Turn your Amstrad into an electronic typewriter with ROLAND WADDILOVE'S HAVE you ever wished you could turn your Amstrad into a typewriter? With its superb editing commands - the electronic equivalent of Tippex -you'd be able to correct your typing errors with ease. You could of course buy an all singing, all dancing word processor but they cost a fair bit. So we've come up with a text editor. It may not have a lot of frills, but it gets the job done and you don't need a PhD to understand it. TextEd allows you to enter, print, load, save and manipulate text with a minimum of effort. It is designed to be easy to use, being menu driven with prompts where necessary. It's also fairly robust and contains a reasonable amount of error checking and mug traps. Most of the basic functions found in professional word processors have been implemented to increase the power of TextEd. The only facility excluded is left and right justification - only left hand justification is available. This means that the right hand margin will be uneven. Justification is possible, but you will have to do this yourself. When the program has been typed in and run a menu will be displayed on a Mode 2 screen. There are 12 options, each listed with an associated reference character. Option selection is by pressing the key corresponding to this reference character - you don't need to press Enter after the selection. The 12 options are: - E - Enters the edit mode. This allows the document in memory to be edited. It is also the option you want when starting to write a document. More of this later.
- P - Will allow you to print your text. When selected, you will be asked to press the space bar when ready. This allows you to prepare the printer for printing. When space is pressed, the text is printed out exactly as it appears in the edit mode. L— Load a previously saved text file. If you already have a document in memory you will be prompted with a message asking if you are sure you want to load a new text file.
This is done because the document in memory will be lost as soon as a new file is loaded. Press Y if you wish to load a new file, or N if you want to retain the file in memory - in which case the menu will be displayed again.
If you select Y you will be asked for the new file's name. Enter it, and press Play — making sure you have the correct tape in the tape recorder. Once the file has been loaded the menu will be displayed. - S - Save a text file. This saves the file in memory onto tape. If the file is too short - less than two lines - it cannot be saved, and the message, "not enough text" will appear. Otherwise you will be asked to enter the name of the file.
Now put a blank cassette in the tape deck and wind it to a suitable position. When you are ready to save the file, press a key. The text file will now be saved. The menu will reappear when the saving is complete. - N - New file. This wipes the text file from memory. Since the command is so destructive a safety feature has been added. As with the L command, you must confirm your option. Pressing Y will delete the text file, while N returns you to the menu.
- O - This option exits from the program. Be careful you don't press 0 if you want the text file in memory. If you do, the text file is lost and the program ends.
- T - Set tab positions. This option allows you to set the four tab positions. You will be asked for the first, second, third and fourth column positions one after another. The tab position must be within the 71 column display - the column width will be less if a left margin has been set.
The tabbing function is invoked by pressing Tab while in the editing mode. This then moves the cursor to the next tab setting you have defined. M - Set the left margin. This allows you to define the number of characters for the left margin. When the document is viewed each line of text is moved over to the left by the number of characters selected.
This is useful for preparing documents to be punched and filed. Normally the punch holes would destroy part of the printout. This option offers a simple remedy. - R - Re-defines the colours. This allows you to change the colour of the paper, pen and border. If you want to change the pen colour for example, press P. On pressing the key, the colour of the pen is automatically changed.
This colour is the next one available in the palette. The 0 and B keys change the colour of the paper and border, respectively. Press Enter when you are happy with the colours selected. - C - Send codes to the printer. Some printers allow you to select different character sets, or different printing styles. This option can be used to send the necessary codes to the printer to select them. You will be asked for the character number to be sent to the printer - the Ascii number.
Since most codes consist of several numbers, you will be repeatedly asked for numbers until you enter -1. This is used to terminate the list.
One point to note is that the Amstrad only allows you to send the numbers 0 to 127 to the printer -since only seven bits are used to transfer data to the printer. - H - Help page. This gives information on the keys used in the editing mode - very useful for those with only short term memories.
- D - Define a function key. This allows you to program the number keys on the numeric pad - 1 to 9. You will be asked for the key number to be programmed and the string you wish to assign to the key.
This allows the keys to be programmed with words frequently used throughout the text - saving time and wear and tear on the keyboard.
The most important command of the 12 is the Edit command. When this has been selected the editing mode is invoked. Now you can type in your document or edit an existing one. The start of the text is denoted by the message ** start ** this allows you to keep track of your position in the document.
On the screen you will see a flashing cursor. Moving this, by using the cursor arrows, allows you to position the cursor at the point in the text where you wish to begin editing.
When you have moved to a suitable position in the text you can start typing. You will notice that it is much the same as typing in a program except this time you type in words instead of Basic commands.
The screen acts like a small window. This window can be moved up and down the text by using the cursor up and down keys - allowing you to view and edit any section of the text no matter how large it is.
If the text size were limited to one screen of text, only small documents could be prepared - making the utility useless to people who need large text files.
There are two editing modes, write and insert - toggle selection by pressing CLR. The bottom left corner of the screen shows the current editing mode.
In write mode everything you type is printed at the cursor position. If text is already there it will be overwritten.
Insert mode will create space for the new character entered. This is done by shuffling the existing text down memory, so making space for the new character.
Any word that splits over two lines will look much neater if it is put onto the next line. This can be done by moving the cursor to the start of the split word and pressing the large Enter key - this must be done in the insert mode. The split word will now be dragged onto the next line.
Other significant keys in the editing mode are listed below. This list can also be obtained by selecting option H from the menu:- The cursor can be moved to the next tab position by pressing the TAB key.
- The large Enter key moves the cursor to the start of the next line.
- Pressing Delete causes the character to the left of the cursor to be deleted - the cursor is moved to the previous position of the deleted character as well.
- The small key is used to set a marker position when copying blocks of text.
Copying text is quite easy. First move the flashing cursor to the start of the text to be copied, and press the small Enter key. Now you should move the cursor to the position you wish to copy the text to. Pressing Copy will copy the text from the cursor's previous position to the new position in the text - one character at a time. This is very similar to editing a Basic program, except there is no second cursor showing the next character to be copied. Justification requires extra spaces between words to pad out each line, resulting in a tidy right hand edge. Move the cursor to the position where the pad is required and press the space bar - while in insert mode. The text will now be shuffled to the left by one character. The pads should be inserted until the required result has been achieved. The best way to understand how the editing mode works is to try it. It soon becomes second nature. TextEd is an invaluable utility. When used correctly, high quality documents can be prepared with very little effort. And that's what word processors are all about. CWTA |
