Re: Word Perfect for GS --

[John_L._Graham@adbbs.antioch.edu (John L. Graham)]

heh, heh, I remember my first encounter with AppleWorks v1.0. I had been
writing a newsletter for some time using Screen Writer on an Apple II+ and I
really didn't like AppleWorks. Since then it's become an extremely valuable
tool for home and work. Just a couple of quick examples... I keep all my lab
notes with AppleWorks using an Apple IIe fitted with a Meg 80-Z card and a
Sider. The word processor is great for taking complete notes, the spread
sheet for doing calcs, and all the handy stuff from TimeOut Super Bundle. Our
WPA work requires copious QA/QC records and AppleWorks has been a tremendous
time saver for keeping these records and doing the required calculations.

I recently had one of those rare episodes were a computer actually helps get
a job done. We'd been fighting an odd-ball beam coming out of a diode laser
for too long and I decided to generate a quick'n dirty intensity map to see
what it really looked like. The laser emits in the IR at about 1400 nm so you
can't see it (hince the problem) and my only CCD camera can't really image
it. Soooo, I set it up with a simple mount and scanned across the beam with a
detector 50 cm in front of the laser's housing. To make a LONG story short I
used some software I wrote on one of our IIGS's to record the light intensity
as a function of time as I moved the detector across the field. Since I new
the scan rate I could easily convert the time base to distance base. I
repeated the scans at various heights, ending up with a series of strips
across the beam. To make a visualization of the beam cross section I loaded
the strips of data into an AppleWorks spread sheet. I recorded a simple macro
that averaged the data to reduce the volume to a managable form and so the
data in the spread sheet had a square aspect (each cell represented a 0.5 cm
square surface). I then normalized the data so all the values lay between 0
and 99 and shrunk the column widths until the accurately displayed the square
aspect and hince a good visualization of the data. A printout clearly showed
what was going on (the beam had a horrible shape with three "hot-spots") and
I fancied it up by shading in all the similar numbers with a pencil.

Nothing fancy, no flashy fonts or laser printing. But it help solved a
problem. In this case we quickly came up a simple fix which worked and we
went on to the next problem.

Neat stuff *B^)

John