
     ST TOOLBOX
     by J. Andrzej Wrotniak

                              WHY WE NEED EUROPE:
               OTTO'S RCS, HIGH SPEED PASCAL, AND APRIL IN PARIS

                     ORCS--Again, the Best Things Come Free

     For a long time I kept complaining about a missing development tool on
     the Atari ST market--a  resource  construction  program (RCS) for GEM.
     For those who may  not  be  familiar  with  the  name,  a reminder.  A
     resource (.RSC) file contains a  description  of  all screen objects a
     program uses for user interaction: menus,  dialog boxes and such.  All
     this can be hard-coded into the program,  but it is much easier to use
     an RCS to  design  all  those  widgets  interactively  on screen (and,
     besides, a  resource  file  can  be  mechanically  translated  into  a
     corresponding program code).

     The original RCS from Digital Research,  the  authors of GEM, has been
     initially distributed only with the Atari Developer's Kit for a rather
     steep price--if you did not want  all  the  other stuff.  It wasn't so
     bad, especially in Version 2,  RCS2,  which  has  been around for five
     years or so. It has some bugs, sloooow saving process and some painful
     limitations.  On the other  hand,  its  user  interface  is simple and
     intuitive, and, after all, it is doing its job (almost) all right.

     Those who wouldn't  buy  the  Developer's  Kit  had  a  choice between
     pirating a copy (now you can  buy  the RCS2 alone directly from Atari)
     and buying a third-party product.   WERCS  and  Kuma Resource were the
     best known of these, distributed  as  stand-alone products or packaged
     with some compilers.

     Having some complaints about RCS2, I have tried both Kuma Resource and
     WERCS.  Both programs had  some  features  absent  in RCS2, but, alas,
     both were far from  what  I  was  hoping  for: quite unreliable (read:
     crashing),  sometimes  inconvenient  to   use,  with  some  irritating
     limitations and quirks.  Not  a  polished,  professional  work I would
     expect from a development tool.

     So each time it was back to  the  old,  cursed RCS2, and it carried me
     through all these years.

     Until recently.  Last May, I  found  a shareware program from Germany.
     Called ORCS, or Otto's Resource  Construction  Set,  it was written by
     Mr.  Thornsten Otto from  Essen  (formerly  behind  the Iron Curtain).
     After trying it out, I am not using anything else.

     The program comes with two very  short  text  files in German, but the
     user interface is in English (with  a mild peculiarity here and there,
     but better than some  US  programs  I  have  seen).   Even without any
     documentation, if you know what an RCS does, you will have no problems
     using ORCS, at least  for  the  jobs  of  which  the  Atari's RCS2 was
     capable.

     This last clause is quite important, because feature-wise this program
     beats all others combined.

     One group of improvements  relates  to  the  output, i.e. the resource
     file produced by the program.   First  of  all,  you have full control
     over the usually null parts  of  some  data items (describing buttons,
     editable fields etc.).   These  parts  are  ignored  by  GEM, but your
     program may use them, creating lots of possibilities. Also, the choice
     of files produced by  ORCS  in  addition  to  the  normal .RSC file is
     wider: not just include  files  (for  C,  Pascal, Modula-2, assembler,
     FORTRAN and BASIC), but also complete source files in C and assembler.
     And yes, ORCS output is compatible  in  both directions with the other
     RCS programs (which, by  the  way,  are  not always compatible between
     themselves).

     The second group makes the process  of  using ORCS much easier, faster
     and more convenient.  Objects  can  be  moved  and resized either with
     mouse or by typing in the co-ordinates;  they can also be easily moved
     or copied  between  windows  containing  different  object  trees (not
     necessarily from the same resource file).

     There is even a "find  by  name"  option,  taking  you directly to the
     desired object, and a plethora of small but useful touches, making the
     process of building a resource  much  less  of  a  pain.  Mr. Otto has
     included virtually everything I could think of, and a kitchen sink.

     Last but not least,  the  program  seems  to  work flawlessly.  I have
     experienced no problems with serious modifications to my huge resource
     files for the  newest  El_Cal  and  Star  Base,  and  this  was a good
     workout!

     The only problem I found in  ORCS  is  the maximum string length of 64
     characters in objects.  RCS2 allows for  more  than 70, and one of the
     objects in El_Cal is 72 characters long.  Well, at least ORCS does not
     trash the excess characters (one of  the  other programs does), and 64
     is enough for practically all applications.

     My second  complaint  is  even  more  insignificant:  the  Tempus-like
     desktop with  drive  icons  isn't  very  useful,  usually  obscured by
     program windows; just a gimmick.   Luckily,  you  can perform all file
     operations from the regular File menu, leaving the desktop alone.

     If you were  looking  for  a  resource  construction  program, look no
     further. Otto's RCS is a clear  winner  in  terms of both what it does
     and how.   More,  trying  it  out  costs  you  nothing;  the  thing is
     shareware (I found it on GEnie and Joe  is adding it to the CN library
     this month as disk #730).  But if  you use it in your programming (and
     I know you will), get  an  international  money  order for 50 Deutsche
     Mark in your local bank  or  post  office  and  send it to the program
     author (his address is in the German text file). Please do it:

     Mr.  Otto did an excellent job and  his  work should save lots of your
     time (and irritation).  My cheque  is  going  out  with a copy of this
     review.
