SLO BYTES PC USER'S GROUP NEWSLETTER - AUGUST, 1988 WHAT'S NEW At our August meeting French Morgan gave us an indepth demonstration of PC TOOLS DELUXE. As multifaceted set of utilities, PC TOOLS has many of the same time saving commands as similar products in it's class. PC TOOLS is divided into Disk Services and Special Services. Under Disk Services you can copy, compare, find, view, edit, and map files. Special Services include directory management (delete, add, and select subdirectories) and on-line help. French highlighted some of the more unique capabilities of PC TOOLS. I especially liked the "prune/graft" routine. With this feature, you can move any subdirectory on any part of your hard disk to any other location on your hard disk without the time consuming aslfk of first creating a new subdirectory, copying the files over, then deleting the old subdirectory. This coming month at the new user's meeting, Nils Sedwick, owner of Onsite Traning Systems, will briefly introduce us to "Managing PC's as a System". This will be of special interest to those who have not purchased their first computer system. He will discuss the many uses of computers, the pitfalls encountered by first-time buyers, and how to buy the system that best fits your needs. Onsite Training offers several software training programs for the new user. Bring your computer questions to the early meeting. As a group we will do our best to answer all questions. Bill Roch, owner of ELLIAM Associates, will present his software package RememDIR. This program is memory resident and will add a 50 character file description to any file. With RememDIR, you can set up commands to load and execute any file from within the program. The program sells for $29.95. ELLIAM Associates, located in Los Osos, sells both commercial and public domain software. They support hundreds of disks in both DOS and CPM format. Prices range from $3.00 to $10.00 per disk depending type and quantity. --------------------------------- TELECOMMUNICATIONS INTERNAL OR EXTERNAL By Bruce Rogers Reprinted from Utah Blue Chips That is the question asked by Shakespere, "to be or not to be." Modems for your computer come in internal and external configurations. INTERNAL MODEMS cost slightly less than EXTERNAL MODEMS in the same model series. A look through the magazines and weekly newspapers shows a wide choice of both internal and external modems. Choices include price, speed and extra functions. There are also power considerations. Internal modems are always on in your computer and there is no real easy way to turn them off; short of removing them. External modems can be turned off and on as needed. Therefore, less power is used with longer component life expected. Another consideration is the use of a slot in your computer by an internal modem. An external modem sits outside of your computer and leaves a slot free inside. This assumes you have a communications (serial) port available and do not have to use a slot for that. I really like to watch the lights on my external modem as it is being used. I can tell what is going on and what to do if things are not going right. There is no question an internal modem is the only thing for a portable. My external modem takes up space around the area of my computer. If space is at a premium that may be a consideration. The internal modem may cause extra heat in your computer and if all the slots are full that may cause some concern. On my external modem I can turn the volume up and down easily. If I dial a BBS and get a busy signal, I can set the computer for automatic re-dial, turn the volume up real loud, go about other things. I can hear the modem cycle through the re-dial process and go back to the machine when contact is made. The software used by both types of modem is the same. There are two major programs you can pay for and several programs available in the public domain. Both types have their advantages and for someone starting out, any of the public domain programs are just fine! My position is biased. I like Cross Talk and the new Q-modem. I use an External modem. If you don't have any equipment now, then get a education about what would be best for you to get on the "air". ------------------------------ BUGS IN DOS 3.3 BACKUP Reprinted from April, 1988 issue NYPC & reprinted in CPC, 6/88 If you rely on DOS for your backup needs, there are some facts about the DOS 3.3 BACKUP command you should be aware of. If you accidentally place a diskette containing files in its root directory into your backup drive, version 3.3 of BACKUP will ask if you want to proceed since these files will be erased. I have found, on testing this, that if you tell DOS to stop the backup process, 75% of the time it will disregard your request and backup onto the floppy anyhow. If you encounter this message, you should use Ctrl-Break to interrupt processing. If you use the /F switch to format unformatted diskettes during backup, there is a potential problem. If you are backing up to a 3 1/2" 1.44M drive on a PS/2 and insert a 720K disk, DOS will format it as a 1.44M disk, a poor procedure at best. If you want to create a log by using the /L switch and do not specify a destination drive or file name for the log file, it will be stored in the current directory of the source disk. If you do specify a path and no name, however, the switch is disabled. You must provide a file name if you give a drive destination. the syntax is also tricky since it uses two colons with the switch /L:A:\subdir\logfile /L: is the log switch A:\subdir is the destination where the log file is to be stored. \logfile is the name of the log file Finally, you can not restore files backed up with earlier versions of DOS if you are using DOS 3.3. If a friend or customer, for example, wants to send you files that were backed up using DOS 3.0, you will have to boot DOS 3.0, 3.1, or 3.2 from drive A, then use the SYS command to put the appropriate earlier version of DOS on the hard disk, and finally, RESTORE using that version of DOS. If no individual file exceeds the size of the backup diskette, you would be better off advising the use of XCOPY. ------------------------------ Why Upgrade Your DOS? By John Predmore Picture City Personal Computer Programming Club Reprinted from INDY PC NEWS Feb/March, 1988 IBM announces a new version of DOS when new hardware is introduced. This is necessary so the operating system (and programs running under DOS) can take advantage of the new hardware features. Thus: DOS 1.0 supported only single-sided drives. DOS 1.1 supported double-sided drives, but only in 320Kb format. DOS 2.0 was the first to support hard disks and the 360Kb format. DOS 2.1 added support for the PC Portable and PCjr systems, and corrected many of the serious bugs that existed in prior DOS versions. DOS 3.0 supports 1.2mb floppies and improves support for large hard drives (10Mb). DOS 3.1 added support for Local Area Networks. DOS 3.2 supports 3.5" micro-diskettes (for the PC Convertible). DOS 3.3 runs on the new PS/2, which uses two new (unique) 3.5" diskette formats. Now, each new DOS may contain new features and new or improved commands, beyond support for new hardware: DOS 2.0 added support for directory structures, redirection of I/O, and device drivers (CONFIG.SYS). DOS 3.0 provides several extensions to the environment through CONFIG.SYS. SUBST and JOIN commands support logical disk drives. Also, DOS 3.0 allows you to execute programs in other directories (this is beyond the PATH facility introduced in DOS 2.0). DOS 3.2 added multiple stacks for improved interrupt handling. It also includes XCOPY, which copies directory structures along with files, using all available memory (instead of copying in 64 Kb blocks). DOS 3.3 includes the APPEND command, which provides a data PATH function (similar to the public domain SEARCH). The new version of BACKUP and RESTORE improves these processes, providing the ability to select files for backup and/or restore according to creation dates; the BACKUP command will also format the floppies when necessary. Normally, when you purchase your computer, you also buy the appropriate DOS to run on that hardware. Here are three reasons you might upgrade to a newer version of DOS: 1. To run on new hardware; e.g. if you add a hard disk, or get added to a network. 2. To take advantage of new or improved DOS commands. 3. To be compatible with other, newer machines in your office. For example: DOS 1.x cannot read floppies formatted under DOS 2.x or 3.x (unless formatted with /8 and/or /1 option). DOS 2.x cannot access large hard disks (10Mb) if formatted under DOS 3.x, because the cluster size is different. The XCOPY command (to convert from 3.5" micro-diskettes to floppies) will only run under DOS 3.2 and beyond. If newer DOS provides all these wonderful capabilities, why not upgrade? First of all, each new DOS is not free. Second, each new DOS is not free of bugs. More importantly, the added features make DOS fatter. (Remember, the operating system includes two hidden files - IBMBIO.COM and IBMDOS.COM - which do not show up on a directory listing.) OS/2 is rumored to be as much as 10 times as big as DOS. Each newer DOS takes up more room on disks, and uses more memory. If you are running a bare-bones PC, DOS 3.2 consumes almost twice as much space as DOS 2.x. Unless you have a hard card or are connected to a network, you don't gain much from DOS 3.x. The average user has limited use for the improved DOS commands mentioned above. Besides, a lot of new DOS features are available as public domain or shareware (RAM disks, disk caches, etc.). But don't throw out your DOS and revert to DOS 1.0. There is a definite advantage of DOS 2.x over DOS 1.x, even in floppy-based systems. DOS 2.0 (and everything since) uses the 360Kb floppy format (9-sector tracts), which contain 12 percent more disk space than 320Kb (8 sectored) floppies. Furthermore, most modern day software packages require at least DOS 2.0, because they employ the more efficient DOS 2.x file-handling routines. Of course, DOS 3.x also supports 1.2Mb floppy disks, but only if you have high- density drives and buy the more expensive floppy disks. The high-density drives never really caught on, partly because IBM can't guarantee they will write reliably to 360Kb double-density disks. DOS 2.1 appears to be the least common denominator of the PC standard, as we know it today (prior to PS/2.) Even though DOS is supposed to be everywhere upward-compatible, you may find some inconsistencies. For example: Most external DOS commands will only work under the proper version of DOS. Therefore, you have to replace all copies of chkdsk.com, diskcopy.com comp.com, etc. that you have in sub-directories or on floppy disks. Some programs that ran fine under DOS 2.x will need to be modified for 3.x. In the DOS 3.x batch programming language, an empty ECHO statement will no longer print a blank line. The backup and restore commands in DOS 3.3 have been changed completely. As a result, the BACK-UP command no longer creates diskettes that use the previous backup format, and the RESTORE command will not restore any files that were backed up with a previous version of the BACKUP command. Summary While each subsequent version of DOS represents an improvement over its predecessors, users should not automatically upgrade as each new version becomes available. Which DOS you use on your computer must ultimately depend on your specific hardware configuration and individual needs. At a minimum, however, you should not be using any version prior to dos 2.10, since this is the earliest version still supported by IBM and MicroSoft. ----------------------------------- THE GREAT AMERICAN WASTE TIME or How I thought I could really score by forecasting the NFL by Pat Farley Here's a situation many of us have been in at least once. You're walking from your office to the water cooler and you overhear "Did you see the game last night? Charlie's thinking of getting an office football pool together." You think to yourself, "I'd sure like to get in on one of those. But I don't know anything about football." Get ready to gear up, fans. There's hope for you office/armchair quarterbacks. Five sports programs grace the ranks of our SLO- Bytes files. A very basic program (no pun intended) is NFL-PIX.BAS on Disk #168. With a little time and effort (and a lot of patience), this program does an adequate job of forecasting. After going inside and setting the data lines regarding who is playing where (ie, changing St. Louis to Phoenix), the system only needs to be fed the scores (double-entry system) after the weekend games. Enter all the games Tuesday morning. A "Sunday now, Monday later" format throws the system off. You can ask it about point spread, but don't expect a lot. If it senses that a game is too close to call, it'll let you know. Don't expect a miracle call until four weeks of play have gone by. If presentation is high on your list of factors, ENDZONE, on Disk #209, is the one for you. The opening screen does two things, (1) it gives you a clever "building logo" to watch as it loads its stats, and (2) it lets you know that the system is still there and hasn't crashed. After the company ad screens are cleared, you're given a simple single-window menu. Choosing a function opens yet another window with more functions. Don't look for any on-line help or .DOC files. This program gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "We ASSUME you know how to use this." At present the disk contains stats for the 86, 85, and 84 seasons, with the 87 schedule entered. It took three days, but I found my way around the 'build schedule' screen and entered 1988. After that I found that 84 had been bumped out of the stat pool. If your job calls for maintaining stats in a daily newspaper, this is your program. No point spread, just accurate stats and good cross referencing as to who played against who, who won, by what, and when. Two files (BW and COLOR) are included for patching onto the end of the file (ENDZONE BW or ENDZONE COLOR) for mono or color monitors. Periodic backup of the .DAT file is strongly recommended. For those bent on converting honest people to the ways of gambling, there's FOOTBALL FUN (a DEMO disk). This system (with a company prepared data disk) prints out entry forms for the upcoming weekend games. Those playing your pool mark who they think will win on their printed forms (like major newspaper contest forms) and return them to you with whatever entry fee you've agreed on. After checking the newspaper and entering the scores, the system prints a posting of who won, how much, and a season win total. A system that seems to be aimed at the professional bookie level is PROGNOS (another DEMO disk). This system seems to say "We'll take care of everything. Send us so much for a current data disk, and we'll give you stats, point spread, the works." I think that after sending them the money for the first disk (if their company is still alive), you'll be getting the works from them for some time. Finally, for those who wish to sit down and throw the old pigskin around, there is FOOTBALL.BAS on Disk #139. With an editor and a free weekend, this program could be changed from a scrolling, UPPER CASE waste of time to a fun and interesting program. Throw in some time delays and format the screen (for eye ease and readability) and take your place on the sideline as Coach of your team. That's my report, fellow quarterbacks. Whoops, there's the two-minute warning. I have to go root for my team. See you on the 50-yard line. --------------------------------- PRINTQ by William J. Upton-Knittle, UCLA PCUG Feb, 1988 Public domain print buffers like MSPOOL, are nice in that they allow you to "stack" several documents for printing. While the first is printing you can edit the second and put it in the queue. If you have ever attempted to switch to another application program while the buffer is still feeding your printer, however, you discovered the major weakness of buffers. Try formatting a diskette while a simple spooler is controlling the printer output and your printer will freeze until the formatting is complete. Even powerful application packages like WordPerfect don't allow you to exit to another application package until their printing output is complete. In the past, only mainframe systems were sophisticated enough to allow printing to continue while the operator went on to other work at his/her terminal. PrintQ now allows such operations on PC's. As you send print commands, whether involving word processing or graphics, PrintQ intercepts them and stores the information to be printed on disk. What happens then depends on how you have set up your defaults. PrintQ can print the files in the order in which you have sent them, rearrange them according to your priorities, hold some from a change or form while printing those that are designed for the paper currently in the printer, even archive documents for later reprinting. And correcting form jams is a cinch since you can stop the process and restart printing at the page of your choice. PrintQ is memory-resident, installs in less than thirty seconds, and has a nifty pop-up status display which allows you to do everything from reading through a document before, during or after printing, to printing a document starting on any page you like. And since the reports are saved on disk rather than in RAM where a buffer saves, they are ready for printing even after the computer has been turned off and on again. PrintQ allows you to store up to 220 documents and to automatically print up to 255 copies of any or all of them. Software Directions, Inc. 1572 Sussex Turnpike Randolph, NJ 07869 --------------------------------------- VENTURA PUBLISHING By Teri A. Sorgatz Most articles you read in publications about Xerox's Ventura Publisher are comparisons of Ventura's features to those of other high-end desktop publishing or page make-up programs for the PC (most specifically Aldus's Pagemaker.) And, many of them have been written since it's release in 1986. This article, however, is intended as a lead-in to future articles in this newsletter about several of the third party enhancements and utilities that have been developed for use with Ventura Publisher. These programs are interesting to we "users" not only because of their value as embellishments to Ventura, but also because of their usefulness as help-mates to other programs as well. In order that we might understand how the need for these programs came to be, we need to take a look at the features of Ventura, and also at some of it's shortcomings. Xerox Ventura Publisher is a professional page layout system that lets you create typeset documents by automatically combining text from most wordprocessors with pictures from line or pixel oriented art programs, CAD programs, or scanned images (including encapsulated postscript.) It also has it's own graphic drawing function. Printer, monitor, and font support is of the highest DTP level. Formatting is accomplished onscreen, in a exact WYSIWYG fashion, via the use of "Style Sheets" which define the document and can be accessed repeatedly by any document to which the style sheet is attached. Typographic attributes are grouped together into "Tags" which are applied in a paragraph by paragraph manner. Some of Ventura's capabilities are mentioned here: * Up to 8 columns per page or frame. * Different Column widths are allowed for left and right pages. * Text flows automatically from page to page. * Vertical rules between columns, plus 2 vertical rules per frame. * Horizontal ruling lines with definable width, length and positioning. * Variable page sizes in portrait or landscape orientation. * Up to 3 ruling lines of different widths can be placed above, below or around any frame. * Up to 128 chapters can be chained together when printing. * Automatic generation of table of contents, index, table of figures, or table of tables. * Documents may be viewed at normal, enlarged, reduced (and greeked) or as facing pages. * Typeface and font control. * Text alignment control within each frame or column. * Hyphenation algorithms. * Indent/outdent for any number of lines. * Control over leading, paragraph spacing, tracking, kerning, individual letter space, and temporary margins. Automatic flagging of loose lines. * Page, line or column breaks. * Special effects: first large letter, bullets. * Individually defined tabs with 16 per paragraph; left, right, center, or decimal aligned. Vertical tabs. * Underscore, overscore and strikethrough (single or double) thickness and position control. * Eight textures and colors. * Windows and Orphans. * Automatic section numbering and page numbering (with numbering type choice) * Automatic headers and footers. * Automatic footnotes and captions. * Text editing. * Picture scaling and cropping. Text run-arounds. * Automatic figure or table numbering. * Pictures anchored to text. * Up to five printers installed simultaneously. * Utility for addition of printer and screen fonts. As you can see, Ventura Publisher is quite a capable typographic program. But all of these features come at a cost: the program uses every bit of the required 512K RAM (suggested 640K) to perform. It is because of this "bumping of the head" against DOS's memory ceiling that the maker's of Ventura have had to for-go many features we would like to see (and may perhaps in the future), such as: the ability to print-out a listing of page definition and Tag attributes as reference, better file manipulation capabilities, or screen capture and graphic file conversion capabilities. Join me next issue to take a look at a few of the programs that have come on the market in response to our "Ventura Publisher Wish List!" --------------------------------- NEWS FROM OUR LIBRARY This month we are adding four disks to our library. Purchase them at the meeting for $.90 each or copy them from our library. They are also available on SLO BYTES BBS as SB276.EXE - SB279.EXE. #276 PrintMaster Graphics - this is an assortment of graphics found on 4 files, BOBDISK1-4 (no relation). Add over 400 new graphics to your library. If you have PrintShop convert them with PM-PS found on SLO Disk #239 #277 Math Programs - ALGEBRAX is an excellent algebra tutorial, with progressive difficulty depending on ability. Although this package does not cover all algebraic functions, other disks are available for $20 each. Requires color graphics card. MATHSHOP - for the younger set; includes addition, subtraction, multiplication, mixed and negative numbers. Progressive difficulty. #278 Family Ties ver. 1.13 - Good genealogy program. #279 Voice Digitizer - schematics for creating a voice digitizer for your computer. Includes software for creating voice file and playback. Read ALL documentation on disk. Requires moderate electronics background. Article by George Campbell, soon to appear in electronics magazine. DEMO DISKS #70A-B Harvard Graphics - trial size ------------------------