UPDATES TO ZWDOS VERSION 2.20 (Changes since v2.1): Copyright Ya-Gui Wei 1992 P.O. Box 2231, Bloomington Indiana 47402 => Changes to Licensing Policy ZWDOS version 2.20 will be distributed under the "share ware" concept. Each user will get a free trial period after which he/she should register by paying a small fee of $15. Failure to register after the free trial period will be considered an act of piracy. Personal users with full-time student status will get a free trial period which will last until he/she graduates. Other personal users will get a free trial period of 60 days. Business or institutional users gets a 1-day free trial period. Most of the current users (who are full time students) are not expected to pay until they leave school. (Refer to ZWDOS.DOC for exact wording of the licensing statement.) Answers to some hyperthetical questions: "If I register, will I be subsidizing student users?" No, most probably not. I will remain as the principle subsidizer for student users for the foreseeable future. If you register, it will simply mean that I won't be subsidizing you. And if you are not a student and is not unemployed, then we are on equal footing (you even may be better off than I am), and you probably shouldn't use my service for free. I could have spent the thousands of hours somewhere else, you know. :-) "I am a full time student and I can afford to register now. Is there any advantage for me to do so?" Yes, there is. For one, the registration fee is likely to go up in the future. Registering now would mean that you won't be paying the higher registration fee later on. In fact, all users should register before their free trial period expires, so that they can continue to use the software legally without interruption. => Font Libraries Changed (1) The 16x14 font library has been replaced by a 16x16 one, in order to improve print resolution. This font is dynamically converted to the needed sizes for video display purposes. (2) You may use 16x16 font libraries from other software packages (such as CCDOS) by using command line switch "/FN". This will allow you to save disk space by using only one copy of a font library for several packages. (3) The file FONTCACH.DAT has been eliminated. (4) ZWDOS now searches through all directories listed under "PATH" for its data files. This means if you have added the ZWDOS directory to the PATH, you no longer need to switch to the ZWDOS directory to run it. => Printer Support. - ZWDOS now supports printing on HP LaserJet printers, and IBM or Epson compatible 9-pin or 24-pin dot matrix printers. The procedure for printing Chinese text with ZWDOS is no different from printing ASCII texts. You can do print-screen, print from applications, copy file to PRN, or use the DOS PRINT command, etc. (When using DOS PRINT.EXE, it must be loaded after ZWDOS.) When printing Chinese (zW or HZ) text, the display screen must be already in Chinese mode. - PRINTING ON LASERJET: When printing on LaserJet, you can print the Chinese characters at 3 levels of quality: high, medium, or low, selectable from command line. (High quality printing takes longer than low quality printing.) You retain full control on the non-Chinese ASCII texts in the file through printer commands. Additionally, you can change the spacing of the Chinese characters by varying the spacing of the ASCII texts: each Chinese character is always as wide as two ASCII space characters. - PRINTING ON DOT MATRIX PRINTERS: the "print quality" switch has no effect on dot matrix printers. (24 pin printers always use "medium quality" fonts and 9 pin printers always use "low quality" fonts.) You retain full control on the appearance of the ASCII text. On 9 pin printers, the ASCII text may be printed as double-strike -- this is normal. - Cursor blinking will be slow during printing. - Printing Chinese Text from WordPerfect. WordPerfect (and other word processors) adds printer control code to the text being printed. These invisible codes may have surprising effects. For example, when printing zW text, printer codes added to the beginning of a line may render the line to be an invalid zW line (recall that 'zW' must be at the beginning of a line). For HZ text, if a line of HZ text is ill-formed, such as not closed with a ~} string, printer codes added to the end of a line may be mistakenly interpreted as Chinese characters. This is one more reason that we should follow the HZ standard closely. - See "Printer-related Command Line Switches" for more information. => Programming Interface. An application program interface has been provided so that users can write programs to take advantage of ZWDOS's Chinese IO capability. See file ZAPI.DOC for details. => User can now delete ZWDOS from memory. See command line switch /DEL. => Configuration file. Users may create a configuration file ZWDOS.CFG with any text editors and put commonly-used command line parameters there. Lines starting with '#' in the configuration file are considered comments. Since the configuration file is processed before the actual command line, you can temperarily override the configuration file settings through command line switches. => NEW COMMAND LINE SWITCHES. (1) Font Related Switches. - /FN - Font Name. Lets you use font libraries from other packages. Syntax is: "/FN=[[d:]\path\]filename". The filename specified will be the font file. (Square brackets "[]" indicate parts that may be omitted.) When using external font files, make sure that the font files are 16 by 16 in dimension and the characters are in GB order. - /S, /U, /W. These switches are now obsolete. Their functions have been replaced by /FN. - /FG=#,#,# - Font Gap. Use in conjunction with /FN if neccessary. GB font libraries typically have a gap between the symbols and the first zone (Qu1) ~{Gx~} of characters. The first # is the offset of actual font data in the font file, the second # indicates the first missing zone, and the third # refers to the last missing zone. Default is "/FG=0,7,14". (Some font files need "/FG=0,10,14".) (2) Printer Related Switches. - /PO=# - Printer POrt. # can be 1 or 2, default is 1. - /PV=#, /PV, /PH - Print Vertical or Horizontal. /PV=1 or /PV - text is printed in traditional, vertical way. /PV=0 or /PH - text is printed in modern, horizontal way. Default is horizontal. - /PT=p_type. Printer Type. P_type may be one of the following strings: none - no printer dm9 - dot matrix 9 pin (IBM or Epson compatible) eps24 - Epson compatible 24 pin dot matrix ibm24 - IBM compatible 24 pin dot matrix lj - laserjet printer (HP LaserJet compatible) Default is LaserJet. - /PQ=H, /PQ=M, /PQ=L. Print Quality, in High, Medium, or Low. Currently for LaserJet only. High quality printing takes longer. Default is /PQ=L. - /PB. Print Blank. Whether the HZ/zW delimiters (~}, zW, etc) are printed as blank spaces or not printed at all. When /PB=0, the delimiters are not printed at all. When /PB or /PB=1, the delimiters are printed as two ASCII spaces. This may be useful for line-justification purposes. Default is /PB=0. (3) Other Switches. - /H or /? - Display a summary of all command line switches. - /DEL. Delete ZWDOS from memory. Note: you may not be able to delete if some other TSRs have been loaded after ZWDOS. => Memory Usage/Requirement A restructuring of font storage contributed to a reduction of memory usage of ZWCGA by 30+K (down from 55K), and that of ZWATT by ca. 20K. The addition of print functions on the other hand increases the memory usage by a few kilobytes for all programs. => DOS Version Requirement ZWDOS now requires DOS 3.0 or higher. (Previous versions required DOS 2.0 or higher.) => HZ COMPLIANCES. Error Checking: ZWDOS now has a more stringent error checking routines for hz/zW codes. For example, previous versions displayed non-compliant hz/zW codes simply as their ASCII images, making some users thinking that it is okay to embed ASCII strings in Chinese strings. Now all illegal codes are displayed as a "bad code" image. (Note that zW text still allows the space character as an escape for a single ASCII character, but this is not allowed for hz texts. ZWDOS did not previously make this distintion.) Note that not all non-compliances with the hz standard are flagged this way. Some that are deemed to be legitimate intermediate products are left alone. For example, an hz string not closed with a ~} is illegal under the hz protocol, but nonetheless is a common product when the user is still working on the text. Double Tildes: ~~{ and ~~} are handled as prescribed by the HZ protocol. => CGA SUPPORT: Support for CGA displays have been discontinued. => ZWVGA vs. MOUSE: ZWVGA no longer cares whether you load it before or after the mouse driver. When is is loaded after, it will attempt to manage the mouse cursor. This elminates the problem with previous versions of ZWVGA caused by loading it after the mouse driver. (However, programs that bypass the standard mouse driver API when erasing mouse cursors may see strayed characters on screen during mouse movement. This is a minor nuisance which can be fixed by redrawing the screen. If this is a problem, load ZWVGA before the mouse driver.) => BUG FIXES: A bug which displays blanks for some Chinese characters at start-up and causing system crashes on some systems has been fixed. => The little triangles that represents the zW/hz delimiters have been changed to a set of (hopefully) less intrusive symbols.