Suggestive Remarks!

Mike Kerslake is a happy stamper...

One of the my office tasks is to despatch all the overseas copies of 
Atari Computing. Fot the UK copies we take advange of the Royal Mail 
franking service but each direct mailed overseas copy requires stamps.
To help me figure out the combination of stamps needed for the various 
destinations I started to compile a table but it all got too much for 
me and I made a Suggestive Remark to Mark Baines in response to his 
request for new program ideas. As a result there's now an excellent 
Control Panel eXtension (CPX) called Stamp Values ** Italics on ** [Ed: 
See review in PD/Shareware pages and it's also on the Reader Disk] ** 
Italics off ** which does all the thinking - leaving me to concentrate 
on licking the stamps!

With my intended Suggestive Remark already taken care off (I'm 
delighted Atari programmers are open to suggestions and respond so 
quickly) I've come up with a couple of alternatives for you to kick 
around.

To recap, the idea of this column is to make suggestions which 
programmers can use as a starting point to develop from. The software 
must have a GEM interface, be compatible with both singletasking and 
multitasking OS's and must be both resolution and colour depth 
independent - from ST high upwards.

A-Z sorter
I often have to make up lists of names or items and, as I don't have a 
particulary tidy mind, I tend to add to these lists ad-hoc. Eventually 
I need to get them into some sort of alphanumercial order and I 
currently use a TTP program which works, but you have to type in a file 
name and it's just a bit crude. A nice GEM utility capable of 
manipulating ASCII files would be a useful addition to global arsenal.

Port Activity Monitor (PAM)
Most Atari users connect a printer, modem and other peripherals to the 
ports on the back of our machines but often, due to lack of space or 
convienence they are positioned so their activity lights are not 
visible.
I've lost count of the times I've forgotten I am online or printing 
stuff (the downside of multitasking!). What I need is a little window 
or something placed in the menu bar to monitors the status of all my 
ports. Similar modem utilities exist for the PC platform - a tiny modem 
icon flickers during send/receive. Something similar for our favourite 
machines would do be great - except I'd like all my ports to be 
monitored!

That's my Suggestive Remarks out of the way but I would really like to 
hear your ideas as well. Please send any Suggestive Remarks, preferably 
in ASCII format on a floppy, to the usual editorial address!