Loadstar 128 #39/q39.d81/t.timeliner

Text File | 1993-01-01 | 9.8 KB | 206 lines

                             T I M E L I N E R

                     Program and Text by Knees Calhoon



    I've always enjoyed books published in a series (like the Hardy Boys or
Perry Mason books) and keep chronological lists of them. To me, it's
important WHEN a book is published because a book can say as much about the
zeitgeist of its period as it shows the author's mindset. For instance,
racial overtones in a 1930s book are NOT the same as racial overtones in a
1990s book because society's attitudes are so different these days. So I
have plenty of chronological lists.

    I also have several "timeline" books in my reference library. These are
encyclopedic tomes which show things like technological advances, works of
art, political trends, etc. all in chronological order and synchronized.
It's good to know that in the same year that Columbus made his first
journey to the New World (1492, of course) the Spanish defeated the Moors
at Granada, driving them from the European continent. It's arguable which
event has had the larger impact on future history.

    TIMELINER can be used for more than just literary lists. In fact, a few
of the many, many files (lists) on this issue are of famous film directors'
or actors' works. You may be interested in religious, scientific or
genealogical lists. As long as you have the dates of the events, TIMELINER
can be used for any of them, but you must format them correctly. More about
that later.


 THE TIMELINER PROGRAM
 ---------------------

    There's nothing fancy about the program. You first see the HELP screen,
which is practically useless, but hey, it's the LOADSTAR style to have help
screens. Then you see a file requestor showing all of the files on the disk
in the current drive that have a "-." prefix. Scroll through them with the
CRSR UP/DOWN keys. Bob Markland's FILE SUBROUTINE from LS 128 #37 works
pretty good, doesn't it?

    You may pick from one to four files for TIMELINEing. They will be
displayed in vertical columns in the order in which you selected them, left
to right. If you want to view just one file, select it and press ESC to
signal that you're through selecting. If you select four, the program
automatically goes to the loading and parsing routine.

    At 20 MHz, which is the only speed I like any more on my C-128, even
the longest files load and get parsed in a few seconds. There is an
indicator on the screen that shows you the earliest and the latest year
covered by the file(s). The current year being parsed is displayed between
them, so you have an indicator of how much longer you can expect to wait. I
admit that at 1 MHz my algorithm, which is in BASIC, is pretty slow,
perhaps even agonizingly slow. Sorry about that! The fewer files you
select, the faster, so keep that in mind if you start getting tired of
waiting.

    Once the latest year is reached the TIMELINER scroll screen is shown.
At the top of the screen are the names of the lists in yellow. Below them
are the books (or whatever) in columns with grey horizontal bars separating
the years. On the left of the screen are the years in light green. Use the
CRSR UP/DOWN keys to scroll up and down through the lists. CRSR RIGHT and
LEFT will page the data, although paging is not all that much faster than
scrolling line by line. Pressing H will show you the help screen again and
M will take you back to the file requestor. Press Q to exit to LOADSTAR or
BASIC after answering a Yes/No prompt.

    That's TIMELINER! You can see at a glance which books (or events) took
place in the same year. You'll see that some authors produced one book per
year and some churned out a half dozen in a year. Some wrote for a decade
before burning out; others wrote for half a century.


 MAKING A LIST
 -------------

    As you can see, my tastes run towards Crime Noir, Mysteries and Science
Fiction. Yours would undoubtedly be different. I have found that a list is
essential for book collectors like myself and that often complete lists are
quite hard to come by. For instance, Lester Dent (and a few contracted
writers) wrote 181 Doc Savage adventures between the years 1933 and 1949.
Can you imagine how difficult it could be to compile a list like that? Now
you don't have to because I've done it for you.

    I used THE WRITE STUFF 128 to make the lists. You may use other word
processors but they MUST be able to save files in screen code format. This
is the standard format for TWS and SpeedScript. Ordinarily we use PETASCII
format for our programs but because of the way TIMELINER works, I decided
to use screen code. There are just too many strings that would have been
created if I'd used PETASCII text and made string arrays of them. Even the
power of the C-128 would have been taxed for big files like Doc Savage or
Agatha Christie. I don't really know what the size limit of files is, but
it's probably somewhere around 18 blocks a file, if four files are viewed
at one time. Doc Savage was 20 blocks long and crashed the program, so I
split it into two files.

    Here's how it's done with TWS 128. The first three lines of the file
must look like the following. I'm using a plus sign to signify a carriage
return, which in TWS is a BACK ARROW. I'm writing this in TWS and can't use
a BACK ARROW, at least not easily.

                 +
   First line    +
   Second line   +

 The top line consists of 17 (no more, no less) spaces followed by the BACK
ARROW for carriage return. The next line has the first line of the
description, and the third line is the second line of the description.
These are what is going to be printed in yellow at the top of the screen.

    Don't worry about setting margins in the word processor. The way we
save it makes margins moot. The important thing is that EVERY line in the
file is exactly seventeen characters long, followed by a carriage return.

    Next comes the event data. The fourth line of the file will have a 4-
digit date preceded by an asterisk. In fact, every date line will have an
asterisk preceding it. Then the event(s) that happened that year are placed
on the line(s) below the date. Use as many lines as you want to describe
the event, but never make a line longer or shorter than 17 characters.
Here's what lines 4-13 might look like:

*1967            +
The Great Mojo   +
 Awakens         +
Parachutes Away! +
*1969            +
Cretins I Have   +
 Pursued a Policy+
 of Personal     +
 Destruction     +
 Against         +

    Notice that I signify a new book or event by having it start in the
very first column. The asterisk must also always be in the first column. If
a title needs more than one line, I indent the second line one space. This
is my convention; you may use another if you wish, as long as the date line
begins with an asterisk and butts up to the left.

    Your dates must be in chronological order. It's okay to skip years.
After all, some writers go several years in between books. If you add to
the list later, you must insert the event into the correct yearly sequence.
Note that the date lines must be exactly 17 characters long, also.

    Keep going until you reach the last event. After its last line, add
another line with one or more AT signs (@). My last line generally looks
like this:

@@@+

 although only one @ is required. This last line does NOT have to be 17
characters long, but it won't hurt if it is.

    For best results, load one of the "-." files on this disk into TWS and
use it as a template. I used the TWS convention of a "-" as the identifier
of a TWS file to make it even easier to use TWS to make the lists. In TWS
the way to load a screen code file that begins with a "-" is to press UP
ARROW and then select LOAD from the top row command line. Then select from
the file requestor.

    To save your file, press UP ARROW to go to the top command lane and
select SAVE. You'll get an input line with a dash entered for you. Start
with a period (.) and add a meaningful title to your file.

    I made some mistakes in entering data and here's what I found. It may
save you some frustration. If, after creating a file, you load it into
TIMELINER and you notice the incrementing date stop and the program seems
to be stopped, then you probably have a date out of order. Maybe *1976
comes before *1975 in your list. Fix it and all will be okay.

    If the incrementing date goes to 3000 and the program halts, then you
probably have put an asterisk in front of a title. Asterisks only go before
each date. A title like M*A*S*H would be okay since the first character
isn't an asterisk. The title "1984" would be okay too, as long as you don't
put an asterisk in front of it.

    Dates must be between 0000 and 2999. For a while I thought my program
had a "Y1K" bug and would choke on dates before 1000 AD, but if you use a
date like *589 it should work. Negative dates won't work, however.

    I can't think of anything more at this time. I hope you enjoy the
program and find my various lists handy. Obviously, a PRINT function would
be a good idea but because I'm working with screen code PEEKed and RECALLed
from memory it would be rather difficult. I will think about it and if I
can come up with a way to print, I will add it to the next version of
TIMELINER. Keep in mind that all of the "-." files are simple TWS files so
they can be loaded and printed with TWS or any word processor that supports
screen code. You just can't print out synchronized lists (as they are on
screen).

    If anyone makes more lists, preferably of literary or theatrical works,
I'd like to have them.


 DISCLAIMER
 ----------

    The lists on the disk are the best I could do with the reference
materials I had. I don't claim that they are definitive, complete lists.
Many of them show only the works by an author in a certain genre, such as
Science Fiction novels. Please consider these as lists to build upon, not
to rely upon in life-threatening situations.

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