Simtel MSDOS - Coast to Coast/simteldosarchivecoasttocoast2.iso/asmutil/asmenv19.zip/ASMENV.DOC

Text File | 1993-11-14 | 30KB | 471 lines

ASMEnv.DOC:
Pronounce ASM as TASM with T dropped. And, then, ASM En, letting the v go.
The full name is ASMEnvironment.

ASMEnv.EXE is copyright (C) 1993 by Gene Fowler, and all rights are reserved.
However, you may use this version (1.9) without paying a licensing fee and you
may hand it to somebody else so long as you don't ask that person for more than
a reasonably few dollars to cover the disk, mailer, and pack room on the U.S.
Mule (or telephone lines). And providing you send along this document, which
is all the manual and documentation there is at this point. If you wish to
make a donation of $20 to the "workbench" fund, though, I'll consider that to
be "registration" and send you any fix of 1.9 and a distribution copy of 2.0.
Someday, I'll add a hardcopy "user's guide" to 2.x. Or that's the dream...

There's no warranty of any sort, stated or implied, as ASMEnv is evolving and
experimental. I can't see how you can do any damage with the program, but I
accept no responsibility if you manage it. Oh, for those outfits that make
a living gathering patents and copyrights and searching others' code for
"matches"...forget it! Ain't an algorithm in here. It's straight forward,
don't-save-a-byte-or-cycle Turbo Vision. There ain't a look and feel idea in
it, just using what Borland serves up plus squeezing different colors from
their tubes onto the palette in App.TPU.

 ********************** A Temporary Nuisance *************************

   ASMEnv is evolved from TVEdit, a demo accompanying Turbo Pascal
   6.0 and Turbo Vision 1.0. In TVEdit if you are at LineEnd and use
   the Right Arrow, you go to the next line. This is fine in a word
   processor (WordPerfect), but drives users up walls in a text editor.

      I've "opened the screen to the right." The Right Arrow will
   add a space. Tab will add spaces to the target column. A single
   mouse click adds necessary spaces to pull the cursor.

      To hold down accumulated spaces in the limited buffer, Tab
   Home, and End keys "clean" lines. Up and Down Arrows add spaces
   to the line entered and clean the line left. While it's an amateur's
   hack under the hood, the surface is quite nice, and you'll be happy
   in your .ASM files. It's all done under lock, so you have no speed
   penalties or clumsiness of any sort.

      THE NUISANCE: You'll be bringing in .LST files to look over to
   study your ASM code together with the resultant machine code. TASM
   uses #9 (tab) codes in the .LST file. Using Left and Right Arrow on
   a line of text, you find occasional lateral skips. They make sense
   and won't bother you. It's as if you had the "every eight" tabs and
   hit Tab. For a time, I had chaos as I used my Up and Down Arrows and
   serious problems after a PgUp or PgDn...

      ...I solved that, and you can travel up and down with these keys.
   But sometimes after traveling, a first lateral move might yield an
   erratic jump. Subsequent keyings are all right. For a time, on first
   or last lines a Home or End might freeze. I'm not sure it's wholly
   fixed. If it happens, hit the other key. While working, if a Left
   Arrow, Right Arrow, Home, or End "froze," one of the other three
   always broke the jam. Consider it the emergency exit.

 *********************************************************************

A "PROTOTYPE" BORLAND TURBO ASSEMBLER IDE:

ASMEnv.EXE is not a Borland product, and Borland's designers, engineers, and
programmers bear no responsibility for whatever shortcomings this TASM IDE
might prove to have. In fact, I don't take a whole lot of responsibility and
call it a prototype because it's primarily a learning project I've assigned to
myself and secondarily the bearer of my ideas about a TASM IDE that I'd like
to hand to those who produce products and the industry's literature (to the
extent that there is a literature). I bump the version number (usually) when
I've added some new direction of exploration to this "prototype" and am al-
ways tinkering and fixing and plugging in new pieces in old directions; so if
two copies find their way to you with the same version number, take the one
with the latest file date...it'll be better. There will be "holes" for a long
time to come, since I'm a one-man team.

The TP6 "Professional" package, which you'll need whether or not you're a
professional, if you do any serious TP work, includes among its added-in but
hardly peripheral tools Turbo Assembler. Presumably Borland long ago decided
that the assembler wouldn't require an IDE like the ones packaged with their
TP and TC/C++ compilers...because real programmers (who use assembly language)
would be insulted by such "greasy kid stuff" and would head for industrial
strength programmers' editors like Brief (which Borland recently bought). Or
some such reasoning. But we semi-pro's who get these "professional" packages
are, quite often, inhabitants of the IDEs. Turbo Debugger "emulates" the com-
piler IDEs, so presumably Borland folks believe that users of the "profes-
sional" packages will appreciate some tools having that familiar housing.

So, I took as my Turbo Vision project the building of an IDE for TASM, a fair-
ly large project for a semi-pro or amateur and, really, a novice. But I had
TVEdit to start from, so I wasn't starting with a blank page. I can push and
pull, squeeze and expand, redirect... . And I have "see-able" goals. On the
one hand, I have the TP6 IDE to contrast with TVEdit. On the other, I have an
image defined by how the IDE ought to be different if I am typing ASM code
instead of Pascal code, a columnar notation instead of a narrative notation.
I am in untraveled territory, but not quite without my packet of maps. And
just about three months later, I'm using ASMEnv pretty heavily and not just
because it's mine. It's already more useful than anything I know about, let
alone anything I've got on hand or could get quickly.

STARTING UP AND CLOSING DOWN

Put ASMEnv.EXE, ASMEnv.Hlp, ASMEnv.CFG, and ASMEnv.DSK into your TA (or TASM)
directory. ASMEnv.CFG and ASMEnv.DSK are "bare bones" files that will hold
settings between work sessions. If you don't have these, you will not have any
problem and they will be created for you on exiting the program or, in the case
of ASMEnv.DSK when you deliberately Save Desktop. Enter ASMEnv by typing ASMEnv
at the DOS prompt. You could add filenames (wild cards ok) and have them opened
inside, but skip that this time. If you haven't the .CFG file, you get an error
box. Press OK and ignore it. Now, you have my ego box. Press okay and it goes
away. ^F3 brings up your last "desktop" arrangement. Try it and if you have the
minimal ASMEnv.DSK I created, you get two New File windows. Later, ^F3 will be
your "main man." For now, your best move is to read the status line at the
bottom of the screen, and the menu of menus at the top. Alt-F drops the first
menu. Arrow keys move circularly, either way, around menus. Read what's there.
And...try Help. F1 gets context-sensitive help. Shift-F1 always gets the "no
context" help; if you are anywhere except in the menu structure, that is the
Main Introduction that F1 gets when you're on the blotter with nothing open.
The right mouse button opens the Help screen like the F1 key (mouse's location
diesn't matter) and closes it like the ESC key if it is open.

But let's look at the two files ASMEnv looked for, if you didn't have them,
the .CFG file it wanted to load on startup and the .DSK file it wanted to load
when you asked for "Last Desk."

You are going to find that you have "histories" and "editable strings" con-
nected with input boxes and dialogs. ASMEnv saves these, between work ses-
sions, in the .CFG file so that you do not have to recreate histories or edit
paths, params, and batch text each time you work on a project. And you may
have multiple .CFG files, any one of which can be the ASMEnv.CFG when you
intend to work on the associated project. When you close down, the ASMEnv.CFG
in the current directory is updated. And on startup, the one in the current
directory is loaded and the histories and strings are reinitialized from the
defaults to your last entries.

When you Exit, ASMEnv.DSK in the current directory is also updated to save your
"desktop," or all the Editors you have running, with their scroll positions,
cursor positions, bookmark settings, block selections, and more included. If
your Clipboard is showing or the calculator running, these won't be saved, but
their presence won't cause any problems. When you start ASMEnv, the Last Desk
isn't set up for you as it is when you start Borland IDEs. I wanted a quick
shifting of the desk or project at any time, including startup time, so I put
Save and Retrieve DeskTop on a menu and on hot keys and the Retrieve hot key on
the Status line. That's ^F3. At startup, you hit ^F3, F3, or Shift-F3...and
you begin working. Shift-F5 gets a Windows List. It lists the first nine opened
windows and gives the file name in the window. Blanks show closed windows, and
the lowest numbered blank will be the next window opened. It tells you that
Alt-# brings the window to the top. You have to OK the dialog before that key-
ing works.

ASMEnv EDITOR AND IDE

ASMEnv isn't a text editor. It's a whole gang of text editors, for starters,
and...it's a lot more than that. IDE stands for Integrated Development
Environment. I guess you can say "environment" generalizes "editor." But a
"gang of editors" isn't a multiple window editor. The plural means something
and in fact follows from the "object" technology of TP and TV. Each of the
editors in the gang (the number being up to you) is a thing unto itself. But
they're all the same until you give each its "setup" for the file that's in it.

The next section describes an editor in ASMEnv. Here I'll describe what else
you have in the environment. The desktop, or the desktop "blotter," with the
menu and status lines instead of those cushy leather borders on a real desk, is
the background for your editors and internal tools. Unless I'm forgetting
something, I have only three internal tools so far. There is the "clipboard,"
which looks like an ordinary editor and in which you can do some editing,
though you can't load (you can save the contents to) a file. It isn't an
ordinary editor but a temporary storage used to transfer text between editors.
When you show it, it opens like an editor, but when you close it, it goes into
hiding and keeps its contents. The contents are not saved across sessions in
.CFG or .DSK.

The second tool is a hex calculator/translator that's very useful when writing
ASM code. I made this from the little Casio among the TV demos. I've given the
calculator one memory that's in ASMEnv not the calculator, so you can store a
result, close the calculator, reopen the calculator, and retrieve that re-
sult. Or you can open two calculators and transfer an item through that one
memory location. The memory is kept across work sessions in the .CFG file.
The "I" key gives you information on the calculator. The Calculator is on the
F11 key and the Utilities menu.

The third tool is an Ascii table which is a powerful book closer on your over-
crowded workbench.

There is one other internal tool. I've thought of it as an external tool
because of its look. This is "Last Dos Screen." On startup, you can look at
the DOS screen that you just left. But This tool is worth its "weight" in gold
when you use your number one external tool: TASM, the assembler. TASM puts its
output on the DOS screen, including errors listed with source code line
numbers. I keep you on the DOS screen after running TASM to study the
output. But you'll want to "recall" that list while working on your source.
That's what Last Dos Screen is for. On the Utils menu, you have Find Line #
forjumping to these error locations.

The external tools are DOS Shell, DOS Command, and "wired-in" programs that
are, in fact, Exec'd. The programs are TASM, TLINK, Turbo Debugger, Turbo
Profiler, and TxtPager. All except Dos Shell let you run programs from inside
ASMEnv, and Dos Shell lets you run programs "on top of" the IDE. In an IDE,
it's convenient to run a program from a hot key or mouse click, with the
path and re-used param line all set...and to do this across work sessions. As
things stand, you won't run the debugger or profiler from inside. They are too
large and you run programs in them. Here's where ^F3 shows its value. Alt-X
out, do your debugging or profiling, Enter, hit ^F3, and you're right where you
were. Later, you'll use the support files TA.BAT (to get TASMS Help inside
ASMEnv, on the ^F1 key) and TA386.BAT (to run TD386 and TF386 within ASMEnv).

The external tools are self explanatory, except possibly DOS Command and Txt-
Split. You know about DOS' Exec function (and TP's). DOS Command is a "trans-
parent" Command Line identical to the one at any DOS prompt. You may use it as
if it were a DOS prompt, but keep in mind that ASMEnv is setting up child
processes and know something of your RAM capacity and structure before you do
any wild launching.

TxtPager is a tool for handling large modules in small capacity editors, as
each of the gang of editors is. The concept of handling a large file in a small
editor is new. Every one assumes you don't. You go away and come back with
smaller files. In any case, you'd be more likely to have large .PAS files than
large .ASM files...and TP never had a way to work with large files before doing
away with the 64K editor. Anyway, I wrote TxtPager as a stand-alone, but I in-
clude it on the disk and wire it into ASMEnv. The help facility tells you how to
use it. There are advantages to "paging" even smaller files for rapid multiple
site working where bookmarks are cumbersome. TxtPager is used both to page and
recollect your file. Ctrl-F7 gets the param box. Give the name of your file as
the only paramater. The param will come up every time you hit ^F7, even in your
next work session because it is save in the .CFG file. Hit OK and choose s to
split the file into multiple pages. Pull each page into an editor. Use the
Alt-# keys to jump among pages and Shift-F5 to see the Windows List. When you
work on a page, save that page. When you're ready to assemble the whole file
or do something else to it, hit ^F7, note the same file is the param, hit OK
and, when you are in TxtPager, select j for join. TxtPager will rebuild the
complete file from the updated pages. Between sessions your editors with the
pages in them are saved in the .DSK file.

The "paging" concept has value beyond distributing a large file over several
editors or providing a more sophisticated bookmark system than the ones on
the F8 key in each editor. When typing TASM (or MASM) code, you often use the
PAGE command to go to a new page. You might have a PAGE break after equates
and macros, another after dseg, and so forth. To use that system of paging
here, you don't start with filename.asm, but filename.pt1. When you'd use
PAGE to start a new section, open a new file and save it as filename..pt2.
And so forth to accumulate yourset of pt? files. Then, call TxtPager, give
filename.asm as the param and choose j (join). You'll have to keep your
set of pt? files for the duration because no subsequent splitting of the
.asm file will give you this unique paging. You can insert a page by re-
naming a ptN with a later number, let the desk open the original number
with an empty sheet and load up the higher number. In fact, you can create
any stack of .pt? files with some desktop work and file naming. Create the
setup you want.

Some "services" border on being "tools." TVEdit made .BAK files on saves. And
I cut this out until recently. But now, ^F7 and Alt-F7 turn this on and off.
Not a toggle, but two definite settings. The default, if you start without a
.CFG in the current directory, is off. Other services on menus and keys are
Borland's numbered windows, accessible with Alt-# or F6, the displayable clip-
board, window zoom, tiling and cascading of windows, and the any-time Save or
Retrieve of .DSK to and from the current directory. And a gang of search ser-
vices, of course. Th main one for a TASM (or MASM) user is Find Line #.

ASMEnv--EDITOR

Everything described above is "support" services and "tools." What ASMEnv is
about, of course, is editing your .ASM source code. Each window opened is a
full-featured text editor pre-customized for assembly language source code
production.

Open Screen: The screen must be a sheet of paper rather than a monitor screen
             in any text editor and particularly in one used for the columnar
assembly language notation. TVEdit presented a monitor. As in WordPerfect or
some other word processors, holding down the Right Arrow took you to the line
end and, then, to the beginning of the next line. The monitor to the right of
the line ends was "nothingness." Modifying the Editors.PAS code to even rough-
ly emulate the TP IDE "open screen" was wading in the briar patch and cutting
strands as though disarming a bomb. But, I've got a fairly smooth open screen
for you.

Hit the Right Arrow key when you are at the end of a line of text, and a space
is added and the cursor moved forward. Use the Tab key, and spaces will be
added, if needed, to put the cursor on the target column. Use the Up or Down
Arrow key, and spaces are added, if needed, so you can go onto the new line in
the column you presently occupy. Use PgUp or PgDn and you are in the column
you expect to be in when you arrive.

You'd think this would fill up your small (61440K) files with spaces in short
order if you happen to travel a lot. So I've built in "cleaning" of trailing
spaces. I had to do that, too, so that use of the End key didn't sometimes
leave you out in the boonies and so that some Shift-cursor combos didn't fail
to select properly. I put ShrinkLine (my cleaner) on the Home, End, and Enter
keys for starters (though I had to take it off Enter to keep Autoindent after
a skipped line). More elegantly, I fixed the Up and Down Arrows so the key
padded, if necessary, the line it was going to, went, and cleaned the line
just abandoned. Usually, when landing on a line you aimed at, you'll use
lateral arrows, Home, End, Tab keys to get to where you type something and
"freeze" the line (with interior spaces) to that point and beyond.

Tabs:        TP's IDE uses tabs in conjunction with Backspace to implement
             a system of indent-handlings that is very useful given a nar-
rative language like Pascal. And TVEdit simply used the "multiples of eight"
(from left) positioning of the cursor. For assembly language programs and the
standard four columns for labels, opCodes, operands, and comments, I wanted a
tab setup different from either TP's IDE of TVEDit.

All the editors (windows) are the same. Four tab positions form a cycle, and
you forward tab through them: 17-25-42-1-17. Right now, Shift-tab gets you an
Information box about the tabs. Backward tabbing would take as intricate cod-
ing as the forward did. And there are only four. Home back-tabs to 1 and
sometimes End will get you out in the neighborhood you want so a single tab
will place you where you want to be. I've not yet felt any constraint on my
movement due to lack of back-tabbing.

TP's Tab is meant to be used on a "clean" line. If used on a line with text
to the right of the cursor, it pushes that text ahead of it. I can't imagine a
situation in which you'd use it for this, so it c'n be considered a nuisance.
Fortunately, you aren't likely to be going to the targets you know Tab seeks
from such a position. In ASMEnv, you definitely want to "float" over text in
one column to get to a column on the right to add or correct something. So the
Tab key definitely DOES NOT push text ahead of it. It floats over text to the
next target column.

In ASMEnv, you will want to push text with the Tab in one circumstance. In
another section of this file, I describe my single most important and pride-
yielding "feature." This is what I call "batch text" and, for identification
purposes, the AutoTyping of assembly code chunks. The old-fashioned term is
boilerplate, I think. Anyway, if you use menus in place of hot keys, you can
damn near type an .ASM module using only your mouse. In any case, ^m will type
"mov     " and if you keyed it on the opCodes column, you are on the Operands
column and ready to type "ax, 0" or whatever. If you accidentally typed your
^m in the labels column, go ahead and type your "ax, 0" and then hit Home and
Alt-Tab...to push the whole two column entry into place.

AutoTyping:  I have five menus of hot key bound typing potentials for easing
everybody's number one gripe about assembly language programming: typing those
small chunks of just-so code in their respective columns. My whole design plan
for the IDE, or editor(s), grew out of this. I wanted as many of the TASM code
elements as possible to be typeable as what I call "batch text." So I did the
first thinking about key use that's apparently been done since the days of
CP/M. The cannibalized typewriter keyboard is no longer hooked up to our
machines. We've four banks (shift states) of letter keys and, then, of "other"
keys, the function and pad keys. It made sense, even if I didn't want all the
extra text keys I could get, to use letter keys for things having to do with
"reading" and other keys for things having to with "acting."

I've kept the Alt-Ltr combos for hooking menus. And used letters in the menu
items, of course, since the user is in the menu and not the editor. And the
user is reading and typing what's read to get more to read. If you use ^f to
get your Find Dialog, you aren't doing this at all. You are trying to use the
letter f as a mnemonic for the action named Find, but that breaks down fast as
you must use ^l for the Find Next occurrence because ^N is used for New Line,
and ^a for replAce, because ^r is taken for something else. And with the
WordStar diamond, ...all pretense is gone. Oh, in the example I've just used,
I didn't mention the ^Q before some of those keys. It wasn't relevant, and
I've fixed my TP IDE so you don't need it. ^f and ^a work as well as ^q,f and
^q,a. And I'm aware that out in the world, in say WinWord in Windows, the user
sets up hot keys that use ALL THREE shift keys WITH any other key on the 102
board. So...my design principle is for little, but hot IDEs.

Batch Text:  I call the chunks of text on a key batch text. Some of the con-
             structs are complex. For instance, Set DS on ^@ or ^2 will type
two lines and put the cursor on the first line in position to add what is to
be moved into ax for relay into ds. You'll find this on the Constructs menu.
Another construct has some features that you might not find on your own. This
is the IfDef and Else/EndIf on the DefSegs menu. You'll use these for condit-
ional compilation or assembly. It's usual to tab to OpCodes and hit ^y,x. You

                IfDef    _

get what you see just above. You can type in the symbol and drop down and put
in the code that will be compiled or assembled IF the symbol is defined earl-
ier in the file (sorry, not yet optional in the IDE).

                IfDef    Production
                  ; code here

That's usually as far as it goes. But sometimes, you want an "else" block or
even an "ElseIf." Now, you'll see some features. You've just typed "code
here," so now hit Enter. You are under the semi-colon and are tempted to use
Backspace to get under IfDef (not being in TP's IDE, you must hit it twice).
Don't bother. Type ^y, z. You will get what is below, because ASMEnv saved

                IfDef    Production
                  ; code here
                Else_
                EndIf

IfDef's column and uses it. You are at the end of Else. You can type "If"
and Tab to put in a symbol. Or just hit Enter to get a line between Else and
EndIf for a code block. Suppose you hit ^y,x in the Label column? Easy, type
your symbol where your cursor is, Home, Alt-Tab to push the text. Now, ^y,z
will Put the Else/EndIf block in the Label column. And your cursor is after
Else. Don't type, push, or fix. Hit ^Backspace twice. It takes out the two
lines. Now, type ^y,z again. It will print in Column 17 this time because it
adjusted the column tracker variable after the first print. The default IS
column 17, the OpCodes column.

Editables:   The segment definition strings, from my batch text, and the paths
             for the programs wired in as tools, are editable. I've given the
definition lines that are standard in texts for novice programmers, since I am
a novice programmer and work with these. You can replace them with whatever
you use, including the "short form" notations such as .CODE or CODESEG. I've
tied the spacing in with the tab settings for decent appearance, so you might
want to hit the insert key for typeover before editing.

Edited strings and the accumulated histories are saved from one work session
to the next in the ASMEnv.CFG file. But if you want to change the defaults so
you don't have to redo all these if you decide to "work differently" in some
transcendental sense later, you have to go into a byte editor like Norton's
DiskEdit. Find the string and you'll see zeros behind it up to a face symbol.
That's the field (space) available to you. Type in the string you want with
zeros filling that excess, write the cluster to disk, and you're set. DO NOT
FORGET that the byte before my lead c is the line length and you must make
that match your new string length (on the hex dump side).

Printing:    Printing is on the File Menu and the Alt-F2 hot key. If you have
             a block selected, that, rather than the whole buffer, will be
printed. The "save to PRN" of 1.8 has been replaced. ASMEnv uses a child pro-
gram, ASMPRN.EXE, which must be on your path. Key or click Print and you get
a message reminding you to prepare your printer. OK or Cancel. ASMEnv sends
the selected block or the whole buffer to the disk as ASMPRN.TMP. It then
Exec's ASMPRN. After ASMPRN returns, the .TMP file is deleted and you're told
the process is finished. You set the command switches in Print Setup. There
is a stack of switch lines you set and this is kept in the .CFG file between
sessions. If the bar is on Print Setup, or you are in the dialog, F1 gets
information about the switches.

Clipboard:   The clipboard is a transfer point for inter-editor copies or
             cuts and pastes. I've altered TVEdit's clipboard to match TP's.
That is, when you put something new in, what was there is not deleted but
simply deselected and the new insertion begins on the next line. You can go
back in and delete or deselect the current selection and select something
you were copying out before. Perhaps a series of insertions was interrupted
for a quick one. You can also use the Clipboard as a SCRATCH PAD. Type a
trial entry. If it's right, Select it, and paste it into an editor. But
remember to take it out, reselect what was selected, and put the cursor at
the END, not the start, of the selection. That's so that something new put
in will get its new line AFTER the selection. Of course, if you want your
scratch piece to be the last entry, do nothing but be sure you've selected
it front to end and DON'T select backwards after typing. Cursor must be
at the end of the selection and at line end...so that NewLine works without
pushing text. If you're at end of non-selected text, a new entry won't get
a fresh line, so you might Enter to get a fresh line. The rule with selected
text is that SelEnd = LineEnd = Cursor.

On-Line Help: This .DOC file is sketchy and isn't intended to be a manual or
              even "help" when you're working. It's something between a de-
scription and a conversation. You'll find REAL help, context sensitive and
detailed, on your F1 key. (The right mouse button opens help like F1 and
closes it like ESC no matter where the mouse is.) Shift-F1 has the last "no
context" help , so that if you are in an Editor you get the Intro F1 would
get on the empty desktop blotter. And if you read the note in TA.BAT on the
distribution disk and set up that .BAT file and use it, you'll have Borland's
THelp.COM on ^F1. In fact, look at the TA386.BAT, Config.386, and AutoExec.386
files and see how to set up to have TD386 and TF386 from inside ASMEnv. In
the on-line help, you find how to "page" large (and other) files, how to use
a great variety of printers, including Postscript and Laserjet printers, as
"line printers" or "highlighting" printers. In fact, the "manual" is in there
in draft form.

INFORMATION:

I'm more or less contactable at The Re-Geniusing Project, 1432 Spruce St.,
Berkeley, CA 94709. Sorry, no electronic addresses, you'll just have to
put it on the U.S. Mule for carrying. I'm there sometimes, as are my col-
leagues Crine Outlaud and Mr. Sprech, First Artificer of Enterprises, and
others. C'n engage in shop talk, but of course can't wave source code
around for reasons outlined above. If you're seeing this on somebody else's
machine and want a copy, send ten bucks for disk, pack room on the Mule,
and such, since the lot of us often can't scrape up the price of a box of
disks. But, if you don't have it, don't NOT ask...we'll find it. And if,
gawd willing, you want to underwrite further puttering with a non-required
"license fee," ...we'll think of you as we empty dust out of and fill
the coffee pot!
                                                       -Gene Fowler
                                                       July, 1993