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Editors galore!
The familiar thud as the latest copy of Atari Computing dropped through my letter box was a welcome sound to my ears.
A great article on text editors. I use Edith Pro, STeno v2.12, Flash (which works under Geneva but crashes under standard TOS on my machine), Edhak, Hagterm 2 terminal - which features a powerful text editor and one or two other others including Tempus 2. The article missed out Hagterm 2, ASL, Context v2.0, ED, Gs Edit, Input, JOVE (Jonathan's Own Version of Emacs) GNU Emacs, GNOME (emacs again in micro form by Moshe Braners - the name stands for Generally Not the Original Emacs) and Micro Emacs, to name but a few! How about a part 2 review?
The BASIC package on the the disk wasn't much use to me as I already have HiSoft v2 and WERCS - all I need is Devpac! Nice to see CAB is commercial at last, Alexander Clauss deserves the financial reward and it's one my must buy list.
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Martin Howard Naylor, Wembley
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** MEMACS.GIF here **
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Thanks for your kinds words. A part two round up of text editors isn't on the cards but since you seem to have more versions of Emacs than I've heard of a round up of these might make an interesting article. Maybe I'll have to ask HiSoft nicely if we can include Devpac on a future reader disk.
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ABC anyone?
Love the magazine... life has taken on a brighter meaning - it looks like my Falcon will be supported for a year or two yet, I really do dislike the soulless PC - maybe because I sometimes have to use them 12 hours a day at work!
I'm trying to locate a track down a couple of programs and wonder if you or other readers can help. The first probably doesn't exist, I'm looking for software which can read and play the "abc" music notation language. There are loads of files in this format out on the web and I'd like to make use of them.
The second item does exist - I even own a copy somewhere in my disks and CDs but I just can't find it! I think it was called Fontlist. If I remember correctly, on launching the program and directing it at a folder of fonts it churn through the entire directory printing out the name of the font followed by a sample of the character set. Can anybody help?
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Jon McNamara, Bishops Stortford
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** GDSCHK.GIF here **
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We share your feelings about PCs but don't forget you can always bung an emulator on other machines. We're not aware of any software which supports the "abc" notation language so over to our readers on that one. I can offer one candidate to help catalogue your fonts. GDOS Check, part of the IdeaList package, and available separately does pretty much all your mystery program does. GDOS Check is available from most PD/Shareware libraries or via the InterActive web pages:
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http://www.cix.co.uk/inactive/
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Kissing cousins
The check is in the mail ... well, it will be in the mail this weekend as I get out the month's second round of household payments. I will re-up for six months because I think the quality of the first three was terrific.
I have been critical of some previous Atari publications because of extremely poor editing as well as production design; the grammar and syntax was god-awful (even when the editors were writing for themselves).
AC is a useful delight, every issue chock full of stuff I didn't know or stuff I had heard about but never had time to investigate. And those Brits do know how to use their queen's English. Keep 'em at it, and keep the magazines coming! The price is barely more than a paperback novel, and the fun lasts lots longer.
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Stu Huffman, Indianapolis, forwarded via email from our US distributor
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We haven't printed many pure back slapping letters but Stu's letter sums up what many of you have written on subs renewal forms or along with letters on other topics. In defence of editors past and present I'd like to point out no one usually sub-edits our copy - we have to write without a safety net!
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ST accelerator?
At the recent London Atari Show, which was excellent, I had the good fortune to meet Dave from TUS developments who really impressed me with his STe IDE interface.
Later in the bar we chatted again and he told me about a very interesting project for all STs.  The project is a system accelerator and CPU replacement. Dave talked about a 68020 CPU running at 24/32MHz.
Impressive enough, then Dave suggested a retail price of under £100! Could this be the ST's Nemesis? I'm writing to you because Dave was rather coy about it and was unsure if people would be interested.
With the availability of the 12Mb memory expansion board and the ST's ability to use standard peripherals a low cost accelerator would give basic ST systems a new lease of live.
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Jim Harris, Brighton
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We think Jim's right. If you'd like to encourage Dave to turn this idea into reality we suggest you write a letter of encouragement to:
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"Yes! I'd like an ST accelerator"
Unit F2, Venture House, Cross Street, Macclesfield, Cheshire, SK11 7PG, England.
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