Shareware Grab Bag/Shareware Grab Bag.iso/002/nyword.arc/README.1ST

Text File | 1985-12-15 | 13.6 KB | 309 lines

                  THE "NEW YORK WORD" WORD PROCESSOR

                            MAGMA SYSTEMS
                         138 - 23 HOOVER AVE.
                       JAMAICA, NEW YORK  11435

    Well, here it is - release 1.0 of NYW, dated 12/16/85. In the .ARC
file, I have included -

  WP.EXE   - the executable version of the word processor
  WPDEFAUL - system config file
  WPFORMAT - format block 0 config file
  WPPRMENU - printer menu config file
  *.PRT    - printer code config files
  *.DOC    - introduction, history, installation, registration
  NYW.HLP  - keystroke chart

    NYW  was  written  almost  totally  in  C, with a few I/O routines
optimized in assembly language. Lattice C version 2.14 was used, large
model, with stack checking included (probably accounting for about  1K
of  excess  code).  PLink86  was  used  for the linker - the footnote,
calculator, printer, paginator, and table of  contents/index  routines
are overlaid to save space.

    I   would   really   appreciate   any  bug  reports,  suggestions,
enhancements, etc. This is YOUR program. Source code is available at a
yet-to-be-decided price, so contact me if interested. If  any  of  you
are good C programmers and feel like helping out, then contact me too.
In  particular,  I'm  interested in proportional spacing algorithms (I
would like to do something with kerning), spelling algorithms, and who
knows what else. Even if you don't have the source code, I  am  always
eager to discuss the technical aspects of NYW.

    As   mentioned   in  the  documentation,  this  is  user-supported
software. If you end up using this  program,  a  donation  of  $35  is
requested.  This will enable me to further develop NYW, and defray the
cost of postage, disks, and phone  bills.  Registered  users  will  be
entitled  to receive a user's manual, any upgrades, and the below men-
tioned mail-merge program and label printer. The next upgraded version
should have a keyboard re-map facility (the UNIX version  already  has
one).

    Below I have included the prospectus that goes along with the UNIX
version of NYW (still commercially available - contact me). All of the
features, except the spelling checker, are present in the PC version.

    Enjoy!!!

                                Marc Adler
                                12/15/85



                   THE "NEW YORK WORD" WORD PROCESSOR


BACKGROUND

   The New York  Word  (NYW)  was  created  in  1984  to  run  on
computers  which  use the UNIX(TM) operating system. UNIX is fast
becoming the industry standard in operating systems, as witnessed
by the support of such major companies as IBM, AT&T, and DEC.  In
late  1985,  NYW  was  ported  to  run under MS-DOS, the standard
operating  system  for  the  IBM  Personal  Computer.  NYW  is  a
state-of-the-art  word processing package available at a low cost
to end-users and  OEMs.  Source  code  is  also  available  at  a
reasonable cost.

   NYW  is capable of supporting a multi-user environment without
noticeable degradation  of  the  system.  There  is  currently  a
30-user  installation running at a major government instituion in
Washington DC.

FLEXIBLE AND FAST

  NYW utilizes your system's main memory  to  the  fullest.  This
way,  you  can  have  complete  random access to any part of your
document. Operations like reformatting (global or paragraph)  and
re-pagination seem to happen in an instant. With the introduction
of  CPU's  (like  the Motorola 68020) which have built-in virtual
memory hardware, you can edit extremely large text files  totally
in memory.

   When  a  user  starts  an NYW editing session, the NYW program
examines several files. These files contain the default values of
several  parameters  which  affect  the  editing  session.  These
parameters  deal  with  items like margin settings, tab settings,
printer options, session modes, etc. By changing  the  values  in
these  default  files, a user can customize an editing session to
suit his particular needs.

GENERAL EDITING FEATURES

   NYW has a full complement  of  editing  features.  The  cursor
movement   commands   allow  you  to  move  up  and  down  lines,
paragraphs, and pages. or can go directly to any line number,  or
any  number of lines relative from where the cursor currently is.
You can place up  to  26  bookmarks  at  various  points  in  the
document,  and  return  to  any point at any time. You can scroll
continuously up or down  the  document,  with  a  user-selectable
scrolling speed.

   There  are  ten  buffers  which  you  can  use  to  store text
temporarily. By using these buffers, you can  move  or  copy  any
portion  of text from one place to another. You can mark a region
of text and then delete it, save it, write it out to a file, draw
a box around it, or change the case of the letters in it.

   To enhance your document, you can choose from special  effects
like   boldfacing,  underlining,  overstriking,  subscripts,  and
superscripts. If your printer is capable of it,  you  can  change
fonts  at any point in the document. There are also several kinds
of tabs - regular, decimal, center, and flush right.

   Pagination is extremely fast. You can re-paginate  a  document
at   any   point,  and  NYW  will  renumber  the  pages  for  you
automatically. You can choose to handle widow and orphan lines to
produce a cleaner looking document.

   NYW  allows  you to have multi-line header and footers in your
document. You can even put in  "temporary"  headers  and  footers
which  will  appear  on  the printer, but will not be saved along
with the document.

   Other desireable features are an escape to the UNIX/DOS shell,
and the ability to redirect the output of  a  command  into  your
document.

FOOTNOTES

   NYW has  full  footnote  capabilities,  with  the  ability  to
automatically  renumber  footnotes  when  you  insert or delete a
footnote. You have your choice of having the footnotes appear  at
the  end  of  a  page,  or  the  end  of a document. You can edit
footnotes as if they were regular text, or flash a listing of the
currently defined footnotes across the screen.

MACROS

   NYW  has  full  macro  capabilities. You can intermix text and
keystroke commands in a macro and replay them at  any  time.  You
can also have libraries of macros, which you can read at any time
into your editing session. Any macros you define in a  file  will
be  saved  along with that file - thus you can build up an entire
dictionary of macros which can be inserted in a file at any time.
This is useful for "skeleton" documents, where you  can  take  an
outline  of a letter and paste text (ie macros) at various points
in the letter.

   Another  feature which greatly aids the user is the ability to
"capture" keystrokes.  If  the  user  must  repeat  a  series  of
keystrokes  a  few  times  in  a  row, then the user can type the
series in once, watch the effect the commands have,  then  replay
the series an arbitrary number of times.

TABLE OF CONTENTS & INDEX GENERATION

   NYW  comes  with  an  automatic  table  of  contents and index
generator.  The  user  has  a  choice  of  having  the  toc/index
generated  at  the  beginning/end  of the file, or written out to
another  document.   The   index   generator   will   also   take
consecutively  numbered pages (ie 4,5,6,8,9,10) and express those
pages as a range (ie - 4-6,8-10).

SPELLING CHECKER

   NYW also interfaces with the UNIX spelling program,  which  is
an  extremely  powerful  spelling  checker.  (See  the  Bell Labs
memorandum by McIlroy). It also has a spelling corrector - if you
chose, you have have suggested correct  spellings  flash  on  the
screen. The advantage of interfacing to the UNIX spelling checker
is  that  no  extra  space  is  required  for  a  massive English
dictionary. The user can also maintain his own private dictionary
which is checked along with the regular dictionary.

AUTOMATIC HYPHENATION

   NYW has automatic hyphenation. It uses  a  cross  between  the
Knuth  algorithm (incorporated in his TEX system), and the Gimpel
algorithm.  This  provides  a  fast,  accurate  hyphenator.  This
algorithm  has  been tested on a dictionary of 2000 common words,
and it performs virtually without error.

MAIL MERGE FACILITY

   The mail merge facility is extremely powerful, and  gives  the
user  a  small  programming language to do run-time calculations.
These  calculations  can  be  merged  into  a  letter,  and  then
recalculated for the next letter. The YACC compiler-generator was
used  to  write  this  language,  which  has a full complement of
arithmetic and string operations, along with  block  if-then-else
statements.

   There are several utility programs which come with NYW to make
the  mail  merge  program  more powerful. These programs take the
output of the mail merge program, and "filter"  it  in  different
ways so the user can use the results in another process.

   One  is  a  label  generating  program,  which  gives the user
parameters for the number of columns in  a  row  of  labels,  the
height  of  each label, and the width of each label. This program
can intermix labels which have a different number of lines - this
was traditionally a short-coming of many mail merge programs,  as
you  had  to maintain a separate mailing list for addresses which
had 3, 4 and 5 lines.

   We also can interface the mail merge program with popular UNIX
packages like Supercomp or Unify. We can write a  custom  program
so  the  output of the mail merge facility can be interfaced with
your favorite program.


REGULAR EXPRESSIONS

     The UNIX(TM) operating system pioneered the use  of  regular
expressions in pattern matching. Regular expressions allow you to
search  for  a  context,  such  as  "all lines beginning with the
letter a,b, or c", or "any occurence of two numbers followed by a
letter".  NYW  incorporates  regular       expressions  into  its
search-and-substitute   facility   to   allow   powerful  pattern
matching. You can also use regular expressions  in  NYW's  global
substitution facility.

TERMINAL INDEPENDENCE

   A  problem with many word processors is that they are designed
to work with only one kind of terminal. NYW can be configured  to
work  with  any intelligent alpha-numeric terminal in a matter of
hours.  It  uses  a  database  of  information   concerning   the
characteristics  of  terminals,  and  it  will  look  through the
database for the type of terminal you specify when you start  up.
Since the database is kept in character form, you can easily edit
it to add your own type of terminal.

   Along with the information about terminal characteristics, the
database  includes  information about the keystrokes you press to
invoke each NYW command. By changing this  information,  you  can
alter  the  keystrokes you press to invoke any command. With this
facility, you may want to put frequently  used  commands  on  the
terminal's  function  keys,  and  make  the  less frequently used
commands an ESCAPE key combination.

SPLIT-SCREEN EDITING

   Many times when you edit a document, you may wish that you can
see another document on the screen at the same time. NYW can edit
two  documents  or  different  parts   of   the   same   document
simultaneously,  each  document in its own separate window on the
screen. You can move or copy text from one window to the another.
The size of each window can be altered by the user,  so  you  can
have  a  window as little as 2 lines long, or both windows can be
full-screen size.

MATH CALCULATIONS

   There  are two kinds of calculators that come with NYW. One is
a desk calculator  that  allows  fully  parenthesizes  arithmetic
expressions.  You  can enter this calculator from the middle of a
NYW editing session in order to do some quick  calculations.  The
desk  calculator  comes  with  memory that can be recalled at any
instant.

   The second  calculator  operates  on  numbers  that  you  have
embedded  in  the  document  you  are  editing.  You can intermix
numbers in the document with numbers you enter at  the  keyboard,
use  parenthesized  expressions,  and  do automatic horizontal or
vertical totals at the touch of a key.

GRAPHICS

   NYW  allows  you  to  intermix  text  and  ASCII  line-drawing
graphics  in  the same document. At the touch of a keystroke, you
can go into graphics  mode,  and  use  several  keys  to  produce
horizontal and vertical lines, corners, and tees. This allows the
user to create charts, and integrate them into the document.

MULTI COLUMN EDITING

   In   addition  to  the  block  cut-and-paste  facilities,  NYW
supports cutting and pasting of columns of text. There is also  a
facility  for  taking  existing  text,  and  rearranging  it in a
multi-column format. This  feature  is  useful  to  magazine  and
newspaper publishers.

SAFETY FEATURES

   NYW  gives  the user two options to help prevent total loss of
data in the event of system crashes. NYW  will  create  a  backup
version of a file whenever you save your current editing session.
NYW  will  also save all of the keystrokes that you have typed in
an editing session. If the system crashes while you are editing a
document, you can replay any number of keystrokes at  a  time  to
recreate  your  document.  You can choose how many keystrokes NYW
will wait for before saving the current "batch" of keystrokes you
have typed.


INFORMATION

     For more information on NYW, contact :

      Marc Adler
      MAGMA Systems
      138-23 Hoover Ave.
      Jamaica, New York 11435
      [phone]
            793-5677