BL> I've got the Telemate script tagged, now. the PUT command is
 BL> pretty-much the same as PRINT, and bloody Telemate doesn't want
 BL> to know about hex or anything but ordinary numbers and ascii
 BL> code.

 RS> Its important to keep clearly in mind that hex is just another
 RS> way of expressing a number. Sure, its a nuisance to have to
 RS> convert between hex and decimal, but thats all it is, just a
 RS> nuisance, it doesnt affect what the code can actually do at
 RS> all.

Hi Rod,
        it goes deeper than that in Telemate script, but perhaps I
have expressed myself badly. I can write a thing that converts
numbers to hex and vice versa in Telemate script, but I can't actually
send it as a character. To send hex 05 in a string, I have to enter
PUT "", and the only way I can get the `' club character is to hold
down ALT and type 05 on the number keyboard. To do Paul's crc
calculation, I have to be able to take a character out of a string and
convert it to its ascii number. Telemate can't do that at all, and
even if I did have the number, there is no way that I could add the
two crc bits to the string without typing Alt-nnn manually.

  Telemate script sux!

 RS> Have a look at the code in PQWK, you will see there some stuff
 RS> which many people like you coming from programming in other
 RS> than C do find a bit of a challenge. C allows some very dense
 RS> and rather cryptic code which some people find gives them brain
 RS> fade real quick |-)

 RS> Here are a couple of fragments

 if(*(p - 1) != '\r' && p > *hold) { *p = '\r'; p[1] = 0;

 RS> The use of the * stuff will throw you for sure. And it gets
 RS> quite a bit worse than that too.

  I have been spending a lot of time trying to work around Telemate
script, and it is teaching me a few tricks, but basically it is a
waste of my time. SALT is more useful, but the manual is hopeless. I
thought I might as well learn C and then come down to SALT, rather
than the other way around.

  The pointer crap doesn't worry me. The way I learn things is by
successive approximations as I go along. When I find something I can't
do, I go back to the book and find a way to do it. If pointers have a
use, I'll find it eventually. 

 RS> Part of the secret is to remember that you dont have to write
 RS> code like that yourself even if you are writing in C. Tho once
 RS> you get the hang of it you find the more long winded style that
 RS> you are forced to use with other more primitive languages irks
 RS> you real quick if you are into a powerful succinct language
 RS> like C.

  This is exactly right. I am a perfectionist, and if I see a shorter
way I'll bash my brain till I learn it. I already know all there is to
know about Telemate script in three weeks. The inability to handle
ascii seems to be basic. I wrote a 255 character string with the hope
of converting back and forth by the position of the characters in the
string, and Telemate won't even do that! The control codes make it do
things. What a bummer.

Regards,
Bob
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12

--- PQWK200