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TIKEYS.TXT
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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN LIMA
NEWSLETTER SEPTEMBER 1988. THIS
SOFTWARE IS AVAILABLE FROM THE LIMA UG
TI-KEYS A "HOT KEYS" PROGRAM WITH
SIGNIFICANT
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^HIDDEN POTENTIAL
^^^^^^^^^^^A review by Charles Good
A "hot-keys" program, once loaded,
allows you to execute commands with
just a single keypress. For example,
you might press CTRL/R and have RUN
"DSK1. appear on the screen waiting for
you to type the rest of the file name
and then <ENTER>. Such one keypress
(hot key) text strings are called
macros. For the TI there are three
hot key programs that I know about.
EZ-KEYS is a commercial offering from
Asgard Software. I havn't had much
opprtunity to use EZ-Keys, but it has
received excellent reviews in
Micropendium (January 1988) and in the
newsletters. Apparently EZ KEYS is
much more than just a "hot keys"
program and can best be described as
an XBASIC programming environment. I
have had the opportunity to play with
the commercial program SOFT-KEYS from
Quality 99 software. SOFT-KEYS only
allows you to configure the number
keys as hot keys via CTRL/n. Because
of the limited number of configurable
keys I consider SOFT-KEYS to be
inferior to both EZ-KEYS and the third
"hot keys" program TI-KEYS.
TI-KEYS is fairware and can be
found in most user group libraries.
The requested fee of $10 is less than
the cost of EZ-KEYS and about the same
as SOFT-KEYS. Unfortunately I havn't
been able to pay the TI-KEYS author
Wes Johnston. He has moved from the
address listed in the docs (404 Furman
Lane, Ladson NC) and my check was
returned by the post office with the
notation "Forwarding time expired".
Wes, if you read this, write me in
care of the Lima UG and let me know
your current address.
When booted from a ramdisk and
used in conjunction with FUNNELWEB,
TI-KEYS adds some really useful
capabilities to the 99/4A.
You boot TI-KEYS as LOAD or as a
CALL LOAD from XBASIC. A set of
predefined macros is loaded which is
accessed by pressing CTRL and another
key. These predefined macros are
show below, and are accessable from
XBASIC command mode or within an XBASIC
program.
.NF
A - ACCEPT S - SAVE "DSK
B - BEEP T - TAB(
C - CALL U - U
D - DELETE "DSK V - VCHAR(
E - END W - CALL INIT
F - FOR X - CALL LOAD("DSK
G - GOSUB Y - CALL LOAD(-
H - HCHAR( Z - CALL LINK("
I - IF 1 - RUN
J - JOYST( 2 - \
K - KEY( 3 - |
L - LINPUT 4 - |
M - MERGE "DSK 5 - \NO PREDEFINED
N - NEXT 6 - / VALUE
O - OPEN 7 - |
P - PRINT 8 - |
Q - Q 9 - |
R - RUN "DSK 0 - /
.FI
You can redefine any of these keys
from XBASIC command mode. Letter keys
can be redefined as a macro of up to 16
characters long and number keys up to
31 characters. You can also save a
disk file of your redefined keys and
later load this key redefinition file
into TI-KEYS after TI-KEYS has booted.
AUTOMATIC BOOTING OF YOUR OWN
CUSTOM MACROS:
So far so good. But what if you
don't like the above standard set of
macros that is immediately available
when TI-KEYS is loaded? Wouldn't it be
nice if you make TI-KEYS automatically
set up your own custom CTRL/- macros
each time TI-KEYS is loaded, without
having to first load TI-KEYS and then
load the file that contains your
customized macros? EZ-KEYS has this
ability. The TI-KEYS doc makes no
mention of this possibility, but I
have discovered how to do this with
TI-KEYS using a sector editor.
Use a sector editor that shows the
byte number in hex, such as FUNNELWEB's
Disk Patch or DISK UTILITIES. The
first three sectors of the TI-KEYS LOAD
program (sometimes called KEYLOAD, and
not to be confused with the D/F80
version of TI-KEYS) contain the ASCII
text that is displayed with each CTRL/-
keypress. The text for CTRL/A starts
at byte >D8 of the first sector, the
text for CTRL/B at byte >E8, etc.
Examine each of these first three
sectors in ASCII and type over any text
already there with whatever text you
want displayed when you press CTRL/-.
Remember, the first 26 macros (letters
A-Z) can have 16 characters and the
last 10 (digits 1-9,0) can have up to
31 characters. Next move the cursor to
the period immediately in front of the
ASCII text you just altered (in the
first sector byte >D7 for A, byte >E7
for B, etc) and switch the display to
Hex (press CTRL/H). Change this two
digit hex number to the number of
characters in your rewritten text. For
example, you might want to change the
CTRL/A macro from the original "ACCEPT"
(6 characters long) to "ACCEPT AT(" (10
characters long). After changing
ACCEPT to ACCEPT AT( in the first
sector, move the cursor to byte D7,
switch to hex display (CTRL/H) and
change the "06" to "0A". When you have
finished editing a sector, be sure to
write this new data to the disk with
CTRL/W. Then move on to the other two
sectors.
The second sector of LOAD (or
KEYLOAD) is shown below. It contains
text for the macros displayed by CTRL/D
thru CTRL/S. You can see that there is
plenty of blank space for you to expand
or alter these macros. The vertical
row of dots is where the hex number is
changed.
.NF;NA
File Editor EDIT
========================================
^. D E L E T E "
D S K . E N D
^. F O R
^. G O S U B
^. H C H A R (
^. I F
^. J O Y S T (
^. K E Y (
^. L I N P U T
^. M E R G E " D
S K . N E X T
^. O P E N
^. P R I N T
^. Q
^. R U N " D S K
^. S A V E " D S
.FI;AD
I have TI-KEYS on my ramdisk as
file LOAD. It boots automatically
every time I select XBASIC and provides
me with the following list of custom
macros. Some of these, such as CTRL/4-
CALL CAT("DSK1.") are only useful to
users of GK-EXTENDED BASIC or the SUPER
EXTENDED BASIC (v130) module. Most of
the changes from the original
predefined macros listed above are
usable with any version of XBASIC and
are, I believe, real improvements.
.NF
A - ACCEPT AT( S - SAVE "DSK
B - BEEP T - TAB(
C - CALL U - CALL DM
D - DELETE "DSK V - CALL VCHAR(
E - END W - CALL INIT
F - FOR X - CALL LOAD("DSK
G - GOSUB Y - CALL LOAD(-
H - CALL HCHAR( Z - CALL LINK("
I - IF 1 - RUN
J - CALL JOYST( 2 - OPEN #1:"PIO" :: PRINT #1:
K - CALL KEY( 3 - OPEN #1:
L - LIST 4 - CALL CAT("DSK1.")
M - MERGE "DSK 5 - LIST "PIO":28:
N - NEXT 6 - LIST "PIO"
O - OPEN 7 - OLD DSK1.
P - PRINT 8 - RUN "DSK1.LOAD"
Q - RUN "DSK4.LOAD" 9 - PRINT #1:
R - RUN "DSK1. 0 -
.FI
COMBINING TI-KEYS WITH FUNNELWEB:
I mentioned earlier that special
possibilities are available if you use
TI-KEYS and FUNNELWEB together from a
ramdisk. Here is what you can do all
automatically just by selecting
extended basic from the powerup menu.
When you boot TI-KEYS as LOAD from the
ramdisk, you can have TI-KEYS
automatically boot FUNNELWEB. Many of
the TI-KEYS macros are not overwritten
by the loading of FWB and are
available for use from the FWB XBASIC
user list. This means that any XBASIC
program you boot from the FWB XBASIC
user list can make use of TI-KEYS
macros from within the program. Also,
from the FWB XBASIC user list you can
enter XBASIC command mode by pressing
3 (XB RETURN) and have the macros
available. Neat!
This works with FWB v4.0, v4.1,
and v4.11. I havn't tried it with
earlier versions. When FWB
automatically loads after after
TI-KEYS the macros for CTRL/A through
CTRL/P are overwritten and no longer
available. The remaining macros for
CTRL/Q through CTRL/Z and CTRL/1
through CTRL/0 remain available. That
is why I have my most used customized
macros within these ranges. Here is
how to do this. OLD the TI-KEYS LOAD
program and list it. There are only 2
lines of XBASIC code embeded in some
assembly code. With many hybrid
assembly/XBASIC programs you can't
alter the XBASIC code and resave the
program because doing so messes up the
assembly code. TI-KEYS will tolerate
slight modifications of its XBASIC
code. Change line 20 from CALL
LINK("MACRO):: CALL
LOAD(-31952,255,231,255,231) to RUN
"DSK1.LOADFW" and save this altered
TI-KEYS to your DSK1 configured
ramdisk as file name LOAD. Now put
FWB's LOAD program on your ramdisk as
file name LOADFW. Just select
extended basic, and everything boots
automatically!
You can't successfully use FWB
in automatic combination directly upon
selection of XBASIC from the powerup
menu with either of the other two "hot
keys" programs. If you boot EZ-KEYS
or SOFT KEYS and then load FWB, the
"hot keys" program won't work.
There is some software that won't
load from the TI-KEYS/FWB combination.
Some (but not all) XBASIC programs
that contain a CALL INIT will lock up
the computer if TI-KEYS is already in
memory (with or without FWB). These
cannot be loaded from the FWB XBASIC
user list. An example is the CALL
LOAD version of WORD COUNT that was
published in Micropendium. To load
such programs you first have to turn
off TI-KEYS from XBASIC command mode
by pressing CTRL/=. Fortunately,
there are only a few programs that are
incompatible with TI-KEYS. With the
TI-KEYS/FWB combination, you can use
the XBASIC user list to boot any
assembly D/F80 (EA#3) or PROGRAM
(EA#5) files, any XBASIC program that
doesn't use CALL INIT, and some XBASIC
programs that do have a CALL INIT.
TI-KEYS only affects the FWB
XBASC user list. All other parts of
FWB, including the other user lists,
work normally with the TI-KEYS/FWB
combination just as if TI-KEYS was
never present.
User groups (not individuals) can
obtain a copy of TI-KEYS from the Lima
User Group by sending a disk and paid
return mailer to Box 647, Venedocia OH
45894.
.PL 1