Oakland CPM Archive/oakcpm.iso/sigm/vol109/abstract.109

Text File | 1984-04-29 | 3.5 KB | 53 lines

       SECRTARY WORD PROCESSOR PRELIMINARY DOCUMENTATION

    Once upon a time many years ago when North Star first started putting
out systems, there was a need for a word processor that was easy to use,
easy to learn, and cheap.  There were very few word processors available
and none available for North Star DOS.  Video terminals and full screen
editors were not common, most systems used ASR33 teletypes for I/O and
most people had much less than 64K of memory.
    This led to the development of MARYELLN, a word processor for the
North Star DOS.  It used less than 8K of memory so the rest of RAM could
hold the text, it was line oriented instead of screen oriented so it
could be used with a TTY, and most of the commands were similar to the
ones used in North Star BASIC.  Anyone knowing BASIC could immediately use
MARYELLN.  The source code was assembled using an early assembler that
required that all of the code be resident in memory at one time.  Therefore
to save memory, comments were kept to a minimum.  Later it took 2, 3 and
eventually 5 files to assemble separately and link together to form
the final program.  MARYELLN did all the usual editor/word processor
functions: edit, load, save, justify, line fill, center, number pages,
move, copy, find, list, print, and change.
    Later, MARYELLN, was greatly enhanced and was renamed SECRTARY (8 characters)
because of so many questions about why it was called MARYELLN.  The enhanced
features included a more sophisticated installation procedure, underlining,
imbedded commands, line wrap around on input, automatic insertion of names and
addresses from a BASIC file, additional commands like STATUS, and the ability
to load North Star BASIC programs in token format, convert them to ASCII,
and edit them as a normal SECRTARY file.  I should point out that a "normal
SECRTARY file" used the format of the old assembler or programs such as XEK,
SCS etc where the line consisted of a character count, 2 byte binary line number
the text, and a carriage return (no line feed).
    SECRTARY still consisted of five source files which had to be assembled
separately and there were very few comments.  SECRTARY is still popular
today on North Star systems.  The source code was merged together and
maintained under CP/M however (some 5000 lines of it).  Later, a CP/M version
was implemented.  By this time, however, full screen editors were popular
and the limitation of line numbers and memory resident files was unpopular
for large text files even with the "CHAIN" command.
    SECRTARY is now available to CPM users  for people who need a
word processor for a few letters but do not want the expense or
complications of the more extensive full screen editors.
    To get SECRTARY to work, first assemble it using ASM or MAC.  It uses
8080 code not Z80 code.  The full user manual is contained in files
USERMAN0.TXT, USERMAN1.TXT, USERMAN2.TXT etc.  After loading the program,
execute it and enter the command "LOAD USERMAN1.TXT". The program will
load the file and tell you the size.  Then type "LIST" (no quotes) and the
file will be listed on the screen.  To get a hard copy of it, first enter
the command "DEVICE L" to have the listing or printing go to the list device.
(LIST shows line numbers and control commands, PRINT justifies, and applies
the commands to the final text).  After setting the device to the list device,
simply enter the command PRINT.  Each file will "CHAIN" in the next file
and you will have the full user manual which will teach you to use the other
features.  "DEVICE C" returns the print or listing to the console device.