At the Learner Level we discussed only a few Editor commands. In this Section we introduce all the Editor commands. In addition to a broad variety of ways to move the cursor, we explore the clipboard and view mode. The clipboard is a flexible tool that makes editing text a delight. The clipboard allows you to move sections of text around very quickly. View mode lets you preview your text without leaving the Editor.
In the Learner Level Section 4, Part 4, we described the smallest working unit of data as a character. A character in BEX can be any member of the group of the 128 ASCII characters. "ASCII" rhymes with "passkey" and is a well-established computer standard for internally representing characters by numbers. At the Learner Level, we mentioned the characters on the keyboard: all the lowercase and uppercase letters; the space character; the digits 0 through 9; punctuation like comma, period, percent sign, parenthesis, etc. This group of characters numbers 96, and is sometimes known as the printable characters.
In addition, there are 32 non-printing characters, called control characters. You use these characters to control the behavior of a printer or a computer. At the Learner Level, we mentioned one of these control characters: the carriage return, also known as control-M. BEX allows you to type any control character directly into your text. This means that a BEX chapter can contain instructions for the Apple, for an interface card, or for any printer.
When you want to type a control character in your
text, first enter the Editor command control-C. The next key you press is
interpreted as a control character and is placed as in your text. In the
80-column Wide mode and the 40-column Non-HI-RES screen mode, all control
characters appear as the delete Entering any control character that's a letter is
easy: first enter control-C and then press the appropriate letter. Since
most of the one-key control characters, such as <CR> and the left
and right arrow keys, have a control character assigned to them, you can
enter them two ways in your text. For example, entering control-C and then
pressing M has the same effect as pressing <CR>.
In printer manuals, you may encounter some strange
looking characters like control-caret or control-shift-2 that you have to
enter into your text as printer instructions. Just take these names as
literal instructions: for control-shift-2, first enter control-C, then
press the shift key and the digit 2 simultaneously. The
result is the break character, also known as
null or ASCII zero.
It's important to distinguish between control
characters as Editor commands and control characters as items in your
text. You use control character Editor commands to delete, insert, and
move around in your text. These commands are not placed into your text.
You enter control characters into your text to give instructions to BEX
and your printer. These commands are placed into your text,
and can be manipulated as normal characters.
As we mentioned above, the Echo speaks the control
characters that are in your text. BEX uses a special vocabulary for voice
and braille output when you move character by character with the left and
right arrow keys. When you enter a "control-shift-2" in your text and then
arrow over it, your voice or braille device outputs "break." Some control
characters have such long names that we chose to abbreviate them to "ASCII
31" or "ASCII 32."
As we mentioned above, every control character appears
as the delete checkerboard in the two screen modes that use
built-in character generators, modes W and N.
For users with large print and braille screen access
devices such as a DP-10 or BDP, the command control-C D toggles the
control characters in your text between the default checkerboard, and the
at-sign. However, this is only visible in screen modes W and N. Part 6
explains more about this command. For all other screen modes, print and
braille, BEX draws special characters. Most control characters appear as a
smaller, underlined uppercase letter. As mentioned earlier, <CR>
appears as tiny uppercase C and R jammed
together. Control-J is the ASCII standard for line feed, so
it appears as tiny uppercase L and F jammed
together.
At the Learner Level, we described in detail how to
enter Editor commands correctly. Everything we said is true, but we
omitted some potentially confusing details.
Remember that when a command is defined as two control
characters such as control-A control-W you must type two
control characters.
When a command is defined as a control character
followed by one or more plain characters such as control-S A you
may type the plain characters as control characters. After
you enter control-S, BEX is laissez-faire about both shift and control
keys: it interprets control-S control-S control-W exactly the same as
control-S S W.
With standard versions of TEXTALKER you can change the
Echo command character by entering control-E followed by another control
character. For example, entering control-E control-A changes the
Echo's command character from control-E to control-A. We have
modified the TEXTALKER on your There are several editor commands that we document as
being executed with the spacebar. An example is control-A <space> to
move to the end of the page. As you may have discovered through
experimentation, the spacebar is not the only key that executes the
command. In fact, any key that is not specifically assigned to a command
executes that command. In the case of advancing the cursor, control-A
<space>, control-A W, control-A <CR>, control-A backslash and
control-A control-J (or down-arrow) have identical effects.
If you're a "hot dog" typist, you can use the control
character that starts one command as the "any key" character that executes
the previous command (which is very handy for inserting). For example, you
wish to insert five words of text and then delete the rest of the
paragraph. Enter control-I, type the five words, then enter control-D
control-P.
We introduced a few of these commands at the Learner
Level. Now we'll give you the complete list. All the cursor move commands
are available for all users; however, some cursor move commands also
output text to the voice and braille channels.
Before we introduce the following command, we need to
explain more about your text output. Because BEX is oriented around
characters, internally it doesn't save data as lines. The
lines that are centered around line-oriented movement
commands (explained below) are not the same as output lines.
The line-oriented movement commands work with lines which are created by
the format commands you place in your text. One unit you can specify for moving and deleting text
is control-L for a line. This only refers to an explicit new line created
by a hard <CR> or a new-line ( $l ) indicator you type in
your text. BEX only divides your text into output lines when it's
printing. Control-L cannot refer to output lines in the Editor, since BEX
doesn't know where they will be.
You can move by sentences in the Editor. BEX's
definition of a sentence includes any series of letters ending with some
punctuation such as period, question mark, exclamation point, and left
parenthesis, then <space>. Because of this, BEX interprets most
abbreviations as the end of a sentence. Keep this in mind when you use the
sentence command, control-T.
When we introduce the commands, we use the number sign
# to stand for number you enter. This number may consist of one or more
digits. For example, when we say that control-A # <space> advances
the cursor # characters, the # can be a digit from 1 to 4096, the limit of
the page characters.
The up arrow, control-K and the down arrow, control-J
move the cursor up or down one line on the screen. When your cursor is
located at the top or bottom line on the screen, then control-K and
control-J will scroll the screen, too.
Control-A starts many editor commands which Advance
the cursor forward through your text: how far you advance depends on the
subsequent numbers and unit character.
You specify how many units to advance by entering
control-A # then the unit's control character. This includes all the
above commands except for control-A control-S. For example: control-A 200
<space> advances 200 characters, control-A 5 control-W advances five
words, control-A 4 control-T advances the cursor to the space after the
fourth sentence, control-A 3 control-L advances the cursor to the third
new line, and control-A 2 control-P advances two paragraphs.
To move the cursor backward, use control-Z in place of
control-A:
Just as with control-A, you use a number to
specify how many units to move. You can use any unit command except
control-S. Control-Z 5 control-W zooms back 5 words, control-Z 4 control-T
zooms back the cursor to the space after the fourth previous sentence,
control-Z 3 control-L zooms back the cursor to the third previous new
line, control-Z 3 control-P zooms back three paragraphs, and control-Z
1400 <space> zooms back 1400 characters.
You can locate text from your current cursor in two
directions. Start out with control-L, then type the exact characters you
wish to locate. Your search string can be up to 38 characters long. As you
are typing in the characters you wish to locate, you can use the left
arrow key to fix typing errors.
After you have typed your search string, execute the
locate command with control-A to locate in advance of the cursor (towards
the end of the page.) Or, execute the locate command with control-Z to
locate backwards of the cursor (towards the beginning of the page). The
next time you use control-L, you do not need to type the search string
again. When BEX can't find an occurrence of your string, you get one high
error beep and your cursor stays where it is. The locate command remembers
the search string characters until you turn off the computer or enter
different characters.
Control-L is very picky when it comes to searching for
sequences of characters. You must type the search string exactly as it
appears in your text. This includes case and punctuation. For example, you
want to search for the word Braille and the word appears with
both an uppercase and lowercase B. You Type initial and final spaces in your string when you
want to find a word as oppose to a series of letters. Suppose you're
trying to locate the word the. If you type To type a control character into your search string,
you use the same method as typing control characters in your text. Enter
control-C then type letter. For example, suppose you want to search for
every occurrence of control-S followed by two dollar signs in your text.
Control-L starts the locate command. Next type control-C S At the Learner Level, we documented many commands as
talking movement commands. By this point, you're probably not surprised to
discover that the same commands also output to the voice and
braille channels.
You can move your cursor by words and output to the
voice or braille channel with control-G and control-R. Control-G speaks
and Goes forward a word. Control-R speaks and Reverses a word. You can
move by words without output with control-A control-W and control-Z
control-W.
The speed at which the cursor arrives at its new
position is determined by the more sluggish device; when your cursor
arrives at its new position, the Apple speaker makes a low boop. When you
do not have a device attached to the voice or braille channel, these
commands still move your cursor as described.
The left arrow key, control-H, and the right arrow
key, control-U, move the cursor one character at a time to the left and
right; BEX uses a special vocabulary when outputting these
characters. Regardless of how your output device handles capitalization
and punctuation, BEX outputs the exact status of the character: whether it
is a plain or control character, etc. On the braille channel, you get the
single screen braille cell corresponding to the character you arrowed to.
For the voice channel, BEX uses a special vocabulary, with some creatively
mangled spelling to improve pronunciation.
The next three commands allow you to review portions
of text with voice and/or braille devices. The spacebar can be used to
stop output; BEX boops when passing a hard <CR>; details are
explained below.
For control-O, control-T, and control-Y, you can press
<space> to stop output and cursor movement. If your serial voice
device has any buffer, however, pressing <space> may not immediately
stop the speech.
Using control-O and the spacebar is very handy for
The environmental command control-S J is the "jerky
speech" toggle command. The default is jerky. Enter control-S J and BEX
stops inserting <CR>s, and the speech is much smoother. However,
when you have toggled off jerky speech, pressing <space> no longer
immediately stops output and cursor movement. See Part 6 for details.
When you enter control-G, control-R, control-T,
control-Y, and control-O, BEX gives a low boop when it passes over a hard
<CR>. When you arrow over it with the left and right arrow keys,
hard <CR>s are spoken as "return."
Each BEX page can hold 4096 characters, but you don't
need to fill up each page. To move from page 1 to page 2, enter control-P
2 <space>. The disk drive whirs as the characters in page 1 are
saved, and you're at character position zero on page 2. When you enter
control-P 0 <space>, BEX saves the current page and returns you to
character position zero on the same page.
You can also move back and forth between pages without
specifying the page number: control-P control-A advances to the next page.
Control-P control-Z zooms back to the previous page. This also saves the
information in the previous page to disk. Entering control-P <space>
cancels any page move.
Control-C control-P cuts the page at the current
cursor, leaving you at character position zero of the second page you've
just created. You can use any of these features at any time to create
At the Learner Level, we introduced several deletion
commands. Now we present them all. The syntax for deletion commands is
similar to control-A and control-Z: you combine control-D with a number
and a unit command.
Deleting the block is discussed under Part 4,
The Clipboard.
As you are editing text, you may decide that all the
characters in one page are useless, so you want to delete them. The best
way to accomplish this is with option K - Kill pages on the Page Menu. To
jog your memory about which page you want to kill, you can delete all but
three characters. Then at the Page Menu, do File list. Any page with three
characters is one you want to kill.
Whenever you ask BEX to manipulate a page file, BEX
checks to see if that page has zero characters. When a page file is listed
in the directory with zero characters, then BEX never asks DOS to BLOAD,
BSAVE, DELETE, or RENAME that page. That's because DOS 3.3 can't
handle a file with zero characters. If BEX asked DOS to work with an empty
file, DOS would freak out. So when you delete all the characters in the
Editor, BEX only updates the directory file. BEX does not save a page file
with zero characters.
Suppose you have a chapter named Suppose you edit the PSALM 25 chapter and delete all
the characters in page 2, then quit. BEX updates the directory file to
reflect the new size of page 2, but it does not save an empty PSALM 25.B
page file. The older version of the page remains on disk.
You can use control-I to signal the start of
keyboard insert. After you enter control-I, every character
after your cursor turns into the underbar character. Each character you
type is inserted in your text immediately before the cursor. While
inserting, you can press <CR>, left arrow or <ESC>. Pressing
control-N, the right arrow key, or any other control character except
<CR>, the left arrow key or <ESC> finishes the keyboard insert
and executes the command associated with the control character.
The bottom line on the screen displays information
about the current cursor position, the size (or total
characters in current page), and the number of the current page. In
5-column screen, the display only shows the current cursor and total size.
Use the "Where am I?" command, control-W for status
information output to screen, voice and braille channels. When you enter
control-W, the text temporarily disappears. You're presented with a
question mark prompt. You can now enter any of four characters:
You may press B, C, P and A as many times as you
need to get information. After you digest the control-W information, press
any key except B, C, P or A to return to the Editor.
The clipboard is an electronic scratchpad that helps
you manipulate blocks of text. The clipboard features described here are
available only with a 128K Apple.
The clipboard is a "floating" temporary page. It may
contain up to 4096 characters, as large as a regular BEX page. However, it
is not a "real" page in an actual chapter. You can place text on the
clipboard from one page and insert it from the clipboard onto another page
within the same chapter or in a different chapter. You can move text on
and off the clipboard in various ways, which lets you accomplish many
different tasks.
You cannot save the clipboard itself to disk. The
contents of the clipboard remain until you copy more information on top of
it, delete it, or turn the Apple's power off.
The idea of a block was introduced in the
section covering deletion in Learner Level Section 4, Part 10. Using the
same commands, you can copy a portion of text onto the clipboard. You can
delete or insert text using the block commands we describe in this Part.
We first introduced these commands at the Learner
Level.
To delete a block of text, you must have a marker
set. The marker can define only the start of the block; the end of the
block is the character immediately preceding your cursor. Control-B L
moves your cursor to the marker either forward or backward, as required.
You can only have one marker set at any one time.
Every time you enter control-B S, the old marker is erased as the current
marker is set. Since the marker is an invisible pointer, erasing it does
not alter your text.
There are three ways to copy text to the clipboard.
First, you can exchange the contents of the page and the clipboard.
Second, you can append text to the clipboard. When you
append a block to the clipboard, you are placing the copied
text after whatever text is already on the clipboard. Third, you can
copy text to the clipboard. When you copy a
block to the clipboard, then all the text on the clipboard is overwritten
by the copied text.
You do not need to set a marker when you want to
exchange the contents of the page and the clipboard. At any time, you may
enter control-B X, and the clipboard and the current page are exchanged.
Your cursor is located at character position zero. When you enter
control-B X when the clipboard is empty, then you have a blank page. You
haven't lost any of the text in your page, it's just temporarily on
the clipboard; it's like putting a phone call on hold.
Control-B X lets you examine and edit the contents of
the clipboard. What was on the clipboard is now in the page. If you save
the page to disk when the clipboard and you page are exchanged (either by
control-Q or moving to another page) you won't save the text that's
on the clipboard.
Enter control-B X again, and the original text from
the page is back in the page, and the original text from the clipboard is
back on the clipboard. It's important to develop the habit of
checking to make sure that the text you wish to save is in
the page and not on the clipboard before you save it.
Here's an example. You have a chapter with 3
pages: page 1 contains 1200 characters, page 2 has 2900 characters, and
page 3 You have moved all the text from page 1 in to page 2.
All the text that was in page 2 is now on the clipboard. Move back to page
1, and enter control-B X one last time. Control-W A informs you:
You've just switched the text in pages 1 and 2 by
using the clipboard as an intermediary. You could accomplish the same
thing by using option E - Exchange pages on the Page menu, but the
clipboard is much faster!
To copy text to the clipboard, you must first set the
block marker at the beginning of the text you wish to copy. Move to the
beginning of the text. Enter control-B S to set the marker. The marker
defines the beginning of your text. Now move your cursor forward until
you're at the end of the text you wish to copy. The marked text includes
all the text from the marker up to the cursor; the character the cursor
covers is not copied. Enter control-B C, and the marked text is copied
onto the clipboard. Whatever text was on the clipboard is overwritten by
the text you've just copied.
Copying text to the clipboard does not affect the text
in your Appending text to the clipboard is a similar process.
First establish the marker with control-B S, then move to the end of the
text you want appended. Now enter control-B A to append the text onto the
clipboard. The text from where you set the marker to the character before
the cursor is appended after any existing text on the clipboard.
The text you just appended is still in your page; if
you wish to delete it, then enter control-B D.
When you want to move text from the page to the end of
the clipboard, you do two steps. First, append or copy the text onto the
clipboard by setting the marker and using control-B A or control-B C.
Second, use control-B D to delete the block of text you just appended.
There are two ways to move text from the clipboard to
the page. The first way we've already discussed: you can exchange text
from the clipboard to the page by entering control-B X.
The second way is to enter control-B I. A copy of all
the text on the clipboard is inserted in your page, immediately before the
current cursor position. The contents of the clipboard is unchanged; you
can enter control-B I somewhere else and insert the same text again.
When you use control-B commands, you can receive three
kinds of error beeps. A single high error beep signals that you've entered
a command sequence BEX doesn't recognize. For example, if you enter
control-B F, you get one high beep.
Two high beeps means there's not enough room to
execute the control-B command. This can happen with control-B I
(there's Three high beeps indicates a marker error. When you
place your cursor before the marker and then enter control-B
A, control-B C, or control-B D, BEX rebels with three beeps. The marker
always defines the start of your block, so it must precede your cursor.
When you enter a command that requires a set marker,
but you have no marker set, you also get three beeps. Either you neglected
to set the marker, or you executed an insert or delete command and your
marker was erased. You can get three error beeps when you enter control-B
A, control-B C, control-B D or control-B L.
The ability to edit text in the clipboard (by entering
control-B X, editing, and then exchanging back again) means that there are
literally as many things you can do with the clipboard as you can in a BEX
page. You'll find that many tasks you used to use the Page menu for can be
accomplished more quickly with the clipboard.
The following examples are not exhaustive. For
clipboard success, keep two things in mind. First, the contents of the
clipboard are never saved to disk. When you want to hold on to the
contents of the clipboard, put them in a page somewhere. Second, remember
that control-B C overwrites all the text on the clipboard. You should be
sure you don't need the text on the clipboard before you enter control-B
C.
As you are developing familiarity with the clipboard,
you can check on its status in two ways. Control-W B or control-W A lets
you know how many characters are on the clipboard, and where your marker
is in the page, if you've set it. Control-B X lets you directly examine
the clipboard's contents. After you enter control-B X for a clipboard
exchange, be careful not to overwrite the data on the clipboard by
inadvertently using control-B C.
As you review your text, you see the need for a new
paragraph. Insert a few unique characters in the text you can locate later
to find your place: for example, When you're finished writing your new text, enter
control-B X to put the paragraph on the clipboard. Your cursor is at
character position zero of your page. Enter control-L Place your cursor at the beginning of the text you
wish to switch; enter control-B S to set the block marker. Move to the end
of this text.
When you want to switch a sentence, enter control-T to
get to the end of the sentence. To move to the next new line, enter
control-A control-L. To move a paragraph, enter control-A P. For larger
blocks of text, enter control-O to start outputting to the end of the
page, and press <space> when you hear the end of the text. Since
these commands always move your cursor to the space or <CR> that
defines the end of a word or sentence, the complete word is
included in the block, while the character the cursor covers is not.
Once you arrive at the end of the text, enter
control-B C to copy the text to the clipboard (and overwrite anything
that's already there). Enter control-B D to delete the text in your
page that you just copied on to the clipboard. You have executed a delete
command, so now your marker has been erased. Move the cursor to where you
want the text to go. This can be in the same BEX page, in another page in
the same chapter, or in a different chapter. To move the text to a new
chapter, simply quit the chapter you're in, and edit the chapter you want
the text put Enter control-B S to set the marker, then immediately
enter control-B C. Since you haven't moved your cursor, you've copied zero
characters to the clipboard, effectively erasing it.
When you want to make sure that you're not erasing
anything important, then use this procedure: enter control-B X to exchange
the clipboard and the page. Review the text for anything worth keeping.
(You can append any worthwhile text to the end of the current clipboard,
which is your original page). Enter control-Z <space> to position
the cursor at the start of the page, then enter control-D A to delete all
the text. Finally, enter control-B X again to get back to your original
page.
Enter control-B X to exchange the contents of your
current page with the clipboard. Enter control-B I to insert the contents
of the clipboard (your original text) into the page. Now type away, but
don't use any clipboard commands. If you decide that you want to go back
to your original text, just enter control-B X again and there it is.
Locate the paragraph you wish to have appear first.
Copy it to the clipboard. Move to the next paragraph, and append it to
clipboard. Continue appending until you've arranged the paragraphs in the
right order on the clipboard, then enter control-B X to move the text in
to the page.
Section 8 explains option R - Replace characters in
great detail. At the User Level, however, Replace characters requires some
disk access. You have to quit the Editor, choose option R - Replace
characters, and read and write chapters to disk. At the Master Level,
Replace characters is much faster. The following technique is good for
quick changes.
In Part 3, we described the locate command: use
control-L The first step is entering control-B X to temporarily
put your page "on hold" on the clipboard. Delete any characters that were
in the clipboard with control-Z <space>, control-D A. Type the
characters for your change to string. Enter control-B X again to return to
your original page. Your cursor is now at character position zero. Enter
control-L, then your find string, then control-A. At the first occurrence
of these characters, enter control-B I to insert the characters from the
clipboard. Your cursor is still on the first character of your find
string.
When your find string is short, use control-D #
control-W or control-D # control-T to get rid of it. When your find string
is long, enter control-B S to set the marker; move forward with control-T
or control-O; press <space> to stop your cursor, then enter
control-B D to delete your find string. Enter control-L control-A again to
locate forward, and repeat the process as needed.
Tables of contents are made up of the major points in
an essay or article. Usually, you use format commands $$h and $$c to make
distinctive the headings and subheadings in your text. Following our
recommendations in the Learner Level Section 6, Part 3, you concluded
these headings with ( $p ) indicators.
When your text follows these format guidelines, then
creating a table of contents is a breeze. Use control-L to locate
occurrences of $$h. At the first occurrence, enter control-B S to set the
marker, then enter control-A control-P to advance to the next
( $p ) marker. Now enter control-B C to clear the clipboard and
copy the first entry to it. For every subsequent occurrence, enter
control-B A to append the following heading or subheading to the contents
of the clipboard. Advance through the entire chapter or chapters this way,
harvesting all the items You can use the clipboard to hold new text you've
created while restoring old text you've changed. You save the new text by
copying it to the clipboard, instead of leaving it in the page and saving
the page. Then, you crash out of the Editor with Control-Reset so that you
don't save the unwanted text, but still have the original text on disk.
For example, suppose you are editing an existing
chapter. The page you are on has two paragraphs. You delete the first
paragraph and create a new version. Then you realize you really want to
use the original first paragraph plus the new paragraph you've just
created.
First, copy the new text onto the clipboard: Move to
the beginning of the text and enter control-B S to set the marker. Then
move to the end of the text with control-A <space> or any of the
other movement commands. Enter control-B C to copy the new text onto the
clipboard. Append any other new text to the clipboard with control-B A.
Next, you need to restore your old text. When you have
not saved since before you made changes in your text, you can enter
Control-Reset to crash out of the Editor. Your clipboard text is saved,
because it is not on any page in your chapter. Edit your chapter; your old
text is back. You may then enter control-B I to insert the new text you
saved into your chapter where you need it.
Sighted users sometimes feel disoriented when entering
data in BEX's Editor. That's because BEX fills each screen line, so
words are sometimes broken between lines. One command allows you to
preview format commands your text without quitting the Editor: control-V,
the View Mode Editor command.
When you enter control-V, the default page format is
80 characters wide by 24 lines long. All format commands on the page are
executed. Format commands such as $$w# and $$f# can easily override this
format. Page breaks are shown by a line of slashes.
When you enter control-V, text scrolls up the screen
quite fast. Use control-S to pause and restart the scrolling. Once the
text is completely printed, you press any key, including control-S, to
return to the Editor.
After all the text is printed with control-V, and
before you return to the Editor, the cursor appears in the lower left-hand
corner of the screen. You may also get some extraneous letters near the
cursor; these are not in your text and should be ignored.
Your current cursor position determines how much of
your text is printed when you enter View Mode. The text where the cursor
appears becomes the middle screen line when you enter control-V: line
L for Echo and SlotBuster users. When your cursor is at the
end of the page, all the text on the page is printed to the screen with
control-V. When your cursor is at the beginning of the page, only the
first 11 lines of formatted text are printed. When your cursor position is
in the middle of the page, all the text before the cursor, plus about ten
lines after are printed to the screen.
Your cursor position is not affected when you enter
control-V; you cursor is in the same place when you return to text.
When you enter control-V BEX prints the text of the
current page to the 80 column screen. All format commands on
your current page are executed, including line spacing and paragraphs.
However, any long-term command on a different page is not
executed. When you have a margin command or paragraph indent at the
beginning of your chapter, those You can temporarily copy your format commands from
page 1 to your current page using the clipboard. Use control-B C to copy
them onto the clipboard, and control-B I to insert them at the beginning
of the page. The commands will then be executed when you enter control-V.
When you are finished editing the chapter, make sure
to delete the format commands you've placed in your pages. If you do not,
strange things may happen with your format. If you changed the margin
using a plus or minus sign, and you did not delete all but the first
instance of the command, your margin would increase or decrease by that
amount every time BEX's formatter encounters the command.
For example, suppose you place the command $$ml+5 at
the beginning of your text. You clipboard it onto subsequent pages for use
with control-V, and then forget to delete it before printing. Each time
the formatter encounters $$ml+5, it moves the margin in five positions: so
the text of your first page will have the correct format, but once the
second page of your chapter is printed, its margin will be ten positions
in, instead of five. The third page will be fifteen, and so on.
At the Learner Level we introduced three commands for
customizing the environment in the Editor. At the User Level you have four
classes of commands at your disposal, giving you control over the screen
output, the keyboard input, the voice and braille channels, and special
Editor features.
You can choose from ten screen modes by entering
control-S S followed by a screen mode letter. Any change lasts until you
turn off your Apple or reboot. When you quit the Editor, the menu prompts
are displayed with the screen mode you specified in your configuration.
The next time you use The ten screen mode letters are:
You use these same ten letters when printing to
the screen--see Section 6 for details.
The screen channel is independent of the voice and
braille channels, so the screen mode you specify doesn't affect how your
voice or braille device displays characters. The larger the screen mode,
the longer it takes to draw the letters on the screen, and the more your
keystrokes end up in the keyboard buffer. W and N screen modes are the
fastest, because they use the Apple's built-in character generators.
If you are partially sighted and a fast typist, you can use W or N mode
while you are typing, then switch to L or X to carefully proofread your
work. Sighted transcribers who are familiar with braille dot patterns can
use one of the braille screen modes for proofreading.
As well as using the Apple keyboard in its
time-honored fashion, you can also use six keys and the spacebar like a
Perkins-style braille keyboard. Changing to braille keyboard is different
from all other environmental commands. Every time you quit the Editor, the
keyboard mode returns to normal; if it didn't, you would have to use the
braille keyboard to type in chapter names.
The braille keyboard uses the "home" keyboard row: the
keys S D F and J K L.
These are the codes you use to enter and exit braille
keyboard mode:
If you're familiar with the Perkins-style braille
keyboard, then BEX's braille keyboard mode lets you do the same thing with
less effort. You must depress the Caps Lock key to activate the seven
keys: dots 1, 2, 3, are letters F, D, S, respectively; dots 4, 5, 6 are J,
K, L; and the spacebar is the spacebar.
There are two ways to issue Editor commands in braille
keyboard mode. You can use the same technique as with the regular
keyboard: to issue commands, depress the control key, then press and
release the appropriate letter key. You can also chord
control characters, by brailling the letter and pressing the spacebar.
Pressing F D J K and <space> simultaneously enters the Editor
command control-G to go ahead one word.
There are two possible ways to type a control
character into your text. The first is the same as with the regular
keyboard: To leave braille keyboard mode, depress the control
key, then press S K N, then release the control key and the Caps Lock key.
Braille keyboard mode is automatically canceled when you quit the Editor.
At the Learner Level, we detailed sending Echo
commands inside the Editor. The only Echo command you can't use is
control-L, because that's what BEX uses for locating. The syntax for
Echo commands is the same in the Editor and at menus: control-E followed
by the appropriate plain numbers and letters. (For example, control-E 12 V
to set the volume medium loud.)
You can also send commands to other devices on the
voice (and braille) channel. You have to find out the commands from that
device's documentation. Use control-S O to start a command sequence,
and <CR> to end it. For example, to send the Echo pitch command
directly to the Echo itself, enter control-S O control-E # P <CR>.
Control-S O tells BEX to send the next command on to the voice device. The
<CR> at the end is mandatory--it tells BEX that you've finished your
command sequence.
Your braille device may be controllable through
commands sent from the host device. You may need to temporarily change
command characters to prevent conflicts. The control-S O sequence sends
the following commands to both the Control-S J controls the quality of speech and the
action of the spacebar during the execution of control-T, control-Y, and
control-O. The default is jerky, and you can press <space> to
immediately stop output and cursor movement. Toggle jerky speech off with
control-S J and the speech will flow more smoothly. With jerky speech off,
pressing <space> does not stop cursor movement and output
immediately. Pressing <space> after entering control-O does stop
cursor movement and output before the end of the text; how quickly your
device responds depends on the device. Generally, it stops at the end of
the sentence in which you pressed control-O. Try it and see! You may find
that you want to use jerky speech (the default) when you're actively
writing, and turn it off with control-S J when it comes time to review
long sections of text.
When your jerky speech is toggled off, and you are
searching for a specific sentence using control-O, use control-X to skip
ahead to the next sentence. When you enter control-X in this situation,
your voice device skips over the sentence it is currently speaking and
reads the next sentence.
Pressing any key while the Echo's talking shuts
it up and immediately passes that keystroke to the Apple. However, this
feature may take some getting used to in BEX's Editor--see Learner Level
10 for details.
The DP-10 large print screen display device cannot
show the delete key checkerboard, which is used in screen modes W and N to
show control characters in your text. Enter control-S D, D
for display, to change the character that represents control characters on
the screen. Control-S D changes it from the delete checkerboard to the
at-sign, which the DP-10 can display. The A few problems are listed here. For further help, see
Section 13, Advanced Data Recovery Techniques, and Learner Level Section
4, Part 14, Troubleshooting Editor Problems.
At the Learner Level, you used option P - Print to
send formatted text to inkprint and large print printers, voice devices,
and braillers. At the User Level, you have access to a new option on the
Main menu: option M - Multi-function print. You can use either Print or
Multi-function print to send formatted text to any printer you defined in
your configuration. Section 3 describes how you define any of the eight
printer classes in your configuration. There's also a lot of useful
background information about printers in the BEX Interface Guide. This
Section discusses using braille previewers, continues the discussion on
the Review class printers, and introduces some concepts of printing
without a format. Samples of using a Review class printer in Section 7.
For both Print and Multi-function print you use the
chapter selection methods described in Section 4 to give BEX a list of
chapters to print. Multi-function print allows you to do three things:
specify which output page printing starts with; make multiple copies of
chapter or chapters; and print the data in one BEX page.
The last step in both Print and Multi-function print
is specifying where the text goes. You have many more choices here.
At the User Level, you can direct text to more
devices. As always, enter a question mark followed by <CR> at the
You can always cancel printing in progress by pressing
<ESC>.
Printers 1 through 4 are the printers you defined in
your configuration. The first number is the printer number you enter at
the Answering S at the You can add voice output to any of these screen
modes by entering the two letters followed by The screen is a printer with pause on form feed. When
the screen is full, it pauses. Press <space> for the next screen.
Press <ESC> as text is being printed to stop printing and return to
the In wide screen mode, underlines are shown in reverse
video. In all other screen modes, the underline is shown.
When your carriage width or form length exceeds the
built-in defaults for your screen display, the carriage width and form
length in your text are ignored.
Answering N at the Here's a sample:
For these four questions, you can press <CR> to
use the value listed, or enter a new value.
Enter L at the At the Learner Level, you added the two characters
When you have a serial voice device, you have three
ways to direct output to it: You can describe your voice device as a class
V printer in your configuration. Or you can enter This option adds three features to option P - Print.
These new features are the ability to start printout on a specific page,
to print multiple copies, and to print a single BEX page from a chapter.
There are three more prompts after you specify the chapters to print.
Which prompts you receive depends on how you answer them.
This feature is handy if you have some mechanical
trouble during a printout, for example you're printing a 15-page print
document, and your ribbon breaks on page 9. After you choose
Multi-function print, specify your chapter or chapters:
We wanted printout from page 9, so we entered BEX "pretends" to print the first 8 pages, and then
actually sends data to your printer at the top of page 9. BEX behaves
exactly like it's printing during the "pretend" portion: BEX reads
data from disk and uses up time figuring out how the page should look.
Restarting a printout in the middle of a very long document will be very
time-consuming. When you have a braille book, for example, with 140 pages,
don't use Multi-function print to reprint pages 75 through
140. Instead, divide your book among several BEX chapters. Start each
chapter with the same format information, and use $$n# to set the page
number to the correct digit at the start of each BEX chapter. If you don't
wish to print all the pages of a document, press <ESC> to cancel the
printout.
This feature allows you to make more than one copy of
one or more BEX chapters. When you accept the BEX automatically inserts a form feed at the end of
each copy of the list, so each copy starts on a new page. For example,
suppose you have a letter consisting of two BEX chapters:
You want to make three copies of the letter, so you
enter When you only specify one chapter to print with option
M - Multi-function print, BEX asks if you wish to print one BEX page from
that chapter. To get one page only, enter Y in response to the question,
and enter the page number you want printed:
When you change the default to You, BEX reads the
directory file of the single chapter you've specified. You have to know
how many pages the chapter has. Enter a digit followed by <CR>, and
BEX prints the text in that BEX page. Keep in mind that this text may
occupy several output pages.
Two preview braillers allow you to know exactly what
the formatter is sending to a braille device. They function much like the
inkprint Review class printer we discussed in Section 5 of the Learner
Level. All three require that you have an 80-column card. The preview
braillers are members of the B - Brailler class of printers. Brailler code
1 is the Braille Previewer, Like the Review class printer, this mode is designed
to work in conjunction with the Echo's line review feature. The
output to both these modes is the same; the only difference are the
default values used for underlining, paragraphs and page numbering.
Clearly the easiest way for a blind person to review
braille format is with paper braille output, but you can't always depend
on having a paper braille output device available. The braille previewer
is a reasonable tool for checking the format of short sections of braille
text, using the screen review functions of the Echo or SlotBuster.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the
Echo's line review functions, suggestions on which commands to use
appear at the end of this section. For further help, Learner Level Section
5, Part 4 discusses Echo line review in detail.
The Apple 80-column screen is 80 characters across by
24 lines down. The page display starts at the left edge of the screen. The
exact number of characters in the display depends on your carriage width.
The first two characters are the line number, expressed in two digits: 01
through 24 at the start of each page. Then comes a vertical bar line which
is the left margin delimiter. After the delimiter come the
number of characters in your carriage width, and finally, another vertical
bar line as the right margin delimiter.
The delete character appears immediately after the
last non-space character on the line, and before the right vertical bar
delimiter. On the screen, the <DEL> looks like a square
checkerboard. The Echo says "delete." This means that when you encounter a
delete, the rest of the line contains nothing but more trailing spaces.
Conversely, when you encounter a space character, you know that there are
more real (non-space) characters on the line. When the first character in
the line is a When you wish to preview your braille material, print
your chapters to the printer number you specified as class B, number 2 in
your configuration. You don't add As each line of text is printed to the screen, the
Apple speaker makes a click. A short series of clicks alerts you to a
short page. When the clicks stop, you can begin to use line review. To see
any lines on your current page past line 24, you press the down arrow. To
get the display of your next output page, press <space>.
It's important to keep in mind that after you
enter line review, all of your keystrokes are interpreted as line review
commands. See Learner Level, Section 5, Part 4 for a discussion of the
Echo commands with line review for further help.
Brailler code number 1 is designed for use by sighted
transcribers. The screen display uses the delete key to make a border
around the page. The screen also has a "cheat sheet" for screen braille
and dot equivalents.
You use the Braille Previewer to proofread exactly
what's sent to your braille device without having to emboss it. You
configure the previewer with the same carriage width and form
The Braille Previewer is part of the TranscriBEX
system. TranscriBEX uses a combination of BEX options to facilitate
accurate braille transcription, following the translation and format rules
as stated in English Braille: American Edition and the
Code of Braille Textbook Formats and Techniques. It's a
low cost add-on module to BEX. Contact us for more details.
When you are creating inkprint or braille documents,
you want your format commands executed. But when you are sending text to
another computer, sometimes you don't want your commands
executed. One of the printer classes is designed to transfer your text
exactly as it appears in the Editor. This feature was originally designed
to send text to the disk-based VersaBraille II. It has since proved useful
in some other situations as well.
We introduce in Section 7, Part 9 a BEX format command
that deactivates all subsequent format commands. When you enter $$z in
your text, no single dollar sign format indicators nor double dollar sign
format commands are executed. Your text is sent from the Apple
exactly as it looks in BEX's Editor. The only <CR>s in
your output are any hard <CR>s you typed; after you
enter $$z, BEX no longer creates soft <CR>s. The effect of $$z lasts
until the formatter encounters the $$d reset to default command or until
you reload the formatter.
A second command provides a middle option between $$z
and printing with full format. $$l0 (lowercase l digit zero)
sets no soft <CR>s at the end of a printed line, and turns paragraph
( $p ) indicators into hard <CR>s. Hard <CR>s are
still executed. $$l0 is handy when you are transferring BEX chapters to
other computer systems. See Section 7 for When you regularly send unformatted text to another
computer, it's a pain to always remember to type $$z in your text.
BEX has a shortcut for this situation: you configure one printer as a
class P - Paperless brailler. A Paperless brailler prints without
format--it's as if you typed $$z at the beginning of your chapter;
only you can't turn formatting on again like you can with $$z. When you
print with a Paperless brailler, it strips out sticky spaces, touching
tokens, discretionary hyphens and discretionary linebreaks--these commands
are discussed in Master Level Section 5, Part 2. When you enter Section 11 discusses VersaBrailles in detail, and
explains more about sending text to the VersaBraille II through a class P
- Paperless brailler. BEX's class P - Paperless brailler provides you with
a limited terminal feature. We combine this class printer with option I -
Input through slot to transfer text between Apples, Macintoshes, and
IBM'S here at Raised Dot Computing.
Many printers require special software, called
drivers. BEX large print on dot-matrix printers, and
printing to Review class printers and the Cranmer Brailler are three
common examples. When you tell BEX to print to one of these devices, it
has to read the driver software from the program disk. When the program
disk is not in drive 1, BEX hangs.
When you want to print two disks worth of chapters to
a printer that requires a driver, you have to do some fancy disk swapping.
Specify the chapters in drive 2 first, then the chapters in drive 1. You
must have the data disk in drive 1 Control Characters on the Screen Channel
Part 2: Entering Editor Commands, Continued
Part 3: Moving Around in the Editor
Silent Cursor Movement
Moving to Specific Characters: Locating Text
raille
finds
both the uppercase and lowercase words.
the
for your search string, your cursor lands on other, weather,
and theocratic. When you type
<space>the<space>
as your search string, your
cursor only lands on the.
$$
to define the search string, then enter control-A to start searching in
front of the cursor.
Talking Cursor Movement
The spacebar stops output
BEX boops over a hard <CR>
Moving from Page to Page
Deleting Text
Avoid pages with zero characters
PSALM 25
that contains three pages. Before editing, option F - File list on the
Page Menu yields this information:
Chapter PSALM 25
3 pages
Page 1 Size882 A
Page 2 Size 1764 B
Page 3 Size 3528 C
When you do a DOS catalog of this disk, you see these
four files:
B005 PSALM 25.A
%%%p-1B008 PSALM 25.B
%%%p-1B015 PSALM 25.C
%%%p-1B003 PSALM 25
Chapter PSALM 25
3 pages
Page 1 Size882 A
Page 2 Size0 B
Page 3 Size 3528 C
However, when you do a DOS catalog, the PSALM 25.B
page file still has 8 sectors. You might think you could use option K -
Kill pages to delete the PSALM 25.B page file, but that won't work. BEX
checks the directory and discovers that page 2 holds zero characters, so
it only changes the directory file. To get rid of the orphan PSALM 25.B
page file, Quit BEX and use the DELETE command at the BASIC prompt.
Inserting Text from the Keyboard
Status Information
Part 4: The Clipboard
() 64K Apple: Users of a 64K Apple should read
Appendix 4 for information on the limitations of the clipboard size and
function.
Clipboard Commands
Moving the Marker Around
Placing Text on the Clipboard
Exchanging the page and the clipboard
Clipboard 0 No Marker
so you know the clipboard is empty.
Enter control-B X: all 1200 characters from page 1 are now on the
clipboard. Use control-W B, and the response is: Clipboard 1200 No
Marker.
Now move to the next page with control-P 2 <space>.
Enter control-B X to exchange the contents in page 2 with the clipboard.
Control-W A yields:
Clipboard 2900 No Marker
Cursor 0 Size 1200
Page 2 of 3
Clipboard 0 No Marker
Cursor 0 Size 2900
Page 1 of 3
Copying text to the clipboard
Appending text to the clipboard
Moving Text from the Clipboard to the Page
Clipboard-Related Error Beeps
Some Examples of Using the Clipboard
~~
(two tildes). Now enter
control-B X to place all the text in your page on the clipboard. Your
cursor is at character position zero of a blank page. Write your
paragraph, but don't use control-B A or control-B C.
~~
control-A. Your cursor is right where you want to insert the paragraph.
First delete the tildes, then enter control-B I and a copy of the
paragraph appears in your text.
Switching text
Erasing the clipboard
Make a short-term backup of text
Rearranging a series of paragraphs
Quick and dirty search and replace
Creating a table of contents
Restoring old text while keeping new text
Part 5: Previewing Print Format in the Editor
The Effect of Format Commands in View Mode
Clipboard format commands to the current page
Part 6: Customize the Editor Environment
Screen Modes
Screen channel affects the Editor's "feel"
() Apple IIgs: The braille keyboard mode does not
work on the Apple IIgs.
() Caution! When you use the N or W screen modes
along with the braille keyboard, you cannot see your cursor.
() Caution! The braille keyboard always creates
lowercase letters.
() Caution! We do not recommend use of the braille
keyboard mode for BDP (Braille Display Processor) or DP-10 users--you lose
the cursor that your BDP or DP-10 can track. You can switch to a large
print screen mode if you wish large print output.
Sending Commands to the Voice and Braille
Channels
Commands to non-Echo devices
Jerky Output Toggle
The DP-10 Toggle
Part 7: Troubleshooting
RUN 999
routine to save your data. If
you still have it, copy our version of TEXTALKER back onto the BEX disk.
RUN <CR>
and
your data will be restored. See Section 13 for more help. Section 6: Print and Multi-Function Print
Part 1: Specifying Which Printer
Which printer:
prompt to be reminded of the printers you
configured:
Main Menu: P
Print
Drive or chapter: 2 <CR>
There are 2 chapters:
1 BLACK
2 WHITE
Select chapters by number
Chapter number: 1 <CR>
BLACK
Chapter number: <CR>
Which printer: ? <CR>
1 - Printer in slot 1 (80 by 58)
2 - Printer in slot 3 (80 by 58)
3 - Brailler in slot 2 (41 by 25)
4 - Brailler in slot 3 (41 by 25)
S - Screen output
N - New inkprinter parameters
L - Last printer parameters
Add +V for voice output
Which printer:
Numbered Printer
Which printer:
prompt. Braille embossers are listed as
"braillers" when you chose them from the brailler class. Review class
printers are listed as "printers" and braille previewers are listed as
"braillers." The slot for the printer is listed, followed by two numbers
in parentheses, the carriage width by form length. You can tell inkprint
printers and braille embossers apart from Review class printers and
braille previewers by the slot numbers they are configured in: the Review
class printers and braille previewers are always in slot 3. In the above
example, printer 1 is the inkprint printer configured in slot 1, and
printer 2 is the Review class printer configured in slot 3.
() Hint! The printer number and the slot number are
not the same. You must use the printer number at the
Which printer:
prompt. You use the slot number to tell the
types of printers you have configured.
Which printer:
prompt
directs printing to the screen channel. Each screen has built-in values
for carriage width and form length. BEX's formatter places soft
<CR>s and page breaks where appropriate. S alone prints to the
screen mode defined in your configuration. Add one of the 10 code letters
to print to a different sized screen display. The code letters and their
carriage widths and form lengths are:
+V
at the
Which printer:
prompt.
Main menu:
prompt.
() Echo: You can only use Echo line review with the
SW and SN screen displays.
Which printer:
prompt
directs output to a new inkprint printer. You can use it for a new
printer, or to change the parameters of an already configured printer. An
N printer is always a generic inkprint printer. Just enter N
<CR>
at the Which printer:
prompt and answer
four questions, for which BEX supplies default values. The default values
BEX uses are taken from the last printer you specified. When you define a
new printer with N the first time you choose option P - Print or option M
- Multi-function print after booting, BEX takes the values from printer 1
in your configuration and uses them as the default values.
() Caution! You cannot use N to define a new
brailler; N only works for inkprint printers.
Which printer: N <CR>
Old carriage width: 80
New width: 72 <CR>
Old form length: 58
New form length: 56 <CR>
Printer slot is 1
Enter new slot: 2 <CR>
No pause after form feed
Do you want to change? N <CR>
Last printer chosen
Which printer:
prompt to
use the same printer you used the last time you answered this question.
When your previous printer was printer 1, for example, then L uses printer
1. The values used by the L choice are the same values that would appear
as defaults for a new printer under N.
+V
to obtain simultaneous voice output with any printer
choice. At the User Level, +V
adds simultaneous output to the
voice channel.
() Caution! The L (last printer) choice does not
"remember" if you added voice output with plus V. If your
last choice was printer
3+V
you enter L+V
for
the same result.
Print to voice channel alone
+V
alone at
the Which printer:
prompt. Or you can define a new printer
with N.
Part 2: Option M - Multi-Function Print
() Hint! Multi-function print adds a form feed at
the end of printing, even when you make only one copy. When you want a
document to roll out of your printer after printing, use Multi-function
print instead of option P - Print.
Restarting a Printout on a Specified Page
Main Menu: M
Multi-function print
Drive or Chapter: BLACK
Drive or Chapter: <CR>
Which printer:
9
<CR>
instead of pressing return to accept the default
1
answer. BEX prompts: Which printer:
and your
choices are the same as with option P - Print.
Printing Multiple Copies
1
default on
the previous prompt, BEX asks for the number of copies, and offers an
answer of one. When you change this answer to a higher number, BEX makes
that number of copies of the list of chapters you've specified.
LETTERHEAD
and JOAN
and you want three copies of
each. Here's how the dialogue looks:
Main Menu: M
Multi-function print
Drive or chapter: LETTERHEAD <CR>
Drive or chapter: JOAN <CR>
Restart printout on output page 1 <CR>
How many copies? 1 3 <CR>
Which printer:
3 <CR>
and BEX prompts Which
printer:
Specify your printer, and BEX prints LETTERHEAD, JOAN,
form feed, LETTERHEAD, JOAN, form feed, LETTERHEAD, JOAN, form feed.
() Caution! BEX's formatter is reset each time you
press P for Print. The formatter does not remember text format from the
previous time you printed.
Printing a Single BEX Page From One BEX Chapter
Print single BEX page? N Y <CR>
Print BEX page: 2 <CR>
Which printer:
Part 3: Preview Braillers
Braille Previewer with Voice
Screen layout for the Braille Previewer with
voice
Printing to Braille Previewer with voice
+V
for simultaneous Echo
output. If you did, you would hear every line as it is displayed. What you
want to do is send a screenful of data and then examine it with line
review.
Braille Previewer
Part 4: Printing with No Format
Commands That Deactivate Format
The Paperless Brailler
?
<CR>
at the Which printer:
prompt, after
configuring a Paperless brailler, it is listed as a Printer in slot
# (40 by 0)
even though it prints with no format.
Part 5: Printing with a Software Driver
Which printer:
replace the data disk in
drive one with the BEX Main side. Now press <CR>; BEX reads the
driver program from drive 1, then starts reading text from drive 2. At
this point, you can remove BEX and insert the data disk back in drive 1.