At work Because of the ease of adding RSX extension commands to Locomotive Basic Toolkit, programs now abound for the Amstrad machines. Each has certain strengths that make them stand out and I recently heard a normally placid Amstrad dealer enthusing wildly about this Beebugsoft release. He was most impressed by a program compactor routine that kills Rem statements, shortens variables, removes excess spaces and joins lines together. Using this he got a Bridge program from the 464 to run on a 6128 when it normally wouldn't because of a lack of memory (sic! - the presence of the disc filing system shortens the first 64K by a couple of K). Other original touches are Bmove and Start that move a Basic program anywhere in memory, and let you alter system pointers such that two programs can be held in memory at once and switched between at will. For the real sloths, Kon lets you use an abbreviated keyword system, eg, you an type M. instead of Mode. Partsave lets you save a given block of a Basic program, Key lets you read and edit function key strings, Keydef returns the codes assigned to any of the keys. List will list a program from disc or tape without affecting the one in memory. There is also a DMP1/Epson compatible screen dump command. Arnor's Utopia toolkit has been revamped with some major improvements including a screen dump that must use a similar routine since neither work with my Epson compatible printer. But then Micropower's Toolbox screen dumps do; it seems that there are Epsons and Epsons and it is worth checking which sort you have. With so many toolkits it may be the best way of choosing. Tony Kendle, PCW | 
