★ APPLICATIONS ★ DIVERS ★ TOOLKIT (SETANTA SOFTWARE)|Amtix) ★ |
| Toolkit (Setanta Software) | Applications Divers |
ANOTHER TOOLKIT FOR YOUR AMSTRAD Our Southern technical correspondent, PAUL SHERREARD, digs deep and unearths a new set of extension commands to aid your programming. In the dark misty past before micros became as popular as they are today, I can remember reading through magazines and seeing adverts for ‘Toolkits'. My first impression was that these were tiny toolboxes containing little brushes and screwdrivers, cassette head cleaners etc all for the purpose of caring for and cleaning your computer. It was only after reading the adverts and reviews, such as these, more closely that I realised how wrong I was (let's face it, we all started somewhere)! Just released from Setanta Software Ltd is such a package — Toolkit — or, in other words, a set of extension commands to be used as a programmer's aid. In all, the machine code program will add 18 new commands to basic in the form of RSX's (Resident System extensions). These are the commands that are reached by using the ‘ bar' (|) command, that is the character above the key. Let's take the extra commands one at a time. First of all let's look at |FRAME. This is used for graphics' programming and waits for the frame flyback to occur before updating the screen. What this does, essentially, is to do away with any flicker or jerkiness of moving characters usually associated with graphics movement when written in basic. For those of you with a CPC6128, you will already have this command available as |FRAME. Next let's look at |LSCROLL. This will scroll text to the left of the screen with wrap-around. In a similar manner |RSCROLL is the same as |LSCROLL only the text will scroll to the right of the screen. Next there is |UNSCROLL which scrolls the entire display up one screen line, but with no wraparound. If the text passes the top of the screen display then the line is lost. The next command, |DSCROLL scrolls the display down one line and, as above, if it drops off the bottom of the display then the line is lost. Command |WRAPL wraps the text line defined by the user one byte to the left, that is it moves the text defined to the left by one character. Command |WRAPR is as above, but moves the text to the right. The command |EXITL moves the text line off the screen to the left and not surprisingly the command |EXITR exits the text to the right of the screen. A nice command is |LARGE which expands the text to cover 2 lines so giving double height text which, with the inbuilt character set, gives a very good appearance to the screen display. |CIRCLE is self explanatory, in that a circle of any size and pen colour can be drawn with this command and in fact it is a very good circle (ie it's round). |BOX is just that: It draws a rectangle again in any pen number (mode permitting). |FULLBOX is similar to the last command, but is a solid filled with the specified pen colour. Command |TRIANG draws a triangle; |FILL fills any enclosed area with a colour (screen mode permitting); |SOUND sounds a gong type sound in a choice of 3 levels. The last two extra commands are for printers enabling them to produce a shaded screen dump |AMSTRAD for the Amstrad printer (DMP1) and |EPSON does likewise for Epson compatible printers. That's it, 18 new commands to add to the existing commands available in BASIC. They are very easy to use and if you do a lot of programming yourself this program could save you some time. However, as half of the extra commands are to do with text manipulation, and the others cover such basic things as boxes and triangles and 'beeps' etc then the actual programming scope is rather limited, perhaps to text adventures and educational basic programs etc. The cost of Toolkit is £9.95 for the cassette and £14.95 for the disk and £24.95 for the ROM version (this is an enhanced version with extra commands, but I can't comment on this as I haven't seen it yet). Included with this is an instruction booklet and, most useful, instructions on how to save the machine code part with your own program so it is even possible to re-load Toolkit under the control of your own program. A very good demo is also included on the tape which explains fully all the extra commands available and then leaves them in memory when it's finished, ready for you to carry on. All in all a good package but one that is limited really to text and basic graphics programming only, and is perhaps slightly on the expensive side. Although having said that, what it does, it does very well.
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