Hi there! Welcome to Gas-Trick V2.0 If you already have my earlier version of Gas-Trick, BIN IT! It is now obsolete. Them lot at the gas board have blimmin' altered their rates again. This is the new improved version that allows you to alter the default rates as and when they change. I have also incorporated full keyboard control just in case your mouse goes belly-up. Although I do not ask a fee for this program, I would appreciate a couple of quid if you do use the progrram and find it useful - if I get a response it will certainly encourage me to release some more programs and games that I am currently working on. You have my permission to pass this program on providing this document accompanies it (unaltered) and ONLY reproduction costs are charged - NO PROFITEERING PLEASE. <<< 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 (or use TAB) 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). 8. Configuration When Gas-Trick is run, it tries to load in the file GT.cfg. This should be present in the directory from where it was run. If this file exists it will try to create one using default values. If for any reason it cannot create this file it will then USE the default values. When altering the configuration all the presets are displayed. If these values don't match those on your gas bill then just click on (or press TAB) the one you wish to alter. You may then USE this configuration or SAVE it for use next time. 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. We cannot promise to reduce your bills, but at least we can help you to keep tabs on what you are spending. So, good bye for now and remember - The Amiga is not a machine, IT LIVES! - Help keep it alive. Finally:- Many thanks to my friend Tony Sansom who supplied the intro and a lot of valued advice and ideas during developement. Also, if you are wondering why you can't run this program on your 'PC clone', I'm terribly sorry but it only works on pedigrees not mongrels. Any correspodencies to: Robert Adams 34 Little Close Eye Peterborough Cambs PE6 7TG