Software 2000/Software 2000 Volume 1 (Disc 1 of 2).iso/utilities/u116.dms/in.adf/TextEngine/TextEngine.doc

Text File | 1995-07-23 | 9.3 KB | 227 lines

         Textengine V3.0 (C) Copyright Nicholas Harvey 1991.

This program is shareware, so please register ownership by sending £5
to:

        Nicholas Harvey
        149 Manor Road North
        Thames Ditton
        Surrey
        KT7 OBQ
        England

I give my permission for this program to be freely distributed only if
the program, this doc file, and all icons are kept together.

The story so far...
At the beginning of the 1990 summer holidays, I thought to myself, "I
need a word processor!" So, after looking through magazine adverts I
came to the conclusion that I was not going to spend £100+ on a
wordprocessing system, so I wrote my own. Ten months of R&D (and
thousands of problems) produced TEXTENGINE V1.0 - a word processor to
my own specification written entirely in assembly language. Then,
after a few additions were made, TEXTENGINE V2.0 emerged. TEXTENGINE
V2.1 has the addition of a macro feature and improved editing
facilities. Version 3.0 is the latest release. If you use it, please
send £5 (or more) to me at the address above.


VERSION 2 IMPROVEMENTS:

-New pull down menu layout.
-Erase file facility.
-Disk DIR facility.
-Line centering function.
-The ability to switch between PAL and NTSC.
-The DELETE key works properly.


VERSION 2.1 IMPROVEMENTS:

-10 macros with a user friendly macro editor.
-The ability to move to the beginning/end of a line by using
 SHIFT+left/right cursor keys.


VERSION 3.0 IMPROVEMENTS:

-Append file facility where files can be attached to the end of the
 current document.
-Cut and paste facility with 4096 byte (4Kb) cut buffer.
-Improved error notification.
-New look display with on-screen gadgets for often used functions
 (load, save, DIR, print, quit, (PAL ONLY) palette, sleep)

Loading Textengine from Workbench.
Double click on its icon and the program will load in a few seconds.

Loading Textengine from the CLI.
Type RUN TEXTENGINE <filename> where the filename is the name of the
file you want the program to load automatically when it loads. If you
don't want to load a file on start up, ignore the <filename> option.


Instructions.
Control of the cursor and input of text is the same as any text editor
you may have used during your life. There is a text buffer of 50kb,
which should be large enough for most documents. When the text buffer
is full, a warning will be displayed, and no more text will be allowed
to be input.

The delete key (marked DEL), now deletes the character underneath the
cursor, and the TAB key produces a space character instead of a tab.
To move quickly through the file, you can hold SHIFT down while using
the up and down cursor keys. This moves you a page at a time. Holding
shift down while using the left and right cursor keys moves you to the
beginning and end of a line respectively.

The word-wrap works well if used properly. The width of the page is 70
columns with a 5 column margin at either side. The word-wrap activates
when the current line being edited becomes 71 characters long. When
this happens, the last word in that line is pushed onto the next line.
For this to happen, though, the cursor has to be at the end of the
line, as if you were typing a line of text from scratch. If you are
inserting text into the middle of a line, text input will cease when
the line becomes 70 characters long.

To centre the current line, either select CENTRE LINE from the TEXT
menu, or press CONTROL+C (^C). This automatically centres the line.

To cut a block of text, place the cursor at the beginning of the
block, and select START CUT from the cut menu. Then place the cursor
at the end of the block, and select END CUT. This will cut out all the
text which lies between these two pointers. To paste the text back
into the document, simply place the cursor on an empty line, and
select PASTE.


Disk operations.
Loading and saving a file is simplicity in itself. Selecting LOAD or
SAVE from the FILE pull-down-menu presents you with a string gadget
(where you input the filename) and two other gadgets (LOAD or SAVE,
and CANCEL). When you have entered the filename, you can either
load/save the file, or cancel the procedure by selecting the
appropriate gadgets.

When you select APPEND, you are asked to input a filename. When this
is done, TextEngine loads that file and places it onto the end of the
current document. The text can then be positioned throughout the text
using CUT and PASTE.

ERASE is used to delete the selected file from the disk.

DIR is used to view the contents of any valid directory (Eg DF0:,
RAM:, DH0:, etc)


The PROJECT menu.
PRINT simply prints the file.

Selecting CLEAR from the menu will clear the text buffer after
confirming the operation with a requester.

ABOUT displays a little information about the program, and also
displays the amount of free memory, and the size (in bytes) of the
current file.

Selecting QUIT from the menu will quit the program after confirming
the operation with a requester.

When you chose SLEEP from the menu, the program closes the main
editing screen and opens a small window on the workbench screen. In
doing this, the program can multitask more easily, and releases about
50kb of memory. To get back to the editor and any text you may have
been editing, simply click on the CANCEL gadget. This returns you to
the editor, at the top of the file.

Printer styles.
In the STYLES menu, there is a list of many different styles that most
printers can produce. Selecting one of the styles will produce an
unusual character in the text. Eg  Ë  is the character for PICA text.
When using these control characters, the first time you use them, the
effect is turned on, and the next time you select the same style, it
is turned off. For instance, in the text

     Textengine V2.1 - The ªbestª wordprocessor for the Amiga.

                                         the word "best" is printed
ENLARGED, whereas the rest of the sentence is normal print. The only
two control characters which don't work like this are ELITE and PICA.
These only work as ON switches as they cancel each other when
selected. For instance, selecting ELITE cancels PICA, and selecting
PICA cancels ELITE. If you want to cancel all of the styles that have
been selected, use the CANCEL STYLES character. This resets the
printer to normal draft mode.

My advice to you on using control characters is to type in the entire
file first, making sure it is correct, and then turn off the word-wrap
and add all of the type styles that you need. Save this off as the
finished file, and then print it.


Special tools.
Also In the TEXT menu, a couple useful tools can be found.

The first menu item is the WORD WRAP switch. If there is a * symbol
before the words WORD WRAP, then word wrap is activated. If the * is
not present, then word wrap is switched off. To change the status of
the word wrap, hold the mouse pointer over the WORD WRAP menu item,
and then let go.

The second is WORD COUNT which simply counts the number of words and
lines in the document. To stop counting, click on CANCEL.

In the PREFS menu, 4 options are available to set up the wordprocessor
to your own needs. The first item is PRINTER. Here you have 3 inputs.
TOP MARGIN is the number of lines you want left clear at the top of a
page. BOTTOM MARGIN is the number of lines you want left at the bottom
of the page. LINES PER PAGE is the maximum number of lines of text you
can fit onto the piece of paper you are using with no gaps at the top
or bottom. It is very important that you get this value correct.

After PRINTER comes PALETTE, which allows you to change the screen
colours in the usual amiga way. Select the colour you want to change
by clicking on its box at the top of the palette, and then alter the
red, green and blue values of that colour using the sliding gadgets.

If you use an NTSC computer, you can still use TextEngine. Simply
select NTSC from the PREFS menu, and the screen will shrink to a
height of 200 lines.

MACROS are defined in the macro editor. There are 10 string gadgets,
each with a buffer of 100 characters. Each of these buffers are
assigned to a function key, so, if you press F1 while editing a file,
the text that you entered in the first macro gadget will be
automatically entered into your file. This can be useful if you find
yourself repeating a phrase or sentence a lot.

To save this setup, select SAVE SETUP from the menu. This writes a
1075 byte long file to your disk called TEXTENGINE2.1.CONFIG which
contains information about the screen colours, printer setup, wordwrap
status, macros, and whether you are using NTSC or not. This file is
automatically loaded up when Textengine is started. If TextEngine
cannot find the configuration file on the disk, or the file does not
exist, then the default settings are used.

Please note that the setup file for version 3.0 of TEXTENGINE is
incompatible with the file for versions 1 & 2, but is compatible with
version 2.1. Because of this, its filename still remains
TEXTENGINE2.1.CONFIG.


Final note.
I hope you find this program as useful as I do, and get many miles of
printout from it!

Many thanks to Mark Higgins and Martin Guy for testing and ideas.
Hello to Peter Lee, James Stuart (both Acorn users - yeuch), Warren
Saunders, Gary Taylor, and everyone else.

Keep on Amiga-ing.

Potential Difference rule the Nimbus network!

Anyway the wind blows... (Your musical talent will be missed, Freddie)