Apple 2000 Vol 3 No. 3 1998 06 BASUG GB

THE NATIONAL APPLE USERS GROUP ‘ JUNE 1988 VOLUME 3(3 ay arsa QA? Di er ao IVY e = Sad ke ee ‘= ’ ale Se pl SS vast TT ' Fay . ei Vi a 1 no Ja I [i TTS | ‘ [appre ppp ys a Bi Saale I< € Fie Edit Find Al ZA tup 3 ; Print Report c\\ Print Report On Dis \\ \ \ Edit Report Template promac All promac products share one obj can buy at any price. No compromises achieving a thoroughbred design Meticulous incoming component inspection, careful manufacture and rigorous quality control, comprehensively tested ROM and firmware to enhance performance, 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 superior 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 ». 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Call us for literature promac and ProDrive and ProTepe are cgistcred trademarks of promac GmbH Sybelstr 57 1000 Bertlin 12 West Germany Apple iva trademark of and Macintosh a trademark reqpstered to Apple Computer tnc This advertisement prepared by the Robin Ray Pannership on the Macintosh using JustText page componition software from MacEurope: Moder” The Granary, Trowse Bridge, Bracondale, Norwich NR1 2EG, England. Tel: (0603) 630636 Fax: 0603 630374 APPLE2000 Apple2000 r= 121 SPY June 1988 OS 928 9097 Contents General Interest Contents 1 Editorial Mick Knapp 2 Profile of the Committee 3 The Nibbler’s Corer Members’ Letters 6 Hot Line News Dave Ward 8 Local Group News Tom Wright 9 News Bits 16 Members Small Ads 21/80 Algol Dave Miller 22 The Force to the Rescue Crick Carleton 26 A Plague of Virii Ewen Wannop 29 Data Transfer from Apple II to Hypercard Nick Hunter 34 Useful ‘Phone Nos. 37 Guide to Online Databases Ewen Wannop 38 Software Cache Ewen Wannop 42 Upgrading the Apple Tom Wright 50 Apple in Education 53 Mac at the NAMM Show Craig O'Donnell 66 Club Business - AGM Norah Amold 77 List of Advertisers 80 Apple Il The II Problem Page The Boffin 7: Sound on Two Jonathan Scott 10 The Magic of PROSEL Dave Ward 18 Applefest Boston 25 Open Apple Cuttings 27 How to copy ProDOS files from Applesoft programs Dave Ward 30 Questions & Answers 33 Macintosh Omnis Questions & Answers 17/76 Microsoft Word 3.0 Keyboard Commands Geoff Wood 40 Mac 2000 Norah Amold 44 Scores Virus H. Upchurch 46 SuperGlue 54 LPA MacProlog Bill Pearce 56 Prodigy SE Mike Davies 60 An evening with LAMUG Nigel Strudwick 62 Mac World Expo 1988 D&IFlaxman 64 Apple Share PC Irene Flaxman 68 Network News 70 Mac Library Norah Amold 74 June 1988 Editorial Team Apple Il Macintosh Ewen Wannop Norah Amold Mick Napp Irene Flaxman A special vote of thanks must go to all those who work behind the scenes, but to whom no credit is given. We thank them for all their input and assis- tance. Administration Alison Davies Irene Flaxman 0732 740415 (Office Hours) 051 928 4142 (24-hour Answerphone) Advertising Hotline Alison Davies Dave Ward OFRS Fades CME SHR WD Monday-Friday 1900-2100 Local Groups TABBS Bulletin Board Tom Wright Ewen Wannop 0527 71913 (tas Faro Printers Cover Design Old Roan Press Stefan Mucha 051 227 4818 Seeesescsssssseseceseseeseeresees * Annual subscription rates are £25.00 for mem: $ bers resident in the UK, £30.00 for members ¢ e resident in the E.E.C., and £35.00 for othere $ overseas members. Founder Members and Supporters of the Apple User Group Council. ¢ Apple2000™ is a trading name of BASUG Ltd., a non-profi © making independent company limited by guarantee. The con- ® tents of this journal are copyright of BASUG Ltd and/or the : ® respective authors. Permission is granted for non-commercial re- production, providing the author and source are properly cred. e ited and a copy of the relevant publication is sent to the company. @ The opinions and views expressed in this journal are those of the ¢ various contributors, and are not necessarily supported by : *® BASUG Ltd. * This journal is published bi-monthly by Apple2000™ as at $ benefitof membership in February, April, June, August, October, e $ and December of each year. @ Apple™ and the Apple logo are trademarks of Apple Compute: @ Inc. Macintosh™ is a trademark of Macintosh Laboratory Inc, ® Telecom Gold™ its a trademark of British Telecom PLC. These ¢ = have been used with the express permission of the owners. The ® ¢ FORCE™ and Apple2000™ are trademarks of BASUG Ltd. $ Advertising rates and copy date details are available on re e quest. PITTI eer Apple2000 @eegcs Editorial Major changes to the Apple magazine scene Since the publication of the April issue of Apple 2000 Magazine (sorry about the late delivery, this is explained later in this leader) there has arrived dramatic news of the decision of Database Publications to cease publication of Apple User. At the time of writing this leader the subscribers to Apple User have had no notification of the decision, but it has been widely reported in the electronic press services, and our own Force and TABBS carried independent verification early in June. We contacted Database for information but only received confirmation of their decision to withdraw Apple User, but no news of what the subscribers and advertisers could expect for the future. If you are only just learning about Apple User's demise you will be feeling the same sense of shock and disbelief that I initially felt. There is no doubt that the magazine was a_ quality publication, contained valuable product information and Database claimed an extensive readership. Our inquiries have not produced answers to the obvious questions regarding the decision to cease publication, but what Is clear is the fact that this leaves Apple 2000 in a unique position, Although there are other groups and publications supporting Macintosh users, there isno other support mechanism for the huge number of Apple// users. We will continue to support our members irrespective of which Apple hardware range they use, but we will aiso keep in mind that we are the sole means by which Apple// users will find out about new products and services. And More Drama... Perhaps even more dramatic than the Apple User news was the announcement by our own Jim Panks to resign from the committee of Apple 2000, The proceedings of the Annual General Meeting were reported in the May issue of Apple Slices, but the shock on the day when Jim announced his resignation is still clear in my mind. The hole left by Jim's departure was quickly filled by volunteers; at least physically filled. What could not be replaced was the experience that Jim had built up over the many years that he had been editing the magazine. Our first committee meeting was held in Luton and many of the members were meeting each other for the first time. Joining the committee carries a reasonable level of responsibility as Apple 2000 is a limited company and the committee is equivalent to the board of directors, You, the members, are equivalent to the shareholders (though don't expect any dividend, we are anon- profit making organisation). As the shareholders you have the Tight to expect that we manage your company as you see fit, and take care of your considerable investment. That is why we hold an AGM. It gives you an opportunity to voice your praise and also your disquiet about how we handle your user group. The committee consists of the individuals whose profiles are on the opposite page. We are backed up by an army of helpers, and we offer our heartfelt thanks to those people who give their time. People like Keith Chamberlin, who keeps all the membership records up to date, and John Lee, who manages the administration of our Force service on Telecom Gold. Dave Ward, who runs the very busy Helpline service, and Tony Game, who has become our typist extraordinaire. These people, plus numerous spouses and friends not mentioned by name, are the backbone of the group, You must be asking the question, what then do the committee members get out of all this in return for the responsibility. The answer in numeric terms is nothing, our travel costs are charged to Apple 2000, but otherwise we gain nothing financially for our efforts. The reason that we help run the group is, believe it or not, that we enjoy it. So that we don't let our enjoyment spoil yours you must help guide the group direction by feeding your views back to us. To let you know who we are, each committee member has prepared aresume of his/her interests and aims for the group, and what he/ she is especially interested in promoting. You will see that we have a wide range of interests and expertise, and hopefully you will see this range reflected in this publication over the coming months. New Magazine Format This issue is the first time that many of the present committee have produced any sort of publication, so we hope that you find the format easy to read and acceptable in quality. Guide icons have been introduced at the bottom of each page so that you will easily see which articles could be of special interest to you, and we have continued the assessment system for product reviews. Apologies for the April issue With the end of Jim's heroic efforts, it was inevitable that something was to suffer. We can only apologise profusely for the late delivery of the April issue of Apple2000. We hope this will be the last time this happens. We apologise for the ommision of any mention of Ivan Knezovich in Apple Slices. Ivan served on the committee for the last two years and was the architect of the changeover from Basug to Apple2000. Mick Knapp - Chairman ¢ 2 Apple2000 June 1988 TOM WRIGHT I have been a committee member for several years, with one short break, covering Local Groups. I also served on the MidApple local group commit- tee until business pressures forced me to resign recently. My professional activities include industrial engineering with the Rover Group and running my own D.T.P. business. In addition to this, Iama member of the R & D committee of the Methods-Time Measurement Asso- ciation. Prior to entering the industrial engineering field, I worked in the reprographic trade specialising in Microfilm and general photographic applications, Industrial training courses are another area of my activities, with the emphasis on industrial engineering techniques, and I still manage to fit in the odd training course for reprogra- phic operatives. EWEN WANNOP I have been a member of Apple2000 for some years now, and with only a short break intervening, I am now en- tering my fourth year on the commit- tee. I have worked over the years to champion the cause of the bulletin board and the Force. Now this has all come home to roost and I have the Bulletin Board whirring away in a back room of my home. Over the past year I have been working with the IIGS, and! plan to emphasise the importance of this machine, and of the II series in gen- eral, within the pages of the maga- zine. Which brings me to my duties on the committee. Apart from overseeing the comms side of things, I am editing the Apple II half of the magazine with Mick Knapp, our chairman. In my spare time, I write software for the II series. Whenever I can find time to tear myself away from all these commit- ments, I lecture in a college in Bath. Where, coincindentally, I have been able tointroduce DTP over the last six months - a useful knowledge when it comes to the Apple2000 magazine. IRENE FLAXMAN I have been Treasurer of Apple2000 since June 1985, and I help Norah with the editing of the Mac pages for the magazine. I work for one of the largest insurance companies, as a Senior Computer Au- ditor - having had about 8 years expe- rience as an analyst-programmer and about eight years as a management accountant. I worked for the same company for nineteen years, before moving to one of the local Apple deal- ers. That lasted about a year, before we parted company. My previous em- ployers then invited me back, in my new capacity. I work mainly with IBM's at the office - from micro's to mainframes. My original interest, so far as Apples are concerned, was the Apple III (which we still have, although it is now little used), We progressed onto Apple //e, then onto the Macintosh - and this is the machine which is used most frequently, now - for DTP, word processing. accounts, spreadsheet work, graphics (with the aid of Illus- trator!), etc, Dave and I have been married for 19 years. We have two cats (to keep the “mouse” under control!) Other interests include: -Scuba diving - I'm Treasurer of our local club. Secretary of the local branch of C.I.M.A. (Chartered Institute of Man- agement Accountants), of which I am a member. -Reading - if I ever have the chance, these days! -Traveling - holidays are usually spent going around Apple expos now. I have lived in Liverpool all my life, and I don't anticipate moving away. KEN HEGARTY Born in South Africa of Irish parents, and brought up in pre-war China, I have spent the rest my life as uncon- ventionally as I started it. Always wanting to be awriter, but never quite able to settle down to actually devel- oping my ideas and putting them down on paper, I tried all sorts of jobs but found the ones I was best at - and liked the most - were driving (prefera- bly Rolls Royces), book-keeping (for small businesses) and typesetting. I got into Apple computers as a way to get myself writing. I recently got interested in postcodes and correct addressing. I am hoping to help the membership secretary with the members’ address list. NORAH ARNOLD I work in education, as Head of Maths and Computing in a school. From September 1988 | will take up the post of Bedfordshire Coordinator of the National Oracy Project. Ihave been Secretary of Apple2000 for several years and was Chairman during 1982 - 84, having been in- volved with the group since its incep- tion. At the present time, I edit the Macintosh section of the magazine and look after the Macintosh software library. One of my favourite hobbies is the production of computer graphics although I rarely get time to produce pictures just for fun. Together with my husband, John, I run the Hertfordshire and Bedford- shire local group. MICK KNAPP I first used an Apple//+ nearly ten years ago and I was quickly hooked on the Apple way of doing things. I admire the Apple technology, and I've made the pilgrimage to Cupertino to see the first-ever Apple. I sell computers for a living. spe- cialising in CAD/CAM, and I guess that sooner or later I'll come up against CAD ona Macll - but it hasn't happened yet. To me, Apple cpitomises all that is best in personal computing but | feel that the available technical software is still immature. I'm still very much into Apple //'s and I think that Apple- works with Timeout accessories is a difficult combination to beat, but | have a Mac SE on order so I am half- way to defection. I was co-opted onto the committee and I have a number of aims for the coming year. I want to make the magazine self-funding, sothat more of the members’ subscriptions can be put back into raising the profile of the group. I want to attain the right bal- ance of Apple// and Mac material throughout the group, and I want each member to feel that joining Apple2000 gives him something that no other service can offer. KEITH ROOKLEDGE I am 48 and a biochemist by profes- sion. I spent over 20 years in a num- ber of research fellowships in areas associated with health care. For the last 10 years, I have been involved in commerce in a number of capacities. Thave had experience with large num- ber crunchers but now I am an Apple man, starting with an Apple Europlus but now using a llcs, I spend my lei- sure time away from the VDU - sailing and in the garden. In addition, I have an extensive interest in reading and the theatre, June 1988 Apple2000 @Beeg 3 For &450 welll give you a brain transplant. Its a simple operation that will clearly make your Macintosh’ 128K, 512K or 512K/800 more advanced and a lot faster. For £450 you now have the opportunity to upgrade to a Macintosh Plus with a full megabyte of memory. All performed efficiently by your Apple” Macintosh dealer in a matter of hours. Just take your Macintosh along to him. He'll install a Macintosh Plus logic board, 800K Disk Drive and give you System Software which includes MultiFinder’ and HyperCard.” With this special upgrade kit youre fully equipped to take advan- tage of the most sophisticated software. You'll also have the means to attach SCSI devices such as an Apple Hard Disk or the new LaserWriter’ Isc. Can you imagine how useful MultiFinder will be? Itll allow you to run a number of different applications in separate windows all at the same time. APPLE. THE APPLE LOGO. MACINTOSH, MULTIFINDER, HYPERCARD Also, run programs in the background while working in the foreground. Another impressive part of your new Macintosh is HyperCard. The revolutionary program that enables you to access, customise and create information. HyperCard is unique because it integrates all types of media, not only text and graphics but sound, animation, voice and video. Using HyperCard is easy because it's based on the familiar idea of index cards. All will be explained to you in the manuals we provide with your kit. = If youre interested in progressing to a Macintosh Plus, contact your Apple Macintosh dealer. He'll provide you with all the information you need and book you in. Or you can dial 100 and ask for Freefone Apple. As always, when it comes to innovative ideas, Apple are the brains behind them. @ Apple.’ The power to succeed. AND LASERWRITER ARE TRADEMARKS OF APPLE COMPUTER. INC, ©1988 The Nibbler's Corner Our resident pundit scans the mailbag and ponders the contents Summer is showing itself as I write this, and the window blinds are pulled to stop the screen dis- play vanishing in the glare. What a joy it will be when we can run proper flat screens and watch the weeds grow as we write. It is a strange and intense thing work- ing with computers. We closet ourselves in front of the magic eye, and beat our fingers to a pulp while the world spins by. Opening the postbag the other day, I came across the following letter. It triggered many thoughts, but before I get sidetracked, I suggest you read it too. EAD) Ayrdireing: Letarine nerrreibiy (Misi areiyjaitilie Dear Apple2000 I am writing to tell you what things could be done to improve Apple2000 and where to get the cheapest Apple games with high quality graphics. To Improve your club you could offer more games with better graphics. When I bought one of your Adventure disks I was ex- pecting to have some graphics. But I didn't. Also I have been looking for games which I could type in my- self. I do not want them to be long games like 2000 lines because I am only aged eleven and I do not like doing this. My dad also is looking for a magazine called Or- chard he has rung them at one address where they used to be and they seem to have moved on and he was wondering if you know where they have gone. Fi- nally we are looking for a group which sells high quality games for cheap prices for example games like Hitch Hikers Guide to the Gal- axy, Gunship, and Under Fire. I hope you will be able to help me and dad in our quest for cheap Apple games. Yours sincerely Robert Hornby (PS if you are wondering whol am. I am the child of Mr R.P. Hornby) Well now Robert, quite a lot to cover in a letter like that. It made me painfully aware of the problem that Apple2000 has in trying to please all its members. Ifit was to feature Apple II games to any extent, the Macintosh users would complain, the business users would revolt and the Apple- Works fiends would resign. To please all is impossible. I suspect that there are not many high quality games being written these days for the Apple II as the pri rs will be busy writing for the IIGS. The IGS is where the market for games is these days. Apple2000 can only sell what it receives, and in most cases this is public domain soft- ware. High quality games have never been a feature of that scene. To get a range of games, try MGA or dare I say it in this magazine, our rival publication Apple User. Both ofthose regularly advertise a range of games. But remember nothing comes cheap these days. I see Robert's father has been trying to find out about the Apple Orchard magazine. This maga- zine has always been a mystery to me, and at the last check had ceased to exist, perhaps someone knows differently? The best magazines for the II range that I have come across, apart from Apple2000, are A+, InCider and Open Apple. The first two cover the whole II scene, and are excel- lent magazines. Open Apple is quite unique, an 8 sheet monthly newsletter quite unsupported by advertising. It pulls no punches, and covers many topics. Apple- Works is a specialty of Open Apple. You will have seen in the May Apple Slices that our chairman asked you all to tell Apple2000 what you want. This is a perennial problem I would think. Among such a large membership there must be many different needs. The committee acting on your behalf can only provide what they think you need. You, like Robert, must tell them if you are not get- ting what you want. I for one felt that the Apple II was not being given a fair deal in Apple2000 over the last year, but thankfully Jim made steps to rectify that in the last issue. Those old Apple II's have not died, they have just passed on to new owners. I see that the virus plague has hit the Macintosh brigade, bit also it appears to be trying to get at the II's as well. It is a great shame that this kind of thing has happened. Not only will we all waste time trying to protect ourselves, but the credibility of the Shareware market will have been dented asa result. It may even dry up alto- gether if this all gets out of hand. We put our trust in the integrity of software, and to have to mistrust even commercial packages can only put back the cause of com- puting many years. Perhaps the rumours that virii are spread by commercial houses trying to kill the Shareware market are true. We will shortly be in the grip of the autumn computer shows, with their attendant wafts of va- pourware. The Zip chip launched itself on the world as the panacea for the II brigade. The ‘magic ac- celerator on a chip’ it said, by the company that brought you Speed- Demon under a new name. No one has yet seen one of these chips in the flesh, and the only working demonstration was run by a de- vice four times the size of a //c motherboard. I see the chip has been advertised in the UK, I do hope it materialises and egg is not left on faces over here. Let me hear your views com- ments and ideas - till next time happy byting. The Nibbler é 6 Apple2000 June 1988 Q. Sometimes when I am changing discs by pressing OA Ctrl Reset on my IIGS, the next disc does not always load correctly, and I am left with the computer either hung or crashed to the moni- tor. A. There could be a number of reasons why this happens. Some programs running on the IIGS set up a regular interrupt from the system heartbeat. This interrupt will be serviced by a routine pro- vided by the program. If you do not exit these programs correctly, you may find that the interrupt has not been cleared. When the next disc boots and loads, it may then overwrite any interrupt driv- ers that may be in force, leaving the active interrupts with no- where to go. It is also possible for the system to simply get itself confused, and make assumptions about what has been left active in the memory. The solution to all these problems is to doa cold boot either from the keyboard or by turning the machine off and then back on after a 20 second pause. Q. Not all my files are correctly date stamped on my IIGS. I under- stood that my IIGS had a clock and that files would always be marked with the right time and date when saved to disc. A. Only versions of ProDOS later than V1.1. 1 willactually rec- ognise the clock in the IIGS and therefore datestamp files. You may find the earlier versions of ProDOS on some application discs. ProDOS from the advent of the IIGS onwards has been re- named as ProDOS 8 to avoid any confusion with the 16 bit operat- ing system ProDOS 16. You will need to use ProDOS 8 to recognise the new features of the IIGS. We are at the time of writing up to V1.4 of ProDOS 8. It is quite in order to change the copy of Pro- DOS on any of your discs. Be careful however, as ProDOS 8 isa larger file than the earlier versions of ProDOS and may not fit on some 5,25 application discs. Q. I sometimes get odd charac- ters in the left margin of the screen dumps from my Imagewriter, What is causing this? I have checked all the connections and switches and nothing seems to stop them oc- ct i A. The Imagewriter II, unlike The Il Problem Page Ask our technical Boffin your problems on the Apple Il and Ilgs the original Imagewriter is able to print in colour. If no checks are made in the program to see that an Imagewriter II is really present, colour information may be sent out to the serial port. This colour information is normally absorbed in the Imagewriter II to move the ribbon to the correct point. How- ever on the Imagewriter I these commands are not recognised and the odd characters you have seen are printed as a result at the start of the line. The answer is to make sure you have the correct printer selected when you install the program. Q. I have an Apple I+ with an 80 column card. However some programs that are meant to dis- play on the 80 column screen hang or crash as they boot and I see nothing on the screenatall. Help... A. There was no standard set for the 80 column screen on the early Apple machines. Most 80 column cards will correctly use the screen output hooks through thetr firmware. The Apple II main- tains these hooks in pagezero and should perform correctly with programs expecting an 80 column screen. However there are two possibilities in your case that could cause such a problem. Firstly any program expecting the Apple 80 column standard of the //e, //c or Igs will probably leave you with the 40 column screen selected and display only every other character on the screen. The Apple //e 80 column screen is constructed and ad- dressed in a very different way to any other 80 column display. Programs expecting this screen simply will not work on the II+. The second possibility is that you have a non-standard 80 col- umn card that requires special drivers loaded from disc to oper- ate. If your card needs a pre-boot disc, then it is of this type. The boot drivers may have been over- written by your application as it loaded. You may find it worth while changing to an 80 column card that conforms to the Videx Videoterm standard. Most appli- cation programs can display on that type of card. These cards can be picked up for about £45 from many sources. Q. I have been told that I can turn over the disc in my 5.25 drive and use the other side. I have tried this and can only get anI/O error. What am I doing wrong? A. You will have to cut a notch in the other side of your disc be- fore you can format it for use. You can get a very handy notcher fora pound or two from many dealers. Once formatted you may use the second side of your disc in the same way as the first side. However be warned, most discs are only guaranteed as single sided discs and may not be very reliable on the back side. These days discs are not made as single sided discs, it is the ones that fail a strict quality test on one side that are issued as single sided. The Apple is however very tolerant of most discs, and I know of many thousands that are used double sided in this way. Very few errors are reported in normal use. But please only use the second side for data that is not important. Keep your important discs as single sided ones only. Write to the Boffin with your Apple II and Iigs problems. The Boffin Apple2000 PO Box 3 Liverpool L21 8PY. « June 1988 Apple2000 &2e 7 Hotline News Ea ee Dave Ward - Mondays to Fridays 1900. 2100 Paul Amos setup AppleWorks with PinPoint version 2.0 on his Apple Ilgs only to find that it would not recognise his Imagewriter 2 printer. PinPoint version 2,0 appears to have been a revision upgrade so that the system would work on the Apple Iigs only to have one of those unfortunate bugs in a routine that should have been tested. We tried this setup on other Apple Ilgs computers with the same result so a bug was almost certainly the cause. This was confirmed when I contacted Mark Whelan of Bidmuthin technologies who suggested that we try PinPoint version 2.01 which would work. This version does, indeed, work. A friend recently reported the computer users ultimate fear - | Apples Work Open-Apple 's Tom Weishaa’s monthly newsleter tor kr adie ‘other i abons, perssse to’ he dearest wis, es. he best warranty (al you money back youre not eateted), ‘space. and t takes up the least I cue #58 There are four primary types of Super: High Res graphics files. Three are $CO C4 PNT types; these are packed’ so ge up less room on the disk. Type $C!. or PIC, is an unpacked 32K snayehet of the graphic. The three packed types are dis tinguished by the following subtypes: For more, see the April 1988 Open. Apple. page 4.24 i) I users. Ifs thin but packed tight with Apple Il lore, humor letters, tips, advice, and solutions to your problems. Compared 10 has the highest new-idea- unnest cartoons the longest From our fan mail: | have never enjoyed reading any moa azine so much as style. The Informatfon each issue pro- vides is amazing, With almost every issue that | read 1 keep shaking my head and muttering "I didn't know that! knew about Open-Apple eariier, | would- ‘At have subscribed to As inCider. They arent bad, but compared = Try two months free! Otter good ore tm ony. Ty Opem Apple a ov expence. Cu oto proto copy hs couson and mal #10 Us fra hee wo-mentn na ebsenpten coffee spillage on the keyboard. Apparently his secretary using, one of four, Apple //c comput- ers accidentally spilt coffee onto the keyboard with the result that the machine produced strange characters on the screen when keys were pressed. Later when the coffee had dried some of the keys were stuck and when pressed would not release. Undaunted he took the machine apart and found that the key- board was detachable from the main board by simply pulling a plug! He then proceeded to wash the keyboard in clean cold water and finally to dry it ina warm air stream. When reassembled the machine worked perfectly and still does!! This is not a recommendation! Perhaps other members have tried this? Louis Baker contacted me regarding a tip for Applewriter II users. He thought that he might be able to use a short-cut in the preparation of Glossaries; since Glossaries are apparently text files just like documents he tried to prepare one using the editor, save it then load it in asa Glossary. Unfortunately he found that entries containing control characters did not work as you can't enter the control- V's required in a textfile. Certain software for the Apple IIgs seem to possess, what is in my opinion, a rather serious bug. Some games and an impor- tant soun spreadsheet will not apparently work if you have some of the memory setup as a RAMadisk. I'm sure most users could do without this hassle. The copy-protection schemes used by some software produces also appears to give problems with certain Apple IIgs setups. We would be interested to hear from any readers who have experiences strange problems with programs specifically for the Apple Iigs computer. Do any members know of Apple //c programs that can be used to hold dental records. 1 seem to recall that back in 1981-1983 when Apple // computers were more popular there were a few packages advertised but I haven't seen any references lately. Dave Ward « “Apple. | like its Hf only | Nibble and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Adcose u2e3 So: Bai | | I | | I H H | to Open-Apple. they are nowhere. ! ! | | | | H I | Free arma! worded I | I | I I I | I Zainudin Hashim | | l i i i i i i i TABBS The Apple2000 Bulletin Board System Bringing you news, views and software from the Apple || and Macintosh arena, the very latest in IIgs utilities and Apple II shareware and featuring a weekly update of the computer scene with Steve Gold's NEWSBYTES ™ UK. TABBS is our modem users very own hotline and is brought to you as a service of Apple2000. 24 hours on V21 V23 V22bis 8N1 sn [ow 8 Apple2000 June 1988 Local News GEE Se The interval between the last issue and this one has been fairly quiet on the local group front, part of the reason may be connected with the fact that I realised that I have a problem with my phone line last night. Only one of my extensions appears to be working at all, and that one only appears to work for outgoing calls, I wonder how many people have tried to call me since last Sunday. The addition of the M25 Busi- ness Mac Group took our list of contacts to thirty three last issue and I have one more to add this issue. The latest addition is the Orpington Com- puter Club which is a multi- interest club numbering half a dozen users of various kinds of Apples amongst its membership. The Orpington club has been established for some years and has a total membership of about sixty, they are always keen to welcome new members and as usual the Apple members are slightly biased and you will receive a very warm welcome from them if you go along. They meet every Friday at 7.45pm at the G.E.A Hall, off Woodhurst Avenue, Petswood, Orpington, Kent. That makes number thirty four folks, not far to go to forty ! Jim Panks tells me that it is intended that the M25 group will meet every fourth Wednes- day, you can base your calcula- tions on the 1st June which was to be the next meeting when I spoke with Jim. You can get more details about plans for the group from Jim if you ring him, The Cambridge Apple User Group is still going strong, now organised to provide separate Apple |{ and Macintosh meet- ings. They will be happy to receive suggestions from anyone regarding topics suitable for club evenings. On the subject of suitable topics the following suggestions may be of help to some of you as well as to Ian and Richard : most used facilities. The FORCE The Telecom Gold Apple2000 Closed User Group Giving you access to the full Telecom Gold system including International messaging and Telex access. Friendly menu structure with single character selection of the We offer a support structure for our users that is fast, friendly and helpful. Most problems can be answered with a simple hone call to John Lee our Sysop. ere is no entry fee for joining the Force. You will be billed each month with any charges you have incurred, we add only a small £5 service ee! If you are not an Apple2000 member there will be a additional service charge on your monthly bill. For further details contact: Apple2000 The FORCE, PO Box 3, Liverpool L21 8PY 1. Microsoft Works as the Mac equivalent of Appleworks ? 2. Microsoft Word formula facilities (not at all clear to the lone adventurer) 3. Appleworks accessories 4. Spreadsheets 5. ‘Desktop publishing’, there really is life after PageMaker 6. Disk drives and/or storage media 7. BASIC programming, a high proportion of users are very interested in this 8. Alternative high level lan- guages 9. Databases 10. Hypercard 11. Games 12, Compilers, should interest BASIC programmers, particularly advice on the limitations of Com- pilers 13. ProDos, still seems to be a mystery to many Apple || users 14. Dot matrix printers 15. Alternative printers, Lasers, Ink jet. etc. 16. Modem associated communi- cations, be careful this subject is less popular than much of its publicity would have you believe 17. Font manipulation 18. Drawing and painting software 19. Graphics aids, tablets, scanners, etc 20. Word Processors Well that has just about worn me out for tonight. I am still waiting to move house by the way. now anticipated to be the 11th June, so if you have diffi- culty contacting me get in touch with Irene Flaxman and she'll pass on a message. That's all for this time, enjoy dem Apples. Tom Wright é The New ORPINGTON COMPUTER CLUB CONTACT: Terry Wheeler © (ifiit-223 G05 VENUE: G.E.A Hall, off Woodhurst Avenue, Petswood, Orpington, Kent MEETS: 7.45pm every Friday June 1988 Apple2000 Sound on Two Jonathon Scott listens to two music programs on his Apple // and Ilgs Before I started using music packages on the Apple I knewvery little,if anything, of music. The music lessons that I was sub- jected to at school provided nei- ther inspiration nor motivation to change this state. Apple Comput- ers have never been held in very high esteem when it comes to the sound department. However, over the years, various companies have produced a number of ‘add- ons’ for the Apple // range that enhance the sound output of the machine. Products that immedi- ately spring to mind are The Mockingboard, The Cricket Board, The Echo Plus System, The Alpha Centuri system or the Greengate DS3 sound sampling system. This review however con- centrates on a number of software products that have been released for the Apple // series including the //GS. The packages that I will be dealing with are:- The Music Construction Set from Electronic Arts (Apple // Series and // GS) The Music Studio from Activ- ision (Apple // GS) The Music Construction Set Apple // Series The Music Construction Kit for the Apple // series does not need any form of additional hardware to run. The basic program allows two different voices to be played within a single piece. However, the program is designed to run in conjunction with the Mocking- board or Cricket system, and when running in this configura- tion, the system is capable of producing up to six voices at any one time. The program uses an icon type system, and the pointer can be moved in a number of ways. The cursors keys can be used, but if the machine has a mouse. joys- tick or a Koalapad attached to it, then it is possible to use them. Using the system ona //GS in // e emulation mode, the pointer seemed very responsive to move- ments of the mouse which is bet- ter than a lot of packages on the / /e that make use of a mouse. Having said that though, picking up pieces can be annoying. The problem being for some parts, to pick them up, you have to have the pointer above or to the left of the actual part and not over the piece before you can pick it up. The same ‘relationship’ problem sometimes occurs when you place the part on to the score and when you try to remove it from the score. The screen is split into two parts, The top section is entirely taken up with a scrolling blank score on which the user places the notes. In the lower halve of the screen the ‘Parts Box’ can be found. The Parts Box contains notes of various values (ranging from a whole note (Semibreve) toa sixteenth ofa note (Semiquaver).), rests (these range from a whole rest (Semibreve Rest) to a Six- teenth Note Rest (Semiquaver Rest).); natural, sharp and flat signs; an octave raiser (8===); a tie; and treble and bass clefs. Also, in the lower section of the screen there are a number of icons that allow you to manipu- late the data that you place on the score. For example, there are two icons, one with a pair or scissors and another with a glue pot on. These are used to cut and paste large chunks of music with the score. Various configuration parameters can be altered by se- lecting the ‘plug’ icon. These para- meters cover pointer type, sound device, printer and interface cards. Disk operations, such as load,format,save, delete and cata- log can be accessed through the disk icon. The method of placing music onto the blank score is roughly the same for all the programs. Point to a part in the Parts Box or the Note Menu as the case might be, and drag it to the desired loca- tion on the score. It is also pos- sible to drag parts off the score. The quality of the sound output from the basic system, (I didn't get the chance to try the system with a Mockingboard) is not great in comparison to some home micros but it is an improvement over the one channel sound that the basic Apple // can provide. Apple //GS Packages Everyone knows that the S in the APPLE //GS stands for sound. At present there are only a few dedicated music packages on the market aimed primarily at the //GS. Two such packages are the Music Construction Kit from Electronic Arts and The Music Studio from Activision. Both these packages take advantage of the new enhanced features of the GS, using digitised instruments and implementing multi-channel stereo sound. The Music Construction Set Apple //GS The Music Construction Kit from Electronic Arts looks very similar to its sister package on the // series. It implements an icon based system that closely follows Apple's guidelines on the ‘Human Interface’ which makes it very simple to use and you do not need to pick up the manual to use it. The manual,although quite brief (20 pages), is very well written and could well be used as an introduc- tory music text book. Within ten minutes of reading chapter three you can be listening to your own 12-bar blues composition. Unlike its sister package, the GS version implements pull down menus which handle all the stan- dard file manipulation, cutting, pasting and playing the music. Also within the Play menu there are options to select instruments for the piece and another option, {not found in the Music Studio), which checks the number of beats to the bar. oc 0 oe ‘Apple2000 June 1988 GO AHEAD AND DRAW YOUR OWN CONCLUSIONS. PRINT MAGIC™ PRINT SHOP” This is from Print Magic’s graphics library. Print Shop's bear is barely there. Note the extreme detail. They say apictureis worth acomplete set of paint tools, in- PRINT MAGIC would normally . A | for £59.95, but MGA h plas words. So go ahead anit 24 panes 5 pen pie tg Be eel deal for compare bears. sizes, fill patterns, circles, ovals, UK users and our price is only Now, for those who still needa boxes, rectangles and lines. Print $2622 including UI postage/VNT few words, consider the following”: Shop? Well you get the idea** ice hore is dead page with a , g J hop graphics, NewsRoom ip art, as wel Print Magic” allows users Finally, while Print Shop lets Roatte oats making this by far the to place an unlimited number of _ users work on just a piece of the printing prowram for the Apple Our fonts, graphics and borders any- page at atime, Print Magic lets 500 sieces at ciip art, and 150. fonts fot where on the page or card. Print _usersworkon thefull page. Sono waiting to Hele, you express yourself better Shop” doesnt. preview is necessary. Print Magic works on Apple //e, //c. IGS graphics make adve MGA SoftCat at edinbe ti ial b st S ae Sie Pear Tree, TAppladores up to six times. Print Shop, ment short, no other so KENT TN26 2AR ENGLAND just three’* Print Magic borders _ ofits type gives you as many ‘Telephone 0233-83571 (fax 83561) can be sized in nine thicknesses. choices or as much power of ex- ™ Print Shop offers a single stan- —_ pression as Print Magic. Phi Madconeswin Seeze PRINT MAGIC Pie euceuaey as UR TO UMRU LL ration tiipanady Meetmy “4, June 1988 ; . Apple2000 11 From Page 10 The system allows up to two instruments to be used, which on a machine that can handle up to fifteen voices is a big restriction. One of the instruments is as- signed to the treble part and the other is assigned to the bass. There are thirty-four instruments included in the basic system to use. As there is no ability to alter the instruments, this also tends to become a restriction. However, the instruments that are included in the package are very good. The piano, especially in the bass area is very good, as are the strings. The banjo and the church organ are also digitised and sound very good. The instruments are not all digitised, some of them are syn- thesized, such as laser and tonedrum. It is also promised that more instruments will be made available in library disks. Editing the music is also very simple. By painting the area that you wish to edit and accessing the edit menu, it is possible to cut,paste move and even trans- pose the selected area up or down any number of notes. There is a problem in moving from one posi- tion in the score to another posi- tion quickly, but it is good at fine movements.The system has also the ability to print the score that you enter, and the print quality is of a high standard. Unlike The Music Studio, it is not possible to add lyrics to the song. Entering the data is exactly the same as the original version, re- leased some five years before this version !. The notes can be picked up from the parts box in the lower halve of the screen and then placed on the blank score. There have been some additions to the parts box, such as thirty second notes and rests (Demi- Semiquaver) and Quintuplets. However, this does have some problems, it is very difficult to place 32 thirty second notes within one bar and if accidentals have to be applied then it becomes nigh on impossible. To the right of the parts box are three sliders, One controls the tempo and the other two control the treble and bass volumes independently. A standard problem in both the packages is the inability to change the key and time signa- tures within the piece. Many songs change tempo or key in mid-song. There is also the prob- lem of adding triplets to a combi- nation of notes without corrupt- ing the beats to a bar check. Also, it is not possible to add triplets to rests. ¢.g. Triplets applied to a quarter note and an eighth note combina- tion does not work but the prob- lem can be overcome by using three eighth notes with a tie be- tween two of them. As with the Music Studio, The Music Construction Kit has the ability to access and use a MIDI device, (Musical Instrument Digi- tal Interface - an industry stan- dard which is used by all the popular manufacturers). The problem with this being it will only output to the midi device, such as a keyboard, drum machine or sequencer. The program cannot receive data from the device which removes some of the benefit of using an external system. What about the quality of the output? The sound that the sys- tem produces is very good. a demo piece using a banjo and strings does not fail to impress anyone who hears the program or ma- chine for the first time, and the number of combinations of in- struments that the program offers makes it an attractive addition to anyone's software library. The Music Studio - Apple //GS Once past the long loading rou- tine and the title song which would not be out of place in a Butlins ballroom, The Music Stu- dio displays a bewildering main composition screen. Again the main part of screen is taken up with a blank scrolling score on which the notes are placed. As with the Music Construction Set, the Music Studio has menus, but they appear at both the top and the bottom of the screen. All the features can be accessed by either pull-down or pop-up menus and the whole system is covered with different colours. E.g. All the in- struments are a different colour which i) If you are colour blind, it makes distinguishing between in- struments difficult and ii) It makes a complex composition look more like a Salvador Dali painting. The ‘interface’ used on The Music Studio is a straight replica- tion of the system used on the Atari ST and the Amiga, which is very inefficient. This works in an entirely different way to the Apple Interface. For example, the user has to firstly select a function and then an object which contradicts the usual order, selecting an ob- ject and then the action which applies to it. This method is strange at first, but you soon get used toit. Thefile menu contains four features: Load Song Files, Load Sound Files, Print Song and Quit. Once a load function is selected, a stan- dard dialog box is displayed. The box has all the features found within the normal Apple system: Load; Save; and Delete, but it also has a number of functions that aren't found within the Apple Dialog. These options are labeled Rename and Append. Unlike the Music Construction Set, the Music Studio cannot determine which files on your data disk are songs and which are instrument files, so the File dialog expects the name to have a suffix, a sound file would be something like .SND and a song file would have .SNG. This whole ‘suffix’ system gives the program a bit of an amateur- ish feel about it. The system has a vast number of features to offer. Each part of the screen has been taken up with either a pull-down or push-up menu or a slider for volume or tempo. The same range of notes as the Music Construction Set are on offer in a pull down menu. The rests are in another menu of their own, and the also cover the same range. The various keys, sharp, flat or natural are in another menu. The editing features are kept in another pull-down menu, The features available are roughly the same as those supplied in the Music Construction Kit. Copy, Cut and Paste are supported, as is the Transposition of a block. Another feature that appears in the menu is ability to lengthen or shorten the length of every note within the specified block. This, which is not found within the Music Construction Kit, is very useful when experimenting and writing your own music. A feature that appears in The Music Studio but not the Music Construction Kit is the ability to add a repeat. This can be easily simulated by copying the block to be repeated and placing it after the original block. In the Music Studio, @ 12 mG Apple2000 June 1988 N plusRAM-16 \ jlusRAM- 16 plugs int the newest R y standard slot in your Apple ockete a ory ready installed nemory, right up to sixteen megabytes. plusRAM ~ 16 is a RAMDISK card which works just like at electronic speeds. It's like having instant access t plusRAM —16 is automatically used by AppleWorks for desktop expansion. It's also supplied with lots of Manager which lets yo so you can change instantly extra-special eohienycemments for ppleWorks (vers. 1.3 2.0 US): i] ction calculator which eed t ve 42K print buffer which can be assigned jutom: i support is int on ssa any. time you mass io any printer. ave time: the special sty HN Of time! \ plusRAM —1 If you don’t need more than one megabyte, then plusRAM — 1 is the card for you! With all the same features as plusRAM-—16, it comes with 256K of RAM and is expandable to one megabyte. (RamDesk Manager requires a minimum of one megabyte.) from only £99.00 up instantly tise .ls other RAM full cursor Pascal 1.1 ProDOS, Pascal 1.3 and Cirt ally recognise plusRAM. 16 and 20b/2.23 and t cai juded ‘a DOS 3.3. cm 2.2 {¥.2, Z aly multiple y ProDOS plusRAM— to guarant plus! 5 hi 16 is designed to observe Apple maximum compatibility. 6 is easily ex, standard: j i usin, his Je ah ei four tes with oF and up to porn tes. ete hcoming f NAG ograms into: ager restore fou 37 as in under 12 the others are. ‘invisible’. Any Manager functions can also be set to 2 aul matically each time the RamDesk plusRAM—GS2 and - GS8 RAMcards specifically for the Apple lIGS memory expansion slot to add up to 8 megabytes of extra memory. Complete with powerful AppleWorks enhancements and the facility to instantly boot programs with the PROMDisk and ROMDisk Adaptors from only £99.00 Contact Cirtech for full information on these exciting products and details of special trade-in/trade-up offers available. (Prices exclude VAT) plusDISK A major advance in storage technology, plusDISK is unmatched for sheer speed and performance — all the speed of a RAMcard and the permanent storage of a disk drive. Supplied with 128K and expandable to 1 megabyte, fits any standard slot in a lIGS, //e or i+. from only £128.00 CIRTECH (UK) LIMITED, Currie Road Industrial Estate, Galashiels Telephone (0896) 57790 Selkirkshire, Scotland, TD1 2BP Tolex 265871 (Attn. 84:CPD001)-Telecom Gold Source Mailbox—AAHS55 CIRTECH (UK) Limited 1988 Apple Il +. //e, IGS, ProDOS, DOS 3.3 and AppleWorks are registered trademarks of Apple Computer Inc. CP/M is registered trademark of Digital Research Inc, From Page 12 actual repeat bars can be entered and the number of repeats can then be changed. Unlike the Music Construction Kit where the note is sounded only when it is placed, The Music Stu- dio sounds the note every time the pointer is moved over the score which can become very annoying. However, in the Option menu there is a ‘toggle’ to turn this off. The Options menu contains a number of useful options, the main one being Design Instru- ment. When selected, the score disappears and is replaced with a screen displaying an envelope generator. Various qualities of the current instrument can be al- tered, the basic shape of the in- struments sound for example or you could add Vibrato or even, by cleverly altering the shape of the sound, add echo. There is also the ability to change the stereo chan- nel you wish the instrument to sound from, and all the changes can be reversed before the instru- ment is saved. Another feature that appears in the Options Menu is the Midi Parameters Screen. On_ this screen, it is possible to specify and alter up to fifteen midi channels and define which preset instru- ments on the midi device to use. The system is configured primar- ily for the Casio CZ101 synthe- sizer and a number of demo songs use this facility. A feature that I had not seen on any package before is one labeled Tracks. This option allows you to isolate one or more instruments or sound effects in a song. If, for example, you are creating a com- plicated score and you want to work on the percussion section separately, without listening to the other instruments, you can assign the percussion to a track by itself and then turn off all the other tracks so that you see and hear only the percussion. This feature also allows you to place the same note from two different instruments without erasing the original note. This is alright for people who understand music notation but what about the people who can't tell the difference between a qua- ver and a demi-semiquaver? Easy, click on the center of the menu bar at the top of the screen and the screen will go blank and the main composing screen willbe replaced with a Music PaintBox Screen. In the paintbox, gone are all the musical notation rests and ties and they are replaced with fifteen coloured blobs which refer to the instruments and five blocks of differing lengths. These blocks refer to the length of the note. The upper halve of the screen is taken up entirely with a large blank musical score on which it is pos- sible to paint the music. So people can place the coloured blocks roughly on the score, hear what they sound like, move or alter them and not have to worry about the notation at all. There are two methods of listen- ing to the music, One icon has an ear on it which plays the entire piece without scrolling the score. The other is called a running note which will either play the whole piece or if a block has been high- lighted then it will play just the highlighted area. If the music is played using the running note, the music score scrolls while it plays. What about the sound that it produces? The sound files con- tain fifteen instruments and the basic program comes with four files, Jazz, Rock, Classical and Voices. Once loaded, the system holds the fifteen in memory so that each one can be accessed immediately without having to go to the disk to retrieve them. The range of instruments that can be accessed is superb. There are electric guitars to whole drum kits, cellos to clarinets, and the last sound file, Voices, contains sampled phrases. One of the demo songs given with the system uses the Voices sound file, and it sounds like a take off of the Swingle Singers. The system comes with about twenty five demo songs that show off the system to the full. These range from classical pieces to a country number, A long rock piece to a swinging jazz song. Most of the demos are very good but the Music Construction Kit’s Pach- elbel Cannon is much better than the one in provided with The Music Studio. The documentation provided with The Music Studio is 120 pages long and it covers all the functions that the system can provide. Also. a quick reference card is provided to enable the user Product: Music Construction Kit Publisher: Electronic Arts Available from : MGA MicroSystems Bidmuthin Technologies Apple Dealers £14.95 (Apple //) £29.95 (//gs) Price : édddd édde éddd info Product : The Music Studio Publisher: —_ Activision Available from : MGA MicroSystems Bidmuthin Technologies Apple Dealers £87.95 Value : Performance : Documentation : Price : édde ééded ddddd Value : Performance : Documentation : to discover want any function means without having to thumb through the manual. With these packages I have gained considerable musical knowledge and, more importantly I feel, thoroughly enjoyed so doing. The system that I use comprises a pair of BOSE Room- mate speakers connected to an Apple //GS. These speakers re- ally enhance the system perform- ance and are highly recom- mended for serious musical work.I heartily recommend all school music teachers to test drive one of these packages and I will guarantee that they will be- come addicted. The Music Studio and The Music Construction Kit are both excellent packages. If you are looking for ease of use and a more professional appearance choose the Music Construction Set. If you are seeking more experi- mental facilities such as variable envelope parameters and greater 4 2 we Apple2000 June 1988 SOUND ON TWO - A Comparison Of Features GENERAL TMCS TMCS T™sS Compaubility Apple // Apple //gs Apple //gs Disk Format 5.25 Inch 3.5 Inch 3.5 Inch Copy Protection Yes Yes Yes Memory Requirements 48K 256K 512K Input Devices Keyboard Mouse Mouse Joystick Koalay Mouse Special Hardware None None RGB MIDI Support NA. Yes Yes Printers Supported ImageWriter [1] ImageWriter ImageWriter Sound Cards Supported Mockingboard SuperSonic SuperSonic Echo +, Cricket LIMITS Note Range 5 Octaves 8 Octaves 8 Octaves Pre-Programmed Instruments 8 34 60 Instruments per Song 2 2 15 FEATURES Key Signature Selection Yes Yes Yes Multiple Key Signatures within a song Yes No No Time Signatures Selection 4 2 7171 Whole through 30-Second notesYes Yes Yes Whole through 30-Second rests Yes Yes Yes Accidentals Yes Yes Yes Double Sharps No Yes No Double Flats No Yes No Dotted Notes Yes Yes Yes Triplets No Yes Yes Quintuplets No Yes No Accents No No Yes Ties Yes Yes Yes Chords Yes Yes [6] Yes [6] Repeats No No Yes Number of Repeats No No Yes multi-voicing capability then choose the Music Stu- dio. Personally, I've brought both of them, and I ea- gerly await the release of the Apple //GS Deluxe Music Construction Set which should remove some of the restrictions the basic system has at present. I would also welcome a means of transferring music files between packages. Programmers please note ! The Music Studio requires 512K, RGB or acompos- ite colour monitor, The Music Construction Kit (// GS) requires 256k and The Music Construction Kit (/ / Series) requires 48K, with joystick, mouse or Ko- alapad being optional. IthankJohn GurrofMGA MicroSystems for kindly loaning me the review copies. All the products I have reviewed are available from: MGA MicroSystems Pear Tree Appledore Kent TN26 2AR Finally, I would be pleased to offer my favourite music files (predominately jazz) to anyone sending a disk and sae to me:- Jonathan Scott, DD Biasitiayn rast, aareaytlsir, Rude, Wiiks, SD au And I would appreciate a reciprocal offer from any other enthusiast. Or Apple 2000 could collect all offerings in order to amass a complete disk-full for the disk library. Jonathon Scott ¢é Stem Direction Yes Yes No Lyrics No No Yes Tempo Control Yes Yes Yes Volume Control Yes Yes Yes Variable length measures. No No Yes EDITING OPTIONS Copy A Block Yes [2] Yes Yes Move A Block Yes (2) Yes[2] Yes Delete A Block Yes [3] Yes Yes Insert A Block Yes [4] Yes Yes Merge Two Blocks No Yes No Edit Selected Voice(s) No Yes Yes Transpose Up/Down A Step Yes Yes cS Up/Down An Octave Yes Yes Yes [8] Swap Instruments In The Song Yes Yes Yes Design An Instruments No No Yes MISCELLANEOUS FEATURES Print Sheet Music Yes Yes Yes ‘Time Signature Check Yes Yes No Music Scrolls while Playing Yes (5) Yes cs Save/Load music from disk Yes Yes Yes Colour Coded Instruments No No Yes FOOTNOTES [1] Also supports C. Itoh, Epson and Okidata. [2] Via Cut and Paste. [3] All Cut and Paste operations can only de done on full measures. [4] By copying an empty measure and pasting it at the desired location. [5] Only with a sound board. {6] Up to fifteen notes. 17] Time signature is only a reminder to the user. It doesn’t affect the notes in any way. [8] May be controlled from the instrument design panel. nm Softwace Lines open 9.0008 to 9.00p— jonday to Saturdoy Macintosh Si2k, Mees KB, souse, 11 HO40 Colour 636i iriter Ul 365 geliriter LQ $ 050 Laseriieiter Plus 62050 20k, 1 printer hE drive eontriler card cord June 1988 Apple2000 News Bits Culled from our own Apple Orchard Apple Europe restructures for the 1990's Outside the US, Apple has divided into two separate operat- ing units, Apple Pacific and Apple Europe. Apple Pacific will be headed up by former Apple UK Managing Director David Hancock. Hancock will be responsible for Canada, Austra- lia, Japan and the emerging markets of the Pacific. Apple TM Europe will be led by Michael Spindler, Vice President. The operation will be subdivided into four regions; France, Ger- many, Nordic and General European Area. The European headquarters are based in Paris which Apple recently announced would be its first regional re- search and development centre. Claris TM appoints distributor gets managing director Claris Corporation has ap- pointed First Software as its exclusive distributor and has also announced that its manag- ing Director will be Steve Johnson, presently education sales manager for Apple. From Friday 6 May Apple will cease to take orders for Claris software and First Software will take over on Monday 9th May. Apple will fulfill its outstanding orders from stock and will then pass any existing stock to First Software. Technical support will be gradually handed over from Apple to First Software. “Claris has invested more in the UK than in many other European countries” said Johnson, who joins Claris on May 30th. “And so First Software and Claris can together offer a full marketing, sales and technical support package to dealers. I hope you will find what we have to say interesting, and I look forward to continuing my rela- tionship with many of you.” Claris is an Apple subsidiary which was launched earlier this year. Extracts ‘rom ‘Agenda’ The Apple Dealer News Bulletin Apple Computer UK Ltd Apple Village for Dexpo '89 at Olympia Over 30 stands at the next DEXPO Europe, in February 1989, will be devoted to an ‘Apple-DEC Computing Centre’, with third-party vendors exhibit- ing Macintosh to Digital connec- tivity products. This will be the largest display of such solutions ever mounted in Europe, and shows the growing popularity of this environment. Commenting on the announce- ment, Jane Burley, DeskTop Communications marketing manager, said “The Apple-Digital alliance focussed attention on the work being undertaken by third party developers. Since then, more and more products have been announced which allow the Macintosh to operate seamlessly in a Digital environ- ment. After August, when both companies will hold a joint developer's conference, we expect the market to grow further, Bringing together a number of these companies in a major European exhibition will give Digital users in business, government and education sectors the opportunity to see the quality and diversity of solutions available.” DEXPO Europe 89 will be held at Olympia 2, London from 28th February to 2nd March 1989. Workshop 2000 Apple II Special Reporter Mike Davies We have been receiving over the months complaints from Apple II users that we were not devoting enough time and space to their interests. With this in mind I set about organising a special Workshop just for the Apple I. I must admit I won- dered how much support such an event would have. I am de- lighted to report that the work- shop was a great success, with members attending from as far afield as Guernsey, Newcastle, Leeds, and Sheffield. The Workshop was organised for Saturday April 16th at Bidmuthin Technologies Ltd, 214 Kenton Road, Harrow, Middx. In hind sight | should have published a map to guide you there as one or two of you had some difficulty locating the building. Next time remember it is above Waitrose, and there is a car park at the back. Anyway it did not mar the attendance which at the end of the day totalled 43 members and 11 non members. Some of the latter were in fact elapsed members whom I hope after this plus the promise of more activity on the Apple II front in forthcoming Magazines will consider it worth while rejoining. The day was based around two subjects. PC Transporter and AppleWorks Enhancements. Our thanks must go to Mark and Steve of Bidmuthin who worked solidly all day presenting these subjects, and also for the use of their showrooms. There never appeared to be a moment during the whole day when there was not a crowd around each demo. Our thanks also to Liz who worked wonders with the coffee machine and kept an endless supply of the brown nectar flowing all day. Well that’s the good news. The better news is that due to the success of this meeting it has been decided to hold another one in the Autumn. The sub- jects will be announced at a later date, but it appears there are a number of new items in the pipe line. Keep your eyes open for the announcement in a future issue of the magazine. @& 16 Apple2000 June 1988 1) Problem: Omnis doesn't produce any output when a remove the Monaco 12 font if it is attached. Quit and try it. Selected Omnis report is printed. 3) Problem: The temporary Cause: The currently selected variables #50 through #60 Problems of the output device is not on line or lose their values. improperly connected. Cause: At the beginning ofevey Month Solution: Use the Chooser to report Omnis zeroes #50 to select the correct printer and #59 and sets #60 to the Lee) serial port, after checking the number of records in the Prepared b printer status and connec- report's main file. (This allows EIOROTON DY. tions. for convenient totalling within Blyth Software Support 2) Problem: When printing to @ report.) an ImageWriter, system Solution: Do not store any their identity (and values). reports look distorted and weird. Cause: Omnis prints system important values (like current screen number) in variables above #50, because they will Solution: Store any global nu- meric values you need to access in #11 through #49, reports in Monaco 9. Because be destroyed when a report is and any global string values the Mac is unable to find that printed. #11 through #49 are in fields belonging to a con- size font, it scales down from not changed by printing and stants-type file or dummy Monaco 12. are independent of #P. file. Solution: Ensure that your 4) Problem: The values in tem- 5) Problem: Omnis truncates system file contains Monaco porary variables #S1 to #S5 values typed into some of 9. If you do find it there, a and #1 to #10 change mid- the temporary fields #51 to font attached to Omnis itself way through a report. #85. might be the culprit. Launch Cause: The page number vari- Cause: These fields are not of Font/DA mover, and while able (#P) in reports ts the length. holding down the Option key, same variable that controls Solution: Remember that #S1 click the right-hand Open the selection of the current has a length of 79 characters, button. You will see Omnis as one of the files you can open when you get to the correct folder. Select Omnis and row in the array. Because the above-mentioned temporary Jields are part of the standard array, a change in #P changes #S2 has a length of 40, #S3 can contain 20 characters, and #s$ and #S5 can only hold 10 characters each. @ Orders or enquiries to: KOLOUR SOFTWARE LTD. A solution for everyone... We offer the full range of Apple II and Macintosh 512K, Plus, SE and II computers, accessories and software from individual items to sophisti- cated systems for the latest applications in desk top publishing or computer aided design at competitive prices. Whatever your interests as a newcomer, en- Communications Software For The Apple // thusiast, professional, small business or large public company, we can provide new and used equipment, with excellent service, reliability and after-sales maintenance, training and support. * Still priced at £86.25, inc. VAT & postage « Viewdata and Ascii modes Tatest New Features @ Binary Il - Automatic packing/unpacking of files With such a wide range of Apple Macintosh equipment and applications, why not call us to discuss your requirements. @ Viewdata Font Editor - create your own Prestel like displays @ Viewdata File Processor - strip those nasty control codes out to provide a perfect text/Appleworksfile @ Xmodem enhancements - now uses both checksum and CRC protocols ROGER D'ARCY COMPUTERS Tel.: Oxford (0865) 728787 June 1988 Apple2000 BM 17 The Magic of PROSEL A Review of a PROgram SELector by Dave Ward To most Apple // users the change to ProDOS was welcomed because it contained most of the enhancements missing from the earlier operating system Dos 3.3. One snag though, is that file names are known as a ‘path names’ under ProDOS and files can be hidden in a directory in a directory etc. making such pa- thnames very difficult to remem- ber. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to quickly move from one applica- tion to another without having to memorise long pathnames. For instance the authors of ProDOS obligingly arranged that oncorrectly quitting from ProDOS applications a routine would be run to enable you to enter the new ‘pathname’ without having to re- boot or switch off the machine. Unfortunately it is one of the least user-friendly procedures I have come across. When you quit the screen blanks to 40 column mode and you see the following legend with a flashing cursor beneath: ENTER PREFIX (PRESS “RETURN™ TO ACCEPT) If you can remember the PRE- FIX you are then given a further blank screen with this legend at the top: ENTER PATHNAME OF NEXT APPLICATION Ifyou cannot remember all this, which is highly likely, you can only exit using a cold re-boot or switching the machine off then on again. ProSel, written by Glen Bredon (author of the famous Merlin as- sembler) makes the running of your ProDOS applications a breeze. When you quit a ProDOS application ProSel is run instead of the normal quit routine and instead of a blank screen you get a menu of your applications. Prosel Editor AppleWorks Check disk (auto) Block Editor Plan Volume copy Information Desk MERLIN 16 Simp demo Filer (cat doctor) SBI calculations File finder Utilities directory Applesoft BASIC Plan tester Copy J{ plus Restore Backup TPROSELU - Application listing : Select mode - ESC for main menu 1-May-88 9:56 The above is the main menu screen of PROSEL which appears when you quit a ProDOS applica- tion. As you might have guessed PROSEL is a selection menu for launching ProDOS programs on all Apple // computers although it looks best on the enhanced Apple //e . Apple //c and Apple Iigs computers. The eighteen names at the top of the screen are titles of applications that you may wish to use. The highlighted title Truns a particular application when the return key is pressed or the mouse button clicked. The application must be the path toa ProDOS system file or a directory which contains other directories or ProDOS system files. Your applications may be on a hard disk, RAM disk, ROM disk, 3.5” disk, 5.25" diskette or any other ProDOS compatible drive. You'll find a 5.25" (143K) diskette rather claustrophobic, though. You can choose a title using the mouse or cursor keys and also, very conveniently, by simply pressing the first character of the title you want. For instance if you want AppleWorks from the above screen just press A and it will be instantly highlighted. If you were to press A again you would high- light Applesoft BASIC. Since there are no more titles beginning with Apressing A again would take you to Prosel Editor as this is the first title on the screen. An immediate problem comes to mind - what happens if a particu- lar application you wish to run is not on the menu screen of ProSEL. Well there are three ways to solve this problem :- 1} Ifthe application is in a direc- tory title on the screen just choose it just like you would an applica- tion and all the system files and directories will be shown on the screen just like the main ProSEL menu. You can choose these titles in the same way and system files will be run and guess what hap- pens when you choose another directory! Although the menu looks like the one above there are some differences such as all the SYSTEM files are in uppercase whereas the directories are in lowercase. 2} If the application is on an- other disk simply place the disk in the drive and then press the slot number followed by the drive number and all the system files and directory files will be shown on the screen just as if you had chosen a directory from the main ProSEL screen. For example a diskette in slot 5 drive 1 just press 51 and the menu will quickly appear. 3} Unless you've got 54 entries on the ProSEL menu you could create a new one to run this new application, but we'll come back to this later. You can quite easily have appli- cations on other diskettes but you must remember to insert the cor- rect diskette as the only error you will get is that the particular pa- thname cannot be found. This is usually sufficient to prompt one to insert the correct diskette and start over. If an application can't be found the screen clears and a message in the bottom left-hand corner informs one of that. This could probably be a little more user- friendly but at least it alerts one to the problem which is due to the pathname cannot be found on any of the volumes on-line. Either the pathname specification is wrong or the required diskette in not on-line. ProSEL works by altering the QUIT code within ProDOS so that when you correctly quit a ProDOS application ProSEL will be re- loaded and the ProSEL menu will re-appear on the screen. or 36 @ B Apple2000 June 1988 — You may have up to 54 titles on a ProSel screen in 80 column mode. There is a 40 column mode by this is less flexible and one would be advised to use the 80 column mode if at all possible. Each title on the screen actually consists of 4 parts (the other three being hidden) which can be edited using an internal editor accessed from the ProSel menu screen by pressing the ESC key. As might be expected this is a very simple editor but works quite well. En- tries added or emended by this editor are placed in alphabetical order on the screen. The external editor is far more sophisticated and allows one to order the screen titles to ones desire. I always keep a copy of the external editor PROSEL.ED on my main ProSel diskette as it only takes up a few blocks. When you invoke the ex- ternal editor the screen is almost the same except that choosing a highlighted title produces the fol- lowing screen :- PROSEL EDITOR Screen tite: ‘SBI calculations Profix RAM7SBI Application path: 2BASIC.SYSTEM Startup: *D del rgt, DEL del Ih. “Q del to end, *B begin, *N end, “R replace ESC to exit. TAB toggles: Insert mode active The above screen was chosen by highlighting the title SBI and then pressing return key. It runs an Applesoft BASIC program STARTUP ona RAM disk /RAM7/ SBI . With ProSel you'll only need one copy of BASIC.SYSTEM on one of the volumes to be able to run any Applesoft program any- where! If you are using BASIC.SYSTEM version 1.1 or later the name of the Applesoft program does not even have to be STARTUP. The title can be up to 24 alpha- betical characters in length. A nice feature that works on all machines may give Apple Ilgs users a bit ofa fright the first time it happens! After 5 minutes or so the screen blanks to black! to prevent ‘burn-in’. The manual states this feature but one might expect the colour screen on an Apple IIgs to blank to the border and background colours rather than all black. I thought that my monitor had died, for a few min- utes, the first time it happened! ProSel may be purchased from Glen Bredon by mail order, only at a cost of $40 and those ordering from outside North America will have to pay an extra $5 for ship- ping. ProSel consists of three sides of two 5.25" diskettes all of which are copyable. The docu- mentation is contained on one of the diskettes and runs to 55 pages when printed! The manual has a table of contents on the first page (no index) the other 54 pages describe ProSel and its utilities very well. When you boot the main diskette /FLOPPY you enter the installation program which aftera few pages of text describing the utilities and copyright notice falls into the main installation menu below :- Welcome to PROSEL. *** The best and most complete set of disk utilities you can buy. *** INSTALLATION The installation program will automatically check for possible prob- lems and will install PROSEL and the disk utilities on a ProDOS volume of your choosing. Although it may rename some files, it will do nothing reversible, The revision installation revises only the files PROSEL.SYSTEM and PROSEL,; other revised files should be copied using CAT.DOCTOR. Please press a number key to select an option: O - Exit to Applesoft BASIC 1 - Install a new PROSEL on a ProDOS volume of your choice. 2 - Install a revision over an old PROSEL version. 3 - Print documentation. 4 - Copy this disk. 5 - Return to start of this program. Select 0-5: Although you can prepare your own ProSel diskettes you would be advised in the first instance to use the installation option from the above menu and then make any changes to the main ProSel screen afterwards. PROSEL actu- ally launches SYStem files so if your application is a SYStem file just set up the path using the editor and PROSEL will run it. Likewise larger systems such as AppleWorks startup from a SYS- tem file, in this case / APLWORKS.SYSTEM so you just specify that the pathname points to /APLWORKS.SYSTEM and PROSEL will run AppleWorks! It is that easy. Applesoft programs, as we have seen, can be RUN through BASIC.SYSTEM but BiNary or TeXT files will be a little more tricky. All the necessary in- formation to RUN your ProDOS applications is given in the man- ual. You may have noticed that Glen Bredon chose that PROSEL be a text orientated utility. This was a wise decision since the system takes up less than 8K bytes on a disk and is very quick and easy to use. Graphic orientated systems are far less flexible and require at least 100K bytes of disk space. PROSEL beats them hands down. For the price of the package one could be forgiven for thinking that’s your lot. ProSel, however, is accompanied by a plethora of support utilities some of the more important will be described be- low:- UNI.FORMAT - is a utility to format 3.5" diskettes and has the additional facility of allowing you to reserve 25% of the diskas a Dos 3.3 area. There is quite a bit of information in the manual to enable one to run many old DOS 3.3 programs from the Unidisk 3.5". FORMAT.35 - you can format 5.25" diskettes with this utility. Since some 5.25" drives Cc June 1988 ‘Apple2000 Beis From Page 19 can access more than 35 tracks this utility allows you to format ProDOS diskettes with more tracks. For instance some drives will be able to read 40 tracks which could give you an extra 20K bytes of storage! CAT.DOCTOR - This utility is not as bad as it sounds! Actually it is a utility to manipulate files in almost every conceivable way! One of the nice features is the ability to copy only those files that have been changed, which one would use as an _ intelligent backup. To do this CAT.DOCTOR compares the modification dates of the source and target files and only copies those where the source has a later modification date. This is great if you have a large RAMdisk or Harddisk with some files to update from time-to- time. The latest version 6.0 has two menus which are shown be- low to indicate the scope of this utility: CAT DOCTOR 6.0 Copyright 1988 by Glen Bredon Q-Quit X-Catalog C-Copy files T-Type files L-Lock files U-Unlock files O-Delete files E-Exhume files V-Veriy files R-Rename files TAB-Monu chango S-Sort directory F-Change file date /-Create directory N-Show volume names: B-Toggle bell, now: ON P-Toggle prompting, now: ON CAT DOCTOR 6.0 Copyright 1988 by Glen Bredon TAB-Main Menu Q-Quit program M-Move files F-Format a disk W-Wipe a volume C-Compare directories D-Disable unused devices Onentry the first item, in the top menu, Q-Quit is highlighted. You can choose others in that menu using the mouse, the cursor keys or by pressing the first character. The item chosen is executed by pressing return or clicking the mouse button. The second menu is chosen by executing the TAB item. This second menu is only available if the file CD.EXT is in the same directory as CAT.DOCTOR . If the second menu is unavailable the TAB item is replaced by W-Wipe a volume. Note that this utility only runs on Apple //c, Apple //e (enhanced) and Apple Iigs computers. The disable unused devices is quite useful if you don't have a disk in a disk ][ drive. Unfortu- nately (bug?) the only apparent way of re-enabling the drive is to reboot ProDOS. Another is ......... SCAVENGE - this is a program that when run will disable any drive that does not have a diskette therein. If, however, you run it again and it finds a diskette in the previously disabled drive it re- enables it. BLOCK.WARDEN - This utility allows one to perform surgery on any ProDOS block. You can refer to blocks by their absolute num- ber on the disk or relatively in any type of file. All-in-all this is an excellent utility with all the edit- ing commands you will require and there is a nice feature to show au the attributes of any ProDOS le. The display underneath shows what the main screen looks like: INFO.DESK - With this utility you get four options which are as follows: 1> Catalog - Lists all the file on adirectory with all the files in sub- directories shown indented. 2> Block usage by files. 3> File usage by blocks. 4> Bit map of the volume. The data may be sent to screen, printer or a disk file. VOLUME.COPY - This simply copies whole 3.5" or 5.25" disk- ettes, There is a special Apple IIgs version that borrows any free memory to copy as much of the disk as possible to reduce swap- ping. BEACH.COMBER - Users of large disks such as hard disks may find after much use that ap- plications load or run slower. This can be due to files having their blocks scattered all over the disk thus causing the head to move from track to track wasting time. BEACH COMBER optimises the way files and directories are stored so that loading time is reduced to a minimum. The manual recommends that you make a backup before proceeding as an interruption may trash the disk. FILE.FINDER - This utility will search every directory on a vol- ume to find a file name that you request. Very useful if you forget the full pathname! Block Warden Profix: /IGSMU- Byto $000400 1988 Block: $0002 (2) Volume name: lIGSML © 00.01 02.03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B OC OD OE OF Tuesday 3-May-88 9:25 Zzoore pe 000: 00 00 03 00 F6 49 49 47 53 4D 4C 00.00 00 00 00 'b 010; 00.00.00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 47 af 2910 y 020: 04.00 C3 27 0D 15 00 06 00 40 06 D4 43 48 2E 31 030: 00 00 00 00.00 00 00.00.0000 000107000100 G 040; 00.02 00 47 AF 20 100400 E3 000047 AF 2810. 050: 02 00 D4 43 48 2E 32 00 00 00 00 00.00 00 00 00 060; 00 00 Of 1700.01 0000020047AF 28100400. 070: E300 00 47 AF 2B 10 02 00 D4 43 48 2E 33.00 00 W 080: 00.00 00.00 0000000000 0F 190001000002. A B 090: 00.47 AF 2B 10 0400 E300 0047AF 2B 100200 | Rr AO: Dé 43 48 2E 34 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 D @ OBO: OF 200001 0000020047 AF 20 100400E300 . .....G/, E d 0C0: 00.47 AF 2D 1002.00 Dé 43 48 2E 3500000000 .G/-_.TCHS. N © ODO: 00.00 00 00 00 00 00 OF 32 00 01 00 00.02 00 47 p Samed} n OEO: AF 2D 10 04 00 E3 00 00 47 AF 2E 10020004 43 /-...c..G/....TC OFO: 48 2E 36 00 00 00.00.0000 0000 0000 000F 3A H.6. Arrows change blocks, [O)uit,[Ejdit, [Rjead, [Wyrite, “=index list, \=fip. [DJump, ['L}st, [Change device, [Pjrefix, (Info on file, [Floliow file, 2 2 Appie2000 June 1988 BACKUP/RESTORE - These two utilities let you backup your hard disk or RAM disk onto 5.25* or 3.5” diskettes. For speed in backing-up your diskettes should be formatted and named BACKUP.O1 etc. You will be in- formed of the number of diskettes you will require and backup/re- store is very fast. A 1 megabyte card can, for instance, be backed- up on seven 5.25" floppies, on one drive, in around 3 minutes with- out rushing. Backup disks are an image and cannot be used di- rectly. There are also utilities for auto- matically loading RAM drives on bootup. RECOVER - Just in case your main disk goes down this pro- gram will let you RECOVER a file from your backup diskettes with- out having to do the whole RE- STORE. MR-FIXIT - This utility helps one to restore di ed diskettes. QUEUEP - With this program you can load a queue of programs one after another automatically, even with a time delay. There are many other utilities on the PROSEL diskettes such as special versions of some utilities for Apple ][ plus users with videot- erm 80 column cards etc. There is even a utility PARK.HEADS which allows one to park the head on a SIDER hard disk so that it may be transported. Why? Well Glen Bre- don has SIDER, of course. From this, other utilities and reading the manual one may come to the conclusion that the prime pur- pose behind PROSEL package is that it was written by a perfection- ist for his own use, fortunately he has made it available for us all and at a rather modest price. Well I almost forgot to mention that Glen Bredon has even di- rectly addressed the distinct lack of user friendliness of ProDOS referred to at the start of this article. When you boot-up one of his diskettes you will see that the version of ProDOS is 1.4B. He has patched this and has made it very user friendly. When you QUIT a ProDOS (1.4B) application all the CONCLUSION ProSel is an excellent way of organising your ProDOS based utilities and applications so that you can switch between them with the greatest of ease, at will. In particular the backup facility for amended files only will be a boon to hard disk and RAMdisk users. I use ProSel all the time, now, and have converted many of the old Dos 3.3 applications, games and utilities that I use a lot, to ProDOS SyYStem files. The Members Small Ads WANTED to borrow NIBBLE Volume 8 Number 12 (my issue lost in Xmas post!) Phone Dave Pearce (i/#59 Min 72 volumes found on-line will be shown, by name, in inverse on the screen which you can choose by moving the cursor and pressing return, Next all the SyStem files found on the volume you have chosen will be shown. When you choose one it will be launched. Dave Ward é info Product : ProSel Auhtor. Glen Bredon Available from : Glen Bredon 521 State Road Princeton NJ 08540 USA $40 ($5 foreign post) only available mail order (no credit cards) Price : Value : éédded Performance : édddd Documentation: ¢é¢é¢é¢é For Sale 512K Macintosh with 400K External Drive ICE 20Mb Hard Disk (HFS and MFS Compatible) with separate Multiplexer ICE Matchbox allowing access to the hard disk via AppleTalk (no further networking utilities required) All necessary cards and cables allowing any FOR SALE Apple Il+ 64K with following cards; Z80 column card, parallel printer card £150.00 o.n.o. Apple 140K single disc drive and controller card £50.00 o.n.o. EICON Research twin 1,2 Mb disc drive for //e, little used, cost £1200.00 new £175.00 to clear Microtech 7-pin dot matrix printer, inc lead £45.00 Software. JARMAN integrated accounts for II+ or //e, cost £1500.00, complete with manuals £200.00 OR £550.00 0.n.0, the lot Tel GiP2a aeamOiF after 6 pm combination of Macintoshes (via the Matchbox) and/or Apple I's (via the multiplexer) to share the hard disk simultaneously ! Complete set of Manuals for all the hardware. This is an exceptionally practical and flexible set-up, ideal for the smaller business, either as an entry level configuration or as a low cost expansion alternative £1,495 complete (private sale — no VAT) Telephone: (@2) 854-4539 June 1988 Apple2000 eg 2 Algol The first Structured Language Dave Miller continues his series with the first of three articles on Algol In 1960 a group of computer sci- entists, supported by the Interna- tional Standards Organisation, released a report on a new com- puter language. The criteria for the language were that it be inde- pendent of the computer on which it is running, flexible and problem oriented (ie. the language is adapted to the problem rather than vice versa). This new lan- guage was christened ALGOL-60, from either the phrase “Algo- rithmic Language” or the phrase “Algebraical Oriented Language”. The resultant language repre- sented the greatest single ad- vance in computer language de- sign whose basic precepts are still used in the newest languages today. In this instalment I shall try to conver the most important prin- ciples of ALGOL and of all of the structured languages developed either directly or indirectly from ALGOL. Figure 1 lists the ALGOL family tree. The most well-known of ALGOL’s offspring are listed although there are several others. CORAL-66 draws not only from FORTRAN but also from a lan- guage called Jovial. Surprisingly ALGOL-68, a later refinement ot ALGOL-60, is suffi- ciently different from ALGOL-60 to be considered a seperate lan- guage. Indeed CORAL-66 bears considerably more resemblence to ALGOL-60 than does ALGOL- 68! ALGOL offered four major ad- vances over the existing main- stream computer languages ex- tant in 1960. 1) Free format source files Languages like FORTRAN and COBOL were designed to be en- tered into the computer via punched cards. Thus the source code was ‘fixed format’. This means that certain columns had specific, predefined uses such as in FORTRAN, where column six is used to indicate a continuation line for a program statement which is too long to be placed on one program line. ALGOL dispenses with all this. ALGOL-60 i Figure 1: The ALGOL Family Tree ! ! | | BLISS — CORAL-66 Pascal ALGOL-68 Modula-2 S3 | ! ! | CPL IMP PL Ada | BOPL | c Some of the languages, like Pas- eal, are developed directly from ALGOL-60 and share many com- mon features. Others, like CORAL-66, PL/1 and Ada, are based upon ALGOL but draw heavily from other sources: for example Ada also shares features of FORTRAN and The language assumes nothing about the format of the source file. This causes one problem: fixed format languages usually have the limitation that only one pro- gram statement can be on one line of text. ALGOL can not assume this so a special ‘statement sep- erator’ has to be employed to indi- cate the end of one statement and the beginning of another. ALGOL adopts the semicolon as the state- ment seperator. Another problem is the parsing of keywords and how they are dis- tinguished from variable names. COBOL uses the space asa delim- iter but ALGOL, being free format, has to adopt a ‘keyword delimiter’ (in fact ALGOL completely ignores spaces in the source file which causes some unusual problems when spaces are to be included in text strings). The single quotation mark, (called a ‘prime’ in ALGOL parlance), is used to delimit key- words. An example of valid ALGOL statements showing the use of semicolons and primes is: i= 2; ‘if d > 20 then'b =b*a'‘eke’b=a Actually, primes were not the first keyword delimiter. When the language was b drawn up, a sea was Caiptel which stated that all keywords should be printed in bold type. This is often still adhered to when ALGOL pro- grams are printed in text books or in research papers. Since most computers can not handle bold type it was suggested that keywords be underlined since this is a method adopted by typesetters to indicate that words are to be emboldened. Underlining keywords was okay for formal reports and research papers but was not very practical when entering code (imagine en- tering “<begin underline>begin<end under- line>” as “b”, backspace, “_", “e”, backspace, “_", “g", backspace, Two solutions were proposed. One stated that all keywords should be enclosed tn primes. The other stated that all keywords should be written in upper case and all veriable names should be written in lower case. Both solu- tions can be used for most imple- mentations of ALGOL but stan- dard ALGOL only recognises the former. This has the advantage of allowing both upper and lower case letters to be used for variable names and keywords if required by the programmer. 2) Compound statements The compound statement is one of the single most important 22 Apple2000 June 1988 advances in language design. It allows a language to be very flex- ible yet still have a simple struc- ture, Cast your minds back, if you will to October's edition of this 1l- lustrious journal. In that edition you will find part three of this series on FORTRAN (own up those who did not read it!). You will see FORTRAN's ludicrously complex IF statements: there are three individual types of IF statement. The compound statement allows only one type of IF statement in ALGOL to perform all of the differ - ent functions of the three IF state- ments of FORTRAN. A compound statement is a se- ries of statements delimited by special beginning and end mark- ers which is taken as being one in- divisible block of code. Thus: ‘begin’ ‘comment’ all of these state ments are regarded as one megastatement; Note the use of the semicolon. It seperates statements from eachother. The keywords ‘begin’ and ‘end’ are not regarded as statements so there is no semico- lon between ‘begin’ and the com- ment statement and between the assignment to “d” and ‘end’. There is a semicolon after ‘end’ if an- other statement follows the com- pound statement because the whole compound statement, de- limited by ‘begin’ and ‘end’, is regarded as a single statement. The benefit of compound state- ments is that they allow code to be easily broken into discrete blocks of code. Take the example of an IF statement. (See Figure 2) 8) Blocks and dynamic variable allocation The compound statement dis- cussed above can have one very powerful addition. In ALGOL, variables can be declared inside a compound statement and be made local to that compound statement. This means that vari- ables defined inside a compound statement are accessible only when the compound statement is actually being executed. When Figure 2: ‘if a> 2 ‘then’ ‘begin’ ai=2; writetext ({A_is_greater_than_2}); newline (1); ‘comment’ one new line ‘end’ ‘else’ ‘begin’ ‘comment’ these are done if a <= 2; newline (1); less than 2 := true; recommended! ‘end’; ‘comment’ all these statements are executed if a > 2; ‘comment’ note the use of *_" in the above statement to indicate a space in the text output by procedure print - note the use of braces to delimit a string parameter; writetext ({A_is_less_than_or_equal_to_2}); ‘comment’ note the spaces in the above variable's name: allowable but not this occurs the compound state- ment is referred to as a block. A block is simply a compound statement with some local vari- able definitions. The implication here is that ‘dy- namic variable allocation’ is per- formed. Languages like FOR- TRAN and COBOL perform ‘static variable allocation’. This is where the variables to be used are de- fined when the program is com- piled. During execution the vari- ables’ locations in memory do not change but remain static during the program's run. Dynamic variable allocation al- lows variables to be defined (and undefined) while the program is running. This has a twofold ad- vantage: it allows memory space to be utilised efficiently because variables which are no longer needed can be undefined, thus freeing their associated memory. It also allows for more flexible pro- gramming. Many of us have had the need to do something like the following: 10 REM Enter a number & demension an array to the number's value 20 INPUT “Enter the number of data wanted:*, N 30 DIM A% (N) 40 FOR | = 1 TO N: A% (I) = |: NEXT 50 FORI=1 TONSTEP2:PRINTA%(I) +A% (141): NEXT uages adopting static vari- ableah location can not dimension an array during a program's exe- cution because all variable alloca- tion is performed when the pro- gram is compiled. The above BASIC fragment can be coded in ALGOL. (See Figure 3) Whereas BASIC can only define new variables, ALGOL also unde- fines them. That is why variables “a” and “i” are not accessible once the block in which they are de- fined is exited. Dynamic allocation does, though, have two disadvantages. One is that all this extra process- ing can take up quite a consider- able amount of processor time. The early ALGOL compilers were very inefficient but advaces in both compiler design and in the hardware available have in- creased efficiency. The second disadvantage is that this allocation/deallocation scheme is ‘stack_based’. This means that if variables are de- fined in individual blocks in the following sequence: a, b, c, d, € then they can be undefined ONLY IN THE REVERSE ORDER : e, d,c, b, a. This is because innerblocks can exist only completely inside outer blocks: ec June 1988 Apple2000 23 Figure 3: ‘begin’ ‘integer’ n; ‘comment’ define “n" as being a local integer variable; writetext ({Enter_the_number_of_data_wanted:_}); n:=read; ‘comment’ read in the number of data; ‘begin’ ‘imteger’ |; ‘integer''array’ a [1: n}; ‘comment’ define a NESTED block statement with a local integer array “a” whose size is defined by the value of “n"- note that variables defined in OUTER blocks (such as “n") are accessible in INNER blocks but variables defined in INNER blocks (such as “a’) are NOT accessible in OUTER blocks; ‘for’ i := 1 ‘step’ 1 ‘until’ n ‘do’a [i] :=i; ‘comment’ note the structure of the above “FOR stat