& LIGHT-YEARS! - TRS-80 Color Computer Archive

n reviews
As a parent or other adult reads the
story aloud, the child gets to "turn" the
pages by pressing any key on the key
board. Children may turn pages for
ward or use the left-arrow key to go
back to previous pages. Once a page is
turned, the built-in timer waits fora full
second before the child can advance the
story any further. This keeps the child
from skipping ahead before the pages
can be read.
At numerous points in the narra
tive, youngsters must make decisions
about what happens next. Should Alex
ask people where Flodd lives, or should
he follow Ollie's nose? Should he and
Ollie enter the dark passage or the lit
one? Is it better to follow Flodd to the
aquarium or take the shortcut?
Children decide how to proceed by
pressing the first letter of the choice
word. To ASK, for example, a child
would press A; to take a SHORTCUT,
the child would press S. Each choice
word appears onscreen in colorful capi
tal letters, with its first letter standing
out from all the rest. Every choice word
is accompanied by an expressive graph
ic clue—kids use it to figure out the cor
responding letter. Next, they locate the
letter on the keyboard and press the
key. The story continues when the cor
rect letter is pressed. There's no nega
tive feedback if the youngster presses an
incorrect key. however, once a decision
is made, it can't be reversed.
The story's numerous turning
points are highlighted by flashing ani
mated graphics with positive-sounding
audio reinforcement. Some kids will
want to hear the story again and again
in order to try out all the possible plot
variations. Others will feel more com
fortable making the same choices every
time. Either way, this tale provides a
wonderful opportunity for prereaders to
polish their early reading skills in a
nonthreatening electronic setting.
Besides promoting reading skills,
Flodd, the Bad Guy introduces young
children to the computer keyboard and
promotes shared computer time be
tween adults and kids. This successfully
interactive storybook strengthens letter
and word recognition as it gives chil
dren a sense of power over their com
puting environment. The package
comes with a copy-protected program
disk, an instruction booklet, and a color
poster. You may purchase a backup for
$ 10 or swap the 5 '/t-i nch floppy for a
3'/2-inch version (or vice versa) for $2
plus the original disk.
The next time you turn on your
computer, think about Flodd, the Bad
Guy (or any of the other stories in the
Reading Magic Library) and share your
74 COMPUTE!
lap and some time with a small person.
If you sit still and don't misbehave,
your child may even let you make some
of the program's important decisions.
— Carol S. Holzberg
Flodd, the Bad Guy
For...
Apple II—$34.95
IBM PC and compatibles with CGA—
$34.95
From...
Tom Snyder Productions
90 Sherman St.
Cambridge. MA 02140
(800) 342-0236 or (617) 876-4433
And...
Also in the Reading Magic Library lire.
Jack and the Beanstalk for Apple II and
PC—$34.95; EGA and Tandy 16-color ver
sions scheduled (or February release.
Publish-lt! Lite!
Just because you're on a budget doesn't
mean you want your documents to look
like Brand X. Publish-lt! Lite! can help.
Despite its silly name (I guess they
couldn't call it Publish-lt! Less), it's the
best of the very-low-end IBM PC and
compatible desktop publishing packages.
This program differs significantly
from competitors iike First Publisher,
The Newsroom, and Pages. Using
Lite—Ihe baby sibling of Timeworks'
Publish-lt!, a medium-price desktop
publishing program that has earned
rave reviews for its ease of use and
power—is like driving the base model
of a luxury car. Not all the features are
there, but the quality still is. Like its
older sibling, Lite is fast and easy to use
and has well-designed fonts and good
print quality.
On the screen. Lite looks similar to
Ventura Publisher. It uses the familiar
GEM interface with drop-down menus,
scroll bars, and a sidebar that contains
the mode selector and a list of files or
attributes. You can view a page as actu
al size or double size, and in full-page
mode.
With Lite, you create up to six col
umn guides to help you design pages.
These guides don't print, but appear on
the screen as dotted lines. The guides
also have a snap-to feature that aligns
your frames within the column guides.
Use your frame to place text or
graphics on the page. You create a
frame by clicking on the frame icon and
then clicking and dragging the mouse. If
you don't already have a frame select
ed, Lite presumes you want to create
one. You can then create four styles of
lines around the frame box: thin, thick,
thicker, and double.
To load text, click on the frame
and then on Import Text, which dis
plays a list of file formats. Publish-lt!
Lite! reads files from WordWriter and
Quintet but doesn't directly read files
from WordPerfect. WordStar, or Micro
soft Word. To import text from those
programs and others, you'll have to
save your work in ASCII. This limita
tion means Lite can't import bold, un
derline, or italic attributes from your
word processor. However, it does con
vert normal typewriter quotation marks
into real typographic quotation
marks—a small victory.
If all your text won't fit in one
frame, you can create another. Lite
automatically redirects text so that it
wraps around a new frame placed on
top of a frame already filled with text.
This feature helps you create more at
tractive and professional-looking pages
because text will continue to wrap
around the frame no matter how often
you move it, making it easier for you to
experiment with design. Besides im
porting text from a word processor, you
can also type directly onto the page.
Lite automatically scrolls the screen
and offers a handy scareh-and-replace
function—even Ventura Publisher lacks
these features.
Publish-lt! Lite! offers low-cost entry into
the world of desktop publishing.
You place graphics on the page as
you place text—by creating a frame and
importing the graphic. Lite will read
only PC Paintbrush and GEM Paint
files; while this is somewhat limiting,
these are the two most popular bit-