Text File | 1989-08-13 | 11.3 KB | 207 lines | [04] ASCII Text (0x0000)
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-==Professor Know It All==-
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The Knight of Knowledge, the Artful Answerer, Professor Know-It-All is here to answer all your questions with the aplomb of...someone who has a lot of aplomb.
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Dear Readers,
Because the I had no GS questions to answer I begged the good editors to run this column from the 8-bit version of Softdisk and pay me again. If you are new to the Softdisk family, read on--you may just like what you see. If you're not new, read on, you know what to expect.
Now dig into the crevices of your cranium and send me, Professor Know It All, your most technical, or trivial questions.
--KIA
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PAGE NUMEROLOGY
I have an Apple IIe and an Epson 8501q printer. For the life of me, I cannot get the AppleWorks program to print sequential numbers on a several-page document. I take that back--I can get it done by individually going back to Control-O for each page. That is too heavy for me and I just let it ride.
If you have a fix, give it to me in one-syllable words, like one, two, three.
Jack L. Giannini
Belleville, IL
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I am not sure what you are asking for so I'll use my massive cranium to deduce that you want to do auto page numbering. That's easy, so easy you are going to say, "That's easy" after I fill you in.
1. At the very top of your document type Open Apple-O, HE, ESC and you will see "-------Page Header" appear on your screen. That means that the next line will be printed on every page of text.
2. If you only want the page number to be in the header (you are limited to only one line of text) type, "Page: " OA-O, PP, ESC. The AW screen will look like this:
"Page: ^"
That caret means you have placed an AW command, in fact if you move your cursor to that point you will see "Print Page No." centered at the bottom of your screen.
3. Print away.
--KIA
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PICTURE THIS
Dear Professor KIA,
Softdisk has great graphics, but there doesn't seem to be a way to use them in other programs. Can you publish a utility or procedure that stores the image on a user's disk as a high-resolution file? If the folks at Softdisk could modify the Softdisk System to store a snapshot of the hi-res page with a command (similar to the way "P" causes an article's text to be printed), it would be terrific.
The file could then be used with drawing programs and with printing programs such as Tom Hall's "What A Poster!" on Softdisk 90.
Arnold Solomon
Snellville, GA
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--The programmers have proposed selling a disk of the fine art by our artists, but have heard nothing from their superiors.
--KIA
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WHAT A PROBLEM!
On Softdisk 90, there is a program called What A Poster! I have been trying to get Print Shop pictures into files to make posters. Everything that I have tried has failed. Any help you can give me in getting this program working would be greatly appreciated.
Foster Gilbert
Columbia, MD
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As the article said, What A Poster! cannot print out Print Shop Graphics--it can only print out single hi-res screens (they are 17 blocks long on a disk catalog).
As for a program to convert PS graphics to single hi-res screens, we'll publish one soon!
--KIA
Oh, they're not dumb at all...
To the folks who like to answer dumb questions:
1. Wow! Am I confused or what. I know almost nothing about programming. I have a IIc+ and can't figure our how to get your AppleWorks files loading into my AppleWorks 2.1. According to your Dupe program, I have to have two drives (which I do -- one is a 5.25"). Since I get Softdisk on 3.5", I can't get the file to my 3.5" AppleWorks.
2. Also, I used my Apple II System Disk 3.1 to copy the files of some of the games off onto a 5.25" and then couldn't get them to load. HELP!
3. I tried to save this letter on my AppleWorks 2.1 disk and kept getting:
Can't Write on Disk at Built-In Drive.
Why can't it? I still have 243K available. I deleted a file which gave me 245K and then it would save the file.
4. I tried to put all of the Softdisk PS Graphics from my 5.25" to one 3.5" and it wouldn't work. It said something about "too many files". It still has LOTS of room available, though.
The closest users' group is 100 miles away and the store where I bought my IIc+ no longer has an Apple representative. Am I having a little bad luck?
Well, I guess I've given you enough problems to solve for now. Thanks for putting out such a great product.
Diana Horstmeyer
Hannibal, MO
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My, you DO have a few questions, don't you. Here goes...
1. Choose "From a different disk" when Adding a file to the desktop. Look on the label to see which folder it is in (usually A). Enter "/SDAnn/A/" and press RETURN (where nn is the issue number). The file should be here.
2. I'll assume you copied all the files listed in Component Files. To have a bootable disk, you need:
PRODOS
BASIC.SYSTEM
You must run your program yourself, or have a file named STARTUP which runs the program.
3. You cannot save the file to your disk because there are 51 files at the "root". When you catalog a ProDOS disk, you will see only the root files. Some of the files may be of the type "DIR". This means "directory". This file contains a list of other files on the disk. By putting the files "in" this directory, you can organize your files into groups, rather than all in a big list.
On Softdisk, our programs are in four of these subdirectories (we call them "folders", as the word "subdirectory" scares people) named A, B, C, and D. To look at them, you must look IN the subdirectories, or the file lists named A, B, C, and D.
If you are confused, read the article about the program TREE on issue 89. You might also look at the book BASIC PROGRAMMING WITH PRODOS from Addison-Wesley.
4. Your Print Shop Graphic problem is the same 51 file limit again. When ProDOS formats a disk, it creates an area called the "volume directory". This area is only large enough to store information on 51 files. As I said before, some of these files may be directories themselves, that is, a list of files.
A good metaphor for directories is the file cabinet. In each drawer are a number of folders and loose papers. In the folders are more papers. Got the picture? OK, let's look for the John Smith's resume. It is in CABINET 1, in a folder marked RESUMES, in a packet of papers labeled SMITH.
Our journey to the resume was:
/CABINET1/RESUMES/SMITH/
so we could refer to that specific resume by the describing our path to it:
/CABINET1/RESUMES/SMITH/JOHN.SMITH
This is exactly how ProDOS organizes your disk. Where the resume and those like it can be found is the "PREFIX".
The actual path to that resume is the "PATH". In AppleWorks when you load in a textfile, they ask for its "full pathname", which is the name of the disk, then what subdirectories lead you to the file, then the file's name.
A representation of all the files and subdirectories on a disk is sometimes called a "tree". That's why I suggested you go look at Tree on #89.
This is a lot of information to take all at once. I hope this brief discussion helps.
--KIA
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TEN QUICK QUESTIONS
From Eddy Marshall, Arran, Saskatchewan, Canada:
1. On issue #92, Typing Tutor kept crashing on my Laser 128EX. It works on my IIe. How can I fix the bug?
-- We just got our 128EX, but we haven't figured a fix for that one yet. The only solution at the point is to play it on your IIe.
2. How and where do you load up shadowbox routines into the proportional text system in #92?
-- Well, the shadowbox routine included is BOX.CHOOSE, which allows four different shadowboxes. The default box (currently the shadowbox) loads at hex $6400, the first at $6433, and the rest at $6466, $6499, and $64CC. These are the addresses of box IMAGES, not box routines. To excerpt an image, save it from Boxmaker, for example, at $D00. Now BLOAD it, and BSAVE WHATEVER.IMAGE,A$DCB,L51. There are a number of excerpted images with the Boxes and Windows program on issue #83.
3. When is a font editor going to be available for the prop. text system?
-- Probably never. We were going to publish it, but it was so large, overwhelming and had such a difficult interface that we decided to publish the routines that loaded in one spot.
4. I always admire the SOFTDISK.SYSTEM program for how so easily handles text (displaying and so on) and the menus (divided up into levels). One day I thought, "Why not make
my own text files and menus for it, and use it as a menu program?" Well, I could make absolutely no sense out of the old files or menus (like I could in the old DOS program, SOS), let alone be able to make my own.
So how about showing your readers, like me, what all the numbers, symbols, and other stuff in the files and menus mean? (A program for making our files and menus would sure be nice!)
-- The end product is nice, but getting it that way is an arduous process. The programmer that wrote the system did everything for speed and compactness, and virtually nothing for ease of use.
It does look pretty, but we use about a dozen tools to get the data the way the system wants it. You'd do better looking at Boxes and Windows on issue 83 for the windows, QuickShapes on 91 for the graphics, and Apple's Mouse manual for the mouse interface.
5. On the subject of SOFTDISK.SYSTEM, how do you make and display all those neat graphics?
-- We draw them with an art program, grab them with a shape grabber similar to QuickShapes, link a shape file together, and use the shapes with special commands built into the ".T" article files.
6. In your files in the menu, the amount of graphics is continually decreasing. Oh, sure, the title page still has graphics, and at the beginning of each file there is a fancy pic, but inside the files, the only graphic is a colored underline. Why is this so?
-- We used to have two artists working for the Softdisk product exclusively. Now they must service FIVE different products. This resulted in the number of graphics dwindling.
Soon the look of the magazine will change a bit, and the "spot graphics" will return as illustrative examples.
7. Is the source code available for the proportional text system?
-- Not yet. Right now, it uses a shape table, rather than block data. If we rewrite it soon, we'll probably publish that one.
8. How about making it possible to DUPE and PRINT from the Read/Run/Cancel dialog box (when you choose a file from the menu)?
-- Besides having to change the structure of our operating system, we feel it would be confusing to many people to copy a file they aren't reading about.
9. If your printer is not online after your printer message ("Make sure your printer is online") is acknowledged, the menu hangs up. Why not have an error prompt put in when this happens?
-- Good question. The SOFTDISK.SYSTEM programmer wrote the text output with a kludge (pronounced KLOODGE): he directs text output to the printer at the start, then just prints characters. This method dies with off-line printers.
10. When Softdisk starts up, what do you mean, by "Series 1Q1"?
-- Upper management told us to ID a number of different masters which would correspond to our disk copying machines, so that when a disk went bad, a customer could report the "series number", which would tell us which copier went bad. This system is no longer in use, but we haven't bothered to remove the message.
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Whew! What a long session!
The good Professor is available to answer your most puzzling questions. Simply write to him at:
