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The Atari Compendium (Toad Computers) (1994).iso
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VIEWER.DOC
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Text File
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1993-06-26
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20KB
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408 lines
OH YEAH! FILE VIEWER v0.9
--------------------------
INTRODUCTION ("What is it?")
----------------------------
I'm sure you've all used a file viewer at one time or another. Basically,
in a word, put simply for your average layman to understand, a file viewer,
right, is a program, ok, that lets you VIEW ... FILES! :]
The simplest example is the desktop 'show' option from the
'show/print/cancel' box that comes up when you double click on a non-program
file. If you've ever made much use of this you'll know that, whilst very handy
for taking a quick look at bog-standard text files, it's almost useless if you
want to examine a document in detail, or examine other sorts of files.
Another popular viewer is 'more', originally from UNIX and now popping up
almost everywhere. This is a little more useful: you can go backwards and
forwards through the file by pages or lines, and even search for strings in the
file, which can all be very handy. But it was originally written for dumb
terminals, which could only print at the bottom of the screen and scroll it up.
A more sophisticated program for the ST series is the Revenge Document
Displayer from the Hitchhiker. This uses the full graphics capability of the ST
to provide line-by-line scrolling in both directions, some printing options and
even pictures while you're waiting! I like this one, but it has some
annoying features. And so I wrote my own...
So, here's *yet* *another* File Viewer: hopefully it's the (only) one
you'll need from now on!
FEATURES ("Wow, it does *this*!")
---------------------------------
* Any type of file (Atari, Mac, UNIX,...)
* Show as ASCII, graphics, or hex dump
* Variable tabstops
* Long lines wrapped or scrolled
* Fast up/down scrolling
* Compatible with medium rez, high rez, big screens, Moniterm, etc etc
* File information shown: size, word count, type,...
* All 256 ASCII and graphics characters are supported.
* Search for string (case in/sensitive)
* Different character sizes
* Very big files no problem
* Simple user interface (keyboard/mouse driven with menu)
WARNING ("It's *almost* finished!")
-----------------------------------
This version is v0.9: it's not *quite* finished yet. I've been working on
it for over a year now, but I'm leaving college in 3 days and after that I
won't have access to the Internet any more :-(((((( so I'm afraid I've had to
post this 'as is'. I'm sure you'd prefer this version (which works fine apart
from two minor points) to no version at all!!! If you contact me, I can send
you the finished version, if it's ready (see below). The main problems are low
rez (going into medium rez temporarily is fine, but it comes out as yellow on
white which is unreadable! I haven't time just now to sort out the palette),
and the Search option (it works fine, but the area highlighted isn't always the
string found: it doesn't yet take into account tabs etc.) Also files with more
than 32768 lines could cause problems, but that's unlikely: I've viewed files
over 300k before without ever approaching the limit.
USAGE ("What do I do?")
-----------------------
The easiest way to use the Oh Yeah! File Viewer is to install it on the
desktop as the default application for all files: click once on VIEWER.PRG,
then select Install Application, and enter *.* for the file type. After that,
whenever you double-click on a file that's not a program, it will be loaded
into the Viewer. (You should make sure that VIEWER.PRG is always accessible,
eg. on a hard disk or ramdisk) This is safe no matter what type of file you
click on: if it's not plain text, you just won't get plain text on screen.
Alternatively, if you have a replacement desktop that lets you put file
icons onto the desktop, you can drag files onto the VIEWER.PRG icon. This way,
you can examine program files as well.
You may be able to give it a TTP extension, and type in the name of the
file to view, or use Double Click's Gem-Takes-Parameters utility.
Go ahead, try it now! Load this file up and see what happens! Quick guide:
use the mouse to scroll the file, right button exits, left button calls up the
menu (only one!) and right button leaves it. The rest should be obvious!
When you run Oh Yeah! File Viewer, what you see is your file on screen,
with a header bar at the top. This tells you what program you're running (Oh
Yeah! File Viewer, of course!), which version, what file you're viewing, how
many lines it has, and what line you're currently on (the number of the top
line). To start with this is always line 1. How many lines are shown depends on
the screen mode: it's usually 24.
You can scroll through the file, if it's too big for the screen, simply by
moving the mouse up or down. It's as simple as that! The file follows the
mouse: move it up and the file follows, stop and it does too. You can also use
keys to move up or down: the up and down arrow keys move up and down by one
line. Space moves down by one screenful, 'B' moves up. 'S' takes you to the
start of the file, 'E' to the end. When you've finished and want to leave, you
can press 'ESCAPE', 'Q', 'UNDO', or the right mouse button.
As you can see, Oh Yeah! File Viewer was designed to be quick and easy to
use. No more tedious file selectors, no more menus to wade through or dialogues
to click on, just simply to view a file. You go straight to the file, and then
straight back to the desktop again. If VIEWER.PRG is stored in a ramdisk,
viewing files becomes incredibly quick.
Oh Yeah! File Viewer (I sound like a salesman, don't I? I should have used
a shorter name! :) also lets you do more sophisticated things, though. Press
the left mouse button to call up the menu. The options are:
GOTO START: self-explanatory
GOTO END: " "
GOTO LINE: " "
FORMAT:
This lets you choose how you want the file formatted. You can have:
ASCII: Only the standard ASCII characters are shown (the letters,
numbers, symbols etc, but not characters with codes <32 or >127)
Tabs, backspaces, etc are interpreted.
GRAPHIC: All characters are shown, none are interpreted. Characters
with codes < 32 or > 126 are shown as graphic characters.
(code 0, NULL, is shown as a '.').
HEX: The hex(adecimal) values of the characters are shown, along with
their graphic characters. A number on the lefthand side shows the
position in the file, also in hex.
TABS:
This is only applicable to the ASCII format. Here you can alter the
number of spaces between tabstops. Each tab character advances to
the next tabstop.
WRAP:
This sets whether lines that are too wide for the screen are
wrapped onto the next line, or whether the screen is scrolled
sideways. Scroll using the left and right arrows, or move the mouse
sideways.
SMALL FONT:
Two character sizes are supported, large and (not surprisingly)
small. The default is large for monochrome monitors, and small for
colour. (Large is twice the height of small; the both have the same
width).
FIND STRING:
Enter a string in the box, and its first occurrence in the file
will be shown. No wildcards are supported (so far :) If the Case
Sensitive option is selected, the string must match *exactly*,
otherwise capital and little letters are treated the