The Last Word 3.21 Released

[flashjazzcat]

Haven't tested SDX 4.47 at all yet. Will do when I get time.

[flashjazzcat]

i cant run LW33_test7 from SDX 4.47 - freeze on loading VDR file

Just tested SDX 4.47 (Ultimate 1MB) with SIDE2 (PBI BIOS), and LW33_Test7 runs fine with LW.VDR and shows the hardware 80 column display. Tried again with S_VBXE.SYS and CON.SYS installed, 80 column DOS display on, and again TLW loads without issue.

 

So what are the exact circumstances of your problem?

[w1k]

here is video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL9j1pECCzI

[flashjazzcat]

Change the drive ID in LW.SYS. You have something like:

 

LOADVDR C:LW.VDR

 

This is causing the program to attempt to open the cassette handler (hence the beep). Change to:

 

LOADVDR D3:LW.VDR

 

Changing SDX versions has no impact on this, BTW.

 

Alternatively, place the following in CONFIG.SYS:

 

LWSDXDEV=1

 

This will cause TLW to interpret drive specifiers by letter. Presumably you had it set up like this before but changed CONFIG.SYS when you upgraded SDX.

Edited March 1, 2015 by flashjazzcat

[w1k]

can i use path? C:\LW\LW.VDR - now not working

 

now that same problem with LW.CFG

 

---------------------

i change path to D3:\LW\..... now working, but lw working strange :/

 

Edited March 1, 2015 by w1k

[w1k]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRl8IDYg0Dc

[flashjazzcat]

Re-read what I wrote above. IF you want to use "A:FILENAME", "C:FILENAME", etc, put "LWSDXDEV=1" in CONFIG.SYS. You haven't done this, and yet you still have LWSYS=C:>LW>LW.SYS, which will make TLW try to open the cassette handler when it loads up.

 

The weird characters on the screen are caused by using a CFG file from an older version. EOLs and false (padding) spaces used to be defined using INTERNAL character codes, but since the VBXE version, they're defined as ASCII codes. So go into LW.CFG and make sure you have:

 

EOLCHAR=155

PADCHAR=32

 

Like this:

 

Edited March 1, 2015 by flashjazzcat

[w1k]

i everything changed on C:\ - ok

 

 

i add that LWSDXDEV=1 to config.sys - not working..

 

-when i add LWSDXDEV=1 to LW.SYS, works, but bottom line i see - error: LWSDXDEV=1

 

-when i change everything to D3:\, works, but when vdr file is loading, path is not D3:>blabla, but D3:_blabla.. why _ symbol?

 

-on bottom i see: ERROR: DRIVE D3: (later C:)

Edited March 1, 2015 by w1k

[flashjazzcat]

I see nothing in the manual which tells you that LWSDXDEV=1 can be placed in LW.SYS. It goes in CONFIG.SYS:

 

SET LWSDXDEV=1

 

(Forgot the "SET" statement earlier, although this should be obvious).

 

Please read the manual: what I'm basically doing here is regurgitating what's already written in the user guide.

 

Just tested DRIVE Dn: in LW.SYS here and it works fine.

 

Regarding underscore: I don't know WHERE you're "changing everything to D3:\", so I can't really comment. Why not upload LW.* in a ZIP file and I'll have a look...

Edited March 1, 2015 by flashjazzcat

[fujidude]

Using 3.3 test 7, 80 column VBXE under Altirra. Is there any way to make drawing characters show up instead of international characters? If so, I think it would be great to have LW default to the drawing and etc. characters when in .TXT mode, and default to the international characters when in .DOC mode. International characters are more suited to documents anyway.

Edited May 21, 2015 by fujidude

[flashjazzcat]

How is this supposed to work?

The program is capable of editing up to ten text files simultaneously (which is mentioned in the manual and on the download page), each of 16KB. That's the main bank plus nine extended banks (which I imagined would be sufficient for most users), plus one or two banks used for extensions (if present). The buffer holding the list of banks is c. 16 bytes long for this reason, and not checked for overflow, hence you were the first to cause unintended behaviour by listing twenty-four bank numbers.

[flashjazzcat]

Using 3.3 test 7, 80 column VBXE under Altirra. Is there any way to make drawing characters show up instead of international characters? If so, I think it would be great to have LW default to the drawing and etc. characters when in .TXT mode, and default to the international characters when in .DOC mode. International characters are more suited to documents anyway.

Just use a standard font called LW.FNT.

 

Has the previous question been retracted, or what? Removing it makes the chronology of the thread a little difficult to intuit.

[fujidude]

Cool. I was 1st at something. Anyway, I edited my message and got rid of the question before I saw any replies here, as I read in a later section of the manual that only up to 10 banks are used. Were you replying from an email of the post, or did you start replying before I even did my 1st edit? Anyway, I changed the post now to a question about drawing characters showing up. LastWord is the most awesome WP I have ever used on an Atari8 BTW.

Edited May 21, 2015 by fujidude

[fujidude]

Just use a standard font called LW.FNT.

 

Has the previous question been retracted, or what? Removing it makes the chronology of the thread a little difficult to intuit.

 

I presume there is a corresponding LW.F80 to go with that.... I'll go check on that right now.

 

... okay I don't see any fonts in the 3.3 test 7 folder I am using. I did grab the 3.21b package too though, and I see it does have a LW.FNT and a LW.F80 file. My understanding is that 3.3 can use a lot of the same stuff that comes along with 3.21b, but not the program extensions? Correct?

Edited May 21, 2015 by fujidude

[flashjazzcat]

Thank you very much.

 

Were you replying from an email of the post, or did you start replying before I even did my 1st edit?

I simply visited the forum, read the question, hit quote and typed a reply, apparently some 28 minutes before you edited post 210.

 

I presume there is a corresponding LW.F80 to go with that.... I'll go check on that right now.

You said you're using the VBXE driver, which does not require special 4-bit characters. Any font will do.

Edited May 21, 2015 by flashjazzcat

[fujidude]

Thank you very much.

 

 

I simply visited the forum, read the question, hit quote and typed a reply, apparently some 28 minutes before you edited post 210.

 

 

You said you're using the VBXE driver, which does not require special 4-bit characters. Any font will do.

 

Hell I don't know FJC. Time just blurs when I'm digging into A8 stuff. Anyhoo... so I gather that in VBXE mode, there are twice as many pixels across, so the same 8x8 fonts as used to 40 column still allows to double the displayed characters? Very nice!

[fujidude]

Okay here's what I found out: It appears that the font that LW uses by default is LW.FNT. This one has the international character designs. I found the font REGULAR.FNT has the drawing character designs.

[flashjazzcat]

It appears that the font that LW uses by default is LW.FNT.

I mention this in post #212.

[fujidude]

I mention this in post #212.

 

Actually you suggested I just use LW.FNT in response to my request to get drawing characters to show up. LW.FNT is the one that is already being used by Last Word, and has the international characters, not the drawing ones. REGULAR.FNT has the drawing characters.

[flashjazzcat]

 

Actually you suggested I just use LW.FNT in response to my request to get drawing characters to show up. LW.FNT is the one that is already being used by Last Word, and has the international characters, not the drawing ones. REGULAR.FNT has the drawing characters.

When I said "Use a standard font called LW.FNT", I meant (in response to your request to make LW use a font with graphics characters by default) take a standard font and rename it to LW.FNT. I did not mean use whatever font is already called LW.FNT. Apologies for any lack of clarity.

[Joey Z]

So now that this post has been dredged up, can I make a feature request? The TLW print processor only allows 80 column printing but my ibm wheelwriter has a 12 pitch font wheel (and I don't have a 10 pitch for it) so it does 96 columns in 8". I also have an IBM proprinter that does 80, 96, and 136 column printing. I know that the print preview is limited by hardware, but could the final print processor support margins >80 columns? I printed a paper w/ my atari 800xl, 850, and IBM wheelwriter a few weeks ago, and it kind of made it difficult to print when I had to center the page with a weird margin so that the narrower space would be printed in the center of the page.

Edited May 22, 2015 by Joey Z

[flashjazzcat]

...could the final print processor support margins >80 columns?

It did when I wrote it. You should just be able to set a wider page width using the embedded directives as per the manual? Does this not work?

[Joey Z]

It did when I wrote it. You should just be able to set a wider page width using the embedded directives as per the manual? Does this not work?

I tried that and I think it gave me a 'parameter error' but maybe I didn't try it on the print processor, maybe I only tried the preview? I'd have to give it another try.

[fujidude]

What would be the feasibility of having LW transparently, and automatically, manage banking on large files spanning multiple banks? Manual bank management by the user seems to be a perfect task for software. IMO, LW is already the best word processor ever published for the Atari8s, but the seamless handling of multi-bank spanned files would be a huge improvement even so. /wishmode off

[flashjazzcat]

I tried that and I think it gave me a 'parameter error' but maybe I didn't try it on the print processor, maybe I only tried the preview? I'd have to give it another try.

 

One gotcha which is easy to miss (since it's possible to get by without using embedded directives at all much of the time) is that the arguments must also be in reverse video.

 

What would be the feasibility of having LW transparently, and automatically, manage banking on large files spanning multiple banks? Manual bank management by the user seems to be a perfect task for software. IMO, LW is already the best word processor ever published for the Atari8s, but the seamless handling of multi-bank spanned files would be a huge improvement even so. /wishmode off

 

This is something which I've looked into, and after considering various possible solutions I didn't do anything about it yet (not least because the most outspoken users have hitherto seemed happy with 16KB buffers). Whichever way you look at it, it's going to complicate the editor engine somewhat, and definitely slow it down (since we'll no longer be addressing a fixed address range when moving text around, but some virtual, indirect address range mapped across a number of banks). If you accept the performance hit, the next question is which approach to take. LW uses a split buffer, which is why typing at the top of a 16KB text file is as fast as typing at the back end of the file. This design lends itself fairly well to two solutions:

• Caching either end of the file to disk
• Spanning memory banks

There was a nice editor called Co-ed on the BBC (for which source code is available) which uses a split buffer and dumps both ends of a long file out to disk. Unfortunately the most interesting part of the source (the caching mechanism) is the only part of the source code which is missing. Aside from that, operations such as cut and paste suddenly become a lot more involved (imagine cutting 36KB of a 48KB file and pasting it some place else in the same, partially cached out document). However, since LW has already hit the buffers with regard to code space, caching to disk (especially a hard disk) remains an attractive prospect.

 

The other way - spanning banks - might seem more appealing on a 320KB or 1MB machine, but you still end up addressing the buffer indirectly (byte $6000 being transparently transformed into bank 2, offset $2000, for example), and this will completely wreck the performance of the editor engine as it stands. It's been apparent for a while that improvements could be made to the editor (speeding it up still further), and I think a complete re-write would be an opportune time to look at large file support. But it won't be happening for a long time, since I'm preoccupied with far more pressing projects at the moment.

Edited May 23, 2015 by flashjazzcat