BOOKS

Each new development in the computer world arrives with, and is often preceded by, an avalanche of hard copy. There are, for instance, more books devoted to the QL than there are QL users to read them. John Gilbert, occassionally guilty of contributing to this abundance of print, digs deep into the 1984 book mountain and discovers some literary gems.

The year 1984 shaped the computer book market and gave some of the younger companies, such as Melbourne House and Interface, a maturity which is seldom seen outside the world of french publishing. That was due to a maturing of the market. Prices went down, the quality was higher than ever before and writers gave away more secrets about computers than ever before.

The year 1984 shaped the computer book market and gave some of the younger companies, such as Melbourne House and Interface, a maturity which is seldom seen outside the world of french publishing. That was due to a maturing of the market. Prices went down, the quality was higher than ever before and writers gave away more secrets about computers than ever before.

MACHINE CODE

At the start of the year few would have dreamed of books on machine code which would detail the whole inside story of the Spectrum and not just waffle about what the instructions do and little else.

Interface was first with a highly-acclaimed series of books on machine code, one of which is Mastering Machine Code on Your ZX Spectrum by Toni Baker. Former owners of ZX-81s may notice that the book is an update on the ZX-81 machine code book. The contents are similar to the earlier version, although the Spectrum book is longer because of the introduction of extended chapters on printing characters on the screen and an update on advanced features on the Spectrum. There the differences end.

The examples in the text, which usually consist of whole chapters, are the same as in the ZX-81 version. They include a graffiti program which displays the Spectrum character set and three chapters which show how a game of draughts is put together.

One useful part is a long chapter which provides a dictionary of all the instructions you can give to the Z-80 processor. It turns the book into a useful reference guide, which should be of use to all beginners. It will, however, be of little use to advanced programmers - unless they want to brush-up on their terms.

The book also contains some useful appendices which give tables of conversions between hexadecimal and decimal and also a list of symptoms variables which can be used either in machine code or in Basic programs.

Two other books from Interface form a series. Spectrum Machine Code Made Easy, Volume One is for the beginner. It is easy to follow and starts, as with most other machine code books, with an introduction to binary and hexadecimal number systems.

The layout of the beginners' book seems to have been thought through carefully, as each chapter deals with one of the major aspects of machine code and, unlike some other books on the market, does not disconcert the reader by moving into another realm halfway through a chapter.

Most of the aspects of machine code covered in Baker's book are included but this is better as it is easier to read and the layout of text and illustrative examples is better.

The companion volume is Spectrum Machine Code Made Easy, Volume Two. It is for the advanced programmer and takes it for granted that you have some knowledge of machine code. Because of the complexity of jumps, both relative and absolute, in programs and the specialised logical operations, there are separate chapters on those subjects.

That is as far as the book goes along conventional lines, however, as the author, Paul Holmes, explains the use of ports and interrupt modes. They are two subjects which are rarely mentioned in books of this kind.

The ports are dealt with in Basic and machine code and some interesting effects are obtained with sound and colour on the Spectrum.

No previous pure machine code book has dealt with interrupts in the Z-80 system. This one explains the subject easily and competently. The chapter on interrupts justifies what is anyway a good book.

Not to be outdone, and rushing in where angels fear to tread, Usbourne Books decided to produce a book on machine code which was aimed not only at the complete beginner but one who is also within the early teenage range. It is Machine Code for Beginners. It is the easiest book on the subject on the market. Using it, a child at junior school could learn the basic techniques of both Z-80 and 6502 programming. The way the subject is tackled is nothing short of brilliant. That both major types of microchip are covered is an extra bonus.

The cartoon characters, such as robots and bugs, which are included, teach machine code in a subtle manner. It is possible to read the book as a comic strip, taking little account of the main text and still derive a knowledge of assembly and machine language.

NEW TECHNOLOGY

The same company did a remarkable job of introducing children to the concepts of information technology and the world of robots. The Information Revolution contains information about all kinds of devices, including computers, which can be used to communicate, from one part of this planet to another, and even into outer space. It looks into the future and examines the introduction of cable communication devices within cities, so that you could see people as well as talk to them on the telephone and do your shopping at home using a computer. Much of what is discussed in this colourful book may seem like science fiction but most of it is available now.

ROBOTICS

A second book from Usbourne is Practical Things To Do With A Microcomputer. It investigates robots, shows how computers create cryptograms or codes, and illustrates how to write programs using almost any computer you might possess.

It will introduce computer technology to a child and, if the child already knows about computers, it should expand horizons even more. Some of the examples may be a little difficult to understand but, with help from parents, children should cope.

LANGUAGES

New computer languages became available on the Spectrum in 1984. Sinclair Research brought out Forth, Micro Prolog and LSCI Logo. The book publishing industry stepped into give the user a wider base of ideas from which to launch into the brave new worlds of those languages.

Melbourne House was one of the first Sinclair orientated companies to bring out a book about Forth. The company had its own reasons for publishing it, however. Advanced Spectrum Forth was launched to help people who bought the company's Abersoft Forth package and did not know what to do with it.

The book, by Don Thomasson, shows the advanced aspects of the language but it is not only for the complete expert, as the title suggests. It offers explanations of the machine stacks and Forth words which the manual does not begin to cover.

The first half is a re-run of the manual but is written in terms which mere mortals can understand. It also shows the difference between Spectrum Forth and the FIG standard. Those additions to the language are mostly for graphics and sound which, the author says, can be manipulated a great deal more easily in Forth than in Basic.

The second half of the book provides the real interest for people at advanced level. It shows how to structure programs using the screen editor and explains the difficult problem of SAVEing screens to tape.

The book also includes the use of assembly language and how to incorporate it in the structure of Forth programs.

Information about the Logo language was published by Granada in mid-year in a book called Introducing Logo by Boris Allen. Apart from Mind Storms, written by the creator of Logo Seymour Papert, it is one of the best books on the subject available. The first part of the book provides a clear, concise, introduction to Logo theory together with examples of Logo programming in practice.

The book is ideal for use by teachers who are about to teach Logo or, who want some ideas as to how to develop the language. One of the best aspects of it is that Allen does not stop at the simple commands. He goes on to expand the subject and show how Logo can be put to good use by anyone who wants to learn how to program or how to use mathematics in an adventurous way.

FICTION

Fiction has also found its way into the microcomputer publishing market. Fontana Armada released the first in a series of highly original who-dunnit books. Input an Investigation, by Lois and Floyd McCoy, provides a series of classic mysteries featuring those American computer whizz-kids, the Bytes Brothers.

Those brain boxes work their way through five mysteries and always get the correct solution using their home computer called Nibble.

As with any good detective story all the clues for the solution have been incorporated in the plot. The computer programs used to solve the crimes are also included, along with a full explanation on their structure and creation.

The book is for children but adults will be equally enthralled. It provides excellent entertainment and value for money.

GENERAL INTEREST

The market for general computer use was just as alive as that of specific usage. One of the best on the market, though it was not perfect, was produced by Penguin. It was one of the few computer book successes which they had in 1984.

The Penguin Computing Book, by Susan Curran and Ray Curnow contains a step-by-step guide to computers and electronics. The criticism is that there is nothing new in the format, although the authors have tried to provide a simple and concise explanation of almost everything relating to digital electronics, analogue electronics and computers.

Reading the book it appears that the authors have tried to cram too much information into a small space. Any difficulty in following arguments will not be because of any complexity in the text but because so much information is covered in a few pages.

The structure of the book suggests that it should be read from cover to cover, like War and Peace, but it serves better as a handbook to be dipped into when necessary. The index is just adequate for such a purpose. The glossary and bibliography are also useful.

QL

The QL, of course, received its fair share of advance publicity from publishers who Stumbled onto the market with books as soon as they could.

The first of those titles was the QL Companion by Boris Allen with which some reviewers had a field day. Much of its content was irrelevant and many of its SuperBASIC programs did not work. Indeed some bore no relation to SuperBASIC at all.

Thankfully we are seeing books of a better standard from companies such as Sunshine and Longman which should fill the thirst for knowledge which most QL users have. It will be a long time before the tide onL books stops but, as with any new microcomputer, every piece of information about it is bound to be well received.

HUMOUR

Not all the new books on the market took such a serious look at computers. Two from the States took the opposite viewpoint.

Micromania, by Charles Platt and David Langford, takes computing to pieces and finds the comedy under the skins of big business and the individual computer user. It does so by using a hatchet of slapstick humour with an ungainly mixture of cliches and buzzwords.

The book provides a compendium of insights into the personalities of those who use computers. The authors may be interested in the machines but they are ready to make fun of the behaviour of their fellow maniacs.

They divide users into four classes - the hardware freak, the video game nut, the end-user and the hacker. The descriptions of those people are as cruel as the names used to label them. A video games junkie is, for example, described as 'between 10 and 16 years of age, mentally if not physically'.

The structure of the book is inventive, to say the least. Each chapter is labelled with a binary number, beginning with 0000 and rising to 1101. The text is split into modules reminiscent of the way in which programs should be structured. It also shows that the authors are part of the computer world of which they are making fun.

Chapter 1101 deals with the future of micro-computing, a subject which would have been a glaring omission from a book dealing with the whole computer scene. The authors may ridicule the denizens of the computer industry but they agree that our future is in their hands:

"We can laugh all we like at micro-maniacs, but they will have the last laugh - because they are designing the future that the rest of us will have to live in."

The Naked Computer, by Jack Rochester and John Gantz starts by looking at the computer invasion and the most successful and unsuccessful computer ventures.

The most ubiquitous computer? The Commodore Vic-20, one million strong at the end of 1982. The least ubiquitous? The CDC G-20, of which there is one left.

The final chapter, The Outer Limits, is like Micromania in that it tries to explain what could happen in the next few decades so far as technology is concerned. The book looks at new IBM projects, research into chip use done at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the way in which robots are being used by the US Army.

Like all the other chapters, The Outer Limits is a collection of anecdotes, although some of the authors' thoughts are included. The book leaves the reader with the feeling that the authors were afraid to approach the subject in anything but the impersonal third person.

Mastering Machine Code On Your ZX Spectrum, Spectrum Machine Code Made Easy Volumes One and Two. All titles £5.95. Interface Publications.

Machine Code for Beginners, The Information Revolution, Practical Things To Do With A Microcomputer. All titles £1.99. Usbourne Books.

Advanced Spectrum Forth, £8.95, Melbourne House.

Introducing Logo, Granada.

Input an Investigation, £1.25, Fontana Armada.

The Penguin Computing Book, £5.95, Penguin Books.

The QL Companion, £6.95, Pitman.

Micromania, £7.95, Victor Gollancz Publications.

The Naked Computer, £9.95, Arlington Books.

AS THE MARKET BECOMES MORE SOPHISTICATED, AUTHORS HAVE HAD TO CATER FOR THE NEEDS OF NEW GROUPS OF USERS. IF HACKING IS YOUR PASTIME OR MACHINE CODE IS YOUR STAPLE DIET THEN THERE ARE BOOKS FOR YOU. ON THE OTHER HAND, IF YOU PREFER A GENTLE INTRODUCTION TO BASIC OR SUPERBASIC YOU WILL FIND THAT WHOLE SHELVES HAVE BEEN DEDICATED TO YOUR NEEDS. JOHN GILBERT SORTS THROUGH THE MOUNTAIN OF COMPUTER LITERATURE WHICH HAS KEPT USERS HAPPY DURING THE PAST YEAR.

Although few authors have produced computer books which have reached the best seller lists, technical anthors must be amongst the most prolific writers in the world. A literary mountain was produced in 1985 alone, in order to further the knowledge of Sinclair computer owners and the popularity of Sinclair machines.

One author who almost reached the non-fiction best seller lists was Hugo Cornwall with The Hacker's Handbook, a slim but explosive book from Century Hutchinson. Hugo Cornwall still remains an enigma, even his name is a pseudonym.

The Hacker's Handbook is a skillful mixture of personal experience, stories from secondary sources and practical information. Indeed, the way in which the book has been written leads me to suspect that Cornwall is a journalist as well as a hacker, or that the book was ghost written by someone from Century Hutchinson.

The practical information in Cornwall's book nearly landed him - her? - in trouble. It begins harmlessly enough with an introduction to innovations in communications technology. Once past that, and some innocuous remarks about his programming experience, Cornwall starts getting technical - and goes way beyond the definition of baud rate.

Although Cornwall gives information on communication protocols and how to go about finding passwords for various types of system, he is careful to point out that hacking is done more as a sport than as a criminal action. If it were more than that, banks would be defrauded daily, and our security installations would be broken into every evening.

The same point is made in a book written by Geoff Wheelwright and Ian Scales, published by Longman. It too is called The Hacker's Handbook, although it takes a slightly different angle on the subject.

The authors have been careful to steer away from controversy. They deal specifically With the Spectrum and how it can be connected to systems such as Micronet 800 and Prestel. An overview is given of both systems together with information on how to connect your computer to a VTX 5000 modem.

The final section of the book takes a look at electronic mail and bulletin boards. Telephone numbers are given to allow access to boards which are open to the public. Although Wheelwright and Scales are not as revealing as Cornwall about the secret world of the hacker, their introduction to the subject is practical and interesting.

Another subject of major interest to the computing public, especially QL owners, has been the secrets contained within the QDOS operating system which has been so highly vaunted by several books. There are no fewer than three titles on the market which jostle for acclaim as the best book about QDOS. They are The Advanced QL User's Guide by Adrian Dickens, from Adder; The QDOS Companion by Andrew Pennel, from Sunshine; and The QL Technical Guide by Tony Tebby and David Karlin, from Sinclair Research.

The books from Dickens and Pennel are very similar in structure. The first to appear was the one from Adder. Dickens managed to obtain the QDOS documentation from Sinclair Research and put together a book using it. The result is, none the less, impressive and, despite the mistakes, provided an introduction to the 68008 chip and operating system. Each QDOS trap was listed and examples of its uses were given.

As well as discussing memory management, graphics, sound and file processing, Dickens also included a chapter in which he showed how SuperBasic worked. Detailed appendices showing the memory map, full 68000 instruction set and microdrive formats were also provided.

Pennel's book differs only slightly from the advanced guide. It arrived on the market four months after Dickens' book and the result was a text full of examples which had obviously been created by the author.

The companion is structured as a graded introduction to multi-tasking, Input/Output, device drives and the QDOS utilities. Information is also included on the 8049 second processor, which acts as a control for the keyboard and sound, as well as an explanation of how to create external ROMS.

The third book, from Sinclair Research, resembles the QL Advanced User Guide but was rather a disappointment. It provides all the information that you would require to program QDOS but its style is clinical, with almost no examples to illustrate the wealth of knowledge given by the authors. It is a humourless read and, even as a reference book, lacks depth. The one or two paragraphs used to describe each trap, exception or interrupt are barely enough. Tebby and Karlin could at least have included a section detailing an example of QDOS in action. As it stands, the authors expect readers to share their competence - not a healthy assumption for any technical writer to make.

The Psion business packages, bundled with the QL, did not escape the attentions of authors last year. Three companies brought out books which cater for the business or home user who wants to put Quill, Archive, Abacus or Easel to work.

Hutchinson was the first onto the scene with a series of QL handbooks. The series contained one title aimed at Quill owners and one aimed at Archive owners.

Word Processing with the Sinclair QL, by Mike O'Reilly, is competently written, although it is long-winded and says little. It shows how to power up the QL, how to load in Quill and how each of the commands work. It even goes as far as to show how a letter can be written and reports drafted. Unfortunately it does not go much further.

Database Management on the Sinclair QL, also by Mike O'Reilly and also from Hutchinson, is much the same as the introduction to Quill. It does little better than the official Sinclair manual, a damning fault, as that manual leaves a lot to be desired.

The Hutchinson books are not the best on the Psion packages, and it is left to the series of Psion books from Century Communications to fit neatly into that niche. There are four books; one for each of the packages. The book on Quill, written by Clare Spottiswood, marked the series as a winner. Even Sir Clive Sinclair stuck his oar in and said that it was one of the most fab things he had ever seen. The simple style, combined with diagrams, cartoons and many useful examples, makes the book a joy to read.

Other titles in the series are similar in style but have different authors. QL Archive, by Ian Murray, provides the easiest and most interesting explanation of the database package ever committed to print. It is a delight to read, and the examples provided can be practically useful. Although it arrived late on the scene it should be very successful.

Sunshine also provided a book on the Psion packages, although it combined all four and was different in approach from the titles from Hutchinson and Century. Quill, Easel, Archive and Abacus on the Sinclair QL, by Alison McCallum-Varey, may be a bit of a mouthful, but it achieves its aim easily and concisely. The book Shows how the four packages can be used together in a business environment. It also shows how to import and export information from them and which of the programs are compatible for each operation.

It was the first book to include comprehensive examples which were worth entering into the Psion packages and which stretched them to their limits. It also showed that the author had an understanding of the QL, while her colleagues in the computer publishing industry showed only their ignorance of the subject.

To be fair, Sinclair Research was to blame for much of the ignorance which authors exhibited after the launch of the QL. Boris Allan is the classic example of a writer so keen to get a book out about the new machine that he forgot the cardinal rule. Wait until a finished product arrives. His book, The QL Companion from Pitman can still be found on the bookshelves of WH Smith and Boots.

Anybody who buys it in the hope of learning something new about SuperBasic will be disappointed. It was written with the aid of a pre-production manual. That would have been alright if Sinclair had not decided to change SuperBasic. The language has gone through three transformations so far.

He is not alone, however. Other authors and publishers have made the same mistake. One such disaster was the QL User Guide, written by Lionel Fleetwood and published by Sigma Press. The author's object was to produce a book about SuperBasic and the Psion bundled packages. He also took his information from the manual and most of his examples were approximately half a page long - or one page when he was at his most impressive.

The best was yet to come. Fleetwood had obviously intended to write a section on the 68008 chip and QDOS but never quite got around to it. His publisher obviously expected it, as early copies of the book had a slip of paper stuck over part of the back cover. It hid the publisher's blurb about the 68008 section which was to have appeared in the book.

Hutchinson also tried its best to go to the rescue of knowledge-parched SuperBasic users. The company managed to produce a series of five books in what seems to be a record time of two months.

The first in the series was Introducing the Sinclair QL by Garry Marshall. It gave simple explanations on how to plug in and switch on the machine, followed by a resume of SuperBasic and an equally short section on the four Psion packages.

The other five books - mentioned at the end of this article - ran along similar lines. The authors wrote about the same subjects, but in a different style.

Fortunately, Hutchinson boosted its reputation for QL books by launching another five books, six months after the first part of its series. They dealt with graphics, machine code, business uses and database management.

Machine Code Programming on the Sinclair QL, by Martin Gandoff was the best of the five titles. It provided one of the most readable introductions to the art of 16-bit 68000 programming. Unlike many of the other books which tried to cover the subject, such as QL Machine Code from Melbourne House, it dealt specifically with QL hardware and software. The most important chapter of Gandoff's book was the section on exception processing. It showed how to invoke QDOS routines and was followed by an explanation of multi~ tasking which even a newcomer to machine code programming could grasp. It is one of the most outstanding books of 1985.

Using Graphics on the Sinclair QL, by prolific and blunt-styled Garry Marshall, provided another exceptional contribution to the QL book scene. The text deals only with SuperBasic graphics commands but it does explain the different types of screen co-ordinates, windows and scaling windows. The examples provided are still worth running and provide some of the simplest but most effective graphics displays you can obtain on the QL.

The other three titles tied the series of ten books together. Profiting from the Sinclair QL, by Barry Miles, showed how to use Abacus and Database Management on the Sinclair QL - Mike O'Reilly performed the same service for Archive. Neither of those two titles expanded much on the manual but they did manage to score points on style. The Psion manuals for both packages were sketchy and uninspired.

Finally, Making the Most of the Sinclair QL, by Dick Meadows, was a repeat of introducing the Sinclair QL with a few more examples.

Unfortunately, the enthusiasm which publishers had for the QL did not pay off. Only 50,000 QLs were sold worldwide during the year of its launch. As a result, the QL publishing market is not a happy place at the moment.

One area which is looking healthy is that of artificial intelligence. The most notable contribution for the Spectrum came from Keith and Steven Brain - no puns please.

They showed techniques by which the computer could learn simple games, understand English sentence input and construct intelligent replies. Most of the information described algorithm methods and not heuristics. That means the programs which they developed in the book use a method which the computer steps through every time. An heuristic is a method by which the computer learns from its mistakes by trial and error, and a little more about such techniques would have been appreciated.

One book which did deal with heuristics was The Creative Computer by Donald Michie and Rory Johnston. It is a general computer book which publisher Penguin/Viking pointed out was unlike anything which had ever been printed. That pronouncement sent reviewers into a flurry trying to obtain a copy.

The premise of the book is that it is possible for computers to take in data and, from that information, produce new data. The authors show examples of intelligent systems, most of which accept knowledge from professionals such as doctors or architects. Those computers can then use that information to diagnose a disease or even find an oil field.

It becomes obvious that all Michie and Johnston are talking about are relational databases, commonly called expert systems.

Nobody wrote a book on true artificial intelligence last year, even though some authors tried to disguise their books as such. True AI is bound up with all sorts of philosophical questions, and consciousness must also be linked with the subject.

Trends within the computer book publishing industry are similar to those within the field of artificial intelligence. Few people have said anything worth listening to. The trend in formula books started in 1984 and continued into 1985. It is still with us and, as a result, computer authors have turned out copies of each other's books, texts which say the same thing in a different way.

Unfortunately, for both publishers and authors the public has caught on. It is no longer willing to put up with a standard of publication which is no better, and sometimes worse, than the pulp fiction of the 1920s.

If both the computer industry and book publishing industry are going to survive then authors had better start coming up with new ideas. There are many fields which have not been covered this year. They include the use of computers as control devices, how to go about connecting your machine to the outside world using telephone or radio links, or even the new graphics science of Fractals. None of those subjects was covered last year, but each expands the use of the Spectrum and QL and the interests of their owners. It is about time publishers thought less about making money on formula books, and more about continuing the interest of those who use computers.