Well set-up workshop toolkit

This set of 25 utilities comes from Ian Trackman, the "Making the Most of Your Micro's" programmer extra ordinaire. As you would expect, it contains some very useful programs.

They are in two sets. One contains routines that can be included in your own programs, while the other is intended purely as program development aids.

The first set contains six sorting routines, circle generating codes, three character generating/printing pro grams, a graphics dump and a speech unit utility. Most of these are written in Basic and are well annotated with REMs.

I particularly liked the Shape Maker program which allows one to convert a shape on the screen into user defined characters.

The second set of programs seem to be what every writer of large Basic programs on the BBC Micro has been waiting for - if he/she hasn't already written them.

There are, for instance, three utilities that help to shorten Basic programs. The first is a REM stripper which not only removes REM statements but also lines with only colons or spaces.

Follow this with a space removing program and then a packer that tucks as many statements as possible on to one line and your original program is considerably shorter, and hopefully faster.

With a disc system the whole process is easily automated and is explained in the manual.

Conversely, if you have a packed program that you would like to make understandable you can use the unpacking and spacer programs that unravel most ofthe mess that the above programs have created.

Add to these a cross-referencer, a variable dump, a global replacer and a resequencing program, and a good deal of the drudgery of writing in Basic is obviated.

The programs come on tape but with full instructions on how to write them on to disc.

A colleague wrote a small program which automatically transferred the programs from tape to disc for me, and this would have been a nice addition to the package.

The manual is large (208 pages) and has complete listings together with concise explanations.

This is a very useful addition to any Basic programmer's toolkit.

Alan Plume