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Title SCREEN$

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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