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Text File | 1992-09-02 | 20KB | 460 lines

TextEngine V4.1, Copyright Nicholas Harvey, 1991-93 INTRODUCTION ============ Welcome to TextEngine, a shareware word processing system for the CBM Amiga. Some of the features of this latest version are as follows... - Brand new screen layout. - Text searcher facility. - 128Kb text buffer. - Built-in spell checker with 36,000 word dictionary. - Fully WB2 (and above) compatible with enhanced features on these versions of the OS (e.g. proper file requesters, & super hires display ability). - ASCII files can be loaded and saved with ease. - 12 text styles available for use with any preferences supported printer. - Up to 99 copies of a document can be printed at once. - Complete configuration options covering page margins, macros (function keys), and colour palette. - Both PAL and NTSC monitors are supported, with the choice of hires, super hires (WB2 or above only), and interlaced screen displays. - Full word wrap. - Various statistical information available such as the number of words, lines and pages a document contains. TextEngine is shareware, and I give my permission for it to be freely distributed. If you use it regularly, or are just feeling generous, then please help out this poor student and register with me by sending £5 (or equivalent) to the address below: Nicholas Harvey 149 Manor Road North Thames Ditton Surrey KT7 0BQ England I am particularly interested in hearing from anyone who uses TextEngine outside the UK. So, if you live across the Channel, or even the Atlantic, then I would be most interested to hear what you have to say about the program! SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS =================== TextEngine should run on any memory configuration from 1/2 MB chip RAM upwards, although at least 1MB is required if you want to use the spell checker. The following files are required to be present on your disk for the program to work (please note that the .gfx file is now no longer needed). TextEngine4.1.cfg - This contains the user's prefered setup for TextEngine which is loaded on startup and used to configure the program to the user's needs. This should be in the same directory as TextEngine. TextEngine4.1.dct - This is the dictionary used by TextEngine's spell checker, and this must also be in TextEngine's directory. libs/asl.library - Only WB 2.04 users will need this if they want to use file requesters with TextEngine. devs/printer.device - This file is needed for printing, along with your printer driver, which should be in the devs/printers directory. l/port-handler - Also needed for printing. HARD DISK INSTALLATION ====================== Installing TextEngine V4.1 on a hard disk is very easy. Simply create a directory anywhere on your hard disk, and then copy the following files into it: TextEngine TextEngine.info TextEngine4.1.cfg TextEngine4.1.dct Alternatively, using workbench you can simply drag the TextEngine drawer from your floppy disk into any directory on your hard disk. LOADING TEXTENGINE ================== From workbench: Simply double-click on the TextEngine icon and the program will load. From the CLI: Lets assume TextEngine is stored in a directory called WORDPROCESSORS. Firstly, type the following: cd wordprocessors (and press RETURN) Now, to run TextEngine, type: run TextEngine <filename> (and press RETURN) If you enter the name of a document in the filename option, it will be loaded automatically on startup. SETTING UP TEXTENGINE ===================== TextEngine can be configured to suit most people's needs by using the following menu selections: TEXT/WORDWAP - Selecting this toggles the wordwrap on and off. PREFS/PRINTER - Here, the paper margins can be altered by changing the values contained in the following boxes: Lines per page: Here you enter the maximum number of lines that can be printed on your piece of paper with no gaps at the top or bottom. This is usually set at 70 for A4 continuous paper. If you are using single sheets (like I do) then your printer may not allow you to use the whole length of the page, due to the 'paper out' detector. In this case, you will need to enter a smaller number in this box. For example, my Star LC10 allows me to print 59 lines per page on a single A4 sheet. Top margin: Enter the number of blank lines you want placed at the top of the page in here. Bottom margin: Enter the number of blank lines you want placed at the bottom of the page in here. If, for example, you specified 70 lines per page with a 5 line margin at the top and bottom, then the maximum number of lines on that page would be 70 - 5 - 5 = 60 lines. Chars per line: Here you enter the maximum number of characters that can be printed across the page from left to right with no gaps either side. This is usually set at 80 for A4 paper. Left margin: This defines the width of the left margin in characters. Right margin: This defines the width of the right margin in characters. Clicking on the DOUBLE SPACING gadget toggles double line spacing on and off. Please note that the double spacing effect only becomes apparent when your document is printed. PREFS/PALETTE - Here you can change the colours of the editor screen. PREFS/MACROS - Here you can assign each of the ten function keys a string of 100 characters which is entered into your document each time they are pressed. This can be very useful when you repeat a word or phrase many times. PREFS/NTSC - Using this option will toggle between PAL and NTSC screen modes. PREFS/INTERLACE - This will toggle the screen between interlaced and non-interlaced displays. PREFS/SUPER HIRES - If you have WB2 or above, a decent monitor, and eye-sight to match, then selecting this will put TextEngine into super hires mode! To save this setup to disk, select PREFS/SAVE PREFERENCES. This writes all of the above information to the TextEngine4.1.cfg file (N.B. the ability to save the macros in this file is a new feature of V4.1). However, every time you save your edited document, (except as ASCII text) the macro and margin information is saved with it, so that every file has its own individual set of macros and margins. This, however, does not affect the setup saved in the .cfg file. DISK FUNCTIONS ============== TextEngine V4.1 uses its own file format which is different to that of ASCII files, and of older versions of TextEngine (V4.0 and lower). However old TextEngine files and ASCII files can be loaded without conversion, and are detected automatically when loaded using the FILE/LOAD menu option. N.B. Files saved from TextEngine V4.1 (excluding ASCII files) cannot be loaded correctly into earlier versions of the program. In the FILE menu, there are the following options: LOAD - Lets you load a file. Both ASCII and TextEngine format files can be loaded. APPEND - Lets you merge a file with the current document. The file is loaded into your document at the cursor position. Only TextEngine format files can be appended. SAVE - This writes your file back onto the disk under the same filename as it was loaded. No file requesters are displayed so this is a quick way of re-saving a file after it has been loaded and amended. SAVE AS - Lets you save your file in TextEngine format via a file requester. SAVE ASCII - This saves your file in ASCII format via a file requester. ERASE - Lets you erase a file. DIR - This feature is only available if you are using WB 1.2/1.3, or if TextEngine fails to open the asl.library. It displays the contents of a given directory, and is useful for locating files on the disk. When using TextEngine with WB 2 or above, proper file requesters are used to select a file name for the above functions. Unfortunately, these are not available when using WB 1.2/1.3, but instead the user must simply type the file name in at the LOAD/SAVE/APPEND/ERASE prompts. If TextEngine fails to carry out a file function for any reason, then an error message is displayed. These errors are explained fully in the section 'AMIGADOS ERROR MESSAGES'. EDITING A DOCUMENT ================== There is a text buffer of 131200 bytes available, which should be large enough for most purposes. If you want to write larger documents, then it might be a good idea to separate them into smaller sections and edit these individually. When the text buffer is full, an error message is displayed. To see how much room there is left in the buffer, select ABOUT from the PROJECT menu. Keyboard input: Text is entered in the normal way with the keyboard, with the following extra keyboard functions being available: SHIFT+LEFT CURSOR - Start of line. SHIFT+RIGHT CURSOR - End of line. SHIFT+UP CURSOR - Page up. SHIFT+DOWN CURSOR - Page down. CTRL+T - Top of file (also available in the TEXT menu). CTRL+B - Bottom of file (also available in the TEXT menu). CTRL+C - Centre line (also available in the TEXT menu). F1-F10 - The ten function keys will each insert a user defined string of text (as defined in the MACRO editor) into the file. The cursor can now also be positioned using the mouse. Simply click anywhere on the screen with the left mouse button to reposition the cursor. On-screen displays: Along the top of the screen is a ruler with each of the small divisions representing one character, and the larger ones representing each of the 9 tab positions. The blue 'Y' shaped marker represents the maximum width of the page. The position of this marker is calculated from the values entered in the PRINTER PREFERENCES window and represents the horizontal limit of your paper. Along the bottom of the screen is a status bar which displays the following information: LINE - The current line at which the cursor is situated. PAGE/LINE - The current page, and line on that page, which the cursor is located on. WW - Word wrap status (ON or OFF). CHIP - The amount of system chip ram currently available. FAST - The amount of system fast ram currently available. The PAGE/LINE numbers are calculated using the values entered in the PRINTER PREFERENCES window (including the double spacing status), so that they represent the limits of the paper you are using. Word wrap: When the current line becomes longer than the width of the page (as defined in PRINTER PREFERENCES), the word wrap comes into action. There are two different ways in which the word wrap takes effect: 1) If you are editing the last word on the line, then when the word wrap takes effect a new line is created below the current one, and the last word is pushed onto it. 2) If you are editing elsewhere on the current line, then when the word wrap takes effect the last word of that line is pushed onto the beginning of the line below, if there is room for it. If there is not room for the word on the line below, a new line is created and the word is pushed onto that. When the word wrap is turned off (by selecting the TEXT/WORD WRAP menu option) the full width of the screen is available for editing, and text input stops when the cursor reaches the right hand edge. Merging 2 lines with the backspace: Lets imagine you had the following two lines in your file: Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water, Jack fell down and broke his crown, and Jill came tumbling after. You can merge the two lines by placing the cursor at the start of the second line and pressing the backspace key. The result in this instant, assuming that you are using a 70 character wide page, would be the following: Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water, Jack fell down and broke his crown, and Jill came tumbling after. Cut/copy and paste: Up to 70 lines can be cut or copied into a buffer and pasted elsewhere in the document. The procedure for this is quite simple: 1) Place the cursor at the top of the block of text and select MARK TOP from the BLOCK menu. 2) Move the cursor down to the bottom of the block, and either select CUT TEXT or COPY TEXT from the BLOCK menu. This will either cut the block of text from the file into the cut buffer, or just copy the block into the buffer whilst leaving it intact in the file. 3) Move the cursor to the position you want to paste the block you have just copied, and select PASTE from the BLOCK menu. Please note that only whole lines can be cut, copied, and pasted. Printer styles: In the STYLE menu are a number of text styles that can be used in your document. Selecting an option from this menu inserts the corresponding control character into your file which, when the file is printed, tells your printer to turn on that style. The next time the same character appears, the printer is told to turn off that style. This is true for all styles except for PICA and ELITE, which cancel each other out. Take the following line of text, for example: There's simply no match for °TextEngine's° user friendliness! When printed, the first five words are printed normally, then the word "TextEngine's" is printed in italics, and the rest of the sentence is printed normally again. Please note that not all printers support all of these styles, but try them out and see for yourself. If you use many styles at once, and want to cancel them together, then why not use the CANCEL STYLES control character? This cancels any styles which are currently selected and returns the printer to normal draft mode. CHECKING YOUR SPELLING ====================== TextEngine has an English spell checker built in which, despite its simplicity, can be very useful if you want to double check your typing. You may, however, find it a good idea to have a dictionary to hand in order to check those words which TextEngine hasn't seen before! Operating the spell checker is very simple. Firstly, you must open the dictionary by selecting OPEN DICTIONARY from the SPELL menu. This reserves a block of memory and loads the file TextEngine4.1.dct into it. Having done this, you will find that three more options have appeared in the SPELL menu, CLOSE DICTIONARY, UPDATE DICTIONARY, and CHECK DOCUMENT. When you select CHECK DOCUMENT, the spell checker window is opened and it begins to check your file. When a potentially incorrect word is found, it is displayed in the string gadget and seven suggestions are shown in the box on the right (which can be scrolled using the up and down arrow buttons). If the word is correct, you can either click on ADD which will add the word to the dictionary and continue on to the next word, or NEXT which will ignore the word and carry on to the next one. However, if the word is incorrect, then you can correct it using the string gadget and then click on NEXT to continue. After using the spell checker, you may have added some words to the dictionary which you want kept there. In this case, select UPDATE DICTIONARY from the SPELL menu, which saves the dictionary with your additions back to disk for future use. Also, if your system is running low on memory, you can remove the dictionary from RAM by selecting CLOSE DICTIONARY. OTHER FEATURES OF TEXTENGINE V4.1 ================================= A new feature in the TEXT menu is FIND TEXT STRING. When this is selected, you are asked to type in the text you want to look. Having done this, click on the FIND gadget and TextEngine will look through your document for the next occurance of that string. Having found it, you can continue searching by selecting the TEXT/FIND NEXT menu item. To print a file, select PRINT from the PROJECT menu. A requester will appear asking you how many copies of the file you want printed. Up to 99 copies can be made, and if you enter 0 as the value, then printing will not go ahead. If you need to stop printing for some reason, simply click on the CANCEL gadget. Selecting SLEEP from the PROJECT menu returns you to the Workbench and reduces TextEngine to a small window at the top of the screen. In doing this, about 50kB of chip RAM is released and TextEngine will let other tasks get on with what they are doing without taking up valuable processor time. To return to the editor screen, make sure the small TextEngine window is selected, and then press the right mouse button. In the TEXT menu is the WORD COUNT option. Not only does this count the words in the document, but also the lines and pages too. AMIGADOS ERROR MESSAGES ======================= If an error occurs when accessing a file with TextEngine, an AmigaDOS error number is displayed. Here is a list of the meanings of most errors that might occur. Error | Meaning ------+-------------------------------- 202 | Object in use 203 | Object already exists 204 | Directory not found 205 | Object not found 212 | Object not of required type 213 | Disk not validated 214 | Disk write-protected 218 | Device not mounted 221 | Disk full 222 | File is protected from deletion 223 | File is protected from writing 224 | File is protected from reading 225 | Not a DOS disk 226 | No disk in drive FINAL NOTE, THANKS, AND HELLOS ============================== Well, as usual I hope you enjoy using TextEngine. Not bad for a fiver's worth of software, I think! Many thanks for the support I have had from the following people: John Reece, Michael Amoah, Paul Burnham, M Rhodes, C Ralfe, Ian Rawlings, G Lambert, S May, Stan Davey, R Evans, P Sullivan, David McClay, E Berney, John Ellis, J Jarret, Gary Shaw, R Chambers, P Berg, Peter Stubbs, Graeme McGibbon, D Simons, Len Mullenger, Alan Lingard, Christopher Jones, Sheila Walsh, Pauli Hietala (hello Finland!), Andrew Chambers, A Gravener, C Wellman, R Minns, Ken Spry, 17 Bit, Deltrax, David Aslett, Bill Sloan, Keith Pang, D Davies, Victor Hunt, J Bryer, B Wyatt, Ernest Wilson, Larry Cashill, Dennis Brunskill, Roy Pearson, N Peters, Colin Curtis, W Davies, Tony Campbell, T Dullage, Frank Mitchell, Jim Finney, Graham Adair, Tony Davies, R Robertson, Marcus Ong, Ian Ridehalgh, Cyril Stacey, Adrian Nudel, Paul Hayball, M F Sheard, John Perks, P L Hammour, P R Thomas, Gillian Beton, Denis Pycroft, Geoff Bowell, Richard Dockett, Mr & Mrs Dickinson, J Rimington, Jagdeep Lall, Piers Kurrein, Russell Tippett, Ian Seth, R Blayney, George Johnston, Peter Hind, Robert Iveson, J E Standley, Geoff Thomas, Rocky Daly, Adrian Back, William Mutch, Roger Coleman, Dave Hawley, Colin Standley, Archie Allison, Ricky Clarke, G M Nicholas, Turtle Lightning Amiga Software (Texas, USA!), Kate Simmonds, Michael Taylor, M Newsham, Colin Coomber, Alex Kane, Tony Green, Robert Lake, and Jen Allen. Usual hellos go to: Mark Higgins, Martin Guy, Warren Saunders, Gary Taylor, and Amanda, Lucy, Susan, and Sophie. Also hello to everyone at JS Surbiton including Scott (graphic artist extrordinaire) Lewis, and anyone who drives a Mini! Signed: Nick (21/8/93)