Open Apple Vol 5 No 02 MAR 1989

_A2-Central’ 2 A journal and exchange of Apple II discoveries Open-Apple 1 os March 1989 Vol. 5, No, 2 ISSN 0885-4017 newstand price: $2.50 photocopy charge per page: $0.15 Apple, Apple, Apple... "Apple's official position is that we will not support develop- ment of copy-protection schemes," according to an article pub- Hshed in both Apple Direct (January 1989, page 19) and the new APDAlog {Winter 1989, page 25), which are Apple publications for developers. Simply pui, copy protection is not a worthwhile endeavor. We cant help or support you in developing copy protection mecha- nisms, Obviously theres no way to stop you from implementing copy protection, but we won't help with schemes or problems that you get into when things break. The article says that developers who insist on copy protecting their products will have to invest their own time and money in engineering a scheme; in maintaining it when new Apple hardware is released; in testing it on all machines and products, including third-party hard- ware; and in interacting with angry customers about bad key disks, hard disk installations, and backup disks. ‘Anything that runs can be debuaged and patched...lt may also be worth considering the bad press Currently given to all products with copy protection," the article says. The Apple Il Technical Note suite has been completely updat- ed and converted from MacWrite files to ProDOS text files. Apple's Developer Technical Support team invested hundreds of man- and woman-hours in this project during 1988. The results of all that effort have recently been made available to the public. Since the notes may be freely copied, though not resold, we have included them, in total, in the extra space on our monthly disk this month. They're also available in the A2Pro library on GEnie and on other online services, This was quite a trick, since in their natural form the tech notes fill up one-and-ahalf 3,5 disks, We had to dehydrate them to get them to fit on the disk. This means we also had to include a program that can rehydrate them back to normal size once you have them at your house. Complete details about how to do this are on the disk. On the next page youll find a chart that lists each tech note currently avail- able by number and name and that tells whether a note is new or revised (and, if revised, whether the changes were major). Those of you who are doing full-text searches of our back issues can now do the same with Apple's tech notes, too. Apple is continuing to look for knowledgeable Apple Il peo- ple to work in Cupertino. This enlightened policy beats the pants off Apple's old way of hiring minicomputer people to guide the per- sonal computer revolution. Apple is looking for programmers, devel- oper technical support engineers, and several kinds of marketing managers for its Apple Il areas. Write Apple's Human Resources department at mail stop 27AS, 10500 N De Anza Blvd, Cupertino, CA 95014. According to an ad Apple recently placed in Call -A.PP.L.E.: Personal computing began with the Apple il. Thousands of appli- cations and millions of computers later, it Is the clear choice in homes and schools. The Apple il family of computers has had an incredible effect on our past and will have an'even greater impact on our future. We re committed to the continued success of the Apple If family, and that presents a rare opportunity for your future. We need more people to help us run with the Apple H and see just how far it can go. If you want fo be a part of our unique and exciting team, send us your resume. You'll influence our next computers, and our next generation. On January 27 Apple announced that its string of 12 consec- utive quarters of surging profits has ended. Apple's profits for the current quarter, which will end March 30, are expected to be about 40 per cent less than the same quarter last year. Apple blames the losses on falling RAM chip prices. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal (January 30, 1989, page B10), Apple still has millions of 1 megabyte chips in inventory for which it paid $38 apiece last summer. Street prices on KAM chips are below that now; in quantities as large as Apple buys, the chips are thought to be available for about $23 apiece. Apple attempted to cover its costs on the expensive chips by raising prices last September, however, that resulted in cus- tomers and dealers buying low-end machines and adding their own chips. 'We thought we were ordering chips to be used in the next month or two, not the next year,’ John Sculley, Apple's president, told the Wail Street Journal. “We also thought that one-megabit chip sup- plies would get even tighter toward the end of the year.” Since Apple doesnt sell any Apple II products that use | meg chips, it would be fair to place the entire blame for the profit drop on the Macintosh product line. On January 19, Apple announced major changes in the way it provides support to third-party hardware and software develop- ers. The changes were driven by needs in the Macintosh marketplace, but with some concern for Apple II developers as well. Apple's herelofore no-cosl Certified Developers Program will be replaced by two new fee-based programs: Apple Partners and Apple Associates. A third level of support will be provided to developers world-wide by a reorganized APDA, which Apple bought back from A.P.P.L.E. Co-op (now called TechAlliance) late last year, as mentioned here in December (page 4.85), The Apple Partners program is intended specifically for U.S, devel- Fw — “JOU KNOW THE ULES COMPADE. SMUGGLED AMERICAN COMPUTER CANNOT BE EXAMINED UNTIL KGB REMOVES ALL ‘ESCAPE’ BUTTONS” 5.10 A2-Central Vol. 5, No. 2 opers who publish and sell their products in the open market. Apple The Apple Associates program is intended for those who influence Partners must qualify for the program by substantiating that they have or support the development of Apple products, but who don't bring products for sale and they must pay an annual fee of $600. their own products to market. This would include computer profes- Released Apple IT Technical Notes November 1988 ‘+t New #RY Revised ne major changes * Ipple Te Apple II Miscellaneous ‘G+ 1 Mouse Differences On Ile and IIe « ‘nt 1 80-Colum Screen Damp * *Rt 2 40-Coluan and Double Righ-Rasolution Graphics * ‘RY 2 Apple TI Family Identification Routines 2.1 ape 3 Foreign Language Keyboard Layouts wee 3 Super Serial Card Firmware Bug yet &—Dworak Keyboard Layout ‘Rt 4 AppleWorks Keys ‘Rt 5 Memory Expansion on the Apple IIc *RY 45 AppleWorks File Fornats *Rt 6 © Ruf fering Blues ’ ¥Rt 6 ~—TWM Port Description ‘Rt 7 Baisting Versions ‘Rt 7 Apple TI Family Identification apple Tle ¥Rt 8 Pascal 1.1 Firmware Protocol ID Bytes *Rt 1 Overview of the Apple Tie 43% 9 AppleSoft Real Variable Storage * ‘Rt 2—-Rardware Protocol for Doing DMA . ‘et 10 80-Colum Getthar Routine _ » ‘at 3 Double High-Resolution Graphics ‘Rt 11 -Buamining the $800 Space frém AppleSoft * aR 4 ROY line wat R Apple II Firawaze WAIT Routine wee 5 /T Line AppleTalk ‘Rt 4G ~The Apple IT Paddle Cizcuits vee 1 Identifying AppleTalk vet 7 Interfaces--Serial, Parallel, and TEER~488 wt 2 ProbOS 8 Compatibility on the Ile and Ics ége 8 Known Anomalies of Enhanced Ile ROMs si cs/os ‘Rt = 9 Switch Input Changes a *t® 1 Contents of the System and System Tools Disks Apple TIss vt 28/08 and the 80-Colum Firmare aR 1 How to Install Custom BRK and /NMI Handlers - 3 Pointers on Caching yRt 2 Transforming 1/0 Subroutines for Use in "Native" Hode House See inc Tnformat ton: Rar 096 se * ¥Rt = 1 Interrupt Environnent with the Mouse * aa 4 Ghanging Graphics Modes in Mid-Application ans 2 ‘Varying VBL Interrspt Bate y we ; aya oe ¥RX «3 Mode Byte of the SetMouse Routine * cS fen, Pest, Dake SExaCenre. we = 4 Mouse Firmware Bug Affecting ServeMouse * ki Balt Mochanisa in 1163 SAG *Re 5 Check on Mouse Fizmware Card ‘Rt 8 -Blems Functions in I1GS SANE ‘RY § ~~ MouseText Charactere 4Rt -9—TIGS Sound Expansion Connector: Analog 1/0 Inpedances * ‘Rt = 7 Mouse ‘Clamping vRt 10 invalegn Tvist, * *Rt 11 Ensoniq DOC Swap-Hode Anomaly Pascal P RE 12 Tool Set Interdependencies bl 4 Pascal Declarations & Directory Structure #Re 13 ROM 1.0 Modem Firawaze Bug aRe le Configuration and Use of Pascal Run-Time Systems & ‘RY 14 Standard File Calls and GrafPort Records we’ DP Bish Format pr: Rout ine iS +R¢ 15 Instal Font and Big Fonts * ¥R 14 Apple Pascal 1.3 TREESEARCH and IDSEARCA * *R* 16 Motes on Backgronnd Printing + sae 15. Apple IL Pascal SHORTGRAPHICS Module * ‘G17 Application Menory Management « the N0StartUp User ID * ‘ge 16 Driver to Have Two Volumes on One 3,5° Disk * *RY 18 Do-It-Yourself SCC Interrupts Proves @ ‘Rt 19 Multichannel Output with Apple I1GS Note Synthesizer 471 The GETIN Buffer and a ProD0S Clock Card *Rt 20 Catalog of APW Language Nunbers *R* = 2 Fort ing DOS 3.3 Programs to ProDOS and BASIC. SYSTEM ‘p+ 21 DMA Compatibility for Expansion RAH at 3 Device Search, Identification, and Driver Conventions Re 22 Proper Unloading of Dynamic Segments mt 4 1/0 Redirection in DOS and ProDOS *R* 23 Toolbox Ose of DOC RAM 9a* 5 ProDOS Block Device Formatting aRt 24 Apple IIGS Toolbox Reference Updates Re 6 Attacking External Commands to BASIC. SYSTEM ‘Rt 25 Apple IZGS Firmware Reference Updates sat 7 Starting and Quitting Interpreter Conventions wat 26 ROM 2.0 Revision Sumary vat & Dealing with /RAM *R+ 27 Graphios Image File Formats vt 9 “Buffer Management Using RASIC.SYSTEN ‘nt 28 Interface Card Design Guidelines a apt 10 Installing Clock Driver Routines *Rt 29 Monochrome Sigh-Resolution Node * ‘Rt 11 The ProD0S 8 MACAID Byte ‘Rt 30 Apple TIGS Hardvare Reference Updates yt 12° Interrupt Handling *RE 31 Redirecting Output in aPWC « ¥Rt —13-_Double High-Resolution Graphics Files *R* = -32,—= [TNH Line Anomaly * *Rt 14 Selector and Dispatcher Conventions aR 33 ERRORDEATE Macro - 15 Row ProDQS § Treats Slot 3 *R 4 Low-Level QuickDraw II Routines bd 16 How to Format a Prod0S Disk Device be i 35 Printer Driver Specifications = baal l Recursive ProdOS Catalog Routine *Rt 36 ~—- Port Driver Specifications *Rt «18 /RAM Memory Map *pt 37“ Free-Form Synthesizer Tips ® *Rt 13° File Auxiliary Type Assignment ‘Rt 38 List Controls in Dialog Boxes * ‘Rt 20 Mirrored Devices and SnartPort aRt 39 Mega II Video Counters a 21 ‘Identifying ProDOS Devices *Rt 40 -VBL Signal . » ‘SmartPort vet {1 Font Family Nunbers *R* 1 Smart¥ort Introduction ce ae Eupton pincers . ‘Rt 2s SmartPort Calls Updated +t 43 Undocumented Feature of C2lcMenuSize ii: 5 Secctvark miadcentvectuns ttt 44 GetPenState and SetPenState Record Error oY —-SuartBort Device Types 5 ne e Fareumers arias *R* SCSI SnartBort Control Call Changes see 47 at seitatesine Does Fe. SME nes gece mente bas 7 SmartPort Subtype Codes ver 48 ALL About Alertiindow een Pci iii baa, ‘Rt «Ls UniDisk 3.5 Internals anager ter: P ‘Ré 2“ UniDisk 3.5 ID Bytes ‘Re 1 Custom Font Selection *ne 3 STAM Call Bug Memory Expansion Card ‘Rt Accessing Macintosh Disks +t 1 Questions and Answers ‘Rt 45 Architectural Differences Between 3.5" Drives March 1989 sionals in large companies, educators, scientists and researchers, consultants, training providers, industry analysts, distributors, and members of the trade press. The Apple Associates program Is open to almost anyone in the U.S. willing to pay the annual fee of $350. APDA is for everybody, anywhere, Well, at least for everybody who is interested in obtaining Apple documentation or development soft- ware, For an annual fee of $20 (in the U.S.; $25 in Canada and Mexi- co, $35 elsewhere) members receive a quarterly magazine/catalog, called APDAlog. The Winter 1989 APDAlog includes 32 pages of tech- nical articles about both the Apple II and the Macintosh and 54 pages of catalog, The APDA catalog includes some items that aren't available else- where. These include Apple's own programming tools and references, such as the Apple Programmer's Workshop ($100), the Apple It SCSI Card Technical Reference Manual ($20), the AppleShare Program- mer's Guide for the Apple ligs ($20), and the AppleCD SC Develop- er's Guide ($22), Also included in this category are beta versions of documents such as the GS/OS Reference, which will be available in bookstores everywhere someday. In addition to Apple's own products, APDA also stocks a wide range of third-party development tools and references. However, whereas APDA under TechAlliance sold these items—such as Addison-Wesley's Apple-authored reference books and Byte Works’ ORCA language series—at discounted prices, APDA under Apple lisis these products at their suggested retail prices (TechAlliance may continue to cary these products at a discount), APDA'’s new address is mail stop 330 at Apple's Mariani address (APDA, Apple Computer Inc, M/S 33G, 20525 Mariani Ave, Cupertino, CA 95014.) The phone number is 408-562-3953 or 800-282-2732 (APDA expects to also have a Canadian 800 number by March 1). Apple Partners and Associates automatically get APDA member- ships, They also get both of Apple's developer publications, the week- ly Apple Viewpoints and the monthly Apple Direct; monthly informa- tion and technical note mailings; automatic System Software updates, including a site license, documentation, change guides, and bimonth- ly technical bulletins (this program is also available, in two versions, separately—more in a moment); access to additional-fee developer training; and The Information Exchange: Technical Guidebook. Participants in the programs also get an account on Apple's internal AppleLink email system with access to the developer bulletin board and technical libraries. Partners can also use AppleLink to contact Developer Technical Support by email with specific questions, howev- er, Associates can't. Partners also get 12 months of AppleLink mini- mum fees prepaid (at $12.50 a month), Associates get only 1 month prepaid. Partners, bul not Associates, also are able to buy Apple hardware at discount; to obtain Apple Service training; to obtain marketing assistance in directories, guides, and new product publicity programs; and, for an additional fee, to participate in Apple's Annual Developer Conference (this year's conference is scheduled to begin the day after AppleFest Boston closes—Monday, May 8, in San Jose). New participants in each program can elect to buy a ‘Developer's Library’ of technical manuals for an additional $150. The library for Apple [I developers includes Technical introduction to the Apple Hgs, Programmer's Introduction to the Apple ilgs, Apple ligs Toolbox Ref- erences Vol ! & 2, GS/OS manuals, international localization guide- lines, Apple Numerics Environment Manual, Human Interface Guide- lines, and all back issues of the Apple Il technical notes, David Szetela, Apple's Manager of Developer Services, told us that the new fees don't come close to covering Apple's costs for the pro- grams, but do provide a way for Apple to expand its support to cover many individuals who were previously ineligible because they weren't true commercial developers. Szetela also said there would be improvements to the program and additional support products announced during the coming year. Szetela also said that while the Partner and Associate programs are available only within the U.S., most Apple offices outside the U.S. have similar programs and Cupertino is working with these offices to strengthen their support efforts. However, based on the reports we've received, my guess is that this support is almost totally Macintosh-ori- ented, If you are an Apple I] developer outside the U.S. and you can't get development support, write to Kirk Loevner, Director of the Apple Developer Group, at Mariani mai) stop 23-EV. and tell him about your Al-Central 5.11 experiences, If you're in the U.S., on the other hand, and would like to join either program, call Apple's Developer Programs Hotline at 408-974- 4897 and ask for an application form, or write Apple Developer Pro- grams at Apple's Mariani mail stop 51-W, Automatic Apple Il system software upgrades are a new ser- vice Apple is offering its customers, as mentioned earlier. The pro- gram comes in two versions, ‘Basic Service’ at $90 a year and 'Com- prehensive Service’ at $190 a year. Both programs include the right to make copies of the new system disks for use at a site (the update pro- gram is designed for institutions) and ‘full documentation." The comprehensive service also includes a bimonthly Apple 1 Technical Bulletin (‘provides the iatest compatibility listings, power- user tps, connectivity guidelines, bug fixes and work arounds, and selected service announcements; identifies and discusses critical technical support and service issues’ according to Apple) and ‘release notification,’ mailed by Apple on the day the new software is announced, that includes a list of new features as well as software and hardware compatibility information. ‘This allows sites to plan ahead for updating all machines on site and to acquire any necessary application or utility software updates.’ The system disks themselves “should arrive approximately one to two weeks after notification,” a document about the new program on AppleLink Industrial Edition says. ‘To order, you must complete a Support Services order form. For more information and an order form, contact your authorized Apple sales representative," the AppleLink document ends. As mentioned earlier, participants in the new Apple Partner and Apple Associate Pro- grams get a free subscription to the comprehensive update service. We've used the AH/P.TO,TAT utility that comes with TimeOut PowerPack pretty extensively in creating our back issue and monthly disks, AWP.TO,TAT allows you to save an AppleWorks word processor file in a text file without returns at the end of each line. Returns appear in the text file only where they appear on the AppleWorks screen when you open-apple-Z(oom) in on them. We had a small prob- lem, however, because AWP.TO.TXT gives the text files an aux type of $2000 instead of the $0000 Larry Skutchan's KEADER program (and the rest of the universe) expects, We gol a patch out of Beagle Bros to fix this, and here it is for v1.1 (the version number appears when you tun the utility), Fron applesoft, set the prefix to the dixectory ANP.10.TRT is in, PORE 768,0 BSAVE TO.ANP. 10. TXT, A768, L1,B1668 If you have an earlier version, search through the file for the hex bytes E3 04 00 20 and change the '20' to ‘00", If you run AppleWorks from a RAMdisk, you'll be interested to know you can reclaim 8K of space by deleting two files from the AppleWorks startup directory. We've published this information before (‘End of the line’, page 3.95), but it's not in a table and therefore it's nearly impossible to find unless you're using something like FastData ro to search through our back issues on disk. This list shows which file AppleWorks uses when it expands its desktop: $86.00 (Aux-Slet mecory, incl 128%) SEG.XX. (Std-Slot matory) SEG,RM_ (IIgs Mem-Slot neaory) {f you are using Applied Engineering's expansion software, update AppleWorks before deleting the two unneeded files since AE's pro- gram patches all three and won't work if one or more is missing. If you work with Apple Ils and disabled people, dont miss the catalog published by Don Johnston Developmental Equipment, Inc. (P.0, Box 639, Wauconda, IL 60084 312-526-2682). It's filled with specialized switches, keyboards, and other equipment, as well as spe- cialized software. dust Add Water is the name a new booklet published by Apple's User Group Connection folks. {t brings together a series of articles on starting and sustaining a user group. Many of Apple's publi- cations suffer from the ‘all form, no content’ Macintosh syndrome, but this one gets pretty specific. If you already belong to a user group, it recently received two copies. If you're interested in starting a group, copies will be available while supplies last from The Apple User Group Connection at Apple's Mariani mail stop 36AA. 5.12 A2-Central Rumors of a $1,000 Macintosh designed to end the Apple Il line ate false, Jean-Louis Gassee sald in his keynote speech at January's MacWorld Expo in San Francisco, Apple doesn't plan to offer a low- cost Macintosh anytime in the next two to three years. ‘We have this tremendous pressure to put more power in the computer to make it more usabie. And that translates into more features and more func- tion at the same price, as opposed to the same capabilities at lower prices," Gassee said. Cambridge Marketing, the company behind AppleFest, is uri- nating in the Apple II soup. Roy Einreinhofer, president of the compa- ny, promises in Cambridge's January/February newsletter that "you will see more Macintosh in the conference sessions and on the exhib- it floor at this year's shows....To increase the number of attendees who use the Macintosh in upcoming shows, we will target a portion of our show promotion toward these users in the appropriate home, education, and home office markets." If Cambridge is successful, it will be the death of Applefest. No combined Apple II/Macintosh maga- zine or conference has been successful in the past and there's no rea- son one would be successful now. Why? Apple ll advertiser- s/exhibilors arent interested in paying to reach Macintosh readers/show attendees, and vice-versa. You'll never see more than a handful of Apple [Is at Macintosh shows arid the opposite should be true as well. If you are an AppleFest exhibitor and as concerned about this trend as | am, make sure Cambridge knows that you're not inter- ested in renting booth furniture to impress people who don't own Apple Ils. Claris stopped supporting Apple-labeled software on February I, From now on, to get telephoné technical support from Claris you must be a registered Claris user. To do that, you either have to buy a new Claris product or a Claris upgrade to an Apple-labeled product. If you own an Apple-labeled (or Claris-labeled, for that matter) Apple- Works 2.0, you can update to the current Claris v2.1 free. Upgrades from earlier versions of AppleWorks are $75. There are also upgrades available from AppleWorks to AppleWorks GS (from v1.X, $169;from v2.x, $99). For questions regarding warranty replacement, upgrade information, registration status, change of address, and other non- Vol. 5, No. 2 technical questions, call the Claris Customer Relations desk at 415- 962-8946 from 8 AM to 5 PM Monday through Thursday, 8 AM to 3 PM Friday. For technical support, call Claris at 415-0962-0371 6 AM to 8 PM Monday through Thursday, 6 AM to 3 PM and 5:30 PM to 8 PM Pri day. All times Pacific. Claris now has a technical support staff of 25 and a goal to maintain an average queue time of less than two min- utes. Where once there was the Apple Il assembly language newsletter Apple Assembly Line, there is now The Sourceror's Apprentice. Apple Assembly Line died after eight years of publication last summer {see October 1988, page 4.65). The Sourceror's Appren- tice will be published by Ross Lambert's Ariel Publishing Co. (P.O. Box 266, Unalakleet, Alaska, 99684 907-624-3161), which also publishes ine Applesoft programming newsletter Reboot (see May 1988, page 28). Source code in The Sourceror's Apprentice will be in Merlin 8/16 format. The newsletter will be divided into three sections each month; one on eight-bit assembly language, one on 16-bit, and one in which the Alaskan second cousin once removed of Uncle DOS, Mike Rochip, answers readers’ questions. The price is $28 for 12 monthly issues. Besides Reboot and The Sourceror's Apprentice, Lambert also pub- lishes ZNews, a $29.95/yr monthly newsletter for ZBasic users. Another Apple II newsletter many of you would like is Al Martin's Road Apple: An Apple il ‘End Users’ Underground Newsletter. Those of you who think I'm not hard enough on Apple and the Macintosh should read and write for this one (6 issues/yr, $9.95 L.S., $10.25 Canada, $12.95 elsewhere; 1121 NE 177th, Portland, OR 97230 503- 254-3874). Sample headline from the current issue: AppleWorks GS or How much is that doggie in the window?" It may have been GS/OS, then again, it may have been our arti- cle on how to build your own SCSI hard drive. At any rate, sales of Apple's SCS! card have been much higher than Apple's projections and they ve been in very short supply since December. Our sources at Apple say January and February production rates were increased and back-orders should be filled by the time you see this. Ask Lets begin with a few corrections to last month's issue. Gentlepeople, start your pen- cils. On all inside pages the issue date and num- bers are wrong. They should say, obviously, Vol 5, No I--February 1989. At jeast I got the front page right. dn the item about Dealer Service Notices, page 5.6-5.7, | said the latest version of the Apple SCSI card ROM Is called ‘part 341-0437, Rev A‘. That would be better expressed as ‘part 541-0437-A, popularly known as Revision C’. In the item called GS/OS tips, page 5.7, the advice is bad. Subscriber David Lyons reminds us that while you can deactivate the UniDisk 3.5 driver by selecting the ‘inactivate’ box, Apple recommends against it. Without that driver active, UniDisk 5.5 disks can be dam- aged if you switch them while blocks are cached. Blocks will be read from the cache, modified, and written back to the switched disk. Bad news. Lyons also points out that the inactivate box works by setting bit 15 of a file's aux type and that inactivation is a feature based on filetype, not on the folder containing the file. Lyons determined (by trying all the possible combinations) that the following file types show up with inactivate boxes in Finder 1.2: $B6 (Permanent Init File), $B7 (Temporary Init File), $B8 (NDA), $B9 (CDA), $BB (Driver), $BC (Generic Load File), and $BD (GS/OS FST). Back to basics The Apple Il is heading in a direction that dis- turbs me greatly. That is toward increasingly complex technology, toward more and more complicated operating systems, toward a learn- ing curve that is beginning to look like a graph of the national] debt, The doctor who wired the Apple-II to a para- Plegic's legs so that she could walk couldn't do it with GS/OS. While | believe Apple is on the right track in developing more powerful operat ing systems, the learning curve has become so steep that it takes someone wholly dedicated.to the system to do anything useful with it. The historical importance of the Apple Il is that it made it easier for an expert in a field to learn enough programming to solve: his own specialized problem than for a programmer to learn enough of the specially to write the same program. On the IIgs this is no longer true. It has become too sophisticated and too compli- cated. Furthermore, hiring a programmer to learn enough about either today’s operating systems or about the specialist's problem to do a credi- ble job of either is a very expensive proposi- tion. Most research installations cannot afford the luxury. Small companies can't support ene or more programmers while they learn the IIgs inside and out. There is a place for simple and there is a place for sophisticated. The Apple Il can satisfy both needs. Unfortunately, Apple is trying to kill the former and force feed Apple users with the latter. Hannelore S, Maddox Sunnyvale, Calif. Apple Is the only company in the world with two families of successful personal computers. One family, the Macintosh, became successful because it was easy on users. The other family, the Apple Il, became successful because it was easy on programmers. I don't think Apple has ever understood the differerice, however, Instead of continuin, uit casy programming into the Apple II fami- ly, the plan at Apple for five long years has been to squeeze the user interface of the Mac- intosh into the Apple il. Programmers who Insist on using that interface lose all ease and saddle themselves with more overhead ihan a computer the price of an Apple I! can absorb. Interestingly, Apple itseif is nearing the same conclusion. Jean-Louis Gassee, head of everything important at Apple, wrote an article for the February 6 edition of Apple's Apple Viewpoints called ‘Algorithms Always Break Down." ‘The implementation of any algorithm always breaks down when driven beyond its range,’ Gassee writes. ‘Somewhere there is a counter with a finite number of bits that the algorithm March 1989 will underflow or overflow....Once you imple- ment the algorithm in a machine with finite resources, it is easy to design an experiment that will create demands that exceed the ability of the resources....In real life, algorithms always have a limited range....Extending the range makes the implementation fatter, slower, and ultimately more fragile.” Now, we could meditate a little bit in front of the claims made that a single hard- ware architecture and/or a single operating system program will address all of mankind's woes-[rom user-centric personal computer uses to technically oriented workstations, process-control, or transaction processing applications. But somewhere there are breakdowns in the algorithm, or the quality, or the perfor- mance, or the cost, or all of the above, as the algorithm becomes longer, slower, and more delicate while it grows to extend its Tange. This is my point: Sometimes, just some- times, beauty-and ultimately costeffective- ness-can come from restraint. Could it be that Gassee is talking about the event-driven desktop-interface algorithm as implemented on the Apple il? GS/OS is not the problem. The idea of a built-in programmers toolbox is not the problem. The problem is putting a graphics-based, event-driven interface at the heart of a computer that has to be cheap enough for homes and schools. Neither the performance nor the programming ease of the interface match our expectations. The probiem isn't, as so many people say, that application software isnt good enough; the problem is that programming the machine fs too complicated. The problem isn't, as so many people say, that the Iigs isn't fast enough; the problem is that the interface algo- rithm requires the horsepower of a $3,000 Macintosh, not a $1,000 Apple ligs. Restraint is what we needed in 1984 and 1985 when Apple decided to saddle the Iigs with the Macintosh interface. I's probably too Jate for restraint now, but let's hope Apple will learn Gassee's lesson and give us back a com- puter we can program. In search of an 8-bit Pascal I have been teaching programming to high school students on an Apple Ile and have had very satisfactory results. At home | use ORCA/Pascal on a Ilgs for programming. At school I've been using Instant Pascal and Kyan Pascal to teach the Pascal class. My problem is that Instant Pascal is copy pro- tected and slow. | can't put it on a RAMdisk because of the copy protection. Kyan Pascal Seems to work well enough, but the company seems to be out of business, There's no one to answer questions, provide support, or sell any of the enhancements they once had, f'm looking for another good ProDOS-based Pascal for the Ile. Do you have any suggestions. for a program that will fill my needs, or a way to get around the minor technicality of Kyan not existing anymore? Michael Colville Del Norte, Colo. The lack of languages other than Basic and assembly language for classic Apple lis has always been a critical weakness. Imagine where the Apple II would be today if Borland'’s Turbo Pascal had been written under ProDOS instead of MS-DOS. Instead we've had a string of language products that have generally come up short in some critical area. Apple Pascal 1,3 doesn't run under ProDOS. Kyan Pascal and PROMAL lack dynamic string handling. Instant Pascal and Logo weren't designed to be used as development tools. Manx C screen output looks like the computer is running in slow motion. Forth makes you relearn algebra. Applesoft and the Beagle Compifer, Micol Basic, and ZBasic (see ‘Basic choices,’ December 1987, page 3.88) are all still avail- able. ZBasic has laid off its Apple 1! program- mer, however (he now works for Apple). The classic Apple I! community critically needs a good, ProDOS-based Pascal. Apple has taken the initiative of hiring Gary Little, the for- mer editor of A+ and prolific author of Apple II- related books, to persuade ianguage develop- ers to write for the Apple Il. If he succeeds, we'll have an answer to your question. if he doesn't, your only choice will be to buy anoth- er kind of computer for your classroom. Apple hopes it will be a ligs. A straighter straightener Your suggestion to the teachers who need to recover from vandalized control panels only works if the default values are acceptable. I've written a very simple $16 program that saves ‘snapshots’ of the Control Panel's seitings to disk and that can restore those settings when needed. In fact, the various users in a lab could each have a control panel file of their own or special files for specific uses. Readers may con- tact me for more information if interested. (On Genie I'm L.WALTON.) Lorne Walton 11672 212th St Maple Ridge, BC V2X 425 Canada GS/OS problems Ive had a number of problems with GS/OS, including false messages that my disk is dam- aged, inability to launch programs, and more. [ve heard of similar problems from other mem- bers of my users group. Calls to Claris and Apple sent me to my Apple dealer, who wasn't much help. What can-you tell us? * Ronald A, Mittelstaedt Trenton, N.J. When Apple sends you to a dealer and the dealer isn't able to help, Apple really does want to know about it, as mentioned here in September. Write up a calm nole giving the name, address, and phone number of the deal- er and the name of the person to whom you spoke, your equipment and software configura tion, and a brief summary of your problem. Send the calm note to: Dealer Evaluations c/o Customer Relations Apple Computer, Inc. 20525 Mariani Ave, M/S 37-8 Cupertino, CA 95014 There are lots of people having trouble with GS/OS, but we haven't been able to trace many of the problems back to GS/OS itself. Given its size and complexity, GS/OS seems remarkably reliable to us. We've traced some problems to misunder- standings of the system disk concept: GS/OS is very different from DOS 3.3 and ProDOS 8. it A2-Central 5.13 works best if you leave the disk you boot from ‘online’, which means ‘in the drive’ if you dont have a hard disk or RAMdisk to boot from. We've traced some problems to system disks that are missing critical files. We suggest using Installer to create new system disks. If you have a SCSI hard drive, a UniDisk 3.5, or 5.25 drives connected to your system, you must take the extra step of telling Installer to put those drivers on your system disk. The sys- tem disk concept and installation (or ‘creation’ procedures were thoroughly covered here in ‘Breaking the incompatibility barrier: An intro- duction to Apple's GS/OS" in November 1988, pages 4.75-4.78, so refer to that article. for more information. GS/OS uses more memory than ProDOS 16 did. You may simply need to add more memo- Ty to your machine. If the additional memory requirements of G5/OS make your application creep into marginal memory chips you had installed previ- ously but never actually used before, your computer may crash under GS/OS but not Pro- DOS 16. All bad chip problems we've encoun- tered are related to chips that arent CAS before RAS. We've been covering this problem for months-see May 1987, second paragraph on page 5. August 1988, "Apple has also discovered...", page 4.49; and February 1989, ‘Apple's December Dealer Service Note...', page 5.6. Diagnostic programs that test for CAS-before-RAS haven't been widely available until recently, which Is why these bad. RAM chips are so widespread. Even the new diag- nostic program that Apple dealers were recent- ly issued only tests the first megabyte of mem- ory on a card. Some desk accessories aren't GS/OS-com- patible. If you use desk accessories, remove them and see if that helps. GS/OS won't boot from a disk attached to a controller that needs a special driver unless that driver is available on the System Disk. This includes SCSI hard drives and Video Technolo- gys Uniyersal Disk Controller. Since Video Technology hasnt yet created a driver for the UDC, you cant use it for booting. if you can't boot from it, you can't use it to hold your Sys- tem Disk. The. only safe way to boot GS/OS is from power up or with a three-finger salute (open- apple/control/reset). Neither a ‘PR#’ nor exe- cating the PRODOS file work reliably for boot- ing. A new feature of the GS/OS Finder (or, more exactly, of the ProDOS FST) is that files with large numbers of consecutive zeros will be made ‘sparse’ when copied. This means the zeros wont actually be stored on the disk-Pro- DOS just remembers where they go and rein- serts them when a program reads from that part of the file. The fact that a file has been made sparse js transparent to other programs unless those programs try to access the file by ‘biock’ reads or writes or unless they check the block size of the file. There are a few programs that use these techniques, however, and they fail after being copied with the GS/OS Finder, These applications can be updated for GS/OS by their programmers simply by avoiding large sections of embedded zeros in a file. Change them to ‘A2’, for example. 5.14 A2-Central GS/OS: doesn't work on an AppleShare net- work, Apple still supplies the earlier Apple ligs System Disk v3.2 for use with its network. One bug that we can confirm in GS/OS is that the part that displays the startup ther- mometer on the super-high-resolution screen doesnt restore the ligs graphics configuration fo its default state, which can cause graphics to look ‘tom’. Finder and the latest version of ProSEL fix the screen, so if you use either of those as a program selector. you probably havent noticed the problem. See 'GS/OS and torn graphics’ in our January 1988 issue, page 4,93, for more on this. Ilgs and 5.25 drives I have an Apple ligs, a 3.5 drive, and two older 5.25 drives connected through a Disk II interface card. When I set the control panel to ‘scan’, it doesn't switch to the 3.5 drive if the 5.25 drive is emply. And why doesn't GS/OS recognize my 5.25 drives? Rami Levy Brooklyn, N.Y. When you use 5.25 drives connected to a controller plugged into slot 6, they work just like they do in a Il-Plus or ite. On those machines, if there is no disk in the drive, the drive Just spins and spins until you insert one, To get the true scan that the Itgs ‘contro! panet promises, you have to plug the 5.25 drives into the back of your 3.5. You'll find that's difficult, however, because the connectors are different. If youre handy with wires, our December 1985 issue, page 1.90, explains how to make an adapter. if youre not handy with wires, Red- mond Cable makes and selis the adapter you need (17571-Al NE 67th Ci, Redmond, WA 98052 206-882-2009). To get GS/OS to recognize your 5.25 drives you have to move a copy of the file called APPLEDISKS.25 from the SYSTEM/DRIVERS folder of your /SYSTEM.TOOLS disk to the same folder on your System Disk and reboot. Up to the second | thought you might be interested in the enclosed item from Physics Today, announcing a time service accessible by modem offered by the National Bureau of Standards. {'ve logged on to this service; it prints the time on your screen every second. I would be nice to have a pro- gram that would use this to reset an Apple II's clock, but | have no idea how to do this from within a communications program Bernard W. Bopp Toledo, Ohio I called the number given in the article, 303- 494-4774, and got the following display: o= HP National Bureau of Standards Telephone Time Service DLD MD YRMODA a MS STS UTi askby om 47566 89-02-09 04:24:01 00 0 -.2 045.0 OIC(NBS) * 47566 89-02-09 04:24:02 00 0 ~.2 045.0 DEC(NBS) * 47566 89-02-09 04:24:03 00 0 -.2 045.0 OIC(NBS) * 47566 89-02-09 04:24:04 00 0 -,2 045.0 OTC(NBS) * 47566 89-02-09 04:24:05 00 0 -.2 045.0 UnC(MBS) * When | pressed ‘?* for help | learned that the columm marked ‘MJD' holds the “Modified Julian Date,’ which is used to tag certain scien- tific data. | could figure out ‘YR’, MO’, 'DA', "M’, and 'S’ myself, but discovered that the rea- son the service said it was 4:24 when it was in fact 10:24 (Central) was that the service gives ‘UTC’ or Universal Time Coordinated (also known as Greenwich time). The column marked DST holds '00" when the continental U.S. is on standard time and ‘50° during daylight savings time. "99' to ‘51° means now on standard, but we'll switch to daylight when the local time is 2 am and the count is 51. The count is decremented daily. 49" to ‘01 means now on daylight time, go to standard when the count reaches ‘I’. This pro- vides 48 days advance notice of a change in time. The ‘LS column has to do with leap sec- onds. ‘DUTI" is the approximate difference between earth rotation time (UT1) and UTC, in steps of 0.1 second (DUT1 = UT} - UTC), The ‘msADV" column tells how far in advance of the exact time the ‘OTM’ **" marker at the end of the line was transmitted. The 45 milliseconds shown is the average amount of time it takes for the marker to reach your computer. If you echo all characters back to the National Bureau of Standards, its computer will mea- Sure the round trip delay and advance the on- fime marker so that the midpoint of the stop bit arrives at the user exactly on time. In that case, the amount shown under ‘msADV" will reflect the actual required advance in millisec- onds and the OTM will be a ‘#’. For the best possible accuracy (1 millisecond) call in at 300 baud. You can use the service to set your watch right now, but to use it to set your computers clock we need someone to write us a program, Any volunteers? French in France After reading the different contributions under the header ‘Foreign accents, cont’ in your January issue {page 4.95), | would like to pro- mote a little bit more the European developers working on the Apple llgs. The KEY.FR desk accessory that you men- tioned is good but sometimes unexpected incompatibilities are noticed either with applica- tions or other NDAs. | am currently using anoth- er NDA for the same purpose called Key- boards. It's freeware and is available from its developer, who will also supply the source code upon request-Marc Klein, 9 me des Rochers, 67190-Gresswiller, France. And an excellent word processor you should know about is Gribouille. It's written under Pro- DOS 16 and includes a font editor. It supports alphabets that read from either left to right or right to left, which means you really can use it for Hebrew or Arabic! The price is about US $150. from Gribouille, 5 rue Humblot, 75015- Paris, France. Jean-Francois Sauvage Strasbourg, France TimeOut vs AE Expander I've just found out from Beagle Bros that their TimeOut Paint program won't work with Applied Engineering's AppleWorks expansion software unless AE is willing to make some changes. This paint program isn't the most powerful available, but it is adequate for my purposes. Plus, it does pop-up inside AppleWorks (always a desirable feature}. Both Applied Engineering and Beagle Bros are important to Apple II users and both are largely dependent on this. market. It would mean a great deal for one to be willing to Vol. 5, No. 2 change in order to accommodate the other. We should encourage this to happen, not just for the paint program, but as an ongoing effort to reduce software incompatibilities. Jim Pendarvis Fairfax, Va. Historically, Applied Engineering's expansion software was very important to AppleWorks and the Apple Il (see ‘RamWorks transforms AppleWorks," May 1985, page 1.34). AE invent- ed the expanded desktop. But AppleWorks itself has included automatic desktop expan- sion since v1.3. We stopped using AE's expan- sion software around here shortly after that. Alan Bird wrote the original version of Time- Out to work with the AppleWorks expanders that existed at that time, including AE's. He contacted the authors of the existing expanders and suggested some ground rules they could ail follow to stay compatible with each other. The companies have largely coop- erated with each other, but there does seem to be an incompatibility between TimeOut Paint and AE's expanded clipboard. Let's hope they can work it out, at least for the sake of those of you who have Applied Engineering's aux-slot type memory cards and who can't get desktop expansion without AE's software. AppleWorks reset revisited There are times when the reset patch youve given for AppleWorks (May 1987, page 5.52) doesn't work. AppleWorks seems to come back to life, but with someone playing the keys. It walks through various menus, fires up disk drives, and so on. Nothing will stop it but anoth- er control-reset. It occurred to me that the prob- lem might be that the 'key pressed flag’ wasn't being cleared, so | altered your patch to do that. So far it séems to work. But what's the address you call for AppleWorks 2.1? ecil Fretwell Waterloo, lowa The jump for v2.1 appears to be the same as the one for v2.0. Here's an update of our AppleWorks reset patch, with your alteration included. Press control-reset to get into the Monitor. (If you can't get to the Monitor, you're stuck.) At the asterisk, enter (all "0"s are zeros): €073:0 (return) 3006 (return (If this doesn't get you an @0-coluan display, you'ze stuck.) 20:20 83 CO 2C 83 CO 20 10 CO AC (return) for Appleliorks 1.1 - 1.3 only 133-10 (retum) for AppleWorks 2.0 - 2.1 only 127-11 return} 2F0G (return) How does DOS move? I am very curious about the technical details of DOS movers. | was very disappointed to find that you had made no mention of this in your otherwise decent DOStalk Scrapbook, even though you have written such a program. Note: Apple didn't ask for (or pay for) the rights to my initials on their current top-of-the- March 1989 line Il, | wonder if they acquired them from the Girl Scouts, who implicitly have my permission, support, etc. Gary Swift Urbana, Il. There was nothing easy about writing DOS- UP, my program that moves DOS 3.3 to the ‘language card’. To do it, you have to figure out a way for Applesoft's machine language instruc- tions and DOS 3.3's to share the same address range (Applesoft in ROM, DOS 3.3 in RAM). You end up with a litle piece of code in the memo- ty area at $BFOO-BFFF that flips between the two, depending on who's turn is next. Since DOS wants to look at every character you enter on the keyboard, the code gets a lot of use and the contents of the address range sometimes flutter like a hummingbird's wing. The truth is that | couldn't have done it with- out two articles written by a prolific European named Cornelius Bongers and published by Call -A.P.P.L.E. back in 1981. See if you can check these out of your local university or user group library: "Loading DOS 3.3 on the Lan- guage Card’, July 1981, page 9; and ‘Notes About DOS Mover’, November 1981, page 81. Computer education news Im in the process of compiling a list and exchange of —_ educational computing newsletters. This project began as an article for the Ohio Educational Technology Association newsletter. When it reached seven pages, [ decided there was a need for a central ctearing- house, If any of your subscribers know of such newsletters, I'd appreciate a note about it. Howard Moskowitz Toledo Public Schools Manhattan and Elm Toledo, Ohio 43608 International user group Please announce to your readers that there is an international Apple II user group for Ameri- can military personnel overseas (SF MAUG). Contact either of us for more information. Pat O'Connor Major Mike Morley 40 Mass Drive Box 486 Ft. Bragg, NC 28307 ‘ABO Sew York, MY 09050 Better than GS BASIC In January you mentioned that the APDAlog indicates there won't be a final version of GS BASIC (page 4.91). There is, in fact. a release version of the program, sort of. TML BASIC is a complied superset of GS BASIC. In my opinion no one should buy GS BASIC. If they want a product like it, they should go straight to TML BASIC. Doug Trueman Renton, Wash. Uni to Apple “kit” found You had a question in the January issue (page 4.92) about making a UniDisk 3.5 into a ‘dumb’ Apple 3.5. My local dealer, actually a nice fellow, will sell me a new Apple 3.5 daisy chain ‘analog’ board for $53. Swap this with the ‘digital’ board in the UniDisk and you have an Apple 3.5. Opening the metal case takes a regu- lar screwdriver and a little persuasion Alan Womack Spokane, Wash. ImageWriter LQ ribbons The ImageWriter LQ doesn't need a twisted ribbon and you don't need to play with the color control codes to get the printer to use it all, as. you suggested in January (‘Yorkshire ribbons," page 4.93). It has a ribbon sensor switch that can differentiate between a color ribbon and a black one. If a black ribbon Is detected the rib- bon will be shifted up and down to spread out the wear. E.G. Wood's printer probably has this feature disabled. He can fix it by setting switch B-2 to ‘open’ or by sending the following control code to the printer "ESC 2 CTRL-@ CTRL-B’. Ihave had my LQ, which | use with a Ilc, for over a year but just recently discovered the Let- ter Quality aspect of it. | had been setting the controls to Letter Quality and printing: however this is actually Near Letter Quality. To get true Letter Quality you also have to print in propor- tional mode, which is easy by means of the ‘P1" and ‘P2' commands in AppleWorks. The quality of NLQ was so good I thought it was LQ. ‘The only loss of compatibility in moving from the ImageWriter II to the LQ was that it does not eat paper. Ah, the sacrifices we make. Bob Church Athens, Ohio Label relief The next time you get a pressure-sensitive mail label caught beneath the platen of your printer, get a playing card {the queen of spades works best) and roll it in just as you would a sheet of paper at the place where you think the label is stuck. | hope you're surprised at how easily the card pushes them out. Stan Bellas Sepulveda, Calif. We've also had typewriter cleaner suggested as a solution (‘imageWriters in the office," October 1988, page 4.70). We've also suggest- ed that the best way to avoid the problem in the first place is not to roll labels through your printer backwards (‘Mail label musings,” September 1986, page 2.59). When you're fin- ished printing, tear them off behind the printer and waste the ones you have to roll forward. Ive heard there's a printer repairman here in Kansas City who adds an additional $50 to the bills of people who have this problem more than once, AppleWorks screen snapshots In various capacities | write about Apple- Works a lot. It would help a lot if there was a way to incorporate the various AppleWorks menus as they appear on the screen into word processor documents without having to type them. Is this possible? | think many persons who write about AppleWorks could benefit from such a function. Richard Marchiafava Fridley, Minn. We agree. The obvious choice is to set up the open-apple-H(ard copy) printer so that it prints to disk, but I just tried it and Apple- Works wont allow it. Can anyone write a patch? (Having it print to the clipboard would be fine, too.) If you have a ilgs, the newest version of Roger Wagner's SoftSwitch includes a function that allows you to capture the current text screen and store it in a file. See our November 1988 issue, page 4.75, for more on SoftSwitch. Another possibility is to replace your printer with another computer running communica- tions software, The open-apple-H command A2-Central 5.15 would then send the current AppleWorks screen to the other computer, where you could capture it and save it ina file. Manual auto-recalc Ive found a problem with AppleWorks 2.1 I'm hoping you can help solve. When a program such as Quicken creates a spreadsheet and you look at it with 2.1, there's no way to recalculate it. Since AppleWorks thinks nothing has changed, open-apple-K(alculate) does nothing, even though most calculated data is incorrect. Using AppleWorks 2.0 to recalculate gives the correct results. Is there a way to force 2.1 to recalculate everything? Lawrence J. Merow Sayville, N.Y. Hummm...interesting oversight. It appears that AppleWorks 2.1 will recalculate al! cells after you move a block to a new spreadsheet with the clipboard. Load your Quicken file, add a new spreadsheet to the desktop, then move the Quicken file to the new file using the clipboard. Then tell us if this worked. No-Slot Clock fix On page 5.8 of last month's issue there's a letter from Frank Eddy about his No-Slot Clock not working with a 65802. 1 don't have a 65802, but my No-Slot Clock wouldn't work with my Rocket Chip until I put it on a slot-based card rather than on the motherboard. You have to instruct the No-Slot Clock software to look for it in the appropriate slot. You also have to re- modify your ProDOS file. But it works. Vic Weisskopf Lincolnwood, Hl. Thoughts on Micol I find your high recommendation of Micot Advanced Basic for the ligs to be a bit unnerv- ing. 1, too, have been increasingly aware of Applesoft's inadequacy for the Ilgs and | was looking for a program exactly like the one you describe this to be. 1 got the impression from your brief review that moving from Applesoft to Micol’s Basic would be relatively straight forward and fun. Ive had the package for several days; Ive read the manual and have done some experi- menting with it. I'd like to share my knee-jerk reactions with you. First, you may be right when you say that us old Applesoft hackers won't have to learn much to get started; but it's really a question of how much one has to unlearn! Despite ali its enhancements to basic Basic (Dartmouth or Applesoft), there are so many places thal Micol’s package insists that you do things its way or no way at all that, instead of starting with a firm foundation of acquired knowledge, | find myself scrabbling for some kind of handhold. The biggest problem | have with the package is its holier-than-thou attitude. in many places, the manual comes off sounding like a funda- mentalist preacher warning of the evils of ‘unstructured programming’ (i.e... programming that contains GOTO statements) with Micol Advanced Basic being the key to the program- mers salvation. | get the feeling that the many things in the program that one can't do are ille- gal merely because the programmer feels that you should not be allowed to do them. Examples: the program won't let you use a NEXT statement without a terminator variable {statements such as NEXT or NEXT YX are both 5.16 A2-Central illegal). It demands one and only one NEXT statement for each FOR statement; to do other- wise is ‘bad programming’ and is not permitted. It demands a semi-colon between items in print ‘statements (optional in Applesoft). One can't effectively alter the counter variable in FOR/NEXT loops, which is a pretty standard way to prematurely exit such loops. It insists each program have a header line, the operational necessity of which escapes me. Now I'll grant you, for almost every limitation the program contains there is an alternate way to accomplish the task at hand. Mico! Advanced Basic, as the documentation says, is hardly a compiled version of Applesoft, and | really dont expect it to follow each of Applesoft- 's idiosyncrasies; yet the word ‘advanced’ makes me think thal the package should offer more possibilities, not just different possibili- ties, and certainly not fewer, | really don't want to get into the structured vs unstructured programming debate, but one of the reasons Basic is such a friendly language is that you can have as much structure in your programming as you want without having it forced down your throat. If 'd needed or want- ed that sort of imposed rigidity, I'd have taken up Pascal long ago. Micol's biggest shortcoming, as far as my own programming style is concerned, is its Boolean variable type. which apparently precludes reducing a Boolean expression to a simple bina- ty | or 0 (one of Applesoft's handiest features). A statement such as OM (1) Goro 100 is not permitted. This particular example is not an extreme hardship, for the line could almost as easily be written IF (X>1) THEN GOTO 100. But something such as this is equally invalid: Value = 5 * (DY) This sort of Boolean structure, it seems to me, is one of Applesoft's greatest strengths and worth its weight in WHILE/WENDS. ll have a hard time giving up this one. It looks like only the most uncomplicated and elementary Apple- soft programs will port into Mico! Advanced Basic without some extensive reworking. There are many other odd programming deci- A2-Central Developer Conference See the inside pages of this month's cata- log for complete details. In summary, you can spend July 21 and 22 in Kansas City listening to Bill Mensch and other Apple Il experts, talking to Apple, leaming how to program TimeOut applications, making contacts for your future, and having a good time for just $300 (early reg- istration). If you've Jost your catalog, call or write and we'll send you another one. Ae Contra ‘ © Copyright 1989 by A2-Central ‘Most aghts reserved Al programs published in A2Cemlral are public domain and may be coped and disrbuled wehout charge. Angle user groups 27d sgntcan fers ay obtain perissn repr aries te me by specie writen request Winer, ected, and pubished by. Tom Weishaar ath hep tor Dennis Doms Tom Vanderpool Steve Kelly Dean Esmay Jean Weishaar A2-Central~iies Open-Apple troush Janay. 1982s been pub feted monthly snce Jamaxy 1985, Workwade pres [r US. dala; smal lly included at ro acta hae) $28 fr T yer, Sor 2 yous: $78 for ‘3 yeas. Al back sues re curory aalabe fox $2 ez, Dound. ndeved ec ‘ors of our, fist fur voles are $145 each. Volumes end wit te January ‘sve’ ninco oho pro wolsmo snc wah he February sue The fl lox ofeach issue of A2-Centrals avaiable on 3.5 disks, ong Sally Dwyer Dianne Plumberg Joyee Hammond witha celation of te best new pubic domain and shareware es and pro- (ams, for $84 a year inewsoter and disk corned), Sigl is are $10, Please senda comesporcerce ia A2-Central P.O. Box 11250 Overland Park, Kansas 66207 U.S.A. ‘A2-Ceatrat's 506 \n an unproiected font for your convenience. You axe cronraged {6 make back-up acva copies or €25y4oead erarged copies for your own use wihoul charge. You may aso copy AZ-Cemtral or <éstrbuton to others. The distribution fee is 15 cents per page per copy ds- trbuted WARRANTY AND LIMITATION OF LIABILITY. | warrant hat mast of he irioimaton m A2-Central s uselul and correct, alhough civ! ane mis- takes are incuded fom time ia tine. usualy uninentonay. Unsalted subscribers may cance! ther subserigtion at any tme and recelve a full tnd of eat sberlin payer Te we pert of any pad subsorpian wl be rfurded evon to salisied subscrbers upor. request MY LIABILITY FOR ERRORS AND OMISSIONS IS LIMITED TO THtS PUBLICATIONS PURCHASE PRICE. In no case shal | or my contributors be lable for any nedental or contequenial damages. nor for ANY came ages in excess of ha eos paid bye subscriber. 1S5N 0985-2017 (Génie molt: A2-CENTRAL Printed inthe U.S.A. ‘913-469-5502 sions (bugs?, limitations?) in this package. The printer output routine, for example, gives you two configuration options: each carriage return issued either has no linefeed appended, or is surrounded by them fore and aft. This gives my ImageWriter Il, configured as Apple suggests, the option of a single line continuously overwrit- ten or double-spaced text. Granted, | could change the DIP switch setting or the control panel to compensate, but it seems unreason- able to have the make the printer incompatible with the rest of my entire set up just to get a printed listing. How come this isn't a problem in any of my other programs? Micol Advanced Basic apparently has major limitations in dealing with strings. You cannot do anything with an element of a string array {other than printing it) without first copying it to a normal string variable and then copying it back when through. Complicated string manipu- lations must be coded in short, easy-to-digest steps. With all this said, ['ll still probably take the time to learn to use the package efficiently, as it does appear to be the simplest route from Basic into the Ilgs Toolbox Routines. And it will cer- tainly allow one to write very large programs. But then adain, would the same programs coded in Applesoft need to be as large? | put together a quick program that creates 50 sixetter strings and then does a simple bub- ble sort on them. Once | had the program up and working, | realized that the sort seemed to be taking awfully long. | constructed the equiva- lent program in Applesoft and ran it, just to compare. The Micol sort ran in 8.4 seconds; Applesoft san in 8.8 seconds. Just for the heck of it, | used the Beagle Compiler on the Apple- soft version, that made the program execute in 1.9 seconds. The Micol program file is over twice as long as the text file that holds the program, which is over twice as long as the equivalent tokenized Applesoft file. The Beagle-compiled file is, of course, the shortest of all. I'll grant you that this is not exactly a scientifically controlled compari- son of the two Basics. But if this sorting routine is any indication, Micol's package takes a lot more steps and disk space for a microscopic increase in execution speed. | am seriously Vol. 5, No. 2 unimpressed with this package, especially in light of how much money Micol wants for it. 1 can't imagine why you'd want to encourage the distribution of such an inferior package by offering it for sale at a reduced price. Perhaps you have family in Canada (grin)? Elliot Lifson Yonkers, N.Y. 1 think some of your criticisms of Micol Advanced Basic are valid. Areas in which | also have trouble with the package are where it doesn't match Apple Il standards-such as the backward operation of the Delete key (which you didn't mention) and the linefeed problem. 1 think the package would be much improved if we could get Steve Brunier, the program's author, to sit down with AppleWorks, ProSEL, and Apple's Human Interface Guidelines for a week and convince him to make Micol's inter- faces match those. This is also a valid criticism of many other programs, including Fastdata Pro, which we carry even though its user inter- face needs a lot of work. If programs of equiva- lent quality that conformed to the standard Apple i interface existed, we would cany them, but, unfortunately, there aren't any. | also find the manual's attitude that Micol was written to save us from Applesoft trou- bling. Like you, | like Applesoft (especially with the Beagle Compiler). But the Applesoft/Beagle combination has a few weak spots, In my opin- jon, those are line numbers (rather than named subroutines), two-character variable names, lack of good support for add-on assem- bly-language enhancements, and lack of sup- port for the advanced memory, graphic, and sound features of the Apple figs. Micol has none of those weak spots and is otherwise remarkably similar to Applesoft. Micol is weaker than Applesoft in handling Boolean and string array variables, as you men- ton. This is a valid criticism. My understanding is that Brunier wrote Micol this way for speed. (What speed, you say? Micol’s speed suffers mostly because it uses the igs SANE toolbox for number crunching-bad. But this means pro- grams written with Mico} will easily adapt to the addition of a math coprocessor-good.} Most of your other complaints have to do with the way Micol forces ‘structure’ into your programs. Write a few programs with Micol and Applesoft, wait three months, then go back and modify them. At that point I don't think the forced structure will seem like such a big issue to you. Micol’'s program files are larger in part because they include ‘relocation’ information. They will load and run at any figs memory address. You ask why I ‘encourage the distribution of such an inferior package’. Inferior to what? Micol may be inferior to perfection, but perfec- tion isn't an option in the world of llgs-compati- ble Applesoft-like compilers, Im encouraging the distribution of Micol because in my judg ment it's the best ligs-compatible language cur- rently available for non-professional program- mers. It's not perfect, but Steve Brunier is a reasonable person who has limited his devel- opment efforts to the Apple Il family. He's worth supporting and I'm confident he'll incor- porate reasonable ideas of what Micol Advanced Basic should be in future revisions of the software.