Apple 2000 Vol 3 No. 6 1988 12 BASUG GB

promac All promac products share one objective. To be the finest you can buy at any price. No compromises have been made in achieving a thoroughbred design. Meticulous incoming component inspection, careful manufacture and rigorous quality control, comprehensively tested ROM and firmware to enhance 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 MacEurope supports the full range of promac protessional products, both internal and external. 20MB, 40MB, 50MB, 80MB, 160MB, 300MB, 800MB SCSI disks, each the leader in its category, WORM/CD-ROM, and the infinite capacity ProDrive, utilising removeable 10MB floppies. ProTape backs up to cassette at 3.3MB/minute, promac products are compatible with Unix and all other Macintosh environments. MacEurope provides enginecring, warranty service, support, software updates and advice. You can see the promac range at your MacEurope dealer. If yours doesn’t have stock, or you don't have a dealer, please call us. We'll be happy to help. Call us for literature. promac and ProDrive and ProTape are registered trademarks of promac GmbH Sybelstr 37 1000 Berlin 12 West Germany. Apple isa trademark of and Macintosh a trademark cegistered to Apple Computer Inc “This advertisement prepared by the Robin Ray Partnership on the Macintosh using JustText page composition software {rom MacEurope Moder The Granary, Trowse Bridge, Bracondale, Norwich NR1 2EG, England. Tel: (0603) 630636 Fax: 0603 630374 Advertisers’ Index ED } There are a number of ways to contact Apple2000. Force users who have a query about the service can contact the adminis- trator, John Lee, directly for help and advice. Call him on the number opposite or send a message to his box on the Force. If you wish to order goods or services from Apple2000, call Irene on (iii) “S14 ite or (during office hours) call Alison on (iia 748%, Both have Ansafones, in case they're not around. Alternatively you can Fax. to (tfhll Su ainaiF, write to the PO Box or (if you use comms) you can leave orders on TABBS addressed to the SYSOP. If you are experiencing problems with Apple hardware or software Dave Ward runs the Hotline and will get you out of the mire. We are very interested in the activities of local user groups, and if you have any information which you would like publicised John Lee would like to hear from you. Moans and Groans - We don't get many of these, but Mick Knapp has broad shoulders (and stomach, and thighs...) so send these to him via the PO Box. A little praise for a few of our authors wouldn't go amiss. Send all comments via the PO box, especially suggestions about what you would like to see in your magazine. December 1988 Apple2000 Apple2000 Apple2000 The All Apple P.O.Box 3, User Group Liverpool, Committed to 121 8PY all Apple Users. Si Spa 4042 including Macintosh December 1988 Fax. @82 929 G07 CONTENTS . (apr jple2000 supports users . Editorial Shelf Mick Knapp 2 all the Apple computers, Letter Box 3 from the 2020, through Micol Basic Review Barry Keal 4 the I, Il, 1+, //e, //c, lgs, Po rtiousporter Got figuration Charts 6 1/7, lasa, Xt, Mac 128, 512 ‘ansporter Configuratio E, Mac II IL Out of oe ae i Dave Ward aK MacPius, SE, 'Mac.H and Thx In the land of Make Believe Pete Kemp 1 Battle Stations! K John Kishimoto 1 3 Coens ane ee ThinkWorks Dr Peter Stark 16 welcome. We can handle any A Sorry Tale gre me Le disk size or format. Please Handy "Tip Sas re send to the PO Box, L21 8PY. MacroTools Review Peter Davis 22 . Strip Non ASCII Bill Hill 26 Bus School Tom Vier 28 NOTE: ProDOS and Big Floppy Drives Udo Huth 29 ie general the front half of Using the RWTS to bypass the VTOC Len Watson 30 the magazine is for the Apple Applesoft Statistics Review Mike Tickle 32 ste s He Ilgs and Apple /// Hotline News Dave Ward 33 ack half of the maga- PlusDisk SC Preview Dave Ward 35 fee is mainly for the Macin- FR System Preview Dave Ward 36 tosh and Lisa. Look out for The Nibbler 37 the descriptive page icons. SuperSonic Stereo Review Paul Warwick 38 ead Ly hlgad pater Wannop mi Key: Dealer Profile - MGA jon Gurr 0 MacChat Richard A Young 42 ||| Apple ll, //eand //e B MacCalligraphy Review Norah Arnold 46 Apple IIgs What Price Spelling Checkers? Bill Pearce 48 The Blind Watchmaker Norah Arnold 50 Macintosh, Lisa Patton vs Rommel Review Ceri Fisher 5 RR Host 2.0 55 Macintosh II J Super 3D Review John Arnold a PT-109 Review Ceri Fisher 60 Network News 6 \)\ Mac pleat Review batts Tickle ee Data Desk Review Bill Pearce ¢ t t U.C.D. Services Kieran Carrick 72 re) n a Cc User Groups 76 s Mac Library 78 Members’ Small Ads. 79/80 P Ol n ts The Force John Lee Voice iF mean Administration Irene Flaxman (orm igen ase Tex. Gl Sas GF Adverts / porn. Hotline Dave Ward Gpapaia yes LG Mon-Fri 1900-2100 TABBS Ewen Wannop - SYSOP a RT Local =f, Groups Ph etal ae y) Editorial Shelf Those that visited the Mac User show last November will know what a huge success it was. Not only as the largest exhibition ever held in the UK devoted entirely to the Apple computer, but for the interest that was aroused by the Apple2000 stand. It seemed throughout the three days that a never ending procession came to our stand. Most of those who came stopped to see what we had to offer, and many of them as a result joined us on the spot. With such a suc- We therefore give a very big welcome to all the new members and hope that you will enjoy your stay with us. I also hope that you will become involved with our many activities over and above the reading of this magazine! I must also say a big thank you to all those members who helped us on the stand at the show. We could not have sur- vived the three days without them. Although there were not many earthshattering new products at the show that we had not heard the Macintosh has finally bro- ken through into the corporate market, not only because of its DTP capability but simply for its friendliness and power, Almost every one I talked to was using a Macintosh already, only two of them were not, and they were feeling the draught terribly! Most had only had their systems for a few weeks, and were now looking for help in making the fullest use of them. Our biggest selling point at the show in getting these people to join Apple2000, was the great expertise that lies within the membership. Help us to help them. You can do this in many ways. If you can write, let us know about your own experiences, or write about your favourite piece of software. Go along to a local group and give your knowledge to others directly. If you are expert at some aspect of the Apple, let Dave Ward at the hotline know about it, he can then add you to his list of experts. I wish you all a very merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year. cess, the membership level has now risen dramatically. about before, it was clear that The Editor « ( Apple2000 brings you two exclusive systems that will give you all you ever should need in ) modern communications and messaging. National and International messages, Telex, Software Downloading, Contacts, Problem Solving, Special Interest Groups, Teleshopping, Telecom Gold and a host of features tallored for Apple2000 members Ring TABBS on (fi) 7419797 at any speed through V21 to V22bis 8N1. TABBS is available 24 hours a day Ring Jonn Lee on i! M45 for details of The FORCE. ie Annual subscription rates are £25.00 for UK residents, £30.00 for E.E.C. residents and £35.00 for other overseas —? The Editorial team Is: members. Apple II Macintosh Apple2000™ is a trading name of BASUG Ltd, a non- Ewen Wannop Norah Arnold profit making independent company limited by guarantee. Mick Knapp Irene Fi: n The contents of this journal are copyright of BASUG Ltd and/or the respective authors. Permission is granted for non- commercial reproduction providing the author and source are properly credited and a copy of the relevant journal is sent. The opinions and views expressed are those of the varl- ous contributors, and are not necessarily supported by BASUG Ltd. This journal is published bi-monthly by BASUG Ltd as a benefit of membership in February, April, Junc, August. October and December. The copy date is the 5th day of the month preceding publication. Advertising rates are available on request. Apple™ and the Apple logo are trademarks of Apple Computer Inc. Macintosh™ is a trademark of Macintosh Laboratory Inc and used with the express permission of the owner. Telecom Gold™ is a trademark of British Telecom ple. The FORCE™ and Apple2000™ are trademarks of BASUG Ltd. % 2 Apple2000 Many thanks to all those who work behind the scenes and who receive no personal credit. These people are the stalwarts of Apple2000. Additional thanks to Walter Lewis of Old Roan Press (02a mM) for our printing service, and to Ian Sharp of Sharp Studios |((ii5l-22*-2 7m) for our cover design. (Graphics for the cover design supplied by Apple Computer UK Ltd, Adobe Systems Inc., Cricket Software.) Apple2000 are Founder Members and Whole- hearted Supporters of the Apple User Group Council J December 1988 Mi iad Shey thiswiatarti thar Witthanane As AS ‘To All Apple2000 members Just a short note to urge all mem- bers of Apple2000 to support the couple of Apple II supplies that are left. Otherwise we find ourselves with alack of hardware rather like the lack of reading material we now find ourselves with (or without!). Thank goodness for Apple2000! I would like through the pages of our journal to extend a special thanks to Holdens Computer Serv- ices who have over the past months been most helpful and indeed saved me a considerable amount of money on a problem I recently had with an ImageWnriter Il SheetFeeder. On the subject of that particular SheetFeeder a warning to all owners of such. When folding up the front half of the the SheetFeeder do this with extreme care as anything more than a gentle pressure may cause one of the small plastic hinges to break and Iam led to believe that repair will cost in the region of £100, Be Warned! PS Does anyone want to swap their Platinum ImageWriter II SheetFeeder for an almost new White one that I have? Paul Warwick «€ Berthold Instruments (UK) Ltd 35 High Street Sandridge St Albans Hertfordshire ALA 9DD (0727) 41999 Dear Sirs, My company still maintains and services a large number of Apple sys- tems which are installed and used at our customers’ premises. We are having great difficulty in purchasing replacement Titan Accel- erator cards at the present time and would be grateful if you could let us know of any companies that still sell these cards. JW Newell Q The Titan card is now obsolete, and as far as I know there are none to be had on the open market. If anyone knows of any quantities of these, please can they get in tough with Mr Newell. If these machines are //e’s, then the alternative TransWarp accelera- tor card or Zip chip would fit the bill. If they are [l+'s then the Zip chip is called for. See the review in the Octo- ber issue for further details. Ewen Wannop é Sidi jedi! Divi To: hy Managing Director - Microsoft UK Excel House 49 De Montfort Road Reading Berks RG1 8LP Copies to Microsoft International, Apple UK, The Macintosh User Group, Apple2000, MacTel, MacUser, Apple Business Dear Sir, I have just purchased Microsoft Word for my word processing require- ments and would like an explanation of your companies attitude to me asa user, Firstly, please just! ur pricin; policy in the UK ee into account the current exchange rate between $ and £. Secondly, please justify the fact that after paying an inflated price for the UK version of the product, I am given an outdated version which docs not support the Apple printer I use - namely the ImageWriter LQ. This printer has been available for some time and it is my understanding that the US version of Word does support the LQ, in fact I have been offered an ‘upgrade’ to the cheaper (and pre- sumably unlocalised (spelt with an s in my dictionary, with azin yours)) US version to get round the problems with the LQ. I do not consider it rea- sonable to have to perform a shift- page setup and shift-print commands every time open a document because the developer decided not to use the device independent drivers properly {note that not one other product that I have tried has had any problems with this printer). Thirdly, it has been a standard guideline for some time NOT to ship software with a System Folder as system files have been machine spe- cific since the launch of the SE more than 1 1/2 years ago. yet Word is shipped with what I assume to be a Macintosh Plus System (since no mention is made anywhere in the documentation of any more recent machine). Whilst this may be conven- ient for Macintosh Plus owners, it is potentially Semegng to users of later machines who follow instructions which clearly expect the system on the program disk to be sued. Fourthly, several serious bugs remain. When using boxed para graphs or vertical line tabs, gaps are frequently present in the vertical lines and the line can change thickness depending on the font/size of the text on the line. This has been observed on a LaserWriter as well as on the LQ showing this to be an old problem which should have been cured long ago, especially in a product which is sold partly on it’s “professional-qual- ity output”. Fifthly, I consider the numeric key pad to just that and have always toggled it back to being so from IBM-PC style u: e chosen by your- selves as most of my work is of a technical nature. I now find that when I do this I lose the page number and other information that normally ap- pears in the bottom left of the window and the cursor keys no longer func- tion correctly, I trust you have a fix for the error. Lastly, I note that your faith in the product is such that your license agreement specifically excludes any warranty that the product does any- thing whatsoever related to what it is claimed to do. I await your reply to these points, SN Hobson QIfStmon will send us any replies he has got to this letter, we gladly publish them. It is not unusual for ‘bugs’ to pass the stringent testing that any devel oper undertakes before releasing a product. But these bugs should be cleared up as they are notified, and put right in subsequent releases. Word has had well documented bugs for some time. It is disgusting that they should continue to proliferate and not be corrected. What cinfidence does it give us in the products of such a large company. Let me have your comments for the next issue. Ewen Wannop é December 1988 Apple2000 3 Micol Basic A new review of the compiled Basic by Barry Keal Introduction Micol BASIC is supplied on a single floppy disk, not copy protected, running under Apple's PRODOS fornat. It comes complete with a spiral bound manual running to over 250 pages complete with table of contents, index and addendum. It is unfortunate that the index always seems to be before the addendum because it makes it harder to refer to it quickly but I suppose after a while one gets used to it. The manual gives a back- ground to the compiler, the advantages and disadvantages of compiled languages compared to interpreted versions and hand coded assembly language. A brief section then follows ex- plaining the merits of structured programming and the facilities offered by Micol BASIC in this direction. The instructions on how to actually edit the program, compile, link and execute it are, generally, quite comprehensive. Tutorials and examples are given where appropriate. Program source code is stored as a text file on disk and Apple- soft programs can be edited if they are first converted to a text file instead of the usual token- ised binary format. All Applesoft programs will need to be con- verted in at least one way before compilation (see compiler op- tions below). The manual then proceeds with the description of the data types available, the differences between Applesoft and Micol BASIC including disk file main- tenance and some of the error messages generated. Why Compile? Compiled programs are invari- ably faster than their interpreted counterpart. They are not, however, as fast as well written assembly language. It is fre- quently more convenient to use a high level language than a low level one. It is also more easily transferred to a different ma- chine. There is always a trade off between the time taken to write a program (and debug it) and the speed of execution. The easier it is to write the program (eg in a high level interpreted language) the slower it will run. This is true of Micol BASIC, as with every other language I have used. Micol is particularly superior to Applesoft when using integer arithmetic; Applesoft converts all integers to real numbers before calculating making inte- gers even slower than floating point numbers. Do not expect every program to be faster though. If your creation has a lot of disk, key- board and screen accessing then the improvement will be slight. This is due to the restriction the peripheral imposes on the rate of execution. For pure calcula- tion and data manipulation the improvement can be in the order of twenty-fold. The Editor After using Appleworks, Applesoft and Apple Pascal it took me a while to get used to the idiosyncrasies of the Micol Editor. However there are some useful features available and one or two extras that would have been nice to see built in. For example there is a hexadeci- mal to decimal (and vice versa) converter but no built in renum- ber facility, The editor is line based and offers an auto line numbering option with user definable start and increment parameters. For Apple |[+ users the missing characters can be produced from the keyboard by using control key combinations for ex- ample the underscore is control A. The cursor is non-destruc- tive, ie it does not delete text to the right of itself when retum is pressed. The maximum length of a line is 250 characters and statements can be split up with the standard BASIC colon delimiter, Deletion of lines is simplicity in itself. Single lines or a range of lines can be specified and prior to deletion you are prompted to confirm the opera- tion. Some disk operations can be carried out from the editor command line including locking and unlocking of files, setting the default prefix (necessary on a hard or ram disk with subdi- rectories) . deleting files, cata- logs and, of course, loading and saving your source. Incidentally, typing in LOAD without a file name having been used previously causes unex- pected errors and garbage on the screen. This was one of several things that annoyed me. A simple check to see if the filename had been entered is all that is needed but seemed to be missing. There is a find facility and a search and replace option in the editor. It is not something I use very often but it is nice to know it is there. A copy or move facility would have been nice along with a full screen editor for the //e (pref- erably with Appleworks key commands) still we can’t have everything (or can we?). Compiling and Linking Having created your master- piece the time finally arrives when you have to compile it. There are two possible ways of invoking the compiler. The first through the main startup menu, the second is from the editorcommand line. If you invoke the compiler from the editor it will prompt you to ‘Be Apple2000 December 1988 save the source file. This is because the compiler overwrites the text buffer and editor. The compiler requires that the first line of the program contains PROGRAM progname, failure to include this terminates the compilation. I get the impression that the author of Micol BASIC is a Pascal programmer at heart, see the section on procedures for further confirmation. If an error is found, the com- piler suspends the compilation and displays the error message. You are then given the option of continuing or cancelling the compilation. If you choose to cancel and then enter the editor to correct the source you are often taken to the line with the error, though not always. Linking the program merely requires the linker to be in- voked. It will then prompt for the file name. The compilation and linking can be automated by selecting RUN from the editor and, after successfully compiling and linking, the runtime library will be loaded and the program executed. Compiler Directives The compiler has, as one would expect, a number of directives that will alter the usual compilation procedure. They appear at the start of the program and must be preceded by an @ sign. They offer the following options: CHAIN To load and execute a second program, sharing variables. CODE Displays the assem- bly language generated by the compiler. ERROR Allows the use of ON ERROR RESUME. Generates 13 extra bytes per line of source. LINE Causes the compiler to generate line numbers in the output stream. Without this option the code is more compact but all runtime errors point to line zero. LIST Displays line num- bers, relative lexical level, the address in memory of the line and the text of it. NOGOTO Makes GOTO illegal. PRINTER As list but to the code at the expense of greater object file size. VAR2 Renders only the first two characters of a variable name significant (like Applesoft). HIMEM LOMEM As Applesoft Data Types In addition to real and string variables, Micol BASIC offers both genuine integer variables and boolean (true/false) data types. The use of proper inte- gers and separate integer rou- lines in the runtime library make the code execute much faster. You must watch that you don't mix real and integer types if you want a fast program, not be- cause it is illegal to do so but because there is an overhead in converting from one to the other. The manual makes this clear and explains the correct proce- dure for maximum efficiency. All the simple data types can be used in arrays, the use of arrays is the same as in Apple- soft with the exception that they can not be dynamically dimen- sioned at runtime (it is bad programming practice to do that anyway). Additional Instructions There are a number of addi- tional commands and functions that are not included in Apple- soft. Unless otherwise stated commands and functions are the same as Applesoft. They are: BELL Beep the speaker. DELAY Wastes time (like a dummy For Next loop) DISPLAY Shows when a simple variable changes value (for debugging). PRTON = Turn on printer. SCRN4O) SCRN8O) Change from 40 column to 80 column screen or back again. INDEX Locate a substring in a string. GOSUB This can be to a line number or named subroutine. IF THEN) Multiple line if-then constructs are supported along BEGIN ) with the ELSE statement. ELSE ) ENDIF ) ROUTINE Allows a subroutine to be called by name instead of PERFORM UNTIL Repeatedly call a subroutine until a condi- tion is satisfied. WHILE WEND ) Structured loop control facilities. REPEAT UNTIL) FOR NEXT UNTIL For next loop. It is not permitted to change the loop counter to force an early exit, the UNTIL will give a graceful exit. PROC ENDPROC Very similar to Pascal procedures but vari- able parameter passing is limited to the call and not passed back on the return. Variables declared inside the procedure block are local by default. PRINT USING This allows the easy formatting of numerical information and can be custom- ised to use leading pound signs (or other currency symbols) as opposed to the default dollar sign. Disk File Handling Applesoft's disk handling is completely changed, thank goodness. It is now possible to have more than one file active simultaneously for reading and writing in addition to the screen and printer. The use of control D is not required any more thus file handling is much more friendly. Logical files are used to communicate to the physical file making the program easier to write and debug. Conclusion All in all, I was very impressed with Micol BASIC. Iama devout fan of the Apple Pascal 1.3 system, in particular pro- gramming in Pascal. I found the transition back to BASIC to be greatly enhanced by the additional features offered which gives the programmer some of the control structures and facilities of the “superior” (?) structured languages. Micol allows the calling of assembly language routines via the CALL, & hook and USR(X) options in the same way as Applesoft. In view of Apple's reported decision to stop supporting Pascal 1.3 and the general lack of software that runs under P- system I have decided to switch to PRODOS based languages. printer. QUICK Generates faster line number. December 1988 Apple2000 @Be@is I am tempted to go for Micol BASIC, which is slightly faster than Pascal 1.3, and convert my applications to PRODOS. I would, however, like to compare ZBASIC against Micol BASIC because of the double hi-res support (it is reported to be faster than Micol as well). I hope to do a review of ZBASIC in the near future. My thanks must go to Apple 2000, and Irene Flaxman in particular, for the loan of the system. It is available from the Apple 2000 shop price £59.80. Barry Keal é The Boffin Answers .... Sil Weeeiagiesadl & inti iE Sea Seeded ast See inflata Dear Boffin, I have an Apple IIgs, ImageWriter Il and SuperCale 3a. When I had my Epson RX80 Printer, Printer card in Slot 1, I had no problem sending spreadsheets out to the printer, But now I have the ImageWriter II in Port 1, and selected the correct printer information and Apple //c port from the menu, it refuses to send to the printer. What am I doing wrong, or is this program not compatible with Apple Ilgs Port 1. DB Pearce Q There could be two possible reasons for the problem. 1. You do not have the printer and the Control Panel at matching baud rates. The normal setting is 9600 baud on each. You must set the Control Panel before running the program. If you are getting output from AppleWorks then this is not the problem ... 2. SuperCalc is writing directly to the hardware address of a //c, the serial chip is not directly available on the IIgs in the same way, only programs writing to the PC Transporter Configuration Charts ae ea ee Following on from the two articles on the PC TRansporter, we give you the definitive list of the items required The various configurations of the PC Transporter, reviewed in both the August and October issues, are listed below. Our thanks to Holdens Computer Services for this information. Ti+ Users Apple II+ Computer with at least one 5.25" disk drive 16K Language Card PC-Compatible Keyboard PC Transporter II+/Tle Installation Kit Monitor (existing or dedicated CGA Monitor) PC Disk drive (either 5.25" TransDrive or 3.5" TransDrive/Apple 3.5 Drive) ProDos PC-DOS (version 2.0 or greater) or MS-DOS (version 2.0 or greater). Tle Users Apple Ie Computer with at least one 5.25" disk drive PC Transporter Il+/Ile Installation Kit Monitor (existing or dedicated CGA Monitor) PC Disk drive (either 5.25" TransDrive or 3.5" TransDrive/Apple 3.5 Drive) ProDos PC-DOS (version 2.0 or greater) or MS-DOS (version 2.0 or greater). IGS Users Apple IIGS with at least one 5.25" disk drive PC Transporter IIGS Installation Kit GS Mono or Colour Monitor PC Disk drive (either 5.25" TransDrive or 3.5" TransDrive/Apple 3.5 Drive) ProDos PC-DOS (version 2.0 or greater) or MS-DOS (version 2.0 or greater). Prices: PC Transporter Card with 256K (Usable as 384K Apple Memory Card) £299.00 +VAT PC ena Card with 640K (Usable as 768K Apple Memory Card) Slot firmware are actually able to i Vi use the Ports on the GS. This is S50, 00 Er IIGS Installation Kit the most likely cause, and cer- £49.00 +VAT tainly would mean that SuperCale 5 was incompatible with the GS. II+/Ile Installation Kit If there is a generic parallel £39.00 +VAT printer option, try that instead. TransDrive 5.25" 360K Disk Drive £159.00 +VAT é ‘The Boffin « 6 &B Apple2000 December 1988 Out of the Glanmire Dave Ward does a timely bit of programming to help a member out Back in 1985 I purchased a Glanmire clock for my Apple ][ plus computer. Those who have a Glanmire clock will, I'm sure, agree that it is an excellent device that saves a slot by fitting into the games port. Although it may interfere with a few other devices that use the games port it works well with the vast majority of soft- ware and hardware. The main advantage of the Glanmire clock was that it fitted into the games port of the Apple ][ plus and Apple //e computers thus saving a valuable slot. The package arrived with two 5.25" diskettes containing &@ support software for DOS3.3, ProDOS, Pas- ss cal and CP/M. Unfor- tunately for ProDOS users the file ProDOS on the disk was heavily patched and that the main patch was ap- parently to large to fit into the space on later versions of ProDOS, The ProDOS version 1.01 supplied by Glanmire also retained the Apple algorithm that calculated the year. The Glanmire clock like most others does not provide the year which must be either sup- plied by the user or calculated by an algorithm. By deleting this useful algorithm I managed to fit the clock driver into ProDOS ver- sion 1.1.1 with just the current year stored within it. This re- quired that the year be updated every year. I know that a number of Apple 2000 members own Glanmire clocks and would like to use the latest version of ProDOS with their clocks, Recently a member rang the Hotline asking whether there was an update to allow the Glanmire clock to interface with December 1988 ProDOS version 1.4 (the latest at the time of writing). I played safe by saying that I didn't think that it could be done but suggested he ring back a few nights later to give me a little time to ponder the matter. I managed to solve the problem within a few hours but unfortunately he didn't ring back. As usual a second look at the clock driver code listing let me see the “wood”. I removed 20 bytes and fitted the code into the avail- able space with one byte to spare. Listing 1 opposite is in effect the binary dump of the code used by the clock driver. » From the Applesoft % prompt ] you should , center all the data. The CALL-151 drops you into the monitor with » its * prompt. The next 10 lines enter the bi- nary code into mem- ory starting at $300. The OG (zero G) com- mand from the monitor takes you back into Applesoft with the ] prompt. Finally save the binary file to disk as file G3. See Listing 1. Listing 2 over the page is the as- sembly listing using Merlin 8/16 version 3.50. This routine can almost certainly be shortened further. The years list on line 95 in the listing below works until the end of 1992. Note the sequence; leap years have two entries and you move from right to left replac- ing redundant years. For instance at the end of 1988 replace the first 88 after the 92 with 93 and then the next 88 with 94. In 1990 the 89 can be replaced with 95 and the algorithm will then work until 1995! When you have completed the assembly save the object code as G3. If you are wondering why there Listing 1 CALL-151 0300:AD SD CO AD 58 CO AD SB CO AD 5A CO 20 9E D7 20 0310:9E D7 8D 92 BF 20 9E D7 8D 93 BF 20 9E D7 85 3c 0320:20 9E D7 98 29 OF 85 3B 98 29 FO 4A 6A 6A 6A 85 0330:3A A8 4A 6A 6A 6A 05 3C 8D 90 BF 08 29 1F 79 C7 0340:D7 90 02 69 03 38 E9 07 BO FC 69 07 ES 3B BO 02 0350:69 07 A8 BO D4 D7 28 2A 8D 91 BF 60 A2 08 A9 00 0360:85 3A 46 3A AD 63 CO 29 80 18 65 3A 85 3A 8D 59 0370:CO 8D 58 CO CA DO EB C9 00 FO 08 A8 FS 38 E8 E9 0380:01 DO FB 8A D8 60 00 1F 3B 5A 78 97 BS D3 F2 14 0390:33 51 5A 59 58 58 57 56 55 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 OG BSAVE G3,A$300, LS9A are two ORG statements in lines 1 and 2 the reason is as follows:- The first ORG ensures that the object code-file has a start ad- dress at $300. The second en- sures that the code generated will be correctly aligned when it is eventually moved to $D742. List- ing 2 is on the next page. Listing 3 over the page is an Ap- plesoft program that patches your ProDOS version 1.4 file on a disk so that when the diskette boots the Glanmire clock routine is automatically installed. Note that the program makes use of the en- hanced features of BSAVE under the ProDOS-Applesoft interface that allow one to bsave patches directly from memory into the correct position within the file on disk. Listing 3 is over the page. Ewen Wannop tells me that the files including the patched ver- sion of ProDOS 1.4 will be avail- able on TABBS Bulletin Board for downloading in due course. The original code is, of course, the copyright of Glanmire Elec- tronics and the amendments to the code in this article are not intended to affect that copyright. Dave Ward «¢ Apple2000 a 7 Out of the Glanmire - Listing 2 00D7C3: CA 75 DEX 00D7C4: DO EB =D7B1 76 BNE NEXTBIT 2 ORG $0300 00D7C6: C9 00 7 CMP #$00 2 ORG $D742 OOD7C8: FO OA =D7D4 78 BEQ RDONE 3 OOD7CA: A8 79 TAY ~BFO6 4 DATETIME EQU SBFO6 ooD7CcB: FB& 80 SED =BF90 5 DATE EQU §BF90 oop7cc: 38 81 SEC ~BF92 6 TIME EQU $BF92 OOD7CD: A2 00 82 LDX #s00 7 OOD7CF: EB 83 NEXTRX INX 8 OOD7DO: E9 01 84 SBC #501 9 CLOCKDVR 00D7D2: DO FB =D7CF 85 BNE NEXTRX 00D742: AD 5D CO 10 LDA $CO5D OOD7D4: 8A 86 RDONE TXA 00D745: AD 58 CO 11 LDA $C058 OOD7DS: DS 87 CLD 00D748: 4C 4E D7 12 JMP JMP1 OOD7D6: 60 88 RTS 00D74B: 2C E9 CO 13 BIT $COE9 89 00D74E: AD 5B CO 14 OMP1 LDA $CO05B 90 00D751: AD 5A CO 15 LDA SCOSA 91 00D754: 20 AB D7 16 JSR READS 00D7D7: 00 1F 3B 5A 92 MONTHLEN ; Ignore the seconds !! DFB $00, $1F,$3B, $5A,$78,$97 00D757: 20 AB D7 aT: JSR READS OOD7DB: 78 97 BS D3 } Read minutes and DFB $B5,$D3, $F2,$14,$33,$51 QOD75A: 8D 92 BF 18 STA TIME OOD7DF: F2 14 33 51 } store the value found. 94 00D75D: 20 AB D7? 19 JSR READS OOD7E3: 5A 595858 95 YEARS ; Read the hours DFB 90,89, 88,88, 92, 92,91 00D760: 8D 93 BF STA TIME+1 00D7E7: 5C SC SB } and store value found 00D763: 20 AB D7 21 JSR READS Q0D766: 85 3c 22 STA $3C End Merlin-16 assembly, 168 bytes, errors: 0, 00D768: 20 AB D7 23 JSR READS symbol table: $1800-$1893 OOD76B: 98 24 TYA 0OD76C: 85 3B 25 STA $3B Symbol table, alphabetical order: OOD76E: 85 3A 26 STA $3A 00D770: A9 OF 27 LDA #S0F 2 CLOCKDVR=$D742 DATE =SBF90 00D772: 25 3B 28 AND $3B 2? DATETIME=SBFO6 OMP1 =SD74E 00D774: 85 3B 29 STA $3B LABO = =$D794 LABL —=$D7Al 00D776: AQ FO 30 LDA #SFO MOD7 —_-=$D795 MONTHLEN=$D7D7 00D778: 25 3A 31 AND $3A NEXTBIT =$D7B1 NEXTRX =$D7CF QOD77A: 4A 32 LSR RDONE =$D7D4 READS =SD7AB 00D77B: 6A 33 ROR TIME =SBF92 YEARS =SD7E3 QOD77C: 6A 34 ROR 00D77D: 6A 35 ROR Symbol table, numerical order: OOD77E: 85 3A 36 STA $3A 00D780: AS 37 TAY 2? DATETIME=$BFO6 DATE =S$BF90 OOD781: 4A 38 LSR TIME =SBF92 ? CLOCKDVR=$D742 00D782: 6A 39 ROR JMP1 = =$D74E LABO = =$D794 00D783: 6A 40 ROR MOD7 =$D795 LAB1 =$D7A1 00D784: 6A 41 ROR READS =$D7AB NEXTBIT =$D7B1 Q00D785: 05 3c 42 ORA $3C NEXTRX =SD7CF RDONE =SD7D4 00D787: 8D 90 BF 43 STA DATE MONTHLEN=$D7D7 YEARS ~=$D7E3 OOD78A: 08 44 PHP 00D78B: 29 1F 45 AND #S1F QOD78D: 79 D6 D7 46 ADC MONTHLEN-1,Y 00D790: 90 02 =D794 47 BCC LABO Listing 3 00D792: 69 03 48 Apc 86#$03 00D794: 38 49 LABO SEC 100 PRINT CHR$ (4)”PR#3" 0OD79S: E9 07 50 MOD7 SBC #$07 : PRINT 00D797: BO FC =D795 51 BCS MOD7 : HOME 00D799: 69 07 52 ADC #$07 00D79B: E5 3B 53 SBC $3B 120 A$ = “GLANMIRE CLOCK UPDATER FOR PRODOS QOD79D: BO 02 =D7Al 54 BCS LAB1 i.4” OOD79F: 69 07 55 ADC #S07 : PRINT SPC( (80 —- LEN (AS)) / 2); OOD7Al: A8& 56 LAB1 TAY : INVERSE 0OD7A2: B9 E3 D7 57 LDA YEARS, ¥ : PRINT AS; 58 PLP : NORMAL 59 ROL : PRINT 60 STA DATE+1 61 RTS 140 VTAB 10 62 : PRINT “ENTER THE VOLUME NAME WHERE THE FILE 63 READS PRODOS IS >"; 64 LDX #$08 : INPUT ““;V$ 65 LDA #800 66 STA $3A 160 IF LEFTS$ (V$,1) < > °/” THEN PRINT 67 NEXTBIT LSR $3A : PRINT “VOLUME NAME MUST BEGIN WITH /” 68 LDA $C063 : FORM =1 TO 9999 69 AND #80 : NEXT 70 cLo : GOTO 100 71 ADC $3A 72 STA $3A 180 If LEN (V$) > 15 THEN PRINT OOD7BD: 8D 59 CO 73 STA $C059 ; PRINT “VOLUME NAMES CANNOT BE LONGER THAN 15. OOD7CO:«8D 58 CO 74 STA $coss CHARS.” 8 pext Apple2000 December 1988 : PRINT : FORM = 1 TO 9999 : NEXT : GOTO 100 200 PRINT CHR$ (4)”BLOAD G3" 220 VTAB 5 : PRINT CHR$ (11) PRINT VTAB 10 PRINT “PLACE “; INVERSE PRINT V$; NORMAL PRINT “ DISK IN A DRIVE AND PRESS A KEY >"; : GET K$ : PRINT 240 PRINT CHR$ (4) ”BSAVE PRODOS, TSYS, B$3100, A$300, L$99" : REM === PRODOS ALLOWS ONE TO SAVE PORTIONS OF MEMORY TO ANY POSITION WITHIN A FILE ON DISK 260 POKE 768,199 : PRINT CHR$ (4) “BSAVE PRODOS, TSYS,A768,L1,B$61C” : REM === A ONE BYTE PATCH TO SHOW G ON THE SCREEN ON BOOT-UP === 280 POKE 768,76 : POKE 769,157 : POKE 770,39 : PRINT CHRS (4) “BSAVE PRODOS, TSYS, A768, L3,B$789" : REM === PATCH PRODOS TO SET UP THE CLOCK VEC TOR === 300 HOME : VTAB 10 : KTAB 35: PRINT “JOB DONE !!” ¢ Beagle Bros TimeOut series integrated AppleWorks applications 7 AppleWorks enhancements that are more advanced, more powertul, faster and easier to use than anything you've ever seen. TIMEOUT GRAPH £49.95 Tum spreadsheets into great looking graphs inside AppleWorks! TIMEOUT SUPERFONTS £39.95 Print with great looking Macintosh fonts from inside AppleWorks! TIMEOUT QUICKSPELL £29.95 Check spelling from inside AppleWorks, Fast! TIMEOUT ULTRAMACROS £29.95 The most powerful macro program ever written for AppleWorks! TIMEOUT SIDESPREAD £19.95 Print spreadsheets sideways trom inside ApploWorks! TIMEOUT FILEMASTER £19.95 Total control over files and disks from inside AppleWorks! TIMEOUT DESKTOOLS £19.95 The best desk accessories inside AppleWorks! * TimeOut is supplied on both 5.25" and 3.5" disks * TimeOut is compatible with most enhancements to AppleWorks All prices include VAT and P&P Payment terms are Cheque with order DIAMOND SOFTWARE (A2000) Clayton Holt End, Underhill Lane, Clayton, Hassocks, West Sussex BN6 SPL FAMILY ORIGINS genealogy soft ware lets you display your ancestry through 8 types of reports. Easy to use, menu-driven programs help you enter, edit, sort and search your family tree. Add any information you desire in footnotes. onty 4495 Whether you raise cattle, dogs, rabbits or pigeons, the GRAND ARK BREEDER’S ASSISTANT will help you keep pedigree, breeding. health, show and other records for your breeding program Use it to select from up to 9,999 animals for mating or to prepare documents for transfer of ownership. onty 7995 Both programs require an Apple //c or //gs. 0 80 column //@ or I+, use ProDOS © Apple 1983-84, support a hard disk and most printers. Demo disk is available PRICES INCLUDE p&ip/VAT and Analytical Solutions & Software IMGA SoftCat| TEL: (0233) 83571 ® Make Newsroom™ clip art disks with Print Sho graphics, Hi-Res pictures, or Newsroom photos ! ¢ Create Print Shop graphics from Hi-Res pictures, or Newsroom photos ! * Design Hi-Res pictures bain rine Shop graphi lewsroom clip art ! * Over 185 pieces of clip art included with every disk ! + Apple sy He ii, & Hs. PRICES INCLUDE p&p/VAT MGA SoftCat TEL: (0233) 83571 BOOKENDS” allows you to quickly put your finger On any Journal, any paper, any DOOk, any specific information contained in your voluminous files. As the New England Journal of Medicine states in its issue of January 12, 1984, it “addresses two widespread problems: first, the challenge of catalog- ing all the information we read; second the need to convert bibliographic infor- mation into the..format demanded by each medical journal. Both problems are solved here in an excellent way.” Bookends has extraordinary versatility and edits with the ease of a word proces- sor. There is no quicker or more efficient means of saving. retrieving and format- ting reference information Bookends Extended !s available with above features plus 80-column display, more memory, and ability to handle unlimited references BOOKENDS™ ine scference management sol ware systems avalabie for Apple computers for 8799 ‘Bookends Extended 97.99 obi» 4 agemant of Avge Comer MGA SoftCat PRICES INCLUDE VAT December 1988 Apple2000 mo SEASONS (REETINGS TO ALL APPLE2000 MEMBERS g Ct Apple? In the land of Make Believe Pete Kemp takes a break from reality and reviews two adventure games DEATHLORD Deathlord is one of the latest games from Electronic Arts. It comes in a standard 8 inch square fold out format. The package contains two disks (three sides used), a quick reference card and a 26 page instruction booklet. It runs on all 64K Apples with at least one 5.25 drive, although two can be used. The player controls a team of (up to) six adventurers. Their task is to gain experience, knowledge and special items, Properly equipped, they will be able to confront the renegade wizard who is attacking the world of Lorn. Of course, experience doesn't come cheaply. Money isn't cheap. Knowledge means talking to a lot of people. Spe- cial items have to be fought over. It's going to be a tough job. The game provides a ready made team, although players may import favourite characters from Bard's Tale 1, Ultima or Wiz- ardry. The available choice is quite staggering - far y too many to list here, Each char- acter may pick from eight races (Human to Kobito) and sixteen (count ‘em!) classes, Magic is an important element in the game. As you might expect. each permutation of race and class has its pro's and con's. Good fighters are poor magic users. Good magic users have poor stamina. And so on, It's important for the player to assemble a proper team. Six ninja might make an excellent killing machine. But once you've got past the guards, who's going to pick the lock on the door? It will take some time to as- semble a balanced team. Don't worry about losing it in the early days. There's so much to learn and map that losing the odd team isn't the end of the world. You'll need to equip your warri- ors with armour and weapons. Of course, you have to live long enough to get to the armoury. You'll need to remember where it is, as well. You'll need to make maps. Lots of them. Without them you haven't, literally, got a hope in hell. The game mechanics are similar to Ultima and Waste- land. The player's team is shown centred on screen, with the terrain flowing under- neath. The world con- tains towns, cities, caves, lakes, seas and so on. The game scale adjusts according to location. Thus, when the team enters a town, metalled roads appear with shops alongside. Equally, when on the open plains, the team seems to be wearing seven league boots, striding across the landscape. The instructions contain full details of all the spells available to magic casters. In addition, just about every key on the keyboard has a function, rang- ing from A for Attack through to Y for Yell and Z for Drink (?). This isn’t a game you can play with your eyes glued to the screen. I confess I don't like this approach. In particular, the real time clock is forever ticking away. In the time it takes to look up/remember the code for Search (F), a baddie can appear and start attacking the party. If you don't respond quickly enough, you can melee round. I would appreci- atea “Pause” key. Those who enjoy Ultima (or Wasteland) have a treat in store. This is a lot of game for the money. é WASTELAND “Wasteland” is one of the latest games from Electronic Arts. It covers four sides of 5.25 inch disks and is compatible with the entire Apple II range, providing you have 64K of RAM. You'll need (at least) one 5.25 drive and a minimum of four blank disks. In the now familiar 8 inch square foldout cardboard sleeve, the package contains 2 double sided 5.25 inch disks, a game manual and a summary card. Copy protection is provided by a book of “paragraphs”. I'll come back to these later. The game manual outlines the scenario: Following the holo- caust (1998) the continental USA is a radioactive wasteland. Odd pockets of civilisation remain, however. Among these is the remnants of a company of US Army Engineers. Alone in the desert. their centre has grown powerful enough to repel criminal groups (and worse) trying to overtake them. With the passage of time, it has become known as “Ranger Centre”, maintaining what @ December 1988 Apple2000 Meu passes for law and order. The Rangers are a motley bunch, with names like Angela Deth, Snake Vargas and Hell Razor, The baddies are worse. Much worse. From mutant lizards to religious fanatics, they're all intent on one thing - your immediate death. At the start of the game the player has the option of taking over a pre-defined group of players or creating his own team. Each individual has certain characteristics covering strength, intelligence, luck, speed, agility, dexterity and charisma. Each character has strong points and weak points, which is why the player must run them as a team. Once the player has chosen his characters, he then chooses their particular specialities. The range is huge, from swimming to metallurgy. Once they're armed (rifle or machine pistol), the team is ready to move out into the big, wide world. The team has some clues - dis- turbances in the local communi- ties. Arriving at one of these (as- suming they haven't been attacked and killed in the desert) the team will meet a young boy. They'll need to talk to him and find out why he’s crying. And what to do about it. They'll need to search the village for clues. They'll find a village hospital willing to tend their wounds. Unfortunately, they'll need to pay the doctor. They haven't got any money. Yet. Thus the game unfolds. The team must travel the Nevada desert, staying alive long enough to find, and piece together, scraps of information about genetic experiments in a secret laboratory. The secrets of Las Vegas. The connection with Mars. And much more. The mechanics of the game are similar to the “Ultima” series. The team is shown as a charac- ter on the screen, with the map moving under it. They can enter towns, villages, caves, missile bases and so forth. Com- bat is on a one to one basis. The better equipped a character is (and more expe- rienced) the more likely he is to survive another day. Some thought has gone into this area - guns run out of ammunition and can even am ! 1 liked the concept of this game very much. However, the implementation takes some of the shine off. For example, the player must use copies of the master disks. This is good, since it saves wear and tear on them. But, having copied the disks, the player still needs to use the master disk to boot the game each time. Trying to boot from the copy disk simply crashes the machine into the monitor. (This is true for the IIGS - it may be different for other machines.) In the early days, getting killed is very quick and easy. Each time, it is necessary to dig out the system master and reboot the machine. The game is sort of copy protected (see previous para- graph). In addition, there is a 28 page book of “paragraphs” included with the game. At strategic moments, the player is prompted to read a specified paragraph from the book. Presumably Electronic Arts works on the principle that giving away copies of the disks is one thing - photocopying 28 pages is something else entirely. In conclusion, I would recom- mend the game to Ultima fans and other players who enjoy this sort of animated detective puzzle. It is good value for money at the recommended price. Pete Kemp ¢é info Product: Deathlord Publisher : Electronic Arts Available from : MGA Microsystems Pear Tree Appledore Kent TN26 2AR Tel 0233-83571 Price : £29.95 Value : éédd Performance : edad Documentation: ¢éééé¢é info Product: Wasteland Publisher : Electronic Arts Available from : MGA Microsystems Pear Tree Appledore Kent TN26 2AR Tel 0233-83571 Price : £29.95 Value : ééde Performance : éddd Documentation: ¢ééedeéeé 2 oD Apple2000 December 1988 Authorized Apple Dealers Level 1 Service Centre What's new from Bidmuthin.,.. GS Users - The new GS operating system, 'GS-OS', is now available. Please phone for upgrade details If you find an Apple in your Christmas stocking... call us, we'll fulfil all your computing needs, give advice on the best applica- tions to suit your requirements, and help you through those é teething troubles. including: PrintShop GS, //e PaintWorks Gold Type rae Deja Vu GS Publish | Certificate and many more Science ta StickyBea Learn the with Applied Engineering's PC Transporter. Fits into either Apple IIGS, //e or Il+. Transfer data/tent. The new Macintosh IIx has already created great interest since its release. Please phone for details of the optional upgrades offered on existing Mac II systems. fer by now, please send your details to the customers, a Merry Christma anda Happy New Year Battle Stations ! K John Kishimoto puts to sea with the US fleet in WWII DESTROYER Destroyer (GS) puts you in command of a Fletcher Class US Destroyer ‘somewhere’ at sea during WWII, Unlike some other simulator type games, however, Destroyer is strictly of the ‘action’ genre. The Game Gameplay consists of one of seven possible scenarios. These allow you to exercise your skill at single event aclions, such as anti-submarine warfare, or multiple event actions, such as convoy escort, when the enemy throws everything they have at you. In all cases, you have 3 levels of difficulty to contend with as you engage the enemy. During the course of a game, you have 10 possible stations available. Navigation allows you to plot a path through and around islands in order to comply with your mission requirements. After plotting, you can engage the automatic helm through the Bridge controls, causing the destroyer to follow your predesignated course. The Bridge also allows you to interrogate the sonar, radar and damage stations for a report. All messages and reports from various sta- tions are displayed on a one line display near the bottom of all the screens. Other bridge functions are helm controls, includ- ing manual, automatic, pur- suit and evasive, crew slalus and weapons control. Although the computer will inform you of impending attack, you can get detailed information of the attack by examining either the Radar or Sonar. Since 4“ 8g manual control of the ship is useful while using these sta- tions, helm controls are dupli- cated. If visual sightings are required, the Observation station can be used. As in a real destroyer, your ship comes equipped with a generous complement of weapons. It has fore and aft 5" guns (with targeting radars of course), port and starboard anti-aircraft guns and port and starboard torpedoes. To discourage the odd prowling submarine, the ship is also supplied with two depth charge launchers, and two stern “roll off depth charge racks, While under attack, any one of the 10 stations (except for the observation and damage sta- tions), as well as steering and engines, can be damaged, which will hamper the operation of the ship. Four damage control crews will automatically repair the damaged station as required, and by selecting the Damage control station you can receive reports or assign crews manu- ally. The action takes place in an anonymous stretch of water, dotted here and there with islands. The ship is limited to ky: the sea area bounded by the borders of the navigation map, as a result, freedom of action is restricted, and you are obliged to follow the selected scenario or lose the game. Graphics and Sound Destroyer takes full advantage of the graphics and sound capabilities of the GS. The ofio display of each of the screens is well designed, giving the appear- ance of depth to various instru- ment controls and indicators The only disappointment in the display are the islands. These consist of multi-banded ‘lumps’ rising out of the sea with little resemblance to real islands. On the other hand, Destroyer uses digitised sound to enhance the action sequences. Firing your anti-aircraft guns while you hear bombs detonating on the ship adds considerable atmosphere and excitement to the game. Controls Although the game can be played using a joystick, selec- tion of various stations has to be input through the > keyboard. Fortunately, the station identifiers (such as NA for Navigation) have been shortened to two letters making selec- tion relatively easy. Conclusion As in many GS games, De- stroyer makes good use of the graphics and sound capabilities of the computer. However, I feel that it lacks depth and should perhaps be regarded as a so- phisticated arcade type game with limited strategy. DESTROYER requires a GS with 512K and 3.5" disks. K John Kishimoto é info Product: Destroyer Publisher : Epyx Available from : MGA Microsystems Pear Tree Appledore Kent TN26 2AR Tel 0233-83571 Price : £24.99 Value : ede Performance : ddd Documentation : éddd “Apple2000 December 1988 Memories... for a bright future! Once upon a time. MEGABYTES of memory seemed like an unnecessary pipedream! But here we are, almost at the end of 1988, and ‘one Megabit chips are becoming the new standard, with the smaller capacity memory chips fast disappearing. And the prospects for 1989 are that one and even four megabit chips will be the norm! Of course, as you'd expect from a forward thinking innovator, CIRTECH cards have been designed to use these future standards as early as 1987 ~ and they're still setting the pace for 1989 and beyond! PlusRAM-16.... the standard in slot RAMcards! ™@ PlusRAM -— 16 is automatically used by AppleWorks for desktop expansion and comes with lots of extra-special enhancements for AppleWorks (versions 1.3 and 2.0 US): ~ A full function calculator which instantly pops up on the screen any time you need to use it ~ A massive 42K print buffer which can be assigned to any printer — Lets you use your AppleMouse for full cursor control and menu selection — Automatic saving of large desktop files to multiple disks caer date and time display (from any ProDOS compatible cloci PlusRAM — 16 is designed to let your Apple I+, //e or IGS keep fight ‘on growing — right up to a huge sixteen megabytes! It’s a RAMDisk card which plugs into any standard slot and works just like an incredibly fast disk drive, making your programs operate at electronic speeds! Built using custom logic cirucits, the advanced design of PlusRAM — 16 gives high reliability and, despite its massive capacity, it uses much less power in your Apple than other RAMcards. ™@ PlusRAM — 16 is supplied with the unique RamDesk Manager which lets you contro! all that extra memory and change instantly between programs as often as you like, without having to use slow drives. @ PlusRAM - 16 is supported by more software than any other RAMcard; ProDOS, Pascal 1.3 and Cirtech CP/M Plus automatically recognise PlusRAM—16, and full support is included for DOS 3.3, CP/M 2.20b/2.23 and Pascal 1.1/1.2. @ PlusRAM—16 is designed to observe Apple standards to guarantee maximum compatibility. ~ Lets you run AppleWorks 1.3 on the I+ (with 16K language in card and 80 column card) a TOTAL MEMORY CONTROL WITH THE RAMDESK MANAGER ream The RamDesk Manager brings a ‘Macintosh look’ to your Apple Il But it doesn’t just look pretty! Using the RamDesk Manager, you can divide the huge PlusRAM — 16 memory into several independent RAMDisks. Each RAMDisk you set up can be used to store different programs/operating systems/data and the RamDesk Manager makes it really simple and quick to switch between them. There's even a fast copy function which can load a complete floppy disk into a RAMDisk in under 12 seconds — hardly time to get the next one ready! It realy does make for totally organised computing. . maybe we should have called it RAMofax? 4 iad ae =m jeune Pod Reoraipon ine The PaBlAM ~ 1 this examcle has her et up ung the RamDes Manager ta have RAMOsAs, ore each lor AppleWorks (ProO05!. DOS. Pasco! and CAM Puss ‘he raohucs RAMDesh Manager shown i er uve with bu eons Rett'verwon vaso sue Yor une wth oie” Aoi Made. PlusRAM — 16 is a fully socketed card and comes complete with one megabyte of memory at only £229.00. Extra megabytes can be simply plugged in whenever you need to expand your memory! Each additional megabyte of memory costs £125.00, PlusRAM-GS8 . . . . maximum power for your GS PlusRAM — GSB is the only GS RAMcard that lete you add up to eight extra Megabytes of RAM and half a Megabyte of ROM to your Apple IIGS! All you have to do is plug PlusRAM - GSB into the special IGS memory expansion slot for instantly recognised extra RAM that's fully compatible with all IIGS software, as well as ProDOS. DOS3.3, CP/M and Pascal 1.3 Use all or part of the PlusRAM-GS8 memory as a RAMDisk to give old-favourite programs a new lease of life, or use new programs, with advanced desktop displays. graphics and sound. which address the plusRAM~GS memory directly. Either way. you'll be amazed at the extra power and speed! AppleWorks Power: Instant Programs and Start-Up: When fast isn't good enough, PlusRAM — GS8 is the only lIGS RAMcard to give instant start-up for your programs using the unique BROMDIsk or ROMDisk adaptors. These Adaptors plug onto the expansion connector on PiusRAM — GSB and give up to 256K battery backed-up Static RAM or 512K ROM to let you store your favourite programs ready for immediate use the instant you switch ‘on your lIGS! A full function memory- resident calculator pops “fup onto the screen the instant you need it! Use the IIGS mouse to move the cursor around or to 2 select menu items S33 KG Adds a massive 42K printer buffer which you can assign to any printer This means you can keep AppleWorking while it handles the printing — no more waiting for a slow printer to finish! Easy Expansion: PlusRAM-GSB comes ready with a full one megabyte ‘of memory and is socketed for quick and easy, expansion in one megabyte steps up to a massive eight megabytes. PlusRAM-GS8 at one megabyte costs £249.00 and each additional megabyte Date and time are displayed costs £125.00 on the AppleWorks screen at all times. 11/06/87 12:04 Large desktop files are automatically saved to multiple disks. CIRTECH (UK) Ltd., Currie Road Industrial Estate, Galashiels, Scotland, TD1 28P Tolophone: (0896) 57790 Cirtach (UK) Lid 1988 Apple Il, //e. GS, Macintosty, ProDOS, 00S, Appieworks are registered trademarks PRICES EXCLUDE VAT of Apple Computer inc, CP/M is @ registered trademark of Digital Resea h THINKWORKS Dr Peter Stark takes a look at an Outliner and tells us what it does Thinkworks An outliner (or outline proces- sor) is a computer program which helps its user to arrange ideas, information, or other material in a structured way. It can be used to group things together easily, to set up sub- groups under main group headings, sub-sub-groups within sub-groups, and so on. In this way, the subject matter can be organised into suitable groups at several chosen levels. By using an outliner, groups (or single items within them) can be edited, rearranged, and manipu- lated as desired. Thinkworks (from Megahaus) is an example of an outliner which runs on Apple II series computers. Although this program has been available for some time, it seemed possibly useful to review it here in the light of experience - and partly to help other people to be aware of this kind of program and some possible uses. who is likely to find Th- inkworks useful? If you feel competent at sorting out and organising ideas and information entirely on paper (or in your head), you probably don’t need an outliner (and you wouldn't use it if you had one). Those of us who are less gifted can do with help, however, and might find an outliner useful. Working on paper is fine, but has limitations - especially if you need to try re- arranging and restructuring your material. Among other things, an outliner allows you to try out alternative arrange- ments quite easily. Often, I have found it best to work out a first rough version on paper, and then to use Thinkworks on my Apple to produce a draft outline which I then alter until the re- sult suits my needs, This isa matter of personal preference, and different techniques may well suit other people better. Examples of possible uses for an outliner, How one might use an outliner depends on what one’s needs and interests are: the scope is wide. Just asa first example, imagine that you are starting to prepare a talk of some kind. To begin with, you might use Thinkworks (or another out- liner) to list the main subjects of your talk. Under each of these main headings, you could then put sub-groups showing the in- dividual topics that you will want to discuss. At further lower levels within these sub- groups, you might wish to enter more specific points that you wish to bring out, and you could then list the slides or other exhibits that are to be shown at various stages during your talk, and so on, In this way, you would be able to build up a possible structure for your talk, and you could then alter it on screen until you were fully satisfied. Similarly, I have also found Thinkworks useful as a way of laying out and deciding the structure and contents of reports, papers, or articles that I intend to write. Here too. the outliner helps in arranging and reorganising information and ideas at different levels. There are lots of other possibilities: defining what jobs need to be done, and in what order; listing people who need to be seen, and what particular things ought to be discussed with each person; preparations for holi- days, visits, shopping, work, training. and so on. As an example of what Th- inkworks produces, Figure 1 (over the page) shows part of the outline which I used in pre- paring this review: several levels of information can be seen. In contrast, Figure 2 shows the screen display of the same part of this outline, but with only the top two levels on view. In the latter case, the ‘+’ signs before some entries mean that these entries are ‘collapsed’ and that there are subsidiary lower level entries which are not currently shown on the screen. What is supplied, and what is needed Thinkworks comes in two versions - as two 5.25" disks which work in an Apple IIC or IIE with 128K, and as a 3.5" disk which works also on the IIGS. Both versions are free from copy protection. A man- ual is also supplied - this is dis- cussed below. With the 5.25" version in particular, it is best to have two disk drives. One drive alone can be used, but at the cost of a lot of disk swop- ping. Various types of printer can be used. Use of Thinkworks in practice I found Thinkworks quite easy to learn to use. It is menu- driven, and there are plenty of prompts to check that the user really intends the next action. Pleasingly, it is difficult to cause Thinkworks to ‘crash’ to an unwanted halt. Thinkworks is operated entirely from the keyboard, and in many cases you merely have to press ‘Open Apple’ plus a letter. For ex- ample, ‘OA-A’ lets you ‘append’ (insert) an entry at one outline level lower than the current entry; ‘OA-S’ saves the outline on which you are working, and so on. Thinkworks allows @ 6 Be ~~ Apple2000 December 1988 you to use up to 10 different levels, which is more than enough for most purposes. Each level is numbered or lettered according to a logical (but slightly curious) system, and you can choose whether or not to print these num- bers and letters. The actual entries 4° aretypedin (fF much as with an ordinary word processor. There are the usual editing features, such as deletion of characters, over- strike and insert cursors, word wrap at the ends of lines, and Find and Replace. Single entries, or groups of entries, can be deleted, moved, or cop- ied. Even with long outlines, you can easily scroll to the beginning or the end, or by one or more pages or entries at a time. Multi-level outlines can be ‘collapsed’ to show only the top one or two levels. If you wish to see more details, you can then ‘zoom’ back to show as many levels as you wish. There are various other facili- ties, described in the manual. When you are reasonably sat- isfied with what you have put together on the computer, you can print out a copy of your outline (many printing options are offered). and of course you can save the outline onto disk. As an alternative. outlines can be saved in AppleWorks format, for inclusion in AppleWorks Word Processor documents. However, it is not possible to go in the reverse direction, from AppleWorks to Thinkworks. The manual The Thinkworks manual is a slim paperback, some 70 pages long. It is clearly written, easy to handle, and hard-wearing. Most of the first part is a tuto- rial, aimed at getting the new user familiar with Thinkworks. The last 20 pages or so are for reference, and summarise the Thinkworks instructions, op- tions, and error messages. Overall comments Thinkworks is an efficient outliner which is commendably foolproof and simple to use. As I mentioned earlier, some people may find this sort of outliner quite helpful: others would not take to it at all, and would regard it as a waste of time and effort. For complete- ness, there are afew minor quibbles which ought * to be men- tioned. For example (in contrast to AppleWorks) it is not possible to format a disk from within Thinkworks. Also, there seem to be no ways of (a) directly adding a new entry right at the beginning of an outline, or (b) saving an outline onto a disk different from the one from which the original version was loaded (one might want to do this for backup purposes). These grumbles are of relatively low significance, however. Overall, Thinkworks is info Product: ThinkWorks Publisher : Megahaus Available from : MGA Microsystems Pear Tree Appledore Kent TN26 2AR Tel 0233-83571 Price : £47.95 Value : ééde Performance : ddd Documentation : édde a competent piece of software which does its job reliably (albeit sometimes a little slowly), which is not difficult to work with, and which has quite a number of possible uses. Dr Peter Stark « Figure 1 I, WHAT AN OUTLINER DOES A. Grouping of things together 1) Sub-groups under main group headings 2) Sub-sub-groups within sub-groups, etc. 3) Organisation of subject matter into chosen levels B. Edit, rearrange, and manipulate, using the computer C. Thinkworks is an example: 1) Runs on Apple II series 2) Has been available for some time 3) But review at this stage could be useful? II. WHO IS LIKELY TO FIND THINKWORKS USEFUL? A. If self-sufficient at sorting out and organising ideas - unlikely to be interested B. People who might find an outliner useful 1) Limitations of just working on paper 2) Ability to try out different arrangements of material a) One technique: 1) first rough version on paper 2) use Thinkworks to produce a first outline 3) use computer to alter 4) find the most suitable alternative, and decide on this b) Other people may find different techniques better Ill. EXAMPLES OF POSSIBLE USES FOR AN OUTLINER LIKE THINKWORKS Figure 2 I. WHAT AN OUTLINER DOES A.+Grouping of things together B, Edit, rearrange, and manipulate, using the computer C.+Thinkworks is an example: Il, WHO IS LIKELY TO FIND THINKWORKS USEFUL? A. If self-sufficient at sorting out and organising ideas - unlikely to be interested B.+People who might find an outliner useful Ill, EXAMPLES OF POSSIBLE USES FOR AN OUTLINER LIKE THINKWORKS December 1988 Apple2000 &a&euigr A Sorry Tale A review of Springboard Publisher by Ewen Wannop Although I am an evangelist for the Apple II computer, I have a healthy respect for our stable mate the Macin- tosh, and in fact use the Macintosh every day to teach my students Desk top Top Publishing (DTP) and other Graphic techniques. This extensive experience of both the II and the Mac has shown me the strengths and weaknessofeach. Acomputeris there to solve a problem and the Macintosh primarily has the speed and greater processing power to do it. With accel- erator cards, additional memory and the right software, the II need not be far behind. I am a software developer as well, and I subscribe to the view that any computer, including the II, can be made to do almost anything you wish. Give it enough memory, the time to work, and most importantly the cor- rect software, you are able to match the achievements of the Macintosh even on the humble Apple Il. The software is the key, as it is the soft ware that embodies the vision of the software developer, I stress this vision deliberately, as without the correct and well written program no computer however pow erful it is, realises its full potential. Every so often, the right software and the right machine do get together and make a winning combination. In the early days of microcomputing this was Visicale and the Apple II, more recently it has been PageMaker and the Macintosh. Without the impetus that PageMaker gave DTP, would Apple still be the dominating factor in this fleld today? It is this combination that has set the standard for DTP that all other computers have been trying to emulate unsuccessfully ever since. I have seen programming stan- dards dramatically improve in the last few years on the Apple II. This is due to many factors, but perhaps the major factor ts the introduction by Apple of the Desktop environment as a standard across all of its machines. Although originally created for the Macintosh, the desktop has been successfully embodied in the IIgs and a very good implementation has also been achieved on the double high resolution screen of the //e and //c. We can now expect all programs to have windows, pull down menus, and other elements of the desktop that we now instinctively use. The software developer has the crucial role in the grand scheme of things in developing the idea and creating the application. He must draw his experience not only from within himself but from that ofothers, and he must make each step forward in the light of his own and others mistakes. It is only through such an arduous and painful experience that new heights are achieved in program- ming techniques or expectation. The power of a program was once limited by the hardware available. With the reducing cost of memory, lmeg or larger is almost common place now even on the Apple I, and with high volume 3.5 disks and cheaper SCSI hard drives, we have seen the power of programs increase rapidly. In recent months the launch of the Zip Chip promises to change the face of computing on the II once more. Its dramatic increase in speed makes larger programs with their conse quent high overheads of memory manipulation, a possibility. The IIgs, having much of this expansion built in as standard, is already used to the extra programming power that we now expect. The Reality It was bearing all these points in mind, that | eagerly looked forward to reviewing Springboard Publisher on the Il. From what I had already gleaned from advertising in the American press, this program was a serious attempt to provide DTP facili- ties on the Ile, //c and IIgs. Having already had a taste of this with Pub- lish It!, I had hoped that Springboard Publisher would at last be the realisa- tion of adream that true DTP could be achieved on the II. As I have explained already, I see no real reason why it cannot be done given the right pro- gram. Springboard Publisher like Publish 3s O28 B It! has LaserWriter drivers available to give high quality laser output from the program. This would give it the same potential output that we expect from PageMaker and the Macintosh. In both cases the programs can also address a range of dot matrix printers albeit with a lower quality output. There is also a wide range of extras such as ‘clip art’, ‘fonts’ and ‘style sheets’. However, my dream collapsed when I started to work with the program. It very quickly became clear that the authors had made a terrible and awful lapse of judgement, and that their efforts had only managed to produce a lumbering monster of a program instead of the powerful pub- lishing tool I expected. What I found was an excruciatingly slow and very limited pagemakeup program, and with an inferior output. However, I will give credit where it is due and review the good points of the program, but for the present | {eel | should explain my basic findings in greater detail. I am spoilt perhaps by my experi- ences with the Macintosh SE and PageMaker. This is a combination which allows very fast pagemakeup, and without which this magazine would never see the light of day! But even with this speed. I curse ifit takes some five seconds to redraw the screen if 1 change something. This is quite common if you are using a large A3 screen and have two A4 pages of text displayed full size. However Springboard Publisher takes five min- utes to do the same thing on only one A4 page. This is just plain silly. It is not impossible to do it fast on a II, Publish It! for instance achieves the same result in fifteen seconds. At this point I was so surprised at how long everything was taking that I timed the complete preparation of an Ad page with three columns of text at 9 point. This is something which is not at all out of the ordinary and is common place in magazine produc tion. So that 1 would emulate the average //e user, I sel the IIgs clock to normal or slow speed and ran the program from floppies disk. I started by importing a prepared text docu ment 4.5K long, it took just over twenty-two minutes with Springboard Publisher to set the page! 1 used no rules or graphics. I then tried the same page with Publish It! This took only twominutes! I then set the IIgs at full speed (the equivalent would be a //e with accelerator or Zip Chip) and ran the program completely from Ram. | cut the time to just over six minutes for Springboard Publisher and sixty-two seconds for Publish It!. I will elaborate on this speed prob- lem later, but there is a second very basic limitation of Springboard Pub- Apple2000 December 1988 lisher. You cannot use fonts other than the special fonts provided. These fonts do not match LaserWriter fonts and are only available in limited sizes. This becomes a very real problem when you use the LaserWriter. You must match screen fonts to the Laser- Writer output or you are simply work- ing blind and will have no idea as to size and positioning of columns of text. It is not impossible to use stan- dard fonts as Publish It! will allow any Macintosh/GS style font to be used. For instance all the fonts in our GS. lib can be used by Publish It!, you caly need to eae file type to $F4 for Publish It! to recognise them. ‘There are a number of other compari- sons like this that I could make be- tween the two programs, but it would be unfair to continually compare them in this way as there are some things that Springboard Publisher can do that Publish It! will not allow. The Source of the Problem? Springboard are well known for their marketing policy of providing software that is available for a wide range of machines. We first saw this with Newsroom, a program that al- lowed documents to be transported between IBM, Commodore or Apple. Springboard Publisher in a similar manner is available for the Apple II or the IBM PC. It may well be that the program has been written in some compiled language that allows com mon parts to be used for both ma- chines. However this pro, ig approach does not allow the maxi- mum speed to be wrought from any kind of program. With a program that handles large amounts of data, it is important to have machine language subroutines to make sure the maxi- mum speed is obtained from the machine. I feel that in fact they just got the whole approach to the program wrong. There are various points in the program flow that have just been approached in the wrong manner. No computer, not even the Macintosh, can display on screen what you will get, all the time. Rather than WYSIWYG it is WYGIBTWYS, which is not a Welsh village but What You Get Is Better Than What You See. There- fore short cuts must always be taken in drawing the screen display. The display must simply do the best it can under the circumstances, in order for a sensible speed to be achieved as the screen refreshes. It is not necessary for areas of text offscreen to be drawn into memory, it is suffictent for the program to simply work out leading and position for the display to be correct. Publish It! for instance takes this approach. Springboard Pub- lisher on the other hand apparently draws absolutely everything to mem- ory. There are very long waits as the display runs down to the foot of a column before it reappears again at the top of the next one. The way that the program has been constructed is also very odd. Both text and drawing are involved in any DTP work, words are text, rules are draw- ings. Springboard Publisher has been split into two very distinct activities, text manipulation and a drawing win- dow. These two activities are drawn into separate boxes, either Text or Drawing. This is similar to the way Quark Xpress on the Macintosh works, but instead of being able to draw lines or rules any- where you want on the screen, they have to be first drawn into a picture box, and this takes a long time. When you start a new page, you first see a display which shows you the whole page. You can then go from this display to either text editing or picture drawing by double clicking on the appropriate part of the display. All very well you may think, but it takes 60 seconds to simply switch displays. This means that if you want to draw a rule be- tween two columns, you must first create a drawing box in full page display, go to the drawing screen, and then draw the line into this box. If this line were to fill a complete column, you have to draw it in stages, as the screen is shown actual size and so will only show a part of the page at any one time. You must also remember to set the drawing box to have no outline or a box will be drawn round the rule. As it takes a minute to change displays, each of these steps takes so long, that you simply do not consider doing it a second time. Beacuse of this, I was inclined at first to abandon the review, but I think it was my eventual astonish- ment at seeing how long everything was taking that made me continue. As asoftware developer myself felt there were some very serious lessons to be learned. It was not impossible to write a program to allow reasonably fast DTP on the Il, Publish It! had shown that, but Springboard Publisher was certainly not the answer. It is only fair to point out again here that Publish It! has serious flaws. You cannot for instance create columns or text boxes with any ease to any size. Once a box is drawn, the ‘handles’ will not change the size of that box. This means that if you want accurate col- umns, you must use the 2x2, 3x3 or 4x4 preset guides. Springboard Pub- lisher on the other hand will allow you to have many columns and change the widths at will. albeit in a rather clumsy way. I began to wonder who this program was aimed at. I had assumed that Springboard was addressing a seri- ous market with this program, it does cost more than Publish It! after all. I think what impresses people most about Springboard products is the packaging and documentation. All programs are packed in durable plas- tic library cases and have excellently prepared documentation. Publisher is no ex- ception and comes in a large box with two excellent spiral bound manuals anda wipe clean Desktop Reference card. The first manual is a com- prehensive ‘Getting Started’ guide, and the second is an 168 page Reference manual. Both were more than adequate for their pur- pose. My only quarrel with them was the use of rather ‘Mickey Mouse’ drawings, though this is a style com- mon to all of the Springboard pro- grams I have seen. It may appeal to primary school teachers, but not I hope to serious users of the program. Installation The version I reviewed came on a 3.5 protected disk, though 5.25 ver- sions are available as well. Because of the large program, 61K for the main shell, 267K for overlays, 101-239K for fonts and some 128K for scratch working area, it would be unrealistic to run from 5.25 floppies though it can be done. If you do not have 3.5 drives you can load and run from a Ram card using the 5.25 disks. The Cirtech Plus Disk is an ideal candi- date for this if you intend working with the program to any extent, as you can load and startup from Ram at any time. The program constantly layers itself into memory from disk, this is espe- cially noticeable when selecting menu items. For this reason alone, it is almost essential to run from a Ram drive to gain maximum speed. The program will also need a ‘scratch’ disk while it is working, and this is where a Ram card is almost obligatory to squeeze that precious extra speed. You also specify the printer and the serial port, and you will find the usual array of obscure printers that can be addressed. Hopefully if you do not have an ImageWriter yours ts amongst the list. Publisher also supports the mouse. and although the program can run without one, it is almost an impossi- bility. For some obscure reason, the arrow keys are not supported in text mode! December 1988 Apple2000 Re w The master disk is copy protected, and even with the program installed on some other device, it will ask for this ‘key disk’ whenever you start up. Working with the program With the program installed, the real test was to actually get a page to gether and print it, and this is where your patience becomes stretched to breaking point. Almost anything you do involves heavy disk access. The Scratch disk holds the current state of the program and this is updated constantly. Each part of the program, and this seems also to include Menu selections, is ieyerert in from disk. It takes some ‘een seconds whatever you do, so you must be careful not to make the wrong choice. However, the strength of Publisher is the freedom it gives you to create text boxes of any size. You can enter text either into these boxes, or into predefined columns on the page. You can have up to nine columns, and these can either be of equal width, or adjusted individually. Text flowed into the page will automatically flow from one column to the next and will add pages as necessary. You enter pictures, which includes rules and other lines, into graphic boxes. These can also be drawn to any size and mixed with text boxes on the page. There is facility to send a box either in front or behind any overlaps. Having defined the page, which is done on a ‘reduced to fit’ screen, you must then goto either the Text edit screen or the Graphic screen to work. The Text Screen It is here that you edit and import documents. The screen gives you onlya portion of the page dis- played at actual size. However, you can edit and enter text in the usual way. There is a ‘select document’ command, that al- lows you to do global changes to point size or leading. This was where I waited longest, 5 minutes to change to Opt on one A4 page. Most things work as you would expect, including cut and paste, albeit very slowly, but inexplicably, the cursor keys are not active! Everything has to be done with the mouse. For those without a mouse, you press down the Closed Apple key and use the cursor keys. This moves the I beam instead of the flashing cursor position, so you must still slect the active position when you finally get there. You can select from either Gothic, San Serif or Serif typeface, and in sizes from Qpt to 24pt. There are an additional ten fonts available as a supplementary disk. These fonts are not standard, and you cannot use normal fonts instead. They approxi- mate normal fonts but are not quite the same. There is a disk of Style Sheets avail- able to go with Publisher. This gives you 36 prepared pages, each havinga different selection of columns and boxes. You could of course pre- pare your own in advance if you wished. The Graphics Screen ‘This is perhaps the oddest piece of Pub- lisher. It is a very good copy of MacPaint, and is in fact a very power- ful drawing tool, but it is practically of no use at all when it comes to the eve- tyday things such as drawing rules into column breaks. There is a single step ‘zoom’ which gives a ‘Fat Bits’ display, and all the usual things from the MacPaint menu. However, it can only draw into a graphic box and this is where the real limitation lies. You can either draw yourself di- rectly into this box, or import from a Dos 3.3, ProDOS, or Clip Art disk. The imported drawing may be sized and then of course further drawing may be done. As a general drawing program, it is limited in that it is of course in Black and White only. There are a range of Clip Art disks available covering different subjects. Many of these have drawings similar to those available with Newsroom. Printing I did not have the Laser Driver, and so was unable to test Publisher this way. I suspect that it would be difficult to predict where things would be on the final sheet, as the non-standard fonts would not match the Laser out- put. This would be a severe limitation to using the high quality of the Laser- Writer for output. I also assume that drawing would be sent as ‘bitmapped’ images rather than Postscript draw- ings, and again would not match what you saw on screen. I tested the printing on an ImageWriter, and was disappointed in the results. Both Publisher and Publish It! use a double pass of the print head in ‘best’ quality mode. However, Publish It! draws the infor- mation between the dots on the sec- ond pass, and Publisher simply draws the same line twice. The result is a ‘near letter quality’ from Publish It! and a chunky, inferior result from Publisher. Publisher also seemed to give ex- cessive pauses while it drew text into memory prior to printing. Publish It! on the other hand ts printing almost continuously and took only a fraction of the time to print a page. The speed problem Diagram 1 shows the timings I achieved when preparing a 3 column A4 sheet at Qpt text, These are all the steps one would expect to follow in pro- ducing such a page, and so it will give you an idea how long it all takes. The actual steps in preparing a page with Publish It! are slightly different, but the timings to produce essentially the same page are given in Diagram 2. Conclusion It will be apparent that I do not think Springboard Publisher is a program worth buying. It only outper- forms Publish It! in very minor ways, and these in no way offset the limita- tions imposed by its slow perform- ance, its limited fonts and its poor printing. As one of the editorial team of Apple2000, I feel it is important that reviews such as the one I have just given are published. | feel that an honest review should show a program for what it is worth, warts and all. I hope that this review has been both instructive and informative, and will have been educational as well. Tim- ings are given on the next page. I rest my case ..... Ewen Wannop «é Springboard Publisher Pro; £97.99 Additional Fonts £27.95 Style Sheets £27.95 Clip Art disks Assortment £29.95 Clip Art disks Education £29.95 Clip Art disks Holdiay £29.95 info Product: Publisher Publisher: Springboard Available from : MGA Microsystems Pear Tree Appledore Kent TN26 2AR Tel 0233-83571 Price : £97.99 inc VAT Value : « Performance : é Documentation : éddded 2 @ BG Apple2000 December 1988 Diagram 1 Springboard Publisher timings Action Slow (1) Import 4.5K text and select output file 3'30" Goto Text Screen ro Highlight all text 15" Select Font Formats Menu 45" Change to Opt Serif 5'0" Select Paragraph Formats Menu 55" Change to 0.25" indent 10.0" pt leading 3. 0" Select Column Menu 42" Change to 3 columns 147" Jump to see end of the A4 page 3'30" Unhighlight text 1°50” Total 22°14" Diagram 2 Publish It! timings Select 3 columns from Menu 10" Set up 3 text boxes 10" Import file and pour into columns 51” Highlight all text 4" Change to Spt Times 15" Display actual size 9" Change to 0.25" indent 12" Jump to see end of A4 page " Total 20" (1) Running at 1mhz entirely from 3.5 floppies (2) Accelerated at 2.3mhz and running entirely from Ram HANDY TIP Here is a technique for playing all those Music Construction Set Songs, WITHOUT buying the program. First get yourself the Demo Music Construction Set (can be obtained free from dealers) and copy it across to a blank disk. The program ap- pears to play a fixed number (9) of songs in the same sequence. All you have to do is replace those songs with your own, renaming them so that they match the original files. The music files and order of execu- 613" tion are as follows: 1) Leroy 2) Fantasy 3) Ubet 10° 4) Canon 10" 5) Ruddigore 20 6) Etude = 7) Wacko Su 8) Italy 4 9) Scherzo 4" Using this method you can create a customised Music v2 Construction Set Demo disk and play all those favorite songs without buying the program. K John Kishimoto THE PERFECT STOCKING &£°) I i, iis al ae T-Shirts in minutes! —— With the Underware Ribbon your printer makes iron-on transfers of any screen image! Just print the image on plain paper using an Underware Ribbon, then iron it on to your own TShirt. Each ribbon makes 30-100 permanent and washable transfers. Adding color is simple & inexpensive With a set of Underware ColorPens you can add up to seven colors to any transfer made with an Underware Ribbon. Just color the plain paper transfer and iron it onto a TShirt A complete selection of Underware Products... The ribbon is available for the NEC 8023, C Itoh, Image writer, Okidata, Star Gemini, and Epson dot matrix printers For other printers — PRINT Tsmers wirn Your COMPUTER! Please call for details. NOW WORKS WITH PRINT SHOP™ @ Underware Ribbon £14.95 Underware ColorPens (set of 5) £14.95 @ Underware Jumbo ColorPens (set of 7) £19.95 MGA MICROSYSTEMS - PEAR TREE APPLEDORE, KENT TN262AR ENGLAND (0233) 83571 PRICES INCLUDE p&p/VAT HIELPWORKS For the Beginner The Package Includes: Comprehensive HELPWORKS Book © Covers all aspects of APPLEWORKS * Quick references & detailed instructions * Working sample files, templates, & explainations On Line Help A Data Base explaining all OA-Key Commands Data Base answering APPLEWORKS questions Over 120 Templates, sample files, and examples on disk (5.25 and 3.5 disks available) Specific Templates for business, home, sports, education, and more. Tips & Tricks and Much More !! "HELPWORKS includes something for just about everyone." Cynthia Field - inCider Magazine ONLY £39.99 PRICES INCLUDE p&p/VAT MGA SoftCat TEL: (0233) 83571 December 1988 Appie2000 me 2 Macrolools MacroTools with Ultramacros V1.7 gives insight into what goes on in Appleworks. By Peter Davis For Non-Macro-Maniacs Perhaps some of AppleWorks nicest features are the 30 or so OPEN-APPLE-APPLE commands, which must have been precursors of the many macro programs that have come on the scene. Early Macro programs allowed you to create Macros which let you reduce a series of keystrokes in Appleworks down to a single-key- command combined with the SOLID-APPLE-KEY. The imagina- tive Macro writer soon ran out of keys to use, and to cater for this, the power of these programs was extended to enable the three applications to be identified so that the effective keystrokes in the Data Base would be quite different from those in the Word Processor. There was also a desire to control Apple- Works, so that for instance the macro would pause for user input, while at the same time a helpful message could be displayed on the screen. In this way macro writing ceased to be a simple matter of representing keystrokes, and include some of the characteristics of a tokenized programming lan- guage, having both logic and bells. By ‘bells’ 1 mean commands to access Prodos time or aids to enable a series of keystrokes to be recorded as a Macro. I write this, while acknowledging MacroWorks, AutoWorks, Super- MacroWorks, and KeyPlayer. Even so UltraMacros, with AppleWorks 2.0, is without question the pro- gram with the most power and complexity that I know. The number of Macro Keys is 50 plus, achieved by enabling macros to be defined with SOLID-APPLE-KEY alone. or in various combinations with the OPEN-APPLE and CON TROL keys. Their usefulness is most likely to be limited by the users own memory and the diffi- culty of reaching several simultane- ous keys. Macros can be simple, word swap- ping would be a good example of the kind of thing that people have liked to do at “the touch of key”. Ul- traMacros is capable of far more than that. Take a look at a few statistics. There are 85 Tokens, the ability to handle 26 numeric variables and 10 string variables, and ability to manipulate these variables by sorting or by arithme- tic. Superimpose these functions and capabilities within the Apple- Works environment where it be- comes easy to move identified data between files and applications (including TimeOut applications) and I think it must be clear that this language is fully capable of greatly expanding AppleWorks capabilities in a quite radical way. Here are a few examples:- A fully controllable Mail Merge is simple, (1 have done it). Additional functions can be added to the Spread Sheet. Natural Logarithms, Sin, Cos, Tan. The number of calculated fields in the Data Base can be increased. In UltraMacros programs are written using the word processor, then compiled in a form which is still accessible to the word proces- sor. So editing is easy enough. MacroTools supplies a few more programing aids and examples. ‘The remaining part of this article is for people who are Macro-Mani- acs, or better still for people who own or want to own UltraMacros. MacroTools creates UltraMacros V1.7 I was sent UltraMacros V1.7 and MacroTools V1.0. Ultramacros V1.7 has some significant changes from the version I purchased at the beginning of this year, and has a revised printed manual. The most obvious change incorporated is the addition of a new Token <asc> which converts a string character to ASCII, there is also a slight change in the mode of operation of <find>. There are a number of other changes which make this latest version of UltraMacros sufficiently different for an upgrade to be mandatory for users of MacroTools. Perhaps the most significant benefit of MacroTools is that it provides the means for owners of UltraMacros versions prior to V1.7 to upgrade a copy of their Ultramac- ros disk, then reinstall prior to working with MacroTools. In addition the default set of macros is ded and MacroTools has a well edited addendum for the earlier UltraMacros manual. MacroTools contains five new TimeOut applications intended as aids and enhancements for Ul- traMacros. The STARTUP proce- dure provides the means of updat- ing UltraMacros disc, te ULTRA.SYSTEM, TO.COMPILER, TO.MACRO.OPT. to version V1.7. (There was no detectable difference between version V1.7 and the my older version upgraded, except the dates). In addition the remaining part of the double sided disk is packed with technical information on AppleWorks and UltraMacros plus a raft of new Macros that are intended to expand your insight into just what can be done with powerful macro program. Even if you might not think of doing so in the first place you end up with the means of ejecting a 3.5" disc or searching for values or formu- las in aspreadsheet. The disc also has a list of AppleWorks addresses that can be PEEKED and POKED from UlI- traMacros. The New TimeOut Applications Once UltraMacros 1.7 is installed on AppleWorks, the new TimeOut applications: TO.DEBUG, TO.MENU.MAKER, TO.FILE.STATUS, TO.TASKLAUNCHER and TO.UM.TOKENS files can be copied to your TimeOut applications disk. I found Debug the most useful of the five. It provides a good descrip- tive aid on the workings of UI- traMacros and is a most useful debugging tool. UM Tokens UM Tokens is perhaps the sim- plest. It displays an alphabetical chart showing all of the tokens that may be used with UltraMacros. Just press Open-Apple-Escape and select UM Tokens and the screen in Figure 1 appears. 2 28 Apple2000 December 1988 Figure 1 | | | <adb> | <ctrl-> =| <id#> | <onerr> | <screen> | | <ahead> | <date> | <ip | <path> | <spe> 1 | <all> | <date2> | <ifkey> | <peek> | <stop> I | <asc> | <dec> | <ifmot> | <poke> | <store> | | <asp> | <del> | <inc> | <posn> | <stx$> i | <ato> | <disk> | <input> | <print> | <tab> 1 | <awp> | <down> | <insert> | <pr#> | <then> t | <ba-> | <else> | <key> | <read> | <time> 1 | <back> | <elseoff> | <lc> | <recall> | <time24> | | <begin> | <esc> | <left> | <rem> | <up> ih | <bell> | <£ind | <“left> | <right> | <uc> f | <call> | <findpo> | <len> | <eright> | <val> 1 | <cell> | <getstr> | <msg> | <xpt> | <wait> 1 | <chr$> | <goto> | <nosleep> | <rtn> | <wake at> | | <clear> | <hilight> | <oa-> | <sa—> | <zoom | | | Copyright (¢) 1987 by Mark Munz “Next time that you get a compiler syntax error you can see what that problem token is really supposed to be called”; says the manual. File Status File Status is another application by Mark Munz that displays the fol- lowing information about the current Desktop file: Desktop #: this file's number in the Desktop index File Size: Desktop memory used File Type: Adb, Asp or Awp File is : New, Saved, Unchanged or Changed When the File Status information is on the screen, you may press OA- C to change the status. Perhaps you inadvertently pressed a key while in a saved file, and then deleted the character. The status will now be “Changed”, so use this application to change it back to “Saved”. This will allow you to remove the file without being harassed by AppleWorks. Menu Maker Menu Maker is a TimeOut appli- cation that allows macro program mers to create true AppleWorks menus by invoking a macro. Both the “numbered option” and “bottom- of-screen-question” styles are supported. The menu items are taken from the UltraMacros strings; you are limited to nine items in an option menu and a maximum of eight in the question menus at the bottom of the screen. It might be thought that there is a definite advantage here since the menu macro can call other macros which you might find it difficult remember without this sort of aid. Unfortunately | was not able to benefit from much in from this because the ones I find difficult to remember would be something like BOTH-APPLE-CONTROL-Z, and it is just in this area that menu maker falls down, To be fair Beagle advise you to avoid the use of BOTH-APPLE- CONTROL macros inside of any complex macros which use begin, rpt, or any of the conditional logic. But this is just the kind of logic required to drive Menu Maker. Debug Debug is an outstanding TimeOut application designed to make TimeOut UltraMacros programs easier to write and understand. There are four options in this application. They are all useful and enable the user to see what the macro has done: I, Vital statistics Select this option to see a display something like this: Sleep Macro Name: Solid-Apple-B Wake at 12:02 Onerr Status Pr# printer: 0 Macros defined: 1 Macro table length: $0007, 7 This allows you to verify that a <wake> command has been in- voked, to see the current <onerr> status, to see which <pr#> printer is selected, and to see the number of individual macros as well as the number of bytes they use. Il. View numeric variables This option displays the current values for all 26 UltraMacros variables