PPMore 2.2 User Manual Aug 23, 1992 Preface ======= The programs and files in this distribution are freely distributable, but are also copyright (c) Nico François. They may be freely distributed as long as no more than a nominal fee is charged to cover time and copying costs. No commercial usage is permitted without written permission from the author. Everything in this distribution must be kept together, in original unmodified form. The above is generally known as freeware. Coverdisks or diskmagazines need written permission of UGA to offer the Powerpacker utilities or Powerpacker/Reqtools libraries on their disk. For commercial use please read the copyright file on your original PP disk. If you have suggestions or remarks about this program, or if you find any bugs, please let me know. Write to the following address: Nico François Corbielaan 13 B-3060 Bertem BELGIUM PPMore 2.0 requires AmigaDOS Release 2 (Kickstart & Workbench 2.0) to run. Contents ======== 1. An introduction 2. Usage 3. Control 4. Using PPMore from other programs 1. An introduction ================== This program was written to complement one of my other utilities, PowerPacker (a command and data cruncher). It is used to read normal ascii text files or text files crunched with PowerPacker. The program itself is about 13K long and when you know you save about 60% when you crunch a text file, you can see that this could save a lot of space on your disks. PPMore was written as a more replacement (as you could have guessed :-), so I tried to keep the keyboard commands the same as well as adding some new ones. There are two main differences between PPMore and More, PPMore uses gadgets and it always loads the complete file in memory (More only loads part of the file and will load the rest when needed). If you can live with these differences, you can replace More with PPMore anywhere you want. PPMore uses 'powerpacker.library' and 'reqtools.library', so make sure these are present in your Libs: directory. Double-click 'Install_libs' for an automatic installation. If you haven't got PowerPacker you are of course missing one of the main features of this program. PowerPacker is available as shareware (up to version 2.3b) or as a commercial program (version 4.0a). Order a copy from UGA, P.O.Box 881, 3700 AW Zeist, The Netherlands. The commercial version offers several enhancements like 40 to 50 times faster crunching, overlay support, an ARexx port, and much more. 2. Usage ======== PPMore can be used in several different ways. - First of all via the CLI: If you enter 'PPMore ?' you will get a standard AmigaDOS template. Enter 'PPMore ??' for more information. You use PPMore like this: PPMore [] [TABS n] [PUBSCREEN ] [MEMVIEW m,l,f[,n]] If you provide a file the program will load and display it. Files crunched using PowerPacker 2.0 or higher will be automatically decrunched by PPMore. If the file was encrypted you will be prompted for the password. Options: TABS n Select tabsize, default is 8. Also see the Settings menu. PUBSCREEN Specify the public screen (by name) where PPMore should open its main window. Note that only real public screens will be recognized, not any screen. If you do not specify this option the default public screen will be used (normally the Workbench). The MEMVIEW option and other uses of the PUBSCREEN option are explained in section 4. PPMore can be made resident so it doesn't have to be loaded every time you use it, use the C: Resident command for this. You can't make PPMore resident when it is crunched!! The file is supplied as an uncrunched command file with the pure bit set. If you enter PPMore without options, you will be presented with a file requester. Entering PPMore with a directory instead of a file as an argument will also get you a file requester, but it will be positioned in the directory you specified. Examples: o PPMore DOCS:PPMore.doc TABS 4 Load and display 'DOCS:PPMore.doc' and use a tabsize of 4 spaces. o PPMore PUBSCREEN "Public Screen" TABS=6 AUTO: Put up file requester (in directory AUTO:) and open window on the public screen named 'Public Screen' (if found). Quotes are used to pass a screentitle with spaces. Use tabsize of 6. o PPMore ppmore.doc.pp PUBSCREEN Workbench Load and display 'ppmore.doc.pp' on the Workbench screen, no matter what the default public screen is. - Via the WorkBench: There are three different ways of using PPMore via the workbench: you can set the default tool of the (crunched) text file to 'PPMore', you can single click the PPMore icon and then double click the text file icon or you can double-click the PPMore icon and pick a file using the file requester. You set the default tool by single clicking the icon of the text file and selecting 'Info' from the workbench menu. You will get a window with several gadgets in it, click in the string gadget where it says 'Default tool' and enter 'PPMore'. PPMore should be in the command path for this to work, otherwise you must enter the full path so Workbench can find it. Last of all select the 'Save' gadget. Following tooltype is recognized by PPMore (in the text file's icon, not PPMore's icon): TABS=n : Set tabsize for file (default 8). NOTE: - PPMore will add '.pp' to the filename when the file wasn't found. This is very useful in the WorkBench enviroment: you can make an icon for 'text.doc' but name the file 'text.doc.pp'. Now the WorkBench will show an icon with 'text.doc' as name, but if you doubleclick it 'text.doc.pp' will be displayed. (As long as there is no 'text.doc' file in the directory!) - After reading a file you can press 'L' to load a new file, instead of quitting and restarting. - In the AmigaDOS template ignore the /M modifier on FILE, PPMore does not accept multiple file names (it was needed to let PPMore still support the old command line format for compatibility). 3. Control ========== PPMore can be controlled by keyboard or by intuition gadgets. To get a summary of the keyboard commands press , the function of the gadgets shouldn't be hard to understand. A few notes on printing: o The printer.device has to be in the DEVS: directory for PPMore to be able to print, you should also have correct preferences settings for your printer. Make especially sure the number of lines is correct. o You can continue to read the text when PPMore is printing (this IS a multitasking computer! :-), you *CAN* quit when printing is still in progress, printing will continue and all memory will be freed once it is finished. PPMore has a settings menu that allows you to change most of its settings. You can save these settings, snapshot or unsnapshot PPMore's window. The settings menu allows you to switch the following things on/off: o Scroll Text: This determines if text is scrolled or paged upon doing a page up or down. Note that the shifted keys/gadgets temporarily reverse this switch. By this I mean that if Space does a paged page down, pressing Shift Space will do a scrolled page down. o Wrap Lines: Line wrap mode determines how lines that are too long will be displayed. If it is on long lines will continue on the next line, if it is off they will be cut off. If a line is cut off an inverse '>' will appear on the right edge of the window. o Line Numbers: If this is on PPMore will display line number in the title of its window instead of a percentage. You can also change the tab size and the window's font. Any fixed width font will work. 'Snapshot Window' will remember PPMore's window position. 'Unsnapshot Window' will forget the position and will go back to the default behaviour of opening a window as large as the visible screen size. 4. Using PPMore from other programs =================================== If you are not a programmer you can skip this section. PPMore has two special options to make it possible to use it from other programs. This way you don't have to include a text displayer in your program, you just execute PPMore with one (or all) of the following options: MEMVIEW mem,len,flags[,name] If you specify this option PPMore will not load a file but instead it will display a chunk of memory. You specify the memory addres and length in the command line as well as some flags. The current version only has one flag: PPMORE_FREEMEM = bit 0 of the flag-word = 0x1. When this flag is set PPMore will free the memory after it has finished (using exec.library/FreeMem()), if it isn't set PPMore will just exit and leave the memory alone. This way your program can start PPMore with the PPMORE_FREEMEM flag set and exit before PPMore has ended. PPMore will then free the memory instead of your program. The address, length and flags must be presented as HEX longwords seperated by a comma. These options can be followed by another comma and a string to give the memory chunk a name, if this string is omited PPMore will use the name 'memory'. PUBSCREEN @addr or PUBSCREEN @* Apart from the use of the PUBSCREEN option explained in section 2, you can supply a '@' followed by a screen address in HEX or a '*'. PPMore will then open the main window on this screen. If you specify a '*' the frontmost screen will be used. Examples: o PPMore MEMVIEW "1A000,1D4E,0,my chunk" PPMore will open a window 'Listing of my chunk', start displaying at address 0x1A000 and stop at address 0x1BD4E. The memory will not be freed after PPMore exits. Note the use of quotes to get a title with spaces in. o PPMore PUBSCREEN @c2d8a0 MEMVIEW 1A000,1D4E,1,memname Same as previous but now PPMore will free the memory chunk and open the main window on the custom screen with the screen structure on address 0xc2d8a0. o PPMore PUBSCREEN @* myfile Load and display the file 'myfile' and open window on the front screen. NOTE: - If you use PPMore on another screen that is not a public screen PPMore will not check if the screen closes! PPMore should always finish before this screen is closed! (There is no problem when you open the window on a public screen) - Watch out when using these options, it is very easy to crash the Amiga if you don't know what you are doing! Using the PUBSCREEN with the name of a public screen is of course 100% safe. - The '-S' and '-@' options of older versions of PPMore are still supported for compatibility, but you should no longer use them. As always, I hope you find this program useful! ****************************************************************************** PPMore 2.2 written by Nico François (Yes, Nico is my first name :-) thanks to Holger Lubitz for the many bug reports :^) and all the useful suggestions. (c) 1992 Nico François