--------------------------------------- THE LETTER DISK Strategies for Attacking Correspondence By R. T. LUNDBERG, Bellingham, WA --------------------------------------- I put all correspondence on a single disk. Using simple AmigaDOS commands, I've come up with way to print, store and keep track of correspondence. I'm going to presume you know at least a bit about using the ED function for creating text documents. Even if you have no need for precise correspondence records, you might be able to use this method for recordkeeping that's important in your life. What you'll wind up with is a disk that boots directly to the CLI, where you use ED to write text, and use easy AmigaDOS commands to keep track of everything. Yes, you can print out your work from this environment. First, make a copy of Workbench. Put the copy of Workbench in DF0: and reboot by pressing the CTRL key at the same time you press the two red As on either side of the spacebar. This is know at a CTRL-A-A. Just after the Commodore copyright notice appears at top left of screen, press the CTRL and D keys together. This dumps you into the CLI, which is the command line interpreter. Here, you may type AmigaDOS commands. The Workbench 1.2 disk is 95 percent full, though the 1.1 Workbench is less crowded. With either disk, the first task is to kill some unneeded material, to make room for the text files you will be creating. ***** If you are not working with a COPY of the Workbench disk, stop right now, make a copy, put your original away, and use the copy for this project. ***** You're in the CLI when you see a number followed by a > symbol. This is a prompt inviting you to type something. Let's get in there and kill! Type the following lines, pressing Return after each. You will see screen messages noting material is being deleted. delete demos all delete system all delete utilities all delete preferences delete clock Following this magnetic carnage, were you to type info (and press Return) you'd see that only about 63 percent of the disk is now filled, leaving more than 300,000 bytes (character strokes of typing) free for your use. This is more than 60,000 words -- room enough for quite a few letters. The next step is to transform the disk so it leaps automatically into the CLI environment. Type ed s:startup-sequence (and press Return) Near the bottom of the file that appears you will see the line Load WB Just above this line, type in this new line: NewCli "CON:0/0/620/200/TEXT FILES" You may replace the characters TEXT FILES with any name you wish. Press the ESC key, producing an asterisk * at bottom left of screen. Type SA and press Return. Think of SA as meaning "save all" to disk. Then press the ESC key again and type the letter Q (for quit) to exit to the CLI. Here is where I must assume you know a bit or a bunch about about the ED commands. Even if you don't, let me take you through a short lesson on how the system works. You'll get results if you go step by step with me. At the CLI prompt, type ED Zekelet (and press Return) This puts you in a newly created file called Zekelet. Type some message, such as Hello Zeke, then press ESC and type SA, then press ESC and type Q. Do this twice more, creating, typing in, saving and exiting files I request that you name Alicelet and Miltlet. There is good reason for ending every file name with the characters "let" and I'll cover it soon. You're actually writing three letters, to friends named Zeke, Alice and Milt, and saving them to their respective disk files. -- When this part is complete, you can send any of the files to the printer by typing, for example: type > prt: zekelet (and press Return) -- You can see a text file on the CLI screen by typing type alicelet (and press Return) If the file is more than a screen long, you may press the right mouse button to stop the scroll, release it to continue. -- You can see a bit of information about the file by typing list miltlet (and press Return) -- If you have written several letters to friend Zeke and named them Zeke1let, Zeke2let, Zeke3let and so on, you can get a list segregated by Zeke occurrences by typing list s Zeke (and press Return) The s specifies a search for filenames containing the characters "Zeke". -- You can get a total list of all files ending in the characters "let" by typing LIST s "let" (and press Return) This tells you enough to get started. There's more to get sophisticated, however. If you try ED Alicelet and there is already an Alice file on the disk, there's no harm. The file text appears, signaling its existence. Press the ESC key and type Q to quit, then try ED Alice01let. If you anticipate putting more than nine letters to Alice on a single disk, this "01" style can help should you wish to sort the Alice letters. Sorting is the event I'll cover. I wanted a special file that held evidence of all existing "let" files on the disk. Now and then, I use the following AmigaDOS commands as a routine to update a sorted file of those files: list > hold s let (press Return) sort hold to letfile (press Return) The line "list > hold s let" lists to a file named hold all files containing the sought string "let". The line "sort hold to letfile" sorts (alphabetizes or ASCII-izes) contents of the hold file to a file named letfile. After trying this, type ed letfile and you will see that Alicelet, Miltlet and Zekelet are listed in alpahebtcal order. Numbered versions of the same name would be in numeric order, if you remember to name the files corectly. Numbers from 1 to 99 should be in the 01 to 99 form. Numbers up to 1000 should take an 0001 to 1000 format. This assures correct numeric sorting. Two extraneous lines are included in this sorted file. One is a Directory line, the other tells the number of files and blocks used. Ignore them. Even if you delete them with a CTRL-B while in ED mode, they jump back in the next time you sort the latest "let" files to letfile. Because I tired of writing the letterhead every time I started a letter, I created my own letterhead using ED and put it in a file named Head. It looks something like this, minus the dashed lines: -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Month XX, 1987 132 Bow Ave. Mellow, MT 55555 . ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- After creating the file with such as Ed Mom27let (and pressing Return) I press the ESC key, and at the asterisk prompt type IF/head/ (and press Return) This loads my template letterhead. I space over and insert the correct date. I then press the ESC key and press B (for bottom) and am taken to the point indicated above as a dot. Here I type addressee information and continue through the letter. Letter writing is only one of many uses this system can have. Its inherent strength is to give you a sorted record of what you have done, to have every file available for use. I hope the brief excursion into AmigaDOS demonstrates that even simple commands can do complex tasks that make your life easier. END OF TEXT