Although in America the Amiga is floundering a bit, and in the UK Amigas are solely looked on as games machines, as they say in the ads "Out there, it's a whole new world!" The German Amiga market is still pushing ahead, with excellent software and hardware innovations. Just some of superb products to have come from Germany in the last year include: VLab, Adorage, Studio, The Patriarch, Multiface, Gigamem, and many others. But there are a whole lot more products that we never get to hear of, and I will be exposing some of these in this article.

Why don't we get every bit of German software and hardware over here? Well, there are several reasons. One is that in terms of hardware products there are a great many more manufacturers there than over here. In England, there are just a few well-known companies, for instance, Power Computing or Evesham Micros. In Germany, there are loads, all making different widgets and gadgets to fulfill every Amigans wish. Of course, some are bigger than others, and they are more likely to get recognised over here, like MacroSystem, but have you ever heard of Advanced System Software? Probably not, but they make the only SCSI-2 controller for the A3000 and A4000. The same goes for software products. Maxon are probably the best known software company in Germany, on a par with Gold Disk or Digita in England, yet none of their software is available over here. And they have a good line up too, from Word Processors to CAD to programming.

Another reason for the lack of German-produced titles is that some of the companies have no English speaker working there, or feel that their English is not good enough to translate the software or manual. However, there are solutions to this problem, with more and more translation agencies springing up in Germany that are technically aware (sometimes even Amiga aware! Gasp!).

The third reason is that not every bit of German software or hardware will appeal to an English audience, such as a German football league management game, or a utility to connect to BTX; the German version of Teletext.

And so, I would like to introduce you to a range of software and hardware products, as yet unavailable here in England, that I think would be of interest to us. I have tried to make the list as varied as possible, for the most part not concentrating on items that already have a counterpart here, like German DTP packages (Advanced Layouter) or Word Processors (Maxon Word), but on products that are unique, or add a new twist to ones we have here.

Der Innenarchitekt
An interior design program with clip art for any piece of furniture you can imagine. Take a sofa, match it's measurements with the ones for your real sofa and place in it a 2D room editor. Do the same for the rest of your furntiure and move into three dimensions using the visualiser which shows your room layout in 3D colour. Move around and check everything is to your taste. Works on any Amiga with at least 1MB

MaxonPAINT
This acclaimed paint package has a number of innovative features in it's workbench-like interface, such as; drag-and-drop file operations, clipboard support, the ability to use any available screenmode resolution and palette, customisable tool icons and windows, virtual memory support, RGB and HSV colour selection and many others. It also works on any Amiga with at least 1MB RAM and Kickstart 1.2 onwards.

ColorFontMaker
Ever seen those demos with whacky, colourful fonts made out of biscuits or foam rubber? ColorFontMaker allows you to create your own fonts that can be then used in any application that supports colorFonts like Scala, Wordworth, DPaint or many others. This program works on any Amiga with 1MB RAM and Kickstart 2.04 or higher.

Multi-Answer
This program currently only works with ZyXel modems which aren't all that popular over here, but I understand there will be a Supra version coming out soon as well. What it does is put your modem into auto-answer mode and when there is an incoming phone call, it listens to the line to see what sort it is. If it's a data call from another modem, it transfers the call to your favourite comms package. If it's a fax message, it will put the call through to GPFax or its equivalent, but the really clever part is that if it's just your mum calling to find out how you are, Multi-Answer switches to Answerphone mode and records their message through the modem onto your hard disk! So now you can replace three items of equipment (Answerphone, fax and modem) with just one(a fax modem with silent answer) and this software.

Nostradamus
A complete program for generating horoscopes in the traditional, Chinese or Runic forms, with accurate astrological reporting.

Pro-Kick An add-on for A500 or A500+ owners, Pro-Kick fits on the external bus on the side of the A500 and gives you either one or four Zorro II slots and a kickstart switch for two EPROMs either 256k or 512k, which would enable you to grab Kickstarts 1.3 through 3.0 and use them on your A500 along with internal cards for a 2000 like VLab or Picasso.

MaxonC++
The best C++ compiler on the market, this is ANSI C compliant and AT&T 2.0 C++ standard. It comes with comprehensive online help and the developer version includes an optimised assembler and source level debugger. Works on any Amiga with at least Workbench 2.04 and 1MB RAM.

Scan-Doubler
This card fits in the video slot of the A4000 and enables the user to use any multiscan monitor with their A4000. Previously, the user would either have to get a 1960 or 1942 monitor that worked in resolutions from 15 kHz to 31kHz and make do with average picture quality, or get a high end monitor, then not be able to use PAL or NTSC screenmodes, such as those used by games.

Mensch Amiga
An interactive biology lesson, Mensch Amiga covers the human boady inside and out. With a hypertext interface and superb illustrations, this program makes an excellent educational tool. There is also a program called Orbit Amiga in this series which is about our solar system. They both work on any Amiga with at least 1MB Chip RAM and an external disk drive.

Euro-Übersetzer
This program should help some of those reluctant Germans to translate their software to English. It consists of a 31,000 word associated dictionary with over 134,000 associations. It will give comparatives and different tenses and persons of a verb and has a user dictionary that can easily be added to. It already has an Amiga bias, with words like "debugging" and "double-click" in the standard dictionary. (Why haven't the people who write this program translated any of their software into English yet?!) By the way, it works on any Amiga with at least 1MB RAM.

Translate it!
This is another one of those programs where you wonder why the company who produces it haven't used it themselves! Translate it! takes an ASCII text file and surprise! surprise! translates it from English to German or vice versa. You can add new words to it's dictionary and they apparently do German to French, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Russian and Portuguese versions as well! They say it is ideal for use with foreign language Public Domain documentation and for only DM79,- (roughly 30 quid) it seems too good to be true!

Maxon Magic
Another title from Maxon, this one might seem at first glance to be a complete waste of money when there are PD programs that do the same sort of thing, but Maxon Magic gives you modular screen blankers that they say will work on any Workbench 2 or better Amiga, even on graphics cards like Retina; these are mainly rip-offs from the Mac or PC package After Dark, with things like Flying Toasters and Tea Cups, staring animal eyes and spotlights. There are also sounds to accompany the blankers and you can match sounds with system events like mouse clicks or file requesters opening. This is the sort of product that sells well in Germany, something to make your Amiga unique.

This is just a sample of the many and varied software and hardware items available in Germany that might never see the light of day over here. There are also things like books about programs such as DPaint and Pagestream; guides on how to get the best out of them, and general books on graphics, video, viruses and hard disks. They are usually hardbacks and sell at very reasonable prices. Alternatively, you could send off your Amiga to get a custom spray paint job, with stars streaking across your power supply and rainbows around the keyboard. Or maybe even a system to convert your plain Jane Amiga 500 into a tower of power with more Zorro slots than you can shake a stick at and an external keyboard. Unfortunately, if you are interested in any of these titles, it will probably be difficult to get hold of them unless you speak German and are willing to get a copy of Amiga Magazin or Amiga Plus, the two best-selling German Amiga Magazines, or you are going to Germany on holiday, and don't mind putting up with German manuals and software.

Hopefully, the situation will gradually change as, with the advent of Workbench 2.1 and 3.0, the Amiga has a system called localisation, where you can choose what language you want your Amiga programs to use. But obviously, you need to be running at least Workbench 2.1 and your software needs to take advantage of localisation for this to work. The only real solution is for German and English companies to get together and discuss the translation of these programs and bring a fresh outlook to the UK Amiga software and hardware markets.

If you wish to get a subscription for either Amiga Magazin or Amiga Plus here are the details:

Amiga Magazin
Markt & Technik Verlag AG
Postfach 1163,
Kochendorfestr. 40
7107 Neckarsulm
Germany
Tel: 01049 71 32/3 85-263
Fax: 01049 71 32/65 63

Amiga Plus
ICP GmbH & Co. KG
Postfach 1143,
85597 Vaterstetten,
Germany
Tel: 01049 8106 33954
Fax: 01049 8106 34238

Why no games?
The main reason there are no games in my list is that there are very few German games companies. There are some german games, but for the most part they wouldn't be too popular over here, that is unless you were really into the German Football or IceHockey leagues!

Glossary
ASCII - American Standard Code for Information Interchange. This is a standardised format for text that assigns code numbers to characters, allowing the exchange of information between different programs or computers.

Silent Answer Mode - this is a new feature of some fax modems where the modem actually listens to the phone as it is ringing and decides what sort of call is incoming and acts accordingly.

Localisation - A system in Workbench 2.1 or higher that allows the user to select which country he is working in. The preferences program then automatically switches any programs that use localisation to the language of the selected country.

Germany - A big country between France and Eastern Europe that has German people living in it (with their Amigas).