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Text File | 1987-11-13 | 10.9 KB | 232 lines | [TEXT/IDLN]

A. Welcome to Afterthought -------------------- A(1). What is Afterthought? -------------------- The Afterthought Editor is a desk accessory programming editor, modeled after MDS Edit. It is disk-based, and can read documents of up to 8,000,000 bytes. Its features include true tabs, full undo, auto-indent, case-insensitive Find, and jump to line number. It can open two documents at the same time, and it prints documents as well. A(2). How to Get Afterthought -------------------- Afterthought is distributed exclusively by Jimmy Mac Software. Order it by sending $20.00 to: Jimmy Mac Software P.O. Box 957 Murfreesboro, Tennessee 37133 You will get back a disk with the fully-functional version of Afterthought, a utility to help you run Afterthought with memory hogs like TML Pascal, and a printed Users' Guide. Updates are free; you can always get a copy of the current version of Afterthought if you will send your original Afterthought disk, plus $1.00 for packaging and postage. A(3). Technical Support -------------------- Jimmy Mac Software will be happy to help you with any problems you might encounter while using Afterthought. You can write Jimmy Mac at: Jimmy Mac Software P.O. Box 957 Murfreesboro, Tennessee 37133 or send Genie electronic mail to CLIFF. B. Using Afterthought -------------------- Afterthought is modelled after MDS Edit, so if you are familiar with that program, you shouldn't have any trouble using Afterthought. When you choose Afterthought from the desk accessory menu (the Apple menu), a new window, entitled “Afterthought : untitled” appears. This is the Afterthought editing window; its title will always be “Afterthought : ” followed by the name of the document. Afterthought also adds a new menu, titled “AEdit”, to the menu bar, and it uses the Edit menu that should already be there (if there's no Edit menu in your application, don't worry; the standard keyboard equivalents will still work). Initially, the window contains copyright and other information; you can clear this with the New command. B(1). Opening Files -------------------- You can open documents with the usual New and Open commands. There are two subtleties, though. First, you never close a document; an open document is closed automatically when you open a new one on top of it. If you have made any changes to the document, you will be asked if you want to save it first. DO NOT CLICK THE CLOSE BOX! Clicking the close box means Quit, not Close. Second, there are actually TWO documents open at all times: a “foreground” document visible in the window, and an invisible “background” document. You can switch between them with the Window command. B(2). Editing -------------------- Afterthought is designed to work as a programming editor; it does not word-wrap, and it automatically indents each new line the same number of tabs and spaces the line above was indented. It supports true tabs; that is, it places tab stops at intervals across the window and skips to the next tab stop when you type a tab. (You can set the tab spacing with the Format command.) It supports all the standard Edit commands, including Undo, even if the host application does not have an Edit menu (that is, the keyboard equivalents Z, X, C and V for Undo, Cut, Copy and Paste work even without an Edit menu). The arrow keys will move the insertion point (so long as there is a blinking insertion point, instead of a text selection), and the Enter key will scroll the insertion point into the window without changing the text. B(3). Printing -------------------- Afterthought has two print commands: the standard Print... and Quick Print. Print does a what-you-see-is-what-you-get, formatted print. Quick Print skips the formatting and writes directly to the printer. Quick Print is faster (as the name suggests) than Print... but Print... produces better looking documents. It uses Macintosh fonts (Quick Print uses the printer's font) and handles tabs correctly (Quick Print treats tabs characters as spaces). B(4). Quitting -------------------- Afterthought does not have a Quit command. The only way to quit Afterthought is by clicking the close box of the Afterthought window. If you do that, it's final; there's no way to cancel a quit. (There's actually a second way to quit: quit the host application. Afterthought will go through a normal quit, asking if you want to save changes and so on.) B(5). Disk and Memory Errors -------------------- Afterthought is disk-based, and it may run out of disk space. On the other hand, it must keep some information in memory, and it may run out of RAM. It operates with a 100-line, 8000-character margin of safety. If it runs out of disk or memory, it can finish whatever it is doing at the moment before it must shut down. For example, if you paste 30 lines but there is only enough disk space for 15, it will paste all 30 because the 100-line margin means there is actually space for 115. Having successfully completed the Paste command, Afterthought will post an error message, and then go through a normal Quit sequence, asking if you want to save changes. The only time you need to worry about your data is if you did something that involved more than 100 lines (or more than 8000 characters). There's a subtlety here: you must consider not just what you are putting in, but what you are taking out as well. If you delete or type over or replace text, the deleted text is copied to a special undo record BEFORE it is removed from the edit record. Thus, you should neither add nor delete more than 100 lines at one time. C. The AEdit Menu -------------------- C(1). About Afterthought... -------------------- The About Afterthought command closes the current foreground document and replaces it with information about Afterthought. If you have made any changes to the original document, you will be asked if you want to save them, and you can cancel the command at that time. C(2). New -------------------- The New command closes the current foreground document and replaces it with an empty, untitled document. If you have made any changes to the original document, you will be asked if you want to save them, and you can cancel the command at that time. C(3). Open... -------------------- The Open command closes the current foreground document and replaces it with a previously-saved document. If you have made any changes to the original document, you will be asked if you want to save them, and you can cancel the command at that time. You can also cancel the Open command at the open-document dialog; the original document will remain open. C(4). Window -------------------- Afterthought always has two documents open (either or both of which may be blank). It displays only one at a time; this is the FOREGROUND document. The undisplayed document is called the BACKGROUND document. The Window command switches the foreground document (visible in the window) with the background document (invisible). This is the only command that affects the background document; all others (New, Open, ect) affect the foreground. C(5). Insert... -------------------- The Insert command inserts a previously-saved document into the foregound document at the insertion point (or in place of the text selection). You can cancel this command at the open-document dialog. C(6). Save -------------------- The Save command saves the current foreground document to disk. If the document has not previously been saved, you will be prompted for a name to save it under, and you can cancel the command at this point. THIS COMMAND IS DISABLED IN THE DEMO VERSION. C(7). Save As... -------------------- The Save As command will save the current foreground document under a new name or in a different folder (or both). You will be prompted for the new name or folder; you can cancel the command at this point. THIS COMMAND IS DISABLED IN THE DEMO VERSION. C(8). Format... -------------------- The Format command will display a Format dialog, from which you can select the font, font size, tab width and creator signature for the current foreground document. The tab width is measured as a multiple of the width of a space character. The Make Default button will save your selections and use them the next time you open a New document, or open an existing document that does not have the MDS Edit format resources. C(9). Show Invisibles -------------------- The Show Invisibles / Hide Invisibles command toggles the current foreground document between the standard editing mode, and one in which invisible characters (such as spaces, tabs and illegals) are replaced by special visible characters. Spaces are replaced by a little diamond, tabs by a triangle, and illegals by an upside-down question mark. (The Show Invisibles command does not display carriage returns.) C(10). Select All -------------------- The Select All command selects the entire foreground document. C(11). Find... -------------------- The Find command displays a dialog in which you may type a string to search for. Case is ignored. If there is some text already selected when the Find command is issued, this text is automatically copied into the dialog and selected. The menu commands work even with the Find dialog active; in particular, you can switch between background and foreground, or paste. C(12). Go to... -------------------- The Go To command displays a dialog which tells you how many lines there are in the current foreground document, and the number of the line in which the current selection begins. You can type in the number of another line, and Afterthought will jump to it. The menu commands work even with the Go To dialog active; in particular, you can switch between background and foreground, or paste. C(13). Page Setup -------------------- The Page Setup command puts up the usual setup dialog. The Print command will also go through this dialog if you have changed printers; Page Setup is provided as a separate menu command in case you want to change any of the settings. THIS COMMAND IS DISABLED IN THE DEMO VERSION. C(14). Print... -------------------- The Print command displays the Page Setup dialog (if you have changed printers without calling the Page Setup command), then the Print dialog, and finally prints the current foreground document. The printed text is identical to that displayed on the screen, except that it does not display invisible characters. You can cancel the command at either dialog. THIS COMMAND IS DISABLED IN THE DEMO VERSION. C(15). Quick Print -------------------- The Quick Print command immediately prints the whole foreground document directly to the printer, without any dialogs and without any formatting. It uses the printer's character set, and transliterates tabs into spaces. It is faster, and uglier, than the standard Print. THIS COMMAND IS DISABLED IN THE DEMO VERSION.