SB BBC @ GBR Oldie hints/tips #139-143 Hints and tips from the archives of Wakefield BBC Micro User Group... 139. Wordwise-plus paging hints ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Three things occurred to Richard Hare after the group meeting in July 1986, when Wordwise-Plus was discussed, and here they are:- 1. "Somebody said he wasted the first sheet of tractor-feed paper every time he used his Epson printer. This can be avoided if you pull the scale-bar towards you and only let it go back onto the paper after the first few lines have been printed. Better still, if the individual texts are short enough to allow quite a large top space, you can start printing with the perforation line along the top of the scale-bar ready for tear-off; use a top space of zero (TS0) and the first line of printing will come at line 6 in the case of an Epson FX80. Use HP0 if you are using a header, and TS4; the text will then start four lines below the header. Use BS10 and that will give you an actual bottom space of 4. Footers should be at FP2 or FP3; if the FP number is greater than 4 the footer will be beyond the perforation, at the top of the next page." 2. "Somebody else mentioned that to get the paper to the start of the next page, when one text has been printed, he uses the operating control code for form-feed, OC12. That is fine, but if you are using a footer it will not be printed on the last page of your text. If you have a footer you should finish with a green BP, with no white afterwards and no carriage return. This will effectively do a form-feed at the end of the text and print the footer. If you press do or after the green BP it will line-feed the number of lines in your top-space for the next page as well, and the header will be printed at the top. This is not desirable." 3. "If you are defining the character strings while using WORDWISE-PLUS remember that it is fatal to define F$. F$ is used in the program, and if you try to use it yourself you will screw the whole thing up!" 140. ADFS filename snag ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you are using an Acorn ADFS, you must avoid using fullstops anywhere in filenames. Whereas an 'ordinary' DFS will accept "VIEW2.1" as a valid filename, the ADFS will treat this as filename "1" in directory "VIEW2". Since it is unlikely that you have such a directory on the disc, you will get the message "Not found". I ran foul of this when using the Copyfiles utility to transfer files from a DFS formatted disc to an ADFS formatted disc. I had to *RENAME any offending filenames to get rid of the fullstops. You should also avoid using hyphens, as these are used in the syntax of a filename/filing-system path on a Master/Compact. 141. Reset to ADFS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ There are occasions when you may wish to enter the ADFS filing system, without causing the disc drive to start up and look for a directory. You may have an 'ordinary' DFS disc in drive 0, and wish to *MOUNT an ADFS disc in drive 1. The behaviour of the ADFS in this situation does depend on the *CONFIGURE DIR (or NODIR) option. However, regardless of this, you can select ADFS without the drive starting up, by either pressing , or by typing *FADFS . The ADFS is a bit hard going at first, but by jove it's worth persisting! 142. Language problems ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Some language ROMs will not work on the Master, (eg Commstar), as they give a "This is not a language" error. You can cure this by editing an 'image' of the ROM. Look through the first few bytes, and see if the 7th along, (address &8006), is &82. If so, edit this to &C2 and save the image. This should then enable the ROM to work, though not necessarily in SRAM if write-protection is needed. It doesn't mean that the ROM will necessarily be compatible with the Master, but it will at least be correctly recognized. Commstar, for example, does work fine after editing. 143. *MOVE syntax ~~~~~~~~~~~~ The syntax of this useful command can be a bit tricky. It is used for moving individual files between filing systems, eg transferring from DFS to ADFS discs. To transfer a file from a DFS disc in drive 0 to an ADFS disc in drive/mount 1, use the form *MOVE -DISC-:0.name -ADFS-:1.newname Note the rather unfamiliar use of hyphens in the syntax. Directory names can be included where appropriate, and the drive specification could be omitted if the currently selected ADFS drive was 1 and the currently selected DFS drive was 0. This is easily overlooked, in which case "Disc error" messages occur, so use the full syntax. To copy several files, it is better to use the Copyfiles ADFS utility program on the Welcome disc. Incidentally, if you specify the same filing system and drive for both source and destination, but specify a different directory or filename, then this a convenient way of duplicating a file on the same disc, without deleting the original as would happen with *RENAME. 73 Rick G4BLT @ GB7WRG