Well set-up workshop toolkit
THIS set of 25 utilities comes from Ian Trackman, the "Making
the Most of Your Micro's" programmer extraordinaire. As you
would expect, it contains some very useful programs.
They are in two sets. One contains routines that can be included
in your own programs, while the other is intended purely as program
development aids.
The first set contains six sorting routines, circle generating
codes, three character generating/printing programs, a graphics
dump and a speech unit utility. Most of these are written in Basic
and are well annotated with REMs.
I particularly liked the Shape Maker program which allows one
to convert a shape on the screen into user defined characters.
The second set of programs seem to be what every writer of large
Basic programs on the BBC Micro has been waiting for - if he/she
hasn't already written them.
There are, for instance, three utilities that help to shorten
Basic programs. The first is a REM stripper which not only removes
REM statements but also lines with only colons or spaces.
Follow this with a space removing program and then a packer
that tucks as many statements as possible on to one line and your
original program is considerably shorter, and hopefully faster.
With a disc system the whole process is easily automated and
is explained in the manual.
Conversely, if you have a packed program that you would like
to make understandable you can use the unpacking and spacer programs
that unravel most of the mess that the above programs have created.
Add to these a cross-referencer, a variable dump, a global replacer
and a resequencing program, and a good deal of the drudgery of
writing in Basic is obviated.
The programs come on tape but with full instructions on how
to write them on to disc.
A colleague wrote a small program which automatically transferred
the programs from tape to disc for me, and this would have been
a nice addition to the package.
The manual is large (208 pages) and has complete listings together
with concise explanations.
This is a very useful addition to any Basic programmer's toolkit.
Alan Plume
