Run Other

This runs an accessory program, or another AMOS program in

memory. You can run as many AMOS programs as you have room
for in memory.
Overwrite
Hit this to change the text editing mode from Insert to Overwrite.
Insert means that all letters already on the screen will move to
accommodate any you type at the start. In overwrite the letters will
write over those already on the screen.
Fold/Unfold
Procedures can be folded to take up less space and show the true
structure of your program.
Line Insert
This inserts an extra blank line in your program if there's
something you forgot to put in.
System Menu
Now when you press the right mouse button (or Shift key) you are
looking at another menu, called the System Menu. Here is what you
can see on this menu;
Load
This brings up a requester for the loading of programs into memory
ready for running.
Save
This brings up the same requester for saving your freshly written
program from memory onto disk for safe-keeping.
Save As
If you already have the program on disk but want to save it as a
different name, you can do so like this.
Merge
This adds a program on disk into the current listing on screen at
the point you have placed the cursor. This is brilliant for bolting
together separate PROCs or even sections of other programs, to
make a whole functioning program.
Merge ASCII
This is the way you can load ASCII files, usually programs from
other forms of BASIC, for conversion to AMOS. If you've obtained an
AMOS program from a bulletin board, or a listing from a magazine,
Mastering Amiga AMOS
you can load it in this way. This even means you can use another
sort of editor to create your program (if the AMOS editor isn't to
your taste) and then load it into AMOS later as ASCII text!
Ac.New/Load
This clears the space reserved for Accessory programs and loads a
new one from the disk. It does this automatically, taking the first
program it finds with the .acc extension.
Load Others
This enables you to load a specific accessory program from disk,
selecting it from the usual requester.
New Others
This enables you to erase one or all of the acc programs you have
loaded from memory.
New
This blanks the memory of all AMOS code, meaning you can load in
a fresh program. This command also clears any memory banks you
have operating, so be sure you either save them out as .abk files or
save the main AMOS program and these with them.
Quit
This stops AMOS and sends you back to the Workbench.
Blocks Menu
Some of the buttons on the initial menu page will take you to
another set of buttons which do other things. Like the Blocks Menu
where you can mark blocks of code for cutting and pasting:
Block Start
This marks the beginning of the block. (You can also mark blocks
using the right mouse button.)
Block End
This similarly marks the end of the block. (Don't forget the right
mouse button can be used instead! Nah, nobody's memory is that
short)
Block Cut
Once you've marked a block you can cut it out using this command.
Block Paste
Once you've cut a block it sits there in the buffer until you want to
paste the code in the block somewhere else in the program. You
may not want to, but you can if you like.
Basic Principles
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Block Move
This moves the marked block to the location of the cursor. So you'd
mark a block, move the cursor to where you want the code in the
marked block to move to, and then hit Block Move.
Block Store
This is what you'd call Copy in any other program. The block you've
marked is copied into memory and can be pasted in the current
program (or one of the other AMOS programs in memory) using the
Paste Block command.
Block Hide
This clears the block marks, in case you've highlighted the wrong
bit and want to start again.
Block Save
This saves off the marked section of code onto disk, so you can
borrow bits of code from other programs and assemble them all on
disk. Later you can use Merge to bring them all together as one
program.
Save ASCII
This is the way you generate ASCII code from your AMOS programs,
should you want to that is. AMOS code is not readable by anything
else but AMOS, but if you wanted to save off an AMOS program for
printing out or loading into a DTP program (like I have in this book
for example), you would highlight the code you want to save, and
save it as text using this command.
Block Print
This prints the currently selected block out to your printer, if you
have one! There is one keyboard command which you won't find on
a button and that's Select All. This selects the whole program for
saving as ASCII text or for printing, and you do this by holding Ctrl-
A. Obviously if you Select All by pressing Ctrl-A and then print, you
can print out everything rather than just a small section.
Search Menu
Then finally we have the Search Menu, where all the search/replace
commands are:
Find
This searches from the cursor position down your file for a certain
word, which is handy if you write big programs and can't remember
where you've left something.