Archive Magazine CD 1995/Archive Magazine CD 1995.iso/text/hints/volume_4

Text File | 1995-06-25 | 174.6 KB | 4,391 lines

• 160k ADFS discs for the Archimedes?  If you have upgraded to the
Archimedes from a Master, or even a Beeb with ADFS, you might have some
5.25“ discs you want to transfer.  According to the manuals, the
Archimedes will only read and write to 640k (L) format, Arthur 800k (D)
format, or the RISC-OS 800k (E) format using either 3.5” or 5.25“ discs
(80T).  However, the Master could read and write 40T 160k (S) format,
80T 320k (M) format, or 80T 640k (L) format discs.  I discovered by
accident that the Archimedes will quite happily read 5.25” 160k (S)
discs in 40T mode, and in fact save them − I have not been able to try
out 320k discs since I do not have any.  You cannot, however, format
discs at either 160k or 320k on the Archimedes but then why would you
want to anyway? Chris Hughes (Wakefield BBC Micro User Group).
4.01
• Apocalypse Tips − Progressing from planet to planet is really simple.
At the start of the game, a map of your selected planet is displayed.
All the objects on the planet’s surface are represented by coloured
dots, about 80% of which must be destroyed for your craft to be
withdrawn and for you to be allocated another planet.
4.01
As you progress through the game and return to the ‘Guild of Spacings’
you will be given various add-ons for your ship.  These include a super-
cooler for your laser-canon and better shielding.  It is vital that you
have these if you intend to progress at a reasonable pace, so it is
advisable to get them as soon as possible.  Remember, you can only
return a maximum of five times before being rejected by the Guild.  When
you have destroyed your 80% or so, you will automatically be withdrawn
by the Guild − this may take some time so don’t give up too quickly!
4.01
If you prefer rather more action and less running away, the following
lines of the BASIC file ‘!Apocalyps.Apocalypse’ can be changed.
4.01
Line 290 is your starting score.
4.01
Replace line 330 with:  330 !shieldcharge=16 :
!rapidturnF=1:!guntempcooler=0
4.01
Now delete lines 340 to 380 inclusive for all the extra features and
(very) strong shields.
4.01
Replace line 770 with: UNTIL 0 for infinite lives.  At line 1970
!impcounter is the number of objects you have shot, which determines how
many you have to go before advancing to the next planet.  For instant
withdrawal, replace 1970 with: 1970 !impcounter=10000.
4.01
Line 6910 is how many times you can return to the guild before rejection
(this is normally 5).
4.01
• HFORM v1.72 bug or feature?  If you try to format an ST506 hard disc
that has had a different profile (e.g. it was used on  a PC beforehand)
with the Acorn HFORM program supplied on the RISC-OS Supplement Disc,
the new disc shape option will not be acknowledged and so the full
capacity of the drive may not be realised.  This can be overcome by
removing the line that reads:
4.01
   2130 IF cyl%=0 IF head%=0 IF Formatted% GOTO 2180
4.01
Brian Oliver.
4.01
• Hostages cheat mode − If you hold down the <R>, <U>, <T> and <H> keys
once the title screen has loaded and press <return>, you will enter into
the cheat mode.  This allows you to jump to either section two or three
of the game with three hostages and seven terrorists.
4.01
• RAM discs for the PC Emulator − It is possible to create a hard disc
partition in any filing system.  For example, by altering the !PC.!Run2
file so that the path for Drive D is ‘RAM:$.RamDisc’ and using the FDISK
program to create a RAMFS hard disc partition, you can obtain any size
RAM disc you require _ memory and pages sizes permitting.  Michael Ben-
Gershon.
4.01
• Reading a system variable from BASIC − The question was, “I’ve got a
system variable being set in the !Run obey file:
4.01
   Set MaxNumberOfFonts 32
4.01
and I want to be able to read this value into a BASIC variable but when
I use:
4.01
   value% = VAL (“<MaxNumberOfFonts>”)
4.01
it produces the error ‘Variable not found’, because it takes the ‘<’
character as meaning ‘less than’ rather than ‘start of system variable’.
Using the BASIC keyword EVAL has the same effect.
4.01
The first thing we need to do is to extract the value of the system
variable into a string that we can manipulate.  After searching through
the PRM volume II, I eventually found OS_ReadVarVal (SWI&23) on page
750.  On entry, R0 points to the name of the system variable to be read,
R1 points to a suitable buffer to store the string in, R2 is the maximum
length of this buffer, R3 is set to 0 to use the first occurance of the
named system variable, and R4 is set to 3 so that an expanded string is
returned in the buffer.
4.01
On exit, we should now have the value of the system variable in the form
of a string.  The next task is to convert this string into an integer,
and this is easily performed by using OS_ReadUnsigned (SWI &21) on page
585.  On entry, R0 is set to 0 so that the base number used is assumed
to be 10 unless the string indicates otherwise, R1 is the pointer to the
string (note that this is the same as R1 for OS_ReadVarVal, which is
preserved on exit).  On exit R2 contains the value of the system
variable as an integer, using only two SWI calls.
4.01
This is easily implemented in both BASIC and ARM assembler.
4.01
In BASIC this can be achieved with 4 instructions:
4.01
   MaxBufferLength = 16
4.01
   DIM BufferPtr MaxBufferLength
4.01
   SYS “OS_ReadVarVal”, “MaxNumberOfFonts”, BufferPtr,
MaxBufferLength,0,3
4.01
   SYS “OS_ReadUnsigned”,0,BufferPtr TO ,,value%
4.01
and if you want to do in Arm assembler, then only eight instructions are
necessary:
4.01
   ...
4.01
   ADR R0, SystemVariablePtr ; point to system variable
4.01
   ADR R1, BufferPtr; point to buffer
4.01
   MOV R2, #MaxBufferLength ; length of buffer
4.01
   MOV R3, #0 ; use first one found
4.01
   MOV R4, #3 ; expand fully
4.01
   SWI XOS_ReadVarVal ; R1 preserved
4.01
   MOV R0, #0 ; use default base
4.01
   SWI XOS_ReadUnsigned ; R2 = value%
4.01
   SystemVariablePTr = “MaxNumberOfFonts”, 0 ; note no ‘<’ or ‘>’ are
used
4.01
   ALIGN
4.01
   MaxBufferLength * 16
4.01
   BufferPtr % MaxBufferLength ; reserve MaxBufferLength
4.01
   ALIGN ; bytes of workspace
4.01
To give a quick example of its use.  ‘SetMaxNumberOfFonts 16’ gives
value% = 16.  ‘SetMaxNumberOfFonts &20 gives value% = 32.
4.01
This may be of use to programmers, as it allows constants to be set up
in the !Run obey file and users can modify them to fit their require
ments, without having to modify the program itself.  John ‘Lofty’
Wallace.
4.01
• System Variables for the Filer Module (Archive 3.11 p7) − The problem
with the Filer module not allowing you to include system variables can
be solved a lot easier (and without taking up any valuable RMA space).
4.01
I like to use icons for the directories which contain the third party
applications, demos, utilities, etc.  This meant using an application
directory and I wanted a general purpose !Run obey file to open the
directory viewer (using Filer_OpenDir).  However, I came across the same
problem as Simon Callan.  The solution I present here was passed on to
me by Paul Fellows (who wrote ‘Archimedes Basic Compiler’ amongst other
things) and so I don’t wish to take the credit for such a neat idea.
4.01
So that I don’t have the !Run, !Sprites, etc with the actual programs I
want to view, I create a directory ‘_’ inside that application directory
to hold them.  Thus my !Run obey file reads as follows:
4.01
   |!Run obey file
4.01
   |
4.01
   IconSprites <Obey$Dir>.!Sprites
4.01
   Set Alias$OpenDir Filer_OpenDir <Obey$Dir>._
4.01
   OpenDir
4.01
Setting a command string as an ‘Alias’ will expand any system variables
within that command string.  This gets around the problem which Simon
describes, and also means that you don’t need to run a program every
time you switch the machine on.  John ‘Lofty’ Wallace.
4.01

• 160k ADFS Discs (continued from Archive 4.1 p9) − It is certainly true
that the Archimedes can be made to read and write 160k or 320k ADFS
discs correctly.  I think, however, that the Archimedes ‘sees’ these as
640k L format discs and if a read or write operation directs it to a
track beyond 39 (160k) it will try to push the disc head off the edge of
the disc searching for tracks that aren’t there.  Fine if you know what
you’re doing.  Lorcan Mongey.
4.02
• Am I in the desktop?  You can use the Wimp_ReadSysInfo SWI command to
see if your program is running in the desktop or not.  The command
returns the number of active tasks, which will be zero if the program is
running outside of the desktop environment.  The example program below
will sense whether it has been run from the desktop environment and if
not, it will start up the desktop before running another application (in
this case !Edit).
4.02
   program segment missing
4.02
Adrian Look.
4.02
• Apocalypse hints & tips − If you shoot the green T-shaped buildings
with a triangular roof using a mega photon your shield will be replen
ished.  If you shoot a purple and green mushroom, your shield will go
into override but your points are decreased for anything you hit with
the photons you are allocated.  If you shoot a rectangular brown
building they leave a shallow pyramid and if you shoot this, a Rakon
Gomjabba will appear and you will get a few more points for destroying
this.  If you shoot a Snail Rider with a mega photon, your energy banks
are recharged.  If you shoot a green mushroom, your score will decrease
for everything you hit with the mega photons allocated.
4.02
If you type in and run the following program with disc two in drive 0
you will then be able to access all of Apocalypse’s nine worlds.
4.02
   program segment missing
4.02
Paul Bedford.
4.02
• Bug in the Debugger Module − Some of you may be aware of a problem
with the Debugger module failing to disassemble certain instructions
correctly if they contain an immediate constant.  An immediate constant
is stored as an eight-bit value with a 4-bit shift applied, and the
debugger normally expands this format to its correct value, but
occasionally fails, e.g.
4.02
   E28F0C01 ADD R0,PC, #&0100 correctly expanded
4.02
   E28F0D01 ADD R0,PC, #&01,26 failed to expand (should be #&40)
4.02
I have disassembled the debugger module and found the offending piece of
code.  It doesn’t seem to be a bug, rather a deliberate move to expand
constants differently under certain circumstances but for no obvious
reason.  Anyway, the fix is to change the word at offset &920 in the
module from &1A000028 to &FA000028, effectively changing a BNE to a BNV.
This seems to solve the problem, although I haven’t tested this fix
exhaustively, so proceed with caution.  Lorcan Mongey.
4.02
• BUILDing !Run files − If you write a !Run file using *BUILD and want
to include a line such as:
4.02
   Run <Obey$Dir> .!RunImage
4.02
then, instead, you should type:
4.02
   Run |<Obey$Dir>.!RunImage
4.02
to prevent RISC-OS from inserting the value of Obey$Dir into the file.
It may be obvious but until now I have been using !Edit to write a two
line Obey file!  Elliott Hughes.
4.02
• Copy Options − “Confirm” and “Verbose” − I think this is probably one
of those hints which would be classed as “obvious” by those who know it:
The Archimedes User Guide and the PRM both describe, at some length, the
use of the system variable Copy$Options which sets default options for
the *Copy command.  However, neither make if clear that the desktop
filer has its own “Confirm” and “Verbose” options which are quite
independent of those which are stored in the system variable.  Thus no
amount of modification of Copy$Options in boot files or elsewhere will
affect the way the desktop behaves.
4.02
The filer options can be read and changed by clicking the menu button
over any directory window and choosing the Options option.  The options
selected by this route differ in one significant way from the
Copy$Options in that they are stored in battery-backed RAM and thus are
preserved when the machine is switched off or reset.  They are stored in
byte 198 of the CMOS RAM (not byte 195 as my copy of the PRM says) along
with various other desktop options:
4.02
   program segment missing
4.02
Having these options stored in CMOS RAM can sometimes be an advantage
but on the whole I find it rather inconvenient.  For instance, I often
change temporarily from an icon display to “Full Info” and would like
icons to be restored after a reset.  Luckily this sort of preference can
easily be dealt with by a few lines in the boot routine.  For instance,
the following lines of BASIC will reset the Display mode to small icons
while preserving the other options:
4.02
   program segment missing
4.02
Hugh Eagle.
4.02
• Cut and paste clip board − Many RISC-OS applications have a ‘cut and
paste’ option.  If these applications can also edit more than one
document at a time then you can use the ‘cut and paste’ option as a clip
board to transfer data from one document to another.  For example, you
can select a block of text in one !Edit document, move to another
document and then use the <ctrl><c> option to copy the block into that
document.  This method will also work with applications such as
PipeDream but not Ovation or Impression, etc as they use the ‘clip
board’ method.  Steve Drain.
4.02
• Deskjet Plus Ink Cartridges, Recharging − You may have discovered the
same problem as me when trying to recharge these cartridges, namely that
the ink won’t go in the hole!
4.02
A bit of reverse engineering, with the aid of a hacksaw, has revealed
the cause.  The container is filled with a dense spongy material which
holds the ink, but this does not enter the cavity formed by the raised
green portion with the central vent hole.  If a syringe needle is
entered through this hole it must be long enough to reach into the
sponge.  At least 20mm is required.  If this is not the case then the
inserted ink charge is held on top of the sponge by surface tension, and
quickly overflows through the charge hole.
4.02
The only syringes which I can get hold of are intended for diabetics and
have a needle which is too short to reach the sponge through the top
hole.  The solution is to fill the sponge through the top hole.  The
solution is to fill through a second hole, drilled as small as possible,
on the 3mm wide land to the side of the raised portion.  In this
location there is a small internal cavity not filled with sponge.  This
prevents capillary leakage after recharging.
4.02
Archive readers may be interested in the following program which will
draw a sketch showing the location of the hole.  It should be made as
close to the vertical wall of the raised portion as is possible.
4.02
   program segment missing
4.02
With regard to inks I have excellent results with Rotring Art Pen Ink
which comes in many colours.  Bill Graham.
4.02
• MEMC DMA control register − With reference to Sean Kelly’s tip in June
‘90 for gaining extra speed from the Archimedes by disabling the VIDC’s
DMA access.  Although the technique normally works without any trouble,
occasionally the machine crashes or has its memory contents corrupted.
As Sean correctly stated, bit 10 of the MEMC register controls VIDC DMA,
however, as the dynamic RAM (DRAM) in the machine is no longer being
read by the VIDC it is also no longer being refreshed properly.  Bits 8
& 9 of the MEMC come to the rescue, they are the DRAM refresh control
bits.
4.02
There are three available modes of refresh:-
4.02
            bit 8   bit 9
4.02
a) no refresh         1   0
4.02
    (not used by the Archimedes)
4.02
b) refresh during video flyback      0   1
4.02
c) continuous refresh         1   1
4.02
Flyback time during standard modes (0-16 & 24) is greater than the DRAM
holding time and as such requires refresh during flyback.  In multi-sync
modes the flyback time is much faster and the memory does not need to be
refreshed by the MEMC.
4.02
The codes for the various modes are:-SYS“OS_UpdateMEMC‘,768,1792 to turn
off the VIDC DMA and invoke continuous refresh and
SYS“OS_UpdateMEMC‘,1536,1792 to return to normal for standard modes.
4.02
It should be pointed out that the continuous refresh mode uses the DMA
video pointer as the refresh address source, incrementing the pointer
after use.  As such this should be used with care if the pointer is used
as an active part of your program whilst the screen is blanked.  (But
why would you want to move the pointer if you can’t see it??)
4.02
There is also a sound DMA control bit in the MEMC but as this does not
affect memory refresh bits 8 and 9 which do not need to be altered.
4.02
Bit 11 − 0 Sound DMA disable
4.02
              1 Sound DMA enable
4.02
Rob Swain.
4.02
• Modifying the RISC-OS dot matrix printer driver − To add a new dot
matrix printer configuration to the RISC-OS printer driver you will need
to alter the ‘PrData’ file in the ‘!PrinterDM’ directory (on you
Applications Disc One or RISC-OS Extras Disc = Shareware 17):
4.02
1)  Make sure you have made a back up copy
4.02
2)  Run the !Edit program on Applications Disc One
4.02
3)  Double click on the copy of !PrinterDM that you wish to alter,
whilst holding the <shift> key down − a filer window will then open with
the contents of the !PrinterDM application inside
4.02
4)  Double click on the ‘PrData’ file in the !PrinterDM filer window − a
text window will then open
4.02
5)  Use the arrow keys to position the caret (red vertical text cursor)
just before the ‘Configured options’ heading and after the row of full
stops
4.02
6)  Add the following text changing the information to match your
printer (the example below adds a Shinwa CP80/Lucas LX80 option to the
RISC-OS printer driver):
4.02
   program segment missing
4.02
Alan Dawes
4.02
• Nevryon hints & tips − Nevryon passwords for level three, five and
seven are given at the foot of this column, the letters being reversed
for the benefit of those who prefer to ignore them.
4.02
The following Nevryon cheat allows the ship to be upgraded to have any
weapons desired and energy/credits/lives may also be altered.
4.02
Load the ‘!Nevryon.Multi’ file on the Nevryon disc 1 and insert the
following at line 211.
4.02
   211 Dump=PAGE-&3F800:Dump?n=value
4.02
where n is:
4.02
n=27:   Ship speed, 4 recommended
4.02
n=28:   Shield orb (top), 1=ON 0=Off
4.02
n=29:   Shield orb (bottom), 1=ON 0=OFF
4.02
n=30:   RAM, 1=ON, 0=OFF
4.02
n=32:   Gun droids, 0-2
4.02
n=33   Lasers, 0-2
4.02
n=35:   Number of credits (default 3)
4.02
n=36:   Number of lives (default 4)
4.02
n=37:   Starting secondary weapons status, 0=Off, 1=flamer, etc
4.02
n=38:   Gold bar status, 0=OFF, 1=flamer, 2=mines, etc
4.02
n=43:   Amount of energy (default 12)
4.02
Change as many of these values as you want and save altered program and
repeat the process for the $.Multi file on the Nevryon 2 disc.  Jeremy
Mears.
4.02
   upside down words missing!
4.02
• Printing a full path name − This is a reply to the cry of help in
February 1990 from Richard Skemp about how to get the printer driver to
include the full pathname.  If you add the following line to the Library
program in the !PrinterDM directory, the printer driver will print the
full file pathname of any text file you print.
4.02
   3281 BPUT#outfile%, CHR$13+CHR$10 +“Printing file ”+filenam$
+CHR$13+CHR10+CHR$10
4.02
Lorcan Mongey.
4.02
• Reinstating the filer module − An item on system variables mentions
that if you *RMFaster the filer module from the desktop, you lose the
filer icons and can’t get them back (Archive 3.11 p7).  To retrieve
them, try:
4.02
   <F12>
4.02
   Desktop
4.02
   <Return>
4.02
this doesn’t interfere with anything already in the desktop but re-
starts any of the default tasks that have been lost, namely Filer,
PaletteUtil an TaskManager.  Note, however, that if you *RMKill or
*RMFaster the Task Manager, you can’t get a *prompt by pressing F12!  To
get around this, make up an Obey file containing the command
4.02
   *Desktop
4.02
and this will do the trick.  It’s quite interesting to see the Task and
Palette icons in the “wrong” place on the icon bar!  However, I feel
that you should not deliberately interfere with desktop modules and this
method should really be regarded as a ‘get-you-home’ technique in case
of problems.  Lorcan Mongey.
4.02
•REMming your programs − When writing a program, in any language, it is
good practice to put plenty of comments in to remind oneself what each
particular section of code does.  However, in BASIC, there are two
things which tend to deter one from following this practice.  The first
is that the interpreter has to recognise a REM statement before it knows
to ignore it.  This takes time, which may be undesirable in procedures
and loops.  The second deterrent is the amount of space taken by the
text of the comment, which is stored verbatim in the program.
4.02
I have a practice, when commenting procedures and functions, of placing
explanatory comments outside the procedure/function block.  For
instance:
4.02
   program segment missing
4.02
Clearly, the above practice prevents the REM statements from impacting
the performance of the procedure/function, as they are in section of the
code which the interpreter will never see.
4.02
This last observation leads to an additional possibility for interpreted
code (but not for compiled BASIC).  Since the interpreter never sees
these lines between procedure/function blocks, the normal syntax rules
can be broken without an error being generated.  Thus, we can save some
space, as well as execution time, by omitting the REM key words.  Note
that this will only work if the comments are where the interpreter
cannot see them.  If you are in the habit of using GOTO statements
(sometimes a handy way of removing umpteen layers of IF... THEN... ELSE
statements if you are checking for exceptions and, despite common
‘wisdom’, still used frequently by professional programmers), this
placing of syntactically incorrect code beyond the bounds of a procedure
block might allow the trapping of such errors as omitting the ENDPROC or
= statements.  David Hazel.
4.02
• Star LC10 − An undocumented feature on a Star LC10 Colour Printer, is
that if you open out a file to the printer and try and print characters
27 and 102 to it, it prints out the current dip switch setting:
4.02
   program segment missing
4.02
Jason Ede.
4.02
• System Variables (continued from 4.1 p9 & 4.1 p10) − I had had similar
problems and came up with a different solution which can solve both
problems, i.e. reading system variables to BASIC and passing system
variables to the Filer module.  I use a call to OS_EvaluateExpression,
which can return a numeric or string value, as follows:
4.02
   program segment missing
4.02
This is an artificial example; in practice you would know whether you
were expecting a numeric value or a string, such as Obey$Dir.  Lorcan
Mongey.
4.02

• Basic Text File Type − Acorn have specified field type &FD1 for BASIC
ASCII text.  This is very useful for BASIC programs which are kept in
!Edit format as it allows the user to define a RunType for them.  For
example, the following command will cause a BASIC text file to be run
just like a normal BASIC file:
4.03
   *Set Alias$@RunType_FD1 Basic-quit |“%0|” %*1
4.03
Jim Markland, Cirencester.
4.03
• Converting old Arthur programs to RISC OS − Before the days of RISC-
OS, programs running under the old Arthur used a form of reconfigure
system to adjust the CMOS RAM settings.  Now that RISC-OS is available,
those programs are out of date, and are a pain, as in most cases they
don’t “Boot-Up” from the desktop.
4.03
RISC-OS uses a different form of reconfiguring.  Two in fact − one is
the WimpSlot command, which tells the computer the minimum and maximum
amount of memory the program is going to need and the other uses the
module MemAlloc, found in the !Lander directory on Application disc 2.
4.03
These two things are quite easy to use.  The only problem is how to find
out how much room the program is going to use.  This can be discovered
fairly easily.
4.03
Load up the !Boot file and examine it using the BASIC Editor.  What you
are looking for are a set of commands/variables, which tell the computer
the amount of SpriteSize/Screensize, etc it is going to need to run.  To
convert this, all you need is the MemAlloc module, and in a run file,
use MemAlloc to allocate the memory needed for the application.
4.03
Here are some examples:
4.03
Holed Out
4.03
1. Format a fresh new disc
4.03
2. Create a new directory called !HoledOut
4.03
3. Copy all the files on the original Holed Out disc, except the !Boot
file into the new directory.
4.03
4. Copy MemAlloc into the !HoledOut directory.
4.03
5. Use !Edit to create the following Obey file:
4.03
   program segment missing
4.03
6. Load HoledOut 2 into the BASIC Editor and, where the program loads a
particular file, change it to
4.03
   (LoadCommand) <HoledOut$Dir>. (File to be loaded)
4.03
for example
4.03
   70 *RMLOAD BELL
4.03
change to
4.03
   70 *RMLOAD <HoledOut$Dir>.Bell
4.03
and
4.03
   610 CHAIN “HOLEDOUT3”
4.03
change to
4.03
   610 CHAIN  “<HoledOut$Dir>.HOLEDOUT3”
4.03
etc, etc.
4.03
7. Do the same as above to the file HOLEDOUT3, wherever the program
loads a particular file, put the command<HoledOut$Dir>. in front of the
filename.
4.03
8. Create a !Sprite file for the application icon and away you go!
4.03
Then HoledOut should run as a RISC-OS application, and will also run off
a Hard Drive (N.B. I used Holed Out Extra Courses 1)
4.03
Explanation of !Run File:
4.03
Line 1:  Tells the computer to set a directory, and to enter it without
changing the root directory whenever the <HoledOut$Dir> command is used.
4.03
Line 2:  Allocates the minimum and maximum amount of memory needed to
run the application.
4.03
Line 3:  Tells the computer to look for the module MemAlloc in memory,
if it isn’t found then it tells the computer where to find it and loads
it.
4.03
Lines 4-9:  Tell the computer the memory settings the program needs.
4.03
Line 10:  Kills the module MemAlloc for more memory.
4.03
Line 11:  Runs the actual program.
4.03
Pacmania:
4.03
In this case, things are a little different.  So do the following:
4.03
1.  Format a new disc.
4.03
2.  Create a new directory called !PacMania.
4.03
3.  Copy all the files except !Boot into the new directory.
4.03
4.  Use !Edit to create an Obey file containing the following...
4.03
   Set PacMania$Dir <Obey$Dir>
4.03
   Run <PacMania$Dir>.!RunLoad
4.03
5.  Use the BASIC Editor to create a file called !RunLoad...
4.03
   10 *Load <PacMania$Dir>.PacMania 10000
4.03
   20 CALL &100000
4.03
6.  Create an application !Sprite file.
4.03
PacMania should then run as a RISC-OS application.
4.03
So there we are, I’ve also used another command to help with the loading
process.  <Obey$Dir> and <(Application name)$Dir>.  These two commands
tell the computer where to find certain files, no matter where they are.
(Hidden in directories on a hard drive for example.)  Duncan Burbidge.
4.03
• Getting Taxan 795 to work with Archimedes.  The Taxan 795 is an
excellent multi-sync colour monitor, but it was a bit unnerving, on
unpacking and assembling my new A440 with VIDC Enhancer and 795 monitor,
to be confronted with a screen which just would not synchronize!  But,
with help from Paul and from Atomwide, and with a lot of exploration, I
think that I now know what screen modes it will support and how to get
them.
4.03
Initially, the trick is to set *CONFIGURE MONITORTYPE 1 and *CONFIGURE
WIMPMODE20.  Then the machine wakes up in the desktop in mode 20 whether
or not the VIDC enhancer software (VIDCmodes for the 795) is installed,
provided that (if it is not installed) the VIDC switch is ‘off’.
However, if VIDCmodes is not installed, loading an application which
changes the mode to one of the basic Archimedes modes (0-17) plunges you
back into an unsynchronized screen.  Therefore, my initial explorations
were done with an ordinary monchrome monitor connected to the sync BNC
socket, after changing two links on the circuit board − as explained on
page 434 of the RISC-OS user guide.  Options for all Acorn and Atomwide
modes (except the high-resolution mono mode 23) are listed in the
accompanying table.  (See opposite.)  Bill Mapleson.
4.03
• Keywords in BASIC − I have found that PRINT ‘SHIFT F1’ showed a lower
case underline ‘a’.  From BASIC on pressing return to ‘PRINT’ the result
I found a number that looked just like TIME.  It was.  SHIFT F2 gives
HIMEM and SHIFT F3 = LOWMEM.  No other Fkey gives a number, but they all
act as quick entry keys for use in BASIC program writing within ARMB
edit.  They must be programmed with BASIC keyword token values.
4.03
I expect this is widely known but here is the list for completeness.
4.03
   program segment missing
4.03
Simon Anthony, Nottingham.
4.03
• Locating screen coordinates − When writing wimp programs (out of
desktop) it’s often hard to plot things because you’re not sure what the
coordinates of the screen are.  Using the program below, it is possible
to do this.
4.03
   program segment missing
4.03
I hope the program is of some use to wimp programmers.  Duncan Burbidge.
4.03
• MSDOS installation on hard disc − Here is a summary of the steps for
getting an MSDOS partition installed onto a hard disc.
4.03
1. (This step applies only if you have an old PCEmulator, e.g. V1.20,
and a V1.33 upgrade disc)
4.03
(a) Read ‘ReadMe2’ on the V1.33 disc.
4.03
(b) Run ‘MakePC’ on the V1.33 disc.  (This copies the file !PC.Rom from
the 1.20 disc to the 1.33 disc.  Although the desktop displays this as a
‘text’ file, I reckon that in fact it is the emulator itself and that
all the other files are concerned with preparing the Archimedes to run
the Emulator.)
4.03
2.  Read ‘ReadMe’ on V1.33 but don’t take too much notice of it − it
confused me a lot!
4.03
3.  Examine the files !PC.GenBoot.! Config and !PC.GenBoot.!Modules.  If
you have more than 1M of RAM, it may be worth changing some of the ‘Y’s
to ’N’s in !Config.  When I first tried it, without any changes, my
screen went blank because my Taxan 795 monitor requires the VIDC
Enhancer and the VIDCmodes software installed in order to synchronize
when not in modes 18-21.  With a 4M machines, I decided to make all the
response ‘N’ and everything seemed OK.
4.03
4.  If you have a SCSI hard disc (as I have), run !SCSIDisk.  This
renames !PC.SCSIRun2 to !PC.!Run2 and !PC.!Run2 to !PC.!ADSF[sic]Run2.
That is, it makes !Run2 the file that defines where the MSDOS partition
is to be placed − on a SCSI hard disc not on an ADFS one.  !SCSIDisk
then creates a file ‘PC.Drive_C’ on the SCSI disc of the size you
request (1 to 32M).  This file can be *TYPEd from the Archimedes command
line − but don’t do it until everything is complete because its contents
misled me!  The screen then displays information for running two MSDOS
commands:  FDISK and HDINSTAL.  It also displays the injunction ‘Press
ESC’ to stop:  Press RETURN to continue‘.
4.03
5.  If you press <return>, the instructions are cleared from the screen;
the PC Emulator is loaded, and you are invited to put the MSDOS boot
disk into ‘DriveA’ (Drive0).  Doing so, and pressing <return>, loads
MSDOS which asks for date and time − but pressing <return> in response
to each request supplies the information from the system clock.  When
the ‘A>’ prompt appears, you need to carry out the instructions that
were recently wiped off the screen:  Type ‘FDISK’, then ‘1’ to create a
DOS partition, then ‘Y’ to assign all of file Drive_C to DOS: then
‘HDINSTAL’ which formats the hard disc and transfers the MSDOS system
files from the floppy MSDOS boot disc to the hard disc.
4.03
6.  If you press ESC (at the ‘ESC to stop, <return> to continue’
injunction) and need to run !SCSIDisk again, beware that this will re-
rename the !Run2 files.  I avoided this by ‘Remming’ the *rename
statements in !SCSIDisk.!RunImage.  (This is a BASIC program from which
it would appear that the procedure for installing MSDOS on an ADFS hard
disc would be the same without the complication of renaming the !Run2
files.)
4.03
7.  Once MSDOS is safely on the hard disc, the !PC application can be
transferred from the V1.33 disk to the PC directory on the hard disk.
4.03
8.  One last complication fo me was that when I type ‘HDINSTAL’ I go the
quaint message ‘insert new diskette in drive C’ and, on pressing
<return>, ‘drive not read − format failure’.  Eventually, after many
hours and several phone calls, the explanation turned out to be that I
have two external 5.1/4“ drives and MSDOS was seeing the second of these
as Drive C and the SCSI hard disc as Drive D.  To avoid amending
HDINSTAL (which is a simple batch file) I told RISC-OS that it had only
two floppy drives (*CONFIGURE FLOPPIES 2, followed by <ctrl-break>) and
all went smoothly.  Subsequently I reconfigured to three floppies and
now MSDOS wakes up with a ‘D>’ prompt ready to run from the hard disc.
The most useful tool for finding out what MSDOS thinks it has is to type
CHKDSKA:.CHKDSKB: etc,
4.03
9.  Finally, in RISC-OS, lock the ‘Drive_C’ file.  I’m astonished that
this is not done by the PCEmulator programs.  Without it, a careless
click in RISC-OS might destroy all your MSDOS files!  Bill Mapleson.
4.03
• Saving your configuration settings − I recently needed to change the
batteries in my Archimedes but this meant that I would lose the
configuration settings stored in the CMOS RAM.  I managed to solve the
problem by writing two small programs that saved and then restored the
CMOS RAM settings to and from a file.
4.03
   program segment missing
4.03
Sham Gardner, Karlsruhe (Germany).
4.03
(The other way of doing it is to open the computer, switch the computer
on, change the batteries, switch off and then put the computer back
together again − but I dare not suggest that you should do that because
someone might stick a screwdriver into the heavily protected p.s.u. and
I’d get blames − so I didn’t suggest it, OK? Ed.)
4.03
• Wimpslotting warning.  Always give the maximum amount of memory your
program is going to use.  Otherwise, the computer will eat up all the
available memory and use it for the program and you can’t get the memory
back unless you quit the application!  This happens in FormEd (All
versions, I would assume).  The FormEd !Run file contains the line:
4.03
   WimpSlot -min 288k
4.03
Using !Edit, change this line to...
4.03
   WimpSlot -min 288k -max 288k
4.03
The program will then run, using up less memory, meaning that both
!FormEd and !Paint can run at the same time on a 1M machine.  You have
been warned.  Duncan Burbidge.
4.03

• Cheats − Here are some cheats for various games.  (I suggest that if
you do any of these, you do not use the original disc, but rather work
on a copy.  Ed.)
4.04
Cheat for Minerva’s BattleTank  If you run the following program you
will have however many lives you specified at line 20:
4.04
   program segment missing
4.04
Cheat for 4th Dimension’s Inertia - Type in the following and then each
time you lose a life, you won’t!
4.04
   program segment missing
4.04
Cheat for 4th Dimension’s Man-At-Arms − The passwords for the 3 stages
are: INCUBUS, STRANGE and PULSARS
4.04
   progam segment missing
4.04
When you run this program, it will allow you loads of lives, punches and
lots of energy.  Be careful not to set any of the variables at &FF
because it does tend to make the program crash!
4.04
Cheat for Minerva’s RedShift − Once the game has loaded, type the
following:
4.04
   PHASING GERALD
4.04
Note:  When you pressed <11>, the screen will change to the Help screen.
Take no notice of this and keep typing the rest of the words in.
Remember that there is a space between the two words!
4.04
If you have entered this correctly, you will hear a bleep.  Then just
press <1> or <2> to play the game and when your Energy is low just press
<E> and you’ll see the energy level is full again!  Also, when your
TurboEnergy is low press <T> and you will be back to full strength!
4.04
Cheat for 4th Dimension’s E-Type − The following will give you as many
minutes as you like to get round each track:
4.04
   program segment missing
4.04
Type in the above and you’ll have all the time you want to round each
track!  Mark Faulkner.
4.04
• DOS RAM Disc − In DOS, it is possible to set up a RAM disc and indeed,
for many applications, it is vital to do so if one does not have the
luxury of a hard disc.  Regular DOS supports a maximum of 640 kbytes of
RAM, although we did learn about Extended Memory in last month’s
Archive.  The problem with a DOS RAM disc is that the memory is actually
taken from the 640k system RAM.  At least it certainly is with current
versions of the PC Emulator.
4.04
A few months ago, an application appeared on the magazine disc called
!PCRamDisc.  This made use of the fact that the PC emulator can support
up to two “hard disc” partitions and that one of these could be in the
Archimedes RAM disc filing system.  (In fact one of these can be on an
ADFS floppy!).  In this way, a large RAM disc can be used within DOS
which does not take anything from the regulation DOS 640k.  This seemed
a really good idea and I was eager to try it out.
4.04
The program which produced the DOS partition is a variation of the Acorn
program to construct a hard disc partition but with the filing system
and paths changed and with the allowed partition sizes also changed to
more convenient values.  Having created such a partition, the !Run2 file
must be modified to tell the machine where the partitions are.
4.04
Then, when the emulator is run, the new “drive” must be initialised
using FDISK and then formatted using FORMAT.  This part really annoyed
me as I had to do it each time I used the emulator, and I kept for
getting what to do.
4.04
It seemed a good idea to create a ready-formatted and initialised
partition before entering the emulator.  I am sure someone could write a
program to do this, but not me.  Obviously, it would be silly to store,
say, a 2 megabyte partition in readiness; this is just a waste of space.
However, I discovered that an initialised, formatted, but otherwise
empty DOS partition of one megabyte capacity could be compressed to just
over a kilobyte using Archimedes ARC, a Public Domain file compression/
decompression program written by David Pilling.
4.04
On the magazine disc there is an application called !PCRamDisk (note the
different spelling).  This contains a compressed but empty DOS partition
which is decompressed into the RAMFS before invoking the PC emulator.
Please read the !Help file before using it as the !Run2 file of the
emulator is overwritten when the application is run.  Brian Cowan.
4.04

Hints and Tips
4.5
•   ANSI C v3 on a SCSI Hard  Disc – After some trial an error, I finally
managed to install ANSI C v3 correctly on my new Oak SCSI card with 45Mb
hard disc drive.  Here’s what I had to do:
4.5
First change line 3390 in the ‘InstallNet’ program which is on all three
of the ANSI C discs so that it reads:
4.5
3390 DATA “ADFS::0.$”,“NET:$”,“SCSI::SCSIDisc4.$”
4.5
Then run the “InstallHD” program from each disc and always answer ‘Y’ on
the overwrite options (otherwise, the back up program would stop).
4.5
If you use the included !Cstart obey file, you should not ‘*Set
Run$Path’ in your !boot file and you should remember to modify the
!Cstart file to work with SCSI and not ADFS i.e. c$loc SCSI::4.$
4.5
Atle Baardholt, Norway
4.5
•   Deskjet Plus ink cartridges, recharging − Further to Bill Graham’s
note in Archive 4.2 p8, I’ve found that Quinx Permanent Black works well
and is probably cheaper than Art Pen Ink. You do need to be careful that
you don’t inject more ink than the sponge will absorb, otherwise the
mess is dreadful!  Stuart Bell, Brighton.
4.5
•   DropShip passwords − Passwords for DropShip are Dahlia, Gaggle, Kaunda
and Nautch.
4.5
•   ExAllPlus − This is a non-Wimp program which was written in an attempt
to catalogue my discs. It was designed for use with a single ADFS Floppy
drive and a SCSI Hard disc together with a Star LC10 printer using
continuous paper. Other printers may require some alteration to the
coding.
4.5
Most existing “ExAll” and “CatAll” programs invoke the *EX and *CAT
calls (!) which produce a lot of unnecessary and confusing duplication
of libraries, directories etc. (I have memories of the reams of paper
produced by an  “ExAll” print-out of the original Archimedes Welcome
disc.) To avoid this, these calls have been re-written so that, in
addition to other changes, the directory headings have been reduced to
path descriptions.
4.5
The program will produce both screen and printed listings of either the
full disc or the root directory. The various options are selected by a
series of key-strokes and a default screen “ExAll” routine has been set-
up which can be easily customised.
4.5
Use can be made of the condensed print option to produce catalogue
listings eight entries wide as against the usual five. This rather
spoils the screen display in this mode but it was thought useful to
maintain a check on the output to the printer. When using this option to
produce “EX” listings the screen display is OK and the reverse feed
facility of the Star LC10 enables double column print-outs to be
obtained.
4.5
The “GetType” program is loaded in by the main “ExAllPlus” code and
contains all the FileType codes I have been able to find but it can
easily be updated.
4.5
(The listing is far too long to put in the magazine. I have put it on
the monthly program disc. Ed.)
4.5
Doug Tuddenham
4.5
•   First Word Plus embedded commands − If you switch off the Word
Processor mode of FWP you can enter printer commands directly into the
text.  Double bracket command codes e.g. ((n))n1 can be entered to
change the printer font and style. For example, with a Star LC24-200 in
the following effects can be achieved:
4.5
Font   ((F))0   Times Roman
4.5
      ((F))1   Sans Serif
4.5
      ((F))2   Courier
4.5
      ((F))3   Prestige
4.5
      ((F))4   Script
4.5
      ((F))5   Draft
4.5
Size   ((S))0   Standard
4.5
      ((S))1   Double Width
4.5
      ((S))2   Double Height
4.5
      ((S))3   Double Width and Height
4.5
Colour   ((C))0   Black
4.5
      ((C))1   Red
4.5
      ((C))2   Blue
4.5
      ((C))3   Violet
4.5
      ((C))4   Yellow
4.5
      ((C))5   Orange
4.5
      ((C))6   Green
4.5
Peter Thomas, Leics
4.5
•   FWP Cut and Paste − It is possible to cut a marked block of text in a
First Word Plus document and then paste it into another document.  Both
documents must be loaded first.  This may be obvious but I have only
just found out – the hard way.  Dave Livsey, Devon
4.5
•   Impression hints & tips − Now that I am using Impression for the
magazine, there are likely to be a number of hints & tips forthcoming.
Some of these may be obvious to the more experienced Impression users,
but bear with me because some of us are only just beginning and, in
fact, the experiences of someone just starting to use an application can
often be very helpful to others going through the same hoop. Also, when
you have been using an application for a while, you build up the feeling
that you know how it works and there may be facilities which you never
realised were available which new users pick up. Anyway, here are the
first few...
4.5
Adding styles to titles − If you want to add a style to a title, be sure
to select the whole line including the carriage return. In other words
either put the cursor by the left hand margin and drag down to the next
line or triple-click somewhere on the line. (I’m sure you all know that
double-click selects a word, triple-click selects a line and quadruple-
click (or <ctrl-@>) selects a whole paragraph.) The reason for selecting
in this way is that if you only select by dragging across the line, you
omit the carriage return which remains in the base style. The problem
with this is that if, as in the title lines in Archive, the added style
says “reduce the space after the paragraph to zero”, the carriage return
still has the full space-after-paragraph so the paragraph spacing
remains unchanged.
4.5
Entering point sizes − If you want to change the size of some text, you
mark it and press <shift-ctrl-S>. If the dialogue box is empty, you can
type in a number, say 18, and it will assume you mean 18 point. If you
decide that you want it a bit bigger and press <shift-ctrl-S> again, it
comes up with “18pt” in the box. If you then type in, say, 2 <return> it
will interpret the “18pt2” as (18+2)pt and will give you 20pt! (Well, it
works in version 2.05.) Unfortunately, if you press <-> to try to put,
say, -2, it seems to interpret it as an escape and closes the box.
4.5
Marking, deleting and re-typing − (This is something that is obvious to
people coming to Impression via the Mac but may have been missed by
people brought up through RISC-OS.) If some text is marked, by any
means, and you want to replace it by some text you are about to type in,
there is no need to delete the marked text first. As soon as you start
to type, the marked text is deleted and transferred to the scrap-pad and
your typing appears in place of it. The deleted text can be used
elsewhere by pasting it in with <ctrl-V>.
4.5
Quick searching − If you want to find something quickly, find/replace is
a good way to do it. Call it up with <ctrl-f4> and then, to delete the
text already in the dialogue box, press <ctrl-U>, then type in the word
you are looking for and press <return>. (This use of <ctrl-U> applies to
all dialogue boxes − useful when saving a document under a new name.)
Remember though that it searches from the cursor downwards, so add a
<ctrl-uparrow> before calling up the find/replace box. (In the version I
have, 2.05, the cursor is sometimes not re-displayed in its new position
after a find/replace has been executed. In other words, it appears to be
still where you left it but it may actually be further down the document
so it’s worth getting into the habit of using <ctrl-uparrow> anyway.)
Also, don’t get tripped up, as I just did. If you set the “case
sensitive” option, it stays set until you switch it off again. So, if
you can’t find a word that you know is in there somewhere, check that
you have not left it in the case-sensitive mode from the last time you
used it.
4.5
Replacing double spaces − I was trying to do a selective search and
replace to remove double spaces and replace them with single spaces.
When I told it to find the next one, it sometimes didn’t appear to mark
anything. Most peculiar!  Eventually, I realised what was happening. The
text was fully justified and the double spaces (the same would apply to
finding single spaces) were between the last word on one line and the
first on the next line. Thus Impression was marking the infinitesimally
small space at the end of the line, i.e. was marking nothing at all.
There’s nothing you can do about it (apart from removing the full
justification) but at least if you are aware of the problem, you won’t
be so baffled when it happens.
4.5
Searching for hyphens − In some versions of Impression, it is not
possible to search and replace hyphens. I discovered this because, for
ease of typing, I was using a double hyphen where I wanted a dash in the
text, the idea being to replace them later. Impression refused to find
any occurrences of hyphen-hyphen. Consultation with CC revealed that
improvements in automatic hyphenation have resulted in this problem. The
way round it is to search for — and replace it with −. Note the spaces
after the backslash and before the 45.
4.5
Smart quotes − If you want smart quotes in a text, i.e. the curly ones
instead of the straight ones on the key next to the return key, you can
type them in using <ctrl-]> and <ctrl-\> for single quotes and <shift-
ctrl-]> and <shift-ctrl-\> for double quotes. However, if you think
that’s a bit of a fag to remember, use the normal quotes and then,
before printing, save the file (just in case of operator error!), save
the text with styles (perhaps to a ram disc as it’s only temporary),
select the whole text (<ctrl-T>), delete it and finally drop the saved
text back into the document. As the text is re-loaded, quotes are
automatically ‘smartened’.
4.5
Switching styles on and off − Those of you brought up in the Mac world
may not have realised, as I didn’t until today(!) that if you want
something in, say, bold, all you have to do is press <f4> to switch it
on, type in the bit that is to be in bold and then press <f4> again.
Obvious? Yes, it may be to those who come new to Impression but for
those of us steeped in Mac techniques, it comes as a welcome surprise.
4.5
If there are things about using Impression that ‘came as a surprise’ to
you, send them in to us (preferably on disc) and we’ll share them with
other Impression users. We may even need an Impression Column.
4.5
•   Rotor and other games’ passwords − One way to obtain the Rotor
passwords (and possibly other games) is to load each of the game’s files
into !Edit and use the ‘Find’ option to look for the first password.
When the password is found, the remaining passwords should be in the
next couple of lines.  Andrew Campbell, Devon
4.5
•   Sony TV / Monitor − I was told by Beebug that I couldn’t use my Sony
TV as a monitor with the A3000, but in fact this is quite easy to do.
The sony TV requires a signal on pin 16 (blanking input) of the Scart
plug, which can simply be connected to pin 20 (video input).  Keith
Raven, Slough
4.5
•   Z88 file transfer − Here is a little utility for people who wish to
transfer files from the Archimedes straight into suspended memory on the
Z88.  It saves having to break a file into smaller sections first and,
of course, there is always a memory overhead in having at least part of
the file held in the Z88 Filer.  With this BASIC program, the filer is
by-passed altogether.
4.5
 10 REM >Suspender
4.5
 20 REM Transfer file from Arc to Z88 suspended memory
4.5
 30 REM ** IMPORTANT: Set z88 receive baud rate at 2400 (in panel) **
4.5
 40 *CAT
4.5
 50 *FX 8,5
4.5
 60 INPUT “Send file? ”file$
4.5
 70 *FX 3,119
4.5
 80 OSCLI(“Type ”+file$)
4.5
 90 FOR i%=1 TO 350
4.5
100 PRINT “#”
4.5
110 NEXT i% : REM these pad chars are need for certain types of file
4.5
120 *FX 3,0
4.5
To load a file into PipeDream, enter “:COM” as the “Name of file to
load” in the files menu.  Then run “Suspender” and immediately press
<return> on the Z88.  Finally, when the BASIC prompt reappears on the
Archimedes screen, press <esc> on the Z88.
4.5
It is kinder to your disc drive to copy the target file into the
Archimedes’ RAM filing system first.
4.5
Jonathan Barnes, Watford
4.5
The following Hints and Tips come from Hugh Eagle of the West Sussex
Archimedes User Group.
4.5
•   Disappearing paragraph spaces in FWP – If, at the end of a paragraph,
you type a space immediately before the carriage return, the carriage
return will be deleted when you subsequently reformat the paragraph.
Believe it or not, this is a “feature” of First Word Plus (documented in
the version 1 manual on page 110)!
4.5
•   Loading sprite files – When you double click on a sprite file icon,
sometimes it is displayed at the bottom left-hand corner of a blank
screen and sometimes in a !Paint window.  This is because the action the
computer takes when you try to “run” a sprite file depends on the
contents of the system variable Alias$@RunType_FF9.  This variable is
defined by default, when the Archimedes is switched on, as “ScreenLoad
%0”.  The effect of this is that when you double click on a sprite file
(type &FF9) icon, the operating system executes the instruction
*ScreenLoad [filename]; this clears the screen and then displays the
first sprite in the file at the graphics origin. However, when the
Desktop Filer “sees” the !Paint application (i.e. when a directory
window is opened in which !Paint is included) it runs the !Paint.!Boot
file which, amongst other things, redefines Alias$@RunType_FF9  in such
a way that when a sprite file is “run” the !Paint application is started
up (that is if it is not already running) and the file is loaded in.
4.5
•   Listing the contents of your (hard) disk – The operating system
command “*Count :4.$.* RV” will catalogue the contents of the root
directory and every sub-directory.  As explained on pages 279/280 of the
User Guide, the output from this command can be redirected to the
printer by adapting the command to “*Count :4.$.* RV {printer: } ”
4.5
Note: the spaces around the curly brackets and the > sign are important.
4.5
This method will redirect the output to the printer without displaying
it on the screen. An alternative method will send all text that is
displayed on the screen to the printer as well: first press <ctrl-B>
(i.e. hold down the ctrl key and simultaneously type B), then issue the
command “*Count :4.$.* RV” then, when the listing has finished, press
<ctrl-C>.
4.5
•   Removing PC Access –  The menu which appears when you click the menu
button over any of the PC Access icons on the icon bar has no Quit
option and the application doesn’t seem to appear in the Task Manager
window.  In fact, the application does appear in the Task Manager window
... in the “Module Tasks” section. Clicking the menu button over the
application’s name there and moving to the Task ‘PC Access’ sub-menu
gives a “Quit” option.
4.5
•   Printing via a PC – For some time I have been perplexed to find that
when I try to print a file created by the Archimedes !PrinterLJ printer
driver to a LaserJet printer attached to a PC, the printout stops part
way down the page. At first I thought it must be because of  limited
memory in the printer so I tried creating the file at a lower print
density but this made no difference to how much of the page was printed.
4.5
I think I have now hit on the answer, namely that, when using the MS-DOS
Copy command to print a file which includes control codes, it is a good
idea to use the /b “switch”, using the syntax:
4.5
copy [filename]/b LPT1
4.5
The insertion of /b after the filename causes MS-DOS to copy in “binary”
mode: i.e. it copies as many bytes as there are in the file. Otherwise,
in text mode, copying will continue only until the first end-of-file
marker (Ctrl-Z or ASCII character 26) is reached whereupon it will stop.
It is of course highly likely that a graphic printfile of many thousands
of bytes will contain this character several times, so it is not
surprising that only part of the page is printed!
4.5
•   Viewing !Draw files – The standard way to view a draw file is to load
it into !Draw. However, this has an irritating tendency to place the
part of the picture you want to see outside the visible window. There
are (at least) two convenient ways of avoiding this problem:
4.5
One is to load the file into the !Display application from Shareware 26.
The other is to load it into an Impression frame (or, presumably, a
frame in one of the other DTP applications). In either case, the drawing
is scaled to fit the frame (the aspect ratio is preserved, so the
picture fills either the height of the frame or the width). One
advantage of Impression is that the frame can very easily be resized and
the drawing thereby magnified; another is that it makes it very simple
to display a number of drawings on a page and create an illustrated
catalogue.
4.5
•   Floppy disc E format – So far as I know, the detailed format of ADFS
discs has not been published either in any of the manuals or in Archive.
Having recently deleted some files by mistake and been forced into some
detective work in order to recover them, I thought it might be helpful
to write down what I have found out about “E” format floppy discs:–
4.5
With two sides, 80 tracks on each side, 5 sectors on each track, the
disc has 800 sectors of 1024 (&400) bytes each. The sectors can be
thought of as being numbered from 0 to 799 in the following order:
4.5
   Track   Head   Sector
4.5
       0       0       0
4.5
       0       0       1
4.5
       0       0       2
4.5
       0       0       3
4.5
       0       0       4
4.5
       0       1       0
4.5
       .       .       .
4.5
       0       1       4
4.5
       1       0       0
4.5
       .       .       .
4.5
       .       .       .
4.5
      79       1       4
4.5
Each byte on the disc has a “disc address” equal to the sector number,
as defined above, times &400 plus the number of bytes into the sector.
Put it another way:
4.5
the disc address    =   (((( track * 2 ) + head ) * 5 ) + sector ) *
&400 + bytes into sector
4.5
Map format − The first two sectors on the disc contain duplicate copies
of the disc map. The first 64 bytes of the map contain the following
information:
4.5
byte  0   a checksum byte
4.5
bytes 1/2   the number of bits to the place in the map which marks the
first free space on the disc, counting from the beginning of byte 1 (if
there is no free space this number will be zero); the top bit of the 16
is always set, so, for instance, the value &8310 in these two bytes
would indicate that the first free space in the map could be found &310
bits or &310 DIV 8 bytes from byte 1, i.e. at byte &63
4.5
byte  3   &FF
4.5
bytes 4-35   the “disc record” as described on pages 1012/3 of the PRM
containing various details about the disc size, etc. which are the same
on all “E” format discs, ending with the Disc ID at bytes 24/5 and the
disc name from byte 26 to byte 35.
4.5
bytes 36-63   reserved (all zero)
4.5
bytes 64-863 (800 bytes) – the actual disc map.
4.5
Each byte in the map represents one disc sector and the contents of the
map indicate how the disc is divided up between the various objects
(directories and files) on it. Each portion of the map is at least 2
bytes long, it begins with an identifying number (max. 15 bits), ends
with a 1 in the top bit of the last byte and all the bits in between are
zero. Thus, for instance, if the file with the identifying number 7
occupies 3 sectors the relevant portion of the map reads as follows:
4.5
first byte   &07
4.5
next byte   &00
4.5
last byte   &80  (1 in the top bit)
4.5
The lowest identifying number is 2 and is reserved for the four sectors
which are initialised when the disc is formatted and which comprise the
two map sectors followed by the two sectors containing the root
directory. Identifying numbers are then allocated, in order, as new
objects are created.
4.5
A file may be fragmented into several pieces, in which case several
portions of the map will contain the same identifying number.
4.5
The portions of the map indicating free space on the disc are linked
together by a chain of pointers. As mentioned above, bytes 1 and 2, at
the start of the map sector, point to the first free space in the map.
At that point there is a similar pointer to the next free space (if any)
and so on until the last free space is reached, where the pointer is
zero.
4.5
A defective sector on the disc is identified in the map by number 1.
4.5
Directory structure − Each directory takes up two sectors. As mentioned
above, the root directory occupies the third and fourth sectors on the
disc (from disc address &800 to &FFF). Any sub-directory can be located
by looking up the relevant entry in its parent directory, finding the
identifying number (in the manner described below) and looking up the
number in the disc map.
4.5
The first five bytes in a directory contain a checksum byte followed by
the string “Nick”. Then there are up to 77 entries of 26 bytes each
representing the various objects (files and sub-directories) in the
directory.
4.5
The format of each of these entries is:
4.5
bytes  0-9   name of file or sub-directory
4.5
bytes 10-13   load address
4.5
bytes 14-17   execution address
4.5
bytes 18-21   file length
4.5
byte  22   sector offset (see below)
4.5
bytes 23-24   identifying number as used in the map
4.5
byte  25   file attributes.
4.5
If the top 12 bits of the load address are all set (i.e. are &FFF) this
means that the file is “stamped” and the remainder of the load and
execution address fields are used to record the file type and date stamp
as follows:
4.5
load address      FFFtttdd
4.5
execution addressdddddddd
4.5
(the bottom byte of the load address field being used for the top byte
of the 5-byte format date and time record).
4.5
Note: in a disc sector editor which shows the bytes in order with the
lowest byte of each word first, these 8 bytes will appear as   “dd tt Ft
FF dd dd dd dd”.
4.5
If not all the top 12 bits are set, the load and execution addresses
will (as their names suggest) determine what the computer does when the
file is *LOADed or *RUN (or double-clicked from the Desktop).
4.5
The sector offset in byte 22 is used where two files are mapped into the
same portion of the disc. In such a case the files share the same
identifying number (in bytes 23/4) but byte 22 indicates how many
sectors into the portion each file starts.
4.5
A typical example of this would involve two small files each fitting
into one disc sector (they might for instance be !Boot, !Run or !Sprites
files within an application directory). Because the minimum size of a
map entry is 2 bytes representing 2 sectors on the disc, it would be
inefficient to give each file a separate map entry, so the two files
would be made to share. In this case, assuming the shared identifying
number is say 8, bytes 23 and 24 of the directory entries for both files
would be &08 and &00 but byte 22 would be &01 for the file that occupies
the first sector and &02 for the second.
4.5
In the usual situation where a file has a map entry to itself, byte 22
is zero.
4.5
The bits of byte 25 (the file attributes byte) are used as follows:
4.5
bit  0   object has read access for you
4.5
bit  1   object has write access for you
4.5
bit  2   undefined
4.5
bit  3   object is locked against deletion
4.5
bit  4   object has read access for others
4.5
bit  5   object has write access for others
4.5
bit  6   undefined
4.5
bit  7   undefined
4.5
Bits 4 and 5 only have meaning to the network filing system. Bits 2, 6
and 7 should be set to zero.
4.5
General note: If you want to explore disc maps and directories it is
very handy to have a disc sector editor such as the !DiscEdit appli
cation on Careware 2. Failing that it is reasonably easy to construct a
program to read from a disc sector by sector (rather than file by file)
and to display the contents. The key to such a program is the SWI call
“ADFS_DiscOp”. For instance, the BASIC instruction:
4.5
SYS “ADFS_DiscOp”,0,1,address%,buffer%,length%
4.5
will read starting at the “disc address” (as defined above) given in the
variable address%, the number of bytes given in length% (1024 for one
sector) into the address in RAM stored in buffer%. Obviously, a certain
amount of caution is advisable since a very similar command (replacing 1
with 2 for instance) could result in writing to and corrupting the
contents of a disc.
4.5

4.5

4.5
{4 .5
•   Caverns − A simple map and the passwords are given at the end of the
magazine on page 60. Neil Berry

Impression Hints and Tips
4.6
Here are a few more hints and tips mostly from the editor’s dabblings in
preparing the magazine...
4.6
•   Dashes − If you, like me, don’t like to see hyphens used where dashes
should be used − i.e. in places like this − you will probably be sick
and fed up of typing <alt-153>. (Note that the character in “alt-153” is
a hyphen, just in case you weren’t aware of the difference.) If you are
importing text into Impression, occurrences of ‘hyphen hyphen’ will be
converted automatically by Impression into a long dash — see what I
mean. Personally, I prefer the shorter one so what I have done is set up
the abbreviation dictionary with ‘expand as you type’ and used an
underline character to be turned into a dash. The only drawback is that
it’s OK for things like the dashes earlier in this paragraph, but if,
for example, you use dashes in phone numbers, as 0603−766592, the
abbreviation technique does not work and you are back to  <alt-153>.
Anyone any other ideas?
4.6
•   Find styles − If you want to find a style, get up the find/replace box
with <ctrl-f4> and then click in the menu box to the right of the Find
box and select the style you are looking for. This will come up as, say,
“”. Type an “@” after this − which stands for “any text” − and then
press <return>. This will highlight the whole of the first piece of text
with that style or effect. Unfortunately, the facility to replace that
style with another style is not yet working. If you do want to do any
search and replace on the style names, export the text, with styles, and
then use another WP such as !Edit to do the searching and replacing
before returning it to Impression.
4.6
•   Rogue effects − Someone sent me a file in which they had used a
particular font which I did not have so when I loaded the file,
Impression told me it was changing it to Trinity.medium. I did an edit-
style and looked at all the style definitions to no avail. Eventually, I
realised that it must have been used as an effect, so how was I to find
it and eliminate it or change it to some font I did possess? Because the
font had been changed to Trinity.medium (i.e. the BaseStyle font) I
could not pick it out with a visual scan so the first idea was to change
the BaseStyle to, say, Zapf.Dingbats so that anything which was in a
different font was obviously an effect or a style. Unfortunately, this
didn’t reveal the offending effect. At this point, I became convinced
that I had a non-existent, un-removable effect, i.e. a bug in Impres
sion. So I sent the offending file to CC who informed me that the
particular effect WAS in the text and they also showed me how to locate
it... as follows...
4.6
(Actually, the reason that I couldn’t find the effect was that I had
already gone through the document adding extra styles and had covered
this rogue font-change effect with a font-change style of my own. In
other words, the style, because it was applied later than the effect,
took precedence.)
4.6
•   Finding effects − In the same way that you can find styles (see above)
you can also find effects as long as you tell Impression that you want
effects to be shown on the style menu. To do this, locate the file “UK”
in the Impression “Resources” directory. Load it into !Edit and find
“Cnf1:” and change it to “Cnf1:E” − that’s a one, not a letter “l”. Save
the file and shut down and re-start Impression. You then will have
effects on your style menus and search on {“effectname” }@, as explained
above.
4.6
•   Fast search and replace − There are a couple of very useful keyboard
short-cuts not documented in the manual which speed up the search and
replace. When the “text found” box is on screen, <ctrl-R> does a
“Replace” and <ctrl-N> moves to the “Next”.
4.6
•   Keyboard short-cuts − Apart from the ones listed on pages 119ff of the
Impression manual, here are a few more: (some are mentioned on the menu,
but not in manual)
4.6
<ctrl-shift-D> go to chapter
4.6
<ctrl-shift-H> produces a bullet i.e. a “•”.
4.6
<ctrl-shift-I> also produces a bullet i.e. a “•”!
4.6
<ctrl-shift-J> produces superscript
4.6
<ctrl-shift-K> produces subscript
4.6
<ctrl-shift-T> save text story
4.6
•   Page number justification problems − Some of you may have had
difficulty getting correct centring or right justification of page
numbers on footers. This is corrected in version 2.09 − well, almost!
The footers on right hand pages were wrong last month, when I was using
version 2.05, (in fact I didn’t even notice!) and the footers on the
left hand pages would have been wrong this month (with 2.09) if I had
not found a way round it. If you try to have left aligned page number
with a right tabbed piece of text, the text suffers a left shift. I’ve
solved it for now by splitting the footer text into two separate frames,
one left aligned and the other right aligned. It’s messy, but it works.
A
4.6

Hints and Tips
4.7
•   Ballarena − I would advise using the mouse to control your ‘bat’
because the keyboard is not very responsive. Also, note that the ‘Auto’
bat does not always respond fast enough to catch the ball, and there is
nothing you can do about it! I was very disappointed in the final
message which just congratulates you, and ends your game. The passwords
are: PUNKANDJUMP, MONTPELLIER, SEA SEX SUN, VL 86 C 010, MOUNTAINEERS,
GRENOUILLE, BLUBEDILOMAR, BRAIN KILLER, RHYTHM BOX, BOUBOULOID, MENFOU,
32 BIT POWER, MARTINI, SEE YOU SOON, ETERNA. Mike Gregory (& Russell
Lamb).
4.7
•   Changing !Edit’s default file types − Answering my own Help!!! plea in
Archive here’s how to change the default filetypes for !Edit:
4.7
*DIR ADFS::4.$.RISC-OS.!Edit
4.7
 (or your path here)
4.7
*GOS
4.7
*L. !RUNIMAGE 8000
4.7
*BREAKSET 8004
4.7
*GO 8000
4.7
*SAVE “!RUNIMAGE” 8000+1F2C0
4.7
 8008 8000
4.7
*BASIC
4.7
*L. !RUNIMAGE 8F00
4.7
$&1B208=“ReadMe” These can be changed
4.7
$&1B214=“DataFile” to suit your needs
4.7
$&1B220=“ExecFile” with any string up
4.7
$&1B22C=“EditFile” to 10chars in
4.7
$&1B238=“!Run”        length.
4.7
*SAVE !RUNIMAGE 8F00+1F2C0 8008 8000
4.7
Rob Davison, Southland, New Zealand
4.7
•   ‘Cheapo’ dialog boxes − You can make use of Wimp_ReportError instead
of writing code for a dialog box when programming wimps. The following
code fragment is an example:
4.7
DEFPROCsave_file(name$)
4.7
IF FNfile_there(name$) THEN IF
4.7
 FNdialog(“A file of that
4.7
name exists. Overwrite it?“)=FALSE THEN ENDPROC
4.7
REM save file
4.7
ENDPROC
4.7

4.7
DEFFNdialog(str1$):!block%=1
4.7
:$(block%+4)=str1$
4.7
SYS“Wimp_ReportError”,block%,
4.7
19,“Message from
4.7
applic“ TO ,resp%
4.7
=resp%=1
4.7
where the string “Message From Application” is <20 characters in length.
4.7
The only disadvantages are that all other desktop activity is suspended,
the machine beeps (if wimpflags bit 4 is not set) and that the user has
to answer “OK” or “CANCEL” instead of the more logical “YES” or “NO”.
However, this saves a great deal of programming and can be very useful
at times (This is why FWP2 stops printing − See Archive 3.10 p 25). Rob
Davison, New Zealand.
4.7
•   Cleaning A310 keyboard contacts − I recently had a very nasty
intermittent fault on my A310. It began as a line of 222222222’s being
printed at the cursor, for no apparent reason. Also the ‘2’ key of the
numbers keypad wouldn’t function occasionally. This was accompanied by a
more worrying symptom where the screen display would suddenly go hay-
wire and only occasionally would right itself after switching the
machine off and then on.
4.7
Eventually, it was cured by cleaning the key-contact of the ‘2’ (keypad)
and on the basis of “If it works, don’t fix it”, I didn’t clean any
other keys. After having the machine checked at a local dealer (£17.50)
and some discussion with Archives’ Technical Help, it was assumed that
the screen break-up was due to CMOS *Configuration settings somehow
being changed to Monitor-Multisync, by the spurious keyboard input. The
problem has not occurred since.
4.7
For anyone else with keyboard problems, here’s how I cleaned mine: Lay
the keyboard upside-down and remove all 8 screws under the keyboard base
and gently lift off the base. Remove the 6 larger screws, securing the
PCB to the keyboard top-cover. Lift out the complete PCB and keys unit.
The keytops are all secured in a frame which is, in turn, secured by 20-
odd small screws from the PCB underside. Take them all out (and put them
somewhere safe) and, keeping the whole kaboodle together with a firm
grip, turn it over and set it down right-side up. The complete set of
keys can now be lifted slowly off the PCB, exposing the rubber contact/
covers. These are glued with a weak glue. I found that all the rubber
bits stayed stuck to the PCB. I gently peeled away the rubber contact/
cover at the offending key position and marvelled at how the dirt had
managed to penetrate so far, considering that the cover was stuck down.
The keyboard key contacts (A310) are just gold plated discs of PCB
copper, easily cleaned with switch cleaner and a non-hairy paper-towel
or cloth. If you have to blow away any bits, use a camera ‘puffer
brush’. If you have to use your mouth to blow away grit, crumbs etc,
wait for any teeny drops of condensation to evaporate. Spit doesn’t make
a good contact cleaner and some spirit-based cleaners may tend to
dissolve the pcb-surface varnish which will be smeared over the
contacts’ surface. Your local electronics hobby shop (e.g. Tandy) should
have cans of switch-cleaner at £2 − £3 (which is a lot cheaper than £120
for a new keyboard(!) and well worth the extra effort of DIY).
4.7
D.P.Allen, Surrey
4.7
•   Data cartridges for tape streamers revisited − Further to the hint in
3.6 p2, the metal variety of DAT can become unreliable after three or
four writes and so it is better to use the non-metal variety e.g.
Memorex tapes. Mr Chapman, London
4.7
•   RISC-OS printing hints − Printing out with the RISC-OS printer drivers
is very easy. However I found several areas which are not well explained
and one or two things which are down right misleading!
4.7
•   PRM pages 1526-1528 sprite plotting commands must be with reference to
the address of the sprite not the name, so if you use
4.7
SYS “OS_SpriteOp”,&122,
4.7
spriteaddr%,“name”,0
4.7
,xpos%,ypos%
4.7
then, when printing, the error “Sprite Not known” will be returned. The
solution is to use &222 and an address instead of the sprite name.
Addresses for a named sprite can be found with
4.7
SYS“OS_SpriteOp”,&118
4.7
addr is in R2 on exit − see PRM page 406.
4.7
•   PRM page 1532. Always use −1 (for current) as the destination mode
with “ColourTrans_Select-Table” if you specify a mode (even the current
one) ColourTrans will not set up the table correctly resulting in
strange looking sprites on printout.
4.7
•   When rendering Draw objects remember to decrease ‘flatness’ to a lower
value. A useful way of calculating it is to divide the default (512) by
the print resolution divided by 90 eg. flat= 512/(printxres%/90) where
printxres% might be 300 − as read from
4.7
SYS “PDriver_Info” TO,printxres%
4.7
printyres% the 90 comes from a normal approximately 90 dots per inch on
screen. Rob Davison, Southland, New Zealand
4.7
•   Saving the CMOS RAM settings − In recent editions of Archive (e.g.
4.3, p.10 and 4.5, p. 21) there have been repeated mentions of the
problem which arises when a battery failure deletes all the information
in the CMOS RAM.
4.7
There is one very simple way of solving this problem: On Careware Nº 6
you will find the application !SysUtil by Jon Marten; one of the choices
it offers is “Save Configuration”!
4.7
All you have to do is copy the Utility and the “ConfigFile” it produces
to some disc where they are easily accessible − not the hard disk!
4.7
After the dreaded memory loss you simply load !SysUtil and drag the
ConfigFile icon onto the !SysUtil icon and confirm that you want to
change the configuration. Jochen Konietzko, Koeln, Germany
4.7
•   Shutdown of hard drives − During the recent experience I have had due
to the volume of hardware I’ve been setting up and testing, the
following items have come to light.
4.7
MR45’s seemed to be suffering from corruption but, when reformatted, the
problem went away, so where did the corruption come from?
4.7
A little further investigation revealed that a verify scan caused the
Closedown procedure of the drive not to occur.
4.7
It was found that, in order to close the drive down properly, a *bye and
two ªShutdowns were required! At first, this was thought to only relate
to MR45’s but, in fact, it has been found that this is not so, and even
my own machine (A440/1 with standard Acorn hardware) does similar
things.
4.7
So, how do you know whether your hard drive is shut down properly? If an
<f12> is followed by a *bye, a staccato blip from the drive LED should
occur and a short sharp click noise should emit from the drive itself.
This is not the closedown condition.
4.7
A *shutdown will now give a flickering performance from the drive LED
and a multiple clicking from the drive lasting about half a second.This
is the shutdown condition with the heads parked and isolated from the
discs and closedown of the system can now occur. Ray Maidstone, Norwich.
4.7
•   !UIM_Hack update (cf Archive 3.10 p 9) − This utility allows you to
edit characters in The 4th Dimension’s U.I.M. game. It has now been
updated and improved by the author, David Sheperdson, and has been put
on this month’s program disc.
4.7
Impression Hints and Tips
4.7
•   Beware thin lines − It seems that Impression can’t cope with the very
thinnest lines that Draw can produce. It does not display them properly
on the screen and sometimes doesn’t print them properly. The answer is
to use 1 mm lines instead. This came to light when Brian Cowan was using
graphs generated by the graph plotting utility (on Shareware Nº 31)
which apparently uses these thin lines. (This has only been tested in
version 2.05.)
4.7
•   Double-clicking on a graphic opens the “alter graphic” window, (For
those who don’t read manuals.)
4.7
•   Help! − Does anyone know how to create a new Master Page based on an
existing master page? It’s a real pain to have to change the margins
every time you create a new master page. Why can’t you have a new master
page just slightly different from an existing one? The particular
application was where I wanted to try two, three, four, five columns
etc. for a document and every time I wanted to change the number of
columns, I had to create a new master page, changing the margins from to
the 5 mm I wanted before changing the number of columns and the inter-
column gap. (Mind you, I did find one short-cut as a result of having to
do this over and over again. If you click in the first margin box, you
can use <ctrl-U> to remove the “12.7mm”, then press <5> and then <down>
will move you to the next box and you can repeat the <ctrl-U>, <5>,
<down> for each box. This applies to most of the dialogue boxes − <down>
moves you to the next box requiring input. Yes, I know it says this in
the manual, but I didn’t see it.)
4.7
Anyway, can I put my plea another way? Is there any way of editing a
master page other than sliding the boxes around? Can you edit, by
entering numbers, the sizes of the margins, for example?
4.7
•   Search & replace again − We mentioned last month that, when doing a
find and replace, <ctrl-N> finds the Next occurrence, <ctrl-R> does a
Replace of the marked text. Be warned though that, if the find box is
on-screen, <ctrl-A> no longer deletes the character at the cursor (as
<copy> does) it forces All the replaces to occur from the cursor
downwards to the very end of the document. I found this the hard way
while attempting to do a selective search and replace at the top of a
large document. I was changing a column of words into a list by
replacing
4.7
 with a comma and a space. You can just imagine the havoc that the
“replace all” command reeked on my (unsaved!!!) document. You have been
warned! By the way, <ctrl-E>, presumably relating to Every or End, has
exactly the same effect as <ctrl-A>. (This has only been tested on
2.09.)
4.7
•   Transferring text between documents − In Archive 4.2 p.8, there was a
hint about the transfer of text between two documents. The implication
was that this was not possible with Impression. This is not true − it is
just done differently. You select the text in question, press <ctrl-C>,
move to the appropriate spot in the other document, click once and
insert the text with <ctrl-V>! Jochen Konietzko, Koeln, Germany  A
4.7

Hints and Tips
4.8
•   ARM code errata − The following is for all those who have an unshak
able faith in the integrity of Acorn’s code:
4.8
The code given to return from SWI “OS_ BreakPt” on page 736 of the PRMs
is incorrect. The following works.
4.8
.backtobreak%
4.8
   SWI “OS_EnterOS”
4.8
   ADR R14,breaksave
4.8
   LDMIA R14,{r0-r14 }^
4.8
   LDR R14,[R14,#15*4]
4.8
   ADD R14,R14,#4
4.8
   MOVS PC,R14
4.8
The code given on page 231 of the old BASIC User Guide (under CALL) is
incorrect. For example, to use MATCH, the line tokenisation routine, the
following code will work. This has been corrected in the new BASIC User
Guide.
4.8
.tokenise
4.8
   STMFD R13!,{r14 }
4.8
   ADD R0,R14,#18*4
4.8
   ADR R1,source
4.8
   ADR R2,dest
4.8
   MOV R3,#1
4.8
   MOV R4,#0
4.8
   ADR R14,cominghome
4.8
   MOV PC,R0
4.8
.cominghome
4.8
   LDMFD R13!,{pc }
4.8
.source
4.8
   EQUS STRING$(90,CHR$(0))  ALIGN
4.8
.dest
4.8
   EQUS STRING$(90,CHR$(0))  ALIGN
4.8
J Heher, South Africa
4.8
•   BASIC printing to a DeskJet Plus − The April issue of Archive
contained a Help!!! plea about printing from Archimedes BASIC to a
DeskJet 500. I have a DeskJet Plus and have successfully printed from
BASIC. For reference, my printer is normally set with the function
switches 6 and 8 in bank A and 2 in bank B up, all others are down.
4.8
To print, I use the command VDU 2,1,27,1,38, 1,107,1,49,1,71 (see Line
Termination in Appendix 8.19 of the Owner’s Manual). Here is an example
of how it can be used:
4.8
 10 REM >PrintTest
4.8
 20 VDU 2,1,27,1,38,1,107,1,49,1,71
4.8
 30 PRINT “TEST OF NORMAL PRINTING”
4.8
 40 VDU 1,27,1,38,1,100,1,49,1,68
4.8
 50 PRINT “This is underlined”
4.8
 60 VDU 1,27,1,38,100,1,64
4.8
 70 VDU 1,27,1,40,1,115,1,51,1,66
4.8
 80 PRINT “This is BOLD printing”
4.8
 90 VDU 1,27,1,40,1,115,1,48,1,66
4.8
100 VDU 1,27,1,40,1,115,1,50,1,48, 1,72
4.8
110 PRINT “This is 20 PITCH”
4.8
120 VDU 1,27,1,69 :REM reset printer
4.8
130 VDU 3
4.8
140 END
4.8
A Kitchenside, Weybridge
4.8
•   Big memory tips − As a footnote to my own article in last month’s
Archive on making best use of machines with more than 1M memory, I’d
like to add one more tip. I was reminded by a review of Protext, which
noted that the current version does not multi-task, that my eleventh tip
might have been, “boycott non multi-tasking packages”. Since, with 1M,
you couldn’t really multi-task two significant applications, this was
not a problem. Now, it’s a real pain in the neck not to be able to have
several applications with simultaneously active windows, much of the
power and ease-of-use of RISC-OS is being un-used and it’s annoying
knowing that 3M of your upgrade is being wasted!
4.8
So, unless there’s a really good reason such as a time-critical sound
sampler or video screen grabber, I suggest that we boycott such
packages. Then, software producers would have to bring them up to date
and not try to palm us off with “Arthur programs with !Run and !Boot
files”. In an ideal world, software sellers would refuse to stock them
but at least they could be marked as such, perhaps indicating their
antiquity by listing them in a suitable script? Stuart Bell, Brighton.
4.8
•   C book − I was recommended a good C book which I used on a C short
course I attended: The Waite Group’s “New C Primer Plus”, First Edition
1990, editor Howard W Sams & Co, ISBN 0−672−22687−1. It covers ANSI C,
UNIX, Microsoft C and Turbo C.   S. Stel, Netherlands.
4.8
•   ChangeFSI update − A new version of ChangeFSI v0.79 is available from
Acorn Direct for £19.95. This will handle more image formats than would
v0.69: Degas PI1, PI2 & PI3, !Translator Clear, MacPaint 579x720x1 bit/
pixel, ZSoft .PCX, Windows3 .BMP, Pineapple 16 bit/pixel, UNIX rle, PC
TGA. Unfortunately it will not run from the desktop under !ChangeFSI
(Shareware Disc 21) as is. This is because version 0.79 is 94 Kbytes
long, compared with 74K for v0.69. The solution is to edit the !Run file
of !ChangeFSI and increase the WimpSlot from 128K to 160K. All is then
well. A Quayle, Chester
4.8
•   C txt library − This idea was inspired by the article ‘Introduction to
C’ – Part 5, in Archive 3.6. This gave a complete RISC-OS application
using the libraries supplied with Release 3 of Acorn C. In particular,
it used the ‘txt’ library to provide a window to display text generated
by the sample program. This requires a minimum of effort by the
programmer since the library looks after most of the problems.
4.8
Although it works as described, it has two major disadvantages. The
first is the slow speed during text generation. The second is the
operation of the window controls. In particular, the cursor control keys
cannot be used to move the text through the window, the close icon has
no effect and the vertical scroll bars can only be dragged. Here are
some techniques which overcome these problems.
4.8
Improved text generation speed turns out to be a very simple modifi
cation since the cause of the slow operation is the redrawing of the
window for every item added to the text buffer using, for example, the
txt_insertstring function. Two extra lines are required; the first turns
off the display updates when text generation starts and the second turns
it back on when the operation is complete. The lines shown below should
be inserted immediately after the visdelay_begin() statement and
immediately before the visdelay_ end() statement in the original program
function sysvars_to_text().
4.8
/* turn off display update */
4.8
txt_setcharoptions(t, txt_DISPLAY, FALSE);
4.8

4.8
/* turn on display update */
4.8
txt_setcharoptions(t, txt_DISPLAY, TRUE);
4.8
Improving text window control requires rather more code but again the
principle is fairly straightforward. Firstly an event handler has to be
registered for the text window following its successful creation by the
txt_new() function using the following statement:
4.8
/* register the text window event handler */
4.8
txt_eventhandler(t, user_txevent, NULL);
4.8
This registers the function user_txevent which will be called to process
text window events.
4.8
The function itself has to process all the events which the user
requires. A sample function is given below which is commented to show
which events are being processed. The keyboard key macro definitions
given in ‘akbd.h’ are used for consistency but, in addition, the ‘Home’
key must also be defined using a macro as this is omitted from ‘akbd.h’.
The actual key values required are defined in the PRM, page 1198 and the
macro definitions are given in file ‘akbd.h’. Note, however, that the
definitions given for both akbd_ PageUpK and akbd_PageDownK are wrong so
I have not used these but used their correct definition in the following
code. The value txt_ EXTRACODE is added to the key value to represent
the equivalent window operation. A full list of these is given on page
325 of the ANSI C Release 3.
4.8

4.8
#include “akbd.h”
4.8

4.8
#define HOME        (30)
4.8

4.8
/***********************************
4.8
user_txevent    text window event handler
4.8
        t            text object
4.8
        h            event handle
4.8
***********************************/
4.8
void user_txevent(txt t, void *h)
4.8
{lines ; /* number of lines in window */
4.8

4.8
 h = h;
4.8
 while (txt_queue(t) > 0)
4.8
 {number of lines visible in window */
4.8
  lines = txt_visiblelinecount(t);
4.8

4.8
  /* process the next user event code */
4.8
  switch (txt_get(t))
4.8
  {+ akbd_Fn+127:
4.8
    /* close window icon */
4.8
    txt_hide(t);
4.8
    break;
4.8

4.8
   case akbd_UpK:
4.8
   case txt_EXTRACODE + akbd_UpK:
4.8
   case txt_EXTRACODE + akbd_Sh + akbd_Ctl + akbd_UpK:
4.8
    /* scroll up one line */
4.8
    txt_movevertical(t, –1, TRUE);
4.8
    break;
4.8

4.8
   case akbd_DownK:
4.8
   case txt_EXTRACODE + akbd_DownK:
4.8
   case txt_EXTRACODE + akbd_Sh + akbd_Ctl + akbd_DownK:
4.8
    /* scroll down one line */
4.8
    txt_movevertical(t, 1, TRUE);
4.8
    break;
4.8

4.8
   case akbd_Sh + akbd_UpK:
4.8
   case txt_EXTRACODE + akbd_Sh + akbd_UpK:
4.8
    /* scroll up one page */
4.8
    txt_movevertical(t, -lines, FALSE);
4.8
    break;
4.8
   case akbd_Sh + akbd_DownK:
4.8
   case txt_EXTRACODE + akbd_Sh + akbd_DownK:
4.8
    /* scroll down one page */
4.8
    txt_movevertical(t, lines, FALSE);
4.8
    break;
4.8

4.8
   case akbd_Ctl + akbd_UpK:
4.8
   case HOME:
4.8
    /* move to start of text */
4.8
    txt_setdot(t, 0);
4.8
    break;
4.8

4.8
   case akbd_Ctl + akbd_DownK:
4.8
   case akbd_Sh + akbd_CopyK:
4.8
    /* move to end of text */
4.8
    txt_setdot(t, txt_size(t));
4.8
    break;
4.8

4.8
   default:
4.8
    break;
4.8
  }
4.8
 }
4.8
 return;
4.8
}
4.8
David Scott, Stockport
4.8
•   Connection problems − If you are having connection problems with RS423
connectors, or video or printer − or a dongle, it may be because the
plugs are not ‘going home’ properly into the sockets on the back of the
computer. I have noticed this particularly on A540’s, but it could also
occur on other Archimedes computers. This may be because the fixing
pillars either side of the socket are too high. The solution it to take
a pair of pliers (or a box spanner if you have a suitable sized one) and
remove each of the pillars in turn, take off the washer and screw the
pillar back in. That extra millimetre can make all the difference.
4.8
•   CPC monitor − When my multisync died on me suddenly and I was forced
to make do with what I had − a well worn Amstrad CPC green screen
monitor. In practice it was fairly easy to connect the six-pin CPC
connector to the nine-pin connector on the A3000:
4.8
   Archimedes      CPC
4.8
   1, 2 & 3   −   6
4.8
   6, 7, 8 & 9   −   5
4.8
   5   −   4
4.8
Naturally, it is impossible to use the multisync modes but it certainly
is almost as sharp a picture on the tube as on my multisync and much
cheaper. If your main interest is games I wouldn’t recommend it but for
most business uses it is perfectly all right. I guess you could get a
second hand green CPC monitor for next to nothing in the UK as many
owners have exchanged them for the new CPC monitors. Ask your local
dealer! A spare monitor could come in handy any day! Tord Eriksson,
Sweden.
4.8
•   !Edit − For what seems like an eternity I have been wrestling with the
problem of importing text from a wordprocessor (in my case View). What I
wanted to do was free the text from newline characters in order that, on
loading it into Ovation, it could be formatted to new column width, in
whatever point size, without the newline control code producing extra
linefeeds. At the same time, it should retain the carriage returns
marking the paragraphs and multi-line spacing. This way I did not lose
all the style. What follows is how I do it . It might seem obvious but
it could help someone who is as thick as me. If I have missed the point
would some kind person tell me before I go mad.
4.8
After loading your text into !Edit, go through the text ensuring that
there are double returns at the end of each paragraph and on multiple
line text like program listings or poetry.
4.8
My technique is firstly to change double returns into something which is
unlikely to appear elsewhere in the text, thus:
4.8
Press <F4> to select Find
4.8
In the Find dialogue box enter  \n\n <return>
4.8
In the Replace dialogue box enter  ZCZC<return>
4.8
Click on the Magic Character box
4.8
Click on the Go box
4.8
Click on End of File Replace
4.8
Click on Stop
4.8
Press <ctrl-up> to move the cursor to the top
4.8
Now, to replace the single returns:
4.8
Press <F4> to select Find
4.8
In the Find dialogue box enter  \n <return>
4.8
In the Replace dialogue box press <space>
4.8
Click on Go
4.8
Click on End of File Replace
4.8
Click on Stop
4.8
Press <ctrl-up>
4.8
Then, to restore the double returns to single ones:
4.8
Press <F4> to select Find
4.8
In the Find dialogue box enter  ZCZC<return>
4.8
In the Replace dialogue box enter \n <return>
4.8
Click on Go
4.8
Click on End of File replace
4.8
Click on Stop
4.8
You should have your text with the paragraph and multi-line spacing
intact. (Simplified from a hint sent in by R Follett, Winnersh, Berks.)
4.8
•   Improving sound quality − Further to the comments by Jeremy Mears
(Archive 4.7 p 21) there is no need, on the A3000, to actually solder to
the motherboard. You can make contact to the appropriate resistors using
micro test clips (Tandy − £1.50 for four). This would, I suppose, still
invalidate the warranty but is less obvious than blobs of solder on the
p.c.b.! To get access to the resistors, you have to remove the disc
drive by unscrewing it from underneath. R86 is under the keyboard side
of the drive whereas R99 is under the middle of the drive. Pin 1 of the
expansion port is the furthest right (looking from the keyboard side of
the computer). Gerald Williams, Aldershot.
4.8
•   Multiple height and width text printing − I know that the emphasis
these days is on programs which multi-task and use mode 12 on the
desktop but not every program is suitable for this and some of these
programs require larger than usual height characters.
4.8
I am (slowly) developing a word game for the Archimedes, from one I
wrote last year on my Model B. The “B” version uses mode 2, with double
height routines written in machine code for speed. The original version
of this code was quite “illegal” and would not work on a Master but it
was fast! With it, I could also have text printed 3 or even 4 times
normal height just as quickly. However, I am new to the Archimedes and
ARM code is currently beyond me, so after trying various routines in
BASIC I came across VDU23,17,7. This gives characters at any height and
any width and is very fast! I can even get half width which gives the
impression of mode 1 characters in mode 2. Also, it works in most Screen
modes (except 3, 6 & 7).
4.8
I’ve put together a short routine which demonstrates how easy and fast
this routine is. To use it, all you have to do is append the PROCedure
to your program and call it with the colour you wish it to appear in,
the X & Y positions, the height and width of the characters and the
Text$ − the routine will do the rest! One point to bear in mind,
however, is that text is printed using the graphic cursor, i.e. under
VDU 5 and MOVE or PLOT, rather than the text cursor and VDU 31, X%,Y%.
4.8
Even though this demonstration program is about 20 lines long, the only
bits you need are in PROCtext(colour, X_co_ord, Y_co_ord, Height, Width,
Text$). The function FNvdu simply returns the text width of the screen
mode window in use and this is used to check if lines are too long in
the first line of PROCtext. The second line in PROCtext is personal as I
like being able to centralise text without effort! To do so, just set X%
to -1. The %110 sets bits 1 and 2 so that both characters and spacing
are altered at the same time. %100 sets spacing, while %010 will alter
just character sizes. It is also possible to use 0.5 as Height or Width
but that works better in “chunky” modes, like 2 rather than 12. When the
width is set to an odd number, the “auto-centralising” is sometimes a
little off so you may prefer to set up the X co-ord manually.
4.8
REM >$.Height/Wid.!RunImage
4.8
:
4.8
DIM block% 12, output% 12
4.8
MODE12:COLOUR3
4.8
:
4.8
PROCtext(1,-1,1,2,3,“Multi Height & Width!”)
4.8
PROCtext(2,-1,4,2,1,“Double Height, Normal Width”)
4.8
PROCtext(3,-1,7,1,2,“Normal Height, Double Width”)
4.8
PROCtext(4,-1,10,3,3,“3 * 3 Format”)
4.8
PROCtext(5,-1,15,4,1,“Ridiculous! 4 X 1 !!”)
4.8
PROCtext(6,-1,20,1,1,“You should reset the height & width
4.8
 before finishing”)
4.8
PROCtext(6,-1,21,1,1,“but as it stands the PROCedure will
4.8
do this anyway”)
4.8
END
4.8
:
4.8
DEFPROCtext(C%,X%,Y%,H,W,T$)
4.8
F%=FNvdu
4.8
IF F%-(LENT$*W)<=0 THEN ERROR 300,“Line too long”
4.8
GCOL C%
4.8
Y%=1000-(Y%*32)
4.8
IF X%=-1 THEN X%=(F%-LENT$*2)/(W*2)
4.8
IF W=1 THEN X%=(F%-LENT$)/4
4.8
X%=X%*32
4.8
VDU 23,17,7,%110,W*8;H*8;0;
4.8
VDU 5,25,4,X%;Y%;
4.8
PRINT T$
4.8
VDU 4,23,17,7,%110,8;8;0;
4.8
ENDPROC
4.8
:
4.8
DEF FNvdu
4.8
!block%=256
4.8
block%!4=-1
4.8
SYS“OS_ReadVduVariables”,block%,
4.8
output%
4.8
=!output%
4.8
•   Off screen desktop windows − Normally, the filer and switcher windows
are forced to stay within the confines of the screen but, by altering
their template files, it is possible to make them move ‘off screen’ and
thus help to reduce window ‘clutter’.
4.8
To do this, you have to copy the window templates from the DeskFS to a
directory called Templates. First, create a directory called Templates
in the root directory of your harddisc or ‘workdisc’ and then type the
following:
4.8
*deskfs
4.8
*copy templates.filer  scsifs::scsidisc4.$.templates.filer
4.8
*copy templates.switcher  scsifs::scsidisc4.$.templates.filer
4.8
(You can also copy netfiler, palette and wimp windows across if
required.)
4.8
Load the window template data into !FormEd (Shareware Disc 20) and set
the ‘no bounds’ option for each window. Then, edit your disc !boot file
to include the following line:
4.8
Set Wimp$Path scsifs::scsidisc4.
4.8
(or whatever your system is!) Don’t forget the full stop at the end.
This points Wimp$Path in the direction of the updated windows.
4.8
Finally re-boot your machine to see the result!  M Roscoe, Ealing
4.8
•   PrinterDM with the Star LC24−10 − I was interested to see the note on
!PrinterDM and the LC24-10 in March’s edition of Archive. May I draw
your attention to the “Hint and Tip” which I had published in the March
edition of Risc User on the same subject but concerning a different
problem. I was initially disappointed in the results I obtained with
Impression Junior (and from the Ovation test disc and, to a lesser
extent, !Draw printouts). This was due to some lines of text having a
marked “slewed” effect. After speaking to Star, and much sleuthing, I
tracked down the problem to the very same line in the PrData file of
!PrinterDM (version 1.12). There is apparently some incompatibility
between the Star and the Epson LQ800. The former does not like the “zero
absolute tab” command used to obtain the CR without LF. The solution was
to substitute the commands used in the FX80 module, although modified to
use the correct line feed command for 24 pin printers. With my version
of !PrinterDM I have not experienced any squashed text with the 24/180
inch feed (could the writer have been in IBM mode where the command
gives n/216 inches rather than n/180 inches?) but the bigger feed
suggested in March’s tip could equally well be used. The modified line
is as follows:
4.8
line_epilogue “<27>A<0><13><27>2<27>J<24>”
4.8
I’m surprised that this matter has not previously been commented on,
especially as I think it also applies to the XB24-10.  A.F. Taylor,
Poole
4.8
•   Quattro to Schema transfer − To move data files from Quattro, first
save the file with a WKI extension. Then you can use Schema’s !sch123 to
translate the file into Schema format. This method leaves all sorts of
spurious bits and pieces which have to be edited out by hand but it does
work.  M Green, Devon
4.8
•   Quitting First Word Plus − If you quit First Word Plus (release 2)
from the task manager while a text file is loaded, you will be thrown
out of the desktop. If other applications are running that may object
e.g. Draw, Paint, etc, they will announce what is about to happen and
give you a chance to prevent it. Otherwise you will lose any files that
you may have been working on in First Word Plus.     R Bunnett,
Swanley
4.8
•   Reading disc names − For those software writers who need to check that
the user has inserted an appropriate disc in the disc drive the
following function returns the name if the disc currently inserted:
4.8
DIM block% 5
4.8
:
4.8
DEF FNdiscname
4.8
SYS “OS_GBPB”,5,,block%
4.8
?(block%+?block% +1)=13
4.8
=$(block%+1)
4.8
M Sawle, Hampshire
4.8
•   !Schema VAT rate − New spreadsheets are created with various user
names available, one of which is “Vat”. To change this from 0.15 to
0.175, look in the !Schema directory and then in the Menu directory and
you should find a file called StartUp. This has a write-lock on it so
you will have to use ‘Access’ off the filer menu to enable it to be
changed. At the end of this file are a number of lines that start with
‘putusn’, the first of which is the Vat rate which simply needs to be
changed before the file is again saved and the write-lock access
restored. Ian Hamilton, Harrow.
4.8
•   Spaced filenames − If you want a <space> in a disc or file name, use a
hard space. This is available by pressing either <alt><1><6><0> or
<alt><space>. You should note that if you do use it then you can’t use
the copy key on a catalogue because the Archimedes thinks that the
character is a normal space (which is illegal in a filename). E Hughes,
Derbyshire
4.8
•   Twin World cheats − The file SavedGame can be edited using !Edit to
cheat. Byte values of interest include:
4.8
Byte 1 = Level (Maximum = 22 = &16)
4.8
Byte 4 = Red Spells (Maximum 99 = &63)
4.8
Byte 5 = Blue Spells (Maximum 99 = &63)
4.8
Byte 6 = Green Spells (Maximum 99 = &63)
4.8
Bytes 8-11 = Score, low byte first. (Maximum = 999999 = &F423F )
4.8
Byte 12 = Lives (Maximum = 9 or 10 = &9 or &0A)
4.8
Remember all value are in hex, so use the magic character option in
!Edit’s Find.  Stuart Turgis
4.8
•   TwinWorld hints
4.8
− Owls in the forest can be killed by jumping up and firing.
4.8
− Similarly, on some occasions you will have to jump, but fire on the
way down to hit denizens close to you.
4.8
− Jump between worlds whenever possible − if you loose a life, you’re
taken back to the last time you changed worlds.
4.8
− Stamping your feet can reveal objects − either treasure or keys.
4.8
− Beware of calling the genie when you are already carrying two other
sorts of objects (remember the horn is one), because you won’t be able
to buy an object which you don’t already hold.
4.8
− Beware when shooting the three-headed dragon. If you don’t shoot the
head furthest away from you, it flies away from you and fires an almost
continuous salvo.
4.8
− Watch out for extended jump − you can sometimes use it when you don’t
realise − on some screens it’s essential and you may only have a limited
amount.
4.8
− Watch out for the parachute − in the last few levels I found I
couldn’t get rid of it and it limited my objects to just two types.
4.8
− When firing at the bird − if you duck, it flies lower to avoid your
fire. Stand until the bird is fairly close, then crouch and fire.
4.8
− When the giant clam fires at you, or the Big eye, if you run so the
‘bullet’ is off the screen it will disappear.
4.8
Impression
4.8
Hints & Tips
4.8
Bruce Goatly (BG), who is busy writing a book about using Impression,
very kindly sent us some hints & tips (in return for permission to use
our H&T in his book!). Most of the rest of the H&T are from the editor’s
experiences with the unreleased version 2.09. (Version 2.10 is not ready
for release so 2.05 is still the latest officially available version.)
4.8
•   Abbreviation expansion − Use it to correct common spelling errors or
to enforce house style (I often type ‘ans’ for ‘and’ and ‘thw’ for
‘the’, and the house style for my book is ‘disk’ whereas I almost always
spell it ‘disc’). BG.
4.8
•   Date and time format − As I continually forget what day it is, I use
the Insert date option quite a lot. If you want to change the format of
the date (the default is in the form 6th April 1991), load the !Run file
into Edit and alter the definition of the variable Impression$DateFormat
(see pp. 337-339 of the User Guide, on using system variables).
Similarly, you can alter the time format by editing
Impression$TimeFormat. BG.
4.8
•   Dongle connection problems − If you are having problems with a dongle
that keeps saying it is not present and you find that you need to wiggle
it (just a little bit!) to recognise its presence, go back and read the
hint above about ‘Connection problems’. Alternatively, CC themselves
offer a hint about it. They say that it is important to quit properly
from Impression and not just do a <ctrl-break>, otherwise the dongle
might need to be left for a couple of hours for a capacitor to discharge
before Impression can be loaded again.
4.8
•   Line spacing and font changes − If a line in the middle of a paragraph
starts with a different font from the lines around it, the line spacing
may be upset for that one line because of the way Impression does its
calculations. The way round it is to put the cursor at the start of the
offending line, cancel the font change at that point and insert a ‘null’
character (such as Alt-131). This will be invisible but will correct the
line spacing. BG.
4.8
•   Loading text files − If you want to load a text file into Impression,
there is no need to create a new document first − just drag the Edit
file onto the Impression icon and it will set up an untitled document
and load the text into a null frame.
4.8
•   Marking a single character − If you are doing DTP in a lower resolu
tion screen mode, you may be finding it difficult to use the mouse to
drag-mark a single character e.g. the ‘l’ in ‘will’. One way of doing it
is to move the cursor between two of the characters, click <select> but
firmly hold the mouse in place. Then you use the cursor left or right,
as appropriate, to move the cursor to the other side of the character to
be marked and finally press <adjust>. George Foot, Oxted.
4.8
My method of doing any of this kind of detailed work is to have two
windows open on the same document − which is extremely easy to do
(another advantage over PageMaker!) − one shows the full page and one
just an enlarged section of the text. Then you can flick backwards and
forwards between the two views enlarging and contracting the windows or
simply pushing them to the back when they are not wanted.
4.8
(However, have you noticed that Impression sometimes insists on going
back to the beginning of the document when you expand and contract the
window using the size switch icon in the top right hand corner of the
window? Has anyone worked out why it happens and, more importantly, how
to stop it?)
4.8
•   Special characters − The list in Appendix 5 of the Impression II
manual gives a printout of all the characters. This is useful, but there
is some variation from one typeface to another, so it would be useful to
have an Impression file of it so that you could print it out in your
particular typeface. I’ll put a file of it on the monthly program disc,
but if you want to do it yourself, you can run the following program and
put the text into a multi-column Impression document.
4.8
10 REM > CHARLISTER
4.8
20 *SPOOL CHARS
4.8
30 @%=2
4.8
40 FOR N% = 32 TO 255
4.8
50 PRINT N%;CHR$(9);
4.8
“{”“heading”“on }{” ;CHR$(N%); “}”
4.8
60 NEXT
4.8
70 *SPOOL
4.8
•   Spell-checking − Not really a hint, but I was using the spelling
checker and it offered me the word “faltness” and told me that
“flatness” was wrongly spelled. Also, while spell-checking, someone had
written “Beebugs’ policy”. The spelling checker knows Beebug but can you
guess what it offered me as an alternative for the accidental plural?
Yes, that’s right, “Bedbugs”! On the same theme, I spell-checked my
Factfile and came up with Motley Electronics, Mike Leecher of EMU Ltd,
ARM3’s from Aloof One and IDLE drives from Ian Copycats. Then I tried
some of our contributors and found Brain Cowman, Dim Parkland and last,
but not least, Pall Beggarly.
4.8
•   Tickets please! − (The following saga gives, firstly, an unnecessarily
long method of doing a job but one which illustrates techniques which
might prove useful in other circumstances. It is followed by the easier,
smarter method!) I wanted to make some numbered tickets at A6 size so I
made up an A4 page with four copies of the ticket. I used a two column
master page so that I could just take a copy of the text on the page and
paste it 14 times to make my 60 tickets. Near the bottom of each ticket,
it said, “Ticket number: ” with an appropriate blank space. Then I
created four guide frames on the master page at about the right place to
put in the ticket numbers and inserted four new frames on each page. I
then went through linking all the frames together. To create the text
for the numbers, I used PipeDream using the “row” command and copying it
down 60 rows. I then “saved” this in tab format straight into the first
ticket number frame and, instantly, all the tickets were numbered.
Brilliant! The only real hassle was lining up the ticket number boxes
with the words on the ticket. The problem is that although you can have
both the text and the master page on screen at the same time and at the
same magnification (which helps), the main page is not updated until the
master page is closed so I changed the “preferences” to make the master
page come up at the right magnification.
4.8
(A similar technique of linked frames is used for the running heads on
the magazine − i.e. the articles’ names at top outside corners of the
pages. The dummy Archive, before articles are inserted, has a whole
string of 60 “X”s, one on each page, alternately left and right aligned.
Then, when an article has been inserted, the running heads are altered
using selective search and replace to change, for example, “X” into
“Hints & Tips”. This is easier than using copy and paste because it
preserves the left and right alignment. But I digress... let me get back
to the tickets...)
4.8
Then I suddenly realised the easy way of doing it.... Create the ticket
at full A4 size on the master page using “Ticket number: ” and then
inserting the page number. (Use <menu> − Misc − Insert − Current page
number − Numeric.) Then, all you do is to add 59 pages (click on “Insert
new page” with <adjust>, not <select> so that the menu option stays on
the screen) and use “Fit lots” on the “Print” dialogue box reducing the
scale to 50%. If you find that it still says, “Fit lots (1)” at 50% and
you have to go down to about 48% before it goes to (4), click on
“Setup...” and select the option to “Ignore page boundary”. If you don’t
do this but print out at 48%, you will find that the margins are
unequal. This is a much quicker way of doing it than the previous method
and also gives the possibility of deciding that you want the tickets
smaller after all so you just reduce the scale and, perhaps, change to
sideways printing.
4.8
•   Widows & orphans − This is the technical term for where you get a
paragraph split so that a single line is on one page (or column) and the
rest is on the previous or next. If the first line is split off from the
rest, the solution is fairly obvious − use <ctrl-G> at the beginning of
the paragraph to push the line onto the next column. The odd line at the
end of a paragraph is less easy. If the text is left justified, you can
again use <ctrl-G> to push one more line to the next column to join the
lonely orphan. However, if you subsequently edit the paragraph so that
the layout of the lines changes, you have to edit out the <ctrl-G>.
Also, this doesn’t work at all if you are using full justification
because the <ctrl-G> causes the justification on the last line of the
column to be lost and it looks like the end of a paragraph without a
full stop. The only solution I can find is to create a new frame with
<ctrl-I> and lay it over the last line of the column. This forces that
line over to the next column without losing the justification.
4.8
SCSI Hints & Tips
4.8
•   Removable drive problems − We are beginning to understand more about
the problems with removable drives. Let me explain... SCSI drives are
intelligent and they keep their own record of any duff sectors. However,
this record is not available to the user. If you tell the computer to
“format” the disc, it deliberately ignores any sectors it already knows
are duff. If you get a “soft error” i.e. where the data gets corrupted
so that the CRC check shows up an error, reformatting will clear the
problem. However, if the disc surface is actually damaged, it may be
that reformatting clears the problem temporarily but, with time, the
problem may reappear and you will get the dreaded “Disc error 10 at... ”
or whatever. The solution to this is to use the *DEFECT command provided
by RISC-OS. If you get an error, *VERIFY the disc, note the addresses
which are thrown up as either suspect or actually having a disc error,
say, 7CEC00, 7CEE00 and 7CF000 and then type in
4.8
*DEFECT SCSI::5 7CEC00
4.8
*DEFECT SCSI::5 7CEE00
4.8
*DEFECT SCSI::5 7CF000
4.8
where SCSI::5 is the drive definition. It is worth recording these
addresses in case you need to format the disc again in the future. You
then need to enter the *DEFECT commands again. If *DEFECT finds that you
are trying to map out a sector that is allocated to a file or directory,
it will tell you so, in which case, you will have to copy the file or
directory and delete the one which it says is in the way.
4.8
Obviously, it is better if you can avoid getting hard errors in the
first place so, just as a reminder, (1) always dismount the drive
properly before switching off the power and (2) keep your drive cool by
not packing other hardware around it.
4.8
•   Removable drive problems (Part 2) − Surely there can’t be any MORE
problems with the removable drives − they really won’t be worth selling.
Yes, there are more problems but, yes, I still think they are worth
selling. If you try to use the MR45’s or the Atomwide equivalent on an
Acorn SCSI podule or on a TechnoSCSI (I have not tried any others), you
will find that occasionally they just hang up − usually when copying a
sequence of files. It is a timing problem which Acorn say they will look
into but they are not too optimistic. They say that Syquest, who make
the drive mechanisms, have interpreted the SCSI standards in a different
way from other drive manufacturers. The Acorn engineers have tried to
modify their software to accommodate Syquest’s idiosyncrasies but
although they have managed to make a version of their software that will
work when copying lots of files, they find that it does not format the
cartridges properly! It is not beyond the bounds of possibility to get
SCSI software to work on the Syquest drives − both Oak and Lingenuity
have done it successfully but, as yet, there is no satisfactory way of
running them on Acorn or TechnoSCSI cards.
4.8
I should say to A540 owners, that, although I am using a Syquest
removable drive on my A540, I am doing so on an Oak podule. I made the
change (before I realised there was any problem) purely on the basis
that (1) the Oak software is the easiest to use on the MR45’s because of
the ease of dismounting and re-mounting discs and (2) it is the fastest
that I have tried. (I have not yet tried the offerings from HCCS or The
Serial Port but unless they have specifically tailored their software
for the Syquest mechanisms, I doubt that they will work.)
4.8
•   SCSI land speed record − Oak are claiming an Archimedes drive speed
record. Their 300M HS drive, on an A440 with a 20MHz ARM3, runs at 1939
/ 1761 / 1043  Kbytes/sec in modes 0, 15 and 21 respectively. Can anyone
beat that?  A
4.8

Hints and Tips
4.9
•   Beware spaces − There is a problem with spaces at the end of OS
variables:
4.9
If you include in a !Run file code such as the following:
4.9
Set ThisApp$Dir <Obey$Dir>
4.9
Run <ThisApp$Dir>.!RunImage
4.9
then beware that you don’t include a space at the end of the first line!
If you do, the space will be included in the definition of ThisApp$Dir
and the second line will cause a “Bad File Name” error. Hugh Eagle.
4.9
•   PC emulator with an ARM3 − The default boot-up process for the ARM3
performs an RMClear command, killing all RAM resident modules including,
in particular, the module that drives the ARM3. So, in order, to get the
PC emulator to take advantage of the ARM3‘s extra speed you need to
alter the line in !PC.Genboot.!Config immediately after the one that
reads “Perform RMClear?” from “Y” to “N”! (Thanks to Martin Coulson of
Atomwide for this advice.) Hugh Eagle
4.9
•   Printer tips − You can alter the halftone density by editing the
PrData file within your printer driver (see Archive 4.6 for an example
of how to find this). For instance, PrinterLJ has lines such as:
4.9
pxres_halftone:300/8
4.9
pyres_halftone:300/8
4.9
so each halftone dot is actually formed of a matrix of 8x8 dots, giving
a halftone density of 300/8=37.5 dpi. This gives a very coarse effect
but can produce 65 different grey levels. Altering the lines to:
4.9
pxres_halftone:300/6
4.9
pyres_halftone:300/6
4.9
gives “only” 37 grey levels and a dot pitch of 50 dpi. Experiment to see
what suits your printer best.
4.9
A word of caution. I used !Draw to produce some PCB artwork, printed it
out using !PrinterLJ on a DeskJet Plus and sent it off... Disaster! The
size was OK across the width but was 1.5% too small along the length of
the paper, as was discovered when the finished circuit boards came back.
I’d previously had no trouble using an Epson-compatible printer, so it
may be something to do with the friction feed on the HP slipping, or
perhaps a slightly thicker paper would have helped. Anyway, if your hard
copy must be accurate, then check it! Jonathan Oakley, Cambridge.
4.9
•   Printing * command output − Ever since I got my LaserDirect I have
been laboriously printing the results of *Status, *Dump, etc. by
directing the output to a file and then printing the file (while
bemoaning the loss of the <Ctrl-B>, etc. facility à la BBC). However, I
have just realised that it is easier (and much more in keeping with
Acorn’s RISC-OS standards, I am sure) to open a Task Window in !Edit,
enter the * command (which puts its output in the window) and then print
the contents of the window by “saving” to the printer driver icon. In
other words, click <menu> on the !Edit icon on the icon bar and use
Create − New Task window. This presents you with a new window with a *
ready for a command. Type in the command whose output you want listing,
say, *STATUS. When the listing has finished, click on the window with
<menu> and go Edit − Save and drop the text file produced onto your
printer icon. Easy! (Then close the window, answering ‘Yes’ to ‘Kill and
close’.) Hugh Eagle
4.9
•   Printing via a RISC-OS printer driver from a BASIC program − Have you
ever wondered why your computer has a button called “Print” that doesn’t
seem to do anything of the sort?
4.9
At last, applications seem to be appearing that recognise that pressing
the <Print> key is rather an intuitive way of printing (Impression and
Poster are two examples). Also, I have discovered that RISC-OS printer
drivers are not nearly as fearsome as the PRM makes them seem and it is
actually quite easy to incorporate into your own program’s printing
routines which are activated by ... wait for it ... the <Print> key.
Amazing!
4.9
Take the Painting application from the original Arthurian Welcome disc,
for instance. We still use this in my family because it is so simple,
but it has always (incredibly) lacked a printing facility. To rectify
this, proceed as follows:
4.9
Put this line near the beginning of the program (e.g. immediately after
PROCdesktop (at about line 200):
4.9
 PROCPrintSetup(110000)
4.9
Note: 110,000 bytes is big enough to allow the program to run in mode
20. 55,000 would be enough for mode 12.
4.9
Put this line in the WimpPoll loop (e.g. immediately after the ENDCASE
statement at around line 400):
4.9
IF INKEY-33 THEN PROCPrint(162,232,1274,972)
4.9
Note: INKEY-33 is the crucial function that recognises whether the
<Print> key is being pressed.
4.9
Finally, put these procedures at the end of the program:
4.9
DEF PROCPrintSetup(SpriteAreaSize%)
4.9
DIM SpriteArea% SpriteAreaSize%
4.9
!SpriteArea%=SpriteAreaSize%
4.9
SpriteArea%!8=16
4.9
SYS “OS_SpriteOp”,9+256,SpriteArea%
4.9
ENDPROC
4.9

4.9
DEF PROCPrint(X1%,Y1%,X2%,Y2%)
4.9
SYS “Hourglass_On”
4.9
PrintHandle%=OPENOUT(“printer:”)
4.9
SYS “PDriver_SelectJob”,PrintHandle% ,0 TO Old%
4.9
ON ERROR LOCAL PROCPrintError
4.9

4.9
MOVE X1%,Y1%:MOVE X2%,Y2%
4.9
SYS “OS_SpriteOp”,14+256, SpriteArea%,“TempSprite”,1 : REM Get sprite
4.9

4.9
DIM RectBlock% 15,Transform% 15,PrintPosition% 7
4.9
RectID%=1
4.9
BackCol%=&FFFFFF00:REM set background colour to white
4.9

4.9
REM X1%, Y1%, etc. are the screen coordinates of the area
4.9
to be printed
4.9
!RectBlock%=X1%:RectBlock%!4=Y1%
4.9
RectBlock%!8=X2%:RectBlock%!12=Y2%
4.9

4.9
REM No scaling or rotation required
4.9
!Transform%=&10000:Transform%!4=0
4.9
Transform%!8=0:Transform%!12=&10000
4.9

4.9
REM Put the bottom LH corner 1.5“ REM from the left AND 5” from the
4.9
REM bottom of the page
4.9
!PrintPosition%=1.5*72000
4.9
PrintPosition%!4=5*72000
4.9

4.9
SYS “PDriver_GiveRectangle”,RectID%, RectBlock%,Transform%,
PrintPosition%,BackCol%
4.9
SYS “PDriver_DrawPage”,1,RectBlock%, 0,0 TO More%,,RectID%
4.9
WHILE More%
4.9
  SYS “OS_SpriteOp”,34+256
4.9
,SpriteArea%,“TempSprite”
4.9
,X1%,Y1%,0
4.9
  SYS “PDriver_GetRectangle”,, RectBlock% TO More%,,RectID%
4.9
ENDWHILE
4.9
SYS “PDriver_EndJob”,PrintHandle%
4.9
SYS “Hourglass_Smash”
4.9
CLOSE#(PrintHandle%)
4.9
ENDPROC
4.9

4.9
DEF PROCPrintError
4.9
SYS “PDriver_Abort”,PrintHandle%
4.9
SYS “Hourglass_Smash”
4.9
CLOSE#(PrintHandle%)
4.9
ENDPROC
4.9
Hugh Eagle
4.9
•   Running one application from inside another If you’ve ever been
puzzled by odd behaviour when you try to run one application from inside
another, the following advice from Mark Neves of Computer Concepts’
Technical Support Department may help.
4.9
My particular problem arose when I tried to make sure that a printer
driver was loaded by running !PrinterXX from within application A’s !Run
file. The result was that application A failed to run and when I quit
!PrinterXX, an error was reported.
4.9
The answer is that when you run a “sibling task” from another appli
cation’s run file the sibling “takes over the current environment” until
it terminates and only then does it return control to the parent task
(in a manner analogous to a subroutine call).
4.9
The solution is to use the command
4.9
* Desktop <sibling task name>
4.9
rather than *Run.  Hugh Eagle
4.9
•   “Saving” data from one application to another − (This is another of
those “obvious to those who know it” hints.) If you want to transfer
data (e.g. text or a sprite or a drawn object) from one RISC-OS
application to another you don’t have to save it on a disc from
application A and then load it into application B; all you have to do is
drag the icon from application A’s “Save” box (i.e. the window that
appears when you choose a Save menu option) into application B’s window.
4.9
This works with all well behaved (“RISC-OS compliant”) applications,
e.g. !Edit, !Draw, Impression, !Paint, !Poster, etc. and generally works
for either the whole contents of a window or for selected items. Hugh
Eagle
4.9
•   Sprite plotting and colour translation − The ColourTrans section of
the PRM (pages 1399 to 1424) includes references to a number of SWI’s
(including, in particular, ColourTrans_SelectTable) which have to be
called with R1 pointing to the “source palette”. Since, according to PRM
pages 390−391, a sprite’s palette data starts 44 bytes after the
beginning of the sprite, it seems clear that, in order to translate a
sprite’s palette you simply call the ColourTrans SWI with
SpritePointer%+44 in R1, doesn’t it? Wrong!!!
4.9
In fact, the palette data in a sprite appears to include 8 bytes for
each colour with the second 4 bytes duplicating the first 4 (does anyone
know why this is?) whereas ColourTrans expects only 4 bytes per colour.
4.9
So, before you can translate a sprite’s colours, you need to include
some code on the following lines:−
4.9
PaletteLength%=SpritePointer%!32−44
4.9
IF PaletteLength%=0 THEN
4.9
 PalettePointer%=0
4.9
ELSE
4.9
 FOR I%=0 TO PaletteLength%-8 STEP 8
4.9
  Palette%!(I%/2) = SpritePointer%!(I%+44)
4.9
 NEXT
4.9
 PalettePointer%=Palette%
4.9
ENDIF
4.9
Note: The palette data, if any, starts 44 bytes after the beginning of
the sprite. SpritePointer%!32 contains the number of bytes from the
beginning of the sprite to the start of the actual sprite pixel data. If
this equals 44, there is no palette.
4.9
The point of setting PalettePointer% to 0 if there is no palette data,
is that if the sprite has no palette then, in many cases, (especially if
the sprite is defined in a 256 colour mode) it makes sense to call
ColourTrans with R1 set to 0 since ColourTrans will then translate the
default palette for the sprite’s mode. However ...
4.9
•   Strange sprite colours − Ever since RISC-OS arrived, I’ve been puzzled
by the odd colours which have appeared when some sprites have been
plotted by various applications (including Impression, no less). I think
that, at last, I’m beginning to understand why. Consider the following
curious state of affairs:
4.9
Palette details are an optional part of the sprite data format. A lot of
sprites are created by !Paint. !Paint, by default, creates sprites
without a palette (presumably on the assumption that, having been
designed in the Desktop colour scheme, they will be used on the
Desktop.)
4.9
The PRM (page 1278) recommends that you should use the ColourTrans
module for best results when plotting or printing a sprite. However,
although ColourTrans knows how to translate from any given palette and
from the default palette for any mode, it doesn’t seem to be equipped
with any means of translating the standard desktop palette of a mode
other than the current one.
4.9
Therefore, the best that applications can do when faced with a palette-
less sprite is to tell ColourTrans to assume that the sprite was defined
in the default palette for its mode. The trouble with this is that it is
about the worst possible thing that can be done with a sprite defined to
be used on the Desktop since, for instance, colour 0 which is intended
to be white, will be translated by ColourTrans, working from the default
palette, into black! For example, even Impression reverses the colours
of its standard document icon.
4.9
So, what’s to be done? As far as I can tell:
4.9
The best advice is to make sure that every sprite has a palette. If this
isn’t possible then, for plotting sprites on the Desktop, use
Wimp_ReadPixTrans if a sprite doesn’t have a palette (this is the
routine that the Wimp manager uses for plotting sprites as icons and
seems to produce quite acceptable results on the whole) and save
ColourTrans calls for sprites that do have palettes. For example, follow
the above palette conversion routine with code something like this:
4.9
SYS “ColourTrans_SelectTable”,Mode%, PalettePointer%,-1,-1,ColTable%
4.9
IF PaletteLength%<>0 THEN
4.9
  SYS “OS_SpriteOp”,52+512,Sprites% ,SpritePointer%,200,200,
Mask%*8,Scale%,ColTable%
4.9
ELSE
4.9
  IF NumberOfColoursInSprite%<63 THEN SYS “Wimp_ReadPixTrans”, 512,
Sprites%,SpritePointer% ,,,,,ColTable%
4.9
  SYS “OS_SpriteOp”,52+512,Sprites%, SpritePointer%,200,200,
4.9
Mask%*8,Scale%,ColTable%
4.9
ENDIF
4.9
If you’re plotting to a printer, “Wimp_ReadPixTrans” doesn’t help and I
don’t think there is any straightforward, foolproof method. (It would be
possible, I think, to create a block of palette data with the RGB values
for the colours of the Desktop palette in the relevant mode and then
feed this into ColourTrans, but this would be a rather tedious process.)
Hugh Eagle
4.9
Impression Hints and Tips
4.9
•   Adding fonts by using search & replace − As a mathematics and physics
teacher, I use a lot of Greek letters and it is rather bothersome to
have to work through all those menus to reach the effect “Greek” every
time. Therefore, I use search & replace in a way which (at least in the
Impression Junior handbook) is not documented:
4.9
I type the text, using the Latin equivalents of the Greek letters (“g-
Quant” instead of “g-Quant”) then, when I have finished the text, I use
the following:
4.9
   Find: g-Quant
4.9
   Replace: g-Quant
4.9
Impression does the rest. (Many thanks to Computer Concepts for the
information!)
4.9
By the way, if you wish to find out how all the other effects are saved
in an Impression document, there is an easy way to find out: Just take a
document with lots of effects and save only the text story (“with
effects”). If you then drag the icon of the saved text story onto the
!Edit icon, the text will appear with all the effects in plain language.
 Jochen Konietzko, Koeln, Germany
4.9
(Wouldn’t it be easier to use <ctrl-F6> and edit the “Greek” style, go
down to the bottom where it says “Key short-cut”, click in the box and
press, say, <ctrl-shift-F9>, then OK it? Then when you want, say, “g-
Quant”, you type “<ctrl-shift-F9>g<ctrl-shift-F9>-Quant”.... Oh, I see,
Impression Junior doesn’t have styles. Oh well, nice try!)
4.9
•   Cutting invisible text − If you have more text in a frame than will
fit, you get the little red arrow which indicates that some of the text
is invisible. You could obviously create a new frame, click on the over-
full frame and then click <adjust> on the new frame but there may still
be too much for that frame. So, is there any way of marking the
invisible text so that you can cut it or copy it? The answer is that you
simply use <ctrl-down> to move the cursor to the (invisible) bottom of
the text the click <adjust> to indicate the upper limit of the area to
be marked. Ed.
4.9
•   Handy hint − If you use the ‘hand’ to move up or down through a long
document, you are not limited in your movements to the visible page. In
other words, if you keep moving the mouse up and up (by repeatedly
lifting the mouse off the table) or down and down, you just keep moving
through the document in the desired direction. (This is particularly
useful if you are a trackerball user!) Ed.
4.9
•   Importing text files into Impression − In the new version of Impres
sion which CC have just sent me (version 2.11), I have discovered an
exciting new concept in the Archimedes world − “the Return Stripper”!!
4.9
In the Extensions directory is a new loader module called “LoadReturn”
which at last seems to deal satisfactorily with the importing of text
files. Using this, I no longer have to load the file into !Edit then
change linefeeds into carriage returns before importing. Nor do I have
to suffer fixed line lengths in the imported text.
4.9
However, I do have two quibbles (some people are never satisfied!):
4.9
Double carriage returns are reduced to single returns, so spaces between
paragraphs are eliminated (unless you change the style so that it leaves
such a space − which I think is good practice. Ed). I feel it would be
helpful to be able to set a “preference” to decide whether or not double
returns are preserved.
4.9
Importing a text file now involves a somewhat tiresome sequence of
message windows whereby I am asked to accept or reject each of the
available loader modules in turn. I feel it would be helpful to be able
to use the “preference” facility either to define which loader is used
for which filetype or, at the very least, to determine the order in
which the various loader options are offered to me. Hugh Eagle.
4.9
(All I did was to put the LoadReturn extension into the Auto directory
in the Impression directory and now when I want files stripping, I use
!Settype (Shareware 19 or 23) to change them to Acorn data file type
(&FFD) and they are stripped automatically. Ed.)
4.9
•   Labels & Tickets − Another way of doing tickets and labels is to
define a new master page which is the right size for what you want to
create (pretty radical, eh?). “Fit lots” still works, giving you
multiple tickets per sheet, but you’re not restricted to 1% size
increments which can cause you to miss the boundaries on sticky labels,
especially where there are three or four across the page width.
(Brilliant! Why didn’t I think of that? Ed. − see below.)
4.9
A similar technique works for cassette inlays. One way is to define a
single master page 101mm deep and 288mm wide, divided into columns of
16, 12, 65, 65, 65 and 65mm; this format will fit two inlays to an A4
page (assuming zero border width, which will vary between printers), but
you need to fiddle around with !FontDraw and !Draw (Or use Draw1½ − see
below. Ed) to get text on the spine of the cassette. Starting with a
page 288mm deep and 101mm wide gives you the spine text a sensible way
round, but the four “body” pages are then landscape, which you may not
want.
4.9
Another way is to split the inlay into two chapters; the spine has a
101mm wide, 28mm high master page, and the body pages are 65mm by 101mm,
or vice versa if you want landscape. Then you need to do a bit of
cutting and pasting by hand, as Impression won’t print individual pages
sideways. This is the technique I ended up by using, printing at 141%
then reducing the pasted-up result from two up on A3 back down by 70% to
A4, thus enhancing the graphics halftones from 37.5 dpi to 53.6 dpi.
I’ve included an example ... (Which we have put on the Monthly Program
Disc. Ed) Jonathan Oakley, Cambridge.
4.9
•   Labels & tickets − Ed’s version − I have played a bit with Jonathan’s
ideas and developed them a little. I tried to create some labels (like
the ones on our Shareware Discs etc which come as 24 to an A4 page) and
found that his method worked very well. I created a master page that was
70mm x 37.125mm (which is 210mm divided by 3 horizontally and 297mm
divided by 8 vertically). I set a border 3mm wide on all four sides
because the Laser Direct HiRes can print up to about 2.5mm of the edge
of the page and I wanted to have a simple line border around my labels.
I put all my text on the master page including a page number so that I
could have a serial number on the labels. I then closed the master page
and created another 23 pages for my document by using <menu> Edit −
Insert new page. I clicked 22 times with <adjust> so that the menu
stayed on screen and once with <select>. I then pressed <print> and
clicked on “Fit lots” and then “Setup...” and then “Ignore page border”.
The printout which appeared was almost right but was 1mm too far to the
right, 1mm too low at the top and the last label was even lower. (Thinks
hard.... tries various things and then....) The printout was slightly
too long so I created a slightly shorter master page − 70mm x 37.11mm. I
tried to see if there was any adjustment on the laser printer but
couldn’t find any so I went to the (new, shorter) master page, clicked
on the frame and pressed <ctrl-F10> to alter the frame. In the position
section, I simply increased X from 5 to 6 and reduced Y from 5 to 4 in
order to move the text on the page 1 mm right and 1 mm up. Bingo! Every
border on every label was almost exactly 5mm.
4.9
I also had a quick try with Jonathan’s cassette inlay printing and it is
really very easy with his first method − I cheated though by using
Draw1½ (Shareware 34). For the spine, all you do is create a new Draw1½
document, type in the text you want, change it to whatever font you are
using, press <menu> − Special − Text to path and then <menu> − Save −
Selection and drop the Draw file produced into the relevant graphics
frame in your Impression document. Then use <adjust> to drag the picture
round until it is near enough at right angles to the rest of the text
(having decided which way you want it to face) and finally press <ctrl-
F11> (Alter graphic) and set the Angle to exactly 90° or 270°. (If you
can remember which way round 90° or 270° puts it, then there’s no need
to swing it round with <adjust>.) Here is a bit of text that I have just
inserted. It must have taken me all of 45 seconds to create the frame,
type in the text, convert it and add it in! (Software to enable me to do
that on the Mac cost me hundreds of pounds a couple of years ago!)
4.9
•   “Running” an Impression document − In Alan Highet’s review of !Menon
on Shareware 38 (Archive 4.8 page 48) he mentions that it did not work
well with Impression documents since an attempt to “run” one of these
caused a second copy of Impression to appear on the icon bar.
4.9
I have observed a similar phenomenon in trying to create a front-end for
Impression which, amongst other things, opens a template document chosen
by the user. Simply *Running the document results in the loading of a
new copy of Impression regardless of whether one is already running.
4.9
So, why is it that double-clicking on an Impression document in a Filer
window will load it into an existing copy of Impression whereas
“running” it doesn’t?
4.9
Mark Neves of Computer Concepts’ Technical Support Department has kindly
explained why this happens and has pointed to a solution.
4.9
The reason is that what happens when you double click on an icon in a
Filer window is not simply that the document is “run”. First, the Filer
broadcasts a Message_DataOpen message inviting other applications to
open the document, and only if this message is returned unacknowledged
does it instigate a *Run.
4.9
The solution is a fairly simple program on the following lines:
4.9
REM >!RunImage
4.9
TaskName$=“RunImpDoc”
4.9
:
4.9
PROCSetUpWimp
4.9
DocToOpen$=FNReadOSVarVal
4.9
(“Doc$ToOpen”)
4.9
PROCPollLoop
4.9
SYS “Wimp_CloseDown”,Taskid% ,&4B534154
4.9
IF NotAcknowledged% THEN OSCLI(“Run ”+DocToOpen$)
4.9
END
4.9
:
4.9
DEF PROCPollLoop
4.9
LOCAL mask%,quit%
4.9
NotAcknowledged%=FALSE
4.9
PROCSendDataOpenMessage
4.9
mask%=0
4.9
quit%=FALSE
4.9
REPEAT
4.9
SYS “Wimp_Poll”,mask%,block% TO reason%
4.9
CASE reason% OF
4.9
WHEN 17,18 : IF block%!16=4 THEN quit%=TRUE
4.9
 REM Another task (presumably
4.9
 REM Impression) has acknowledged
4.9
 REM our request to load a file.
4.9
WHEN 19  : NotAcknowledged%=TRUE:quit%=TRUE
4.9
 REM Our request has not been acknowledged.
4.9
ENDCASE
4.9
UNTIL quit%
4.9
ENDPROC
4.9
:
4.9
DEF PROCSendDataOpenMessage
4.9
!block%=256
4.9
block%!12=0:block%!16=5:block%!20=0
4.9
block%!28=0:block%!32=0:block%!36=0
4.9
block%!40=&2000
4.9
$(block%+44)=DocToOpen$
4.9
?(block%+44+LEN(DocToOpen$))=0
4.9
SYS “Wimp_SendMessage”,18,block%,0
4.9
ENDPROC
4.9
:
4.9
DEF PROCSetUpWimp
4.9
DIM block% &1000,errblk% 256
4.9
REM Taskid%=FNWimpInit(200,TaskName$)
4.9
SYS “Wimp_Initialise”,200, &4B534154,TaskName$ TO Version%,Taskid%
4.9
ON ERROR PROCError(TaskName$)
4.9
ENDPROC
4.9
:
4.9
DEF FNReadOSVarVal(varname$)
4.9
LOCAL temp1%,temp2%,length%
4.9
DIM temp1% 100,temp2% 100
4.9
$temp2%=varname$
4.9
SYS “OS_ReadVarVal”,temp2%,temp1%, 100,0,3 TO ,,length%
4.9
temp1%?length%=13
4.9
var$=$temp1%
4.9
=var$
4.9
:
4.9
DEF PROCError(TaskName$)
4.9
!errblk%=ERR
4.9
$(errblk%+4)=REPORT$+“ at line ”+ STR$ERL
4.9
errblk%?(4+LEN$(errblk%+4))=0
4.9
SYS “Wimp_ReportError”,errblk%,1, TaskName$
4.9
SYS “Wimp_CloseDown”,Taskid%, &4B534154:END
4.9
ENDPROC
4.9
To use this program, simply set up the OS variable Doc$ToOpen with the
full pathname of the document and run the program. Hugh Eagle
4.9
•   Setting a style in an Impression frame − Question: how do I set up a
blank frame containing a predetermined style (for instance, to hold the
address of the person I am writing to, where I would like to use a
different font from the one in the body of the letter)? If I put the
cursor in the frame, then apply the style, then move the cursor
elsewhere (or save and reload the document) before bringing it back to
the address frame, and then start typing, the text comes up in the
Basestyle.
4.9
Answer: If after applying the style, I type anything (for instance a
couple of carriage returns) in the address frame then the applied style
seems to be remembered and the address frame works as intended.
4.9
Caution: if I delete the entire contents of the frame the applied style
is deleted too. So, if I want to blank the frame for reuse I have to
remember to leave a carriage return or two to preserve the style. Hugh
Eagle.
4.9
•   Typesetting − We said we would try to find companies willing to do
typesetting from Impression output. Here are two that we have found. If
you discover others, ask them to send us details of their services and
we will publish them. We are particularly interested in those that will
take Impression files as such rather than PostScript files on MS-DOS
discs.
4.9
The Type Station in Cardiff offers a full bureau service for bromide or
film. You create PostScript files and either send them by post on an MS-
DOS disc or send them c/o BT using a modem. For details, contact Elgan
Davis on 0222−229977.
4.9
Focus Print in Aberdeen can do bromides (PMT’s) from your Impression
files. Phone Alexander Bisset on 0224−592571 ext 211 (or 0224−593956
evenings).  A
4.9

Hints and Tips
4.10
•   *Count command − In Archive 4.6 p8 the hint about *Count, is only
partly right. The *Count command only counts data. This means that
directories indeed don’t contribute, but also that only the amount of
data in a file is counted. However, all files must be an integer
multiple of the block-size (1k for D and E format), and for short files
this makes a huge difference. My 46Mb hard disc has about 8Mb difference
between space used from *Free and from *Count for these reasons!
4.10
One implication of this is that when you archive a large number of small
files with !Spark you can save much more disc space than you might
expect. One thing I would suggest for hard disc users is to copy the
directory tree using *Copy :4.$ :0 T R, and then archive it, which will
compress it down to almost nothing. Think of all the time you spend
setting up the directory structure; this may be more important than
losing files, most of which you will (should?), after all, have on
floppies. As an added bonus this also gives you the location of all
applications, as these are just directories. If (perish the thought) you
have a disc crash, you can just drag the tree out of the archive and
onto a new hard disc.  Stephen Burke, Liverpool.
4.10
•   DataLoad problems? − The PRM says that if a DataLoad message isn’t
acknowledged, the sending task should delete <Wimp$Scrap> and give an
error. However, I think this is wrong. You aren’t guaranteed that the
scrap file used is, in fact, <Wimp$Scrap>. One case where this must
happen is with an application which can both load and save files of the
same type at the same time; it must not use <Wimp$Scrap> for both, or it
might get very confused! However, there might be other reasons. I
therefore think you should remember the name of the file you saved, and
delete that − you get told that it wasn’t a secure file, so this should
be safe.  Stephen Burke, Liverpool.
4.10
•   Hard Drive problems − BEWARE!!! If you have a fairly old computer − a
310 or a 440 or even a vintage 410/1 or if you are working in a dusty
environment and you are putting in a new hard drive, check/replace the
fan filter. Why? Well, drive suppliers tell us that on more than one
occasion they have had a computer where the fan filter was blocked up
with dust, the customer has installed a new drive and not changed the
filter and, as a result of the lack of airflow, the drive has suffered a
fatal head crash. So, you have been warned. (Fan filters should be
available “from your local Acorn dealer” or they can be bought from
N.C.S. as part of an “Annual Service Kit” − including a new pair of
batteries − priced £3.)
4.10
•   How long is a line? − While editing an old program which I was
converting from the BBC Master to run on the Archimedes, I came across
some features of Basic line lengths which may be of interest. The
program was originally written for the BBC-B with the longest possible
lines to save space.
4.10
On Page 16 of the ‘Basic User Guide’ issue 1 dated 1988, it says ‘A line
of Basic can contain up to 238 characters...’ but on page 386 it says
that ‘As in a Basic program, the length of a line is limited (by the
Basic Editor) to 251 characters..’. This implies that the system has two
different ideas of what the maximum line length should be, instead of
one. Unfortunately, the one it uses seems to depend on what you are
doing.
4.10
My module ARMBasicEdit (version 1 21 August 87) allows the insertion of
many more than 238 characters in a line. I can get up to 369 before
there is a warning bell, but then neither <Escape> nor <Return> nor SAVE
work until there are only the 251 characters left. Programs containing
lines of length between 239 and 251 apparently run without problems.
However, if you try editing the lines with Basic loaded, just using the
Copy key, you find that there is a warning bell after 239 characters,
(excluding the line number), not after 251.
4.10
Programs with lines longer than 239 characters can be converted to ASCII
using *SPOOL. However, when you attempt to read them back into a Basic
program using *EXEC, the lines are truncated to 239, so that the program
no longer runs. There is a warning bell but the *EXEC process does not
stop, so not allowing me to find which lines are at fault. I find this
very frustrating. The file Btest, on the monthly disc, is an example of
such a program. The file ‘CHECK240’ is a small program which reads a
file made using *SPOOL which cannot be successfully read back using
*EXEC. It lists the line numbers which are too long, allowing me to edit
them with the Basic Editor.
4.10
CHAIN“Btest” to see that it runs. Then try
4.10
*SPOOL TEMP
4.10
LIST
4.10
*SPOOL
4.10
*EXEC TEMP
4.10
CHAIN “CHECK240”
4.10
and reply “TEMP” at the prompt. Kate Crennell, Didcot.
4.10
•   Printer drivers − Further to recent tips about altering the PrData
file within the printer driver, you can also alter the title of your
preferred driver and make it the default driver on loading. For example,
the amendments to !PrinterDM in Archive 4.8 could be made to read “Star
LC24-10” by altering the line before the line “printer number:2”. The
default loading is achieved by amending the line “printer:01” to
“printer:02”. This line is found towards the end of the data file
immediately before the line “location:1”. Note that the printer number
must be padded out with a zero (0). Pressing <select> after loading the
driver will confirm if your amendments have been correctly made.  Ted
Lacey, Southampton.
4.10
•   Printing A5 on an A4 printer − If you ask the manufacturers, they say
it is not possible to put A5 paper through either the Qume (300 d.p.i.)
or the Canon (600 d.p.i.) Laser Directs − or the LBP4’s for that matter
− but it is possible. All you need is a pile of A5 sheets of scrap paper
sellotaped up into a solid block about ½“ thick (or ¾” thick for the
Canons). You put them at the back of the A4 paper tray and put the A5
paper, sideways, of course, at the front. The paper usually goes through
OK but does occasionally stick. All you have to be careful of, presum
ably, is that you don’t print on the lower half of the (A4) paper that
is not actually there. Having said that, I have been using A5 paper on
Qume’s, Canons and Mac Laserwriters for years and have occasionally left
the “A5” tray in when printing A4 without any obvious damage to the
printers.
4.10
We can now get hold of spare paper trays for Qume (£66) and Canon LBP4
(£57) and Canon LBP8 (£54)
4.10
(A possible alternative to the paper is a block of wood the same size
and thickness but I haven’t actually tried it.)
4.10
•   Psychedelic sound-to-light − Whilst playing a Tracker module, it is
possible to obtain some interesting effects on your monitor by typing
the following Basic command:
4.10
SYS “OS_UpdateMEMC”,768,1792
4.10
The screen can be returned to normal with either a MODE command or with:
4.10
SYS “OS_UpdateMEMC”,1536,1792
4.10
Rob Swain, Kent
4.10
•   Render Bender on SCSI hard disc drives revisited − In Archive 3.11 p6,
Neil Berry explains how to use Render Bender on SCSI hard disc drives
but leaves us with the problem of how to use *KILLADFS. This can be
achieved by changing all references made to SWI ADFS_Drives (&40242) to
SWI SCSI_Drives (&403C6). i.e.
4.10
In the ‘Render’ Basic listing: change the SWI &40242 to &403C6 in line
15810
4.10
In ‘Aniroute’ Basic listing: change the SWI &40242 to &403C6 in line
6670
4.10
Atle Mjelde Bårdholt, Norway
4.10
•   Running one application inside another − The comment in Archive 4.9
page 6 seems to need some amplification. As explained on page 11 of the
May/June 1991 issue of “The Archimedean” from Computer Concepts, if you
want to run one application from inside the !Run file of another, you
should first enter the command
4.10
*Desktop Run <sibling task name>
4.10
and then repeat the *Wimpslot command from earlier in the !Run file to
ensure that there is enough memory available for the main application
before you run it.
4.10
Thus, for example, to make Impression automatically load a printer
driver whenever it is run you should edit the !Impress.!Run file by
inserting two extra lines immediately before the last so that the last
three lines read:
4.10
Desktop Run [...path...].!PrinterXX
4.10
Wimpslot −min xxxK −max xxxK
4.10
Run “<Impression$Dir>.!RunImage” %*0
4.10
The xxxK in the Wimpslot command should be exactly the same as used
earlier in the !Run file − the precise amount of memory needed will vary
from one version of Impression to another. Hugh Eagle, Horsham.
4.10
•   Sound improvements − A much improved sound, which is also more
controllable, can be obtained using the standard colour monitor supplied
with the Archimedes. A 3.5mm jack (Archimedes) to phono (monitor) cable
is required, and the speaker on the Archimedes should be turned off
using *SPEAKER OFF.  Sean Kelly, London
4.10
•   Sound voice changes − Among the (many) things that annoy me are those
professional programmers who alter your Sound Voice for their games
which otherwise claim to be “RISC-OS Compatible”. They return you to the
desktop with their Sound Modules set up as ChannelVoice 1. Not everyone
likes the WaveSynth-Beep as default voice, and as for some of the sound
modules or digitised Voice Modules which are then sounded when an error
occurs, YUK!
4.10
It is quite a simple matter to find out what ChannelVoice the user has
set up and the program could very easily, before exiting to the desktop,
restore it using the following code which is available for all program
mers to use, professional or amateur (please!).
4.10
REM Find the User’s ChannelVoice 1
4.10
SYS “Sound_AttachVoice”,1,0 to ,user_voice%
4.10

4.10
REM Because ChannelVoice 1 now equal to 0, reset
4.10
SYS “Sound_AttachVoice”,1,user_voice%
4.10
REM Rest of program, Wimp Interface, whatever
4.10
*ChannelVoice 1 Totally Fantastic Voice
4.10

4.10
REM Program at end, restore user voice
4.10
SYS“Sound_AttachVoice”,1,user_voice%
4.10
David Shepherdson
4.10
•   Toolkit Plus update − Clares’ Toolkit Plus usually produces a ‘Bad
disc address’ error when you try to edit E format floppy discs. This can
be rectified by performing the following:
4.10
1   RMLoad the Toolkit Plus module.
4.10
2   Type: *Modules <return> and take note of the ‘position’ address of the
Toolkit Plus module.
4.10
3   Use *WFIND &EF060240 <return> and ignore the first occurrence (i.e.
press <ctrl-tab> to go on to the next occurrence).
4.10
4   Locate the instruction seventeen lines down which reads BCC xxxxx.
4.10
5   Select ‘word mode’ and zero this instruction.
4.10
You should now be able to edit E format discs.
4.10
S Edwards, Wordsley
4.10
•   Toolkit Plus with SCSI − Clares’ Toolkit Plus provides a disc sector
editor, which refused to work on my SCSI hard disc. A modified Toolkit
Plus may be produced by using !Edit on the Toolkit Plus module to
replace all occurrences of ‘ADFS’ with ‘SCSI’ before saving the module
with a new name e.g. SCSITools.
4.10
A drawback is that the modified version will not cope with ADFS
floppies. Changing the module name (e.g. from ‘Toolkit+’ to ‘SCSITools’)
using !Edit allows the modified and original modules to be present at
the same time, and changing the disc edit command names allows both ADFS
and SCSI discs to be edited − for instance, !Edit could be used to
replace ‘AEDIT’ in Toolkit+ with ‘WEDIT’ in SCSITools.
4.10
Sean Kelly, London
4.10
Impression Hints and Tips
4.10
•   Abbreviations − I use abbreviations quite a lot such as “imp” for
Impression and just “r” for Archimedes but I often want to say, for
example “ ...using DrawPlus (Careware 13)...” and although “ca” and “Ca”
are both set up to expand to “Careware”, using “(ca” doesn’t work. There
is no easy way round it as far as I know − you just have to put “(ca”
into the abbreviations dictionary to expand to “(Careware”.
4.10
•   Bullets − We’ve mentioned that <ctrl-shift-H> produces a bullet but
since <backspace> (immediately below <F12> and above <\>) produces the
same ASCII code as <ctrl-H>, you will find that <shift-backspace>
produces a bullet. Touch typists may well find it somewhat more natural
than <ctrl-shift-H>.
4.10
•   Creating tables − The release notes issued with Impression II describe
the new features of version 2.12 but they do less than justice to one of
those features, namely the capacity to create tables. It is possible to
vary the width of individual columns and individual rows in a table as
well as the thickness of the vertical and horizontal lines which form
the table.
4.10
In addition, the many editing facilities of Impression can be used to
modify text which has been entered into the table so that the style and
size of the characters in any “cell” of the table can be varied as
desired.
4.10
Moreover, in the manner usual with Impression II, another frame can be
superimposed on any selected part of the table with the effect that
lines of the table can be covered and will “disappear” permitting text
of any size and nature to be introduced and adjusted to appear to be a
part of the structure of the table.
4.10
In addition to text, any of the superimposed frames can be made graphics
frames permitting illustrations to be introduced. You can use left hand
tabulation in the some columns, right hand tabulation in others and
decimal point tabulation in others.
4.10
Practical matters: First construct the empty table. Then determine which
cells will be visible in the completed table and enter text into those
cells, Finally, superimpose other frames as required. Proceeding in this
order prevents interference with tabulation.
4.10
The usual procedure will be to construct a table of this kind within a
frame of its own so that it can be moved as a whole to any desired
position within the document of which it will form a part. Therefore, on
completion of the table, the various frames of which it is composed
should be Grouped so that the table occupies a single frame. George
Foot, Oxted.  A
4.10

4.10

4.10

4.10
Oak
4.10
From 4.9 page 12
4.10

4.10
Lindis International
4.10
From 4.8 page 16
4.10

4.10
Computer Concepts
4.10
New artwork
4.10
Coming direct to you, hopefully!
4.10
If not, use old one.
4.10

4.10
Computer Concepts
4.10
New artwork
4.10
Coming direct to you, hopefully!
4.10
If not, use old one.
4.10

4.10
Graphics Galore on the Cheap!
4.10
Tord Eriksson
4.10
Reading with amazement about the latest version of Ventura Publisher Mac
that costs a cool £695 (exclusive VAT!) and so-called ‘budget’ DTP
programs for IBMs weighing in at £70 to £160, I wonder if we Archimedes
users really know how fortunate we are when it comes to good, cheap
software.
4.10
The “budget” DTP programs for IBMs can’t even word-process − you have to
use a separate editor, just as you have to do if you do some DTP with
!Draw....
4.10
Of course, the latest version of Ventura Publisher Mac can print fonts
in 23½ size instead of just 23 or 24 point size − a revolution no doubt
but one that almost all DTP and word-processors for our Archimedes
machines manage easily!
4.10
Archimedes − no master of colours!
4.10
There is a difference between modern IBMs and Mac II’s that puts all
Acorn computers at a disadvantage, even if it was once hailed as an
advance over said computers: Colours!
4.10
In terms of colour, both Mac II computers and IBMs with VGA are better
than Archimedes and the sky is the limit as there are hundreds of
graphics cards that can be bought that improve things further − 24-bit
colours are available.
4.10
RISC-OS has an upper limit of 8 bits per pixel, 256 colours − 24 bits
per pixel gives 16,777,216 different colours, quite a lot more!.
4.10
For the Archimedes range, the limitations are built-in, through RISC-OS
and the fixed hardware. (There are some improvements possible with
hardware add-ons, but nothing major).
4.10
Serious DTP is black & white!
4.10
Fortunately, colour printers are very rare in everyday printing, mainly
due to the fact that such printers are very costly and/or requires
skilled staff to attend to them.
4.10
So, for practical purposes, DTP will continue to be a mainly black &
white affair, maybe with some colour thrown in for good measure on
covers etc.
4.10
The woes of illustrating....
4.10
Being a former technical illustrator, I am painfully aware of the amount
of work needed to set text in a circular fashion as on a coin or an
official seal or make the logo on a fluttering flag look like the real
thing. Hours and hours of work, or in the case of the flag, take a photo
of the real thing and trace that with tracing paper....
4.10
If the logo is new, you can’t print it first on a flag, so you try to
make do with crinkling a piece of paper upon which you put your text or
logo and take a photo of that....
4.10
All this is now of the past, as long as your logo or text can be
transformed into a !Draw file.
4.10
First − !FontFX
4.10
Let us try an example: There used to be an oil company around this part
of the world called Caltex. Let us say we are going to do a drawing with
a flag fluttering with that name on it.
4.10
First we have the text, set in Pembroke:
4.10
To make it more interesting let’s add a shadow, with the shadow in the
north-east, and make the text itself a black outline filled with a light
grey and behind it, the dark grey shadow:
4.10

4.10

4.10

4.10
Both these operations are very easy to do with !FontFX as you just click
on the buttons needed, no previous know-how needed!
4.10
To make this flutter we have to use a couple of other utilities:
!DrawPlus (or !Draw) and DrawBender.
4.10
Warped universe
4.10
A normal picture is plotted in our brain according to the angle we watch
the picture from: If we fly above a square field the corners are right
angle corners (a so-called bird’s-eye view) and if we stand just outside
the field the angles get very odd indeed − their sum is still 360,
though!
4.10
If a square is wrapped around a cylinder things get much more compli
cated, especially when seen at an angle − an illustrator’s nightmare!
Not even all CAD programs seems to be able to solve it correctly....
4.10
Secondly − make a mould!
4.10
DrawBender manipulates !Draw files by plotting them inside each other:
Any text that is going to be manipulated has to be in !Draw format. The
coordinate system “inside” a square is still square but inside a circle
it takes on the characteristics of a text printed on a balloon like
this:
4.10

4.10

4.10

4.10

4.10
The first (the circle) is called the mould and the second (the square
inside a frame) is called the object.
4.10
Due to the way DrawBender works, a real circle couldn’t be used − it had
to be substituted it with a 32-sided polygon and it had to be flipped
over because paths have to be clockwise to work as moulds in DrawBender
whereas !Draw and !DrawPlus draw counter-clockwise − it’s all very well
explained in the DrawBender manual!
4.10
Wonderful results!
4.10
Taking the text, we put it on rectangular background, to make the
outline of the flag as the outline of the mould doesn’t show up on the
finished result:
4.10
This is now our object! A “flapping flag” is our mould:
4.10
Conclusion
4.10
As the end result shows the effect is quite stunning. This amount of
manipulation is available to IBM users of course − I could recommend
Express Publisher (£159.95) as the “low-cost” alternative!
4.10
For Archimedes users the cost is just £21, including two manuals and
lots of sample files (available from Ian Copestake Software).  A
4.10

Hints and Tips
4.11
•   Running applications − Carrying on from Hugh Eagle’s tip about running
one application from inside another, on a A310, if you only have
floppies and have, say, a DTP !Impression disc with !PrinterDM ,
!FontDraw and !DrawPlus all at the same level, you can tailor the !run
file of, say, !Impression to load other applications at the same
directory level, dependant on memory, by using the command
4.11
*desktop <obey$dir>.^.!second_
4.11
application_name
4.11
the <obey$dir> sets the filing system into the first selected appli
cation (!Impression.) and the .^. takes it back up to the level you were
at first! The next application then loads on the desktop ready for use.
Repeat the line with “!third_ application_name” and so on.  Ned Abell
4.11
•   Colour separations − Last month, there was a question from John
Oversby about a colour separation program for !Draw or sprite files. One
solution is to use DrawPlus (Careware 13), actually drawing different
colours on different “layers”. Another possible solution revolves around
the Impression Business Supplement which provides colour separation for
PostScript files. However, the ideal solution is a simple “filter”
program which takes in a !Draw file and selects all objects of a
particular colour and puts them into a new !Draw file. Does anyone know
of such a program? I would be interested in using this for producing
double-sided printed circuit boards using !Draw. It is easy to write a
Basic program to do this starting from the !Draw format as specified in
the PRM − I could even do this myself − but making it RISC-OS-ified is
another matter. Brian Cowan
4.11
Impression H & T
4.11
•   Business Supplement − Like many of you I was excited about the release
of more software for serious users of Impression II. The addition of the
mail-merge facility is particularly useful. However, I have noticed that
it suffers from a problem that early versions of Impression had. Namely,
using the * print facility causes the print to crash after the first
document with “Invalid number of output bits” in multiscan mode. The
problem is resolved by switching to mode 15. Also, beware of forgetting
to load your RISC-OS printer driver before requesting a print from
!Importer. This is because it won’t warn you that you will receive a
draft copy − and worse, you have to close everything down and start
again.
4.11
Another word of warning to those of you planning to buy the supplement
thinking that the WordStar loader will solve all your translation
problems − it doesn’t (not on my version, anyway)! If I had thought
about it, the result one gets is obvious. All the ASCII spaces that mess
up justification are stripped − but this is at the cost of losing a
space at the end of a line. Consequently, numerous words are joined
together. If you are prepared to use the spellchecker to separate the
words again the utility is fine and it does stop those messy spaces
appearing whenever you make an alteration to the text. However, it’s
still hard work!  John Brocks
4.11
•   Font usage − Is there a product or would someone like to write an
application which takes an Impression document and tells you what
fonts are required? The reason for this is that some PD software
includes documentation prepared in Impression format. This is a great
idea but sometimes strange fonts are used. If you are using Adrian
Look’s !FontDir (Shareware 36) then you need to know which fonts are
needed before Impression is booted up. Brian Cowan
4.11
That should be easy enough. If you want to do it manually, you can save
the text of an Impression document with styles and look at it in Edit.
You can search for “font  ” and look through all the references to
particular fonts as they occur in the style definitions and as effects
within the text. Mind you, that will give you the fonts that appear
within the style definitions regardless of whether those styles have
actually been used in the document. Anyone want to have a go at writing
such an application?
4.11
Is anyone interested in / able to convert between the Impression
Document Description File format and TeX? I think it should be possible
since both contain the same sort of information. This would be useful
for scientific applications where many journals accept material on disc
or by wire in TeX format. Brian Cowan
4.11
•   Labels and tickets − When I was printing video cassette labels onto a
roll of adhesive labels they were printing too far to the right. I
failed to understand that !Impression is smart and says, “right, you are
printing a document 165mm wide. I will print it 82.5mm to the right and
left of the centre line of the printer”. I have a mark on the case of my
Citizen 120D printer to align the left hand side of A4 paper, when
putting in individual sheets but I can’t centre different rolls of
labels accurately without putting several marks on the case which would
be confusing so I got round the problem by designing new master pages
that are always A4 width (210 mm) and creating a frame on that page that
is the right width for the labels and off centred to the left. I
continue to put the label roll edge to the mark.
4.11
I then had to change the !Printer DM page size to one 102mm by 210mm
wide which gives me the the right “greying” on the screen as I have
“Preferences”, “Show page borders”, switched on. This prints two perfect
sets of labels but I still get unwanted form feeds at the end of the
page! (Example supplied on monthly program disc.)  Ned Abell
4.11
•   Retaining styles − Hugh Eagles’s question about setting a style in a
blank Impression frame (Archive 4.9 p11) can be answered in terms of
‘Place holding’ in the same way as my hint on re-aligning lines starting
with a different font (Archive 4.8 page 11). Just set the style and type
a ‘null’ character in the frame (i.e. one which is not defined in the
font you are using) by using Alt and the keypad numbers. (EFF fonts are
rapidly filling up, making null characters harder to find, but try 136
or 139.) Bruce Goatly
4.11
•   Un-deleting − As you probably know, you can highlight a passage, type
over it and thereby replace it. Well, if you have second thoughts
immediately afterwards, you can restore the original by highlighting the
replacement passage and typing <ctrl-V>. This deletes the replacement
altogether rather than cutting it to the clipboard; the clipboard still
contains the original version. Bruce Goatly  A
4.11

4.11
Help!!!!
4.11
•   Mac Scanner − Does anybody know of software to use a Mac AppleScanner
with a SCSI interface on an Archimedes? Brian Cowan
4.11
•   Podule expansion − Does anyone know of an expansion box which allows
more than 4 podules to be attached to an Archimedes computer at any one
time? A G Duckett, Telford.  A
4.11

4.11



ProTips
4.11
Peter Jennings
4.11
This is a column of hints and tips for users of Protext 5. It is not
intended as a regular feature to rival PipeLine as there are probably
not yet enough users of the Archimedes version of Protext to support it.
Arnor have promised to keep me informed of developments to Protext,
particularly the eagerly awaited RISC-OS version, and I will pass the
details on in future issues of Archive, along with any hints or tips
that pioneering users of this exciting new word processor may care to
send by way of Paul Beverley.
4.11
In the meantime, here are a few hints of my own plus advice on an
irritating bug that has emerged from the software since I completed the
review in last month’s Archive.
4.11
First the bug, which has suddenly appeared after lying dormant during
three months’ constant use of Protext. It shows itself during attempts
to save a file, either manually or automatically, with two messages, one
saying that the file “PROTEXT!X” or “PROTEXT!T” cannot be found and the
other: “Error creating file”. More alarmingly, the text sometimes
disappears from the screen. Any further attempt to save brings a “File
open” message. My description of this as “irritating” may seem rather
inadequate but, in fact, it is not disastrous and can be dealt with
quite easily. When the message about PROTEXT!X appears just type “close”
at the command line, followed by “s” (for save). Your original file name
will then be offered and pressing <return> will duly save it.
4.11
Arnor have not given me any fix for this fault but have just said,
rather uncertainly: “We think we may have solved the problem in the next
version of Protext.” Let us hope they have.
4.11
Omissions
4.11
Two strange omissions from Protext, so far, are a function key strip and
an icon. If you dislike the boring default applications icon, or the
blank squares representing files, you can always design your own icons,
using !Paint. First create a directory for them, called !Sprites, inside
the main !Protext directory. Then design an application icon named
!protext and a files icon called file_cdf, with additional small
versions if wanted. Finally, add an initial line to the !Boot file:
“IconSprites <Obey$Dir>.!Sprites”. If you are not sure how to create
icons there are instructions in the chapter on “Paint” in the User Guide
or you can find a set of ready-made sprites in a !Sprites directory on
this month’s program disc. You can just copy !Sprites into the !Protext
directory but do not forget to add the IconSprites line to the !Boot
file. The ready-mades have a simple “P5” design, with a border round the
files sprite, but are colourful enough to be readily identified in a
desktop directory.
4.11
A do-it-yourself function key strip is also easily made, either using a
program which provides a template or by starting from scratch with
Protext’s excellent line drawing facility. One made this way is also on
this month’s disc. It has to be printed in two sections, one below the
other, as Protext can not print down the paper in landscape form. Anyone
who has a wide-carriage printer can copy the second section beside the
first by using the Protext “box” marking facility.
4.11
Line drawing
4.11
When making a grid by line drawing, the natural way is to begin by
drawing either the horizontal lines or the outside box shape and then
adding the verticals afterwards. If you do it this way, however, you may
find the vertical lines going slightly beyond the outside boundaries. To
correct this, draw the uprights with the up or down arrow key, as
normal, but use one of the horizontal, left or right, arrow keys for the
final stroke before reaching the horizontal boundary. The line will then
turn the corner to make a neat join instead of an intersection. Corners
are drawn in the same way.
4.11
Although Protext comes with 48 printer drivers, there isn’t one for the
very popular Panasonic KX-P1081 printer, which I use. The FX80 printer
driver is suitable for it but will not print line drawings. So the
function key strip needs to have the IBM9 printer driver loaded and one
of the printer’s tiny DIP switches changed. These can be found below and
immediately to the right of the printer head when it is in its “home”
position on the extreme left. Lift up the thin strip of clear plastic
covering them and use a small screwdriver or similar implement to push
switch number one, on the extreme left, down (for off). The other
switches can probably be left as set but if you still have a problem try
putting either switch six or seven up (for on).
4.11
Hopefully, Arnor will produce a key strip and their own official icons
when the RISC-OS version of Protext finally appears.
4.11
Obvious when you know
4.11
Finally, a few brief tips of the “it’s obvious when you know” variety.
You can find your version number of Protext by pressing <escape> and
reading the bar above the command line. This also shows you the current
directory and the selected printer driver.
4.11
The “Swap” line at the top of the colour configuration menu puzzled me
for a time as it does not seem to be explained anywhere. I eventually
discovered that selecting it and pressing <return> shows the colours
used for alternate documents when more than one is loaded.
4.11
It is a good idea to lock the files of templates, such as letter
headings, to prevent them being overwritten if a document you are
working on is automatically saved with the template’s name. If, for any
reason, you cannot lock the template, load it with the command “m” for
merge instead of “l” for load. The bar at the top of the screen will
show “No file” and you will be asked for a name before the document is
saved.  A
4.11

Hints and Tips
4.12
•   Basic line lengths revisited (Archive 4.10 p7) − The Basic line input
buffer is 238 characters and so this is the most you can type in from
the Basic prompt. Once entered, this line is tokenised before being
stored as part of a program. Most of the keywords are reduced to only
one byte, so the line ends up taking up much less room in a program. The
maximum length for a line in a program is 255 bytes, but four of these
bytes have special purposes (one is a line terminator, one the line
length and two the line number). This leaves 251 bytes for the rest of
the line. So what’s the point in allowing bigger lines in the program if
you can’t type them in? Well, you can by being devious. Try typing the
following at the Basic prompt:
4.12
10E.:E.:E.: etc
4.12
until you hit the line limit and then press Return. Listing your program
now should reveal:
4.12
10ENDPROC:ENDPROC:ENDPROC: etc
4.12
up to a length of about 790 characters! This line is perfectly valid and
would run OK (although I can’t think of a program where 79 ENDPROCs in a
row would be useful!) but is much too long to edit at the Basic prompt
or in the Basic Editor. It wouldn’t be sensible for the Basic Editor to
limit you to 251 characters since, once tokenised, your line would be
much shorter, so it allows you to type up to 369 characters hoping that
tokenising will bring it back to 251. It objects if you try to type in
more than 369 characters; it also objects if you type a shorter line
which would be longer than 251 characters once tokenised (try REM
followed by 300 letters). As for solving the problem, if you have a copy
of Twin, you could try loading your Basic program into it. Twin has no
line length limit and will cope with anything. Returning to Basic will
always work provided the resulting tokenised lines would be no longer
than 251 characters. Lorcan Mongey
4.12
•   Citizen printer spare parts − You may be interested to know that you
can get spare parts for Citizen printers from XMA Ltd, Ruddington Lane,
Wilford, Nottingham, NG11 7EP. (0602 −818222) Rob Brown, Tadworth,
Surrey.
4.12
•   Fatal error type = 5 − !Edit will report this error if you have too
many outline fonts in your !Fonts folder. This will prevent you from
editing any documents within !Edit. The following Basic program will
solve this problem by hiding the !Fonts folder before running !Edit and
then restoring it once !Edit has been run.
4.12
1. Rename the ‘!RunImage’ file inside the ‘!Edit’ folder as ‘EditImage’.
4.12
2. Type the following program in and then save it as ‘!RunImage’ in the
‘!Edit’ folder.
4.12
REM ><Edit$Dir>.!RunImage
4.12
SYS “Wimp_Initialise”,200,&4B534154, “EditStart” TO ,taskid%
4.12
*Set temp <Font$Prefix>
4.12
*UnSet Font$Prefix
4.12
*WimpSlot -min 160k -max 160k
4.12
*WimpSlot -min 160k
4.12
SYS “Wimp_StartTask”,“Run <Edit$Dir> .EditImage ”+FNenv_string
4.12
*Set Font$Prefix <temp>
4.12
*Unset temp
4.12
SYS “Wimp_CloseDown”,,taskid% ,&4B534154
4.12
END
4.12

4.12
DEFFNenv_string
4.12
LOCAL env$,x%
4.12
SYS “OS_GetEnv” TO env$
4.12
IF LEN(env$)<6 THEN =“”
4.12
WHILE INSTR(env$,“ ”,x%)>0
4.12
x%=INSTR(env$,“ ”,x%)+1
4.12
ENDWHILE
4.12
=RIGHT$(env$,LEN(env$)-x%+1)
4.12
•    Locating the I/O podule (a SWI number change) − Those writing code
for the I/O podule for use on different machines should note that Acorn
made a SWI number change between version 1.04 and 1.06 of the software
(use *Help Modules to find what version you have). Earlier issues of the
podule use &4043F for SWI “I/O _Podule_Hardware” whereas the later
versions use &40500. ARM code assembled on a machine with one version of
the software will not work on another machine with a different version
without changing this SWI number. Richard House, Surrey.
4.12
•   PC screen fonts − If you are not overly fond of the chunky IBM
character set in the PC emulator, the following few lines of Basic will
modify the emulator ROM file with the BBC font of your choice.
4.12
REM >PCFONT
4.12
REM Merge BBC FONT file into !PC ROM file
4.12
REM N.B. *** COPY ORIGINAL ROM FILE BEFORE RUNNING THIS ***
4.12
:
4.12
DIM rom% &2000 : offset%=&166E
4.12
R$=“:4.$.!PC.ROM”
4.12
OSCLI(“Load ”+R$+“ ”+STR$~rom%)
4.12
A%=OPENIN(R$) : r1%=EXT#A% : CLOSE#A%
4.12
:
4.12
F%=OPENIN(“4:.BBCFONTS.NEWFONT”) : REM file of type &FF7
4.12
REPEAT
4.12
A%=BGET#F%
4.12
IF A%<>23 THEN PRINT “This is not a BBC font file!” : END
4.12
C%=BGET%F%
4.12
FOR I%=0 TO 7
4.12
rom%?(offset%+((C%+128) MOD 256) *8+ I%)=BGET#F%
4.12
NEXT I%
4.12
UNTIL EOF#F%
4.12
CLOSE#F%
4.12
:
4.12
OSCLI(“Save ”+R$+“ ”STR$~rom%+ “ + ”+STR$~r1%)
4.12
END
4.12
This program has been used successfully on the ROM files supplied with
version 1.33 and the latest 1.60 (large and small) − each version stores
its VDU 23 character definitions from offset &166E onwards. Pete Bready,
Glasgow.
4.12
•   Impression Junior styles? − In the June 1991 edition of Archive, it
was pointed out that Impression Junior does not have styles. Although it
does not have styles, it does have rulers. These are intended to define
margins and tab-stops, but they can be used for other things.
4.12
If you save a text story with effects, you will see the definition of a
ruler, which looks like:
4.12

4.12
There will also be the definition of the BaseStyle, which contains a
number of additional commands. By copying some of these to the ruler
definition, you can create the equivalent of a style. As an example, a
‘style’ that changes the font of the text subject to the ruler to greek,
could be, for example:
4.12

4.12
As Impression Junior does not have the facility to create rulers with
these extensions, they must be written using an ordinary text editor
(such as !Edit) and imported into Impression where they become rulers.
4.12
The commands that I know work are:
4.12
font <font name>   − e.g. Greek, Trinity.Medium, etc
4.12
fontsize <size>pt   − 8 to 20 is reasonable
4.12
fontaspect <size>%      −
100 normal, 200 stretches to twice size
4.12
fontcolour rgb = (<n>,<n>,<n>)  − n is from 0 to 1 or 0 to 100 (both
appear to work)
4.12
linecolour rgb = (<n>,<n>,<n>)  − as above
4.12
justify [left, right, centre, full]  − full is to both margins
4.12
underline [0,1]      − other
values also work but give strange underline
4.12
strikeout [on, off]      −
writes ‘-’ over characters
4.12
script [off, sub, super]      −
sub and super-scripts
4.12
leader “<text>”      − overwrites
tab character
4.12
By using these additional commands, it is possible to generate some very
useful rulers.
4.12
Simon Callan, Borehamwood.  A
4.12