Making the most of 1st Word Plus

Mark Sealey recounts his experiences with 1st Word Plus, and offers some helpful tips for other users.

Like it or loathe it, 1st Word Plus is the most substantial word processor available for the Archimedes. Many loved it because it came to our rescue (over a year ago) on the heels of the ill-fated Arcwriter. 1st Word Plus is not an entirely in-house product. Originally written by GST for the ST range, it nevertheless operates very well in the Archimedes WIMP world: a header to allow it to be started from the RISC OS Desktop is on the Acorn RISC OS support disc, though 1st Word Plus will not multi-task. In other respects it is RISC OS compatible.

What follows is an indication (based on eighteen months of almost daily use) of how to get 1st Word Plus to do the routine tasks as well as some of the more advanced ones expected of more expensive word processors. What is more, it will concentrate on those features which are either likely to cause the most trouble or save the most time. The topics touched on fall into five main categories: files, keying, printing, spelling and mailmerging.

SHORTCOMINGS

Some of this implies that despite several upgrades (Acorn will update versions earlier than that of June 1988 if returned to them) it is still less than perfect. Incredibly, 1st Word Plus, has neither case-swap nor access to the operating system - for example to unlock files. It has a directory structure complicated enough to deter anyone unfamiliar with ADFS, and can behave unpredictably when changing text styles on screen and during formatting. There is no key combination to move to the top or bottom of files. At times, text jumps to the right hand side of the page and doesn't reappear on exit from the hyphenation dialogue box.

Acorn is aware of most of these drawbacks and will, presumably, put them right if and when a fully updated version is released. 1st Word Plus nevertheless supports several powerful features such as the incorporation of graphics into documents, a good hyphenating routine, and footnotes. It is also easy to work on more than one document on screen at once.

DISCS AND FILING

In the first place there is an excellent 250 page manual. It takes you through the basics of text entry, editing, formatting and filing. On booting, 1st Word Plus requests a filename for editing, in a window which will become extremely familiar. By default, this file is in the DOC directory and is named "untitled". If you want to create a new file you enter your text first and name it when it is saved. Otherwise, if you wish to load an old file, simply click on its name or change directories to find it.

If the file you create isn't in the DOC directory (see below), be sure to convert it to 'WP mode' by clicking on the relevant box in the Edit sub-menu. Only in WP mode can all the operations which you need for formatting, blocks, find/replace and multiple rulers be carried out. And only when it has been saved can you print a file. That is the time for final options for printer margins and number of copies etc. to be set.

The windows containing filenames only appear one directory at a time, but you can cycle up and down any directory structure very easily by clicking on the cross symbol normally associated with closing a window. If you are in one directory and the file you want is in another, you need to follow this procedure. The file's name must actually appear in the filenames list on screen. This is particularly relevant if there is a document which you know exists but is not in the currently selected directory. This often happens when you come to print out or to read a file from another directory into the document being edited. What is more, if 1st Word Plus senses that the text has been changed, it has to be saved again before it can be printed.

When you save a file (say letter5) with a name that already exists, it re-names the earlier version to BAK.letter5 or whatever. You may wish to create a sub-directory called LETTERS if the DOC directory gets too full for all the filenames to appear in the window at once. If so, use *CDIR from outside 1st Word Plus to create both LETTERS and BAK on the same directory level, that is below DOC in the hierarchy.

If you have a double disc drive, 1st Word Plus can be made to default to drive 1 for DOC (or indeed any other) files. Working from your backup copy of the 1st Word Plus distribution disc, alter the line (line 30 in most versions) which sets the system variable 1stWordPlus$Docs in the Basic program $.Library.1stWord+ from "$.1wp.doc" to ":1.$.1wp.doc" - case is not important, of course.

KEYING CONVENTIONS AND USAGE

One of the strengths of 1st Word Plus is that what you see is almost exactly what you get. Width of print (condensed, enlarged etc) cannot be seen on screen, though. Since these effects are brought about by changing the ruler, the only way to know which style is selected is to keep an eye on the ruler as it changes whilst you scan through your text. However, text effects such as italic, bold and super/subscript, as well as non-standard font characters are actually visible on screen. But the exact procedure for obtaining these is unclear from the manual.

Here is the sequence which effectively marks out small (or longer) blocks: click with the mouse pointer on the first character you want highlighted, drag the now altered pointer along and if necessary down to the last character to be highlighted. Should some of the text be outside the screen window, Ctrl-S and Ctrl-E may be used instead with the cursor keys to mark the start and end. The letter(s), word(s) or line(s) of text selected are partially blocked out. Next press one or more of function keys f1 to f6 according to the effect desired. They act as a toggle and can be combined. The text - still partially obscured by the blocking - will change to italic, underline or whatever. To complete the effect, either reformat (f12) or begin to mark another block. To de-select the highlighting altogether, click with Adjust anywhere on the block.

At times, text will jump up - as it does with View - onto the previous line; even when you have formatted it - especially after deleting an intervening line with f8. The answer is to place the cursor on the beginning of the wayward line of text, delete anything that may be to the left of it, eventually concatenating it up next to the end of the previous line. Re-inserting a Return there pushes it back down once and for all.

PRINTING

You might like to consider attaching Lingenuity's Control Panel in the 1st Word Plus !BOOT file so that it always starts up with an appropriate machine configuration. And while you're at it, what about the RISC User Printer Buffer utility (see Volume 1 Issue 3)? I find 64K is a good size for the buffer. Again the place to install it is in that same Basic program referred to already. The lines needed to do this are:
*RMLOAD BUFMODULE
*BUFFER ON

An area about which much has been written since 1st Word Plus appeared is printer drivers. Assuming you have managed to translate the printer sequences into a usable table, these will be saved in the $.1WP.cfg file.

Nowhere has it been made explicit how to change the default driver. First edit the appropriate file in the $.1WP directory as described in the 1st Word Plus manual - Appendix B. Next copy the 'cfg' file produced by running the Printer install program to the $.Resources.1wp directory. You must search your 1st Word Plus working disc for the file "1wp_Print" in the directory $.Resources.1wp.

Delete the file (or re-name it - e.g. to OLDprint - if you wish to preserve it in case of errors). Then re-name to 1WP_Print either the file you have been working on or one already provided to match your printer. Do not be put off by all this; one of the strengths of 1st Word Plus is the happy combination of Basic and Absolute code to maximise both user-accessibility and speed.

SPELLING AND MAILING

These are two final examples of such strong points. Spelling checks take place at a truly amazing rate, and are easy to perform. Once the dictionary is loaded (via the Spelling menu) pressing Ctrl-C will check as you type, although don't be surprised when hyphenated words are not recognized.

Even greater power comes from combining dictionaries, and an excellent suite of three has just been published for £6.95 inclusive by Science Frontiers. You can merge everything into one giant, combined specialised and standard dictionary using the 1stDmerge utility outside 1st Word Plus. This is the only way to add new words to the main dictionary. Merge the main one with the 'supplementary' file into which additions are all saved by default. Even then there will still be room for all the systems and utility programs on the same disc - though not really for data and text files as well.

As for mail shots, 1stMail (which has a long and extremely clear tutorial section occupying a quarter of the manual) is also loaded separately from 1st Word Plus. It obeys the same conventions in a familiar environment. There is one drawback though: page breaks do not work consistently. To get round this, spool the merged file to disc for reloading into 1st Word Plus rather than send it directly to the printer. This means cycling through the output box at the bottom right of the screen first.

Macros are fully implemented, drawing either on direct keyboard input or a data file (which must be in the correct, DAT, directory). Minerva's Mailshot (an excellent product in its own right) is ideal for creating such files in a format that 1st Word Plus (and indeed most other word processors) can use. 1stMail can also handle whole files as macros so that a letter could effectively call a standard letterhead or paragraph(s) which you regularly wanted to be included. These can be nested, and their use is well explained in the manual.

If the absence of certain standard features mentioned earlier is the sorest point with 1st Word Plus users, the flexibility and user-friendliness of 1stMail are among the package's strongest points. With some similar products, the combination of mouse and keyboard is counter-intuitive and even intrusive. Whatever you've heard about 1st Word Plus, give it a try.

WORD PROCESSING/DESKTOP PUBLISHING

Those who feel that a word processor such as 1st Word Plus does not offer all the facilities for word processing and page layout that they would wish, might want to wait for one of the new breed of word processor/desktop publishing packages expected very shortly. Acorn Computers, Computer Concepts and BEEBUG all have such products at an advanced state of completion, and all three are likely to be demonstrating their latest software at the BBC Acorn User Show in July.

SUPPLIERS

Science Frontiers
7 Porthill Court,
Aberdeen
AB1 1DU.
No phone

Minerva
69 Sidwell Street,
Exeter EX4 6PH.
Tel. (0392) 437756

Lingenuity
P.O. Box 10, Halesworth IP19 0DX.
Tel. (098) 685476