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Text File | 1991-09-20 | 32KB | 817 lines

╔═════════════════════════════════╗ ║ ║ ║ ║ ║ Booklet ║ ║ ║ ║ ║ ╚═════════════════════════════════╝ Booklet v2.40, 20/09/91, (c) 1989/90/91 Andy Lawrie Softronix, Townsend Road, Ashford, Middlesex, TW15 3PR, England. Booklet ------- 'Booklet' prints a file on an HP Laserjet II or III, or an Epson 9 or 24 pin printer, or any other printer that is compatible with them. It prints on A4 (Laserjet) or 11" x 8" (Epson and Laserjet) in landscape mode, using both sides of the paper. When the output is folded down the middle it becomes an A5 or 8" x 5.5" booklet. 'Booklet' is 'shareware'. It is NOT public domain or free software. The un- registered version may be copied and used, subject to certain restrictions detailed below, for a trial period of 14 days. If, after the trial period, you wish to continue using the program, you should register your copy. The restrictions on the copying and trial use of the program are :- a) It should not be distributed in connection with any other product or service without prior written permission from Softronix. b) It should not be charged for. c) The three files comprising the unregistered version should be copied together, i.e., the program BOOKLET.EXE, this documentation file BOOKLET.DOC and the file README.TXT. The BOOKLET.CFG file produced by a registered copy should NOT be copied. Bulletin board operators are encouraged to provide 'Booklet' for downloading to their users, provided the above conditions are adhered to. Distributors of public domain and shareware software are granted exemption from b) providing 1) They charge only a moderate sum for the media and copying service. 2) They clearly describe the principle of shareware distribution in their literature and advertising material. Their customers must be aware before purchase of the requirement to register shareware in order to continue using it after the trial period. Upon registration you will receive a code that will enable you to mark your current and future versions of the program as registered. You will be entitled to help with any problems you may encounter, and the opportunity to influence future improvements. You will receive a copy of the latest version of the program if the one you have has been superceded. Registration entitles use of the program on a single machine. Site licenses are available for multiple machines, please contact Softronix for details. To mark your copy of the program, select the 'Config/Register booklet' menu option. Enter 3 lines of name and address information, followed by the user code. Registering your copy --------------------- Registration costs £10.00 for U.K. customers, £12.50 for European users and £15.00 outside Europe. Please include your name and address in capitals, refer to 'Booklet', and send your remittance to :- Softronix, Townsend Road, Ashford, Middlesex, TW15 3PR, England. Page 15 contains an order form for your convenience. Your registered copy will normally be despatched on the working day following receipt of the order. Arrangements will be made where possible to cover for holidays, etc., but this cannot be guaranteed. All payments direct to Softronix must be by sterling cheque or postal order. To facilitate payment by credit card (Barclaycard/Visa and Access/Mastercharge) we have appointed an agent :- D & M Systems, 24 Agar Crescent, Bracknell, Berks., RG12 2BX. Tel. 0344-412347 Fax. 0344-488110 Orders can be accepted by telephone, facsimile or post and will be passed to Softronix for processing. Please allow a few extra days for delivery. Prices are the same except that it may be necessary to charge V.A.T. in the future. An unregistered copy of 'booklet' is available to prospective purchasers on request, for a nominal handling charge of £2.50 for the U.K., £5.00 for European users and £7.50 for all others, refundable against subsequent registration. Registered users wishing to upgrade who are unable to download a copy, may obtain the latest release for the same nominal charge as listed above. Softronix will re-issue a registration code in case of loss, but may make a similar charge for this service. All prices and terms are subject to change without notice. Availability ------------ Booklet will be made available on bulletin boards (BBS). The filename will normally take the form 'bookXXX.YYY' where 'XXX' represents the version number (e.g., currently 240) and 'YYY' is the extension used by the BBS file packing program. Please try to adhere to this convention if you upload the program to another board. How to use 'Booklet' -------------------- Selecting a file ---------------- Enter the file you wish to print by selecting 'File/Enter filename' from the menu (selections are made by moving the highlighted option with the cursor keys or the initial letter and pressing ENTER to select it). The current working directory is displayed. 'Booklet' will not let you enter an invalid filename. If you want to return to the menu without entering a filename, press ESC. If you are not sure of the name of the file you wish to print, 'Booklet' can provide a pick list. Just enter a template using the '*' and '?' characters (e.g. *.doc, temp?.txt, booklet.*) and you will be presented with a window containing all the matching files. If you enter a blank line it is the same as a template of *.*, and all files will be shown. There is a limit of 600 files in the pick list. If 'Booklet' runs out of space it will warn you that the list is incomplete. Files are sorted alphabetically and are displayed in lower case. All sub- directories (including the parent, ..) are shown before the files, in upper case. Use the cursor keys to position the highlight bar over the file or directory you require and press ENTER. If you selected a file you will return to the menu, but if it was a directory you will be back at the 'Enter filename' prompt. If the file you require is not present, you can use ESC to return to the 'Enter filename' window. You can change to a different drive by putting the drive name and a colon (e.g. a:, b:temp.txt) at the beginning of the line. As an alternative, you can supply the name of the file to print when invoking 'Booklet' from the command line. Editing keys ------------ When entering the filename, or any other string of characters, there are various editing keys available. The Backspace key deletes the character to the left of the cursor. The Delete key deletes the character under the cursor. Shift/Del deletes the whole of the current line. The Left and Right cursor keys obviously move the cursor to the left and right. The Home and End keys move it to the start or end of the line. The Insert key toggles Insert mode. With insert on, the text to the right of the cursor will be shifted right when characters are entered, with insert off they will be overwritten. The cursor should be a thin line when in Overwrite mode, a little larger in Insert mode. Return (or Enter) confirms your entry. ESC quits with the original line intact. There are two different editing 'modes'. In 'First key delete' mode, entering a character as the first key press will delete the default contents of the field, whereas a non-character key will leave it in place for subsequent editing. The original contents are highlighted to warn you that they may be deleted, but after the first key press normal colours are used. If 'First key delete' mode is off, the first key press will be dealt with just like any other. Use the 'Config' menu to select the mode you prefer. Don't forget to save the configuration as described below if you wish your preference to be automatically selected next time you run 'Booklet'. Where relevant, the Up and Down cursor keys move to the previous or next line. Be careful not to acidentally delete a line if 'First key delete' is active. Options ------- Choose any options you require before selecting 'File/Print' from the menu. It is particularly important to select the printer and/or port. The printer type should be set before any other options as it can affect them. You can use 'File/Edit title' to enter the optional header/footer text. If you wish the current filename to appear, enter /f. In a similar manner the current date can be entered with /d and the time with /t. To enter a /, use //. If a mode with a header or footer is selected the title will appear in the Status window as it will be printed. Note that the filename printed is the last thing entered in the 'Enter filename' window. This allows some flexibility. If you first move to the directory containing the required file and then just enter the filename, only the filename will be printed. If you wish the whole path to be shown, enter the whole path at the filename prompt. There are several page length options. Many documents are already formatted for 66 lines/page. Booklet will print this length page with an optional header or footer for the filename, date, time, title, etc. If you require the maximum number of lines/page and don't mind losing the header/footer, you can select 68 lines/page. The line spacing in these modes is reduced to a minimum; a more pleasing appearance can be obtained, at the possible expense of more pages, by selecting 55 lines/page with a header/footer or 57 lines/page without one. In the unlicensed version only options that include a header or footer are valid. You can choose whether or not to print headers/footers on the blank pages that follow the end of the file. Not showing them can save a little time when printing with a 9 or 24 pin impact printer. You can choose to display 80 or 90 columns/line. The standard for most documents is 80. The width of the margins is reduced to a minimum with 90 columns selected. Lines exceeding the chosen length can be truncated or wrapped to the following line. Unfortunately, there is insufficient room to fit 90 columns on US Letter paper in the Laserjet. Tabs are expanded to every eighth column. This is switchable to every fourth column if preferred, or they can be shown as spaces. Form feeds in the source file are normally acted upon, but you can choose to ignore them. The currently settings are displayed in a Status window in the lower part of the screen along with the filename, header/footer text, the number of pages, the number of sheets and the selected part of the document. You may see how long your document will be before printing it by selecting 'File/Analyse'. 'Booklet' will only re-analyse your document if it is made necessary by changing one of the relevant options. Saving Options -------------- The 'Config/Save configuration' menu option can be used to save the current settings. These will be restored when 'Booklet' is started, or by using the 'Config/Reload configuration' option. Page Preview ------------ You can check the layout of your document by selecting the 'Preview' menu. In preview mode you can scroll the document around the screen using the cursor keys. You can go to the top/bottom of the current page with the 'Home' and 'End' keys, and to the next/previous page with the 'Page Down' and 'Page Up' keys. The page, sheet, lines and columns being previewed are shown on the preview screen border. Printing -------- When you select 'File/Print' from the menu, 'Booklet' will open a window on the screen, request you to make the printer ready, and wait for you to press Enter. You can alternatively press ESC to quit back to the menu if this item was selected by mistake. Print the first side in the normal manner, ensuring on a dot-matrix printer that the paper perforation is in the correct position for the start of a page. If the printer has a push feed, leave a blank page before the start of the document to provide purchase when printing the second side. Laser printers should just use the normal tray feed. 'Booklet' will report on its progress, and when the first side is complete, will ask you to re-install the paper. This procedure is slightly different for laser and dot-matrix printers. With the Laserjet II or III, you should lift the paper out of the output tray on the top of the machine, blank side uppermost, without turning it over or rotating it, and place it straight back into the feed tray. Alternatively, for short documents, you can simply feed the sheets into the manual sheet feeder with the top sheet first, again keeping the orientation exactly as it was in the output tray. If you do it this way, you must judge the time to feed in subsequent sheets carefully, but this is very straightforward with practice and is the method I most often use. The Laserjet IIIP (and probably the IIP too) benefit from a slightly modified procedure. For the first side, select the front paper output tray. For the second side use the top tray. In other respects follow instructions as for the Laserjet II and III. With dot matrix printers, eject an extra complete blank page before tearing off the paper (this is to provide a purchase for the tractors, and is not strictly necessary with a pin or push feed printer). Pull out the blank fan-fold paper from the feed slot and replace it with the end you have just torn off; don't turn the paper round or feed in the start of the listing. Feed the blank page through the printer and line up the perforation. The blank side of the paper should now be at the front. When you are ready press Enter again. 'Booklet' will print the second side. When it has finished, you should trim the sides and separate the pages on fan- fold paper, and stack them in order (not necessary on the Laserjet of course). Simply fold the paper about the centre line to produce your booklet. Printing part of a document --------------------------- You will normally want to print the whole of the selected document. However, there may be occasions, for example if the paper has jammed in the printer or if you have had to interrupt a print run, when you wish to print only a part. 'Booklet' has two ways to split the document. You can select either or both sides of the paper, and you can choose to print a single sheet, a range of sheets or the whole document. These options are all found on the 'Select' menu. The program defaults to both sides of the whole document. 'Booklet' works with sheet numbers because there is little point in printing only one of the pages on a side. However, you can if you wish convert a page number to the relevant sheet number. When the program is requesting the sheet number, press the Cursor Down key and enter the number of any of the pages on the sheet. 'Booklet' will fill in the sheet number. Another way to find the sheet numbers is to look at the Preview window heading, which displays both page and sheet numbers. When printing the second side of a document, the sheets have to be printed in reverse order. Bear this in mind when loading the paper. Printing part of a document is an advanced option, and should not be used until you are familiar with the operation of the program and the orientation of the paper on your printer. Colours ------- You can change the colours used in colour mode with the 'Config/Set colours' menu option. You can modify the window and border colours of the Main, Information, Menu, Warning and Help windows. After choosing the attribute you wish to change use the left and right cursor keys to view the different foreground colours. The up and down cursor keys change the background colours. The background keys are inoperative when setting the 'Information highlight' attribute. Use ENTER to select the combination you require or ESC to leave the colours unchanged. There are menu options to restore the original or the default colours while remaining in the 'Set colours' routine. To exit, select 'Exit/Save new colours & exit' or, if you wish to revert to the original colours, 'Exit/Restore original colours & exit'. The colours you choose will be fixed for the remainder of the session. If you wish to retain the colours you have defined in future sessions you must use 'Config/Save configuration' before quitting the program. You cannot change the attributes used in mono mode. Back to DOS ----------- When you have finished, return to DOS by selecting 'File/Quit'. You can go to DOS temporarily by selecting 'File/DOS shell'. To return to 'Booklet' type 'exit'. Don't forget to do this; if you carry on working with 'Booklet' still active it occupies about 100Kb of your computer's memory. You may change the drive or directory while in the DOS shell. 'Booklet' will automatically return to the drive and directory it was using. This means you should avoid deleting the working directory, or changing the floppy if it contains the working directory. Printer timeouts ---------------- The time 'Booklet' will wait when sending a character to the printer is affected by the BIOS and the speed of the printer. A few combinations of machine and printer report a timeout before a character is sent (mainly laser printers, which can remain not ready for a period while printing a page). 'Booklet' can retry to send the character if necessary, and the facility to set the number of retries is reached using the 'Config/Set printer retries' option. You can increase the number up to 9. You should save the configuration if you wish to retain the new setting in future sessions. Suitable printers ----------------- The current version of 'Booklet' supports only LPT1 and LPT2 parallel ports. This may be changed in future versions if there is a demand. Any printer compatible with the basic, unexpanded HP Laserjet II can be used. This includes the Laserjet IIP, III and IIIP, as well as printers from other manufacturers. The only font employed is the 8.5 point, 16.66 c.p.i. Landscape Line printer font. Most Epson compatible 9 pin dot-matrix printers supporting 'ESC L' for 8 pin Double Density Graphics Mode and 'ESC J' to feed the paper in increments of 1/216" should be acceptable. 24 pin printers should support 'ESC * 33' for Double Density Graphics mode and 'ESC J' to feed in increments of 1/180". Both should recognise 'ESC @' as a reset. Error codes ----------- 'Booklet' returns the following error codes to DOS - 0 - O.K. 1 - Can't find source file specified on command line. 2 - Path specified in command line is too long. 3 - Too many arguments on command line. 4 - Error loading configuration file. 5 - Out of memory (please inform Softronix) 6 - Device error. 7 - Disk error, (A)bort selected. 8 - Incompatible display type or mode. Hints and Tips -------------- When you have folded your booklet you can use a long reach stapler as a simple 'binder'. However, this will work only on relatively short documents as the stapler cannot penetrate too many pages. One customer mentioned that he overcomes the problem of using a standard stapler by opening it out and driving the staple through the spine of the booklet into a cardboard box. The staple is then manually closed. This seems to work quite well. Staples should be driven from the outside so the sharp points end up on the inside. ---------- 'Booklet' can print documents up to 500 pages. However, long documents become very difficult to fold into the A5 format, and a practical maximum is therefore about 200. ---------- 'Booklet' can print the IBM character graphics. If you would like these to join up vertically in Epson mode, you should use one of the 66/68 line options. ---------- If you have difficulty getting the paper loaded correctly on a dot matrix printer you could try tearing off a length of paper before you start. The 'File/Analyse' option tells you how many pages are needed, allow 2 more for a blank page at each end. ---------- If you use ESC to break the program it may be in the middle of sending an escape or graphic sequence to the printer. This is likely on a dot-matrix printer but improbable on a laser. If it happens the printer can appear to 'lock up'. Just switch it off (or press the reset button if there is one). ---------- The document to be printed must be an ASCII file. Word processor files often contain formatting information and cannot therefore be used directly. Most word processors allow you to either print to a file, or to export an ASCII file. If you print to a file you should not format the file for re-use with the word- processor. Choose a 'vanilla' type printer such as teletype (TTY), NOT an Epson or HP, and select draft mode if you are offered a choice. ---------- Some users have thought the program was malfunctioning when it printed a lot of blank space at the start. This is quite in order. When you print a document that is not an exact multiple of 4 pages long, the first page to be printed is the blank last page. ---------- To produce bold characters, underlining, etc., some documentation contains backspace characters. At present 'Booklet' is unable to deal with this and the formatting of the page is affected. Future versions may be enhanced to cope with this situation. For present, you can use the shareware 'List' program to strip out such characters. Enable the junk filter, select the whole document and write it to another file. ---------- I have been unable to properly test the US Letter paper sizes on the Laserjet. The printer senses a conflict between the selected size and the paper tray and I'm not sure what effect this has. I would welcome any feedback on performance from a user of this size paper. Future enhancements ------------------- Some of the possible future enhancements for this program, mostly requested by customers, include :- Additional layouts, including loose leaf binder format. Command line switches. Backspace support. Offset page numbers. If there is anything else you would really like to see, or if you find a bug in the program or documentation, please let me know. Disclaimer ---------- Andy Lawrie and Softronix specifically disclaim all warranties, expressed or implied, including but not limited to implied warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. It is important that you determine the safety and suitability of the program, particularly in view of the 'shareware' distribution method which can be susceptible to abuse by third parties. Release History (in reverse order) ---------------------------------- 2.40 20/09/91 1) Added file pick list. 2) Now show path in 'get file name' window. 3) First key delete is now a switchable option. 4) Added Shift/Del to edit keys, to delete all. 5) Restores original drive and directory at exit. 6) Added disk error handler. 7) Restores original break status before DOS shell and restores drive and directory afterwards. 8) Help screens tweaked and more added. 9) Return values documented. 2.37a 23/07/91 1) Documentation only, added IIIP note. 2.37 17/06/91 1) Corrected 'Ignore form feeds' operation. 2) Now bleeps on page change with CsrUp/CsrDn in Page Preview. 2.36 16/06/91 1) Added DOS shell option. 2) Corrected 1st help screen format. 2.35 02/06/91 1) Corrected minor bug in 'Printing sheet' routine. 2) Set break off for duration of program. 2.34 07/05/91 1) Added support for US Letter paper on Laserjets. 2.33 04/05/91 1) Default input that will be deleted if the 1st keypress is not a cursor control is now highlighted as a warning. 2) Cursor key at top/bottom of page now change pages in Preview. 3) Ran docs. through a grammar checker. 85% of US adults can understand me. 2.32 21/04/91 1) Increased size of Get File window. 2.31 19/04/91 1) Reload config. now changes colour immediately if necessary. 2) Appearance of menu bar. 2.30 14/04/91 1) Improved registration instructions. 2) Registration allows moving back up lines. 3) Corrected minor bug in string input. 4) Preview selections now go straight into preview. 5) Added facility to print parts of a document. 6) Sheets now always numbered from beginning of document, even when printing reverse side. 7) Help now allows moving back through screens. 2.20 29/03/91 1) Added configurable printer retries to cure timeouts on some machines, mainly with laser printers. 2) Preview pulldown menu repositioned next to File menu. 3) PgUp in Preview now goes to END of previous page. 4) PgUp & PgDn in Preview don't change the horizontal position. 5) Added an 'ignore form feed' option. Will the people who requested this item please let me know how well it works. If the files you want to print use form feeds INSTEAD of line endings, this may not work very well. 6) Minor modification to the status display. 7) Clarified the colour configuration prompts. 2.12 20/03/91 1) Bug fix release, cured a problem with some Epsons in 66 line mode. 2.11 14/03/91 1) Added a second digit to minor version number. 2.1 11/03/91 1) Added colour configuration. 2.0 27/01/91 1) Added configuration file. 2) Epson modes now don't try to print completely blank column pairs. Saves time when using impact printers. 3) Added option not to print header/footer on pages after end of file. Can improve appearance, but mainly provided to save time on impact printers. 4) Tabs can now be dealt with as spaces. 5) Page limit increased from 200 to 500 on request. If you try to use 500 pages you will get a VERY fat booklet. 6) Added page preview mode. 7) Altered the registration mechanism to simplify version upgrading. A user code is now provided which can be used to mark future releases. 8) Rearranged the menus to accomodate the extra options. 1.8 24/11/90 1) Now sends select symbol set to HP. The program previously used whatever symbol set had been selected as the default. The most noticeable effect was IBM graphics appearing as accented characters. 1.7 14/11/90 1) Added 24 pin Epson printer support. 1.6 19/10/90 1) Set up printer again before second pass. When the program uses a printer on a network it seems the network software treats the second side as a separate job, and resets the printer between passes. NOT TESTED BY ME as I don't have access to a network. 2) 'Printing documentation' help added to help menu. 1.5 08/10/90 1) First public release. Date ______________ Title & Name __________________________ Address __________________________ __________________________ __________________________ Softronix, Conifers, Townsend Road, Ashford, Middlesex, TW15 3PR, England. Please supply a registered copy of 'Booklet'. I enclose the sum of ___________ (£10.00 (U.K.), £12.50 (Europe), £15.00 (rest of the world), plus £5.00 if in local currency). Signed _______________________________ 5.25" 360 Kb or 3.5" 720 Kb floppy required. _____________________________ Where did you obtain your copy of 'Booklet'? _____________________________ Make & model of printer normally used. _____________________________ Version 2.40 Please use block capitals.