Tone Byte

So I lied...again just a nybble. Maybe next month.



BIT ONE: Amiga Report Reaches Milestone

We here at The Amiga Monitor would like to take a moment to congratulate a contemporary of ours on a recent accomplishment.

Amiga Report has been one of the most significant sources of online information in the entire Amiga community over the last few years, under the command of Jason Compton, one of the most widely respected and accredited journalists in Amiga history. With issue #5.01, Amiga Report recently began its fifth year of publication. This is a major landmark for any publication, especially an online one, and even more especially one devoted to a platform that is widely rumored to be "dead."

Again, our sincerest congratulations to Jason Compton for carrying AR boldly into its fifth year of publication, and may there be many more to come.

Contributed by: Michael Webb

BIT TWO: New Image Processors

If you think that the demise of Art Department ended the ability of the Amiga to keep up in the graphics processing market, think again. Many might know that there are a few good commercial programs. Included in this group are ImageFX, Photogenics, and Personal Paint. There are three others less known to many Amiga users but well known to frequenters of Aminet. They are Wildfire, ArtPro and Image Engineer. I mention these three because they have been recently updated by their authors.

Wildfire, at $40 to register, is geared toward animations. It allows you to combine, process, create, and convert animations and can also be used to process individual images. Wildfire also includes another new animation format, YAFA. This format allows you to use XPK to compress the animation along with the usual compressions in the IFF format. The latest update is Version 2.58 and can be found in the gfx/edit directory of Aminet. The unregistered version is fully functional but slowly "eats" RAM until none is left. Editor's Note: What, does this mean that all these years, I've neglected to register my copy of Windows®...?

ArtPro, at $15 to register, is still under heavy development with very few operators. This program is geared to processing individual images, just like Art Department Pro. It utilizes datatypes and internal loaders and savers and uses the render.library (included). Development is to include more loaders and savers and more operators. The current version is 1.0 and can be found on Aminet as gfx/conv/artpro1.0.lha.

Image Engineer, at $35 to register, is one of the most sophisticated of the shareware image processors. It is also restricted in its non-registered form in the size of picture you can work on. This program requires the superview.library V15+ and comes with many operators and convolvers. It also uses, for many operators, a visual interface. As long as you have enough RAM, the program generates the altered image in a separate window allowing you to return to any point in a multistep operation. This program can be found in the gfx/edit directory of aminet as ImgEngV3.Xp1.LHA and ImgEngV3.Xp2.LHA.

Well folks, if you're interested in doing graphics for a minimum budget, don't throw out your Amiga just yet. The development in this field has not shown much sign of slowing even with the bankruptcy mess.

Contributed by: Anthony Becker, Executive Editor

BIT THREE: Some gripes: Attention Developers

This section is for all you programmers and developers out there. The rest of you, move on to Bit Four. No, this is not the usual "what Commodore should have done" gripe. This is real useful stuff from someone who is constantly trying out the latest Amiga programs and utilities.

1. Use Installer scripts! I know, most of you do. Those of you who don't, you know who you are; learn to use Installer scripts.

2. When using Installer scripts, note that not all of us call User-Startup from the Startup-Sequence. You don't know how frustrating it is to have your Amiga no longer boot properly after installing a program. Allow the educated user to skip this step more easily by explaining exactly what the modification to the startup-sequence file will be before doing it so we know when we can safely press the "skip this part" button.

3. You know how annoying it is to double-click on an icon just to see the "Unable to open your tool 'C:Installer'" or 'C:MultiView'? Why would I necessarily place these programs in the C: directory? Just remember, the C: directory is in the path, but not the whole path is in the C: directory. It is enough to look in the path for these programs rather than in a specific directory. I, like many others, keep Installer and MultiView in my Utilities directory, where they really belong.

Contributed by: Anthony Becker, Executive Editor

BIT FOUR: Some gripes: Users.

1. Upgrade. If you don't have at least 2.0, get it. If possible, get 3.1. If you don't have a hard drive, get one. AmigaDOS 2.0 and a hard drive should be considered a minimum Amiga system these days.

2. Register your shareware. These people work real hard and some, like SASG, make it real easy with a Web site set up for online registering.

Contributed by: Anthony Becker, Executive Editor

-Edited by Anthony Becker-
Write to him at e-mail address commodoreuser@juno.com