there got a copy of this ancient and much-loved tome? It has been
out of print for some time now but there are still people asking for it.
Rather than disappoint them, could we use it as an opportunity to raise
some more money for charity? If you have a copy and would be prepared to
donate it to our Charity Appeal, please send it in to the Archive
office. Thank you.
6.11
Help Offered
6.11
•    BJ10ex control codes − In Archive 6.8 p16, Paul Pibworth asked for
information. I agree that the User’s Manual is a bit thin, so what you
need is the “Programmer’s Manual”. This is obtainable from Canon for
about £10.00 + VAT. The phone number is 081−647−4044. Tell them that you
wish to order the “Programmer’s Manual” for the BJ10ex (not the BJ10e −
there is a difference).  Chris Bass, Grimsby.
6.11
•  Help for beginners − If there are people in the Nottingham/Grantham
area who need a bit of help getting to grips with their new Archimedes
or new disc drive, or whatever, we have had an offer of help from Alan
Highet, one of our contributors. He is prepared to visit people, free of
charge(!), to give help (but I suspect that an offer of petrol money
wouldn’t go amiss). If you are interested, give Alan a ring on 0949−
50380.  A
6.11
Hints and Tips
6.11
•    Amstrad CPC monitor link − Let me describe how to use the old monitor
left over from your Amstrad CPC for emergency use with your Archimedes.
6.11
You need a six-pin, 270-degree DIN female plug, like the one in your
CPC, a normal D-sub nine-pin male, to plug into your RGB socket on the
computer and some soldering skill. (If you use an A5000 or later, you
need a 15-pin VGA-compatible plug, instead.)
6.11
To make the setup even more user-friendly, you should invest in a two-
way, double switch, to cater for both mono and colour monitors.
6.11
The DIN plug has six pins, with the centre pin being mono-in. When seen
from the rear with the soldering lugs towards you, (as in the diagram
opposite) the pin for the red is top left (1), then comes green (2),
blue (3), sync (4) and signal earth (5).
6.11
On the 9-pin D-sub, pin number 1 is red, 2 is green and 3 is blue. Pin
number 4 is sync and 7 signal earth. The rest are unused. The
arrangement on the new machines is slightly different, as there are more
pins, but it is essentially the same!
6.11
Basically you connect 1 to 1, 2 to 2 and 3 to 3, but the addition of a
switch makes it much more useful. Before starting, switch on the
computer while pressing <0>, to change to monitortype 0 for 50Hz
monitors and TVs.
6.11
The switch on the cable is essential under two circumstances: You might
also want to use your TV as a colour monitor. Then you have to use the
Amstrad TV MP-2 modulator (still available). That does not use the
central monochrome pin, but the normal three RGB pins. You could make
two converters of course, but you might forget which is which. Instead,
you just flip the switch if the picture looks odd! Those with TVs that
accept RGB through the SCART connector should use those, of course!
A3010 owners should first try connecting to a TV, but the green CPC
monitor should be much sharper, if not having a higher resolution!
6.11
Sometimes, when running some games like MiG-29M, you might want to
switch back and forth as the headup display is almost invisible against
the sky if you have all colours connected to the middle pin. By
momentarily switching to the colour setting, everything yellow will
become easily visible, as it becomes black (or more correctly, a black-
ish green, if you use the green monochrome monitor)!
6.11
Turbo Challenge II becomes a real challenge in green. Chopper Force,
Bughunter II and Taipei work fine in green. Impression, Vector and
ArtWorks are essentially monochrome, if you don’t add colour yourself,
so they are not affected!  Tord Eriksson
6.11
•    BASIC64 application − I have, for a long time, toyed with the idea of
testing BASIC64, by running the PCW Benchmarks with it. The normal way
would be to RMLoad the BASIC64 module and then type *BASIC64 − not very
user-friendly, as you have to type in the paths each time.
6.11
Remembering David Pilling’s advice on the uses of the OSCLI command
(very odd to me, brought up on Spectrums and mainframes!) I wrote the
following Basic lines:
6.11
*DIR SCSI::Conner170M
6.11
*DIR OldRubbish.BASIC.BenchMARK
6.11
*CAT
6.11
INPUT “Which file? ”;a$
6.11
OSCLI “*BASIC64 -quit ” + a$
6.11
The *CAT shows me which files are available and OSCLI “*BASIC64 -quit”
loads BASIC64 runs the program a$ and then quits. Your version will have
to include your drives and directories, of course! This programming
fragment, I called !RunImage.
6.11
Put this in the directory you have made called !Run64.
6.11
To make this an application, steal some !Sprites from a program you
like, rename the individual icon sprites to !Run64 and sm!Run64.
6.11
The next step is to make a copy of BASIC64 and drop that into the
directory. Now for the !Run file:
6.11
Iconsprites <Obey$Dir>.!Sprites
6.11
RUN <Obey$Dir>.BASIC64 -QUIT <Obey$Dir>.!RunImage
6.11
Alternatively, you could run the copy of BASIC64 that you might have in
your system’s modules directory.
6.11
It seems idiotic to run BASIC64, in order to run BASIC64, to run the
program you have selected, but it works perfectly.
6.11
I tried using the more logical *RMLoad BASIC64, but then you fall into
the editor and we do not want that!
6.11
Finally, you need a !Boot file:
6.11
Iconsprites <obey$Dir>.!Sprites
6.11
(A sample Basic64 application is on this month’s program disc.)  Tord
Eriksson
6.11
•    ColourCard and VIDC software − After I had installed my ColourCard and
(thanks to a hint in Archive) realised that I still would have to use a
VIDC module (Careware 18) to make my monitor display modes 12 and 15, a
problem arose. I had configured my machine to one of those wonderfully
large screen modes (1152×848 logical pixels), and then when I found the
time to play a mode 15 game, (Tower of Babel, which is completely mouse-
controlled), there was no pointer!
6.11
This is what Nigel Star of Wild Vision told me: In a ColourCard mode,
the VIDC pointer is disabled and some games don’t re-enable it so all
you have to do is switch to mode 15 first, and only then start the
game.  Jochen Konietzko, Köln.
6.11
•    Combatting fiddlers − A solution for teachers who suffer from children
‘fiddling’ with the palette, task windows, applications accessing the
hard disc and destroying files might be to use the RMKill command in the
!Boot file. Any or all of the following lines can be added to the !Boot
file.
6.11
RMKill ResourseFiler
6.11
RMKill ADFSFiler
6.11
RMKill PaletteUtil
6.11
RMKill Taskmanager
6.11
This will leave the iconbar empty. Pressing <reset> will give error
messages. If you want a particular program to run, this could be done
from the !Boot file or from an application launcher such as !Menon or
!Two. Directories can be opened in the same way. Switching on whilst
holding down <shift> avoids running the !Boot file and returns icons to
the iconbar.  Paul Harrigan, Hong Kong.
6.11
•    DragASprite module − After seeing the tip on the dragging of solid
sprites from a previous Archive, I decided to explore the DragASprite
module for myself. I have not worked on it exhaustively but I have come
across the following which users could put in their Basic programs.
6.11
The DragASprite module supports two SWIs but the more useful of these
two is the SWI DragASprite_Start. It requires the following parameters:
6.11
R0    control value
6.11
R1    1 (this seems to be the only value that works)
6.11
R2    pointer to sprite name
6.11
R3    points to start coordinates of the drag box
6.11
The control value consists of bits which affect the drag. The only ones
I have worked out are:
6.11
bit 6    allow dragging outside graphics window
6.11
bit 7    shadow the sprite
6.11
Bits 0 and 4 seem to allow only the value 5, as far as I can work out.
6.11
I have found that the two most useful values for the control value in R0
are:
6.11
&85    non-shadowed drag outside the graphics window
6.11
&C5    shadowed drag outside the graphics window
6.11
R2 points to the first character of a string which is the name of the
sprite to be used for the drag, for example “file_fec”.
6.11
R3 points to four 32-bit coordinates which describe the start and size
of the drag box (which is the same size as the sprite).
6.11
This is about all I have been able to work out in the time I have spent
on it, but it is possible to modify Basic programs using the Save As
window to use DragASprite_Start instead of Wimp_ DragBox.
6.11
For example, in FormEd 1.24, modify line 4810, which normally reads:
6.11
4810 SYS “Wimp_DragBox”,,q%
6.11
to
6.11
4810 SYS “DragASprite_Start”,&C5 ,1,“File_fec”,q%+8
6.11
I’m sure a similar fix could be used for other programs to give solid
sprite dragging.  Robin Terry, Newcastle upon Tyne.
6.11
(Those who can afford £100 for a RISC OS 3 PRM will find more details on
page 3-299. Ed.)
6.11
•    Free space on hard discs − In Hints and Tips, Archive 5.12, Steve
Drain asked if the same problem of allocating 28Kb to each new directory
applies to IDE drives. I checked this for my A5000 40Mb drive and found
that 7Kb is allocated per directory which seems a reasonable compromise.
This is lucky as there seems to be no way to alter the default format
using HForm.
6.11
N.B. Count only reports the size of the data, not the actual space used
on the disc. This can only be found by using *FREE from the command line
before and after creating a directory/file and subtracting the values.
6.11
The structure of !Fonts is where most directories occur. In my case,
there are 111 directories requiring 777Kb of space initially, but since
each contains over 7Kb of data for IntMetrics and Outlines, the space is
not wasted. However, if 28Kb were allocated, as with Steve’s make of
SCSI drive, then 111 × 28 = 3108Kb would be allocated. In my case, only
2625Kb would be used as font data, losing 483Kb on fonts alone! When
Computer Concepts released Compression, I thought that this would solve
space problems, but I was told by CC that it retains the directory
structure (I assume with the same overheads per directory) and is not
very effective at reducing the disc space taken up by !Fonts.
6.11
I have now installed SparkFS from David Pilling. Although each compacted
Spark file can contain lots of directories when opened, to the IDE
filing system it is only one file and only allocates one lot of 7Kb (or
28Kb for Steve). So it is not sensible to have a Spark file containing
less than 7Kb. (The Count facility is misleading as it only gives the
size of compressed data not the space allocated by the IDE drive.) There
is a speed penalty for using a Spark file but there is also a Spark
directory option which is a lot faster according to the booklet although
it seems to have a much larger disc space requirement of about 14Kb
which does not all seem to be recovered.
6.11
So the conclusions seem to be:
6.11
1)    If possible, reformat with the smallest file allocation.
6.11
2)    Only create a new directory if you are going to store an amount of
data comparable with the directory space (7Kb for my IDE drive, 28Kb for
Steve’s original SCSI).
6.11
3)    Be aware of the overheads due to any compression system you use,
checking by using *FREE at the command line (particularly if it retains
directories.)
6.11
4)    If using SparkFS on an A5000, ensure any Spark file will contain
at least 7Kb of data.
6.11
5)    If space is tight, remember that a Spark directory will have space
overheads although it is faster.
6.11
It would be interesting to hear the findings from other people using
other compression systems, types of drive and any information on
reformatting A5000 IDE drives with different file allocation sizes.
Alan Dawes, Ilford
6.11
•    Help_ with menus in C − In Archive 6.10 p8, Richard Simpson asks about
using help_ with menus. I enclose a program (on the monthly program
disc) to demonstrate a solution.
6.11
The program offers help via !Help in the following situations:
6.11
  •    The main iconbar icon.
6.11
  •    Menu (with sub-menu) from from the iconbar.
6.11
  •    Dialogue box from iconbar, including special processing for
version details.
6.11
  •    A simple window.
6.11
  •    Menu from the simple window.
6.11
The program doesn’t actually do anything and is quite long, so I won’t
attempt to explain its operation here. There are a number of comments in
the code which should, hopefully, be sufficient for a C programmer using
help_.
6.11
The short-hand strings supported by !Help are (this is from !Help’s
message file), note the spaces:-
6.11
\S  ’Click SELECT to ’
6.11
\A  ’Click ADJUST to ’
6.11
\G  ’This option is greyed out because ’
6.11
\D  ’Drag SELECT to ’
6.11
\w  ’window’
6.11
\a  ’ADJUST’
6.11
\R  ’Move the pointer right to ’
6.11
\T  ’This is the ’
6.11
\W  ’This window is ’
6.11
\d  ’Drag ADJUST to ’
6.11
\s  ’SELECT’
6.11
Please bear in mind that the documentation in Release 4 is sketchy and
this may not be Acorn’s preferred solution, but it works. Hope this is
of some use.  Joe Wood, Goring-by-Sea.
6.11
•    Impression master pages − To create a document with the same master
page as an earlier document in Impression, load the first document, save
a new copy with a new name, create a new chapter with the following
choices: Insert after current chapter / Restart page at 1 / Copy master
page and delete all of the chapters except the new one.  George Foot,
Oxted.
6.11
•    Numeric resets − I have a 420/1 and, because of lack of space on the
table where the computer lives, the keyboard has to be kept upright
behind the computer when it is not in use. One day, I turned the
computer on and was greeted by a display moving rapidly upwards and
slowly sideways. Adjusting the monitor had no effect. It turned out that
one of the numeric keys was being held down by the corner of the monitor
and the monitor type had been reconfigured as I switched on. So, if you
keep your keyboard upright (yes, I know it’s bad practice, but where
else can I keep it?) and your display goes crazy, try a <numeric> reset
before panicking!  P Young, Cheltenham
6.11
•    Pocket Book and BJ10ex problems − It appears that the Pocket Book’s
built in Canon BJ10e driver does not work correctly with the Canon
BJ10ex. We have a printer driver (supplied to us from Psion via Richard
Collinson) which works. If you have this printer, send us a formatted
SSD or a disc and your problems will be over. Psion can also supply
other drivers on SSD if necessary.  Simon Moy, Archive.
6.11
• SigmaSheet revisited − John Waddell’s SigmaSheet fix in last month’s
Hints & Tips requires one more line within DEFPROCexit: *Country UK.
6.11
•    Solid icons − If the ‘drag solid file icons’ option is set in RISC OS
3, it causes applications like DrawPlus to reject the file as being of
an incompatible file format. This prevents files being dragged between
applications in the normal way.  Mike McNamara, Dunstable.  A
6.11
Help.h in Desktop C
6.11
Gwyn Williams (Wyddfa Software)
6.11
In response to a request in the July edition for help with the C
“help.h” functions, here is a brief explanation of how to do it.
6.11
Use of the help.h functions
6.11
The help.h functions with Acorn’s Desktop C are quite sparsely
documented. Their main aim is to provide the RISC OS 3 feature of menu
help messages.
6.11
The first problem is that the RISC_OSLib library file provided with
Desktop C does not allow you to pass, in R3 of the Wimp_Initialise SWI
call which the function wimpt_init() calls, a list of messages in which
the task is interested. To remedy this, ask Acorn for a RISC_OSLib which
does support this. This new RISC_OSLib comes with a wimpt module with a
new function, wimpt_messages(), with which you can add the list of
messages. We will therefore need a new function to set a list of
messages and pass them on. We use wimpt_wimpversion() to tell the system
that we know about RISC OS 3. (Er, oops, the version of RISC_OSLib that
Gwyn is referring to isn’t actually available except to registered
developers until it is has been fully checked by Acorn. Ed.)
6.11
The menu help message is regarded by the system as an unknown event, so
we will either have to write an unknown event processor, or pass unknown
events to an existing window. In the example below, ukev_proc() is the
unknown event handler. The function help_process() returns TRUE if the
help request was a menu request which has now been processed. In that
case, no further processing is needed.
6.11
As an example, we’ll alter the c.DrawEx file in the !DrawEx example
application provided with Desktop C. Please copy the original to a safe
place first.
6.11
(1) After #include “saveas.h” add two additional header files:
6.11
#include “help.h”
6.11
#include “msgs.h”
6.11
(2) Put these new functions in the “miscellanea” section − they are the
functions referred to above:
6.11
void setmess( void )
6.11
{messages[] ={wimp_mdatasave ,
6.11
    wimp_MDATASAVEOK,
6.11
    wimp_MDATALOAD,
6.11
    wimp_MDATALOADOK,
6.11
    wimp_MDATAOPEN,
6.11
    wimp_MRAMFETCH,
6.11
    wimp_MRAMTRANSMIT,
6.11
    wimp_MPREQUIT,
6.11
    wimp_SAVEDESK,
6.11
    wimp_MDATASAVED,
6.11
    wimp_MMENUWARN,
6.11
    wimp_MMODECHANGE,
6.11
    wimp_MHELPREQUEST,
6.11
    (wimp_msgaction)0
6.11
  };
6.11
  wimpt_messages( messages );
6.11
}
6.11
BOOL ukev_proc( wimp_eventstr *e, void *handle )
6.11
{ret ;
6.11
  handle = handle;
6.11
  switch( e->e ) {case wimp_ESENDWANTACK:
6.11
      switch ( e->data.msg.hdr. action ) {{ Style “ParaIndent” Off}
6.11
        case wimp_MHELPREQUEST:
6.11
          if ( !help_process(e) )
6.11
            msgs_lookup( “BORDER” );
6.11
          ret = TRUE;
6.11
          break;
6.11
        default:
6.11
          ret = FALSE;
6.11
          break;
6.11
      }
6.11
      default:
6.11
        ret = FALSE;
6.11
        break;
6.11
  }
6.11
  return( ret );
6.11
}
6.11
(3) Before the call wimpt_init(“DrawEx”) in drawex_initialise(), add the
following statements (their function is as described in the
introduction):
6.11
  setmess();
6.11
  wimpt_wimpversion(310);
6.11
(4) Add this statement after the line “Drawex_
data *d = (Drawex_data *)handle” in drawex_ menumaker(). This calls
help_simplehandler to handle menu help messages. The messages are in the
messages file with a number after the tag “WINMENU”, indicating which
menu item was “hit”, with 0 at the top:
6.11
  help_register_handler( help_simplehandler, (void *)“WINMENU” );
6.11
(5) Add this statement after dbox_setfield() in
drawex_info_about_program(). This tells help_dboxrawevents() to look up
the help message with the tag “INFO” in the messages file:
6.11
  dbox_raw_eventhandler( d, help_ dboxrawevents, “INFO” );
6.11
(6) The request for help to the window will come as a wimp_ESENDWANTACK
with action wimp_MHELPREQUEST. To deal with this, add a new case after:
6.11
  case wimp_MDATALOAD:
6.11
  case wimp_MDATAOPEN:
6.11
    drawex_load_file(d);
6.11
    break;
6.11
  case wimp_MHELPREQUEST:
6.11
    if ( !help_process(e) )
6.11
      help_reply( msgs_lookup( “WIN” ));
6.11
    break;
6.11
(7) To initialise the msgs system, after visdelay_init(), add:
6.11
    msgs_init();
6.11
(8) After the draw_registerMemoryFunctions() call in
drawex_initialise(), add:
6.11
  win_add_unknown_event_processor( ukev_proc, (void *)0 );
6.11
This tells the system about the unknown event processor.
6.11
(9) Now make the new !RunImage.
6.11
(10) Now add a new file “messages” in the !DrawEx application directory:
this is a text file containing the following text:
6.11
INFO:This box displays information about the program.
6.11
SAVEAS:Drag this file icon to a directory viewer to save it.|MDrag it to
a printer to print the file.
6.11
IMENU0:\Rdisplay information about the program.
6.11
IMENU1:\Squit the program.
6.11
WINMENU0:\Rdisplay information about the program.
6.11
WINMENU1:\Rsave the file.
6.11
WINMENU2:\Squit the program.
6.11
WIN:This is the example window.
6.11
BORDER:This window belongs to the DrawEx application.
6.11
These are the actual messages that will be displayed. Always use the
msgs system rather than put the messages in the code because it makes
“internationalisation” much easier.  A
6.11
Oak Solutions
6.11
From 6.10 page 12
6.11
Colton Software
6.11
From 6.10 page 11
6.11
Schedule − Agenda for the Pocket Book?
6.11
Simon Moy
6.11
As promised in the original Pocket Book News Release, Acorn have
produced a version of Psion’s Agenda for their own hand-held computer.
“Schedule” is the program that many people have been waiting for. At
last we have a proper diary/calendar/appointment book application which
turns the Pocket Book into an immensely useful pocket tool.
6.11
Some people have used Write as a simple appointment book but, until now,
the gap between the education-orientated Pocket Book and the business-
orientated Psion Series 3 has been a painfully obvious one.
6.11
Schedule is described as a timetable and personal organiser. There are
five separate displays which make up the calendar, diary and time
organisation facilities:
6.11
− monthly/weekly calendar
6.11
− weekly timetable
6.11
− daily appointments
6.11
− day notes
6.11
− “to do” list
6.11
Pressing the assigned Schedule button, or the Esc key, cycles between
these screens.
6.11
Check the date...
6.11
Schedule’s opening screen (below) consists of a calendar displaying the
current month and a weekly summary which is used to show your week’s
appointments at a glance. Simple use of the cursor keys allows you to
look at different months and weeks, and pressing <Acorn-J> allows you to
jump to any date. This always defaults to the current date and is a
useful way of returning to today’s date. The weekly summary is used to
show appointment times (and durations) and the existence of a “day note”
for each day of the week. Appointments are shown as arrows pointing
downwards, the length of the arrow corresponding to the duration of the
appointment. Day notes are shown as an underscore under the relevant
day(s).
6.11
...and plan your day
6.11
Pressing <Enter> from the calendar will display the appointment diary
for the highlighted day.
6.11
This allows you to enter or view your appointments for the selected day.
I did not find Schedule as user-friendly as Agenda in this area. Agenda
displays its diary as a two-page open book allowing you to view almost a
whole day on a single screen (fourteen appointments per day.) Schedule
displays appointments in a list down the screen which means that you can
only display a maximum of six appointments at any one time. This problem
can be alleviated slightly by hiding vacant time slots from view
(normally, Schedule defaults to displaying all empty slots with an hour
between each one).
6.11
Entering a new appointment is simply a matter of telling Schedule when
the it starts, when it ends (or how long it is) and typing the message.
As soon as you enter an appointment, it appears on the weekly summary
and on the timetable. The length of the arrow (in the weekly summary) or
the text slot (in the timetable) is proportional to the length of the
corresponding appointment.
6.11
Appointments can be repeated with an enormous array of repeat options:
daily, weekly, monthly, annually, workdays only and the same day each
month. Repeat dates can be set to any period between the currently
selected date and 1st January 2070! Finally, the repeat frequency can be
set to every other, every third and so on.
6.11
Schedule’s alarm provides a further useful feature. The Time application
can already set alarms to repeat daily, weekly and on workdays but there
is no facility for setting an alarm on a specific date more than a week
away. The alarm feature within Schedule can be used to remind you of
appointments at any time up to the year 2070. Any appointment can have
an associated alarm and each one can be set to sound at a predefined
time before the relevant appointment. (Acorn’s example is to remind you
fifteen minutes before you’re due to go to a meeting.)
6.11
Day notes
6.11
Alongside the appointment book is the capability to record notes for
each day without specifying a time. Pressing the Schedule key from the
appointment screen will display this screen and allow you to enter notes
which relate to the current day. As with the other screens, the cursor
keys allow you to change the current date and <Acorn-J> will allow a
specific date to be entered.
6.11
Up to six day notes can be entered for each day and each one can be
repeated using the same options as for the appointment book.
6.11
Alarms can also be set for day notes. These allow you to set an alarm up
to twenty-eight days in advance for the relevant note. An option in the
Special/Options menu sets the time at which note alarms will sound on
the specified day. A final option allows a particular note to appear as
a heading for the appointment book on that day.
6.11
Setting a day note displays a small note symbol on the corresponding
appointment book screen and produces an underscore under the relevant
day on the weekly summary to remind you that a day note exists. This
screen can be disabled if it is not being used.
6.11
What a to do!
6.11
This screen is the odd one out in Schedule. The other four screens all
interact in some way but the To do list is a separate entity. It offers
a way to remind the user of tasks which need to be completed by some
given date.
6.11
Each item in the To do list has an associated priority (urgent, high,
medium or low), a subject and a due date. You can group items under
subject headings and cycle through them using the left and right cursor
keys, or you can display all of the items at once. Items are displayed
in order of priority (or by date for items of equal priority.) As a
safety feature, items do not expire from the list when the due date has
passed − they have to be manually deleted.
6.11
The timetable
6.11
I have left this until last because it is not an active screen. It gives
a graphical display of a week’s appointments. The length of each item
corresponds to the duration of the appointment. An option to change the
displayed start and end times is available and Schedule adjusts the size
of each slot accordingly
6.11
As with the other screens, the cursor keys can be used to modify the day
or week, and pressing <Enter> will display the appointment book for the
selected day. This screen can also be disabled like the day notes
screen.
6.11
Conclusion
6.11
Schedule is an application that has been eagerly awaited by Pocket Book
fans and you will not be disappointed. There are a couple of minor
niggles: the lack of a ‘day-to-a-page’ feel about the appointment book
is the most notable. Also, the To do list does not display the current
date. Thankfully you can display both the time and date in any
application using <Acorn-Menu>, although I would have liked to have seen
the date permanently displayed in the To do screen. But please note that
these really are pedantic niggles!
6.11
So how useful is Schedule? In brief, it is essential for anyone who
carries (or wants to carry) their Pocket Book around as a ‘feature-
filled filofax’. For those who have hesitated in buying the Pocket Book
(perhaps debating between this and the Series 3), Schedule makes the
machine far more attractive. There are trade-offs with both machines:
the Series 3 comes without a spell-checker or a spreadsheet, both of
which the Pocket Book has; but the Pocket Book comes without a diary
planner and the OPL editor, both of which the Series 3 has. Now that
both of these packages are available to Acorn users, the Pocket Book is
just about on a par with the Series 3. I know that it is meant as an
education tool, but there are many users out there who would like to buy
Acorn products and these applications are essential if the Pocket Book
is to sell in large numbers.
6.11
Basically, Schedule is an excellent application − everyone who wants to
use a Pocket Book as a pocket notebook should get themselves a copy!
6.11
Acorn Schedule is £49.95 inc VAT (or £46 through Archive) but as an
introductory offer, until 30th September 1993, Acorn are offering it at
£19.95 inc VAT (£19 through Archive). Also until 30th September, the
Pocket Book itself is on special offer so you can buy a Pocket Book plus
Schedule for just £219 inclusive through Archive.  A
6.11
Hardware Column
6.11
Brian Cowan
6.11
Things seem relatively quiet on the hardware front at the moment. There
are rumours, but then of course there always are. The bulletin boards
have a few mentions of Windows NT in connection with the ARM. We will
have to wait and see.
6.11
Colour card
6.11
I have been using my Computer Concepts / Wild Vision colour card for
some time now. It is installed in an A540 machine with an Eizo 9070
monitor. The system works well but I was waiting for the mode designer
from CC so that I could produce screen modes to my own specifications.
The mode designer has finally appeared but beware on a number of counts.
6.11
Beware
6.11
Before CC would send me the software, I had to write them a letter
accepting full responsibility if I damaged my monitor as a result of
producing ‘unsuitable’ modes. There is also a warning in the mode
designer documentation to this effect. It would appear that this piece
of software is not for general release − and I suppose this is sensible
if it could cause one’s monitor to self-destruct!
6.11
To start with, I could not use the designer software at all; an error
message said that I needed a later version of ColourCard. When I ’phoned
CC I received a surprise. Apparently there are two versions of the
colour card, each with different hardware. I was told that I probably
had a version one card and that the software would also work with
version two cards. Could I upgrade? Answer: no. This was all rather
disappointing. However, on closer inspection (doing a *podules), I
discovered that my card was a version two model but my software was
rather old. A second disc was dispatched from CC and everything was fine
− or at least reasonably so. The screen display is different with the
new software, and the mode designer is actually quite complicated to
use. This is really not designed for amateurs; it is a serious software
tool for people who really know what they are doing. As yet, clearly I
don’t, but I am learning. I hope to report on my progress soon.
6.11
SyQuest drives
6.11
Some of my SyQuest removable drives are a few years old now. Without
wishing to tempt fate, I can report that they seem remarkably reliable.
Of course, there would not be a lot of point in using them if they were
not! Much of the credit for the success of these drives must go to
Atomwide who were the first people to realise that good ventilation was
vital for reliable performance.
6.11
Reliability survey
6.11
I bring up the topic of SyQuests because, as they have now been used by
many Archimedes users for a reasonable length of time, perhaps we should
do a realistic survey of how good they are in practice.  There was
mention, some time ago, of the fact that the spinning discs would act as
a pump and suck air (and dust) into the plastic cases. After all, the
technology is essentially that of an open hard disc, and think of the
warnings against opening a real hard disc drive! In order to provide a
realistic assessment of the technology, I invite readers to let me know
of experiences − good or bad − with these drives. You can write directly
to the Archive offices or, for those of you with access to email, I can
be contacted as [e-mail].
6.11
The FPA arrives
6.11
The long-awaited floating point accelerator, the FPA10, has finally
appeared (£99 plus VAT or £107 through Archive. The FPA chip can be
plugged into A5000 machines and also the later A540 models which have an
FPA socket on the CPU board. The instruction booklet tells you how to
perform the installation in those machines. Some ARM3 upgrade boards
also have a socket for the FPA; I bought a Simtec board for precisely
this reason. I plugged the new chip into the Simtec board on my upgraded
A410/1 with trepidation as I had no instructions. However the FPA
booklet indicated where pin 1 was with an arrow. On the Simtec socket
there was also an arrow, and when I found that the flat on the chip
package matched a recess on the socket, I thought that things should be
OK. I was able to install the FPA, with care, without removing any
podules. Having plugged in the FPU chip, I switched on and the computer
booted up as normal. The physical installation should be equally easy
with the A5000 and A540 machines.
6.11
Running the FPA
6.11
As expected, the FPA does not perform all of the floating point
operations on the chip; some are still done with the aid of software.
For this reason, a new version of the floating point emulator is needed
and this is supplied on a floppy disc which comes with the FPA upgrade.
The instructions suggest that installation of this support module is
done within a boot sequence. Once this is done, you should be able to
forget the FPA is installed − except that floating point operations
should run much faster. Acorn publicity suggests that speed improvements
of as much as 50 times should be possible for floating point intensive
tasks such as CAD, spreadsheets and various graphics operations. The
FPA10 is claimed to have a peak throughput of up to 5 megaflops at 26MHz
with an average of 3 megaflops ‘over a range of operations’.
6.11
On test
6.11
I ran a few benchmark tests of my own to see how well the chip matched
up to this. The RealMath benchmark test gave a 12 times speed
improvement. This test performs just addition, subtraction, division and
multiplication operations on floating point numbers, so a substantial
improvement is to be expected. The Savage benchmark, which comprises
many transcendental functions, gave an improvement of about 6.5 times.
These sort of operations do use some software support and, as can be
seen, the speed improvement is not so dramatic. Finally, I used an old
favourite of mine, a fast Fourier transform. Here the speed improvement
was about five times. This is relatively slow, mainly because much of
the speed-critical operations like the creation of the sine tables is
already done faster in assembler. Nevertheless, the speed improvement is
pleasing. It remains to be seen how well the FPA performs in practice.
Will I realise that it is installed when I am running spreadsheets and
CAD programs? I will let you know.
6.11
Older A540 machines
6.11
If you have an early A540 (as I do) then a free modification must be
made to the CPU card. Actually things won’t be as simple as that for me
as I have one of the original 30MHz ARM3 chips in my A540. The FPA
instructions state clearly that it is not designed to run faster than
26MHz. So, if you have a fast CPU, you must slow it down with another
crystal before you can use an FPA. Maybe some faster chips will appear
in the future, as happened with the ARM3 chips.
6.11
(The bad news for Brian and me, as I also have an old A540, is that the
boards needed for the FPA upgrade won’t be available until the autumn!
Ed.)
6.11
New machines?
6.11
An interview with Robin Saxby, the managing director of ARM Ltd, in the
August issue of BBC Acorn User sheds some interesting light on the shape
of the new machines which Acorn have under wraps. Mr Saxby says that the
new generation of Acorn machines will be based on the ARM700 chip rather
than the ARM600 as used in the Apple Newton notebook. He is quoted as
saying, “Acorn will definitely be using the ARM700 family in its new
range of machines, as well as the VIDC20 video controller”. So, with
ARM700 (which is said to be “at least twice as fast as the ARM3”) plus
VIDC20 providing 24-bit graphics plus an FPA10, Acorn will have an
extremely powerful machine to sell.
6.11
Top of the range
6.11
The general feeling is that we are talking about a top of the range
machine to replace the A540. (Acorn say that the A540 is now no longer
in production and that they don’t have any in stock. Ed.) Some time ago
there was a suggestion that new ARM-based machines might have two CPUs
with one of them dedicated to looking after the video. It would make
sense to free the main CPU from this responsibility but if they are
using the VIDC20, presumably, it would be ARM-driven. The VIDC20 would
probably be using at least 2 Mb of dual-ported RAM which must be fed
from a CPU somewhere but as the ARM700 can address a staggering 64 Mb of
RAM, there is plenty of address space to go round.
6.11
Podule support
6.11
What other developments might one expect? Many people are discovering
that four podule slots is really not enough for many applications. If
you have a PC card, a LaserDirect, a Scanner and a SCSI interface then
that’s your lot. There is then no space for a FaxPack or an IEEE
interface, for example. Hopefully, Acorn will address this problem and
provide the possibility of having eight or more expansion slots, maybe
as an add-on unit.
6.11
The other way in which the expansion capability ought to be enhanced is
by supporting the full 32-bit data transfer between expansion cards and
the Archimedes. At present, only 16-bit communication is allowed,
although the podule documentation hints at a possible relaxation of this
restriction. 32-bit expansion cards with a generous memory address range
would allow some really sophisticated hardware expansion products. Of
course, the old 16 bit cards would be compatible with such new machines
but not the other way around.
6.11
PC compatible
6.11
Talking to those who actually sell Acorn computers, the biggest
conversation-stopper is, “Is it PC-compatible?” If the new machine is to
take advantage of the huge potential market, it needs to have some sort
of PC-compatibility. Of course, you could have an Atomwide PC486 card as
standard but you would need to find a way round the problem that you
cannot access the PC partition from RISC OS when it is in use by the PC
card.
6.11
When?
6.11
The editorial in last month’s Archive suggested that a release at the
Acorn World Show in October was unlikely. To make a good impact, it is
necessary that software and hardware developers have a sufficient time
to use versions of the new machines before they are released. For
instance Computer Concepts would be expected to have versions of
ArtWorks and Impression available at launch, which would demonstrate the
real potential of any new machines.
6.11
Robin Saxby also said that the ARM700 isn’t available “in silicon” at
the moment but would be launched in the fourth quarter so it seems very
unlikely that these new machines will be available until at least Spring
next year − still 9 months away yet.
6.11
But remember − this is all speculation. All I can do is read the
published information and draw my own conclusions!
6.11
(I asked Acorn about these machines and they said they had no
information to publish at this stage. Ed.)  A
6.11
Econet Column
6.11
Dave Emsley
6.11
Different establishments will have different network systems and will
set them up to meet their own requirements but within the Econet Column,
I hope to raise issues which are relevant to network users and managers,
regardless of the system they use. In this first article I am going to
look at a typical network from a user’s point of view − what do they see
and how do they access the software that they need?
6.11
The network
6.11
The network at our school consists of a single, mixed economy, Level 3
Econet network with BBC B, Master, A3000, A310, A440 and A5000 systems
with a 40Mb FileStore E01S.
6.11
What do we require from our network?
6.11
This has to be the first, and main question that anyone with, or about
to install, a network should ask. I would suggest that there are a
number of reasons for installing networks:
6.11
1)    Share expensive resources, e.g. laser printers, scanners, CD-ROMs,
etc.
6.11
2)    Provide a facility where students and staff can save work.
6.11
3)    Provide a facility from which students and staff can load
applications.
6.11
4)    Provide a standard ‘front end’ so that each user needs only to be
taught once and they are then able to load all the network applications
in a similar way.
6.11
I intend to look at these ‘in reverse order’.
6.11
The front end
6.11
Students and staff are used to the network system booting up with an in-
house front end. This is an information screen giving daily notices
(though in practice this changes every 2−3 days), station number, date
and time. Through this front end, they enter their name, tutor group and
whether they are a boy or girl. This information is then stored and
weekly statistical analysis carried out, for example number of boys/
girls using the network, breakdown by tutor group and subject area, etc.
This enables us to target and support groups of students who are not
using the system often enough. As a bonus, it allows us to check on
abuses of the system, e.g. excessive numbers of ‘sign-ins’ or Paul
signing in as a girl, etc.
6.11
The front end also serves another more vital purpose. It is the vehicle
through which new modules are loaded into each machine, in particular;
VProtect 1.33 and NetPrint 5.3 both of which are vital to ensure that
the network runs smoothly.
6.11
In this way, our network system remains (so far) virus free, although
just to be on the safe side, it is regularly scanned using Pineapple’
!Killer.
6.11
The BBC and Master systems on the network also boot up a similar front
end but it is not quite as pretty.
6.11
The URD
6.11
When a user logs onto the system they are put into their user root
directory (&).
6.11
At Glossopdale this looks like:
6.11
These files are: !Scrap − Standard Acorn Scrap directory for scrap
files. ConfigPD − A file supplied with the BBC version of PenDown.
A!Pendown and A!FPSE − These directories are created and moved into by
the Menu System for the BBC and Master system. This menu system is
called Epsilon and is subject to copyright. More information is
available from DESCIT.
6.11
!Apps − This is probably the most important of the applications as far
as using the network is concerned. It runs the network !System folder.
This is important as some students might not open the directory
containing the !System application.
6.11
Double-clicking on the !Apps application opens a directory on the hard
disc in which all the application for which we have a licence are
stored. !Apps was written by myself and Martin Williams and is the
copyright of Derbyshire County Council, further information from DESCIT.
6.11
The applications
6.11
The directory opened by !Apps looks something like this :
6.11
!EpsMenu is the application which runs the Epsilon menu system which is
used for loading the applications which are available to us under County
licence and which run only under BBC emulation.
6.11
!Fonts is the font folder as supplied with PinPoint Junior, but with
only one font in it.
6.11
It is not practical, nor desirable, to have the amount of traffic that
fonts would generate travelling over Econet. This will be reviewed when
(if) we go over to Ethernet or Nexus. If students require more than one
font, they can simply use a floppy disc with more fonts on it prior to
loading applications.
6.11
!Shutdown is a Public Domain application written by Stuart Hickenbottom.
It logs the user off after interrogating any currently active
applications to see if they need to save data. This has been made
largely redundant under RISC OS 3.1 as a shutdown is provided. We
encourage students to use this rather than simply using BYE from the
Econet menu because it will also park any hard discs and close any open
files.
6.11
!System is the main system folder as supplied with most applications. It
has all the latest modules in it supplied with any of the applications.
6.11
All other directories hold sub-directories or applications, a maximum of
eight in each directory. This is so that students do not have to scroll
through each directory’s contents.
6.11
Other front ends
6.11
When !Menon, a Public Domain applications launcher by Joris Röling,
appeared on a rival magazine disc, we looked at the possibility of using
it on the network. It worked very well. The application itself resides
in the $.Apps.!System directory and is run from an application in the
URD.
6.11
The !Run file within this dummy application is:
6.11
Run Net#0.254:$.Apps.!System .!Menon
6.11
This loads the full application which installs on the iconbar. Clicking
with <menu> on this icon produces a menu (no surprise there!) of the
software available from the network.
6.11
Some of the applications have keyboard shortcuts to start them, e.g.
!!Shutdown uses <ctrl-Q>, Ovation uses <ctrl-O>, the printer driver uses
<ctrl-P>, etc. These are all easily configured using Menon. The reason
for deciding against this as our method of accessing applications was
that it is non-standard and students going elsewhere might find
difficulties with other, standardised systems.
6.11
If your front end or application organisation is fundamentally
different, please write and let me know. I intend to write about the
software which works on the network and any problems encountered. If you
have any horror stories or any applications which worked first time
please let me know.
6.11
My address is 746 Manchester Road, Stocksbridge, Sheffield, S30 5EA.
6.11
DESCIT can be contacted at Chatsworth Hall, Chesterfield Road, Matlock.
(0629−580000).  A
6.11
Computer Concepts
6.11
From 6.10 page 24
6.11
Ovation Column
6.11
Maurice Edmundson
6.11
Tabulation within Ovation
6.11
There is no specific automated feature within Ovation for preparing and
including tables within a text document but on the occasions I have had
to do this, I have found that the standard tools can be used to very
good effect. My attention has been drawn to this topic through
correspondence with Brian Bailey, a reader from Gloucestershire. I have
also incorporated Aneurin Griffiths’ frame stacking principle which I
outlined in the last column and which I think makes construction of a
table even easier.
6.11
The technique makes use of the following standard Ovation features:
nesting frames, sliding frames around easily with <adjust>, guidelines
and the way frames snap on to them, and stacking frames. Spend a few
moments planning the form of the table so that you will know the number
of columns and rows, and have a rough idea of the width and depth of
each. This will give a guide to the overall dimensions of the finished
table and where it might appear on the page.
6.11
I have prepared an example (see below) on which to base the description
of how it is done. The table can be constructed in the document, or
perhaps more easily on a new empty page, and later transferred to its
final site. Draw a text frame onto a blank page making it about 8mm
wider and about 30% longer than the finished table is likely to be. The
extra length is to provide a work area at the bottom for stacking
frames.
6.11
At the bottom left of this frame, and within it, draw a text frame about
25mm wide by 10mm deep. This is not critical and, in some circumstances,
could be drawn to the finished size straight away. If you want the table
‘grid’ to be visible then add a thin single border to the frame,
otherwise leave it unframed. Now duplicate it (say) 12 times
horizontally to get the stack. When frames are generated within an
existing frame, they become ‘nested’ and will move around with the
parent frame. (If you slide a frame into another one from outside, it
remains independent. It does not become nested and it will not maintain
its position relative to the parent if the latter is moved.)
6.11
Show the rulers and add vertical guidelines to the page at those
positions where the grid lines are required. The first grid line, i.e.
the left hand side of the table, should be a few millimetres inside the
parent frame and, for convenience, it is helpful to choose a nice round
number on the top ruler, e.g. 20mm. Now add the guidelines for the
remaining columns until you reach the one for the right hand edge of the
table. These can be placed at measured positions, e.g. every 30mm, or
they can be judged by eye. Remember that a guide line, if wrongly
placed, can be moved using <adjust> (in this case the mouse pointer must
touch the line off the ruler) or it can be removed altogether by
dragging it to the side of the page.
6.11
The columns can be of varying widths. Try to ensure that these widths
are finalised at this stage where they are easily modified. They could
be changed later but it would be more complicated since each column
would have to be adjusted to allow for the change in one of them. If in
doubt about the width of a column, type a trial frame to test how big it
has to be to hold the required data. Add one horizontal guideline to
mark the top edge of the table, a few mm inside the top of the parent
frame. Guidelines do not show through the parent frame but can be seen
around the sides. This doesn’t matter much, since objects still snap to
guidelines even though they are hidden from view.
6.11
Activate the top frame in the stack and, using <adjust>, slide it off
the stack and up to the top left corner of the guidelines. If you
haven’t done this before, you will be surprised how obviously the frame
snaps onto the guides − you can almost hear it click! Take care when
releasing <adjust> not to move the mouse. Once the top and left edges of
the frame are snapped into position, the right hand edge of the frame
must be dragged onto its guideline using <select> with the pointer on
the small red ‘handle’ in the middle. In the same way, adjust the frame
depth to suit (no guideline here but a glance at the red marker on the
left ruler will show its position).
6.11
Now slide frames from the stack into position next to those already
there. The snapping is easily observed and very accurate. Adjust the
length and the depth as before. If necessary, minor adjustments of
alignment can always be made at the end and if viewed at about 300% they
can be achieved perfectly. Of course, if you are not showing the grid in
the printed table, these fine adjustments are probably not necessary.
You can type in the data as each frame is positioned, (useful if you
want to size the frame to hold a lot of data) or fill in the whole table
when construction is finished. It will be obvious that the depth of the
rows can vary from row to row or even from column to column.
6.11
The paragraph styles should be prepared in advance. Modifying your
bodytext for the type which will be used most, simplifies entry. I find
centred format is often the best for all fonts throughout the table.
6.11
Sometimes a thick line is preferred under the table headings. This can
be added using the draw tool (holding down <shift>). As with frames,
provided lines are drawn (created) within a parent frame they will
become nested and linked to it. Using the palette in the Modify Frame
option, selected slots, rows or columns can be shaded. If a logo or even
a graph or diagram is required in the table, use a picture frame at that
position.
6.11
When the table is completed, the parent frame can be closed up to the
table, leaving just enough space at the bottom − about 5mm − to select
it and activate it easily. If you have been working on the required
document page, slide the parent into position and the whole table will
be positioned with it. If you have been working on a spare page, the
frame can be copied and pasted in its true place in the document. If you
are printing grid lines, no overall border is required otherwise use the
parent frame, closed up to the table on all four sides to add the chosen
border.
6.11
You can use the RISC OS snapshot facility to make a sprite or a
drawfile, which will allow sizing within a picture frame, but there will
be some loss of definition.
6.11
Version numbers
6.11
You may be interested to know the latest version numbers for Ovation:
Ovation 1.38 − this is tuned to load faster across networks; Ovation
1.39 − this provides ArtWorks file rendering.  A
6.11
Ray Maidstone
6.11
New artwork
6.11
Computer Concepts
6.11
From 6.10 page 23
6.11
Education Column
6.11
Solly Ezra
6.11
Many thanks to all who welcomed this column and contributed to it. In
the process of including the salient points from the correspondent’s
letters, I hope that I will not exclude any that you may have considered
important. The emphasis this time is on teachers.
6.11
Dr Fagandini has asked us to consider, first, whether a piece of
software is “educationally significant” as the term “educational
software” hardly defines itself. He further says that we need to know
what information − in the broadest sense − is imparted and how effective
the transfer is. He is also concerned that teachers themselves should be
supported by the technology. I have no doubt that this will strike a
chord with most teachers. Dr Fagandini suggests that the Archive column
(or supplement) should move from teachers towards the children. I am
quite certain that our column will achieve more than that.
6.11
I have with me a copy of the report by a working group of the Education
Committee of The Royal Society on ‘Interactive video and the teaching of
science’ from Dr Fagandini and will refer to this at another time.
6.11
Mark Sealey suggests that if the target audience of the education column
is teachers then we should include topics such as:
6.11
  •    The Acorn Education Centres, their purpose, role and how they
function.
6.11
  •    The work and role of NCET (National Council for Educational
Technology).
6.11
  •    A directory of help and advice on IT (Information Technology).
6.11
  •    A basic software library for each phase.
6.11
  •    Guidance on basic disc management and housekeeping.
6.11
  •    A regular update on publications and research findings.
6.11
  •    A simple questionnaire/hotline for teachers to express what are
their most pressing worries and areas where support is needed.
6.11
  •    The role of CD ROM, now and in the future.
6.11
  •    Case studies of good practice from an educational rather than a
technical standpoint.
6.11
John Thompson has sent me a description of software and hardware
(in)compatibility from a tutor’s view. The point he makes underscores
references above to teachers’ support. The burden of John’s report is
the prevalence of incomplete facilities and incompatibility arising
(perhaps) from incompetent management. He has access to a plethora of
Archimedes computers which are used during the day by the school and at
night by the Adult Education Service.
6.11
John was responsible for presenting the RSA (Royal Society of Arts)
Information Technology Stage II course to adult students. The software
was made available by the school’s IT coordinator. The software seemed
to have been pulled off the coordinator’s hard disc onto floppies. These
were incomplete and lacked system folders.
6.11
There were problems with:
6.11
(a)    saving data on the !EBase database.
6.11
(b)    printing from the spreadsheet. DIP switches had to be set at the
start of each session and then reset for school use.
6.11
(c)    the size of the charts in the graphics module.
6.11
(d)    collating information.
6.11
(e)    communications between Archimedes and the Z88. There was no
available communications facilities or network in the computer
laboratory.
6.11
Despite these and other problems the modules were completed
successfully. From the description of the work done it is obvious that
the teacher (John in this case) had to put in a great deal of effort to
make up for the shortcomings.
6.11
Reviews
6.11
Paul has sent me three pieces of software − Amazing Maths, Picture It
and Sumthing. These are being tested out on groups of children at Ayloff
School in Havering. I am very grateful to Ken Nicholls for his trouble.
I will then use them with another group from an inner city school and
give you my findings in the next column.
6.11
Please do write to me with your thoughts, comments and experiences. This
column, as all the others, depend largely on your contributions.
6.11
My address is 35 Edgefield Avenue, Barking, Essex, IG11 9JL.  A
6.11
Small Ads
6.11
(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)
6.11
•    A310, 4Mb RAM and software, £300. 40Mb hard disc drive + controller
£140. ARM3 upgrade £80. Acorn multisync £180. Phone 0744−58404.
6.11
•    A310 with IFEL backplane and fan; Panasonic KP1081 9pin Printer £450.
Contact Thilmcraft 0362−691690
6.11
•    A410/1, 4M, 40M IDE drive, Acorn m/s monitor, manuals + lots of
software, £900 o.v.n.o. Phone 071−703−5675.
6.11
•    A440/1, HD40, Impression II, Pipedream 3, Render Bender, Taxan 775,
£850. Call Barry on Derby 0332−701969.
6.11
•    A5000 40Mb/2Mb RAM + Acorn m/s monitor + RISC OS 3.1, brand new, inc
software £1469. Phone Roger on 061−799−9845 (eves or w/e).
6.11
•    Acorn DTP £40, Star/Epson colour printer driver (Beebug) £8, GammaPlot
£20, System Delta+ £30, DR DOS 5.0 £20, MSDOS 5.0 £30, Nevryon £8,
Powerband £8. CC ROMs: Interchart £10, Intersheet £15, SpellMaster £20.
All original programs with documentation etc. Phone 0737−832159
(evenings).
6.11
•    Acorn DTP £40, 1st Word Plus £35, Genesis+ £60, all v.g.c., original
discs with manuals. All three for £115. Phone 0746−765812.
6.11
•    Acorn I/O podule £50. Armadillo Sound/Midi podule £70, Hawk V9
Digitiser podule £120, ICS IDE interface £50, CC BJ10ex turbo driver
£40. Phone Dave on 021−745−2423.
6.11
•    Austrian exchange student looking for Archimedes-users in and around
Strasbourg next year (Sep. ’93 − June ’94). Write to Roland Nitsch,
Mariensteig 17, A−1130 Wien, Austria, or phone +431−874−6644.
6.11
•    Lingenuity 44Mb SCSI external drive + A3000 interface, £250 o.n.o.
Phone David on 0223− 842505 after 6.30.
6.11
•    Midnight Tracer £25, Genesis Plus £14, Acorn DTP £19, 1st Word Plus 2
£5, Drawbender £5, FontFX (RISC OS 3) £4, ShapeFX £5, Euclid £25,
Investigator 2 £15, E-Type £5, Pacmania £5, Interdictor £4, Apocalypse
£9, Air Supremacy £11, Lemmings £9, Superior Golf £5, Trivial Pursuit
£5, Acorn JP150 Printer boxed as new £149. Wanted − Image Outliner,
Helix Basic, DeskEdit2. Phone 0626−853774
6.11
•    Miracle Modem WS3000 £40, Miracle modem WS2000 £20, Archimedes Morley
Teletext £30, CC BJ10, BJ300/330 Turbo Printer Driver, new, boxed £25.
Phone 036284−633.
6.11
•    Panasonic KX-P1081 printer and stand £60. Phone Mr K J Tompkins on
0276−28932.
6.11
•    Panasonic KX-P1124 good cond, £110. Also Beebug 5¼ disc interface, 40
track drive, DFS reader software and 50 5¼ discs, the lot for only £40
o.n.o. + p&p. Phone Derby 0332− 557751.
6.11
•    SJ MDFS Fileserver + 20Mb hard disc. SJ Tape Streamer + 35Mb tapes.
Will sell separately. Continued manufacturer’s support. Phone Paul Story
or Marcus Foreman on 0225−464313.
6.11
•    Wanted − ST506 podule for an A310. Phone Chris on 0742−823782 after 6.
6.11
•    Wanted − Scrap print head for KX-P1124. Phone Ken on 0462−682167.
6.11
•    Watford Hand held scanner, 400dpi and up to 16 grey scales, boxed. £99
or offers. Phone 0223−63545.
6.11
Charity Sales − The following items are available for sale in aid of
charity. PLEASE do not just send money − ring us on 0603−766592 to check
if the items are still available. Thank you.
6.11
Apocalypse £5, Archimedes First Steps book £4, Archway 2 £8, Chocks Away
2 £5, Colony Rescue £2, Design Concept fonts £4, Drop Ship £2, Holdfast
Joypad £5, Interdictor 1.0 £3, Kitchen Plan £2, PC Emulator (1.34) + DR-
DOS 3.41 £20, Presenter (Hot-links) £5, Tactic £2, Terramex £2, The Wimp
Game £5, Trackman portable (brand new, for PC) £25, Twin World £4, UIM
£2, White Magic £2.
6.11
(If you have unwanted software or hardware for Archimedes computers you
could donate for charity, please send it to the Archive office. If you
have larger items where post would be expensive, just send us details of
the item(s) and how the purchaser can get hold of them.)  A
6.11
Professional Printing
6.11
John Thorn
6.11
The challenge in June’s Archive was for someone with a deep and
professional knowledge of printing to write an article for beginners.
Let me start by denying a ‘deep and professional’ knowledge − my only
qualification is that in my job I manage an annual budget of £3million+
which includes a printing bill in six figures.
6.11
Let me try, however, to describe the process that is necessary to
convert a document in electronic form (Impression, Pagemaker, etc) into
that pile of neatly wrapped parcels that is delivered a few days or
weeks later.
6.11
The electronic document consists of a specification of a number of pages
− text or graphics or both − that need to converted into sheets of paper
and, possibly, bound into books or pamphlets.
6.11
As an Archimedes owner, you will probably have spent one or two thousand
pounds on a system which (when you are not zapping aliens) makes you
more productive. The professional printer has probably spent hundreds of
thousands of pounds on a high-speed printing press and he wants to make
that investment as productive as possible, in order to pay off the
overdraft he needed to buy it in the first place. He buys paper in huge
rolls, about 1 metre wide and weighing a ton or so.
6.11
His printing-press, most probably, uses an offset lithography process.
An aluminium plate is specially treated so that some areas will attract
ink and others repel it. These areas are created by a photographic
process and contain the text or graphics to be printed. The plate is
wound around a drum and transfers the ink which sticks to it onto a
roller which, in turn, transfers it to the paper (at a few hundred feet
per minute!).
6.11
The plate is big (up to a metre square, or so) and changing plates and
re-setting the press is a slow and expensive operation (because of the
lost time) which he aims to do as rarely as possible. Accordingly, the
plate will contain several pages of your work (or several copies of one
page) fitted together by the printer to make the best use of his
equipment.
6.11
The photographic process that creates the plate uses negative film
(negative because the letters are white and the space black). This can
be created directly from a computer typesetter but is, more usually,
created by photographing a master copy of the plate made by pasting
several pages of the document together to fit the size and shape of the
plate. Even at six hundred dots per inch, a laser printer on normal
paper does not produce sufficiently high quality for this ‘camera-ready
copy’.
6.11
The camera-ready copy is produced by what is, in effect, a very high
quality laser printer, working at between 1200 and 2500 dots per inch,
known as an electronic typesetter. It can create positive or negative
images on film or photographic paper (‘bromide’) which have to be
developed just like a photograph. The input to the typesetter is a
computer file which contains the description of the page in a special
computer language called PostScript (which was designed by a company
called Adobe just for this purpose).
6.11
The bromide stage can be omitted by providing laser printed pages as
‘camera-ready’ but the resultant quality is lower − especially with
half-tones (i.e. = grey shades as in photographs).
6.11
The beauty of PostScript is that it defines a printed page in a way that
is independent of the actual printer used to create the page. It may be
a typesetter, a laser printer or even a humble dot-matrix printer.
PostScript is a complex language which needs a fairly powerful processor
to interpret it at any speed. The product ShowPage from Computer
Concepts was an example of using the Acorn processor to good effect but
is, sadly, no longer available. [Rumours that CC lost the source code
are, surely, totally unfounded.] The real expert (I am married to one)
can write PostScript directly but it is usually created by a PostScript
printer driver (as supplied by Acorn) which takes the page description
from Impression etc and turns it into PostScript.
6.11
Most typesetting machines prefer discs from Apple Macs but can read PC
(DOS) format discs (720Kb or 1.4Mb). Those that can read Acorn discs are
rare (some have advertised in Archive) so, for safety, put your
PostScript file onto a DOS disc (with MultiFS, if you still have RISC OS
2). The printer will create bromides from them and paste them together
to create his master plate. He will be able to paste them more
accurately if you create the PostScript file containing crop (cutting)
marks. Many packages offer this as an option.
6.11
The process for printing a document in colour is more complex as it
requires four plates to be made and the press has four ‘stands’ (sets of
rollers) under which the paper passes in turn. Three plates are, in
theory, sufficient but it is difficult to avoid blacks appearing as
muddy browns unless a Key (=black) plate is used as well as the three
colours. The three colours are, surprisingly, not red, green and blue
but cyan (=turquoise), magenta (=purple) and yellow, hence the
abbreviations CMY and CMYK.
6.11
The typesetter is a monochrome (black and white only) device, so for
colour printing, you must create four PostScript files containing the
colour separations. There are packages that will do this automatically −
ExpressionPS (part of the Impression Business Supplement) is one.
6.11
The above applies when printing in a range of colours such as a colour
photograph. If there are only two colours (e.g. the cover of Archive)
then the printer will re-mix the shade required and the green (or
whatever) is output as a single extra colour separation in addition to
the black. Printers use the ‘Pantone’ system for describing ink colours
and will often show you colour cards from which to choose. Tables are
also available relating the Pantone colours to percentages of cyan,
magenta and yellow.
6.11
Your printer will help you decide the type of paper that you want your
work printed on − weight and texture − and how it is to be bound. Some
of the terms are confusing: paper weights are in gsm (grams per square
metre) − 80 gsm is normal, 200gsm is about the thickness of a postcard,
50gsm is typists’ copy paper. Bindings may be referred to as ‘saddle-
stitching’, stapled (like Archive) or ‘perfect’ (glued).
6.11
Before the advent of desktop publishing, many printers were, of course,
pleased to typeset documents for you from your typed or handwritten copy
− most are still pleased to do this and will do a very professional job
− at a price, of course! DTP comes into its own when you wish to have
total control over the finished document and/or want to reduce the time
between idea and final production. I hope that this article will have
helped you to understand more of the process. Good luck!  A
6.11
His printing-press, most probably, uses an offset lithography process.
An aluminium plate is specially treated so that some areas will attract
ink and others repel it.  These areas are created by a photographic
process and contain the text or graphics to be printed. The plate is
wound around a drum and transfers the ink which sticks to it onto a
roller which, in turn, transfers it to the paper (at a few hundred feet
per minute!).  (see figure 1).
6.11
The plate is big (up to a metre square, or so) and changing plates and
re-setting the press is a slow and expensive (because of the lost time)
operation which he aims to do are rarely as possible.  Accordingly, the
plate will contain several pages of your work (or several copies of one
page) fitted together by the printer to make the best use of his
equipment.
6.11
Comment Column
6.11
•    Acorn Pocket Book − Having had it with me everywhere for six months, I
thought some comments from a user might be helpful...
6.11
Can you really use a keyboard that small? How much memory has it got?
How long do the batteries last? People are amazed that I use my Pocket
Book so much. At last, I have a computer that I can take anywhere and
everywhere. I’m not worried by the batteries running down (as with my
Z88), or about its size or weight. My only worry is that it is such a
desirable little thing!
6.11
It really is a most useful accessory for an Acorn desktop computer, for
those who are on the move. I run Bible Clubs, Beach Missions and Camps
in my job with Scripture Union, and I am often away from my desk. I take
minutes of meetings as we talk, and it only takes a few minutes to tidy
them up and print them out. I write down notes for the little books I
publish, which then get expanded to whole chapters. I type letters and
papers wherever I am. The Spell-checker is remarkable for the type of
machine. I keep accounts for Camp on Abacus (the spreadsheet). I keep a
Holiday Club Team list on Cards (the database), and a campers’ list on
Abacus (because I need more options than Cards offers).
6.11
It’s an almost perfect machine for people on the move, especially as you
can turn it off and on and find that it is still where you left it. All
portables should do that. It is great for working on the train, in
meetings, in the car, even in the lounge at home, so as to be with my
family, instead of in the study.
6.11
In case it helps, here are a few hints that I have discovered in the
time I have been using my Pocket Book. The weak link is undoubtedly A-
Link. It is slow − slower than the Z88 link from David Holden, as far as
I can remember although, to be fair, it is doing a conversion job as
well. It is a great pity that it doesn’t multitask. It has crashed a few
times. I have learnt to close the conversion window as soon as I have
finished with it, to avoid delays as it updates. A-Link can get upset if
the Pocket Book turns itself off, as mine does after two minutes.
6.11
Write files drop into Impression with no problems, though I haven’t
tried the Rich Text Format, as I haven’t got the Impression Business
Supplement. I tend not to use styles much on the Pocket Book, preferring
to add them later in Impression. Impression files transfer well into
Write, using the ‘Save Text Story’ function, but remember to set the
‘With Styles’ button off.
6.11
I use Pipedream for all my accounts and database work. I convert these
to Lotus123 files (using !PD123 supplied with Pipedream) and then use A-
Link to load into Abacus on the Pocket Book. (123 files are the same as
WK1 format, which the A-Link software can convert.) Most functions that
I use come across well. It doesn’t like dates from Pipedream so I just
put dates in text format. It fails to convert the correct number of
decimal places which is annoying for accounts.
6.11
Converting back to Pipedream using the reverse porcess has sometimes
left me with a spreadsheet with all columns set to zero width. This is
worrying first time, as it appears to be an empty sheet! Setting the
column widths to sensible values solves it, but it doesn’t always
happen. I’m not sure whether the A-Link software or !PD123 causes these
problems.  Steve Hutchinson, Gloucester.
6.11
•    Basic Compactors (See Archive 6.9 p65) Perhaps I was too hasty in
condemning program compactors outright. It seems that the programs will
still run perfectly after compaction by a Basic program compactor.
However, as soon as any compacted program is edited by either !Edit or
ARMBE, then it will indeed no longer run without errors because of lack
of spaces after pseudo-variables or floating point variables. This is my
main criticism of program compactors, and what I should have said in my
original article.
6.11
However, I see no reason why the authors should not program their
compactors such that spaces are inserted (or not omitted) after pseudo-
variables and floating point variables. This is not an impossible
requirement: once compacted, a program should still run even after being
edited again. Indeed, this is such a very sensible argument that I begin
to wonder why they haven’t thought of it themselves! This would
certainly make modifying compacted programs a lot easier. OK, so the
program compactor will not compact it as much as is possible, but what a
price for a few saved bytes. Memory isn’t that tight! Take Acorn’s
!SciCalc, for instance. I had to re-insert some missing spaces before I
could modify it to work in double precision, displaying 18 digits. The
Basic Runfile is only about 22Kb.  Roger Darlington, Manchester.
6.11
•    Archimedes versus Windows Machines − I am an unashamed Archimedes
enthusiast, but I have been a bit concerned by the complacency of Acorn
computer users about developments in the PC world. This head-in-the-sand
attitude does serious harm to our credibility. What is so good about
Acorn machines? The answers that spring to mind are that they are fast,
the operating system is great and they are innovative because Acorn
develops its own chips, etc. However, the world has moved on since I
turned down a 286-16 in favour of a Archimedes 410.
6.11
Speed: Everyone quotes the “Artworks on the 540 is as fast as Corel Draw
on the Pentium” story, but this is not really fair to the PC. Artworks
is written in hand crafted ARMcode by CC whereas Corel Draw is
acknowledged in the PC world to be a bit slow even if you have a 486-33.
(But, I gather from a PC friend that Corel Draw is also mainly coded in
assembler. Ed.) Unfortunately, most software for the Archimedes is not
written in optimised machine code. A better comparison of speed would be
MS Word vs Wordz − where a 486-50 feels much faster than my A410+ARM3.
The colour cards from CC and State Machine help but it does make the
Acorn world seem “tacky” that you have to buy 3rd party solutions to
speed up your machine. Pentiums will run at 50 MIPs, DEC alpha RISC
chips already run at almost 60 MIPs (and faster ones are planned) − with
the best will in the world the ARM700 running at 26 MIPs is going to
look slow. Where is the parallel processing 60 MHz ARM chip?
6.11
Operating system: Windows 3.1 is unfriendly, cumbersome and still is
based on the legacy of DOS. However, it already has dynamic data
exchange (hotlinks) and background printing built in (unlike RISC OS 3).
OK, it uses loads of memory and hard disc space, but memory is down to
£25 per Mb and hard drives seem to almost double in capacity (for the
same money) every year. If you bolt Dashboard and Icon Manager on top
then you get drag-and-drop and an iconbar (vertical). Excel already has
pop-up menus using the right mouse button and it is rumoured that
Windows 4 will implement this for all programs as well as offering all
the above. Object-oriented programming and a global script language are
also on the way. If this speed of development continues, RISC OS will
soon look dated.
6.11
Innovation: Acorn video hardware was great in its day but it hasn’t
changed much in 3 years − compare that with 24 bit colour Windows
machines with graphics accelerators. You can now get active matrix
colour 486 notebooks with built in CD-ROM and space for a fax-modem
card. It makes the A4 seem a bit tame. (By the way, I heard a rumour
that Triumph-Adler have stopped making the cases for the A4 so now might
be a good time to get one.) IDE drives, CD ROMs, direct drive laser
printers, OCR − usually we follow the PC world rather than leading it.
6.11
Some suggestions: 1) There are 90 million PCs in the world and about 26
million copies of Windows 3.1 have been sold. I guess there are up to
200,000 RISC OS machines (please correct me if you know better). Let’s
accept that Windows is the de facto world standard and work at
communicating with it. RISC OS should contain utilities to convert
Sprites and Drawfiles to and from Windows bitmap and metafiles.
Likewise, conversion between Video-for-Windows and Replay files
(technically more difficult I think) would give us access to a huge
number of digital video clips as well as being able to export native
movies. (I like the way CC have given Artworks access to Corel Draw! and
Illustrator files.)
6.11
2) We badly need a new machine with better speed, graphics, FPU etc.
Perhaps something with a second ARM3 as a graphics co-processor...
(hopefully there will be good news in September!) (See the Hardware
Column on page 19 for more on this! Ed)
6.11
3) How about an A4 derivative which is cheap enough for every child in a
class to have one (say £400)? It doesn’t have to have colour or a huge
hard disc, but it must run RISC OS programs − i.e. not a Psion 3.
6.11
4) An object-oriented version of RISC OS would be nice − especially if
an object-oriented application development system was bundled with it
(like NextStep). Failing this, a version of Basic with “handles” to make
Wimp programming easier (cf. MS Visual Basic) would be much appreciated.
6.11
Acorn machines have always been tremendously upgradable and are
supported by software houses (e.g. CC) which squeeze every last bit of
performance from them. I believe that they are still value for money
compared to the opposition. Let’s not throw this away by failing to
notice what the rest of the computer world is doing.  Cain Hunt,
Cambridge.
6.11
•    Basic program compression − Mike Smith’s comments on Basic program
compression illustrates one of the pitfalls of benchmarking − how easy
it is to reach an unsafe conclusion unless you’re very thorough with
your testing. His first example seems to show that variable name length
has no effect on program speed, but this is not always the case. I
modified his program slightly to make the effect more obvious:
6.11
PRINT“The program starts now...”
6.11
T%=TIME
6.11
FORi%=1TO100000
6.11
  a=2
6.11
  b=4
6.11
  c=0
6.11
  c=b+a
6.11
NEXT
6.11
PRINT(TIME-T%)/100;“ seconds.”
6.11
i.e. I’ve changed to floating-point variables and reduced the size of
the loop counter to speed things up a bit. Obviously, the run times of
this program will not be directly comparable with Mike’s any more, but I
went on to run several versions: version 1 uses variables a, b and c;
version 2 uses aa, bb and cc, and so on. Tabulating the results (on an
A5000) gives:
6.11
        Version no.    Timing (sec)
6.11
    1    4.32
6.11
    2    4.34
6.11
    3    4.06
6.11
    4    4.00
6.11
    5    4.32
6.11
    6    4.34
6.11
    7    4.06
6.11
    8    4.00
6.11
    ...    ...
6.11
The first thing to notice is that the times are not constant, but vary
by about 8%. Secondly they don’t increase with variable name length, as
one might expect, but follow a cyclic pattern which repeats every four
versions. I can only guess why this should be, but it may be due to the
way the MEMC fetches quadwords of memory, making quadword alignment of
the variable storage important. Obviously, the Basic programmer doesn’t
have direct control over the exact placement of variables, but this
example shows how comparing only two programs can be misleading −
comparing version 1 with, say, 21 or 41 might lead you to the conclusion
that variable length has no effect, when this is clearly not the case.
6.11
Just in case this description seems to be falling into place all too
easily, consider the following timings from further down the table:
6.11
         Version no.    Timing (sec)
6.11
    ...    ...
6.11
    45    4.32
6.11
    46    12.28
6.11
    47    4.07
6.11
    ...    ...
6.11
I leave it to the real Archimedes gurus to explain this one!  Lorcan
Mongey, Belfast.
6.11
•    C (Acorn-style) − The C programming language is one of the most
popular languages today, if not the most popular, so it is not
surprising that Acorn promote it as the language of choice for wimp
programming on the Archimedes. However, there are a number of features
which, for me, make it less pleasant to use than might otherwise be the
case.
6.11
From the language point of view, C’s oddest feature is its handling of
arrays. For example, “all function arguments are passed by value, except
arrays, which are passed by reference”. The close link with pointers is
fine for vectors (1D arrays), but confusion is not far off when you move
into higher dimensions − compare the syntax for accessing an element of
a 2D array, and accessing a data item via a vector of pointers! C is
sometimes called a medium level language because of its similarity with
assembly language in this area.
6.11
The reason for this is that C was designed to handle the same sort of
objects that computers do, i.e. characters, numbers and addresses.
Composite types, including arrays and structures, were provided for, but
not comprehensively. For example, in the first edition of the language,
structures could not be assigned as a whole, or passed to or returned
from a function. The treatment of structures has been sorted out in ANSI
C, and this could be done because the syntax did not need changing.
However, to make C’s arrays sensible would leave you with a different
language.
6.11
I am sure that C’s facilities for modular software could be improved,
but I don’t know how it could be done! Object orientation would be nice,
but C++ suffers from being an evolutionary language, and so it is not as
neat as it could be. The array anomaly seems even stranger in this
setting!
6.11
What I dislike the most, however, is the libraries that Acorn supply. A
lot of C’s popularity is supposed to be due to the ease with which the
programmer can get close to the operating system and the hardware, but
this aspect of the language is cleverly masked by Acorn’s libraries. To
be fair, RISC OS is an assembly language operating system, and many of
the calls have multiple return values, whereas C functions can only
return one value. Also, the standard library is based on UNIX, and has
been closely defined by the X3J11 committee, but I see no reason why
this should make it obtrusive. At the risk of being boring, I would like
to list a few specific things that annoy me the particularly:
6.11
The i/o functions in stdio.h convert vdu commands sent to the screen
into escape sequences. I can see no good reason for this, except that
perhaps it is to encourage the use of other libraries, but why? Other
libraries would not be part of the shared C library, so there would be
more duplicated code in the system plus the unused part of CLib, so the
supposed space-saving advantages of the shared C library are cancelled!
Also, the only other libraries that can be used are bbc.h which is
discouraged, or kernel.h which is ugly.
6.11
It would be nice to be able to do unbuffered keyboard input using
stdio.h, but I suppose ANSI require it to be the way it is... Also, does
the library have to buffer every stream itself? Doesn’t RISC OS buffer
byte i/o already?
6.11
When a C program crashes (e.g. by attempting to access non-existent
memory), rather than getting a normal RISC OS error (e.g. Abort on data
transfer), the library gives a customised error message. This is
obviously the signal handling system at work. Why can’t it just leave
the RISC OS actions in place and provide the necessary hooks, if they
are needed, rather than installing them regardless? And what is wrong
with “Escape” that makes the more cumbersome, verbose and alien
“Interrupt received from user − program terminated” better?
6.11
Why does the library have to provide i/o redirection facilities when
RISC OS has its own? The library does provide a bit more functionality
in its distinction between stdout and stderr, so maybe RISC OS should
have included similar facilities.
6.11
The kernel seems to have a lot of paraphernalia associated with
debugging and multiple language program support. This seems ridiculously
over-specified, especially since most programs are C only or
C+assembler. Can’t the level of support be specified at compile time,
and only as much as is needed be linked in? Production programs do not
need to display stack backtraces, or to know which function or language
section is currently executing, since these are only used when the
program is being debugged.
6.11
There seems to be a common aspect to most of these problems: the
libraries are duplicating functions already provided by RISC OS, and
doing so in a different (usually UNIX-styled) way. Little can be done
about the appearance of the ANSI library but its working can be made
more RISC OS-like rather than UNIX-like, which would seem sensible
considering the operating system that we are running under.  Anthony
Finch, Beaconsfield.
6.11
•    DOS 6 − an advance? − Brian Cowan wrote very favourably (in Archive
6.9 p53ff) about this new version of MS-DOS. However, those who have DOS
5.0 should think twice about upgrading. Since version 6 appeared, just
about every German PC magazine has torn it to shreds as a half-hearted
attempt to get even with DR-DOS 6. Even one magazine which has a
reputation of being “Microsoft-friendly” has just published (I think) 14
pages with reports about bugs, glitches and unpleasant quirks; in
particular, Double Space seems to create a lot of problems. (By the way:
Has anyone got any DOS disc doubler to work on ADFS discs?)
6.11
Those colleagues of mine who always have to have the latest version of
every piece of software they use, all report trouble, not least with
mysterious crashes of Windows 3.1 which did not happen before. You have
been warned!  Jochen Konietzko, Köln, Germany
6.11
•    Electromagnetic Compatibility − John Woodgate, who made the original
helpful suggestions about screening some of the RFI generated by
Archimedes computers (Archive 6.2 p10) wrote in to say that he felt that
Barry Haines’ screening techniques (Archive 6.10 p55) were potentially
dangerous − certainly in the hands of someone of limited technical
ability. Obviously, you should take extreme care when implementing
Barry’s suggestions and you should certainly NEVER put metal foil INSIDE
the computer. Also, as Barry pointed out, you should never block the
ventilation slots. Also, you should make very sure that any conductive
paint or metal foil is firmly and securely earthed.
6.11
•    Flopticals for ADFS − An Obituary? − There is sad news for those who
have been waiting for the new improved software for Morley’s floptical
drive (Archive 6.7 p66).
6.11
Insite Peripherals have changed the boards of their drives; until
recently the EPROM which holds the device driver was socketed, and could
easily be exchanged. However, the current batch of drives (and probably
all future ones) boasts a surface-mounted firmware EPROM! Apparently,
there is no hope that Insite will change their design again to the
previous more customer-friendly one.
6.11
Therefore, as Morley just told me in writing, they “are ceasing the ADFS
floppy option on the flopticals”. (I understand that flopticals as such
will still be sold; they just won’t be able to handle ADFS floppies any
more.)
6.11
However, there is one ray of hope. For some months now, a Berlin-based
Acorn dealer (Tools Akademische Agentur GmbH, Geschwister-Scholl-Straße
5, D-10117 Berlin, Germany, Phone 0049−30−2081329) has been working on a
software adaptation of the Insite flopticals for the Acorn world.
6.11
So far, they have run into a lot of problems, as Insite seem incapable
of issuing developers’ information which actually fits the drives.
However, I have just been assured that work on the project is
continuing.
6.11
So, maybe there will be a fully functioning floptical drive for Acorn
yet! Stay tuned for more on this subject!  Jochen Konietzko, Köln,
Germany.
6.11
•    Ink cartridge refills − The cost of manufacturers’ original cartridges
for inkjet printers is considerable and this is particularly the case
for tri-colour cartridges for colour inkjet printers. For this reason,
several companies are offering refill kits for giving new life to spent
cartridges, but some of these products are better than others.
6.11
I have a Hewlett Packard colour ink jet printer which uses tri-colour
cartridges. My experience is that the refill kit sold by System Insight
of Welyn Garden City, Hertfordshire is very satisfactory. One refill kit
can fill a cartridge nine times and print quality is indistinguishable
from printing with a new cartridge. Moreover this company is very
helpful.  George Foot, Surrey.
6.11
•    Refilling ink cartridges − Regarding Mike McNamara’s question about
Quink Permanent Black ink, R E Parsons uses it all the time to fill an
HP cartridge and finds that it is water soluble and does not block the
jets.
6.11
Having said this, Arthur Taylor writes that Quink is NOT suitable for
the Canon BJ3xx range and suggests that it may not be suitable for other
inkjet printers. Apparently, everything works well while the printer is
being used but problems arise after the printer has been switched off
long enough for the ink to dry out. If this has already happened to you,
some gentle rubbing with a cotton bud wetted with water and a little
washing up detergent will shift the dried ink.
6.11
With the current interest in refilling cartridges, it is important to
note that refilling is only recommended on replaceable cartridges.
Printer manufacturers do not recommend the refilling of cartridges but
this is partly due to their interest in the printer consumables market.
However, it should be made clear that refilling with certain inks or
refilling too many times may damage the head. Therefore refilling is
definitely not recommended on permanent-head inkjet printers such as the
Epson Stylus 800.
6.11
•    Utilities I find useful − In the first year or two as an Archimedes
owner, I bought literally hundreds of discs with PD and Shareware, and
tried out just about everything. Bit by bit, most of the discs were
classified (for my working environment) as quite useless, and nowadays
there are just a handful of applications that I always use. Some of
these might be useful for some of you, too.
6.11
(a) Always loaded (i.e. as part of a Boot file):
6.11
FreeMem, by Ian Ashley (DataFile PD), resides on the iconbar and gives
the amount of free RAM in kilobytes.
6.11
2ndHand, a.k.a. The Missing Hand, author unknown, replaces the two-
handed Shift-double click for opening application directories and
loading all sorts of files into Edit with a one-handed double click
(short click, long click).
6.11
HangFire, Shareware by Edouard Poor (DataFile PD), is a rather nice
little multitasking, modular screen saver, for which it is quite simple
to write new modules.
6.11
Alert(er), by Ian Rawlings (DataFile PD), gives a beep if any single-
tasking operation takes longer than a certain time.
6.11
MegaMouse, copyright Risc Developments, is a module which makes the
mouse pointer “dynamic”, i.e. the faster you move the mouse over the
same stretch of your desk, the further the pointer will move.
6.11
Quitter, by Gnari(?) (DataFile PD), is a module which provides an
“emergency exit” when you come across a game which normally can only be
stopped with a reset.
6.11
Warfarin, by R.K. Lloyd (Shareware 20), is a module which lets you move
the mouse pointer via the keyboard (just in case the mouse should
suddenly “die”).
6.11
Monitor, by G.T.Allen (DataFile PD), is a luxurious version of Acorn’s
!(CPU)Usage.
6.11
(b) On the Pinboard, I have:
6.11
RMCompare, by David Wilkins (DataFile PD), puts an icon onto the
iconbar. Dragging any module there will give details about name, version
and so on, and also which version, if any, is present in !System and in
RAM.
6.11
RMA_MAN(ager), by Keith Sloan (Careware 8) gives you easy access to the
Relocatable Module Area (including the Wimp sprite pool).
6.11
WasteBin, by Adrian Look (Archive monthly disc 5.4), is quite a
luxurious bin which can be extensively configured.
6.11
Provided that enough RAM is available, then these, together with some
commercial products, are very helpful. (All the stuff I cram into my
machine during the boot sequence takes up nearly 2 Mb.)
6.11
I would love to know about the favourite PD or shareware programs of
other Archive readers.  Jochen Konietzko, Köln, Germany
6.11
•    Wizzo speed tests − I was interested in the adverts for Wizzo, the IDE
filing system from ICS Ltd and ordered one at the Harrogate Acorn User
Show on the basis of those adverts. I realise that there are other
benefits, but it was the speed aspect that I was particularly interested
in.
6.11
(To set this comment in context, I suggest you look at ICS’s full-page
advert which appeared in Archive 6.8 p12 and also in Acorn User and
Acorn Computing for four months, from April to July. It says “2 Mb/sec
speed barrier broken by ICS IDE filing system! So fast, they’re calling
it Wizzo. (It’s magic) Wizzo5 for the A5000, only £29.” However, ICS
have withdrawn this advert and in the alternative advert in the August
Acorn User they explain that “a Wizzo ROM by itself will only produce
slight speed improvement. If you need speed in an A5000, fit an IDEARCIN
interface instead. Up to 60% improvement can then be achieved but this
does depend which hard disc you use, so do check with us first.”
Apparently the drive which gives this “60% speed improvement” was a
Seagate 500Mb drive. Ian Copestake himself has made some comments about
this situation − see below. Ed)
6.11
Having bought Wizzo, I decided to carry out the some tests on the two
hard drives in my A5000. This involved backing up the data, a total of
about 140Mb, because part of the testing procedure would be to
initialise the discs to have a large file allocation unit (LFAU) of
either 256 bytes or 512 bytes. One of the previous contributors, Steve
Drain (Archive 5.12 p7), indicated that, with his SCSI drives, this LFAU
made some difference to the data transfer speeds and size of
directories.
6.11
Another variant that came into the tests was the speed increase routine
from Archive 6.8 p28. In the tables I have used speed setting 1 for the
default processor speed of the A5000 and speed setting 2 when using the
speed increase routine. After backing up all of the data, I initialised
the discs − when using Acorn’s !HForm, the final question asked is
“Large File Allocation Unit? 512”. If you expect to use a very large
number (several thousand) of small files, type 256 in response to the
prompt. As can be seen from the table, the size of LFAU affects the size
of each directory created on the disc. As an example, if there were 500
directories with an LFAU of 512 bytes, these directories would occupy
500 × 7680 = 3 840 000 bytes of disc space. With a LFAU of 256 bytes
then the occupied space would be 500 × 4096 = 2 048 000 bytes.
6.11
After initialising the discs, I did a *FREE :4 and *FREE :5 to find the
exact USED space on the discs − again this was related to the LFAU
chosen and is shown in the table.
6.11
The files used for checking the speeds were the contents of RISC OS 2’s
Application Disc 2, transferred from one directory to another − the test
which has been used in Archive for some years now. The drives were
configured by default to the ADFS filing system and the speed transfer
tests carried out.
6.11
To carry out the comparison, the Wizzo ROM had to be inserted into the
fifth ROM socket adjacent to the RISC OS ROMs. A diagram would have
helped to locate the Wizzo ROM into its correct position, i.e. the lower
28 holes of the 32 pin socket.
6.11
The computer then had to be configured for the new filing system by
typing in a series of commands that took away the ADFS and substituted
the IDEFS for controlling the hard discs. With that done, the speed
tests were once again carried out using IDEFS.
6.11
The A5000 was equipped with two IDE drives: an 85 Mb Conner and a 122 Mb
Quantum Pro. I have used a combination of variables to obtain a fairly
comprehensive view of how these affect the speed of transfer of files.
In the tests modes 0, 12, 27 and 106 (1088×448) were used.
6.11
Conner 85 Mb
6.11
LFAU (bytes)    512    256
6.11
Directory size (bytes)    7680
    4096
6.11
Used disc space (bytes)    52736
    90112
6.11
Data transfer speeds Kb/s (Wizzo percentage speed gain)
6.11
Filesystem        Mode            Speed setting 1
  Speed setting 2
6.11
                                         (512)                  (256)
            (512)                 (256)
6.11
ADFS    0    507        428
    520        435
6.11
ADFS    12    500        427
    512        433
6.11
ADFS    27    467        398
    492        416
6.11
ADFS    106    484        416
    499        427
6.11
IDEFS    0    441    (−15.0)    459
    (+6.8)    457    (−13.8)    455
    (+4.4)
6.11
IDEFS    12    435    (−14.9)    446
    (+4.3)    445    (−15.1)    452
    (+4.2)
6.11
IDEFS    27    418    (−11.7)    428
    (+7.0)    430    (−14.4)    440
    (+5.5)
6.11
IDEFS    106    428    (−13.1)    439
    (+5.2)    436    (−14.4)    450
    (+5.1)
6.11
Quantum Pro 122 Mb
6.11
LFAU (bytes)    512    256
6.11
Directory size (bytes)    7680
    4096
6.11
Used disc space (bytes)    70144
    126976
6.11
Data transfer speeds Kb/s (Wizzo percentage speed gain)
6.11
Filesystem        Mode            Speed setting 1
  Speed setting 2
6.11
                                         (512)                  (256)
            (512)                 (256)
6.11
ADFS    0    847        780
    706        790
6.11
ADFS    12    835        744
    698        784
6.11
ADFS    27    741        673
    657        715
6.11
ADFS    106    780        696
    679        731
6.11
IDEFS    0    699    (−21.2)    699
    (−11.6)    704    (−0.3)    701
    (−12.7)
6.11
IDEFS    12    691    (−20.8)    682
    (−9.1)    696    (−0.3)    696
    (−12.6)
6.11
IDEFS    27    605    (−22.5)    610
    (−10.3)    661    (+0.6)    659
    (−8.5)
6.11
IDEFS    106    657    (−18.7)    654
    (−6.4)    670    (−1.3)    673
    (−8.6)
6.11
The large file allocation unit has some effect on data transfer speeds
as does the speed increase routine published in Archive, but my
conclusions about Wizzo are that it does nothing for data transfer
speeds except on the smaller drive with LFAU 256 bytes. As the test
results indicate, IDEFS slows down the rate of data transfer in many
cases. Obviously, it depends what kind of test you do. In tests
involving loading large files, things may be different.  Barry Thompson,
Derby.
6.11
•    Wizzo speed tests − A Wizzo ROM on its own will make little difference
to speed (we have found small improvements in our tests using software
supplied by Paul Beverley). The speeds emphasised in our recent
advertisements are possible when you use one of our interface cards
(which contain the same software as a Wizzo5). Transfer rates better
than 2.3 Mb/s can be achieved but this depends which hard disc you use.
We will be happy to advise.
6.11
We accept that the old advert could lead people to the wrong conclusion
about speed with Wizzo5, and we have revised it to make the Wizzo5
advantages clearer. No-one has complained to us so far, but we will
happily make a refund to any customer who feels they have not benefitted
from buying Wizzo5.
6.11
The main advantage of fitting a Wizzo ROM in an A5000 are: password
protection and partitioning, the ability to use more than 512Mb and
compatibility with many models of hard disc which would not work with
Acorn’s own filing system.  Ian Copestake, ICS Ltd.
6.11
My personal view of this is that Barry Thompson has done a more
realistic test of Wizzo than the ones upon which the advertising claims
were based. The speed tests used for the claims of “up to 60%
improvement” are using ICS’ own £60 hardware add-on and are based on
loading large files, and the actual 60% figure was obtained with a 500Mb
drive! ICS have admitted that, with the built-in drives − 40, 80 and
120Mb − the speed increases on file-loading are only a few percent.
6.11
What is more, all ICS’ claims are based on the old speed tests we used
to use in Archive. More recently, Archive has gone over to quoting the
“copying a load of files” test which Barry used because we feel this
gives more of an indication of the practical speed difference. You
should ask yourself how often you have to wait for a large file to load
and how often you have to wait for a group of files to be copied.
6.11
The real issue with Wizzo is not one of speed but whether the extra
facilities that Ian mentions are worth the extra cost. Ed.  A
6.11
Masterfile 3 Database
6.11
Peter Jennings
6.11
Masterfile has been a familiar database name since the days of cassette-
based programs on the BBC. It developed into Masterfile II on DFS and
ADFS and when the Archimedes came along a suitable conversion appeared.
The Archimedes version of Masterfile II was, however, very much a BBC-
style program and users who remained loyal to it have had a long wait
for Risc Developments to issue their brand new multi-tasking Masterfile
3. In the meantime, a number of other database programs have appeared.
So has it been worth the wait?
6.11
Masterfile 3 (version 1.15) comes on two unprotected discs, one for the
program and the other containing ten sample files. They are accompanied
by a spiral-bound 100-page manual, a reference card and some release
notes, all packed in a smartly designed box. It costs £49 +VAT (or £54
from Archive) and a site licence for 30 users is available from Risc
Developments for £245 +VAT.
6.11
The well-illustrated manual is clearly set out and easy to follow,
although marred in its present edition by a few omissions and some
inadequate indexing. It is divided into three sections, a basic
introduction, a tutorial guide and a more detailed reference section.
Its friendly tone is set by a chatty introduction from Sheridan
Williams, who wrote the original Masterfile, telling some of the uses he
has found for Masterfile 3 in business and for his hobbies. Experienced
database users will find much of the text confirms what they would do
intuitively.
6.11
The program is loaded in the normal way to put an icon on the iconbar.
New users can open one of the sample files and learn how to use it with
step-by-step guidance from the manual and, if needed, Acorn’s Help
application, which is supported.
6.11
Descriptor files
6.11
A new database is created by clicking on the iconbar icon to open a
window where details have to be entered into a table to define the
required fields for a “descriptor” file − an idea which will be familiar
to users of Masterfiles I and II. There can be up to 255 fields, each up
to 255 characters long, and they can be set for text, integers, decimal
numbers, dates, date stamps, time stamps, calculations or pictures in
either sprite or Draw format. Date stamp and time stamp fields are given
the current date and time automatically when a record is created.
Calculation fields produce the result of a mathematical calculation
which can use data from other fields. Field names are limited to ten
characters or spaces, which has the drawback of needing abbreviations
for any longer titles, including some commonly used labels such as
“Classification”, “Description” and “Miscellaneous”.
6.11
After the descriptor file has been completed and saved, there is a
further stage if you wish to arrange the fields to suit your own needs
and taste. A card designer opens a window displaying the field names and
blank fields neatly lined up, one below the other, in the order they
were created. These can be dragged into new positions with two or more
on the same line, spaces between them and with multi-line fields, as
required. There is an optional, invisible, grid to help the alignment.
Additional fields, which can have graphics or up to 4Kb of text dragged
into them, can be added by creating “object” windows. Fields can be
hidden and unhidden and two different passwords can be set to allow
access with or without the ability to alter the database structure. Data
can be imported and exported in CSV, TSV or ASCII formats.
6.11
Customised colours
6.11
I dislike working on a dreary grey background and one of the first
things I like to do with suitable applications is to customise the
colours. With Masterfile 3, text and field colours can both be set from
a menu but there is no entry on it to change the grey background of the
card itself. Here, the manual let me down as I could find nothing to
tell me how I could do this and there is not even an entry for “colour”
in the index.
6.11
The clue came from the example files. All but one of them have grey
index cards. The exception has a colourful map of the world for
background. With a bit of trial, error and manual searching, I
eventually created an “object” window, dragged it to size to fill the
card completely and then set it to the colour I wanted for the
background. The object was then put to the back so that the fields and
field names were visible in front of it. These all had to be separately
moved down the card as I had not been able to extend the object window
far enough above the top field to give the card a balanced look. This
finally had the desired effect but was rather a cumbersome way of doing
what most other applications provide as a menu option.
6.11
Cards can be browsed through and new records added by using an attached
toolbox with tape recorder style symbols and there are a number of
useful “find” options allowing searches, with optional wildcards, on all
or selected fields.
6.11
The order that the cards are displayed can be changed by creating
indices. You can have up to 76 and the first nine are automatically
assigned F-keys for quick selection.
6.11
The database can also be divided up into subsets so that you can view a
selection of cards on a particular subject or which fulfil a particular
condition. Subsets are very simply created by entering the subject or
condition to be matched into the appropriate field or fields in a
“dialogue box” window. Another omission from the manual came to light
when my first attempts to make a subset were rejected with an “Unknown
field name” message. Once again, reference to the sample files solved
the problem by showing that the subject had to be entered in quote
marks, a detail not given in the manual.
6.11
Indices and subsets are both updated automatically when records are
changed, added or deleted.
6.11
Report styles
6.11
One of the useful ways that data can be presented is in the form of
reports which can be generated from the complete file or a subset and in
“table” or “label” style. You can choose which fields to include and can
rearrange their order. Table reports can display and/or print the data
either vertically, with each field on a different line, or horizontally
with fields side by side across the page. The label option sets out the
information in a suitable form for printing onto sheets of labels in any
size or layout.
6.11
Masterfile 3 faces stronger competition than its earlier versions did,
so how does it compare with other new databases? I would like to have
been able to use macros or some other quick-entry facility and it is
without a few of the more exotic features or gimmicks, according to
viewpoint, such as the ability to store sounds. The manual needs a few
additions but no doubt this is already in hand.
6.11
Masterfile 3 emerges as a good middle-range program, in both features
and price, which has all the essentials which most database users
need.  A
6.11
Yes Chancellor 2
6.11
Rob Wilcox
6.11
Like most taxpayers, I’ve often listened to budget speeches and
wondered, ‘Why doesn’t he... ?’.
6.11
Well, for anyone who fancies their chances at being Chancellor of the
Exchequer, ‘Yes Chancellor 2’, published by Chalksoft, will at least
prove that it’s not as easy as you might think.
6.11
At first I wasn’t too sure if ‘Yes Chancellor 2’ was meant to be a
serious economic model of the nation, or just a light-hearted game. In
fact, it ends up being somewhere between the two!
6.11
It’s written by Tom Tuite, an economics graduate and a former senior
official of the Inland Revenue, who’s been involved in the design and
management of major computer projects.
6.11
The first thing I did was write-protect the supplied disc, to play
around just to get a rough feel for the program before reading the
manual and seriously getting down to being Chancellor.
6.11
The program is not multi-tasking but takes over the whole computer and I
very quickly discovered that the program needs to write to the disc. As
I had write-protected my copy, this led to a non-recoverable fatal error
requiring a <reset>.
6.11
Equally, there is no means of safely abandoning after a few minutes
familiarising. There is no early ‘quit’ menu option, and <escape> has
been disabled. The only way out is to hit <reset>.
6.11
Having got those minor niggles out of the way, I was delighted to find
that I could make a working backup and was able to install it onto the
hard disc.
6.11
At this point, I decided to read the excellent 16-page manual, which is
informative and educative (well, I learnt a few things) and has
obviously been produced with the student in mind.
6.11
Even more informatively, the disc contains text files explaining exactly
how the PROCs within the program deal with variations in exchange rates,
inflation and GDP, and how these factors affect your all important votes
if you’re to win the next election and eventually even gain a peerage.
So this was to be my chance to be Chancellor.
6.11
The nice thing about a program such as this is that you can alternately
play at being Mr Nice Guy (and have give-away budgets) and Mr Tough Guy
(and hit ’em firmly in the wallets) which, at the very least, ensures a
very bewildered electorate.
6.11
I soon learnt that whichever rôle you decide to play, it’s all too easy
to wreck the economy, and whilst you can get away with so much in the
early years of a parliament, you have to be much more cunning in the
run-up to the election, if you’re to get re-elected. Doesn’t this sound
very familiar?
6.11
Operation
6.11
As Chancellor you’re responsible for tax raising, public sector pay
settlements, industrial policy, interest-rates, foreign reserves, public
borrowing and deciding on levels of all national expenditure including
defence matters, law and order, education and social services; not to
mention the occasional grandiose major construction project. Get any one
of these wrong and you just have to dig yourself out of the mess you’ve
created.
6.11
A feature I particularly liked, was the way in which the program
lets you know exactly how much you need to raise, in order to fund
public expenditure plans, and allows you to scroll up/down all the
various permutations available for adjusting taxes, borrowing or
repaying the national debt, or drawing from or adding to the reserves.
This helps to find an equitable balance between all the variables.
6.11
One area where you really have to balance out the Nice Guy/Tough Guy
dilemma is in the annual public sector pay round. Offer too little and
you end up with a series of strikes and bad industrial relations (which
affect your popular vote). Offer too much, and inflation rises,
exchange-rates fall …and the rest is history.
6.11
If, due to total incompetence, you screw things up badly enough too
quickly, you’ll soon find yourself out on your ear, as the business
community loses confidence in your ability to govern.
6.11
After I had got the economy into a bit of a mess with interest rates at
about 17%, I thought I’d try to reduce interest rates at a stroke.
Unfortunately, the program assumes we are still in the ERM, and doesn’t
allow you to lower interest rates below the permitted floor. Real
Chancellors, it seems, can move the goal posts; sadly I had to struggle
on with mega interest rates − and no, I didn’t get re-elected. (Are we
to have a Yes Chancellor 3 with membership of the ERM removed? Ed.)
6.11
Overall
6.11
The on-screen presentation is excellent and illustrated with lots of
visually pleasing graphics, including amusing animated sequences of
telexes with the PM at No 10. At the end of each year in office, you are
given treasury feedback of the state of the nation, and presented with
full graphical analyses of your progress and a histogram showing your
popularity. Interestingly, you’re then presented with a ‘dream’ option,
which lets you go back to see where you went wrong, and which then lets
you try again with all the benefits of hindsight to see what might have
happened. The ‘dream’ option though, is just that − it does not actually
undo your mistakes.
6.11
Shortcomings
6.11
My main disappointment is that the program deals in the grand total of
all taxes − i.e. income tax, national insurance, VAT, excise duties and
even local taxes are all lumped together as one. This is a pity because,
from an educational standpoint, it would have been highly instructive to
compare the separate effects of direct and indirect taxation. It would
also be fascinating to see the effect of adding a penny on here, or
taking tuppence off there, or even to explore the effects of old
multiple ‘soak the rich’ tax bands. Indeed, such a facility to
separately adjust income tax and VAT rates was included in a similar
program ‘Great Britain Limited’, produced for the old BBC computer by
Simon Hessel back in 1982. It would be nice to see such features
included in any future enhanced release of the program.
6.11
From an entertainment point of view, I feel that ‘Yes Chancellor 2’
could have been considerably spiced-up by the inclusion of a more
profligate random seeding of crises, disasters, scandals and
banana skins of the kind so hated by politicians but upon which
newspaper editors positively thrive. I have to say that after three or
four sessions in office, I was beginning to find frequent threats of
‘Sabre rattling in the East’, rather tedious.
6.11
Conclusion
6.11
‘Yes Chancellor 2’ is a good all-round practical introduction to the
world of government finance and economics − and it’s fun to use.
However, I suspect it is probably not sufficiently detailed to benefit
students of A-Level economics, who should know much of this already.
Apart from that, I quite like this program, though at £23 +VAT from
Chalksoft (or £25 through Archive) I feel it is somewhat overpriced.  A
6.11
LandBuild
6.11
Meg Else
6.11
This program creates three dimensional landscapes which can be viewed on
the screen in colour, saved for future reference or printed out. There
are two versions of LandBuild − a 1Mb and a 2Mb. The 2Mb version
requires more memory but enables you to draw high resolution 256×256
landscapes.
6.11
Having loaded the correct version for your machine, LandBuild installs
itself on the iconbar ready for use. First click on the icon and the
statistics window appears. From this, you can make various choices. You
can decide upon the height of the water, rock level and snow level. The
total height reached on your map is the sum of the water level and the
rock level. You may choose to include beaches to separate the land from
the water and you can define the length and direction of shadows cast
over the landscape by using the light source height and the light
direction options. Finally, you can choose the height from which you
want to view your landscape. You are totally in command of all these
elements and although a lot of experimenting may be necessary, it should
be possible to generate the image you want.
6.11
There are two elements which are random or pseudo-random. The fractal
dimensions enables you to alter the texture of the landscape. The lower
the value chosen, the rougher and more ragged the landscape appears, and
raising the value gives a smoother, more circular landscape. The main
random element, however, is the seed value and it is this which defines
the general shape of the landscape. This is initially set up at 9999,
but there are no hints given in the manual about appropriate numbers to
try.
6.11
Getting a picture of your landscape is complicated. Firstly, you select
generate all but, in order to see your landscape, you have to return to
the main menu from the iconbar. Show map gives a sprite-sized version of
your landscape. On this, you can change the angle from which the map is
viewed. Show view initially informs you that there is no landscape
printed. However, clicking on the menu button over this message allows
you the options of seeing a full-scale preview, printing your landscape
or taking a plan (overhead view) of the current landscape. The preview
option is the one to use first. This gives you a real idea of your
creation and you can then print it, make alterations from the statistics
menu or return to the main menu on the iconbar and save your landscape.
6.11
I have not listed all the options available on this program, for they
are an impressive array; plenty to stimulate the imagination. There are
also a wide and effective selection of colours and excellent printout
facilities, especially if you have a colour printer. It is extremely
quick to create the landscapes − just a matter of seconds, and a far cry
from the various free software we have used during which several meals
could be eaten and the car serviced. It is great fun to use once you
have got over the initial difficulty of a slightly confusing manual.
6.11
My main difficulty with fractal landscapes is the random element. I have
spoken to several mathematicians and geographers about this and they
have confirmed my view that you cannot reproduce a preconceived model on
LandBuild or any other fractal program. The results produced by
LandBuild are excellent, but I am ultimately left with the question of
who will use the programme and for what purpose?
6.11
You can obtain LandBuild from Software 42, for £15 (no VAT) or £30 for a
site licence.  A
6.11
PipeLineZ
6.11
Gerald Fitton
6.11
Once again, thanks for all your many letters, problems, discs, words of
praise, criticisms, etc. I often find those which are not published of
greater interest to me personally than those which I can use in Archive.
Sorry, but I (and the Archive editor) have to try to strike a balance
between an article which will interest a few intensely and an article
which appeals to a wider readership.
6.11
On this subject of broad and narrow interests, I’m no longer surprised
to receive correspondence from readers of this column who don’t have
PipeDream or Wordz, but, for the first time, I’ve noticed that quite a
few of you say you’re regular readers of Archive who are reading my
column for the first time. Of course, reading a specialist column about
a package that you might buy is an excellent way of helping you to make
up your mind about it. You tell me that Archive, with its half a dozen
such specialist columns, has been (and still is) most useful in this
respect. The comment you make is “Why doesn’t Archive advertise this
fact instead of advertising that it is first with the news of new
products?”.
6.11
I am beginning to receive letters from you about covering one or two
items dealt with in depth or covering more topics more thinly in the
magazine leaving details of the applications on the Archive monthly
disc. It is too soon to come to a conclusion yet but, for this article
at least, I shall not be following the strategy of the last two months.
Indeed, in response to the increasing number of my ‘fans’ who don’t have
any of Colton Software products, I shall try to make this month’s column
of broader interest whilst not straying too far from helping you with
applications of PipeDream and ‘The Z Set’.
6.11
Unlucky Friday 13th?
6.11
The fact that more 13ths fall on a Friday than any other day of the week
was first drawn to my attention by Robert Macmillan of Colton Software.
I asked for a proof in PipeLineZ and the torrent of correspondence still
hasn’t abated! Really, I didn’t expect the volume of mail I’ve received
about this. I wonder what’s so universally intriguing about this pagan
superstition of 13ths being unlucky?
6.11
What I’m sure will surprise our editor is that I’ve received programs
written not only in Basic but also in C; I have received spreadsheet
applications which use not only PipeDream but also Schema, Eureka and
even Viewsheet. The only failure I have had in running these is with the
programs written in C − the correspondents didn’t send me a compiled
version, only the source code on paper. I still have ViewSheet and, with
the help of a subscriber from a school (who wishes to remain anonymous)
who has access to the other three spreadsheet packages (Schema, Eureka
and PipeDream) and who has the knowledge and ability to ‘port’ from one
to the other, I have been able to try out PipeDream versions of all the
spreadsheet applications. By the time you read this, I should have
replied to all correspondence received on this topic before the end of
June 1993.
6.11
My more mature readers will be unaware that some of my younger
correspondents don’t know why we have leap years let alone the full rule
for their determination. When questioned, I replied that leap years
exist so that the Seasons stay ‘in place’ in the Calendar − and this
lead me to discover that the reason we have Seasons isn’t taught in some
schools now! Let me add very quickly that I do not say this as a
criticism of teachers − I know only too well why there has been no time
to teach topics which “Every schoolboy knows” or at least parents (and
lecturers in Further Education − like me) think they should know!
6.11
Anyway, as an experiment, and at the request of some of my ‘fans’ who
are in the business of teaching, in this month’s column I am going to
run through a series of lightly connected topics finding applications
for spreadsheets as I go along. Much of what I shall say can be applied
in most spreadsheet packages even though I shall stick to examples using
PipeDream and Resultz.
6.11
Projects, themes and topics
6.11
For many years now the Business & Technical Education Council (BTEC)
have encouraged something called ‘Integrated Assignments’. Such an
assignment may be thought of as a ‘project’ requiring the student to
demonstrate a range of ‘competences’ including social as well as
literacy and numeracy skills. There is no doubt that when students apply
skills (such as the ability to add up) to something other than abstract
numbers (e.g. money) their learning is reinforced. Some educationalists
would argue that the only value in acquiring number skills is in their
application − personally, I don’t agree but I can see their point! In
GCSE courses, and now the courses for General National Vocational
Qualification (GNVQ), being able to apply number (and other) skills and
interpret the answers to ‘sums’ is certainly taking on a greater
significance than when I was at school.
6.11
What has this to do with this month’s article? Teachers and lecturers
are looking for ideas for projects which require (in GNVQ jargon) the
Application of Number Skills. What I hope to do this month is to give
teachers a few ideas, as well as passing on to you some of the questions
they have put to me. So even if you are not in the teaching profession,
if you can answer the unanswered questions or expand on any of the ideas
herein, I am sure your contributions will be received with much
gratitude by the overworked members of that much maligned profession.
If, by choice, you configure your application to run in Schema or
Eureka, it might be better if you send it to ‘The SpreadSheet Column’ of
Archive rather than to this PipeLineZ column.
6.11
Polar graphs
6.11
First the Seasons: Our Earth moves around our Sun in an orbit which is
nearly, but not quite, a circle of about 92 million miles radius. The
light from the Sun (and, incidentally, the gravitational field) takes
about 8 minutes to reach us. In truth, the orbit is much closer to an
ellipse, with the Sun at one of the two focii.
6.11
Most of you will know how to draw a circle with a piece of string; stick
a pin in the board, attach the string to the pin and to a pencil at the
other end. Run the pencil around with the string taut and you’ll draw a
circle. With a slight variation on this scheme of pins, string and a
pencil you can draw an ellipse. Stick two pins in the board. Select a
length of string which is more than twice the distance between the pins.
Make a loop out of the string and place it over the pins. Place the
pencil in the slack and run it around the pins to make an ellipse as
indicated below.
6.11
PipeDream is not able to plot polar graphs directly but, if you start
with the angle theta in column A and the radius in column B, you can
calculate the corresponding x and y using x = r*cos(theta) and
y = r*sin(theta). That is what I have done in the spreadsheet below
which is the file [Ellipse] on the Archive monthly disc.
6.11
The formula for calculating the value of the ‘radius’ of an ellipse when
given the angle theta is as shown in the sheet above. I have calculated
the values of x and y at 5 degree intervals from 0 to 360 degrees in the
range C10D82. To produce the polar graph as a chart in PipeDream, you
must mark the block C10D82 and execute <ctrl-CHN> to create a new chart.
By default, this will be a bar chart! To change it to a ‘graph’, place
the pointer in the chart, and through click <menu> and run the pointer
through Gallery and select Scatter (not Line as you might suspect).
Select the scatter graph as the top left option. You will produce a
polar chart as follows.
6.11
I have been asked if I have a spreadsheet for ascribing days of the year
(or Seasons) to different parts of such an elliptical chart. The quick
answer is “No!” so, if anyone can help, I have some people who would
like the answers. Before you amateur astronomers rush away, here’s a few
points to note. The Sun is at one focus and so the distance between the
Sun and the Earth is not constant. Summer is not when the Earth is
nearest to the Sun! The Earth does not move around the Sun at a constant
velocity (nor at a constant angular velocity) so marking the Seasons or
dates on such a chart is not a trivial task. Finally, I think that an
application of one of Kepler’s Laws is probably the easiest method of
calculating the position of the Earth in its orbit.
6.11
Another chart I have been asked for is a ‘plan view’ of the (near)
epicyclic orbit of the Moon around the Sun. Any takers?
6.11
Back to the Seasons. A line drawn perpendicular to the elliptical orbit
of the Earth around the Sun is not parallel to the North South axis
around which the Earth spins once each day. The Earth’s axis ‘points’ to
a position in the sky which is close to a star called the North Star.
The North Star is not on the axis of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun.
In fact, the angle between the Earth’s axis and the line perpendicular
to its orbit is about a quarter of a right angle. So you will see that,
as the Earth goes around the Sun, the angle between the North Star and
the Sun varies between ¾ and 1¼ right angles. We are in the Northern
hemisphere of the Earth and, when the Earth’s (North pointing) axis is
pointing towards the Sun (the angle between the North Star and the Sun
is ¾ of a right angle), we get our Summer. Six months later the axis is
pointing away from the Sun and we get our Winter.
6.11
Leap years
6.11
The reason why the concept of a leap year was invented by Julius Caesar
over 2000 years ago was so that the same day of the year would keep
corresponding to the same season of the year. We want to keep mid summer
day in the middle of June and the spring equinox in the middle of March.
The Earth takes about 365¼ days to get back to the same place in its
orbit so that, if the calendar is not to ‘slip’ a quarter of a day each
year relative to the seasons, we need to add a day roughly every four
years.
6.11
Julius Caesar got it slightly wrong. Well, give him credit, it was
probably his astronomers who got it wrong. The ‘slippage’ is not exactly
6 hours per year but a bit less so we don’t need 25 leap days per
century but nearer 24. In October 1582, Pope Gregory, who, I suspect,
was more concerned about getting Easter in the ‘right’ place in the
year, modified Julius’ calendar by removing 3 leap years every 4
centuries. The extra rule, which many of the Friday 13th (wrong)
solutions omitted, is that century years, such as the years 1900 and
2100 are not leap years. However, if the century year is divisible by
400, as is the year 2000, then it is a leap year.
6.11
The number of leap days in 400 years of Pope Gregory’s calendar is
(4 × 25) − 3 = 97 and not 100 as some of you assumed. Thus the number of
days in 400 years is (400 × 365) + 97 = 146097. This number is exactly
divisible by 7 to give 20871 weeks in 4 centuries.
6.11
Pope Gregory was a Roman Catholic Pope and, in 1582, because Henry VIII
had ‘broken off relations’ with the Catholics, we decided to stick with
our good old Julian calendar. We stuck to it until the
2th September 1752 − the day following the 2nd was the
14th September 1752! The people who paid bills monthly (e.g. rents) paid
a month’s rent for September and found that that September contained
only 30 − 11 = 19 days! The more recent Poll Tax rebellion was a trivial
event compared with the riots that month.
6.11
The calendar
6.11
On the Archive monthly disc are some Basic programs iby Sytze Stel
(Netherlands). They will produce a calendar ready for printing and
calculate the dates of the movable feasts (e.g. Easter). One programs
contains the following REMarks.
6.11
“It is assumed that the change from Julian to Gregorian Calendar took
place at the officially intended date, October 4th (Julian) was followed
by October 15th 1582, skipping ten days. In a number of countries the
Gregorian Calendar came in force (much) later. Even in parts of one
country, e.g. The Netherlands, it happened that the date in the
southwest (Zeeland) of the Republic was 10 days ahead of the date in the
Northeast (Drente) until the beginning of the 18th century. So if you
were in possession of a quick means of transportation (a horse, I
guess), you could celebrate Easter and Christmas twice!”
6.11
One of my ‘famous’ spreadsheets is an everlasting calendar. It’s on one
of our PipeLine User Group discs. If you have it, you will find the
following rather long formula in one of the slots:
6.11
int(mod(if(year<1753,year*365
6.11
 +int((year-1)/4)+5,0)
6.11
 +if(year>1752,(year-1752)*365
6.11
 +int((year-1-1752)/4)
6.11
 -int((year-1-1700)/100)
6.11
 +int((year-1-1600)/400),0),7) +0.5)
6.11
The word ‘year’ in this formula is a PipeDream name; as you will have
guessed it is the year for which the calendar is calculated. The formula
in the slot calculates the number of days between the 1st January of the
year in question and the year zero (Yes! I know there wasn’t a year
zero), divides this number by 7 and returns the remainder. It’s a short
step to finding the day of the week on which the current 1st January
falls and pure routine to generate the remainder of the calendar from
there.
6.11
Easter
6.11
The Christian festival of Easter is moveable. It is celebrated on the
first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring equinox (which
occurs in March). One of the Basic programs on the Archive monthly disc
by Sytze Stel calculates the date of Easter (plus Whitsun and Ascension
day) for any year. The algorithm is similar to that sent me some time
ago by Brian Edwards and about which I corresponded with Nigel Kinsella.
The directory Easter on the monthly disc contains my version of that
algorithm as a PipeDream custom function. It ‘works’ for both the Julian
and the Gregorian calendars.
6.11
Friday 13th
6.11
Yes! Back to whether the 13th is more likely to be a Friday than any
other day of the week. One of the PipeDream spreadsheet solutions which
I must quote is the one below:
6.11
“Here is my solution to the Friday 13th problem. I can’t remember all
the ones that have gone before but haven’t they all taken rather a long
time to recalculate. Mine takes 3½ minutes on the A5000 with the clock
ticking away merrily. This seems a bearable length of time. Also, I
suspect mine is the shortest solution, so do I get a free mug?”
6.11
The solution consists of a calling document containing the following
formula: set_value(E1E7 ,[Fri13_cust]days_count()). The custom function,
[Fri13_cust]days_count(), consists of the following ten lines:
6.11
function(“days_count”)
6.11
set_name(“tempdate”,B2)
6.11
set_value(tempdate,date(1993,5,13))
6.11
set_name(“day_of_week”,B3B9)
6.11
set_value(day_of_week,0)
6.11
for(“i”,1,4800)
6.11
set_value(tempdate,tempdate+month-days(tempdate))
6.11
set_value(index(day_of_week,1,week-day(tempdate)),index(day_of_week
,1,weekday(tempdate))+1)
6.11
next
6.11
result(day_of_week)
6.11
Well, I suppose, if it were up to me I’d feel obliged to award a free
mug to the writer of this rather elegant solution if it weren’t for one
small problem. The way it ‘works’ is this. Starting on 13th May 1993
(line 3), the number of days in May 1993 are added to this date (line 7)
to return the 13th of the next month (June 1993). This is repeated 4800
times to cover all the 4800 months in 400 years. For each 13th, the day
of the week on which it falls is noted and counted into the day_of_week
array (line 8). All that remains is to transfer the totals of the
day_of_week array back to the calling document.
6.11
I don’t know if it’s a ‘bug’ but something interesting happens when I
run this custom function. You will note that at line 5, the seven values
in the range day_of_week are initialised to zero. If I create a new
document, put the ‘input focus’ (caret) in that new document and press
<return> then the custom function re-starts! Line 5 initialises the
array and the sums start again. This ‘problem’ of self-destruction of
the ‘multi-tasking’ feature of PipeDream is the reason why I think we
shouldn’t award the writer a mug. I’d like your opinion − should we
blame the author or the writers of the package for this ‘glitch’?
6.11
You will find a copy on the Archive monthly disc in the directory
bearing the name of its author − Macmillan! Yes! Him! Comments about the
self destruction and the giving of mugs will be much appreciated.
6.11
Sytze Stel has a solution in Basic which you will also find on the
monthly disc. Sytze’s technique is to use Julian Day numbers. I have had
other solutions which use Julian Day numbers (both in PipeDream, Basic,
C and other spreadsheets) but Sytze uses the ‘full’ Julian Day and not
one of many reduced forms offered by other writers. His version of the
program takes about 12 minutes to run with an ARM 2. It scans and lists
the frequencies each day of the week for the full 146097 days in the 400
years.
6.11
The Julian Day must not be confused with days of the Julian calendar. As
Sytze writes: “The counting of Julian Day numbers starts on the 1st
January 4713 BC at 1200 (noon) Universal Time.” Some of my
correspondents have used (incorrectly) an arbitrary day to ‘zero’ their
version of the Julian Day algorithms. I believe that the BBC and ITV
transmitters encrypt the full Julian Day and transmit it along with
their Teletext signals. I have a clock which contains a radio receiver
tuned to the Rugby transmitter which receives its time signals from the
National Physical Laboratory. My clock receives the exact time by radio
and resets itself. It is interesting to see it automatically change an
hour forwards or back in spring and autumn respectively. That clock
receives Julian Day signals!
6.11
Sytze refers us to “Astronomical formulae for Calculators” by Jean Meeus
and “Astronomy with your PC” by Peter Duffett-Smith. Anything which can
be done by way of calculations in Basic or on a calculator can be done
in a spreadsheet. He also refers us to Shareware 10 available from NCS
at £2! If you have in mind some spreadsheet project then Shareware 10 is
recommended as a starting point for the algorithms.
6.11
Navigation
6.11
I think that I’m already ‘over the top’ for my share of space this month
so let me add this brief request. Has anyone got a ‘database’ in
PipeDream format of the Equation of Time and Declination of the Sun? If
you can let me have it in time the next month, I’ll show you how to do a
little spherical trigonometry in a spreadsheet to ‘fix’ your position on
the globe (i.e. find your latitude and longitude)! By the way, for those
of you into ‘projects’, making a reasonably accurate ‘sextant’ and
taking ‘sightings’ on the Sun is fairly straightforward and interesting.
6.11
Cities of the world
6.11
I’ve also been asked for a database of latitude and longitude together
with time zones. Help please.
6.11
Resultz
6.11
Well, it should be out by the time you read this and, if you have
registered with Colton Software as a PipeDream or Wordz user, you will
already have been offered a substantial discount on the list price for a
limited period of time (a couple of months). If you haven’t, then
register now! My latest information is that, if you buy Resultz, then
you will need an upgraded version of Wordz (I think V 1.04) to harmonise
the two packages. Send your master copy of Wordz (both the Program and
the Examples discs) along to Colton Software at the same time as you
order Resultz from them.
6.11
We can supply you with a Resultz Demo disc. With it you can load
documents or create new documents; you will not be able to print nor to
save your work. Nearly two hundred subscribers have registered with us
(Abacus Training) to receive the Resultz Demo disc as soon as it is
available; trying out Resultz this way is a good idea if you are unsure
whether you want to buy it or not. We can’t afford to give it you for
free. Send us £2 EC (£2.50 non EC) to cover our costs.
6.11
Wish list
6.11
I recently asked you for contributions to a wish list for Wordz. Here
are some of the most general ones: The date formats are extensive but
please add one such as 1st August 1993. The delete key currently cuts
text to scrap so that it cannot be recovered with Paste − please cut to
the clipboard. Please can we have an easier method of forcing a page
break and an easier way of removing and deleting Styles?
6.11
Finally
6.11
If you need advice on a problem, please create an example on a disc and
send it in. Sending a disc helps me in at least three ways.
6.11
Firstly, by trying to run your file, I can see immediately whether I get
the same effect or whether your problem is related to your ‘set up’.
6.11
Secondly, if it is something about the way you are using a package then
I can modify your file and show you, using your example, how it can be
done. I find that, in nearly all cases, the easiest way to demonstrate
to you the solution to your problem is to send you a disc containing a
worked example. If I have to create the example from a blank sheet then
it does take me a lot longer.
6.11
Thirdly, if the problem is a feature or bug in the package, I can send a
copy of your file with my comments to Colton Software; they too much
prefer a disc file example of a problem.  A
6.11
Using RISC OS 3.10
6.11
Hugh Eagle
6.11
Neil Dickson asks a jolly good question: have I or Archive ever had any
response from Acorn indicating that they are paying attention to this
column? Well, I haven’t (yet) and I think Paul would have told me if he
had. Surely, it’s inconceivable that Acorn are not interested in the
experiences that have been recounted, the suggestions offered and the
views expressed here. Isn’t it? Perhaps we’ll have some comment for next
month. Let’s wait and see ...
6.11
RISC OS 4 Wish List (continued)
6.11
•    Alarm – (a) An option to display the digital clock not on the iconbar
but at the top right corner of the screen in front of all other windows.
(b) An option to set an alarm that goes off after every n (settable)
minutes − to remind you just how much time you are spending on the
machine!!?? (Rex Palmer)
6.11
•    Shutdown – The <shift-ctrl-F12> routine should dismount any floppy
discs that may be present, then remind the user that they are still
there. (Peter Young)
6.11
All the following are from Neil Dickson:
6.11
•    Paint – (a) Allow local fills with the “mask” colour. (b) Use outline
fonts.
6.11
•    Edit – (a) Use multiple fonts (and maybe accept graphic files: i.e.
have a simple wordprocessing option). (b) Update the font list each time
a new font directory is loaded (like Draw and Impression do.)
6.11
•    Printers – (a) Put as much as possible of the code into ROM, to save
loading time. (b) A quicker method of “toggling” within !Printers when
deciding which are active and which are inactive.
6.11
•    Calc – Make it better, but less complicated than SciCalc. (E.g.
include memory buttons and a percentage button, and allow
multiplication, division, etc, by a constant.)
6.11
•    Draw – (a) Optional detachable toolbox. (b) An option for redefining
the toolbox (e.g. to include zoom and edit tools.) (c) Patterned fills
(hatching, stripes, etc.)
6.11
•    Tidy windows – Include a “Tidy windows” option on the desktop.
6.11
•    Filer multitasking – An option to make all filer actions (load and
save, disc mounting, etc) multitask.
6.11
•    Replacement of system font – Optional replacement of the system font
by an outline font on the desktop (like the Germans seem to have already
in RISC OS 3.12)!
6.11
•    RMFaster – An option to RMFaster various modules, such as
SharedCLibrary, from the Task Manager (rather than having to type in the
command at the command line).
6.11
•    Virtual memory – For hard disc users.
6.11
•    Built in sounds – A greater variety.
6.11
•    Simpler mode changing – A less fiddly method.
6.11
•    Keyboard emulation of the mouse – e.g. using <Alt> and the arrow keys.
6.11
•    Auto-scrolling of font menus – Make the list of fonts scroll
automatically when the pointer reaches the bottom.
6.11
•    Compression of sprite files – Either in addition to, or instead of,
compression of entire discs, arrange for sprite files to be compressed
always.
6.11
•    Font management – Put a Font Manager on the icon bar showing a list of
available directories which you can select and deselect by clicking.
(Sounds like !FMaster from Risc User.)
6.11
Miscellaneous
6.11
Superfluous icons in template definitions
6.11
Mick Day has found numerous examples of template definitions in standard
RISC OS 3 applications which contain extra unused icons. The “save”
window in Alarm is just one example: this has four superfluous icons.
(To see for yourself: find the template file inside Resources:$.
Resources, load it into FormEd, use the menu to assign vertical and
horizontal scroll bars and a size icon, then scroll around the window.)
He has also noted inconsistent naming of templates and numbering of
icons. If you use existing windows borrowed from existing applications,
beware that the templates may require more memory than you might expect
because of the space taken by the extra icon definitions and pay close
attention to the icon numbering. As Tim Nicholson comments: it is a
great pity that Acorn did not supply a suitable “clean” set of templates
to work from.
6.11
“OS_Find” and image filing systems
6.11
In one of my programs, I need to be able to check that a specified
filing system object (which might be either a file or directory) is
actually present and, in particular, is not on a floppy disc that has
been removed. In RISC OS 2, I found that the following code seemed
fairly foolproof:
6.11
ON ERROR LOCAL:PROCReport(“Can’t find ”+Object$):ENDPROC
6.11
SYS “OS_Find”,&40,Object$ TO FileHandle%
6.11
IF FileHandle%<>0 THEN SYS “XOS_Find”,0,FileHandle%
6.11
RESTORE ERROR
6.11
This relied on the fact that the SWI call “OS_Find”,&40 (which is the
general routine for opening a file) should “open” Object$ whether it is
a directory or a file. However, with the arrival of “image” filing
systems such as DOSFS and SparkFS, I found that this wouldn’t work,
because an attempt to “open” a directory inside an image filing system
(e.g. a directory inside a SparkFS archive) resulted in an error
(contrary to the rules set out in the Programmer’s Reference Manual).
6.11
David Pilling says “there are two entry points to SparkFS, one via the
OS image filing system, the other via a traditional FS entry. The code
in these after the entry point is the same. So it looks like it is the
OS that is faulting your operation and not SparkFS.”
6.11
I have now rewritten my code so that it checks to see whether Object$ is
a directory and, if it is, it looks inside it for a file and tries to
open that. This seems to work with image filing systems as well as
others, but is a bit cumbersome to say the least (and as David Pilling
observes is still open to being fooled by cacheing). Does anyone know of
a simple and genuinely foolproof way of ensuring that a filing system
object is present?
6.11
Applications that refuse to Shutdown
6.11
Keith Gardner has experienced problems with applications that interfere
with the Shutdown process and cause the computer to hang. He refers to
advice in the June issue of Risc User, according to which the Shutdown
routine in RISC OS 3 (which can be selected from the Acorn icon or by
pressing <ctrl-shift-F12>) cannot cope if more than one Run file is open
at the time of Shutdown. Run files are left open while applications are
running if there are any lines after the line that calls RunImage. One
way to avoid the problem is to remove surplus blank lines or lines
containing remarks (prefaced with a | ). However, applications sometimes
contain tidying up commands such as RMKill commands to get rid of
modules: in these cases, it may be necessary to Quit one or more
applications before selecting Shutdown.
6.11
Matters arising
6.11
Testing a printer’s on-line status
6.11
(Archive 6.9 p12) Mick Day found that the printer test routine published
in the June edition of Archive lied! It told him that the printer was
not on line whether it was or not, and the printer beeped if it was on
line. Tim Nicholson says that the routine (as previously published) can
fail for two reasons: Firstly, it assumes a printer buffer of 1024
bytes, but the actual size depends upon the setting of *Configure
PrinterBufferSize, which may be different from the default of 1Kb.
Secondly, the first line of the program redirects the whole output
stream to the printer, thus if the program is run from the desktop, the
output which normally goes to the Task window that the desktop
generates, goes to the printer instead as well as the test byte of
CHR$(0). Typically this stream will contain several control codes to
open the task window display and the Task window title, e.g. RUN
ADFS::DiscName.$.PrintTest. Although this stream is sent before running
the program, the FX 3 call at the top of the program is executed in time
to redirect this part way through and upset the printer.
6.11
Tim suggests the following variant of the routine:
6.11
*FX21,3
6.11
empty%=ADVAL(-4)
6.11
PRINT “Printer is ”;
6.11
*FX3,10
6.11
PRINTCHR$(0);
6.11
a%=INKEY(20)
6.11
a%=ADVAL(-4)
6.11
*FX3,0
6.11
*FX21,3
6.11
IF a%<>empty% THEN
6.11
PRINT “not on line”
6.11
ELSE PRINT “on line”
6.11
ENDIF
6.11
END
6.11
This deals with the first problem by comparing the buffer length
immediately after flushing with the length after inserting the test byte
and pausing to allow throughput, and with the second by including a
PRINT statement before redirecting the output stream.
6.11
Tim notes that the original program would run correctly (subject to the
buffer size being correct) from the command line, i.e. after pressing
<f12>, and CHAINing or LOADing and RUNning.
6.11
Tim does not understand the supposed warning from Acorn about the use of
ADVAL(−4) (see Archive 6.7 p41) since it is a use specified in the Basic
manual. He can only assume it is a confusion with the use of positive
ADVAL parameters, which are only meaningful if a podule with an analogue
input which mimics that of the original BBC Micro is fitted. He has
experienced no difficulties using negative ADVAL parameters to inspect
the condition of buffers and is not aware of any differing action under
RISC OS 3.1x as opposed to 2.0 with this facility.
6.11
Basic program compaction
6.11
(Archive 6.9 p65) Rex Palmer says that in his experience compacted
programs only cause problems when you try to alter them. The problem
seems to occur with both Edit and BasicEdit. If a compacted program is
loaded into either of these and any alterations made, then when the
program is re-saved, the line that has been altered will generate the
error even if the resulting error is not part of the line that was
altered!
6.11
Altering the keyboard status
6.11
(Archive 6.8 p27 and 6.9 p65) Rex Palmer has written to explain the
purpose of bit 7 (the “Shift enable” bit) of the keyboard status byte.
When this bit is set, the <Shift> key reverses the action of the
<CapsLock> key. Thus, if you hold down <Shift> while pressing <CapsLock>
then release both keys, you put the computer in a state where pressing
the <Shift> key with a letter key gives you lower case letters. The
computer can be configured to start up in this state. Alternatively, the
command *FX202,128,111 will achieve the same effect ... since 111 = 255
− 128 − 16 the command sets bit 7 (Shift Enable on) and unsets bit 4
(Caps Lock on).
6.11
To recap, the most useful commands are likely to be:
6.11
*FX202,0,239 to set Caps Lock on
6.11
*FX202,16,239 to set Caps Lock off
6.11
*FX202,128,111 to select ShiftCaps
6.11
Programmer’s Reference Manual
6.11
The increase in the number of pages is not “nearly 50%”, as I said last
month, but is in fact over 70% (excluding the indexes, there were 1,882
pages in the RISC OS 2 manual and there are over 3,200 in the new
edition.) Sorry about the mistake!
6.11
Arm3 hare and tortoise (again)
6.11
(Archive 6.6 p59, 6.8 p30 and 6.10 p63) With the help of Jim Nottingham,
I have found out the source of my problem. The Run file of the Aleph One
!Arm3 application should read:
6.11
IconSprites <Obey$Dir>.!Sprites
6.11
|Use only one of the lines
6.11
|below, comment out the other.
6.11
|Load <Obey$Dir>.CMdlUnix
6.11
Load <Obey$Dir>.CacheMdl
6.11
Load <Obey$Dir>.IconMdl
6.11
<Obey$Dir>.Kick CacheIcon
6.11
In my file, the CacheMdl line had somehow got REM’d out. I vaguely
remember that when I first tried to install !Arm3 with RISC OS 3, I read
the instruction about “using only one of the lines below” as meaning
that only one of the following three lines should be used and, since I
assumed that I no longer needed “CacheMdl” because RISC OS 3 now had a
module to deal with this, I removed it as well as the CMdlUnix line. On
looking at the file again, I now presume that you are only supposed to
remove one of these two lines, so I have reinstated the CacheMdl line
and everything seems fine. A case of trying to be too clever, it seems.
6.11
Redraw problems (and an alternative)
6.11
(Archive 6.8 p29 and 6.10 p63) Richard Hallas confirms that the problem
of incorrect screen redrawing in Edit and DeskEdit is indeed due to a
bug in the Shared C Library and that the problem seems to occur with
particularly long lines. He says that any program which uses the C
library’s text object feature will suffer from the bug until Acorn
corrects it in a future version of CLib. He adds that Acorn has been
aware of the problem for some time, so hopefully a fix should not be too
far off.
6.11
Richard used to use DeskEdit to produce files for input to PMS which
frequently involved very long input lines indeed (up to several hundred
characters). He would occasionally reposition the caret and start
typing, only to find that his input had gone into a separate part of the
file which was not on the screen! Partly because of this bug, he has now
moved over to using the public domain text editor, Zap, which he
thoroughly recommends: “It has its own redraw routines, which are
unbelievably fast and totally accurate: plus you can get twice as much
text on the screen in multisync modes.”  A
6.11
Chatter from 4Mation
6.11
Peter Smith
6.11
Chatter (Version 1.02) is advertised by 4Mation as a ‘simple, low cost
communications program which can be used to introduce RISC OS users to
the world of communications’. As a complete beginner to the world of
‘comms’, I thought I would be a good guinea pig for such a claim. As
such, I make no claim to have tested this program to destruction or to
have tested the extent to which the various emulations offered match up
to their specifications. If you want the opinion of a comms ‘power’
user, you will have to look elsewhere. Instead, I will attempt to give
an idea of the range of facilities of the program and an indication of
the extent to which 4Mation’s claims for the program are justified.
6.11
I received the package within a few days of taking delivery of my Pace
Microlin FX pocket modem, which I used with Chatter to carry out this
review. I had never used a modem before, and the limit of my experience
was confined to watching over an experienced colleague’s shoulder for 30
minutes, whilst he whizzed through various facilities which were
available to the modem owner. I was left feeling excited but daunted by
the apparent complexities and variations possible. With different
bulletin boards offering different emulations, with a variety of data
formats and an assortment of data transfer speeds, the possibilities of
hitting the right permutation seemed remote!
6.11
First steps
6.11
Chatter is supplied on a single disc which has to be initialised in the
usual 4Mation way. For those of you who have not previously purchased a
4Mation product, when you first try to run the !Chatter application, you
are told to enter a name. This name is embedded into the software and
will be displayed in a window whenever the software is run. Once
initialised, the software can be backed up to another floppy, or copied
to your hard disc drive. I think 4Mation have found a good balance
between protecting their legitimate interests in the copyright of their
product, and the needs of the user.
6.11
Chatter is a fully RISC OS compliant application which installs itself
on the iconbar in the standard manner.
6.11
Using Chatter
6.11
When you load Chatter, a default ‘phone book’ is loaded too. A few
sample bulletin boards are included in this default telephone directory.
Unfortunately, I tried the Archive number first, without success, only
to discover in the January editorial of the Archive magazine that the
number had been changed. I have yet to get an answer from the new
number. (We’ll get it going again one day! Ed.) I was more successful
with ‘World of Criton’, and with ‘Arcade’ which I have used more than
any other so far (Arcade’s number is 081−654−2212). In fact, I managed
to connect to World of Criton without recourse to the Chatter manual and
just followed the on-screen instructions. The text appeared rather more
slowly than I had expected until I realised that the data rate was set
to 1200 baud. To change it, I had to bring up the phone book, choose the
option to ‘Edit selected entry’, then click on the ‘Communications
setup’ box.
6.11
It is all there, but I did need the Chatter manual to find this
particular option, which I think is fair enough! Actually, this is a
result of careful design − you only ‘see’ the features you really need.
Most of the time, all you will want to do with the phone book is to
dial, so opening the phone book just shows this essential information
(figure 1) and only expands (figure 2) when you want to change
something. Since setting the data baud rates is something you would
normally only need to do once, this option is further hidden.
6.11
In fact, after several months of use, I have rarely had to pick up the
manual. Indeed, the manual was only really meaningful to me after I had
begun to assimilate some of the jargon and I found that the best way to
do this was just to ‘get logged on’ to a bulletin board and experiment.
6.11
Facilities
6.11
With Chatter, depending on the bulletin board you are logged onto, you
may be able to receive (download) and send (upload) public domain files,
communicate with other people with similar interests to you, read news
items such as reviews of recent software, get answers to your technical
problems, and communicate to others all over the world through
electronic mail (EMail). The ways in which you do this with Chatter seem
to follow well-established RISC OS guidelines and I found the program
well-planned and reasonably intuitive.
6.11
Chatter has four modem drivers available by default, these being Hayes,
HayesV42, Manual and Tandata512. You can add other drivers if necessary.
Communication with a host system is via an Edit-type text editing
window. The display from the host appears here, and you enter commands
in this window too, so that a dialogue continues between you and your
host. All (or some) of this ‘conversation’ is logged in a buffer which
can be configured to anything from 25 to 10000 lines of text, depending
on the amount of memory you have available. Alternatively, if you have
little memory to spare and still want a record of your communication,
you can set an option to ‘log displayed text’.
6.11
When I first explored a few bulletin boards, I was a bit nervous about
running up huge phone bills whilst trying to read and understand all the
facilities which seemed to be on offer. I found a good strategy was to
set a large buffer, and then flash around the various facilities fairly
quickly, avoiding time consuming possibilities such as down-loading
software. I would then log off, print out the contents of the Chatter
text buffer and read it at my leisure.
6.11
Chatter makes use of a number of keyboard short-cuts. I was sorry to see
no function key strip included. Is it my imagination or is this becoming
a more common omission? I was recently astonished that a pack like
Artworks omitted such an essential item!
6.11
Technical
6.11
Different bulletin boards obey different display protocols and different
protocols for the transfer of files. Chatter supports ANSI, Viewdata and
Teletext displays as well as Campus 2000. When transferring files, you
can select X,Y or Z modem standards. Data speeds can be selected from 75
baud to 19.2 Kbaud, but 14.4 Kbaud seems to be missing. I think it would
be possible to cheat by setting up a modem driver to assign this speed
to one of the other existing selectable speeds, but the Communications
Setup window would continue to display the default range of speeds.
6.11
Chatter allows you set up a simple (up to five-step) automatic logon
script which is entered through the phone book window. One feature I
would have liked is a facility to precede all phone numbers with my
Mercury code as is available in David Pilling’s Arcfax. (It is also
available in ArcComm2 which I use. Ed.)
6.11
Reliability and robustness
6.11
I had few problems here. A couple of times, when there was insufficient
memory to load the program, I was left with the hourglass rather than
the arrow pointer, but I could not reliably reproduce the error, so it
is possible that it was caused by some other program. Chatter never
crashed or hung and downloading files has always worked without fault.
The documentation seemed adequate for my needs and included a useful
appendix of technical terms. I had read of a number of inaccuracies in
some of the terminal emulations in a review in another journal. I
contacted the author Dave Caughley who confirmed that the emulations
were not full but contained the most commonly used subset of features
for each emulation. Some of the criticisms, however, have already been
addressed and corrected in the latest version (1.02) and he is
continuing to develop the product. It is good to see publishers taking
software development seriously.
6.11
Summary
6.11
All in all, I have been very satisfied with Chatter. The inclusion of a
free site licence for schools must make this an attractive option for
the educational market.
6.11
Chatter retails at £37.50 +VAT (£35 through Archive). A school site
licence for is included!  A
6.11
Figure 1
6.11
Figure 2
6.11
Figure 3
6.11
Creating Impression Borders
6.11
Barry Thompson
6.11
If you have ever thought you would like to create borders for Impression
but could never work out how to do it from the manual, I will try to
make it a bit clearer.
6.11
First of all, a short explanation about the objects that you can find on
Impression Disc 5, in the borders directory. If you load one of these
borders into, say, DrawPlus, you will find that it contains two objects.
One is used by Impression as the corner of the frame, the other is
stretched to fit the length of the side of the frame. Impression is
clever, it fits the corner piece exactly on the corner of the frame and
the side exactly along the side of the frame.
6.11
If you are using DrawPlus, when you select the side piece, you will
discover that it comprises at least two objects. One is the visible
object that is seen as the border, the other is an invisible line used
by Impression to position the side of the border exactly on the side of
the frame that the border is being placed around.
6.11
Creating the objects
6.11
A simple design has been chosen to illustrate the process − we will
create a black border 6mm wide around an Impression frame. Create the
shapes to the dimensions shown − it is easier if grid lock is set to on.
Move the objects together so that there is no gap between them. The
corner object is selected, press <ctrl-F> to bring the corner object to
the front. The side is then selected and press <ctrl-B> to send the
object to the back. Save the file to disc.
6.11
In Impression, bring up the Borders Setup option in the Frame menu. In
this can be seen the borders that Impression has built into it. Pick up
the drawfile icon of the border objects that have been created and drop
it onto the target arrow at the top right of the border setup. Click OK
after the message “Drawfile loaded as frame border”. Scroll down the
Borders Setup to see that the border has been added as border number
eleven (or higher if your default document has extra borders added).
6.11
Create a blank frame in Impression, select it by clicking inside it,
then bring up the Alter frame dialogue, <ctrl-f10>. Click on the View
button at the bottom, then click an the All button at the top. Click on
the top right pointing arrow next to where the word Off appears.
Continue clicking until 11 appears and click on OK. If all is well, the
new border will appear around the selected frame.
6.11
Now for something completely different... If a border is to be created
that has a side which is less in width than the corner, then an
additional invisible line has to be added to the side to keep the side
away from the side of the frame. If this invisible line is omitted, the
result will be as shown below, for the corner and side shown opposite.
6.11
All lines have a finite thickness and this has to be taken into account
when creating both the corner and side. Line thickness and colour should
be the same for both.
6.11
The invisible line that has to be created must also have the same
thickness as that used formerly for the corner and side. The position of
the invisible line in relation to the corner piece is important. Any
slight discrepancy will show up as the side being out of alignment with
the corner when Impression creates the border. If the line has been
drawn with grid lock on, then the centre line of the line will lay on
the grid position, as will the outline of the corner. In the diagram
below, the sizes have been exaggerated for clarity and the single line
has been drawn in black.
6.11
Select the corner and side and give them a fill colour to match the line
colour. It can be any colour from the palette. Select the single line,
change the colour from black to none, create a group of the side and the
now invisible line. Then close the gap between the group created and the
corner. Select the corner object, press <ctrl-F> to bring the corner
object to the front. Select the side group and then press <ctrl-B> to
send the object to the back. Save the file to disc, load the new border
into Impression and try it out. Examine the created border at each
corner at high magnification to check that the alignment of the corner
and the side is correct. If there are any misalignments, it is usually
because the edge of the ‘invisible’ line is not in perfect alignment
with the outside edge of the corner piece.
6.11
The sides that can be created do not have to be straight, but if curves
are used these can look a little strange if the frame is other than
square. If Paul can find space on the magazine disc there are several
ready-made frames to use. (Yes, we can fit it on.) A disc can be
obtained from me which contains over 120 different frames and borders
compressed onto one disc for £10 inclusive of p&p, cheques payable to
me. These were formally sold as Capsoft Discs 1 & 2. My address is:
Barry Thompson, Lantern Pike, 8 Old Gate Avenue, Weston On Trent,
Derbyshire, DE7 2BZ.  A
6.11
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
6.11
With
6.11
invisible
6.11
line
6.11
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
6.11
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
6.11
Without
6.11
invisible
6.11
line
6.11
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
6.11
Aldebaran
6.11
Rob Wears
6.11
(This game from Arc Angels was reviewed on an A310 with RISC OS 2, 4Mb
RAM, ARM3 and an Oak SCSI drive.)
6.11
I bet you thought that solar power was ecologically friendly. Well, have
I got news for you. In the twenty seventh century, the human colony on
Aldebaran is having problems with an alien satellite known as Algol
which is using their sun as a power supply. The one slight drawback from
this scheme is that Algol extracts the power forcibly, producing a
supernova and destroying all of humanity. Your mission is to destroy the
satellite and save the entire civilisation, and you’ve only got 24 hours
to do so.
6.11
The game itself comes on a single disc, and is easy to install on the
hard drive. It is possible to run Aldebaran on a 1 Mb system but the
manual recommends that at least a MEMC1a upgrade is fitted (to A310’s
and old A440’s) to improve game speed. The copy protection system
employed involves typing in a word from the manual before you start a
new session of the game. Actually, this itself is quite challenging, as
the manual is small and printed in something like 6pt text!
6.11
The game will multitask in the style of Elite, taking over the whole of
the computer during gameplay but sitting innocently on the iconbar while
you try to convince your nearest and dearest that you really are working
hard on that latest batch of letters. This is not as easy to do as it is
with Elite, because you actually have to have landed safely before you
can return to the desktop, making rapid changeover virtually impossible.
It is possible to save your position in the game, but double-clicking on
one of these “pilot” files will load another copy of the game, even if
one version is already running. Instead, the file has to be dragged to
the iconbar. Aldebaran will not complain if loading a new file
overwrites another unsaved file, so be careful! To be fair, the manual
warns you about this.
6.11
The game itself involves you collecting the brains of humanity (twelve
professors) and giving them the resources they need to build weapons and
defence systems to destroy the Algol satellite. You are given a
spaceship called the Flashlight, which looks suspiciously like an
updated Zarch hovership, and an enormous interplanetary transporter
called the Taurus. The professors are scattered across the solar system,
so collecting them together into teams is essential. The only problem is
that this takes time, which you don’t have in great abundance.
6.11
You are hindered in your mission by the presence of large numbers of
homicidal aliens who are apparently free to roam unhindered across the
face of every human colonised planet. The rest of mankind is apparently
so impressed with your abilities that they plan on leaving everything to
you. Fortunately, the Flashlight is hard to destroy, and even when it
is, it is possible to have the pieces reassembled. This may sound
boring, but it most certainly is not.
6.11
The gameplay is delightful, the graphics are smooth and colourful and
the sound effects are more than adequate. However, what makes the game
really tick is the time limit. If you manage to damage Algol you can
delay the supernova, but the professors seem to work at an agonisingly
slow pace, they periodically get kidnapped and require rescue and they
are generally irritating. To make matters worse, it takes valuable time
to repair the Flashlight, and to travel between planets. The travel time
varies as the planets move in their respective orbits, making advanced
planning essential if you are to avoid being fried. And if you fail, a
rather evil looking chap appears on screen to crush your sun out of
existence.
6.11
The final confrontation on the surface of Algol is straight out of Star
Wars. Disappointingly, this last section is in wire frame graphics, but
is still tricky enough to keep you interested. After all the effort
involved, I had rather hoped for some sort of extravagant victory parade
when I completed the game, but I had to make do with a nice picture of a
sunset and a terse “Thank you, commander”. Ah, the ingratitude!
6.11
I have no reservations in recommending this game. There are similarities
to the venerable Zarch, but there is also more than enough new material
to keep many a budding Luke Skywalker happy for hours. And it is
possible to win without ever visiting Algol....  A
6.11
Watford Electronics’ VGA VIDC Enhancer
6.11
Stuart Bell
6.11
In his review of the Princeton Colour Monitor (Archive 6.3 p68), Andrew
Ferguson wrote very positively about the Watford VGA VIDC Enhancer and
the software that accompanies it. Encouraged by that, I decided to
purchase the enhancer, as a prelude to upgrading my ancient standard
resolution monochrome monitor (now in its twelfth year, and on its
second tube).
6.11
Archive members will have read the reviews of the super new colour cards
now available for the A300/400/4000/5000 machines. I’d love one, but
know that I could not afford both a new card and a monitor that would
take full advantage of the new modes which they make possible. VIDC
enhancers can be thought of as a ‘half-way-house’ in display
improvement. By making the video controller in the computer (the VIDC)
run faster than normal, larger modes can be displayed − up to 16 colours
at 1152 × 448 or 800 × 600. (The new cards go up to 1120 × 840.)
6.11
Atomwide were the first in the market with a VIDC enhancer (Archive 3.10
p21) but have recently discontinued the product. Watford Electronics
followed and added the extra facility in their VGA model of making it
possible for Acorn machines to drive VGA and SVGA monitors in most
screen modes up to 800 × 600 pixels (100 text columns by 75 lines)
without buying a multi-sync monitor. (Basic VGA monitors will only
achieve 640 × 480.) Also, the Watford enhancer requires no external
switching, using the I²C data bus to drive the board entirely by
software. Wishing to keep my options open, I purchased the VGA version.
6.11
Having read Andrew’s comments, I expected a trouble-free installation
process. Unfortunately, this was not the case, primarily because of
machine and monitor differences. Three problems arose on my A310 with a
TV broadcast standard (i.e. standard resolution) monitor. First of all,
despite following the instructions to the letter (including keeping the
numeric keypad’s “0” depressed on power-up), whenever I started up the
supplied applications, the screen went totally out of synchronisation.
Whilst waiting for the Watford telephone number to become free, I found
that the applications always left the OS variable Monitor Type as 4,
meaning SVGA – hence the screen problems. The solution is to alter the
default module type held in the !Edit-able Defaults file of each
application from Alphascan to BaseTV (or whatever is applicable for your
monitor).
6.11
Secondly, whilst A3000 and later A400 machines do have headers for all
the connections which the enhancer requires, this is not the case with
A300 and early A400 computers. One three-pin header and one two-pin
header must be fitted by an Acorn dealer, or other competent person,
before the board can be fully installed so as to produce separate
horizontal sync and vertical sync signals – which most VGA monitors
require, I understand. So, approach the VGA VIDC enhancer with a little
caution if you have an A300 or older A400.
6.11
Thirdly, connections to the I²C bus are made by probes which are simple
imitations of those used on oscilloscopes. In my A310, one chip had been
soldered so close to the main PCB, and with so much solder around one
pin, that it was very difficult to get the probe firmly attached. I
would not like to guarantee the connection at all.
6.11
Having said all that, the software that comes with the enhancer is very
neat indeed, although I agree totally with Andrew that it would be even
better if all the functions were integrated into one application. Modes
can be designed, edited and fine-tuned at will. Although standard
monitors cannot use the higher clock rate of the VIDC enhancer hardware,
their modes can be handled by the applications; my personal 1136 × 280
(142 columns by 35 rows) doesn’t look bad at all! I’m now looking out
for a new monitor for my A310 – and with SVGA monitors being so cheap
and 800 × 600 being really the largest mode that it’s sensible to use on
14“ screens, little is sacrificed in comparison with the cost savings
over a proper 14” multi-sync monitor. For those who can’t afford a new
colour card and a nice 17“ (or 21”!) multisync, it’s not a bad ‘half-
way-house’.  A
6.11
Psion MC 400 − Middleweight Champion?
6.11
Tord Eriksson
6.11
When the Psion Mobile Computer was presented in Personal Computer World
in November 1989, it was love at first sight.
6.11
It seemed to combine all the features I wanted from a portable computer,
including good looks! Or as Guy Swarbrick, the PCW editor, wrote in the
July ’92 issue’s editorial: “No, the real issue here is the notebooks. I
hate the things. Not just the Tandon − all new notebooks. They’re far
too heavy, the battery life is far too short and almost without
exception, the screens are awful. There is a solution to this problem
and, as it happens, that comes from Psion too. I’d been happily using
the MC 400 ....”.
6.11
At that time the MC 400 cost £845, without any expansion nor any word
processor. Today, it is sold for £325 by Dabs, and that includes a
Microsoft Word-compatible word processor! It weighs 2.5 kilos, batteries
included.
6.11
Unpacking
6.11
When opening the box, you find that the only thing you have to do to get
the handsome, grey Psion MC 400 running is to insert the lithium
battery. That keeps the configuration memory refreshed during main
battery changes. Also included is a ready-installed flash PCMCIA card
with Word and other utilities, and three manuals (User manual, OPL
manual and Word processor manual).
6.11
There are lots of optional add-ons: several expensive mini-modems that
fit inside, four slots for PCMCIA cards like Solid State Discs (a.k.a.
flash cards), ram cards or modem cards, modem cables, several serial
cables, AD/DA signal processors, microphones and chargers.
6.11
Printing is straight forward − just choose a suitable printer driver,
connect your standard Centronics cable and off you go! (I have to
confess that my BJ-330 refuses to do linefeeds after having printed the
first page of a document correctly, so everything becomes a wet mess.
Probably easy to fix?)
6.11
The battery is said to last 60 hours on an unexpanded MC 400 − quite a
lot more than on the A4! If you use a rechargeable battery, the little
charger will charge while you type. If you put rechargeable AA cells in
the battery compartment, these will not be charged properly, so you have
to charge the eight cells in a separate battery charger.
6.11
The keyboard is not configurable, just like the Archimedes is under
RISC OS 3.00 (unless you use the little !IntKey patch). My Psion MC 400
is UK to the hilt, so no “foreign” characters are available! But there
are ways to circumvent that.
6.11
A family of Psions
6.11
There are two other Mobile Computers, the 200 and the 600. All three
models are equipped with an Intel CMOS static 80C86 PC-compatible
processor but only the 600 is an MS-DOS machine. The other two use a
Psion-developed WIMP environment called MUI, which is quite like the
Archimedes. It multitasks, you can push windows off the screen and the
MUI rivals the best GUI! (MUI equals Multitasking User Interface and GUI
is Graphical User Interface.) The 200 has a small LCD display, the other
two a 640×400 pixel high-tech LCD from Hitachi, the size of a copy of
Risc User (i.e. 50% bigger than Archive!). (No comment! Ed.)
6.11
The displays are monochrome, character-based and none includes any back-
lighting. Under most lighting conditions, it’s easy to use but the
softer the lighting, the better.
6.11
The hardware, excluding the display, is the same as in the Acorn Pocket
Book/Psion Series 3. Just as in those, the main way to save your files
is to use flash cards, with options of external drives or ram cards.
6.11
The 61-key keyboard on the MC 400 feels quite like the A3000‘s, but
somewhat stiffer and with only eight tiny functions keys on top. There
is also a digitizer tablet above the keys that works just like a mouse
with a single button. When you press harder with your finger the entire
tablet moves and gives an audible click. It works very well after some
minutes of trial and error.
6.11
The flashware
6.11
There are many utilities supplied: calendar, editor, database, alarm,
filer, MC Link, comms and the WORD word processor. In addition to these,
there is the Basic-like OPL programming language, so popular with Psion
Organiser owners.
6.11
Being a man of words and graphics, I will concentrate on the word
processor and the comms software, as the MCs are limited in their
graphics capability, except for the graphics included in the graphical
user interface. (The Psion Series 3/Acorn Pocket Book use a bit-mapped
LCD, so graphics is easy to do!)
6.11
Firstly, let me say a word about the MC Link. This enables your PC-
compatible and your MC to become one single filing system, so the MC
becomes REM: to the PC and vice versa. I have not managed to get this to
work on my A3000, running the PC Emulator and DR-DOS first, of course,
probably due to limitations in the serial chip on the A3000.
6.11
Word
6.11
The word processor is Microsoft Word-compatible, so it is easy to
transfer texts to and from a PC or Mac using Word − an increasingly
popular package on both machines. Both Word and Microsoft Word
understand RTF files and so does Impression if you have the Business
Supplement. Sadly, however, Impression does not export RTF files.
6.11
If you haven’t bought the Impression Business Supplement, the easiest
way to transfer files is by editing them first in your MC editor,
stripping away surplus style information and converting the file to a
pure ASCII file. This is done most easily by selecting the part you want
and saving it onto a new file.
6.11
After you have tidied your file, you can use a simple serial lead,
connecting the Archimedes serial port with the normal serial port on the
MC, to transfer the file.
6.11
The easiest way to do this is by buying a Psion serial lead for
connecting to an IBM AT and then making a so-called breakout box,
conversion cable or null modem, that fixes the oddities with the Acorn
connector as compared with an IBM AT connector (see the article about
the Psion Series 3, in Archive 6.1, p57).
6.11
Load your favourite communication program in your Archimedes (I use
TASKansi+, £5.99 from David Pilling) and activate the terminal program
in your MC, select the same protocol and transfer speed (9600 Baud, 8N1,
Xon/Xoff is fast enough for me!). If you have set up things correctly
and soldered your null modem properly, you will have no communication
problems!
6.11
The Psion MC 400 is, as I’ve stated, language-specific. You buy it with
a Swedish keyboard or a UK keyboard and that’s it! (I do not know if
this is true of the MC 600 as it is a true PC.) All is not lost if you,
like me, end up with the “wrong” keyboard.
6.11
To get my å, ä and ö, I simply ignore the fact that the character on
screen is not the one I wanted. On a Swedish keyboard, the key right of
the L is the Ö-key, so I press it each time I want an Ö.
6.11
To transform the character ‘:’ to an ‘Ö’, I use David Pilling’s !Xlate
(with a suitable transformation file, of course) or replace with the
right characters manually. So when I write my address on my MC 400 I
write :vralidsgatan 25>5 and that will be transformed into Övralidsgatan
25:5. This method can be used for any language as long as you don’t mind
what you type on your MC’s screen!
6.11
Conclusion
6.11
Compared with the portable offerings from Acorn, you get a screen the
size of the A4’s and a full-sized portable just a bit more expensive
than the Pocket Book! With communication software in your Archimedes, a
serial cable (and a serial chip in your A3000) you can transfer anything
you want quickly and easy, with no errors.
6.11
I know of no other portable that runs for 60 hours on one set of
batteries, nor one with such a big screen and nice keyboard that costs
so little. Even the cheap Amstrad NC200 and the failure-prone Z88 are
not cheap in comparison.
6.11
The best alternative is a Sharp 6220 with a similar screen, keyboard and
a 40Mb hard drive. Original price was over £2000 but it costs around
£600 today, if you can find one! That is almost price-worthy but it
certainly won’t run for 60 hours on one set of batteries.
6.11
Of course, it would be nice to have further add-ons: there are 1.8“ hard
cards that fit the PCMCIA slot − hopefully these could be used on a
Psion MC 400!? And an MC Link for Archimedes users would be nice.
6.11
The only disadvantage, compared to modern notebooks, is that there are
no Lemmings available!
6.11
To end with, here is a warning. When Guy Swarbrick wrote his editorial
“Inside Out” (PCW, July, ’92) mentioning the Psion MC 400, he thought it
was near perfect. That is, until German Customs X-rayed the machine,
despite his protests. It never worked properly again! Surprise,
surprise?!
6.11
This text was prepared with the help of illustrations from the User
Manual, scanned with Scan-Light Junior 256 and pasted into Impression.
Invaluable help has been given by David Pilling. Thanks!  A
6.11
The Psion MC 400 has room for four PCMCIA cards, two each side.
6.11
Also visible is the digitisation tablet above the keyboard.
6.11
Spectra
6.11
David Wild
6.11
One of the non-computer things I do with my Archimedes is to produce the
newsletter for the British Railwaymen’s Esperanto Association. There can
be no doubt that the use of DTP methods has made a big improvement in
the appearance of the newsletter but it still lacked good illustrations.
Although there are many art and drawing packages available, I do not
really have the skills necessary to produce what I need, but I am a
reasonably competent photographer.
6.11
When I saw Risc Developments advertisement for the Spectra colour
scanner, I was interested to see what it might do for me and, after a
demonstration at St Albans, I decided to buy one. When you open the box,
there is the Spectra device itself, a power supply, a podule to fit in
the back of the computer, a disc with the software and a couple of
manuals − one written for Risc Developments and one provided by the
manufacturers of the scanner. It didn’t take very long to put the podule
in, connect everything together and get ready to try the system.
6.11
The scan area is just a little bit bigger than a standard 6×4 inch print
and is clearly outlined on the bottom one of the two clear plates which
make up the top and base of the scanner.  This allows you to position
your photograph ready for scanning, but I did find it difficult to stop
an individual print moving as I adjusted the position of the scanner.
For my first attempt, I asked the program to scan at full resolution
without setting any limits and then waited for the job to complete. You
do need to be patient, or have something else to do, as a full scan
takes about six minutes.
6.11
When the scan is complete, the program spends some time processing the
image before displaying it on the screen. This processing time is not,
unlike the scan time, multi-tasking, but the percentages displayed under
the hourglass appear to be correct. When the processing is finished, you
are then given a number of options, one of which is to save the scanned
data for further use. This is when you realise why the scanner doesn’t
cover a bigger area − the saved file is well over 3Mb and will not
reduce significantly by squashing. (At the Harrogate show, I saw a
scanner which would cover an A4 sheet but the file in which the scan was
saved took up 25 Mb!) You can also save the picture as a sprite which
takes up rather less space and which will squash but you can’t then do
any further processing on it. There is no doubt that this system is only
for use on a hard disc, and a fairly large one at that. On the 20Mb disc
in my original 440, I would only be able to store about five pictures.
6.11
The news isn’t all bad, though. If you want to be able to print pictures
for use on a copier, you can scan in grey or in monochrome with a
significant reduction in the amount of space used. I found that, for
ordinary photographs, a grey scan gave a better result than monochrome
but you can always scan at one level and process to lower levels if that
makes sense. Obviously, you can’t process to colour if you scanned in
grey as the information isn’t there.
6.11
The results of scanning and then printing on a Deskjet 550C are very
impressive and, although the results couldn’t be mistaken for a
photograph, a monochrome sprite brought into Wordz and then copied on an
ordinary office copier produced an effect as good as most newspaper
photographs. Some time, I hope to see the results of printing one of my
scanned photographs on a really good colour printer and would expect the
quality to be even better. As it is, I am well satisfied with the
results I can achieve and I will certainly get plenty of use out of the
equipment.
6.11
The only real snag that I have found is that there isn’t a power switch
on the equipment itself and it can only be switched off by pulling the
plug out of the socket. In view of the position of my power socket, this
is not the best way to do it. A useful accessory would be a tray in
which you could position a standard print accurately and know that it
would be in exactly the right place when the scan was done. I have
sometimes found that I have needed to trim the final sprite and the rows
and columns of the sprite were not quite parallel to the edges of the
print.
6.11
On the whole, Spectra is a very useful accessory. Justification of the
cost is a bit more difficult as it will depend on what you are trying to
do. There is absolutely no doubt that it beats any of the hand-held
scanners needing to be moved at exactly the right speed on exactly the
right line. If you have a lot of work to do, the time-saving in this
respect could well outweigh the additional cost. It will be interesting
to see what happens to the market for scanners when the new OCR software
comes out. An interesting point is that the stitching together of text
is much easier than for pictures so if the scanner will cover the full
width of your document, it doesn’t matter if you need two or three scans
for a page.
6.11
I did have one disappointment; I scanned a railway map from a booklet
published just after the war and the sprite was excellent. This seemed
to me to be ideal, with clear black lines and lettering, to trace into a
drawfile, so I set the program to work. Unfortunately, the result was
unuseable as there were just too many errors. This is no fault of the
scanner but it does suggest that we need a different method of solving
the problem. The current issue of the Archimedean offers a method of
tracing using different levels in Artworks and this might be the answer.
6.11
Spectra costs £549+VAT from Risc Developments.  A
6.11
PipeDream 4 for Teachers
6.11
Malcolm Fraser
6.11
The full title of the book under review is “A Teacher’s Introduction to
Spreadsheets using PipeDream 4”, hence the shortened heading! The
package consists of a 32 page booklet accompanied by a disc of the
PipeDream 4 files and charts discussed. You must have either PipeDream 4
or the demonstration disc in order to use the files.
6.11
The book is written specifically to show teachers a variety of ways in
which spreadsheets might be used in lessons. The examples are mainly at
secondary level, although some could be adapted for younger classes.
6.11
The booklet is not a substitute for the PipeDream 4 manuals. Some
familiarity with PipeDream 4 is needed to follow the examples, and the
booklet suggests working through the Tutorial in preparation. With this
background, most of the examples will be fairly easy to follow. In a few
cases though, it would be advisable to have the reference manual handy
as you work through the examples, unless you are familiar with functions
such as vlookup.
6.11
The subjects covered
6.11
There are eighteen example spreadsheets, although some of these are
closely related, showing how an idea can be developed from an initial
sheet. The booklet divides these into files dealing with personal and
business use, and those relevant to particular subjects.
6.11
The first set of sheets shows how to set up a record of your bank
account and how the account can then be developed to present summaries
from the daily transactions. The next set covers business accounting and
the use of spreadsheets to predict cash flow. In the cash flow sheet, an
example is given of how to set up a sheet so that possible future events
such as pay increases can be handled easily.
6.11
The spreadsheets which deal with topics in particular subjects cover
modelling and the investigation of number patterns in Mathematics,
preparing costings for Technology projects, the analysis of data in
Geography and Science, and using simulations in Physics and in History.
6.11
The booklet
6.11
The aim is to describe a wide range of possible uses of spreadsheets in
education. Care is taken to explain why each spreadsheet has been set
up, rather than just describing the formulae used. Often, suggestions
are given for ways of developing the spreadsheet further, and related
problems which might be tackled by spreadsheet are mentioned. Obviously
though, in 32 pages, the space which can be given to any one example is
limited.
6.11
The discussion of the purpose of a spreadsheet is in welcome contrast to
books which concentrate on the mechanics of setting up a spreadsheet and
stop there. The danger in the second approach is that students (and
teachers?) can become skilful in setting up spreadsheets without really
knowing why they should want to do so. The author adopts a common sense
approach, suggesting for example that if a calculation is to be done
only once, it may be just as effective to use a calculator.
6.11
The examples vary in complexity and, as you might expect, some are more
interesting and convincing than others. The line graphs produced when
modelling projectiles and waves in Physics show just how powerful the
graphing facilities are. One spreadsheet is used to set up a simulation
of the costs and profits from a slave ship voyage. I am not sure that
this is a good approach, as it concentrates on the financial aspects and
presents a distorted picture of a complex subject. This is also the one
example where the spreadsheet does not seem to be correctly formulated.
6.11
The spreadsheets give examples of some useful techniques, for example
using if and other functions, linking files together and using different
graphing facilities.
6.11
Some screen shots of spreadsheets lack clarity. The system font is used
extensively, but bold and italic versions can be difficult to read.
Greys and colours have been reproduced as dot patterns (at about 300
dpi) and can be quite faint. This could have been avoided − the graphs
are much clearer, partly because of the use of outline fonts. In
attempting to put in as much material as possible, rather cluttered
pages have sometimes resulted, and this also detracts from the
readability of the booklet at times.
6.11
The disc
6.11
I have found only a few mistakes in the disc files and none of these
caused any problems in using the sheet, with the exception on the
‘Slaves’ sheet mentioned above.
6.11
Overall impression
6.11
The examples provide a good ‘next step’, once the basics of PipeDream 4
have been mastered. Colleagues have been impressed by the range of
suggestions in the booklet, and have seen ways in which the material
could be adapted for use in lessons. The spread of subjects is likely to
be particularly useful to Information Technology coordinators working to
ensure that computers are used in all subjects. The examples should also
help introduce spreadsheet functions beyond the obvious sum, ave and so
on, as the sheets include quite complex uses of if and vlookup
functions.
6.11
It is also an advantage that the number of examples for individual
subjects is quite small. Newcomers to spreadsheets will not be
overwhelmed by the amount of material, and can concentrate on
understanding and then expanding and altering one or two sheets. Most
people find it better to build up slowly, working on a small amount of
new material at a time, rather than going straight to problems which
require a wide range of functions for their solution.
6.11
There are some problems with the booklet, though most are minor. The
major one arises from the need to pack a lot of material into 32 pages.
Although a description is given of each different function used, this is
quite brief and does not give enough detail for many new users. In one
case, a complex if expression is used on disc with no explanation in the
booklet. It would be better to extend the book by a few pages and give
more explanation of the formulae most likely to be new to readers, so
that they are not frustrated in their attempts to understand how the
sheets work.
6.11
Some suggestions of further reading or sources of sample spreadsheets
would be useful. Only one is mentioned in the booklet, and this is for a
specific topic. A very good way to learn about spreadsheets is to see
what other people have already done. In the case of PipeDream, both
PipeLine and Archive have published sheets for a wide range of
applications, and many of these are relevant to school work. As more
teachers use spreadsheets, occasional collections of spreadsheets for
specific subjects might usefully be published in one or other of these.
There would be a need to clarify the position over copyright, which
brings me to my last point.
6.11
The booklet and disc are not expensive if only one copy is bought.
However, there is a standard copyright statement at the front, which
restricts copying to the owner of the book. There are two main ways in
which this material might be used in schools. Sections of the book could
be used with departments or members of staff during a training session,
or particular sheets could be modified for use with a class. Providing a
copy for every member of staff would be prohibitive for most schools and
it is not remotely likely that a copy would be bought for every student.
I imagine that Colton Software would be prepared to set up a licence or
bulk purchase arrangement but I have not seen this publicised.
6.11
Conclusion
6.11
As a source of ideas, the package is a success. It would provide a very
useful resource for Information Technology Coordinators who are trying
to help colleagues to introduce the use of spreadsheets in the different
areas of the curriculum.
6.11
I would not recommend giving the booklet on its own to staff who are
still learning about spreadsheets, because explanations given are not
always enough for independent use and some sheets are quite complex.
This would depend on the confidence of the individual concerned. The
material could form the basis of a training course, with additional help
and explanation being given by an IT teacher or through additional notes
as required.
6.11
The package costs £4.95 from Colton Software.  A
6.11
The Real McCoy 4
6.11
Andrew Rawnsley
6.11
The Real McCoy 4 is the 4th Dimension’s latest games compilation,
following the success of the previous three. The games included are:
Cataclysm, Galactic Dan, Grievous Bodily ’ARM and X-Fire.
6.11
All the games are supplied in their original form, with seven discs and
four manuals squeezed inside a standard, smart 4th Dimension plastic
box. A note on the back of the box informs us that each game has, at one
time or another, retailed at £25.95, making the total cost of buying
each game separately a staggering £103.80!
6.11
Each game will work with RISC OS 2 or 3, and all except X-Fire can be
easily installed onto a hard disc. They will, however, require the
presence of the original disc 1 as part of the copy protection system.
6.11
For those readers familiar with the games, there is nothing new − no new
features or changes − but for those who aren’t, here follows a short
review of each.
6.11
Grievous Bodily ’ARM
6.11
In any compilation, there is usually a space filler which is not up to
the standard of the rest. In this compilation Grievous Bodily ’ARM (GBA)
is certainly it.
6.11
Not surprisingly, GBA is a pure, unadulterated beat ’em up. It professes
to be nothing else. Having played such games as Double Dragon on the
Amiga, I was hoping that GBA would bring this style and calibre of game
to the Acorn world. I was to be rather disappointed.
6.11
The plot involves a mad scientist who has discovered a new way of
manufacturing cheap, illegal narcotics. Apparently, you have decided to
put him and his addicts out of business − permanently.
6.11
Running the !GBA application to play the game, you are greeted with two
poor title screens accompanied by a rather uninspired tune. The main
choices screen allows you to play with keyboard or joystick, start the
game or exit to desktop (which caused my 2Mb A5000 to hang!).
6.11
Starting the game presents you with some rather drab background graphics
and a large character in a white vest who flying-kicks his way onto the
screen. The first level involves walking down a street, thumping and
kicking cats, men and leather clad women, whilst jumping over man-hole
covers.
6.11
Each type of villain can be despatched with kicks and punches, but is
poorly animated. Punching them causes them to fly backwards a short
distance. Thus you can punch them to the side of the screen (which
doesn’t scroll until you’ve killed the addicts) and bash away at the
punch key (Return) until the enemy is dead. Each move and hit is
accompanied by some inappropriate grunt. (I’ve never heard a cat sound
like this before!) You can survive four hits before you lose one of your
four lives.
6.11
Movement is very limited − you can move forwards and backwards and jump
only. Apparently, you can find weapons to fight with, but I suppose I
just didn’t get that far! On the plus side, the game does have a curious
addictive quality which might make it popular with those desperate for a
beat ’em up on an Acorn machine. GBA is one of a very small number of
this type of game for Acorn owners.
6.11
X-Fire
6.11
This game is quite a different kettle of fish. Despite the fact that it
can’t be installed on a hard disc, I find myself playing it regularly.
The presentation it excellent − except for the graffiti spray-can effect
on the title screen.
6.11
X-Fire is an arcade style shoot ‘em up, with the graphics and speed to
match. The action takes place on a grid with blocks in alternate squares
to restrict directions you move go in. The blocks are always in the same
place on every level, and the combat arena is rather like a collection
of crossroads stuck together. You can shoot enemies in any of the four
directions surrounding you, provided that you press the direction key
when you are firing.
6.11
When destroyed, the aliens may leave power-ups such as X-fire (which is
where the game got its name from), rapid fire, bullets that split up
into four directions at every junction or zaps which destroy every alien
on the screen. You must destroy a certain number of aliens on each
screen to go on to the next level, which is similar but with different
graphics.
6.11
You have a wide range of control over the sound and music, but I found
it more pleasant to turn the speakers off and play in silence. The lack
of variety in the levels is made up for by the many different aliens,
the power-ups and the slick presentation. Great fun!
6.11
Galactic Dan
6.11
This is one of the 4th Dimension’s more recent game and occupies only
one disc, hence the lack of music in the game. It can be installed onto
a hard disc by dragging in standard RISC OS fashion.
6.11
The plot revolves around hostages and enemy robots in a variety of maze-
like strongholds. You must rush around the maze, collect a certain
number of hostages and find the exit in a specified time limit. However,
the aliens aren’t too keen on this, so you are armed with some form of
laser weapon.
6.11
Control is via the mouse with a few keyboard controls for advanced
things such as firing sideways and changing the vertical aiming of your
weapon. You can find different types of weaponry and the function keys
allow you to swap between these.
6.11
The game has some puzzle elements which involve finding control buttons
to open doors, controlling lifts and making jumps to rescue hostages
standing (or rather bouncing!) on blocks.
6.11
The alien droids and hostages have been produced using raytracing
software and look rather good, but why do the hostages look like
snowmen?
6.11
The fast vector graphics used for the maze, and the smoothness with
which the whole game runs set it in a class of its own. Even an Amiga
owner I showed it to was impressed!
6.11
The levels have passwords, so there is no need to repeat the simpler
levels every time you die.
6.11
Galactic Dan was certainly a highly enjoyable game, but jumping requires
a great deal of practice!
6.11
Cataclysm
6.11
This game is of the puzzle genre, in which you must guide incoming water
from the top of the level down into a plug hole at the bottom,
transporting enough water out of the system before the time limit runs
out. Water reaching the bottom, but missing the plug hole causes you to
lose your precious time.
6.11
The gameplay is similar to that of Lemmings, but you control a little
man who can place blocks for the water to flow along (but there is a
strict limit on these), open valves and operate door switches.
6.11
The task is made harder by different sorts of aliens and gun
emplacements, many of which seek to destroy our little hero. The water
may become acidified, causing death on touch, or may be of different
colours and need mixing before it can be poured down the plug hole. To
make life easier guns can be picked up on some levels.
6.11
Again, this game has a high level of presentation and I was particularly
impressed by the cross-hairs on the main menu screen, which can be
controlled by mouse or keys and remains in the same place during a game
so that to repeat a level when you die, you simply have to press
<return>.
6.11
This game will prove popular with all the family.
6.11
Overall
6.11
The Real McCoy 4 is a good compilation, with the exception of Grievous
Bodily ’ARM. It is biased more toward the destructive side of computer
games (i.e. those involving much blasting and aggression), but even so
it has puzzle elements in Galactic Dan and Cataclysm. Is it worth the
RRP of £34.95 inc. VAT? Probably, but at street prices (£32 through
Archive) it is definitely a good buy for those who don’t already possess
more than one of the games.  A
6.11
Chopper Force Tutorial
6.11
Cain Hunt
6.11
I read with interest the review by Robert Fuller of Chopper Force in the
Archive 6.8 p56. I agree with Brian Barr that it is a great program
which is let down somewhat by its lack of documentation. Being new to
helicopter simulations, I was disappointed that there was no “flying
tutorial” and I offer the following account for the aid of any new
Chopper Force pilots.
6.11
About your chopper
6.11
Your chopper has two means of propulsion − its main rotor blade and a
forward propelling jet engine. You therefore have two quite different
types of flight − jet mode when the jets are on and hover mode when they
are off. Jet mode is faster, but hover mode is more manoeuvrable. Both
jets and main rotor engine run from the same fuel tank (but jets use
fuel faster). The rotor blades are used all the time, otherwise you
would fall out of the sky. You cannot glide (no wings!) so running out
of fuel is a fatal event.
6.11
Jet mode
6.11
This is not unlike flying an ordinary jet flight simulator. You control
roll and pitch with the mouse and can change the amount of thrust to
alter speed. There are major differences: if you roll sideways, the
downwards thrust of the main rotors will also point sideways, so you
will turn in the direction you roll towards. You are not an aerodynamic
shape that requires forward movement to maintain lift, so if you cut
your thrust you cannot stall. Your rotor blade holds you up, so you
cannot fly upside down or loop the loop (well, not in this simulator).
6.11
Hover mode
6.11
This is conventional helicopter flying and is totally different from
flying a fixed wing aircraft. Hover mode takes over as soon as your
forward thrust drops to zero. When you tilt your chopper in any
direction, some of your main rotor’s thrust will push you in that
direction (as in Lander or Zarch). In a real-life helicopter, you would
also have to increase rotor speed proportionately so that the remaining
vertical part of your thrust was enough to keep you airborne. Chopper
Force makes it easier for you by always automatically maintaining your
height when in hover mode. The further you tilt your craft, the faster
you accelerate. You need to tilt in the opposite direction to bring
yourself to a stop. Tilting sideways also tends to rotate you.
6.11
In hover mode, you have two other sets of controls not available in jet
mode: up/down and rotation. Up and down actually change the main rotor
thrust, so you accelerate up or down. Since your top forward speed
depends on main rotor thrust, you can go faster when rising. (In real-
life, I think, top speed is in level flight.) Rotation spins you round
but, unlike a plane, your momentum carries you in the direction you were
travelling.
6.11
Combat tactics
6.11
1. Chopper Dog Fights. The manual rightly says that you should use hover
mode to engage other choppers and spin round to keep them in your
sights. However, it’s not as simple as that. When you are in hover mode
you are relatively still and it is easy for an enemy to spray you with
fire as they swoop in in jet mode. To prevent this, approach them in jet
mode, swerving from side to side and then, when you are at close
quarters, switch to hover. Never stay still in hover mode (sitting
duck). To fly after a fleeing chopper you must drop your nose and tilt
towards it − quite unlike a plane simulator where you always try to keep
the enemy in your sights. The optimum “kill” position seems to be above
and behind them shooting down through their rotor blades, so it is
useful to rise (cursor up) and tilt towards them. This also gives you
top speed for pursuit (see above). You can spin round faster in a dog
fight by rolling sideways in the direction of spin as well as using the
rotation keys. In dire emergency, when you need to knock a chopper down
fast, you can try an air-to-ground rocket at close quarters − if you hit
him, he’s dead.
6.11
2. Ground Attack. Don’t hover near things that can shoot back. In jet
mode, you fly level with your nose slightly down so it is good for
strafing.
6.11
3. Strategic Hints. Always try to take on one chopper at a time − this
is because two or more can catch you in a cross-fire. You can sometimes
escape from a tight situation by jetting forward, then hovering and
spinning round. Mid-air collisions between choppers seem to spin you up
in the air but don’t do any damage (not at all like real-life!). Kill
jet planes on the ground − I haven’t yet found a reliable way of getting
them in the air! Choppers on the ground seem invulnerable and you seem
to be safe from their fire when you are on the ground. The dreaded radar
guided missile seems not to be able to lock onto you if there are enemy
aircraft near you (even if you are above 100ft). However, once launched,
a missile can find you even if you land and switch off your engine so
make sure there is a building between you and it.
6.11
Navigation
6.11
You can set the “target finder” on your head-up-display by pressing <D>
and entering the co-ordinates. However, this is usually unnecessary as
the default target finder points to anything useful. Note that the
compass reads anticlockwise bearings (unlike the more usual clockwise
ones). There seems to be no repair or refuel facility except when the
mission is completed, so the only thing to do is to head for the bad
guys.  A
6.11
(We now have some technical information sent in by Tord Eriksson. He
sent it in as part of a review but as we already had Cain’s comments and
the original review by Robert Fuller, I felt we could only spare the
space for these extra technical comments. Moral: Before taking the
trouble to write a review, check with me whether someone else is already
doing one! Ed.)
6.11
Helicopter or autogyro or both?!
6.11
For the technically inclined, here is an explanation of the aircraft you
are piloting. It is a helicopter at low speed and an autogyro at high
speed. The difference is quite drastic, both in this simulator and in
flying the real things!
6.11
A helicopter produces the lift and forward propulsion by forcing air
down through the rotor with the help of the engine. This is easily seen
by the characteristic leaning forward of the rotor and aircraft when
flying at speed. In hover, the aircraft is more or less horizontal.
6.11
The autogyro, on the other hand, is propelled forward by a jet engine or
vertical propeller. It develops lift from a windmilling rotor (i.e.
leaning backward) and it is really an aeroplane with a rotating wing.
6.11
If you could see the blades of the rotor while they were rotating, you
would find the helicopter’s rotors behaving like a normal propeller,
with a positive angle of attack and the autogyro’s having a negative
angle of attack, just like any other windmill.
6.11
Helicopter above and autogyro below. Arrows indicate the airflow through
the rotor discs.
6.11
So the power produced by the engine in an autogyro is only used to push
it forward and the rotor is tilted backward to catch some of the wind
and thus produce lift. If the engine should stop, the aircraft would
lose height and speed as there is too little energy available to keep up
the rotor speed.
6.11
If the engine stops in a helicopter, and the pilot does not react
correctly, things get bad very quickly. If he doesn’t change the blades’
angle of attack to negative, that is, to transform the aircraft into an
autogyro, the rotor will stop and the aircraft will fall like a ton of
bricks. Not nice!
6.11
Helicopter pilots used to train in the technique of making an “auto-
rotating” landing. Extreme care was needed to brake the speed of descent
at exactly the right altitude by reverting to a positive angle of attack
with the overspeeding rotor. If applied too early, the helicopter would
stop in midair and then fall like a ton of bricks. If applied too late,
there would be a severely mangled helicopter and possibly fatal
injuries! So, nowadays, it is usually simulated with the engine on!  A
6.11
Music Column
6.11
Stewart Watson
6.11
Serenade is now available in version 1.05, release date, 30.4.93. There
are several major enhancements since version 1.00 and as Clares offer a
free upgrade, it is well worth returning your original disc for
upgrading. (Send them an SAE to show you care! Ed.)
6.11
Rhythm-Bed
6.11
As explained in the manual, to use Serenade and Rhythm-Bed together, you
need Rhythm-Bed version 1.27, so if you don’t have that version, it is
as well to return both discs together. Version 1.27 also loads and saves
MIDI files, which is a major advantage.
6.11
Serenade voices
6.11
When selecting instrument voices from the track window, a new folder is
available which, when clicked on opens a new window with all the voices
in the current patch file. Clicking on a voice enters the voice name and
number in the parameters list.
6.11
Extra bars
6.11
A useful new feature is that, when you record a piece longer than the
current number of bars, extra bars are created automatically. This can
be very handy, because sometimes you may set out to play only a fairly
short phrase, but inspiration strikes and you need to play on and record
the results of your inspiration, before it evaporates.
6.11
Metronome
6.11
The added option of internal instead of external metronome has been
added, so that users, especially those with a keyboard without a
percussion channel, can use an internal voice as a metronome. If we can
now use one internal voice, maybe soon we’ll be given the facility to
use the other seven for normal track output.
6.11
External sync
6.11
This allows Serenade’s clock to be controlled from an external device,
like another sequencer, allowing sequences from other sources to be
loaded in, in real time.
6.11
One button record
6.11
An additional option to record by simply pressing record, rather than
record then play has been added. This is set to off by default, but can
be switched on in the set-up window.
6.11
Smooth tempo changes
6.11
As well as stepped tempo changes, there are smooth tempo changes
available which will make the inclusion of smooth accelerandos or
rallentandos much easier to control.
6.11
Text info file
6.11
A new text input window has been included with information about the
current piece of music and the composer. This is saved with the file.
6.11
Patch names
6.11
Spaces are now permitted in patch names. A simple example is E Piano,
instead of EPiano. A small change, but it does tend to make names much
more easily identifiable.
6.11
Keyboard short-cuts
6.11
Keyboard short-cuts for play and record now work in any mode.
6.11
A major annoyance in early versions was that you had to move from edit
mode to record mode before you could hear the results of your edit, or
record any new information. Now play, stop and record keyboard short-
cuts work in any mode, so one keypress lets you hear the result of your
endeavours. I still feel that more use could be made of keyboard short-
cuts to bring up the Track window, Edit window, etc.
6.11
Locked tracks
6.11
In the early versions of Serenade, all tracks, including empty tracks,
were saved, but to cut down on file size, locked tracks are no longer
saved in MIDI files. This gives a shorter file length and avoids extra
blank tracks when the file is loaded into Rhapsody. The option remains
to save all sixteen tracks, if you so wish − simply leave them all
unlocked.
6.11
If you want to use the shorter file length feature, all you need to
remember is to go down the track list and lock all the tracks not used
before you save your work. Another option, if you seldom use many
tracks, is to save a template with all the tracks locked and just unlock
the ones you need as necessary.
6.11
If you sometimes have more than one attempt at a melody, on different
tracks, but are unsure which to keep, you can always mute and lock the
less favoured parts before copying into Rhapsody, assuming you are using
both programs concurrently. This allows you to have a look at one
version of a file in Rhapsody while having the original still available
in Serenade.
6.11
Files into Rhapsody
6.11
The only problems I have found moving carefully quantized files into
Rhapsody, is that when you load a file from Rhapsody in 9/8, Serenade
reads it in 10/8 or 5/4, adding an extra blank quaver at the end of each
bar. I am waiting for a reply from Clares as to how to cure this problem
other than recording in 9/4 instead of 9/8.
6.11
Hanging offences
6.11
I have managed to make the program hang up by loading any one of the
demo drum patterns, lets say eight bars long, copying it to bars 9-16,
then copying 1-16 into 17-32, (so far so good) but then copying 1-32
into 33-64 causes a fatal error. I must add that this does not happen if
you do what you are supposed to do and create the necessary bars first,
using the toolbox.
6.11
Conclusions
6.11
I must confess to enjoying using Serenade more and more as I get to know
it better. When Rhapsody 3 becomes available, in just a few weeks time
(I gather), the improved notation output available from Serenade via
Rhapsody 3 will make the combination of Serenade (sequencer) and
Rhapsody 3 (notation), even better.
6.11
Oops!
6.11
In my review of Serenade (6.10 p33), I mixed up Rhythm Box and Rhythm-
Bed. Serenade can sync to Rhythm-Bed (£49.95 from Clares), but not to
Rhythm Box from EMR. My apologies for any confusion caused − please put
it down to end of term blues! Rhythm-Bed has just been enhanced and is
currently into version 1.28 (free upgrades through Clares to existing
users). Among the new features are:  a toolbox for easy editing, the
ability to load all types of MIDI files and the ability to load SQUASH’d
files.  A
6.11
Fun School 4 (Under 5’s)
6.11
Nick Perrott
6.11
My first encounter with Database Publications’ Fun School series of
software was when I purchased Fun School 3 (FS3) for the under 5’s about
eighteen months ago. This suite proved an instant success with my, then
two year old son Alistair, who up till that point had either totally
ignored the computer or had tried to switch it off using a pocket
calculator as a remote control!
6.11
Bob and Lisa Ames did a very good review of FS3 (under 5’s) in Archive
(5.8.66). The only point I feel they missed was that once the program
suite had been loaded, it was impossible to return to the desktop
without performing a <reset>. You therefore lose anything else that you
had been working on prior to the arrival of “junior”. This is an
important consideration as the patience of a youngster is soon exhausted
whilst you desperately try to save the WP file you have been working on
for the last two hours. This problem has been overcome in Fun School 4
(FS4) although another problem has emerged in that the program will not
load properly if you have been using “Impression” and yes, you have
guessed right, you have to perform a <reset> before it runs. This and a
few other minor reservations aside, this is another excellent suite of
programs.
6.11
The programs
6.11
The introduction to the six separate programs that make up the package
is quite exciting, with a very catchy tune being played followed by
Teddy walking across the screen and then being lifted into the air by a
balloon he is holding, returning a few seconds later with the main menu
screen. From here it is possible to select which of the six programs you
wish to run by either pointing and clicking with the mouse or by
pressing <space> to highlight the individual program and then pressing
<return>. Also, from this main menu, <escape> will return you to the
desktop. I thought that the tune played as Teddy brings the menu would
drive me mad after a while but after six months, I retain my sanity.
6.11
The six programs are supposed to represent a busy day in Teddy’s life
starting with nursery school (Addition and Teddy Paint), a trip to the
park (Fun Train), the return to home (Teddy’s House), a birthday party
(Teddy’s Karaoke) and finally bedtime (Teddy’s Books). With the
exception of Teddy Paint, all the programs have either three or four
levels of difficulty which can be changed by pressing <F10>.
6.11
Addition − This starts with counting a number of different objects on
the screen and then entering the number either by pressing <space> or
using the cursor keys until the required number is highlighted and then
pressing <return> or by pressing the number on the keyboard. As the more
difficult levels are tried, objects and numbers are shown which have to
be added together and at level three only the numbers are displayed. As
each correct answer is entered, one teddy gets to go out to play. An
incorrect answer will have the teacher shake his head.
6.11
This is a very useful program and the only problem is that one of the
objects displayed is a tank (of the military variety). Quite why
Europress feel it is necessary to introduce under five year old children
to weapons of war when any number of alternatives could have been used,
remains a mystery to me.  Europress have so far failed to reply, despite
the matter being raised on two separate occasions.
6.11
Teddy Paint − Three alternative backgrounds (beach, country or play
ground) can be selected onto which a number of different objects can be
entered. With some objects (e.g. triangle) it is possible to vary the
size and/or colour whilst others (e.g. sun) remain fixed. The locations
of any object can be chosen by moving the mouse or cursor keys and then
set by clicking on <select> or pressing <return>. The available objects
vary with the background and so the cow is only available in the country
and not on the beach. It is possible to save a picture, load it back
into Teddy Paint and as the saved file is a Paint file, it can be loaded
into other applications and printed out as the example below shows:
6.11
Fun Train − This allows the matching of a picture (with a description of
the object) shown in the middle of the fun train ride to one that
arrives in the carriage of the train. If the pictures don’t match then
the <space bar> is pressed to bring another. If they do match, <return>
is pressed. At the higher levels, the picture is sometimes omitted,
leaving only the description to encourage the recognition of the word.
When words are correctly matched, teddy is rewarded with the usual
“happy” sound and a wrong answer gives an “unhappy” sound. However, if
the pictures/descriptions are the same but the child does not try to
match them, the train just continues even though an essentially
incorrect answer has been given. After five objects have been correctly
matched, another tune is played and the train arrives with a “Well Done”
message and teddy jumps down from the train waving.
6.11
Teddy’s House − Here the painters are at the house and require
instruction on what colour to paint each part. There is a row of eight
paint pots, each of a different colour with the name of the colour
written on them (very useful for colour blind dads). The object to be
painted (e.g. window, garage door, etc) is displayed in a small box with
a written request asking what colour it should be painted. The paint
brush is moved between pots using <space> or cursor keys and is selected
with <return> or by using the mouse keys. The same colour cannot be used
for more than three different parts of the house and each time the game
is played, the parts of the house come in a different order. At the
second level, the house is already painted and, in this case, teddy has
to identify what colour has been used. Again the object is displayed in
a little box. At the third level, a written request is made to find a
colour and then move to a specific part of the house. This can be done
either by <space bar> and <return> or by using the mouse. In the latter
case, some of the parts of the house (window frames) are a bit on the
small side for little hands (paws!) to accurately position before
pressing <select>. At all levels, when the house is completely painted,
the decorator’s van drives away.
6.11
Teddy’s Karaoke − This offers a selection of eight well known nursery
rhymes with a bouncing ball appearing over each word as it should be
sung. At level two, the tune only plays as the <space bar> is pressed
allowing teddy to tap out the beat. On the third level, the tune plays
and then stops until a specifically requested letter is pressed on the
keyboard.
6.11
Teddy’s Books − There are six little bears in bed waiting to be read a
story from one of six books on the shelf − but which of the numbered
books is Daddy Ted reading? At level one, the books are in order and it
is easy to see which one is missing and then to press the appropriate
number. At this point, one of the bears falls asleep. At level two, the
books are out of order. By level three, the number of books has
increased to eight of which five are on the shelf, two on the bed or
floor and one held by Daddy Ted, and it is therefore necessary that some
deduction be used to work out which one he is holding. If a wrong answer
is given, a prompt of “BIGGER” or “smaller” is given. At level four,
there are only three books on the shelf and four on the bed or floor.
For the highest two levels, if more than three incorrect answers are
given, the bears start to wake up again! At all levels, once all six
bears are asleep, Daddy Ted walks out of the room, switching out the
light as he goes.
6.11
Problem areas
6.11
Apart from the choice of a tank in Addition and the incompatibility with
Impression, there aren’t that many problems and most are quite trivial.
As in FS3, the instruction manual leaves a bit to be desired as it has
been written to cover eight different computers and then comes with an
addendum. I repeat the comment from the FS3 review that a separate
instruction book for the Archimedes would be preferable.
6.11
On Fun Train and Teddy’s House, the moving graphics (Train and Paint Van
respectively) are very jerky, making it almost impossible to read what
is written on them. In FS3, the <F9> key was used to change levels but
in FS4 it is <F10> − why the change? When loading each separate program
from the main menu, the screen display fades out beautifully, followed a
few seconds later by the sound being cut-off abruptly in mid-note. If
you use !Configure to reduce the volume, you lose all the sounds that
are heard during the individual programs. However, it has no impact on
the volume of the tune played as the main menu is displayed, either at
the start of the program or when moving between programs. Each program
change is accompanied by the tune, Teddy walking across the screen,
rising up on the balloons and pulling down the menu. So an incorrect
program selection costs a lot of noise and about thirty seconds to
rectify. There were a number of other problems on an earlier version but
these have been rectified when the programs were modified to work on
RISC OS 3.1.
6.11
Conclusion
6.11
Overall, this is another very good suite of programs from Europress and
with some nice touches (e.g. in Teddy’s Books, the stars in the night
sky twinkle). With a few changes, it would be even better but at £23
from Archive it represents very good value. At the end of the day, if I
had to make a choice between Fun School 3 and Fun School 4 at the under
5’s level, I would pick Fun School 3 but there is not a lot in it. This
choice has been confirmed by Alistair’s playing habits.  A
6.11
PCB Design with DrawPlus
6.11
Ian Nichols
6.11
As many Archimedes users have discovered, Draw is a very useful program
for producing all kinds of diagrams and drawings. DrawPlus is an
enhanced version of Draw written by Jonathan Marten and which is
available as shareware (e.g. Careware 13). It has a number of features
which make it easier to use than Acorn’s original Draw and two very
useful features which even the version of Draw supplied with RISC OS 3.1
does not have – layers and libraries. Layers allow you to separate a
drawing into distinct sections which can overlap each other. A layer can
be made ‘selectable’ or not and visible or not, which can make life much
easier if you have a lot of objects which overlap or which are drawn
completely within one or more other objects.
6.11
A PCB layout is just such a complex drawing. There are the component
outlines, their identification labels (e.g. R1, C5, TR3 etc), the copper
tracks, marks for the component lead holes and any other labelling. If
all of these different elements of the drawing are grouped together into
layers, it is much easier to construct the drawing and almost trivial
print out the copper tracks and hole marks onto transparent acetate to
make a real PCB.
6.11
A library is a store of often-used objects (e.g. component outlines,
circuit symbols). These are usually used for getting multiple copies of
the same object into a drawing without having to copy and move an
existing object – you can simply pick the object out of the library and
insert it at the mouse pointer.
6.11
Earlier this year, I embarked on a project to build a hi-fi power
amplifier, based on a kit which is available from Maplin Electronics but
with some modifications. I don’t do a lot of PCB design work – in fact,
this is the only PCB I have ever produced – and so it seemed extravagant
to spend money on a program specifically to do this, therefore I decided
to see what I could do with DrawPlus.
6.11
(Slightly) Technical note
6.11
The amplifier is based on the MOSFET power amplifier module described in
Maplin Electronic Supplies’ catalogue and which is available from them
as a kit. I had already built an amplifier using two of these modules
and, encouraged by its success, decided to build an improved version.
The documentation supplied with the kit says that the output transistors
can be ‘doubled up’ to give a lower output impedance and hence better
damping and higher output power. This is the essence of the
modification, although a few other components were also changed to
extend the frequency response downwards. Obviously, with twice as many
output transistors, the PCB had to be made larger and extra tracks had
to be put in to connect up the extra components. The stereo amplifier
was built as two separate modules: one for each of the left and right
channels.
6.11
The components
6.11
The first thing to do was to construct shapes which would mark the
position and size of each component, e.g. the transistor shown here. The
sizes and shapes of the components were determined by either accurately
measuring the component with calipers, measuring the area allocated to
the component in the original circuit or looking up the dimensions and
lead spacing in a catalogue.
6.11
Using the gridlock feature, these were then drawn to actual size and put
into a layer called ‘components’. I tried to keep the component
positions as close as possible to the original circuit design, since
this worked very well and moving things around unnecessarily could upset
this. As the row of four output transistors was the dominant influence
on the width of the new board, these were put into the layer first. With
all the components in place, the ‘components’ layer was made non-
selectable, so that it would be impossible to accidentally ‘pick-up’ any
of them and move them around.
6.11
The tracks
6.11
The next stage was to draw in the copper tracks which would connect up
the components and put these in another layer called ‘tracks’. (Well,
why make life difficult by calling it anything else?) As you can see
from the picture, I did all the tracks as filled curved outlines.
Straight edged outlines would have worked and might have been easier,
but I like using bezier curves and I think they look better. It is true
that electrical charge tends to concentrate in sharp points rather than
curves, but I am not enough of an electronics expert to say whether or
not this really has any bearing on the quality of the finished circuit!
6.11
 The finished layout
6.11
Hole marks
6.11
The final stage in preparing the drawing was to put in the hole marks.
These had to be printed as white dots in the solid black of the copper
tracks so that they appeared as holes in the copper when the board was
etched, hence they were added in a layer of their own exactly over the
positions marked for them in the component outlines.
6.11
Printing the drawing
6.11
To prepare the PCB, all layers except ‘tracks’, ‘hole marks’ and
‘border’ (which contains marks for the corners of the circuit board and
a label saying what it is) were made invisible; the line and fill
colours of all the objects in the ‘tracks’ layer were changed to black,
and the hole marks were all brought to the ‘front’ of the drawing. The
drawing was then printed onto acetate (overhead transparency film) in a
laser printer. This gave a printed result which was suitable for use as
a photoresist mask.
6.11
The copper tracks and hole marks
6.11
Making the PCB
6.11
To produce a PCB, first the drawing printed on acetate was placed in
contact with a piece of copper-clad board coated with photoresist
(printed side next to the photoresist). This was then exposed to u.v.
light and developed in caustic soda. The photoresist which was exposed
to the u.v. light (i.e. under those areas not printed in black) was made
soluble in caustic soda and so the result is that the areas of the board
which were to have the copper etched away were exposed and the areas
where copper was to remain were still covered with photoresist. The
copper was then etched away in ferric chloride solution and the
remaining photoresist dissolved in acetone to leave an almost perfect
image in copper of the drawing. The only thing left to do then was build
the amplifier onto it – but that’s another story.
6.11
Conclusion
6.11
I was very pleased with the outcome of this project. Whilst !DrawPlus
may not be specifically intended for this kind of work, for someone like
me who cannot justify buying a ‘proper’ PCB design program, it is ideal
for producing the occasional board. The result was even accurate enough
for drilling the transistor mounting holes!  A
6.11
Key Plus Datafiles − The North Sea
6.11
Paul Hooper
6.11
The one advantage of using Key and Key Plus, rather than more
sophisticated databases, is the sheer number of top quality ready-made
datafiles that are available for it. Living, as I do, a mere five
minutes drive from the North Sea, I was particularly interested in this
series of databases. The review was carried out on an A5000 running Key
Plus 2.50.
6.11
The package
6.11
The disc comes in the back of a glossy A4 manual, which contains not
only teachers’ notes but also a series of study sheets and a couple of
work sheets along with maps and diagrams. The study sheets make
depressing reading, although this is not the fault of the manual, but of
what we are doing to the North Sea.
6.11
The disc
6.11
The disc is unprotected and easy to install onto a hard disc. It
contains nine separate datafiles, three maps and a directory containing
ten drawfiles. The datafiles cover North Sea birds, countries, fishes,
rivers, seals, seaweeds, towns, whales and oceans and seas. Each
datafile has many fields covering all aspects of the subject. So for
instance, the rivers datafile covers the countries which the river runs
through, its source, mouth, length, flow rate, how polluted it is, the
main pollutants, catchment area, main tributaries and the large towns or
cities on the river. Of the five rivers which are labelled as badly
polluted at the mouth, three are English.
6.11
This brings me to the strange geography employed in the program. For
some reason, Anglia TV has decided that it will list the United Kingdom
in the countries file and the towns file but in rivers this is split
into England and Scotland. This means that to search for all the rivers
in the UK you need to do a complex search rather than a simple one.
6.11
All of the 23 species of whales listed have decreasing populations
despite there having been no commercial whaling for the past few years.
Exploring the datafiles can surprise you and they are certainly worth a
good exploration.
6.11
The maps are: North Sea during the ice age, North Sea now (which can be
used for plotting the towns file) and a map of the Europort in
Rotterdam. The pictures directory contains a series of drawfiles which
are those shown in the manual.
6.11
Conclusion
6.11
The manual is excellent although I feel it could do with a few more
worksheets. The datafiles are good and if you have version 2.50 of Key
Plus, it is worth converting them into applications rather than leaving
them as directories. They would make an excellent basis for a more
detailed study of the North Sea, and the addition of a bibliography
would enable hard-pressed teachers to order books without too much
trouble. The drawfiles are good but too few in number, there was still
247Kb left on the disc and a number of the drawings in the manual were
not included as drawfiles. Despite these criticisms, it is still an
excellent little datafile.
6.11
Cost and availability
6.11
The datafile pack North Sea is available from SCA (Anglia Television),
PO Box 18, Benfleet, Essex SS7 1AZ, at £18 for BBC and Nimbus 186
versions and £22 for Archimedes and IBM versions. All prices exclude
VAT.  A
6.11
Topographer
6.11
Alan Highet
6.11
Topographer is a program for constructing 3D maps. It is aimed primarily
at the education market to help children visualise how contour lines are
used to portray height changes on maps. The package consists of two
discs and a 54 page ring-bound manual supplied in a rather flimsy
cardboard library case. Topographer will run under either RISC OS 2 or 3
from a floppy or hard disc on a 1Mb machine but with a constraint placed
on the map size, so 2Mb or more is recommended. A !Max application is
supplied for 1Mb users.
6.11
On disc one is the 2D application, a font directory containing Homerton
and Trinity fonts and the obligatory !Scrap, !System and !SysMerge
applications. There is also a tutorial directory containing three maps
and a release note text file with up-to-date information not covered in
the manual. The second disc contains the 3D application and a selection
of demo maps.
6.11
Map-making
6.11
In this review, I will take you through the creation of a small map
detailing the village in which I live. I could have chosen somewhere
with a more varied landscape but I decided on somewhere I knew so that I
could check whether the 3D views were recognisable.
6.11
Setting up the map
6.11
Creating a map entails installing the 2D application and clicking
<select> on the iconbar. This opens a window prompting you for a scale
for your map. There are the normal preset scales ranging from 1:1250 up
to 1:625000 and a writable icon for the more unusual sizes. I decided to
use 1:25000 (2½in to 1 mile) which is the scale used by the Ordnance
Survey in their Pathfinder series and allows details of individual
houses to be seen. Once the scale has been selected, clicking on OK
opens the map window with default settings. The first thing to do then
is to set the origin and size of your map.
6.11
Opening the grid dialogue box lets you set the origin by specifying the
Easting and Northing for the bottom left hand corner along with the size
of the map in metres and the number of digits used in grid references (2
to 5). Here I came upon a minor inconsistency as the map grid lines are
set in units of 1000 metres (Easting 74 means 74000 metres from the
origin) but the default measurement is centimetres, although an ‘m’ is
shown following the default sizes, so care needs to be taken. Next comes
the physical size of the map and for this I chose 3 grid squares or 3000
metres in each direction. It is nice to see that all these details can
be altered at a later date if you find you have taken on rather too
large a task.
6.11
Adding features
6.11
Features may now be selected by choosing them from a conventional menu
or by opening a feature window displaying the items graphically and
selecting them with the mouse. Features are grouped into four main
types. Symbols are features like buildings or man-made additions like
telephone boxes. Lines are features such as roads and railways as well
as rivers and canals. Areas are spaces such as woodland, parks and
quarries. The final group are contours which are self explanatory.
6.11
Most features have parameters attached to them such as the width of
roads or the heights of buildings and these can be altered in a dialogue
box at the bottom of the features window. The features may be placed on
the map in any order but the first thing I chose to enter were the main
roads as these helped in the placement of other items.
6.11
Once the appropriate road has been selected it may be entered in the
conventional Draw manner of clicking select at each change in direction
followed by a double click to finish. Alternatively, you may hold down
<select> and draw freehand. Upon double clicking, the freehand line is
converted to a series of straight lines with varying degrees of accuracy
which may be selected from a preference menu. Two roads may be joined
neatly by holding down <ctrl> when you click <select> and line sections
may be erased by successive clicks of <adjust> to backtrack prior to
double-clicking which will place the selected feature. Road numbers can
be attached to roads although they do not run parallel to them.
6.11
Once I was happy with the major roads, I placed the minor roads in the
same manner followed by the footpaths. To aid in the accurate placement
of lines and objects, the grid reference of the pointer may be displayed
on screen and a conventional zoom facility is also provided. Next came
the streams, irrigation ditches and electricity lines and then I added
the contours which completed all the line features.
6.11
Contours come in two different versions. One allows you complete lines
and the other is open to show lines that disappear off the edge of your
map. Spot heights may also be entered but these do not appear to affect
the 3D view and are for information only.
6.11
Next came the woodland areas and finally the individual items such as
pubs, telephone boxes and houses. Although the map scale prevented me
from adding every single house, a fair representation of the village was
achieved.
6.11
All the features may be selected and then cut, copied, moved or deleted
with the exception of open contours which may only be edited or deleted.
Contours may also be replicated to allow rapid entry of parallel lines
at a user-selected height interval. Editing of all feature parameters is
possible and line features may be altered by selecting edit whereupon
the control points appear. Unlike Draw, however, the control points
cannot be dragged but instead new lines may be inserted between control
points replacing whatever existed before or, alternatively, lines may be
extended. Text may be added in two styles in a font similar to the one
used by Ordnance Survey. The range of symbols and features is vast and
covers nearly all the OS symbols.
6.11
Although the main use for the 2D part of this package is to input the
information for use in generating the 3D image, it is also a good 2D
map-maker in its own right. What makes this all the more viable is the
ability to export in Draw format, enabling the tidying up of any small
details and the addition of any text you require.
6.11
And so to 3D...
6.11
After designing your map, you can export it into the 3D part of the
software.  This can done in memory assuming enough is available (each
application takes 768Kb without any map information) or the map can be
saved to disc and imported from there. In the 3D application, the map is
displayed with a black cone superimposed. This is the viewing cone
showing the range of map that will be displayed in 3D.
6.11
On the cone is a white arrow which indicates the view you will see with
you being at the base of the arrow looking towards the head of the
arrow. The height above ground of your eyes and your end view may both
be altered and multiple views may be set up, named and stored with the
map. Once you are happy with the view, you can start the 3D generation.
This may take some time and a progress window will show what is
happening. On completion, the 3D view may be saved to disc as a sprite
for later printing, editing or inclusion in a DTP document.
6.11
A few niggles?
6.11
Overall I was very pleased with Topographer although there were a few
niggles and a few things I would like to see in future versions. Because
of its similarity to Draw, I think that line editing should follow other
vector graphics program styles and allow dragging of control points with
the mouse or the nudging of selected control points with the cursor
keys. It would be very nice to be able to place symbols and lines by
entering their grid references rather than the map construction being
purely by eye as I think this would give a child a greater understanding
of grid references.
6.11
It’s 3D that counts
6.11
The 3D part of the program is what makes this application different from
a simple drawing package and it is on this that the package should be
judged. Resolution preferences may be set and different screen modes may
be used to generate more detailed pictures but the trade off is the time
taken to generate the picture. I would suggest you use the lower
resolutions to start with to check positioning as the highest resolution
take some time even on an ARM 3 machine. The picture appears as a
standard sprite and so may be saved and imported to other painting
packages.
6.11
When the picture is complete, do not expect a photograph of your local
beauty spot as it would take a lot more processing power than even Acorn
can supply to generate lifelike images. What you will see is exactly
what was promised, a three dimensional landscape with all the features
in their right places and a fair representation of a light source
although the sky is a little menacing as it is dark blue. Given a lot of
patience, a selection of sprites may be taken and a fly through could be
generated although a more accurate way of specifying the view would be
needed.
6.11
The future?
6.11
As far as the future is concerned I, personally, would like to see the
ability to export the 3D map in other forms such as Draw format or maybe
even Illusionist, enabling ray tracing to take place. Clares tell me
that they will be endeavouring to improve the software but have nothing
specific as yet. Minor upgrades will be supplied for a small handling
fee and major upgrades will be available at a special upgrade price to
existing users.
6.11
Overall, I was very pleased with the software and felt it achieved
everything it set out to do for a reasonable price. To my knowledge, it
has no competition in the Acorn field so if you want a 3D map creation
program then this is it!
6.11
Topographer costs £79.95 inc VAT from Clare’s Micro Supplies or £75
through Archive. The educational site licence price is 5 × £79.95 for a
secondary school and 3 × £79.95 for a Primary/Middle school.  A
6.11
KidPix
6.11
Richard Rymarz
6.11
KidPix is yet another painting program for primary school age children.
Two discs − a program and extras disc − are supplied in an A4 hardback
file. The program is distributed by ESM and costs £37.50 +VAT from ESM
or £41 through Archive.
6.11
Installation
6.11
KidPix can easily be run from floppy disc. The program disc contains an
installation application which merges the contents of the two discs and
allows them to be copied to hard disc. No master disc is then required
on start up.
6.11
Clicking on the KidPix icon results in a full screen 16 colour mode
which contains two drop-down menus. The look and feel of the screen
betrays its origins − I believe it began on an Apple Mac. However, these
can be replaced by RISC OS menus from the configuration option found by
clicking <menu> on the KidPix icon. The program does not run in a window
but a return to the desktop is only a mouse click away.
6.11
In use
6.11
The full screen has a large drawing area and a tool box on the left
which contains twelve tools. These are common to most art programs −
line, fill, etc. − but what is different is that each tool has a huge
variety of options which are displayed along the bottom of the drawing
area. The number of options is astounding and it takes some time to
experiment with them all. For instance, the pen tool has six different
widths each of which can have six different effects. The pen itself can
be square or round. Selection is shown by highlighting the tool and a
black line underlines the effect.
6.11
Another “different” feature is the use of sound effects. All mouse
clicks are accompanied by a loud clunk and most of the tools have their
own special sounds. Thus the cut and paste tool − a van − is accompanied
by an engine and the screech of brakes. There is even an option to add
your own sound effects if you have a suitable sound sampler.
6.11
Colour selection is from a fair-sized colour palette under the tool box
with the current selected colour shown in a double-sized box. Only
sixteen colours are available and there appears to be no option the
change the palette.
6.11
It would fill Archive if I were to explain all the possible effects that
the tools provide. Some of them are straight forward − others are quite
weird. They include: a dripping paintbrush, the ability to paints in
segments, circles, letters, random symmetrical lines, playing card
suits, geometric shapes, stars and so on. The list seems endless (there
are 28 possible brushes to choose from). Another example is the electric
mixer. This allows the screen to be mixed up in a variety of ways
ranging from tiling to the addition of randomly placed colour circles.
6.11
There is ‘stamp’ tool that gives access to 117 small ready-drawn
pictures that can be used to stamp onto the drawing. Placing text is
accompanied by its own voice, or voices, some of which sing, whine or
harmonise. There is an ‘undo guy’ that allows the last operation to be
undone; a circle and rectangle tool that includes a variety of patterned
fills; a line drawing tool; and a colour fill tool. Finally, a word
about the eraser. There are no less than ten different ways of clearing
the drawing area as well as four different sized tools for rubbing out
parts of a picture.
6.11
Conclusions
6.11
The program is described by its authors as ‘an entertaining, easy-to-use
program that lets children create art...’ Entertaining it certainly is.
I enjoyed randomly exploring all the features just as a child would and
I produced some extraordinary effects. It is indeed easy-to-use and I am
sure even the youngest child would produce some interesting paintings.
The manual is very good, offering ready-made projects for the child to
explore. The program is unconventional and is bound to attract the
interest of the targeted audience. There is an option to simplify some
of the features for the youngest children.
6.11
However, I do have reservations. Some features are missing (they always
are) or at least I haven’t come across them. There is no pixel editor;
no blend or sharpening tool; no variable polygon tool; there is a limit
of sixteen colours; and the number of ways to clear a screen smacks of
overkill.
6.11
All the above may not matter because the program contains so much else.
However, I do wonder whether too much is already done for the children,
allowing little opportunity for them to draw for themselves. Many of the
effects are difficult to control and often the screen is filled with a
mass of colour which has little thought, planning or shape to it. Having
said that, if a teacher or parent wants something different from the
more conventional art packages, they should look carefully at KidPix.
Without doubt, their children will produce strange and wonderful
paintings.
6.11
KidPix costs £37.50 +VAT from ESM or £41 through Archive.  A
6.11
Portable Software     P.O.Box 244,
York, YO2 2YU. (0904−633918)
6.11
Ray Maidstone (p25)    421
Sprowston Road, Norwich, NR3 4EH. (0603−400477) (0603−417447)
6.11
Risc Developments     117 Hatfield
Road, St Albans, Herts, AL1 4JS. (0727−840303) (0727−860263)
6.11
Scene Double     2 Glendale Avenue, Edgeware, Middlesex, HA8 8HG.
(081−958−3639) (081−958−3639)
6.11
Silicon Vision Ltd     Signal
House, Lyon Road, Harrow, Middlesex, HA1 2AG. (081−422−3556)
(081−427−5169)
6.11
Software 42     109 Ferry Road, Hullbridge, Essex, SS5 6EL.
6.11
Special Access Systems     4 Benson
Place, Oxford, OX2 6QH. (0865−56154)
6.11
State Machine     Unit 4, Stopsley Business Centre, Stopsley,
Bedfordshire, LU2 7UX. (0582−483377) (0582−480833)
6.11
Topologika     P.O. Box 39, Stilton, Peterborough, PE7 3RL. (0733−244682)
6.11
Watford Electronics     Jessa House,
Finway, Dallow Road, Luton, LU1 1TR. (0582−487777) (0582−488588)
6.11

Past, Present...
6.12
In my editorial comment in July 1990, I was reminiscing about way
Acorn’s computers had developed over the years. I looked back to July
1980 when I had gone to 4A Market Hill and bought my Acorn Atom which
had 2Kb of RAM  − 1Kb for the screen and 1Kb for program and data! I
mentioned that it was July 1987 when I first saw the Archimedes with its
1Mb RAM and noted that, in 1990, 1Mb was not nearly enough RAM. I then
mused “I wonder where we will be in July 1993?”
6.12
So, as I write, in July 1993, where are we? I thought it would be fun to
give an over-view of the last 13 years and see if we can make some
inspired guesses as to the future.
6.12
    Date    Computer    Processor    RAM
screen RAM    ROM    Floppy drive    Hard drive
6.12
    1980    Atom    1MHz 6502    2Kb−16Kb
1Kb    8Kb OS+8Kb Basic    Tape only!
Whasat?!
6.12
    1982    BBC A/B    1MHz 6502    16Kb/32Kb
1Kb−20Kb    16Kb OS+16Kb Basic    100Kb
Whasat?!
6.12
    1986    Master 128    1MHz 6502    128Kb
1Kb−20Kb    128Kb OS+Basic+Apps    640Kb    5/
10Mb
6.12
    1987    A310    8MHz ARM2    512Kb/1Mb
160Kb    512Kb OS+Basic    800Kb
20Mb
6.12
    1989    A4xx/1    8MHz ARM2    1−4Mb
320Kb    1Mb OS+Basic    800Kb
20Mb
6.12
    1990    A540    26MHz ARM3    4−16Mb
320Kb    1Mb OS+Basic    800Kb
100Mb
6.12
    1991    A5000    25MHz ARM3    2−4 Mb
320Kb    2Mb OS+Basic+Apps    1.6Mb
40Mb
6.12
    1992    A3/4000    12MHz ARM250    1−4 Mb
320Kb    2Mb OS+Basic+Apps    1.6Mb
60Mb
6.12
    1994    Axxx?    33/50MHz ARM700    1−256 Mb
2Mb    2Mb OS+Basic+Apps    1.6Mb
200Mb
6.12
    Increase?    ×300    ×16,000    ×2,000
×500    ×16    ×40
6.12
    2000    Awhat?    150MHz ARM1000    4Gb
128Mb    10Mb OS + Apps    10Mb
200Gb
6.12
 ...and Future
6.12
The figures for 1994 are a relatively inspired guess but the figures for
the year 2000 are obviously just a stab in the dark − but it will be fun
to look back in 7 years time and see how far off I was!
6.12
When I was talking to Roger Wilson about this the other day (says he,
name-dropping heavily!) he reckoned that the exponential growth in the
80’s would not be mirrored in the 90’s. His reasoning behind this was
that, in the 80’s, the technological increase in the microcomputer world
was helped by the technology ‘falling down’ from the minicomputer world.
In the 90’s, the microcomputer development is using leading-edge
technology and so it will probably not be quite so dramatic.
6.12
What changes will take place over the next few years? Well, the trend
towards lower power devices, which is being led very effectively by
Acorn’s RISC technology, is bound to bring more steps forward in the
realm of hand-held and portable devices. The Apple Newton, which uses
the ARM610, is the first of an exciting new generation of computers.
6.12
The other area where we can expect change is networking. The coming of
Econet in the early 80’s gave us data transfer at up to about 200Kbits/s
(i.e. about 25Kb/s). Ethernet now gives us 10Mbits/s but this increase
of ×50 doesn’t really match up to the increase in the size of
applications and data being thrown around. However, ATM (asynchronous
transmission mode) should soon improve things to 100Mbits/s and more. I
hope we may have an article about this soon.
6.12
I think the next few years are going to be very interesting. My job is
to see that Archive magazine continues to keep you in touch with all the
latest developments.
6.12
Products Available
6.12
•    Acorn have moved − Acorn Computers’ new address is Acorn House, Vision
Park, Histon, Cambridge, CB4 4AE. The telephone numbers all remain
unchanged − switchboard: 0223−254254 and fax is on 0223−254262. Vision
Park is appropriately named as the place from which Acorn will be
delivering their new ‘Vision for the Future’... watch this space!
6.12
•    Alpha-Sound from Xavier Educational Software Ltd (£29.50 +VAT) helps
children with their letter/sound correspondence and alphabet sequencing.
Sampled speech is used throughout and the teacher has control over the
selection of letters and sounds. It provides printed report sheets for
some tasks.
6.12
•    ARM3 upgrade upgrades! − If you have got an ARM3 upgrade without an
fpa socket, we are prepared to do a part-exchange on your old ARM3.
There isn’t much of a market for second-hand ARM3’s without fpa socket,
but we are prepared to offer £60 off your old ARM3 against one of the
new ones. If anyone then wants to buy these second-hand ARM3’s we will
sell them at £75. (We have to add VAT to the £60, = £70.50, before we
add anything for admin and postage.) The part-exchange price for the
ARM3 + fpa would therefore be £185 + £107 − £60 = £232.
6.12
•    Artworks and Impression are available in a new dongle-less version for
network use. It now works with all the new Ethernet cards including i³,
Beebug and Digital Services as well as Acorn, Atomwide, Oak and SJ Nexus
cards that they worked with previously.
6.12
•    Back trouble? − Anyone who has back trouble and is doing a reasonable
amount of computer work should consider buying a decent chair. For over
five years now, I have been using a Stokke Wing chair − see opposite. In
fact, I have two − one in the office and one at home. I’m always singing
their praises to people who visit me. I find that if I ever have to use
a conventional office chair for any length of time, I get back-ache
whereas I can (and do) sit on my Wings (so to speak!) for hours on end
without tiring.
6.12
“If they are so good, why don’t you sell them?” someone said to me
recently. Why indeed?! So, I have made an arrangement with an importer
(they are Scandinavian chairs − you might guess!) and I can sell them
for £320 inclusive. They have a five-caster base so you can move around
easily and a gas-lift mechanism so that you can adjust the height for
the best position relative to your monitor and keyboard. The chairs are
extremely robust and the material with which they are covered is very
good quality. The one I use in the office is just beginning to wear a
bit thin on one side of the knee-pad after over four years of constant
use.
6.12
I’m so confident that you will be pleased with them that I will give you
a full refund if you buy one and find you don’t like it. You may feel
that £320 is a lot of money for a chair but as far as I am concerned, it
is a kind of insurance policy − keeping my back in good condition − and
I’m prepared to pay for that. I can say from personal experience that
they are very long-lasting but in any case, they come with a five-year
guarantee (although this does not apply to the covering material).
6.12
The Wing chairs come in natural beech, rosewood and teak and the covers
are available in black, blue, brown, red, cream or grey.
6.12
•    CIS prices − The special offer that we had last month for some of the
Cambridge International Software packages has finished but C.I.S. have
had a general price drop. New prices are as follows:
6.12
Serpents    £10
6.12
KillerBugs    £10
6.12
Humanoids & Robotics    £10
6.12
CardMania    £10
6.12
MicroDrive II    £19
6.12
MicroDrive Designer    £19
6.12
Mah Jong    £10
6.12
Crisis    £10
6.12
FireBall II    £10
6.12
Chequered Flag    £10
6.12
TurboType    £19
6.12
Sound-FX Maker    £19
6.12
Photopia    £23
6.12
E-Numix    £10
6.12
Mental Maths & Memory Magic    £10
6.12
•    DataPower is Iota’s new database for RISC OS computers. Amongst other
features, it has support for ArtWorks files, so that they can be stored
directly in a database file. All pictures stored using DataPower
(including drawfiles and sprites) are compressed ‘on the fly’, so
storing them in a database file saves you disc space. Datapower costs
£149 from Iota or £160 through Archive. Site licences are available from
Archive at £375 for up to 10 machines and £650 for more than 10
machines.
6.12
•    Diet Manager (updated) − For the weight-conscious Archimedes owners,
this multitasking application will allow you to keep track of all those
calories (and proteins and fats). It also gives information about
energy, carbohydrates, fibre, vitamins and minerals contained in
individual foods, complete meals or diets. This updated program from
MEWsoft costs £55 inclusive.
6.12
•    Eizo monitor pricing − It wasn’t a ploy to get you to buy monitors
quickly, honestly! Eizo did say that the prices were going to be
increased on 1st August. They then said they were trying to avoid
raising prices. Now they are saying that there will be “a number of
changes in our price list from the 1st September.” All I can do is
report to you what they are saying.
6.12
•    FontDir − LOOKsystems’ font filing system, as mentioned several times
already in Archive, has reached the stage that the program is ready but
the full documentation has still to be written. Brian Cowan has a pre-
release version and has reviewed it − see page 13. When it is released,
the price will be £35 inc VAT from LOOKsystems or £33 through Archive.
6.12
LOOKsystems are not predicting when the manual will be ready, so anyone
desperate to get hold a copy of FontDir can have a pre-release copy, as
supplied to Brian Cowan, by sending £33 to Archive. We have arranged
with LOOKsystems that we supply this on the understanding that (1) it
only has limited documentation, (2) the full documentation will be
supplied free of charge by LOOKsystems as and when it is ready, (3)
until the full package is available, you must not contact LOOKsystems
for technical assistance − if Adrian is too busy answering technical
calls, the manual will never get written anyway!
6.12
•    Forms Suite Plus allows you to combine large size and standard text
with lines boxes and grids. You can include drawfiles and sprites into
your form and the resultant form can be saved as a drawfile for
inclusion in DTP packages, etc. Forms Suite Plus costs £55 inc p&p from
MEWsoft.
6.12
•    Frontier 2000 − “Two thousand years of history for 8 year olds to
adult”. Cambridge Software House have produced a simulation/resource
package for history that could be useful in the primary classroom, in
the secondary school or in the home. There is a disc version for £95
+VAT (which needs a 2Mb computer) and a CD-ROM version for £175 +VAT
which is bigger and better with more paper resources as well as more
computer data. The CD-ROM plus the disc version are available as one
pack for £195 +VAT.
6.12
•    Hatchback is a new utility from 4Mation. It allows you, simply and
easily, to add various types of cross-hatching, striping and patterning
into drawfiles. Hatchback costs £35 from 4Mation or £38 through Archive.
6.12
•    Keystroke is a new desktop utility which allows you to perform a range
of desktop activities, including using existing desktop programs like
Impression by just pressing keys. For example, at a single keystroke you
can call up Impression master pages and go straight to the master page
you want to edit. You can add auto-save to those applications that lack
it. You can even make up your own button bar. It comes with example
files of keystroke definitions for Filer, Paint, Draw, DrawPlus,
TypeStudio, Vector, WorraCAD, Ovation and Impression amongst other.
Keystroke is available from Quantum Software. (This software was brought
to our attention by a subscriber, Richard Skemp, who thinks it is
“simple, powerful and very useful”.)
6.12
•    Mac removable drives − The 42Mb and 84Mb removable drives have had a
major drop in prices this month. The 42Mb has dropped from £485 to £410
and the 84Mb has dropped from £670 to £550! (This is the drive that will
read and write both the 42Mb and the 84Mb cartridges.) The prices
include cables (please specify podule type) and one cartridge. The 42Mb
cartridges stay at £75 but the 84Mb cartridges go down from £120 to
£100. This price drop has probably been precipitated by the arrival
of...
6.12
•    New 105M 3½“ removable drives − There is now a 3½” removable drive
from the same manufacturer (SyQuest) as the well-established 5¼“ units.
The new drives have a formatted capacity of 105Mb. We have had a brief
opportunity to try one and they seem to be much faster than even the
84Mb drives. Here is a summary of the quoted specification plus our own
observations (in italics):
6.12
    42Mb    84Mb    105Mb
6.12
Size    5¼“    5¼”    3½“
6.12
Speed (rpm)    3,200    3,200
3,600
6.12
Ave access (ms)20    20    15
6.12
Buffer size (Kb)    8    32    64
6.12
Transfer rate (Kb/s)    590
900    1370
6.12
“File copy” test (Kb/s)    45    47
60
6.12
Max power (W)    28    28    6
6.12
Ave power (W)    13    13    3.5
6.12
Cartridge weight (g)    183
183    79
6.12
Drive price (ext)    £410    £550
£570
6.12
Media    £75    £100    £75
6.12
Cost/Mb    £1.79    £1.19    71p
6.12
As you can see, the price of the 105Mb drives is very similar to the
84Mb drives and the media, as well as holding slightly more data per
disc, are somewhat cheaper (£75 compared with £110) and especially so
when you works out the price per Mb (71p cf £1.19).
6.12
The internal units look like being £490 each and they fit perfectly into
a normal second floppy drive slot. This mean that owners of A5000s can
put one in the second floppy drive slot − a wonderfully neat solution
for anyone who is looking for more data storage (who isn’t?!) and/or who
is concerned about backup of their existing drive and/or data security
in, say, a school environment. A310/A400/A540 owners could also install
an internal 105Mb removable although only as an alternative to the
internal hard drive. Also, you would have to hack a hole in the fascia
of your computer. (I have three spare two-slot fascias available for £10
each, if anyone wants them but I am using the fourth one for my own
A540! Ed.)
6.12
The other significant comparison between the 5¼“ and the 3½” removables
is that the smaller drives only take a maximum of 6W power compared with
28W for the larger ones. Anyone who has, like me, felt nervous at the
temperature that their removable cartridges reached on a hot summer’s
day, should be well pleased with these new drives − and the external
units don’t need ‘wind tunnel’ sized cooling fans!
6.12
These drives really look superb. When you see them, you really cannot
believe that such a small unit could hold so much data and be so fast.
Obviously, as these are new devices, I cannot say anything about the
long-term reliability but the manufacturer claims the same “mean time
between failures” (100,000 hours) as for the older drives.
6.12
“What about magneto-optical drives? They are 3½“ and hold 128Mb and the
discs are cheaper!” The trouble with optical drives is that they can
only manage 675Kb/s on reading and about 250Kb/s on writing (cf 1,370Kb/
s on both) and the average access time is only about 40ms (cf 15ms).
Also, although the discs would cost about £40 each (cf £75), the drives
themselves would cost about £1,100 instead of £570.
6.12
“They look very nice and I would like to buy one but will the price drop
five minutes after I have bought it? The 42Mb drives were £680 when you
first sold them!” No, I don’t think it will, not for a few months,
anyway. The thing is that I am gambling that the buying price will be
dropping at least a little, so what I have done is to set the Archive
price as low as I dare, allowing only a very small profit margin. That
way, I can hopefully sell larger numbers initially and then, if the
buying price does drop a little, it will bring it back to a more
realistic profit margin. I cannot (sadly!) predict the future, but my
guess is that it will be several months before the Archive price will
drop. On the other hand, if I get several early orders, I might be able
to force the buying price down a bit − in which case, everyone will get
the resultant lower selling price. So, if you are prepared to have a go
with one of these new drives, send in your order as soon as possible − I
will wait a week or so, to see what other orders I get and whether I
can, as a result, reduce the price.
6.12
I shall certainly be going over to using them myself. For the last six
months, I have had to carry two 42Mb cartridges back and forth every day
− one isn’t enough and I didn’t feel I could justify the cost of going
to 84Mb. However, the step up in size/speed/convenience ratio that these
new drives represent is certainly worthwhile for me. I will obviously
let you know how I get on with them.
6.12
(Many thanks to David Bower, one of our subscribers, for bringing these
exciting new drives to our attention. Ed.)
6.12
•    Pictogram is a program from KudlianSoft that teaches children the use
of graphs for representing data. This is aimed at Key Stage 1 data-
handling. The datafiles it uses are compatible with DataPlot in
DataSweet. Pictogram costs £20 +VAT from KudlianSoft but this price
includes a site licence.
6.12
•    RemoteFS no longer comes with both serial and parallel cables as
standard. You have to choose which type you require. The Archive prices
are Serial £53 and Parallel £53 but if you do want both, you can have
Serial + Parallel for £64.
6.12
•    RISC OS 3.1 upgrades − Acorn have now withdrawn the A5000 RISC OS 3.1
upgrade. (They have already sold several times as many copies of this
upgrade as A5000s with RISC OS 3.0!) The only upgrade available now is
the full upgrade (Archive price £50 inc carriage) which includes manuals
and has the software on two 800Kb discs instead of one 1.6Mb disc.
6.12
•    ScanLight Video 256 − This is a greyscale scanner and video digitiser,
combined on a single card − what a good idea! It combines the Computer
Concepts ScanLight 256 scanner (5.4 p30) and the Wild Vision GreyHawk
video digitiser (6.9 p7) on one single-width expansion card. The scanner
is a 400 dpi, 256 grey level scanner and the digitiser offers real-time
greyscale video digitising from any video source with quarter screen
real-time previewing.
6.12
The individual products will continue to be available and upgrades are
possible from either the scanner or digitiser to the combined ScanLight
Video. Upgrade pricing and details are available from Computer Concepts
or Wild Vision. The new ScanLight Video costs £220 + VAT + carriage or
£245 through Archive.
6.12
•    Sleuth − Risc Developments’ OCR program, Sleuth, is in stock now. We
hope to have a review of it fairly soon. The price is £49 +VAT from Risc
Developments or £54 through Archive.
6.12
•    Stunt Racer 2000 − In the year 2037, the world of motor sport has
developed somewhat. Will your driving skills match up to the demands of
the 16 courses across a variety of terrains doing jumps and loop the
loops? 4th Dimension’s new racing game works on 1Mb machines and will
install onto a hard disc. Stunt Racer 2000 costs £34.95 from 4th
Dimension or £32 through Archive.
6.12
•    Soapbox from Xavier Educational Software Ltd (£35 +VAT) links spelling
patterns and vowel sounds by using sampled speech. As each word is
pronounced, the consonant pattern is emphasised by highlighting and
contrasts are made between words with short and long vowel sounds. 400
words are included but you can add your own words by using a sound
sampler such as the Oak Recorder.
6.12
•    Sound Advice − This is a new 24-track sequencer for the Archimedes
produced by The Really Small Software Company. It includes support for
both Midi and the internal sound system allowing up to 32 internal
sounds in a song. It is pattern-based with the number of patterns
limited only by memory. It runs on a 1Mb Archimedes and costs £39.95
inclusive from TRSSC with an education price of £31.95.
6.12
•    The Dungeon − 4th Dimension have produced a new 3D adventure game
which works on 2Mb machines and will install onto a hard disc. The plot
is that you have fallen through a hole into a subterranean world
inhabited by all sorts of weird and wonderful creatures, most of whom
need to be avoided or fought. It has an option for ARM3 machines to
benefit from improved smoothness of animation. The Dungeon costs £34.95
from 4th Dimension or £32 through Archive.
6.12
•    Turbo drivers − Computer Concepts have said that their Turbo Drivers
for the HP Deskjet, Deskjet Plus, Deskjet colour and Laserjet 2, 3 and 4
are definitely now available. Their Epson Stylus 800 Turbo Driver is
also available now.
6.12
•    Word Library is a program from KudlianSoft that provides a small
window containing a list of words which, when clicked upon, can be
entered into any desktop application which accepts text. This can be
used up to secondary level and is particularly useful within modern
languages. Word Library costs £20 +VAT from KudlianSoft but this price
includes a site licence.
6.12
Review software received...
6.12
We have received review copies of the following: 1st Paint (e), Alpha-
Sound (e), ArcVenture III − The Vikings (e), ArtSchool (ea), BookStore
(e), CardMania (g), Choices (e), Control Logo (e), DataPower (ue), E-
Numix (e), Frontier 2000 (e), Games Wizard and The Hacker for comparison
(g), Gestalt 2 − Money & Shopping (e), Gestalt 2 − Time & Fractions (e),
Hatchback (a), KiddiCAD (e), Letters (e), Mini Expansion Adaptor (h),
Primary Nature (e), Programming book: Archimedes Game Maker’s Manual,
Sea, Trade & Empire (e), Serpents (g), Soapbox (e), Sounds & Rhymes (e),
Splash (ea), Switch (g), Tiles (e), TOM computer simulator (e) (6.5 p9),
Visual Backup (u).
6.12
e=Education, g=Game, h=Hardware, l=Language, m=Music, u=Utility,
a=Art.  A
6.12
Norwich Computer Services 96a Vauxhall Street, Norwich, NR2 2SD.
0603−766592 (−764011)
6.12
4th Dimension     P.O. Box 4444, Sheffield. (0742−700661) (0742−781091)
6.12
4Mation     11 Castle Park Road, Whiddon Valley, Barnstaple, Devon, EX32
8PA. (0271−25353) (0271−22974)
6.12
Abacus Training     29 Okus Grove, Upper Stratton, Swindon, Wilts, SN2
6QA.
6.12
Acorn Computers Ltd     Acorn House,
Vision Park, Histon, Cambridge, CB4 4AE. (0223−254254) (0223−254262)
6.12
Arnor Ltd     611 Lincoln Road, Peterborough, PE1 3HA. (0733−68909)
(0733−67299)
6.12
Atomwide Ltd     7 The Metro Centre, Bridge Road, Orpington, Kent, BR5 2BE.
(0689−838852) (0689−896088)
6.12
Cambridge International Software     8 Herbrand
Street, Russell Square, London, WC1N 1HZ. (071−278−5136) (071−837−6077)
6.12
Cambridgeshire Software House       7 Free
Church Passage, St Ives, PE17 4AY. (0480−467945) (0480−496442)
6.12
Coin-Age Ltd     23 Cooper Street, Nelson, Lancashire BB9 7XW.
6.12
Colton Software (p25)    2 Signet
Court, Swanns Road, Cambridge, CB5 8LA. (0223−311881) (0223−312010)
6.12
Computer Concepts (pp16/19)    Gaddesden
Place, Hemel Hempstead, Herts, HP2 6EX. (0442−63933) (0442−231632)
6.12
Dalriada Data Technology (p18)     145 Albion
Street, Kenilworth, Warkwickshire, CV8 2FY. (0926−53901)
6.12
Datafile     71 Anson Road, Locking, Weston-super-Mare, Avon, BS24 7DQ.
(0934−823005)
6.12
Eizo UK Ltd     Unit 7, Genesis Business Park, Albert Drive, Sheerwater,
Woking, GU21 5RW. (0483−757118) (0483−757121)
6.12
ICS     1 Kington Road, West Kirby, Wirral, L48 5ET. (051−625−1006)
(051−625−1007)
6.12
Iota Software Ltd     St John’s
Innovation Centre, Cowley Road, Cambridge, CB4 4WS. (0223−421542)
(0223−421543)
6.12
Klein Computers     Haßlocherstrasse 73, D-6090 Rüsselsheim, Germany.
(010−49−6142−81131) (010−49−6142−81256)
6.12
Kudlian Soft     8 Barrow Road, Kenilworth, Warwickshire, CV8 1EH.
(0926−851147)
6.12
Lambda Publications (p12)    194 Cheney
Manor Road, Swindon SN2 2NZ. (0793−695296)
6.12
Longman-Logotron     124 Cambridge Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge CB4
4ZS. (0223−425558) (0223−425349)
6.12
LOOKsystems (pp40/41)    47 Goodhale
Road, Bowthorpe, Norwich, NR5 9AY. (0603−764114) (0603−764011)
6.12
MEWsoft     11 Cressy Road, London, NW3 2NB. (071−267−2642) (071−482−6452)
6.12
Minerva Systems     Minerva House, Baring Crescent, Exeter, EX1 1TL.
(0392−437756) (0392−421762)
6.12
New Era Software     204 High Street, Woodville, Swadlincote, Derbyshire,
DE11 7DT. (0283−812818)
6.12
Oak Solutions (p20)    Broadway
House, 149−151 St Neots Road, Hardwick, Cambridge, CB3 7QJ.
(0954−211760) (0954−211760)
6.12
O.U. Maths Education Centre    The Open
University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA. (0908−274066)
(0908−653744)
6.12
PEP Associates     34 Tiverton Way, Cambridge, CB1 3TU. (0223−212251)
6.12
Quantum Software     35 Pinewood Park, Deans, Livingston, EH54 8NN.
(0506−411162 after 6)
6.12
Rheingold Enterprises     7
Waterbridge Court, Appleton, Warrington, WA4 3BJ. (0925−210657)
6.12
Risc Developments     117 Hatfield
Road, St Albans, Herts, AL1 4JS. (0727−840303) (0727−860263)
6.12
Silica Software Systems     Mallards,
Lower Hardres, Canterbury, Kent, CT4 5NU. (0227−700279)
6.12
System Insight     Unit 1-3, East Burrowfield, Welwyn Garden City, Herts,
AL7 4TB. (0707−395500) (0707−395501)
6.12
The Really Small Software Company     Olivers
Hill, Ashburnham, Battle, Sussex, TN33 9PE. (0435−830467 − eve & w/e)
6.12
The Serial Port     Burcott Manor, Wells, Somerset, BA5 1NH. (0749−670058)
6.12
UK Software     38 Midlands Estate, West End, Southampton, SO3 3AD.
(0703−474681)
6.12
Wyddfa Software     3 Preswylfa, Llanberis, Gwynedd, LL55 4LF.
(0286−870101) (0286−871722)
6.12
Xavier Educational Software Ltd     Dept of
Psychology, 37 College Road, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 2DG. (0248−351151)
(0248−364412)
6.12
Paul Beverley
6.12
O.U. Maths Education Centre    The Open
University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA. (0908−274066)
(0908−653744)
6.12
PEP Associates     34 Tiverton Way, Cambridge, CB1 3TU. (0223−212251)
6.12
Quantum Software     35 Pinewood Park, Deans, Livingston, EH54 8NN.
(0506−411162 after 6)
6.12
Rheingold Enterprises     7
Waterbridge Court, Appleton, Warrington, WA4 3BJ. (0925−210657)
6.12
Risc Developments     117 Hatfield
Road, St Albans, Herts, AL1 4JS. (0727−840303) (0727−860263)
6.12
Silica Software Systems     Mallards,
Lower Hardres, Canterbury, Kent, CT4 5NU. (0227−700279)
6.12
System Insight     Unit 1-3, East Burrowfield, Welwyn Garden City, Herts,
AL7 4TB. (0707−395500) (0707−395501)
6.12
The Really Small Software Co.     Olivers
Hill, Ashburnham, Battle, Sussex, TN33 9PE. (0435−830467 − eve & w/e)
6.12
The Serial Port     Burcott Manor, Wells, Somerset, BA5 1NH. (0749−670058)
6.12
UK Software     38 Midlands Estate, West End, Southampton, SO3 3AD.
(0703−474681)
6.12
Wyddfa Software     3 Preswylfa, Llanberis, Gwynedd, LL55 4LF.
(0286−870101) (0286−871722)
6.12
Xavier Educational Software Ltd    Dept of
Psychology, 37 College Road, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 2DG. (0248−351151)
(0248−364412)
6.12
Government Health Warning − Reading this could seriously affect your
spiritual health.
6.12
No, don’t worry, the God-slot hasn’t got pushed out by pressure from
those who don’t like it! The main editorial bit was a bit too big − but
it was a bit exciting, too, wasn’t it? Just think, a 33/50MHz ARM700,
machine with up to 128Mb of RAM! Wow!! Oh, sorry, where was I? Oh,
yes...
6.12
What I want to say this month is perhaps more for those who would call
themselves Christians. I simply want to give a little testimony of what
God has been doing in my life lately and offer to share the means by
which God has been pouring out his blessing on us here in Norwich.
6.12
About 9 years ago, I listened to a series of eight taped talks by Colin
Urquhart, entitled “How to Love and be Loved” − that is “love” in the
Christian sense, of course. God used those talks to change my life in a
wonderful way. There was no revolutionary new teaching in them − just
basic biblical teaching about God’s love for us and how we can learn to
love him and to love others.
6.12
Through those talks, I came into a deeper knowledge of God’s love − and
so did many other people in our church who studied the tapes. And so,
because the talks were so helpful, we typed them up and made them into a
48-page booklet so that they could be shared more widely.
6.12
Recently, I met up with a couple of folk at church who would, I thought,
benefit from listening to these tapes. These friends have, indeed,
benefited from the talks but, as a bonus, God has once again given me a
new depth of love for Him and for others.
6.12
“Oh, no”, my friends say, “Paul’s in one of his enthusiastic modes
again!” Listen! Wouldn’t you be enthusiastic if you believed that the
God who created the whole universe actually loved you enough to live in
you and to fill you with his resources of love, so that you could share
it with others? I believe it and I am full of praise to God for all he
has done for me and is doing for other people, too.
6.12
I have now re-printed the booklets so that I can share them with others.
If you would like a copy, just write in and ask for one − it would be my
pleasure to send you one free of charge. (Mind you, I wouldn’t refuse a
small contribution towards the printing costs. Because we only did a
small print run, they work out at almost £2 each to produce. Thanks,
Paul Beverley.)
6.12
Reader Survey
6.12
As part of our efforts to improve and develop our services, we are
asking Archive Subscribers to help us by taking part in a Customer
Service Survey. We would be grateful if you could spend a short while
completing the questionnaire enclosed with the magazine.
6.12
We would like to know how you view the quality of the services we
currently provide and whether there are any comments or suggestions you
would like to make about any aspect of Norwich Computer Services or
Archive Magazine.
6.12
(Even if you do not intend to re-subscribe, we would value your response
to the questionnaire.)
6.12
We hope you will support us in this and trust that, in due course, you
will benefit personally from any developments arising from the
questionnaire results.
6.12
As a ‘carrot’, we are offering to send a free Archive mug for each of
the first 200 responses we receive in the Archive office − don’t forget
to put your name and subscription number clearly somewhere on the form
if you would like a mug.
6.12
Many thanks, in anticipation of your assistance,
6.12
Paul Beverley
6.12
Chair picture (trimmed to fit)
6.12
Man on chair picture
6.12
Hardware Column
6.12
Brian Cowan
6.12
Once again we have a mix of goodies and baddies. But first a correction
− in my rush to get the latest information into last month’s column, I
overlooked a typing error which might have misled readers.
6.12
Correction
6.12
As I said last month, the Computer Concepts’ Colourcard comes in two
versions. Apparently, they had to produce a second version because of
difficulty in obtaining some of the components used in the initial
design. What I meant to say in the last Hardware Column was that the
mode designer software can not be used with version one cards; it only
works with version two. Sorry for any confusion I may have caused.
6.12
Ageing floppy disc drives
6.12
I purchased some of the first A300 and A400 series Archimedes computers.
These have been running for quite some time now, permitting me to
observe and report on patterns of malfunctions. You might recall that
there was a whole batch of the original 20Mb ST506 hard discs which had
a very short life. Now a problem with floppy disc drives has occurred.
6.12
With both the original A440 machines, the floppy disc drive stopped
working. One of my students dismantled the first drive and discovered a
small piece of stainless steel sheet about one centimetre square
rattling about in the mechanism. When this was removed the drive
functioned perfectly and it continues to do so. The disc drive on the
second machine ceased to function and, acting on a hunch, I gave the
machine a good shaking with the front pointing downwards. After a few
moments a similar offending square of stainless steel fell from the
computer. Apparently it is a protective cover which goes over the head
magnet. Presumably, the adhesive dried out with age and the thing fell
off. The drives seem to function OK without the covers, so I have not
tried to re-stick them.
6.12
So, if you encounter a floppy drive failure it might not be completely
fatal. The funny thing about this is that the various A300 machines,
which are older, have not exhibited this problem. (If you do have a
fatality, we do have replacement drives in stock and they are quite easy
to fit. The A310/440 type are £102 and the newer 400/1 types are £83.
Ed.)
6.12
Monitors
6.12
While we are on the subject of the ravages of time, you might be
interested to know that two of the Acorn Multisync AKF18 monitors, as
supplied with the A5000, have died on us. Luckily, both failed within
their guarantee year and so they were repaired/replaced free of charge.
This is certainly a worrying trend. The one similar monitor which has
not failed will shortly become one year old; if it dies soon after that
I will be very annoyed!
6.12
One of the benefits of buying from a reputable dealer rather than a
‘box-shifter’ was that, in both cases, we were lent a replacement
monitor while the dead one was being serviced.
6.12
Just for the record, all the original Acorn standard monitors are
functioning, even if the screen resolution is pretty grotty. Also, the
various Eizo monitors have given no problems. One Taxan 795 needed to be
repaired (outside of guarantee), when I had to pay about £60 to have an
electrolytic capacitor replaced. (This reflects our experience in this
area of monitor reliability. We have hardly ever had Eizo monitors in
for repair but the AKF18’s have an unenviable reputation − but Acorn are
looking alternatives. Ed.)
6.12
Keyboards
6.12
Apart from the A4 portable, as yet, all Acorn ARM machines have
interchangeable keyboards. (Notwithstanding the Acorn employee at the
last Acorn User Show who swore blind that the A5000 keyboard was PC-
compatible.) So, in my laboratory the computers and keyboards are
thoroughly mixed up. Some of the old A300 keyboards are showing their
age with keys sticking or even ‘firing’ when not pressed. I guess that,
at some stage, some will have to be replaced. Or I might investigate the
PC to Archimedes keyboard converter; I know that at least one is
available. (Do tell us about it please, someone − it would be very
useful. Ed.)
6.12
There is a strange problem which I have encountered with keyboards, but
I don’t know if it is a hardware or a software fault. Often, the
capslock key seems to stop functioning. I observe this particularly when
using Impression, but maybe that is because I mostly use the capslock
key with Impression. Is it really the case that this particular key is
liable to malfunction or is there another explanation for this
phenomenon?
6.12
Bubble jet printers
6.12
In January, I purchased a Canon BJ200 bubble jet printer together with
the Computer Concepts Turbo Driver. I have sung the praises of this
system before; using standard photocopy paper, the print quality is good
and with the recommended paper (more expensive) it is superb. The Turbo
Driver software makes using the thing a doddle. Last week my ink
cartridge ran out. This was particularly annoying since I had no warning
of the impending expiry. I have learned my lesson and, in future, I will
have another in readiness. But the fact that I had no warning,
highlights one of the good points about bubble jet printers − the print
quality remains constant throughout the entire life of the cartridge.
This is in contrast to dot matrix printers where the print quality gets
progressively worse and you change the ribbon only when you can’t see
it. With my BJ printer, the ink ran out half way down the page. The top
half was printed perfectly and the bottom half was blank.
6.12
More FPA
6.12
Only one of my computers has an FPA chip installed, as reported last
month. I can’t say that I have experienced a faster “feel” to the
machine apart from the few benchmark tests I ran, but that is probably
because most desktop applications are cleverly written to use fixed
point arithmetic. Draw does not use floating point, but WorraCad does. I
will soon install another FPA in a machine which is used exclusively for
number crunching. That will give a better indication of the benefits of
an FPA.
6.12
It seems unlikely that any faster versions of the FPA will appear. So I
don’t suppose I will be able to use one in my 30MHz A540. Furthermore,
it does not seem that there will be large numbers of the FPA available.
6.12
Presumably, the main use for the FPA design will be as a macrocell in
later ARM chips. Now that the design is complete and tested, and
particularly if the few bugs are corrected, future ARM CPUs will almost
certainly be available with internal FPA. The question is whether ARM
Ltd will continue to manufacture CPUs without the FPA. If so, then
upgrading to an FPA will simply involve replacement of the existing ARM
CPU.
6.12
SyQuest request
6.12
I have had a few replies to my request for information on the
reliability of SyQuest removable drives. Some people had problems in the
initial stages, getting the thing set up correctly etc, but there have
been very few problems once they are running. One person reported a few
disc errors, but nothing any worse that with conventional hard disc
drives. What has transpired is that the SCSI interface used is of
importance. I use Oak interfaces exclusively and they are superb. I
understand the Acorn interfaces can be a problem. Any more information
would be most welcome. Many of us have experienced the death of a fixed
hard disc drive. What I would like to know − forgive me please − is
whether anyone has experienced the death of a SyQuest.  A
6.12
Acorn World Show Report
6.12
Paul Beverley
6.12
I believe that the Acorn World Show 1993 is going to be significant and
so, before I start on the show itself, I am going muse a little on the
whole context of where Acorn is today and where it is going in the
future.
6.12
Excitement
6.12
When Acorn took over the organisation of the main Acorn User Show and
declared that “things were going to be different” from now on, I was
somewhat sceptical. (My scepticism is based on many years of experience
− Acorn have NEVER been good at promoting themselves.) However, as the
year has progressed and more of Acorn’s plans have been revealed, I have
moved from sceptical to mildly optimistic to downright enthusiastic. I
think Acorn really are making a huge effort, through this Show, to break
out of their old mold.
6.12
I am not alone in this view − if you read the editorial in the September
issue of Acorn Computing, you will see what I mean. Steve Turnbull
believes that Acorn are “thrusting their way into the markets of Apple
and PC compatibles”. He believes that Acorn have processors and
computers that “deliver more power to the user than either of the other
types of machines”. I share his assessment and his enthusiasm − Acorn
and RISC really are important names for the future of computing. But...
6.12
... a note of caution
6.12
Steve Turnbull also goes on to muse about what will happen when Acorn
becomes a third major player alongside PCs and Macs outside the rarefied
atmosphere of education. Acorn have always been a “nice” company and
Acorn third-party suppliers have always been (with one or two notable
exceptions) very “nice”, untainted by the cut-throat attitudes and
activities out in the big, bad world. Steve believes that Apple and PC
companies could enter into a price war in which only the biggest
companies would survive because only they can afford to deliberately
fund huge losses.
6.12
My father-in-law always used to say, “Paul, there’s no sentiment in
business”. Now in the Acorn world of today, I don’t think that is the
case − there is a spirit of mutual help amongst Acorn developers and
dealers. However, I share Steve Turnbull’s fear that, if Acorn succeed
in their attempts to get out there into the big, bad commercial world,
many of our small, friendly third-party companies (and dealers too) will
get killed in the crush.
6.12
Is there any alternative?
6.12
Still, I don’t actually think we have got much choice but to follow
Acorn’s line of slugging it out with the big boys. Macs and PCs are
moving in fast on Acorn’s traditional territory of education. I agree
with Mike Williams’ comments in his editorial in the August/September
issue of Risc User. (That reminds me, I was amused to see that while
R.U. has 10 issues a year, and others have 12, Acorn Computing are going
to exact four-weekly publishing − thirteen issues a year! − I can’t wait
to see what they call the thirteenth issue!!) Mike points out that LMS
(Local Management of Schools) has meant more power in the hands of the
governors to decide on buying policy. They don’t have much say in the
purchase of text books (thankfully) − that is left to the
educationalists who are qualified to make the decisions. But buying
computers involves (relatively) large amounts of money and so they do
get involved. Educational issues get put to one side and the “you’ve got
to be industry standard” lobby gets going. I agree with Mike − What is
standard industry? Is DOS standard? Windows? WindowsNT? Unix? Macs?
Word? Lotus? PageMaker? Is there an “industry standard” network?
6.12
Anyway, I digress. (But that’s an editor’s privilege − no-one can edit
out my ramblings!) All I am saying is that, yes, Acorn are making a real
effort to get out there and mix it − they have to or they will lose
their education market − but I think we are going to have to work very
hard if we are to maintain the friendly, atmosphere of mutual self-help
that has always pervaded the Acorn world of the past.
6.12
The Acorn World ...of the future
6.12
This is the first of a three or four-part series relating to the Acorn
World Show. The first two will give details of what is planned and the
final part (or two) will be a report of what actually happened.
6.12
Date and venue
6.12
The Acorn World Show will take place in Hall 1 at the Wembley Exhibition
Centre on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, 29th to 31st October.
6.12
The theme − Vision for the Future
6.12
With the idea of showing the past, the present and the future, Acorn
have again picked up their “Vision for the Future” slogan, as I
mentioned in my editorial last month. Since then, I have gathered that
there will be some sort of ARM700/VIDC20 machine on show but with the
emphasis on it being “The Future”, i.e. it won’t be a saleable product
but they do want to impress us with its capabilities. This is not
Acorn’s normal policy as it is likely to hit sales of existing machines.
This ‘future’ area is being set up with the help of the Science Museum
who are experts in interactive demonstrations − as anyone who has
visited the Science Museum recently will certainly be able to confirm.
6.12
Although there won’t be an ARM700 machine on sale, Acorn will be
launching a new range of computer packages at the show. The two Learning
Curves, the Family Solution and the Home Office will all be superseded
by new bundles of various kinds aimed at different potential customers.
6.12
Features
6.12
The show will feature juggling, face painting and abseiling... Hang on,
I thought this was supposed to be a computer show! It is, but there is
also an emphasis on a fun day out for the whole family. If there is
enough to entertain the less computer-oriented children, the parents can
have more time to spend looking round the exhibits.
6.12
There will certainly be an Education Area, confirming Acorn’s commitment
to its traditional market place but there will also be more emphasis on
both consumer and business. In the games arcade, you will find, amongst
other things, a laser light show produced by Laser Graphics who more
often work on pop concerts including one for Elton John.
6.12
The bit about abseiling refers to an exhibit where children (specially
selected ones, not yours!) will be abseiling down a tower while their
heart rate and blood pressure are monitored and analysed on an Acorn
computer.
6.12
New products
6.12
Judging by the dearth of new products in Archive this month, I guess
that many software and hardware manufacturers are saving things up for
launch at the Acorn World Show (or desperately trying to get them
finished in time for it). Sherston Software, educational software
specialists are certainly planning to launch their Crystal Maze, if
their full-page adverts are anything to go by.
6.12
Acorn will be launching their new computer bundles − that’s “new
(computer bundles)” and not “(new computer) bundles” I’m afraid. We are
also hoping to see the !NewLook desktop being made available as an
official Acorn product.
6.12
Theatre presentations
6.12
There will be regular presentations in the theatre (up to nine each
day). The theatre will seat 150 people and will have a 6 foot high
projected video screen. The presentations will cover a huge range of
topics − see the list opposite. The idea is to give an indication of the
future direction of Acorn.
6.12
After-show reports
6.12
If you visit the show and see something interesting that you want to
share with other Archive subscribers, get in touch with me either at the
show or immediately afterwards and we can decide who will write up each
of the new products.
6.12
Vision for the future − Tie-ups
6.12
As I mentioned in last month’s editorial, Acorn are working on several
‘tie-ups’ with major companies. This work is part of Acorn’s new serious
effort to break out of the straight-jacket of education into the ‘real
world’. They will be hoping to have many of these tie-ups worked out in
some detail in time for Acorn World. The importance of this is that they
are making an effort to attract non-Acorn people to the Show and they
want to show them that they mean business for the future.
6.12
We already know about links at the chip level with Apple, 3DO and Texas
but at the computer level, there have been tie-ups with Psion, Kodak,
Digital Arts and AB Dick.
6.12
We don’t yet have any details about the link with Psion − assuming, that
is, that it’s more than just the fact that the Pocket Book is produced
by Psion − Psion’s theatre presentation on the Saturday afternoon will,
no doubt, reveal more.
6.12
Kodak will be demonstrating their “innovative imaging technology”
including showing the photo-to-CD transfer taking place. Acorn are
porting the Kodak PhotoCD Access Developer’s Toolkit to run on RISC OS
platforms and have already made CDFS PhotoCD-compatible.
6.12
Digital Arts is a Swiss-owned software company who have signed a joint
deal with Acorn aimed at the printing, publishing and graphic design
markets.
6.12
The UK subsidiary of the international pre-press printing specialist, AB
Dick, have a joint project with Acorn. They have adopted Archimedes
computers for their lower-end computer-based pre-press solutions.
6.12
Novell, the networking giant from the PC world are involved in one of
the theatre presentations but we haven’t yet managed to find out what
that is all about yet.
6.12
Is it worth coming?
6.12
If you ask whether I think the Acorn World Show is worth a visit then I
have to say a resounding “Yes”! It looks to as if Acorn are really
making a major effort to attract non-Acorn people as well as its
traditional customers − who will certainly find plenty to interest them.
6.12
Advance booking
6.12
If you want to book tickets in advance, they are £5 for adults, £3 for
children and £15 for families. (At-the-door prices are £6, £4 and £16.)
Ring the ticket hotline on 0784−483818 and tell them you saw the
information in Archive magazine or write to Acorn World, P.O. Box 162,
Dept NCS, Staines, TW19 5JX. Ask to be entered in the prize draw and you
will have a chance of winning an Acorn Pocket Book computer!  A
6.12

6.12
Theatre Presentations
6.12
Presentations will include...
6.12
Networking in the Wide World − Acorn & Novell
6.12
Publishing for Professionals
6.12
Open Access − Special Needs
6.12
Taking Better Photos for PhotoCD use − Kodak
6.12
The Electronic Prospectus
6.12
ARM − The Power behind the Vision − ARM Ltd
6.12
Graphic Design
6.12
School Administration
6.12
Producing a Pop CD
6.12
Governors Start Here
6.12
Photo Retouching
6.12
From Archimedes to Archimedes − Science Museum
6.12
Preparing Material for Publishing Bureaux
6.12
Educational Software on CD
6.12
A Truly Portable Personal Computer − Psion
6.12
Beginners Start Here
6.12
Why buy a Pocket Book for my child?
6.12
Publishing Magazines − Redwood Publishing
6.12
Education Down Under
6.12
Multimedia − Solution looking for a Problem
6.12
Lambda
6.12
New
6.12
LOOKsystems
6.12
“Arial light”
6.12
LOOKsystems
6.12
“Monotype Onyx”
6.12
Font Directory
6.12
Brian Cowan
6.12
Using fonts has become a pain. In the ‘early days’, there were very few
fonts available for the Archimedes and they were relatively expensive.
At that stage, all your fonts could be placed in the !Fonts directory
and everything was fine. But with the proliferation of fonts available,
You are likely to find that the !Fonts directory could not hold all your
font families. Setting font paths is relatively easy with RISC OS 3, but
now there has been a revolution: LOOKsystems have produced a ‘Font
Filing System’ − called Font Directory. This provides a completely new
way of managing large numbers of fonts.
6.12
Font partition
6.12
The fonts are stored in an image filing system which comprises a single
file called ‘partition’ stored in the !Fonts directory. This is rather
like a DOS partition and it is configured as a D format disc. This means
that files are stored contiguously so that deleting files can waste
space which must be recovered by compaction. The advantage, however, is
that it is an easy matter to extend the size of the partition. When
creating the font partition, you can choose a relatively small size and
then, as your collection of fonts increases, the size of the partition
can be increased accordingly. The partition can hold up to 77
directories, each of which can hold up to 77 different font families.
Thus Font Directory can cope with up to 5929 font families − more fonts
than most people would own!
6.12
Special features
6.12
Font Directory does a lot more than simply allow a large number of fonts
to be installed − you could use multiple font directories with the paths
appropriately specified to do that. The real advantage of Font Directory
is in the way it allows you to manage your fonts. It is easy to install
a selection of fonts and to change this when needed. Fonts need only be
installed when you actually want to use them. There is a provision to
view any of the fonts, and predefined selections of fonts may be
installed for particular applications. But the real pièce de résistance
is the facility to scan documents and files and install the required
fonts automatically. This is a dream to use. I always found it
frustrating that Impression would simply replace all uninstalled fonts
by Trinity without even giving the option to abort loading the document.
Draw would replace unrecognised fonts by the system font. Now that is
all a thing of the past.
6.12
The two applications
6.12
Font Directory has two application directories, one called !FontMgr and
the other called !FontDir. Font partitions are created and fonts saved
into their directories using !FontMgr. This provides a complete filing
system with directory viewers, etc, so you can save, copy and delete
font files, view free space and compact the partition as required. Then
there are some special features which are needed such as compiling font
tables and extending the font partition size. This is all managed by
!FontMgr. Once the font partition is set up, the access to the fonts is
controlled by !FontDir. This allows the installation and de-installation
of fonts, viewing of fonts and the scanning and installation of fonts in
documents and files. You can also control the font cache from this
application.
6.12
Getting started
6.12
The first thing which must be done is to run !FontMgr which puts an icon
on the right hand side of the iconbar. It asks you to specify the size
of the font partition, and the new version of !Fonts (containing the
font partition) is then dragged to a suitable directory viewer, usually
the root directory of your hard disc. The program then looks at the
available fonts and asks which should be moved to the font partition.
Alternatively, if you are happy with the RISC OS desktop, the font
partition directory viewer can be opened, directories created and files
copied in the usual way. It is all quite painless. At the end of the
installation procedure, you ask for the font tables to be compiled
before !FontMgr is quit.
6.12
In use
6.12
It is !FontDir which controls the access to fonts in normal use. This
installs as a font directory icon on the left hand side of the iconbar.
It makes sense to have this running all the time, so it should really be
run from your boot file. However, you have to quit !FontMgr to gain
access to !FontDir’s facilities otherwise the font directory is locked.
Clicking on the font directory icon brings up a list of all the fonts in
the partition ordered by directory, family and weight. Fonts can then be
selected and selections installed or de-installed, and individual fonts
can be viewed. By default, it shows the ubiquitous ‘quick brown fox
jumping over the lazy dog’ but any text can be displayed in any point
size and colour. There is also an option for selecting which fonts
should be installed by default at start-up.
6.12
Fonts in documents
6.12
You install the fonts that are used in a document by simply dropping the
document onto the FontDir icon. It is as simple as that! If you
inadvertently load an Impression document, say, and you get the error
message telling you that Impression could not find a given font and that
it has replaced it with Trinity, all you have to do is to drop the
document onto the FontDir icon. That causes the necessary fonts to be
loaded and the Impression document is then displayed correctly. The
whole thing is entirely painless.
6.12
Wish list
6.12
There are only two things which come to mind as possible improvements to
the system. As a very minor point, it should be possible to make the
font partition expand automatically rather than having to change the
size manually. During my initial installation, I must have increased the
partition size some five or six times as fonts were moved from the
!Fonts directory to the font partition. I would also like to be able to
store the font partition in a compressed form. Currently, my font
partition occupies some 16Mb. Although it is perfectly possible to use a
compressed filing system such as Compression or SparkFS, the problem is
that they need decompression space during operation which can be as
large as the uncompressed file − another 16Mb. However, since the
partition is stored as a D format, it should be possible to have a
compression scheme which simply uses a table to know where the relevant
piece of code for a given font is, and to uncompress that font alone.
That facility would certainly enhance Font Directory.
6.12
General impression
6.12
I was very happy with Font Directory. I found it very easy to install
and use, with minimal reference to the manual. Note though that you must
study the manual to find the difference between dragging, <ctrl>dragging
and <shift>dragging a document to the font list window of the Font
Directory icon. These options add the used fonts, install only the used
fonts or just indicate the used fonts, respectively. I understand that
LOOKsystems are examining ways of indicating those features from the
desktop. Apart from this point, this is a highly intuitive application −
a great deal of care and thought must have gone into its design and
realisation. It integrates seamlessly with RISC OS and if you use a lot
of fonts, you have to have Font Directory. However, because of its
convenience, I think I will continue using it with my usual, somewhat
limited, selection of fonts. Font Directory is available from
LOOKsystems at a price of £35 inc VAT or £33 through Archive.
6.12
Font post script
6.12
There is a great temptation to use a wide variety of fonts in documents.
This should be resisted − as every expert in typographical layout will
tell you. However, it is tempting to collect more and more fonts,
particularly for those special effects. If you own ArtWorks, you will
already have some 220 fonts at your disposal. To be honest, I was rather
disappointed with the ArtWorks font collection − there is actually not
that much variety. Furthermore, many of the fonts come only in a single
weight and style. If you are serious about collecting fonts then you
must consider the PD compilations from Skyfall. They supply four packs,
each containing 50 fonts, costing £6, and you can buy the lot for £20.
Many of the fonts come in different weights and styles. Furthermore,
many have scaffold lines. Skyfall also do a disc of Star Trek fonts
although these are not PD.
6.12
As I write, the first set in a series of Monotype fonts is appearing
(well, it should be available by the time you read this) from
LOOKsystems. The first set consists of 100 fonts for £95 inclusive (or
£90 through Archive). These are more expensive than PD fonts but they
promise to be truly professional quality. Eventually, there should be an
enormous range of Monotype fonts available.  A
6.12
(Anyone who is desperate to get hold a copy of FontDir can have a pre-
release copy, as supplied to Brian Cowan, by sending £33 to Archive. We
have arranged with LOOKsystems that we supply this on the understanding
that (1) it only has limited documentation, (2) the full documentation
will be supplied free of charge by LOOKsystems as and when it is ready,
(3) until the full package is available, you MUST NOT contact
LOOKsystems for technical assistance − if Adrian is too busy answering
technical calls, the manual will never get written! Ed.)
6.12
Journal of Physiology
6.12
CC
6.12
6.11 page 26
6.12
Photopia
6.12
Gabriel Swords
6.12
Photopia is a new image processing application from Cambridge
International Software. Unlike other image processing applications such
as  Imagery or Revelation ImagePro, Photopia can’t ‘edit’ − there are no
paint brushes, sprays or crayons to give you individual pixel power.
Never-the-less, you can probably do all that kind of stuff in !Paint −
Photopia simply wasn’t designed for that. In any case, at the special
price of only £16, you can’t have everything, though surprisingly, for
the price, you get quite a lot.
6.12
Still let’s not get carried away with too many plaudits. There are, for
me, some very annoying things about this application. The first thing
you notice is that the image you get on screen is not very clear
compared with the display produced by other applications. Secondly, the
processing is very slow − imagine waiting three minutes for an image to
process only to find you don’t like what you’ve done − it doesn’t make
you want to experiment! For example, Photopia’s Whirlwind effect shown
below is very interesting but, while this was processing, I was able to
drink a cup of coffee, chat to my wife and tidy my study! Also, you
can’t ‘Escape’ once the process has started. Finally, dialogue boxes do
not disappear when you choose another tool. This means that you could
end up with dialogue boxes all over the place.
6.12
Having got those niggles out of the way, we can have a look at some of
the positive things Photopia has to offer.
6.12
You can only process 256 colour sprite files, so if your sprites aren’t
in that format you’ll need to convert them by using ChangeFSI (if you
can work out how it works). Once Photopia is loaded, you get three
windows. One loads your original image, one shows the image with any
changes you make and the other is a tool box.
6.12
How it works
6.12
Photopia works by affecting the prime colour components which produce
colours on the Archimedes. Coloured images are made up of a mixture of
three colours − red, green and blue (RGB). By altering the percentage
values of any of these colours, you can change from one colour to
another, or change the shades of the same colour. For example, dark blue
is produced by mixing different amounts of green and blue; yellow is
made with red and green. By altering these values, Photopia allows you
to alter the colour of an image and, therefore, change its appearance.
It’s this kind of manipulation of colours which is used in such
functions as Mask, which removes one or more colours; RGB Swap, which
can swop one colour for another; Saturation, which varies the intensity
of a colour; Negative, which makes your image look like a photographic
negative; Anti-alias, which creates a blurred effect; Contrast, which
changes shades; and Brightness, which changes the amount of white light
in the image.
6.12
Other effects
6.12
Other effects like Posterise, Solarize and Greyscale produce black and
white, 8 and 16 colour images, respectively. The effects can be quite
startling − you can change a sky from being bright blue and summer like
to dark and menacing, or you can soften a picture with a gentle wash or
by applying the anti-alias option. Some of Photopia’s special effects
allow you to change the shape of an image using tools such as Ripple,
Squidge, Whirlwind, Ellipse, Pyramid and Corrugate. It can also rotate
to any degree, rotate using the 180 degree pre-sets, or mirror on the x
or y axis. If you don’t want to process the complete image, you can
select areas for specific change. You can see from some of the examples
what can be done − but is it worth having?
6.12
Conclusion
6.12
Photopia is a good enough program if you don’t mind all the annoying
little niggles. I suppose the main argument for it is that because it’s
so cheap you don’t lose much if you don’t like it, and anyway it’s a
good introduction to image processing. While all that is true, I would
rather pay a bit more for a program which did things a lot faster and
which performed with a bit more sophistication. Having said that, if all
you ever want to do is change the look of images without being able to
edit them, and if you can wait for it to happen, then Photopia could be
the application to choose.
6.12
Photopia comes with one example file on an 800Kb disc. When in use, it
takes up just 96Kb of RAM before you drop in your image. It was
available from Archive at a special price of £23 inclusive.  A
6.12
Some examples included on the disc
6.12
Photopia’s menu bar − You can use the bar or bring up menu of functions.
6.12
TableMate
6.12
Advert
6.12
Dalriada Data
6.12
CC
6.12
new artwork
6.12
Scanlight Video 256
6.12
Oak
6.12
From 6.11 page 13
6.12
JPEG Column
6.12
Stuart Bell
6.12
Manuel Timmers wrote from Belgium with a solution to my original
problems with using ChangeFSI from the desktop in the form of an
application called JPEG (not a true desktop-application – he confesses
to zero knowledge of WIMP programming, just like me) with an ‘obey’ file
that invokes a series of Basic programs which call ChangeFSI to effect
the required compression to JPEG format. Thanks, Manuel.
6.12
Thomas Down, author of JPEGit, wrote to stress a point I made last time,
that JPEG is primarily for photographic images: “My advice is to stick
to LZW (the algorithms used by, among others, Compression) or similar
for sprites from ray-tracers and art packages, and only use JPEG for
scanned photographs (very detailed line drawing can work well too) and
digitised video frames.”
6.12
Jewel and JView
6.12
Also in response to my original article, Ketil Kristiansen wrote from
Norway, with some more specimen JPEG image files, to tell of two useful
freeware applications relevant to JPEG users. He writes, “Jewel is a
JPEG compressor/decompressor which can convert between JPEG and either
GIF, Targa or PPM formats. Unfortunately it doesn’t accept sprites, so
don’t throw away Translator! The other program, JView, lets you view
JPEG pictures (Jewel has no facilities for viewing). Both programs are
much faster than ChangeFSI and Translator, and don’t create those BIG
temporary files that cjpeg and djpeg do.”
6.12
Clearly, Jewel’s inability to handle Acorn sprite files makes it rather
less useful than JPEGit and JFIF. However, because some of the
compression /decompression routines are coded in ARM machine code,
rather than compiled ‘C’, Jewel may be faster for JPEGing files that are
already in suitable non-Acorn formats. What was interesting was the
source of the application. I quote an extract from its Help file: “Jewel
is another production of ARM’s TECH the new French programmers’ group.
This software is freeware and is © Frank Lyonnet 1993. Despite this,
don’t hesitate to support a student by sending me money, software,
hardware, RISC OS 3 PRMs, etc.”(!) More files give details of this
French group.
6.12
JView comes from the same source and seems a most useful application. It
claims a 2× speed increase over Translator, and 3× over ChangeFSI. I
tried it, and it is very fast. Once the picture has been displayed, it
can then be zoomed, using a Paint-like magnifier option, and also saved
(in Acorn sprite format). So, it is much more than a JPEG viewer – more
a JPEG de-compression program that also displays the image. The problem
I encountered was that, on my non-multi-sync screen, sprites were
displayed without omitting alternate lines, with the effect that the
images were stretched by a factor of two vertically. This happened even
with images that had started off as ‘non-hi-res’ sprites. For example, a
‘grabbed’ and JPEGed 640×250 image was displayed by JView as a 640x500
image. I guess the author assumed that we all have multi-sync monitors.
If only!
6.12
JView is so good that I’ve written to the author in France with these
comments, in the hope that he might be able to produce a version without
this problem. Watch the JPEG Column for news.
6.12
Another JPEG and a djpeg bug?
6.12
Mike Williams wrote to describe some of his further experiments with
JPEG. He enclosed a copy of another “JPEG”, this time written by Keith
Sloan, and he comments, “The input file needs to be in GIF format, and
the output file can be in GIF or PBM format. . .”
6.12
He also notes that John Kortink’s latest Creator and Translator
shareware applications will handle JPEG files (£10.00 registration
covers both), and continues, “These programs are easy to use. They cope
happily with files which are larger than the available memory, (unlike
ChangeFSI which just suddenly disappears from the iconbar, leaving the
partially converted file in Wimp$Scrap). JPEG support appeared in
Creator version 1.36, and Translator version 7.11. Some PD libraries may
still be distributing earlier versions. Since the comparison that
follows (which I’ve already written) has already made this column rather
long, I’ll test and report on Creator and Translator next month.
6.12
Finally, he has been wondering about the dreadful loss of image quality
which I reported last time. He writes, “I think I have discovered what
might have happened to Cain Hunt’s QRT ray-traced image. The awful
effect on this file doesn’t look anything like the normal subtle
distortion you normally get with JPEG quality losses. I’ve found two
things that can cause awful colours like this. (1) If your original
image is a 256 colour sprite with a non-standard palette, then the
conversion to or from PBM format is not performed correctly by some
conversion programs. (2) The other cause is a bug in the “djpeg” code.
Some versions of djpeg misread certain JPEG files. The file is encoded
correctly but is decoded incorrectly. I enclose a version of “djpeg”,
ported to the Archimedes by Keith Sloan, which does not exhibit this
bug. Simply replace the “djpeg” in ChangeFSI (or JPEGit or JFIF or
Translator) with the Keith Sloan version, saving the old one first in
case they are not completely compatible. You should then discover that
your “awful” JPEG file can be de-JPEGed correctly.” Again, this must
await next month. Many thanks, Mike.
6.12
Moving JPEG!
6.12
Tom Kirby-Green sent me a most interesting disc with the latest version
of ChangeFSI (0.90a), noting, “the main change is that the loading of
windows bitmaps have been fixed, i.e. no longer needs to be a multiple
of 8.” He also included a very long and interesting file off Internet:
“This is the latest posting of the JPEG ‘Frequently Asked Questions’
listing. You did say in your original article that you were writing for
“users”, not “programmers” − but if you’re interested, I have the latest
official JPEG (and MPEG) sources, and lots of JPEG articles.” I’m sure
that articles in ‘soft form’ – i.e. on disc – will be of interest, and
I’d be happy to accumulate them (provided they’re not copyright) for an
Archive JPEG Shareware disc. He concludes, “Talking of MPEG (the motion
picture compression scheme), did you know this is available on the
Archimedes too? I have the “official” Acorn version (which Roger kindly
emailed me) and a German version plus lots of movies. It’s very similar
to Replay, but there are loads of movies available, and as it’s a
standard, you can run “Sun”, “PC” movies as well. If you’re interested,
I can send you the MPEG player engines and some movie files.” (In case
that’s not clear, MPEG is a moving version of JPEG.) Yes, please, Tom!
Thanks, too, for your images.
6.12
For Yours Eyes Only
6.12
As this column was nearing completion, I received FYEO from Neil
Hoggarth − this is another JPEG reader/zoomer/saver from Frank Lyonnet
in France. A quick test reveals that it displays the image as the
conversion proceeds, but that there is the same problem as JView for
those requiring an interlaced display on a standard resolution monitor.
Neil suspects that the output is more grainy than that of ChangeFSI, so
he has left the decompression facility in JFIF. More details next month!
6.12
JFIF or JPEGit?
6.12
Thomas Down, having received a preview of my comments about version 1.10
of his application, kindly sent me a copy of 1.11 and then 1.12 of the
shareware version, which address the minor bugs which I found and also
deletes its intermediate Scrap files. The shareware version now includes
the option to use outline fonts in its displays, rather than the dreaded
system font.
6.12
Likewise, Neil Hoggarth has updated JFIF, among other things removing
the very minor ‘save’ window and ‘JTIF rather than JFIF’ bugs which I
reported last time. More importantly, he has also added a number of new
features to JFIF, including the use of the correct JPEG filetype.
6.12
So, the current state-of-play with RISC OS JPEG applications is: JView
(version 0.07) is an excellent JPEG de-compressor and viewer but, at the
moment, has a problem with non-hi-res screens. JPEGit exists in two
forms, one PD (version 1.11A) and one shareware (1.12B). JFIF (version
26/06/93) is a PD application. Which is best?
6.12
Installation
6.12
JView loads as a stand-alone application. JFIF requires one line to be
changed in the Boot file of ChangeFSI. JPEGit comes within a very
elegant installation program JPEGinst, which does the modifications to
ChangeFSI by icon-dragging on the desktop. JView and JFIF exist
separately from ChangeFSI; JPEGit becomes part of ChangeFSI, and its
icon is automatically displayed when the latter is loaded. On loading,
JView takes 160Kb of memory, JFIF claims 96Kb plus the 384Kb for
ChangeFSI, as does JPEGit in both PD and shareware incarnations.
6.12
Features
6.12
The four applications differ quite widely in the facilities which they
offer the user. JFIF’s options are to set the “Q” value, and the sprite
output mode for decompression. These values may be changed for the
current session and then saved for future use. JFIF now gives files a
suitable icon on directory listings. Full C source code is supplied and
the author is happy for people to ‘hack’ it, as long as changes are
documented.
6.12
There is nothing to set in the case of the decompress-only JView –
perhaps being able to select the sprite output mode would solve my
problem. Once it has decompressed and displayed a file, the screen image
can be zoomed and the image saved to file.
6.12
The facilities offered by JPEGit differ between the two versions. The PD
JPEGit allows the “Q” value to be set, but not saved to disc. The
shareware version adds the source code to the application (in C), a
utility to de-install JPEGit from ChangeFSI (very useful when installing
a later version of JPEGit) and an alternative installation procedure
that keeps JPEGit as a discrete application. Once running, the “Q” value
and options to “optimise entropy” (gaining smaller files at the expense
of speed), store the file as a grey-scale image (reducing the size of
the intermediate file), produce a report of the translations, disable
pre-dithering when producing the intermediate file (as that holds 24
bits per pixel, image loss should be imperceptible), “auto choices” and
“fast mode” can all be selected and saved to disc. These last two,
respectively, bring up the options window automatically each time – very
useful if you want to change the options for different files – and put
the machine into mode 0, reducing the overhead of screen updating.
6.12
Testing
6.12
To compare the various applications, I started with the “Hi People”
sprite from HCCS which I used in the first JPEG article. It was then
JPEGed with a “Q” of 25 and then decompressed again. To test robustness,
attempts were made to use the applications with insufficient available
memory and also with files of the wrong format. Although I normally use
Compression, I did not do so for these tests which were carried out on a
4Mb A310 with an ARM3 and an Oak SCSI with 45Mb.
6.12
JFIF took exactly one minute to compress the file (mode 36), and
marginally less to decompress. It left the save window on screen until
another window was accessed. Since they both call the same routines in
ChangeFSI, I was surprised that JPEGit was faster than JFIF, the PD
version taking 42s to compress, and then ChangeFSI taking about 55s to
display the uncompressed image, which could then be saved to disc. Using
the fast mode option in the shareware version made negligible difference
in compression time on my machine but this would probably not be the
case with an ARM2 or with high-resolution screen modes. The author
reports a 20% saving with mode 31 (SVGA) and an ARM3. The fast mode
option has no effect on decompression, as ChangeFSI is used. With pre-
dithering disabled, the shareware version took 36s to compress. JView
took only 12s to display an image JPEGed with JPEGit.
6.12
The ‘Report’ option in the shareware JPEGit most helpfully gives the
parameters and timing of the compression in a special window, which
looks particularly elegant if the ‘use outline font’ option has been
selected on installing the application. The ‘show options’ area allows
the options which applied to the compression process to be displayed.
6.12
When started with only 288Kb (i.e. 192Kb ‘spare’) in which to run, JView
quite properly reported “not enough memory for this picture”. With a
similar spare amount with the (PD) JPEGit /ChangeFSI combination, on
attempted compression ChangeFSI reported “not enough room for this DIM”,
and then JPEGit, recognising that no intermediate file had been created,
guessed that ChangeFSI had failed, and suggested using the Report option
(which doesn’t exist in the PD version!). On decompression, ChangeFSI
reported two fairly uninformative errors in ‘command-line type’ windows,
but did return control to the desktop, with ChangeFSI having been
deleted from memory, if the ‘cancel’ response was selected. In similar
conditions with JFIF, two unhelpful error messages were issued on
compression, and three on decompression, although it would decompress in
a little less memory than JPEGit required.
6.12
In the ‘bad filetype’ test, JView refuses to look at any file not of
type JPEG. If a file of that type doesn’t contain data of JPEG format,
it reports an error but then drops off the iconbar. JFIF claims to try
to JPEG any file not already in JPEG format. A text file produced
internal ChangeFSI errors. JFIF was not fooled by a ‘pseudo-JPEG’ file,
reporting ‘not a JPEG file’, despite the correct filetype.
6.12
JPEGit (PD version) ignored any file that was not a sprite file. On
decompression, the modified ChangeFSI very helpfully responded “sorry,
format not recognised” to an Edit file and to the pseudo-JPEG file that
was in fact a sprite file.
6.12
I felt rather cruel and ungrateful putting such freely-given software
through such tests but the results were good in that none of the
software crashed my machine.
6.12
So which is best?
6.12
Of those applications tested to date (with Creator, Translator and FYEO
to follow next month), the speed of JView for decompressing JPEG files,
and the fact that it will display, zoom and save images, makes it a
winner, at least – at the moment – for those with multi-sync monitors.
For producing JPEG files, JPEGit (PD version) is faster than JFIF but
the latter’s ability to save the “Q” value and mode and the inclusion of
source code are distinct advantages. Not surprisingly, the shareware
version of JPEGit is the best all round package tested to date. The
additional options for speeding up the compression process and giving a
report of its activities are very useful and the ‘outline font’ option
is elegant. Registration details will be in the PD version on the
Archive JPEG shareware disc (see below).
6.12
But one is left hoping for the compression partner to JView, (a Jewel
that reads Acorn sprite files) with the speed benefits of specially
coded compression routines.
6.12
Applications on disc
6.12
Clearly, it doesn’t make much sense to ask Paul to take up valuable
space on the monthly disc every time with the latest versions of JPEG
applications. Instead, in time for the October issue, I’ll put together
a JPEG shareware disc (including JPEGit (PD), JFIF, JView, FYEO, Tom’s
Internet file, the latest ChangeFSI and Keith Sloan’s de-bugged djpeg),
and ask Paul to add it to the Archive series. After that, I’ll update it
from time to time with the latest PD versions of the applications. It
will also include some of the JPEG image files that people have sent,
and will send, (hint, hint!) to me.
6.12
Finally, in response to my query about cross-platform portability, Neil
Hoggarth comments, “In your column you ask if anyone has used JPEG files
between different platforms. I can confirm that ChangeFSI and FYEO work
with files produced on a variety of Unix systems at work and files
downloaded from Usenet news groups on the Internet (I can’t vouch for
what machines were used to make these − everything under the sun I
should think). Of course, the JFIF format starts out with a big
advantage, the IJG designed it to be portable and they have given their
code away to anyone who wants it. Nobody is going to start from scratch
when somebody else has done the hard work, so almost all the JPEG
implementations on any platform are based on, or derived from, the IJG
code.”
6.12
Until next month, many thanks to all the correspondents, and especially
to the programmers whose work I’ve ‘road tested’ this month.  A
6.12
Colton
6.12
From 6.11 page 14
6.12
Hints and Tips
6.12
•    Cfs and the cluttered iconbar − There are five drive icons on my
iconbar, together with five Cfs (i.e. Computer Concepts’ Compression)
icons, so there is hardly room for anything else!
6.12
Since version 1.17 of Cfs, however, things have rather changed for the
better, due to the key combination <ctrl-insert> which lets you switch
between the Cfs and the normal window.
6.12
I now find that one Cfs icon on the iconbar is all I need. What I have
done is this: My !Boot file contains nine lines concerning Cfs:
6.12
<d>.!Cfs
6.12
(This runs the application. <d> gives the path for the program, as
described in Archive 3.9, p.8)
6.12
RMEnsure CFSModule 1.17 RMLoad <d> .!Cfs.CFSModule
6.12
RMEnsure CFSModule 1.17 Error CFSModule not loaded
6.12
(These two lines are just to make doubly sure.)
6.12
CFStemp <s>!Scrap.ScrapDir
6.12
NewCFS ADFS::0
6.12
NewCFS ADFS::intern
6.12
NewCFS SCSI::SCSIDrive0
6.12
NewCFS SCSI::SCSIDrive4
6.12
NewCFS SCSI::extern
6.12
(The last six lines duplicate the way in which everything was first set
up from the Cfs iconbar icons.)
6.12
With these commands in the !Boot file, it is now possible to delete all
but one Cfs icon from the iconbar and save the changes. Now one of my
drives (the one I use most often) can have its Cfs directory windows
opened directly. On all the others, I open the relevant uncompressed
window, then press <ctrl-insert>.  Jochen Konietzko, Köln, Germany
6.12
•    Impression arrows − Left and right arrows in Impression are extremely
easy to generate. You start with “<−−” or “−−>” and use <ctrl-R>
inbetween the characters to reduce the spacing (kerning) between the
characters so that you end up with “<−−” or “−−>”. Those two needed one
<ctrl-R> between the dashes and nine <ctrl-R>s between the angle bracket
(inequality sign) and the dash but it will depend on the font size.
(These “dashes” are produced in Impression with <shift-ctrl-hyphen>.
Actually, they are supposed to be minus signs, I think but I prefer them
to the “proper” dash which is <alt-152>. Certainly when I tried the
“proper” dash for this purpose, it produced “—>” which isn’t quite as
good as the height is different and it doesn’t hit quite at the centre
of the angle of the hairpin.) You can see it better at a bigger point
size:
6.12
Two minus signs: “−−>” One dash: “—>>”
6.12
In Times font, which I am using here, the long dash is slightly lighter
and doesn’t match the weight of the angle bracket. However, this trick
does depend on the particular font used − it’s a ‘suck it and see” job.
Ed.
6.12
•    Multistore alphabetical sorting − I recently created a large database
for my church roll in which there was a single name field presenting the
information in the form “Sue Adams”. I set up an index on this field
using the Surname function only to discover that it persisted in sorting
“Sue Adams” after “Margaret Adamson”. An examination of BaseLib (found
by shift-clicking !Multistore and dragging into !Edit) revealed how the
Base Function FNsurn worked and led to the idea of creating another Base
Function, FNchristian, to select the Christian name and any initial.
Using !Edit, I adapted FNsurn and then saved it as a further Base
Function in BaseLib. Then, using the Sort facility with the expression
“FNsurn(@ Name)+FNchristian(@Name)”, the names were sorted into correct
alphabetical order. It is necessary to quit and re-load Multistore to
ensure that it knows of the new Base Function. FNchristian is as
follows:
6.12
DEFFNchristian(A$):LOCALI%,C%
6.12
WHILERIGHT$(A$,1)=“ ”:A$=LEFT$(A$) :ENDWHILE:I%=LENA$: C%=ASCMID$(A$,I%)
6.12
WHILEI%>0AND((C%>64ANDC%<91)OR(C%> 96ANDC%<123)ORC%=45):I%-=1
6.12
C%=ASCMID$(A$,I%):ENDWHILE
6.12
IF INSTR(A$,“ ”)>0THEN=LEFT$(A$, I%-1)ELSE=“”
6.12
Colin Brockie, Kilmarnock.
6.12
•    Multiple stories on one page in Impression − It can sometimes be
extremely desirable to have two or more independent stories on a single
page in Impression. Normally, when you enter text in a single-frame page
and the text fills the frame, a new page is created and the text
continues to flow onto the new page. Creating a second frame on any
given page simply makes a local frame which does not exhibit this
ability to flow text onto a new page when it is full. However, if it
were possible to have two or more frames on a page which could
independently create new pages when full, this would be very useful − it
would make for easy creation of footnotes, for one thing.
6.12
I was recently asked how to achieve this effect by a user who was
setting opera libretti, and who wanted to have two columns side by side
for different languages. A two-column master page layout did not achieve
the desired effect because the text flowed from one column to the next
on the same page, rather than from any given column to the equivalent
column on the following page.
6.12
There is, in fact, a way of achieving the required effect in Impression,
but the technique is a little subtle.
6.12
How to do it − Either choose a suitable master page which exists already
or use the ‘New master page’ menu option to create an appropriate page
with the desired number of columns on it. Create whatever extra frames
you need on your master page in the normal way.
6.12
Now use the ‘Show flow’ option from Impression’s iconbar menu to see how
the text will flow between the frames. Under normal circumstances, to
link frames into the text flow sequence you click <select> on the first
frame in the sequence, followed by <adjust> on the succeeding frames in
the correct order. However, it is not possible to remove frames from the
sequence using this method and so, if you try to alter the order of flow
which is automatically assigned on the master page, you will find you
are not able to do so. Therefore, the only way to remove a frame from
the text flow sequence is to actually delete it and then recreate it.
6.12
So, for each frame which is to contain its own page-creating story,
first select the frame and then open the ‘Alter frame’ dialogue box with
<ctrl-f10>. Make a note (mental or otherwise) of the X and Y coordinates
of the frame, close the dialogue box and press <ctrl-X> to cut the frame
to the clipboard. Immediately you have done this, press <insert> (or
<ctrl-V>) and paste the frame back to where you cut it from. Finally,
open the ‘Alter frame’ box again and restore the coordinates to what
they were before.
6.12
On the face of it, this seems pretty pointless. All you have done is
delete a frame and then put it back again in the same place. However,
the practical effect of the action is to un-link the frame from the text
flow sequence. If you choose ‘Show flow’ from the iconbar menu again,
you will see that the frame no longer has an arrow pointing to or from
it. (In fact, if you have a layout of three or more columns, you will
see that the flow has bypassed this frame, but still connects the
others.)
6.12
What this boils down to is that you can have as many individual stories
as you want on a single master page. Each story can consist either of a
separate frame or any number of linked frames. Any such set of frames on
an Impression master page will cause the creation of a new page when
filled with text in the document.
6.12
The layout shown in the illustration is not intended to be a serious
example but it merely illustrates the idea. The frames for both Story 1
and Story 2 have been linked, whilst the frame for Story 3 is a separate
entity, as is the frame for footnotes.
6.12
As for practical examples of this idea, one has only to look at the old-
style (RISC OS 2) Acorn manuals, such as the BBC Basic Guide or PRM.
These manuals all have a vertical line about a third of the way across
each page, to the right of which is the main text. The headings and sub-
headings all appear to the left of the line. Although the creation of
such pages by conventional methods would be perfectly possible, having
two independent stories (one for the main text, another for the
headings) would greatly simplify the process.
6.12
A similar idea commonly found in educational material is to have a
column, at the right hand side of the page, which contains comments
relating to the ideas presented in the main body of the text.
6.12
Another good use for this idea is the presentation of tabulated material
such as a printed index. If you want a column of numbers to be in a
different style to the reference text the numbers accompany, it is far
easier to have two independent stories than to apply a specific style
for each number on a line.
6.12
When using this approach, there is just one thing to watch out for. If
there is not a direct one-to-one correspondence between the number of
lines in the stories (which there may or may not be, depending on the
document), you must remember to press <ctrl-G> (which corresponds to the
‘Frame=>Force to next’ menu option) when you have typed in all the text
for the shorter story on each page. If you don’t do this, you may find
that, when you position the caret in the frame in which you want to
start typing, the text appears on the previous page. However, you will
soon get used to this.
6.12
As for footnotes, if you know that none of your footnotes will exceed a
single line in depth, you should create your footnote master page frame
to be just large enough to contain one line of text. Then, each time you
press <return>, the caret will advance one page. If you need longer
footnotes, however, make the master page frame large enough to hold the
largest note and remember to use the <ctrl-G> method.  Richard Hallas,
Huddersfield.
6.12
Is it possible to have two or more independent stories running side-by-
side in Ovation? If so, can anyone explain how? Ed.
6.12
•    Printing to files − I experienced the same problem as Tom Rank
(Archive 6.9 p63) with printing to a file. This involved an address
exception being caused at the end of each print run which prevented the
last few graphics lines from being printed. The problem is caused by
ADFSBuffers. Setting this to zero using:
6.12
    *Configure ADFSBuffers 0
6.12
solves the problem.  Paul Mellor, Derby.
6.12
•    Vector overlays − The new version 1.10 of Vector offers the option to
draw lines with overlays (i.e. between 1% and 99% of the line’s interior
is drawn in a different colour), a feature which makes drawing little
map sketches very simple.
6.12
A problem arises if you want to join two roads or two rivers without a
seam.Vector produces something like this (overlay 50%):
6.12
For a decent map you need, instead, something like this:
6.12
If, as in this case, all paths have the same width, it is simple: Just
select them all and merge them through the “Special” menu. (This also
saves memory: The five paths in the first picture take up 1071 bytes,
the merged path only 883 bytes.)
6.12
If the width differs, the thickest line will force its width upon all
the others, making a merge inadvisable; then you will have to apply
little “beauty patches” in the form of completely white rectangles to
cover the unwanted black lines.
6.12
While you rotate the rectangles to align them with the road, it is best
to switch the amount of detail shown on the screen from stage 5 to stage
3, so that all the rectangles appear just as thin black outlines (even
if they are not selected) and this makes an “invisible” shape rather
more easy to handle.
6.12
When you go about rotating those rectangles, it makes sense to lock
everything else first with <ctrl­H> because else it is very simple to
rotate something else besides the little patch.  Jochen Konietzko, Köln,
Germany.  A
6.12
Help!!!!
6.12
•    80Mb Oak SCSI drive problems − Colin Buckland, one of our subscribers,
bought an 80Mb Oak (Seagate) drive from us about 3 years ago and it
worked OK until recently, when he fitted a fan quietener. The drive died
and he quite reasonably assumed that it was because it had over-heated.
Colin had read Tord Eriksson’s sad tale (Archive 6.8 p41) of dying and
dead drives and he too had failed to back up all the data on his drive!
So, as a last resort, he tried using the drive external to the computer
− it worked! (So he immediately backed it up before trying anything else
− you see, Tord, your article has already helped at least one person!)
But when he tried to put it back in the computer, it would not work. Why
not?
6.12
Well, this problem occurred once or twice before when we first started
supplying these drives. Apparently, they are sensitive to a small
voltage appearing on the earth line. When bolted in place in the
computer, the drives refused to spin up but when electrically isolated
from the chassis, they worked fine. Colin’s solution was to fix the
drive in place with double-sided adhesive tape! It worked OK but I
wouldn’t like to transport a machine with a drive fixed in that way! Has
anyone else got any other way of solving the problem?
6.12
•    Acorn Teletext unit − Has anyone got a circuit diagram? I F Montague,
Chatham.
6.12
•    Austrian Exchange Student looking for Archimedes-users in and around
Strasbourg next year (Sep. 93 − June 94). Write to Roland Nitsch,
Mariensteig 17, A-1130 Wien, Austria, or call ++431−87 66 444.
6.12
•    Greek fonts − There are various Greek fonts around including some PD
versions. Although some are available as both upright and italic styles,
I can’t find any which have bold weight. Does anyone know of a Greek
font which has a bold version, PD or otherwise? Alternatively, (although
unlikely) does anyone know of a utility which will embolden an outline
font?  Brian Cowan.
6.12
•    Impression keys − As I didn’t foresee using some of the more
“professional” aspects of Impression II, I bought a copy of “Impression
Junior” and I must say that it is a joy to use. However, I am a little
disappointed that the function keys are not user-definable. Does anybody
know if it is possible to define <ctrl-shift-f11 − f12>?  Gary Jones,
Manchester.
6.12
Would Keystroke help, as mentioned in Products Available on page 4? Ed.
6.12
•    Inter-machine communication − It is becoming more and more important
to be able to transfer files and/or data between different (types of)
machines. We have had requests for information (but no responses) about
Archimedes to Mac transfer (6.9 p31 and 6.10 p8).
6.12
Could anyone write an article for us about import/export from Archimedes
to different machines, covering hardware and software solutions? It
would be helpful to share any information that anyone has about options
for formatting, compression, splitting files onto floppies and using
SyQuest removables on Macs, PCs and Archimedes. One of the most common
requests is how to get large colour scans or large PostScript files in a
form for use by a Mac-only bureau.
6.12
Please write in to the Archive office if you have any experience to
share and/or could write an article for us. If there is enough
information, we might have an occasional Import/Export Column. Ed.
6.12
•    Serial Port Graphics Enhancer − as The Serial Port seems unlikely to
offer a real RISC OS 3.1 upgrade, does anyone have any technical details
about the hardware? I would like to write replacement software to enable
alternative VIDC clock frequencies and to permit the use of an extended
palette chip. Seán Kelly, 8 Vicarage Lane, Wing, Leighton Buzzard,
Bedfordshire, LU7 0NU.
6.12
•    Transferring BBC tape software to disc − I would like to transfer some
old BBC software to the Archimedes but it is on tape, so first I need to
get it onto disc. Could anyone help me, please?  Gary Jones, 2 Cams Acre
Close Radcliffe Manchester, M26 0RZ.
6.12
•    Z & Z Software − Does anyone know the whereabouts of Z & Z Software,
writers of !Pax, or has anyone got !Pax to work under RISC OS 3.1. If
so, please contact Peter Young, 20 Racecourse Lane, Northallerton. North
Yorkshire. DL7 8RD.  A
6.12
Comment Column
6.12
•    Basic compactors (6.9 p 65) − I think R W Darlington has misunderstood
what is going on when a program is compacted. There is no bug in these
compactors − the programs so compacted run quite normally. The
compaction works on the tokenised program, and removing spaces has no
effect on the interpretation of the program during runtime. The
“problem” arises when a compacted program is reloaded into an editor,
when it is reconverted to text. If the program is now once again saved
as a tokenised program, the tokeniser can no longer differentiate the
end of variable names and the start of the Basic keyword, due to the
missing spaces, and the retokenising fails. This is NOT a fault of the
compactor, it would happen whenever you miss out an essential space
while entering any program.
6.12
If you are writing your own programs and wish to compact them, then it
is essential to keep a copy of the uncompacted program, on which any
editing must be done. The edited program can then be compacted.  Chris
Johnson, Edinburgh.
6.12
•    Fitting an FPA in an 8Mb A5000 − Owners of an A5000 with an 8Mb
Atomwide RAM upgrade may well feel daunted by the prospect of fitting
the FPA as the RAM board, roughly postcard-sized, is attached to the
motherboard right on top of the FPA socket, rendering it totally
inaccessible. The board is clearly easy enough to remove. It was the
prospect of fitting it back on again that I found daunting.
6.12
Acorn’s advice for fitting the FPA gives instructions for removing the
drive assembly. With this out of the way, the RAM board is revealed, but
you need more room for working and for seeing what you are doing. I also
removed the backplane, all podules and blanking plates and the speaker.
All of these come away quite easily.
6.12
If “South” is the rear side of the computer, the RAM board is attached
to the motherboard by screws at its NW and SW corners; by a chip
(presumably a memory controller) fitted to the underside of the South
side of the RAM board and socketed into the motherboard; and by a light
grey plastic connector looking exactly like a podule connector running
the whole width of the Eastern edge. This last connector is sealed by a
gummed label warning you that you will invalidate your Atomwide
guarantee if you break the seal.
6.12
My guarantee has expired, so I undid the screws and gently eased the
board free of its connectors. Once the board was out of the way, the FPA
went into its socket (with an unnerving crunching sound) and it was time
to refit the RAM board. I was able to align chip with socket and male
connector with female by peering through the gap left by the blanking
plates and putting the fingers of my right hand through the speaker hole
to hold the board. The Northern edge of the board was slightly elevated
and I simply lowered it down, pressing as I did so, as if I was closing
the lid of a box. Firm, gentle pressure at either end of the connector
and on the chip in turn eventually produced another unnerving crunch,
and the board was installed. I put all the bits back together again and
everything worked perfectly first time − and the FPA does indeed make a
wonderful difference to a spreadsheet!
6.12
One thing did puzzle me in Acorn’s instructions for loading the FPE400
module in a !Boot file. They recommend renaming your present !Boot file
as !Boot2 and then creating a new !Boot file containing the line:
6.12
rmensure FPEmulator 4.01 rmload !System.modules.FPE400
6.12
and then another line containing an instruction to run !Boot2. This
seems unnecessarily long-winded to me. I simply <shift-double-clicked>
on !Boot to load it into !Edit and typed the line in at the beginning of
the file, saved and then rebooted. No problems.
6.12
I think perhaps I was a little lucky. I did the job after a confidence-
boosting liquid lunch, I forgot to earth myself when handling the FPA
and I didn’t really know what I was doing. If you want the job done
safely and professionally return your computer to NCS.  Alan Booth,
Northwood.
6.12
•    Function key strips − Peter Smith, who provided Impression files of
keystrips for Artworks, Eureka and DBEdit on last month’s program disc,
asked why such major applications were not provided with a keystrip.
6.12
You may be interested to know the reply I got from 4Mation when I
queried the absence of a keystrip while I was reviewing DBEdit. Mike
Matson told me: “No, we didn’t include a function key strip in the
package. In fact you’re the first user to have commented upon its
absence which, perhaps, confirms my suspicion that they are rarely used.
I can’t think when I last used a keystrip. However, if there is a demand
we will certainly consider designing one.”
6.12
The answer seems to be, if you want a keystrip demand one.  Peter
Jennings, St Albans.
6.12
•    Hutchinson Encyclopedia CD − Jim Bailey’s July review of CD’s (6.10
p25) brought a swift response from PEP Associates, the distributors of
the Hutchinson Encyclopedia CD. In his review, Jim says that (1) much of
the information given on the CD is too shallow to be of any use, (2) the
program crashes, (3) scrolling through the indices is too slow and
(4) cross references do not always work and are not logical − he cites a
cross reference for Neil Armstrong and the Apollo Project, with the god
Apollo.
6.12
Paul let me have a copy of PEP’s comments and the CD, then gave me a
month to try it out. Let’s look at PEP Associates’ replies. In answer to
Jim’s first comment, they said that the content of the CD is determined
by the authors of the encyclopedia. It should be the same as the printed
version − and so it is, as far as I can see. The encyclopedia doesn’t
provide in-depth analysis to every subject it covers. (‘15-love’ to PEP)
6.12
Secondly, the crash problems have been sorted out, but the new software
is only available as an upgrade to the 1993 text version of the
encyclopedia. (‘30-love’)
6.12
Thirdly, the failure of cross references has been fixed in the 1992
multimedia version − these fixes are presumably available through Attica
Cybernetics? (‘40-love’ − just!)
6.12
That, for me, is the end of PEP’s scoring. From here, I have to agree
with the rest of Jim’s comments. Going through the indices is mind-
numbingly slow and even when you get a list of subjects, you still have
to wait quite a while before the computer accesses the information. PEP
say they may include an option to load the index into RAM in future
releases − this should improve searching and scrolling.
6.12
The real drawback to this program is the overall slowness of accessing
information. As much as I want to use CD-ROMs on my A5000, I’m not
likely to use them until the speed is more acceptable. (The score is ‘40
all’ but I reckon that ‘game, set and match’ has got to go to PEP for
the cheek of their final comment.)
6.12
‘It should be remembered that the CD-ROM is a port from a PC product,
and I have found that Archimedes users are more exacting in their
software requirements than PC users.’  Gabriel Swords, Norwich.
6.12
Yes, that last comment is very telling, isn’t it? PC owners are more
used to the ‘thick treacle syndrome’, as I call it, than we are. Ed.
6.12
•    Impression and large documents − The other day, for the first time, I
created a really large Impression document. I was not very impressed
with its performance as I shall explain. Indeed, I was sure that
Impression was not up to the standard which one could expect from a DOS
PC.
6.12
As luck would have it, I found an article in a German PC magazine which
dealt with just this subject. How do Winword 2.0, WordPerfect 5.2, Ami
Pro 3.0 and Wordstar 1.0 deal with text files of 2Mb or more?
6.12
Impression − Impression is thought to have the ability to handle “large”
documents. (However, as RISC OS does not provide virtual memory
management, they have to be divided into chapters, each of which must
fit into RAM.)
6.12
I was trying to make it possible to “Find” a string in all the Archive
Words files in one go by creating one big Impression document which, so
far, has six chapters. The first two files (6.5−6.8 and 6.1−6.4) were
merged quite easily. However, a Count gave the first nasty surprise:
2,047,670 bytes (the two Edit files) had mysteriously turned into no
less than 4,011,758 bytes. I wondered whether I would have enough hard
disc space left for the complete document.
6.12
So, before I went on dropping more Edit files onto the Impression
behemoth, I tried out the search routine on the document as it was. All
went well through the first chapter, but when it tackled the second one,
all I got was an “Out of Memory” error. I could still scroll by hand
through chapter 2, but the search routine and also the key combination
<ctrl-down> (to jump to the end of the chapter) didn’t work. So much for
my bright idea!
6.12
Not yet willing to give up, I tried again, but this time I put each
issue of Archive into a new chapter. This division of the text into
eight chapters made it work − just. The size of the document had grown
once again, this time to 4,800,370 bytes, and the Info window which
before had showed 49,287 words, now claimed 55,778. While I was
wondering whether I had accidentally dropped one chapter twice into the
document, the next count gave 46,912 words as a result. Then the number
which appeared always was either 46,912 or 95,559(!).
6.12
This appeared to indicate that Impression was at the very outer limit of
its capabilities when trying to handle a text of 500+ pages. The search
aborted with an “Out of Memory” error if there was less than 1,850Kb of
RAM available when the document was loaded. (This equates to the first
three chapters − shouldn’t it be possible to program the thing in such a
way that there only has to be enough RAM for two chapters?) When there
is more RAM, a different message appears once, in just the same spot
where before the missing memory was indicated, warning that “This action
will change the file on disc”, and asking if you really want to go on.
On a machine with less than my 4Mb of RAM, this behaviour would mean
having to divide a long text into lots of rather small chapters.
6.12
Anyway, I decided to go one step further and add the twelve chapters of
volume 5. The results were: 4,802,924 bytes of Edit text turned into
8,537,930 bytes. Compression could only squeeze this down to 4,995,740
bytes − still more than the uncompressed original! The word count had
dropped to 39,356 words − this feature really doesn’t work properly on
large files.
6.12
There was no problem with the page count − a “Go to last page of count”
brought me instantly to the end of the text although a few seconds’
delay occurred because I had first to click onto the page to make
Impression load the last chapter. The scroll bar also worked without a
hitch.
6.12
Searching for a string which I knew occurred only once, on the very last
line of the document, took 4 minutes and 10 seconds. (In Edit, opening
the four files of volume 5 and 6 and searching for the same string took
just 54 seconds, most of which was used for opening and closing the
files!)
6.12
Changing the base style from 10 pt to 14 pt took a staggering 15 minutes
32 seconds and blew the file up to 10,855,012 bytes and 2,037 pages.
During the format operation, I nearly panicked because, after some
minutes, all activity stopped and there was no hourglass, no hard disc
access and the iconbar clock was still frozen. About two minutes later,
I had just about decided that Impression must have crashed, when the
disc started chattering away again.
6.12
All these times were taken on files in a Compression window, so I
decided to find out just how much Compression slows the work down. I
decompressed the document again and did the search for the last line
again. This time it was only 1 minute 36 seconds and changing the base
style took 11 minutes 15 seconds!
6.12
So, if there is enough disc space available, this would be a case for
not using Compression! My conclusion would be, while Impression is (just
about) able to handle really big files, it still has some way to go
before it is on a par with Windows text processors in this area, too.
6.12
The opposition − (I think that the four PC programs were being run in
“concept mode”, with WYSIWYG disabled, to avoid unnecessary strain of
the CPU.)
6.12
Ami Pro became so indignant when asked to do long jumps through a 2Mb
file or indeed to do anything while the Auto-save option was enabled,
that it crashed!
6.12
WordPerfect worked without a hitch, but very slowly. Just to jump to the
last page of a 4Mb file took exactly as long as the search for a string
on the last line of the compressed file took Impression. (They said
nothing about the type of CPU or the amount of RAM they used, so time
values are, of course, very relative indeed.)
6.12
Wordstar could not deal at all with texts of more than 750 pages.
6.12
Winword worked very well. It took about as much time on their computer
to do its job as Impression did on my A410/1 (ARM 3, 4Mb) and it too
created files roughly twice as large as the original text files.
However, the page numbering broke down completely at about 1,500 pages.
ASCII files of up to 8Mb could be handled − 9Mb caused a crash. Of
course, there is always that well known spoil-sport bug which
occasionally causes Winword to refuse to save a file if it is too large
to fit into the Windows Clipboard − this could be quite nasty!
6.12
The one advantage that all these programs have over Impression is that
Windows does provide virtual memory management and so it is not
necessary to divide a large text into “bite-sized” morsels.
6.12
Conclusion − This, in my view, is another example of the fact that
Archimedes owners tend to take the excellence of their computers for
granted and really don’t know how well off they are.  Jochen Konietzko,
Köln, Germany
6.12
•    Menu help in C − This relates to Gwyn Williams’ article last month
(Archive 6.11 p11). Here is an explanation of how to handle menu help if
you don’t have the new RISC_OSLib. I will describe how to modify DrawEx
using the same paragraph numbering as Gwyn Williams.
6.12
(1)    Also add:
6.12
#include “swis.h”
6.12
This file may not be with the other RISC OS header files but it should
be. In the “Constants” section add:
6.12
#define Task 0x4B534154
6.12
(2)    Do not create the function “setmess”. Instead, declare the array
“messages” either globally or within drawex_initialise. There should be
no call to wimpt_messages (since we don’t have this command).
6.12
(3)    Add the following after “wimp_wstate state;” in drawex_initialise:
6.12
    os_regset    regs;
6.12
regs.r[0]=310;
6.12
regs.r[1]=Task;
6.12
regs.r[2]= (int) “DrawEx”;
6.12
regs.r[3]= (int) &Messages;
6.12
os_swi (Wimp_Initialise, ®s);
6.12
win_init ();
6.12
Do not add setmess or wimpversion and remove the call to wimpt_init.
6.12
All other changes should be as described. I hope that this information
is of some use and error free, but readers may have to use their
initiative a little.  Richard Simpson, Farnborough.
6.12
•    Monitors − I class myself as having a non-technical brain and I must
confess that the choice of monitors one could connect to the Archimedes
is bewildering. I own an A410 with a standard resolution monitor
(AKF12). I read about multisync; VGA; SVGA; VIDC enhancers and colour
cards. In the main, most of my work on the Archimedes involves text and
an occasional game. I don’t want to buy a new monitor only to find that
it isn’t suitable. Can anybody explain, in fairly simple terms, what I
would need to upgrade, without burning a very large hole in my pocket!
Gary Jones, Manchester.
6.12
My answer would be to buy a Cubscan 1440 (£480 through Archive) stating
clearly which computer you are using so that you get the correct monitor
lead. This is the only non-Acorn monitor we know of, apart from the Eizo
9060 (£600 through Archive), which is a plug-in-and-go on all Acorn
computers. If you are prepared to start playing with a VIDC enhancer and
the software that goes with it then there is a lot more scope and you
can think about using some of the cheaper monitors. Has anyone else got
any suggestions? Ed.
6.12
•    Re-inking cartridges (problems with) − I have a very salutary tale to
tell. I have a Canon BJ130e and decided to launch myself into the world
of colour, so I bought from InkMun a coloured ink outfit as well as a
black-only refill kit, complete with the ICS program !ColourSep. The
first problem that I found was that the supplied needle was not be long
enough for use with the BJ130e cartridges, but a telephone call to
InkMun brought a free long needle in the post a few days later.
6.12
So, I proceeded to cleanse all my empty cartridges as best I could by
repeatedly filling and emptying each sac with cleaning fluid. I then
inserted the Yellow, Cyan, Magenta and Black inks from the Colour Refill
Outfit and re-assembled the cartridges.
6.12
I loaded the computer with an Impression page containing a colourful
picture. I removed the black cartridge and inserted the yellow one
(palest colour first), used !ColourSep to pick out the yellow content of
the picture and tried a printout. It all came out as black on white, so
I decided I ought to “flush the printer” of black ink − to do this, I
made up some pages of solid yellow, cyan, magenta and black.
6.12
I started printing the yellow page but some ten pages later, it still
had a considerable degree of black content. However, after one “cleaning
cycle” of the BJ130e, things were almost perfect (but stripy) and after
one “priming cycle” and only a third of a page of printing, I had “pure
yellow” coming through, so I did the yellow pass of my pictorial
document. The above (extremely lengthy) performance was repeated for
each of the other colours.
6.12
I decided that the design of the BJ130e, with its many lengthy tubes
full of ink, was not destined for a “colourful future”, and the dents on
my brick wall did, by now, bear a certain similarity to the shape of my
head, so, having used my refilled Black cartridge last, I decided to let
sleeping printers lie.
6.12
Over the next few days, my “ordinary” (mono) printouts began to become
more and more “stripy”, until, after a couple of weeks and a few more
cleaning and priming cycles, the BJ130e stopped printing altogether −
but it was not due to ink running out. To make absolutely certain of
this, I inserted a brand new Canon cartridge, put the printer through a
cleaning and priming cycle and the following printout was the perfect
image of a bride’s dress on a snow-capped mountain with a white
Pyrannean Mountain dog at her side! (I think he means it was white. Ed.)
6.12
A local office equipment repair business found that the printer’s purge
unit had stopped working − probably because some content of one of the
inks had “attacked” the material from which the “piston washers/rings”
were made. As it is a sealed unit, the only answer was to purchase a new
purge unit, which has now been fitted, and the printer is once more in
pristine working order.
6.12
The moral of this story is beware of using ink refills on printers with
purge units and long tubes!
6.12
Although I do not have intimate knowledge of their construction, I am
given to believe that printers like the BJ10’s, and perhaps the HP
Deskjets, would not experience the same problems, so perhaps it is worth
finding out other members’ experience. Bill Rawcliffe, Shepperton.
6.12
•    Speed of Basic programs (6.10 p16) − I was interested in this comment
but I was very surprised that there was no difference due to length of
variable name and so I tested it on my machine. There was a difference
but only 0.07s in about 35s. This intrigued me. I thought − maybe the
routines use good technique and count down to zero, in this case
checking from the end of the variable name rather than the start. I put
the one different character in the middle of the long name and tried
again. The speed difference was now smaller than before. It appeared it
was checking the whole name from the beginning. I now did an Archimedes
and, while lying in the bath, carried out some mental calculations. A
difference of 70ms in a loop of 1,000,000 means a difference of 70ns for
a single cycle. The clock cycle of a 25MHz ARM3 is 40ns. Thus we are
apparently using 2 clock cycles (instructions) to check a 31 character
variable name six times over! Am I out by some orders of magnitude, or
is the Archimedes a very much smarter machine than even I thought? I
hope someone can explain.
6.12
What I was really writing about was the SYS calls. I agree that it is
very much faster to call a SWI (SYS) by number than it is by name.
However, it is almost as quick to use an integer variable as it is the
actual SYS number. The variable can have a meaningful name, so you do
not have to keep putting REMs in the program. Since the OS provides a
SYS call to look up the number corresponding to a SWI, you do not have
to remember, or look up the numbers anyway. During program
initialisation, set up any variables you need in the following way (note
the two commas after the first SWI name).
6.12
SYS“OS_SWINumberFromString”,, “Wimp_GetIconState” TO GetIconState%
6.12
From then on, you could refer to this particular SYS as SYS
GetIconState%.
6.12
Users of the ABC Basic compiler (I cannot speak of any others) have the
best of both worlds, since the compiler will automatically convert the
text form into the number form for you during the compilation process.
6.12
There was also a utility in Risc User that will convert one form to the
other and vice versa.  Chris Johnson, Edinburgh.
6.12
•    Talking Pictures − This is a reply by Anne Williams of Wyddfa Software
to the review in the July issue of Archive (6.10 p47).
6.12
There is a serious aim behind Talking Pictures which I feel was not
appreciated by the reviewer − it is to stimulate the development of
spoken language in children who have not yet learnt to read. The program
is also a simple introduction to the computer for young children, and
can help children who are having difficulty in correctly naming colours.
However, using sampled human speech (and incidentally the voice is male,
not female as the review says), the intention of this program is to
encourage spoken language. Its greatest value is with children with
special educational needs.
6.12
A computer is no substitute for crayons and paper but a child with
learning difficulties can be initially surprised and then stimulated to
respond to a computer that ‘talks’. In addition, a child with
difficulties with coordination will struggle to use a mouse and pointer.
This program can help a child to produce a decent coloured picture,
which can then be printed out, where crayons would leave him or her
floundering. (Talking Pictures is quite obviously not concerned with
either spelling or reading and it certainly does not claim to cover
these topics, contrary to the implication in the last paragraph of the
review.)
6.12
Talking Pictures comes with five pictures, but more pictures are
available. The Extra Pictures Pack (price £10 inc VAT and carriage)
contains six more pictures which run in both Talking Pictures and its
sequel, The Spoken Word. More pictures are planned, both for children
and for adults. The one aspect of sales that has genuinely surprised me
is that individuals and institutions are buying this program for use
with mentally-handicapped and brain-damaged adults. I really would
welcome advice on suitable topics or themes for pictures for adults from
people who have relevant experience.
6.12
Finally, the review was based on a rather ancient pre-release version of
Talking Pictures. The release version has already dealt with several
minor points raised in the review, for example, the colour indigo has
been lightened.  Anne Williams, Wyddfa Software
6.12
•    Text>Draw converter − In Archive 6.9 p31, Brian Cowan requested a Text
to Draw converter. I have written a multi-tasking application (on the
monthly program disc) that will do all that Brian asked for initially (I
have since had several e-mail messages from him ‘upping the ante’). It
allows the use of up to three font styles and does super and subscripts.
A WYSIWYG display is shown as the text is entered and the result can be
saved as a drawfile. Note that this program will only function correctly
on RISC OS 3.
6.12
The application contains extensive on-line help. If anyone finds the
program useful, they can contact me for a more enhanced version which I
have already written in response to some of Brian’s later wish lists.
Chris Johnson, Edinburgh. (Chris has sent us another version for the
disc which is, I think, this enhanced version. Ed.)
6.12
•    Ultimate MultiPodule, Analogue Port for A5000 and CC Laser Direct 4 −
I felt it may be useful to other people to know of my experiences with
the above. I have an A5000 with CC Laser Direct 4, an Acorn I/O podule
and an Vidi-Archimedes digitiser. As the I/O podule took up two slots,
the chance to get an analogue port in half a podule slot was attractive,
so I bought an Ultimate MultiPodule and analogue port (direct from
HCCS). Once fitted, the analogue port worked well, but the effect on
Laser Direct was devastating. It produced black or blank pages or
sections of gibberish. I had read in my favourite magazine that the LD
podule was a bit fussy about which slot it was in. I remember somebody
had complained about lines through the print. I tried swopping and
removing podules. There was a considerable difference depending on the
relative podule slot position of Ultimate and LD, but I could not find a
position where I was happy that the situation was stable. Incidentally,
the digitiser podule made no difference whether it was in or out or
where it was.
6.12
I rang HCCS who were helpful and came back saying they had tried the
same combination on their A5000 without any problem and suggested I send
the board back for checking. No problem was found, so when I got the
board back I borrowed a friend’s A5000 and put my podules in it. All
worked well in any position. I tried swopping the backplanes but this
made no difference. It looked as though there was something wrong with
the main board of my A5000. However, I noticed that my friends A5000 had
an Issue 2 board, whereas mine is an Issue 1. I also established that
the problem was nothing to do with the Analogue port of the Ultimate
setup, it was the main MultiPodule which was causing the problem. I
tried killing the Ultimate module, but this made no difference either.
6.12
At this stage, I called on my friendly neighbourhood Acorn dealer. He
tried my podules in an A5000 with an Issue 1 board and all the problems
were there once again. So it appears that it is not my machine, but a
function of an Issue 1 board and the two podules. The dealer said he
would write to Acorn, CC and HCCS, but three weeks later he has not had
a response. I am a rather worried that all I am going to get is buck-
passing as, effectively, three manufacturers are involved... but I live
in hope!
6.12
It has been suggested that the problem is due to a timing fault which I
gather was fixed by another manufacturer when a similar fault occurred
in a different situation, by putting the timing on the podule. This is
all a bit beyond me.
6.12
As a sideline, I also discovered a separate fault, which was due to the
Ultimate analogue podule or at least the module it loads. With the
Ultimate analogue podule in the machine, when ARCterm7 addresses my Pace
Microlin modem, it reports “modem not responding”. However, as soon as I
kill the analogue module, it all works perfectly. I have also reported
this to HCCS.
6.12
Roger Penniceard, Wandsworth.  A
6.12
Music Column
6.12
Stewart Watson
6.12
Each month there seems to be more good news on the software front for
music lovers. Not only is new software appearing, but established
programs are constantly being updated, so keep in touch with the
distributors because many of the new facilities are well worth having.
6.12
Standard MIDI files
6.12
There is now a vast number of standard MIDI files available from a
variety of sources. Many of these files have been prepared by
professional demonstrators for the main music equipment manufacturers,
Yamaha, Roland, Akai, etc, to allow salesmen to demonstrate equipment in
shops. Copies of these discs are usually available free from your local
music shop. Most of these files are written to correspond to the General
MIDI standard which means that if you have a sequencer like Serenade,
and a keyboard or expander that responds to General MIDI, you can load
and run any of these files from your Archimedes. Many of these files are
in foreign formats, (DOS or Atari) but fortunately the Archimedes is
capable of reading both these types of files.
6.12
Demo files
6.12
Apart from showing off how good your equipment can sound, these files
can provide a fund of useful tips on sequencing because, once they are
converted into Serenade files, you can examine the various tracks and
see what tricks the professional demonstrators get up to. You can even
clip bits out and stick them into your own sequences.
6.12
Converting DOS files
6.12
Yamaha have produced many demonstration files for the PSR-SQ16, TG-100,
etc and these files can easily be modified to run from Serenade. First
make a copy of the original file and put the original away in a safe
place. Using the backup copy, click on the file using <menu>, go down to
the second item, file ‘whatever’, move the mouse to the right and then
down to Set type and across to the right where you will see the word
‘DOS’ in a writable icon. Press <ctrl-U> to clear this text and type in
&FD4 (Serenade filetype) and press <return>.
6.12
De-mixing
6.12
Load Serenade and double click on your converted file. If you open the
track window, you will notice that all the parts are loaded onto track
1. Click on track 1 and drag it down to the de-mix icon, and a warning
window will appear, ‘Demix track one? This will erase all other tracks.
Yes/No.’ Click on Yes, then go and make a cup of coffee and when you
come back, you will see that the parts have been separated onto
different tracks.
6.12
Performance changes
6.12
To ascertain which voices are on which tracks, open the Event Edit
window and you will be able to identify the voices by ‘Pc’ for
‘performance change’ in the Type list, and the number in the Data 1
list. A full list of the General MIDI voice numbers is printed on page
74 of the Serenade manual.
6.12
Studio 24 files
6.12
EMR sell a MIDI file converter which converts standard MIDI files for
use in EMR programs. It also converts EMR files to standard MIDI files
which can then be loaded into Serenade. The EMR files are converted one
pattern at a time, so it easier to cut and paste all the patterns into
one long pattern in Studio 24 before converting into a MIDI file, rather
than sorting it all out later.
6.12
Inspiration
6.12
The Acorn Education Directory Issue 4 on p139 states that, “The current
version of this product at the time the directory went to press does not
work with RISC OS 3.10. Please contact the supplier for information on
later versions.” I have tried several times to get in touch with the
supplier, Pandora Technology, but without success.
6.12
Serenade
6.12
The guitar window in Serenade is very useful for making guitar parts
sound as if they are played on a guitar, rather than a keyboard. This is
because when a keyboard player plays a chord he tends to play all the
notes at once, whereas a guitar player strums the strings one after
another, producing a quite different effect.
6.12
Guitars with more than six strings?
6.12
Each chord has three alternative fingering patterns, any of which can be
placed and edited by combining the Draw feature from Edit mode with the
Guitar window, and if you superimpose the second and third versions of
the chord over the first version, you can produce guitar chords
containing more than six notes.
6.12
Harp chords
6.12
You can combine this technique with the octave transpose facility to
create strummed chords spanning five octaves to create harp-like
effects.
6.12
User files
6.12
I suggested to Richard Millican, the author of Rhythm-Bed, that it might
be a good idea to ask users to pool their rhythm patterns. He agreed and
suggested that drum kit files could also be included in this exchange.
If Rhythm-Bed users, via Archive, send me a disc of Rhythm-Bed files
disc, together with a stamped addressed envelope, I will undertake the
compilation of all the files. The inclusion of a brief note describing
the contents of the disc sent would be a help. I will then return the
original discs with copies of all the material received.  A
6.12
Ovation Column
6.12
Maurice Edmundson
6.12
Hyphenation
6.12
Ovation contains a useful algorithm for hyphenation which I find works
very well and produces sensible splits in most words. It was some time
before I began to make use of this facility, since by default it was
switched off. Now I tend to keep it on, especially when I am typing into
columns narrower than a full page with the text justified. In these
circumstances, some hyphenation is inevitable if you want to avoid the
so called “rivers of white” which can spoil a justified layout.
6.12
You will find the hyphenation option at the bottom of the Format menu.
6.12
To be active, it must be ticked. Sliding the mouse to the right also
reveals two user choices which control its operation in special cases.
These are (a) the ability to prevent splitting of a word whenever it
begins with a capital letter − useful for proper names for instance, and
(b) restricting the split to a minimum number of letters. The default
value in my software was six but I usually alter this to three. It is
surprising how many long words can be split after the third letter and
still make sense. Of course, this rule is not infallible and some
changes will have to be made from time to time. For example the word
“hyphenation” itself could only be split after the fourth letter at the
minimum. Selecting a number of letters does not prevent the internal
algorithm from choosing other split points at suitable places along the
word but it will never leave fewer than the minimum at the end of the
first line.
6.12
There is also a built-in hyphenation dictionary. It does not require
loading like other dictionaries but it can be brought onto the screen
for adding and deleting entries. This dictionary is called !HyphDict and
is accessed from the Spell option at the end of the main menu.
6.12
Adding a word to this dictionary will prevent it from being hyphenated
in the text. Alternatively, if a word is added with a hyphen at the
place where you wish any split to take place, it will appear normally in
the text without a hyphen, except when it occurs at the end of a line,
when it will split as you indicated. This method is useful for
specialised text, e.g. scientific papers, where you know of many words
which will occur again and again and must be split, if at all, only at
pre-selected points.
6.12
If, as you are typing, you can see the possibility of a word requiring
hyphenation, you can force your choice by typing <ctrl-hyphen> between
the appropriate letters as you write the word. Nothing will be seen on
screen, but if a split has to be made the word will be hyphenated at
this point. The advantage of this method is that if for any reason the
text is later modified and the word moved to a new position, no hyphen
will be visible to spoil the rearranged sentence.
6.12
Read the manual
6.12
Ovation contains many other useful features which, like hyphenation, are
easily overlooked, especially if they are only required infrequently. It
pays to re-read the manual and supplementary sheets from time to time. I
can illustrate this point by mentioning two things which have cropped up
in the past few days, as I write. On one occasion, I wanted to import a
short manual on disc into Ovation for editing and printing out. Ovation
now imports text from !Edit and other software very easily but, in this
case, as I imported the text file, I held down <ctrl> and this
automatically converted single carriage returns to spaces and double
carriage returns to single ones. This can save time when re-formatting
the text within Ovation.
6.12
The second feature I have used many times is the “Find and Replace”
option, at the bottom of the Edit menu.
6.12
Note that the special “wild card” characters only appear if the wild
card option is highlighted. Using these, it is possible to modify
globally, paragraphs and general layout as well as the more usual
technique of finding and replacing words.
6.12
I think I have covered many of the interesting and versatile aspects of
Ovation in this column to date and, for the time being, I will bring it
to a close. I am grateful to those readers who have written to me with
their ideas and comments. It may be possible with the editor’s
permission to contribute an occasional commentary covering any new
developments which may arise in the future.  A
6.12
Small Ads
6.12
(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)
6.12
•    47Mb ST506 suitable for 400 series (no interface needed) £140. Phone
Ian on 061−476−0229.
6.12
•    A3000 2 Mb upgrade (Watford) £22. This is 2Mb only − not upgradable to
4Mb. Gerald Fitton 0793−723347.
6.12
•    A3000 (4Mb) − Twin 3½“ disk drives, colour monitor with stand,
Voltmace joystick, magazines and discs, £550 o.n.o. A3000 Technical
Reference Manual £10, Archimedes Assembly Language book £5. Acorn ANSI C
(rel 3) Compiler £40. Archive complete to date £20. Interdictor £5,
Zarch £5. Phone Basingstoke 0256−27355.
6.12
•    A3000 1−2 Mb expansion board (Atomwide, unused) £20. Task and Window
Organiser £5. DeskEdit2 £15. (Originals with handbooks). Phone Ernie on
0493−740557.
6.12
•    A310, 4Mb RAM, RISC OS 3.1, MEMC1a, IFEL 4-slot backplane, external
floppy interface, Acorn colour monitor, Lingenuity 16-bit SCSI
interface, Rodime 105Mb, lots of software, £695 or offers. May split.
Phone 0932−245301 anytime.
6.12
•    A310M − RISC OS 3, colour monitor, Epson LX80, software, computer
desk, swivel chair, £500. Phone 0782−657521 after 6.
6.12
•    A440/1 − ARM3 and RISC OS 3.1 and much PD £895. Acorn colour monitor
£110. Computer Concepts ROM/RAM podule with Interword chip and battery
backup £25. Bristol 0272−736237.
6.12
•    A410/4 − 4Mb RAM, ARM3 processor, RISC OS 3, Oak SCSI interface, 100Mb
drive £795. Taxan 795 Multisync £350. Aleph One 386 PC Card (for A410/
A310 etc), 4Mb RAM, maths coprocessor, Windows driver and PC Emulator
£350. Phone Bill on 0279−424139.
6.12
• Acorn AKF18 multisync − £190. Pace Linnet V21/23 Modem £50. EMR
MicroStudio V1.0G and Music Disc Set £40. EMR StoryBook and StoryBook
Disc Set 1 £40. Both packages new, unregistered (unwanted competition
prizes). Contact G. Rhodes 0302−722781 eves.
6.12
•    AKF18 multisync, as new, only 7 months old, £200 o.n.o. Phone
0533−660123.
6.12
•    Aleph One 386PC podule, 4Mb RAM and software. £375 o.n.o. Phone Jim
Nottingham 0759−303511 after 3pm.
6.12
•    Ancestry (2.0) £5, Address I (3.02) £3, MicroSpell (3.04) £3, Split an
Image £6, SparkFS (1.12) £5, Archivist Pro £15, First Impression
(tutorial guide) £10, System Delta Plus 2 £3, Watford 5“ hand held
scanner £15, External 5¼” 40/80 drive and interface £25 o.n.o., Datachat
1223 Modem and lead £10, monitor swivel stand £5, blank used 3½“ discs
10 for £2. Phone 0223−629868.
6.12
•    Archimedes 420/1, 2Mb RAM, 20Mb hard disc, RISC OS 3, Acorn colour
monitor and MIDI interface, EMR Studio24+ (V3.0c), PRM’s, all boxed,
£950 or will split (e.g. Studio24+ £150). Phone 0532−781455.
6.12
•    Canon BJ130e bubblejet prints larger than A3, has sheet feeder up to
100 sheets. Original packaging, manuals, etc, RISC OS 3.1 Turbo Driver,
£275. Phone 0932−245301.
6.12
•    Fast A5000 − 27MHz ARM3, 16.7MHz Memory (4Mb of 70ns Ram), Eizo 9060s
Multisync, 100Mb Quantum £1300 (or with 40Mb £1175). Totally reliable,
perfect condition + software. Phone R. James on 0494−522704.
6.12
•    HP PaintJet XL (takes A3 & A4), paper and few cartridges, £2,000
o.n.o. Would suit small business. Phone Chris Price on 0813−002112 or
write to Merton Court School, Knoll Road, Sidcup, Kent, DA14 4QU.
6.12
•    Morley SCSI podule Archimedes or A5000 £50 o.n.o. Phone Mike on
0203−715864 after 6.
6.12
•    Programmers wanted for Archimedes/RISC educational software, part-time
home-based. Phone 0775−725717 eves.
6.12
•    Student requires work experience for one year from Sept/Oct. Studying
for computing, maths & business studies degree. Can cover operating
systems, programming, spreadsheets, etc. Phone Daniel on 0603−614581.
6.12
•    Taxan Viking II − B&W monitor, mode 23, 1152×896 resolution, excellent
for DTP, £350 o.n.o. Phone 0895−230826.
6.12
•    Two 20M hard discs, £65 each. Phone Paul on 0274−481075.
6.12
•    Wanted − “Disctree”, Hard Disc Companion II and Impression II
preferably upgraded for RISC OS 3.1, but not essential. Write to Peter
Young, 20 Racecourse Lane, Northallerton, North Yorkshire, DL7 8RD.
6.12
•    Z88 with 128Mb RAMpack, mains unit, link to Archimedes, 4 rechargeable
batteries, charger, manual, £95 Phone 091−536−2066. Also Psion II XP,
32Kb Datapak, 32Kb Rampack, 16Kb Datapak, mains unit, manual £65.
6.12
Charity Sales − The following items are available for sale in aid of
charity. PLEASE do not just send money − ring us on 0603−766592 to check
if the items are still available. Thank you.
6.12
Acorn Education Directory £15, Archimedes Assembly Language Programming
Disc £3, Archimedes First Steps book £4, Archway 2 £8, Battle Chess £18,
Computer Projects for Railway Modellers (book) £5, Design Concept fonts
£4, Holdfast Joypad £5, Interdictor 1.0 £3.
6.12
(If you have unwanted software or hardware for Archimedes computers you
could donate for charity, please send it to the Archive office. If you
have larger items where post would be expensive, just send us details of
the item(s) and how the purchaser can get hold of them.)  A
6.12
PipeLineZ
6.12
Gerald Fitton
6.12
Already I’ve received a few replies to my last PipeLineZ article in
which I commented on the number of people reading this column who don’t
have PipeDream or Wordz. It seems that many of you read the specialist
columns of Archive because, when you are considering whether to buy a
package, you find them a much more reliable guide than reading reviews.
I have received more comment along the lines of, “Archive should
emphasise its specialist columns in its adverts”.
6.12
Leading on from this, it has got to be a result of the reduction in the
price of PipeDream 4 (now £140 through NCS) which has resulted in a
surge in the number of new PipeDream users asking for help and advice
and wanting to join the PipeLine user group. From my correspondence, it
seems that those of you who didn’t buy PipeDream before, were put off by
the price rather than the specification but, at the new price, you now
believe that it’s good value for money. Some correspondents have asked
me whether the PipeLineZ column will soon be an exclusive Wordz column.
My answer is that the surge of interest in PipeDream augurs well for the
future of articles about PipeDream.
6.12
I hope to include a comparison of PipeDream with FireWorkz (see below)
in the near future, so if you have a contribution to this, please drop
me a line.
6.12
Monthly discs
6.12
Thank you for your letters. With a very few exceptions, it seems that
you would like me to keep the PipeLineZ articles in the magazine totally
self-contained (even though it means fewer topics) rather than
transferring a lot of material to a monthly disc which most of you don’t
want to buy as an extra. One comment which I have received in many forms
can be summarised as, “If the economies of scale were such that
supplying a disc with the magazine didn’t cost too much extra then it
would make the task of writing articles much easier for authors”. I
suppose it would − I wouldn’t need the screen shots!
6.12
FireWorkz
6.12
FireWorkz is not yet a ‘product available’ in the Archive sense of the
word − so no review yet − just an explanation of the thinking behind it,
so you’ll understand the pre-release publicity!
6.12
FireWorkz is not a package in the conventional sense of the word. It is
the name of the ‘shell’ which will enable you to combine Wordz, Resultz
(and other ‘modules’ which will be released later) into a ‘seamless’
integrated package like PipeDream. FireWorkz employs the same flexible
‘mix and match’ strategy as ArtWorks. By this, I mean that you will be
able to buy the ‘modules’ you want and leave out the rest (or add them
later). For example, you may want just the word processor, Wordz, and
the database, Recordz, but not the spreadsheet, Resultz. FireWorkz will
allow you to integrate as many or as few ‘modules’ as you want into one
package with one icon on the iconbar. In addition to the ‘obvious’
modules (word processor, spreadsheet and database) there will be other
new modules which you (the purchaser) will be able to install within
FireWorkz retrospectively. As you install your ‘modules’ in FireWorkz,
you will gain full ‘dynamic data-linking’ (what I once called seamless
integration in a review of PipeDream 2) between all the ‘modules’ you
have installed!
6.12
If you have a knowledge of the ArtWorks modular system then please write
to me.
6.12
Curve fitting
6.12
This month’s PipeDream application is curve fitting...
6.12
For over a year now I have been asked to explain how to use the
PipeDream functions linest(y,x) and trend({c ,m},x). I kept promising
myself that I ought to get around to it but it has taken a problem sent
to me by John Nottage to finally make my mind up that now the time has
surely come.
6.12
I have decided that, in addition to describing the ‘line of best fit’
function, linest(y,x), and the trend({c ,m},x) function, I could use the
opportunity to show you how using Arrays and Names often make formulae
more usable and readable.
6.12
Best straight line
6.12
Let’s make a start by creating the spreadsheet shown in the screen shot,
below.
6.12
The formula for a straight line is y = m*x + c. The parameter c is
called ‘the constant term’ and m is called ‘the gradient’. In the range
A12A17, I have inserted half a dozen values of x and, in the range
B12B17, the corresponding values of y have been calculated by putting c
and m (from B6 and B7) into the formula y = m*x + c. This formula is
used in many engineering and financial applications. An example is
“total cost = marginal cost of a unit * number of units + fixed cost”.
The “marginal cost of a unit” is the gradient (m) and, in this example,
it is the extra cost of producing one more unit. The “fixed cost” (c) is
the cost you incur just getting ready to make some units (such as
machinery) but it doesn’t include the “marginal costs” such as raw
material and labour.
6.12
Names
6.12
In slot B12, I could have typed B$7*A12+B$6 and then replicated it down
through the range B12B17 − but I haven’t done that. In my version, slot
B12 contains the formula set_value(y,m*x +c). I suggest that my version
makes the spreadsheet much more readable but at the expense of a little
more effort on the part of the writer of the application.
6.12
It may help you follow the next paragraph if you refer to the following
screen shot.
6.12
The four letters within the set_value(y,m*x+c) function, y, m, x and c,
are all PipeDream Names. If, in the final version of this spreadsheet,
you were to place the pointer over the italic f (just to the left of the
tick and cross and to the right of the PipeDream logo − near the formula
line) and click <select> then a sub-menu called ‘functions’ will open
and, at the bottom of the list, you will see ‘Edit name’. If you were to
run the pointer through the arrow to the right of ‘Edit name’, you would
see that there are seven names defined. These are x, y, y_est, m, c,
c_est, m_est. You could run the pointer through, say, c, and you would
see that the definition of the name c is the content of the slot B6.
Similarly, you could establish that the name x is the range of slots
A12A17 − this range contains the values of x!
6.12
To define a name such as x to be the range of slots A12A17, you click on
the italic f, run the pointer through ‘Define name’, type x in the
dialogue box alongside ‘Name:’, type A12A17 into the dialogue box
alongside ‘Refers to:’ and finally click on the OK box.
6.12
The names I have defined are: x as A12A17, y as B12B17, y_est as D12D17,
m as B7, c as B6, c_est as D6 and m_est as D7.
6.12
The set_value(,) function
6.12
The function set_value(,) is a simple way of evaluating a function many
times and ‘poking’ the answers into a range of slots. It is particularly
simple when used with names. Yes, I know it takes time to define the
names but, for large ranges particularly, it is worth it. The function
in slot B12 is set_value(y,m*x+c). Having defined the names as slots or
ranges of slots, set_value(y,m*x+c) calculates all the y values from
m*x+c and ‘pokes’ the answers into the range of slots defined as y. What
is ‘clever’ about PipeDream is that each value in the y range is
individually calculated using its corresponding x and the result ‘poked’
into the ‘correct’ y slot.
6.12
The set_value(,) formula is written only once and does not have to be
replicated (or copied) down the range of slots. Using names in this way
reduces the size of the PipeDream file in memory (the function appears
in only one slot) and on the disc. Because the file is smaller, the
loading time and the time to recalculate are also reduced.
6.12
The linest(y,x) function
6.12
In slot D6, I have entered the formula index(linest(y,x),1,1) but let’s
deal with linest(y,x) first.
6.12
The function linest(y,x) takes, as its arguments, only two ranges of
values − in our case y and x. Please note that the y range is the first
argument. In our simple example, x is a single column of values, a more
complex version (which we’ll deal with another day) uses one y range and
a many-column x range! When used in this simple way, linest(y,x) returns
an array of two numbers in a single slot. The two numbers are the row
array {c_est ,m_est} where c_est and m_est are the ‘constant term’ and
the ‘gradient’ of a straight line which is the ‘best’ straight line for
the set of points. Strictly, it is the ‘least squares regression line of
y on x’!
6.12
On page 250 of the First Edition of the PipeDream 4 Reference Guide, the
function linest(,,,,) is shown with five arguments. All too often, I
have been asked how to use the last three arguments. The answer is that
you can’t because, in PipeDream version 4.13, they don’t exist and, as
far as I know, they are never likely to. The function linest(y,x) can
take only two arguments but the second argument, x, can consist of many
columns. Let’s deal with what is called ‘multivariate regression’
another day. For now, let it suffice that the arguments stats, constant_
parameters and measured_errors of the First Edition do not and will not
exist.
6.12
The index(array,col,row) function
6.12
To ‘split up’ the array returned by linest(y,x) into its two separate
terms, {c_est ,m_est}, we need to use the index(array,col,row) function.
The index function I have entered into slot D6 is
index(linest(y,x),1,1).
6.12
Since linest(y,x) = {c_est ,m_est}
6.12
index(linest(y,x),1,1) = (index({c_est ,m_est},1,1).
6.12
The array {c_est ,m_est} has only one row and so the last (third)
argument of index({c_est ,m_est} ,1,1) must be 1. The second argument,
1, selects the first element of the array which is c_est. Hence
index(linest(y,x),1,1) = c_est.
6.12
The value in D6 is our best estimate of the constant term c_est for the
‘least squares regression line of y on x’!
6.12
Slot D7 contains index(linest(y,x),2,1). The only difference is the
second argument, 2, which selects the gradient, m_est. The value in D7
is our best estimate of the gradient, m_est.
6.12
A point you should realise here is that I’ve ‘cheated’ by using ‘exact’
values of y calculated from the formula y = m*x + c so that, if I have
the ‘right’ formulae in column D, then my ‘estimated’ values for c_est
and m_est are bound to be ‘exact’ and equal to the values of c and m in
B6 and B7!
6.12
The trend({c ,m},x) function
6.12
From the screen shot, you will see that slot D12 contains the formula
set_value(y_est,trend({c_est , m_est},x)) − and we’ve dealt with
set_value(,). Note that y_est is the name of the range D12D17, so let’s
have a look at trend({c_est ,m_est},x).
6.12
The function trend({c_est ,m_est},x) returns a column array when x is a
column (as it is in this case) or a row array when x is a row. The
column array returned by trend({c_est ,m_est},x) is exactly the same
array as that given by the formula {m_est*x + c_est }. We saw how
{m*x + c } returned an array when we looked at slot B12. I think that,
when I know the values of c and m (separately), then I would prefer to
enter m_est*x + c_est (without the curly brackets) instead of
trend({c_est ,m_est},x); it’s shorter and it does exactly the same
thing. On another occasion when we have a look at the function
logest(y,x) to produce log-linear and log-log graphs, we shall see that
this second approach has its advantages. The function trend(,) has the
advantage if you don’t want to use the values of {c ,m} separately. In
those cases you can write trend(linest(y,x),x) and we’ll find that we
can’t do that with log-linear and log-log curve fitting.
6.12
To summarise where we are up to now. In the spreadsheet on page 44,
there are only five slots containing formulae. These are:
6.12
    B12 = set_value(y,m*x+c)
6.12
    C12 = set_value(C12C17,x)
6.12
    D12 = set_value(y_est,trend({c_est ,m_est},x))
6.12
    D6 = index(linest(y,x),1,1)
6.12
    D7 = index(linest(y,x),2,1)
6.12
There are seven PipeDream Names which have been defined. These are:
6.12
    x = A12A17
6.12
    y = b12B17
6.12
    y_est = D12D17
6.12
    m = B7
6.12
    c = B6
6.12
    m_est = D7
6.12
    c_est = D6
6.12
You can alter the values in B6 and B7 and in the range A12A17 but, for
now, you should change nothing else.
6.12
Best straight line
6.12
Up to now, the y values in B12B17 have been generated from a formula
which uses the values c and m in B6 and B7.
6.12
Place the cursor in slot B12, delete the formula and replace it with the
number 1. Nothing much should happen but the values of y are now no
longer calculated from the formula using c and m from B6 and B7. Enter a
few y values which are different from but approximately the same as
those generated by the formula and, when the sheet has recalculated, you
will find that y and y_est do not quite match. If you plot the values of
y against x you will no longer have a straight line (unless you’re
lucky) but plotting y_est against x will give you a perfect straight
line, the ‘best’ straight line for the x and y values.
6.12
Don’t save the modified sheet unless you change the name!
6.12
Charting
6.12
To help you visualise what is going on, you might like to try creating a
chart with two sets of data. For the first set, use the x and y values
in A12B17 plotted in red. For the second set, use the data in C12D17
plotted in blue.
6.12
You won’t see the blue points until you modify the y data as described
in the previous paragraph.
6.12
Finally
6.12
If you wish to write to me then you may do so at the Abacus Training
address given on the inside back cover of Archive.  A
6.12
Beginners’ Column
6.12
Laura Handoca
6.12
Laura has compiled some more questions Q and some hints H from readers.
If you feel you can answer any of the questions and/or fancy writing a
short article about any subject that beginners might appreciate, write
in to Laura via the Archive office. Thanks, Ed.
6.12
H. (A response to the query about Acorn DTP and the “No stack for trap
handler” message.) Like Sue Hooper, I used to use this package − my task
was to produce a newsletter in the college where I worked. I got the
same messages when producing about four pages. My solution was to load
the printer driver first, then quit it from the iconbar − this leaves,
in memory, the modules required for printing. Drag out the “next” slot
(in the task manager) to about 1200Kb, then load Acorn DTP. Then, when
you are approaching the stage in document creation when memory is
getting tight, an error message pops up saying there is insufficient
memory. If you don’t increase the “next” slot size before the program is
loaded, this error message does not seem to appear and it comes up with
the dreaded “No stack for trap handler” message. [Barry Thompson]
6.12
H. Further Acorn DTP... − Concerning Sue Hooper’s problems with Acorn
DTP, I would think the problem is almost certainly lack of usable memory
− for printing perhaps? (Jim offers the same suggestion as Barry.)
6.12
Assuming this does the trick, there’s a potential solution for printing
even larger documents and that is to ‘print to file’ first rather than
direct to the printer − this uses less memory. It’s a bit of a palaver
and means telling the printer driver where to put the print file (!Scrap
directory perhaps?) and what name to give it, but it can make all the
difference between getting a print-out and not. Once the print file
exists, its icon can be dropped onto the printer icon and the file will
be printed, in the background. The only solution for mega-files is mega-
memory, I’m afraid.
6.12
There is another possible reason for the computer crashes − rather
obscure, but I’ve seen it before and the error message was near-
identical. This appeared when I was using some commercial clipart
drawfiles which had text areas and/or copyright messages embodied in
them, using the system font (some of these messages were “hidden”
beneath the drawings). The problem surfaces if the drawfiles are reduced
in size (Sue’s “lots of drawfiles”?) so that the system font size is
reduced to well below the standard 12pt. In that case, the printer
driver may fall over in a heap and cause the crash.
6.12
Even if there are no visible text areas in System font, to see if there
are any hidden messages, the suspect file(s) should be loaded into
!Draw. Then Select All and have a look at the Style sub-menu. If “Font
name” is greyed out, there are no messages lurking. However, if it’s in
black, have a look at the Font name sub-menu to see if any font is
ticked, especially System.
6.12
To clear the problem, there are two solutions. The easier is to
select “Convert to path” but, if there are extensive text areas, this
can generate a large file. The alternative is to convert the System font
to an outline font instead. To do this, Select All, and choose the
desired font via the Style − Font name menu. [Jim Nottingham]
6.12
Q. Basic programming − I currently have two programming problems. As a
teacher in a Sixth-form college, I have developed my own database (BBC
Basic on Model B, graduating to A310 with 4MB+HD+RISC OS 3.1) for
handling entries to a wide variety of Exam Boards (using EDI), archiving
all past results, performing statistical analyses upon them and handling
a range of internal exams admin. The program has grown to about 140Kb,
with another 100Kb-worth of code-sections which can be appended as and
when required. I do not have either the time or the expertise to re-
write the program to run in a windows environment, although I have just
managed to put it in an !Applications directory so that it can be run
from the desktop (but it then runs native, NOT in a window).
6.12
Problem 1: Am I being naive to ask if it is possible to get an existing
Basic program to run in a window, so that it can multitask with, for
example, PipeDream, so that one has the flexibility to switch from
database to wordprocessor and back without having to close either of
them down? I don’t want to introduce pull-down menus etc, etc. I don’t
want to transfer data from one to the other; I just want them co-
existing in their respective windows. Can it be done by writing a
suitable front-end and without re-writing my Basic database? If so, how?
6.12
Problem 2: In order to obtain screendumps of statistical scatter-graphs
and bar charts by data from within the database, I currently load the
old *Hardcopy module and invoke that from within the Basic program.
However, the print quality is not marvellous. Is it possible to invoke
the facilities of the !Printers software to invoke a screendump from
within a Basic program? If so, what are the commands to use from within
Basic to load the relevant code and then to invoke it? [M. P. Sawle]
6.12
H. Hard disc management − The query from Christine Shield regarding hard
disc management prompts me to refer you to an article in Archive 5.12 p7
“Hints and Tips” by Steve Drain. I have recently been experimenting with
the amount of disc space occupied by directories on IDE drives. Like
Steve with his SCSI device, I found that the size of a directory created
on the hard disc is governed by the size of the Large File Allocation
Unit. The file allocation is determined by the hard disc formatting
program and is the final request from Acorn’s !HForm application when
you have either formatted or initialised the hard disc. I discovered
that if the file allocation was chosen as 512 bytes then when a
directory was created, its size was 7680 bytes. If a file allocation of
256 was chosen, then a created directory had a size of 4096 bytes. With
floppies, the directory size seems always to be 1028 bytes. Of course,
if Compression is used, this helps enormously in saving space without
too much of a speed penalty. [Barry Thompson]
6.12
Q. First Word Plus − I have two queries about First Word Plus. Firstly,
how do I go about changing the ruler? Secondly, how do I prevent it
printing a page number at the foot of each page? [M. E. Ellis]
6.12
(Have you got the old Archive magazines? There were hints & tips about
FWPlus in Archive from 1.10 to 3.11, including a regular FWPlus Column
that Stuart Bell did for us. Ed.)
6.12
H. File limitations − Beware, a reminder: all filing systems based on
FileCore (e.g. ADFS, RAM, IDEFS) have the limitation of a maximum of 77
entries per directory. Non FileCore filing systems don’t have this
restriction (e.g. SparkFS). If you try to exceed the maximum number of
entries, (i.e. files or sub-directories) you will get error messages,
such as “disc full”. [Ted Lacey]
6.12
H. Professional printing − In reply to Beginners’ Column Archive 6.9, re
professional printing [Christine Shield], could I mention some things?
6.12
If you present a printout, say of an Impression document, to the Printer
(from now on Printer with a capital P means commercial Printer, with
small p means your computer printer!!) he will make a negative film
using a camera. From this film he makes his “offset litho plate” from
which he prints your document. Your work will be presented to him the
“right way round”, the negative film will be the reflected version − the
plate, right way round − offset roller reflected − final print right way
round!
6.12
If you take your disc to a typesetting bureau, they can do two main
things for you:
6.12
(1) They could make a negative film using a linotronic machine (very
high dot resolutions, up to 2400 dots per inch) for the Printer to make
his plate from − which will be much clearer than your own printout.
6.12
(2) They could make you a Bromide − a positive right way round printout
of your file at the same very high resolution, but with fairly coarse
graining for half tones.
6.12
If your document is complete (no additional bits needing to be pasted in
with real glue) a bromide is unnecessary − the bureau can make you a
negative.
6.12
But why is it so expensive? Because time is money! It can take a long
time for the document to “feed through” the linotronic machine −
sometimes several hours, thus tying up the bureau’s machine.
6.12
Are there any intermediate alternatives? Well yes, there are.
6.12
If you can push your document through someone else’s Laser Direct HiRes
system (it is quite quick and cheap), you can produce camera-ready
artwork which is pretty good − for black and white work the results are
not noticeably different from those using a Bromide − and a lot cheaper.
The snag comes when you try to produce reasonable half-toning. CC HiRes
at 600dpi produces a very fine (in the sense of thin) dot screen which
the Printer’s camera tends not to be able to resolve properly: the
results of even a simple grey tint on the printout tend to become
“blotchy” on the negative and so on through to the final output.
Bromides overcome this by using a coarser screen. (I believe CC are
working on this for the RISC OS 3 version of HiRes PrDr). (If you want
to see the effect, look at Archive 4.9. That was the first issue which I
produced after swapping my 300 d.p.i. Qume Direct for a 600 d.p.i. Laser
Direct Hi-Res 8. Archive is now produced by printing at 300×600 d.p.i.
onto a good quality A4 art paper. This is given to the Printer who
reduces it for printing at A5.)
6.12
A fairly new alternative has become available in the last year. Most
Printers can make plates from either negatives (black where the result
is white) or “positive film” (the plates required here work the opposite
way round: thus where the positive film is black the plate will receive
ink). The recent innovation is the “Plazer”. This is an acetate sheet
coated with a special matt white emulsion on one side, designed to pass
through laser printers (and photocopiers − but not Bubble jets). Since
it is quite easy to print in reflection (everything mirrored) on an
Archimedes, you can print out your document onto a Plazer and the
Printer then uses them as positive film to make his plates. The result
is that you get dot for dot reproduction on the plate, and half tones
once more behave themselves!
6.12
Plazers are designed in principle to be used directly as ‘paper plates’
for Printing, but these require the sheet of Plazer material to be A3
size, and few of us are able to afford an A3 laser printer. However,
when used as positive film, an A4 size works perfectly well. The Printer
(who often uses A2 anyway) lays ‘two up’ or ‘four up’ on his litho
plate. All he needs to do is to expose the plate for about twice as long
as usual, the matt white coating acts like “milk glass”.
6.12
Using plazers, you can get reasonable reproductions of scanned
photographs, though Laser Direct is effectively limited to a maximum of
128 grey scales.
6.12
If you require a proper professionally scanned photograph to be dropped
into the document, just make the box into which the photograph is to go
black. The Printer then can re-expose that part with the photograph scan
later.
6.12
I am willing to supply A4 Plazers at 70p each + p&p (or A3 size at
£1.40). This represents a small mark up, but any profits go to church
funds. Buying from the suppliers, requires you to purchase a minimum of
250 A3 size! This price compares very favourably with the cost of a
negative (usually around £4 to £6 per page). Subject to demand, I could
also print out Impression documents on Plazers for a reasonable charge.
[Rev. Philip Foster, St Matthews Vicarage, 24 Geldart Street Cambridge,
CB1 2LX.]
6.12
H. More professional printing − I couldn’t agree more about the need for
an article. I deal with Printers all the time but could not begin to
write such an article. The trade seems to me to be a jargon-littered,
closed shop and you get different stories from different people. There
is an excellent Commercial Printing Guide in the ArtWorks package −
perhaps Computer Concepts could be persuaded to sell it separately?
6.12
As to negatives and bromides, I think most people will be familiar with
photographic negatives which, in the printing industry, can be used to
produce a positive, normally on film or printing plate, for printing in
quantity. Essentially, a bromide is a positive version of the negative,
on photographic paper, ie it is a normal print, and is also used for
certain printing applications. The material is usually a glossy paper
with a silver bromide coating, hence the name.
6.12
Apart from commercial printing, bromides have value in DTP and
illustration work. For example, I produce technical illustrations which
I print as camera-ready copy on my Laser Direct at 600dpi. If I print
at, say, 200% scale to fill an A4 sheet, this can be reduced
photographically to 100% and printed on bromide paper. In so doing, this
doubles the effective resolution to 1200dpi which approaches imageset
quality. In this case, lots of similar bromides are − quite literally −
cut and pasted onto board to make up the desired artwork, prior to being
passed to the printers.
6.12
By this method, we produce high-resolution artwork, using the superb
combination of Archimedes and Laser Direct, in conjunction with simple
photographic techniques, relatively cheaply. To produce the same or
higher quality, a Printer would take your PostScript file and feed it
into a Linotronic or similar imagesetter machine costing umpty-thousands
of pounds, hence the higher charges.
6.12
While the inherent quality of bromides (being a photographic process) is
quite good, the finished result can only be as good as the original
camera-ready copy. So it’s important to print on fine-quality paper, to
minimise laser toner ‘splatter’ or bubblejet inks running into each
other or the paper.
6.12
Some time ago in Acorn User, someone recommended Bromex brand paper. I
haven’t been able to find this but, almost by accident, discovered
System Insight’s FQS paper to be an excellent solution. Although it is
marketed as Final Quality Smooth Paper for inkjets, it’s useless on my
Canon BJC-800 bubblejet − but superb on my laser! It costs about 5p a
sheet, well worth the brass for the high-quality results. [Jim
Nottingham]
6.12
H. Creating a 32 bit application − Further to your hint on this topic in
Archive 6.9, I have a couple of comments to make.
6.12
The listing given on page 20 has two areas which might possibly cause
problems. It is suggested that the Basic program should be called
!RunImage. Unfortunately, the !Run file refers to this as RunImage, and
not !RunImage. There is also the line which uses the RunImage system
variable Obey$Dir to set the directory, prior to running the Basic
program. When the program is exited, the directory setting remains. (I
will come back to this later.)
6.12
Since the setting up of an application directory needs a minimum of disc
space, plus extra time in reading the sprite file, I would question the
need for this action unless (a)    there is a
need for a distinctive icon within a directory window or (b) the program
is going to read and/or write data files.
6.12
It is this second aspect which may well justify the setting up of an
application directory, as the files can then reside within the
directory. They are thus hidden from immediate sight. However, it is
assumed that they will be loaded/saved in a non-Wimp fashion. The
context was a simple Basic program. In the case in question on page 20,
the program would read and write files within the directory, but with
the problem of not resetting the directory on leaving the program.
6.12
Remaining within the context of a simple approach, I use an alternative
method. I use a !Run file with the following lines to set up a system
variable, e.g. prog$dir.
6.12
SET prog$dir <Obey$Dir>
6.12
RUN <prog$dir>.Myprog
6.12
Then when reading a data file, I use either:
6.12
Z%=OPENUP (“<prog$dir>.”+file$)
6.12
or
6.12
Z%=OPENUP (“<prog$dir>.”file)
6.12
where file$ holds the name of the data file, or its actual name is
“file”.
6.12
You can also use OSCLI to lock up, unlock, rename and delete. This means
that you can keep a backup, say “bfile”, which is updated automatically.
(However, there needs to be verification that bfile exists prior to
deleting it!)
6.12
OSCLI “DELETE <prog$dir>.”bfile$
6.12
OSCLI “RENAME <prog$dir>. ”file$+ “ <prog$dir>.”bfile$
6.12
Z%=OPENOUT (“<prog$dir>.”file $)
6.12
The advantage of this is that then when the program (or directory) is
moved to a new location, everything still works, while the actual
directory setting is not changed. [Paul Pibworth]  A
6.12
Genesis/Magpie Column
6.12
Paul Hooper
6.12
Sounds in multimedia
6.12
If there is one advantage of multimedia packages over conventional
books, it is the ability to include not only pictures and movement but
also sound. When I was at school, the only way to learn about birds was
to read a book, where you were informed that a blue tit’s song was
“Tsee, Tsee, ch-ch-ch-ch-ch”, “Si-si- si” (Observers’ Book of Birds,
1960). Now, with multimedia, you can record a blue tit and place the
resulting sound sample on the page, so that the bird can ‘sing’.
6.12
Sound can also be used in other ways, for example, I recently saw a
Magpie binder that taught young children the phonetic sounds and the
names of letters. Adventures can have recorded sound effects, words can
be spoken and musical instruments can be ‘played’. As an example, I have
put together a binder of pages containing sound effects on this month’s
disc.
6.12
Sound sampling for multimedia
6.12
Without a doubt, one of the best investments for anyone thinking of
adding sounds to their binders is the Oak Recorder microphone which, for
£48 through Archive, provides you with a microphone which can be
attached to the printer port. Using this you can import sounds into your
binder, either by speaking into the microphone direct or placing it near
a sound source. Using the birds’ binder as an example, I recorded the
samples onto a portable tape recorder and then held the microphone near
the speaker of the tape recorder. (A direct link is available on the Oak
Recorder II so you could take the output straight from an audio output.)
There are also many sound samples in the PD libraries which can be used
for your binders. Beware of copyright problems though as the law is very
complex. If in doubt, don’t use it! Another useful PD program is
!SampConv which allows you to turn almost any form of sound sample into
Armadeus samples which the two programs will accept. All I’m waiting for
now is a PD program which will convert Soundtracker into Maestro format!
6.12
Music in multimedia
6.12
Maestro files can be used in multimedia, either as background music or
to illustrate a particular style or point. But beware of over-use − a
few soft background musical pieces can be inspiring but don’t go
overboard with a different piece for every page! Soundtracker tunes
cannot be used in Magpie, but I have yet to try to incorporate them in
Genesis. From the script book, it appears that you should be able to run
them but if any one has managed this, please let me know. Both packages
allow you to play CDs from within them, but as I don’t yet have a CD-ROM
drive, I am unable to comment on them.
6.12
Sounds within Magpie
6.12
When you drag a sound sample onto a Magpie page, it is replaced with a
loudspeaker icon with a couple of sound waves emerging from it. Playing
the sample is just a matter of clicking on the icon. The icon can be
resized and also placed behind an object. You can make an object speak.
In the disc example, on page 2, the cow moos when clicked, the word
‘Cow’ says ‘cow’ when clicked. The letters say the names. So long as you
keep things consistent from page to page, most people will pick it up
quickly.
6.12
Magpie pages can be ordered to play sounds automatically when they are
opened. Using <menu> over a Magpie page, choose the Preferences sub menu
and click on the “Play sounds/movies” radio icon. Save the page and
then, next time you open it, the sound will be played automatically. You
can play two or more sound samples using this method but they are played
in the order that you place them on the page, so the first placed gets
played first. Again these icons can be hidden or displayed on the page.
6.12
Sounds within Genesis
6.12
The more powerful facilities of Genesis allow you more flexibility.
Sounds can use the original Armadeus icons or can be dropped into frames
that already contain other information so that when they are clicked,
the sample is played. There is no need to hide sound samples as in
Magpie. This allows the application to react to what the user does.
Sound samples can also be set to play on open or can be timed so that
they play after the page has opened. This can be done by defining a
blank backdrop using this to play the sample as follows:
6.12
DEF BACKDROP
6.12
DRAW “”
6.12
AFTER 10 SECONDS BEGIN PLAYSAMPLE “Zulu2”
6.12
NEXT
6.12
CLOSE END
6.12
END BACKDROP
6.12
The sample being played here is Zulu2 and is switched on after 10
seconds. The sample is then played for about 15 seconds and the next
page is opened and this page is then closed.
6.12
Conclusion
6.12
Experimentation with sound samples and music in multimedia produces some
quite interesting and impressive results − this is what places
multimedia above the text book. Many of the applications that I have
seen, or produced myself, have made little use of sound. Sound is such
an important sense that better use should be made of it in the
multimedia world.
6.12
The Swap Shop
6.12
After the suggestion that Magpie and Genesis were suitable for an
adventure game, (6.9 p58) I have been sent a rather good adventure by
Robert Williams about a Confederate Scout during the American Civil War.
This has been added to the catalogue. This excellent application shows
off Genesis’ ability to interact with the user. At one point during the
game, a window pops up and asks you for the password. If you don’t give
the right reply, you are marched off and shot as a spy!
6.12
Also accepting my challenge was Elaine Jones who, rather than just write
an adventure, has actually managed to write a ‘mind’ game on Genesis
called ‘Knight’s Challenge’. This game has shown me a way of making
‘solitaire’ type games on Genesis and I hope to develop a games
compendium based on this.
6.12
Also added to the list this month is Animal Alphabet, an application
developed for my local playgroup to teach children the basic names and
phonetics of the letters. Once this application is started, the whole
thing is totally mouse driven and the keyboard can be put to one side.
Having tested this with a group of 20 four year olds, I was quite amazed
at the speed with which the children picked up the use of the mouse.
6.12
Next month
6.12
Next month, I will be looking at ‘skeleton’ pages in Magpie and the way
to recreate them in Genesis. In the meantime, if you have any
suggestions or queries concerning either program, or if you have an
application/binder that you want to swop then drop me a line: Paul
Hooper, 11 Rochford Road, Martham, Great Yarmouth, NR29 4RL.
(0493−748474)  A
6.12
Wimp Programming in C − Part 1
6.12
Remo Biagioni
6.12
This is the first article in a series concerned with using the wimp from
C. My own background in programming was very much concerned with writing
short code to solve a particular problem, and I have only very recently
turned my attention to the wimp. So rather than attacking this series as
an expert, I aim to discuss the problems that I’ve had to cope with and
demonstrate how they were either solved or side-stepped. As ever, any
suggestions for future articles, or specific problems will be gratefully
accepted.
6.12
Assert
6.12
Those of you who are experienced C programmers, will no doubt have used
the assert macro. For the uninitiated, assert is part of the standard C
library, and is used to document code. It takes as a parameter a boolean
expression. If the value of the parameter is false (i.e. zero) then
assert will terminate the program with a diagnostic message. However, if
the macro NDEBUG is defined at the point where the header file assert.h
is included in the code, the assert statement is effectively ignored
(the preprocessor treats it as comment). To demonstrate its use,
consider the following code
6.12
/* c.Example1:: This program shows the way that the WIMP informs the
user of an assert error.*/
6.12
#include <assert.h>
6.12
#include “h.wimpt”
6.12
int main()
6.12
{wimpt_init("example1") ; /* Tell
6.12
     the wimp that we
6.12
 are here */
6.12
  assert(1==0);
6.12
}
6.12
This will provide a nice little dialogue box explaining that example1
has suffered a fatal internal error and must exit immediately. If you
are really lucky, slightly to the left of this window, you will see the
message:
6.12
***assertion failed: 1==0, file c.Example1,line 10.
6.12
Which is what the C standard states that assert must do. The previous
message (fatal internal error ...) is actually produced by the abort
function which is called by assert. What I’m going to explain is how to
get the message produced by assert into a window.
6.12
The standard C library
6.12
One of the nicer aspects of C is that it is powerful enough to write
most of its own library in C. This is in marked contrast to, say, Pascal
or Fortran. This makes it relatively easy to rewrite any part of the C
library to tailor it to your own personal requirements. I will
demonstrate this by rewriting assert to make it function better under
the wimp.
6.12
Werr
6.12
In the RISC OS library that comes with version 4 of Acorn’s C compiler,
is a function called werr. This is used to produce error messages,
together with an OK icon. The function takes, as a parameter, an integer
and a message. The message is displayed and the boolean variable governs
the behaviour of werr. If this variable is zero, the program continues,
otherwise the program is terminated. Clearly, this is similar to assert.
Thus, werr is a suitable candidate to be used with assert. Note also
that no work is required by the programmer to declare a window − all
this is done by the library.
6.12
NDEBUG
6.12
As previously mentioned, NDEBUG is the macro which governs the exact
behaviour of assert. According to the C standard, if the macro NDEBUG is
defined at the time that the header file associated with assert is
#included in the code then assert is ignored, otherwise the parameter is
evaluated and assert called. This allows for assert to be used in the
same file with different values for NDEBUG each time. The value of using
assert with NDEBUG defined is that a debugging comment is left within
the code without delaying it at run time. Thus, in the final version of
any piece of code using assert, NDEBUG should be defined. Note that it
can be defined by the following preprocessor directive:
6.12
#define NDEBUG
6.12
and undefined by:
6.12
#undefine NDEBUG.
6.12
The assert header
6.12
Consider the following code:
6.12
/* h.WimpAssert :: header file for the assert macro to be used with the
Wimp.*/
6.12
#undef assert
6.12
/* Now if assert has already been defined, i.e. an assert header has
already been #included, then the original version is ignored, so that
the present value of NDEBUG can be examined and assert can be expanded
depending on this, rather than on any previous value. If assert has not
been previously defined, this command does nothing. */
6.12
#ifndef __assert__h
6.12
#define __assert__h
6.12
#endif
6.12
/* The above code has been added so that this header can be used in
conjunction with Acorn’s header. So both versions can be used by the
same code in different places. _assert_h is the secret name used by
Acorn to decide if an assert header has already been defined.*/
6.12
#ifdef NDEBUG
6.12
#define assert(ignore) ((void)0)
6.12
/* So if NDEBUG has been defined assert is replaced by a
6.12
 void function. */
6.12
#else
6.12
/*Here NDEBUG has not been defined, so assert has
6.12
 to do something. */
6.12
void __WimpAssert(char *);
6.12
#define __SR(x) __VL(x)
6.12
#define __VL(x) #x
6.12
#define assert(test) ((test) ? (void)0  : __WimpAssert (“Assertion ”
#test “ failed at line ” __SR(__LINE__) “ of file ” __FILE__ ))
6.12
#endif
6.12
(The penultimate line, starting “#define assert”, is one long, single
line. Ed.)
6.12
Hopefully, the comments in the code are self-explanatory. In effect,
this header file instructs the preprocessor to replace any reference to
assert by a void function if NDEBUG is defined, otherwise it is replaced
by a call to __WimpAssert. The macros and functions used in this header
are all prefixed by __, as this is a standard method of denoting a
function internal to a library, and is not a function designed to be
used by the end user. These are sometimes called secret names. The
macros __FILE__ and __LINE__ are defined by the preprocessor and are
replaced by the filename and the line number respectively, at the point
where they are included. The two macros defined above SR and VL are used
to transform the value of __LINE__ into a string.
6.12
__WimpAssert
6.12
Consider the following:
6.12
/* c.WimpAssert :: The _WimpAss-ert function. */
6.12
#include “wimpassert.h”
6.12
#include “h.werr” /* From the RISC OS library */
6.12
#define FATAL 1
6.12
void __WimpAssert(char *msg)
6.12
{werr(fatal ,msg);
6.12
}
6.12
This simple function provides the call to werr. The reason that a call
to werr could not be made from the header file is that this would mean
that the line
6.12
#include “h.werr”
6.12
would need to be in the header, and thus werr would be defined within
the end user’s code. In the case of werr, this would probably already be
the case but it still remains bad practice. Also, the name werr might
have been used by another function, providing a clash. The method used
above means that the client program is only aware of assert.
6.12
Note that any code using wimpassert, must be linked with o.wimpassert.
6.12
Now try Example1 again, replacing the line,
6.12
#include <assert.h>
6.12
by
6.12
#include “h.wimpassert”
6.12
and note the difference.  A
6.12
Word Processing, Pure and Simple
6.12
Elwyn Morris
6.12
What do you want from a word processor? I, personally, only require a
little more than a glorified typewriter. I need to produce presentable
letters quickly via an inkjet. Alternatively, linked to a dot-matrix
printer, I write, and later easily edit, complex lecture notes, or
whatever, for my own use.  The main requirement of the word processor is
that it should use the printer’s own fonts instead of the Acorn outline
font which means that copy is produced quickly.
6.12
So what is currently available to do this? I would suggest that there is
little more than in Beeb days. Interword is still a near ideal answer
although this program has never been properly upgraded to take advantage
of the Archimedes’ capabilities. PipeDream, also pre-Archimedes, has
gone further down the RISC OS multi-tasking road and Arnor tell me that
ProText is soon to go even further. There is another processor,
EasiWord, in the same group but, unfortunately, my personal experiences
with Minerva means I know nothing about it.
6.12
I find that a real advantage in processors which grew from low-memory
beginnings is that they employ multi-file facilities. Short files can be
loaded separately and quickly but a group can still be printed as one
large file. Perhaps PipeDream is less good at this than Interword in
that it does not remember page numbering or formatting commands when
they differ from the default.
6.12
As far as the presentation of the page on screen is concerned, I prefer
Interword. The cursor always remains at mid-point on screen and allows
text on each side to be read for editing without having to scroll up and
down. Equally, by showing the amount of unused page on screen, Interword
makes it easy to decide where to make a page break or how to lay out
notes to allow best for existing page breaks. All my examples, unlike
most PC word processors, allow for word-checking as you type − a
facility I find essential with my poor typing abilities. Interword
requires a second dictionary program to enable it to do this but this
can be on ROM where it does not wear out a disc drive. PipeDream’s
dictionary can be loaded into memory to save disc use as well. Automatic
formatting is another “must” for me. Here, Interword wins hands down.
Neither Pipe-Dream nor ProText totally reformat automatically in all
cases.
6.12
As processors develop, more and more facilities are implemented by
special key-presses. InterWord does not attempt very much so the key
pattern is simple to learn. PipeDream makes it easy for the user to
choose his own key-press preferences. ProText has a more complex
hierarchy but this can be learnt quite quickly and key formats can be
changed to user’s preferences but less easily than can PipeDream’s.
6.12
On support and development, only one of my preferences looks set for
advancement. Interword seems to have been jettisoned in preference for
Impression. PipeDream may be about to be replaced by a new “Z” range
although I think Colton will continue to support PipeDream. ProText is a
different story. Arnor remains a front-runner in PC word processor
development and say that they are upgrading their Acorn version very
soon. I simply hope they do not go the Colton “Z” range way and move
over totally to the use of outline fonts.
6.12
Probably a very personal requirement is that a word processor should be
able to run under both RISC OS and MS_DOS. It is unrealistic to talk of
conversion of files via ASCII or whatever when a major part of my
documentation relies heavily on indenting and paragraphing as well as
underlining. It is also unrealistic to expect existing PC users to
convert to Acorn machines overnight, however superb the Acorn machines
are or may become. Therefore, for people like myself, the use of word
processing packages which can “port” information between home and office
machines are a god-send. PipeDream and ProText do this.
6.12
So, to sum up, what do I recommend as a true word processor which is not
trying to be a DTP package (or, conversely, a DTP package masquerading
as a word processor)? I would have to say that I know nothing of
Easiword. I would then say that I have used Interword, on its own, for
the first three years that I had an Archimedes and that I now use it in
tandem with PipeDream. I have found PipeDream different, even
idiosyncratic, because of its history (I also use it as a simple but
highly competent database) but superb when its oddities are mastered. I
would also say that I have used ProText for the past few weeks and find
it a very sophisticated processor. Nor would I forget to mention the PC-
Archimedes connection.  A
6.12
Using RISC OS 3.1
6.12
Hugh Eagle
6.12
SCSI problems
6.12
Barry Thompson found one day that he was unable to access the hard
drive, an Oak Worra Winnie 45Mb on an A340 with RISC OS 3.11. The error
message, ‘Disc not understood – has it been formatted?’ came into view.
On Oak’s advice, he refitted RISC OS 2 and the message became ‘Bad free
space map.’ Adrian Look’s !FixMap was unable to help, so the disc had to
be reformatted and, of course, all the data was lost. Someone at Oak
suggested to Barry that SCSI can be less reliable with RISC OS 3 than
with RISC OS 2 and recommended doing a *Checkmap every couple of days
and, if errors were reported, to back everything up and reinitialise the
disc.
6.12
Synonymous pathnames
6.12
Mick Day writes, “I wrote some time ago that the operating system did
not check for synonymous valid references to the RAMDisc pathnames. This
is, in fact, more general. If full and accurate pathnames are always
used, this is no problem; and where removable media are concerned, it is
probably necessary. However, comparison of the ‘Bytes free’ or a CRC
number could have largely eliminated this. Alternatively, if an
abbreviated Disc Spec was given, the filer could have filled it in
completely and thus discovered identical manifestations of filer
windows! It does no harm, but is confusing. If you set the pathnames for
your harddisc in the following short program:
6.12
*Filer_OpenDir RAM::RamDisc0.$
6.12
*Filer_OpenDir RAM::0.$
6.12
*Filer_OpenDir RAM:$
6.12
*Filer_OpenDir SCSI::HardDisc4.$ | set these
6.12
*Filer_OpenDir SCSI::4.$| names to
6.12
*Filer_OpenDir SCSI:$| your system
6.12
*Filer_OpenDir ADFS::MCDay.$
6.12
*Filer_OpenDir ADFS::0.$
6.12
END
6.12
you will find, on running, three identical filer windows on the screen
for RAMDisc, three for Fixed disc and two ADFS floppy! I think this is
sloppy implementation, akin to not checking the disc before issuing
‘Free’!”
6.12
Top bit set characters
6.12
Mick Day uses a Star LC10 mainly for address labels. The dip switches
set it to the Epson character set. However, he sometimes needs to use
top-bit characters in foreign addresses. He thus has implemented a
complete look-up table for the characters 160-255, trying as near as
possible to get the Latin1 set. He says that, interestingly, it is
possible to dodge about and use the IBM set in addition to the Epson
set! The Basic program $.Latin1 on the monthly program disc summarises
it; anyone with a Star LC10 should be able to get it going. It might
work on some others as well.
6.12
Form feeds
6.12
Mick Day also writes: “I have spent a lot of time trying to stop the
PDriver module or its front end from issuing formfeeds. I would rather
decide for myself when the paper is to be thrown out onto the desk. Am I
missing some glaring instruction or is it really impossible to configure
this simple option? I experimented further with !Printers after reading
Tim Nicholson’s article (Archive 6.10 pp 43-47), but got no further. I
suspect that the formfeed is done by PDriver; I have set the printer
configure to the start sequence instead of the end and removed the
formfeed character, but all to no avail. It means that if you drag a
single address to print on labels, you need a specific Printer with a
page length of 9 − a sledgehammer to crack a nut! I want one driver for
the printer which does what I tell it. Can anyone tell me definitively
if the terminal formfeed is configurable or not? Otherwise I could be
experimenting until I die!”
6.12
Testing a printer’s on-line status
6.12
(See Archive 6.11 p51) Mick Day says that he prefers the following
routine to the one published last month (which he says is slower and
escape can interrupt it):
6.12
DEF FNCheckPrinter
6.12
*FX 5,1
6.12
*VDU 2,1,0
6.12
SYS “OS_Byte”,152,3 to ;f%
6.12
f%=f%AND2
6.12
*FX 21,3
6.12
VDU 3
6.12
*FX 5,5
6.12
=f%
6.12
(I’m no expert in these matters, but I believe that the *FX 5,1 only
applies if your printer is connected to the parallel port and the *FX
5,5 might have unwanted effects if your system is set up differently
from Mick’s – HE.)
6.12
He adds that the important point to emphasise is that “the fundamental
difference between earlier Acorn systems and RISC OS 3.1 is that, in
RISC OS 3.1, once you have issued a VDU 3 or equivalent, you are dead!
You can only switch the printer on or press <esc> (if it is enabled).
Page 18 of the Release Notes specifically refers to freezing when
attempting to print to ‘non-existent’ printers. They could have been
much more helpful here in only a few words. I wonder how many man-months
of time-wasting this has generated?”
6.12
AZERTY keyboard
6.12
Mick Day says that, try as he might, he cannot get an AZERTY keyboard
with *Country/*Language/*Keyboard France. He knows of at least one
Belgian colleague who was impressed by his Archimedes but who did not
buy one because he could not get the keyboard he wanted. (We have a
couple of modules that get round this problem − for French and German,
anyway − they are on this month’s program disc.)
6.12
The following are taken from extracts from recent Acorn Customer Service
Newsletters which Barry Thompson has kindly forwarded:
6.12
RISC OS 3 CMOS problems
6.12
There have been a number of reports of systems not powering up properly.
Acorn suspect this is due to rogue CMOS RAM settings which occurred
while the system was used with RISC OS 2 and they “strongly recommend
that a ‘Delete-power-on’ is performed before the RISC OS 2 upgrade is
removed. This will ensure that CMOS RAM locations now used by RISC OS 3
are set correctly.”
6.12
First Word Plus ‘Window Definition’ error
6.12
If First Word Plus issues the message ‘Window definition will not fit’,
a ‘Delete power on’ will cure the problem (but may well, of course,
corrupt other CMOS settings)!
6.12
Maximum DOS partition sizes
6.12
DOSFS only supports DOS hard disc partitions up to 32Mb. If you create a
larger DOS partition, it will not be possible to access it from the RISC
OS desktop environment.
6.12
DOS partitions larger than 32Mb can only be accessed from within the PC
card or PC Soft (i.e. PC emulator) environment. Therefore, if you wish
to transfer files between a large DOS partition and a RISC OS based
filing system, this should be done via floppy disc(s) or another
(smaller) DOS partition.
6.12
Windows driver with the Acorn 486 card
6.12
Following on from the last point ...
6.12
The Windows Driver disc supplied with the PC card is in Acorn ADFS
format. So, if you have created a DOS partition which is larger than 32
Mb, it will not be possible to use the procedure outlined in the PC Card
User Guide to copy the file on this disc to the DOS partition. Instead,
you should use the following procedure:
6.12
– From within the RISC OS desktop, format a blank floppy disc to 720Kb
DOS format.
6.12
– Click <select> on the floppy disc drive icon to open a Filer window
showing the contents of the root directory of the DOS format floppy (at
this stage it will be empty).
6.12
– Remove the DOS floppy and insert the Windows Driver disc. Click
<select> again and copy the file ARMVGA/DRV from the Windows Driver disc
to the DOS floppy.
6.12
– Start the !PC Card  application.
6.12
– Insert the DOS floppy again.
6.12
– At the DOS prompt type:
6.12
copy a:*.* C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM
6.12
to copy the correct Windows driver for use with the PC card into the DOS
partition.
6.12
– Load the \WINDOWS\SYSTEM.INI file into the DR DOS text editor by
typing at the DR DOS prompt:
6.12
C:\DRDOS\EDITOR C:\WINDOWS\ SYSTEM.INI
6.12
– Use the cursor keys to move down to the line that reads:
6.12
display.drv=vga.drv
6.12
and change it to read:
6.12
display.drv=armvga.drv
6.12
– Save the modified file by holding down <ctrl> and pressing <K> and
then <Q>. Then press <escape> to return to the DR DOS prompt.
6.12
– The new driver will be loaded the next time you start Windows, and a
different hourglass shape will indicate its presence.
6.12
MEMC1a or no MEMC1a
6.12
The following short command can be used from within Basic to find out
whether a MEMC1a chip is fitted:
6.12
PRINT ?274 AND 1
6.12
If the result is 1 then a MEMC1a is fitted.
6.12
RISC OS 4 Wish List (continued)
6.12
The following are from Richard Burnell:
6.12
•    Shutdown – Include an “are you sure” window after you press <ctrl-
shift-F12> with an option to cancel the Shutdown, in case you press it
by accident.
6.12
•    Unlimited directories – Allow more than 77 files in a directory.
6.12
•    Filer windows – Allow file icons to be positioned where you want them
(as on an Apple Macintosh).
6.12
•    Other disc formats – Include another extension to the filing system to
allow the reading and writing of Amiga and BBC B discs.
6.12
•    Outline fonts – Allow unfilled outlines to be printed (without having
to convert them to paths in !Draw first) as you can in Windows on PCs.
6.12
•    !Draw and !Edit should warn you when you try to save files with names
that already exist.
6.12
•    !Draw – When you drag selected objects, it would be helpful to see the
shape of the objects moving (as you do in Artworks), not just the
bounding box.
6.12
•    !Edit – should allow the option not to strip line numbers to be saved
in the configuration.
6.12
•    Printer buffer – Provide one that allows background printing. (Richard
observes that this was advertised as a feature in the pre-release
RISC OS 3 reviews and finds it surprising that Acorn haven’t yet
released “a working printer buffer module”.)
6.12
Finally, a point from Roger King. A similar suggestion has been made
before but it is worth repeating:
6.12
•    Distinguishing non-ADFS discs – When a non-ADFS disc (e.g. a DOS disc)
is mounted, the disc drive icon on the iconbar should change to a
different colour. (Some form of indication like this is particularly
important because the directory names in Filer windows for DOSFS, as for
other “image filing systems”, are prefixed ADFS!) Roger receives many
discs through the post and increasingly often he finds that the discs
are DOS format, presumably because people buy them pre-formatted. The
great snag in using DOS discs in the Acorn environment is the shorter
length of filename allowed. Roger often checks and modifies files sent
to him, then saves them back to the same disc with a “U” (for “Updated”)
tacked onto the end of the filename. If the original file has a name 8
characters long and is on a DOS disc this results in the original file
being overwritten by the updated file since the “U” is discarded from
the filename!  A
6.12
!FasterPC Emulator
6.12
Brian Cowan
6.12
It came as somewhat of a surprise to me to discover that someone had
decided to produce a software PC emulator to rival the Acorn product.
When it transpired that the price of the product was a modest £19.95
(direct from David Lawrence, 33 High Street, Farnborough, GU14 6ES) − I
had to see it for myself. To be fair, FasterPC does not claim to be a
replacement for Acorn’s PCem, rather it is described as a “second string
to one’s bow”. What the product does claim is that the screen driver is
much faster and the sound simulation, pathetic in PCem, is quite
faithful. Subject to certain limitations, which I will describe,
FasterPC does live up to these claims.
6.12
Pedigree
6.12
FasterPC was written by David Lawrence who cut his teeth in the
emulation game by writing an emulator for the Sinclair Spectrum,
although this was never released into the public domain as the ROM image
is the property of Sinclair.
6.12
What it does
6.12
FasterPC takes over the whole machine − it does not multitask in a
window, but it allows you to return to the desktop by pressing <alt> and
<menu> together. As with the Acorn PC emulator, you can use PC
partitions on your hard disc. You can create these partitions and,
unlike the Acorn product, FasterPC allows the use of four hard disc
“drives”. The product supports modes from CGA, VGA and Tandy graphics
adaptors, but more of that later. A Microsoft compatible mouse driver is
also supplied.
6.12
I was very interested to see that there is an option to turn on or off
implementation of the ’186 op-codes. So you can choose whether to
emulate an 8086 or an 80186.
6.12
Versions
6.12
Currently, the software disc contains version one and version two of
FasterPC. The implemented improvements in version two are the ability to
re-enter FasterPC without re-booting, implementation of the
unidirectional printer port at hardware level and the provision of the
real-time clock. A future version should give hardware implementation of
the serial port.
6.12
Monitor support
6.12
There is a problem with the currently released versions of FasterPC in
driving various “high quality” monitors. The emulator works fine with
the old standard resolution monitors and with the multisync monitor on
the A5000, but I could not get the screen display to lock using an Eizo
9070 or with a Taxan 795, both using VIDC enhancers. Also, it would not
work with the LCD display of my A4. However, I have told Mr Lawrence of
these difficulties and he is currently working to rectify them. I have a
pre-release version which does run on my A4 and the other problems
should be sorted shortly.
6.12
My impression
6.12
The present versions still do not support many of the features of the
Acorn Emulator such as GETFILE and PUTFILE, exporting text and graphics
screens and HD floppy disc support. However, many of these should come
in the future.
6.12
If you are interested in playing PC games on an Archimedes without the
luxury of a PC card then FasterPC is a must. If you run a lot of non-
Windows software and, if you use Acorn’s PC emulator a lot, you should
consider buying FasterPC. Using it on my A4 definitely gave DOS programs
a faster “feel”. In its present form, FasterPC is certainly not a
replacement for the Acorn product but it is a very useful and cost-
effective addition.  A
6.12
LinkWord Spanish
6.12
Neil Hutchinson
6.12
Linkword Spanish is produced by Minerva Software. French and German
equivalents are also available. It is priced at £39.95 (+VAT) or £44
through Archive.
6.12
Linkword Spanish is supplied on one floppy disc which is not protected,
enabling simple backup or installation onto hard disc. It is accompanied
by a pronunciation cassette on which all vocabulary is recorded (this is
an integral part of the course). There is a manual, but this is only
eight pages in length, (four of which are taken up by a glossary of
words used. The manual covers the installation of the program, which is
multitasking, and its basic use. Apart from the glossary, it would only
be needed when starting out. Instructions appear on the screen as to how
the course should be used.
6.12
Background
6.12
For those who wish to delve into the theory behind the program, I would
suggest the following two articles:
6.12
M M Gruneberg and P E Morris ‘Applying memory research’, and M M
Gruneberg ‘The practical application of memory aids’. These both appear
in Gruneberg and Morris (eds.) Aspects of Memory: Volume 1 (2nd ed.)
(London, 1992).
6.12
However, I shall attempt to summarise the basic theory. The assimilation
of vocabulary in a foreign language is improved by the association of
the foreign word with an image or activity conjured up by the word’s
sound in English. For example, in Spanish, the word for bed is cama
(pronounced [kama]) and we are asked to imagine a camel lying on the
bed. If such imagery is not your ‘cup of tea’ then this program will not
be to your taste either. However, the theory is generally accepted as
experimentally proven.
6.12
Using the program
6.12
The program is divided into sections, according to subject area: for
example, ‘Home/Hotel’, ‘In the restaurant’, ‘Shopping and Business
words’. Each section is further divided into sub-sections and there is a
review test at the end of each sub-section. It has to be emphasised that
the course must be followed in the correct sequence and according to the
instructions.
6.12
Having read some of Michael Gruneberg’s work in the past, I fully
expected the program to utilise the computer’s capabilities to actually
produce pictures of the requested images. I was disappointed that the
requested image is merely described in text. It is left to the user to
picture the image in his/her mind.
6.12
The format of the review test is to present the vocabulary on screen and
request the meaning to be typed in. This test is conducted both from
Spanish to English and vice versa. I was surprised that there was not
the facility to enter accented characters and was disappointed that the
program is only designed to present the correct answer on screen for
comparison with your own answer. There is, for example, no on-screen
total of correct answers. At the end of each section, users are referred
to the cassette for pronunciation practice, listening and repeating the
words covered in the particular section.
6.12
There are three on-screen icons which are used during the presentation
of new vocabulary: ‘forward’, ‘back’ and ‘clock’. The first is to enable
the presentation of the next word, accompanied by the instructions for
the necessary image. The second enables a review of previous sections.
The ‘clock’ icon repeats the function of the ‘forward’ icon, but with a
built-in 10-second delay, during which the image for the vocabulary item
is held in the mind and memorised. This is a vital part of the theory
and function of the program, and indeed of Gruneberg’s theories of
memory aids in general.
6.12
Conclusions
6.12
Computer Linkword first appeared almost a decade ago (for PCs). The
present program appears to be a smartened-up version of the original
(which I have not seen). It is an interesting way for the individual
student (adult or teenager) to learn some basic language. However, I
have to say that if I were faced with advising a potential learner, with
a budget of around £40, Linkword Spanish would not feature very high on
my list of proposed purchases: basic language courses (with cassettes)
are available for less than £20 and would teach far more than this
program.  A
6.12
Days of Steam
6.12
Andrew Rawnsley
6.12
Days of Steam (written and marketed by UK Software) has been around for
at least 6 months but has only been reviewed in one magazine and has
received very little advertising.
6.12
The game itself is a simulation of railway management during the 1920s
through to the nationalization of the railways in 1948. You have the
choice of playing for 12 or 25 game years and there is a saved high
score table for both.
6.12
The fact that the game is set in this period only affects the appearance
of the trains, so it lacks the period feel of some historic simulations.
6.12
It is important to understand that the game doesn’t set out to be an
accurate historical simulation, rather an enjoyable family game that
merges strategy, simulation and profit into the ever-popular world of
steam locomotives. As such, it certainly achieves its aims, although
individual simulations do take some time to complete if you play out the
full 25 years.
6.12
The game runs outside of desktop (a pity for this type of game) and its
main menu allows you to set various options such as the name of your
railway, whether or not you can change the fares per mile of your
railway and whether or not you must order new stock before it can be
used.
6.12
Another important option is the ARM 3 button. This allows the user to
tell the game whether or not he has an ARM 3. It will adjust the playing
speed accordingly. Unfortunately, on an ARM 3 machine, with the option
off, it all runs a little too fast, but if you tell it that you have an
ARM 3 it is not quite fast enough. An ARM 250 is just about right!
6.12
You must choose the level of difficulty at which you wish to play − this
determines how many rivers there are. Rivers must be bridged and this
costs £100,000 each time. Given that you start with only half a million
pounds with which to set up stations (£100,000 each), trains (at least
£50,000 each), goods yards (£65,000 each) and lay track (£625 − £1,125
per 10 miles), it becomes clear why increasing the number of rivers
makes the game harder.
6.12
However, your yearly bonus goes up the higher the skill level, and
exporting of goods can only take place at river ports. The game allows
you to have a £100,000 overdraft, but if you quickly produce a large
network, you soon wish you could borrow more!
6.12
To begin with, the main source of income is from passengers but once you
start to set up goods routes − to timber factories, brick works and
ports − you begin to make real money. You can see how your game is
progressing from the balance sheets and pie charts (both overall pie
charts and by station), and full information is given at the end of each
year. Unfortunately, this means that you can’t just leave the game
running and come back when the first 12 years are up, as it requires a
mouse click on an OK button at the end of each year.
6.12
The cities in the game (which can grow if your railway is making money)
come in three classes, and the laws governing where passengers of each
class will go, combined with goods transportation, lead to great
problems with timetabling. Fortunately, the game’s timetabling system is
fairly intuitive and flexible, whilst still retaining its power. Good
timetabling is an essential part of running a profitable railway and,
despite powerful facilities, it is still helpful to write down each
train’s timetable.
6.12
In-game options allow you to save and load (but not to/from hard disc,
although the main game will run from hard disc), set fares, order stock,
go to stations and locos, check orders, manually control trains (i.e.
now go to station ...) as well as checking your profits.
6.12
The graphics in the game are its biggest handicap, looking rather
amateurish, but this doesn’t spoil it too much. However, some goods
trains may take up to six game months to travel between stations, which
is rather unrealistic.
6.12
The author plans to start work on a new version later this year (once
the company’s next product is out of the way) which should cure the
weaknesses and introduce ‘Populous-style’ 3D graphics − but it is likely
to be some time before it is released.
6.12
At only £14.99 from UK Software (only available direct) Days of Steam
represents great value for money at a time when most Acorn games seem to
be pushing prices to the limit.  A
6.12
Flare with Fades
6.12
Tim Nicholson
6.12
Silica Software have released an enhanced version of their Flare
graphics package, complete with a new application called Fades, which is
a carousel facility for producing rolling displays of Flare and other
mode 15 pictures. Flare itself has been around for some time, indeed its
origins are in the pre RISC OS days. So what has the new release got to
offer?
6.12
Re-kindling an old flame?
6.12
Flare is a non-desktop graphics package, aimed squarely at the primary
education sector. It works in mode 15 only producing pictures 535 pixels
wide by 191 high. These may be stored either in an internal compressed
format or as standard Paint-type sprites. The software is supplied on a
single, unprotected, floppy disc which contains the main and ancillary
applications, updates to the manual and a selection of sample pictures.
It comes packaged with its manual in a vinyl folder.
6.12
The manual is for release 2.65 of Flare. Release notes refer to the new
features present from version 2.71 onwards and the actual software was
initially version 2.72, with an upgrade to 2.75 being supplied during
the course of evaluation for this review. It is nice to see that,
despite not being a new product, development of the software in response
to feedback from users is continuing. Direct support for RISC OS printer
drivers, a simple palette option and an improved installation procedure
are the main improvements in recent releases.
6.12
Parents’ and teachers’ overview
6.12
Manuals are often a last resort when trying to determine how to use a
particular package properly. This is a shame since although it is
usually possible to produce some results without reference to it, there
are often hidden functions which are best discovered by a thorough read.
Flare is no exception and it is worth reading the manual, which is laid
out in three sections, before leaping in at the deep end.
6.12
The introduction includes paragraphs on making working copies,
installing on a hard disc and coping with limited memory machines (1Mb).
There follows a tutorial covering the basic operations, and a reference
section with headings containing copies of the tool icons, followed by a
full description of each tool/menu and its uses. It is important to
refer to the release notes on the disc when first looking through the
manual since there are one or two significant changes in the latest
versions which render the manual incorrect. In particular, the manual
describes precautions to take in allocating screen memory before
attempting to load Flare. These are now redundant.
6.12
Double clicking on Flare in a filer window loads it onto the iconbar.
Once loaded, clicking on its icon exits the desktop and puts you into
Flare itself. Getting back to the desktop is simply a case of hitting
<escape>. You can toggle in and out of Flare in this way without losing
your current picture.  Once in Flare you are presented with a white
drawing area bordered by pull-down menu bar above, tools to the right
and colour palette below. Initially, this may be either the full 256
colour mode 15 selection or a 9 colour simple palette, using much larger
selection squares, suitable for younger children.
6.12
Switching between the two is achieved within the effects pull-down menu,
the default setting is presettable. This is an example of one of Flare’s
best features: customisation of the package to suit the abilities of
those using it. A separate pair of applications are provided to set up
the default status of various features and select which pull-down menu
items are available from the full set. Thus, younger children can have a
simple palette and “sticky menus” with few facilities until they are
more used to the package, whilst older users can start off with the full
works. Options in between should cope with most abilities.
6.12
The toolbox
6.12
The tools to the right of the drawing area consist of a selection of
shape drawing tools for lines, open or filled squares, rectangles,
circles, arcs, etc, together with a pencil for freehand work, a rubber
for correcting errors, and text, flood filling and pattern-editing
tools. Underneath the tools are a selection of brushes which include a
spray gun, user defined and “anti-alias” wash tools. The currently
selected tool is highlighted in inverse video. If brushes are selected
using the <menu> button instead of <select> then a window pops up to
enable sizing of the brush before use.
6.12
Menu masters
6.12
The pull-down menu bar contains four sets of menus under the headings of
area, effects, files and text. There is also an undo icon for undoing
the last operation although you can’t undo an undo (redo). The area menu
allows the usual range of cut, paste, copy, rotate, scale and flip
operations to be performed on a marked area as well as more subtle
effects like lightening or darkening, pixillating and anti-aliasing to
be applied.
6.12
The effects menu allows selection of colour-mixing logic to be used
(colour, inverse, AND, OR etc), filled or outline shapes, palette type,
cursor type (normal or cross hair) and gridlock on/off. The Files menu
allows the usual loading, saving and deletion of files, as well as
printer dumps of pictures using built-in drivers for Citizen Swift 9 or
24 pin or Integrex 132 printers. If any standard RISC OS driver has
previously been loaded then this may be used directly from within this
menu. The text menu allows different text styles to be applied such as
bold, italics underline, etc. These are applied to the system font, as
there is no support for outline fonts.
6.12
Flare do
6.12
So much for the facilities, but how do they work out in practice? In
fact, Flare is extremely straightforward to use. My 7 year old had no
difficulty in producing basic pictures straightaway, although he needed
frequent reminding, to start with, as to which tool did what. The fact
that tools behaved differently depending on which mouse button was used
to make the selection took a little getting used to and I have
reservations about the non-standard (in RISC OS terms) use of the mouse
buttons for some of the functions.
6.12
Having produced a Christmas tree by piling green triangles on top of
each other, he was able to greatly enhance it by means of the various
shading and texturing tools. The anti-alias wash proved to be effective
at making the picture look less “electronic”. It works by adding an
intermediate colour between the junctions of two different colours
effectively softening the join. In some cases, the intermediate colour
was darker than either of the other colours rather than being the
midpoint as it should have been. This could make the picture appear
darker overall but otherwise the effect worked well enough. Add some
sprayed-on snow, etc and an otherwise cardboard cut-out image is turned
into a real picture. Even the 3 year old wanted to have a go but
obviously required a great deal of help.
6.12
Of mice and children
6.12
Younger children tend to hold the mouse at an angle and then move it up
and down or left and right so that the cursor moves on a diagonal. When
accessing menus, the ability to make them “sticky”, i.e not disappear
when the cursor accidentally falls off the menu, but stay put until a
selection is made, proved invaluable. The simple 9-colour palette with
large colour blocks also proved to be a must since the main 256 colour
palette swatches are quite small.
6.12
A palatable mix
6.12
The 256 colour palette has the colours grouped together in blocks which
blend from one block to the other. There are one or two discontinuities
as would be expected from strips of colours rather than a colour
triangle but the approach generally seemed to work well. Both palettes
also have the pattern selections − there are eight default patterns
which are all editable and may be saved to disc. They are too small to
see properly on the selection grid but the currently selected colour or
pattern is shown in a large colour box to the right of the palette.
6.12
Up and down arrows allow for shading adjustments to the chosen colour in
a manner similar to the area options. However, because of the limited
number of bits used to describe mode 15 pixels, several steps of
lightening followed by the same number of steps of darkening will not
necessarily bring you back to your starting colour. In practice this is
unlikely to be a problem.
6.12
Hard copy, floppy copy
6.12
Once created, pictures can be printed or saved, in Flare format, to the
default directory. This means only a name is required for the picture
before it is saved, which keeps the user interface simple. It is also
possible to save a picture via Flare’s iconbar menu. This provides for
saving in either Flare or sprite format to any destination using the
RISC OS drag and drop technique. There is no scaling available on the
print options although the RISC OS format does at least allow for
different resolutions and greyscale sizes. Either way, the print output
comfortably fits on a sheet of A4.
6.12
Fading away
6.12
Having created some pictures, it was then a case of “Can we show mum?”
This is where Fades comes in. Unlike Flare, Fades runs in the desktop.
Double clicking on its filer icon loads the application to the iconbar.
Selecting this opens a small window into which Flare or mode15 sprites
may be dragged.
6.12
For each picture, a duration and fade type can be set and an optional
title text string may be added in any available outline font. Sixteen
different fade types are available or “random choice” may be set. These
fades are what, in television terms, would more properly be called
wipes. There is a selection of up and down, in and out, and left and
right effects together with random and raindrop patterns.
6.12
Changing your mind
6.12
Having created a sequence, it is possible to insert and delete pictures
and alter the parameters associated with them. The save option creates a
stand-alone application which, when double clicked, will run the
demonstration. This stand-alone application only contains information as
to where the pictures are stored and so an error will be produced at run
time if a picture cannot be found.
6.12
There is no need for all the pictures to be from the same directory, or
even the same media, since the full path name is used. After creating
the demonstration, a picture may be altered or even changed completely
without needing to touch this run-time application. If it needs editing,
it may be dragged to the Fades window and worked on.
6.12
This approach makes the whole set up very flexible and easy to use. When
creating the list of pictures, no validation check is made. If a non-
mode 15 sprite is used, the error will only be picked up at run time.
Sprites do not need to be full screen but may not be larger than full
screen − they will be displayed centred on a black background.
6.12
A picture’s worth a thousand words
6.12
For Flare pictures, any added text is displayed underneath the picture.
Full screen sprites have the text superimposed upon them in the
equivalent place. This plays havoc with the anti-aliasing of the fonts
and should be used with care. The resulting rolling demo is certainly
eye catching.
6.12
One trick is to save intermediate versions of a picture and then
sequence them together so the picture “grows” into the final version,
giving a simple animation effect. The demonstration may be set to run
once or loop indefinitely and has uses outside simply showing off Flare
pictures. It could, for example produce a rolling display from digitised
pictures of a school project for an open evening or the like.
6.12
In conclusion
6.12
Flare is not an all-singing, all-dancing, pixel-based graphics program.
It is designed as an educational tool with as straightforward a user
interface as possible. There are several art packages available these
days which are more powerful, at a price. For example, the Revelation
range, which is highly regarded in educational circles, is considerably
more powerful (although considerably more expensive). It is also aimed
at an older age range than Flare which is really designed as a package
to introduce children to computer painting. Some of the effects
available were surprising for what appears to be a relatively humble
package, and it is capable of producing very good pictures.
6.12
The Fades application provides a practical way of displaying these, and
other pictures, to good effect. At a combined price of £22 for
educational users, they represent good value for money. (£66 for a site
licence, £7 for an upgrade on return of old disc.)  The £29.30 home
users’ price is perhaps a less good deal considering its limited usage
outside the educational environment. However, as a purchase for one’s
children to follow up on work done at school, it may be worth
considering.
6.12
My 7 year old actually wanted to use it in preference to playing one of
the many games he has access to − now that must say something about the
package!
6.12
The software was tried out on both RISC OS 2 and RISC OS 3 on a variety
of platforms from a 2M A3010 to a 12M A540.
6.12
The only areas where I could fault it were the slight error in the anti-
aliasing routine, and the slightly non-standard use of mouse buttons.
Neither of these seemed to bother the children at all and certainly
don’t detract from an excellent package.  A
6.12
Paradroid 2000
6.12
Jean-Paul Hamerton
6.12
Paradroid 2000 is a Coin-Age conversion and costs £25.99 (£24 through
Archive). It was reviewed on a 1Mb A310 with hard disc. I first saw this
game in 1985 on a friend’s C64 and loved it, so as soon as it became
available on the Archimedes, I went out and bought it.
6.12
The plot
6.12
The year is 2390 AD and one of Earth’s colony worlds is under attack by
the Trimorg empire. To defend the colony, Earth has sent five freighters
filled with a cargo of the deadliest battle droids. All is fine until
the ships run into an uncharted asteroid belt. The droids become
activated and go haywire. The only way to get back control of the
freighters is to send the prototype droid, the Mark II Influence Device
(ID). As the ID, you are beamed on board the first freighter to destroy
all the other droids on the ship. To do this you have two weapons − a
small plasmabolt gun and the ability to take control of (or “hack into”)
other more powerful droids.
6.12
The package
6.12
The game comes on a single floppy and in a white video cassette box. The
disc is protected so you can’t put the game on your hard disc. There is
a single piece of paper with the instructions and some hints on how to
play the game. If you haven’t played Paradroid before, it would be a
good idea to read them.
6.12
The instructions are very basic but this isn’t a problem as it is quite
fun to learn what you have to do. On a 1Mb machine, you have to change
the screen mode to 12 and make 720Kb free before double-clicking on the
Paradroid icon. The screen goes blank for about 20 seconds then some
music starts and credits are printed on the screen. The music is a bit
strange at the beginning but it does get better. Press <fire> and the
game begins.
6.12
The game
6.12
As the ID, you are beamed on board the deck on the first ship. It gives
a plan view of the deck, so you can only see the top of the ID, which is
very dull because it is a hovering ball − this doesn’t matter as you
don’t stay as a ball for long. It can be moved in any direction but the
screen will only scroll up or down.
6.12
Different decks have different droids on them − some without any weapons
which you should be able to shoot without too many problems. Before long
though, you will most probably meet a droid with a blow torch − two hits
from this and you are dead! If you do get hit, however, there are
energisers on some of the decks which will then recharge your battery.
When you move onto an energiser, a circle of lights starts to rotate − a
very nice effect.
6.12
Transferring droids
6.12
The next thing to do is try to “hack into” a droid as this will give you
a bit of protection. When you are in a droid, if you get shot, it will
blow up the droid but not the ID. To do this you must hold down the fire
button for two seconds − a spark appears and then you move into another
droid.
6.12
The screen is cleared and a circuit is drawn. There is a row of 14 boxes
in the middle of the screen with wires coming from each side. What you
then have to do is move your pulsers down each wire and to fire at the
middle to change the colour of the boxes. This might sound easy but the
droid is going to do the same from the other side. The one with the most
boxes in their colour wins.
6.12
If you lose, your droid will blow up, so you will have to get the hang
of this pretty quickly. It’s not too hard with the easier droids as they
don’t have many pulsers, but the harder the droid, the more pulsers it
has. When you have been successful in transferring, the ID will slowly
move from the old droid to the new one, then the old droid will blow up.
6.12
Strategic information
6.12
There are lifts which will allow you to go from deck to deck and
computers to allow you to find out information about the ship or how
many droids are still on the deck. You will know when you are near a
computer console as a light will appear.
6.12
There is another option that allows you to get more information on the
droids that are of lower rank than yours. When you select this option,
press up/down and you can get some details on what the droid does, how
fast it can go and what weapons it has. Some of the droids have some
really nasty weapons: machine guns, flame throwers and even worse − but
I will leave you to find out the hard way.
6.12
As decks have different droids on them, you will soon learn the droids
to avoid until you get a better droid to use. When you are on a deck
with a really nasty droid, the combat can be very fast and furious. You
will have to decide on the best action, try to hack into it, stand and
fight or leg it − many times this is where get you killed.
6.12
Conclusion
6.12
I have been playing this game for about a month now. I have made it to
the fourth freighter but I still haven’t seen all the different droids.
The ability to take control of the other droids makes the game very
addictive. There is a lot of attention to detail − for example, if there
is a crate in front of you, you can’t see what is hiding behind it.
6.12
The graphics are straight forward but very detailed − the pictures on
the droid library are particularly good. The sound is very effective −
each weapon has a different noise. The music at the start has a good
beat after a while, but there is no music while the game is being
played. In any case, I always turn the music off after a while. The
whole screen is used instead of the two thirds used in other
conversions.
6.12
There are still some bugs: sometimes you go onto a cleared deck and
there is a droid there. Also, you can’t save the high scores.
6.12
As conversions go, I think Paradroid is one of the best. I found the
Archimedes version a bit easier than the Amiga one as you can get in the
999 droid and stay in it whereas, on the Amiga, you would be kicked out
after about 20 seconds. If you have enjoyed playing Paradroid on a
different computer, you will love this one. If you haven’t played
Paradroid before, but like to think about what you are shooting, then
this game is for you.  A
6.12
Creating and Managing Window Panes
6.12
Graham Crow
6.12
A pane is a window which is ‘fixed’ to another window, and this article
and the accompanying program, !Pane, will describe the purpose of panes
and explain how to use them in your own programs. Incidentally, Acorn
rather unhelpfully calls the main window the ‘tool’ window, but I shall
refer to it as the ‘parent’.
6.12
There are two main types of pane − examples can be found in Draw and
DrawPlus. Draw uses a pane containing the various drawing options
attached to the left hand side of its parent window. Note that, in this
case, the pane has no title bar or scroll bars. If you experiment, you
will see that the pane always moves with its parent, and overlaps it at
the left of the screen. If you scroll or resize the parent, the pane
remains exactly as it was; and if you close the parent, the pane is
closed too. Finally, notice that if you click <select> on one of the
pane icons, the parent gains the input focus (its title bar becomes
cream).
6.12
DrawPlus offers a library window which enables you to view a collection
of objects and import selections into your drawing. The parent library
window contains a pane in which appears a list of the object names. In
this case, the pane has a vertical scroll bar to enable the contents to
be scrolled if there are more items than would fit in the window. Note
that the vertical work area of the window (and hence the size of the
scroll bar) is automatically adjusted in accordance with the number of
objects in the window. The parent window has no scroll bars but does
have a title bar, including close, back and toggle-size icons. It is
this latter type that is created in the program Pane.
6.12
The example application !Pane
6.12
Double-clicking on the application !Pane installs its icon on the
iconbar and opens the parent and pane windows. Within the pane appears
some scrollable text which describes its features.
6.12
I shall now explain the relevant parts of the !RunImage.
6.12
In DEFPROCinit we have to dimension a block of memory of 36 bytes (DIM
pq% 36) to hold information about the pane. (The main block q% does the
same for the parent window.) We also need to describe the position of
the pane in relation to the parent by assigning the offset from the left
of the parent (pol%), the offset from the top of the parent (pot%), the
width (pw%) and the height (ph%). All values are in screen units.
6.12
DEFPROCloadtemplates creates the pane and parent windows from the file
Templates. This may be examined by loading it into FormEd. The window
flags for the pane require that the ‘movable’ bit is unset, and the
‘pane’ bit is set. Since the example displays text in the pane, the
‘auto-redraw’ bit is unset. There is a title bar (optional) and a
vertical scroll bar but no other ‘system area’ icons. Finally, a
writable icon has been added for demonstration purposes. The parent
window simply contains two icons, of which the upper will accommodate
the pane and the lower could be used for radio buttons or the like. The
window flags show that its ‘movable’ and ‘auto-redraw’ flags are set. It
has a title bar, with back and close icons, but no scroll bars.
6.12
There are two separate procedures for opening a window. DEFPROCow1()
handles any Open Window requests from the Wimp, for example when the
parent window is dragged. DEFPROCow2() opens a window at our own behest.
In this case, we need to call Wimp_GetWindowState, and set q%!28 to −1
to ensure our window is opened on the top of the stack.
6.12
Both these procedures check whether the window we are opening is the
parent and, if so, make a call to DEFPROCpane() which handles the
opening of the pane. The first step is to extract the visible area x and
y coordinates of the parent together with the window it is behind (b%).
Since the information about the parent is already in the block q%, the
data we want can be extracted from q%!4, q%!16 and q%!28.
6.12
Next, we call Wimp_GetWindowState to get information about the pane into
our special pane block (pq%). Before opening the pane, we need to place
it in the correct position in relation to the parent, and this is done
by setting its visible area coordinates by reference to the parent’s x,y
and the pane’s offsets, width and height. Then we set the ‘behind’ flag
to b% to ensure that it will be at the correct position in the stack
(i.e. behind the window behind which is the parent!). Finally − and this
is important − the parent must be opened behind the pane. This is
achieved by setting the parent’s ‘behind’ bit (q%!28) to pane%, before
returning to PROCow to open the parent.
6.12
This tortuous procedure ensures that the window redraw is performed
efficiently and that the pair of windows always behaves correctly, such
that they appear to the user as a single window.
6.12
The vertical work area extent of the pane is calculated from the size of
its contents and set by a call (in line 220) to DEFPROCsetextent.
6.12
Finally, there are two other procedures which are not used in the
demonstration, but which may be of value in your programs.
DEFPROCpaneforce simply forces a redraw of the pane should you need to
update its contents. DEFPROCpanescrolly() allows you to determine the
extent of vertical scrolling. The argument is negative or zero.
6.12
I hope the procedures described in this article will help to demystify
panes and enable you to take advantage of them in your programs. Panes
can certainly be effective, particularly when you have a lot of
tabulated information, such as an index, and you want to scroll the
data, while keeping the column headings fixed.  A
6.12
Precision
6.12
Bob Ames
6.12
Precision is a pupil reading/teacher marking program. It provides a
series of words for a child to read, first in a learning format and then
as a formal test. The teacher clicks different mouse buttons as the word
to indicate if it is correct or incorrect. The computer keeps the score.
The score can be viewed and saved or you can return to the learning
stage, for instance, for the next pupil. Individual records may be
printed, success with a word being shown as a slash, failure as a cross.
6.12
The Itemfiles (as word files are called) are built up using a special
input editor, small pictures can accompany the word to be read, or
swatches of colours can accompany names of the colours.
6.12
There are student files, which are updated as the activity progresses.
There is a record of which activity is done by which pupil, at which
times, (assuming the Archimedes clock is accurate) and the scores at
reading the tests are also kept.
6.12
The program may be started by double clicking on the rather academic-
looking ‘pince-nez’ icon in the directory. However, double clicking on
the pupil or item file puts the Precision icon on the iconbar but
doesn’t load the pupil or item file!
6.12
Installation on hard disc was no problem as there is no copy protection.
The two-sheet “manual” implores the owner to make two backups before
use. The use of an AOC multisync (with MonitorType3) showed no problems
either.
6.12
The program works well as far as it goes. New Era have provided a couple
of example files but if the use of pictures is chosen, a fair bit of
work will be required to achieve a full working set of word files − from
three to ten words (maximum ten letters) are allowed in each file.
However, I think most people would omit the tedium of drawing pictures
and use words unaccompanied.
6.12
I suspect that a school would find it easier to use than the more
traditional paper records of the past. However, it would be dependent on
there being a full set of files sold with the basic program, and
preferably included in the price of £20 (no VAT), otherwise the tendency
would be to stay with the previous (paper) system.
6.12
New Era have “a growing library of named pictures available at extra
cost” but I haven’t had a chance to look at them yet.  A
6.12
Spreadsheets Column
6.12
Chris Johnson
6.12
The long awaited release 2 of Eureka has now arrived. Longman Logotron
claim there are “over 100 enhancements and exciting improvements” on the
first release. All registered users should by now have received their
upgrade pack which consists of the software and a set of additional
pages for the manual. These pages also include an index, which removes
one of the common complaints about the earlier version. I have only had
the upgrade about three weeks and I have been away at meetings for most
of that time, so I have only had time to form a few first impressions.
Therefore, some of the following comments may be modified in the light
of further use. I hope to work through all the past correspondence I
have received in connection with this column to see how many of the “if
only” and “why doesn’t it” type comments have been satisfied.
6.12
Those who have received the upgrade will already be aware of the
numerous changes but there may be a number of Archive members out there
who have read the previous columns but have held off buying Eureka until
they see what the new version has to offer. Therefore, I will make a few
comments in relation to previous columns. Generally, my first
impressions are very favourable, although it still takes as big a wimp
slot as before, and I also feel it is a little slower, although this is
very subjective, and I have no scientific basis to back it up. All my
old sheets loaded without problem, and behaved impeccably.
6.12
Printing
6.12
One area where the original version was sadly lacking was that of
printing. Most of the adverse criticism has now been dealt with. There
are a number of new options available. It is possible to scale the
printout by a fixed percentage, or to force a fit to a specified number
of pages across and/or down. This allows much neater printouts and also
the use of a relatively large font size for screen display, but a much
smaller size when printing on a good printer. If simple scaling is not
sufficient, it is also possible to force page breaks at any chosen
column/row. The scaling appears to work well, both for whole sheets and
for selected parts. A further facility is that a chosen column and/or
row can be printed on every page, giving much enhanced titling of the
sheet, and making multipage sheets easier to follow. The feature still
lacking, which a number of correspondents would have liked, is a full
print preview facility, to allow page breaks, etc, to be seen before
printing.
6.12
Charts
6.12
The charting has been improved in a number of ways. Perhaps most
importantly, it is now possible to chart multiple columns (or rows) that
are not all adjacent. It is simply a case of making multiple selections,
and the program will initially construct the chart in the way it thinks
is best. It is a simple matter to override the program’s initial attempt
to produce a custom chart if you wish.
6.12
Saving selected areas
6.12
The saving of selected areas has been improved. Such (multiple) selected
areas can also be saved as CSV or as drawfiles − both work well. For the
number who have asked, my own program GraphDraw will load the CSV files
saved from Eureka, so you can now do those complex transformations! I
feel there is one feature still lacking from the drawfile saving, and
that is the facility to save without gridlines. I have used Eureka on
occasions for the production of tables (which may be purely textual)
since it is so much easier than the table-making facilities of
Impression. As long as it is a self-contained page, the printing options
from Eureka are very flexible, particularly since the gridlines can be
turned off, and the lines to be placed selectively using the cell border
facility. On some occasions, I would have liked to have incorporated the
output in Impression as a drawfile but without importing the gridlines.
This I have not yet achieved.
6.12
Macros
6.12
As originally promised, a comprehensive macro facility has now been
implemented. The macro language should be readily understood by anyone
who has seen Basic (or most other high level language) programs.
Constructions such as FOR, IF, ELSEIF, ENDIF, REPEAT UNTIL, WHILE, etc
should be familiar to almost all users. Macros are essentially multiline
functions, which are executed in a way similar to a program, and bring
real power to the facilities. All those out there who have been
impatiently waiting for this, then send me some examples of your macro
masterpieces. Those that are of interest, I will include in the column.
6.12
Comments please
6.12
I shall be most interested to receive your comments on the new version 2
of Eureka. By the copy date for the next issue of Archive, I hope that I
will have had more time to make a full investigation of the macro
facilities.
6.12
Eureka versus Excel
6.12
There have been several articles in Archimedes related magazines
(including Archive) comparing Eureka to Microsoft Excel. The overall
conclusion is that they are very similar. While I have never used Excel,
I have recently found a text book, Spreadsheet Chemistry, which is
wholly based around the PC version of Excel. I found that all the
examples I tried could be entered directly from the book into Eureka,
and all worked correctly. Some of these examples contained simple
macros, and these also worked correctly. This certainly demonstrated to
me how similar, at least in functionality, the two packages are. (If
anyone is interested in the actual book, I can let them have full
details.)
6.12
How to contact me
6.12
My postal address is Chris Johnson, 7, Lovedale Grove, Balerno,
Edinburgh, EH14 7DR. I can also be contacted by e-mail as
[e-mail]. clust, if you have access.
6.12
I am happy to receive anything in connection with spreadsheets, hints or
tips, macros, problems, solutions to problems, or just requests for
help. What could also be of interest are examples of unusual uses of
spreadsheets.  A
6.12
Geordie Racer
6.12
Rocky Grove & Tracey Dunn
6.12
The program is supplied on one disc together with a glossy A5 booklet
containing program instructions, suggestions for follow-up in the
classroom and background information on pigeons and running! It is
published jointly by Longman Logotron and BBC Enterprises and costs £26
from Archive.
6.12
Look and Read TV programme
6.12
The computer program is based on BBC Television’s “Look and Read” series
which is aimed at helping develop reading skills for children aged 7 −
9. The story for the Spring Term 1993 was entitled “Geordie Racer” and
was a tale about a boy called Spuggy who lives in Newcastle. Spuggy
keeps pigeons and proceeds to get himself tangled up with a gang of
crooks. The programme will probably be repeated in 1994/5.
6.12
The computer program
6.12
The graphics are very basic and can be little different from the BBC
version. It gives all the appearance of being a program run under the
emulator, although this is not, in fact, the case. The program starts
with “Wordy” − a character from the television series, who gradually
introduces the other characters involved.
6.12
There are a total of nine separate games. Each of the initial games is
centred around either pigeons, or the Great North Run and the final part
of the program involves the user directing a sea serpent around a maze
in order to catch the crook, Baz Bailey.
6.12
Using the program in the classroom
6.12
After using the program for a term in the classroom, we feel that it has
encouraged the children to think more deeply about the Look and Read
story. It encouraged them to think about some of the hazards experienced
by pigeons when racing and also connected moral issues in the story.
6.12
Program content
6.12
The graphics are entertaining and the operating instructions were simple
to understand. We do feel, however, that some of the language used
within the program could be a problem for the less able child (for whom
the TV programme is mainly aimed). Further, the program is difficult to
complete unless children have watched all of the episodes in the
television series.
6.12
Conclusion
6.12
The program has been thoroughly enjoyed by all of the children in the
class who have played it and has been of great educational value,
combining many topics in a cross-curricular way. However, it is a shame
that more use was not made of the capabilities of the Archimedes and the
program would only be of real use to a class teacher following the Look
and Read television programme.  A
6.12
KeyCount − A Primary Spreadsheet
6.12
Joe Gallagher
6.12
While the Archimedes has spawned wordprocessors and databases to suit
every pocket and age, spreadsheets, especially those for younger
children, remain a bit thin on the ground. Eureka, a clone of Excel 3,
is perhaps, the most user-friendly spreadsheet available but it is far
too expensive to justify for primary use. KeyCount is an attempt to fill
this gap and is the latest in Anglia Television’s suite of programs
based around their data-handling package, Key.
6.12
KeyCount comes with a selection of sample files showing some possible
contexts for using spreadsheets. The files are supported by both
children’s and teachers’ notes in a generally well laid out manual but
it would have been nice to have a quick reference sheet to supplement
the handbook.
6.12
The toolbar
6.12
The program is a modified version of KeyCalc, a spreadsheet aimed at
secondary schools. It’s not just a cut down affair though for, as well
as limiting its facilities, some thought has been given to shaping the
interface to meet the abilities of younger users. For instance KeyCount
dispenses, for the most part, with pop-up menus and uses instead a
toolbar along the top of each sheet containing 14 options. A context-
sensitive description of each tool appears as you pass the pointer over
it. This is invaluable for new users (especially teachers!) who wish to
dabble before wading through a manual.
6.12
With these buttons, you can align cell entries, switch on or off
headings and determine both the units of measurement and the number of
decimal places required. The direction that the caret moves when
<return> is pressed is controlled by two further buttons. Other icons
include those for saving and printing worksheets, an autosum feature, a
fill option, a button for deselecting cells and one for deleting cells.
All these actions take place without the need for further sub menus
which makes for a very simple layout indeed.
6.12
Printing, however, is a bit long-winded. Clicking on the printer icon
opens a window with the familiar save text icon on it. Dragging this
icon to a printer driver installed on the iconbar will print out the
text. At least this does have the advantage of allowing text to be saved
into other RISC OS applications.
6.12
Charts
6.12
The remaining button is for displaying charts − a more involved process
than any of the above functions. Clicking on this leads to a pop-up
window which allows you to choose from one of five types of chart to
display your data. Up to two sets of data can be plotted on one graph
and this is achieved by selecting a range of cells and clicking on the
legend, “Set 1 is:”. The range to be charted is then inserted in the
appropriate box and you can choose to see your graph. This part of the
program could have been better thought out. For one thing, it would seem
more intuitive to click in the text box where the cell range is entered.
What’s more, if you are supposed to click on the legend, at least it
should look like a button in some shape or form.
6.12
Deleting and moving ranges
6.12
Columns and rows are selected by clicking on the column or row heading
respectively. However, it is not possible (as far as I can see) to
either insert, delete or move columns or rows in KeyCount. Once
selected, the contents of cells, rows or columns can be cleared by
clicking on the delete icon but the actual cells themselves are left in
situ.
6.12
While I can appreciate that deleting, as opposed to clearing, individual
cells could lead to unwanted complexities for young users, a more
flexible approach to handling whole rows and columns would seem to be
essential. Few of us, especially young children, would be expected to
get the layout of a spreadsheet right on the first go. Imagine a
wordprocessor which only operated in overtype mode and wouldn’t allow
you to insert or delete extra lines.
6.12
One solution may be to exclude anything other than complete rows or
columns from the scope of this operation as Excel does with non-
contiguous ranges. Given that it is so easy to delete a range of cells
and thus undo a morning’s work with a single click of the mouse, the
program really does need an undo facility. Why this feature is so thin
on the ground in applications for the Archimedes, I’ll never know.
6.12
Data entry
6.12
Data entry and editing is simplicity itself. Just point at the desired
cell, click and start typing. There is no need to tell the program what
sort of data to expect and the width of each column adjusts
automatically to fit the data. Now this is a feature that every
spreadsheet should have.
6.12
Double click on a cell and a small window pops up which allows you to
see and edit the contents of the cell, useful where formulas are
involved. Formulas referring to other cells can either be typed in
directly or else referred to by pointing.
6.12
Picture files can be dropped onto individual cells. When this is done,
the cell displays the name of the sprite or drawfile and is coloured in
blue to denote a picture. The picture can be displayed by clicking on
the cell while holding down <shift>. While pictures can enhance
understanding of the subject for the users, this can create huge
KeyCount files as the graphics are stored in the worksheet itself.
6.12
As well as reading KeyCalc files, the program can load KeyPlus and
KeyNote database files enabling access to the growing range of datafiles
now available for those programs.
6.12
Configuration
6.12
KeyCount comes with a good range of built-in functions, and custom
functions can be written in Edit and imported into KeyCount for use by
pupils. The format of these macros is very straightforward and several
examples are provided with the main program.
6.12
KeyCount can also be configured to meet the needs of different groups of
pupils from a password-protected option on the iconbar icon. Worksheets
can also be loaded from this icon, thus sparing children the need to
navigate the directory structure, although any KeyCount files can be
dragged to the application’s icon in the normal way. Files are saved to
a default directory unless the path is edited at the time of saving.
6.12
Conclusion
6.12
I was very impressed by the sensible defaults of the program and the
ease with which it can be set up for different users. While the
Archimedes’ menus are undoubtedly quick and effective in the hands of
experienced practitioners, toolbars do seem to offer a painless “way in”
for younger users at least. As KeyCount has obviously borrowed so
heavily from Excel in its use of the toolbar, why not go one step
further and make that toolbar fully customizable as is the case with
Excel4? After all, why should only accountants and executives have all
the easiest tools?
6.12
KeyCount is available from: (SCA) Anglia Television, PO Box 18,
Benfleet, Essex SS7 1AZ. Site licences range from £40 +VAT for a small
primary school to £120 +VAT for a large secondary school of over 800
pupils.  A
6.12
HD Backup_2
6.12
Alan Murdey
6.12
This backup application came to my notice when the team from Klein
Computer were at the Acorn User Show in October last year. I had seen
Hard Disc Companion by Risc Developments, but I decided to try the
German software, as it offered a similar specification for less than
half the cost.
6.12
So after a short demonstration on the stand, I handed over £17 for my
copy of the application. It really is my copy, as each copy is numbered
and registered at the time of purchase. A sensible protection system
that does not inconvenience the legitimate user, which means that Backup
can be run from a hard disc.
6.12
The package
6.12
I took home with me a plastic bag containing my disc and a sixteen page
A5 manual, which was produced using Impression, and written in very
good, understandable English. The disc contained !HD_Backup and some
shareware software.
6.12
Starting up
6.12
HD_Backup installs on the iconbar, occupying 224Kb of RAM. The info
dialogue confirms that the software is licensed to me, and that I have
v2.13.
6.12
On clicking on the icon, a window entitled “New Backup Job” opens the
following window:
6.12
This window is used to specify the backup source, which can be a whole
drive, a single directory or an arbitrary collection of files. This can
be selected by the user and saved for future backups. The source can be
set by typing in the drive specification or by dragging a directory to
the dialogue box. If the backup list is selected, a window opens and
files or directories can be dragged to the window. Items included in
error can be deleted by clicking <menu> over them and selecting Delete
item.
6.12
Show options will open the backup options window:
6.12
Backup options
6.12
The options in the File Selection group allow a selection of any files
to be excluded from the backup. Selecting all files means that all files
from the source described in the new backup job window will be backed
up.
6.12
Incremental backups are achieved by selecting the “after last backup”
option. Files will only be considered for backup if they were created or
changed after the last backup. This function only works if the last
backup was made with this function selected and the Backup Job file was
saved. Finally, only files date stamped after a specified date will be
selected for consideration for backup.
6.12
The exclusion list, if selected, will open another window similar to the
one created for the backup list. Files can be dragged to the window.
Another feature, when clicking <menu> over the window, gives a choice of
delete item or add item. This allows the user to enter part of a
pathname, as the names are matched from the end. For example, if the
user types in Memo, any file bearing that name will be excluded.
6.12
File storage on backup discs
6.12
There are two methods of storing the files on the backup discs. Single
files means that the files are stored on disc in a full directory filing
structure, just as happens when using Backup from the filing system
menu. This method is not very efficient, as the directory structure uses
disc space, and creating single files slows the process down. File
splitting means that when using the single files format, the disc space
will be used fully, by splitting large files across two discs as
required.
6.12
However, it is now recommended that compact backup is used, as the
backup data is stored on the destination disc as one compact file, so
the backup process is faster, as a directory structure does not have to
be created on each destination disc. The compact file method allows use
of Huffman compression, which should compress most data to 60% of its
original size, but sprites could be compressed to 20% − 30% of their
original size.
6.12
Finally, if doing a backup onto a pile of unformatted discs, they will
automatically be formatted if Format all discs is selected. If this
selection is not made and a disc which is unformatted is used, then the
program will complain and ask for a confirmation to format it.
6.12
Once all of these parameters have been set in the windows that I have
described, you are ready to start the backup process. I recommend that
the Backup Job file is saved for the future. This is vital if you want
to do incremental backups in the future.
6.12
Backup process
6.12
When the start button is clicked, the backup process is started, the
progress window appears and it prompts you for the first destination
disc.
6.12
The process can be stopped by clicking on suspend and it is restarted by
clicking on resume. It is possible to abort the process at any time by
clicking on abort.
6.12
The program is fully multitasking and so you can perform your backup
whilst doing other work on the desktop, stopping just to feed discs into
the drive when requested.
6.12
Coping with compressed files
6.12
HD_Backup will cope with files that have been compressed previously with
Compression and ArcFS. For Compression users, it is suggested that the
original filing system is used as the source directory and the Huffman
compression is turned off, otherwise Compression will have to decompress
the files only to have them compressed again by Backup. Similarly with
ArcFS, whole archives can be backed up with Huffman compression off but
if just a single file from inside an archive directory is required, the
source directory will have to be ArcFS: and Huffman compression should
be switched on.
6.12
Restoring backups
6.12
Backup includes a restore function on the iconbar menu to restore files
back to a filing system. If the backup has been done using single files,
the restore function is not required as the backup is just a copy of the
source directory.
6.12
Clicking on Restore opens the Hard Disc Restore window shown opposite.
6.12
The method of entry is similar to the Backup Job window, with writable
fields for source and destination drives. The files to be restored can
be all files or a selection, specified as a list in a text file which is
dragged to the window.
6.12
There are also options dealing with the overwriting of files, as
HD_Backup checks whether a file of the same name exists on the
destination disc, before a file is restored. If Query existing files is
selected, confirmation is required before an existing file is
overwritten. Otherwise selections can be made to prevent files being
overwritten, depending on whether they are locked or not, or all files
can be overwritten. The restore process has a progress window and it is
very similar to the backup process.
6.12
Conclusion
6.12
I have used HD_Backup on my A420 (still RISC OS 2 and ARM2). The
11,471Kb of data in 1032 files on my hard disc were compressed down to
8573Kb on eleven 800Kb floppy discs. It was easy to configure it, to do
what I wanted, and the manual is easy to understand.
6.12
The retail price is certain to have increased as Klein Computer were
selling their software at the Acorn User Show at special pre-Black
Wednesday prices. So expect to pay at least £20 now. Klein Computer can
be contacted at: Haßloch-erstr. 73, W-6090 Rüsselsheim, Germany.
(+49−6142−81131) (Fax +49−6142−81256).  A
6.12
Grid Algebra
6.12
Ashley Bowden
6.12
Grid Algebra is a program from the Open University’s Centre for
Mathematics Education. The program offers a dynamic visual approach to
help develop images for interpreting and manipulating number
relationships and algebraic notation. The program relates horizontal and
vertical movements over a grid to the four basic operations of number.
Expressions, involving numbers or algebraic quantities, are generated by
journeys made over the grid.
6.12
Some examples
6.12
The potential of the program is not immediately obvious but working
through the examples given in the manual, shows just what can be
achieved. Many of the activities are based on a ‘times-table’ grid like
that opposite.
6.12
If a journey were to start from the 6 in row 2 and comprise a move of
two squares to the right, the program would produce a destination result
of 6 + 4. In row 2, each square covered when moving to the right,
results in an additional increment of 2. If we were in row 3, the
increment would be 3 and so on. Movements to the left correspond to
subtractions.
6.12
If, again, we were to begin a journey with the 6 in row 2 and this time
move to row 1, the result would be 6 / 2. A movement from row 2 to row 1
always results in division by 2. Similarly, moving from row 2 to row 6,
say, will correspond to multiplication by 3.
6.12
The cells in the grid do not have to have their contents displayed. The
arrangement given above can be created so that the program knows which
number corresponds to which cell, even though this is not displayed on
the screen. A pupil may have created a journey which corresponds to
7 × 5 and then have to supply the actual value in the cell. A cell can
contain several expressions which represent its numerical value and the
program provides neat facilities for examining them and deciding which
variant should be displayed at a given time.
6.12
Algebraic expressions
6.12
The beauty of this package is that most operations on numbers can be
applied to letters and a journey will then create an algebraic
expression.
6.12
If the letter a is placed in row 2, the journey to row 1 produces a/2.
Additionally, a two-stage journey from a can be carried out by doing the
horizontal move before the vertical or vice versa. This leads to the
equivalence of the expressions 2a+4 and 2(a+2). It is also possible to
investigate inverse functions (by reversing journeys) and to solve
certain equations with integer solutions.
6.12
Other features
6.12
The size of the grid can be set by the user with a maximum of 100 by 100
cells. It can be arranged so that journeys to the left move into the
negative integers in the obvious way. It is possible to fill the grid
automatically with the numbers, if that is required. The grid can be
scrolled, resized, cleared, saved and, of course, re-loaded later.
6.12
Numbers and expressions can be erased from cells or hidden. It is also
possible to highlight cells in one of two colours so that numbers with a
particular property, say, could be marked. The notation that the program
uses to represent multiplication can also be chosen by the user.
6.12
The package
6.12
Grid Algebra comes on a single disc and runs as a non-RISC OS single-
tasking program. The interface is quite intuitive and most operations
are carried out easily with the mouse. A slim 32-page manual provides a
good introduction to the ideas behind the package and the user is
invited to experiment freely. Much of the manual is devoted to example
activities and it is only after following these through that one really
gets a feel for the package’s possibilities. Games, investigations, open
and closed exercises are discussed along with the mathematical concepts
and learning which they promote.
6.12
In conclusion
6.12
As you will have gathered, this program is aimed mainly at mathematics
teachers. It is suitable for both primary and secondary age groups, with
the more numerical work accessible to younger pupils and the algebra for
those older. As might be expected from an organisation like the Open
University, the material is of a high quality with the educational
objectives well thought out and implemented. The package costs £25 (inc
VAT) from the Open University for a single user licence which seems to
be quite good value. (A network version of the software is under
development.)
6.12
The actual value gained from content-free software often depends on the
imagination of the user (or the user’s teacher) and this is likely to be
the case here. The time taken to gain familiarity with such programs
(which would not be much in this case) is only well spent if the users
can turn to the program freely and concentrate on the educational ideas
generated, rather than the basic functionality.
6.12
So if, as a teacher, you want a good mathematical tool which can be used
in developing many varied areas of numeracy and algebra, this program is
well worth consideration. However, if you want to use the program to its
full potential, you will probably need to spend a bit of time
experimenting.  A
6.12
Crossword 2.00
6.12
Andrew Rawnsley
6.12
Crossword version 2, written by David Ramsden, provides 50 desktop
crosswords at the click of a mouse button. Not only is it possible to
(attempt to) solve these crosswords, but you can also create your own
crosswords.
6.12
The software is not protected and can be easily installed on a hard
disc. RISC OS 2 floppy disc users will have to load the FPEmulator
module before running the application, which has been compiled with
Silicon Vision’s Risc Basic compiler.
6.12
The manual takes the form of a text file on the disc, which can be read
in Edit or printed out for reference. It covers all the options and
choices as clearly as can be expected from a disc-based manual, but
perhaps a small application could have been included on the disc to
allow floppy disc users to browse through, and print out, the text
without the need to load Edit.
6.12
The main game loads onto the iconbar and displays a crossword in a
window. The actual crossword displayed on loading can be chosen from one
of the fifty available. The window is nicely drawn and can use either
the system font (a nice touch for floppy disc users) or outline fonts.
In the latter case, Trinity and Corpus are used. Perhaps a future
version might allow the user to choose the font used.
6.12
Crossword in use
6.12
The crosswords are displayed just as if they were in a newspaper, but
the numbers are missing, as these would only clutter up the display. In
any case, the computer gives the clue when you click on the boxes in the
grid − <select> for a horizontal clue, <adjust> for a vertical one. This
works well, although you sometimes accidentally click the wrong button.
6.12
Clues are displayed in a large box to the right of the crossword, and
you can type in your answer in a box below. There is a problem with
punctuation in the questions, as any punctuation at the end of a line
(which grammatically ought to stay at the end of that line) is pushed
onto the next line. This sometimes adds to the difficulty in making
sense of the question.
6.12
The clues themselves are a mixture of anagrams, cryptic clues and
general knowledge questions. The latter are often quite difficult as
they require detailed knowledge of the last 10 or 20 years. This
restricts the age range for playing, but the level of difficulty is such
that the average child below 15 years would, in any case, have
considerable difficulty with it (without using the help options). Having
said this, there is considerable variety in the level of difficulty of
the clues.
6.12
Help is at hand
6.12
There are a good number of help options, ranging from first letters to
complete answers for just one question at a time, or the entire grid.
However, there did not seem to be an option to turn off the help once it
had been selected.
6.12
Crosswords can be saved in a half-completed state, so that you can
continue to work on them at a later date.
6.12
DIY crosswords
6.12
The option to create your own crosswords is the major difference between
release one and release two. However, it did not seem to have been
particularly well implemented. You must use a text editor to create the
crossword by hand and then load it into !Crossword. There is no
designer, which seems an obvious omission, and so producing your own
crosswords is rather hard work. There was also no print option which
would have been useful.
6.12
One aspect of the paper crossword as compared to !Crossword is that in a
paper crossword you can enter the wrong solution into the grid, and the
fun comes in finding which is the wrong answer. !Crossword will not
allow you to enter a wrong answer.
6.12
Overall
6.12
As it stands, !Crossword costs £5.95 and represents great value for
money for the crossword enthusiast. Completing the fifty supplied will
take some time, so be prepared for a challenge, unless you are used to
doing the Times crossword in your tea break. The software is being
continually updated and developed, which is always a good sign. It is
available from: David Ramsden, 7 Chevet Lane, Wakefield, West Yorkshire,
WF2 6HN  A
6.12
Medieval & Gothic Fonts Collection
6.12
Richard Hallas
6.12
“The Medieval and Gothic Fonts Collection with Period Clipart plus Draw
Fonts”, is available from Datafile PD library. Although the Datafile is
normally associated with public domain software, this is a commercial
offering with a price tag of £31.50, all inclusive.
6.12
Packaging
6.12
Three discs are supplied in an attractive plastic wallet along with two
manuals. One of the manuals covers the outline fonts whilst the other
relates to the vector clipart which consists of four drawn fonts and
various pieces of ornate clipart. The whole package is very nicely
presented and the manuals well laid out, making imaginative use of all
the fonts and clipart supplied.
6.12
The three discs contain five outline fonts (one of which has an
additional oblique face), four capitals-only draw fonts, and various
pieces of clipart. I will deal with each of these in turn.
6.12
Outline Fonts
6.12
The five fonts supplied are all very pleasant in appearance, although
they really need to be used at a large point size before their
intricacies can be appreciated. Carol is a German Gothic face with
extremely florid capitals. Charlie could almost be used as body text,
although it is a little ornate for prolonged use. I noticed that it
bears more than a passing resemblance to the popular Caslon font (EFF
Eve), and my suspicions were confirmed by a disc file stating that it is
indeed a Caslon Swash face. Karen is another German Gothic face which
includes alternative, fancy versions of some lower case characters.
Priory is quite similar to the script hand commonly to be found in
medieval manuscripts. Versals is a lombardic face with embellishments,
which also features roman numerals. It contains capitals only − lower-
case letters are scaled-down versions of the capitals.
6.12
When viewed at a reasonable size, all five fonts look very authentic.
Carol, in particular, provides some beautiful ornamentation in its
capitals and goes particularly well with the more flowery decorations
provided with the package.
6.12
In terms of construction, the fonts are pretty good. (They are all RISC
OS 2 format and do not provide kerning data.) I examined them quite
closely using FontEd and can report that all are scaffolded and have
hinting lines provided. The quality of drawing is good, although not
quite in the same league as you would expect from EFF, say. None of the
fonts provides full character sets, although this is not terribly
important, as they are intended mainly for decorative use. Of course,
the more specialised characters would not have been present in the
original designs in any case. However, it would be nice if Charlie could
provide a full character set, since it is just a specialised Caslon
face. Many of the fonts do not provide full punctuation symbols,
although Charlie and Priory have a full set of ‘basic’ characters (i.e.
up to ASCII code 126), and most of the fonts include some unusual extra
characters. Charlie, for example, provides all five standard ligatures,
whereas the Acorn font specification only allows for two: fi and fl. (The
others are ff, ffi and ffl.)
6.12
Draw fonts
6.12
For the uninitiated, these are sets of letters provided as drawfiles,
usually because they are too large or complicated to supply as proper
fonts, or simply because they only exist as letters (without numbers or
punctuation). They cannot be used as normal text and are intended for
manual positioning in drawing packages.
6.12
Four sets of drawn letters are provided, although only one of the sets
has lower-case letters. A few of the capitals occur in two or three
styles, however. The fonts seem nicely drawn, although it’s a pity there
aren’t any numerals or common punctuation marks. Three of the four fonts
have a Lombardic appearance, whilst the fourth (Italian Chancery Papal
Manuscript) is highly ornate, with extremely elaborate capitals. It is
this font which also includes lower-case letters: they are very plain
and provide a stark contrast with the upper-case characters.
6.12
Clipart
6.12
The remaining space on the three discs is filled up with the clipart.
Although there isn’t a vast amount of it, what is provided is of a high
quality and should provide plenty of scope for producing interesting
designs. The three discs are really packed full, to the extent that much
of the clipart is provided, not as separate files, but as individual
objects within example files which have to be taken to bits in order to
use them. This is a generous approach, although it does cause a little
inconvenience to the user. Purchasers would be well advised to take the
example files apart and save their constituent objects as individual
files for easier access.
6.12
A second slight difficulty is that some of the objects were created in
ArtWorks, so if you ungroup them too far, you may find yourself with
bits of graduated fill all over the place! However, this is hardly a
problem and, with a little care, all will be well.
6.12
The clipart is mostly very nice indeed. A couple of the items did appear
to have been converted from scanned images by a tracing package, but I’m
only guessing at that. Anyway, the vast majority of the artwork is very
well produced. There are a total of seven example files, and each is
discussed briefly in the manual. As well as providing the source of the
clipart, many of these files are intended to provide the initial ideas
for your use of the artwork. It is suggested that you recolour some of
the items, or use the floral decorations within the drawn capitals.
Although seven files does not sound a lot, there is a great deal in each
− in fact, the seventh file is over 700Kb long!
6.12
Conclusion
6.12
It is always nice to be able to report good service and support. When I
was sent this package for review, I found a number of problems and
inadequacies in it initially but, after speaking with Datafile’s Dave
McCartney, they were all corrected immediately and I now have little
left to criticise − which has left me with a somewhat shorter review
than I had to start with! The few criticisms I still have are being
addressed: for example, I believe that commercial fonts should provide
full sets of basic punctuation marks, if not complete character sets.
However, by the time you read this, it is likely that at least some of
the fonts will have been updated.
6.12
The package as a whole provides a wide range of quality period artwork,
and at least as great a range of ideas to stimulate the imagination. As
such, it represents good value for money and is to be recommended.  A
6.12
P is for Saint Paul, perhaps?
6.12