Let's take a quick peek at the Extras disk to see if there's anything there we want. Nope! Well maybe a few things. Try out the Keytoy just for giggles; it'll show you your Alternate keyboard characters. Fed is a font editor and you'll want to goof around with it some day. IconMerge is a useful little icon tool which you'll want to toss onto the IconBench. You'll also want to punch up the PerfMon just to check it out. Don't bother with FreeMap, Palette and MEmacs. FreeMap is so bad it smacks of nepotism. The Basic demos are kind of dumb, and unless you purposefully get into it, you won't be spending any time with Basic. You might want to have a BasicBench, which would be a BareBench with the AmigaBasic program on it, just for running the odd program. There are a few good games written in Basic, and FPMapEd, a Firepower map editor, is one of the finest downloads I've seen. That FPMapEd is, by the way, the program I mentioned before that ran faster with NoFastMem run first. Maybe it has something to do with it being in Basic, or maybe it was just an oldie. These are matters beyond us, no doubt. * Well, it's time to spend a few minutes with that faithful friend, Ed. Common commands: (all Esc commands, capitals not necessary) T - Top of file B - Bottom of file BS - Block Start BE - Block End IB - Insert Block DB - Delete Block CS - move Cursor to Start of line CE - move Cursor to End of line WB - Write Block to new file IF - Insert a different File into this file F - Finds keyword D - Delete line Q - Quit Ed without saving X - save file SA - save without exiting ("freshen up the file") Learn these and that's Ed. The WB and IF ones need EXACT format, like so: (Esc) WB"df0:temp/xx (Return) That will write the block you've selected (with BS and BE) to your temp directory and name it "xx". The quote mark and no space are critical. The only thing limiting about BS is that once you have a block marked, you can't do much else with the cursor or it loses the block. You can go to the top and bottom of the file, as well as use the Find feature. If you want to MOVE the block, make sure you Delete Block RIGHT after you've Inserted Block, got that? IF uses the same format: (Esc) IF"Ram:xx to insert an already-written file (xx) into the line the cursor is on. F, for Find, searches for the keyword you enter, such as (Esc) F"keypad to search for the word "keypad". Also, remember Find is case-sensitive. It's easy to forget it so I'll say it again: Find is case-sensitive. An apostrophe works fine in place of the quote mark unless the word you're searching for has an apostrophe in it. You can quickly scroll up and down using the Ctrl U and Ctrl D keys, but it's a little weird, especially with a large textfile in Interlace. Ed trick: ED just gives you 76 characters across, although you can squeeze out 77 if you put a character under or before the cursor, before you get to the end of the line. That'll shift the margin out rather than giving you a "carriage return", so you can type in the 77th character. Then you delete the extra character and CS to get back to the start of the line. Now and then, for no apparent reason, Ed won't let you Save, spitting some inexplicable reason back at you, so just remember you can still WriteBlock what you want (the whole thing, for that matter) to Ram or something until you can get out of there and start afresh. It's usually 'cause the pathname of the file you're editing is wrong. * And yes, those are the first quote marks we've used. The usual instance is when we want to copy or rename or whatever a file that has spaces in the name, like, say, the Extras(space)1.3 disk: Assign "Extras 1.3:" df1:DirtyBench I presume you've bought both of the DOS books. Read them just like you did the Amiga manual; understanding each time you read it about 20 to 30 percent of what you haven't understood so far. Did I get that about right? The books cover things like the use of quotation marks and asterisks quite well. Now if only they'd tell me when I'm supposed to use FastMemFirst! * What's that? What's that you say?? You HAVE a modem, printer, extra drive, joysticks, plexitable, disk rack, oodles of blank disks and BOTH DOS books?? Well, then..clearly it's time to go software shopping! Okay, you bought Online. You screwed around with that dumb PD modem program your buddy gave you and wondered just WHY they couldn't do just a FEW simple things right..so you finally went ahead and spent real money. You bought Deluxe PaintII because you need it as a primary, basic tool for graphics work. And you did, after all, buy a graphics-oriented computer. You bought FaccII and are, let's face it, thrilled. You had a certain bittersweet feeling as you bid that last good-bye to faithful old AddBuffers as it was borne away to far-off Bytelandia. You looked at Sculpt 3-D and said we-e-e-e-ll, maybe you'd better wait, and that was the correct decision. You broke down and bought ProWrite because Notepad was driving you crazy with all of its little quirks, and using Ed is completely out because it doesn't have Word-Wrap. Sure, it wraps around the first time you type the sentence, but just try adding a few words here or there once it's written. If you don't know what I'm talking about yet because you haven't tried using Ed to write a letter, you have a terrible shock awaiting you. I just don't have the heart to say any more. And I'm, if you can believe it, writing THIS whole crazy thing in Ed! Obviously the thing to do would be to write it with ProWrite and then convert it to text, but NO-O-O-O, no one's written a program to do that (yet, I hope). And yes, ProWrite does have a feature that saves in text format, but it doesn't work quite correctly. Notepad doesn't save in text right either, which doesn't surprise me. Just a few of those many fun computerland quirks. I know a guy who has a 500 and can't get his snazzy Toshiba printer to run right because no one's written a driver for it! "Why doesn't somebody write a program that will..." will be a question you will ask more than once. (Any programmers in the audience will quickly point out that that's supposed to be a "challenge", not a question...) Update Note: Finally, after these many many moons, two "respectible" PD terminal programs are out, JR-COMM, and NCOMM. They both have their advo- cates, so try them both. I like NCOMM the best. Also, DPaintIV is out, now, and much-improved (does HAM pics). So, you got all these neat programs just like that nice Mr. BenchMaster told you to do, but what about GAMES? When do we get to do some of the dumb, mindless FUN stuff?!?! "Mindless", did I say? Ha-ha-ha. Anyway, the answer is, right now: An "arcade" game is one you can play again and again. An "adventure" is one you just play through once. No, it's not a waste of money. I figure I probably put 50 hours into FaeryTale, exploring every nook and cranny, just generally kicking butt, and if the game cost me about $35, that's a pretty good buy for top-notch entertainment per hour. Top Shelf: Silent Service - puts you in WW2 submarine. Nothing's topped it yet, except maybe... Gunship - puts you in armed-to-the-teeth chopper, super action and sound. FaeryTale - A great adventure, have fun and enjoy. Starglider - You won't be able to look at another space game after getting used to this one. You'll wonder why they even bother. Dark Castle - This is still my favorite arcade game..always something new to explore, something crazy to try. It'll give you a brand-new appreciation for keyboard sensitivity, promise. If you're really good, say your prayers at night, help old ladies across the street, spend countless hours at your Amiga and do everything in this tutorial, I'll tell you where the unknown, hidden Secret Passageway is... Beyond Dark Castle - a superb job of expanding and improving an already excellent game. I'm a third the way through it and can only describe it as an "excruciating blast". Shadow of the Beast - Latest arrival. Almost stunning graphics, the smoothest background scrolling you'll see. The game is tough as knots (only serious arcadists need apply), but there's a cheat program running around the boards that makes you invincible. Firepower - Still the quintessential tank game. Extra fun because you can make new maps or edit the originals with FPMapEd (If you don't get the one with my added doc, look for the textfile I uploaded called FPMapEd2). Barbarian - A fun arcade game, like Dark Castle, kind of unique. Chessmaster - Okay, so I've got a serious side. Middle Shelf: All text adventures, like the Infocoms. They're fun, but this is, after all, the greatest of graphic computers. Still, if the above stuff isn't your bag, try Infocom's "A Mind Forever Voyaging", "Wishbringer", or "Suspended". Suspended is definitely a trip. Defender of the Crown - A kid's game but some of the best graphics around. Uninvited - Another unique adventure, haven't gone too far in it. Best mouse interaction I've seen. StargliderII - I don't know, call me a purist, I just didn't like it as much. You have to remember, the handling of the original Starglider craft was what sparked my interest in the Amiga in the first place. These controls sucked. Apart from that, I've heard the game's terrific. Flight Simulator - Everything is so Real Time it'll drive you crazy. BattleChess - At $39 I considered this an "expensive hack" (the graphics are so wild you can't concentrate on the game) but I just HAD to have it. It does have a 2-D board that you can use but, for what it's worth, ChessMaster is a little smarter. It ticks me off that I haven't got qui-i-i-te enough memory to run them both at the same time and have them play each other! Dungeon Master - A lot of people have this on their Top Ten list, so thought it deserved mention. An oldie but goodie. The Dregs: SDI Galactic Invasion Adventure Construction Kit Alien Fires Golden Path Destroyer Anything else not on these lists unless it comes recommended. There's a marked difference between a game RE-WRITTEN for the Amiga, and one written FOR the Amiga. The prime example of a game written FOR the Amiga right now would have to be Shadow of the Beast. Update Note: Okay, okay, so they're a little old. Still fun, though. Old Update Note: Two righteous new progs! Ah-h-h...finally-finally got a sound-digitizing program, FutureSound. Works great with pre-recorded stuff, but clips too easily with the microphone. Need a DBX or something to compress the dynamic range. And after all these years of buying fancier and fancier stereo equipment to EXPAND the dynamic range!! Also got the absolute latest, VoRecOne, the program that allows you to control the Amiga with, ahem, your voice! Doesn't work all that well, the industry's obviously still in its infancy, but beats the hell out of no program at all. It occurs to me that if I pre-record the commands with FutureSound, VoRecOne won't have any problem recognizing them at all, as they'll be digitized, so I could run a file speaking the different commands, and VoRecOne could perform the tasks, and, and, there..there won't be any- thing left for ME to do! I'll have been..(sob!)..replaced by a computer!! * Those are my suggestions. Get that money spent and quit bothering me. * If you've been using the Interlace mode since (or before) I mentioned it, then you might have come to the question: Just what do we use the NON-Inter- lace mode for?? Well, not much. Icon editing for one. We want to use the IconEd, but everything's smaller in the Interlace mode. No prob. Do we presume you've got the Interlace toggle switch Lace in the c directory, as well as SetPrefs and SavePrefs, from the program PrefCh? You can see them there, right next to Conman, Mackie and Select. Anyway, you have a certain Workbench color scheme for the Interlace mode that you've saved with Save- Prefs, calling it, say, Inlace. You have another, brighter one for the non- Interlace mode, call it Nolace. So you do the IconX thing: First you write a scriptfile: Lace ;switches screen to non-Interlace mode SetPrefs Nolace ;turns on non-Interlace colors CD df0:Utilities ;keeps everybody happy IconEd ;loads IconEd. Scriptfile freezes here until IconEd is quit (no Run used) CD df0: ;just to keep things on track SetPrefs Inlace ;turns on Interlace colors Lace ;toggles back to Interlace You can't call the file "IconEd", as you know, so let's call it "IconEd!" for now. After you get the hang of IconX, you can try renaming the actual program something like "IconEd-" (in my own system, the minus sign means that it's part of an Xicon file) and name the scriptfile the correct name, but for now let's keep things straight. A few programs, including, amazingly enough, IconEd, won't run correctly with the name changed. The best practice is to just call the scriptfile something else until you're sure the file's executing okay. Then do JUST the renaming business and see if it still works. It takes a little longer, but making just one or two changes at a time, once you've gotten a program to run, keeps things at least within the realm of potentially understanding what suddenly went wrong. Next we change the IconEd icon over from a Tool type to a Project type, with IconEd (Doctor, heal thyself?) or IconType. I know, I know, you still don't have IconType because, well, you needed groceries, and then you had to make a phone call, and then you probably needed to do something else, and, well, just forget it. The new Project icon is named after the script- file, so it's "IconEd!.info". Put "df0:c/IconX" in the Default Tool box of the Info window and that should do it. Leave the old icon in the drawer as IconEd looks for it to plaster all over the little editing windows. It'll run without it but gives you an error message. That's why it doesn't like to be renamed. Most programs don't mind, just don't rename anything until you've gotten it to run first. You might also want to have a special editing pointer for IconEd, so you'd SavePrefs a special setting just for IconEd, and use that instead of Nolace in the scriptfile. You might want different pointers and/or colors for lots of different programs..live it up, they're a whole 232 bytes apiece. I suggest the Hermes IconLab as your main tool to change the type of an icon. Treat the Disk icons, the "disk.info", like any other. Also, you'll want the IconLab to view any downloaded Disk icons you get, as Disk icons can't be viewed inside a window. For archival purposes change them to Tool or Project icons. * A program wanting to call up something "by name", be it an icon, a terminal (.trm) file, a font, a lib, a dev, whatever, will be one of your constant ongoing challenges. Sometimes a program will want the disk named to a certain something and you have to do a re-assign. Sometimes a program wants a certain font, and whoever arc'd the thing for uploading forgot to include it. IconEd, as mentioned, needs an icon with it to run correctly, even though you're running it through the CLI. When I first got my hard drive I faithfully copied both the harddisk.device AND the harddisk.device.- info over to the Expansion directory, although I couldn't for the life of me figure out what I would want an icon for the hard drive device driver for. Things ran just great and at one point I was just doing a little dusting and swept that silly icon right out the door. Surprise! The hard drive didn't boot! Naturally, copying the icon back over to the Expansion drawer was the LAST thing I tried, but sure enough, that's what it was. Conversely, if I had been handed Online!, spelled "Online", without the exclamation mark, it would have run just fine, and I would never have known it calls up the "Online!.trm" file automatically as it loads, very convenient. So be care- ful, take things a step at a time, and keep in mind all the things a program might need to run, especially if you're trying to run it from a REALLY sliced up, whittled-down Workbench. You might try odd things that make other programs work, such as having the arp.library in libs. You'll find some people just kind of assume you're using the arp.library or the big Shell program or whatever. They might assume you're running it from an icon instead of the CLI, or vice versa. You might be running it from an icon, all right, but a Project one for IconX to use, instead of a Tool icon, which isn't the same deal at all. Sometimes they assume you've got the file(s) on the surface, excuse me, "at the root" of df0, instead of in a directory, and also some programs DO demand to be in a certain directory, usually c. * Misc Dept: SAY NOTES MUSTS A: CLI needs Run wander waunder haw haw hau hau Notepad needs clipboard.device shall shal but not the clipboard dir gals,pals gaels,paels Say needs both the translator- E: .library and narrator.device baby babeeee baby. babee Calculator needs mathieeedoub- yeah yia bas.library residence risidence LoadWb needs icon.library I: service servis Select needs Execute and Run fixing ficksing Mrs. missus RunBack needs Run friday fryday office ofis continent con.tih.nent O: to too okay ookay stove stofe Jose hoesay toots tutes como cowmo modem mowdem U: minute minite doesn't dussent you yu, u truth trooth And just a little thought on the side: You'll occasionally hear an Amiga owner putting an Atari down, but that's wrong. Look at them more as our poor cousins from across the tracks. I mean, at least they're trying. I might also mention that it's slightly blasphemous to put down our little brother Commodores, the 64 and 128. It should be pretty clear that if it weren't for them, we could kiss off our Amiga. Commodore is kind of like a foster parent who took the little Los Gatos starveling under their wing and helped feed them just enough to get their start. They weren't particularly proud of the little pipsqueak, and didn't brag about him much to the other parents, but when the ugly little duckling grew up to be this beautiful swan, they were as proud as, well, peacocks, and wanted to, uh, crow to the world about him. Of course, if you want to, er, hawk your wares in today's market, it takes a lot of, um, chicken feed, and if you can't, uh, swallow the fact that they can't spend it all on us, well, there's (just can't think of how else to put it) no sense in grousing about it! * Hey, by the way, I bet you've really grown to dislike that "Software Error" requester, the one that says "To Reset/Debug" all you have to do is to simply click in this little box and...oh no! GURU-CITY!! Yes, you've probably come to really hate that little box and are probably just outraged that any modern computer would use such a cheap shot, like, "Yeah, hey buddy, ya want me to fix this little snag? Watch this!" *POOF!* I mean, sure, ANYbody can hit Ctrl-LeftAmiga-RightAmiga to reboot the sucker..sure, that'll fix ANYthing! Okay, fine, your complaint is seemingly fair and justified. Now think about the term "multi-tasking", and why they call the Amiga's multi-tasking "true" multi-tasking, and the Apple's multi-tasking "garbage". And think how much your complaint would mean to a meeting of single-tasking IBM users: Would they let you escape the auditorium alive? Being able to work around that "Guru Requester", to save important things that were in Ram, to say "screw it", push it to the background and press on...THAT is one of the things that makes this computer so special. And has re-defined the term "multi-tasking" for the industry. Just didn't want you writing Amiga World or anything. * Have you picked up DU-VI yet? You can see why I call it a "CLI-Buster", what a great tool. I've downloaded about six DU's and this is definitely the best. I humbly include what my idea of a "CLI-Buster" icon should look like, released into the Public Domain now and forevermore. If anybody else wants to use it, fine, but between you and me, well, it'll just be a little reminder of these good times we're sharing. Cunningham's also the one who did GShow, the fine displayer for graphic pics. GShow lets you activate the color cycling by hitting the TAB key, SView shows the pic cycling by default, which is why I had you pick them both up. Just a couple of tools for ol' GraphBench. I keep GShow in my Workbench's c directory as a rule. If you don't know what color cycling is, well, you've just got a whole BUNCH of fun stuff to find out about, don't you? It's basically a function of DPaint and can get pretty wild. Update Note: With today's "smart" DU's out there, ol' DU-VI is looking kind of archaic, but for just a basic, solid, DU, it's still tops. Anyway, DU-VI is certainly the most valuable tool you've added to your bench yet. Indeed, it may be the most valuable ever. An excellent program. It works so well and the documentation is so clear that I really can't think of a single thing to add. No, not one. Nope. None. Not one. Well, uh, maybe one teensy-eensy little thing. Hate to even bring it up, really. He, uh, well, he mixpelled a word is what he did. Hit Free to see how many bytes are free on this device, and you get "dievice", which is exactly what you DON'T want to happen to your device! If yours says "device" then you got a corrected version, by me, him or someone. This is absolutely no knock on the guy's spelling. $40 commercial games will force some glaring mistake at you in inch-high letters. I guess the all- time classic has to be Firepower, the tank game. Here's this big fancy modern-day snazzy wargame, who knows how many people must have previewed it, goofed around with it during development, tinkered with it at the last moment...and sure enough, if you die, this great big message appears that says (are your ready?) YOUR DEAD!! Yes, your really are!! So, we might say, if there's an un-will, there's a way. Let nothing surprise us. There, in glowing blue and white, at the bottom of a document copyrighted by as modern a company as a computer company can be, there, at the bottom of the StartupII scriptfile on the 1.3 disk, reads the line: break 1 C ;signal to other process its ok to finish Its is? Yes, it's! * All right, back to the business at hand. Did you download NewZap? I hope you found version 3.1; he messed around with it in the latest version and really screwed up the color arrangements. It was hard enough to read before, the latest version is even harder. If you have version 3.1, open Prefs and set the colors to: #1 - 6 #2 - 0 #3 - 11 #4 - 6 6 0 11 0 6 0 11 0 then hit USE and then "SavePrefs Zap" to save this Prefs setting. Then type "SetPrefs Inlace" to get your Interlace colors back. I really like the program, it's just that getting the colors right so that things are clear in the Search mode as well as the Hex is a bitch. You are more than welcome to put NewZap at the top of the screen and Prefs on the bottom and experiment for yourself. We "Ed s/z" (z for zap, right?) and our scriptfile would read: CD df0: ;usually a CD command first SetPrefs Zap ;special NewZap color scheme Lace ;needs all the help it can get Utilities/NewZap ;load NewZap (no Run) SetPrefs Inlace ;back to Interlace colors Lace ;back to Interlace mode Run that puppy, activate the Filespec box and type in "df0:Utilities/DU-VI" or whatever directory it's in (if in a directory at all) and hit Return. That ugly mess that appears is DU-VI. Pull down the Search menu, activate the box and type in "die" or "dievice", hit Return and NewZap will search the program for those characters. When you see them, click on the "d" with the mouse and type in over the old letters "device", then a space for the extra letter. Hit SAVE, click NewZap's close gadget and get the hey out of there. Presto, one repaired Directory Utility. If this gets you excited, please be. NewZap certainly gave ME plenty to do, heh heh heh... For starters, of course, you can change a DU line like "Searching For Selected Files" to something a little clearer, like "Hold on a sec, will ya?" You can zap games and have characters or the computer swear at you, just all kinds of great possibilities. I had a gas with Defender of the Crown. Of course, you can also do semi-serious things with a file-zapper. I almost hate to bother you with it. A good example might be our new buddy Select. It normally says something like "Please select a boot sequence", but if we were, say, running a graphics program by a scriptfile and at some point we wanted a chance to choose from which directory we wanted the pics loaded, we could make a copy of Select renamed as Select2, file-zap it with NewZap and change the "boot sequence" line to "Please pick a pic directory". Continuing: You then put "Select2 (filename) (filename)" in the script- file and when it gets to that point it runs the Select2 and then seeks the s directory for whatever scriptfile you've chosen. If you have a lot of them and/or don't want to clutter up your s directory, you can use the Assign command in the scriptfile before the Select2 and "Assign s: df0:(dir)/(dir)" and this way Select2 will search that dir instead. At the end of the script- file you'd have an "Assign s: df0:s" so that all systems return to normal. I'll give a few more examples of file-zapping here and there, but since you can file-zap almost ANY program, I'd say the sky's the limit. * Above, we made a copy of Select because we wanted to file-zap it. Normally in a scriptfile we'd just use the original Select and give it different options, as well as re-assigning the s directory. By doing so it can be used over and over again, allowing us quite a bit of interaction. Combine it with funny old Say and things could get REAL interesting... * Let's take a sec and update our master copy of BareBench. Periodically you'll want to update your other benches with your latest scriptfiles, Prefs settings, subroutines, etc. I guess I have to assume you have a DU by now, so pop that rascal up, pop the master BareBench in df1, and go through the applicable directories, copying any "master" scriptfiles, subroutines, etc over. You, the budding computer operator, could even write a scriptfile to do the dirty work for you. You'll have a few variations of BareBench, some more stripped down than others, maybe the ultimate one called WorkTable. * Go Ahead, Pop My Balloon Dept: Let's say you're thinking of writing a professional computer game for the Amiga and you're wondering what key to use for the Pause key. One key on the keyboard that's kind of an oddball is the Help key, right? And that's usually what you NEED when you DO go grasping for the Pause key, right?? So it kind of sounds like an obvious choice, RIGHT??? Check this out: Starglider uses Del Barbarian uses Esc Dark Castle uses Tab Beyond Dark Castle uses Tab Gunship uses Tab Silent Service uses W Flight Simulator uses P Firepower uses Esc & joystick button and.. FaeryTale uses the space bar! NOBODY uses the Help key! So much for my career as a computer programmer! * UH-OH, DOWNER DEPT!: On a more sobering note, I'd like to point out a few things you should know about your jazzy new Workbench 1.3 before you go waltzing into a room full of 1.2 users, bragging, crowing, and just generally sounding like a nut. - For starters, the Shell users in the group are probably using the real Shell program, not this half-baked department store mock-up. And the non- Shell users, such as...perhaps you've noticed...myself have to bite our lips to keep from giggling out loud at the whole thing. So know your audience before you utter the word s-h-e-l-l. - For regular old computer users and operators like ourselves, all these handlers they've mounted and this CLIPS and ENV business in Ram just don't have any place. And it's quite clear from looking at just exactly WHAT got upgraded in their thirty-five "revised" commands, not to mention that Prefs mess, that they had LOTS of time on their hands for "busy work", but I wouldn't say they spent it wisely. I mean, seriously, IconX's window doesn't close? You kiddin' me? List doesn't list into sub-dirs? You pullin' my leg? They didn't toss a measly OFF switch onto Addbuffers? How's that again?? - The FastFonts program is a true gem, as it's not only small, but the old BBS font-changer program, NewFont, didn't have an OFF switch to get the memory back, and the fact that FastFonts returns about 99 percent without losing the fonts it truly admirable. I even think it's faster than Blitz- fonts, a BBS fast text program. Of course, the bad news is that here we've finally got a program that outshines not one, but two classic BBS programs, and it's not ours, it's MicroSmith's. So much for bragging rights. - Maybe some of this next stuff only works with an authentic 1.3 machine, not an upgrade, but I noticed in going through my update book that some of the new options for the updated c commands don't work as documented: Copy - The book says it'll make a dir for the file if it didn't previously exist, but, thankfully, it doesn't. If you don't enter the Copy command correctly, don't have a dir already set up to receive the file, then hey, the command SHOULDN'T work. LoadWb - The book mentions two options, neither of which I can get to work. The first is "delay", which quiets the disk thrashing down as they validate and the icons load, but I'll be double-dipped if there's any difference between it and the clatter I've been hearing for two years now. The second option is -DEBUG, which supposedly pops up a "hidden" menu with two programs on it. I'm STILL looking for that menu. The first program is ROMWACK, which doesn't pertain to us, and the second one is FlushLibs, which is a lib-flusher like Flush or Sweep, so we don't need it anyways. But it would still be nice to know what they're talking about. Or, turning it around, if there's documentation for options that AREN'T there..wouldn't it stand to reason that there might be options..for which there's no documentation? Run - The book says that you can now close a CLI window behind a program, that is, while it's still running, but the simple test I made with the Clock said it was just the same ol' Run. RunBack, give it a big slobbery kiss on the cheek, is still our baby. - A few programs don't seem as good as the 1.2 versions, specifically: AddBuffers - The old command took an extended string, now you need two commands, one for each device. Hello, anybody home? CLI - seems like it takes twice as long to load. It's supposed to scratch around in the s dir for that CLI-Startup file (to put the current directory's name next to the prompt sign, like the Shell does), but mine didn't work, even though I noticed the code for the startup file is written into the revised CLI command. Clock - old one had second-hand showing by default, certainly a more presentable graphic. Why have it NOT show? Lastly, a few criticisms of the stock st-seq, aside from the general chaos they made with the Shell business: - First, and granted this may sound petty, when you Type it, one line's too long and the "h" from the end of "bench" gets put onto its own little line. That could put some newcomer in a spin, thinking that somewhere in the startup-sequence you're supposed to have the command "h". In Ed it just glides rudely out unseen past the margin, which, we note, it doesn't do by default. Quite obviously this person didn't have Mrs. Stolberg for fourth grade English. - I don't like them mounting all these worthless handlers, like the Pipe and Speak-Handlers. Nothing wrong with them, they certainly might play an integral part someday, we just don't want them hogging up 17,524 bytes of disk space and wasting our time during the startup-sequence. And what's even more insidious, if that's the word, is that all the additional Mounts means a longer MountList, so there's another thousand bytes wasted, not to mention having to keep the Mount command on the disk in the first place, thereby losing ANOTHER five thousand bytes. They also hog some memory, not a lot, but when you're scrapin' for every last byte, "not a lot" mean "WAY too much". - I'm still trying to figure out why they CD'd to the c directory, and maybe that doesn't puzzle me as much as that they didn't CD back out! Guess I missed something there. Probably Mr. Shell's parting shot at me. I also don't know what they hoped to gain by running the FastMemFirst, since I'd think whatever you'd gain would be lost in the time it took just to load the command, but I couldn't say for sure. I also notice they put the s dir in the Paths, which implies that they expect tools to be in there, which flies in the face of thousands of years of tradition and harmony. Even with the ancient abacus, only scriptfiles were kept in the s dir, tools always found a home elsewhere. But we forgive them their trespass. They knew not upon what hallowed ground they trod. *