The Quoter FKEY was written as a direct result of a need on a local Mac™ BBS, Just Another Board (JAB). My Quoter FKEY can be used on any BBS or elsewhere, when replying to other people’s messages, so that people reading your reply can see what specifically you are replying to. Quoting on a BBS is normally done by prefixing each line of text by a “> ” sequence, e.g.
> This is a quote.
Since words can wrap differently when quoted, doing this manually for quotes other than very short ones is a real pain. With my Quoter FKEY, you can concentrate on the message, not the hassle of quoting it — the FKEY does all the work for you. It automatically handles word wrapping, quoting, and even nested quotes (with some limitations), and optionally plays a user-specified sound. There are many different cases this program handles, but you will find that it always (or at least almost always) delivers consistent quotes.
INSTALLATION:
There are several ways to install the FKEY, depending on how you organise your disk. Personally, I use Suitcase™ to open the FKEY file, but if you prefer you can use a FKEY moving utility (such as the FKEY Manager) to copy it into a large FKEY file, or indeed the System file. You could also use ResEdit™ to copy the FKEY resource into your System file, or one of several other utilities that are available. Another good place to install it is in the comms application itself, that way the FKEY will only be available in that program (which is the only place you are likely to need it) — but remember to re-install it when you upgrade the application!
Also provided with the FKEY are two other files: a sound and a QuicKeys™ macro. (If either of these items are missing, they can be obtained directly from Dejal Userware™: see below). The sound is played if installed in your System file or an open sound suitcase, when the text has been successfully quoted. I liked the optional sound facilities of ZTerm™ so much, that I’ve included a sound for quoting too, even though quoting takes no perceptable time to do, so it’s not as useful as the sounds in ZTerm.
To install the sound, simply drop the file on your System file (if under System 7.x) or use a sound copying utility, such as Riccardo Ettore’s highly recommended Sound Mover™ (if under System 6.0.x). Make sure it remains named “Quote”, otherwise it won’t be played. You can use any sound you like, or none. If you use your own sound, make sure you rename it as “Quote”. I thought that this sound was quite appropriate: it’s HAL from 2001 saying “I am waiting for your reply.” — can’t get better than that! (If you have a better sound, tell me; better yet, send it to me. I have a huge collection of sounds, if anyone wants more sounds: see below for details of how you can get some, or a catalogue.)
The other file is a QuicKeys macro, which makes quoting a one-touch operation: you simply select the text to quote, and press Command-N (or whatever other sequence you prefer, e.g. a function key if you have an extended keyboard), and the text is copyed, the FKEY is activated, and the text is pasted back to the modem.
USAGE:
To use the FKEY (once it’s installed, of course), simply select some text to be quoted, copy it into the Clipboard, and press Command-Shift-5 (or whichever number you have renumbered the FKEY to) to activate it. If for some reason there is a problem (e.g. the text is longer than 32K worth, or there isn’t enough memory to quote the text, or there isn’t any text in the Clipboard), the FKEY will beep once, but normally the text will be quoted, any quotation sound you have installed will be played, and you can then simply paste the text into the application (if using ZTerm, you don’t even have to select where to paste it: the characters will be pasted directly to the modem). That’s it.
TRUNCATION QUOTING:
Sometimes you may find the powerful word wrapping features of my Quoter FKEY actually gets in your way, e.g. when quoting a textual picture, or some other display that only looks good laid out the way it is. The FKEY has an additional feature to let you quote such text blocks with no formatting applied: a quote marker (“> ”) is added at the start of each line, and any surplus characters are truncated. Nothing more. To use this method rather than the normal one, simply press the Caps Lock key before activating the FKEY (and remember to turn it off again after the text has been quoted!). When you want to use the normal intelligent quoting method, make sure Caps Lock is off.
PARAGRAPH BREAKS:
Different people break their text up into paragraphs in different ways. Most common — and clearest in my opinion — is seperating each paragraph with a blank line (as I have in this document). If the person you are quoting didn’t leave a blank line, but simply hit Return once and maybe inserted a few spaces to mark the beginning of a new paragraph, it is very difficult for a computer program to determine where the break is — after all, every line in comms programs ends with a Return character. What I have done for the default settings is assume that any line shorter than 40 characters indicates the end of a paragraph, and longer lines are not. This results in the correct interpretation more often than not — this and other features can be customised: see below.
There are two exceptions to this: firstly, short line handling isn’t handled for the first line of text in the Clipboard, since you may have started quoting from near the end of a line. Secondly, a blank line is always inserted between the end of any nested quotes and the remainder of the message, even if there are more than 40 characters and no blank line.
NESTED QUOTES:
Nested quotes are where you are quoting a message that already contains a quote. Without special handling, the Quoter FKEY would mix the quote symbols within a line, which wouldn’t look too great. Note: the following description only applies to the standard nested quotes, which can be of the form of “Joe> …”. If you have the alternative nested quote STR# resource installed, multiple nested quote blocks are supported for those markers: see the next paragraph for details. Handling nested quotes is somewhat difficult, but the best solution I have come up with is to look at the first line of text, and see if it contains a “>” character in it. If not, it is assumed that there are no nested quotes in the selected text. If there is, nested quotes are handled specially until a line appears where there is no “>” character, then normal quoting is started for the remainder of the text. Note that it works equally well if there is a space after the “>” character or if there isn’t, and any text before the “>” is treated as part of the quote marker. If you don’t want nested quotes handled for some reason, simply ensure that the first line doesn’t contain the “>” character; conversely, if you do, make sure it does. You don’t need to understand exactly how it works: just use my Quoter FKEY, and hopefully it will do what you expect.
As of version 1.4, multiple alternative nested quote markers are also recognised. This feature lets you quote a message containing multiple nested quote blocks, and also successfully quote a message that includes a quote that uses a different marker than the conventional “>”. As shipped, these include “*”, “|>”, “|”, “!”, “:” and “>” (the latter is included for multiple nested quote support). If you find someone using a different symbol (or even a sequence of characters, e.g. perhaps “Quote:”, you can add it to the STR# resource: see the CUSTOMISATION section below. In order for these to be recognised, one of them must be the first character on a line, any line, unlike the normal nested quote marker (normally “>”), which will be recognised anywhere within the first line only. This is to prevent Quoter FKEY from mistakenly thinking a sentence like “Wow, what a wonderful quoting tool!” is a nested quote. NOTE: these alternative nested quote markers will only be available if the STR# resource can be found: if you installed the FKEY via an FKEY moving utility, it probably won’t copy this resource. If you open the existing FKEY file using Suitcase, or copy all of the resources into the System or elsewhere via ResEdit, the alternatives will be available.
CUSTOMISATION:
My Quoter FKEY will work very well without any modifications, but in certain circumstances it may be necessary or desirable to customise it. Now, it is possible to alter some aspects, using ResEdit™. This section is aimed at power users, and can be skipped. Within the provided file you will find a ‘QPrf’ resource with a corresponding ‘TMPL’ (template) resource, and a ‘STR#’ resource. When you install the FKEY, also copy these resources across if you want to modify the settings (if the ‘QPrf’ resource is missing or has the wrong ID number the default settings will be used, which are the same as those in the ‘QPrf’ resource as shipped). The following is a description of each of the options in the ‘QPrf’ resource:
• Prefs Version: Do not alter the value of this field.
• Don’t Play Sound: If this is set to 1 the sound will not be played even if it is installed; if 0 it will always be played when installed.
• Intelligent Quoting on Caps Lock: If this is set to 1 the normal function of the Caps Lock key will be reversed: the FKEY will use truncation quoting unless the Caps Lock key is pressed; if 0 it will use truncation quoting only when the Caps Lock key is pressed.
• Leave Surplus CRs: If this is set to 1 any Return characters before the first non-Return character or after the last non-Return character in the Clipboard will be left, and thus included in the quote; if 0 they will be filtered out, which is tidier.
• Line Length: The length of each line, expressed in characters. Normally 79, if you are using a larger point size or a smaller window you might want to change it to 39 or 40, or whatever. The valid range is indicated — if you use a value outside the range for this or the following option, the resource as a whole will be treated as invalid, and the defaults will be used for all settings.
• Length for Para Break Lines: Any lines shorter than this number will be treated as being paragraph breaks rather than part of the same paragraph. This is typically set at half the line length value.
• Quote Marker and Nested Marker: You can alter the symbol used for quoting and / or that recognised as a nested marker, if you wish. The convention is to use the “>” symbol for both, but you may prefer to use a different symbol (I would strongly recommend you leave it as “>” though, to avoid hassles for other people quoting your quotes).
The default values for the 0 / 1 options are always 0. You should leave all items marked Reserved set to 0.
In addition to this prefs resource, there is a STR# resource, that contains a list of alternative nested quote markers that are recognised. To add a new marker (any length), simply add it to this list. See the section above for more information.
If you like, you can install multiple copies of the FKEY in various applications and have different settings for each! (You can’t open multiple copies with Suitcase or similar products, though, since only the preferences from the most recently opened edition will be used.) If you would like any other features included in these “preferences”, please let me know.
RELEASE & CHANGE HISTORY:
• 1.4: 4 May 1993; Added the option of customising the quote and nested quote marker symbols. Also added the alternative nested quote markers, and support for multiple nested quotes within the text (at last!!). I needed to do this to use Quoter when corresponding with my friend, Lee Smith, of Australia. She uses a “*” symbol for quoting, which Quoter wouldn’t recognise. This version is dedicated to you, Lee! I also added simple styled text support: if the Clipboard contains styled text, the quoted text will be in the same style as the first character.
• 1.3: 8 August 1992; Added the customisation features and surplus Return stripping. Both of these features were inspired by comments from Flash Sheridan of the US, who also kindly paid the suggested $5. Thanks!
• 1.2: 18 June 1992; Added the truncation quoting feature, described above, and a few cosmetic fixes.
• 1.1: 8 June 1992; Added support for certain types of paragraph breaks without blank lines: at the end of a nested quote and when the line length is quite short (except for the first line, as explained above).
• 1.0: 12 May 1992; First public release.
ABOUT:
This FKEY is being released as Donationware. You may give it away to anyone, provided it is unmodified and you include all the files described above. Since it’s not Shareware (yet), you may continue to use it without paying me any money, however I strongly suggest you donate something (e.g. $5 or $10) if you like it enough to continue using it. This will encourage me to continue providing free or virtually-free software, in addition to my work on paying Shareware products. I am continuing to develop Quoter FKEY, and am actually thinking about changing it into a control panel to make access and customisation easier — if I do, it will definitely be Shareware, and anyone who donates money in the meantime will be automatically registered.
If you come across any bugs, please let me know. Rest assured I have checked it quite extensively, and found it works fine on my machine and those of my beta testers, but I accept no responsibility if it trashes your hard disk or blows up your Mac.
You may be interested in other programs I’ve written, including some high quality Shareware applications. Write to the address below, or contact me via e-mail, for more information. If you want to receive the Dejal Userware™ disk, which includes every program I have written and released as Shareware or Freeware, plus my sound catalogue, send US$5 or provide your credit card details (I can accept VISA, MasterCard, Bankcard and American Express, as well as cash & checks in any major currency or international money orders) — I can even accept credit card orders via e-mail!
NOTE: If the copyright date of this version is more than a few months old, there is a good chance that I’ve released a new version since this one. If you contact me, I will tell you what is the latest version. Ordering the Dejal Userware disk will ensure that you get the latest versions of all my Shareware and Freeware. (I still get registrations based on the first released version of SndConverter™, even though it has been upgraded many times since then!)
Please let me know if you use this program, by writing or e-mailing:
David Lambert
Dejal Userware
12 Scorpio Place
Mairangi Bay
Auckland 10
NEW ZEALAND
Internet and AOL: dejal@deepthought.kiwi.gen.nz
CompuServe: via Internet (preferably) or 100033,2435
