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dbWRITER 1.8 ================================ Copyright 1991,1992 David Becker GEnie D.Becker8 Compuserve 73030,3562 dbWRITER was originally an experiment in alternative interfaces, long before my ZeST programs were developed. I wanted to create a custom graphic user interface that would closely resemble GEM and be portable to the IBM platform. I had written a simple text editor in my FontSwap2 program that I wanted to expand so it became the perfect vehicle in which to test my alternative interface ideas. dbWRITER has been floating around in various BETA stages for quite a few months. The first OFFICIAL RELEASE came as a result of much prompting by other users. dbWRITER has never seen any serious testing therefore I would appreciate your input when you are confronted with bugs. I hope to continue perfecting dbWRITER in my spare time as well as adding many new and requested features. I have released dbWRITER in three parts. The dictionary file probably won't be changed for some time so you will only have to download it once. The thesaurus is also available online and will not be changed. The main program and support modules will be released anytime an update warrants it. dbWRITER and all my past programs are freeware, you can copy them, sell them through the user group or upload them to local BBS systems. You use dbWRITER at your own risk. dbWRITER is configurable and will therefore run on all ST platforms. One megabyte or more is recommended though you can run without the dictionary on a 520ST. dbWRITER really needs more than one megabyte and a hard drive if it is to be fully appreciated. I recommend TurboST by Softrek to dramatically speed up text scrolling (Programmers note: I use the Line-A-Routine BITBLT to scroll the screen). You will need a monochrome monitor. Starting Out ============ I must begin by stressing the importance of regularly saving your document to disk. If you are about to make any major change to your document such as a global column or width reformat, or do a spell check, make sure you've saved your work first. dbWRITER is fairly solid, but any application is bound to have hidden bugs, please proceed safely at all times. This manual is an overview of the primary commands and functions needed to operate dbWriter. It assumes an understanding of the fundamentals of word processing and general knowledge of the ST's mouse and keyboard. Key combinations listed in this documentation may include the alternate key <A>, the control key <C>, the LEFT shift key <S> or any combination of these. <CS>L would require that you hold down the LEFT shift key and control key while pressing the letter L. Editing Text ============ The dbWRITER work space is divided into two areas. The uppermost blank area is your text editing screen. This is where you will be typing and manipulating your document. Just below at the bottom of the screen is the command line. You can move the cursor around your document using the arrow keys or by pointing and clicking with the left mouse. Here are the basic editing principles, - BACKSPACE moves the cursor to the left and deletes a character. It drags all text 'to the end of the line' along with it. BACKSPACE at the beginning of a blank line deletes that line and moves the cursor up and on to the end of the line above. - DELETE deletes the character that the cursor resides on and also drags everything else 'to the end of the line' left. The cursor stays put. DELETE will remove a blank line and move all lines up one space. - <SHIFT>DELETE deletes any line, empty or not and moves all lines up one space. - When RETURN is used at the end of the last line in your document, the cursor jumps to the beginning of a new blank line below. When RETURN is pressed at the end of a line within your document it inserts a blank line below and moves the cursor to the beginning of this new line. When RETURN is pressed at the beginning of a line it inserts a blank line at the cursor, moves the existing line down then moves the cursor down to the beginning of this line. When RETURN is used within a line, the line is split into two parts and everything from the cursor position to the end of the line is moved to the line below, inserting a blank line if nescessary. The cursor is also moved down to the beginning of the line. There are two distinct modes for text entry. INSERT and OVERWRITE. You toggle between the two modes using the INSERT key. INSERT mode is the default and displays a pointing arrow while OVERWRITE displays a crosshair. INSERT MODE (this is where you will spend most of your time) - When entering text or using the SPACEBAR, all other text in front is pushed forward. Each time a letter is typed, the cursor moves one space to the right awaiting the next keypress. OVERWRITE MODE - When entering text or using the SPACEBAR, all existing text is overwritten by the new characters. Nothing gets pushed forward. Each time a letter is typed, the cursor moves one space to the right awaiting the next keypress. Word Wrap ========= Word wrap can be toggled on and off by clicking within the command line box at the bottom of the screen. When word wrap is enabled, any text extending past the right margin will be automatically wrapped to the next line as you type. Word wrap only works when there is a blank line beneath. Word wrap does not effect editing, only typing when the cursor is at the end of the line. This way you can format and play with any given line after it has been typed without the irritation of the last word always wrapping around by mistake. Command Line ============ The bottom of the screen contains the command line. From left to right you see the line number indicator which shows the line the cursor resides on. Click within this box to jump to any line number. Next to that is the page number indicator displaying the page that the cursor resides within. Click here to jump to the beginning of any page. The bottom of this box doubles as a document indicator, either DOC1 or DOC2 (you toggle between two documents using <C>F). The word wrap indicator displays the status of automatic word wrap, dark for on and light for off. Click here to toggle between these to modes. The 'quick pick grid' is next and lets you [L] Load a text file, [S] Save a text file, [P] Print the current document or [D] look up any word in the Dictionary. The dbWRITER logo toggles the drop down menus on and off. The left and right margin indicators reflect the ruler line and its margin settings. Click here to directly enter a new setting. Page length defaults to 60 but can be changed by clicking in this box. Page length, margins, word wrap and TAB settings can be custom saved and restored using the ruler function <A>T. The system memory status box also doubles as a clipboard indicator. Press this button to call clipboard functions when the clipboard is full of text. Finally the CAP LOCK indicator has an up arrow for uppercase lock and a down arrow for normal lower case typing. Use the CAP LOCK key on the keyboard or click within this box. Drop Down Menus =============== dbWRITER uses its own custom style of drop down menu. If you are familiar with GEM menus then you will have no trouble with these. Simply touch the mouse cursor at the very top of the edit screen to the left, right or center to 'drop a menu'. Menu choices flash as you run the mouse pointer over them. Click the left button to choose or move the mouse off the menu left or right to cancel. Not all functions are represented in the menus, only the most important (some may be redundant). Click the dbWRITER logo at the bottom in the command line to toggle menus off and on. Text Attributes (italic, bold, underline) ========================================= There are a few ways of setting bold, italic and underline attributes within your document. Most likely you will want to change to one of these as you are typing. Simply press F1(italic), F2(bold) or F3(underline) and then continue entering text. The correct attribute will be reflected within the text editor as you type. What has happened is dbWRITER has embedded an invisible control character at the point where the function key was first pressed and again just to the right of the cursor. As you type, the last hidden control character is pushed forward and all text lying between the two control characters is displayed as either bold, italic or underlined. The most common method of exiting a chosen attribute is by pressing the RIGHT arrow key once. This forces the cursor to skip over the last invisible control character and allows you to once again type with normal text. You could also use the UP or the DOWN arrow key to exit attribute selection. You can also set up dbWRITER through the printer driver screen <A>W so that punctuation automatically exits any attribute. You can have up to 3 different text attributes on any line at the same time. Should you have difficulty with bold, italic or underline text and a word gets scrambled, press F8 to clear the line of all attributes and try again. You can also set attributes 'after the fact' by placing the cursor on any chosen word and pressing one of the function keys. If you want to set more than one word, a sentence or a paragraph then create a text block (hold down the left mouse and drag down) and choose bold, italic or underline from the block options menu (right mouse button after the block is set). When a block is highlighted, you can actually see the hidden control characters! If you want to save your document as ASCII text you can press <S>F5 after first saving a copy of your work to disk. This function will clear ALL hidden control characters and therefore all text attributes. <A>E lets you delete only ONE type of text attribute from the entire document. Dictionary ========== The dbWRITER dictionary is over 40,000 words long and is ASCII text. You can change words in the dictionary if you follow some simple rules. Do not add or delete any lines. Do not change spacing on any of the lines. Make sure the words changed are alphabetic, alongside other words beginning with the same sequence of letters with one space between each word. I encourage users to continue updating the dictionary. Canadians will want to change color to colour and check to cheque, etc. dbWRITER also allows you to compile a personal supplemental dictionary file. It will be automatically created during spell check and you will be prompted to save this personal dictionary file to disk before exiting the program. One megabyte users should be aware that the dictionary requires about 380K of available memory. Check the system memory status display within the command line and make a backup of your document BEFORE you load the dictionary. You can purge the dictionary from memory using <A>X after the spell check is complete. Alternatley you may wish to take advantage of the "Memory Saver" spell check option within the configuration screen <A>C You can look up any word or even a part of a word by placing the cursor down on the first letter of the text and clicking 'D' within the quick pick grid or pressing <C>V. The spell check window will open and if the word is present it will be highlighted. If not, dbWRITER will show you a list of correctly spelled words that come close. You can use the up and down arrow to page through the dictionary or click on the arrows at the bottom of the spell check window. You can also use SHIFT-UP or DOWN ARROW to fast reverse or fast forward through the dictionary. If you hit ESC or any other key you can enter a new word into the edit line at the bottom of this window and then press RETURN to look it up. The right mouse button or UNDO exits the spell check window (as long as you are not still entering a word on the edit line). If you want to spell check your entire document then press <C>X. dbWRITER will start at the top of your document and everytime it sees an unrecognized word it will place a flashing black cursor on the word and bring up a dialog box with three options, SKIP, ADD and CORRECT. If you know the word is spelled correctly and you want to add it to your personal dictionary then choose ADD. If you know the word is spelled correctly but it is an oddball then press SKIP and the spell check won't bother you again if it sees another the same. If you want the computer to help you correct the highlighted word then press CORRECT and the spell check window will appear. If you see the correct spelling within the window you can click on it with the left mouse button and it will replace the original word within the edit line at the bottom. If not, you can page through the dictionary or hit ESC or any key to manually type another spelling within the edit line. Hit RETURN or the right mouse button to exit the spell check window, replace the old word with the new spelling and continue on with the rest of the document. Your personal dictionary will only be updated when you quit this session of dbWRITER. Always quit using the UNDO key! You can cancel spell check by pressing UNDO while the computer is scanning words. The bottom left of the command line shows you the progress during spell check. If the dialog (SKIP, ADD, CORRECT) is on the screen you can hold down the right mouse button while pressing RETURN to also cancel spell check. dbWRITER configuration <A>C contains an option called "Memory saver spell check". When this option is active the spell check uses only half the normal memory by doing two passes and loading only half the dictionary at a time. Word searches are done by scanning the dictionary disk file instead of loading the entire dictionary resident in memory. This dictionary disk scan can take a few seconds but uses very little memory. Thesaurus ========= The dbWRITER thesaurus is contained within four files: THES1.DAT, THES2.DAT, THES3.DAT and THES4.DAT These files should be in the same directory as dbWRITER or if you choose to share these files with the dbWRITER accessory (see configuration instructions below) they will be in the folder DICT on drive C: There is a drop down menu on the far left (bottom) that will activate the thesaurus screen or hit the key combination <CA>T The thesaurus screen pops up in the middle of the text editor and awaits input. Simply type the word you wish to search and hit RETURN. dbWRITER looks at the files on your hard drive and does not actually load the thesaurus into memory. This uses very little RAM. After a few seconds, if the word was found, you will see the thesaurus choices appear at the bottom of the thesaurus window. The combined thesaurus files contain almost 30,000 words! Press RETURN to input another word or click again within the box. The thesaurus search will continue to expand until it exhausts itself or until you hit UNDO. Click the right mouse button, input an empty string or press UNDO to exit the thesaurus window. Mail Merge Database =================== <S>F6 enters the mail merge database. One megabyte users should not enter the database unless they plan on using it. I allocate the needed memory only when entering mail merge for the first time, not when dbWRITER is first run. This is a simple address book/cardfile that allows you to send form letters to anyone included within the database. This feature allows you to imbed both the salutation and inside address into your document using SHIFT-F7 or SHIFT-F8. For example, your form letter might start like this: Dear SHIFT-F7, and everytime a new letter is printed the computer inserts a different name onto this line. Same thing for the inside address (can also be used for envelopes). Here are the options within mail merge, F1 Mark an address for inclusion or exclusion in the current printouts. There will be a cross in the upper left corner or a check mark. A check mark will INCLUDE the entry when mail merge printing and a cross will SKIP the entry. F2 Sort all the address cards. Mail merge sorts using the last name on the salutation line. For example, if your salutation line is 'Mr. David Becker' the sort is smart enough to look at 'Becker' instead of 'Mr.' F3 Search for any string in any address card. F4 Load a mail merge database (extension of .MM) F5 Print one or all the address cards F6 Erase any one or all of the cards F7 Save your personal mail merge database to disk F8 Go to (jump to) any card number you wish Use the arrow keys to cycle through the cards. Hit UNDO to return back to the dbWRITER edit screen. Hit RETURN to enter edit mode. The black cursor appears on line one (the salutation line). Type your information onto each line. You must continue hitting RETURN after each entry line to exit edit mode. Global Search and Replace ========================= <C>S brings up the search and replace screen. If you want to search for a text string then click in the box at the top, enter your target text and press RETURN. If you are going to search and then replace this text with an alternate string then enter this on the next line using the same process. The next set of buttons let you choose how much of you document to search within. You can search forwards from the current cursor position to the end of your document. You can search backwards from the end of the document to the cursor or simply search every line from top to bottom. Highlight the correct button by clicking the left mouse on it. Below are the WITH QUERY, WITHOUT QUERY buttons. These buttons function only during search and replace. WITH QUERY prompts you before replacing text and WITHOUT QUERY just replaces text on its own without asking. The button to the right is CASE SENSITIVE. When this is darkened the computer looks for an exact match when searching text strings. Upper case and lower case MUST match exactly. When this button is light, case does not matter when searching for text. The next set of buttons, ITALIC, BOLD, UNDERLINE only work with search and replace. The computer can search for the text string in the top box and turn it into one of the three chosen attributes, italic, bold or underlined. The text is not replaced by the string in the second 'replace string' box but is simply converted to the chosen attribute. To begin a simple search WITHOUT replace press the bottom left button on this screen titled SEARCH or hit RETURN. F10 will continue searching after each occurrence. To begin a search AND replace press the bottom center button titled SEARCH-REPLACE. To begin a search and attribute change press the bottom right button titled ATTRIBUTES. UNDO cancels any search underway or exits this screen. Auto Load Options ================= dbWRITER will automatically load a ruler line (DBWRITER.TAB), a mail merge database file (DBWRITER.MM) and a set of macros (DBWRITER.MAC) if it finds the correct filename present in its directory. The dictionary can be loaded automatically through the configuration dialog <A>C (You can't auto load the dictionary if memory saver is turned on). Block Options ============= There will be many times when you wish to manipulate only a small portion of your document. This can be accomplished by defining a text block. The easiest way of doing this is to place the cursor at the beginning of your chosen text by pointing and clicking the left mouse. Hold down the button and drag down and to the right (or only to the right) with the button depressed. You can move the highlighted area up and down as long as the mouse button is held. It's easy to highlight only one letter, one word, a sentence or a paragraph! If you drag past the bottom of the edit screen the document will begin to scroll up. Let go of the mouse button when you have highlighted the chosen text. If you mess up you can hit ESC and try again. With a defined block, the right mouse button no longer calls your custom keypress but instead opens the block option dialog box. Here are 15 options for your chosen text. You can click the left mouse on any option or press the correct number or letter to activate it. 1. Delete Block (There is no safety buffer for deleted blocks. All text beneath will snug up into the deleted area.) 2. Copy Block (You can't copy a text block into a text block. Move the cursor to the point of insertion and you can copy into an existing sentence or start from a blank line. The original block remains highlighted.) 3. Move Block (A copy is made at the cursor position then the original block is deleted.) 4. Write to Disk (A copy of the chosen text is saved to disk under a filename of your choice.) 5. Print Block (Only the chosen text is printed together with any chosen attributes.) 6. Italic (Change the entire block of text to italic.) 7. Bold (Change the entire block of text to bold.) 8. Underlined (Change the entire block of text to underlined.) 9. Clear Attributes (Erase all bold, italic and underline attributes from the chosen text. Control characters become visible within highlighted text.) A. Justify Block (Flush left or flush right. If only a small part of a line is highlighted the whole line is still justified.) B. Copy to Clipboard (This is the only way to copy blocks into blocks or to copy between two seperate documents. The content of the clipboard remains intact even if you load another document. Clipboard functions are called by clicking in the system memory box You can stack text blocks within the clipboard or replace text in the clipboard with the new block.) C. Indent Block (Once again if a part of a line is highlighted the whole line will still be affected. Positive numbers indent right, negative numbers indent to the left.) D. Reformat Width (The easiest way to reformat a paragraph is with F9 but this accompishes the same thing with your chosen text block.) E. Upper Case (The entire block is changed to upper case letters. Numbers and special characters are not affected.) F. Lower Case (The entire block is changed to lower case.) Click the right mouse button again or hit UNDO to exit block options without making a choice. You can also use key commands to set a block: <C>A Block start <C>Z Block end <C>U Use the block options or check out the far left drop down menu under text block options. The configuration screen has an option called "Auto options after setting text block". When this is enabled the text block option dialog will display after you set your text block by dragging the mouse. Configure dbWRITER ================== <A>C enters the custom configuration screen. These settings reflect the way dbWRITER operates when next run. You can set the maximum number of lines in the dbWRITER editor. This option will save memory for those using a megabyte or less and only wanting to type short letters. The default is 4000 lines. I set it at 20000 on my MegaSTe and at 2000 on my 1040ST. (If the maximum line setting is exceeded while using dbWRITER you will see a warning dialog advising you to save your document. Please change your configuration and run dbWRITER again.) Maximum number of lines for the clipboard defaults to 99. If you are going to be copying between two seperate documents you will need this set higher. Maximum number of mail merge names. If you use dbWRITER in your business you may want this set quite high, or maybe you have lots of friends! Text block auto options (as descibed in the section on text blocks) is next. You can auto load the dictionary when dbWRITER is first run by selecting the next option. You can't auto load the dictionary with memory saver. The next two options set the dictionary and thesaurus paths. When using the dbWRITER accessory (available on GEnie and Compuserve) you can share the dictionary and thesaurus instead of having seperate files for each application. Follow the instructions included with the dbWRITER desk accessory and after the accessory has created and installed the new dictionary folder (it creates a folder called DICT on drive C:) and you have copied the thesaurus files into it, you can share these between the dbWRITER program and the dbWRITER accessory. If you do not use the dbWRITER accessory than the dictionary file and thesaurus files must be in the same directory as DBWRITER.PRG The next box tells dbWriter to save a custom ruler line everytime you save a text file. The ruler will share the same name as your text file but will carry the proper .TAB extension. Ruler lines are auto loaded when they share the same name as text files (example: LETTER.TXT and LETTER.TAB). The last option is called "Memory saver spell check". When this option is active the spell check uses only half the normal memory by doing two passes and loading only half the dictionary every time. Word searches are done by scanning the dictionary disk file instead of loading the entire dictionary resident in memory. This dictionary disk scan can take a few seconds but uses very little memory. Many other settings are saved with your configuration such as screen colour, key click, visible page breaks, and the custom right mouse button press to name a few. Did'nt I mention the custom right mouse button key press? This is cool! Press <A>F and dbWRITER will ask for a custom key press to assign the right mouse button. Any key combination supported by dbWRITER! Now everytime you press the right mouse button you can call your favorite function. Printer Driver Configuration ============================ <A>W brings up the printer driver screen. Here you can create you own custom drivers by simply entering the DECIMAL values for bold, italic, underline and form feed right from your printer manual. Just click the CHANGE button next to each attribute, enter the codes and when you are done save your new printer driver as PRINTER.DBP for auto load everytime you run dbWRITER. (If your printer supports subscript, superscript, light text or other special effects you can easily substitute these codes for bold, italic or underline!) At the bottom next to the SAVE and LOAD buttons you can choose the device to print to, either the serial port (modem) or the parallel port (this will most likely be what you are using and is the default). The next button decides whether punctuation exits attribute selection. For example, if you are typing using bold, should a period, question mark or exclamation mark exit you back to normal text? The command button lets you send any custom printer string to your printer and the form feed button ejects a page from your printer. All other settings are saved with your printer driver. Ruler Line ========== You can set and remove TAB marks (small triangles) by pointing and clicking on the ruler line. If you click and hold the left button a vertical line will appear that you can slide back and forth. Let go of the mouse button to set your TAB! Normally you would click once quickly on any existing TAB marker to remove it or click on any empty space to set a new TAB marker. Left and right MARGINS can also be set by clicking on top of the MARGIN within the ruler line (the black blocks with L or R inside) and holding down the mouse button. This is a bit tricky, you must click between the horizontal ruler line and the top of the command line. Drag the double vertical lines left or right and then let go of the button. MARGIN settings will change within the indicator box as you go. You can save and load custom rulers using <A>T or even setup dbWRITER's configuration to load a custom ruler when run. If a ruler line shares the same name as a text file (example: LETTER.TXT and LETTER.TAB) then this ruler line will be loaded along with the text file. Printout margins (left and top) are saved with your ruler line. Printout Configuration Screen ============================= The first two options set the top and left margin for only the printed page, not for the displayed document. These settings are saved with your custom ruler line. Next you can set the number of copies to be printed. The countdown box at the bottom right of this screen displays the total number of complete copies (not pages but entire documents) sent to the printer. This indicator resets everytime you close the printout configuration box. If you want to send a form feed (page eject) after each page is printed then set this option to YES. The next box tells dbWRITER to send your entire document continuously to the printer without prompting you at all or to alternately ask after each page. If you have entered the mail merge database and inserted a Shift-F7 or Shift-F8 into your document then you can print using the mail merge database. This option will be lightened if the database is not available. The next option sets the page number that will begin the printout. The last option sets the number of lines between pages. It may be easier to set the automatic perforation skip on your printer and just print from dbWRITER continuously. If you are printing labels then this option will be invaluable. Extras and Reminders ==================== - Press HELP to find the current version number. - UNDO quits dbWRITER and returns you to the GEM desktop. - The 'quick pick grid' next to the dbWRITER logo lets you [L] Load a text file, [S] Save a text file, [P] Print the current document or [D] look up any word in the Dictionary. - The cursor control arrows are non-destructive and the cursor floats freely. You can use the arrows or mouse to move the cursor ANYWHERE on the screen above the last line of your document. - SHIFT-LEFT ARROW takes you to the beginning or SHIFT-RIGHT ARROW to the end of any line. - If you've just screwed up a line you can hit CONTROL-UNDO to call the safety buffer and restore the line. - Click the left mouse button once quickly and the cursor will drop wherever the arrow is pointing. Drag with the left button to set a text block. Use the right button to call up block options or hit ESC to clear the block. - CONTROL-RETURN centers any line of text. - The INSERT key toggles between insert and overwrite mode (pointing arrow or crosshairs). - You can pass parameters to dbWRITER. If you have Mega STe - TOS 2.05 or better just 'pick up' your text file with the mouse and 'drop it' on top of the dbWRITER.PRG icon. The program will run and then will automatically load your document! You can 'install' any file with the extension .TXT or .DOC on all TOS versions and have dbWRITER do the same thing when you double-click on the text file! - F9 reformats the current PARAGRAPH to the margins. - If you place the mouse pointer at the very bottom of the screen you can scroll through your document by pressing the left and right buttons. All Currently Supported Functions in Brief ========================================== <C>Q ........... Calendar. (Defaults to system date, use the arrow keys to change the month or year. UNDO or right mouse to exit.) <C>W ........... Invert the screen colours. (Black on white / white on black. Colours are saved automatically with your configuration.) <C>K ........... Toggle key click on and off. (Default is off. Key click is also saved with your configuration.) F4 ............. Load an ASCII text file. (You can alternately click the [L] within the 'quick pick grid'. dbWRITER offers a basic import option when it recognizes a non-ASCII file. Wordwriter and First Word Plus importation is also supported.) F5 ............. Merge a text file. (Merge another small file at the cursor. This file must be less then 500 lines.) F6 ............. Save a password encrypted text file. (Encrypted files are automatically recognized when loaded and you are then prompted for the correct password. This function requires a lot of memory, make a backup first.) F7 ............. Save a text file. (You can also click [S] within the grid.) <CS>F7 ......... Save a text file using the last filename. (You must have first saved your file at least once. The previously saved text file will be renamed to BACKUP.TXT) <C>H ........... Toggle slow scroll on and off. <C>N ........... Automatic scroll. (Use the up or down arrow key to start the scroll in the chosen direction. Try it with slow scroll.) F10............. Continues a string search initiated with CONTROL-S. <C>F ........... Flip between two separate text files. (You can use the clipboard to copy text back and forth between two files. The two text buffers work best when you have MORE than one meg of memory. I allocate extra memory only when this function is called. dbWRITER remembers the cursor position, line and page for each document and returns you to the correct last position when flipping back and forth.) <CA>T .......... dbWRITER Thesaurus <C>T ........... Jump to the top of your document. (CLR does the same thing.) <C>B ........... Go to the bottom of the current document. <C>M ........... Mark a line (bookmark) and jump to it any time with <C>J. (The line changes to light italic text. Hit ESC to clear a marked line.) <C>A ........... Mark the beginning of a block of text. (You can also hold down the left mouse button and drag over text to set a block. If you continue dragging past the last line, the text will scroll up. After the block is highlighted use the right mouse button to call up the option screen. Printer control codes become visible within blocked text. Use ESC to clear a text block.) <C>Z ........... Mark the end of a text block. <C>U ........... Calls the block option menu (or use the right mouse button). <C>G ........... Go to any line number (or click within the command line). <C>E ........... Go to any page number (or click within the command line). <CS>TAB ........ Toggle between destructive and non-destructive TAB. (When you hit the TAB key it either pushes everything in its path ahead or just skims over existing text.) <SA>T .......... Typewriter mode.(A checkmark becomes visible when this option is active. After hitting RETURN, the current line of text is sent directly to the printer.) <C>S ........... Search and replace screen. (Click within the text entry boxes at the top of this screen to enter your search strings. You can search/replace FORWARD from the cursor position, BACKWARDS from the current cursor position or everything in your entire document. You can search/replace WITH QUERY and you will be prompted to confirm each match. You can also search/replace CASE SENSITIVE or without caring about upper or lower cases. Finally you can search for a text string and set its attribute to either italic, bold or underlined! Click on one of the three choice buttons at the bottom of this screen to initiate the search/replace. UNDO or the right mouse button exits.) <CS>D .......... Here you can set the editor to single or double spacing or automatically reformat the entire document from single to double spaces and back again. <CS>P .......... Page preview. (Standard page sizes, side by side. Sixty lines per page is the maximum supported by page preview.) <CS>I .......... Auto or manual indent. (Automatic indent centers the entire document left to right. Manual indent accepts positive or negative numbers. Positive shifts text right, negative shifts text to the left. If AUTO indent does not seem to work it is likely because one or more lines are too long.) <CS>T .......... Center one page. (If you have no more than one page of text you can center it horizontally AND vertically!) <CS>R .......... Reformat width. (This option can reformat your document width to match the right and left margins. You can also define a text block and reformat from the block options menu. Make a backup of your document before reformatting. If you want to reformat only the paragraph the cursor is touching then press F9.) <CS>F .......... Reformat full-out. (You will be prompted to first reformat the document width. This usually results in a cleaner justification. Backup your document before reformatting.) <CS>L .......... Reformat the entire document flush left or right. <C>V ........... View the dictionary. (Or click on the [D] in the quick pick grid on the command line. The dictionary will be loaded if this is the first time you have chosen the option. If you are using a hard drive then this is relatively painless. The dictionary will be retained in memory from this point on. The file DICTIONA.RY should be in the same folder as dbWRITER. You can place the cursor on any word, or even in the middle of a word, and the computer will look it up in the dictionary. If the word is present, it will be highlighted. If not, hunt through the dictionary using the up or down arrow. You can also type alternate words into the dictionary window and then press RETURN to search again. UNDO or right mouse exits.) <C>X ........... Spell check the entire document. (When confronted with a word it does not recognize, the ST gives you the option of SKIPPING the word, ADDING it to your personal dictionary or CORRECTING it. dbWRITER will look up the closest match to the incorrect word and then display a list. If you see the correct spelling just click with the left mouse. You can also use the up or down arrow to browse the dictionary. Hit RETURN to accept the word or any other key to edit it. Hit UNDO during spell check to cancel or use RETURN while depressing the right mouse button if the dialog box is present. <A>X ........... Purge the dictionary from memory. Restores all used memory. You will have to reload the dictionary next time you use it. <A>P ........... Print the current document. (You can also click [P] within the grid. You can print single pages with a prompt between pages or print continuously. You can send a FF after each page or you can set the number of spaces between pages. You can also print multiple copies and set you margins. If the mail merge database is active you will also have the option to print form letters.) <CS>C .......... Word count and document status. (Calculate the number of words, the number of lines, the number of characters and the number of pages in the entire document.) <CS>A .......... Sort and alphabetize. (Descending Z-A or ascending A-Z. This option is fast and great for lists!) <CS>CLR ........ Erase entire document. (You will first be prompted.) <C>D ........... Show text macros. (You can program up to ten text macros for instant insertion at any time in your document. Hold down ALTERNATE and any function key to program the string and hold down CONTROL and the same function key to insert the text string into your document.) <S>F9 .......... Load text macros from disk. (With this option you can load any set of ten macros you want. The configuration screen allows you to auto load macros when running dbWRITER.) <S>F10 ......... Save macros to disk. (After programming some text macros you can save them to disk for another session. ) <CS>T .......... Switch transposed letters. (I'm always doing this, typing 'thier' instead of 'their'.) <CS>H .......... Format text into columns. (For the time being you can only do two columns. I usually choose about 35 characters across. You can also define the space between columns. Each page will be separated by a FF printer control code. Check your installed printer driver. Backup your document before formatting it into columns. These 'psuedo' columns cannot be individually edited after creation. Each line of text is independant even though it contains two columns.) <C>P ........... Set the page length. (Or click in the command line. The default setting is 60 lines per page. This setting is saved with your ruler line.) <A>UNDO ........ Remove command line. (Hit ALT-UNDO or UNDO to re-install the command line. This feature is nice when reading long text files, it speeds up the scroll! While in this mode you can use the left mouse button to scroll your document down or the right mouse button to scroll up.) <A>A ........... Gives you access to desk accessories. (Make sure you close all opened accessories before returning to the edit screen.) <C>Y ........... Clipboard. (You can click within the command line as well. If you choose to view clipboard contents use the arrow keys to scroll around the clipboard window. The clipboard can be used to copy text between two seperate documents.) <A>T ........... Save and load ruler lines. (All TAB marks and margins can be saved or loaded from disk. Also saves page length and word wrap status. dbWRITER can be configured to automatically load a ruler line when run.) <A>B ........... Display page breaks with a dotted horizontal line. (This will be saved with your configuration.) <C>INSERT ...... Insert special graphic characters. (Point and shoot, make sure your printer can support these special characters.) <A>C ........... Configure dbWRITER (Changes take effect next time you run the program. You can auto load the dictionary, the mail merge database, a custom ruler or custom macro set. The mail merge file must be named dbWRITER.MM, the ruler must be named dbWRITER.TAB and the macros must be named dbWRITER.MAC) The configuration file also contains information on screen colour, key click, horizontal scrolling, page breaks and other settings.) <C>C ........... Fixed or free cursor. <A>W ........... You can create custom printer drivers with this screen. (The printer driver named PRINTER.DBP is always default loaded when dbWRITER is run. You can also load another alternate driver and you can save the current driver. When no driver is present dbWRITER uses Epson FX mode. You can send a custom control code to the printer, choose the output device and decide how punctuation effects attributes. You can also set the margins just for printouts. Use UNDO or the right mouse to exit.) <A>E ........... Erase all bold, underlined or italic codes. <A>F ........... Assign a custom keypress to the right mouse button. (This will be saved with the configuration.) <S>F5 .......... Delete all printer codes in the entire document. <S>F4 .......... Imbed a FF character or forced end of page. (This separator is shown as a triple bar, 80 columns across.) <S>F6 .......... Mail Merge Database. (This is a simple address book/cardfile that allows you to send form letters to anyone included within the database.) In Closing ========== dbWRITER was originally written for my own use only. I am happy to share it with the rest of the ST community but please be patient with me. I will do my best to deal with bugs and updates in a timely fashion. I may not always be able to return a letter or electronic mail but I really do appreciate the feedback! Updates will be posted on all the major online services. I will try to enhance the limited documentation included with this version. I encourage those users creating printer drivers to upload them and share. dbWRITER is NOT shareware, it is freeware and you do NOT have to pay to use it. Enjoy! David Becker GEnie D.Becker8 Compuserve 73030,3562