Every picture tells a story

I am sure the only reason half these computer books are ever commissioned to is provide employment for illustrators. The covers are true works of art, yet they often seem to bear precious little relevance to the subject matter of the book.

Take Procedures And Functions In BBC Basic; a giant hand descends from the sky to pick a big blue children's building block off the rocky landscape, while the sun sets on the horizon.

Mr. Gregory's book, unfortunately, is nowhere near as exciting as the front cover. After an introduction explaining the difference between procedures and functions and how to use them, the rest of the book contains 90 examples, most of which work on the Electron as well as the Beeb. The areas covered include: sound; animation; text windows; graphics; mode 7 displays; and calculations.

The author sees the procedures and routines contained in his book as aimed at novices who don't need to know how they work. Nothing wrong with that, but if that is the idea, why make them so difficult to type in, using difficult and fiddly variables names like 'leftcolm%' when 'L%' would do just as well?

A handbook of procedures is useful for serious programmers, but beginners are better off typing in complete programs which do something worthwhile. Liked the cover, though.

Geoff Nairn