Clipboard

Tips and Tricks for the ST Owner

Compiled by Heidi Brumbaugh,
START Programs Editor

To the Readers of START: ST owners form a dynamic community, constantly learning, growing and increasing in size. The job of START's editors is to determine the needs of that community and then respond to those needs. You are the most important part of that process. We Count on you not only for questions and suggestions, but for articles, programs and answers as well. Many of you have developed expertise in your area of computing. We need you to share that expertise with us so that we in turn can bring it to the people who need it the most. Send your tricks, hints and tips to the Clipboard. Submit material to our columns in programming, MIDI, graphics, online or desktop publishing. If you'd like to review games for START, send us a sample 500-word review of your favorite game. If we assign a review to you, you'll get to keep the game we send you. No matter what your interests are, there's no better way to reach more ST users than by writing for START. For information on how to submit your work, send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to: START Author Guidlines 544 Second Street San Francisco, CA 94107

Finding .RSC files

If a program has an accompanying resource file, the applications environment service (AES) will first look for the resource file in the same directory as the program. If it doesn't find it there, it will check drive A. If the resource file isn't on drive A either, the program will abort or the system will crash. Thus, if you're running a program from a drive other than A and the A light comes on before a program crash, this may be what is happening.

GFA BASIC programmers especially take note: If the GFA BASIC interpreter is in the root directory of a drive and you loaded your program from a folder such as MYPROGS, AES will look for the resource in the root directory of that drive rather than the subdirectory. You should either copy GFABASIC.PRG to the subdirectory where you do most of your programming or move the resource file into the root directory.

WK1--WKS files

This issue's Tax Template was created in LDW Power from Logical Design Works. We wanted to publish the Tax Template in such a form that any ST spreadsheet that reads Lotus files could read it. However, LDW power is the only ST spreadsheet that reads both the old WK1 Lotus formats and the new WKS format. All the others can read only WKS files. The LDW conversion program that comes with it generates WK1 files only. We were unable to find a public domain program to do the job, but fortunately version 2 of Lotus 1-2-3 comes with a program that can convert between the two types. We simply put the WK1 file on a floppy with an MS-DOS boot sector (courtesy of DCFormat) and ran the conversion program on a PC-compatible running Lotus.

Saving Control Panel Settings

Previous Clipboard tips have emphasized that you can save the Desktop colors you set with the Control Panel by clicking on Save Desktop under the Options menu. Another feature of Save Desktop is that it saves your other Control Panel settings, for example, keyclick on or off and keyboard sensitivity. The Install Printer options work the same way.

Control-G + Control-G = Great Styling

ST Writer formatting controls are in the format Control-G (shown as a reverse video G) followed by a number followed by a hyphen or other dummy character. For example, Control-G 1 is bold and Control-G 4 is italics. If you want a word to be in both italics and bold simply add the two code numbers together, e.g., Control-G 5 for boldfaced italics.

Got an ST trick or tip to share? We're interested in tips for the rank beginner or expert programmer for exploring the Desktop or for getting the most out of any popular ST program. Send it to the Clipboard, START Magazine, 544 Second St., San Francisco, CA 94107.