Obviously, Commodore Hacking depends on the comments and article submissions from the Commodore community to flourish. Everyone sees the articles, but let's not forget those comments. They are very helpful, and every attempt is made to address concerns in them. Address any comments, concerns, or suggestions to:
Commodore Hacking
10710 Bruhn Avenue
Bennington, NE 68007
j.brain@ieee.org (Internet)
From: Adam Vardy (abe0084@InfoNET.st-johns.nf.ca)
Dear C=Hacking,
In the last issue there was some source code for printing very big numbers. This source code is all in uppercase. This seems to be true whenever source code is included in the magazine. I am wondering why that is. This makes it rather difficult for me to extract the source and put it into a form that my assembler can deal with. I can't load the source right into Power Assembler. It only accepts lowercase code. It is puzzling to me why you do this, because I would think any assembler that accepts plain text would work this way too.
Another thing is this. In the last issue one of the uuencoded files in the magazine was dim4. The source code for the included files is for the Merlin Assembler. OK. So I try to read these files. I'm having problems with this. If I try to More them in ACE, I can't. It's unreadable. They seem to be text, but however I try to read them, I get weird characters or other stuff. Loading them into a word processor or into ZED, or anything doesn't work.
I don't have Merlin. But I would think it must have some way to save plain text source. That way, everyone can at least read it, right?
Code is printed in the magazine as it is received by Commodore Hacking. The only formatting done to source code in articles and columns is to indent each line 3 spaces. The source code to which you refer above was in a USENET posting and was captured from the comp.sys.cbm newsgroup in uppercase. Our theory is that some folks who upload code to the Internet do not do an PETSCII-ASCII translation, which would cause the effect of switching all lowercase characters to uppercase. However, we are not certain that there all assemblers expect lowercase, which is why we do not try to alter case of source code.
As for your second problem, we accept part of the blame. We are attempting to obtain allof the source code used in the publciation in ASCII or PETSCII format. However, a number of assemblers, including Turbo-Assembler, do have an internal format that is neither ASCII nor PETSCII. Merlin may also have such a format. However, we are unfamiliar with Merlin, so it may not have an option to output code in ASCII or PETSCII, as Turbo- Assembler does. Our suggestion is to contact the author of the article directly and ask for an ASCII copy of the source and accept our apologies.
From: MICHAEL I DEMING (m.deming@genie.geis.com)
Dear C=Hacking,
An article or series of articles on the 80 column chip would be very helpful e.g. how to use sprites, a screen dump and other things like that. If I knew how to do this I would write the articles but I don't so I am begging for any info on this chip.
Always check back issues of Commodore Hacking for prior
articles on topics. See Commodore Hacking Information (Reference:
info) for directions on how to access back issues. VDC
information is included in Issue 1 as part of Craig Bruce's
"Simple Hires Line Drawing Package for the C128" and as
part of Craig Taylor's "An In-Depth Look at the 8563 Video
Chip on the C= 128" in issue 2. As for the other topics,
other articles in Commodore Hacking touch on those issues, but we
always appreciate new articles dealing with these topics.
From: George Szaszvari (gsz@dial.pipex.com)
In Commodore Hacking #13 Preface:
>Whew! Folks, here is the long awaited Issue #13 of
Commodore Hacking.
>Hacking Headquarters has produced an issue overflowing with
technical
>articles sure to satisfy even the most discerning Commodore
enthusiast.
>In fact, this issue is OVERFLOWING with 384 kB of material,
so empty out
>that mailbox. Here it comes...
Yeah, a real BUMPER issue, thanks!
Well, the size is a both a blessing and a curse. While we
are happy about the number and diversity of articles, we know
there are those who can't handle a large issue like #13, so we
are trimming the size a bit from #14. However, thanks for the
comments.
From: Brett Tabke
Dear C=Hacking,
Thank you! One of, if not THE, best issues yet!
I can't thank you enough for all the work you've done here Jim. Between Hacking, The FAQ, and the CBM product documetation, you have put out more valuable information in 6 months than most of the pay magazines to in their lifetime. The CBM products listing is a rare treasure that every CBM owner should take time to read.
We don't know what to say. We're just happy that everyone stood by us during the move and the delay in getting #13 out. By th way, for those who have not seen. The CBM Products List to which Brett Tabke refers is available as "cbmmodel.txt" on the MAILSERV and through the WWW. (http://www.msen.com/~brain/pub/cbmmodel.txt) If you prefer to wait, aupdated copy will be presented in Commodore Hacking #15.
From: Ruth Hackley (fgm@rosenet.net)
Dear C=Hacking,
I am Ruth Hackley, Ron's wife, and newsletter editor for the L.C.C.U.G. in Eugene. Are there any portions of C=Hacking that can be used in the newsletter. We plan to provide the magazine on disk to our library as well.
The entire publication can be redistributable as a complete work, as explained in the Commodore Hacking Legal Notice (Reference: legal). As well, individual articles can be reprinted with permission from the author of the article. Commodore Trivia is a special case. Permission has been given by the author to reprint Commodore Trivia in newsletters and publications, just as _Commodore World_ and this publication do.
From: Scott Brockway (fungus@eskimo.com)
Dear C=Hacking,
I thought the magazine was sort of a transactor replacement. When I downloaded issue 12 of C=Hacking I was not just a bit disappointed. I like all the technical stuff and now I fear the mag is no longer for me.
Hey C=H, Put the code back in!
We are sorry you felt this way. It was not, nor is it currently, our intention to leave technical readers without articles of interest. We ask that you take a good look at the magazine. Others have initially thought the magazine lacked technical content, but later determined that the style of some articles had changed and the technical articles were separated by a few less technical offerings. However, be aware that due to the time and space constraints we are trying to fit Commodore hacking in will reduce the number of technical articles by 1 or possibly 2 each issue over the old issues. Also, some technical articles do not contain any code pieces.
In the case of Issue 12, we were forced to redo the issue after an important technical article from a semi-regular writer did not appear. The resulting rework might have shown through. We hope Issue 13 provided enough technical content. Our most technical readers might find the current issue a bit light on content, due to problems associated with Commodore Hacking's recent relocation efforts. We ask that the technical readers bear with us as we ramp up in our new location.
One of our continual problems, and one of Craig Taylor's
(the previous editor) as well was finding quality technical
articles to publish. One way to solve the problem is to delay the
publication date, a tactic Craig might have used. However, we are
trying to get back on a stable schedule. So, if you are up to it,
write up a technical piece for inclusion in the next issue.
From: wanderer_rtc@usa.pipeline.com (R. T. Cunningham)
Dear C=Hacking,
I just read CHacking #13 and was very impressed with the amount of work put into it. While I was reading the HTML tutorial, I came to a not quite brilliant idea.
While working on an HTML viewer, take time to see if you can work standard C/G viewing. I would love to do up a bunch of web pages using C/G with the familiar disclaimer up on top, previously posted by someone else and plagiarized by me, (best viewed using a Commodore 8 Bit Computer). This would please quite a few people (besides me of course). Who says we have to be able to see 256 colors!
Oh, do we detect a bit of revenge here? I am sure Jim Brain can arrange C/G graphics in the HTML viewer he is working on, but we can see a problem:
The eventual goal of the HTML viewer is to grow the application into a full fledge WWW Browser. If a site uses C/G graphics exclusively, the large number of Commodore enthusiasts that view WWW sites with non-CBM graphical browsers will not see the C/G graphics.
In addition, some would-be Commodore enthusiasts who explore these C/G graphics enabled sites might leave thinking we are snobs and never return. We don't need that.
We think a slightly altered suggestion is better. When designing the "<img>" tag in he HTML viewer, allow it to understand the optional attribute "CBMSRC". That way, a Commodore site can safely display graphics to non-CBM browsers and still put the "Best Viewed with a C64" on the page. All the graphics on the page would then be specified by an image tag looking like: <img src="junk.gif" cbmsrc="better.cg">. The CBMSRC attribute could then be used on a CBM browser to display the alternate C/G graphic. A non-CBM browser would ignore the CBMSRC attribute, and a tag like: <img cbmsrc="..."> would be ignored by the browser as well, since it contains no SRC attribute. And, best of all, if you really wanted to keep the Netscape browsers out, simply put <img src="better.cg">.
From: Cameron Kaiser (ckaiser@sdcc13.ucsd.edu)
Dear C=Hacking,
I noticed that the last C-Hacking had a number of uuencoded
files concatenated to each other. This presents a problem in unix
because a number of crufty uudecoders don't recognize them
together (only the first one). I have made a PERL script that
folks can use to fix this. I'll leave it in
ftp.armory.com/pub/user/spectre/UNIX/multiuu.pl
We appreciate the utility. If someone wants to take
advantage of this helpful utility, simply FTP the file to your
local UNIX account and execute:
chmod u+x multiuu.pl
Then you should be able to uudecode multiple part files with this
program.
From: rbthomas@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca
I have d-loaded a few issues of C= Hacking and converted them to GEOS and looked at them with geoWrite but that is a clumsy process. Also, I understand some of the issues have program files in them and these need to be extracted for use. How does a person go about this? Thanks in advance for any help you can offer. I have a 1581 and an FD-2000 drive so the space isn't a problem with storing the file. I would like to read it in comfort also. TWS won't handle it.
To help people who can't handle the large size of Commodore Hacking, each issue is now available as an archive of individual articles and already decoded executable files. Commodore Hacking Information (Reference: info) has information on how to obtain and dowload the archive files.
C= Hacking Home | Issue 14 Contents
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Last Updated:
1997-03-31 by Jim Brain