home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- PC-Write version 2.5 changes: March 5, 1985
-
- Editor - New Features
-
- 1. Merge facility (see enclosed new chapter).
-
- 2. Hard-Hyphen (operation 246): Ctrl \ enters a Hard Hyphen. It shows
- as a divide sign (hyphen with two dots) on the screen, and prints
- as a normal hyphen. Wordwrap and reformat do not break words at a
- Hard-Hyphen. It is treated like an alphabetic character and part
- of a word, like a Hard-Space.
-
- 3. Accent key (operation 426): the back-quote key (`, next to Enter)
- permits entering accented vowels and other special characters. It
- acts like a special back-arrow key that "overstrikes" the letter
- below it with an accent, such as overstriking e with ' (or ' with
- e) to get e with ` accent. To get a literal ` type a space then `
- twice (overstrike ` with space). Available character pairs are:
-
- ' and a ` and a ^ and a " and a " and A
- ' and e ` and e ^ and e " and e ' and E
- ' and i ` and i ^ and i " and i " and y
- ' and o ` and o ^ and o " and o " and O
- ' and u ` and u ^ and u " and u " and U
-
- , and c o and a ~ and n _ and a e and a
- , and C o and A ~ and N _ and o E and A
-
- / and c (cents) ? and ? (upside-down ?)
- - and L (Pounds) ! and ! (upside-down !)
- = and Y (Yen) 2 and 1 (1/2)
- t and P (Pt) 4 and 1 (1/4)
- - and f (Francs) < and < ( << )
- blank and ` is ` > and > ( >> )
-
- 4. Word count key (operation 425): press Ctrl-K to count total bytes,
- letters, words, and average letters per word. A letter is an
- upper or lower case alphabetic, a digit, an accented letter, a
- Greek letter, a Hard-Space, or a Hard-Hyphen. A word is every
- occurrance of a letter followed by a non-letter.
-
- 5. Although PC-Write still cannot edit files larger than 60 KB, it can
- now divide large files into pieces. When you try editing a file
- that's too big, it asks if you want to edit part of the file or
- cancel. If you request part of the file, you enter a byte offset
- at which to start reading. PC-Write changes the name of the file
- to the old name with a new extension, composed of the first two
- digits of the offset and $. If you edit FILE.XYZ at offset 12000,
- the name becomes FILE.12$. This name change tries to avoid using
- the same name for different parts of the file, but you should
- rename the file (with F1 F5) to a more meaningful name.
-
- 6. Dot commands in the editor Ruler file now set the number of lines
- per page, spacing, and so on for the Repage command (+F1 F2) and
- location (+F9) command.
-
- 7. %W in the Ruler file removes high-order bits from files, providing
- the ability to read Wordstar files. If you know of additional
- ways to translate Wordstar to PC-Write format, let me know.
-
- 8. %V in the Ruler file should speed up scrolling by line on the
- "compatible" computers which trap direct video access, such as the
- Attache, Epson Plus, and Morrow/Osborne Pivot.
-
- 9. %C in the Ruler file has no effect on an IBM monochrome display
- adapter. It only turns on colors if you are using a color
- graphics display adapter (or a PCjr). If you have both displays,
- use %B and %C lines to switch to the color monitor.
-
- Editor - Minor Changes
-
- 1. In Pushright mode, the Scroll Lock light on the PC/AT keyboard is
- OFF; in Overwrite, it is ON. So if the red light's on, you can
- type over text. Also, ED.EXE turns Scroll Lock off by default,
- which Lotus users and others seem to prefer.
-
- 2. When you press F2 to edit the Ruler line, PC-Write changes to
- Overwrite mode. When you leave the Ruler line, it goes back to
- whatever mode you were in before.
-
- 3. When ED edits a file on a specific drive, for example D:filenm.XYZ,
- it now looks for RULER files in the following order:
- 1. D:RULER.XYZ
- 2. RULER.XYZ
- 3. RULER.DEF
- You can keep a Ruler file on the same diskette as the file it
- applies to, or on your default drive. It does not look for
- D:RULER.DEF (a default Ruler file would be on the default drive
- anyway and looking for files takes time). Each of these attempts
- to find a Ruler file searches all available PATH's. Do we need a
- command line switch (it cannot be a Ruler file switch) to avoid
- looking for some of these Ruler files?
-
- 4. When reading a Ruler line from a Ruler file, all but the final
- capital margin L, P, B, R get converted to lower case.
-
- 5. In NUMBERS mode, the first key typed enters its KEY number. All
- other keys typed enter OPERATION numbers currently assigned to the
- key. This makes NUMBERS mode work better defining key sequences.
-
- 6. In a Ruler file key definition line, you can use " or ' to enclose
- text, such as A: "Alpha".
-
- New Dot Commands
-
- 1. We finally ran out of good single letter dot commands. We are
- CHANGING some of the existing dot commands to allow for new
- present and future commands. The changes are:
-
- old .J (all pages extra margin) to .X
- old .K (right pages extra margin) to .XR
- old .G (right page footer) to .FR
- old .I (right page header) to .HR
- old .V (vertical extra margin) to .XT
- old .B (bottom extra margin) to .XB
- old .X (header/footer extra margin) to .XH (header) .XF (footer)
-
- New dot commands:
-
- new .FL footer for left pages only
- new .FR footer for right pages only
- new .HL header for left pages only
- new .HR header for right pages only
- new .XL extra margin for left pages only
- new .XR extra margin for right pages only
- new .I Index entry (see below)
- new .IF Index filename
- new .IW Index entry minimum width
- new .IX Index entry leading symbol space
-
- 2. A dot followed by a digit is no longer considered a dot command.
-
- 3. Do not put a dot command on the same line as a page break.
-
- Page Printer - New Features
-
- 1. You can make indexes, tables of contents, lists of figures, etc.
- First include an initial .IF command (example: .IF:index.out) to
- indicate a file to store Index entries. If you do not include the
- IF command, then the .I commands themselves are ignored, so you
- can print drafts without always making an Index file.
-
- Next, include a .I commands for every entry. A simple .I command,
- such as ".I:word", puts a line into the Index file with "word"
- followed by the page number. When the page printer has finished,
- sort this file using the DOS SORT command. Then edit the Index
- file to the style you like. PC-Write does only the most essential
- part: making the file of words and page numbers.
-
- For example (all examples here do not include the leading dot):
-
- I:headhunters
- I:jungle law
- I:jungle lawyers
-
- These commands produce the following Index file entries:
-
- headhunters 12
- jungle law 117
- jungle lawyers 2
-
- The page number goes flush right on the line. The .IW:n command
- sets the total width of the line. The default width is 24.
-
- There are several special features of Index entries:
-
- 1. Index terms starting with non-alphabet symbols are alphabetized
- by their first real letter. Up to three non-alphabetic symbols
- in front of an index term can be handled, and up to three
- blanks go in front of every index term (the .IX:n command sets
- this from three to any number). For example, these Index
- entries:
-
- I:///flags
- I:*home key
- I:@@macros
- I:line bounds
-
- produce these Index file lines:
-
- ///flags
- *home key
- @@macros
- line bounds
-
- 2. Example of using the DOS SORT command:
-
- A>SORT /+4 <INDEX.OUT >INDEX.SRT
-
- This sorts the file INDEX.OUT to the file INDEX.SRT, starting
- at column 4 (columns 1, 2, and 3 contain special symbols). The
- SORT command sorts upper case before lower case, so make all
- your entries lower case (put a symbol like * before entries to
- be manually converted back to upper case after sorting).
-
- 3. You can use this process to make several lists: a table of
- contents, index, figure list, etc. To do this, flag every
- entry for (say) the table of contents with a TC/, for the
- figure list with a F/, and so on:
-
- I: TC/Birds of a feather
- I: F/One good tern deserves another
- I: index terns
-
- When the page printer processes these, it moves the slash to
- the beginning and adds one or two spaces to line up the entry:
-
- /TC Birds of a feather 3
- /F One good tern deserves another 117
- index terns 22
-
- Now the SORT command sorts all the / lines first. You'll have
- to edit the sorted file, extracting the / lines to a different
- file. Then sort this new file on the page number column.
-
- 4. You may want some entries emphasized. All font characters
- surrounding the index item get moved over to the page number.
- For example, pretending @ and | were font characters:
-
- I:@footers@
- I:@|headers
-
- gets changed into:
-
- footers @17@
- headers @|36|@
-
- Note that in the second line, matching ending font characters
- were inserted automatically after the page number.
-
- 2. New commands in RULER.PRT:
-
- $V=n,n,n,... end of line sequence (default 10,13)
- $J=n,n,n,... end of all (or left) page sequence (default 12)
- $K=n,n,n,... end of right page (only) sequence (default 12)
- $R no form feed (or other sequence) for LAST page
-
- 3. When you request skipping a page (the F3 response), the page printer
- prompts for a page number to skip to.
-
- 4. Trailing blanks get trimmed automatically. If you create forms with
- underlined spaces, make sure there's an end underline font at the
- end of each line to avoid trimming those spaces.
-
- 5. The P code (wheel change) in RULER.PRT files works now.
-
- 6. Maximum line length has been increased to 253 characters.
-