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Disk 12 program notes
+ + + + P R O G R A M N O T E S + + + +
SAMSCRATCH 3.2 Updated by S.N.Goodwin
Another version of our now famous wordprocessor with even more
added by our good friend Simon Goodwin. This version has many
new features, and has full instructions contained within the
program.
A must for all you Samscratch fans..
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FONT INDEX by Dave Marriot
This program is a must for all you people out there, who like
me, save character fonts from various sources.
This program will keep your fonts in order, and will allow you
to add comments, view the fonts in all modes and all sizes, as
well as being able to update itself when new fonts are added to
the disc.
It needs Masterdos to run, but there are comprehensive
instructions if you fancy converting it to Samdos.
All running instructions are included within the program, a
must for us fontaphiles.
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FILE WIPE by M.Broster
A useful utility, which allows you to quickly erase unwanted
files from a disc. Each filename is printed on screen, and you
just select yes or no. It couldn't be simpler.
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LABEL PRINT II by John White
This is an upgraded version of the label printer published a
couple of issues ago.
Some of the extras include the ability to save and load border
patterns, and do selective printing.
Originally written for the Spectrum, John has done a nice job in
converting it for the Sam.
COLOUR SWAP by Dave Hall
A small utility, which allows you to load a screen and see at a
glance which colours have been used in it. You can also change
any of the colours to your own choice, even flashing ones.
The program is self explanatory, and has instructions built in.
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MASTERDOS UTILITY by Keith Pirie
Again for Masterdos users, a disc organiser, which will let you
read in a directory, and then gives you the opportunity of
erasing, loading etc, the file(s) of your choice.
Very easy and quick to use, but as mentioned, needs Masterdos to
operate.
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CROSSWORD by D.A.Lorner
An unusual type of crossword puzzle this. It ask the relevant
question, and if you get it right, will fill in the squares. If
however you get it wrong, you have the option to see the correct
answer.
Mr. Lorner has sent a couple of these in, so I shall publish
another one in a future issue.
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MASKS by Stan Flynn
Stan volunteered to try and learn how to use masks with the GRAB
and PUT commands. After I did him a small explanation program,
he sent back this very good program, which simply but
effectively, shows how masks are creared and used.
He uses plenty of graphic demos to explain various points, and
everything is easy to follow.
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TASWORD TO BASIC CONVERTER by D.Tonks
This program simply loads in a Tasword file, and converts it to
BASIC. Using it along with PC SUITE, you could write a BASIC
program on a PC wordprocessor, which could then be
transferred to a Tasword file and read into this program. This
would then be converted to true BASIC, which can be run quite
happily on the Sam.
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TRIANGLE (DEF PROC) by D.Tonks
Give your Sam a TRIANGLE command with this DEF PROC. Triangles
can be drawn any size anywhere on the screen with just 1
command.
Instuctions included in the program.
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GALLERY
Another selection of screens, sent in by members, plus a couple
which fell off the back of an Amiga.
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TRAY GAME by D.A.Lorner
The very popular sliding puzzle game, done this time with giant
characters, and using the Sam's smooth scroll routines.
It's driven me mad for hours, trying to get the pieces in the
right place.
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ALL SORTS by Simon N. Goodwin
A couple of nice demos of 2 different types of string sorts. As
the sort takes place, you can watch it actually happening.
Explanations of the various merits of the sort are also given.
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MESSTOOL by D.Tonks
This utility is aimed at the people who have purchased a
Messenger. What it does is to allow you to load a messenger
file, and then play around with it. After extracting the
character set, or putting a new screen into the Spectrum
program, you are able to save a new copy of the program to disc.
All command are shown on screen, and are fairly self
explanatory. I have not given a program run command, as if you
ran the program, you would have to break it with the NMI button,
and when reloading, this method needs several CALLs to restart.
I have for instance put a new background into "180" using this
program, and I am sure that there are many other programs that
have a screen or character set that you can change to your own
requirements.
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OPUS DISC READER by Andy Wright (sent in by K.Pirie)
For you Opus owners out there, this is another Opus disc-reading
utility, but this one gives you the choice of 40 or 80 track
discs, formatted to either 256 or 512 bytes per sector. This
should cover most of the Opus disc setups and saves having to
swap over files on the Opus to the right type of disc, before
converting.
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CLIP ART DISC (free gift)
by Jeff Jenning, Bob Evans and Dave Tonks
This disc contains an amazing 110 MODE 4 screens on it. These
were done using G. Bobkers great screen compressor, which really
does make the most of disc space.
The only problem is that you can only get 80 files onto a
directory, and this leaves a lot of disc unused. To get around
this problem, the 3 of us, over the weeks devised this disc
system. What we've done is to take 10 compressed screens and
save them as 1 block of memory. This cuts down the number of
directory spaces needed.
The program is menu driven, and with it you can view the screens
one at at time scrolling backwards and forwards through them
using the cursors. As each 10 is looked at, the next block of 10
is automatically loaded, so you have in effect, a continuous
display.
Screens on view can be saved to disc as ordinary MODE 4 screen
files, as well as dumped to a printer. There is even an option
to make your own blocks out of 10 compressed screens, which
updates the BASIC to match when finished. The compressed screens
have to be done using G.Bobkers screen compressor, which is
available directly from him at £2.99 We are working on a MODE 1
version at the moment, which we reckon will get about 400 to 500
screens on 1 disc.
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MENU.SCR (M.Collinge)
This is the file that was missed off issue 11.
Swap it to that issue and Menumaker will now work correctly.
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