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TM formerly ' february 1990 Vol. 6, 1'10. I ISSN 0885-40 I 7 newstand price: $2.50 A journal and exchange of Apple II discoveries phOtocopy charge per page: $0.15 ners, and Associates, and is also available on a subscription basis. It Miscellanea will consist of technical information and examples down to actual code examples. The spring 1990 AppleFest is moving from its previous Boston The journal is not Apple 11 specific, but will include Apple 11 arti· location to the New York metropolitan area. The show will take place cles. For information on develop, contact the editor, t.ouella Pizzuti, on May 4-6 at the new Garden State Conference Center in Somerset. at Apple Computer, Inc .. 20525 Mariani Avenue, MIS 75-~B , Cuperti· N.J., wilhin an hour's drive of Manhattan. The dale was advanced one no, Calif. 95014 (AppleLink Pizzuti!). week to avoid a clash with the Apple Deve loper's Conference sched· The first issue of develop wlJl contain an article on the Apple uled for May 7·11. II Development Dynamo by Eric Soldan. Eric described this system Cambridge Markeling. the company that . organizes Applefest, at the A2-CentraJ SulDlDer Conference in July 1989; it consists of a expects to attract a larger number of attendees at the new location run·time library and macro interfaces to allow using the (Macintosh) and also hopes to reach a new audience. The new site is also expect· HPW I/gs cross-development system (and, we hope, eventu~lIy. the ed to be less expensive than the Iloston location; for example, hotel APW development environment on the lI!!s) to develop applications rooms are anticipated to be 25~35% less than comparable rooms in for the older Apple II systems. The Dynamo supplies many standard· Boston. ized roulines as part of the library, including manipulation of strings, ComputerFest. a new event, will be run in conjunction with Apple· variables, arrays, and integer math. By using these routines, each pro fest to also allow reaching the increasing number of educational and grammer is freed from having to write these common utilities for him· home users of HS-DDS machines. Apparently, just adding Macintosh self. The Dynamo also includes a ' builder" to create the application users to AppleFest didn't satisfy some exhibitors' goals. AUendees will from the programmer's modular code and data segments, and a be able to participate in both events. AppleFest is expected to be the ' loader' which takes care of the task of loading and relocating these larger of the two events. modules (even inlo extended memory on a 128K lie or IIc) at run The incorporation of an HS-DDS 'adjunct' to Applefest will no time. doubt concern Apple Computer, Inc., but it certainly responds as well While the Dynamo Is primarily an assembly language tool which is to the aUendee's desires as does the decision to incorporate Macin· cUlTently limited to Apple's Macintosh·based HPW development envi· tosh products into what users perceive as the major Apple II trade ronment. it does provide a development functionality that has not show. We will see how (and iO Apple responds to this challenge. been present for the 8·bit Apple II systems and should ease the task The first International Computer forum. sponsored by the of writing large applications for these systems.-DJD International Computer Club, is being held June 14-17, 1990 at the World Trade Center in Moscow, U.S.S.R. Complete details are avail· able by writing to the address International Computer Club, Serova, 4, Proyezd, Moscow, 101813, USSR, telephone 921·09'()2. You'll want to contact the ICC early, as the membership rates will increase stepwise on March I. April I. and April 15. Those who fondly remember the AST l'isionPlus digitizer for the IIgs may be happy to know that the product is returning to the market under the auspices of Silicon and Software, 18004 Sky Park Circle, Suite 240, Irvine, Calif. 92714, (714) 250·8101. Not only that. the price has been lowered to $299 from the original price of $395. Also available from the new company is a IIgs RAM memory expan· sian card expandable to 4 megabytes of RAM. and up to 640K of ROM in the optional ROM .card. Special pricing exists on these products until March 3 L 1990. Ariel Publishing is consolidating its publications into 8/16, a new monthly technical journal for Apple II programm ers. The new publication will be source code intensive, Monthly columns include coverage of Drca/ e. Hicol Advanced Basic as, Herlin 8 and 16 bit assembly, Applesoft. and ZBasic. Other environments such as Pascal. Drca/H, THL BASIC, etc .. will also be examined frequently. A one·year subscription (12 issues) will be $29.95. A companion disk will also be offered which will contain the issue 's artides and .source code along with additional articles, code, utilities, and product demos. The diskette will be $69,95 per year, $39.95 for six months, and $21 for three months. The first issue is expected in March 1990, for further 'y MII/illf/{lURES OF A OOA OKRl'PfIDN FRCXJW.\ 1I'A1 ~5 information, contact Ariel Publishing, P.O. Box 398, Pateros, Wash. Io'tS~GES INTO A ePAlNl£S5 ~ss ~ )Nt:ECIMRABLE a:tE, ~ 98846, 509·923·2249. M>T FILED A 'I.alt<. AND FEEt: COPY'RJu~ SUIT A<loIINST QJR Apple itsetf has announced a new quarter1y te<:hnical journal. lA"IG~ ARTS ~TWlP£:' develop. The journal will go out to Apple Certified Developers, Part· 6.2 A2,CenlraJ Vol. 6, No. I stack. input 2.35. push it. input 3.14, take the SIN of the last entry, GS Numerics: graphic math multiply the lowest two numbers on the stack, and then add that value to the next number on the stack (1 )". It looks awkward com In the movie "Peggy Sue Got Married", the title character respond· pared to the description we might use for the first expression: "find ed to an algebra Instructor by explaining that she lInew for a fact that the SIN of 3.14, multiply it by 2.35, then add I". Reverse Polish Nota she would never have any reason to lInow algebra in the future. That tion was deSigned to eliminate the need for entering parentheses as is,probaQly somewhat-lrue for )TIost people. and the program about to part of the expression; whether it is an improvement has been a mat· be described is not going to be of use to them. ter of debate among scientific calculator users for years. for those people who never have, or will have, a use for .algebra, If you don't care for RrN, you can ,ente< the first equation above consider the program in th e followtng tight, a good deal of our future directly into the Input Register and 05 Numerics will evaluate the depends on people who will have those skills, and the existence of a expression for you and put the'result in the (stack's) x-register. program that can help the "algebra technicians" of the fulure learn The Register·Memory section also contains a set of 26 memory reg their trade well is an important step. And, in the broader sense, such isters labelled A·Z, each of whiCh can store one value. The basic four a program may indicate the type of USe that computers should be put algebraic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and divi· to in educaUon; as tools to make concepts more easily and quickly sian) can be performed directly between the "x" and Y registers of understandable. The fact that this particular tool is aimed at a specific the stack and the corresponding data in a selected memory register. A segment of education should, if it is a good tOOl, make us long for two-value (X·Y) 'CSTORE" register is also provided. This gives 05 and seek to find similar tools In other areas. Numerics' calculator the ability to do (two-dImensional) vector arith tn 1972. wh en I graduated high school. th e state-of·the·art tool for metic directly, working with rectangular coord inates (and complex doing the very complex calculations of "higher' math and science was numbers) or polar coord inates (using angular data in radians, the slide rule. What I originally found fascinating about a slide rule degrees, or grads). was that I could see the way that logarithms worked. Though I had The Functions section includes 48 "buttons", each labell ed with a worked with logarithms since Junior high school. they were always mnemonic form of the corresponding function le.g. "SIN(x) ", somewhat "magic". Having the stide rule's graphic represent.atlon of "CADD"). Function labels that end with an asterisk can be used when the logarith mic "spacing" between the numbers used in the calcula entering expressions into the Input Register, as with the example tion gave me a concept of how an addition could become a multipll· above. Labels that are not marked with an asterisk. such as the cation. I finally understood how logarithms mattered in mathematics, "CADD" ("complex number addition") cannot be entered In this man· rather than just blindly using them as a tool. nero The battl e didn't stop there. With college came courses in engineer. The ConversionsjElements secUon contains tables marked ' Area', ing physics and calculus. Physics was so math·lntensive that, even "Length ", "Mass", "Power", "Volume", and "Temp ", each with a selec· using a slide rule to "assist" in working problems, a set of problems tion of buttons marked with various units for the section.