HALIFAX AREA
                  PERSONAL COMPUTER SOCIETY

NEWSLETTER                                    MARCH 1995


Meets 4th Sunday of each month, 7:00 pm
     Nova Scotia Community College
     Institute of Technology Campus (NSIT)
     Leeds Street, Halifax, N.S.

26 MARCH MEETING

Topics This Month
     - Windows Feature - Bill Marchant
     - Question & Answer - Colin Stuart
     - Spreadsheet Stock Tracking - Arlo Moen
     - Contest Update - David Potter

In This Month's Issue:

Announcements

Next General Meeting Notes
What's happening this month

The Contest
An update on our Spring programming contest

What Might Have Been
This series on a look back in time continues with part three

Worth Paying For?
A review of some recent shareware

The Newsletter
A few notes about this document

Meeting Schedule 94/95
Dates for the rest of the year


GENERAL INFORMATION

This document is mailed to all paid up members and to anyone who
has attended a meeting within the past three months.  Yearly
membership dues are $15.00.  The text of the newsletter is
available on ATAB 435-0751, (8N1) and other local bulletin
boards.
Society Mailing Address -
     P.O. Box 29008, Halifax N.S., B3L 4T8
Executive
     Chairperson - David Potter
     Vice-Chair - Andy Cornwall - 861-4503 (h)
     Secretary/Newsletter Editor - Colin Stuart - 461-0370 (h)
     Treasurer - Garth Bennett - 492-3368 (h)
     Disk Librarian - Thayne MacLean - 461-0082 (h)
     and but not least Norman DeForest, Henry Hill, Arthur
     Layton, Rob MacCara, Bill Marchant, George Richards, and
     Diane Smith


ANNOUNCEMENTS

David Potter has written a couple of short articles this month
which provide us with the details on our next meeting and the
ongoing programming contest.

Last Planning Meeting
The last planning meeting was held on March 6th and was attended
by Norman DeForest, Bill Marchant, Henry Hill, Thayne MacLean,
David Potter, Garth Bennett, George Richards and Colin Stuart. 
The next planning meeting will be held on the 3rd of April, at
7:30 pm at the Institute of Technology Campus (NSIT), Leeds
Street in Halifax.  Anyone wishing to have input into what goes
into the next meeting or has some comments on any other Society
business is welcome to attend.

Society Draw
The last draw that we held was in January for a US Robotics 14.4 
fax/modem.  In last month's newsletter it was stated that there
would be a draw for some income tax preparation software but I
guess some wires got crossed and this didn't come about.  There
will be other draws in the near future so stay tuned.  For those
who can do some programming, see David's article about our Spring
Contest.

Membership Expiry Dates
For those of you who are not already aware, the membership expiry
dates are printed in the upper right corner of your newsletter
mailing label.  I noticed that a number of people's subscriptions
have run out in the past few months.  If you wish to continue to
receive this newsletter and know what interesting meetings are
coming up, you either have to renew ($15 per year) or come to the
meetings and put your name on the list that is passed around.

I will bring an up-to-date member list to the next meeting.

OS/2 Users Group
Next meeting is 7:00 pm, Tuesday, April 11th at the Maritime Life
Building (near the Armdale rotary).  A representative from Lotus
will be demonstrating Lotus' OS/2 products.

Those who are interested in attending should contact Carey Rolfe
at 462-4551 or E-Mail crolfe@fox.nstn.ns.ca for date and time
confirmation.

WordPerfect Users Group Meeting
Meetings of the Atlantic Canada WordPerfect User Society are held
on the third Wednesday of the month at 6:30 pm.

For more information contact:

Therese Mackintosh, 435-5456.

Advertising and Want Ads
We don't charge for small individual want ads.  That is any
Society member or other interested person with some computer
related item that they wish to sell, trade, or give away can
contact the editor to place an ad similar to the ones above in
the newsletter.  We would expect that more commercially oriented
advertising provide the Society with some remuneration for
carrying the ad.

An ad will normally only appear once but let me know if you need
it repeated.  Ads can be given to me at meetings or give me a
call two weeks to ten days before the next general meeting
(newsletter deadline).


NEXT GENERAL MEETING NOTES

by David Potter

The next meeting will feature the following people and items.

Arlo Moen - on the use of a spreadsheet to track the value of
stocks.  After trying several other packages, none of which did
exactly what he wanted, Arlo created his own.

Win.ini - Installing a substitute for windows program manager -
'Dash Board'  by Borland.  "There are several substitutes for the
Windows Program Manager...  I love mine (D. Potter)"

Questions and Answers - Colin Stuart will host this feature
(Rob's away).  Colin is particularly knowledgeable in disk drives
and other hardware, dBASE and networks.  The Q&A session is also
a good opportunity to ask question about other problems and to
offer TIPS that you have found particularly valuable.

Contest Announcement - David Potter (anything not in the
newsletter we'll  decide at the meeting ;-)

See you at the meeting!


THE CONTEST

by David Potter

In response to an expressed interest in programming the Halifax
Area Personal  Computer Society is pleased to announce Spring
Contest '95.

The contest is open to all.

Three Requirements to Win

1) Entrants will create a 'tic-tac-toe' game that can be
demonstrated on an  average computer that includes a relatively
current version of DOS 3.3 or over, Windows 3.1 (or higher). 

If you wish to use some exotic programming system (such as Lotus
macros..) it is Your Responsibility to confirm that you will be
able to demonstrate your program at a meeting.

2) In addition to demonstrating the program you must provide a
copy of the source code for the program.  This source code will
become available for distribution to and the Free use of members
of the society.

3) The program must include the ability for a human to play
against the machine.  Additional ability such as for two humans
to play or the computer to play both sides will add to the
'win-ability' but are not strictly required.

Prizes

There will be three prizes... 

a) Best in Show
b) Members Pride for a member of the Society 
c) Most Novel

Prizes include a Windows Program Manager Replacement (Value $70),
a Book on Windows 95 (Value $40) and a kit that allows you to use
a 'real' vacuum to clean you computer/heater crevices in you car
(or clean wax out of your ears).

Last Chance to Win

The contest will end with the judging at the May meeting. 


Biblical Bits #18
-- Micro Chips --
certain additions were made of thin work  1 KINGS 7:29


WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN - PART THREE

by Garth Bennett

The last time out we looked at the Osborne Executive, a complete
8 bit machine.  The Osborne was pushed into oblivion by the
stampede to the 16 bit machines from IBM and the Clones that
followed.  A couple of companies tried to bridge the gap between
the 8 and 16 bit world with co-processors. It was an interesting
time in the mid eighties as these machines were introduced. 
There is similarity to what is happening today with The Macintosh
and the PowerPC which are trying to bridge the DOS/APPLE worlds. 
Back in 83/84 the biggest name to try the bridging process was
Digital Equipment, a major powerhouse who are still, today, a
strong force in the computer world but at the corporate end with
mainframes and storage devices.  Their first entry into the
mainstream of the desktop world was the Rainbow.  This machine
had a Z80B processor and could run all the CPM80 programs.  In
addition it also had an 8080 processor on board so it could also
run MS DOS programs.  It's claim to fame for anyone who has had
the opportunity to use one is it's keyboard.  It was the same one
that University people were using to work with their VAX
machines.  A total of 18 usable Function keys along the top and
two dedicated keys (one for HELP).  The Qwerty keyboard was
standard along with a cursor key control bank and a key pad.  The
Key pad had another row of function keys.  Very responsive and
programmable.

Where this machine went wrong is that it was a little weird.  The
disk drives were 400K with very strange engineering; not the
standard issue and only sold by Digital (read lots of dollars). 
The format was also not standard so you couldn't easily move the
disk from your machine at work to your IBM Clone at home.  Three
operating system was probably a little much for the average user. 
Along with the CPM80 operating system I mentioned it provided
CPM86, Digital Research's answer to the 16 bit world.  In
addition almost as an afterthought, they threw in MS DOS 2.1. 

Most of the machine was proprietary and, because of this,
specific versions of WordPerfect and Lotus 123 had to be
developed by Digital for it's client base.  They, therefore, were
always behind the latest versions as the Company  programmers
would try and make these plain vanilla DOS programs work on the
Rainbow with its different screen and disk drives.  In addition,
it was expensive and aimed at the business executive market. 
Shortly after its introduction there developed a secondary market
for people who had software and hardware which would make the
machine more compatible.  It was never enough and even if you
decided upgrading was what you wanted to do you would end up
spending as much for the upgrades and 'kludges' as you would for
a new machine.  In 1992, almost ten years after its release, I
tried to purchase a Hard Disk Controller for a Rainbow for an
upgrade I was attempting (and still am).  The best price I could
find was 200 ($US).

All in all a wonderful machine to use.  If it had been more
adaptable to the mainstream I think, personally, that Digital
would be in the forefront of PC's today.  The company had a lot
of built in goodwill with it's corporate and academic base and
could have used that to springboard into the users throughout the
general population.  Digital, always, a proud company thought
what they gave the public was correct.  It may have been right
but the public gave the vote with their dollars and The Rainbow
didn't get a lot.

Next time the ubiquitous TRS80.


...WORTH PAYING FOR? 

by John Howard Oxley 

Notes, In One Form Or Another.

Another in the (increasingly irregular -- blame NFL football!!)
series of reviews looking at hardware I've found worth
registering (486DX66/16Mb; mostly WINDOWS, available from club
librarian unless otherwise mentioned).

In my last column, I promised to look at some utilities, but the
press of events has dictated a change.  Instead I will provide
the resolution to a problem noted in my last column, plus
describing a piece of software which I think is nifty cubed, but
which does not fit in the usual categories into which
applications are divided.

First, the problem of a quick note utility, which I mentioned the
Tardis DP Consultants' NOTE-IT ultimately failed to solve,
because it could not be registered.  An immediate question is
"Why would you need this anyway?  Why not just install NOTEPAD to
the desktop as an icon and use that?".

There are two answers to this: first off, the idea of a quick
jot-it-down utility for the purposes for which I want to use it
involves easy date-stamping, which NOTEPAD lacks; and secondly,
you would have to configure a separate icon for NOTEPAD which
brought up your "scratchpad" file, which is simply inelegant.

As it happened, the October PsL CD-ROM contained not one, but
four, note-taking programs, and I thought rather than simply
describing the one I selected, I would explain some of the
reasoning behind my choice, and why one program was better than
another in this regard.  The initial grounds for consideration
were twofold:

1) The utility had to be small, simple, and quick; and 

2) It couldn't cost much (remember, NOTE-IT only cost U$3.00). 

The first program I looked at was INREACH NOTES, from InfoStructs
Corporation (U.S. $20), and this package immediately failed
Criterion 1, because what it provides is a folders-based notepad
management system, which allows you to manage a multitude of
different notes at the click of a mouse.  In this case, there was
nothing wrong with the product (and in fact I intend to evaluate
it more thoroughly and report back in a future issue), which
seemed indeed well crafted.  The only thing wrong with this
application was the fact it simply was not what I was looking
for.

The second program was NOTE MANAGER from Cooper Collier, which
fulfilled Criterion 1 quite handily, as it took all of 5 minutes
to install and use, and also fulfilled the Criterion 2
requirement (because its suggested registration price was U$1.00
- 5.00).  Where this program failed was its mode of operation --
to input notes, a window with 4 differently coloured background
boxes was displayed, and when you filled the first 4 boxes, you
had to scroll to a new box; you were moreover limited to 15 boxes
in total.  Since I expect my jotting utility to contain about a
dozen notes at any one time and have room for expansion, the
scrolling required was just too clumsy to be worthwhile and the
total notes limit was cramping.

The third program was NOTEMAN from Chris Yourch, which at a
registration price of U$ 20 violated Criterion 2 by much more
than I cared to spend.  This is undoubtedly a well-crafted,
good-looking program whose additional features (WINDOWS CARDFILE
import, ASCII import, autodialer, and export capability) may
justify its price, but I don't need these extra features for what
I am doing.

Which leaves JOT-IT from Roger C. Spaeder (Registration fee
U$7.50), which while costing about twice as much as the original
NOTE-IT, added functionality which was well worth the extra
registration price.  The program is small (total files <150Kb),
easily installed (just copy the files), and easily used (the
entirely comprehensive help file comprises just 3 pages for
operations).  The added functionality to NOTEPAD included date
stamp, cursor mode toggle, locate text, clear screen, and an
informative status bar.   What I particularly enjoyed was the
ease with which I could customize the interface and make it
distinctive in terms of font and colours (and the font selection
is valid for printing as well).   JOT-IT is always on top when
activated, so you can look at it when working in another WINDOWS
application, and its screen is resizeable/minimizable.  The
program also automatically saves both on time period and on exit
(though if you want to abandon your edit, you can use Quick Exit
from the Help Menu).

Professionally crafted, attractive, and easy to use, JOT-IT has
worked flawlessly since I installed it.  Its one limitation is
that its maximum file length is 32K, but as I noted in my review
of NOTE-IT, if you are working with a note pile this large, you
need a PIM, not a quick-note tool.  Providing you can support its
system requirements (386 with VGA or better, hard disk, and a
mouse), it's hard to see how this could be bettered for its
purpose.

Turning to "notes" of another kind, the next program to be
discussed was such a hit that I unzipped it from the CD-ROM on a
Thursday, and decided to pay for it the very next day!  The
program is IMPROVISE 1.22 (David Pannett: Registration U$25.00),
and I immediately run into a problem when trying to describe it,
because those who are knowledgeable in the subject say "ho-hum",
while those who are not say "so what?", but I still say it is
terrific.  What IMPROVISE is an algorithmic MIDI music
composing program which allows you to create musical passages in
real time.  Alternately (and more important, from my viewpoint),
the program can create new music endlessly, without the user
doing anything at all except telling it to play.

For those in the audience who don't know what MIDI is, it's a
standard protocol for producing music through computerized tools,
and I will be the first to admit that I know nearly nothing about
it.  That's the beauty of this program -- so long as you have the
hardware (essentially a multimedia-capable system), you don't
have to know anything about MIDI to be able to make all sorts of
interesting music.  All settings can be activated by clicking on
buttons or selecting menu choices, the full range of MIDI sounds
(from Acoustic Grand Piano to Gunshots -- so you CAN shoot the
piano player if you wish!) is supported, and three distinctively
different musical generation algorithms can be applied to up to
16 channels.  The "Jazz" mode is highly reminiscent of Brian Eno,
whereas the wilder of the "Experimental" modes is nearly
indistinguishable from Morton Subotnik. Moreover, you can load
pre-defined setting (a dozen are supplied) or save your own
creation at the click of a button, and you can also save your
output to a sequencer/notation program should you wish.

This program puts immense musical power in the user's hands,
without requiring any technical knowledge, and is a breeze to set
up and use -- I was playing a musical composition in under 5
minutes the first time I started the program.  If you have a good
stereo system, even better, since you can run your sound card's
output to it, and really enjoy spontaneous electronic music, some
of which can be very soothing.  Highly recommended to anyone who
is even remotely interested in electronic music composition, or
has children who are so inclined.  This program is good for hours
and hours of absorbing play, in all senses of the word.

As a tailpiece to this review, when I registered this product, I
wrote in my covering letter how it would be really nifty to be
able to replicate a wind chime using IMPROVISE (the idea of
simulating a $50 wind chime on a combined computer/high fidelity
system costing more than a couple of orders of magnitude greater
tickles my fancy greatly -- I've always wanted a wind chime). 
When the author sent back the disk with my registered copy, he
covered it with a letter explaining the principles of what I
wanted to do, so I could do it myself, and also included an
example file on the disk showing what a wind chime might sound
like.  That kind of personal attention and responsiveness is what
makes shareware so great.



ABOUT THE NEWSLETTER

Newsletter Articles
We are almost always in need of good articles.  If anyone has
something that they feel would make a good article, an
interesting story to tell, or even a good meeting topic, please
don't hesitate to pass it on.

Articles can be submitted in almost any format, ASCII text, AMI
Pro, MS Word, Windows Write, WordStar and of course WordPerfect. 
How does one get an article to me?  Various ways are available. 
You can bring it to a meeting or give me a call and upload it to
me.  If you are on the Chebucto FreeNet, Internet, or any type of
e-mail system that has a gateway to the Internet, you can send
something to me via the internet to where I work -
hlfxtrad.educ.stuartce@gov.ns.ca

It does work, that is how most of the articles in this month's
edition were received, but if you are sending a file attachment
to your message, it should be UUencoded and not a mime
attachment.

Newsletter Production Notes
As usual , for those who may be interested, the newsletter was
formatted this month with WordPerfect for Windows 6.1 running on
my own creation of a machine here at home. It has a 386SX-25
motherboard with 8megs of RAM, a 1meg SVGA video card (Trident),
and a 540 Western Digital IDE drive.  It is not fast but it works
and WordPerfect 6.1 seems to operate at a speed which is not
unacceptable.  A 486DX2/66 would be nice and I hope to be able to
move up into that range sometime this summer.  Much  of the
clipart is from Novell (formerly WordPerfect) Presentations 3.0.

The original was printed at 600 dots per inch resolution on a HP
Laserjet 4M.  If I don't have access to this printer then we
print it on an Okidata 850 at Bits and Bytes on Portland Street
in Dartmouth where they allow the Society to print the originals
at no charge.

The main body of the newsletter is set in 10 point Palatino with
the article headings being 14 point bold.  The title on the first
page is ITC Zapf Chancery Medium Italic 19.2 and 16 points.

There were a few less copies made this month as compared to the
previous editions, with about 90 copies produced of which around
75 were mailed out.  Any extra copies from the previous few
months issues that I have will be brought to the next meeting for
those who are new to the group or may not be in regular
attendance.

I do have a complete set of all the previous newsletters and if
someone wanted to look through these, let me know and I can bring
them to the next meeting.


MEETING SCHEDULE - 94/95

Well we are quickly moving through this meeting year.  Only four
more meetings left.  The dates for these are listed below. 

26 March
23 April
28 May
25 June

The planning meetings are normally held on the second Monday (8
days) after the general meeting.  They are also located at NSIT,
normally in a small boardroom to the left as you come in.  Anyone
is welcome to assist in the planning of future meetings or
events.

Any changes to the scheduled dates will be announced where
possible at the regular monthly meetings and/or in this
newsletter.