Volume 4, Number 1 - Goldstar Software
Contents
1. being printed for every command executed POKE 768 216 and 769 96 then do a PRINT D PR A768 What you get is a short routine CLD RTS that will consume all char acters sent through the output hook The CLD is required by ProDOS My main program resets output with a PRINT D PR 3 Paul Lucas Levittown N Y ZBasic amplifications You got a couple of points wrong about ZBasic in your reply to Basic choices in December page 5 88 You said our DOS 3 3 version runs on any 64K Apple While compiled DOS 3 3 ZBasic programs will run on any 64K Apple our DOS 3 3 version requires a 128K Ile lic or Iigs for program development Our ProDOS version comes in two flavors 64K and 128K The 64K version will run on any Apple that has at least 64K this is required for ProDOS as will the programs compiled with it The 128K version requires at least 128K and a 65C02 or newer processor In addition any program compiled using the 128K ver sion also requires 128K and a 65C02 When a compiled program is distributed to others the ZBasic runtime support files may accompany the stand alone file without royalty payments or credit to Zedcor However the Editor Compiler and associated files cannot be legally distributed as your article implied Greg Branche Zedcor Tucson AZ On rereading my response find did imply that the whole package could be redistributed but didn t mean to My goal was to compare the cost of ac2. year 44 for 2 years 60 for 3 years Al back issues are currently available for 2 each bound indexed editions of our first three volumes are 14 95 each Vor umes end with the January issue an index for the prior volume Is included with the February issue Please send ail correspondence lo P O Box 7651 Overland Park Kansas 66207 U S A Open Apple is available on disk for speech synthesizer users from Speech Enterprises P O Box 7986 Houston Texas 713 461 1668 Open Apple is sold in an unprotected format for your convenience You are encouraged to make back up archival copies or easy to read enlarged copies for your own use without charge You may also copy Open Apple lor distribution to others The distribution fee is 15 cents per pege per copy dis tributed WARRANTY AND LIMITATION OF LIABILITY warrant thal most of the information in Open Appie is uselul and correct although drive and mis takes are included from time to time usually unintentionally Unsatisfied subscribers may cancel their subscription at any time and receive a full refund of their last subscription payment The untilled portion of any paid Subscription will be refunded even to satisfied subscribers upon request MY LIABILITY FOR ERRORS AND OMISSIONS S LIMITED TO THIS PUBLICATIONS PURCHASE PRICE In no casa shal or my contributors be liabla for any incidental or consequential damages nor for ANY dam ages in exbess of the tees paid by a su
3. 1 have all of my AppleWorks files carefully arranged in subdirectories on a Sider 10 meg drive Some of them are getting rather full One of them AW DATA LETTERS COMPUTER currently has around 75 files When 1 attempt to load any of them into AppleWorks 2 0 on my Iigs everything proceeds fine until the last file specified is loaded AppleWorks then tells me it is getting errors trying to read empty dou ble quotes At the bottom of the screen is the Press February 1988 spacebar to proceed i Here s where it gets weird If press the space bar the program crashes hard So hard that a Timeout con trol reset will not recover the program But if 1 press Escape instead of the space bar go back to the main menu and al of the files I have specified have been properly loaded This happens even if specify only one file 1 have done some tests to try to figure out the source of the trouble I ve tried several copies of AppleWorks 2 0 under several versions of ProDOS Always the same However under AppleWorks 1 3 I never have a problem Rex Creekmur Grandville Mich We can t explain it either We ve had reports that problems like this happen with as few as 64 files in a subdirectory July 1987 page 3 45 and reports that AppleWorks 2 0 is designed to handle a maximum of 85 files in a subdirectory August 1987 page 5 56 We once a camied a patch to expand this also page 5 56 but it doesn t work as ruef
4. Miscellanea in June 1985 page 1 45 and Nibble bytes tongue in August 1985 page 1 63 In the interview I m quoted as saying once again that I d like to see AppleWorks in ROM on new Apple IIs I m catching a lot of grief about that one everyone says it would be too hard to patch that way and new versions couldn t be used Sure would be a big sale for Claris though I thought we d carried this correction before but I can t find it anywhere On April 1987 s page 3 22 in the program listing in the middle column in the line that begins 00 030A the number after the colon should be A2 not AD igs system disk 3 follow up Thanks to several postal and GEnie correspondents I ve leamed a few additional things about the new ligs system disk the last couple of weeks Please thank them when you next see them Meanwhile pencil in a note on page 3 90 of last month s issue that says to look here for additional information when you buy that new Iigs First let s set the record straight about the disk drive light blinking many of you have been worrying about while running the Finder This is normal The only way the Finder can fell if you ve taken a disk out of a 3 5 drive is to repeatedly ask it But each time a UniDisk is asked for its current status its in use light blinks Don t worry about it Next let s talk a bit about icons Icons are those Pictures that show up on your screen when you run the Finder The idea is tha
5. ning of your header text and press the space bar until the sticky spaces drop to the second line of the head er Your AppleWorks screen should now look some thing like this page AAKAAAAAAA aoe Unjustified The caret after the word page is the page number caret the other carets are sticky spaces AppleWorks allows only one line of text in a header The idea here is to push the sticky spaces into the second line where they won t be printed But they will drag the page number to the right margin because the header is being printed with full justification This right justifies the page number even if it grows to a two or three digit number If you are using one of the proportional typestyles you may have to use more spaces in front of the text until the text is about halfway across the second line and more sticky spaces to get the trick to work This is because the space is a very narrow character with pro portional typestyles You can also use this trick outside of headers for example in a table of contents but in this case the sticky spaces will actually be printed as a blank line So you have to plan your printout so thal it appears the output is at the least double spaced because every line following a right justified line must be blank HansJuergen Kuehne Garbsen West Germany AppleWorks passwords I was wondering about the possibility of patching AppleWorks 2 0 to add a password routine to prevent casua
6. the line length during the printing process The data base needs more flexible reporting capa bilities and the spreadsheet needs more functions and string handling ability As Lowney suggested a path name selection menu should be included and should be invokable any time a disk is accessed AppleWorks should display subdirectories when loading a file and allow the user fo open them and look inside Text and DIF files should be loaded from a menu Mouse sup port in the AppleWorks spirit that does not replace the standard AppleWorks interface would make Apple Works simpler for new users AppleWorks should recognize and use any combina tion of aux slot standard slot and ligs memory but should be smart enough to leave RAMdisks alone We need more word processor lines data base records spreadsheet cells and a larger clipboard The desktop should be able to hold a larger number of files Finally AppleWorks needs something similar to Bea gle Bros Timeout manager built in to support applica tions that run within AppleWorks Add on programs should be able to access every necessary AppleWorks 1 0 disk and memory feature New applications should be able to appear on the Add Files to Desktop Menu and should be activated when you load a partic ular file type And of course AppleWorks developer s information should be made available in the form of a technical reference manual Jerry E Kindall Grove City Ohio 75 file bug
7. which we regularly carry to our Aberdeen Scotland office to communicate with the home office network We plan to put a laser printer on line this month Several employees have personal lics at home which they readily use to do the home work regularly done by successful businessmen today although several of our guys admit that they have to share the home machine with their families My daughter at college regularly exchanges files with the business network and with our home machine using her enhanced ilc We ve solved lots of minor software and hardware problems to make our system work and grow but Apple support people local and regional were and are no help at all It s a real pity that other businesses who would like to do what we do and save the money that we ve saved are shunted off to Macintosh land by the locals who steadfastly deny that a Ilc can be pro ductive And worse than that many of these fine potential If users become convinced by others that only MS DOS II do it and we don t hear much from them anymore yes we do have one MS DOS unit in the corner and yes it ll soon be connected to the net work as well We know the limitations of the Ilc CPU and graphics but let s face it those limitations mean very little in actual real daily business transactions Now don t get me wrong The local Apple folks didn t actually fight with us as we bought or inquired about the various components we needed T
8. Workshop version 1 0 1 25 megabytes of memory and two 3 5 drives or the equivalent CMS has a new ROM for its SCSI hard drives that corrects some problems when using ProDOS 16 programs such as the Finder The new ROM is free to any CMS owner by calling 714 549 9111 ext 216 Somebody took a search and replace sword to the January 1988 edition of the A C Express the newsletter of the Erie Apple Crunchers user group in Erie Pennsylvania Every place the word Apple should appear there are instead five underline characters The editor explains A major concern among user groups during the past year was the implemen tation of licensing agreements for our computer s operating systems and the use of a certain company s logos and trademarks The position taken by this company on the licensing of the operating systems is quite fair for all parties involved However the permission to use the trademarks and logos comes with quite a few strings attached Basically we are supposed to put the little TM mark after the first appearance of a product for which this computer company holds a trademark We are also supposed to use the little r in a circle and so on and so forth We will try to comply with the trademark and logo restrictions as much as possible in future issues It s too bad that ___ did not put a TM or c in a circle or an r in a circle in their printers Magnets in speakers placed too close to the igs
9. a Ile or Hc equipped with an RBG monitor there are three double high RGB modes These are color 140 x 192 in 16 colors monochrome 560 x 192 in black and white and mixed a combination of the first two Keep in mind however that these three modes are available on a Ile or IIc only when it s equipped with an RGB monitor this too is rare Without RGB Ile Ilc double high res appears as 560 x 192 black and white on a monochrome monitor and as 140 x 192 16 color on a color monitor Unfortunately Apple didn t follow its own RGB standards on the IIgs An RGB equipped IIgs supports color and monochrome double high modes but not the lle lic mixed mode In addition the method for switching between color and monochrome modes is completely new on the Ilgs On the Ile and Ilc RGB dou ble high res mode selection involves tickling several softswitches in certain spe cific sequences as demonstrated here in 1985 On the figs on the other hand RGB double high res mode selection is deter mined by bit 5 of the Video Control Register at C029 O color 1 monochrome if you change this bit from inside a program use a read modi fy write procedure so that you don t accidentally change the other bits in the register As mentioned changing the Monochrome Color Register at C021 affects only the composite output but changing the Video Control Register at C029 has an effect on both the composite and RGB outputs This is a little strange bec
10. analog RGB color monitor can wash out or warp the colors on the screen Just moving the speakers farther away from the monitor doesn t help immediately you also have to turn the monitor off for several minutes before it will correct itself This tip comes from the January edition of the Washington Apple TM Pi newsletter The Desktop Publishing Newsletter is a new publication that will feature techniques for producing effective publications on the Apple II for schools and businesses It will be published by Sage Productions the same company that publishes the AppleWorks Joumal The premier issue is expected in February 1988 later issues will follow every other month A one year six issue subscrip tion is 20 5677 Oberlin Drive San Diego CA 92121 619 455 7513 Apple has been working hard to make big sales to the federal govern ment The problem is that most federal contracts require MS DOS compatibility The slots in the Macintosh SE and Mac II were supposed to solve that problem But Apple s first major victory in the federal marketplace according to Charles Berger Apple s vice president of market development was the sale of 4 000 Apple ligs systems together with 4 000 of Applied Engineering s PC Transporter cards The computers will be used in 270 schools for dependents of U S mili tary personnel The company that selected the Apple llgs for the government said that it had received proposals from several computer suppliers and t
11. on system disks 2 0 or 3 1 The other says that the Finder has a practical limit in the number of files per folder it can handle Though hav ing 200 or more files in a folder will not cause a sys tem crash the Finder slows to where even the sim plest of operations becomes unacceptably time con suming Dennis has demonstrated this has nothing to do with the Finder itself however but happens to all programs using ProDOS For example try this and watch how slow things get as we approach the 200th file 10 PRINT CHR 4 CREATE BIG DIR 20 PRINT CARS 4 PREFIX BIG DIR 30 FOR I 1 10 200 40 PRINT Now on file I 50 PRINT CHRS 4 SAVE FILE 1 60 NEXT The slow speed results from ProDOS thrashing around loading the same old directory blocks in and out of buffers The moral use more folders subdirec tories so that you don t have more than about 50 files in any single folder Subscriber Steve Busey points out that you can set up a two volume hard drive so that the first volume HARD1 for example boots into ProDOS 8 while the second volume HARD2 for example contains the ProDOS 16 system files To startup ProDOS 16 you sim ply set the prefix to HARD2 and execute PRODOS You can easily do this from a program selector such as ProSEL if you want Subscriber Wilber Mardis points out that once you ve created a system disk you can copy many Pro DOS 16 application programs onto 5 25 floppies Once yo
12. the database as you want copies of your word processing document Use mail merge to insert that word back into the document from the database AppleWorks 2 0 will print the exact number of copies that you want Larry Jones El Paso Texas ADB READER bug found There s a bug in your ADB READER program in the March and June 1987 issues AppleWorks database records begin with a two byte length When a record starts in the very last byte of the buffer however ADB READER gets only the first byte of the two byte length The second byte is whatever garbage happens to be one byte past the end of the buffer To fix this the end of buffer pointer BEN should be aimed at the last byte of the buffer rather than one byte beyond the end of the buffer Change line 1052 on pages 3 11 and 3 35 to 1052 BEN BBG 16384 1 REM BEN end of buffer In March s line 1052 you divided the 16384 by 2 in June you said this wasn t necessary so didn t do it here Jim Luther Kansas City Mo A sneaky right justify Here s how to get page numbers or any other text right justified inside an AppleWorks header Use open apple O ptions HE to start a page header and JU to force full justification Enter the text to be right justi fied a blank space and then about 10 sticky spaces open apple space bar If you want the rest of your text to be unjustified return to open apple O ptions and enter W Now put the insert cursor at the begin
13. turn into color smears If you use the control panel to switch to monochrome nothing happens You can fix all this however by tricking the IIgs into displaying double high resolu tion monochrome mode and then looking at just half the picture Setting up an Apple II to display double high resolution graphics requires that you hit the softswitches at C050 graphics C057 high res CO5E double res and COOD 80 col To look at just half the picture go back to 40 columns hit C00C Now if you have the llgs control panel set to monochrome you will see a standard resolution graphic on a Ilgs RGB monitor without the color blurs It s quite simple to modify existing 40 column Applesoft programs to use this new mode Simply add a POKE 49246 0 double res on to the beginning of the program Now as long as the control panel is set to monochrome and your program stays in 40 columns you will see a monochrome single high res picture To return to a standard res color display either change the control panel setting or POKE 49247 0 double res off This trick comes from Apple s Apple ligs Technical Note 29 so we can expect it to work with future members of the Apple 1l family too The first final version of Apple Hgs Programmers Workshop Cis now available from the Apple Programmers and Developers Association for 75 Updates to version 1 0 from beta versions are available for 17 75 The pro gram requires the Apple Programmers
14. wanted me to assist him in the selection of an encryption system After considering his request decided to simply reverse the direction of the drive motor in his second drive which is where he always puts his data disks Once the direction change was made we used Copy II Plus to copy his disks from the normal drive to the reversed drive The system and software don t know that a change was made But the disks made on the reversed drive can t be read by a normal drive The major benefit of this encryption system is that the user has no added steps pre boots or operator interven tion so there s no clue that something is different 1 put a switch inside the drive operable through a hole in the bottom so that normal operation of the drive can be achieved without disassembly To make this modification take a drive apart and locate the drive motor There are normally four wires connected to the motor two for DC power and two for speed control Disconnect one of the pairs and see if the drive motor will come on If it does you ve discon nected the speed contro wires and you should recon nect them Once you ve figured out which pair of wires provide the DC power look at the back of a DPDT switch and you ll see six places where wires can be connected three on the right side and three on the left side Sol der the power lines from the circuit board to the two top connectors one to the right and one to the left Also attach a w
15. world it that simpler can be better This leaves me feeling in con trol of my computers one at home and one at work and not feeling overwhelmed and useless when some thing unpredictable happens I regard myself as a serious user work in the area of youth policy and often write reasonably lengthy doc uments a regular newsletter and a welter of short doc uments as well as maintaining a number of smallish databases I use my computer every day at work and it really is a personal productivity tool rather than an embellishment on my desk It strikes me that many people writing about com puters are people who write about nothing but com puters As such they are ali too infatuated with new and powerful and fast and complex and so on This is wonderful if you have nothing to do all day but play with the latest 386 monster and explore the intri cacies of O 2 but what about us folks who use a computer as a means to an end rather than as the end Similarly I find many people using MS DOS com puters equally hung up on these marketing concepts and not actually doing much at all with that power and complex software The price they pay is a most unfriendly operating system a plethora of standards which DOS versions which graphics standard what format word processor files and noisy fans If there is one thing than an Apple and AppleWorks can do well it is make useful rather than esoteric computing
16. you want with a simple Return Quickspell can be set up so that it checks only a single word or screen rather than a whole document It also checks for double words The two big problems I ve always had with spelling checkers is the amount of time they typically take to use and the large number of correctly spelled mis spelled works they find Quickspell s three dictionary speed the ease with which you can deal with multiple words at one time and the ease with which you can add words to the custom dictionary solve all these problems I love this program now find myself spell checking not only Open Apple but even the simplest shortest messages Timeout Quickspell 69 95 Beagle Bros 6215 Ferris Square San Diego CA 92121 619 452 5500 Updates for other programs in the Timeout series all require that you send in your original disks as proof of purchase a 2 50 handling charge and for AutoWorks MacroWorks or SuperMacroworks to UltraMacros 20 for SideSpread SuperFonts or the both of them to FontWorks 10 20 or 30 respectively Turning Point Software now has an upgrade for Time Is Money that allows it to work on an Apple IIgs Back in August Cheap accounting page 3 51 I promised a review of accounting programs but haven t gotten very far on that project We have tried Manzanita s BusinessWorks but stopped looking at it when we discovered it throws away all your transactions every month and just keeps acc
17. 0 CALL 768 100 PRINT Tine is PEEK 49043 PEER 49042 Printing pastels 1 found this hint quite by accident but now I use it any time want to print pastels rather than vibrant col ors with my ImageWriter II Simply set the printer s Paper thickness control for one additional sheet of paper This makes the printer print lighter than it nor mally does something you might want to use with a baby announcement or shower invitation The one pon is that black won t be as black as it should an everyone know you can return to the Finder from the Applesoft prompt on the ligs by just typing BYE Lowell Lutz Phoenix Ariz Hello Good Bye have just received a copy of ProDOS 8 version 1 4 on a commercial program disk would like to know of a standard way to install Alan Bird s Bird s Better Bye quit routine into the various versions of ProDOS 8 H W Madison Bellingham Wash Bird s Better Bye wil work with any version of ProDOS 8 You need to lift a copy of it out of your cur rent version lay it into the new version then BSAYE the new version with Bird s program embedded in it Here are the details you need to know to do this The program has a length of 500 In versions 1 2 published and Copyright 1988 by Tom Weishaar Sally Dwyer Steve Kelly with help from Tom Vanderpool monthly since January 1985 Wordwide prices in U S dolars airmail deivery included at no additional charge 24 or 1
18. 1 am still against copy protection will always buy or review an unprotected program before I ll buy or review a protected one But refusing to look at or use any copy protected software in a world where novice users expect to get all the software they need for free is pushing logic too hard Experienced users who have a better appreciation of what it takes to write a good program appear to be much more likely to pay for their software 1 want to see an end to copy pro tection because it s a nuisance to honest users But the only way to achieve progress on the copy protection front is to achieve progress on the copies for free front It takes only a glimpse of holiday reality to realize that little progress is being made there With no copy protection at all Christmas could become nothing more than a time for families and friends to get together to cheat soft ware developers out of honest livings Many novice users actually seem to believe that if a program isn t copy protected it must be public domain We have to get rid of those ideas Until we do honest users will simply have to learn how to live with the developers who insist on using copy protection That s not after all impossible Just when they finally had a good excuse to use an exclamation point the gang at Nibble ran out of them Look at the cover of their February issue Interview with Tom Weishaar Publisher of Open Apple Geez For more on this controversy see
19. OS 1 4 solves the track 0 crash bug we discussed at Jength in November 1986 see ProDOS bug found in Australia page 2 73 and is the version we now recommend using We do not recommend either ProDOS 1 2 or ProDOS 1 3 both have bugs relating to the use of two 5 25 drives among other things Incidentally the track 0 bug described in November 1986 was always confined to 5 25 inch disks That bug has nothing to do with any 3 5 disk hard disk or RAMdisk problem you may experience If you don t have ready access to ProDOS 1 4 another alternative is to patch ProDOS 1 1 1 as described in Ruth s letter back in 1985 A public domain pro gram by Glen Bredon that installs a similar patch is in file 3047 in the GEnie Apple Il library These patches only work till 1992 however We ve finally had time to start digesting the Beagle Bros Timeout appli cations around here They re all good Ltramacros is incredible But Quick spell is a work of true genius What makes Quickspell so great is its interface You prepare your document within AppleWorks You press open apple escape to bring up the Timeout menu and scroll to and select Quickspell It immediately checks through an internal dictionary of most used words your personal cus tom dictionary and an 80 000 word Random House Concise dictionary Then it lists on the screen all the words in your document that it couldn t find in any of the dictionaries You can scroll through this list and select
20. Open Apple Releasing the power to everyone February 1988 Vol 4 No 1 ISSN 0885 4017 newstand price 2 00 photocopy charge per page 0 15 SS SS SE SS Ss ee Mainframe genie at your service Those of you who have been subscribing to Open Apple for awhile probably remember the cartoon in our June 1986 issue in which a fearsome looking IIc genie is saying to a shaking human at the keyboard Yes Master It s always been one of my favorites Christmas morning I know it s strange to talk about Christmas in the Febru ary issue but the January issue was already printed by Christmas morning so I couldn t possibly tell you this story in it the kids woke Kathy and me up and we crept downstairs together It got kind of steamy about half way down by the time we got to the Christmas tree it was obvious that someone besides Santa had been there I went to the fireplace and reached for my stocking As I touched it there was a loud humming sound like a modem pushing 2400 baud Suddenly smoke was everywhere Carolers were at our door singing out passwords A booming voice shook the house with Tom let s form a strategic alliance was sore afraid It was the mainframe genie From a pocket deep within his flowing robes he pulled out a clipping from the November 30th InfoWorld and asked me to read it I started to say that Steve Gibson s column was the only thing in InfoWorld worth reading but thought better of it The clippi
21. ade expires September 30 1988 According to the Walt Street Journal January 11 1988 page 5 the upgrade program is not merely to win customer goodwill When Apple itself handled the marketing and support chores for the programs it didn t bother to keep returned warranty cards from software customers much less lists of their names Claris s discounted upgrade will help us identify those customers said Mr Zeisler John Zeisler vice president of marketing who contends that suc cessful software companies cultivate repeat customers We really wish we knew their names already Maybe Zeisler would like all of us who aren t going to buy the AppleWorks upgrade to send him our names along with our wish lists of what we d like to see in future AppleWorks versions If you do write to him remind him that about 80 per cent of his revenue is coming from Apple Il programs and about 90 per cent of his development dollars are going into Macintosh programs Then tell him what you think about that His address is Jobn Zeisler Claris Corp 440 Clyde Ave Mountain View CA 94043 If you d rather just call and leave a message the corporate phone number is 415 960 1500 Time stopped for ProDOS 1 1 1 and earlier incarnations of ProDOS on Jan uary 1 of this year Clay Ruth warned us this was going to happen way back in October 1985 Time short for ProDOS page 1 79 Sorry 1 forgot to re men tion it a couple of months ago Pr
22. all the words you want to ignore Then you can scroll through it and select all the words you want to add to your custom dictionary You can also choose to replace misspelled words in the list The cursor point and select interface is at its finest in Quick spell The Macintosh interface supports a similar system but you have to use the mouse button to both scroll the list and to select individual items In the Apple Il interface the up and down arrows make the cursor scroll and the right and left arrows select or deselect items You can also select a single item with Return On the Apple Il it is very easy to control the speed at which the list scrolls and to select individual items On the Macintosh the list scrolls too rapidly to stop exactly where you want and using the mouse button for two dif ferent functions causes lots of extra hand movement Don t expect to read about this in Apple s Human Interface Guidelines however At any time Quickspell also lets you look at your misspelled words in con text in which case you see the whole AppleWorks screen with a small Quick spell menu at the bottom From the in context display you can once again choose to replace a word ignore it or add it to the custom dictionary But from this screen you can also request a suggested spelling Quickspell will then dis play a list of words spelled similarly to the one you have misspelled Again you can scroll through this list and pick out the spelling
23. am you want to run in the STARTUP position and runs Basic system As you can see with out BASIC LAUNCHER you can t start Applesoft pro grams from the Finder You can startup Basic system from the Finder by clicking on the Basic system icon but you can t tell Basic system to run anything other than the default program STARTUP without BASIC LAUNCHER Interestingly the Finder knows to use BASIC LAUNCHER with Applesoft programs because BASIC LAUNCHER is written in tiny print inside the icon file The icon for binary files on the other hand doesn t include this information That s why you can t start up a binary file from inside the Finder However using a buggy Apple program called icon Editor you can add the information about BASIC LAUNCHER to the binary file icon Neat eh Then novice users could crash their systems whenever they wanted by clicking on binary files that weren t actually pro grams The same trick would allow you to EXEC text February 1988 files from the Finder Apple handed out a beta copy of its Icon Editor to Apple I developers at AppleFest but unfortunately this tool hasn t surfaced at the Apple Programmers and Developers Association yet Actually icons are even neater than this You can make an icon specifically for all text files that have a filename ending in EX for example If all such files are execable and you tell the icon to use BASIC LAUNCHER then you cam exec these files fr
24. ause there never has been and still isn t any such thing as a double high res monochrome mode for composite screens double high mono is an RGB only mode But if you are looking at a color composite monitor with the Monochrome Color Register set to color and start flipping the Video Control Register between color and monochrome you will see a color shift on your dis play It means the best strategy for programmers is to keep the two switches synchronized that is either both set to color or both set to gray sca le monochrome The easiest way to do this is to enter the IIgs control panel and toggle the display type The Desktop program from early IIgs system disks changes this bit to turn on monochrome double high res Notice that if you enter and exit the control panel while using Desktop the screen display turns to multi colored mush if display type is set to color You can play with this to convince yourself that the color monochrome setting really does do something on an RGB equipped Iigs There are many doubters however because the setting works only in dou ble high res Many new RGB lgs users are discovering problems with Il family software that uses standard rather than double high resolution graphics The Open Apple 4 3 problem is that many graphics programs were written by and for II le lIc users who had composite monochrome monitors On color monitors the nice blacks and whites that these programs are supposed to display
25. available to ordinary people I d also like to endorse the comments of every sec ond writer to Open Apple and lament the lack of knowledge of dealers They are no better here than anywhere else I recently had to tell one about the lle to Ilgs motherboard upgrade option among a number of other things 4 6 Open Apple A possible solution to the chronically inadequate support provided by many dealers would be for them to enlist local Apple Il aficionados as experienced customer advisors to speak to potential or actual pur chasers about the possibilities of their computers Something as simple as giving a potential customer the name of an experienced local user as a support person would be of enormous value to the dealer the local support person could receive special discounts as payment Every happy user is worth a great deal to Apple Conversely every unhappy user who puts their system away in frustration is a mini disaster I for one would be quite happy to be involved in such a scheme Jan Wright Ballarat Australia Stone Solid Apple I ve been reading your comments and letters about the future of the Apple II with interest Where will new Apple II productivity software come from From fools like me who stil believe in the Apple II Fools who believe that if you can write a decent database manager for a 48K computer you should be able to write a great database manager when you have 128K to work with Who believe that pe
26. bscriber ISSN 0885 4017 Printed in the U S A GEnie mail OPEN APPLE through 1 4 of ProDOS it lives at 5900 if you bload PRODOS at 2000 In versions previous to 1 2 it lives at 5700 So for example to move the program from a version 1 1 1 PRODOS file to a version 1 4 PRODOS file do this insert disk with PRODOS 1 1 1 BLOAD PRODOS A 2000 TSYS load ProDOS 1 1 1 insert a backup copy of a disk holding PRODOS 1 4 BSAVE BIRDS BYE A 5700 1 300 save quit code BLOAD PRODOS A 2000 TSYS load ProDOS 1 4 BLOAD BIRDS BYE A 5900 overlay Bye BSAVE PRODOS A 2000 TSYS re SAVE ProDOS 1 4 Bird s program isn t sold separately It s part of the ProDOS image on most Software Touch and Beagle Bros products Duplicate pathname problem Copy ll Plus users beware The program will allow you to rename a file to that of one which already exists If you then try to manipulate the renamed file and it happens to be farther down in the directory than its namesake you ll be manipulating the wrong file EXEC files make a good alternative to the Basic Copy program in your July 1985 issue In my applica tion the last thing that my STARTUP program needs to do is to transfer some files to RAM put all the LOAD SAVE s BLOAD BSAVE s and the RUN MA IN PROGRAM into a text file with my word processor save this as a text file and then have my startup pro gram EXEC the filename and END To overcome the annoyance of an
27. cified device names were I found CONSOLE PRINTER MODEM NETPTRI NULL and MEMBUFR NULL is probably a dummy device for sending output off into the ether NETPTR is probably for AppleTalk devices and MEMBUFR is described in the GS BASIC manual as a 256 byte pseudo character device Tom says they must mean a 256 byte pseudo character device he says a pseudo character would have to be a character with the high bit set to two Anyway you can get an immediate mode printer listing like this OPEN PRINTER FOR OUTPUT AS L OUTPUTA LIST OUTPOTHO CLOSB 1 This is pretty Klunky what s more haven t figured out how to get rid of a superfluous linefeed as each line wraps at the printer You may want to enter the commands into an EXEC file find typing EXEC LIST is a lot easier than entering the above every time want a hardcopy 1 also haven t figured out how to use LIST from with in a program This feature may seem useless but for example several of the Applesoft programs on the DOStalk Scrapbook Program Disk LIST themselves so that the user can see them and leam how they work The answer to the control reset situation is trivial Just never include any bugs in your program that would make the program hang If you do this you ll never need controt reset
28. for paid Open Apple sub scribers I ll do it the GEnie said but no free time and no free manuals the 29 95 includes a manual and two hours of free time I already liked the basic rate for connect time on GEnie 5 per hour for non prime access evenings after 6 mornings before 8 weekends and holidays at either 300 or 1200 baud 12 50 per hour for 2400 baud More importantly there are no minimum monthly charges None of the major national networks has lower rates most are higher GEnie can be accessed with a local telephone call from almost 500 cities in the U S and four in Canada What about our international subscribers asked I m a multinational company GEnie responded expanding around the world Self actualization was starting to set in Like the other national networks GEnie offers news shopping airline schedules and fares financial information and electronic mail And like the other national networks the most popular part of GEnie is its bulletin boards and libraries devoted to computers On GEnie these areas are called Roundtables There are two active Apple I Roundtables on GEnie a general one and a second one for programmers and developers Each Roundtable has its own bulletin board conference rooms and library The bulletin boards are organized into categories the categories into topics Unlike other systems a user s message isn t deleted after a few days but stay
29. h as 169 This little gadget if sold or mar keted by Apple would allow more folks like us to use lics as solid productivity computers If anyone would like a Radio Shack parts list and schematic for our tlc standby power unit just drop a SASE to us and we ll fix em up How many more businesses operate Apple II office systems like we do Why has Apple deliberately cho sen to ignore us and our needs Why can t we get info on how to link lics together or to laser printers from the local Apple boys We ve been tempted to find or start an Apple II business only users group Maybe there is such an organization and we re further behind than I thought Oh well back to exchanging files and graphics with Scotland as we prepare our 400K one year operating plan spreadsheet and print it out on the laser printer as the Customer Service guys run a database failure sort for a customer who has asked Marketing for a big re quote while Engineering fiddles with George Smith President Electro Flow Controls Inc P O Box 870 Missouri City TX 77459 Useful computing ordinary people I have often pondered why the Apple II has such appeal to me after using a I Plus then a Ile It has been very difficult to actually pin down the reasons for my loyalty Certainly much has to do with accumulated knowledge but there is much more to it than that Probably the major factor and one which goes against conventional wisdom in the computer
30. hat Apple was chosen because its bid represented the lowest life cycle cost 1 hadn t thought of that before but the Apple II does have a much longer life cycle than your standard MS DOS machine The IBM PC has come and has been discontinued yet we still have the Apple II As we begin volume 4 of Open Apple we re making a few adjustments to our operation in addition to the GEnie alliance that thought you might like to know about One problem we ve had is that you our subscribers insist on buying stuff from us Now that in itself isn t so bad But we ve never been set up to provide you the kind of service you expect from a high tech computer related company You expect 24 hour order turn around Our system here how ever is modeled after what s typical in the magazine industry four week turn 44 Open Apple around if there are no snags You ve complained about it I ve complained about it and it has come down to either getting out of the book and back issue business or getting into it with all six feet Our current level of sales doesn t justify all six feet However if my own experience at trying to buy Apple Il related books is any indication of what s going on in the world the kingdom is badly in need of a mail order retailer who camies a large selection of Apple II books We ve decided to expand and improve our mail order business and to try to fill that niche We re working on an order entry inventory and shipp
31. he root directory The file DIALOG ICONS which I gave a what is this and why is it here notation in the directory listing on page 3 90 may or may not deserve the snotty treat ment I gave it It contains duplicates of some dialogue icons that are embedded inside the Finder program The Finder doesn t use DIALOG ICONS but sup posed it s possible that other ProDOS 16 programs could But even so why is this file cluttering up the root directory instead of being in the System Disk ICONS folder The file called BASIC LAUNCHER in the root direc tory of the ligs system disk on the other hand has value Don t drag it to the trash can as I suggested on page 3 92 Don t believe my notation in the aforemen tioned directory listing that it takes longer to toad than to run BASIC LAUNCHER is needed to startup Applesoft programs from within the Finder If you double click on an Applesoft program icon the Finder is supposed to run that program To get to that program however the Finder has to have a way to leave ProDOS 16 startup ProDOS 8 startup Basic sys tem and finally startup the Applesoft program you have selected This requires a long reach The Finder obtains this reach by telling BASIC LAUNCHER what Applesoft program you want to run and telling PQUIT to start BASIC LAUNCHER This is how we get out of ProDOS 16 and into ProDOS 8 BASIC LAUNCHER in tum loads Basic system embeds the name of the Applesoft progr
32. hey just said We don t know about that nearly every time we asked a question It was too much to expect the Apple locals to know about enhancing AppleWorks or enhancing lics or doing a bit of networking I guess After a bit we like other slightly knowledgeable Apple business users bought our goodies by mail order we succumbed to the Why pay more from someone who won t help you syndrome causing the locals to decide that there wasn t enough Apple II business around to warrant their attention as they leaned further toward MS DOS contraptions It s a dog gone shame that we businessmen must also be com puter experts and work against the local Apple sales effort to get the job done while the MS DOS boys down the street will gladly sell you the whole lot Our business network operates just fine We don t brag about it we just use it It s nothing fancy but 11 machines with compatible integrated software that is easy for new employees to learn and a varied collec tion of accessible printers Apple and otherwise is nothing to sneeze at my friend Macintosh MS DOS or Open Apple 4 5 otherwise To top things off we developed and built a cheap standby rechargeable power pack that operates each IIc for 2 hours during power glitches and outages It lets us really utilize IIc RAMcards and RAMdisks It costs 30 bucks to make and any Apple llc user can get all the parts at Radio Shack Some folks sell them for as muc
33. ing system now and expect to be in full operation by mid summer As part of the change we re bringing our subscrip tion list back in house see May 1986 page 2 25 and we ll resume processing it with Apple Ils Unfortunately all this has required that give up being a cot tage industrialist On December 1 Open Apple began moving out of peoples houses and into 2 000 square feet of office warehouse space in a top secret location somewhere east of the Rockies An office needs to have people working in it to amount to much Two of our work at home consultants agreed to become office based employees one wouldn t leave the cottage Still with us are Dennis Doms and Sally Dwyer The other Sally Sally Tally our imaginary Circulation Manager may or may not be moving here from the fulfillment service in Syracuse N Y that we re about to stop using she hasn t decided yet We have added the locally renowned Apple II and Mazda wizard Tom Vanderpool to our technical side staff And our business side staff now includes Steve Kelly an MBA who comes to us with very rare and nearly unbelievable business credentials he s been a Kansas farmer for more than ten years and has a net profit to show for it Open Apple has never had to pay rent before postage rates go up this spring for the second time since we started and each direct mail campaign we do gets a slightly lower response because our best prospects are already subscribers I ve had to face the
34. ire from the top right connector to the bottom left connector and from the top left connector to the bottom right connector Finally solder new wires going to the drive motor to the two middle connectors one on the right side and one on the left side With the switch in one position the drive runs normally in the second position it is reversed Move the switch only when the drive motor is off Len Powell Finksburg Md ProDOS time I want to access the Apple Iigs clock from Applesoft under ProDOS tried PEEKing at locations 49042 BF92 minutes and 49043 BF93 hours but these locations are only updated during disk access Do I need a machine language routine to call the lgs toolbox such as the one you published back in April page 3 21 or is there an easler way Glenn Calderone Fountain Valley Calif The easy way is to use the ProDOS Machine Lan guage Interface GET_TIME call This call updates the locations you mention with the current time Using this call rather than a ilgs toolbox call makes your program compatible with any Apple Il Here s a short program that Dennis wrote to show how to do this 10 POKE 768 32 REM 0300 20 00 BF JSR BFOO 20 PORE 769 0 REM 0303 82 DA 82 30 POKE 770 191 REM 0304 00 00 DA 0000 40 PORE 771 130 REM 0305 18 cic 4 8 Open Apple 50 POKE 772 0 REM 0306 60 RIS 60 PORE 773 0 REN 10 POKE 774 24 REM 62 is GET TIME call 80 PORE 775 96 REM no parameter list 9
35. l accessing of sensitive files This valuable fea ture is available on Symphony and it would be a good addition to AppleWorks John M Klein Spring Texas The best solution we can think of is Beagle Bros Timeout DeskTools which contains a routine called File Encrypter that can be used to encrypt files from within AppleWorks You load any type of AppleWorks file you want to keep secret onto your desktop encrypt it using a password of your choice from one to ten characters long and then save it Encrypted files look like gibberish To decrypt load the file onto the desktop reenter your password and the file will be restored If the file is still gibberish you entered the wrong password At this point you can try to guess the right password but it may take some time to enter all Open Apple 4 7 60 000 000 000 000 000 000 possible combinations Desktools also includes a calendar calculator notepad dialer envelope addresser clock clipboard converter for moving data directly between database format and spreadsheet format or vice versa without using DIF files upper lower case converter word processor page preview word counter and of course a puzzle Timeout DeskTools is 49 95 from Beagle Bros 6215 Ferris Square San Diego CA 92121 619 452 5500 aedi revelc A was recently approached by an associate who operates a smail business He has a number of data disks that are vulnerable to unauthorized copying or use He
36. lanea Claris changed from egg to chick in mid January I ve given Claris a mighty hard time the last few months but we have to live with Claris now so m declaring a unilateral cease fire Claris started shipping a slightly revised version of AppleWorks in mid Jan uary The only revision I can detect from talking to them over the phone is that they changed the disk label They re calling it AppleWorks version 2 0 This in itself is pretty special you might remember that when Claris was announced Apple said Claris wouldn t be allowed to use Apple trademarks To its credit much of the Claris s early efforts appear to be going into cus tomer service It says it intends to provide customer support which will be quite a change from how Apple itself handled AppleWorks The Claris version of AppleWorks will retail for 249 Upgrades from earlier versions of AppleWorks are 75 For more information on the upgrade call 800 544 8554 8 30 5 30 M F Pacific time and ask for an AppleWorks upgrade packet They ll mail it to you use it to mail your check and original disk as proof of purchase back to them If you already have AppleWorks 2 0 save your money until we find out if there are any real changes here If you have an earlier version of AppleWorks this is your chance to get the latest According to the Claris representative talked to on the phone the upgrade can be made from any prior version of AppleWorks Availability of the upgr
37. ly are If you buy just one book about AppleWorks this is the one fo get AppleWorks 8 amp 16 Your ongoing discussion of what the next version of AppleWorks should do is intriguing However the focus of the discussion has been on the llgs and what a 16 bit AppleWorks should be like Why not bring any enhanced version of AppleWorks to the 8 bit Ile and IIc too Both 8 bit and 16 bit versions of AppleWorks should be included in the same box The 16 bit version should use the 16 bit code for improved performance not new features as you have suggested To the user and to AppleWorks add ons like Timeout both ver sions should seem identical To allow add ons to be compatible with both versions the developer hooks should be written in 8 bit code Now how should the program itself be improved For one thing the three AppleWorks applications should be enhanced to bring them up to stand alone quality In the word processor for example how about Tight justification a way to print either formatted or unformatted text files without using a custom printer and wildcard and carriage return options for Find and Replace A way to embed special printer codes in word pro cessor documents is needed Why not allow ten cus tom character strings per printer In the word proces sor select U ser 0 through U9 to select these strings which would appear as carets in the text These com mands would be sent to the printer but not counted in
38. make up a portion of the Apple I libraries As we wrestled I was never able to persuade the GEnie into paying royalties at a level high enough that I could hire a professional to manage the day to day operations of the Apple II Roundtables even if the professional I hired got every penny But financial considerations have never been very high on the list of pri orities around here and the potential of a GEnie Open Apple alliance for releasing the power of the Apple II eventually overcame me and I signed on the dotted line 4 2 Open Apple It will be a few weeks yet before this alliance is settled and organized I m still learning how to use GEnie s system I ve been to an introductory confer ence in the Apple II area where the GEnie regulars many of them already Open Apple subscribers threw electronic pies at me The procedure for Open Apple subscribers getting free accounts isn t settled yet but it will involve calling a GEnie 800 number with your modem and providing your name and credit card number for billing purposes Stay tuned Starting with this issue Open Apple will carry bits of information about the software available in GEnie s Apple II libraries news about upcoming confer ences and tips and tricks gleaned from its bulletin boards If you re a GEnie user already you can start sending mail to me UNCLE DOS and to Dennis OPEN APPLE right now See you online Miscel
39. ng said that Apple was planning an online com munication network for Apple users The network would be managed by a com pany called Quantum Computer Systems which has a similar product for Com modore users Quantum would operate Apple s service the clipping said which would be sold under Apple s logo The new network would offer technical sup port from Apple itself Subscribers would use Quantum s own communications software to access the service Sounds great said All the l family genies will be able to get together on line and release the power to everyone But as we talked could tell that this mainframe genie wasn t happy The smoke started to settle and his robes slowly became translucent Through them I could see a three piece suit Then it dawned on me This wasn t just any main frame genie this was GEnie the online network operated by General Electric GEnie had lost its Apple II manager to Quantum and wanted Open Apple to take his place No I said I don t have time We ll pay you royalties the GEnie said They re not enough I responded and negotiations were open We wrestled Mainframe genies are strong but not overpowering fired up AppleWorks and attacked him with memos and spread sheets I know how to deal with these suits thought to myself The GEnie was about to raise its onetime sign up fee for new users to 29 95 from 18 1 demanded no sign up fees at all
40. oDOS 1 1 1 and earlier versions were designed to work with a clock card the Thunderclock that didn t keep track of what year it was To compensate for this the clock routines in ProDOS 1 1 1 figure out what year it is by match ing the day of the week with the date It s all very complicated but it works for seven years Then it doesn t Since ProDOS 1 1 1 won t read the clock in the IIgs anyhow if you have a Jigs the point is moot If you have any other Apple without a clock in it same result If you do have a clock in any other Apple IL however you ll notice that all the files you ve changed since the first of the year now have a last modifica tion date of 1982 If you try to use AppleWorks you ll find that it won t even accept 1982 when you try to get past the startup date prompt One wonders whether Claris updated the version of ProDOS on its new AppleWorks disks Apple s last AppleWorks 2 0 disks still had ProDOS 1 1 1 on them Vol 4 No 1 The best solution is to get ProDOS 1 4 from your dealer or from a friend who has a igs On the ligs system disk ProDOS 1 4 is in a file in the SYSTEM folder and is called P8 You need to rename it PRODOS and copy it into the root direc tory of all the disks you boot with While you re at it you might as well get the latest ProDOS system utilities too They re in a folder called SYS UTILS on the ligs system disk and will work on any 64K Apple that can display 80 column text ProD
41. om the Finder without endangering novice users While we re talking about the Finder I ll pass on a tip from GEnie user Bruce Gordon Program icons can be dragged onto the desktop and left there Run one of the programs with the write Finder data option on and when you quit back to the Finder the icons will reappear on your desktop if the programs can be found in your drives You can double click on any program s desktop icon to run it without opening any windows or folders This trick should be most useful for hard disk users Don t bother teaching it to your Macintosh friends however because their Finder can t do that unless all the programs come from the same window to begin with A Finder limitation several people have reported running into fs that it won t copy the contents of a 3 5 disk onto RAM5 As GEnie s LINEFEED Lou Flemal explains it the Finder uses the free RAM in the GS Ram card to copy faster But you are trying to use that same RAM to copy TO When Finder starts out it sees XxxK free so it knows it can fit the disk you want copied into RAM5 But then Finder loads all it can into the free RAM same stuff so it can copy faster When it goes to write the stuff to RAMS there isn t enough room because it has used the space I found two notes about the system disk in Apple s AppleLink technical library One says that anyone who upgrades to the 1 1 ligs ROM should then only use the system software
42. ople are interested in fast pow erful programs that don t use graphics and sound even if Apple Computer generally isn t Who love the Macintosh and the Apple II but sus pect that trying to turn an Apple li into a color Macin tosh simply costs too much in both speed and memory to make sense for a lot of applications Who are willing to buck all of the trends and go it alone without big bucks financing the way we did it in the old days when personal computer software was a vibrant innovative cottage industry producing high powered applications software for a computer that conventional wisdom says won t pay off Who understands that first time computer users soon become experienced computer users with needs that often can t be met by software designed for first time users But they re still computer users not com puter programmers And a good program designer should be able to give those people the power they need without forcing them to become programmers Fools who are willing not only to produce software for the Apple IL but to make a commitment to it Stone Edge Technologies is committed to making DB Master Version Five and Version Five Profession al the high power data base managers for the Apple II With multi file relational capabilities multi user ver sions and one of the most powerful report generators available for any personal computer we re giving the Apple il market a chance to prove that the p
43. ount totals This is how professional accountants do it I guess but a seat of the pants operation like Open Apple needs a little more flexibility than that also bought DAC Easy Accounting but it was so slow once we got it set up that nobody around here would use it So we re still using Time Is Money ourselves For more on this program see the last paragraph of my February 1988 response to The Sider and Software in September 1985 page 70 Upgrade 15 program 100 Turning Point Software 230 Western Ave Boston MA 02134 617 782 4877 One of the least understood selections in the Apple IIgs control panel is the very first one the display type for which there are two choices color and monochrome The user manual s advice which is essentially to use the color selection if you have a color monitor and the monochrome selection if you have a monochrome monitor is simplistic The manual doesn t mention it but this selection does totally different things depending on whether your monitor is connected to the 15 pin RGB video out put or the round RCA type composite output The composite output is what other Apple Ils use On the Ilgs this output does exactly what it does on other Ils when the IIgs display type is set to color When display type is set to monochrome on the other hand all color sig nals coming from the lgs composite output are changed into gray scale signals This
44. reality that Open Apple s subscription price must go up an ugly prospect This will happen March 15 1988 Our new prices will be 28 for 1 year 54 for 2 years and 78 for three years free airmail worldwide as usual Renewals at the old prices 24 44 and 60 will be accepted through Yol 4 No 1 April 1 Facing and accepting the financial limitations of Open Apple has been difficult but accepting the philosophical limitations of my take no prisoners position on copy protection August 1987 page 3 50 has been gut wrenching The problem with my position is that it restricts the amount of software avail able for the Apple II and thus the value of the Apple Il in two ways First obviously those of us who simply refuse to buy or use any copy pro tected software blind ourselves to a major share of what s going on In the king dom Secondly and far more importantly Apple II software developers deserve to be compensated for their work The ethic that it s all right to make a copy for my friend colleaque students pervades the kingdom That ethic is wrong If the pervasive ethic was that asking someone to copy one of their programs for you was the same as asking them to shoplift a memory card we would be in a better position to demand no copy protection But that s not the pervasive ethic Have you ever noticed how much bigger and wealthier Apple II hardware companies are than Apple II software companies Now you know why
45. s on until the area manager deletes it Thus the bulletin board consists of a large number of threads each on a specific topic with tips questions and answers going back in some cases two years or more AS negotiations progressed I started to think about editing these threads so that the older information in them was all solid while the newer information toward the bottom of the thread would contain today s questions and more tentative answers could imagine hundreds of Apple II users working together to release the power each in his or her own areas of interest Then I realized was imagining an issue of Open Apple that had come alive The conference rooms in each Roundtable can be used for online meetings A good example of the power of conferences is the Binary Il file format for mak ing Apple II communications easier see Sending files by carrier bunny April 1987 page 3 17 Gary Little used the conferencing feature of one of the national networks to discuss Binary Il with other Apple II users interested in communications protocols These discussions led to improvements in his pro posed format and to its rapid acceptance in the Apple H community once it was finalized The libraries in each Roundtable hold public domain software and text arti cles as well as many shareware programs that can be examined in the comfort of one s own home and purchased by sending the author the necessary fees Pictures and sounds also
46. s small as possible Another possibility when there are just a few columns or rows that contain calculated double blanks is to use the IF function to determine where the blanks are For example to add A10 and Alt when either could contain a double blank use IF A10 0 A1 1 IF A11 0 A10 A10 Al 1 Werner Kubelka Niteroi RJ Brazil Use a flag cell to blank zero entries in worksheets December 1987 page 5 85 June 1987 page 3 39 Set the flag to 99 to see the spreadsheet as it would normally appear and to caiculate totals Set the flag to zero and recalculate to blank out the zero cells for printing In the data cells use IF with a formula such as IF AND flag 0 result 0 NA result where flag points to the cell you will use as a flag and result is the formula that gives the data you want displayed in this cell In cells that make calculations using these data cells use a formula such as IF flag 0 self calcula tion where self causes the cell to return its own value and calculation returns the data you want dis played in this cell Force calculation of the worksheet with the flag set to 99 to obtain the correct results then set the flag to 0 and recalculate to replace the zero cells with blanks For installing custom printers a word processor file of printer code macros would be an efficient distribu tion medium The macro could start at the point where you give the printer a name Has an
47. slightly modifies the dot patterns that represent colors on a monochrome screen from splotchy to reqular in all graphic modes Internally what the con tro panel actually does is change bit 7 of the Iigs Monochrome Color Register which is at C021 O color L gray scale Remember however that this regis ter affects only composite monitors If you have a composite monitor either color or monochrome our advice is to leave the control panel s display type set to color this will give you exact ly the same screen image that you d get with your monitor if it was hooked to any other Il The gray scale option does have the potential to clean up your screen image slightly so you may like to try it from time to time But software designers who put any thought at all into how color images look on monochrome monitors will be working from the standard II family display since most IIgs owners buy RGB monitors hardly anyone has a system that actually supports the IIgs gray scale capability With the more popular RGB monitor the color monochrome selection does have an effect but you have to be in exactly the right place to see it That place is double high resolution graphics Apple created standards for RGB double high resolution graphics for the Apple II family when it released the Apple Color 64K Extended Memory card for the Ile These standards were discussed here in Open Apple way back in May 1985 page 36 and July 1985 page 54 On
48. t each file type should have its own icon Thus you can tell a binary file from a text file from an Applesoft file by looking at its picture In addition icons can be defined for specific files For example a special icon could be created for an Apple soft program called HEARTBEAT MATH Just that one program would be linked to the special icon other Applesoft programs would continue to use the generic Applesoft icon All icons that the Finder uses come from special files that are themselves file type CA and that have a file name ending in ICONS no don t know what the icon for an icon file is In addition all icon files must appear inside a folder previously known as a subdirectory called ICONS The ilgs system disk has an ICONS folder in its root directory In January insisted rather strongly that this folder contained the same kind of stuff as a bunch of other folders on the system disk and that those other folders were inside the SYSTEM folder Thus using blind logic insisted ICONS should be inside the SYSTEM folder too At the time I assumed that all icons the Finder would ever use would be in the Sys tem Disk s ICON folder However subscriber David Lyons points out that every disk you own can have its own ICONS folder The Finder will look for an ICONS folder on all the disks it has access to Since most disks don t have a SYSTEM folder to put the ICONS folder into it makes more sense for ICONS to be in t
49. tually distributing programs written with each of the various Basics G uess S yntax BASIC In the November Open Apple you mentioned Apple s ligs BASIC page 3 80 I have had it for a month and have two problems with it First there seems to be no way to warm start it Control reset brings up a bouncing Apple screen Second LISTing a program to an ImageWriter II seems impossible 1 can LIST to the screen or print the output of a program or a CATALOG but can t OPEN PRINTER as a file in immediate mode In deferred mode the error RESERVED WORD comes up when LIST is used in a program R C Allison Punta Gorda Fla Dennis responds The beta version ilgs BASIC man ual is woefully deficient we ve had a copy for a while too but have decided not to review it until a passable manual surfaces An example of the manual s problems is that file and device I O isn t covered except in the reference sec tion descriptions This means you have to discover things in bits and pieces found one clue for listing a program under the syntax for the OUTPUT com mand Then I found out that the syntax given for the OPEN command is incorrect when opening a device The example given is OPEN CONSOLE FOR OUTPUT AS 1 The correct syntax includes quotes around the filename OPEN CONSOLE FOR OUTPUT AS 1 That solved scanned the GSBASIC SYS16 program file with Block Warden to find out what the other unspe
50. u get all the tools fonts and print drivers onto the system disk older floppies often have enough room for the actual programs I have for instance copied MultiScribe GS 0 one side of a 5 25 disk and Top Draw o the other Getting down to business I ve read comments in your publication about using Apple Ils in commercial productivity applications Let me tell you about how we do it We utilize eleven enhanced Apple lc machines all using AppleWorks to operate an electronic instrumen tation business We acquired our first machines in late 1984 and have taken advantage of improvements in AppleWorks itself version 2 0 and in various hard ware Z RAM Ultra Ill UniDisk 3 5 and software add ons PinPoint Point to Point and TimeOut for exam ple We re experimenting with some relatively new AppleWorks file compatible accounting software too If a lic fails we have a couple of extras so we just whup it out an drag the broken one down to the local Apple boys for service Every single business day we use word processing spreadsheets and data base operations and accesso ry programs for communications and spell checking exchanging disks and files filling in standard order and invoice forms making mailing labels using infor mation from our IIcs We have a portable IIc a la Roger Coats in San Diego utilizing a Prairie Power battery pack an LCD display a Diconix battery powered print er and a ProCom modem
51. ully admitted on page 5 69 suspect the only short term answer is to put fewer files in each subdirectory 5ince Claris has big plans for customer support perhaps we can look for a fix to this problem from them Database fixer I ve also experienced the AppleWorks 2 0 database file bug reported by Eugene Whitehouse and Sidney Powers December page 3 87 January page 3 96 1 don t know what s causing it but I ve gotten quite good at recovering the files If Copy H Plus is used to copy a damaged file to an otherwise empty disk the database file header will be found at track 0 sector 1 Byte 38 26 in this sector gives the number of report formats in the file I ve had success at both trial and error changes to the value and at studying the first 50 lines or so of a word processor text file load of the database file to determine just how many report for mats are left Robert L Hildebrandt Pleasant Ridge Mich Those who would rather use ProSEL s Block War den to make the change need to tell it to Follow the correct file then change byte 26 in the file s first block Another copy machine Another way to make more than nine copies of a word processor document without having to patch any thing AppleWorks as copy machine October 1987 page 3 71 is to create a database file with just one category Put a single word from your document in this category then copy the record until you have as many records in
52. undits are wrong that there is a market for high powered soft ware for the Apple Il Barney Stone Stone Edge Technologies Inc P O Box 200 Maple Glen PA 19002 Blessed are the disk rescuers You mentioned Pete Johnson as a source of disk repair in an earlier issue November 1986 page 2 76 1 have had unfortunately several occasions to need his services He has always done well for me The last time I needed help FAST 1 express mailed the disk to him I had it back the third day I heartily recommend him Brian Eastman Cincinnati Ohio Johnson s address is P O Box 5 New London MN 56273 Solving for double blanks A simple way to get around the calculated double blank NA problem mentioned in Multiplan update in December 1987 page 3 85 is to create a duplicate of what you want to print on the right side or the bot tom of your work area To create this duplicate where for example cell A101 corresponds to the original Al use the formula IF A1 0 NA A1 Using the copy rel ative command it takes just a few keystrokes to create this duplicate spreadsheet provided you have enough space 1 found in practice that 1 want the cosmetics of blanks substituting for zeros only in that part of the spreadsheet that print into a report And that is usual fy only the summary The bigger the part with the cos metics the slower will be the speed of calculation That s why I try to keep the cosmetic part a
53. yone noticed that Randy Brandt is licensing a runtime version of UitraMacros to support task files You published a letter of mine in September Thinking about databases page 3 63 in which I said the AppleWorks word processor Find and Replace commands take about 10 per cent longer with version 2 0 than with version 1 3 My AppleWorks 2 0 word processor was slower because it had escaped my per mutation heap unlabeled with AutoWorks on it In real ity the 2 0 word processor is slightly faster I second the motion for a discussion of what a 16 bit or any AppleWorks could and should do For example version 2 0 still cannot handle a DIF file with optional headers a bug you exposed in detail in August 1986 AppleWorks DIFficulties page 2 56 Robert Ericson North Providence RI Along with his letter Ericson sent us a copy of a new second edition of his book AppleWorks Tips and Techniques Sybex liked the first edition of this book so much January 1986 page 1 97 that part of what I said ended up on the back cover of the sec ond edition The new edition was just generally spiffed up with new tricks expanded to include all the new stuff in AppleWorks 2 0 and has a whole new chapter on macro programs Here s a typical Ericson insight from the macro chapter The Beagle Bros man ual draws no line between macros and contro pro Vol 4 No 1 gams This makes macros appear to be more compli cated than they real
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