My OS-9/68000 Catalogue

Dear OS-9 User:

We are pleased to announce the availability of the following software for your OS9/68000 system. Each has been prepared with the careful attention to detail our company is known for and comes with complete, detailed documentation.

Our programs have been tested on several OS9/68000 platforms, including the MM/1 (68070), System IV (68000), and MVME (68020/68030). Our interactive programs use the termcap library for terminal independence.

And don't be fooled by the low prices. All our programs are professional products. But, we're out of the high rent district here in the mountains of British Columbia—and the saving are yours.

Ved Text Editor

Simply, the best editor available for your system! Written for speed and ease of use! Configurable—nearly all internal settings (macro definitions, key- bindings, editing modes, etc.) can be modified from an initialization file which is automatically read each time the editor is used.

Ved's editing mode options include insert or overstrike modes, automatic indenting, automatic numbering, wordwrap on/off, etc. Standard functions like search, find/replace, block move/copy/delete, word and line delete are completely supported with countless variants and options. A complete set of "undo" functions make it easy to correct mistakes. Network users will appreciate Ved's ability to read and write UNIX and DOS format files.

At every step in designing this powerful editor we have considered the usually conflicting goals of ease-of-use, speed, power and flexibility. We're pleased with the results! For example, if you start Ved with a filename included on the command line that file will be the one edited; but if you can't remember exactly the way to spell it (or maybe just feel a bit lazy) Ved will scan the current directory, sort the entries and display them on your terminal's screen—then you can pick the file to edit with the arrow keys. And then we couldn't decide just how some commands should function. For example, should the delete to end of line command remove the carriage return? We've left that CR in for now, but it is simple to set an option in your initialization file (or dynamically while editing) so that it is deleted. You'll find lots more examples once you start using Ved!

Ved also has a built-in text formatter. This formatter supports a sub-set of Vprint commands. Included in the command set are margin settings, headers and footers, justification modes, and embedded commands for various printer fonts (italic, underline, double wide, etc.). An interactive preview mode makes it easy to see what the final document will look like when printed.

To assist you in creating prefect documents, an integrated spelling checker is included at no additional charge! A highly compressed 60,000+ word dictionary is used to quickly scan the spelling of any document without leaving the editor. There is even a "real-time" mode which checks words as they are entered into your text with no slowdown in performance. "New" words can be saved and user dictionaries can be included.

With the multiple buffer feature you can now have up to 20 files loaded into memory at one time and swap sections of text between various files. Files can be loaded from the command line, or at any time during an edit session. Multiple buffers can be displayed on separate screen windows.

Even though many users will just start to use Ved without giving the manual as much as a glance, we have developed a complete, detailed and indexed reference guide for this powerful program. And if it is just too much of a hassle to open the manual, Ved has a built-in help function which can be customized by the user.

A companion program, MVEF, is an interactive, full-screen editor to create and maintain Ved environment files. With MVEF it is simple to create new environment files to support different terminals, keyboards or the preferences of different users. MVEF is included at no extra charge.

Ved costs only $59.95 for a personal, single-user licence; $249.00 for an industrial licence, plus $3.00 shipping and handling.

VPrint Formatter

Vprint is a full featured text formatter. Proven for many years on 6809 systems, this powerful program is now available for OS9/68000. The complete list of features fills a 120 page manual, but here are a few highlights:

• support of up to 36 printer fonts, including proportional, with multiple width tables and full microspace justification if your printer supports it,
  
• support of extended character sets (graphics and special characters),
  
• full printer support using initialization files for printer independence,
  
• built in mail-merge and repeat functions,
  
• input and output file switching and nesting allows long documents to be printed from a master "book" file, output to a pipeline or file, input from pipelines, etc.,
  
• full referencing facilities, including footnotes and endnotes, index and table of contents,
  
• single or multiple column printouts,
  
• conditional tests using "if" and "when" commands, along with arithmetic functions and variables, allow a high degree of programmability,
  
• full macro programming capability, combined with the other programming features, allow the user to extend the Vprint command set almost without limit,
  
• support of hanging indents, temporary indents, "wide" tabs, different even and odd page formats, etc.,
  
• 28 numeric registers are available to the user, in addition to such values as page number, line counter, margins, time and date, etc. Output of registers can be in decimal, hex, Roman numerals, ASCII or month name and registers can be set to auto-increment by any reasonable value,
  
• handles files with or without carriage returns at the end of each line,
  
• support of half line spacing,
  
• allows embedded OS-9 commands.

Vprint's power comes not only from an extensive command set, but also from two significant features:

1. Vprint knows your printer intimately through the init file (which you can set up yourself). This means that special printer functions such as font changes, superscripts, boldface, double width, etc. can be carried out with no need for the user to calculate new margins, line lengths, page lengths, etc. Not only that, but you can send the same identical text file to several different printers with no need for editing since the commands in the text file are printer independent.
   
2. Vprint's macro capability allows you to extend the capabilities of the formatter by adding new commands. These commands can include such things as automatic captioning of figures, pre-formatted chapter and section headings, automatic handling of numbered points (where the formatter takes care of the numbering and indentation). Macros can be stored in one or more files, and can be loaded either by a command in the text file, or automatically by the init file. Several different macro files can include commands for different types of formatting, such as correspondence, manuals, stories, etc.

Vprint comes with a 120 page manual, several dozen sample files and printer initialization files for many common printers. Vprint costs $59.95 for a personal, single-user licence; $249.00 for an industrial licence, plus $3.00 shipping and handling.

Vmail

Vmail was written to maintain our own mailing list. But we find it so useful, we figured that you might like it too.

Vmail uses a proprietary system of linked lists and external indexes for lighting fast insertion and retrieval. All entries are indexed when entered— there is never a need to sort your files.

Each record has fields for the first name, last name, company name, street address, city, state, country, zip code, phone number, and memo. In addition, the create and last modified date are maintained for each record.

A handy feature is the ability to print a single record—to any of three different ports. And because the format of the printout is something you decide Vmail becomes very versatile. For example, on our system, pressing <1> prints a mailing label on /p1; pressing <2> sends to the phone number to /t0 (and since we have a modem connected to /t0 we Vmail now functions as a phone dialer; pressing <3> prints an envelope, complete with return address, on /p2.

Mass mailings are easy to prepare with Vmail. Listing can be by in Lastname, Companyname or Zipcode order. Plus, you can specify matching fields—you can print records in Lastname order only for those customers who live in Texas or California and have not heard from you in one year. And the format of the label is up to you, not the program!

So there you go. A complete mailing list package: Configurable, Flexible, Powerful. Oh, did we mention speed? On our system the name we're looking for appears before our hand leaves the ENTER key! Really!

You might expect a program like Vmail to cost hundreds or thousands of dollars. And if we were a giant company we'd probably have to charge that much to cover the high cost of advertising, office space, salaries, etc. But that's not our game—we enjoy living here in our mountain retreat writing programs. So take advantage of us: Vmail costs only $49.95 for a personal, single-user licence; $229.00 for an industrial licence, plus $3.00 shipping and handling.

Cribbage

We have ported our famous cribbage card game to Kwindows on the MM/1 (sorry, but this graphics program cannot be run on a terminal system). This program plays an excellent hand of the classic card game. Written in lighting fast 'C', this is a great card game simulation which'll keep you going for hours—but beware, some people have been known to spend so much time playing (and trying to beat the computer) they never do get around to doing the dishes! Cribbage costs only $19.95 plus $2.00 shipping and handling.

Magazine Index

A computerized magazine article retrieval system with neat input routines and fast searches. This easy to use program comes with a giant data base of Color Computer articles and detailed documentation. And it's not only for your computer magazines—use it to index hobby magazines, etc. It'll really show its stuff a year from now when you say to yourself, "I remember reading about that, somewhere?" This program has been very popular with Level II users over the years and is file compatible with that version. Magazine Index costs only $19.95 plus $2.00 shipping and handling.

Personal licence: this permits you to use our software on a single CPU.

Industrial licence: this permits you to use and copy our software on up to 7 CPUs on at a single site as well as unlimited customer support via CIS and one year's free updates.

To order any of our programs, please send a check or money order to the address at the top of this flyer. Sorry, we do not accept credit cards—but we will ship COD to US and Canadian addresses (we add a small additional charge to cover the post office COD fee). Purchase orders are accepted from Fortune 500 companies, governments and educational institutions. All products are in stock and ready to ship.

When ordering, please include your preferred disk size and format. We can supply programs on either 3.5" or 5" disks in just about any format— do let us know before we ship something you can't read.