home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
A.C.E. 2
/
ACE CD 2.iso
/
FILES
/
DOCS
/
EXCELLED.LHA
/
Excellence.doc
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1994-11-27
|
240KB
|
5,879 lines
EXCELLENCE!
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1: MAKING A COPY OF THE MASTER DISK......................1
Duplicating Excellence! With One Drive...........................3
Duplicating Excellence! With Two Drives..........................9
Making a Data Diskette..........................................12
Initializing a Data Disk With One Drive.........................13
Initializing a Data Disk With Two Drives........................15
CHAPTER 2: EXCELLENCE! FOR THE NEW USER.........................19
Loading Excellence!.............................................20
The Project Window..............................................23
Entering Text...................................................28
Moving the Insertion Point......................................30
Editing a Paragraph.............................................31
Replacing a Word................................................32
Deleting a Word.................................................34
Highlighting Text...............................................36
Selecting Menu Items............................................40
Saving Documents................................................44
Multiple Fonts..................................................48
Undo Typing.....................................................51
Cut and Paste...................................................52
Revert To Saved.................................................57
Changing Your Ruler Settings....................................58
Copying Ruler Settings..........................................64
Hanging Indents.................................................68
Paragraph Alignment.............................................70
Tab Settings....................................................72
Ruler Notes.....................................................74
Multiple Columns................................................75
Hyphenation.....................................................77
Show Markers....................................................82
Inserting a Picture.............................................84
Pictures and Text...............................................86
Nonbreaking Spaces..............................................88
Find and Replace................................................89
Check Spelling..................................................93
Printing a Document.............................................97
PostScript Printing............................................102
Quitting Excellence!...........................................104
Backing Up Documents...........................................105
CHAPTER 3: MENU COMMAND SUMMARY................................107
Project Menu...................................................108
Edit Menu......................................................112
Format Menu....................................................114
View Menu......................................................116
Font Menu......................................................118
Style Menu.....................................................119
Document Menu..................................................121
CHAPTER 4: ADVANCED FEATURES OF EXCELLENCE!....................123
Multiple Project Windows.......................................124
Activating a Window............................................128
Multiple Project Window Rules..................................129
Advanced Highlighting Operations...............................131
Font and Style Substitutions...................................134
Identical Ruler Changes........................................136
Relative Ruler Changes.........................................138
Formatting Documents...........................................140
Finding the Right Word.........................................147
Checking Your Grammar..........................................151
Creating an Index and Table of Contents........................160
Generating an Index and Table of Contents......................163
The Clipboard..................................................164
Scaling and Cropping Pictures..................................168
Printing Mailing Labels With Mail Merge........................174
Creating a Mail Merge Data File................................177
Glossary.......................................................181
Creating a Style Sheet.........................................189
Memory Management..............................................191
Text Files.....................................................192
Excellence Files and ASSIGN Commands...........................193
CHAPTER 5: QUICK REFERENCE GUIDE...............................197
Project Menu...................................................198
Edit Menu......................................................238
Format Menu....................................................242
View Menu......................................................249
Font Menu......................................................253
Style Menu.....................................................256
Document Menu..................................................259
Glossary Entry Commands........................................276
Highlighting Text With the Glossary............................278
Changing an Existing Glossary Entry............................279
Keyboard Commands..............................................280
Troubleshooting Tips...........................................284
Printer Preferences............................................286
Printing Sideways..............................................289
Conserving Memory..............................................290
GLOSSARY.......................................................291
INDEX......................................................Index-1
APPENDIX................................................Appendix-1
INTRODUCTION
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Congratulations on purchasing Excellence! Micro-Systems Software's word
processing program for the Commodore Amiga personal computer.
Excellence! is a "What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get" word processor. You may use
any combination of text and pictures and know that what you see on the
screen is what appears on the printer.
CHAPTER 1
~~~~~~~~~
MAKING A COPY OF THE MASTER DISK
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excellence! requires a Commodore Amiga 500, 1000, or 2000 with 512K of RAM
and one or more disk drives. Kickstart and Workbench 1.2 or higher is
recommended. While Excellence! boots with 512K of RAM, 1MB provides the
greatest flexibility. See the section titled Conserving Memory in Chapter 5
for more information.
Caution
~~~~~~~
Some of the features described in this manual may not function fully with
only 512K of RAM. Micro-Systems recommends a minimum of 1MB of memory to
take advantage of Excellence!'s capabilities.
Excellence! is compatible with most add-on Memory Expansion boards and hard
disks that operate during Amiga DOS. The following items were tested at
Micro-Systems Software:
Memory Expansion Boards Hard Disk Drives
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Alegra 1/2MB Byte-by-Byte Pal Jr.
C-LTD 1MB C-LTD
COMSPEC 2MB Microforge 40MB
SupraDrive 20MB
Excellence! is not copy-protected. Micro-Systems feels that quality
software at a reasonable price is the best way to encourage people to
purchase the program instead of "sharing" it. Giving away commercial
software is stealing and may force us to raise our prices. Because of the
lack of copy protection, you can make duplicate copies of the master
disks.
The Excellence! package contains two floppy disks, located in the disk
case. Please read the Micro-Systems Software License Agreement before
breaking the seal on the package.
One disk is marked Disk 1 and the other Disk 2. Disk 1 contains a full 1.2
Workbench and Disk 2 the Excellence! program and associated files. Make
sure the write protect tabs on both disks are in the write protect mode. On
the back of each disk is a black tab - move it to the top so a hole is
visible.
Now turn on your computer and insert Disk 1 when prompted for a Workbench
diskette. If you haven't booted with Disk 1, please reboot your computer by
pressing both Amiga keys and the Ctrl key simultaneously. Insert Disk 1
when your Amiga prompts you to insert a Workbench diskette.
The following sections describe how to make a duplicate copy of the
Excellence! diskette.
DUPLICATING Excellence! WITH ONE DRIVE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When the Workbench screen appears, remove Disk 1 and insert Disk 2 in the
internal drive. Since Disk 1 contains just the Workbench, this section
describes the duplication of your program disk.
Move the mouse pointer to the Excellence! disk icon and click once. The
disk's icon shutter moves from the right to the left.
Press and hold the right mouse button. A list of menus appear at the top of
the screen. move the mouse pointer to the Workbench menu item. When the
pull-down menu appears, move the mouse pointer and highlight the word
Duplicate. Release the right mouse button. The message Please replace
volume Workbench in any drive appears. Remove Disk 2 and insert Disk 1.
After a few moments of disk access you'll see the message Please replace
volume Excellence! in any drive. Do so and a requester displays:
Put Excellence!
( FROM disk ) in drive DF0:
Continue Cancel
Since the Excellence! disk is already n drive 0, click the Continue gadget.
The copying process begins and continues until you see the following
message:
Put DESTINATION disk
( TO disk ) in drive DF0:
Continue Cancel
Wait until the red light on the disk drive goes out and replace the
Excellence! diskette with the disk you want to use for your duplicate copy.
It doesn't matter whether this disk is blank or already formatted. Never
remove a disk while the drive light is on! Click the Continue gadget and
the Amiga writes the information to the new disk.
This procedure continues several times, FROM one disk TO the other, until
your Amiga duplicates the entire Excellence! disk.
The new diskette is named copy of Excellence!. Click the disk icon and
press the right mouse button. Move the pointer to the Workbench pull-down
menu again. Highlight rename and release the mouse.
A window with the new disk's volume name appears in the middle of the
screen. Press the DEL key until the cursor is on the "e" n Excellence!
The next step is very important, since Excellence! relies on the disk's
volume name to locate its files. When you have deleted the "copy of" from
the name, press Return. The disk's new volume name is under the icon.
Congratulations! You have successfully made a copy of your Excellence!
program disk.
If you wish, repeat these steps for Disk 1, which contains the Workbench.
You may use Excellence! with any Workbench disk, but if you want to use the
one included with your package please duplicate it first.
After you've finished, file your master disks away in a safe place and
re-boot the Amiga using the duplicate copies.
DUPLICATING Excellence! WITH TWO DRIVES
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Boot up your Amiga with Disk 1 and wait until the Workbench screen appears.
Load the disk you wish to use for your duplicate copy into the external
drive, it doesn't matter whether you use a blank disk or one already
formatted. If it is an unformatted disk, a name like DF1:BAD may appear. If
previously formatted, you will see the disk's volume name.
Remove Disk 1 and insert Disk 2. You should now see three disk icons on the
Workbench screen. Click the Excellence! disk icon and hold the left mouse
button. Drag the mouse pointer to the disk icon for the destination disk.
Attached to the mouse pointer is a "ghost" image of the Excellence! disk
icon.
Release the left mouse button. When the Excellence! disk icon is over the
destination disk icon. The message Please replace volume Workbench in any
drive appears. Remove Disk 2 and insert Disk 1. After a few moments of disk
access you'll see the message Please replace volume Excellence! in any
drive. Do so and a requester displays:
Put Excellence!
( FROM disk ) in drive DF0:
Put DESTINATION disk
( TO disk ) in drive DF1:
Continue Cancel
Since your Excellence! disk is already in drive DF0: and your destination
disk is in drive DF1:, click the Continue gadget. When the red disk drive
lights go out, the copying process is complete. Never remove a disk while
the drive light is on!
The new diskette is named copy of Excellence!. Click the disk icon and
press the right mouse button. Move the pointer to the Workbench pull-down
menu again. Highlight Rename and release the mouse.
A window with the new disk's volume name appears in the middle of the
screen. Press the Del key until the cursor is on the "e" in Excellence!
The next step is very important, since Excellence! relies on the disk's
volume name to locate its files. When you have deleted the "copy of" from
the name, press Return. The disk's new volume name is under the icon.
Congratulations! You have successfully made a copy of your Excellence!
program disk.
If you wish, repeat these steps for Disk 1, which contains the Workbench.
You may use Excellence! with any Workbench disk, but if you want to use the
one included with your package please duplicate it first.
After you've finished, file your master disks away in a safe place and
re-boot the Amiga using the duplicate copies.
MAKING A DATA DISKETTE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It is always a good idea to keep your documents on a disk by themselves.
This helps to prevent filling your Excellence! program disk too quickly.
Follow these instructions as the tutorials in Chapters 2 and 4 refer to a
document data disk.
INITIALIZING A DATA DISK WITH ONE DRIVE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Remove the disk from your internal drive and insert the blank disk to store
your documents. This process erases all the information from the disk.
Therefore, if the disk contains anything valuable, please use another.
Click the disk icon once. The icon's shutter moves from the right to the
left. Press the right mouse button and move the mouse pointer to the Disk
pull-down menu. Highlight Initialize and release the mouse button.
Follow the instructions when prompted to swap the Workbemch and the blank
disk. If you initialize a previously formatted disk, your Amiga looks for
the disk with that volume name. Otherwise, it prompts you to insert the
disk to initialize and click the Continue gadget. This next requester
appears. This is your last chance to prevent the data on the disk from bing
irretrevably lost.
Ok to Initialize disk in
drive DF1:
( all data will be erased) ?
Continue Cancel
Click the Continue gadget to continue or Cancel to abort. When Workbench
finishes initializing the disk the volume name Empty appears below the disk
icon.
Use the Rename function like you did before and rename the disk with the
volume name Documents.
INITIALIZING A DATA DISK WITH TWO DRIVES
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Remove the disk from your internal drive and insert the blank disk to store
your documents. This process erases all the information from the disk.
Therefore, if the disk contains anything valuable, please use another.
Click the disk icon once. The icon's shutter moves from the right to the
left. Press the right mouse button and move the mouse pointer to the Disk
pull-down menu. Highlight Initialize and release the mouse button.
Follow the instructions when prompted to swap the Workbemch and the blank
disk. If you initialize a previously formatted disk, your Amiga looks for
the disk with that volume name. Otherwise, it prompts you to insert the
disk to initialize and click the Continue gadget. This next requester
appears. This is your last chance to prevent the data on the disk from bing
irretrevably lost.
Ok to Initialize disk in
drive DF1:
( all data will be erased) ?
Continue Cancel
Click the Continue gadget to continue or Cancel to abort. When Workbench
finishes initializing the disk the volume name Empty appears below the disk
icon.
Use the Rename function like you did before and rename the disk with the
volume name Documents.
Now, you have your master disks copied and a data disk ready to store
documents. Please turn to Chapter 2 to begin using Excellence!
CHAPTER 2
~~~~~~~~~
EXCELLENCE! FOR THE NEW USER
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Welcome to the Excellence! tutorial for the new user. Whether you are new
to the Amiga, word processors or Excellence!, this chapter guides you with
easy to understand examples. In no time at all you'll be able to compose
anything from a business letter to a newsletter.
This tutorial continually expands on ideas introduced in each section. It
is to your benefit to follow the examples in this tutorial at least once.
Caution
~~~~~~~
Some of the features described in this manual may not function fully with
only 512K of RAM. Micro-Systems recommends a minimum of 1MB of memory to
take advantage of Excellence!'s capabilities.
Excellence! is much more than a word processor. It is a writer's tool
sophisticated enough to meet many desktop publishing needs. In a very short
time you'll have a flair for Excellence!
If there is a topic you do not understand, look at Chapter 5, the Quick
Reference Guide, for a complet explanation.
LOADING EXCELLENCE!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you have not already done so, please boot your Amiga with Disk 1 or a
Workbench disk of your choice. When the Workbench screen appears, insert
Disk 2 which contains the Excellence! program. Double-click the Excellence!
disk icon.
There are several ways to load Excellence! The easiest way is to
double-click the Excellence! program. If you double-click a project icon,
it loads Excellence! with that particular document. Ony do this once. Since
each project icon loads the program, you waste memory with more than one
copy of Excellence! loaded. In the Documents drawer you'll find a few
sample documents. Ignore these for now.
You may also load the program from CLI. In a CLI window isn't present,
double-click the system drawer and then press the CLI icon. When the window
appears, type Excellence! and press Return. optionally, enter the document
you want Excellence! to load from the command line. For instance:
Excellence! df1:sales___ltr
Excellence! letters:january/sales__ltr
In the first example Excellence! looks on the disk in drive Df1: and opens
the document named sales__ltr.doc. Excellence! adds the filename extension
for you. In the second example Excellence! searches for the disk with the
volume name letters. If the disk isn't present, your Amiga prompts you to
insert it. Excellence! then searches in the sub-directory names january for
the file named sales __ltr.doc. Again, the .doc extension is optional.
When Excellence! cannot find the document you entered it displays the
message File not found! Excellence! displays its main screen and waits for
your next command.
Please load Excellence! without a project icon. After a few moments of disk
access you will see a project window. If you only have one disk drive your
Amiga will prompt you to insert your boot disk in the internal drive. This
is necessary, Excellence! needs certain information found on the Workbench
disk. From time to time, as you use Excellence!, this will happen.
Selecting a new font is just one example.
THE PROJECT WINDOW
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The project window is the heart of Excellence! From here you do all the
creating, editing and finally, printing.
Title Bar
~~~~~~~~~
When you first load Excellence! the title bar displays the project name
Untitled-1.doc. When you save the document to disk the title bar shows the
new filename.
Ruler
~~~~~
The ruler displays and lets you change the setting for the paragraph. An
explanation of the ruler is found later in this tutorial.
Scroll arrows
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To view different parts of a document, use the scroll arrows found at the
bottom of and the right side of each window.
Click the scroll arrows to move the display in small increments, in the
direction of the arrow. Hold the left mouse button to scroll continuously.
Scroll bar
~~~~~~~~~~
To "page" through a document, click in the blank area next to the scroll
bar. For example, click below the vertical scroll bar to move the display
down one screen.
A third method lets you quickly move to any portion of the document. Point
at the scroll bar, click and hold the left mouse button. Move the scroll
bar to the approximate position in the document and release the mouse.
Page number indicator
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
At the right of the horizontal scroll bar is the page number indicator. As
you move the scroll bar, the current page number is automatically updated.
the page number indicator always reflects the page at the top of the
window.
Screen depth arrangers
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When you use move than one project window the screen depth arrangers let
you switch from one window to another easily.
Click the left arranger to "push" a window to the back. To make a window
active, either click the right arranger or click anywhere in the window.
Excellence! automatically brings the active window to the front. To place
an inactive window over an active, click he left screen depth arranger
twice.
TIP
~~~
Excellence!'s menu bar also has screen depth arrangers since it uses a
custom screen to display eight colors. Click on the left arranger to
display the Workbench or next custom screen. you may also press
Left-Amiga N then click to make that screen active. To return to the
Excellence! screen, press Left-Amiga M and click.
Every Amiga program which uses a custom screen should have screen depth
arrangers on the menu bar. Click the left screen depth arranger on the
menu bar to switch custom screens.
Re-size gadget
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This gadget lets you change the size of the project window. Click the
gadget and the window border changes color. Hold the moue button and move
the mouse pointer. Move the pointer to where you want the bottom right-hand
side of the window. Release the moue button and the window is re-drawn to
match the new border size. To move the location of the window, click on the
title bar, drag the window border and release.
Close window gadget
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Click the close window gadget to remove a project window. If the text in
the window contains text or was edited since the last Save, a requester
prompts you to store the changes.
If the document in the project window does not have a name, a default name
appears, along with these gadgets:
Yes
~~~
Closes the window and saves the changes under the name which appears on the
requester.
No
~~
Closes the window without saving any changes.
Cancel
~~~~~~
Leaves the window open without saving any changes.
Select Project Save As to store the changes under a different name.
Zoom gadget
~~~~~~~~~~~
At the far right of the title bar is the zoom gadget. This gadget is unique
to Excellence! It lets you work with multiple windows easier than you could
imagine.
The zoom gadget toggles the project window's position and size. If you have
a full-size window then shrink it down to one-quarter size, click this
gadget to return to a full-size window. To return to the small window,
click again.
The first window Excellence! displays is full size. If you click the zoom
gadget the window re-sizes to below the menu bar. This lets you return o
the Workbench screen without pressing the Left-Amiga N key.
Insertion point
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the middle of the project window is the blinking insertion point.
Whatever you type from the keyboard appears to the right of the insertion
point. You can move the insertion point with the mouse or arrow keys.
ENTERING TEXT
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The only think you should see in the window is the insertion pint. Anything
tped appears to the right of the insertion point. Also, the insertion point
moves to the right, so the character you entered is on the left.
Please type the following, without pressing the return key.
Excellence! processes words perfectly. With this program there is not limit
to what you can do.
If you make a mistake, press the Backspace key to correct. Notice when you
typed the word is, it automatically movd the word and the insertion point
to the next line. This is known as word wrap. Excellence! automatically
adjusts the paragraph so words which don't fit on one line wrap to the
next.
A paragraph can b a few words, a picture with several sentences or no
characters at all. Until you press the Return key Excellence! treats all
new text from the last carriage return as a paragraph. Word wrap works best
when you press the Return key at the end of a paragraph and not at the end
of every line. This lets Excellence! reformat the paragraph when you make
mistakes.
Excellence! hides the mouse pointer when you type and it stays hidden until
you move the mouse. This gives you an unobstructed view of the screen when
editing a document.
MOVING THE INSERTION POINT
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Changes made to a document are done from the insertion point. Therefore,
you need to know how to move it. There are a copule of ways to relocate the
insertion point. The preferred way for many is to move the I-beam shaped
mouse pointer to the correct place in the document and click.
Also, you may use the arrow keys. Press an arrow key and the insertion pint
moves one character or line in that direction. Press an Alt-Right arrow to
jump one word to the right. Alt-Left arrow moves the insertion pont to the
beginning of the previous word. Refer to the section titled Keyboard
Commands in Chapter 5 for a complete list.
EDITING A PARAGRAPH
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Look at the sentences you typed earlier. Move the I-beam to the left of the
word "program" and click. If you're move comfortable using the arrow keys,
go right ahead.
If the insertion point is not directly to the left of the word, try again.
With proportional fonts the characters aren't the same width, you may not
get it there on the first try. It should take very little time before you
can place the insertion point perfectly.
Type the word 'new' and press the space bar. Again, Excellence! wraps the
words to fit within the margins.
REPLACING A WORD
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excellence! is always in the insertion mode. That is, whatever you type
from the insertion point continuusly moves all text to the right. There is
no "overtype" mode, where every new character you type deletes the old.
However, Excellence! does have a replace feature.
Double-click the word 'new' and it becomes highlighted.
Now enter the word 'fantastic'. When you type the first character Excellence!
deletes the word 'new' and inserts the new word or words.
DELETING A WORD
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
While the replace feature is useful, often you need to delete the word. The
easiest way is to double-click he word and press the DEL key.
For example, double-click the word 'fantastic'.
Now press the DEL key. Since the word was in the middle of a sentence here
is an extra space so press the DEL key once more.
HIGHLIGHTING TEXT
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There are times when large amounts of words need to be deleted or replaced.
This is done by highlighting the text and either typing in the replacement,
or pressing the Del key.
To perform an operation which affects specific characters, words or
paragraphs you first highlight the text and then select the menu command.
You may highlight text with the mouse or the keyboard. With the mouse, move
the I-beam to the correct position and click. Continue to press the left
mouse button and drag the mouse pointer. When the highlighted area reaches
the window boundary, th text scrolls. The mouse pointer's position in the
window determines how fast to scroll the text. You can scroll in very small
increments, or large. Release the moues button to stop highlighting.
The text stays highlighted to select a menu command. Click anywhere in the
document or press one of the arrow keys to abort the hightlighting. Be
carefuyl that you don't type any characters from the keyboard unless you
intend to replace the highlighted text.
IF YOU ACCIDENTLY DELETE OR REPLACE HIGHLIGHTED TEXT, IMMEDIATELY SELECT
EDIT PASTE!
For those of you who have a fear of mice, you can easily highlight your
text from the keyboard. Just press the Shift key in combination with an
insertion point keyboard command.
To Highlight Press
~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~
Character right Shift-Right arrow
Character left Shift-Left arrow
Line up Shift-Up arrow
Line down Shift-Down arrow
Word right Shift-Alt-Right arrow
Word left Shift-Alt-Left arrow
Beginning of document Shift-Alt-Up arrow
End of document Shift-Alt-Down arrow
End of line or window Shift-Ctrl-Right arrow
Beginning line or window Shift-Ctrl-Left arrow
Top of window Shift-Ctrl-Up arrow
Bottom of window Shift-Ctrl-Down arrow
With the Ctrl-key combinations, press them again to "page" in that
direction.
You may increase or decrease a highlighted area by holding the shift key
and pressing one of the highlight commands.
To highlight the entire document, choose Select All from the Edit menu.
Using one of the above methods, highligh the first sentence in your sample
document.
Now you can see how Excellence! handles highlighted text. Press Right-Amiga
B to convert the text to boldface.
Notice how the text stays highlighted after the menu operation. Many of the
commands in Excellence! let you select another meny item to make additional
changes to the same text. Multiple style changes become easy.
Now highlight the second sentence and continue to the next section.
SELECTING MENU ITEMS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To choose a menu item with the mouse, press the right mouse button. The
menu bar displays the following items:
PROJECT EDIT FORMAT VIEW FONT STYLE DOCUMENT
Continue to press the right mouse button. Move the I-beam mouse pointer to
the menu bar. The first thing that happeins is the mouse pointer changes
from an I-beam to an arrow. When the mouse pointer touches one of the names
on the menu bar, a pull-down menu displays.
Now move the mouse pointer down the pull-down menu. As the pointer touches
a menu item, it is highlighted. Some menu items contain menus of their own.
These are known as pop-out menus. Move the mouse pointer to the right and
down the pop-out menu to highlight one of the menu items. When the desired
menu item is highlighted, release the right mouse button.
The View, Font and Style menu items have checkmarks next to the current
selection. When you choose one of these menu items, Excellence! updates the
checkmark on the menu.
Some menu items have a stylized A nest to them with a letter. You can
access these menu commands from the keyboard by pressing the Right-Amiga
key and the letter appearing next to the A.
Choose multiple menu items by clicking the left mouse button as you
highlight the menu selections. When you release the right mouse button the
menu functions perform in that order.
If your sample document is still on the screen and the second sentence
highlighted, try the following:
Press and hold the right mouse button. Move the mouse pointer to the menu
item Style. When the pull-down menu appears, move the pointer down the menu
and highlight Foreground. The pop-out menu appears with the color black
checkmarked. Move the mouse pointer to the right and down the pop-out menu
until you highlight the color red.
Release the right mouse button. The highlighted text becomes red. Go back
to the Style menu, the color red is checkmarked. These checkmarks always
reflect the current Font and Style to the left of the insertion point.
Select black again to return the text to its normal foreground color.
now you can try multiple menu commands on the same highlighted text. With
the sentence still highlighted, press the right mouse button and display
the Style menu. Move the mouse pointer to Bold and press the left mouse
button. The checkmark moves from Plain to Bold. Continue to hold both mouse
buttons and move the mouse pointer down the menu until checkmarks appear
next to Italic and Underline. Release the mouse button.
Now select Style Plain to return the sentence to its normal appearance.
Click anywhere in the document to abort the highlighting.
You may also assign menu commands to a glossary entry. For more information
refer to the section titled GLOSSARY in Chapter 4 or DOCUMENT GLOSSARY...in
Chapter 5.
SAVING DOCUMENTS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
One of the most important things you must do when creating a document is to
store it permanently on disk. This lets you retrieve it and either make
changes or print it again.
The sample document you practiced with during this portion of the tutorial
only exists in memory. If you turned off the computer or the power went
out, everything entered is lost.
Therefore, you need to save the document to disk. This is a simple
procedure. First, select Project Save. Since this document does not have a
name, a file requester appears.
Excellence!'s file requester lets you save or retrieve a document from
disk.
The top of the file requester contains the current volume/path. For this
tutorial you will use the data disk created in Chapter 1.
To the right of the volume/path is the filename pattern. The default is
.doc which Excellence! adds to a file. This lets you easily distinguish
Excellence! documents from other files.
Below the directory input area are the files which end in the extension
.doc. This area is probably empty right now.
After the list of files are the sub-directory names for that disk.
Sub-directory names appear in a different color and have the word < DIR >
next to them. To the right of each name appears the date and time the file
was last saved.
Next to the filenames and sub-directories is the proportional scroll bar.
Use this like the scroll bars in the project windows, only the filenames
scroll as you move the scroll bar.
The Drive gadget has Excellence! automatically switch the file display to
another floppy drive. If you only have one floppy drive, swap out floppy
disks while Excellence! displays the files in the empty RAM disk.
Now insert the disk with the volume name of DOCUMENTS. If you have only one
floppy drive, click the Drive gadget so the file requester displays RAM
Disk. Then insert the DOCUMENTS disk and click the Drive gadget again.
To the left of the Save gadget is the Text gadget. Leave it un-selected at
this time. Chapter 4 covers how and when to use the Text gadget.
Above the Save, Drive and Cancel gadgets is the Selection input area.
Excellence! normally activates it so you may enter the filename from the
keyboard without first clicking the mouse. However, since you clicked the
Drive gadget to change the disk to which Excellence! will store the
documents, you will need to activate it with the mouse.
Do so and enter the filename Sample and press return. Excellence!
automatically addes the .doc filename extension for you. To have Excellence!
add the filename extension, you may not use a . (period) as part of the
filename.
Now click the Save gadget or press S from the keyboard. The file requester
closes and the mouse pointer snoozes for several seconds. When Excellence!
finishes saving the file, the mouse pointer stops snoozing. That is all
there is to it.
Next to the Cancel gadget is the free disk space in kilobytes (KB) or
megabytes (MG). This is used to keep track of dwindling disk space for a
disk near its capacity. If you find yourself running out of disk space it
is best to save the document on another disk.
Notice the project window's title bar now contains the name Sample.doc. If
you make more editing changes just select Project Save. To store the
document under a new name, without overwriting the original, select Project
Save As.
Excellence! saves the file as it appears in the project window. This
includes all ruler settings, Font and Style attributes along with the
settings in Page Setup. You don't have to reformat the document or change
the page layout when you open the document later.
Files saved with Excellence! use an IFF file format. This format is used by
some word processors and desktop publishers and is not compatible with text
editors.
MULTIPLE FONTS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
One of the most valuable features of Excellence! is its ability to use any
legal Amiga font. Your Workbench disk contains several fonts, in different
sizes. The size of the font is in points.
Place the insertion point at the end of the document and Select Font Garnet
9. Single drive owners have to swap disks so Excellence! can open the new
font. When you have done that, type Excellence! even does fonts.
Be careful not to try every font you have. Excellence! must store the font
in memory and unless you have memory to waste, just experiment a little.
Excellence! looks at the character to the left of the insertion point to
determine the font and style to use. This lets you add a word or phrase to
existing text without worrying about constantly changing fonts. Excellence!
does that for you.
To demonstrate this, move the insertion point to one of the first two
sentences. Display the Font pull-down menu. Diamond 12 is check-marked. If
you added new text to the document, it would use this font.
Now place the insertion point before the word fonts in the last sentence.
Verify that the font is Garnet 9 from the pull-down menu. Excellence! even
lets you use multiple fonts within a sentence or word. Select Font Diamond
12 and enter the word multiple in front of the word fonts.
Not only does Excellence! automatically adjust fonts for you, it is
flexible enough to let you change fonts on the fly.
UNDO TYPING
~~~~~~~~~~~
Sometimes you'll make a mistake when typing. To reverse the last editing
changes you made to 'Sample.doc' select Edit Undo Typing. To restore the
text, select Edit Redo Typing.
This function only works until you move the insertion point to another
paragraph. Remember, a paragraph to Excellence! is any text separated with
a carriage return.
CUT AND PASTE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Before word processors, moving a sentence or paragraph involved using
scissors and glue, also known as Cut and Paste. With Excellence! Cut and
Paste eliminates the scissors and glue.
For this example you'll use one of the sample documents provided on your
Excellence! disk. Select Project Save to store your changes to the
'Sample.doc'. Now click the project window close gadget or choose the
Project Close command.
What you see now is the Excellence! main screen. Choose Project Open. When
you see the file requester enter the following:
Excellence!:documents/Gothic
press Return and click the Open gadget.
Excellence!'s file requester lets you open or save a file to another disk
other than the current by preceding the filename with a volume/path name.
Swap disks if prompted. After a few moments 'Gothic.doc' appears in a
project window.
Use the mouse pointer and highlight the line 'Chapter 15' along with the
blank paragraph below.
Choose Edit Cut. Excellence! erases the selected text and places it in the
clipboard. Move the insertion point back to the beginning of the document
and select Edit Paste.
The chapter reference now appears at the top of the document.
Once the text is in the clipboard you may paste it as often as you like. In
addition, you can replace text. Highlight 'Gothic Suspense' with the mouse
and select Edit Paste again.
Excellence! deleted the selected text with the contents of the clipboard.
If you ever accidentally highlight text and select Edit Cut or press the
DEL key, use Edit Paste immediately to restore the document.
Copy and Paste work similarly, except the original text stays in the
document.
REVERT TO SAVED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sometimes you make so many changes to a document that Edit Undo Typing just
doesn't help. When this happens, choose Project Revert To Saved. Please do
so now.
The message 'Abandon changes to "Gothic.doc"?' appears. You have one last
chance to abort. Click the Yes gadget and Excellence! reopens the original
copy of the document fromdisk. Click No and Excellence! returns to the
project window.
Remember, when you make changes to a document, Excellence! does not save
them until you tell it to.
CHANGING YOUR RULER SETTINGS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Before you learn how to adjust the ruler settings for a paragraph, take a
look at the ruler gadget.
Ruler Scale
~~~~~~~~~~~
Excellence! displays its ruler in inches or centimeters. See Page Setup for
more information.
Ruler markers
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To move any of the ruler markers, click the left mouse button and drag it
to the desired position and release. Excellence! automatically adjusts the
marker's position to the nearest ruler scale.
Left margin marker
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This marker determines where the left edge of the paragraph prints. The
left margin in Page Setup determines how far to the left this marker can
appear. When you move the left margin marker the indent marker
automatically adjusts.
Indent marker
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To auto-indent a paragraph click the indent marker and move it to the
right. As you enter each new paragraph, the first line appears at indent
marker position.
The default setting is for no indention. This aligns the indent marker with
the left margin marker to give the appearance of a right arrow.
Right margin marker
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This marker determines how far to the right edge of a pge a document
prints. You may place the right margin marker anywhere from the left margin
marker to the right margin definition.
Tab markers and gadgets
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excellence! has four different types of tabs:
LEFT
~~~~
Text etered at this tab position is flush left with the marker
CENTER
~~~~~~
Text entered at this position is automatically centered in relation to the
tab marker.
DECIMAL
~~~~~~~
Text entered at this position shifts to the left of the tab marker until
you press a (.) period. From then on, any text entered appears to the right
of the (.) period.
RIGHT
~~~~~
Text entered at this position is flush right with the marker.
Paragraph alignment gadgets
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
These gadgets adjust how a paragraph appears. There are four ways to format
a paragraph:
LEFT
~~~~
Align each line in the paragraph with the left margin. This is the default
setting.
JUSTIFIED
~~~~~~~~~
Aligns each line in the paragraph with the left and right margins. Excellence!
automatically inserts spaces in short lines (except for the last).
CENTERED
~~~~~~~~
This centers each line in the paragraph. No line padding is done. For
single line paragraphs you may also use a center tab.
FLUSH RIGHT
~~~~~~~~~~~
Aligns each line in the paragraph with the right margin. No line padding is
done, which gives the appearance of a ragged left paragraph.
Line spacing gadgets
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
These gadgets let you increase or decrease the amount of space between each
line of a paragraph. The default value is one greater than the default font
height. Excellence! always adjusts the line spacing so there is at least
one point between two lines, regardless of the font height.
INCREASE
~~~~~~~~
Increases the space between the two lines. Regardless of the value in the
gadget, unless the lines in the paragraph visibly move, there are not
enough points to increase the line spacing. The maximum value is 49.
DECREASE
~~~~~~~~
Decreases the number of points between each baseline. You may not decrease
the line spacing past what Excellence! requires to display two lines
properly.
The ruler displays the setting of the paragraph at the insertion point or
the first paragraph highlighted.
When you make ruler setting changes to one or more paragraphs, Excellence!
immediately updates them.
If 'Gothic.doc' is not present in the project window, please open it and
place the insertion point in the paragraph which starts with 'The next
day.'
Click the right margin marker and drag it to the 5 inch position. Press the
ALT key when moving a marker to precisely position it on the ruler.
Release the mouse button. Scroll the document so you can see the paragraphs
below.
Notice how the other paragraphs remain the same. Place the insertion point
in any of the paragraphs o see the ruler settings change.
COPYING RULER SETTINGS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This section discusses two types of ruler changes. The first one lets you
copy the ruler settings from one paragraph to another.
Suppose you need to change the ruler settings for several paragraphs and
hey are not located together. Rather than moving the insertion point to
each paragraph and making the changes by hand, use the Copy and Paste Ruler
commands.
With the insertion point on the paragraph you just changed, select Edit
Copy Ruler. Now highlight two of the paragraphs below and choose Edit Paste
Ruler. The selected paragraphs now have the same ruler settings as the
first.
To copy the ruler settings to individual paragraphs, place the insertion
point in the paragraph and select Edit Paste Ruler. Use the Select All
command to highlight the entire document when making global ruler changes.
This second example makes the same 'type' of ruler change without affecting
the other ruler settings. Suppose you need to adjust only the left margin
of several paragraphs without changing the right margin.
Move the left margin from 1 inch to 2. Notice the right margin and other
ruler settings for the highlighted paragraphs stayed the same.
HANGING INDENTS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A normal indent moves the first line of the paragraph to the right of the
wrapped lines. Hanging indents align the first line of a paragraph further
to the left. This is used to create "bullet" paragraphs.
For this example select Project Revert To Saved and answer Yes to abandon
your changes. When the project window appears place the insertion point in
the paragraph which begins with 'The next day'.
With the mouse, drag the left margin marker to just past the 1 1/2 inch
scale marker. Press the Shift and Alt key to position the marker precisely.
The Shift key lets you move the left margin marker independent of the
indent. If you accidentally drag the indent marker by itself, try again. It
may take a little practice to know which marker you're grabbing. Just
remember that the indent marker is the lower of the two.
PARAGRAPH ALIGNMENT
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excellence! lets you align paragraphs flush left, flush left and right,
centered and flush right.
Return the indented paragraph to its original position or select Project
Revert To Saved. Place the insertion point on the line with 'Chapter 15'
and click the center gadget.
Paragraph alignment is part of your normal ruler settings and may be copied
and pasted to other paragraphs.
TAB SETTINGS
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Place the insertion point at the top of the document and press Return
twice. Again move to the beginning of the document. With the mouse, click
the left tab marker at the 5 1/4 scale line and drag it to the bottom of
the ruler. Release the mouse button to remove the tab marker.
Now click the right tab gadget and place it on top of the right margin
marker at the 7 1/2 inch position. Now press the Tab key twice. The
insertion point is now flush with the right margin. Enter today's date by
selecting Format Insert Date with the mouse.
When text is aligned on a tab, you can move the text by adjusting the tab
marker. Move the right tab marker to the 7 inch position on the ruler.
Notice how the date also moved.
When you add a tab marker to the left of a tab marker which has text
aligned at that position, Excellence! moves the text and aligns it with the
new tab marker.
For example, click the center tab gadget and place it at the 4 inch
position. The date is now centered instead of flush right. Press the Tab
key again to move the date to the flush right tab marker.
Press the Tab key to move the insertion point from one tab marker to
another. To move the insertion point to the previous tab marker press a
Shift-Tab.
You may use a tab to pad a line with characters, such as chapter
references. Press Alt-Tab and the character to repeat. The character
repeats until the next tab marker is reached.
only use tabs on lines which do not wrap but end in a Return.
RULER NOTES
~~~~~~~~~~~
The size and scaling of the rules is selected through Page Setup. Excellence!
displays the ruler in inches or centimeters. The three pitch settings
affect the actual scaling of the ruler.
You may change the left and right margin positions of your paragraphs,
however, they can never exceed the margin boundaries defined in Page Setup.
Whenever you add a new paragraph to a document Excellence! uses the ruler
settings from the previous paragraph.
MULTIPLE COLUMNS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you decide to create newsletters or other items which require multiple
columns, you'll find Excellence! quite versatile in this area.
Select Project Revert To Saved. When the original 'Gothic.doc' is in the
project window select Project Page Setup.
Click the Number of Columns gadget until 4 is displayed. Then click the OK
gadget. After a few moments, Excellence! re-displays the document.
Move the insertion point to the next column. Notice how the ruler settings
reflected the change in the left and right margins for the column. Not only
can you display multiple columns, you may define the column width in Page
Setup.
If a paragraph wraps from one column to another, the ruler reflects the
settings for the column where the paragraph began. If a word is too wide
for the column, Excellence! displays as much as possible on one line before
splitting the word to the next.
Excellence! uses newspaper-style columns. This means when the insertion
point reaches the end of one column the text wraps to the beginning of the
next column on that page. When you reach the end of the last column for a
page, Excellence! wrapss to the first column on the next page. Select
justified paragraph alignment to produce true newspaper columns.
When you highlight text with multiple columns, Excellence! highlights by
column. If you drag the mouse across to the next column, Excellence!
highlights the entire column to the left of the mouse pointer.
When you use multiple columns you will find it faster to move around the
document with the scroll bar rather than the scroll arrows.
HYPHENATION
~~~~~~~~~~~
If your document contains long words which wrapped to the next line and
consistently cause a lot of wasted space, you may use soft hypehns and let
Excellence! break up the word by syllable.
This problem is more apparent when using multiple columns. Refer to the
document in your project window. Scroll down a little and you'll see the
words 'sheepmasters' and 'cattlemasters' on lines by themselves. It's
obvious that if the word was split more text could fit on a line.
You can insert a soft hyphen by pressing and Alt- (hyphen). The soft hyphen
appears at the insertion point. Unless Excellence! splits the word you
won't see the soft hyphen until you select View Show Markers.
The easiest way to insert soft hyphen is with the Document Hyphenate
command. Place the insertion point on the word 'sheepmasters' and select
that menu item.
Click the Change gadget and Excellence! hyphenates the word.
Now highlight the phrase 'cattlemasters of Greystone'. You now have two
choices:
1. Click the Find gadget. This has Excellence! look for the next
word in the selected text which can by hyphenated. Single
syllable words cannot be hyphenated. Excellence! highlights the
next word which can be hyphenated. When searching through
highlighted text, Excellence! disables the highlighting once it finds
a word. Think of the highlighted text as the starting point for the
function.
2. Click Hyphenate All. This has Excellence! automatically insert
soft hyphens in all the highlighted words which qualify.
A document requester may remain visible and can be selected at any time.
Several different requesters can be visible simultaneously. This helps to
give you truly interactive writing tools. If you don't want to close a
requester, push it back by clicking the left screen depth arranger. You can
bring a Document requester to the front at anytime by selecting the menu
item again.
Click Hyphenate All. Notice how Excellence! adjusted the text to take
advantage of the soft hyphen. If you try to click Change before it Finds a
word to hyphenate, the computer beeps.
The Document Hyphenate requester is the only requester on that menu which
affects only the word at the insertion point or the words in the
highlighted text. The other requesters affect the document from the
insertion point to the end of the document. It is unlikely that you would
need to hyphendate an entire document. However, to do so you would choose
Select All and then Hyphendate All.
When Excellence! hyphenates a word, it removes any existing soft hyphens.
If you accidently insert a soft hyphen in a work in the wrong place, select
Document Hyphenate to let Excellence! correct your mistake.
SHOW MARKERS
~~~~~~~~~~~~
When you select View Show Markers, the margin boundaries, carriage returns
and special characters Excellence! uses become visible. This includes soft
hyphens. Select this command to see where Excellence! placed the soft
hyphen.
Notice how Excellence! inserted several soft hyphens in the words
'sheepmasters' and 'cattlemasters'. Where Excellence! splits the word
depends on the line length. Excellence! always places as much as possible
on a line before splitting it. If you don't care for where Excellence!
places a soft hyphen, delete it. Any of Excellence!'s markers may be
deleted, copied or pasted.
INSERTING A PICTURE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chose the current project window without saving any changes. Select Project
Open from the Excellence! main screen. Choose the DOCUMENTS: disk which
contains the 'Sample.doc' created earlier and Open it.
One of the nice things about Excellence! is its ability to let you mix
pictures and text. Make sure the insertion point is at the beginning of the
document and select Project Insert.
When the file requester appears, type the following:
Excellence!:documents/E__LOGO
and press Return. After a few moments Excellence! inserts a picture into
your document.
The Project Insert command places the contents of the file at the insertion
point. Only an Excellence! document or IFF picture can be inserted in this
manner, regular Text files may not.
PICTURES AND TEXT
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excellence! treats a picture just like one large (or small) character, with
some exceptions. For instance, you may not Find one picture and Replace it
with another. nor does the Font or Style menu selections affect them.
Trying to Check Spelling on an image is also a waste of time.
However, pictures word wrap and may appear within a paragraph, sentence or
word, like the next example. Place the insertion point to the left of the
picture and type 'Let us introduce you to Excellence!, our new word
processor for the Amiga'.
If the picture is larger than the margins for that paragraph, Excellence!
chops the picture. Increase the margins and Excellence! displays the entire
image. The line height is always large enough so the image fits properly.
You may insert low, medium and high resolution images into your document.
Excellence! automatically adjusts the image when it contains more than 8
colors or is a high resolution.
Highlighting a picture with text is done the same as with text. To
highlight only a picture, double-click on the image.
Chapter 4 discusses how to re-size and chop pictures.
please select Project Save, close the project window and open the document
'Gothic.doc'.
NON-BREAKING SPACES
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There may be times when you need a command which is the opposite of a soft
hyphen: the ability to keep two or more words from wrapping.
Excellence! uses a feature know as a non-breaking space. To insert a
non-breaking space, press an Alt (space bar) between the words. This looks
like a regular space, but Excellence! treats it like an invisible character
and handles the phrase like one long word. The phrase 'Dr. Smith' could use
a non-breaking space.
FIND AND REPLACE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This command lets you locate a specific word or phrase in the document.
Optionally, you may delete or replace the text. Excellence! lets you search
for partial words with upper and lower case matching. The only things you
may not search for are markers and pictures.
Select Document Find/Replace to display its requester.
Enter the word 'the' in the Find Text input area. The string limit is
approximately 30 characters. Do not worry about font or style attributes,
Excellence! ignores them when searching.
Leave the other requester options alone and click the Find gadget.
Excellence! highlights 'The' in the phrase 'The next day'. Since the word
is highlighted you may type in the replacement string or enter a word or
phrase in the Replace with input area and click Replace. The Replace string
uses the same Font and Style attributes. For now, keep clicking the find
gadget until 'them' is highlighted.
Using a combination of these gadgets, you can specify a variety of ways in
which Excellence! searches for words:
Find Backward
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When selected, Excellence! looks for the Find Text string from the
insertion point to the beginning of the document. The default searches from
the insertion point to the end of the document. A small box appears in the
gadget to confirm that you have selected it.
Wrap Around
~~~~~~~~~~~
Click this to have Excellence! start the search again from either end of
the document. If you haven't selected Find Backward, Excellence! searches
to the end of the document, then continues again from the beginning and
stops at the insertion point. When this gadget is off, Excellence! stops
once it reaches the end of the document.
Full Word
~~~~~~~~~
Click this to require the Find Text to appear by itself and not as part of
another word. For example, the find Text string 'an' would not match
'another' or 'animal'.
Match Case
~~~~~~~~~~
When you select this, Excellence! only displays a word or phrase where the
character case of Find Text matches that of the document. For example,
'The' would not display 'the'. If this is not selected, both examples are
shown.
Move the insertion point back to the beginning of the document and click
the Full Word gadget. Click the Find gadget again. Notice how Excellence!
does not stop at 'them'. Once Excellence! finds a word you can click any of
the following gadgets or type in the replacement from the keyboard.
Find
~~~~
Click this to start the search. To skip to the next occurrence without
replacing, click again. The Find Backward gadget determines the direction
of the search.
If you don't want to use the mouse, select Document find Next which locates
the next occurrence of the word or phrase defined in Find/Replace. It is
the same as clicking the Find gadget.
Replace
~~~~~~~
Click this to exchange the Find Text with the Replace with string. The
replacement string uses the same font and style as the original text. When
the Replace with input area is empty, Excellence! deletes the phrase.
Replace, then Find
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Click this to replace the Find Text and continue the search for the next
occurrence. This is like clicking Replace and then Find.
Replace All
~~~~~~~~~~~
Select this gadget to automatically replace all the occurrences of the Find
Text with Replace with.
To abort a Replace All press ESc or click the close window gadget on the
requester.
using the example above Excellence! finds 'the' and 'them' when Full Word
is not selected. Otherwise Excellence! finds only 'The' if Match Case and
Full Word are both chosen.
Since the requester is in a window of its own you can position it wherever
you'd like. Until you close all the project windows, the program remembers
the requester's position.
CHECK SPELLING
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Imagine putting together a quarterly report, and misspelling the boss's
name! No matter how careful you are, sometimes a spelling mistake may
occur.
Excellence! helps to find these mistakes with its built-in spell checker.
Place the insertion point at the beginning of 'Gothic.doc' and choose
Document Check Spelling.
When the requester appears, click the Find gadget. If you do not wish to
use the mouse you can choose Document check Next from the keyboard. It is
the same as clicking the Find gadget.
Excellence! highlights the word 'Kamelle'. If you know the correct spelling
of the word, type it from the keyboard. For here you may click one of four
gadgets.
Find
~~~~
When Excellence! finds a misspelled word, it is highlighted. To skip a
word, click this gadget again. if you need to abort this function, pres ESC
or click the close gadget.
Sometimes Excellence! displays a word as misspelled when it is in fact
spelled correctly. Excellence! features a 90,000 word dictionary which
contains many commonly used words. However, no dictionary knows everythng
and occasionally you may need to add a word.
In addition, Excellence! can check the spelling of a word, but not its
context. 'There' and 'their' are spelled correctly, but have different
meanings. Select Document Check Grammar to help find those types of
mistakes.
Guess
~~~~~
Click this gadget to display alternative spellings for the selected word.
Excellence! finds these words from the main dictionary file, not the user
dictionary.
Ignore
~~~~~~
Click this to ignore further occurrences of a word and continue the spell
checking. Excellence! remembers the list of words to ignore until you click
the close requester gadget.
Learn
~~~~~
This command adds a word to the user dictionary. If the user dictionary
doesn't exist, Excellence! creates it. When you add a word to the user
dictionary it isn't displayed as misspelled anymore. The user dictionary
can store as many words as memory and disk space permit.
Now click the Guess gadget. Excellence! displays 8 possible spellings.
Double-click on one of the guesses to replace the highlighted word. In this
case the word is not misspelled so click the close gadget of the Guess
window.
The one thing you must remember is Excellence! can only check the current
spelling for the current view. Refer to Chapter 4 for a complete discussion
on views.
Excellence! also boasts a feature to let you check your spelling as you
type. At the top of the requester is the Check Continuously gadget. Click
this to have Excellence! constantly monitor what you type. Whenever
Excellence! finds a misspelling, the computer beeps.
For Excellence! to continuously check your spelling, the dictionary must be
in memory. When you choose this option Excellence! copies the dictionary
into memory automatically. However, if there's not enough memory available
the message 'Out of memory!' appears and the function aborts.
Fell free to practice with the Check Spelling option before continuing to
the next section.
PRINTING A DOCUMENT
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
No word processor is of any use unless it can put your ideas on paper.
Excellence!, dispite being a WYSIWYG word processor, is flexible enough to
work with everything from a letter quality to a laser printer. Excellence!
does this by using the preferences printer driver you select from the
preferences tool in Workbench.
Please close the project window containing 'Gothic.doc' and open
'Sample.doc' from your DOCUMENTS disk.
The first thng you must do is make sure the correct printer drive is
selected. From Excellence! press a Left-Amiga N. When the Workbench screen
appears click the left mouse button to make it active. Now insert your
workbench boot disk and double-click on the preferences icon in the disk
window.
From there, follow the instructions in your Amiga User's Guide to select
your particular printer. If you booted with Disk 1, please leave all other
preferences settings alone for now.
If your printer isn't listed among the drivers in preferences, you may have
to experiment. Also, check with your local dealer or Amiga User's Group to
see if a driver is available for your particular printer.
When you've finished selecting your printer drive, exit preferences. To
return to the Excellence! project window either press a Left-Amiga M or
click the left screen depth arranger on the Workbench menu bar. When you
see the project window, click in it to make it active.
now select Project Print. This requester initiates the printing of your
document. A variety of settings let you choose anything from the quality of
printing to the pages to print.
Print Quality
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Click this gadget to toggle the print quality. The default is Normal. If
you do not have a dot matrix graphics printer you must select Draft or NLQ
(Near Letter Quality). For now select Draft.
Print Pages
~~~~~~~~~~~
This option lets you select which pages of the document you wish to print.
Leave it set to All.
Paper Type
~~~~~~~~~~
Click this gadget to toggle between single sheet paper and fanfold. Change
this if necesary. When Single Sheet is chosen, a requester appears with Ok
and Cancel gadgets after printing each page.
When you are ready to print click the OK gadget. Excellence! starts
printing.
While printing is in progress the menus ghost and the mouse pointer
snoozes. While Excellence! prints, you may do nothing else. To abort the
printing of a document press ESC. If your printer continues to print and
the window unghosts, your printer has a print buffer. When the buffer
empties, the printer stops.
As you can see from this example, you can use Excellence! to quickly print
out documents which do not need fonts or pictures. Notice that Excellence!
left a blank space where the picture appeared.
Highlight the word Excellence! and select Style bold. Do this twice to
change both occurrences. Now select Project Print and change the Print
Quality to NLQ. Click OK to begin printing.
NLQ mode lets Excellence! print the document with any of the attributes
selected from the Style menu. Of course, if your text doesn't appear with
the same attributes, it is very likely due to an incompatibility with your
printer and the printer driver you selected.
When in Draft or NLQ mode, Excellence! cannot print out true WYSIWYG,
though the output is as close as possible. For the closest WYSIWYG output,
use the Topaz 11 font to have the page breaks and characters per line print
as they appear. Style attributes will appear as it does in the document
window. If you have a letter quality printer which is incapable of printing
graphics, you must use the Draft or NLQ print modes.
Now select Project Print once more and select Normal print quality. Click
OK and Excellence! starts printing. You will notice that the printing takes
a bit longer than in the other two modes. Since Excellence! fully supports
any legal Amiga font and graphic images, the document must be printed in
the printer's graphic mode. Current Amiga printer drivers are not terribly
fast; it is hoped that future releases of these drivers from Commodore
Amiga will improve printer performance.
Excellence! can normally print a document in 8 colors or shades of grey
when you use the Normal print mode. Depending on the available memory,
Excellence! may drop the printed output to 4 or 2 colors. See the section
titled 'Conserving Memory' in Chapter 5 for more information.
POSTSCRIPT PRINTING
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you have a PostScript printer, you're probably anxious to see PostScript
output. Fortunately, your Disk 1 Workbench diskette contains four
PostScript fonts:
PCourier
PHelvetica
PTimes
PSymbol
Each font has a corresponding '.metric' file. If the '.metric' file is not
present, Excellence! prints out the document with the font's normal
resolution.
When printing with an Apple LaserWriter, change your preferences to Serial.
The Workbench preferences settings on Disk 1 have the proper serial
parameters set.
Highlight 'Sample.doc' and select Font PTimes 12. Change your Page Setup to
15 Pitch. Choose the Project Print command.
Change the Print Quality to PostScript and click OK. If you don't have a
PostScript printer, you can print to a disk file. Then take the PostScript
file to a commercial printer and have camera-ready copy produced with their
PostScript printer.
After a few moments you'll see text similar to what appears in this manual.
Notice the picture's resolution changed. This is due to the higher pitch
setting.
When mixing PostScript with Amiga fonts and pictures, the Amiga font and
picture always prints using the Amiga resolution.
QUITTING EXCELLENCE!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To exit Excellence! choose Project Quit. Excellence! checks any of the open
project windows and gives you the opportunity to save your changes. If the
text in the project window was edited since the last Save, a requester
prompts you to store the changes.
Click the Yes gadget to close the window and saves the changes with the
name appearing in the requester.
Click No to close the window withoug saving any changes.
Click Cancel to abort the function and leave the project window oven
Please click the No gadget to prevent Excellence! from saving the changes
made during this tutorial.
Your Amiga returns to wherever you loaded Excellence! from, either
Workbench or CLI.
If memory runs low you won't see this requester. Instead, Excellence!
automatically closes the window and saves your changes.
BACKING UP DOCUMENTS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excellence! maintains its own backup files by default. Backup files are
stored as 'document.bak' where 'document' is the name of the file. See
Project Preferences in Chapter 5 to turn this option off.
If you have very important documents you should back them up onto separate
disks using the diskcopy command from Workbench or drag the document's
project icon from one disk window to another.
You can also make a backup within Excellence!. Just select Project Save As
and specify an alternate document name on another disk before you exit the
program.
CHAPTER 3
~~~~~~~~~
MENU COMMAND SUMMARY
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This section lists all of Excellence!'s commands as they appear from the
pull-down menus. Each command is followed by a brief description.
Refer to the QUICK REFERENCE GUIDE for a complete explanation of each of
these items.
PROJECT MENU
~~~~~~~~~~~~
New
~~~
This command opens a new project window. With several project windows
available, you can work on several documents at the same time.
Open
~~~~
Use this command to retrieve a document previously stored on disk. A
requester displays the names of all the documents available for editing.
To open a document, double-click the filename. You may also type the name
of the document from the keyboard and click the Open gadget. To abort,
click the Cancel gadget.
If you are a SCRIBBLE! owner you should be pleased to know that your
SCRIBBLE! documents are completely compatible with Excellence!
Insert
~~~~~~
This command inserts a document or picture in the current window. The
document appears at the insertion point.
Close
~~~~~
Choose this command to close the current window. If changes have been made,
you are prompted to save the document. Close unneeded windows to free
memory for other applications.
Save
~~~~
This item saves the latest changes to your document to a disk file. If the
current project is untitled, a file requester appears. Enter the filename
in the Selection input area and click the Save gadget. Ghosted filenames in
the requester indicate you may only save a document with this selection.
Save As..
~~~~~~~~~
Displays a file requester to allow you to save the current document under a
new name. This is useful when making changes to a document without fear of
losing the original.
Revert to Saved
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This option retrieves the last saved version of the current document. This
function is perfect when you make changes to a document and wish to abandon
them to start again.
Revert to Backup
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This item retrieves the backup version of the current document. A backup
copy is created automatically when you first save a document with
Excellence!
Delete..
~~~~~~~~
Choose this item to remove a document from disk. A file requester appears
and lists the documents available. Double-click the filename for the
document yu wish to delete. Another requester prompts to continue. Click
the Yes gadget to delete the file or No to abort.
Page Setup..
~~~~~~~~~~~~
This item displays a requester which contains information about how each
page in Excellence! is setup. Values for margins and page size may be
entered in inches or centimeters. One to four columns can be displayed with
headers, footers and footnotes.
Print..
~~~~~~~
Choose this menu item to print your document. Print quality is selectable
and you may define which pages and how many copies to print.
Print Merge..
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Select this item to print form letters or other documents which insert
information into a document from a separate datafile. You will enter the
datafile name and the range of records to merge.
Preferences...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This item displays a requester to let you change the default color
settings, the type of window Excellence! uses, the user dictionary,
glossary and font. These defaults are stored in a preferences file which is
read when you load the program.
About..
~~~~~~~
Displays the Excellence! copyright notice along with pertinent information
about the document in the current window.
Quit
~~~~
Exits Excellence!. If changes have been made to the document since the last
Save, you are prompted to store the changes.
EDIT MENU
~~~~~~~~~
Undo
~~~~
Choose this to reverse any editing to a paragraphg. After this command is
selected the menu item changes to Redo, which un-does the Undo.
Cut
~~~
Removes the highlighted text from the document and places it in the
clipboard. Information placed in the clipboard can be accessed by
Excellence! again or by other programs.
Copy
~~~~
Copies the highlighted text to the clipboard and does not change the
original document.
Paste
~~~~~
Places the contents of the clipboard at the insertion point.
Erase
~~~~~
Removes the highlighted text but does not place it in the clipboard.
Select All
~~~~~~~~~~
Highlights the entire document for the next operation.
Math
~~~~
Performs mathematical functions on highlighted numbers and places the
result in the clipboard.
Copy Ruler
~~~~~~~~~~
Copies the ruler settings for the paragraph containing the insertion point
or the first paragraph highlighted. Use this to quickly format other
paragraphs with the same settings.
Paste Ruler
~~~~~~~~~~~
Formats the paragraph at the insertion point with the ruler settings from
the paragraph selected with COPY RULER. If several paragraphs are
highlighted, they'll also be re-formatted.
FORMAT MENU
~~~~~~~~~~~
Insert Page #
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Displays the current page number at the insertion point and is updated if
the page number changes. Page numbers may appear anywhere on the page,
including headers, footers and footnotes.
Insert Time
~~~~~~~~~~~
This command places the current time at the insertion point. The time is
automatically updated when the document is first loaded by Excellence! and
when it is printed.
Insert Date
~~~~~~~~~~~
This command places the current date at the insertion point. The date is
automatically updated when the document is first loaded by Excellence! and
when it is printed.
Insert Page Break
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Use this command to force a new page at the insertion point.
Insert Header
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This command allows you to enter information which appears at the top of
that page before any other text. Headers often contain the name of the
document or author.
Insert Footer
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This command allows you to enter information which appears at the bottom of
that page and after any other text. Like the header, a footer may contain
useful information about the document which should appear on every page or
a select number of pages.
Insert Footnote
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Footnotes are like footers, except they appear after the text and before
the footer. If multiple columns are defined, the footnote is placed under
the correct column.
Mark Index Entry
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Select this command to add the highlighted text to the list of words which
will be indexed with the Generate Index function.
Mark TOC Entry
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Choose this to add the highlighted text to the list of words which will be
indexed with the Generate TOC function.
Keep Together
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Choose this command to keep the paragraph at the insertion point from
printing over two pages. If several paragraphs are highlighted they are
printed together on the same page.
Allow to Split
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The command allows paragraphs selected with the Keep Together command to be
printed on more than one page. If no paragraphs are highlighted, only the
paragraph at the insertion point is affected.
VIEW MENU
~~~~~~~~~
Show Ruler
~~~~~~~~~~
This is the default setting and displays a ruler across the top of the
current window. The ruler shows the margins, tab settings, indention
gadgets and the line spacing for the current paragraph.
Hide Ruler
~~~~~~~~~~
This command removes the ruler from the current window to display more of
the document. The current ruler settings stay in effect. Select SHOW RULER
to change the ruler settings.
Show Markers
~~~~~~~~~~~~
This command lets you see the margins for each page and the markers used to
represent page numbers, headers, footers, footnotes and the date ad time.
By displaying the markers, you can easily remove a header or footer by
deleting its marker.
Hide Markers
~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is the default setting to hide the markers and display the document as
it will appear on paper.
Page View
~~~~~~~~~
Displays and lets you edit the body of the document.
Header View
~~~~~~~~~~~
Displays and lets you edit a header
Footer View
~~~~~~~~~~~
Displays and lets you edit a footer.
Footnote View
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Displays and lets you edit a footnote.
FONT MENU
~~~~~~~~~
The items which appear on this menu depend on the number of fonts on your
Workbench disk. The fonts are sorted alphabetically. If more fonts exist
than can be displayed on a single menu, a double-width menu is used. If the
default font in Project Preferences cannot be found, Topaz 8 is used.
When a new font is selected it appears at the next character typed from the
insertion point. Highlighted text automatically changes to the new font.
Style Menu
~~~~~~~~~~
This menu contains commands which affect the appearance of the text in the
document, regardless of the font selected. Checkmarks appear on the menu
and reflect the style of the character at the left of the insertion point.
All the commands on this menu work the same. If no text is highlighted, the
style change appears at the next character typed at the insertion point.
Highlighted text automatically changes to the new Style selection.
Style selections do not affect pictures.
Plain
~~~~~
This command resets all Style Attributes except for the Foreground and
Background colors.
Bold
~~~~
Displays characters in boldface format to draw attention to key words or
phrases.
Italic
~~~~~~
Displays characters in italics which causes the characters to be tilted
slightly.
Underline
~~~~~~~~~
Underline selected text.
Superscript
~~~~~~~~~~~
This command raises text above the rest of the line, such as footnote
numbers.
Subscript
~~~~~~~~~
This command lowers text below the rest of the line, such as engineering
equations.
Foreground
~~~~~~~~~
This command displays a pop-out menu to choose the color of the characters.
A color printer must be used for Excellence! to take advantage of the color
selection.
Background
~~~~~~~~~~
This command displays a pop-out menu to select the color of the background
text. This feature requires a color printer, unless the color selection is
used for aesthetic purposes.
DOCUMENT MENU
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Find/Replace
~~~~~~~~~~~~
This command lets you locate text in a document and optionally replace or
delete the text. Excellence! searches for partial words and upper and lower
case matching.
Find Next
~~~~~~~~~
Locates the next occurrence of the word or phrase defined in Find/Replace.
Check Spelling...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Choose this to locate misspelled words in your document. Excellence!
searches from the insertion point and can display a list of possible
corrections. New words may be easily added to the user dictionary.
Check Next
~~~~~~~~~~
This command locates the next occurrence of a misspelled word form the
insertion point. This is similar to the Find option of the Check Spelling
command.
Thesaurus..
~~~~~~~~~~~
This command lets you easily find the synonym of a word (words which are
similar in meading). If an antonym (word which means the opposite) is
found, it is displayed.
Check Grammar..
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This command searches from the insertion point to loacte possible
grammatical errors in your document. As each error is found a suggestion is
presented.
Hyphenate..
~~~~~~~~~~~
Choose this command to split a word over two lines. Words are often
hypenated to better utilize space when logn words cause unattractive or
wasteful character spacing.
Generate Index
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This command creates an index from user-selected entries. The index is
placed in the clipboard.
Generate TOC
~~~~~~~~~~~~
This command works much like Index except its output format is different.
The Table of Contents is placed in the clipboard.
Glossary..
~~~~~~~~~~
Choose this command to insert or add glossary entries. Glossary entries
allow you to quickly retrieve paragraphs, pictures or commands you often
use.
CHAPTER 4
~~~~~~~~~
ADVANCED FEATURES OF EXCELLENCE!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This chapter covers the more powerful features of Excellence! Examples
cover many topics - font substitutions, headers, footers and assigning menu
commands to function keys.
At the end of this chapter you'll find several sections which contain
useful information. If you need to install Excellence! differenly from most
users or are curious about how Excellence! does things, please take a look.
CATUTION
~~~~~~~~
Some of the features described in this tutorial may not function fully with
only 512K of RAM. Micro-Systems recommends a minimum of 1MB of memory to
take advantage of Excellence!'s capabilities.
MULTIPLE PROJECT WINDOWS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For this example, please boot with a copy of Disk 1 or your own Workbench.
Insert your copy of Disk 2 and double-click the Excellence! disk icon.
When the disk window appears, double-click the Documents drawer. You will
see several project icons.
Notice the scroll arrows at the bottom and right side of the disk window.
If you decide to store you own documents in this drawer, you may need to
scroll in the disk window or make it larger to see all the project icons.
Refer to your Amiga User's Guide for information on how to save icon
positions.
Find the project icon titled 'Gothic.doc' and double-click. After several
moments the Excellence! main screen appears and then the window containing
the document. If you have only one drive your Amiga will prompt you to swap
your Workbench and Excellence! disk at least once. Excellence! must locate
and open the fonts used by the document.
Suppose you needed to work on tow or more documents at the same time.
Instead of loading Excellence! again with the new document, just open a new
document window. Excellence! lets you switch document windows with the lick
of the mouse.
Choose Project Open. When you see the requester, enter DOCUMENTS:Sample in
the Selection input area, press Return and click the Open gadget. After a
few moments the second window appears.
Click the re-size gadget of the 'Sample.doc' window, move the mouse pointer
about halfway to the top of the screen and release. Use the scroll arrows
to make the text visible. Click the title bar and drag the window to the
bottom of the screen.
You can see the text in 'Sample' but not 'Gothic'. Click the right screen
depth arranger on the 'Gothic.doc' title bar. Excellence! brings the
'Gothic.doc' window to the front and pushes 'Sample.doc' to the back. Click
the left screen arranger and 'Sample.doc' appears again.
Notice the insertion point doesn't appear in the 'Sample.doc' window.
Excellence! lets you have only one insertion point active, no matter how
many windows are open. Fortunately, Excellence! remembers where the
insertion point is, so you can quickly copy text from one window, activate
the other and select Edit Paste.
Click somewhere in the 'Sample.doc' window to make it active. Now you see
the insertion point.
ACTIVATING A WINDOW
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excellence! automatically activates a window when you click anywhere in an
inactive window. For example, move the mouse pinter anywhere in the
'Gothic.doc' window and click. The window immediately comes to the front.
When working with multiple windows, sometimes it's easier if they are
small. Unfortunately, each time you want to use one you must re-size it.
Excellence! provides a shortcut.
Click the left screen depth arranger in the 'Gothic.doc' window so the
'Sample.doc' window is visible. Now click the zoom box on the 'Sample.doc'
title bar. In just a moment you have a full size window. To return to it's
original size, click the zoom box again.
The zoom box toggles the window between two sizes and positions, so it is
even useful when working with half size and three quarter size windows.
MULTIPLE PROJECT WINDOW RULES
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Like the insertion point, Excellence! only uses one document requester at a
time. This does not mean you can't have both the Find/Replace and Thesaurus
requester visible, but they are shared by all project windows.
A document requester works with the project window which contains the
insertion point. As a quick example make the 'Sample.doc' window active and
select Document Find/Replace. When the requester appears, enter the word
'with' in the Find Text input area. Then click the Find gadget.
Now activate the 'Gothic.doc' window. Make sure the nsertion point is at
the beginning of the document. The Find/Replace requester is not visible.
Excellence! pushed it to the back with 'Sample.doc'. Choose Find Next from
the Document menu.
If you ned to see the Find/Replace requester, choose the Document
Find/Replace command.
Different rules apply to all other requesters. When a non-Document
requester is visible, it must be closed before you can switch windows.
ADVANCED HIGHLIGHTING OPERATIONS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
By now you're familiar with highlighting text with the mouse. In this
section you will earn alternative methods of highlighting for various
operations.
If you need to highlight a space, double-click. The same thing applies for
tabs so they can be deleted. Double-click at the position from where you
pressed the Tab key and press Del.
One of the easiest ways is to highlight by word. Place the insertion point
at the beginning of 'Gothic.doc' and double-click, which highlights
'Gothic'. Continue to press the left mouse button and move the mouse pinter
to the letter 'S' in 'Suspense'. Excellence! immediately highlights the
entire word.
The fastest way to highlight with the mouse is to Shift-Click. Place the
insertion point at the beginning of the document again. Without holding
down the left mouse button, move the I-beam to the end of the 5 in 'Chapter
15'. Now hold down the Shift key and click.
The entire area becomes highlighted instaneously. To extend or decrease a
highlighted area, simply move the I-beam, press the Shift key and click
again. Excellence! adjusts the selected area depending on where the I-beam
is in relation to either end of the highlighted text. For example, click on
the word 'next', Excellence! extends the highlighted area to include all
text up to that word.
Now Shift-Click on 5 again. Excellence! decreased the highlighted area.
Shift-Click at the end of the word 'Suspense'. This time, Excellence!
decreased the highlighted area from the beginning of the document. This
happened because the I-beam was closer to the beginning of the highlighted
area than the end, so it decreased from the opposite end of the selected
text.
Shift-Clicking is perfect for highlighting large areas of text. You can
position the insertion point, scroll down several pages, place the I-beam
where you want and Shift-Click. Excellence! highlights text much faster in
this manner.
FONT AND STYLE SUBSTITUTIONS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Highlight from the beginning to the 5 in 'Chapter 15'. Select Style Bold.
Double-click 'Kamelle' and select Style Plain.
Return the insertion point to the beginning of the document and highlight
from 'Gothic' to '15'. Now press the Shift key and select Style Underline.
Excellence! adds underlines to all boldfaced text within the selected text
area, skipping 'Kamelle' which is Styled differently than the text at the
beginning.
IDENTICAL RULER CHANGES
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excellence! lets yo make identical ruler changes to paragraphs. First,
highlight a series of paragraphs. Then press the Shift key and make a ruler
change. Excellence! changes the ruler settings for the first highlighted
paragraph and makes the same changes to any paragraphs which has the same
ruler settings as the first.
Highlight 'Gothic.doc' from 'The next day' to 'look on your face. Why?"
Move the left margin marker to the 2 inch ruler position.
Now move the I-beam to the end of "Scrapey noises?" and Shift-Click. Press
the Shift key and use the mouse pointer to move the indent marker to the 1
inch ruler position. Release the Shift key and the mouse button.
Notice the first two highlighted paragraphs use a hanging indent, while
Excellence! left the others unchanged.
NOTE
~~~~
To best take advantage of this feature, use unique ruler settings for the
paragraphs you may need to change. Placing a tab in a certain position is
enough to make the ruler settings unique.
RELATIVE RULER CHANGES
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Unlike an identical ruler change, you may need to make the same type of
change to a series of paragraphs.
Choose Edit Select All. Now press the Left-Amiga key and move the left
margin marker to the 1 1/2 inch position. Release the Amiga key and mouse
button.
All the paragraphs were indented by 1/2 inch. Move the insertion point to
the paragraph 'The next day'. Before, the left margin marker appeared at
the 2 inch ruler position, now it's at 2 1/2.
FORMATTING DOCUMENTS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now that you've mastered the basics of word processing, it's tme to learn
how to improve the look of your document. The Format menu contains many of
these commands.
Many professional documents require page numbers, headers, footers and even
footnotes. Excellence! does all this and more.
When you insert headers, footers or footnotes you can see where they appear
on the page. Only the header and footer extend the full width of the page.
Excellence! formats the body of the document into columns when you select
that option through Page Setup, each column having its own left and right
margin.
In this section you're going to start with a fresh 'Gothic.doc'. Choose
Project Revert to Saved and click Yes to abandon changes. After a few
moments 'Gothic.doc' appears in the project window.
This document is a chapter of a novel. Novels sometimes contain the name of
the book in the header. Highlight 'Gothic Suspense' and select Edit Cut.
The paragraph disappears. Now choose Format Insert Header. When the header
view appears, select Edit Paste.
The portion of the document you edit depends on the current view. The body
of the document is edited from page view. The View menu lets you verify or
change the current view.
The header view uses the header margin size defined in Page Setup. The
paragraph alignment defaults to centered. Click the left paragraph
alignment gadget.
The ruler displays an Even and Odd gadget. Excellence! highlights both to
print the header on all pages. Now select Page View.
The header appears on each page. Scroll down to page 2 and verify this. If
you enter more text in a header view than will fit in the header margin,
Excellence! increases the size of the header view but chops the actual text
in the document. If this happens, increase your header margin size in Page
Setup.
Place the insertion point at the top of the document and select Show
Markers.
Excellence! displays a marker to represent the header. The Format menu
contains most of the menu items which use markers. A header marker may
appear anywhere on the page and Excellence! will display it in the header
region properly.
You can copy, cut or move a marker like any other character. If you don't
want the header to appear on the first page, move the marker to page 2.
Highlight the header marker and select Edit Cut. The header information
disappears. Scroll to page 2 and select Edit Paste. The header information
now appears on page 2, but not page 1. Return to the top of the project
window.
Select Edit Paste to insert the header marker on the first page. You now
have two headers defined. You can use multiple headers to display page
numbers on alternate margins. To display the header, double-click the
header region of page 1.
Each appears on a page of its own. The insertion point is at the end of the
header. Now you'll insert a page number which appears flush with the right
margin. Click the flush right tab gadget on the ruler, drag it to the right
margin marker and release.
Click the left paragraph alignment gadget, then select Format Insert
Page#. The page number marker appears. Move the insertion point to the left
of the page number marker and press Tab twice. Excellence! places the
marker flush with the right margin. The page number is the only marker
which never displays a value while in a header, footer or footnote view,
since the page numbe constantly changes. Alternatively, you could have
pressed the Tab key twice and then selected Insert Page#.
Click the Even gadget and the header appears only on off-numbered pages.
You'll apply this same format in reverse order for the next header.
Select Edit Copy Ruler, click in the second header page before the word
'Gothic' and Edit Paste Ruler. Now choose Insert Page# and press the Tab
key twice. Click the Odd gadget to have this header appear only on
even-numbered pages.
Scroll down the document and confirm that you now have alternating headers.
You may insert headers, footers and footnotes anywhere on the page. If Even
and Odd headers/footers are defined, double-click in the region
header/footer region on the odd or even numbered page to edit that
particular header. For example, click in the header region of page 2 to
edit the even numbered header. In this example the header markers are on
two different pages when they can just as easily be on the same page.
The same principles work for both footers and footnotes. The only
difference is a footnote appears just on the page where it was defined. If
your Pge Setup specifies multiple columns, the footer appears beneath the
proper column.
FINDING THE RIGHT WORD
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For some people, writing is the most natural thing in the world. For
others, every word is a trial. 'Trial'. Perhaps not the best word for that
sentence. You turn once again to your thesaurus....
Finding the right words can mean the difference between a document which
puts the reader to sleep, or one which interests. Excellence! features a
built-in thesaurus to aid you in this search.
Close your current project window without saving any changes. Open a new
window with Project New and type in the word 'trial'. Place the insertion
point on the word and select Document Thesaurus. Excellence! lets you view
Synonyms, Antonymn or Both. Click Both.
Excellence! opens a window and displays the words it finds. Synonyms appear
first, then antonyms. If the word has more than one grouping, each appear
below the other. Excellence! displays these types of words:
adj(ective)
adv(erb)
conj(unction)
noun
prep(osition)
pro(noun)
verb
Sometimes you won't see the word you want the first time. Click the word
'endeavor' in the thesaurus window. Excellence! highlights it. Now click
the Both gadget again. Excellence! opens a new window and displays synonyms
and antonyms of the word 'endeavor'. Excellence! lets you continue this
process for as long as you wish. You may have so much fun looking for words
that you forget about writing.
To replace one word for another, double-click or enter the word from the
keyboard. Double-click the word 'effort'. With Excellence!, looking for the
right word is not so much an effort as it is a .... You know how it's done.
If the insertion point is not on a word or a word isn't highlighted,
Excellence! beeps when you click on the Thesaurus gadgets. Either move the
insertion point or highlight a word and try again.
When Excellence! cannot find a word, it displays the Check Spelling and
Guess window. Click one of the selections in the window and then one of the
Thesaurus gadgets. To abort, click the close gadget on the Guess window.
CHECKING YOUR GRAMMAR
Close the current project window without saving any changes. Now open
'Gothic.doc' from the Documents drawer of your Excellence! disk.
After a few moments the document window appears. Select Document Check
Grammar.
You'll use the requester defaults for this example. Verify that the
insertion point is at the beginning of the document and click the Check
gadget to begin. Excellence!'s mouse pointer snoozes while it loads the
'Phrase.txt' file. Once loaded, Excellence! searches the document for
possible problems.
In a few seconds Excellence! locates the first occurrence. Excellence!
highlights the phrase 'kind of'. The problem and suggestion appears within
the requester.
If you want suggestions to automatically appear elsewhere, click the Output
gadget to Printer or File. If set to File, Excellence! saves the errors in
a file names 'document.err' where 'document' is the document name in the
current project window. With the Output set to Interactive, Excellence!
pauses at each error to let you make changes immediately.
When Excellence! finds a problem you have five choices:
1. Click in the sentence and make a correction.
2. Click the Check gadget to ignore the problem and continue to the next.
3. Click Ignore and Excellence! will not report this same problem again.
However, Excellence! still displays other errors of the same type.
4. Click Eliminate and Excellence! ignores any problems which fall into
the same category.
Problems stay Ignored or Eliminated until you close the Grammar requester
or change phrase files.
5 Click the Summary gadget to display the summary information for the
sentences checked.
You may click the Summary gadget anytime while Excellence! checks for
errors. The output must be set to Interactive to display the summary
information. This gadget beeps when Strictness is set for Summary.
For now, click the Check gadget. Excellence! continues to search and
highlights the phrase 'just exactly'. The problem and suggestion appear in
the requester.
Redundant
"just" or "exactly"
Dialog often contains errors since it reflects how some people talk.
However, you can still make a correction. Type 'exactly'. Notice how
Excellence! deletes the highlighted phrase and replaces it with your entry.
Now click the Check gadget to continue. Excellence! finds the next phrase.
'indicating'
Overstated or pretentious
"showing" or "suggesting"
In many instances this suggestion is fine. However, unless you change the
phrase to 'pointing to', you're better off leaving it alone. Click Check to
continue.
'ceiling'
Hackneyed, Cliche, or Trite
use "maximum" or "limit" unless you are talking about a room
Unfortunately, the Grammar Checker can't interpret your sentences, it only
looks for specific phrases. Click Check to continue
'was constructed'
Wording - passive voice
Consider revising
This is a common problem for many writers. Too many passive voice sentences
tend to bore the reader. This occurrence is fine. Click Check to continue.
'And'
Hackneyed, Cliche, or Trite
use sparingly to begin a sentence
If Excellence! finds another occurrence, you'll need to make some changes.
Click Check to continue.
'is where'
Misused often
O.K. for specific place, but not as in "math is where I fail"
This is fine. Click Check to continue.
'kind of' again. This time highlight the phrase 'the kind of thing' and
type 'something' from the keyboard. Sometimes an error requires more
drastic measurer. Click Check to continue.
'be cared'
Wording - passive voice
Consider revising
Click Check to continue. When the mouse pointer stops snoozing the
grammatical checker is finished.
now click the Summary gadget. The summary statistics appear.
The summary window displays the number of suspected problems. Below is the
grade level and Reading Ease score. Next appears the Sentence, Word and
Special Statistice. Each is useful in determining how yur writing fares.
Click the Next gadget to compare your document against 3 others.
Excellence! compares your document against a Hemingway short story, the
Gettysburg Address and a life insurance policy. Excellence! presents a bar
graph for each. Be careful, as a good result here does not imply
readability.
Click Next to display each succeeding comparison. you may abort at any time
by clicking the window gadget.
Excellence! only displays this summary information on the screen. When all
you care about is the summary information, set St5rictness to Summary and
click Check. The summary window appears automatically when Excellence!
finishes checking the document.
To abort while Excellence! checks for problems, press Esc or click the
close gadget of the Grammar requester.
When you finish examining the summary information, close th check Grammar
requester and continue to the next section.
Excellence!'s grammatical checker is a writing tool. It reports common
errors based on the contents of the phrase file. By no means can
Excellence! report every grammatical error, nor can Excellence! check for
every type of incorrect word usage. Look at these sentences:
Jack done fell down the hill. He got all broke up.
If Excellence! checked these for grammatical errors, it would find none.
Even though these two sentences display text book summary statistice,
everyone who writes like that will not win a Pulitzer, there's a good
chance they will have to stay after class.
Excellence!'s spelling checker, thesaurus and grammatical checkers are
writing aids. Use them to help you in finding and correcting mistakes. As
the examples in this manual have show, Excellence! cannot think for you!
No matter how good Excellence! is, you should never place yourself in the
position where you have to use the excuse, "But Excellence! didn't find
anything wrong!" Ther is no substitute for proofing your own work!
Refer to the document 'Bad_Grammar.doc' in the Documents drawer of your
Excellence! disk for examples of the types of grammatical problems for
which Excellence! looks.
CREATING AN INDEX AND TABLE OF CONTENTS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Producing a professional looking document or manual often needs a Table of
Contents or Index to locate specific information quickly.
Excellence! does both quite nicely. If 'Gothic.doc' appears in the project
window, select Project Close and click Yes to abandon changes. From Project
Open enter Excellence!:Documents/Titles in the Selection in put area and
click the Open gadget. This is a sample document whichshows the sue of
headers, footers and footnotes.
When the document appears in the window highlight 'Introduction' and select
Format Mark TOC entry. Section headers often become Table of Content
entries. Use Show Markers to view the TOC entry.
TOC and Index entries are the only items which require a beginning and
ending marker. Both TOC and Index entries ccan exist in the same document.
Highlight the phrase 'killer whale' in the paragraph below and select Mark
Index entry.
Continue to the end of the document; highlight each section header (they
are underlines) and select Mark TOC entry. Place the insertion point at the
top of the document when finished.
Excellence! only indexes the marked word or phrases. To index every
occurrence of 'killer whale' use Find/Replace. First locate each occurrence
of the phrase, select Mark Index Entry and click Find. As the remainder of
the document uses the phrase 'killer whales', which is plural, do not
select the Full word option on the Find/Replace requester.
Do so and repeat the same index procedure for 'Fred'. Then continue to the
next section to learn how to generate your index and Table of Contents.
GENERATING AND INDEX AND TABLE OF CONTENTS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The only difference between an index and Table of Contents is the way
Excellence! outputs them. Index entries appear as:
Page Setup 12-25, 34
WYSIWYG 1-2, 4
while the Table of Contents uses the format:
Introduction................................................1
Making a Master Disk........................................3
To have Excellence! generate your index select Document Generate Index.
When the mouse pointer stops snoozing the index is complete.
Excellence! automatically places the output in the Clipboard. Move the
insertion point to the end of the document and select Edit Paste.
Excellence! uses the current page numbers when creating the index. If you
change your Page Setup or make enough editing changes to the document, run
Generate Index again. Excellence! can store only one thing in the clipboard
at a time, so after you insert the index into the document, generate the
Talbe of Contents by selecting Document Generate TOC.
This time place the insertion point at the top of the document before
selecting Edit Paste.
It is as simple as that.
If you have multiple documents because everything won't fit into memory you
can generate a TOC for each document and place the output in a separate
document.
You can generate an index over several documents by following a slightly
different procedure: Place the output from all the documents in one file.
Then mark each index entry as an entire index phrase (include the page
numbers) and select Generate Index again.
Excellence! produces the same index, except it is sorted properly. However,
each entry contains one extra page number. Simply delete the extra page
number. When duplicate entries appear, delete the carriage return at the
end of the first entry and remove the duplicate indexed word or phrase.
THE CLIPBOARD
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excellence! uses the Clipboard for many things. The most common is to Cut,
Copy and Paste information into an Excellence! document. However, the
Clipboard is also a way to transfer information from one program to
another.
For example, you can Copy a paragraph from Excellence! then Paste it into
SCRIBBLE! Micro-Systems popular text-based word processor. The same applies
to ANALYZ! and ONLINE!, the electronic spreadsheet and telecommunication
programs.
The Clipboard is versatile. Even if you don't have enough memory to run
both applications at the same time, just copy text from Excellence! and
quit. Then load SCRIBBLE! and Paste the information.
This requires that you use the same Workbench boot disk for both
applications, since the Amiga stores the contents of the Clipboard to a
disk file.
Depending on the program, some information may not transfer properly. For
example, SCRIBBLE! cannot display pictures, fonts or markers, so it must
ignore them.
SCALING AND CROPPING PICTURES
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
you know that Excellence! lets you insert a picture into a document, any
low, medium or high-resolution IFF picture. Excellence! automatically
adjusts the size and the colors in the picture if necessary.
The problem with pictures is they can be too large for the document. Or,
you may only want to print part of the picture.
Excellence! lets you re-size and crop pictures. Close the current project
window without saving any changes. Then select Project Open, enter
'Documents:Sample' in the Selection input area and click the Open gadget.
When the document window appears double-click the 'e' picture.
A box surrounds the picture and the mouse pointer becomes an arrow. In the
lower right corner of the picture appears a small re-size gadget. Click the
re-size gadget and drag the mouse up to the halfway point and release.
After a moment Excellence! re-displays the picture and adjusts the
paragraph. The picture is still highlighted. As with any highlighted
character, press the Del key to remove the image, select Edit Copy or enter
replacement text from the keyboard. If you accidentally delete the picture
select Edit Paste immediately.
Click the re-size gadget and move the mouse pointer around. With this
method you can increase the size of a picture, though some resolution loss
is expected. In some instances when you've re-sized a picture too small it
may be better to delete the picture and use Project Insert and start again.
As you move the mouse pointer, the border adjusts to keep the image in the
same proportion. Press the Shift key while you move the mouse pointer. The
picture's proportion changes. Move the mouse pointer so the border overlaps
the original image and release.
When re-sizing a picture you can select Edit Copy and make a backup of the
original. The picture stays in the Clipboard until you do another Clipboard
operation like Edit Cut or Copy.
While re-sizing a picture helps to conserve document space, sometimes you
need to remove part of the picture.
Click the re-size gadget of the picture and press the Alt key. Now move the
mouse pointer up and past the lower portion of the 'e'. Release the mouse.
That portion of the picture is now gone. You'll need to select Project
Insert and load the picture into the document again should you crop too
much of the image. Refer to the instructions above to create a backup of
the original image with Edit Copy.
Excellence! crops a picture from any of the four corners, just click on one
of the corners of the picture. You'll find this feature very handy when you
need just one small part of a large picture.
If you're printing columns with pictures and the columns don't line up at
the bottom of the page, you'll need to adjust the picture. Either re-size
or crop the picture. Another solution is to increase the line spacing for
the paragraph which has the picture.
PRINTING MAILING LABELS WITH MAIL MERGE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mail Merge is a system where Excellence! automatically inserts information
from a separate datafile when you print a document. In this manner you
create 'form letters'.
This section teaches you how to print mailing labels. You will use the
Mail__Merge.dat file supplied on you Excellence! disk.
Close the current project window with saving any changes. Select Project
New and display the Page Setup requester. Change your Page Setup to the
following:
Page Height 1.00
Top Margin 0.2
Bottom Margin 0.2
Header Margin 0
Footer Margin 0
When finished, click the OK gadget. If these values aren't entered properly
you will hear a beep. Double-check your entries and click OK again.
Select Show Markers to see how much room you have for the mailing label.
Then set the right margin marker to 4 1/2 inches.
Press Alt-< (less then). Two left arrows appear. Enter 'name' and press
Alt-> (greater than). This is known as a variable name. Excellence! uses
variable names to know where in the document to place the information form
a mail merge datafile. Press Return to start a new line.
Follow the instructions above to make your document window appear like the
one below:
<<name>>
<<address>>
<<city>>,<<state>> <<zip>>
Character case does not matter. If you accidentally press return an end up
with two pages, press Backspace once. Excellence! uses the same font and
style attributes as the variable name when doing its Print Merge. This lets
you use multiple fonts, boldface or even color in your mailing labels.
When finished, select Project print Merge. Click in the Mail Merge Data
File input area and enter the string:
Excellence!:Documents/Mail__Merge.dat
Leave the other the requester information alone and click OK. This
instructs Excellence! to merge all the datafile records in the document.
The Project Print requester appears next. Make any necessary changes to the
Print requester and click OK to begin printing. For fast output select
Draft or NLQ printing. If you have a PostScript printer follow the
instructions in Chapter 2.
After a few moments your printer outputs several names and addresses. When
you use mailing labels you may have to adjust the left margin to begin
printing on the left side of the label.
In a regular document, like a business letter, you may use variable names
anywhere and as often as you'd like in the document. Refer to th document
'Mail__Merge.doc' for a sample Mail Merge document.
Select Project Save and store the document under the name Documents:Labels.
CREATING A MAIL MERGE DATA FILE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There's one rule Excellence! must follow - to do mail merge you must have a
mail merge datafile. And the datfile must be in a specific format.
On your Excellence! disk is a mail merge datafile. Cloe the current project
window and select Project Open. Log into the Excellence! disk and the
Document drawer and retrieve the document 'Mail__Merge.dat'.
You may also enter Excellence!:Documents/Mail__Merge.dat in the Selection
input area and click Open. Notice in this example you entered the filename
extension. If the document doesn't have the same filename extension listed
next to Pattern, you must enter it.
When the document window appears you'll see the same information printed in
the previous section.
Name, Address, City, State, Zip
Chris DeBracy,5251 Markham Drive,Wellington, FL,33414
"Jack Matthews, Jr",4897 NE 18th St.,Boca Raton,FL33418
,P.O. Box 497,Lake Worth,FL,33415
Paul Dubois,293 Cottonwood Ave.,Jupiter,Fl,
"William Needham, Pres.",14 Cornwall,West Palm Beach,FL,33430
The first line of an Excellence! mail merge file contains the variable
names used in the previous document. These names must be in the same order
as the information in the datafile.
A mail merge datafile follows a simple but specific format. The data for
each variable name must be separated by a comma. These are known as fields.
If the field contains a comma, surround the entire field in quotes. If the
field is blank just use a comma. A field must exist for each variable name
found at the top of the datafile.
A set of fields for the variable names are known as records. Each record
must be ended with a carriage return and it can be no longer than 240
characters. Since most of the fonts Excellence! uses are proportional (some
characters use more space than others) it may be difficult to know just how
many characters each record uses. But it can be done.
First, convert the text to a Topaz 11 font. Then change your Page Setup to
a Pitch of 15 with a Page Width of 17 inches. Set the left margin to 0 and
click OK. The maximum number of characters you can place on each line,
including the carriage return, is 240.
If a record goes past 240 characters, press Return at the end of the line.
Excellence! will use the rest of the record's information on the next line
when doing its Print Merge.
Look at each record carefully. You can see examples of records with blank
fields and fields with commas. YOU MUST FOLLOW THIS FORMAT PRECISELY! If
you don't, information may appear in the wrong place when yu do your Print
Merge.
Go to the end of the document and enter your name and address, following
the same format as the record above. When you finish, select Project Save.
Normally Excellence! saves the document under the name on the title bar.
However, the Text gadget on the file requester is selected. When you load a
file, Excellence! toggles this gadget to let you save the file again as
text, instead fo the Excellence! format. Since a mail merge datafile must
be in text format, click the Save gadget.
Whenever the Text gadget is toggled, Excellence! displays the file
requester when you use Project Save. This is done purposely. When
Excellence! stores a file as Text, no formatting information is saved.
Refer to the Section 'Text Files' later in this chapter for more
information.
If you wish, open 'Labels.doc' and do a Print Merge again. you should see
your name and address appear after the other names.
GLOSSARY
~~~~~~~~
The Glossary is the last menu item examined in this tutorial. In some ways
the best was saved for last. The Glossary is a powerful and versatile menu
item. With it, you can do everything from creating a macro key to delete
words, to selecting menu items and inserting items like a header for your
business letters.
Close the current project window and select Project New. When the document
window appears, choose Project Insert. Enter
Excellence!:Documents/MSS__Logo and click the Open gadget.
Move the insertion point to the right of the picture and press Return. On
the lines below enter:
Micro-Systems Software, Inc.
12798 W. Forest Hill Blvd.
Suite 202
West Palm Beach, FL 33414
Now highlight the picture and text and select Document Glossary. In the
Name input area enter 'Letterhead' and click the Define gadget. The
glossary window now contains the new entry.
Select Edit Cut to clear the project window. Now click the 'Letterhead'
entry in the glossary requester and select the Insert gadget.
Edit glossary entry saves all Font, Style and ruler settings. If you click
the Save gadget in the Glossary requester you may insert this letterhead
into any document. While it's great to be able to insert information like
this with the mouse, it's even better to have it at your fingertips.
Click the 'Letterhead' glossary entry with the mouse. Below the Name input
area appears the first 32 characters of the glossary entry. Pictures appear
as small boxes. Now click the Key gadget, Excellence! highlights it. Press
any keyboard command, like Alt-L. When you enter the keystroke Excellence!
un-highlights the gadget and inserts the keyboard definition below the
glossary entry display. This helps to prevent you from assigning a
duplicate keyboard definition to a macro.
Press Alt-L and Excellence! automatically inserts the 'Letterhead' entry
for you. you may type this at anytime, Excellence! doesn't require the
glossary requester to be present. Close the requester if you wish to save
memory.
Just this feature alone makes the Glossary a powerful feature. But there's
more. Excellence! uses special commands known as reserved words whichyou
can place in a glossary entry. When Excellence! inserts the entry into the
document, it does operations based on the reserved words. The following
lists all the reserved words Excellence! recognizes:
Word Meaning
~~~~ ~~~~~~~
{alt} Alt key
{amiga} Right or left Amiga key
{backspace} Deletes character left of the insertion point
{ctrl} Ctrl key
{del} Deletes character right of the insertion point
{down} Moves insertion pont down one line
{esc} Esc key
{fx} Function key where "x" is a number from 1-10
{left} Moves insertion point to the left
{menu} Executes menu command
{return} Return key
{right} Moves insertion point to the right
{shift} Shift key
{tab} Tab key
{up} Moves insertion point up one line
The {menu} reserved word is he only command which does not reference a
keyboard command. You may access a menu item by entering the full menu
name. For example, enter the following line in the document window.
{menu format, mark index entry}
You must enter the menu command as it appears on the menu (case does not
matter, nor do font and style attributes). Place a , (comma) between each
portion of the menu command. The curley braces must surround the reserved
words.
Now highlight the line and enter 'Index' in the Name input area of the
Glossary requester. Click Define and then Key. Press Alt-I to assign this
keyboard command to the entry. If you accidentally press Return, click the
Key gadget three times. Twice to remove the keyboard definition and the
third to accept Alt-I.
Return to the document and delete the highlighted text. Type in the word
'test' and select View Show Markers from the pull-down menu. Place the
insertion point on the word 'test' or highlight it. Press Alt-I and you'll
see two index markers appear on either side of the word.
Any menu item is acceptable. For example.
{menu font, garnet, 9 point}
is perfect for changing a font on the fly without using the mouse. When
using reserved words you must assign a keyboard definition to the glossary
entry. Otherwise, if you Insert the entry using the moue, Excellence!
places the entire string in the document without interpreting the reserved
words.
Despite these already enormous capabilities, Excellence! lets youdo even
more. With a combination of reserved words you can accomplish most
highlighting operations normally done with the mouse. Enter the following
line in your document:
{shift}{alt}{right}{del}
Highlight the line and enter 'Del__Word' in the Name input area. Click
Define and then Key. Press Alt-D to assign this keyboard command to the
glossary entry.
Now place the insertion point in front of the line you just entered and
press Alt-D. You now have a word delete function.
Continue to press Alt-D to remove the entire line.
Refer to Chapter 5 for more examples and a full list of the keyboard
commands available within Excellence!
To save your glossary entries, click the Save gadget. Select an entry and
click Remove to delete a glossary entry. Whenever you click the Define, Key
or Remove gadgets always click Save to permanently save your changes.
Excellence! uses the glossary name listed in Project Preferences. To switch
between glossaries, select Project Preferences, change the glossary name
and click OK. If the glossary doesn't exist then Excellence! creates it.
To change the contents of a glossary entry, Insert it into the document,
make the necessary changes and highlight the text again. Enter the name in
the input area and click Define. If the glossary definition already exists,
the message 'Replace existing entry?' appears. click the Yes gadget to
continue or No to abort.
With the combination of commands available to you, the glossary function
will be one of your most valuable features.
CREATING A STYLE SHEET
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A style sheet is often thought of as a pre-defined document format. You may
use one format for your business letters, where a flush right tab is
required and another for manuscripts, where an auto-indent is used.
You can easily create a style sheet with Excellence! Open a project window,
change your ruler and Page Setup settings and store the empty document
under a unique name. When you need that particular format, open the
document and select Project Save As you sotre the document under another
name. Since you never change the original document, you can use it as often
as you'd like. In this manner you save time in se5tting up your initial
page and ruler settings.
Close the current project window without saving any changes. Select Project
Open and enter Documents:Labels in the Selection input area. Click the Open
gadget and after a few moments your sample mail merge file appears.
Remember the time it took to change your Page Setup and ruler settings? Now
you'll create a style sheet to avoid having to do so again.
Choose Select All from the Edit menu and press Del. Once the document
window is empty select Project Save As. Click the Drive gadget until your
Documents disk is in one of your drives. Enter the name 'Mail__Labels' in
the Selection imput area and click Save.
Without changing the original 'Labels' document (it's still on disk),
you've created a style sheet you can use at any time when you need to print
mailing labels.
Keep this rule in mind for creating style sheets. When you enter text into
a document, Excellence! always uses the ruler settings from the previous
paragraph. So once you set your ruler settings once, the rest of the
document format automatically follows.
Using this feature you have a style sheet with multiple columns for your
newsletters or a document with pre-set tabs for columns of data. There's
almost no limit to what you can define. If you select Font or Style
attributes and press the space bar, Excellence! saves you the time from
having to select those options with the mouse before you start typing.
MEMORY MANAGEMENT
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excellence! is rather unique in how it uses the memory of your Amiga.
Instead of you having to specify an amount of memory for your document,
Excellence! automatically uses only what the document requires. If the
document size decreases, Excellence! releases the memory.
Occasionally, you may be unable to open a window or display a requester.
Due to the way the Amiga handles memory, the memory available to Excellence!
may be too "fragmented" for it to display a window or requester. When this
happens it is often necessary to reboot and un-fragment the memory. Refer
to the section Conserving Memory in Chapter 5 for further information.
TEXT FILES
~~~~~~~~~~
To save a document as a text file, select Project Save As and click the
Text gadget. Then click Save. If Excellence! loads a text file it
automatically toggles the Text gadget for you
When the Text gadget is selected, Excellence! stores the document without
any paragraph formatting, fonts, style, color, pictures or page setup
settings. Every paragraph is saved as one long line, a format compatible
with many text-based word processors and editors. if formatting is
required, print to disk.
While the Text gadget is toggled, Excellence! re-displays the file
requester each time you select Project Save or Save As. To update a text
file, press Right Amiga S and when Excellence! displays the requester,
press Return and then S to activate the Save gadget. If you click the Text
gadget off and click Save, Excellence! stores the file in its own format.
To format a file on disk, select Project Print and specify a filename.
Select Draft Print Quality. Every line ends with a line feed. Remove
margins to prevent unwanted blank lines. If you need to embed the
preferences control characters for boldface, underline and italics, select
NLQ Print Quality.
EXCELLENCE! FILES AND ASSIGN COMMANDS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Your Excellence! disk contains several files. Among them are the dictionary
files for the spell check and thesaurus, plus sample documents and
datafiles.
Excellence! can locate these files using the AmigaDOS ASSIGN command. If
you don't need to move your files to another disk you can skip this
section.
The AmigaDOS ASSIGN command is very useful. It is used to tell your Amiga
to look here instead of there when searching for information. Excellence!
takes advantage of this by internally ASSIGNing its files. For example,
under the volume name of Excellence!:, Excellence! looks for these files:
Excellence!:
Excellence!
Excellence!:.udict
Excellence!:.gloss
Excellence!:.prefs
If you copied these files to another volume/path you could enter an ASSIGN
command from CLI or in your Startup-sequence to tell your Amiga where to
find these files when Excellence! needs them.
assign Excellence!: dh0:word
This has the Amiga look in the sub-directory named 'word' on your hard disk
for all the Excellence! files assigned under the volume name of Excellence!
Note, you may not ASSIGN Excellence!: anywhere else if there's a disk with
that volume name in any one of the drives. AmigaDOS will display an error
and abort.
The next ASSIGN command Excellence! uses is DOCTOOLS: The following files
are located under this volume name.
Doctools:
Spell1.dict
Spell2.dict
thesp.dict
thesm.dict
thess.dict
phrase.txt
summary.txt
These ar eyour dictionary and grammatical checker files. Normally Excellence!
searches on its own disk for these files. However, you could copy them to
another disk or even Ram: to speed up the thesaurus and spell check
guesses. Do this by typing the following commands from CLI:
copy Excellence! :#?.dict to ram:
copy Excellence! :#?.txt to ram:
assign doctools: ram:
The last ASSIGN command has nothing to do with Excellence! However, if you
reguarly use a large number of fonts (more than the 120 Excellence!
displays), then you can ASSIGN your fonts: directory elsewhere. For this to
work the ASSIGN command must be done before you load Excellence!
assign fonts: my__fonts:fonts
The example above has Excellence! search the disk with the volume name of
My__Fonts for the fonts it will use.
you can find this last set of files in your Documents drawer of your
Excellence! disk. They are not located with an ASSIGN command, but listed
here for your convenience.
Documents Drawer
Bad_Grammar.doc Examples of grammatical errors
Mail_Merge.dat Sample Mail Merge datafile
Mail_Merge.doc Sample Mail Merge letter
Gothic.doc General purpose document
Titles.doc Examples of headers, footers and footnotes
Style.doc Example of multiple fonts and color
CHAPTER 5
~~~~~~~~~
QUICK REFERENCE GUIDE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This section contains a list of all Excellence!'s commands. Commands are
shown as they appear on the pull-down menus. Following each is a complete
description.
At the end of this chapter is a list of keyboard commands and
troubleshooting tips.
PROJECT MENU
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Project New (Right_Amiga N)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Each document in Excellence! is edited from a project window. This command
opens a new project window, empty of text. You may have as many project
windows open as memory permits. Each window needs about 70K of chip memory
(115K for interlaced windows). See the sectin titled Conserving Memory at
the end of this chapter. Select the Save command to store the document on
disk for later editing or printing.
Project Windows
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A project window contains the following items:
Close window gadget
Title Bar
Zoom Gadget
Screen Depth Arrangers
Left margin Indent marker
Tab marker
Ruler Scale
Tab marker
Right margin marker
Left --!
Justify ! Paragraph alignment gadgets
Center !
Right --!
Scroll bar
Left --!
Center ! Tab gadgets
Decimal !
Right --!
Scroll arrow
Decrease --! Line spacing gadgets
Increase --!
Page Number Indicator
Insertion Point
Re-size gadgets
Title bar
~~~~~~~~~
When Excellence! is first loaded, the title bar initially contains the name
'Untitled-1.doc'. When you save the document to disk he title bar displays
the new filename.
Scroll arrows
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To view different parts of a document, use the scroll arrows found at the
bottom and the right side of each window. Refer to the section titled
Keyboard Commands at the end of this chapter to learn hw to move around the
document without the mouse.
The scroll arrows move the display in small increments, in the direction of
the arrow. Hold down the left mouse button to scroll continuously.
Scroll bar
~~~~~~~~~~
To "page" through a document, click in the blank area next to the scroll
bar. For example, click below the verticle scroll bar to move the display
down one screen.
A third method lets you quickly move to any portion of the document. Point
at the scroll bar, click and hold the left mouse button. Move the scroll
bar to the approximate position in the document and release the mouse.
Page number indicator
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
At the right of the horizontal scroll bar is the page number indicator. As
you move the scroll bar, the current page number is automatically updated.
The page number indicator always reflects the page at the top of the
window.
Screen depth arrangers
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When you use more than one project window the screen depth arrangers let
you switch from one window to another easily.
Click the left arranger to "push" a window to the back. To make a window
active, either click the right arranger or click anywhere in the window,
Excellence! automatically brings the active window to the front. Should you
need to place an inactive window over an active, click the left screen
depth arranger twice.
TIP
~~~
Excellence!'s menu bar also has screen depth arrangers since it uses a
custom screen to display eight colors. Click on the left arranger to
display the Workbench or next custom screen. you may also press Left-Amiga
N then click to make that screen active. To return to the Excellence!
screen, press Left-Amiga M and click.
Every Amiga program which uses a custom screen should have screen depth
arrangers on the menu bar. Click the left screen depth arranger on the menu
bar to switch custom screens.
Re-size gadget
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This gadget allows you to change the size of the project window. Click the
gadget and the window border changes color. Hold the mouse button and move
the mouse pointer. Move the pointer to where you want the bottom right-hand
side of the window. Release the mouse button and the window is re-drawn to
match the new border size. To move the location of the window, click on the
title bar, drag the window border to where you wish and release.
Close window gadget
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Click the close window gadget to remove a project window. If the text in
the window contains text or was edited since the last Save, a requester
prompts you to store the changes.
If the document in the project window does not have a name, a default name
appears, along with these gadgets:
Yes
~~~
Closes the window and saves the changes under the name which appears on the
requester.
No
~~
Closes the window without saving any changes.
Cancel
~~~~~~
Leaves the window open without saving any changes.
Select Project Save As to store the changes under a different name.
Zoom gadget
~~~~~~~~~~~
At the far right of the title bar is the zoom gadget. This gadget is unique
to Excellence! It lets you work with multiple windows easier than you could
imagine.
The zoom gadget toggles the project window's position and size. If you have
a full-size window then shrink it down to one-quarter size, click this
gadget to return to a full-size window. To return to the small window,
click again.
Insertion point
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the middle of the project window is the insertion point. Whatever you
type from the keyboard appears to the right of the insertion point.
By far the most flexible item of the project window is the ruler gadget.
RULER SETTINGS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The ruler gadget displays and changes the settings for each paragraph.
The ruler reflects the settings of the paragraph at the insertionpoint or
the first paragraph highlighted. Ruler settings are stored with each
document.
When a ruler setting changes, Excellence! immediately updates the
paragraph. Remember, WYSIWYG! Refer to the command Select All to make
paragraph changes for the entire document.
Ruler scale
~~~~~~~~~~~
Excellence! displays its ruler in inches or centimeters. See Page Setup for
more information.
Ruler markers
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To move any of the ruler markers, click the left mouse button and drag it
to the desired position and release. Excellence! automatically adjusts the
marker's position to the nearest ruler scale. Press the Alt key while
moving a marker to precisely position it on the ruler.
Left margin marker
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This marker determines where the left edge of the paragraph prints. The
left margin in Page Setup determines how far to the left this marker can
appear. When you move the left margin marker the indent marker
automatically adjusts.
Indent marker
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To auto-indent a paragraph click the indent marker and move it to the
right. As you enter each new paragraph, the first line appears at indent
marker position.
The default setting is for no indentation. This aligns the indent marker
with the left margin marker to give the appearance of a right arrow.
You may create a hanging indent by holding down the Shift key and moving
the indent marker to the left of the left margin marker. If the hanging
indent won't move past the left margin, move the left margin marker to the
right and try again.
Right margin marker
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This marker determines how far to the righ tedge of a page a document
print. You may place the right margin marker anywhere right of the left
margin marker to the right margin definition. See Page Setup to set the
value of the right margin.
Tab markers and gadgets
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excellence! features four different types of tabs, for an incredible amount
of versatility when creating your documents.
Left
~~~~
Text entered at this tab position is flush left with the marker.
Center
~~~~~~
Text entered at this position is automatically centered n relation to the
tab marker.
Decimal
~~~~~~~
Text entered at this position shifts to the left of the tab marker until
you press a (.) period. From then on, any text entered appears to the right
of the (.) period.
Right
~~~~~
Text entered at this position is flush right with the marker.
To add a tab, click on the appropriate tab gadget below the ruler line. The
mouse ponter changes to that tab marker. Move the marker to the correct
posision on the ruler and release the left mouse button. To precisely place
a tab and have it appear between the ruler scale lines, press the Alt key
before releasing the mouse.
Removing a tab is as easy as clicking the tab marker and dragging it to the
bottom of the ruler and releasing the mouse button.
Once the tabs are in position, press the Tab key to move the insertion
point from one tab marker to another. Tabs are part of your ruler settings
and are therefore stored with the document. you may have as many as 8 tabs
on the ruler line.
if you press the Tab key a the end of a line, the insertion point
automatically wraps aroudn to the next line. You should always press Return
to prevent improper formatting.
You may use a tab to "fill" a line with characters, such as chapter
references. Press Alt-Tab and the character to repeat. The character
repeats until the next tab marker.
Press Shift-Tab to move the insertionpoint to the previous tab marker.
Tabs are deleted like any other character, though they're not shown as such
when you choose Show Markers. You should only use tabs on lines which do
not wrap but end in a Return.
Tabs, like the other ruler settings, may change from paragraph to
paragraph.
Paragraph alignment gadgets
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
These gadgets adjust how a paragraph appears. There are four ways to format
a paragraph.
Left
~~~~
Aligns each line in the paragraph with the left margin. This is the default
setting.
Justified
~~~~~~~~~
Aligns each line in the paragraph with the left and right margins. Excellence!
automatically inserts spaces in short lines (except for the last).
Justified paragraphs often appear in newspapers and articles.
Centered
~~~~~~~~
This centers each line in the paragraph. No line padding is done. For
single line paragraphs you may also use a center tab.
Flush Right
~~~~~~~~~~~
Aligns each line in the paragraph with the right margin. No line padding is
done, which gives the appearance of a ragged left paragraph.
Line spacing gadgets
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
These gadgets let you increase or decrease the amount of space between each
line of a paragraph. The default value is one point larger than the default
font, but this may not be accurate as Excellence! always adjusts the line
spacing so there is at least one point between two lines, regardless of
font height.
Increase
~~~~~~~~
Increases the space between the two lines. Regardless of the value in the
gadget, unless the lines in the paragraph visibly move, there are not
enough points to increase the line spacing.
Decrease
~~~~~~~~
Decreases the number of points betwee each baseline. You may not decrease
the line spacing past what Excellence! requires to display two lines
properly.
Project Open (Right-Amiga O)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This command displays the file requester to retrieve a document from disk
and places it in a project window of its own.
Note
~~~~
If you are a SCRIBBLE! owner you should know that Excellence! will open
your SCRIBBLE! documents with no converting on your part. On-screen
centering, boldface, underline and italics are converted. However, dot
commands are not.
Files Requester
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excellence!'s file requester lets you quickly retrieve a document from
disk.
The top of the file requester contains the current volume/path. To the
right of the volume/path is the filename pattern. The default is '.doc'
which Excellence! appends to a file it creates to let you easily
distinguish documents from other files. Click the pattern to change it to
'.pic' and once more for ALL. Every file in the volume/path is now
displayed.
Bel;ow both of those is a list of files and sub-directory names.
Sub-drectory names appear in a different color and have the word DIR next
to them. To the right of each name appears the date and time the file was
last saved.
Above the directory names are the files which end in the extension '.doc',
or the filenames which fit the pattern displayed. To the right of each
filename is the filesize and the date and time the file was last saved.
Next to the sub-directory and filenames is the proportional scroll bar.
This works like the scroll bars in the project windows, except the
filenames scroll as the scroll bar moves.
Below the filenames is the selection input area. This is automatically
activated when the file requester appears, so you may type in the filename
and open a document without using a mouse. The filename in the selection
area is the document opened. Clicking a filename places that name in the
input area. Double-clicking a filename automatically opens the document.
Three gadgets appear in the file requester. The Open gadget retrieves the
file in the selection input area. Cancel aborts the Open function and
removes the file requester. The gadgets are active, which means you can
type in the filename when the requester appears, press Return and then type
O to open the document.
Click the Drive gadget to have Excellence! automatically switch the file
display to another floppy drive. If you only have one floppy drive, swap
out floppy disks while Excellence! displays the files in the empty RAM
disk.
Next to the Cancel gadget is the free space in kilobytes (KB) or megabytes
(MB). This is used to keep track of dwindling disk space for a disk near
its capacity. If you find yourself running out of disk space it is best to
save the document to another disk.
One of the file requester's strengths is its ability to change volume/paths
by double-clicking on sub-directory names. When you select a sub-directory
name in this manner, the directory input area is automatically updated to
reflect the new volume/path.
To exit from a sub-directory, double-click the / directory. This is known
as the parent directroy. When a parent directory is not visible then you
are in the main directory of that disk. If you do not wish to use the mouse
to change sub-directories, click in the directory input area, type in the
new volume/path and press Return.
This is necessary to change the disk which Excellence! uses to store a
document. The directory input area may contain the drive name where the
disk is, or the disk's volume name.
Each project window maintains its own volume/path and filename pattern
information.
Volume and Drive Names
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When you initialize a disk from Workbench its default volume name is
'Empty'. The volume name is found under the disk's icon. Use the Rename
function from Workbench to change the volume name of a disk.
Your Amiga can store data to whatever disk is in a particular drive or to a
specific disk. Drive names are DF0:, DF1: and DH0:. Sample volume names are
Excellence!, Documents, Data and Mystuff.
If the directory nput area of your file requester contains the drive name
DF1:, then regardless of what disk is in that drive, that's where
Excellence! saves and opens documents.
When the directory input area contains a volume name, Excellence! saves and
retrieves documents from that disk no matter where it is. If the disk is
not in a drive, hen the Amiga prompts you to insert that disk. Single drive
owners must use volume names when storing documents on another disk!
Whichever format you use, terminate the drive or volume name with a colon!
Without a colon, Excellence! assumes you have specified a sub-directory and
attempts to save the file to a non-existent sub-directory. This results in
a "File not found!" error. To specify a volume/path with a sub-directory,
separate the sub-directory names with a / (forward slash).
DF1:DOCS
TEST:DOCS/JANUARY
In the first example, Excellence! displays the files in whichever disk in
drive DF1 and the sub-directory named DOCS. In the second, the disk with
the volume name TEST is first found. Then Excellence! looks in the
sub-directory names DOCS, and in that sub-directory for another named
JANUARY.
Note
~~~~
The Commodore Amiga supports many levels of sub-directory names. Excellence!
does not create sub-directories. To create a sub-directory use CLI's
MAKEDIR command or duplicate a drawer, empty and Rename it. Refer to an
AmigaDOS user's guide for more information.
Project Insert
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This command lets you insert a document or picture in the current project
window. Regular ASCII files are not permitted. If you try to insert an
ASCII file, the message 'Incorrect IFF chunk!' appears.
When you insert a picture, click the pattern from '.doc' to '.pic' or ALL
so you may display those filenames. Select the file and the requester
closes. The contents of the file appear at the insertion point.
Project Close
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Select this to close the current project window. If you have edited the
document since the last save, Excellence! lets you save the changes.
The same requester as found with the close window gadget appears. Make sure
you close unneeded windows to free memory for other applications.
Project Save (Right-Amiga S)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This item automatically saves the latest changes to your document and
creates a backup of the original document, when the backup option is
enables. Refer to Project Preferences for more information. If the current
project is untitled, a file requester appears.
Enter the filename in the selection input area and click the Save gadget.
Filenames can be 16 characters in length and may not contain a (.) period
or (/) slash. Excellence! automatically adds the '.doc' filename extension
when the pattern matches. If the pattern is ALL, Excellence! stores the
file without the '.doc' filename extension.
Ghosted filenames in the requester permit you to save a document, not open
one. If you try to save a file using a name which already exists, the error
message 'Replace existing "filename.doc"?' appears. Click the Yes gadget to
overwrite the old filename or No to abort.
Note
~~~~
Excellence! normally stores its documents in a format which text based word
processors cannot read.
If you need to save a document as Text only, click the Text gadget. The
gadget becmes highlighted. To save the file in an Excellence! format, click
the Text gadget again.
Text files do not contain any paragraph or page formatting, including
headers, footers, page numbers and so on. Nor are fonts, style or color
attributes saved. If the document contains a picture, Excellence! ignores
it. Excellence! stores paragraphs as single lines, a format used by many
text-only word processors.
Project Save As..
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Displays the file requester to let you save the current document under a
new name. This is useful when making changes to a document when you don't
want to lose the original. If you try to save a file using a name which
already exists, the error message 'Replace existing "filename.doc"?'
appears. Click the Yes gadget to over write the old file or No to abort.
Project Revert to Saved
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This option displays a requester with the message 'Abandon changes to
"filename.doc"?'. Click the Yes gadget to continue or No to abort.
If you click the Yes gadget Excellence! retrieves the last saved version of
the document and places it in the current project window. This is perfect
when making changes to a document and you need to abandon them to start
again. Excellence! looks for the document in the volume/path selected in
the file requester. This menu item is ghosted until the document is saved.
Project Revert to Backup
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This item retrieves the backup version of the document and places it in the
current project window. A requester first prompts you with the message
'Abandon changes to "filename.doc"?'. Click the Yes gadget to continue or
No to abort.
Excellence! creates backup copies each time you select Project Save. Refer
to Project Preferences to disable this option. This lets yu maintain three
levels of every document: the one in memory, the saved document and the
backup copy.
If the backup option is not selected then the menu item is ghosted.
Excellence! searches for the document using the volume/path in the file
requester.
Project Delete..
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This function permanently removes a document from disk. A file requester
lists the documents found in the current volume/path.
To select the filename for the document you wish to delete either enter the
filename in the selection input area or click on the filename with the
mouse. When the name is in the input area, click the Delete gadget to
diaplay another requester. This last requester confirms your choice. Click
the Yes gadget to delete the file or No to abort.
Project Page Setup...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This command displays the Page Setup requester which defines each page in
Excellence!. These values remain constant for every page and are stored
with the document.
Measurements in
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excellence! displays values in inches or centimeters. Click this gadget to
toggle between the two. Conversions to the other Page Setup values are made
automatically. When you exit this requester the ruler reflects the correct
measurements.
Pitch
~~~~~
This determines the number of characters per inch that Excellence! prints.
If you print in draft or near letter quality mode then this setting should
be 10 or 12. PostScript requires a pitch setting of 15. The ruler scale
adjusts to the pitch.
Pitch is set as characters per inch even when the ruler scale is in
centimeters.
Page Height
~~~~~~~~~~~
The amount of space in which Excellence! may print a document vertically.
Page Width
~~~~~~~~~~
The amount of space in which Excellence! may print a document horizontally.
Top Margin
~~~~~~~~~~
The amount of blank space at the top of each page before any other text.
Bottom Margin
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The amount of blank space at the bottom of each page after any other text.
Header Margin
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The space after the top margin and before the body of the document. The
header margin may be left empty or contain the document name, page number,
date or other useful information.
If the header is larger than the header definition, Excellence! chops the
remainder. Just increase the header if this happens.
Footer Margin
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The space after the body of the document and before the bottom margin. This
margin is like the header except the text appears at the bottom of each
page instead of the top.
Left Margin
~~~~~~~~~~~
The blank space on the left side of each page.
Right Margin
~~~~~~~~~~~~
The blank space on the right side of each page.
Start Page Number
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is the number Excellence! uses for the first page of a document. If
separating a large book into chapters, each a different document, it is
necessary to be able to specify a beginning page number to maintain
continuity.
The page number indicator always reflects the correct page number using
this value.
Facing Pages
~~~~~~~~~~~~
This gadget toggles between Yes and No. When clicked to Yes, Excellence!
substitutes the left margin for the right margin on even pages. This is
useful when printing books or newspapers so each page aligns properly for
binding. This does not show on the screen, but only on the printed page.
The default is No.
Number of Columns
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Each click of this gadget toggles the number of columns from 1 to 4.
Excellence! uses newspaper-style columns, a format used by magazines and
newspapers. When a column becomes full the insertion point moves to the
beginning of the next column on that page. When the page is full, text
starts in the first column of the next page. The default is 1 column.
Space Between Columns
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The amount of blank space between each column of text. With one column
defined, this value is ignored.
Enable Automatic Numbering of Footnotes
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When using footnotes in the document you may specify whether each footnote
has a number. The default is Yes. Click the gadget to turn off numbering of
footnotes.
Start Footnote Number
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When footnotes are automatically numbered, this is the value of the first
footnote. This works like the Starting Page number.
Click the OK gadget at the bottom of the requester and Excellence! accepts
the new settings. If you hear a beep and the requester doesn't disappear
then an illegal value appears somewhere. Double-check your values and click
again.
When changes are made which affect the ruler, the ruler markers adjust
automatically.
To abort changes made to the Page Setup requester, click the Cancel gadget.
Project Print..(Right-Amiga T)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From this requester you initiate the printing of your document. A variety
of settings let you choose anythng from the quality of printing to the
pages to print.
Print Quality
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This gadget toggles the print quality. The default is Normal. If you do not
have a dot matrix graphics printer you must select Draft or NLQ (Near
Letter Quality). Excellence! uses the driver selected through the
Preferences tool, found on Workbench. Always verify you have the correct
printer driver selected before printing a document with Excellence!.
Normal
~~~~~~
This is the setting used when you wish to print the document as you see it
on the screen. For Excellence! to print fonts, color and pictures, the
document must be output in graphics mode. Depending on your printer, this
can take a bit longer than printing in Draft or NLQ. The resolution of the
printout is adjustable with some printers using the Print Density setting.
If you select this mode with a letter quality printer the error message
'Incompatible printer!' will appear.
NLQ
~~~
This mode is chosen for the quick printing of a document when you don't
need special fonts, colors or pictures printed.
The printer uses normal text mode and the document printed in near letter
quality mode if your printer supports this mode. If the document contains a
picture, a blank space represents its position in the document.
All special style attributes (bold, underline, italics, super and
subscript) are sent to the printer. In this mode you can use Excellence! to
quickly print first drafts of a document or business correspondence which
may not require fancy fonts. Choose the number of characters per inch
through the Pitch option of Page Setup.
Draft
~~~~~
This mode is like NLQ except style codes are not sent to the printer. This
is particularly useful when printing a document to disk. choose the number
of characters per inch through the Pitch option of Page Setup.
PostScript
~~~~~~~~~~
PostScript is a page description language, the standard for many laser
printers. With PostScript you achieve higher text resolution than
conventional printers can accomplish in the Normal print mode. You may only
use this mode if you have a laser printer which supports PostScript. The
Apple LaserWriter and LaserWriter Plus are two examples.
Pitch must be set at 15 for PostScript to work properly. Excellence!
creates a PostScript file to send to your neighborhood printer. From there,
it is printed on a high resolution laser printer.
For PostScript quality select a font which has a corresponding metric file.
If you select a font which does not have a metric file, PostScript uses the
Amiga's resolution to reproduce the font.
You can easily verify the existence of a font's metric file. From
Workbench, double-click the CLI icon. From the CLI window type DIR :FONTS
and press Return. A full display of your fonts sub-directory appears in the
window.
Standard font names like Helvetica, Times, Symbol and Courier most often
have the '.metric' filename extension.
Print Density
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Some printers, such as the HP LaserJet, can print in several different
resolutions. The default is 4 for the highest possible resolution. Toggle
this from 1-4 for a lower resolution. While it speeds up output, the print
quality is not as good. Refer to Print Quality for more information. This
setting only affects the printer in the Normal print quality mode.
Print Pages
~~~~~~~~~~~
This option lets you select which pages of the documen you wish to print.
All
~~~
This is the default which prints all the pages specified.
Odd
~~~
Prints only the odd numbered pages specified.
Even
~~~~
Prints only the even numbered pages specified.
Paper Type
~~~~~~~~~~
Click this gadget to toggle between single sheet paper and fanfold. Fanfold
is the default. When Single Sheet is chosen, press the space bar to resume
after placing the new sheet of paper in the printer.
Print From Page
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is the page number from where Excellence! starts printing. The default
is 0 to print from the first page of the document.
Print to Page
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This last page in the document to print. If this is 0 then everything from
Print from Page forward prints.
Number of Copies to Print
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is the number of times to print the document using the rest of the
values in this requester.
Print Back to Front
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Toggle this gadget to Yes, to have Excellence!'s print pages in reverse
order, starting with the last page first.
Print to File
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To print the document to a disk file, enter a filename. Precede the
filename with a volume/path name, such as:
DOCUMENTS:mydocument.doc
If you don't specify a volume/path, then Excellence! creates the disk file
where Excellence! was loaded. Documents are often printed to a disk file
and typed from CLI or viewed by another word processor or text editor. The
only time Excellence! prints a document to disk is if this input area
contains a filename.
Sometimes you can enter the filename PAR:. This is an easy way to have
Excellence! print a document without using the preferences printer driver.
There are few instances when you should need to do this.
When you are ready to print click the OK gadget. Excellence! starts
printing using the values entered. Click the Cancel gadget to return to the
project window without printing.
While printing is in progress the mouse pointer snoozes. This prevents you
from doing anything while printing is in progress. To abort the printing of
a document press Esc. If your printer continues to print and the pointer
un-snoozes, your printer has a print buffer. When the buffer is empty the
printer stops.
Project Print Merge..
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This option lets you send the same letter to many people, yet let it look
personalized. This is known as a form letter. Excellence! supports Mail
Merge, which does just that.
Mail Merge Data File
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Enter the datafile name. You may precede it with a volume/path like
DATA:mailmerge.dat. If you don't specify a volume or drive name, Excellence!
looks in the current directory. If Excellence! is loaded from DF0: and the
Mail Merge datafile is on the disk in drive DF1: then the filename should
be something like DF1:datafile.dat.
If the datafile is not found, the error message "Main Merge file not found!"
appears when Excellence! prints.
HOW MAIL MERGE WORKS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The mail merge principle is simple: You create a document which markes
places in the document for data to be automatically inserted from a mail
merge datafile.
Suppose you wish to send the same business letter to several people. You
could create a document using the following variable names:
<<Name>>
<<Address>>
<<CityState>> <<Zip>>
Dear <<Name>>:
This is to inform you that our new program, <<Program>> supports full
WYSIWYG. Please contact us...
Notice the words Name, Address, CityState, Zip and Program are each
surrounded by << and >>. This lets Excellence! know that each time it
prints a line with one of these words to substitute information from the
mail merge datafile. These words are known as variable names.
To create a mail merge variable name, press an Alt-< (less than), enter a
variable name and press an Alt-> (greater than). The variable names are
important since Excellence! uses them to retrieve the correct information
from the mail merge datafile.
By itself, this document will do nothing special when printed. Therefore
you create the mail merge datafile.
The mail merge data file contains simple ASCII data. The first line must
contain the variable names in the order they appear in the mail merge data
file, not the documen. For example:
Name, Address, CityState, Zip, Program
Each line following contains the actual information inserted in the
document when print merged. Separate each piece of information with a ,
(comma). These are known as fields. Any field which contains a , (comma)
must contain " (quotes) on both sides of the field. All the fields together
are a record. Terminate each record with a Return and do not exceed more
than 240 characters.
John Doe,1234 Anyplace,"West Palm Beach, FL",33414,excellence!
Notice the field CitySate is surrounded in quotes. The quotes show tha the
comma between the city and state belongs there and is not a field
separator.
If you select Print Merge and data from one field appears where it doesn't
belong, double-check your fields. More often than not you've forgotten to
surround a field in quotes, inserted an extra comma or neglected to use a
comma for an empty field.
John Doe,,"West Palm Beach, FL",33414,Excellence!
For the mail merge to work correctly, every record must have the same
fields for every variable name defined in the first line of the mail merge
datafile.
you may use variable names anywhere in the document. Always make sure
youenter only the variable names in the mail merge datafile. When printed,
the inserted information uses the same text attibutes and font as the
variable name. Excellence! automatically reformats a paragraph when the
merged text is greater or less than the space the variable name uses in the
document.
If you want an eary way to create mail merge files, look at ORGANIZE!
Micro-Systems Software's database program. ORGANIZE! creates mail merge
files compatible with Excellence!
Merge All Records
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This option determines which records from the datafile Excellence! merges
with the document. Click the gadget to toggle between Yes and No. Yes is
the default and overrides any other selections. Toggle this to No to merge
only the records specified below.
Merge from Record
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When Merge All Records is No, enter the record number from where Excellence!
should start its print merge. Each line in your mail merge datafile is a
record. To start at line number 50 enter that number here. If this is 0,
Excellence! starts with the first record in the datafile.
Merge to Record
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When Merge All Records is No, enter the record number at which Excellence!
should stop its print merge. Each line in your mail merge datafile is a
record. To stop at line number 300 enter that number here. If this is 0,
Excellence! prints all records from the Merge from Record number.
When the information is complete click the OK gadget and the Print
requester appears. Select Cancel to abort any changes made in this
requester.
Project Preferences..
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This item displays a requester to let you change the default color
settings, the type of window Excellence! uses, the user dictionary,
glossary and font. Excellence! stores these defaults in an
Excellence!.prefs file, which the program reads when you load the program.
The three slide gadgets let you change any or all of the eight standard
colors which Excellence! uses. Click the box which represents the color to
change and move the color gadgets. Those colors Excellence! uses to display
information take effect immediately. Others only show in the Style menu.
RED
GREEN
BLUE
These gadgets change a particular color. This works the same as the
Preferences tool found on Workbench, except these colors only affect
Excellence!
Click on either side of the bar or click and drag the bar with the mouse.
As the bar moves the highlighted box changes color. Combinations of red,
green and blue make up the colors which the Amiga can display. The default
colors (left to right, top to bottom) are: Blue, white, black, green,
magent, cyan, red and yellow.
Interlaced Window
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A normal project window can display 15 to 25 lines of text. This varies
considerabley depending on the font size, project window size and whether
the ruler is hidden. With an interlaced window you can display between 30
and 40 lines.
One drawback to an interlaced window is the display tends to shake. By
adjusting your project window colors properly you can eliminate most of the
jitter. Try using grey, black and white as the firs three colors and you'll
see an improvement.
Because of memory considerations (each interlaced window requires
approximately 115K), interlaced windows do not appear until Excellence! is
loaded again. This is the only selection in Project Preferences which does
not take place immediately.
Create Backup Files
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
With this gadget toggled to Yes, Excellence! keeps an extra copy of your
document. Backup files have a '.bak' filename extension. Each tme you save
changes to a document Excellence! renames the original to 'filename.bak'.
With the combination of Revert to Saved and Revert to Backup you always
have three copies of a document: the one in memory, the one saved to disk
and the backup of the disk file.
With this option disabled, the Revert to Backup menu item is ghosted and no
'.bak' files created.
Create Project Icons
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The default is Yes to create a project icon for each document. A project
icon appears from Workbench as a smaller version of the Excellence!
application icon.
One advantage to using project icons is it lets you easily copy documents
from one disk to another. If you double-click on a project icon, Excellence!
is automatically loaded with that document.
Dictionary
~~~~~~~~~~
Enter the user dictionary name in this input area. The user dictionary
stores words that it has learned from Check Spelling. If the user
dictionary doesn't exist, Excellence! creates it when it Learns new words.
Excellence! uses the default name of Excellence!.udict. You may precede a
user dictionary name with a volume/path.
Glossary
~~~~~~~~
The default glossay file. If the glossay file doesn't exist, Excellence!
creates it when you add an entry with Document Glossay. Excellence! uses
the default name of Excellence!.gloss. You may precede the glossay name
with a volume/path.
Font Name
~~~~~~~~~
This is the name of the default Excellence! uses when first loaded. Diamond
12 is the default font. If Excellence! cannot find the font name, it looks
for the closest match. If a match is not found, Topaz 8 is used.
Font Size
~~~~~~~~~
The size of the font Excellence! uses. Refer to Font Name.
Once you have selected your Preferences click the OK gadget, Excellence!
saves the changes in the file named Excellence!.prefs and read each time
you load Excellence! To abort the current changes, click Cancel.
Project About... (Help Key)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Displays the Excellence! copyright notice with statistics like the memory
available. Click the OK gadget or press any key to resume.
Project Quit (Right Amiga Q)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Exits Excellence! and closes each project window. If you have made changes
since the last Save, a requester prompts you to save them.
The requester is window-specific. If you click the Yes gadget in one window
then only the document for that window is saved. However, anytime you click
the Cancel gadget the function aborts and you return to the current project
window.
Edit Undo Typing (Right-Amiga Z)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This reverses the last editing changes to the paragraph. After you select
this command the menu item changes to Redo, which un-does the Undo.
The menu item ghosts when not available. When you selected it the menu item
appears as follows:
Edit Redo Typing (Right Amiga Z)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Choose this to undo the undo command.
Edit Cut (Right Amiga X)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Removes the highlighted text from the document and places it in the
clipboard.
Edit Copy (Right Amiga C)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Copies the highlighted text to the clipboard. The original text in the
document is left unchanged.
Edit Paste (Right Amiga V)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Copies, does not erase, the contents of the clipboard and inserts it at the
insertion point. Pasted text uses the same font, size from where you copy
or cut.
Edit Erase
~~~~~~~~~~
Removes the highlighted text from the document without placing it in the
clipboard.
Edit Select All (Right Amiga A)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This command highlights the entire document for the next operation. Global
font, style changes and paragraph alignment are just several examples.
Edit Math (Right Amiga M)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This command takes a highlighted column of numbers and does mathemitical
operations based on the leading operator. The default operator is +
(addition). For example the following:
11.00
-3.35
yields the result 7.65 and stores it in the clipboard. Select Paste to
insert the result in the document at the insertion point. Other
mathematical operators are - (subtract) * (multiply) and / (divide).
If you have several columns of numbers and wish to add up only one, hold
down the Alt key, press the left mouse button and highlight that column.
THIS METHOD OF HIGHLIGHTING ONLY WORKS FOR THIS FUNCTION!
Edit Copy Ruler
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Select this command to copy paragraph settings to one or more paragraphs.
If you highlight several paragraphs then Excellence! copies the settings
from the first. Otherwise, the program uses the settings for the paragraph
at the insertion point.
Use this to reformat paragraphs which already exist in the document. new
paragraphs always use the ruler settings from the previous paragraphs.
Edit Paste Ruler
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This command reformats the paragraph at the insertion point with the ruler
settings from Copy Ruler. To reformat several paragraphs or the entire
document, first highlight them with the mouse. Unitl the Copy Ruler command
is chosen this menu item is ghosted.
FORMAT MENU
~~~~~~~~~~~
Note
~~~~
When you use Insert commands with Show Markers, a marker replaces the
actual text. You can delete, move or copy these markers.
Format Insert Page #
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Displays the current page number at the insertion point. If you change the
starting page number through Page Setup it updates this number. Page
numbers may appear anywhere on the page. Select Insert Header or Footer and
then this command to have a page number appear automatically on every page.
Format Insert Time
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This command places the current time at the insertion point. Excellence!
updates the time when the document is opened or printed. The time may
appear in the body of the document or in a header, footer or footnote.
Format Insert Date
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This command places the current date at the insertion point. The date is
automatically updated when the document is opened or printed. The date may
appear in the body of the document or in a header, footer or footnote.
Format Insert Page Break
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Use this command to force a new page at the insertion point, Excellence!
ejects the page, regardless of how much space may be left on the page.
NEVER TRY TO INSERT A PAGE BREAK AFTER ONE HAS OCCURRED NATURALLY. A FORCED
PAGE BREAK MUST ALWAYS OCCUR BEFORE A NATURAL PAGE BREAK.
Format Insert Header
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This command lets you enter text which appears at the top of a page before
any other text. Headers often display the name of the document or author
and may contain pictures, page numbers, and the date and time.
Enter header text from the header view. Only changes may be made to the
header from this view, none may be made to the body of the page. To exit
from the header view select Page View.
The header view uses the default ruler setting from Page Setup. Paragraphs
are automatically centered. You may change any of the ruller settings for
the header paragraphs. Headers may be as large as you wish. If the contents
of the header exceeds the header margin, as defined in Page Setup
Excellence! chops the header where the margin ends. In this case just
increase your header margin in Page Setup.
Select Show Markers when in a header view. This lets you see the defined
margins and any markers. With markers shown it helps to prevent you from
exceeding the header margin.
On the ruler both an Odd and Even gadget. They are highlighted to show that
the header will appear on both odd and even numbered pages. If you want the
header to appear only on even numbered pages, click the Odd gadget to
de-select it.
Defining an Odd numbered header is as simple as selecting Insert Header
again, clicking the Even gadget and entering the header information for the
odd numbered pages. Use alternating headers to place page numbers on the
outside edge of the page, such as found in this manual.
If you wish to edit a header after you have defined it, either double-click
in the header region for that page or select Header View from the View
menu. When you use alternating headers, go to the even or odd numbered page
and select Header View.
Headers may be defined anywhere in the document. You may turn a header off
by choosing this command and leaving the header view blank. A header may
not contain a footnote, page break, footer or another header.
Format Insert Footer
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This command lets you enter information which appears at the bottom of that
page and after any other text. Like the header, a footer may contain useful
information about the document which should appear on every page or a
select number of pages. See Format Insert Header for the rules on inserting
a footer.
Format Insert Footnote
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Footnotes are like footers, except they appear after the text and before
the footer. Footnotes provide a ready source of reference for a term
defined but not explained in the document. If you use multiple columns,
Excellence! places the footnote under the defined column.
Enter footnotes from the footnote view. Excellence! uses the default ruler
settings with paragraphs aligned to the left with ragged right margins. You
may change the ruler settings for each footer as desired. Footnotes may
contain text and pictures like the header or footer and page numbers, and
the date and time.
When Excellence! prints the footnote, a line is drawn 1/3 the width of the
column, before the actual text. If you enable footnote numbering, the
footnumber appears in superscript at the place of insertion and at the
bottom of the page before the footnote text.
Footnotes are automatically renumbered when copied or moved to another
place in the document.
The text in the body of the document is automatically wrapped to the next
page to make room for the footnote, if it becomes too large.
Format Mark Index Entry
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This command marks the word at the insertion point as an index entry. If
you highlight several words then Excellence! indexes the entire phrase.
Refer to Document Generate Index when you are ready to compile your index.
Format Mark TOC Entry
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This command marks the word at the insertion point as a Table of Contents
entry. If you highlight several words Excellence! indexes the entire
phrase. Section headers are often selected as Table of Contents entries.
Refer to Document Generate TOC to compile your Table of Contents.
Format Keep Together
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This function lets you keep a paragraph or series of paragraphs from
printing on two pages. If you highlight nothing then it affects only the
paragraph at the insertion point.
Columns of numbers, short paragraphs and text with pictures are most often
instances where it is better to have them on one page instead of being
split.
This command can only work effectively if you don't try to Keep Together
more paragraphs than can fit on a single page. Keep Together is more
flexible than Insert Page Break since it allows editing of the document
without worrying about where the page breaks occur, natural or forced.
When you insert a new paragraph between text highlighted with this command,
it's made part of the Keep Together selection.
Format Allow To Split
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The command lets paragraphs highlighted with Keep Together to print on more
than one page. If you haven't highlighted any paragraphs, it affects only
the paragraph at the insertion point.
Use this when you have edited the affected paragraphs to the pint where it
is no longer practical to keep them on one page. If you highlight only some
of the paragraphs selected with Keep Together, then only those may print
onto two pages. The paragraphs not highlighted print together.
VIEW MENU
~~~~~~~~~
View Show Ruler (Right Amiga R)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is the default setting which displays the ruler at the top of the
project window. The ruler reflects the current margins, tab settings and
the line spacing for the paragraph at the insertion point.
The ruler must be visible anytime you wish to make changes in a paragraph's
format. When you highlight more than one paragraph, Excellence! changes
them all to the new ruler settings.
View Hide Ruler
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This command hides the ruler in the project window to let you display more
of the document. The current rules settings stay in effect. New paragraphs
added to the document use the ruler settings from the previous paragraph.
Select Show Ruler to make changes to the format of a paragraph.
View Show Markers
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This command lets you view the document with all the markers used in the
document visible.
When the markers are shown it makes it easy to move, copy or delete them.
This is a list of the markers used by Excellence!
Carriage Return
Page Number
Time
Date
Page Break
Header
Footer
Footnote
Index Entry
TOC entry
Soft Hyphen
(Sorry, but there is no way to show the markers used)
Tabs, spaces, non-breaking spaces and padded spaces are not shown with this
command, though you may edit them.
View Hide Markers
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ths is the default setting. All markers are hidden and Excellence! displays
the document as it will appear on paper.
View Page View
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is the default view to edit the body of the document. While you may
not edit headers, footers and footnotes from this view, they appear as they
will when printed. Select this command when in another view to return to
the body of the document.
View Header View
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Edits the header for that page. If you have not definied a header for that
page Excellence! locates the nearest header marker from the previous page.
If you have defined odd and even headers, Excellence! locates the nearest
odd or even header marker, based on the current page number. Select Show
Markers to display the defined headers.
The header view may be displayed by selecting this command or
double-clicking the header region of a page. This command is ghosted when
you have not devined a header.
View Footer View
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
See View Header View. This command is ghosted if you have not defined a
footer.
View Footnote View
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From this view you may edit a footnote. Excellence! displays all the
footnotes for the document in this view and places the insertion poit on
the footnote selected. You may also select this view by double-clicking a
footnote.
This command stays ghosted until you define a footnote.
FONT MENU
~~~~~~~~~
This menu lets you control how the text appears in your document. Excellence!
can substitute one font for another or do a global font change.
The items which appear on this menu depend on the number of fonts on your
Workbench disk. The fonts appear in alphabetical order. If there are more
fonts than Excellence! can display on a single menu, Excellence! displays a
double or triple-width menu. As many as 120 font entries can be displayed
on the menu.
The default font listed in Preferences is checkmarked on the menu, if
found. Excellence! uses Topaz 8 (the built-in ROM font) if that font or
match is not found.
Excellence! gives you full control over which fonts and the size you wish
to use. Excellence! allows a fonts size up to 99. Larger fonts cause the
error message 'Fonts too large!' to display.
The only practical limit to the number of fonts you may use depends on the
amount of memory you have available. When you select a font Excellence!
places it in memory. The more fonts selected, the more memory required. If
too many fonts are chosen the error message 'Out of memory!' may appear.
Should this happen, you'll need to save your documents, exit Excellence!
and re-open everything.
Note
~~~~
Some fonts are available only in upper case. If you enter words from the
keyboard and they don't appear in the window, try pressing the Shift key.
If you see two identically named fonts appear on the menu, the fonts were
probably named illegally.
The font menu always checkmarks the current font. If your document uses
several fonts, the checkmark reflects the font to the left of the insertion
point. As you move the insertion point from one font to another, Excellence!
automatically changes fonts to maintain consistency throughout the
document.
You may select a new font at anytime, regardless of where the insertion
point is. Simply checkmark the new font from the menu and anything typed
from the insertion point on uses your new choice.
To change a font globally, highlight the text and select the new font.
Exchange one font for another by pressing the Shift key and selecting the
new font from the menu. Excellence! substitutes all occurences for the font
at the insertion point with the new one. This does not affect the other
highlighted fonts.
STYLE MENU
~~~~~~~~~~
This menu lets you change the appearance of the text in the document,
regardless of the font selected.
Menu selections work much like the Font Menu: the checkmarks reflect the
style of the character to the left of the insertion point. Whenever you
change the Style selection, the change takes effect immediately and all
characters typed at the insertion point will display the new Style.
The Style coices are cumulative. This means you may have text which
combines bold, italic, underline and superscript attributes, using specific
foreground and background colors. Superscript and Subscript are exclusive,
only one can be selected.
If you change the Style with text highlighted, it automatically changes to
the new Style. If you highlight text and press the Shift key when making a
Style change, Excellence! substitutes all occurrences of the Style at the
insertion point for the new.
Note
~~~~
Style selections do not affect pictures, with one exception. you may raise
or lower a picture's position slightly with the Superscript or Subscript
command.
Style Plain (Right Amiga P)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This command resets all Style attributes except for the Foreground and
Background colors.
Style Bold (Right Amiga B)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Displays characters in boldface format to draw attention to key words or
phrases. Use Style Plain to turn off this attribute.
Style Italic (Right Amiga I)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Displays characters in italics which tilts characters slightly. Use Style
Plain to turn off this attribute.
Style Underline (Right Amiga U)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Underlines selected text. Use Style Plain to turn off this attribute.
Style Superscript (Right Amiga H)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This command raises text above the rest of the line, such as footnote
numbers. Use Style Plain to turn off this attribute.
Style Subscript (Right Amiga L)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This command lowers text below the rest of the line, such as engineering
equations. Use Style Plain to turn off this attribute.
Style Foreground
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This command displays a pop-out menu to choose the color of the characters.
you must have a color printer for Excellence! to take advantage of this
selection.
Style Background
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This command displays a pop-out menu to select the color of the background
text. This feature requires a color printer, unless you select the colors
more for aesthetic purposes.
DOCUMENT MENU
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The commands on this menu work only in the current view. In addition, a
document requester may remain visible so you can select it at any time. If
you chooses a menu command with the requester visible, Excellence!
activates it. Click the close gadget to remove the requester. Gadgets may
beep when clicked to let you know hat you may not select the option.
Document Find/Replace
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This command enables you to locate a specific word or phrase in the
document. Optionally, you may delete the text. Excellence! allows searches
for partial words and supports upper and lower case matching. The only
things you may not search for are markers and pictures.
Find Text
~~~~~~~~~
Enter the string to locate in the document in this input area. The Find
Text string limit is approximately 30 characters. Do not woory about font
or style attributes, Excellence! ignores them when searching.
If you also select Match Case, be sure to enter the text in this input area
with the correct characters properly capitalized.
Should you need to search for text with leading or trailing spaces,
surround the string in the input area with " (quotes).
Replace With
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excellence! lets you locate and replace text in a document. enter the
replacement string in this input area. The replacement string takes the
font and style properties of the original text in the document. If this
input area is left empty and you click the Replace gadget, Excellence!
deletes the text.
Find Backward
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you select this gadget, Excellence! looks for the Find Text string from
the insertion point to the beginning of the document. The default searches
from the insertion point to the end of the document. A small box appears n
the gadget to confirm that you have selected it.
Wrap Around
~~~~~~~~~~~
Click this to have Excellence! start the search again from either end of
the document to the insertion pint. A small box appears in the gadget to
confirm its status.
If you haven't selected Find Backward, Excellence! searches to the end of
the document, then continues again from the beginning and stops at the
insertion point. When this gadget is off, Excellence! stops once it reaches
the end of the document.
Full Word
~~~~~~~~~
When you click this gadget the Find Text string must appear by itself and
not as part of another word. For example, the Find Text string AN would not
match ANOTHER or ANIMAL. If this gadget does not display a box, Excellence!
displays both examples. A small box appears when you select this option.
Match Case
~~~~~~~~~~
When you select this, Excellence! only displays a word or phrase where the
character case of Find Text matches that of the document. For example, The
would not display the. If this is not selected, both examples are shown.
The small box confirms whether the option is on or off.
Find
~~~~
Click this to start the search. To skip to the next occurrence without
replacing, click again. Excellence! always starts its search from the
insertion point. Find Backward determines the direction of the search.
Replace
~~~~~~~
Click this to exchange the Find Text with the Replace with. The replacement
string uses the same font and style as the original text. When the Replace
with input area is empty, Excellence! deletes the phrase. To skip without
replacing, click the Find gadget.
Replace, then Find
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Click this to replace the Find Text and automatically search for the next
occurrence. This is like clicking Replace and then Find.
Replace All
~~~~~~~~~~
Select this gadget to automatically replace all the occurrences of the Find
Text with Replace with.
Document Find Next (Right Amiga F)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Choose this command to locate the next occurrence of the word or phrase
defined in Find/Replace. It is the same as clicking the Find gadget of the
Find/Replace requester. If Find/Replace doesn't contain a Find Text string,
Excellence! displays the requester.
Document Check Spelling...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Choose this to locate misspelled words in your document. Excellence!
searches from the insertion point or the first word highlighted. You may
enter the correction from the keyboard or display a list of possible
corrections.
You may add new words to the user dictionary. Select the user dictionary
through Project Preferences.
Check Continuously
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Click this gadget to have Excellence! constantly monitor what you type.
When Excellence! finds a misspelling, the computer beeps. This function
only works for words you type within a view. The default setting checks
spelling only from the document requester.
For Excellence! to continuously check your spelling, the dictionary must be
in memory. when this option is chosen, Excellence! copies the dictionary
into memory automatically. However, if there's not enough memory available
the message 'Out of memory!' appears. If this happens, close any
unnecessary windows or requesters and try again. Also, refer to the section
titled 'Conserving Memory' for more information.
Find
~~~~
Click this to locate a misspelled word. When Excellence! finds a misspelled
word, it is highlighted. Type the correction from the keyboard to replace
the misspelling or click the Guess gadget to diaplay a list of possible
spellings. To skip a word, click this gadget again.
Sometimes Excellence! displays a word as misspelled when it is in fact
spelled correctly. Excellence! features a 90,000 word dictionary which
contains many commonly used words. However, no dictionary knows everything
and occasionally you may need to add a word. See Learn for more
information.
Guess
~~~~~
Click this gadget to display alternate spellings for the selected word.
Excellence! finds these words from the main dictionary file, not the user
dictionary. The guesses appear in a separate window. Double-click a word in
the window to replace the misspelled word. Click the close gadget to abort.
If none of the words displayed are correct, then type in th correction from
the keyboard. If you know the word is spelled correctly, click the Learn
gadget to add the word to the user dictionary.
Ignore
~~~~~~
Click this to ignore further occurrences of a word and continue the spell
checking. Excellence! remembers the list of words to ignore until you click
the close gadget.
Learn
~~~~~
This command adds a word to the user dictionary. If the user dictionary
doesn't exist, Excellence! creates it. When you add a word to the user
dictionary it isn't displayed as misspelled any more.
The user dictionary can store as many words as memory and disk space
permit. If you find yourself running low on memory, you may wish to use
several different user dictionaries. Choosing an alternae user dictionary
is as easy as selecting Project Preferences, entering the new user
dictionary name in the input area and clicking the OK gadget.
Document Check Next (Right Amiga E)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Choose this command to locate the next misspelling. Excellence! checks
words from the insertion point. It is the same as clicking the Find gadget
of the Check Spelling requester. Once the word appears, type in the
correction or select Document Check Spelling and click Guess to display a
list of possibilities.
Document Thesaurus..
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This command displays a list of synonyms and antonyms for the current word.
This requester contains three gadgets:
Synonyms
~~~~~~~~
Displays only the words which mean the same.
Antonyms
~~~~~~~~
Display only the words which mean the opposite.
Both
~~~~
Display synonyms and antonyms.
No matter which gadget you click, Excellence! displays the matching words
in their own window. To replace a word with one from the list, double-click
the new choice or type it from the keyboard.
If you want to find the synonym to one of the words in the window,
highlight it and click one of the gadgets. Excellence! removes the old
window and shows you the new words.
Document Check Grammar...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This command searches from the insertion point to locate possible
grammatical or punctuation errors in your document. The checker is
interactive to let you correct mistakes immediately.
This function only points out possible problems and offers suggestions. You
do not have to use every suggestion. Look at this as a guide to improve
your writing. Occasionally, writers break rules to add variety and keep the
reader interested.
Phrase file
~~~~~~~~~~~
Excellence! uses two files which contain a list of words and phrases that
pont out incorrect word or punctuation use.
The default phrase file is 'Phrase.txt'. The other is 'Summary.txt', used
only to generate a statistical summary.
Strictness
~~~~~~~~~~
Toggle this gadget between Full, Less and Summary. The default is Full,
which checks the sentences in your document against the phrases in
'Phrase.txt'.
When set to Less, Excellence! doesn't compare your sentences against as
many phrases.
The Summary setting changes the phrase file from 'Phrase.txt' to
'Summary.txt'. Excellence! does not display problems, it only shows the
statistical summary information. This is a good way to see how you're
doing.
Output
~~~~~~
Click this gadget to toggle between the Printer, File or Interactive.
Select File, to have Excellence! save the errors in a file named
'document.err' where 'document' is the document name in the current project
window.
When you select Printer or File, Excellence! does not pause at each errr.
It prints the messages where specified to make the changes later. This is
useful for first drafts or checking the document unattended. Remember, to
see the summary information, Output must be Interactive.
Interactive is the default. This lets you make changes to the document when
a problem is found. Excellence! highlights the error. Type the correction
from the keyboard and Excellence! replaces the highlighted text with
what you enter.
When the sentence requires more to correct the problem, click and place the
insertion point somewhere in the sentence. Make your changes, then click
Check to continue.
Use the Interactive mode to have Excellence! display the statistical
summary information on the screen. Click the close window gadget to quit or
the Next gadget to continue viewing the summary.
Check
~~~~~
When you're ready to start checking for errors, click this gadget. If the
phrase file is not in memory, Excellence! loads it first. When Excellence!
finds a problem, click this again to continue.
If you change phrase files while checking for errors, Excellence! restores
all Ignore and Eliminate phrases.
Problem
~~~~~~~
When Excellence! finds an error it highlights the phrase in the document.
The nature of the problem appears in the requester. Grammatical or
punctuation problems fall into one of these categories:
Archaic
Unbalanced (), {}, [], or "
Capitalization
Doubled word or punctuation
Hackneyed, Cliche, or Trite
Informal or illiterate
Jargon or technical
Clumsy or awkward
Often misused
Overstated or pretentious
Punctuation
Quotation misuse
Redundant
Spelling
Trademark
Usage in question
Wording - passive voice
Split infinitive
If Excellence! finda the phrase 'had had' in your document, it displays the
problem 'Doubled word or punctuation'.
Suggestion
~~~~~~~~~~
This line contains a suggestion to correct the problem. In the case of
'Doubled word or punctuation', the suggestion is 'delete extra'.
Click one of these three gadgets when Excellence! locates a possible
problem.
Ignore
~~~~~~
When you click this gadget, Excellence! will not report this same problem
again. However, it still displays other errors of the same type. If you
click Ignore at the double word 'had had', Excellence! will report 'that
that'.
Eliminate
~~~~~~~~~
c;lick this gadget to have Excellence! ignore further problems which fall
into the same category. if you click this when it finds one set of double
words, no other double words show as an error.
Categories stay eliminated until you close the requester or change phrase
files.
If you need to eliminate classes of errors regularly, try this: Load a
sample document that contains just those problem types and click Eliminate
on each. Then check the other document. Until you click the close gadget,
the eliminated problems stay that way.
Summary
~~~~~~~
Click this to display the summary information for the sentences checked.
After the summary appears several comparisons of your document against
other documents, each with its own style.
You may select this at anytime while Excellence! is checking for errors.
output must be interactive to display the summary information. This gadget
beeps when Strictness is set for Summary. Refer to this to learn some
useful information about your document.
At the top of the summary window appears the number of suspected problems.
Next appears the grade level of reading experience needed to understand the
document. Excellence! highlights this grade number in white. The lower the
grade level, the easier people will understand your writing.
Below the grade level bar is the Reading Ease score. The higher this
number, the easier it is to read. Both the Reading Ease and grade level
calculate their results based on the number of syllables per word.
Sentence Statistics
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Number of Sentences
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is self-explanatory.
Average Length
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sentences should average less than twenty words. A higher number makes your
document harder to read.
End with "?" or "!"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A low percentage here suggests a lack of variety in your writing. Software
manuals inevitably suffer here! Don't they?
Short ( < 14 words)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The number of sentences less than fourteen words and the percentage. A high
number could mean a choppy writing style.
Long ( > 30 words)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The number of sentences greater than thirty words and the percentage of
occurrences. A high number could mean you have a lot of complex sentences.
Shortest
~~~~~~~~
This is the shortest sentence in your document. The sentence number and
word count appear.
Longest
~~~~~~~
This is the longest sentence in your document. The sentence number and word
count appear.
Word Statistics
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Number of Words
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The number of words in your document.
Average Length
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is the average length of the words in characters. Look out when this
value reaches 10 characters.
Special Statistics
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Passive voice
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The number of passive voice sentences in your document and the total
percentage.
Prepositions
~~~~~~~~~~~~
The number of prepositions in yor document and the total percentage of
occurrences.
Click the Next gadget to begin displaying the document comparisons.
Excellence! compares your document against a Hemingway short story, the
Gettysburg Address and a life insurance policy. Five comparisons are done.
Readability Grade Level
Number of Words Per Sentence
Number of Letters Per Word
Percentage of Sentences in Passive Voice
Prepositions as a Percentage of All Words
Excellence! presents a bar graph for each. Be careful, since good results
here does not imply readability.
Click Next to display each succeeding comparison. You may abort at any time
by clicking the close window gadget.
If you clicked the Summary gadget before Excellence! had a chance to finish
checking the document, close the Summary window and click the Check gadget
to continue.
When you're finished checking a document, always reset the Grammar Checker.
Either click the close gadget or select the menu item again. To conserve
memory, click the close gadget. Excellence! removes the phrase file from
memory. To reset the Summary information, Ignore and Eliminate phrases
without removing the phrase file, choose the Document Check Grammar command
from the menu.
Document Hyphenate...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This command inserts soft hyphens in large words. This lets Excellence!
split a word over two lines to better use space when long words cause
unattractive or wasteful character spacing.
Find
~~~~
Excellence! locates and highlights the next word to hyphenate. To skip the
word without hyphenating, click again.
Change
~~~~~~
Inserts soft hyphens in the highlighted word. To view the soft hyphens, use
Show Markers.
Hyphenate All
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Choose this to automatically hyphenate all the highlighted words. If no
words are highlighted, just the word at the insertion point changes.
Document Generate Index
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This command creates an index from the user-selected entries. When
generated, Excellence! places the index in the clipboard. Use Edit Paste to
insert it in the document.
Document Generate TOC
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This command works like Generate Index except its output format is
different. When generated, Excellence! places the Table of Contents in the
clipboard. Use Edit Paste to insert it in the document.
Document Glossary...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Choose this command to insert or add glossary entries. Use the glossary to
quickly insert information which you use throughout a document or all your
documents.
A glossary is made up of glossary entries. Each entry may contain anything
from your name and address to pictures, entire paragraphs or menu commands.
Excellence! stores the ruler settings, font, size and style attributes with
the glossary entry. So you can insert it in the document as it was saved.
In addition, you can define a keyboard command for each glossary entry to
quickly insert it in a document.
Select Project Preferences and change the glossary name when using an
alternate glossary. When Excellence! detects a glossary name change, the
new glossary is automatically loaded.
See Define on how to create a glossary entry.
Insert
~~~~~~
Place selected glossary entry in document. Highlight the glossary entry
with the mouse and click this gadget. Excellence! inserts the text and
pictures stored with the entry in the document.
Define
~~~~~~
Click this gadget to insert the highlighted text from the document into the
glossary. Each glossary entry has a name. Enter it in the Name input area
and click this gadget. The entry name is added to the glossary list. If you
have highlighted nothing in the document, the error message 'Entry not
defined!' appears.
Remember, click Save to permanently store a glossary entry.
Key
~~~
This gadget lets you assign a keyboard command to a glossary entry. First,
click the glossary entry name. When the entry appears in the Name input
area, click Key.
With the Key gadget highlighted enter the keyboard command. Any single key
combination is acceptable. For example, Ctrl-N, A, Alt-Z, Left Amiga S,
Right Amiga L and any of the function keys are permitted. However, you may
not define a two character such as Ctrl-S D.
If you make a mistake or want to change a keyboard definition, select the
glossary entry and click Key. Enter the new keyboard command or disable it
by clicking Key again while highlighted.
Excellence! doesn't display the keyboard definitions in the glossary entry,
so it is a good idea to keep track of the commands you've already defined.
Remove
~~~~~~
This gadget deletes the entry from the glossary. To permanently remove it,
click Save.
Save
~~~~
Stores the glossary changes with the filename in Project Preferences.
Name
~~~~
Enter the name of the glossary entry into this input area to define or
insert. This input area must contain the glossary entry name before you
click the Key gadget when you assign a keyboard command.
Always save changes to your glossary!
GLOSSARY ENTRY COMMANDS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Besides the macro key capabilities of the glossary, Excellence! lets you
perfrm operations normally done with the mouse, plus you can execute any
menu item.
Excellence! does this with reserved words. You can use these words in
combination to highlight text for menu operations, delete or transpose
words and so on.
Place each set of commands on a paragraph or line of its own. Since these
are reserved words, they may not appear as text in a normal glossary entry.
Word Meaning
~~~~ ~~~~~~~
{alt} Alt key
{amiga} Right or left Amiga key
{backspace} Deletes character left of the insertion point
{ctrl} Ctrl key
{del} Deletes character right of the insertion point
{down} Moves insertion point down one line
{esc} Esc key
{fx} Function key where "x" is a number from 1-10
{left} Moves insertion point to the left
{menu} Executes menu command
{return} Return key
{right} Moves insertion point to the right
{shift} Shift key
{tab} Tab key
{up} Moves insertion point up one line
The {menu} reserved word is the only function which does not reference a
keyboard command. Choose a menu item by entering the full menu name of the
command. For example:
{menu project, page setup..}
{menu font, garnet, 9 point}
Enter the menu command as it appears on the menu (case does not matter).
You must place a ,(comma) between each portion of the menu command.
When using the {menu} command with foreground or background colors, the
second parameter is the color number, 1-8. The color number refers to their
order of appearance on the menu.
{menu style, foreground, 1}
You may not execute a menu item by referring to its keyboard equivalent.
For instance:
{amiga} R
is not the corrent command to show the ruler. However, this is:
{menu view, show ruler}
HIGHLIGHTING TEXT WITH THE GLOSSARY
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
With a combination of reserved words you can accomplish most means of
highlighting normally done with the mouse.
{shift}{alt}{right}{del}
{ctrl}{left}{shift}{right}{del}
The first example deletes a word and the second deletes a line.
Transpose a word by defining:
{shift}{alt}{right}{del}{alt}{right}{menu edit, paste}
To define this as a glossary entry highlight the line with the mouse and
select Document Glossary. Enter a name in the Name input area and click
Define. Then click the Key gadget and type the keyboard definition you'll
use to transpose a word. To keep a glossary entry permanently, click the
Save gadget.
CHANGING AN EXISTING GLOSSARY ENTRY
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There may be times when you want to change the contents of a glossary
entry. You may do this by Inserting the entry into the document, making the
necessary changes and highlighting the text again. Then enter the name in
the input area and click Define. if the glossary definition already exists,
the messge 'Replace existing entry?' appears. Click the Yes gadget to
continue or No to abort.
KEYBOARD COMMANDS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excellence! supports a wide range of keyboard commands for many areas. The
following is a list ofkeyboard commands and where they apply.
Input Areas
~~~~~~~~~~~
Meaning Keyboard Command
~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clear Line Right Amiga X
Abort Changes Right Amiga Q
Move to beg. of line Shift Left arrow
Menus
~~~~~
Menu Item Keyboard Command
~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Project New Right Amiga N
Project Open Right Amiga O
Project Save Right Amiga S
Project Print Right Amiga T
Project Quit Right Amiga Q
Edit Undo Typing Right Amiga Z
Edit Cut Right Amiga X
Edit Copy Right Amiga C
Edit Paste Right Amiga V
Edit Select All Right Amiga A
Edit Math Right Amiga M
View Show Ruler Right Amiga R
Style Plain Right Amiga P
Style Bold Right Amiga B
Style Italic Right Amiga I
Style Underline Right Amiga U
Style Superscript Right Amiga H
Style Subscript Right Amiga L
Document Find Next Right Amiga F
Document Check Next Right Amiga E
Requester Keyboard Equivalents
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Requester Meaning Keyboard Command
~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Project Open OK O
Project Optn Cancel C
Project Insert Insert I
Project Insert Cancel C
Project Close Yes Y
Project Close No N
Project Close Cancel C
Project Save As Save S
Project Save As Cancel C
Project Delete Delete D
Project Delete Cancel C
Project Page Setup OK O
Project Page Setup Cancel C
Project Print OK O
Project Print Cancel C
Project Print Merge OK O
Project Print Merge Cancel C
Project Preferences OK O
Project Preferences Cancel C
Project Quit Yes Y
Project Quit No N
Project Quit Cancel C
Views
~~~~~
Movement Meaning
~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~
Character right Right arrow
Character left Left arrow
Line Up Up arrow
Line Down Down arrow
Word right Alt-Right arrow
Word left Alt-Left arrow
Beginning of Document Alt-Up arrow
End of Document Alt-Down arrow
Insert soft hyphen Alt--(hyphen)
Insert non-break space Alt (space)
End of line or window Ctrl-Right arrow
Beginning line or wind. Ctrl-Left arrow
Top of window Ctrl-Up arrow
Bottom of window Ctrl-Down arrow
Press the Shift key with any of the view movements to highlight a
character, word or line for the next operation.
TROUBLESHOOTING TIPS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Why doesn't the requester appear on Project Open?
You may be running low on memory. Another indicaion is if you click the
close window gadget and the prompt doesn't open and let you save your
changes.
Sometimes a pull-down menu won't appear.
Again, this is a low memory problem. Close unnecessary windows or shrink
down the current project window to try to recover more memory.
My document won't print.
Have you selected the correct printer driver through the preferences tool
from Workbench?
Is your printer cable connected properly?
Check the Project Print requester to verify that you've specified a
beginning page less than the ending page.
When I try to Check Spelling, Thesaurus or Grammar it says to insert a disk
with the volume name of Excellence! - and it's already in the drive.
When you choose on of these Document commands, Excellence! looks on the
current drive for the associated files first. If they're not found, then
Excellence! looks on the disk with the volume name of Excellence!
When you copy the master disk from Workbench, the volume name of the copy
is 'Copy of Excellence!'. If you use the Rename function to renamed the
volume name to Excellence!, please make sure the cursor is on the 'e' in
Excellence! before pressing Return. If there's a leading space in the
volume name Excellence! won't recognize your working copy as the correct
disk.
Refer to Chapter 4 on using the ASSIGN command to have Excellence! look for
its document tools in a specific place.
PRINTER PREFERENCES
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excellence! uses the printer driver selected through the preferences tool
on Workbench for most of its printing. The only exception is if PostScript
is chosen. By using the printer drivers shipped on the standard Workbench
disk it frees you from the worry of installing a printer driver and
mastering confusing printer codes.
Sometimes there is a drawback. If your printer is not in preferences, or
the printer driver is not 100% compatible with your printer, inconsistent
output can result.
If you're printing in Draft or NLQ mode and you see strange characters at
the beginning of the document or a style attribute doesn't print, there is
a good chance your printer isn't perfectly compatible with the printer
driver. This may happen even when the driver and printer do match: your
printer driver simply may have a problem.
Often you can verify a printer driver problem by printing the filename
PAR:. This is the parallel device, which bypasses the preferences printer
driver. To print through the parallel device, you must select Draft mode.
Fonts, style or color will nto appear. However, if you don't see the
strange characters at the beginning of your document, you've verified the
printer driver problem.
Printing with the Normal mode may take longer than you expect. To print
WYSIWYG, Excellence! must print the document in graphics mode. Some printer
drivers are not as efficient as they could be in this mode. Please be
patient as the result is well worth the wait.
Printing pictures and fonts in Draft or NLQ mode is not possible. Instead,
Excellence! inserts blank spaces where the picture appeared. if you are
using a letter quality printer, this is the way you'll print your
documents.
In the Page Setup requester you have a choice for the number of characters
per inch you wish to print. Excellence! displays the ruler based on this
value. When you print in Draft and NLQ mode, the pitch selection in the
preferences tool always takes precedence. Therefore, if you've selected a
pitch of 10 in Excellence!, be sure to use the same pitch in preferences.
The page height, line spacing and margin settings work in the same way.
Those defaults should be left alone. if you need to make changes to any of
those settings, double-check the relevant settings in Excellence! to insure
that your printing is consistent.
On the Excellence! boot disk, preferences has been set with defaults other
than those found on the standard Workbench. This lets you use Excellence!
without lengthy installation.
Page Length 66
Left Margin 1
Right Margin 255
Paper Type Fanfold
Pitch 10-Pica
Quality Draft
Line Spacing 6 lines per inche (66 lines per 11 inch page)
Click the Change Printer gadget to view these settings:
Graphic Select Setting
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~
Threshold 2
This value determines which colors print as black and which as white. The
higher the value the more colors print as black. Change this only if the
Shade option is set for Black and White.
Image Positive
This determines the way characters print. Depending on your color settings
in Excellence! you can sometimes save printer ribbon by changing this to
Negative.
Shade Gray Scale
This option prints colors in different shades of gray. If your printer
supports color printing, you may select Color. If you don't want shades of
gray, select Black and White in combination with Threshold.
Please select the correct Preferences printer driver for your printer and
save your choice. Please understand that if your printer is not 100%
compatible with the printer driver you have chosen, inconsistent output may
result.
PRINTING SIDEWAYS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In instances when you need Excellence! to print your documents on the page
sideways, change your Page Setup to support a Page Height fo 8.5 and a Page
Width of 11.
From the preferences tool on Workbench change the Aspect from Vertical to
Horizontal. To print sideways, you must use the Normal print mode in
Excellence!. This may only be done on graphics and laser printers.
CONSERVING MEMORY
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Since Excellence! uses more memory than a conventional text-based word
processor, here are a few tips to help you conserve memory when your Amiga
has 512K of RAM:
Keep the glossary entries and pictures to a minimum.
Split up a large document into two smaller ones.
Close unnecessary windows and document requesters. If you have a lot of
document windows open, shrink the inactive ones. Use the zoom gadget to
re-size the window.
Don't use interlaced windows.
Do not select Check Continuously from Check Spelling.
Close the Check Grammar requester when you're finished.
limit the number of fonts selected. Whether you use them is immaterial -
Excellence! loads a new font in memory and keeps it there until you exit
the program.
Decrease the page width in Page Setup. For example, if your right margin is
set to 7 inches, decrease the page width to 7 inches and move the right
margin to the edge of the page.
Refer to Project About when you're not sure how much memory is available.
Excellence! displays chip and fast memory. Without going into a large
discussion on the different types of memory, suffice it to say when your
chip memory gets too low (below 100K), memory problems occur. Specifically,
requesters and menus may not appear.
Requesters, menus, project windows and pictures each use a lot of chip
memory. As long as you are careful about keeping track of the memory used,
you should not run into 'Out of memory!' errors.
EXCELLENCE! GLOSSARY
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Active window
The window in front of all other windows, also known as the current window.
If a window is not active its title bar is ghosted. To make a window
active, click in the window. Excellence! automatically brings the window to
the front.
AmigaDOS
The operating system used by the Commodore Amiga. It normally consists of
Kickstart and Workbench. Commodore Amiga 500 and 2000 owners have a
built-in Kickstart.
Antonym
Words which mean the opposite.
Baseline
The point at which the characters line up horizontally. The descender of a
character falls below the baseline. See Line spacing.
Body
The main portion of the page which contains the actual text of the
document. This does not include headers, footers, footnotes or margins.
Bottom margin
The amount of blank space at the bottom of a page. The bottom margin
follows the footer.
Character attributes SEE Style
CLI
Command Line Interpreter. From CLI you can access functions of AmigaDOS not
available from Workbench. See Workbench.
Click
Press the left mouse button.
Clipboard
Text or pictures which are cut or copied from the document are placed in
the clipboard. Information stored in the clipboard can be accessed by any
other program which supports the clipboard device. This allows you to copy
text from Excellence! to our telecommunications program ONLINE!, or our
electronic spreadsheet ANALYZE!
Close window gadget
This gadget is found in the upper left-hand corner of most windows. Click
this gadget to close the window. If the window is used by a menu item, the
function is aborted. If the window contains a document, Excellence! prompts
you to save your changes before closing the window.
Custom screen
Excellence! uses a custom screen to display 8 colors. To switch back and
forth between the Workbench screen and Excellence!, press Left-Amiga N and
Left-Amiga M. When two programs with custom screens are loaded, click on
the left screen depth arranger on the Excellence! title bar on the main
screen to display the next custom screen. See Screen Depth Arrangers.
Document
A collection of text and pictures.
Double-clicking
Pressing the left mouse button twice in quick succession.
Filename
The name used by your Amiga to open and store a document.
Font
A set of characters which share a consistent design.
Footer
Text which appears at the bottom of each page.
Footer margin
The amount of space between the body and the footer.
Footnote
An explanatory or reference note. A footnote appears after the body and
before the footer.
Gadgets
Small boxes which perform functions related to a requester. To activate a
gadget, click it with the mouse or type the first letter of the gadget from
the keyboard. Many gadgets have keyboard equivalents. See Requester.
Ghosted
A condition where a menu item or window appears "fuzzy". Inactive windows
are ghosted as are menu items which may not be selected.
Hanging indent
Indentation of the first line of a paragraph for bulleted or numbered
items.
Header
Text which appears at the top of a page before the body.
Header margin
The amount of space between the header text and the body of the document.
insertion point
A blinking bar. To place an insertion point, move the I-beam to the point
in the document and click.
Justify
To space every line in a paragraph, except the last, so the entire
paragraph aligns on both the left and right margins.
Kickstart
A disk which contains the AmigaDOS operating system. Commodore Amiga 500
and 2000 owners have a built-in Kickstart. Excellence! requires Kickstart
1.2 or greater to work properly.
Left margin
The amount of space between the left edge of the page and the text of the
document.
Line spacing
The number of points between the baselines of two lines of text. See Point.
Markers
Graphic characters which indicate the position of certain codes. These
include the header, footer, carriage return and page break.
Menu bar
Displays the pull-down menus for the program assigned the active window.
Non-breaking space
A special type of space designed to keep two or more words from being split
over two lines or a page, like December 25, 1987.
Non-printing characters
Codes which are used by Excellence! but are not printed. See Markers.
Page height
The amount of vertical space Excellence! utilizes to print a single page.
Page width
The amount of horizontal space Excellence! utilizes to print a single page.
Paragraph
A collection of characters or pictures which end in a carriage return or
page break.
Print
1/72 of an inch. Excellence! calculates all spacing in points.
Printer driver
A device used by Excellence! to send the correct formatting codes to your
printer. Printer drivers are supplied by Commodore Amiga.
Project icon
Excellence! creates an icon used to identify a document from Workbench. if
you click on a project icon, it loads Excellence! with that document.
Re-size gadget
A gadget used to change the size of each of Excellence!'s project windows.
It is located at the bottom right hand corner of each project window.
Requester
An item which appears in a window to request information before performing
a function.
Right margin
The amount of space between the text and the right edge of each page.
Ruler
The gadget at the top of each project window. The ruler controls the left
and right margins, hanging indents, paragraph alignment and tabs.
Screen depth arrangers
Gadgets found at the upper right-hand side of each project window. They are
used to scan through a series of windows when more than one project is
open. The left arranger "pushes" the current window to the back and the
right arranger makes the visible window active.
Scroll bars
Gadgets at the right and bottom of each project window used to display
different parts of a document.
Style
The attribute assigned to the current font. Styles include bold, underline,
italics, superscript and subscript.
Sub-directory
Also known as a drawer. Sub-directories are used to segregate files to
better utilize disk storage. A sub-directory is created with CLI's Makedir
command.
Synonym
Words which mean the same.
Title bar
The portion of each window which contains the close window gadget, zoom box
and screen depth arangers in addition to the document name or current
function.
Top margin
The amount of space at the beginning of each page.
Word wrap
The adjustment of a paragraph so words are correctly split at the right
margin.
Workbench
An icon-oriented environment where applications can be opened and files and
disks copied.
WYSIWYG
What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get. A term used by word processors or desktop
publishers which means the screen display accurately reflects how the
document will appear on paper.
Zoom gadget
A small gadget on the title bar used to quickly toggle the project window's
size and position.
APPENDIX
~~~~~~~~
This section supplies additonal information about changes to the original
documentation and features added to Excellence! version 1.1 after the
manual was written.
To verify the version number of the program, first load Excellence! You'll
see the version number on the menu bar, before the project window opens. If
Excellence! is already loaded, click the zoom gadget to display the menu
bar.
Project Window
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A change to the project window lets you quickly move around the document.
Click the page number indicator at the bottom of the project window and
Excellence! displays a requester.
Press Return and the top of the current page appears. Click the Next gadget
to jump to the next page. Click Previous and you move one page back. To
move several pages, enter the page number in the input area of the
requester and press Return.
Project Page Preview
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is a new menu item to let you view pages of your document before you
actually start printing. While Excellence! is a WYSIWYG word processor, it
is difficult to know exactly how the text will appear on the page before
you print.
Select this command and after a few secons a window appears with the page
at the insertion point. This page may appear on the right or left,
depending on the current page number. Excellence! prints both an odd and
even numbered page together. If the insertion point is on an even numbered
page, the previous page appears to the left.
You'll notice the text on the page is not readable. It is not meant to be.
You're only viewing how the page looks as a whole. If you're worried that
a picture doen't appear in the right place, this function is perfect.
You may return to the document at any time by clicking the close window
gadget.
Project Print
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When you set Print Quality to Draft, Excellence! sends all style
attributes. Your manual incorrectly documents the feature. With some
printers, NLQ mode prevents these style attributes from appearing,
therefore, the change was necessary.
If you need to print a document without boldface, underline or colors,
first Save your document, then choose Edit Select All. Do a Style Plain and
then print. When finished, select Revert to Saved.
While in Draft or NLQ mode, Excellence! prints a document with 6 lines per
inch. If you need 8 lines per inch, format the document with a Topaz 8
font. From Workbench, select the preferences tool and change the Spacing
from 6 lpi to 8 lpi.
Excellence! refers to the PROLOGUE file on your Excellence! disk when you
print in PostScript. If you're familiar with PostScript you may modify this
file, though for normal use you should not need to make any changed. With
PostScript you should also use the Generic printer driver. Select this
through the preferences tool on your Workbench disk.
Project Preferences
Excellence! now lets you have a 2, 4 or 8 color window. Click the Number of
colors gadget to toggle this value. The changes won't take effect until you
start the program again. A 2 or 4 color window provides a significant
savings in memory.
If you have 512K of RAM, load Excellence! and see an "Insufficient memory!"
message, select Project Preferences and change your colors from 8 to 2.
Clkick OK and quit the program. now you should be able to load Excellence!
If you save a document in 8 colors and then open it with a 2 color window,
Excellence! automatically adjusts the colors used in the document. The same
applied when saving a dorument in 4 colors and then loading it in an 8
color window.
Document Check Spelling...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Check Spelling requester now has a Load Dictionary gadget. Click this
and Excellence! places the dictionary in memory, providing there is room.
This lets you click the Check Continuously gadget and have Excellence!
searcg the dictionary on disk. This new features means a significant
savings in memory.
To improve disk performance, use the AmigaDOS ADDBUFFERS command. Enter the
following from CLI or add it to your Startup-Sequence:
ADDBUFFERS DF0: 32
Substitute any legal drive name for DF0:
If the dictionary is in memory, Excellence! only releases it when you
toggle off the Load Dictionary gadget or quit the program. Clicking the
close gadget of the Check Spelling requester still keeps the dictionary in
memory. This lets you spell-as-you-type without having to view the
requester window.
Unlike the SCRIBBLE! DictAdd program, Excellence! does not let you merge
your user dictionary to create a new dictionary. This allows you to modify
your user dictionary at any time. Simply load it into Excellence!, add or
delete words and save it as a Text file.
Document Check Grammar
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The manual incorrectly documented that Excellence! ignores double words
like 'had had', but not 'that that'. Double words and punctuation are
handled internally by Excellence!. However, any phrase in the 'Phrase.txt'
file is ignored or eliminated as documented.
Document Hypenation
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This function locates words at the beginning of a new line for hyphenation.
The manual documented that any highlighted word would be selected for
hyphenation, if needed. However, since hyphenation only affects words at
the beginning of a new line, there was no need to check every word.
Ther is now a command to insert a non-breaking hyphen. Press Ctrl-(hyphen)
and Excellence! won't split the word at the hyphen.
Document Glossary
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Glossary requester now prompts when you Remove a glossary entry. Please
remember that none of these changes are stored until you click the Save
gadget.
Double-click on a glossary entry and Excellence! automatically Inserts it
in the document.
Macro keys may not include pictures and won't display text using the same
style attribute as when you saved the macro. If the macro string requires
special style attributes, include them with the {menu} reserved word.
Excellence! ignores the style attributes of the glossary entry when
processing a macro key. For example:
Now is the {menu style, bold} time {menu style, plain} for all
Document Generate TOC
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When you create a Table of Contents and plan to insert it at the beginning
of your document, specify a new Starting Page Number through Page Setup. If
the Table of Contents requires 2 pages to print, enter 3 as your Starting
Page Number. This helps to keep your page numbering consistent.
If the output is not to your liking, you may increase or decrease the
number of periods between the entry and the page number by clicking on the
flush right tab marker and dragging it to a new location. Excellence!
automatically adjusts the "fill" characters for you. Use Copy Ruler and
Paste Ruler to make the same change to all the Table of Contents entries.
International Keymaps
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excellence! fully supports the international keymaps. To select a keymap,
double-click the System drawer on your Workbench disk. Then doubld-click
the SETMAP icon and change the keymap. For further instructions, please
refer to your Amiga User's Guide.
CLI Switches
~~~~~~~~~~~~
You may load Excellence! from CLI and specify two window settings. The
number of window colors and interlace mode is selectable from the CLI
command line. For example:
Excellence! document.doc -wi4
Excellence! loads the filename 'document.doc' with an interlaced, 4-color
window. when you use the -w switch, Excellence! ignores these values in
your Excellence!.prefs file. Substitute the color number for either 2 or 8
colors. To display a non-interlaced window, don't include the "i" in the
command line.
Clipboard Support
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excellence! uses the clipboard to pass information to different programs.
If you won SCRIBBLE!, ANALYZE! or ONLINE! you may insert information from
any of these programs directly into Excellence!. To move information from
Excellence! to the others, you may only do it one paragraph at a time.
Also, you must remove all style attributes. SCRIBBLE!, ANALYZE! and ONLINE!
do not understnd Excellence!'s paragraph and style attribute information.
Updated copies of Scribble!, Analyze! and Online! are available which
import multiple paragraphs and ignore Excellence!'s style attributes.
To obtain updated versions, please return your master disks along with
payment of $15 for the first disk and $10 for each additonal disk. The cost
to update all three progams if $35.
When you return the master disks please specify that you watn 2.2x version
of each. Make your chek or money order out to: Micro-Systems Software, Inc.
Sorry, no cash, credit cards or C.O.D. orders accepted.
Technical Tip
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If a problem suddenly appears which worked correctly for a tme, please make
a new copy of your Excellence! disk and/or your Workbench disk. If the
problem still persists, then please contact Micro-systems Technical
support. This can save you both time and long-distance phone calls.
Mail Merge
~~~~~~~~~~
Excellence! now features the reserved mail merge variable name << NEXT >>.
When Excellence! encounters this reserved word it automatically reads the
next record from the mail merge date file. This is ideal when creating 2, 3
or 4 across mailing labels. Refer to the sample document "2Across.doc" in
your Documents drawer for a working example.
Excellence!'s Document Hyphenate feature uses al alogrighm to hyphenate
words. However, due to the complexity of the English language some words
may not hyphenate properly. Therefore, an exceptions dictionary,
hyphen-excpt, is supported. This file follows the ASSIGN path of DOCTOOLS:
and may be edited with Excellence! Remember to save your changes with the
Text gadget toggled on.
Follow the format found in hyphen.excpt to have Excellence! hyphenate
specific words. Excellence! inserts soft hyphens in the same place as the
hyphens in the exceptions file. Place hyphens in every location wher you
wish the word to break.
Version 1.1 of Excellence! automatically opens the Glossary requester if an
Excellence!.gloss file exists. This lets you use your defined macro keys
without having to open the Document Glossary requester each time you load
Excellence!
============================================================================
The Excellence! docs are brought to you by The Southern Star.