______ ______ ______ 
|_ _ \|_ _ \ .' ___ |
| |_) | | |_) |/ .' \_|
| __'. | __'.| |
_| |__) || |__) \ `.___.'\
|_______/_______/ `.____ .'
|_ \ / _|(_)
| \/ | __ .---. _ .--. .--.
| |\ /| | [ | / /'`\][ `/'`\] .'`\ \
_| |_\/_| |_ | | | \__. | | | \__. |
|_____||_____[___]'.___.'[___] '.__.'
Useful Software
I regularly use my Beeb for everyday tasks, and have started to
create a set of applications and utilities to use in the modern
day. However even without these the Beeb is quite a versatile
machine, although sometimes you have to change your workflow.
Text Editing
|-W.E. Interword
L-Acornsoft View (built in to System ROM)
Interword can run from ROM or Sideways Rom (if you have it) and
is an advanced WYSIWYG editor. It supports macros and integration
from Intersheet. I have a number of templates set up which I open
from a menuing system (see below) for letters, labels and blog
entries.
Desktop Publishing
L-W.E. Wapping Editor
In the absence of social media in our lives, we send out a Xmas
Newsletter each year. I've tried a few different DTP packages for
the Beeb (AMX Stop Press, Fleet Street Editor, AVP Pixel Perfect,
and PD Publisher). I always come back to Wapping Editor, it uses
the mouse, runs from ROM and can save to a variety of file
systems (including econet). This is however one of those work
differently moments, all the "articles" need to be typed up first
in a text editor (like Interword or View), likewise any images or
clipart should also be gathered together first. Wapping editor is
really about arranging content on the page (rather than creating
said content).
Comms
|-ATerm
|-Xterm
|-Commstar II
|-My Web Utilties
L-Econet TCP/IP Rom
There's not a one size fits all approach to comms on the Beeb (at
least not yet). The above tools all have a specific strength that
makes them most suitable in a given situation. ATerm is a
wonderful 4 colour 80 column ANSI terminal (although as it is
really using a 40 column mode with custom characters the text can
be a little jarring after a while), it does have a Mono option that
uses a true 80 column mode however some ANSI control codes are not
interpreted correctly. XTerm does interpret most ANSI codes
correctly, however XYZ modem transfers do not work. Commstar II is
great for Viewdata and VT100 emulation and works with X-Modem CRC
transfers with a good menuing system.
What I found frustrating with all the above is the lack of
parameter support e.g. *term -d beebs.ddns.net so armed with no
6502 knowledge I created a small program that can establish a
telnet connection using *dial {address} for connecting to BBS,
once a connection is established it passes to the built in
Terminal rom.
I currently connect via a raspberry pi connected to the RS-432
port running TcpSer emulating a Hayes modem. With the use of the
Econet TCP/IP rom telnet connections can be made via the econet
port over a regular TCP/IP network, the only drawback of this
method is the telnet connection requires the IP address of the
host rather than a web address.
In an expansion to my *dial program I have added a basic web
browser which will scrape the text of a html document to a file
and then display it in Mode 7. It will interpret some formatting
tags, hyperlinks and image descriptions. This works in
conjunction with TcpSer so the user can enter web addresses rather
than IP.
Programming
|-Acornsoft Edit (built in to System ROM)
L-Acornsoft Basic Editor
For a long time I was an advocate of the Acornsoft Basic Editor,
however whilst it is a powerful editor with a number of features
I have realised that I rarely use 99% of them. I like to keep my
4 banks of sideways ram empty due to the way I have programmed a
menu system to automate the loading in of rom images (some of
which needing 3 banks...looking at you AMX Art!), so my physical
rom spaces are limited. I decided to fore-go the advanced features
of the Basic Editor rom and now use the built in Acornsoft Edit
text editor, using Shift F4 exports the text file as a program
listing for execution and loading a program and then entering
*edit opens it in the editor.
Spreadsheet
|-W.E. Intersheet
L-Acornsoft Viewsheet
As a self employed gardener so use Viewsheet as my accounting
package. It works well with View (the word processor) however I
would argue that this is not as intuitive as Interword. Once I
have trained myself up on Intersheet I may move over to it so that
I can use it with Interword. Like Interword, Intersheet it more
graphically appealing than Viewsheet.
Drawing
L-AMX Superart
I rarely do any graphics work on the Beeb, however if I do need to
create an image, or some clipart for the Xmas Newsletter I will
use AMX Superart. It contains a font, texture and pattern editor.
You can even save sets of patterns as pallets which can then be
used to create PCBs or Diagrams.
Teletext Editing
L-ABX Teletext Suite (JGH mdfs.net)
File Management
|-Commandline
|-Advanced Disk Tools
|-Desktop v2 (Beebug)
|-Admenu (mybbcmaster.nl)
|-Systems Server
L-My Menuing Utils
CAD/CAM
|-Pineapple PCB Design
L-Technomatic Novacad" drive