EDITORIAL
---------
This editorial looks like it will be a long one, as I've got a lot of
things to say.

First off, let me apologize for the last two weeks of AM-Report.  I've
been quite busy with my job and haven't had the time needed to devote
to compiling AMR.  Heck, I haven't even answered most of my email!  As
a result, the last issue wasn't up to par.  There were errors in fact
and typos galore.  (I've limited it to just typos in this issue. <grin>

Now, to answer some mail publically.

I was asked about the relationship of AM-Report to STR, PCR and MCR.
ST-Report is the parent magazine, put out weekly in the Atari arena
and covering the ST and the Portfolio.  PC-Report, Mac Report and AM-
Report are all separate magazine that are designed for their target
audience:  clone, Mac and Amiga owners respectively.  While I am not
quite sure where you can go about getting access to PCR and MCR, I can
pass messages to Ralph Mariano, editor of STR, who will know.  Contact
information will be published in a future issue of AM-Report.


                                     ***
AM-REPORT WILL, FOR THE NEXT TWO MONTHS, BE GOING OUT ON A BI-WEEKLY
BASIS.  THAT IS, ONE ISSUE EVERY TWO WEEKS.
                                     ***

This will allow me to catch up with my family, job and all the news.
I will finally have time to get a spelling checker and grammar
checker on the A3000, which should improve the quality of AMR by a
noticable amount.

This issue includes only this editorial, a review on GVP's IV24 board
(which I promised to a number of people) and a report on AmiExpo in
Oakland.  The only other item I'd like to mention is a PD file I found
called JPEG.LZH.

This file takes a graphics file and compresses it using JPEG algorithms, 
or it decompresses compressed files.  I scanned in 6 photos in 24-bit color
and scaled them to 1/6 of a page.  I then used ADPro to put them all on
one screen in a 3x2 grid.  The resulting 24-bit picture was 933,550 bytes
when saves as 24-bitplane data.  After JPEG compression the file was
57,134 bytes long.   Decompressing the JPEG file gives me a file with
the length of 1,069,536 bytes.  Loading it into ADPro then saving it
back gives a length of 955,804 (the original and the final are 
compressed IFF whereas the intermediate file is uncompressed IFF).
I can see *no* visible difference.  File size (736x484) was retained and
I recovered a lot of hard disk space.  

Practically, what does this mean?  A normal business week in Orlando 
sees 100 individuals booked through the jail system.  Each individual
is photographed and each photo is stored in digital form.  If each
photo is 750,000 bytes long, a 600 meg optical disk (629,145,600 bytes)
would be filled in a little over eight weeks.  In one year, seven disks
would be necessary for the image storage!  By using JPEG compression
(soon to be included in ADPro) that figure is reduced to one disk every
two years and three months!  Needless to say, that makes recalling older
information *much* easier.

Thanks for being patient.

 -Chas
AM-Report