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Mike Kerslake's back with more ideas for programmers everywhere...
 
It's all very well me sitting here making suggestions but the idea of the column was to encourage programmers to actually take some of the ideas on and develop them. I'm pleased to report programmers are taking up the challenge and so far the following useful utilities have emerged.

Firstly, you may remember in AC#6 I made an appeal for a simple A-to-Z sorter and Matthias Jaap, the Home Page Penguin author, has produced A-to-Z - you'll find a review in the PD/Shareware pages and it's included on the Reader disk as well.

Secondly, STripper v1.0b by Neil Wakeling is a HTML to Timeworks and ASCII converter. Currently we've received a test version for feedback, but it looks promising.
Neil would like to add options to convert to RTF and Thats Write and just possibly, by a slightly convoluted route, support for Papyrus could be implemented. I have been able to convert HTML to ASCII although I did experience a few problems under MagiC (Neil doesn't own MagiC) but I'm sure these can be overcome pretty easily. Neil is looking for feedback at this stage so if you'd like to do some beta testing why not get in touch with him via the usual Atari Computing contact points or directly if you'd prefer:

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Email: neil@tuva.demon.co.uk
http://www.tuva.demon.co.uk
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I'm always pleased to hear from readers with their ideas, and this issue is no exception! Mahn Davis has suggested the following:

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* A CPX like PHplayer (sample player)
* A decent CPX calculator (with percentage, square root, and memory options)
* A CPX dictionary/thesaurus
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These three ideas certainly sound possible.

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* A utility to convert between various 3D file formats including 3dS, DXF, POV, 3D2 and OBJ (Cyber)
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I'd also like a program to convert between CVG to GEM. At the moment only a handful of graphic programs include suitable options and these are expensive OTT solutions for many people. Something to convert the popular Corel Draw CDR format files to an Atari friendly format would also be invaluable.

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* A utility which allows all loose files on the root directory of C: to be kept in, and read from, either a folder called ROOT, or in several folders called INF, SYS, RSC, CONF, and OTHER, with a user configurable path. The exceptions would be MAGIC.RAM, DESKTOP.INF, NEWDEXK.INF and XXXDRIVER.SYS which would remain (There's already an AUTO folder utility called ACC.PRG which does the same thing for accessories).
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This is slightly more complicated because many programs expect to find vital files in certain places. But anything that reduces the clutter of loose files on the root of a boot partition would be welcome!

So, plenty of ideas for programmer to get to grips with there. Don't forget this column is designed to help both users and programmers, so do get in touch. Whether you have a basic idea or have a more detailed suggestion, this column is an ideal forum in which to suggest and discuss it!

Next time I'll be making a suggestion as to how users can obtain advice and help each other more easily.

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Mike Kerslake
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