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Hints and Tips 5.1 • FileUtils − Anyone using Ben Summers’ FileUtils should note that <ctrl-shift-F2>, <ctrl-shift-F3> and <ctrl-shift-F4> will still call up the FileUtils routines even when, say, working in Impression. This can give a nasty shock if you are, for example, trying to insert preset styles using <ctrl-shift-F4> and a “change filetype” dialogue window pops up. Mike Hobart, Cambridge. 5.1 • Installing Desktop C − If you have recently upgraded from C to Desktop C, you may have a little difficulty installing Desktop C onto your hard disc. When you first try to run the ‘Install’ program, it will stop abruptly half way through the second of the four discs, with no clues as to what has happened. This is because the ‘Install’ program tries to create a directory called $.User. Cmodule, which already exists from your previous installation of C and so the program crashes. The solution is simple, just delete the old $.User.Cmodule directory before attempt ing to install Desktop C. D R Kennard, London. 5.1 • LBP-4 CaSPL − Switching between Video output (for the CC Hi-Res board) and CaSPL output of the LBP-4 doesn’t appear to be documented in the manual. Here is how it can be done: 5.1 From Video to CaSPL mode: 5.1 1. Hold down “Menu” for 3 seconds until “Mode=Video” is displayed. 5.1 2. Tap the “Menu” key once to display “Mode=CaSPL” 5.1 3. Tap “Enter”. The LCD will read “01 Ex Exit” then “00 Ready A4” 5.1 4. Tap the “Off-line” key to take the machine off-line (if the green on-line indicator is lit). 5.1 5. Tap “Feeder Select”. 5.1 6. Tap “Menu”. The menu as described in the manual is now displayed. 5.1 From CaSPL to Video: 5.1 1. Take the printer off-line. 5.1 2. Hold down the “Menu” for 3 seconds − “Mode=CaSPL” is displayed. 5.1 3. Tap “Menu” again − “Mode=Video” is displayed. 5.1 4. Tap “Enter”. 5.1 5. You are now back in Video mode. 5.1 Mike, Bainbridge, Derby. 5.1 Impression Hints & Tips 5.1 • Adding a frame at beginning of a story − It is not immediately obvious (well, it wasn’t to me!) how to add extra frames into a story that runs through a number of frames. Suppose you have two frames, B and C (I’ll get to A in a minute) − perhaps they are two main columns on this page − and you want to split column B into two frames leaving a gap in the middle. What you do is firstly shorten frame B using the frame handle at the middle of the bottom of the frame. Then you use <ctrl-I> and create a new frame wherever you want it under frame B (let’s call it frame B2). Now click on frame B with <select> and then on frame B2 with <adjust> and the text will flow into it so that it runs B−B2−C. 5.1 Now suppose you want the text to start in a frame before frame B. (Let’s call it frame A.) The technique is to create the new frame, A, wherever you want it using <ctrl-I>. Then click on frame B with <select> and then on frame A with <adjust>. The text will now flow into it so that it runs B−A−B2−C−etc. (N.B. This won’t work unless frames A and B are on the same page because you cannot flow text backwards across a page bound ary.) Then click on B and use <ctrl-X> to delete it. The flow is now just A−B2−C−etc. Finally, you create a new copy of frame B by using <ctrl-V>, click on frame A with <select> and the new B with <adjust> and the flow will be A−B−B2−C−etc. 5.1 • Dual window problems solved? − A few issues ago, I mentioned the problem that if you open a second window on a document and then expand and contract that window (so that you can alternately use two different scale views) each time you shrink view 2 using the icon at the top right of the window, it doesn’t stay at the place in the document that you have just been working on. It always seemed (in my case) to go back to somewhere earlier in the document. No one has offered any solution but it seems to me that it goes back to wherever you last added a frame into that window. So if you want to “keep your place” in the second window, use <ctrl-I> to create a new frame at that place in the document and then use <ctrl-X> to delete it again. Crude, but it seems to work. (No, it doesn’t, not always. Drat, I thought I had solved it! Come on, someone must be able to solve this one − I’ll give a free Archive mug to the first person to solve it. Ed.) 5.1 • Equasor and matrices − The biggest drawback Equasor has for me as a mathematics teacher is its inability − at least in version 1.00 − to handle vectors and matrices. 5.1 There is, however, a way in which a very credible matrix can be created − with a small amount of extra work: 5.1 I build the columns as multiple fractions, and then enclose everything in brackets; I drop the file into Draw, remove the fraction bars and then align the brackets with the numbers. 5.1 Jochen Konietzko, Köln, Germany 5.1 • Special characters − Now I’m sure you ALL knew this, but I didn’t until I read this month’s PipeLine article. The Alt key is extremely useful for inserting special characters in the text. I had discovered that <Alt-space> (that’s holding the Alt key down and tapping on the space bar) gave a ‘hard’ space where you don’t what the words (e.g. the halves of a postcode) to be split across the end of one line and the beginning of the next, and I had discovered the idea of using Alt together with the numbers on the numeric keypad to produce special characters, but how about this... 5.1 a² + b² = c³ 5.1 I produced that in seconds without using superscript. The ² is produced with <Alt-2> and the ³ with (yes, you’ve guessed) <Alt-3>. In other words, you hold down the Alt key, as if it were the shift key, and type 2 or 3. Here is a table of the ones I have found but note that this only applies to Trinity font which I am using. Other fonts may be different but, generally, they tend to stick to using the same symbols for the same ASCII numbers which the Alt key produces. The third column is the ASCII number produced. 5.1 <Alt-1> ¹ 185 5.1 <Alt-2> ² 178 5.1 <Alt-3> ³ 179 5.1 <Alt-9> ± 177 5.1 <Alt-0> ° 176 5.1 <Alt-C> ¢ 162 5.1 <Shift-Alt-C> © 169 5.1 <Alt-M> µ 181 5.1 <Alt-R> ® 174 5.1 <Alt-S> § 167 5.1 <Alt-X> » 187 5.1 <Alt-Y> ¥ 165 5.1 <Alt-Z> « 171 5.1 <Alt-`> ¬ 172 5.1 (top left key under <esc>) 5.1 <Alt-,> × 215 5.1 <Alt-.> ÷ 247 5.1 <Alt-space> 160 (hard space) 5.1 If you have found any that I have missed, perhaps in other fonts, let us know. Ed. 5.1 • Spell checking Edit documents − Whenever I typed a longish Edit text file, I used to regret the absence of a spell checker. For Impression users, this poses no problem: 5.1 Simply drop the Edit file in question into an empty Impression frame, have Impression check the spelling, then export the text back into Edit by saving just the text story without styles. You can drag the text story onto the Edit icon to have another look at it or save it in the usual way directly to a disk. The import/export takes just a few seconds, so this is nearly as good as a spell checker built into Edit itself. Jochen Konietzko, Köln, Germany A 5.1 5.1 Silicon Vision 5.1 New 5.1 5.1 Colton 5.1 5.1 4.12 p21 5.1 5.1 Matters Arising 5.1 • Archimedes’ Tutor − Simon Anthony has produced a Beginner’s D.I.Y. Introduction to the Archimedes using the !Hyper application on Shareware Disc 19. If anyone is interested they should contact him directly at 62 Rutland Road, West Bridgford, Nottingham, NG2 5DG. 5.1 • ArmSort − Fast Array Sorts − The author replies... The reviewer (Ashley Bowden in Archive 4.12 p53) seems to have created a problem with the flag values. The ArmSort documentation DID clearly state that for the CALL sort “The parameters must all be variables, but may be of any name”. If CALL sort,test%() ,128 is used, then it is Basic that objects with “Syntax Error”, ERR=16, because it is a Basic requirement that all CALL parameters are variables not constants. Thus it is rather unfair for the reviewer to claim that to have to use variables is “.. very unorthodox, and mention should be made in the documentation.” ArmSort errors are comprehensive and are very clearly documented. 5.1 This ‘problem’ wasted about a third of the review, which could have been better used to mention the PROCsort and SWI interfaces or the ability to sort on absolute numeric values, or with null strings low or high. 5.1 May I also suggest that all software reviews should clearly state what version is being reviewed: the ArmSort review copy was Version 2.12, sent to Archive in February. The current Version is 2.51, which has the following improvements: sort time reductions of between 30% and nearly 50%; the ability to sort strings from any position, or by length; the ability to specify a key sequence; new procedures for a fast binary search of sorted arrays; and all programs now do run easily from the desktop. All users have had free upgrades and seem happy with the product. Martin Avison, Avisoft. 5.1 (Sorry if we seem to have reviewed an out-of-date product but when someone sends software to us for review, we have to assume it is a “stable” version. If the software has gone from version 2.12 to version 2.51 since February, this indicates continuous development. This is fine but, if significant changes are made, the onus is on the software supplier to send us the latest version. This product was still on the “software to be reviewed” list in the May edition of Archive. If Martin had noticed this and sent us the latest version at that stage, the difficulty might have been avoided. Ed.) 5.1 • MidiVision Update − Koen Lefever has sent us an updated version the MidiVision program on Shareware Disc 33. It is now compatible with the new Acorn MIDI Podule ROM and capable of detecting real time messages. The new version has been put on this month’s program disc. 5.1 • PRES Disc Interface & DFS − In the review in Archive 4.11 p27 we referred to difficulties in reading 40 track BBC discs. PRES suggested that the problem may be due to “residual data” on the discs. In other words, they are suggesting that the problem may lie with discs that have been written onto by different 40 track drives, some with narrow heads, as in 40/80 drives, and some with wider tracks as in true 40 track drives. It would be interesting to hear other people’s experiences on this. We have also found that it is sometimes necessary to slow the head stepping time right down as low as it will go in order to read 40 track discs. (We also used a rather old address for PRES. It is currently P.O. Box 319, Lightwater, Surrey, GU18 5PW. 0276−72046, fax 51427.) 5.1 • RISC-OS Dreaming − I would like to reply to Oliver Gunasekara’s letter, RISC-OS Dreaming, published in Archive 4.12 p15. Many of Oliver’s suggestions have been extensively discussed in the USENET news- group dedicated to Acorn machines. Well-informed contributions from Acorn staff (in a private capacity) and experienced programmers (RISC-OS and otherwise) allow fairly definite predictions to be made as to the likelihood of some of these suggestions being realised in later version of RISC-OS. 5.1 Firstly, there is almost no chance of proper demand paged virtual memory being implemented under RISC-OS on current generation ARM processors. The problem is that much (if not all) of RISC-OS runs with the ARM processor in its supervisor mode. In this mode, the ARM-2 and ARM-3 are unable to implement virtual memory. Not enough information is saved to enable execution to be resumed after an attempt to access memory not physically present causes the MEMC memory controller to interrupt execution. Thus, virtual memory would require a drastic rewrite of RISC- OS so that any code that might access virtual memory runs in user mode or avoids memory not physically present. Acorn almost certainly do not have the resources to do the necessary rewrite. Simpler, less effective forms of virtual memory such as swapping out non-running programs are possible, but would still be very complicated. 5.1 Pre-emptive multi-tasking is, on the other hand, quite possible. It is just that doing it without introducing subtle bugs into software written under the assumption that multi-tasking is co-operative is fiddly. As with virtual memory, the fact that RISC-OS did not allow for pre-emptive multi-tasking, when originally written, makes it messy to implement later on. Even running other tasks when the current task is blocked, waiting for i/o, is rather tricky to implement though, according to the grape-vine, this does indeed happen to some extent in RISC-OS 3. 5.1 As to nicer system fonts, better design, TCP/IP file-sharing and hot- linking − let’s hope it happens. There’s no technical obstacle and these are definitely things necessary for Acorn to keep up with the state of the art. A new file-system allowing more files in a directory and longer filenames would also go down well. It would be a real boon to people like myself who have to use RISC-OS machines in conjunction with UNIX or MesS-DOS boxes. Andrew Stevens, Overton. 5.1 • RISC-OS Dreaming − I would agree with many of the points about RISC-OS 2.0 put forward (in Archive 4.12 p15), by Oliver Gunasekara. However, I’m not sure that making RISC-OS look more like other graphical interfaces will necessarily bring us much benefit. 5.1 I am responsible for several different computer systems (micros and minis) each of which has its own user interface from the quirkiness of the Apple and Atari systems, to the smooth, powerful X-Windows systems. Some of the staff prefer one system, some prefer another. It’s a bit like choosing your favourite car, you get the one that suits you. 5.1 Strangely enough, considering its sales, the least popular GUI in our department is Windows 3.0. Even allowing for its deficiencies, RISC-OS seems to have become the preferred choice for more than half our department. Whether this is due to RISC-OS itself, applications like Impression or the speed of the ARM3 powered machines, I’m not sure. What I am sure of is that RISC-OS is quite capable of winning converts from other systems. 5.1 Even so, let’s hope that RISC-OS 3 contains a lot of those improvements mentioned by Oliver. D Hutchinson, Sheffield. A 5.1 The Engineer Speaks... 5.1 Ray Maidstone 5.1 For the last few months, Ray Maidstone has been, effectively, the N.C.S. Service Centre. He has done a great job fixing dead or dying Archimedes computers for us and upgrading the memory of A310s. In doing so, he has come across various recurring problems which could be avoided if a few precautions were followed. 5.1 Here are some hints & tips which should help to keep your Archimedes in tip-top condition. A word of warning though, some of the things I am suggesting should not be attempted unless you really feel competent to do so. The general rule is, if in doubt, ask for help! 5.1 • 300 and early 400 series keyboards − (See also the article on page 37) These keyboards do not have sprung contacts coming together, but foil closing over multiple contact points on sprung pads. Various people have informed me that they have sprayed their keyboards with switch cleaner to improve things when they have had intermittent contacts on one or more keys. They may have got away with it, but it is my view that these keyboards should never be sprayed with switch cleaner. The only recommended method of servicing this item is to dismantle (but ONLY if you feel competent to do so!) and remove foreign particles with a soft brush and a vacuum cleaner. Anything sticky or difficult to remove is best left to your Service Centre. WARNING: Using switch cleaner which contains an organic solvent can destroy components within the keyboard and slowly but surely render it useless. Be warned! (We have a dead keyboard available for inspection if you are in any doubt! It was killed by using Tandy’s Tix Electronic Switch Cleaner. Ed) 5.1 • Mouse − If you unplug your mouse, the recommended procedure for reconnection is to first disconnect the keyboard from the computer, plug the mouse into the keyboard then reconnect to the computer. The reason for this is that the mouse contains one solitary chip, which has no protection from spikes at switch-on from the outside world, whereas the keyboard has circuitry that is slightly better equipped to cope with any misadventures. Plugging the mouse into the keyboard and then plugging the keyboard into the computer is the safest method and could well save you money. 5.1 • Monitor smear − On the 400 series computers, it is possible to get a composite video signal out of the sync socket which you can use for a mono monitor. This is done by making links LK5 and LK6. However, if these links are made, it can cause problems with certain high resolution monitors. You get a certain amount of smearing on the ends of horizontal lines. This effect is caused by the electronics of the Archimedes and can only be cured by removing the links. (I have a confession to make. Until we discovered this problem, we always tested our 400 series computers using a mono monitor. We added links 5 and 6 but did not remove them before sending out the computers. If you have had a 400 series computer from us, I suggest you check for this effect and remove the links if necessary. Ed) 5.1 • Video RGB outlet − On the 310 and early 400 series, it is possible to destroy the VIDC chip by plugging in the video lead to either the computer or the monitor if one or both of these items are switched on. The electronics of this socket do not accept the slightest static variation and any deviation will damage the VIDC chip. Whoops! − there goes another £30! I have designed a multiple diode module as a service modification which upgrades these old machines to the new static- protected specification. Whilst Acorn confirm that my modification is “Archimedes-legal”, they will not put their name to it as yet. This modification has been particularly well received by schools, as it stops pupils being able to blow up their computers! 5.1 • Fan filters − With the fan driving air into the filter (lower half of the diagram below) it is possible for the filter, in its blocked state, to completely eliminate all airflow within the computer. However, with the fan sucking air through the filter (upper half of the diagram below), even if the filter becomes totally blocked, residual air currents will still flow within the computer, providing some “last resort” cooling. Also, with the filter on the outside of the fan, cleaning couldn’t be easier. All that is needed is to slide the lid back 10 cm (or 4 inches for those of us still in Imperial!) and suck the dust off the filter with a vacuum cleaner. 5.1 • Hard drive parking − After much debate and the dismantling of two unserviceable hard drives, I have found that, in order to give your data maximum protection at closedown, *BYE must be followed by *SHUTDOWN. These two commands, although slightly similar, do not seem to perform the same task and, to my satisfaction, have been proven to be necessary in the order stated. The effects of closing the drive down can be verified acoustically and visually, e.g. *BYE will produce one staccato tick noise and a short flash on the hard drive LED, but this does not mean the drive is fully parked. Typing *SHUTDOWN will produce a multiple wink of the hard drive LED and a triple tick noise from the drive. Take my word that this guarantees total shutdown of the drive. If *SHUTDOWN is typed without having typed *BYE, a single tick will be heard and the drive will simply have moved the head to a different track, but it will not be fully parked. (Different effects happen on different drives under this condition.) 5.1 (Some may call this a “belt & braces” method, but when it comes to protecting several hundred pounds worth of hard drive, I prefer to err on the side of caution. Ed) 5.1 • Removable hard drive parking − The command DISMOUNT brought up by clicking <menu> on the SCSI icon, does not mean your drive is parked. It simply means that the drive has shut its motor down and that the software has “forgotten” about the drive in question. At this point, if you switch the power off, the heads have been left out over the disc at the last track you were using and will be in the same position next time you switch on the power. In order to eliminate the possibility of power- on destroying any data bits, the centre button on the removable drive must be pressed and the drive fully disengaged with the lever. This operation mechanically parks the heads off the disc and is the only way to guarantee this. 5.1 • Stray metalware − When removing the motherboard on the 300/400 series, it is very possible to dislodge one or more of the spring speed nuts (for the two rear self tapping screws that “get in the way” when removing the board). Make sure these are firmly in place when reassem bling − better still, remove them, clamp them slightly more closed and refit. This will prevent any further mishap which could cause shorting under the main PCB. 5.1 • Stuck floppy discs − It is unfortunately possible, now and again, for a floppy disc to become stuck in the drive. This will be due to one of the following causes, and if you wish to keep costs to a minimum, NEVER tug at, or forcibly remove, the stuck item. 5.1 (Again, we have u/s floppy drives available for inspection if you need proof. Ed.) 5.1 1. The metal sliding cover on the disc can become widened, perhaps due to being bent in the post, or being sat on or whatever. As the metalwork of the slider opens, it will act like a ratchet allowing the disc to go in but not to come out without difficulty. 5.1 2. The spring that returns the metal cover can become unlaced and behave like a fish hook, snagging the unlocking post within the drive. 5.1 3. The metal screening plate on the upper disc reading head within the drive can become dislodged and catching the plastic work of the disc (particularly on the older Sony drives). 5.1 In ALL cases, if the drive is removed by somebody competent to do so, you should find that delicate easing will allow the disc to come out again without damaging the drive and, 9 times out of 10, the disc can also be saved. 5.1 In the case of the metal head shield of the Sony drive, simply throw it away as it was later found to be unnecessary. Where the metal gate of the drive is distorted, it is quite acceptable to remove this item by unfolding it and removing the spring. The disc will operate without the metal cover but keep little fingers out − remember the 5¼“ floppies? A 5.1 Hints and Tips 5.2 • Fatal error type = 5 revisited (Archive 4.12 p9) − It’s not only !Edit that reports this error, !Draw and some other Applications abort with a similar error, but you might want to use !Edit, for example, with fonts. The version in Archive 4.12 p9 simply hides the !Font-folder, so the idea is to have the Applications just to see part of the !Fonts folder. The easiest thing to do is simply to split up the fonts-directory into directories − i.e. create two directories within !Fonts − in the first directory (maybe SmallFonts within your !Fonts Folder) just put the really necessary fonts in (just Trinity, Homerton, Corpus or so), but remember that there may only be up to 50 fonts (approximately) − including styles (say Italic, Medium, Bold etc). In the second directory (maybe LargeFonts) put every font that is not already included in the first directory. 5.2 The next thing to change is your !Boot and !Run-File from the !Fonts application. 5.2 The !Boot file should read as follows: 5.2 | !Boot file for !Fonts 5.2 | ********************* 5.2 IconSprites <Obey$Dir>.!Sprites 5.2 RMEnsure FontManager 2.42 RMLoad <Obey$Dir>.Fonts 5.2 RMEnsure SuperSample 0.04 RMLoad <Obey$Dir>.Super 5.2 Set Small$Fonts <Obey$Dir>. SmallFonts. 5.2 Set Large$Fonts <Small$Fonts> ,<Obey$Dir>.LargeFonts. 5.2 If “<Font$Prefix>”=“” Then SetMacro Font$Path <Font$Prefix> 5.2 If “<Font$Prefix>”=“” Then Set Font$Prefix <Large$Fonts> 5.2 SET Alias$@RunType_745 RUN <Obey$Dir>.FontHelp -Obey %%*0 5.2 SET File$Type_745 FontObey 5.2 5.2 The !Run file should read as follows: 5.2 | !Run file for !Fonts 5.2 | ******************** 5.2 Obey <Obey$Dir>.!Boot 5.2 Echo Outline Font Manager 2.42 installed. 5.2 Echo Fonts now available: 5.2 Echo 5.2 FontCat 5.2 5.2 In addition, you have to create a Basic program called Fonthelp, which should be situated in the !Font folder and should read like this: 5.2 REM >FontHelp Version 1.00 20.1.91 5.2 REM ******************************* 5.2 REM Written by: Martin Sperl 5.2 REM Nattergasse 12/32 5.2 REM A-1170 Vienna (Wien) 5.2 REM AUSTRIA 5.2 5.2 END=&A000 5.2 DIM Data 255 5.2 SYS“OS_GetEnv” TO ENV$ 5.2 ENV$=MID$(ENV$,INSTR(ENV$,“-Obey ”) +6) 5.2 *SET Font$Prefix <Small$Fonts> 5.2 SYS “Hourglass_On” 5.2 SYS “Wimp_Initialise”,200, &4B534154,“**LoadMore**” 5.2 TO ,TaskHandle% 5.2 SYS “Wimp_StartTask”,“OBEY ”+ENV$ 5.2 REPEAT 5.2 SYS “Wimp_Poll”,0,Data TO R% 5.2 UNTIL R%=0 5.2 SYS “Wimp_CloseDown”,TaskHandle% 5.2 *SET Font$Prefix <Large$Fonts> 5.2 SYS “Hourglass_Off” 5.2 END 5.2 Then create a sprite called “file_745” (maybe the same sprite as for an Obey-file, but another colour) and include it in the !Sprites file of !Fonts. 5.2 To start an application which can only handle some fonts without errors just change the Filetype of the !Run-file with “Settype !Run FontObey” to FontObey. Then you can start the application as normal without having to worry about fonts at all. 5.2 Martin Sperl, Austria 5.2 • Formatting PC disks − If, like me, you do not have a PC Filer on your Archimedes you will have to format DOS diskettes (for use with the PC Emulator) on a PC. If your PC has a 1.44M drive the standard FORMAT command needs modifying. The command to use is 5.2 FORMAT A: /N:9 /T:80 5.2 This certainly works on the PS/2 55SX I have at work. Richard Wheeler, Wokingham A 5.2 5.2 Impression H & T 5.2 • Function key changes − Computer Concepts have chosen to use <ctrl-F3> and <ctrl-F4> for ‘save’ and ‘search and replace’ instead of the more standard <F3> and <F4>. If you prefer to use the latter, simply go into the edit styles dialogue (<ctrl-F6>), select first italic and then bold and, on each, change the keyboard shortcut (or delete it altogether), as follows... You could, for example, change from <F3> to <shift-ctrl-F3> by clicking in the shortcut box, pressing <ctrl-U> to delete the existing text and pressing <shift-ctrl-F3>, at which point the words “<shift-ctrl-F3>” will appear in the box. Click OK and <F3> will now produce the desired “save” effect. 5.2 If you already have a lot of documents, this could prove a frustration since you would have to do this with every document individually. Also, you would need to go into Impression’s Auto directory and edit the default document. Michael Ben-Gershon, Israel. 5.2 • Only 77 graphics frames allowed in a chapter − Impression won’t allow more than 77 graphics frames in a single chapter. This is due to the ADFS limitation of 77 files per directory − earlier versions of Impression (2.03) normally crashed after loading the offending file when displaying. Impression 2.1 does not allow to save a file with more than 77 graphics-frames per chapter. I mentioned it to CC but they told me “This is something that would be extremely difficult to overcome. It should only affect a very small percentage of users”. So beware of too many frames in one chapter !!! Martin Sperl, Austria 5.2 Couldn’t you get round this by putting several draw objects together in a single file and then show different parts of the same file in different frames? I haven’t tried it, but it should work. Ed. 5.2 • Running Impression documents from !TinyDirs − If you use !TinyDirs to install an Impression document on the icon bar and then click on it to run it, a new copy of !Impress will be fired up even if one is already running. 5.2 This seems to be because of a small mistake in the !TinyDirs.!RunImage programme. In the PROCdataopen procedure are two lines which read as follows: 5.2 900 q%?(44+LEN$(q%+44))=0 5.2 910 q%!0=(48+LEN$(q%+44))ANDNOT3 5.2 If you reverse the order of these two lines the program runs correctly. Hugh Eagle, Horsham 5.2 • Special Characters − The full list of ISO 8859 characters is included in the Archimedes User Guide, e.g. page 455 for the Latin 1 alphabet. However, it’s not too helpful in that it is listed in hexadecimal. If you want to enter characters using <Alt> and the numeric keypad, you need to know the decimal numbers. Those of you with EFF fonts will have a manual that shows various of the character sets by decimal number. This is particularly useful for Zapf Dingbats and MathGreek fonts. Jim Nottingham, York. 5.2 (For those without EFF fonts, I have put an Impression file on the monthly program disc so that you can print out your own lists of characters just by changing the font in the style definition. Ed.) 5.2 • Wrong sprite colours in Impression − If, when you drag a sprite into an Impression frame, the colours come out all wrong, it’s probably because the sprite has not got a palette. If so, the answer is to give it a palette, which can be done as follows: 5.2 1. Load the sprite file containing your sprite into !Paint. 5.2 2. Double click on the thumbnail picture of the sprite you want to alter. 5.2 3. Click <menu> over the sprite window that now appears, then move to the Edit submenu and click on the Palette item at the bottom. 5.2 4. Save the amended sprite file. 5.2 5. Load the amended sprite back into Impression. 5.2 (Note: if you don’t want to keep the amended sprite, you can, if you like, shortcut steps 4 and 5 and save the sprite direct from !Paint into Impression.) Hugh Eagle, Horsham A 5.2 Finally, Andrew Scott... 5.2 The following comments and hints are based on my first week of using the machine which, from the outset, I must say is brilliant, especially compared with my old Archimedes A310. 5.2 During the time I have had the machine, I have tried quite a number of applications. Now, whilst most of them have worked perfectly, I have had problems with the following: Atomwide Hi-Res. modes, Jinxter and Corruption adventures (CIS Adventure pack), Beebug Toolbox disc sector editor, Data Store’s FontFX (version 4.04), Mitre Software’s DiscTree (version 2.16) and !DSEdit, PD sound sample player. 5.2 The Atomwide mode designer comes with a number of sets of modes for various monitors, but none of these is completely suitable for the A5000 and Acorn’s multisync monitor. The mode designer application, however, works fine, provided you remember to select monitor type 1, and machine A540/A5000. Using this, it is quite straightforward to modify the hi- res. modes (SVGA, 102 etc.) to produce working versions of these. However, make sure that you work in mode 27 while defining the new modes, as some of the other modes (12, 15 etc.) are redefined by the standard mode module (MegaModes), and this can produce some strange effects − they appear as two letter box shaped screens one above the other!! 5.2 The adventures Jinxter and Corruption do not work with version 3.87 of the SharedCLibrary which is in RISC-OS 3. However, they are supplied with a very old version (1.01) which will work if you *RMKill the version in RISC-OS 3 first. Better still, alter the !Run files to automate this, and restore the RISC-OS 3 version afterwards. I have included two suitable !Run files on the disc. On the monthly program disc. Ed.) 5.2 The disc sector editor in Beebug’s Toolbox (version 1.00) does not work at all on the A5000, and hangs the machine!! 5.2 FontFX from the Data Store (version 4.04) does not like the default setting for the system macro Font$Path. However, if you edit out the reference to Font$Prefix it works OK − not a perfect solution, but it works. e.g. 5.2 *SetMacro Font$Path adfs::IDEDis c4.$.!Fonts.,Resources:$.Fonts. 5.2 DiscTree (version 2.16) from Mitre Software will load, but all attempts to access a disc (hard or floppy) produce a fatal internal error. 5.2 !DSEdit, the excellent PD sound sample player will not play samples. This is because the author has been ‘naughty’ and used an abbreviation for the ChannelVoice command. RISC-OS 3 wrongly interprets the abbrevia tion as the new command *ChangeDynamicArea and hence causes an error. This is easily corrected by changing the abbreviation to the full command. Acorn have issued a warning with RISC-OS 3 that a number of commands have different minimum abbreviations, and have provided a file on the RISC-OS 3 Support Disc to change them all back to what they were in RISC-OS 2. 5.2 Something else that I have observed is that if you use the !Configure application to auto-start any of the ROM based applications then this will cease to work if you have a !Boot file on the hard disc which includes a line like : 5.2 *Desktop -file <Obey$Dir>.DeskS tart 5.2 Instead you must include a line in the DeskStart file to run each of the applications which you want to auto-start. e.g. 5.2 Run Resources:$.Apps.!Alarm 5.2 Hardware problems − (I have left this in to see if anyone has any ideas! Ed.) I have discovered a fault with my machine, that concerns the real time clock. Every time the machine is reset with either <ctrl-break>, or turning it off and on again, the real time clock is reset back to the last time that it was explicitly set too, e.g. using *Set Sys$Time or the Set clock option on !alarm. The rest of the time, the clock appears to function correctly. 5.2 My first thought was a loose battery connection. However, on opening the case, I found that the machine doesn’t even have a battery! While the case was off, I checked for any loose connections, but could not find any. 5.2 Next, I thought that it might be a software fault and not a hardware one, because the fault only occurs when the machine is reset, which is a software function. I noticed that in the list of modules in RISC-OS 3 there is a new module called RTCAdjust which presumably stands for Real Time Clock Adjust. Could this be causing the problem? The module provides no star commands or software interrupts, only a service code handler. I have not been able to confirm if this module is causing the problem or not. Any ideas? A 5.2 The Engineer Speaks (again) 5.2 Ray Maidstone 5.2 As there were several comments of appreciation received regarding the hardware care section labelled “The Engineer speaks” last month, further points of interest have been forwarded and are listed here. 5.2 Headphone sockets 5.2 These stereo sockets are mechanically very delicate and several machines have been in for repair. (This is presumably because these sockets are getting used more now that there seems to be a little more notice being taken of the fact that the Archimedes is capable of matching other makes of computer, when it comes to music and sound effects.) The replacement of these sockets is fairly simple but involves completely dismantling your machine and getting the motherboard out. 5.2 More serious is the fact that we’ve had some machines in for repair with the sound output chip blown. Although this is a very cheap repair, I can only think that this was caused by people using the socket whilst music was actually playing! Looking at the circuit diagram, I find it difficult to see how shorting the contacts in the socket by plugging in headphones, or whatever, whilst it is playing should be able to blow anything up, but there it is. I suggest it would be for sensible to cause your machine to be silent while plugging things into this socket. 5.2 RGB video output failure 5.2 Further to the question “Does disconnection or connection to the RGB socket while things are switched on blow the VIDC (Video Output) chip?” The answer is most definitely yes, even though several people have expressed surprise, saying “Well, I’ve plugged and unplugged mine for years and years, and I’ve never had any problems.” 5.2 The fact is that eventually it will blow up, as there simply isn’t any static protection in the early machines. The modification I mentioned last month has sparked a lot of interest. (Bad choice of words there, Ray! Ed.) We can fit this for you and we can offer this item, fitted for £15, but you will have to sort out the carriage. 5.2 This protection feature is already incorporated into the 400/1 series, the 3000 and everything since, and will only be needed in the 300 series and the early 440’s. To my certain knowledge, this modification has put an end to the grief being caused by pupils “in the know” at a couple of schools, deliberately plugging and unplugging monitors and Arabellas (that’s what VIDCs are called) are not cheap. 5.2 A3000 crashes and aborts 5.2 My findings on this subject are a bit distressing and, to make matters worse, I own one of these troublesome machines and can speak from experience. We have had a slowly increasing number of people losing work because their 3000 occasionally crashes with the “Abort on transfer”, or “Address exception” captions coming up. These problems have been traced to impedance peculiarities on the pin and socket connections of the expansion ram cards. At first, the ram expansion itself was suspected but we have finally discovered that these connections sometimes go high impedance at the high frequencies of the ram access speeds. The “sometimes” is what’s giving the problem, as the bulk of these expan sions run trouble free. 5.2 My own belt and braces solution to this has been to remove the pins and sockets, and replace them with gold plated counterparts − No more problems! This, of course, is “open heart” surgery and, if not done by an Acorn Service Centre, will invalidate any guarantee and, if it is not performed using the correct equipment, it can destroy the machine as well. (Solder suckers are completely incapable of performing this task and the 4 layer board is too delicate to risk damaging.) 5.2 I have helped several people out with a temporary DIY tip that consider ably improves the reliability of these connections. However, you should only attempt this if you are familiar with opening your machine and fiddling inside it. Locate the ram board, lift it off the P.C.B. expansion pins and lay the board to one side. Take a can of WD40, or Contek 9, but nothing else, and find a clean bottle top or small dish. Spray some of this into the cup and, using a cotton bud, carefully rub around all the expansion pins, taking care not to distort any. Do not spray anything directly into the machine. 5.2 This should be done in a well lighted area and at the end, the pins should be slightly moist (not too much and not too little!). Take the ram card, and offer it onto the pins, checking that all pins align properly into their relevant socket, and press it down. (Check that the speaker wires do not get in the way.) Once the board has “bottomed”, pull it back up again about ¼“ (6mm), and then ease it down until it still about 1/32” (1mm) away from the bottom. Don’t push it all the way down this time so that it leaves the connectors on “fresh” metal. This procedure should temporarily relieve the crash situation but the following test will reveal whether your problem is corrosive or mechanical. 5.2 Leaving the lid off, (beware of the high voltages in the power supply if your machine has a cardboard p.s.u. cover) connect your machine up to monitor and mains − no other connections are needed − and switch on. You should now have the desktop visible on your monitor. If your expansion is Atomwide then very slightly rocking it from front to back (Do not exceed ¼“ movement) will not disturb the display if the fault was corrosion. If the fault was mechanical, you will see the Address Exception or Abort error flag, in which case the problem is mechanical and you need to rush to your nearest Acorn Service Centre. 5.2 If you have the Morley board, this is a little more difficult, as you will have to carefully hinge up the keyboard and find a way of holding it up (get someone to help you, as if you drop it you could short something, or break the flexible connector strips) and now take hold of the front edge of the board and raise and lower it about 3/8“ and watch for the same effects as already mentioned. 5.2 (This problem would probably have been averted if the pin and socket components used at time of manufacture had been the gold flashed type, but this obviously would have increased the product cost.) 5.2 STOP PRESS 5.2 After talking to another dealer at the recent Acorn User Show, I have been able to find out from a couple of their personnel (unofficially) that Acorn did indeed have a couple of batches of A3000’s that came with oxidized expansion pins. So I suggest that either you offer your machine to your dealer for him to sort out, or heed the above instructions, and also try a light rub with a very small piece of “Scotchbrite” or pan scourer. Do not use anything metallic because that will leave a residue. A 5.2 Hints and Tips 5.3 • AMX mouse − To replace the Archimedes mouse with an AMX mouse from a BBC computer, all that is necessary is to change the plug on the AMX mouse for a miniature 9 pin DIN plug. The correct plug can be obtained from Maplin Electronics (0702−554161). It is stock number JX19V (price 82p +p&p). Cut the original 20 way IDC connector off the mouse cable and then solder the wires onto the new plug. The pins are very close together, so a fair amount of care is required. It is easiest to start with the middle pins and work outwards. I found that the plastic housing supplied with the plug was just too wide to fit into my A3000 but it can easily be cut smaller with a sharp knife. 5.3 Paul Marshall, Loughborough. 5.3 (Has anyone got the connections to do the same sort of thing but with a BBC Trackerball? Ed) 5.3 • Cops and Plague Planet − I should like to pass on the following advice received from Alpine. 5.3 Both Cops and Plague Planet re-configure the character set used to their own. If you have a copy of Alpine Software’s ALPS (Adventure Language Programming System) this contains a copy of the default Archimedes character set e.g. $.!ALPS. Resources.defaultchr. 5.3 Copy this file to the appropriate games directory (e.g. $.COPS.defaultchr), and add the following line at the very end of the appropriate !Run file (e.g. for Cops): 5.3 Print <Cops$Dir>.defaultchr 5.3 This will then automatically reset the computer to the default system font upon returning to the Desktop. Rob Brown, Tadworth 5.3 • Corruption and Jinxter − I have recently transferred a number of the earlier Magnetic Scrolls adventure games from floppy to hard disc and have encountered certain problems with their usage of the Shared C Library !System module. 5.3 Fish! does not use the Shared C Library at all. Both The Guild of Thieves and The Pawn came with version 3.50 of the Shared C Library and they function with more recent versions without any difficulty. However, my copies of Corruption (version 1.12) and Jinxter (version 1.30) came with version 1.01 of the Shared C Library and they will not function at all with any of the more recent versions. 5.3 What I wanted to achieve was an easy means of starting either program straight from the Desktop and automatically loading the “old” version of the Shared C Library. After some trial and error I have found one way round this by modifying the !Run files for both applications. 5.3 Firstly, version 1.01 of the Shared C Library needs to be copied to a suitable directory within the !System application on the hard disc (e.g. $.!System.oldModules.CLib_v101). 5.3 Unfortunately the command RMEnsure will not only check for a particular version of a module but it will also accept more recent versions. In the !Run file I have therefore used this command to check whether a subsequent version (e.g. 1.02) of the Shared C Library is already loaded and, if not, the most up to date version is loaded from the !System application. The command RMKill is then used to delete this module before loading the “old” version 1.01 of the Shared C Library. Finally, after exiting the program, the “old” Shared C Library is deleted, the latest version (currently 3.75) is re-loaded, and the !Run file finally returns control direct to the Desktop. 5.3 | !Run file for Corruption 5.3 | (or Jinxter − change references from “Corruption” to “Jinxter”) 5.3 | (requires Shared C library version 1.01 dated 13-Jun-88) 5.3 | 5.3 IconSprites <Obey$Dir>.!Sprites 5.3 WimpSlot -min 512K -max 512K 5.3 | 5.3 Set Corruption$CLibLoaded 1 5.3 RMEnsure SharedCLibrary 1.02 Set Corruption$CLibLoaded 0 5.3 If Corruption$CLibLoaded=0 then If “<System$Path>” = “” then Error System resources cannot be found 5.3 If Corruption$CLibLoaded=0 then RMLoad System:Modules.Clib 5.3 RMKill SharedCLibrary 5.3 RMLoad System:oldModules.CLib_v101 .Clib 5.3 RMEnsure SharedCLibrary 1.01 Error You need SharedCLibrary 5.3 version 1.01 ONLY 5.3 Unset Corruption$CLibLoaded 5.3 | 5.3 Set Corruption$Dir <Obey$Dir> 5.3 Run <Corruption$Dir>.Corruption.f1 <Corruption$Dir>.Corruption.f2 5.3 | 5.3 | 5.3 RMKill SharedCLibrary 5.3 RMEnsure SharedCLibrary 3.75 RMLoad System:Modules.Clib 5.3 RMEnsure SharedCLibrary 3.75 Error You need SharedCLibrary 5.3 version 3.75 or later 5.3 Desktop 5.3 WARNING − any other programs active within the Desktop should be closed down and any files saved before starting either Corruption or Jinxter − especially those programs which use the Shared C Library! Perhaps another reader can find a way round this? 5.3 Rob Brown, Tadworth 5.3 • Elite − When you start Archimedes Elite, it prompts you to enter a word from the manual, as an anti-piracy precaution. When it says “type the word exactly as shown” it means the input is case sensitive. You have to remember to take the Caps Lock off. This falls into the category of “obvious to most people” but hopefully this hint will save somebody the frustrating quarter of an hour which I spent trying to get the thing to work when it first arrived. 5.3 People who are used to the 8 bit version of the game should watch out for little things which have changed. For example, furs are now illicit cargo in the same way that narcotics and firearms are. You are told this in the manual but you have to look for it pretty carefully! 5.3 Neil Hoggarth, Winchester A 5.3 5.3 Impression Hints & Tips 5.3 • Position holding − My repeated plea for a way of holding the current position in a document when you expand and contract the window has been answered! A box of four Archive mugs is winging its way to Bob Potter of Bath. He gave me the basic idea which I have amplified slightly. 5.3 Basically, as Bob pointed out, when you expand and contract the window, Impression returns to the position that was current when the window was small. (Surely, CC, this isn’t very sensible, is it? You are more likely to change the current position when working in the full size window. Why not change it whenever you move about within the document?) Anyway, given that this is how it works at present, all you have to do to maintain your position is, as soon as you have shrunk the window, press <cursor-left> (and then <cursor-right> if you want to) so that the current position will be displayed and remembered within the small window. The only slight disadvantage with this is that if the small window is very small, you will find the cursor near to the top of the window when you expand it, not near the middle. Thanks, Bob! A 5.3 The Engineer Speaks 5.3 Ray Maidstone 5.3 • Hard drive mounts − Several customers have had cause to ship their Archimedi to me for repair, and a hardware problem has come to light. Some of you have purchased hard drives that have been mounted on thin aluminium brackets. These rather flimsy brackets easily distort under small amounts of G stress and, unfortunately, a few harddrives have gone to the great hard disc graveyard in the sky. Aluminium was used by the Airforce because of its tensile properties, and should (due to this very fact) not be used to anchor a hard drive. These small brackets deform under stress and leave the drive “flapping” about. 5.3 Another comment about brackets − a lot of them are fine for their supporting properties but not very good when it comes to air circula tion. This can be improved by either punching some 3/8“ holes in the sides, or by buying a pair of Paul’s new nifty side brackets at £4 a pair. We have had a few instances of over-heating causing premature decease of drives, particularly with back planes full of podules and a partly blocked filter. It is possible that, by reducing the bracket size, this could have been avoided. 5.3 • *Shut and *bye − The last word! I have not, at any time in my comments, stated that the suggestions I have made are law, I have merely offered the result of my findings to those who hadn’t a clue of what was going on. There are a few small, old drives that need both, but most only need one command to park. The removables, however, most certainly do not park, and only the operating lever finally parks the heads. These findings came about from observations of partially dismantled units operating under standard command use. 5.3 • LBP4 laser printers − I have been asked about switch on/off procedures for these, and I reckon that, to minimise “spikes”, the order should be... when switching on, either do so all together or the printer last, and turning off, either do it all altogether or switch off the printer first. 5.3 • Cooling − Following the success of quietening the fans on Archimedes, external hard drives have now been added to the list, and no heat problems have arisen (mainly because of 14 months of actual proving before releasing). Whilst assessing the quietening for these drives, it was surprising to find just how mechanically noisy some makes of fan were, as nearly 50% of the noise from the unit was being conducted through the chassis assembly. 5.3 I have also been asked “If I don’t like Acorn’s cooling method, what would I like instead?” My reply is that, in my opinion, the current fan with or without a quietener (that never lets the fan speed drop below 75%) is not quite enough in the real world. Particularly if the filter is on the inside, hardly anyone appears to pay much attention to keeping the filter clean. Therefore, I have found a rather nice miniature fan (currently being used by Morley in their external hard drives) that, when introduced into the opposite side of the case to the present arrangement, and being set to push air out of the case as the other sucks it in, really gets some cooling done. 5.3 A cautionary note about airflow is not to stand external floppy and hard drive units too close to the sides of the Archimedes, or soft surfaces under the A3000, as “what goes in must come out” and I have seen several instances of hot machines being caused by the proximity of external surfaces. The A3000 has a power supply that runs quite hot and, being encased in fireproof cardboard, (on the earlier machines, anyway) made things even more heated. I am using the miniature fan, aimed at the end of the P.S.U., to assist temperature differences in this rather enclosed environment. If anyone is interested in more details, let me know. This small fan gives off very little sound and certainly improves longevity. The lack of space inside the A3000 generally adds to the poor cooling in the P.S.U. and any air movement is better than none. 5.3 I made the comment above about fan quieteners not slowing the fan more than 75% because, in the course of my development, I also tried systems that reduced the fan speed to 40%, and also did one trial where I stopped it all together for the first quarter hour, as no heat would build up until after this. The fan would then thermostatically cut in and then run in a varied way subject to temperature requirements. These were all dropped due to the fact that, as the Archimedes box is not at all aerodynamic, once the temperature began to build up, certain items within it started to experience particularly large temperature rises i.e. hard drive, P.S.U. and floppy drive. The final unit chosen simply took the fan below the noise of air flare speed and, together with the chassis decoupling grommets, removed so much noise that only the sound of the hard drive rang in the ears. I would caution people against using controllers that slow the fan excessively. 5.3 • IDE cabling − I notice that IDE drive cables have been quoted as long as 20“. I have it on very good authority that in some cases, even 12” is pushing it. This is because IDE signals tend to be far more easily corrupted than those on SCSI lines. So please be warned and keep them as short as possible. A 5.3 Hints and Tips 5.4 • A5000 monitor problem − One problem which various people seem to have had with the Acorn A5000 monitors is intermittent contact on the mains cable but the solution is simple. When you plug the power cable into the monitor, it seems to go in but actually, to get it fully home, you have to push it very firmly. 5.4 • Draw files in Impression − Did you know that when using Draw files in Impression frames, it is possible to “zoom” in on a part you want to concentrate on and bring it up to “fill the frame”? This means you can, for example, call up a file of, say, a fruit filled bowl and then choose the apple to fill the space available in your document or show a group of cartoon figures and, in the next frame, have a “close up” of one face. Since Draw files are capable of incredible scaling, their should be no real loss of detail involved. 5.4 The procedure is simple. Create a frame for the draw file. Open the directory containing the Draw file. Drag it into the frame in the usual way. Changing the shape of the frame with its handles using <select> will “crop” the picture until only the part you require is visible. Then enlarge the frame using the adjust button on the corner handles. The cropped picture will “grow” with your mouse movements. (Well, stone me! I didn’t know that! Please keep sending these “obvious” hints − they are not obvious to everyone. Ed.) 5.4 Incidentally, don’t try moving a frame containing a Draw file around the page using the usual method of pointing inside it, holding down <select> and waiting for the blue lines to appear. If you don’t wait quite long enough, the graphic moves inside the frame and bang goes your careful alignment! Instead, hold down <ctrl> when you press <select> and the frame can be moved safely and immediately. Kevin Beales, Shropshire. (The latter hint was also sent in by Johannes Thordarson of Ice land.) A 5.4 Hints and Tips 5.5 • A5000 PC delete danger – I found out the hard way that deleting the PC directory (and probably Drive_C as well) gives a disc error over the area of the deleted partition. The only solution is to reformat the hard disc and restore the last backup. J.R.McLachlan, Hertford. 5.5 Yes, there does appear to be a problem here. The same thing happened to us. In theory, the idea is that Drive_C is a filetype that is not deleteable. The trouble is that on the A5000, it seems to get confused and half delete it, leaving a blank entry in the file table (seen as a blank line in the filer window if you use “full info”). The answer is to change the filetype to, say, FFF with 5.5 *SETTYPE $.<pathname>.Drive_C FFF 5.5 before you try to delete it. Ed. 5.5 • BBC Tracker Ball − In December’s Archive, Paul asked for a wiring diagram to convert a BBC tracker ball to an Archimedes one. I have converted an old Marconi tracker ball for use on the Archimedes using the following diagram. 5.5 The nine wires come out of the bottom of the tracker ball socket as I have drawn it. Socket 1 is marked, or it is on mine. 5.5 The connections are as follows... 5.5 9-pin Trackerball 5.5 mini DIN Socket 5.5 1 3 yellow 5.5 2 6 black 5.5 3 7 brown 5.5 4 9 grey 5.5 5 2 orange 5.5 6 1 red 5.5 7 4 green 5.5 8 8 white 5.5 9 5 blue 5.5 The colours are the colours on mine. They may differ between various tracker balls. A mark 1 Archimedes mouse lead will also fit this particular tracker ball but two leads need swapping round. 5.5 Connectors 6 and 7, in my case red and brown, need to be changed over. This can be accomplished with a needle by gently lifting the black plastic clip above the connector with the needle whilst pulling gently on the wire to be removed. 5.5 December’s article was, I think, for a mark 1 AMX mouse. I have a later AMX mouse which is the same design as the early Archimedes mouse and the lead is a straight swap. 5.5 Dave Morrell, Middlesbrough 5.5 • Elite Cheat − Here is program that will create a commander file for use with Elite. It gives you the most needed items to get around a little better than before, especially the docking computer, (most welcome). When you have successfully loaded it in, use galaxy map to see where to go, a little bonus is waiting: Front beam laser, rear beam laser, large cargo bay (35 tons), docking computer, E.C.M. system, four missiles. 5.5 REM>:0.$.Elite_com 5.5 REM Program by Scott Edwards 5.5 REM 3-1-92 5.5 REM It is important that you have 5.5 REM the correct checksums on the 5.5 REM right line, the program will 5.5 REM inform you if you have a wrong line. 5.5 MODE0:OFF 5.5 DIM store% &1000 5.5 checkcode%=38901:code$=“” 5.5 line%=390:inc%=0 5.5 FOR l%=0 TO 17 5.5 FOR blk%=0 TO 15 5.5 READ code$ 5.5 dat%=EVAL(“&”+code$) 5.5 checksum%=checksum%+dat% 5.5 ?(store%+inc%)=dat% 5.5 PRINT dat%,~dat% 5.5 inc%+=1 5.5 NEXT 5.5 READ checkcode% 5.5 IF checksum%<>checkcode% THEN 5.5 PRINT “You have a data byte incorrect at ”;line% 5.5 STOP 5.5 ENDIF 5.5 line%+=10:finalcheck%=checksum% 5.5 checksum%=0 5.5 NEXT 5.5 IF finalcheck%=checkcode% THEN 5.5 PRINT“You have a correct file for saving” 5.5 REPEAT 5.5 INPUT“Enter the commander name for your file ”;A$ 5.5 UNTIL A$<>“” 5.5 SYS“OS_File”,10,A$,&C87,,store%, store%+&11C 5.5 ENDIF 5.5 PRINT“Program is Finished,now run ELITE and use your new commander” 5.5 END 5.5 : 5.5 REM Commander file for ELITE 5.5 : 5.5 DATA 16,B5,DC,72,DF,DD,20,C9,F2,3C, 54, EB,32,6F,EF,09,2244 5.5 DATA E5,F9,61,E3,31,12,B8,70,85,F3, FE,A9,EB,11,02,DD,2439 5.5 DATA 31,43,F2,80,D5,F6,81,FA,70,92, 9A, 72,B9,EB,FC,B9,2707 5.5 DATA C9,B1,42,CE,85,DD,F6,7F,5D,00, D2,9A,92,D2,6F,FC,2553 5.5 DATA B9,2F,F9,62,CF,B5,62,B8,7B,5E, 98,7E,AF,68,DC,AA,2413 5.5 DATA DD,39,30,CD,40,D6,B5,EF,53,70, 9E,91,E9,99,EC,DB,2568 5.5 DATA F1,2C,B1,50,C1,F5,4D,F7,EE,72, 97,52,A1,59,FC,A7,2558 5.5 DATA FD,78,B2,CD,22,CA,AD,FF,54,7F, 3D,52,67,0A,66,D7,2204 5.5 DATA F8,23,39,20,A2,B4,86,B4,6C,7D, 0B,1D,09,4A,D3,44,1663 5.5 DATA D3,37,3F,07,0F,06,A6,63,23,E3, 1D,18,84,80,84,D4,1541 5.5 DATA AA,8A,6B,10,8D,3B,39,43,EB,56, C6,B6,81,48,9F,1E,1846 5.5 DATA 9A,77,2C,64,DC,BA,A5,49,10,CE, BD,17,33,EF,5E,D4,2091 5.5 DATA A5,01,E8,E0,8D,12,71,30,6B,53, F9,F5,E9,47,02,B2,2110 5.5 DATA 91,37,22,7D,F1,F6,A4,7A,DC,C2, 9C,8A,B5,FE,7C,CB,2602 5.5 DATA 38,E2,DA,CF,49,E0,80,BF,CF,20, 6A,6E,E7,24,69,39,2207 5.5 DATA 7E,74,89,36,A6,69,0B,36,B7,A9, 33,46,99,DD,35,07,1676 5.5 DATA 34,D0,D6,93,1D,CF,F0,9B,03,0F, 61,EC,D6,13,E8,71,2181 5.5 DATA 48,83,01,29,F7,5A,82,75,32,A8, BA,41,00,00,00,00,1298 5.5 S Edwards, Stourbridge 5.5 • First Word Plus 2 − In Archive 3.12 someone was bemoaning the lack of a key that would toggle insert mode on and off. In fact the <insert> key itself will do just that. 5.5 Robert Fuller, Basingstoke. 5.5 • Lemmings Passwords − For all you bald headed insomniacs.... 5.5 Taxing Level 5.5 02 Justforyou 03 Runandflee 04 Doortodoor 5.5 05 Stillalive 06 Fixedmyfix 07 Anurebevan 5.5 08 Helpmemate 09 Drinknwine 10 Tenpercent 5.5 11 Stickuptwo 12 DiginDelve 13 Hisbadluck 5.5 14 Teensforth 15 Teensfifth 16 Notsosweet 5.5 17 Driveukcar 18 Votesforme 19 Tenstonine 5.5 20 Doublesten 21 Lockandkey 22 Twoelevens 5.5 23 Justforme 24 Lemmingmore 25 Jiveanjive 5.5 26 Lemsinafix 27 Lemsheavon 28 Gardengate 5.5 29 Startowine 30 Fivexsixis 5.5 Mayhem Level 5.5 02 Nearlygone 03 Spendspree 04 Onthefloor 5.5 05 Uncleclive 06 Clogclicks 07 Difference 5.5 08 Waitanwait 09 Eatanddine 10 Tentontess 5.5 11 Binisthree 12 Twotimesix 13 Returntome 5.5 14 Twicelucky 15 Nineandsix 16 Charitynum 5.5 17 Stillyoung 18 Comesofage 19 Olderstill 5.5 20 Numbtwenty 21 Olderlemms 22 Lemminduck 5.5 23 Soonbefree 24 Lemmsstore 25 Lemmsdrive 5.5 26 Yourinafix 27 Lemtodevon 28Twostoplay 5.5 29 Oneafterme 30 Lemmgfinal 5.5 Robin Jefferies, West Sussex. 5.5 • Improving Logistix (v0.01) RISC-OS compatibility − As anyone who has a copy of Logistix will be aware, the RISC-OS support files to “upgrade” the package to run from the desktop do nothing except allow the application to be launched from the desktop! (I do not know if there was ever a subsequent release of Logistix since v0.01 − I assume not, as I was a registered owner and was never informed of any update.) 5.5 In the case of old programs upgraded through the support disk, it’s likely that some of the software houses did not have any real experience of RISC-OS before the deadline date for the disk, so they may be excused for the minimal level of compliance. (Acorn could not be considered to have had any such excuse, but Logistix wasn’t actually written by them, they only marketed it for Grafox.) 5.5 The directory structure of the “upgraded” !Logistix was rather messy, and all pathnames were specific to the directory structure, therefore not transportable from drive 0 and the $ directory. This makes it impossible to install on a hard disk without some editing. The major annoyance in using the application is that clicking on Logistix data files does nothing except give an error message! Files can only be loaded by first loading Logistix, then keyboarding through the menu system. 5.5 The application directory can be arranged far better for RISC-OS by the movement of a few files, and a little editing with !Edit. Dealing with the directory structure first... 5.5 All that the user wants to see of Logistix is the !Logistix application icon which can be double clicked on to start it. Your !System directory should contain a directory called Modules which contains the latest version of the FPE, Clib, Colours etc. As upgraded after using the support disk, a Logistix floppy disk contains the following directories: 5.5 !System − A system folder which still requires updating with the RISC-OS extras disk for the newer versions of Clib etc. (The latest Floating Point Emulator (2.80) should also be placed in the Modules directory inside this.) 5.5 !Logistix − The RISC-OS startup directory containing the !Boot,!Run and !Sprites files. 5.5 Logistix − The actual Logistix program files and a (now outdated) Floating Point Emulator. 5.5 MAKE A BACKUP COPY OF YOUR DISK then, using the backup copy... 5.5 Move the Logistix directory into the !Logistix directory. 5.5 Copy the latest FPEmulator you have into the !System.Modules directory. 5.5 (You may then delete the copy in the Logistix directory.) 5.5 Using !Edit, edit the !Logistix.!Boot file to contain the following lines: 5.5 | !Boot for !Logistix version 0.01 5.5 | Updated to allow autoload 5.5 | (This is an OBEY file) 5.5 Set Logi$Dir <Obey$Dir> 5.5 IconSprites <Logi$Dir>.!Sprites 5.5 Set File$Type_DFF Logistix 5.5 Set Alias$@RunType_DFF Obey <Logi$Dir>.InitFile %%*0 5.5 Edit the !Run file so that it becomes: 5.5 | !Run for !Logistix version 0.01 5.5 | with better RISC-OS compatability 5.5 | (This is an OBEY file) 5.5 IconSprites <Logi$Dir>.!Sprites 5.5 WimpSlot -min 500k 5.5 RMEnsure FPEmulator RMLoad <System$Path>Modules.FPEmulator 5.5 Dir <Logi$Dir>.Logistix 5.5 LGX 5.5 The use of “<System$Path>Modules.” to reach the FPEmulator and setting up the system variable <Logi$Dir> allow proper transportability of the application, and it can now quite happily be installed anywhere in the directory structure on a hard disk. Clicking on a data file causes RISC- OS to check if a command has been matched to that file type. The system variable Alias$@RunType _xxx has to be set up for files of the type in question. If it has not been set up then you will get the error message “No run action specified for this file type”. This is exactly what happens with Logistix and similar applications written before (and even since!) RISC-OS made its appearance. The addition of the line Set Alias$@RunType_ DFF Obey <Logi$Dir>.InitFile %%*0 in the !Boot file corrects the original omission, along with the following Obey file. 5.5 The file described here can be used with most applications which require keyboard input to load files, the exceptions being those which clear the keyboard buffer on start up. In principle, the method is simple. An Exec file is used containing the commands or keystrokes to be executed as though they had been entered at the keyboard. Due to the fact that only Obey files can process the Obey$Dir system variable, it could get a little bit confusing. 5.5 One way around this is from an Obey file: 5.5 1. Collect the startup pathname from RISC-OS and put it in a system variable. 5.5 2. Using an Obey file, create an Exec file (by using Spool and Echo) containing all the commands which require to be carried out to start the application and set it up for a load operation. 5.5 3. Echo the system variable containing the full pathname into the Exec file. 5.5 4. Exec the file which has just been created. 5.5 There is one small problem. When trying to write to the FIRST file being created by a *Spool operation, extraneous data flows into it before the data! A dummy file is spooled first to get rid of this before the real file is created. 5.5 Using !Edit, create a new Obey file as follows, (You may miss out the comment lines, but please leave in the fact that it is public domain and attributed to me.) 5.5 | “InitFile” − Public Domain by 5.5 | D.Potter 26/6/90 5.5 | Allows keyboard emulated loading 5.5 | by double-clicking on a data file 5.5 | in the RISC-OS desktop. 5.5 | Intended in this version for 5.5 | Logistix, but the principal will 5.5 | work for other programs which do 5.5 | not clear the keyboard buffer at 5.5 | startup. 5.5 | This is an Obey File. (Exec files 5.5 | do not allow passing of system 5.5 | parameters.) To pass actual 5.5 | commands to Logistix, (or any 5.5 | similar application), an Exec file 5.5 | must be used. 5.5 | The Exec file is built by this 5.5 | file, including the full path for 5.5 | the startup file that was clicked 5.5 | on. 5.5 | The !Boot file for app. must be an 5.5 | Obey file containing the commands 5.5 | Set Logi$Dir <Obey$Dir> 5.5 | Set Alias$@RunType_xxx Obey <Logi$Dir>.InitFile %%*0 5.5 | (As well as any other commands 5.5 | already there) 5.5 | Where xxx is the filetype for the 5.5 | data file (DFF for Logistix). 5.5 | Logi$Dir will be the directory 5.5 | where the application resides, and 5.5 | is automatically set up when the 5.5 | application’s !Boot is first seen. 5.5 | Note : the | characters at the 5.5 | start of the above lines should 5.5 | NOT be in the !Boot file! 5.5 | 5.5 | Put the pathname information in 5.5 | temporary system variable Lload$ 5.5 Set Lload$ %*0 5.5 | Clear extraneous data which 5.5 | appears when a file is written to 5.5 | at this stage by dummy spooling. 5.5 | This data is not needed here any 5.5 | more! 5.5 Spool <Logi$Dir>.!LoadFile 5.5 Echo <Lload$> 5.5 spool 5.5 | Now create the actual Exec file 5.5 | which will run LGX and issue the 5.5 | commands. 5.5 Spool <Logi$Dir>.!LoadFile 5.5 Echo || !LoadFile − Transient program built by InitFile 5.5 (PD) by D.Potter 1990 5.5 Echo *Run <Logi$Dir>.!Run 5.5 | 5.5 | Send the Logistix load sequence − 5.5 | Note : NO SPACES in the sequence! 5.5 | /L = load, L= Logistix data file, 5.5 | <Lload$>= Full filename, 5.5 | A= All to be loaded (You might 5.5 | want to use a different load 5.5 | sequence) 5.5 | (Where a return is required such 5.5 | as after the filename here, 5.5 | simply start a new Echo statement 5.5 | for the next command.) 5.5 | 5.5 Echo /LL<Lload$> 5.5 Echo A 5.5 | 5.5 | Close the file 5.5 Spool 5.5 | 5.5 | Set its file type 5.5 SetType <Logi$Dir>.!LoadFile Command 5.5 | 5.5 | Lose the temporary system variable 5.5 UnSet Lload$ 5.5 | 5.5 | And run the file just created! 5.5 Exec <Logi$Dir>.!LoadFile 5.5 Save the above file as InitFile in the !Logistix directory. 5.5 Now click on the !Boot file in the !Logistix directory to set the system variables. (You won’t always have to do this, as the !Boot file will be run the first time you open the directory containing !Logistix. You only need to do it at this time because you have been messing about with the files, and the !Boot file may be different now than when it was last run.) Clicking on any Logistix data file will now load Logistix and the data file ready for use. You will still have to set up any default prefixes etc. 5.5 It is not possible to do this automatically with a simple file such as the above, because the full pathname would require to be split up to provide the path to your file directory minus the filename. i.e. you would require string handling facilities such as in Basic. 5.5 Note: The Logistix application itself still sets the CSD to the Logistix directory within the !Logistix application directory. Implementing a fully RISC-OS compatible version would require rewriting of the actual coded LGX file, which is not possible without both the source code file and the full approval of both Acorn and Grafox. 5.5 Other applications requiring a parameter block in memory − Other programs (in Basic) written before RISC-OS, which will autoload a data file at startup if a parameter block is set up in memory, could be made to auto load using a version of the following routine. Again, this builds an exec file which is run in Basic, using simple string handling to split off the filename from the full pathname. 5.5 This example file was built to implement auto loading under RISC-OS on an old BBC program which was written for DFS, and without re-writing could not handle full pathnames, therefore it includes a line to set the current directory to the application directory. 5.5 Note: This particular version works due to Basic being selected during the execution of the Exec file and the memory accessible to both the file and the program is that assigned by the selection of Basic. Any other programs (e.g. integrated packages) which are to use the shared parameter block must (obviously) use the same memory, so must not move out of Basic (return to the desktop) in between the programs, but simply chain each other. 5.5 This actual file will be irrelevant to most users, but it does show a method of getting around the conversion of system variables to actual data therefore easing the amount of work involved in conversion of BBC B and Master programs to Archimedes. I know that re-writing the appli cations might be more sensible, but this is aimed at people who know how an application works, but didn’t write it in the first place! 5.5 | “Autoload” 5.5 | A Customised version of “InitFile” 5.5 | − Public Domain by D.Potter 5.5 | 7/7/90 5.5 | —— Information ——- 5.5 | Allows parameter block loading by 5.5 | double-clicking on a data file 5.5 | in the RISC-OS desktop. 5.5 | Intended in this version for the 5.5 | upgrade of an old BBC/Master 5.5 | program called Datbase, but the 5.5 | principal should work for other 5.5 | Basic programs which when started 5.5 | up check a parameter block in 5.5 | memory, and if found to be valid, 5.5 | will load the file referred to in 5.5 | the block. 5.5 | eg. Old “Integrated” suites of 5.5 | programs which allow files to be 5.5 | left as active or current for each 5.5 | program in the suite. 5.5 | 5.5 | This is an Obey File. 5.5 | An Exec file is built by this file 5.5 | including the filename for the 5.5 | startup file that was double 5.5 | clicked on. 5.5 | The !Boot file for app. must be an 5.5 | Obey file containing the commands 5.5 | Set DatBa$Dir <Obey$Dir> 5.5 | Set Alias$@RunType_xxx Obey <DatBa$Dir>.AutoLoad %%*0 5.5 | (As well as any other commands 5.5 | already there) 5.5 | Where xxx is the filetype for the 5.5 | data file. (DatBa$Dir will be set 5.5 | to the directory where the program 5.5 | & this file reside when the !Boot 5.5 | file is run) 5.5 | 5.5 | Put the full pathname information 5.5 | in system variable DBload$ 5.5 Set DBload$ %*0 5.5 | Clear extraneous data which 5.5 | appears when a file is written to 5.5 | at this stage by dummy spooling. 5.5 | This data is not needed here 5.5 | anymore! 5.5 Spool <DatBa$Dir>.!LoadFile 5.5 Echo <DBload$> 5.5 spool 5.5 | 5.5 | Now create the actual Exec file 5.5 | which will run the program and 5.5 | load file. 5.5 Spool <DatBa$Dir>.!LoadFile 5.5 Echo || !LoadFile − Transient program built by AutoLoad 5.5 (PD) by D.Potter 1990 5.5 Echo *Basic 5.5 Echo REM this particular application requires the CSD to be it - 5.5 Echo *Dir <DatBa$Dir> 5.5 Echo REM The startup parameter block for this application 5.5 is at &F000, with 5.5 Echo REM the filename held at &F100, any conditions for 5.5 printing at &F110, 5.5 Echo REM the record number to display at start up held in R%, 5.5 Echo REM and HIMEM held in H% 5.5 Echo HIMEM=&F000 5.5 Echo H%=&F000 5.5 | Echoing a system variable 5.5 | causes it to be converted to 5.5 | the real data. 5.5 Echo F$=“<DBload$>” 5.5 Echo REM Split off the actual filename itself (This 5.5 particular example is 5.5 Echo REM for conversion of a BBC B/ 5.5 Master program which 5.5 has restricted 5.5 Echo REM filename length, and therefore can’t handle 5.5 full pathnames) 5.5 Echo REPEAT:F$=MID$(F$,INSTR(F$,“.”)+1):UNTIL INSTR(F$,“.”)=0 5.5 Echo $&F100=F$ : $&F110=“”:R%=1 5.5 Echo MO.12 5.5 Echo CHAIN“DATBASE” 5.5 | 5.5 | Where a return is required after a 5.5 | command such as L for load, simply 5.5 | start a new Echo statement for the 5.5 | next command − a return will be 5.5 | put in. 5.5 | 5.5 | Close the file 5.5 Spool 5.5 | 5.5 | Set its file type 5.5 SetType <DatBa$Dir>.!LoadFile Command 5.5 | 5.5 | And do it! 5.5 Exec <DatBa$Dir>.!LoadFile 5.5 Douglas Potter, Glasgow 5.5 • Oak SCSI on A5000 − Using the ‘free’ menu option on a SCSI disc on the iconbar doesn’t make use of the new Free module in the RISC-OS 3 ROM. To correct this, include the following line in your hard disc boot file : 5.5 Set Alias$Free ShowFree -FS scsi %0 5.5 That’s all there is to it. Now, whenever you select ‘free’ from the SCSI menu, a Free window pops up. The ‘%0’ picks up the device (disc drive) name. Should you then subsequently wish to use Free from the command line, use : 5.5 %Free [<disc spec>] 5.5 Typing ShowFree at the command line (with no parameters) reports the command syntax. 5.5 David Lenthall, London 5.5 • Refilling ink cartridges − We have, in past issues, published comments about refilling inkjet cartridges with various types of ink. Tord Eriksson sent in another such comment a while ago but I didn’t publish it. He now writes.... 5.5 Remember my recommending using water or fountain pen ink to keep your printer going when your ink supply is gone? You didn’t publish it (sensibly enough!) and I ran into deep trouble with it. I thought the printhead was a goner (and messed it up further...), as the printer didn’t work properly. After buying a new £100 head, with no improvement, I found out that the reason you shouldn’t refill the cartridges is that air easily leaks into the paint container if you disconnect it many times (as when injecting ink) because the membrane gets worn. This means that suction isn’t up to specification and you get uneven paint delivery. 5.5 You may publish this as a warning − water does not harm a Canon BJ-what- ever printer − but the side-effects can be very troublesome! I could have spent the £100 on something more sensible!!! Tord Eriksson, Sweden A 5.5 Impression Hints & Tips 5.5 • Function key changes (cont’d) − In addition to Michael Ben-Gershon’s excellent hint in Archive 5.2, p.12: Why not go the whole way and put all those styles (like those fonts you use regularly to enhance your texts) into your Impression default document, after you have assigned a function key to each of them? 5.5 There are quite a lot of possibilities; in addition to those fields on the function key strip that are quite empty, you can remove the default styles you may not need (like hanging indent) and if there are some of those ten scales offered which you never use, you can simply take over those keys for your own styles. 5.5 You will find that the editable field which allows you to define a keyboard short cut is slightly unusual: It accepts only certain entries (function keys, <Shift>, <Return>,..), and it is not necessary to delete the existing content with <Ctrl-U> − just click in the box, enter the new combination and click on OK. (Don’t press <Return>, because that simply means that the short cut for your style is the Return key!) 5.5 Jochen Konietzko, Köln, Germany 5.5 • Sprite files in Impression − Kevin Beales told us (Archive 5.4 p5) about Impression’s ability to scale pictures in Draw format. In this context, he forgot to mention something even more remarkable: Impression can also scale sprites! This works in exactly the same way as he described. 5.5 Of course, due to the well known problems of jagged edges/loss of detail, you shouldn’t scale up or down too much; but if you have a sprite that is just slightly too big or too small for its intended place, then this feature of Impression is certainly extremely useful! 5.5 Jochen Konietzko, Köln, Germany 5.5 • Illustrated Impression documents − I often include sprite and draw files in my Impression documents (for test papers and the like). 5.5 One minor problem is that one can’t really edit those graphic frames in an Impression document. Therefore, to have the corresponding files always on hand, I save them into the document’s directory (after opening a window on this directory by <shift>-double clicking). 5.5 This is one more reason for buying Compression: A typical sketch I make with DrawPlus is reduced from about 6k to about 2 kbytes. A screen shot made of an oscilloscope application I use takes up 100 kbytes; Compres sion reduces this to just about 5k bytes (!). This means that even pictures that appear in several documents don’t clog up the hard disk too much, if you always save them together with the documents they appear in. 5.5 (Surely, though, the Draw files are already in the Impression document directory? Why not edit them directly from there? Two drawbacks, I suppose... you don’t know which file is which because they have names like Story2 and Story4 (but you could identify them if you have full info set in the filer window because of their size) and secondly the changes to the Drawfiles are only displayed then next time you load the Impression document. Ed.) 5.5 (By the way: Can anyone tell me whether this hint will become obsolete once Computer Concepts’ much vaunted Impulse II will be available, that is, whether you will then be able to open a graphic file saved somewhere by clicking on a graphic frame in an Impression document?) 5.5 Jochen Konietzko, Köln, Germany 5.5 • Tiny left hand margin − I often wondered why the default document on the Impression disc has a left hand margin set on the base style of a couple of millimetres. Because of my sense of symmetry, I reduced that to zero as soon as I started using Impression. Surely, if you create a new master page with, say, 10cm margins, you don’t want the lefthand margin to be 10.2cm? 5.5 Suddenly it dawned on me... yes, I know I’m slow... the reason for the small lefthand margin is to make it easier to position the cursor to the left of the first character on a line. If, as I do, you have zero margin in the base style, you’ve got to judge the mouse cursor fairly accu rately otherwise it goes onto the paper margin and turns into a hand. Well, yer pays yer money... but I think I’ll stay as I am. I have too many documents to change them all. Ed. 5.5 • Impression speed users’ tips − I find that if you can get into the habit of using <adjust> reverse scrolling, it really does save time, especially when I am laying out the magazine and the screen is cluttered with windows. Just press <select> to scroll down and switch quickly to <adjust> to go back up again without having to move the mouse and locate the other end of the scroll bar − which could be under another window anyway. 5.5 Also, <adjust> can be extremely useful, again with a cluttered screen, for moving windows whilst keeping them where they are relative to the other documents. It takes practice, but it speeds things up in the long run. Ed. A 5.5 Hints and Tips 5.6 • Alt key problems − (I think I’ll have to write this in six-foot high letters. We’ve said it several times, but people keep missing out on it.) If your <alt>-keypad numbers don’t give the special characters you think they should, type *UNPLUG and you’ll probably find that someone or something has unplugged the InternationalKeyboard module. If so, do an RMREINIT InternationalKeyboard and all will be well. Ed. 5.6 • Copy key use − I had not realised until recently that the copy key has the function of “delete right” (as it does in Impression) in most RISC- OS applications. 5.6 • Floppy backup – (I know it’s obvious but...) On a single floppy disc machine, if you want to backup up floppy discs in one chunk, i.e. instead of having to take the discs in and out twice, call up the task manager and increase the “Next” memory allocation to 800k or more. If you don’t, it loads 640k into memory and copies that and then copies the last 160k separately. 5.6 • External floppy drives on A5000 − There seems to be some concern and confusion over connecting extra floppy drives to the A5000 and over the fact that ADFS treats the drives in a different way from previous Archimedes computers. Let me try to explain. 5.6 The A5000 motherboard can access two internal floppy drives and two external drives. However, many modern 3½“ drives can only be configured as drive 0 or 1. Thus to allow a full complement of four drives, drive selections 2 and 3 are transformed into 0 and 1 but on a separate ribbon cable (as in a PC). 5.6 Here is the problem: If one internal drive is fitted (physical drive 0/ 1) and an external drive is added (addressed as drive 3), then to access the external drive you must ‘*configure floppies 4’, with the result that you have two useless floppy drive icons! 5.6 The solution that Acorn has is: Logical to physical drive mapping, whereby ADFS can be configured with two floppies but would access physical drive 3 when requested to read from logical drive 1. In order to achieve this, ADFS must determine which physical drives are present. This is achieved after reset (or rmreinit) by performing a ‘restore’ operation on each physical drive and then testing for a track 0 indication from a functional drive. The following table depicts a typical example: 5.6 Physical Drive Present ADFS drive Nº 5.6 0 − − 5.6 1 Y :0 5.6 2 − − 5.6 3 Y :1 5.6 This has a benefit for production by permitting the single internal drive to be physical drive 1, which is the default for the PC world, and hence not requiring link changes. Note that the 82C710 controller fitted to the A5000 has 48mA sink capability and therefore does not require a buffer board to operate with 5¼“ drives fitted with 150R pullup resistors. 5.6 Drive mapping was the main reason for accessing the floppy after a reset, but once this approach was adopted, several other features were possible. 5.6 (1) 40 track drive detection. MultiFS allows 40 track discs to be read in 80 track drives but, if a real 40 track drive is fitted, the double stepping mode is inhibited. This test is performed on all physical drives detected and works by first seeking to track 44 (a 40 track drive will block at track 40, 41 or 42) and then seeking to track 2 (42 step pulses). A 40 track drive will indicate track 0 at completion. Thus, if you have a 40/80 switchable drive, you should type ‘*rmreinit ADFS’ after changing mode to ensure ADFS knows about the change. 5.6 (2) During shipping, some floppy drives can have their heads shocked beyond track 0 (negative track number). The 40 track drive detection scheme ensures these drives will be recalibrated correctly. 5.6 (3) If you ‘*configure’ too many floppies, ADFS will only install the number detected. Conversely if you ‘*configure’ too few drives, ADFS will not use the excess physical drives (the physically greater drive numbers will be ignored). Lastly, if the configured floppies is 0 then ADFS will not attempt to select any floppies. 5.6 If you have configured the correct number of floppies, the extra time spent ‘booting’ should normally be less than 250ms, that is 80 x 3ms step pulses to detect a 40 track drive plus the time to initially restore the head. Note that a configured 12ms step time is now trans lated on an A5000 to 25ms to allow for very old/slow 40 track 5¼“ drives sometimes found on prehistoric Beebs. 5.6 I think this should explain the different behaviour of ADFS on A5000. (Could this also explain why the A5000 floppies seem slow compared to my A540? Ed) However, if you are trying to connect 5¼“ drives to the A5000, one other factor needs to be taken into account. Unless they are modified, 5¼” drives cannot be mixed with 3½“ drives on the same ribbon cable because of differences in pin out of the ‘disc changed’ and ‘ready’ signals. To work correctly on the internal drive connector, pin 34 must present the ‘disc changed’ signal (or be disabled) and pin 2 carries the density select from the FDC. 5.6 Therefore connect the 5¼“ drive on the external (middle) socket and make the following link changes to the A5000: 5.6 LK18 (north and west of socket) in the West position (viewed from front of m/c); LK19 (north and east of socket) should be removed (park the jumper on the centre pin only); LK21 (south and west of socket) should be removed (park the jumper on either pin). 5.6 These links only affect the external socket. To give the full informa tion on it. 5.6 LK18 selects logic hi (west) or logic lo (east) for the high density signal from the FDC 5.6 LK19 selects ‘density’ to drive (west) or ‘disk changed’ from drive (east) or neither (removed) on pin 2 of drive interface 5.6 LK21 enables (jumper fitted) the disc changed signal from pin 34 of the drive interface. 5.6 Your drive should then be configured as drive 0 or 1, remembering to *configure floppies 2 5.6 The above information was culled from a bulletin board by Brian Debenham of Chelmsford. One of our other subscribers got some help from Steve Picton at IFEL who referred him to pages 1-23 and 1-26 in the A5000 Technical Reference Manual and included a useful table for link changes as follows: 5.6 Drive type link 18 link 19 link 21 5.6 PC-AT 1M / 2M 1-2 2-3 1-2 5.6 PS/2 1M / 2M 2-3 2-3 1-2 5.6 older 1M types * 1-2 2- 3 5.6 most 5¼ drives * don’t fit 2- 3 5.6 * = either position or don’t fit at all 5.6 It’s difficult to get at these links, so a pair of long nosed pliers is extremely useful. Bob Potter, Bath. 5.6 • Lemmings − Did you know that a ‘blocker’ can be released by hitting it in the right place with a ‘digger’ and also by burrowing very closely underneath with a ‘basher’? 5.6 • MS-DOS users − Even in CGA emulation, the latest emulator screen updates can be very slow. However, some of the new utilities (like EDIT) have a ‘switch’ to allow faster CGA updates so... 5.6 EDIT MYFILE.TXT /G 5.6 will edit the file with quicker screen updates (/G means “switch G”). In true Archimedes style, HELP <command> now gives the syntax and meaning of commands (about time, too!). Paul Bamberger, Hinckley. 5.6 • !MultiFS bug (with PCEmulator 1.70)? − Those of your readers using the latest version (1.70) of the PCEmulator on RISC-OS 2 may be interested in the following problem which I found recently. I have reported it to Acorn, but have not had response yet. I understand that users of RISC-OS 3 need not use !MultiFS with the PCEmulator because of their different disc handler, so they need not read further into this hint. 5.6 Following the correspondence in Archive about how to shut down a hard disc reliably (See Archive 5.1 p26 ‘The Engineer Speaks’.) I now type *SHUTDOWN just before turning off the power on my A540. After loading !MultiFS on the icon bar, and then quitting it again, I found that when I typed *SHUTDOWN, sometimes it just hung, sometimes I got an error message, something like “Address exception at &01889 CE0”, and then I could do nothing until after resetting the Archimedes, (<ctrl-break> would not work). After the reset, *SHUTDOWN normally worked as usual, occasionally, I had to turn off the power to reset it. 5.6 After a little research I found that when !MultiFS quits, it removes the MultiFS module, but leaves MultiFS in the list of filing systems held by ‘FileSwitch’. Thus when *SHUTDOWN is trying to shut down all filing systems, it cannot cope with MultiFS as the module is no longer loaded. 5.6 You can check which filing systems are known to ‘FileSwitch’ with the following BASIC program: 5.6 10 REM >FScheck test which filing 5.6 systems exist 5.6 20 PRINT“Number Name” 5.6 30 @%=6:DIM fsname% 20 5.6 40 FOR F%=3TO255 5.6 50 SYS “OS_FSControl”,33,F%,fsname% ,21 5.6 60 L%=−1:REPEAT:L%+=1 5.6 70 UNTIL fsname%?L%=0 5.6 80 IFL%>0 fsname%?L%=13:PRINTF%“ ” $fsname% 5.6 90 NEXT 5.6 To make ‘FileSwitch’ forget about MultiFS use the program below: 5.6 10 REM >DelMultiFS delete multifs filing system 5.6 90 REM see whether MultiFS is still loaded, if not, exit 5.6 100 SYS “OS_FSControl”,13,“MultiFS” ,0 TO ,F%,T% 5.6 110 IF T%=0 END 5.6 120 REM next line removes MultiFS 5.6 130 SYS “OS_FSControl”,16,“MultiFS” 5.6 140 END 5.6 While reporting this problem to Acorn, they gave me a very helpful statement of the essential differences between the various ways of closing down a hard disc system, which I feel sure they will not mind my passing on. 5.6 *SHUTDOWN closes all open files on all filing systems, logs off all file servers, causes hard discs to be parked. 5.6 *DISMOUNT closes all files, unsets directories and parks the given disk (The currently selected drive on the current filing system is assumed if this command is given without specifying the disc.) 5.6 *BYE closes all the files, unsets directories and parks the hard discs on the currently selected filing system. 5.6 So you see the engineer was quite right, they are different. It depends what your current disc is, and only the *SHUTDOWN parks the disks on ALL the filing systems. Kate Crennell, Didcot. 5.6 • Mysterious error message from Hard Disc Companion II − In Archive Vol 5.4 page 3 you described the new version of the program from Risc Developments. I upgraded from my old version recently and found that the new version does not allow comments in the ‘Ignore’ part of the file used to specify which directories and files are not to be backed up. I found this a very useful feature of the previous version, and I should like any other users who regret its passing to join me in asking Risk Developments to put this feature back as soon as possible. 5.6 This is mildly annoying, but I found a more serious problem. The first time I used the ‘Hard Disc Companion II’ it worked beautifully, but the second time, it would not load onto the icon bar, instead I got the usual ‘traffic sign’ warning window and a message “File not found at line 49”. Neither the !Boot nor the !Run files had 49 lines in them. The program is not written in Basic, so it has no line numbers. I eventually found that since making my first full backup and trying to do the next incremental backup, I had deleted one of the files which I had previ ously said I wanted to ‘ignore’ in the ‘Choices’ file. Luckily, it is possible to edit the ‘Choices’ file with !Edit, so I just took out that line. I have reported this error to RISC Developments and they said they hope to make the error message more informative and tell you the name of the file which is missing. Kate Crennell, Didcot. 5.6 • Paper for inkjets − I have a Hewlett Packard Deskjet 500 inkjet printer. I have had great trouble finding good paper − the main problem seems to be how absorbent the paper is; too absorbent and you will get white patches in your black areas, but not absorbent and it will smudge across the paper! If you go into most paper suppliers or printers, they will be happy to give you various samples that you can try. Make sure when you test the paper that you include very small text, thin and thick straight lines at various angles, fine and thick curves, shading, large black areas and bit mapped graphics. I have ended up using “Mustang Copier − Long grain 80gsm” for my draft printing (as it is cheap − about 0·5 pence per sheet) and Croxley Script 100gsm for quality work (this works out at about 3 pence per sheet but is water marked and has a nice feel to it). There is probably better paper available − I have only tried about twenty types. Paul Bamberger, Hinckley. 5.6 • Pandora’s Box problems? − There seems to be an incompatibility between Pandora’s Box and Acorn’s AKA16 MIDI card (v3.14). Therefore, to load the game, simply type: *RMKill Midi <return> before attempting to run it. Rob Brown, Surrey. 5.6 • Psion Organiser and the Archimedes − The PD program !Download, written by Emmet Spier, works very well with the Psion Organiser. To upload from an Archimedes to an Organiser, I created an application called !Upload, consisting of a suitable sprite and a !Run file as follows: 5.6 IconSprites <Obey$Dir>.!Sprites 5.6 Filer_OpenDir serial: 5.6 C. Parker, Hong Kong. 5.6 • Second internal 3½“ drive on the A5000 − I have fitted a second 3½” drive internally on my A5000 with no problems at all. 5.6 The 3½“ drive fitted to the A5000 is a Citizen model OSDA20C. These do not seem to be generally available in the UK. The Citizen OSDA39C is easy to get and the ONLY difference (according to my experience and Citizen UK) is that the drive light is a different colour. They are generally available for about £75 + VAT but I got mine for £35 + £10 overnight delivery + VAT = £52.88 from: 5.6 CD2000, PO Box 1061, London Road, Slough, Berks SL3 8RE (0753−553366) (fax 0753− 554661) who were super efficient and helpful. 5.6 There is a power plug already inside the A5000, so all you need is a 9“ drive cable. I have altered NO links or switches on the A5000. All I did was set the tiny slider switch on the drive (next to the socket for the data cable) to the opposite position on the drive already in the machine. (Actually, this wouldn’t make any difference, as explained in the section above about external floppies on the A5000. Ed) 5.6 You need 4 off 18mm spacers and 4 off screws (6BA I think) to fit the drive to the bottom of the A5000 case. I used various spacers and nuts to make up the 18mm and the drive has worked faultlessly. With RISC-OS 3 being so slow at any disc backing up or copying, the second drive is essential. Colin Thompson 5.6 • Shrinking windows − A rare bug has just ‘bitten’ me while using Impression. It’s not a bug in Impression, in fact, but a bug in RISC-OS 2. I was trying to change the size of the window on a large Impression file by using the sizing icon in the bottom right-hand corner of the window. The window jumped to about an inch high and would not go any longer unless I clicked to open the window to full screen size − that worked fine but as soon as I touched the sizing icon, the window contracted! I tried various other Impression files but they were OK. I restarted Impression, I cut and pasted the text, I saved the text and created a new document but the window kept jumping back to this reduced size! A phone call to CC revealed the reason. In RISC-OS 2, if the window size is exactly 65,535 OS units in size, it gets confused and loses the top bit of the window size number and thinks it’s a somewhat shorter window. All I had to do was to create a new page in the document and all was well. Alternatively, I could have changed the magnification − even 1% change solves the problem. Presumably, the chances of it happening are small (1 in 65,535?) and it has to be a large document − mine was 28 pages displayed at 140% magnification. A 5.6 • Virus Kit v1.17 − Some people have had a few problems running version 1.17 of the virus killer, which is supplied on Shareware 17 and on the Archive 5.5 program disc. Here are a few hints that might help you to solve them: 5.6 (i) You should let your Archimedes see either a !System folder or !Scrap file before running the !Killer application. 5.6 (ii) Some sticky backdrops clash with the !Killer application and so should not be used at the same time. 5.6 (iii) If you have caught the module virus, it is possible for the VProtect module in the !Killer application to become infected and so prevent the program from being run. 5.6 • Acorn Virus Kit (latest) − Acorn have decided to make the latest version of The Virus Kit (currently 1.26) available through Pineapple Software rather than Acorn Dealers. This will allow them to keep tighter control over the version being distributed and any updates. Contact Pineapple Software for availability though distribution isn’t due to start until May. 5.6 • Wimp programming oddities? In the process of developing a wimp utility in 100% machine code, I’ve come across a few things that other program mers might like to look out for... 5.6 Menus − You can click the mouse in a menu one pixel above the first menu item (and also one pixel below the last item). The result is that Wimp_Poll returns a menu tree of zero length to your program i.e. the first word is returned as −1. Once I had found this (it crashed my program completely on random mouse clicks!) I tried it out on all the programs I could find. The easiest test is to click the menu button and then the adjust button without moving the mouse. Most commercial programs weather it OK, just redrawing the menu. Some that don’t are Menon 1.86 (which gives a “bad string” error), Ian Copestake’s IDEFS (which comes up with “File ‘:4’ not found”), and the Cross-32 assembler (which corrupts its menu title to “Crosr 32”). 5.6 Zooms − I’ve seen <adjust> reverse-scrolling mentioned several times, but this applies (or should apply, anyway!) to just about anything with arrow icons on it; notably the zoom-windows in Paint/Draw and all the nudge arrows in Impression. 5.6 Variable Filetype Variables − Regarding David Lenthall’s article in Archive 5.5 p 63, I’m using a user file type and have found that the way round file type clashes is, in fact, already built into RISC-OS! You don’t need to create extra system variables to shift file type numbers about: 5.6 SYS “OS_FSControl”,31, “FileTypeName” TO ,,FileTypeNumber% 5.6 works equally well (now we just have to persuade everyone to do this rather than using absolute file types in their programs). Fred Williams, Cannock Wood A 5.6 Impression Hints & Tips 5.6 This month’s hints and tips have been submitted by the following people: Computer Concepts (CC), Richard Hallas (RH), Paul Beverley (PB), Patrick Dowling (PD), Rob Sherratt (RS) and Steve Kirkby (SK). Many thanks to all. 5.6 • Hyphenation − If you want to be able to switch hyphenation on and off easily, create a new style with <ctrl-F5>, give it a name such as “hyphenated”, go down to the section where it deals with hyphenation, switch hyphenation ON, go to the bottom and select an unused key short- cut, say <ctrl-shift-F1> and save the new style. Now, to switch hyphenation on for a given paragraph, select the paragraph (using <ctrl- @> or quad-click with <select>) and press <ctrl-shift-F1>. Alterna tively, if you want hyphenation on for most of the document, edit the definition of the basestyle to have hyphenation ON and create a new style, in the same way, whose only attribute is that hyphenation is OFF. (As an aside, I have always found it difficult to find the line dealing with hyphenation in the edit style window but I now know why. If you click in the scroll bar three times, half of the word “hyphenation” is visible at the bottom of the window. Click again and half is visible at the top of the window − very easy to miss. So, either slide the scroll bar or simply remember that it is only just visible at the edge of the window.) − PB. 5.6 • Ligatures − The word ‘ligature’ actually means ‘tie’ or ‘bandage’ and, in typesetting, it refers to groups of two or more letters which are joined together. In professional typesetting, several exist but the Archimedes’ font system has just two: ﬁ and ﬂ. 5.6 Impression provides no handy short cut to access them, so if you wish to use them, you need to do two separate searches through the entire text as follows: bring up the find text box and enter fi into the first slot, ensuring the Case sensitive switch is on. Then move the caret into the second box, hold down <alt> and type 158 on the numeric keypad. A single character will be entered which, when viewed in an outline font which supports it, will appear as ﬁ. For ﬂ, repeat the process, but replace all occurrences of fl (obviously) with character 159. Remember to do a case sensitive search, since replacing Fi and Fl with the ligatures will make them lose their capital letters. 5.6 Not all fonts (especially the PD ones) contain the ligatures, and some PD fonts have them in the wrong places. You should replace the normal letters with the ligatures after you have finished your document because Impression’s spell-checker does not take them into account and will query any words containing them. This month’s disc should contain a system font file which I have created; it is identical to the standard one, except that the previously undefined characters have been created to look like the outline font characters they produce, so you can see things like smart quotes and ligatures in Edit. It’s useful to load this in the boot-up sequence. − RH. 5.6 • Rotated text in Impression − Those lucky enough to own an A5000 will, of course, have the new versions of Draw and Font Manager. Charles Moir, director of Computer Concepts, suggests the following tip: since the new Font Manager can rotate text by itself, create some text in Draw, and import it into an Impression graphic frame. Dragging in the frame with <adjust> should now rotate the text or you can set the angle precisely in the ‘Alter graphics’ dialogue box. − RH 5.6 • Hyphens and minus signs − Character 153 is very useful as a hyphen − as you can see! In fact, it is really the minus sign (compare it with the plus and you will find they are both the same width and their crossbars are at the same horizontal position − see for yourself −+−+−); the minus sign on the keyboard actually produces a short hyphen of the sort which should be used to break words at the ends of lines. Anyway, Impression provides handy access to this character: simply press <ctrl- shift> in conjunction with the minus key. Characters 151 and 152 are the en (–) and em (—) dashes respectively but, unfortunately, these have no handy short cuts. − RS & RH. 5.6 • Finding effects − If you want to be able to look through a document and find where a particular effect occurs (as opposed to a style) all you need to do is modify one line in the ‘UK’ file in the Resources directory inside the !Impression application. As supplied, there is a line that says “Cnf1:” − all you have to do is add an E making it “Cnf1:E”. Next time you start up Impression, you will find that, when you click on the arrow at the right of the search string box, it will list not only the styles but also the effects. (In case you have forgotten, I published a hint a year ago to explain that, to find a particular effect or style, you should select it from the menu on the search string box and follow it by an “@”. In other words, look for any string following the place where that effect / style is first switched on.) − PB. 5.6 • Double scale − on later versions of Impression (about 2.14g onwards) you will find that <shift-F12> no longer doubles the scale of the current view. This is because <shift-F12> is used on RISC-OS 3 to toggle the icon bar forwards and backwards. Double scale has now been moved to <ctrl-shift-F11>. − PB. 5.6 • Reverse characters − From 2.15 onwards, there is a keyboard short-cut that I have been asking for since I started using Impression in earnest − swap characters. If you press <ctrl-shift-Q>, the two characters either side of the cursor swap places. This is very helpful because it allows you to correct, very quickly, one of the most common tpying errors! − PB 5.6 • Single word spelling check − If you want to check the spelling of a single word, you don’t need to select the whole word − just place the cursor somewhere in the word and use <ctrl-W>. (I suppose everyone except me knew that anyway!) I find that this speeds things up especially if, as you are typing, you get to a word that you don’t know how to spell; all you do is to have a go at typing the word and then, before you press space or full-stop, press <ctrl-W>. If it is incor rectly spelt, it is selected and the spelling box appears with, hopefully, a guess at the right spelling. Click on “Replace” and away you go. 5.6 Also, if, while you are typing, you get a spelling error bleep then, as long as you haven’t started to type the next word, you can press <ctrl- W> and correct the erroneous word. − PB. 5.6 • Avoiding smart quotes − In the magazine, I like to use “smart quotes” rather than plain quotes but they look a little funny on program listings. If I want to paste in an article which contains programs as well as straight text, I have a problem. Either I can switch smart quotes OFF on the Preferences list and then edit them into the text or I can leave it ON but edit them out of the listing. Then I had a brain- wave (-storm?). I realised that the only time I use the Corpus font is for program listings, so I never need to have smart quotes in that font. All I did, therefore, (well, Adrian did for me) was to load Corpus into FontEd (Careware 7) and edit the smart quotes so that they are the same as the normal quotes. This can be done by editing each smart quote in turn and copying the plain quote into its place. − PB. 5.6 • Rotating sprites − Draw-files can be rotated within Impression but, in the normal course of things, not sprites, scanned pictures or bit-image clip-art etc, unless Enhanced Graphics is switched on. This is hidden away in Preferences, the one in the icon-bar menu, not the one in the Document sub-menu. It is effective immediately and does not need to be saved as a preference option. (When switched on it also automatically switches on Greyscale Dithering but that can be switched off again if not wanted.) Scanned images etc can then be rotated inside Impression by entering an angle in the Alter Frame box. Remember also, when subse quently reloading the file, to switch on the Enhanced Graphics again, (if it’s not saved as a preference) as this won’t happen automatically. − PD. You can also rotate the image by dragging within the graphic frame using <adjust>. − RS. 5.6 • Spurious form-feeds − Using dot matrix printers (e.g. FX80) you may get an extra form-feed between pages when printing a multi-page document. The solution, (thanks to Alan Williams of Acorn, Melbourne, for this one) is to set Scale in the ‘Print’ box to 97 or 98%. No further problem! − PD. 5.6 • The underline trap − If you set up underline when creating a Style, maybe for a sub-heading, do not try later to remove the underline with <shift-ctrl-U>. Probably nothing at all happens but, sometimes, the screen goes inverse and panic reigns until Reset is pressed! − PD. I tried without success to repeat this problem with release 2.16, but <shift-ctrl-U> caused no ill effect. It did not cancel the underlined style either, which I guess is correct. − RS. 5.6 • ¼ ½ ¾ characters − These are available on <alt-188>, <alt-189> and <alt-190> respectively in the main fonts − Trinity, Pembroke, Homerton etc and several others but by no means all. Many fonts conform in general, but with omissions, to the character set laid out in Appendix 5 of the manual. Most contain a bullet (•) on <alt-143>, (or <shift-ctrl- H>) and a decimal point (·) on <alt-183>. The ones that don’t, Optima and Hull for instance, have their bullet on <alt-183> and a different set of characters in the row 128 to 159 including, for instance, TM. In general, there seem to be two main variations for this row while System is completely on its own. The characters in 160 to 255 appear more or less standard across the board where they are present, though most fonts omit some and some (PD and magazine fonts particularly) omit most if not all the top-bit-set characters, save for the £ symbol. With <alt-215> and <alt247> it’s a toss-up whether you get × and ÷, or Œ and œ, or nothing at all. (!Chars in Impression’s Utils directory is a useful reference but much better is Beebug’s !CharSel which looks identical but has a pointer showing the character number.) − PD. 5.6 • Fit lots − If you want to know or have forgotten what it means, it does not appear in the index. You will find it on p.144 on the last, and easily missed, page of ‘Print’. − PD. 5.6 • Frames − How to put a frame around an existing chunk of text? You can’t! The only way is to move the chunk to the clipboard, create the frame and then copy it back in. − PD. You can also create a number of new frames which fill the area occupied by the old frame, click in the old frame area and then press <adjust> in the new frames. Text will then flow from the old frame into the new one and, if you stretch the new frames so that there is no printable area left in the original frame, the desired effect can be achieved. − RS. 5.6 • Master pages − It seemed perfectly logical to me to press ‘New Chapter’ on the key-strip when I wanted to start a fresh document with other than the default master page. I got the new master page all right − as well as the default page I didn’t want and found no way to get rid of it. (You need to move to the unwanted chapter, then use <menu> <Edit><Delete Chapter>. − RS) You can alter the current chapter to use a different master page by using ‘Alter Chapter’ which is not on the key- strip. The key short cut is <shift-ctrl-A>. Be aware that if you are viewing the master pages when trying to do this, you will find ‘Alter Chapter’ greyed-out on the Edit sub-menu. The answer is to go back to the document page, remembering which number master page is wanted and try again there. Also note that if you want to use one of the three- column master pages, (numbers 7 or 8) remember the default frames are only Guides and you must create new frames before anything can be typed in. − PD. 5.6 • Guide frames − It is really most provoking, having carefully followed the manual to find the screen blandly refusing to operate as stated. Can anyone suggest why my guide frames do not remain visible? I create them, (sub-menu New Frame) on the document page or on the master page, click elsewhere and they just vanish. They are not a lot of use if I can’t see them, so which little hidden detail in the manual have I failed to register, please? − PD. Guide frames are always positioned as the rearmost (back) frame on the page. If you make sure all text /graphic frames on the page are local frames (<menu><frame> <alter frame><make local>) and then reduce these in size, you will see the yellow guide frames that you had created. Guide frames are mainly of use when setting up a master page, though. − RS. Am I missing something here? Can’t you just make it visible by using <ctrl-F10> to alter the frame and changing from a white background to transparent? − PB. 5.6 (By the way, I hadn’t come across the idea of turning a master frame into a local frame. If you hadn’t either, read up in the Impression manual on page 84 then have a play with it − it could prove a useful facility. − PB) 5.6 • Font cache full error − Even with the cache set to a ridiculous size, 750k or more, this error recurred and anyway, isn’t the cache itself supposed to clear enough space for a new font if necessary? I found that some silly PD game had unplugged SpriteUtils module and restoring it seemed to resolve the difficulty. It’s not only PD games that do this − the demo version of Cataclysm sent out by Archimedes World unplugs virtually everything including the Font Manager. Even a power off /on will not restore unplugged modules. If you aren’t sure whether anything has been unplugged, type *UNPLUG and it will list any unplugged modules. − RS. 5.6 • Rule off errors − The Impression manual is a bit short on advice when the package refuses to do what it should and it is totally silent on the subject of errors. What do you do for instance when the machine throws at you: “Overflow while transforming point, print aborted” ? I had been trying to print a landscape document containing a few vertical rules. Later, I noticed one of the rules slightly projecting beyond the edge of the frame. I went to the Style Edit box and switched ‘Rule-off’ on, and set it to 0pt. I must have done something right − the next time I tried, it produced a perfect print-out! − PD 5.6 • Shift and control symbols − Patrick sent a detailed account of using !FontDraw to generate a graphical representation of the <shift> and <control> keys − as they appear in Impression menus − and then continued to incorporate these into embedded frames at 30 or so points in his text. He also asked if there was an easier way? − PD. Yes there is. Use the Acorn Font Editor and David Pilling’s D2Font Drawfile to font converter which is on the same disk as his Trace program (now available through Archive for £6). You will end up with a new outline font which can be used within Impression just like any other font and which can be used within a style and assigned to a function key to turn it on and off. If anyone has the time to do this, please would they send Archive a copy of the resulting font for the magazine disk? − RS. 5.6 • Find within a group of frames − If the currently selected frame is a group of frames then the <find text> menu option is unavailable. To make it available, select a frame that does not contain a group and which contains at least one letter, (or create such a frame and text character if necessary). Then, to find or replace throughout the document (including all grouped frames), turn on the <whole document> button in the <find> dialogue box, and use find or replace as normal. − SK. Hints and Tips 5.7 • A5000 floppy drive problems − There have been a number of comments in Archive about the slowness of the A5000’s floppy drive. Could this be due to a bug which RISC-OS 3 has with the ADFS buffers. There was a note with my machine when it was delivered saying that the ADFS Buffers should be configured to zero due to a bug which causes occasional data errors. Configuring thus makes the floppy drive incredibly slow during copy operations with a track access taking more than 2 seconds. I preferred to have the speed and I spoke to Peter Dunn of Acorn at an Open Day in Glasgow recently who told me that the adfs buffers problem had only appeared with the Acorn DTP and that it shouldn’t be a problem with other programs like Impression. Indeed they had their A5000s configured with ADFS Buffers set to 16k so I copied them. 5.7 Then just the other day, Impression 2.16 dropped through my letter box. A couple of days later, I had two relatively complex newsletters to typeset. The first crashed during a save operation, losing most of the text. I thought ‘That will teach me to make back-up copies in future.’ I remade the document successfully. The next job was done with two copies on the hard disk, a main and a back-up. The main would auto-save and I would make a back-up by adding a ‘b’ to the filename. Well into this job, it crashed. Both copies were corrupted, so I gave up and returned to version 2.14f. No further problems. A word with Computer Concepts and they suggested that I return the ADFSbuffers to zero. 5.7 I’d be interested to hear if other A5000 and Impression users have had similar or other experiences with their setup. David Woods, Glasgow 5.7 • ArcDFS and !65Host − If you try to use ArcDFS with the 6502 emulator, you may get a “Bad DFS emulation” error. John Fletcher of Dabs Press says: “This is because the manual does not fully explain how to use ArcDFS with the emulator. The way to access a DFS disc, is not to type *DISC, but to type: *Dir dfs::<drive number>. You should also change drive using the above command instead of *Drive.” P Northing, Sheffield 5.7 • Bringing windows to the front − To move a window to the front, you must click on its title bar. This often involves moving other windows to get to it. However, I have just discovered that clicking on the window’s adjust size icon (bottom right) also brings the window to the front. This ‘obvious’ hint may help prevent too much window shuffling! R House, Andover 5.7 • Canon Bubblejets BJ300 & BJ330 − There are some undocumented features on these machines that make cleaning and changing ink cartridges a bit easier. The normal cleaning cycle is started by pressing the shift then the cleaning keys. An extended cycle is started by pressing shift then pressing and holding cleaning and then pressing shift again. 5.7 There is a function called reference aging which sprays ink all over the printed area of the paper. Be warned though that this uses a lot of ink and the ink is very difficult to remove from hands, etc so have a poly- bag handy to pop the sheet in!! The sequence can be stopped by turning the printer mains off. Press shift then press and hold cleaning and then press card and paper together and release cleaning. 5.7 I’ve been using “Report” photocopier paper in my BJ300 and the print quality is superb. Ned Abell, Kidderminster 5.7 • Changing the file allocation of a hard Disk − My A410/1 is equipped with an internal 40M ST506 hard disk (NEC). Recently I added an external SCSI hard disk (cached Morley “Cheetah”, 100M, fitted with a Rodime R3000 disk). When I compared those two drives, I made some very unexpected discoveries. 5.7 I copied the entire content of the internal disk (39M) to the new drive, because I wanted to soak test the old disk. To my amazement the SCSI “free” window showed that I had already used up no less than 62M of space! I phoned the (very friendly and competent) Morley help line, and they told me that larger drives usually were formatted differently from small ones (with larger blocks), because this improved their speed performance. 5.7 They advised me that if the extra space was more important to me than speed, I should use the formatter on the Morley support disk to alter the size of allocated blocks. I fiddled around with this application and found that it is indeed possible to change the space needed for a file quite considerably; in the configuration that I finally chose, the 39M from my old disk actually occupied slightly less space − below 38M! 5.7 What is more, the speed tester showed a slightly worse performance, but any improvised speed tests I did myself (like copying 3M of files from RAM disk to hard disk and back) showed these differences to be quite negligible. 5.7 So: If you buy a new (second) hard disk, it might be a good idea to check how it administrates data, before you do any serious work with it! Jochen Konietzko, Köln, Germany 5.7 • DFS reader and A5000 − When the DFS reader (Shareware 31) is run on the A5000, it fails with “Unknown or missing variable at or about line 260”. This can be cured by adding the following line: 5.7 215 large% = TRUE : full% = TRUE 5.7 M Pullin, Cheltenham. 5.7 • Econet interface faults − We had a big mains spike that ‘took out’ twelve BBC B Econet interfaces. At first, the Masters and Archimedes machines seemed OK but further investigation proved otherwise. The findings may prove useful to others. 5.7 There are two types of Acorn Econet cards, (plus the XOB one) an old one and a newer one. All the machines with the old type of cards seemed fine after the spike but none of the newer ones worked! Our first thought was that they were zapped by the spike. However, on closer examination, when we disconnected the old type machines from the network, the ones with the newer type card started to work. Looks like some of the old type cards are faulty but still working. The old style cards definitely seem more fault tolerant than the new ones! A faulty old style card can still work but it will stop other machines with the new style cards from working! Dave Leckie, Fort William. 5.7 • HP Deskjet 500 & RISC-OS 3 − Here is a tip about the RISC-OS3 printer drivers and the HP Deskjet 500. The graphics margins given in the HP configuration for the A4 (Generic Deskjet) are a bit conservative. 5.7 Top − 12.5mm 5.7 Bottom − 19.9mm 5.7 Left − 5.0mm 5.7 Right − 7.0mm 5.7 From the manual and from my own experiences of using the printer and seeing where it can print to, I have come up with new values which are:- 5.7 Top − 1.5mm 5.7 Bottom − 10.5mm 5.7 Left − 3.2mm 5.7 Right − 3.2mm 5.7 I have used these values very successfully ever since I got the machine. The RISC-OS 2 printer driver for the Laserjet/Deskjet has problems when it has different values for top and bottom margins because it prints out in landscape mode in the opposite direction to the way the margins have been set. i.e. it prints out last, the part of the sheet which is shown by the print borders to be the top! RISC-OS 3 has sorted this out allowing the maximum printing area to be available. It can be very important when using Impression’s ‘fit lots’ facility to reduce pages to have as much room as possible as margins are reduced as well. David Woods, Glasgow 5.7 • Paper for inkjets − I too have had much trouble obtaining good paper for my HP Deskjet 500. The manual recommends photocopy paper and that you should use the paper’s correct side (as marked by the arrow on the end of the packet). I have found photocopy paper to be poor no matter what side I try. The results usually come out ‘furry’ where the absorbency of the paper has caused the ink to creep by capillary action. Prior to the type of ink sold by Hewlett Packard being changed to a more permanent one, some photocopy paper gave white patches within areas of black which I think was due to a degree of waxiness repelling the ink from spots but this phenomenon happens no more. 5.7 (Acorn Inkjet owners can also benefit by using the HP DJ 500 cartridges as they are the same fitting. Ed.) 5.7 The new ink seems to give good results with some types of paper but rather ‘furry’ with others. Interestingly, I found that Croxley Script 80gsm, similar to that mentioned by Paul Bamberger in Archive to be very poor. I have settled on two paper types for ‘cheap and good’ and ‘expensive and excellent’ printouts. The cheaper paper is ‘Plus Fabric 70gsm’ from Empire Fine Papers at about £7.50 for 500 sheets. This gives consistently sharp, even results although it does wrinkle if there are large printed dark areas. 5.7 For printouts intended for further copying by a photocopier or at a printing company (or for making letterheads for small businesses) I have found that a type of paper generally described as ‘laid’ paper, available in various brands, is excellent, costing about £15 a box. It is smooth on one side and has a fine, ribbed pattern on the other. Both sides accept ink very well and you often see the paper used for prestigious company printed letterheads. I have used both ‘GB Classic, White Laid, 100gsm’ and ‘Conqueror, High White Laid, 100 gsm’. David Woods, Glasgow 5.7 • Printing on labels or A3 paper − Most RISC-OS printer drivers have difficulty with anything other than A4 paper. Although they have a page length setting, they do not tell the printer the page length to expect, so the printer still assumes that it has 11“ or A4 size paper (usually determined by a DIP switch). This is fine when printing on individual sheets or when using a sheet feeder to feed labels or envelopes but it causes serious problems with tractor feed labels or with A3 paper. Imagine printing on 1” tractor feed labels from Impression. The Impression master page must be defined to be 1“ length and, similarly, the printer driver’s page length must be set to 1”. The first label is printed and the printer driver sends a form feed character telling the printer to advance to the next form (page). Unfortunately, the printer driver assumes that it is using 11“ paper and feeds over the next 10 labels, simply because the printer driver did not define the printer’s page length. Similarly, printing on A3 paper (using a Canon BJ330 for example) fails because the printer thinks it is using A4 paper. The solution is for the printer driver to pass on the page length setting to the printer and this is a very simple change for Acorn to make. Meanwhile, it is necessary to modify the page start and end strings manually. With RISC-OS 2 drivers this can be difficult, but with RISC-OS 3 the printer driver editor allows it. 5.7 With an Epson compatible printer, the page length can be defined by putting ESC,“C”,n in the page start string, where n is the page length in lines (1/6“ per line). With an IBM compatible printer, an extra ESC,“2” is needed on the end. Furthermore, it is sometimes necessary to change the page end string which is often set to perform a printer reset (ESC,“@” on Epson printers) after every page − this should be removed completely. Note that these changes must be applied for each resolution setting that is to be used and that a new printer driver file should be saved with its name and type set appropriately to indicate that it is a different version for a special page size. Paul Skirrow, Ipswich 5.7 (Acorn are aware of the problem and have found at least a partial solution − see the comments below, page 9. Ed.) 5.7 • Mandelbrot bakeware − I have written a short PROC to improve Basil’s Mandelbrot program (Archive 5.6 p57): 5.7 DEFPROCdebug 5.7 WHILE flour=flour+weevils 5.7 REPEAT 5.7 GETweevil 5.7 BPUT# weevil ON blockA% 5.7 BEAT blockB% 5.7 UNTIL dead%=TRUE 5.7 weevils-=1 5.7 ENDWHILE 5.7 ENDPROC 5.7 The variable declaration: Mouth_Open=FALSE is the best I’ve seen so far! I have another for anyone who typed the program in: 5.7 Egg_on_face=TRUE. 5.7 Joseph Seelig, Harrow. 5.7 • Ten tips for larger memories − The article on better use of available memory (Archive 4.6 p52) set me thinking and here’s a tip for those of us who don’t have a hard disc. I have 4M in a 310, two 3½“ internal floppies and an external 5¼” drive. 5.7 If you look at what you use your computer for, it breaks down into a few task areas as well as playing games. I create a Task disk for each activity and that sits in the 5¼“ drive and I have one each for DTP, business and drawing. Each disc has !System, different !Fonts and the appropriate applications that I can cram on using !Compression. 5.7 Each task disc has two Obey type files called !boot and startlist to get everything up and running and here I put in a plug for the excellent !DeskEdit utility from Beebug which allows even me to get this working quickly. 5.7 Let’s look at the business Task disc which is called “LrgeBus1”. 5.7 The !boot obey file consists of one line... 5.7 Desktop-File adfs::LrgeBus1.$ .startlist 5.7 and clicking on this runs the second file called startlist. As you probably know, if this Task disc were in drive 0 it could be set to auto start each time the computer was turned on, by setting the disc to *OPT 4,3 and the computer to *Configure Boot. 5.7 The second obey file called startlist sets up the essential tasks that you will need but some of these are squeezed on the disc under the !Compression filing system. If you specify “cfs#adfs” as a filing system to get them to load, the computer throws a wobbly so I set up two aliases as the first lines of startlist. 5.7 Set Neds$Dir adfs::LrgeBus1.$ 5.7 and 5.7 Set NedsCFS$Dir cfs#adfs:: LrgeBus1.$ 5.7 you can then get the computer to find the bits you want by using: 5.7 <Neds$Dir>.!System 5.7 and to load various fixes found in the system modules directory into memory like.. 5.7 RMLoad<Neds$Dir>.!System. 5.7 modules.WimpUtils 5.7 and then to get !Compression up and running 5.7 <Ned$Dir>.!CFS 5.7 Now a word about !Fonts. I use Swiss as my main business font. You need to edit the run file of !Fonts and put in a “desktop” command at the end after “FontCat”or it will stop and ask you to press space. I also tailor the run file after the line “Echo Font Manager 2.42 installed.” with the lines 5.7 Echo Neds Business Fonts now available: 5.7 Echo 5.7 because I like to personalise things!! 5.7 Back in startlist, we can now run... 5.7 <NedsCFS$Dir>.!Fonts 5.7 which are compressed and then in a compressed directory called resources 5.7 <NedsCFS$Dir>.resources. 5.7 !PrinterDM 5.7 <NedsCFS$Dir>.resources.!Alarm 5.7 and anything else you need and the last line is 5.7 desktop 5.7 The whole process is very easy to achieve and each task disc can be tailored. The drawback is that its a bit on the slow side and all my fonts have to be uncompressed before I use them but I do set a large Fontsize. Ned Abell, Kidderminster 5.7 • Transferring PC files with the Emulator − It is true that the multi- tasking PC Emulator does prevent access to the PC hard disc partition while it is running and it is therefore necessary to quit the emulator before a file created by a PC program can be read in RISC-OS. This is because RISC-OS does not know whether the PC hard disc partition is in a valid state or not (i.e. a PC program may be writing to an open file). However, it is possible to transfer files between RISC-OS and the PC emulator by using floppy discs. After the PC has written a file to the floppy it may be necessary to dismount the floppy disc (using the menu item) and re-open it by clicking on the floppy icon to make RISC-OS read the directory again (otherwise it may not realise that it has been changed). This works with RISC-OS 3, but should also work with any of the various PC disc readers. Paul Skirrow, Ipswich 5.7 • Watford mouse − If you need to replace the plug on a Watford mouse (old version) my experience may be useful. The original plug is moulded onto the cable, and it took careful dismantling with a sharp knife to discover where each wire went. 5.7 I purchased the replacement plug from Maplin Electronics (code JX19V 0.82p, page 177). This plug has three disadvantages; firstly it has no cable strain relief, so you must be sure of your wiring, secondly, it is extremely difficult to disassemble and thirdly you need to shave a small amount from the front to fit it into the socket of an A310. (I don’t think it would fit too well on an A3000!) The wire colours are as follows (functions as on p469 of the A310 User Guide): 5.7 Pin Function Colour 5.7 1 X Reference white 5.7 2 Switch 1 yellow 5.7 3 Switch 2 red 5.7 4 0V return brown 5.7 5 X Direction green 5.7 6 5V supply black 5.7 7 Y Reference blue 5.7 8 Switch 3 orange 5.7 9 Y Direction purple 5.7 M Angove, Caerphilly 5.7 • Wonderland on SCSI − I’ve managed to get Wonderland to work on SCSI. What you do is:- 5.7 Obtain the SCSI “fix”, which Archive will supply if you send them a charity donation (minimum £2). However, it’s also on this month’s program disc. 5.7 Run the INSTALL program on the “fix” disk, using the “fix” disk when asked for disk “ONE”, then the original disk “TWO”, “THREE” and “FOUR”. 5.7 When the installation is complete, use !Edit to modify the “win” application code. Look for the second occurrence of the text “adfs” and replace it with “scsi”. (If you replace the first one, it all seems to work until you save or restore a game position.) 5.7 To get it to work on SCSI with 1M memory you need to unplug more modules than you would with ADFS, because SCSI, SCSIFiler and SCSIDirCache take up some space. I find that I need to unplug:− Debugger, Draw, EcoNet, FontManager, IIC, NetFS, NetPrint, NetStatus, PaletteUtil, Percussion, RAMFS, RAMFSFiler, ShellCLI, SoundChannels, SoundDMA, SoundScheduler, StringLib, SystemDevices, WaveSynth. 5.7 Mike Williams, London N16. 5.7 The following hints and tips are taken from the February Acorn Customer Services Newsletter. 5.7 • RISC-OS 2 printer drivers 5.7 1) We have had reports of the release 2 printer drivers producing the following error message: 5.7 “Invalid number of output bits” 5.7 This error is produced when you attempt to print a sprite that was created in a 256 colour screen mode such as MODE 15 in a 16 colour mode such as MODE 12. The solution to the problem is to print in MODE 15 if this error occurs, or to print the sprite in the mode in which it was created. 5.7 2) When attempting to load any of the many RISC-OS 2 desktop printer drivers the following error message may be displayed: “Filing System or path ‘Printer:’ not present internal error xxxx” 5.7 The error is caused by one of the printer driver support modules becoming unplugged from the operating system. To resolve the problem, the first action to take is to find out which modules are unplugged. This information can be found by typing the following command from the command line: 5.7 *UNPLUG 5.7 It is then necessary to re-insert the modules that *UNPLUG has shown as being unplugged with the following command: 5.7 *RMREINIT <ModuleName> 5.7 Once you have used *RMREINIT to re-initialise all the modules, you should then perform a <ctrl-break> to ensure all the modules have started correctly. 5.7 3) Printing labels on small page lengths can sometimes cause problems. 5.7 a) !PrinterDM (2.46) reads a system variable called PDriver$DMExtra at the start of each print job and sends it to the printer before the actual data stream. PDriver$DMExtra has to be set using GSTrans format so, to set a page length of nine lines, you would use: 5.7 *SET PDriver$DMExtra |[C|I 5.7 You would use |[C|J for ten lines and |[C|K for eleven lines and so on. This command can be executed explicitly from the command line (after !PrinterDM has been loaded) or incorporated in the !Run file. 5.7 b) Set the (Graphics) clip window to the appropriate size from !PrinterDM’s icon bar menu. If the stationery is continuous, you can leave the top and bottom graphics margins set to zero. 5.7 c) Finally, you need to tell the Wordprocessor you are using, the page size of each label. 5.7 • RISC-OS 3 printer drivers − Loading RISC-OS 2 printer drivers into Acorn A5000s with RISC-OS 3 can cause problems if an attempt is then made to load the RISC-OS 3 !Printers application from the Applications 1 disc or directory if stored on the hard disc. 5.7 !Printers will report the error “!Printers requires PDriver 3.16 or later”. 5.7 The error occurs because the RISC-OS 2 printer driver loads an older PDriver module than 3.16. The solution to the problem is to type from the command line. 5.7 *RMKILL PDriver 5.7 *RMREINIT PDriver 5.7 This will allow you to load the new !Printer application supplied with RISC-OS 3 on the A5000. 5.7 • Maestro − Version 1.75 has a problem where notes are displayed at double-height in certain modes. This may be fixed in the field by deleting or renaming the sprites22 and !sprites 22 files. 5.7 • PC Emulator hints & tips 5.7 1) Deleting an unformatted or non-system PC Emulator hard disc partition on an A5000. 5.7 RISC-OS 3 looks at the PC hard disc partition (DOSDisc, &FC8) as if it were a filing system and therefore before it will delete the partition, it must look inside to find out what files are there. To be able to delete an unformatted partition it is necessary to fool the operating system into believing that it is not a PC partition, by changing its filetype. However, it is not possible to change its filetype from within the desktop and the following information gives details of how to change the filetype from outside the desktop. The file can then either be deleted from the command line as shown below or from the desktop. 5.7 a) Press <F12> from the desktop to get the command line (*Prompt) 5.7 b) Type: 5.7 *SETTYPE ADFS::4.$.PC.Drive_C TEXT <return> 5.7 *DELETE ADFS::4.$.PC.DRIVE_C <return> 5.7 2) The Archimedes keyboard has a U.S. style PC layout. You should not therefore use KEYBUK or KEYB UK in the Autoexec batch file. Also, the £ sign on an Archimedes keyboard doesn’t exist on a PC keyboard, so to get a £ sign you will need to enter its ASCII code 156: 5.7 Under the emulator, hold down the ALT key and type 1 5 6 on the numeric keypad. (Remember to have Num Lock on). 5.7 3) Configuration − ‘Startup Text’ − The startup text is only intended for use with a hard disc partition, not for floppy based systems. The problem is that the first characters of the startup text are lost because they are taken as a reply to the ‘Insert DOS Boot Disc and press any key’ message which you get when running the emulator from floppy discs. 5.7 The startup text should also not be used unless you have an Autoexec.Bat and Config.Sys file. If you do not have these, the startup text is taken as a reply to confirming the date. 5.7 4) PC Software compatibility − there are some screen redraw problems with WordStar 4 using the !PCEmS emulator. However, no problems have yet been reported using the large !PCEm emulator. A 5.7 5.7 Impression Hints & Tips 5.7 There’s no shortage of hints and tips this month and there is a special emphasis on mail merging, printing and uses of Impression’s “save graphics” facility. 5.7 • Mailmerge (1) − There have been some queries about mail merging with Impression, so Rob Sherratt contacted Computer Concepts to outline the problems. Rob wrote, “I have tried to use the Business Supplement (Importer) and Impression to mailmerge a set of addresses to generate a sheet of laser labels where each label contains successive fields from the database. I have come to the conclusion that it can’t be done at present − unless you tell me otherwise! I can print, say, a sheet of 24 labels for the same addressee (using a variety of methods) − but I cannot print 24 labels for different addressees unless I enter the data manually. Isn’t this a normal requirement for mailmerge programs? 5.7 “It seems to me that Impulse’s ‘Merge’ command causes Impression to do a ‘Delete then merge’ operation, coupled with a small change to Importer’s user interface to toggle the ‘Delete vs Duplicate’ option on and off. As well as, or instead of this, you might like to consider adding a new pair of methods to Importer – :Importer Next record and :Importer PrevRecord – which would allow the user to build a composite ‘24-up’ merge template where each frame in the template might contain the following merge commands; 5.7 :Importer Getfield 1 5.7 :Importer Getfield 2 etc 5.7 :Importer Next Record 5.7 On receiving the Next Record message, the Importer application would reset its field counter to 1 and would scan forward for the start of the next record.” 5.7 Charles Moir agreed that !Importer would not allow different names and addresses to be imported into different frames and thought that Rob’s new command to move onto the next record would work, but again that’s another improvement that will have to wait for Impression 3 (if that is the correct title!). 5.7 However, Charles did have this useful suggestion, “whenever we have had a requirement to produce labels in this fashion (e.g. for mailing the Archimedean magazine) we have gone about it in a different, and I would suggest, a simpler way. First we create a master page that has separate frames for each label. These are then linked together so they all form part of one flowing story, so text will flow from one frame to another. Presuming you have the name and address list in ASCII form with some identifier between records − all you do is drop the file into the first frame. All the names and addresses then flow into successive frames, creating new pages as required. If the names and address are fixed length records it is only a matter of making sure the label is the correct size to hold exactly one record and it should all format correctly. Even if the records are not the same length all that is required is a single search and replace operation to replace the record separator with a 5.7 command to make sure each new record starts in a new label. 5.7 (If you use label sheets that have no selvedge, i.e. the whole A4 page is divided into exactly 24 equal spaces, you just create one simple master page whose size is just 70mm × 37.1mm. Then all you do is ensure you have “ignore page borders” set and “fit lots” and it prints beautifully. Ed.) 5.7 “The only disadvantage of this system is that it loads all the names and addresses in one go. However, we use this system for mailing 10,000 names and addresses on a standard 4M machine and so space is not a problem. In fact, I don’t think something like !Importer would cope with anything like that number of records satisfactorily. This method has the advantage that you can see and edit each record individually if required, and you can print any required range of pages or multiple copies, etc.” 5.7 • Mailmerge (2) − Stuart Bell had more modest needs. He wanted to send a basic letter with a customized “Dear ...” beginning, and an address in a box at the bottom of each letter. His solution to create the skeleton letter as a master page <ctrl-F2 − Edit − New Master Page>. In this master page type everything, except the names for the salutation (the “Dear . . .” bit). Then create two frames on the master page, one for the name, the other for the address box, and make text flow from one to the other. 5.7 Now, leave the editing of the master page and return to your document. Alter the chapter so that your newly created master page is the one for that chapter and you will see your letter appear, with boxes for the name and address. Type in the name of the first person, and their address, using <ctrl-G> to advance to the next frame, as required. Impression will generate new pages as necessary, each containing the same letter. 5.7 In order to make the salutation look neat, you may need to move the ‘name’ frame on the master page, to line up “Dear” with the name. Check this with a large scale view of your document. 5.7 Now, the whole point of a mailing list is not to send one letter, but to make it easier the next time you write to the same people. To change your letter, save the original document under another name – e.g. if originally “Letter1”, save it now as “Letter2” to avoid losing the original letter. Then simply change the letter on the master page of Letter2 to produce your new letter. Alternatively, create another new master page and alter your chapter to use it. 5.7 To produce a simple listing of your mailing list, create a master page with many frames stacked in a vertical line (or any other close pattern for that matter). You will then have a simple list of the names and addresses in a tabular form. 5.7 I know that most mailmerge packages offer more complex facilities than this penny-pinching approach, such as selecting certain names out of a list. However, if your needs are as basic as mine, then it certainly beats the laborious task of producing twenty (or two hundred) virtually identical letters manually! 5.7 • A merge program? − On a related note, identical pleas from Peter Blenkinsop and P Closier: “has anyone written a merge program for Impression?” Peter has several two page documents he would like to merge into one (longer) document, mainly for ease of printing, although he admits that a printer queue system might do just as well. No doubt other users would also find this useful, so has anyone cracked this particular nut? Batch printing would undoubtedly be useful for the next release of Impression (with perhaps the incoming document forming a new chapter), but we do also need a proper printer queueing system for Acorn printer drivers. (Laser Direct owners already have one. Ed) 5.7 • Viewing clip art – Impression’s ease of manipulating and printing Sprite and Draw files has been touched on by others but the following may be of interest. Just as with fonts, one really needs to see a print- out of one’s collection of clip-art files in order to pick out the one that’s just right for a particular job. I have done this by setting up my collection on a set of standard Impression pages laid out with 5 rows of 4 frames, each frame filled with a clip-art object. The sheets when printed out then provide a ready reference and can be saved economically as Impression documents using ArcFS/Spark/Compression. 5.7 The beauty of this is that in future you can ignore the individual clip- art files and work from the saved Impression document. You choose the frame you want and save it as a graphic to the RAM disc. Then drag the icon from RAMFS to the Impression frame you have set up to receive it. Note that you have to use the RAM disc as an intermediate stage for the transfer. If you drag the icon directly across to the new Impression frame you get a message to the effect that Impression cannot save a file to itself. (Jack Evans) 5.7 Don’t forget though that there are a number of commercial programs that allow you to view clip art and these might be more useful if you are constantly adding new images to your collection. Incidentally, an earlier version of Glimpse (Sherston Software) used to hang up the computer if presented with a DrawPlus file. I am glad to report that this was fixed (v1.02 and later) and, although the program ignores unknown file types, it will not cause any other problems. If you have an early issue of Glimpse, Sherston advise you to call them for advice and they tell me that they are further developing the program. 5.7 • Taking graphics from documents – Paul Skirrow writes in response to the Impression Hints & Tips by Jochen Konietzko (Archive 5.5 page 41) and also makes use of the save graphics facility. It is true that graphics cannot be edited within Impression, but it is a simple matter to click on the graphic frame to select it and then use the <save graphic> option on the document menu (or use <shift-ctrl-T>). I rarely bother keeping separate copies of graphics files now, I just save them from Impression directly into Draw, modify them and then save them back again. (With PipeDream, things are different as it does not take its own copy of the graphics file, but simply stores the filename, so modifying the file on disc will change the image in the PipeDream document.) 5.7 It is true that the draw files are stored within the document directory (called story1, story2, etc), but they should not be edited because Impression stores information about them elsewhere (in the !DocData file). It is possible to crash the entire system by modifying a graphics file within an Impression document. I have always regarded Impression documents as no-go areas − they belong to Impression and use Computer Concepts’ own format which is not published and which could be changed between Impression versions. 5.7 The only disadvantage with using the <save graphic> option is that it always saves the graphic as a draw file, even if it is a sprite. If you want to edit a sprite, you must therefore drag the draw file from Impression to Draw, select the object and then use the <save sprite> option on the save menu to save into Paint. This is clumsy, especially if memory is short, in which case you will have to save the intermediate files to disc before loading into Paint. Computer Concepts do this mainly to simplify the inner working of Impression (it means everything can be regarded as a Draw file which may contain sprites). Another argument for using Draw files to hold sprites is that they contain absolute size information, whereas the sprite format does not. It therefore makes a lot of sense for scanners to produce Draw files containing the scanned sprite together with absolute size information describing the resolution of the scanned image. The <save graphic> menu item only appears when a graphic frame is selected (whereas the RISC-OS guidelines suggest that unavailable menu items should be shaded so that the user knows they are there). 5.7 Could Impression be made to pass graphics files to Draw and Paint when they are double clicked? Perhaps Computer Concepts would be prepared to implement this. I also think that there should be an easy way of transferring data between applications generally without bringing up a save menu. I know that we are all used to it now, but it is not really a “save” operation that you are doing when transferring things between applications, and the filename is certainly irrelevant when you are not saving to a filer window. One approach, adopted by Squirrel, is to make a click-drag from a Squirrel window to another application transfer the data by doing a save automatically. This is extremely useful in Squirrel and means that an address can be transferred to a letter very quickly without using a menu. I have also adopted this technique in some of my programs where <click-drag> is not used for something else, but unfortunately, many programs use <click-drag> for their own operation. What do other people think? Could we standardise on a <shift-drag> or <alt-drag> to do a save. (This would also work with filer windows using the default or last filename). 5.7 • Styles used and unused − When I am preparing the magazine, I use one big file that contains all the things like hints & tips, comments, small ads, products, etc, so I am forever importing new bits of text into it and then exporting them back out into the magazine. This means that the style list grows longer each month so, every now and then, I remove unwanted styles. To do this, I select the whole text with <ctrl-T> and pull up the edit styles window with <ctrl-F6>. I click on the style selection menu button and there is a list showing which styles, in the whole story, are used and which are unused. I can then select and delete the ones that aren’t needed (remembering to click the delete button with <adjust> so that the window stays on-screen). 5.7 Sometimes, I want to remove a style completely even though it is being used. If so, I select all the text, pull up the style menu and click on the style to be removed. That will remove all occurrences of it. Don’t forget though that a style may also be used on a master page, in which case it will not delete. This can actually be put to good advantage because I don’t want to accidentally delete, say, “bold” just because it is not used in the file as it stands. To prevent accidental deletion, create a new dummy master page, create a text frame and type in a few choice words and give them the styles that you want to maintain permanently within the document. They cannot now be deleted acciden tally. − PB 5.7 • Kerning − On Impression, kerning is extremely easy to achieve, especially with the keyboard short-cuts. If you want to (R)educe the space between adjacent characters, simply put the cursor between the two characters and type <ctrl-R> a number of times. If you over do it, simply (E)xpand the space a bit using <ctrl-E>. If you can’t make a fine enough adjustment with <ctrl-R> and <ctrl-E>, go through the menu options to call up the kerning menu and adjust the number. Remember that if you want to try a particular number without losing the kerning window, click on Set with <adjust>, not <select>. For vertical kerning, use <ctrl-U> to move the text (U)p and <ctrl-J> to er... (J)ump downwards?! (Can anyone think of a better mnemonic?) 5.7 The trouble with kerning being so easily available is that it’s easy to hit <ctrl-R, E, U or J> by accident. I have tried to use search and replace to locate any spurious kerning in a document but cannot find any way to do it. You can, of course, export the text with styles and load the text into Edit and search for “{but I would have liked a simpler way. Any ideas? Still, if you can see roughly where the spurious kerning appears, simply go through the menu to get the kerning window up on screen and use cursor left and cursor right to move the cursor around through the suspect areas. If you move past a kerning statement, the numbers will flick up in the kerning window. To remove the kerning, click <adjust> on the Clear button and go back to using the cursor keys to search for other kerning statements, finally clicking <select> on Clear. − PB 5.7 • Impression speed users’ tips − (Reprinted from Archive 5.5 where the last two lines were accidentally omitted!) I find that having got into the habit of using <adjust> for reverse scrolling, it really does save time, especially when I am laying out the magazine and the screen is cluttered with windows. Just press <select> to scroll down and switch quickly to <adjust> to go back up again without having to move the mouse and locate the other end of the scroll bar − which could be under another window anyway. 5.7 Also, <adjust> can be extremely useful, again with a cluttered screen, for moving windows whilst keeping them where they are relative to the other documents. It takes practice, but it speeds things up in the long run. − PB 5.7 • Search & replace on styles − Impression appears to have the facility to search and replace on styles. Indeed, you can search for a style using {name” }@, where @ is the wildcard for “any text” but, sadly, you cannot replace with another style name, despite the fact that there is a menu button on the Search & Replace window to allow you to put a style name into the Replace box. I don’t know why CC haven’t implemented this facility. They obviously intended to do so because the menu button on the Replace box has no other purpose − as it stands, it is totally redundant. Perhaps it could be implemented in Impression III but, in the meantime, you can do it in Edit, though it’s a bit cumbersome. 5.7 Suppose, for example, that you have a document with various headings all using “Heading” (marked on <F2> as Sub-heading) and that you want to change some of them to a sub-sub-heading, let’s call it “SubHead”. What you will have to do is to click somewhere in the text and use <shift- ctrl-T> to save the text. Save it with styles, perhaps into a ram disc. Then load that into !Edit and use search & replace to, selectively, change into . (The reason for using is to catch, in one go, ON} and OFF} and } all of which can occur in the document.) 5.7 To get it back into the original document, click back in the main text in the Impression document, select the whole text with <ctrl-T>, set it all back to base text with <ctrl-B>, delete it and then go back to the Edit document and save the text into the Impression document. Remember though to save the document before you start messing about with it in this way. You can get in an awful mess if you edit the text file incorrectly. 5.7 If CC can’t add the style search & replace feature into Impression, perhaps someone could produce a simple editing application for us. As the Impression text is loaded into it, it would create a list of the styles available then it would allow you to search and replace using a menu to provide you with a list of the styles it knows about. Could someone write that for us, please? If you’d like to have a go, get in touch with me at Archive. − PB 5.7 • Style problems − When I am preparing the magazine, I save the text of each of the articles, with styles, as edit files in one directory. I then have a dummy Archive magazine document into which I insert the various edit files. If I have a particular space to fill, say about a page and a half, I link together the title frame and the text frames that are to make up the article. I know roughly how long each article is, so I drop one of the edit files into the title frame. Sometimes, it turns out to be just too short or too long and I want to delete it, but if I just mark it with <ctrl-T> and delete it and then drop in another edit file, I find that the whole text ends up in the same style as the main heading − then it really is too long! As far as I am concerned, this is a bug in Impression. Anyway, the “work-around” is to mark the whole text and press <ctrl-B> first, to change it all back to base style, before deleting the text. On a long file, especially if a lot of it is displayed on screen, this can take quite a time. Does anyone know a quicker work-around? 5.7 Also, I find that, fairly often, the title is left justified instead of centred as its style specifies. If I click on the title, type a single character and delete it, it springs back to the centre − another bug, but one that’s easy to get round. − PB 5.7 • RTF loader − To transfer WP files from the Mac (or PC versions of Microsoft Word, I guess) you can use the RTF (rich text format) loader that comes with the Impression Business Supplement. The RTF loader is fairly intelligent and knows to swap things like ë into ’ because the fonts on Mac and Archimedes use some different ASCII numbers. However, unless it has been fixed, it sometimes hangs up with some of these “top- bit-set” characters. For example, I was trying to transfer a cook book and it hung up (the whole machine!) every time it came across a degree symbol as in 100°C. The answer was to search and replace the degree symbol into, say, an equal sign or some other character not used in the text, transfer with the RTF loader and then search and replace back again. (Some of you may have noticed the repeated occurrence of ë instead of ’ in one of Risc User’s articles last month − I guess they are still using Macs for their magazine and the Archimedes to Mac conversion is not as intelligent.) − PB 5.7 • Blank pages printed − If your printer sometimes prints blank pages (as Patrick Dowling explained in Archive 5.6) it is probably because the printer driver’s bottom margin is set too small. The printer drivers send all the data they are told to send for the page and then send a form feed character. If they send so much that the printer just goes on to its next page and the driver then sends a form feed character the printer will eject a sheet. Make sure that the printer’s DIP switches are set to disable perforation skip and check any others which determine the page size. When entering the bottom margin into the printer driver’s paper size entry, it is important to be on the conservative side and make this a fraction larger than you think it ought to be (by a couple of mm). The only disadvantage to this is that you will lose the ability to print in this borderline area, but at least you will avoid the mysterious blank pages which can otherwise occur. Unfortunately, printer manuals are notoriously awkward, especially when you are looking for the top and bottom margins, and most of the printer drivers are supplied with the incorrect default settings (to be fair, some drivers are written for a range of printers which each have their own unique paper margins). Paul Skirrow. 5.7 (I passed this hint on to one of our Technical Help Service members a couple of weeks ago and she confirmed that it worked. All she did was to increase the paper size from 297.00 mm to 299.00 mm and she got no more blank pages. Ed.) 5.7 • Entering special characters into Impression − There is an updated version of !Chars on this month’s disc which can enter special charac ters into Impression without needing to tell Impression which font they came from. It works just like Chars (or NewChars2 to be precise) and provides quick selection of common fonts (Dingbats, Symbol, System and Trinity) as well as passing the font information to Impression in DDF form. Note that RISC-OS 3 defines the system font to be the same as the Latin 1 fonts, complete with the “ and ” characters, but RISC-OS 2 doesn’t, so it will help if you use the new System font provided on the Archive 5.6 program disc if you are using RISC-OS 2. Paul Skirrow. 5.7 • PC file transfer − Impression saves text files with an LF-CR termina tor rather than the CR-LF terminator which is used by most PC programs. This can confuse a lot of PC programs which automatically ignore the first character after a LF (which they expect to be a CR), and Computer Concepts have agreed to fix this some time. Paul Skirrow. 5.7 In the meantime, you can presumably use !Edit’s search & replace facility to change \x0A\x0D into \x0D\x0A remembering to set the magic characters to ON. Ed 5.7 Ovation Hints and Tips 5.7 • Master documents – Hilary Ferns has sent details of master documents she has created for use with Ovation. Her design for A4 and A5 letters will be particularly useful for newcomers to either DTP or Ovation, and her templates for an A5 four sided leaflet, an A5 booklet, A6 leaflet and a greetings card or notelet are valuable time savers. With Hilary’s permission they are on this month’s program disc in Ovation format, but here is just one example of how Hilary used Ovation to produce an A5 four sided leaflet. 5.7 5.7 This is the format of our weekly church news-sheet, which displays news about all the events in bordered frames − rather like the ads page of the local newspaper. It is printed on A4 paper, photocopied and folded neatly in half. 5.7 I use an HP Deskjet 500 printer, so all the margin settings are based on this. Printer paper size is A4. 5.7 1. Set up a new document with the following settings: 5.7 A4 5.7 Landscape 5.7 Single-sided 5.7 2 columns 5.7 Gutter 24mm 5.7 Margins – Top 12mm, Left & Right 12mm, Bottom 8mm 5.7 2. Open up the Master page for your document and include on this any regular heading, logo, etc. that you may require. We always have our church logo at the top of the front page, together with a “welcome” greeting. These are placed in picture frames at the top of the right- hand column, i.e. the front of the leaflet when it is eventually folded. 5.7 3. Obviously, page two will not want these headings, so you will now need to create a new chapter (“New Chapter − After current Chapter”) and specify chapter two starting at page two (“Modify chapter”). Delete your frames from page two. Remember too to think about any paragraph styles that you are likely to use. 5.7 4. Go back to your document and delete the existing pages one and two. You will now have a simple document with two A4 sheets, each with 2 columns and a wide gutter. Within this framework you can create text and picture frames, making sure they do not overlap the central guidelines. I tend to display most of my text in individual text frames with borders, often with a nested picture frame for a picture or “FontFX” generated heading. Only rarely do I type directly into the principal text frame. 5.7 5.7 5. You may want to have text which flows from one page to the next. However, using the principal text frame, the text will not flow back up to the “back” page of the leaflet. To do this you will need to create a text frame to fit within each column and use the “link” tool to flow the text from the front, to the middle and onto the back. This is quite simple to work out. (see diagram). 5.7 6. Save your stylesheet. Printing out such a document is straightfor ward. Change to “landscape” on the “Print setup” before saving stylesheet. 5.7 Hints and Tips 5.8 • A5000 filing system problems − There have been more comments about problems with losing files on the A5000. We suggested last month that you take Acorn’s advice and configure the ADFSbuffers to zero. In the light of further experience, we would suggest it even more strongly. This problem occurred with Impression but we have had reports that it also happens with other software. You have been warned. Ed. 5.8 David Pilling adds... In the last Archive, you had a piece from someone saying that it is necessary to *configure ADFSBuffers 0 to make Acorn DTP and Impression work properly. The official line according to Beebug, is that unless A5000’s are configured like this, they will corrupt their hard discs sooner or later. There are well documented cases of this occurring. In addition, many programs, ArcFS and the Beebug hard disc backup for example, won’t work unless ADFSbuffers are set to zero. 5.8 It is also common advice to load the SerialUtils module before attempt ing to use comms programs. The naive point of view is that SerialUtils does something clever that allows buffers to work. That is not so, SerialUtils actually prevents buffers from doing anything. It is therefore much more efficient to stop your comms program from loading any buffer and not bother with SerialUtils. SerialUtils will apparently also prevent things like printer buffers from working. 5.8 New versions of Hearsay cope with all this automatically and there is a version that uses the buffer manager built into RISC-OS 3. However, we are still having discussions with Acorn over whether this works properly in RISC-OS 3 as fitted to the A5000. David Pilling, Blackpool. 5.8 • A5000 second floppy drive − In Archive 5.6 p12, it said that if you were putting an external 5¼“ drive onto an A5000 it should be connected into the middle socket of the three. That is not correct. It should go into the one farthest East. The internal drive goes in the middle one. The other point to note is that it said the external drive can be set to ID zero or one. That it true but it should perhaps should have been spelt out more clearly that it should NOT be set to either two or three. If it is, it will not work properly. Ed. 5.8 • Adjust clicking (RISC-OS 3) − Most people will, by now, have cottoned on to the idea that clicking open a directory with <adjust> closes the parent directory viewer and that clicking the close button with <adjust> opens up the parent. One extension of this on RISC-OS 3 is that clicking the close button with <adjust> while holding down <shift> doesn’t actually close the window but does open up the parent directory. 5.8 • Directory date stamps − When copying a directory and its contents, the destination directory is created with the current date stamp, as opposed to being created and then stamped with the date of the source object. (Looking through the PRM I haven’t been able to find a way of stamping a file to a date other than that held in the real time clock.) 5.8 In the case of application directories, the application directory’s date stamp appears to be copied through, but on closer inspection this is not so. The application directory is created with the current date stamp (as for normal directories) however, the date which the filer presents the user (for the date of the application directory) is actually the date stamp of the !RunImage file. 5.8 RISC-OS 3 automatically detects an attempt to move from one directory to another on the same media, and performs a Rename operation instead of a copy, whereby the date is retained. (Possibly, RISC-OS 3 also has a facility for stamping a filer object with a specified date, although I will not know about this until the RISC-OS PRM is released!) D Lenthall, London. 5.8 • Exiting the desktop (RISC-OS 3) − With RISC-OS 2, you could set up an obey that would exit the desktop by making the last line: 5.8 FX 138,0,252 5.8 and as long as no text was output by the obey file, the desktop would be exited. The same can be done with RISC-OS 3 by placing the above line in the obey file twice. It also works with the keys, press <shift−ctrl−F12> twice and the desktop is exited. Also when <shift−ctrl−F12> has been pressed F12 (*Commands) and <ctrl−F12> (Task Window) still work! Warning: If you do use this then the ADFS will be reset, losing the current directory. P Bedford, Peterborough. 5.8 • Extra validation flags − With RISC-OS 3, a number of new validation flags are available for when you are designing window templates. So far I have found the following: 5.8 Border Flags − these require the border flag to be set on and give an icon a 3D border similar to Impression’s, they all begin with a B (or b) and are followed by a number to give the border type: 5.8 0 Single raised border. 5.8 1 Double border for grouping. 5.8 2 Triple border for default action icons. 5.8 3 Triple border for writable icons. 5.8 4 Single recessed border. 5.8 5 Standard single line border. 5.8 6 Triple recessed border similar to type 3. 5.8 Border type 0 and 3 can be followed by a comma and then a number between 0 and 15 to define the colour to slab to. 5.8 Pointer definition − you can define an icon so that the pointer changes shape when over the icon. This is done by placing a P (or p) in the validation string followed by the name of the sprite containing the pointer shape. Try sprite ptr_double. 5.8 Many others may be available with other parameters for the above options but until the RISC-OS 3 Programmers’ Reference Manual is available we won’t really know. Most of the above is available in RISC-OS 2 by using the Interface module by Simon Huntington. P Bedford, Peterborough. 5.8 • Iconised windows with Impression (RISC-OS 3) − If you want to distinguish Impression documents that have had their windows iconised, generate an icon called ‘ic_impressio’ and place it in the !Sprites file in the !Impress directory. Mine is the Impression quill & pot in a window (ic_?). P Bedford, Peterborough. 5.8 • Menon hotkey − If you use Menon’s hotkey facility, a problem can arise in that it may not work if you have a window open that contains the caret (e.g. Impression). However, it will work if you hold the alt key down at the same time as the hotkey i.e. <alt-ctrl-H>. P Bedford, Peterborough. 5.8 • Oak drives with Acorn SCSI card − If you are using an Oak drive with an Acorn SCSI card (e.g. if you own an A540), you may find that you are unable to dismount the drive and that you get a ‘Bad parameters’ error. 5.8 Hard drives that are formatted using an Oak SCSI card include additional information in the boot block which the Acorn card objects to. To solve these problems (especially annoying with removable hard drives!), you will have to format the disc with Acorn’s SCSIDM. 5.8 Unfortunately, it is not that simple. When the desktop is started up, the Acorn card looks at all of the drives that are available. Once it sees an ‘incorrectly’ formatted Oak disc, it will not allow SCSIDM to access the drive. This means that you will have to start up outside of the desktop in order to format the disc. This can be done by typing *Configure Language 0 <return> from the command line and then pressing <ctrl-break>. 5.8 Once this has been done, you can format your drive in the usual way − see pages 11-12 of the SCSI Expansion Card User Guide. 5.8 To start up in the desktop again, simply type *Configure Language 4 <return> from the command line and then press <ctrl-break>. Adrian Look, N.C.S. 5.8 • PC file transfer revisited − When transferring text files from PC to the Archimedes (or vice versa), it is necessary to convert the carriage returns (CRs) to line feeds (LFs) and vice versa. This can be done using the search and replace facility of Edit, but it is much quicker just to use the in-built transfer ‘CR<->LF’ which is available from the ‘Edit’ submenu or to press <F8>. G Riley, Cheshire. 5.8 • PC screen fonts revisited − In Archive 4.12 p10 there was a hint that explained how to change the screen font of the PC Emulator to any BBC screen font. Since then, the program has been updated to include EGA+ and ECD definitions. 5.8 The EGAROM looks to contain two sets of character definitions: EGA+ 16×8 cells and ECD 14×8 cells, as opposed to the ROM file which (amongst other things) contains the 8×8 cells used in the other modes. The following program will convert these character sets for EGA+ and ECD modes in a similar manner to my previous program: 5.8 REM >EGAFONT 5.8 REM Merge BBC FONT file into !PC EGAROM file 5.8 REM NB. *** COPY ORIGINAL EGAROM FILE BEFORE RUNNING THIS *** 5.8 : 5.8 ON ERROR REPORT:PRINT“ at line ”;ERL :CLOSE#0:END 5.8 DIM rom% &2000,C%(7) 5.8 R$=“:4.!PCEM.EGAROM” 5.8 OSCLI(“*LOAD ”+R$+“ ”+STR$~rom%) 5.8 : 5.8 F%=OPENIN(“:4.BBCFONTS.NEWFONT”):REM File of type &FF7 5.8 : 5.8 REPEAT 5.8 A%=BGET#F% 5.8 IFA%<>23THENPRINT“This is not a BBC font file!”:END 5.8 O%=BGET#F%:PRINT“Char &”;~O%;“ ”;: VDU23,255 5.8 REM EGA+ chars 16x8 − double horiz. thickness 5.8 P%=O%*16 5.8 FORI%=0TO7 5.8 C%(I%)=BGET#F%:C%=C%(I%):VDUC% 5.8 REM − assemble 8x8 char array 5.8 rom%?(P%+2*I%)=C% 5.8 rom%?(P%+2*I%+1)=C% 5.8 NEXT 5.8 VDU255:PRINT 5.8 REM ECD chars 14x8 − blank first and last three rows 5.8 P%=&1000+O%*14 5.8 rom%?(P%+0)=0:rom%?(P%+1)=0 5.8 rom%?(P%+2)=0 5.8 FOR I%=0TO7:rom%?(P%+3+I%)=C%(I%): NEXT 5.8 rom%?(P%+11)=0:rom%?(P%+12)=0 5.8 rom%?(P%+13)=0 5.8 UNTIL EOF#F% 5.8 CLOSE#0 5.8 : 5.8 OSCLI(“*SAVE ”+R$+“ ”+STR$~rom%+ 5.8 “ + 2000”) 5.8 END 5.8 This program has been tested in both modes by squeezing every last byte out of my A3000 and through the use of the PD multisync ‘emulator’ − I could just about stand the flickering! The ECD characters are a little smaller due to the difficulty in mapping the default 8 onto 14 rows, however, it does result in greater line spacing and arguably improves readability. 5.8 Finally, I suppose that if anyone needs to redefine the MDA1 outline font (has anyone found anything which uses the MDA mode?), they could use !FontEd or a similar application to change the font name of their preferred outline font to MDA1. The MDA0 font would appear to contain definitions for the ‘additional’ IBM character set and, as such, is less likely to require redefinition. P Bready, Glasgow. 5.8 • Printer buffers − RISC-OS 3 provides a configurable printer buffer. Use the command: 5.8 *Configure PrinterBufferSize <n>K 5.8 to set the buffer size to <n> K in length. This does not seem to be used by the RISC-OS 3 printer drivers but is used outside the desktop environment. To check the buffer has been configured, perform a <ctrl- reset> after the configure command, go into Basic and type: 5.8 PRINT ADVAL(-4) 5.8 the result will be the size of your printer buffer. P Bedford, Peterborough. 5.8 • Translator tips − Translator can easily be used to convert a sprite from one screen mode to another. From the Translator menu, simply deselect the ‘Pop up > Auto mode’ option, and then select the ‘Process > Sprite output > Output mode > Current’. Select the desktop mode for the output sprite and drag the sprite to be converted onto the Translator icon. Finally, save the converted sprite from ‘Misc > Save > Full’ option. 5.8 When printing foreign graphics files on a monochrome printer, better results can be obtained by selecting the ‘Black and white’ option from the Translator menu i.e. the sprite is converted into 256 grey scales. (I think this is because there is less distortion of the colours than when fitting the sprite to the 256 desktop colours available and then the printer driver using ColourTrans to convert them to monochrome information.) C Paul, Manchester. 5.8 • Waiter and MultiFS clash − You can’t run The Data Store’s Waiter with the version of MultiFS that comes with the new PC Emulator. You must quit Waiter before running MultiFS. J Thompson. 5.8 • Window bug (RISC-OS 3) − There is a bug in the windows redraw routine. If you use !FormEd to define a window with a vertical scroll bar, no horizontal scroll bar and no size icon, then turn on the horizontal scroll bar, being careful not to cover where the size icon would be with the menu, you will see that no box is redrawn in the area where the size icon should be. If you drag other windows over this window the result is a mess in the area where the size icon should be. As this example shows, the result is not as expected. P Bedford, Peterborough. 5.8 • Window movement (RISC-OS 3) − If you use <adjust> in the scroll bar areas to provide reverse movement, you may find useful the facility for complete window scrolling. If you click adjust and hold on either slider bar, the pointer vanishes and if you move the mouse, the window is scrolled in the same direction. This only works if both scroll bars are on a window. P Bedford, Peterborough. A 5.8 5.8 Image-setting 5.8 Hints & Tips 5.8 • Make sure you ask the image-setting bureau to produce films in a form that your printer can use. e.g. Can he use ‘right reading positive’? 5.8 • Only use high quality PostScript fonts such as the range from EFF – mistakes can be expensive. 5.8 • Ensure that the client ‘accepts’ a bromide ‘proof’ before having the work printed. 5.8 • Scanning − if you do your own scanning, rather than having it done via a bureau, use the lowest possible scanning resolution that is consistent with the screen resolution being used by the printer − i.e. a 150 l.p.i. screen (a typical value for high quality magazines) requires no more than 150 dots per inch scan, assuming a reproduction ratio of 1:1. A 5.8 Hints and Tips 5.9 • Auto-destruct! − There are applications, like Impression, that have an auto-save facility. Auto-save is a very helpful facility and I use it myself but, with Impression (and perhaps other applications), there is an option to auto-save without prompt. In other words, every few minutes, without you being able to stop it, it will save the current document on top of the original document on disc. If you can’t already see the danger of this, an anecdote might help... 5.9 Tord Eriksson sent an article (over 400k long including various draw files) all the way from Sweden on a single floppy disc and there was no space on the disc for a duplicate copy of the document. I loaded the article and was playing around with it prior to editing it for the magazine. I was trying to see if the text was all one story and so had cut and pasted various bits when suddenly I got the message “The file has just been saved”. Fortunately, I hadn’t actually deleted anything important just prior to the auto-save, but it does go to show that you should never send a file to someone else having left the preferences set to auto-destruct, sorry, I mean auto-save. Ed. 5.9 • Compression − Contrary to the review of Compression in Archive 5.2 (page 57) it is possible to initiate cfs directory displays from script files. This might prove useful for those who want to use cfs as the default filing system and who want to automatically display the root directory on switching on the Archimedes. The problem is that the line, 5.9 Filer_OpenDir CFS#SCSI::Work.$ 5.9 will not work unless the CFSmodule is active and it is inadequate to simply run the !CFS application before this line in the script file. The trick is to set up a !Boot application (as always) and to use this application’s !boot (or !run) file to load the CFSmodule and activate it before calling the script file. Assuming the !CFS application is hidden away on the hard disc in the directory $.Utils. Filehndlng, this can be achieved using the following commands: 5.9 |Load CFS 5.9 RMEnsure CFSModule 1.10 RMLoad $.Utils.Filehndlng.!Cfs .CFSModule 5.9 RMEnsure CFSModule 1.10 Error CFSModule not loaded 5.9 5.9 |Initialise CFS and set the 5.9 |scratch dir for it to use 5.9 |in handling files 5.9 NewCFS SCSI:4 5.9 CFStemp SCSI::Work.$.!System 5.9 |The !cfs !boot file should be 5.9 | run to allow the correct icons 5.9 | to be “seen” by the system: 5.9 $.Utils.Filehndlng.!Cfs.!Boot 5.9 5.9 | run desktop, load applications 5.9 | and display root directory 5.9 Desktop -file <HardBoot$Dir> DeskBoot 5.9 The script file, in this case called DeskBoot, used to load the applications and open the root directory should be something like this: 5.9 Run <r>!System 5.9 Run <r>!Scrap 5.9 Run <r>!FontsPlus 5.9 Run <us>!StickyBD 5.9 Run <um>!Alarm 5.9 Run <uf>!Dustbin 5.9 Filer_OpenDir CFS#SCSI::Work.$ 5.9 The commands “*Newcfs” and “*CFStemp” are not documented in the Compression manual but are explained in sufficient detail in the *Help feature of the CFSmodule itself. (Type *help cfsmodule for a list of the commands, then do a *help for each individual command for more details.) 5.9 There is an example !boot application on the monthly program disc. Rob Wears, Birmingham. 5.9 • Speeding up SQuirreL − If, like me, you often have lengthy queries and reports for the SQuirreL database to perform, you may have wondered why it makes no difference at all when you drag the table in question onto a RAM disc. 5.9 The reason for this is that SQuirreL makes extensive use of the !Scrap application; if you copy this, too, to the RAM disc and double click on it, the hard disc will be silent. 5.9 Just don’t forget to double click onto the version of !Scrap on your hard disc when you remove the RAM disc! 5.9 Jochen Konietzko, Köln, Germany. A 5.9 5.9 Ovation Hints & Tips 5.9 The following was submitted by Hilary Ferns, for which we are very grateful. She adds that the Ovation manual is full of hints and tips like these (and identical to some we have already published − oops!). 5.9 • Selecting tools − Using <select> to choose from the toolbox will automatically return you to the text insertion icon after you have performed one action with that tool. Using <adjust>, however, will allow you to remain with your chosen tool until you decide to select the next tool again yourself. This is useful when you want to draw several lines or frames, or link a number of successive boxes. 5.9 • Using picture frames − The default ‘inset’ for a picture frame is 0 mm. (For a text frame it is 1 mm.) Ovation will scale your imported picture with the bottom and left sides aligned to the frame. I have discovered on many occasions these sides of a picture (Draw or Sprite format) to have been slightly cropped. This is not always obvious on screen but is quite noticeable when printed. I now offer various answers to this problem. 5.9 1. Set inset to 1mm before importing the picture. 5.9 2. If you want to move the picture within the frame, whatever the inset you are ln danger of losing a fragment on any edge. You can give yourself more space by either increasing the frame size (often not suitable) or by decreasing the size of the picture by 1% in each direction. 5.9 3. Remember too that holding down shift while moving the picture will restrict movement to horizontal and vertical directions only, thus enabling you to move the picture more accurately. 5.9 I find the keyboard short-cuts for scaling a picture within a frame particularly useful <shift-ctrl-G> to scale and <shift-ctrl-H> to fill the frame. 5.9 • Text to Draw path object − The character selection application (!CharSel) supplied with Ovation, apart from offering access to alternative characters, also allows a single character to be changed to Drawfile format. To do this, you select the character with <adjust>. The resulting Drawfile icon can then be dropped into an Ovation picture frame. Various interesting effects can be obtained by using these characters in headings (together with a bit of imagination!). 5.9 • Default style-sheet − In the !Ovation application directory is a style-sheet called ‘Default’. This is the one used each time you load Ovation and click on the icon to open up a document. This can be replaced with a style-sheet of your own choice, e.g. one you use regularly, but it must be called ‘Default’. This would mean that you will always have your own particular choice of paragraph styles defined when Ovation is run. This is a very useful facility not to be missed. 5.9 The next few hints and tips were sent by Aneurin Griffiths from Trefin, Dyfed. Again we are most grateful and are glad to see a number of readers redressing the Impression/Ovation balance by sending in some really useful Ovation tips. 5.9 • To draw short lines using the “line-tool” − Draw a long line, even passing through text, and press <select>. Now shorten the line by placing the pointer on the red box at the ‘long end’ of the line, and, using <select>, shorten the line to the required length. 5.9 • Printing labels using computer sheets with 2 or 3 rows of labels − If the sheets are not A4 size, adjust the page size on the printer menu. Carefully measure the distance from the top of the sheet to a point half way between the first label and the second label. Use ‘View 200%’ and mark a horizontal guide line by placing the pointer on the side ruler and pressing <select>. (Fine adjustment is possible using <adjust>.) Measure the distance from the mid point previously taken to one mid-way between label 2 and 3. Carefully draw a guide line as before. Other guide lines can now be drawn with the same spacing. 5.9 Vertical guide lines can now be drawn in the same way. Now draw a text- frame in the first of the rectangular spaces, allowing space for the margins around the label. At this stage it is a good idea to save the layout as “Blnk_xy”, where values for the label size could be coded. 5.9 Enter the text in the text frame. Then select Object − Duplicate Frame, and enter the appropriate number (‘requirement’ − 1!). Without changing the instructions further, a stack of labels will be shown. These are now easily moved to their positions on the grid using <adjust>. Obviously, the labels on one printed sheet may be all the same or assorted. It is sensible to make the first printout on an A4 sheet and then the A4 and the sheet of labels may be matched from the top and left margins. Any necessary adjustments can be easily made. Using this method the sheet feed system is used. This works very well with a Canon BJ130e printer. 5.9 • Using Ovation’s spelling checker − It is important to realise that the checker must be started at the beginning of each Chapter when checking a document composed of more than one Chapter. After Ch.1, select the first page of Ch.2 and start the spell check again. 5.9 This from Albert Kitchenside, Addlestone, Surrey: 5.9 • Importing Text from PipeDream − The Ovation manual recommends importing PipeDream text by holding down <ctrl> while dragging the PipeDream text file into an Ovation frame. This has the effect of converting single line terminators into spaces to allow Ovation to reformat text within a frame. However, Albert finds that lines between paragraphs and headings are erroneously removed using this method. He has sent a Basic program which processes files correctly prior to import into Ovation. They are in the directory PD/OV on the monthly program disc. 5.9 Impression 5.9 Hints & Tips 5.9 • More than 76 graphics per chapter − If you really want to have more than 76 graphics per Impression chapter, then use David Pilling’s ArcFS to store your document. You will then be able to store an unlimited number of graphic files, but you may find the access times a bit slow! Also, RISC-OS 2 users should be aware that a bug manifests itself after the 9358th file and filenames become confused. − Martin Sperl, Austria. 5.9 • More than 76 fonts available at once − Continuing the ‘trick’ above, it is also possible to have an unlimited number of fonts available simultaneously by copying all files from your !Fonts directory into an ARCFS archive (plus all the extra fonts that you have always wanted to use), and then insert the following line (for example, assuming the new archive is called “Font”) into your !Boot file within the new archived font directory: 5.9 Set Font$Path ARCFS#Font:$ 5.9 You can then cause the new set of fonts to be loaded automatically by inserting the following line within your system startup sequence (after ArcFS has been run!): 5.9 OpenArchive SCSIdisc4::ARCFS#Font 5.9 (You need to substitute the name for your own hard disc in place of SCSIdisc4.) Also, please note that to avoid a speed penalty in system startup, you do not have to use compression when creating the font archive and you will still save approximately 2k of disc storage per font. − MS 5.9 • Viewing the screen without moving the cursor − Hold down <Shift> and <Ctrl> and then use the arrow keys. It changes your view on the document, left, right, up and down, without moving the cursor position. This is useful if you don’t want to have to change the magnification to something smaller, and thus lose the legibility of the screen font. − David Crofts, Bury St Edmunds 5.9 • Large capitals in normal text − If you like having a large letter to add emphasis to the start of a paragraph but have found that the subsequent line is spaced too far beneath, there is a solution: 5.9 Edit the Main Heading style (or create a new style), clicking on the 120% button, and then changing the Line Spacing box to the same as the Font Size box e.g. 24pt as default. The problem, as you can see above, is solved! − DC 5.9 • Substitute for colour in documents − Try a little variety in Black and White. For a poster I did recently, I redefined some of the font colours in styles to grey palettes. This gives an interesting variety to the print density if you have a decent printer driver. − DC 5.9 • Bullet point − <shift−backspace> is a short-cut to enter a • bullet in the text. − DC 5.9 • Deleting styles from the menu − another of those hints that everyone else probably knew about all along... 5.9 When you merge pieces from several old documents into one new text, this often means that your style menu becomes unnecessarily long. 5.9 You can delete those unwanted styles in the “edit style” window, with one snag: 5.9 If you click first onto a style in the style list, then on “edit style”, any attempt to delete that style will bring up an error message. 5.9 This is because clicking into the style list automatically selects a style at the cursor position. 5.9 Therefore, after you open the edit window, you must first deselect the style before it can be deleted! − Jochen Konietzko, Köln, Germany 5.9 • Installing Impression on the A5000 − While helping a relative to setup his A5000/Impression system, we discovered that the installation program for the DTP installs the old Font Manager (v2.44) onto the !Fonts directory and all the old files associated with it. The ability of the new Font Manager (v2.49) to address multiple font directories is lost and Impression only ‘sees’ either the ROM fonts or the hard disc fonts. I suggest that anyone installing Impression is urged to remove the support files in the fonts directory after the installation process (leaving the actual fonts themselves behind) and reload the files within the fonts directory on the Apps 1 disc. Hopefully, Computer Concepts will alter the !Install program to take account of the changes in RISC- OS 3. − David Woods, Glasgow 5.9 • More on Impression styles − Various readers have written with queries on styles called ‘table’ and ‘default’ that appear on the style menu with Impression version 2.16. These are not (in themselves) new program features or bugs − they are just extra styles stored as part of the !Default document stored in !Impress.Auto. The facilities provided by the ‘table’ style are all as documented in the very first Impression-2 User Guide and are automatically set up for you if you import spread sheet data using the LoadCSV+ loader which comes with the business supplement. If the extra styles cause you problems or conflict with any of your own style names, all you have to do is open a blank document, edit the offending styles and click on the delete button to remove them and save the document with the name !Default in one of your own directories. Now quit Impression, open !Impress.Auto and move the “original” !Default document elsewhere and replace it with the one you just created. Now when you start Impression, the offending styles will not appear. You may like also to set up your most frequently used master pages and other styles using the same method. − Rob Sherratt, Felixstowe. 5.9 • !Impression with !Compression − The message from Impression “Incompatible document version” means you are trying to load the adfs icon into the application rather than the compressed icon!! − Ned Abell, Kidderminster Hints and Tips 5.10 • RISC-OS 3 & DOS filenames − DOS filenames (including extensions) are, in general, longer than the maximum length of a valid ADFS filename (10 characters). It is not always possible to copy or move DOS files from hard disc partition or floppy discs directly to the ADFS. 5.10 The !MultiFS utility, as supplied with the PC Emulator, solves this by allowing you to truncate the DOS filename while the translation process takes place. Another very useful option (which I often use when copying files from C programs) is to force !MultiFS to handle DOS extensions as directories (hierarchical). 5.10 However, when the filetype of a DOS partition on your ADFS hard disc is set to ‘DOSdisc’, RISC-OS 3 will display a filer window for the partition when you try to open the folder, while !MultiFS just ignores it (i.e. no :C drive on the iconbar). This is all very nice but RISC-OS 3 doesn’t offer the nice name translation options mentioned above. To enable !MultiFS to display your DOS partitions just set their filetype to ‘data’ before you start !MultiFS. Remember to use the command line and not the filer menu, because the latter doesn’t allow you to change the filetype of DOSdiscs. I inserted three lines for each DOS partition in the !MultiFS !Run file to swap between ‘DOSdisc’ and ‘data’ type partitions when !MultiFS is started: 5.10 *Filer_CloseDir <PCe$Drive_X> 5.10 *SetType <PCe$Drive_X> Data 5.10 directly after setting the system variable <PCe$ Drive_X>, and 5.10 *SetType <PCe$Drive_X> DOSDisc 5.10 at the end of the !Run file (although the comment tells us not to do so). 5.10 Unfortunately, there are some bugs in !MultiFS: When you copy to a MultiFS filer window, you must ensure name translation is not set to hierarchical, otherwise you will end up with wildcards (‘?’) in filenames. When this happens, you must use DOS itself to delete the file because RISC-OS fails to wipe those objects. Another bug appears if you shut down your system after using !MultiFS. This results in an error report and a task manager crash. Paul Groot, Holland. 5.10 • Sprite does not exist error − In answer to last month’s query in the Help! section, the ‘Sprite does not exist’ error only occurs with the old version of the printer drivers. It can be solved by simply using a later version of the printer driver e.g. v2.44 or later (as per Shareware Disc 17). 5.10 Progammers take note: The error is cause by programs that print sprites using their names and not their pointers. 5.10 Many thanks to all those who called − too numerous to mention! 5.10 • High resolution PostScript? When printing sprites to !PrinterPS, the resulting output may be lower quality than, for example, a 600 dpi LaserDirect (using !ShowPage), even when printing at 300 dpi. A solution is to change the configuration file of !PrinterPS to make it think the resolution is higher e.g. change the ‘pxres’ and ‘pyres’ parameters to 600. J Thorn, Cardiff. 5.10 • Problem with Font$Path − I recently experienced a problem with Impression 2.16 that took a long time to solve. The problem manifests itself by Impression, on starting, reporting an error ‘Not Found’. If you select OK to continue, the following error is reported ‘Illegal window handle’ and at this point you have to quit, because continuing results in the second error message. After about two hours of trying to find the problem − as the error messages are not particularly helpful − I discovered that the problem lay with Font$Path. 5.10 I have two !Fonts directory, one with a small number of outline fonts and one with a large number. Also, my second font directory pulls in the fonts in my first directory by use of the Font$Path variable. I had moved the locations of these directories from an Apps folder to the root folder of my hard disc and this was causing the problems. The ‘Not Found’ error is caused by Impression not finding the first directory in the Font$Path and the second error is caused by the fact that a Font Menu can’t be created, as the specified directory does not exist. Indeed, most applications that support outline fonts will also give similar error messages. 5.10 I have written a small program (on this month’s program disc) that will test the validity of Font$Path and a call to this program should be placed as the last line in any !Fonts.!Run file. A copy of FontTest will need to be copied into all !Fonts directories i.e. 5.10 | !Run file for !Fonts (version 0.11, 10-May-89) 5.10 | 5.10 Iconsprites <Obey$Dir>.!Sprites 5.10 | 5.10 | Kill newer versions of Font Manager 5.10 | 5.10 RMKill FontManager 5.10 RMKill SuperSample 5.10 | 5.10 RMEnsure FontManager 2.42 RMLoad <Obey$Dir>.Fonts 5.10 RMEnsure SuperSample 0.04 RMLoad <Obey$Dir>.Super 5.10 | 5.10 SetMacro Font$Path adfs:: 5.10 HardDisc.$.!Fonts., <Font$Prefix>. 5.10 Set Font$Prefix <Obey$Dir> 5.10 | 5.10 <Obey$Dir>.FontTest 5.10 The program firstly checks that Font$Path exists and then reads the environment variable and checks its size. The length of this variable has to be greater than zero for it to point to a valid !Fonts directory. 5.10 It then checks that every reference in Font$Path points to a valid directory. This is done by an OS_File call (line 680) which will return 2 if the filename given is a directory. If the file reference does not exist, an error will be generated and the Fonts directory !Run file needs to be modified. 5.10 I have included an example of the problem on the program disc in the ‘Example’ directory. If you click on !Fonts2 an error will be generated as the Font$Path contains a reference to a file !Fonts3 (not a direc tory). Andrew Ferguson, London. 5.10 • ArcFS and sticky backdrops − I have a backdrop application on my machine with all the sprites for the various applications held in an archive in order to save disc space. In order that the sprites can be seen, in theory they should be de-archived first. Thanks to my son, Neil, I have the following set of ArcFS commands in the !Run file of my !Boot application on the hard disc. 5.10 RMEnsure ArcFS 0 RMLoad System: Modules.ArcFSMod 5.10 RMEnsure ArcFS 0 Error I cannot find the module 5.10 OpenArchive <Boot$Dir>.SpriteLib Sprites 5.10 IconSprites ArcFS#Sprites:$. !Sprites 5.10 CloseArchive Sprites 5.10 C Walker, Wymondham. 5.10 • Elite Commanders − On this month’s program disc, there is a program which allows you to edit Elite commander files. There are also three commander files with missions to accomplish. S Edwards, Stourbridge A 5.10 5.10 Vector Hints − not in the manual! 5.10 If the paths rotate the wrong way, you get... 5.10 5.10 If the paths rotate the “right” way, you get... 5.10 5.10 If the paths originate at the same point, you get... 5.10 5.10 Remember, always have the same number of points in the paths. The interpolation in the first example was without reversing or flipping either of the paths. 5.10 5.10 The paper margins are shown on the main window and the printer setup menu is used to deselect those pages you don’t need. 5.10 The Eppler profile was “plotted” on an A0 page. The paper margins shown are A4 size. 5.10 5.10 5.10 Impression Hints & Tips 5.10 • Mailmerge in Impression: So it seems that there are no tips like old tips (Archive 3.9 p20). I claim that Charles Moir learned the trick he uses from me! Just one point to add, though. You have a choice between linking frames on a master page and not linking. If you link, the text flows through the frames on a page and then on to the first frame of the next page. This is probably convenient for small mailing lists without use of a database. If you do not link frames, text flows from page to page within the homologous frame. I recently helped to run a biggish scientific meeting which involved mail shots to about a thousand potential delegates and a full feedback of booking information to about 450. The database resided on a Mac, the most widely-used computer in the lab, and an output file was generated in <Tab> separated format, ported to a DOS disk, then to PipeDream. Individual columns (fields) or groups of columns were then extracted, linefeeds replaced by 5.10 s, and the fields dropped into the right frames of the first page. Perfect registration was retained: the last person’s details did belong to him! All I had to do was to edit some of the less wise entries in the “comments” field of the database, which might have been taken as casting aspersions on the intelligence, rationality and financial or moral rectitude of some the participants! This method obviates the need to generate a report format for your database. You just extract the data you want for each of your frames and drop it in. Some fields get used twice, such as parts of names, once for the address (lined up with an envelope window), and once for the Dear... line. 5.10 We also produced sheets of individualised meal tickets. The purpose here was to ensure that none of the three eating places got all the dele gates. We operated a “swap-shop” but needed to know who was swopping with whom. Named tickets solved this. In this case, I extracted the names once and dropped then into the first (unlinked) frame. To make a copy in the next frame (×450), <Ctrl-T> to mark all the text in the frame, 450 pages deep, <Ctrl-C> to copy it and then <Ctrl-V> to paste it into each frame. The printer who perforated the sheets was quite impressed by the product: he had never seen the like. He certainly had no idea how easy it was (save for feeding 450 sheets of card into the laser printer). Mike Hobart, Cambridge. 5.10 Image setting − Another firm which does image setting is Stylus Publications Bureau of 98 Wilberforce Road, Finsbury Park, London N4 2SR. They also do colour slides and CibaChrom prints and overheads from Draw and Impression. However, they covered so much of their literature with gold leaf that I wonder if they are still trading! Mike Hobart, Cambridge. 5.10 Hints and Tips 5.11 • A5000 hard disc replacement − One drawback with the A5000 is that the 40M hard disc quickly fills up. Being in this position, I decided to replace mine with a larger one. 5.11 Researching prices, I found that IDE drives bought direct from suppliers advertising in magazines such as Personal Computer World are much cheaper than the same drives advertised in the specialist Acorn magazines. Would any IDE drive work? A friend told me that Seagate IDE drives did not work correctly on A5000s but Connor (as already fitted to my A5000) and Maxtor (as fitted to another A5000 I know of) should be OK, as well as Quantum. Another friend recently bought and fitted an NEC drive to his A5000. 5.11 I bought a 120M cached Quantum drive (the GM120AT). The drive, from SMC who advertise in PCW, arrived the day after I ordered it. 5.11 The fitting was extremely simple. After a backup and power off I removed the cables, undid the four screws under the old drive (it is necessary to remove all the drive cables and lift out the metal bracket to which the drives are fastened) to release it and slotted in the new one − no problems! The drive was already low-level formatted and, although the hard disc formatter supplied with RISC-OS 3 didn’t recognise the disc shape, I just selected ‘Initialise’ and that was it. The drive worked a few seconds after switching on. 5.11 In use, the drive feels very fast. I have measured a data transfer rate of 1060k/sec, compared to 800k/sec for the original drive and an average access time of 7ms(!) as compared to 18ms. 5.11 Similar drives advertised specifically for the A5000 in the Acorn press are £50£100 more. Some of these include splitter cables, allowing the old drive to remain (there are already mounting holes for a second drive on the A5000, drilled in the case below the floppy disc drive). I intend to make my own in the next few days − it will cost about £10. 5.11 So I would recommend anyone wishing to upgrade their A5000’s internal disc drive to do it themselves. Just obey the following rules: 5.11 − Shop around for the best deal in the general computer and PC press. 5.11 − Buy a low profile 3½“ AT IDE drive made by Quantum, Conner, Maxtor or NEC. 5.11 − Make a backup of your old hard disc before commencing the changeover. 5.11 − Use the RISC-OS 3 hard disc formatter to initialise the new disc, no need to format. 5.11 − If you want to use both drives, Maplin Electronics sell everything you need to make the splitter cables. 5.11 Perhaps a list of known A5000-friendly IDE drives could be compiled? Seán Kelly, Leighton Buzzard 5.11 • Acorn SCSI card − If you buy the CDFS/FSCSI upgrade for the Acorn SCSI card, there is a link change to be made on the AKA31 version of the card but if you have one of the older AKA30 cards, it is slightly more complicated. 5.11 The upgrade consists of putting a 27512 EPROM in place of the existing 27256 EPROM. To enable the extra address lines, hardware modifications are needed. Links 1, 3, 4 and 5 remain unchanged but link LK2 was open and has to be closed and link LK12 was closed and has to be opened. On the AKA31 boards, these changes can be made by moving a link but on the AKA31, this will involve cutting a track on LK12 and soldering a link on LK2. This should not be attempted unless you are competent to make such a modification and it will, in any case, invalidate the warranty on the board. Acorn dealers should do the modification for you although there may be a charge unless you buy the upgrade from them. Tudor Jones, Barnet. 5.11 • Automatic kerning and RISC-OS 3 − The font manager has this facility. Currently it is only available with the standard ROM fonts (Trinity, etc.). Presumably, EFF will update their fonts to include kerning pairs. To use auto-kerning, simply set bit 9 of R2 in all calls to SYS “Font_Paint”. 5.11 10 REM >KernDemo 5.11 20 REM Example of automatic kerning 5.11 30 REM For RISC-OS 3 ROM fonts only 5.11 40 MODE 15:OFF 5.11 50 SYS “ColourTrans_SetFontColours”,0,0, 5.11 &F0F00000,14 5.11 60 SYS “Font_FindFont”,,“Trinity. Medium”,50*16,50*16 TO hdl% 5.11 70 SYS “Font_SetFont”,hdl% 5.11 80 REM Kerning off first 5.11 90 SYS “Font_Paint”,,“WAWA no 5.11 kerning here!“,%0000010000,10,500 5.11 100 REM Kerning on now 5.11 110 REM Set bit 9 in R2 5.11 120 SYS “Font_Paint”,,“WAWA this is kerned.”,%1000010000,10,300 5.11 130 SYS“Font_LoseFont”,hdl% 5.11 The ease with which this can be done leads me to wonder why CC haven’t provided it as an option in Impression. 5.11 To rotate fonts, set bit seven of R2 in “Font_ Paint” and pass the (draw style) transformation matrix in R7. Note that old style calls to “Font_StringWidth”, etc don’t take account of kerning or transformation. A new SWI “Font_ ScanString” is used to do this. Rob Davison, New Zealand 5.11 • Basic 1.05 Bug − A really annoying bug exists in all versions of Basic except the floating point version supplied on the RISC-OS 3 application discs. 5.11 Consider the following two statements (type them in if you feel like it.) 5.11 a=210 5.11 b=2.10*100 5.11 These two variables should hold the same value. They seem to be the same, as you can check with: 5.11 PRINT a,b 5.11 IF a=b PRINT “SAME” 5.11 etc. 5.11 If you have RISC-OS 2 then both the above checks will say that they are the same. RISC-OS 3 Basic 1.05 will not print ‘SAME’ in the second test. The reason for this can be revealed by trying the following: 5.11 PRINT INT(a),INT(b) 5.11 PRINT STR$(a),STR$(b) 5.11 These problems seem to occur because of the limited accuracy of floating point numbers in Basic. My program stored times at centisecond resolu tion internally and I wanted to scale these times to seconds for the user. I did a usertime=centitime/100 but ran into problems when I tried converting the usertime variable back into a string with STR$(usertime) 5.11 My solution (and I’m not saying it’s a good one) is as follows: 5.11 A short ARM code routine intercepts the WRCHV vector and stores characters printed in a buffer. The routine is linked in just before a PRINT realvar statement and killed off just afterwards. You can then extract the string from the buffer via normal means. An example program follows: 5.11 10 REM >string 5.11 20 REM provides a STR$( function 5.11 25 REM that avoids some floating 5.11 30 REM point problems in Basic 5.11 40 REM By Rob Davison, May 1992 5.11 50 REM Public Domain 5.11 60 REM 5.11 70 PROCassy 5.11 80 PRINT “First the old way -” 5.11 90 PRINT STR$(2.10*100) 5.11 100 PRINT “Should be ”;FNstr(2.10 *100) 5.11 110 PRINT’“Another example” 5.11 120 PRINT STR$(0.6) 5.11 130 PRINT “Should be ”;FNstr(0.6) 5.11 140 PRINT’“Bye now.” 5.11 150 END 5.11 160 DEFPROCassy 5.11 170 DIM code% &100 5.11 180 REM ’possy’ is a buffer. Can be scratch space but MUST 5.11 be big enough. 5.11 190 DIM possy &100 5.11 200 FOR opt=0 TO 2 STEP2 5.11 210 P%=code% 5.11 220 [OPT opt 5.11 230 .intercept 5.11 240 STMFD R13!,{r0-r3 } 5.11 250 LDR R1,posaddr 5.11 260 STRB R0,[R1] 5.11 270 ADD R1,R1,#1 5.11 280 STR R1,posaddr 5.11 290 LDMFD R13!,{r0-r3 ,PC} 5.11 300 .posaddr EQUD possy 5.11 310 ] 5.11 320 NEXT 5.11 330 ENDPROC 5.11 340 REM this is the string function 5.11 350 DEFFNstr(number) 5.11 360 LOCAL ERROR 5.11 370 ON ERROR LOCAL SYS “XOS_Release” ,3,intercept,0:REPORT:PRINT ERL:END 5.11 380 !posaddr=possy:REM reset pointer to start of buffer 5.11 390 SYS “XOS_Claim”,3,intercept,0 :REM claim the vector 5.11 400 PRINT number 5.11 410 SYS “XOS_Release”,3,intercept,0 :REM and release it immediately 5.11 420 REM Extract the string and get rid of leading/trailing rubbish 5.11 430 str$=$possy:WHILE LEFT$(str$,1)= CHR$32:str$=RIGHT$(str$, 5.11 LEN(str$)-1):ENDWHILE 5.11 440 WHILE ASC(RIGHT$(str$,1))<32: str$=LEFT$(str$,LEN(str$)-1) 5.11 :ENDWHILE 5.11 450 =str$ 5.11 Rob Davison, New Zealand 5.11 • Basic V rounding errors − Last month, (Archive 5.10 p19) Mr E. Hollox asked for help with the STR$ rounding. I hope that the following will help solve his problem. No actual specifics were given on his problem, so I’ve assumed that he’s working with monetary units (i.e. two decimal places). This may not be correct in this instance, but will probably be relevant to a large number of users and should provide Mr Hollox with a starting point for the solution he wants. 5.11 In simple terms, the solution is to avoid decimals; to work only with integer variables. At first glance this may sound like an odd solution when a number of decimal places are required, but it’s not as strange as you may think. 5.11 Firstly, the use of integer variables does not restrict you to the use of integer numbers − not when you are making use of STR$, anyway. 5.11 Secondly, integers make for faster programs, as I’m sure everyone realises (unless they program an Atari ST in GFA or Atari Basic!) 5.11 Thirdly, and more importantly, integers are far more accurate than real numbers due to the way in which they are stored. The method of storage does have a negative effect, however, in that your range of numbers is restricted − though the range available should be enough for most people’s needs. Page 21 of the Archimedes’ BBC Basic Guide details this. Remember that the more decimal places you require, the lower the range becomes. 5.11 So, onto the solution to the problem... 5.11 Your ‘real’ number must be stored as an integer 100 (for 2 dp users) times as big. Whenever any output is required, a routine must be used to convert it to a string and insert a decimal point at the correct place. For inputting, the reverse is required; the decimal point must be removed. 5.11 The function FN_Int_To_Str carries out the decimalisation of your integer number: 5.11 DEF FN_Int_To_Str(Int%) 5.11 LOCAL Real$ 5.11 Int%=ABS(Int%) 5.11 IF Int%<10 THEN Real$= 5.11 “ 00”+STR$(Int%) 5.11 IF Int%>=10 AND Int%<100 THEN Real$=“ 0”+STR$(Int%) 5.11 IF Int%>=100 THEN Real$=RIGHT$ 5.11 (“ ”+STR$(Int%),9) 5.11 Real$=LEFT$(Real$,7)+“.”+ 5.11 RIGHT$(Real$,2) 5.11 =Real$ 5.11 You must call the function with string$=FN_Int_ To_Str(number%) where string$ is your variable to hold the decimalised string and number% is your variable holding the stored number. The routine returns the number as a string with two decimal places, and right justified (in a ten character field). 5.11 The minus symbol ruins the simplicity of the routine, so an absolute value is taken of the number. Minus numbers aren’t difficult to cope with but, as they weren’t part of the problem.... 5.11 The function works by converting the integer number to a string and then adding spaces to the left in order to right align it. This is done by the three IF statements and, possibly, is the more complex part of the routine. 5.11 In the first case, the number is lower than ten (i.e. 0 to 9) so the final figure will be of the form “ 0.0x” − hence six spaces and two zeros are added. 5.11 In the second case, the number is in the range 10 to 99, so the figure will be “ 0.xx” − six spaces and one zero are added. 5.11 In the third case, the number is over 100 (over 1.00). In this case, rather than add the correct number of spaces for its size (6 for 100 to 999, 5 for 1000 to 9999, etc.) we add the maximum required and truncate the resulting string to its rightmost nine characters. 5.11 The result, in all three cases, is a right aligned integer number in a nine character string. 5.11 Then we have the easy bit. The first seven characters of the string are taken, a decimal point added, then the last two digits − problem solved. 5.11 The reverse function is even simpler: 5.11 DEF FN_Str_To_Int(Real$) 5.11 LOCAL Int% 5.11 Real$=FN_FormatNumber(Real$) 5.11 Int%=VAL(LEFT$(Real$,7))*100+ 5.11 VAL(RIGHT$(Real$,2)) 5.11 =Int% 5.11 This function is called with number%=FN_Str_ To_Int(string$) where string$ is your variable containing the string and number% is the variable that will contain the integer number. 5.11 The first thing the function does is to pass the string to another function in order to ensure it is of the correct format before convert ing it to a number. This is dealt with below. 5.11 The function then calculates the integer part of the number (positions 1 to 7 within the string), multiplies this by 100, and adds the fractional part of the number (positions 9 to 10 − after the decimal point.) The result, an integer number 100 times the real number, is returned to the calling routine. 5.11 I could have simply used Int%=VAL(Real$)*100, making the routine much simpler. Then the inaccuracy of real numbers is risked once more. In between Real$ and Int%, the number is stored as real until it is multiplied by 100 and put in the integer variable. The method I’ve used circumvents this risk, but introduces another factor. The format of the number within the string must be correct. For the above conversion to work, this must be a two decimal place number, with the decimal point as the eighth character of the string. This is where the third formula comes in:- 5.11 DEF FN_FormatNumber(Number$) 5.11 LOCAL Length%,Point% 5.11 Length%=LEN(Number$) 5.11 Point%=INSTR(Number$,“.”) 5.11 IF (Point%=Length%-1) AND 5.11 (Point%>0) THEN Number$=Number$+“0” 5.11 IF (Point%=Length%) AND (Point%>0) THEN Number$=Number$+“00” 5.11 IF Length%=0 THEN Number$=“0” 5.11 IF Point%=0 THEN Number$=Number$+ “.00” 5.11 IF Point%=1 THEN Number$=“0”+ Number$ 5.11 Number$=RIGHT$(“ ”+Number$ ,10) 5.11 =Number$ 5.11 This routine looks far more complicated than it actually is. The second routine, above, passes its Real$ to this function which formats it to two decimal places and ensures that the final string is 10 characters long. 5.11 In this sense, it is a routine that can be used independently of the other two; by calling it with New$=FN_FormatNumber(Old$) where Old$ is the unformatted number and New$ is the result. 5.11 It works by determining first the length of the string, then the position of the decimal point within the string. With a two decimal place number, the position of the point would be 2 less than the length of the string. 5.11 The first IF statement adds a single zero if the position of the point is 1 less than the string’s length but only if the decimal point’s position is larger than zero − in which case the number is an integer and would have been accidentally multiplied by ten. 5.11 The second IF adds a double zero if the point is at the end of the string. This is not done if the position of the point is zero, in which case the string is null and represents nothing. 5.11 The third makes the string equal to “0” if it is found to be null. 5.11 The fourth adds “.00” to the end of the string if there is no decimal point − i.e. if the number is an integer. 5.11 The combination of the third and fourth IF’s result in the null string (“”) becoming “0.00” 5.11 The fifth IF adds a zero to the string if the decimal point is at the very beginning − if the number is lower than one and is lacking the leading zero. 5.11 Finally, before returning the result, a number of spaces are added to the left of the number which is then truncated to the rightmost ten characters. Hey presto, a nicely formatted number. 5.11 The three routines are on the enclosed disk, in the form of a procedure library − details of how to use such are on page 92 of the BBC Basic Guide. 5.11 Though the routines, as given, are for numbers with two decimal places − and with a field width of ten − it shouldn’t be too difficult to alter them for other requirements. Unfortunately, the higher the number of decimal places, the more (and more complicated) IF’s are required. It shouldn’t be too difficult to write routines that accept the number for conversion, together with the number of decimal places and the field width but, as I said before, this was just intended to provide Mr Hollox with a starting point for his solution. Vince Hudd, Soft Rock Software. 5.11 • Bible Master with RISC-OS 3 − Having found a list of verses or cross references, it is possible to import the text into an Archimedes word processing (or DTP) package. 5.11 (i) Load the PC text into !Edit and then 5.11 (ii) Use the wildcard search and replace option searching for %[ $x76- xFF] (note that the square brackets start with a space) and replacing with a space. 5.11 This will remove all the screen control characters and multiple spaces. The resulting text can then be saved and/or loaded into most word processors. S Wright, Basingstoke 5.11 • Deskjet 500C and RISC-OS 3 − Recent contributors on the subject of the HP Deskjet 500C have tended to concentrate on the best type of paper to use. I will not attempt to further that debate, but rather recount my efforts to produce envelopes to match the quality of their contents. This turned out to be less straightforward than I had expected but I eventually succeeded. Most of my printing is from Impression Junior, so the following will apply to Impression II users and, although I am using an A5000, the RISC-OS 2 drivers are not crucially different. 5.11 Using the Alter Pages sub-menu in Junior, create a custom page the same size as the envelope. A standard A4 envelope seems to be 218mm by 110mm. Create a suitable frame for the name and address and save the file as ‘envelope’. Load the !Printers application and create a custom page of the same size, also called ‘envelope’. I have used margins of 10mm all round which show up unambiguously in the Junior window. Click on <Save Settings> in the page set-up menu and <Save Choices> from the main menu. Go to the ‘configure’ option from the printer control menu, select the new ‘envelope’ option and click on OK. The printer margins will now be visible in the Junior window. Insert an envelope face down in the out- tray of the printer, sliding it into the guide slots provided and keeping the right hand edge against the edge of the tray. At this point, the HP manual is misleading. Do NOT press the envelope button on the printer. Simply press <Print> on the computer and then <Return>. The envelope will now be properly printed. If the envelope button on the printer has been pressed, the envelope will be passed disdainfully through the printer and the address will appear on the next sheet of paper from the in-tray. 5.11 In the prison where I work, I have recently been involved in running an Anger Control Programme which required a couple of dozen overhead projector transparencies. These can be produced to a high standard on the 500C and, of course, in full colour. The transparencies used must be designed for use with inkjet printers since they require a special material to absorb the ink. There is, however, one major problem − the appropriate material is rather expensive. Hewlett Packard’s own transparencies cost about £75 inc. VAT for a box of 100. For me, this is too many and far too much money. Eventually, I found that NOBO produce a box of 50 for a slightly lower price per transparency and these should be available from a good office supplies firm. The inadequate black produced by the colour cartridge on the 500C is particularly noticeable on an OHP and I found that a more satisfactory result could be obtained by printing each transparency twice; once for black and once for the coloured areas. Registration seems not to be a problem for the bold text and graphics which are the norm for this kind of presentation. This technique also saved an awful lot of expensive, coloured ink. 5.11 Incidentally, the UNDO facility on RISC-OS3 !Draw(or in !DrawPlus) was a considerable help in creating the colour ‘separations’ for this process. I could delete either the black or the coloured areas of the image before printing and restore them by pressing <F8>. A Trout, Lancs. 5.11 • Deskjet 500 DIP switches − For those just buying Deskjet 500 printers, it may be worth knowing that the default setting of the DIP switches is not too helpful. Try the following settings instead... 5.11 Bank A Bank B 5.11 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 5.11 ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ 5.11 This seems to work OK − it sets things like skip-over-perforation OFF and A4 paper instead of some US size. Steve Hutchinson, Gloucester. 5.11 • Dragging solid sprites − RISC-OS 3 has, built in, the ability to solid drag sprites from save dialog boxes. The solid drag option is stored in CMOS in a ‘hidden’ location on bit 1 of byte 28. The following commands will set bit 1 without disturbing anything else in this byte. 5.11 *Basic 5.11 SYS “OS_Byte”,161,28 TO ,,v% 5.11 v%=v% OR %10 5.11 SYS “OS_Byte”,162,28,v% 5.11 Now try saving a file from Draw/Edit/Paint, etc. 5.11 (Comparing the A5000 to an A440/1+30Mhz ARM3, the 440 runs at about the same speed as the A5000 in mode 12, but at about 1/3 of the speed in mode 28.) Rob Davison, New Zealand 5.11 • Personalised application templates − Many users may not have realised that it is often possible to alter the windows and templates used by an application. Most programmers use the FormEd application or one of its derivatives to create a Template file which contains the window definitions used by the program and this can often be seen in the application directory normally called, not surprisingly, Templates. 5.11 If you have a copy of FormEd, which is supplied with all Acorn’s compilers but is also available from most PD libraries (Shareware Disc 20, Ed), you can load these templates and alter them to suit your own ideas and preferences. What you must not do is change the number of any of the icons or the program won’t behave properly. You must also be careful if you create any extra icons that they don’t overlay any existing button icons since the Wimp doesn’t report clicks on icons which are hidden behind others with a higher number. 5.11 As an illustration, I have included a set of modified windows for Edit. Since some of these now use sprites there is also a sprite file and you must insert a line to load these in the !Run file or the windows will look rather bare. For simplicity, I have included a !Run file with the extra line in it. 5.11 Rename your existing !Run and Templates files something else (in case you don’t like mine) and copy the files !Run, Templates and sprites2 into the !Edit application directory. Now when you run Edit the new windows will be used. 5.11 Note that the main text window is also changed. When Edit opens a new file the main text window opens in whatever form the template was created. Just load the Templates file into FormEd and drag the text window around the screen and resize it until you are satisfied. Then save the templates. Next time you open an Edit window, that is the size and position it will assume. 5.11 I don’t claim that these examples are particularly brilliant but they are certainly an improvement on the original and will help to show how you can customise standard programs. David Holden, Sydenham. 5.11 • Pinboard problems − Several people (well, at least two anyway!) appear to have had problems with Pinboard running under RISC-OS 3. It would seem that the Pinboard module is automatically UNPLUGged following an exit from the desktop. One solution involves using an alias to re- initialise the Pinboard. If you have a desktop !Boot file then, before the Pinboard command (if there is one), insert something like the following: 5.11 Set Alias$NewDesktop %RMreinit Pinboard |m %Desktop |m 5.11 Obviously, in place of NewDesktop you can use any name that you like (note that abbreviations still work so, in this case, you could use New. to carry this out.) If you wish to re-run the !Boot file on exiting from command line mode, add -F !Boot after the %Desktop command. If you do not have a desktop !Boot file, use the Desktop Boot function from the Acorn menu on the iconbar. 5.11 From now on, to get back from the command line (after using the Exit option), type New. (or your appropriate alias) rather than Desktop. 5.11 Simon Moy, Norwich Computer Services. 5.11 • Truncated filenames and RISC-OS 3 − It took me a long time to discover that you type *Configure Truncate off to stop the O.S. automatically truncating filenames when saving and therefore (possibly) overwriting an old version of a file which I wanted to keep! A 5.11 Hints and Tips 5.12 • Free Space − (Ref to Archive 5.11 p21) − The call to check the amount of free space on a disc is ADFS_FreeSpace. On entry, R0 points to the disc specifier and on exit R0 contains the free space and R1 contains the size of the largest object that can be created. E.g. 5.12 SYS“ADFS_FreeSpace”,“:0” to free%,largest% 5.12 Change the ADFS to RamFS, SCSIFS or whatever you’re using. 5.12 • Free space on hard discs − For some time I had been concerned by the apparent discrepancy between the figures returned by COUNT and FREE for the space used by files on my SCSI discs. I was aware that COUNT only counts the actual files and that FREE counts all the space used but I still felt uneasy and my discs seemed to fill up alarmingly quickly. 5.12 ADFS floppies use 2k for every directory and there is an initial 4k overhead for the map on E format discs. My impression was that the same amount of space would be used for each directory in all Filecore systems, including SCSI, but that the map would take more space depending on the size of the disc. 5.12 So the first thing I did was to estimate the number of directories on my 120M disc. I make full use of the directory structure to organise my data, not to any great depth but with some width. RISC-OS encourages this and, of course, applications are directories too. I reckoned there were well over 1000 directories on the disc, but at 2k per directory, this did not account for the difference. 5.12 With a little experiment of adding a directory and looking for the change in free space, I found that a directory was taking a staggering 28k! This was where the space was going, but why? 5.12 My Oak SCSI card is managed by their SCSIForm program which allows some flexibility in defining the format of the disc. Having backed-up, I did some experimenting with the parameters. 5.12 I changed the sector size, but the minimum value for the 120M disc was 512 bytes and, for a 42M removable was 256 bytes. I imagine the lowest possible value of 128 bytes is only for small discs. Anyway, the changes I made had only very small effects on space or disc transfer times. The default is 512 bytes per sector, so I left it at that. 5.12 Next I changed the file allocation size. This defaults to 2k on the large disc and 1k on the other. The minimum is 256 bytes. The larger values are chosen, I believe, to speed up transfer times to large files on larger discs. I did not think this parameter would have an effect on the structure, but look at the table below. The results were impressive. For a loss of transfer time of less than 5% I was gaining a saving on structure of 7 times! There were similar results for the smaller disc. 5.12 File Alloc’n (bytes) 2048 1024 512 256 5.12 Map Space (k) 57 47 68.5 124 5.12 Dir’y Space (k each) 28 15 7.5 4 5.12 Mode 0 (k/sec) 1959 1864 1864 1864 5.12 Mode 21 (k/sec) 994 955 955 955 5.12 I have not delved any further into why more than 2k per directory is taken in SCSI but the figures suggest 14 blocks are used: 13 are <256 bytes and the other is 512-768 bytes. 5.12 When I settled on a file allocation size of 256 bytes, I recovered about 30M of extra space on the larger disc − about £200 worth, perhaps. Some of this saving comes from taking much less space for the multitude of small !Run,!Boot and !Sprites files. 5.12 The only other make of SCSI of card I have access to is a Cumana one in school, running in a fileserver for 600 users. This too has 1000+ directories. The Cumana SCSIManager program only offers formatting with default values, so I changed the format using my Oak card and made similar impressive savings. The disc runs happily with the Cumana card, as you would expect, but will not dismount. This is no penalty with self-parking heads. 5.12 I then found an old ADFS hard drive and did the same check, finding that a new directory takes 12k. RAMFS takes a straight 2k. I would be interested to know if the same problem applies to IDE discs and what formatting is possible with other SCSI cards. Steve Drain, Portland. A 5.12 Impression Hints & Tips 5.12 Ŷ• Problems with version 2.17 − If you are having problems with version 2.17 − such as the machine hanging up when you select large areas of text − don’t blame Impression! Basically, what is happening is that CC have implemented message-passing via the Wimp for their thesaurus and these messages are rather large. This is a perfectly valid thing to do under Acorn’s RISC-OS programming guidelines but not all filing systems have been written to allow for such large messages and they end up over- writing areas of memory − hence the crashes. Filing system versions known to be a problem are: 5.12 Oak SCSI version 1.11 5.12 Ian Copestake IDE version 1.13, 5.12 Serial Port IDE version 1.01, March ’91 5.12 CC say... “If your Archimedes gives problems, contact your Acorn supplier or the appropriate company. Please do not contact Computer Concepts − these problems are not caused by Impression but by the filing system.” 5.12 The Oak SCSI filer 1.11 has been replaced by version 1.16 but this ‘new’ version (actually two years old!) is available through Archive as an upgrade for £12 inc VAT. 5.12 The ICS filer 1.13 can be swapped for version 1.14 as a free EPROM exchange from ICS. They also have a completely re-written IDE filer (version 2) which is available from them for £15 +VAT. The customer returns the old EPROM afterwards. 5.12 The Serial Port filer 1.01 can be replaced with 1.02 as a free upgrade − in this case, just send the floppy disc back to The Serial Port and they will replace it. 5.12 • Using borders − From David Wooldridge comes one of those tips that is obvious to the initiated but might be new to some users. When choosing a border in the Alter Frame window (view mode), don’t forget you can see the various borders by pointing at the white border in the window and pressing menu. A border picker window opens, allowing you to select from all the available borders. This tip is in the manual but, as we all know, not everyone reads manuals − own up, please, if this is new to you! (Me for one! Ed.) 5.12 The Readers Write! 5.12 • Laser Jet printing with RISC-OS3 − Gerald Fitton (of Pipeline fame!) has experienced a problem when using RISC-OS 3, !Printers, Laser Jet II and Impression. He has found that documents in the portrait format print 7 mm out of position on the vertical axis and are offset 5mm to the right. This occurs even when the page borders are set to 0 mm. If he increases the latter figure, the print out is further out of position. As Gerald says, ‘What I need is a minus value for my borders. Help!’ Has anyone else come across this particular problem? 5.12 • Keeping track of Draw and Sprite files − In Archive 5.9 p37 Steve Hutchinson was asking advice on keeping track of his Draw and sprite files and was recommended two viewing applications. There is also an easy hardcopy method namely !PicList which was on the Acorn User October 1991 disc after being upgraded from the May version. The application makes a set of sprite “pages” containing any Draw or sprite pictures that are dropped into it. The pictures are displayed in a grid and are labelled with their name/path above them. The application is easy to use from the iconbar having options to: 5.12 • Set up the size of the “page” (defaults to print size if a driver is loaded), 5.12 • Set the number of columns and rows required − depending on the required detail of each picture, 5.12 • Set the screen mode for the resultant “pages”, 5.12 • Choose the path/name format to name each picture. 5.12 You can drop directories onto the icon and several pages are generated. The pages can be stepped through to view and saved to make a hardcopy of each page. Alan Wilburn, Hartlepool. 5.12 • Auto destruct! − In the Hints and Tips section of the June edition of Archive, there was a mention of possible problems with the auto-save facility of Impression under the title “Auto-destruct!”. Version 2.16 (and 2.17) of Impression does not appear to be as dangerous in this respect. If the auto-save facility is turned on but with the “With prompt” switch left off, a prompt will still appear on-screen before the first time the document is auto-saved. 5.12 This also occurs the first time the document is auto-saved after it has been reloaded. It is mentioned in the Impression 2.15 release notes on pages 1 and 3. 5.12 Still on the subject of Impression, I have two problems that readers of Archive may be interested in: 5.12 Spelling checker − If you check and replace a misspelled word by using <Ctrl-W> to invoke the spelling checker, this appears to work correctly except that if you have typed nothing after the word, it also has the effect of <Ctrl-B> and returns you to basestyle. Obviously the solution is to always type at least a space after the word before using <Ctrl-W>. 5.12 PrintBJ (the extension module to print draft text) − This makes a reasonable attempt at interpreting styles as far as different fonts and font sizes are concerned but seems unable to cope with rulers or effects that control the position of the text on the page. Tabs it gets completely wrong, right aligned text is centred, centred text is centred but using a page width about three quarters of the actual width. This is using the Canon BJ-10e. I have phoned Computer Concepts who suggested I wrote enclosing example documents both printed and on disc. This I did several months ago and have not received a reply. Has anyone else experienced these problems or indeed found a solution? Nick Edgar, Doncaster. 5.12 I can understand Nick’s problems and only print out in graphics format. My method of working for proofing documents is always to print at a lower resolution − and hence achieve a quicker print out. Users of the Deskjet 500 have the option of using the draft mode on the printer for this purpose and leaving the resolution set on the driver unchanged.