O.K. let's get the most important bit out of the way first! WARNING! COPYRIGHT ALERT! etc. etc All rights to this program are strictly the sole property of anyone who happens to have a copy of it. Copying of this program or any of the ideas or code contained therein is absolutely encouraged. The reason for this is not because we think that it isn't much good, but because we want so show you what we think True Public Domain is - Software by the Public for the Public! If any part of our program or any ideas we have used will help you, please feel free to use them for yourself (imitation is the sincerest form of flattery). All we want is some feedback - what you think of our program, ways to improve it, any ideas for new programs you would like to see/have, what you do at weekends or even just Amiga-Chat (v: to talk about anything Amiga). Before we give you a few instructions, we feel that we must credit the people that have made it possible for mere mortals to produce professional looking software without having to take a honours degree in meta-physics. Francois Lionet for creating the AMOS System Stephen Hill & Mel Croucher for giving us the literature required in a form that we can understand and all those who have helped the above people. <<< INSTRUCTIONS >>> The idea behind this program is to be able to work out exactly what your gas bill should be at any time. All you need to enter is the dates and meter readings between which you require the cost to be calculated. This is handy for checking to see how far out an estimated bill or you may want to know how much it has cost since the last bill so that you can use a bit more or cut down a bit as necessary. 1. Altering Dates You may enter the dates and readings in any order you like - simply click on the appropriate window to edit the settings. When you are satisfied with the amendments simply click anywhere outside the current editing window or press return. Whilst editing these figures the usual Amiga rules apply for moving the cursor - use the Left and Right Arrow keys or click LMB to drag it left and right. The Del and Backspace key will put a 0 in the position to the left of or at the current cursor position respectivly. Gas-Trick will only let you enter numbers (either from the keyboard or the key pad) and will tell you if you enter an illegal date. The date is in European Format i.e. Day-Month-Year. It will only calculate your bill over a maximum 2-year period. This is to prevent inaccuracies occuring due to the meter going 'Round The Clock' several times. N.B. If you have a battery backed-up clock you may enter the date quickly by clicking CURRENT DATE: button providing that you have used the SetClock load instruction in the s/startup-sequence of your BOOT DISK. It will also work if you set the date from Workbench Preferences. 2. Altering Readings This functions in the same way as the Date editor. You just enter the required readings in the appropriate window as you would the dates. Only the main 4 digits shown on your meter are needed (see your gas bill). N.B. Please note that on your meter will be a label telling you wether it is metric or imperial. You will need to click the appropriate meter type button so that the correct calculation can be made. I would like to point out that we have not been able to find out what a metric meter looks like. I am assuming for the moment that it has 4 digits, the same as an imperial one. I tried phoning the Gas Board but they did not seem to know themselves or want to find out for me so if anyone knows I would appreciate it if you let me know so that I can modify Gas-Trick if necessary. 3. Saving Once you have calculated your bill the Current Date and Reading can be saved so that you can Load it in again as the Previous Date/Reading when you wish to do your next calculation. Click the Save button and the standard AMOS PROFESSIONAL file requester will appear. Simply type in a name for the file to be saved and click the save button. If you are not familiar with the AMOS File Requester, don't panic it works in the much same way as the requesters in most other Amiga software. We recommend that you use a separate disk to save to so that no harm comes to your Gas-Trick boot disk (which you should have made a back-up copy of, just in case). Oh yes! When you Load in a file Gas-Trick expects a file with the extension ".gas". If you forget to include the ".gas" extension to your file name, don't worry because it will be added for you. For your own benefit, try to name each file with an easily identifiable name e.g. Jan94.gas or GransMarchBill.gas or... well! you get the idea. 4. Loading Clicking the Load button brings up a similar requester so that you can load any previously saved Date and Reading. This will now be the "Previous" Date and Reading and will appear in the Previous Date and Reading windows. 5. Calculating Your Bill Once you have entered the required dates and readings click the calculate button and Gas-Trick will display the result in the little window on the right of the screen. This is broken down into:- > Cost of the gas used over this period > Cost of the standing charge for this period > How much VAT (currently charged at 8%) > Total cost for this period The result may be 2 or 3 pence out. I think this is because we use more decimal places in our formula than the Gas Board (or vice-versa). 6. Quit To quit, click the quit button. A requester appears just to make sure that you really want to leave the program. If you have not saved you current settings you still have the option to go back and do so by selecting "No". 7. Hard-disk Users From WorkBench, simply click and drag the GasTrick drawer over to where you want Gas-Trick to be installed to and make sure that you copy the file AMOS.LIBRARY to the LIBS directory of your SYS: directory (where your Amiga is booted from). And that's it really. By the way! You should find that Gas-Trick will Multi-Task with most programs. To leave Gas-Trick in the background press "Left Amiga + A". To return to Gas-Trick press "Left Amiga + A" again. This program was written with AMOS PROFESSIONAL on an Amiga 500 but we tried it on an Amiga 1200 and an Amiga 4000/30 with no problems. If you do have any problems then send us a note/letter etc. and we will see what we can do. As I said, we do not ask for donations (though any received would be most appreciated) but if one other Amiga user finds our program useful it would be ample reward. So, good bye for now and remember - The Amiga is not a machine, IT LIVES! - Help keep it alive. Any correspodencies to: Bob Adams or Tony Sansom 34 Little Close Eye Peterborough Cambs PE6 7TG England