MAPPING THE ATARI - REVISED
EDITION
COMPUTE! Books
£16.95
Above all else the one thing XL
programmers have been crying out for is a memory map for the XL
series. It has been a long wait but COMPUTE! have finally come up
with a revised version of the classic Mapping The Atari which includes
not only the XL and the XE but also throws in a few more hidden
gems about the old machines!
Reviewing the book for new XL or
XE owners is simple. If you want to be able to program your machine,
buy this book, it cannot be recommended highly enough. What you
get is a detailed description of almost every memory location you
are likely to need to know about with many programming examples
and useful routines. If you program in BASIC, your programs will
have added polish and scope with this book to hand and if you want
to learn machine code a memory map is essential. You may as well
not bother without one! But you get much more than just a memory
map for the introduction tells you quite a lot about the fundamentals
of programming and there are no less than nineteen appendices covering
almost every aspect of your machine and including specific chapters
on XL/XE enhancements and bugs, XE memory management, DOS 2.5,
XL./XE
graphics modes and more.
There is a section using the Translator
to get a customised Operating System for your machine and you also
get a type in program that converts the XL Revision B BASIC to Revision
C which alone could save you the price of the book!
What if you already have the original
version of Mapping? Well that is more difficult. This one is more
expensive at £16.95 and the vast majority is the same. It depends
on how you value all those little gems you picked up from the first
edition. There is an Addenda and Errata to the First Edition which
was a great thrill to read (I didn't know that!) and there is certainly
more information overall. In the long run those few extra programming
tips might be worth more than £16.95 spent on some game you put
away after a few plays.
Two hundred and seventy pages of
good, solid, hardcore knowledge. What more could you want?
SPEEDSCRIPT
COMPUTE! Books
£9.95
Speedscript was a professional
quality word processor published a while ago in COMPUTE! and this
book is basically a repeat of the article and program listing with
a complete source code and much previously unpublished information.
At first sight it might seem strange
to produce a book about a magazine program but Speedscript is probably
one of the most comprehensive and professional programs ever published
in a magazine and is certainly the cheapest full-feature word processor
you are ever likely to come across. Good word processors are expensive
and you may find that the one you buy doesn't suit you. At least
with this book you can introduce yourself to word processing with
the minimum outlay and even if you find that the program doesn't
suit you you will be better armed to find one that does.
Word processing is one of the few
tasks that a computer can do for everyone and if you have not dipped
your toe in the water, try it, you will not find a cheaper way!
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