A Beginners Guide To COMPUTE!

If you're just getting started with your computer or with COMPUTE!, here are several notes to help you use COMPUTE!:

Organization

The front section of the magazine contains articles of general interest. These will vary from issue to issue with columns, business applications articles, general programming hints and educational articles. While an article may appear in this section that is machine specific, it's generally here because it has material of interest to other readers.

The balance of the magazine is organized into five Gazettes. These are, in order of appearance, Atari, OSI, Pet, and the Single-Boards (Aim, KYM, and SYM). Even if you're not the owner or user of a computer covered by a particular Gazette, you'll still find useful information there.

Presentation

In every issue we try to present a balanced group of articles ranging from material for beginners to material for old hands. Frequently, a beginner can get a great deal out of an advanced article, even though much of it may be over his or her head.

Program listings are presented as legibly as possible. Pet programs are generally reproduced and reformatted here where we've developed software to "translate" the special Pet graphics characters into characters printable by our equipment. These are explained below:

Program Listings for COMPUTE

Cursor control characters will appear in source listings as shown below:

h = HOME          , ĥ = CLEAR SCREEN
↓ = DOWN CURSOR  , ↑ = UP CURSOR
→ = RIGHT CURSOR , ← = LEFT CURSOR
r = REVERSE       , &rcirc; = REVERSE OFF

Graphics (i.e. shifted) characters will appear as the unshifted alphanumeric character with an underline. This does not apply to the cursor control characters. The Spinwriter thimble doesn't have a backarrow symbol, so a "˜" is used instead.

The "&neq;" is used to indicate the beginning of a continuation line. It is also used to indicate the end of a line which ends with a space. This prevents any spaces from being hidden.

If, for example, you're an Apple owner using a Pet program that's reproduced in this fashion, you'll need to be familiar with these special characters so you can program around them. As more computers implement versions of MicroSoft BASIC, the programs should become more and more transportable.

The Readers Feedback and CAPUTE!

These two continuing features provide channels of communication with readers and authors. The Readers Feedback grows out of your comments provided via The Editor's Feedback card. You'll find one bound into every issue. Please use it. CAPUTE! is our collection ground for past errors and omissions. Here you'll find updates to previous program problems, etc.