********¢VTEX.COM - The Text Viewing Utility¢********¢Version 1.1 3/10/92¢¢Program and Documentation by:¢ Larry Richardson, 5521 Madrid Ave.,¢ Orlando, Fl 32807.¢¢ This program is distributed as SHAREWARE. I have spent a great deal of time designing, coding, debugging and modifying this program. Any donations I receive for my time and effort will encourage me to continue supporting this program as well as writing new software for the Atari 8-bit computer. Thank you.¢¢¢ USE ARROW KEYS TO SCROLL PAGES¢ FORWARD or BACK.¢¢¢I. What does it do?¢¢ VTEX is a utility that allows you to view any file on the screen. If you have used DOS to view a file (copy from the file to E:), you already know how unfriendly it is. VTEX is an attempt to give the Atari 8-bit user an easier and more powerful method to view a file.¢¢¢II. Features¢¢ VTEX can page through a file, both forward and backward. It has the ability to skip to the last page and back to the first page, or to skip in increments of ten pages.¢¢ Since VTEX doesn't go through CIO to display on the screen, special characters (such as the clear screen command) will not interfere with the display. VTEX has a pseudo-word wrap (I'll explain later), and can delete the leading spaces from the left margin (good for viewing files that have been PRINTed to disk). VTEX also has string search capabilities, ASCII CR/LF handling, adjustable screen colors, a directory lister, and the ability to save its default configuration. It has been tested under both Atari DOS 2.5 (2.0) and SpartaDOS.¢¢¢III. Running VTEX¢¢ From any Atari type DOS, use the binary load command (Option L) and load the VTEX executable file (VTEX.COM). The program will prompt for a filename. Enter the filename to view and press RETURN. After VTEX opens the file, the VTEX view screen will appear. At the bottom of the screen is the VTEX status line. It displays the version number of the program, the current page number of the file being viewed and has an end-of-file indicator. It also indicates if the word-wrap, delete leading spaces, or ASCII/ATASCII option are active or not.¢¢ From SpartaDOS, you may specify the filename to view on the command line. Simply type - VTEX filename <RETURN>. Under SpartaDOS, VTEX will look for the filename on the command line. If it doesn't find the filename there, it will prompt you to enter the filename (as it always does under Atari DOS).¢¢ With either DOS, if VTEX encounters an error while trying to open the file, it will re-prompt you for a new filename. If you wish to exit VTEX at this prompt, press ESC. The program will then exit to DOS.¢¢¢IV. Commands¢¢ Once VTEX is running, you have a number of commands to choose from. The commands are explained below. ¢¢¢PAGE FORWARD¢¢ Press the down arrow key (without holding down the CONTROL key). VTEX will display the next page in the file. As VTEX moves forward through a file, it notes the position of the beginning of each page so that it can move backward (or jump forward) directly to that page.¢¢¢PAGE BACKWARD¢¢ Press the up arrow key (without holding down the CONTROL key). VTEX will display the previous page in the file.¢¢¢FORWARD 10 PAGES¢¢ Press <SHIFT> down arrow (without the CONTROL key). Note that because of the way Atari 8-bit DOS's handle random access files, VTEX cannot just jump to a page that it has not yet read in a sequential manner (see the explanation in PAGE FORWARD). It doesn't know at what point in the file the 10th page occurs, for example, until it has read pages 1-10. Therefore, when you press <SHIFT> down arrow, VTEX will either:¢ 1) Move forward 10 pages (if it has already read that far in the file); or¢ 2) Move to the highest page it has read (if less than 10 pages from the current page).¢¢¢BACKWARD 10 PAGES¢¢ Press <SHIFT> up arrow (without the CONTROL key). VTEX will either:¢ 1) Move backward 10 pages (if the current page being displayed is greater than 10); or¢ 2) Go to the beginning of the file.¢¢¢GO TO THE BEGINNING OF THE FILE¢¢ Press B to return to the first page of the file.¢¢¢GO TO THE END OF THE FILE¢¢ Press E to ATTEMPT to go to the end of the file. VTEX can only go directly to the end of the file if it has already read the last page. If the last page has not been read, pressing E will take you to the highest page number read at that point. Once the last page has been read (using the down arrow to page forward), VTEX notes the position if this page so it can access it directly.¢¢¢DISPLAY THE CURRENT FILENAME¢¢ Press F to display the name of the file that is currently being viewed. Press F again to see the normal VTEX status line.¢¢¢WORD WRAP THE DISPLAY¢¢ Press W to turn on the pseudo-word wrap. A 'W' will appear on the left side of the status line to let you know that word wrap is active. This is not a true word wrap, so long words will hang over onto the next page. VTEX will simply start looking for a space after column 31. If it finds a space, it will break the line here and wrap the text at this point. Pressing W again will turn the word wrap off.¢¢ Note that because selecting word wrap (or the delete leading spaces option) will change the size of the displayed pages, VTEX resets the file to start back at page 1 when either of these options are selected. This allows the program to re-build its pointers to the beginning of the pages (which will now be in different positions).¢¢¢DELETE LEADING LEFT SPACES¢¢ Press D to turn on the delete leading left spaces option. A 'D' will appear on the left side of the status line to let you know that this option is active. Any spaces that would have appeared on the left edge of the page are now gone. Also, the current page is reset to 1 (see the note under the word wrap option for an explanation). Press D again to turn this option off.¢¢¢SEARCH FOR A STRING¢¢ Press S key to search for a string. The program will prompt you to enter a string. Type the string you wish to search for and press RETURN. The program will start from the current page and look forward for the search string. The search will stop when the program has found your string, the end of the file has been reached, or the ESC key is pressed. The function will not search if the current page is the end of the file.¢¢¢ASCII option¢¢ VTEX can optionally display ASCII carriage return/line feeds or carriage returns alone as it would ATASCII carriage returns. This is useful for viewing text generated on IBM PC's, such as many text files that are on bulletin boards. Pressing A will toggle this option on or off. An 'A' will appear on the left side of the status line to let you know that the ASCII option is active. As with the word-wrap and delete leading spaces options, the file will be reset to the beginning when this option is selected.¢¢¢LOAD A NEW FILE¢¢ Pressing L will make VTEX prompt you for a new filename to load and view. Enter the filename and press RETURN. If the program encounters an error while trying to open the file, the buzzer will sound and the prompt will re-appear to allow you to try again. Pressing ESC at this prompt will exit the option and let you continue to view the current file. When a new file is loaded, VTEX operates as if it has just been loaded (i.e. you begin at the first page in the file and all pointer information must be re-created). If no drive specifier is given, the D: prefix is appended to the filename before attempting to load the file.¢¢¢EXIT THE PROGRAM¢¢ To exit VTEX and return to DOS, press the ESC key. Note that if you choose the search option, pressing ESC while the program is prompting for the search string simply takes you out of the search function. This is also the case with the load a new file option. Pressing ESC while the program is prompting you for a filename will simply abort the command.¢¢¢DIRECTORY¢¢ Press R to view a disk directory. VTEX will prompt for a path (the initial default path is D:*.*). This path is the drive specifier, subdirectories, AND file specifier. For example, to view the directory listing all of the .BAS files on drive in the BASIC subdirectory, the path would be: D2:>BASIC>*.BAS¢¢ To view all of the files on the default drive in the current subdirectory: D:*.*¢¢ Pressing ESC at the path prompt will abort the directory listing.¢¢¢COLORS¢¢ VTEX allows the user to customize the screen color and text intensity to his or her liking. The < and > keys decrease and increase the screen intensity. The 9 and 0 keys decrease and increase the text intensity. Finally, SHIFT < and SHIFT > decrease and increase the screen color, independent of the intensity level.¢¢¢SAVE CURRENT CONFIGURATION¢¢ Press C to save the current configuration. This command saves the state of some of the VTEX features, allowing you to customize your copy of the program. The following are all saved by this command:¢¢ - Word Wrap On/Off¢ - ASCII/ATASCII state¢ - Delete Spaces On/Off¢ - Screen color and Text intensity¢¢ Press C and VTEX will prompt for a VTEXfile name. This is the name of the VTEX executable that you run. After entering the filename, VTEX will update the executable file itself with the new default values for the above features. So, to make a bright red screen and black text your default, simply set the screen colors and then press C.¢¢¢HELP SCREEN¢¢ VTEX version 1.1 has a Help Screen built in. Just press ? and the help will pop up on the screen. All of the key commands listed in this DOC file are on the help screen, followed by a short explanation. You may execute any key command from help by just pressing the key (you don't have to exit help first).¢¢ NOTE: To exit help without doing a command, press ?, or any other unused key. Pressing ESC will not only exit the help screen, but take you completely out of VTEX and back to DOS.¢¢¢OTHER FEATURES:¢¢- The BREAK key is disabled while in the program.¢¢- ESC will stop a string search before getting to the end of the file (I did a search on a 70+ page document one evening... I put the ESC feature in shortly after that!)¢¢¢Enjoy VTEX!¢¢ ------------------------------¢¢Documentation tidied up by S.J.Murray, NOSAUG, May 1993.¢¢ VTEX is included on NOSAUG PD disk U22 (Menu Makers & Text Readers). The full original documentation file is on this disk. It includes a section on using VTEX with Spartados X.¢¢ If you like VTEX, please consider sending a small donation to Larry Richardson ($2 or $3 suggested). His address is at the beginning of this file. If you don't want to exchange pounds for dollars you could send him a small present to show your appreciation of his programming talents (postcards, PD disks, keyring, etc.). Even a letter of thanks is appreciated by shareware programmers! We need to let these people know that we appreciate their efforts to support the Atari 8-Bit.¢
