Apple 2000 Vol 2 No. 6 1987 12 BASUG GB

ple2000: THE NATIONAL APPLE USERS GROUP iff DECEMBER 1987 falas |= ats Ti | Ear all Lid Print Report On 0 a J SS NS 4 ‘ — % ” s*\ y 1 WA , L 3 ie 4 yey yyy wry . : 4 wana A\\ y 2 ile lo Fina al \ d X é file Edit Find fi tUp ‘“ Print Report \ \ in Dis! x : : Edit Report Template R \ x a. eiieeiebaaiau cb AUtbOnLIe\ \ \ SS ae ie & € \ 4 \ ; id. » > \ , <A th a3 7 a ae 43 Pat a : 1 —_— 40 : e 150. Wi F promac All promac products share one objective. To be the finest you can buy atany price. No compromises have been made in achieving a thoroughbred design. Meticulous incoming component inspection, careful manufacture and rigorous quality control, comprehensively tested ROM and firmware to enhance pe ance, and error-free software combine to achieve our objective promac products are elegantly designed and unobtrusive. They are exceedingly fast and very. quiet. With the reliability that comes from supetior engineering. They meet or exceed all safety and interference standards, You owe it to yourself to consider promac before accepting any other drive. They represent outstanding value. You can't buy faster or better forn MacEurope supports the full range of promac protessional products, both internal and external. 20MB, 40MB, 50MB, 80MB, 160MB, 300MB, 800MB SCSI disks, each the leader in its category WORM/CD-ROM, and the infinite capacity ProDrive, utilising removeable 10MB floppies. ProTape backs up to cassette at 3.3MB/minute. promac products are compatible with Unix and all other Macintosh environments. MacEurope provides engineering, warranty service, support, software updates and advice You can see the promac range at your MacEurope dealer. If Vt have stock, or you don’t have a dealer, please call yours does Il be happy to help. Call us for literature us. { promac GmbH Sshelsty promac an! ProDrive an! ProTape an rexistercn tracer TO) Merlin 12 West Gen Apple is a trademark of and Macintosh a trademark registered 1 Computer | This advertinement prepared by the Rubia Ray P hip on the Macintosh seiny JustText paxe composition soltware from Mach Crown House Abbeydale Rd London NW10 7PN England Tel: (01) 965 6905 Telex 265871 MONREF G Quote Ref: 72:MAG20278 | VOLUME 2 Editor Jim Panks Assistant Editor Graham Attwood Macintosh Editor Norah Arnold Advertising Julie Panks lle Alison Davies Administration Alison Davies Irene Flaxman HotLine Dave Ward Te eae Monday - Friday 1900-2100 hours} BABBS Tony Game (tin Fao Local Groups e Tom Wright P.O.Box 3, Liverpool, L21 8PY yey 051 928 4142 (Answerphone) (Old Howes Penn ORT Stefan Mucha ISSUE 6 Eprrowat Cun News Locat Group News Lermas ro nm Eprror News Byres Lanauaces « COROL - Dave Maume Raxoom Lurarssions of Los Ancrirs - Nice Smaupwick Axounp ne Snows - Doucat Hever ‘Swat Apvers & Anvrattuns Iypex a ae APPLE lu FEATURES Ave Bytes Tips, hints and small stories from around the AppleWorld CiicKaMAvca & ANTIETAM ‘Tom Wright looks at some games for Christmas Notes @N Furs A new package for the GS, reviewed by Vic Jones Divesi-Cace Dave Ward reviews this share-ware utility for the GS Snicon Darams The Hanley brothers look at two games from Rainbird ‘Micon Macro A new assembler for the GS previewed by Dave Ward ArrreWonxs ANswens Steve Morrisby starts a new problem solving column New rox THe // tance Graham Attwood survey's the Apple //scene Cents - Sorrwane Litany Review Andrew Menadue's variation on Life SEIT SS SSO NI A es Mac2000 MiniMac Jeremy Amold gets all musical on his Macintosh Backcnounp: Jim Panks puts together the first of a new series on HyperCard Post- Arr Irene Flaxman looks at some great new clip art 5. Mxosorr Worn 3 Nigel Suudwick looks in depth at this Word Processor PaceTuror PageMaker 2 tutorial puts Irene Flaxman on the right road TX300 Scanner Norah Amold puts this cut-price scanner through the works! AV SLIDEMAKER: Richard Wilday picks his Mac and Camera up and enjoys himself Wuart is MIDI? Norah Arnold answers the question CAT. A relational database gets the once over from Irene Flaxman Music Norah Arnold visits Argents to find out what makes the Mac musical MacMoney Mary Guillaume & Michael Maloney keep track of their money! MouseWarre Bernard Jackson looks at this Hebrew/English Wordprocessor MacLinrary Ten new disks on HyperCard plus news of the new library structure Fractat Srupio Norah Arnold takes a look at Fractals for artists and designers Network News ‘The latest news, Ups and gossip from the networks ‘Liciersinc A product evaluation of Version 2 of this Spelling Checker ‘Smasu Hrr Raguernant Play this game without getting a heart attack tt! limited by guarantee ipple2000™ is a wading name of BASUG Lid, 1 non-profit making independent company ‘This journal is published bi monthly by Apple2000 as a benefit of membership in Febru ‘The content of this journal are copyright of BASUG Lid and/or the respective authors. Pes- preceding publieauon. Advertising rates ate available on request mission is granted for non-commercial reproduction providing tie author and source are —_Apple™ and the Apple logo are wademarks of Apple Computer Inc. Macintosh is a wade properly credited and a copy of the relevant journal is sent. The opinions and views cx- mark of Mclntwsh Laboratory Inc and used with the express permission of the owner pressed are thote ofthe various conuibutors,and are notnecessanly supported by BASUG Telecom Gold™s a wademark of Brush Telecom PLC. The FORCE™ and Apple2000™ are ary, April, June, August, October and December, The copy date it the Sth day of the month vademarks of BASUG Lid EE mR Paget Editorial You will see below a small article written by Computing and ap. pearing on the front page of the November 11th issue. Apple com- pletely ignored the allegation in the reply. “Users bare their teeth at Apple” seems to be slightly over the top for what was a construc- tive criticism of Apple U.K.'s pric- ing policies and it’s lack of sup- port for the Apple II range. Apple have made a slight improvement in prices, hopefully this isjust the start of getting near a realistic pricing structure ! On the Apple II front it is ap- parent from information received that Apple U.K. are not putting any effort into selling or promot- ing the Apple IIGS. I have heard of one dealer wondering why the thing would not work -he had no keyboard plugged in! Other deal- ers have simply not bothered to even buy a demo model, we will have to rely on the Bidmuthin’s Holden's and MGA’s to supply the goodies. Whilst on about the Apple II I would like to thank Jon Gurr of MGA MicroSystems for his kind offer (see letters page) and also Steve Morrisby of Bidmuthin who has taken time to wrile the first of aregular AppleWorks column. We are lucky to have members who are in the trade and who support us in this way. We have recently appointed as our Administrator Mrs Alison Davies who is at present getting to know the ropes. Alison was promptly thrown in at the deep end when she assisted us at the MacUser Show. Our attendance at the MacUser Show was an outstand- ing success with a packed stand . We enjoyed mecting the many members who came along for a chat, sorry if we missed you in the crush!. I would like to welcome all those new members from the MacUser Show who will be receiv- ing this magazine for the first time - thanks for joining us and I hope you find the experience worth while. Many members including myself will be receiving a member- ship renewal form with this issue, I hope that you have found Apple2000 useful in the last year. We have been trying and we have not finished yet. Next year should see another dramatic increase in our activity, we have already or- ganised two workshops and we are arranging an Apple II event. A large Workshop will coincide with the AGM and will cover both machines. All we ask is that you let us know what YOU want from YOUR club so that WE can ar- range it. Well that’s it for another year I Users bare their teeth at Apple By Keith Rodgers Apple UK was accused last weck of abandoning support for the Apple IT range and of overcharging, despite the announcement that it had dropped prices across the Macintosh range. The cuts reflect a growing commitment to the Macin- tosh at the expense of the Apple II, but all models re- main vastly overpriced, according to the national user group Apple 2000. Group chairman Jim Panks described the pricing policy as ‘ridiculous’. He s: The people at Apple treat it as if they're selling razor blades or loaves of bread — asif they're just selling a product. They don’t look at any other angle.” The price cuts — as much as 13% on some models — are attributed to increased demand, as manufacturing costs decrease with a higher volume of output. According to product marketing mana- ger Chris Calvert, the attempt to become more price competitive also reflects the company’s desire to in- crease significantly its market share next year. Calvert said: ‘Many manu- facturers in the UK now have roughly cqual market shares. It’s a major objective that we raise our head and shoulders above that mélée.” He denicd allegations from the user group that support for the Apple II was poor or that the If GS model was widely unavailable. ‘Resel- lers have had to handle the huge growth of Apple, and this has led to a refocus. However, many resellers are still selling the IT GS.” Page 2 hope you all have a Wonderful Christmas and a Prosperous New Year and I look forward to the pleasure of your company in 1988. 4 im Pann ka A postscript - Our trusty Apple Il man Tom Wright has defected - he is now the proud owner of a Colour Macll - the good news is that he spent three months deciding that it was better than purchasing an IBM PS/2 1!!! Coming in the February 1988 Issue. A full review of Micol Assembler GS Fullwrite Professional - How good ? The return of Blyths Omnis pages! AppleWorks Q & A ALGOL - A look at languages. Quickeys - the best utility yet ! Background - Hyper News - Views - tips. SmartPad - A Mac DA by Blyth Software Pressgang Publishing - The inside story. Plus our regular News, Views, Tips and Techniques from the AppleWorld. Club News »°2¢20% The MacUser Show As you will see from our report else- where in this issue our attendence at the MacUser Show was an outstand- ing success Itwas nice to see so many old friends arriving on the stand which was full most of the time. The cost of atten- dance was high but we think that the effort was well worth while. Our stand was ‘outSTANDING' and we helped hundreds of Macintosh Users solve many of the problems that no one else knew. Thanks to those members that al- tended and helped us out, everyone enjoyed themselves although deal- ing with a crush for eight hours a day can be rather tiring on the feet, throat and brain! z Mac DiskLibrary With this issue all those that have reg- istered as Macintosh Users will have received a Macintosh Software Cata- logue. This is bang up to date being printed just prior to the Mac User Show. The catalogue lists all 250 disks in the library. If you have not received a copy and want one please contact the P.O.Box. We would ask members to read the notice in the front of the catalogue so that they order the right software for their machine. Norah Arnold has spent three months on this task and we would like the membership to gain as much from it. Remember to send your orders NOW for early delivery before the Christ- mas Postal Rush. a HOT LINE NEW NUMBER Dave Ward our HOTLINE guru has in- formed us that B.T. after an eighteen month delay have given him two weeks notice of a number change. Well what can you expect - here is his new number which came into effect on the 8th December td M2162 Recommended Dealers. Apple2000 has a small group of deal- ers that we have designated Recom- mended dealers. These are the distributors, dealers and trade members that provide an invaluable service to the group and who we have found are reliable, help- ful and most of all USER FRIENDLY. We feel that our membership must have a reference point when it comes to buying hardware or software and our starting point is the Apple2000 Recommended Dealer List We are not saying that other dealers are not as able but we have hard evi- dence to prove that A2000 dealers are worthy of our members attention. Please let your supplier know that you are a member of Apple2000. Maybe you will be treated better! Please remember those that adver- tise with us they are supporting your group and deserve your support. Workshops for 1988 Yes our Workshop co-ordinator has been busy arranging tor some work- shops to happen around the country. We will need your support to make them successful. The workshops will be focused on a couple of subjects and will be ma- chine specific. We are always looking for venus for workshops and therefore ask the membership to help us in finding suti- able locations to hold the events. The main requirements are: a) Enough Room and Electrical Power Points. b) Easy to get to. c) Open ona Saturday. If you have a particular subject that you would like to see covered lets us know. We are also on the look out for members with expertise to help at workshops. If you can help please let us know. « The first two workshops have been finalised just prior to publication and are included here to allow an early entry in your new 1988 diaries or the Calendar you will receive with this issue. Saturday March 12th 1988 will see a workshop in the brand new sports and social pavilion in the pretty North Downs village of Kemsing situated near GevenEightoaks With easy access via the M25 we think that you will enjoy an informal day learning about HyperCard and DeskTop Publishing. Saturday 26th March 1988 will see a workshop on Graphics/Scanners and HyperCard in the brand new Ap- pleCentre in Kidderminster. This is the ideal opportunity forthose living in the Midlands to have a great day out solving problems and obtaining that much needed advice. ‘ Recommended Dealer List. Bidmuthin Technologies Blyth Software Celtip Computers Cirtech DarkStar Systems Holdens Computer Services. MacEurope Mac Line MacSerious Software Maidstone Apple Centre M.G.A. Micro Systems Page 3 Local Group News s°8:=20°e by Tom Wright In the last issue I very briefly mentioned a new group in Poole (Dorset), Iwas able to call in at the Poole Apple Dealer during Sep- tember and have the following notes for you. ‘Mac User’ evenings are organ- ized at three monthly intervals by DEVERILL the local dealer. De- verill have been Apple dealers for about nine years and have been organizing User evenings for be- tween four and five years. MacUser evenings start at 7pm and David Huckle told me that Hypercard was featured at the mecting prior to my visit in Sep tember, that meeting ended at 3am the following day ! Average attendance at the mectings (held at three month intervals). is be- tween thirty and sixty so there is obviously a great deal of user in- terest in the area and plenty of potential for Mac users who have not yet been along to one of their mectings. Deverill have had a great deal of success in introduc- ing the Mac to many users in the south and are very enthusiastic about the User evenings. Invita- tions to attend the evenings are usually mailed out to Deverill customers but if you haven't re- ceived one and wish to attend please contact David Huckle who will be very pleased to provide you with details of their next evening (see contact list). Anew group for the contact list this month is the Burnley Apple User Group. The group, which has been in existence for about three years, meets at the Michelin Sports Centre on the second Wednesday of each month. Meet- ings start at 8pm and end “when they finish”, an attendance fee of £0.50 is collected at some meet- ings. Membership includes a mixture of hobbyists and profes- sional users and currently stands at about fifteen, most members Page 4 are currently users of Apple II. Meeting format is varied with some meetings having guest speakers and others being infor- mal. The current venue may change in aboul three months but no decision has yet been made. Contact Rod Turnough for de- tails. Colin Withington (Doncaster) has just telephoned me to (very gently) explain that I managed to get his telephone number wrong in the last iss the correct number is @iiz SH). Several people have already contacted Colin so it looks as if there is a good chance that we shall see another group developing in that area, Best of luck, let me know if I can help in any way. Mr T Veluppillai (Leeds) has also contacted me in search of Apple users in his area. Mr Velup- pillai (bit formal that but I'm short of his full name, is an Apple IIc user who may become a GS user in the near future, he can be contacted on Ga Fa hee Bob Miller is also in the York- shire area (Pudsey) and is an- other Apple II user secking con- tact with other users. Bob can be reached during office hours on CORRS STR, eae BAF and is keen to make contact. Another good sign of user activity in York- shire. Mr C Robinson (Darlington) also contacted me about a user group and hopefully by now he will be in touch with The North East Apple User Group. Anybody else in Durham who is interested ner contact Mr Robinson 28490, or Philip Dixon (see contact list). Graham Longbottom of Whitley Bay (Tyne and Wear), has also been in contact and may now be in touch with the North East group. There has been a change of contact for the Edinburgh Scottish Apple User Group. Adam Gilinsky tells me that Ricky Pollock is the new contact and Ricky can be contacted on @Bi. ‘erate This change has resulted from Adam's own career development move to the deep south (ie London). Hope to have more news of this group for the next issue. Well, that's been a productive period for making new friends and contacts which will hopefully help more users get together. We are still hunting for new groups, and willing to try to help establish them if required so please let me know of any that we haven't listed yet. Ourcontact list of friends and helpers is now comfortably past thirty and judging by the current level of activity it will not be too long before it reaches forty. If you haven't yet taken the plunge and visited your local group please do go along and see what you have been missing. In common with many other users | use Apples (and others machines) in my business life, and during my visits to local groups | have been shown/taught many things which have helped me in profes- sional work, you will probably have the same experience. Although the User Group Council appears to be “resting”, Mary Ainsworth is still getting out and about and a number of clubs have benefited from demonstra- tions of Hypercard recently. Even if you aren't ‘Mac oriented’ I rec- ommend that you ask to see this demonstration as it is one of the most interesting that I have seen recently. Happy (and/or Apples to you all. Tom Wright profitable) The Apple Directors Chair —just one of the superb items available in The Apple Collection. Apple are pleased to announce the launch of The Apple Collection, a special range of items designed with the needs of Apple enthusiasts in mind, each one carrying the Apple name as a guarantee of the highest quality. The Apple Collection is available exclusively through Authorised Apple Dealers, so for full details of the Collection range and how you can order your items, pull up a chair at your nearest Apple dealer now. Take your Pick from The Apple Collection 4 of Apple Computer Ine. 1987 Apple Computer 1K. Lad APPLE DEDICATED GROUPS STARTING-UP DONCASTER - SOUTH YORKSHIRE Colin Withington, a Mac User in the Doncaster Area is starting a Usor Group. Colin can be contacted on 0302-53930, several people have contacted Colin ¢9 it could be a flyer! DORCHESTER CONTACT Ron Hoare Tel : iti. iit ‘Agolus, 11 Redbridge Road, Crossways, Dorchester, Dorset. LEEDS : CONTACT Bob Millar (/#itis'=/P#2i\ | 90 T Veluppillai iii: “anit Both interested in helping to form a group in this area. SOUTHAMPTON _ CONTACT Gooff Parson Tel :(l/7ilindii) (iit (weit) ‘fits AAU (homo) - \EA\, | (ean igual) ten aan aT) SUE HAL ACTIVE APPLE DEDICATED GROUPS APPLE Il PROGRAMMERS CLUB CONTACT Philip Dixon TEL : iattaisatntisi)) VENUE — None — operates as a postal group via a monthly nowslottor. BENTWATERS APPLE USER GROUP CONTACT John Thomas Tol :/(iiii 7M!) VENUE — RAF. Woodbridge MEETS — 7.00pm first Tuesday of each month BRISTOL GROUP (B.A.U.D) CONTACT MIKE FARMER Tel : aa VENUE Decimal Business Machines, Throe Queens Lane, Redcliffe MEETS — 7th of each month, or the Friday nearest ifthe 7th falls on a wookend, BURNLEY APPLE USER GROUP CONTACT Rod Tumough Tol iff lie) VENUE — Michelin Sports Centre MEETS 2nd Wednesday of each month CAMBRIDGE APPLE USERS GROUP CONTACT lan Archibald Tel : {iti} fi VENUE Varies, Isons Cycle shop, 72, Chesterton Rd., Cambridge, MEETS — Fortnightly CROYDON APPLE USERS GROUP CONTACT Graham Attwood Tol :(i: tiaihiiiiit VENUE 515, Limpfield Road, Warlingham, Surrey MEETS — 7.30pm on the third Thursday. EAST MIDLANDS MAC USER GROUP CONTACT Nick Helm Tel :iiitiis2afii VENUE Wilford Cricket & Rugby Club, Nottingham MEETS 8:00pm on the frst and third Wednesday EDINBURGH GROUP CONTACT Ricky Pollock Tel : it saya VENUE Proteus Micro Systems, 55, Frederick Sweet, Edinburgh, EH2 1LH MEETS — Monthly, check with Ricky. Page 6 ESSEX GROUP CONTACT PatBermingham — Tel :(tii#li VENUE The Y.M.CA, Victoria Road, Choimstord MEETS — Third Friday of every month GATEWAY COMPUTER CLUB CONTACT Robert D Hall Tel : iisiiii *\-7#H VENUE — Bob Hope Recreation Centre, RAF Mildenhall MEETS — Normally meets at weekend ,check with Bob before going along. GLASGOW GROUP CONTACT Donald Davidson Tel jit sit iii VENUE Proteus Micro Systoms, 17, Park Circus Place, Glasgow MEETS — 3-4 times por year, check with Donald HANTS & BERKS GROUP CONTACT Mike Hollyfiold Tol :(1i?ia “itil VENUE — Thames Valley Systoms , 128 High Street, Maidenhead, Berkshire, SL6 1PT MEETS 7.00pm on the second Monday HERTS & BEDS GROUP CONTACT Norah Amold Tol iiili avfitit VENUE The Old School, 1, Branch Road, Park Street Village, St Albans, Herts. MEETS 8.00pm on the first Tuesday. KENT GROUP CONTACT Richard Daniols Tol : fiilfitiiiat VENUE — Microspot 5-11, London Road, Maidstone. MEETS —_7.30pm on last Monday of each month, LONDON APPLE ll COMPUTER CLUB CONTACT Chris Williams Tel : 6%) siitelitits VENUE Studio 8, Wharfodale Projects, 47, Wharfedale Road, London, Nf 9SE MEETS 6.00pm, first Wednesday of every month. LONDON MACINTOSH GROUP CONTACT Maureen de Saxe Tel “ili isi VENUE Room 683, London University Instituto of Education, Bedford Way, London, WCt MEETS 6.00pm on the second Tuesday. MACINTOSH USER GROUP (CAMBRIDGE) CONTACT Patrick Winterson Tel -(iii2 iis ait VENUE — Formal vonue now established. MEETS — Every three months. MACTAFF - SOUTH WALES MAC GROUP CONTACT Lorrain Thomback Tel VENUE Apple Conte South Wales, Longcross Court, 47 Newport Road, Cardiff MEETS 7.00pm on the first Thursday . MIDAPPLE CONTACT Tom Wright Tel ‘litiiiy 8b VENUE —L.T.E.C., Tildaslay Street, West Bromwich. MEETS 7.00pm on the second Friday. SOUTH EAST ESSEX MAC GROUP CONTACT Mick Foy Tel : /)7ijbeantiinah VENUE D-P.S., Acom House, Little Oaks, Basildon, Essex. MEETS First Monday of every month THE MIDLAND MAC GROUP - CONTACT Wan Knezovich Tel : iiitsitibi VENUE — Spring Grove Houso, West Midland Safari Park, Bewdley, Worcestershire, MEETS — 7.00pm on the first Tuesday . ‘THE NORTH EAST APPLE USER GROUP CONTACT Philip Dixon Tol : atte iii) VENUE — AppleCentre North East, Pontoland Road, Ponteland, Newcastie-upon-Tyne MEETS First Wednesday of every month THE NORTH WEST APPLE COMPUTER CLUB CONTACT Jim Rosco Tel it) VENUE — Horse & Jockey We MEETS POOLE MACINTOSH USER GROUP CONTACT David Huckle ‘Tool: WziE trent VENUE — Deverill Computers (Dealer) ec House, 34-40, West Sireet, Poole, Dorset, BH15 1LA Four times per year. inwick Road, farrington First Monday of every month MEETS: MULTLINTEREST GROUPS WITH APPLE USERS AMONG THE MEMBERSHIP CREWE COMPUTER USERS CLUB CONTACT Paul Edmonds 2, Syab ‘yrsilttiie (Chrawwet, Given vines: (OOM) 1 VENUE — Christ Church Hall, Crewe MEETS Fortnightly, Fridays, 7.30pm to 10.00pm LEICESTER GROUP CONTACT Bob Bown Tel :ii#itiiiiyfnitih VENUE — Shakespeare Pub, Braunstone Lane, Loicoster MEETS — 7.90pm to 10.0pm on first Wednesday . WEST MIDLANDS AMATEUR COMPUTER CLUB CONTACT John Tracey Tel: ii titi> VENUE Hil Crest School, Simms Lane, Netherton, Near Dudioy. MEETS | 7.00pm on the 2nd & 4th Thursday. APPLE DEDICATED GROUPS IRREGULAR ACTIVITY FURNESS AREA CONTACT Alan Curtiss Tel: aH) NOTE There has been more activity in this area recently, | have been unable to contact Alan for some time so check with him yourself, APPLE USERS IN CONTACT NO ORGANIZED GROUP HARROGATE AREA CONTACT Peter Sutton Tel: taististttyninth ‘Anumber of keen Apple users in contact with each other. STOP PRESS LIVERPOOL GROUP NOW ACTIVE Contact: irene Flaxman Tel: (ji) iii MACTEL [THE EUROPEAN BBS FOR MAC USERS: NOW MULTI-USER V21/22/22bi8/23 8 BIT - NO PARITY - 1 STOP - FULL TT: Sy GH are SSR GRE BH TREE SEE i TEE Gas: BFR SRBRS SSH aU SHR VEE LER BBB GAR Text handling is very easy, you can either enter it straight into the program by using the Text symbol or you can PLACE it. Whatever method you use the facility for moving text around and changing the formating is the same. You have a TYPE menu item which allows the choice of fonts and styles, you also have the choices of formating and Black or White text. The last choice allows the printing of black boxes with white text just like the newspapers. Text is stored in blocks with a starting marker and ending marker, if the text block is longer than the space available you can PLACE it any other area, the program remembers the location of text and allows you to move the text around. If you place text and have some in another place it will move text between them if you enlarge or decrease the area of either piece. If you change margins and then replace the text it will automatically realign any following text. This allows for flowing around pictures and drawings. This facility works across page boundaries so you can place text on two or three seperate pages in the same publication. The page has some space on either side this is called the cutting board and allows you to manouever pictures and text before incorporating it into the page layout. You can also do some precise measurements using the ruler and markers. You can have either metric or Imperial measurements. The whole layout proccedure takes no more than an hour of practice before you can produce fairly profesional results. To illustrate the ease of use the system | used to produce the February Hardcore went something like this. 1. Set up the marginsand columns. 2. Set up the left and right page master items. (Headers etc.) 3. Copy the file to another disk (Standard Format File). 4. Get articles together and place on Start-up Disk. 5. Get MacPaint Files in to Scrapbook. 6. Re-boot and start on pages 1-6 7. Do heading and then place text file etc. 8. Check spelling and tidy up pages. 9, Repeat the above 7 times. 10. Take disk to local dealer and print on Laserwriter. 11. Send to printers. You can draw lines, boxes and circles with various shades and line thicknesses. You can then put the boxes and lines behind or in front of other objects including text. This enables you to put text into shaded boxes and overlay objects: You can put text over shades. can put text over shades. The various line thicknesses and shading patterns available are shown below - these give a fairly comprehensive number of variations: To The ability to produce good quality publications is now within the reach of the small business and | can see the whole area of Desktop Publishing becoming a very competetive market. Apple have with the Macintosh, Laserwriter and PageMaker made a very large inroad into this market and it will be some time before the others catch up. I can through my experience with PageMaker reccommend it to anyone desiring a good quality publication without the hassle of typesetting. The other good point is that this set-up does not work 9-5 and therefore those urgent jobs can be produced without relying on someone else. The quality of the output can be gauged by this journal as PageMaker is used for all the artwork. Remember the limitation when used without a hard drive or twin 800k drives. Stop Press. I have been able to use PageMaker with a MacPlus and a 800k external drive and the extra speed and drive capacity has saved about an hour on disk swapping and file transfers. This was on only twelve pages and therefore is about a 20% saving overall. If you are going to use PageMaker in a business environment then you must look to a MacPlus and as much disk space as you can afford, As Hard Drives fall in price I feel this is the only toute to take. | have also heard that a new version of PageMaker will be available during the Summer. Not that there is anything wrong with version 1.1. PageMaker by Aldus is distributed In the U.K. by McQueen Systems Ltd, 18 South Goathill Avenue, HARDCORE - APRIL 1986 Letters to the Editor Defence of the // Dear Jim Panks, In response to your editoral, | leap to the defence of Apple //. | happen to have a // ¢, but //c or //e accompanied by Apple- Works still seems to do practically any- thing any other integrated program willdo, with very little extra key-pressing, and with the help of Beagle’s MacroWorks, LESS key-pressing. For two reasons | have been obliged to make use of an Amstrad PC, for an Open University Course, and in order to use a data-input program from The Museum Documentation Association. All over the Amstrad’s Gem format one finds pale re- flections of the Mac, but compared with the cinema-organ keyboard of the Am- strad (and most others nowadays), | am particularly struck by the marvellously economical use of space and keys by AppleWorks on the //c. Ionly | could have added CP/M AND ex- pected the MDA’s disks to have worked on my //c’s drive, | might never have puta foot in both camps. In our ‘History Society’ we are evolving a database using Omnis 3+ with a Mac+, and intend to continue with it in spite of MDA’s reluctance to produce a Macor an Apple// version of their data-input pro- gram. | am about to experiment with file- transfers from the //cto Omnis onthe Mac, using a cable, Apple and Mac communi- cations software, hoping later to do the same via modem and phone. Later still we might try to get files into the Amstrad’s CP/M data-input program. Can any of the Group give me hints on where the prob- lems are likely to occur, or are they too busy trying to sell their Apple //'s? Yours sincerely, P.C. Arnold Channel Islands Ed's reply: Firstly thanks forthe reply, the Apple //is a good machine and still has a lot to offer the business, educational and home user. The rot seems to have come from Apple U.K. - in the U.S. they still sell large numbers of the // range and soft- ware is still being written for it. You can add C/PM to a/c but it still will not run IBM software although a card is being developed for the liIGS. | hope that we will get some response to your request for help! « Printer problems Dear Sir, The following tale is a much-shortened account of a problem | experienced with the above set-up, which may be of help to others. Page 8 When I first purchased the system | also bought Appleworks v 2.0. Printing from this program resulted in only about three- quarters of a page being printed before a line of gibberish appeared and the system stopped dead. My supplier's salesman, plus technician, tested all they could think of, and the printer cable was changed in case there was a fault in it, but to no avail, Aftersome days my supplier told me to change DIP switch SW-3 to closed, on the advice of Apple (UK) Ltd. This provided a solution to the Appleworks print-out, but then prob- lems were discovered with random col- umn mis-alignment in older DOS program printouts. My supplier apparently having gone to ground, | approached Apple (UK) Ltd di- rectly. After much hassle it was discov- ered that the printer cable was not the correct one, and after replacing this, and resetting SW-3 as per manual, all was sweet and light! One other problem that confused the is- sue was that when 'LIST'ing an Applesoft program to the printer resulted in over- printing if the line was longer than 80 char- acters. This, however, is a problem inher- ent in the design of the Imagewriter. Itcan be solved by setting the soft switches to give an appropriate line feed, either from a Basic program or a machine-language one. The wrong cable should never have been supplied in the first place. After that, notice should have been taken by my supplier and Apple (UK) Ltd, rather than ignoring me in the first instance and telling me that it was my programs that were at fault in the second. One ‘Appleperson’ even said that it was the operating system that was at fault. | had to be very blunt with Apple before | got put in touch with a Senior Technical Support Specialist, who did everything to put things right quickly and efficiently, explaining as he went along. Having previously had an Apple Il+ for over five years, albeit overseas, | was very happy to invest quite a lot of money in the new GS when I returned here. But it appears that Apple is very poorly man- aged in this country, and | shall keep Cupertino advised in any further prob- lems | experience. Yours sincerely, J.C. Clayton Northants Ed's reply: Mr Clayton has a valid point however | must re-enforce his experience with the Technical Support Departmentat Apple UK - When they get involved with a problem they do a first-class job - they do know what they are talking about. Some dealers however seem afraid to ask them and they are the only ones with direct access. Remember that Apple2000 can help in many instances - through the hot line. We are always intrested in members views on their dealer - maybe we should havea ‘USERS’ DEALER OF THE YEAR AWARD! « Well presented. The Guardian 119 Farringdon Road, London EC1R, Dear Sir, Thanks very much for sending me acopy of Apple2000. | read it with interest, and it is well presented. Yours sincerely, Jack Schofield Computer Editor Ed's note: We sent magazines out to journalist recently - we received the above from Jack Schofield. It is nice to have compliments from the professionals. Leaving the camp Maidenhead, Berks. Dear Jim, Congratulations on your comments on the front page of the 12th November issue of COMPUTING relating to the Apple lIGS. Well Done! It is time Apple were told they are overpricing themselves. | have been an Apple Il user since April 1981 but now find it too expensive to upgrade to an APple IIGS because of the ridiculous price Apple are asking. Ourlocal dealer has just sold off his colour lIGS for £995 because he is no longer keping ademonstrator. He thought | might be interested ..... but the Amstrad 1640 with a 20meg hard disk is only £1125 and is reputed to be IBM compatable so | turned his offer down. Unless Apple offer the GS at a price that has some realistic relationship to the cost of the component parts, I shall just have to change to Amstrad_ Thank you for bringing this pricing policy into the open. Yours sincerely Barty Hill Ed's reply: Thanks for your letter. My remarks hopefully have reached the management team at Apple although | think not. What Apple in the U.K. is doing is to turn their back on the huge Apple il base that has been built up over the last five years. In the US. it is the other way around - Apple offercurrent users support and encouragement to stay with them. | hope that AppleU.K. will put some effort into keeping Apple Users within the Apple Camp, although they appear to only want a small slice of the corporate market. QuickKeys This new utility from CE Software allows the setting of macros to do numerous tasks instantly. It will work with all Macs using the new ROMS. | must confess that | went and bought one before receiving a review copy and it ranks in my books as the Best Macintosh Utility of 1987. A review in the next issue! Available from MacLine for around a WordPerfect Macintosh Yes at last WordPerfect for the Macintosh has been released and is available from your Apple Dealer at £299. Containing a word counter, spelling checker, thesau- tus, sort and mail merge it is very powerful and has many of the features lacking in Word3. Auseful feature is the ability to import IBM style WordPerfect files. For more details contact your local Apple dealer or Senti- nal Software - 0932 231164 « HyperText relaunched. Guide 2.0 is a new version of the first HyperText application from Office Work- stations in Edinburgh. Designed to appeal to the corporate market in the Information areas it will easily link to mainframes, video disks and other hi-tech equipment. No price but an upgrade from version 1.0 is available. Office Workstations 031-659-6737 MiniQisk - Cables - etc. Computer Capability have released a very nice 20mbyte SCSI drive which whilst being priced at the lower endis a full featured hard drive. Phillip Bath is proba- bly one of the foremost experts in the SCSI field in this country has now built up a very complete range of drives from the MiniQisk up to a 140 mbyte internal Mac II drive. The build quality is high and Phillip has ensured that the drives are fast and affordable. If you need any cables then you will have to go no further than Computer Capability who now have a range of nine cables covering all the normal needs of the Macintosh User. lf you want more information contact Computer Capability 0753 841659 « Lotus reveals its plans. After Jazz fell by the wayside Lotus look set to launch two new packages for the Macin- tosh in the new year. The first is called Modern Jazz and follows the IBM software package Galaxy. The second package which will be Macintosh 1-2-3 is not ex- pected to appear before the end of baa Postscript News News about forthcoming Postscript prod- ucts include Display Postscript which will be available sometime next year, Steve Jobs is apparently working with Adobe to ensure that this new display standard is available for workstations in the near fu- ture. The next generation of printers to use Postscript will be with us in the first few months of 1988 and it is no secret that QMS will launch a colour printer using the Mit- subishi thermal transfer engine and giving a resolution of 300°300 d.p.i. C4 FullCalc beta testing. Even though FullWrite is still not available Ann Arbour are apparently beta testing a new spreadsheet called FullCalc. FullCalc will have to be good to compete with such standards as Excel and the expected new applications from Lotus. No dates, prices or specifications have yet been released - hopefully they will wait until it is ready! é RAM Upgrades prices down! In the United States Apple have slashed the price of its RAM upgrades even though the supply is almost dried up due to prob- lems with the Japenese supply and the number of Appie Users wanting extra memory torunall the latest memory hungry applications. Apple has reduced its 1 megabyte upgrade from $399 to $249 and its 2 megabyte from $999 to $599. Needless to say this has caused some concern to third party suppli- ers who have had to follow suite. Apple in the U.S, have been seen recently to be forcing prices down which can only be good news for the user. Now all we need is Apple U.K. to followCupertino! « Copy Il Mac Version 7 Centre Point Software have announced the release of version 7 of the popular back-up utility for the Macintosh. It comes complete with MacTools which helps recover crashed disks. The new version has a powerful undelete com- mand for recovering a file together with the name, type and creator. U.S.Price is $39.95 and registored owner can have an upgrade for just $18. Available from Macline at £22. ¢ New Mac game - 1 PCAI the publishers of MacGolf have a new game for the Macintosh called MacRacquetball. This is a game similar to squash and allows two players to play using the AppleTalk network or a mo- dom. Utilising over one thousand frames of digitized graphics it allows the player complete control. So when the court is booked why not have a more relaxed game on your Mac! if you already have MacGolf then try MacCourses - it is a disk of four new courses to test your skills. New Mac game - 2 Epyx have launched Sub-Battle a really good simulation of the U.S Navy at work during WWII. The user interface is an improvement on Gato and includes real- istic sounds. You can choose to play a single mission or the whole war period. Save allows you to stop for some fresh air. | hope that we can bring a review in the next issue of a really clever game to take your mind off all those spread- sheets and things. An ideal present for christmas at just £34.00 from MacLine. « New Mac game -3 Electronic Arts the well known Apple Ii software house have released a Macin- tosh Chess game called Chess Master 2000. Chess Master is a complex game made easy by a very good user interface - it includes excellent graphics with 2 or $d playing boards - real time clocks and many user options - it is one of the best Chess games | have seen implemented on any machine and if you want to get the grey matter going this is the place to start! « Page 9 be MGA MicroSystems Move After many years in the centre of Tenter- den MGA have moved out to larger prem- ises at Appledore and an appropriate place for anyone who adores the Apple. So fromthe 1st December please note the new address: MGA MicroSystems Pear Tree, Appledore, Kent TN26 2AR Tel 0233 83571 CE SOFTWARE CE Software News CE Software have now completed the change from ShareWare publisher to full- time utilities developer and publisher. For many years the utilities from CE have been outstanding and now that they are producing them commercially the utilities have been enhanced. MockPackage Plus contains 5 utilitios including the famous MockChart, Printer, Terminal and Write. You also get a bonus of EZ-Menu. Price in the US $35. MacBillboard is a nice enhancement to MacPaint which also includes MacBan- ner for printing large posters etc. Files created are compatible with MacPaint and it costs $35. CalendarMaker 3.0 is the latest release of this utility that allows you to create, maintain and print your own calendars. You also got a bonus of IconMover which allows you to open, copy, paste and turn icons into resource files. A nice little bo- nus at just $49.95. DiskTop version 3.0 is the latest release of a real winner. This is a housekeeping program for your every day tasks, it allows you to delete, move, create,copy a new folder or file from within a program - it really saves time by letting you do jobs without going back to the slow finder. You can do searches and finds on your hard disk without going near the finder and to top it all you get two bonus programs - Widgets and LaserStatus which means a disk packed full of useful utilities for the discerning Macintosh User. Together with Quickeys CE have a good repertoire of utilities which should find a home in many MacUsers stockings this Christmas. CE Software canbe purchased inthe U.K. from MacLine. e Page 10 ProMac MacEurope have released ten new SCSI devices under the ProMac name. These include 20, 40, 50, 80 and 160 megabyte external hard disk drives and 40 or 80 internal Mac II drives. Other new drives announced include the ProDrive 10 which is a removable cartridge drive with claims that itis faster than a20 megabyte normal drive. The ProTape 60 is a SCSI back up tape drive transferring data at 3.3 Mega- byte per second. Further information and prices from MacEurope 01-965-6905 C7 Findswell & Spellswell Working Software have now launched their latest software in the U.K. through MacEurope. Findswell is a replacement for the Apple Find File and will locate files in half the time. It also allows the finding of documents from within application dialog boxes ‘and you can remember frequently used documents for faster access. Spellswell is a new spell checker and proofreader with a 93,000 word dictionary and an unlimited capacity for additional words. Itcan be used with several special- ist dictionaries including a legal and medical dictionary. Lookup is a DA spelling Guide which uses the same dictionaries as Spellswell. It will alert you when you make a mistake and suggest an alternative or replace it with a correctly spelt word. Allthese products are now available from MacEurope on 01-965-6905. Pixel Paint SuperMac Technologies have an- nounced the availability of Pixel Paint for the Macintosh II with full colour capabili- ties. Pixel Paint includes all the familiar MacPaint tools together with a wealth of increased functionality in addition to colour support. The minimum configura- tion required is a Macintosh Il, 1meg RAM .@ hard disk and a colour monitor. Contact your Apple Dealer or SuperMac Technology on 01 847 2101/2571 HyperCAD Desktop Engineering Systems have an. nounced HyperCAD a 2D CAD package for the Macintosh II with a minimum of 2megabyte of memory. HyperCAD users have access to over 500 basiccommands through a user interface that follows the Mac Interface. It has a built in Macro Command Language and users can de- fine their own compound commands. For further details contact DeskTop Engl- neering Systems 0895 637037 © New Apple Dealership Bidmuthin Technologies of Apple Il fame have now been granted an Apple dealership and at the same time have moved to Brent House, 214 Kenton Road, Harrow, Middlesex HA3 8BT. Telephone 01 907 8516. As well as selling the Macin- tosh Series Bidmuthin will be supporting the Apple Il and lIGS. They are alevel one service centre and will still be bringing in fromthe U.S. hardware forthe Appler Il by Applied Engineering. Bidmuthin are an Apple2000 Recom- mended Dealer. ‘ FreeHand announced. Aldus have announced the introduction of anew drawing package called FreeHand, It willbe approachable as a basic drawing tool whilst having many high level func- tions such as special effects tools, ad- vanced text handling, and colour capabili ties, t would seem from reports to be a super Illustrator and will be available sometime towards April. Price will be in the £450 region. Any enquiries to Aldus but dont expect too much of a reply just yet! s PageMaker 3.0 Aldus announced PageMaker 3 for the Macintosh at the MacUser Show. Version 3 will have a multitude of new features which have been asked for by users. Over 30 new features have been added includ- ing Automatic Text Flow through the whole document, User defined style sheets, page design templates, spot colour, automatic text wrap around graph- ics. The minimum configuration will be a Macintosh 512E with at least a Megabyte of memory and a hard disk. Expect this to be available before March and the price willbe £545 no upgrade prices have been announced yet. s Give your APPLE the best! HD -Mate Ultimate Hard Disk Partitioning The HO-Maie utility is designed to allow you to have both ProDOS and PASCAL 1.3 programs on the same Hard Disk! (And if you're already using Cirtech CP/M Plus, you can have three operating systems: ‘on the same Hard Disk!). Simply select the sizes of the ProDOS and PASCAL areas you wish, install the PASCAL area, and you're ready to start using your new-look Hard Disk. The PASCAL area is divided into two equal sized volumes called HDMATE1 and HDOMATE2. Normal operation of the Hard Disk is not affected and all standard PASCAL 1.3 and ProDOS commands work in exactly the some way. 98 with an ordinary disk dive. You can start up PASCAL or ProDOS from any disk drive {including the Herd Disk) and both systems will ‘A diate one Pail see their appropriate part of the Hard Disk. se Pale Ue MARENTES MOST GF OUS AROS, deonatabetn, Sth support or suveosl etrage ony WITH HD-MATE £38.00 under DOS 3.3, PASCAL 1.1/1.2 & CP/M 2.20b 2.23 on the varicus mode's of Apple computers DOS. PASCAL CPIM UniDISK 3.5 tec teca rec 3.5 Disk g INNOVATION Slot RAMcord +ecg + penne dike or the COMPLETE range of memory cards VERSATILITY preg Hard Dik tecg tecg plusRAM and plusRAM-xtra (with the unique RamDesk NGS internal ROM Manager memory management system) are designed for (ae Apple treeksieve. Appli He: the I+, //e or lIGS, giving 256K to 1 Megabyte extra ¢ = Apple tic: g = Apple IGS! memory. plusRAM-GS2 and GS8 are designed for the | TOTAL VERSATILITY UGS, giving up to a massive EIGHT MEGABYTES of FOR ONLY £28.00 extra memory — on one card! You can even add a further 512K with the instant-loading ROM/PROM Disk Adaptors. plusRAM cards are fully ProDOS DOS 3.3, PASCAL & CP/M compatible and are used by standard Apple I! programs as super-fast electronic disk drives! plusRAM cards also feature AppleWorks 2.0, 1.3 expansion with multiple disk saving. mouse control, date/time display, print buffer and iA CIRTECH CP/M PLUS calculator (also allows use ot AppleWorks Advanced operating systems 1.3 on the Il+) 4 he sophisticated new CP/M Plus Systems let you FADM ONLY ES 200, use the huge range of CP/M programs, like dBASE & WordStar, on your Apple IGS, //e or //c! With @ lightning-fast 8MHz co-processor card and the most Advanced version of CP/M Plus, these Systems make full use of the Apples’ power. Pop up ToolKey windows allow you to copy and format disks, print screen dumps, control internal print buffers etc., at any time! The inbuilt File Manager, with pull down windows, keeps track of your programs and can be used to solect user arcas un, copy. delete or rename files; & there's even ‘an on-screen, full-function caiculator! Fully e pte og enappinte = compatible with all Apple-standard devices ilo lk and you can even use CP/M Plus & ProOOS. fe and lIGS give you all the on the same hard disk! i es bese inane Bs ore EO TOP PERFORMANCE ~ £118.00 Hike text and praphics screw toms, character font size selection, line/page/margin controls, § or £ independent X & ¥ axis scaling, etc) Text printing {s supported on all modern printers, with graphics tastes avaiable on ail printers with “Epson type graphics codes. Compatitie with ProOOS, DOS. CPM E PASCAL. Champion cards have a full 8 bit parallel Bells eho 8 Interface as well os nbult sonal UO espsbilty for PE odd sla bral? Siren RS232c type interface using a Serial Adaptor. operation to finish — with a CACHEBOX connected Champions are also avolablo with a mocaive Betwean your computor and printer, data is accepted 64.000 choracter bulfar & imagewriter/DMP ae last ae your computer can send it lup to 20,000 EPROM progening prearptortenen top peere PERFORMANCE were eee CACHEBOX comes complete with all required cables: Bis available in two sizes, 256K or 512K (enough for ‘want to know more — please send me full data on all the CIRTECH products! ' ' f NAME: _ - ; ¥ FROM ONLY £198.00 ' ADDRESS: = I 1 ot i ~ 1 i _ 74 Alpe way forward——_— { } CIRTECH (UK) Limited, Currie Road industrial Estate. Galashiels. Selkirkshire, TO1 28P, Scotland i GS Telephone: (0896) 57790 ‘Telex: 265871 (MONREF G) ATTN. 84: CPD 001 (Telocom Gold! | | SOURCE Mailbox: AAHS55 Mailbox System No. 84 — MAILBOX CPDOO1 © CIRTECH (UK) Ltd 1987. Apple i+. lle, IGS, Jle, AppleWorks, DOS3.3, ProUOS, UniDisk, ProFile, are registered trademarks of Apple Computer Inc.. CP/M and CPIM Plus are registered trademarks of Digital Research Inc, WordStar is a registered trademark of MicroPro, GBASE is a registered trademark of Ashton Tate. COBOL Dave Miller continues his series on languages with a look at COBOL In the late 1950s, the Pentagon was given a brief to develop a computer language suited to the needs of the business community. Many people had realised that the computer's numerical abilities were ideally suited to many routine business applications whilst no suitable programming envi- ronment existed. The only reasonably well-known program- ming environments were either assembly language or FOR- TRAN: both of which were not ideal, to say the least. The re- sultant language was released in 1959 and was called by the grand title of “Commercial and Business Oriented Lan- guage”, COBOL for short. Since that time COBOL has gener- ated much debate about its fitness as a language. COBOL seems to be somewhat similar to the Great West- ern Railway: people seem either to love it or to loathe it. Edsgar Dijkstra, the famous Dutch computer scien- tist, commented that “teaching CO- BOL ought to be regarded as a crimi- nal act.” While this may be a bit strong, it is maintained by some that COBOL Is a form of job security be- cause it makes programming so un- pleasent as to dissuade all but the mad or desperate. There are several reasons for this unusual regard for the language. One is because the language was designed to be self-documenting. This seems to be an impossible task because any self-documenting program can be made obscure by the poor choice of variable and procedure names by the programmer. In practice, COBOL requires comments just as much as any other language. The result is an extremely verbose language which can be frustrating to program in, especially if the programmer is used to other, more succinct, languages. Many regard this verbosity as totally irrelevent and point out that carefully written code in any language, no matter how brief. can be made per- fectly understandable by the use of clear and concise comments (I don't believe that!). Compare the following equivalent COBOL and BASIC: statements: COBOL MULTIPLY VAL1 BY VAL2 GIVING RESULT. BASIC RESULT = VAL] * VAL2 Page 12 It is obvious that COBOL's version is rather more verbose. It is true, though, that COBOL's version is far more powerful with various optional qualifiers which can be used to mod- ify the function performed. For ex ample: MULTIPLY VAL] BY VAL2 ROUNDED GIVING RESULT ROUNDED ON SIZE ERROR GO TO ERR. compilation is a long process. Whereas a Pascal compiler need only scan the source file once to produce the object code (a one-pass compiler), it is not unusual to find a COBOL compiler having to perform seven passes on the source file to produce the object code. This has one benefit in allowing various optimisation tech- niques to be employed by the compiler to produce more efficient machine code. These techniques invariably in- volve multiple passes of the source file so if these passes are already being done, the techniques might as well be employed. The processing required to optimise the code is often much less than that performed by the compiler in translating the code and assem- bling the machine code. ‘Thus COBOL programs are often very efficient. Some people have gone as faras tosay that aCOBOL program can be up to ten times more efficient that an equivalent program written in FORTRAN. I think that FORTRAN's illsuitedness to COBOL’s application field may have more to do with this performance difference than any code optimisation on the part of COBOL. A COBOL program is usually split into four DIVISIONS. The first divi- sion is the IDENTIFICATION DIVI- SION. This lists the program name, its author, the date of creation and other details. The next division is the ENVI- RONMENT DIVISION. The environ- ment division is split into various SECTIONS. The CONFIGURATION SECTION lists the computers on which the code was written and on The Language of Business The above statement rounds both VAL2 and the result. On a size error (that is either overflow or underflow) execution is transferred to the state- ment marked with the label ERR. The self-documenting feature also reflects itself in the terminology used to describe the various features of COBOL: there are no KEYWORDS, COBOL uses VERBS and statements are renamed clauses or sentences. Another reason for COBOL's notori- ety may be due to COBOL’s success. Much of the criticism has come from possibly disgruntled followers of less popular. but more aesthetic. lan- guages, There is no doubting COBOL's success, no matter how unwarrented some may feel it to be. The fact that COBOL was the first commercial language obviously helps as does its stability: the core of the language has hardly changed at all. COBOL is a very large language: a huge amount of business features are provided as standard by the compiler. This means that the compiler itself has to be very large. It also means that which it is to run. These are usually the same but not always: sometimes one machine is used to create code for another computer. The INPUT-OUTPUT SECTION lists the various input and output files used and their characteristics. CO- BOL supports not only the normal sequential files (like DOS 3.3's text files) but aiso supports random ac cess files and various forms of index sequential files. Files are assigned to a particular logical device. The most common devices used are the VDU (screen and keyboard), disc drive, tape drive and printer. In older sys- tems the punched card reader was a common form of input and the line printer or card puncher was the usual form of output. ‘The next division is the DATA DIVI- SION. This defines ail the variables to be used in the program (note that, like BASIC. the variables are global to the whole program). This is really COBOL 's strength. COBOL variables are not really like the variables used in BASIC. A variable can refer to more than one individual data item. For trata a vanab ‘coal bold | ‘The following program reads in a time sheet file consisting of the following complete line from a data file. This Soeeett number employes name group no, hours worked can be split into the various fields | 6 digits 60 characters 4 digits 2 digits making up the line. These fields can, ss 4 ‘ sri tn tur, Be split ito theconattioent — | Tes ohn ss tee tans ne mare en reer a data items making up each field. firet. The program then outputs the resulted file to the printer, Thus a variable can constist of differ- | ent levels of detail, the “higher” the | ADENTIFICATION DIVISION. level then the smaller and more de- 4 tailed the data item. COBOL allows me evosme the data to be handled in terms of all DATE-WRITTEN. 20TH Max 1987. the defined levels, thus making it very REMARKS Program to sort and output time sheet file. easy to manipulate data in the form of whole chunks of information or as in- IEEE ERE dividual data values. CONFIGURATION SECTION. The individual data items are de fined by giving hemaPICTURE.This | mereneoms. —owtro-nermachne. defines the size and format of the vari- able by using special editing charac- INPUT-OUTPUT SECTION. ters similar to the PRINT USING fea ture of some BASICs. * This defines the files to be used- sequential files are default This is especially useful in defining rine-corraot, output lines to be sent to the printer. SELECT IN-TIME-SHEET ASSIGN TO DISK. By using special editing features the | SELECE SEI-TOR~SUEET ASSIGN 70 DISK. exact format of printed output can be SSS ae there: oo caseeen: easily and powerfully specified. | S The data division's FILE SECTION DATA DIVISION. lists all the variables associated with each of the files defined in the INPUT- FRE SEN. OUTPUT SECTION of the ENVIRON- * This defines the format of the files used- note the way the file MENT DIVISION. This allows the * characteristics are defined (FILE-ID is the file’ exact format of files, in terms of the internal organisation of data, to be yn ag defined. In effect, the file buffers are VALUE OF FILE-ID 15 ‘INTM@ESIEET’, defined in the FILE SECTION. DATA RECORD IS IN-TIME-REC. The WORKING-STORAGE SEC- OL = IN-TIME-REC PIC x(74). TION defines those data which are to be manipulated by the program in Be eee siae saa Gann) performing its calculations. VALUE OF FILE-ID IS ‘SRITIMESHEET’, An optional section of the data divi- DATA RECORD IS SRT-TIME-REC. sion is the REPORT SECTION. This is * The following is a two-level definition of the file consisting of a very powerful feature which is * four fields, the payroll number, the employee name, group number and the sometimes absent on smaller compil- * number of hours worked- note the pictures defining the fields’ ers. It allows whole printed reports to * characteristics be defined, page by page. Once the e pean sie various data have been inserted into . peycoll, maiber eight digits the “holes” left in the report, the re- 02 PAYROLL-NO PIC 9(8). port is automatically printed with the * exployes name 60 alphanumeric characters characteristics defined (such as page . ome i size, layout, number of copies etc). és) eeeees nes The last division is the PROCE- * hours worked two digits DURE DIVISION. This is the actual 02 — ROURS-WOBKED PIC 99. code. It can be split into named — SECTIONS which loosely correspond LABEL RECORDS ARE CMITTED, to procedures or subroutines of other DATA RECORD IS REPORT-LINE. languages. These can, in turn, be split into “paragraphs”. A paragraph ts a * Printer file: 110 characters per line plus an extra character for = control group of “sentences”. A sentence is * character line control one or more COBOL verbs and any as- sociated arguments terminated by a 0% RERORE-—TMR,. full stop. Sentences can be joined Hd oe ae — together by seperating them with ‘ commas. This can be used to force a | sD WORKFILE, group of sentences to be taken as a LABEL RECORDS ARE STANDARD, whole, such as a multiple sentence SERS TE Tae following an IF verb. | ® Sort work file COBOL has many verbs, some of | which provide some very sophisti- * Mote the use of FILLER to reserve the space for those fields which are cated features such as scarching and * not used during the sorting sorting. COBOL is, though, lacking 01 WRK-TIME-REC. on the more structured statements 02 WK-PAYROLL-NO Pre 9(8). which are founden in the more mod- 02 FILLER PIC x (64), ern languages. Even FORTRAN has 2 Sees, ISR more structuredness than COBOL. | wormua svosace sxcrras. The basic way of assigning values toa Page 13 variable is via the MOVE verb: MOVE 21 TO COUNT. MOVE DATE TO RECORD-DATE. The GO TO verb allows execution to be transferred elsewhere. The destination is indicated by using a label. It is interesting that only COBOL, of all the mainstream computer languages, allows labels to be alphanumeric strings, as opposed to simply a number. GOTO END-PROC. The IF verb provides the main way of altering execution depending upon some condition: IF VAL > 2 MOVE GREATER-THAN-2 TO CONDITION ELSE MOVE NOT-GREATER-THAN-2 TO CONDITION. Multiple sentences can be used to force more than onc sentence to be executed: IF FILE-ID = END-OF-FILE DISPLAY “End of file reached”, MDVE 2 TO VALUE, GO 0 END-PROCESS. The PERFORM verb is one of the most powerful verbs in COBOL. It allows para: graphs to be called in a similar way to sub- routines in BASIC. It also provides COBOL's only means of iteration. For instance the following sentence per- forms the paragraph PROCESS four times in succession: PERFORM PROCESS 4 TIMES. A FOR loop can be implemented by: PERFORM PROCESS VARYING INDEX FROM 1 BY 1 UNTIL INDEX = 10. A WHILE loop is implemented by: PERFORM PROCESS WHILE PROC-STATE = DO- PROCESSING The above sentence, though, is slightly misleading because the condition is evaluated after PROCESS has been called. So PROCESS is always called once. No other WHILE loop functions like this: they all test the condition before anything else is done. This an unfortunate error in COBOL's specification. Although COBOL supports arrays, it is rather clumsy. One-dimensional arrays can be defined but some compilers can not cope with higher dimensional arrays. On those systems which support multidi- mensional arrays, the handling is difficult and so they are seldom used. COBOL is a very powerful language suited to applications in business computing. Many of COBOL’s limitations, such as no Page 14 01 «HEADER. + HEADER contains the current date and time 02 HEADER. 03° HD-DATE. 4 HD-DAY PIC 99, 4 FILLER PIC X VAIWE ‘/’. O48 HD-MONTH PIC AAA. | 04 = FILLER «= PIC 20K VALUE ‘/19’. | 04 «= MD-YEAR PIC 99. * 99 blanks | 030 FILLER Pre B(99). | * HEADERZ is the main header 02 MEADER2. 0300 FILLER PIC A(14) VALUE ‘PAYROLL NUMBER’ . 030 FILLER PIC B(27). 030 FILLER PIC A(13) VALUE VEMPLOYER NAME! . 030 FILLER PIC B(28). 03 FILLER PIC A(12) VALUE ‘GROUP NUMBER’ . 030 FILLER PIC B(4). 0300 FILLER PIC A(12) VALUE ‘HOURS WORKED’ . ‘* HEADERS ie the underlines for HRADERZ 02 «© HEADER. 030 FILLER PIC A(14) VALUE ALL ‘_’. 03 FILLER Pic B(27). 030 FILLER PIC A(13) VALUE AM. \'. 030 FIILER PIC B(28). 030 FILLER PIC A(12) VALUE ALL‘ /. 03 FILLER PIC B(4). 030 FILLER PIC A(12) VALUE ALL \_’. * The main data line 01 = DATA~LINE. 02 FILLER 02 DI-PAYROLL-NO 02 «= FIZLER Pre B(7). 02 © «DI-EMPLOYER-NAME = PIC X(60). 02 «FILLER PIC B(8). 02 Di-GROUR-NO PIC 9(4). 02 «FITSER PIC B(13). 02 © DL-HOURS-WORKED PIC 99. 02 | FILLER PIC B(S). 01 WORK-VARTABLES. * Define END-OF-FILE with an initial value of 0 02 0 END-Or-FILE PIC 9 VALUE 0, 02 NO-LINEs PIC 99, 02 © TODAYS-DATE. 0300 ™D-YEAR PIC 99. 030 TD-MONTH PIC 99. 03° = ™D-DAY PIC 99, | * Define = list of month names as 36 alphabetic characters 02 MOWTH-NAMES PIC A(36) VALUE ‘ JANPEBHARAPRMAY JUNJULAUCSEROCTNOVDEC’ . * overlay the array MONTH on the above list of month names~ MONTH is defined * ag having 12 3-character elements 02 MONTH REDEFINES MONTH-NAMES OCCURS 12 TIMES PIC AAA. PROCEDURE DIVISION. MAIN SECTION. * First of all, sort the file SORT WORKFILE ON DESCENDING KEY WK-HOURS-WORKED ASCENDING KEY WK-PAYROLL-NO USING IN-TD@-SHEET GIVING SRI-TIM-SHEET. * Get today’s date and output the headers to the print file PERFORM GET~TODAYS-DATE. PREFORM DO-KEADER. * open the soxted file and output ite data until the end of file has been * reached OPEN INPUT SRC-TIME-SHEET. PERFORM OOTPUT-DATA WHILE END-OF-FILE = 0. * Close file and stop CLOSE SRC~TIME-SHEET. STOP RUN. GET-TODAYS-DATE SECTION. + Cot today’s date and insert it into the report header ACCEPT TODAYS-DATE FROM DATE. MOVE TD-DAY TO HD-DAY. MOVE MONTH (TD-MONTH) TO HD-MONTH. MOVE TD-YEAR TO HD-YEAR. exit, COTPUT-DATA SECTION. + Read in the data from the input file and output it to the print file READ SRC-TIME~SHEET AT END MOVE 1 TO END-OF-FILE, €O TO OUTPUT-DATA-END. * Place data into the output record and print out line MOVE PAYROLI-NO TO DL~PAYROLL-NO_ MOVE EMPLOYER-NAME TO DL-EMPLOYEE-NAME. MOVE GROUP-NO TO DL-GROUP-NO. MOVE HOURS-WORKED TO DL-HOURS-WORKED. MOVE DATA-LINE TO LINE. WRITE REPORT-LINE AFTER ADVANCING 1 LINE. * Count this line if at the end of the page then do next page’s headers ADD 1 TO NO-LINES. IF NO-LINES = 60 PERFORM DO-HEADER, COTPUT-DATA-END exrr. DO-HEADER SECTION. * print out the headers after feeding a new page- note that HEADERS is * printed over HEADER2 (it contains underscores) MOVE HEADERI TO LINE. WRITE REPORT-LINE AFTER ADVANCING 1 PAGE. MOVE HEADER2 TO LINE. WRITE REPORT-LINE AFTER ADVANCING 1 LINE. MOVE HEADERS TO LINE. WRITE REPORT-LINE BEFORE ADVANCING 3 LINES. * Reset the page count wove 0 TO NO-LINES. war. multidimensional arrays or no exten- sive mathematical features, do not apply to the business field. Some of the other criticisms, such as COBOL's lack of structure in the procedure division, are more serious. The latest standard of COBOL being developed (COBOL-8X) should address many of these faults by the addition of some more comprehensive control struc- tures and the elimination of some of the more dangerous features of the language. Whether or not the new COBOL ts more in keeping with the modern thought on structuredness, it is likely that the most widespread computer language in the world will be in use for many years to come. The next instalment will look at AL- GOL- the first of the structured lan- guages. « FED UP WITH LONG PRODOS CATALOGS ? If you have ProDos disks with large numbers of files and don't want to see them all when looking for a particular file don't forget that you can catalog selected files types. eg CAT,BAS will list Applesoft files only CAT,TSYS lists system files CAT,TTXT lists text files CAT,TAWP lists Appleworks W.P. files Apple Bytes Small tips, hints and stories from around the AppleWorld The Northern Illinois Computer Society recently published some notes about an Apple User Group Conference which included the following ; “The User Group Pur- chase Plan will allow user groups that meet a rigid criteria, the opportunity to purchase certain Apple products for User Group activities. Groups meeting the criteria will be able to purchase single quantities of equipment at developers prices (typically 50% of list prices).” “Apple Inc also have a new li- censing agreement on offer to User Groups, the agreement ef- fectively allows User Groups to sell certain system software to their members. Software included in the agreement includes DOS 3.3, ProDos 8, 16, Mac System, Mac Printer Installation, and some tools for the Mac. Further extensions to the agreement will allow User Groups to offer up- dates to its members forthe above software. for a fee (to Apple), this feature should reduce the delay between updates appearing and users gaining access to them.” This system still does not oper- ate in the U.K. - we thought you would like to see what happens in the United States where User Groups have special relationship with Apple. é 1/O ERROR MESSAGES ? Sometimes when using DOS 3.3, the dreaded “I/O ERROR” message appears during at- tempts to CATALOG, LOAD or RUN a program. If you have this problem try the following rem- edy which disables part of the error checking routine when DOS reads from disk. Enter “POKE 47426,24” and a read may then be successful, if it is avoid repetition of the problem by saving the file/program on a new disk (nb ensure that you reboot before inilialising any disks ). é Page 15 CHICKAMAUGA and ANTIETAM Tom Wright goes back to the U.S. Civil War and finds out how hard it is to win! This month I have been testing two more SSI wargames both of which offer opportunities for many hours of enjoyment to war- gamers. Both game scenarios are based on battles of the American civil war period, with very similar features which facilitate their joint coverage. I am happy to report that the poor error trapping which was evident in the Warship game that I reviewed last issue is not evident in either of these games. I did not in fact find any sign of poor pro- gramming. The manuals provided with both games are up to the normal SSI items and must be regarded as excellent. All features of the games are covered in depth in a manner which is easy to fol- low, ‘Rebel Charge at Chicka- mauga’ and ‘Battle of Antietam’ are the games that I have been testing, purely out of dedication to the club you understand! Both games are presented in attractive boxes containing a manual, one disk, and a laminated map card. The review copies were suit- able for 48k Apple II+, Ie or Ill and versions are available for Commo- dore C-64, Atari and IBM ma- chines. During play I found the visual appearance of the Chickamauga game slightly more attractive and it has one or two features that are lacking in the Antietam game. This type of game may appeal to chess players since it represents a more complex form of chess. The feature which may not appeal to keen chess players is the ‘random’ determination of attack and de- fence effectiveness during combat periods.I found that the random routines really do work, it is pos- Page 16 sible to achieve different results when replaying a given tactical situation which has been previ- ously saved to disk. The ability to save both games to disk is a very necessary feature as a game can easily occupy fif- teen hours. Playing time can be reduccd ifyou have an accelerator card in your machine. Both games offer three levels of difficulty, Beginners, Intermedi- ate, and Advanced. if you buy one or both of these games and haven't played anything similar before I strongly recommend that you begin at the beginners level. At the Advanced level both pro- grams will give you a pretty tough game. Of the two, I think that Antietam is the most difficult which is about what would be expected from a scenario wherein the Union forces have a two to one advantage in numbers. Achieving a major win in either game isa real challenge. The player is offered the choice of controlling Union or Confederate forces in both games with fairly accurate representa- tion of force strengths. Ifyou enjoy a real challenge choose the Con- federate side in both games. The following comments are based on the Chickamauga game with reference to differences be- tween it and the Antietam game where appropriate. Entry into both games is via a gencrally similar sequence of player's options which in the case of the Chickamauga game include the ability to utilise an accelerator card. Chickamauga also offers a demonstration game option, a facility which is not offered in the Antietam game. Both games have a feature which allows the player to recall a previously saved game from disk, or play a new game. Chickamauga includes facilities for weighting Corps and Divi- sional command which are not included in the Antictam game but in most other respects both games have similar start-up fa- cilities including a choice between ‘hidden’ or ‘non-hidden’ units. Selecting ‘hidden’ units can liven the game up considerably in terms of reproducing the effect of ‘encounter’ engagements. The Chickamauga game has the option of silent play a feature which will doubUless be much appreciated by other members of the family during the early hours of the morning. Colour and mono- chrome displays are selectable, as is a ‘time limit’ mode, and the player is able to choose between Icon and Symbol representation of each unit. Choice between Icons and Symbols is associated with one of the differences between the two games as the Chickamauga game includes two levels of display during the game. The ‘normal’ display is a tactical map which can display Icons (ie men, can- non, horses), The player can also look at a large scale map on which units are represented by symbols. The Antietam game only offers the tactical map display. In both games reinforcements appear at intervals during the game on designated map loca- tions, with the Union side receiv- ing more reinforcement than the Confederate one. The laminated maps supplied are extremely useful and offer more detail than those displayed on screen in terms of ground elevation, wooded and open ground. What's elevation got to do with it ? ele- mentary my dear Watson, the simulation of ground elevation can often result in units being able to approach enemy units in safety due to the fact that they are in ‘dead’ ground and cannot be seen by the target unit(s). It is possible to carry out lim ited reconnaisance of enemy units although the information that is obtained does not extend beyond an ‘ap- proximation’ of the unit's manpower and gives no guide to it's morale or fatigue rat- ings, both of which sig- nificanUy affect combat efficiency. Apart from the limited amount of in- formation which can be obtained during arecon- naisance the player is al- lowed a strictly limited number of recon- naisances during each game move, A player may change the directional facing of each of their units, move units in any of nine dif- ferent directions, build fortifications, identify units belonging to a par. ticular brigade. select unit advance in the event of successful con tact, designate units to engage in melee, check line of site from the creek in the north and use the Dunker church as a pivot. * If you elect to charge at Chickamauga don't beat your brains out trying to force your way across the creek by Lee & Gordon's Mill in the early stages. Demon- strate around McAfee's church and manoeuvre via Kelly's and Brock's fields. Both statements as- sume that you elect to play the Confederate side. In the event that you find your forces decimated keep your let- ters of complaint to yourselves, serves you right for listening to me ! I thoroughly recom- mend both games. selected units. split units into sub-units, and many other features. Any- one selecting ‘double time’ rate of advance will be well advised to con- sider the rela- tive merits of Product : info Rebel Charge at Chickamauga Publisher: Strategic Simulations Available trom: MGA MicroSystems Bidmuthin Technologies arrivin g|Price: ey quickly with an exhausted | Yao: 22772 unit, and arriv- . ing more slowly Performance K eeded with a unit | Documentation: déede which is not fatigued to the point of losing much of its fighting effec- liveness. Hints and tips Product : ra Battle of Antietam Publisher: Strategic Simulations Available from: MGA MicroSystems Bidmuthin Technologies * If you choose Battle | Price: £? of Antietam cone ay to if | Value : 22229 pla istoi r fangiig ay Performance: deed Documentation: #é¢ee¢ the sunken road. Get some units across Ordors oF enquitin to KOLOUR SOFTWARE Lo, In GAZELLE Communications Software For The Apple // © written by Ewen Wannop, author of Dato Highway. * Viewdata (Prestel) ana Ascii modes, * New!l On-line colour Viewdata display for GS version. Still priced of £86.25 (£63.25 with hade in). SPECIAL OFFERS Kolour Software can offer massive savings on modems bought with Gazelle software. For example, the Pace Lnnet Is on intelligent, speed buffered modem offering 300/300 and 1200/75 baud rates and auto-diavauto- answer facilities. OFFER 212.75 NORMALLY Gazollo, Linnet and Cable 273.70 Please call for detalls of other modoms. All prices INCLUDE VAT and carriage Silicon Press’ The lndispensible Macintosh Print Utility NOW ONLY £67.77 plus VAT | The Suicon Pres oan Send cheque for £79.95 to receive your copy from: MGA MICROSYSTEMS Pear Tree, Appledore, KENT or tel: 0233-83571 for Access orders. svsvem reaumements Se, Page 17 Notes en Files Vic Jones reviews Notes en Files - a simple filing and text editing system for the lIGS What is Notes *n Files? DATAPAK, in the introduction to their In- struction Book say that it is soft- ware written in response to a common requirement of most people who would like to ‘be able to keep track of some names and addresses and write these people a letter now and then, or maybe just jot down a memo and file it away..." Well that is certainly a need that most people feel. We all, in both office and home, need to keep, in various degrees of order (and disorder), all sorts of infor- mation, scruffy notes, letters to friends and businesses, memos of all sorts, addresses, telephone numbers, the name of the horse we backed last Friday and the odds we got at the time.. We want to keep track of the supplier of that last lot of electronic goodies and the date our driving license expires. So many things.. and we are all crying out for someone, or something to keep that whole lot in good order.. Not much use having the information if we can- not find it again when we really want it. Ido think, though, that DATA- PAK have rather understated the capabilities of Notes *n Files in that introduction. it is capable of much more than keeping a few rough notes in order. Just as in an office or home paper filing system, Notes *n Files uses filing cabinets, drawers and folders for filing all this stuff. In return for a little care in choosing the titles of these imaginery cabi- nets, drawers and folders this easy to use software will keep your files in good order and will be able to find the information you want when you want it. Its text editing facility will allow you, to write notes, memos, letters, reports etc. and print them out on your printer. It will address the enve- Page 18 lopes, make ordered lists and indexes, find folders on same or similar subjects and allow the printing of form letters. The ways in which it may be used depend very much upon the limits of your own imagination. All that you have to do is to stay within the rules laid down in the instruc- tions. Perhaps it is not so much that you have to stay within the rules as that you must be pre- pared for Notes en Files to impose essary but they certainly do away with the need for titling and simi- lar explanations and they are easy to get used to. The Instruction Manual is comprehensive and easily under- stood. My only complaint was over the Data Entry section where considerable emphasis was placed on saving disk space by making proper use of abbrevia- tions. All well and good but some of the abbreviations would be confusing in these islands since they were entirely U.S. usage. I suppose that I should not com- plain of US software writers writ ing for the American market. They do live there, after all, and without doubt that market is the biggest one around at the moment. Well, what about the use of the software itself...? One cannot just read the instruction book and then write a review.. One has to spend a lot of time actually using the software. That is the way one discovers the things that will get up a user's left nostril. « File Edi Font Style Format Print | Lirash ] ‘(Stotionery} [ESTE (index The Notes «n Files main screen. the rules upon you. Like all well written software Notes ¢n Files will trap most of your errors and oper- ate around them. I liked the way in which I was able to enter the system with minimal assistance from the in- struction book. DATAPAK have clearly aimed the software at users who are new to computers and they have tried to make the operation of the system as simple and as foolproof as possible. I think that they have succeeded in their aim. Perhaps the graphic representations of filing cabinets and folders etc. are not 100% nec- DATAPAK say that you need an APPLE IIGS with at least 512k of memory, a 3.5 inch disk drive, of necessity, because Noles en Files lives on and operates from a 3.5' disk but you can use 5.25' disk drives for data only. They advise having a second 3.5' disk drive for convenience, so that you do not need to swop disks back and forth, and, for the truly rich, and busy, they reckon a hard disk would be a good idea. linitially viewed these require- ments with some alarm because it looked as if the system was pretty well drive-based and my own sys- tem is a bog-standard IGS bundle consisting of APPLE IIGS, with a 1 megabyte Memory Ex- pansion Card, color monitor and a single 3.5' disk drive. Hooked in, also, is one of my old 5.25 drives. I need not have wor ried. After I had organi- sed memory properly my system worked splen didly, My first,and only, glitch occurred because I had not appreciated phabetical order. Click- ing on the little triangles fingered through the folders either from front to back or from back to front. Aclick on the little square shut the drawer again. Easy. At the top of the screen is the usual sort of selection menu giving filing, editing and print- ing options. Mouseclick- ing does all the selection. For instance, if you wish to rename a drawer, you (© /NF.MAsTER/ Select the file you want to open: O. PRODOS PRO SHMPLES © system J Clase duit) The FILE selection box that Noles en Files would do all the setting up that was necessary. For speed I always use the memory expansion card as a Ramdisk, setting aside a whole 3.5’ disk’s worth (800K) for this purpose. I forgot to ad- just the amount of Ram- disk allocated and Notes en Files would not com- plete the boot. When Isct the Rameard properly things started to hap- pen. Then it was just a matter of mouseclicking for first ‘PROGRAMS’ and then ‘Notes ¢n Files’ and I was into the main screen which shows the two drawer filing cabinet and a selection of icons. The latter give access to the STATIONERY store, the file Master List for the two drawers, two dif- ferent Index options, the printer (which for some weird reason they call the ‘Copier’) and the trash can. A double click on the label on the top drawer opened the drawer and showed some sample folders stored within. They were nicely organised in al- only need to open that drawer, mouscclick for ‘Rename Drawer’ in the ‘Edit’ menu and then type in the new name.. Mouscclicking on the ‘OK’ button or a swipe at the ‘RETURN’ key ac- cepts it and there you arc. Folders can be re- named just as simply. At this point, not wanting to mess up the disk that had been loaned to us by MGA SYSTEMS, I write pro- tected it and set out to make a separate dala disk of my own with my own trial cabinets and folders. Notes en Files is a protected disk but, once booted, the master disk need never be used. This was easily done by closing the cabinet I was working with, se- lecting ‘New Cabinet" which allowed me to choose a suitable title. Changing the disk for a new formatted one and clicking on the ‘Disk’ button produced the an- swer. After that it was a simple matter, although a rather lengthy one, to put a lot of make-believe folders into one of the COMTEC COMPUTER REPAIRS send equipment *FAST TURNAROUND - NORMALLY 2 DAYS *3 MONTH WARRANTY *COMPETITIVE PRICES ON ALL SERVICES EXAMPLES APPLE J[ + OR //e Power Supply. £32 APPLE ][ + OR //e Motherboard. Apple Interface Card (most makes).£25 Disk Drive - cleaned & aligned. Please ring for other repair prices or Quantity Discounts available. Repair prices include P&P and V.A.T. £32 £25 for free estimate. MACINTOSH UPGRADES 128K to 512K - 128K/512K to MacPlus MacPlus Extra Memory 1MEG TO 2 MEG 1 MEG TO 4 MEG RING FOR BEST PRICE NOW IN STOCK MacPlus Connectors, Serial & AppleTalk. Price depends on quantity. COMTEC ST GEORGES MILL, 3 ST GEORGES STREET, MACCLESFIELD, C: -HESHIRE. SK11 6TG TEL (0625) 34691 at IIGS PRODUCTS | APPLE Programming 816/PAINT £63.47| CP/M Plus £109.00 | DeluxePaint I] 85.21 | Orca Assembler 64.99 | Art Parts I/II/H 24.34] TML Pascal 109.99 | Print Shop-GS 50.38 | GraphicWriter 108.99] Kidstime II 32.99 | | PaintWorks Plus 34.77 Music Construct. 41.73 | Top Draw 68.99] Music Studio 34.77 | | Visualizer GS 88.99) Supersonic Card 54.99 | | Draw Plus 67.77) Audio Digitizer 54.99 | | Fantavision-GS 50.38 | Word Processing |Iraos-annr 41.73 | | Writer's Choice 67.77] Mad Libs 17.35 |Word Perfect 139.00] Hacker II 32:99 | | MultiSeribe 78.99 pisansth seal) eel i anghai 2i. GraphieWriter 108.99 Taso Nines 21.73 | ) Softwood File 128.64 Notes’n'files 94.99 Utilities/Books | ProDOS-16 Reference 26.95 | IICS Firmware Refce. 26.95 CS Tech. Introduction 9.60 SoftSwitch 50.38 Pinpoint CS Starter 127.82 DeskPak 24.99 MGA MicroSystems Pear Tree, Appledore, KENT, Myraglen Tower 44.95 Accessories| Fan Kit 29.99 GS-RAM 256K 149.00 ImageWriter cable 6.91 Joystick 18.99 8-pin switch (1:4) 44.99 plusRAM 256K 89.99 proGrappler 89.99 iS Telex: 8950511 ONEONE C | Page 19 drawers just to try out the capa- bilities of the software. Slightly confusing is the use of the word ‘folder’. They use the word to describe the divisions into which you will, eventually. divide Re-nome opened Drawer: each of your disks. These are ‘disk folders’ and, oddly enough, will contain the ‘filing cabinets’ you create. For instance you might de- cide to label one of the folders on one disk as ‘Accounts’. Inside this folder might be put a series of cabinets such as ‘Income’, ‘In- come Tax’, ‘Investments’, ‘Bills’, etc. The Bills cabinet, for in- stance, then might contain ‘fold- ers’ titled ‘ACCESS’, ‘Gas’, ‘Elec- tricity’, etc. Making folders allows you to organise your cabinets into groups of subjects if you so wish.. (You needn't, of course, the way you organise your cabinets and files is entirely up to you). You can put disk folders inside disk folders inside disk folders. This system can cope with some very complicated minds. As I said earlier, the system you produce can be tailored specifically to your own personal needs. Finally, each drawer can be given a suitable name chosen by you yourself. I noted that after I had created my new cabinet named VIXFILES the cabinet se- lection window showed the disk as holding THREE files - VIXFILES, VIXFILES.A and VIXFILES.B. The two extra files are essential to the operation of the cabinet. They contain the indexes, or is it indices..? Should one ever need to transfer a cabinet over to another disk one is warned that all three files should be transferred. The folders in cither drawer can be listed by clicking on the MASTER LIST icon. The list may be scrolled using the ‘thumb’ rec- tangle at the side or onc can use the UP or DOWN arrows. Similarly the contents of each of the folder fields can be viewed by scrolling sideways. When you create a new folder you can cither use the exist- ing field format or you can specify fields that suit your purpose more Page 20 exactly. A folder can be chosen directly from this list. Just double-click on the title and the folder will in- stantly ‘fly’ out of the Drawer and appear on the screen. Once inside a folder you can find and open a document by either using ‘dog- ears’ on the document icons or by double-clicking on a document name in the folder log. The search facilities are highly flexible allowing the selection of single folders or lists of folders which are based on your own entries in the folder fields. Sorts can be applied in many ways and there is a useful capability of sort- ing in either ascending or de- scending alphabetic order. As I emphasise continually, much depends on your original title and folder field choices. For a search you can specify conditions that will provide you with a list of folders that satisfy the conditions.. The system sup- ports either AND or OR require ments as well as giving you the option of using a set of conditions Edwards, Liso_| Denning, Mike Carlson, Fred Baker, Thomas Anderson, Bill formulae that allow: *Exact match *Any occurrence «Equals up to given values Lesser then *Greater than sser than or equal to *Greater then or equal to *Not equal to *Not equal to any occurrence Use of these will allow you to find folders bearing the names of, for instance. everyone you know in Swansea. Or a list of all the folders with names starting with a given range of letters. Or all fold- ers with the word SMITH any- where in the title. Or with titles be ginning with SMITH. You could, for instance, also find folders covering details of all SMITHs working for a particular com- pany.. There are many other pos- sibilities.. I would not have space to cover all of those available but a simple and useful routine is lo place the date of creation of each folder in the appropriate field which gives one the option of call- ing for ‘all documents created after such and such a date’. Suf- fice it to say that the search capa- bilities are extensive. Search speeds were pretty good with the numbers of folders IT uscd. Ijust did not have the time to test out cabinets containing thousands of folders so I cannot say how well the system performs with very large numbers of fold- ers. However, if search times be- come too long, one can always rearrange the drawers so as to reduce the search ranges. It is important to remember, though, that Notes en Files will find the folder for you but it leaves it to you to sort through the docu- ments in that folder until you find the right one. This is not as diffi- cult as it may sound because you are unlikely to have all that many documents in the one folder. If one does start to get overfull there are certain to be ways of splitting the docu- ments into more folders. A document name is limited to 19 characters and this should be ample for most purposes. a Of course you can put as many or as few documents into your folders as you wish. Similarly you can put just a few or very many folders into a drawer.. There are obvi- ously limits, though. The system works just like the storage ar- rangements in your office. If you use very thick files with lots of documents in them you will find after a bit that you are going torun out of drawer space. You can have lots of thin folders or nothing like so many thick ones. More care is necessary than one might think when choosing titles for cabinets, drawers and folders. To achieve the best re- sults one needs to bear in mind that your own truly hierarchical system of filing depends on your own choice of title. The arbitrary limit of 17 letters for folder titles tends to cramp the style of a wordy person like me but, in fact, should be enough to enable one to provide satisfactorily descriptive titles for a wide range of files. v DATAPAK say that one can import data from other data base programmes directly into Notes ¢n Files. I was not able to try this but judging by the way that the rest of the package works, I have no doubt that it will do it effec- tively. | note, however, that the instruction book counsels care in carrying out the proce- dures. This is clearly a useful thing to be able to do but there are hazards for the careless. Isn't that true of most of our computing tasks though? I know of no better training in self- discipline than the regu- lar usage of a computer system. One can also ‘export’ a file. Thus you can cre- ate a text file on a disk that can later be used by other IIGS programmes. I found this easy and itis a useful thing to be able to do. Of course there ts a method of removing folders and documents from the system. Just drag them across to the trash can. Finally, if a window gets in your way, you can move it around the screen to where it is less of a nuisance. I found this to be a most useful facility from time to time. So far I have concen- trated upon the data- base aspects of Notes en Files. It is here that I believe the true useful- ness of the programme lies. Nevertheless, one needs a word processing capability to achieve entry of data into one's database. The Text Edi- tor does all that I would expect of it. It provides two fonts and three sizes of print and supports copying, tabbing and cutting and pasting, It is capable of carrying out all the normal justifica- tion routines. It did all that I required of it and showed no vices. The stationery store was handy. Not only could I drag out a new blank folder from it but it also contained an inex- haustible supply of pa- per for letters etc. in four useful sizes, letter size, legal size, wide paper and 3x5. Printing can be organised by use of one of the indices, To print one's letter or memo one needs only to drag the document icon from the folder down to the Copier icon. The Copier window then appears and allows one to choose from four printer options and three qualities of print. Page numbering may be selected and multiple prints organised. There is likewise no difficulty in printing out selected individual pages from a document. Printing be- gins immediately one clicks on OK or hits <RETURN>. An ABORT is available at any time. Just press <ESCAPE>. Mailing labels and Form Letters are no trouble. Notes en Files hasabuili in MAIL MERGE capa- bility. It can take names and addresses from the folders and insert them, Unda ET Cut an Copy ac Poste au Rename Folder Fields 3h as required, into your form letters, To give some idea of the size of the Address List one could employ, DATAPAK say that a simple system contain- ing nothing but names and addresses might contain ‘a few thousand’ folders. Anice feature is that, once a folder has been used for printing a label or form letter it can be ‘flagged’. A record of the date is included in each folder. One can thus send part of a set of let- ters off one weck, and the remainder the fol- lowing weck, without the risk of duplication. All in all a well-be- haved piece of software with considerable po- tential. Because it al- lowed me so much scope for my own development of my own sort of filing system I liked it a lot. 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KENT TN262AR amt ) Page 21 ABOUT WHEN A ProDOS based fribble from Jim Harle Having recently purchased Micol Assembler from Shop2000, it was soon noticed that this useful product didn't date and time stamp files created under the ProDOS version. Maybe that's because my //e has no vacant slot to house a clock card. I've grown used to setting current values at the beginning of the session anyway. So, although Basic is somewhat of a foreign language to me, an attempt to overcome this minor irritation was clearly called for. On loading ‘Startup’ from a work disk derived from the master supplied, an extensive program from previous experience, it quickly dawned that the ProDOS Utilities T’ option was not in- cluded. In fact, you could count the lines of Micol’s version of the program on your fingers! The first solution that came to mind was to lift the setting of time and date from the utilities disk and insert it into the mini- Startup. That worked, but the rest of the program was so swamped by the sheer size of the routine that the result wasn't aestheti- cally pleasing. Further investigation pro- duced new insights, leading even- tually to the modified program listed below. In short, four valid decimal numbers poked will cause the files to be dated and timed. Get the right numbers. and the files get the right date and time. In persuit of the trivial, the first of the numbers was found to be fairly constant, Twice a year only, on Ist January and Ist August, it increases by one. For January- July 1988 it will be double 88, which is 176, Anyone who, given how many days there are in a normal year, is capable of com- puting the number of days in a leap year will readily ascertain the value of the first byte fro August- December 1988. And, no doubt, su