Volume 6, Number 4
Contents
1. TL 1150 NEXT I 1155 REM save table 1160 PRINT D CREATE ASCII TABLE TTXT 1170 PRINT D BSAVE ASCII TABLE TTXT A 2000 L TL 1198 END 2000 REM format I to text string 2010 I STR I IF I lt 100 THEN I 0 I IF I lt 10 TREN I 0 I 2020 E MIDS HEXS INT I 16 1 1 MID HEX I 16 INT I 16 10 REM do hex string 2030 RETURN 3000 REM create string 3010 s IS 8 3998 RETORN 4000 poke string into memory 4010 FORK 170 LEN S 4020 POKE 8192 TL ASC MID 8 R 1 4030 TL 1 4040 NEXT K 4050 POKE 8192 TL I REM value 4055 T TL 1 4060 POKE 8192 TL 13 REM carriage return 4065 TL TL 1 REM value 4998 RETORN The file is written using the BSAVE command because BASIC SYSTEM clears the high order bit on characters written to a standard TXT file The file can then be imported into a pro gram and edited to generate a printout While editing watch out for interpretations of certain control codes for example the imbedded car 6 30 A2 Central riage retum ASCH 13 will generate a blank line in your chart printout unless you edit that character out We edited our version of the table to encom pass the printable characters accessed either by using an option character both keys at once command or by a combination of an option character command followed by a sec ond character For e2. item from the Apple menu If you are chroni cally short of memory after stripping out any thing expendable in the way of desk acces sories RAM disk space etc the only perma nent answer is to get a larger memory expan sion card DJD Too much power Well had a quiet chuckle when I read Vern Mastel s article in last month s newsletter about relative speeds and capabilities of the MS DOS and Apple il systems 1 am one of a team of nine people scattered around Victoria engaged in community develop ment work For the last three years have used a computer for numerous tasks involving lots of word processing low level desktop publishing databases statistical analysis and plenty more Recently prepared a paper on the computer needs of my fellow workers with a view to hav ing them equipped for the task The paper out lined our needs based on what I had been doing and was submitted to the computer experts of our organization for appraisal The experts came back with a recommendation that we be equipped with MS DOS compatible desktop 286 386 with VGA monitors 110 megabyte hard disks and laser printers Sound ed pretty good to me The only fly in the oint ment however was that 1 had been doing all my work on a 128K Ile standard monitor 20 meg SCSI drive although my software runs hap pily off floppy disk and Olympia dot matrix printer There s no doubt about it the potential of the more powerful ma
3. the near future books take several months to write and at the rate the ligs System Software is changing right now any book written from current knowledge would probably not be com prehensive by the time it is finished The ligs C compilers available now APW C and ORCA C are also still being improved This does not mean there is a lack of hope books on toolbox programming do exist see Desktop programming heip p 6 21 of last month s issue though most examples are in assembly language by and large the principles apply to high level languages as well Too calis do not look that distinct between various lan guages in every case it is a matter of allocating the necessary data structures and just calling the correct routine The important factor is understanding the Janguage you are using be it assembly BASIC A2 Central 6 31 Pascal C or other well enough to be able to create the program logic necessary to provide the framework and environment for making the toolbox calls This means you should learn the language itself first before trying to perform functions specific to a particular system It s the same principle as leaming chemistry before trying to make nitroglycerin Apple s s Introduction to the Apple ilgs contains the complete source code for the demonstration HodgePodge applica tion in assembly lanquage Pascal and C Pas cal is used for the text of the book but you could flip back to the index and
4. ASCII charac ter 127 is the non printable Delete key so is used in it s place After hours investigating this we aren t sure we have all the loose ends tied down for example we tested this all on our decidedly USA IIgs We have included the tables so that others can experiment we haven t seen the information compiled in one place anywhere else and we re among the people who need to use it occasionally Now at least we ll be able to find it DJD AppleTalk and WordPerfect I like WordPerfect and need a word proces sor like it because of its footnote and hyphen ation possibilities And with the latest version everything worked fine until I tried to print with an Apple LaserWriter I1 NT First printed via the AppleTalk network It printed but the results were bad The worst printing happened with accents Then tried to print via the IWEM ImageWrit er Emulator to slot 7 nothing happened I hope someone can help me with this also have written to WordPerfect Corporation but it could be that you or a reader might have the right answer have 1800 pages in WordPerfect format with French accents and therefore I m longing for a solution 1 would also like to know if it is possible to make the LaserWriter print in the emulation mode with foreign characters like the way it can be done with the real ImageWriter J rgen W retschofer Maastricht Nethertands We do not use WordPerfect at ali at A2 Cent
5. PostScript printer You can also print the PostScript output for a document to a file on disk and TimeWorks includes a short section at the end of the 3 0 update manual on how to print these files from the Macintosh sys tems often found at printing services Our LaserWriter NT had trouble digesting some of our test files however The program can also now import a Ilgs graphic 256K of memory is required on a Ile or lic from such programs as Deluxe Paint I 8 16 Paint and PaintWorks Gold with the limitation that only the first 256 lines of a tall graphic will be imported SHR graphics are imported in color and will be printed correctly in color though the colors will be distorted on the screen display Color can also be added to objects and text Publish it 3 0 now correctly supports the importation of Apple Works 3 0 word processor files It also allows the direct use of IIgs fonts although TimeWorks cautions that the quality may not equal that of the Publish tt 3 0 fonts We ve had our hands on Vitesse s new Quickie scanner for the Ilgs Vitesse also now reports they have software to support the scan ner on a Ile or il Plus The Quickie consists of a hand held scanning mechanism connected to the Apple I through an interface card that can be installed in an internal slot The ligs software includes a stand alone application and an NDA that can access the scanner to import graphic data to the screen A2 Central 6 29 while i
6. Volume 2 Number 12 January 1987 you showed us how to execute Smartport commands This information permits me to detect the presence of a RAM disk that uses SmartPort protocol In Volume 3 Number 8 Alan Silver shows how to detect a RAM disk that does not use the SmartPort protocol Both of these ideas work fine My problem is this once have detected a SmartPort RAM volume under ProDOS 8 how do find its ProDOS volume name so that 1 can do a GET_FILE_INFO MLI call to find out how many free blocks the volume has The Smart Port device status call only returns the total number of blocks not the number of blocks used or the number of blocks free need to know if the RAM volume has sufficient unused storage space for my program s temporary files The method am currently using is to do a GET_FILE_INFO call for each online volume and compare the total blocks of that volume with the number of blocks that was returned in the SmartPort Device Information Block for the SmartPort RAM disk When they re equal I assume I ve found the SmartPort RAM volume This technique dares to assume that the RAM volume will never be exactly the same size as any other online volume So far I ve lucked out but sooner or later one of my programs is going to run up against a RAM volume that is the same size aS an online floppy disk or other __hlock ariented device and my method will byte the dust What can do Robert C Moor
7. copies of development tools and refer ences The materials will be available through a new Developer Tools Express service though the service does not include other APDA priv ileges such as receipt of the quarterly APDALog issues and the ability to order prerelease beta versions of products Publish It 3 0 has several new features Although the program is still designed to run on the 128K Apple Ile and Iic models includ ing the llgs in Ile mode several enhancements have been added including the ability to import Ilgs super high resolution graphics Support for Epson LQ series printers and the Apple Scribe has been added and color printing is supported In addition to the ability to use an expanded memory card to hold Vol 6 No 4 the program itself for faster operation Pubfish It now has an option to also load all fonts into memory if you have approximately 400K or more of memory available The Save Settings command has been enhanced to allow saving defaults for all options in effect at the time of the save including set tings for custom guides page size viewing display size display of pic tures in the document rulers pen and fill choices the default font selection and more This option does not save your document so you can use it to determine the startup conditions you prefer for Pub lish It New features in the Page Layout section include Go to Page by number user defined guide settings new editing
8. functions cut copy paste move to front and move to back on grouped objects and new object attributes Don t Print Locked Don t Runaround PostScript and Color By turning off Runaround for an object you can make text flow around the object Using this in combination with the Transparent option to allow overlaid objects to be printed you can create special effects such as dropped capital letters a single large letter leading into a paragraph The PostScript attribute indicates Publish lt 3 0 s new ability to use encapsulated PostScript EPS files EPS is a standard format for graphics and text objects consisting of a text file in a standardized PostScript command format By importing an EPS file into a text frame scaled to the desired size of the printed object the EPS data Ask or tell Uncle DOS One of these days I ll beat the deadline by enough lead time to find the subtle errors like forgetting the address information for prod ucts we mentioned last month The disk labelling program we mentioned in April Disk Labels p 6 23 is Disk Label Pro available from Hardsoft Products P O Box 90012 Honolulu Hi 96835 for 30 postpaid includes 100 labels for 5 25 disks and 20 labels for 3 5 disks and Electronic Learning ISSN 0278 3258 mentioned in Personnel moves rock Apple March 1990 is 23 95 per year 8 issues the address is P O Box 2041 Mahopac Md 10541 DJD App
9. modem to my Ilgs to take advantage of your GEnie service have AppleWorks GS which has a communications module Please offer suggestions or literature which would guide me in firmware hardware software etc and especially installation proce dures Peter Orio Tweksbury MA Our back issues have some information on modems in general and connecting to GEnie in particular the pertinent articles are Mainframe GEnie at your service Feb 1988 Crossing telephones with computers Mar 1988 and Twisting talk into data May 1988 With your modem installed the AppleWorks GS manual should be adequate to get you up and running though if you re looking for practi cal tips you might find another reference handy We ve heard good things about Que books and a look at their new Using Apple Works GS convinced us to include it in our catalog One note you won t find in the books System Software 5 0 2 has a small bug in the SCSI driver that can cause AppleWorks GS or any native ligs communications program to die with a error indicating the program has received too many interrupts Claris has some Suggestions on dealing with this problem for now which we anticipate is on the redress list for any future system software release The SCSI drivers for Apple s new High Speed SCSI Card which also includes a minor GS OS revi sion to version 3 2 apparently still allow the error to be generated but the system will al
10. present in the device in the low order four bits if the device is empty this value is zero and the ASCII text high bit clear for the volume name beginning at the byte following OURBUFR in this case the text of the volume name does not contain the lead ing normally associated with ProDOS vol ume names If things don t go well Possible errors are 28 no device connected 52 not a ProDOS disk and 27 disk I O error With the volume name you can now do a GET_FILE_INFO call See Butterflies turn to worms Oct 1985 to retum the information for the volume directory file For a volume directory the field that normally would indicate an auxiliary type actually indicates the total number of blocks on the volume Subtracting the blocks used from the total blocks gives of course the blocks free DJD IIgs programming in C How about carrying some books on program ming in C Especially with reference to the IIgs toolbox Glenn Goldstein Drexel Hill Pa We know of a few good books on C pro gramming in general we see most of them on the shelves at normal bookstores so we haven t bothered to try and sell them our selves We ve stuck primarily to Apple II specif ic books that might be somewhat harder to locate locally There is no single Ilgs Toolbox program ming in C reference that is topically current that we are aware of Overall you probably shouldn t assume that such a book will exist in
11. to look and what to change because hate to rein vent the wheel Hans Wolter Dreieich West Germany Please h h help have been with you for some time and feel you are probably the best source of honest information for my beloved Apple I have recently upgraded to AppleWorks 3 0 along with all of my favorite applications including the TimeOut series Yet with all this power on my IIgs and 64 meg hard disk I cannot yet create a custom dictionary to my liking What I require is the ability for the AppleWorks dictionary to accept the 1 characters to permit me to build a French Canadian custom dictionary with their equivalent characters and a As it now stands when I invoke the open apple V command AppleWorks accepts most words but once a foreign character is found AppleWorks breaks the word in two As an example Fran ais would be construed as Fran plus ais If the AppleWorks dictionary could recognize these five lower ASCII characters it would per mit the construction of a French dictionary that would properly respond to approximately 95 of all spelling errors The remaining words those requiring the use of the accent circum flex such as tre and the tr ma such as Noel would be quickly verified using the old manual system 1 hope you or one of your readers could help me find a patch that would allow a more versa tile AppleWorks 3 0 dictionary Jean G
12. 14 6 by 4 intended for a wide range of laptop and portable systems including the Ilc models Such a case wouldn t house the figs monitor but would probably be adequate fo cary the CPU an external drive or two and the neces sary cables The case has a padded internal divider that splits the large compartment into two sections one could be used for the CPU and the other for a 3 5 drive and cables The interior of the lid has pockets specifically May 1990 designed for 3 5 disks business cards and writing implements as well as a larger pocket for files There are outer pockets designed to hold large items possibly a modem or external drive Targus also selis other cases they sell through dealers so you may find the Lappac 2 case at dealers that carry MS DOS computers and accessories Mac Connection 14 Mill Street Marlow N H 03456 800 5534 4444 or 605 446 7791 sells Targus cases for the Mac licx 75 and the ImageWniter li 45 the licx case might be suitable for the smaller ligs CPU and keyboard Another source to check might be your local music instrument store the places that sell keyboards guitars electronics etc to profes sional musicians Those instruments need hard Shell cases to protect them on the road and some of the case suppliers will actually config ure a case to match your requirements Audio visual equipment dealers may also be a place to check DJD Disk identification Back in
13. A2 Central i DS A journal and exchange of Apple II discoveries formerly Open Apple E as May 1990 Vol 6 No 4 ISSN 0885 4017 newstand price 2 50 photocopy charge per page 0 15 The shell game Back when ProDOS Inside and Out was written an appendix was included that was intended to help those who wanted to choose between the use of ProDOS or DOS 3 3 to make their decision A few of the arquments are still valid but time has taken us to a point where DOS 3 3 cannot be considered a viable option for Apple II users wishing to be anything other than anachronistic Unfortunately those of us who make our arguments public have to live with them for a long time Three things have occurred since the time the book was written to alter the impact of the discussion in that ProDOS Inside and Out appendix First Apple delivered AppleWorks which became a major force as the integrated application that sold hundreds of thousands of Apple lle and Ilc computers AppleWorks was a child of the ProDOS operat ing system if you wanted to use AppleWorks you had to use ProDOS Second Apple released the UniDisk 3 5 the first mass market removable media drive with a respectable storage capacity 800K ver sus the paltry 140K of standard Apple 5 25 drives accepted by Apple II users ProDOS is clumsy when limited to 140K disks but becomes elegant on larger capacity devices DOS 3 3 is just the reverse acceptable on lower capacity disks but visib
14. B 3 26 JUN 89 SPREAD AS 3 26 JTN 89 SMMPLE FILES DIR 2 2 A0G 89 BLOCKS FREE 289 BLOCKS USED 1311 Each file listing contains among other items two specific items we are interested in One is the file name APLRORKS SYSTEM SYS 26 3 03 83 and the other is the file type APLBORKS SYSTEM SYS 26 3 ANG 89 The file name is used to identify the specific file we are interested in For the purposes of trying to run a program four types of files may be of interest the CAT command displays these as SYS system file BAS Applesoft BASIC program BIN binary file this may contain an executable program or it may not and TXT text file a limited number of these known as EXEC files can be executed with BASIC System Notice that SYS and BAS files are usually exe cutable programs there may be occasional exceptions but that BIN and TXT files most often are not executable programs at least it s best not to assume that they are programs There is no 100 reliable way to assure that a file is an executable program but the above rules serve as a practical guide There is a fifth file type that may be of interest the DIR file This is a subdirectory that may contain further sets of files If you don t see the file you want to execute in the volume directory you can use PRE FIX followed by the subdirectory name to enter that subdirectory PREFIX SAMPLES Notice that the subdir
15. S that is PREFIX plus the name returned previously to select the vol ume Once you ve identified the name of a volume it s a good idea to add the name to your disk label if it isn t already there In the future all you ll need to do is look at the label to confirm the disk s name Selecting a directory The second command allows you to list the files on a disk or in a subdirectory and that command is CATALOG CATALOG produces an 80 colume listing so BASIC System also pro vides a form called CAT which produces a listing tailored to the 40 column screen CAT or CATALOG used by itself will attempt to Jist the contents of the last accessed disk or of the current directory Assuming you have used PREFIX to select a specific disk the current directory will be the root directory of that disk For our AppleWorks 3 0 master 3 5 disk for example CAT produces the following list of files Vol 6 No 4 ABPLERORKS wE TYPE BLOCKS MODIFIED PRODOS SYS 32 22 WAR 89 APLWORKS SYSTEM SYS 26 3 ADG 29 SEG 00 BIN 9 3 ADG 89 SEG M BIN 9 3 AUG 89 SEG RM BIN 9 3 AUG 89 SEG AM BIN 9 3 AUG 89 SEG EL BIN 12 27 DEC 88 SEG PR BIN 9 3 A0G 89 SEG ER BIN 6 3 A0G 89 SEG aW BN 98 3 A0G 89 SEG WP BIN 88 3 1 89 SEG DB BIN 87 3 AUG 89 SEG SS BN 76 3 AUG 89 MOIN DICTIONARY BIN 395 14 JUL 89 CUST DICTIONARY TKT 1 15 JUN 89 FASTCOPY SYS 40 17 01 87 LETTER AP 3 26 JUN 89 MILLIS MB 4 26 70 89 INCOME ASP 4 26 JUN 89 TT A 1 26 JUN 89 DATA AD
16. a program There is no clear rule for identifying the pro gram file you are looking for other than to know from reading the pro gram s documentation or by experience that is you tried it before and it ran consistently One of the files you will notice on the Apple Works disk is APLWORKS SYSTEM and that has a high probability of being a main program file because it is a SYS file and it follows the ProDOS SYSTEM naming convention indicating it is intended to startup on booting the AppleWorks disk So after using PREFIX APPLEWORRS to select the directory all we need to do is to try and execute the file We do this using the BASIC System smart run command which is just a dash followed by the name of the file we want to execute APLWORKS SYSTEM The disk should spin and we ll be in AppleWorks Selecting the proper prefix is a necessary step The APLWORKS SYSTEM file uses the value of the prefix to locate other files it needs to use the files labelled with names starting with SEG among others It is not uncommon for programs to use the prefix in this manner Once you re convinced AppleWorks is running you may want to quit and get back to your program selector However this won t be BASIC System as we mentioned earlier standard ProDOS has its own selector As you learn the prefix and the filename to enter for your disks you can elect to use ProDOS s selector Or like most people you may prefer to
17. avoid the standard ProDOS selector as much as possible One alternative if you ve mastered launching programs from BASIC System is to make up a selector disk containing BASIC Sys tem You can then insert this disk and supply its name as the prefix and BASIC System as the application Then you ll be back to a selector with more options To exit back to the selector installed in ProDOS just type BYE from the BASIC prompt But even if you become familiar with BASIC System there are times where it won t be acceptable as a selector Some programs are too large to execute directly while BASIC System is in memory And some people won t ever find using a shell acceptable to them An option is to replace the ProDOS selector with something more palat able alternative selectors are available from sources of public domain software or shareware including on line services and user group libraries and commercially Augmenting Apple s system Several smaller selectors have been made available that fit completely in the same space as the standard ProDOS selector such as Squirt 8 50 from Synesis Sys tems P O Box 1308 Gilbert Ariz 85234 and Bird s Better Bye available on many Beagle Bros products on our monthly disk and on some other commercial products These selectors are more of the menuing type You select the disk volume you want to deal with either from a list or by toggling to each device The sel
18. by A2 Central Most nghis reserved Al programs published m A2Cemtral are public domain and may be copied and distributed without charge Apple user groups and significant athers may obtain permission 10 reprint articles rom lime to time by specific written request Edited by Dennis Doms with help Irom Tom Weishaar Sally Dwyer Joyce Hammond _ Jeff Neuer Tom Vanderpool Jean Weishaar A2 Central ited Open Apple through January 1985 has been pub lished monthly since January 1985 World wide pices in U S dollars airmail dolivey induded at no addtional charge 28 for 1 year 54 lor 2 years 78 for 3 years All back issues are cvrenttly available for 2 each bound indexed ed bons of our first four volumes are 1495 each Volumes end with the January issue an index lor the prior volume is included wilh the February issue The full text of oach issue of A2 Central is available on 3 5 disks along wilh a selection of the best new public domain and shareware files and pro grams lor 84 a year newsieller and disk combined Single disks are 10 Please send all correspondence 10 A2 Central P O Box 11250 Overland Park Kansas 66207 U S A A2 Central s sold in an unprotectas format lor your convenience You are encouraged lo make back up archival copies or easy to read enlarged copies lor your own use without change You may also copy A2 Central for distribution to others The distribution lee is 15 cenis per page per c
19. chines is mind boggling Unfortunately can t afford the luxury of a bog gled mind I ve got too much work to do in the real world The new machines suggest a learn ing curve like the north face of the Matterhorn okay for masochists but not much fun for the rest of us I think we ll probably end up with laptops which makes more sense we re a pretty mobile bunch but am as keen as mustard to get that Hewlett Packard laser printer running under AppleWorks 3 0 DB Master Pro and Printrix Incidentally the April newsletter was great more positive than I ve seen in quite a while plus lots of useful tips tan Wright Ballarat Vic It looks like the portable IIc would be a good choice for you too Unfortunately we learned that Roger Coats can no longer obtain the C Vue LCD screen mentioned in last month s Permanent portable lic in stock which pretty much kills the use of a lic as a battery powered portable DJD
20. cles seem to be solidly formed around HyperStudio An individual membership in the HyperLearning Net work is 29 for one year 55 for two years institutional member ships and other products are also available DJD appropriate Display Language and Keyboard Layout settings in the contro panel the physi cal layout of the key caps on the keyboard would have to also be rearranged But text based programs used on the ligs still need software that is designed to support the special characters for the language in use Graphics based programs don t have to feel as limited because the character display is not determined by a ROM character set For exam ple AppleWorks GS can handle the interna tional characters and other characters from the extended ASCII character set in its spelling checker A decision also has to be made where to define these extended characters in the set of ASCII codes for the igs fonts we ve looked at the USA character set occupies ASCII values from 0 to 127 and the international characters ASCII value char Option 128 A 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 PROPHcOoZ PROC OOODE EH EE OOOO DW A Mo COMBO EEOOKHOODHRHEHO OOD ASCII value char Option PODA amne e e we AOMOE KVAHES are represented as
21. e Laurel Md Apple has released two ProDOS 8 Technical Notes you should read 20 Mirrored Devices and SmartPort and 21 Identifying ProDOS Devices Apple Technical Notes are wonder ful things and are highly recommended to seri ous programmers These clarify the identifica tion of ProDOS disk devices Basically if you have isolated where the RAM disk is so that you know the slot and drive assigned to it then you have it s ProDOS unit number The unit number format is DSSS0000 in binary where D is O for drive 1 or for drive 2 and SSS is the three bytes represent ing the slot number Therefore if you have a RAM disk that appears in slot 4 as drive I the unit number would be 01000000 40 in hex 64 decimal The MLI ONLINE C5 call requires the unit number as part of its parameter block If you use the specific unit number for the device of interest ONLINE will return the volume name for the device in the buffer you specify As an example executing JSR MI yexecute MLI command DFB ONLINE online call DA OLPARMS our parameters BCS ERROR handle any error RIS jreturn OLPARMS DFA 02 jtwo parameters Dra 40 islot 4 drive 1 DA OURBUFR our buffer location would return the volume name information at location OURBUFR The actual form of the information is a byte at OURBUFR which con tains the unit number of the device in the high order four bits the length of the name of any ProDOS volume
22. earkey IF Rey lt A TEEN PRINT ASCII code Rey ELS PRINT Character CHR Rey EDIF UNTIL Key 80 wait for Qeturn gt PRINT That s all POKE 216 0 cancel ONERR END Wain FixError trap control C RESUME just return 6 32 A2 Central translates to this 100 TEx 110 ROME 120 ONERR GOTO 250 130 PRINT Rey 140 WAIT 16384 128 150 KEY PEER 16384 160 POKE 16368 0 170 ON NOT KEY lt 160 GOTO 200 180 PRINT ASCII code KBY 190 GOT 210 200 PRINT Character CHR KEY 210 IF NOT KEY 141 THEN 130 220 PRINT That s all 230 PORE 216 0 240 END 250 RESUME after a pass through the MD BASIC preproces sor with optimization off There s even a decompiler to convert existing Applesoft pro grams to MD BASIC source code and several advanced features to eliminate some of the pit falls of normal Applesoft indentation no line numbers extended variable names preproces Sor macros and so on as can be seen in the sample above The MD BASIC preprocessor is a shell utility that works on files edited with the ORCA M ligs or APW editors hence the need for the ORCA M or APW environment MD BASIC also includes AmperWorks a set of ampersand amp enhancements to Applesoft MD BASIC is 49 95 from the Morgan Davis Group 10079 Nuerto Lane Rancho San Diego Calif 92078 1736 619 670 0565 A Central Copyright 1990
23. ector dis plays a list of directories and SYS files on the chosen disk you select the subdirectory and then you select a SYS file to run Most of these selectors like ProDOS s built in selector will only execute files of type SYS Another option is to replace ProDOS s selector with a small pro gram that attempts to load a more complicated and capable selector This has the disadvantage of requiring that a disk with the program for the larger selector be available when you return to the selector On the old 140K floppy disks this inconvenience may outweigh ease of use but with larger disks 3 5 disks RAM disks or hard disks the A2 Central 6 27 space required is negligible and the ease of use increases tremen dously as the number of files on the volume increases The selector can be any one of the three types mentioned The extended 8 bit selector that we had our first experience with and primarily still use is Glen Bredon s ProSel It is based on a men uing system that allows the user to pre define a set of applications with their location by prefix pathname and file name and even to pass the name of a file to applications that accept a startup path A common example of a program which accepts a startup path is BASIC System itself which normally will attempt to execute a file with the name of STARTUP We feel compelled to mention that Prose con sists of a complete set of disk utilities and not j
24. ectory name is not preceded by a and then use CAT to list any files it contains CAT without a pathname will only allow you to see the files for the directory that you have cur rently specified To return to the volume directory for the disk you again must type PREFIX APPLEWORKS see we left off the trailing this time This method of maneu vering through directories is tedious but it has the advantage of being systematic On the AppleWorks disk you can use the sequence PREFIX APPLEWORKS car PREFIX SAMPLES cat PREFIX ADVANCED FILES cat PREFIX APPLERORKS May 1990 to locate the ADVANCED FILES directory within the SAMPLES direc tory on the APPLEWORKS volume and list the files it contains Finding no executable files you return to the volume directory There is a shortcut If you know precisely where a subdirectory of interest is contained you can combine the names of all the directo ries you pass through into one long path name to the subdirectory and feed it to the PREFIX or CAT command thus CAT APPLEWORKS SAMPLES ADVANCED FILES Notice that one and no more than one character is used to sepa rate each directory name from the next and that the order of the names from left to right is the same as that used in the individual PREFIX commands above from top to bottom There are other tricks but we won t try to rewrite ProDOS Inside and Out here Selecting
25. he ligs you need to use the option key mapping which does not correlate to the ASCI order of the keys in the ASCII chart So we have an additional column in the table that shows the option character equivalents for the US keyboard layout along with the few that also have a shifted equivalent option shift character We can t reproduce the table for all foreign keyboards but if you can locate a Mac intosh user manual you may find it contains a keyboard diagram with similar information our Macintosh SE manual had the keyboard defini tions on page 139 Looking at the table it turns out that the character can be generated by the option 3 keyboard sequence and the German essett 6 character by option s notice that is a lower case s The extended characters can also be generat ed with TimeOut SuperFonts check your man ual for information regarding the lt xI gt lt x2 gt and lt x3 gt commands for accessing ASCI ranges of 32 128 128 191 and 192 255 respectively The offset is from the ASCII equiv alent in the range of ASCII 64 to ASCII 254 We see from our ASCI chart that is ASCII 163 which lies in the lt x2 gt range 163 minus 128 is 35 Adding 35 to 64 gives us c lower case as our normal ASCII equivalent so we use lt x2 gt c lt xl gt as our SuperFonts sequence to generate on the printout The exception is ASCII values 191 our and 255 undefined for our chart normal
26. icate that it serves as a protective shell around the raw internals of the disk oper ating system expects you to memorize a few command key words that allow you tell the program what to do The key words themselves vary from one shell to another and are often cryptically abbreviated For the MS DOS shell interface the command to list files within a directory is DIR short for directory the same command for a unix system is Is short for list By specifying a keyword along with a filename you can perform operations on specific files for example in MS DOS ERASE THISFILE TXT tells MS DOS to ERASE delete the file THISFILE TXT from the disk One problem with using a shell as a standard user interface is that there can sometimes be hundreds of commands and hundreds of filenames to remember commands to copy files configure devices and so on Many users consider this to be confusing But if we limit THESE ELEVEN KEYS SIMULTANEOUSLY HERB OVER THERE HAS A KNACK FOR DOING THIS M T THINK YOU LL ENJOY HERB GOT 6 26 A2 Central our use of a shell to finding and executing a program the number of commands needed is often reduced to only a few This is the case with the Apple Ik after all Apple does give you utility programs to do things like copy and delete files so if you know how to run the pro gram everything falls into place The classic Apple I shell involves the use of di
27. l of Europe Currently the price is in U S dollars This announcement follows on the heels of the announcement of Compuserve Forum a European arm of Compuserve which began operating out of Berne Switzerland and Bristol England on February 1 Barney Stone has decided to distribute DB Master Version Five as shareware This version of DB Master supports up to 200 fields per record 250 characters per field and files up to 10 6 28 A2 Central megabytes in size either using a hard disk or multiple floppy disks The shareware price for the product will be 45 which entitles the owner to the latest revision of the program a full instructional manu al and a special offer on DB Master Professional which remains a normal retail product Barney expects many users to upgrade to DB Master Professional once they ve seen what Version Five will do DB Master Version Five requires an enhanced 128K Apple lle Ilc IIgs or Laser 128 computer with at least two 5 25 drives or one 3 5 drive The program can be installed on a ProDOS compatible RAM disk or hard disk with at least one half megabyte of available storage More information is available from Stone Edge Technologies Inc P O Box 3200 Maple Glen Penn 19002 215 641 1825 The Spring 1990 APDALog from APDA Apple Computer Inc 20525 Mariani Avenue M S 33 G Cupertino Calif 95014 408 562 3910 mentions that membership in APDA will no longer be required in order to purchase final
28. leWorks international Is there a patch for the alphabetic sort in the AppleWorks 3 0 database such that foreign e g German characters get sorted correctly This would be the characters A 91 4 123 0 92 6 124 U 93 125 and 126 They should be sorted with A O U and S respec tively I m sure alt those who are using other languages would appreciate this Does anyone know where can get a Ger man character generator chip with mouse char acters for my Ii enhancement The one that comes with the enhancement kit fits American motherboards and has 24 pins the German character ROM part number 342 0275 for the upgrade has 28 pins Apple Computer in Cupertino informed me by phone that they could not support it a letter to them brought no reply Terrell Smith Madison Wisc The AppleWorks 3 0 enhancements are really worthwhile my only grief is that Claris seeming ly did not heed your advice to read the interna tionally different ASCII characters from a table The 7C character of vertical line shows up as a6 on alle using the German keyboard switch Using the information in A2 Central on Apple Works 2 0 I had all 7C characters converted to exclamation marks and thought it easy to do the same to version 3 0 But the disk storage of 3 0 is so different that a huge amount of work is involved Before go ahead would like to know if some reader or organization has already come up with a scheme of where
29. look at the equivalent C code Cecil Fretwell has convert ed the code for Programming the Apple ligs in Assembly Language to C source on disk and you could also get that disk print out the source files and follow along with the book with C source in hand The crucial step is to know enough C to be able to understand the examples DJD IIgs to Il BASICally I m writing a role playing game of my own in TML BASIC know this works with the Apple IIgs but can you recommend any language or program like TML that works on earlier Apples i e lIc Ile I d like my game to be available for these people too Harold Reynolds Minnetonka MN If you re looking for a BASIC compiler the 8 bit Apple li options are Micol Advanced BASIC for the Apple ile and lic ZBASIC or using Applesoft and the Beagle Compiler Actually since you have a ligs there is anoth er alternative Morgan Davis has announced MD BASIC a preprocessor which allows using the ORCA M or APW ligs assembly envi ronment to translate a structured BASIC source file into Applesoft which can then be compiled with the Beagle Compiler As an example the program Trivial sample for MD BASIC constant definition define KeyDataReg 16384 define KeyStrobe 16368 nacro definition Hdefine WaitForRey WAIT ReyDataReg 128 fefine Clearkey PORE KeyStrobe 0 Main TEXT EOE ONERR GOTO FixError REPEAT PRINT Key WaitForkey Key PEEK ReyDataReg Cl
30. low you to recover rather than forcing a reboot DJD Don t do too many windows 1 own a ligs and am always looking out for new graphics and font programs Recently incorporated several new fonts from Graph icWriter into both AppleWorks GS 1 0 and 1 1 In both cases I have run into the same problem 1 can t print I either get Can t print this docu ment or Not enough memory to complete etc if have more than one window open was using a graphics page but it only had mini mal black and white art and a name written five or six times using different fonts Is this prob lem due to these fonts being in graphic mode Any suggestions John Reed Simi Valley Calif We mentioned the problems of memory constraints last month Serious errors pp 6 11 12 One thing we didn t mention is that open windows are one of the things that can eat memory in addition to multiple fonts If Vol 6 No 4 memory is very tight and you have an idle or expendable document window open close it it may get you through the next operation but only if the difference is a few thousand bytes windows don t use that much memory Fonts graphic objects including those used by the system such as windows and many other items can affect memory use Apple Works GS allows you to see how much memo ry you have free as part of a status report shown when you hold down the Option key and pull down the About AppleWorks GS
31. ly out of its element on large volumes The UniDisk 3 5 propelled a move to a mass storage environment that Apple s overpriced Profile hard disk never man aged The third factor had nothing to do with Apple this was the appear ance of programs that made ProDOS easy to use for the rest of us Apple s utilities and manuals were universally horrific for neophyte users The single most important oversight was an explanation of how to exit one program and start another without re booting each time Apple s standard user manuals although they do explain the con cepts of files and directories don t effectively explain the mechanics to their customers wishing to use ProDOS 8 the IIgs Finder solves many of the problems if you are a Ilgs user booting through GS OS For example let s assume you have booted into AppleWorks and wish to quit and run a communications program to download a file How do you get to that next program without rebooting The concept is one of a program selector software that allows you to select the next program you wish to use ProDOS 8 includes a mechanism that allows AppleWorks or any program to request Pro DOS to execute a self contained routine intended to allow the user to select the next program Unfortunately ProDOS s standard routine is intimidating in the process it uses The first prompt a user meets is ENTER PREFIX PRESS RETURN TO ACCEPT and ProDOS expects you to provide a name that indica
32. mage to the printer gives a hardcopy that matches the on screen appearance Print ing the same document to the LaserWriter results in several character substitutions as we ve learned to expect with Apple s desktop environment what you see is not always what you get For example the option charac ter visible on screen did not print on the Laser Writer from the ilgs The reason the substitu tion occurs is that the LaserWriter driver is fed the QuickDraw Il rather than the bitmap form of the document which includes separate defi nitions for the graphics and text elements of the page image as displayed on the screen When the text is processed into PostScript it is converted to ASCII character codes that the LaserWriter is expected to print as the charac fers we see displayed in the text on screen We ve seen dissimilar weirdness on the Mac in different circumstances We mention this to indicate that non WYSIWIG output is not a problem unique to the ligs Unfortunately the LaserWriter character codes apparently don t match up The ImageWriter image is correct since it is essentially a graphic printout of the composite image displayed A table like our Extended ASCII Key Equiva lents on the previous page has a practical pur pose it gives you a reference to know which characters are available on screen and in your printout and for the selected codes we ve included how to generate them from the key board For t
33. n the ligs s 640 by 200 super high resolution screen mode The software includes selections to allow determining the length of the scanner s path which can be many feet though the width of the scanned image is limited to the scanner s dimension of about 4 inch es and options affecting the resolution and representation of the scanned image black and white gray scale dithering on the display The scanner handles gray scale levels no color but currently is limited by the storage format of the acquired data which must be saved as a 640 mode graphic image The scanner resolution is 100 200 300 or 400 dots per inch selected by a switch on the scanner head We found the scanner to be quick and easy to use and it produced excellent results within the limitations of the 640 mode screen We d like to see either added support for using the 320 mode screen which is capable of 16 gray levels per screen pixel or a way of sav ing raw data as the ColorEyes video digitizer does in such a manner as to allow further massaging by other programs The Quickie is 299 from Vitesse Inc 13909 2A Amar Road La Puente Calif 91746 818 813 1270 HyperLearning Forum is a new newsletter available from Hyper Learning Network Box 103 Blawenburg N J 08504 609 466 3196 Although the first issue March 1990 expresses a mission of promot ing the use of hypermedia products for instruction without naming a specific product the initial arti
34. name of APPLE WORKS can t be located BASIC System will return a PATH NOT FOUND error If the disk appears to be damaged BASIC System returns an I O ERROR message 1 O is short for input output indicating the transfer of data to or from the disk If you don t know the name of a volume but you do know the slot and drive assignment of your disk drive you can let BASIC System find the volume name and select that volume for use by inserting the disk into the drive and using two parameters set off by commas The first Sn where n is the slot number provides the slot number of the disk the second Dn where n is the drive number provides the drive number For a ProDOS disk inserted in slot 6 drive 1 the normal location for a 5 25 startup drive the command would be PREFIX S6 D1 Typing PREFIX without any parameters will display the current set ting for the prefix If there is no prefix currently specified PREFIX without parameters will attempt to access the default disk usually the last disk device accessed using slot and drive numbers if the drive is empty you li get an 1 O ERROR message and display the name of any ProDOS volume found in that drive This does not select the volume so to set the prefix to the volume in the default device you need to use two commands PREFIX to display the name and continuing with the example of APPLE WORKS PREFIX APPLEWORR
35. opy dis tributed WARRANTY AND LIMITATION OF LIABILITY l warrant that most of the information in A2 Centraf is useful and correct although drivel and mis takes ara included from Ume to lime usually unintentionally Unsatisfied subscribers may cancel their subscription at any time and receive a full refund of iheir lasl subscnpton payment The unfiled porton of any paid wil be refunded even lo satisfied subscribers upon request Dean Esmay Jay Jennings subscription MY LIABILITY FOR ERRORS AND OMISSIONS IS LIMITED TO THIS PUBLICATION S PURCHASE PRICE In no case shat or my contributors be liable for any incidental or consequential damages nor lor ANY dam ages in excess ol lhe fees paid by a subscriber ISSN 0685 4017 GEnie mail A2CENTRAL Voice 913 469 6502 Printed in the U S A Fax 913 469 6507 The suitability of any of these alternatives depends closely on the number of specific TAL BASIC features you may have used regarding access of the ligs toolbox and for specific uses such as graphics For example Micol Advanced BASIC and ZBASIC both have some graphics commands extensions to draw circles and other objects on the graphics screen in Applesoft and MD BASIC such fea tures are absent and you would have to write your own subroutines MD BASIC has an include instruction that allows subroutine source to be imported into a file at compile time DJD llgs modem help 1 would like to add a
36. part of the set of ASCII val ues from 128 to 255 We tested the Apple Works GS database and alphabetic sorting is handled strictly by numerical ASCII value Most of the international characters are accessed by using the prefix keys described in More keyboard options Feb 1990 p 6 7a or by using the option key in conjunction with a character key We became curious about the total range of characters supported and decided to generate a table for a representative font Courier You can use the following Applesoft program to generate such a test file 1000 REM generate full ASCII table 1010 LOMEM 16384 REM brute force 1020 D CARS 4 1030 BEX 0123456789ABCDEF ASCII value char Option u 188 BC to u 189 BD 2 z 190 BE 191 SBF 192 C0 193 C 1 194 C2 195 C3 196 C4 197 c5 198 C 199 C7 C8 c9 CB sec cD CE SCE D0 D1 02 D3 D4 05 D6 07 08 200 201 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 ZICONANUNODWA Kt Ee AFUE HH WO Om ya biwelooa 1QonD 00 weruuwraak e axsam Extended ASCII Key Equivalents 1040 TL 0 REM table length 1100 REM generate table 1110 FOR I 0 TO 255 1120 GOSUB 2000 REM format current number 1130 GOSUB 3000 REM create string for character 1140 GOSUB 4000 REM poke string into memory 1145 PRINT S TL
37. ral possibly a reader has a suggestion The LaserWriter s ImageWriter emulation does support foreign characters Since you cant open the lid and change the DIP switch settings as on the ImageWriter you need to send the appropriate software commands as part of your printer initialization For example the sequence to use the Danish characters is Escape Z Control E Control Escape D Con trol B Control DJD Vol 6 No 4 Math coprocessors Please consider reviewing math coprocessors for the Ile and IIgs There s a couple on the market FPE Floating Point Engine and the Applied Engineering FastMath My interest is Ilgs specific Will a coprocessor speed up screen display and computation of objects in object drawing applications such as Top Draw Does it improve performance of AppleWorks GS spreadsheet graphics and database modules Dan Rencher Cincinatti Ohio For an idea of the relative performance of the hardware for the FPE and the Fastmath check the times given in the January 1990 Miscellanea column using the Beagle Com piler s interface routines The FPE was the clear winner but those not interested in the utmost in performance may wish to factor the lower price of the Fastmath into their pur chase equation As your interest is ligs specific the Floating Point Engine is the only realistic alternative FastMath s hardware does not provide the SANE Standard Apple Numerics Environment compatibility neces
38. sary to augment the ilgs or classic AppleWorks use of the SANE model for floating point calculations Be clear on the point that a floating point coprocessor only speeds up calculations The FPE will accelerate AppleWorks GS s spread sheet recalculations for example because the FPE includes a routine to cause calls to the lgs SANE routines by any program to be rout ed through the FPE instead Graphics that depend on a great many SANE calculations such as a fractal program that calis SANE to calculate the points to plot will be sped up by the virtue of quicker calculations not by any acceleration in the actual plotting of points to display the graph Most general painting or drawing programs won t use SANE to calculate the form of the object they are commanded to draw because the object s image can be ren dered more quickly and adequately for display purposes by using other techniques DJD Carry me away Do you know of any company that makes car tying cases for the Apple Il like they have for the Mac Paul Christianson Lancaster Calif We haven t seen a specific ligs case adver tised The IIgs monitor and CPU might fit in cases designed for a compact Mac licx style of system the llgs components are a bit smaller than their Mac counterparts Targus manufactures a soft case called the Lappac 2 Deluxe 99 95 suggested retail for woven vinyl 219 for the leather version that has interior dimensions of 17 by
39. sk commands from BASIC This interface was built into DOS 3 3 itself but for Pro DOS it requires the use of a specific program represented by the BASIC System file found on Apple s ProDOS 8 system disks When you boot ProDOS it looks for the first file of type SYS the filetype is shown when you list the contents of a ProDOS disk or directory with most utilities with a name ending in SYSTEM and executes that program Therefore if you initialize a new ProDOS disk with your Pro DOS system utilities and copy the files PRODOS and BASIC System to the disk you can boot that disk and initially use BASIC System as your shell Selecting a disk From BASIC System there are three commands that you need to know in order to execute most files The first com mand PREFIX allows you to select which disk or ProDOS directory you will be dealing with assuming you either know the name of the disk or the slot and drive where the disk is located If you know the disk is installed in a drive and you know the disk s name using PREFIX followed by the name will tell BASIC System you want that disk established as the one to use by default For example if you have inserted your AppleWorks master named APPLEWORKS the command PREFIX APPLEWORKS will tell BASIC System you want to deal with the APPLEWORKS vol ume Notice that a ProDOS volume name always begins with a character a trailing is optional If a disk with the
40. tes the default directory you want ProDOS to use Next you ll be asked to ENTER PATHNAME OF NEXT APPLICATION Now ProDOS expects you to type the filename or pathname if the file is in a directory other than the one specified by the prefix of the next program you intend to run What s wrong with this system Once you are looking at the prompt ProDOS won t let you list the volume names or file names for any disks The standard ProDOS selector doesn t accept slot and drive numbers or any command to list the contents of disks you have to know where you re going before the ProDOS selector will let you get there Thankfully Apple has documented the location of ProDOS s selec tion routine and the protocol for starting new programs in section 5 1 5 of the ProDOS 8 Technical Reference Manual It is possible to replace the normal selector with a more useable program selector The Windows utility on our monthly disk installs replacement selector code Karl Bunker added to the program the assembly language source code is included in the STANDARD TOOLS subdirectory as WIND QUIT S Program selectors come in three general styles with regard to how the user selects the next program the use of a command line you type the program s name a menu based system the program s name is displayed as an element of a list or a symbolic model the program file is represented by an image A command line interface we ll call it a shell to ind
41. ust the program selec tor ProSel for us made ProDOS friendly Other extended selectors such as Quality Computers s EasyDrive and RAM UP PUPS 39 95 from North York Software 3000 Victoria Park Avenue Suite 520 North York Ontario M2J 4Y2 416 495 0615 and so on have appeared Extended selectors based on the shell model are Don Elton s ECP 8 included on our June 1989 disk Dave Lyons s Davex 25 from DAL Systems PO Box 875 Cupertino Calif 95015 0875 and those supplied as part of a programming environment such as Kyan Pascal s KIX or ORCA M s sheli These selectors provide more control over Pro DOS than BASIC System and can also execute files of commands programmers tend to like them since their functionality can be extended by adding new commands that execute within the frame work of the selector Symbolic selectors There have also been graphics based selec tors for ProDOS 8 including Quark Catalyst and MouseDesk These use graphic symbols icons to depict files the files can be selected using a pointing device ideally a mouse These have not survived well the size and system requirements required to operate these selectors apparently was too extreme for most Apple li users Apple apparently believed so strongly in this type of interface that they start ed building computer systems based entirely on this metaphor the Lisa the Macintosh and the IIgs in native mode Many Apple II users apparently disbelie
42. uy Mariage Shannon Quebec Is there a way to print a on an Apple Ilgs through a software package or can it be done through hardware itself without too much diffi culty Fred Reinstein San Diego Calif We don t have cures for customizing Apple Works 3 0 for international characters but per haps one of our Gentle Readers may have developed a patch We d like to point all AppleWorks patch hackers to a series by John SuperPatch Link in The AppleWorks Forum which provides details for several AppleWorks 3 0 patches Also you may con sider asking one of the companies that has modified AppleWorks for international charac ter sets such as Davka Corporation see For eign Accents cont Jan 1990 p 4 95 to see what options they can offer We don t see a long term solution for text based programs because their character set is determined by the character ROM in use and the monitor routines which support it which is part of the computer s firmware design In the lle and lic models were available with ROM and keyboard support localized for specific countries this was extended to the ligs by placing several options in ROM and allowing the user to localize the system by selecting the May 1990 will be converted into the object on printout and placed in the area defined by the text box To do this you enable the Publish It 3 0 PostScript attribute for the text object containing the EPS file while printing to a
43. ved so strongly that they elected not to switch to Apple s newer lines of machines Our experience with the Catalyst and MouseDesk programs demon strated to us that you can either use most of the system resources to produce pretty pictures or you can use them to do work and we gen erally chose the latter option The acceptance of the Jigs Finder is wider because like the Mac the Igs was designed with the icon based interface in mind With Sys tem Software 5 0 the performance of finder is not so poor as to make us disregard it There are ways to customize the selection mech anism in the llgs Finder that makes it attractive to many users we plan to look at some of Finder s features as a selector next month as well as mention some ilgs alternatives DJD Miscellanea GEnie is emerging from the bottle in Europe at last Bill Louden general manager of the GEnie service announced the avail ability of GEnie in Germany Austria and Switzerland on March 23 1990 The United Kingdom is expected to follow within three months and then possibly the Netherlands GEnie also hopes to eventually provide the service in East Germany A2 Central will be mailing out sign up instructions to subscribers as GEnie opens for business in the individual countries The local access rate within the first three countries will be 18 per hour for non prime time and 27 per hour for prime time GEnie is trying to create a single end user price structure for al
44. xample is generated by option I by option I and by option u fol lowed by a normal non option space There are a few idiosyncrasies First The characters represented in our table are for the Courier character set other character sets may differ in the content of completeness of their character set representations For example Cairo is composed of graphic characters rather than the normal printable characters we inter pret as readable text Second a font editor will generally show you the complete character set for a font but it may not correlate directly to what you actually have available in your program For example AppleWorks GS seems to disregard all control character codes as printable characters con trol M ASCH 13 is executed as a carriage retum as expected but ASCH characters 11 control q 12 control r 13 control t and 14 control s from the Chicago font were not displayed with AppleWorks GS in the print able forms indicated by Beagle Bros GS Font Editor v in the Chicaga font To add to the confusion the Macintosh has elected to display ASCII 11 as the Mac option key cloverleaf instead of the open apple char acter shown for the same character in the ligs Chicago Font we looked at Third the font you have on screen may not correlate to the font you see on the printout Printing the document using the ligs imageWrit er driver which sends a bitmap of the docu ment i
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