============================================================================== = = = TextMaster V1.00 = = = = ©1991 By Neil Johnston = = = ============================================================================== Preface ======= This program is freeware, that means it can be distributed by anybody as long as no charge is made for the actual program, apart from a small fee for the copying and media, and this document accompanies this program. Note: This program requires both the arp.library & powerpacker.library, to be in the LIBS: directory of your system disk. Purpose ======= The purpose of this program is to enable the user to generate ASCII text files which have each line centered on the screen. This is useful for both text headers, possibly similar to the one at the top of this document, or to produce 'nice' CLI menus, where each line is centered perfectly on screen. This saves you the hassle of typing all the text, and then counting all the spaces at the start of each line. TextMaster can usually do this boring and time consuming job in under a second! This program also has one extra feature which I'm sure will be greatly appreciated by all assembly language demo coders, it will centre your text, and also place the relevant "DC.B" prefix at the start, so you can insert the perfectly centered text straight into your demo. Usage ===== TextMaster can be started from either the Workbench or the CLI. Just double-Click on the Workbench icon, or type 'TextMaster' From the CLI, it requires no parameters as it is fully gadget controlled. The Load Gadet will put the ARP FileRequester up, to allow you to enter the name of your source file. Either type the name or click on the gadget, and the Requester will disappear and the message box at the bottom of the screen will tell you if loading was successful or unsuccesful. If unsuccesful, it may be because you entered the wrong name, a read error occured, etc. Once you have loaded the file, you may now choose whether you would like the "DC.B" prefix. Unless you are using this text for inclusion in some Demo, you should leave this gadget off as it has no other use. Next you may alter the width of the screen, or leave it at the default of 80 characters per line. This value tells TextMaster how wide the destination screen is. If you are using this for a standard CLI text screen, you would probably leave this at 80. The 'Centre "DC.B"' option will dictate whether the text is centered within the 'DC.B' quotes, or just translated as it is found. This is ideal for processing an ASCII file so that you can directly insert it in your source as a scrolltext or whatever you wish! Note: TextMaster can only cope with Screen widths from 2-98, and the width must be an even number. If you specify an odd screen width, then TextMaster will round your number down to a lower number. Next, click on the Process gadget, and the screen will flicker very briefly, before a message at the bottom explains that your text has been processed. Clicking on the Save gadget will bring the ARP FileRequester up again, to specify the save filename. Warning: TextMaster does not check if you wish to overwrite an existing filename so you should be careful when saving your text! The Other Stuff =============== OK, all that's left to do now is explain some of the 'extra features' of TextMaster: It can't process files Greater then 20K -- I don't feel this is any great restriction as you should have no real need to process a file greater than this. If you do though, you could always do it in seperate chunks, and then merge them together! It will 'clip' lines that are too long -- If you try to process a line which is greater than the Width specified, then that whole line will be clipped. You will be told if this happens, but you can still save the processed file, but the clipped lines will be missing. It will load files crunched with PowerPacker -- Yes! Believe it or not, TextMaster will load a file that has been crunched with PowerPacker, and save it as a processed, uncrunched file! Now I'm sure you've got loads of ways you can put that great function to use! :-) When you're typing your text for TextMaster to process, you should try to ensure that every line is either an odd or an even number of bytes long, as otherwise it won't look right. The easiest way to do this is to use a text editor which tells you the cursor's current column, and if it's an odd number at the end of the first line, then always try to have an odd number on every other line. You should also try to avoid having extra spaces at either the start or the end of your text, as TextMaster will interperate these as actual characters, and your text will not be centered properly. It is not a good idea to use the QED text editor when preparing text for this program as it tends to replace a series of spaces with another character (tabs?), which can confuse TextMaster. When producing text which is enclosed between DC.B quotes, you will find that inverted commas ['] will appear as ['']. This is because the Devpac assembler takes a single quote as meaning the end of the ASCII string, so it must be replaced by two quotes. Lines which have two quotes on will be longer than the other lines, but don't worry, once assembled they will really contain only one. Well if you have any suggestions, or bug reports (preferably suggestions! :-) ) Then you can send them to me at the following address: N Johnston C/O WO2 Johnston B Sqn 5 Innis D.G B.F.P.O. 16 If ANYBODY suggests something they think will be useful for this program, even if it isn't to do with centering text, but just doing something (useful) to it, then I WILL incorporate it in future versions. Have Fun ... -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Release Info ======= ==== V1.00 - First Release V1.10 - Added "Centre DC.B" option. - Fixed any bugs I found! - Display pathname of loaded text file [ MM ] --------------------------------------------------------------------------