Apple Orchard v4n5 1983 Aug

g2 INTERNATIONAL ™ ee eg & Apple core _P —_ presents ? = Sa SS Se Go “asa The Premier Magazine for Apple Computer Users ™M VOLUME 4 NUMBER5 AUGUST 1983 $3.25 (US) Apple /// WordStar NoDOS 2 BUY A BANANA. SAVE A BUNCH. MORE TO COME. Leading Edge Products, Inc, 295 Turnpike Street, Canton, Massachusetts 02091 Call: toll-free 1-800-343-6833; or in Massachusetts call collect (617) 828-8150. Telex 951-624 INTRODUCING With UltraTerm, the revolutionary new card from Videx, you'll enjoy sweeping panoramas of spreadsheets that you've never seen before: 128 columns by 32 lines, 132 columns by 2 lines and even 160 columns by 24 revel in the scenics of ay stretching out act Teen. records in the new horizon of 80 by 48 lines—double the lines you ormally have. So your word processing will reveal a “depth of character” never possible before! Another breath-taking view of Ultraterm—it delivers absolutely flicker-free, state of ut? display, with 8 x 12 character matrix: preposterously clear, rea Apple is a registered trademark of Apple Computer Inc paper! And youssiiierentate those charac: ters in sevel des: normal (white on black), inverse (black on white), bright intensity ang dim intensity. Ultraterm features a built-in soft video swi and has complete firmware support for BASIC, Pascal and CP/M®. Use it with the Apple® | Apple Ile, Apple fl and Franklin UltraTerm. Come on over and enjoy the view. Suggested retail price: $379 897 N.W. Grant Avenue, Corvallis, OR 97330. 503-758-0521 CP/Mis a registered trademark of Digital Research Inc MEDICAL Fite MANAGEMENT Microsoft SoftCard systems introduce your Apple to thousands of new programs. More powerful Apples. When you plug a SoftCardm system software manufacturer. The very first. Today, into the Applee Il, II Plus, or lle, you're adding the ability Microsoft software is running on well over to run thousands of CP/Ma-80-based programs. Word ‘7 a million computers, worldwide. processing, data-base management, analysis and forecast- 2 With a reputation for dependability ing programs—SoftCard gives your Apple access to ~ and consistent product thousands of software tools for use in your business 4 % enhancement. or home. Fe ? z > Ask your dealer. Ask about the Premium capabilities. Apple Il or || Plusowners % superior application programs the who want even more can add the Premium 3 SoftCard and Premium System make System. In addition to CP/M-80, it provides ay * available to your Apple—high quality 80-column upper-and-lower case video on é ‘ programs for almost every area of home, and a 16K RAMCard. Apple Ile owners z " - business and professional use. Then ask for a can have all this on a single card— . “ demonstration of the complete SoftCard, the Premium SoftCard lle. . Premium System, or SoftCard Ile. And introduce Two computers in one. Any pa your system to some of those thousands of new of these systems turns your y programs. Apple into two computers. One o.. ” 7 that runs Apple software and . . BETTER TOOLS FOR MICROCOMPUTERS another that runs CP/M-80. Which ” the, means you'll double the utility of your ae = computer. if ‘4 w MICROSOFT CORPORATION 10700 NORTHUP WAY, Complete solutions. The SoftCard, Premium System, and Premium SoftCard Ile have everythin: you need. Easy-to-install circuit boards. The CP/ BELLEVUE, WASHINGTON 98004 operating system. Microsofte BASIC. And the utilities you need to manage CP/M-80 files. Microsofts a registered trademark, and SoftCard and the Microsoft Why Microsoft? Microsoft was the first microcomputer 'ogo are trademarks of Microsoft Corporatio. egret WES WOES isa bg <i Cat Bey Take a bite... ay fox swararas O06 KO IR POC y sf Vol. 4, No. 5 August 1983 Cover: Courtesy of Apple Computer Inc. ARTICLES Coming Full Circle - Kevin Everett Fitzmaurice. ............ 0000s cece cece cence eee e ences 10 The dark and bright sides of the Apple ///. Structured Programming - Ronald L. Askew. .......0 0000s e eee c eee e eee eect nent n ene e eens 16 A good way to do it right. Review: WordStar-Woody Liswood 3 cise: saeeenis eee SE Ee eS 20 The CP/M Best Seller in wordprocessing. Reversal Eugenie M. Payttiattsscassencs:anarenrosncarsnesancerswin: snereinse wrnnwia sw irnnerecsietaceresiessretam: mearermmante 25 Othello by any other name... A Moving Average Program - Joe and Chris Jasper... 0.0.0... c ccc cece eee eee 28 A program for business or home. Use of the Disk Il Interface Card Part Il- John Uhley.......... 0... cece een cence ence eee e eens 32 Reading and writing without DOS. Speed Reading on ‘the Apple ~ Michael A: Fischetse.... sseewrseesawens sere eee a 39 The Electronic tachistoscope. Apple /// BASIC Compare - Mike Kramer. . 40 Compare adapted to Business BASIC. The: Stamp ‘Collector Richard S: Willingssss<.<sccseners Sepee mace gene prem 46 Review of a Philatelist’s helper. Hand Crafted Compiling - John B. Matthews M.D... 2.2.0.6 6.0.0 c eee cee ene tenet eee 50 More on Assembly Language. Review: Proof Reader - Woody Liswood............ 00.00 cece eee eee eee xi tenenenetetdlnesessavenemntae-s 55 Check documents for spelling errors. DEPARTMENTS Textfile 4 Planting a Seed: The Management Converts - Peter C. Weiglin 9 Ask Us 58 IAC Sponsoring Members. 62 From the IAC President - Dave Alpert. . 63 From the IAC Office - Ken Silverman. . 64 Forbidden Fruit- Mark L. Crosby............ 0.00.22 eeeeeee eee e eee ee 65 New Temptations, Delicacies, and Necessities. Apple rchard Vol. 4, No. 5 August 1983 Entire contents Copyright® 1983 by International Apple Core, Inc. Peter C. Weiglin - Editor and Publisher Donna Caldwell - Managing Editor Nicole Lefcourt - Editorial Assistant Val J. Golding - Editorial Associate Contributing Editors: Mark L. Crosby - New Products “Dr. Wo” - Pascal/Languages Editor Neil D. Lipson, P. E. A. S. (Woody) Liswood Morgan P. Caffrey Barry D. Bayer Jim Linhart - Miscellaneous Cartoonery Dawn Brown - Circulation Manager Karen Vanikiotis Zinsmeister - [AC Staff Advertising Representative: JE Publishers’ Representative Company 6855 Santa Monica Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90038 (213) 467-2266 New York - (212) 724-7767 San Francisco - (415) 864-3252 Address for all subscriptions, correspondence, advertising material, manuscripts, etc.: Apple Orchard 908 George Street Santa Clara, CA 95050 (408) 727-7652 APPLE ORCHARD (ISSN 0277 - 1950) is published monthly by the International Apple Core, Inc., 908 George St, Santa Clara, CA 95050. Second Class Postage paid at Santa Clara, CA and additional entry points. Subscription Rates (U.S. funds): $24.00 for 1 year, $45.00 for 2 years in the U. S.FPO & APO; $30.00:1 yr., $55,002 yr., in Canada; $36.00 (surface), $48.00 (airmail) in Mexico, Central America, Caribbean Islands, Phillippines, Samoa; $36.00 (surface), $60.00 (airmail) in South America, Europe, North Africa; $36.00 (surface), $72.00 (airmail) in Asia, Middle East, South Africa, Australia. APPLE ORCHARD is a publicaion of the International Apple Core, a worldwide federation of Apple computer User Groups. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors, and do not necessarily represent the views of the International Apple Core, While we appreciate the co-operation of Apple Computer, Inc. and other sponsoring members, the IAC and APPLE ORCHARD do not necessarily represent the views of any of these companies. Our existence is derived from the thousands of Apple users, and it is their interests which we serve. Textfile Apple Orchard is now a monthly publication. That's right, monthly. In about 18 months, we have come from publishing four times a year to 12 times, competing on considerably less than equal financial terms with megabuck publishers, but building a stable base of readers, advertisers, and friends. It's an exciting achievement for our small staff and many friends, but it brings with it a new responsibility. For those of you who are subscribers at our old nine-time rate, we're adding one issue to your subscription if it expires before the end of 1983; two copies are being added if the old expiration date was after the end of 1983. That roughly compensates for the fact that our subscription rate is a bit lower ona per-issue basis. Also, for the first time, we have an incentive for a two-year subscription: it's $24 for one year, and $45 fortwo years in the U. S. Outside of the U. S., the rates are as shown elsewhere in this issue, and we've added the air mail postage categories for those international subscribers who requested them. Other changes include a new advertising representative firm, headed by a human dynamo named Jay Eisenberg. If you're a prospective advertiser, call him at (213) 467-2266 ... but then, he or one of his staff has probably called you already, We have quite a story to tell. Jeff Ginsberg, who had been handling that chore, will now be taking care of some special projects for us. If you're one of those who has been hearing about the pros and cons of the Apple ///, we invite you to read “Coming Full Circle”, by Kevin Fitzmaurice of Omaha. It's a classic tale of love/hate/love, including a summary of features, Funny thing: the rumoris that Apple is abandoning the Apple ///. Well, there are almost 100,000 ///s out there, an installed base that many companies would love to have. The /// ranks fifth or sixth among computers in terms of sales, but of course the Il is so far ahead that it causes a distorted perspective. Well, Apple people claim that abandonment is not in their minds, and invite us to watch what happens in the next couple of months. We're watching. Meanwhile, the largest installed base for the CP/M operating system is on Apple computers, and we're seeking to devote more space to this “old-timer”. Beginning on Page 20, Woody Liswood takes a look at WordStar, the best-selling word processor for CP/M (so far). Also, he reviews Proof Reader, which checks spelling. Next month, we'll feature a program that converts text files from CP/M to SOS on the Apple ///. The variety of articles in this Apple Orchard issue also includes Part Two of John Uhley’s probing into the Disk Il drive, covering reading and writing to and from disks without DOS. Joe and Chris Jasper provide a small program, actually a subroutine, for calculating moving or running averages. Mike Kramer shares his Apple /// BASIC Compare program, and John Matthews covers “Handcrafted Compiling”, tactics for better use of Assembly language. ‘And speaking of sharing, that's what Apple Orchard is; a -means for sharing information. Monthly or not itis, and will be, no better than the sum of its contributions. If you have even the slightest thought of writing a long or short article about Apple computers, their uses, innards, software, etc., for a magazine, drop us a line and we'll send you a copy of our author guidelines. We look forward to hearing from you. Dont let price get in the way of owning a quality printer. Adding a printer to your computer makes sense. But deciding which printer to add can be tricky. Do you settle for a printer with limited functions and an inexpensive price tag or buy a more versatile printer that costs more than your computer? Neither choice makes sense. Here’s a refreshing option—the new, compact STX-80 printer from Star Micronics. It’s the under $200 printer that’s whisper-quiet, prints 60 cps and is ready to run with most popular personal computers. The STX-80 has deluxe features you would Py expect in higher priced models. It prints a full 80 columns of crisp, attractive characters with true descenders, foreign language characters and special symbols. It offers both finely detailed dot- addressable graphics and block graphics. And, of course, the STX-80 comes with Star Micronics’ 180 day warranty (90 days on the print element). The STX-80 thermal printer from Star Micronics. It combines high performance with a very low price. So now, there is nothing in the way of owning a quality printer. “Manufacturer's suggested retail IL SQ SCO THE POWER BEHIND THE PRINTED WORD. Computer Peripherals Division, 1120 Empire Central Place, Suite 216, Dallas, TX 75247 (214) 631-8560 The newSTX 801 printer for only $199 winchester disk corona starfire 5 ~ drive from Corona. It leaves Apple DOS in the dust. For starters, the Starfire gives you all the power inherent in a hard disk drive. Lightning speed (up to 10 times faster than a floppy), enormous storage capacity (5 and 10 megabytes), and superb data reliability. With none of the bottlenecks, headaches and hassles of floppy drives. But even better, it makes Apple DOS infinitely friendlier, faster and more powerful. Boot into any program from the hard run programs with a single keystroke. We've added other features from the Coro: PC, our own 16-bit desktop and personal computers. You can automatically, selectively backup your vol- umes. Partition the disk and run up to 16 different operating systems, including Apple DOS, Pascal and CP/M? And depend on our DataGuard™ and Fail- Safe™ data protection systems for the disk reliability and data integrity you need. | monitor 7 | is being squeezed, tarfire hard disk. or the name of ue nearest Corona dealer, FEEL THE POWER. st call us toll-free at 800-621-6746. Or write Corona Data Systems, 31324 Via Colinas, Westlake # Village, CA 91361. (213) 991-1144. ‘Fasopoe om Omegs Mictonvel tn Store 4 tm Aion te ‘Its simple. The typewriter was a wonder in its with Letter Perfect, and more. time. Letter Perfect is a wonder for Much more. today. Lettei Perfect from LJK When it comes to practical lets you use your computer to software for Ataris and Apples, write letters and create reports, Letter Perfect is simple to and edit your work. Change learn. And hard to beat. Ask a word, Move a line. your dealer for a demon- Combine two paragraphs. stration, or write LJK You can do it all for more information. LUK, INC. * 7852 Big Bend Blvd, St. Louis, MO 63119 « (314) 962-1855, Plantings a seed... nf The Management Converts Today, the “progressive” manager is one who spearheads the use of microcomputers as business tools in his or her organization. More and more chests puff out proudly as boxes beige and gray/blue appear on desks. Most of these folks would have you believe that it was always this way, but it ain't necessarily so. The fact is that the acceptance of personal computers in institutional settings did not come easily. The machines were seen by some managers as “toys”, using “dormitory software”. The most common avoidance approach was, and is, to say, “We're studying it’, as long as possible. Reluctant managers may limit the scope of activities in which the computer is to be used; or he may say that these things are fine for menial work, but that managers have better things to do than to play with keyboards. That last one at least has a ring of plausibility to it There is, after all, no real substitute for a human being when it comes to dealing with other human beings, and that’s what manage- mentis. Managers are continually being warned to combat the instinct to do their subordinates’ jobs for them, and to rely on team members to know their jobs. But management involves the use of information to plan, control and evaluate the activities and performance of others. If we achieve blissful ignorance, then how do we assess the decisions, judgment, and promotability of those subordinates? And how do we get the relevant information to make the decisions, in time to be most effective? Enter the computer, the best information-processing tool yet devised to aid humans. In the personal area, the Apple computer and its imitators have been even more effective than the relatively unapproachable mainframe computers. The “business-institutional” market segment is growing rapidly, as managers describe the new small computers in glowing terms. The funny partis that ina majority of organizations, large and small, the microcomputer didn't arrive with fanfare at the front door; rather, it was smuggled in through the servants’ entrance by employees who had become computer hobbyists (not “hobbiests”, please), and who had seen the value of this tool in the performance of their work. Unless the hobbyist also happened to be the chief executive, what followed was a process of system development, demonstration, proposal and rejection, iterated until grudging approval was given. That grudging approval turned to the appropriation of credit by managers after the “toys” proved successful. The idea that managers should concentrate on the humans whom they manage is a good one in an era when computer- generated data substitutes for human judgment; having a pile of printouts to point to builds “justifiability” and fends off much criticism. That human-oriented sentiment all too often obscures another reason why some managers are reluctant to use a microcomputer: the folk wisdom is that managers don't use keyboards. Keyboards are for secretaries, for clerks, for “girls”. Another funny thing: the managers who have taken to keyboards attached to Apples have scored innumerable successes as a result of that interaction. That's a trend that should continue: the computer-using manager will outdistance his or her illiterate brethren by greater distances. And in terms of ease of use, computers are coming to everyone, even managers. Apple's Lisa is an example. The manager doesn't have to be a programmer or a typist, yet he or she can make use of the computer as a tool. Unfortunately, a computer will not guarantee success. The key is in how, and how well, it is used. FCUas l he time had finally come when | could afford to upgrade my personal computer system. Not that my Apple Il Plus had something wrong with it, but rather | wanted a system that could do more, and do it better. After reading about all of the problems the Apple /// was having, | decided that perhaps my happy relationship with Apple was com: ing to an end. | made quite an extensive search. My bulging literature library is proof of that. Yet, | simply could not find one personal unit that could meet all of my require: ments. By this time | was beginning to hear that Apple had been hard at work remaking the Apple ///. | decided to give Apple the benefit of the doubt, and take a second look. Lo and behold, here it was right in front of me, the very computer | had been searching for all along! What | would like to do now, is to give you a clear and simple list of the features of the Apple /// ona single page or two (See Figure 1). You should then be able to use this list as a yardstick for compari- sons of different micros. Then, we'll look at a few of the important features of the Apple /// The First RAM Machine One of the most intriguing and unique Coming Full-Circle by Kevin Everett FitzMaurice features of the Apple /// is that it is the first RAM based machine. While all the other new personal computers have greatly increased ROM, the /// has almost completely done away with it! Inside the /// there is only 4K of ROM which does a diagnostic check of the ///, and then automatically boots whatever disk is in the built-in system disk drive. What this means is that you are not bound to any language or operating system, nor do you have to work around them to use different ones, nor are you stuck with outdated ROM! Any language or oper: ating system is just loaded in on disk first thing. You will never be caught with an outdated machine because updating any language or operating system is as easy as loading a different disk. With the ///'s generous amount of RAM, there is no reason not to take this more intelligent path to updating your BASIC, UCSD Pascal, DOS, SOS, or what have you. There is quite a speed difference be- tween a RAM based operating system, and a DISK based operating system. If you have worked with one of the popular portables, and have had to wait for” swap- ping’, then you already know what | mean. Apple Il Emulation Mode When you use the new Apple Il Emula- tion diskette, none of the advanced feat- ures of the /// are functional. Instead of an Apple ///, itis as if you had an Apple Il Plus or an Apple Il. Your II Plus has 48K, DOS 3.3, Applesoft, Autostart ROM, a disk controller in Slot 6 with 1 or 2 drives, and either an Apple II serial card or an Apple Il communications card. The Uni- versal Parallel Interface Card is also fully supported under emulation. While emu- lating the Apple ll, the only changes to the above are that now you are in Integer BASIC with Programmer's Aid *1, instead of Applesoft with Autostart ROM. Paddles and joysticks are not universally useable under emulation; for example, any program that uses the annunciators at the same time that it reads the joysticks will get erroneous joystick readings. Also, any Apple Il program that uses its own routines for paddle-reading routines will not run under the Emulator program. All programs that require only the ll orl Plus as configured above, and which use only keyboard input, will run without any problems on the ///. Most Apple Il pro- grams require only the configuration the Apple /// will emulate! However | would like to see the next rewrite of Apple Il emulation to include options for a 16K- RAM card (64K needed for Apple Logo), 80 column display, lower case, support of the ProFile, and an option for the Dvorak American Simplified keyboard. Perhaps the best deal would be for Apple to offer a new Apple //e emulation mode. To run Apple Il Pascal the emulation mode is not needed, and you still have your super Apple /// with all its power. Apple /// Software Apple has been demonstrating its sup- port of the /// by supplying most of the indispensible software packages a user needs. With the Access /// program and a modem, the Apple /// can communi- cate with large mainframes, exchange files back and forth, and thus do remote data-processing work for them. Access /// supports ANSI standard escape se- quences, and emulation of the DEC VT100 and VT52. Now you really can work from home! There are several utilities for the Pascal System. One offers a whole library of utilities, and is rightly called Apple /// Pascal Utility Library. Another is called Script ///, and is for formatting any text written with the Apple /// Pascal Editor. The formatted text can then be printed to the screen, saved on disk, or printed out. And for the serious Pascal programmer there is Record Processing Services, which provides sophisticated file management for development work. Considering all the Pascal aids, and the fact that most of Pascal can exist on the ProFile so that you need only one Pascal diskette, the Apple /// isthe best UCSD Pascal development system around. AppleWriter /// is out and was used to write this article. Among the many fea- tures of AppleWriter /// are paragraph and column tabulation, word wrap, split screen operation, the ability to read Visi- Calc /// files, global search, file insertion, centering, four kinds of justification, search and replace, printing to the screen, automatic pagination, typeover, etc. AppleWriter /// even includes a Word Processing Language (WPL) that makes it easy to customize your own applica tions. Also included is a utility disk for the transfer of files beteen Apple Writer 1.1, Il, ///, Mail List Manager Files, and general conversion between SOS and DOS text files. The most enjoyable feature of Apple Writer for me is the powerful, yet easy to use text formatting menu. Compared to any other word processor that | have used, this is the only one that makes it simple to format something as difficult as a single envelope. Business graphics are made easy with a new program called, of course, Apple /// Business Graphics. It uses the DIF file standard so it can communicate with VisiCalc /// as well as Business BASIC, and Apple /// Pascal. Mail List Manager is yet another pro- gram released through Apple for the ///. This one is for creating and maintaining mailing label files, among other things. Quick File /// is a inexpensive data base (file maintenence) program from Apple. And of course, there is a special version of VisiCalc, the Apple program that took business software to new heights, for the Apple ///. But have you heard? There is a new much improved VisiCalc called, Visi Cale Advanced Version, and so far it is just for the Apple ///! Outside support of the/// continues to increase every day. More and more of the tried and true programs for the Apple I are being updated forthe Apple /// allthe time. And Apple has the Microsoft CP/M board designed to work with SOS, out and working. Apple has named it Soft- Card ///, and ina move to support it, has become the sole distributor. Quite unlike CP/M-86, the CP/M:80 for the Apple /// will allow fairly straightforward conver- sion of existing CP/M software. Many CP/M programs will only require refor- matting for the Apple /// disk drives, which can also read Apple Il CP/M disks. SoftCard /// includes the standard Mi- crosoft BASIC. It also allows CP/M and SOS to exchange files, and the ProFile is fully supported. We have been waiting a long time for this adapter, because Mi- crosoft spent a lot of time interfacing CP/Mand SOS. This being accomplished, the wait was well worth it SOS, however, is such a real advancement over CP/M that, you may just want to stick with it 32-Bit, or 16-Bit, or 8-Bit? The Apple /// comes with the 8-bit 6502B, which is an improvement on the 6502A, which is an improvement on the 6502, which is an improvement on the 6800, which is an improvement on the first 8-bit chip, the 8008. The 6502B includes an address enhanced instruc- tion set for the 6502. Now there are both bank-switched and enhanced indirect addressing allowing up to 512K RAM. Also, there are separate execution envi- ronments for user and SOS, including private zero and stack pages. Even clock speed has been increased to 2-MHz peak, and 1.7-MHz average. This allows the /// to run, on the average, about 40% faster than the Apple Il. This makes the 6502Ba dream come true for 6502 lovers (Micro magazine take note)! The speed at which a CPU (central processing unit) computes is a highly overrated comparison factor between personal computers. Being such an easy one to compare on paper, because of being in the numerical values of clock speed and bit-size, it is often used. But in real life, the computational speed of a CPUis like horsepower, a factor to consi- der if you intend to pull heavy loads like time sharing or your camper. A substantial problem when compar- ing just clock speed, is not knowing that one CPU can compute faster than anoth- er at the same speed. The 6502, for example, averages four times faster than the 8-bit Z-80 at the same clock speed. Also, a fast processor running a slow BASIC may appear to be slower than a slow processor that is running a fast BASIC. The demands on the CPU by the operating system can vary a great deal. Matters are further complicated by memory access times, as an 8-bit chip can have much faster access times thana 16-bit chip depending on the memory chips used and other factors. Yet another problem involves the number of bytes used by instructions. A 16-bit chip often requires more bytes than an 8-bit chip for the same operation, and usually needs more memory for the same program. Even 8-bit chips don't use the same amounts of memory. The 6502 is a more efficient user of memory than the Z-80, which can result in both memory savings and speed improvement Internal repre- sentation of numbers varies from ma- chine to machine, and language to lan- guage. The difference in the amount of bytes needed to represent numbers can be substantial in a large program, and can account for some speed differences. To simplify matters, and to test a complete system's performance, we have benchmark tests. The IEEE is in the progress of developing a standard set of benchmark programs. But, benchmark testing can not take into consideration the tricks or advanced features that a machine may have to speed its process- ing. For example the Apple /// canruna full 20% faster by merely pressing the CONTROL key and the “5” key on the Figure 1: Keyboard Friendliness. numeric keypad at any time (this sus- pends screen display). Another problem with benchmark test- ing is that the tests are usually very small programs that can't begin to use the advantages of features like Business BASIC’s invokable modules, which can sharply reduce the amount of code needed. Frankly, | will never rely on benchmark testing until it is done with very large programs, and these would have to utilize the features available to each machine. Standard benchmark programs only test a machine's ability to do things in a very cramped fashion, and if followed too closely would discourage advanced fea- tures. Features like Business BASIC’s ability to search for the line number of a GOTO, starting either with its own line number or at the beginning line number of the Apple /// a) Arranged in a strictly traditional typewriter layout. b) Sculptured, stepped, and angled keys. c) Numeric key pad. Recognized differently from main keyboard. d) Software definable character set. Can be used for graphics. e) All characters used by programming languages. f) Dedicated cursor or arrow keys. g) Two-key method to boot a disk without powering on and off. h) Alpha lock key. Shift locks alphabetical keys only. i) The entire ASCII code. j) Automatic repeat for all keys and the speed can be tripled. k) Can print 224 distinct characters. 1) Little bumps on D, K, and 5 keys for finger positioning. m) Numeric keypad can be redefined into 12 special function keys. n) Dvorak American Simplified Keyboard available on file. 0) 128 byte type ahead buffer. p) Many different fonts available on file. q) Character set can be changed under program control at any time. 1) Up to 13 control keys. s) Computer “ON” light. t) Two system keys. Closed and Open Apple keys redefine others. u) 73 keys total. Integrated Main Unit (built-in features). a) 80 column display. b) 143K Disk drive. ) Interface for up to 4 disk drives, d) RS-232-C. Can be made to serve 6 devices with T-switch. e) Color. All 16 colors with 192 lines of 280 dots per line. f) Graphics. 16 shades of green with 192 lines of 560 dots per line. g) Sound. 64 volume settings and over seven octaves, h) Speaker. Of speech producing quality. i). Monitor ports. RGB or any video device, NTSC, 80-column monochrome. J) Real time clock (location for one on board at coordinates 3-B). k) Two Joystick ports, A & B. Silentype printer can share port A. 1) Diagnostics in ROM. m) Audio output, SOS Audio Driver can be rewritten for your needs. n) Builtin security mount to prevent theft. 0) 256K RAM ability,512K potential without strain. q) Four real expansion slots, program, cannot become significant time-wise in small programs. Most BASICs always start at the very beginning line number even if itis the next line they want If a programmer wants to speed up a program there are many techniques a- vailable. Perhaps a more important ques: tion than benchmark testing is, does the program in question use all the speed advantages of your machine, or even more to the point, does it run fast enough for you? Most applications for a personal com- puter just don't require the horsepower of a race car (time-sharing CPU) any more than we require it with our passenger cars. It took a long time for people in the AS. to realize that unnecessary horse- power was costing them a lot of money, and yet was virtually unusable. Word Features Expansion Products Supported. processing, for example, is handled 8 bits at a time regardless of the CPU size. To put it simply, eight bit machines have their place and true sixteen bit machines have theirs. Some may find it surprising to learn that super refined 8-bit chips like the 6502B, the 6809, and the 6509 can compute faster than early 16-bit chips. A bench mark test in Byte, January 1982, Page 54, showed the pseudo 8/16- bit IBM-PC to compute only about 20% faster than the 8-bit Apple Il on the average. This is consistent with the find- ings of the benchmark testing for arith- metic processing done by the Associa- tion of Computer Users, but they found the Apple Il about 50% faster on their accounts receivable test. The Apple /// runs about 40% faster than the Apple lon the average. Most of this speed improve- ment is not noticeable, however, due to a) ProFile 5-MEG super quiet hard disk drive. Can fit under monitor. b) Universal parallel port A T-switch could extend this. c) Silentype inexpensive printer can plug in port A. d) Qume letter quality printer (plugs into RS-232-C). ) Monitor ///, 16 shades of green and full graphics. f) Modem eliminator cable comes with /// for use of RS-232-C with printers. g) Cursor /// joysticks plug into ports A and B. h) Prototyping board for development of new boards. i) Apple CP/M adapter made by Microsoft including MBASIC. j) Apple's new dot matrix and letter quality printers. k) niFile and DuoFile disk drives providing up to 1.7 MEG. REVOLUTIONARY OPERATING SYSTEM. a) First ever written to be user friendly. b) Data base capabilities. Hierarchical file-structure. ¢) Manages ALL memory locations and 1/O. d) One disk format for ALL allows file sharing and communication. e) Easily updated without hurting existing compatibility. f) Ability to rewrite software drivers instead of changing hardware. g) Will locate which drive a file is in for you. h) Error proof menu system. i) Any destruction of data requires confirmation. j) Automatic date/time stamping of every file. k) Interrupt driven. 1) Device-independent 1/O. m) Stores information using all empty space. n) Programs that request printing could continue while the printing goes on. 0) Powerful drivers for graphics, console, audio, printer, and RS-232. p) Programs can run 20% faster by pressing Control-5 (no video). q) Uses alll available memory. Apple Languages 1) Apple /// UCSD Pascal. a) Works under SOS, thus it has a hierarchical file-structure. b) Will run Apple II Pascal. c) 6502 development system. d) Can communicate directly with SOS. €) 32-bit floating point arithmetic. IEEE proposed standard. f) Enhanced instruction set the fact that the 6502B must also run SOS, which consists of a great deal more code than DOS 3.3 or PC-DOS. With all the extra work we get out of SOS, though, this trade off is well worth it When the 32-bit CPU is affordable for the personal computer, there will by then also be storage media that can make use of the 32-bit CPU's capacity for TERAbyte virtual memory (trillions of bytes). Pehaps the read/write video disk with a 32-bit CPU like Intel's IAPX-432 or Motorola's still in progress 120,000 transistor 32-bit CPU, will be the real step into the future. We can then have data bases (collections of related information) and libraries for everything and anything at our fingertips. I have already heard promises of read/ write video disks with 100 GIGAbytes per side (one hundred billion bytes). There are several 32-bit chips already announc- ed that can directly address 4-GIGAbytes of main memory. If we are going to access and search through such vast amounts of data as third generation storage will permit, then the speed of our CPU will become a crucial consideration. But present stor- age being floppy disks and Winchester type hard disk drives, the eight bit mach- ines with 256K programmable RAM are challenge enough for a single person to utilize fully. Increases in RAM, Disk stor- age, and CPU speed are just not signifi- cant enough for desk top (personal) computers to have to go to second generation (16-bit) systems. It is also quite likely that 16-bit systems will not be fast enough, or able to address enough memory for efficient use of GIGAbyte and TERAbyte appliances. However, time sharing, advanced operating systems, and scientific number crunching applica- tions can use the power of the full 16-bit systems now. With the introduction of third generation memory, storage, and speed, it will be time to update both 8-bit and 16-bit systems. Everything, including applications, will have increased geome- trically with third generation capabilities. Apple's Lisa is the first example of a personal computer that does need the power of a true 16-bit processor. There is no way that a single 8-bit chip or a pseudo 16-bit chip could run all the operating code and graphics that are so necessary to the Lisa. In fact the Lisa is Apple's first departure from von Neumann architec- ture, as it has another three processors to assist the main processor. Since the Lisa includes in its $9,995.00 price the inte- grated six application programs | have read so much about, the 5MEG ProFile, 1.7MEG of diskette storage, and 1MEG of main memory, then only a fool would call it overpriced! Figure 1 (cont.) g) BASIC programs can be edited with the Pascal Editor. h) Can be loaded to the Profile and takes up only 175 Kbytes. i) Memory limited by size of RAM, not software. j) Up to 48 units for any one program. k) Can be used to develop UCSD Pascal for any p-code machine. 2) Business BASIC. a) Apple's third BASIC. b) Up to 19 digit precision. c) Console driver allows four direction scrolling. d) Memory limitations are based on available memory. e) Graphics subroutines are easily called. f) Variables of current programs not destroyed by changes. g) Code is fully I/O independent. h) Turnkey systems need only to use the file name “HELLO”. i) Arrays of several dimensions. j) Integer variables available to speed up BASIC processing. k) Can edit programs with AppleWriter ///. 1) Long Integers can be used for Financial Accounting. m) REAL variables have significant digits after 6 rounded. n) Floating-point Arithmetic is done with 32-bit precision. Here are some of the advanced statements available: a) PRINT USING and IMAGE statements with aids for output. b) IF THEN ELSE for structured programming. c) CHAIN to link programs together. d) INVOKE and PERFORM make Assembly language routines easy. e) WINDOW statement for definition of screen size. f) ON KBD statement looks for keyboard input. g) TYP statement controls type of data to be read. h) INDENT and OUTDENT to make BASIC loops readable. i) EXEC simulates keyboard input j) DEF FN statement allows definition of added functions. k) SWAP statement swaps values between variables. 1) FOR... NEXT has the STEP clause available. m) POP removes the top pointer from the program stack. n) ON ERR is used to handle errors. 0) RESUME will start execution over at the beginning of the error. Here are the builtin disk file statements: a) REC statement returns current record number. b) ON EOF statement controls end of file procedures. c) CREATE is used to make directories. d) CATALOG to list directories. e) DELETE, LOCK, UNLOCK, RENAME, OPEN, and CLOSE for disk files. f) OUTPUT *, PRINT *, and PRINT * CSING for disk files. g) READ *, WRITE *, all for use with files on floppy or Profile. 3) Apple /// COBOL a) Rated High Intermediate Level by U.S. GSA. b) Higher rating than many minicomputers. c) Can run significant mainframe COBOL programs. d) Makes use of SOS's advanced features. e) Animator -provides full view of actual program execution. f) FORMS-2 -interactively generates screens and source code. g) Far more programs exist in COBOL than any other language. h) Most English like language to date. i) Supports structured programming with the PERFORM statement Software Sources: a) Apple Il software library. b) Apple Computer, Inc. c) UCSD Pascal software library. d) CP/M software library with adapter. e) International Apple Core f) Apple /// software from everyone. g) COBOL software library. Conclusion Apple /// represents the apex of the combination of von Neumann and 8-bit architecture. The main improvement | would make on the /// is to build-in as standard its Universal Parallel Interface, rather than have it take up a slot. But where do you stop adding if you want to keep the initial price within reach, and maintain a small footprint? Some com: panies have stopped much too soon. The success of the Apple Il was and still is, in my opinion, due primarily to its builtin expansion chassis. We could also build in to the Apple /// an interface for the Profile, another RS-232, four more ex- pansion slots, a 6502B for I/O process- ing, terminal interfaces, or we could just buy a Lisa if we could afford it! You will never be sorry you purchased the ///, as the software end of it can be updated more easily than any other com- puter. And there are more programs for Apple computers than any others. Also, Apple has already built so much into it, that you may never need anything else. But if you do, there is plenty of room for the future. Just as it is, the Apple /// is, in my mind, THE state-of-the-art profes- sional or networking micro system. The /// is fully supported by Apple, meaning you can expect new software and hardware releases from Apple all the time. Apple said in Apple /// Dimensions that their number one project for the whole company in ‘82 was the re-release of the Apple ///. We have recently seen new ideas for the ///, such as the “Pro- duct Training Paks” that help the novice get started using Apple /// programs, and the interactive program called the “The Keyboard” to teach its use. Quick File /// is an example of Apple continuing to release new software for the ///. We should soon see the release of the clock chip kit Even more manuals have been and will be released on the Apple ///. To end all complaints against the low K of the built-in Apple Il compati- ble drive on the ///, Apple has anounced the DuoFile (2 drives) and UniFile (1 drive) drives. Each drive holds 850K! And to provide easier back-up of the Profile, Apple has developed and released Back- up ///. This new program makes back- ing up the ProFile an easy chore, and condenses files to take up less disk space. What is even more exciting is the new Catalyst program from Quark Engineer ing. Using this program I can boot all my software from the hard disk. | have finally gotten away from the old “floppy shuffle”! Well, here | am; an Apple fan once again! Ne DOUBLE-TAKE ac ve PRONTO-DOS a; may 2-WAY-SCROLL / MULTIPLE UTILITY 34.95 HIGH-SPEED DISK UTILITY BY MARK SIMONSEN. BY TOM WEISHAAR LISTINGS & CATALOGS SCROLL Up AND Down, Put HIGH-SPEED DOS inyour Apple's normal memory, making file names and program lines much easier to Language Card or Apple lle high-memory— access. Arrow-keys control scroll direction. New Apple- Function ‘soft List Format lists each program statement on new BLOAD HI-RES IMAGE ....... line for FAST program tracing and de-bugging. LOAD 60-SECTOR PROGRAM Variable Diplay shows all of a prograns strings and SAVE 60-SECTOR PROGRAM « variables with current values. Cross-Reference shows BLOAD LANGUAGE Ci 4 line nos. on which each variable & string appears. Better Kap ea ite No Change) sak, Shashi Renumber/Append lets you merge programs (not just Boot the Pronto disk or your updated disks, cr connect end-to-end). Applesoft ine-Number as eaqg eBro with the normal INIT command. Compatible with ail you type. Instant Hex/Dec Converter, Program Stats, DOS commands, G.P.L.E.® and most of your programs. Cursor Eliminate/Redefine, Free Space-On-Disk.. Fronto-DOS wil move DOS to your Language Card Charts: Peeks/Pokes ‘or Apple Ile's standard high-memory, giving you With 2 and Tipe & Tricks : Ppl uf oarnaie mani “ a rontoDOS also frees-up 15-extre-sectors per initial- ‘Apple Mechanic's 4315 Sterra Vista | San Diego, Callfomia 92103 | ized cist amost one hal track of ciak specet Hi-Res type routines PLUS: Auto Free-Disk-Space, New “TYPE” Com- are oT ‘ONLY | 8nd displays Text File contents, and much more... programs Geena ay abhi ssrA] —— give Beagle Bros. srormon your clek RENAME COMMANDS AND ERROR MESSAGES: ALPHA PLOT oxy eae anying you want Pte your rogram An urtino. BY BERT KERGEY £ JAGK CASSIDY anything you want nunautho- fzed save-atiompt can produce 8 Not Copyable' mes DRAW IN HI-RES, on both pages, using keyboard OR sage, or any message you want. Also LIST-prevention | paddies/joystick. View lines before plotting, Use mixed- and one key peooramexsaition from eatlog: colors and Reverse (background opposite) plotting. u stasis Oe or ce ported paerlingto Fast hi-res circles, boxes and ellipses; filled or outlined. ur messag L Omit of & Compress HERes | to 1/3 Disk-Space. Super- APPLE MECHANIC Fascinating "apcumentation. tips and experiments. | impssc rs pages t ane Sor reosateant roca ‘SHAPE-WRITER / BYTE-ZAP Hours of juicy Apple reading material image area anywhere on either hi-res page. BY BEAT KERRY mate SOS toeleay you decioned 1) WBE ‘Or | Proportionslly-Spaced Hi-Res Type with adjustable ‘SHAPE EDITOR: Keyboard-draw shapes for anima- : character size and color. Upper and lower case with no tion in your programs Create Pre Mone paced (includes Peeks & Pokes Chart and Tip Book #2) eae Imi Sorere ppb lh ors ie jpetaces with special characters. Six fonts inclu ip Listable Applet demas show you how to animate All Beagle Bros disks - graphics and create professior iar rapt BYTE-ZAP: Rewrite any byte on a disk for repair or || @@ Unlocked, ores GOTO your loc: alteration. Load entire sectors on the screen for inspec- and Com Apple Software tion. Hex/Dec/Ascii displays and input. Educational * Store for Beagle instructions include experiments for making trick fle Apple* Il, | ? Mandl io agile names, restoring deleted files, changing DOS, etc. Don’t le for | Bros products. MORE: Useful music, text and hi-res tricks for your n’t settle for less. H they don't tele #5) _ | TAPPLE” sa registered trade mark of You-Know-Who.| have ‘what you || ONLy | want, tell them | APPLE MECHA NeW FLEX TEXT 28) tose onne TYPEF ACE! ‘ONLY | " 20/40/56/70-COLUMNS WITHOUT HARDWARE | stick by call- 20.00 BY MARK SIMONSEN ing Beagle Bros \ BY BERT KERSEY, PRINT VARIABLE-WIDTH TEXT on both hires | (619-296-6400) 26 NEW FONTS for use with Apple Mechanic pro- | screens with Applesoft_ commands (including | or ANY Apple grams. Many sizes of fully-editable characters. Hiab 1-70). Normal, expanded & compressed text with | Sofware Distributor. BEAGLE MENU: Display only thefilenames you want | no hardware. 70-columns requires a monitor (not tv) : from your disks (e.g. only Applesoft or only Lockedfiles) | Add to text or text to graphics. Run your for fast one-key cursor selection. existing Applesoft programs under Flex Text control (Includes Peeks & Pokes Chart and Beagle Menu Easy to use and compatible with GPLI ’ DOS Tool Kit® font compatibility, or use the supplied 100 TIP BOOK TIPS ON DISK 20.00 Flex Text typefaces, Select up to9 fonts with control-key BY BERT KERSEY MEMORY commen ea rel od cals any type style! 100 LISTABLE PROGRAMS from fee le cope Tip ustom text character editor inclu Books 1-4. Make your Apple do things it’s never done! (includes Peeks & Pokes Chart) All 100 programs ere changeable for experimentation. Includes our Apple Command. aturing all Apple- soft, Integer Basic and DOS Commands! BEAGLE BAG av (Includes Peeks/Pokes and Command Charts) T2-GAMES-PLUS ON ONE DISK = 20-50 ‘uy gm A COMPARE BEAGLE BAG with any one-game g RUSH the following disks by First Class Mall— locked-up disk on the market today. All 12 games area Mf O Alpha Plot... $39.50 1 Pronto-DOS . $29.50 blast, the price is right, the instructions are crystal clear, fj CO Ap.Mechi + 29.50 Qo Ter anal #1... 20.00 AND the disk is ible. You can even change the O Beagle Bag. . . 29.50 programs or list them to learn by seeing how they work. ff 2 oes spon » 2400 a On Gity 7 ‘Twelve Games from the Applesoft Ace, Bert Kersey— jg 1 Double-Take. . 34: i TextTrain, Slippery Digits, Wowzo, Buzzword Magic Ml O Flex Text....:29.50 (Add me to mailing list. 10 asstnUOWLU Ra0C YNTOOB C@OBDC": | pack "A great Nanety that taps your Apples exoiy. CO Frame-Up |: 29.50 O Already on mailing list. X20 FO LENTAS) 1 NSCRN(X 19): | ExGallont review In January 83 Softak (page 148). AT YOUR APPLE DEALER NOW! 7 ERO RTSH STD) ISe18)(SCHINGS 18) 10); | BEAGLE MENU too: See “Typefaces” disk Or order directly from an Bros— POP Rte NER A GOT NT) 10% | (Includes Peeks & Pokes Chart and Beagle Menu) UTILITY CITY az E-UP a UTILITIES ON ONE DISK 23.50 HIGH-SPEED DISPLAY UTILITY i BY BERT KERSEY. EY TOM WEISHAAR Visa/MasterCard/COD, fal To es FREE LIST FORMATTER prints each program statement | _ MAKE PROFESSIONAL PRESENTATIONS of exist- Nationwide: 1-800-854-2003 ext. 827 ‘ona new line. Loops indented with printer page breaks. | ing hives, lo-res & text frames. FAST hi-res loads in Calltornia: A005" F200 ext BT A great Applesoft program de-bugger! Also... 2¥eseconds! Paddle or Keyboard-advance frames. Calorie t eoe See 1800 ext Mult-Column Catalogs for printouts, auto-post Run- | _ Unattended Shows are optional with each picture number & Date in proper, put invisible commands in | arranged and bre programmed to display from 1 to 99 OR mail U.S.Check, Money-Order or Visa/MC# programs, create Invisible file names, alphabetize/store | seconds. Text Screen lets you create amoral | | to BEAGLE BROS, tath-Floor info on disk, convert dec to hex or Integer toFP, protect | white text “slides” and add type “live” from the keyboard [4316 SIERRA VISTA, SAN DIEGO, GA 92 and append programs, dump text to printer. during shows. Mail of presentations on disk to 103 || MORE TOO: 21 Programs Total, a best-seller! friends a cian Pooks Crome chan I oven $10 fst Clas Shipping Any Sze Order Includes lifor Be | ee ORDERS SHIPPED IMMEDIATELY. Structured Programming by Ronald L. Askew When a member of a micro user group sits down to write an article for his/her club newsletter, he/she does it for one of a small set of reasons. Some do it to establish themselves as experts on a particular subject Some will perform the chore out of loyalty to the group and to insure the quality of the club's information function. Others are content to invest their creative writing talents in the hope that someone else might learn something useful from it. I'm writing for none of those reasons. My motivation springs from a groundswell of frustration in trying to take advantage of one of the most important and most highly advertised benefits of user club membership, ie., access to the club program library. Whether you are a novice programmer or have been at it for years, | am sure that you have had occasion to dig out one of your old programs hoping to update it with a few embellish- ments for some particular and important application. Or perhaps you spent hours copying a listing of some promising contributed program from a magazine. It doesn’t matter if the program was a game, a print utility or a super file management application, you probably spent too much time trying to figure out how the old program worked before you could modify it at all. And how about the programs on your club's program disks! Of course, you got the programs for slightly more than the cost of the diskettes, but how often should you be expected to have to shell out your hard earned cash for a disk-full of frustration? And if you think you can take many of those nifty little programs and modify them for some special purpose, you might as well resign yourself and dig in for the near certainty of having to invest hours and hours of work just figuring out how the code works. This article is written as a plea to BASIC programmers to change their evil ways. | am offering, herewith, some general programming principles to help make your code in the BASIC language easier to read, write, debug, and easier for the author or anyone else to maintain and modify. It is common knowledge that, generally, those who learn to program in BASIC are infamous for their poor coding habits and even poorer documentation techniques, and this includes yours truly. Consider for a moment that the software you spent $150.00 for might have been written by some one-time hobbyist who, though he/she might be a genius, chose to set the price of the software based on the amount of code and time spent in writing and debugging it Now consider how unreliable and bug-infested this software might be. This is a serious problem for the whole micro industry. If the problem is not addressed by the hobbyist/user, we might find what some suspect to be already the case, that although micros are convenient and useful tools for home and business, the majority of software available is unreliable and unecessarily overpriced. The principles that follow are borrowed from a number of sources and do not pretend to be an exhaustive approach to structured programming, The general approach is an abbrevi- ated and simplified hybrid of the “Top Down” and “Step Wise Refinement” methods of software development. Examples are written in Apple /// BUSINESS BASIC be- cause of obviously superior built-in software devices that contribute and encourage structured programming. Most of the principles can be generalized and applied to any extended BASIC (including Apple Il Integer and Applesoft) and all apply, ultimately, to most languages that are not self-documenting and that do not demand structure. Structure Outline When you sit down to write, the first thing you should do is to. outline the major functional parts of the program. Identify a range of linenumbers for the code and mark them with REM statements. Make sure you have allowed room for short utility routines that might be called often by the other modules. Principles that should be kept in mind are as follows: e Short subroutines that are accessed often should be placed at or near the beginning of the program. This enhances execution speed because GOSUBs and GOTOs, in interpretive BASICs, tend to search from the beginning of the code for the destination linenumber. Speed is also enhanced because the program is shorter due to the non-redundance of frequently executed code. Each subroutine should list the parameters it must receive. The major advantage of this approach, even in cases where speed and brevity are not considered impor- tant, is that your subroutines are all labeled and in one place so they can be easily found when you want to debug or modify them. * Try to anticipate what subroutines you might require. Certain common routines should be in a library some- where so that you can renumber them and EXEC them into the project at hand. Common routines might be for text centering, numeric input routines with string to numeric conversion, generalized menus, graphics initiali- zation, ‘hit any key to continue’, output formatting, etc. . ¢ Longer routines, especially if not accessed very often, should be positioned at the end of the program. * Modules should be generalized, that is, if you have one routine that accepts numeric input and another that has a numeric entry routine incorporated in it, you have been redundant It would be better to write one generalized routine than to have several versions of it ¢ The initialization section is usually executed only once and should be located at the very end of the program. This includes all DATA, DIM, DEF FN and IMAGE statements, and control character and other variable constant initiali- zations. Should your program involve chaining or EXEC overlays, divide your initialization module into two or more submodules. By doing this, you can CLEAR unneeded overhead and only the necessary variable baggage is available to the chained program. Listing 1 is an example of a skeleton structure. Control Logic Now you can actually write the code for your “main control logic”. If the program is complex then you might want to perform Step 1 to subdivide and outline the major modules of your main control logic section. The main control logic may be organized by menu options and their branches. There may also be internally controlled options and branches dictated by calculations, the value of key variables, or any other program branching criteria. Listing 2 is an example of a simple main control logic module. Note how the program fills in as you determine what constant, variable, and subroutines are needed. The dummy PRINT statement for the ‘add’ routine demonstrates how the menu module can be tested even though the subroutine it calls is not yet written. Subroutines You should incorporate subroutines into the program on an ‘as needed basis’, testing each from immediate execution mode with GOSUBs to ensure the operating integrity of your software. ° The special and temporary variables should be given names that will not conflict with the other program variables and that can be used by other subroutines that it neither call or that call it Suggested variable names are: TMPS(TMP.INDEX), STRGS(TMP.INDEX), TMP.STRG$(TMP.INDEX), etc. ¢ Always qualify FOR .. NEXT loops in subroutines that may be called from within another FOR. . NEXT loop. A qualified FOR..NEXT loop has the control variable identified in the NEXT part of the construct. For Example: 100 NEXT J is qualified, 100 NEXT is not qualified. Write Code Now you can write and hook each major functional module using Steps 1 to 3, in turn, until the program is complete. First outlining, then writing the code and adding subroutines. The subsequent examples provide sequenced snapshot views of the development of the program following these principles. ¢ Each module should be tested before moving on to the next one. If the module has been designed as has been suggested, this can be done from the keyboard in immediate mode by typing GOSUB (linenumber). This approach reduces the complexity of debugging a large hunk of code at one time and it serves to isolate the type of logic errors that are most difficult to find. Often you will have to initialize, from the keyboard, some dummy data that the module needs before GOSUBing. As the coding progresses and new ideas impose on the structure and/or the scope of the project, it is often necessary to reevaluate the existing structure. This activity is much simplified when the above principles have been adopted. Readability Your programs will be fairly readable just through the application of the structuring techniques described above. Here are some additional tricks to make it even more readable. Offset your REM statement from the other program lines by embedding control characters. There are exotic ways of doing this but here is the simplest technique (the charac- ter in brackets is a control character): 100 REM[J]***turn on thermostat***[J] This will cause the line to be separated from the lines above and below it and might look like this: 90 IF temperature (= freezing THEN 200 95 RETURN 100 REM ***turn on thermostat*** 105 GOSUB 60000 : GOSUB 61000 110 ON ERR GOTO 62000 ¢ Variable names should give the reader a good idea what the value of a variable is. To this end, it is a good idea to adopt certain naming conventions. Temporary variables should be named as we discussed above. Control charac- ters should be given names like a$, b$ or ctrl .a$, ctrl .b$; and these should be declared in an intialization section. Other variable names should be descriptive as follows: 6300 freezing = 32: boiling = 120: screenlength% = 24: firstname$ = “Sam: lastname$ = “Jones”: int max% = 32767 If, for the sake of speed, it is necessary to shorten variable names or to eliminate REM statements, it is best to publish the slow documented version with the advice to users that they should use appropriate REM removal and text editor utility programs for that purpose. Flow of Control Constructs Ihave also included a listing of skeleton routines that may be of assistance to BASIC programmers adapting routines from an algorithmic language or from other languages that incor- porate some of the more common “flow of control” constructs. They may be used to help in direct translations from such a . language or by the ambitious BASIC programmer who wishes to simplify program logic and branching techniques. It is assumed that readers need not be briefed on the use of the FOR..NEXT, GOTO, GOSUB.. RETURN, and IF..THEN.. ELSE constructs. 1. WHILE This construct will evaluate a logical expression prior to the execution of the following block of code. This means that it will i GOSUB 62600:GOSUB 62700 9 REM short subroutines 38 REM setup protected field 39 REM fid.len& := lenoth of field, horz%,verth -= coordinates 58 REM input integer 59 REM parameters not yet determined 2998 REM add 2 numbers 2999 REM oprandi’ := ist operand, oprand2% := 2d operand 3998 REM subtract 2 numbers 39979 REM corandi® := 1st operand, oprand2% := 2d operand 59999 REM menu - control module 63900 ROEM UOC GGU GGG ISS SISISIGR J OCICIGIOI III 63910 REM * Program to perform calculations * 62599 REM constant initialization 63910 REM * on pairs of integers * ; 63930 REM * Copyright (C) 1982 * 62699 REM variable initialization 63940 REM * by Ronald L. Askew * a 639401 REN OCG OOO CGO OEICGGSOICIC GCG ICE Listing 1 only execute the block that follows if the logical expression is 3. CASE true or since BASIC does not have a Boolean data type, if the numerical value of the expression is not zero. If the expression evaluates as false (or zero), the block of code will be ignored. Applications of this construct are common to many pro- gramming problems. Suppose you want to continue to allow user input and processing only if the user responds with alphanumeric characters, as in an input routine. Or suppose you want to continue processing all values but you only want to print results while they are non-negative. Finally, suppose you want to read from a file “while” the file still has data in it 2. REPEAT This construct is the functional opposite of WHILE. The block of code will execute at least once and repeat only if a condition evaluates as true or non-zero. As with the WHILE construct, if the expression is always true, an infinite loop results. Applications include the reading of a random file that is known to exist and has as its first record data describing the number of pointers to subsequent records (linked lists). If the condition tested was whether or not the next record in the list has a null pointer, execution will continue until a record is read that has such a pointer, but it will read at least one record (the header record) before the loop terminates. The CASE construct is most useful as an alternative to along list of IF statements testing for some specific condition. An expression is compared to a list of selectors of the same data type. Each selector is associated with a statement or block of statements to be executed. The first matching selector deter- mines the code to be executed. If none of the selectors matches the expression, no statements are selected or executed. One special application may provide the best example: a menu where the legal options are selected by the entry of a letter from “A” to “G” (in upper or lower case) or the control characters produced by pressing the «RETURN»,and the «ESCAPE» keys. In Conclusion: It would be encouraging if user groups imposed some standards upon the software they accept into their libraries. | am sure that most, if not all, disk librarians and newsletter editors are down-in-the-mouth about the problems of having to respond to members who have, in turn, responded negatively to the quality of important organizational software materials. If acomputer club is not willing to impose standards, it becomes the responsibility of the contributors to make the best contri- bution they can or we're all in trouble. + GOSUB 626G0:66 9 REM short subroutines & REM > REM [14 field, horak, B REM 9 REM input patameter integer not determined 98 REM ? add 2 numbers 9 REM 1 eprandi% := Ist operend, oprand2% 2 numbers ist operand subtract oprandiW := oprand2% REM menu - 9 control module 00 TEXT.HOME 1 VPOS=4: PRINT USING 63460; Addition REM veeewe 02 REM 1 03 REM t) 4 REM 2 Subraction vert% = coordinates = 2d operand = 2d operand titles Listing 2 (Listing 2 cont.) $0005 REM 40006 REM ees te ee ete 60007 REM Enter Seiection O10 WINDOW 29.8 te port for options 020 PRINT screencf 00G1 TO 60009 230 vow i.8 To creen on$, REM erase linenumbers 040 GET resoond$ u.opts$s.respond$) THEN 60040 O86 ON INSTRimenu osts$.respond$) GOSUB 3060,4000: GOTO 60000 initialization to perform calculations" REM variable initiaiization screenoff$=chr3(14) screen REM REM REM REM menu opts$="12" Peer ecTOreCe Cer tet terse tte cere rters: x Prog x on p rem irs to perform of calculations integers * * Convright ty Ronald cc) 1982 Askew * x x * ZOO GOO GOOG IOS GG OGG CGI ons 100. REM WHRHKKAKKKRKKAMKARKAKHKKAKAMKKE RAM AER KERR KRM KR ARERR RR AR KHER ER KERR 103 REM ** xe 105 9 REM xx Structured Business Basic - ae 110 REM ** A set of Subroutine Skeletons od 115 REM ** by xn 120. REM ** a 125 REM x* Ronald L. Askew xe 130 REM ** xe OT MET ETTTOCTOTCTOCTCTOTOOTICOUCTCOCTOCITOCSCOCOCe STITT TT ee ee ee ete eter tee PALME TA METECTCTOCSOSCOCICTOCE SCS TE TIC TOSe Tete Tete e etter rere rere ttt te tert Te) 205 9 REM ** xe 208 REM xx Emulation of the While Statement xe 207 REM ** a 208 REM OCG GG GCE CIGCGGOOGSIGCGOCIGOIGIIGISOIOIGOIGSIGIOIGUIOUIOI UOT TOTO IGE 210 IF conditiontstestvalue% THEN operationi=executed: ELSE GOTO 250 220 operationZ=executed 230 operation3=executed 240 etc, .=executed 245 GOTO 210 250 REM continue sequential processing 200) REM OCC GCG O OS OSGGUUSIGOIGOGO IOC UOIGGGIGOIGIGOEOUI OOOO IOI ISITE 305 REM x* ke 306 REM ** Emulation of the Repeat Statement x 307 REM ** wx 208 REM 00S 00 Gg GGSOIGGUISOIGOIGOGOIOIGUICIOIGCIGRGDIOGSIIOI GUCCI O SIO ISU IIGE 309 truest: false=0 310 FOR test=false TO true 315 operationl=ezecuted 320 operationZ=executed 330 operation3=executed 340 etc... =executed 345 test=(conditionk=testvalue®) 350 NEXT test 360 REM continue sequential processina 600) REM OCC GRO SOCCER SC US IG SIOCI GOGO GCGOOCCIGCIOGOGOGCIOG IODIOGOGI ISI GIO 405 REM *x ae 406 REM *x Emulation of the Case Statement xe 407 REM *x ae 208 REN OGG COURS OSI SO UCIGG IGG OI IOGIGIICIGTIOCIOGIOGC GOOG UI IO SIO 409 escapekev$=CHR$(27):returnkey$=CHR$(13) 410 acceptable. chars$="ABCDEFGabcodefa"+esckey$+returnkey$ 420 GET respond.char$:IF NOT INSTR(acceptable.chars$,respond.char$) THEN 420 430 ON INSTR(acceptable.chars$,respond.char$) GOSUB 500,510,520,530,540,550, 560 ,500,510.520.530.540,550,560,600.610 450 REM continue sequential processing Listing 3 WordStar Review by Woody Liswood Published by: MicroPro International Corporation 33 San Pablo Avenue San Rafael, Ca. 94903 (415) 499 - 1200 Want a quick opinion? WordStar is the best word processor available for the Apple. That is if you don’t need real propor- tional printing. If you do, then you should check out Spell- Binder. But SpellBinder is not a what-you-see-is-what-you-get screen image like WordStar. So, you should really think about what you want, and then try out both of those programs. | personally like WordStar for my own use. There is one problem though: WordStar is a CP/M based program. Therefore, you need to purchase a CP/M card of some sortas well as an 80-column card. If you do lots of writing, you'll be glad you did. WordStar is a what-you-see-is-what-you-get word processor. The screen shows you exactly what will appear on your paper. To me, that's what word processing is all about WordStar is not the easiest program you will ever have to learn. Since the program can do so much, and offers you so much flexibility, you have to learn how to use all of the features. Documentation The documentation which comes with WordStar is so complete it gets in the way. It is designed to document the program, not to teach you how to use it | have used WordStar for a long time now, and | still discover new things it can do when | page through the manual. What happens is that | get a need, look in the documentation, then discover that it not only does what I want, it does a few more things as well. 20 Apple Orchard Operation The operation is quite simple, or quite complicated. It all depends on your point-of-view. | go for the simple. The program is controlled by Control key sequences. To me they make sense. Cursor movement is all with the left hand; Control-S moves to the left; Control-D moves to the right; Control-E moves up and Control-X moves down. So far, so good. Control-A moves left one word; Control-F moves right one word. Now some complications; Control-QS moves to the left end of the line; ControlQD moves to the right side of the line; Control-QE moves to the top of the screen; ControlQX moves to the bottom of the screen; Control-QR moves to the start of the file and Control-QC moves to the end of the file; Control-Q plus a number will move to those marks if you have set them. Control deletes the line the cursor is on; Control-T deletes the word to the right; Control-G deletes the character the cursor is on; Control-QY deletes to the right side of the line; Control- Q(left arrow) deletes to the left side of line. A left arrow deletes a character it goes over. Ihave heard some criticism of WordStar because of these one and two control character sequences. | have also heard criticism that WordStar, on the Apple, doesn’t have the special function keys that are available on other CP/M based ma- chines. Rubbish. Having all those keys available under your left hand means you can do all your text manipulation and cursor movement without moving your hand from the keyboard or without having to take your eyes away from to screen to figure out what to do. That makes the program very easy to use. I've tried the function keys and personally feel that they get in the way, Actually, if function keys were available | would use them for strings of commands (macro’s if you will), not for single movement commands. I would have one key save the current file and return the cursor back to the current location. Oh well, maybe some day. Screens WordStar contains a series of help screens. These screens contain many of the control command sequences which you can use to cause things to happen. After you gain some familiarity with the program, you can turn the screens off. A very nice feature. No-File The first screen which appears is the NO-FILE menu. It is called “no file” because you do not have a file in memory to be worked upon. From this menu you can change the logged drive, allow your file directory to be displayed or not, and set your help level. This determines the amount, if any, of information that the help screens will show. From here you can also print file, rename a file, copy a file from one name to another or from one disk to another, and you can delete a file. Also available are an exit back to CP/M or a Run a program option, which would return you to WordStar when it ends. There is also a command to run MailMerge or Spellstar. WordStar also works with two types of files. You can edit normal word processing files. These files will contain lots of special characters which the program uses for it's formatting. You can also edit a normal CP/M text file and have no special formatting characters put into the file. Main Menu If you have selected a help level of 3, then all of the help menu's will appear when requested. First to appear is the MAIN MENU. This menu shows you the control sequences which move the cursor around and cause the screen to scroll. You don't have to memorize all those things | was talking about. They are displayed at the top of the screen for you to read. Also displayed are some Miscellaneous commands for tabbing, reforming paragraphs, turning insert on and off, the find and replace and how to stop a command once you have given it For example, Control-B reforms a paragraph. WordStar, while you are entering data, automatically word wraps and right and left justifies the text. However, you will probably want to go back and add or subtract characters. When you do that the right justification is lost When you are finished with the editing, you move the cursor back to the line where you started your editing and press a Control-B. The paragraph then is justified and things can continue. That's how easy it is. Oh, yes, you can turn off the justification feature if you wish. WordStar allows you to insert or write over your file. Itis your choice. | always leave the insert on. The other thing shown on the menuis the control sequences to get to the other menus. Remember that there are many two character control sequences. Each of the first character's has TransModem 1200 -77 How to Save Money with the SSM TransModem 1200° Cut down your phone time. The TransModem 1200 cuts long distance costs by sending and receiving elec- tronic information faster. The TransModem 1200 runs at the most widely used baud rates—110, 300, or 1200—so you can easily commu- nicate with any computer, including other personal com- puters, public information services, and timeshare systems. You don’t even have to set the data transfer speed. The TransModem 1200 automatically adjusts the baud rate to match the speed of any modem on the other end of the line. You can’t find a better equipped modem for the money. The TransModem 1200 completes calls where other modems cannot get through. 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Apple IV/Ileand Apple Ill are registered trademarks of Apple Computer Corporation, their own screen to show you what the second character is and what that character does. Control J gives you a Help menu. Control Q shows you what is called a Quick menu. Control O controls the Onscreen menu. Control K is the Block menu, and Control P shows you special characters which will affect your printing. Help The Help menu gives you text information about the help levels, how the reform command works, what the special symbols mean that are shown at the right side of the screen, and what each of the “dot” commands do. In addition, it has text information about the status line, the ruler line, how to set margins and tabs, how to place markers and how to move text. Quick The Quick menu shows you many of the commands that are accessed by first typing a Control-Q; Control-QS moves the cursor to the left end of the line; Control-QF starts a string or character find sequence; L finds a misspelled word marked with SpellStar; and Q plus something else repeats that indefinitely or until the end of the file is reached. Block The Block menu is reached by first typing a Control-K. This shows you the characters for setting, moving, and working with blocks of information. After a Control-K, S saves the file onto the disk and let's you continue working. D saves the file and places youat the no-file menu; X saves the file and places you in CP/M; Q abandons the work; 1 to 9 places those markers; B marks the beginning of a block of text for a block move; K marks the end of a block for a block move; and H hides or displays a marked block. That deserves an explanation. Ifyou use a Videx board with an Inverse chip, then the menus and special functions are all shown in inverse characters. When you mark a block of text, all of that text turns into inverse characters. This feature makes it very easy to see what you are doing. Well, when you are done, you would use the H to turn off the inverse characters so that you can see the text normally. C lets you copy blocks of text; V lets you move blocks of text; Y deletes text; W writes the text elsewhere; and N sets column mode on or off. Also, R allows you to read a file on the disk and place it in your document O copies a file on to the disk; J deletes from the disk; P prints and an E renames. As youcan see, you can do your disk file operations and start printing some other file all while you are editing a current file. That is a very handy feature. Yes, WordStar allows print spooling. You can be editing one file while you are printing another. Onscreen The Onscreen menu controls much of the visible activities of WordStar. It is reached with a Control-O. After the Control-O, L sets the left margin; R sets the right margins, X releases the margins; | sets and N clears tabs. G sets paragraph tabs and F sets the ruler to the cursor position. C centers the text and S sets the line spacing mode. In WordStar, if you want double spacing and you cannot set that on your printer, you must have double spacing on the screen. There are also a number of toggles at this menu. W toggles word wrap; T turns on or off the ruler line; J is for justification ; V is for variable tabs; His for hyphen help; Eis fora soft hyphen; D is for the printer display, and P is for page breaks. Now to explain. 22 Apple Orchard Word wrap only lets full words exist at the end of a line. Incomplete words, are wrapped down to the next line. If you don't want spacing between words, you would toggle the word wrap off and let WordStar act like a typewriter page. There is a ruler line normally displayed at the top of the screen. It shows where the tabs are and what the margins are set at. If you want to display an additional line of text and don't feel you need to see those things, you can set it off. Hyphen help is a useful WordStar feature. If you leave hyphen help on, then when you form paragraphs, rather than wrap longer words found at the end of the line down to the next line, WordStar will stop at the word and allow you to insert a soft hyphen in it That way, your printed material will look better with less spaces between words on any given line. Soft hyphen, you ask? WordStar has hard and soft hyphens. Hard hyphens always print. Soft hyphens only print when they are found at the end ofaline. If you toggle soft hyphen on, then all your hyphens will be soft. Sound Confusing? It really isn’t The Word Plus, a spelling program, actually will go through a WordStar docu- mentand insert soft hyphens in all words of a certain character length or longer. Page breaks are dotted lines which show on screen where the page will break when printed. This allows you to visualize how the material will look before you take the time to print it | use that display all the time. When a page will break where | don't want it to, | use a dot comand to force a page break where | would like it to appear. The printer toggle hides special printer control characters so that your screen will show, exactly, what will appear on paper. If it is off, special printer control characters will appear where you inserted them. | leave it off so that | will know what is going on. Print The Print menu is reached with a Control-P. This menu allows you to insert printer control characters in the text. B turns on bold face; D turns on double strike; S underlines; X strikes out the text V subscripts; T superscripts; H overprints the characters; A changes to an alternate pitch, N returns to standard pitch, C allows for a pause during printing, Y changes ribbon color, and there are four user defined characters, QWE R, which will do what ever you set up during your WordStar installation. Of course, your printer must be able to support all these features. DOT Commands Dot commands are commands which are preceded by a period “.” with the period located on the far left end of a line. They are used by many word processors. With these com- mands, you can override the WordStar defaults. The following are some of the commands: LH sets line height; CW sets character width; PL sets paper length; PO sets the page offset from the left edge of your paper; MT sets the top margin; HE sets a heading; MB sets the bottom margin; FM sets the footing margin; FO sets the footing; PC sets the page number column; PA starts a new page; CP starts a new page if there is a specified number of lines left to be printed; OP omits page numbers; PN starts page numbering; IG or two dots allows you to insert nonprinting comments, and VJ toggles justification. Summary Asyoucan see, WordStar can do almost anything you wantit to do. Many people call it the Cadillac of word processors. | agree. If you do lots of writing, you need WordStar. Don't settle for second best. Mailmerge MailMerge is WordStar's option for form letter development Itallows you to produce form letters, to insert variable data into a document during printing, to insert other complete files during printing, to print multiple copies of a single document, and to build command files for automating complicated processing operations. MailMerge is accessed from the WordStar no-file menu by keying M. That, however, is not the way it’s used. You must first create, with WordStar, a file which contains special dot commands and other special commands which, when processed by MailMerge, allow all those special things to happen. Following is the first section of a letter which I use. It shows just how one feature of MailMerge works. .. Source product review notification letter .OP cS AV” TODAY'S DATE?",DATE AV“ COMPANY NAME?”,COMPANY AV” ADDRESS?",ADDR1 “AV” CITY STATE ZIP?”,ADDR2 AV” SOFTWARE NAME?”,NAME. AV” CONTACT NAME?”,CNAME. WOODY LISWOOD 110 Upland Drive San Francisco, CA 94127 (415) 585-6375 &DATES & COMPANYS SADDRIS SADDR2& Dear SCNAMES: Thank you for participating in our review program. This review may appear in a variety of separate media. We plan on publishing this review in the Cider Press, the nation-wide magazine of the San Francisco Apple Core. Also, | now publish a software and hardware review magazine on both The Source and CompuServe. As space permits, | will be publishing selected reviews on The Source and on CompuServe. Addi- tionally, certain reviews will also appear in The Apple Orchard, a 30,000+ publication of the International Apple Core. I have enclosed a copy of the article about Gname& that is written to go on-line. If you wish to reply, | will be happy to add your reply as a comment section to the review. In addition, we plan to publish this article in the next scheduled issue of the Cider Press. The article for the Cider Press may be slightly different since we will add illustrations and other graphics that we cannot utilize on The Source. The.AV'S tell MailMerge to ask me for those variable names. Then, when it sees a Gname& within the text, it places the appropriate variable name within the text, and justifies it accordingly. It looks like an originally typed letter. How about that MailMerge works with CP/M data files also. It works the same way with some small exceptions. Instead of .av's, you first tell MailMerge the names, in sequence, which will be found between carriage returns in the data file. Then you use those names within the &.....6's. MailMerge will go through and place the appropriate data into the letter. You can create the data files with WordStar using the Non- Document mode, or if you can use DataStar, MicroPro's data entry and retrieval program, to create the files. There is a “.DM” command for use also. This displays a message on the screen while MailMerge is going about it's work. You can say, now put the letter head stationary in the printer and press “P”. Then display a request to now put the envelope in the printer... A very powerful and flexible program. Another Dot command of great use is the “.FI”. This stands for insert a file. Whenever MailMerge reads this command and the file name next to it, it will then add that file to the text which is being printed. This way you can create a large boiler plate document by only keying in a series of commands. If you need paragraphs a, b, d, g, aa, zz, c, then qq. You would set up the MailMerge file with a series of “.Fl A, .Fl B”. etc. You can also span multiple disks using the “.FI” commands. You would set up the same way, but follow the “.FI B” with a “CHANGE”. This tells the operator to change disks and will cause MailMerge to warm-boot the new disk without causing a BDOS error in CP/M. Why, you ask, would a document or documents to be printed as one printing be so large as to be spread over more than one disk? Perhaps each disk contains one chapter of a book. The MailMerge file would basically say print chapter one, change disk, print chapter two, change disk, and so forth. A useful feature for writers. Another feature is the repeat printing feature. This tells the file to be repeated until a specified action has ended, a data file is used up, or a selected number of documents have been printed. You can see that it is possible to build a command file with just dot commands, which would invoke a series of MailMerge documents, each of which might use a separate data file for processing. With continuous feed paper, you can come in, select one command file, and hope your ribbon holds out. Summary Mailmerge is a necessary and useful addition to the MicroPro - WordStar product line. If you do word processing, you really need the features found in MailMerge. It does much more than just Form Letters. Once you have become used to the command file structure and learned the extra dot commands used for MailMerge, you will find many uses for it Spellstar SpellStar is the MicroPro spelling program which works only with WordStar. It is run by keying in a S from the WordStar No- File menu. SpellStar comes with a basic dictionary of about 20,000 words. On the Apple, which was the version which I tested, that takes most of one disk. The program works very well. | have used it with many files without problems. Over the past few months I have used, and August 1983 23 reviewed a number of spelling check programs. Each has its good points and its bad points. The best feature of SpellStar is that it is designed to run within WordStar. Here’s how. After you select the SpellStar menu option within WordStar, you are asked the name of the file you want to check or to add to the dictionary. If you are doing a spelling check on the file you just worked on with WordStar, you key a Control-Rand a return. Otherwise, you must type in the name of the file. Next, you come to an operations menu. You choose C to check spelling, M to go to dictionary maintenance, or X to return to the no-file menu. Spelling Check You are then given the option to change the spelling check controls. If you use a hard-disk, this is usually unnecessary. If you are using 5 1/4 inch floppies, then you will need to tell SpellStar which drive contains the file to be checked and which drive has the dictionary. You can, at this point, indicate which drive contains the main dictionary, or change the default name of the main dictionary to the dictionary name to be used. You may also adda supplemental dictionary name to be used. And, you can designate a work drive to hold the subsidiary files which SpellStar generates while it processes your textfile. What you have to worry about with small disks is that the dictionary takes about 100k. SpellStar generates work files that are equal in size to your text file. If you are checking large files, it is possible for you to run out of space. When that happens with CP/M, you bomb. The Spelling Check While the spelling check is going on, SpellStar displays a screen which tells you where it is and what it is doing. First, you are told how many words are in your document. Then, the number of different words are displayed. Next is the number of words in your main dictionary along with the number of words in the supplemental dictionary. Then, WordStar keeps track of where it is in the main dictionary and updates the number of dictionary words checked. This is a nice feature for it tells you what is happening. You don't just sit there staring at the screen waiting for a cursor to return and wondering if things have bombed and you should reset out and start over again. When this is done, Spellstar gives you the number of misspelled words and the total number of occurrences of those misspelled words. At this point you can display the misspelled words on the screen, start over, return to the WordStar menu, or mark the words as misspelled in the file and continue with the program. Correcting Your Spelling Errors SpellStar uses WordStar to fix the errors. Each of the words is marked with a special character. You use a Control-L to go from word to word. You must make the decisions yourself. There is actually a menu of items that you can choose from. When the cursor stops at a potential misspelling, F lets you fix the word; B allows you to bypass the word leaving it marked; an lignores the word; D says the word is correct and will place it into an ADD file to be added to the dictionary during a maintenance operation, and S adds it to the supplemental dictionary rather than the main dictionary. 24 Apple Orchard SpellStar has a small buffer of about a 20 word capacity. If you instruct the program to ignore a word or say that a word is correctly spelled, it will automatically remove the spelling marks and pass over future occurrences of that word. That's a nice feature. Works smoothly. No problems. However, this is the one area where I feel the program should be improved. SpellStar has no feature to check the dictionary for suggested correct spelling and to read a correctly spelled word out of the dictionary and correct the file. Modern technology for spelling programs should have that feature. Dictionary Maintenance After you complete your spelling checking, and have indicated that there were correctly spelled words in the file, you have the option to add those words to either a supplemental dictionary or to the main dictionary. WordStar has placed those words in a file with the extension .ADD. You would go back to the SpellStar prompt and this time choose the dictionary maintenance option. The dictionary maintenance menu presents itself in a similar way as the spelling checking menu. You have the opportunity to indicate what drive contains what file. The main dictionary is 100k long, You will need a blank, formatted disk to hold the new dictionary since both will not fit on the same disk. You also have menu items to create a new dictionary, add words, delete words, list dictionary words, combine add/ delete functions or to only use the “S” words from the .ADD file. When you combine add/delete this is what happens. Words which are in the ADD file but not in the dictionary are added to the dictionary. Words which are in the add file and in the dictionary are deleted from the dictionary. Actually SpellStar stops at each of the words to be deleted and informs you that this word is already in the dictionary and asks that you confirm that you really want to delete that word. Neat. That's how you get a misspelling out of the dictionary. Dictionary maintenance takes a few moments, but not excessively so. It works well. Other spelling programs have the maintenance program as an automatic function after checking spelling. | kind of like this way. It gives me lots of control over the process and allows me enough options to set up things the way | want. Summary This a well organized and constructed spelling checking program and dictionary maintenance operation. Itis designed, specifically, to work with WordStar and takes advantage of the WordStar editing features for spelling correction. It works, is relatively easy to use, and like all MicroPro programs appears to have been designed as a solution to a problem rather than as an afterthought to a separate program. However, in my opinion, there are now better spelling programs on the market. You owe it to yourself to look at “THE. WORD PLUS" before you make a decision about Spellstar. The difference is that “THE WORD PLUS” in addition to the spelling checking, gives you suggested spellings for words that it doesn't recognize, then will place those words in the file for you when itis done. That way you do not have to mark a word as misspelled and come back to it with a text editor and try to remember how to fix it If you get SpellStar as part of a package, then | think that you probably will use it and be very happy with it If you must purchase a program, | think that you would like some other programs better. 7 Reversal Review by Eugene M. Paymar Published by: HAYDEN PUBLISHING CO. 50 Essex St Rochelle Park, NJ 07662 Available through B. Dalton Bookstores Price: $34.95 (approximately) All right! | have to confess. | love playing strategy games against the computer, but | hate sitting around waiting for the computer to make its move. At 15 seconds | start to get antsy; at 45 seconds | begin to think of rubbing my feet on the carpet and hurling bolts of static lightning into the guts of my poor Apple. Of course, /’m allowed all the time that/ need, but that's a different story. Under the above restraints, | have always had a difficult time finding a good quality game to play. Sargon II came closest; | could always beat it, but only by paying very close attention. The game known variously as Othello/Reversi/Reversal has always been a particular source of disappointment to me. | learned the game in Nikko, Japan one memorable evening four years ago, and have been enthused about it ever since. However, finding a good computer opponentis something like pursuing the Holy Grail. I've played two versions on the Heath H-8, at least two more on the Apple, and the Atari game computer version. Frankly, the only real challenge lay in trying to zero the poor computers. Then a friend invited me over to see the new “great” Reversal game that he had just bought | noted with interest that the authors were Dan and Kathe Spracklen, the authors of Sargon II, However, with my previous experience in mind I set the top level of play, AQ9(Advanced Strategy, level 9). The program's curser blinked interminably. At 40 seconds my friend hastily saved both his computer and our friendship by restarting the program at level A3 which produced a computer response a few seconds after each of my moves. Now, one does not have to play this type of game long to realize that you are relatively safest on the sides and perman- ently safe in the corners. Thus it seems reasonable to strive to achieve positions on the sides of the board and later spread into the corners; and conversely, try to keep your opponent from doing likewise. Much to my astonishment, after only a few moves the computer freely offered a jump onto the side of the board. Muttering a few choice scathing comments about both the program's capability and my friend's judgment, | gleefully accepted this and several future “gifts”. Approaching the end of the game, | had a forty point lead. Then | discovered that was forced to give the computer a corner . . . and then another one! When the dust cleared | had lost by forty points! I asked to borrow the game for future study. My friend graciously granted my request (after all, I'm a heck of a guy... also, | have spent 15 years in the martial arts). Several evenings and a number of heartbreaking last-move losses later, | had finally found enough patterns to play the machine even at A3 and win some at A4. Folks, this program is tough! And not merely tough. The Spracklens have done their usual fine job of human interfacing. Not surprisingly, they have used Sargon II as a model with very similar menu and control features. The main menu has four options: play the computer; play a human opponent; board “editor”; and exit If you wish to play the computer, screen prompts let you choose the computer's strategy (beginner, intermediate, ad- vanced) and level (1-9) as well as select your own color. Once the game begins, the «ESCAPE» key lets you toggle back and forth between a text screen which records the moves and a delightful Hi-Res display of the board. All of the pieces have faces which appropriately change expression as the tide of battle ebbs to and fro. When the computer makes its move it Puts its flashing piece on the screen, but in another nice touch, it does not change over the pieces until you hit (RETURN». This allows you ample time to analyze its move. When it’s your turn, you may move a flashing cursor from one legal move to the next via a key stroke from the keyboard, finally pushing «RETURN» to enter the move. If you choose to play a fellow human, the computer simply acts as the umpire. It will only allow legal moves, and it takes care of changing the captured pieces. The edit mode is another nice feature. You can get there either from the initial menu or from the middle of a game by typing Control-R. (Warning: Be sure to toggle back to the text screen first, or you will likely be lost in never-never land.) This mode is useful in setting up problems or in recovering from accidentally hitting «RETURN» during a game and thus making the wrong move (of course, you would never cheat and try to recover from an inferior move). The “++” and?” keys move the cursor up and down the board, respectively while the left and tight arrows do their own things, also. Typing “W” or “B” at the cursor location will place the appropriately colored piece there. The space bar erases whatever is at that location. Finally, «RETURN: terminates the edit mode and brings back the main menu from which you can re-enter one of the game modes and continue with the now modified position. The exit mode leaves you in the System Monitor. It would have been a little nicer to be back in DOS, but typing “3D0G” gets you back to what acts like a freshly booted DOS. In summary, Reversal is an excellent program, good for many hours of challenging intellectual play. | may not have found the Grail yet, but this program is a real treasure. e August 1983 25 Satisfying Over With Innovation The Original Apple® graphics printer interface. Since its introduction three years ago, the Grappler has been imitated by many, but never matched. Now with Dual Hi-Res Graphics for side by side reproductions and Mixed Mode screen dump- = ing, the Grappler + remains the most intelligent interface available. Over two dozen commands give Apple users full control over any graphics or text on the Apple Screen, including a new 80 column text dump. Performance, reliability and support have made the Grappler + the #1 selling intelligent Apple interface. For Apples and Printers The economical way to add printer buffering. The Bufferboard easily adds memory to your current Apple interface system, freeing your computer for additional input. Easily upgradable from 16K, the Bufferboard can store up to 20 pages of text. It fits neatly inside your Apple, “Docking” onto your existing printer interface.* No clumsy boxes or cables, no external power supplies. ..just conve- nience and g economy. With the Buff