Pixel Print Professional is a “Fairware” program. That is to say, you are invited to try it an use it, and to show appreciation by sending Stan Lemke a suggested $15 if you find the program worthwhile. You will find his address on the ‘BOOT.B1’ program closing display panel.
The program suite, supplied to the TTSUC on tape, was designed to work with the Aerco Disk system. It was modified to work with the Larken system through the combined efforts of Larry Crawford, Bob Mitchell, and myself.
This disk suite has been prepared for the use of Larken owners who have a Larken RAMdisk equipped with at least one memory chip. The first of the two disks contains the suite of PPP program files, plus several Tasword ‘help’ files. The second disk of the suite is a ‘data’ disk. It contains files which may be called up by the several programs on the ‘program’ disk. As made up for the TTSUC library disk #28, drive #0 is the ‘master’ drive, and Drive #1 is the ‘data’ drive. If this is notsuitable for your application, you may load the ‘BOOT.B1’ program, break into it and revise LINE 100 to change the variables mdrv (master drive) and ddrv (data drive) to correspond to your system configuration.
Be aware that when you load PPProf, that the first thing that happens is a SAVE of the RAMdisk Bank ‘A’. Therefore you should have an unprotected disk in the ‘data’ drive ready to accept this SAVE. In normal use one terminates the use of PPP by returning to the base BOOT program, so that the RAMdisk may be restored to it’s normal condition. (Press option 9 of the BOOT program). However, it has been my experience that one often advertently terminates PPP by shutting off the machine. Then, you may be tempted to reload PPP, to rectify the situation. Mistake! What happens is you will make another SAVE of the corrupted RAMdisk, overwriting the original RAMdisk SAVE on the data disk. To cover yourself, I suggest that you make a RAMdisk SAVE to your master disk. Then, with this disk protected, you will always have a backup readily available, regardless of what fumbles you may make!
Also, when ‘ARTIST.B1’ is loaded it SAVEs the contents of the RAMdisk to the ‘data’disk as file “TEMP.Cx”.
The font files and the icons library which form part of the Pixel Print Plus suite (TTSUC Larken Libr. Disk #10) are interchangeable with Pixel Print Prof., and you should consider obtaining them.
A few points regarding the LOADing and SAVEing of files:
When a file is to be loaded, the program will do a disk CAT. This CAT will show only the files that are appropriate for that particular LOAD, i.e. files ending with a “.Cg”, if a column that requested; “.Ci” if an icon is to be loaded, etc. Although the INPUT will indicate “<=9” only 6 characters of any displayed filename need be entered, and the program automatically tacks on the suffix. However if you wish to load a file that does not have the appropriate suffix, entering the full file name will load it. On the other hand, when saving a file the program will insist on the file having the appropriate suffix; it will over-ride any suffix you may attempt to impose.
The logic is this. The files saved by this program each have unique suffixes. For example, files that are PixelPrint columns have been assigned a “.Cg” suffix; icons a “.Ci”, screen files a”.C$”, and fonts a “.Cf”. So at a glance one can determine file types, and the program is also enabled to display only those appropriate at the moment. However, since you may have “non-standard” files to load, the program enables you to do so by entering the full file name.
However in an attempt to maintain consistency the program insists that all files have the proper suffixes when SAVEd.
There is a printed manual for Pixel Print Prof. Ask me for a copy, if you do not already have it. It is almost a necessity. I do not have the data files on which it is based. The manual has been augmented by other material.