Archive Magazine CD 1995/Archive Magazine CD 1995.iso/text/hints/volume_05/issue_06

Text File | 1995-02-16 | 33.4 KB | 669 lines

Hints and Tips
5.6
•   Alt key problems − (I think I’ll have to write this in six-foot high
letters. We’ve said it several times, but people keep missing out on
it.) If your <alt>-keypad numbers don’t give the special characters you
think they should, type *UNPLUG and you’ll probably find that someone or
something has unplugged the InternationalKeyboard module. If so, do an
RMREINIT InternationalKeyboard and all will be well. Ed.
5.6
•   Copy key use − I had not realised until recently that the copy key has
the function of “delete right” (as it does in Impression) in most RISC-
OS applications.
5.6
•   Floppy backup – (I know it’s obvious but...) On a single floppy disc
machine, if you want to backup up floppy discs in one chunk, i.e.
instead of having to take the discs in and out twice, call up the task
manager and increase the “Next” memory allocation to 800k or more. If
you don’t, it loads 640k into memory and copies that and then copies the
last 160k separately.
5.6
•   External floppy drives on A5000 − There seems to be some concern and
confusion over connecting extra floppy drives to the A5000 and over the
fact that ADFS treats the drives in a different way from previous
Archimedes computers. Let me try to explain.
5.6
The A5000 motherboard can access two internal floppy drives and two
external drives. However, many modern 3½“ drives can only be configured
as drive 0 or 1. Thus to allow a full complement of four drives, drive
selections 2 and 3 are transformed into 0 and 1 but on a separate ribbon
cable (as in a PC).
5.6
Here is the problem: If one internal drive is fitted (physical drive 0/
1) and an external drive is added (addressed as drive 3), then to access
the external drive you must ‘*configure floppies 4’, with the result
that you have two useless floppy drive icons!
5.6
The solution that Acorn has is: Logical to physical drive mapping,
whereby ADFS can be configured with two floppies but would access
physical drive 3 when requested to read from logical drive 1. In order
to achieve this, ADFS must determine which physical drives are present.
This is achieved after reset (or rmreinit) by performing a ‘restore’
operation on each physical drive and then testing for a track 0
indication from a functional drive. The following table depicts a
typical example:
5.6
     Physical Drive   Present    ADFS drive Nº
5.6
   0   −   −
5.6
   1   Y   :0
5.6
   2   −   −
5.6
   3   Y   :1
5.6
This has a benefit for production by permitting the single internal
drive to be physical drive 1, which is the default for the PC world, and
hence not requiring link changes. Note that the 82C710 controller fitted
to the A5000 has 48mA sink capability and therefore does not require a
buffer board to operate with 5¼“ drives fitted with 150R pullup
resistors.
5.6
Drive mapping was the main reason for accessing the floppy after a
reset, but once this approach was adopted, several other features were
possible.
5.6
(1) 40 track drive detection. MultiFS allows 40 track discs to be read
in 80 track drives but, if a real 40 track drive is fitted, the double
stepping mode is inhibited. This test is performed on all physical
drives detected and works by first seeking to track 44 (a 40 track drive
will block at track 40, 41 or 42) and then seeking to track 2 (42 step
pulses). A 40 track drive will indicate track 0 at completion. Thus, if
you have a 40/80 switchable drive, you should type ‘*rmreinit ADFS’
after changing mode to ensure ADFS knows about the change.
5.6
(2) During shipping, some floppy drives can have their heads shocked
beyond track 0 (negative track number). The 40 track drive detection
scheme ensures these drives will be recalibrated correctly.
5.6
(3) If you ‘*configure’ too many floppies, ADFS will only install the
number detected. Conversely if you ‘*configure’ too few drives, ADFS
will not use the excess physical drives (the physically greater drive
numbers will be ignored). Lastly, if the configured floppies is 0 then
ADFS will not attempt to select any floppies.
5.6
If you have configured the correct number of floppies, the extra time
spent ‘booting’ should normally be less than 250ms, that is 80 x 3ms
step pulses to detect a 40 track drive plus the time to initially
restore the head. Note that a configured 12ms step time is now trans
lated on an A5000 to 25ms to allow for very old/slow 40 track 5¼“ drives
sometimes found on prehistoric Beebs.
5.6
I think this should explain the different behaviour of ADFS on A5000.
(Could this also explain why the A5000 floppies seem slow compared to my
A540? Ed) However, if you are trying to connect 5¼“ drives to the A5000,
one other factor needs to be taken into account. Unless they are
modified, 5¼” drives cannot be mixed with 3½“ drives on the same ribbon
cable because of differences in pin out of the ‘disc changed’ and
‘ready’ signals. To work correctly on the internal drive connector, pin
34 must present the ‘disc changed’ signal (or be disabled) and pin 2
carries the density select from the FDC.
5.6
Therefore connect the 5¼“ drive on the external (middle) socket and make
the following link changes to the A5000:
5.6
LK18 (north and west of socket) in the West position (viewed from front
of m/c); LK19 (north and east of socket) should be removed (park the
jumper on the centre pin only); LK21 (south and west of socket) should
be removed (park the jumper on either pin).
5.6
These links only affect the external socket. To give the full informa
tion on it.
5.6
LK18 selects logic hi (west) or logic lo (east) for the high density
signal from the FDC
5.6
LK19 selects ‘density’ to drive (west) or ‘disk changed’ from drive
(east) or neither (removed) on pin 2 of drive interface
5.6
LK21 enables (jumper fitted) the disc changed signal from pin 34 of the
drive interface.
5.6
Your drive should then be configured as drive 0 or 1, remembering to
*configure floppies 2
5.6
The above information was culled from a bulletin board by Brian Debenham
of Chelmsford. One of our other subscribers got some help from Steve
Picton at IFEL who referred him to pages 1-23 and 1-26 in the A5000
Technical Reference Manual and included a useful table for link changes
as follows:
5.6
Drive type   link 18   link 19
link 21
5.6
PC-AT 1M / 2M   1-2   2-3   1-2
5.6
PS/2 1M / 2M   2-3   2-3   1-2
5.6
older 1M types   *   1-2   2-
3
5.6
most 5¼ drives   *   don’t fit   2-
3
5.6
   * = either position or don’t fit at all
5.6
It’s difficult to get at these links, so a pair of long nosed pliers is
extremely useful.  Bob Potter, Bath.
5.6
•   Lemmings − Did you know that a ‘blocker’ can be released by hitting it
in the right place with a ‘digger’ and also by burrowing very closely
underneath with a ‘basher’?
5.6
•   MS-DOS users − Even in CGA emulation, the latest emulator screen
updates can be very slow. However, some of the new utilities (like EDIT)
have a ‘switch’ to allow faster CGA updates so...
5.6
EDIT MYFILE.TXT /G
5.6
will edit the file with quicker screen updates (/G means “switch G”). In
true Archimedes style, HELP <command> now gives the syntax and meaning
of commands (about time, too!).  Paul Bamberger, Hinckley.
5.6
•   !MultiFS bug (with PCEmulator 1.70)? − Those of your readers using the
latest version (1.70) of the PCEmulator on RISC-OS 2 may be interested
in the following problem which I found recently. I have reported it to
Acorn, but have not had response yet. I understand that users of RISC-OS
3 need not use !MultiFS with the PCEmulator because of their different
disc handler, so they need not read further into this hint.
5.6
Following the correspondence in Archive about how to shut down a hard
disc reliably (See Archive 5.1 p26 ‘The Engineer Speaks’.) I now type
*SHUTDOWN just before turning off the power on my A540. After loading
!MultiFS on the icon bar, and then quitting it again, I found that when
I typed *SHUTDOWN, sometimes it just hung, sometimes I got an error
message, something like “Address exception at &01889 CE0”, and then I
could do nothing until after resetting the Archimedes, (<ctrl-break>
would not work). After the reset, *SHUTDOWN normally worked as usual,
occasionally, I had to turn off the power to reset it.
5.6
After a little research I found that when !MultiFS quits, it removes the
MultiFS module, but leaves MultiFS in the list of filing systems held by
‘FileSwitch’. Thus when *SHUTDOWN is trying to shut down all filing
systems, it cannot cope with MultiFS as the module is no longer loaded.
5.6
You can check which filing systems are known to ‘FileSwitch’ with the
following BASIC program:
5.6
 10 REM >FScheck  test which filing
5.6
 systems exist
5.6
 20 PRINT“Number Name”
5.6
 30 @%=6:DIM fsname% 20
5.6
 40 FOR F%=3TO255
5.6
 50 SYS “OS_FSControl”,33,F%,fsname% ,21
5.6
 60 L%=−1:REPEAT:L%+=1
5.6
 70 UNTIL fsname%?L%=0
5.6
 80 IFL%>0 fsname%?L%=13:PRINTF%“ ” $fsname%
5.6
 90 NEXT
5.6
To make ‘FileSwitch’ forget about MultiFS use the program below:
5.6
  10 REM >DelMultiFS  delete multifs filing system
5.6
  90 REM  see whether MultiFS is still loaded, if not, exit
5.6
 100 SYS “OS_FSControl”,13,“MultiFS” ,0 TO ,F%,T%
5.6
 110 IF T%=0 END
5.6
 120 REM  next line removes MultiFS
5.6
 130 SYS “OS_FSControl”,16,“MultiFS”
5.6
 140 END
5.6
While reporting this problem to Acorn, they gave me a very helpful
statement of the essential differences between the various ways of
closing down a hard disc system, which I feel sure they will not mind my
passing on.
5.6
*SHUTDOWN closes all open files on all filing systems, logs off all file
servers, causes hard discs to be parked.
5.6
*DISMOUNT closes all files, unsets directories and parks the given disk
(The currently selected drive on the current filing system is assumed if
this command is given without specifying the disc.)
5.6
*BYE closes all the files, unsets directories and parks the hard discs
on the currently selected filing system.
5.6
So you see the engineer was quite right, they are different. It depends
what your current disc is, and only the *SHUTDOWN parks the disks on ALL
the filing systems.   Kate Crennell, Didcot.
5.6
•   Mysterious error message from Hard Disc Companion II − In Archive Vol
5.4 page 3 you described the new version of the program from Risc
Developments. I upgraded from my old version recently and found that the
new version does not allow comments in the ‘Ignore’ part of the file
used to specify which directories and files are not to be backed up. I
found this a very useful feature of the previous version, and I should
like any other users who regret its passing to join me in asking Risk
Developments to put this feature back as soon as possible.
5.6
This is mildly annoying, but I found a more serious problem. The first
time I used the ‘Hard Disc Companion II’ it worked beautifully, but the
second time, it would not load onto the icon bar, instead I got the
usual ‘traffic sign’ warning window and a message “File not found at
line 49”. Neither the !Boot nor the !Run files had 49 lines in them. The
program is not written in Basic, so it has no line numbers. I eventually
found that since making my first full backup and trying to do the next
incremental backup, I had deleted one of the files which I had previ
ously said I wanted to ‘ignore’ in the ‘Choices’ file. Luckily, it is
possible to edit the ‘Choices’ file with !Edit, so I just took out that
line. I have reported this error to RISC Developments and they said they
hope to make the error message more informative and tell you the name of
the file which is missing.  Kate Crennell, Didcot.
5.6
•   Paper for inkjets − I have a Hewlett Packard Deskjet 500 inkjet
printer. I have had great trouble finding good paper − the main problem
seems to be how absorbent the paper is; too absorbent and you will get
white patches in your black areas, but not absorbent and it will smudge
across the paper! If you go into most paper suppliers or printers, they
will be happy to give you various samples that you can try. Make sure
when you test the paper that you include very small text, thin and thick
straight lines at various angles, fine and thick curves, shading, large
black areas and bit mapped graphics. I have ended up using “Mustang
Copier − Long grain 80gsm” for my draft printing (as it is cheap − about
0·5 pence per sheet) and Croxley Script 100gsm for quality work (this
works out at about 3 pence per sheet but is water marked and has a nice
feel to it). There is probably better paper available − I have only
tried about twenty types.  Paul Bamberger, Hinckley.
5.6
•   Pandora’s Box problems? − There seems to be an incompatibility between
Pandora’s Box and Acorn’s AKA16 MIDI card (v3.14). Therefore, to load
the game, simply type: *RMKill Midi <return> before attempting to run
it.  Rob Brown, Surrey.
5.6
•   Psion Organiser and the Archimedes − The PD program !Download, written
by Emmet Spier, works very well with the Psion Organiser. To upload from
an Archimedes to an Organiser, I created an application called !Upload,
consisting of a suitable sprite and a !Run file as follows:
5.6
IconSprites <Obey$Dir>.!Sprites
5.6
Filer_OpenDir serial:
5.6
C. Parker, Hong Kong.
5.6
•   Second internal 3½“ drive on the A5000 − I have fitted a second 3½”
drive internally on my A5000 with no problems at all.
5.6
The 3½“ drive fitted to the A5000 is a Citizen model OSDA20C. These do
not seem to be generally available in the UK. The Citizen OSDA39C is
easy to get and the ONLY difference (according to my experience and
Citizen UK) is that the drive light is a different colour. They are
generally available for about £75 + VAT but I got mine for £35 + £10
overnight delivery + VAT = £52.88 from:
5.6
CD2000, PO Box 1061, London Road, Slough, Berks SL3 8RE (0753−553366)
(fax 0753− 554661) who were super efficient and helpful.
5.6
There is a power plug already inside the A5000, so all you need is a 9“
drive cable. I have altered NO links or switches on the A5000. All I did
was set the tiny slider switch on the drive (next to the socket for the
data cable) to the opposite position on the drive already in the
machine. (Actually, this wouldn’t make any difference, as explained in
the section above about external floppies on the A5000. Ed)
5.6
You need 4 off 18mm spacers and 4 off screws (6BA I think) to fit the
drive to the bottom of the A5000 case. I used various spacers and nuts
to make up the 18mm and the drive has worked faultlessly. With RISC-OS 3
being so slow at any disc backing up or copying, the second drive is
essential.  Colin Thompson
5.6
•   Shrinking windows − A rare bug has just ‘bitten’ me while using
Impression. It’s not a bug in Impression, in fact, but a bug in RISC-OS
2. I was trying to change the size of the window on a large Impression
file by using the sizing icon in the bottom right-hand corner of the
window. The window jumped to about an inch high and would not go any
longer unless I clicked to open the window to full screen size − that
worked fine but as soon as I touched the sizing icon, the window
contracted! I tried various other Impression files but they were OK. I
restarted Impression, I cut and pasted the text, I saved the text and
created a new document but the window kept jumping back to this reduced
size! A phone call to CC revealed the reason. In RISC-OS 2, if the
window size is exactly 65,535 OS units in size, it gets confused and
loses the top bit of the window size number and thinks it’s a somewhat
shorter window. All I had to do was to create a new page in the document
and all was well. Alternatively, I could have changed the magnification
− even 1% change solves the problem. Presumably, the chances of it
happening are small (1 in 65,535?) and it has to be a large document −
mine was 28 pages displayed at 140% magnification.  A
5.6



•   Virus Kit v1.17 − Some people have had a few problems running version
1.17 of the virus killer, which is supplied on Shareware 17 and on the
Archive 5.5 program disc. Here are a few hints that might help you to
solve them:
5.6
(i) You should let your Archimedes see either a !System folder or !Scrap
file before running the !Killer application.
5.6
(ii) Some sticky backdrops clash with the !Killer application and so
should not be used at the same time.
5.6
(iii) If you have caught the module virus, it is possible for the
VProtect module in the !Killer application to become infected and so
prevent the program from being run.
5.6
• Acorn Virus Kit (latest) − Acorn have decided to make the latest
version of The Virus Kit (currently 1.26) available through Pineapple
Software rather than Acorn Dealers. This will allow them to keep tighter
control over the version being distributed and any updates. Contact
Pineapple Software for availability though distribution isn’t due to
start until May.
5.6
•   Wimp programming oddities? In the process of developing a wimp utility
in 100% machine code, I’ve come across a few things that other program
mers might like to look out for...
5.6
Menus − You can click the mouse in a menu one pixel above the first menu
item (and also one pixel below the last item). The result is that
Wimp_Poll returns a menu tree of zero length to your program i.e. the
first word is returned as −1. Once I had found this (it crashed my
program completely on random mouse clicks!) I tried it out on all the
programs I could find. The easiest test is to click the menu button and
then the adjust button without moving the mouse. Most commercial
programs weather it OK, just redrawing the menu. Some that don’t are
Menon 1.86 (which gives a “bad string” error), Ian Copestake’s IDEFS
(which comes up with “File ‘:4’ not found”), and the Cross-32 assembler
(which corrupts its menu title to “Crosr 32”).
5.6
Zooms − I’ve seen <adjust> reverse-scrolling mentioned several times,
but this applies (or should apply, anyway!) to just about anything with
arrow icons on it; notably the zoom-windows in Paint/Draw and all the
nudge arrows in Impression.
5.6
Variable Filetype Variables − Regarding David Lenthall’s article in
Archive 5.5 p 63, I’m using a user file type and have found that the way
round file type clashes is, in fact, already built into RISC-OS! You
don’t need to create extra system variables to shift file type numbers
about:
5.6
SYS “OS_FSControl”,31, “FileTypeName” TO ,,FileTypeNumber%
5.6
works equally well (now we just have to persuade everyone to do this
rather than using absolute file types in their programs). Fred Williams,
Cannock Wood  A
5.6



Impression Hints & Tips
5.6
This month’s hints and tips have been submitted by the following people:
Computer Concepts (CC), Richard Hallas (RH), Paul Beverley (PB), Patrick
Dowling (PD), Rob Sherratt (RS) and Steve Kirkby (SK). Many thanks to
all.
5.6
•   Hyphenation − If you want to be able to switch hyphenation on and off
easily, create a new style with <ctrl-F5>, give it a name such as
“hyphenated”, go down to the section where it deals with hyphenation,
switch hyphenation ON, go to the bottom and select an unused key short-
cut, say <ctrl-shift-F1> and save the new style. Now, to switch
hyphenation on for a given paragraph, select the paragraph (using <ctrl-
@> or quad-click with <select>) and press <ctrl-shift-F1>. Alterna
tively, if you want hyphenation on for most of the document, edit the
definition of the basestyle to have hyphenation ON and create a new
style, in the same way, whose only attribute is that hyphenation is OFF.
(As an aside, I have always found it difficult to find the line dealing
with hyphenation in the edit style window but I now know why. If you
click in the scroll bar three times, half of the word “hyphenation” is
visible at the bottom of the window. Click again and half is visible at
the top of the window − very easy to miss. So, either slide the scroll
bar or simply remember that it is only just visible at the edge of the
window.) − PB.
5.6
•   Ligatures − The word ‘ligature’ actually means ‘tie’ or ‘bandage’ and,
in typesetting, it refers to groups of two or more letters which are
joined together. In professional typesetting, several exist but the
Archimedes’ font system has just two: fi and fl.
5.6
Impression provides no handy short cut to access them, so if you wish to
use them, you need to do two separate searches through the entire text
as follows: bring up the find text box and enter fi into the first slot,
ensuring the Case sensitive switch is on. Then move the caret into the
second box, hold down <alt> and type 158 on the numeric keypad. A single
character will be entered which, when viewed in an outline font which
supports it, will appear as fi. For fl, repeat the process, but replace
all occurrences of fl (obviously) with character 159. Remember to do a
case sensitive search, since replacing Fi and Fl with the ligatures will
make them lose their capital letters.
5.6
Not all fonts (especially the PD ones) contain the ligatures, and some
PD fonts have them in the wrong places. You should replace the normal
letters with the ligatures after you have finished your document because
Impression’s spell-checker does not take them into account and will
query any words containing them. This month’s disc should contain a
system font file which I have created; it is identical to the standard
one, except that the previously undefined characters have been created
to look like the outline font characters they produce, so you can see
things like smart quotes and ligatures in Edit. It’s useful to load this
in the boot-up sequence. − RH.
5.6
•   Rotated text in Impression − Those lucky enough to own an A5000 will,
of course, have the new versions of Draw and Font Manager. Charles Moir,
director of Computer Concepts, suggests the following tip: since the new
Font Manager can rotate text by itself, create some text in Draw, and
import it into an Impression graphic frame. Dragging in the frame with
<adjust> should now rotate the text or you can set the angle precisely
in the ‘Alter graphics’ dialogue box. − RH
5.6
•   Hyphens and minus signs − Character 153 is very useful as a hyphen −
as you can see! In fact, it is really the minus sign (compare it with
the plus and you will find they are both the same width and their
crossbars are at the same horizontal position − see for yourself −+−+−);
the minus sign on the keyboard actually produces a short hyphen of the
sort which should be used to break words at the ends of lines. Anyway,
Impression provides handy access to this character: simply press <ctrl-
shift> in conjunction with the minus key. Characters 151 and 152 are the
en (–) and em (—) dashes respectively but, unfortunately, these have no
handy short cuts. − RS & RH.
5.6
•   Finding effects − If you want to be able to look through a document
and find where a particular effect occurs (as opposed to a style) all
you need to do is modify one line in the ‘UK’ file in the Resources
directory inside the !Impression application. As supplied, there is a
line that says “Cnf1:” − all you have to do is add an E making it
“Cnf1:E”. Next time you start up Impression, you will find that, when
you click on the arrow at the right of the search string box, it will
list not only the styles but also the effects. (In case you have
forgotten, I published a hint a year ago to explain that, to find a
particular effect or style, you should select it from the menu on the
search string box and follow it by an “@”. In other words, look for any
string following the place where that effect / style is first switched
on.) − PB.
5.6
•   Double scale − on later versions of Impression (about 2.14g onwards)
you will find that <shift-F12> no longer doubles the scale of the
current view. This is because <shift-F12> is used on RISC-OS 3 to toggle
the icon bar forwards and backwards. Double scale has now been moved to
<ctrl-shift-F11>. − PB.
5.6
•   Reverse characters − From 2.15 onwards, there is a keyboard short-cut
that I have been asking for since I started using Impression in earnest
− swap characters. If you press <ctrl-shift-Q>, the two characters
either side of the cursor swap places. This is very helpful because it
allows you to correct, very quickly, one of the most common tpying
errors! − PB
5.6
•   Single word spelling check − If you want to check the spelling of a
single word, you don’t need to select the whole word − just place the
cursor somewhere in the word and use <ctrl-W>. (I suppose everyone
except me knew that anyway!) I find that this speeds things up
especially if, as you are typing, you get to a word that you don’t know
how to spell; all you do is to have a go at typing the word and then,
before you press space or full-stop, press <ctrl-W>. If it is incor
rectly spelt, it is selected and the spelling box appears with,
hopefully, a guess at the right spelling. Click on “Replace” and away
you go.
5.6
Also, if, while you are typing, you get a spelling error bleep then, as
long as you haven’t started to type the next word, you can press <ctrl-
W> and correct the erroneous word. − PB.
5.6
•   Avoiding smart quotes − In the magazine, I like to use “smart quotes”
rather than plain quotes but they look a little funny on program
listings. If I want to paste in an article which contains programs as
well as straight text, I have a problem. Either I can switch smart
quotes OFF on the Preferences list and then edit them into the text or I
can leave it ON but edit them out of the listing. Then I had a brain-
wave (-storm?). I realised that the only time I use the Corpus font is
for program listings, so I never need to have smart quotes in that font.
All I did, therefore, (well, Adrian did for me) was to load Corpus into
FontEd (Careware 7) and edit the smart quotes so that they are the same
as the normal quotes. This can be done by editing each smart quote in
turn and copying the plain quote into its place. − PB.
5.6
• Rotating sprites − Draw-files can be rotated within Impression but, in
the normal course of things, not sprites, scanned pictures or bit-image
clip-art etc, unless Enhanced Graphics is switched on. This is hidden
away in Preferences, the one in the icon-bar menu, not the one in the
Document sub-menu. It is effective immediately and does not need to be
saved as a preference option. (When switched on it also automatically
switches on Greyscale Dithering but that can be switched off again if
not wanted.) Scanned images etc can then be rotated inside Impression by
entering an angle in the Alter Frame box. Remember also, when subse
quently reloading the file, to switch on the Enhanced Graphics again,
(if it’s not saved as a preference) as this won’t happen automatically.
− PD. You can also rotate the image by dragging within the graphic frame
using <adjust>. − RS.
5.6
• Spurious form-feeds − Using dot matrix printers (e.g. FX80) you may
get an extra form-feed between pages when printing a multi-page
document. The solution, (thanks to Alan Williams of Acorn, Melbourne,
for this one) is to set Scale in the ‘Print’ box to 97 or 98%. No
further problem! − PD.
5.6
• The underline trap − If you set up underline when creating a Style,
maybe for a sub-heading, do not try later to remove the underline with
<shift-ctrl-U>. Probably nothing at all happens but, sometimes, the
screen goes inverse and panic reigns until Reset is pressed! − PD. I
tried without success to repeat this problem with release 2.16, but
<shift-ctrl-U> caused no ill effect. It did not cancel the underlined
style either, which I guess is correct. − RS.
5.6
• ¼ ½ ¾ characters − These are available on <alt-188>, <alt-189> and
<alt-190> respectively in the main fonts − Trinity, Pembroke, Homerton
etc and several others but by no means all. Many fonts conform in
general, but with omissions, to the character set laid out in Appendix 5
of the manual. Most contain a bullet (•) on <alt-143>, (or <shift-ctrl-
H>) and a decimal point (·) on <alt-183>. The ones that don’t, Optima
and Hull for instance, have their bullet on <alt-183> and a different
set of characters in the row 128 to 159 including, for instance, TM. In
general, there seem to be two main variations for this row while System
is completely on its own. The characters in 160 to 255 appear more or
less standard across the board where they are present, though most fonts
omit some and some (PD and magazine fonts particularly) omit most if not
all the top-bit-set characters, save for the £ symbol. With <alt-215>
and <alt­247> it’s a toss-up whether you get × and ÷, or Œ and œ, or
nothing at all. (!Chars in Impression’s Utils directory is a useful
reference but much better is Beebug’s !CharSel which looks identical but
has a pointer showing the character number.) − PD.
5.6
• Fit lots − If you want to know or have forgotten what it means, it
does not appear in the index. You will find it on p.144 on the last, and
easily missed, page of ‘Print’. − PD.
5.6
• Frames − How to put a frame around an existing chunk of text? You
can’t! The only way is to move the chunk to the clipboard, create the
frame and then copy it back in. − PD. You can also create a number of
new frames which fill the area occupied by the old frame, click in the
old frame area and then press <adjust> in the new frames. Text will then
flow from the old frame into the new one and, if you stretch the new
frames so that there is no printable area left in the original frame,
the desired effect can be achieved. − RS.
5.6
• Master pages − It seemed perfectly logical to me to press ‘New
Chapter’ on the key-strip when I wanted to start a fresh document with
other than the default master page. I got the new master page all right
− as well as the default page I didn’t want and found no way to get rid
of it. (You need to move to the unwanted chapter, then use <menu>
<Edit><Delete Chapter>. − RS) You can alter the current chapter to use a
different master page by using ‘Alter Chapter’ which is not on the key-
strip. The key short cut is <shift-ctrl-A>. Be aware that if you are
viewing the master pages when trying to do this, you will find ‘Alter
Chapter’ greyed-out on the Edit sub-menu. The answer is to go back to
the document page, remembering which number master page is wanted and
try again there. Also note that if you want to use one of the three-
column master pages, (numbers 7 or 8) remember the default frames are
only Guides and you must create new frames before anything can be typed
in. − PD.
5.6
• Guide frames − It is really most provoking, having carefully followed
the manual to find the screen blandly refusing to operate as stated. Can
anyone suggest why my guide frames do not remain visible? I create them,
(sub-menu New Frame) on the document page or on the master page, click
elsewhere and they just vanish. They are not a lot of use if I can’t see
them, so which little hidden detail in the manual have I failed to
register, please? − PD. Guide frames are always positioned as the
rearmost (back) frame on the page. If you make sure all text /graphic
frames on the page are local frames (<menu><frame> <alter frame><make
local>) and then reduce these in size, you will see the yellow guide
frames that you had created. Guide frames are mainly of use when setting
up a master page, though. − RS. Am I missing something here? Can’t you
just make it visible by using <ctrl-F10> to alter the frame and changing
from a white background to transparent? − PB.
5.6
(By the way, I hadn’t come across the idea of turning a master frame
into a local frame. If you hadn’t either, read up in the Impression
manual on page 84 then have a play with it − it could prove a useful
facility. − PB)
5.6
• Font cache full error − Even with the cache set to a ridiculous size,
750k or more, this error recurred and anyway, isn’t the cache itself
supposed to clear enough space for a new font if necessary? I found that
some silly PD game had unplugged SpriteUtils module and restoring it
seemed to resolve the difficulty. It’s not only PD games that do this −
the demo version of Cataclysm sent out by Archimedes World unplugs
virtually everything including the Font Manager. Even a power off /on
will not restore unplugged modules. If you aren’t sure whether anything
has been unplugged, type *UNPLUG and it will list any unplugged modules.
− RS.
5.6
• Rule off errors − The Impression manual is a bit short on advice when
the package refuses to do what it should and it is totally silent on the
subject of errors. What do you do for instance when the machine throws
at you: “Overflow while transforming point, print aborted” ? I had been
trying to print a landscape document containing a few vertical rules.
Later, I noticed one of the rules slightly projecting beyond the edge of
the frame. I went to the Style Edit box and switched ‘Rule-off’ on, and
set it to 0pt. I must have done something right − the next time I tried,
it produced a perfect print-out! − PD
5.6
• Shift and control symbols − Patrick sent a detailed account of using
!FontDraw to generate a graphical representation of the <shift> and
<control> keys − as they appear in Impression menus − and then continued
to incorporate these into embedded frames at 30 or so points in his
text. He also asked if there was an easier way? − PD. Yes there is. Use
the Acorn Font Editor and David Pilling’s D2Font Drawfile to font
converter which is on the same disk as his Trace program (now available
through Archive for £6). You will end up with a new outline font which
can be used within Impression just like any other font and which can be
used within a style and assigned to a function key to turn it on and
off. If anyone has the time to do this, please would they send Archive a
copy of the resulting font for the magazine disk? − RS.
5.6
• Find within a group of frames − If the currently selected frame is a
group of frames then the <find text> menu option is unavailable. To make
it available, select a frame that does not contain a group and which
contains at least one letter, (or create such a frame and text character
if necessary). Then, to find or replace throughout the document
(including all grouped frames), turn on the <whole document> button in
the <find> dialogue box, and use find or replace as normal. − SK.