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1995-04-22
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Documentation for "The HomeTerm Customizer"
------------------------------------------
Program written by Russ Wetmore for Star Systems Software, Inc.
Copyright (c) 1984 by Star Systems Software, Inc.
All rights reserved.
HomeTerm and HomePak are trademarks of Batteries Included.
Portions of this program were written using Action! and the Action Runtime
Package.
Action! is a trademark of Action Computer Services.
Portions of this program are Copyright (c) 1983, 1984 by Action Computer
Services.
Permission is granted for non-commercial usage only. This program may be copied
and distributed freely, provided that you do not attempt to sell it, use it as
the basis for a commercial program, or otherwise obtain or attempt to obtain any
financial gain from it. You may modify it in any way that you feel appropriate
within these limits.
With all the formalities out of the way.....
RUNNING THE PROGRAM
-------------------
(All instructions regarding DOS commands assume usage of DOS 2.0S, or its
equivalent.)
Before you begin, you must make a backup copy of your original HomePak master
disk. The manner in which you copy it is crucial - you must make your copy from
DUP.SYS by using the "J" command. You cannot simply copy files from the HomePak
master disk. The Customizer assumes absolute positioning of the files on the
disk, and a "J" copy is the only way you can be assured of this.
Load the Customizer from the DUP.SYS menu, using the "L" command. (The
Customizer was written in Action!, but you don't need the Action! cartridge to
run it.) You will first be presented with a prompt to insert your backup copy
of the HomePak master in disk drive 1. Insert the disk and press [RETURN].
THE MAIN MENU
-------------
The main menu has 8 selections. To make a change to a particular option, or to
load one of the other two menus, press the number key in the left column. (i.e.
To change option 2, press the [2] key.)
Item 1 (Other R: handlers (ATR)) is primarily for ATR-8000 users running the
RS-232 version of MYDOS. You can toggle between the "DEFAULT" setting (use
HomePak's built in handler) and the "other.." setting (use a non-standard R:
handler.) ATR-8000 users should choose "other..".
Item 2 (Key repeat rate) is for those users who have special hardware or special
versions of Atari's O/S with a built in fast key repeat rate. The default
setting is "FAST". Those with such special hardware, or who wish a slower
cursor speed should choose "NORMAL".
Item 3 (Automatic Line Feed) allows you to set whether or not a Line Feed
character (ASCII 10) is sent automatically after a Carriage Return (ASCII 13).
Some modems (notably Rixon) and some services such as many RCP/M BBS's and
Delphi, require that a line feed NOT be sent after a carriage return. If you
are having difficulty with a BBS accepting your input after you press return,
you should try to change this to "OFF". ("ON" is the default setting.) Turning
this option to "OFF" won't affect most services, but some require it, so only
change it if you are having problems with this.
Item 4 ('Stop' code (XOFF)) and item 5 ('Start' code (XON)) are for those people
who use systems that don't use the usually standard XON/XOFF control codes. It
is rare anymore to find a system that doesn't. It is probably a good idea not
to change this unless you know exactly what is going on. In these items, and in
the joystick keys menu, control characters are shown as their letter equivalent
preceded with a "^" character. SHIFT-CTRL-keys are shown as "SHIFT^" except for
SHIFT-CTRL-0 to -9 which are Macro keys in HomeTerm.
Item 6 (Character set menu) and item 7 (Joystick key menu) take you into the
other two menus in the Customizer. They will be discussed later.
Item 8 (Bell on prompt) affects the "* Press any key *" prompt that frequently
occurs in HomeTerm. You can turn the bell "ON" or "OFF". ("ON" is the default
setting.)
From the main menu, once you have finished making alterations to the various
defaults, you can write your changes out to your backup of the HomePak master
disk by pressing the [START] button. Or, you can exit the program without
making any changes at all by pressing the [X] key. You will be prompted to
insert your backup disk in disk drive 1 (if it isn't there already) and given
one last chance to change your mind. In either case, press the [Y] key if you
want to write/exit and any other key to abort.
CHARACTER SET MENU
------------------
HomeTerm uses two character sets, one being the master HomePak set and other
being the standard Atari set. There are several public domain and commercial
character set editors that allow you to create your own character sets, which
you might want to substitute for the HomePak set.
Item 1 (Load new character set from disk) allows you load your own character set
and make it the HomePak "master" set. (Note that this change (and items 2 and
3) affect ALL 3 PROGRAMS.) When asked, supply the disk filename of your
character set and press [RETURN]. Because telecommunications requires a full
ASCII set, the Customizer automatically alters ASCII 96 and ASCII 123 to 127 to
their proper ASCII equivalents. (The copyright symbol at ASCII 16 is also kept,
partly for esthetic and partly for legal reasons.)
Item 2 (Use default HomePak set) changes the character set back to the original
set, and item 3 (Use standard ATARI set) changes it to the standard ATARI set.
Your currently selected set is always shown in the menu, and is the one that
will be written as the master set.
Items 4, 5, and 6 affect the behavior of character set changes when switching
translation modes. Normally, the default is for the master character set to be
used whenever in VIDTEX or ASCII mode, and the standard ATARI set when in ATARI
mode. Item 4 changes HomeTerm to use the master set in all modes; select item 5
to use the standard ATARI set in all modes and item 6 to go back to the normal
default.
Note that several ATARI set graphics characters are used in menus and prompts,
and your display may look "funny" if your set doesn't contain them. It doesn't
affect the program's operation in any way, but for cosmetic reasons you will
probably want to retain the normal graphics set in your custom set if you want
to use one, and only change numbers, letters, and punctuation.
JOYSTICK KEYS MENU
------------------
One feature that was not disclosed in the manual is the ability to use a
joystick (plugged into port 1) to send keystrokes. Each direction on the
joystick (forward, back, right and left) correspond to a keystroke, and the
joystick button sends a fifth. Since HomeTerm Macros are sent via a single
keystroke - you guessed it - you can send whole strings of commands using one
joystick movement. The default settings are RETURN (button), CTRL-Q (forward),
CTRL-S (back), Macro 5 (left) and CTRL-P (right). I use this configuration
myself, with Macro 5 being set to:
^P^W:SK
where ^P and ^W stand for CTRL-P and CTRL-W respectively. This macro halts the
current message being displayed, waits for a ':' (in the (UA RE D): prompt) and
then sends SK[RETURN] which skips over all replies to the message - handy for
skipping over messages you have no interest in. Using this default
configuration, you can scan the entire message base without ever having to touch
the keyboard (excepts perhaps to answer a message.)
Items 1 through 5 allow you to change the key associated with a particular
direction or the button, and item 6 resets all stick keys to their HomeTerm
defaults. When asked to press a key that corresponds to a particular item,
press the combination of keys that you'd normally type in its place - hold own
CTRL and press a key for a control character and SHIFT-CTRL-0 to -9 for macros,
as examples. See the 'Start' and 'Stop' codes item in the main menu docs above
for an explanation of how the characters are displayed on the screen.
CREATING A STANDALONE HOMETERM DISK
-----------------------------------
In order to crea