PC Plus 34

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ PC Plus 34 / UTILS / DGEDIT.DOC next >

Wrap

Text File | 1989-01-01 | 22.1 KB | 423 lines

░░░░░▌ ░░░░░▌ ░░░░░░▌ ░░░░░░▌ ░░░░░░▌ ░░▌ ░▌ ░░░░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░░░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░░░░░▌ ░░░░░▌ ░░░░░░▌ ░░░░░░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌░░▌░▌ ░░░░░░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌░░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌░░▌░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░░░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░░░░░▌ ░▌ ░░▌ ░░░░░░▌ ░░░░░░▌ ░▌ ░░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░░░░░▌ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ ░░░░░▌ ░░░░░▌ ░░░░░░▌ ░░░░░░▌ ░░░░░░▌ ░░░░░░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░░░░░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░░░░░░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌░░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░▌ ░░▌ ░░░░░▌ ░░░░░▌ ░░░░░░▌ ░▌ ░░░░░░▌ ░▌ ░░▌ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ Note: This the text file DGEDIT.DOC. Press [Esc] to exit editor. 1. Introduction 2. Getting Started. 3. Function Keys. 4. Program Description. 5. Applications. 6. Restrictions & Limitations. 7. Registration. 8. Bug Fixes & Improvements. 9. Program Source Code. ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ ▌ Personal Editor Ver 1.00 ▐ ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ Introduction «≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈» This program was written mainly as an exercise in Assembly Language programming. As such it is lacking in certain areas which might have been improved should more thought have been applied to what the program was going to evolve into at the outset. However, as a text processor the program is quit adequate and its simplicity can be an advantage. It is ideal for writing programs where as products such as wordstar are slow and unweildy and offer many more facilities than the average programmer would ever want to use. Also the compressed 'EXE' file is very small and can be included on any diskette without a great loss in disk space. One of it's best features is it's easy to learn command windows. Nearly all of the editors features can be accessed by first pressing a function key and then selecting the appropriate function from those selected with the up and down cursor keys. Once the option is selected that you wish to perform you need only press enter to select it. Once a window has been called up there are two ways to cancel it without selecting a function, firstly you can select the last option, which is always called cancel, or secondly you can press the escape key. In fact you need only press this escape key in many situations and whatever you are doing will be terminated. Getting Started «≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈» To start the editor you need only type the program name followed by <ENTER>. You will then be presented with the initial logo screen. To proceed you need only press any key and the screen will be cleared and you will be asked for the name of the file that you wish to edit. There is another quicker method of editing a file however and that is done by specifying its filename on the same command line when invoking the program. The editor has the ability to edit up to five files simutaneously and if you want to edit more than one file you can specify all the filenames when you invoke the program. Examples :- (1) DG<cr> (2) DG MYFILE.TXT<cr> (3) DG MYFILE1.TXT MYFILE2.TXT MYFILE3.TXT MYFILE4.TXT MYFILE5.TXT<cr> Function Keys «≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈» F1 - Displays a help screen which gives you a breif summary of all of the editors function key assignments along with the editors software version number. If you press the F1 key whilst there is a Window on screen a small pop-up help message will be displayed which will give you a better idea of what the various menu functions do. F2 - This provides you with a quick method of jumping to either the top or the bottom of the current file. F3 - This will display the File Menu, from which you can perform many file/disk orientated operations follows :- i) New - this function will always abandon whatever file is currently in memory and ask you for a new file specification. ii) Save - this will save you current document to disk using the filename displayed on the status line at the bottom of the screen. Should the current document not have a filename you will be prompted for it before the program will save the document. iii) Exit - this is a combination of the above to functions. The program will save the current document, clear it from memory and ask you for a new file specification. iv) Rename - this allows you to change the name of the document you are currently working on. Note that this will only affect subsequent save opterations and will not rename any files on the disk. v) Finish - this allows you to save the current document and quit the editor in one operation. You will be prompted for a filename should the document not have one already. vi) DIR - this will give you a list of the files in your current directory. Note that only files with normal attributes will be displayed. Should there be more files in the directory than can be displayed on one screen then a prompt '<-More->' will appear at the bottom of the screen and will wait for you to press a key before continuing. Once all the files have been displayed, the prompt '<-No More->' will appear before the screen is cleared. vii) CHDIR/MKDIR/RMDIR - allow you to perform the standard directory functions as per the normal dos commands. viii) ERASE - is the equaivalent of the dos ERASE/DEL function with the only difference being that this function does not allow you to perform global *.*/*.bas etc type deletions. ix) RENAME - will let you rename a file on the disk and should not be confused with the 'Rename' function above which merely renames the document in memory. x) ?.? - is a facility that has been provided so that you can select any file type when performing a directory search with the DIR function. It will present you with a menu of pre-selected standard extensions for you to use or you can select '?.?' again if you wish to use a different file specification. xi) - is a quick way of deleting from disk the filename that you are currently viewing. xii) Switch - is a function which allows you to select another file/session. You can edit up to 5 files simultaneously, each of which can be up to 61k bytes. There is two other methods that you can use to switch between files. Either you can type ALT+F to pull down the file selector menu or just type ALT+S to automatically switch though them in sequence. F4 - This option will give you a graphical representation of how much of the available memory your current document is using. On all IBM machines this will be represented by a white bar on the screen. On the Hitachi MBE-16002 however the bar will change color as it progresses along the screen. It will change colour at 50k and 60k to give you a more easily recognisable warning of when you are getting towards the memory limitations. You should take great care once your file has exceeded 60k as it is possible that you could start to loose the end of your document if you start adding text at the begining of it. As yet the program will not provide you of any warning once this starts to occur, although you will be notified if you attempt to load a file which is too big. In this situation the editor will load as much as it can, and then print a warning message to the effect 'FILE TRUNCATED'. You will require a graphics adapter and suitable screen to be able to use this function. F5 - This is here to give you a quick impression of what your document looks like. It is most useful for viewing documents where you want to get an idea of what the format is like before printing. You can also examine program files quickly to see if they contain any screens. Each vertical row of text displays 200 lines of your document. This function also requires the use of a graphics adapter/screen. F6 - This key is used in conjunction with the F7 key and it's function is to enter any ASCII character including those which would normally have a special meaning to the editor such as the ESC key. You can also use this key for drawing diagrams by assigning it one of the ASCII line characters. To assign a character to this key you must first press the F7 key. You can select any character you wish from the display generated by the ASCII Select function. The only character that I suggest that you avoid using is the END OF FILE character/marker which is character 26 or the Arror symbol (the one pointing right). Shame, I know but there you go. The only other characters that have any special meaning to the editor are character 13 & 10 which are Carriage Return and Line Feed respectively. Even these chacaters may be enetered freely as they only take on any special meaning to the editor when they appear together like <CR><LF>. Should you enter these two characters together the next time the screen is completely redrawn the line will no longer display these characters but appear to be split. This is exactly what the split line function does. F7 - This function displays a series of miscellaneous options which in general allow you to access more easily the extended character set which you would normally find more difficult to generate on the standard IBM keyboard. This first option is called ASCI Table and one you have selected this you will be have the entire character set displayed on your screen. You will also notice that one of these characters is highlighted. This is the currently selected charater to be used by the F6 key. You may select another character by moving the highlighted area with the cursor keys. Once the character that you wish to use has been highlighted you need only press enter. As with all other functions you need only to press the ESC key to quit without doing anything. The second option from the initial screen is described as select macro. as a programmer I often have to draw flow charts and simular types of diagrams. The IBM has access to many more characters than you can easily generate from the keyboard and it is quite possible to create some usefull symbols with these shapes. This function allows you to select a predefined shape for drawing with the Draw Macro command. ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓ ░ BOX 1 ░ ▒ BOX 2 ▒ ▓ BOX 3 ▓ ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ ▒ ▒ ▓ ▓ │ ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ ▓ ▓ │ │ ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓ │ │ _/\_ ▄▀▄ │ _/ \_ ▄▀ ▀▄ │ _/ \_ ▄▀ ▀▄ ╔═══╗ _/ Diagonal \_ █ Decision █────────────║ A ║ Connectors / Lines \ ▀▄ Box ▄▀ ╚═══╝ ╔═══╗ ╔═══╗ ▀▄ ▄▀ ║ B ║ ║ C ║ ▀▄▀ ╚═══╝ ╚═══╝ ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ ░▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ ░▒▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓ ░▒▓▓ 3 Different ▓▓ ░▒▓▓ types of ▓▓ ▒▓▓ box shading ▓▓ ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓ Now press F5 and see whats happens, now you see why F5 does what it does. If you had written this document some months ago and could not remember quite what it contained, then that display could give you a quick impression of the document as a whole, especially the diagrams it contains. The next function under the draw macro command, is provided to allow you to quickly and painlessly remove the result of the last macro you have drawn You should note that all of the predefined macros restore the cursor to it's starting position at the end so that you are in the correct position to erase the macro should you find that you have drawn it in the wrong place. Also note that the erase function does not restore the area to its former state, merely overtypes the charcters with spaces. Obviously there are bound to be shapes that you wish to use on a regular basis that you won't find already defined for you. It is for this reason that there is a facility to create your own, user defined macro's and load them in from disk. To create your own macro, you should first create a new file, or at the least use a empty part of you current file. It is important that when you create a new macro, that the only characters displayed on the screen are the actual characters that compose the macro that you are creating. Any macro can only ever be as large as a single screen of data. Note that this function will only read from the current screen and does not work on the whole of the file that you are editing. You can therefore use a single file to hold the source for all of you macros. If your not sure of what will happen, try the following example. After you have read this, position the following picture so that it is the only thing on the screen. Then press F7 and select the save macro option. The program will then, rapidly proceed to scan the screen for any no-blank areas which will be put into the macro file. As it works down the screen it will place an asterisk '*' over each character that has been processed. Once the screen has been completed you will be prompted for the filename that you wish to use for this macro. It can be any filename you wish but I surgest that you use an extension of '.MAC' or something simular so that you can easily identify these files later. If you decide at this point that you do not wish to create a file then you should press the ESC key. Once the macro has been written to the filename you have specified, the screen will be restored to it's original situation. Now lets Load this macro back into the editor so that we can actually use it. Press F7 again and select the option to Load a Macro. You will need to respecify the filename that you have just used. Once loaded it is a simple matter of selecting this (User Macro) from the Select Macro option/window and we will be ready to use it. Position the cursor to any part of this file, or any other file for that matter, and select the Draw Macro command. Here is an example for you to experiment on. │ ╔═════╧═══════╗ ╔╝ SAVE THIS ╔╝ ║ BOX AS A ║ ╔╝ MACRO 'MAC'╔╝ ╚═══════╤═════╝ │ The next facility offered on the F7 window are to Select and Save the colours to be used by the editor. If you select the first of these options you will be presented with another window which displays all the areas of the editor which you can define the colour of. If you then select one of these the screen will be cleared and a colour chart displayed. Each colour is allocated a number which reflects the attribute byte setting used. Remembering which area of the editors colour scheme you are defining you need only to position the arrow on the screen so that it points to the colour that you want and then press enter. If you want to leave the colour of the selected item as it was you should press the escape key. Once you have come out of the select colour option the F7 menu will automatically position the highlight bar on the save option for you to make these colours permanent. Should you decide to save these colours then you should press enter. The colours will be saved in the root directory of the current logged drive in a file called 'SETUP.DG' If you are using the editor for the first time on a particular disk, and you have not got the above file already in the root directory then it will automatically create it for you using it's default colour scheme. If you are quick you may see the Create/Write and Close messages appearing just before the main program logo comes up. The option that follows this is described as AUTO TAB and governs how the cursor will behave when you press the ENTER key at the end of a line. If AUTO TAB is ON the cursor will automatically position itself under the start of the previous/last line provided that it is still visible. If AUTO TAB is OFF then the cursor will always return top column position 1 on the next line. The AUTO TAB setting will be saved along with the colour settings. The last option is described as 'Pick Up ASCII' and provides you with a quick method of capturing a character from the screen for you to later enter with the F6 key. Program Description ═══════════════════ The entire program was written in assembler using Microsoft's Macro Assembler Ver 4. Some of the code is particulary inefficient which is mainly due to the fact that this is my first assembler program. I am currently in the process of re-writing some of these routines which will no doubt appear in later releases of the program. If you are using this program on any machine comparable in speed with a lowly IBM PC it will no doubt appear rather sluggish. There are three things that you can do to improve this :- In order of preference. 1) Buy a faster machine. 2) Reduce the maximum size of the file that can be edited. (This can be done by reducing the number of bytes specified by MAXBYTES at the top of the program.) 3) Avoid the use of insert mode when extending lines, and if you really want to cheat, pre-extend all the lines you are going to type on by entering a space at coloumn position 80 or greater. Now, I bet your wondering how an assembly language program can be so slow. Well, let me tell you, it wasn't easy. The primary reason for it being so sluggish is the way that text is held in memory. With a high level langauge such as basic, you could use an array to hold each line of the text. When you wanted to insert some characters into a line, basic would perform so very neat and complicated housekeeping. In short basic would look for the next available area of memory that could accomodate the new line, move the line there, and adjust its array pointers accordingly. This has the effect of the text leapfrogging its way though memory leaving little ununsed gaps all over the place so basic has occasionally to have a good clean up and move all the elements of the array into continuos memory locations. Complicated eh ! Well I thought so, so this program holds the text in memory in the same way as it appears on the screen. Each line follows directly after the previous one in memory, only separated by CR LF combinations. This is a much simpler method, but it has the disadvantage of meaning that every time you enter a character from the keyboard in insert mode (or extend an existing line) all subsequnt characters in memory are shuffled up. In theory therefore the editor will get faster the further down the document you get ! I considered using 'C' but although it supports arrays I'm not sure I could set up variable length arrays. If I couldn't the maximum size of the file that I could edit would be drastically reduced. Applications ════════════ There are three particular advantages this editor has over most, firstly you can enter any characters you wish, unlike some editors which only let you enter standard characters, using the rest for special text formating functions. Secondly it is ideal for creating diagrams especially with the various macro functions and the limitless line length. The third reason which I consider to be an advantage of this editor is that it has been written in such a way as to be as hardware independant as possible. That is to say that it should work on the majority of MS-DOS computers. For example, the program was written on an Hitachi PC which is by no means an IBM Clone. If you find that you have a problem with the editor which you suspect to be due to compatability then please let me know. The most common varaitions I have come across are how the cursor appears on different machines. Also the differences between machines in respect of printer status return codes are quite difficult to cater for. Registration ════════════ If you like this program and wish to ensure that you have the latest version then you can register as a legitimate user by sending £15.00 to :- Not only will you receive the latest version but also the source code for your enjoyment - over 200k. D.Garratt, 9 Godwin Road, Wisbech, Cambs. PE13 3HR Any comments whether about bugs or requests for new features will be very welcome. Bug Fixes and Improvements. ═══════════════════════════