8bitfiles.net/archives/archives.tar/archives/genie-commodore-file-library/C128CPM/PIPMAG6.ARK/PRN-TIPS.ART

Text File | 1990-07-25 | 12.7 KB | 231 lines

          SOME ARCANE, SELDOM-USED, BUT POSSIBLY USEFUL, PRINTING TIPS
                                      for
                             WHEN IN DOCUMENT MODE

                          by Tom McEnroe (T.MCENROE1)

        Here are a couple of items about getting stuff from the word
     processor onto the printed page that might help someone on just the
     right occasion.  They aren't really arcane (i.e., secret).  They're
     just so little used (because not all that necessary for most
     occasions) that they didn't occur to me for a long time.  But I'm very
     slow, so maybe these are what everyone already knows except me.

        The first item, on printing international characters, will work
     only in WordStar 4.  The second, on uses of the overstrike, will work
     not only in WordStar (any version), but also in VDE and ZDE, those
     dandy, free, public domain word processing programs.


        I.  PRINTING FOREIGN LANGUAGE CHARACTERS WITHIN WORDSTAR 4

        Many dot matrix printers can also print some of the characters and
     symbols of languages other than American English in order to make the
     spelling "correct" for that language.  For instance, in French you
     need accent marks grave and acute over the letter e for correct
     spelling of some words, and include the cedilla under the c properly
     to spell "facade." Writing German requires the use of umlauts over a,
     o, and u.  Swedish and Norwegian use even more umlauts.  Accurate
     Spanish requires a tilde over the n in some words, accents marks over
     a, e, i, o, u, plus the "upside down" question mark to begin a
     sentence that is a question, and similarly the "upside down" ! mark to
     begin an exclamation.  And of course the British use a special symbol
     to designate the pound sterling.

        If your printer supports an international character set, you can
     print c with a cedilla, n with a tilde, o with an umlaut, the pound
     sterling symbol, and so on, even though none of these are on your
     keyboard just by hitting some other keys instead.

        Your printer manual will show you what is available.  It also
     advises you to set dip switches accordingly if you are going to use
     foreign characters or write a great deal in one of the printer's
     available international character sets.  The manual may even show you
     a tiny BASIC LPRINT routine for invoking any of its international
     character sets.

        But if you use this feature only once in a great while, it's
     probably easier to get what you want by using one of WordStar 4's
     custom print controls: ^PQ, ^PW, ^PE, and ^PR which are called up by
     their respective dot commands of .PQ, .PW, .PE, and .PR.

        (Custom print controls are explained on pp. 143-145 of the WordStar
     4 spiral-bound manual.  There they are presented as ways to change
     print width.  But this article shows how to do something else with
     them.)

        My printer, an Epson LQ-800, has the capability of producing many
     international characters; but changing the proper dip switches from
     USA characters to something else is a job I'd rather not practice
     often.  It's an eye-squinting, fiddly chore that I'm content to do
     once and then never again.

        Suppose that in writing about matters pertaining to Great Britain
     you need to use the English symbol for pound sterling.  If your
     printer has an "International Character Set" which includes the
     English pound sign, you too can print it in your document by using one
     of WordStar 4's custom print controls and without changing the
     printer's dip switches.

        For instance, the EPSON LQ-800 will print the pound sign with the
     keyboard's # sign.  But first you have to tell WordStar you want the
     UK character set.

        To do that, use one of the custom print controls dot commands, for
     instance, .XQ, plus the hex code for the UK character set shown in
     your printer's manual.  For my printer it is 1B 52 3.  Thus at the
     beginning of the document I type the dot command:

                               .XQ 1B 52 3 <RET>

     in the left margin beginning in column 1.  (Like all WS dot commands,
     this requires its own line so it can be inserted anywhere in the
     document preceding where you need the pound sign.  And the line does
     not produce an empty line in the print out.)  Thereafter, everything
     from your keyboard is still the same as in "American" EXCEPT when you
     want the sign for pound sterling.  Oddly (or fortunately) the UK
     character set doesn't substitute the dollar sign $ for the pound sign;
     so you can have both.  All you've "lost" is the # sign.

        To get the pound sterling sign, wherever you need it, type ^PQ#.
     ^PQ (CTRL-P Q) is the print control matching the trigger .XQ command
     (which we've defined as the UK set), and # (on your keyboard and on
     your monitor, too) will actually print on your paper as the sign for
     pound sterling.  You could set ^PQ# up as a WS macro if you want.

        Suppose that later on in your document you need to print the # sign
     "as is"? You just "turn off" the UK character set by reverting to the
     USA set which is .XQ 1B 52 0 (starting also in the left hand column,
     all its own one line; and that's a zero), so thereafter when your
     screen shows # that's what will print on the page.

        Obviously, you can do more than just get the English pound sign.

        Your printer's manual will show you the hex codes for all the
     available, different international character sets as well as the
     particular keyboard characters you must use to make the available
     foreign symbols and letters appear on the printed page.

        Nor are you restricted only to .XQ and ^PQ.  WordStar's three other
     custom print dot commands and print controls -- .XW with ^PW, .XE with
     ^PE, and .XR with ^PR -- are available too.

        I suppose that, theoretically, you could use all four in one
     gloriously polyglot document, but I think you'd run into confusion and
     troubles and don't recommend it

        The UK set is easy because, as said, the only difference between it
     and the USA set is that # substitutes for the pound sterling sign.
     Others, i.e., the German and Spanish are far more extensive in their
     substitutions and results.  For instance, the Latin American (Spanish)
     set substitutes ten of your keyboard symbols (e.g., @, [, \, ], ^, `,
     {, |, }, and ~) for, respectively, a with an accent, the upside-down
     exclamation point, N with a tilde, the upside down question mark, e
     with an accent, u with an umlaut, i with an accent, n with a tilde,
     and o and u each with an accent.  To use these you'll probably want a
     crib sheet until you've memorized the whole set.

        I suppose you could try to combine Spanish in one document with,
     say, German (using another pair of custom dot commands and print
     controls), but the two use many of the same keyboard symbols for
     entirely different results, so the effort to juggle them would surely
     tax even the most diligent and conscientious writer.


        II.  RARELY USED (BUT MAYBE USEFUL) OCCASIONS FOR ^PH, WORDSTAR'S
     OVERPRINT COMMAND


        a) WHEN AN "O" BECOMES A ZERO

        If you paid close attention (though I don't know why you should
     have) to one of the directions above, you'll note that I wrote ".XQ 1B
     52 0" and then added the words "and that's a zero" referring to the
     final number of the hex code.  On the monitor's screen 0 is obviously
     a zero, so my statement "that's a zero" seems redundant.  But suppose
     you printed out this article. If you're me, you've set your printer's
     dip switch to make zeros print without the slash through them because
     most of the time, I think, a slashed zero looks out of place (too
     computerish?) in a document, while printed unslashed zeros are easily
     discerned as zeros and not O's.  (You don't need them when you're
     printing out "It's costing Henry $22,000 a year to send Susan to
     M.I.T.")

        Occasionally though, as with the hex code, you do need to have your
     hard copy make absolutely clear that a 0 is really a zero and not an
     O.  Here's where the ^PH overstrike command can come in.

        Just type 0^PH/ (CTRL-P H/).  (On your monitor the P does not
     appear.) ^PH has the effect of a backspace and thus will put the /
     inside the 0 on your print out making it plain that it's a zero not an
     O.

        It would be nice if you could type 00^PH/,^PH/ (or more) to get two
     (or more) zeros with slashes; but that won't work.  Only the final
     zero would have a slash in it.  So you have to enter each separately
     as in 0^PH/0^PH/0^PH/.

        If you have to do very much of this (0^PH/) you'll wonder if this
     is the original kludgy word processing fix for pretty soon your screen
     will look a mess, the columns all awry, and you will want to reset the
     printer's dip switches to achieve zero with a slash on the paper; but
     for very occasional use, 0^PH/ is a serviceable alternative.


        b) GETTING THE CENTS SIGN

        I don't know of any regular computer keyboard that includes the
     sign for cent (as in "1-cent Sale").  My ancient Royal portable
     (mechanical, sigh) typewriter had it, up somewhere on the top row of
     keys, combined with 1/2, if I remember.  Maybe some printers include
     it in their fonts, but I don't know how you'd get it onto the printed
     page.  After all, there aren't many times you need it.  But if you do,
     c with a backslash in it looks perfectly good on paper as the cent
     sign.  Just type c^PH/, and you've got it.


        c) SAVING THE DOTTED LINE

        As everyone knows WordStar will not print anything on a line which
     begins at column 1 with a dot (period) because WS uses dot commands in
     that column for all kinds of mailmerging, printing and formatting
     purposes.  (VDE and ZDE also ignore every line with a dot in column 1,
     to make them WS compatible, even though they don't use dot commands.)
     This rarely creates any problems because, after all, who is apt to
     start a line with a period? Even James Joyce didn't do that.

        However, there are rare occasions when, willy, nilly, your document
     may find itself with a row in which the first column and perhaps three
     or four after it, do start with a dot.  I'm speaking specifically of
     ellipses, that series of three or four periods (dots) that you insert
     to show an omission.  For instance: "In the beginning ....  Let there
     be light: ..."

        When you first type in those ellipses the periods may well be
     somewhere other than column 1 and so present no problem in printing,
     but after a while what with the inevitable reformatting of paragraphs
     in which you've added or deleted words or phrases, there may come a
     time when that little row of three or four dots do start in column 1,
     but you're so used to seeing them as ellipses and not as "dots" that
     you forget what will happen to that line when your print out your
     document.  But WordStar doesn't forget; it blindly sees a line
     commencing with just a dot and so omits the whole line, dots and all
     text, and jumps to the next line.

        So how can you guarantee that if your line does start with a period
     (dot) it won't be trashed in printing if that isn't what you want?

        Just insert the overstrike print command, ^PH at the beginning of
     any row of dots that you do want to print out.  It looks like this on
     screen: ^H....  WordStar "sees" the overstrike command first, even
     though there's nothing to overstrike, so goes ahead and prints what
     follows, the first dot appearing in column 1, just where it should be.

        If you remember to do this every time you want one or more periods
     that may fall into the beginning of a line to print out, do it -- even
     when your ellipses are not at the moment starting in column 1.  You
     won't be disappointed later on should the ellipses have been
     reformatted to begin in the first column.  The ellipses and the
     remainder of the sentence will in fact appear on the printed page.
     You've fooled WordStar, and isn't that nice to be able to do?