22 September 1986 Z-NEWS 601 Z Tips. Latest version of CLEANDIR, 1.3c, has a directory status feature some may find useful, and also a check-only without writing option. Much slower than Version 1.1, especially on big disk systems, 1.3c should be considered a complement to 1.1, not a replacement. On Z-Nodes and on SUS #5. See below. ---------------------------------------------------------- If you can't remember ASCII character hex values, a short little program called ASCII displays value of character typed--neat...on many RCP/M systems and SUS #5. Soon available programmer's tool, PPAL, Pretty Printer for Assembly Language, is three times faster than AN source code filter written in C (on SUS #2). Extreme flexibility along with speed are featured, converting source to form desired. Pretty viewing and printing! One of four built-in default formats is new proposed Z-System standard. Optional directives change defaults. Control appearance of labels, op codes, operands, and comments (both embedded and stand-alone). Upper and lower case, case of first letter, space or not between comment-beginning semicolon, colon or not after symbols and labels, make no change, blank line removal, macro and conditional nested indenting, and more. Over 100 million combinations in seven categories. Works from command lines, aliases, and menus. And format directives may be placed within source code itself. Thus, one portion of source can be for- matted differently for another. PPAL is one of several utilities in PROGRAMMER'S TOOLBOX to be offered by Echelon. Announcements. For Echelon software delivery, baseline now is double-sided (double-density) 5.25" diskette. We can still handle single-sided, for $5.00 download fee; but, if not specified, we ship Ampro, Kaypro, Osborne, Heath, etc., as DSDD. Because of money considerations, we had either to do this or up our software package prices. Hopefully, DSDD can be handled by great majority of our present and future customers. Thank you. Z-News 504-5, 30 June 1986, stated our overseas (International) Shipping and Handling (S&H) policy not reflected in PRICES11.RAS file or subscription edition of Z-News 509. PRICES12.RAS corrects this oversight. (Overseas S&H is actual postal charges plus $2.00.) ZRDOS, Version 1.7, is shipping. Many new utilities support it features. DISKRST (reset disk system), LOGGED (show read-only, fixed- and removable- media drives), SRO (set drive read-only), DRO (display read-only drives), and SRW (set drive read-write). We believe version to be bug-free. Very fast for fixed media memory, RAM and hard disk. Should be last change until banked version comes out. Update for $20.00 plus S&H. SUS Report. Fifth Software Update Service diskette contains programs discussed or mentioned in this or in previous newsletters. The beat goes on... XDIR III, Version 2.0 Horizontal Listing by File Name/Type Disk: F User: 0 Name: BACKUP, File Attributes: Non-System Filename.Typ Size K RS Filename.Typ Size K RS Filename.Typ Size K RS -------- --- ------ -- -------- --- ------ -- -------- --- ------ -- -SUS .005 0 R AC42 .COM 6 ALIAS .CMD 2 ASCII .LBR 2 CLNDR13C.COM 4 CLNDR13C.ZQ0 18 ERADIR10.LBR 14 FINDF25 .LBR 22 FINREP22.LBR 14 MCOPY43C.COM 6 MCOPY43C.ZQ0 18 PRICES12.RZS 10 SAK22A .LBR 8 SIEVE .C 2 SIEVE .COM 18 SIEVEZ80.COM 10 TALIAS16.LBR 38 TXT2ASM .LBR 12 VF41H .LBR 28 VMENU20A.LBR 74 WF .COM 2 ZHELPR17.RQS 4 ZNODES34.LQT 4 23 Files Using 316K, 23 Files on Disk and 74K Left PRICES12.RZS requires using UNCR(unch), efficient un-compress tool, to obtain readable ASCII text file. (Middle letter of file-type signals crunched if Z, squeezed if Q.) Find UNCR.COM in CRUNCHnn.LBR of SUS #2 and on Z-Nodes everywhere. Eventually, Z utilities will be upgraded to handle conveniently both squeezed and crunched files. Full details of SUS concepts are in Z-News 507 (and 506). If you cannot economically contact Z-Nodes, here's the way to stay current with Z-System community for $85.00 per year. From Our Mail Box. Testimonial from R. Barry Lewis, Champaign, IL, "This past Friday morning you kindly helped me to get my copy of ZRDOS+ installed. I was very impressed by the highly professional manner in which you diagnosed the problem and guided me to a solution over the telephone. It was a pleasure to talk with someone who clearly knows what they are doing and who has the skill and the patience to help a novice. Thanks again./ "I must also add that the good things that I have heard and read about Echelon are borne out by my experience in the couple of instances that I have bought something from your company. I will buy more from you and will try to promote your company and ZCPR3 locally." Thank you, Barry...we do our best...what more can we say? David Vergin, Elma, WA, writes, "'...if we are to continue...?' [from Z- News 408-5.] My gosh! Z-News die? No. Here's $24.00. Keep it up." Z-User's Corner. Here, meanings of words and expressions dealing with file names and trailing attributes and parameters, as used in ZCPR3 and Z-System command lines, by common usage and by convention. Meanings established by assignment, program requirements, and accepted by majority of people active in the community: field -- A file has two fields: name and type. Example: VFILER is the name field, COM the type field for file VFILER.COM. Up to eight characters are allowed for names and up to three for types. Either field may be empty. A period, ., separates name field from type field. wild card -- Either an asterisk, *, or a question mark, ?, used within field. "?" matches any character; "*", all characters from position to field's end. afn -- Ambiguous File Name. Name and type fields may contain wild cards. VFILER.* All files with name VFILER and any type. ?V*.COM All files of type COM with any first character for name, secondcharacter a V, and with any remaining up-to-six characters. ?V? Any three character file name without a type. *.TXT Any file name of type TXT. ufn -- Unambiguous File Name. Exact name and type of file to be acted upon. VFILER.COM ECHO.LBR Z-NEWS.502 Only exact file names and types. Wild cards not permitted. file_list -- A declaration of more than one file name, separated by comma delimiters. File names may include wild cards. ECHO.COM,?FILER.*,*.D?C The file ECHO.COM, all seven-character files with FILER occupying positions two through six in name field with any type field, and all files of any name with type starting with D and having C for last character. fn.ft -- File name and file type of file used in an example. Same as "ufn." Wild cards may be used to declare file in actual use, if program accepts them. string -- A series of characters made up of one or more words. "This is an example string." Several words in quotes. This is a string Words without quotes. This_is_a_string Words handled as one word using underline character as delimiter, connective. cmd -- Command. May take the form of cmd;cmd2;cmd3;... . Spaces between semicolon command delimiter and next command are ignored. cmd; cmd2; cmd3; ... is accepted. -- Necessary operator input. [text] -- Optional input, as desired by operator. Please refer to Z-News 309-4 (Z-News, Volume 3, Number 9, page 4, Z-Index reference convention) for more details regarding ZCPR3 and Z-System convent- ions. Lunch Break. Symmetric 375 (Z-News 409-2) reduced in price to $4,995.00. If interested in a 22-pound portable, personal Unix bsd v4.2 computer using 10mHz National 32016 chip and 50-megabyte hard disk, now is time to buy. Machine comes with 8 languages: C, Fortran, Pascal, LISP, Prolog, BASIC, APL, and Assembler. And SPICE, TEX, INGRES, and EMACS! Plus 2-megabytes of DRAM, parallel Centronics and 4 serial ports at up to 38.4k-baud. Call 408/279-0700 for literature. Zedcor, 4500 E. Speedway, #93, Tuscon, AZ 85712, and ZBasic appear to be doing well. At $89.95, their interactive compiler gives new life to BASIC, and portability between machines (Apple IIc, IIe, Macintosh; IBM PC and compatibles, TRS-80 Models 1, 3, 4/4p; Kaypro Graphics; and Z-80/HD64180 Z- System, CP/M v2.2 computers). As Zedcor says, "Works the same on all computers." Sieve benchmarks, BYTE's prime number classic, prove compiler's efficiency (29 seconds versus 1490 seconds for MBasic, compiler against interpreter, 34.7 seconds for Aztec CII, 7.4 for assembler, all on 4mHz Z80). Compiler translation speed is 40 lines per second! Features put ZBasic into structured-language class giving C and Pascal a run for it. More information, call toll-free 800/482-4567. ==================================================================== Of Angles and Eagles. "Yes, machines think--if you disagree, wait another 2 years for evidence even 'flat-earthers' won't be able to repudiate!" From Z- News 109-3, 8 April 1985. Machines remember, better than humans. Machines manipulate data and return information. Machines reach conclusions. But machines do not generate knowledge from information, from its decisions. Machines do not understand ideas. Machines do not create ideas. (What are ideas?) Information-overloaded society, that's us! Computers have been main force behind data explosion in our industrial, international culture. Post- printing press era, where information increases have been so great we cannot keep up with overwhelming amount of semi-paralyzing data. Some believe information is power. It is not. But knowing how to convert information into knowledge is. Knowledge requires human assessment (and knowledge is worthless unless acted upon) and here is where we fall apart. (See Z-News 501-4 for more details relating data, information, knowledge, and understanding.) We continue like nothing has changed--more data is on the way, too much data. Who learns to assimilate such ever increasing amounts of data for rational action to follow? Learning to understand how machines think, task for computer users...making machines think, job of designers and engineers. (What is thinking?) By April 1987 we should see computers thinking beyond what most of us ever thought they would or could. Man quickly learns how mankind thinks! Presently, whole subcultures dealing with how-do-we-think harvest fruits from earlier blossoms, fruits go into ripening-baskets, fruits from Artificial Intelligence (AI) community nearly ready to be eaten. Banquet prepared, spread once-eaten surely changes the world! What hath man wrought! A servant superior to its master, creator? Yes, and beyond...a machine answering mankind's burning questions: What is life, what are humans? "Man's mind stretched by a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions."--Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1809-1894, physician and author. Experience is one thing, openness to new ideas is quite another. From a multitude of realities, each real for a particular observer, comes an understanding of the oneness of all. We need only to learn other realities to come to this view. But a bend in our thought process is necessary for learning to occur. Myth dwarfs truth...major problem that slows progress, forward movement of mankind. You see, we must change our thinking habits, both style and pattern, to see more or differently than we see now. See you down the lines... Echelon, Inc. 885 N. San Antonio Road Los Altos, CA 94022 USA Telephone: 415/948-3820 Z-Node Central (RAS): 415/489-9005 Trademarks: Bookshelf, Ampro Computers; SB180, Micromint; PRO-180, Magnum Digital; ON!, Oneac; DT42, The SemiDisk, Deep Thought 42, SemiDisk Systems; TR-XL180, M.A.N. Systems; HD64180, Hitachi; Z-System, ZCPR3, ZRDOS, Z-Tools, Zas, Zlink, Z-Msg, Term3, Quick-Task, FINDS, PPAL, Lasting-Value Software, Echelon; GT180, Turbo Modula-II, Borland International; Lotus 1-2-3, Lotus Development; MBasic, Microsoft; TWP, The Word Plus, Oasis Systems; SIFT, Siftsoft; Electra-Find, O'Neill Software. * * Z sets you FREE! * * Z-News 601 is Copyright 1986 Echelon, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Permission to reprint, wholly or partially, automatically granted if source credit is given to Echelon. hts Reserved. Permission to reprint, wholly or partially, automatically granted if so