July 1983 — Vol 5 No 7

Overview

David Morganstein continues as President (5th term, mid-year). Cover hooks: TIP — The Invoice Printer (James T. DeMay Jr., 12), Householder Transformations for Regression (Walter Liggett, 22), Forth: Putting it All Together III (Bill Wurzel, 28). Editorial by Bernard Urban opens fire on Jim McCullagh + Bill Slapin at Software Merchandising magazine, whose May 1983 issue implied WAP tolerated piracy; Urban demands a retraction and invites them to a Pi meeting (at their own expense) to present evidence. David Morganstein's "An Irate Letter" (51) continues the rebuttal — a rare combined Pi response. Introduction to Applesoft 3 (David Morganstein, 32) — Morganstein's pedagogical series continues. Two Comm Packages: A Review (George Kinal & M. Arnold, 25) — first sustained Pi look at competing terminal/modem software. VisiColumn: Choosing a Spreadsheet (Walton Francis, 56) — Francis takes Raesly's VisiColumn slot for one month to compare spreadsheets. The Shift Key Modification (Richard Langston III, 53) — the canonical Apple II shift-key hardware mod for shift-aware text. SoftDisk Magazette (Michael P. Schemer, 52) — first Pi note of the SoftDisk subscription-on-floppy publishing model.

Table of contents (selected)

Highlights

Urban + Morganstein vs Software Merchandising — "An Irate Letter"

Software Merchandising magazine ran a May 1983 piece implying Pi tolerated piracy at its meetings. Urban's editorial calls out editor Jim McCullagh and publisher Bill Slapin by name; Morganstein's separate "Irate Letter" (51) doubles down. Urban writes: "From the very beginning we have made it our stated policy not to permit copying of copyrighted software during any WAP activity and have acted swiftly whenever anything smacking of that came to our (the Board's) attention." A rare two-byline Pi rebuttal — a sign Pi was taking the public-perception fight on copy ethics seriously, two years after Morganstein's October 1981 IAC copy-protection forum.

Forth: Putting it All Together III — Bill Wurzel

Third installment of Wurzel's Forth-on-the-Apple series, this one bridging the gap from APPLESOFT to UCSD. Forth never quite achieved BASIC penetration at Pi but the series is one of Pi's more sustained Forth efforts.

The Shift Key Modification — Richard Langston III

The canonical Apple II hardware mod (jumper wire from shift-key switch to game-port pin) that lets word processors detect shift presses. By July 1983 every serious WAP word-processor user had done this mod, but Pi finally publishes the canonical write-up.

Entities

People: David Morganstein, Bernard Urban, Dana Schwartz, Edward Myerson, Paula Benson, Bernie Benson, Bruce F. Field, Nancy Philipp, Jesse Wagstaff, Rich Wasserstrom, Betsy Harriman, Genevie Urban, James T. DeMay Jr., Walter Liggett, Bill Wurzel, George Kinal, Walton Francis, Richard Langston III, Michael P. Schemer, Leon H. Raesly, Robert C. Platt, Peter Combes, Jay Thal, Nancy C. Strange, Jonathan S. Vaupel, Loftus E. Becker Jr., Ed Knepley, Paul Koskos, Bill Hershey, Curt Robbins, Ed Schenker Topics: Pi vs Software Merchandising 1983, Forth on Apple, Apple Shift Key Mod, UCSD P-System, Copy Protection Debate References: Software Merchandising magazine, SoftDisk Magazette, Quadram Printer Buffer, Synetix UCSD, VisiCalc, Graftrax+

Connections to other issues

• Continues the Pi vs Software Merchandising 1983 thread that Urban returns to repeatedly through 1983
• The Forth III installment ties to Bill Wurzel's ongoing series across 1983
• The same-month 1983-07 — Membership Directory (redacted) is a separate publication, not a duplicate
• VisiColumn now established (cf. 1983-08 — V05 N08 where Raesly resumes); Francis's spreadsheet-comparison piece is the spiritual ancestor of the massive June 1983 Word Processing Section