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1993-03-06
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SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS AND STARTING
The HomeCraft Personal Journal runs on any IBM
or compatible PC with an EGA or VGA monitor and
graphics card. Although the program will run from
a floppy drive, a hard drive is almost necessary if
you intend to read illustrated documents, due to
the graphics overhead. You should also have at
at least 256K of RAM (512K recommended) and DOS 2.1
or higher. If you run Microsoft Windows, you must
run this program as a DOS application. Consult the
Windows manual for details.
To start the program from DOS, just type HPJ
and press the ENTER key.
THE CONTROL PANEL
The control panel is the area visible at the bottom of your
screen while you're reading. Starting from the left, under the
title is a handy date and time display. Then there are graphic
representations of the ESC, PgUp, PgDn, Home, End, F1 and F2
keys. If you have a mouse (you can tell if it's operative by
checking to see if the arrow-shaped mouse cursor is visible)
you can "click" on the pictured keys by moving the mouse cursor
over the key, then pressing (and releasing) the LEFT mouse
button. Only the left mouse button is used in the HPJ. You can
also press the corresponding key on your PC keyboard, which, of
course, is your only option if you don't have a mouse.
Pressing the ESC key takes you back to the Table of contents.
Use the Page Up or Page Down keys (PgUp/PgDn on some keyboards) to
page through the document. Some readers allow "scrolling" one line
at a time with the up/down arrow keys. This is very hard on the eyes,
especially in graphic modes, as the text tends to "roll" down the
screen. The HPJ "pops up" each page in sequence, which is more like
turning pages in a book. The same method is used with the HOME and
END keys, which take you to the first and last pages of an article.
Finally, the F1 key presents a brief help screen (F1 accesses help
in most PC programs) which summarizes the information in this and the
last two paragraphs. Pressing F2 brings up the Reader Options Menu,
shown to the right. This can be
considered the "main menu" of the
HPJ. All "pop up" menus operate
the same way. You can "click"
on your choice with the mouse, or
press the number key that corre-
sponds to the selection you want.
Every menu also has a "Quit This
Menu" option, in case you change
your mind, or brought up the
menu by mistake. There are also instructions for each menu in a
window just right of the options (not shown here).
TABLE OF CONTENTS
When you select "Table of Contents" (or press ESC while reading
an article) the Table of Contents (TOC) screen appears. The right side
of the screen lists the articles for that issue. Just point to your
choice and press the left mouse button. The article will be loaded and
the first page displayed. You can also use the up or down arrow keys
and move the small arrow to the article you want, then press ENTER.
If you don't have a mouse, you must use this method. This screen is
also where you quit the HPJ. Either select the "Quit to DOS" option
or press ESC. An "Are you sure?" message will appear. Press "Y" to
quit, or any other key to cancel the quit request.
The Bookmark Feature
For your convenience the HPJ will let you set an "electronic
bookmark". If you are interrupted or for any reason have to leave
the HPJ before you have finished reading an article, and you want to
return to the exact article and page the next time you start the HPJ,
just press CTRL-B (hold down the CTRL key and press the 'B' key once).
A message will appear that says "Bookmark file written..." The next
time you start the HPJ it will bypass the Table of Contents and load
in the article you were reading, then pop up the page you were on when
you set the bookmark. There can only be one bookmark file, so if you
set another one it overwrites the first. If you don't set another book-
mark, then the first one is deleted so you won't be sent back to your
previous place then next time you start the HPJ.
PRINT CURRENT PAGE/ARTICLE
The first real submenu,
PRINT CURRENT PAGE/ARTICLE
gives you several options
for printing. Here "page"
refers to that part of the
document visible on the screen.
The first two options produce
graphic prints, which will
include any illustrations on
the page. Be sure to select
the correct type of printer. Option 1 is ONLY for laser printers.
All others should select Option 2, if you want a graphic print. Color
printing is not supported. The third and fourth options will produce
a text-only printout, which is quicker and uses less ribbon or toner.
Option 3 prints only the text on the current screen page, which would
be handy for getting a bibliography, addresses or other info. very
quickly. The fourth option prints the entire .DOC file. (In fact,
you could print this article right now by selecting this option!)
When selecting any of the print options, always be sure your
printer is on line and has a good supply of paper. When you select
a print option, the mouse cursor will disappear and you will not be
able to page or do any other program action for a few seconds while
the program formats the data and sends it to the printer. (This
generally only happens when you select a graphic printing.) Soon a
message box will appear with a "Printing..." message, and printing
will begin. Depending on the size of the printer's buffer, you
may have to wait before resuming reading. The length of this wait
will depend on how much there is to print. One-page jobs are
shorter than whole-document dumps, and graphics printing takes
longer than text-only. When printing is complete, the HPJ sends a
"formfeed" code which will eject the last page printed.
If you should accidentally select the laser graphic option when
you have a dot matrix or other non-laser printer, just turn off the
printer. The printing data stream should "time out" after a while
and return control to the program. If somehow you lose complete
control, just power everything down and try again.
CHANGE TEXT/BACKGROUND COLORS
The next submenu lets you
select from seven different color
combinations for the text display.
The normal or "default" text and
background colors is Option 1,
black text on a light cyan (a sort
of blue-green) background. This
provides a nice high-contrast color
scheme that mimics paper documents,
but avoids a bright white back-
ground, which would be too bright
for a PC screen.
The other color combinations are
all high-contrast combinations that have been used with many popular
PC word-processing programs. Color is a highly personal issue--each
of us reacts differently to different combinations, so the HPJ offers
some options to the default display.
When you select a color scheme, the program redisplays the same
page of the document you were reading in the new color scheme. One
nice feature of the HPJ is that it remembers your current color scheme
when you load in a new file, so that the first page of the new article
will be displayed with the same colors used with the previous article.
One word of caution is in order about changing colors: often the
pictures in an HPJ document are designed to "blend in" with the cyan
background, so rectangular "borders" may appear when you select a
different color scheme. The borders are always there, of course,
you just don't see them with the default color scheme.
SEARCH FOR A WORD/PHRASE
The last option is the word/phrase search. This is not a submenu,
but a "pop-up" input screen. (It will be shown on the next page.)
This feature is one of the biggest advantages of a diskzine over
hardcopy magazines. Say you're reading a long article and want to
find all references to PC software. It would take a LONG time to
skim through the magazine and mark each occurence of "PC software."
But the computer can do this in a split-second, making such research
actually pleasant!
To enter a word or a
phrase you want to search
for, either press the F2
key or click on the F2
icon below, then select
Option 4 from the Reader
Options Menu. The box
shown on the right will
appear. Like all sub-
menus and input screens
in the HPJ, it has in-
structions provided on
the screen itself. Just type in the word or phrase you want to
search for, then press ENTER. (You might want to press the HOME
key first, to start your search from the beginning of the file.)
You can correct mistakes while typing the word or phrase with the
backspace key, or toggle insert and typeover modes with the insert
key.
When you press ENTER the IR searches for the word or phrase, and
takes you to the page where it first occurs. It finds the line
containing the word or phrase occurs and "highlights" it in
reverse colors, as if someone used a colored marker to highlight
the line in a book. (The only difference is that this highlight-
ing isn't permanent!)
Word/phrase searches are limited to 24 characters maximum, which
is an arbitrary limit that should suffice for most searches. If you
need to find larger strings, e.g., "antidisestablishmentarianism,"
just type in the first 24 characters and this should work just as
well. Searches are case-sensitive--a search for "March" will not stop
on every occurence of "march." To repeat a search, all you have to
to is use the handy "hot key." This is the ALT-S combination, which
is activated by pressing the "s" key while holding down the ALT key.
The reader software for the HomeCraft Personal Journal was de-
signed to be "user-friendly" and instinctive to use, but there is
always room for improvement. If you have suggestions or comments,
just drop us a line.