Cream of the Crop 1

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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 contains escape sequences which are sent to the printer as initialization strings and the like. Short cuts can be found there, too. This escape file may be changed in order to: * adapt WSD to special printers which don't use the common escape sequences. For example, you could easily tell WSD to replace "#K" by ESCAPE "X" instead of ESCAPE "4". This makes sense if your printer is switched to italics via ESCAPE "X". * change the text characters which invoke printing features. If you don't like "#K" to turn italics on, change the escape file so that "#j" switches to italics (if you think this makes sense). * define or change short cuts for escapes. GHMIN HYF File with hyphenation info (need not be there). The name of the file to use is specified in the configuration file. The hyphenation info as well as the hyphenation procedures are due to the TeX text formatter. GHMIN.HYF contains the information of GHYPHEN.MIN (delivered with EmTeX by Eberhard Mattes) in compressed form. GHMIN.HYF works very fine with german words. HYPHEN HYF The same as GHMIN.HYF, but for English texts. MAKEHYPH EXE Utility program to construct hyphenation files from TeX-style hyphenation files. NECP6 WID NECP6PL WID LC2410 WID These files specify the width of all the characters in proportional spacing on the respective printer. There MUST be one such file at program start. Which file WSD will use is defined in the configuration file. WSD must be told how many dots the various characters need on paper. This is especially necessary to left and right justify the output lines. Formatting will work nonetheless with files that do not contain the exact widths of your printer. The result will merely be that the right margin will not be properly justified. If your printer is none of the above, refer to the appendix (it tells you how to find out the spacing data of your printer). PROPTEST.EXE Program to find out the proportional spacing data (see appendix). LISTING FRM File with layout data, e.g. two columns or not, right justification off, draft quality, condensed. You can use this file to print listings or similiar "raw" data. Since each column will contain one usual print page, you need only half the paper. To use this file, call WSD /fLISTING or just LISTING.BAT (with additional parameters, as needed). Comment: some people like enormously spaced, few information on one paper. I like to see much small printed data on one paper because it is easier, then, to grasp cross references. For listings, I find it very convenient to have two conventional pages on one sheet. Buf if you prefer the first mentioned style, forget everything about LISTING.FRM. LISTING BAT Batch file. It calls WSD with parameter /fLISTING. To print a Pascal file DATEI.PAS using the format data from LISTING.FRM, just issue LISTING DATEI.PAS If you call LISTING.BAT from another directory, not where WSD.EXE resides, you must probably enter the actual path to WSD.EXE into LISTING.BAT (and LISTING1.BAT etc.). See below on installation of WSD. ------------------------------------------------------------------ How to install WSD ------------------ In case you didn't, to read the previous chapter (description of files) would probably be helpful before you install WSD. First copy all the files in a new subdirectory (unless already done so by PKUNZIP). WSD.EXE is the executable program. It is called from within LISTING.BAT, LISTING1.BAT and LISTINGQ.BAT. If you want to call LISTING.BAT from another directory, not where WSD.EXE resides, you must probably enter the actual path to WSD.EXE into LISTING.BAT (and LISTING1.BAT etc.). If, e.g., WSD.EXE is in the directory D:\TEXT\WSD, the call in LISTING.BAT should look like D:\TEXT\WSD\WSD /fListing ... At program start, WSD reads the file specified in the environment variable WSDMSG, or the file WSD.MSG. Just for now, the file WSD.MSG will be good. If you like to adapt WSD to German language, for example, simply issue the command SET WSDMSG=WSD-GER.MSG before running WSD. In this case, it will do no harm if WSD.MSG is not present. It is then even possible to run WSD from another directory (not where WSD.EXE and WSD-GER.MSG are); WSD will automatically search for the message file in the directory in which WSD.EXE resides. If you aren't able to set the environment variable because the environment lacks space, you should adapt your computer's system file CONFIG.SYS also. To this end, increment the value after /E: in a line like SHELL=C:\DRDOS\COMMAND.COM C:\DRDOS\ /P /E:512 If you are not sure how this works, see the documentation for your DOS operating system. After reading the message file, WSD reads the configuration file WSD.CFG (or whatever file you specify on the command line, e.g. /cMYCONFIG; ".CFG" will be added automatically). Installing WSD, the main thing is to set up the data in WSD.CFG appropriately. We now turn, therefore, to an explanation of these data (with examples). wi=necp6.wid WI (WIdth) denotes the file with proportional spacing information. This line MUST be there in the configuration file. If your printer is one of NEC P6, NEC P6+ or Star LC 24 10, just enter the name of the respective file (NECP6.WID, NECP6PL.WID, LC2410.WID) after "wi=". If there is no file for your printer, you can for the moment use one of the other files. Refer to the appendix to see how you can build such a file for your printer. es=necp6.esc ES (EScapes) denotes the file with escape sequences. This line MUST be there in the configuration file. Since most dot matrix printers will accept the NEC pinwriter escape sequences, for most printers you can just leave the line as "es=necp6.esc". If you later find that some printing features (italics, bold etc.) don't come to paper as you think they should, then you should do something. Produce a copy of NECP6.ESC, give it the name of your printer, and refer to your printer's manual whether some data in the file should be changed. fo=c:\text\font FO (FOnt-directory) denotes the directory, in which WSD looks for user defined fonts. If you specify font file names using the dot command FT, these names will be preceded by the FO-value. Example: in your text, you write .FT=greek. With fo=c:\text\font, WSD will look for c:\text\font\greek.let. If you don't specify FO, WSD will look for the fonts in the current directory. ff=yes FF (Form Feed). If a page is printed, WSD can either use the printer's internal form feed (ff=yes), or it can produce the page break by sending several line feeds to the printer (the exact number depending on the page layout; this is with ff=no). wa=no WA (WAit). With wa=yes, WSD will pause at the end of a page and wait for a keystroke. Nowadays, wa=yes seems to be no more necessary. There have been problems when entire font files were downloaded to the printer; these problems didn't occur when WSD waited on a keystroke before form feeds and before downloading a font file. But possibly, these problems were caused by a bug. ta=8 TA (TAbulator size) specifies the number of blanks that will be inserted internally to replace a tab character (ascii 8). Personally, I don't use tab characters, I even don't like them. It seems to me that text files containing tab characters are not properly treated by WSD but don't be amazed if I didn't fix that problem yet. Some editors can be customized to produce no tab characters but to replace them with blanks themselves. pm=c PM (Page Mode) is the default page mode for WSD. It is in effect as long as you don't issue the dot command .PM. The page mode says: - whether for the left paper margin the value of IR (indentation left) or IR (indentation right) shall be used - whether for the top line of the pages the line specified by dot command HL (head left) or HR (head right) shall be used - whether top and bottom lines are printed left or right justified (lines which are split by "#>" are not affected) Legal values are (upper or lower case): - R (Right): use IR and HR always, print top and bottom lines right justified (except lines containing "#>") - C (Center): use IR and HR always, but center top and bottom lines (except lines with "#>") - L (Left): use IL and HL always, print top and bottom lines left justified (except lines with "#>") - 2 (2-sided): for even page numbers the same as L, for odd ones as R. hy=hyphen.hyf HY (HYphenation table) denotes the hyphenation table file. Hyphenation tables can be produced via the utility program MAKEHYPH.EXE from original TeX hyphenation tables. The file GHMIN.HYF has been built from GHYPHEN.MIN and contains exactly the information of the latter in compressed form. For printing English texts, the table HYPHEN.HYF (produced from HYPHEN.TEX) should be suitable. If there is no HY-definition, WSD will not do any automatic hyphenation. in= IN (INclude-file) denotes a file that will be read before your actual input text is read. It makes sense to specify a file containing formatting data (e.g., dot commands). The extension .FRM will be supplied automatically. If you use parameter /f on the command line, the line in the configuration file will have no effect. ig=no IG (IGnore dot commands in verbatim-mode). In verbatim mode, all text escape characters (#x) and all short cuts ($x) are printed without interpretation. Only with dot commands, you can choose: * with ig=no the dot commands will be interpreted, as done in the other printing modi. They will not appear on the paper themselves. * with ig=yes, all dot commands are printed as text. The only exception is .)) which must be interpreted since it turns verbatim mode off. If you want to print "raw texts", listings for example, there may a large amount of "#" and "$" characters in them. Verbatim mode is very helpful in these cases since in verbatim mode, the characters are not interpreted but simply printed. In formatting mode, the characters can only be printed by doubling them: to print "#", you write "##" in your text, as well as "$$" for printing "$". In general, you will use ig=no in verbatim mode since then you can control even printing of raw texts via dot commands. ig=yes will only be necessary if you want to print a text that has dot commands in it, and you want to print these on paper. Well, this is a description of the configuration file. As far as I can tell, everything is now said about installing WSD. Further note concerning file names: The files which are specified in the configuration file must be under the there mentioned name either in the WSD directory (where WSD.EXE resides), or in the current directory. The search for the files proceeds in this order. In this case, NO file name extensions are automatically supplied. This is different as for your command line parameters. Format file, configuration file and input text file will also be searched for in the WSD and then in the current directory. If not found, and if the file name did not contain an extension, a default extension will be supplied for the respective file type, and the search is done again in the mentioned order. If it is not found again, you will get an error indication, and WSD stops. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Formatting texts with WSD ------------------------- How to start WSD ---------------- Simply invoke WSD with WSD or WSD /? to get a help screen dealing with options and parameters. These data are now explained in detail. What you MUST specify to work with WSD: 1) the name of your text file. All DOS pathnames are allowed. Not allowed are wildcards like * or ?, as well as character oriented devices like CON (you want to try "WSD CON"? Don't do it!). Things like DIR | LISTING are not possible. If your text has the extension TXT, you need not type these characters since WSD will supply them automatically. Example: WSD file.txt produces the same as WSD file What you CAN specify to work with WSD: 2) the name of the output file. All DOS pathnames are allowed here, too, as well as character oriented devices (e.g., PRN). The output file name must be specified AFTER the input file. In fact, this is the only restriction about the ordering of command line parameters. Example: WSD file.in file.out If you don't specify the name of an output file, WSD will gracefully assume PRN for you. If you specify one, output including printer escape sequences will be directed to that file, so later on you can print it via COPY file.out PRN 3) Several options. Options work as toggles: they toggle features of WSD on or off. Options are denoted by single characters, upper or lower case doesn't matter. On the command line, options must be preceded by "-". You can sum up several options after one "-". As already mentioned, options can be located at any position in the command line. Examples (both have the same effect): WSD -c file.in -d WSD -cd file.in The default values of the available options are displayed on the helpscreen by invoking WSD /?. - Option -C (Check Syntax): WSD then analyses your text without producing output. If there are any problems during the analysis, WSD will report afterwards how many problems occured. All problems are protocolled into a file named WSD.LOG. NOTE that this protocolling occurs in any case, even if you did not specify -C. Examples: Assume the text escape character "z" is undefined in your escape file. WSD will then report the occurence of #z in your text file. In verbatim mode, WSD reports lines which are too long for the current line length (it will automatically wrap these lines at word boundaries, if possible. Otherwise, they will be suppressed). ERGO: it is VERY HELPFUL to check your text first with option -c. If WSD reports problems, refer to WSD.LOG, change your text, if necessary, and only then go on printing. Option -c can save you a lot of paper... - Option -L (Load Font): only for use of user defined fonts. Probably only for NEC P6. Usually, WSD loads the character definitions of a user defined font into main memory. Only if a certain user defined character must actually be printed, the pixel data will be loaded into the printer. This allows to intermingle printing of several fonts without at each occurence of another font downloading that font entirely. But (at least on our NEC P6) there may be a problem if the double high or underlined printing features where active before loading the pixel data: there will be a small but noticeable forward paper motion. If you want to print an underlined headline, it will be printed nicely "downstairs". This effect doesn't occur if the pixel data for the characters are already in the printer's download memory. So the trick is to ensure that the font is already downloaded as a whole. I did it as follows: before headlines that I wanted to print in a user defined font, I put the FT font dot command. Also, on the command line, I set the option L. Option L then causes the font to be loaded to the printer immediately when FT occurs. May be, this is specific to the NEC P6, so forget all about it. - Option -P (Preview): ** not yet implemented ** - Option -D (Dump): not recommended. Internal data which are build during the analysis of your file are output to the file named WSD.TST. This option is helpful for programmers and bug fixers of WSD. The output file can become rather large! Only the pages which are selected by parameter /p will be dumped. 4) Various parameters. Parameters follow the character "/". They also can be placed at any position in the command line. - Parameter /P (Pages): decides, on which (output) pages WSD shall work. In any case, WSD starts analyzing your text from the beginning of the file, even if the first page(s) are not to be printed (how should WSD recognize where the second output page begins if it did not process the first?). WSD stops when the last specified page has been processed. If you don't specify parameter /p, all pages will be processed ("all" means: up to page 255. You know, the "byte" and stuff). Immediately following the "/p", you can write several ranges of text pages, these are delimited by periods. The following ranges are possible: Example Effect -------------------------------------------------------- 10 single page -10 all pages up to page 10 (inclusively) 10- all pages, beginning from page 10 (inclusively) 5-7 pages 5 thru 7 e (also E) all even pages, i.e. 2, 4, 6... o (also O) all odd pages, i.e. 1, 3, 5... Examples of complete page specifications: /pe all even pages /pe.1-3 pages 1, 3 and all even pages /p10 page 10 /p10 /p2-3 pages 2, 3 and 10 As you may have noticed, the several ranges are implicitly combined by OR (union), not by AND (intersection). Thus, /pe.1-3 denotes NOT just "page 2 only" but moreover "all even pages + pages 1-3", i.e., pages 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 etc. When processing your file, WSD will show selected page numbers in brackets like [1], suppressed pages will be displayed surrounded by dots like .2. In detail, the opening bracket will be displayed before the analysis of the page starts. The page number will be displayed after the page has been analyzed, the closing bracket after the page has been output. Example: [3] .4. .5. [6] If you press any key while WSD is working on your text, you will enter a dialougue with WSD after the current page has been processed (on that point, refer also to the chapter on installation, feature DI). In this dialogue, you can redo the page selection, starting at least from the next page (you can't work on previously finished pages again). Note: if you decide to exit printing immediately, then WSD will nonetheless try to return your printer into a well defined state (which includes your exit string, see file with escape sequences). If you simply turn your printer off, and then type "x" to exit from printing, WSD will try to send the exit data to your printer. Because this is no more possible, it will then abort with a rather mysterious "runtime error 160" (which means exactly "device write fault"). So either don't turn off your printer too soon, or else just ignore the error message. - Parameter /F (Format): this parameter must denote a file. The file will be analyzed as include file before your text is worked on. Therefore, it will be convenient to save commonly used layout values (dot commands) as a file and supply them on the command line via /f. The extension FRM will automatically be added. Example: WSD /flisting wsd.pas Note, that /f suppresses the configuration file datum IN. If your configuration file says IN=DINA4.FRM (extension there necessary!), and you invoke WSD with parameter /fLISTING, only LISTING (or LISTING.FRM) but not DINA4.FRM will be processed. - Parameter /C (Config): in place of WSD.CFG the specified configuration file will be used. Extension CFG will be supplied automatically (probably /C is not necessary). ------------------------------------------------------------------ Printing modi ------------- WSD prints texts in three different modi: - F+ (formatting): WSD formats your text automatically left and right justified. It doesn't matter where the input lines end. WSD reads word after word and fills the output lines as good as possible with microspaces to get the justification (note that WordStar 3.0 did not work with proportional spacing fonts and, as I remember, filled lines with blanks only which is rather crude). Note that there is a great difference between the job of a typist and the job of WSD! A typist (and most likely WordStar 3.0) types fixed width characters and fills in an appropriate number of blanks between the words to get right justification. You easily recognize such output because all the characters are positioned column for column in the same manner. WSD does more: it uses proportional fonts. If you have a look at the next book at hand, you will find that in professional printing characters are of different widths: "w" takes more horizontal space than "i", for example. This makes texts more readable. To print such texts right justified, WSD must be told what widths all the individual characters have. Given these widths, WSD computes the width of a complete line and appropriately fills in pixel space (not blanks) in order to right justify the line. To end a paragraph, you place an empty line into your file (such as the one before "To end..."). At this point, WSD will stop continuous formatting and place an empty line into the output, too. To get a line break within a paragraph, insert the text escape "#." (hash, followed by a dot). But, admittedly, I didn't use this feature extensively, neither did I test it. In the output, the lines will be indented as you indented them in the input file. Since source and output lines can be of different length, there are somewhat subtle problems with this statement. To be exact, note the following: "For every output line WSD uses the indentation of that input line, in which the output line was begun" (i.e., in which the first word of the output line was found). If you, for example, write paragraphs of the form Keyword: 1111 2222 333 444 555 65666 7777 8888 9999 2020 aaa bbb ccc and so on... and format these lines rather narrow, then you will get something like Keyword: 1111 2222 333 444 555 65666 7777 8888 9999 2020 aaa bbb ccc and so on... The point here is that the second output line, beginning with 7777, was begun while the first input line was still active (because 7777 comes from the first input line). Therefore, the indentation of the second output line is taken from the first input line. Since you surely want the lines to look like Keyword: 1111 2222 333 444 555 65666 7777 8888 9999 2020 aaa bbb ccc and so on... you should in such cases simply shorten the first input line like Keyword: 1111 2222 333 444 555 65666 7777 8888 9999 2020 aaa bbb ccc and so on... In this case, when the 7777 is processed, it will infer the proper indentation of the second input line to the respective output line. Alternatively, WSD does the indentation similiar to English documents: the first line of every paragraph is indented, all the rest of the lines will be left justified. You get this if you specify parameter /i on the command line, after the /i telling how many characters the first line shall be indented. Note that /i0 will have the same effect as leaving /i at all: paragraphs will be formatted according to the input file indentation. Example: WSD mytext /i4 - F- (Non-formatting mode): your text will be output line after line, just as you wrote it. Text escape characters are interpreted into the respective printing features. When an output line becomes too long (with respect to the line length specified by dot command LL), then the rest of the line beginning from the out dropping word will be placed into the next output line. The misery will be protocolled into the log file. Example: When an output line becomes too long (with respect to the length will (according to LL) be formatted to When an output line becomes too long (with respect to the length Besides this step all output lines will exactly correspond to the input lines. Dot commands won't be printed but interpreted. When printing listings, it may happen that many lines are too long and will be wrapped. The output will then be badly readable. For this reason, WSD allows you alternatively to shorten these output lines and simply suppress the out dropping parts. I use this feature when printing Pascal programms: the suppressed parts are almost always the final words of comments which I consider to be neglectable, then. Note that only whole words are suppressed. This means that the word that does not fit on the line entirely will be suppressed as a whole. Suppressing is only in effect in mode F-. It will be enabled by option -s, for example: WSD mytext -s. - (( (verbatim, direct mode): your text will be output line for line, exactly as you can see it on the screen. Text escape characters are NOT interpreted but printed as characters. Dot commands are either interpreted (as in the other printing modi), when ig=no is specified in the configuration file, or they will be printed as well, with ig=yes (see chapter on installation). Lines which are too long are automatically wrapped or shortened as in F- mode. Verbatim mode can be very helpful to print tables or texts containing a lot of special characters, since the characters # and $ are not interpreted but simply printed. The dot command EV (escape verbatim) allows you to specify an escape sequence which will be inserted automatically when WSD meets the verbatim enabling dot command ((. For example, with EV=#p#q, in verbatim mode there will proportional spacing and LQ be automatically turned off, i.e. draft is turned on. The dot command )) then restores the printing state which was active before entering verbatim mode. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Escape characters ----------------- To achieve special printing features, simply insert the escape character # into your text, followed by one of the characters introduced below (e.g., this is #Sunderlined#s and that is #Dbold#d): s underline off S underline on d double strike off D double strike on c condensed off C condensed on q LQ off (= draft on) Q LQ on v double high off (= normal height) V double high on k italics off K italics on b double wide off B double wide on p proporitional spacing off (= LQ/draft on, according to q/Q) P proporitional spacing on t superscript/subscript off T superscript on U subscript on N 10 cpi (additionally condensed results in 17 cpi) E 12 cpi (additionally condensed results in 20 cpi) e 15 cpi (additionally condensed results in 20 cpi, too) I Internal printer font X user defined font 1 Y user defined font 2 Z user defined font 3 The sequence "#." in the input text in mode F+ (formatting mode) produces an immediate line break at this position. In other modi, it is ignored. Note that this feature is not extensively tested, there may occur faults. To print character "#", write "##". All other characters are NOT ALLOWED after "#" and are reported as errors. Therefore, if you want to print a text you didn't write yourself, be sure to double all occurences of "#" to get to desired result, e.g., "phone ##43". This is not necessary for verbatim mode since there no escape characters are interpreted. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Additional escapes in head and foot lines ----------------------------------------- In head and foot lines (or should we call them top and bottom lines?) all the above escape sequences are allowed, except "#." and double heigth on/off. Furthermore, the following "short cuts" are possible (note that upper/lower case is of importance here): $P print the current page number at this position $| split the line at this position. The left part will be printed left justified, the right part will be printed right justified. When it occurs more than once in a top or bottom line, only the last occurence will be taken into account. As a side effect, the current page mode (PM) has no effect on the line since it is split. $D insert date, format: 07-05-1991 ( = 5th july 1991). The actual date format used depends on the specification in the message file (i.e., the file specified via SET WSDMSG=xxx, or else the file WSD.MSG). $T insert time, format: 09:27pm. The actual time format used also depends on the respective specification in the message file. $n insert name of text file - i.e., the name you specified on command line, supplied with .TXT if necessary. $n only prints the name and extension part. $N like $n, but the entire path of the file will be printed. Examples: .he $n ($D $T)$|Page $P results in INFILE.TXT (07-05-1991 09:29pm) Page 1 INFILE.TXT (07-05-1991 09:29pm) Page 2 etc., .hl $P$|$n .hr $D $T$|$P results on left pages (odd page numbers) in 1 INFILE.TXT and on right pages (even page numbers) in 07-05-1991 09:31pm 2 ------------------------------------------------------------------ Page layout: ------------ The following values are only examples for possible dot command data. ---------------------------------------------- top of paper 1 (printing head start pos.) ) ) 2 head line .HE ) ) 3 ) ) .MT = 4 ("margin top") ) 4 ) .HM = 2 ("head margin") ) ) 5 Beginning of text! ... In the beginning was the word, ) 6 and the word was with God, and the Word was God. He was ) 7 with God in the beginning. Through him all things were ) 8 made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In ) 9 him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light ) 10 shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood ) 11 it. ) ... ) 56 The true light that gives light to every man was coming into ) 57 the world. He was in the world, and though the world was ) 58 made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came ) 59 to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. ) 60 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his ) 61 name, he gave the right to become children of God - children ) 62 born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a ) 63 husband's will, but born of God. ) 64 (Gospel of John, chapter 1). End of page text. ) 65 ) ) ) 66 ) .FM = 2 ("food margin") ) ) 67 foot line .FO ) ) 68 ) .MB = 6 ("margin bottom") ).PL=70 69 ) ) 70 ) ) ---------------------------------------------- bottom of paper ------------------------------------------------------------------ Short cuts for escapes ---------------------- To allow an abstraction level over text escapes, there are short cuts for escapes. Suppose, you want to print all head lines in a document bold and underlined: #D#SMy headline#d#s There are some other text elements, say, proper names, which you mark by printing them in italics. Later, you are no more happy about this choice of printing features. You'd like to print the headline double wide instead, and the proper names bold. What to do? One idea is to define short cuts for escapes. In your escape file, you define that $H shall mean #D#S, and $h shall mean #d#s. Then you write only $HMy headline$h and the like. This gives also raise to mnemonic references instead of longer lists of escapes. And to change the style of the headlines, you simply change the short cut definition, for example, to mean $H #B instead of #D#S. May be, you do use this feature even less than I do, but nevertheless: here it is. To print "$" in your text, you must protect it by doubling it: "$$". "$25.00" is to be written as "$$25.00". In verbatim mode, invoked by ((, the character "$" will be printed without interpretation. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Appendix A) Printer requirements -------------------------------- To print user defined characters, you must print on a 24 dot matrix printer. If you don't print user defined characters, WSD can probably also work as desired on 9 dot matrix printers. Versions for deskjets and laserjets are possible but not yet available. The following will be of interest to you if there are problems between WSD and your printer. In any case, the printer must meet the following requirements (refer to your printer manual; the mentioned codes are fix programmed in WSD): 1) it must be able to do a relative horizontal pixel motion, and that must be invoked by the escape sequence ESC "\", followed by two bytes. In proportional spacing and LQ, the unit will be 1/180 pixel, in draft 1/120 pixel. (Comment: draft has another unit, as you see. This is not fine for WSD. Since there are problems, in mode F+ WSD actually switches to LQ mode to do the relative motion and then switches back). 2) it must be able to do a relative vertical pixel motion, and that must be invoked by the escape sequence ESC "3", followed by a byte. The unit is 1/180 pixel. 3) The form feed is invoked by ascii 12. If your printer doesn't meet that requirement (ever seen such a printer?), you can specify FF=no in the configuration file, also. If you want to work with user defined characters: 4) you MUST print on a 24 dot matrix printer. The pixel data are fundamentally different on 9 dot matrix printers. 5) Loading of user defined data is initiated by ESC "&" 0. 6) Take into account that probably you must setup your printer differently in order to allow working with user defined characters. For example, the printer NEC P6+ uses the needed printer memory area in the usual setting just as printer buffer. 7) WSD assumes a certain format of pixel data for user defined characters. Accordingly, it sends the data to the printer. The format is taken from the NEC P6 manual, but it seems to be the same on a wide range of 24 dot matrix printers. The pixel data are grouped into 3 byte groups, where each group defines the appearance of one pixel column of the character. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Appendix B) List of dot commands -------------------------------- NOTE: the first character immediately past the two dot command characters is ALWAYS ignored. So write .MT 4 and not .MT4 ! .. some line Comment line, will not be printed. F+ Formatting mode on. F- Formatting mode off. The current output line will be output immediately. (( Verbatim mode on. All characters are immediately printed. With ig=yes (in configuration file), even dot commands except )) are verbatim printed. With ig=no, dot commands are interpreted. The printer will receive the escapes sequences which are defined via EV ("Escapes for Verbatim mode"). )) Verbatim mode off. Restores the printer mode which was active before )), e.g., F+, as well as the respective printer state, e.g., proportional spacing in italics. EV sequence Defines printer state which is automatically entered when verbatim mode begins. Default is: empty sequence (but see LISTING*.FRM). Maximal length is 10 characters. Example: EV #p#q 1C One column printing on. 2C Two column printing on. IMPORTANT: in two column mode the dot commands LH and LL are not allowed. They should therefore always be issued BEFORE 2C. CO Start new colomn (in two column mode, new page in one column mode) PA Start new page PN n Use new page number (starting from current page) OP Suppress page number which is as default printed in bottom line. If you specify HE, HL, HR or FO, these also suppress the default. HL line head (top) line for left pages HR line head (top) line for right pages HE line head (top) line, defines both HL and HR FO line foot (bottom) line EH sequence Text escape character sequence, defining appearance of top lines. In fact, this sequence is simply put in front of all lines which you specify via HE, HL or HR. Example: .EH #T .HL Top line for left pages results internally in .HL #TTop line for left pages which means that all your top lines will be printed in superscript. Note that you need not be concerned to switch this superscript off again because WSD automatically restores the previous printer state when the top line is finished. EF sequence Text escape character sequence, defining appearance of bottom lines. This works analogous to EH. IL n Left margin for left pages (unit see below). IR n Left margin for right pages (unit see below). FT n Name [Q] Load font into main memory, Q: LQ-Mode, otherwise in proportional spacing. N may be 1, 2 or 3. "FT 1 name" defines the font to be used in connection with #X, "FT 2 name" for #Y, "FT 3 name" for #Z. Note that Name must not contain a path; .LET will be supplied if you didn't. NOTE: in two column mode, you must not load different fonts on the same font number - while in the left column font kk is needed for #X, due to the right column there would font mm be needed for #X which is a very bad situation for WSD. DL n Download a font (which has already been loaded to main memory via FT) into the printer memory. This can be issued as often as you like. IN Name Include file Name. The include file must itself not contain the dot command IN, and it should be terminated with a line feed. LH n Set line spacing. Default is 2 which corresponds to "1" on some type writers, 1 corresponds to 1/2 (half), 3 to 1 1/2 (one and a half). This command does not affect the current layout data MT, MB and PL - these denote the paper layout with respect to the default spacing LH 2. LH 2 is the usual line spacing; it results in 6 lines per inch. LH 1 results in a closer spacing (8 lines per inch), and LH 3 in a wider spacing (4 lines per inch). LL n Set line length for formatting. In modi F- and ((, too long lines are protocolled into the log file. IMPORTANT: in two column mode, the length of one line within a column is computed by subtracting the column separation CS from LL and dividing the result by 2. CS n Set column separation for two column printing. PL n Page length (unit see below) MT n top margin (unit see below) MB n bottom margin (unit see below) HM n distance of top line from text area FM n distance of bottom line from text area The layout dot commands MT, MB and PL are based on the default line height of 6 lines per inch. Therefore, for the text of a page, PL - MT - MB lines are effectively used. When the default line height LH 2 is set, on any paper will PL - MT - MB be printed. By changing the line height, you will get more or less lines on the paper. All dot commands concerning width (IL, IR, LL, CS) are based on the width of a "normal" character, i.e. 36 pixels. This is the pixel width of a character in the default pitch LQ 10 cpi. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Appendix C: How to construct your proportional table ---------------------------------------------------- Start the program PROPTEST.EXE after you made your printer ready. The program writes (rather noisy) some pages in proportional spacing. In every line, you find a certain character printed twenty times side by side. With this pages, you can find out the proportional width of your printer's font. 1) For every printed line, do the following: Measure how wide the twenty characters are altogether. A typical value for character "A" might be 5.6 centimeters. The width of one character (in cm) is then the twentieth part of your measured value. To get the pixel width of the character, divide the value by 2.5 (since one inch has 2.5 cm - this division is of course not necessary if you did measure in inches already but this is not my affair), then multiply the result with 360 (for one inch has 360 pixels). The formula is in short y = (((x / 20) / 2.5) * 360 = x * 7.2 or: multiply your measured (cm) value with 7.2. Round the result to the next integer number. For "A" as above, you get 5.6 * 7.2 = 40.32 or rounded exactly 40. This means, "A" has width of 40 pixels in that font. 3) Write the measured values into a file. Separate the numbers by blanks. Blank lines are not allowed with one exception: the first half of the data is for normal proportional spacing, the second half is for superscripted or subscripted proportional spacing (that means, you do all the measurement twice...). Between these two parts, there may be a blank line. To make a long story short - simply have a look at NECP6.WID. 4) Enter the name of your new file into the configuration file. And don't throw away the listing on which you measured the characters - may be you must check and improve some values. In case you got measurement or computing mistakes, the proportional spacing on the herewith printed documents will not be exactly right justified. 5) Please send me a copy of the listing or a disk with the width values. Other people may thank you. If you are happy to have a proportional spacing table in your printers manual, don't be happy too early: the same happened to me, but I found that the widths in the manual are not correct. Give them a try, and if the printing results are not correctly right justified, see above... ------------------------------------------------------------------ Appendix D: Bugs, problems, missing features -------------------------------------------- (this list could grow in the future...) - Double high printing isn't correctly taken into account for the page break. - when using user defined characters, there may be problems with non German texts concerning the brackets [] and braces {}. WSD uses the special ascii codes following after "Z" and "z" to represent the German special Umlaut characters (the NEC P6 accepts user defined characters only in the range below ascii 128). Unfortunately, in English texts these ascii codes are used for brackets, braces and other special symbols. There are two remedies against that: * avoid using these symbols when a user defined font is active. For example, don't "#X citation [Smith] p. 120#I", but rather "#X citation #I[#XSmith#I]#X p. 120#I". * edit the fonts and replace the respective German Umlaut characters by the respective English special symbols - Cut sheet feeders actually aren't taken into account at the present. - The use of the sequence #. is not encouraged because I implemented and tested that only half hearted. - There is no preview now, the best you get is with option -c (check syntax). - If you turn the printer off before WSD sent the printer exit string (as defined in the respective .ESC file), WSD will gracefully halt and report an error 160 (device write fault). - the INclude file feature is not worked out the best. Especially the line number counting may be mocked by the use of include files. - the abbreviation feature is not very sophisticated. It could probably be changed to allow definition of macros within the text file itself. - WSD is possibly not prepared for printers that do not support all the printing features defined in the .ESC file (but, are there printers that do not allow to print superscripts and the like?). ------------------------------------------------------------------