the Editor

Welcome to the AMOS Professional Editor! It is assumed that you have either read the last Chapter, or are already familiar with AMOS or Easy AMOS.

AMOS Professional provides one of the most effective and powerful creative environments for the Amiga programmer. It is also incredibly simple to use. Here is a synopsis of the AMOS Professional enhancements and improvements over the previous incarnations of the Editor.

• The size of the Editor working area has been dramatically increased.
• The increased working area is made possible by the provision of a comprehensive system of pull-down menus. The main menu headings are invisible until they are revealed by pressing the right mouse button. The second part of this Chapter provides a detailed guided tour of the vast selection of menu options.
• The on-line Help system that was offered by Easy AMOS has been enhanced beyond recognition! Instant Help is available for any command, offering definitions, correct syntax and working examples. This allows instant insights into the hundreds of new commands provided by AMOS Professional for existing AMOS and Easy AMOS users. Chapter 4.2 contains a full analysis of the Help system.
• A Monitor accessory can be called for analysis and reports of actual program listings, and this is explained in Chapter 12.1.
• AMOS Professional features a split-screen Editor, allowing you to flick from program to program with a single mouse click.
• There is immediate access to printer support, and listings can be printed by selecting a single menu option.
• The block system has been dramatically improved, and given its own mode. Block Mode can be entered by double clicking on the left mouse button, or by summoning the [Block] menu.
• The SET BUFFER command is now intelligent, allowing you to increase the memory area at any time, without the necessity to save programs first.
• Finally, the File Selector is new, improved and extremely friendly!

The AMOS Professional Editor is very easy to use, and it may be tempting to pick up the system as you go along, particularly if you have experience of AMOS or Easy AMOS. After a few weeks of use, the exploitation of the Editor features will become almost instinctive.

However, if you plunge into the system without a little guidance, you may well end up using only a fraction of the Editor's potential capability. The sheer power of the system is vast, and it would be a pity to overlook some of its exciting features. It is possible that you may only need to refer to this Chapter once, but please make sure that you are aware of everything that the AMOS Professional Editor has to offer.

The AMOS Professional Editor
The purpose of the Editor is to make it as easy as possible to create, adapt and modify AMOS Professional programs via your screen. To achieve this, the Editor provides a range of tools that have been designed with the sole purpose of saving Amiga programmers time, trouble, frustration and confusion. It also short-circuits the need for ugly, complex program listings!

The Editor is intelligent, and will recognise AMOS Professional instructions as they are typed in, allowing mistakes to be corrected immediately.