Fort Worth October Meeting Notes

The meeting convened jointly ın ROOM 3052 of the INFOMART at 1950 Stemmons Freeway in downtown Dallas. The next meeting is scheduled for November, 14, 1987 in, MEETING ROOM ‘A’. The meetings are on the second Saturday ọf every month from 1:00 P.M. to 4:00 P.M. The meetings are open to all who wish to learn more about Sinclair, Timex, and Amstrad computers. Any visitors are welcome to attend. Any other computer operator/owners are more than welcome, as there are many different types of computers, peripherals, and programming languages that get discussed.

The meeting was called to order by George Edmonds, Chairman of the Dallas group. Everyone stood up and introduced themselves and told a little about themselves before the business meeting began. I am afraid very few of the Fort Worth members made the meeting, but it was excellent anyway. These “new quarterly joint meetings have already begun to cement new friendships between the two groups. I, personally, have a great deal of admiration for the members in Dallas. They, too, have a widely varied group. Many of the members I know fromvthe last joint meeting. Some of the others as names on StarText, the local database videotex service, the rest were just “new” but hope to become “old” friends quickly.

I must say, in all fairness to George Edmonds and the rest of the Dallas members that were present, the the Dallas group wastes no time whatsoever. We started the business at hand out very little fanfare. The main disucssion, with a few small side trips from time to time, was the merger of the Dallas and Fort Worth newsletter into one joint effort – all problems being ironed out at the meeting or as shortly as possible thereafter. We never did quite get around to discussing a BBS with a Metro number.

Charles Stelding will not be able to publish the newsletter as his work is becoming too much for him tó handle both. He was to use his DESKTOP PUBLISHER. Glenn Harris, past news etter editor, stated that everything else that was necessary for producing a newsletter still must be done. It was nice to have Charles with his program, but it is not a stumbling block without it. Glenn did not know all that was involved in being an editor.

George Edmonds stated that the DATA EXPANSION was one of the top newsletters, but it did cost to produce it. He then move to increase the dues to $2.00 a month to keep up with the increase size of the newsletter. It was voted on and accepted. The reason that the Fort Worth newsletter is higher was for printing the newsletter, postage.. labels, etc. This left very little in the treasury for group purchases.

I explained how I put the newsletter together using MSCRIPT, the printing (cheaper at the print shop at school), the assemblage, and the mailing. I told them I enjoy writing the newsletter, if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have been beginning my fourth year of publishing and editing it. It is time-consuming, but worthwhile. The extra money that seems to be saved during the year is spent to produce the same amount during the summer when the printing costs go higher. I also explained that the DESKTOP PUBLISHER is a great program, adding in the screen dump is impressive, but it will only work with my 2040. The pasting together the strips is not a workable format for the newsletter. The booklet format, so long as the screen dump or pictures (in black and white) are pasted in, is still the most viable style for the present newsletter.

The only real problem that was forseen was how to get the newsletter across to the Dallas group. When I receive back the printed pages the stack is about 2″ thick. This would be inadvisable to send this to the Dallas group as price of mailing would be prohibitive. Even if we tried to send them out as bulk mail, as was suggested, we would not have sufficient numbers to do so. It was also suggested that we try to send them as 3rd class book rate. This was also discarded because of the late arrival of the newsletters. (Sometimes they are late now, but that is because of circumstances beyond my control.) The solution was provided by the users of StarText. Since the videotex service is available from both Dallas and Fort Worth without long distance charges, the MSCRIPT files could be sent via E-MAIL, downloaded, edited, formated and sent back to be printed on both sides of the turnpike. This was acceptable from both groups. It was decided that this would be the best newsletter published in the Metroplex. Then someone added “Texas”, another added, “the US”, so; not to be out-done; I added “the WORLD”. With enthusiam like this, who knows just how far we really will be able to go. It was decided that the newsletter, when possible, might be expanded from its 24-page format to a size of 28 to, possibly, 32 pages, making it one of the largest, Timex/Sinclair/Amstrad newsletters published anywhere. Because the workload will be increased and the dues will be increased, it was suggested that the newsletter would be published only once every two months, like TDM. This was also discarded, very vocally by myself, because of the increase in working knowledge that all would benefit from. The same idea that you get from being in a users group-to learn more about your system and how to put it to the best use for you.

The idea for downloading the MSCRIPT FILES got to be slightly confused. When an ASCII file is sent to StarText, all embedded codes are stripped from the files. The format codes for MSCRIPT are not stripped because they are sent as part of the file in ASCII, the MSCRIPT program reads them as formatting and sends it to the printer correctly. George was curious about how all this was going to be done. The exiting To BASIC, saving the code (26710,XXXXX) from the buffer used on Mterm II and the loading the bytes saved back into the Dohany version of MSCRIPT. It actually is a very simple process, it just sounds quite confusing. When you have been doing this as long as those in the Fort Worth group have been doing, it becomes second nature to you.

This brought up the questions about the two separate columns that are on StarText. This was something that needed be addressed. We decided that the TIMEX KEYWORD on StarText need not be incorporated into the FWTIMEX KEYWORD or vice versa. I was very happy with the idea of the merger and I hope that it will be as successful, as I think it will be and, I know that the rest of the respective groups feel the same. We then adjourned, having spent the alloted meeting time, and many headed down to where the vendors are to look for bargains.