PDA Software Library/pdasoftwarelib.iso/PSION/UTILS/VR3A100/VR3A.DOC

Text File | 1994-01-09 | 11.1 KB | 303 lines

Prologue
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This text is based on Gilles Kohl's HP95XL/HP100XL Vertical Reader v1.05
package.  Many thanks to him to allow me to use his text.


Introduction
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VR stands for 'vertical reader' and will add another use to your
palmtop:  reading 'electronic texts'. (In short, etexts - these are
simply ASCII files and can range from short-stories to entire books
and novels.) Read a book or short-story wherever you have your
palmtop with you: on the train, on the plane, in that boring
conference - no need to carry piles of paper along.

VR allows you to hold your palmtop like you would hold a book:
upright, in one hand. Text is much easier to read this way - the
distances the eye has to travel are reduced. VR further increases
readability through the use of proportional fonts and on-the-fly word
wrapping. All navigation and control keys are conveniently located
near your thumb.


A word about word wrap, page positions and rescan
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Unlike other reader programs, VR doesn't have an 80 column screen at
its disposal and can't output lines from the original text verbatim.
It must break them down into smaller units by using word wrap and
proportional fonts. To save memory, VR doesn't read the whole text
into memory, but works directly on the file level. VR also tries to
gain more space on the screen by reducing horizontal and vertical
whitespace (blanks and empty lines) a bit. While you are reading, VR
remembers the positions (in the file) of the pages you have visited,
so that you can get back to previous pages. Because of this, VR can't
directly jump to the end of your text, for example, if it has not
seen the last page yet.  This is also the reason why you can confuse
VR by changing fonts while reading. When you change the text font,
the amount of text that fits on a page is very likely to change. This
in turn invalidates the page positions VR has remembered - they were
valid for the font previously used. The effect is overlap or gaps
(depending on the new font chosen) between pages. (Only when paging
back, though)

The solution is called 're-scan'. VR can be instructed to re-read
your text without actually displaying it, storing updated page
positions as it scans along. This will result in consistent pages,
and will allow you to jump to the last page of the text. Because
scanning may take a long time for larger texts, this operation is
not automatically done but is available from the menu.


VR command overview
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All VR commands are directly accessibly via the menu and the
keyboard.


NEXT PAGE (<up-arrow>, <Enter>, or Psion-n)
PREVIOUS PAGE (<down-arrow>, <Delete>, or Psion-p)
JUMP TO PAGE (</>, or Psion-j)

These commands allow the reader to move around in the text.


OPEN TEXT FILE (Psion-o)

Will pop up a file query dialog to select a new text.  By default, the
directory is "\TXT".  Select a text and press <Enter> to
accept your selection, or cancel using <ESC>. If you select a new text,
the page positions, current page, text font and bookmarks (see below)
of the current text are saved first. Then, VR tries to recover the above
information for the newly opened text. (These are stored in *.VPG
files that have the same name as the text file they refer to.)


SELECT FONT (<*>, Psion-f)

This command will pop up a menu of text fonts.  Select a font to be
used, and accept it using <Enter> or cancel the menu with <ESC>.
Be sure to read the section entitled 'A word about word wrap, page
positions and rescan' above.


ZOOM IN  (<.>(>), Psion-z)

This command simply cycles forward through the text fonts without any
further interaction - it is probably most useful when directly accessed
on the keyboard (by pressing '.').


ZOOM OUT (<,>(<), Psion-Z)

This command simply cycles backwords through the text fonts without
any further interaction.


FIRST PAGE (<->, or Psion-<->)

Jumps to the very first page of the current text, as you would expect.


LAST PAGE (<+>, or Psion-<+>)

This is less obvious, as this command does _not_ necessarily jump to
the last page of your text. Instead, it can only jump to the last
page VR has ever seen of this text. For an explanation of this
behaviour, refer to the section entitled 'A word about word wrap,
page positions and rescan' above. The last page that VR currently
knows is displayed in the status window, see below.


DROP BOOKMARK (Psion-r)
GOTO BOOKMARK (Psion-g)

These two commands are used to drop bookmarks and jump to them. A
bookmark is simply a saved position in the text file that you can
later return to. Ten bookmarks are available - they are all
initialized to the start of the file. When you select 'Drop Bmk',
select the bookmark you want to drop and press <Enter> to drop it,
<ESC> to cancel or <SPACE> to view the current bookmark assignment.
You can later go back to that spot
using 'Goto Bmk'.

Note also that bookmarks really remember file positions, not pages.
Suppose you're reading a text in a rather tiny font, drop bookmark 1
on page 7 and then later decide to switch to a larger font and do a
rescan (see section entitled 'A word about word wrap, page positions
and rescan' above). The page number of bookmark 1 will now be higher
because pages contain less text. Also, bookmark 1 will probably not be
on the top of a page any more. When you jump to bookmark 1, VR will find
the correct location regardless of current page size.


FULL RESCAN (Psion-</>)
SCAN TO END (Psion-k)

These two commands scan your text as if you were reading it very fast
- without displaying the pages (the status window is updated though,
watch it to see the scan progress). A full rescan starts at page 1,
while a rescan to end starts at your current page. You would do a
full rescan to ensure correct page positions after a font change, for
example. A reason for a 'scan to end' might be that you want to go to
the last page of the text.


ABOUT VR (<help>, or Psion-v)

This command will issue some information on your VR version and its
author.


QUIT (<ESC>)
EXIT (Psion-x)

Well, the quit command leaves VR. There are actually two quit
commands:  hitting the <ESC> key will ask for confirmation before
quitting. Hitting Psion-x will leave VR no questions asked.


The status window
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VR uses two lines on the bottom of the screen to display some status
information. The lines looks like this:

   Pag: 26/27 Fnt:6
   Text: filename.txt

The PAG information gives the current page number, and the number of
the highest page that VR can currently go to. (It will do so when you
hit the <+> key or select the corresponding command from the menu).

The FNT field shows the currently selected text font number.  And TEXT
show the filename of the current viewed file.


Font nomenclature
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VR fonts are named using the following system:

   letter 1: identifies the 'family'.
               s: sans serif font  ('helvetica' style)
               f: font with serifs ('times roman' style)
   letter 2: monospaced or proportional
               m: monospaced
               p: proportional
   letter 3: character set
               a: ascii only (characters from 32 to 126 available)
               x: extended set
   letter 4: type
               n: normal
               b: bold
   letters 5-6: width in pixel for a monospaced font,
                00 for a proportional font.
   letters 7-8: depth in pixel for a monospaced font,
                approximate point size for a proportional font.

Note:  Currently VR3a only provides fixed width fonts (sm*.*)


[The following section is copied verbatim from Gilles Kohl's
 documentation, with the references to SHRUNK.TXT removed since
 it is not included with VR3A. -Rob]

Where to find more etexts
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There are several sources for etexts that can be read with VR:


+ The Literary forum on CompuServe (GO LITFORUM)

The libraries of this forum have a wealth of etexts available for
download. I'd suggest getting an overview by downloading the summary
files first. If you're into SF, get KIRINY.AGA by Mike Resnick
- a genuine Hugo Award. (All section 17)


+ The Science Fiction and Fantasy Forum on CompuServe (GO SCI-FI)

Lots of etexts here too. I read (and liked) SOUL.TXT by Mike Resnick
in Section 3, and BARB.TXT by John Thompson in section 14.


+ The Travel Forum on CompuServe. (GO TRAVSIG)

More non-fiction here of course. You'll find travel diaries, saved forum
threads discussing issues important to the frequent traveller, member
written reports and tips, etc.

If you're on a hurry, download the files relevant to your
destination, and read while on the plane. Beside the fact-filled,
there's sometimes funny stuff too. (Try XXSHOW.AMS in TRAVSIG lib
section 8. Caution: Adults only.)


+ CDROMs.

If your PC or Mac is equipped with a CDROM drive, you can get entire
collections of etexts on CDROM.

Here's a short list - those that I have.

* "World Library's 171 Stories of Murder, Mystery, Magic, Terror &more..."

Definitely a must if you like Conan Doyle, Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft ...
Has a complete collection of Sherlock Holmes stories.

Contact (from the back of the CD):

WORLD LIBRARY INC., 12914 Haster Street,
Garden Grove, CA 92640. [phone] or [phone]



* Bureau Development's "Great Literature" CDROM.
(Runs on both Mac and PC.)

Has the texts of 1896 literary classics. Impressive list of
authors and texts. More 'serious' than the above.

Contact (from the back of the CD):

Bureau Development, Inc., 141 New Road,
Parsipany, NJ 07054. (201)-808-2700


* Walnut Creek's "SIMTEL-20 MSDOS ARCHIVE"

This CD has some 11MB of zipped etexts (probably some 33 MB unpacked)
in its \MSDOS\BOOKS archive. The texts are all from Project Gutenberg
(read more about P.G. below) and include classics like Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hide, Moby Dick, The Time Machine ...  If you have an MSDOS
machine and a CDROM drive, the 'SIMTEL archive' is worth getting
anyway, one of the best shareware and PD collections I know of.


+ Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg was initiated by Prof. Michael S. Hart. Their goal is
to make a maximum of free electronic texts available to everybody.

Send e-mail to [e-mail] for details on the project.

To retrieve etexts via FTP: FTP mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu
(128.174.201.12), (login 'anonymous', password 'your@login') cd etext
and snoop around.

To get etexts via e-mail, send the following line by itself to
[e-mail]

   send gutenberg catalog

then follow the instructions from the Almanac server in Oregon.
(Attention CompuServers: receiving huge e-mail from the Internet may
be dangerous to your CIS bill)