peelings ii v4n4 1983

VOL. 4, NO. 4 THE MAGAZINE OF APPLE SOFTWARE AND HARDWARE EVALUATION @ The Prime Plotter none ee FLIGHT SIMULATORS PFS GRAPH e Spitfire Simulator Versaplot The Best Dogfight Simulator on the Market Apple I! Business Graphics ¢ IFR Simulator Graphics Processing System —— The Graphics Solution ACCU-SHAPES Delta Drawing Paper Graphics e¢ Omniscan Laser VideoDisc Interface Complements of the Future Your Apple & the Laser Videodis¢ DATA MANAGEMENT BEGINNER COLUMN “The Anything Machine” CHAPTER FOUR | DOs EEECHRONICSIincs SUPER FAN II™ For Your APPLE II* COMPUTER $74.95 SUPER FAN II™ = witHzENERRAYOPTION $109.00 ¢ TAN OR BLACK COLOR * QUIETEST FAN ON THE MARKET * INCREASED RELIABILITY — SAVES DOWN TIME AND REPAIR CHARGES * REDUCES HEAT CAUSED BY EXTRA PLUG-IN CARDS ZENER RAY™ TRANSIENT VOLTAGE SUPPRESSOR INCLUDES FAIL SAFE WARNING LAMP SYSTEM OUR BUILT IN ADVANCED DESIGN UNIT GIVES: D Cos — STOPS ANNOYING DOWN TIME VOLTAGE SPIKES - GLITCHES S VOLTAGE SPIKES CAN JEOPARDIZE YOUR COMPUTER SYSTEMS T COMPUTER - DISK DRIVE - PRINTER AND MONITOR NO CUTTING WIRES * WON'T VOID WARRANTY, JUST PLUG IN SUPERFAN II WITH ZENER RAY “Registered trademark of Apple Computer Inc. ONE YEAR WARRANTY ® VISA/MASTERCARD ALSO AVAILABLE FROM Thy ELECTRONICS, INC. AN UNINTERRUPTABLE POWER SOURCE ‘APPLE MONITOR STAND ——___—=7 ae PATENTED AIRFLOW SEAL FOR COMPUTER TO STAND 2282 ee SS SS SE e.ec.2 eee P| eS SE si = pep : ‘ ‘aenvac SR : ae a eaeraee ‘et Se ee i of 3 Pt <p 3 2 wave cy Take a bite... ...0f Apple Pchard! Your Apple will love you for subscribing to APPLE ORCHARD! An official publication of the International Apple Core, APPLE ORCHARD has all the information you need for your Apple. In addition to outstanding feature articles, we present new product information, product and book reviews, program listings, articles and news from member clubs (maybe yours!), and IAC information, including club listings, sponsor listings, and upcoming events. Please enter a subscription to APPLE ORCHARD for: NAME. ADDRESS . Subscribe today! cry. STATE. 2. You. . .and your Annual Subscription Rate: $19.50 for 9 issues Canada, Mexico, APO, and FPO addresses: $27.00 Apple. ..won’t want to miss a single 1 Check or money order enclosed O visa O MasterCard g issue! No. Exp. Reply to: Apple Orchard Subscriptions 908 George Street Santa Clara, CA 95050 ! l I ] ! I | Overseas and other foreign surface postage: $36.00 I I I I ! DOUBLE-TAKE om 2. WAYLIST/MULTIPLE UTILITY 34.95 | BY MARK Si s LISTS & CATALOGS Scar a and DOWN, file names & lines much easier to access. control scroll direction. NEWLIST! rORAt its each program statement on new line— FAST program trace/de-bugging. VARIABLE DISPLAY shows all of a program's & variables with current values. CROSS- REFERENCE shows line nos. on which each vari able/string appears. Better REUBEN lets yor s (not just end-to-end). Applesoft AUTOLINE-NUMBER as you eype n- stant Hex/Dec Converter, Program Stats, Eliminate/Redefine, Free Space-On-Disk... (includes Peeks/Pokes Chart) SAC Apple Mechanic's Hi-Res type routines are usable in your programs WITHOUT LICENSING FEE! Just give Beagle Bros credit ‘on your disk and documentation. 29.50 APPLE ! ‘MECHANIC Peesey OT ‘SHAPE aro aca ‘shapes for hi- res animation in your programs. Design Propor- tionally-Spaced TYPEFACES with special characters, Six fonts on the disk. Listable demos show how to use sl tables to animate (a graphics and professional Charts & Graphs. BYTE-ZAP: Rewrite any byte on a diskfor repair or alteration. Load entire sectors on the screen for inspection. Hex/Dec/ Ascii displays and input. Complete instructions & experiments for making trick file names, restoring deleted files, etc. MORE: Useful music, text and hi-res tricks for your programs. Educational documentation. (includes Pecks/Pokes Chart & Tip Book*5) TYPEFACES FOR APPLE MECHANIC 26 NEW FONTS for Apple Mechanic programs. All sizes of fully-editable characters. BEAGLE MENU: Display only filenames you want from YOUR DISKS (eg. only Applesoft or only Locked files) for one-key selection. lincludes Pecks/Pokes Chart & Beagle Menu Utility) ONLY 0.00 UT ILITY Cry war 21 UTILITIES ON ONE DISK 29.50_ BY BERT KER’ LIST FORMATTER prints = program state- ment on a new line. Loo eps Inde indented with printer page breaks. A great de- MULTI-COLUMN catsloge for Feintouts auto- st Run-number & Date in programs, put invisi- le commands in programs, create INVISIBLE file names, alphabetize/store info on disk, convert decimal to hex or INT to FP, renumber to 65535, append programs, dump text-screen to printer... MORE TOO: 21 Programs Total, a best-seller! (includes Peeks/Pokes Chart & Tip Book"3) NEW Beagle Bros Unlocked Utilities! AllBeagl Bros iets cre Unicoxed ond Ing you the MOST for your Sonware Bolla, n't settle for less! eaale!| Bro oo" Bro ‘ontoDOS + ONY HIGHSPEED DISK UTILITY Put oe DOS 7 your Apple's normal memory, Card or Ile high-memory— Function... Normal Pronto BLOAD HIRES IMAGE..........10 sec. 3 sec. LOAD 60-SECTOR PROGRAM ..116 sec. 4 sec. SAVE 60-SECTOR PROGRAM ...24 sec. 9 sec. LOAD LANGUAGE. 3 sec. 4 sec. CARD . {HEMT FILES Ro Chang) BOOT PRONTO disk or your updated disks. Create new high-speed disks with normal INIT command. Compatible with ALL DOS COM- MANDS and almost ALL of your programs. LANGUAGE CARD or Ile high-memory can hold DOS— 10,000 Extra-Bytes of program space! MORE DISK SPACE: ProntoDOS frees-up 15- extra-sectors per disk, almost one full tra PLUS: Auto-Free-Disk-Space, New “TYPE” Com- mand displays Text Files, and much more... {includes Peeks/Pokes Chart) 4315 SIERRA VISTA / SAN DIEGO, CA 92103 619-296-6400 “APPLE” is a registered trade mark of You-Know-Who. ALPHA PLOT or BY BERT Sane & JACK aa BOSS ay DISK COMMAND EI ee BY BERT KERSEY & JACK CASSIDY RENAME COMMANDS & ERROR MESSAGES: “Catalog” an Be. “Cat”; “Syntax Error” can be “Oops” or am ut want. Protect ur thauthorised save-attenspt can’ produce jot Copyable” message. Also LIST-prevention and one-key program-run from catalog, CUSTOMIZE DOS: Change Disk Volume head- ing to your message. Omit/alter catalog file codes. Fascinating documentation and tips; hours of juicy reading and Apple experiments. ANYONE USING YOUR DISKS (booted or not) will be formatting DOS the way you designed it. (includes Peeks/Pokes Chart & Tip Book*2) ONLY FLEX TEXT 2280 70:COLUMN TEXT WITHOUT HARDWARE _ BY MARK SIMONSEN PRINT VARIABLE-WIDTH TEXT on the hi-res screens with normal Applesoft commands (including Htab 1-70). Normal, expanded & com- pressed text on same screen— no hardware! ADD GRAPHICS TO TEXT or vice-versa. Run existing programs under Flex Text control. Easy to use and compatible with PLE® and GPLE.© DOS TOOL KIT® FONT compatibility, or use Flex Text fonts. Select up to 9 fonts with'ctrl-key commands, Print/List/Catalog in any style! Cus- tom TEXT CHARACTER EDI REQUIRES MONITOR. not TV; includes Pes Pokes) BEAGLE BAG ay 12-GAMES-PLUS ON ONE DISK [IGE R COMPARE BEAGLE a = B ay one gene I locked-up game disk on the mar! Au 12 games are a blast, the price is right, the tions are crystal clear, AND the disk is copie. Youcan even change the programs or list themto ff LEARN, and see wi them tick. TWELVE GAMES tog the Applesof Ace. pert rsey— TextTrain, ,_ Wowzo, Buzzword, Magic Pack... A G i /ARIETY o} games that tap your Apple's flexibility. Excellent review in January 83 3 Sohail 148). BEAGLE MENU TOO: See Tyretaces™ disk. (includes Peeks/Pokes Chart & Beagle Menu Utility) E-UP or HIGH-SPEED DISPLAY UTILITY 29.50 BY TOM WEISHAAR MAKE PROFESSIONAL PRESENTATIONS ofex- isting hi-res, lo-res & text frames. FAST hi-res loads in 2%4-seconds! Paddle or Keyboard-ad- vance frames. UNATTENDED SHOWS optional— ean pe seamed ore ed to dis, to 99 seconds. -REEN EDITOR! ete u create ‘b/w text “slides”. Add type “live” from. during shows. Send copies of presenta- tions-on-disk to your friends and associates. (includes Peeks/Pokes Chart) | oramev .. DRAW IN HI-RES, o1 on peddles/joystiek: View lines pee Pi plotting Mixed-colors and reverse (background oj Fast circles, boxes and ellipses: filled or outlined. COMPRESS HI-RES PICS TO 1/3 DISK-SPACE. Superimpose pages or re-locate any re image area anywhere on either hi-res page. HI-RES TEXT: Proportional spacing, adjustable character size and color, upper & lower case, no htab/vtab limits, sideways typing for graphs. Store for Beagle Bros disks. If they don't have what you want, | tell them to GET ON THE STICK \ Beagle Bros, 619-296-6400, or \\ ANY Apple SOFTW! DISTRIBUTOR. TIP DISK ae 100 TIP BOOK TIPS ON DISK JERT KERSEY 100 aaa Roca from Be: Tip Books 1-4, Make your Apple do never done! Ali pro; jeable for mentation. Includes our Apple Command Chart with ALL Applesoft, Integer & DOS Commands! (includes Peeks /Pokes AND Apple Command Charts) je Bros RUSH the following disks by First Class Mail: Alpha Plot . 38.50 1 Fronto-Flus 29.50 lechanic 29.50 O Tip Disk*1 . 20.00 Hee ae 29.50 0 1 20.00 Boss .. 24.00 0 Eig City : 29.50 O Double-Take 34.95 —§ C Flex Text... 29.50 1 Add me to mail list. OI'm already ON it. AT YOUR APPLE DEALER NOW! Or order directly from Beagle Bros— I] Visa/MasterCard/COD, call TOLL-FREE [| Nationwide: 1-800-854-2003 ext. 827 California: 1-800-522-1500 ext. 827 Alaska/Hawail: 1-800-854-2622 ext. 827 ay Ml OR mail US.Check, Money-Order or Visa/MC* to BEAGLE BROS, 17th-Floor ysis. SIERRA VISTA, SAN DIEGO, CA 92103 | oman ret 5 “size order. fornia add 6%. RDERS SHIPPED IMMEDIATELY Peelings (|| ‘THE MAGAZINE OF APPLE BD) msc AND HARDWARE EVALUATION Volume 4, Number 4, 1983 GRAPHICS 14 The Prime Plotter Published by PrimeSoft Corp. 16 PFS Graph Published by Software Publishing Corp. 20 Versaplot Published by Spectrasoft 25 Apple II Business Graphics Distributed by Apple Computer, Inc. 29 Plot Summary 31 Graphics Processing System Published by Stoneware, Inc. 33 TGS: The Graphics Solution Published by Accent Software, Inc. 35 Accu-Shapes Published by Accent Software, Inc. 36 Delta Drawing Published by Spinnaker Software Corp. 39 Paper Graphics Published by Penguin Software 43 Reviews Revisited Gibson Light Pen Published by Gibson Laboratories Printographer Published by Southwestern Data Systems 44 Graphics Dump Chart BEGINNER COLUMN: 9 The Anything Machine Chapter 4: DOS DATA MANAGEMENT 47 Super File Cabinet Published by Abacus Computing 51 Notebook Published by NIKROM Technical Products, Inc. APPLESOFT PROGRAM EDITOR 55 ES-CAPE Published by S-C Software FLIGHT SIMULATORS 58 Spitfire Simulator Published by Mind Systems Corporation 61 IFR Simulator Published by Programmers Software 64 Simulator Comparison Chart HARDWARE 65 Omniscan Laser Disc Controller Distributed by Anthro-Digital, Inc. DEPARTMENTS 5 Authors 6 Peelings Ratings 7 Cut & Dried 43 Reviews Revisited ADVERTISER INDEX Advertiser Page APPLE ORCHARD . AXLON ..... BEAGLE BROS CENTRAL POINT COMPUTER TAX SERVICE CRAWFORD DATA .. DARK STAR SYSTEMS DAVID DATA DIGITAL ACOUSTI DILITHIUM PRESS .. DIVERSIFIED SOFTWARE RESEARCH EAST SIDE SOFTWARE .......... HARCOURT BRACE JOVANOVICH HUNTINGTON COMPUTING . INTERACTIVE MICROWARE KENSINGTON MICROWARE LJK ENTERPRISES . MICRO-SPARC . MODERN INFORMATION METHODS . RH ELECTRONICS .. SENSIBLE SOFTWARE zc) SIERRA ON-LINE... C4 SKYLINE COMPUTING CO. SOFTKEY PUBLISHING . SORTS essen anne SOUTHWESTERN DATA SYSTEMS . SSM MICROCOMPUTER ‘ST. MARTIN’S PRESS UNITED COMPUTER WILDCAT COMPUTING THE AUTHORS Sandy Abernathy, who taught elementary school for thir- teen years, now teaches courses in microcomputer ap- plications and management technology at New Mexico State University. In addition, she presents workshops on educational applications of microcomputers for teachers and administrators and uses her Apple for word process- ing and consulting projects. She holds a B.S. in Biology, a M.A.T. in Elementary Education and a Ph.D. in Educa- tional Management and Development. Her hobbies in- clude fishing, camping, swimming, reading, and using her Apple. Edward Burlbaw is staff scientist and the regional manager for Science and Technology Corporation. His background is in physics, electronics, and mathematics. He has a B.S. in physics, an M.S. in mathematics, an M.S. and a Ph.D. in physics. His other interests include snow skiing and electronics. Montgomery Lee is a U.S. Air Force Captain currently assigned to the DoD Shuttle Program Office in Los Angeles as a Manager for Shuttle Payload Flight Readiness. He is also an F-4 pilot. He has a B.S. in mathematics and astronautical engineering and an M.B.A. His hobbies are science fiction and photography. Tom Little has a B.S. in physics and computer science. He is currently pursuing his studies in physics at Oxford University. Tom’s hobbies are writing computer languages and writing science fiction. John Martellaro is an operations research analyst for TRASANA, White Sands Missle Range working in com- puter graphics and combat simulation models. He has a B.S. in astrophysics and a M.S. in physics. John enjoys computer chess, science fiction, astronomy and soaring. John Mitchener is a Personnel Management Specialist at White Sands Missle Range. He is a former Electronics War- fare Analyst for the U.S. Army and has a B.S. in psychology. John’s hobbies are ballooning , cooking and ham radio. Alan Shalette is president of Shalette & Company, Inc., a Chicago-based management consulting firm. The firm provides market, product, business and operational systems planning assistance for clients mainly in the finance industry. He holds a B.S. (ChE) and an M.B.A. Alan’s outside interests include astronomy, photography, camping and reading. Michael Weasner is a U.S. Air Force Captain and a fighter pilot/instructor with multiple FAA ratings. He is currently assigned to the Air Force’s Space Division in Los Angeles where he is manager of the Computer Resources Division in the Launch Vehicles Program Office. Mike holds a B.S. in astrophysics. Besides flying, his interests include space exploration and computers. Publisher Peelings I, Inc. Associate Editors Edward Burlbaw John Martellaro John Mitchener Contributing Editors William Daugherty Tom Little Alan Shalette Michael Weasner Administrative Assistant Pamela Carmody Director Marketing & Communications Rebecca Winecup Copy Editor Richard Bishop Editorial Assistants Jane Trego Jack Moran Ruth Moran Circulation Director Lorie Browne SUBSCRIPTION RATES 9 issues (1 year) $21.00 18 issues (2 years) $38.00 27 issues (3 years) $54.00 Sample Copy $ 4.00 Back Issues $ 4.00 Canada, Mexico, APO, FPO (First Class) 9 issues $36.00 Back issues $ 5.00 South America & Europe (Air Mail) 9 issues $48.00 Back issues $ 6.00 All Other Foreign (Air Mail) 9 issues $57.00 Back issues $ 6.00 All remittances must be in U.S. funds and drawn ‘on U.S. bank. Credits Cover Art: Richard D. Bishop Printing: Meredith Corp., Albuquerque, NM. Typesetting (via modem): CrazyQuilt Graphics, Las Cruces, NM. Apple and Applesoft are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. Copyright 1983 by Peelings Il, Inc. All rights reserved. Material in this publication may not be stored or reproduced in any form without permission. Requests for permission should be directed to Rights and Permissions Editor, Peelings Il, P.O. Box 188, Las Cruces, NM 88004 ISSN:0744-2475. Peelings Il is published monthly except June, Aug., and Oct. by Peelings Il, Inc., 2260 Oleander, Las, Cruces, NM. Second class postage paid at Las Cruces, NM and additional mailing offices Telephone: (505) 526-8364 The Source: TCT120 Postmaster: Send address changes to Peelings Il, P.O. Box 188, Las Cruces, NM 88004 Correspondence: Send all regular mail to Peelings II, P.O. Box 188, Las Cruces, NM 88004. U.P.S. Address: 2260 Oleander, Las Cruces, NM 88001, New product information and other editorial correspondence should be sent to the at- tention of Pamela Carmody. Dealer inquiries should be sent to the attention of Lorie Browne. Change of address and all subscription correspondence should be addressed to Peel- ings I, P.O. Box 625, Holmes, PA 19043. For address changes, please include your old address as well as new and enclose, if possible, an address label from a recent issue. Volume 4, Number 4, 1983 PEELINGS RATINGS The Peelings Rating is a letter grade designed to indicate an overall im- pression of the product. It is a measure of how well the publisher did the job he intended to do taking into consideration comparison to other similar products, price to per- formance, ease of use, documenta- tion, and sophistication. We stress that you should not skip a review or disparage a program be- cause it receives a low rating. The rating alone can never tell the whole story. Only reading the entire review will give you all the information you need. For this reason, the rating should never be quoted alone with- out reference to text of the review. The Peelings II rating categories follow: some example criteria are given for the categories, but they are not meant to be all inclusive. AAA — Absolutely astounding soft- ware. We have seen one program in two years that fits this category. AA — Top notch, superb. These programs generally use the most sophisticated programming techni- ques and have excellent documen- tation. A — Very good. Software in this class incorporates very good pro- gramming techniques and has clear and informative documentation. B — Good. This software may have minor errors or be slightly flawed, it may be lacking in thorough doc- umentation, or it may just be unex- citing. C — Average. Software of a medi- ocre nature. There may be a lack of good programming concepts or poor error trapping. It may be a repeat of other work, or have a low perfor- mance/price ratio. D — Below Average. Software with a blatant disregard for the user in terms of programming design, unacceptable documentation or per- formance/price ratio. F — Unacceptable. Software of such poor quality or usability that it should not be marketed Bring thousands of dollars worth of information home for only $14.95! THE COMPLETE HANDBOOK OF PERSONA COMPUTER | COMMUNICATIONS ro dO SRUMNETS onto “The best reason to buy a computer. Packed with useful information—it's an absolute must for computer owners everywhere.” — Gary G. Reibsamen, Vice-President of NewsNet Inc. Your passport to the electronic universe—how to turn any personal com- puter or word processor into a communica- tion/information machine of incredible versa- tility and power, even without a knowledge of programming. Here's just a sampling of what you get—sk How to select a modem and communications software > How to send electronic letters, telexes and MailGrams™ 2 Money-saving techniques for using The Source, Dow Jones News/Retrieval, DIALOG, BRS and more °K Get free software! Down- load thousands of programs ** Get privi- leged information from $30,000 worth of newsletters *& Get discounts of 10% to 40% by shopping on-line *& Trouble-shooter’s guide to problem-free communications 2 Hundreds of free computer bulletin boards} (CBBS) 2 Access vast libraries (Library of ongress, N.Y. Times, magazines, and whole encyclopedias) Get real-time com- puter games and tournaments * Electronic banking, investment management, and then barter * Get toll-free numbers, valuable short-cut commands ** Get on-line advice from experienced users of your equipment. Plus much more! In just two days you'll see what this unique handbook can do for you—but we'll give you two weeks to decide. Send for your copy now; if you're not satis- fied return it in two weeks for a full refund Main Selection of The Small Computer Book Club Alternate Book-of-the-Month Club/Science Selection Please return this coupon to your bookseller or direct to St. Martin's Press — —— ————————— 4 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Atin: ML P | Please send me___copy(ies) of The Complete Hand: ook of Personal Computer Communications $18.95 | paperback each. Please add $1.50 per book for postage I and handling. My check or money order is enclosed in the amount of SI may examine the book for two weeks | 2nd: not 100% stistiod, can retun it fora complete felund p Name. | address. i pity Vstate__Zip. c CUT & DRIED by John Martellaro A continuing column of rantings, ravings, and highly personal opinions. Any congruence of at- titudes between Mr. Martellaro and the other editors is purely coincidental. In March and April | had the op- portunity to attend the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco and the Applefest in Anaheim. Here is what I learned. The West Coast Com- puter Faire seems to be drifting in its purpose. Other than the Apple Lisa and the Analytical Engines 12 MHz 68000 card (which is still not ready for delivery), there did not appear to be many new and exciting products. Were it not for those two items, | would have been even more de- pressed than | was. It certainly is no fun to walk around for hours in the Civic Center and Brooks Hall seeing the same old things while fighting the crowd. Brooks Hall is never well ven- tilated even on those breezy March days. There never seems to be a place to sit. And | don’t recall seeing anyone extraordinarily impressive on the speaker list. For those who are es- pecially interested in the Apple, there is just too much dilution of effort in this San Francisco perennial. Those who want to announce great new products tend to do it at NCC and COMDEX. Where does that leave the West Coast Computer Faire? The Anaheim Applefest had a whole different character. The creature comforts were enormously better and were designed to keep the interested buyer hanging around longer. Among these comforts were Peelings I carpeting, adequate ventilation, more open space, and a large pavil- ion of tables with real table cloths and chairs where one could have lunch, sip a coke, and gather his wits. | felt comfortable and relaxed. It was an enjoyable way to spend a day. Also, the Applefest is more consumer oriented in that many retail outlets set up booths to sell their wares, often at a festive discount. There were representatives from Apple Computer who discussed the //e and the Lisa and answered questions in seminars. On the whole, | felt that the execution of the Fest was ex- cellent overall. The event was mar- red only by some confusion at the entrance gate about what to do depending on whether or not you held a pre-purchased ticket. The Gibson Light Pen was there with new software (see the update elsewhere in this issue), and there were several other interesting pro- ducts: the Viewmax-80e from Micro- max, an extended 80-column card for the //e with 128K instead of 64K; the Sweet-P from Enter Computer Inc., a multi-color plotter; a voice- input module from Voice Machine Communications; a personal lan- guage operating system from Savvy Marketing, and a couple of new aux- illary processor boards that have 6502Cs running at about 4 MHz Cut & Dried (Standard Memories, and Saturn Systems). The Analytical Engines Saybrook 68000 board, which runs at 12.5 MHz, will eventually have Pascal and Fortran 77 compiling in- to p-code and, it is claimed, Ap- plesoft compiling into 68000 ma- chine code. As soon as this product is available, we will have a review for you. | attended a conference session in which the future of computing was discussed. Some interesting facts: In 1978 Apple Computer had 97 em- ployees and grossed about $7million. In 1983 Apple has about 4500 em- ployees and will gross about $1 billion. There are currently about five million personal computers in place. By 1986 it is estimated that there will be 20 million; in 1987, 30 million. Feedback to Apple Computer in- dicates that many Apple owners are using their computers at home to help them in their primary or secon- dary businesses. A show of hands in the audience even confirmed this. The TI-994A, which started out (deservedly) as an abysmal failure, has been turned around. By lower- ing the price to near $150 and pushing it in department stores, T.1. has pushed their production up to 150,000 units a month. While Apple is selling //e’s and IBM is selling PCs both at about 40 - 50,000 units a 7 month, Commodore is selling 150,000 VIC-20s a month. Timex is doing the same with the Sinclair 1000. Toys-R-Us is selling the VIC-20 for $88 which is less than many Ap- ple program packages. The impact of this is that a potentially huge market is being penetrated: the market in which people have only hundreds, not thousands of dollars to spend on their system. As a result, the larger Apple software vendors are jumping into the software market for these small computers. It appears that the failure of Apple to lower their price on the Apple II substantially through its period of explosive growth has left inroads for Commodore, Atari, and Texas Instruments. How this will af- fect the industry and Apple is not yet clear. | have read some articles call- ing for Apple to immediately reduce ple users: the price of the //e to about $500. Since 80% of the personal computers that will be in place in 1987 have not yet been sold, it may not be too late. What can you expect for your Ap- ple Il in the near future? Those who need to write specialized application software that runs very fast will be helped considerably by Applesoft compilers and auxillary processors, either 4 MHz 6502Cs or 12 MHz 68000s. It will be the year of the mouse and the light pen. Integrated packages that switch more easily bet- ween applications and have com- mon data structures are on the way. | suspect that you will see word pro- cessors on the //e that will be momentarily interruptable so that another task can be performed. Can- non and Diablo have announced multi-color ink-jet printers in the $1000 price class, single quantity. The problem of compatibility among products is still with us, however. Many new buyers are not inclined to take a soldering iron to their com- puters. It is more important than ever that compatibility issues be concen- trated on. We have a long way to go in this area. Another problem area is the exorbitant price of some soft- ware. | particularly feel that when an average user spends over $500 on a program in 1983, that it has little ex- cuse for not being AA software on the Peelings II scale. Stay tuned. Many of the products described above will be evaluated in the coming months including a special issue on hard disks later this year. Make sure your Peelings II con- nection is plugged in and in good working order. Buy Transend I for only $89. And get a valuable subscription offer from THE SOURCE: For just $89. Transend 1 software can make your Apple com- municate with any computer or information service over the telephone lines. And, for a limited time, you can take advan- tage of a valuable subscription offer from THE SOURCE, AMERICA'S INFORMATION UTILITY™—your connection to up-to-the-minute business and UPI news; stock prices; information and shopping services—virtually unlimited uses. Right now, SSM's complete line of Transend commu- nication software includes this subscription offer. For de- tails, ask your local dealer about Transend. For the name of a local SSM dealer, please call: 800-227-2400, ext 912 (or 800-772-2666, ext 912 in California) Offer expires June 30, 1983. g Apple is a trademark of Apple Computer, Inc. Transend is a trademark of SSM Microcomputer Products, Inc. 3k ‘ae; ‘THE SOURCE and AMERICA'S INFORMATION UTILITY is a servicemark of Source Telecomputing Corporation, a subsidiary of The Reader's Digest Association, Inc EY SEF | Transend it. ay Uy, ]/ SSM Microcomputer Products Inc. yd 2190 Paragon Drive, San Jose, CA 95131 THE ANYTHING MACHINE Chapter Four: DOS Last time we talked about the Ap- plesoft BASIC programming lang- uage: How to convey your best in- tentions to an unthinking machine, using Applesoft as an interpreter. Now it’s time to consider another in- terpreter which is co-resident (mean- ing it’s in memory at the same time) with Applesoft: DOS. DOS stands for ‘‘Disk Operating System.’’ Whenever the computer does something with the floppy disks in the disk drives, you can bet that it is DOS that’s working. But what is the need for two interpreters (DOS and Applesoft)? Couldn’t Applesoft handle the disks perfectly well? It can do just about everything else, it seems. The answer is two-fold. First of all, when Applesoft first came out there weren't disk drives for the Apple, and even for several years after that they were a rarity. So Applesoft was (naturally) written without built-in disk capabilities. Later, when disks were available, DOS was written as an “extra’’ program, rather than a modification of Applesoft, purely for simplicity’s sake. The other reason that DOS and Ap- plesoft are separate is so that DOS can run with any arbitrary language, not just Applesoft. DOS is an operat- ing system, which means it is a pro- gram for general control of the machine (saving files, selecting I/O devices, etc.), whereas a program- ming language is much more specif- ic. So keep in mind that DOS and Applesoft are two separate per- sonalities in the mind of the machine, but they do cooperate on occasion. Peelings I! THE FILING STATION We have already encountered the commands LOAD and SAVE for bringing programs from disk to mem- ory and vice versa. These are in fact DOS commands. When you type these commands, it is DOS which in- terprets and executes them, not Applesoft. Before discussing the other DOS commands, let’s try to picture the World According to DOS. DOS's life centers around disk files. A file is just a lot of information stored under a single name on the disk. A program is a good example. When a program is in memory, it is just a program. But when it's on disk it is also a file, hav- ing its own name (known to DOS), and taking up a certain amount of space on the disk. To see the names of ‘the files on disk, type “CATALOG”. This is a DOS com- mand, and it produces a result (on the screen) something like this: DISK VOLUME 254 A 002 HELLO B 034 ROSE.PIC *A 004 MY PROGRAM T 002 NOT MUCH.EXEC B 005 PRINTER DRIVER This shows you (the human) what DOS (the program) thinks is the state of affairs back at the disk. It shows the file type (““A” for ‘‘Applesoft pro- gram”, ’B” for “Binary file’, “T”’ for “Text file’), and the number of sec- tors (256 bytes each) that the file is using. An asterisk means the file is “locked’’, to prevent accidental re- moval. The different file types will be explained later on. The thing to The Anything Machine notice now is that DOS knows some important information about your files. Several DOS commands are just simple-minded things to do with files. DELETE causes a file to be removed from DOS’s World-View. (NOTE: DELETE does not erase the contents of a file, it just makes DOS forget about the file. If DOS hasn't used the disk space for anything else, you can often “‘reclaim’’ a DELETEd file. It’s better though, to avoid DELETEing files you may wish you hadn't. An important project should be backed up (additional copies of the files made) on a separate disk. RENAME changes the name of a file. For ex- ample ‘‘RENAME MY PROGRAM, AQ34-P”’ changes the name of the file “MY PROGRAM” to ““AQ34-P”’. The contents of the file are not af- fected. You may also “‘lock’’ and “unlock’’ files with the (surprise!) LOCK and UNLOCK commands. When a file is locked, DOS will not DELETE it unless you UNLOCK it first. SYSTEM CALLS: LONG-DISTANCE DOS Now all these DOS commands are certainly great fun for a quiet Satur- day afternoon. However, last time we soon discovered that the real power of Applesoft commands was in the ability to make programs out of them. The natural next step is to put DOS commands in programs too. This is a relatively easy thing to do. On most computers this is referred 9 to as “making a system call’, the idea being that your program is call- ing on the operating system (DOS in this case) to perform one of its many functions. From Applesoft, DOS system calls are made by simply PRINTing the DOS command line with a control-D character as a lead- In. What in Wozniak’s name is a control-D character? Well, it’s along story, but the upshot is that in addi- tion to the letters, digits, and widgets a computer can print, there are also other characters, the “unprintables’’ (honest!), and control-D is one of them. You can type it by holding down the CTRL key and pressing D. This is the simplest way to insert it in- to the text of a program: 10 PRINT “CATALOG” where an invisible control-D was typed between the first quote and the C. When this program is run, a CATALOG system call will be made to DOS and the catalog display will appear on the screen. The word “CATALOG” will not appear. The PRINT, you see, is not an honest PRINT, but is a system call instead. Although this may be the simplest way to put a control-D in a PRINT statement, it is not the best way. This is because it is invisible (you may not even be sure you've typed it), and if you copy over the line while editing the program, the control-D will not get copied. It is best to define a string variable which contains just a con- trol-D, then PRINT this string just before every DOS command, like so: 5 D$ = CHR$(4) 10 PRINT D$;‘“CATALOG” This program runs exactly like the one before, but is less subversive. CHR$(4) is an Applesoft expression which is equivalent to ‘“’ ’’ with a control-D between the quotes. There is no need to even type the control- D at all; the CHR$(4) creates it automatically. Now this is all well and good. Still if you have not yet given up all hope of understanding the mentality of the people who design computers, lan- guages, and operating systems, you will probably be muttering “Yes, yes, yes, but why?’’. This control-D thing seems almost too bizarre to be real. | will try to give some rationale for Other Output. —- PRINT Commands Device nonbos APPLESOFT Keyboard Commands or Other Input Device PRINT Commands INPUT OUTPUT Screen or non-control-D DOS Commands and PRINT control-D. Commands are Executed DISK The Anything Machine it, which will lead naturally into the next topic of discussion. Let’s return briefly to using DOS not from an Applesoft program, but from the keyboard. DOS and Ap- plesoft are co-resident, so how do the commands you type end up at the right one? It turns out that DOS is ac- tually in control. DOS, reads all the command lines. If it finds a DOS command it executes it. If the com- mand line is something DOS can’t recognize, it hands it on to Applesoft with a shrug of its software shoulders. In effect, it censors all the mail be- tween you and Applesoft. The incredibly clever part about this arrangement is that DOS can get ahold of anything Applesoft tries to send to you, too. In other words, an Applesoft PRINT statement actually goes through DOS to you. So, you see, DOS can recognize commands both from you, and from Applesoft in the form of PRINT statements. A little thought will show that it would be disastrous to have DOS try to act on every PRINT statement as though it were a system call. For ex- ample, suppose you ran this pro- gram: 10 PRINT ““LOCKIN’ AND LOLLIN’ ALL NIGHT LONG” It would not be a good idea to have DOS interpret this as a LOCK com- mand. The solution to the dilemma is to have DOS only interpret Ap- plesoft PRINT statements as com- mands when preceded by some hor- rendously unlikely, obscure, and blatantly improbable lead-in. Enter control-D. DOS THE BUSY-BODY See figure 1 for a picture of how DOS censors the mail. DOS has its fingers (claws? fangs? tentacles?) in to both the input and output channels of your Apple. This means that there’s a risk of ‘‘disconnecting DOS” if you redirect output to the printer (normally done with the com- mand “‘PR#1’) or some other device. DOS has your best interests at heart. Volume 4 Number 4 ‘iles (“A’’-type, or ‘“I'’-type for Integer BASIC). There is also a BRUN command, which is just like a BLOAD except hat after the file is loaded into nemory, DOS will try to run it as a machine language program. How- aver, it is important to remember that not all B’’-type files will be machine anguage programs (the Hi-Res pic- cure mentioned above clearly is not), and BRUNing something which is jot a machine language program will yield unpredictable results, as they say in the business. ) MasterCard & VISA Orders / Dealer Inquiries For Your Convenience Use This 24hr | Day Toll-Free Number 800-345-81 1 2 (In Pennsylvania: 800-662-2444) TEXT FILES AND WHAT THEY’RE GOOD FOR The last file type is ““T’’. These files contain text: character strings, words, letters, digits, and so on. Using text files, information from (or for) a pro- gram can be easily stored perma- nently on the disk. Consider this program: 5 D$=CHRS(4) 10 PRINT D$;“OPEN GREAT TEXT” 20 PRINT D$;“WRITE GREAT TEXT” 30 PRINT “HELLO WORLD” 40 PRINT 5;/,/";5*5 50 PRINT “THE END” 60 PRINT D$;“CLOSE GREAT TEXT’’ 70 PRINT “PROGRAM DONE” The commands OPEN, WRITE and CLOSE must be used as system calls: they cannot be typed directly from the keyboard. The OPEN gets DOS ready to use a text file having the given name (it will create the file if it’s not there already). The WRITE tells DOS to send all subsequent out- put to the named text file. The CLOSE cancels the WRITE and the OPEN and puts us back in the real world again. It is important to CLOSE every file you open, so that no strange things happen. After this program runs, there will be a “'T’’-type file on the disk bear- ing the name “GREAT TEXT” and having the following contents: TO SUBSCRIBE or RENEW YOUR SUBSCRIPTION Please See Postage-Paid Subcription Cards Attached INQUIRIES INVITED HELLO WORLD 5,25 THE END The Anything Machine This file can now be read by another program (or the same program at a later time): 100 PRINT D$;“OPEN GREAT TEXT” 110 PRINT D$;READ GREAT TEXT” 120 INPUT A$ 130 INPUT N, M 140 INPUT B$ 150 PRINT D$;“CLOSE GREAT TEXT” 160 PRINT AS 161 PRINT N/M 162 PRINT BS This shows that in general, the pro- gram which reads a text file must know quite a bit about how it was written. Most word processors can save text as text files. However, ‘’B’’-type files are faster to load and save, so they are usually used as the default file type. Unless you have a word processor that can create text files, the only way to make them is by the process illustrated in lines 10-60 above. This talk about text files is really an introduction to the wonderful world of EXEC files: DOS by remote control. EXEC-UTIONER’S SONG As John Martellaro pointed out after first viewing Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the Federation has finally discovered EXEC files. Apple owners are way ahead of them (neglecting the two hundred year discrepancy, of course). An EXEC file is a way to run your computer by remote control. Although you can’t do anything quite as spectacular as making a star ship drop its shields, you can be exactly that devious. An EXEC file is nothing but a sim- ple text file, in which all of the lines are valid commands to the Apple. The command EXEC with the name of such a text file will cause the Ap- ple to think that the contents of the file are being typed in, one line at a time, from the keyboard. Consider the following text file: TEXT HOME INVERSE to as “making a system call’, the idea being that your program is call- ing on the operating system (DOS in this case) to perform one of its many functions. From Applesoft, DOS system calls are made by simply PRINTing the DOS command line with a control-D character as a lead- In. What in Wozniak’s name is a control-D character? Well, it’s a long story, but the upshot is that in addi- tion to the letters, digits, and widgets a computer can print, there are also other characters, the “‘unprintables’’ (honest!), and control-D is one of them. You can type it by holding down the CTRL key and pressing D. This is the simplest way to insert it in- to the text of a program: 10 PRINT “CATALOG” where an invisible control-D was typed between the first quote and the C. When this program is run, a CATALOG system call will be made to DOS and the catalog display will appear on the screen. The word “CATALOG” will not appear. The PRINT, you see, is not an honest PRINT, but is a system call instead. Although this may be the simplest way to put a control-D in a PRINT statement, it is not the best way. This is because it is invisible (you may not even be sure you've typed it), and if you copy over the line while editing the program, the control-D will not get copied. It is best to define a string variable which contains just a con- trol-D, then PRINT this string just before every DOS command, like so: 5 DS = CHR$(4) 10 PRINT D$;““CATALOG”” GALIANI SAIMINONI uaTvad This program runs exactly like the one before, but is less subversive. CHR$(4) is an Applesoft expression which is equivalent to “ ’ with a control-D between the quotes. There is no need to even type the control- D at all; the CHR$(4) creates it automatically. Now this is all well and good. Still if you have not yet given up all hope of understanding the mentality of the people who design computers, lan- guages, and operating systems, you will probably be muttering ‘Yes, yes, yes, but why?’’. This control-D thing seems almost too bizarre to be real. | will try to give some rationale for Other Output. PRINT Commands Device ToRpOS APPLESOFT Keyboard Commands or Other Input Device PRINT Commands INPUT OUTPUT Screen a non-control-D DOS Commands and PRINT control-D Commands are Executed | 49]28Q / S19P10 VSIA F PAegusjsey poayseyy spied uolj}dloqng pleg-23e}s0q 88g aSedjq NOLdIYOSANS YNOA MANIU 40 ISINISANS OL DISK ( nm °o = ~< o = = Cr) r—) 3 < o = o = ° o i a © =a =. a nD = => = o Ey < al S = mn = © © = c = = © = sauinbu The Anything Machine 2,9) 2) ? 16) > yo © = — NO é E It knows it will be missed if discon- nected, so it makes a tremendous at- tempt to hang in there. When you type ‘PR#” or “IN#” from the keyboard, DOS handles it — Ap- plesoft never gets these commands when DOS is running. This way DOS can send all of your output to the printer (or wherever), and still be around to censor it, looking for more DOS commands. This is how DOS is intended to work. This means that an Applesoft pro- gram running under DOS should not have any “PR#’’s or ““IN#’’s. Instead it should have the DOS system calls “ PRINT D$;"‘PR#” “ and ‘’ PRINT D$;“IN#” ”. This prevents DOS from getting disconnected. Perhaps by this point you’ re begin- ning to think they should have incor- porated DOS into Applesoft, instead of having the two interpreters dance this tangled tango. There are clearly advantages to both strategies. We do want to be able to run DOS with other languages besides Applesoft. Let’s see how this happens in the case of machine language programs. Now at last can be revealed the true nature of a ‘‘B’’-type file. A ““B”’ file is an exact copy of part of the Apple’s memory. It doesn’t have to be an Ap- plesoft program. It doesn’t have to be anything at all. It’s just a chunk of in- formation. For example, if we know the memory range where a Hi-Res graphics image is stored, we can save it on disk as a “B” file: BSAVE PICTURE, A$2000, L$2000 This instructs DOS to save the con- tents of memory starting at address (the “$” means base 16, or hex- adecimal numbers) $2000, and going for a length of $2000 bytes, as a file named ‘‘PICTURE’’. There is also a “‘BLOAD” command to bring it back into memory. (By the way, almost all graphics pictures start at address $2000; a few start a $4000 (Hi-Res page two)). BSAVE and BLOAD are special commands used for saving and load- ing ‘B’’-type files. SAVE and LOAD, in contrast, only work on program Peelings II files (“A’’-type, or BASIC). There is also a BRUN command, which is just like a BLOAD except that after the file is loaded into memory, DOS will try to run it as a machine language program. How- ever, it is important to remember that not all ‘“B’’-type files will be machine language programs (the Hi-Res pic- ture mentioned above clearly is not), and BRUNing something which is not a machine language program will yield unpredictable results, as they say in the business. -type for Integer TEXT FILES AND WHAT THEY’RE GOOD FOR The last file type is ‘‘T’”. These files contain text: character strings, words, letters, digits, and so on. Using text files, information from (or for) a pro- gram can be easily stored perma- nently on the disk. Consider this program: 5 D$=CHR$(4) 10 PRINT D$;OPEN GREAT TEXT” 20 PRINT D$;‘“WRITE GREAT TEXT” 30 PRINT ““HELLO WORLD” 40 PRINT 5;/7,’7;5*5, 50 PRINT “THE END” 60 PRINT D$;‘“CLOSE GREAT TEXT’ 70 PRINT “PROGRAM DONE”’ The commands OPEN, WRITE and CLOSE must be used as system calls: they cannot be typed directly from the keyboard. The OPEN gets DOS ready to use a text file having the given name (it will create the file if it’s not there already). The WRITE tells DOS to send all subsequent out- put to the named text file. The CLOSE cancels the WRITE and the OPEN and puts us back in the real world again. It is important to CLOSE every file you open, so that no strange things happen. After this program runs, there will be a ‘’T’’-type file on the disk bear- ing the name ‘(GREAT TEXT’ and having the following contents: HELLO WORLD 5,25 THE END The Anything Machine This file can now be read by another program (or the same program at a later time): 100 PRINT D$;“OPEN GREAT TEXT” 110 PRINT D$;“READ GREAT TEXT” 120 INPUT AS 130 INPUT N, M 140 INPUT BS 150 PRINT D$;“CLOSE GREAT TEXT” 160 PRINT AS 161 PRINT N/M 162 PRINT B$ This shows that in general, the pro- gram which reads a text file must know quite a bit about how it was written. Most word processors can save text as text files. However, ‘‘B’’-type files are faster to load and save, so they are usually used as the default file type. Unless you have a word processor that can create text files, the only way to make them is by the process illustrated in lines 10-60 above. This talk about text files is really an introduction to the wonderful world of EXEC files: DOS by remote control. EXEC-UTIONER’S SONG As John Martellaro pointed out after first viewing Star Trek Il: The Wrath of Khan, the Federation has finally discovered EXEC files. Apple owners are way ahead of them (neglecting the two hundred year discrepancy, of course). An EXEC file is a way to run your computer by remote control. Although you can’t do anything quite as spectacular as making a star ship drop its shields, you can be exactly that devious. An EXEC file is nothing but a sim- ple text file, in which all of the lines are valid commands to the Apple. The command EXEC with the name of such a text file will cause the Ap- ple to think that the contents of the file are being typed in, one line at a time, from the keyboard. Consider the following text file: TEXT HOME INVERSE ANNOUNCING... snapshot // The Ultimate Unlock System - Apple’ disk copy card - Only 129.95 “Picture this: another last-minute rush, another presentation to our Big Client. The company Apple goes weird. I called in the in-house Apple ‘expert’ who promptly bombed my program disk. IF THAT DISK HADN’T BEEN A BACKUP, I would be rewriting my resume. Thank you, Snapshot.” “Thank you, Snapshot.” SNAPSHOT // makes unprotected backup copies of most memory-resident programs that run on the 48K Apple Il, Il+ or Franklin in just 30 seconds. Easy 1-2-3 copy procedure: Peelings II said “easiest and clearest of the three cards.” Copies programs no nibble copier can touch. SNAPSHOT // has more features and capabilities than any copy system on the market. NO “UTILITY” DISK NEEDED. You get it all for one low price... $129.95. eNEW built in remote switch and e Expert technical consulting extension cable ¢ Full, normal use of other e FAST! Faster than any other hardware and software system available ¢ MORE! Write for our information e COMPRESSED BRUN files packet or leave your address (automatically, instantly) with our answering service (413) 584-7600. TO ORDER: Mail check payable to Dark Star Systems. Add $3 shipping in the e LIST and SAVE protected Basic programs automatically Copy, interrupt & restart, list, U.S. ($7.50 to Canada, $15 . analyze, debug, traces, ae elsewhere). Mass. residents add disassemble, modify... move $5.50 tax. protected programs to hard or BE SURE TO SPECIFY YOUR 16K 8-inch disk CARD WHEN ORDERING. NEW DEALER PRICING AND RETAIL PACKAGE. Dealer inquiries invited. aarkStar P.O. Box 140, Dept. P, Amherst, MA 01004 SYS TEMS One drive and 16K card required. Works with most popular cards (Apple, Microsoft, MPC, Ramex, RH Electronics, Orange, Digitek, U-Micros, Ace, Computer Stop). Other brands, specify when ordering. *Apple is a TM of Apple Computer. PRINT “MAGICAL EXEC FILE ACTIVATED” NORMAL 10 PRINT “HELLO WORLD” 20 X=2*3.14159 30 PRINT X, SIN(X), COS(X) SAVE TRIGGY RUN NEW HOME VTAB 10 HTAB 16:PRINT “BYE BYE” This file would have to be created by a word processor and saved as a text file, or manufactured ‘‘by hand” us- ing OPEN and WRITE, as shown above. If the file is saved under the name MAGICAL, then typing EXEC MAGICAL will have exactly the same effect as typing each of its individual lines, one at a time. The EXEC file is not only faster than human fingers, it makes this whole complicated pro- cedure (specified by these 14 com- mand lines) totally automatic! The person sitting at the keyboard doesn’t have to do anything (in fact he can’t do anything) while the EXEC file is EXECing. In a sense, an EXEC file is a pro- gram: a program which replaces the human operator. Many computer systems have something very much like Apple DOS EXEC files. In fact, all of the commands available under DOS are quite typical of operating systems in general. Dealing with DOS is not a tremen- dous difficulty. DOS commands are fewer and simpler than Applesoft commands. The important thing to realize is that DOS has its own per- sonality, and it hears everything you say. DOS MODIFIED DOS is in an interesting position by virtue of being the standard operating system for the Apple. As discussed in a previous column (chapter one), the operating system is ‘‘bootstrapped’”’ into memory when the computer is first powered on. DOS is kept on the disk as a machine language program (though it’s not a file — if it were it would be in danger of being DEL- ETEd or changed). When the power Peelings Il to the Apple is turned on, a section of the disk (if there is one in the drive) is read into memory and run. Ona standard disk, this is DOS. This means that DOS is there first, and has control of the machine from the beginning. So it is not easily avoided or outsmarted. All disks have some kind of operating system on them. Pascal disks have the Pascal system, CP/M disks have CP/M, and game disks usually have their own primitive systems. In general, files made under one system are not intelligible to another. The disk formatting may be so different that it is impossible to even read the contents of an alien disk into memory. This is the basic idea of copy protection. The data on a copy-protected disk is stored in a manner which DOS cannot com- prehend. This is possible because there are an infinite number of ways to encode information on the magnetic surface of a floppy disk. A less radical departure from stan- dard DOS is customization of DOS. Some software uses a slightly modified DOS, which can still use standard DOS files but has some ex- tra tricks up its sleeve. There are even utilities available now which allow you to customize DOS yourself. Beware, however, that DOS is a complicated program. Only the stan- dard, unmodified DOS can guarantee compatibility with all the different Apple software available. Before concluding, | will list a few of the shortcomings of DOS. It is not hard to find material telling you what DOS does. It is more difficult to find a description of what it doesn’t do. There is no simple way to copy files. FID is Apple DOS’s general pur- pose copy program, and it works. But it’s not part of DOS. It is a separate program which you have to locate, load (destroying whatever else is in memory) and run. There is no easy way to save and load text files. If you don’t have a word processor, you must use the “brute force’’ method of writing an Applesoft program with lots of The Anything Machine OPENs, READs, WRITEs, and CLOSEs. This makes the use of EXEC files less common than it should be, and hinders the identification of the contents of forgotten files. There is no way to inspect the con- tents of any file without loading it in- to memory. It is impossible to have several text files open for reading or writing at the same time. This makes some data- base applications difficult. To summarize, DOS is essentially a disk file controller. It is a program which acts as interpreter between the user and the permanent storage available through the use of a disk drive. Its world consists of files, which are either BASIC programs, text, or memory images. DOS can be called from Applesoft BASIC with PRINT D$ commands. Next time we’ll do a whirlwind tour of the Pascal language. Till then, beware the DOS.O OCK MARKET SOFTWARE Increase your profits with OPTIONX!™ the ultimate option analysis program for the Apple computer. Extremely easy to use. For experienced option writers and speculators. Includes the Cleeton model and Bookstaber's extension of the Black- Scholes model. Automatic calendar, stock data base manager, recursive calculation of volatility, and much more. 65 page manual completely describes the program and the equations used. Requires DOS 3.3 and 48K. Send $145.00 for the program and manual Return for full refund in 15 days if not satisfied Request free brochure describing OPTIONX™ and other sophisticated stock market software. Crawford Data Systems P.0. Box 3000 - 561F Camarillo, CA 93011 (805) 484-4159 CA residents please add 6% tax. The Prime Plotter by Eli Argon PrimeSoft Corp P.O. Box 40 Cabin John, MD 20818 301-229-4229 $240.00 (Introductory price) $15.00 (demo disk) 16K RAM card required Rating: A+ Reviewed by Edward Burlbaw INTRODUCTION The Prime Plotter is a very com- prehensive plotting package contain- ing plot routines applicable to the business, scientific, and technical user. There are X,Y-plots, bar charts, pie charts, curve-fitting algorithms, labeling routines, graphics utilities, and a “slide show,’ to name the general categories. The plots may be printed directly from the program if a card with integral graphics-dump routines is used. FEATURES Just for openers, there are 26 menus, up to three levels deep, with between 6 and 11 items on each menu. The items may be selected from the menus either by number or by using the Left and Right Arrows. A menus flowchart is provided to help the user keep it all straight. The Prime Plotter is set up in a modular fashion and the required module is brought into memory when required. This is not to imply that there is a great deal of disk I/O; the disk is accessed only when the seven major modules are changed. Two drives are supported but not necessary. With only one drive the program prompts the user when changing disks is necessary. The cur- rent modules are the X,Y-plotting, pie charting, statistics, data manage- ment, titles and labels, and graphics utilities. A PIE CHART 15.82% 12.75% — 5.93% 18.46% Lee 3.96% 5.49% 16.04% 14.29% Virtually any type of plot can be created with The Prime Plotter: pie charts in one and three dimensions with up to four groups pushed and/or exploded and any kind of color fill you can imagine. Any number of pieces are allowed. The size and ratio of horizontal to vertical can be user defined to make the circles round when printed on different printers. Single- and multiple-bar charts can be created. The bars can be given thickness or the frame can be thickened to give a 3-D illusion. For a fancy touch, the bars can also be made up of figures of varying heights. Histograms can be generated and plotted with curves fit to the plot. Graphics Standard X,Y-plots are just a start. Hi-lo plots can be generated; error bars can be placed either horizontal- ly or vertically. The area under the curve may be filled as can the area between curves; the data can be fit with linear, logarithmic, exponential, n-th order polynomial, and other methods. It appears that the number of data points is limited to 250; this is probably adequate for most uses. This is approaching the resolution of the Hi-Res screen. Labeling can be done in a variety of fonts and styles. Superscripts and subscripts can be generated automatically from the input-label string. Printing can be in bold, dou- ble bold, double size, or combina- tions of the above. Other character sets can be incorporated into The Prime Plotter, in case you need more than the 20 different types provided. Placement is by X,Y-position, cursor placement (IJKM keys), or pad- dles/joystick placement; this is true whether the labels are being placed on a graph or on a viewgraph with no plot involved. Plots and data files may be saved in a variety of ways. The replay file (list of commands which create the plots) can be saved and later reload- ed and run. The data can be saved in either PrimeSoft Data Format (PDF) or as Data Interchange Format. The picture files may be saved as 33- to 34-sector binary files or as com- pressed files (with the compression utility). Standard text files may be used to display pages of text, and EX- EC files control the replay program. Data to be plotted can be input in several ways. The PDF files are stan- dard text files and can be written by Volume 4 Number 4 your own program and loaded by The Prime Plotter; the format is given, or input by hand directly. User functions and subroutines may be entered to generate the data. The statistical functions can be applied to create a fit to the data, do trend analyses, and give distributions. The data and statistics may be displayed, printed, or saved at any time. profits CoH) rt r 158 Promotion ($0 For the most part, The Prime Plot- ter is very well error trapped. | did run into a few situations where the computer (program) appeared to be acting strangely. One particular in- stance was when | attempted to place labels on my pie chart. The label ‘refused to be placed’’ where | wanted to put it, for no apparent reason, and subsequent commands didn’t occur when they should have. | was able to RESET and recover without losing data, but the incident puzzled me. In general, the Back Ar- row does not work as a backspace/delete; CTRL-D must be used instead. ADDITIONAL FEATURES In addition to the many plotting features, there are also graphics utilities and a slide show/replay feature. The utilities include free- draw, filling and framing of areas, copying of one part of the Hi-Res screen to another part, and shape- table drawing. Shapes are compati- ble with the Apple Tool Kit shapes. The replay option uses the replay file to redraw the plot step by step, just as you originally plotted it. The replay file can be edited with steps deleted, inserted, and interchang- ed. This would allow, for example, Peelings I! replotting without the shading, to determine if that improved the legibility of the plot, and changing it back if you preferred. Each of the Hi- Res pictures can be compressed and later decompressed for increased storage capacity. The algorithm must be able to compress the picture to less than 4K in order to obtain a suc- cessful compression. This works on any 33- to 34-sector binary Hi-Res. Files may be linked together in a “slide show’’ manner. The show may be interrupted, with moves backward and forward through the file. The current screen may be printed and/or saved with a few keystrokes. FUTURE ENHANCEMENTS PrimeSoft. advertises that it will have interfaces for the STROBE 100 and HP 7470A plotters available soon. The plotter option is included in some of the menus but, when selected, returns with a message stating that this option is not install- ed. Business-risk analysis, 3-D plot- ting, mapping, and typesetting will also be available soon. Customized statistical modules that contain the analysis routines of your choice and will interface with TPP can be ordered from PrimeSoft. The manual states that the price of each module is expected to be approximately 100 dollars. Obviously, due to the com- plex nature of this package, this in- vestment will probably be necessary, even if the program were not locked. DOCUMENTATION The instruction manual is over 200 half-size pages and is divided into 16 sections. There are 10 appendices and a glossary. There is no index, but the table of contents is quite ade- quate. Each section is further divid- ed into several subsections with descriptive headers. These headers also appear in the table of contents. Even with such a large manual, | found that some of the features were described in less detail than | feel is appropriate. The tutorials lead the user through making a pie chart and Graphics an X,Y-plot, but sometimes the steps are not clearly justified. Why the par- ticular order of the steps only becomes apparent after more ex- perience is gained. One user spent nearly two hours going through the tutorial but was still unable to create an acceptable plot of his own data, and, obviously, did not learn the pro- gram either. Perhaps a simpler tutorial would allow the user to be “up and running’ sooner. There is a help feature built into the program, but it is more for refreshing your memory than teaching. A quick- reference card containing a list of the commands and a menus flowchart is also provided. WARRANTY AND BACKUP POLICY Recently, PrimeSoft has revised its warranty and backup policies. They currently are: free replacement for a period of 60 days — thereafter, 20 dollars for the MASTER disk and 15 dollars for the REPLAY disk, for registered owners. One backup of the MASTER and multiple backups of the REPLAY disk may be obtained. CONCLUSION This package is one of the most comprehensive plot packages available for the Apple today and | have not tried to describe all its features. After all, the manual takes over 200 pages to do that. It has numerous features in both business and scientific applications. While most plot packages seem to be oriented to only one type of user, the Prime Plotter does it all, and does it well. The multiple menus (and features) are sometimes overwhelm- ing, so be prepared to spend several hours running the tutorials and prac- ticing before you are able to obtain a plot of your own data. Even after you become familiar with all the features, | suspect that you will con- tinue to find something new to try. If this package sounds appealing, the $15 demo disk will probably con- vince you. If you want a comprehen- sive, no-holds-barred program, this could be it.0 PFS GRAPH by Bessie Chin and Steve Hill Software Publishing Corp 1901 Landings Drive Mountain View, CA 94043 415-962-8910 $125.00 Apple II Plus or //e Rating: B Reviewed by John Martellaro BACKGROUND PFS GRAPH is a business-oriented plotting package designed to pro- duce line, bar, and pie graphs. The data for these graphs can come from VisiCalc files, PFS FILE, or keyboard entry. It will plot the graphs on a variety of printers or on a Hewlett- Packard HP7470A Color plotter. Several plot packages have been previously reviewed by Peelings I. A comparison chart summarizing the features of seven programs was published in V3N5 (1982). PFS GRAPH most closely resembles the Apple Plot and Apple I! Business Graphics series. INTRODUCTION PFS Graph is a simple and coherent program as it appears to the user. It does a lot of the tedious work that a computer program should do for a user, and it is designed to doa limited number of things very well. In this sense, it has some of the polish and smoothness of Bank Street Writer (V4N3, 1983). The basic menu looks like this: PFS: GRAPH MENU GET/EDIT DATA DISPLAY CHART DEFINE CHART SAVE CHART GET/REMOVE CHART PRINT/PLOT FUNCTIONS Item 1 in the main menu provides for entering data from the keyboard, a Visicalc file cast in DIF format, or a PFS FILE file. In order to select a menu item or terminate any data en- try throughout the program, the CTRL-C is used instead of RETURN. As with PFS FILE, Software Publishing Corp. seems to have an extreme reluctance to make use of the RETURN key. | found this to be ir- ritating and philosophically troublesome. After all, truly friendly software should be using typewriter- like keys. Asking a user to use CTRL- C comes about four years after Ap- ple Computer gave up asking people to enter BASIC with a CTRL-B. If you select to enter data from the keyboard, you will enter a dual- column page with the columns labelled as X-DATA and Y-DATA. The X-data can be numeric, alphanumeric, or ‘‘datic’”’ (this word will be used to indicate date- formatted data). Once you select the option for the format of the X-data, it is frozen for the lifetime of the data set. This can be considered a limita- tion. Datic data can be in terms of days, months, quarters and years. DUawna Graphics Certain combinations of these four are not allowed since this would ex- ceed the resolution of the X axis. Other codes can be combined; for example, YQ will print years with four tick marks labelled one through four quarters per year. The primary limitation here is that only 18 data points on the X-axis can be plotted with character-labelled values. Bar charts can have 36 points spread among up to four graphs. Contrast this to 100 points for Apple Plot, 300 for VisiPlot, and 3,800 for Apple II Business Graphics. You do not have to enter data in ascending order along the X-axis. Disordered data will be sorted when later retrieved from diskette. Item 2 produces a labelled graph on the high-resolution screen. Line charts can have up to four sets of labelled, uniquely marked data sets. Titles must be in upper case. The markers for each set of data are in dif- ferent colors. They can be viewed on a color display but can only be printed in black & white. (Color plots require the Hewlett-Packard Plotter.) Bar charts must have the datic or alphanumeric format. Data sets with eight or fewer data points and an alphanumeric data format can be displayed as a pie chart. Raw data can be entered for a pie chart, and when displayed, it will be normal- ized to individual percentages of the pie. | noted that the normalized percentages have more precision than the input data which is a com- mon error in this type of procedure. For example, the numbers 25, 30, 35 and 40 produced percentages of 19.23, 23.08, 26.92, and 30.77, respectively. Volume 4 Number 4 Co] GRAFH C The third item in the menu allows you to define how the data generated in item 1 will be handled. Up to four sets of Y-data can be labelled and plotted. You can mix line and bar charts provided the line data is alphanumeric or datic. Data can be plotted as individual values or ac- cumulated across the plot. Options include stacking individual graphs (see figure), showing horizontal grid lines, and utilizing color. The chart title is limited to 26 characters, and legend names for the data sets are limited to 15 characters. There is a fundamental problem in the data entry. The cursor quadrant of CTRL T,V,F,G is used to move the cursor up, down, left, and right respectively. The Right Arrow is used to jump to the next field. So far, so good. But the Left Arrow merely backspaces and duplicates the CTRL- F key. The Left Arrow key should cause a a jump back to the last field. This major oversight is an extremely annoying aspect of PFS GRAPH. Items 4 and 5 provide for book- keeping on a specially formatted data diskette. This diskette is copyable, but is used by PFS GRAPH in its own unique way in that the normal DOS catalog does not exist--only PFS GRAPH is able to read the catalog. File names may have up to 10 characters, and up to 45 charts can be saved per diskette. The specially formatted catalog has three columns of names and is convenient to use. Peelings Il oo fod Fl GRAFH B The last item in the main menu selects either a printer or a plotter. You can first print the tabular data, and the program will pause to ask if you want to proceed to the graph. This gives you a chance to abort or adjust the paper if necessary. Printers that are supported are the MX-70 and MxX-80 with GRAFTRAX, Okidata 82A, Apple dot-matrix printers, IDS Prism (in black & white only), NEC 8023, and the C-Itoh Prowriter. There is no configuration program. PFS GRAPH requires the printer to be in slot 1 and the Hewlett-Packard plot- ter, if available, to be in slot 2. | tried to print a plot on an Apple //e with no printer plugged in, and, amazing- ly, the program did not hang-it simp- ly displayed the image on the screen. If you have a need to save the Hi- Res picture created as a 32-sector binary picture file, you will have to get tricky. As with Apple II Business Graphics, you must insert an Apple DOS 3.3 slave diskette, RESET, and reboot. Then you can save the Hi-Res picture as a 33-sector binary file. A user should not be forced into these kinds of machinations. Not only is there no explicit support to save a Hi- Res image, but the above emergen- cy technique is not mentioned either. This is a grave oversight. DOCUMENTATION & WARRANTY The manual supplied is a spiral- bound, typeset booklet with about 50 pages. It is extremely well written- -clear, concise, and well organized. It starts with trial examples which, if followed carefully, will allow a new user to quickly understand the work- ings of the program. Good use is made of pictures, and the design is professionally laid out. There are ap- pendices containing error messages, a quick reference, and advice on copying data diskettes. There is a heavy paper quick-reference card which is perforated at the binding so that it can be torn out. There is a 2 1/3 page index. This documentation ranks with the best program doc- umentation | have ever seen. Two copy-protected diskettes are supplied along with a diskette of sam- ple graphs. It used to be that you got one master diskette, and a backup of EMPLOYEE GROWTH WS PROJ ag KTHOUSAMDS 2 TOTAL EMPLOYEES ~~ + | 4 12 se | =F | o EMPLOY. GROWTH + Graphics 22 | 93 FROT. GROWTH Having Computer problems? Paws for the solution. e AN @ BUSINESS Retail Wildcat Price Price 250.00 187.46 74.95 56.21 74.95 56.21 CONTINENTAL CPA | Gen. Ledger. First Class Mail ... Home Accountant MICROLAB Invoice Factory Payroll Manager Wallstreeter MICROSOFT Multiplan-Native Apple . 275.00 200.00 SOFTWARE DIMENSIONS Accounting Plus II (G.L., A-R., A.P., Inv.) .. in . 199.95 149.96 300.00 225.00 300.00 225.00 . .1250.00 875.00 VISICORP Desktop Plan . 250.00 187.50 Visicalc 3.3... . 250.00 187.50 Visischedule 300.00 225.00 Visitrend/Visiplot 300.00 225.00 & WORD PROCESSING Word Processing, cont. ART-SCI Magic Pak ... Magic Window Il... . HAYDEN Piewriter. . Piewriter 80 col. ON-LINE Screenwriter II Screenwriter Pro The Dictionary SENSIBLE Sensible Speller SILICON VALLEY . 199.00 150.00 The Word Handler Retail Wildcat Price Price 225.00 168.75 149.95 112.46 149.95 112.46 149.95 112.46 . 129.95 97.46 199.95 149.96 99.95 74.96 125.00 93.75 GAMES yy BRODERBUND Choplifter Seafox .. pean Sy Aztec . Casino Sou Fair . ig Pen be shack Attack . H.A.L. LABS Sheila..... f Supertaxman il INFOCOM Starcross . Zork I, lor Ill. ON-LINE Cannonball Blitz 34.95 26.21 Time Zone Ultima! Ultima Il. SIR-TECH Knight of Diamonds Wizardry!.. SYNERGISTIC Bolo Crisis Mountain Escape from Arcturus Nightmare Gallery . Wilderness Campaign . 59.95 34.95 34.95 26.21 26.21 39.95 39.95 29.95 29.95 29.95 29.96 29.96 22.46 22.46 22.46 25.00 25.00 20.00 20.00 . 39.96 29.96 39.96 29.96 Ss Frogger ... 34.95 26.21 Lunar Leeper . 22.46 “75.00 29.96 44.96 29.96 99.95 39.95 34.95 49.95 26.21 37.46 39.95 34.95 29.96 26.21 34.95 34.95 26.25 26.21 15.00 mY ys EDUCATION Retail Wildcat Price Price EDU-WARE Algebra, Il or Ill Compu-Read Counting Bee... SAT Word Skills KRELL Full Logo . 39.95 29.95 29.95 49.00 29.96 22.46 22.46 36.75 . 179.95 147.00 LEARNING COMPANY Bumble Games 59.95, Bumble Plot....... 59.95 Gertrude’s Secrets 74.95 Juggles Rainbow 44.95 SPINNAKER Facemaker . Snooper Troops #1 Story Machine TERRAPIN Terrapin Logo . ZEITGEIST Invader Attack ... 49.50 37.13 Space Mouse 49.50 37.13 Or. TERMS & CONDITIONS There is a $2.00 shipping fee on all software and a 2% fee on hardware and supplies with a $2. minimum. No overseas shipments. Texas residents add 5% on all products except soft- ware. Immediate shipment with money order, cashiers check or charge card. Allow 10 days for personal checks to clear. Prices and availability subject to change without notice. Send for free catalog with complete listing of product line. 44.96 44.96 56.21 33.71 26.21 33.71 26.21 150.00 120.00 we Wildcat Computing, Inc. 1160 Park Boulevard Plano, Texas 75074 (214) 424-3582. the master was available for $15.00. If you buy one of these older pack- ages with-only one master diskette, check with Software Publishing Corp. on how to get your second. If the original diskette(s) fail(s) within 90 days of purchase, it (they) will be re- placed by Software Publishing Corp. STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES PFS GRAPH seems to be aimed at business users who want a profes- sionally done and easy-to-use package. On the positive side: The documentation is nothing short of terrific. A sample diskette with over 30 sample graphs is supplied. There is good flexibility in the entering of datic information. Error trapping is excellent. Positive and negative values can be presented on both axes with autoscaling or manual override. X-axis data is sorted. The support for the Hewlett-Packard plotter allows you to produce professional-looking graphs in color. It is largely menu driven and extremely easy to use. On the negative side: There is no direct facility for saving Hi-Res pic- tures as pure binary files. The use of the Right Arrow and the CTRL-C for entering data is distracting. The number of points allowed on the horizontal axis is extremely limited. Chart labels are in upper case only. The price for the package ($125.00) is, on the surface, rather steep for a program with its limitations. No ex- tra documentation is supplied that explains the files on the sampler diskette; such documentation would be useful. There is no configuration program that allows for the printers or plotters to be in different slots. CONCLUSION My first impression of this package was that it is extremely slick and very well done. As | dug deeper, | found small but nagging problems, men- tioned above, that need to be iron- ed out. The method of entering and correcting data is so unconventional that it is frustrating. The facility to save a file as a Hi-Res screen image is a feature that must be added. If more data points were available on the X-axis, and the other mentioned problems were fixed, PFS GRAPH would probably rate an A+ and would be a valuable and cost- effective tool for many business users. The bottom line is that if you are looking for the easiest possible plot program to plot limited data sets without much fuss or delay, PFS GRAPH is a reasonable choice. 500% Faster Loading of Textfiles, Integer, Applesoft & Binary and Now Six Powerful Extra Commands in Standard DOS 3.3 30 out of 60 bought it on the spot when DAVID-DOS™ was demonstrated at the Original Apple Corps, UCLA. Automatically supports an Integer or Apple- soft Rom Card in anyslot (without configuring) Six New Commands 1. TLOAD Speed loads all Text Files 2. TLIST Lists all Text Files to screen/printer. 3. DUMP Binarv/Ascii to screen or printer. 4. DISA Disassembles Binary to screen/printer 5. AL Prints program Address & Length. 6. HIDOS DOS moves itself to Language Card Like Other DOS Commands These six commands operate identical to ex- isting DOS commands. Use A or AS for address and L or LS for length. Enter them on the Keyboard and use them in Basic programs with the familiar D8. 100 Sectors in 7 Seconds TLOAD loads a Visacalc Template of a hundred sectors in 7 seconds and TLIST scrolls it to screen or printer, TLOAD speed loads Se- quential and Random Text Files starting at $1000 or as specified by A. It loads the entire file or a smaller length specified by L. List Any Textfile TLIST lists Sequential and Random Text Files to screen and printer, DUMP screen dumps memory with Ascii along the right side. Use A and L for specific dumps Without them it starts at $00 and stops with return, Disassemble Machine Code DISA disassembles machine code to screen Use A and L for specific routines. Variable Speed Scrolling ‘TLIST, DUMP and DISA Features: 1. Print with PR# 2. Key operated variable speed control. 3. Instant pause with Space Bar. 4. Exit anytime with Return Key. 10K More of Memory HIDOS command checks for a language card in slot O and moves DOS residing in memory to the card at $DDO0. Himem is set at $BEOO adding 10K of free memory for programs. The Integer Card is still automatically supported in any slot. $300 to $3D0 is kept free. Apple II and Applesofi are trademarks of Apple Computer ine Visicale is a trademark of Visieorp. To Order: Send Check To 12021 WILSHIRE BLVD., SUITE 212 LOS ANGELES, CA 90025 Two More New Commands HIDOS has all previous commands and features operational and adds a 7th command FIND, Find searches 64K memory in 3 seconds for any Hex sequence up to 31 bytes long and prints the addresses to screen. Hidos has an optional 8th command DATE configured for Mountain Hardware clocks and is useable in basic programs. Use with Most Software DAVID-DOS is totally accurate and speed loads without over-writing. Great care was taken to keep DOS standard and compatible with most software. All DOS entry addresses have been preserved. Only two routines were moved to allow more room in command tables. DOS is the same length. Init areas were used for DAVID-DOS. Install in Seconds Catalog Free Space is also provided. DAVID- DOS installs in seconds on blank or full disks. Requires a 48K Apple IT with DOS 3 Comes with instructions. California residents add 614% sales tax, ‘ Foreign add $2.00. (218) 478-7865 VERSAPLOT by Samuel Shultz SPECTRASOFT 350 N. Lantana #775 Camarillo, CA 93010 805-987-6602 $99.50 Apple II Plus or //e Rating: D Reviewed by John Martellaro Versaplot, like all plot programs, is designed to transform data into several different kinds of charts. These can be line charts, scatter charts, bar charts, area charts, and pie charts. There are significant pro- blems, however. Versaplot has many options and is capable of producing a wide variety of sophisticated- looking charts. However, it is not easy to use, and the documentation is the poorest of all the plot programs reviewed in this issue. Normally, | leave the subject of documentation until later in the review. It is usually more appropriate to get right to the discussion of what the program does and how well it does it. This time, however, you should know before you read any farther that even the latest version of the Versaplot documentation is so confusing, wordy, and unpredictable that it renders the program almost unusable. While PFS GRAPH (also reviewed in this issue) may have its limitations and may be somewhat ex- 20 pensive, I will say that | was up and running with it in less than 15 minutes. | had tried every feature within an hour. Versaplot, on the other hand, took me two evenings to get to the point where something useful could be done. Attempting to read the “‘tutorial’’ was so frustrating that | was ready to forget the whole review. These may not be factual statements about the operation of the program, but they are factual statements about my experiences try- ing to learn how to use the package. OPERATION Versaplot’s chief virtue is that it can display and save to disk Hi-Res im- ages of a variety of good-looking plots, in perspective if you so choose. ? Se 45) 48r 35 3G) 25 26) 15) 19 Ss x MALPIM AMADIS SOFTWARE SALES Otherwise, you must use your own software to produce dumps of the 34-sector binary files. The program is geared more towards scientific applications by vir- tue of its design and features. For ex- ample, all data plotted is numeric. When numbers become too large to display, a factor in scientific notation is displayed next to the numbers. | tried plotting a graph of some ar- bitrary numbers versus yearly quarters. The highest number on the Y-axis was 7500, but it was displayed as 750 with a multiplier of 1E1 (scien- tific notation for 10). PFS GRAPH, be- ing business oriented, puts a scale in- dicator at the top of the chart: “in thousands”, and scales the numbers 1 to 7.5. However, because of auto- 7S 76 77? 78 9 86 841 82 YEARS 1975-1982 A major drawback is that printing support of the graphs is supplied on- ly if you have special graphics-dump interfaces such as the Grappler. Graphics normalization, my nice, neat quarters of one through ten were set up at numbers like 2.7, 4.3, etc. This is obviously not as useful to the Volume 4 Number 4 businessman who wants to see something like the following: Plt driidl 12341234 1981 1982 A consequence of the way Versaplot works is that you cannot have discretely labelled dates or alphanumeric descriptors (except for pie charts). A “Year Plot’ function does delete the century portion of a number like 1982 and allows integer year numbers to be displayed. While PFS GRAPH offers only line, bar, and pie charts, Versaplot in- cludes scatter charts and area charts. Scatter charts are used when there is no clear cut connection between the X-values and the Y-values, and no lines are drawn to connect any of the points. Area charts are charts in which the area under a curve is shad- ed for certain types of emphasis. Fur- ther, the bar charts and pie charts in Versaplot can be drawn with a three- dimensional appearance. For scien- tific work, error bars whose size is a certain percentage of the Y-value can be plotted. The color of the lines in line charts may be chosen by the user, consistent with certain limita- tions imposed by the Apple II Hi-Res graphics. The main menu of Versaplot is displayed as follows: DISK L(EXICOMM E(DIT DATA P(LOT GRAPH C(REATE DATA QUICK LOOK G(RAPH DISPLAY F(ORMAT GRAPH A(XIS ASSIGNMENTS = M(ODIFY LABELS The DISK command supervises the loading and saving of Hi-Res pictures or tabular graph data. It also allows access to certain DOS commands like LOCK, DELETE, UNLOCK, CAT- ALOG, and so on. The EDIT DATA command invokes an editor that is considerably more refined than the method used by PFS GRAPH. However, the price paid for this is that the editor must be loaded as a new program. When it is loaded, the menu above is replaced by a similar edit menu. The editor is easy enough to use. | did notice strange behavior when | tried to enter more than 80 data points, and | presume this is the Peelings II 2g) HIGH — 872 27 34 | Ba 78 N ’ Jnl , il 6 <8 pow JONES INDEX | $ -12) 8-15 a9 =3 LOW - 814 “St? t bist it te MONTH OF JULY limit. Unlike PFS GRAPH, which does a data analysis after you enter data to make sure every X has a cor- responding Y, Versaplot will just ig- nore data when it is unpaired. This is a better technique when you are stuck with raw data that sometimes is missing a Y value. The FORMAT. GRAPH provides a full page of graph display options that can be toggled on and off. These are: DIM PLOT COLOR BAR PLOT OVERLAY ERROR BARS YEAR PLOT LABEL GRAPH ZERO LINE SCATTER PLOT VERT LINE INVERSE PLOT HORIZ LINE NO TICK MARKS POINT TRACE FRAME THE PLOT. KILL AXIS LINES XY AXIS DIVISIONS RIGHT OFFSET AREA UNDER CURVE GRAPH W/O LABELS These options provide the scientific user with a great deal of flexibility in the presentation of the graph. Selected options that are toggled on stay on even if another module, like the editor, is loaded. This is good. What Versaplot has in the way of displaying pie charts in four different combinations of pie and background colors along with perspective, it lacks in the display of the actual percen- tages of the pie. Where PFS GRAPH errs on the side of unjustified preci- sion in computing the pie sub-area percentages, Versaplot provides no numbers at all. The user is left with only visual estimation of the percen- Graphics ages. This is unacceptable since the program has to compute the percen- tages anyway. Sixteen pie segments are possible with the option to place the label anywhere compared to PFS. GRAPH’s eight segments and fixed- position labels. There is nothing slow about the plotting of the charts; | never had to wait very long even when the pro- gram had to shade the area under a curve. Also, you may operate on the data to transform it in the manner of some statistical packages. You may define a function that consists of the basic arithmetic and scientific func- tions so long as they form a legitimate mathematical expression and apply this function to the data. ALTERNATE DATA INPUT By using the LEXICOMM function (which must be loaded from disk), you may load VisiCalc files (after transformation to DIF format) and Statisitics With Daisy files (Peelings II, V3N5, 1982). It is from this menu that you send the printer interface the necessary commands to print the Hi- Res image if it is like a Grappler or Apple Dumpling that have these commands. As mentioned above, if you do not have this kind of printer interface, the best you can do is save the Hi-Res screen and dump it yourself with one of the printer dump programs. (See Peelings Il, V3N8, 1982.) 21 DOCUMENTATION The Versaplot documentation was recently released in a small three-ring binder printed with a daisy wheel printer. The physical improvement over the former dot-matrix printed, spiral-bound manual may be con- siderable, but the manner of writing in the manual leaves much to be desired. The major problem with the documentation is the tutorial method of endless requests to press certain keys. It looks something like this: PRESS D R D RETURN RETURN RETURN PRESS DRDY Not only does this make for tiresome reading, but sometimes the request is simply made as a precursor to ex- actly undoing something that was just demonstrated. You never know whether you are being instructed to perform an act that leads to something interesting or being a guinea pig for a demonstration that you would prefer to learn by being told about it. The manual spends entirely too much time dragging the user through every minutiae of the program in the style of the above instead of pro- viding a coherent explanation of the available functions. This is the reason it takes so long from the time the package is opened until useful work can be done. | am certainly not a “‘toss-the-manual-and-boot-the- damn-disk’’ type of user, but in my estimation, the style of the manual causes undue delay in comprehen- ding and utilizing the product. This is the principal cause for the low rating. In contrast, the PFS GRAPH manual is a model of excellence in human interface, good organization, clarity in exposition, and good use of visual aids. Two of the things that helped me make sense of it all are an alphabetical command _ reference with page-number references and a fairly good index. SPECTRASOFT RESPONDS | recently received your review of Versaplot that will appear in the up- coming issue of Peelings Il magazine, and would like to respond in your let- ters section to its low rating. To begin, your reviewer praises most of the pro- gram, and points out very few dif- ficulties, some of which will be rebut- ted below. Why such a low grade? According to your reviewer, it is the documentation, not the program, that receives the low grade. Is not the program just as or more important than the documentation? The review implies that the program is not easy to use. That opinion is not shared whatsoever from most of our customers that use Versaplot and have submitted comments. They comment on its ease of use! Some of these are individuals who own one or two other plotting programs — in- cluding the program you compare to Versaplot in your review! The reviewer’s “example” of a 22 “typical’’ tutorial was taken from the first section only 3 pages from the beginning of the first tutorial. His negative remark of the “undoing” of a command appears in the same discussion. It appears that your reviewer did not continue at all with the manuai, and reviewed the pro- gram in the same manner. To PROVE that the review was incomplete and inaccurate, the reviewer states “I tried to enter more than 80 data points, and | presume this is the limit’. He completely missed IN THE FIRST TUTORIAL — only four pages away from the “example’’ of the tutorial that is cited in the review — the section on “reconfiguration of memory” which allows the user to in- put up to 200 data points in a col- umn! This discussion is cited in the table of contents, the index, the reference section, and is mentioned throughout the entire manual. How competent and thorough can this Graphics SUMMARY Versaplot is a program that is com- petently written and provides a great deal of flexibility and power for the primarily scientific user. Unfortunate- ly, the accompanying documenta- tion seems to be a leftover from the old days when one technically mind- ed person felt that all he had to do was explain everything in roughly the order in which it occurred to him, and the user would be happy. The documentation must be completely redone before this package can be easily used. This combined with the fact that (1) pie charts fail to show percentages and (2) there is no direct support for driving the software of selected dot-matrix printers like the MxX-80 with GRAFTRAX and the Ap- ple Computer printers forces me to give a non-recommendation. This is despite the fact that the author has left few stones unturned in providing most features needed by a scientific user.) review be? The reviewer states “(Versaplot) took me two evenings to get to the point where something useful could be done.” By the end of the second tutorial (28 pages from the beginning of the tutorial section) a user will have used almost all of the graph plotting and formatting commands and op- tions, setting and changing the axis scales and defaults, use of single and- dual drive system, loading of diskette data files, printer slot settings, system operation, reset key protection, changing memory configurations, DOS housekeeping commands, and more. How much more comprehen- sive can the first 28 pages be? After all, for the beginner, one should spell out everything. Why penalize one program because it contains many more useful functions than another program, and contains more material in order to learn its complexities? To Volume 4 Number 4 APPLE (1) EAGLE [1] IBM, PC (] NORTHSTAR (] TRS-80 Il 8” [] OSBORNE C] FRANKLIN (] STANDARD CP/M 8” RENT SOFTWARE BEFORE YOU Buy! from our SOFTWARE RENTAL LIBRARY You can now RENT the most popular software available for just 20-25% * of Manufacturers’ Retail Price ¢ Eliminate the risk—rent first! | HEATH/ZENITH 89 8” ¢ 100% of rental fee applies toward purchase e All purchases are 20% Off of Manufacturer’s Suggested List ® Rentals are for 7-days (plus 3 days grace for return shipping) SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY OFFER There are now 2 different plans to choose from: Join the Game Group, $25.00 per year | Join the Business Group, $50.00 per and rent as many games as you like for | year and rent as many business applica- only 20-25% of Mfrs. Sugg. Retail Price* tion programs as you like for only Minimum order, 3 game rentals 20-25% of Mfrs. Sugg. Retail Price* REMEMBER, THESE ARE NOT DEMOS, BUT ORIGINAL UNRESTRICTED SOFTWARE PROGRAMS (complete with manuals in original manufacturers’ packages) To Immediately Order, or for more information: UNITED COMPUTER CORP Toll Free CALL 1-800 992-7777 . In California CALL 1-800 992-8888 eae Rene Library In L.A. County CALL 1-213 823-4400 ulver City, California Canadian Orders Welcome es AMERICAN | *Plus postage and handling EXPRESS | | sere EDUCATIONAL [) ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE [] WORD PROCESSORSL] DATA BASES) LANGUAGES [1 GRAPHICS ACCOUNTS PAYABLE [) MAILING C] SPELLING [] COMMUNICATIONS () REAL ESTATE () TAXES CL) STOCK MARKET (1) INVENTORIES 439031 TvuagNa9 0 T1OwAVd O TVLN3G C1) TvdIGaW C] SL33HS GVaNdS C) ONILNNODOV CO SS3NISNg LF S3ILITILN CF) SYITIdWOD LC] SAWVD C068 XOX | | review one program and compare it to another in exactly the same con- text renders a totally biased viewpoint. No mention was made that the manual is 120 pages in length, and that the last two tutorials are advanc- ed overviews of the complex interplay between all of the formatting modes. It’s there if the user needs to reference the material. No mention was made in the review of the number defined step command that allows one to render virtually infinite differences in the same charts (no other plotter has this feature) which was also introduced later in the manual. Essentially key aspects such as remembering the filenames, single key menu driven mnemonic commands, ability to stop, continue, or return to the menu during the plotting mode, inverse and colored backgrounds, moveable labels, and erasable labels were not mentioned. No mention was made of the system file storage. Versaplot will store a data file with the parameters of the entire system after the graph has been formatted and plotted. This allows the user to build a library of self-executable files, that, upon reloading, will allow one to press six keys and plot the chart exactly as it appeared when the file was saved. Is this an “unusable program’’? | can recall scores of clients that have given me the opposite impression of Versaplot. Also, there was no mention of the copyable automatic graph presenta- tion program that is included with Versaplot, nor was there mention of the package coming with a backup diskette. These are features your readers should be aware of, and should have been elaborated on when comparing features to other plotting programs. The reviewer says that you cannot use alphanumeric labels on the axis, and in one sentence renders Ver- saplot unfit for the business person. What he fails to mention (and did not take time to read) is that numeric labels on the axis can be erased, and an infinite number of MOVEABLE labels can be placed anywhere on the chart, including. on the axis. These labels also appear on the self- executable files that were mentioned THE REVIEWER RESPONDS If publishers of complex software want to make their products easily usable, they should do a good job of explaining their features and opera- tion. Versaplot was the most frustrating package | have reviewed in a year. Nevertheless, | went through the entire tutorial. For those purchasers of Versaplot who are less experienced on their Apple than | am, | have much sympathy. | stand by my review and claim that an ex- amination of the instruction manuals that come with Apple Business Graphics and PFS GRAPH will bear out my point. In 1983 it takes more than a brilliantly written and executed piece of software to win high praise and ratings. It must be supervised by 24 orderly, organized, and well thought out documentation. The power must be leashed and unleashed by a superb human interface both in the execution and in the instructions. Versaplot has a lot of power. | apologize for missing some of the finer points of the power mentioned in Mr. Shultz’s letter which sets the record straight on those matters he considers important. Two sentences in Mr. Schultz’s let- ter point out the differences in his and my feelings about microcom- puter software. First, only the direct comparison of software performance will prevent bias. Evaluating the per- formance of a program based on the best performance by all is, in fact, the only fair way to do product com- Graphics above. These features are what make Versaplot superior and more versatile than many other plotting programs, and should be included in a review of the program. Versaplot is currently being used by schools, hospitals, corporations, students, the U.S. Government, and many individuals who recognize it as one of the best and most complete plotters available for the Apple II computer. | agree that the manual is somewhat tedious, though again, Versaplot’s complexity demands a complex discussion. Past users of Ver- saplot have mentioned that the manual takes six to eight hours to make full use of the advanced features. However, once learned, owners of Versaplot tell us that it is one of the easiest to use, comprehen- sive, most versatile (to coin a phrase) and fastest plotters available. In summary, | believe your review was incomplete and inaccurate. Sincerely, Samuel Shultz SPECTRASOFT parisons. If every program were evaluated only on the standards set forth by each author, every program would be AAA. Second, complex software should be complex because it is required to do a simple job. The simple job should be simply and- clearly documented. A good exam- ple is Lisa’s software. To claim that complex software requires a com- plex discussion is not, | believe, a philosophy that is universally supported. Incidentally, it should be pointed out that the purchase of a microcom- puter software package by an agen- cy of the U.S. Government does not constitute an endorsement by the U.S. Government.O Volume 4 Number 4 APPLE II BUSINESS GRAPHICS by Business & Professional Graphics Cambridge, MA distributed by Apple Computer 20525 Mariani Ave. Cupertino, CA 95014 408-996-1010 $175.00 Apple II Plus or //e Rating: A- Reviewed by John Martellaro INTRODUCTION Apple Il Business Graphics replaces Apple Plot (reviewed in Peelings Il, V2N1, 1981). It con- siderably expands on the capabilities of Apple Plot, and it is now almost a complete plotting package. Those business and scientific users who are reasonably familiar with their Apple Ils will find most of what they need. Apple Il Business Graphics is much more powerful than PFS GRAPH, which is modest in its capabilities; and unlike Versaplot, the documen- tation of Apple II Business Graphics is excellent (PFS GRAPH and Versplot are also reviewed in this issue). On the whole, it has the best compromise between ease of use, Peelings I power, and versatility of all the plot- ting packages that we have ever reviewed. There are a few problems, however, which shall be mentioned later. CAPABILITIES AND OPERATION This program is written in Pascal and is command driven. (You will need 64K of RAM.) There are essen- tially two modes: the Command mode and the editor. From the Com- mand mode, you may select from about 90 commands that control the appearance of your graph. The basic methodology, like most plotter pro- grams, is to generate data in a file, load it, and request that certain ac- tions be performed on this data. Ap- ple II Business Graphics will generate single, side-by-side, and _ vertically stacked bar charts. It will generate line graphs and pie charts. The X- and AX OAEMO IE DATE BY Graphics Y-axes may be alphabetic. The editor of Apple Ii Business Graphics is easier to use and more coherent than PFS G