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DOCUMENTATION FOR CTRLALT ********************** Version 1.0 ********************** by Barry Simon and Richard Wilson Documentation for CTRLALT TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter I:INTRODUCTION.................................1 I.1 Features........................................1 I.2 Files in the CTRLALT package and installing CTRLALT............................2 I.3 Notation........................................3 I.4 Should you read the documentation?..............4 I.5 A Bow and Two Disclaimers.......................4 I.6 Usage Notes.....................................5 I.7 A Warning.......................................5 Chapter II:TWO MONITOR SUPPORT.........................7 II.1 Main Commands..................................7 II.2 Usage Notes....................................7 Chapter III:TABLES.....................................9 III.1 The Character Tables..........................9 III.2 Entering Keystrokes from ASCII Tables.........9 III.3 The aTtribute and aNsi Tables................10 III.4 ASCII codes and Scan codes...................11 III.5 Usage Notes..................................12 Chapter IV:PRINT CONTROL MODE.........................15 IV.1 Line Marking..................................15 IV.2 Printing the Marked Lines.....................15 IV.3 Sending Control Codes to Your Printer.........15 IV.4 Usage Notes...................................16 Chapter V:MARKING MODE................................19 V.1 Marking a Rectangle............................19 V.2 What you can do with the Marked Box............19 V.3 Inserting the Large Buffer.....................20 V.4 Usage Notes....................................22 Chapter VI:BOX DRAWING................................24 VI.1 The Alt Numeric Keypad........................24 VI.2 Box drawing characters........................25 VI.3 Other graphics characters.....................26 VI.4 Cursor motion and <Grey +/->..................26 VI.5 Usage Notes...................................27 Chapter VII:THE EMERGENCY EXIT........................28 VII.1 A Powerful but Dangerous Command.............28 VII.2 Fouled Interrupts............................29 VII.3 RELEASE: A Safety Valve......................31 Table of Contents Page i Documentation for CTRLALT VII.4 Usage Notes..................................31 Chapter VIII:COMMAND SUMMARY..........................34 Chapter IX:CUSTOMIZING CTRLALT........................35 IX.1 The Procedure.................................35 IX.2 Fundamental key combination...................35 IX.3 Command keys..................................36 IX.4 Table colors..................................37 IX.5 Table location................................37 IX.6 Copy attributes...............................37 IX.7 XOR attributes................................38 IX.8 Printer escape sequences......................38 IX.9 Using DEBUG...................................38 Table of Contents Page ii Chapter I: INTRODUCTION I.1 Features This documentation for CTRLALT can be printed out on most printers by typing the command copy ctrlalt.doc prn at the DOS command line. CTRLALT is a collection of resident utilities taking about 7K of RAM. Its features include the following: -Two monitor support: copy the active monitor to your inactive monitor on a two monitor system even inside a running program making your second monitor a useful scratch pad; other dual monitor support included. -Popup tables: One screen (indeed partial screen) tables of ASCII codes, color attributes, ANSI color codes and keyboard scan codes. -Entry of non-keyboard characters: a logical and convenient way of entering the IBM graphics drawing characters. Any character can be picked off the resident ASCII table. -Cut and Paste: Resident cut and paste facilities; with one keystroke, you can enter a mode which allows you to mark a box (on either screen, if you have two) which you can save in a buffer and later insert in any program. You can print part or all of your screen (or screens on a dual monitor system). -Resident printer codes: If you have an IBM graphics compatible printer, you can send a variety of control codes to it at any time. -Emergency exit: a way of recovering from situations where your system crashes due to some program getting into a loop or dead end. In order to keep the memory used to a minimum, no on screen help is provided. You will need to refer to this documentation when you need further information. The basic commands follow a mnemonic system and a command summary can be found in Chapter VIII and in the file CACMDSUM.DOC which you can print out separately. This documentation is for version 1.0 of CTRLALT. You can find out which version of CTRLALT you have by entering the command type ctrlalt.com at the DOS prompt. Normally typing a com file will produce junk on the screen but we have arranged that only brief useful information will appear when you issue this command. And you needn't worry that we are filling your memory with unneeded information when the program loads; the part of the com file that gets typed is used for the "small buffer" discussed in Chapter III. Chapter I:INTRODUCTION Page 1 Documentation for CTRLALT I.2 Files in the CTRLALT package and installing CTRLALT CTRLALT consists of the following files: -CTRLALT.COM executable program file -CTRLALT.ASM source code -CTRLALT.DOC this file -CACMDSUM.DOC a short summary to print out and have handy -RELEASE.COM a program by R. M. Wilson discussed in Chap VII -RELEASE.ASM source code -RELEASE.DOC documentation for RELEASE The source code for CTRLALT is provided in part to allow you to customize the program if you have access to the MICROSOFT or IBM Macro Assembler. Directions for customizing CTRLALT are provided in Chapter IX. For a small number of commands Chapter IX also provides directions on using DEBUG to make the modifications. We hope to include an installation program in a future release of CTRLALT. CTRLALT is a resident program which, once installed, will remain in your computer's memory until you reboot (unless you use RELEASE as described in its documentation). You install it by typing ctrlalt at the DOS prompt or placing that line in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. Once you have the program installed, try depressing the CTRL and ALT keys and then one of the letters A, H or T while you are holding down CTRL and ALT. Hitting <Esc> will make the resulting table disappear. While examining the table that appears in response to <Ctrl-Alt-T>, try hitting a letter key and then a function key. This will show you some of the features of CTRLALT. If you happen to load CTRLALT a second time, it will load and you will lose the memory it takes so it is probably best to load it in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. CTRLALT uses only two interrupts (one of the keyboard interrupts and the clock interrupt) and it is careful to pass any keystrokes not intended for it to any programs loaded before it. It cooperates with other resident programs but certain other resident programs may not cooperate with it. For this reason, it is best to load it after any keyboard macro program such as SUPERKEY or PROKEY. When NEWKEY is installed, occasionally the first keystroke issued after exiting a CTRLALT module will not get passed to your program. Since SMARTKEY has trouble passing keystrokes to resident programs, CTRLALT does not work well with SMARTKEY. If you have loaded KEYWORKS, you cannot safely invoke CTRLALT when a KEYWORKS menu is displayed but otherwise the two programs seems to work together. We know of no other incompatibilities. Chapter I:INTRODUCTION Page 2 Documentation for CTRLALT I.3 Notation Commands are passed to CTRLALT by depressing the Control and Alternate keys at the same time as a third key. (By customizing, you can replace this with any other pair of shifts.) You must first depress the shift keys and then, keeping the shift keys depressed, press the third key. We will indicate such a combination as ^@<key> so that for example ^@C means to hold down Control, Alt and then depress the <C> key. Various key names will appear in brackets such as: <Esc> the Escape key marked "Esc". This is the key to exit most modules of CTRLALT. <Enter> the "Enter" or "Return" key <n0>,...,<n9> the number keys on the numeric keypad 0,1,2,3... refer to the number keys on the top row (sometimes, we will refer to 0(zero) to distinguish it from "oh"; while the distinction is clear on your screen, it is not always clear on your printer) <Grey +>, <Grey -> the plus and minus at the extreme right of the keyboard +,- refer to the +/= and _/- keys on the top row <Arrows> the generic name for the the four arrow keys <PrtSc>, <Ins>, <Del>, <Home>, <End>, <PgUp>, <PgDn> the keys with these words marked on them <F1>, etc., the function keys Occasionally for emphasis, we will denote the key with !/1 on it by <1>, the key with Q as <Q>, etc. To help remember the large number of commands which CTRLALT will take, the keys chosen have mnemonics associated with them and we will often write out the mnemonic with the special key capitalized. Thus ^@aNsi is a mnemonic for the command ^@N. In particular, ^@Enter (the mnemonic for ^@E) should not be confused with ^@<Enter>, the command issued by depressing Ctrl, Alt and <Enter> at the same time. Once a module of CTRLALT has been invoked with ^@<key>, there may be single letter "subcommands" which we have tried to make consistent across modules. In particular: E Enters something into a buffer or your program P sends something to your Printer S Switches a marking cursor from one monitor to the other <Esc> exits the module As for ^@ commands, we use mnemonics for subcommands so that, for example, cUt is a mnemonic for the subcommands issued by . CTRLALT sets aside two places to store keystrokes which you can later enter. One accessible from "Marking Mode" (Chap V) will store up to a full screen of data and is called "the large buffer" and one accessible when the ASCII or Hex tables are displayed will Chapter I:INTRODUCTION Page 3 Documentation for CTRLALT take up to 64 strokes and is called "the small buffer". As currently implemented these buffers can only contain ASCII codes and not the extended ASCII codes associated with function or alt keys. I.4 Should you read the documentation? Yes! However, we are aware that the full documentation is long. This is because of the many services that CTRLALT offers. We suggest that you learn about one or two modules at a time and have tried to write the documentation in a way that you can read individual chapters. For many of the modules, it will be more convenient to experiment in your word processor than in DOS. And we apologize for warning you about the difference between ^@Enter and ^@<Enter> more times than you will need, but we want to be sure that you see it even if you skim the documentation. I.5 A Bow and Two Disclaimers This program was developed by Barry Simon and Richard Wilson. It is POSTWARE: if you like it, send us a postcard addressed to us at 253-37 Caltech Pasadena, CA 91125 Of course, we're glad to hear comments, suggestions about enhancements, and even about complaints, incompatibilities and bugs. Simon has a Compuserve number [76505,2315] but he doesn't promise to check his Compuserve mailbox very often! And if you like the program please give it to your friends, place it on bulletin boards and otherwise spread it around. While it is copyright by the two of us, we explicitly allow any use of it but request that at a minimum, the CTRLALT.COM and CTRLALT.DOC files be distributed together. While we have a connection with Caltech, we emphasize that this program has no such connection. And we make the usual disclaimer: this software is distributed "as is" and is warranted for no purpose. Any risk associated with its use including, but not limited to, loss of data is borne by the user. The following are trademarks or copyrighted names of the companies indicated in parentheses: FANSI-CONSOLE (Hersey Microcomputing), Proprinter & IBM (International Business Machines), KEYWORKS (Alpha Software), MONOGRAFXS (Analytics Chapter I:INTRODUCTION Page 4 Documentation for CTRLALT international), NEWKEY (FAB software), PCED (Cove software), PCWRITE (Quicksoft), PROKEY (Rosesoft), SIDEKICK, SUPERKEY & TURBO PASCAL (Borland International), SMARTKEY (Software Research Technologies), WORDSTAR (Micropro). The original version was finalized during April, 1986. I.6 Usage Notes Many chapters will end with some "Usage Notes" which we hope will help you use CTRLALT and will deal with some special situations. We are painfully aware of the fact that there are only six combinations of pairs of the four shift keys and that software developers are fond of using them as "hotkeys" for resident programs. Because CTRLALT has so many hotkeys, we felt that we had to use three key combinations and it was natural to use two shifts as the common callup. Besides, once we named the program CTRLALT, we had no choice! The customization procedure described in Section X.2, explains how to change which pair of shifts combine with letter keys to call up CTRLALT. Because a third key is involved you will probably want the two shifts to be on the left side and the second choice is clearly <Ctrl-LftShft>. It is even possible to replace the <Ctrl-Alt> combinations by just <Alt> or just <Ctrl> although this will likely cause problems with some of your application programs that use Alt or Ctrl keys. If you are a SIDEKICK user, you probably use ^@ to invoke SIDEKICK. More recent versions of SIDEKICK allow you to change this choice and we believe that is better than changing CTRLALT but clearly you should follow your preference. We note that while SIDEKICK allows you to choose two different combinations to invoke it, you can choose to have only one: while running SKINST you need only hit the same shift twice when asked for "Secondary command" after making the "Activate commands" choice from the SKINST main menu. One final warning about the choice of ^@. We are careful not to use ^@ with any of the numeric keypad or with <Grey +>/<Grey -> to avoid any chance of accidentally pressing ^@<Del>. If you customize, we suggest that you keep this convention although using ^@ with <n7>, <n8> or <n9> (or <PrtSc> on an AT style keyboard) should be safe. I.7 A Warning Many of the modules in CTRLALT are quite powerful and should Chapter I:INTRODUCTION Page 5 Documentation for CTRLALT be used with care. We have in mind especially the emergency exit feature invoked by ^@<F9>. PLEASE READ CHAPTER VII BEFORE EXPERIMENTING WITH IT. We urge you to try it initially in a situation where you would lose nothing but a little time if your system underwent a hard crash (i.e. required you to turn the power switch off and on). We don't wish to frighten you from using this module since it can be useful but we urge some care. You may need to experiment with the different modes of entry of material previously cut in the marking module discussed in chapter V. Some programs don't accept keystrokes in quite the way that you might expect. The same caution applies to the entry of graphics characters as described in Chapter VI. Not all programs will accept ASCII characters with codes between 129 and 256 or will act in the way you would like. Problems associated with these issues are not likely to cause any serious foulups and can usually by corrected by a little deletion and retyping. Chapter I:INTRODUCTION Page 6 Chapter II: TWO MONITOR SUPPORT COMMANDS: ^@Copy, ^@Kill, ^@Switch, ^@Other II.1 Main Commands ^@C for Copy will copy the current monitor to your second monitor if you have a two monitor system. ^@K for Kill will blank your inactive monitor. It is NOT necessary to blank your inactive monitor before copying to it a second time; ^@K is provided so you needn't look at the material on your second monitor when you no longer need it. ^@S for Switch will copy the present screen to the inactive screen and transfer control to the inactive screen. ^@O for Other will place ASCII tables in Hex and decimal on your inactive monitor; they will not erase the whole inactive monitor but will cover up a large portion of it. ^@K will erase them and the rest of the inactive screen. II.2 Usage Notes You will use ^@C the most. You will discover that your inactive monitor makes a great scratch pad and that you no longer need to make little notes which get lost on your desk. Indeed, we believe that if you use your computer a lot and have a single monitor system, it may be worth investing in a second one (a monochrome card and monitor can be purchased for as little as $250) just to use ^@C! Unfortunately, ^@K does not kill the cursor on the inactive monitor. However, it will not produce a cursor if none is there and ^@S takes the cursor with it. Thus, the sequence of commands ^@S,^@S,^@K will erase the inactive screen and remove the cursor on it. It will not change any colors on the original monitor. For the technically minded, we note that a screen ^@Copied to a monochrome monitor has all attributes set to 07 (white, green or amber on black) and a screen ^@Copied to the color monitor has attributes set to 1EH (yellow on blue). ^@S copies the exact attributes so that a double ^@S to remove your cursor doesn't lose any attributes. ^@S will not be used very often. If used in a running program, the results may be unpredictable if the program writes directly to the screen; for example loading PCWRITE on a color screen and using ^@S will thoroughly confuse PCWRITE. At the DOS command line, it is preferable to use a command like "Mode mono" to switch screens since that will reinitialize the cursor. There is a strange interaction involving the cursor between CTRLALT and the Chapter II:TWO MONITOR SUPPORT Page 7 Documentation for CTRLALT DOS command editor PCED (and its public domain precursor CED) which can cause ^@S to give you a cursor in a funny place; you can even lose your cursor completely. However, this interaction does not take place if you are only using ^@S twice to remove a cursor on the inactive screen and you do not issue any commands between the two ^@S commands. If you have a dual monitor system, ^@C will not work before both monitors are initialized. That is, if your boot up procedure only uses one monitor, say the color monitor, ^@C will not work until you have made the system recognize the other monitor by issuing a "mode mono" command (followed by mode co80) or otherwise "used" your second monitor. However, ^@S will work and a pair of ^@S's can be used to initialize the inactive monitor. CTRLALT works in 80 column text mode. Thus, if you try to copy a monochrome screen to a color screen which was initialized in a 40 column text mode or last in graphics mode, the copy will not be successful. However, ^@S, ^@S, ^@C from the monochrome screen will place the color screen in the proper mode and copy the monochrome screen to it. The dual monitor commands if issued by accident on a single monitor system will certainly not cause catastrophe. ^@C, ^@K and ^@O have absolutely no effect. ^@S will cause a problem but a second ^@S followed by a "clear screen" should recover. But, if you have a single monitor system and the Macro Assembler, you should follow the directions in Section IX.3 for disabling the dual monitor services or you can follow the directions in Section IX.9 for using DEBUG. If your graphics monitor is in a graphics mode, issuing a ^@Copy will not have any adverse effect but it will produce junk on your inactive screen. A ^@Switch will be more dramatic but issuing an immediate "clear screen" will often allow you to recover. Graphics monitors can use their extra memory in text mode to show more than one page (4 pages on the CGA and up to 8 pages on the EGA) and there is software (e.g. FANSI CONSOLE) that allows you to shift pages. CTRLALT assumes that "page 1" is the page being displayed on your color monitor and, for example, ^@C will copy that page to the monochrome screen even if another page is currently displayed. Similarly, the highlighting in print control and marking modes (see Chapters IV and V) will not show on the color screen if any page other than page one is displayed. The issues discussed in this paragraph will be irrelevant to most users who will not be on any page other than page 1. If you do wind up on another page in memory a command that reinitializes the screen such as "mode co80" will make page 1 the page displayed on the color monitor. Chapter II:TWO MONITOR SUPPORT Page 8 Chapter III: TABLES COMMANDS: ^@Ascii, ^@Hex, ^@Other, ^@aTtributes, ^@aNsi, ^@Enter,^@Quit ^@A,^@H SUBCOMMANDS: <Arrows>, <Home>, <End>, <Esc>, Enter, Print, Buffer ^@T SUBCOMMANDS: <anykey>, <Esc> WARNING: Do not confuse ^@Enter (that is ^@E) with ^@<Enter> or the subcommand Enter (the is E) with <Enter> III.1 The Character Tables CTRLALT allows you to pop up two different tables of ASCII characters at any time. They are more compact and therefore perhaps more useful than the ASCII tables provided by programs like SIDEKICK. ^@A popsup a table which is 34 characters across and 14 down showing a decimal ASCII table. The characters are shown in groups of ten with the groups labelled 000, 010, ... ,250. The characters appearing as 256-259 are really repeats of 0-3. Please remember that the groups start with xx0, that is, for example, the third character in group 080 (the letter R) has ASCII code 082 not 083. ^@H shows a similar table 18 long by 22 wide with Hex ASCII values. The rows are labelled with a hex digit followed by 0 and the columns with the second hex digit. ^@O shows both tables at once on your inactive monitor. Pressing <Esc> when the tables produced by ^@Ascii or ^@Hex are active clears the tables and restores the screen. You cannot restore the inactive screen following ^@Other although you can clear it with ^@Kill. You cannot show both tables on your active screen; that is, ^@A has no effect after a ^@H and vice versa. III.2 Entering Keystrokes from ASCII Tables The tables produced by ^@A or ^@H have a highlighted cursor, the first time at character 00 but at later times wherever you left the cursor the last time that table was used. The four arrow keys move the cursor in the obvious ways and <Home>/<End> moves the cursor to positions 000 and 259 (00 and FF on the Hex table). Once you have moved the cursor to the desired character, you have a number of options: E will Enter the highlighted character at the position your cursor was when CTRLALT was invoked and the table will disappear P will send the character to your Printer. The table remains on the screen so you can send several Chapter III:TABLES Page 9 Documentation for CTRLALT characters to your printer. The small buffer is not affected. B will send the character to the small Buffer. The table remains on the screen so that several characters can be sent to the buffer. <Esc> will make the table disappear but the small buffer is not cleared. CTRLALT keeps a small buffer of up to 64 characters. When the choice E is made, the highlighted character is added to the end of the buffer and the entire buffer is inserted at the original cursor position. Thus, if several B subcommands have been issued followed by an E several characters will be entered. And if only a single E with no B subcommands has been entered, then the buffer will have one character in it. If you wish to put several characters in the small buffer without entering any of them yet, then use several B subcommands followed by an <Esc>. If no E or B subcommands have been invoked, the small buffer will not be changed and will remain what it was when you invoked the table. An E or B command will clear the buffer of what it had in it before ^@A or ^@H was invoked but does not affect any additions to the buffer made during the current invocation. At any time you can strike ^@E to Enter the contents of the small buffer at the current cursor position. ^@Entering does not empty the buffer so that you can repeatedly reissue the buffer. For example if you need to enter a string of ^I's to your program, you need only call up ^@Ascii highlight position 009, press E (or B and <Esc>) and then ^@Enter as often as necessary. If you strike ^@E a second time while CTRLALT is still sending characters from the buffer due to a first ^@E, the first insertion is aborted and a second insertion begins at the head of the buffer, probably not what you want. You can halt the playback of the contents of the small buffer with ^@Q. After using ^@Q to Quit, you are back in your application program. A ^@E will reinsert the small buffer from its beginning while another ^@Q will continue the playback of the buffer at the point you quit with the first ^@Q. PLEASE DON'T CONFUSE ^@Enter AND ^@<Enter>!!! See the Usage Notes to this chapter for a discussion of exactly how characters are sent to your program, for a warning about sending characters to your printer and for a discussion of alternates to using the small buffer. III.3 The aTtribute and aNsi Tables ^@T will pop up a table of colors which is 22 wide by 11 down. This table has rows labelled with a hex digit and 0 and Chapter III:TABLES Page 10 Documentation for CTRLALT columns labelled with a single digit. The color combination in row 60 and column F has what is called color attribute (hence T for aTtributes) 6FH (The H stands for Hex; in this case 6F is white on brown). Some programs require you to pick colors by giving these attributes which is why this table can be useful. For example, you can change the colors that CTRLALT uses for its tables by modifying the source code; you will need to insert attributes in appropriate places as will be described in Section IX.4. The table only shows attributes 00H through 7FH but attributes run up to FFH. Row 8x is the same as row 0x, row 9x is the same as row 1x,... row Fx is the same as row 7x except that the character is blinking. We decided to spare you the blinking! If you have a monitor which is two color ("monochrome") but with many shades such as the COMPAQ monitor, the attribute table can be very useful in showing you what attribute choices correspond to what shadings. Unfortunately, the color codes used by the ANSI.SYS device driver are different from the color attributes. ^@N for aNsi will pop up a table showing the ANSI conventions. The rows are marked 4x because ANSI uses that for background colors. The columns are marked 0;3x or 1;3x because that is the ANSI convention for foreground colors. In the Usage Notes to this chapter, we explain how to use the table to set colors in DOS via the PROMPT command. The colors in the ANSI table are not set using the ANSI.SYS device driver but by writing the color combinations directly into memory. Thus colors will show even if you do not not have an ANSI device driver loaded. A non-standard replacement for ANSI.SYS which attempts to correct the ANSI codes on a monochrome screen (for example, FANSI-CONSOLE) may show attributes set by ANSI commands differently from indicated in the aNsi table. However, on a color monitor, the attributes shown by the aNsi table should correctly correspond to those set by any ANSI.SYS compatible device driver. III.4 ASCII codes and Scan codes Each letter has an ASCII code and each key of the keyboard has a so-called scan code. Certain programs require you to give scan codes, some in decimal form and some in hexadecimal form. When the aTtribute table is active, pushing any key or simple key combination will cause the scan codes of the key in hex and decimal to be displayed at the top of the table and the ASCII code in hex and decimal to be displayed at the bottom of the table. By convention, a key and its shifted version have the same scan codes but some of the alt and ctrl shifted keys have special "scan codes" different from the ordinary keys. For such keys, the ASCII code will be listed as 00 and the "scan code" as the appropriate code. The scan code in this case is often called "extended ASCII code" or Chapter III:TABLES Page 11 Documentation for CTRLALT "second ASCII code". In the Usage Notes, we will explain how these codes are used in ANSI keyboard redefinition. For example, in decimal form <F1> has second ASCII codes 59, 84, 94 and 104 in its unshifted, shifted, ctrl-shifted and alt-shifted states. Try hitting ^@T followed by <F1>, <Shft F1>, <Ctrl F1>, <Alt F1> to see this in action. You won't need to reach for your BASIC manual any more to look up these numbers with CTRLALT there to help you! Since <Esc> exits from the aTtribute table, you can't use CTRLALT to get the codes for <Esc>. You'll just have to remember them. The scan code is real hard: it's 01 decimal and 01H. The ASCII codes are 27 decimal and 1B in Hex. Two warnings about using CTRLALT to generate scan codes which we'll expand upon in the Usage Notes: if you have a keyboard macro program installed and you redefined <Alt 1> to mean "hello", pressing <Alt 1> will not display the codes (78H scan and 00 ASCII) for alt-1 but will display the codes (18H scan and 6FH ASCII) for "o", the last letter in hello. That is, your keyboard macro program will get to translate the keystrokes before passing them to CTRLALT. Similarly, if you want the scan code for <Alt-End> (94H), you must be sure you are in the ^@0(zero) mode discussed in Chap VI. By default, CTRLALT translates <Alt n1> to the box line character, └, ASCII code C0H and that is what will appear in aTtribute mode if you strike <Alt End> (which is the same as <Alt n1>) without shifting to ^@0 mode. Thus the box drawing module of CTRLALT translates the keystrokes before passing them to the aTtribute module. III.5 Usage Notes When the Ascii or Hex tables are displayed, the cursor can be moved off the tables and the characters on the screen Entered, Printed or put in the Buffer. However, if you wish to get characters off the screen, it is probably preferable to use marking mode described in Chapter V. When in these tables, hitting any key but the arrow keys, <Home>, <End>, <Esc>, <E>, or has no effect. If the small buffer fills and you press , the table will disappear and you will be placed back at the cursor position. If you don't get your finger off the key soon enough, some extra 's may be issued to your program. The buffer can be entered with ^@E. Characters sent to many printers are often not printed until line feed (ASCII code 0AH) is sent. Thus, your use of the Printer option when the tables are active may seem to have no effect; if you want to see the effect, you can send the necessary 0AH or 10 decimal ASCII code. You can send control codes to the printer from the ASCII table but it is easier to use the printer control mode Chapter III:TABLES Page 12 Documentation for CTRLALT described in the next chapter. When you strike a key like <a> on your keyboard, the ASCII code (61H in this case) and scan code (1EH in this case) are stored in DOS's keyboard buffer until input is requested by a calling program. You can also enter an "a" using the numeric keypad and the decimal ASCII code (97 in this case): just hold down the <Alt> key, press <n9>, then <n7> and then let go of the <Alt> key. The ASCII code is still entered in the buffer as 61H but the scan code is 00. To see this, call up ^@T, and depress <n9>, <n7> while holding down both the <Alt> and <LftShft> keys. The point of this is that CTRLALT enters characters from the small buffer and tables (or from the large buffer for that matter) as if they were being entered from the numeric keypad, that is with a scan code of 00. This may affect how your keyboard macro program processes something like a "+" if you have defined a macro for <+> but not for <Grey +>; generally, it will act like the more usual key but that depends on the keyboard macro program. This issue, especially as regards KEYWORKS, is discussed further in Section V.4. It is also important to realize that the keystrokes entered by CTRLALT from the tables or buffers will be processed by your application programs or keyboard macro/application program combination. Thus placing the cursor on 18H in the Hex table (Ctrl X) and pressing E will move the cursor down in WORDSTAR just as hitting <Ctrl-X> would do and it will not enter a Ctrl-X in your file. If you want to enter a long string of graphics characters such as ════════════, you could place the corresponding ASCII character in the small buffer (C4H in this case) and use ^@E many times but you should be aware that CTRLALT's box drawing mode described in Chapter VI is probably easier to use. ANSI color codes are useful for setting screen colors in DOS. The syntax is <esc>[3x;4y(;1)m where x and y can be read off the ^@N table and the ;1 is optional. Thus the command prompt $e[33;44;1m$p$g at the DOS command line would set colors to yellow on blue and display your current drive and directory ($p for path) and a ">" ($g) as your visible prompt assuming you had included a line device=ansi.sys in your CONFIG.SYS file. Or the command prompt $e[33;44;0m$p$g$e[32;44;1m will display the path and ">" in brown on blue and what you type in green on blue. The "1" and "0" codes are toggles so that if both colors were intense, it would not be necessary to place the "1" in each escape sequence. The reason that ANSI codes and color attributes are not the Chapter III:TABLES Page 13 Documentation for CTRLALT same is that if the hex digit is written in binary as 0xyz, then x is Red, y is Green and z is Blue in color attributes and in ANSI the roles are in the reverse order. Thus cyan, which corresponds to green and blue on, is 011 (=3H) in attributes and 110 (=6H) in ANSI. For the technical among you, CTRLALT intercepts interrupt 09H when looking for its commands but waits for interrupt 16H to act before reading its subcommands and/or scan codes. This is why keyboard macro programs will process input before CTRLALT reads the scan codes. CTRLALT does see the original keystroke through int 09 but passes it up the chain where the macro program processes it before the ^@T module reads the scan codes via int 16. Extended scan codes are useful for ANSI keyboard redefinition. For example, to redefine <F1> to be "dir" followed by <Enter> you need to send <esc>[0;59;"dir";13p to the screen. The <esc>[ and "p" are the ANSI codes indicating key redefinition while 13 is the decimal ASCII code for <Enter> and 59 the extended ASCII code for <F1>. That is, if you call up ^@T, and press <Enter>, you'll see a decimal ASCII code of 013 while pressing <F1> will return an ASCII code of 00 and a decimal "scan" code of 59. Chapter III:TABLES Page 14 Chapter IV: PRINT CONTROL MODE COMMANDS: ^@P SUBCOMMANDS: <Up Arrow>, <Down Arrow>, <PgUp>, <PgDn>, <Home>, <End> Switch, Print=<Enter>, All, <Esc> Bold, Emphasized, Doublestrike, Compressed, double Wide Tiny, near letter Quality, pIca, 8 lines/in, Underline Form feed, New page top character set 2, 1 direction, sKip perforations, Reset, Off IV.1 Line Marking ^@P calls up a line marking mode which can be used to send lines to the Printer and where it is possible to send control codes to an IBM Graphics compatible printer. A whole line mark appears at the position of your current cursor. This line can be expanded to a multi-line band. <PgUp> and <PgDn> move the band up and down without changing its width. The <Down Arrow> key makes the band wider by moving the bottom edge down one line without moving the top edge. This key has no effect if the bottom edge is on the bottom of the screen. The <Up Arrow>key makes the band narrower by moving the bottom edge up by one line without changing the top edge. If the band is one line wide, <Up Arrow> has no effect. <Home> moves the band to the top of the screen and <End> to the bottom without changing the width. If you have a dual monitor system, S for Switch will switch the band to your inactive monitor and a second S will switch it back. The band can be adjusted while it is on either monitor. At any time <Esc> exits this mode with no further action. IV.2 Printing the Marked Lines After you have marked some lines, you have two options for printing on the system printer LPT1: P Prints the marked lines on the printer A Prints all lines on the screen with the marking Thus, A acts like <Shft PrtSc> if you haven't Switched the marking to the other screen while ^@P,S,A will print what's on your inactive screen. At any time <Esc> exits this mode with no further action. <Enter> means the same thing as P, i.e. it prints the marked lines on your printer. IV.3 Sending Control Codes to Your Printer Did you ever wish that you could send commands to your printer while inside a running program? CTRLALT lets you do that while in its ^@P mode. Hitting the letters or numbers in the first column sends the commands indicated; for the technically inclined Chapter IV:PRINT CONTROL MODE Page 15 Documentation for CTRLALT the last column gives the actually decimal ASCII codes sent to the printer. THESE CODES ONLY DO THE OPERATIONS LISTED FOR PRINTERS COMPATIBLE WITH THE IBM GRAPHICS/EPSON MX 80 including the IBM Proprinter and Epson FX 80. Three are special to the PROPRINTER. ┌────┬───────────────────────────────────┬───────────────┐ │ │ PRINTER FUNCTION │ ASCII CODES │ ╞════╪═══════════════════════════════════╪═══════════════╡ │ B │ Bold=Emphasized+Doublestrike │ 27,69,27,71 │ │ E │ Emphasized print │ 27,69 │ │ D │ Doublestrike │ 27,71 │ │ C │ Compressed print │ 15 │ │ W │ double Wide │ 27,87,1 │ │ T │ Tiny = Superscript, 1.5 mm │ 27,83,1,27,65,│ │ │ line spacing, compressed │ 5,27,50,15 │ │ Q │ near letter Quality (PROPRINTER) │ 27,73,2 │ │ I │ pIca=12 cpi (PROPRINTER ONLY) │ 27,58 │ │ 8 │ 8 lines per inch spacing │ 27,48 │ │ U │ Underline on │ 27,45,1 │ │ F │ Form feed │ 12 │ │ N │ New page top(PROPRINTER ONLY) │ 27,52 │ │ 2 │ character set 2 │ 27,54 │ │ 1 │ 1 directional printing │ 27,85,1 │ │ K │ sKip perforations │ 27,78,8 │ │ R │ Reset │ INT 17H │ │ O │ Off │ 27,70,27,72,18│ │ │ │ 27,87,0,27,84│ │ │ │ 27,79,27,55, │ │ │ │ 27,45,0,27,65│ │ │ │ 12,27,50,27, │ │ │ │ 73,0,13 │ └────┴───────────────────────────────────┴───────────────┘ The box characters in the above table were entered with the CTRLALT box drawing mode (Chapter VI). Rather than have separate commands to turn printer features on and off, you can only turn them on with single commands. The Off command turns off all special printing features; it should have the same effect as turning your printer off and on except that it will not reset the meaning of top of page. The RESET command, which should work with any printer uses a BIOS routine and, when it works, has the same effect as turning the printer off and on including resetting the top of page. It appears not to work when one of several different print spooling programs is installed. IV.4 Usage Notes Until you get used to print control mode, you will probably call up ^@P and then hit the <Up Arrow> and be surprised that nothing happens. Note that the <Up Arrow> moves up only the bottom Chapter IV:PRINT CONTROL MODE Page 16 Documentation for CTRLALT edge of the marked region and has no effect when the region is one line wide. Use <PgUp> to move the marked region up. In print control mode, all letter subcommands except P, A, S send codes to the printer. Characters sent to the printer using this module are filtered to avoid control characters being sent inadvertently. That is characters 00H through 1FH and 80H through 9FH (0-31 and 128-159 decimal) are replaced with spaces before the characters are sent to the printer. Such filtering is not done in printing from the ASCII and hex tables nor in marking mode (discussed in the next chapter). To see the difference, call up the ASCII table with ^@A, then call up ^@P and highlight the first row followed with . Only spaces will be printed. Now call up ^@<Enter>, move the cursor to ASCII code 007 (Ctrl G) and hit P. This single character will be sent unfiltered to your printer and you will hear a beep. Except for the issue of filtering, you may find it more convenient to use marking mode to send characters to the printer. In the default "character set 1", the printer interprets codes in the 80H through 9FH range as the corresponding code 80H smaller so that, for example, 9B is the same as 1B (<Esc>). Character set 2 which can be turned on with the <2> subcommand prints out various foreign alphabet characters for these codes corresponding to what you will see on your screen if you popup an ASCII table. Since CTRLALT cannot know which character set your printer is using, filtering in printer control mode is always on. Thus the <2> command is only useful for printing out files with DOS's copy command, in some application programs, or printing from a CTRLALT table. Turning on Emphasized or Doublestrike print slows down your printer by a factor of about 2 and turning on both by a factor of 4. Nevertheless, output in this "Bold" mode looks so good that we have included a separate command (B) to turn it on. Thus B is equivalent to striking <D> and <E>. If you have a Proprinter you might look at the NLQ (invoked with Q) or <Q> and <D> together. Tiny print is a combination of superscript mode, compressed print and a reduced number of lines per inch; it has an interesting affect somewhat akin to the EGA's 43 line screen mode. The eight lines per inch mode invoked with <8> does not change the size of characters but removes white space between lines. It is useful for saving paper in printing out things like program listings with the "copy ... prn" command. Unidirectional printing, invoked with <1>, slows the printer down but is useful if you want columns to come out especially straight. You may want to use it when printing out the graph drawing characters. Chapter IV:PRINT CONTROL MODE Page 17 Documentation for CTRLALT The underlining turned on by is continuous; even blank lines are underlined. The sKip perforation command sets the printer to print out 58 lines and then skip 8. If you want to use it, you should set the top of page to about four lines below the perforation and then use the <R> or <N>(on a Proprinter) command or turn your printer off and on. The IBM Graphics printer does not allow you to turn on all possible combinations of special print features. Only one of Compressed and Emphasized can be turned on and only one of the following three: Double strike, subscript and superscript. The rules for the IBM Proprinter are somewhat different, see page 4-35 of the Proprinter Guide to Operations. There is no problem invoking ^@P while your screen is in a graphics mode. You cannot use the mode to print part of the screen in a useful way (although you could Switch to your monochrome monitor and Print part of it), but you can successfully send control codes to your printer. When ^@P is invoked from a graphics screen, a certain amount of garbage will appear on the screen but that will disappear and your screen will be successfully restored when you <Esc> from the print control mode. Currently, the printer marking works perfectly on lines 1-25 even when the EGA is in its 43 line mode. However, you cannot mark more than one line below line 25 and you can only mark a line above the one you start on. Moreover, the <A> command will only print the first 25 lines of the screen even if you have a line after the 25th marked, but then again, Shift PrtSc also only prints the first 25 lines displayed. We hope to remove these limitations in a future version of CTRLALT. If you don't have your printer turned on and you invoke ^@P, if no printer is attached to your system or if you have a printer turned on but you have switched it off line by pushing an "Online" button and you invoke ^@P, CTRLALT will beep at you and refuse to come up. If you have a print spooler resident, CTRLALT thinks that you have a printer attached and it will act normally passing characters to the spooler. If you have a two monitor system and set colors via ANSI.SYS in your prompt, the band in print control mode may appear invisible on your monochrome monitor. The ^@Vanilla command should resolve this problem. It is discussed in Section V.4. Chapter IV:PRINT CONTROL MODE Page 18 Chapter V: MARKING MODE Commands:^@<Enter>, ^@Vanilla, ^@Insert, ^@Quit Insertion Control Options: ^@Backspace,^@carriage Return, ^@Zilch Insertion Speed Controls: ^@+, ^@- ^@<Enter> Subcommands: <Enter>, <Ins>, Switch, <Esc>, <Arrows>, <PgUp>, <PgDn>, <Grey +>, <Grey ->, cUt, Copy, Print, Enter V.1 Marking a Rectangle ^@<Enter> brings up a solid block cursor at your present cursor position. This cursor can be moved in the following ways: <Up Arrow> or <PgUp> moves it up <Down Arrow> or <PgDn> moves it down <Left Arrow> or <Grey -> moves it left <Right Arrow> or <Grey +> moves it right <Home> moves it to row 1, column 1 <End> moves it to row 25, column 80 In addition S switches this block cursor to your other monitor <Esc> exits the marking module with no action being taken All the actions discussed in the next section can be taken with the one character box formed by the block cursor. To get a bigger box, you must "tack down" one corner. Pressing <Ins> or <Enter> tacks down the upper left corner of the box. You can then move the lower right hand corner with the arrow keys so long as the box remains at least one row down and one column across. Thus the arrow keys change the size of your box. You can also move the box as a whole without changing its size: <PgUp> and <PgDn> move it up and down while <Grey +> and <Grey -> move it right and left. <Home> moves the upper left hand corner of your box to the upper left hand corner of the screen and <End> does the same with the lower right corners. And S will switch the box from one screen to the other. The box will appear on a color screen in distinctive colors and on a monochrome screen in reverse video. However, there may be a problem showing the box on your monochrome monitor if you set colors with an ANSI.SYS prompt; as we will discuss in the Usage Notes of this chapter, these problems may be resolved with the ^@V command. You may also have problems with an invisible box on a black and white monitor attached to a graphics card such as the standard COMPAQ setup. This can be solved by customizing the program according to the directions in Chapter IX. V.2 What you can do with the Marked Box Once you have a marked box on the screen, you can take the following actions: S Switch the box to your other screen Chapter V:MARKING MODE Page 19 Documentation for CTRLALT P Print it on your printer (no filtering of control characters) E Enter it at the position that your cursor had when you called up ^@<Enter> C Copy it to the same position on your other monitor U cUt it to the large buffer <Enter> has the same action as U <Ins> has the same action as U <Esc> exits marking mode with no action being taken For any of these actions except <S>, the box disappears, your screen is restored and you exit CTRLALT. You can copy from your inactive to your active monitor but this will only affect what is displayed on the screen and is not the same as having typed in the characters. Using the E option not only enters the characters at your cursor position but also puts them in the large buffer. The way the characters are entered is determined by the same options set in the insert mode and discussed in the next section. That is, the option <E> is the same as followed immediately by ^@I. The contents of the large buffer are only changed if you cUt or Enter the box in which case the box replaces what was in the buffer. Options , <C> and <Esc> do not change the contents of the large buffer. As in the case of the small buffer which is not emptied in response to a ^@A or ^@H, the contents of the large buffer are not changed by a ^@<Enter> but only in response to some of its subcommands. V.3 Inserting the Large Buffer It wouldn't do much good to be able to put characters into the large buffer if there wasn't a way to get them out. ^@I will Insert (don't confuse ^@Insert with ^@<Ins>: the latter is NOT a CTRLALT command to avoid an accidental ^@<Del>) the contents of the large buffer as a series of keystrokes which are then acted upon by your application program. The entire contents of the buffer will be entered and you will then exit CTRLALT. The buffer is unchanged so you can reenter it with a second ^@I. You can suspend the playback of the contents of the large buffer with ^@Q. After using ^@Q to Quit, you are back in your application program. A ^@I will reinsert the large buffer from its beginning while another ^@Q will continue the playback of the buffer at the point you quit with the first ^@Q. The large buffer stores a box and therefore more than one line of characters. Depending on the application, you may want line ends to be treated in different way. CTRLALT will treat line Chapter V:MARKING MODE Page 20 Documentation for CTRLALT ends in one of three different ways. You choose the entry mode with suitable ^@ commands: ^@R carriage Return mode, the mode in which CTRLALT starts ^@B Backspace mode ^@Z Zilch mode You only need issue this command once and CTRLALT will remember it until you issue another one of them. When ^@I is issued or the <E> subcommand is chosen from marking mode, CTRLALT uses the mode determined by the last of these three commands or it uses carriage Return mode if none of these commands has been issued since loading. In carriage Return mode, CTRLALT sends a carriage return (ASCII 013) at the end of each intermediate line in the buffer. This is precisely the code sent by the <Enter> key as you can check by using ^@T. This is the proper mode to use in certain word processors. In Backspace mode, CTRLALT looks at the length of the lines in the buffer and sends a sequence of left arrow keystrokes followed by a down arrow at the conclusion of each line. This will tend to produce a rectangular box in most word processors but you may have a problem if your word processor ignores down arrows issued at the bottom of a file. This is also the slowest entry method. Despite the name, it is <Left arrow>s and not <Backspace>s that are issued in this mode. In Zilch mode, as the name implies, CTRLALT sends no keystrokes at the end of a line but continues to send the characters on the next line. If you don't want to preserve the box shape of what you put in the buffer and you are sending the characters to a word processor with word wrap, Zilch is probably for you. Not all applications can take keystrokes at the rate that CTRLALT supplies them. For that reason, you can issue a command to CTRLALT to send keystrokes at a slower rate. It will then issue keystrokes at that rate until its receives a command to use the faster rate. The commands are: ^@- use slower speed ^@+ use faster rate The + and - refer to the keys on the top row and not the <Grey +> and <Grey -> which are too close to <Del>. By ^@+ we mean ^@ and the <+/=> key; you should NOT also depress a shift key. By default CTRLALT starts in the fast mode. PCWRITE in Backspace mode requires the slower speed to operate properly. While it is intended that you issue ^@+ and ^@- at a time when CTRLALT is not inserting keystrokes in response to a ^@I, there seems to be no problem issuing these commands while an Chapter V:MARKING MODE Page 21 Documentation for CTRLALT insertion is in progress. The results of issuing ^@R, ^@B or ^@Z during an insertion are unpredictable. V.4 Usage Notes The attributes used to display the difference between a box being made with CTRLALT and the ambient background are determined by a method which will show a multiply colored box overlaying a multiply colored screen. On an ordinary monochrome monitor with the normal attributes for regular (07) and reverse video (70), the box shows as reverse video where it overlays ordinary text and ordinary video where it overlays reverse video. However, if you have a two monitor system and set your prompt with ANSI.SYS, or if you are looking at the output of a program intended to run in color, the attributes on the monochrome screen may be non-standard. That is the bytes stored in memory will not be the usual 07 although the screen will appear normal. Thus if you use ANSI to set yellow on blue as the colors on your color screen while in DOS, the attributes which ANSI.SYS sets up when you're active on your monochrome screen will be 1E which appear as intense amber (or green) on black. The algorithm used by CTRLALT will set the attributes in a box on the monochrome monitor to 69 which also appears as bright amber (or green) on black so the box is invisible! For this situation, we have built in a special command ^@V which will change all the attributes on your monochrome screen to the plain Vanilla 07. So if you are on the monochrome screen and your marking box appears to be invisible, do the following: <Esc> to exit marking mode ^@V to Vanillaize attributes ^@<Enter> to return to marking mode The marking box will not longer be invisible. If you use ^@V before or without <Esc>aping first, the results will not be the desired ones and you should follow the above directions. These comments apply also to print control mode. If you are using the commercial program FANSI-CONSOLE, it uses a better algorithm for setting attributes on the monochrome screen and you will probably not have the same need for ^@V. As explained in Section III.5, text entered by CTRLALT is sent to your application as if it were entered via the alt-numeric keypad, i.e. with a reported scan code of 00. This may affect how it is treated by certain keyboard macro programs especially those such as KEYWORKS that allow you to define macros on the alt- numeric keypad. With such a program, it would be wise to restrict the numbers of these macros to the range 128-175 to avoid unexpected results when entering characters from the buffers or in the box drawing mode. The remarks made in Section IV.3 about the marking of lines Chapter V:MARKING MODE Page 22 Documentation for CTRLALT on the EGA running in 43 line mode when in print control mode also apply to marking mode. Chapter V:MARKING MODE Page 23 ╒═══╕ ╓───────╖ Chapter VI: │BOX│ ║DRAWING║ ╘═══╛ ╙───────╜ COMMANDS: ^@<0>,^@<1>,...,^@<9> character type set with 0-6, cursor movement with 7,8,9 SUBCOMMANDS: @<n0>,...,@<n9>,@<Grey +>,@<Grey -> VI.1 The Alt Numeric Keypad When IBM decided to develop an extended ASCII code covering the codes from 129 through 256, they included 40 box drawing characters to allow single line boxes, double line boxes and mixed boxes like those in the title of this chapter. These characters display properly on the screen and on some printers (but the IBM graphics printer prints all graphics characters as single line characters, even the double line and mixed characters; the Proprinter prints them out as they appear on the screen) and they are much more elegant than what people try to put together with =, - and |. Just compare ───────────────────── with ------------------- or ═════════════════════ with =================== │ | │ | │ | or │ with | │ | │ | The problem is that there is not any simple way of embedding graphics characters in your word processing files. There are full featured monographics editing programs like MONOGRAFXS which are quite nice but they don't solve the problem of occasional use or the occasional user. CTRLALT provides access to these box drawing characters in a simple and logical way. The keystrokes that we use for this depend on exploiting a redundancy built into the standard keyboard setup. One can always enter box characters by knowing their ASCII codes and using the <Alt> shift and the numeric keypad. For example, the corner └ has decimal ASCII code 192 so one can enter it by holding down the <Alt> key and pressing <n1>, <n9>, <n2> on the numeric keypad. When you lift your finger off the <Alt> key, the └ should appear. Try it in DOS. The point is that you can get the same result by pressing the <Alt>-<Lft Shft> combination instead of the <Alt> key and this leaves the <Alt> keypad for other uses. Of course, one can't get 40 characters out of a ten key keypad, so we use ^@numbers to shift between different templates for the keypad; one of the possibilities is ^@0(zero) which returns the alt-keypad to its usual state so you can continue to use it for entering ASCII codes or for use in your keyboard macro program which has a key like <AltEND>. ^@1-4 will give templates with the various box characters and ^@5-6 yield some other Chapter VI:BOX DRAWING Page 24 Documentation for CTRLALT useful extended ASCII characters. ^@7-9 will control the cursor motion associated with the keys that send in the straight graphics characters. Later in the chapter, tables will appear that should be useful if viewed on the screen. Not all printers will print the graphics characters. VI.2 Box drawing characters The shape of the numeric keypad is perfect for associating to those graphics characters which are not straight. This is one place where a picture is worth a thousand words so we show the keypad and the characters one obtains with them in the default ^@1 mode: 7 8 9 ┌ ┬ ┐ 4 5 6 ├ ┼ ┤ 1 2 3 └ ┴ ┘ ^@1 so that @<n3> will give ┘ and @<n5> will give ┼. There are two other single line characters, the straight lines ─ and │ and these are given by @<Grey -> and @<Grey +> respectively. Of course - is a horizontal line and + has a vertical line. Similarly, ^@2 gives the double line characters, ^@3 the characters associated with double horizontal and single vertical while ^@4 is the reverse. A mnemonic for remembering which is which is to note that the number 3 has more horizontal lines than vertical lines while 4 has more vertical than horizontal lines. In pictures: 7 8 9 ╔ ╦ ╗ ╒ ╤ ╕ ╓ ╥ ╖ 4 5 6 ╠ ╬ ╣ ╞ ╪ ╡ ╟ ╫ ╢ 1 2 3 ╚ ╩ ╝ ╘ ╧ ╛ ╙ ╨ ╜ ^@2 ^@3 ^@4 Thus, for example to insert ╧, first hit ^@3 and then @<n2>. Until some other of ^@0-6 is struck, the @<n.> keys will then yield the characters shown above ^@3. In each case @<Grey+> and @<Grey -> give the vertical and horizontal line characters for the associated set (so, for example @<Grey -> gives ═ with ^@2 and ^@3 while @<Grey +> gives ║ with ^@2 and ^@4). Chapter VI:BOX DRAWING Page 25 Documentation for CTRLALT VI.3 Other graphics characters ^@5 and ^@6 give shading and Greek characters respectively as shown in: 7 8 9 ▌ ▐ ▀ α ß τ ┌─┐ ┌─┐ ┌─┐ 4 5 6 │-│ █ ■ ▄ │«│ δ ε Θ │Γ│ ├─┤ ├─┤ ├─┤ 1 2 3 │+│ ░ ▒ ▓ │»│ µ π σ │Σ│ └─┘ └─┘ └─┘ ^@5 ^@6 The shading characters shown in positions 7 and 8 look the same but occupy the left and right sides of a space so that @<n7>@<n8> is ▌▐ while @<n8>@<n7> is ▐▌. Similarly positions 9 and 6 are top and bottom as in ▀▄ and ▄▀. The characters on the Grey +/- make attractive patterns as in: ««««««««»»»»»»» »»»»»»»»»»»»»»» The way to remember the shading characters is that the shading gets darker as one runs from @<n1> to @<n4>, the left hand shading is to the left of the right hand shading (@<n7> and @<n8>) while the top half shading is on top of the bottom half shading. The Greek letters are in alphabetical order reading as if the keypad were a page rather than in numeric order and the Grey +/- have capital Greek letters. Σ, the mathematical symbol for sum is associated to the plus key. There are three additional Greek letters included in the IBM set: ASCII 232 Φ, 234 Ω and 237 φ not to mention the Greek letters that IBM doesn't recognize! VI.4 Cursor motion and <Grey +/-> The three commands ^@7, ^@8, ^@9 control the way that the cursor moves when one issues an @<Grey +> or @<Grey -> keystroke. In the default mode, to which one can return with ^@8, the character is issued and the cursor moves right one position. In the mode reached with ^@9, @<Grey -> works the same as in the default mode but for @<Grey +> the cursor moves down one row rather than right. Thus one can draw a line downward by depressing the alt key and tapping the <Grey +> several times. In the mode reached from ^@7, the cursor moves back one step after @<Grey -> and up one after @<Grey +>. These extra cursor modes are only operational when the @numeric keypad is in a mode set by one of the commands ^@1-4; Chapter VI:BOX DRAWING Page 26 Documentation for CTRLALT there is no unusual cursor motion in the modes set by ^@0, ^@5 or ^@6. But CTRLALT does remember the cursor movement mode that was set if you go, for example, from ^@1 to ^@6 and back to ^@1. VI.5 Usage Notes Notice that states of the Alt keypad numbers are set with ^@ -top row number commands. We want to be sure to keep your fingers away from an accidental ^@<Del>. The motion of the cursor when ^@7 or ^@9 is set is based on the assumptions that entering a character moves the cursor right one character and that arrow keys act in the conventional way. Thus the action of @<Grey +> in ^@9 mode is accomplished by sending the three keystrokes │ (ASCII 179), <Lft> (ASCII 00;75) and <Down> (ASCII 00;80). If these assumptions are not met the results can be unexpected. In PCWRITE, there is a problem with the rapid entry of two <Lft>'s: the cursor moves left, not two but three spaces. The @<Grey -> does not work properly in ^@7 mode when you are running PCWRITE. Keyboard macro programs typically allow you to define macros on keystrokes like <AltEND> if you hold down the <Alt> key and tap <End>. These macros are still accessible to you if go into ^@0 mode. What happens if you try to define such a macro on ^@<n1> if you are in a mode like ^@1 will depend on the particular macro program. For example if you are using SUPERKEY, you will get the message that you are defining a macro based on └. This means you can define not one <AltEND> macro but 7 of them and move between them with a choice from ^@0 to ^@6. In KEYWORKS, the effect will be similar but instead of telling you that the macro is named "└", it will give you the name {{192} (192 is the decimal ASCII code for └). Chapter VI:BOX DRAWING Page 27 Chapter VII: THE EMERGENCY EXIT COMMAND: ^@<F9> VII.1 A Powerful but Dangerous Command CTRLALT provides a service which can be very useful but which can cause crashes and loss of work if not used properly. We urge you to experiment with it before using it "under fire" and to read this ENTIRE chapter before doing any experimentation on your own. We have made the keystroke invoking this service ^@<F9> which is sufficiently awkward that it is unlikely you would issue it by mistake. In particular, you can safely choose to ignore this chapter and the service provided if our warnings make you nervous (but we think that would be a mistake since the service can be useful). You have surely had the experience of your machine apparently locking up for no apparent reason or because you bumped the wrong key causing your application program to bomb. There is no real excuse for applications programs to behave like that but some do because some programmer neglected to put error checking in one place or another. In that situation, you have had to reboot or even turn the machine on and off. ^@<F9> will occasionally save you when this happens. This solution is not ideal; what ^@<F9> does is issue a call to DOS (service 4CH of interrupt 21H if you really want to know) to terminate the currently running program. Any work you did during the current session in that program and which you or the program did not explicitly save will be lost. But if the exit is successful, you will not have to wait while your system boots up again nor will you lose the contents of your RAM disk, or anything left unsaved in resident programs like SIDEKICK's notepad. ^@<F9> is also useful for exiting certain game programs which do not give you any way of exiting to DOS but expect you to reboot the machine when you are finished playing. If you want to see ^@<F9> in action, you can try the following experiment. Use DEBUG to make a little two byte program which will put your computer into an endless loop. Here is how the debug session should look (WARNING: DO NOT THINK, "Oh I know how to do that in BASIC; it won't matter if I don't follow directions and use BASIC instead". YOU WILL BE SORRY IF YOU TRY EXPERIMENTS WITH ^@<F9> AND BASIC BEFORE READING THIS CHAPTER!!): Chapter VII:THE EMERGENCY EXIT Page 28 Documentation for CTRLALT >debug junk.com File not found -a xxxx:0100 jmp 100 xxxx:0102 -rcx CX 0000 :2 -w Writing 0002 bytes -q Here, "xxxx" is an irrelevant string of four hex digits. Merely making this program will not produce any effect but running it will. So please be sure that CTRLALT has been installed and type in "junk" at the DOS command line. The cursor will move down and sit there but the machine will respond to no normal keystrokes, even <Ctrl C> or <Ctrl Break>. Your resident programs may still be accessible. For example, when we tried the experiment, SIDEKICK could still be called up but SUPERKEY could not unless SIDEKICK was called up first. When you've decided that you can't think of any way out but rebooting, use ^@<F9>. Impressed? If you hit various keys in your attempt to exit they may now appear on the screen since they were put into the keyboard buffer and released when DOS came back (if you invoked SIDEKICK, it may have eaten the keys in the buffer so they may not appear). VII.2 Fouled Interrupts Generally, ^@<F9> will "work" at any time that the machine would respond to ^@<Del>. If your machine is so dead that you must turn it on and off, ^@<F9> will certainly have no effect but it can't hurt to try. And if ^@<F9> doesn't work, certainly try rebooting via ^@<Del> before giving up and powering off and on. There are times that ^@<F9> will successfully exit the running program and give you a DOS prompt but the machine will not respond to the keyboard. This happens because while you successfully terminated the running program, the crash involved more than a logic loop in the program; a keyboard interrupt could be fouled or some aspect of DOS could be sick. In that case, you'll have to reboot via ^@<Del>. It should be possible to make a version of the RELEASE program mentioned below a resident part of CTRLALT which might probably save you in such situations and we may do that in a future release of CTRLALT. It is important that you understand in vague terms why this problem occurs. When you strike a key on your keyboard, a signal Chapter VII:THE EMERGENCY EXIT Page 29 Documentation for CTRLALT is sent to your CPU telling it to invoke a special program. To find that program it looks at the four bytes starting at memory address 00024H (Interrupt 09H). These four bytes are interpreted as a memory address and the computer looks to that memory address to find the special program to run. Initially, the address is in the ROM, that is the memory "hard wired" into your machine. Keyboard macro programs work precisely by changing that address when they load. The macro program puts the address of some of its code in memory location 00024H and the CPU then invokes the macro program whenever a key is struck. Typically, the macro program will decide if the keystroke was "intended for it" and if not, it will then invoke the routine at what used to be called from address 00024H. Suppose somehow that the four bytes at address 00024H get changed in a random way. Then, striking a key will call up an irrelevant program or even what the CPU would regard as pure babble. Actually, if int 09H were fouled, ^@<F9> would not work but keyboard input in DOS involves an additional interrupt (16H) which could be fouled without affecting ^@<F9>. The point of giving you this technical discussion is that there are many interrupts besides 09H and 16H. If they become fouled, you may not realize it since keystrokes will act normally but some other action like reading a disk or loading a program may cause your CPU to get babble. There is another possible problem related to this. Suppose the application program you loaded changed int 9H so that the application program directly processes keystrokes (two programs notorious for doing this are XYWRITE and SMARTCOM). While ^@<F9> has exited the program, it has not removed the code for the program so that it could happen that the code for the exited program will continue to successfully process keystrokes. However, exiting the program has told DOS that the memory can be used so that loading some other program overwrites the code that was processing keystrokes. Since the address at int 9H still points to the overwritten address, you have babble this way too. Thus, ^@<F9> may get you out of trouble but lead to an unstable state. Fortunately, errors in the interrupt table or DOS (produced by an application program doing something stupid) are likely to so foul the system that you won't be fooled into thinking all is well. Thus the problem of merely apparent salvation will be associated with using the emergency exit from certain programs. Which ones? We wish that we could tell you. You will learn mainly by trial and error but it appears that many programs are safe. Generally the one with problems are those that clearly don't "play by the rules". If your keyboard macro program doesn't work in an application, it is likely that it will produce an unstable state after an emergency exit. And BASIC changes a whole bunch of interrupts so using ^@<F9> inside BASIC will cause an unstable state. There may also be problems with complied BASIC programs. Chapter VII:THE EMERGENCY EXIT Page 30 Documentation for CTRLALT VII.3 RELEASE: A Safety Valve With some advanced planning and the program RELEASE.COM (written by one of us - RMW - and in the public domain) which is included with this package, you can give yourself an extra safety valve to use when you have issued a ^@<F9> and are unsure of the state of your interrupt table. RELEASE works in the following way: at any time you have a DOS prompt, you can run the RELEASE program by typing the command release FILENAME FILENAME can include an optional drive and directory name and must include a valid filename with NO extension. If a drive and/or directory path are not given, RELEASE will use the current values. This command will create a file in the specified drive and directory with the name FILENAME.com. If such a file previously exists RELEASE will erase it and replace it with the file it creates. Thus "release B:\foo\george" will create george.com in the directory foo of drive B and any previous george.com in that directory will be eliminated. If you later run the program george.com (by issuing the command "george" from the proper directory or having that directory in your DOS search path), the program will remove any programs loaded subsequently to your having run RELEASE and restore the interrupt table to its state at the time george.com was created. In particular, it might pay to include the line "release aeend" near the end of your autoexec.bat file. If you invoke ^@<F9> and are concerned about the stability of your system, just run aeend. We have tested this procedure after exiting from BASIC with no later problems. Of course, you may find RELEASE useful for memory management tasks other than just saving you after ^@<F9>. VII.4 Usage Notes It can happen that exiting a resident program like SIDEKICK especially when running an application program in graphics mode will fail to restore the screen. This is a time when ^@<F9> will at least save you from rebooting. However, you will lose any work which was not previously saved so you should try other methods like reinvoking the resident program or refreshing the screen in the application program by <PgUp> and <PgDn> if appropriate. Invoking ^@<F9> from a resident program like SIDEKICK is perfectly possible (although SIDEKICK is unlikely to lead to a situation where ^@<F9> is needed, we have known the system to lock up with SIDEKICK active due to a conflict with another resident program). However, ^@<F9> issues a command to DOS to return to the DOS level so that ^@<F9> will not only terminate the resident Chapter VII:THE EMERGENCY EXIT Page 31 Documentation for CTRLALT program but also the application program that was running when the resident program was invoked. It may also happen that you are no longer able to call up the resident program with its hotkeys if you have exited it with ^@<F9>. This will depend on the program and the state it is in when you invoke ^@<F9>. For example, if you call up CTRLALT via ^@A and then use ^@<F9>, you will disable all the tables although the other features of CTRLALT will still be accessible. This has to do with the internal structure of CTRLALT. CTRLALT saves the part of the screen replaced by a table in a special buffer in order to restore the screen upon exiting. To save memory, only one buffer is kept which means that CTRLALT will not let you call up one table when another is currently active. It does this by setting an internal flag saying a table is currently active. When this flag is set, the four table commands ^@A,H,N,T have no effect. Exiting a table with <Esc> resets the flag but exiting with ^@<F9> cannot reset the flag and thus the tables are disabled. The point of this discussion is to explain why the behavior of a resident program exited with ^@<F9> will depend on the program and its current state. DOS has special rules for how its special processes act in response to ^@<F9>. If a batch file is running and ^@<F9> is invoked, the batch file is not terminated. If you have called up an application program with a batch file and you issue a ^@<F9>, you will exit that application program but the batch file will continue running (if you ever want to exit a running batch file, Ctrl-C or Ctrl-Break works fine). If you are in a new shell of DOS ^@<F9> will return you to that shell and does not terminate the shell, that is ^@<F9> does not terminate the program command.com. The com files produced by RELEASE can be dangerous if run during a different session where other programs are loaded. For example, if you change your autoexec.bat file and later run an aeend file produced in an earlier session, you are bound to have a serious problem. This is why RELEASE erases any file with the same name as the one you are trying to create. To add to you safety, we recommend placing the com files made by RELEASE on a RAM disk if you have one. RELEASE does not know about Lotus/Intel/Microsoft EMS and will not properly free any EMS memory filled up between when RELEASE was run and when you run the com file RELEASE made. There is a pair of public domain programs written by Turbo Power software called MARK and RELEASE (different RELEASE; if you have both rename one of them!) which serve a function similar to the RELEASE program discussed here but which includes EMS support. However, you cannot use the MARK/RELEASE combination as a safety valve as described above. If run after BASIC, the other RELEASE program will cause a dramatic hard crash. The difference seems to be that the Turbo Power RELEASE, being a TURBO PASCAL program is large (about 13K) Chapter VII:THE EMERGENCY EXIT Page 32 Documentation for CTRLALT while the com file made by Wilson's RELEASE is small (555 bytes) and so Turbo Power's RELEASE overwrites some code pointed to by an interrupt. If you have both programs available and use EMS memory, you can first run Turbo Power's MARK and then Wilson's RELEASE at the end of your autoexec.bat file. Then when trying to recover from a dangerous ^@<F9>, you first run the com file made by Wilson's RELEASE and then the Turbo Power RELEASE program. Chapter VII:THE EMERGENCY EXIT Page 33 Chapter VIII: COMMAND SUMMARY Section numbers appear in parentheses ────────────────────────────────╥────────────────────────────────── ^@A ASCII table (III.1-2) ║ ^@U NOT USED ^@B Backspace mode (V.3) ║ ^@V Vanilla (V.4) ^@C Copy screen (II.1) ║ ^@W NOT USED ^@D NOT USED ║ ^@X NOT USED ^@E Enter small buffer (III.2)║ ^@Y NOT USED ^@F NOT USED ║ ^@Z Zilch mode (V.3) ^@G NOT USED ║ ^@<F9> Emergency Exit to DOS (VII) ^@H Hex table (III.1-2) ║ ^@<Enter> Marking Mode (V.1,2) ^@I Insert large buffer (V.3) ║ ^@<=/+> Fast Insert Mode (V.3) ^@J NOT USED ║ ^@<-/_> Slow Insert Mode (V.3) ^@K Kill other screen (II.1) ║ ^@1 └ ┴ ┘ ├ ┼ ┤ ┌ ┬ ┐ mode (VI.2) ^@L NOT USED ║ ^@2 ╚ ╩ ╝ ╠ ╬ ╣ ╔ ╦ ╗ mode(VI.2) ^@M NOT USED ║ ^@3 ╘ ╧ ╛ ╞ ╪ ╡ ╒ ╤ ╕ mode(VI.2) ^@N aNsi table (III.3) ║ ^@4 ╙ ╨ ╜ ╟ ╫ ╢ ╓ ╥ ╖ mode(VI.2) ^@O tbls on Other scrn (III.1)║ ^@5 ░ ▒ ▓ █ ■ ▄ ▌ ▐ ▀ mode(VI.3) ^@P Print control mode ║ ^@6 µ π σ δ ε Θ α ß τ mode(VI.3) ^@Q Quit buffer insert (V.3) ║ ^@7 - left; + up mode (VI.4) ^@R carriage Return mode (V.3)║ ^@8 normal alt <Grey +/-> (VI.4) ^@S Switch monitors ║ ^@9 - right; + down mode (VI.4) ^@T aTtribute table (III.3) ║ ^@0 @Keypad in standard mode ────────────────────────────────╨────────────────────────────────── ^@A,^@H subcommands: E(nter), P(rint), B(uffer), Arrows, <Esc> ^@P subcommands: <Up>,<Down>,<PgUp>,<PgDn>,S(witch),P(rint), A(ll), various escape codes to printer ^@<Enter> subcommands: Arrows, <Enter> or <Ins> to tack down Arrows, <PgUp>,<PgDn>,<Grey +>,<Grey -> S(witch), C(opy), P(rint), (c)U(t)=<Enter>=<Ins> ^@1-6: @numeric keypad, @<Grey +>, @<Grey -> Chapter VIII:COMMAND SUMMARY Page 34 Chapter IX:CUSTOMIZING CTRLALT IX.1 The Procedure If you have access to the IBM or Microsoft Macro Assembler, it is quite easy to customize CTRLALT. In the last section, we will even give you directions for using DEBUG to change some of the parameters if you do not have the Macro Assembler and you still wish to change some of the more important parameters. If you wish to customize CTRLALT and have the Macro Assembler, you should take the source code file ctrlalt.asm and make a copy with a convenient name, say mycalt.asm and do the following: first edit the file with an ASCII file editor or word processor capable of producing pure ASCII text. For example, PCWrite was used to edit the original source file. Editing directions will be found in Sections 2-8 of this chapter. After editing mycalt.asm you will need to issue the sequence of commands: masm mycalt; link mycalt; exe2bin mycalt mycalt.com You might care to then erase mycalt.obj and mycalt.exe. The source code begins with eight parts separated by a line of dashes before the code itself which is separated from the preliminaries by a line of #'s. Part 1 has the copyright and other goodies. We will refer to places to change by the parts and lines in the parts. IX.2 Fundamental key combination The last line of part 2 (line 23) says "call combo = 0CH". This sets the Ctrl and Alt keys as the basic call up combination. Change 0CH to xxH as indicated below for the key combination indicated: 0CH Ctrl-Alt 06H Ctrl-LShift 0AH Alt-LShift 03H RShift-LShift 05H Ctrl-RShift 09H Alt-RShift 01H Right Shift alone 02H Left Shift alone 04H Ctrl alone 08H Alt alone We believe that the first two possibilities are the preferred one; you should save the Alt-LShift combination for the Alt-numeric Chapter IX:CUSTOMIZING CTRLALT Page 35 Documentation for CTRLALT keypad. Combination with the right shift are awkward. It is possible to use only a single shift with letters to call up CTRLALT but this will disable many key combinations needed by other programs (but you could, if desperate dedicate one of your shifts to CTRLALT but shouldn't unless you are a real hunt and peek typist). IX.3 Command Keys The fourth section of the code begins: ;**** SCAN CODES FOR COMMAND KEYS FOLLOW: commands db 1FH,2EH,25H,18H,1EH,19H,23H,43H db 1CH,17H,10H,0CH,0DH,30H,12H db 0BH,2,3,4,5,6,7 db 14H,13H,8,9,0AH db 2FH,2CH,31H These five line correspond to the basic command combinations: ^@S,^@C,^@K,^@O("oh"),^@A,^@P,^@H,^@<F9> ^@<Enter>,^@I,^@Q,^@<-/_>,^@<+/=>,^@B,^@E ^@0,^@1,^@2,^@3,^@4,^@5,^@6 ^@T,^@R,^@7,^@8,^@9 ^@V,^@Z,^@N Suppose that you wish to change the callup for print control mode from ^@P to ^@<PrtSc> which you might because you own a program that already uses ^@P as its callup command. You search for ^@P (the default in the second of the tables above) or alternately get the scan code in HEX for (using ^@T; the scan code is 19) and search for it in the first table above. This tells you that you need to change the sixth entry in line 1 of the section "SCAN CODES FOR COMMAND KEYS FOLLOW:". You find the scan code for <PrtSc/*> which is 37H and modify that entry in line one in the source file mycalt.asm. It should now read: commands db 1FH,2EH,25H,18H,1EH,37H,23H,43H In making these changes keep the following in mind: -You must use the hex scan codes; the basic manual lists scan codes in hex but of course, it is easier to use ^@T -Unless the scan code is less than 9, you must include an H -Beware that the number key "n" has scan code "n+1" IMPORTANT: If you want to disable a CTRLALT module, just change its call up key code to 0FFH. (The 0 is important!). For example, if you have a single monitor system, we recommend disabling the four basic dual monitor commands so the first line should read: Chapter IX:CUSTOMIZING CTRLALT Page 36 Documentation for CTRLALT commands db 0FFH,0FFH,0FFH,0FFH,1EH,37H,23H,43H There are also subcommands which can be changed. These occur in sections 5-7 of the initial stuff. We leave it to the user to puzzle out the meanings of the funny labels or to use the scan codes except to note that with a singe monitor system you should disable the <S> subcommands by changing the 1FH that appears on the line in section 5 beginning "prtcoms" and the 1FH that appears on the third line in section 6 to a 0FFH. IX.4 Table Colors If you don't like the color which we have picked for the various tables, the first 7 lines in section 2 of the code deal with those. The attributes for the borders of the table on the color monitor (default of 19H=bright blue on blue) are called "border", the attributes for the numbers and labels (default of 1FH=white on blue) are called "background" and the attributes for the actual characters (default of 30H=black on cyan) are called "mainattr". There are similar labels for the monochrome screen. The scan code and aNsi labels have attributes (default 1B=bright cyan on blue) have the name "attrlabel". We recommend the following changes for the COMPAQ dual mode monitors: mainattr = 0FH attrlabel = 10H IX.5 Table Locations If you don't like the locations that we have chosen for the tables, you can change them but not dynamically. That is you can make a permanent change but if a table comes up in a bad place one time there is nothing that you can do (at least for this version of CTRLALT). The upper left hand corners of the tables are determined by decimal numbers occurring in section 2 of the code with "begoff" labels. These numbers MUST be even. If you want to locate the corner in column y of row x this number should be 160x+2y with the convention that rows are labelled 0-24 and columns 0-79. If you make y too close to 79 the table will line wrap and look rather funny. In addition, you need to be careful that positions of the ASCII and Hex tables don't overlap or else ^@O will produce an improper display. IX.6 Copy Attributes You can change the colors used when ^@C is invoked. The comments in section 2 of the source code are clear on this account. Chapter IX:CUSTOMIZING CTRLALT Page 37 Documentation for CTRLALT IX.7 XOR Attributes The cursor in the ASCII/Hex tables and in the ^@<Enter>/^@P modes has colors set by "xoring" the present attributes with attributes given in the source code. This is not the place to explain that algorithm. We recommend the following changes for the COMPAQ dual mode monitor: colxor = 27H ascolxor = 7FH IX.8 Printer Escape Sequences The eighth section of the source file lists the decimal ASCII sequences sent to the printer by the various letter subcommands in ^@P. You can change these sequences if your printer does not use IBM graphics control sequences. For example with the Epson LQ-1500 whose NLQ mode is called up with a distinct sequence to that used by the Proprinter, you would replace the line qual db 27,73,2,0FFH ;proprinter with qual db 27,126,1,0FFH ;LQ-1500 Please add "0FFH" to the end of the sequence listed in your printer manual. That code is used for CTRLALT's internal purposes. IX.9 Using DEBUG The table below gives various addresses for using DEBUG to change certain bytes in the com file: Function ║ Byte(Hex; offset 100H) ║ Default(Hex) ───────────────────╫────────────────────────────╫───────────────── CallUp ║ 2BE ║ 0C ^@S ║ 14F ║ 1F ^@C ║ 150 ║ 2E ^@K ║ 151 ║ 25 ^@O ║ 152 ║ 18 ^@P:Switch ║ 1B1 ║ 1F ^@<Enter>:S ║ 20D ║ 1F Mainattr ║ 86D ║ 30 Attrlabel ║ 527,784,8DB,8F4 ║ 1B Colxor ║ 36F ║ 2A Ascolxor ║ 928 ║ 5F The callup function is discussed in Section IX.2; the other Chapter IX:CUSTOMIZING CTRLALT Page 38 Documentation for CTRLALT functions involve things we recommend changing for the COMPAQ dual mode monitor (disable the 6 monitor switches and follow the recommendations in Sections IX.4 and IX.6 for attributes). Here is a trial debug session modifying CTRLALT for the COMPAQ. It assumes that you have copied ctrlalt.com to cacmq.com: >debug cacmq.com -e14f xxxx:014F 1F.ff -e150 xxxx:0150 2E.ff -e151 xxxx:0151 25.ff -e152 xxxx:0152 18.ff -e1b1 xxxx:01B1 1F.ff -e20d xxxx:020D 1F.ff -e86d xxxx:086D 30.0f -e527 xxxx:0527 1B.10 -e784 xxxx:0784 1B.10 -e8db xxxx:08DB 1B.10 -e8f4 xxxx:08F4 1B.10 -e36f xxxx:036F 2A.27 -e928 xxxx:0928 5F.7F -w Writing 0E36 bytes -q In the above, "xxxx" is an irrelevant four digit hex number. The "e" command tells debug that you want a byte displayed and want the option to change it. For example when you type in "e928<Enter>" in response to the debug "-" prompt, debug responds "xxxx:0928 5F." telling you that 5F is currently there. You type in "7F<Enter>". You could shorten things by just typing "e928 7F" in which case debug would make the change and not report anything but we believe the error checking of seeing the current byte displayed is useful. Chapter IX:CUSTOMIZING CTRLALT Page 39