Totl Text 2.6

[Rorshach]

Greetings Programs,

I ran across a tape of the Totl Text 2.6 program for the 64 at a flea market last week. I did loaded it up and it does run. It as I suspected a word processor and a rather early one at that being dated 1982. However I did not find the manual for it and could not see it online either. Its mostly a curiousity to me as its one of the oldest I have seen for the 64 and written in uncompiled basic which is a rarity for commercial software. This is probably the most obscure 64 software I have run across but does provide a bit of fasination no less. I am curious if anyone here used this program when they were new to the 64?

[RobertB]

I am curious if anyone here used this program when they were new to the 64?

I used Totl. Text 2.6 actively between 1983 to 1985.  It was my second word processor, after Quick Brown Fox.  I bought it on cassette new in 1983, later upgrading to the disk version (which was the same).  Because it was Basic, it "crunched" well.  It also compiled well with Blitz 64.  It was compatible with Compute's Gazette Screen-80, which gave it a 80-column preview screen.  Like Paperclip, it used commands in-line with the text and did not give you what it would look like on print unless preview was used.  It used $$ as the code for a command, e.g. $$pr would indent a paragraph.

                 And it works with a SuperCPU,
                 Robert Bernardo
                 Fresno Commodore User Group
                 http://videocam.net.au/fcug
                 July 25-26 CommVEx v5 - http://www.commodore.ca/forum and click on ComVEX

P.S. Totl. Text was in a series of other Totl. products, such as Totl. Mail.

P.P.S. Author, Ann McCarty later replaced Totl. Text 2.6 with the user-friendlier Totl. Writer 1.0.

[Rorshach]

I did put a copy of it on disk as its no longer available that way, look how long it took to find the casette version. I did try to compile with Blitz! but it reported several errors on the second pass. I will take another look at it sometime soon and see if I can fix it up. I am not sure yet if it was an originally buggy copy, modified, or suffering minor corruption due to age. The last of the three could be possible as only one side of the tape will load, the other has the program as well but results in a load error.