Ask The Readers

Robert Lock, Richard Mansfield And Readers

This is your column—readers ask the questions and other readers answer. Please address any questions or answers to: Ask the Readers, COMPUTE!, P.O. Box 5406, Greensboro, NC 27403.

"I have a suggestion for contributors with programs:

When listing programs it would be exceedingly helpful if lines were numbered in regular increments. Since most of us have Tool Kits it would save considerable time if we who enter our own programs would not have to check that a number 182 or 287 didn't suddenly sneak in after a regular sequence of 10, 20, 30, 40 etc.

[Not using] regularly incremented line numbers negates the value of the Tool Kit's AUTO feature. As an example, recently I was so intent on making sure the entries were correctly typed in that I overlooked checking the numbers. When I was on line 620 the program listing was about 560.

How frustrating!!!" Edmund N. Ricchezza

We couldn't agree more. COMPUTE! has recently published "dynamic keyboard" methods for Atari and Microsoft BASICs (which can be used to generate automatic line numbering during program entry) and a number of software products also provide for it. When generating listings here we are often tempted to renumber programs which arrive with irregular line numbering, but frequently this is impossible because the author has referred to various program lines in his article. Please save everyone time, though, and renumber your programs as Mr. Ricchezza suggests before sending them in to COMPUTE!.