Re: Q: Any new GSoft programs?

[CUTblakeney@home.com (Jeff Blakeney)]

On Thu, 11 Nov 1999 00:29:47 -0600, phoenyx <phoenyx@texas.net> wrote:

>Pretty serious, back problems at 3 different levels with nerve damage.
>This has been ongoing for years, with a recent re-injury.

Ouch!  Sorry to hear that.

>Through the years I've found the Apple ]['s to be great therapy to
>prevent a person from going stir crazy.

This is very true.  I know my Apple II machines have helped me through
illnesses throughout the 16 years I've been using them.  :-)

>From what I've seen, Gsoft is probably easier to use than Call Box. But
>either presents some interesting possibilities. I do most of my programming
>with 8 bit systems.

Applesoft is still a great way to throw together a quick hack.  For
example, a couple years ago someone on Delphi pointed out that the IRS
had the tax forms in self-extracting ZIP archives on their web site in
a form that Apple II users could dump directly to printers using the
PCL printer language (they may have had Postscript too, I can't
remember now).  I threw together a quick Applesoft program to remove
the self-extracting program portion of the archive to leave a standard
ZIP file that Apple II unzipping programs could unpack.

The program didn't run very fast but it did work.  Unfortunately it
only worked with the self-extracting ZIPs created by the DOS version
of PKZIP.  When I fixed that oversight I also took the time to add a
small assembly routine to speed things up.  ZipStripper v1.1 still
works quite well.

I'll eventually end up converting that program to GSoft and I'm hoping
to do so in a way that I can release an archive that shows the
development process from v1.0 to v2.0 and how I converted the program
from Applesoft to GSoft and how I would rewrite it from scratch using
just GSoft.

+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Jeff Blakeney - Dean of the Apple II University in A2Pro on Delphi     |
|                    Delphi Apple II Forums Web Pages                    |
| A2: http://www.delphi.com/apple2   A2Pro: http://www.delphi.com/a2pro  |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+