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Text File | 1990-12-02 | 24KB | 469 lines

M A G N E T I C P A G E S: Editor (V1.0) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Introduction: The Editor is the largest and most complex part of Magnetic Pages. With it you create the articles for your magazine. Each article can contain up to 100 pages. You use the editor to create you page layouts, import your text, graphics, sound and music and put them all together. Note that you must import your text, graphics, etc. The Editor is not a word processor or a paint program. You must write you articles on a word processor, save them as text files and them load them into the Editor. The same is true for any graphics, sound or music you want to use. You must have already created it with the appropriate program and then import it into the Editor. There are two page types available. The most common is called the 'text page'. It's called a text page because it can contain text as well as graphics. A 'text page' is displayed on an 8 or 16 colour non-interlaced hires display. (ie 640*256 pixels PAL, or 640*200 pixels NTSC). Most pages should only need 8 colours, but some graphics look better if you use 16 colours. Just remember that when you are using a 16 colour screen your articles will use more memory (to display and store) and will be slower to display. A text page is made up of a series of boxes defined by the user. On a text page you can create two types of boxes. Text boxes and Graphics boxes. Text boxes are used to display text and Graphics boxes are used to display pictures. All boxes can be set up to allow the reader to branch to different sections in the magazine by clicking on them. They can also be used to play a piece of sound or music when the user clicks on them. When a box is clicked on by a user the box works like a push button. A graphics box may have up to 30 frames of animation instead of the push button effect. A 'graphics page' is a lot simpler than a text page. Its primary use is to display pictures that use different screen modes from that used by a 'text page'. For example you can display HAM (Hold & Modify), Extra Half-Brite, Lo-Res 32 colours, etc. A 'graphics page' contains no boxes at all. In addition to the sound/music that can be played by clicking on a box you can set up a page so that as soon as the page is displayed a specific sound or score will start playing. Running the Editor ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Editor will run on a standard 512k machine. However, the more memory you have the better. If you have enough memory, it is very convenient to run a word-processor and a paint program at the same time. The Editor can be run from the workbench or the CLI. If you run the Editor from the CLI, make sure you have a stack size of at least 10k. Editor Functions ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The following is a description of the menu commands available in the editor. All action is carried out using menus and their associated requesters. Many of the menu commands have keyboard equivalents. I recommend you use these instead of the menus once you are familiar with the commands. PROJECT About - Displays a window with information about the program. New Article - Allows the user to start a new article. A requester will allow the user to cancel this command, as the previous article will be erased. Load Article - Load a previously saved article. Note that any current article will be erased by the article loaded. Also at this point I find all floppy disk access is speeded up by moving the workbench screen to the front. This is becuase the editor uses a 16 colour hires screen, which slows down DMA activities. Compressed articles will be decrunched automatically (see Save Article below). Save Article - Save an article to disk. Just enter the file name you want the article saved as. Note that once an article has been saved, you may compress it using Power Packer. This saves disk space and reduces load time. When you are in Power Packer, make sure you set the file type to 'Data File'. Don't bother using the crunched article if it crunches to less than a 30% saving. Load IFF Pic - Use this command to load any graphics you want to use. Note the picture must be saved as an IFF file. Brushes and pictures are treated no differently. I recommend you use DPaint III for creating icons, etc. Other useful programs are PixMate (especially good for colour manipulation) and PhotoLab (good for reducing the number of colours in a picture). Load Text - Allows you to load the text for your article. The text file must be in ASCII format. It may also have ANSI control sequences imbedded to allow you to change the text mode and colour. Note that if you are using a word-processor to write your article you must save the text as 'TEXT ONLY'. You only load one text file per article. The text will flow automatically from the 1st 'text box' to the next and from page to page. The text is NOT truncated to fit in the number of pages you have created. Therefore as you create more pages and 'text boxes' more of the text will be displayed. The following ANSI control codes are supported. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ESC [0m - Resets text to default colour and plain style ESC [3m - Italics On ESC [23m - Italics Off ESC [4m - Underline On ESC [24m - Underline Off ESC [1m - Boldface On ESC [22m - Boldface Off ESC [3nm - Set foreground colour (where n = 0 - 9) ESC [4nm - Set background colour (where n = 0 - 9) ESC [6"m - Shadow On { Note: Normal ANSI uses 6"Z ESC [5"m - Shadow Off and 5"Z for Shadow control. } ESC = Ascii code 27 and appears as an inverse left square bracket. There should be no space between ESC and the [. It is also possible to combine several commands in the same escape sequence by seperating them using semicolons. eg. ESC[3;4;35m - Turns on Italics, Underline and sets the foreground text pen to 5. Save Text - Allows you to save your article text as an ASCII file for re-editing. This allows you to load in some text, perform some text manipulation commands (eg Re-Format, Justify, etc) and then save the result so can do other editing from within your text editor or word-processor. Load Sound - Allows you to load in digitized sound. This sound can be stored as an IFF sound file or as a RAW file of data. Load Music - Allows you to load a Soundtracker music module. The module must have been saved using Soundtracker V2.3 or above. Note it must be a module and not just a song file. The Editor does not check to see if the file you have loaded is a valid Soundtracker module. This means if you load any old file and try to play it, you may cause a system crash. Remove IFF Pic - Allows you to discard a picture you have loaded but are not going to use in the article. Note that even if you don't use a picture in the article, it will still be saved as part of the article. Remove Sound - Same as Remove IFF pic except it removes a sound. Remove Music - Same as Remove IFF pic except it removes a music module. Quit - Exit the Editor here. PAGE New - Creates a new page. This displays a requester which allows you to define your page. This requester is also displayed when you first run the Editor. Requester Fields: Page Title: Title that appears in the title bar at the top of a page. This doesn't appear on a 'graphics page' so you should clear it. Click in the box to change the title. Note it is only displayed by the Displayer and not the Editor. Page Type: 'Text' or 'Graphics'. Note if you specify a graphics page you must specify a picture to display before you save the article. Colours: Choose an 8 or 16 colour screen for you 'text page'. It has no effect on a 'graphics page'. Page Colour: Use the + and - gadgets to select the pen you are going to use as the page colour. Initial Sound: Use the + and - gadgets to select the sound to play as soon as the page is displayed. Initial Music: Use the + and - gadgets to select the music to play as soon as the page is displayed. Note that you can only have sound or music played when the page is turned, not both. IFF Picture to Display: Use the + and - gadgets to select the picture to be displayed. This is only used for a 'graphics page' to select the picture to be displayed. Clear - Deletes all the boxes on a page. Has no effect on the text. Copy - Allows you to make a copy of the current page. If the 'to page' is greater than the number of pages in the article it is tacked on the end, or if it's less than 1 it is put at the start. Move - Similar to Copy except the current page is moved to the specified position. Note that the text is not moved with it. Edit - Allows you to edit the page characteristics. See PAGE New for more information. Delete - Deletes the page and all associated boxes. Has no effect on the text. BOX New Text - Creates a new 'Text Box'. Brings up a requester allowing you to edit the box characteristics. Requester Fields: Text Left, Top - Left and Top edge co-ordinates of the box. Columns, Rows - Number of Columns and Rows of text in the Box. Text Colour 1 - The colour of the actual text. Text Colour 2 - The colour behind the text or if the text is in shadow mode the colour of the text shadow. Border Width, Height - Width, Height of box border in pixels. Colour - Actually this is the colour of the box. Special - Standard - This box is for displaying text only. It cannot be clicked on. Play Sound - If at least 1 sound has been loaded then this option will appear. Will play the sound selected below when the reader clicks on the box. Play Music - Same as play sound but plays music instead. Go to Page - When clicked on by the reader they will be taken to the article specified in the 'Go to Page ?' field below. Shadow XOff - Offset of bottom shadow component from the left edge of the box. YOff - Offset of right shadow component from the top edge of the box. Width - Width of the right shadow component. Height - Height of the bottom shadow component. Colour - Shadow colour. Go to Page ? - the AmigaDos path and filename of the article to be loaded when the user clicks on the box. You must have selected 'Go to Page' in the 'Special' gadget or it will be ignored. Sound - Sound to be played when the box is clicked by the user. You must have selected 'Play Sound' in the special gadget or this field will be ignored. Music - Music to be played when the box is clicked by the user. You must have selected 'Play Music' in the special gadget or this field will be ignored. New Picture - Creates a new 'Picture Box'. Brings up a requester allowing you to edit the box characteristics. You must have loaded at least 1 IFF picture for this command to work. Requester Fields: Text Left, Top - Left and Top edge co-ordinates of the box. Width, Height - The width and height of the picture. You cannot change this. Border Width, Height - Width, Height of box border in pixels. Colour - Border colour around the picture. Special - Standard - This box is for displaying text only. It cannot be clicked on. Play Sound - If at least 1 sound has been loaded then this option will appear. Will play the sound selected below when the reader clicks on the box. Play Music - Same as play sound but plays music instead. Go to Page - When clicked on by the reader they will be taken to the article specified in the 'Go to Page ?' field below. Shadow XOff - Offset of bottom shadow component from the left edge of the box. YOff - Offset of right shadow component from the top edge of the box. Width - Width of the right shadow component. Height - Height of the bottom shadow component. Colour - Shadow colour. Animate PUSH/FRAME - Gadget to toggle between a standard push button box and a box with several frames of animation. Frames - Number of frames of animation. Select between 1 and 30. Speed - Number of 1/60ths of a second between frames. Picture - Select the picture for the box or current frame of animation. Next/Prev Frame - Move to the Next/Prev frame of the animation so a picture may be selected for that frame. Go to Page ? - the AmigaDos path and filename of the article to be loaded when the user clicks on the box. You must have selected 'Go to Page' in the 'Special' gadget or it will be ignored. Sound - Sound to be played when the box is clicked by the user. You must have selected 'Play Sound' in the special gadget or this field will be ignored. Music - Music to be played when the box is clicked by the user. You must have selected 'Play Music' in the special gadget or this field will be ignored. Edit - First choose a box to edit by clicking on it. Then you will be presented with a text or graphics box edit requester. This is the same requester used for 'New Picture Box' and 'New Text Box'. Move - Pick a box, hold the mouse button down and drag the box into the desired position. Resize - Pick a box, hold the mouse button down and drag out the box to the desired size. If you resize a graphics box, then only the border size will change. The actual picture will not be resized. When you resize a text box, the new size will be used to work out the maximum number of text rows and columns for the box. Anything left over will be used for the borders. Copy - Pick an existing box, hold the mouse button down and drag the copy into the desired position. Erase - Pick a box. If the box is a graphics box it will ask if you want to delete the picture as well. If the picture is being used by another box or page it won't let you remove the picture. If the box has sound or music associated with it, it will ask if you want them removed as well. Again this may not be possible if they are still being used by another box or page. TEXT Re-format - This command lets you remove unnecessary spaces from lines of text and fill lines that can fit more words on them. It is most useful when you import text. Lines that don't fit in the text boxes are broken at word boundaries if possible and put on the next line. This often leads to lines that contain only 1 or 2 words. To fix this use Re-format. Simply select text to re-format by clicking the mouse at the start of the text you want and drag-select the rest. You may have to do this several times on a box as the text is compacted. Because you can only select the text from one box at a time you often can't fill the bottom line of a box. If you want to do this you will have to save the text and edit it using a word processor. Re-format can also be used to unjustify text that you have used 'Justify' on. Justify - Used to right justify text. Select the text to justify in the same manner as you do for Re-format. Centre - Used to automatically centre text within a box. Select the text to centre in the same manner as you do for Re-format. *** NOTE *** These text formatting commands may have slightly unpredictable results, when used on lines that contain ANSI control codes (see Load Text). If they don't format the text as required, you will have to save the text and edit it using a text editor/word-processor. Set Style - Not implemented in current version. Edit Style - Not implemented in current version. TURN TO Self explanatory. OTHER Palette - Allows you to change the page colours. You can use a pictures palette by selecting the picture you want and then clicking on picture colours. UNDO lets you undo a change you have made to a colour. COPY allows you to copy a colour to another position. Note that 3 of the proportional gadgets have no effect on the colours. These are going to be used to alter a colour's Hue, Saturation and Brightness in a future update. I never quite got round to writing the code for it. Show Pics - Lets you view any picture you have loaded. Useful to view pictures that use custom screen modes. Play Sound - Allows you to play any sound you have loaded. It also lets you change the volume, period and number of cycles of a sound. Set the number of cycles to zero to have the sound play continuously (when played from the displayer). Play Music - Allows you to play any music you have loaded. It also lets you change the number of times the music is played. Set the number of cycles to zero to have the music play continuously (when played from the displayer). ------------------------------ Well that's it. If you have found any parts of this manual unclear, or incomplete, please let me know and I will address the problem in future updates. This manual was written pretty quickly and is meant only to be a reference. See the tutorial for a step by step, worked example of creating articles. Upgrades ~~~~~~~~ The Editor is by no means perfect. I will continue to work on it when I get the time. I'm not promising anything but if enough interest is shown in Magnetic Pages I hope to make the following improvements to the Editor. * Total overhaul of the intuition interface. The current version is quite rough and crude in parts. I'm a bit reluctant to spend a huge amount of time on the perfect intuition interface when Workbench 2.0 is on the horizon. * Edit Text Style and Set Text Style commands implemented. These commands will allow you to change text style and colour within the Editor by simply selecting the text to change. * More powerful (intelligent) text formatting commands. * Proper file requesters. Again these weren't done properly as Workbench 2.0 is supposed to have a standard one built in. * General optimization in all time critical areas. * Use the Clipboard device so text can be exchanged directly between a wordprocessor/text editor. * An Arexx port. Only because it's trendy. The above improvements are just a few general ideas I have planned. If you have any suggestions, or complaints please let me know when you order the Organiser. Mark Gladding.