4]-------------- 3]READERS' FORUM 4]-------------- 3]A2000 LAMENT - Steve Ziegler, Miami Shores, FL Following are excerpts from a letter written by Mr. Ziegler to Commodore with copies provided to Amiga-specific magazines: Since the Amiga came out, I have purchased three A100s, three A1010 external disk drives, five memory add-ons, plus cables, modems, books, magazines and tons of software. All the hardware and most of the non-PD software was bought at (a Florida store). This is where my big gripe starts. I have made four trips to that store to take advantage of the current trade-in offer. They keep saying they don't have any Amigas in stock, except the plain 2000. On top of that, they say their second store and warehouse don't have them either. Don't stop; it gets worse. The sales people tell me if they were to order the 2000HD or the 2500/30, it would take Commodore more than a month to process the order, and IF Commodore had the inventory. Don't stop; it gets worse . . . Is it not dumb to be in the middle of a major sales push and have little or no inventory? . . . For all too long, too many people in high places have been sitting around on their hands and/or making bad marketing decisions around the Commodore household . . . Don't bring out the 3000 until you get it right! And then have enough to go around. When that time comes, you will have to stand back to make way for the tens of thousands of us who will want one -- or two. 3]FALSE ADVERTISING - Steve Smith, Bronx, NY The Walker Demo (416 and 417) I ordered through JUMPDISK requires TWO megs to run -- not one meg, as you stated on the order blank. Isn't this false advertising? FROM THE EDITOR: Our apologies. We thought the thing required only a meg. Our mistake won't be swept under the rug. To all who ordered 416 and 417 for a one-meg machine: Return the disks and choose two more. Let us know what you're doing and we'll reimburse you for postage. You must return the disks we sent you. 3]I LIKE AMIGA PLUS - Thomas Blair, San Francisco The reader letter blasting Antic's Amiga Plus: Wasn't that just a convenient way for you to knock your competition? I'll be interested to see if you print my letter saying I like Amiga Plus; it is bright, cheerful and informative. FROM THE EDITOR: OK, so let's all raise our glasses in a heartfelt toast to Amiga Plus! 3]BASIC: WHY NOT? - Al Comroe, Granada Hills, CA In recent issues of JUMPDISK I read statements from readers who say they can live without Basic. They can live without ice cream, too, but it wont be as much fun. I believe JUMPDISK was founded on Basic and Basic carried it through its first years. Basic is provided with the system so you don't have to buy a language. Because of that, and the fact that is much easier to read than the higher level languages, beginners can enjoy the fun of learning to program. And since it is an interpretive language, it is much easier to debug. It is not as fast as most high level languages, but I see many programs in Basic with coded delays to slow them. I note you will go to a compiled Basic, but I'm delighted you will include the original code. If you could ask your subscribers what they think of Amiga Basic, I believe the response would be in favor of it. I'm a charter subscriber, so you know I mean it when I say keep up the good work! FROM EDITOR: We've pulled back on the idea of using compiled Basic. The compiler does not offer across-the-board conversion and tends to signal runtime errors in programs we know run correctly in Basic format. We will continue to run Basic programs, though fewer are being submitted. There is no reason not to accept good programs, whatever their language, if they work on the Amiga. 3]EDUCATION IN ONTARIO - Lech Biegalski, Etobicoke, ON, Canada Presently, Amiga is not popular in Ontario schools because until 1989 it was not listed by the Ontario Ministry of Education as a Grant Eligible Microcomputer System (GEMS). The educational potential of the Amiga and the quality of its programs are not known to the officials in most of the boards of education in Ontario. They are also not known to most of the teachers. Systems that are commonly used include Apple (Quest family), Commodore (C-64, Comlink family), IBM (EDNET family and AN/ICLAS family, INTERTAN (edLAN family), and UNISYS (Icon/Lexicon family). Programs that are offered (based on these systems) are in many cases poorly developed and do not allow students to use the computers in a versatile and creative way. Many teachers would like to use more challenging and more interesting programs, but they do not have the access to the right equipment and software. The main limitation here were the GEMS requirements. That is slowly changing. In March 1989 the Amiga 2000 with XT card became a GEMS vendor. Two out of nine school boards in the metropolitan Toronto area have already set up the first complete Amiga 2000 and 1000 computer labs. Some schools use single Amiga 500 units to enhance visual arts and music programs. Recognition of the Amiga's educational value is growing in the York Board of Education, which is the leading force in implementing modern technology in our sachools. In my opinion the market will open to the Amiga in education here in Ontario, because it simply will not be able to resist the quality and opportunities this system provides. The only way to speed this process is to practically demonstrate it to the boards of education, to the schools, and to the parents. This is what Futureland has decided to do. As a "Computers in Classroom" teacher, as well as an Amiga user and programmer, I am myself personally committed to the goal. From the Editor: Biegalski is president of Futureland, 675 Martin Grove Rd, Suite 1108, Etobicoke, ON Canada M9R 3T5. Phone (416) 249-6170. 3]MINI GEN SOLUTION - Carlton Connelly, Detroit, MI A problem with Progressive's Mini Gen is that you can't see what you're recording. I am happy to say I have solved the problem. I got a Radio Shack audio/video three-way distribution amplifier, catalog number 15-1103. Plug the Mini Gen into the Amiga, connect your cables to the amplifier and the genlock, switch over to the composite mode, and you can see as you record. I hope this will help other Mini Gen owners with their desktop video projects. 3]COMPUGRAPHIC FONTS - Lawrence Corr, Rome, NY How about those new Compugraphic fonts? They are to be part of AmigaDOS 1.4 and are now available from Gold Disk in its new Professional Page. They work with any dot matrix printer. FROM THE EDITOR: Thanks for the example you sent. Though we can't show it here, we can say it was of good quality, and we look forward to 1.4. 3]SYS PRAISE - Lawrence Webb SYS on your February 1990 disk is among my favorites. I enjoy it more than other games for which I paid as much as $40. FROM THE EDITOR: More cheers for author Anders Bjerin. 3]AFTER THREE YEARS - Angelo Furlan, Downsview, Ontario, Canada I've had my Amiga for three years now. There's not much that interests me any more, particularly since I'm not much for games. However, I find JUMPDISK a monthly treasure trove of goodies, guaranteed. I particularly like the utility programs, though I have to keep messing with my working copy of Workbench to fit the latest offerings. Thank goodness for PowerPacker. 3]ABOUT KLONDIKE FROM THE EDITOR: Longtime JUMPDISK friend Stan Kendall of Glen Ellyn, IL, wrote to suggest changes in the Klondike game in the April 1990 issue, to give the player a better chance of winning. The game can be beaten, but it seldom happens. This solitaire game was once a popular offering of olden-days casinos around New York race tracks. A player paid $52 for a game and under the scrutiny of the house, played a standard solitaire game. The discard deck was unpeeled one at a time and could be gone through only once. The house paid $5 for every card put in the aces piles. The house edge is considerable. Under such circumstances, wins seldom occur. But that's the way it was and is. 3]TODD M. LEWIS TAKES OVER Todd Lewis, who is well represented in this issue, has submitted three items which now take over the balance of this month's reader column. They deal with icons and sprites. Whether you're a beginner or expert, you'll be interested. Todd, take over: 3]THE VANISHING ICON, PART 2 -- Todd M. Lewis, Sanford, NC In the February '90 JUMPDISK, Giorgio Cupertino explains what combination of user and hardware errors combine to produce the phenomenon known as The Vanishing Icon. What happens is when an icon is dragged in a window and released, it disappears. Not completely, though. In fact, it can be found in another drawer on the disk. Giorgio is mistaken about the effect. When I first got my Amiga in November 1985, I explored all the system's ins and outs. I had to explore, for there was no documentation to speak of, except the ABasiC manual. There were no magazines, newsletters, user groups or local gurus to be found. The OS version was 1.0. I never lost an icon. OS version 1.1 was out quickly, accompanied by Amiga Basic. I never lost an icon. OS 1.2, then eventually 1.3 arrived. Two 3.5" drives and a 5.25" drive served me well, moving icons all the time. I never lost an icon. Then late last year I added an A590 20Meg hard disk to the side of my trusty A1000. It came with OS 1.3.2 (an update to 1.3) already installed. The icons, of course, had to be moved to match my preferred layout. I grabbed one and moved it slightly. Poof! My jaw dropped. A little searching found it in another drawer. I thought, "Hmm. I didn't think I was anywhere close to that drawer. I'll try that again." I moved the icon to its original place in the first window, then carefully moved it a couple of pixels and let go. Poof! I could go on, but you get the idea. This will happen consistently with every icon in the disk's main window about every third time one is moved. This has been going on for months. I am not inexperienced at arranging icons in windows. I've never had the problem show up on a floppy, and for that matter, it's never happened in any drawer on my hard disk except the disk's window itself. After several months now I can still make it happen, but only in that window on that disk. I had heard about the Vanishing Icon phenomenon before it happened to me, and I thought it was the result of user error, just as Giorgio did. (I never suspected hardware error, however.) I can't offer an explanation, but I can state beyond any doubt that it is real, and I just wanted to set the record straight. 3]PROPOSAL FOR ICON GUIDELINES, Todd M. Lewis I was pleased to see JUMPDISK using my small drawer icon (which accompanied Concentration (March 1990) on several other drawers on that disk. The issue's surrounding icons lead to unending debates, and the following comments may only add fuel to the fire. Nonetheless, I offer these guidelines in the interest of usability and consistency in the visual user interface. 1. Drawer icons should be readily discernible. The creativity allowed in the design of icons often leads to diminished consistency, sometimes to the extent that the user cannot tell which icons represent drawers and which ones represent projects or programs. Where possible, all drawer icons should be identical, or perhaps slight variations on a theme, through a given disk. 2. The boundaries of icons should be obvious from inspection. One frequent problem, especially with dual image icons, is that the artwork occupies only a small part of the bounding rectangle. Consequently, the user inadvertently selects icons, or overlaps them when rearranging them. This can cause more confusion if the overlapped icon represents a drawer, causing the moved icon to be move into the drawer. 3. Very large icons are generally discouraged. Every rule has exceptions, of course, but if your creation is worth the effort of making a icon, someone else may find it worth moving or copying to another disk. If, for example, someone wants to add your program to her collection of favorite programs, it will likely have to compete for window space with perhaps dozens of other icons. Help the user out by making a good small icon, and spend your creativity on the content of the file rather than the appearance of the icon. 4. An icon, when selected, should be obviously selected. This is perhaps the hardest of these guidelines to follow, especially considering a user could have changed the colors on the WorkBench screen, and likely has. Ideally, a stranger should be able to walk up to an Amiga with several drawer windows open and tell, without any experimentation, which are selected and which are not. This can be accomplished through judicious choices of color, highlighting mode, and/or alternate icon images. All too often the selected icon looks like just another icon. Without knowing what the original image looks like, the user has no clue whether a given icon is currently selected. Above all, remember the appearance of icons on the screen is supposed to help the user more effectively use the machine. Icons which lead to confusion, regardless of artistic quality, are poor icons. This does not mean artistic creativity should be sacrificed for clarity -- quite the contrary! Anyone can hack out a bunch of dots on a screen, but to make an icon both beautiful and functional is a much greater artistic challenge. 3]SPRITE PROBLEMS AND SCREEN SIZE/POSITION, Todd M. Lewis Under certain circumstances, the Amiga is unable to display all eight of the hardware sprites. This can happen when the screen is positioned too far to the left. The problem is exacerbated by higher numbers of bitplanes (e.g. more colors) in the displayed screen. What's going on here is that while the system is getting ready to show the next scan line, the hardware is looking up the information needed to show whatever sprites might appear on that scan line. The farther to the left the picture is positioned, the less time is available for this lookup operation. Too far to the left and it doesn't get looked up at all. The result is the sprite doesn't get displayed. If you have run the program MoreRows (which makes the WorkBench screen larger than the standard size), your system could be especially susceptible to this phenomenon, and it could easily effect the usability of programs which use sprites. The program BOUNCE (Brian Buell, Dec. 1989 JUMPDISK) is an example of just such a program. When I ran Brian's BOUNCE program on my system (my WorkBench screen is 672 by 233) I couldn't see the ball. However, when I booted with a normal screen size everything worked fine. So, if you can't see the sprites you should see in a program, consider moving your screen via Preferences a little to the right. If that doesn't do it, set your screen to the normal 640 by 200. That should take care of the problem.