REVISION 2 ---------- The Absolute Beginners Guide To Amos V1.0 ------------------------------------------ by A.Pine (C) 1994 ------------------ Chapter One ----------- Right let`s get things out in the open right at the start, I am not an Amos expert, but then again I am not a beginner, the purpose of these tutorials are to help complete beginners and by beginners I mean people who know how to load Amos but are confused by the hundreds of commands and want a simple explanation of what they do. Note: You can read these text files from inside Amos by pressing the HELP key which, providing your disk is set up right, will load your HELP Acc, click on the disk icon to load a text file. After reading a chapter you can quit the text reader and load in the examples Amos programs. The best place to start is at the beginning, so I will be taking you step by step through some simple but very useful commands, when you have finished reading this chapter load in EXAMPLE1.Amos, but read the rest of this chapter first. Don`t worry if you do not understand everything first time as the example program offers more information and advice on this chapter. These are the commands that we will be covering in this chapter: CLS N PAPER N CURS OFF HIDE PRINT WAIT KEY EDIT I bet you can already guess what some of the above commands do! Here is a detailed rundown on each. CLS N ----- CLS is an abbreviation of CLear Screen and does exactly that, it clears the screen to any colour you want, that is what the N stands for, N in this case can be any number from 0 to 15, the number you assign to CLS represents a colour so if you typed CLS 0 Amos would clear the screen of any text or graphics and turn the screen black. When you load EXAMPLE1.Amos try changing the number after CLS to see it`s effect, don`t worry you can`t do any harm by typing CLS 197540 or something, Amos will just tell you that you have a syntax error in your program and place the cursor on the offending line. Paper N ------- Paper is the background colour of any text you PRINT to the screen, the N works exactly the same as the N in CLS N. This is one of those commands that you will understand better by changing the value of N and running the example program, make sure you tinker with it to understand it properly. CURS OFF -------- This is a nice straight forward command, it simply gets rid of the flashing text cursor that would otherwise appear on screen. You can also use CURS ON to reinstate the cursor if needed. Try changing or deleting the CURS OFF command to see it`s effects in action. HIDE ---- Luckily for me this command is easy to use and easy to describe, this literally HIDEs the mouse pointer from view while your program runs. The opposite to HIDE is SHOW which reinstates the mouse pointer. PRINT ----- PRINT enables you to PRINT text to the screen, sounds great but there is a small catch, whatever you want PRINTed must be inside quotes this isn`t as bad as it sounds when you look at the following examples, PRINT "HELLO THERE" PRINT "JUST REMEMBER TO PUT" PRINT "THE QUOTES" PRINT "BEFORE AND AFTER YOUR TEXT PRINT "Don`t forget you can use numbers and symbols as well" PRINT "LIKE THIS @#$%^&*()_+|1234567890" Take a close look at EXAMPLE1.amos and try changing the text inside the quotes. WAIT KEY -------- One of my favourite commands this one, nice and straight forward and powerful. WAIT KEY will force Amos to WAIT until a KEY is pressed by the user. Try taking this out of EXAMPLE1.Amos to see what happens. EDIT ---- Edit stops your program and returns you back to the EDITor where you can continue adding to and making changes to your masterpiece. This command is not really necessary at all as all you have to do is press the space bar to return to the Editor when a program ends. EDIT just saves you pressing the space bar and looks cleaner and neater. Delete it from EXAMPLE1.Amos to see what it`s like without it. OK, we have covered seven commands already, I know it`s a lot to take on board and understand in one go so read the above explanations of each command again. It doesn`t matter wether you can remember them but it does matter if you can UNDERSTAND them. After loading EXAMPLE1.Amos and playing about with it for a while get a note book and jot down briefly in your own words what each command does because I can guarantee you that you will not remember them later on and a quick glance at your notes will refresh your memory, also if you have an Amos manual (some people own the coverdisk version from Amiga Format) look up each of the above commands for a different explanation of them, this can often help a lot. I have mentioned EXAMPLE1.Amos so many times you must be chomping at the bit to LOAD it, so off you go and do it. Don`t be afraid to read this chapter again if there is anything you do not understand, good luck. End of chapter one.