Tech Arsenal 1/Tech Arsenal (Arsenal Computer).ISO/tek-17/pcwritex.zip/PCWRITEX.UPD

Text File | 1989-01-03 | 14KB | 282 lines

PC-WRITeX update          v2.3 (a few bug fixes)         No 5: 03 Jan 89
----------------

The main change has been adding "{}" after a lot of macro names. This avoids
you having to use a hard space after control sequence names, and fixes the
problem of such names gobbling spaces after them.

The definition of "end-of-page" as far as PC-Write itself was concerned (the $J
in PR.DOC), this has been changed from a 0 (zero: ASCII NUL) to a 32 (ASCII
SPACE) because SBTeX chewed up over a NUL.

A few new command names have been added to make life a little easier: details
are in PCWRITEX.DOC (let me know if you invent more!)

Peter Flynn
<[e-mail]>
<[e-mail]>
_______________________________________________________________________________

PC-WRITeX update          v2.2 with tables               No 4: 27 Aug 88
----------------

DEVELOPMENTS --- The major change in v2.2 is the addition of ruled and
unruled tables. The IBM PC box-drawing character set can now be used
to produce simple tabulations like

               ╔═══════════╦═════════════╗
               ║  PRODUCT  ║  PRICE in $ ║
               ╠═══════════╬═════════════╣
               ║  dBASE II ║      49.95  ║
               ╠═══════════╬═════════════╣
               ║  *WARS    ║      25.00  ║
               ╠═══════════╬═════════════╣
               ║  PACMAN   ║      15.00  ║
               ╚═══════════╩═════════════╝

Using the double-line character set will produce a ruled table. Only
the horizontal and vertical lines, corners, crossovers and T-characters
can be used. The single-line character set will produce an unruled
table:

               ┌───────────┬─────────────┐
               │  PRODUCT  │  PRICE in $ │
               ├───────────┼─────────────┤
               │  dBASE II │      49.95  │
               ├───────────┼─────────────┤
               │  *WARS    │      25.00  │
               ├───────────┼─────────────┤
               │  PACMAN   │      15.00  │
               └───────────┴─────────────┘

This is nice, but the same restrictions apply: NO MIXING OF DOUBLE-
LINE AND SINGLE-LINE CHARACTERS IN THE SAME TABLE. Partially-ruled
tables may be possible at a later date.

There is no (logical) limit on the number of rows or columns, but the
inherent assumption is that all columns except the last will be left-
aligned: the last will be right-aligned (because it is often used for
money or other numbers). You can bodge your own copy of PR.DOC to
change this if you want it different. Making character 203 equate to
"\hfil#&#&" instead will make all columns except the first one right-
aligned: this may be more useful for invoices, where column 1 is text
and all remaining ones are numeric.

Because of all this, a few things have had to change:

   The character code 206 (double-line crossover (Shf Ctl S), which
   gave the TeX logotype, has been removed. To get "TeX" you now
   need to use the Alt Z literal.

   The character code 179 (Shf Alt V), which gave a vertical rule,
   is now needed for tables. A plain vertical rule is now got with
   character 221 (6<accent>`).

   The character code 196 (Shf Alt G), which gave a horizontal
   rule, is also needed for tables: use character 223 (8<accent>`)
   for horizontal rules.

I hope this is all worth it. A couple of small bugs have been fixed,
mainly concerning the caret mark in typewriter type.

Peter Flynn
<[e-mail]>
<[e-mail]>
_______________________________________________________________________________

PC-WRITeX update          v2.1 now out                   No 3: 22 May 88
----------------

DEVELOPMENTS --- Since the last copy of v1.1 went out the door (or
rather, off onto the network), I have been busy converting quite a lot
of my own documentation from an assortment of formats into PC-WRITeX
format. With the use of a PR.TXT file as well as the PR.DOC, it has been
possible to maintain a single source file in PC-WRITE which can be
printed (a) on any of the printers supported by PC-WRITE; (b) as a plain
text file with no attributes at all (ie plain unvarnished ASCII,
suitable for network mailing); and (c) as a TeX document. This has
proved very successful: the only caveat is not to get carried away, once
you see the quality you get from TeX typesetting, into overusing the
facilities so much that your documents become unuseable on ordinary
printers.

A NEW VERSION --- is now available: converting all this documentation
has made a lot of things clear both about PC-WRITE and about what is
needed from a multi-output documentation system. The new version has
some extra bells and whistles, and very few actual changes, but I'm
afraid there are indeed some Alt keys which have had to change. ED.DOC
defines a few extra keystrokes to operate new features.

Reasons --- The major change was triggered by finally grasping that PC-
WRITE does not turn font attributes off at the end of the line in the
order that you turned them on, or in the order that you specified. In
fact the rules are as follows (obtained by inspection of a print-to-disk
of a line containing all possible font characters on and off in order):

Details --- Fonts C and P cause a reversion to font F first before
activating themselves (logical, I suppose). Fonts D, E, F, Q and V turn
OFF the current font first before activation. This limits what you can
do in certain styles: you can't get small caps (Alt P) within the
compressed face (Alt C) for example. In general, fonts are turned OFF
in the following order at the end of a line:

     S B E V P C M J X Z D N W O K I Q U H L R Y

and not in either alpha or user-implied order. The effect of this on
PC-WRITeX was to utterly screw up some modes (center line, math mode)
because the translation of the turn-off sequences into TeX were coming
out in the "wrong" order (wrong for TeX, that is). The consequent
changes to font characters are:

     Was      Now

      O       u/d    footnote
     n/a       O     narrower margins this paragraph
      R        X     no indent this paragraph
      M        R     math mode (linear, not display)
      J        M     quad horizontal space
      Y        J     blank line (quad vertical space)
      Z        Y     center line
     n/a       Z     TeX literal

CHANGES --- The implementation of footnoting was unsuccessful for
anything involving multi-line footnotes because when typing it in, the
Alt Os wrapped with the text, causing chaos. Footnoting is now
implemented by usurping characters 175 and 177 decimal (shaded boxes,
unrepresentable in TeX) respectively. ED.DOC defines Shf Ctl F1 and Shf
Ctl F2 as the turn on and turn off keystrokes

Math mode was made Alt R and the short chain of consequent reassignments
now means that TeX closing sequences are honored correctly. The math
characters now work alone and in math mode transparently. In particular,
super- and sub-scripting now produces roman (upright) type, not math
italic.

A new facility has been introduced in Alt Z, which outputs a backslash,
so TeX commands can be passed to the output file if you require special
effects such as changing indentation amounts etc.

Another extra is right-alignment, initiated by character 222 (defined in
ED.DOC as Shf F5) and terminated by 177 (Shf F6). This causes a
\line{\strut\hfil and a closing }

One final new addition is a verbatim mode for quoting DP output in
typewriter type (Tex's \tt face). This is implemented by usurping
characters 178 and 219 (the other two shaded boxes) to turn this mode on
and off. They both cause a paragraph skip, so put them on a line by
themselves. They cause any intervening text to be printed in small size
typewriter type, but it is not a true verbatim mode, because backslashes
will not work. Most plain ASCII text will reproduce OK this way, though.
ED.DOC defines Shf Alt F1 and Shf Alt F2 as the turn on and turn off
keystrokes.

The default TeX output is now \magstep1, not \magstep0. Most people seem
to prefer documentation at the larger size, but you can change this
locally in PCWSTY.TEX if you wish.

DISTRIBUTION ---To ease the pain of this, I am now shipping a
replacement help screen which you can put in ED.HLP wherever you like (I
replaced the SHAREWARE panel in my personal copy, because QuickSoft,
having pioneered the concept in the US, are refusing to honor it in
Europe). I am also shipping a four-line ED.DOC which defines the
characters 176, 177, 178 and 219 as Shf Ctl F1 and F2 and Shf Alt F1 and
F2 for operating the new features mentioned above.

Sorry to go making these changes if you've gotten yourselves
established, but they were required to make the thing work
satisfactorily. I am sending v2.1 out with this note to all those who
requested the original (v1.2) and I would ask them please to circulate
it to those to whom they gave the previous version. An announcement will
also appear in the TeXHaX list to this effect. I have removed the .TEX,
.DVI and .HP files from the .arc distribution because of size. A copy of
the PR.TXT file is included, however.

FUTURES --- The next phase of development will be creating TeX
definitions for the box-drawing character set. This is a non-trivial
task (help welcomed!) and no timescale exists yet for this phase.

Peter Flynn
<[e-mail]>
<[e-mail]>
_______________________________________________________________________________

PC-WRITeX update              v1.2 changes               No 2: 31 Mar 88
----------------

Several people have asked for closer co-operation between PC-WRITE's way
of using Alt characters and that used by PC-WRITeX. It is difficult to make
them very much closer, but one change which seems desirable is to exchange
the definitions of Alt-N and Alt-Y, so that itemising is done with Alt-N,
as in PC-WRITE ("autonumber" facility), and \vskip space is done by Alt-Y
(as in "y-axis") rather than vice-versa. The two lines in PR.DOC should
therefore look like this:

#N=17 +"\item{"-"} "                  (itemises para [only works with indent>0])
#Y=31 +"\vskip"-"em "                 (leaves vertical space in ems eg, 12)

Another problem is that of generating plain unvarnished ASCII files from
PC-WRITeX documents. If you have nicely formatted files which print well
in TeX but which you want to send across a network or give to someone
who only has a mainframe lineprinter, you need to de-TeX (or at least
de-PC-WRITE) the file. I have therefore put together a "dumb ASCII" driver
which will reproduce only the text, with no formatting at all (you can
put in a ruler line with a J for justification if you wish). This file
PR.TXT is being sent out along with this update, and should be added to the
distribution .ARC file if you are acting as a supplier. All users need do
is put PR.TXT in their \pcwrite subdirectory, and copy or rename their
text files to .TXT instead of .DOC  Printing to disk in the normal way will
then generate a plain ASCII file.

One unfortunate by-product of doing this, though, is that the Alt commands
which in .DOC file usage enclose a numeric argument (eg for setting para
skip values) will reproduce just a number in the plain ASCII output, on its
own. For the moment you'll just have to edit these out where they occur.
One suggestion is that these value-setting Alt commands should be replaced
by macros which increment or decrement the TeX values by a fixed amount,
instead of allowing the user to specify how much to set them to. I am not
entirely in favour of this, as it would lead to rather more restrictiveness
than is desirable for typesetting, but it would get rid of lone digits in
plain ASCII output because the definition of the Alt characters in PR.TXT
would be null.

Peter Flynn
<[e-mail]>
<[e-mail]>
_______________________________________________________________________________

PC-WRITeX update                                         No 1: 26 Feb 88
----------------

Since the first distribution of PC-WRITeX, three points have been brought
up which require correction. PLEASE ENSURE YOUR COPY IS UPDATED, AND TRY
TO PASS THIS NOTICE ON TO THOSE TO WHOM YOU HAVE ALSO PASSED THE SOFTWARE.

     1. In PCWRITEX.DOC, the reference to the 1-line contents of file
        PR.DEF should have the period removed from between the
        exclamation mark and the pr.*: this file should thus contain
        the line !pr.*

     2. In PCWRITEX.DOC, the reference at the very end to a public-domain
        version of TeX called MS-TeX is incorrect and should be deleted.
        My apologies to Mr McGuffey for any inconvenience I have caused.
        There *is*, however, a limited MS-DOS implementation called DOSTeX
        available for US$75 ($85 outside the US) from Electronetics Inc,
        119 Jackrabbit Run, Round Rock, Tx 78664. Contact Gary Beihl there,
        or on the Internet as <[e-mail]>

     3. Some early versions of PCWSTY.TEX have an incomplete definition of
        the font changes in the \sans and \bigger macros, which omitted
        to reference an equivalence for the \bx (bold extended) type.
        Please substitute the following macros in that file:

\def\sans{\let\rm=\zrm\let\it=\zit\let\bf=\zbf\let\sl=\zit\let\bx=\zbf\rm}

\def\bigger{\let\rm=\brm\let\it=\bit\let\bf=\bbf\let\sl=\bsl\let\tt=\btt
            \let\bx=\bbf\rm}


Peter Flynn
<[e-mail]>
<[e-mail]>