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1992-06-17
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(* ------------------------------------------------------------------
Helmut Steeb 03.07.91 TURBO-PASCAL 5.5
S+C-AT 286, Herculesgraphik, 1MB RAM, MS-DOS 3.30
486/33, VGA-Graphik, 4MB RAM, DR-DOS 6.0
WSD-ENG.DOC
From: 17.06.92
------------------------------------------------------------------ *)
──────┤ WSD ─ your text formatter by Helmut Steeb ├──────
Contents
--------
What is WSD?
A short introduction
Description of files
How to install WSD
Formatting texts with WSD
How to start WSD
Printing modi
Escape characters
Additional escapes in head and foot lines
Page layout
Shortcuts for escapes
Appendix
A) Printer requirements
B) List of dot commands
C) How to construct your proportional table
D) Bugs, problems, missing features
------------------------------------------------------------------
What is WSD?
------------
WSD is "yet another text formatter". Its functionality is styled
similiar to WordStar 3.0. In fact, I made the first version of WSD
because WordStar 3.0 lacked some features which I'd liked to have.
These are especially printing user defined fonts, printing in double
height and with several printing features the printer supported. "WSD"
means "Word Star Druck" (Word Star Printing). But Word Star was not
the last word to WSD. I have worked on WSD continuously. Today, the
most important features of WSD are:
- printing ONLY on 24-dot matrix printers (at the moment)
- WSD formats your text in proportional spacing, with left and right
justification. Proportional spacing is the most readable print style
- characters are of different width, then, e.g., "i" is not as wide
as "w".
- Automatic hyphenation!
- Checking your text file in advance before actually printing
- Print styles can be mixed:
* Proportional spacing normal/narrow, 10 cpi (characters per inch,
the usual spacing), 12 cpi, 15 cpi, 17 cpi and 20 cpi (narrower)
* LQ (letter quality) or draft quality
* Printer internal or user defined fonts (for foreign language
characters, calligraphic fonts, maths...)
* double wide and double high print style, italics, underline, bold,
superscript, subscipt.
NOTE: double high print style is not correctly taken into account
for vertical page layout at the present.
- page format with one or two columns (to be mixed on the same page)
- page style "normal" / only "left" pages / only "right" pages /
twosided
- variable line spacing 8 / 6 / 4 lines per inch (the same as 0.5 / 1
/ 1.5 on some typewriters).
- WSD is a mere text formatter. The printing features (italics,
underlined, etc.) are not visible on screen, only on paper you will
see them. This is not "what you see is what you get". You write your
text with your favourite text editor (I am using QEdit, by the way).
WSD will do the formatting and printing.
To control printing, you add formatting commands to your text. These
are:
* "escapes", following after the "escape character" "#". For
example, "#K" means "italics on", and "#k" means "italics off".
* "short cuts" (abbreviations) of escapes. Short cuts for escapes
are not important at the beginning. More about them can be found
below (I don't use these very often).
* "dot commands". Their purpose is in general to control printing
layout. Dot commands are text lines which start with a dot in the
first text column (in regular text lines, this is assumed to never
occur). These lines with a dot in the first column are only to
define layout features. They will NOT be printed. For example, to
switch to two column printing, you would use the following command
placed in the first print column:
.2c
------------------------------------------------------------------
Short introduction
------------------
I suppose, before reading all the rest of this text, you'd like to get
a quick taste about WSD. My proposal: just give it a try now!
To this end, all files of the WSD archive should be together in a
subdirectory. Now change dir to that directory, e.g.,
A:
CD WSD
and make your printer ready. NOTE: the print head should be
immediately below the top paper border (if you are using a sheet
feeder, we must think a bit over that. May be this can be managed by
adjusting the paper layout, i.e., you should then decrease the top
margin and increase the bottom margin. See below on these notions).
Now start WSD by
WSD -c WSDDEMO
WSD will check (-c) the file WSDDEMO.TXT and tell you that no error
occured (by adding -c, you can always suppress printing to only check
the input file). Fine! Now becoming serious, type
WSD WSDDEMO
Afterwards, (hopefully) you see your first WSD formatted text on the
printer. It is a demo, so don't bother that it is in German language.
Just enjoy the printing features. If there are some less beautiful
phenomena, you should seemingly proper install WSD to your printer.
For printers as NEC P6, there should be no problems. If you like it,
go on trying some more texts. Or just more promising, have a try with
LISTING WSD-ENG.DOC
Be told again: if you add option -c when calling WSD, then the input
file will only be checked, not actually be printed. As a side effect
you will see the number of pages needed.
You can also print first all pages with odd page numbers, then turn
the sheet round, then print all pages with even page numbers:
LISTING WSD-ENG.DOC /po
... turn all round ...
LISTING WSD-ENG.DOC /pe
If you like it still smaller, do it with LISTING1 instead.
Some remarks are in order here (for details see the following
chapters):
- the batch files LISTING.BAT etc. all call the WSD.EXE program. If
there are problems, make sure that LISTING.BAT etc. contains the
correct actual path to WSD.EXE.
- the files FONTTST1.TXT, FONTTST2.TXT and SAMPLE.TXT all try to print
user defined fonts. This will only work if your printer is prepared
to print user defined fonts, and if the file WSD.CFG contains the
correct path to the fonts (entry FO=xxx; the fonts are all named
with extension .LET and come in the LETTER subdirectory). You can
always print these files with LISTING because LISTING suppresses the
font switching commands.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Description of files
--------------------
WSD is no "integrated" environment as some commercial available
programs are. The formatting process is controlled by some files which
are read by WSD at program start. You can easily adapt these files
using a simple text editor.
WSD EXE The program
WSD MSG message file
MUST be available at program start. Without this file, WSD would not
be able to communicate with you. The idea behind this is to allow
simple adaptation to various languages. Actually, you need not copy
your adapted file onto WSD.MSG. On startup, WSD first checks the
value of the environment variable WSDMSG and tries to read that
file. If this succeeds, WSD.MSG need not be there. For further
information see below in the chapter on Installing WSD.
WSD CFG configuration file
MUST be available at program start. You can write a configuration
file of your own and tell WSD to use that via a command line
parameter. In the configuration file, some general data for
formatting are specified. These are tabulator width, for example, as
well as the names of other files used by WSD (hyphenation info,
printer information, etc.).
NECP6 ESC
MUST be available at program start. The name of the file to use is
specified in the configuration file. This file defines the
connection of text characters following "#" with printer escape
sequences. For example, the file says that the character sequence
"#K" in your text will be replaced by the printer codes ESCAPE "4"
(ESCAPE is a special character for printer control). On most
printers, ESCAPE "4" will switch to italic printing. Besides that,
the file conta