³¼TRASHM ONE V1.6¼³

³¼REVIEW¼³


¹At  THE  PARTY  '92, Trashm'One v1.6 by
Deftronic of Crionics was released.  In
this  article, I'll look at what's new,
what's good and what's not so good...
THE  major change is probably that it's
now   possible   to  use  10  different
sources  at  the  same  time.  However,
when  you  change  source,  the one you
'leave' is save in the T:-assign, so if
you  use  large  sources  and you don't
have  a  harddisk  or  enough free RAM,
this  probably  won't  help  you  much.
Anyway,  who hasn't got that???  (Well,
I  for  one...   Anyone  got some spare
SIMM's???    -ed)  BUT,  it  BUGS,  and
seriously,  that  is.   When  you  exit
Trashm'One,   if  you  answer  'No'  to
'Delete  sources  on  hold', Trashm'One
will  in  most  cases crash your Amiga!
Also,  in  general the swapping between
sources  creates  gurus  from  time  to
time.   Anyway,  when  Deftronic  fixes
this, it'll be great.
Another   nice  thing  is  the  INCIFFP
'command'.   It works just like INCIFF,
but   grabs   the   palette   as  well.
Furthermore,  if  you  supply  a second
parameter   (the   first   one  is  the
filename,   dummy!),   Trashm'One  will
create   a  palette-copper,  using  the
supplied    number    as    the   first
hardware-colour-address.
A   pretty   weird  'newcomer'  is  the
possibility to 'assign' a register to a
variable, so that i.e.

MOVE.W #2,X0

will be replaced with:

MOVE.W #2,D2

if D2 is assigned to X0.  Personally, I
haven't felt the need for that one yet,
but  if you have a VERY large loop with
LOTS  of  variables/registers,  I guess
this  feature will greatly increase the
understandability (can you actually SAY
that?  -ed) of your code.
QREPT  is  another  new  one.  It works
just  like REPT, but only with relative
code,  i.e.   BRanches  are OK, but not
Jumps.   As it is achieved using simple
memory  copying,  it's  of course a lot
faster that REPT.
The  last  improvement  I'll mention in
detail is HoldCursorX, which works like
this:  If the cursor is at the end of a
very  long  line,  and you move it i.e.
up  to  a  shorter  line, and then down
again,  it'll 'remember' the X-position
of  the  cursor  from the last time you
'were there' (Perhaps I should become a
teacher???   (And  perhaps not!  -ed)).
Anyway, it's just like word processors.
Personally, I can't get used to it, but
thanks God it's optional...
Also  some other small improvements and
bug   fixes   are  included,  like  the
possibility  to  change stack size, and
hte  possibility  to  show  the symbol-
table   starting   from   one  or  more
supplied letters.
All  in  all  (Yep, you CAN say that in
English  as well!  -Estrup), Trashm'One
is  STILL  the  best and fastest assem-
bler  around  (that  is, as long as you
don't  use  the  '10 sources'-option!).
Like  someone  (an American, of course)
once  said:  If you haven't got it, get
it...
     ³           Estrup/Static Bytes