Editorial

Welcome to Issue 18 of SynTax. I can't believe that it will be
entering its fourth year with the next issue. Time certainly flies
when you're editing a magazine - even more so when you're involved
with two. But it's great to be busy and the housework does still
get done - eventually!

I always enjoy putting the magazine together (it's copying the
disks that I find the least enjoyable part of the process) but
this issue has been even more pleasant due to the tremendous
number of contributions I've received since Issue 17, especially
on the reviews side. It's so much better to see lots of different
people giving their views on games.  As a bonus, it meant that
I've been able to do a bit of adventuring just for myself over the
last two months. I've got hooked on the Unnkulian Unventures and
found them the funniest games I've played in a long time. It isn't
often that I laugh out loud at pure text games! I think Humbug was
the last one. On the RPG side, I've finally completed Ultima I and
am now well into Ultima II. The graphics may be basic but I am
finding them very compulsive and it's also interesting to see how
their style and appearance improves with each successive game.
Ultima VI looks especially good but I'm determined to play them in
order and not skip ahead.

Now, apology time; my apologies to Kjell Robertsen, Claire Dyard
and Michael Foote who couldn't get their Issue 17 disks working.
In my own defence, I'd like to put the blame on Atari for
continually changing the TOS! Every time they change the TOS, STOS
programs, like SynTax, don't work and need to be recompiled with a
new version of STOS which takes the changes into account. Well,
not having screenshots, Issue 17 used the Amiga version of the
program which predates the last TOS change and, as the Amiga and
emulator don't worry about it, I'd never bothered to recompile it
- if it works, don't fiddle with it, that's my motto!
Unfortunately I didn't think of it when I used it for Issue 18. It
was Claire who worked out what was wrong and actually rang me from
France about it which was very kind of her and it was nice to have
the opportunity for a quick chat. So the problem was sorted out
very quickly and within the week, everyone had working disks. Just
to prevent any confusion, the program has also been renamed this
issue - the old one was AAMIGASQ.PRG which, not surprisingly, made
some readers think they had the wrong program.

Jean Childs has put forward a good idea for a new type of review;
have a look at the Letters section for more details and I hope
you'll join in. The idea of SF/fantasy book reviews has also been
well received so I hope more of those will be sent in for future
issues too. They've been moved to the Features section to leave
Reviews purely for software. If anyone has any other ideas for new
sections, do send them in.  It'll be interesting to see what the
next year has to bring for SynTax. Lots more contributions, I hope
to make future issues as full and lively as this one!

                                                       Sue