I want to thank everyone for your support. Many very complimentary letters have been received and repeat orders would certainly seem to imply satisfaction.
At the time I write this, I am about out of ideas and 1 don’t particularly want to turn this into a newsletter that does little more than provide new ways to use PRO/FILE. It has always been intended as a way to improve on the original program.
Barring a sudden turn of events (either I get more ideas or my customers send me some), this could be the last issue. About the only remaining idea I have would involve making PRO/FILE handle more lines of data, probably 17. Time will tell, but any suggestions or request for routines may help a lot. There is a possibility that I could develop some specialty programs which would not be included within Pro/File itself, but could operate on the same data. Let me Know what you think and what you’d like to see.
This issue will concentrate on flexibility. That is, there will not be as many new routines, but more options will be available on the existing ones. This can cause you to change the reasons for using PRO/FILE.
For example, when I was restricted to using a tape drive, I Kept only two different files. One was for all my band records such as student addresses, inventory, schedules, etc. The other Kept track of my customers. Since it. took so long to load and save (and verify), it was impractical to have more. However, after converting to a Spectrum ROM (with a ROMSWITCH) and adding Sinclair microdrives, I am adding new files regularly. They load, save, and verify so quickly that my whole approach is different.
The changes in this issue will cause a reduction in file capacity. Change the size of D$ in line 9996 to 27529. That value seems to work with me. If you use a Spectrum, you have more memory available and shouldn’t need to reduce it (actually you could probably increase it) so ignore any reduction instructions.