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From: patth@dasys1.UUCP (Patt Haring)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: RESCUE SQUAD
Message-ID: <1177@dasys1.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 3-Sep-87 03:28:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: dasys1.1177
Posted: Thu Sep  3 03:28:13 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 5-Sep-87 17:12:51 EDT
Organization: The Big Electric Cat
Lines: 103
Keywords: Help Column, A+, by Gary B. Little

RESCUE SQUAD

by

Gary B. Little


PRINTER REFERENCE

Q.  Do you know of any reference book that has a listing of the
commands that work with various printers and printer-interface
cards?  I need this information so that the graphs and charts
created by physics programs I develop for the local high school
can print out properly with the many printer configurations
the students use.

						Phil Southworth
						Florence, WI


A.  There is a series of just such books, The Programmers'
Handbook of Computer Printer Commands (Volumes I, II, and III),
and it's available from Cardinal Point Inc., P. O. Box 596,
Ellettsville, IN  47429 ([812] 876-7811).  Even with the book
however, you're going to have a hard time testing the seemingly
infinite number of configurations you might encounter.  A
convenient alternative is to insist that the school invest in
The Printographer (Roger Wagner Publishing, 10761 Woodside
Avenue, Suite E, Santee, CA  92071; [619] 562-3670).  This nifty
little program works with hundreds of printer configurations, and
you can use it to print graphic and text images in a variety of
convenient formats.


APPLESOFT AS TEXT FILE

Q. Is it possible for me to save an Applesoft BASIC program to
disk as an ASCII text file so I can load it into my
word-processing program?

						Anthony J. Oresteen
						Batavia, IL

A.  Unlike some dialects of BASIC for other comptuers, neither
Applesoft not its BASIC.SYSTEM ProDOS interface has a command
for saving a program to disk as lines of readable text.  When
you use the Save command, the program is stored in a compressed,
tokenized form in a BAS file, a form that only the Applesoft
interpreter understands.  To convert the program to text form,
you must first create a text file called BAS.TO.TXT that
contains the following three lines:

?"Transferring program to 'BASIC.TXT'"

0  D$=CHR$(4): ?D$;"OPENBASIC.TXT":
   ?D$;"CLOSE": ?D$;"DELETEBASIC.TXT":
   ?D$;"OPENBASIC.TXT":
   ?D$;"WRITEBASIC.TEXT":?"NEW":LIST 1,63999:
   ?D$;"CLOSE":END
RUN

You can use a word-processing program to create this file, but
be sure to save it to disk as a text file.  To convert your
Applesoft program to text, load it into memory and then enter
the command BAS.TO.TXT.

	BAS.TO.TXT works by first adding a line #0 to the program
and then running the program.  Line #0 gets control first, opens
a text file called BASIC.TXT, lists the program into the file,
and then closes the file.  You can then deal with the text file
as you would with any other.  BAS.TO.TXT works with any
Applesoft program that does not contain a line #0, illegal line
numbers, or embedded (and hidden) assembly-language routines.


MANUAL SEARCH

Q. I'm trying to learn how to program in BASIC and have been
referred to a book called BASIC Programming and ProDOS.  Where
can I find this book?

						Robert J. Molessa
						Fort Wayne, IN

A.  BASIC Programming with ProDOS is an official Apple reference
manual and is now published and distributed by Addison-Wesley
Publishing Company, Inc., 6 Jacob Way, Reading, MA.  You should
be able to order it through any bookstore, since Addison-Wesley
is one of the largest book publishers of textbooks in the world. 
Addison-Wesley now handles almost all of Apple's manuals,
including those related to the Macintosh and the Apple IIGS.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Please send your questions and problems to Rescue Squad, A +, 11
Davis Drive, Belmont, CA 94002.  Because of limited space, we
aren't able to publish repsonses to all inquiries we receive.

-- 
Patt Haring                       UUCP:    ..cmcl2!phri!dasys1!patth
Big Electric Cat                  Compu$erve: 76566,2510
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