SOFTWARE REVIEW by Bob Mitchell
880814
My long-awaited copy of Version 5.3 of MSCRIPT by Jack Dohany finally arrived early in June of this year. Because I had told him that I was using a non-standard, earlier version of the Larken DOS, he sent the program on cassette, to be on the safe side. I was delighted to find that a back-up on disk was readily made by selecting DISK on the main menu and then pressing B.
Documentation was on paper and the only other program on the cassette was the LCODES text which contains all the various codes that a wide printer would recognize. I understand that the disk version contains all the documentation as files.
The main problem that I had had with my earlier version MS5T was one of the printer dropping characters every now and then. This problem has been resolved, I am happy to report.
The cost to me for the new version was US$25 which included $5 for mailing and handling. The program is so much better than the earlier version that I was happy to pay the price.
Here are some features of MSCRIPT (not necessarily in order of importance) that make the program quite attractive and make me a convert:
1. Finding and Changing any string of up to 30 characters is simple and very fast.
2. Headers and Footers (titles at the top and bottom of each page of a document) are easy to add.
3. Moving, copying, deleting, saving and loading blocks of text is fast, easy and very professional, with markers used to identify the block to be worked on.
4. The cursor moves very fast across the page. There is also a tab feature that is very useful when developing tables and lists.
5. When making a back-up copy, it is optional to include the text as part of the back-up: ideal for making a version that includes, say, a letter head for page 1. If you want to make a LARKEN AUTOSTART copy, this can be done by using <CLEAR 45000:RANDOMIZE USR 102:RUN>. You have to CLEAR a higher address if you include any text in your save.
6. View Memory allows you to PEEK and POKE the contents of memory; this starts at the LCODE file which is handy if you want to inspect and change any printer control codes.
7. The name of the text you are working on appears on the home menu. I find this to be very useful particularly as I hop from text to text fairly often. It let’s me know where I am at the moment. The GIVE NAME command allows you to assign or change the name of your text at any time.
8. There is an alternative fattened character set that makes reading the text on my monitor much easier. The use of different screen colours is restricted by the TS2068 hardware and I have settled on white ink on black paper as the best for me.
9. The disk catalogue in the selected drive can be added to the text in progress. The drive is selected by entering a number from 0 to 3 (ie, 1 to 4 respectively). The LARKEN Ramdisk is selected with <4> and this can be accomodated easily by changing lines 131 and 132 in the BASIC with no addition to the BASIC length.
10. The new LARKEN Version 3 EPROM uses the token MOVE to call a file rename routine and this was easily added to the home menu by a few lines at line 220 in the BASIC. Watch out for an out of memory report here. I had to sacrifice lines 420 to 440 (VERIFY, which I seldom use anyway) to make room for this.
11. I like being able to put comment lines in the text to serve as reminders to me and that won’t appear in the printout. Tab settings are one example as you have to reset these whenever they default to their normal settings.
One thing that could be better: It’s too easy to stutter in more spaces than wanted when entering text. However, on right justification, these extra spaces are not really noticed.
MSCRIPT is a totally different word processor from TASWORD which I have used for some time and which has its devotees. But there are so many advantages to MSCRIPT that I have begun to switch over to it for my word processing tasks. Once you get used to the protocol and press the right keys, MSCRIPT is just as easy to use as TASWORD and a lot more rewarding. I recommend the purchase of MSCRIPT Version 5.3 and look forward to experimenting with Version 6 when it comes along. Hurry up, Jack!