GEnie Livewire e-zine/LW9408MM.ZIP/MAGIC.TXT

Text File | 1994-07-26 | 10.4 KB | 263 lines

Last month, we talked about the joys of GE Mail,
and I invited you to write me, to see how it all
worked. Many of you did, and I discovered that you
can't speel or t ype any bettter than I can! So
this month, let's talk about editing.

Everyone at one time or another makes an error in
typing. We've used poor punctuation, poor spelling
or made a less-than-exquisite choice of words.
Right up to the very instant you hit [RETURN] after
typing *S, though, you can change whatever you want
in the body of text you have created on GEnie.

Simple Line Editing

GEnie's editor has taken a lot of flack for being
hard to use. Like most reputations (except for the
one about British cars leaking oil), this one is
based more in legend than fact. GEnie's editor
requires a little thought and planning, but it's by
no means difficult to use. And once you've learned
a few commands and how they affect your prose,
you'll be impressed with the power available
literally at your fingertips.

First off, we need some way to signal GEnie that
what you're typing is some kind of an editing
command, rather than text. Just as Real-Time
Conferences and ChatLines use a slash (/) in the
first position on a line to indicate that the
following text is a command to GEnie itself, we'll
be concerned with the asterisk ([SHIFT]+[8] or *)
in the first column of text. This tells GEnie that
you want to do something with text you've already
created. For the most part, the commands we'll
discuss here are usable in GE Mail or on the
Bulletin Boards.

Most editing commands take the form of
Star-Line-Literals-Modifiers on GEnie. Not all of
the elements must be present for the command to
work. They all begin with an asterisk, or star.
Most need a line number, except for the preview
command, *P, and the terminators, the *S and *X
commands which send the final text to GEnie or let
you change your mind about the whole thing. And the
resequencing command, *R, changes all of the line
numbers, so it doesn't need a line reference.

The Nitty Gritty

First up, let's talk about one command not
available in GE Mail, and the reason it isn't
available. *P is available only in Bulletin Board
posts, and allows you to preview your text as it
will appear online to anyone reading it. GE Mail,
on the other hand, has no formatting at all. What
you type and what you send is what they'll get. But
posts in Bulletin Boards are massaged so they look
good (most of the time) to everyone, no matter what
kind of computer or software they're using on
GEnie. Some folks read everything in 80-column
format, but for many people, GEnie is only 75
columns wide, or 65, or even 40. To see how your
text will look in 80-column format, you need only
type *P at the beginning of a line and hit your
[RETURN] key. To see how it looks in any other
format, put a comma after the "p" and a space,
followed by the number you're interested in.

 *P      Shows your text in 80 columns.
 *P, 55  Shows your text reformatted
          for 55-column screen widths.
 *P, 68  Shows your text reformatted for
          68-column screens.

If your posting has columns or tables of data, you
can use the *SN command to signal GEnie that you
want the text "Saved" with "No" formatting. But
don't fall into the habit of using this all the
time, because it really makes life hard on those
who, for whatever reason, choose to view GEnie in
other-than-80 columns.

When you have everything as you want it, *S will
"Save" your text, or "Send" it to either the
Bulletin Board or to the people you've chosen to
receive your GE Mail.

 *S      Means you're done and GEnie can
          have the text now.
 *SN     Means you're done and you want the
          work saved without formatting.
          (Bulletin Board only.)

If you decide that you've got one too many blank
lines, you can delete one by letting GEnie know
which one you no longer need.

 *D,23   Will delete line 23.
 *D,42   Will delete line 42.

If you want to delete a range of lines, you can
indicate that by a hyphen between the first line
number and the last one.

 *D,2-5  Will delete line 2, line 3,
          line 4 and line 5.
 *D,9-21 Will delete lines 9 through 21,
          including line 9 and line 21.

Once you've deleted lines, you may want to re-read
your work in context to see how it looks without
the old text. To list your message, type *L. To see
only a small range of text, indicate which lines
you're interested in, by following the "L" with a
number, or a range of numbers.

 *L      Will list the whole message.
 *L,18   Will list only line 18.
 *L,2-5  Will show you line 2, line 3,
          line 4 and line 5.

Note the difference between *L and *P on a Bulletin
Board. *List or *L, shows you how the text was
entered, line by line. *P shows you how it will be
seen as a complete Bulletin Board posting. With
editing, your text may be entered with only one or
two words on each line. GEnie will reformat that
into paragraphs that look great, but you'd never
know it to read a *LISTing!

If you've really messed up and need to delete a
whole paragraph, you can go back and *Insert lines
of text by telling GEnie the last GOOD line you
want follow.

*I,15  Will let you enter a new 16th line of text.
*I,21  Will let you enter a new 22nd line of text.

This is all well and good, but what if you've
chosen the wrong "its" again or spelled a name
wrong? You can fix that with the *CHAnge command.
Its format is much like the others. The most
noticable difference is the use of delimiters.
These are characters you choose to indicate the
beginning and the ending of the text you want found
and the text you want to replace it with. You can
use any non-alpha character, but it's best to stick
with one until special circumstances indicate a
need to change it.

CHAnging Your Mind

In its simplest form, you're indicating to GEnie
that you want to make a change, what line you want
to affect, and in what way, as *CHA 23/Old Text/New
Text/. This tells GEnie to *CHAnge line 23. It
tells GEnie to look for the string delimited as
'Old Text' and when it finds it, to change it to
'New Text' instead. In truth, you needn't have the
word 'Text' in there at all, since it's the same
both ways, but play along with me, okay?

What if you've decided you want to change a word
you've used several times in the body of your text?
*CHA 5/Oldish/Newer/* tells GEnie to start on line
5 and to change EVERY instance of the string
'Oldish' to the string 'Newer' throughout the
entire message. Pretty handy, huh? But what if you
started out calling him Mister Green three times
and then learned it was Greene? You can change
every instance of Green to Greene, but GEnie's
editor will do just that -- and you'll end up with
three of them "Greene" and the rest as "Greenee"
then! To limit the number of changes, type *CHA
4/Green/Greene/3 and GEnie will start on line 4,
and change every "Green" to "Greene until it's done
that three times.

How can you ever be sure? You could continually
type *P in the Bulletin Boards, or type *L in GE
Mail, but a better way is the Change-And-Verify
option of the *CHAnge command. *CHAV
25/Green/Greene/3 will make the changes for you,
and then show you each new line as it's been made
to look with the new text 'Greene' inserted -- all
three times. If the final '3' were an asterisk,
then GEnie would show you EVERY line where it
changed 'Green' into 'Greene'.

Sometimes subtle changes in the way you do your
editing can have remarkably different results. This
is especially true since some words have spaces in
front of them and some have spaces following. GEnie
disregards spaces at the end of a line, so you
can't always count on that being there. After
previewing a text, you may find an error but not
know for certain whether it's on line 3, line 4 or
line 5 (since *Previewed text contains no line
numbers). If you're certain that it's the first
instance of a string of text, you can use line #1
in the change command, and GEnie will start looking
at line #1, but of course won't change anything
until it has found the targetted text -- on
whatever line that may be. *CHA 1/Old/New/ will
work on a 500-line letter, even if the text string
'Old' doesn't appear until the very last line.

Remember that since it is a text editor, it is
case-sensitive. If you're looking for the string
'onFriday' and want to change it to 'on Friday'
don't enter this as *CHAV 1/OnFriday/on Friday/
because the string 'OnFriday' won't be found.

When should you change delimiters? The most obvious
reason to do this is when they no longer work. If
you're entering a series of stock prices, which
typically involve fractions, then the slash
character "/" may be inappropriate. You can use the
period, semicolon or any other delimiter then -- as
long as you are consistent!

*CHA 12#13 5/8#13 1/2#*  Changes every instance of
 "13 5/8" into "13 1/2"

It can be confusing to read, but to GEnie's
computers, it's a snap. GEnie simply looks where
it's told for what it's told to find, and then
changes it into whatever you've indicated you want
it to be. ANY text between the first pair of pound
signs will be converted into whatever text is
between the second and the third pound sign.

There's currently no way to make changes across
lines of entered text. By this, we mean that if
part of your text is on line 13 and the rest is on
line 14, you'll need to enter changes to that part
which is on line 13 first, and then change the
part that's on line 14. For this reason, GEnie's
editor is sometimes known as a "line editor." It
works only on one line at a time. (Even global
changes and multiple changes, while they occur
several times throughout a block of text, are
actually only modified one at a time,
line-by-line.)

The GEnie Shrink

Editing can be frustrating but it can also be
therapeutic. It's wonderfully cleansing to write a
letter to your boss as "Dear Dirt-For-Brains" and
then change every instance of "Dirt-For-Brains" to
"Mr. McGillicuddy". Just be SURE that you change
them all!

I'd like to hear from you. Write to me at the GE
Mail address of MARK.HIATT or drop by GENIEus, the
GEnie Users' RoundTable, and ask whatever questions
you have about editing text on GEnie. Don't forget
we have online classes covering this kind of thing
in Real-Time Conferences every week.