CompuServe Messages

Charles, I have redesigned Helm so I can more easily port it to other systems. Though it is taking a lot longer than I anticipated, I'm planning to have the Windows version by the end of the year. Because Helm is so complex, I realized that I probably could not maintain several versions of the same program so I'm working on a single core that will compile on multiple platforms. This means the Amiga version will continue to get updated in the future, ports to subsequent OS's will be much easier, and it also means you will be able to author books on the Amiga that will run on other platforms. You can seek to anywhere within a disk file with Helm's seek command. Here are the descriptions of Helm's IO commands. open <filename> as <container> [erase] seek <integer expression> [from] <start | position | end> [of] <file> read [from] <file container> for <number of bytes> read [from] <file container> until <character> write <expression> to <file container> Also, Helm 2 will have support for dBase files which will allow you to bind record fields to Helm objects. Helm's script language allows the author to specify individual codes in the form of octal numbers. For instance, to send a 1 followed by a three to the printer, you can use the following script: open "prt:" as myprinter write "\001\003" to myprinter close myprinter Jerrell Nickerson Eagle Tree Software