Monster Media 1993 #2

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Text File | 1993-05-20 | 33KB | 650 lines

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde The first in the "Golden Gale" series of computerized books. O==============================================================O | | | Contents | | ======== | | | | 1. How to read the book in scrolled (automatic) mode: | | Use of the Space Bar to control smooth scrolling | | Use of the - and + keys to adjust the speed | | Passing from scrolled mode to manual mode | | | | 2. How to read the book in non-scrolled (manual) mode: | | 2.1 Moving to different sections of the text: | | The Down arrow key | | The Up arrow key | | The Page down key | | The Page up key | | The Home key | | The End key | | The "Go To" Panel | | 2.2 Discovering your present position: | | The Where key | | 2.3 Finding a word: | | The Find key | | The Again key | | Special control keys used when entering a word | | Combination characters | | 2.4 Bookmarks: | | Adding them | | Modifying them: | | Deleting them | | Editing them | | Moving to a bookmark | | Toggling to and from a bookmark | | 2.5 Printing sections of text | | 2.6 Copying sections of text to a disk file | | 2.7 Changing the display margins | | 2.8 Choosing the display colours | | 2.9 Ajusting quotation marks for "clipboards" | | 2.10 Leaving the program | | 2.11 "Help" display, a summary of keys you may use | | | | 3. Known problems: | | MS-DOS Shell | | Fonts on Portables | | MS Windows | | Grey-scale Displays | | | O==============================================================O 1. How to read the book in scrolled (automatic) mode: ====================================================== There are two ways to read the book; scrolled ("automatic") reading, and unscrolled ("manual") reading. The scrolled mode enables you to read through a book with the minimum of manual intervention. Press the space bar if you want to pause, and press it again when you want to continue. When you start the program, it is initially in non-scrolled or "manual" mode. You can begin scrolled reading as follows: a) If you are not already there, move to the point from which you wish to start reading. (The way to do this is described below in section 2.1, "displaying different sections of the book's text".) b) Press the space bar, and the text will begin to scroll slowly up your screen. While the text is scrolling upwards, you may use the following keys: a) the - (minus) key reduces the scrolling rate. Twelve graduated scrolling speeds are available. b) the + (plus) key increases the scrolling rate. c) pressing the space bar again will temporarily pause the scrolling (for example if you want to read a passage carefully, or think about it, or something else). d) the space bar, pressed yet again, will cause the scrolling to resume. e) any of the manual mode keys, described in section 2 below, will cause smooth scrolling to stop; the program will return to non-scrolled mode before performing the function indicated by the key. The escape key too, pressed when you are in scrolled mode, will simply cause smooth scrolling to stop. Note that the current scrolling rate (as set by the + and - keys) is saved in the configuration file when you use the E key to exit from the program, and whenever you change the colours or margin sizes. Please refer to section 3 for some observations about using scrolled mode in conjunction with the MS-DOS task switcher DOSSHELL or an MS-Windows "windowed DOS" session. 2. How to read the book in non-scrolled (manual) mode: ======================================================= When you are in manual (unscrolled) mode, you may press various keys in order to perform various functions. Among other things, you may: a) move to different sections of the book b) set bookmarks at a point to which you would like to return later c) find a word anywhere in the book d) copy selected text from the book to a printer or to a disk file e) change the left and right margin widths f) change the colours of the text, background, italics, poetry, quotations, and author's notes g) make author's notes visible or not All the functions are described in detail below: 2.1 Displaying different sections of the book's text ==================================================== a) The Down-arrow key enables you to move forward by one line of text. (In fact the text moves UP on the screen, but your position moves down.) At the end of a chapter, this key has no effect. b) The Up-arrow key enables you to move backwards by one line of text. (In fact the text moves DOWN on the screen, but your position moves up.) At the beginning of a chapter, this key has no effect. c) The Page Down (or Next Screen) key enables you to move forward 25 lines of text at a time. At the end of a chapter, this key will take you to the next chapter. At the end of the book, this key will have no effect. d) The Page Up (or Previous Screen) key enables you to move backwards 25 lines of text at a time. At the beginning of a chapter, this key will take you to the end of the previous chapter. At the beginning of the book, this key will have no effect. e) The Home key enables you to move directly to the beginning of the current chapter. f) The End key enables you to move directly to the end of the current chapter. g) The Left Arrow key or the Right Arrow key will bring up a little panel known as the "Go To" panel. While this panel is displayed, you can use the left and right arrow keys to change the chapter number. When the chapter number displayed is that of the chapter you want, press Enter or Return. The beginning of the chapter you want will immediately appear on the screen. A fast way to choose the beginning of the book is to press the Home key when the Go To panel is displayed. A fast way to choose the final chapter is to press the End key when the Go To panel is displayed. Press the Escape key to remove the "Go To" panel if you do not after all want to move to a different chapter. If you have already set some bookmarks, there will be a second line on the "Go To" panel, namely "A Bookmark". To use this feature, press the Up-arrow or Down-arrow keys to move the highlight to this line, and then press Enter or Return. A list of all the bookmarks which you have set will be displayed. You may use the Up-arrow and Down-arrow keys to move through this list and highlight each individual bookmark. When the highlight is on the bookmark you want to go to, press Enter or Return. (Press Escape if you decide that you do not after all want to go to a bookmark.) A faster way to go to an existing bookmark is to press the | key, described in section 2.4.3 below. 2.2 Discovering your present position ===================================== In certain situations (after Finding a word, for instance) you may want to know your present position in the book. If you press the W ("where") key, a small panel will appear at the bottom of the screen. This panel displays the current chapter number (or the word "Preface"), and a percentage. The percentage relates to the top line of the current display, and gives its position within the current chapter. (For example, "50 per cent" will be displayed when you are at the mid-point in a chapter.) This percentage value can be used to identify a given position even after the margin widths have been changed. 2.3 Finding a word anywhere in the book ======================================= a) If you press the F ("find") key, a wide panel will appear. Key in a word which you wish to find, then press Enter or Return. One of two things will then happen: EITHER the first occurrence of the word in the book will be found, and the passage will be displayed OR a message will appear, saying that the word does not occur in the book. b) If you subsequently press the A ("again") key, the next occurrence of the word in the book will be found, and that passage will be displayed. This process may be continued until the message "No Further Occurrences" is displayed. c) A few special keys may be used when keying in the word to be found: > The HOME key moves the cursor to the beginning of the field. > The END key moves the cursor to the last character in the field. > The INSERT key toggles between insert mode (where each key entered pushes one place to the right any characters at and to the right of the cursor position), and overwrite mode (where each key entered overwrites any character at the cursor position). The size of the cursor changes to indicate the current mode: large for insert mode and small for overwrite mode. > The DELete key deletes any character at the cursor position. > The BACKSPACE key deletes the character to the left of the cursor position, and causes any characters at or to the right of the cursor position to shift to the left by one place. It has no effect at the beginning of the line. > The Enter or Return key causes the panel to disappear, and sets off the search for the word which has been keyed in. > The Escape key causes the panel to disappear, and your display will reappear as it was before you pressed the F key. d) When keying in the word to be found, you may occasionally wish to use characters which do not directly correspond to a key on the keyboard, for instance æ, è, or ü. To enter one of these characters, first type control-D (hold down the control key, type D for "Double", then release both keys). (People familiar with the WordPerfect program may use control-V instead of control-D.) Next type in the two parts which, in combination, make up the character you want. Type these parts one after another. The special character you want should then appear on the screen. For example, æ may be obtained by typing Control-D, then a, then e. Note that the two keys may be typed in either order; that will make no difference. There follows a list of all the special characters of this kind which are used in this book, together with the two keys which may be typed to generate them. æ (ae dipthong) a e à (a grave) a ` ä (a umlaut) a " ç (c cedilla) c , É (E acute) E ' é (e acute) e ' è (e grave) e ` ô (o circumflex) o ^ ü (u umlaut) u " e) When the Find panel first appears, anything which you typed in last time will be displayed. If, at this point, the first thing you type is a letter of some kind, the old entry will disappear and the new letter will appear at the left of the field. If the first thing you type is a Left or Right arrow key, or End, or Home, the old entry will not disappear. Note that this version of the program does not handle "wild cards"; future versions will. 2.4 Using Bookmarks =================== 2.4.1 Adding a new Bookmark =========================== If you would like to mark a place in the book, and return to it later, you can set a bookmark. First press the B ("bookmark") key. A panel will appear, giving you a choice between Adding a new bookmark, Modifying existing bookmarks (if any), or (again if any) Going to an existing bookmark. Press A to add a new bookmark. (Do this only when the passage you want to mark is currently on your screen.) A highlight will appear on the first word of the top line of the screen. Use the four arrow keys to move the highlight to the exact point in the text where you want to set the bookmark. Then press Enter or Return. A panel will appear, requesting you to key in up to 76 characters of text to identify the bookmark. (This identifying text will be displayed later, whenever you request a list of all the bookmarks.) Key in your text, using the method described in 2.3 above, and then press Enter or Return. The new bookmark will at once be saved in the configuration file GGB001.CNF in your current directory. 2.4.2 Modifying existing Bookmarks ================================== First press the B ("bookmark) key; then press the M ("modify) key. You will see a list of all existing bookmarks. If there are more than twenty, you may move through the list using the Down and Up arrow keys to move the highlight bar. When you see the bookmark which you want to modify, move the highlight to it. Then you have the choice between deleting that bookmark (press the D "delete" key), changing the identifying legend (press the E "edit" key), or displaying the text at that bookmark (press the G "go to" key). Any changes you make will be stored in the configuration file GGB001.CNF as soon as you strike the Enter or Return key. (If you strike the Escape key while editing a bookmark legend, your changes will be cancelled.) The keys available for editing are those described above in section 2.3. 2.4.3 Moving to the Text at a Bookmark ====================================== You may display the text at any bookmark as follows: Press the key with the | character marked on it. You may also press the B ("bookmark") key, and then G ("go to"), but the first way is faster. A list of all the currently defined bookmarks will appear (or the first twenty, if there are more than twenty). Use the Up or Down arrow keys to move to a bookmark you are interested in. Then press Enter or Return. The text at the point where the bookmark was set will appear on the screen. (Press the Escape key instead of Enter if you decide that after all you do not want to go to any bookmark.) Another method of displaying the text at a bookmark is to start from the "Go To" menu as described in section 2.1 above. This menu is displayed when you press the left or right arrow keys. Move the highlight to the item "A Bookmark" and press Enter or Return. A list of all the currently defined bookmarks will appear, and you may choose from them as described above. 2.4.4 Quick Toggling to and from a Bookmark =========================================== Just before you go to a bookmark, a record of your current position in the text is saved. Once you have read the text at the bookmark, you may quickly return to the saved original position by pressing the TAB key (even if you have moved to a third position in the meantime). If you press the TAB key a second time, you go back to the bookmark again. 2.5 Printing Sections of Text ============================= The printing capability of this program is intended to be simple and straightforward. The layout of the printed text is very similar to what you see on your screen. To copy a section of the text to your printer, first display the beginning of that section, and then press the C ("copy") key. The word at the top left will be highlighted, and a panel will appear, asking you to move the highlight to the first word of the section you wish to have printed. Use the four arrow keys to move the highlight, and then press Enter or Return. A second panel will appear, asking you to move the highlight to the last word of the section you wish to have printed. Use the four arrow keys, or the Page Down key, or (in the case of the registered version) the End key, to move the highlight, and press Enter or Return. A third panel will appear, asking you to choose your printer port. You can use the left and right arrow keys to rotate between PRN, LPT1, LPT2, LPT3, and LPT4. When you have chosen the printer port, press Enter or Return. (If you are uncertain about which port to choose, try LPT1 first, PRN second, and then LPT2.) If your printer is turned on and "on line", printing will now begin. You will not be able to enter any more keyboard commands until printing has finished. If printing cannot take place, either because your printer is off-line, or because it is not switched on, or because it is connected to a port other than the one you have selected, or because it runs out of paper, a message will appear to that effect. Here you may elect to press Enter or Return to try again (after having adjusted the printer), or you may press Escape to give up trying to print. Most printers will give you some choice of fonts, point sizes, line spacing, letter quality, and the like; it should also be a simple matter to set the page length and inter-page gap. If you want to do your own text formatting, you will have to copy the text to a disk file (as described below) and then use a formatting program such as PageMaker, Ventura, or Wordperfect. Note that double quotation marks, and dashes, will be printed in a form more simple than that in which they are displayed on the screen. Italics will not be present. Greek letters will not be printed. In the shareware version of this program, the maximum number of pages which you may print or copy is three. The version which you will receive when you register has no such restriction, and you may, if you are so minded, print or copy the entire book in one go. 2.6 Copying Sections of Text to a Disk File =========================================== Copying a section of the text to a disk file is similar to printing it, as described in 2.5 above. First display the beginning of the section, and then press the C ("copy") key. A highlight will appear, and you will be asked to move it to the first word of the section to be copied. Do this, using the four arrow keys, and press Enter or Return. Next, you will be asked to move the highlight to the last word of the section to be copied. To do this, you may again use the four arrow keys, as well as the Page Down key and (in the case of the registered version) the End key. Press Enter or Return when the highlight is on the last word of the section to be copied. Next, the panel will appear which asks you choose a printer port or a file name. Press the down arrow to move to the file name field, and key in the name you want. A disk drive letter and directory name may be included; if they are not, the file will be written to the current directory. Some special keys may be used, in addition to those described in section 2.3: the Space key will take you to the next field, and the Dot (Full Stop or Period) key will do the same. After you have keyed in the file name, and pressed the Enter or Return key, the program will check whether the file you chose already exists. If so, you will be given a choice between 1) overwriting the existing file, 2) appending the text to the end of the existing file, or 3) writing to a new file with a different name (which you should type in over the name you just tried). In the second case, where you elect to append the text to an existing file, a short horizontal line, towards the left, will be written to the file, so as to divide the earlier section of text from the newly-written section. 2.7 Changing the Display Margins ================================ To change the widths of the left or right margins, press the M ("margins") key. A panel will appear, showing the number of columns currently used for the left and right margins. Use the Up or Down arrow keys to move the highlight between the Left and Right margin display. Use the Left arrow key to reduce the value. Use the Right arrow key to increase the value. The values of both the left and the right margins may range from 0 to 19 columns. Pressing the Home key will give you a value of 0, and pressing the End key, a value of 19. The default margin size is 12. When the required values are displayed, press Enter or Return. The new margin sizes will at once be stored in the configuration file GGB001.CNF in your current directory. The text displayed will change to reflect the new margin sizes. 2.8 Choosing the Display Colours ================================ To change the colours used in the display, press the D ("display colours") key. A panel will appear, comprising six lines. Press the T, I, P, Q, or B keys to change the colours of the Text, the Italics, Poetry, Quoted Sections, or the Background respectively. In each case the red, green, and blue constituents of the current colour will appear at the right. Each of these three constituents (red, green, or blue) is defined by a number which may range from 0 to 63, giving in combination a total of 262143 possible colours. The combined colour number of the currently selected item (text, italics, poetry, quotations, or background) appears at the lower right of the panel. Use the Down or Up arrow keys to move between the red, green, or blue constituents. Then change the selected colour value using the left arrow key to reduce the number and the right arrow key to increase it. As you change the colour number of the red, green, or blue constituents, the new colour will instantly appear in the main screen, and the new combined colour number will change. The Home key and the End key may be used to move quickly to 0 or 63 respectively. When all the colours are as you want them, press Enter or Return. The new colour combination will be saved in the configuration file GGB001.CNF in your current directory. Next time you start the program, these new colours will be used, unless you delete the configuration file. If, while you are changing the colours, you decide that you do not want to continue, press the escape key, and the display will revert to your original colours. The last option on the "Display Colours" panel is "Defaults". By repeatedly pressing the D key, you can step through a series of preset colour combinations. (There are ten for colour mode, and two for grey scale.) If one of these combinations suits you, just press the Enter or Return key to save it in the configuration file as your new colour scheme. Alternatively, you can use any one of these default colour schemes as a starting-point for your own choice of colours: press T, I, P, Q, or B to alter the Text, Italic, Poetry, Quoted Section, or Background colours as described above. 2.9 The " key (quotation mark adjustment key) ============================================= In some environments, such as Desqview or Windows, it is possible to copy text from the display screen to an electronic "clipboard". The text thus copied can subsequently be "pasted" into another program (which might be running simultaneously or which may be started later). One problem which might arise when doing that is that the book reader program uses more characters than do many other programs. For example, it uses distinct characters for opening and closing quotation marks, and distinct characters for dashes and hyphens. Many other programs use a simpler character set, designed for more primitive computers. Therefore, if you are about to copy a section of the displayed text to a "clipboard", you should press the " key first. This changes all double quotation marks to the character " , and it causes all dashes to become slightly longer. Next, do the copy of the text to the "clipboard". After that, you may press the " key a second time, causing the normal characters to reappear. The adjustments described here are also automatically made when printing text and copying it to a disk file. They are useful too when running the program in a "windowed DOS" Windows session. 2.10 Exit and Escape keys ========================= a) The E ("exit") key causes the reader program to stop. Control will return to the operating system (DOS). Your current margin settings, scrolling rate, and colour selections will be saved in the configuration file GGB001.CNF. b) The Escape key is normally used to remove a panel if you decide that you do not want to perform the panel function. If you press the Escape key when you are in smooth scrolling mode, the program will revert to non-scrolled (manual) mode. If you press the Escape key when you are in manual mode and no panel is displayed, the reader program will stop and control will return to your operating system. In this case the current configuration will not be saved. c) If you really like the text colour you have used, you may retain that colour in DOS by exiting in a special way via the Q key. First press the Q ("quit) key, then press the T key. This will return you to the operating system, just as if you had pressed the E ("exit") key, except that the DOS text colour and background will remain the ones you have chosen while viewing this book. 2.11 Using the F1 key to display a "help" screen ================================================ Press the F1 function key to see a full-screen summary of all available keyboard commands. To remove this Help screen, press the key you require, or press Escape, or press F1 a second time. 3. Known problems: ================== a) A minor difficulty occurs if you are running under the MS-DOS shell DOSSHELL, are using the smooth scrolling mode, and press the Alt-TAB key combination to change to a different program. When you return to the book reader, the screen goes blank. The text will reappear when you press one of the cursor keys, but the best solution, for the time being, is to be in non-scrolling mode before switching sessions. b) When running on some portable computers, such as the Mitac, the fonts are the wrong size. Some early monochrome Toshibas do not work at all. (Other, more recent, portables, such as the Toshiba 1850, produce a satisfactory display.) c) When running under Microsoft Windows, GGB001.EXE will work normally in a "full-screen DOS session". But if you use a "windowed DOS" session (for example if you want to "clip" some text), press the " key to simplify the quotation marks and dashes. An improved character set for some of the more popular Windows fonts will be provided in a later version of this program if there is any demand. Smooth scrolling, too, only works in a "full screen DOS session", because of the restricted functionality of "Windows". In a "windowed DOS" session, the text just jumps roughly from one line to the next. d) Another problem with "windowed DOS" sessions is that sometimes lines are blanked out in the lower half of the screen when moving down line by line. This can be remedied, in a rough and ready way at least, by pressing Page Up followed by Page Down. e) Automatic detection of grey-scale displays does not work yet with some portable computers, such as the Toshiba 1850. In general, you should start the program with the /G switch to ensure that you get the best results with a grey-scale display.