Msg: 2310 *Conference*

04-08-92 21:45:51

From: LEX JENKINS

To : RICK LOPES

Subj: WARM

RL,
 
'Scuse me for not responding sooner; been busy.
 
CR&CR (or CR/CR, as I've renamed it on my laptop for a very good reason which
escapes me at the moment) strips and inserts carriage returns.  Very useful for
formatting text files for bbs uploads and downloads.
 
DO2BA converts BASIC programs from .DO to .BA format.  Sure, you can already do
that with your stock Model 100/102.  But DO2BA does it much faster and it
actually replaces the .DO file, rather than leaving the .DO file in RAM.  So
what?  OK, try this: convert a 12K or larger BASIC file from .DO to .BA using
the standard method.  You probably can't.  Now try it with DO2BA.  No problem.
Seeing is believing.  The programmer, James Yi, must be a genius.  He also
wrote PACK.BA/.CO, a phenomenal file compression program, not to be confused
with...
 
...PACKER, which compresses BASIC programs in .BA format.  Supposedly,
compressed BASIC programs run faster.  I haven't noticed any improvement in
speed, but it sure makes the files smaller and saves RAM.  By the way, you
probably won't be able to convert PACKER from .DO to .BA format without DO2BA -
it's a big program, which is why I use WARM.BA to load the small, quick .CO
file created by running PACKER.BA.
 
Regarding your question about whether you must keep the .BA program that
creates the .CO file (which actually does the job): Often you don't need the
.BA file.  Once it has created the .CO file, all it serves to do after that is
place the .CO file into HIMEM so you can run it.  You can do the same thing
quicker with WARM.BA, a small file, on MOST, but not ALL, programs.  You just
have to experiment to find out.  So far the only .CO program I use that I
haven't been able to run via WARM.BA is Rick Perry's SORT.CO (I specify his
name, because there is at least one other sorter called SORT.CO).
 
As far as the .DO file you downloaded from the bbs is concerned, you don't need
it, but you might want to keep it for archiving, especially if you use a
cassette recorder instead of a disk drive.  Cassette saves and loads seem to be
less persnickety with .DO files.  And if your disk drive ever fails, or, gasp!,
you delete your DOS, you can always fall back on the cassette.
 
<Lex>