The WERCS

To complement HiSoft BASIC, Mich Tron has also released a resource editor called WERCS ($49.95). It's so intuitive that you'll hardly need the manual. The program is menu-driven, and it supports a mouse.

Resource editors create resource files, which define menus, dialog boxes, and other GEM constructs. Once you have selected a tree type (such as Menu or Dialog Box), you can put various items (such as buttons, text, or icons) on the screen and change many of their attributes. Button shadows, text templates, and boxes are all simple to manage, and the procedures are very well thought out. You can name objects or let the program name them for you.

You can use WERCS' icon and graphics editor to design pictures for your dialog boxes. You can also import images from popular paint packages. WERCS saves files in several languages, including BASIC, Pascal, C and assembly language. For example, if you select BASIC, the file will set the item names to numbers using HiSoft's CONSTANT statement. Once in your BASIC program, you can refer to the object by its name.

Overall, WERCS is far easier to use and is much more powerful than the DRI resource construction set.