Apple 2000 Vol 4 No. 6 1989 12 BASUG GB

15, | Lone, eston, Lancs. PR4 5EB eo” Wey, ¥ Tools that” Holdens have been specialising in Apple Electronic Publishing since the concept began back in 1985. We offer free advice to all prospective customers, and can offer existing site referrals. If you you would like to know more about Apple Computer Systems, and how they can help your business, then contact us right away for a free information pack, or call and see us at our new spacious premises. As appointed Apple Education Dealers we are able to offer substantially reduced prices to schools, Colleges, Polytechnics and Universities; also to full-time students and lecturers. A similar scheme applies to Churches, Teaching Hospitals and Registered Charities. Orders must be made on the establishments official order forms for approval by Apple Computer (UK) Ltd. Orders from Charities must indicate registered charity number. Student order forms available on request Tools that are serving us better 6 FAX (0772) 6 5919 id 5 Pe ae TEL (0772) 61551 Apple2000 The All Apple User Group Committed to All Apple Users including Macintosh Apple2 December 1989 CONTENTS Chairman's Corner Ewen Wannop 2 Letter Box 3 Hardcore Pips John Sharp 5 Wordbench — A review Elizabeth Littlewood 8 IIgs to Sinclair QL Linkup Stuart Aitken 12 The 'L’ Test Bill Mealey 13 GS Font Editor John Beattie 14 IIgs Machine Language — A review Dave Ward 16 War in Middle Earth — A review John Kishimoto 17 Finder, EasyDrive & Prosel — A comparison 18 Vanilla SCSI Tape System Kenneth Buchholz 20 Apple Il GS/OS — AppleLink PE Transcript 23 Using the Glanmire MicroWatch Jeremy Quinn 26 Program Writer 2.0 — A review Dave Ward 30 Hotline News Dave Ward 32 AppleWorks 3.0 — A review Peter Davis 34 Communicate Keith Rookledge 36 The Nibbler 38 MacChat Norah Arnold 42 Omnis 5 — A review Bill Pearce 44 Déja Vu — A review Ceri Fisher 48 New Service to Members 50 Snippets from the States 50 Book Reviews John Armold 51 Artificial Intelligence Anna O'Connell 54 What Do You Do With Yours? Mike Dawson 58 Network News 60 TN # 229 A/UX 1.1 Toolbox Bugs 64 TN # 228 Swopping MMU Mode 65 MultiFit v 1.5 — A review Norah Arnold 66 Software Circus 68 Implementing Undo Larry Rosenstein 70 Card Forum 72 Bi ce of Power 1990 — A review Ceri Fisher 74 User Grow 78 Members’ Small Ads. 80 Advertisers Index 80 AppleXtr A new service to members see page 5O for details 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 (i -S1a# #2 or (during office hours) call Alison on 8705 7Hh4i% Both have Ansafones, in case they're not around. Alternatively you can Fax. to (iil Hida) 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 and Tony Dart run the Hotlines and will try and help you. 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. We reserve the right to publish, without prejudice, any advice or comments given to members in the journals of Apple2000. A little praise for a few of our authors wouldn't go amiss. Send all comments, and contributions, via the PO box. especially suggestions about what you would like to see in your magazine. Apple2000 P.O.Box 3, Liverpool, 121 8PY St She anes Fax. @i S29 30/7 jple2000 supports users of all the Aj ape computers. The ITT 2020, I, Il, t+, //e, J/c. //c+. UWgs, gst. ///. Lisa, XL, Mac 128, 512 MacPlus, SE, SE/30, Mac II, Ilcx, Ici, Ix and Mac Portable Contributions and articles for the meager ae are always welcome. We can handle any disk size or format. Please send to the PO Box, L21 8PY. NOTE: In general the front half of the magazine is for the Apple Il, sonle IIgs and Apple /// The back half for the Macin- tosh and Lisa. Look out for the descriptive page icons. Key: Apple Il, //e and //c Apple /// Apple IIgs Macintosh, Lisa Macintosh II WS boone & The Force and Local Groups John Lee Voice GiiFe miaiell Administration Irene (FE Sieea Hie i Peep Gl Sok HGF Adverts / Admin. Alison Davies OF Ns Pets Apple ll Hotline ave Ward ENS HEIRS Mon-Fri 1900-2100 Macintosh Hotline Tony Dart eee SEG Mon-Fri 0900-17.00 1900-2100 TABBS Ewen Wannop - SYSOP December 1989 Apple2000 Chairman's Corner Q First of all this month I have some announcements. John Elver wishes to apologise to any- one who tumed up for the Mac/ Apple event at Filton last month, and who missed the notice in Apple Slices. Since the event was first mooted, it grew out of all pro- portion, and John was obliged to postpone it till the spring of next year. We shall keep you posted as soon as we have a new date. Secondly, the Apple II HotLine has anew phone number. It is still run by Dave Ward, and he will still answer queries on the old num- ber. However he now has a spank- ing new extension to his house, complete with a dedicated phone solely for the Apple II Hotline. Please note the new number (0889 562859) and use it from now on. Finally, a big welcome to all the new members we signed up at the Mac User show. I hope you find Apple2000 to your liking, and that you may be able to contribute “1980-1990. to the Group in some way in the future. The astute among you will have noticed the birthday cake that has been added to the designs at the top of this page. Apple2000/ BASUG is ten years old next year. Started soon after the Apple II or should I say ITT 2020 hit the shores of England, Apple2000 has been supporting users of ALL Apple computers throughout its ten years. We have seen the rise and fall of the Apple /// and the Lisa, and the rise and continuing success of the Apple II series and the Macin- tosh series. We shall be continu- ing to support ALL Apples, regard- less of what new computers we may see launched in the future. BASUG started as a group of volunteers who had a crusading desire to help each other in what ever way the could. We continue into 1990 in the same vein. We rely on the goodwill and bound- less energy of a select band of helpers, and the input that all the members make with articles for the magazine. We are not able to pay for these articles, and can only offer the glory of seeing your name in print! As various committments can take people out of this circle of volunteers, we have a continuing need to recruit new helpers into the fold. The most prominent opportunity to offer help is the AGM which is held in April each year, but we accept offers of help at any time! If you would like to help us, please get in touch with a committee member and offer your services. You may be just what we need! And now a word from our spon- sors ... or more correctly, a word about our advertisers. We have a number of dealers who advertise in the pages of Apple2000. We rely on these advertisements to help us produce a magazine of the quality you have come to expect. Many of these advertisers show Apple2000 a great deal of good- will. We would like you to return this goodwill and use these deal- ers wherever possible. Please also tell them where you saw their ad- vertisement. This will make them feel wanted, and the whole cycle will be able to repeat itself. Some of the advertisers will offer a dis- count to Apple2000 members. Give them a ring and see what they can do for you. Finally, I wish you all avery good Christmas, and a prosperous New Year for 1990. Ewen Wannop <é Va Annual subscription rates are £25.00 for UK residents, £30.00 for E.E.C. residents and £35.00 for other overscas members, Apple2000™ is a trading name of BASUG Ltd, a non- profit making independent company limited by guarantec. 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 vari- 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, June, August, October and December. The copy date is the 1st 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 an The Ediforial team is: >) Apple Il Macintosh Ewen Wannop Norah Amold Irene Flaxman 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 (051-227-4818) for our printing service, and to Ian Sharp of Sharp Studios (051-236 5442) for our cover design. (Graphics for the cover design supplied by MacMemories. Specialised fonts for the cover design supplied by Lexitrope.) Apple2000 are Founder Members and Wholehearted Supporters of the Apple User Group Council 4 2 Apple2000 December 1989 Apple /// Letterbox Wimborne Dorset Dear Members, In a University in Iraq there is an Apple ///, new but unused. Does anyone have any suggestions about what it could be used for? In this country. suffering from a severe shortage of foreign currency after the recent war with Iran, eve: ing has to be used and there Is difficulty in buying another computer. I would like to hear from anyone who has software for this computer, whether in Roman or Arabic script. The operating system is there but probably nothing else, Copies of Public Domain programs would be welcome, especially if accompanied by operating instructions. As I myself have never used on of these machines I have no idea what to advise the Iraquis. EG Matthews Q The Apple /// is built round the 6502 chip but has 128k of Ram and an 80 column screen as standard. It runs under the SOS operating sys- tem. ProDOS was a development of the SOS system and is very similar. If the operating system disks are there, then there should be an emula- tor disk to allow the /// to operate as an Ape u Raat ab This will runa number of Apple II pro; includ- ing almost al of the Bos 3.3 pro- grams. However programs running under ProDOS 1.1.1 or later will not. However if you run pri is under ProDOS 1.0.1 you might be able suc- cessful. The /// has the same slots as the Apple II, so many cards will work in them, however the interrupt line is not active and so some communica- tons programs may not work with serial ports. This is about the limit of my knowl- edge on the ///. 1 do know we have some members who own these ma- chines, perhaps they could help. Also refer to the article on le 18 of the April 89 issue of Apple2: for more details of the /// and public domain software. Ewen Wannop é ligs Font Letterbox Market Drayton Shropshire Dear Sirs, I don't ct you to publish this letter, but the inmate! may be of use to you if anyone asks about the & sign in TimeWorks Publish-It! iblish-It! is one of the only two none GS software that I own (Apple- Works the other). It really is a great program, and it is more like a GS program than an or ple II program. The new Publish-It! 2 is vastly improved and offers new features. The one criticism of Publish- It! is that the fonts don’t have the £ sign in them. In a past edition of Apple2000 magazine I noticed that someone write in saying why didn't TimeWorks use GS fonts in Publish- Itt, thus the £ sign would be in them. The following comments were taken from an article about GS ($C8) fonts, and Publish-It! ($F7) fonts:- Mithougs the file structure be- tween GS fonts and Publish-It! fonts is exactly the same, there is a difference in their design. TimeWorks, the com- pany which wrote Publish-It!, has stated that their fonts are designed with a special aspect ratio. Most GS fonts have the wrong aspect ratio for use with Publish-It!and will appear to be squashed and narrow wheal use with that program. The reason for the difference in aspect ratios, comes from the fact that most IIgs fonts actually origi- nated on the Macintosh. On a Mac, the pixels (or dots) on the screen are square. On a //e or Ilgs, the pixels on the screen are rectangular. Super- fonts, ri Beagle Bros., corrects for this difference within the program. The ers at Publish-It! de- cided that a better solution was to design the fonts especially for the // ¢. This ts why they used a different filetype for their fonts.” The part about Beagle Bros. cor- recting the difference is one to note. Recently I received direct from je Bros. in the US, their GS FONT EDITOR. To my surprise it not only edits GS fonts, but also Publish-It! fonts. It doesn’t mind which format you are using (brilliant work by Beagle Bros.). It treats them both the same, only you know the format. It can't load one format and save into the other - it saves the format the original font was in. It is a good little presen (except for a A Snaoing ug - you can't save toa differentdisk. You have to save to the disk you called the font from. You can get round it though, by going through the process of loading a font from another disk, but not actually loading it. It will then save to that disk), and doesn’t have to have a GS to use It. It will also nun on a //eand //c. It works exactly like a normal GS program, and you must have a mouse. It will swap the charac- ters around with no problem, you don't have to redraw them. Eg. copy the £ over the #. I then set about editing the $F7 fonts. The problem is that the fonts don't have the £ sign in them, they only have the characters (# instead of £). Thus I would have toedit #toget the &sign. I then came up with a better idea. Use the £ sign from the many GS fonts available, and paste it over the # in the $F7 fonts. This worked perfectly, but because of the aspect ratios mentioned above, the £ looked too thin when used in Publish- It! You have to select ey, thick £ signs from the GS fonts. or edit the thinner ones to look right. I have matched them up pretty well. You couldn't tell that the £ signs came from different fonts. I had a problem with Wilmette.72, the Font tan would not recognise it. It does load point 72, so this was very strange. I converted it to a GS font, and it still didn't recognise it. I had to use a Public Domain GS font editor to draw it in, and then convert back to a $F7 font. When you come to use the edited fonts in Publish-It! you still get the # on the screen, but when you print out you get the & This is because when Publish-It! prints out, it takes the fonts from the disk - it doesn't load them into memory like the GS pro- grams do. This the beauty of Publish- It! Using too many fonts in GS pro- soon uses up the memory. In Publish-It! you can use as many and as large fonts as you want, and never worry about running out of memory. Ifanyoneasks you about editing the fonts in Publish-It! just mention the GS FONT EDITOR to them (it also has Helvetica and Times in sizes 54 & 72, Please submit all letters and articles to the magazine on disk wherever possible. The disks will be returned to you when the magazine is published. If you have a modem, send us letters, articles and Public Domain programs either to BSGOO5 or to TABBS (iliiiis-FHa8i7)) December 1989 Apple2000 included on she fields At has ie oH minor bugs, but the people at le Bros. ce know eray they are doing. Christopher Beckett Q Well we did publish the letter, and we have a review of the GS FONT EDITOR elsewhere in the magazine. The problem of the pound sign being unavailable will probably crop up time and time again. The standard Macintosh font has the usual charac- ters in the lower half of the font set, and has a large number of special characters in the top half. To get access to these characters on the Mac you simple use the Option key in addition to the normal key presses. Few programs on the GS ‘ed this to happen. However, with the new System 5.0 for the IIgs, AppleWorks GS now displays these special char- acters just like on the Mac. So press- ing the Option key and the ‘3' key gives a pound sign. Beware of changing the £ sign for the # sign if you intend to print to a LaserWriter. The laser font not having been changed itself, will still display that letter that I bed another reply to query so in all there was a very scteaciay conclusion to the effort put in by pout and Apple 2000. many thanks. Steve Hollinsghurst Erith Kent Dear Jon I am writing to thank you for your kind effort in answering the query I put to Apple 2000 re the TABS MOD- ULES and the MOUNTAIN MULTI- FUNCTION CARD, it was a pleasure to know that you had made the effort to clear up my confusion regarding those two items. Just prior to receiving your letter I had a phone call from a Mr P Dyson who had a Multifunction card that had gone faulty and who offered me the faulty card together with the Soft- ware and the pi -back board you mentioned and a printer cable and the manual that went with the card. I have since received the items and installed the card and everything seems to be working OK. This was a RGB Monitor for £7!! Dear Editor, I do not need a colour monitor very often. I also lug around equipment occasionally and a monochrome is much lighter. When | bought a new Ilgs system recently! therefore did not feel spending the extra hundreds of pounds for a colour monitor. However I did also happen to buy a colour TV for use andI chose a model which offers an RGB input via a SCART- socket at the back (Salora model 15 L30). The pin-out for the RGB socket was published in Open Apple (now A2 Central) last year. The connections for the SCART socket are included in the manual of the TV. All had todo was buy a 15 channel male D-type plug and length of 9 channel cable from my Apple dealer, then buy a male SCART plug from my TV dealer (total cost 6 pounds and 75 p.), bor- row a soldering iron, and I would have my part-time RGB monitor. The connections are shown in the table. My first attempt yielded a full-colour but rolling image. Ihad connected the the # sign. However, I would not ex- relief particularly as when I bought Apple “synch” signal to the “blanking” pect that are using Publish-It! the card it had no protectionandhad input on the TV. A call to the Salora with the LaserWriter. obviously been well handled and I service department revealed that it Ewen Wannop @ feared that it would be useless, fortu- should have been connected to the nately this is not so. composite eee input. A quick With re; to the TABS MOD- swap of pins in connector and all Hardware Letterbox ULES I must admit toasmile at your was Erith very ably pulling the ladder from Kent ler my feet by your “even if state- Signal Applellgs SaloraSCART ment. 1 can't that I am over Red Earth 1 13 Dear Ewen disapointed as I have nousefor Red Signal 2 15 By now you will have received a_ the and did not pay very ich. 3 20 letter for Jon Gurr of MGA answe: much for them. Blue Earth 5 ll my queries regaring the two pleces o! So thank you once again for you _ Blue Signal 6 9 hi that was the subject of my kind thoughts and my best wishes. Green Earth 9 7 recent letter to you. Green Signal 13 5 You willalsosee fromthe contentof Steve Hollinshurst e « (- (TITTT A BBB BBBB SSSS )) The T AA B BB BS T A ABBBB BBBB SSSS T AAAAAB BB B s Apple2000 T A ABBBB BABB SSSS Bulletin THE APPLE 2000 USER GROUP Board BULLETIN BOARD SYSTEM V21, V22, V22BIS, V23 System 24 HOURS 8-N-1 The TABBS message system is more than just a Bulletin Board. With a shopping mall where you can browse the Apple2000 catalogues and order the goods you require; a library containing over 1300 files for the Apple II, IIgs and Macintosh, news files update twice weekly bringing you the latest in world computer news and of course NewsBytes™; a private and public E-mail service; file transfers thatcan be enclosed in private or public mail; message areas covering many topics includ- ing the Apple II, the IIgs and Macintosh; Xmodem, 1k Xmodem and Ymodem file transfers; multi-speed access at all common speeds; 24 hour operation; and much, much more make TABBS the premier Apple Bulletin Board serving Europe. Give <l> Apple 1{ folder <2> Apple IIgs folder <3> Macintosh folder <4> Apple2000 folder <5> Developers folder <6> Public areas <D>ownload Libraries <Mailbox <tNPews Columns <S>hopping Mall <Weeekly Update TABBS a call today. \_<ibelp files for TABBS my Ring TABBS on quiz) F45297 at any speed through V21, V22, V23 to V22bis 8N1 TABBS is available 24 hours a day \ J 4 2B Apple2000 December 1989 Hardcore Pips The BASUG archive continues this month the Debugging Tips from February 1983 Some debugging hints were covered in the last Be, ers e. There are anumber of things that can go wrong so we will carry on trying to sort out further problems. Having carried out the tips in the last article, your program may still not work because you have errors which are errors of logic of some sort. These are harder to debug, because the computer doesn't tell you directly where the program is joing wrong. Consider the mis' of a misdi- rected line number. 10 FORN = 1 to 10 20M=N*N 30 IF M-N > 30 THEN GOTO 60 40 NEXT N 50 PRINT “NONE FOUND” 60 END 600 PRINT “IF N = “;N ; N IS GREATER THAN 30” What we want to happen is that if the difference between M and N is greater than 30 then we print the value of N (which as shown below should heppen when N reaches 7). Because of mistyping in line 30 the program is directed to line 60 instead of the correct 600. By looking at the listing this ts fairly obvious. However, this listing is short and because of this it is easy to pick the mistake up. This is often not the case. especially if line 600 does not come up on the screen at the same time as the offend- ing line. Let us look at a procedure for finding out what the problem is. Running the program produces the prompt back. You know it should produce a printed result. so your immediate reaction is to say “IMPOSSIBLE!!! STUPID * # % !! COMPUTER® - but it is your fault in fact. ¢ first thing to do ts print the values of N and M. Once you are out of the program in immediate mode then the variables are still stored within memory. ‘So just typing:- 2.N,M produces the answer:- 7 49 A quick calculation with cil and paper says this ts correct. IfN=7 then M=7*7 and ifN were 6 then M would “THEN M- be 36, M - N would be 30 and so the value of M-N would not be greater than 30, Thus 7 is the value we ex- pected to cause it to go out of the loop with at line 30. rinting these values directly thee Ls ee that that part of the program is working correctly. Why then is is not going where you want it to? Where is it gol In this case looking at line 30 tells you that the mistake is that it is going to line 60. In more complicated cases it may not be as easy. It would be of great help ifthe computer told you where the program was jumping to. Fortunately the APPLE has just such a means of letting you know what is going on. The special com- mand is TRACE. Ifyou set the trace on and RUN as follows the screen should look like:- TRACE RUN #10 #20 #30 #40 #20 #30 #40 #20 #30 40 #20 #30 #40 #20 #30 #40 #20 #30 #40 #20 #30 #60 Every time the computer goes through the line it prints the line number with a ‘#' in front of it. You can look at the listing and fol- low it Seog working out logically what should be happening. This is called “dry running”, and would be useful to do this in case. Line 10 first sets N =1 Line 20 find the square of N and sets the variable M equal to it. Line 30 checks the value of M-N with the number 30, if M ts less than 30 then it ignores the rest of the line. Since M-N = 0 then the program moves onto line 40. Line 40 sends the program round the loop, Le. back to 20. Line 20 says N ts increased by 1 to 2. It is not yet equal to the limit of 10 so carry on to line 30 again and do the check once more, It continues going round and round until, when N = 7, M-N is greater than 30 and the statement being true al- lows the GOTO 60 to be executed. The last line number printed out by the tracing routine is ‘#60’. If you have noticed this then the error is picked out. In this case it is possible to put the listing and the trace on the screen. Normally great lines of accessed line pane are gencrated aa the: your go funny trying Pp Up wath what is happening. One way to overcome this is to use the same facility you can use to slow listings down, the CTRL-S. Put the second finger of your left hand on the CTRL and keep it there. Put your index fingers over 'S’ key. By preesing: the'S’ key alternately as an on and off key, it is possible to have very fine control over the scrolling. Correct the error in line 30 by making it 600 instead of 60 and RUN the pro; again. What happened? All the fine sumabers appeared again with something on the end:- RUN #10 #20 #30 #40 #20 #30 #40 #20 #30 #40 #20 #30 #40 #20 #30 #40 #20 #30 #40 #20 #30 #600 IF N =7 THEN M - N IS GREATER THAN 30 The trace facility was still on and when it came to line 600 it carried out the print action straight after printin; out the ‘#600. This is very useful you wish to find out at which line number a particular statement is being output or where an input is ted. expected. The trace facility would be a nui- sance hereafter so switch it off by typing:- NOTRACE The next stage ts too long tocarryon with so it will form the next beginners page. Meanwhile :~ More Syntax Errors Type in the following lines and run em:= 10 LET PLANK=20 20 LET PLOB =30 30 PRINT PLANK The answer will be 30 because the APPLE only interprets the first two letters of a variable name. To the APPLE therefore PL is the last variable name using those letters first. So ifyou find yourvariableis not the value you thought it should be, think what you have called other variables. This will not give you a syntaxerror, but if you have variables such as the following, you will come up with the SYNTAX ERROR IN LINE xxx where you have used It. Such examples as NEWT, GROG, ANEW, AGREE would be interpreted as a mixture of the BASIC command. If you had typed in the following:- 10 LET AGREE = 5 When you listed it, it would come out as 10 LET A GREE =5 This is because the interpreter sees the GR of the graphics command and ‘TOKENISES' it , that ts it saves it as a special character of itsown. @ December 1989 Apple2000 @e 5 Try the following program :- 70 FOR N= 1 TO 8 80 Q(N) = M 90 NEXT N and RUN it. Since there is nothing output to the screen then there is no visible evi- dence that the program has done anything. The array Q0 has however been filled. This happens even when other parts of the program are writing to the screen. It is ible to find out if variables are w! are by inspecting them in immediate mode just by typing in from the key- board, so that for example if you type:- PRINT Q(3) <RETURN> 3 is the result We can also use variables so PRINT Q(N) is just as valid. Try it and see that the following is the result PRINT Q(N) ° So what is this? Surely since the loop has gone around from 1 to 8. N has become 8 why do we not get the value 8. PRINT Q(8) 8 is OK. So try PRINT N 3 NOTE !!! when you come out of a loop the value of the variable you are changing has always gone one more step than you specified. When the program reaches the NEXTin line 750 goes back to une beginning ofthe oop goes back to the beginning ip at line 700 and tests if the value of N is greater than 8. Only if it is not will it go through the loop again, other- wise it will try to find the line Seba the NEXT statement line num! greater than 750. It is sometimes the case that when running a program, you realise it is not going the way you thought. In this cas¢ you press Cand try to sort it out from there. Add line 75 as follows:- 75 FOR DLY = 1 TO 500: NEXT This is a very useful general line. It Is a time wasting statement, simply sending the line round and round 500 times so that time is used up. In this case it is there to make the program go slower so that we can press the break key before it has finished. You can see the delay as follows :- TRACE RUN #10 #20 #30 #40 #20 #30 #40 #20 #30 #40 #20 #30 #40 #20 #30 #40 #20 #30 #600 IF N = 7 THEN M - N IS GREATER THAN 30 #70 #80 #90 #75 #80 #90 475 #80 #90 #75 #80 #90 #75 #80 #90 #75 #80 #90 #75 #80 #90 #75 #80 #90 #75 #30 #40 #20 Every time the computer reaches #90 the screen display stops. Having switched off the trace func- tion with NOTRACE, then RUN the program aga and when it has passed the first loop and has printed out, and before it has finished press CTRL C. The message:- BREAK IN 75 comes up. ane is a very important aspect of lebugging. A program may agiee! to ive one away - techincal) own as ‘hanging’. If you press <BREAK> then it tell you that you have stopped at a particular line. If you now type CONT it will CONTinue where it left off. In practice you would probably print out some of the variables in immediate mode in the meantime. This would in this case for example yield the following information:- RUN IF N= 7 THEN N-M IS GREATER THAN Bgeenaey 2 a and you know you have broken into the pro, when the outer loop had a value of N=3. The value of N was preserved and it was able to carry on even though you had printed the value of N. You can even alter the value of N and still allow it to con- tinue, RON IF N = 7 THEN M ~- N IS GREATER THAN 30 BREAK IN 75 RGRERo2R ‘This means that you would not have filled the array when N was equal to 4,5 and 6. To show this type the following in immediate mode:- FOR N = 1 TO 8: ? Q(N);:NEXT 12,3 O08 nO) i708 OK The line containing the FOR ... NEXT loop should be on one line without pressing <ENTER> until the end of the line. Do not forget the *;" so that the values are printed in one line, or you will possibly scroll off the screen. Now alter line 80 to 80 Q(N) = M run the program again, without BOEOEINE and repeat the last exer- cl 4 FOR N = 1 TO 8 : ? Q(N);:NEXT 49 49 49 49 49 49 49 49 OK This time since M is fixed by the previous loop to 49, and all the values of the array are the same. If this was an error of typing, miss- ing the N key and hitting the M in- stead, you would have a clue instantly especially if you then printed M and found it to match. One other way to pick up this type of error, Le. of getting all the values wrong without at first knowing why would be to go straight to the appro- priate loop directly. This can be done in two ways:- RUN 70 or GOTO 70 They are both valuable tools. Sup- pose we c: out the same exercise and print the value of the array vari- ables as before, using RUN 70, the result would be as follows:- RUN7O OK FOR N= 1 TO 8 : ? Q(N);:NEXT 0° 0 0 0" 0" OH O98. OK The value of M has automatically been set to zero by the RUN com- mand. The command GOTO does not zero all variables. Try the following using the <BREAK> to halt the program after the value of M has been set, and see that the array variables are all set to 49 again RUN IF N= 7 THEN M - N IS GREATER THAN 30 BREAK IN 75 OK GOTO 70 OK FOR N= 1 TO 8: ? Q(N);:NEXT 49 49 49 49 49 49 49 49 OK In fact, just to prove the point, the alteration of the variable first could be done as follows:- M= 99 RUN 70 OK FOR N= 1 TO 8: ? Q(N) 0000000 OK 3: NEXT ° or as follows M = 99 GOTO 70 OK FOR N= 1 TO 8 : ? Q(N);: NEXT 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 ‘The same tricks can be used with strings. If the string variable has not been assigned, it will not of course print anything. So the following holds ? AS:? BS FRED means that A$ was empty (a blank line was printed) and B$ had been set to FRED. John Sharp - February 1983 « 6 && Apple2000 December 1989 Wace SESO 4/40.... £2660 Uae SE F400. 42222 BT Bidmuthin Technologies Brent House, 214 Kenton Rd Kenton, Harrow, Middlesex Laser Writer 99N7., £2696 i HA3 8BT Tel. (01) 907 8516 Very limited avattability Heutett Packard PatutYet Colour Printer waually 1095 Season of goodwill price... 795 beso lemited ported auty, re oF oa att (Weg STUUS only L175 ine UAT Communications Suudles Apple 1200/75 Modem & Gazelle Software. L129 Apple 1200/1200 Modem & Gazelle Software.. L295 PC “Transporter - Special Offer For the mouth of December auly, we are offertug the PC “fransparter card 640/7 68h, tackuding GS on [/e tnataltation bit & “TransDrve, for only L399 plua UAT Exdeme ripple CD Rom Player - cast price... L895-Amas giveaway,. L445 Battery backed-upRAM - Applied RamReeper... 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All Prices Exclude VAT Wordbench Elizabeth Littlewood explores a powerful wordprocessor from Addison Wesley for the //e, //c and llgs Introduction Wordbench is an integrated writing proj meant for authors, in par- ticular technical authors who would probably benefit most from the vari- ous modules provided. The program runs under Prodos 8 and is provided on 4 double-sided 5.25 inch disks and also on two 3.5 inch disks. It is not copy protected and is quite easy to install ona hard disk. A minimum of 128k is needed and the program is suitable for the Apple Ile, Ic, or IGS. There are three major parts to the | ey a word processor, an out- iner and finally a section which takes care of the presentation, formatting and output of the documents pro- duced. These tasks and associated ones are covered by the following six Wordbench Applications: Outliner Notetaker Writer Print Manager Folder Manager Add-in Manager As well as the applications modules there are a number (7) of Desktop Tools: Help Viewer Format Tool Reference Tool Speller Thesaurus Word Search The Help function was particularly welcome and I found it useful at the beginning as there is quite a lot to be learned about this program. There are a lot of functions to be memorised even although the desktop tools avail- able are always displayed at the bot- tom of the screen. The lack ofa mouse was disconcert- ing (to a confirmed mouse lover) and I found I was reaching for it all the time at the beginning: in fact, even after weeks of use I still wanted to use the mouse whenever trying to position the cursor. How the cursor moves depends on different combinations of keystrokes and some I never remem- bered to use. Choosing items from a menu is easy, and the response is fast, and can be done either by using the arrow keys to highlight the re- uired item or in some cases by typing the initial letter. The latter method ts not always available but is the fastest way to move through the various lev- els of the pi & 1 also found at first that I disliked working on a screen of black back- ground and white text. Although I still miss the ability to adapt screen and text colour to rest my or I have in fact become used to the black and white and it isactually sharp andeasy to read. The other problem with the Fees is that it Is not WYSIWYG. ¢ default printer is the Imagewriter Il and though you can produce italics on screen you are not going to get italics printed out. Print-outs are therefore going to look, in my opinion, as th had been ‘typed’, fusing different fonts ts really important, then the only solution would be to print the document as an ASCII file and export it to another i Ber This would seem to be a waste of time in using Wordbench in the first place unless some of its fea- tures were very much wanted. l used this program over a couple of months and since I have to write articles and papers fairly uently, I found it extremely useful. However my particular style of working meant that I never really came to terms with the Outliner as it simply felt artificial to set out an outline which | already had firmly fixed in my mind. On the other hand. the Notetaker was an invaluable part of the package. No doubt if | were writing technical pa- pers then the ability to create and edit footnotes would have been wel- come. The same can be said for the easy creation of a Bibliography. The most useful of the extras was the Brainstormer in the Add-in Applica- tions module. I made extensive use of the Freewriting session, not only was it exactly what was needed on many occasions to get my thoughts flowing but itam me to find that it gently chided me and told me to keep writing when I momentarily dried up. That alone was almost enough to make me like this program and what's more | did as | was told and started writing again. The word processor is simple to use and easily keeps up with my ping speed which though not pro- fessional is quite competent and speedy. The screen layouts are well de- signed with a large text area. Along the top of the screen is the Prompt area containing pro; prompts and instructions which vary accord- ing to which application is being run. The Status Line is found at the bottom of the screen and indicates whether uu are in insert or overstrike mode. is is also where the list of available Desktop Tools is shown. As | said before, the Help tool is particularly important when first using this pro- When one of the tools or a macro is called then a new window pops up which overlays the main window. The new window ts always positioned so Fig 1 Wordbench Main Menu QUTLIWER . . . HOTETAKER . . . PRINT MANAGER . FOLDER MANAGER ADD-1N MANAGER . EXIT/SAVE . . Select application with + or t, then press btaduay. . Plan structure and flow . Gather infornation - Print docunents and texts Organize folders and settings « Access other applications . Save work and exit Press QH for Help. © TOOLS: HELP IKSERT sw Apple2000 December 1989 that the portion of text being referred to, for example a word whose bi is being sought. remains visible. sometimes means the text be- neath {s scrolled but sometimes it means that the pop-up window is shifted. This slowed me down at first as windows and prompts weren't always where I expected them to be butonce I became used to itand came to ap reciate that I would al- ways be able to see the appropriate text beneath. There is one irritation about these tools. shortcuts (macros) and add-in applications which still exists and that is trying to remember whether to use <return> or <open- apple retum> or <escape> to finish. ere are prompts available, true, but when working at speed one doesn’t always look at them and the Meedretn keystrokes can vary quite a it. Documentation Like all Addison-Wesley products that I have ever seen, the Packaging and documentation are excellent. The whole package arrives in a neat box which feels quite heavy which is not surprising since it contains two large manuals, a tutorial and a quick refer- ence card as well as the afore-men- Uoned disks. The manuals are glossy covered, well indexed and contain a useful apy nan sania are wide margins wi I always to ee cee like to make marginal notes. The two main manuals are the User's Guide and the Reference Manual. The quick reference guide is on and the inside has space for notes about shortcuts designed by the user. Tutorial The tutorial manual is made up of four sessions lasting from 30 minutes to one hour depending on the lesson. The first lesson is about the basic use of Wordbench and starts with a re- minder to make back-up copies of the disks and refers you to User's Guide if you are still unsure about loading and starting up. Once you have the tutorial started up, you are taken through an entire Wordbench session using a file provided. Since this ts the first lesson, it is primarilya lesson in entering text and editing it. Editing and enhancing blocks of text is also covered as is the ability to insert footnotes. How to access the on-screen help function fs explained and a brief look at the Reference Tool is taken. How to create folders and save your work obviously is explained at this stage as you might want to continue practising with this lesson later on but leave the original file untouched. Lesson two deals a bit more with the Reference Tool. Having had an earlier look at the Reference Assistant, we now also learn how to link notes to a reference, enter new references, edit and order or re-order them. How to Fig 2 Writer Menu showing Prompt and Status Lines 128k is neede arts to the or It eR oe Ey associated ones are covered by the fo wrlcnine Notetaker Writer (7a najor r— WRITER: DRAFT Maem EDIT CHANCE DOCUMENT MERGE = AHALYZE SETTINGS WORDBENCH = * = = = Introduction Wordbench 4 integrated writi 7 th prs ah Pan aa Me A various nodules pi prided, The program runs under trodes 8 ng is provided on 4 doh ersided 5.25 inch disks and also on ue } itch disks. It is not copy protected and Is quite easy to install on a d and the program is suitable rogram, a word processor, an akes care of the presentation, predacas These tasks and lowing six Wordbench TOOLS: HELP WIEWER REFERENCE INSERT use the Outliner and the Notetaker are the main themes of lesson two, however, and all the usual points are covered such as creating outlines ora set of notes and then editing them. Collapsing and expanding outlines is explained and also marking and sort- ing of notes. Lesson three effectively covers how to pull it all together, merging texts from the various sources such as outliner and notes and adjusting the format. The Brainstormer, which is an add-in application, is used in this lesson and finally the text produced is anak in various he ba spell- checking the text and performing word counts are two of the options available. The final lesson deals with Wordbench Shortcuts, in other words how to create macros which use the option key in conjunction with an- other key or sequence of keystrokes. Twenty shortcuts are already avail- able but you may re-define these as well as create new ones. By the time you have worked through all the above lessons, you will be able to use Wordbench adequately but there is so much available in this program it would be useful to spend some extra time on the learning process. Wordbench refers to text files cre- ated the Writer as documents, other texts being known rather obvi- ously as outlines, notes and refer- ences. All associated text files are stored in a work Folder. How to create these is covered in the following short gulde to some of the functions of this Mor ary On first entering Wordbench you will be taken through a menu which establishes where your various fold- ers are to be found and which work folder to use in this session; then you will be presented with the main pro- gram menu. This shows the six main modules mentioned at the beginning (see fig.1). Since word processing is wobably familiar to most readers, t's start with the Writer. Writer When you enter the Writer a new menu page (see fig.2) is presented which allows you to start work on a current document unless this is the start ofanew session. If this isso then first a list of documents in the Work Folder is shown. You then have the choice, as displayed in the File Selec- tion Window, of working on a previ- ously created document or starting a new one. You then choose Write from the Writer menu and you will have the normal text entry screen before with the cursor positioned at the point you were last working. Both insert and overstrike mode ofentering text is possible and sticky spaces, sticky returns and soft hyphenation are all provided. Although sticky re- turns will ensure that paragraphs are kept together, may still spread over two pages, so the Format desktop tool should be used if the paragraphs are to be kept on the same page. ane katie to Format tool a wit e spacing, paragrap! indentation, ‘andentining of text and such, there are Viewer and Reference tools, It is also extremely useful to be able to spell check a word, find a synonym or even do a word search when one is unsure of the spelling and all without leaving the text en! screen. One can of course also spe! check the document from the main Writer menu. The Viewer ts probabh the tool that makes Wordbench suc! a flexible program. From the Viewer one may look at any text item in the current folder, any other folder and importantly the Lil Folder. Hav- ing called some text into the Viewer it may then be copied wholly, or a se- lected into the current text fleld of the Writer or of the Notetaker when December 1989 Apple2000 @e@s Desktop Tools Fig 3 NoteTaker screens showing the 4 fields and full set of r NOTETAKER: MEW HOTE Press Qitasmay when done. OUTLINE: SUBJECT: Format of Hotes ————— TEXT: Motes consist of four Fields and nay fe a pe subject or a text string Cu: area © TOOLS: HELP VIEHER FORMAT REFERENCE HOTE 3 OF 3 REFERENCE® ked di Fas 26 feentdetted” link, eerie te in the SPELL THESAURUS WORD INSERT working there. Amore comprehensive merging ability exists in the M¢ facility of the Writer main menu. Fi- nally the Reference tool allows crea- tion, editing and sorting of references which may then be copied into appli- cations or marked for printing by themselves. For example. the refer- ences could be used as footnotes in a text document or printed as a sepa- rate bibliography. The Reference Assistant is also called up via this tool which will give guidance on the cor- rect way to enter references to such varied publications as books, disser- tations, Government publications, interviews, letters and periodicals. Miscellaneous entries such as those for film. paintings, radio programs ete. are also advised on. The next entry in the Writer menu is the Edit facility, This has all the usual capabilities such as copy, move, de- lete, undo last edit ete. and many of these can also be called up without leaving the text entry by using Open Apple M. The Search and Replace functions are especially interesting in that they allow a search for a condi- tion such as double spacing, a head- ing orasticky space and soon and not just for text occurrences. This is also the place where you have the option of directly entering and editing foot- notes. The Change Document function is simply as its name suggests. The merging facilities called at this level via Merge set pou merge in outlines, notes, or both as well as text from other Wordbench documents. You may also import text files from other applications which have been saved as ASCII files. As well as being able to perform word counts and spell check the text, or mark misspelled words for later editing, Analyze offers Find Matchi: Words which means you can mane words which have been found to have a match in a word list. The word lists already on offer are a list of sexist words, commonly misused words and alistof: phrases. A punctuation list is also provided and new lists may be added by the user. Once words have been marked you can ask for only the marked text to be displayed and after viewing it choosing Unmark all Marked Text will then remove the markin; i Ifyou want to unmark only some eS] text itis necessary to use the pant . The text may also be collapsed to display only the headings if wished. Finally Settings is where one chooses how the headings should look, paragraph formats and tab set- tings. While working on any text, it is advisable to save at regular intervals and fortunately this is easily done by typing Open Apple U so that one loesn't need to leave the work area and move uP and down through the various levels of the peograny In fact many functions can be carried out at all levels even if the method varies depending on the level you are at. Outliner The Outliner menu consists of the Outline, Collapse, Expand, Labels and Modify functions. Choosing Out- line lets you start creating and editing a new outline or loads in the existing one. Only one outline of course is possible in any one folder. The outline may be up to four levels deep andeach level can have as many as 26 head- ings but there is an overall limit of 255 headings in the outline. The Collapse and Expand functions are as they suggest and it is possible to collapse/ expand one level or all the way. When an outline is collapsed. any headings which have subheadings are marked with an asterisk. Three different op- tions are provided by Labels so that headings and subheadings may be 10 &2e Apple2000 identified by number and letter (the Standard format), numbers only, or no identifiers. In addition to normal editing while creat the outline, Modify caters for b! editing and there are inbuilt protections which make sure you don't try for example to move blocks of headings to inappro- priate places in the outline. Outline headings may be linked to notes cre- ated in the Notetaker and also merged into the working document in which case the outline headings become section headings and are shown in the format set up in the Writer menu. The Notetaker The Notetaker is probably the key to using Wordbench successfully. Not only can you use it as a means of jotting down ideas to be used later but the ability to link notes to an outline is particularly powerful. Starting a new document in the Writer by merg- linked outline and notes could in fact be the document or at least the first draft of your document. The Notetaker menu consists of New Note, Mark, Browse/Edit, and Sort. Notes consist of four flelds (see fig.3) and may be marked according to an out- line link, a reference, subject ora text string (used as an identifier) in the text area. Compound selection crite- ria are allowed but no more than two fields may be chosen. A check mark is placed against any note that has been marked. When using the Browse/ Edit facility, one then has the choice of seeing all the notes or only those which have been marked. Sorting of notes can be done either by Outline, Reference or Subject, otherwise notes will appear in the order that they have been entered. Notes linked to a par- ticular outline heading will remain so even if the heading is moved toa new position in the outline. Printing All the settings for documents, notes etc. are made via the Folder Manager and soare the Print Defaults for all the various texts that can be produced Le. this is where one de- cides how footnotes, bibliography, references and so on, as well as the main document text, should be printed, The Printer Manager is where one chooses which of the printer driv- ers to use, the Imagewriter Il being the default printer. ASCII text may be printed by choosing the printer driver identified as Plain. One can also cre- ate a “new” printer and modifications Tey. be made to the default printer codes if for example you would like to replace italics, which your printer might not support, with another text enhancement. There is a 6-page ap- pendix in the User's Manual covering all the possible print settings for documents, references, footnotes, etc. and I don't feel I could possibly deal with them all here. Once you have chosen Print and selected, fem the list of texts in the work folder, December 1989 ment Fig 4 Print Format settings just prior to printing a docu- PRINT RAKAGER? PRIKT PRINTER: IMAGEWRITER.1] —— Do you want to change print foraat settings (Y/N)? N h COPD: 4 Print Footnotes? Kt eesciaes bn ine ioe Position & Needaaryttt conrrwats ‘age Length thins) HA Divider from text! oF 4° Pe margin (Lines Start No. Front 1 ton margin (Lines): rae a aPClay of note: SINGLE) Left margin (Characters): Text and note Labels: IMBERS JustiFication: Lert Position of Labels: Print text? ves Sule tof tte Label we i i SING! i i f text | ne 7 TP ie Prin ate a oa inlet - iif r Print fi ibl door rire nea be {i er hes s through lev jane Mitgeat feof Arde. Lines: aximut Length of heading: “3 anes tert 1 sitter betaden hes head ae BLANKS: a * By to prints sot tee to arr he at vi ine spacing: $7: itt BN loscarke i the Hi of Contents what is to be printed, you then have the option of overriding the default settings and making a decision on how your printout should appear (see fig.4). Shortcuts and Add-in Applications Wordbench 1s already a program with a wide range of facilities to aid the author, but it doesn’t end there. Not only can you customise Wordbench and define macros, known as Shortcuts to Wordbench, but the Add-in Manager allows for other applications to be added to Wordbench. One add-in module is already provided, the Brainstormer. There are four brainstorming mod- ules to choose from, two of them designed to encourage the flow of ideas and two to help you be concise when defining your aims. These are Freewriting. favisible Writing. Goal Setting and Nutshelling. Invisible writing which displays. asterisks rather than the text you are typing is essentially a variation of the Freewriting option. Freewriting was the one I used most frequently. You may set a time limit for yourself but when it is reached you may extend it if wished. No editing is allowed in this mode and if you stop typing for more than a few seconds you are reminded to “Keep Writing”. As I said, it works! The final text can of course be copied into Writer and editing can then be carried out there. You will almost certainly need to do so! Nutshelling and Goal Setting both use the prin- ciple of restricting the length of text entry. You are therefore forced to set down your ideas as concisely and clearly as possible but some simple editing is allowed so it is possible to work at refining your ideas before saving them. Nutshelling allows 8 lines of text in which to state the main idea of your work whereas Goal Set- ting. with only 2 lines per category, is intended to help you ident Point of View, Audience these being the 4 categories pre- sented, Subject, Conclusion Altogether, Wordbench is quite an impressive package but I feel that this article can only been a brief overview. The serbipc curve for this p iescran is probably a long one aide ere is al- ways a tendency for humans to stop at the point where they can get rea- sonable results. However to get full value, I thinkone would need to persevere a bit longer than I did. It is undoubtedly a pack- age most useful to authors although the word processor can be used for any text file production. The lack of WYSIWYG ts a drawback in this pro- gram, otherwise the documentation and performance are both of a high standard and I would say this ts defi- nitely value for money in a possibly specialised market. Elizabeth Littlewood ¢ info Product : Wordbench Publisher : Addison Wesley Available from : Shop2000 P.O.Box 3 Liverpool 121 8PY Price ; £154.22 inc VAT + P&P Value : dddd Performance : édde Documentation; é¢6éé¢é MGA APPLE // BARGAINS EDUCATION ALPINE TRAM RIDE £11.95" ANIMAL HOTEL £11.95" BIKE HIKE £11.95* CLOWNING AROUND £11.95 MATHS IN A NUTSHELL £11.95" PIPELINE £11.95" TRADE (PD) £4,00* GAMES ALTER EGO: FEMALE/MALE each £4.95 ALTERNATE REALITY II (ounceon) £9.95 ANDROMIDA TRILOGY (Games) £4.00* BATTLE OF ANTIETAM £14.95) BLUE POWDER, GREY SMOKE £14.95 COLONIAL CONQUEST £9.95 COLOSSUS IV CHESS £14.95) COMPUTER AMBUSH £9.95 DEFENDER (PD) £4.00" DESTROYER (IIGS ONLY) £14.95) EUTE £9.95 FIELD OF FIRE £9.95) FIGHTER COMMAND £9.95 GEMSTONE HEALER £9.95 GETTYSBURG £14.95 HALLEY PROJECT £9.95 HELICOPTER RESCUE (HERO) £9.95) HIGH SEAS £14.95 LANCELOT £9.95) MECH BRIGADE £9.95 MINDSHADOW £9.95 MOVIE MONSTER GAME £14.95 MURDER ON THE MISSISSIPPI £9.95 OIL BARONS £9.95 PHANTASIE II £9.95 ROF 1985 £9.95 REBEL CHARGEatcnicxamauca £14.95 RINGS OF ZILFIN £9.95 ROADWAR 2000 £9.95 SHILOH £9.95) SOUTH PACIFIC QUEST £4,00° SPACE SHUTTLE £9.95" STREET SPORTS BASKETBALL £9.95 STREET SPORTS SOCCER £9.95 SUB BATTLE SIMULATOR £9.95 THE GAMES:SUMMER/WINTER EDITIONS each £19.95 TIME AND MAGIK £9.95) TRACER SANCTION £9.95 WORLD GAMES £9.95 PRICES INCLUDE VAT & *-POSTFREE (CURRENT STOCK ONLY) December 1989 ‘Apple2000 1 2e Apple ligs Linkup to Sinclair QL Stuart Aitken talks to the opposition with his llgs and describes both the success and the pitfalls Introduction A friend and myself recently had the idea of linking our two computers together via their RS-232 serial ports; it was a kind of challenge. We thought that it would take days and prove to be really pe eoagtct aoa it didn't. even thor the se rts tried to hinder us. We maieyed ont aim in that we were able to talk tocach other and also transfer files, both ways. Problems The first problem was the RS-232 ports (Note: although the Apple IIGSs port is an RS-433 port, it is compat- ible) - what pins would we link to- gether? Had we both had the stan- dard 25 way ‘D' socket, it would have been meth just requiring a standard 25 way plug to 25 way plug cable (and possibly something else - see later on). But do Apple or Sinclair stick to the standard? No, Apple using the elusive 8 pin Mini DIN connector and the QL having a slightly easier to obtain 6 pin BT phone plug. The dia- below shows the way RS-232 ideally works: GND GND RX (TX= transmit) RX TX (RX =recelve) HSOUT --- HSIN (HSOUT= hand- shaking out ) HSOUT (HSIN = hand- shaking in ) HSIN - Handshaking is an interesting thing, often confusing. It works like this - The HSOUT line tells the other device whether or not it is ready to receive data (e.g. its buffer may be full up). It is only enabled when the first device is ready to receive. The other device should check its HSIN line and only transmit when the other device indicates that it is ready. This works both ways. Some ports don’t support handshaking; others won't work without- it can be important. The problem is that the handshaking lines aren't given simple names like HSOUT and HSIN, they are called DTR (Data Terminal Ready), DSR (Data Set Ready), CTS (Clear To Send), RTS (Ready to Send) and oth- ers, When two different devices have totally different handshaking lines, It may not be clear which to connect to which. A manual that has pin-out details of the port should provide the answer, by indicating which pin is the handshaking output and which pin is the input. However, do. remem! that the output of one has to be con- nected to the input of another, and vice versa. This leads me nicely onto another problem. namely that there are two different types of RS-232 ports, DTE (Data Terminal Equipment) and DCE (Data Communications Equipment). ADTE port is correctly wired, but on a DCE port. the receive, transmit and handshaking pins are reversed. This was so that ifyou had a computer with a DTE port. it could be connected pin to pin to a modem, that had a DCE pe I mentioned earlier that it would to connect two 25 way ‘D ports together - in actual fact, difficul- tles may be encountered with the DTE/DCE problem. If you are con- necting together two computers with different RS-232 ports, there should be no problem, but use a lead that connects pin 1 to 1, 2 to 2 etc. How- ever, if you are connecting together two 25 way ‘D' ports that are the same (e.g. both DTE), either fie will require a cable that crosses the appropriate wires or an ordi: cable and some- thing like a wiring box, that permits you to link the pins you want. My advice, if you are ig to link two ports that have totally different sock- ets. is first. make your own cable, or modify a cable and secondly, so as to not get mixed up with the pins, is to use the DTE port where there is an option (if there is only one port, it is likely that it will be a port). Finally, before connecting up, be sure you know exactly what you are doing, asa wrong connection could leave you with a lot of dead computer! In my opinion, youreally need some commercial terminal software. How- ever, some Basics, such as the QL's, have commands relating to serial ports and you may be able to write a simple piece of terminal software in Basic, but you will be unlikely to be able to transfer files using this. Obvi- ously, both computers will have to use the same baud rate, but they also must be using the same number of start, stop, data and parity bits. which I feel is often overlooked. Be- ware of faster baud rates which may only work with specific combinations of Start and stop bits etc. I had no problem transmitting or receiving dataat all baud rates up to the Apple's maximum of 9600, although I would advise something slower, because at that speed buffers could be filled ey quickly and if the cable is unshielded, anolsy line could cause corruption of the data. Transferring files was no problemat all, ng terminal program: the handshi ig worked fine - no data was lost. However, be careful in a powerful Basic - the QL Basic can copy a file from disk to the serial port, but there was a problem in that the file header information was transmit- ted also. If transferring graphics files between different makes of computer, it is very advisable to convert the file to a standard format, such as GIF (Graphics Interchange Format), as trying to write a Basic program to interpret a “foreign” graphics file is very difficult! There is a program todo this on the IIGS in the Apple 2000 library, called Showflle. In my opin- ion, such a link would be best for text files, as these are most likely to be needed to be transferred from one computer to another. When transfer- ring pipe apeste aces such as Applewor! les, first get the program to make an ASCII copy of the original file and transfer this. dBase II won't be able to make head or tail of an Appleworks file, but it could do some- thing with an ASCII file. Conclusion My RS-232 link up was a t success and I was, toa limited pars able to control the IIGS (in Basic), from the QL, and vice versa. It was alsovery cheap, as! simply connected a 25 way ‘D' socket to my modem cable and then wired this to a termi- nal block that went to the serial port on the QL. Total cost = £3.25. | would recommend it as a good way to trans- fer data between two incompatible computers. Stuart Aitken é 12 Appie2000 December 1989 The ‘L Test Learner drivers test experience: My first Hard Disk Drive by Bill Mealey I decided I could do itl had read and reread all the articles in the maga- zines about the SCSI Hard Disk and after seeing Ewen Wannop’s feature in the April Edition and Nibbler in the following edition I decided to have a 0. - DEREK HUGHES of le men- tioned in Nibblers writing supplied me with a ST 277N-1 64mb. SEAGATE DRIVE and a massive 150watt power supply with its own cooling fan for the very reasonable sum of a little over £400. he also supplied the required software, a pleasure to deal with him, the drive arrived within 24 hours of my order. I noted that the Apple SCSI card required for use with the Seagate ST277N-1 had to be the"C” Rom ver- sion. I phoned my order for the Apple SCSI card and a cable to BIDDMUTHIN, STEVE MORRISBY spoke to me and took my order, he warned me that this was a difficult project and that the warranty on the card would be void if there was any trouble. The card and cable arrived, card OK, cable wrong type (I must remem- ber to send it back). Try as I could I was not able get anyone to supply the correct cable, in the end I made up my own using the ‘wirin; eg or from the le 2000 M cine ril edition. Bet en I tried to buy a case, any kind of a case, no luck there, all the Apple people | tried to buy one from had had requests for this item before from DIY people and said they could order one BUT it would take some time etc. etc. , Sol finished up making my own case, Thad this 150 watt. power supply ina great big case with its own fan this was lesigned into the drive case that I had made up and the unit was finished. Now I had the whole bag of tricks together I found that the drive had 5 pairsof1D pins and the illustration for the drive in the Universal Manual only had 4 pairs, I could not find any information for the ID jumper con- nections, many phone calls later, and after I had been told that I would not do any damage with the jumper con- think of without any success. I could not get past the first partition stage, not having any experience with hard disks it took me some time to convince myself that it might be something er that the ID connections. I found out that Ewen Wannop was away for a few days, that source of help was cut off for a while. During the time I had been trying to find ‘3 out how towire up I had been re- reading all the maga- zines I could lay ip Hired onIreada feature on hard disks in Computer Shopper by Paul Mullen. from the Computor Advice Centre, Tonbridge. I phoned his office to speak to him, he ‘was away, and one of his colleagues Martin Saul. could not have n more helpful he listened patiently to my tail of woe and he said he was sorry he had no experience of this drive and he could not find any references in his office, then came up the most helpful of all suggestions oy, don't you ring up the mi ?. Yes, he then gave me the phone number for Seagate UK. I thanked him for his information. The gentle- man from gave me the con- nections and promised to post a mea proper manual for the ST277N-1 (it arrived ) he then asked me had I got anything from the drive at all. He told me to disconnect the cable from the drive to the CPU and power up the drive, (this allows the drive todoa self test routine) then count the number of flashes on the drive LED this indi- cates the state of the drive, I did as instructed and I counted 8 flashes, I reported this to my newfound friend whereupon he told me the drive hada READ OPERATING SYSTEM MI- CROCODE FROM DRIVE fault (whew what a mouthful) and the fault was not serviceable by user he advised me to contact the supplier and inform him of our conversation and to obtain an replacement drive. Soon a new drive was on its way to me, the old one returned and a credit note promptly issued for the old drive. I used the information from the feature on Hard Disks out of the April Apple 2000 magazine and followed step step the instructions using the so! outlined in this feature. Within a hour or two of receiving the new drive it was up and running and I saw the HARD DISK DRIVE ICONS for first time on the IIgs. it was a great feeling. After sorting out the missing mbs. I spent some time finding the best Interleave L/h the in- structions on the I. HACKER disk settled for 11 and started TEST UNIT and patiently waited (this takes some hours) saw on the screen UNIT PASSED. ... . 1 threw my ‘L’ plates away, and that is the story of how I passed my test. I can not recall any of the articles that I have read mentioning the DISK test without the CPU being con- nected, it would have saved mea lot of time had I known. Finding the case and cables is the only problem unless you can get them made for you, the rest is easy, I can not understand now why I thought it was difficult, read the manual, make sure you have the correct software and cable connections, power up and follow the menu prompts. The moral of this story is find an rt to advise you, if you need help, I found all the people I asked for assistance most cooperative if they are reading this thank you one and all. Reversing my driving test, 1 gave myself a pass, if | can do it anyone can. Bill Mealey ¢ Background material on writer. Bill M was a National Paper (Daily Mirror) picture editor working out of the Manchester office he took to computers when he found that it was more fun to type letters with a word processor r he retired a couple of years ago. he started with an Amstrad 8626/ then on to a to EuroPlus/ likes using Apples, now using lle and 11gs. thinking about a Mac. his only regret is that he didn't get hooked on computers years ago. nections if | used the wrong pairing. I tried all the permutations that I con December 1989 Apple2000 GS Font Editor John Beattie looks at the new Font Editor from Beagle Bros As a great fan of Appleworks GS, the lack of aversion localised (or should I say localized ?) for Great Britain has bothered me since I got Appleworks GS almost a = ago. Its inability to delete words from the original diction- ary( making color, for example, an acceptable spelling) is a minor nul- sance; its inability to show and print a & sign was something which drove me to a seething rage of frustration. All the more so since the majority of GS fonts already contain the & sign. Unfortunately, this has been rele- gated to ASCII 163 and, since most programs (Appleworks GS included) use, show and print only those in the range 0 to 128, the £ sign remained unreachable. Certainly, some shareware pro- grams (Font Doctor, Font Editor and Font Switch - all available from Apple 2000) could show the availability of the £ sign and, with some judicious “wing and a Ls eal Juggling, I had managed to produce a font with a & sign in a reasonable number of sizes. But it wasn't easy. Enter Beagle Bros’ GS Font Editor to the rescue! The package Itis Srey ting a good commercial package should be: well packaged and presented, with an excellent manual, it comes on both 5.25 and 3.5 inch disks and ts hard disk and ram disk installable. It works on the Ile, IIc and IIc+ as well as on the GS. Why would anyone want to use a GS font editor on these other machines, you might ask. Well, GS Font Editor can be used to modify GS fonts so that they can be used in Publish It and other non-GS pro- grams. Here I should, perhaps, declare an interest. GS Font Editor was origi- nally a Styleware product and was held up by that company's absorption into C yen ‘strd mainly for me Burpee of Cl obtainin; le- works GS. However, Beagle ne: who have been heavily involved in Classic Appleworks add-ons, have picked this up, put finishing touches to it and released it under their label. Before Apple 2000 was approached by MGA who supplied the copy for review, | had already seen GS Font Editor advertised in In Cider and had asked a friend going to the States to get it for me. So I was already committed to the idea of GS Font Editor and | certainh wasn't disappointed by the reality. It isa he which follows the Apple Golden Rule that you should be able to take it from its package, boot it up and start doing some useful work within 10 minutes or so. It is also a program which has depths which are well documented in the manual. Booting the Program Booting up presents you with a main screen with a menu bar in the usual format comprising Apple Sym- bol, File, Edit and Special. The screen then is split into left and right portions ; the Font window on the left, showing, in a grid pattern, the characters present in the font currently loaded for editing. The char- acters are not shown in the font itself in this window, this is left forthe right hand sec- tion of the screen where Samples of the font are shown, In plain style. on the t hand por- tion clears tigi shy Ne Samples area to al- low you to in any characters you may wish to view. This is necessary since in the larger sizes of fonts, there is not room to show all the characters in the font at once. Using The Font Window The Font window is a 16 by 16 grid with spaces for all the possible char- acters (255) ina font, plus the missing symbol which is usually an empty rectangle. Clicking on a character in this grid takes you to the Edit screen where the character Is displayed. with its ASCII code in hex and decimal above it, six boxes to the it of it showing the character in each of the styles - plain, bold, italic, underline, outline and shadow, while to the left there are 8 tools with which to alter the character. Apt, these tools follow the Apple paren and comprise marquee, grabber, four arrows, pencil, eraser, straight edge, rectangle and oval. The only tool which is unusual here is the four arrows which move the font rectangle without moving the character. Even Beagle Bros. say that they're not sure why this is useful but that the Macintosh font editors they've seen let you do this so they figured they had to build it in, too! Editing : Editing a character is a straightfor- ward process, using the tools avail- able. The font can then be saved with the same name (I.e. over the original) or with a different name so as to preserve the original font Intact. Again, the manual sets out the alter- natives and cxamipie® of “good” and “bad” font names for your guidance. Characters can be cut or copied and pasted into new locations in the grid, so that it Is not necessary to build a new character completely fronr scratch. For ex- ample, anaccented e could be created pony by copying and pasting an e into a new Bad lo- cation, then adding the accent and re- saving the font. The accented e would then be available by the keystroke whic! accessed the new id location. To as- sist in this, the manual contains a Key Chart showing the keystrokes required for each of the 255 ASCII characters. Since these vary from the straightforward pressing key m to get the character m to pressing Option u then u again to fet a, this chart is most helpful. Copying, seen | and pasting could also be u: to customise a font for use, for ex- ample where a teacher ofa foreign language wanted to write class ques- tions using French or German char- acters but did not want to have to re- member awkward keystroke se- quences, the characters could be cut and pasted into easier locations, per- haps using the locations of charac- ters not needed by the teacher. 4 § Appie2000 December 1989 The Special Menu The Special Menu lets you scale an entire font to make it larger or smaller, hide the styles of the cl c~ ter being edited in the edit window, get information on the current font’s name, size and ID and edit the next or previous character, automatically resaving the font changes as it goes. Using The Program Ihave used GS Font Editor over the last 3 weeks both to modify charac- ters in a font individually, switching them into handier locations, editing them to look different or creating new characters and to work on whole fonts, renaming them and aero 3 them. I have never been able to get G: Font Editor to misbehave: it does what it sets out to do without a hitch. For those of you with Appleworks GS a Up and a word of warning: it seemed that it would be easy to change the Shaston font yy switching the $ sign to the & sign and thereby let the Spreadsheet module Rg be ures with a pounds instead ofa dollar format. This I thought could be ac- complished by switching the $ and & characters in the font and resaving the font. However, if you look in your fonts folder in the system folder, you'll find o1 Shaston 16. Change this and, although you can then print the £ sign in Better Text quality in both normal and condensed mode, you will still get the $ showing up in all other prints. This is because Shaston 8 which is the font used by the Spread- sheet module is, I believe, held in ROM and can't therefore be modified. The reason it works in Better Text mode is that the GS looks for a font twice the size when printing in this juality and, when it finds the modi- ied version of Shaston 16, it uses this. Conclusions So, all in all, a most useful and informative package. I feel I have learned more about fonts and their construction from the manual to this ik than from any other source including A2 Central's special issue devoted to fonts). The manual has a dry, laid back sense of humour that makes you feel that font editing is easy. With the advent of GS/OS System 5.0, things have changed for the bet- ter and now, like our Macintosh brethren before us, we can, by addi- tional keystrokes, access those char- acters formerly unattainable. For example, to geta£sign both onscreen and in print, you now press Option and 3 and, if the font being has As at ASCII 163, it will be ac- c by System 5.0. However, there are still many uses for GS Font Editor, Product : GS Font Editor Publisher : Beagle Bros. Available from : MGA Softcat Pear Tree Appledore Kent TN26 2AR (0233) 83571 Price : £39.95 inc VAT + P&P ééd+ édddd ceded Value : Performance : Documentation : from simple beer up or down sizes to the creation of a character not included in that font. And, although ‘ihe no think of characters as letters or numbers, they can be a bols or pictures: one friend is thinking of constructing a font holding his firm's logo as a character which would then be easily accessible and print- able from within a document. John Beattie « Disks , Double sided 3.5" Sony branded, box of 10, 2DD 3.5" Sony/TDK bulk packed, 25 off 3.5” Sony, HD, box of 10, 2HD 3.5" HD bulk packed, 10 off 5.25” 48 tpi, bulk packed, 25 off $.25” disk notcher 3.5" lockable storage box, 100 cap. 5.25” lockable storage box, 110 cap, Toner Cart.’s Apple Laserwriter (black) Apple Laserwriter |! (black) Computer Images 15 Grove Market Place, Eltham, London, SE9 SPU Access/Visa cards, Telephone: 01 - 850 3883 £ Cables , size as stated £ 14 SCSI 25 way to SO way, 1m 13 20 SCSI 50 way to SO way, Im 21 29 8 pin to Imagewriter 8 pin, 2m 6 24 8 pin to Imagewriter 25 way, 2m 10 8 8 pin to modem, 2S way D plug 10 ANET kit 31 5 ANET, cable, 10m 10 ANET in-line coupler 6 7 4 pin extension cable, 1.5m 8 7 Printer ribbons, priceper 3off £ £ Fabric, black, compatables 7S Imagewriter II im 79 Imagewriter LQ 24 Epson EX800 / 1000 12 Epson LQ500 / 800 / 850 11 Epson LQ 1000 / 1050 12 Epson LX80/86 8 Epson MX/FX80 10 Star LC10 W All prices include VAT, Carriage free, E&EO December 1989 ‘Apple2000 15 Apple Ilgs Machine Language for beginners Een a Dave Ward reviews a primer on Machine language programming Apple Ilgs Machine Language for beginners is a book published by Roger Wagner at about the same time as Merlin 8/16 first appeared. Roger Wagner was once a teacher before forming his own software compam SouthWestern Data items whic! may explain why his book Assembly Lines gets it deserved eulogies as a teaching aid. What does it claim? The book Apple IIgs Machine Lan- guage for beginners does what it claims and more. It starts off discuss- ing Applesoft BASIC versus machine code through how to write machine code programs from Applesoft. It describes three assemblers; the one you get free with the machine (the mini assembler), Merlin 8/16 and APW from the Apple Pro; ers Workshop. The basics of machine code programming such 65816 regis- ters, loops, counters, logic, shift and simple mathematics are treat aly The more difficult concepts of ad ig modes and data storage are discussed, too. ProDOS 8 and ProDOS 16 are covered followed by the Apple IIgs and its memory man- agement and tool box routines. Fi- nally you are guided along the path to produce a simple ting program using many of the Apple IIgs tool box routines. In each chapter the neces- sary 65816 instructions and address- ing modes are discussed until by the end of the book almost all will have been described in detail. How big is it? The book has a little over 600 pages divided into 20 chapters and five appendices. A 3.5" diskette contain- ing all the programs is available at an cost. I decided that I'd do better by typing in these demonstrations rather than get the diskette. That proved to be a mistake and I would like to thank MGA Microsystems who came to the rescue by providing me with one. The Chapter and Verse Let’s just delve a little deeper into some of those 20 chapters: The first chapter discusses the need for machine language by comparing it with Applesoft BASIC. Then follows the use of PEEK and POKES from Applesoft to produce machine code Progen that can be CALLed from App! lesoft to execute them. This flows well into the second chapter where the ‘dreaded’ hexadecimal number pion srt is a prerequisite of machine juage programming, is neatly covered and made clear. This is followed by some simple machine lan; ic PLOgTaNDe: Chapter 3 deals with the Apple Ilgs mini assembler. This mini assembler actually appeared in the first Apple | computers with the Integer BASIC in ROM but disappeared when Applesoft BASIC in ROM arrived with the Apple ]{ plus. Fortunately it re-appeared in late Apple //c and enhanced Apple / /e computers with a few additions. The Apple IIgs incarnation is, how- ever, vastly superior to the older ver- sions in its capabilities, aithoug? many wouldn't call it an assembler because you can't use labels!! Chapter 4 shows how to use Merlin with small demonstration programs. Chapter 5 uses the same demon- strations to show APW the Apple Programmers Workshop. Those a ing both assemblers available may notice that APW is more difficult, long winded to use and assembles source file very much more rast Begin- ners, in particular, will find Merlin by far the easiest and pleasant to use. Don't, however, get me wrong! APWis, perhaps, the most hietly featured Apple IIgs assembly lan; e system available and is fepariabiy e choice of professional programmers. The next six chapters deal with programming concepts such as counting constructing loops and making comparisons. Simple arith- metic of the 6502 and 65816 is de- scribed and the logical operations are covered, too. The 65816 and 6502, too, are endowed with a wealth of addressing modes and these are fully covered using a printing programasa demonstration. Data storage, an important area a programming is included. Chapter 12 ts for Applesoft pro- | Boe who want to use machine age routines then ProDOS 8 is discussed. At this stage you will be about halfway through the book. Most of the book so far will be of interest to all Apple // computer users. And there is more! The rest of the book ts for Apple IIgs users only since it uses the goal of an Apple Ilgs desktop simple painting proj . The Apple igs is not only a fast classical 8-bit Apple // computer largely described in the first halfof the book but a 16-bit machine with the possibilities of 8 megabytes of RAM and a whole toolbox of subroutines in ROM and RAM that allow one to pro- duce desktop programs with windows and mouse input just like the Macin- tosh. To use all this extra memory and Tr a new operating system Pro- DOS 16 (now GSOS) has arrived and this is described in detail first fol- lowed by details of a set of tools called ‘The Memory Manager. With all that memory available some method of mani ig it is necessary and to effec- feta a full-blooded i Apple I, desktop program you'll need to full use of The Memory Manager. Through the rest of the book all the nec tools from the toolbox are descril in text and by the example of producing programs which slowly attain the goal of the simple paint program, Conclusions When you've read this book a few times and tried out all the programs om otto gis all there is to ow about App! rogrammil and the toolbox, Bi Seaapenaie gives a list of further reading. Other appendices list all the instruction of the 65816 in some detail, explain the commands in the Apple Ilgs monitor and a listing of a ProDOS 16 program that open reads and closes files. writ- ten in Merlin 16, of course. Final Thoughts Apple igs Machine Ponguage for Beginners 1s an excellent cor- rectly deals with machine language programming for the two machines which constitute the Apple IIgs. The book contains a lot of useful informa- tion not only for beginners but also most other Apple // users. My copy of the book is fast becoming ‘dog-eared’ due to over use. Dave Ward e Apple ligs Machine Language for Beginners :- Author :- Roger Wagner Publisher :- COMPUTE! publications Greensboro North Carolina You can purchase this book from MGA Microsystems at £19.95 with the diskette as an extra £15.95. 16 Apple2000 December 1989 War in Middle Earth John Kishimoto descends into the abyss of a Tolkien adventure Introduction Reader's of J.R.R. Tolkien's classic “Lord of the Rings” will no doubt immediately recognise the location of this adventure/strategy game. Those who have not had the opportunity to read this book will find the manual instructive, and provides a good background to the scenario and main characters. The action takes place in the whole of Middle Earth. the objec- tive being the delivery of the One Ring to Mt.Doom in Mordor. Frodo 7 gins, unlike the book, does not have to carry the Ring to Mordor himself. Should he perish in an encounter, another character can carry it to Mt.Doom. It should be said at this point iat the book e nota Lk ao guide in helpii u alot in Le game. Althou, the jective ts the same. the evil Sauron has a sig- nificant number of allies, in the form of Nazguls, Trolls, Wights and other creatures, making a straight assault with a small team very difficult. A number of potential allies exists in the form of Elves and Dwarves who, when pscuea wine ropriate (tobe found around Middle Earth), will mobilise and provide the necessary manpower. The Levels The game Is presented in three dif- ferent levels. At the Full Map level, the whole of Middle Earth ts visible, giving a penetalised view of the deployment of forces. Those under your command as flashing blue dots, Sauron's forces as red dots. and those that are un- committed as green dots. As with most Apple Il GS games, control ts achieved by using the mouse and activating various icons on the screen. At the Full Map level, you are presented with four icons. The Eye allows you to look into Galadriel’s mirror, the enchanted pool found in the kingdom of Lorien. The resultant window informs you of friendly and evil force activities. The Scroll icon allows you to save the game on the current game disk (disk 2). Unfortunately, you are al- lowed to save only one game on the disk, so if you require backup, you will have to copy the complete disk. The Hourglass icon changes the perceived time scale of the game into one of three states: Normal, Hasty and Very Hasty. Although Very Hasty is useful in the early stages of the game, later on a more sedate time scale will be necessary. The Magnifying glass provides a very quick way of examinii part of Muldle Earth. Just elitkron the icon, then move the resulting magni- fying glass pointer to any point on the map you wish to examine. Using this option magnifies the Map of the se- lected area, bringing you to the Cam- paign level. The Campaign level gives you a detailed view of the selected area which can be scrolled in all four direc- tions by using the mouse. At this level, you are presented with terrain features such as towns, hills and riv- ers. Individuals and groups are repre- sented by small figures. the figure being the character Kecdgteicen that party. Forces are shown as a shield, the shield design indicating the type. such as a spear for light infantry or a scimitar for Corsairs. A flashing shield indicates readiness of the force to accept commands. As in the Full Map. a Series of control icons line the right hand side of the map. The Eye icon at the campaign level gives you status information on the selected character or force. The Map icon takes you back to the Full Map level. The Hourglass is the same as that described earlier. The Arrow icon allows movement commands to be issued to forces or characters. The Magnifying glass, as in the previous case allows closer examina- tion of a section of the map. Selection of this option takes you to the Anima- tion level. At this level, all characters or forces are visible as animated characters on the screen. Although small groups are accurately represented, large forces such as cavalry, are repre- sented by a small number of horse- men. Clicking on any character will tell you who are and what they are Cr As in the previous screens, a series of control icons are available. The and Map perform essentially the same functions as before, except that the Map takes you back to the Cam- paign level. ¢ Provisions icon enables any one of the displayed characters to put down, collect or use an object. The Game As described earlier, the primary objective of the game is to take the One Ring to Mt.Doom in Mordor. Scatte: across Middle Earth are forces which can potentially be your ally or form formidable opponents. Using the icons for control (at the campaign level), you can manipulate the Fellowship to travel in directions which enable you to avoid potential problems. Unfortunately, although Sepue and Ores are clearly visible on the Map, other creatures, such as giant spiders, wolves and wights can attack at any time, making travel something of an ordeal. During your travels, however, you can occasion- ally encounter strangers who may impart some item of information to you, which can be of significant bene- fit. Such encounters at the coupe level offers you the chance to go to the animation to watch the meeting, or simply continue on. Ifyou are given a clue as to where an item of interest can be found, you have to travel at the animation level in order to actually see and collect said item. At the cam, level you cannot find or manipulate an object. Encounters with opponents will lead to combat. At the animation level, you are given a degree of control over your characters. By clicking in boxes within the combat window, you can control individuals to charge, engage, withdraw or retreat. The de- fault selection is engage. The combat window will also give indications of force strength (if a large group is engaged in combat) or some measure of health of the individual character (black for healthy, red for wounded, for dead). If you decide to ignore ¢ battle, it will take place anyway. and the subsequent result will be displayed. During the later stages of the game, Sauron will inevitably mobilise his forces. If bie did not manage to get any friendly forces on your side finding objects and presenting them to the appropriate group). you cannot command most of the friendly groups until Sauron starts marching. Only then will all the forces your commands. At this point all friendly forces, as well as your opponent's December 1989 Apple2000 @ 17 allies become visible on the map. Then a mad scramble will be neces- sary to ensure that all your forces are positioned correctly for the forthcom- ing war. You have to meanwhile en- sure that the ringbearer avoids com- bat or remains heavily protected in order to reach the mountain. Asadegree of randomness hasbeen built into the program, the game never re repeats itself and any sequence of events may not have the same results, As for the war, the odds are always in Sauron's favour. A few thousand men are no match for tens of thou- sands of Ores. Only tactical skill will keep your men alive. Conclusion On the whole, this game has been well written, although some aspects of the game (such as searching for objects in the animation level) could become irritating. War in Middle Earth is more of a strategy type than a true adventure, and the complexity is such that it is unlikely to be completed easily. Note ‘The game was run on a computer which has a Transwarp GS installed and as a result, the movement of the characters and screen was relatively smooth. Running the GS at the nor- mal ‘Fast’ mode caused the screen motion to be rather jerky. Although the game is playable without an accel- erator, it performs better with one installed. The supplied disks are not copy protected, runs using GS/OS V4.0, and starts from the Finder. Consider- ing the amount of disk access it has to perform, significant benefit could be pene Peteatalty the game on a hard disk. The IGS version req's 768K of memory John Kishimoto « info Product : War in Middle Earth Publisher : Electronic Arts Available from : Virgin Mastertronic (Melbourne House) 2-4 Vernon Yard Portobello Road London W11 2DX Price ; £24.99 Value : ade Performance : eed Documentation: ¢#¢¢ Finder, EasyDrive and ProSel, a quick comparison... Ee ee ee Caveat: I personally am a Finder fan. I in- tend to make my remarks balanced, but I AM saying this up front. Background: lam nota novice. I have had a //gs for a little over a year now, and have gone from the base 256k CPU and a ir of third party 5.25 drives toa full ore 3.25 meg machine with RamKeeper, 62meg SCSI Hard Drive, 2400 baud modem, color printer, and a set of GEN-ewe-ine Apple disk drives. I spend a lot of time (and money) on the on-line services and large numbers of local BBS's through PC Pursuit. I spend a lot of time reading and studying publications and texts about Apple //s. I recently spent some time setting up ProSel 16 for a friend of mine, who is a novice and simply did not have time to do it himself. While I had owned ProSel 8 for some time, I had never used it as a proj launcher. As previously stated, I have a prefer- ence for Finder. | was quite familiar with the ProSel utilities, but was put in the position of having to learn the ProSel launching system in a matter of days. Walker Archer of Quality Computers was kind enough to send me a copy of EasyDrive 1.5 for my personal evaluation. (He had no idea I would be writing this, nor did I at the time.) Iwas already quite familiar with Finder, but I had to come to MAUG for help with ProSel 16, and coinciden- tally, while 1 was in the middle of working with this, EasyDrive came in the mail,which leads to the first comparison statement. I spent about a week bending ProSel to my will. That is, 4-6 hours a day for 5 days and 8-10 hours a day for the last two were spent on making ProSel do what I wanted it to do. at I wanted It to do was not anything that it is not intended to do. I have a fairly complex system, with two HD parti- tions and a battery backed ROM disk of 1.5 meg containing about a dozen productivity programs, half a dozen utility programs, a couple of telecom- munications packages and a number okgames (some of which present their OWN problems as far as compatibility with GS/OS etc), which are pretty evenly divided between P8 and P16. What I wanted to do was to be able to quickly and e: get into ANY of these programs from one main screen, without having to think about what! was doing in the process. Actu- ally, this is my wife’s computer, and I wanted to set it up so that she could SEE, from looking at the screen, what to do, without having to wonder, or come and ask me. It took me those seven hard days to do it with ProSel. It took me three hours to do it with EasyDrive. at's the difference? ProSel is COMPLEX. It offers a LOT more flexi- bility and power than EasyDrive, but complexity is the price fale pay. And by offering you many different ways of doing things, and many opportunities to custom tailor things, it TEMPTS you to do that. EasyDrive is SIMPLE. This is not to say that it is not power- ful also, it is, but it ts specifically designed to be easy to use and uncon- fusing to the new user. (In fact, it may be more confusing to the EXPERI- ENCED user, due to its somewhat unconventional interface, more on that later.) With both EasyDrive and ProSel, you can let the program do the setting up of the pathnames to launch the programs. EZs EasyAdd and ProSels Automatic Mode will both present you with a list of EXECable programs ona volume and allow you to choose which one you want, and what name you want for it, without your having to understand anything about pa- thnames or anything else. With EZ, you are able to “add” a menu. and *add” applications onto that menu. Your choices are limited to the name you give each menu. and the name you give the application, and the number of characters allowed is not real large. ProSel allows you to name things whatever you want, but gives you more characters to do it with and allows the use of Mousetext, reverse video, “active” and “inactive” menu entries, etc...And learning how to use all these bells and whistles is what took me so long. ProSel, instead of “menus” has “screens” which serve the same purpose, I ran into some minor but time consuming problems setting up screens also. | will not detail that here, there is no reason to believe YOU will run into the same exact misconceptions | did, but I will say that the documentation provided, while extremely rich in detail. can be somewhat confusing and obtuse on some points. The only point of confu- sion I ran into on EasyDrive was that the fact that the easiest way to get back to the Main Menu (the Menu of menus, in my setup) is not clearly spelled out in the docs. So I will give it to you here. To get back to the main menu, “add” a menu to whatever menu you are working on and name it “Main”. ProSel, both versions, contains utilities to handle any file activities you might want to do (and many that u won't), a disk optimiser, a bad lock fixer, a backup and restore function, and a zillion other (NOT by Apple2000 December 1989 sc aie little eae nat MEO! uite_possib! uy) find very usclul Bees not contain a bad block , but it does have the optimiser, backup and re- store, file activities tools, and a little poodle of it's own called “Status” that lls you the degree to which your disk files are fragmented and makes a recommendation as to whether the disk needs to be optimized. (VERY handy.) Drive also includes a set of inst tion scripts that will install MANY of the major programs to your Hard Drive for you. This can be EX- TREMELY useful to the new HD owner, especially one who is not sure of himself. (Of course, you have to have the programs in order to install them.) It will also install the operating systems for you, if it is pre-GS/OS. (more on THAT later too) You will notice that I have not talked about Finder yet. Finder will do any- thing that ProSel or EasyDrive will do in terms of file activities and program launching. (Efficient program launching under Finder is easy if you know the trick, but that is too in- volved to fit in this post. so I will be doing another one on that topic.) Finder is AT LEAST as complicated as ProSel in terms of learning how to set it up for most efficient use, and about as easy to use as EZ when you take it out of the box. AND it's pretty. It DOES NOT contain all those useful utilities. But it will run all the utilities from ProSel 8 as stand alone applica- tions, and it will run ProSel 16 or EasyDrive and let you use their built in utilities. Finder is grossly slow in comparison to ProSel and Drive {as this is written. GS/OS 5.0 has been announced, and I have seen a Beta ve Ae ee it isa oe. faster), primarily because it uses the phi- cal interface and all that moo re- drawing takes TIME. Finder has also been accused of ren sent buggy. This turns out not to be the case. (I hadone person, and he knows who he is, tell me that it was IMPOSSIBLE to make ProSel crash...maybe for him, but I can do it, and I did, several times.) Finder has either two bugs, or one bug with two faces, that will cause it to hang up when you try to do something on the desktop after re- turning from certain non specific applications. This bug appears rarely, and once you become familiar with it. is only a minor ation. It CANNOT, be- cause it