Subject: MINI-REVIEW: Amos Professional
From: [email-masked] (Paul Dale)
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1992 17:52:54 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews

PRODUCT NAME

	Amos Professional

BRIEF DESCRIPTION

	Amos Professional is a program development environment.  It is an
	updated version of Amos.  This is a "mini-review."

AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION

	Name:		Europress Software Ltd.
	Address:	Europa House, Adlington Park, Macclesfield,
			Cheshire.  SK10 4NP

	Main programmer:	Francois Lionet
	Manual author:		Mel Croucher
	Technical author:	Stephen Hill
	Demo programmer:	Ronnie Simpson
	Project manager:	Richard Vanner

LIST PRICE

	69 pounds sterling, ($111 US).
	An upgrade is available for registered users for 30 pounds.

SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

	The program should run on the A500, A500+, A2000, and A3000, but
check for non-standard configurations.

MACHINE USED FOR TESTING

	The review system was an A500+ (2MB CHIP RAM), A590 hard drive with
2MB FAST RAM, external floppy, Phillips 8833 monitor, and WB 2.04.

INTRODUCTION

	For your money you get 6 disks, a hefty, soft-covered, spine-bound
(NOT ring-bound) manual, a manual for the four games (includes a Golden
Rules of Programming section which will amuse professional programmers,
mainly for its omissions) and a registration card.

	The obvious intent is to provide the user with a complete development
environment for software on the Amiga.  There are substantial language
extensions and improvements, the principal ones being:  support for MED and
Tracker modules, an Amos Interface (the Amos equivalent of Intuition), ARexx,
serial port support, access to system libraries and devices, and machine code
support.

	A lot of this is to provide more complete access to the full
functionality of the machine, and for many programmers is chrome.  Of the
extensions, the Amos Interface is possibly the most useful. 

SYSTEM UTILITIES

	The area which makes Amos Professional a "must buy" is in the
development utilities. The editor has been transformed and includes full
online help (place cursor at start of function name, press Help button, and
up comes a screen). 

THE EDITOR

	The look has been transformed to be slick and pleasing to the eye.
The edit functions have been improved with a comprehensive set of pulldown
menus to access improved block functions, to name but one feature.  There is
split window support, intelligent program buffering, and a much improved file
selector.

	Another addition to the editor is a monitor to step through programs
at various speeds with a pseudoscreen showing what will happen.  This can't
be used with Amal, but then there is a separate Amal editor and monitor
accessory.

	The single greatest improvement is the configurability. You can
configure the editor to behave almost exactly like your favourite editor.
This includes not only being able to redefine keystroke combinations, but
also being able to create yor own menus.

OBJECT EDITOR

	Again this has been transformed to look and behave, well, more
professionally :-) Amos users will have no problems as the basic
functionality is much the same.  The single item worth attention is the
animation previewer which allows 16 (PAL) / 8 (NTSC) frames for previewing
object animation.  It works simply by placing images into a "film" which can
then be played from 1-100 frames per second.  A hot spot is placed in the
viewing window to place objects but is constant for each object. 

OTHER ACCESSORIES

	As this is a mini review I don't have time to give these other
accesories any real justice. In addition to the editor and object editor
there is a menu builder, Amal editor and monitor, resource manager, and
sample bank maker. I've only had time to look at the menu builder which is
fairly good (not up to the Editor or Object Editor standard, but very
useful).

PRODUCTIVITY, TUTORIAL, EXAMPLES

	There are two Productivity disks, a Tutorial disk, and an Examples
disk.  These contain four well-commented games and a host of other Amos
programs.  It's a fairly safe bet that you'll be able to find just about most
things in there.  The Amal tutorial is quite funny; check out the silly game.

PROBLEMS

	The "return to Workbench" feature behaves erratically in that
sometimes you end up with just a white screen.  This seems to be because a
CLOSE WORKBENCH instruction may have been called in an example program you
have run (or maybe an accessory; I haven't checked them all).  The idea is to
save about 40k.  I have 2MB CHIP RAM, so why worry?  A better way to program
this would be to check memory and close the Workbench screen based on a
threshold.

	I've had no crashes, no gurus.

CONCLUSIONS

	This mini-review can only scratch the surface of this product.
There is a lot of stuff I haven't even mentioned.  For current Amos users it
is a great step forward.  For people who want to do more than play games,
it's a great way to explore the capabilities of the Amiga without having to
read the RKMs.

	As a programmer who is more comfortable with C than BASIC, I have to
admit Amos Professional is a good product. The updated compiler will appear
very soon. Having been down the RKM path and enjoyed the experience, I
believe Amos is a much smoother introduction to a machine which is
complicated.  The return on effort is more immediate.  Amos Professional is
worth checking out for anyone who just wants to enjoy the machine.

---

   Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews
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