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3]READERS' FORUM
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     (EDITOR'S NOTE: This being April, a month that begins with a day
dedicated to foolishness, let this be noted at the outset: The editor is in a
bit of a larky mood and may not respond too seriously to reader concerns this
month. On the other hand, maybe he will.)

3]TWO FEBRUARY ISSUES? - Bert L. Allen, Sacramento, CA
     How come JUMPDISK has two February 1991 issues? One published in
February 1991 and the other in March 1991. You are going to have to change
the area in the Table of Contents.

     FROM EDITOR: It was an early April Fool's Day trick. It was a true, new
March 1991 issue with correct content listings. We simply forgot to change
the month information. Would we believe we did it just to see if anyone would
notice. Everyone did.

3]AHEAD OF ITS TIME - Charles Vassallo, Tregastel, France
     I was particularly interested in Thomas Krotchko's paper about laser
printing in the January 1991 JUMPDISK. There is another way to obtain high-
quality printing from the Amiga, AmigaTEX! I have printed high-resolution
documents with this program and a 24-pin matrix NEC printer, but it could
also be printed within 300 DPI resolution with an ordinary HP laser printer.
In fact, I am preparing a book I have written in camera-ready form with
AmigaTEX and an HP Laserjet. I think there is no serious competitor for
scientific printing. For more usual publications, I admit there is now more
user-friendly desktop software.

     FROM EDITOR: In a stunning pre-April Fool's Day coup, JUMPDISK actually
published the illustration for this letter in the March 1991 issue. It's in
the drawer for COVER, which Vassallo wrote. We wondered where the picture
was. Now we know. So to see an example of AmigaTEX type, get out the March
issue, put it in a drive, open a CLI or Shell and therein type:

j:util/ppshow j:cover/tex.pic <press Return>

3]COPPERMAN POST MORTEM - T. H. Watkins, Norfolk, VA 
     Despite your whitewash of a report on the end of Harold Copperman's stay
as president of Commodore U.S.A., it was simple enough to read between the
lines. Harry was definitely booted --laterally and slightly downward. By
keeping him on board, Commodore avoids or delays severance pay.

     FROM EDITOR: Our theory is that Mr. Copperman developed a deep desire to
coordinate multimedia projects. We also have a theory to the effect that
Elvis was taken by a UFO  and will be back in the next century for a round of
live appearances.

3]ART AND MUSIC PRAISED - Angelo Furlan, Downsview, ON Canada
     The February 1991 issue was fabulous! I really enjoyed all five lessons
of Lew Tilley's Art Course. As well, TrackTalk was a great unexpected
surprise.

     FROM EDITOR: You'll be pleased to know TrackTalk returns this month with
an article and three pieces of music.

3]A PROGRAMMING CHALLENGE - John E. van der Brook - Cheyenne, WY
     The programming expertise and knowledge of the Amiga operating system
possessed by your frequent contributors leads to this challenge/request.
     In AmigaDOS, to move a window forward, the user must click on a "button"
located at the top right of the desired window. Todd Lewis has taken that a
giant step forward by developing a program which allows the user to place the
"button" at any convenient location of the screen and then merely click on it
and then anywhere on the desired window (Portable Front Gadget, October 1990
JUMPDISK).
     The challenge is to develop a utility which will bring forward any
window the mouse pointer is over, without having to click on any device. 
Such a utility would greatly increase the functionality and speed of the
Amiga and would significantly increase user productivity.
     While I have the floor I would like to add a comment to the gentleman
who finds it uncomfortable to have JUMPDISK publish comments from Amiga
detractors. Mr. Bemis (Readers' Forum, March 1991) didn't offer any
indication as to how long he's owned an Amiga. I've had mine since its
inception, nearly five years now. If one stands back and looks at what
Commodore has actually accomplished in five years, one discovers it's
appallingly little. My A1000, with appropriate accessories, is every bit as
good as the A3000. Yes, it's more difficult for me to add devices, and they
are not nice neat packages. But realize that nearly every major addition to
the Amiga line has come first from third-party vendors. Increased memory,
increased processor capabilities, hard drives, modems, WORMS and CD ROMS, the
flickerFixer, the Toaster, etc. CBM can only point to the Bridgeboard as an
in-house first, and it is inexcusably, grossly overpriced. Even many of the
OS improvements have been pioneered by third-party firms.
     The Amiga, when it hit the street, was literally lightyears ahead of the
competition, both in capability and price. While Commodore sat still, the PC
crowd cooperated, developed standards independent of a particular vendor,
such as EISA, and moved forward aggressively. I am no fan of the PC but must
use it for my business needs. And I am looking forward to this fall, when 486
machines with Unix will sell for less than A3000s. Then I will finally be
able to multitask my business applications without resorting to special
windows versions.
     All that notwithstanding, I still love my Amiga. It's a great computer,
lots of fun to experiment and play with, and I expect to get a second five
years' use out of it.
     I no longer get upset when people whose lives depend on productivity
reluctantly move to the Mac or PC world. For them to do otherwise would be
economic suicide. The constant stream of criticism in every Amiga periodical
ought to motivate people at Commodore to do something. That they do not or
cannot, I suspect, is indicative of the attitudes and guidance of the owner
of Commodore and not a failing of the hard-working, dedicated folks there.
     If you read business reports, you will note that Commodore's chairman of
the board and various presidents take more out of revenues for personal
compensation than do their corporate counterparts at Hewlett-Packard, a firm
many times the size and productivity of CBM. This alone speaks loudly about
their motivations and interests.

3]SLEEPING BEAUTY - O. L. Bishop, Thorndale, PA
     The sleeping beauty known as the Amiga continues to amaze me in many
ways. That's no small accomplishment, by my standards, which are influenced
by 25 years in the industry. What really stands out is how, in spite of
Commodore, the Amiga continues to succeed. This is due to so many people who
have waited for what seemed like a millenium for that bang-for-your-buck
creation.
     My wish is that someone at Commodore would really sit up and take notice
of both you and the many programmers that set the Amiga apart from the
ordinary personal computer.

     FROM THE EDITOR: We've been through this before. Commodore works with
hundreds of developers and can hardly afford to lavish extra attention on
many of them. For our part, we pay our annual developer fees, get fed
standard technical information, and we pay to attend the annual developers'
conferences in the U.S., where we pick up what we can and pass it on to
readers. As for the programmers whose works appear in JUMPDISK, some of them
are themselves members of Commodore's technical staff. What more can we ask?

YAY NEWSFLASH! - E. J. Flinn, Chandler, AZ
     Newsflash is great! My only problem is time. It takes a long time to go
through and use or view all that is there. Keep 'em coming. Nice to see a
different slant on things.

     FROM EDITOR: We're currently up to Newsflash 16 and may have 17 by the
time you read this. See the Ad drawer for the pitch on this European magazine
on a disk.

3]GLOSSARY PLEASE - Bert C. Davis, Holiday, FL
     I run into many Amiga-specific names and acronyms. Usually, your docs
furnish definitions and explanations. Still, I'm sure a disk glossary of
Amiga-specific terms would be appreciated and useful to many of us.

     FROM EDITOR: A good idea. Now will we take the time to do it?

ICONS, DATES and CLOCKS, OH MY! - Brian Lightfoot - Ceres, CA

     FROM EDITOR: Brian, allow us to jump in from time to time during your
letter, since you address several topics.

     A general criticism of the appearance of Workbench icons for each
monthly issue. Although the recent issues are getting better, in my opinion,
they may still confuse some brand new users on the Amiga. You have a tendency
to use the actual Project icon image for the Drawer icon . ..While this
appears "jazzy" and somewhat artistic when the user opens up the main J:
window, I often wonder if a new user gets confused as to why some drawer
icons look like drawers and some other icons that look the same as the
project icons within them seem to function the same as the normal drawer
icons.

     FROM EDITOR: On what page of the rule book does it say drawer icons have
to look like drawers? If a user clicks and icon and it opens a window, it's
obvious he or she has been led into some new possibilities, whether the
initial drawer icon is a picture of a drawer or a goose.

     Maybe a nice tutorial about icon types, some sample programs/commands on
how to change icon types, and specific examples of how you changed icon types
on the J: disk might be helpful. If you think this might be over the head of
most J: readers and would only confuse the issue more, then using drawer
looking icons only for drawers should be the appropriate action.

     FROM EDITOR: The March 1991 issue's PD PERUSALS column covered
distributable utilities that help work icons, and PDQ_3 included the programs
mentioned. For months and months, JUMPDISK has used Hermes' (A. G. 
Kartsatos) IconLab for all its icon work, and we are pleased to announce we
can now offer IconLab for sale. See the Ad Drawer.)

     Second issue: A few weeks back I talked to the editor about some
problems with 3rd party clocks on RAM expansion boards for A1000s. Here are
some more specifics about that recent clock snafu that occurred to me. 
Equipment: A1000 with Spirit Technology's internal RAM expansion of 2 Meg;
includes an on-board clock, the Thompson/Mostek Zeropower Timekeeper MK48T02
that occupies 2040 bytes of RAM and 8 bytes for clock registers beginning at
$DC0001. The clock must be "read" as part of the startup-sequence via the
supplied READCLOCK command. Clock may be re-set via their supplied SETCLOCK
command.
     Anyone who uses a third-party clock as part of RAM expansion for the
A1000 and has experienced "missing clock" errors, might be interested in
reading about my recent experience. While doing some RAM-intensive
Compugraphic Font manipulation on my A1000 with an internal RAM expansion
board and clock, my computer exited the program that I was running with a
very nasty guru. Upon re-boot my startup-sequence gave me an interesting
"CLOCK NOT FOUND" error as it attempted to "READCLOCK".
     I powered down, waited about 30 seconds and started over with the
KickStart disk, followed by my normal Workbench disk. Once again the "CLOCK
NOT FOUND" message appeared. Since it was late at night (computer users don't
actually use them during daylight hours, do they?), I threw in the towel for
the night and went to bed.
     The next day upon the normal boot procedure I once again got the same
"CLOCK NOT FOUND" message. I figured that nasty guru must have really
scrambled the clock for good. Would I ever get the clock back again or would
I be forced to resort to the old "SETDATE" command for the A1000?
     After a few days of never "finding" the clock, I decided to try the
SETCLOCK command furnished for this clock. Amazingly, the clock was reset to
zero and subsequently accepted valid time parameters and functioned normally
from then on. Apparently the clock's time was scrambled as part of the guru
that I experienced and when the usual READCLOCK command did not get valid
time parameters, there was no report of an invalid time or an error condition
other than "CLOCK NOT FOUND". Simply resetting the clock to valid numbers
solved the puzzle of the missing clock. A detailed reading of the original
docs supplied with the RAM expansion board contained just that warning about
using the SETCLOCK command when software foul-ups cause the CLOCK NOT FOUND
error.

     FROM EDITOR: Now your talking! We love it when you people talk technical!

     Third Issue: I think I can shed some light on your recent influx of
"1978" dates on your disk files. I don't recall reading anything about this
and I can't believe I have stumbled across some minor bug in the Amiga OS.
Surely, somebody else must have already figured this out.
     Create the normal RAM DISK and then type in a CLI, "INFO DATES". The
normal INFO response will be printed on screen, indicating all devices
mounted along with their creation dates normally encoded in the root block of
the disk. However, the RAM DISK seems to always have the creation date of
"JANUARY 1, 1978 00:00:00". Hmmmm..... even the time is invalid. Question:
why is this date important in computer history? Another question: Is this a
bug/oversight/undocumented feature (pick one) of DOS when it creates the RAM
DISK or is the fault in the ram-handler or RAM.DRIVE device files?
     Apparently in creating your monthly master disk, you must be doing a lot
of file manipulation around in RAM: but when you finally copy your file onto
the master floppy, it is doing a true COPY CLONE and maintaining the creation
date of the file from the creation date of the RAM DISK. I'm sure you can
figure out your own work-around to eliminate this little indiscretion on your
published disk.

     FROM EDITOR: We have heard of this little anomaly. The impossible dates
could be changed to current dates by doing a:

copy j: to newdisk: all <Return>

. . . but by the time we reach the point of being able to copy the entire
issue to a new disk, we're dealing with what has become the archive disk for
the issue. We don't want to take a chance on losing material in a wholesale
copy of the disk. And if we did copy it, we'd feel constrained to run all
programs and open all files on the new disk --just to make certain. Life is
tough enough without starting a cycle of work one minute before we have a
pristine archive disk ready to copy.
     Oh, the heck with it! We might as well admit that we're time travelers
who live in 1978. JUMPDISK is so good because we leaped far into the future,
stole Amiga material from the 21st century, returned to 1978, put together
fifteen years of JUMPDISKs and just relaxed. The other great thing about this
arrangement is that we buy all our disks in the year 2022, when they will
cost 3 cents each in NewMerica currency. The only tough part is getting
current subscribers to pay in platinum, which we can use in the future. 
That's right! Amiga material from the 21st century! Now you know how long
this computer will be popular.

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