Archive Magazine CD 1995/Archive Magazine CD 1995.iso/text/hints/volume_05/issue_07

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Hints and Tips
5.7
•   A5000 floppy drive problems − There have been a number of comments in
Archive about the slowness of the A5000’s floppy drive. Could this be
due to a bug which RISC-OS 3 has with the ADFS buffers. There was a note
with my machine when it was delivered saying that the ADFS Buffers
should be configured to zero due to a bug which causes occasional data
errors. Configuring thus makes the floppy drive incredibly slow during
copy operations with a track access taking more than 2 seconds. I
preferred to have the speed and I spoke to Peter Dunn of Acorn at an
Open Day in Glasgow recently who told me that the adfs buffers problem
had only appeared with the Acorn DTP and that it shouldn’t be a problem
with other programs like Impression. Indeed they had their A5000s
configured with ADFS Buffers set to 16k so I copied them.
5.7
Then just the other day, Impression 2.16 dropped through my letter box.
A couple of days later, I had two relatively complex newsletters to
typeset. The first crashed during a save operation, losing most of the
text. I thought ‘That will teach me to make back-up copies in future.’ I
remade the document successfully. The next job was done with two copies
on the hard disk, a main and a back-up. The main would auto-save and I
would make a back-up by adding a ‘b’ to the filename. Well into this
job, it crashed. Both copies were corrupted, so I gave up and returned
to version 2.14f. No further problems. A word with Computer Concepts and
they suggested that I return the ADFSbuffers to zero.
5.7
I’d be interested to hear if other A5000 and Impression users have had
similar or other experiences with their setup.  David Woods, Glasgow
5.7
•   ArcDFS and !65Host − If you try to use ArcDFS with the 6502 emulator,
you may get a “Bad DFS emulation” error. John Fletcher of Dabs Press
says: “This is because the manual does not fully explain how to use
ArcDFS with the emulator. The way to access a DFS disc, is not to type
*DISC, but to type: *Dir dfs::<drive number>. You should also change
drive using the above command instead of *Drive.”  P Northing, Sheffield
5.7
•   Bringing windows to the front − To move a window to the front, you
must click on its title bar. This often involves moving other windows to
get to it. However, I have just discovered that clicking on the window’s
adjust size icon (bottom right) also brings the window to the front.
This ‘obvious’ hint may help prevent too much window shuffling!  R
House, Andover
5.7
•   Canon Bubblejets BJ300 & BJ330 − There are some undocumented features
on these machines that make cleaning and changing ink cartridges a bit
easier. The normal cleaning cycle is started by pressing the shift then
the cleaning keys. An extended cycle is started by pressing shift then
pressing and holding cleaning and then pressing shift again.
5.7
There is a function called reference aging which sprays ink all over the
printed area of the paper. Be warned though that this uses a lot of ink
and the ink is very difficult to remove from hands, etc so have a poly-
bag handy to pop the sheet in!! The sequence can be stopped by turning
the printer mains off. Press shift then press and hold cleaning and then
press card and paper together and release cleaning.
5.7
I’ve been using “Report” photocopier paper in my BJ300 and the print
quality is superb.  Ned Abell, Kidderminster
5.7
• Changing the file allocation of a hard Disk − My A410/1 is equipped
with an internal 40M ST506 hard disk (NEC). Recently I added an external
SCSI hard disk (cached Morley “Cheetah”, 100M, fitted with a Rodime
R3000 disk). When I compared those two drives, I made some very
unexpected discoveries.
5.7
I copied the entire content of the internal disk (39M) to the new drive,
because I wanted to soak test the old disk. To my amazement the SCSI
“free” window showed that I had already used up no less than 62M of
space! I phoned the (very friendly and competent) Morley help line, and
they told me that larger drives usually were formatted differently from
small ones (with larger blocks), because this improved their speed
performance.
5.7
They advised me that if the extra space was more important to me than
speed, I should use the formatter on the Morley support disk to alter
the size of allocated blocks. I fiddled around with this application and
found that it is indeed possible to change the space needed for a file
quite considerably; in the configuration that I finally chose, the 39M
from my old disk actually occupied slightly less space − below 38M!
5.7
What is more, the speed tester showed a slightly worse performance, but
any improvised speed tests I did myself (like copying 3M of files from
RAM disk to hard disk and back) showed these differences to be quite
negligible.
5.7
So: If you buy a new (second) hard disk, it might be a good idea to
check how it administrates data, before you do any serious work with
it!  Jochen Konietzko, Köln, Germany
5.7
•   DFS reader and A5000 − When the DFS reader (Shareware 31) is run on
the A5000, it fails with “Unknown or missing variable at or about line
260”. This can be cured by adding the following line:
5.7
215 large% = TRUE : full% = TRUE
5.7
M Pullin, Cheltenham.
5.7
•   Econet interface faults − We had a big mains spike that ‘took out’
twelve BBC B Econet interfaces. At first, the Masters and Archimedes
machines seemed OK but further investigation proved otherwise. The
findings may prove useful to others.
5.7
There are two types of Acorn Econet cards, (plus the XOB one) an old one
and a newer one. All the machines with the old type of cards seemed fine
after the spike but none of the newer ones worked! Our first thought was
that they were zapped by the spike. However, on closer examination, when
we disconnected the old type machines from the network, the ones with
the newer type card started to work. Looks like some of the old type
cards are faulty but still working. The old style cards definitely seem
more fault tolerant than the new ones! A faulty old style card can still
work but it will stop other machines with the new style cards from
working!  Dave Leckie, Fort William.
5.7
•   HP Deskjet 500 & RISC-OS 3 − Here is a tip about the RISC-OS3 printer
drivers and the HP Deskjet 500. The graphics margins given in the HP
configuration for the A4 (Generic Deskjet) are a bit conservative.
5.7
   Top − 12.5mm
5.7
   Bottom − 19.9mm
5.7
   Left − 5.0mm
5.7
   Right − 7.0mm
5.7
From the manual and from my own experiences of using the printer and
seeing where it can print to, I have come up with new values which are:-
5.7
   Top − 1.5mm
5.7
   Bottom − 10.5mm
5.7
   Left − 3.2mm
5.7
   Right − 3.2mm
5.7
I have used these values very successfully ever since I got the machine.
The RISC-OS 2 printer driver for the Laserjet/Deskjet has problems when
it has different values for top and bottom margins because it prints out
in landscape mode in the opposite direction to the way the margins have
been set. i.e. it prints out last, the part of the sheet which is shown
by the print borders to be the top! RISC-OS 3 has sorted this out
allowing the maximum printing area to be available. It can be very
important when using Impression’s ‘fit lots’ facility to reduce pages to
have as much room as possible as margins are reduced as well.  David
Woods, Glasgow
5.7
•   Paper for inkjets − I too have had much trouble obtaining good paper
for my HP Deskjet 500. The manual recommends photocopy paper and that
you should use the paper’s correct side (as marked by the arrow on the
end of the packet). I have found photocopy paper to be poor no matter
what side I try. The results usually come out ‘furry’ where the
absorbency of the paper has caused the ink to creep by capillary action.
Prior to the type of ink sold by Hewlett Packard being changed to a more
permanent one, some photocopy paper gave white patches within areas of
black which I think was due to a degree of waxiness repelling the ink
from spots but this phenomenon happens no more.
5.7
(Acorn Inkjet owners can also benefit by using the HP DJ 500 cartridges
as they are the same fitting. Ed.)
5.7
The new ink seems to give good results with some types of paper but
rather ‘furry’ with others. Interestingly, I found that Croxley Script
80gsm, similar to that mentioned by Paul Bamberger in Archive to be very
poor. I have settled on two paper types for ‘cheap and good’ and
‘expensive and excellent’ printouts. The cheaper paper is ‘Plus Fabric
70gsm’ from Empire Fine Papers at about £7.50 for 500 sheets. This gives
consistently sharp, even results although it does wrinkle if there are
large printed dark areas.
5.7
For printouts intended for further copying by a photocopier or at a
printing company (or for making letterheads for small businesses) I have
found that a type of paper generally described as ‘laid’ paper,
available in various brands, is excellent, costing about £15 a box. It
is smooth on one side and has a fine, ribbed pattern on the other. Both
sides accept ink very well and you often see the paper used for
prestigious company printed letterheads. I have used both ‘GB Classic,
White Laid, 100gsm’ and ‘Conqueror, High White Laid, 100 gsm’.  David
Woods, Glasgow
5.7
• Printing on labels or A3 paper − Most RISC-OS printer drivers have
difficulty with anything other than A4 paper. Although they have a page
length setting, they do not tell the printer the page length to expect,
so the printer still assumes that it has 11“ or A4 size paper (usually
determined by a DIP switch). This is fine when printing on individual
sheets or when using a sheet feeder to feed labels or envelopes but it
causes serious problems with tractor feed labels or with A3 paper.
Imagine printing on 1” tractor feed labels from Impression. The
Impression master page must be defined to be 1“ length and, similarly,
the printer driver’s page length must be set to 1”. The first label is
printed and the printer driver sends a form feed character telling the
printer to advance to the next form (page). Unfortunately, the printer
driver assumes that it is using 11“ paper and feeds over the next 10
labels, simply because the printer driver did not define the printer’s
page length. Similarly, printing on A3 paper (using a Canon BJ330 for
example) fails because the printer thinks it is using A4 paper. The
solution is for the printer driver to pass on the page length setting to
the printer and this is a very simple change for Acorn to make.
Meanwhile, it is necessary to modify the page start and end strings
manually. With RISC-OS 2 drivers this can be difficult, but with RISC-OS
3 the printer driver editor allows it.
5.7
With an Epson compatible printer, the page length can be defined by
putting ESC,“C”,n in the page start string, where n is the page length
in lines (1/6“ per line). With an IBM compatible printer, an extra
ESC,“2” is needed on the end. Furthermore, it is sometimes necessary to
change the page end string which is often set to perform a printer reset
(ESC,“@” on Epson printers) after every page − this should be removed
completely. Note that these changes must be applied for each resolution
setting that is to be used and that a new printer driver file should be
saved with its name and type set appropriately to indicate that it is a
different version for a special page size.   Paul Skirrow, Ipswich
5.7
(Acorn are aware of the problem and have found at least a partial
solution − see the comments below, page 9. Ed.)
5.7
•   Mandelbrot bakeware − I have written a short PROC to improve Basil’s
Mandelbrot program (Archive 5.6 p57):
5.7
DEFPROCdebug
5.7
WHILE flour=flour+weevils
5.7
  REPEAT
5.7
    GETweevil
5.7
    BPUT# weevil ON blockA%
5.7
    BEAT blockB%
5.7
  UNTIL dead%=TRUE
5.7
  weevils-=1
5.7
ENDWHILE
5.7
ENDPROC
5.7
The variable declaration: Mouth_Open=FALSE is the best I’ve seen so far!
I have another for anyone who typed the program in:
5.7
Egg_on_face=TRUE.
5.7
Joseph Seelig, Harrow.
5.7
•   Ten tips for larger memories − The article on better use of available
memory (Archive 4.6 p52) set me thinking and here’s a tip for those of
us who don’t have a hard disc. I have 4M in a 310, two 3½“ internal
floppies and an external 5¼” drive.
5.7
If you look at what you use your computer for, it breaks down into a few
task areas as well as playing games. I create a Task disk for each
activity and that sits in the 5¼“ drive and I have one each for DTP,
business and drawing. Each disc has !System, different !Fonts and the
appropriate applications that I can cram on using !Compression.
5.7
Each task disc has two Obey type files called !boot and startlist to get
everything up and running and here I put in a plug for the excellent
!DeskEdit utility from Beebug which allows even me to get this working
quickly.
5.7
Let’s look at the business Task disc which is called “LrgeBus1”.
5.7
The !boot obey file consists of one line...
5.7
Desktop-File adfs::LrgeBus1.$ .startlist
5.7
and clicking on this runs the second file called startlist. As you
probably know, if this Task disc were in drive 0 it could be set to auto
start each time the computer was turned on, by setting the disc to *OPT
4,3 and the computer to *Configure Boot.
5.7
The second obey file called startlist sets up the essential tasks that
you will need but some of these are squeezed on the disc under the
!Compression filing system. If you specify “cfs#adfs” as a filing system
to get them to load, the computer throws a wobbly so I set up two
aliases as the first lines of startlist.
5.7
Set Neds$Dir adfs::LrgeBus1.$
5.7
and
5.7
Set NedsCFS$Dir cfs#adfs:: LrgeBus1.$
5.7
you can then get the computer to find the bits you want by using:
5.7
<Neds$Dir>.!System
5.7
and to load various fixes found in the system modules directory into
memory like..
5.7
RMLoad<Neds$Dir>.!System.
5.7
modules.WimpUtils
5.7
and then to get !Compression up and running
5.7
<Ned$Dir>.!CFS
5.7
Now a word about !Fonts. I use Swiss as my main business font. You need
to edit the run file of !Fonts and put in a “desktop” command at the end
after “FontCat”or it will stop and ask you to press space. I also tailor
the run file after the line “Echo Font Manager 2.42 installed.” with the
lines
5.7
Echo Neds Business Fonts now available:
5.7
Echo
5.7
because I like to personalise things!!
5.7
Back in startlist, we can now run...
5.7
<NedsCFS$Dir>.!Fonts
5.7
which are compressed and then in a compressed directory called resources
5.7
<NedsCFS$Dir>.resources.
5.7
!PrinterDM
5.7
<NedsCFS$Dir>.resources.!Alarm
5.7
and anything else you need and the last line is
5.7
desktop
5.7
The whole process is very easy to achieve and each task disc can be
tailored. The drawback is that its a bit on the slow side and all my
fonts have to be uncompressed before I use them but I do set a large
Fontsize.  Ned Abell, Kidderminster
5.7
• Transferring PC files with the Emulator − It is true that the multi-
tasking PC Emulator does prevent access to the PC hard disc partition
while it is running and it is therefore necessary to quit the emulator
before a file created by a PC program can be read in RISC-OS. This is
because RISC-OS does not know whether the PC hard disc partition is in a
valid state or not (i.e. a PC program may be writing to an open file).
However, it is possible to transfer files between RISC-OS and the PC
emulator by using floppy discs. After the PC has written a file to the
floppy it may be necessary to dismount the floppy disc (using the menu
item) and re-open it by clicking on the floppy icon to make RISC-OS read
the directory again (otherwise it may not realise that it has been
changed). This works with RISC-OS 3, but should also work with any of
the various PC disc readers.  Paul Skirrow, Ipswich
5.7
•   Watford mouse − If you need to replace the plug on a Watford mouse
(old version) my experience may be useful. The original plug is moulded
onto the cable, and it took careful dismantling with a sharp knife to
discover where each wire went.
5.7
I purchased the replacement plug from Maplin Electronics (code JX19V
0.82p, page 177). This plug has three disadvantages; firstly it has no
cable strain relief, so you must be sure of your wiring, secondly, it is
extremely difficult to disassemble and thirdly you need to shave a small
amount from the front to fit it into the socket of an A310. (I don’t
think it would fit too well on an A3000!) The wire colours are as
follows (functions as on p469 of the A310 User Guide):
5.7
 Pin   Function   Colour
5.7
1   X Reference      white
5.7
2   Switch 1      yellow
5.7
3   Switch 2      red
5.7
4   0V return      brown
5.7
5   X Direction      green
5.7
6   5V supply      black
5.7
7   Y Reference      blue
5.7
8   Switch 3      orange
5.7
9   Y Direction      purple
5.7
M Angove, Caerphilly
5.7
•   Wonderland on SCSI − I’ve managed to get Wonderland to work on SCSI.
What you do is:-
5.7
Obtain the SCSI “fix”, which Archive will supply if you send them a
charity donation (minimum £2). However, it’s also on this month’s
program disc.
5.7
Run the INSTALL program on the “fix” disk, using the “fix” disk when
asked for disk “ONE”, then the original disk “TWO”, “THREE” and “FOUR”.
5.7
When the installation is complete, use !Edit to modify the “win”
application code. Look for the second occurrence of the text “adfs” and
replace it with “scsi”. (If you replace the first one, it all seems to
work until you save or restore a game position.)
5.7
To get it to work on SCSI with 1M memory you need to unplug more modules
than you would with ADFS, because SCSI, SCSIFiler and SCSIDirCache take
up some space. I find that I need to unplug:− Debugger, Draw, EcoNet,
FontManager, IIC, NetFS, NetPrint, NetStatus, PaletteUtil, Percussion,
RAMFS, RAMFSFiler, ShellCLI, SoundChannels, SoundDMA, SoundScheduler,
StringLib, SystemDevices, WaveSynth.
5.7
Mike Williams, London N16.
5.7
The following hints and tips are taken from the February Acorn Customer
Services Newsletter.
5.7
•   RISC-OS 2 printer drivers
5.7
1) We have had reports of the release 2 printer drivers producing the
following error message:
5.7
   “Invalid number of output bits”
5.7
This error is produced when you attempt to print a sprite that was
created in a 256 colour screen mode such as MODE 15 in a 16 colour mode
such as MODE 12. The solution to the problem is to print in MODE 15 if
this error occurs, or to print the sprite in the mode in which it was
created.
5.7
2) When attempting to load any of the many RISC-OS 2 desktop printer
drivers the following error message may be displayed:    “Filing
System or path ‘Printer:’ not present internal error xxxx”
5.7
The error is caused by one of the printer driver support modules
becoming unplugged from the operating system. To resolve the problem,
the first action to take is to find out which modules are unplugged.
This information can be found by typing the following command from the
command line:
5.7
*UNPLUG
5.7
It is then necessary to re-insert the modules that *UNPLUG has shown as
being unplugged with the following command:
5.7
*RMREINIT <ModuleName>
5.7
Once you have used *RMREINIT to re-initialise all the modules, you
should then perform a <ctrl-break> to ensure all the modules have
started correctly.
5.7
3) Printing labels on small page lengths can sometimes cause problems.
5.7
a) !PrinterDM (2.46) reads a system variable called PDriver$DMExtra at
the start of each print job and sends it to the printer before the
actual data stream. PDriver$DMExtra has to be set using GSTrans format
so, to set a page length of nine lines, you would use:
5.7
*SET PDriver$DMExtra |[C|I
5.7
You would use |[C|J for ten lines and |[C|K for eleven lines and so on.
This command can be executed explicitly from the command line (after
!PrinterDM has been loaded) or incorporated in the !Run file.
5.7
b) Set the (Graphics) clip window to the appropriate size from
!PrinterDM’s icon bar menu. If the stationery is continuous, you can
leave the top and bottom graphics margins set to zero.
5.7
c) Finally, you need to tell the Wordprocessor you are using, the page
size of each label.
5.7
•   RISC-OS 3 printer drivers − Loading RISC-OS 2 printer drivers into
Acorn A5000s with RISC-OS 3 can cause problems if an attempt is then
made to load the RISC-OS 3 !Printers application from the Applications 1
disc or directory if stored on the hard disc.
5.7
!Printers will report the error “!Printers requires PDriver 3.16 or
later”.
5.7
The error occurs because the RISC-OS 2 printer driver loads an older
PDriver module than 3.16. The solution to the problem is to type from
the command line.
5.7
*RMKILL PDriver
5.7
*RMREINIT PDriver
5.7
This will allow you to load the new !Printer application supplied with
RISC-OS 3 on the A5000.
5.7
•   Maestro − Version 1.75 has a problem where notes are displayed at
double-height in certain modes. This may be fixed in the field by
deleting or renaming the sprites22 and !sprites 22 files.
5.7
•   PC Emulator hints & tips
5.7
1) Deleting an unformatted or non-system PC Emulator hard disc partition
on an A5000.
5.7
RISC-OS 3 looks at the PC hard disc partition (DOSDisc, &FC8) as if it
were a filing system and therefore before it will delete the partition,
it must look inside to find out what files are there. To be able to
delete an unformatted partition it is necessary to fool the operating
system into believing that it is not a PC partition, by changing its
filetype. However, it is not possible to change its filetype from within
the desktop and the following information gives details of how to change
the filetype from outside the desktop. The file can then either be
deleted from the command line as shown below or from the desktop.
5.7
a) Press <F12> from the desktop to get the command line (*Prompt)
5.7
b) Type:
5.7
*SETTYPE ADFS::4.$.PC.Drive_C TEXT <return>
5.7
*DELETE ADFS::4.$.PC.DRIVE_C <return>
5.7
2) The Archimedes keyboard has a U.S. style PC layout. You should not
therefore use KEYBUK or KEYB UK in the Autoexec batch file. Also, the £
sign on an Archimedes keyboard doesn’t exist on a PC keyboard, so to get
a £ sign you will need to enter its ASCII code 156:
5.7
Under the emulator, hold down the ALT key and type 1 5 6 on the numeric
keypad. (Remember to have Num Lock on).
5.7
3) Configuration − ‘Startup Text’ − The startup text is only intended
for use with a hard disc partition, not for floppy based systems. The
problem is that the first characters of the startup text are lost
because they are taken as a reply to the ‘Insert DOS Boot Disc and press
any key’ message which you get when running the emulator from floppy
discs.
5.7
The startup text should also not be used unless you have an Autoexec.Bat
and Config.Sys file. If you do not have these, the startup text is taken
as a reply to confirming the date.
5.7
4) PC Software compatibility − there are some screen redraw problems
with WordStar 4 using the !PCEmS emulator. However, no problems have yet
been reported using the large !PCEm emulator.  A
5.7
5.7



Impression Hints & Tips
5.7
There’s no shortage of hints and tips this month and there is a special
emphasis on mail merging, printing and uses of Impression’s “save
graphics” facility.
5.7
•    Mailmerge (1) − There have been some queries about mail merging
with Impression, so Rob Sherratt contacted Computer Concepts to outline
the problems. Rob wrote, “I have tried to use the Business Supplement
(Importer) and Impression to mailmerge a set of addresses to generate a
sheet of laser labels where each label contains successive fields from
the database. I have come to the conclusion that it can’t be done at
present − unless you tell me otherwise! I can print, say, a sheet of 24
labels for the same addressee (using a variety of methods) − but I
cannot print 24 labels for different addressees unless I enter the data
manually. Isn’t this a normal requirement for mailmerge programs?
5.7
“It seems to me that Impulse’s ‘Merge’ command causes Impression to do a
‘Delete then merge’ operation, coupled with a small change to Importer’s
user interface to toggle the ‘Delete vs Duplicate’ option on and off. As
well as, or instead of this, you might like to consider adding a new
pair of methods to Importer – :Importer Next record and :Importer
PrevRecord – which would allow the user to build a composite ‘24-up’
merge template where each frame in the template might contain the
following merge commands;
5.7
   :Importer Getfield 1
5.7
   :Importer Getfield 2 etc
5.7
   :Importer Next Record
5.7
On receiving the Next Record message, the Importer application would
reset its field counter to 1 and would scan forward for the start of the
next record.”
5.7
Charles Moir agreed that !Importer would not allow different names and
addresses to be imported into different frames and thought that Rob’s
new command to move onto the next record would work, but again that’s
another improvement that will have to wait for Impression 3 (if that is
the correct title!).
5.7
However, Charles did have this useful suggestion, “whenever we have had
a requirement to produce labels in this fashion (e.g. for mailing the
Archimedean magazine) we have gone about it in a different, and I would
suggest, a simpler way. First we create a master page that has separate
frames for each label. These are then linked together so they all form
part of one flowing story, so text will flow from one frame to another.
Presuming you have the name and address list in ASCII form with some
identifier between records − all you do is drop the file into the first
frame. All the names and addresses then flow into successive frames,
creating new pages as required. If the names and address are fixed
length records it is only a matter of making sure the label is the
correct size to hold exactly one record and it should all format
correctly. Even if the records are not the same length all that is
required is a single search and replace operation to replace the record
separator with a
5.7
 command to make sure each new record starts in a new label.
5.7
(If you use label sheets that have no selvedge, i.e. the whole A4 page
is divided into exactly 24 equal spaces, you just create one simple
master page whose size is just 70mm × 37.1mm. Then all you do is ensure
you have “ignore page borders” set and “fit lots” and it prints
beautifully. Ed.)
5.7
“The only disadvantage of this system is that it loads all the names and
addresses in one go. However, we use this system for mailing 10,000
names and addresses on a standard 4M machine and so space is not a
problem. In fact, I don’t think something like !Importer would cope with
anything like that number of records satisfactorily. This method has the
advantage that you can see and edit each record individually if
required, and you can print any required range of pages or multiple
copies, etc.”
5.7
•    Mailmerge (2) − Stuart Bell had more modest needs. He wanted to
send a basic letter with a customized “Dear ...” beginning, and an
address in a box at the bottom of each letter. His solution to create
the skeleton letter as a master page <ctrl-F2 − Edit − New Master Page>.
In this master page type everything, except the names for the salutation
(the “Dear . . .” bit). Then create two frames on the master page, one
for the name, the other for the address box, and make text flow from one
to the other.
5.7
Now, leave the editing of the master page and return to your document.
Alter the chapter so that your newly created master page is the one for
that chapter and you will see your letter appear, with boxes for the
name and address. Type in the name of the first person, and their
address, using <ctrl-G> to advance to the next frame, as required.
Impression will generate new pages as necessary, each containing the
same letter.
5.7
In order to make the salutation look neat, you may need to move the
‘name’ frame on the master page, to line up “Dear” with the name. Check
this with a large scale view of your document.
5.7
Now, the whole point of a mailing list is not to send one letter, but to
make it easier the next time you write to the same people. To change
your letter, save the original document under another name – e.g. if
originally “Letter1”, save it now as “Letter2” to avoid losing the
original letter. Then simply change the letter on the master page of
Letter2 to produce your new letter. Alternatively, create another new
master page and alter your chapter to use it.
5.7
To produce a simple listing of your mailing list, create a master page
with many frames stacked in a vertical line (or any other close pattern
for that matter). You will then have a simple list of the names and
addresses in a tabular form.
5.7
I know that most mailmerge packages offer more complex facilities than
this penny-pinching approach, such as selecting certain names out of a
list. However, if your needs are as basic as mine, then it certainly
beats the laborious task of producing twenty (or two hundred) virtually
identical letters manually!
5.7
• A merge program? − On a related note, identical pleas from Peter
Blenkinsop and P Closier: “has anyone written a merge program for
Impression?” Peter has several two page documents he would like to merge
into one (longer) document, mainly for ease of printing, although he
admits that a printer queue system might do just as well. No doubt other
users would also find this useful, so has anyone cracked this particular
nut? Batch printing would undoubtedly be useful for the next release of
Impression (with perhaps the incoming document forming a new chapter),
but we do also need a proper printer queueing system for Acorn printer
drivers. (Laser Direct owners already have one. Ed)
5.7
• Viewing clip art – Impression’s ease of manipulating and printing
Sprite and Draw files has been touched on by others but the following
may be of interest. Just as with fonts, one really needs to see a print-
out of one’s collection of clip-art files in order to pick out the one
that’s just right for a particular job. I have done this by setting up
my collection on a set of standard Impression pages laid out with 5 rows
of 4 frames, each frame filled with a clip-art object. The sheets when
printed out then provide a ready reference and can be saved economically
as Impression documents using ArcFS/Spark/Compression.
5.7
The beauty of this is that in future you can ignore the individual clip-
art files and work from the saved Impression document. You choose the
frame you want and save it as a graphic to the RAM disc. Then drag the
icon from RAMFS to the Impression frame you have set up to receive it.
Note that you have to use the RAM disc as an intermediate stage for the
transfer. If you drag the icon directly across to the new Impression
frame you get a message to the effect that Impression cannot save a file
to itself. (Jack Evans)
5.7
Don’t forget though that there are a number of commercial programs that
allow you to view clip art and these might be more useful if you are
constantly adding new images to your collection. Incidentally, an
earlier version of Glimpse (Sherston Software) used to hang up the
computer if presented with a DrawPlus file. I am glad to report that
this was fixed (v1.02 and later) and, although the program ignores
unknown file types, it will not cause any other problems. If you have an
early issue of Glimpse, Sherston advise you to call them for advice and
they tell me that they are further developing the program.
5.7
• Taking graphics from documents – Paul Skirrow writes in response to
the Impression Hints & Tips by Jochen Konietzko (Archive 5.5 page 41)
and also makes use of the save graphics facility. It is true that
graphics cannot be edited within Impression, but it is a simple matter
to click on the graphic frame to select it and then use the <save
graphic> option on the document menu (or use <shift-ctrl-T>). I rarely
bother keeping separate copies of graphics files now, I just save them
from Impression directly into Draw, modify them and then save them back
again. (With PipeDream, things are different as it does not take its own
copy of the graphics file, but simply stores the filename, so modifying
the file on disc will change the image in the PipeDream document.)
5.7
It is true that the draw files are stored within the document directory
(called story1, story2, etc), but they should not be edited because
Impression stores information about them elsewhere (in the !DocData
file). It is possible to crash the entire system by modifying a graphics
file within an Impression document. I have always regarded Impression
documents as no-go areas − they belong to Impression and use Computer
Concepts’ own format which is not published and which could be changed
between Impression versions.
5.7
The only disadvantage with using the <save graphic> option is that it
always saves the graphic as a draw file, even if it is a sprite. If you
want to edit a sprite, you must therefore drag the draw file from
Impression to Draw, select the object and then use the <save sprite>
option on the save menu to save into Paint. This is clumsy, especially
if memory is short, in which case you will have to save the intermediate
files to disc before loading into Paint. Computer Concepts do this
mainly to simplify the inner working of Impression (it means everything
can be regarded as a Draw file which may contain sprites). Another
argument for using Draw files to hold sprites is that they contain
absolute size information, whereas the sprite format does not. It
therefore makes a lot of sense for scanners to produce Draw files
containing the scanned sprite together with absolute size information
describing the resolution of the scanned image. The <save graphic> menu
item only appears when a graphic frame is selected (whereas the RISC-OS
guidelines suggest that unavailable menu items should be shaded so that
the user knows they are there).
5.7
Could Impression be made to pass graphics files to Draw and Paint when
they are double clicked? Perhaps Computer Concepts would be prepared to
implement this. I also think that there should be an easy way of
transferring data between applications generally without bringing up a
save menu. I know that we are all used to it now, but it is not really a
“save” operation that you are doing when transferring things between
applications, and the filename is certainly irrelevant when you are not
saving to a filer window. One approach, adopted by Squirrel, is to make
a click-drag from a Squirrel window to another application transfer the
data by doing a save automatically. This is extremely useful in Squirrel
and means that an address can be transferred to a letter very quickly
without using a menu. I have also adopted this technique in some of my
programs where <click-drag> is not used for something else, but
unfortunately, many programs use <click-drag> for their own operation.
What do other people think? Could we standardise on a <shift-drag> or
<alt-drag> to do a save. (This would also work with filer windows using
the default or last filename).
5.7
•   Styles used and unused − When I am preparing the magazine, I use one
big file that contains all the things like hints & tips, comments, small
ads, products, etc, so I am forever importing new bits of text into it
and then exporting them back out into the magazine. This means that the
style list grows longer each month so, every now and then, I remove
unwanted styles. To do this, I select the whole text with <ctrl-T> and
pull up the edit styles window with <ctrl-F6>. I click on the style
selection menu button and there is a list showing which styles, in the
whole story, are used and which are unused. I can then select and delete
the ones that aren’t needed (remembering to click the delete button with
<adjust> so that the window stays on-screen).
5.7
Sometimes, I want to remove a style completely even though it is being
used. If so, I select all the text, pull up the style menu and click on
the style to be removed. That will remove all occurrences of it. Don’t
forget though that a style may also be used on a master page, in which
case it will not delete. This can actually be put to good advantage
because I don’t want to accidentally delete, say, “bold” just because it
is not used in the file as it stands. To prevent accidental deletion,
create a new dummy master page, create a text frame and type in a few
choice words and give them the styles that you want to maintain
permanently within the document. They cannot now be deleted acciden
tally. − PB
5.7
•   Kerning − On Impression, kerning is extremely easy to achieve,
especially with the keyboard short-cuts. If you want to (R)educe the
space between adjacent characters, simply put the cursor between the two
characters and type <ctrl-R> a number of times. If you over do it,
simply (E)xpand the space a bit using <ctrl-E>. If you can’t make a fine
enough adjustment with <ctrl-R> and <ctrl-E>, go through the menu
options to call up the kerning menu and adjust the number. Remember that
if you want to try a particular number without losing the kerning
window, click on Set with <adjust>, not <select>. For vertical kerning,
use <ctrl-U> to move the text (U)p and <ctrl-J> to er... (J)ump
downwards?! (Can anyone think of a better mnemonic?)
5.7
The trouble with kerning being so easily available is that it’s easy to
hit <ctrl-R, E, U or J> by accident. I have tried to use search and
replace to locate any spurious kerning in a document but cannot find any
way to do it. You can, of course, export the text with styles and load
the text into Edit and search for “{but I would have liked a simpler
way. Any ideas? Still, if you can see roughly where the spurious kerning
appears, simply go through the menu to get the kerning window up on
screen and use cursor left and cursor right to move the cursor around
through the suspect areas. If you move past a kerning statement, the
numbers will flick up in the kerning window. To remove the kerning,
click <adjust> on the Clear button and go back to using the cursor keys
to search for other kerning statements, finally clicking <select> on
Clear. − PB
5.7
•   Impression speed users’ tips − (Reprinted from Archive 5.5 where the
last two lines were accidentally omitted!) I find that having got into
the habit of using <adjust> for reverse scrolling, it really does save
time, especially when I am laying out the magazine and the screen is
cluttered with windows. Just press <select> to scroll down and switch
quickly to <adjust> to go back up again without having to move the mouse
and locate the other end of the scroll bar − which could be under
another window anyway.
5.7
Also, <adjust> can be extremely useful, again with a cluttered screen,
for moving windows whilst keeping them where they are relative to the
other documents. It takes practice, but it speeds things up in the long
run. − PB
5.7
•   Search & replace on styles − Impression appears to have the facility
to search and replace on styles. Indeed, you can search for a style
using {name” }@, where @ is the wildcard for “any text” but, sadly, you
cannot replace with another style name, despite the fact that there is a
menu button on the Search & Replace window to allow you to put a style
name into the Replace box. I don’t know why CC haven’t implemented this
facility. They obviously intended to do so because the menu button on
the Replace box has no other purpose − as it stands, it is totally
redundant. Perhaps it could be implemented in Impression III but, in the
meantime, you can do it in Edit, though it’s a bit cumbersome.
5.7
Suppose, for example, that you have a document with various headings all
using “Heading” (marked on <F2> as Sub-heading) and that you want to
change some of them to a sub-sub-heading, let’s call it “SubHead”. What
you will have to do is to click somewhere in the text and use <shift-
ctrl-T> to save the text. Save it with styles, perhaps into a ram disc.
Then load that into !Edit and use search & replace to, selectively,
change  into . (The reason for using  is to catch, in one go,  ON} and
OFF} and } all of which can occur in the document.)
5.7
To get it back into the original document, click back in the main text
in the Impression document, select the whole text with <ctrl-T>, set it
all back to base text with <ctrl-B>, delete it and then go back to the
Edit document and save the text into the Impression document. Remember
though to save the document before you start messing about with it in
this way. You can get in an awful mess if you edit the text file
incorrectly.
5.7
If CC can’t add the style search & replace feature into Impression,
perhaps someone could produce a simple editing application for us. As
the Impression text is loaded into it, it would create a list of the
styles available then it would allow you to search and replace using a
menu to provide you with a list of the styles it knows about. Could
someone write that for us, please? If you’d like to have a go, get in
touch with me at Archive. − PB
5.7
•   Style problems − When I am preparing the magazine, I save the text of
each of the articles, with styles, as edit files in one directory. I
then have a dummy Archive magazine document into which I insert the
various edit files. If I have a particular space to fill, say about a
page and a half, I link together the title frame and the text frames
that are to make up the article. I know roughly how long each article
is, so I drop one of the edit files into the title frame. Sometimes, it
turns out to be just too short or too long and I want to delete it, but
if I just mark it with <ctrl-T> and delete it and then drop in another
edit file, I find that the whole text ends up in the same style as the
main heading − then it really is too long! As far as I am concerned,
this is a bug in Impression. Anyway, the “work-around” is to mark the
whole text and press <ctrl-B> first, to change it all back to base
style, before deleting the text. On a long file, especially if a lot of
it is displayed on screen, this can take quite a time. Does anyone know
a quicker work-around?
5.7
Also, I find that, fairly often, the title is left justified instead of
centred as its style specifies. If I click on the title, type a single
character and delete it, it springs back to the centre − another bug,
but one that’s easy to get round. − PB
5.7
•   RTF loader − To transfer WP files from the Mac (or PC versions of
Microsoft Word, I guess) you can use the RTF (rich text format) loader
that comes with the Impression Business Supplement. The RTF loader is
fairly intelligent and knows to swap things like ë into ’ because the
fonts on Mac and Archimedes use some different ASCII numbers. However,
unless it has been fixed, it sometimes hangs up with some of these “top-
bit-set” characters. For example, I was trying to transfer a cook book
and it hung up (the whole machine!) every time it came across a degree
symbol as in 100°C. The answer was to search and replace the degree
symbol into, say, an equal sign or some other character not used in the
text, transfer with the RTF loader and then search and replace back
again. (Some of you may have noticed the repeated occurrence of ë
instead of ’ in one of Risc User’s articles last month − I guess they
are still using Macs for their magazine and the Archimedes to Mac
conversion is not as intelligent.) − PB
5.7
• Blank pages printed − If your printer sometimes prints blank pages (as
Patrick Dowling explained in Archive 5.6) it is probably because the
printer driver’s bottom margin is set too small. The printer drivers
send all the data they are told to send for the page and then send a
form feed character. If they send so much that the printer just goes on
to its next page and the driver then sends a form feed character the
printer will eject a sheet. Make sure that the printer’s DIP switches
are set to disable perforation skip and check any others which determine
the page size. When entering the bottom margin into the printer driver’s
paper size entry, it is important to be on the conservative side and
make this a fraction larger than you think it ought to be (by a couple
of mm). The only disadvantage to this is that you will lose the ability
to print in this borderline area, but at least you will avoid the
mysterious blank pages which can otherwise occur. Unfortunately, printer
manuals are notoriously awkward, especially when you are looking for the
top and bottom margins, and most of the printer drivers are supplied
with the incorrect default settings (to be fair, some drivers are
written for a range of printers which each have their own unique paper
margins).  Paul Skirrow.
5.7
(I passed this hint on to one of our Technical Help Service members a
couple of weeks ago and she confirmed that it worked. All she did was to
increase the paper size from 297.00 mm to 299.00 mm and she got no more
blank pages. Ed.)
5.7
• Entering special characters into Impression − There is an updated
version of !Chars on this month’s disc which can enter special charac
ters into Impression without needing to tell Impression which font they
came from. It works just like Chars (or NewChars2 to be precise) and
provides quick selection of common fonts (Dingbats, Symbol, System and
Trinity) as well as passing the font information to Impression in DDF
form. Note that RISC-OS 3 defines the system font to be the same as the
Latin 1 fonts, complete with the “ and ” characters, but RISC-OS 2
doesn’t, so it will help if you use the new System font provided on the
Archive 5.6 program disc if you are using RISC-OS 2.  Paul Skirrow.
5.7
•   PC file transfer − Impression saves text files with an LF-CR termina
tor rather than the CR-LF terminator which is used by most PC programs.
This can confuse a lot of PC programs which automatically ignore the
first character after a LF (which they expect to be a CR), and Computer
Concepts have agreed to fix this some time.  Paul Skirrow.
5.7
In the meantime, you can presumably use !Edit’s search & replace
facility to change \x0A\x0D into \x0D\x0A remembering to set the magic
characters to ON. Ed
5.7
Ovation Hints and Tips
5.7
• Master documents – Hilary Ferns has sent details of master documents
she has created for use with Ovation. Her design for A4 and A5 letters
will be particularly useful for newcomers to either DTP or Ovation, and
her templates for an A5 four sided leaflet, an A5 booklet, A6 leaflet
and a greetings card or notelet are valuable time savers. With Hilary’s
permission they are on this month’s program disc in Ovation format, but
here is just one example of how Hilary used Ovation to produce an A5
four sided leaflet.
5.7

5.7
This is the format of our weekly church news-sheet, which displays news
about all the events in bordered frames − rather like the ads page of
the local newspaper. It is printed on A4 paper, photocopied and folded
neatly in half.
5.7
I use an HP Deskjet 500 printer, so all the margin settings are based on
this. Printer paper size is A4.
5.7
1. Set up a new document with the following settings:
5.7
      A4
5.7
      Landscape
5.7
      Single-sided
5.7
      2 columns
5.7
      Gutter 24mm
5.7
Margins – Top 12mm, Left & Right 12mm, Bottom 8mm
5.7
2. Open up the Master page for your document and include on this any
regular heading, logo, etc. that you may require. We always have our
church logo at the top of the front page, together with a “welcome”
greeting. These are placed in picture frames at the top of the right-
hand column, i.e. the front of the leaflet when it is eventually folded.
5.7
3. Obviously, page two will not want these headings, so you will now
need to create a new chapter (“New Chapter − After current Chapter”) and
specify chapter two starting at page two (“Modify chapter”). Delete your
frames from page two. Remember too to think about any paragraph styles
that you are likely to use.
5.7
4. Go back to your document and delete the existing pages one and two.
You will now have a simple document with two A4 sheets, each with 2
columns and a wide gutter. Within this framework you can create text and
picture frames, making sure they do not overlap the central guidelines.
I tend to display most of my text in individual text frames with
borders, often with a nested picture frame for a picture or “FontFX”
generated heading. Only rarely do I type directly into the principal
text frame.
5.7

5.7
5. You may want to have text which flows from one page to the next.
However, using the principal text frame, the text will not flow back up
to the “back” page of the leaflet. To do this you will need to create a
text frame to fit within each column and use the “link” tool to flow the
text from the front, to the middle and onto the back. This is quite
simple to work out. (see diagram).
5.7
6. Save your stylesheet. Printing out such a document is straightfor
ward. Change to “landscape” on the “Print setup” before saving
stylesheet.
5.7