Contents
Introduction 3
Getting started 3
Feel free to experiment 4
The document and the display 5
The commands 5
Formatting 9
Mailmerge 12
Summary of commands 14
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Copyright (C) 1983 by MiCROL. All rights reserved. See cassette
copyright notice for further information.
Published and printed in England.
MiCROL (UK Mail Order)
38 Burleigh Street
Cambridge CB1 1DG
Subject to statutory limitation MiCROL accepts no liability for loss,
loss of profit, or consequential damage arising from the use of THE
WORD PROCESSOR or from information contained in this manual. It is
the purchaser's responsibility to ensure suitability for purpose.
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Introduction
The Word Processor will enable you to write, print and store
documents up to about four thousand words long. Like most word
processing programs, The Word Processor has two parts. The first part
is the text editor, which will take the text you type and place it in
the computer's memory, and has a variety of commands for editing the
document. The second part is the formatter, which takes the document
in memory, reformats it to fit the margins and other formatting
options you have chosen, and prints it. The printing can take place
either on the printer, or on the screen if you want to see how a
document will look without wasting paper.
Getting started
Use the command LOAD "wp" to load The Word Processor. It will take
about thirty seconds to load, and will run automatically. If an 'Out
of memory' error message appears you are probably using a 16K
Spectrum: The Word Processor will work only on a 48K machine.
Remember to turn the tape recorder off after the program has loaded.
When this has happened the screen should be blank apart from the
words 'Line 0' and 'The Word Processor (C) 1983 MiCROL' at the top of
the screen and, just underneath, a single underscore.
You now have an empty area to put text into. The top line says you
are 'on' line zero, but there is really no line zero: this just
means you are at the beginning of the document, which
at the moment is empty. The underscore character (_) is the
cursor and this always points at the line you are 'on'. To enter
text, press ENTER. A flashing L will appear at the bottom of the
screen: this is the normal entry cursor. Type 'Mary had a little
lamb' and press ENTER. You will see the text appear at the top
of the screen, and the line cursor (the _) will move down to
point at the new line. Now try typing something longer than thirtytwo
characters, which is the width of the screen. Type 'Its fleece as
white as snow, And everywhere that Mary went, The lamb was sure to
go'. This brings the word-wrap feature into play: words which would
be broken at the ends of lines are wrapped round on to the following
line. The screen should now show:
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Line 4
add text (ENTER to stop)
Mary had a little lamb
Its fleece as white as snow, And
everywhere that Mary went, The
lamb was sure to go
The new text has been split into three lines, and the cursor is now
on line 4. To stop entering text, press ENTER in response to the L
prompt at the bottom of the screen, without typing in any text. This
will change the second line of the display to 'ENTER=type arrows=move
d=delete' which is always shown when The Word Processor is expecting
a command rather than text.
Try the other two things listed on the second line. 'arrows=move'
means that if you press the 6 key, which has a down arrow printed
above it on the keyboard, the cursor will move down one line. The 7
key moves the cursor up one line. If you use CAPS SHIFT with these
commands, the cursor moves eight lines instead of just one. The other
two arrow keys, 5 and 8, move you to the beginning and end of the
document respectively. Do not use SHIFT with these. 'd=delete' means
that if you press the D key while in command mode, the line the
cursor is on will be deleted. Using these few commands you can
familiarise yourself with entering text and simple editing. The
ENTER, command will insert text at the cursor position in the
document, so if you want to go back and add some more text before the
end, just move the cursor to the right place, then press ENTER. Two
special cases worth mentioning: to append text to the document, press
8 then ENTER; to add text before the start of the document, press 5
then ENTER.
Feel free to experiment
You cannot harm The Word Processor by pressing any key in sight,
simply to see what it does. If you see a question you do not
understand, press ENTER to get back to the ordinary command level. If
you press BREAK, or press CAPS SHIFT and 6 while entering text at the
bottom of the screen, The Word Processor will stop with a Sinclair
BASIC report. To restart the program, type 'GO TO rs'. This restarts
with no loss of text. If you delete a line accidentally, you can
bring it back by moving the cursor up one line by pressing 7, then
pressing Y ('yank' or retrieve). The Y command will retrieve the last
line deleted using the D command.
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The document and the screen display
You can have a document up to 950 lines long in memory. The text
part of the screen display is only nineteen lines long, so the
screen acts as a 'window' looking at the local area of the text,
which will always include the cursor. The screen display is
automatically adjusted as you move around the document.
The commands
5 (unshifted): Move the cursor to the beginning of the
document.
6 (unshifted): Move the cursor down one line, unless the
cursor is at the end of the document.
6 (with CAPS SHIFT): Move the cursor down 8 lines, or to the
end of the document, whichever is nearer.
7 (unshifted): Move the cursor up one line, unless the cursor
is at the beginning of the document (on 'line 0').
7 (with CAPS SHIFT): Move the cursor up eight lines, or to the
beginning of the document, whichever is nearer.
8 (unshifted): Move the cursor to the end of the document.
A ('again'): repeat the last find or replace operation, with the
same options as before, except that in the case of a repeated F
(find) command the search will start at the line after the current
line, and in the case of a repeated R (replace) command the search
will start on the current line.
B: Mark the beginning of a block, for use by the C (block copy)
and Z (block delete) commands. The block will be shaded yellow on
the screen. To turn the beginning marker off, set it to line zero.
This means that if you wish to mark a block starting at the
beginning of the document, you should press B when you are on line
one, not line zero.
BREAK: you can stop The Word Processor by pressing the Spectrum
BREAK key (CAPS SHIFT with SPACE). If this happens accidentally,
restart by typing 'GO TO rs'. If you wish to make a copy of The Word
Processor, press BREAK, type CLEAR (the X key) (note that this will
destroy any document in memory) then use the command 'SAVE "wp" LINE
1'. Pressing BREAK, then typing RUN, is the way to clear all the
data from the file and start again.
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C: Copy the marked block (see the B and E commands) to the cursor
position. This will only work if the block markers have been set
using the B and E commands. This command will only work properly if
the cursor is outside the block to be copied. A block can be copied
as many times as necessary, and the receiving position may be before
or after the block to be copied. To move a block, rather than just
copying it, use the C command immediately followed by the Z (block
delete) command.
D: Delete the cursor line and close up the text. The cursor will
stay where it is, but will be on a different piece of text: the line
which was moved up to fill the gap. An exception is deletion of the
last line of the document, which moves the cursor back to the new
last line. To delete a small group of lines, put the cursor on the
first line of the group and press D repeatedly. To delete a large
group of lines, use the Z (block delete) command. The last line
deleted using the D command can be retrieved using the Y ('yank')
command. This also gives a method of copying or moving single lines.
E: Mark the end of a block, for use by the C (block copy) and Z
(block delete) commands. The block will be shaded yellow on the
screen. To turn the end marker off, set it to line zero.
ENTER: Enter text at the cursor position. You can type as much
text as you like before pressing ENTER again to place it in the
document, but in practice you will find it best not to type in more
than five lines in one chunk, because the input routine slows down at
about that point. The text at the bottom of the screen can be edited
before it goes into the text by using the usual Spectrum delete (CAPS
SHIFT with zero) and arrow keys (CAPS SHIFT with 6 and 7). Any piece
of text you enter which is longer than 32 characters (the width of
the screen) will be split into separate lines, without breaking any
words. To stop entering text, press ENTER as soon as the flashing L
appears at the bottom of the screen.
F: Find. First you will be asked 'find:'. Type in the sequence of
characters you are looking for. The question 'options:' will appear:
press ENTER for a straightforward search of the entire document. If
you enter no options, the search will start at the top of the
document, and all character positions will be searched. However, you
may type in a sequence of characters specifying one or both of the
two non-standard options. 'h' means 'start the search here (on the
current line) not at the beginning of the document'. 's' means
'search only at the start of each line. If the two options are
combined they may be typed either as 'sh' or 'hs'.
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A successful search will result in the cursor being moved to the
line containing the target of the search. If the search fails, an
appropriate message appears and the cursor does not move.
The 'find' command makes no distinction between capitals and
small letters.
Sometimes you will want to find something without knowing exactly
how it is spelt. For example, you might want to find the first
occurrence of either 'practise' or 'practice'. When you answer the
'find:' question, type a question mark for any character you are
unsure of: in this case, type 'practi?e'. The question mark is known
as the wild card character. You can have as many question marks as
you like in one 'find' string. A question mark will match any
character.
L: Load a document from tape. Asks you for the name of the file to
load, and searches for a file created by the S (save) command. If the
file is found, the document in memory is deleted and replaced by the
new file. If you possess The Database, another MiCROL product, you can
load files saved by The Database, provided they are not longer than
950 lines. All files saved by The Word Processor can be loaded by The
Database.
P: Format and print the document, either on the ZX printer or on
the screen. Press P again to confirm that you wish to print (in case
you pressed P by mistake) then check the display of the printing
format to see if you want to make any changes. If you want to change
any item, press the number to the left of the item, then type the new
value. When everything is satisfactory press ENTER. You will be asked
two more questions: whether you want the document to be printed on the
printer (the alternative is to print it on the screen only, to check
the formatting without wasting paper) and what heading should appear
at the top of every page. If you do not want a running heading just
press ENTER. The text will now appear on the screen or the printer.
You can control the format of the text via commands embedded in it,
as well as via the 'printing format' menu. To leave a blank line, just
enter a line consisting of a single space. This will appear as a blank
line on the screen. To force the next line of text to appear on a new
line, insert a line consisting of a single full stop (.) at the
appropriate point. To centre a line, place the characters '.c' on a
line of their own
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immediately above the line to be centred. These and the other
embedded formatting commands are explained in more detail under
'Formatting' below.
To break out of printing, press BREAK, then type 'GO TO rs'.
R: Replace string. This command uses exactly the same prompts as
the F (find) command (see above), but if the search is successful you
will be asked for a new string, and the target string will be
replaced by whatever you type in. If the result of the replacement is
longer than 32 characters, word-wrap will operate and the new line
will be split into two or more lines. To delete a string, replace it
with nothing: press ENTER in response to 'replace with:'.
S: Save document. You will be asked for a file name, and the
document in memory will be saved to tape. The time taken to save
varies with the length of the document: document of 500 lines will
take about a minute to save. The file format is compatible with The
Database: see under the L (load) command above.
SPACE: Space left. Pressing the space key will display a
message saying how many lines are left for text. The document can
be up to 950 lines long, so this number will always be 950 minus
the length of the document. You can see how long the document is
by pressing 8 to move to the end, then looking at the line number,
shown at the top of the screen.
T: type lines on the ZX printer. This simple command prints
whatever you enter on the printer. It allows you to add extra
headings, footnotes and postscripts to any document you print,
whenever you like. Word-wrap does not operate on this command: you
can only type 32 characters at a time. You can type as many lines as
you like. Go back to the main command level by entering an empty
line.
Y: 'yank' (retrieve) deleted line. The last line deleted can be
retrieved an automatically reinserted by pressing Y. This not only
enables you to recover from errors, but allows you to move a line by
deleting it and reinserting it somewhere else, and copy a line by
deleting it, then retrieving it more than once, perhaps in several
different places.
Z: 'zap' - delete marked block. This command will only work if
the boundaries bf a block have been marked using the B and E
commands. The Word Processor asks for confirmation, then deletes the
block and closes up the document.
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Formatting
The simplest way of formatting your document is to use the 'what
you see is what you get' formatting method. This only applies to a
limited extent, but is adequate for most purposes. Using this method,
you type your text into the document, leaving a blank line on the
screen (by typing a single space, then pressing ENTER) every time you
want a blank line to appear on the printed document. If you wish to
leave a few spaces at the beginning of a paragraph, just type the
spaces in at the start of the line, and they will be preserved at
print time. This last feature, however, only applies to text which
will appear at the start of a line in the printed document.
It is important to remember that text can be entered in
completely 'ragged' format. If you type a sentence so that each word
is on a separate line, the words will be collected together so that
lines are properly filled when the document is printed. This means
that when you edit a paragraph using the R (replace) command, you
need not worry about rearranging it so that each line has the
maximum number of words in.
While the 'what you see is what you get' method, in combination
with the 'printing format' menu are adequate for simple formatting,
other techniques must be used to achieve more complex formats. There
are a series of commands which you can place in the text itself to
control formatting as the document is printed. Each of these embedded
commands starts with a full stop and must occupy a line of its own.
The following example shows various embedded commands in use. The raw
file as it appears on the screen is shown first, followed by the
printed result.
.p1
.j1
. c
This Heading is Centred
This is a piece of ordinary
text, justified and printed over
a width of 32 characters.
.j0
This section is not justified,
but left with a ragged right
edge.
.j1
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.i10
You can easily indent the text
by ten characters.
.i0
.w16
This paragraph is printed
over on the left hand side of
the page.
.i16
.w16
And this paragraph is printed on
the right hand side.
.f0
If you wish, you can turn
formatting off entirely, to
allow you to position things
like
 2
 e=mc
manually. If formatting is off,
no justification will be done.
.fl
.i0
This appears on the printer as:
 page 1
 This heading is centred
This is a piece of ordinary
text, justified and printed over
a width of 32 characters.
This section is not justified,
but left with a ragged right
edge.
 You can easily indent
 the text by ten
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 characters.
This paragraph
is printed over
on the left hand
side of the
page.
And this
paragraph is
printed on the
right hand side.
If you wish, you can turn
formatting off entirely, to
allow you to position things
like
 2
 e=mc
manually. If formatting is off,
no justification will be done.
Here is a complete list of the embedded formatting commands and
their effects:
. (just a full stop): Start the next piece of text on a new
line.
.An prompt: print the prompt or question on the screen and ask
the user for variable n, for use in mailmerge. N must be between
zero and nine. See 'Mailmerge' below.
.C: centre the following line, within the existing margins.
.FO: turn formatting off. If formatting is off, lines of text
will be printed just as they are, without word-wrap or
justification. This is useful for printing tables, graphic designs
and other items needing careful manual formatting.
.F1: turn formatting on. You need only use it if formatting has
been turned off by .F0.
.In : indents by n characters. Resets the current line length
to 32-n. To turn off indentation, use .I0.
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.J0: turn off justification. Following text will be printed
with a ragged right margin.
.J1: turn on justification. Following text will be printed
with an even right margin.
.Ln: set the current page length to n lines. This number does not
include the inter-page gap or top margin set by .T.
.Pn: set the page number to n, so that the next page printed will
be numbered n. .P0 turns page numbering off.
.Tn: set the top margin or inter-page gap to n lines.
.Wn: set the page width or line length to n characters.
Any nonexistent embedded commands will be ignored, except that
they will have the effect of the '.' command in starting a new line of
printed output. Avoid setting the line length to less than 2, the page
length to less than 1, or the inter-page gap to less than 3. If you do
one of these things accidentally and the system seems to hang up,
press BREAK, then type 'GO TO rs', then edit the text in the normal
way.
Mailmerge
The mailmerge facilities of The Word Processor allow you to create
a standard 'skeleton' document, then add the variable information when
the document is printed. The best way to explain this is by means of
an example. Suppose you have received a lot of presents from distant
relatives at Christmas, and you want to write thankyou letters to them
all. If you were fiery lazy, you could create a standard letter using
The Word Processor, and print as many copies as you liked, adding the
variable information, such as the name of the person you are writing
to, when the document is printed.
If you created a document which looked like this on the
screen:
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.a0 name of addressee
.a1 present
.a2 adjective
Dear \0,
.
 thank you for the \1 you so
kindly sent me for Christmas. I
have found it \2. Your present
was especially welcome, because
I have been meaning to buy a \1
myself for some time.
Yours ever,
Johnny
the three '.a' commands would result in you being asked the three
questions next to them when the document was printed. The answer you
give to the question printed by '.a1' will be used to replace every
following occurrence of the sequence '\1' in the text. Similarly, the
answers given to the questions printed by '.a0' and '.a2' will replace
the sequences '\0' and '\2' in the text. There are ten possible '.a'
commands, .a0 to .a9, and ten corresponding symbols for
substitution, \O to \9. If you printed the document shown above and
gave the answers 'Uncle Fred', 'hippopotamus' and 'rather frolicsome'
to the questions, the printed result would be:
Dear Uncle Fred,
thank you for the
hippopotamus you so kindly sent
me for Christmas. I have found
it rather frolicsome. Your
present was especially welcome,
because I have been meaning
to buy a hippopotamus myself for
some time.
Yours ever,
Johnny.
When you use mailmerge, remember that mailmerge does not operate
if formatting has been turned off using .f0, and that the answer to a
question asked by the '.a' command cannot be longer than 32
characters. Also, remember to put your '.a' commands before any text
which is to receive substitutions.
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Summary of commands
ARROW KEYS: 7 and 6 (unshifted) move up and down one line, or
(shifted) move up and down eight lines. 5 and 8 (unshifted) move to
the beginning and end of the document.
A: 'again' - repeat the last find or replace, using the same options,
but starting from the current position.
B: mark the beginning of a block.
BREAK: stop The Word Processor. 'GO TO rs' restarts.
C: copy marked block to cursor position.
D: delete the current line and close up the gap. See Y.
ENTER: enter text at the cursor position (i.e. after the
current line).
F: Find string. If you press ENTER in response to 'options:', F
searches all positions in document. See 'The commands' for details of
options.
L: Load file from tape. If the load is successful, any previous
document is deleted.
P: print document. See 'The commands' and 'Formatting' for details.
R: replace string. Like F (find) but asks 'replace with:' if
the search succeeds.
S: save file on tape.
T: type line or lines on the printer.
Y: 'yank' - retrieve last line deleted.
Z: 'zap' - delete marked block. Asks for confirmation.
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