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UPDATE22.TXT
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1993-03-05
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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(1) The 16x14 font library has been replaced by a 16x16 one,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.