Hello everyone! (I thought it was time I addressed these letters to you all rather than to Gus alone as you all read them!)
Having read Dave Edwards' letter and Gus' comments, I thought I should add mine as I'm responsible for the menu system which makes the EUG disks work, though I can't take the blame for any errors such as missing files! I must apologise for the failure of the perforation skip routines and the inconvenience it has caused. This has now been corrected and should be all right, though you may have to alter the values in the "PRINT" program to suit your printer and paper.
As regards the 'horrible' menu, I know it is rather simple but with very limited memory to play with, what can I do? With the basic Elk and ADFS, PAGE is at &1D00 and HIMEM is at &2600 to allow for loading the text files - which is done to avoid flicker when printed to screen as when a text file is loaded directly from the disk. There are then only &900 bytes left for the menu and variables. This rather limits any possibility of change except for the use of Mode 1, instead of 4, to provide some colour.
I have just spent hours providing Gus with a new menu scheme from an idea of his to combine all menus in one. This has been no easy task with the above limitations and I thought at first it would be impossible. I then found that I could do it by transferring the text print routines to the "PRINT" program and making the two programs work together. This was no mean task as I had to think of how to transfer the variables between the programs. I had also to alter the ADFS version for DFS both with and without the dual catalogues. I hope that this is now up and running well as it should make the Editor's task of making up the disks much easier.
In the meantime, I may have some possible ideas for improving the menus, if I can, for the future.
Can persons submitting articles please try not to include long strings of characters, such as Internet and e-mail addresses? This is important for the correct working of the 40 column print routine. I have found several files which lock up in this mode due to lack of spaces. I suggest you all re-read the EUG information page and follow it. Doing so should also improve the appearance of your articles, and make them more readable.
Richard Dimond
I can only speak as one member but I rather like the blue screen menu as it appears. It's simple, clear and easy to use. But others apparently have their own opinions. If Richard comes up with some radically new ideas, it might be interesting for someone else to try them out (and get some flack).
1st April 1998
