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3RANVUE and why call AMUS
One of the best things about AMUS is the AMUS system. About 3
- 10 times a month I usually call the system up just to see
what's new. There are a lot of donated programs that are very
useful for your own system.
Dave Pallman has recently donated a lot of useful programs and
subroutines. What do you do with them? I play with them to see
if they can be useful in helping the system run better.
One such routine is his VUE.SBR. The only thing this subroutine
does is to allow you to manipulate your cursor around a
predetermined area on your screen like Alpha Micros VUE
program.
I downloaded the VUE.SBR and tried to make it work just to see
what it does. After getting it to work, I kept playing with it
and developed a simple program that allows you to VUE a random
file. The whole program was built around the VUE.SBR. It seemed
to grow and grow. After I got one section to work I decided it
needed to do more and more. It became an obsession working
with it. In the middle of the night I would wake up with a new
thought on how to make it work better. Strange how one little
subroutine can ruin your social life.
Now the program.
RANVUE allows you to vue a random file and manipulate the data
in any way you want. It is similar to Alpha Micro's VUE.LIT
which works only on sequential files, but has many differences.
Some differences are due to the fact of different types of
files, Sequential vs Random; some differences are due to BASIC
program Vs ASSEMBLER and a third difference ME vs PROGRAMMING.
Since Random files are allocated in 512 byte blocks RANVUE
vue's 512 bytes at one time. This made some things simple such
as page search. If you wanted to see the second 512 bytes of
data then open the file, read record #2, manipulate the data
and write it back. It also made some things difficult such as
reading a floating point or binary number somewhere within the
512 bytes without a MAP statement for that particular file.
That was probably the hardest thing to figure out. With my luck
there is probably an easier way to do it than the way I did but
it works. I would try to explain it, because I wrote it but I,m
not sure I understand how it works now.
RANVUE has most of the goodies of VUE; Search, Replace, Global,
Page, and some of the goodies of SUPERVUE, Print, change files
without leaving RANVUE, and something special, a program to
figure MAP statements if you can remember the name of the
program that has them, for the Random file you are vueing.
Ranvue also backs up the previous record you had on the screen
in case you write over some data that shouldn't have been. It
also has an option to back up the whole file before you RANVUE
it just in case.
You must have a AM100/L, Dave Pallman's VUE.SBR and some
patience to use RANVUE. It is a far from perfect program but it
works and sure beats having to write a special program to see a
RANDOM file particularly if you need to see something now.
I would suggest reading the program listing and make changes
necessary for the program to work on your particular terminal.
The graphic modes( on and off), the graphic characters (corners
horizontal and vertical line characters) and high and low
intensity characters may need to be changed. The program is set
up now to work with a FREEDOM 100 terminal and it's attributes,
but the program can be modified to suit any terminal.
To invoke RANVUE type "RANVUE filename". To learn how to use
RANVUE a random help file is included it is called RANVUE.DAT.
To invoke RANVUE and use the help data file type in "RANVUE
RANVUE" and then follow the instructions. You will find that
my instructions and documentation are not very comprehensive
and maybe not very complete. Once you see the program listing
you might understand why. But you can't have everything for
free.
The listing RANVUE.LST is a copy of the random help file
RANVUE.DAT. This will give you an idea of the operation of
RANVUE. It is a direct printout of the file using the print
mode just as the screens appear.
If you do find a use for this program and have any comments or
suggestions for version 2.0 or would just like to improve the
documentation, feel free to write or call James A. Jarboe IV,
Educational Filmstrips, 1401 19th Street, Huntsville TX, 77340
(409) 295-5767.
