| I think that what you are suggesting would be a good idea.
Another approach is to subscribe to Amazing Computing, which provides
information on new public domain software for the Amiga in every
issue. (I recommend it for other reasons as well -- it's not as
glossy and flashy as Amiga World but the quality of its articles
is generally a lot higher. It's also targeted towards people
interested in programming on the Amiga rather than towards naive
users.)
In addition to listings of what's on PD disks, it would be useful
if we could share our experience with what we've found there. The
most useful thing I've found is proff, a runoff-type formatting
program. I've used it (though not too heavily) for all my word
processing requirements for about 8 months. (Why pay a lot for
a word processor? Dot commands work just fine, once you get used
to a few idiosyncrasies and limitations here and there.) Apparently
there are also some macro packages for proff on one of the newest
Fish disks -- I'm looking forward to trying them out.
The point is not proff (at least, not for this note). The point
is that I've had some experience with a program that someone else
might like to know about. How about more along this line?
Here's the only Fish listing I happen to have on-line: it's an
announcement for disks 41-46 (none I which I've actually seen yet).
I got this off usenet a few days ago, and have edited out everything
but the actual descriptions of contents. It looks like there's
some high quality stuff in there. . . .
======================================================================
Itemized contents of disks 41-46 follows, in reverse order for
the benefit of those that already have early releases.
======================================================================
CONTENTS OF DISK 46
-------------------
Asm A shareware macro assembler, submitted by the author.
Asm is a 68010 macro assembler that is compatible with
the assembler described in the AmigaDOS manual.
Author: Douglas Leavitt
CheckModem A program which provides for executing other programs
from your startup file, if and only if there is actually
a modem connected to the serial port.
Author: Matt Dillon
Egad A gadget editor from the Programmers Network. Very
nicely done and very useful.
Author: John Draper, Ray Larson, Brent Southard, and
Dave Milligan
Jive A filter program which transforms its standard input
to "jive" on its standard output.
Author: Unknown
My.lib A binary only copy of Matt's alternate runtime library.
Author: Matt Dillon
ProffMacros Subset implementations of the Berkeley "ms" and System V
"mm" macro packages, for the proff program.
Author: Tony Andrews and George Walker
ValSpeak A filter program which transforms its standard input
to "valspeak" on its standard output.
Author: Unknown
CONTENTS OF DISK 45
-------------------
Clue Clue board game. Nice.
Author: Greg Pryor
Make Another version of make that seems to be more complete
than many other PD makes.
Author: Unknown, downloaded from the Software Distillery
Pictures Miscellaneous pictures selected from dozens of pictures
that have come my way since the last full art disk.
Author: Rich Payne, Grace Rohlfs, and others.
Update Used to update an older working disk with files from a
newly released disk. Files on the older disk that are
out of date will be upgraded with files from the new disk.
Author: Unknown, downloaded from Software Distillery
WhereIs Program which searches a disk for the first or multiple
occurances of a file with a given name.
Author: Steve Poling
CONTENTS OF DISK 44
-------------------
Icons Some miscellaneous icons for your viewing pleasure.
Author: Unknown
NewIFF Some new iff material dealing with sampled voice
and music iff files.
Author: Posted to usenet by Carolyn Scheppner
RayTracePics Ray tracing pictures, some of which appeared on disk
number 39, but now in IFF HAM format for MUCH faster
loading and compatibility with existing IFF tools.
Author: Dave Wecker
ViewILBM Reads an ILBM file and displays as a screen/window
until closed. Handles normal and HAM ILBM's.
Author: Based on ShowILBM, enhanced by Carolyn Scheppner
CONTENTS OF DISK 43
-------------------
BasicBoing An AmigaBasic program which shows animation by page
flipping. Precalculates all views of a rotating 3
dimensional cube and then cycles through them rapidly
for animation.
Author: Arthur Blume
Bbm Demo copy of B.E.S.T. Software's Business Management
System. It is a full implementation with file sizes
reduced for demo purposes.
Author: Business Electronics Software & Technology Inc.
BbsList A list of Bulletin Board Systems which support the
Amiga. The list was compiled from a list on Delphi,
Compuserve, bathroom walls, etc.
Author: Dick Sheffold
Cc C compiler frontends for Manx and Lattice C, developed
independently by Jay Ts. These automatically filter off
the annoying banner messages from various passes of
the compilers.
Author: Jay Ts
Copper A copper list disassembler. Dumps the contents of a
hardware copper instruction list.
Author: Scott Evernden
InstIFF A program which converts sampled sound files from the
Instruments dealer demo disks to IFF sampled sound files
in a FORM 8SVX.
Author: Bobby Deen
PopColours Lets you change the Red/Green/Blue components of any
color register, on any screen currently in the system.
Uses a movable window with slider gadgets. Very well
done. Version 1.0, November 1986.
Author: Chris Zamara and Nick Sullivan
SpriteClock A very simple clock that uses a sprite as it's display
medium, thus allowing it to be displayed on top of all
other screens. Includes source in assembly language.
Author: Darrel Schneider
STEmulator Turns your Amiga into an Atari ST (sort of). Be sure
to read the README file for the true story...
Author: David Addison
WBrun A program designed to allow any program to be invoked from
CLI yet behave as if it were invoked from Workbench.
Workbench need not be loaded, thus saving the memory that
Workbench would normally use.
Author: John Toebes
Wild Two versions of Unix shell style wildcard matching routines.
Author: Rich Salz and Fred Fish
CONTENTS OF DISK 42
-------------------
To quote the "Read Me First" file:
This diskette contains the Amiga version of MicroGNUEmacs (MG),
a small but powerful text editor that runs on many other computer
systems besides the Amiga. One of MG's major goals is to be
compatible with its cousin GNU Emacs, so certain features you
may have seen in other versions of MicroEmacs may work differently
here, or not exist. Hopefully, you'll find the added features MG
provides to be worth the trouble it takes to make the switch.
From the "Read Me Second" file:
This is the fourth Beta distribution of MicroGnuEmacs. Beyond the
work of Dave Conroy, author of the original public domain v30, this
contains the efforts of:
[email protected] Mike Meyer
[email protected] Mic Kaczmarczik
[email protected] Bob Larson
[email protected] Dave Brower
A very nice job guys! Congratulations.
This disk is essentially unchanged except that I have added the usual
README.dist and README.list files, along with changing the volume name
to AmigaLibDisk42. The original volume name was "MG 1a".
CONTENTS OF DISK 41
-------------------
AmigaVenture A program which allows you to write your own Infocom-style
adventure programs in AmigaBasic. It is a full-featured
adventure parser, including direct and indirect objects,
multiple object processing, adjectives, automatic
ambiguity resolution, and subordinate clauses. The
parser includes support for one, two, or three-word verbs,
and a full set of object-manipulation primitives.
Author: Mitsuharu Hadeishi
Csh Version 2.03 of Matt's Csh-like shell. Executable only.
Author: Matt Dillon
Dbug Macro based C debugging package. Machine independent.
Provides function trace, selective printing of internal
state information, and more. First released on disk #2.
This version includes some bug fixes and enhancements.
Author: Fred Fish
DualPlayField An example of using a dual-playfield screen, using a
method contrary to documentation in the Intuition
Manual.
Author: Jim Mackraz
GetFile A very nice file name requester. Unlike the earlier
version on disk #35, this version includes source code.
Author: Charlie Heath
LatticeXref A cross reference listing of all symbols defined in the
Lattice 3.10 header files. Sorted alphabetically by
symbol string, includes file name and line number of all
references and/or definitions.
Author: Fred Fish
Lines A line drawing demo program, reminiscent of the "sparks"
program on disk #9.
Author: Paul Jatkowski
SetFont A program to change the font used in a workbench screen.
Includes several sample fonts of various sizes.
Author: Michael McInerny
Vt100 Version 2.3 of the ever popular vt100 terminal program.
Includes xmodem and kermit file transfer protocols.
Author: Dave Wecker
===========================================================================
Fred Fish Motorola Computer Division, 3013 S 52nd St, Tempe, Az 85282 USA
{seismo!noao!mcdsun,hplabs!well}!fnf (602) 438-5976
===========================================================================
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