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Textread release 1.13 Version 38.82 User's guide Copyright © 1992-1995 Martin Blom Released 3 August 1995 Please also read the History section! Because this version was releases in a hurry, I haven't had time to update the documentation (which, with a few changes, describes version 1.11/38.64). Preface ~~~~~~~ The programs in this package are copyrighted by Martin Blom, but freely distributable as long as only a nominal fee is charged for copying and distribution. If you, the user, finds this program worth using, you must pay the author 40 SEK, 20 DM or US$ 10. The address can be found below. Textread must be distributed in this archive in unmodified form. Nothing may be added, or removed from it. I take no responsibility for any trouble Textread may cause. Use it at your own risk. If you, for some strange reason, wish to include Textread in your own software package, please contact me: Martin Blom Alsättersgatan 15A.24 S-582 51 Linköping SWEDEN E-mail: lcs@lysator.liu.se Introduction ~~~~~~~~~~~~ The first official release of Textread, 1.03, was released in November 1992, exactly two years ago. I wrote it for two reasons: 1) I wanted to learn how to code system friendly programs under Release 2 2) I didn't think PPMore's text routines were fast enough. Speed was the most important issue, memory had lower priority. This is still the case, even if I have replaced my own hardware-banging blitter routines with system calls (=slower), and have optimized memory usage. This new release does, although it has many new features, only use about 5500 bytes more when loaded into memory, and the executable file is only about 8800 bytes longer than 1.03. Textread was designed with "Amiga User Interface Style Guide" beside the keyboard, so I think you will feel comfortable with the layout. Textread requires V37 of the system libraries (Release 2.04). If found on your system, Textread will take advantage of asl.library V38, XPK and power- packer.library (V35). Powerpacker and Reqtools are no longer needed. Neither is V38 of asl.library. I'm sorry! ~~~~~~~~~~ I must take the opportunity to apologise to you who reported bugs in the previous release. I should have released a bugfixed version before I made this bigger upgrade. To my defence, I may say that Textread 1.11 was called Textread 1.04ß until one hour ago. It was never really ment to include all new things it does... About Textread being Shareware ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The first release of Textread was Freeware. As time went by, I found my self sitting in front of Trash'm-One, torturing myself coding this boring program. And I figured that if somebody else will enjoy my work, he or she might find it worth some money. If you disagree, you are free to do so, and you are also free to use another ascii reader... However, I have never liked shareware, especially when it comes to shitty programs like Textread. If you think it is worth some money, please consider paying. The suggested shareware fee for Textread 1.04 is 40 SEK, 20 DM or US$ 10. If you know anything about Sweden, you know that 20 DM is about 100 SEK. So if you want to save money, send SEK. My address can be found in the Preface section. Usage ~~~~~ The following files should be included in this package: fonts (dir) IBM (dir) 11 8 IBM.font fonts.info libs.info Textread Textread.doc Textread.doc.info Textread.guide Textread.guide.info TextRead.info TextRead.PC.prefs TextRead.PC.prefs.info TextRead.prefs TextRead.prefs.info The size of Textread 1.13 is 47632 bytes. The installation script has been removed, just copy the files where they belong/where you want them. Installation scripts are for applications, not for small programs like this one. Once installed, Textread can be started either from the Shell or from the Workbench. Starting Textread from the Shell ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ Type Textread ? to get the standard AmigaDOS template: FILES/M,TABS/K/N,UNIT/K/N,SETTINGS/K,NEW/S: If you give wrong arguments, you will get this text: Textread 1.11 ©1992-1994 Martin Blom. Usage: Textread [[FILES] <files|dirs>] [TABS <n>] [UNIT <n>] [SETTINGS <name>] [NEW] You may supply any number of files or paths as arguments to Textread, a new buffer will be created for each of them. If a path was given instead of a file name, or the file didn't exist, a file requester will appear. The other arguments are options; TABS <n> Selects the tab size (on screen, not printer). UNIT <n> Selects the unit of printer.device to use when printing. Useful if you've got more than one parallel or serial port. SETTINGS <name> Selects a settings file to use instead of the default settings file or the build-in settings. NEW If a copy of Textread was already loaded before, it will be told to open a new buffer with the new files. Specify this keyword to force a new copy of Textread to be loaded. Here are some examples: 1> Textread Textread.doc TABS 3 1> Textread TABS 3 FILE Textread.doc These two command do the same thing, they load Textread.doc and show it with tab size set to 3. 1> Textread TABS 8 UNIT 1 SETTINGS ENV:Textread.prefs This command sets the tab size to 8, selects the second parallel or serial port for printing and uses the settings file found i ENV:. You will be prompted for a file to view. 1> Textread dh1:Docs/cars.txt dh1:Docs First loads dh1:Docs/cars.txt, then opens a new buffer, and opens a requester showing the files in dh1:Docs Starting Textread from the Workbench ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ This is really simple. Just doubleclick on its icon, and you will be prompted for a file name. You can also select Textread's icon and then doubleclick on another icon to view that file (or, if it was a settings file, to use that settings). If you doubleclicked on a drawer or disk, the file requester will appear and list the files in that directory. Another way to start Textread is to set the icon's default tool to Textread. Just select an icon and chose Information from the Workbench Icons menu. The icon parsing is quite flexible. Suppose you can see Textread, two different prefs files, and a couple of text files on you Workbench. Assume the prefs files are called Textread.PC.prefs and Textread.Amiga.prefs, and you have a couple of MS-DOS text files. You want to show 2 'normal' text files and 1 MS-DOS file. Here is what to do: Click one on Textread, press shift and hold it down while pressing Textread.PC.prefs, <MS-DOS text file>, Textread.Amiga.prefs, <first Amiga text file>, and doubleclick on the <second Amiga file>. Textread will first load the PC prefs file, and load the PC text file. After that, a new buffer will be created using your normal prefs, and the first Amiga text will be loaded into this buffer. The last file will be loaded in a new buffer using the same prefs as the previous file. Hmm... just try it! Here are the tooltypes supported: (FILETYPE=PREFS Tells Textread that this is a settings file.) TABS=<n> Selects the tab size (on screen, not printer). UNIT=<n> Selects the unit of printer.device to use when printing. Useful if you've got more than one parallel or serial port. SETTINGS=<name> Selects a settings file to use rather than the default settings file or the build-in settings. NEW If a copy of Textread was already loaded before, it will be told to open a new buffer with the new files. Specify this keyword to force a new copy of Textread to be loaded. Control ~~~~~~~ Once you have started Textread, you have several options via the menus. Below is a full description of each menu. If you press »HELP«, you'll get a summary of all the keyboard commands. Press a key to view the text file again. At the bottom of the screen you will notice a button, an info box and a scroll bar. The small button labelled Q will quit Textread. The info box shows current line number, percentage and the status of some of the checkmarks in the menu (<W>rap words, Remove <A>NSIs, Remove C<R>s, Don't <F>ake font, <C>ase sensitive) The scroll bar is used to scroll the screen (!). And the arrows... guess! When you have loaded a text, you can edit it with your favourite text editor by pressing <Shift-E>. The editor specified in ENV:Editor will be run and the text will be loaded. However, only the file name is passed to the editor, so if the text was crunched, you editor must be able to load such files. You can also set and jump to up to ten bookmarks. Set them with <Shift> and a function key, and jump with just a function key. The bookmarks will be cleared when a new file is loaded (if you don't open a new buffer, that is). Except for the 'Print options' window, all requesters have keyboard short-cuts. They are marked as usual. Escape cancels a requester, and Return accepts. In some requesters the cursor keys (unshifted or shifted) works too. In the Find requester, you can deactivate the string gadget by pressing Shift-Return. Reactivate by pressing the underlined character. Pressing Return in the string gadget starts the search. Here are the menus: Project menu ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ New Opens a new buffer. Open... Will bring up a file requester and ask for a file name. At the moment, multiselect is not possible. Open new... This is a combination of 'New' and 'Open...'. Print Will send your text to the printer using your settings (see below). Unfortunately, this will lock up Textread until the printing is finished. This is unacceptable and I will fix this in a later version. Make sure that 'printer.device' and either 'serial.device' or 'parallel.device' is in DEVS: and you Printer preferences are correct (especially the number of lines). If your (parallel) printer isn't on-line, this command will return immediately. Print as... Will open a window with several gadgets. See separate section below (Print options). Reveal Shows a listview with the file names of all open buffers. Select one, and that buffer will be displayed. Close Closes the current buffer, and frees all memory used. If the buffer in question was the last one, Textread will terminate. Iconify Will close the screen, open an icon in the Workbench window and put Textread to sleep. When you doubleclick on the icon, the screen will reopen. Starting a second copy of Textread without the 'NEW' keyword will uniconify Textread. About... Will open a requester showing the current version, a copyright message and the current text file's name and length in bytes/charters. Quit Textread Quits Textread, WITHOUT giving you a second chance to abort. Setting menu ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ Wrap words? Turns wordwrap on or off. If on, no words will be cut at the end of each line. This should usually be on, except when reading C sources, maybe... Use Sysfont? If set, your preferred screen font will be used to render menus and requesters. If not set, you preferred fixed width font will be used. Auto-remove ANSIs? If selected, ANSI codes will always be removed from the document when a new file is loaded. Auto-remove CRs? If selected, all return codes will always be removed from the document when a new file is loaded. This is handy when viewing MS-DOS text files. Don't 'fake' font? If selected, Textread will not display some (normally invisible) ascii codes as inverted letters. This is handy when viewing MS-DOS text files containing national characters, like å, ä, ö, ü, æ... Tab size... Lets you select a new tab size for the screen (not the printer). The maximum value is 15, but this is far to high. 8 is default and looks often good, especially when you're viewing assembler sources, but a lower tab size is better when looking at C sources (3 is a good choice!). Screen mode... Brings up a requester, asking for a screen mode. Please note that the mode must be an Amiga mode, not smaller than 640*200, and not bigger than 2040*2040. (It might work with some graphics cards, as long the card has a good emulation or a planar mode that looks just like the Amiga standard modes.) Text font » Select text font... Lets you select a new font to be used. However, only a 8*8 pixel font will be accepted. This is because I prefer speed in front of cool fonts. Default font Selects the System default font, specified in Font preferences. If no font is suitable, the ROM Topaz font will be used. This is also often the System default font (pre-MagicWB? :) ). Load settings... Lets you chose a settings file to use. This means that you can save the preferred tab size, screenmode and so on to disk, and then chose between different configurations. When Textread is started, it first looks in the icon's tool type array for a name of an settings file or, if started from the Shell, it searches the arguments for the file. If not found, it tries to load the file 'Textread.prefs' from the same directory as Textread is in. If this file isn't present the build-in settings will be used. Save settings Saves your current setting using the same name the setting file was loaded as. If no setting file was previously loaded, you settings will be saved as 'Textread.prefs' in the Textread directory. Save settings as... Saves your current settings using the name you type or select. Create icons? Selects if icons will be saved together with your settings files. The icons is useful if you have different settings. To use a setting, just doubleclick on that settings file and Textread will be run using the wanted settings. However, if you only runs Textread from the Shell, the icons could be waste of diskspace. If so, simply turn this option off. Copy to all buffers This will copy the current configuration to all open buffers. Commands menu ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ Find... Asks for a string to be searched for, and then searches forward in text. If found, the screen will be positioned so the top line contains the string (if it not was too close to the end of the file). If 'Wildcards' in the requester is checked, you may use all Amiga wildcards as a pattern. BEWARE! If wildcards is turned on, searching is MUCH slower! The other options should be obvious. If nothing was found, the screen will flash. Find next Searches forwards in text for the string entered in the 'Find...' requester. Find previous Searches backwards in text for the string entered in the 'Find...' requester. Case sensitive? This selects how the string entered will be treated. If on, the search routines will look for an exact match of the entered string. But if it's off it doesn't matter what case the string was entered in. That means that if you want to find the word 'assembler', Textread will find 'assembler', 'ASSEMBLER', 'Assembler'... Textread's search routine (non-wildcard) can handle all national charters if you have 'local.library' loaded (WB 2.1). The wildcard search is handled by AmigaOS and is of course localized. Edit text Starts the editor that the environmental variable $EDITOR points to, given the file name with full path as the only argument. Remove ANSIs Will remove ANSI codes from the document. Remove CRs Removes all Return codes from the document. This is handy when viewing MS-DOS text files, since MS-DOS uses both Line Feed (LF, ascii #10) and Carriage Return (CR, ascii 13) as an end-of-line mark. Print options ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When you select 'Print as...' from the Project menu, a window with some gadgets will open. This requester has not been updated from 1.03, nor have the printer routines. I hope to clean this up in the next (?) version. The field buttons Used to control the header of each page. The left filed may contain the name of the file or a title, max 30 charters long. The middle and right filed may contain todays date or page number. If you don't want any header, simply set all fields to 'Nothing'. If the header is on, you loose 2 lines on each page. Header style Selects how the header will be printed. Bold, underlined, or italic. Title Max 30 characters of text. See above. Tab size Selects the tab size for the printer. Note that all tabs are converted to spaces before printed, so you printer doesn't need to support different tab sizes. Wrap words Selects wordwrap on or off. See Settings menu, 'Wrap words?' above. Print Starts the printing. See Project menu, 'Print'. Use Closes the window. Cancel Restores the options and closes the window. TODO ~~~~ ARexx interface. Localisation. Multithreaded printing, new Print as... requester. A better prefs file format. Multiselect in the file requester. Comments are welcome. See 'Preface' for my address. Credits and Acknowledgments ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Just for fun, here is what I wrote two years ago, in the 1.03 docs: Textread was coded in pure assembler by Martin Blom. Textread was coded on a slow Amiga 500 with 1 MB of Chip memory and 2 MB of true fast memory, a 52 MB Supra Harddrive, a Philips 8CM852 Monitor, Citizen external diskdrive, a Golden Image GI-6000 optical mouse and AmigaOS 2.1. Textread has only been tested on a few other computers, sorry for that... Please send bug reports. The ROM Kernel Reference Manuals were often needed. Sourcecode Rescuer II v1.3f (also by me) was often needed. Length of code: 28572 bytes. Assembling time: 18 seconds. I want a A4000/8/425! Please send. And now, back to reality: Textread was coded in pure assembler by Martin Blom. Textread was coded on a slow Amiga 4000/040 with 2 MB of Chip memory and 8 MB of true fast memory, a 120 MB Seagate HD, a 405 MB Maxtor HD, a Commodore 1960 monitor and AmigaOS 3.1. Textread has only been tested on a few other computers, sorry for that... Please send bug reports. The ROM Kernel Reference Manuals were often needed. Sourcecode Rescuer II v1.3f (also by me) was often needed. Length of code: 37572 bytes. Assembling time: 2.3 seconds. I want somebody to make a COOL Amiga again. Please do that. -I'm still not satisfied. Thanks to Nicolas Dade, Carsten Fulde, Che Lalic, Stefan Virebrand, Stefan Stammler, Pontus Munck, Sven Thomas (please write me, I have lost your address!), Stefan Sommerfeld, Mathias Karlsson, Ulrich Sibiller Dave Dustin and Excel for your help and support! Special thanks to Stefan Stammler and Mathias Karlsson for paying the shareware fee. Yes, it's true. Only two have payed. / Martin Blom --- Textread is copyright © Martin Blom. The requesters was designed using GadToolBox 2.0c by Jan van den Baard. PowerPacker.library and Reqtools.library are copyright © Nico François. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Program History ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Release 1.00 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ V37.0 First release. (12.9.92) V37.01 Minor bugfix. (12.9.92) V37.10 Finally got the docs to Powerpacker.library! Thanks, David of Iceland! (12.9.92) V37.11 Now accepts a directory instead of a file from the Shell too. When you load a new file, the textposition will be reset the top of file. Screen will now flash if nothing was found when searching. Fixed a bug in the screen print routine. This ^ led to another bug. Fixed! (13.9.92) Release 1.01 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ V37.13 Silly bug removed (division by zero). Another silly bug removed in print options window. Thanks, Mungwall... (18.9.92) V37.14 Decreased the size of settings file. Added arrowgadgets to the scrollbar. Fixed the last (!?) bug... (20.9.92) Release 1.02 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ V37.15 LAME bug removed: IntuiTicks forced the Helppage to disappear! Textread now checks if your (parallel) printer is online before it tries to print. The number of lines won't be recalculeated if the user cancels the Tab size-requester. Added bookmarks on F1-F10. (24.10.92) Release 1.03 (first public release) ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ V37.16 Textread was kind of slow when you looked at the end of a 600 kB text. Fixed... The number of lines won't be recalculeated if the user doesn't change the tabsize in the Tabsize- requester. <Alt> and cursor up/down moves 100 lines. Fixed bug: Strange textoutput if big overscan was used. Removed the annoying 'copyright' requester. (7.11.92) Release 1.1 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ V38.63 (NOTE! Some things were changed more than once!) MAJOR code cleenup. Result: shorter and faster (?) code. Some errormessages added. But more are needed. Now uses a ScreenMode-requester, so any bitplanemode is supported. Also rewrote the blit routines to use the ECS-blitter if available. The icon now shows the filename when Textread is iconified. Removed the "Verify quit?" menu item. Now supports XPK libraries. But it still works with powerpacker! Some cleanup in the menus. Some minor bigfixes. Removed the lame helptexts. Mail me if you want them back! Now shows the status of some checkmarks at the bottom of the screen. Added the posibillity to remove (legal) ANSI sequences. NewLook-Menus on OS 3.0+. Textread doesn't NEED diskfont.library anymore. But the fontrequester will not work, if diskfont isn't present. Added a hook to the fontrequester, that removes all fonts that are not 8*8 pixels. This may slow down the requester a bit, but only the first time. Textread now uses rtLockWindow() when the Print Options window is open. Added possibility not to 'fake' the font, ie. chars $0 to $1f and $80 to $9f will be printed as $0 to $1f and $80 to $9f, and not as inverted $40 to $5f and $c0 to $df. Hmm, well... 8 bit MS-DOS textfiles will now look as they are supposed to do. If you have the right font. Added the posibillity to remove CR characters. They are used in MS-DOS textfiles togeather with LF as a line terminator. The Amiga only uses LF. This will make MS-DOS textfiles look better. Removed an Enforcer read hit. Fixed some argument parsing bugs. No more flicker in the line number gadget! Real improvement, eh? Added am AppIcon to the Workbench, and removed it again. :) Replaced my blitter routines with BltBitMap for compabillity (HA!). The scrolling is slower, but you won't notice. Trust me. I FINALLY got my A4000/040... 2 month delayed! Many enforcer hits removed... Textread doesn't need neither the powerpacker nor xpkmaster libraries. But if found, they will be used (XPK, pp, dos, in that order.). Temporary (?) removed the colour requester. Did anybody used thay thing? It was an easy way to make Textread support AGA colours... :) Made the settings routines work (quick'n dirty). The format is NOT compatible with old prefs files, and NO version check is made, so please delete all old prefs... Sorry. The format will change in next release again. The ANSI-remover can now also handle the BS character. (For some UNIX man files.) Reduced flicker when using the scrollbar. Improved the linecounting routine a bit, hopefully reducing memory fragmentation. Replaced Reqtools with ASL. Why? I don't know... The binary file size increased by almost 10kB!! :( Added wildcards to the search routines. Uses AmigaDOS' MatchPattern and MatchPatternNoCase, so they are SLOW! Added a tiny Quit button at the bottom of the screen. Added finescroll. Yes, I know... The implementation sucks. I might try to fix it some day, but I don't know how I can improve it without adding double buffering..? Added multibuffer support. You can now have any number of files loaded, limited only by available memory. Hopefully, this will make up for the increased program size. Added 'NM_COMMANDSTRING' menu shortcuts if running V39+. Made 'Escape' quit Textread when the last buffer was closed. Added command 'Copy settings', which makes all buffers use the current settings. "+" and "-" now switches to the next/previous buffer. If a second copy off Textread is started, a new buffer will be opened in the first copy and the second will terminate. This feature can be tured off by using the NEW keyword or tooltype. Multiply arguments can now be passed from the Shell or Workbench. No wildcards yet, though... (9.11.94) Release 1.11 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ V38.64 V38 of asl.library is not needed anymore, V37 will do, but you loose the screenmode requester. (30.11.94) Release 1.13 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ V38.82 'Edit text' now runs the editor async. Textread should now be 100% (well, close) compatible will graphics cards, if 'system rendering' is selected. Added 'Save' and 'Save As...' menu items. The file requesters now have a title, just like the other ones, when using RTPatch. Minor improvements to the requesters, removed redundant code. Improved the ANSI/ISO sequence remover (It did not remove ANSI/ISO sequences, just some common Escape sequences!). When 'system rendering' is selected, any fixed-width font may be used, as long as 80×20 characters fits on screen. (Expect some slowdown) When searching, the found word will be hightlighted (or the line the word is on if wildcard is used). You can now supply your own icon images for the prefs files and the AppIcon, just create the files "ENV:Textread/def_prefs.info" and "ENV:Textread/def_app.info". (Re)added 'Go to line' (l, #) and 'Go to %' (g, %) The default preference file is now located in 'ENVARC:Textread/Textread.prefs'. Added a palette requester. Well, not quite... All it does is running SYS:Tools/Colors (Exists on your WB 2.0 disk. 3.0+ owners may want to try Ian J. Einman's IanUtils (Fred Fish, or AmiNet:dev/asm/IanUtils.lha) The prefs files have changed format for the last time, the new format is more flexible. The key binding has changed a bit. The 'Reveal' list now also shows buffer numbers. Textread now supports pipes. Read the docs for notes. Some bugs removed, some small things improved. Textread never detaches itself from shell anymore. It was inconsequent, and besides, 'run' was made for a reason. Added Open/Close Workbench menu items. If a second copy of Textread is started, without the NEW argument, only a small portion of the code will stay resident in memory, waiting for the new buffer in the old Textread to be closed. Ehmm.. let's just say it saves memory. System rendering and fontfake is allways on (and can't be turned off) when a non-native screenmode is selected. This will avoid potential (chip) memory trashing. Fixed the "***Corrupt window pointer!" problem WShell reported. Thanks, Ulrich! Added a requester to prevent accidental saves. Discovered what caused a frustrating bug that made my custom text routines do nothing (no screen clear, no text printing, no nothing.) It was Magic Layers (1.1) . So if Textread suddenly (or more specific after you have dragged a window on Textread's screen) stops printing, just iconify it and deiconify, and don't drag any more windows on Textreads screen! Changed the shareware rules a bit. Removed a bug that caused Textread to crash if the ENVARC: assign did not exist. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ $VER: Textread doc 38.82 (3.8.95)