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INTRO.DOC
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1986-06-02
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THE "NEW YORK WORD" WORD PROCESSOR
RELEASE 1.2
MAGMA SYSTEMS
138 - 23 HOOVER AVE.
JAMAICA, NEW YORK 11435
(718) 793 - 5670
This ARC file contains release 1.2 of the New York Word word
processor, dated 3/15/86. The ARC file contains the following files :
WP.EXE - the executable version of the word processor
WPDEFAUL - system config file
WPFORMAT - format block 0 config file
WPPRMENU - printer menu config file
*.PRT - printer code config files
*.DOC - introduction, history, installation, registration
NYWHELP.* - help menus
The "New York Word" word processor (hereby referred to as NYW) is
a powerful text editing and formatting tool. It has many advanced fea-
tures which you don't even find in the commercial word processing
packages. Some of the advanced features are :
- Split screen editing, with the ability to move text between windows
- Macros of unlimited length
- Regular expressions in the search & substitute facility
- Global Substitution
- Two calculator modes (desk and text)
- ASCII line-drawing characters
- Full footnoting capabilities
- Multiple headers & footers
- Columnar operations (copying, moving, deleting, blanking)
- Automatic table-of-contents and index generator
- Knuth automatic hyphenation algorithm
- Powerful mail merge facility, including a programming language
- Unix version interfaces to the UNIX spelling program
NYW was written almost totally in C, with a few I/O routines
optimized in assembly language. Lattice C version 2.14 was used, large
model, with stack checking included (probably accounting for about 1K
of excess code). PLink86 was used for the linker - the footnote,
calculator, printer, paginator, and table of contents/index routines
are overlaid to save space.
I would really appreciate any bug reports, suggestions,
enhancements, etc. This is YOUR program. Source code is available at a
yet-to-be-decided price, so contact me if interested. If any of you
are good C programmers and feel like helping out, then contact me too.
In particular, I'm interested in proportional spacing algorithms (I
would like to do something with kerning), spelling algorithms, and who
knows what else. Even if you don't have the source code, I am always
eager to discuss the technical aspects of NYW.
As mentioned in the documentation, this is user-supported
software. If you end up using this program, a donation of $35 is
requested. This will enable me to further develop NYW, and defray the
cost of postage, disks, and phone bills. Registered users will be
entitled to receive a user's manual, any upgrades, and the below men-
tioned mail-merge program and label printer. The next upgraded version
should have a keyboard re-map facility (the UNIX version already has
one).
FUTURE ENHANCEMENTS
Integration with a spelling checker (PC version only). I would ap-
preciate comments on existing spelling programs out there, and what
you would like to see in an ideal spelling checker. Keep a slant
towards public-domain programs.
Keystroke re-definition facility. The UNIX version uses the
termcaps database to represent every word processor command as a two
character symbol, and the user is able to remap the entire keyboard. I
didn't want to use termcaps in the PC version, partly for legal
reasons, partly for speed reasons. The keyboard re-mapping facility
will be available only to registered users.
A better looking version just for the PC. My idea is to keep the
PC and UNIX versions similar, so I can maintain both easily. If the PC
version seems to do well in the public domain, I will try to snazz NYW
up so it looks like a PC product. Possible enhancements include color
support, better keystroke interpretation (to differentiate between the
different shift statii), etc.
THE USER-SUPPORTED CONCEPT
The PC verion of this program has been placed in circulation under
the "user-supported software" concept. Non-profit clubs and in-
dividuals are encouraged to make copies of this software and dis-
tribute it to their members and friends so long as no charge is made
for the software and documentation. However, a distibution charge of
no more than $10 may be charged for the cost of the diskettes.
Under the user-supported concept, you are given a complete, work-
ing product for no charge. If you find yourself using this program, a
contribution of $35 is suggested. The money will cover the cost of bug
fixes, future developments, postage, telephone bills, etc.
The contribution will make you a registered user. As a registered
user, you are entitled to things like updates, support, and a copy of
the user's manual. A registration form is enclosed in this documen-
tation.
SOURCE CODE
Source code is available for both the IBM PC and the UNIX ver-
sions. The entire code is written in the 'C' programming language,
with the PC version containing a few assembly language routines.
Please contact me for availablility of the code.
THE UNIX VERSION
If you would like me to port this package to your UNIX machine,
please contact me. The UNIX version is still available commercially.
If your company is interested in marketing this package, exclusive and
non-exclusive distribution rights are available. This package is also
available to OEM's wishing to develop their own applications.
DISCLAIMER
Marc Adler and Magma Systems will in no event be liable for any
damages, including lost profits, lost savings, or other incidental or
consequential damages arising out of the use or of the inability to
use this program.
Marc Adler
MAGMA SYSTEMS
138 - 23 Hoover Ave.
Jamaica, New York 11435
Below I have included the prospectus that goes along with the UNIX
version of NYW (still commercially available - contact me). All of the
features, except the spelling checker, are present in the PC version.
Enjoy!!!
Marc Adler
3/15/86
THE "NEW YORK WORD" WORD PROCESSOR
BACKGROUND
The New York Word (NYW) was created in 1984 to run on
computers which use the UNIX(TM) operating system. UNIX is fast
becoming the industry standard in operating systems, as witnessed
by the support of such major companies as IBM, AT&T, and DEC. In
late 1985, NYW was ported to run under MS-DOS, the standard
operating system for the IBM Personal Computer. NYW is a
state-of-the-art word processing package available at a low cost
to end-users and OEMs. Source code is also available at a
reasonable cost.
NYW is capable of supporting a multi-user environment without
noticeable degradation of the system. There is currently a
30-user installation running at a major government instituion in
Washington DC.
FLEXIBLE AND FAST
NYW utilizes your system's main memory to the fullest. This
way, you can have complete random access to any part of your
document. Operations like reformatting (global or paragraph) and
re-pagination seem to happen in an instant. With the introduction
of CPU's (like the Motorola 68020) which have built-in virtual
memory hardware, you can edit extremely large text files totally
in memory.
When a user starts an NYW editing session, the NYW program
examines several files. These files contain the default values of
several parameters which affect the editing session. These
parameters deal with items like margin settings, tab settings,
printer options, session modes, etc. By changing the values in
these default files, a user can customize an editing session to
suit his particular needs.
GENERAL EDITING FEATURES
NYW has a full complement of editing features. The cursor
movement commands allow you to move up and down lines,
paragraphs, and pages. or can go directly to any line number, or
any number of lines relative from where the cursor currently is.
You can place up to 26 bookmarks at various points in the
document, and return to any point at any time. You can scroll
continuously up or down the document, with a user-selectable
scrolling speed.
There are ten buffers which you can use to store text
temporarily. By using these buffers, you can move or copy any
portion of text from one place to another. You can mark a region
of text and then delete it, save it, write it out to a file, draw
a box around it, or change the case of the letters in it.
To enhance your document, you can choose from special effects
like boldfacing, underlining, overstriking, subscripts, and
superscripts. If your printer is capable of it, you can change
fonts at any point in the document. There are also several kinds
of tabs - regular, decimal, center, and flush right.
Pagination is extremely fast. You can re-paginate a document
at any point, and NYW will renumber the pages for you
automatically. You can choose to handle widow and orphan lines to
produce a cleaner looking document.
NYW allows you to have multi-line header and footers in your
document. You can even put in "temporary" headers and footers
which will appear on the printer, but will not be saved along
with the document.
Other desireable features are an escape to the UNIX/DOS shell,
and the ability to redirect the output of a command into your
document.
FOOTNOTES
NYW has full footnote capabilities, with the ability to
automatically renumber footnotes when you insert or delete a
footnote. You have your choice of having the footnotes appear at
the end of a page, or the end of a document. You can edit
footnotes as if they were regular text, or flash a listing of the
currently defined footnotes across the screen.
MACROS
NYW has full macro capabilities. You can intermix text and
keystroke commands in a macro and replay them at any time. You
can also have libraries of macros, which you can read at any time
into your editing session. Any macros you define in a file will
be saved along with that file - thus you can build up an entire
dictionary of macros which can be inserted in a file at any time.
This is useful for "skeleton" documents, where you can take an
outline of a letter and paste text (ie macros) at various points
in the letter.
Another feature which greatly aids the user is the ability to
"capture" keystrokes. If the user must repeat a series of
keystrokes a few times in a row, then the user can type the
series in once, watch the effect the commands have, then replay
the series an arbitrary number of times.
TABLE OF CONTENTS & INDEX GENERATION
NYW comes with an automatic table of contents and index
generator. The user has a choice of having the toc/index
generated at the beginning/end of the file, or written out to
another document. The index generator will also take
consecutively numbered pages (ie 4,5,6,8,9,10) and express those
pages as a range (ie - 4-6,8-10).
SPELLING CHECKER
NYW also interfaces with the UNIX spelling program, which is
an extremely powerful spelling checker. (See the Bell Labs
memorandum by McIlroy). It also has a spelling corrector - if you
chose, you have have suggested correct spellings flash on the
screen. The advantage of interfacing to the UNIX spelling checker
is that no extra space is required for a massive English
dictionary. The user can also maintain his own private dictionary
which is checked along with the regular dictionary.
AUTOMATIC HYPHENATION
NYW has automatic hyphenation. It uses a cross between the
Knuth algorithm (incorporated in his TEX system), and the Gimpel
algorithm. This provides a fast, accurate hyphenator. This
algorithm has been tested on a dictionary of 2000 common words,
and it performs virtually without error.
MAIL MERGE FACILITY
The mail merge facility is extremely powerful, and gives the
user a small programming language to do run-time calculations.
These calculations can be merged into a letter, and then
recalculated for the next letter. The YACC compiler-generator was
used to write this language, which has a full complement of
arithmetic and string operations, along with block if-then-else
statements.
There are several utility programs which come with NYW to make
the mail merge program more powerful. These programs take the
output of the mail merge program, and "filter" it in different
ways so the user can use the results in another process.
One is a label generating program, which gives the user
parameters for the number of columns in a row of labels, the
height of each label, and the width of each label. This program
can intermix labels which have a different number of lines - this
was traditionally a short-coming of many mail merge programs, as
you had to maintain a separate mailing list for addresses which
had 3, 4 and 5 lines.
We also can interface the mail merge program with popular UNIX
packages like Supercomp or Unify. We can write a custom program
so the output of the mail merge facility can be interfaced with
your favorite program.
REGULAR EXPRESSIONS
The UNIX(TM) operating system pioneered the use of regular
expressions in pattern matching. Regular expressions allow you to
search for a context, such as "all lines beginning with the
letter a,b, or c", or "any occurence of two numbers followed by a
letter". NYW incorporates regular expressions into its
search-and-substitute facility to allow powerful pattern
matching. You can also use regular expressions in NYW's global
substitution facility.
TERMINAL INDEPENDENCE
A problem with many word processors is that they are designed
to work with only one kind of terminal. NYW can be configured to
work with any intelligent alpha-numeric terminal in a matter of
hours. It uses a database of information concerning the
characteristics of terminals, and it will look through the
database for the type of terminal you specify when you start up.
Since the database is kept in character form, you can easily edit
it to add your own type of terminal.
Along with the information about terminal characteristics, the
database includes information about the keystrokes you press to
invoke each NYW command. By changing this information, you can
alter the keystrokes you press to invoke any command. With this
facility, you may want to put frequently used commands on the
terminal's function keys, and make the less frequently used
commands an ESCAPE key combination.
SPLIT-SCREEN EDITING
Many times when you edit a document, you may wish that you can
see another document on the screen at the same time. NYW can edit
two documents or different parts of the same document
simultaneously, each document in its own separate window on the
screen. You can move or copy text from one window to the another.
The size of each window can be altered by the user, so you can
have a window as little as 2 lines long, or both windows can be
full-screen size.
MATH CALCULATIONS
There are two kinds of calculators that come with NYW. One is
a desk calculator that allows fully parenthesizes arithmetic
expressions. You can enter this calculator from the middle of a
NYW editing session in order to do some quick calculations. The
desk calculator comes with memory that can be recalled at any
instant.
The second calculator operates on numbers that you have
embedded in the document you are editing. You can intermix
numbers in the document with numbers you enter at the keyboard,
use parenthesized expressions, and do automatic horizontal or
vertical totals at the touch of a key.
GRAPHICS
NYW allows you to intermix text and ASCII line-drawing
graphics in the same document. At the touch of a keystroke, you
can go into graphics mode, and use several keys to produce
horizontal and vertical lines, corners, and tees. This allows the
user to create charts, and integrate them into the document.
MULTI COLUMN EDITING
In addition to the block cut-and-paste facilities, NYW
supports cutting and pasting of columns of text. There is also a
facility for taking existing text, and rearranging it in a
multi-column format. This feature is useful to magazine and
newspaper publishers.
SAFETY FEATURES
NYW gives the user two options to help prevent total loss of
data in the event of system crashes. NYW will create a backup
version of a file whenever you save your current editing session.
NYW will also save all of the keystrokes that you have typed in
an editing session. If the system crashes while you are editing a
document, you can replay any number of keystrokes at a time to
recreate your document. You can choose how many keystrokes NYW
will wait for before saving the current "batch" of keystrokes you
have typed.
INFORMATION
For more information on NYW, contact :
Marc Adler
MAGMA Systems
138-23 Hoover Ave.
Jamaica, New York 11435
(718) 793-5670
793-5677
