The Last Word 3.2 Released

[MEtalGuy66]

Just admit it.. Youll never have a "final release" version.. You will alwayse be making some kind of "minor adjustment" or "wouldnt it be kewl if it did that too" addition..

 

It's the same reason that hardware guys never put the case screws back in their personal machines... They got tired of taking them in & out.. Finally they learned.. Just leave the damn screws out..

[+Stephen]

Any volunteers to test the spelling checker? I wasn't going to beta 3.21 but with the proofreader (now just about complete), it seems wise to.

I can test for you. I'll take a quick look this evening and can spend some time this weekend.

[flashjazzcat]

Just admit it.. Youll never have a "final release" version.. You will alwayse be making some kind of "minor adjustment" or "wouldnt it be kewl if it did that too" addition..

 

It's the same reason that hardware guys never put the case screws back in their personal machines... They got tired of taking them in & out.. Finally they learned.. Just leave the damn screws out..

LOL. You got that right. That's the reason my 130XE doesn't have the lid screwed down.

 

Anyway, this one is something of a watershed since I can't go anywhere else inside 64K. So this is the last version of the WP which will run on a stock XL (the spell checker for this one requires extended RAM, mind).

 

I can test for you. I'll take a quick look this evening and can spend some time this weekend.

Sounds great. I'll try and get something prepared tonight.

 

In the meantime, this is the beta proofreader spellchecking a 1,100 word document in 1m 40s running on SDX with the MyIDE driver:

 

 

Having previously built my dictionaries using README.TXT as a template, I'm just tapping "Ignore" when it stops at words I didn't want to add to the dictionary. Note that "valid" is actually spelled wrongly in the text file and in the dictionary: I fixed it since making the film!

 

There are lots of optimisations which can still be made to the proofreader, such as not storing the initial word letter in the list (since there are 26 separate files, one for each letter). I'll also expand it to work with international character sets, so you'll be able to build a dictionary in any language you like. The files for each letter are stored as plain text, EOL delimited alphabetical lists, so you can add/remove words by hand. It's not a sophisticated spell checker, but it works and is fast. The code is also under 1.5K in size (it's just a small extension which runs with the existing version of the word processor).

 

All you have to do to set this up is place all 26 dictionary files in a folder referenced in your LWPATH, set RESERVED to 2 in LW.SYS (to allocate two 16K banks for the proofreading buffers), and EXTPAGES to 7 (to reserve space for the extension to run in). You then load up the text, press <CTRL+;>, type "Spell" ("Proof" in the movie), then <Return>.

Edited October 21, 2010 by flashjazzcat

[flashjazzcat]

Not quite ready for beta today: busy testing it myself first for obvious immediate-fix programming errors. It's odd spell-checking documents for the first time which I originally wrote in 1999...

[Roydea6]

Any volunteers to test the spelling checker? I wasn't going to beta 3.21 but with the proofreader (now just about complete), it seems wise to.

 

I can help test the proofreader. Now that I have my Atari working with your great MYIDE.SYS for SDX 4.42. On partition 2 loaded with The last word the program screams along. Loads in just seconds, with a few keystrokes text file gets reformated ready to print seems even quicker than on the PC with my textfile editor for windows.

[flashjazzcat]

I can help test the proofreader.

Great!

 

Now that I have my Atari working with your great MYIDE.SYS for SDX 4.42. On partition 2 loaded with The last word the program screams along. Loads in just seconds, with a few keystrokes text file gets reformated ready to print seems even quicker than on the PC with my textfile editor for windows.

Well, I've said it before: I could not go back to SIO now, having gotten used to 62KB/s reads.

 

Version 3.21 of the word processor is more or less sewn up. Now I'm using the program heavily on real hardware, there are so many things I think I could change or improve, but I've decided to draw a line under the 64K version now. All the new features and improvements can wait for the version which demands extra RAM...

 

The spelling-checker, being an extension, doesn't really have to be "finished" when the WP is realeased (it can be updated at any time), but I still need to make some important decisions on the dictionary file format so that testers don't waste time building large dictionaries which need altering later on. I also want to add at least the possibility of handling other languages. The attractive thing about letting the user build their own dictionaries absolutely from scratch is that I can support any language without having to supply the files! Also, the dictionary is naturally tailored to your personal vocabulary. I've run about 10,000 words through the checker so far and the largest dictionary files by a fair margin are those containing words beginning A, C and P. I guess that's a general bias in the English language, but it's interesting nevertheless. Another advantage with the plain text file approach is that if you want to download word lists from the net and set up your own dictionaries that way, there's nothing stopping you.

Edited October 23, 2010 by flashjazzcat

[flashjazzcat]

Version 3.21 should be released tomorrow. I've tested it with DOS 2.5, MyDOS and the new SDX 4.43RC and there are no obvious problems. BeweDOS has me running round in circles, however: "Error 168" when trying to open a folder in the disk menu. I feel that DOS is too idiosyncratic to spend another week looking for bugs in my application which may not exist.

 

A copy of the BeweDOS manual and the latest version of that DOS would help greatly: I'm too knackered to look tonight.

 

I've decided to throw in the (unpolished) spell-checker, since it does everything I need a spell-checker to do on the Atari, even in its experimental state. You get a basic, ready-made dictionary as well.

[flashjazzcat]

Found BeweDOS 1.30 manual here:

 

http://wiki.strotmann.de/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=BEWE%20DOS%201.30%20Manual#section-BEWE+DOS+1.30+Manual-SYNTAXDEFINITIONS

 

Problem was that it doesn't implement SDX's get path command. Fixed, and LW works well with BeweDOS now.

[flashjazzcat]

Those who wanted to test the spell-checker will get the chance soon. I decided to refine it a bit before releasing it. It will be provided with the 3.21 release, and possibly updated in the future if bugs are found in the add-in (and hopefully not in the main program). I'm not going to bother with betas.

[+Stephen]

Sounds good. I just started using Last Word for a proper project. I will be writing my A8 blog with it, and then posting from ICE-T to an Atari BBS. With the insane load times given by MyIDE, swapping between apps is literally a matter of 4 to 5 seconds. It's unbelievable how much nicer it is to use the machine this way.

[flashjazzcat]

Isn't it just, hehe. Wait till you try this spell-checker. It really rips through documents when using a hard disk.

 

 

[flashjazzcat]

I'm finally gonna put LW 3.21 out tomorrow. As usual, documenting new stuff is what's taking up all my time. I'm keen to get this version over and done with, because my head's already moved onto the 130XE version, which will correct many of the things I wish I'd done better in the 64K editions.

 

The program will be released on four disk sets:

 

• DOS 2.5
• MyDOS
• SpartaDOS X
• BeweDOS

BeweDOS is a really good option if you don't have/like SDX. MyDOS's "unique" approach to working directories has my fingers in knots every time I come back to it (far better to have a default working directory for each drive on the system, I would venture), but you can set up LW's files in folders if you're know what you're doing.

 

I know what Ronnie Riche (TextPro) meant when he told me he eventually got sick of staring at the same source code after seven years.

Edited November 25, 2010 by flashjazzcat

[doctorclu]

Just wanted to say thanks for this. Have not had a chance to try this yet, but I am in need of a word processor that will not save in ATASCII but Ascii. I spend a lot of time recently on BBSs with the Atari 800 and there is a lot of captured text I need to edit.

 

So thanks for at least putting something like this together. The website looks like a ad for a word processor for the Mac.

 

And your work on the SIO2SD... nice!! I used a Vic 20 modem case (those modem cases for 300 baud modems had to find some new use) but what I did is not nearly as nice.

[doctorclu]

"not a XL/XE computer"

 

Oh well, not everyone can consider the beige. Thanks for supporting the Atari computers all the same.

[tep392]

Is there a manual for 3.2 or 3.3? All I can find on FJC's website is the German version's of 3.1 & 3.2 and the english version of 2.1.

 

I just started playing around with this. I love how easy it is to switch and copy between multiple open files.

[+MrFish]

If you download v3.21b from his website, the ZIP contains the manual for 3.21.

[tep392]

If you download v3.21b from his website, the ZIP contains the manual for 3.21.

Cool. Thanks!

[+Stephen]

Is there a manual for 3.2 or 3.3? All I can find on FJC's website is the German version's of 3.1 & 3.2 and the english version of 2.1.

 

I just started playing around with this. I love how easy it is to switch and copy between multiple open files.

It's great how it handles extended RAM. I can't imagine how awesome this would have been if it was released back in the day. It makes Atari Writer look positively amateurish.