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TextRead release 1.03 User's guide Copyright © 1992 Martin Blom Released 7 November 1992 Preface ~~~~~~~ The programs and files in this distribution are freely distributable, but copyrighted. They may be freely distributed as long as no more than a nominal fee is charged to cover time and copying costs. No commercial usage is permitted without written permission from the author. Everything in this distribution must be kept together, in original unmodified form. The above is generally known as freeware (and also 99% quoted from the doc to PPMore by Nico François). I take no resposibility for any trouble TextRead may cause. Use at own risk. If you want to use TextRead in you software packages you need to ask for written permission. Write to this address: Martin Blom Solängsvägen 19 S-556 26 Jönköping SWEDEN Introduction ~~~~~~~~~~~~ TextRead is (surprise!) a textreader for the Amiga computer, used to read ascii files. It can of course handle PowerPacked textfiles, encrypted too. It can also show all ascii and nonascii charters (except TAB and LF, they're not shown). TextRead was written for two reasons 1) I wanted to learn how to code system friendly programs under Release 2 and 2) I didn't think PPMore's textroutines were fast enough... :-) Note that the screen is not double buffered, I think this is waste of chip memory. This is of course only yet another textreader, but I wanted one that I liked, so I wrote it. Since TextRead is a kind of clone of PPMore and More, most keys means the same thing in all three programs. TextRead was designed with "Amiga User Interface Style Guide" beside the keyboard, so I think you will feel comfortable with the layout. TextRead *requires* V37 of the system libraries (Release 2.04), V37 of ReqTools.library and V35 of Powerpacker.library. TextRead is copyright © Martin Blom. PowerPacker.library and Reqtools.library are copyright © Nico François. Usage ~~~~~ The following files should be included in this package: libs (dir) Drawer.NoInfo Install Install.info TextRead TextRead.doc TextRead.doc.info TextRead.info TextRead.prefs TextRead.prefs.info To install TextRead and the libraries, execute Install from Workbench. This will install Reqtools och Powerpacker libraries in LIBS: and TextRead in sys:Utilities or an user specified drawer (will be created if it doesn't exists). Once installed, TextRead can be started either from the Shell or from the Workbench. Starting TextRead from the Shell ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ Type TextRead ? to get the standard AmigaDOS template: FILE,TABS/K/N,UNIT/K/N,SETTINGS/K: Type TextRead ?? to get this text: TextRead 1.03 ©1992 Martin Blom. Usage: TextRead [[FILE] <file>] [TABS <n>] [UNIT <n>] [SETTINGS <name>] If you supply a filename, that file will be loaded, decrunched (if necessary), and show on TextRead's custom screen. If you don't, the screen will open, some info will be displayed and then you will be asked for a filename. If the file was encrypted, you will be asked for a password. The other arguments are options; TABS <n> Selects the tabsize (on screen, not printer). UNIT <n> Selects the unit of printer.device to use when printing. Useful if you've got more than one parallel or serial port. SETTINGS <name> Selects a settings file to use instead of the default settings file or the build-in settings. Here are some examples: 1> TextRead TextRead.doc TABS 3 1> TextRead TABS 3 FILE TextRead.doc These two command do the same thing, they load TextRead.doc and show it with tabsize set to 3. 1> TextRead TABS 8 UNIT 1 SETTINGS ENV:TextRead.prefs This command sets the tabsize to 8, selects the second parallel or serial port for printing and uses the settings file found i ENV:. You will be prompted for a file to view. 1> TextRead dh1:Docs TABS 4 SETTINGS sys:Utilities/TextRead.interlace.prefs Sets tabsize to 4 and since dh1:Docs isn't a file but a directory, a requester will pop up, listing the files in dh1:Docs/. Very useful! A settings file in sys:utilities will be used. Starting TextRead from the Workbench ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ This is really simple. Just doubleclick on it icon, and you will be prompted for a filename. You can also select TextRead's icon and then doubleclick on another icon to view that file (or, if it was a settings file, to use that settings). If you doubleclicked on a drawer or disk, the filerequester will appear and list the files in thar directory. Another way to start TextRead is to set the icon's default tool to TextRead. Just select an icon and chose Information from the Workbench Icons menu. Here are the tooltypes supported: FILETYPE=PREFS Tells TextRead that this is a settings file. TABS=<n> Selects the tabsize (on screen, not printer). UNIT=<n> Selects the unit of printer.device to use when printing. Useful if you've got more than one parallel or serial port. SETTINGS=<name> Selects a settings file to use rather than the default settings file or the build-in settings. NOTE: - Powerpacker.library will add '.pp' to the filename when the file wasn't found. This is very useful in the WorkBench enviroment: you can make an icon for 'text.doc' but name the file 'text.doc.pp'. Now the WorkBench will show an icon with 'text.doc' as name, but if you doubleclick it 'text.doc.pp' will be displayed (As long as there is no 'text.doc' file in the directory!). - TextRead CANNOT, like PPMore, be made resident. BEWARE! - TextRead does not support multiple files (yet!). - TextRead doesn't detach itself from the Shell. Control ~~~~~~~ Once you have started TextRead, you have several options via the menus. Below is a full description of each menu. To get brief information from within the program, hilite a menu and press »HELP«. A requester will pop up. If you press »HELP« alone, you'll get a summary of all the keyboard commands. Press a key to view the textfile again. At the bottom of the screen you will notice a info box and a scroll bar. The info box shows current linenumber and percentage. The scroll bar is used to scroll the screen. And the arrows... guess! When you have loaded a text, you can edit it with your favorite text editor by pressing <Shift-E>. The editor specified in ENV:Editor will be run and the text will be loaded. However, only the filename is passed to the editor, so if the text was powerpacked, you editor must be PowerPacker compatible (or you can use PP Patch by Michael Berg). One way to solve this (by me) is the send the decrunched file via PIPE: to the editor, but then you must specify a name when you want to save it, and I don't like this. Take a look at PP Patch, maybe that's what you're looking for... You can also set and jump to up to ten bookmarks. Set them with <Shift> and a funktion key, and jump with a funktion key. The bookmarks will be cleared when a new file is loaded. Here are the menus: Project menu ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ Open... Will bring up the ReqTools' filerequester and ask for a filename. You can select the pattern and if icons shall be showed. If you cancel the requester, your old textfile will be intact. If you chose 'Open', the file will be loaded, decrunched (if it was powerpacked) and printed on the screen. If the file was encrypted, you will be asked for a password. Then the memory the previous file was occupying will be freed. Print Will send your text to the printer using your settings (see below). Unfortunately, this will lock up TextRead until the printing is finished. This is unacceptable and I will fix this in a later version. NOTE - Make sure that 'printer.device' and either 'serial.device' or 'parallel.device' is in DEVS: and you Printer preferences are correct (especially the number of lines). If your (parallel) printer isn't on-line, this command will return immediately. Print as... Will open a window with several gadgets. See separate section below (Print options). Iconify Will close the screen,open an icon in the Workbench window and put TextRead to sleep. When you doubleclick on the icon, the screen will reopen and the text you were viewing will be redisplayed. About... Will open a requester showing the current version, a copyright message and the current textfile's name and length in bytes/charters. Quit... or Quit Will either quit immediately och ask if you are sure, depending on the 'Verify Quit' flag (see below). When confirmed, the screen will be closed, and all memory that were used by TextRead will be returned to the system memory pool (of course). Setting menu ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ Create icons? Selects if icons will be saved together with your settings files. The icons is useful if you have different settings. To use a setting, just doubleclick on that settings file and TextRead will be run using the wanted settings. However, if you only runs TextRead from the Shell, the icons could be waste of diskspace. If so, simply turn this option off. Wrap words? Turns wordwrap on or off. If on, no words will be cut at the end of each line. This should usually be on, I think... Verify Quit? Selects if a 'Are you sure'-requester should pop up each time you quit TextRead. These kinds of requesters can be quite annoying, but also quite useful. You may chose what you want. Note that you can bypass the requester by pressing Shift-Escape to quit, even if 'Verify Quit' is on. Select tab size... Lets you select a new tabsize for the screen (not the printer). The maximum value is 16, but this is far to high. 8 is default and looks often good, especially when you're viewing assembler sources, but a lower tabsize is better when looking at C-sources (3 is a good choice!). Text font » Select text font... Lets you select a new font to be used. However, only a 8*8 pixel font will be accepted. This is because I prefer speed in front of cool fonts. I don't anybody else has another opinion. I you have, get another textreader! ;-) Default font Selects the System default font, specified in Font preferences. NOTE - If no font is suitable, the ROM Topaz font will be used. This is also often the System default font. Colours » Select screen colours Lets you select new colours to be used. Just make sure that the colors don't mess up the 3D-look! Default colours Selects the default colours. That is, the colours used when TextRead was started will be used. Screen » PAL: Hires Selects a PAL screen (at least 640*256). PAL: Hires-Interlace Selects a interlaced PAL screen (at least 640*512). NTSC: Hires Selects a NTSC screen (at least 640*200). NTSC: Hires-Interlace Selects a interlaced NTSC screen (at least 640*400). Productivity Selects a Productivity screen (at least 640*480). Use Prefs Screen font? Turns the use of Screen font on and of. If on, the font used in menus are rendered with the Screen font, which may be proportional. NOTE - The screen is opened as a Text Overscan screen, so the display area may be bigger than the dimensions stated above. This actually means that the screen will be as big as the Workbench screen. If you're using a PAL Amiga, you'll need the ECS Agnus to be able to use the NTSC screenmodes, and if you have a NTSC Amiga, you need the chip to use the PAL modes. Productivity requires both ECS Agnus and ECS Denise. Load settings... Lets you chose a settings file to use. This means that you can save the preferred tabsize, colours, screenmode and so on to disk, and then chose between different configurations. When TextRead is started, it first looks in the icon's tool type array for a name of an settings file or, if started from the Shell, it searches the arguments for the file. If not found, it tries to load the file 'TextRead.prefs' from the same directory as TextRead is in. If this file isn't present the build-in settings will be used. NOTE - When doubleclicking a settings file TextRead will only believe it is a settings file if the icon has a 'FILETYPE=PREFS' tool type. Save settings Saves your current setting using the same name the setting file was loaded as. If no setting file was previously loaded, you settings will be saved as 'TextRead.prefs' in the TextRead directory. Save settings as... Saves your current settings using the name you type or select. Search » Search for Asks for a string to be searched for, and then searches forward in text. If found, the screen will be positioned so the top line contains the string (if it not was too close to the end of the file). Search next Searches forwards in text for the string. Search previous Searches backwards for the string. NOTE - If nothing was found, the screen will flash (If you have WB 2.1, you may hear a sound too). Case sensitive? This selects how the string entered will be treated. If on, the search routines will look for an exact match of the entered string. But if it's off it doesn't matter what case the string was entered in. That means that if you want to find the word 'assembler', TextRead will find 'assembler', 'ASSEMBLER', 'Assembler'... TextRead's search routine can handle all national charters if you have 'local.library' loaded (WB 2.1). First it makes a convert table and then uses its own (fast) routines. Print options ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When you select 'Print as...' from the project menu, a window with some gadgets will open. No online help is available from here so read this! The field buttons Used to control the header of each page. The left filed may contain the name of the file or a title, max 30 charters long. The middle ane right filed may contain todays date or page number. If you don't want any header, simply set all fields to 'Nothing'. If the header is on, you loose 2 lines on each page. Header style Selects how the header will be printed. Bold, underlined, or italic. Title Max 30 charters of text. See above. Tab size Selects the tabsize for the printer. Note that all tabs are converted to spaces before printed, so you printer doesn't need to support different tab sizes. Wrap words Selects wordwrap on or off. See Settings menu, 'Wrap words?' above. Print Starts the printing. See Project menu, 'Print'. Use Closes the window. Cancel Restores the options and closes the window. Improvements to come (!?) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I know a lot of things that could be included in a text viewer: A better name! Send suggestions, please... ;^) Multiple texts ARexx interface Local versions Use AmigaGuide.library Memory display Range mode for printing Scrolling with the mouse Faster scrollingspeed Finescroll (one pixel) Ansi control codes Extraction of IFF chunks 'Light' version (smaller (5-8 kB), KS 1.3 comp) and much more... But who cares? I don't, if you don't. So send me suggestions, bug reports or anything but Jazz music, please! Credits and Acknowledgments ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ TextRead was coded in pure assembler by Martin Blom. TextRead was coded on a slow Amiga 500 with 1 MB of Chip memory and 2 MB of true fast memory, a 52 MB Supra Harddrive, a Philips 8CM852 Monitor, Citizen external diskdrive, a Golden Image GI-6000 optical mouse and AmigaOS 2.1. TextRead has only been tested on a few other computers, sorry for that... Please send bug reports. The ROM Kernel Reference Manuals were often needed. Sourcecode Rescuer II v1.3f (also by me) was often needed. Length of code: 28572 bytes. Assembling time: 18 seconds. I want a A4000/8/425! Please send. One big thank must go to Nico François for his Reqtools and Powerpacker libraries... »»» THANKS! / Martin Blom ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Program History ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Release 1.00 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ V37.0 First release. (12.9.92) V37.01 Minor bugfix. (12.9.92) V37.10 Finally got the docs to Powerpacker.library! Thanks, David of Iceland! (12.9.92) V37.11 Now accepts a directory instead of a file from the Shell too. When you load a new file, the textposition will be reset the top of file. Screen will now flash if nothing was found when searching. Fixed a bug in the screen print routine. This ^ led to another bug. Fixed! (13.9.92) Release 1.01 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ V37.13 Silly bug removed (division by zero). Another silly bug removed in print options window. Thanks, Mungwall... (18.9.92) V37.14 Decreased the size of settings file. Added arrowgadgets to the scrollbar. Fixed the last (!?) bug... (20.9.92) Release 1.02 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ V37.15 LAME bug removed: IntuiTicks forced the Helppage to disappear! TextRead now checks if your (parallel) printer is online before it tries to print. The number of lines won't be recalculeated if the user cancels the Tabsize-requester. Added bookmarks on F1-F10. (24.10.92) Release 1.03 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ V37.16 TextRead was kind of slow when you looked at the end of a 600 kB text. Fixed... The number of lines won't be recalculeated if the user doesn't change the tabsize in the Tabsize- requester. <Alt> and cursor up/down moves 100 lines. Fixed bug: Strange textoutput if big overscan was used. Removed the annoying 'copyright' requester. (7.11.92) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ $VER: TextRead doc 37.16 (7.11.92)