This document summarizes all the significant changes
in the new version of BEX. We assume that you are currently using BEX 2.2,
and that you have read the BEX 2-2 FEATURES
chapter that talks about the differences between BEX 2.2 and earlier
versions. (This chapter was supplied on the BEX 2.2 update disk. If you
purchased BEX after November 1986, then the BEX 2-2 FEATURES
chapter is on your BEXtras disk.)
We completely rewrote the BEX Dox. We guarantee that, even if you know BEX by heart, you'll learn some new things by reading the new BEX Dox. The audio version has a much better tone-indexing system; the "Reference Tape" contains the complete Table of Contents, making it easier to find your way around. The braille version uses the Code for Computer Braille Notation. The large print version uses changes in typeface that make it much easier to find the information you're after.
If you are involved in teaching BEX to new computer users, you'll be happy to know that we narrowed the focus of the Learner Level. We only discuss a few Editor commands. Learner Level Section 5 includes an extensive discussion of setting up your printer correctly. In that Section, we use the "GRID" chapters supplied on your new BEXtras disk to help new users understand the numbering system used in BEX format commands.
Master Level Section 6, Contextual Replace, wins the prize for greatest expansion. Your old Section 7 was 13 print pages; the new version is 55 print pages. We hope this means more people can take advantage of this powerful feature.
Since we tried hard to make the new Dox as wonderful as sliced cheese, we won't go in to great detail in this document. Check the Index (Appendix 6) when you need more information about any of the features we describe here.
As always, we want to warn you about BEX bugs when we
can. We strongly recommend the 128K Apple as the
appropriate base for BEX. We therefore discourage use of the Apple II
Plus; all information regarding its use is moved to Appendix 4 in the
revised BEX Dox (where you'll find some sneaky ways to use Master Level
features on an Apple II Plus). There is a compelling reason for urging the
128K Apple. BEX 2.2 and earlier versions essentially functioned in a 64K
environment. The additional 64K of auxiliary memory in a 128K Apple was
used only to store program segments--in particular, the Editor, Print, and
Replace programs. When the time came to execute these programs, they were
copied from auxiliary to main memory. One of the most dramatic changes for
BEX 3.0 is that programs are actually executed in the 64K auxiliary
memory. This allows for larger programs, and therefore, some new features.
(By the way, if you have been using a Titan Accelerator speed-up card, you
will perceive a definite slowing down with BEX 3.0. That's because
the Titan card only speeds up main memory activity.)
BEX 3.0 supports the Apple IIgs in a variety of ways;
check Apple IIgs in the Index for details. It's quicker to mention
the limitations of our Apple IIgs support:
Because the Apple IIgs can not display the <DEL>
character checkerboard, we had to change the name of the Zippy chapter.
It's now the Ready chapter; its single-character name is
right bracket. We called it the Ready chapter for two reasons: The Echo
pronounces The Ready chapter is much larger on the Apple IIgs,
since the IIgs comes with a minimum of 256K memory. The Ready chapter in
memory is 20 BEX pages on the Apple IIgs. Any Ready chapter page files
with an extension of If you have created automatic procedure chapters that
include the <DEL> character for the Zippy chapter, use Replace
characters to change the <DEL> to right bracket. This won't affect
the final character in the auto chapter, which is a high bit
set character. (See Master Level Section 7 for a much clearer
discussion of auto chapters.) However, if your auto chapter included the
<DEL> as a page number token, you will have to manually change it
back to <DEL> after replacing.
We have completely revamped the large print screen
display in BEX. Earlier versions used the "screen flip" system. You saw
one screen of data, then it manually or automatically flipped to the next
screen. BEX 3.0 replaces this with true scrolling. This
scrolling is available at all menus. It's also used inside the
Editor; when you enter text for Locate you see a cursor on the line above
the status line. Ten or five column screen also scrolls when you press
control-W A. You can control the speed of BEX 3.0 supports many more disk drive options; see the
separate section on Disk Drives that follows.
When configuring at the User or Master Levels, you may
specify "auto linefeed" and/or "pause on form feed" for braillers. BEX no
longer asks the "auto linefeed" question for large print printers, since
you must answer yes. (That was probably the single most troublesome thing
when trying to do BEX large print.)
There's a new Starting Menu option: R -
Recognition of cards. This option lets you teach BEX about circuit cards
it doesn't recognize. Interface Guide Section 15 tells how and when to use
this new option.
BEX 3.0 includes many features allowing Master Level
access to more disk drives. In previous versions of BEX, we used the term
"nonstandard disk drives" when talking about the Disco-RAM, RAM drives,
and the Sider. This is replaced with a more positive term in BEX 3.0:
"extended disk systems." Please read Master Level Section 3 for all the
details. We found it very hard to get the Disco-RAM and BEX to cooperate;
since BEX 3.0's RAM drive support is so thorough, we no longer support the
Disco-RAM card.
When your Apple has more than 128K memory, BEX 3.0
lets you configure portions of memory as RAM drives. (Extra memory can
come from an auxiliary slot card on the IIe, its equivalent on the IIc, a
memory expansion slot card on the IIgs, or a slot 1 through 7 card on any
Apple model.) You may assign one of these RAM drives to the Main program.
When you do, BEX checks to see if the Main side software is on the RAM
when As you're configuring RAM drives, BEX gives you
on-line help--as always, press <CR> alone at a configuration prompt
for an explanation.
3.5-inch disk drives
BEX 3.0 includes a specially patched version of DOS
3.3 that works with 3.5-inch microfloppy drives, so 3.5-inch microfloppies
may be used for your BEX data. However, BEX still requires that the
program be booted and loaded from a 5.25-inch floppy drive, so your system
must have at least one 5.25-inch floppy disk drive. When you include
3.5-inch disk drives in your configuration, then you can read ProDOS
textfiles from ProDOS 3.5-inch disks, as well as read and write DOS 3.3
data. Remember, however, that Read textfile can only find ProDOS textfiles
at the root directory level.
In previous versions of BEX, you were limited to 6
"virtual drives." One of these drives could be the controller card for a
Sider hard disk, which in turn gave you access to the Sider's own
"volume number" virtual drive system. BEX 3.0 allows 8 virtual disk
drives, one of which may by a Sider. It's possible for one
configuration to include two 5.25-inch floppy disk drives, two 3.5-inch
microfloppy disk drives, one Sider with many disk "volumes",
plus three RAM drives from an extended memory card.
BEX 3.0 handles a wider range of disk drives, which
requires some modification of the Starting Menu. Option I - Initialize
disks prevents you from initializing a RAM drive; you may initialize 5.25
or 3.5-inch disks. Option C - Copy disks refuses to copy anything except
5.25-inch disks. (The April 87 RDC Newsletter article about RAM drives
warned about conflicts between the RAMDRIVE software and initializing from
the BASIC prompt. BEX 3.0 automatically modifies the RAMDRIVE program, so
you can use options I and C on the Starting Menu and even
type Since BEX 3.0 supports RAM drives, 3.5-inch drives,
and various other combinations, it's easy to momentarily forget the
relationship between the virtual drive numbers you configured and the slot
and drive numbers of the actual disk devices. At all BEX menus, you have
option D - Disk catalog. When you press D, BEX responds with In the same vein, we added one more scanning
option for the As mentioned earlier, there's a new option R -
Recognition of cards on the Starting Menu. What is in this computer now
li/s the current configuration name and whether RAM drives are available.
You may have encountered a bug trying to initialize totally blank disks
twice in a row. Option I - Initialize disks no longer assumes you want to
initialize another disk; after the initialization in complete, you're back
at the Starting Menu.
When working for a long time at the Page Menu with
earlier versions, BEX may have crashed with the In earlier versions of BEX, the Editor, Print, and
Replace characters options were loaded in auxiliary memory before you got
to the Starting Menu prompt. Now these programs are loaded when you move
to the Main Menu. The net result is that you get the Starting Menu prompt
faster after you supply a We changed the name of the Starting Menu
program. In earlier versions, Whenever you name a BEX chapter, BEX now checks to
make sure that the chapter name won't end in space. This checking occurs
whether you're typing the chapter name or you're using a target chapter
naming method. In previous versions, a BEX chapter name ending in space
was a real pain: it appeared in catalogs and numbered chapter li/s, but
you couldn't use it for anything.
On the Main Menu, Auto print from VB, To VB, and From
VB work as they always did, but you'll notice some slight rewording of the
prompts. The software for these options are loaded differently in BEX 3.0.
Because of the change, you can no longer include option A - Auto print
from VB in an automatic procedure chapter.
To transfer data from BEX to the disk-based
VersaBraille II, you configure one printer as class P - Paperless
brailler. In earlier versions of BEX, a Paperless brailler functioned just
like a generic printer, except that BEX automatically placed the $$z zap
format command at the start of each print stream. If your chapter
contained the $$d reset to default command, then BEX would wake up and
start formatting the text. If your chapter contained any control
characters, in particular the <ASCII 30> discretionary line break,
you had to use the We have removed option P - Partition chapters from the
Second Menu. Here's why: Partition chapters was a remnant from
BRAILLE-EDIT days. If you can remember back that far, BRAILLE-EDIT'S
Page Menu only allowed you to grab a single page at a time to an
existing chapter. BEX's Grab pages is much more flexible.
When you want to create two (or more) chapters from an existing chapter,
you can use Grab pages into a new chapter. By using Grab
pages, you are copying information into a new chapter.
BEX's Partition chapters was "destructive"; it did not
make copies as it divided the source chapter. Because Partition was
destructive, it always worked on the "home" drive. Even if you specified
the With BEX 2.2 and earlier, you're prompted You can use option I - Input through slot to capture
serial output from a wide variety of devices. Some send print data, like
the IBM-PC; others send braille data, like the disk-based VersaBraille II.
In earlier versions, BEX created pages holding between 3300 and 3400
characters. When you back-translate pages this big, you can easily have an
overflow error.
In BEX 3.0, Input through slot creates two different
page sizes. When your data is all lowercase or all uppercase, BEX assumes
it's braille, and limits page size to around 3072 characters. When
your data is a mixture of lowercase and uppercase, BEX assumes it's
print, and changes BEX pages at around 3800 characters.
Previously, Fix chapters could miss some of the page
files at disk; when Fix chapters was finished rebuilding the directory
file, it left you at the BASIC prompt. In the new version, Fix chapters is
bullet-proof; when it's done, you're back at the Second Menu prompt.
Preventing crashes when printing to HI-RES screen: In
previous versions of BEX, people frequently crashed the program when they
printed material from the BEXtras disk to the HI-RES screen--that is: SH,
SL, SB, SJ, etc. The worst offender was the You may have encountered some problems trying to
center text on the first line of a braille page; these have been fixed.
We've added a few new $$ commands: check the Thick Reference As with previous versions, control-P # <space>
saves the current page and moves to page #. The new feature is that
control-P 0 <space> saves the current page and then returns you to
it, at position zero. (This was a BRAILLE-EDIT feature that was brought
back to life.)
During voice output with control-G, control-R,
control-T, and control-O, BEX boops when passing a hard <CR>. In
previous versions of BEX, control-O moved the cursor forward and spoke
approximately 500 characters. The number 500 was totally arbitrary; based
on user requests, we decided to make control-O talk until the end of the
current BEX page, unless stopped with the spacebar. When you toggle off
"jerky" speech with control-S J, then BEX pauses at the end of each
sentence.
We've added a new "unit character" for the advance
cursor, zoom back cursor, and delete text group of Editor commands. Just
as control-W stands for a BEX word, and control-P stands for a BEX
paragraph, control-L stands for an explicit new line: a hard <CR> or
the BEX new-line ( $l ) indicator. Control-A control-L does not
advance to the next printed or output line--BEX
3.0 does not have a WYSIWYG editor. So when you enter control-A control-L,
you advance the cursor to the next hard <CR> or the initial space of
the next ( $l ). When you enter control-D 8 control-L you delete
text from the current cursor forward up to, but not including, the eighth
hard <CR> or ( $l ). When you enter control-Z 6 control-L
your cursor zooms back to the sixth previous hard <CR> or
( $l ).
Pressing control-I or Tab now turns all characters in
front of the cursor into the underline character. When the insert is
completed by control-N (or any other control character) then the
underlines turn back into the text that was there. This attempts to make
Editor screen display less disconcerting to sighted people during keyboard
insertion. It does slow down screen display a bit; if you can't see the
screen, enter control-S S N to use 40-column non-HI-RES mode, which is the
fastest.
In previous versions of BEX, all control characters
were represented with the <DEL> key checkerboard in W and N Editor
screen modes. The DP-10 large print screen display device can not show the
<DEL> key checkerboard, nor can it show BEX's HI-RES screen. Enter
control-S D to change the control-character representative from the
<DEL> key to the at-sign, which the DP-10 can display.
In previous versions of BEX, most, but not all changes
to the Editor environment lasted until you rebooted. We have attempted to
make things more consistent. With this version every change
to the Editor environment la/s until you reboot with the single exception
of braille keyboard mode. When you enter control-S K B and Quit, you
really don't want to use braille keyboard at the menus. The commands
affected by this change include: control-S A to announce keystrokes;
control-S S (letter) to change screen modes; control-S J to toggle jerky
speech; control-S B and control-S V to toggle the braille and voice
channels; and the two new commands, introduced in the next two paragraphs.
The block marker is no longer cleared when you use
control-V to preview format in the Editor. Control-O and control-T use the
correct pitch at the end of a BEX page.
Option B - Back translate from grade 2 got its first
meaningful overhaul in some time. A number of annoying bugs are gone, and
there are a few new features. Half an hour spent with User Level Section
9, Parts 2 and 3 will get you up to date on all the latest back translator
news.
In brief: the back translator recognizes a mid-word
change in capitalization signaled by the termination mark, dot 6, dot 3.
Here's a sample with two particularly stinky words. What you want in
print is DECtalk and BRaT; you enter
We've changed how the back translator decides between
the ble sign and the number sign. The program back-translates
dots 3-4-5-6 as a number sign when the word begins with either a letter
sign or a single capital letter followed by a number. A good example is
Canadian postal codes: you can now back-translate M4G 7Y6 as
long as you enter it as Previously, a single letter inside parentheses was
gobbled up in back translation. BEX 3.0 translates it without damage.
Previously, two hyphens (a braille dash) were back-translated to space,
hyphen, space. BEX 3.0 just leaves the two hyphens alone.
When you turn off back-translation with space,
underbar, hyphen, space your text is totally left alone. In earlier
versions, various problems occurred during no-translation mode. This means
you can enter tricky number-and-letter combinations in computer braille
and be confident that the back-translator won't mangle them.
We're getting closer and closer to the elusive goal of
a perfect Grade 2 translator. The "dash clash" problem--detailed in the
June 1987 Newsletter--has been fixed. The translator generally creates an
apostrophe rather than a close single quote after a word ending in the
letter so. It used to fail for most words ending in double
so. The translator in BEX 3.0 is more clever in this regard.
When you show a range of Roman numeral page numbers,
you need to have a letter sign after the hyphen and before the second
Roman numeral. For BEX 3.0, the translator automatically creates letter
signs for both numbers.
When a word ends in a hyphen followed by a single
letter, the translator creates a letter sign, even if the letter is
followed by punctuation. For example, the translator places a letter sign
before the X in Use control-X. The translator
doesn't place the <ASCII 30> discretionary line break character in
this situation, since you wouldn't want the letter X all
alone at the start of a braille line.
BANA'S November 1986 changes to English
Braille--American Edition mandate a different treatment for letters that
follow numbers. The new rule is that any time a letter
touches a number, you must use the letter sign. Previously, you only added
a letter sign when the braille reader must distinguish a letter from a
digit: when the letter touching the digit is lowercase and between
a and just. We decided not to implement this
change.
It's now possible to have both the SlotBuster and
an Echo in your system without BEX acting up. BEX decides which software
to load (TEXTALKER or SCAT) depending on which device is in the highest
numbered slot. So when the Echo is in slot 4 and the SlotBuster is in slot
1, BEX loads TEXTALKER. When the SlotBuster is in slot 7 and the Echo is
in slot 2, BEX loads SCAT. Appendix 2 is devoted to using the SlotBuster
with BEX.
In addition to supporting the SlotBuster's
printer ports, BEX 3.0 lets you use the modem port for Input through slot
and tape-based VersaBraille transfers. You need to add a 36 adapter to the
SlotBuster's cable to attach any RDC-standard cable.
Earlier versions of BEX were very rude when it came to
managing the SlotBuster's buffer. When you were using the SlotBuster
as both a printer interface card and a voice device, the data you wanted
printed frequently got clobbered. BEX 3.0 won't do this. However, you
cannot add SlotBuster speech to a document that's being printed
through the SlotBuster printer port.
The "enter line review" command character for the
SlotBuster's SCAT software is control-R. This has prevented
SlotBuster users from beginning or cancelling Remember Mode. For BEX 3.0,
the asterisk (*) character functions exactly as control-R does at BEX
menus. You can use either control-R or asterisk to start remembering
keystrokes, or cancel remembering keystrokes after you've started.
KNOWN
BEX BUGS
chapter, which supersedes all other known bug li/s--or as
we used to call them at our stuffiest, "Known System Anomalies."
Apple IIgs Support and 128K Apples
Zippy Chapter Becomes Ready Chapter
]
as "ready," and the Ready chapter is always
ready for your data, even when you don't have a disk in the drive.
.U
or later are written to disk on your
default data drive.
Large Print Scrolling
Configuration Changes
Disk Drive Changes
Configuring RAM drives
INIT HELLO
at the BASIC prompt.) FID now On-line list of disk drives configured
Which
drive? #
where # is your default data drive, the highest virtual
drive number. Enter question mark followed by <CR> to obtain a list
of virtual drive numbers and the slot and drive they relate to.
Drive number or chapter name:
as well
as the Which drive?
prompts. Entering slash followed by
<CR> is the same as entering the number for your default data drive.
Menu Changes
OUT OF MEMORY
error. You may also have encountered this error when working with long
li/s of chapters. BEX 3.0 manages memory much better, so these problems
are a thing of the past.
Moving between Starting and Main Menus
MAIN
was the name
for both the Starting Menu and the Main Menu. This allowed you to move
from the Second or Page Menu to the Starting Menu by inserting the Boot
side and pressing J. Now, the Starting Menu is named START
so
you can only move between the Main Menu and the Starting Menu. If you
press <space> at the Main Menu and your Boot disk is not in drive 1,
then you'll get a Program segment cannot be loaded
error
message.
Preventing spacey chapters
VersaBraille Issues
FILTER
transformation before you printed
to the VersaBraille Second Menu Changes
Partition chapters goes away
First new target chapter
and Second new target
chapter
on different drives, they were created on the drive where
the source chapter was. This was BEX's only "destructive" option, and the
only one where you could not direct the target chapter to a different
drive, so removing it increases consistency.
No marking BEX page breaks when writing
textfiles
Do you
want page markers? N
when you Write chapters to a textfile. When
you answer Y, BEX theoretically places a control-Y in the textfile at the
transition between BEX pages. When you Read a textfile to a chapter, BEX
theoretically moves to a new BEX page when it encounters a control-Y.
We're using the word "theoretically" for a good reason--we have never been
able to make this feature work correctly. Each BEX version has had a
slightly different bug in regards to control-Y page breaks. The primary
reason we thought this feature up was to facilitate transferring files
between BEX and a ProDOS spell checker. BEX page size for Input through slot
Improvements to Fix chapters
Print Program Changes
RESUME
chapter,
because it contained $$w72 $$f58 format commands that set the carriage
width and form length greater than the built-in values for 40 or 20 column
screen. BEX 3.0 is a little smarter in this regard: the print program
ignores any $$w# or $$f# commands when # is larger than the maximum
carriage width or form length of the chosen screen mode.
Editor Changes
Saving the current page
Improved Talking Cursor Movement
Moving and deleting by lines
The DP-10 toggle
Duration of changes you make to the Editor
environment
Editor Bug Fixes
,,dec,'talk
and ,,br,'a,t
in your grade 2
chapters.
,m#d,g #g,y#f
in your grade 2
chapter. In earlier versions of BEX, the back-translator never created a
slash in inkprint. With BEX 3.0 you get a slash when your grade 2 chapter
contains the two cells, letter sign, st-sign.
Grade 2 Translator Changes
SlotBuster
The End