CP/M/CPM_CDROM.iso/cpm/programs/list/ep-docs.ark/EPUSE.DOC

Text File | 1988-05-21 | 19.1 KB | 487 lines

\space-caps 3
\punctuation-factor 4
\concatenate
\justify
\adjust 3/4"\llength 13/2"
\*
\font B:Memphis\font B:Stymie\f1
\$kernpairs WAAWVAAVAYYATAATLTLV--fffffor.r,
\attach
\*
\dot-character
\use-braces        \* {..} will mark off a print mode
\{\italic\emphasized\}    \* and make that mode italic & emphasized
\bold            \* Add a little space after emphasized char's

\* the title
\center\{\tall\expanded\emphasized Using EP}

\paragraph-indent 3
\paragraph-spacing 0

\* Define some convenient macros:

\* s - Section headings
\s$ \pp\skip\undent 3\up-case\$\uc0 .  \.

\* h - Major headings
\h$ \skip 2\char-height +2p\center\tall{\$}\char-height -1p\skip

\* x - Start a text example
\x$ \sk 6p\co0\ju0\use-brc0\cw 20.\f2\ec #
\* z - End a text example
\z$ #ec \\sk 6p\co\ju\f1\use-braces\{\italic\emphasized\}\cw0

\* u - Do line in upper case
\u$ \uc\$\uc0\.



\s Getting started
Use your editor to make a text file, add some EP commands, and have
EP print it.
All the lines in the file should start clear at the left of the
screen, except where you want a new paragraph to start -- then add
some spaces at the beginning.
An empty line will also start a new paragraph.

A typical set of EP commands to put at the beginning of your file would
be:
\x
\    adjust        1"
\    line-length    6"
\concatenate        \justify
\    font        Times-Roman
#z
Then, to get the printout, tell \u cpm:
    A>ep trial.txt
\br or whatever, depending on what name you gave the file.

Well, that's it.
Now here is an explanation of what those commands accomplish.
The {adjust} command sets the left margin in 1 inch to the right
of the left-most position of the Epson's print-head.
This is going to be a little more than 1 inch from the left edge of
the paper, probably by 1/4 of an inch.
The {line-length} command sets the length for lines, and implicitly
sets the right margin to the position 6 inches to the right of the
left margin.
So you should get an inch and a quarter of white space at the left
and the right of 8 1/2 inch wide paper.

{Concatenate} requests EP to reform paragraphs by moving words up
from lower lines so as to put as many words as possible into each
printed line.
{Justify} gets you right justification; without the justify command
you'd get ragged right.

Finally, the {font} command asks to use the font whose character
shapes are stored in the disk file
\u {timeroma.fn2},
which must be
present on the disk in the default drive for the command to work.
You'll notice some disparity between the name given after {font}
and the actual name of the disk file.
EP does some abbreviation here.
If this makes you uncomfortable, you can always use the real
file name by giving the command as
    \\font \u timeroma.fn2
\br if you like.

If you actually printed something out, you'll have noticed that
a top and bottom margin was left on each page, and page numbers
were put in the bottom margins.
EP set the top and bottom margins at 1 inch each, and \it{assumed}
that you started printing with the printhead at the top margin.
If you did, then the margins should indeed be one inch.


\s Another style
Perhaps it's premature here to talk about alternate ways of doing things,
but all the same, if you've used other formatting programs, the following
alternative way of giving the above sample set of commands may seem
more familiar:
\x
.LM 10
.LL 60
.FI
.JU
.FO timeroma
#z
These commands have exactly the same effect as the earlier ones,
and there is a mechanical relationship between the two styles
(which will be described a little later).


\s At the console
As the formatting and printing proceeds, an approximation of what
is being printed is displayed on the console screen.
It's a very rough approximation, with the ends of lines truncated and
other crudities, so please don't think the print will look as bad as this.
It does give an idea of where you are in the input file, and
sometimes you may wish to let EP have a go at the file without actually
printing it, to catch major formatting errors.
Depending on how your printing interface is set up, just turning off
the printer might work for this, but if this makes your system ``hang''
you can temporarily insert into the file a command {\\beginning-page 10000}
to prevent printing.

EP is a batching program -- not interactive.
It does however understand the usual CPM
conventions: ^S for ``wait 'til I hit another key'',
and ^C for ``quit, abort, return to the system''.
There are also commands available to build in to your
text some user interaction.
See the {put-terminal} and {get-terminal} commands described in EPREF.DOC.





\h Implicit Commands

There are several ways to get the effects of EP commands without having
them in the text.
This can make the preparation of documents a little less trying,
and the text file will be easier to read and modify if it's not
cluttered up with formatting commands.

\s Leading blanks
A space character or a tab at the beginning of an input text line is
a ``leading blank''.
A leading blank causes a break, and a break finishes a paragraph.
When {concatenation} (or {fill}) is turned on, a break causes the next
word to be put on a new output line, and when {justification} is
turned on, the last line is considered to be the last line of a paragraph
and so is not justified.
An explicit command {break} does this too, but you will seldom need
to resort to this.

Another special convention associated with leading blanks is this:
each leading blank space indents the following text by one column,
i.e. 1/10 of an inch.
What's so special about that?
Well, when you're using proportionally spaced fonts, the width of
a space will not usually be 1/10" and will differ from font to font.
But it is convenient to use blanks to indent paragraphs or examples
and be able to count on getting the same indentation no matter what
font happens to be in use.
The explicit command for this is {indent-line.}

\s Tabs
For many CPM editors, a tab character means: advance to the next
column which is divisible by 8, i.e. the next tab stop.
This is also EP's understanding.
For instance, if you start a line with a tab, then the following
text is indented by 8/10 of an inch in the printout.
However, there is a little problem here about what ``next'' should
mean in the above statement.
Proportionally spaced characters are on the average less than 1/10"
wide, so you could be past a tab stop on the screen when you are
editing the file, but not past it so far as the printout goes.
So that you will be able to predict what effect a tab will have,
EP looks at it from your viewpoint.
If you used three tabs interspersed with text, for example,
to get over to the 24th column
on the screen, then the text after the third tab will be printed starting
at the 24th column, also.
That is, it will start 2.4 inches in from the left margin, as established
by the {left-margin} command.

Now here is an additional note about leading blanks.
Space characters after a tab count as ``leading'', so each moves you over
1/10" in the printout regardless of the font you're using.
To extend the above example, you could get to column 26 by putting
two spaces after the third tab.

This method of using tabs for columnar alignment will not necessarily
give the most pleasing results, and EP provides several alternatives,
however they are all more trouble to use.
And note that the tab character referred to in the preceding discussion
is a real tab -- a control-I in the input text file.
If you use WordStar in ``document'' mode, the tab key does not give
a tab character, but just some spaces, and EP will have no means of
telling that a tab was intended.

\s Blank lines
A line with nothing on it in the input text file is a signal for EP
to start a new paragraph.
Ordinarily this means ending the last paragraph (i.e. a blank line causes
a break) and skipping down one line in the printout.
A line ``with nothing on it'' here means one that appears empty when
you are editing.
It could have spaces or tabs on it, but it still counts as blank.

At the cost of a few introductory commands, other actions can be
triggered by blank lines.
See the section on Paragraphs in EPREF.DOC.
``{Hanging-indent}'' is especially useful for formatting bibliographies.

\s Braces
The left and right braces are usually just printed, but if you choose,
you can set things up so that braces have a special significance.
This is useful for the common situation where a document requires only
two fonts or print modes, primarily.
Say you just want some words or phrases in italic, and you don't need
to print any braces.
Then braces can be used to enclose the italic portions of text
after you've inserted the following two commands:
\x
\use-braces
\{\italic\}
#z
This associates the italic mode with braces.
Now braces will not be printed, but instead a left brace will turn
on italicization and a right brace will turn it off.
By following a similar procedure, any font together with any
combination of print modes can be associated with braces.

\s Control characters
An economical way of issuing a whole set of EP commands which must
often be used together is to define a macro command.
In turn, macro commands can be associated with any of those control
characters that are not required for some other use (like CR, e.g.).
Without going into detail at this point on the use of macros, I
will just give an example which defines ^U as an underline toggle.
Since other printing programs sometimes use ^U this way, you might
be able to save yourself the trouble of a lot of reediting of old
text files which assume such a convention.
\x
\u$ \xu+\if xu>1 {\xu 0}\under-line = xu\.
#z
Bolding, alternate character spacing, and so on, could be handled
similarly.


\h Syntax of Commands

An embedded command consists of an escape character, followed by a
command ``word'', and then, in some cases, a numerical argument or
text enclosed in braces.
Spaces and tabs after `\\', after the command word or a numerical
argument are not printed.
The escape character is either a dot `.' at the very beginning of a line,
or else a backslash `\\', which can occur anywhere in the line.

A command word is either one or two characters long, and in most
cases the character are both alphabetic letters (where the `$' counts
as alphabetic).
When this is so, it doesn't matter whether the letters are
upper or lower case, and the command word can
alternatively be written in a long form, in
which the above two letters are the first two of the word, or the
first letters of each part of a compound word.
E.g., the following all have the same effect:
\x
\pl 11"
\PLENGTH 11"
\page-length 11"
\Piranha-logo 11"
#z

\s The \\font command
This command has as its argument the name of a file which has letter font data.
At most the first 8 characters of the name are used, and the
file extension is supplied.
The following would both load in the data of the disk file
CRAWMODE.FN2:
\x
\fo crawmode
\font CrawModern
#z
For easier reading, compound names can be used for fonts.
In this case the actual filename will be made up of letters taken
from each part of the compound. Expressed schematically, the rule
is (4_to 8)-(2_to 4)-(1_to 2)_...-1, meaning that for the first
part, the beginning letters to a maximum of 4 are extracted or,
if there is no subsequent part to the compound, to a maximum of 8,
and so on.
Here are some examples:
    Venus-Bold
     refers to file VENUBOLD.FN2
    Venus-Title
     refers to file VENUTITL.FN2
    Venus-Bold-Title
     refers to file VENUBOTI.FN2
    Venus-Bold-Condensed-Title
     would refer to file VENUBOCT.FN2
    Venus-Bold-Extra-Condensed-Title
     would refer to file VENUBOET.FN2

After the name may come, optionally, braces surrounding text
that is to be printed using the named font, following which
the font previously in use will be restored.

Instead of the name of a font, a number can be used.
Number 0 refers to the Epson built-in font, and 1-7 refer to
previously referenced letter fonts, in the order in which
they were referred to.

Although any number of fonts may be used in a document,
if more than 7 are used, one must take special care, since
EP sees all those after the 6th
as having the same number, \italic {viz.} 7.
Since the font of a character is internally encoded by number,
when it is time to print an output line,
the last font referenced after the 6th is used for all ``number 7''
characters.
A consequence of this is that characters from the 7th and 8th fonts, e.g.,
can not be together on the same output line.

The order in which fonts are referred to also has significance
in case a letter font file does not have definitions for all
characters (you might want a set of superscript numbers
or swash capitals, for instance).
When EP finds that a character is undefined,
it searches lower numbered fonts for a character to replace it.

\s Numeric Arguments
Many EP commands have a numeric argument.
E.g. {\\line-length 60} sets the line length to a value of 60.
But 60 what?
Since the widths of characters differ from each other
and also differ from font to font,
and not all commands refer to widths,
the conventions for interpreting numbers
after commands have to be somewhat involved.
In this particular case, the `60' would mean 60 columns,
where a column is reckoned to be 1/10 of an inch, thus, 6 inches.
In the case of other commands, such as `{\\font}'
which selects a letter font by number,
a similar interpretation would not be appropriate.

So here are the conventions used.
Numeric arguments are interpreted in one of four different ways,
and in the list of commands given in EPREF,
these interpretations are symbolized by `n', `b', `h', `v'.
The `n' means ``plain old number'', as for example
the number of a letter font after `{\\font}'.
The `b' means Boolean; i.e. an ``on'' versus ``off'' value.
For the Boolean arguments, `0' means ``off'' and `1' means ``on''.
Whenever a command takes a numerical argument but none is given,
the value `1' is assumed.

The `h' and `v' mean ``horizontal measure'' and ``vertical measure'',
respectively.
There is a choice about how to give these measures --
they can be given in terms of dots, points, inches, columns, or lines.
Unless the number is followed by a special symbol, columns is assumed
for horizontal measures and lines for vertical measures.
If the number is followed by a dot `.', this means ``dots'';
`p' or `P' means points;
double-quote `"' means ``inches''.
So {\\ad 2"} would mean
``set the adjust value (the left margin) to 2 inches''.
The measures are related to one another in the following ways:
    1 point    =  3 dots,
    1 column    =  8 points,
    1 inch    = 10 columns as a horizontal measure, but
    1 inch    = 72 points as a vertical measure.
\br
Thus, a horizontal dot is 1/240th of an inch,
which corresponds to
the maximum horizontal dot-density on the FX-80, and a vertical dot is
1/216th of an inch, which corresponds to the maximum vertical dot-density.

The height of a line is the character height plus the space left
between lines -- the `leading'.
The letter font characters are 8 points high unless the `{\\character-height}'
command has been used to assign a different nominal value.
When {character-height} has its default value of 8 points,
the height of a line is this 8 points plus the leading, however
that has been set using the `{\\leading}' command (the default is 2 points,
giving a line height of 10 points).



\h Multiple Columns

The multiple column facility is probably not usable for running
text without the use of the preprocessing program EPMC.
It may be of direct use for some simple charts.

Here are the commands for a little 3 column figure:
\x
\    center    Horse-Kick Deaths
\skip
\    gutter            4
\    numberof-columns    3
Year 1862    \break        21\break    0.15 %
Years 1863-65\break        85\break    0.18 %
Year 1866    \break         8\break    0.03 %
\    numberof-columns    1
\skip
\    center    figure 12.
#z
In printing the above, the line is split into 3 equal width columns
separated by 4/10" of white space, a ``gutter''.
There is no method provided for selecting the positions or widths
of the columns independently of one another, although some adjustments
can be made using the {indent} command (see below).
In general,
after setting the {gutter} width between columns, multiple
column printing begins when the number of columns is set to
some value greater than 1 and ends when it is set to a value less
than 2 (\it{i.e.,} 0 and 1 are equivalent).

In multiple column mode, when EP comes to what would ordinarily be
a new output line, the line is instead placed in the next column.
Until, that is, each column is filled and it is time to start a new line.
EP cannot do concatenation in multiple column mode.
Unless you use {break} commands, as I did in the above example,
each line of each column will correspond to an input line with some
printable text on it (i.e. not consisting entirely of commands).
It is convenient to split up the input lines with {break}'s,
because if you don't, then what reads
downward in the text file will read across the columns.
(The preprocessor EPMC allows concatenation and changes things so
that text will read down the columns.)

During multiple column formatting, the sense of some commands is
reoriented toward the output column.
To illustrate, I will repeat the above example in a slightly
elaborated form.
\x
\center Horse-Kick Deaths
\skip
\gutter 4
\{
\numberof-columns 3
\emphasized
\ce Year 1862    \break\ra    21\in 32p\ital\. 0.15 %
\ce Years 1863-65\break\ra    85\break    0.18 %
\ce Year 1866    \break\ra     8\break    0.03 %
\numberof-columns 1
}\in 0
\skip
\center figure 12.
#z
Now, due to the {center} commands, the entries in the first column
will be centered \ital{within this column.}
In the second column, the numbers will be right adjusted to the end
of their own column, and in the third column, each percentage is
moved over 32 points from where the column starts by the {indent}
command. The {indent} affects only the third column.

The two print mode commands in the example affect only a single column.
Since the {emphasized} command was encountered when EP was processing
text destined for the first column, this entire column will be emphasized,
but the other two columns will be unaffected.
Similarly, the material in the third column will be italicized,
but not that in the first two columns.
The print mode commands and the {indent} command will
affect following single-column text -- their effect is local
to a column but not local to multiple column mode.
This is the reason for the `{\\\(123)}' and the `{\\in 0}' in the example.

The commands that behave this way in multiple column mode are
the Line Format commands {justify, center, right-adjust, co-lumn,}
indentation commands, and all print mode commands.
{Ta-b} commands work relative to the beginning of a column, but
there is only one set of tab stops for all the columns.
Text blocks, also, run up and down the columns.

Commands that change the height of characters or the space between
lines will affect all columns, since EP prints an entire row of
columns at once.