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AW.INSTRUCT
This file contains instructions for using Applewriter, for
those who do not have the manuals. These are written for
novice users, and do not go into the more powerful features
of the program. See the end of this file for other
references.
Applewriter, written by Paul Lutus and published by
Apple Computer, will run on any Apple II that can display 80
characters per line. I will assume that you have been able
to load the program and run it. I do this on a GS by
selecting the file AWD.SYS.
When Applewriter starts up, it looks for two other
files which should be in the same directory, SYS.PRT and
SYS.TAB. These contain the default setting for margins,
tabs, etc., and you will get strange and unwanted results if
these files are not present. You can create your own files,
as explained below, if these are missing.
Applewriter next looks for a file called STARTUP,
which would contain any other commands that you might want
to execute at the beginning. For example, you might want to
display a menu of choices for the user, or load a special
file of commands to control your printer. If STARTUP is
found, these commands are executed, and Applewriter finally
displays the document editing screen.
The editing screen is blank, with a single line at
the top, as follows (except with black characters on a white
background):
> Z Mem:46165 Len: 0 Pos: 0 Tab: 0 File:
This is the "data line", and it tells you about the document
in memory. As you create the document, you will see this
data line change. The data line tells you how much free
memory you have remaining (Mem), the number of characters in
your document (Len), the position of the cursor, counting
the number of characters from the start of the document
(Pos), the number of characters since the start of the
current paragraph (Tab), and the name of the file you are
working with. The filename will be blank until you have
loaded or saved the document.
The Z symbol means that the program is set to
automatically "wrap" words, so that you do not have to press
Return at the end of each line. The > symbol is explained
later, in the section on Control Commands.
You are now ready to create a new document, or to
load a document that has been saved on the disks.
Using Disks:*******************
The GS version of Applewriter can work with very
large documents, limited only by the computer's memory. The
classic version can hold approximately twenty pages of text,
but when the computer's power is turned off, all the
information stored in the computer is lost. To save your
document for later use, you will need to save it on a disk.
You should always save your work, unless you are certain you
will never need to use it again.
A document stored on a disk is called a "file".
Each disk has a list of the files stored on it, called a
catalog or directory.
Before we can load or save a file, we must tell the
computer the name of the directory which contains the file,
as well as the filename. This is called the "pathname". For
example, the pathname of the file named NOTE.1, which is
stored in the FILES directory on the disk named /WP.32,
would be:
/WP.32/FILES/NOTE.1
First we give the name of the disk, then the name of the
directory, and finally the name of the file. The names are
separated by slash marks "/", and the name of the disk (or
"volume") always begins with a slash mark.
In a pathname, everything which comes before the
name of the file is called the "prefix". In the above
example, /WP.32/FILES is the prefix, and NOTE.1 is the
filename. Usually, when we start using the word processor,
the computer will check to see which disk we are using and
it will automatically attach the prefix whenever we tell it
a file name. When we tell the computer to load the file
named NOTE.1, it will try to find it on the disk we were
using most recently. But if we have inserted a different
disk, we need to tell the computer the which disk to use. We
do this with the PREFIX command, described below. Once you
have done this, the computer will continue to use this disk
for saving and loading files, and you will only need to tell
it the filename.
Using the ProDOS Commands :**********
We can display a menu which lets us do several things with
the disks. Control-O (hold down the Control key while
pressing the O key) will display the following menu:
ProDOS: (A) Catalog (C) Lock (E) Delete (G) Sub-dir. (I) Format
(B) Rename (D) Un-lock (F) On Line (H) Prefix (J) Printer ->
Pressing A will cause the computer to ask you for the name
of the catalog (directory) to display. You can type in the
pathname of any directory you would like to see, or you can
simply press Return, which will cause the computer to
display the "current" directory, that is, the one the
computer was already using.
The other choices have the following effects:
.ff10
(B) - Changes the name of any file. The computer
will ask you for the old name and the new name.
(C) - Locks the file so that it cannot be changed.
(D) - Unlocks the file.
(E) - Deletes the file from the disk.
(F) - Lists all the disks currently in the disk drives.
(G) - Creates a new sub-directory.
(H) - Sets the prefix to a selected disk.
(I) - Prepares a blank disk for use.
(J) - Allows you to describe the printer to the
computer.
Most of these you will rarely need to use, but you will use
Control-O A (to catalog the disk) and Control-O H (to set
the prefix) quite often.
Creating a Document:*************
Typing a document into the computer's memory is similar to
using a typewriter: you press the keys, and the characters
are stored into memory, and displayed on the screen. The
memory can hold many more characters than the computer can
display on the screen at once, however. The screen can
display 23 lines of 80 characters each. When you type enough
characters to fill the screen, all the lines are shifted
upward one line, so that the top line is no longer visible.
Typed characters are inserted at the location of
the "cursor", which is a blinking white square. You can move
the cursor within the document to any location you choose by
using the arrow keys on the bottom row of the keyboard. This
lets you go back and insert words, or entire paragraphs,
that you may have left out.
Carriage Return:**************
Unlike a typewriter, the computer does not require
you to press Return at the end of each line. It will
automatically move down to the next line, and will move
words around so that they are not broken at the right
margin. You do need to press Return to end a paragraph and
begin a new one.
Deleting Letters:*************
If you make a typing mistake, you can delete it by
placing the cursor to the right of the mistake and pressing
the Delete key, at the upper right corner of the keyboard.
The Delete key will take out one character each time you
press it. The Delete key, like all keys on the keyboard,
will rapidly repeat if you hold it down. There are several
other ways to correct and edit a document, which are
discussed in the section on Editing.
Loading Paragraphs:***********
You can also create a document by loading sections
of it from the disk. For example, you could type part of a
document, then place the cursor at the end of the document
and tell the computer to load a file from a disk. The file
would be inserted at the cursor location and would become a
part of your document. This ability lets us save certain
standard paragraphs on the disk, so that you will not need
to retype them whenever you want to include them in a
document.
Automatic Document Creation:***********
Another way to create a document is to program the
computer to ask you questions about which paragraphs to
load. Based on your replies, the computer will load
paragraphs from the disk and will then display the complete
document. This is a very powerful feature, but is not
described in this file. Refer to the information on WPL
(Word Processing Language) to learn more.
Editing and Correcting:************
One method of correcting errors, mentioned
previously, is to place the cursor to the right of the
error, use the delete key to remove the incorrect text, and
then type in the correct text. However, there are many
commands available which will let you make more extensive
changes. For example, you can delete entire words or
paragraphs, and re-insert them at other locations. You can
automatically search for words and phrases, and replace them
with other words.
Control Commands: *************
Most of the editing features are used by entering
"control commands". For example, by holding down the Control
key while pressing the B key, you can cause the cursor to
jump to the beginning of the document. This is called a
"Control-B", and these instructions will print this as ^B.
There is a control command for each of the alphabetic
characters:
^A Adjust the display of the document after changing
the margins.
^B Jump to the beginning of the document.
^C Change case. After entering ^C, you can use the
right and left arrow keys to change all the
characters the cursor passes over to upper case.
Press ^C twice to convert characters to
lower case. Pressing any key other than the
arrow keys turns off this command.
^D Change direction. When you search a document for a
phrase, the
search is done from the cursor toward the end
of the document, or toward the beginning. This key
chooses the direction. The direction chosen is
displayed by the > symbol on the data line. Also,
this command determines whether words or paragraphs
are deleted or inserted when you use the ^W and ^X
commands, described below.
^E Jump to end of document.
^F Find a string of characters. ^F/x/ will find the
first occurrence of "x". ^F/x/y/ will replace the
first occurence of "x" with "y", and will then ask
whether to continue searching for other occurences
of "x". F/x/y/a will replace all occurences of "x".
The search will begin at the cursor position, and will
proceed in the direction of the < or >
arrow at the top left corner in the data line.
^G Define or use a glossary. This is an advanced
feature which allows you to specify a phrase which will be
inserted each time you press ^G and a key. For example, you
could set the program to insert the phrase "Sincerely
yours," whenaver you pressed ^GS.
^H Backspace, same as right arrow.
^I Tab, same as tab key.
^J Scroll up, same as down arrow.
^K Scroll down, same as up arrow.
^L Load a file at the cursor position.
^M Carriage return.
^N Erase memory. New.
^O Display the disk command menu.
^P Print the document.
^Q Additional functions menu.
^R Replace mode. The normal mode is the "insert" mode,
in which characters to the right of the cursor are
pushed to the right when you enter a new character.
Choosing this mode causes new characters to replace
the old characters, rather than pushing them to the right.
^S Save the document to disk.
^T Set tab stop at the cursor position, or clear the
tab stop that is at the cursor position.
^U Same as right arrow, moves cursor forward.
^V Control character insert mode. Allows Control
characters to be inserted in documents, rather
than treated as commands. Toggles off.
^W Deletes the word to left of cursor, if the
direction arrow is pointing to the left, and saves
the word in a separate area of memory. If the direction
arrow points to the right, the word is recalled from the
special memory.
^X Similar to ^W, except paragraphs are deleted,
recalled. Good for swapping location of paragraphs,
items in a list, etc. ^W and ^X have separate memory areas,
each 2048 characters long.
^Y Splits screen. Allows you to display two sections
of the document.
^Z Toggles word wrapping. Normally, you will want the
computer to automatically move a long word down to the next
line, rather than breaking it in the middle, but you can
turn off this feature if you wish to control word breaks
manually.
In addition to using these commands to edit the text of a
document, you can also insert special commands into the text
of the document you are creating. These commands will not be
printed, but will control the way the document will be
printed. For example, you can insert a command which will
change the left margin, so that a paragraph will be
indented. These commands are explained in the section below
called "Dot Commands".
Saving a Document:****************
Once a document has been created and edited, you need to save
it on the disk for later use. In fact, it is a good idea to save
a document several times as you work on it; a power failure could
cause you to lose all the information in the computer, but
information on the disk is safe.
Before saving a document, you will need to tell the
computer which disk to store the file on. Use the Control-O
H command to set the prefix. To save a file named CONTRACT,
you would type Control-S (hold down the Control key while
pressing the S key). The computer will display, at the
bottom of the screen
[S]ave:
and will wait for you to enter the name for the file. You
would type
contract
and press Return. If the correct disk is not in the disk
drive, the computer will tell you that the volume was not
found, and you will have to insert the correct disk and try
again. If you wish, you can enter the full pathname after
the Save prompt, in which case the default prefix will not
be changed. For example,
[S]ave: /DISK.1/LETTERS/LETTER.TO.MOM
After you have saved a file, you can continue
working with it and adding to it. The next time you tell the
computer to save it, by entering Control-S, the prompt
displayed by the computer at the bottom of the screen will
show whatever name (or pathname) you used to save the file,
such as:
[S]ave:contract
The cursor will be located just after the colon. The
computer is displaying the name you used when you last saved
the file, and asking whether to use the same name. If you
want to use the same name, you can type an equals sign (=)
and press Return, in which case the same name will be used.
Filenames cannot be more than 15 characters long.
They must start with letters, and they can only contain
letters, numbers or periods.
Loading a Document:************
Loading a document into the computer's memory from
a disk is simple: First, tell the computer which disk to
use, by using the Control-O H prefix command. Then type
Control-L and the computer will display the following prompt
at the bottom of the screen:
[L]oad:
It will wait for you to type in the name of the file to be
loaded, and, after you press Return, it will attempt to load
the file from the disk. If the correct disk is not in the
disk drive, or if you have not spelled the filename
correctly, it will tell you that the file was not found, and
you will have to try again.
You can load a file into the middle of a document
that is already in memory. Simply place the cursor at the
location where you want the file to be loaded and use the
Control-L command as explained above. This allows you to add
paragraphs that you have saved into a new document, so that
you do not have to type them again.
Printing:**********
When you are ready to print the document, you need
to decide what size paper you want to use, and tell the
computer about the margin widths and paper length so that it
does not print on the wrong part of the paper. For example,
when I print letters we use a left margin width of 9
characters, and the right margin is in the 85th column.
These margin setting can be changed individually,
or you can save them in a file (such as the SYS.PRT file
mentioned above), which can be loaded into memory whenever
you wish to use that particular format. Control-O will
display the Additionall Functions menu, which allows you to
save and load print files.
You can examine and change the current margin
settings by typing Control-P. The computer will display the
following prompt:
[P]rint/Program :
You can do three things at this prompt:
(a) you can type np, and press Return. "np" means "new
print", and the computer will begin printing the document if
the printer is turned on. "np" means that this is a new
printing job, and that any page numbering should start with
page number one;
(b) you can type ?, and press Return. This will display a
list of the current format settings, as shown below; or
(c) you can press any other key, and press Return, which
will cancel the print command and let you continue editing
the document.
The list of format settings looks like this:
Left Margin (LM) = 9
Paragraph Margin (PM) = 0
Right Margin (RM) = 85
Top Margin (TM) = 2
Bottom Margin (BM) = 5
Page Number (PN) = 1
Printed Lines (PL) = 58
Page Interval (PI) = 66
Line Interval (LI) = 0
Single Page (SP) = 1
Print Destination (PD) = 1
Carriage Return (CR) = 1
Underline Token (UT) = \
Print Mode (FJ,FJ,CJ,RJ) = LJ
Top Line (TL):
Bottom Line (BL):
Press RETURN to Exit
[P]rint/Program:
When this display is shown, you can change any of the format
settings. For example, to change the left margin width from
9 to 15 characters, you would type LM15, and press Return.
The changed setting is immediately shown on the display, and
will remain in effect until you change it.
The settings have the following meanings:
Left Margin: the number of character-widths from the left
edge of the paper at which printing will begin.
Paragraph Margin: the position at which the first line of a
new paragraph will begin printing. If this is set to 0, the
left margin setting will be used. You can use a value
different from the left margin width, however. Using a value
greater than the left margin will cause the first line of a
paragraph to be indented. A number less than the left margin
setting will create "hanging paragraphs"; that is, the first
line will begin farther to the left that the rest of the
lines in the paragraph. This is sometimes a useful effect.
Right Margin: The right-most column of print. Any words
which would extend past this colume will be "wrapped around"
to the next line.
Top Margin: the number of lines to skip on each page before
printing the top line.
Bottom Margin: the number of lines to leave blank at the
bottom of each page.
Page Number: the number to begin counting with, when
automatic page numbering is used.
Printed Lines: the number of lines on a page, excluding the
number of lines left blank by the Top Margin and Bottom
Margin settings.
Page Interval: the total number of lines on a sheet of
paper. This setting tells the computer how far to advance
the paper when it is set to print on continuous forms.
Line Interval: this tells the computer whether to single,
double, or triple space the printed lines. A setting of 0
means single space, since no blank lines will be inserted
between printed lines. (Note: if you are using a GS, your
control panel settings will override this.)
Single Page: this tells the computer whether you are
printing on continuous forms. We usually use single sheets
at the office, so this is set to 1, meaning True. A setting
of 0 (False) would cause the printer to automatically eject
the paper when it reached the end of a page, and begin
pronting on a new page.
Print Destination: this is the number of the connection on
the back of the computer to which the printer is attached.
If a second printer were attached to connector #2, you could
select printers by changing this setting.
Carriage Return: this is set to 1, to tell the program to
automatically insert a carriage return at the end of each
line as it sends the lines to the printer.
Underline Token: this is set to the "back slash" character
\, which tells the printer to begin underlining every
character following the back slash, until another back slash
character reached. Any other character could be used
instead.
Print Mode: tells the computer to align the left edge of the
lines (Left Justification), to add spaces between the
letters so that both left anf right edges are even (Fill
Justification), to position the text lines in the center of
the page (Center Justification), or to align the right edge
of the lines (Right Justification). Usually, we use left
justification. When printing Wills, however, we use fill
justification. Center justification is used for section
headings, titles, etc.
Top Line: this lets you specify a header to be printed at
the top of each page. You can select whether the text will
be printed aligned at the left margin, centered, or aligned
at the right margin. A common use is to number pages. When
you use the # symbol in the specified top line, the # symbol
will be replace with the page number on each page. For
example, you might specify a top line as follows:
TL/page #//
This would cause "page 1" to be printed at the top left
corner of page one. The / symbols are delimiters which
specify whether the text should be at the left, center or
right. If your top line had been
TL//Page #/
then "Page 1" would be centered at the top of the first
page, and
TL///Page #
would cause "Page 1" to be printed at the top right of the
page.
Bottom Line: this works the same as the Top Line command. I
generally prefer to number pages at the bottom, in the
center, by using the following command:
BL//-Page #-/
When you have set the format, you can save the settings in a
file for later use with the Control-O D command. For
example, if I have set the margins for printing a letter, I
can save that format with the following command:
Control-O D
Enter File Name:letters
The program asks me for the file name, and I entered
"letters". The program then saves the file with the suffix
.PRT, as LETTERS.PRT. When I want to use it later, I can use
the Control-O C command. The program will prompt me for the
file name, I will enter "LETTERS", and the margins will be
reset to the values I had saved.
Printing Steps:***********
To summarize the steps involved in printing:
(1) load the file to be printed into memory, if it is not
there already.
(2) decide what kind of paper you want to use.
(3) put the paper in the printer and turn the printer on.
(4) set the format, either by loading a format file or
Control-P ? to set the format manually.
(5) type Control-P np, and press Return.
The computer will start printing. If the document is more
than one page long and the Single Page format setting is set
to 1 (True), the computer will pause after it prints each
page to give you a chance to load a new sheet into the
printer. When you are ready, press Return, and the printing
will continue.
When the printer is through printing, it will stop, and the
cursor will flash on the screen. You can now work on other
documents.
Indenting Paragraphs: ************
These print formats control the way the entire
document will be printed. Sometimes, however, you will want
to make temporary changes of margin width, or you may want
to single space a part of a document that is otherwise
printed in double space. You can insert "dot" commands into
the text which will change these format specifications.
Dot Commands:************
Whenever a period occurs at the left margin, the
computer will try to interpret that line as a special
command, instead of printing it. If you are typing a letter
and the left margin is set to column 9, and you want to
indent a paragraph to column 15, you could place the
following command on a separate line just before the
paragraph to be indented:
.lm15
This would change the left margin to 15, and the new left
margin setting would remain in effect until you included the
command
.lm9
to change the margin width back to 9. You can do the same
with any of the print format commands. For example,
.rm90 would set the right margin to 90,
.lm+10 would set the left margin to 10 more than it was previously,
.li1 would cause the line interval to be set to 1 (double space)
.cj would cause the following text to be centered
.lj would turn off centering and resume left justification
There are other useful "dot" commands:
.ep0 The "enable printer" command stops printing the
or document, if a "0" follows the .ep, and starts printing
.ep1 if a "1" follows the .ep. This is useful if you only want
to print part of a document: you would put a ".ep0" at the
beginning of the document, and put a ".ep1" just before
the part you wanted to print, and another ".ep0" just after
the part you wanted to print. When you print the document,
only the part between the .ep1 and the .ep0 will be printed.
.ff The "form feed" command causes the printer to stop at
this point and wait for you to insert a new page.
You can also use a variation of this command, by placing a
number after the ".ff". For example, .ff10 will cause the
printer to skip to the next page only if there are fewer
than 10 lines remaining on the page being printed. This
lets you avoid breaking apart lines of text that should
be printed together.
.pm The "paragraph margin" command is similar to the
left margin command, but it affects only the first
line of a paragraph. You can use the .lm and .pm
commands to indent paragraphs but leave the first lines
hanging out toward the left. For example, the
following commands would indent the paragraphs
ten spaces, but leave the first lines alone:
.lm+10
.pm-10
(1) This is the first line of a long paragraph which is not
a very good example of much of anything.
(2) This is the second line, which is not much of an improvement.
However, the third line is somewhat more optimistic, probably due to
birth order.
.lm-10
.pm0
When the above text is printed, it will appear as follows:
(1) This is the first line of a short paragraph which is
not a very good example of much of anything.
(2) This is the second line, which is not much of an
improvement. However, the third line is somewhat more
optimistic, probably due to birth order.
Wildcards: *************
The Control-F Find command normally uses the "/" delimiter
to indicate the start and end of the text string to find.
However, you may wish to search for text containing carriage
returns, and it is not possible to enter a carriage return
into the Control-F prompt line. Applewriter will allow you
to use other delimiters in the Control-F command, with the
following effects:
Delimiter Any Length Carriage Return Any Character
/ none none none
! none none none
< = > ?
# $ % &
For example, the command
Control-F
[F]ind: <>>=>><deleted<a
would search for any text which had two carriage returns
before it and two carriage returns after it, and would
replace it with the word "deleted".
WPL and Advanced Topics: ************
I think you will find that Applewriter is far more
powerful than any other word processor. Period. To use all the
power that is built into the program, however, you need to learn to
use WPL, the Word Processing Language that is built in. WPL lets
you write programs to construct and edit documents
automatically. A WPL routine might, for example, ask the
user questions and, based on the answers, load paragraphs
from the disk to create a document.
To find out more about WPL, look for the file
WPL.INFO.BXY. To find out how other people have added
commands and otherwise patched Applewriter to make it even
more powerful, look for the file AW.EXPAND.BXY.
If you want a great book on Applewriter, get Don
Lancaster's "Applewriter Cookbook". It's full of tips,
patches, and a very complete analysis of the program code.
- Gareth Tucker 9/30/92