Scientific and mathematical notation can be next to impossible with most word processors. Now, Sciways can work with View or Wordwise (and many others) to produce a wealth of new symbols. And if you don't like the ones supplied, you can always design your own.

In the midst of ROMs for alternative character sets, ROMs for fancy graphics and ROMs for desktop publishing, Mayhew Telonics has spared a thought for the scientific user of the BBC micro and Master, and has provided a ROM to service him (or her) with just about any conceivable special character. Here are integrals, sets, derivatives, superscripts, subscripts and two complete Greek alphabets. Not only this, but each character can be displayed on screen as well as being sent to the printer.

Unlike the majority of NLQ character sets, each Sciways character is built from an 8 x 8 cell. Printed copy is therefore of lower resolution, but you can see what you're going to get before you start to print. This is just as well, as some tall mathematical symbols, such as integrals and matrix brackets, have to be printed in sections over more than one line. Lining up the various segments of such characters would be very haphazard if you had to take test prints to check the positioning each time. Regrettably, you cannot fully edit any of the special characters directly, but only in the form of trigger characters and associated keyboard symbols. The full character display is more of a preview display, but none-the-less very useful.

You can incorporate Sciways characters into any word-processor, or into Basic listings. The ROM works by looking for the 'trigger' symbols, which are put into your text in pairs with ordinary keyboard characters. The character pair is compared with a look-up table in the Sciways ROM, and the appropriate character is substituted by the ROM when displaying or printing the document. The trigger characters have been selected to occur fairly rarely in scientific documents, but, if you need to use them, you can turn the Sciways characters on and off with separate star commands.

Sciways is extremely easy to use. You install the ROM in any vacant socket (it can be used from an expansion board) and type *CHON to activate the extra characters. From then on over 350 extra characters are available. They are accessed by preceding characters on the keyboard with the trigger characters !(pling), #(hash), % and &. Pling is used for the Greek character set, and *GREEKI changes all the characters from upright to italic. Hash is reserved for symbols, and there is a complete table of these in the excellent 40 page manual provided.

% and & are used for superscripts and subscripts, and it is possible to produce superscripted subscripts and subscripted superscripts. If you don't understand these terms, you probably won't have occasion to use them! Superscripts and subscripts are produced using the Epson's own fonts, and look very professional. They don't work with NLQ print selected, though.

As well as the characters provided within the ROM, you can define up to 26 of your own, using the character definer provided on the accompanying disc. You can load files of your own characters at any time and incorporate them into your work by using the $ sign as a trigger symbol. You could use the facility, for instance, to add foreign language accents to letters.

In addition to the facilities already described, Sciways provides a neat alternative to sending control characters to your printer. Using the trigger character @, you can set any of the standard Epson printer functions (excluding NLQ) with just two characters - very handy.

Sciways has to intercept the WRCHV vector to check for the trigger character, and claims workspace in the cassette buffer and in envelopes 3 and 4. In most cases this won't cause any problems, but to be on the safe side Sciways includes a simple ROM manager which allows you to 'unplug' any ROMs which cause a conflict. There was a conflict on my BBC B, but ironically this only showed up when trying to use Sciways' ROM manager! Mayhew Telonics specifically mention graphics ROMs as possible 'baddies'.

Sciways is designed to work with an Epson FX or MX printer, and with these it may well do the job. It is also intended to work with Epson compatible printers, including the Kaga Taxan, which is the work horse I press into service. Although the output is quite adequate (witness the sample printouts accompanying this review), some kind of contretemps between the Sciways ROM and the Kaga printer forced its head to jigger quite alarmingly while printing. It seems to back up a character after each Sciways character is printed, as if it was going to embolden it. The end result is that I wouldn't give much for the life of the head mechanism if you were using a Sciways/Kaga combination for any long print jobs (a Ph.D. thesis, for instance).

Sciways is a very well thought out product. It gives scientific users the opportunity to construct documents which contain all kinds of mathematical and chemical symbols. Up until now, such documents had to be constructed painstakingly with user-defined characters, or added by hand after printing the document. The Greek character set is very useful in its own right (mathematicians and scientists use many Greek symbols as standard notation), and the abbreviated control sequences for Epson printers are a worthwhile bonus. The advantage of being able to see the characters in preview mode on Wordwise and View helps considerably in laying out complex formulae.

Weighed against the advantages of the ROM is the fact that none of the characters are NLQ. Universities have varying rules, but I know of several that won't allow theses and final year projects to be submitted in 'ordinary' dot matrix print, insisting instead on NLQ or daisywheel copy. I suspect there are many other institutions with similar restrictions.

There's no doubt that Sciways is a valuable product for anyone engaged in scientific writing, and must be about the cheapest solution to creating a 'scientific' word processor. The same effects on an IBM PC would cost you four or five times as much.

Product: Sciways ROM
Supplier: Mayhew Telonics, 376A Ringwood Road, Poole, Dorset BH12 3LT. Tel: (0202) 747695
Price: £38.52. 16K ROM, 40/80 track disc and manual.