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Structures

Fundamental to a full understanding of EasiWriter is an awareness of document structure. Traditional word processors are totally preoccupied with document formatting, that is, with typographical attributes.

In EasiWriter, formatting is subordinate to structure. The user thinks and works in terms of the structure of the document and attaches formatting attributes to the structural components: this is completely in keeping with current trends in document processing (cf. SGML, ODA). That said, it is possible to create simple documents (letters, memos etc.) without becoming deeply embroiled in structural complexity.

EasiWriter documents are composed of the following structural components:

Document

A document, at its simplest, can consist of just body matter, which is essentially an unstructured list of paragraphs and pictures. This might be all that is required for a simple document such as a letter or memo.

Long documents such as books and manuals could benefit from a more structured approach: the first page or two could consist of a few introductory paragraphs, banner pages etc., and the rest of the document could be a sequence of chapters, which are each broken into sections which, themselves can contain sections.

Documents can have headings.

Chapter

A chapter is a container for a discrete unit of a document. It usually begins with a heading and is followed by the body of the chapter.

A chapter cannot be contained within another chapter.

Chapter heading

The chapter heading is normally a paragraph although it can be any of the other structures. Usually it has typographical attributes that make it stand out from the body of the chapter.

The body matter can consist of almost anything and in any order. In particular, the body can consist of a sequence of sections, nested to any level. Should a heading that is followed by body text, become the last line on a page EasiWriter will automatically move it to the top of the next page.

Section

A section is similar to a chapter except that it has some formatting differences.

Sections can contain sub-sections.

List

Lists are a series of related paragraphs with a hanging margin. Their primary function is to act as a focal point for formatting a sequence of items (such as the bullet list at the start of this chapter). Lists can contain sub-lists.

Lists can be automatically numbered.

Picture

A picture is any graphic object created using some other application program and imported into the EasiWriter document. For example Draw files, Sprites, JPEGs etc.

Figure

Figures exist to enable a caption to be associated with some piece of information, normally a picture.

The caption is a paragraph (e.g. figure 1) and often includes a short description of the figure body.

In addition to pictures and tables, the figure body can be a list. This means that such things as program fragments can be given a caption.

Table

Complex tables can be created consisting of multiple rows.

Each row of a table consists of a sequence of single cells. The number of cells in a row corresponds to the number of columns. Contiguous cells in a row can be grouped together to form so-called spanner cells: these enable you to insert information that spans more than one column.

A cell can contain a single paragraph, a picture or another table.

You can create the effect of more than one paragraph in a cell by pressing Shift-Return to start a new line.

Tables can be automatically formatted or can have user definable fixed width columns which word wrap.

One or more Table rows can be marked as Heading rows, which means that they will be included at the top of any continuation table if it is necessary to split the table across a page break.

Paragraph

EasiWriter paragraphs contain ASCII characters and pictures. They are terminated by a carriage return.


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