home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
Collection of Tools & Utilities
/
Collection of Tools and Utilities.iso
/
tex
/
off_09.zip
/
README.1ST
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1993-01-12
|
6KB
|
139 lines
OFF V.0.9.
Vassilis Dimakopoulos
Jan. 1993
Read this file before using OFF for the first time. OFF is free,
public domain. Use it and modify it (if you can :-)) as you wish. You
are NOT allowed however to sell it. Look at the end of this file for
information about the source code.
You should have the following files:
off.exe - the OFF text formatter
reader.off - info on the options and usage of OFF
reader.txt - info on the options and usage of OFF (preformatted)
writer.off - tutorial on the commands of OFF
writer.txt - tutorial on the commands of OFF (preformatted)
readme.1st - this file
1. About using OFF
OFF acts as a filter: reads a text file and formats it according
to simple commands that may exist in it. Normaly it sends the output
directly to the screen, i.e. it acts also as a 'previewer'. If you
want to save the output to a file, or print it you normally have to
preview it for a couple of times to make sure everything looks the way
it should. Then run OFF with one of the '-a' or '-p' options to
redirect the output to disk or printer.
Consult the 'reader' files for the complete list of options and
the 'writer' files for the commands of OFF. You can also get a list of
OFF's options by running OFF with no parameters at all; just type
'off' at your MSDOS prompt.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
OFF uses ANSI codes to produce screen output, so make sure you
have one of the ANSI drivers available from many ftp sites.
2. The 'reader' and 'writer' files
'reader.txt' is the next file you should consult after this one;
you'll understand how to use OFF to preview and print files.
'writer.txt' is a tutorial on the formatting commands OFF understands;
you'll need that when you actually want to have your files formatted
by OFF.
'reader.off' and 'writer.off' are the source files that resulted
in 'reader.txt' and 'writer.txt' after OFF precessed them (actually I
edited them a bit after OFF produced the result so they are not
exactly what OFF would have produced). You can use them as a quick
reference (by previewing them) plus you can see the usage of OFF's
commands (especially in the 'writer.off' file where some non-trivial
situations were met). After you feel sure about OFF's usage it is
better to let OFF print 'writer.off' instead of printing 'writer.txt'
by yourself, since 'writer.off' can be matched to your printer page
size.
3. Directories
If you want to keep a directory of all you documents so that you
can take a look at them easily, you can set the environmental variable
'OFFPATH' to contain specific directories were OFF should look for
source files. The additional feature of OFF not needing filename
extensions to identify a file actually saves lots of time: I use OFF
as a small unix-like 'man' and have all the documents about the
programs and utilities I've written in certain directories where OFF
searches.
4. Printing
You have to have a line printer to take advantage of the direct
printing capabilities of OFF. I DO NOT HAVE ONE! I had one for a
couple of months only and wrote the driver code then. So i'm not 100%
that it will work for every line printer!
I usually produce plain ascii output, save it in a file, transfer
it to the Unix machines in our department and print it in the laser
printers there. I'm not into PostScript so I cannot produce
bold/underlined/etc. characters this way.
I'm especially interested in making OFF produce PostScript code on
request, so anybody interested in helping me please do so ... In
return I'll share the source code of OFF with you and you'll be a
co-author in the later versions of OFF.
5. Screen Ouput
On my ancient XT a fast ANSI driver makes a hell of a difference.
I guess that a >= 286 machine will have no speed problems no matter
how fast the ANSI driver is. OFF is relatively fast since each line of
the output is processed in memory first before actually being printed.
The word-by-word approach used in previous versions was considerably
slower. I imagine that a page-by-page approach may be even faster but
I don't think it is needed.
Finally, OFF was not meant to be a screen previewer that's why I
did not implement backward movement functions (like page up). One can
only move forward when viewing a file. The backward moves are not
trivial to implement, so if nobody complains there are chances of them
never being implemented.
6. Unix
An almost-working version of OFF runs on Unix machines. Anybody
interested in making it actually-working, let me know.
7. Bugs, author info.
There MUST be some bugs although I spent a considerable time of
pushing the usage of OFF to the limmit. Some minor bugs seemed so
minor and so unlikely to ever come across so I did not even bother to
fix them. I'm interested, though, in making OFF better than it is and
let everybody enjoy a bug-free program, so report any problems to me.
If you have any suggestions for improving OFF let me know.
The source code is NOT free, actually it is worth $30. The only
exception is for the ones willing to contibute a major addition to
OFF's features. I'm particularly interested in PostScript output and
code for backward movement when previewing a file (these are the
'major additions') since I do not have the time to do them myself.
I am:
Vassilis Dimakopoulos
Elec & Comp Engineering, University of Victoria
dimako@sirius.uvic.ca