Imported and also spread by FPL in 1989! The ONLY Name in the Business  New Features Transcript has some recently-added features that were not in the manual - they are documented here. Please read the Transcript manual first, in order to get the background that will help clarify these instructions. MACROS Macros let you define common operations or pieces of text and recall them with a single key sequence. This is useful for an operation like "italicize word" (delete word, paste word, italic text, clear highlight), a piece of text like a Professional Page formatting code, or any sequence of text and operations that you perform often. Up to ten different macros can be defined at one time, and sets of macros can be saved to disk and loaded at any time. To define a macro, hold down SHIFT and CTRL and press a function key. All the keystrokes and/or menu operations you enter from now on will be stored into the macro for that function key. End the macro definition by pressing the SHIFT-CTRL combination again (see the prompt displayed in the title bar during macro definition). To "replay" a macro, press CTRL and the function key. You can define up to ten macros (one for each function key), each with up to 99 keystrokes or operations. You can save or load macro definitions from the Project menu. Other macros can be used within a macro definition. Macros can "record" only those events taking place within a Transcript editing window; operations done on requesters or control panels will be ignored. MOUSE-DRIVEN MACROS You can automatically insert text or perform any operation allowed by a macro at any place in your document by holding down the CTRL key when you click the left mouse button. This will first position the cursor as usual, then invoke the F9 Macro as if you had pressed CTRL-F9. If you continue holding the CTRL key and click the mouse button again within two seconds (moving the mouse to a new position first), the F10 macro will be invoked at this new position. (If you wait more than two seconds, the F9 macro will be invoked again the next time you click.) This feature is extremely useful for adding Professional Page formatting codes to selected phrases or sections of text. For example, suppose your document is in the `Times' typeface, but you wish to put selected words or phrases in Helvetica. You could define macro F9 as the formatting codes required to switch to Helvetica ( \ff ), and macro F10 to switch back to Times ( \ff ). Now, to change a word in your document to Helvetica, you just hold the CTRL key down and click the mouse button at the beginning of the word, then at the end of the word. TRUE TAB CHARACTER Some word processor and other text programs put a special TAB character in a document when you press the TAB key. Although Transcript doesn't use actual TAB characters, if you absolutely need to get true tab characters into a document, you can do so with CTRL-t (which shows up on the screen as a reverse-field `t'). This character doesn't do anything special in Transcript, but will be saved as a true tab (ascii 9). However, when it is loaded back in, it will be expanded into spaces (Transcript's normal way of handling tabs). The only way to preserve true tabs across a save/load sequence is to select "Show P-Page Codes" (Special menu) before saving, and "Hide P-Page Codes" after you load. NEW FORMATTING CODES (See the section on formatting codes in the manual.) Relative text margin settings are now supported - use `+' or `-' before the margin value to specify a relative adjustment to the current setting, e.g. lm+4 to indent subsequent text by four spaces. Paragraph indent: `pi+' or `pi-' indents or outdents the first line of all paragraphs by the specified amount. The `ep' (eject page) code has been extended to take an optional numeric argument. If present, this specifies a minimum number of lines that must be available for text on the current page. If less than this minimum are available, the page is ejected and printing continues on the next page. This allows you to `protect' sections of text in your document from being split across a page boundary. Using `ep' without the numeric argument causes a form-feed regardless of the current page position. There is also new code, `nl'. This works similarly to `ep', except that `' refers to a number of end-of-paragraphs, rather than just line breaks. Typically, the code `nl1' might be used before a paragraph to ensure that the whole paragraph will fit on the page. As another example, You might have a paragraph with a heading above it that you want to keep on the same page: assuming there is a blank line between the heading and the paragraph, by specifying `nl3', you would make sure that the three paragraphs - the heading, blank line, and following paragraph of text - were not split up between pages. CHANGES TO THE SPELLING CHECKER, TRANSSPELL · You can specify default user dictionaries and rejection dictionaries in the command line or with TOOLTYPES in the icon. These dictionaries will be automatically loaded when TransSpell is run. The tooltypes are as follows (See the manual for more details on tooltypes): USERDICT=name1+name2... REJECT=name1+name2... For example, putting the command `USERDICT=MyWords' in the icon's tooltypes would cause TransSpell to load in the user dictionary called `MyWords' from the same directory as the TransSpell program. You can specify the entire `path name' for the dictionary if you wish. To load more than one file, put a `+' between the file names. For CLI users, the command line options are -u and -r, e.g. `run TransSpell -uMywords+british.dict'. · An option now exists to keep the dictionary on disk instead of automatically copying it to RAM on start-up; this saves about 170k, but makes spelling checking slower. To specify this option, use DICTIONARY=DISK in the TOOLTYPES of the icon, or `-d' in the command line (`run TransSpell -d' from the CLI). NOTE: Users with 512K Amigas must use this option in order to run Transcript on a custom screen and TransSpell at the same time. · The manual gives the word "Amiga" as a good candidate for a user dictionary entry. The word is now in TransSpell's internal dictionary, so it will be recognized automatically. For an example of a word not in the dictionary, try "Atari" instead. THE FILE REQUESTER · ".info" files do not show up in the file requester. This avoids confusion when looking through a directory containing a large number of documents with icons. · You can type the complete `path name' of a document, including the file name, into the "Drawer" string gadget; the file name will be automatically removed from the end of the path and put into the "file name" string gadget. SEARCH AND REPLACE A search/replace operation can be aborted with the ESC key. JOIN/SEPARATE LINES The `Join single lines' and `Separate lines' features in the Special menu can be restricted to a range of text: if the cursor is within the marked range when you select one of these commands, only the marked text will be converted. This is consistent with the way text styles and the convert to upper/lower case commands work. RUNNING FROM THE CLI You don't need to use the RUN command to make Transcript `detach' from the CLI: Just type `Transcript' (or `df1:Transcript' if the disk is in drive 1) from the CLI and the program will run, leaving your CLI window free to type new commands into. INSTALLING ON A HARD DRIVE To install Transcript on your hard drive, you need only copy the program using the Workbench or CLI, as the manual instructs. If you wish to run the spelling checker from the hard drive and have it load the dictionary from the hard drive, you need to copy both the `TransSpell' program and the dictionary file `pfsf6b90k'. You must then remove the Transcript floppy disk from the drive and give the CLI command `Assign Transcript: dh0:' (substitute the appropriate volume or directory name for `dh0:'). PERFORMANCE On page 10 of the manual, the `TIP' box advises splitting up large paragraphs in order to speed up Transcript's text operations. Transcript's performance has since been increased to the point that this is not necessary; text updating will always keep up with any typing speed, even in very long paragraphs. BOOTING FROM THE TRANSCRIPT DISK The manual advises booting from your regular Workbench disk, then inserting the Transcript disk and clicking the icon to run the program. This is still the recommended method, but you may boot with the Transcript disk if you wish (insert the disk when the Workbench prompt appears on the screen). This may be more convenient for users with single-drive systems. fpl