HIPS AND TINTS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  CLI  * To use your Amiga/printer set-up as an electronic type- writer, turn your printer on with the settings you want, then enter the CLI and type : > copy * to prt: which will dump each line you type to the printer every time you press . Useful for quick notes, or labels or a letter or whatever. To exit to the normal CLI, just press CTRL-\ together. * If you have a file/drawer/project or whatever existing in the CLI, but without an icon, and therefore inaccessible from Workbench, you can easily attach an icon to it so you can get at it both ways. Say you want to attach an icon to FILENAME1 in the root directory ie, df0: . All you have to do is copy another PROJECT icon from somewhere else and rename it. If we use a Notepad icon in the Utilities drawer, which happens to be called MYNOTE, we'd enter: > cd df0: > copy Utilities/Mynote.info to df0: > rename Mynote.info Filename1.info and now FILENAME1 will appear with an icon on the WorkBench. Note that any file ending with .info indicates an icon for the file named in the first part of the name, and it can be manipulated like any other file in the CLI. See MD1 and MD2 for more information about icons and how to manipulate them. * RENAME - This is another powerful CLI command which deserves a little attention. It lets you change the names of files and directories, move files from one directory to another on the same disk ( "cannot rename across devices" ), and reorganise directory structures. It is best used when you actually want to move things rather than get another copy somewhere else (in which case you'd use COPY), and is very fast because the file is not really copied: only its pathname is changed. The basic command is: > rename SourceName DestinationName where the two names can be just files or directories or long complicated pathnames. E.g., move a directory called Sausages and all the files and directories in it to a directory called Barbecue/Meat and call it Snags: > Rename Sausages Barbecue/Meat/Snags * If you've been using a particular disk a lot and it's rather full, and seems a bit slow in operation, you can give it a new lease of life by recopying it all to a fresh formatted disk. This process reorganises the file structure on the disk, compacting things somewhat and pulling related stuff together which might have strayed all over the original disk. So format a disk: > format drive df1: name MYDISK (or df0: for single drivers) and then copy your whole disk to the newly formatted disk: > copy df0: to df1: all quiet (put "quiet" in if you don't want to watch it all happening on screen). Your new disk should have faster disk access times and have a little more space. * FASTER STARTUP - If you've got a few commands in your startup-sequence which are repeated (such as ECHO), then it'll be slow because each time the command occurs it has to be read from disk again. If you add as the first line to the startup-sequence AddBuffers dfx: 15 (x is 0 or 1 or 2) you'll eliminate the repeated disk access, because this command creates a little buffer of memory which holds the last disk access and so can be rapidly called. Don't allocate too much ( 15 is OK) because you can't get that RAM back once allocated. This only works (like a number of other commands) under 1.2 software. * For those who want to learn more about the CLI with minimal sweat, there's an excellent commercial program called AMIGADOS EXPRESS which brings up screens full of information about the various commands and processes of the CLI, well-described and easy to use. It contains all the 1.2 system commands and beats looking up books. Lots of useful examples too. For those who want a cheaper alternative in the same style, DOSHELPER, which we placed on MegaDisc1, has all the system 1.1 commands which are of course identical to those in 1.2. Simple to use and well-explained. * When you're in the CLI and have entered > type textfilename you'll find it scrolling past fast. To stop scrolling either hit the SPACE bar (then RETURN key to continue) or just press down the Right mouse button - when you want to carry on, just let go of the button. In MD2, there was some misleading information on this point. (For a complete discussion of the CLI commands TYPE, RUN and ASSIGN, see MD2, and MD1 for other commands and tutorials on the CLI.) * If you'd like to get rid of Preferences from your Workbench (since it takes up about 52kb), it's worth knowing that all the Preferences information is contained in a file called "System-configuration" in the DEVS directory of your Workbench. So if you wanted to use the Preferences settings of another disk, all you'd need to do is copy the "system-configuration" file from that disk to your own, as in > cd Otherdisk:devs > copy system-configuration to df0:devs If at any time you want to change any of the Preference settings you can simply load another disk which has Preferences, and open it and change the settings you want to change, which will be saved. If you'd just like to change the colours, you can use a small Public Domain program called POPCOLOURS (Fish 43) to do so instantly. * Using Interlace on the 1.2 system, you might find the default system font, Topaz 8, a bit small. So if you get the Public Domain program SETFONT (Fish 75), you can change the system font by simply entering > setfont topaz 11 or whatever other font you'd like to use. For more more info on fonts, see MD2, or get our Fonts Theme disk.  WORKBENCH  * Usually when you're running a program, you can drag your screen down with the left mouse button depressed to find Workbench waiting behind. But sometimes it vanishes, because a program closes it down to save on memory - ABasic, the original Basic for the Amiga, does this, as does Deluxe Video, and so does MaxiPlan Plus. If you want to avoid this problem (say to run something else from the Workbench), all you have to do is have a window open on WorkBench when you start any other program - having a CLI window open is both effective and useful, since you may want to use it for a bit of file manipulation at times. The clock will do too. * You can load files created with various text editors into others: eg, you can load a Notepad file into Textcraft by clicking on the Notepad icon once, then pressing SHIFT while double-clicking on the TextCraft icon. From the CLI, if you want to load a file created in ED (without an icon) into Scribble! just enter > Scribble! myEDfile and in it goes. When you save it later, it will be given a Scribble! icon. * When you're using Snapshot on the Workbench, you might find that you have the odd problem with the icons not staying put. The reason is that if a file is write- protected (using the Protect command in the CLI), it might give odd results in Snapshot. * Want to see a little trick? Click in your Workbench window to activate it, and then press simultaneously the SHIFT and ALT keys (both sides, ie 4 keys at once), and while they're pressed down press any of the Function keys (maybe with your nose!). Keep an eye on the Workbench title bar... Going even further...Keep both SHIFTS & ALTS pressed, and any of the function keys as well: then eject your Workbench disk (check title bar); then push it back in. Did you see a little message for about 2 seconds?? PROGRAMMING * C TUTORIALS - For those who'd like to learn more about the C programming language, there are various sources of good information: You can get a subscription to KICKSTART magazine from England through Commodore here, which has an on-going & in-depth tutorial series (get the back issues too); or you can get onto the C USERS BBS on (02) 5603607, which has a C tutorial section; and of course, look at the many examples of C source code on the Fish Disks. AmigaWorld magazine has occasional tutorial articles too, as does AMAZING COMPUTING (which is hard to find here). MISCELLANEOUS * DELUXE PAINT - A few little undocumented capabilities include: the 7 and 8 keys subtract and add to the level of red in the currently selected foreground colour; likewise the 4 and 5 for green and the 1 and 2 for blue. If you press the Help key, colour 1 will be set to black and colour 2 to white, useful if you've got a palette which makes gadgets invisible. And the Braces ( { and } ) let you move through the palette to choose the background colour just as the square bracket keys let you choose the foreground colour. Generally speaking, it's well worth reading the manual for Deluxe Paint carefully, as there are many very powerful commands available with the press of a key. That fellow Dan Silva is something of a genius with software. As he says: "We do have to look at computer painting as a new medium, not as an emulation of old media, it does not do some things as well as other methods, but it does some things that are impossible with old media. The medium gives people something they did not have before." * GRAPHICS & TEXT & SPEECH - On Fish 80 there is a clever piece of programming called PRINTEXT, which is a utility which will display both text files and graphics with scrollbar, arrow gadgets, word-wrap, search function and online help. There's also an option to have the page or the whole text file spoken to you! I know a guy who gets a recording of files from the Amiga to play in his car as he gets around. For kids, it might be a pretty good way of learning how to read; or it could come in very useful for partially sighted or blind people; or you could use it as a change from eyes to ears every now and then. * FLIPSIDE - This is an excellent Print Utility, recently available from the same people who brought us SCRIBBLE, which allows you to print practically anything (text or graphics) in a variety of ways from the Workbench. It brings up a requestor which allows you to change margins, fonts, aspect (sideways or normal), and it multi-tasks, so that you can be doing something else while the printing is going on. So you can print large colour graphics, banners, spreadsheets, etc. Worth getting, so ask your dealer. HARDWARE * If you're thinking of adding a RAM expansion board to your Amiga, ask these questions : if it attaches to the Amiga's bus (on the side of the machine), does it have a "pass-through"?; does it "auto-configure", ie, will it be immediately recognised for what it is when you boot up??; and is it a "no-wait-state" device, meaning fast??? See MD 2 for a discussion of RAM and available devices. See also this issue for reviews of the INSIDER and the X-1000 RAM expansion units. * The difference between "Auto-configure" and "AddMem": both of these allow you Amiga to recognise devices attached to the expansion bus - Autoconfig is built into the 1.2 system software, and allocates memory space to the devices on the bus, and is the preferred way of doing things. Addmem is not automatic, but requires that you decide what devices get allocated what memory, but doesn't guarantee that devices will not use the same memory space. Real products use Autoconfig. (See MD2 for the article on the Enhanced 1.2 Operating System). * Those who don't yet have a second drive are probably very keen to get one. A number of local suppliers are selling, or about to sell them, for pretty good prices. Have a look at the article on Local Products in this issue for details of where and how to get them. Some people might like to get a 5.25" drive which acts just like a normal 3.5", but has the advantage of using disks which are much cheaper - useful for making back-ups, especially of a hard disk. * For those who like to use HI-RES but are annoyed by the flicker of the interlace screen, there is another simple near-solution: go to a Plastics dealer, and get a 13 X 10 inch piece of perspex cut, say about 3mm thick and with a dark tint. Stick it onto the front of your monitor with some Blu-Tack or similar, and you'll see a big difference - it cuts both the glare and flicker significantly. I got mine from "Cut-to-Size" Plastics in Whiting St, Artarmon for $10. MEMORY * If you're very low on memory, you can free some up by closing as many Workbench windows as possible. To close up all the windows and still have a program icon to click on, drag the program's icon outside its window onto the Workbench screen (which is the backdrop window). When you've finished, make sure you drag the program icon back into its usual window. If you must have some windows open, you can minimise the memory requirements by not letting them overlap. And if you're really desperate, you can unplug your extra drive which takes about 30 Kbytes. And if all else fails, get a memory expansion board.  ========================END OF HINTS & TIPS=============================