EDITORIAL

We  have  come  a long way since  we  launched  our  first,  very 
amateuristic  version of ST NEWS.  That was back on the  26th  of 
July of last year, about half a year ago. We are now finally able 
to offer you the ultimate solution: ST NEWS with a "F.A.S.T.E.R." 
look! Now, it's possible to select one article at the time, which 
isn't  only  much handier with regard to  available  memory  (the 
current ST NEWS can work with about 160 Kb of free memory!),  but 
also much more user-friendly.  We have received many requests  to 
split  up ST NEWS,  but we just couldn't do that.  That's why  we 
made this version of ST NEWS with its own reader,  etc. Maybe, we 
can now finally be as good as (or maybe better than) the Canadian 
disk magazine "F.A.S.T.E.R."!
The program you're now using was written using GfA Basic and  our 
good old Scroll Message Editor (that we published in our previous 
issue  of ST NEWS).  I was glad I had some help with  the  actual 
page viewing routine by a logical thinker (Hans van der  Linden), 
so it was possible to finish it in about 12 hours of programming. 



There  will undoubtedly be bugs in the program (although  it  was 
tested  thoroughly and I haven't seen any bugs  myself!),  and  I 
hope that you will contact me if you think there are some bugs in 
the program that aren't minor anymore.

A big thanks must go to the people at F.A.S.T.E.R. in Canada, for 
giving me the excellent idea of putting documents in such a user-
friendly environment.  Also thanks to Math,  who supplied me with 
the music (exception-driven, as you'll notice if you select "Quit 
but  keep  Music").  Also thanks to Jos Schilders,  with  whom  I 
developed the Scroll Message Editor that created the scrolling in 
this issue.

If  you happen to be working in medium resolution (ST  NEWS  does 
not and will never support low resolution,  I'm  sorry!),  you'll 
notice  that  you haven't got access to the "About ST  NEWS"  and 
"Bonus Pictures" options,  as well as the "Invert Screen" option. 
I am very sorry to say, but originally this program was to be for 
monochrome only!  Maybe we'll include fully working options in  a 
future issue of ST NEWS!


The  Bonus  Picture was beeped over by Modem from the  Amiga  and 
afterwards  converted from Low-to High Resolution using  our  own 
Low->High-Converter  (that we published quite a while ago  in  ST 
NEWS  Volume  1 Issue 4).  I have also tried converting  it  with 
Degas Elite, but (although it is a really great program!) I found 
that that didn't satisfy me.  The artist is unknown to me, but he 
will now undoubtedly have sold his Amiga to buy the ST...

I wish you lots of fun reading this issue of ST NEWS,

                                    Sincerely

                                    Richard Karsmakers
                                    (Editor of ST NEWS)


