Columnist is a text file post-processor which takes any TXT (ASCII text) or AWP (Appleworks Word Processor) file and converts it into a new file in which the text is formatted in two or three columns on each page. This converted file can be then loaded back into your word processor for additional editing and printing, or can be printed by Columnist. Before converting a file, you adjust various format settings to control the page layout of your document. These format settings include such things as: Number of lines per page, width of left margin, width of each column, amount of space between the columns, number of columns, and whether the columns will be full justified. You can add multi-line page headers and/or footers to the formatted file, and can include printer control-characters. These and other features of Columnist will be explained in detail below.
Columnist is shareware. This means that you are encouraged to give away copies of it, and you can try it out to see if you have any use for it. If you decide you want to keep Columnist, you are asked to send the fee of $15.00 to me at the address below. You will receive a 5.25" disk with the latest version of Columnist. If you prefer or need a 3.5" disk, please send an additional $1.00. The Columnist disk comes with a utility program that allows you to scan through the on-disk instructions for a word or phrase. This can greatly facilitate looking up a particular topic in the documentation.
Karl Bunker 321 S. Huntington Ave. Boston, MA 02130
Columnist is for all Apple II's but the ][+, and requires 80 column display. Although it makes some use of MouseText, it has alternate displays if it is run on an un-enhanced IIe.
What Columnist is good for
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With Columnist you should be able to do simple, newsletter-type desktop publishing projects. Columnist is text based, rather than graphics based as most desktop publishing programs are. This has both advantages and disadvantages. The advantages include the following: Columnist is fast; it prints as quickly as your printer allows. This can mean a savings of HOURS over most IIgs DTP programs. Columnist works with all types of printers, including daisy-wheel and other letter-quality printers. Columnist uses the fonts that are built into your printer; this gives you clearer, better looking text than is available with most 8-bit graphics based DTP programs. Columnist is simple to use; most of the formatting options available to you are listed on a single menu screen. The major disadvantages to Columnist's text-based nature are that it doesn't allow true WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get), imported computer graphics, or proportional type fonts.
Columnist can also be used for such things as printing 2-across or 3-across mailing labels, or columnized data base reports. With an AppleWorks data base of addresses, you would first "print" a data base report to disk as an ASCII test file, and then load this file into Columnist to format and print it.
Using Columnist
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After the title screen, the first thing you have to do with Columnist is select a source file to be converted. The source file must be type TXT or AWP. About the only restriction on the source file is that it should not have "hard" margins - that is, spaces inserted before each line to make a left margin. Columnist can process files of ANY length. To select a file, enter the directory you want to catalog at the prompt, or accept the one shown by pressing <return>. When the catalog is displayed, you select a file by moving the inverse bar and pressing <return> to select a file for formatting. If you press <return> while the inverse bar is on a DIR file, this directory will be added to the current prefix, opened, and cataloged.
In addition to selecting a file to be formatted, there are two other options available from the catalog display, and these are noted in the catalog screen prompt. First, you can press V to view the contents of the highlighted file. You'll want to do this if you're having difficulty remembering just which file it is that you want to format. Second, you can press P to print a file. This option is primarily intended for use with files that have been previously formatted with Columnist. It will not work correctly with files that are "soft formatted" i.e., which do not have <return>s at the end of each line. I'll have more to say about this print-from-the-catalog option later in these instructions, under "Hints and Suggestions".
After selecting a file for formatting, you'll need a name for the new, multi-column object file that Columnist will create. A default name, the same as the source file's name with the suffix ".COL" is offered. You can accept this or enter another. If you want the object file to be on different disk from the source file, just enter a full pathname for at the "Object file:" prompt. Columnist supports disk-swapping on single drive systems.
The Page Format Settings Menu
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After some disk access to prepare the files, Columnist will show you a screen entitled "Page Format Settings". I'll explain each of the items in this list in the order they appear:
Lines of text per page:
This is, of course, the number of printed lines that appear on the printed page. Since 66 lines of standard-size text will fit on an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet, the number of printed lines will usually be about 58, to allow for top and bottom margins. Columnist will actually format the page with one less line of text than the number you enter, and will insert one blank line between pages.
Left margin:
This is the width, in characters, of the left-hand margin. If you set this to 8, Columnist will insert 8 spaces before each line of text.
Two or three columns?
2 gets you two, 3 gets you three. Sorry, those are your only choices for this option.
Width of each column:
Also in characters. Readability studies have shown that the optimum width for columns of text is about 35 to 40 characters.
Note: If, during the formatting process, columnist encounters a word in the source file that is longer than the selected column width, it will be forced to abort the conversion. After showing you the offending word and explaining the problem, it will send you back to the start of the program.
Space between columns:
This is something of an esthetic choice. It should be enough so that it's immediately obvious that the page is divided into columns, but not so much as to waste space. If the columns are going to be full justified (even on both sides), the space between can afford to be smaller. 3 to 6 is usually good.
The rest of the Page Format Setting prompts ask you yes/no (Y/N) questions. Some of them ask for further information if you answer "Y".
Full justify the columns?
This is also an esthetic choice. Since Columnist can't do "micro justification", it full justifies by inserting additional spaces between words. If overdone, this gives the text a "toothy" appearance, sort of like this. Left-only justified columns, on the other hand, can look pretty ragged. So I guess you have a choice between teeth and rags. Using the hyphenation editor (explained below) can markedly improve the appearance of both full justified and left-only justified columns.
Even-off columns on last page?
For most applications, this will be a useful and important option. Here's what it does: Say you have a file that you want Columnist to format in two columns, and this file is slightly more than one and a half pages long. With this menu item set to "N", Columnist will format this file as you might expect: It will fill the first page with two-column text, and on the second page, it will print a left-hand column all the way down the page, and then print a short partial column on the right side of the page, until the end of the text is reached. This leaves you with a lop-sided page.
If you have the Even-off option set to "Y", Columnist will behave differently. It will format the last page of text in two shorter, equally lengthed columns. The columns will end "evenly"; in this case, about half way down the page. If there is less than one full page of text in the source file, setting this option to "Y" will simply cause all of the text to be formatted in two or three columns of equal length.
Open a box in the text?
This allows you to print out a page with an empty "box" area in the text. This area can then be used for an illustration or a "pull quote". If you answer "Y" to this option, you will be prompted for some additional information, namely:
lines: start: l/c/r:
"lines" means the height of the box to be left open, measured in lines of text. "start" refers to how many lines down on the page you want the box to start. "l/c/r" is asking you if you want the box to be on the left of the page, in the center, or on the right. The width of a box will always be equal to the width of one of the columns on the page. You can only open a box on the first page of your document.
Use Hyphenation Editor?
As noted earlier, you can get a much cleaner looking document by hyphenating the longer words that fall at the end of a column-line. Columnist's hyphenation editor allows you to do this. If you select to use the hyphenation editor, then Columnist will take each word that it decides is a good candidate for hyphenation, and display it for you. Using the arrow keys, you then move the cursor to the appropriate point in the word, and insert a hyphen. Either the "-" key or the space bar will insert a hyphen in the word. If you make a mistake, the hyphen can be removed with the <delete> key. Pressing <return> accepts the word, and Columnist will continue until it has another word to offer you. You can also accept the word as-is by pressing <return>. (Columnist may occasionally display a one syllable word that can't be hyphenated.)
Immediately above each displayed word, you will see a vertical line. This marks the furthest point into the word at which you can insert a hyphen; if you were to hyphenate the word to the right of this point, the word-segment to the left of the hyphen would still be too long to fit on the line. For this reason, you will find that the cursor won't move past this point in the word. The vertical line does NOT mark the point where you are "supposed" to insert the hyphen; that decision is up to you (and your dictionary).
Enter headline/printer-code?
This performs two distinct, but connected, functions: First, it gives you the option of entering some text onto the formatted page which will appear above the main body of your text. If the text of your source file is an article for a newsletter, for example, you could use this option to enter a headline to the article. This headline will NOT be formatted in columns like the rest of the text; it will just extend across the page. The second function has to do with printer control codes. In addition to (or instead of) adding a text headline to your formatted file, you can also add control-characters which send special instructions to your printer.
As an example, let's say you're using an ImageWriter II printer, and you want to format a newsletter article with a headline. To do this, you will set "Enter headline/printer-code?" to "Y". Before Columnist starts processing your text file, it sends you to an editor screen. This is where you will enter the text of the headline, and also some printer control codes. First, since you want your headline to be in (let's say) underlined, boldface text, you check your ImageWriter reference card and see that the control codes to start this type of text are ESCAPE X and ESCAPE !, so you press these keys. (The <esc> character will appear on the screen as an inverse "[".) Then you enter the text of your headline. As a prompt on the editor screen explains, you can erase mistakes with <delete>. After your headline, you'll want to turn off the boldface and underlining, so following the ImageWriter card, you enter the characters ESCAPE Y and ESCAPE ". Now let's say you want the body of your text to be in Elite, semicondensed. The codes for this are ESCAPE E and ESCAPE e, so you enter these characters. You want to have a blank line between your headline and the main text, so now you press <return> once to start a new line in the headline editor. Your headline is finished, so you can press open-apple-<return> (as the editor screen prompt explains) to exit the editor.
Enter a page header?
Answering "Y" to this will allow you to enter one or more lines of text which will appear at the top of each formatted page. If your document has both a page headers and a headline, the header will be printed above the headline. You will enter the header text using the same editor that was described above for entering headlines. Again, you can enter text, or printer control characters, or both. Since you'll (most likely) want some blank lines between your page header and the body of the text, remember to enter these blank lines as part of the header.
The lines of the header will NOT be counted as part of the "Lines of text per page" setting described above. So if you have lines-per-page set to 56, and enter a 4 line header, there will actually be 60 lines to your formatted page.
If you select to enter a page header, an additional prompt on the Format Settings screen will ask you "Skip first page?" You might want to leave the header off of the first page of your formatted document -- to leave room for a newsletter masthead, for example -- and this second prompt allows you to do so.
Enter a page footer?
This is the same as the page header option, only the text you enter will appear at the bottom of each page. With a page footer, you'll want to enter a few blank lines BEFORE you enter the text of the footer, so there will be space between the body of the text and the footer. As with page headers, you have the option of leaving the footer off of the first page of the formatted document.
Both page headers and footers can include automatic page numbering, and can have segments that are left justified, centered, or right justified. For page numbering, simply include the character "#" in the text of a header or footer, and Columnist will replace this character with the appropriate page number. If you want the page numbering to start with something other than 1, enter a one- or two-digit number immediately after the "#". For example, the header "Page #7" would appear in the formatted file as "Page 7" on the first page, "Page 8" on the second, and so on. Columnist's page numbering is limited to two digits; i.e., 99 is the highest allowable number.
To center or right justify part or all of a header or footer, the backslash character ("\") is used, like so:
Left segment\Centered segment\Right segment
Thus, if you wanted a footer that put the page number at the center of a line, you would enter something like:
\This is page #
as your footer text. The footer:
Columnist News\\Page #
would put "Columnist News" at the left side of the page, and the page number on the right. The centering and right justification will work correctly only if the text of the header or footer is the same size (in characters per inch) as the text of the body of the page.
The line-length prompt:
At the bottom of the Format Settings screen there is a status line reading:
"Length of each line (including left margin) will be ## characters".
As you enter changes into any of the menu items that effect the line length, you'll see that the number in this line is updated. Remember, if you are going to be printing your file with a standard 10-characters-per-inch type font on standard sized paper, this figure should not be more than 80.
You can use the up and down arrow keys to move the cursor to different items on this screen. Move the cursor past the bottom item, or press open-apple and <return>, and you will be prompted with "Settings okay?". Press Y or <return>, and Columnist will go to work and format your document.
Just one more:
There is one more option available on the Page Format Settings screen, but because it's something you will rarely want to use, it's hidden away. This option controls the speed of Columnist's blinking cursor. Apples run at quite a range of speeds these days, so I thought this would be a nice thing to give the user control over. With the cursor in one of the upper levels of the Page Format Settings screen, press open-apple-B (for Blink). A new line will appear on the screen, prompting you: "Cursor blink (0 - 9):" Enter a digit and the change will be immediate. As is explained below, this setting, like the other format settings, can be made permanent to your copy of Columnist.
The "Done" Menu
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When Columnist has finished formatting a file and has saved it to disk, it displays a "Done!" message and a final menu. The items on this menu are:
<V>-View this file:
Pressing V will cause the formatted file to be displayed on-screen. The file will be shown one page at a time. If the page is too long or too wide (more than 80 characters to each line) to fit on the screen, then the four arrow keys can be used to scroll the text up, down, left and right. Above the displayed page, there is a prompt showing the current page and the total pages, like: "Page 1 of 5". Pressing <N> will load the next page for viewing, and <P> the previous page. An on-screen prompt explains this.
<P>-Print this file:
Reasonably self-explanatory. After pressing P, you will be prompted for your printer slot number.
<F>-Format another file:
This selection will send you back to the beginning of Columnist to choose another file for conversion.
<A>-Format another file, appending it to this file:
This allows you to put several source files together into one formatted object file. Several articles in separate files could be combined into one formatted newsletter file, for example. The text of a file that is appended will "pick up" wherever the text of the previous source file ended -- usually somewhere in the middle of a page. When you select to append a file, all of the page format settings will remain the same, including any page header or footer that you entered. You will be prompted to enter a new headline for each appended file. The <A>ppend option will only be available if you selected to even-off the columns on the last page.
<S>-Save format settings to disk for future defaults:
This item will appear only if you have made changes to the page format settings, to the default printer slot, or to the prefix used when selecting a source file. When the page format settings menu is first displayed, there are default settings already in place. You can accept all of these values, or change any of them. If you have made changes, you may want the values that you entered to be the default values that appear the next time you use Columnist. This menu selection lets you do this. After you press S, the page format settings will be re-displayed, and you will be asked: "Make these settings the new defaults? Y/N" Press Y or <return>, and the new defaults will be written into your copy of Columnist. You may want to keep several copies of Columnist on hand, each with different default settings for different jobs.
In addition to the page format settings and the printer slot, the prefix of your source file will also be saved to disk. If this prefix is online (available) the next time you run Columnist, then it will automatically be the default prefix shown when you are prompted to select a source file.
<Q>-Quit:
Exits you from Columnist.
Using a formatted file in your word processor
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The multi-column file that Columnist creates will be a type TXT file. As mentioned, you may want to load this file back into your word processor to modify and/or print it. To load a TXT file into AppleWorks, you first select "Make a new file for the Word Processor" from AppleWorks' Add Files menu, and then select "From a text (ASCII) file" from the Word Processor menu. When you load a Columnist file into any word processor, there are some things that should be kept in mind. For one, make sure that the line length in your WP is set to at least the length of the lines created by Columnist. Otherwise, if your WP inserts its own line-breaks, your file will look completely jumbled on your WP's display. In AppleWorks, you get maximum line length by setting the left and right margins to 0. Most word processors, including AppleWorks, cannot correctly display a Columnist file if the line length of the file is more than 79 characters. One exception to this is the FreeWare WP "FrEdWriter" which is available from most Apple user groups for a few dollars.
You must also make sure that the point at which your WP inserts a page break is in agreement with the lines-per-page setting used by Columnist. Since the text flows from the bottom of column 1 to the top of column 2 on the same page, and then (assuming a two-column document) to the top of column 1 on the next page, the file won't make sense if the page breaks are in the wrong place. Your WP may have "Top Margin" and "Bottom Margin" settings which will also have to be taken into account.
If you are printing a Columnist-created file from a WP, be sure NOT to use a "proportional" font, as this would defeat the formatting.
Hints and Suggestions
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If your Apple has 128k or more, you may find it helpful to use the /RAM disk to save your object file while you experiment with different page format settings. That is, enter a pathname like /RAM/TEMP at the "Object file:" prompt. Then, when you have a layout you like, you can save it permanently by formatting the source file again with the same settings, this time saving the object file to a real disk.
As has been noted, Columnist provides you with a "Print" option at two points in the program. Usually, you will want to print the object file immediately after formatting it, using the Print selection in the "Done!" menu. Sometimes, however, you may want to print a file that you formatted at some earlier date. The Print option in the catalog display is provided for this purpose. When you press P from the catalog display, you will be prompted: "Enter number of lines per page, or press <return> if file includes form-feeds:" This prompt isn't needed when you print a file from the "Done!" menu, because Columnist already knows the lines-per-page count for the file. If you expect that you will be using the catalog-screen print option with a file, you can save yourself the trouble of remembering the lines-per-page count by including form-feed characters in the file. To do this, select to "Enter a page footer" in the Page Format Settings screen. Then, when entering the text of the page footer, enter control-L as the LAST (or only) character of your footer. Control-L is a "form-feed"; when your printer sees this character, it will automatically move to the top of the next page.
Help?
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If you have any problems or questions regarding Columnist, the best way to reach me is on GEnie. My Email address there is K.BUNKER. You can also phone me at (617) 522-2807, 6:00 pm to 10:00 pm, eastern time.
