[net.micro.cbm] SpeedScript Evaluation Report

egb@burl.UUCP (egb) (05/11/85)

*** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR MESSAGE ***

                          SPEEDSCRIPT 3.0 - A REVIEW

     This review was written with use of "SpeedScript 3.0", which is
clearly the most appropriate way to write a review of Speedscript
3.0.
     Being somewhat new to the world of personal computing (eight
months or so experience), I am not in a position to do an exhaustive
comparison of SpeedScript with other word processing programs that run
on the C-64, but I can say that for the price (free) it sure does a
nice job!  It does not have all the sophistication of, say Fleet
System 2 or of WordPro3/Plus64, but it does have some very nice
features which those highly-regarded programs do not. If you need a
compact, convenient, smooth-operating, really neat word processor,
read on!
     The program was written by Charles Brannon, Program Editor at
COMPUTE! magazine and published in the April, 1985 issue, together
with an article that does very well as a user's manual.  Companion
articles in subsequent issues presented versions of the program
modified to run on Atari and on Apple machines, which is why     
COMPUTE! was chosed over "COMPUTE's Gazette" (designed for Commodore
users specifically) as the vehicle for introducing it to the world.
     Presented as a 100% machine-language program, the job of typing
it into memory is pure drudgery, no doubt about that, but the rewards,
in my view, are well worth the effort. (COMPUTE! will sell you a
tested disk for $12.95 plus tax and handling expense - more as a
service than as a profit-making act.)  The program is about 6K bytes
long, so typing it takes a while.  Yet 6K is very compact for a word
processor.  The program leaves plenty of memory for text storage.  See
point 5, below.

      Some of the rewards especially worthy of mention here on the net
are:
   
   1. The program loads in less than 20 seconds *without* 1541 Flash
   or Epyx Fastload.  I have the FastLoad cartridge and can load
   SpeedScript in about five seconds.
   
   2. Cursor control is designed for writers, not programmers. CRSR
   left-right moves the cursor one column at a time, but CRSR up-down
   moves it to the beginnings of sentences, not line-by-line. 
   Function keys f3 and f4 work the same as CRSR up-down. The f1/f2
   key moves the cursor to the beginning letter of each word (f1
   forward, f2 rearward) and function keys f5 and f6 cause it to leap
   over paragraphs in either direction.  The keys are "repeating", so
   the cursor can be moved with lightning speed to any point in the
   document.  During this time while I am becoming accustomed to their
   action, my tendency is often to overshoot the target because of
   such speed.
   
   3. Editing can be done with the same tools as are used to enter and
   edit BASIC programs, but additional tools of great power are
   available.  Search and replace can be invoked separately or
   together, a continuous-insert mode can be toggled in and out,
   correction by typeover is the norm but is enhanced by little things
   like single-keystroke correction of adjacent transposed letters and
   single-keystroke exchanging of upper and lower case versions of any
   letter.  The "RUN/STOP" key has been programmed to provide
   automatic insertion of five spaces, useful for indenting paragraphs
   and "SHIFT-RUN/STOP" will insert a 255-byte block of empty spaces
   to speed up insertions where lots of text follows the cursor
   position.  This may be too much space, so "SHIFT-CTRL-BACK ARROW"
   will instantly eat up all blank spaces between the cursor and the
   following text.
   
   4. The "erase" function is multi-purpose.  When invoked it offers
   the user options of erasing words, sentences or paragraphs, but it
   puts the "erased" material into a temporary  buffer from which it
   can be recalled as many times as one likes.  Therefore it can be
   used as a means for moving text from anywhere to anywhere in a
   document as well as for producing multiple copies of text segments
   at any desired places in a document.
   
   5 The amount of memory SpeedScript makes available for text storage
   is impressive.  At this point in this writing, if I press "CTRL =",
   I am informed by a message on the "command line" at the top of my
   screen that there is still room for 39828 more bytes!  The total
   available as one approaches a clean slate for a new document is
   43520 bytes.  The buffer into which "erased" material goes has room
   for 12K bytes.  That means one may handle about 10 pages of
   single-spaced text in memory at one time.
   
   6. If you have more to say after 43520 bytes, a clue you can plant
   in the final line in your unfinished document will cause linking of
   a subsequent file wherein a new slate will start clean all over
   again.
   
   7. The display is 40-columns wide, which users know is often a
   bummer when using the C-64 for word-processing, but Brannon has
   done some things to make me happy with 40 columns!  First is
   word-wrap.  No word gets split at the right edge of the screen,
   although any word longer than  
   "supercallifragilisticexpialidocious"  may require the writer to do
   some preplanned splitting.  Second, he has provided a module for
   printing to the screen as if the screen were a printer so one can
   see how the final printout will look and, third, formatting
   specifications in the document will provide computed left- and
   right-margin control.  The only use one makes of the "Return" key
   is to end paragraphs or to terminate short lines.
   
   8. It is possible to exit from SpeedScript to BASIC to do some
   presumably important things, then return to SpeedScript by a SYS
   command.  If you haven't used too much "joint use" memory space
   while in BASIC, you will not have lost the SpeedScript text you
   have in "live" memory. "SAVEing to disk is so easy, though, that I
   don't take chances on losing text that way.  In any case, the
   SpeedScript program itself is not destroyed by a return to BASIC.
   Function key f8 invokes the "SAVE" routine in a one-keystroke
   operation

   
   9. Output options may be selected both as to where the output is to
   go (screen, tape, disk, printer, modem) and as to format (PET
   ASCII, True ASCII or C-64 screen code).
   
   10 The control commands have been selected for the maximum possible
   mnemonic content.  Nearly all commands are entered with use of the
   CTRL key, sometimes with the simultaneous use of the SHIFT key. 
   CTRL-b changes color of (b)order and (b)ackground. CTRL-l changes
   the screen color of (l)etters, CTRL-i toggles the (i)nsert mode,
   SHIFT-CTRL-h activates the (h)unt feature to find occurrences of
   specified strings, CTRL-e invokes the (e)rase mode, CTRL-r
   (r)estores erased material (at the cursor position) and so on.  A
   few commands had to be otherwise because the preferred mnemonic had
   been assigned, examples: CTRL-a toggles upper and lower case for
   the letter under the cursor and CTRL-j invokes the hunt and
   *selective* replace function.  (Brannon says "j" was selected only
   because it's next to the "h" on the keyboard.)
   
     I didn't intend to go into this much detail because Brannon's
article covers all this material plus a good deal more and does it
better. Moreover, it is published and widely distributed.  I thought
it unlikely that other magazines would pick up on it, however, since
that would unduly boost a competitor's appeal.  In the same April
issue of COMPUTE! there is published a "proofreader" program that
produces a checksum display at the top of your screen after entry of
each program line and a machine-language monitor program called "MLX"
which one can enter practically error-free with "proofreader"s help. 
The MLX program is not only useful, it is probably essential to the
successful error-free entry of SpeedScript itself.
     In my case, I first learned about SpeedScript after COMPUTE!'s
April issue had been replaced on the stands.   So, wanting a copy of
my own, I ordered the back issue from the publisher.  It's not
entirely true to say the program is "free" - COMPUTE! charged me six
bucks for the back issue, for one thing, and the five or six hours of
"spare" time I spent typing must be assigned *some* value.  I might
have been ahead of the game if I had ordered the disk in the first
place!

     A final note: the program stores your text in "screen" code,
which is neither ASCII nor CBM's version of ASCII.  While you can
command a copy to be made on disk in True ASCII or CBM ASCII instead
of screen code, such copies cannot be recalled by SpeedScript for
further editing without first re-translating them back to screen code.
 A part-BASIC, part ML program is published as part of the article
which is supposed to accomplish these translations - making translated
copies on the same disk as the source files.  I used it successfully
to make a "True ASCII" copy of a screen-code source file, but my
attempt to go from CBM ASCII back to SpeedScript's screen code for
another file did not work too well - lower-case letters were handled
properly, but upper case letters got translated into punctuation
marks!  Careful rechecking of my typing revealed no errors, so this
little problem remains "under active investigation."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

     The "Bottom Line": I expect to use "Fleet System 2" for jobs
involving columns of numbers requiring addition as part of document
creation and where its capability to display 80 columns (with
horizontal scrolling) is important for entering multiple tabbed
columns, but for 95 percent of the word processing I expect to do,
SpeedScript 3.0 will be my hands-down choice.
     An additional boon - since there has been no protection of the
software via the notorious "bad block" method, (or any other method,
for that matter),  loading the program does not cause destructive
banging of the head against the stops in my 1541 Disk Drive!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

     If you are still with me and interested, and if your local
resources are lacking, COMPUTE! publishes the following:

"The Commodore 64 version of SpeedScript 3.0 may be ordered on
disk directly from COMPUTE! Publications.  Call TOLL FREE 
800-334-0868 (In NC 919-275-9809) to charge your order 8:30 a.m.
-7:00 p.m. EST Monday through Friday. Or send check or money
order ($12.95 plus $2.00 shipping and handling) to:

   COMPUTE! Publications, Inc.
   P.O. Box 5058
   Greensboro, NC 27403 USA

Readers outside the US and Canada add $3.00 shipping and handling.
All orders must be prepaid in US funds.

DISCLAIMER: I have no involvement or interest in the magazine or
suppliers.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Wally Blake  akgua!gcuxc!gccwb   May 10, 1985

calway@ecsvax.UUCP (James Calloway) (05/16/85)

x
I agree with Wally Blake's praise of SpeedScript (I have an earlier version),
with one exception. The cursor's inability to move straight up or down
is a big nuisance. Sure, it's nice to be able to move from sentence to 
sentence, but that function is duplicated (as Blake mentioned) on the
f-keys. The only reason I can figure for not allowing straight up-down
cursor movement (i.e., staying in the same column or defaulting to the
end of the line if it is shorter than the previous line) is that the
cursor would have to re-figure the word-wrap, in other words,
it was too much trouble to write the code.

My version won't store files in ASCII at all, so I hacked in a pair of 
arrays to convert files as they are loaded and saved. In the process I
managed to neutralize most of the printer commands, and I never got
around to fixing that, but it works fine for sending files into
work, if I can remember to make them sequential files (by putting
  ,s,w   after the name when saving to disk).



-- 

James  Calloway
The News and Observer
Box 191
Raleigh, N.C. 27602
(919) 829-4570
{akgua,decvax}!mcnc!ecsvax!calway