2 THE MAGAZINE FOR PROTEXT USERS Number 8 Editorial 237 News 238 E-Mail and Cix 238 Document Settings 239 Ten Commandments of Style 247 Macro Tips 249 Promerge Corner 251 Technical Support 253 Protext and Windows 256 Amiga Screens 258 AutoSwitch OverScan for the Atari ST 260 Short Story 261 Drawing Lines and Boxes on Laser Printers 264 Using ECONOMODE on HP Laser Printers 266 6 In the Next Issue 268 Editorial Welcome to Exfile 8, which could be called the 'relaunch'. As John Blackburn is not continuing as editor, this issue is brought to you by Arnor and Exfile readers. Thank you to those who responded so quickly with contributions, some of which have been held over to the next issue. Thank you for your patience during the long wait since number 7. It was only with the completion of Protext 6.5 that we were able to find time to produce the magazine. This gives us a timely opportunity to start covering some of the differences in 6.5. I shall be editing at least the next few issues. In this new Exfile we shall continue to provide the best ideas to help you make the most of Protext. We would also like to open up the magazine as a readers forum. We shall publish readers letters and articles. Please send us your comments about Protext, suggestions for Exfile and technical questions. From Exfile 9 we shall publish answers to those questions that may be useful to other readers. In this issue I cover a number of common questions on document settings, which is a fairly new and still evolving area of Protext. Mark Tilley Please send letters and articles for publication (on disk please) to: Exfile Arnor Ltd. 611 Lincoln Road Peterborough PE1 3HA or by E-Mail to mtilley@cix.compulink.co.uk News The last two months have seen the completion and release of Protext 6.5 for MS-DOS, Atari ST and in mid August for the Amiga. I won't repeat the details of the upgrade here as you've all received them, but please telephone (01733 68909) if you need further information. The first review of Protext 6.5 has just come out in ST Review (October 1994 issue). The article covered the new features of the upgrade accurately and gave us a 90% rating. Look out for a lot more reviews over the next couple of months. After a quiet few months on the advertising front we shall be targeting a range of magazines this autumn. Amiga owners will probably know that the Commodore International went into a form of receivership some months ago. On 3rd August the joint managing directors of Commodore U.K., David Pleasance and Colin Proudfoot con- firmed that they are negotiating a management buy-out of the whole company. We still await news of whether they have succeeded. E-Mail and Cix There has been a lot of publicity about Electronic Mail (E-Mail) and the Internet recently. If you have a modem you can join a service which will give you an E-Mail address. You will then be able to send and receive messages to people all over the world. Cheaply. One popular service is Compulink Information Exchange, always known as Cix (pronounced 'Kicks'). This is a conferencing system. Using your modem connected to your telephone line you can dial into the Cix computer. You can then access many thousands of different conferences. These are discussion forums, each relating to a particular subject. Arnor have been on Cix for 6 years. There is a conference called 'Arnor' in which anything to do with Protext is discussed. Protext owners make sugges- tions about features for new versions or ask for help. Answers are often given by other users as well as from Arnor. Cix and Exfile: two places where you can exchange ideas with other Protext owners. Contact Cix on 01492 641961 (voice) or 0181 390 1255 (data). Cix costs a minimum of œ7.34 per month, not including telephone charges. Program listings from Exfile can be downloaded from Cix. ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ Document Settings Mark Tilley The document settings dialogue was introduced in Protext 6.0. It provides a new way to do some old things and some altogether new facilities. Margin sizes and the default ruler can be set from the dialogue. Previously this had to be done with Config or stored commands. Stored commands may of course still be used and would be needed to change parameters at a later point in the document. You are unlikely to want to change margins within a document. Often you will not need to change the ruler. It's best to try to set up a ruler that will serve for the whole document. This is often possible. First, let's clear up a question that has been asked many times. Q. Why can't I set margins and default ruler in Config any more? A. Because you should use document settings. This actually changed in version 6, but you may have missed the significance of the change. Protext 6.0 brought in some radical changes. Too many changes can be painful so we bend over backwards to keep familiar processes the same. When we remove or change a feature we have thought long and hard and decided it is unavoidable. So why did we take out the Config layout options menu? Layout options had two serious flaws when used with Protext 6. First, margins could be set only to whole numbers of lines or characters. This was sufficient for Protext 5 and earlier because it wasn't possible to set margins more accurately. Now, margins can be defined in absolute measurements, down to 1/100th of a centimetre or inch. Document settings lets you do this. The second flaw was that the layout of a document depended on the configuration file, meaning that documents were not portable. If you gave a file to someone with different Config settings it would print out differently. Now, with document settings in the file it will print out the same as long as the same printer driver is used. Q. Document settings doesn't let me set the ruler width. How do I do this? A. It does let you set the ruler width but there's a new way of looking at it. The new way is better and more natural. Take your piece of paper. Decide how much blank space you want to leave around the edge of the paper. These are the margin settings. The preset defaults are 1 inch for each of the margins (half an inch for A5 paper). Try changing the margins with a document loaded. Use Preview to see the effect (if you're not using 6.5 then upgrade - it's worth it for the print preview alone). Remember: Use the left margin, do not indent with L in a ruler line. Q. Why do my old documents come out differently? Protext 6 documents use a new file format because document settings and styles are stored with the file. This information is actually stored in a special section at the start of the file - but you don't need to know anything about that. Because this information (document settings and styles) is so important to the workings of Protext, when you load old documents they are converted to the new format. This has happened only since v6.08 (PC/ST) and 6.15 (Amiga). When you load a document that was created with Protext version 5 or 4, the document settings will be added to the file. The settings that will be added will be your default ones, as saved in PROTEXT.SET. If your document contains stored commands to set the margins and ruler lines, the layout will be unchanged as the stored commands override the document settings. If not, your document will be printed by the default settings. Note: you can save in Protext 5 format using SAVE5 or the Save As dialogue. This may mean that the document will be formatted differently. The reason for this is that we have changed the default margin sizes. This happened in v6.07 (PC/ST) and v6.13 (Amiga). The old margins were half an inch wide, giving a 7" ruler. The new margins are one inch wide, except for the A5 paper size when they remain half an inch. We're sorry if these changes have caused you any difficulty, but the change was long overdue. The one inch margin is the recommended standard and gives a more professional look to your layout. Q. So how do I make the old documents print out as they used to? A. This is easy. Load the old document and go into document settings. You will see all the margins set to 1". You may only need to change the left and right margin to restore the old ruler length. Assuming you are using A4 paper, to get a 7" ruler you should set them to 0.64" or 1.63cm. (Why this value? Because the width of A4 paper is 8.28". Subtract 7 to get 1.28" margin required. Divide this by 2 to get the left and right margin sizes. If you are using a different paper size you can work out your own value in the same way). If you want the page length the same as the old layout, set the top margin to 0.5" and the bottom margin to 1.2" if your old page length was 66 or to 0.37" if it was 70. Hint: use the Save button to save these settings. Call the file OLD.SET. Then whenever you load an old document and want to use the old layout go into Document Settings, use Load and choose OLD.SET. Q. I knew where I was when margins were set in numbers of columns or lines. Now all these margins are in inches. How do these relate? A. A long time ago when we were first writing Protext (it was on the Amstrad CPC464 in those days), printers were very simple machines. Laser printers cost more than a new car and dot matrix printers usually gave you a choice of pica (10 cpi), elite (12 cpi) and (if you were lucky) a single proportional typeface. You almost always printed 6 lines to the inch. Protext never changed the line spacing for you as it does now, and so the top and bottom margins were set in numbers of lines. One line meant 1/6th of an inch. Left and right margins were originally set in number of characters. This was unfortunate as it meant that the margin size changed if you changed font. Although this was sorted out in Protext years ago, the margins were still set in columns. But Protext usually assumed 10 cpi, so one column equalled 1/10th inch. This is an outdated approach. It is far more natural to think of the margins in terms of their dimensions. The font or line spacing you happen to be using has nothing to do with it. All this changed in Protext 6.0, but we looked on this as a transitional version and did not immediately remove the Config layout options menu. You may have noticed, however, that the 6.0/6.1 version of Config headed this menu "Not used for v6 documents". In truth, versions of Protext between 6.00 and 6.05 allowed you to create a document without document settings. In this case the layout options was still used. In retrospect we decided we shouldn't have allowed this so we changed Protext to always store document settings in a new document (using PROTEXT.SET as the default). Now PROTEXT.SET had replaced the Config layout options. In Protext 6.5 we removed the layout options menu. This initially caused mild panic for some, but we hope all is now clear. The Document Settings Dialogue Paper sizes You will have seen that a number of different paper sizes are predefined. These are the European sizes A3, A4 and A5, the American sizes Legal, Letter and Executive, 11" continuous, A4 continuous (112/3") and 'A5 on A4 paper'. The last will print an A5 size page in the centre of an A4 page. Q. Why does Protext show A4 page length as 11.7" when it should be 11.69"? A. 11.70" is correct. The size of A4 paper is usually quoted as 297 x 210 mm and so, knowing there are 25.4 mm to an inch, it is easy to divide 297 by 25.4 and obtain 11.69". Doing this is making the mistake of trying to get a result more accurate than your input data. 297 mm is not the exact length of A4; it is an approximate value rounded to the nearest millimetre. A more accurate value is 297.3 mm, which gives 11.70". A mathematical interlude. How to work out the size of A4 paper. The European standard paper sizes are obtained by successively folding in half, horizontally. The height/width ratio is always û2, the square root of 2 (equal to about 1.4142). The largest size is A0 which is defined to have an area of 1m2. So the area of an A1 page is 0.5m2, A2 is 0.25m2, A3 is 0.125m2 and A4 is 0.0625m2. To work out the dimensions of A4, let us call the shorter side (the width) 'x'. The longer side is then xû2. The area is x2û2 = 0.0625. So x = û(0.0625/1.4142) = 0.210m = 21.02 cm. xû2 = 0.297m = 29.73 cm. Divide by 2.54 to obtain the size in inches, 11.70 x 8.28. Or, to the nearest millimetre, 297 x 210 mm. And before you write in to tell us, yes, Protext is slightly wrong, showing A4 width as 21.00 cm or 8.27". However this is purely academic; a 0.01" discrepancy will make absolutely no difference in practice. Q. What does 'gutter' mean? A. The gutter margin is the way of using different margin sizes on even and odd pages (to leave a wider margin on the inside of pages in a book). The right margin on even pages and the left margin on odd pages are increased by the gutter margin. The opposite margins are reduced correspondingly so the text width is unchanged. Q. What is 'Use style for tab units'? A. This is a specialised option, which you may not need. The 'tabs' box allows you to put in tab positions for the ruler line. These tab positions are normally in tenths of an inch. The default tab settings are '5 10 15 20'. This sets tabs at «", 1", 1«" and 2" from the left margin. If you are using a fixed pitch, 10 cpi font the tabs on the ruler line will line up with your text. If you are using a different font then the text will not line up with the ruler line tabs, but will be displayed to look as near as possible as it will print (bearing in mind that fonts are not shown in different sizes when editing). This can be inconvenient in a document with a lot of tabulated columns. In this case you might choose 'Use style for tab units'. The tab settings now represent numbers of characters in the default style and so the text columns will line up with the ruler line tabs. If the default style is a proportional font then an average character width is used for each tab position. Q. Do I need to use 'Save' to keep my changes to document settings? A. No, not for changes to a single document. You will see 5 buttons at the bottom of the document settings dialogue. These are Load, Save, Default, Cancel and OK. Let's forget about Load and Save for the moment. If you are just changing the settings for the current document, when you click on OK (or press Return), those changes are retained in the document. If you click on cancel (or press Esc) a message will appear asking whether you want to 'Retain changes in document'. Say 'no' and they will be discarded. Having changed your settings for the document, they are held in memory. When you save the document, the settings are saved with it. This has nothing to do with the Load and Save buttons. Now the Load and Save buttons. These allow you to use document settings files for different layouts. The files saved have the extension '.SET'. The file PROTEXT.SET is special. This contains the document settings that are used when you start a new document or when you load a Protext 5 document. PROTEXT.SET is similar to the configuration file, PROTEXT.CFG and as I mentioned earlier it replaces some of the old configuration options. It's a good idea to have a .SET file for each of your standard layouts. For example I have LETTER.SET which I use for printing letters on Arnor headed paper. This is based on A4 with a top margin of 1.9" so that the text starts below the company logo and address. I have a footer defined to print my E- Mail address. Finally I have set the default style to Q, which is CG Times 12 point in the LJ4L driver. I then have a different file for printing private letters. These are on blank paper so I use the standard top margin of 1 inch. Again I have the default style Q but I don't have the footer. This I save as PVLETTER.SET. When I come to write a letter I can go into document settings, click on Load and select either LETTER.SET or PVLETTER.SET as appropriate. But I don't do this. You can also load a settings file as if it was a document, with the LOAD command. I use this facility in a macro/exec file/mail merge combina- tion which will load the settings file, change to my letter directory, ask me for the name of the addressee and give the file a name which incorporates the person's name and the current date. You may like to try to set up something similar. I'll show you mine in the next issue. Q. How do I set different footers on left hand and right hand pages? A. The footers dialogue allows you to do this. Go into Document Settings and press F. You will see buttons labelled 'Odd' and 'Even'. Pressing O or E changes from one to the other. What does this mean? When you create a footer Protext always stored two copies. One is used for even numbered pages (left hand side of a book) and one for odd numbered pages. Often these will be the same, so when you edit the footer Protext will update both copies the same. Below the Odd and Even buttons is a button labelled 'Edit Both'. This will initially be selected so that when you edit a footer both the even and odd copies will be changed. To create different footers press B to turn this option off. Now edit the footer and you will see the message 'Both Same' change to 'Different'. Pressing O and E will now show you the different footers and let you edit them separately. Q. What is the footer style for? A. If the footer style is not set, footers will be printed using the default style for the document. Often, though, you may want to print the footer text in a different font. Setting a footer style allows you to do just this. The footer style will be used for all footers and now the document's default style has no effect on footers. Style changes in the document never affect footers. Q. How do I centre a footer? A. When typing in your footer text, press TAB first. This will show as a right pointing arrow. Any text before the first tab will be printed at the left; text after the tab will be printed centred. Q. How do I right justify footer text? A. Press TAB twice at the start of your footer line. Any text after the second tab on the line will be printed right justified. You can include left justified, centred and right justified text in the same footer, using a tab to separate each part of the line. Q. Can I draw a line across the page within a footer? A. Yes, enter your footer line as follows: CTRL-X, U, TAB, TAB, CTRL-X, U. The Footer Dialogue Q. What if I want to use bold or italics for just part of a footer? A. You can put control codes in any line of footer text. When editing the footer text just press CTRL-X and B for bold or CTRL-X and I for italics. Q. What if I want one header on page 1 and a different header on later pages? A. You will have to use a stored command to change it. The header set up in document settings will be used for page 1. Then in the document (after the first text line) you will need to use the stored command '>HE' to define the header for the later pages. If it is a multi-line header you can use '>HE1', '>HE2' etc. Refer to the Protext reference manual for full details. ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ Ten Commandments of Style The Reverend Brian Elliott Deliver us from the boredom of Courier: and from the tyranny of the half inch tab-stop. The typewriter was a wonderful invention, and transformed business practice a few generations ago. The word processor in our own time has given freedom to creative writers. Typing and retyping is no longer necessary because of the computer's facility to store and retrieve text, and the word processor's ability to shuffle words around the page as the work is composed. Protext excels in the speed and power of its editor: the speed and quality of its printing is limited only by the printer itself. Recently cheap printers have allowed small businesses and home users to approach typesetting quality: many of us have the hardware, few of us have the skill - even large firms that invest in expensive machinery fail. We fail because we cannot rid ourselves of typewriter habits. We now have properly proportioned typefaces in a variety of sizes and weights, and we have Protext to place them accurately on the page. Knowledge of a few simple rules would improve style and legibility. Here they are: 1. Aim to fill no more than 50% or 60% of the paper with type. Make sure no line is longer than 80 characters including spaces. This means at least 1 inch left and right margins on A4 paper with 12pt Times Roman. I use 1¬ inch side margins and rather more top and bottom. 2. Make sure the leading is adequate. The longer the line, the greater the leading needs to be to retain legibility. The leading is the gap between each line, and was achieved in traditional typesetting by adding a strip of lead between each row of type. The point size of the font plus the extra leading adds up to the line height. Protext controls this in the Style menu by changing the setting of Font Spacing. Try a Font Spacing of 1.1 or 1.2 but stay with single line spacing (>LS 1). Line spacing belongs with the typewriter analogy we should leave behind. (Hint: If you have a problem with a page breaking in a bad place you can use a stored command to change the Line Spacing for one or a number of pages: >LS 0.95 or >LS 1.04 can get you out of a fix.) 3. Many typists use a double space after a full stop: use only one. 4. Most punctuation belongs inside quotation marks. "This avoids odd spac- ing." This would be considered 'bad form'. Use the "Proper Quotes" that Protext offers. 5. Underling is used with typewriters to show emphasis. With proportional fonts use italics for inline textual emphasis and bold for greater emphasis, such as headings. 6. Be careful when mixing typefaces, and if in doubt stick to one in no more than three sizes using only the bold and italic options. Times Roman is a typeface. It has a number of fonts in its family. Usually only two weights are available - normal and bold. Simple printers will also furnish an italic font and a bold italic. Never use on the same line Times Roman and the San Serif typeface called variously Swiss, Helvetica or Univers. These two typefaces have become standard but are ill matched. 7. Set the tabs intelligently. A half inch tab may be fine when setting indented lists with Courier, but 0.2" or 0.3" is much more suited to Times Roman in 10 or 12 point. 8. Use tabs and never spaces to line up columns. Typists hate proportional fonts because they cannot cheat. The layout becomes extremely fragile without a firm framework of tabs. 9. Setting tables in lined boxes with a proportional font is a nightmare using Protext. Stick to Courier or another mono-spaced font until a table creation facility is available. 10. Aim to use full justification with hyphenation turned on, but when using narrow columns turn the justification off. A ragged right margin is often better than the bad spacing of a narrow column. These few simple rules should improve your style considerably. Try to forget the rules of typewriting, and attempt to make your work look as if it was typeset. You can produce some very fine results with Protext and even a simple inkjet printer. ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ Macro Tips Mark S. Baines I advise people to study the TOKENS file and take advantage of what you find to allocate some of the functions to your own key assignments. For instance I discovered that token 916 called the Find dialog and token 917 called the Find and Replace dialog. It is a simple matter to go into the CONFIG program and change the assignment of the Alt-F key to token 916 and Alt-R to 917. There are many such enhancements to be made. Perhaps you don't like the default key assignments. For instance, I prefer Alt-S to save a file. Save file is token 926. There are a number of expansion tokens between the range 256 and 383. Expansion tokens are pre-allocated to certain keys and can be assigned one or more tokens or commands, the resulting string being called a macro. In this way you can carry out a whole series of actions or commands with a single key press. All these assignments are stored in the PROTEXT.KEY file which you can edit manually or by using the Edit Macro menu item and dialog. The latter is far easier and takes care of all the details for you. Make a back up of the PROTEXT.KEY file first though. Below are some of my useful macros. This is how you can install them. Decide on which key you want to assign the new macro command. The Function keys, Shift-Function keys, Control-Function keys, Alt-Function keys, Alt-letter keys (letter on its own) and Shift-Alt-letter keys (a letter with an 's' in front) are all available. My first 'new command' is to count the number of words in a document or a block of text. I decided to use Alt-C to count the words in a document and it seemed natural to use Shift-Alt-C to count words in a block of text. Go to the Edit Macros dialog. Scroll down the list to see if your key choice is already in use. If so, either choose another one or make a note of what the current macro is and assign that macro to another key combination. Click on the Key field and type in the characters standing for the key assignment, i.e. 'sf1' for Shift-F1 or 'M' for Alt-M. Alternatively, click on a letter displayed in the list below. For the count block example, type 'sC'. Then click on the Expansion field and type in the string shown below, in this case '^766^ctb^13^' without the quotes. This sequence means goto command mode, enter the letters ctb (for count block) and press Return. Then click on the 'Add' button, the 'Save' button and then 'Finish'. You do the same for each new command. As this progresses you may need to keep notes on which keys you have assigned with new commands or tokens. I keep an edited copy of the TOKENS file to show the current state of my configuration. Count words in text Assign to Alt-C key Enter in Edit Macros Expansion field: ^766^ct^13^ Count words in a block Assign to Shift-Alt-C Highlight a block of text, press the key assignment. Enter in Edit Macros Expansion field: ^766^ctb^13^ Delete to end of text file Assign to Shift-Alt-E Place cursor at the place where you want the end of text to be, press key assignment and all the following text to the end is deleted. Enter in Edit Macros Expansion field: ^765^^538^^541^^541^^538^^744^ Bold line Assign to Shift-Alt-B Put cursor at start of line - press Shift-Alt-B Enter in Edit Macros Expansion field: ^765^^687^^298^^523^ Italic line Assign to Shift-Alt-I Put cursor at start of line - press Shift-Alt-I Enter in Edit Macros Expansion field: ^765^^687^^305^^523^ Underline paragraph Assign to Shift-Alt-U Put cursor at start of line - press Shift-Alt-U Enter in Edit Macros Expansion field: ^765^^536^U^764^f !.^13^^536^U^754^ Swap two lines Assign to Alt-A Will swap the line the cursor is on with that below it. Place cursor at start of first line. Press key assignment. Enter in Edit Macros Expansion field: ^765^^687^^762^^753^^753^^13^^752^^525^^523^^752^^752^^545^ Indent paragraph and format I have assigned this to the Shift-TAB key so that it not only adds an indent tab but also formats the paragraph at the same time. This is a good example of how existing commands can be added to or modified. Choose one of the unassigned expansion tokens between 357 and 382. Then use Config (Keyboard options/redefine keyboard) to assign this token to Shift-TAB. Enter in Edit Macros Expansion field: ^694^^720^ Quit Protext I have assigned this to Alt-Q. Enter in Edit Macros Expansion field: ^766^q^13^ ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ Promerge Corner This is an ingenious and original idea from Chris Lovelock. He wanted to use >AV to ask for data to be entered but to supply a default string which can be accepted by pressing Return or edited; just as the SAVE command prompts you with the current filename. >AV does not have an option to supply a default value but Chris realised that the XS command could be used to cause >AV to read its input from a string. The string could be set up to contain the text to be prompted. To use XS from a Promerge script you need to use the stored command >EX and this is what the example does. The key line is: >ex xs "&name&|762|" Here, 'name' is the variable containing the text to be displayed and |762| is the token for 'cursor to start of line'. The cursor is placed at the start of the line for editing. >>> CandlVision Ltd - Notes for Exfile - 08/08/94 >>> >>> Using EX XS "string" in input loop routine >>> >>> Two lines below set default strings for >>> first 3 inputs only. Two have no default. >>> >sv name1 = "Fred" name2 = "Bert" name3 = "Mike" >sv job1 = "Prime Minister" job2 = "Brain Surgeon" >sv job3 = "Software Engineer" >>> >dp 0 >sv c = 0 >rp >sv c = c + 1 >cs >dm " " >dm " " >dm " " >id name&c& >sv name = name&c& job = job&c& >el >sv name = "" job = "" >ei >>> >ex xs "&name&|762|" >av " Type Name : " name&c& >ex xs "&job&|762|" >av " Type Job : " job&c& >un c = 5 >cs >dm " " >dm " " >dm " " >sv c = 0 >rp >sv c = c + 1 >sv n = name&c& j = job&c& >dm " &n& &j& >un c = 5 ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ Technical Support Michael Yates If you call or write for technical support you can make it easier for us and save time by providing certain information about your setup. This article is a guide to how you can help us to help you. Type of Computer Let us know as accurately as possible which type of computer you use; don't forget that Protext is available on seven different types of computer. Protext 6.5 has been released for PC compatibles, Atari ST and similar and Commodore Amiga. Other versions of Protext run on the Amstrad PCW, Acorn Archimedes, Amstrad CPC and Amstrad NC100/NC200. For PCs have the following information ready: 1. Processor: e.g. 8086, 80286, 80386, 80386 SX, 80486, Pentium 2. Manufacturer and model name/number: e.g. IBM PS/2, Dell 316SX, Toshiba T4600 3. Operating system: e.g. MS-DOS 3.3, MS-DOS 6.2, Novell DOS 6 4. Whether you are running within Windows 5. Total memory: e.g. 640K, 1Mb, 2Mb, 4Mb, 8Mb For Atari computers please let us know: 1. Model, e.g. 520 ST, 1040 ST, Mega ST, TT, Falcon 2. Memory size, e.g. 512K, 1Mb, 2Mb 3. Whether you have a hard disk fitted or a second floppy drive. For the Amiga tell us: 1. Model, e.g. A500, A500+, A600, A1200, A2000, A3000, A4000 2. Workbench version, e.g. 1.3, 2.1, 3.0 3. Memory size, e.g. 1Mb, 2Mb, 4Mb 4. Whether you have a hard disk fitted or a second floppy drive. Registration Number Your registration number may be found on the registration card that was supplied when you originally purchased Protext. We will only support registered copies of Protext. If you have not registered please do so by returning the card. If you have lost the registration card and you purchased directly from Arnor we will have a record and will be able to issue a new registration number. If you call, please save time by having your registration number ready. In the past we have spent time giving support only to find that the enquirer did not have a legitimate copy of the product. This can only mean that registered users are left waiting. Note that new registration numbers are not usually provided with upgrades. You should continue to use the same number. Protext version number Every time Protext is updated the version number is changed. When you contact us with a query it is important that you quote the exact version number. This is a decimal number with two or three digits after the decimal point. So please tell us that you are using for example 'version 6.52', not just '6.5'. In a number like '6.52' the integer and the tenths digit indicate a major release. The recent releases have been 5.0, 5.5, 6.0 (PC/ST), 6.1 (Amiga) and now 6.5. These are the upgrades that are notified to all registered owners. The third (hundredths) digit changes for minor updates or maintenance releases. Occasionally a fourth digit is added when a very small change is made. The version numbers are kept in sync between the PC, Atari and Amiga releases. Not all version numbers are released on all systems. For example: 6.50 was released for the PC only 6.51 was the first Atari release of 6.5, the PC version was updated 6.511 was a minor update for both PC and Atari 6.52 was the first Amiga release of 6.5, PC and Atari were updated At the time of writing all three systems are currently on v6.52. You can only find the exact version number by running Protext. On the PC and Atari you will find it on the command mode banner line (press Esc from edit mode). On the Amiga the version number is visible in the window title bar. If you have a problem, the version number can tell us if it has already been solved in a subsequent release. Printers and Printer drivers The majority of printer problems, especially those that suddenly appear for no particular reason, can be traced to a bad printer cable or cable connection. Check your cable, if possible borrow another one. Try printing the same file on a colleague's machine. If the fault doesn't reappear, the chances are that the problem is hardware related. It is more important than ever to use the correct printer driver as this affects the layout while you are editing as well as when printing. When you have support queries concerned with printing or document layout please tell us which printer and printer driver you are using. RTM - or Read The Manuals Most questions about Protext can be resolved by reading the Protext manuals, or your computer's manuals. We know it's often easiest to telephone and ask someone, but please consult the books and on-line help first; the answer is probably there somewhere. Has anything changed on your system? Just because you have a problem within Protext doesn't mean that Protext is at fault. Have you added new hardware or software to your system? For example some hardware can mean that less memory is available than previously. Adding a second disk drive to an Amiga takes memory away from the system. Certain poorly written Desktop accessories on the Atari or memory resident programs on the PC can conflict with properly written software. Try running Protext with a bare minimum setup. If it works add in your accessories one at a time until you find the conflict. What is the problem and can you reproduce it? Many technical enquiries are vague using phrases such as 'It didn't work' and 'it printed all over the place'. This doesn't help us much. Remember that you can see what is happening but we can't. Therefore a clear description is most important to enable us to picture what you can see. Whenever something goes wrong and you think it might be a fault with Protext, the first thing to do (before calling us) is to attempt to repeat it. Start from loading Protext and go through the same procedure to see if it happens again. If it does, try to narrow down the sequence of events that lead to the problem. Sometimes we will be able to reproduce your problem easily and hopefully give you a solution. Other times we may ask you to send a copy of your document which demonstrates the fault. If we have a ready made example we will be able to work out what is happening and why. Without, we may or may not get the same effect as you. If you don't understand something, ask Many times a simple problem can be solved by a better or more complete explanation. I once received a 5¬" diskette (which as many will know is a floppy floppy disk) with a compliment slip stapled to it, asking me to help recover some files which had become corrupted. The staple now meant that the disk would not rotate, apart from the fact that the holes had further corrupted the disk. Nowhere had anyone explained just what a disk was. Copying files or disks is an area that regularly leads to problems. I have had a photostat copy of a disk sent to me because I had failed to realise that someone might not understand just how a computer stored data or that the end user had never been taught how to copy disks. I only said 'send me a copy of the disk'. My apologies to the two individuals concerned (who were not Protext users) but I am only using these as examples of how a lack of communication can lead to misunderstanding. I hope I learnt from these and other occasions and neither of these two examples have happened again. The point is, if you don't understand, ask. ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ Protext and Windows Mark Tilley Q. How do I run Protext from my Applications group in Windows? A. Open the Applications group window in the Program Manager. Also open the File Manager and arrange the windows so that both are visible and not overlapping. In the File Manager find the drive and directory in which Protext is installed and scroll the window down until PROTEXT.EXE is visible. Select this by clicking with the mouse and drag it into the Applications group window. An icon will appear which shows a screen with 'MSDOS' written on it. This is the standard icon used for DOS programs. You can now run Protext by clicking on this icon. Q. Shouldn't Protext have its own icon? A. Yes, we provide an icon with Protext. You need to tell Program Manager to use it instead of the standard MSDOS icon. To do this first select the Protext icon (the MSDOS one) by clicking on it once. Press ALT-RETURN. This will open a dialogue box entitled 'Program Item Properties'. Click on the 'Change Icon' button. A message will appear saying 'There are no icons available for the specified file'. Ignore this and click on OK. Another dialogue box will be shown, headed 'Change Icon'. The first text box 'File Name' will contain something like 'C:\WINDOWS\PROGMAN.EXE'. Change this to 'C:\PROTEXT\PROTEXT.EXE', or the correct Protext path if not C:\PROTEXT. Click OK and the Protext icon will be shown. Click OK again to come out of the Program Item Properties dialogue. The Protext icon should now be installed. Q. Can I run Protext in a Window? A. Yes. When Protext is running press ALT-RETURN and it will change from running full screen to be within a window. Q. Can I copy and paste between Protext and Windows applications? A. Yes, when Protext is running in a window. Click on the system menu button at the top left of the window. Amongst items for resizing the window you will see 'Edit' which brings up a submenu, containing 4 items: Mark: Choose this when you want to mark a block in Protext for copying to the clipboard. You will then be able to mark the block with the mouse. Copy: After marking, this will copy the marked section to the Windows clipboard. Or you can just press Enter. Paste: This copies the clipboard into the Protext document. As Protext is not a Windows application, Paste is quite slow. Scroll: This allows you to scroll the window using the keyboard instead of the scroll bars. Don't confuse this with Protext scrolling the text, this refers only to the window display. Part of the normal Protext screen may be hidden as the window size may be changed. You can see when this is the case because scroll bars will appear at the bottom or right edge of the window. Wherever possible it is best to have the whole Protext display visible. Changing the font (see below) may help. Q. Protext is very slow when in a window. What can I do? A. Do not use graphics mode when running in a window, always run Protext in text mode. Q. When inside a window the text is too small for me to read. What can I do? Q. How can I fit the whole Protext display in a window? It's too wide. A. At the bottom of the system menu is 'Fonts', which allows you to select a number of different size fonts. Q. Do I have to press ALT-RETURN every time to put Protext into a window? Can I configure it to start that way? A. Yes, there is an option to do just this in the PIF. Q. What is a PIF? A. Program Information File. Each program running under Windows can have a PIF to define how the program behaves. The PIF for Protext is the file called PROTEXT.PIF and will be found in the same directory as PROTEXT.EXE. When Protext is run, Windows will automatically find the PIF in the program's directory. Q. How do I change the PIF options? A. Use the PIF Editor, usually found in the 'Main' group in the Program Manager. Run this and choose Open from the File menu. Locate and select PROTEXT.PIF and you will be able to edit the options. In particular you will see the item 'Display Usage' which allows you to select between 'Full Screen' and 'Windowed'. For explanations of each option use Windows Help - click on the item and press F1. Q. Why doesn't the mouse work when Protext is windowed? A. This depends on your mouse driver. If you are using the Microsoft mouse driver as supplied with MS-DOS 6, you should load it with a command in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file using the '/Y' option: c:\dos\mouse.com /y If you are using another mouse driver you may need an updated MOUSE.COM or equivalent. This may not always be available, but you may be able to use the Microsoft mouse driver instead. ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ Amiga Screens Mark Tilley Do you always run Protext on the Workbench screen? If so, you should consider using a custom screen. There are several advantages. Setting Protext up to use a custom screen is easy. Run Config and go to the Visual Options menu. Set the 'Use custom screen' option to 'YES'. Then press 'M' to 'choose screen mode'. A Screen Mode Requester will appear listing all the modes which your Amiga can use. Choose a mode from the scrolling list by clicking on it. You will see that when you do this the 'Width' and 'Height' boxes are filled in with the dimensions of the screen that will be opened. You can set the number of colours to be used on your screen. Choosing more colours will slow Protext down and has little benefit. When you have Protext running on a custom screen: 1. Pressing left Amiga-M will swap between the Protext screen and the Workbench screen (and any other screens you may have open). 2. You can press ALT-F to turn on interlace. This doubles the number of lines on the screen. On standard Amiga hardware this will flicker badly. If you have a Flicker Fixer board or an Amiga 3000 display enhancer with a multi-sync monitor it will be steady and clear. 3. Using interlace is especially useful for Print Preview, because the extra lines are needed to show the printed page accurately. An option is provided in Config (Visual options menu) to 'Use interlace for preview'. If this is set to 'YES' then Protext will switch to interlace for previewing and switch back afterwards. (If you are already using interlace this will make no difference). 4. Your Protext screen is a public screen, which allows you to open other software (with public screen support) on the same screen as Protext. The screen name is 'Arnor'. 5. You can open Protext on a public screen that has been opened by another program. Do this by defining a Tool Type in the Protext icon. Click once on the Protext icon to select it and use 'Information' from the 'Icons' menu. Click on New and type into the text box: PUBSCREEN=screenname Instead of 'screenname' type the name of the screen. The documentation for the software that opened the screen should tell you the name. If you are running Protext from the Shell you can pass a public screen name as a command line option: PROTEXT -Pscreenname Note: if a 'PUBSCREEN' tool type or '-P' option is used the Config screen mode options are ignored. AutoSwitch OverScan for the Atari ST Mark S. Baines I fitted the AutoSwitch OverScan board to my Mega ST4 some while ago and it gives a rock steady display of 688 x 480 pixels on my SM124 mono monitor. Once the hardware is installed all that is required is for a couple of programs to be run from the AUTO folder at boot up. The beauty about the AutoSwitch facility is that you can set up an .INF file with details of which programs should run in OverScan mode and those that shouldn't. The OverScan program consults this whenever a program is loaded and swaps back to normal 640 x 400 resolution mode instantly. This is necessary as not all programs are written to be independent of screen size, many only assume the usual three standard ST resolutions although this is rapidly changing. These tend to be mostly .TOS programs and .PRG programs that don't use the GEM interface. Until recently Protext fell into this latter category, working in the standard ST high resolution of 640 x 400 pixels but gave a corrupted display at anything beyond that. Although using a GUI interface it isn't GEM and so Protext couldn't take advantage of GEM's resolution independence. I asked Arnor if it was at all possible to get OverScan compatibility. After sending some details as to how the OverScan display memory is set, up the first beta version arrived which worked except for some screen flashing during scrolling. Later beta versions cured that and Protext v6.51 works superbly in any resolution I throw at it. It is stable and scrolls without any flicker or flashing. And what a difference it makes. I always use my own designed small 8 x 8 system font in Protext's 50 line mode. With OverScan I now get 58 lines of document text 85 characters wide - almost a page of A4 text. The graphics displayer also uses the extra screen and so does Page Preview which shows a page that is actually readable. Not bad for a 12" monitor! ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ Regina v Computer and Ward-Pro Sessor A short story, the first of two parts by Wamba Lord Chief Justice Gerald 'Mad Dog' Goddard began his summing up. It was noticed that in addition to the articles usually present on his bench (gavel, water jug, black cap etc.) A. Typewriter was also present. "Members of the jury. You have heard over the past three days the evidence for and against the defendants, A. Computer and Ward-Pro Sessor, who have been charged with a number of very serious crimes. "I mean to be even-handed in my summary. I wish to be fair to the defendants; heinous though their crimes are, and though they obviously deserve, in the judgement of all loyal and right-thinking persons, to receive no more consid- eration from their fellow-men than a rope from the nearest tree! "Well may you shiver in the dock, miserable wretches, in the shadow of the gallows! Well may you, Computer, shamefacedly avert your monitor from public gaze and guiltily twiddle your leads and plugs! However I must control my understandable abhorrence and do my duty... "You will have observed, members of the jury, that on my bench rests Mr A. Typewriter, our hard-working friend over many years. One is close to tears when considering that he is now almost totally unemployed, having to scrape a pitiful living, solely as a result of the vile activities of Computer and his henchman. "Mr Typewriter as we are all well aware has been a good and faithful servant in offices and homes in the land for nigh on a hundred years. Yet now in his twilight years he finds himself at last spurned and his stalwart services unwanted; his wife and fourteen young children likely to be forced on to the Parish due to the recent advent of Computer and Sessor. "The defendants' counsel has endeavoured to put forward, to the best of his ability in such a hopeless cause, a case of some sort for his clients. But first of all let us detail the charges: "1. Common robbery. "2. Treason by attempting to injure British industry and the morale of the British people by destroying the minds of the innocent dupes who have fallen into their hands. "3. A second count of treason by undermining the health of the Queen's subjects thus rendering the state less liable to defend itself against its enemies. "4. Offences against Humanity. "Their counsel's pitiful defence to these dreadful charges is to maintain they are more useful and more efficient than Mr Typewriter! "With regard to the charge of common robbery, which offence I remind you has been committed against the vast majority of the citizens of our land, you may well consider this charge amply proved by the well-recognised fact that all Computer's equipment is obscenely expensive and is very often obsolete at the time the hapless victim is driving it away from the establishment at which it was purchased. "By contrast Mr Typewriter can cost as little as one hundred pounds or less and, as virtually no significant improvements have been made to his design since its inception, your purchase will remain up-to-date. Good value for money indeed from Mr Typewriter! "Treason! To be a traitor is a dreadful offence. Worse even than murder! It is the murder of one's own country! Yet Computer and Sessor stand accused of treason! In the name of being 'useful' and 'helpful' they have insinuated themselves into the hearths and homes traditionally sacred to loyal British men and women - and into their offices! Once there they have callously 'helped' their victims indeed! - to their grievous and inevitable destruction! "You may ask how this is accomplished. I answer by sapping the natural initiative and vitality of the British people! For instance who needs to write a letter when an identical letter is present in Sessor's memory? Only a change of address is needed. Who needs to remember important dates when the villain has a file containing all the information? Who needs even to type a label: Sessor in league with Computer has such addresses stored, awaiting the touch of a key. Who needs even to write a letter as the insidious macro key device of these partners-in-crime remembers all commonly-used phrases? Certainly the eventual logical conclusion to this kind of 'help' is that the user himself will be redundant when he finds that Sessor and Computer write the letter for him in its entirety! "They have many other such sinister tricks at their beck and call, all with the same aim in mind. With their many so-called labour-saving contrivances they clearly mean to subvert the nation by turning our citizens into slothful and inept creatures capable only of pressing a key on their infernal instruments. By contrast Typewriter makes you do your fair share of work. He would not dream of helping you in any such way. He allows you the dignity of hard work! "As I have indicated the defendants have many such pernicious devices. I will give a couple of examples only. A program to refine the style of the user's letters! Apparently to help him to write in some kind of superior, artistic way! May I remind these degenerates that the average British man and women is instantly repelled by the mere thought of such Oscar Wilde foppery! British words said in a British way seemingly are too strong for the effeminate stomachs of Mr Computer and Mr Sessor! "May I pointedly remind the defendants that our greatest poet Will Shakespeare did not require the services of Mr Computer or Mr Sessor and their StyleWriting and other gimmicks! Nor did Homer when he penned the immortal Iliad! Had these great men been so misguided as to do so there can be no doubt that the world would be in a far worse state than it is." [The remainder of Lord Goddard's summing-up will be published in the next issue] To Be Continued ... ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ Drawing Lines and Boxes on Laser Printers Gavin Every The following program fragments should work on all HP LaserJets and compatibles except for the very first LaserJet One. They work by setting up some variables and then including the relevant file (>IN PCLBOX). These variables are: top: Distance in mm from top edge of paper (minimum 4.3mm). left: Distance in mm from left edge of paper (minimum 6.1mm). height: Height of box in mm including lines at top and bottom. width: Width of box in mm including lines at left and right. thick: Thickness of box in dots (1=thin, 3=normal, 5=thick). Note that laser printers cannot print very close to the edge of the paper and so the top and left variables have minimum values of a few millimetres. If width is zero, we just get a vertical line. If height is zero, we just get a horizontal line. If top is zero, the box is drawn from the current position upwards. Line numbers are for reference only and should not be typed 100 >>> PCLBOX: 31 Aug 94 (GME) draws a box on LJ2 or better 101 >>> 102 >>> top,left is position of outside topleft (in millimetres) 103 >>> width,height is external size of box (in millimetres) 104 >>> thick is thickness of lines (in dots!) 105 >>> 106 >sv mm=300/25.4 ; dots per millimetre 107 >sv pclmintm=50 pclminsm=72 ; offsets of (0,0) from page corner 108 >sv pcly=top*mm -pclmintm 109 >sv pclx=left*mm -pclminsm 110 >>> 111 >sv pclh=height*mm +0.5 112 >if top=0 113 >sv pclh=pclh +thick 114 >ei 115 >if pclhsv pclh=thick 117 >ei 118 >>> 119 >sv pclw=width*mm +0.5 120 >if pclwsv pclw=thick 122 >ei 123 >sv pcly=pcly[w1] pclx=pclx[w1] 124 >sv pclh=pclh[w1] pclw=pclw[w1] pclt=thick[w1] 125 >sv sys_ver=sys_ver[1] $+ "." $+ sys_ver[3:] 126 >if sys_ver > "6.04" 127 >sv ocqm="?" 128 >el 129 >sv ocqm="" 130 >ei 131 >oc &ocqm& 27,"&f0S" ; save pos 132 >if pcly>0 133 >oc &ocqm& 27,"*p&pclx&x&pcly&Y" ; goto abs top left 134 >el 135 >oc &ocqm& 27,"*p&pclx&x-&pclh&y+&pclt&y-1Y" ; goto rel topleft 136 >ei 137 >oc &ocqm& 27,"*c&pclw&a&pclt&b0P" ; draw top 138 >oc &ocqm& 27,"*p+&pclh&y-&pclt&Y" ; move down 139 >oc &ocqm& 27,"*c0P" ; draw bottom (same as top) 140 >oc &ocqm& 27,"*p-&pclh&y+&pclt&Y" ; move up 141 >oc &ocqm& 27,"*c&pclt&a&pclh&b0P" ; draw left 142 >oc &ocqm& 27,"*p+&pclw&x-&pclt&X" ; move right 143 >oc &ocqm& 27,"*c0P" ; draw right (same as left) 144 >>>oc &ocqm& 27,"*p-&pclw&x+&pclt&X" ; move left 145 >oc &ocqm& 27,"&f1S" ; restore pos Points to note: Line 107 sets up the variables pclmintm and pclminsm. These are the direct equivalents of MINTM and MINSM in printer drivers. They are set to the normal default margins of a laserjet. If the top left corner of your box is not millimetre perfect you can change these variables: increasing them moves the printout towards the top or the left, decreasing them moves down or right. Line 123 converts the variables we use into strings so that when we use them later, we do not get trailing decimal places, e.g. '3.00' becomes '3'. Line 125 makes sure that the variable sys_ver is in the form it should be (due to an error, versions 6.00 to 6.07 of the 32-bit PC version did not have a decimal point in the second position). This workaround should be used to guarantee correct testing of the version number. Versions of Protext after 6.04 extended the syntax of >OC so that if a page were not being printed, then '>OC ? ' would not print any codes. Lines 126-130 set up a suitable variable for use with the subsequent >OC lines. Examples: To draw a thick box at an absolute position >SV top=20 left=20 width=170 height=257 thick=5 >IN pclbox To draw a normal thickness horizontal line at current position >SV top=0 left=25.4 width=210-25.4*2 height=0 thick=3 >IN pclbox Drawing a box around a paragraph of text We need to specify variables left, width and thick in the usual way, but height and top are calculated for us, by including '>IN BOXSTART' before the text and '>IN BOXEND' after the text we want to box. We need these files: >>> BOXSTART: 31 Aug 94 (GME) >sv pcltmp=sys_line/6*25.4 ; sys_line in mm >>> BOXEND: 31 Aug 94 (GME) >>> We must set up the PCLBOX variables: left,width and thick >>> before doing >IN BOXSTART ... >IN BOXEND >sv height=sys_line/6*25.4 -pcltmp >if height>=0 >sv top=0 >in pclbox >ei This example draws a box around each line of a table 3.8" wide, leaving 2« mm gap each side of the table. 25.4 is the left margin in millimetres, and 3.8*25.4 is the ruler width in millimetres. Note that 'boxend' is used several times for the same 'boxstart' to draw successively larger boxes. >----------------------.--------------.----R >SV left=25.4-2.5 width=3.8*25.4 +5 thick=3 >IN boxstart Adams, Joey 15.3 23 >IN boxend ; draws box around first line Adkins, Mary 14.11 25 >IN boxend ; draws box around second line Allen, Nigel 15.8 23 >IN boxend ; draws box around third line In a later issue, I will be developing this program to add support for shadowing, shading and cross-hatching. ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ Using ECONOMODE on HP Laser Printers Gavin Every The recent HP LJ4L, LJ4ML, LJ4P, LJ4MP, LJ4 Plus and LJ4M Plus printers have an economy feature which can save up to 50% of toner. It works by printing only every other dot. It is still very legible and quite suitable for draft copies. It can only be used on an entire document, and cannot be turned on and off within a page or document like a normal control code. The program listing below can only be run on versions 6.071 and later (PC/ST) or versions 6.13 and later (Amiga). It will turn the economode feature on or off depending on whether you type P or PQ from the command line, or whether the quality button is selected in the print dialog box. It is enabled by including the line '>IN ECONOMOD' at the top of your document. It must come before any other INFILEs which may send data to the printer (for example, download fonts or macros) because it modifies the reset code, which gets printed before any other data. Line numbers are for reference only and should not be typed. 100 >>> ECONOMOD : For selecting Economode on HP LaserJets in PCL mode 101 >>> Use with '>IN ECONOMOD' before any other >IN, >OC, >IB or >IG. 102 >>> 103 >>> PQ or quality print from menu will print normally 104 >>> P or draft print from menu will print in draft (economode) 105 >>> 106 >sv sys_ver=sys_ver[1] $+ "." $+ sys_ver[3:] 107 >>> version check (for sys_printopt) & 2 printer checks 108 >if sys_ver > "6.07" AND NOT (sys_ver >= "6.10" AND sys_ver < "6.13") 109 >if sys_printer[1:2]="lj" AND sys_printer[3] in "456789" 110 >if "ps"<>sys_printer[-2:] 111 >if (sys_printopt >> 3) mod 2 112 >sv econcode="OFF" 113 >iu tray 114 >sv tray="q" 115 >ei 116 >el 117 >sv econcode="ON" 118 >iu tray 119 >sv tray="d" 120 >ei 121 >ei 122 >id tray 123 >if tray in "ql" ; lower (or quality tray) 124 >sv traycode='27,"&l4H"' 125 >el ; upper (or draft tray) 126 >sv traycode='27,"&l1H"' 127 >ei 128 >el 129 >sv traycode="" 130 >ei 131 >cc '@'=27,"%-12345X@PJL SET ECONOMODE=&econcode&",10, "@PJL ENTER LANGUAGE=PCL",10,27,"&k0G",&traycode&, 27,"&l0l6d1e68F",27,"(10U",27,"(s0p10h12v3T" ; 27,"&l1T",27,"%-12345X" 132 >cc q 133 >ei ; not PS printer check 134 >ei ; LJ printer check 135 >ei ; sys_ver check There are a few points to explain in the listing. Line 106 is the sys_ver workaround as explained in the PCLBOX example. Line 108 checks the version number for the availability of the sys_printopt variable which is available from 6.071 (PC/ST) or 6.13 (Amiga). Lines 109 and 110 do a simple check that a suitable printer is being used before sending the printer commands. Line 111 checks the type of print command using the new system variable sys_printopt. It is a bit obscure, but there is no easy way of testing a single bit. The useful tests are printed below; more than one can apply at a time, for example, print block to printer in quality. Print to printer: .................. (sys_printopt >> 0) mod 2 Print to screen: ................... (sys_printopt >> 1) mod 2 Print to file: ...................... (sys_printopt >> 2) mod 2 Print in quality: .................. (sys_printopt >> 3) mod 2 Save ASCII: ...................... (sys_printopt >> 5) mod 2 Generate Index/Contents: ...... (sys_printopt >> 6) mod 2 Print block: ....................... (sys_printopt >> 7) mod 2 Save ASCII (fixed): ............. (sys_printopt >> 8) mod 2 Preview: .......................... (sys_printopt >> 9) mod 2 Line 131 should be typed as a single line, not over 3 lines as printed. It is basically a copy of the reset codes and end codes out of the printer driver. If you have two paper trays Protext printer drivers use the quality control code to select the 'quality paper tray', which is usually the lower tray. Now we are using the same code to control Economode we need to be able to specify which tray to use. Line 132 cancels the definition of the old quality control code, which is now incorporated into the reset code. If you have two paper trays, as before, the quality (lower) tray will be selected for quality and the draft (upper) tray for draft. This can be changed by editing lines 114 and 119 or you can specify which tray to use in your document by adding a line immediately before the line '>IN economod': >SV tray="L" ; to use the lower tray >SV tray="U" ; to use the upper tray ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ In the Next Issue Topics planned for Exfile 9 include: Questions and answers on using styles How to edit your own printer drivers Readers letters (as long as you send us some) The final part of our short story (sorry!) More macros and Promerge routines There's room for more ... let us know what you would like to see. Better still, write something and send it in. We'll be back soon. Any opinions expressed in this magazine are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the publishers. No liability can be accepted for any mistakes. Copyright = September 1994 Arnor Ltd. and the individual authors. Created with Protext 6.5 and a Hewlett Packard LaserJet 4L. Printed from camera ready copy by Sushima Printing of Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire. Published by Arnor Ltd., 611 Lincoln Road, Peterborough PE1 3HA. Telephone +44 (0) 1733 68909. Fax +44 (0) 1733 67299.