There was a time when it seemed that everyone produced light pens for the Beeb. To produce a new one at this late stage must mean that ATPL reckons that its Colour Stick is a good deal better than the competition.

The Colour Stick package includes some software. First, however, there is the pen itself. This is based on (or rather, in) a commercial felt-tip pen case in fluorescent green plastic. There is a light sensor at the nib end and from the other a 6 foot (extended) curly black cable with a plug to fit the analogue socket in the back of your Beeb. On the side of the pen body is a small square button used to signal to the micro.

The whole pen is well made and the use of the plastic pen body means that it looks and feels attractive too. The real test of the pen, however, is how it works. As is true for all such devices, this is very much dependent on the software used in conjunction with the light pen. This is where the Colour Stick package really comes into its own, and justifies its relatively high price.

There are three software packages that accompany the Colour Stick - a couple of games, a suite of utilities for use in your own programs, and a drawing package. These are supplied on two 40 track discs along with facilities to copy them onto 80 track format.

The two games are Pontoon and Solitaire and, of course, they are chosen from suitable menus controlled by light-pen. In the Solitaire game, the pen is used to select the counter to be moved and its destination. In Pontoon, the pen is used to select cards and change the stakes. However, there are considerable problems on a monochrome screen as the darker background will not trigger the light sensor. However, with a colour monitor or TV the results are impressive.

Presumably, the games are only included to give some idea of the possibilities of the Colour Stick in your own programs and in this they do demonstrate the convenience of selections on the screen using the pen.

To implement such pen-controlled selection in your own programs you should use the utilities supplied with the Colour Stick. These comprise a suite of Basic procedures spooled on the disc according to the line numbering you choose.

There are five of these procedures. These comprise the assembler code to use the pen, a calibration procedure, a set up procedure for any one of the Beeb's eight display modes, a procedure to return the pen position in character co-ordinates on the screen, and one to return the state of the pen button. The calibration is not essential but is recommended for accurate use of the pen, to accommodate differences between individual pens and monitors. The five utilities work well and provide a very easy interface with the hardware. However, like the software supplied with the AMX mouse, the real strength of this package lies in the drawing program supplied.

'Palette' is a four-colour mode 1 drawing program controlled totally with the light pen. In the central area of the screen the picture is created and along the base a menu of icons is displayed.

The operation of the program is very similar to AMX Art - each drawing operation is selected by pointing to the required icon and then the position on the picture indicated by pointing to the desired area of the screen. However, the pointing is achieved with the light pen (a process even more natural and easy than pointing with a mouse) and there are many more icon menu choices than the single menu used with that package.

The menus are arranged in a tree structure so that, for example, to draw a square, first the shape drawing menu is selected from the main menu, the squares menu from that and, when the square is drawn, various fine adjustments have their own menus selected from that.

There are twenty seven menus in all. These cover just about every conceivable operation of picture creation. Lines can be drawn free hand or by rubber-banding, and squares, rectangles, polygons, circles and ellipses drawn in full or in part. A light pen cannot cope with screen manipulation at pixel accuracy. However, ATPL get around this problem with a position-trimming menu used with all the drawing operations. Once a line or shape has been roughly positioned with the pen the trimming menu is selected and icons touched with the pen to shift the line or shape one pixel in the required direction.

This procedure is obviously more tedious than, say, using a mouse to position a line directly where it is needed. However, it is surprising how quickly it becomes second nature and the end result is always more accurate.

Once the picture outline is complete, areas can be filled in with colours or a wide range of textures and stippled colour mixtures. Text can be printed on the picture either vertically or horizontally. The typestyle of the text can be altered too. Three typefaces are provided, including normal Beeb style, and ATPL promises a further editing package to create your own fonts.

The whole Palette package is, with practice, a joy to use. The multiple menu system provides great flexibility and, as it operates fast and efficiently, is also convenient and easy to use.

The manual provided for the whole Colour Stick package is not a glossy work but it describes all the functions well. Although ATPL has been late in providing its runner in the light pen stakes, the quality of the hardware and the flexibility and complexity of the Palette package make Colour Stick a clear winner.