| 1 | Before You Turn on the Computer |
This Section provides crucial background information to ensure that your first encounter with BEX is a pleasant one. Because computers are so literal-minded, it's important that you're precise when you communicate with them. Part 1 explains the conventions we use in our manuals to help you communicate clearly with the computer.
Part 2 discusses the minimum equipment you need to run BEX. Part 3 discusses some of the equipment you can use with BEX. Depending on your preferences and your vision, you can access the computer in various ways: through letters on the computer monitor in various sizes, through various speech devices, and through braille screen access devices. Part 3 also covers regular printers, large print printers, and braille embossers. If you've never used an Apple before, be sure to read Part 4, where we provide fundamental information about the Apple.
The BEX Interface Guide explains how to connect the special devices that BEX supports to your Apple. For the nitty-gritty details about anything mentioned in this Section, please refer to the extensive descriptions in the BEX Interface Guide.
Part 1: Guide to Conventions in the BEX Manuals
Structure
The BEX Manual is divided into three Levels, Learner, User, and Master. Each Level is divided into numbered Sections, and each Section is further divided into numbered Parts. When we refer to a Part without mentioning a Section, we are talking about a Part within the current Section. All references to another Section refer to the Section within that Level, except when explicitly stated otherwise.
The Index provides page references for all three Levels. Many topics are covered at all three Levels; while the Learner Level reference may simply provide a step-by-step sample, the Master Level reference may provide an in-depth understanding of what's happening.
We use the following symbols to make sure that you know exactly what to type.
This font shows you exactly what keys to
press when you're typing at the Apple keyboard. Any spaces shown in
this font are significant. Unless we state otherwise, you type any space
shown in this font. In the braille edition, this font is transcribed with
the Code for Computer Braille Notation. In the audio edition, we
frequently spell out this material letter-by-letter, as well as using a
distinctive tone of voice.
This font shows exactly what the computer
says so you can compare what's on the screen with what's
in the manual. In the braille edition, this is also transcribed with the
Code for Computer Braille Notation. When the print shows a dialogue
between you and BEX, your responses are in bolder type than what the
computer prompts. In this case only, we use emphasis markers in the
Computer Braille Transcription. What BEX prompts is emphasized; your
response is not.
In the audio edition, it's shown by a slightly lower tone of voice.
Some keys have long names, which we abbreviate throughout the manual. For example, the key labelled Return is abbreviated <CR>. When you need to press the spacebar once, we show it as <space>. Later on you will encounter other character names inside angle brackets.
| Warning! | When we want you to pay special attention to a feature, you see a note like this one. |
| Echo | Some information only concerns people with certain equipment. The group that it applies to appears on the left, with the note in the main body of the text. |
A tale of two twos
The two in the Apple II family name has
been represented many ways over the years. Originally, the
two was created from a right bracket next to a left bracket.
(And TEXTALKER has a special entry to pronounce this right.) Later on,
Apple used two slashes to represent the two; on current
Apples, the two is shown with two uppercase letter
I's. Of course, devices that plug in to the Apple have
used even more ways to show the two. In the BEX Manual, we
use the Roman numeral II when talking about Apples. However,
whenever the BEX program
Part 2: Equipment Requirements
A detailed technical description of the Apple computers appears in Section 1 of the Interface Guide. Here's a summary.
● BEX Performs Best with 128K Apple II
BEX is designed to work on a 128K member of the Apple II family. When you have more than 128K of memory, BEX can use this extra memory for RAM drives. The Apple IIc and IIgs always have at least 128K of memory. If your Apple does not have 128K of memory, you will encounter a number of limitations as you use BEX; in particular, 128K of memory is required for the Master Level. Appendix 4 discusses BEX in a 64K environment.
The information in Appendix 4 is also relevant if your Apple is the oldest member of the Apple II family, the Apple II Plus. While BEX minimally functions on a Apple II Plus, there are many BEX features that you can't take advantage of with the older machine.
The Apple IIe
To use the full power of BEX, install an extended 80-column card, which offers both 80-column text display and 64K of memory. Once you've installed the extended 80-column card, you have a 128K Apple. You cannot operate the Master Level without an extended 80-column card.
An enhanced Apple IIe is different from a 128K Apple IIe with an extended 80-column card. Enhanced means that the main computer chip on the Apple IIe's motherboard has been changed to the same chip that the Apple IIc uses, the 653#02.
The Apple IIc
While the portable Apple IIc does not have slots for
memory expansion cards or interface cards, the Apple IIc right out of the
box has 128K memory and an 80-column card. The Apple IIc
The Apple IIgs
The Apple IIgs comes with 256K memory standard. BEX operates well on the newest member of the Apple II family, with one exception. On other Apples, you can enter text through a six-key, Perkins Brailler-style keyboard at the BEX User Level. However, due to differences in hardware, the six-key braille keyboard mode does not work with the Apple IIgs.
The Apple IIgs has both slots, like the IIe, and ports, like the IIc. How the Apple IIgs communicates through these slots or ports is determined by the Control Panel utility built in to the Apple IIgs. More details on this topic appear in Section 1 of the Interface Guide.
The Apple II Plus
We don't recommend using the Apple II Plus as the principal computer with BEX. BEX can minimally function (details in Appendix 4) but there's a lot of frustration ahead. No circuit cards exist to provide an Apple II Plus with the functional equivalent of the memory in a 128K Apple IIe or IIc. This means that the Master Level of BEX is not available on the Apple II Plus. BEX requires 64K of memory in the Apple II Plus to operate at ANY level--you need a language card or 16K RAM card. The Apple II Plus keyboard lacks true upper and lowercase, and some punctuation is missing. BEX allows true upper and lowercase, with or without the shift key mod.
The II Plus keyboard does not have the Open-Apple and Solid-Apple keys that control large print on the screen. The buttons on a joystick or game paddles do function like the Open-Apple and Solid-Apple keys, so if you want large print screen on an Apple II Plus, you need a joystick or game paddles. If you have an Apple II Plus and a 128K Apple, you can use the II Plus to drive your printer while you edit and review text with the more powerful Apple.
●
In the past, Apple II'S always used 5.25 floppy disk drives. Beginning in 1986, Apple has also sold 3.5-inch disk drives, sometimes called microfloppy disk drives. To use BEX, your Apple must have at least one 5.25 inch disk drive, because the BEX program disk only boots from 5.25 inch floppy disks.
BEX works best when your Apple has two disk drives. You can tell BEX that you only have one disk drive, and BEX then prompts you to switch between the program disk and a data disk as required. However, you will be switching disks a lot if you have only one disk drive--more information appears in Appendix 3.
At the Learner and User Levels, BEX is limited to two 5.25 inch floppy disk drives. When you have an Apple IIgs with one 5.25 inch disk drive and one 3.5 inch disk drive, the Learner and User Levels of BEX are a little inconvenient.
At the Master Level, however, you have more disk drive options. BEX can store data on both 5.25 inch and 3.5 inch disks. When you have more than 128K memory in your Apple, BEX can use the additional memory for RAM drives. Finally at the Master Level, BEX supports one brand of hard disk system, the Sider manufactured by First Class Peripherals. Master Level Section 3 discusses all the possibilities in detail.
Part 3: Other Equipment You Can Use with BEX
None of the equipment described here is required when you are using BEX, but it certainly can make your computer system more productive.
● Printing and Brailling
There are a great variety of inkprint printers: dot
matrix, letter quality dot matrix, letter quality daisy wheel, laser
printers, ink jet printers, and thermal printers. There are also two ways
for the Apple to communicate with a printer: serial and parallel.
Braille embossers
BEX attempts to support every braille embosser manufactured. To generate Grade II, or literary braille, you need to have a translation program that creates the appropriate computer signals for braille embossers to generate braille. BEX translates from print to Grade II and vice versa. BEX has special drivers for braille embossers that need them. In addition, BEX supports Dipner Dots, a technique for generating draft-quality braille on a daisy-wheel inkprint printer. Information on Dipner Dots and interfacing braille embossers to your Apple is supplied in the BEX Interface Guide.
Large print printers
BEX creates large print output when you have the right combination of interface card and dot matrix printer. The list of supported printers and interface cards is found in Section 4 of the Interface Guide. BEX has two large print fonts: 14 and 18 point.
Voice device as a printer
It's possible to send formatted output to any voice device. The higher quality speech synthesizers can be recorded as they are printing.
● Speech synthesizers
There are two basic types of speech devices: integral and serial. BEX works with both types of devices; the integral type offers more features to blind users.
Street Electronics manufactures and supports four integral speech synthesizers: the original Echo II; the Echo Plus; the Echo IIb; and the Cricket. (The Echo II is no longer manufactured.) As far as you are concerned, BEX handles all four devices identically; all references to the Echo in this manual apply equally to all four devices. Please note that the Echo GP is not on this list; it's a serial voice device.
The Echo uses various programs. The
TEXTALKER program makes the Apple accessible to blind users.
The disk supplied in the box with the Echo Plus or Cricket does not
contain TEXTALKER; the disk in the Echo IIb does contain
TEXTALKER. The BEX program disk (and most other Apple software for blind
users) includes TEXTALKER.
TEXTALKER not only allows the Echo to speak any word it encounters, it also provides screen review ability. Screen review lets you randomly examine the contents of the computer screen, so you are not limited to hearing something once and trying to remember it. Because of TEXTALKER'S power, and because the Echo is very reasonably priced, BEX has particularly good support of the Echo's features.
SlotBuster II
Manufactured by RC Systems, the SlotBuster combines
speech synthesis with a variety of other functions. You decide what
functions you want when you buy the device; they include parallel and
serial printer interfaces, a modem port, and a BSR X-10 controller.
Because the SlotBuster supports many different functions, it requires more
computer sophistication to operate successfully. The BEX program disk
contains the SCAT software, which provides the SlotBuster
with screen review capabilities slightly superior to TEXTALKER'S.
Appendix 2 discusses the SlotBuster II commands.
Serial Voice Devices
At the User Level and Master Level, BEX supports serial voice devices like the Echo GP, DECtalk, Votrax, and others.
●
You can connect either a computer monitor or a TV set to your Apple. If you can't see the screen at all, you only need to connect a voice device; you don't need to connect a monitor to the Apple. Whenever a program interacts with the "screen," it's actually interacting with a part of the Apple that controls the screen. The Apple doesn't know or care if you have a computer monitor or TV set plugged in.
Monitors come in a dizzying array of different sizes and colors; monochrome screens can have white, green, or amber characters. The size of letters on the screen are expressed as some number of columns, or how many characters fit on one line. The actual size of the letters depends on the size of the screen. Forty-column letters are much larger on a 24-inch monitor than on a nine-inch monitor, because the line is longer.
BEX can display text with 80, 40, 20, 10 and 5 column sizes. The 20 column screen shows 160 characters at once; the 10 column screen shows 40 characters at once, while the 5 column screen display only shows 10 characters at a time. Section 3, Part 4 explains how you control the speed of large print screen display with the open-Apple (or command) and solid-Apple (or option) keys.
| Warning! | As the screen display changes, the 5 column characters make large areas of light and dark. This strobe effect may cause seizures in persons who are prone to them. If you use the 5-column display, we strongly urge you to reduce the contrast and brightness of the screen output and test the 5 column display gingerly. |
Instead of or in addition to using BEX's large print, you can use a large print screen access device. One example is VTEK'S DP-10, consisting of a circuit card and a large monitor. The circuit card grabs all information on the Apple screen and enlarges it.
● Braille Screen Access Devices
At all levels, BEX supports many braille devices as
printers. As
Part 4: Foreground Information
In this Part, we briefly discuss some basic features of the Apple computer. If you are familiar with the Apple's keyboard, know what booting and DOS mean, and understand how to communicate with the Apple through menus, then you can skip the rest of the Section and move to Learner Level Section 2.
Appendix 5 contains names and addresses for publishers of accessible computer materials. In addition to the resources listed there, check out local Apple user groups in your area. You can find where and when they meet by asking at an Apple computer dealer; their members include both newcomers and experienced Apple users eager to help newcomers out.
● The Cursor
This is a special symbol that marks your place. In BEX, the cursor is a square blob of light. When you type characters on the keyboard, they appear at the cursor. You can move the cursor to cover existing text; it changes from a square blob to a reversed picture of the character it's covering. When you use screen review software with the Echo, you can have two cursors. In addition to the screen cursor, you can control an audio cursor that marks where the next text is spoken. The audio cursor is not shown by a blob of light; you can command the Echo to speak the position of the audio cursor.
●
Locate these keys on your Apple keyboard so that you can issue commands to the Apple and BEX. Every Apple has a slightly different keyboard layout. Complete keyboard maps for every Apple model are provided in Part 5.
● Booting the Apple
Some programs are built in to the Apple--when you turn
the machine on, they are waiting to be used. One is the programming
language called Applesoft BASIC. You may wish to explore programming in
BASIC yourself, but you don't have to
More importantly, there's one little routine inside the Apple that lets you get started. When you first turn the Apple on, it knows just enough to look for a disk drive controller card. If it finds one, it says to the card: "OK, start spinning the disk in drive 1 and see if you can find a program to tell me what to do next." When it finds this information it's automatically loaded into the Apple's memory for use until you turn the machine off again.
The Apple is smart enough to pull itself up by its own bootstraps. That's why this process is called booting the Apple, or sometimes, booting a disk.
There are two ways to boot the Apple. A cold boot means you start with the power off. You insert a disk in drive 1, close the drive door, and turn on the power.
A warm boot means that the power is already on. You insert a program disk in drive 1 and close the door. You press three keys for a warm boot in a particular sequence. Press Open-Apple, then Control, then Reset; and then release these in reverse order: release Reset, then release Control, then release Open-Apple. The disk in drive 1 starts spinning.
If you turn off the power and then immediately turn it back on again, the Apple may not boot correctly. There's a lot of electrical energy that's stored in the Apple, and it takes at least 30 seconds for the energy to dissipate. For a successful cold boot, turn off the power and then wait 30 seconds before turning the power back on again.
● What DOS does
All computers use a Disk Operating System, abbreviated DOS. (It rhymes with toss.) DOS controls how the computer handles information. DOS provides instructions for the computer to use in reading and writing data and programs from disk; interpreting input from the keyboard and other places; and displaying characters on the screen, to printers, to voice devices, to braille devices, etc.
Not every disk has the DOS software on it; if you try to boot a disk that doesn't have DOS, the disk just spins endlessly. Placing DOS on a disk uses some space. BEX lets you prepare disks to store data by initializing them. BEX does not place DOS on these disks, so you have more room for your text.
● The BASIC Prompt
BEX issues DOS commands that tell the Apple to load
information from the disk into the Apple's memory. You can also
temporarily quit BEX and issue DOS commands. The Apple lets you know that
it's ready for DOS or Applesoft BASIC commands with a single
] character on the screen; we refer to this character as
the BASIC prompt. The TEXTALKER software makes the Echo
pronounce the right square bracket as ready, since the BASIC
prompt means the Apple is ready for your commands.
Even if you don't plan on doing any Applesoft BASIC
programming, the BASIC prompt is important to recognize. Many times when
something unexpected happens in BEX, you recover by crashing the program.
Crash is a dramatic word, but don't be frightened: all you do is
temporarily stop BEX dead in its tracks. You then receive the BASIC
prompt. You depress your Caps Lock key, type RUN <CR>
and you're up and running again. Details in Section 13.
Part 5: Keyboard Maps
Throughout this Manual and the following keyboard maps, we use the official, dictionary names for all punctuation characters. Many voice devices use different terms when describing punctuation. The following list shows the seven terms where the Echo's vocabulary deviates from the standard names.
| Character | Official Name | Echo Calls It |
|---|---|---|
^ | caret | up arrow |
& | ampersand | and |
* | asterisk | star |
_ | underbar | underline |
| | vertical bar | vertical line |
- | hyphen | dash |
] | right bracket | ready |
Apple IIgs
The Apple IIgs has five rows of keys in the main keyboard, plus a numeric keypad on the righthand side. Main keyboard:
The Reset key is a long rectangle parallel and above the 5 and 6 keys; it's labelled with an incised triangle pointing left.
The numeric keypad has five rows: Top row is Clear;
equals
Eight keys on the Apple IIgs are single-character control keys. Escape is the same as control-left bracket. Tab is the same as control-I. Both Enter and Return are the same as control-M. Left arrow is the same as control-H. Right arrow is the same as control-U. Up arrow is the same as control-K. Down arrow is the same as control-J. Clear is the same as control-X.
Apple IIe with numeric keypad
The keyboard layout of the Apple IIe changed in 1987. The newest models have numeric keypads; if yours doesn't, see the next map. Apple IIe has five rows of keys in the main keyboard, plus a numeric keypad on the righthand side. Main keyboard:
The numeric keypad has five rows: Top row is Escape; equals sign; slash; asterisk. Second row is digits 7; 8; 9; plus sign. Third row is digits 4; 5 (has raised dot); 6; hyphen. Fourth row is digits 1; 2; 3; and top half of Enter key. Bottom row is double-width zero, period, bottom half of Enter key.
Seven keys on the Apple IIe are single-character control keys. Escape is the same as control-left bracket. Tab is the same as control-I. Both Enter and Return are the same as control-M. Left arrow is the same as control-H. Right arrow is the same as control-U. Up arrow is the same as control-K. Down arrow is the same as control-J.
Apple IIc and pre-1987 Apple IIe
The keyboard layout of the Apple IIe changed in 1987. The newest models have numeric keypads; if yours does, see the previous map. Apple IIe and IIc keyboards are identical except for the position of the Reset key. There are five rows of keys:
| 2 | An Exploratory Trip through BEX |
This Section takes you on a guided tour of the most important BEX functions. The BEX program disk is a flippy disk; it contains programs on both sides. One side is labelled Boot; it contains the information the Apple needs to get started running BEX, plus the Starting Menu. As we explore the Starting Menu, we show you how to make backup copies of your BEX disks, and other useful tasks.
The other side of the BEX disk is labelled Main and contains the bulk of the program: the Main, Second, and Page Menus. In this trip we demonstrate BEX's Editor and Print formatter, found on the Main Menu. We explore some options on the Second and Page Menus as well. Along the way, we provide definitions for words that have special meanings in BEX.
Part 1: Are You Ready to Go?
To take this exploratory trip, you need to set up your Apple system and have the right materials. Gather together your two-sided BEX program disk and the BEXtras disk. One of the first things we'll do is make backup copies of your BEX disks, so you'll need at least four high-quality blank disks.
There are several sources of help for setting up your Apple system. First off, check the Owners Guide that came with your Apple--it does an excellent job of explaining the basics of your computer. (See Appendix 5 for organizations that supply Apple manuals in large print, audio tape, and braille.) The BEX Interface Guide provides details on installing special devices, like voice synthesizers and braillers. Finally, Apple computers are very popular in schools. Chances are excellent that you can find a technically-adept high school student who can set up your system if you are having trouble.
When you have an Echo II, Echo Plus, or Echo IIb, you
should install it following the instructions in the Interface Guide.
Always turn off the Apple's power when you install or remove a
circuit card, or you'll fry your Apple! Make sure that
When you have a Cricket, you must plug it into port 2 on the Apple IIc (on the right-hand side). The Cricket must be turned on before you start using BEX. Check to make sure that the Cricket volume knob is not turned all the way down.
When you have an inkprint printer, plug it in to slot or port 1. This exploratory trip assumes that your printer is plugged in to slot or port 1. Section 3 discusses how you tell BEX where to find your printers and braillers.
Part 2: Get Started by Booting Up BEX
Turn off the power to the Apple. Insert the BEX
program disk into disk drive 1, with the side labelled BEX
boot facing up. Turn the Apple on. When everything goes well, the
disk drive whirs for around 20 seconds, and then BEX prompts: Enter
configuration: and beeps. When you have an Echo or Cricket
connected properly, then it should also speak the Enter
configuration: prompt.
If you don't get this prompt in 20 seconds, try it again. Turn off the Apple's power and wait for 30 seconds, then go through the same routine. If your Echo or Cricket didn't speak, check to make sure all the connections are secure and the volume knobs are turned up.
If you turn on the power and then start hearing annoying loud blaaats like a submarine diving, it means that you inserted the Main side of BEX instead of the Boot side. You must always start with the Boot side. Turn the Apple off to stop the noise, then flip the disk over, and try again.
Part 3: Get Started with a Supplied Configuration
A configuration is a file on the Boot side of your BEX
disk that lists your equipment preferences. BEX can work with many
different devices, and the Boot side of BEX contains programs for working
with large print printers, large print screen display,
In Section 3 we describe how you set up a new configuration. We have supplied six configurations that allow most people to get access to the Apple and explore. The supplied configurations are very limited. None of the supplied configurations include a braille embosser. As soon as you've taken the exploratory trip, you should establish a configuration that describes your equipment. If none of the supplied configurations matches your situation, read Section 3 to see how to set up your own configuration.
The names of the supplied configurations are each two characters long. To tell BEX to use one of the six existing configurations, you press three keys: a letter, the number of disk drives you have, then the carriage return key.
When you can see the regular screen, and have
S1 <CR>S2 <CR>When you want Echo or Cricket output, and have
E1 <CR>E2 <CR>When you want 20-column large print screen display, and have
L1 <CR>L2 <CR>After you press <CR>, BEX reads the information in the configuration file on disk. Then, BEX displays its owner's name, zip code, and a six to ten digit serial number. Make note of this information: we'll ask you for it if you call for Technical Support.
After BEX displays the serialization information, the
disk whirs for a moment and BEX announces:
Part 4: Explore the Starting Menu At all four BEX menus, pressing <CR> gives a
list of the available options. Do this now and you see the Starting
Menu's options. At all BEX menus, you choose an option by pressing
one letter. No <CR> is required or expected after the one letter
choice at a menu prompt. Some BEX options are available at all
menus, while some are only available at particular menus. We will explore
some of the more important options on each of BEX's four menus in this
trip. Controlling large print letters When you are using the L2 or L1 configuration, BEX
makes 20-column letters on the screen. You can control how fast these
letters appear with the open-Apple (or Command) and solid-Apple (or
Option) keys. Whenever you depress just the open-Apple key (or Command)
key, large print scrolling freezes. Release the key to allow scrolling to
continue. Whenever you depress just the solid-Apple (or Option) key, large
print scrolling slows to a crawl. When you release the key, scrolling
resumes. We explore these issues in detail in Section 3, Part 4. You can issue Echo commands at all BEX menus,
including the Starting Menu. We discuss Echo commands in detail in Section
10. The configurations we supplied establish a particular set of Echo
parameters: how fast the Echo speaks, what punctuation it pronounces and
what punctuation is silent, and how loud it is. It takes some time to get
used to the Echo speech. One Echo command adds a pause between every word; this
can make it easier to decipher what the Echo's saying. The
delay command is three keystrokes: control-E, a number
between zero and eight, then D. The Echo starts out at zero, meaning no
delay between words. To add a medium-length delay between words, enter
control-E 4 D at the menu prompt. ● BEX Disk Catalogs and BEX Pages Option D - Disk catalog is available at all four BEX
menus. When you press D, BEX prompts Insert your BEXtras disk in drive 2. Press D, then
acknowledge the default drive number by pressing <CR>. After you press <CR>, BEX reads the disk and
presents you with a list of chapters. A chapter is BEX's
basic unit for text. You edit text in a chapter, one chapter at a time.
For most other BEX options, you can work with many chapters at once. BEX
uses the chapter's name to organize information on floppy disk. A chapter is subdivided into pages, and each page is
stored as one file on the disk. How text is divided between BEX
pages on disk is completely independent of how many output
pages the After BEX presents the list of chapters on the BEXtras
disk, BEX prompts: The many filenames you see when you press
<space> after a BEX catalog is exactly what you get when you type
the DOS command Part 5: Initializing a Data Disk Before you can save your text on a disk, you must
initialize the disk. Initializing totally erases any existing
data, and establishes magnetic pigeonholes for information storage.
Placing an uninitialized disk in the drive is like not inserting any disk
at all: BEX can't save data on it. Prepare a data disk to use as you explore BEX. At the
Starting Whenever BEX asks yes or no
questions, it just uses the first letter--when you supply BEX with a
yes or no response, you only need to type Y or N
followed by <CR>. Your cursor is on top of the Y. When you
press <CR>, you accept the default response. If you don't want to
proceed, type In this case, you do want to proceed, so
press <CR>. Now BEX tells you to insert the disk in the drive.
Insert a blank disk in drive 2 (drive 1 when you only have one disk
drive). BEX asks you to press <space>. If you press any other key
besides <space>, you return to the Starting Menu prompt. Again, you
do want to initialize the disk, so press <space>. BEX
then starts to initialize the disk. Whenever you initialize a disk, you
hear a dramatic sound we call gronking. Don't worry--this is
normal. After a few gronks, you hear a regular pattern of writing to disk. If there's something wrong with the disk, then
BEX won't be able to initialize it, and tells you so. Please don't try to
economize by buying inexpensive disks. In our experience, it's
worthwhile to pay a few extra dimes for a disk you can count on. One of the next stops on our exploratory trip is
making a working, or backup, copy of your BEX program disk.
The BEX program is copy-protected; we only allow you to make
three backup copies of your BEX disk. If BEX encountered a problem with a
disk while it was copying the BEX master, you would lose one of your
backup copies. To ensure that the disks for your backup copies will work,
initialize them first. The BEX program disk has two sides, so
you need to initialize two disks to prepare for making the backup copies.
Use option I - Flippies and floppies The Master BEX disk is a flippy disk;
both sides of the disk have been designed and tested for data storage. If
you have flippy disks, you can make your backup copies on one flippy. Some
people make a flippy disk from a floppy disk by just cutting another notch
in the disk. We think this is a bad idea. If you use a paper
punch or other tool to cut another notch in a floppy disk, the "new" side
may be of very poor quality. If you want flippies and you can't find them
at your local computer store, RDC sells flippy disks at a reasonable
price. Many disks are labelled double density or
double sided. These words are often abbreviated to DD or
DS. Don't confuse these terms with a flippy
disk. Double sided means that both sides are certified for storing data.
IBM disk drives can read and write from both sides of a disk at once.
Apple disk drives can only read from the top side of a disk. Only use
flippy disks manufactured with two write-enable notches. Take care of your disks! A floppy disk is a very handy item, but is quite
vulnerable to damage when handled carelessly. Never touch the exposed
surface of a disk. Insert the disk carefully into the drive, without
bending or twisting. When a disk isn't in the disk drive, it should be in
its paper jacket. Never write on the label of a disk with a ballpoint pen
or pencil, as it can damage the surface. Keep your disks in the proper
environment: between 50 and 125 degrees Farenheit. We can tell you horror stories about the hours
required to retype all the data lost when coffee dribbles onto a floppy
disk. Unfortunately, this is one lesson most people learn the hard way.
The most important rule for handling disks is never have your hands
on the only copy! We tell you how to copy disks with BEX in just a
few paragraphs. But more important than the technical details is that you
should always make copies of any disk you care about. Making copies of
your disk is so important Part 6: Copying Disks One Starting Menu option is C - Copy disks. When you
press C, BEX confirms your choice with We practice copying disks with the BEXtras disk. At
the start of the trip, you gathered four blank disks. In the previous
part, you initialized three of these disks. The fourth disk has not yet
been initialized; insert it in drive 2. Place your BEXtras disk in drive
1, and then proceed as follows:
You don't have to initialize every disk
Part 7: How and Why to Copy Your BEX Disks We hope we've convinced you that a floppy disk is a
vulnerable item. We want you to enjoy using BEX for many years to come. If
you always used your BEX Master disk, then an accident would mean you
couldn't use BEX. To ensure that you always have a working copy, use
option C - Copy disks on the Starting Menu to make backups of both sides
of your BEX Master disk. Once you do, store the Master disk in a different
and safe place, and always use the backup. Don't keep your BEX Master disk
and your working backup in the same place. If you kept both Master and
bakup in the same box, then you would be in deep trouble when the roof
leaks on your disk holder. If your backup disk is damaged, you can then
make another working copy from the Master. Backups are for your use only Because BEX disks receive heavy wear, your Master disk
is programmed to allow you to make three backup copies of each side. Any
attempt to make further backup copies will be unsuccessful. If you don't
make a backup copy and always use your Master BEX disk, you are risking
inconvenience if your pet rabbit chews your BEX master disk to pieces. If
you do encounter problems with your BEX Master disk, contact the technical
support staff at 608-257-8833. We know that most BEX users are honorable people, and
would not consider making a copy of BEX and giving it to someone who
hasn't bought the program. Unfortunately, we have encountered a
dishonorable minority who are willing to do just that. This is why BEX is
copy-protected. The BEX program and all its documentation is
copyrighted, as well as copy-protected. Our copyright on BEX means that
you cannot make copies of BEX to give or sell to another person. You can
only use BEX on one computer at a time. Treat BEX like you would treat a
book. If you want to read a book at home and When you need to use BEX on more than one computer at
a time, you should contact RDC about legally obtaining multiple copies of
the program. RDC offers special prices for bulk purchases. If you have
four computers, do not make three backup copies and use them
plus your Master disk. If you did, you would be violating our copyright
and breaking the law. In addition to the moral problem, there's a
practical risk as well--you should never use your Master BEX disk. RDC
offers special prices for bulk purchases--contact us for more information. Since your BEX backup copies will see heavy use,
it's important that the disks you copy onto are
high-quality disks. An easy way to make sure that your disk
will work is to initialize it first, using option I - Initialize disks. If
there is something wrong with your disk, BEX refuses to initialize it. Backing up BEX step-by-step Now that the lecture is over, it's time to make
your working backup. Check to make sure your BEX Boot disk is in drive 1;
place one of the pre-initialized blank disks in drive 2. Now press C and
follow the instructions on the screen. When you press <CR>, BEX
makes a loud gronking sound as it identifies your Master disk, and then
reminds you to use a high quality disk for your backup. You must enter
When the Boot side copy is complete, you're back at
the Starting Menu. Press C again. Remove your master BEX boot side from
drive 1, flip it over to the BEX main side, and reinsert it in drive 1.
Insert another high-quality, pre-initialized blank disk in drive 2, and go
through this procedure again. If you have flippy disks, you can create a
double-sided backup instead of two separate disks. We have finished exploring the Starting Menu. The
other Starting Menu options are discussed in Section 3, Part 1. If you
want to take a break, this is a good opportunity. Our next step is moving
to the Main side of BEX and seeing what's there. Part 8: Explore the Main Disk If you paused at the previous Part, you should get BEX
up and running again. Insert the backup Boot disk in drive 1
and turn on the power. At the The BEX Boot disk contains the configuration programs
and the Starting Menu. The rest of BEX is on the Main disk. Remove the
Boot disk, find the backup of the BEX Main disk, insert it in
drive 1, and press <space>. BEX announces:
When you want to move from the Main Menu back to the
Starting Menu, you use the same procedure. At the Main Menu, insert the
Boot side in drive 1 and press <space>. What's on the Main Menu When you press <CR> for the list of BEX options,
there are ten items on the list. S and Z let you move to other menus. D
and # let you examine disk information. Four options form the heart of the
Main Menu. Option E - Editor is where you type and correct text; we
explore it soon in Part 11. When you want to send your text to a printer
or brailler, you use option P - Print chapters; we show you how this works
in Part 12. Option G - Grade 2 translator changes inkprint text into
contracted grade 2 braille. A step-by-step sample of using this feature
appears in Section 7. Finally, option R - Replace characters lets you
alter ● Moving Around on the Main Disk Each of the three menus on the Main disk is accessible
from every other. Press S and you move to the Second Menu. Press Z and you
"zip" to the Page Menu. At both the Second and Page Menus, press J to
"jump" back to the Main Menu. When you are already at the Main Menu and
press J, BEX just repeats the menu prompt. Some options are available at all menus. You can
always get the list of options by pressing <CR>. You can always find
out how much room is left on a disk by pressing the number sign. Pressing
D always performs a Disk catalog, the list of BEX chapters. Finally, you
can use control-E to send Echo commands. Typing Your Part of the Dialogue so BEX
Understands When you communicate with BEX at a menu, every
letter you type is interpreted as uppercase. It doesn't
matter whether you use the shift key or depress the Caps Lock key. Of
course, when you want to type a shifted character like the question mark
in your chapter name, then you'd better use the shift key! When you type your responses in the computer dialogue,
you can't type very fast. The E1 and E2 configurations are set to Most
punctuation, so the Echo speaks every key your press at menus except
<CR>. When you are reading the screen, make sure that every letter
you type appears there. Part 9: Copying chapters You are about to edit and modify an chapter named
Make sure your BEX Main side is in drive 1, then press
S. At all You want to write the copy on the disk in drive 1. BEX
always looks at the disk in drive 2 unless you tell it otherwise. To
signal BEX to write the MY QUANDARY chapter on drive 1, you
precede the chapter name with the digit 1, like so:
● Copying chapters on a One-Drive System Copy chapters on the Second Menu allows you to copy
between two disks. The dialogue goes like this:
Part 10: Exploring the Editor Once you have made a working copy of the QUANDARY
chapter, it's time to experiment with the Editor. The Editor is on
the Main Menu. Insert your BEX Main disk in drive 1, then press J. ● Word Processor vs. Typewriter: Some Important
Differences When you type on a typewriter, you use the spacebar,
the return key, and the tab key to manually control where every character
appears. You have to press the return key at the end of each line to move
to the next line and return the carriage to the left margin. Unless you
have a fancy electronic typewriter, Typing text in the Editor is quite different from
typing on a typewriter. First and foremost, when you make a mistake,
it's easy to correct it. If you spell one word wrong, you can just
fix that one word without having to retype an entire line or an entire
page. That's because you don't manually format every line. Instead of
using the return and tab keys to control where your text appears on the
sheet, you use format indicators and format commands. These are characters
you type in your text. The format indicator and format command characters
control what happens when you send the text out of the Apple to a printer,
brailler, or voice device. As you explore an existing chapter, you'll
notice several strange combinations of dollar signs, numbers, and letters.
These are the format indicators and commands, described in detail in
Section 6. ● Editing the MY QUANDARY Chapter You are now at the Main Menu. To start using the
Editor, press E, and BEX confirms your choice. Insert the disk with the MY
QUANDARY chapter in drive 2. Instead of specifying this chapter by name,
let's use the scanning feature. Here's how it goes:
Once you supply the chapter number, BEX pauses a
moment, reads the disk, and discovers how many pages the MY QUANDARY
chapter contains. In this case, MY QUANDARY has four pages; BEX supplies
you with a default value for where you want to start editing by prompting:
You can start editing on any of the four pages. The
beginning seems as good a place as any, so accept the default by pressing
<CR>. BEX now reads the disk file that contains the text of
page 1. BEX copies this information to a particular place in the
Apple's memory called the page buffer. When you use the
Editor, you are always working in the page buffer. To store a lasting
edition of your text, you copy it from the page buffer to your data disk.
This happens automatically when you move between pages or quit the Editor. Once BEX has copied the text of page 1 to the page
buffer, BEX announces The cursor marks your place in the text. BEX has many
commands that let you move the cursor: some move silently, and some talk
as they move. As you type each letter, it appears at the cursor and the
cursor moves over one to the right. There are many Editor commands, but we'll just
introduce a few here. Detailed explanations of several more Editor
commands are in Section 4 of the Learner Level, as well as a summary that
appears in the Quick Reference Card. All Editor commands start with a
control character, so it's important to know how to enter them
correctly. You enter a control character by depressing the control key,
then pressing a character, then releasing both control key and letter key.
We show the combination of the control key and the other character by
joining them with a hyphen. There are some control characters which are
also separate keys on the Apple. You can move one word at a time using control-G and
control-R. Control-G goes ahead one word and talks. Control-R reverses one
word and talks. When you don't have a voice device, then control-G and
control-R move your cursor silently. A word in BEX is a group of characters
without a space or <CR> in it. Control-G and control-R move
word-by-word, so your cursor always moves from the space or <CR>
that defines the start of the word to the space or <CR> that defines
the end of the word. When your cursor is in the middle of a word and you
type control-G, your voice device only pronounces that portion of the word
in front of your cursor. Control-R acts differently; when your cursor is
in the middle of a word and you type control-R, the entire word is spoken. Try using control-G now: you hear "dollar sign, dollar
sign, d" then a low boop. (When you don't have a voice device, your cursor
moves and you hear the boop.) Whenever BEX finishes executing an Editor
command, you hear the low boop. The first four words in the MY QUANDARY
chapter are some of those format commands we mentioned earlier. Don't
worry about what they mean right now. Keep entering control-G. The first few real words are
spoken in a high-pitched voice--that's because they are all uppercase
words. Use the left and right arrow keys to move character by
Continue using control-G: the next words are spoken
with a slightly lower pitch which indicates that they have an initial
uppercase letter. Words that are all lowercase are spoken at the
Echo's normal pitch. You can use the up and down arrow keys to move
up and down lines on the screen. The up and down arrow keys are silent,
except for the boop to indicate the execution of the command. The keyboard buffer When you are a fast typist, or when you use a large
print screen display, you may hear little clicks from the Apple speaker as
you type. BEX stores all the characters you type in a special place in
memory called the keyboard buffer. BEX feeds each character
from the keyboard buffer to the screen or to the Echo at a pace it can
handle. Every time BEX hands over another character to the screen or Echo,
you hear a click. Both the text you type and the commands you enter are
stored in the keyboard buffer. The keys on Apple II keyboards have an
auto-repeat feature. When you hold down a key for more than
a half-second, the character automatically repeats. For sighted users,
don't hold down the left and right arrow keys to move your cursor forward
several words. If you do this, the keyboard buffer stores more
move-one-character commands than you expect, and your cursor overshoots.
Use control-G and control-R instead. The auto-repeat feature also affects voice output
users. Try holding down control-G for a few seconds. For the first few
words, the Echo barely speaks the start of one word before it starts
saying the start of the next word. After the first few strange-sounding
words, the Echo returns to normal. Whenever the Echo receives a command,
it acts on it immediately. If the Echo happens to be talking
when it gets a The Paragraph Indicator BEX uses a special combination of characters to
indicate the beginning of a paragraph. It's always four keystrokes
long: space, dollar sign, lowercase p, space. Because
you must type the initial and final spaces for the paragraph indicator to
work, we always show the paragraph indicator as ( $p ). Don't
type the parentheses; they are just there to emphasize the initial and
final space. The Editor has a number of commands oriented around
the paragraph indicator. You can move your cursor forward silently to the
next paragraph ( $p ) indicator by issuing the Editor command
control-A control-P. To help you remember the command, think of
advancing a paragraph. After you press
control-A control-P, press control-G. The voice says dollar sign
people. Control-A control-P places your cursor on the initial space
that defines the paragraph ( $p ) indicator. Page 1 of the MY QUANDARY chapter has many paragraphs:
enter control-A control-P five times and your cursor is at the beginning
of the fifth paragraph. Try using control-R to Reverse your cursor back
word-by-word. To return to the first character in the page, enter
control-Z <space>. To help you remember this command, think of
zooming back to the beginning. To advance to the last
character of the page, enter control-A <space>. Announcing All Keystrokes If you are unfamiliar with the Apple keyboard, you can
ask BEX to talk every key you press. Depress the control key, then press
the letter So, then release the control key. Now press the
letter A. You have just issued the Editor command control-S A
which tells BEX to announce all keystrokes. Because the Echo stops talking
every time it gets a new keystroke, you have to type fairly slowly to hear
every key you type. When you don't want to hear every keystroke announced,
you turn off this feature by pressing Control-S A again. When the same
command turns something on and off, it's called a
toggle. In the Editor, there are a variety of toggled
commands like Control-S A. These commands change how you interact with the
computer: we refer to these as environmental commands.
MovingBetween Pages Each BEX chapter is made up of smaller units called
BEX pages. As mentioned earlier, a BEX page is just a
collection of characters stored as one file on disk. A BEX page is
independent of an output page. Now that you've explored page
1, let's move to another BEX page and practice typing text. Whenever you move between BEX pages, the text in the
page buffer is copied back to disk. Any changes you have made in the text
are now saved to disk. Enter control-P 4 <space>. BEX pauses to
write the page buffer to the disk file for page 1, then reads the disk
file for page 4 and copies that to the page buffer. When this process is
complete, BEX announces ● Typing in text Move your cursor to the end of the page by pressing
control-A <space>. Whenever you start to type in the Editor,
it's a good idea to check that the Caps Lock key (in the lower
righthand corner of the Apple keyboard) is not clicked down. When this key
is clicked down, every letter you type is uppercase. Most of the time, you
want to type lowercase letters, and use the shift key to get uppercase
letters. Once you're sure the Caps Lock is up, type a paragraph
indicator by pressing <space>, dollar sign (shift of digit 4),
p, <space>. Now type your name, followed by the
phrase edited Your cursor is on the first <space> of the
paragraph ( $p ) indicator. Press control-O and the Echo speaks
what you just typed. The control-O command speaks all the text starting at
your cursor forward to the end of the page. When your cursor lands on the
end of the page, BEX boops once. ● Leaving the Editor Safely When you are ready to quit the Editor, press
control-Q. This one command copies your current page buffer to disk and
returns you to the Main Menu. Using control-Q is vital: if you don't enter
control-Q, any changes you've made in the most recent page aren't saved to
disk. Practice leaving and returning to the MY QUANDARY chapter. If you
want to take a break, now is a good time to do it. Remove your BEX disk
and data disk from the disk drives and turn off the power. Part 11: Exploring Option P - Print chapters If you paused at the previous Part, you should get BEX
up and running again. Insert the backup Boot disk in drive 1
and turn on the power. At the If you have moved to another menu, press J to "jump"
back to the Main Menu. You can use option P - Print to send formatted text
to inkprint printers, braille embossers, large print printers, and voice
devices. You tell BEX which chapters to print and which printer to send it
to, and BEX does the rest. Here's a sample dialogue when you print the
QUANDARY chapter. Insert your BEXtras disk in drive 2.
We defined printer number 1 as an inkprint printer
plugged in to slot 1. We defined printer number 2 as a Review
class printer. A Review class printer is a good way for both
sighted and blind people to proofread their text before its committed to
paper. It works will in combination with the Echo's screen
review feature. We take a quick look at this feature in a minute.
Section 5 discusses the Review class printer in detail. None of the
supplied configurations include a braille embosser. When you want to
braille materials, you must establish a configuration that includes an
embosser--details in Section 3. The number attached to a printer depends on how you
define it in your configuration. Printer number 1 is 1
because we defined it first in our configuration, not because it's
plugged in to slot 1. In addition to the numbered printers, you have two
other choices, S and ingV. When you enter When you want the Echo to speak every line as
it's printed, add the two characters plus sign, letter
V, to whatever printer you have chosen. For example, to
print to the screen with Echo voice, enter BEX formats as it prints No matter which choice you make, BEX formats your text
when printing it. Every paragraph ( $p ) indicator is executed
with two <CR>s and a paragraph indent of five spaces. BEX
automatically breaks each line as required: the number of characters that
fit on a line change depending on which printer you specify. Printer 1 is
defined with 72 characters on each line; printer 2 also allows 72
characters on the line. The 40-column screen can fit 40 characters, and
the 20-column screen can fit 20 characters on the line. When you want to
make BEX stop printing before the end of the text, press <ESC>. Because BEX takes care of breaking text into lines,
you don't have to worry about ending every line with <CR>, like you
would on a typewriter. In Sections 5 and 6, we explain how BEX adjusts the
format of your text so it's correct in both print and braille. Printing to the screen When you tell BEX to print to the screen, each
screen's worth of data is one output page. The QUANDARY
chapter contains a format command that numbers pages. When you print to
the screen, BEX centers the word Page plus a number on the
last line of each screen. When the screen is full of characters, the
display stops and you hear a boop. Press <space> to get the next
page of text. How many characters fit on one line of the screen
depends on your configuration. When you are using L1 or L2, then the limit
is 20 characters wide and ten lines down. With any of the other supplied
configurations, it's 40 characters wide by 24 lines down. The Review class printer is a special way of printing
to the screen, that lets you define a bigger page size than the screen
allows. It's useful for people who can see the 80-column screen or
who can hear the Echo. Printer number 2 is defined as a Review class
printer 72 characters wide by 58 lines down. Print the QUANDARY chapter to printer number 2. BEX
displays the first 24 lines of the page, making a low click as it shows
each line, then stops. When you have an Echo, try this: when the clicks stop,
press control-L. The Echo says Review, because control-L
turns on the Echo's screen review mode. Now press B and
the Echo starts speaking all the text on the second line of the screen.
You can press the up and down arrows to read line by line. With a Review
class printer, BEX puts a line-number on the left edge of the screen so
you can tell where text appears on the page when printed. To exit from
screen review mode, press <ESC> once. To see more of the page, press down arrow. Each
58-line page is displayed in three parts. To see the next page, press
<space>. Printing to the Echo There are two ways to get Echo output when printing:
you can add the Echo to other printers, or you can print to the Echo
alone. To add Echo to another printer, add the two characters plus
sign, letter V to your choice. When you enter
Printing to an inkprint printer Printer 1 is defined with a maximum of 72 characters
per line. We defined printer 1 as an inkprint printer with continuous feed
paper; BEX assumes that you don't have to pause at each page and insert a
fresh sheet of paper. If your printer requires this pause on form
feed, don't print QUANDARY to printer 1! Part 12: Highlights of the Second Menu Press S at the Main Menu or Page Menu, and you move to
the Second Menu. Some Second Menu options are familiar, because they are
available at all four BEX menus: option D - Disk catalog; option # - Free
sectors on disk; and control-E for Echo commands. The unique Second Menu
options are described in detail in Section 11; here are some highlights. We have already demonstrated using option C - Copy
chapters. Option N - Name change for chapters lets you change a
chapter's name without making a copy. Option M - Merge chapters
allows you to make one larger chapter from several smaller ones. Option K
- Kill chapters permanently erases one or more chapters from disk. Option
R - Read textfile to chapter copies information that's stored as a
textfile on disk to a BEX chapter. Part 13: Highlights of the Page Menu Press Z at the Main Menu or Second Menu, and you "zip"
to the Page Menu. The Page Menu allows you Insert your BEXtras disk in your data drive and press
W. Option W - Whole disk catalog provides you with more information about
a disk than you see with option D - Disk catalog. For each chapter on
disk, Whole disk catalog shows the name, number of pages, and number of
characters in each chapter. Option F - File list gives you similarly detailed
information about an individual chapter. Press F and BEX confirms your
choice then prompts for the chapter you want to examine. Just like copying
and editing, BEX announces Bon voyage! We hope you've enjoyed your exploratory trip through
BEX. You've learned a lot of important BEX concepts that you will use
daily. You have booted BEX, supplied a
configuration name, and reached the Starting Menu. You have
made a backup copy of your BEX disk, so you know that your BEX Master disk
is safe. You've switched disks and reached the Main side of BEX, and moved
around between the Main, Second, and Page Menus. You know how to copy
chapters as well as copy disks, and you've been introduced to the
target chapter concept. You've BEX works with many input and output devices. In fact,
BEX takes complete control of what are called the input/output
routines for the Apple. (User Level Section 2 provides details.) In
order for the Apple to interpret incoming information and to structure
outgoing information, you must introduce yourself, the devices you're
working with, and your preferences. The Boot side of BEX contains programs
for working with many different braillers, various large print printers,
and speech synthesizers, but all the programs can't fit in
the Apple's memory at once. When you define a configuration, you're
telling BEX which parts of the program you want to use, so BEX can load
the appropriate ones in memory. Part 1: Getting Ready Two Starting Menu options can help you prepare for
setting up your first configuration. Boot BEX and specify one of the six
supplied configuration names when BEX prompts Option W - What is in this computer This option allows you to find out about the insides
of your Apple without opening the cover. Press W and BEX tells you the
name of the configuration you're currently using, the model of your
computer, and what's in each of the slots. Most of this information
is also available to you as you establish your own configuration: when BEX
prompts for a slot number, you can press <CR> alone to find out what
interface cards are in which slots. Option V - View a configuration This option displays the equipment preferences defined
by a particular configuration. You can look at all configurations on the
disk; use option W - What is in this computer to find out the name of the
current configuration. After you press V, BEX scans the Boot
side for configuration files, and supplies a numbered Enter the number or name that corresponds to the
configuration name you entered when you booted BEX, and then press
<CR>. These configurations include a generic inkprint
printer in slot 1, and a Review class printer in slot 3.
Please note that these configurations do not include a braille embosser.
You must set up your own configuration when you want to braille material. Since we established the six supplied configurations
on the Apple IIe computers at RDC, what's displayed reflects our
equipment. This means that even if you have an Apple IIc or IIgs, the
supplied configurations state that you have an Apple IIe. Part 2: Overview of Establishing a New
Configuration Every time you boot BEX, When you have properly installed an integral voice
device in your Apple, BEX recognizes that it's there. When BEX
notices an Echo or Cricket, it loads the TEXTALKER software that makes
these voice devices speak. When BEX notices a SlotBuster, BEX loads the
SCAT software that makes it speak. You know whether BEX has recognized
your voice device when BEX talks the first After you enter At the Learner Level, the configuration questions
address four issues: After you supply answers to all these questions,
BEX prompts: Use your initials or a short phrase that describes the
devices you've specified. The next time you boot BEX, you type this name
followed by <CR> at the You cannot edit the information in a
configuration. But you can have several configurations on one
disk; the only limit is the space on the disk. Generally, you establish
one or two configurations which are your favorites. You don't have to
describe every device you own in one configuration. You only go through
the configuration process to establish a new configuration. Once it's
established, you just type the configuration name at the Each configuration question has at least two possible
answers, so describing exactly what BEX says for all the possible
combinations would require a separate manual. Help is available with every
configuration question: when you don't understand what BEX wants to know,
press <CR> alone to obtain a summary of your choices. To establish a
new configuration at the Learner Level, enter BEX only asks these questions when it recognizes an
Echo, Cricket, or SlotBuster, installed in your Apple. When you don't have
a voice device, you jump ahead to the screen display questions. When you answer The Echo output during the configuration process uses
fast speech. If you're having difficulty understanding the Echo, you can
change this to slow speech by issuing an Echo command. After BEX has asked
a question and is waiting for you to respond, press control-E E. All
subsequent questions use slow speech. For the SlotBuster, press control-E
1 S to set speech at the slowest rate. When you have an Echo or SlotBuster installed in your
Apple, but BEX doesn't ask this question, check to make sure you've
installed the circuit card correctly. Turn off the Apple, and remove the
circuit card. Gently but firmly reinstall the card. Make sure that the
volume knob on the card is not turned down all the way, and that the
connection for the external speaker is secure. Then reboot BEX. If you
still don't get speech, see the device's manual for further
troubleshooting hints. Ninety percent of the time, when a Cricket doesn't
speak the first configuration question, it's very simple to fix. Turn
off the power to the Apple. The Cricket cable must be plugged into port 2,
and the power to the Cricket must be on before BEX boots.
(You will encounter troubles if you plug the Cricket and the Apple into
the same powerstrip, and power on the two devices simultaneously.) When you answer For the Echo and Cricket, BEX asks individual question
about the speed, pitch, punctuation, and volume. The first question is
Part 4: Screen Display Questions BEX can display letters in five sizes, measured in
columns or how many characters fit on one screen line. The
smallest screen display is 80 columns; the largest is five columns. The large print sizes are 20, 10, and 5 column: when
you wish to have large print screen display, answer As introduced in Section 2, Part 4, when you press the
solid-Apple (or Option) key alone, large print scrolling slows to a crawl.
When you press the open-Apple (or Command) key alone, large print
scrolling freezes. You can also change the scrolling rate, or how fast the
letters appear on the screen. BEX starts out at the fastest speed.
Solid-Apple-number (or Option-number) controls the speed of scrolling; 1
is slowest and 9 is fastest. You can only change the rate
during scrolling; you cannot change the rate
when BEX is waiting for input. To initiate scrolling, press <CR> at
any menu prompt. Now, as the characters scroll by, depress the solid-Apple
(or Option) key. Press and release a digit between 1 and 9, then release
the solid-Apple (or Option) key. When you depend solely on voice output, press Part 5: Printer Questions This is the lengthiest part of the configuration
process. You define up to four printers which can be either
inkprint, braille, or serial voice devices. You can specify four different
devices, or up to four different sets of parameters for the same device.
When you want to specify less than four, then enter zero for the next slot
number. For example, to describe only one printer, enter a zero for the
second printer's slot number. BEX labels each printer description with a number from
1 to 4. The first printer you configure is always 1, the second is always
2, and so forth. When you are ready to print something, you use this
printer number to reference the information you've provided in your
configuration. The printer number does not refer to the slot where the
printer interface is plugged in. When it comes time to print, BEX asks you
for the printer number. When BEX prompts Remember, if you are uncertain how to answer a
question, enter <CR> alone and you receive instructions on what BEX
needs to know. In addition to the on-line help, more information about
printers is provided in the BEX Interface Guide and in the manual that
came with your printer. For each printer, you are asked a series of questions.
There are some questions that are asked for all types of printer, and some
which are specific to particular printer classes. BEX tailors
the output differently depending on the printer's class. You must tell BEX the number of the slot that your
printer interface card is plugged into, otherwise BEX won't know where to
send information to be printed. When you want to specify less than four
printers, enter While there are seven printer classes, at the Learner
Level we focus on four basic classes. Information about class V - Voice
device and class P - Paperless brailler is provided in the User Level.
Information on the class S - Specific printers appears at the Master
Level. Details about the class A - Apple LaserWriter PostScript driver can
be obtained by contacting RDC. Class G - Generic inkprint printer As the name implies, a generic printer is a "one size
fits almost everybody" inkprint printer. It can be dot-matrix or daisy
wheel. Class B - Braille embossers None of the supplied configurations include a braille
embosser. When you want to create braille output with BEX, you must define
a braille embosser in your configuration. All braille embossers are class
B printers. You won't get well-formatted braille if you define a
brailler as anything but a class B printer. Class L - Large print printer BEX can make large print output on some dot-matrix
printers when you have the appropriate interface card. In addition to the
on-line explanations in the configuration process, there are details about
interfacing in the BEX Interface Guide. You must have both a supported
printer and a supported interface card for a class L printer to work. Class R - Review class printers A Review class printer is a special way of printing to
the 80-column screen that lets you proofread your text exactly as it would
be printed to a real printer. The supplied configurations all include a
class R printer--check out Section 2, Part 11 for an You are asked this question for large print printers
and braille embossers. Press <CR> alone for the list of codes. After
you enter the code that corresponds to your device, BEX confirms the
choice; you have another chance to enter the code if you picked the wrong
one. RDC tries to support as many braille embossers as
possible. These include manufactured braillers, like the Cranmer,
VersaPoint, MBOSS-1, and Thiel; and homebrew brailling
methods, like Dipner Dots. Much more detail on these is
available in the BEX Interface Guide. Brailler codes 1 and 2 are
braille previewers. These are braille equivalents of the
Review class printer (so they must be configured in slot 3). The braille
previewers allow you to proofread braille material on the screen that
looks exactly like what's sent to a braille embosser. This question is asked for generic, large print,
Review class printers as well as braille embossers. The carriage
width defines the maximum number of characters BEX prints on each
line. Press <CR> alone at this prompt for commonly-used values,
which vary greatly depending on the printer class. Learner Level Section 5
provides extensive advice for making nice-looking print output. This question is asked for generic, large print, and
Review class printers as well as braille embossers. Form
length defines the maximum number of lines BEX prints on each page.
Again, you can press <CR> for suggested values. This question is asked for large print and generic
inkprint This question is asked for generic inkprint printers.
Your answer controls BEX's behavior at the end of each line of printed
output. Always start out answering Part 6: Finishing Up the Configuration Questions At the Learner Level, BEX only works with one or two
5.25-inch disk drives, so there are only two possible answers to this
question. When you enter At the Master Level, you can configure up to eight
disk drives, choosing among 5.25-inch and 3.5-inch disk drives, RAM
drives, and the Sider hard disk. Once you have answered all the questions, you get to
name your configuration. Configuration names follow two simple rules: The
first character must be a letter, and the name cannot exceed ten
characters in length. Choose a name you can easily remember. When the name
you choose already exists on the Boot side of BEX, then the new
information overwrites the old. The only limit to the number of configurations is the
space available on disk. You can define several configurations to describe
various combinations of equipment and screen display. When both a sighted
and blind person are using the same Apple, each can define a configuration
that meets their needs. Part 7: Sample Questions and Answers for Printer
Section To provide you with a feel for all the possibilities,
here's one way you could answer the printer questions. This text is
just a sample--you must answer the questions as appropriate for your
equipment. This sample assumes you have a 128K Apple IIe with an
extended 80-column card. You have a VersaPoint embosser connected to an
interface card in slot 4 and an ImageWriter printer connected to an
interface card in slot 1. You configure the VersaPoint as printer number
1. You configure the ImageWriter twice: as printer number 2,
the ImageWriter is a large print printer; as printer number 3, it's a
generic inkprint printer. Printer number 4 is a Review class printer.
Since you use printer 4 to proofread material before it's sent to
printer number 3, printers 3 and 4 have the same carriage width and form
length. Note that the printer numbers refer to the order they are defined
in, not to the slot where the device is hooked up.
This sample demonstrates some of the error-checking
BEX does as you establish a new configuration. When configuring printer 1,
you entered 9 instead of 10. Since BEX confirms
your choice, you have an opportunity to cancel the 9 and
re-enter 10. When configuring printer 2, you were unsure about the
meaning of line spacing. You press <CR> and you get
some advice about what to enter. You happened to have seen a sample of
14-point BEX large print, and you prefer less space between the lines than
the default. BEX uses the answer you give to this question to calculate
the suggested value for form length. For printer 4, you specified slot 1, then a Review
class printer. That combination doesn't work, because the Review class
printer uses the 80-column card in slot 3. BEX gave you another chance. Part 8: Configuration Error Messages If you answer the configuration questions with strange
values, you may get strange output. For example, if you give an inkprint
printer a carriage width of 5, you'll get very short lines. The following
problems could interfere with getting to the Starting Menu at all. BEX tries to diagnose errors that interfere with
saving a configuration on the disk. Here are error messages and how to
cope with them: A word processing program allows you to prepare
written material efficiently. You can review your text before you print
it, so that you know that your final output is the way you want. You can
save the text you write to disk and reprint it again whenever you want.
You can make minor modifications to an existing text without having to
retype the whole thing. The part of BEX where you do all these things is
called the Editor. Use the Editor to write, review, add,
delete and correct text, and enter format information. In this Section, we introduce some basic word
processing concepts. You'll learn how to move around in the Editor, and
how to delete and insert text. Part 1: Editing a New Chapter In Section 2, we explored the Editor by examining an
existing chapter. The Editor is at the Main menu; press E to use the
Editor. BEX confirms your choice, then asks for the drive number or
chapter name you wish to use:
There are two ways to edit an existing chapter: When
you know its name, type the name, followed by <CR>. Or you can enter
a drive number followed by <CR>. BEX then presents a numbered list
of chapters, and asks you to choose one chapter from the list by number. The first step in creating a new chapter is to tell
BEX the name of the chapter you wish to create. You type a name, and
finish with <CR>. You can add a drive number to the beginning of the
name when you want the chapter saved on a drive other than the default
data drive. After you type the name and press <CR>, BEX scans the
disk drive to see if that name is on it. If it Part 2: Rules for Chapter Names A BEX chapter name cannot exceed 25 characters. If you
try to enter a name that's too long, BEX tells you so and complains
with a low boop. The first character of a chapter name must be a letter,
but you can use numerals, spaces and some punctuation in the rest of the
name if you want to. There are 4 punctuation characters you must never use
in a chapter name: period, comma, semicolon, or colon. If you use one of
these four, BEX won't be able to recognize the disk file as a chapter.
When you are entering the chapter name, every letter is interpreted as
uppercase, whether or not you use the shift or Caps Lock key. Part 3: Chapters and Pages A BEX chapter is made up of pages. A
page is an arbitrary division in the Editor: it can contain
from zero to 4096 characters. Each page is stored as one file on your data
disk. When you start a new chapter, you always start on page 1. A BEX chapter can contain up to 30 pages. These
pages do not refer to the number of physical print or braille
pages when a document is printed or embossed. An average sheet of braille
contains around 1000 characters, and an average sheet of double-spaced
inkprint text contains around 2000 characters. From this you can see that
a single BEX page can contain enough text to fill several output pages. Part 4: How Data is Organized As you use BEX, you'll work with data organized in
five ways: as a BEX chapter, within a chapter as
pages; within a page as paragraphs; within a
paragraph as words, and within a word as
characters. Before we get any further, we'd better define
our ● The Basic Unit: the Character A character can be any lowercase and
uppercase letter; the digits 0 through 9; punctuation like comma, period,
percent sign, parenthesis, and the space character. These characters are
what your printer or brailler prints. A character can also be a
control character. Instead of being printed, a control
character controls the behavior of a printer or a computer. A few
of the keys on the Apple keyboard are control characters. The first one
you learned is the carriage return, also known as control-M
or simply return. That's the key we refer to as:
<CR>. To move around in the Editor, you issue commands that
consist of control characters and other characters in combination. For
example, to move your cursor ahead by 2000 characters, you enter control-A
2000 <space>. You can also include a control character as an item in
your text. A control character controls the behavior of your printer when
it's sent out of the Apple. For example, you can type <CR> in
your text. Every time a printer or embosser encounters a <CR> in the
text it's receiving, it moves the printhead to the beginning of the
next line. You can insert a <CR> when you want to force a
new line. When you do type a <CR> in your text, it's actually
there. The screen shows it (with the letters C and
R or a checkerboard pattern) and the Echo says "return." ● Larger Units: Words, Lines, and Paragraphs The basic unit is a character. The next size up is a
word. BEX has a pretty crude definition for a word: any
series of characters that's bounded on each side by a space or a
<CR>. That means that a word also includes letters with
touching punctuation, such as a period, colon, or comma. For example,
suppose you How many characters fit on a screen line can vary from
five characters (in G or F screen mode) to 80 characters (in W mode). You
tell BEX how many characters you want on a line when you print, and you
can print the same information with many different formats. At the User
Level, we explain the line preview feature, where you can examine how
material will look when it's printed without leaving the Editor. The next division is the paragraph. BEX
uses a special indicator to mark the beginning of a paragraph: space,
dollar sign, lowercase p space. To emphasize that the
paragraph indicator is always four keystrokes long, we show it as
( $p ) throughout this manual. (By the way, this is the same
symbol that the VersaBraille uses to mark a paragraph.) To start a new
paragraph in your text, you type in those four characters. When your text
is printed, BEX executes the paragraph indicator as appropriate for print
or braille format, so the ( $p ) doesn't appear in your output.
A paragraph can contain one word or thousands of words: you define a
paragraph by where you place the ( $p ) indicator. We've already described chapters and
pages, so now you're ready to dive in to the Editor. Part 5: Starting a New Chapter When you type a name at the Editor prompt, BEX checks
to see if it already exists on the disk. When you add the digit 1 before
the chapter name, BEX checks drive 1; otherwise, BEX assumes you want the
default drive 2. When the name isn't on the disk, BEX asks The keyboard buffer Since you've just started a new chapter, there is no
text, so start typing. As you type each letter, it appears at the cursor
and the cursor moves over one to the right. BEX stores all the characters
you type in a special place in memory called the keyboard
buffer. Both the text you type and the commands you enter are
stored in the keyboard buffer. If you are a fast typist, or if you have a large print
screen display, you hear little clicks from the Apple speaker as you type.
This is the sound of characters being fed from the keyboard buffer to the
screen, and to the Echo if you are in control-S A mode, which announces
every keystroke. Take care when you type: when you hold down a key for
more than a half-second, the character automatically repeats. Don't hold
down the left and right arrow keys to move your cursor forward several
words. When you release the key, the keyboard buffer has stored more
move-one-character commands than you expect, and your cursor overshoots.
Use control-G and control-R instead. Uppercase and lowercase letters The Editor recognizes the difference between uppercase
and lowercase letters, unlike at the menu prompts. When you have the Caps
Lock key depressed, release it when you enter the Editor. Use the shift
key to get uppercase letters. How characters appear on the screen How many characters fit on each line of the screen
depends on the screen mode you've chosen in your configuration. BEX fills
each line on the screen with characters, so part of one word may appear at
the end of one line and the rest of it at the beginning of the next line.
Don't let this disconcert you--when you send the text out of the Apple to
a printer, embosser, or voice device, your text is properly formatted. At
the User Level, you'll learn how to change the screen display inside the
Editor. ● When you want to start a new paragraph, type the
paragraph indicator: ( $p ). Those four characters appear on the
screen, and when you print your chapter, there will be a new paragraph
wherever you entered the paragraph ( $p ) indicator. BEX has
many commands that are oriented around the ( $p ) indicator, so
it's a good idea to use it often. When you want to force a new line, you have a choice:
you can either enter <CR> or use the new-line
indicator: space, dollar sign, lowercase l, space ( $l ).
The <CR> and the ( $l ) have the same effect: BEX forces
the printer or embosser to start a new line. We discuss many other format commands in Section 6:
how to center, underline, and use tabs, and to instruct BEX how to execute
the paragraph ( $p ) indicator. Part 6: Entering Editor Commands All Editor commands start with control characters.
Hold down the control key, then press the specified letter, then release
the control key. After BEX executes any Editor command, the Apple speaker
makes a low boop. If you enter a command BEX doesn't recognize, the
speaker makes a high beep. Some Editor commands consist of several control
characters in a row; in this situation, you hold down the control key,
press the specified letters, then release the control key. We show a
single-letter control command as: control-G. (This advances your cursor
one word and speaks it.) Although we show the letter g in
uppercase, you don't need to depress the shift key to enter the control-G
command. An example of a two-letter control command is control-A
control-P. (For easier reading, we show a space between the two
characters, but do not press the spacebar between control-A and
control-P.) This advances your cursor to the next ( $p ). BEX is quite picky when it comes to entering commands
properly. All characters in a command must be entered as Other Editor commands start with a control character
and are followed by one or more plain letters. An example is control-S A,
which toggles off and on the speaking of all keystrokes. Again, you don't
press the spacebar between the control-S and the A, and you don't need to
use the shift key. Part 7: Moving Around in the Editor There are many ways to move around in BEX's Editor:
some commands simply move the cursor, and other commands move the cursor
and also speak. There is very little duplication between movement-only and
movement-with-output commands; we recommend that even BEX users who only
use the screen investigate all the commands. ● Silent Cursor Movement The up arrow moves the cursor up one line on the
screen. If you press the up arrow when you are on the top line of the
screen, then the screen display changes to show previous text. When you
press the up arrow when you are on the very first screen line of the page,
your cursor moves to character position 0. Like the <CR> key, the up
arrow key is a single-key control character: entering control-K is the
same as pressing the up arrow. The down arrow does exactly the same thing as the up
arrow, but in the opposite direction. Control-J is the equivalent to
pressing the down arrow key. Advancing the cursor Control-A starts many editor commands which advance
the cursor forward through your text: how far you advance depends on the
subsequent characters you type. Zooming back the cursor There is an equal and opposite set of commands that
zoom back the cursor. They all begin with control-Z in place of control-A. You can begin to see the patterns in these cursor
movement commands. The first control character determines the direction
you move: control-A advances forward, and control-Z zooms backward. Then,
you can type some numbers to determine how far you move. Finally,
there's a unit character: control-P stands for the paragraph unit,
while <space> stands for the character unit. At the User Level, we
discuss a number of other units you can use as you move your cursor. ● Moving to Specific Characters: Locating Text Use control-L to locate text from your current cursor
in two directions. Start out with control-L, then type the exact
characters you wish to locate. You can type in a string that's up to
35 characters long. Your search string can contain any character that is
in your chapter. Control-L is very picky: you must type in the search
string When you are finished typing the search string, use
the movement commands to search in a specific direction. Press control-A
to locate the string ahead of the current cursor position. Press control-Z
to search text previous to the current cursor position. When BEX executes the locate command, it moves your
cursor to the first character of your search string, and makes the Apple
speaker boop. When you want to find another occurrence of the same string,
simply enter control-L control-A or control-L control-Z again. You do not
need to type the search string again. The locate command remembers the
characters until you enter a different search string. When BEX can't find an occurrence of your string, you
get one high error beep and your cursor stays where it is. ● Talking Cursor Movement Even if you don't use speech with BEX, these commands
still move your cursor as described. What we describe here for the Echo is
generally true for the SlotBuster. Check your SlotBuster manual for
further information. The left arrow key, control-H, and the right arrow
key, control-U move you one character at a time to the left or right; we
refer to this movement as arrowing. When you arrow to a
character, the Echo pronounces the character your cursor lands on,
regardless of punctuation mode. BEX gives the Echo a special vocabulary
that's only used for arrowing, which is slightly different from
TEXTALKER'S vocabulary. The special vocabulary lets the Echo
pronounce all control characters, and makes it say escape
instead of control-left brace; right bracket
instead of ready; ampersand instead of
and, etc. When you try to arrow past the last character on
the page, you get the high error beep. When your cursor is at character
position 0 and you press Talking words You can make the Echo speak one word at a time by
using control-G and control-R. Control-G goes forward a word and speaks
it. Control-R reverses a word and speaks it. In Part 4, we defined a word as any
series of characters that doesn't contain a space or a <CR>. When
your cursor is in the middle of a word and you enter control-G, the Echo
only speaks the characters from your cursor to the next space or
<CR>. When your cursor is in the middle of a word and you enter
control-R, the Echo speaks the entire word (forwards, not backwards!) Talking sentences These two commands are handy for reviewing portions of
text with the Echo. After the Echo starts speaking, you can shut it up and
stop the cursor by pressing <space>. Control-T talks the next sentence. Press <space>
to turn off control-T, and your cursor stops after the word you heard when
you pressed the spacebar. To start speech and cursor movement, enter
control-T again. Control-O is the "output a bunch" command: it outputs
to the end of the current page and moves the cursor there. As you listen
to text with control-O, you can use <space> to stop output and
cursor movement at any point. Pressing <space> turns off control-O;
to hear more text, enter control-O again. Using control-O and <space> is very handy for
proofreading. BEX pauses slightly between each word to check to see if
you've pressed <space>. At the User Level, you learn how to modify
the Editor environment to eliminate these pauses if you wish. (If you
don't have an Echo, control-O just moves the cursor forward to the end of
the current page.) Each BEX page can hold 4096 characters,
but you don't need to fill up each one. The page is an arbitrary division,
and need not refer to a particular output page. You can move to a new page whenever you want. Enter
control-P # <space> to move to a specific page number. For example,
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 0 on page 2. To move back to page 1, enter control-P 1
<space>. The characters you've typed in page 2 are saved to disk,
and then the characters on disk in page 1 are copied into the page buffer. Control-P 0 saves your current page to disk, and puts
you at character position 0 of the same page. When you are working for a
long time on one page, use this command as a quick method of saving your
data. Control-P <space> cancels your page move. When
you have accidentally entered control-P or when you have changed your
mind, press <space> and your cursor stays in the same position as
when you entered control-P. Control-C control-P cuts the page at the current
cursor, leaving you at character position 0 of the second page you've just
created. A paragraph is usually a logical place to divide a page. If you
want to, though, you could enter control-C control-P right in the middle
of a word. When your chapter is printed, that word will output fine. The
page is an arbitrary division; you decide what relationship
each page has to your final output. You can use any of these commands except control-P 0
to create more pages. BEX automatically renumbers your pages. Suppose you
have a six-page chapter, and you're on page 4. There are 3600 characters
in the page, and your cursor is at position 2000. You enter control-C
control-P. Page 4 now has 2000 characters. The text between your cursor
and the old end BEX creates pages sequentially. It will not let you
create pages out of order. For example, when you have a three page chapter
and you enter control-P 20 <space> you move to the beginning of page
4. ● When to Move to a New Page As a rule of thumb, move to a new page when you have
3300 characters in your current page. For all screen sizes except
5-column, the number of characters in the current page are displayed on
the status line on the bottom of the screen. Enter control-W C for speech
output of your current cursor position and the number of characters in
your current page. (See Part 11, Status Information for details.) ● Every Key Beeps for a Full Page When you type along for quite a while, you may
suddenly find yourself getting a beep every time you press a key. This
means that you filled up your page; you have 4096 characters in it. Don't panic, it's easy to fix. Enter control-Z
2000 <space>. This zooms your cursor back approximately halfway
through your page. Now enter control-A control-P. This advances your
cursor to the next paragraph. Enter control-C control-P and you cut your
page in two. Part 9: Inserting Text BEX offers two different ways to insert new text into
existing text. You can type in text directly from the keyboard, or insert
text from the clipboard. At the Learner Level, you can only insert text
from the keyboard. The clipboard is really a lot of fun; you'll learn how
to use it at the User Level. Whenever you position your cursor in the middle of
some text and then start typing, the new characters overwrite the existing
characters, deleting them. You can insert and delete text by issuing
Editor commands. ● Insert Text from the Keyboard When you insert text, the new characters appear at the
cursor position. Before you start inserting, place your cursor exactly
where you want the new text to appear. The insert places the new text
between your cursor and the character or space immediately before it. Signal the start of the keyboard insert by entering
control-I. There's a Tab key on your keyboard which is actually a
control-I key, so you can just press Tab to start the keyboard insert.
After you press Tab all the characters from the character under your
cursor to the end of the screen turn into the underbar character. Don't
worry, the text that just disappeared is still in your chapter; the
underbars make it easier for sighted BEX users to know when they are
inserting. When you type beyond the end of the screen, your text scrolls
up, placing the line your cursor is on in the middle of the screen. The
rest of the screen contains underbar characters. Type along merrily: every
character you type is inserted in the text immediately
before the character your cursor was on when you entered
Tab. When you're ready to complete the insert, enter
control-N. The Null command control-N refreshes the screen, and the
inserted text takes its rightful place, with your cursor at the same
character it was when you entered control-I. For example, you have the word fanciful
in your text, and you want to insert quotation marks around it. Use the
locate command to move to the word: press control-L then enter
Another example adds words to a phrase. Suppose you
have: Exiting insert Actually, you don't have to use control-N
to complete the insert. Every control character completes the insert, with
the exception of three: control-M or <CR>, control-H or left arrow,
and control-C. These exceptions allow you to insert carriage returns and
control characters into your text, and let you use the left arrow to back
up and make minor corrections in the text you're inserting. You can use the right arrow key to leave or complete
the insert. The right arrow key is actually control-U, so it qualifies as
a control character. After you press control-I, any Editor command you
enter accomplishes two functions: because Editor commands are all control
characters, you complete the insert and then execute the Editor command.
For example, when you are in insert and type control-Z control-G you exit
insert and the Echo speaks the next word. Part 10: Deleting Text You use control-D to begin all delete commands.
Similar to the cursor move commands control-A and control-Z, you can
combine control-D with a unit character to delete text by
characters, words, and paragraphs. Control-D <space> deletes one character.
Control-D 17 <space> deletes 17 characters. When the number that
follows control-D has more than 4 digits, BEX boops and deletes only one
character. If you enter control-D by mistake, you can enter zero
<space> to cancel the command. Deleting words Control-D # control-W deletes # number of words.
Entering control-D control-W with no number deletes one word. BEX defines
a word to be the characters in between two spaces or <CR>s. When
your cursor is on the space or <CR> that defines the start of a
word, control-D control-W deletes that character and all the characters up
to but not including the next space or <CR>. When your cursor is on
any character in a word, then control-D control-W deletes the entire word,
from the previous space or <CR>. Control-D 5 control-W deletes five
words, starting with the space or <CR> that defines the first word
and up to the last character of the fifth word. When you enter a large
number, for example, control-D 2000 control-W you can delete the rest of
the page. Deleting paragraphs Control-D control-P deletes all the characters from
the cursor position up to the initial space of the next paragraph
( $p ) indicator. Control-D control-P deletes one paragraph. ● Un-Deleting There comes a time in your life when you regret a
deletion. Because of how BEX is designed, there are a number of approaches
that allow you to recover information you deleted by mistake. When you are editing an existing chapter and you
delete something by mistake, it's easy to return to your original
text. When you edit an existing chapter, you copy the information from the
page file on disk to the page buffer. The changes you make in the page
buffer (including deleting characters) are not saved on disk until you
move to another page or quit with When you regret deleting text that has not yet been
saved to disk, you may be able to use the ● Deleting Blocks of Text The deletion commands work well when you know how many
units you wish to delete. The editor also has a special, invisible pointer
called the block marker that you can use to make deleting
text easier. At the User Level, you'll discover other uses for the
block marker as you find out about the clipboard. Block marker commands There are two ways to find out where your marker
is set: Using the block delete It's easy to block delete large portions of text.
Position your cursor at the end of the text you want to keep, then enter
control-B S to set the block marker. Advance your cursor with any of the
Editor movement commands. For Echo users, control-O is useful if you want
to delete more than a sentence. When you hear the word that ends the text
you wish to delete, press <space>. Now, enter control-B D and all
the text between the block marker and your cursor disappears. The
character your cursor covers is not deleted. Set the block marker
again with control-B S, and enter control-O again to start speech and
cursor movement. When you decide that you don't want to delete some of
the text in the block, and you've already entered control-B, press
<space> to cancel the block command. You may then reset the block
marker where you want it. Block related error beeps As you use control-B commands, you can receive two
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 entered
control-B F, you would hear one high beep. Three high beeps can indicate two kinds of marker
error. If you place your cursor before the marker and then
enter control-B D, BEX complains with three beeps. Your cursor must be
after the block marker is set in your text. When you enter a command that
requires a set marker, but no marker is 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. This can happen with control-B
D or control-B L. The bottom line on the screen displays the current
cursor position, the size of the page (or total characters in
current page), and the current page number. The line above this shows the
letters that correspond to the control character of the Editor commands as
you execute them. In 5-column screen, the display only shows the current
cursor and total page size. For more details and Echo output about your status,
use the "Where am I?" command, control-W. When you enter control-W, the
Echo announces the character under your cursor and then the text
temporarily disappears. You're presented with a question mark prompt on an
otherwise blank screen. You can now enter one of these four characters: B,
C, P, or A: You can press any of the letters B, C, P or 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
data entry. Part 12: Quitting The Editor Enter control-Q to quit the Editor and save your
current page to disk. Enter control-Reset to quit the Editor and abandon
any changes you have made to the current page. If you enter control-Reset
and then think, "Gee, I wish I had saved that Part 13: Changing the Environment in the Editor There are many ways to customize the editor's
environment--we introduce three basic commands at the Learner Level. At
the User Level you'll learn how to change the screen mode while in the
Editor, and how to use the braille keyboard. Most of these commands start out with control-S for
set environment. Most of these commands are
toggled: the first time you enter the command, you turn the
mode or feature on, and the next time you enter the command, you turn the
feature off. When you change the environment, that change lasts until you
toggle it off by entering the command again, or until you turn off the
computer. ● Announce All Keystrokes Control-S A makes the Echo announce every key you
press. You hear all your Editor commands announced, and every key you
press as you type in text. When the Echo is announcing every keystroke,
you have to type very slowly. This is a toggled mode: enter control-S A
again to return to normal. In announcing keystrokes, BEX uses the special
vocabulary described under Talking Cursor Movement in Part 7: to minimize
confusion, arrow keys (and their corresponding control characters) are
announced as up, down, left, and
right. ● The Lock Out Changes Command Control-S L disables all Editor commands that alter
your text, and makes every keystroke a control character. While you are in
this mode, you may use any of the Editor motion commands, but you cannot
alter your text in any way. You cannot add, delete, or edit text while in
this mode. For example, after you enter control-S L, pressing just the
letter O executes control-O to move your cursor forward and speak.
Entering ● Send Echo Commands within the Editor Almost all of the Echo commands are available within
the Editor. (A full explanation of Echo commands is in Section 10.) You
can't use control-L to enter line review, but there are many other ways to
review your text with BEX's editor commands. You can use the spacebar to
silence the Echo after entering control-T or control-O. To send any other command to the Echo, use the same
syntax as at a BEX menu: control-E followed by the appropriate plain
letters. For example, enter control-E 12 V to set the volume medium loud. Control-E also sends commands to the SlotBuster. Refer
to your SlotBuster manual for details about SlotBuster commands. Part 14: Troubleshooting -- Editor Problems Even if BEX seems to be behaving abnormally, you can
almost always save your data. There are literally hundreds of printers on the
market. Since every printer is slightly different, we can't tell you
exactly how to set up yours. However, in Part 3 we provide you with a
generic procedure to assist you in setting up the proper margin commands
for your printer. Part 1: The Formatter BEX internally structures output one line at a time
before sending the line of text to the printer. We call the part of the
program that builds up the lines of text the formatter The formatter uses the format indicators
and format commands you type in your text to organize the
information going to the printer. (Section 6 explores these in detail).
BEX's formatter tailors its output differently for print and braille
devices. The formatter knows, for example, that paragraphs are formatted
and pages are numbered differently for print and braille documents. The formatter builds a line of text according to the
commands you have given it. When you establish a left margin of five
characters, the formatter watches for each new line. At the start of a new
line, it sends out five spaces to create your left margin. It counts each
line as it goes along, comparing the current line number to the form
length. If your form length is 25 lines, for example, it sends out a form
feed command after printing line 25, and your printer moves to the top of
a new page. You can print the same text to different carriage
widths without making any changes. The formatter automatically places soft
<CR>s where needed, creating lines of the right lengths without
further instructions from you. You provide the formatter with two basic
dimensions when you configure: form length and carriage width. BEX's
formatter uses the carriage width to break lines when printing, and the
form length to divide the text into output pages. At the User Level, you
will learn how to change margins and page lengths within a
Because of the formatter's vigilance, usually it
doesn't matter what kind of device you print to. BEX communicates with
printers in a generic way, using codes that all printers can understand.
It tailors output to the capabilities of the printer. When printing to a
brailler, the formatter filters out commands that braillers
can't execute, like underlining. The formatter makes sure that paragraph
indent, line space and page numbering are executed appropriately for print
and braille devices. Part 2: Set Your Printer Correctly When it comes to printing nice-looking documents, you
and BEX operate as a team. BEX does its best to make nice output, but you
have the responsibility of making sure that your printer is ready to
print. In order to get the best possible output, you must keep in mind
some general principles about printers and printing. ● Vertical Alignment: Use Top of Form Each printer keeps track of where it is printing on
the page. In order for it to do this correctly, you must make sure the top
of the page is in the correct position before you print. When you tell BEX
to start printing, BEX assumes that the printer printhead is in the
correct position to print the first line. BEX does not add any top margin
unless you tell it to do so. (Setting top margins is discussed in Section
6, Part 3.) Some printers have a top of form button you push to
tell the printer: "OK, remember your current position as ‘the top of
the sheet.'" Less expensive printers use the position of the
printhead when you turn the machine on. To set the top of form, first establish a landmark to
use as a reference. This landmark is to point out where the top edge of
your paper should be when you are ready to print. A common position is to
place the top edge of the page even with the bottom of the tear bar. If
you are visually impaired, have a You may have to print an experimental page or two to
get the paper exactly where you want it. Once you have your top of form
landmark set, you should check the top edge against the landmark
immediately before telling BEX to print. When you have set your paper correctly, then BEX takes
over. Using the form length you defined in your configuration, BEX keeps
track of every <CR> it sends to your printer. If you have a form
length of 58, for example, BEX knows that after sending 57 <CR>s,
it's time to send a form feed character to the printer. This form
feed character makes the printer advance to the next top of form, where
BEX starts counting <CR>s again. To roll your paper out of the printer when it is
finished, always use the form feed button. Form Feed advances
the sheet to the next top of form, and lets the printer and BEX know that
it is ready to print a whole new page. Here's what may happen: Suppose you have a
printout that's two and one-half sheets long. When BEX is done
printing, the third sheet is halfway through the printer. As far as the
printer knows, there are still around 30 lines left on that sheet. If you
manually roll out the paper, the printer has no way of accounting for the
30 lines. Even if you manually roll the paper so it looks like it's
set for the right top of form, the next time you print, your output would
only fill half the sheet. The printer itself would generate a bogus form
feed after it counts 30 lines, and your page breaks would not be in the
correct place. The best way to proceed is to always use the
printer's form feed button that advances the sheet to the next top of
form. That way both the printer and BEX are operating from the same
assumptions. ● The form length is the maximum number of printed lines
on each page. Generally, single spaced printer output is 6 lines per
vertical inch. The standard eight-and-one-half by 11 inch paper is 66
lines tall. However, if you use 66 as your form length, your text would
look cramped. You want to allow for top and bottom margins. (Note that
when you double or triple space, the blank lines between text are still
counted.) For example, for a top margin of one-half inch,
subtract one-half times six (the number of lines per vertical inch), or
three lines from your maximum form length. For a bottom margin of one
inch, subtract one times six, or six lines from your maximum form length.
Combining top and bottom margins, your form length is 66 minus nine, or 57
lines. Confused? Here's the general rule: Subtract your
top and bottom margins in inches, from the paper length. Multiply the
result by six (the number of lines per vertical inch) to get the form
length. Good luck! ● Carriage Width The carriage width is the maximum number of characters
on each line. Inkprint printers generally can print 10 or 12 characters
per horizontal inch. You may be able to specify exactly which on your
printer. On an eight and one-half by 11 inch paper, you
could fit 85 or 102 characters on a line. But again, you
want to allow room for left and right margins. When your printer prints 12
characters per inch, then your text can occupy a maximum of 72 (the
carriage width) divided by 12, or six inches. Eight and one-half inches
minus six equals a total of one and one-half inches for left and right
margins. Here's the general rule for figuring out how much
room you have for left and right margins: Divide your carriage width by
the number of characters per inch (10 or 12). Subtract the result from the
width of your paper. The number you get is the total When you define a carriage width of 72 for a printer
in your configuration, you are actually telling BEX: "Print as many
complete words as will fit in without exceeding 72 characters in this
line, then send the printer a <CR>." Exactly where the first
character on the line shows up depends on your printer. When the place
that the printhead returns to is too far to the left for your taste, then
you can tell BEX to use a left margin. Again, printers differ. Some printers have their own
commands for setting margins. With these commands, you can move the spot
where the printhead returns to when it prints. You use an automatic set-up
sequence for this (discussed in User Level, Section 3, Part 3). Then when
you set top of form, you are also setting a left margin. If this is the
case for you, then BEX (and you) don't need to worry about a margin.
(Setting margins is discussed in Section 6, Part 3) Position zero: the definition In the ever-changing world of printing, some
artificial absolutes must be set. When we talk about the placement of the
characters on a printed line, we will be referring to them with the term
position. A position is equivalent to the width of one printed character.
Position zero is the leftmost point that the printhead on
your printer can go to. Therefore, if your carriage width is 72, your
printer will print characters on positions zero through 71. Position zero
can move around on your paper, once you learn how to set a printer's
internal margins through the use of automatic set-up sequences. However,
in terms of how BEX's formatter view your text, position zero is always
the leftmost position on the printed page. There are literally hundreds of printers on the
market, each with its own bonuses and drawbacks. Different printers have
different internal left margins, different numbers of characters per inch,
and a different amount of lines per inch. You may want left and right
margins on your printer that are different from BEX's default margins.
However, properly configuring your printer is a confusing process, and one
that can take much time. In this section, we provide you with a generic
procedure to assist you in identifying how BEX interacts with your
printer. The horizontal and vertical test grids As explained in Part 2, BEX format commands control
the appearance of the printed or embossed page within the basic image of
carriage width (number of characters per line) and form
length (number of lines per page). You can also set a left margin
and a top margin, for a balanced page. Four chapters on your BEXtras disk,
the All four of these chapters print reference grids using
BEX's horizontal and vertical numbering system. Enlisting the assistance
of a sighted person if necesary, you can ascertain the appropriate
horizontal and vertical numbers that provide a well-balanced print page. ● Before you can test a printer, you must establish a
configuration that includes this printer. The reference grids are
appropriate for regular and large print printers; don't use them with
braillers. For further information on configuring printers, consult Part 4
of the Interface Guide. Defining a printer involves answering many questions.
In terms of testing, only four questions are important: the questions on
slot number, printer class, auto linefeed, and pause on form feed. After
you analyze the test results, you will know exactly what values to enter
for carriage width and form length. Reboot and set up a configuration for your printer.
Don't worry about any carriage width and form length values you have set;
the reference grid chapters override the carriage width and form length in
your configuration. If you are configuring for the first time, enter the
suggested values. (Press <CR> at any configuration question to get
suggestions for how to answer.) You'll enter better values after you print
the test chapters. When you first configure, always start by answering N
to the Only answer Y to pause on form feed when your printer
uses single sheets of paper. When you answer Y, BEX pauses printing at the
bottom of each page. You then remove the printed sheet, insert a blank
sheet, and press <space> to continue printing. ● Printing the Vertical Test Grid The chapter named V GRID provides you with a guide to
set form length, top-of-form, and top margins. Establish a
Where line 1 appears in this printout is where BEX
prints the first line of every page. When your test sheet shows line 1 too
high on the paper, then you have several ways to establish more
aesthetically pleasing top and bottom margins. Establishing a top margin One way to position line 1 in a good place to always
include a top margin command in your BEX chapter. Suppose the grid line
numbered 4 seems like the ideal first line on the page. You type $$mt3 in
your BEX chapter, and at the start of each page BEX prints three
<CR>s before it starts printing the text for line 1. (Section 6
explains the $$ format commands in detail.) Another approach requires that your printer have a
button labelled linefeed. When the printer is off-line,
pressing the linefeed button once advances the paper exactly one line. You
can align the paper using your landmark, then press the linefeed button
exactly three times. Now, set top-of-form by pressing the top-of-form
button or switching the printer off and on again. BEX now prints the first
line of every page on line four, per your instructions. This procedure
establishes top-of-form; it does not change as long as you maintain the
top-of-form. As we've stressed, to maintain an accurate top-of-form
you must never advance the paper by rolling the platen. When you are done
printing a document, turn the printer off-line, and press the formfeed
button. The paper advances into position for the next document you print.
(The design of some printers make it difficult to tear off the sheet after
just one formfeed. In that case, press the formfeed button twice,
sacrificing one sheet of paper to the cause of beauty.) At the User Level, we discuss automatic set-up
sequences, which can include a top margin command to your printer. In addition to establishing the appropriate top
margin, the V GRID chapter can provide you with the appropriate value for
your form length. Once you've decided on the value for your top margin,
print the V GRID chapter again, using the value for your top margin. Fold
the paper in half the long way (so that the top and bottom edges meet) and
note which grid line number towards the bottom of the sheet meets line
number 1. Use this number as your form length. When you specify that
number as your form length, you have equal top and bottom margins. ● Printing the Horizontal Grid Chapters The chapters named RP GRID, LP GRID, and LONG GRID
provide rulers for you to determine left margin and carriage width for
your printer. Use the grid chapter that is appropriate for you: The RP
GRID chapter prints six rulers; this chapter is designed for regular print
printers. The LP GRID chapter prints three rulers; it is designed for
large print printers. The first ruler in the chapters prints 39
characters, the second prints 49 characters, and so on up to 59 characters
for LP GRID and 89 characters for RP GRID. The LONG GRID chapter is
intended for condensed inkprint printers. It contains one long ruler, 159
characters long. Determining margins for multiple print sizes You should print the RP GRID, LP GRID, or LONG GRID
chapters once for each different character size or pitch you plan to use.
For example, the ImageWriter II has built-in 10, 12, and 17 characters per
inch. It also has a headline mode which doubles the width of
a character without change its vertical size. The ImageWriter II can also
do BEX large print. When you plan to use all these various
features, then you need to print the RP GRID, the LP GRID, or the LONG
GRID chapters once for every possible size. ● Once you have your sample RP GRID, LP GRID, or LONG
GRID printouts, it's time to analyze them to determine left margin
and carriage width. Each of the rulers consists of four lines. The first
line labels how many characters are in that ruler. The second and third
lines print a numerical label every five characters, which are read
vertically. The fourth line prints the ruler: a line of lowercase
o characters and vertical bars which make it easy to count
the number of characters for your left margin and carriage width. A
vertical bar appears every five characters, directly below each numerical
label, beginning with zero on the left margin; four lowercase
o characters are printed in between. When the number of characters in a ruler line is less
than your printer's maximum carriage width, then these four lines
stack up vertically. The first vertical position on the line for each
ruler contains zero zero vertical bar. In print, it looks like this: by by , by en" for----for----for The full cell stands for the
vertical bar, while dots 3-6 stands for the lowercase o. When a ruler is longer than your carriage width, three
different things can happen: The first ruler that's too long, and the
ruler immediately above it are the two rulers we are concerned with. The left edge of the ruler is BEX's position
zero. On some printers, this position zero appears at the left edge
of the paper, which means that BEX's position zero would make a very ugly
printed page. When you are unhappy with the left margin on the test
printout, get a real ruler. Measure a nice margin of one inch
or seven-eighths of an inch and make a pencil mark at this point. Compare
the pencil mark with the grid ruler. Suppose the pencil mark occurs at position number 8;
you now know that BEX's left margin of eight positions the printhead at a
good place. You can use this value of 8 to set a left margin, using $$ml8
when you print. Include the $$ml8 command at the start of every chapter
you print. Or, place them in a chapter which you print before your text
chapters. At the User Level, you learn how to configure an
automatic set-up sequence. By consulting your printer manual,
you can find the sequence which sends a left margin command to the
printer. Then, you won't need to set the left margin in every chapter you
print. Setting the carriage width When you've set the left margin, you need to set a
carriage width to work with that left margin. Take your newly printed copy
of RP GRID, LP GRID, or LONG GRID and examine it. On the printed copy RP
GRID or LP GRID, find the first ruler that is too long. This is the ruler
you use to measure your carriage width. On the printed copy of LONG GRID,
there's only one ruler to choose from. Now take a real
ruler and measure a distance from the right edge of the paper that is
equal to the distance of your left margin, and mark this position.
Determine the value for your carriage width by counting over from the
number above the nearest vertical bar. This value is the number you use
for your carriage width. For example, suppose you have a left margin of
one-half an inch. You measure one-half inch over from the right edge of
the paper, making a mark along the first ruler that's too long. This
mark falls at the third lowercase o after the vertical bar
Now you reconfigure, using the values you obtained
from the tests for carriage width and form length. Part 4: Using Option P - Print Chapters BEX sends information to many different devices, and
not all of them are actually printers. You can use option P
to send formatted information to an inkprint printer, a braille embosser,
a Review class printer, a serial voice device, the Echo, or an electronic
braille device. The procedure for "printing" to all these devices is
basically the same. Here's how the dialogue goes:
After you press P at the Main Menu, BEX needs to know
what chapters to print. Entering BEX then asks you to specify chapters by number. Enter
the numbers of the chapters you wish to print, following each number with
<CR>. BEX responds with the name of the chapter you've chosen. When
you wish to cancel your selection, enter a minus sign (dash) to the next
When you have specified all the chapters you wish to
print, enter <CR> alone to the The numbers in parentheses list carriage width by form
length; you can use this information to help identify the printer. (In
this example we use the configuration set up in Section 3). Printer 1 is a
TSI VersaPoint embosser. Printer 2 is an ImageWriter configured as a large
print printer. Printer 3 is the same ImageWriter as printer 2, but used as
a 12 characters per inch printer. Printer 4 is a Review class printer,
configured with the same carriage width and form length as printer 3. You can add Echo speech to any printer by enter
You can also print to the Echo alone by entering
Review the printer options and enter the number and/or
letter(s), followed by <CR>. The disks whir and the requested output
device starts printing. When you configured the printer Part 5: Review Class Printers A Review class printer allows you to know exactly what
the formatter is sending to a print or braille device, saving you paper,
time, and bother. For this option, you must have an 80-column card. A
Review class printer is its own class of printer; simply enter A Review class printer combines the Apple 80-column
display with the 80-column line review software in TEXTALKER Version
3.1.2. 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. ● Screen Layout for Review Class Printers 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. There are always four characters more than your
carriage width on each line. The first two characters are the line number,
expressed in two digits: 01 through 24 at the start of each page. The
third character on each line is the vertical bar; it separates the line
number from the start of the text. This vertical bar marks the space
immediately before position zero. A character that separates information
this way is called a delimiter. Anything directly on position
zero will appear immediately When your carriage width is 76 or greater, there are
two lines of text on the screen for each line of text in your final print
output. Half the number of lines as with smaller carriage widths will be
on your screen at one time. The voice stops at the end of a screen line, even if
it is in the middle of a word. Words broken between lines will not be
pronounced as a whole word, but are said as if they were two separate
words. That means that you may hear strange sounding text at the beginning
of some lines. These words are broken on the screen as the result of a
carriage width wider than the screen line. The words will print normally
when outputted to an inkprint printer. The easiest way to tell if the strange words are
broken words or misspellings, is to go to the numbered line above the
questionable word, and after the voice is finished speaking that line, use
the down-arrow key to have the voice speak the next line. If the words in
question seem to go together, they probably are one broken word. One way to proofread text formatted with extra large
carriage widths is to print to the screen with voice output. A second way,
printing to a textfile, is documented in User Level, Section 10. In all carriage widths, the delete character appears
immediately after the last non-space character on the line. 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 not in your text. 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 delete
character, ● Printing to a Review Class Printer When you wish to preview your material, print your
chapters to the printer number you specified as a Review class printer in
your configuration. When you type It's important to keep in mind that after you
enter line review, all of your keystrokes are interpreted as line review
commands. While you are in line review, you cannot use the down arrow to
see any lines on your current page past 24; the spacebar, to get the
display of your next output page; and <ESC> to stop printing. All
these commands have different functions once you are in line review. Once
you exit line review, you can use these command functions again. 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 enter line review. ● Basic Echo Line Review Commands The following are basic Echo commands. They are not
comprehensive, but are just suggestions; there are as many ways to use
Echo line review as there are Echo users. Feel free to experiment! See
Section 10 for further help with Echo commands. Start printing your chapter. When the clicks stop, the
first 24 When you press <CR> on any line, the entire line
is read. Or, you can use the left and right arrows to move left and right
on the line, word by word. To move character by character, press T to
toggle off moving by word. Press T again to move word by word again. Use
the up and down arrows to move up and down lines. Any keystroke except <space> shuts up the Echo.
When the keystroke is a valid Echo command, that command is executed. To exit line review, press <ESC>; the Echo says
"exit." Now you may press the down-arrow key to review the rest of the
print page, or the spacebar to move to the next print page. You can enter
line review with control-L and exit it with <ESC> as many times as
you want. Sometimes it's a lot faster to exit and re-enter than to
move your audio cursor many lines. Part 6: Troubleshooting -- Print Problems Here is a list of common problems encountered while
printing. For further help, for large print printer problems, and for
guidance on establishing communication between BEX and your printer, see
the Interface Guide, Section 4 on printers. BEX's formatter controls what your output
looks like. When you enter the appropriate commands into your text, the
formatter follows these instructions to break text into lines, paragraphs,
and pages, and to complete all other formatting tasks. There are some terms and concepts you need to know,
before beginning. BEX provides some default values for new lines,
paragraphs and margins. You can always change them if you want to, or
accept them by not specifying any others. A hard <CR>
is one that you type into your text--a hard <CR>
always causes a new line in your output. Don't type a
<CR> after every line as you enter text in the Editor; enter
<CR> only when there must be a new line in your output. The
formatter automatically places soft <CR>s in the text as it prints.
A soft <CR> is one that the formatter creates when it
runs out of room on the current line, and must begin a new one. It is not
always easy to change a hard <CR>; but BEX's soft <CR>s can
easily change, depending on the carriage width of your printer or
brailler. Part 1: Format Indicators: Lines and Paragraphs Format indicators and format commands: the
difference BEX uses format indicators and
format commands in different ways, even though you use both
sets of commands to format your text. Indicators and commands are
different in two fundamental aspects: First, format indicators serve as
navigational units in BEX's Editor, while format commands do not. For
example, you can enter control-A control-P to advance to the next
paragraph indicator. Or, you can enter control-Z control-L to go to the
beginning of the previous new-line indicator or hard <CR>. Second, format indicators and format commands look
different. You enter format indicators into your text with exactly four
keystrokes. Format commands may be more or less than four
● The New-Line Indicator The new-line indicator is four keystrokes: space,
dollar sign, lowercase l, space ( $l ). (Note that
it is lowercase ell, not the digit one. Whenever there is a possibility of
confusing the two, we try to make the distinction clear.) Remember, the
parentheses are used to emphasize the initial and final spaces; do not
type these parentheses in your text. The ( $l ) functions
exactly the same as a <CR>, causing the formatter to start a
new-line of text. The Echo pronounces it as "dollar sign ell" no matter
what punctuation mode is set. It's also readable on a "linear
electronic braille device," such as a VersaBraille. ● The Carriage Return The carriage return <CR> also forces a new line.
On the Editor screen, the <CR> can appear in two ways. In any HI-RES
screen mode, <CR> looks like tiny uppercase C and
R jammed together. In 80 column or 40 column non-HI-RES
screen mode, <CR> shows as a small checkerboard. With voice output,
BEX makes a low boop as it goes over a <CR> character in your text.
When you arrow over letters, the voice pronounces a <CR> as
"return." ● The Paragraph Indicator The paragraph indicator is four keystrokes: space,
dollar sign, lowercase p, space ( $p ). This
symbol is executed differently depending on whether it's sent to a
printer or brailler. You can also control how the ( $p ) symbol
is executed with several format commands. Use ( $p ) at the beginnings of paragraphs,
and before any other text you wish to set off, such as headings and items
in a list. We advise you to use it instead of typing two hard <CR>s
and five spaces. It is more flexible and can be changed easily using a few
format commands. BEX changes its parameters Case and space rules Part 2: Overview of Format Commands All BEX's format commands start with two dollar signs.
BEX only recognizes the $$ format commands when they are typed in a
particular way. All format command letters must be
lowercase. As an example, $$np starts page numbering. $$NP just prints two
dollar signs uppercase NP in your text. We've tried to make
the letters remind you of the command's function. More format
commands contain numbers; numbers must follow the letter, with no space in
between. As we introduce the commands, we'll use # (the number sign) in
place of a particular numerical value. Every $$ command must be immediately preceded by one
of five choices: The formatter recognizes that a space immediately
following a $$ command is not a real space. The formatter
throws this space away. When you have a string of format commands, you can
jam the commands together:
● How Format Commands Work When the formatter encounters the commands in their
proper form, it doesn't print the characters. The formatter wakes up and
says "Wow! Time to execute this command." The formatter knows that print
and braille devices need to have some commands executed differently, such
as paragraphs. The formatter prevents any underlining commands from being
executed when printing to a brailler. Section 9 details how the Grade 2
translator uses the underlining commands to place the italics symbols in
braille. ● When Format Commands Take Effect You must place a format command before the text you
wish to affect. For example, you must place the centering command
immediately before the text you want centered. Some format commands take
immediate effect, like tabs and centering. Others, like margin commands,
influence the start of the next new line. Some, like page numbering, keep
on working, affecting the placement of information on every page. The current line The formatter, when preparing to print text, assembles
each line before it is actually put onto paper. We call the line being
assembled the current line. The current line contains all the
text from one soft <CR> to the next soft <CR>. Because the
formatter operates this way, it is important to place commands that create
new lines, such as the new-line ( $l ) and Part 3: Format Commands in Detail BEX has many, many format commands. We introduce some
fundamental ones at the Learner Level; you'll learn about others at the
User and Master Levels. All the commands introduced here are also listed
on the BEX Quick Reference Card. ● Centering Place $$c before the text you want to center. BEX
continues to center the text until it encounters a hard <CR>, or a
new-line ( $l ) or paragraph ( $p ) indicator. If your
text doesn't fit in one line, it centers on two or more lines. Place a ( $p ) or ( $l ) indicator
before $$c to ensure that only the text you want is centered.
If you do not, BEX's formatter would also center the line of text
immediately before your $$c, as well as the text that comes after. ● Center and Underline Combine to Make a Heading Place $$h before the text you wish to center and
underline. BEX continues to center and underline the text until it
encounters a paragraph ( $p ) indicator. If you do not want to use a ( $p ) indicator
to end your heading, you must turn off underlining with, and the centering
with ( $l ). For example, you want the next line after your
heading to be a full line, and not indented, so you type:
Make your headings into paragraphs Always precede the centered or centered-and-underlined
text with the ( $p ) indicator. Using the default inkprint
format, this creates a blank line between the previous paragraph and the
text of the heading, and insures that only the text you want is centered
and/or underlined. For example, if you do not have a ( $p )
indicator before your centered text you will get something like this:
● Underlining The underlining commands must appear in
pairs:signals underline begin, and signals underline finish.
To prevent an inkprint printer from going crazy underlining, underlining
is also turned off by a ( $p ) indicator. Always enter five
characters: space, two dollar signs, lowercase u, lowercase
b or from. When you use the underlining commands
in this way, the Grade 2 translator can automatically insert italics signs
in the braille text where appropriate. ● Line Spacing $$l# changes how far apart lines are on the page; it
changes the number of soft <CR>s between ( $l ) indicators
and hard and soft <CR>s. The default value for both inkprint and
braille is single spacing, or $$l1 (two dollar signs lowercase
l, digit one). $$l2 sets double linespacing, or one blank
line between every line of text. ● $$s# sets the number of soft <CR>s the formatter
issues when it executes the paragraph ( $p ) indicator. $$s2
sets two <CR>s at each paragraph to create one blank line between
paragraphs. $$s1 sets one soft <CR>, or no blank lines between
paragraphs. When printing to an inkprint printer (or the screen) the
default value is $$s2 -- two <CR>s at each paragraph. For a
brailler, the default value is $$s1 -- one <CR> at each paragraph. ● Paragraph Indent $$i# sets the paragraph indent. The value # can be a
positive or negative number: it always moves relative to the left margin,
discussed below. When the number is positive, the first line of your
paragraphs are shorter than the rest of the lines. When the number is
negative, the first line of your paragraphs are longer than the rest of
the lines. We call this outdenting. Outdenting is discussed
briefly below, and more thoroughly in Section 9, Part 4. When printing to an inkprint printer (or the screen)
the default value is $$i5 -- indent five spaces at the start of each
paragraph. For a brailler, the default value is $$i2 -- indent two spaces
at the start of each paragraph. ● Left Margin $$ml# (lowercase m lowercase
l) sets the left margin. The value of # ranges from zero
to your carriage width. $$ml# sets the margin at a definite
position on the line. $$ml2 means establish a left margin at
position 2. The default for $$ml# is position zero. $$ml# and $$i# work as a team. The left margin defines
where every line of text starts, except for the first line of a paragraph.
The first character of a new paragraph is placed using the combined values
of $$ml# and $$i#. The default for both commands are $$ml0 $$i5. Indent
always moves relative to left margin. If you set $$ml5 and do
not set a Left margin and carriage width The left margin uses up space from your carriage width
(horizontal line length). When you define a printer with carriage width
72, and then establish a left margins with $$ml5, characters can appear
from position 5 to position 71. If the place the printhead returns to on
your printer is too far to the left for your taste, you can always use a
margin command to move text further right. Suppose your printer has 12 characters per inch. We
advise a carriage width of 72 characters to yield six-inch lines of text,
with a three-quarter inch margin on either side. Unfortunately, when you
just turn the printer on, the printhead is positioned 1/4 inch from the
left hand edge of the paper. You want to move the place the printhead
returns to one-half inch to the right. Twelve times one-half is six, so
setting a margin with $$ml6 will do the trick. Seventy-two plus six equals
78, so define a carriage width of 78 in your configuration to get
approximately equal white space to the left and the right of your text.
Part 4 shows how the ever-resourceful Macalaster J Prude handles a
similarly repetitive format requirement. ● Top Margin $$mt# sets the top margin of your paper. The value #
is equal to the number of soft <CR>s added after a form feed. The
default value is zero. This command does not change the number of lines of
text printed per page. When you define a form length of 56, you get 56
lines of text whether you use $$mt# or not. What changes is where the text
starts on the page. You can't use a negative number with this command. Section 5, Part 3 discusses the horizontal and
vertical grid chapters, which assist you in establishing left, right, and
top margins, and carriage width for your printer. ● Simple Page Numbering To number pages, use $$np. Where the page number
appears depends on whether you are printing to a "printer" or a
"brailler." The print format is the word "Page" followed by the
appropriate number, centered on the bottom line of each printed page; the
line above the page number does not contain text. The braille format
places the page number, preceded by at least three spaces, on the
right-hand margin of line 1. ● Tabs BEX's tabs operate differently than tabs on a
typewriter. There are many situations in BEX where the right command for
the job is the left margin command, not the tab commands you might use on
a typewriter. You have to establish values for tabs; none are set when you
start out. There are many ways to specify where a tab should be. You can't
clear just one tab; you have to clear all of them at once. And you can't
use the key marked Tab on the Apple IIe, IIc or IIgs keyboard to move to
tabs (see Section 4, Part 9 for uses of the Tab key.) Setting Tab Stops Use $$t# where # is the number of the position where
you want the tab stop established. The value # can be any number from zero
to one less than your carriage width. For example, Clearing tab stops Use $$tc to clear every tab you've set. Advance to next tab To set text to begin at the next tab stop on the line,
you enter four keystrokes: <space>, dollar sign, dollar sign,
<space>. Since the leading and following spaces are integral parts
of this command, we show this command as ( $$ ). Using BEX tabs The tabs stops are completely independent of the
margins. When you want to advance to the next tab, enter ( $$ ).
To advance two tab stops, enter two of these commands:
( $$ $$ ). Notice that the final space of the first
advance-to-the-next-tab command can also serve as the initial space of the
second advance-to-the-next-tab command. When ( $$ ) appears
after the tab, then BEX separates your text with just one space. For
example, you set a tab at position 10. You type this text:
● Reset to Default Use $$d to reestablish the print or braille defaults:
no page numbering, no margins, no tabs, line spacing at single space,
paragraph format as appropriate for print or braille. The importance of $$d Each time you press P to print chapters, the formatter
resets to default. However, when you print two chapters with different
format without going back to the Main Menu, as when you scan for chapters,
you may run into format problems. If you do not have $$d at the beginning
of the second chapter, that chapter would be printed in the format of the
chapter printed before it. For example, suppose you set $$l2 for double
Therefore, we recommend you place a $$d command at the
start of every document, which may be one chapter or several. That way,
you ensure your chapters will be printed correctly no matter if you print
them one immediately after the other, or by returning to the Main Menu and
pressing P for each one. Part 4: Putting Format Commands to Work There are two chapters called ● Inside the LETTERHEAD Chapter Notice that the LETTERHEAD chapter starts with $$d.
This ensures that the formatter is set to default parameters, so that the
following format commands are executed correctly. The next command is $$t40, which sets a tab stop at
position 40. Mr. Prude uses this tab stop for positioning the date and the
complimentary close. Next comes $$l2 (dollar sign, dollar sign lowercase
l digit two), which sets double spacing. The default value
for the paragraph ( $p ) indicator is also double spacing, and
Mr. Prude wants the first three lines of his letterhead to be equally
spaced. Mr. Prude wanted a spiffy-loooking letterhead, so he
decided to center and underline his name, and center his address. This
● Inside the JOAN Chapter The first seven characters are a paragraph indicator
and an advance-to-next-tab format command. Notice that while both of these
commands require leading and trailing spaces, the trailing space in the
( $p ) and the leading space in the ( $$ ) are
actually the same space. Remember that whenever a command requires a
leading or trailing space, that space can be shared with other commands.
Mr. Prude didn't have to reestablish a tab stop, because the tab at
position 40 from the LETTERHEAD chapter is still in the formatter's
memory. Because of the ( $p ), the date appears on line 7. After the date, Mr. Prude uses a new-line
( $l ) indicator. (A <CR> would have the same effect.) If
he used a ( $p ) indicator, Joan Hackney's name would be
indented 5 spaces, which he doesn't want. Her name appears on line 9.
After the last line of Joan Hackney's address, there's the $$l1
(dollar sign, dollar sign, lowercase l digit one) command,
which resets the line spacing to single-space. This line finishes with a
( $p ), so his salutation is nicely indented 5 spaces. It's
been double-spaced up to this point, so the Dear Joan appears
on line 15. The ( $p ) after the salutation moves the start of
the first paragraph of text to line 17, and the start of the subsequent
line is line 18. Mr. Prude hasn't changed the line spacing at
Using Underlining The second sentence in the first paragraph contains
some underlining. Notice that the underline begin command,andthe
underline finish command, stand alone as words surrounding the text
they underline. The formatter automatically throws away the space
betweenandthe word was, as well as the space between
the and the word surprised. The printed output is
correctly underlined: there's just one space between the words
and and was as well as the words
surprised and at. After the third paragraph,
Mr. Prude uses the tab at position 40 again. Notice that it doesn't matter
whether a line begins with a ( $p ) or a ( $l ) as far
as the tab goes. Mr. P uses two ( $p ) indicators in a row to
make four blank lines where he can sign his name. There are several other
ways he could create the same four blank lines: either four
( $l ) indicators or four <CR>s would do the same thing. ● Using the Screen and Echo to Proofread Now that you've taken an in-depth look at these two
chapters, try proofreading them. At the Main Menu, press P. When BEX
prompts for drive number or chapter name, enter the drive number where the
BEXtras disk is. Choose LETTERHEAD and JOAN by number. When BEX prompts
You'll notice that words are not broken between lines.
How many characters fit in one line depends on the screen mode you've
defined in your configuration. The Echo pauses slightly at the end of each
line. If you want to hear all the spaces, set the Echo to All
punctuation mode with the Echo command control-E A Whenever you add Echo output to a printer with
● Using a Review Class Printer to Proofread Use option P - Print at the Main Menu. When BEX
prompts for drive number or chapter name, enter the drive number where the
BEXtras disk is, and choose LETTERHEAD and JOAN by number. Press
<CR> when BEX asks for drive or chapter the third time. When BEX
prompts You hear clicks as the review printer prints each line
to the screen. When the clicks stop, the first 24 lines of text are on the
screen. Enter Control-L to begin line review. Press a letter between
A and X to read lines one through 24. The Echo
will read first the two digit line number, then the text on that line. You
can use the left and right arrow keys to examine the text word by word,
and the up and down arrow keys to move line by line. Any keystroke but
<space> shuts up the Echo. ● Inside the QUANDARY Chapter This chapter is also on your BEXtras disk--it's
the same one you used in the Exploratory Trip in Section 2. It's four
pages long. When you Edit page 1, you see that the first two "words" are
format commands. First off is our friend $$d to reset the formatter to
default. Next comes $$np which establishes page numbering. Then
there's a <CR>. The format commands at the very start of the
chapter do not "use up" room on the page when printing. However, there are
two reasons why placing a <CR> right there is a good idea: First, you must place format commands before the text
you wish to format. Many format commands influence behavior at the
beginning of a line. Placing <CR> or a ( $p ) indicator
after a group of format commands and before the start of the text insures
that the commands take affect. Second, the <CR> means that line 1 on
the page will not contain text, which makes the title stand out in
inkprint. The article's title is all uppercase, centered
and underlined with $$h. The author's names and all subsequent
sub-headings are centered with $$c command, and each is preceded and
followed by a ( $p ) indicator. Again, this makes one extra
blank line before and after the heading, which is more legible in
inkprint. Examine the chapter carefully for further ideas about
how format commands and indicators work with your text. Experiment with
the new format commands you have learned. Try several different number
values with $$ml#, $$i#, $$s# and $$l# to change the shape of the
paragraphs and line spacing. Some ideas: create block-style paragraphs,
with single- Part 5: Troubleshooting Format Problems Manually transcribing inkprint to braille is a complex
task. Fortunately, BEX automates almost all of it. For most reading
material, you change inkprint to braille by following the rules for
what's called literary, contracted, or,
most commonly, Grade II braille. This Section provides a very
basic, step-by-step understanding of how to do braille translation with
BEX. Section 8 explains how you send your translated text to an embosser,
and Section 9 deals with some basic format issues. Because most voice synthesizers pronounce the Roman
numeral II as "aye," BEX's prompts refer to the Grade
2 translator; we use that nomenclature from here on in. Part 1: Distinguishing Between Braille and Print
Chapters We suggest that you always name your translated
braille chapters by adding the digit 2 to the name of the print original.
BEX doesn't demand that you name your braille chapters this way, but it is
crucial that you develop some system that clearly
distinguishes braille from print chapters. (At the User Level, we explain
how you can select chapters based on the last character of a
chapter's name.) Here's why it's so important: BEX has no way
of knowing if a print chapter is sent to a braille device. It's your
responsibility to make sure that the text matches the type of printer. If
you send a braille chapter to an inkprint device, the screen
braille result doesn't make a lot of sense--in fact, it looks like
garbage. If you send a print chapter directly to a braille device, the
result is not grade 2 braille. Instead, this untranslated braille uses one braille
cell for every print character. Untranslated braille requires more space
than grade 2 braille. That's because grade 2 translation involves
many contractions, where common letter combinations and whole
words are represented by one or two braille cells. For example, the word
the is just one cell in Grade 2. Another Part 2: Using the Grade 2 Translator You find option G - Grade 2 Translator on the Main
Menu. You provide BEX with the names of one or more inkprint
source chapters. You tell BEX how to name the grade 2
target chapter or chapters. The grade 2 target chapter is a
modified copy of the inkprint source chapter. If you use the same name for
your inkprint source chapter and your braille target chapter, you would
lose your print original. Once you supply the names of the chapters, you sit
back and wait for BEX to do the work. The following sample shows the
step-by-step dialogue for translating the ● How format commands are translated When the translator encounters a word that begins with
two dollar signs, it recognizes a BEX format command. The translator does
not try to translate these commands. In Section 4, Part 4, we defined a
BEX word as any group of characters that begins and ends with
either a space or <CR>. But when you don't include a space between the
centering command and the first word, and your inkprint looks like this:
Scanning a disk for chapters to translate In the QUANDARY sample, you only translated one
chapter. You can also translate many chapters at once. Instead of typing a
chapter name at the When you want to translate every chapter, type ● Grade 2 and Grade 1 Braille Grade 2 braille is the standard for braille production
because it saves space. In some rare situations, you may wish to create
uncontracted or grade 1 braille. Grade 1 braille does not use
grade 2's word and letter-combination contractions. Grade 1 does use
special symbols for capitalization, underlining, and numbers. Sending
inkprint chapters to a braille device does not create grade 1
braille, except if your braille embosser has software in it that
translates from inkprint to grade 1. User Level Section 9 discusses
changing between grade 2, grade 1, and untranslated braille within a
document. Once you have translated material from inkprint to
grade 2, the grade 2 chapter is ready to be embossed. However, before you
do this with BEX, you must define a configuration that
includes a braille embosser. Part 1: Configuring an Embosser BEX sends formatted information to many different
devices, and not all of them are literally "printers." How you tell BEX
which chapters to print is the same, no matter what the output device is.
You use Print chapters to send formatted information to an inkprint
printer, a braille embosser, a serial voice device, the Echo, or an
electronic braille device. Exactly what BEX sends to the device depends on
how you define it in your configuration. BEX can communicate with every computer-driven
embosser made. However, some embossers require that BEX send data in a
particular fashion. We did not include a braille embosser in our supplied
configurations because we can't know which kind of embosser you have. The Interface Guide contains detailed information
about how to set switches and other embosser-specific items. Section 3 in
the Learner Level gives step-by-step examples of establishing a new
configuration. In the configuration process, you have an opportunity to
define up to four different printers. For each printer, BEX asks you what
class the printer belongs to. All embossers are class B -
Braillers. Once you tell BEX that a particular printer is a brailler, then
BEX asks you to enter a numerical brailler code. You can
press <CR> to see the entire list of codes. Numbers 1 and 2 are
braille previewers, discussed in detail in User Level Section
6. The rest of the list are actual braille embossers. If your embosser is not on the list, try
configuring it as number 5 - Thiel. If this does not work, call the RDC
Technical Hotline 608-257-8833 for assistance. In Section 5, we explained how to use option P - Print
chapters on the Main Menu. The general procedure is the same whether you
are sending inkprint text to a printer or sending grade 2 braille text to
a braille embosser. Here is an example of printing the QUANDARY2 chapter
you translated in Section 7. Your BEX disk is in drive 1; the data disk
with QUANDARY2 is in drive 2.
You may have created other chapters on this disk. If
so, then your screen display is different: the numbered list contains more
than one chapter. You just want to print the QUANDARY2 chapter, so you
would press <CR> to accept the N - default at the Once you have supplied BEX with the chapters you want
to At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this is
just an example. In this case, the appropriate printer
destination is printer number 1, the brailler in slot 4. The printer
number does not refer to the slot for the embosser's
interface card. The printer number refers to the order you defined the
printers in your configuration. Which printer number is the appropriate
destination depends on which number you configured as a class B -
Brailler. When you press the printer number followed by
<CR>, BEX starts sending text to the embosser. You can always cancel
printing by pressing <ESC>. The $$ format commands introduced in Section 6 are
also used to format braille output. For more details about any of the
commands discussed here, see Section 6. As we mentioned there, BEX's
formatter uses different default values for print and braille output. The
grade 2 Translator recognizes that a group of characters that begins with
two dollar signs and ends with a space or <CR> is a format command;
it doesn't try to translate it. Part 1: General Braille Format Principles The main rule in formatting braille is to conserve
space wherever possible. Blank lines are only used to signal
major divisions in the text. The braille line is a lot
shorter than the print line; the maximum carriage width for an embosser is
around 41 cells. Standard braille paragraphs do not skip a line; the
indent is just two blank cells. BEX takes care of this automatically. Underlining in the way inkprint documents are
underlined is not possible in braille. The braille cell is always three
dots high; you can't add extra dots beneath the cell to show that
something's underlined. When you create print with a typewriter or computer
printer, underlining shows emphasis. It's also used for the titles of
books. When you typeset print, you don't use underlining, you
use italics. Braille also has a way to indicate italics. The
Grade 2 translator uses the presence of BEX's underline beginand
underline finish command to place braille italics signs as it
translates. Since the Grade 2 translator ignores most format
commands, you can format your text in print before you translate it. This
is easier for people who are not braille readers. When you create print documents with a typewriter, you
usually space twice at the end of a sentence. In both braille and
Part 2: BEX's Automatic Braille Format BEX's formatter tailors the execution of some format
indicators and format commands differently for print and braille. The
formatter does not analyze the text within the chapter; it's relying
on you to send braille text to a braille device. The only way that the
formatter knows that text is "braille" is when you specify a printer that
you have configured as a class B - Brailler. To ensure appropriately formatted grade 2 braille
output with BEX, you must do three things: In Part 3, we explore how each of the basic $$
commands are executed for a braille device. When you send text to either a
printer or brailler, BEX uses default values for paragraphs,
underlining, and page numbering. You can easily override these default
values by entering $$ commands in your chapters. When the $$ commands you
enter create values that are inappropriate for braille, make sure they are
removed from the braille chapter before you emboss it. You can either delete the commands in the print
chapter before translating it, or you can delete the commands in the
braille chapter once it's translated. Since the Grade 2 translator
doesn't change the $$ format commands at all, they look the same in both
print and braille chapters. When you are creating print and braille
versions of the same text, it's faster to delete the $$
Part 3: Basic Format Commands for Braille As mentioned in Section 6, it's important that
you precede and follow yr $$ commands with a space or <CR>. When you
do, the translator translates your text but leaves the format commands
untranslated. Underlining When you print a braille chapter like
When $$ub and $$uf commands are present in your
inkprint source chapter, the Grade 2 translator places italics signs where
appropriate in your grade 2 target chapter. There are two forms for the
braille italics sign: single and double. The single italics sign is dots
4-6, shown in screen braille by the period. The double italics sign is
two dots 4-6, or two periods in screen braille. When an
italicized passage is three or fewer words, each word is preceded with the
single italics sign. When the italicized passage is more than three words
long, the initial word is preceded by the double italics sign, and the
last word is preceded with the single italics sign. Here's a silly inkprint sentence showing how
italics signs work:
As mentioned in Section 7, viewing screen braille can
be a little disconcerting at first. In this sample, when the brailler gets
the exclamation point, it embosses dots 2-3-4-6, the grade 2 contraction
for the word the. The exclamation point is preceded
Both of the last two words are preceded by a single
italics sign. The dollar sign in Centering Place $$c before the text you want to center. A
typical carriage width for inkprint is 72 characters; for braille
it's 40 or 41 cells. The centering effect of $$c continues until a
( $l ), ( $p ), or hard <CR>. A heading that
centered on one line in print may require two or more lines to center in
braille; BEX takes care of this automatically. Center and underline As mentioned, BEX suppresses underlining when sending
text to a brailler. When printing to a brailler, BEX executes the $$h
command exactly the same as a $$c command. The $$h command does not signal
the start of braille italics; the translator only usesand to
place braille italics. Line spacing Braille text is always single spaced, BEX's default
value for both inkprint and braille. If at some point in your inkprint
chapter you have increased the line spacing with a $$l# command, remember
to remove the $$l# command before embossing the grade 2 version. Paragraph spacing BEX's default value for braille paragraphs is one
<CR> at each ( $p ). If you have increased the paragraph
line spacing witha $$s# command, remove the $$s# command before embossing. BEX's default value for braille indenting at
paragraphs is 2 spaces. The $$i# command allows you to change where the
first line of a paragraph starts. The value # can be either negative or
plain: it determines where the first line of a paragraph appears
relative to the existing left margin. BEX defaults to no
margins, either right or left. When you want to change how paragraph
( $p ) indicators are executed, you must place the $$i# command
before the first paragraph indicator you want to affect. All subsequent
( $p ) indicators use the new value until you change it with
another $$i# or reset to default with $$d. In Part 4, we show how you
combine a negative indent with a positive left margin to create
outdenting. Left margin You set the left margin with the $$ml# command,
lowercase m, lowercase l, followed by a
number. The default for $$ml# is position zero. $$ml2 means
establish a left margin at position 2; $$ml10 means establish a left
margin at position 10. The left margin defines where every line of text
starts, except for the first line of a paragraph. The first character of a
new paragraph is placed using the combined values of $$ml# and $$i#:
Indent always moves relative to left margin. The default value for braille
is $$ml0 $$i2, so the first line of a paragraph starts at position 2 and
all subsequent lines start at position zero. means that the first line of
a paragraph starts at position zero and all subsequent lines start at
position 2. This is discussed further under "Outdenting," in Part 4. Simple page numbering Enter $$np in your chapters to number pages in either
print or braille. When BEX outputs to a brailler, the page number is
placed at the right margin of line one, with at least three preceding
blank cells. Tabs You use tabs identically with print and braille
material. It is important to keep in mind the different carriage widths of
the two formats. The grade 2 version of a word is usually shorter than the
inkprint version. When representing columnar material in braille, you
usually have just two blank cells between columns. RDC'S TranscriBEX
software, an add-on module to BEX, includes extensive systems for
transcribing columns and tables. To establish a tab stop, you use $$t#. The value for #
corresponds to that position on the line. $$t10 sets a tab at position 10,
and $$t28 sets a tab at position 28. Establishing a tab stop does not clear any other tab
stop. You can only clear all the tab stops at once with $$tc.
Generally, you should enter $$tc immediately before you establish new
tabs. Move to the next tab stop with ( $$ ). The
leading and following spaces are integral parts of this command. To reestablish braille default values, use $$d. This
clears all margins, page numbering, or tabs, sets line spacing to single
space, and paragraphs to single spaces with an indent of two. Part 4: Braille Format for QUANDARY In Section 7, we use the Delete the <CR> The QUANDARY chapter begins with
Establish outdenting We use the word outdenting to describe a
situation where the first line of a paragraph is further to the left than
the start of all subsequent lines in that paragraph. Another term for this
format in print is a hanging indent. Outdenting is frequently
used in braille for lists of things. Braille transcribers would use the
phrase indent to cell one, runover to cell three to describe
the format we establish here. There is one place in the QUANDARY article where
outdenting would be good: the list of four things for
training centers to ponder that appears at the end of BEX page 2. To establish outdenting, combine a negative
value for # in the You always place format commands before the text you
wish to format. The margin command influences how the formatter handles
the start of the next line. The indent command influences how the
formatter handles the start of the next paragraph. To start outdenting,
place immediately before the first ( $p ) indicator where
outdenting commences. To restore normal braille paragraphs, place before
the first ( $p ) indicator where standard braille paragraphs
recommences. Edit page 2 of the QUANDARY chapter. The paragraphs
under discussion all begin with a dash, shown by two hyphens. Press
control-L to begin locating, then type
When you are doing a lot of braille transcribing, you
will encounter a number of code books that dictate more sophisticated
braille page formats and subtle braille translation issues. The
TranscriBEX module is an enhancement of BEX that provides you with the
tools to create perfectly formatted and translated braille in accordance
with English Braille--American Edition, the Code of
Braille Textbook Formats and Techniques, and the Code for
Computer Braille Notation. Contact RDC for more information about
TranscriBEX. At the Learner Level, BEX supports two
integral voice devices: the Echo family, and the SlotBuster
II. This Section focuses on the Echo. Most of the strategies discussed
here are equally appropriate for SlotBuster users; the actual commands
differ. Since the SlotBuster is a multi-function circuit card, it requires
more sophistication to operate. You have to know when you want to send
text to the SlotBuster for talking, and when you send text for printing. A
concise summary of SlotBuster commands is provided in Appendix 2. RC
Systems also distributes a talking SlotBuster manual on disk. Part 1: Why the Echo? Street Electronics has manufactured four different
devices: the Echo II, Echo Plus, the Echo IIb, and the Cricket. We refer
to them all as Echo because BEX treats them identically. When
the Echo speaks, it's a cooperative effort between a circuit card,
BEX, and the We've chosen to standardize on the Echo family because
it has many wonderful features. The Echo's speech output is flexible:
you can enter commands to control the pitch, how fast it speaks, which
punctuation is announced, and the delay between words. You can change
these parameters at any time within BEX. The TEXTALKER software enables the Echo to speak any
possible combination of letters and words. TEXTALKER also allows you to
review the contents of the Apple screen. It does require some practice to
understand the Echo speech. Because the Echo is designed for a mass
market, it is relatively Included in your BEX package are two flippies called
the Echo/Cricket Training Set. One side is the Echo/Cricket Lessons Disk.
These lessons are aimed at the novice computer user: we strongly recommend
these lessons to familiarize yourself with all the Echo's features. Part 2: BEX and the Echo As you boot BEX, it scans your Apple system looking
for an Echo II, Echo Plus, Echo IIb, or Cricket. BEX can only recognize
the Cricket when it's turned on before you boot BEX. When BEX locates
the Echo, it automatically loads the TEXTALKER software into the
Apple's memory. When BEX recognizes an Echo in your system, then BEX
speaks the first Part 3: Turn the Voice Off and On Automatically Two chapters on the Main side of your BEX disk can
turn the Echo voice off and on automatically. These chapters are examples
of automatic procedure chapters, which you learn how to
create at the Master Level. An automatic procedure chapter contains
instructions for BEX to do a series of actions without you having to type
them. You can use automatic procedure You don't need to use an automatic procedure chapter
when you just want to silence the Echo temporarily: Part 6 explores the
various ways you can suppress Echo speech. Turning the voice off and on is
handy when sighted and blind computer users are sharing a system. Use this
feature when you have configured without Echo speech and want it, or
configured with Echo speech, and don't want it. Here's how: Sit back and watch the fireworks! BEX is reading
keystrokes from the chapter you specified. When the automatic procedure is
finished, you are back at the Main Menu prompt. Part 4: Voice-Oriented BEX Features When you know what Echo features BEX provides, you can
better understand how to use the Echo without BEX. We've designed BEX to
make word processing with voice output efficient. Program prompts are
concise to speed access time. You can press <CR> for
the list of options at a menu, or scan a drive for all the chapters on the
disk. But when you know exactly what you want, you save time by just
typing it in. The software makes various signal tones with the
Apple's speaker to distinguish program parts. A low beep signals menu
announcements; a high beep signals errors. ● Editor Features Many Editor commands are designed for voice output.
These were mentioned in Section 4, but are repeated here for ready
reference. ● Printer features You can add Echo output when BEX prints to any
printer. Add the two characters Part 5: Echo Commands You can set and change many parameters for the Echo
family of synthesizers. The best way to discover how these changes work is
to play around with them. The Quick Reference Card contains a summary of
all Echo commands. Two commands are disabled in BEX's Editor; several
commands are not useful with BEX. All Echo commands begin with the Echo's
command character, control-E. Some commands have a numerical
value; we show a Controlling what characters the Echo speaks The Echo has three different punctuation modes. When
you're reading a document for content, you may not want to hear every
apostrophe and period. But when you're carefully proofreading your
sentence structure, you probably do. TEXTALKER names some punctuation
marks differently than your English teacher; you hear this version when
you move the cursor by words or sentences. BEX has a special vocabulary
for pronouncing punctuation when you arrow left and right in the Editor.
Most of the names there are what your English teacher prefers; we
shortened the name of the The Echo parrots most of the letters you press at
a menu, depending on punctuation mode. For example, when you are in Some
punctuation, the Echo does not speak when you press question mark. We
don't recommend using All punctuation mode unless you really
need it. If you used this mode in BEX's Editor, you would hear a
<CR> between each word. Those Returns are not in your
text. BEX sends a <CR> after each word Most of the time, you want the Echo to speak words.
When you are reviewing grade 2 braille text in the Editor, however, word
mode is very difficult to understand. Two commands control this function: The repeat filter When you create text that contains more than two
punctuation characters in a row, you probably will encounter
TEXTALKER'S repeat filter. For example, you might want to create a
letterhead that centers 12 asterisk characters under your name. When you
control-G over this word, you only hear "star star." TEXTALKER has a repeat filter that
suppresses pronunciation of punctuation and control characters when the
same character appears more than two times in a row. In BEX, the repeat
filter is active when you're printing to the Echo with BEX's screen display doesn't contain any
ornamental characters. We've pared it down to show only the information
you need to hear. Software mainly designed for sighted people
is quite different: frequently the screen is decorated with all manners of
punctuation. The Echo's repeat filter makes using software like this
bearable. Controlling speed When you first use the Echo, it can be hard to
understand. Use these commands to slow down the Echo: Controlling pitch and volume ● Echo Commands in BEX's Editor You use the same commands in BEX's Editor and at
menus. However two Echo commands are disabled in the Editor: control-X (to
temporarily turn off the Echo voice) and control-L to enter Echo line
review mode (detailed in Part 7). However, BEX provides you with workable
alternatives: many commands let you review text, and you can use
<space> to stop Echo speech. ● General Echo Commands outside of BEX All of the above commands, using the same syntax, are
available plus three more. You don't need the following three commands
inside BEX, because BEX takes care of all input and output itself. Part 6: Making the Echo Stop Talking One of the most important features for any voice
device is shutting it up. There are several different ways to do this. In
the Editor, you press <space> to silence the Echo for control-T and
Control-O. There's also an explicit Echo command that
only shuts up the Echo: control-X. The drawback to control-X
is you must wait for the Echo to finish speaking "silently" to itself. TEXTALKER also shuts up whenever you press
any key except <space> while the Echo is talking. This
is a wonderful feature once you know your way around BEX. For example,
while printing a chapter, you want to be reminded of which printer number
corresponds to your inkprint printer. You specify the list of chapters to
print. Then, when BEX prompts Here's an example in the Editor. You want to
locate the third $$c centering command in a page. Enter control-L $$c
control-A and the Echo announces the character position of the first $$c
command. You don't have to listen to the entire number; when you enter
control-L control-A to locate the next occurrence, the Echo shuts up.
However, the Echo's instant silence response can be a little
confusing in the Editor. Keeping track in the Editor When you issue an Editor command while the Echo is
talking, that command may shut up the Echo. But in some
situations, it may not. The problem boils down to a "battle of the
buffers." TEXTALKER has a buffer that can store approximately 128
characters. This buffer is crucial to TEXTALKER'S ability to inflect
sentences. TEXTALKER accumulates a bunch of characters in its buffer,
analyzes the punctuation, and tries its But that's not all! BEX's Editor
also has a buffer: the keyboard buffer, which holds up to
256 keystrokes. BEX regulates how fast keystrokes are passed from the
buffer to the Apple. BEX knows that TEXTALKER'S buffer can hold only
128 characters, so BEX makes sure that TEXTALKER'S buffer doesn't get
overloaded. If you hold down control-G for a count of three seconds and
then let go, you have an opportunity to hear the battle of the buffers at
its most confusing. As long as you're holding down the control-G command,
each control-G starts the Echo talking a word, and then interrupts that
word and starts it talking the next word. But once you lift your fingers
from the keys, BEX starts storing the control-G commands in the keyboard
buffer. BEX slows down the stream of control-G commands to the point where
TEXTALKER has time to fully pronounce each word. Part 7: Echo Line Review The Echo's line review feature
allows you to randomly read any material on the 40-column and 80-column
Apple screen. (Some people call this feature "screen review.") You cannot
use line review in combination with BEX's large print screen display at
menus. BEX large print is a graphics display; TEXTALKER can never review
graphics. By the way, you don't need to plug in a computer monitor to use
line review. TEXTALKER uses the information in the Apple's screen
memory to show you what's on the screen. The Apple doesn't know or
care if there's a monitor plugged in. Echo line review is not available in the Editor; you
can use Echo line review in combination with a Review class printer to
proofread your work. When something interrupts you as you're working at a
BEX menu, Echo line review is a handy way to see what's on the screen
and what you last did. Line review mode creates a separate audio
cursor. The position of the audio cursor determines what the Echo
speaks. You move the audio cursor around the screen with the line review
Control-L enters line review mode; the Echo says
Review. You can press control-L when the Apple is waiting for
input, or you can enter line review while the Apple is outputting
characters. In the second case, control-L freezes the Apple temporarily.
When you exit line review, the Apple resumes whatever it was doing (before
it was so politely interrupted). Choosing lines to read The 24 lines on the Apple screen are labelled with the
letters A through It: line 1 is A,
line 2 is B, up to line 24 which is X. The
first step after entering line review is choosing a line to read. When you
press a letter between A and X, the Echo immediately begins speaking that
line. When you press Z the audio cursor moves to the same line as your
true cursor. After you press Z, press <CR> to read that line. Once you have specified the first line to read, you
have a wealth of choices. Press <space> and the Echo announces the
position of the audio cursor. Press <CR> to reread your current
line; your audio cursor ends up at the start of the line. Use right and
left arrows to read word by word. You can change to letter-by-letter mode
by pressing L; when you do then right and left arrow read
letter-by-letter. After you have specified the first line, you don't use
A through X to position the audio cursor. Instead, press the up and down
arrows to move your cursor to a new line and start talking it. Instead of reading one line at a time, you can read
several. The comma key is the through key used to separate
the first and last line to read. When you first enter line review mode and
press You leave line review by pressing <ESC>; the
Echo says "Exit." Changing Echo parameters in line review You can also issue many Echo commands in line review
mode, but the syntax is a little different. You don't use the
Echo command character control-E. When you are in line review mode, the
Echo is already paying attention to all your keystrokes. The changes you
make to the Echo's parameters in line review do not affect the
Echo's parameters at menus and in the Editor. Column review In addition to reading the entire screen line, you can
divide the Apple screen horizontally into up to nine columns. Each time
you load TEXTALKER into memory, you start out with nine default columns,
labelled, logically enough, 1 through 9. Each
column is 5 characters wide: column 1 contains the characters in position
01 through 05; column 2 is 06
through 10, and so forth up to column 9 at 41
through 45. The first time you enter line review, you default to
the entire screen: 00 through 40 or
80, depending on which screen you You can hear the entire line by choosing column 0; but
if you don't want to leave your column, you can press the letter R. This
reads the entire line without escaping from your chosen column. As always,
<CR> repeats the chosen text, whether it's a full line or a
columnar portion of it. When you exit line review, TEXTALKER remembers
your last column. The next time you enter line review, you'll be in the
same column. Changing column boundaries While the nine default columns may suit your needs,
it's always nice to be able to customize your operating environment.
Each column is an independent entity; column boundaries may overlap. If
you wish, you could define column 1 as positions 02 through 39, column 2
as 04 through 09; column 3 as 00 through 31. We explain changing column
boundaries in a minute. Whichever column you're in, you get a low boop when
you attempt to move past its edge. (It's the same low boop you get
when you reach the edge of the screen on a full line.) Press <space>
to find out your current cursor. (It may be easier to interpret portions
of words when you change to Letter mode at this point.) Moving the column
boundaries is similar to setting margins on a typewriter. The combination of open-Apple and left arrow keys is
like the left margin release on a typewriter. When you
decrease the left column boundary (move it to the left) you
use the open-Apple and left arrow combination. Similarly, the open-Apple
combined with the right arrow is like the right margin
release. To increase the right column boundary (move it to the
right) you use the open-Apple and right arrow combination. Suppose you want to change column 2's default values;
its left edge is position 06 and its right edge is position 10. You want
to make column 2 encompass positions 00 through 09. Here's how you
proceed. Enter line review, then press A to choose a line.
Press 2 to shut up the Echo and enter column 2. The Echo reads the five
characters from 06 to 10; your audio cursor ends up at A, 06. Press
<space> to confirm this. Press the left arrow and the boop signals
the left edge of column 2. Hold down the open-Apple key while pressing the
left arrow, and you're moving the left edge of the column as you go. Each
left-arrow press is acknowledged with a boop; six presses gets you to
position 00. Press 2 now and you hear the text between 00 and 10. The
open-Apple right arrow combination can not move the right edge of the
column to the left. In this example, move your audio cursor
right with the right arrow key until the Echo announces A, 09, when you
press <space>. Now press the equals key to set the right column
edge. ● Using Line Review in BEX The 20, 10 and 5 column screen display draw letters on
the Apple's screen, and TEXTALKER can't read graphics. You can review
the 80 and 40 column screens. When you are interrupted while working with
the Apple and want to know where you left off, use line review to find
out. Enter control-L Z R. Control-L enters line review mode; Z places your
audio cursor on the same screen line as your true cursor; and R reads that
line. You hear what BEX is prompting for. You can then use the up and down
arrows to see what else is on the screen. You can also use line review to examine text you print
to the 80 or 40 column screen, or to a Review class printer. Up to now, you've concentrated on the Editor, Print
formatter, and Grade 2 braille translator. While these options form the
heart of BEX, there are many other utility functions provided on the
Second, Page, and Starting Menus. Before we explore those menus, however,
we want to provide you with an overview of how you select chapters in BEX. Several methods are available for choosing which
chapter or chapters to work with. We use the term default data
drive to refer to the number that appears as the default when you
press D at any menu. When you have a 2-drive system, your default data
drive is always drive 2. When you have a 1-drive system, your default data
drive is always drive 1. At the Master Level, you can have up to eight
drives; knowing your default data drive becomes quite important. Part 1: Specifying Chapters When BEX needs to know which chapter you wish to work
with, it prompts When presented with the When you work with the Editor and all of the Page Menu
options, you work with just one chapter at a time. In this situation, BEX
prompts you to enter the number of the one chapter you want to use. For all other options, you can work with an entire
disk of chapters. When you scan the disk for chapters, BEX presents a
numbered list of your chapters, and then asks you if you want to use the
entire list in order. The default is N since you usually don't want to
work with the entire list. Enter After you get a numbered list of chapters, BEX prompts
you to pick one or more chapters by entering their numbers. After you
enter a number followed by <CR>, BEX responds with the name of the
chapter you've picked. When you want to cancel this chapter, enter a minus
sign (the hyphen) followed by <CR>. BEX announces that the chapter
is canceled. When you're done entering chapter numbers, enter <CR>
alone to the ● What Happens Next? You have just specified a list of source
chapters for BEX to use. What happens next depends on the option.
When the result of the option is writing one or more chapters on disk,
then you have to tell BEX how to name the chapters. BEX prompts
BEX prompts for multiple chapter names with options G
- Grade 2 translation and R - Replace characters on the Main Menu, and
with options A - Adjust size of pages, C - Copy chapters, M - Merge
chapters, N - Name change for chapters and R - Read textfile to chapter,
on the Second Menu. We When the option doesn't involve writing new files on
disk, then after you specify the source chapter list, you're asked for
other information. With option P - Print chapters, the next step is
answering the Part 3: Target Chapter Naming Methods Many BEX options created modified copies of your
chapters. We refer to these new chapters as target chapters.
Options G - Grade 2 translation and R - Replace characters on the Main
Menu, as well as many of the options on the Second Menu, ask you how you
wish to name the target chapters you create. ● Working with One Chapter When you are only working with one chapter, BEX
prompts for the The rules for naming chapters stated in Section 4,
Part 2 still apply: the chapter names cannot exceed 25 characters; the
first character must be a letter they must never contain periods, commas,
colons, or semicolons; and they must never end with a space. When you have two disk drives, BEX assumes that all
your chapters are read from and written to drive 2, your default data
drive. You can tell BEX to write your target chapter on drive 1 by
starting your target chapter name with the digit 1, as we did At all BEX menus, you can press number sign
● Working with More than One Chapter When you specify more than one source chapter, BEX
prompts for you to enter one of the target chapter naming methods, as
shown in the example above. This is a handy shortcut that allows you to
create target chapter names by systematically changing the source chapter
names. Enter When you make your choice, enter the characters
that define your naming method, and press <CR>. You've probably
noticed that the target chapter naming methods all concentrate on changing
the final characters of the source chapter names. At the User Level,
you'll learn how you can use the last character of a chapter name to
select a subset of chapters on the disk. For example, suppose you want to copy the
● Using the Same Names for Source and Target
Chapters We briefly mentioned above that BEX allows you to use
the same name for source and target chapters. This characteristic of BEX
comes in very handy as you advance to the Master Level, but it has its
drawbacks. There's no danger at all when you are simply copying a
chapter from one disk to another, as when you make back-up copies of your
chapters. But when you specify the same name for source and target
chapters) on the same disk, the data in your source chapters is forever
lost to Whenever you instruct BEX to save data on a disk with
a particular name, BEX carries out your instructions to the letter. BEX
doesn't check to see if that name already exists on the disk. For example,
you have a chapter named Part 4: Manipulating Chapters with the Second
Menu All the options on the Second Menu allow you to change
how information is saved on disk. Section 12 demonstrates using some of
these options to accomplish a specific task. In this Part we detail the
features of each option. Most of the options allow you to work with many
chapters at once. ● Second Menu Options Part 5: Manipulating Pages with the Page
Menu The Page Menu allows you to reorganize pages in many,
many ways. Section 12 shows some examples. All the options assume you are
working on one chapter. When you Zip to the Page Menu and choose an
option, you're prompted Part 6: Starting Menu Utilities In Section 2, we explored some items on the Starting
Menu. In Section 3, we discussed two options relevant to configuring. For
your reference, here's a complete list of all Starting Menu options.
To move from the Main Menu to the Starting Menu, insert the Boot side of
BEX in drive 1 and press <space>. In Section 11, we detailed all the ways you can
specify source chapters and name target chapters. We also described
several of the options on the Second and Page Menus. In this Section, we
demonstrate how you might combine these features to accomplish a specific
task. BEX's ability to manipulate information is like a
Swiss army knife: there are many, many tools available. These examples are
neither exhaustive nor prescriptive. As you gain experience, you'll
develop your own work patterns. For example, you'll recognize when it
makes most sense to use Copy chapters and when Adjust pages or Merge
chapters is more efficient. To give yourself a better "feel" for the
possibilities on the Page Menu, use option F - File list on every chapter
you edit. Part 1: Dealing with Textfiles Option R - Read textfiles to chapters on the Second
Menu allows you to copy information from one type of file into another.
Textfiles are information stored on disk differently than BEX
chapters. Apple software that creates textfiles which can be read by BEX
include AppleWorks, ProTERM, AppleWriter, ASCII Express, and a host of
others. At the User Level, we explain how BEX creates textfiles. Textfiles have a format different than BEX chapters,
and often require some internal changes before they are workable with BEX.
Option R reads textfiles, which many other Apple programs can manipulate,
into BEX chapters, which are unique to BEX. The EchostCricket Training
Disk contains textfiles full of There are two ways to locate a textfile on disk. In a
DOS catalog, the letter T in the second column of the catalog
indicates a textfile. On the Second Menu, option R - Read textfiles to
chapters lets you scan a disk for textfiles in the same way you scan a
disk for BEX chapters. Instead of prompting When no textfiles are present, BEX responds with
When there are textfiles on the disk, BEX presents a
numbered list. Respond by entering the textfile number as you would with a
numbered list of chapters. After you specify the source textfiles, BEX
prompts for target chapter names; use the same techniques as always.
However, you can't use the S target chapter naming method.
Your new chapter must have a different name than the textfile, even if
it's on a different disk. After you specify the names, BEX gets to work. The BEX
chapter uses slightly more room on a disk than the textfile it's read
from: it's generally a good idea to read textfiles from one disk to
chapters on another disk. Part 2: Transforming a Textfile into a BEX
Chapter: An Example If you use the Echo synthesizer, you've probably
already explored the EchostCricket Training Disk. Even if you don't use
the Echo, however, there's some useful information on the disk,
stored as textfiles. To examine it with BEX, you must copy the textfiles
to BEX chapters. To do this, you need your EchostCricket Training Disk,
your BEXtras disk, and an Insert the EchostCricket Training Disk in your data
drive. Use option D - Disk catalog at any BEX menu; there are two BEX
chapters named ● Using Option R - Read Textfile to Chapter The first step is to change the textfiles into BEX
chapters. Press S to get to the Second Menu, proceed as follows:
When you don't want to use the whole list, you press
<CR> here to accept the default answer. BEX then prompts:
But here we are interested in the whole list, so when
BEX asks You must use different names for the BEX chapters
you're creating. When BEX prompts: ● Reformat the BEX Chapters with Option R -
Replace characters Put your BEX disk in drive 1 and your data disk with
the newly created chapters in drive 2. Jump back to the Main Menu, and
edit one of the chapters you've just created. You'll notice that there aren't any format indicators
or format commands in the text, but there are lots of spaces and hard
returns. This is true of almost all textfiles you encounter: they are
usually formatted as if they had been printed to disk. You could reformat
these chapters by hand, but it would be very dull and time-consuming.
Anyway, one of BEX's most powerful features is option R - Replace
characters on the Main Menu. Replace characters can reformat these
chapters for you automatically. Quit the Editor and press R for Replace characters:
At this point, you can remove your BEX disk from drive
1 and insert your BEXtras disk. A transformation chapter is a BEX chapter
that has a list of changes to make. We supply several transformation
chapters on the BEXtras disk. One is named FIX TEXT is on the BEXtras disk in drive 1, so this is
how you proceed:
Now the Apple's speaker starts making all sorts
of noises. Replace characters makes a click for every replacement. One of
the replacements going on is getting rid of extra spaces. There are so
many extra spaces that the clicks turn into a moan. Notice the target chapter naming method
code of S. As we explained in Section 11, Part 3, this tells BEX to use
the same name for source and target chapters, and to write chapters on
drive 2. This is a good example of when you want your target
chapters to overwrite your source chapters. The reason we're using Replace
characters is because the format in the source chapters is not what you
want to work with. You have no further use for this data. If you use a
different target chapter naming method, you create modified copies with
Replace characters. You would have to use option K - Kill chapters to get
rid of the source chapters at some point. Using the naming method S is a
shortcut. Replace characters takes some time. When you no longer
hear any clicks, BEX is finished replacing, and you get the Main Menu
prompt. Now edit one of the transformed chapters, and you see
paragraph ( $p ) indicators and $$c centering commands. At the User Level, we explain option W - Write
chapters into a textfile. This option enables BEX to print DOS 3.3
textfiles to disk. Raised Dot Computing also distributes a ProDOS utility
called the Quick Textfile Converter, or QTC. This utility copies BEX
chapters into ProDOS textfiles. It has on-line documentation that's
stored as a ProDOS textfile, which you can read into a BEX chapter if you
want. Contact us for further details. Part 3: Manipulating Pages The Page Menu allows you to manipulate individual
pages within a chapter. Because page numbers can easily change as you use
the options available, we recommend you frequently use option F - File
list to keep track of your work. To understand File list, you need to
learn a little bit about the structure of BEX chapters. ● How BEX Keeps Track of Pages Insert your BEXtras disk and choose option D - Disk
catalog at any BEX menu:
For every BEX chapter, there is one
directory file and additional page files. The
file named QUANDARY above is the directory The files named QUANDARY.A, QUANDARY.B, QUANDARY.C,
and QUANDARYDDD are the page files. The page files contain the information
in each BEX page. BEX adds a two character extension to each page file as
a label for the directory. The extension is period followed by a letter.
This is why you can't use a period in a chapter name. BEX recognizes page
files by the period and letter extensions in their names. ● Use File List To Keep Track of BEX Pages Every time you choose option F - File list on the Page
Menu you get the page number, the size of the page, and the extension
letter for each page file for the specified chapter. Here's how to get a file list of the QUANDARY
chapter:
● Manipulating Pages: An Example Here's the task: you want to send a friend some
excerpts from the QUANDARY article. You think that what's said is
fine, but feel it could be better stated if the three main points were
rearranged. Use option C - Copy chapters on the Second Menu to
make a copy of the QUANDARY chapter. You will be typing the name of this
chapter a lot, so make it easy to enter. Here we call it Chop the pages into logical units Jump to the Main Menu and edit chapter WC. At this
point it has four pages. From previous examination, you know it has five
headings: the main title, and four sub-titles. The sub-titles are
centered, so you can find them by Locating for the $$c format command. On page 1, enter control-L $$c control-A. The first
occurrence is the author's names. Enter control-L control-A again,
and you arrive at the first sub-title, Aids Can Play Three
Roles. Enter control-Z control-P to zoom back to the previous
paragraph ( $p ) indicator. Now enter control-C control-P to cut
the page at this point. There's a slight pause while the new, shorter
contents of page 1 is saved to disk. BEX announces Enter control-L control-A again, and you go to the
first subtitle again. Enter control-L control-A once more, and you receive
a high error beep because there are no further centered sub-titles in this
page. Move to the beginning of the next page (page 3) with control-P 3
<space> Enter control-L control-A and you advance to the next
sub-title, Training. Enter control-Z control-P to zoom back
to the previous paragraph ( $p ) indicator. Enter control-C
control-P to cut the page again. Wait as the new page 3 is saved to disk;
when BEX announces Enter control-L control-A twice to locate the next
sub-title, Expertise Needed for Prescribing Aids. You get the
high error beep, because it's not on page 4. Enter control-P 5
<space> to get to page 5. Rearranging the pages Since you have put each of the three main points
(delineated by subheadings) onto separate pages, you can use options M -
Merge pages and R - Rearrange pages to manipulate them. Here's how:
As you created the new pages, BEX automatically
renumbered them, and added the extension letters shown in the third
column. The new page 1 contains just the introduction; pages 2 and 3
contain the Aids Can Play Three Roles discussion; page 4
contains Training; page 5 contains Expertise
Needed; and the summary spans pages 6 and 7. Merge pages into topics To make the task of rearranging easier, use option M -
Merge pages to make each topic one BEX page. Merge pages lets you merge
two pages together--the opposite of control-C control-P in the Editor:
When you merge pages, the new page uses the extension
letter of the old first page. Page 2 is still E, while
B (old page 3) has disappeared. Use Merge pages again to
merge the last 2 pages. The first time you did file list, they were pages
6 and 7, but since you've merged two pages, they are now pages 5 and 6.
Their extension letters are the same however: still G and
D. Enter page 5 as the first page and page 6 as the second
page. Use option F - File list again with this result:
The last step: rearrange the pages At this point, each page of chapter WC contains one
topic: the Introduction is page 1; Three Roles
is page 2; Training is page 3; Expertise is page
4; and the Summary is page 5. You want to The disk drive whirs as BEX saves these changes. When
you use option F - File list again, here's the result:
Incorporate this text into another chapter Harking back to our original purpose, you want to
include this text in a letter to your friend. You don't want to bother
with the introduction, just the last four pages. This is where option G -
Grab pages from another chapter comes in handy. But first, you must use
option C - Change current chapter. The Page Menu always works with one
chapter as the current chapter, and at this point, it's
chapter WC. You want to clear the current chapter because you want to grab
into a new chapter not yet on disk:
After you have cleared the current chapter, you are
free to use option G - Grab pages from another chapter:
Now you can jump back to the Main Menu and write your
letter by editing the FRIEND chapter. When you first start out using computers, it's
common to feel that the computer is smarter than you. We want to help
dispel that feeling. It's very hard to break a computer unless you
physically damage it--sit on top of it, pour coffee on the keys, or plug
in a card when the power is on. Just about anything other mistake you make
you can recover from. When you do something that BEX isn't expecting, it
tells you with an error message. We've tried to make the BEX
error messages self-explanatory, so you know exactly what went wrong and
how to fix it. But it's also possible for you to do something
that Apple's DOS 3.3 isn't expecting, and the Apple's error
messages can be a little frightening. In this Section, we try to pull
together answers for the basic problems you could encounter as you use
BEX. User Level Section 13 discusses some less likely problems. If you
can't solve the problem by reading this manual, please give us a call at
608-257-8833. We want to help you make the most of BEX. Part 1: Cancelling Gracefully There are several ways to cancel a BEX activity. Which
method you use depends on what you're doing. ● Cancel an Option During the Prompts When BEX needs more data to continue, then you cancel
the option by entering <CR> alone. For example, when BEX prompts
Some options supply defaults, so when you press
<CR>, BEX has enough information to continue. As a safety feature,
all options that delete text supply a N default; pressing
<CR> When the unwanted option moves you to another menu,
press the letter that returns to the previous menu. For example, if you
press Z at the Main Menu by mistake, just press J to return from the Page
Menu. ● The Escape Key <ESC> allows you to cancel three BEX options in
progress. When you are using option R - Replace characters or option G -
Grade 2 translator, you are generally creating target chapter
copies of your original chapters. When you press <ESC> before BEX
announces that's the chapters) done, BEX does not finish writing
the target chapters. The partially-finished chapters take up room on the
disk, but they do not appear in a BEX disk catalog. Part 7 explains how
you can delete these partial chapters from disk. When you press <ESC> during printing, your
printer may not stop immediately. Many printers and printer interface
cards have a buffer that stores text waiting to be printed.
Buffers are usually very handy; BEX can send the text to be printed to the
buffer, and then BEX is free to do other tasks. But when you want to
cancel a printout, you have to know how to clear the text in the printer
or interface card buffer--check out their manuals. Can't cancel disk activities Many BEX activities consist mainly of reading and
writing to disk. Because BEX chapters are stored as several files, your
chapters won't be complete if you cancel this sort of option in the
middle. When you press D for a Disk catalog, they won't appear in the list
of chapters located. In fact, this sometimes happens if your disk gets
full in the middle of writing a chapter--Part 7 explains how you handle
this situation. Most of the time, when something goes wrong, BEX can
recognize the problem. For example, when you place an uninitialized disk
in the drive, BEX can't save data on it. When you have an uninitialized
disk and you try to move between pages in the Editor, BEX realizes that it
can't save the current page, so it tells you what to do next. (Details in
Part 5). When BEX can't cope gracefully, it crashes. While
crash is a dramatic word, it's not something to be
afraid of. In computer jargon, crash just means that the program stops.
There are some times you intentionally crash BEX by pressing
Control-Reset; we discuss this further in Part 4. ● Symptoms of a Crash Other times, BEX crashes by itself. Here's how
you recognize a crash: Whatever BEX was doing stops. You hear a high beep,
and then you hear an Apple error message, a short phrase like
Whenever you are at the BASIC prompt, you return to
BEX by depressing the Caps Lock key, then typing Even though the Apple says break, your
BEX disk is not broken! When BEX crashes, the Apple is
running a program. Whenever a program stops unexpectedly, the Apple says
While the This error message mean that there is not enough room
left on the disk to save a file. Get a different,
initialized disk that has some room and try again. You can
find out how much room is available on disk by pressing # at any BEX menu.
When you crash with I/O ERROR I/O is the abbreviation for
input/output. (A more detailed discussion of I/O is
presented in User Level Section 2.) This error message means that BEX is
having trouble writing to disk, which can be caused by a variety of
problems, some trivial and some serious. The following problems are easy
to fix: When you try these solutions and you still get an
I/O error, there's something seriously wrong with your disk. You may
be able to salvage the chapters on the disk by using option C - Copy disks
on the Starting Menu. With audio tapes, a copy usually degrades the quality.
But a disk copy can actually improve your data. When you get an FILE NOT FOUND As we discussed in Section 12, Part 3, each BEX
chapter is composed of page files and a directory file. BEX makes sure
that the directory file describes the correct order for the page files.
Usually, you never worry about these issues. But when you start having
problems with your data, it becomes important to understand what's
going on. When you get a Part 3: When BEX Hangs Hanging is another piece of computer
jargon that sounds more serious than it really is. When a program
hangs it doesn't do anything. You don't hear any beeps or
error messages--the computer is unresponsive. When you're in the Editor and BEX seems to hang, press
<CR>. Chances are you typed control-E for an Echo command. Once you
type control-E, TEXTALKER grabs control of the keyboard, waiting for you
to finish the Echo command. When you press <CR>, TEXTALKER
relinquishes control of the keyboard to BEX. When BEX hangs during Replace characters, then
there's something wrong with the transformation chapter you specified
from disk. When you read User Level Section 8, you find out how to
diagnose and solve this problem. When you tell BEX to print, but the printer is not
ready to receive text, then BEX hangs. Your printer has an
on-line or select button that switches its
attention between the printer control buttons and the computer. When you
press the button that makes it ready to print, BEX starts printing. Many printers require special software, called
drivers. BEX large print on dot-matrix printers and the
Cranmer Brailler are two 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. Part 4: When You Make BEX Crash There are times when you choose to induce a program
crash to stop BEX. While you can press <ESC> to stop printing,
replacing, or translating, you can crash BEX in almost every situation. To crash BEX, you press Control-Reset. Whatever BEX
was doing stops, and you hear a high beep. You temporarily lose Echo and
large print output. The screen clears, and the BASIC prompt appears at the
top. You have to issue some DOS instructions, so you must depress your
Caps Lock. To get back to BEX, enter four keystrokes: If you want to issue DOS commands without losing the
Echo or large print, don't crash. Use option Q - Quit on the Starting or
Main Menus. ● Good Times to Crash You can intentionally crash BEX whenever you don't
want to do something except when you are writing to disk. For
example, you tell BEX to edit a chapter, and BEX tells you Exit the Editor without saving the page As you use the Editor, you are always working in the
page buffer. When you edit an existing chapter, you copy the data from the
page file on disk to the page buffer. When you enter control-Q or
control-P 0 <space> or move to a different page, all changes you
make are saved back to the page file on disk. When you don't want to save the changes you made,
crash out of the Editor by pressing Control-Reset. Because you leave the
Editor without saving the current page, the original material on disk is
unchanged. Crashing can recover material deleted in error After you issue a delete command, the text you delete
no longer appears on the screen. However, the characters may still be in
the page buffer. The delete command does not actually place blank
characters in the page buffer; it simply changes the pointers BEX uses to
know where the real text is. An example: you have a 3000 character page,
move the cursor to position 2000, then enter control-D control-A. BEX's
pointers say real text is between 0 and 2000, but the characters from 2001
to 3000 have not been erased until you save that page. When you crash at
this point, you can recover using Typing Control-Reset Depress the control key, then press and release the
Reset key. Just to make things interesting, the Reset key is located in a
different place for each model Apple, as follows: Part 5: Recovering the Page Buffer with RUN 999 Because each BEX chapter is divided into pages, and
you always work one page at a time, the worst thing that can happen if
your power suddenly dies is you lose the text in one page. As you move
between pages in the Editor, BEX always writes the current page to disk.
If BEX can't write a page to disk for any reason, it performs a rescue
routine called Every time you or BEX uses ● Using RUN 999 by choice In addition to BEX automatically using From this point on, follow the 12 steps outlined
previously. Part 6: Recovering Missing Text with Fix
chapters Some mistakes are impossible to correct; others you
can recover from. Once you understand the basic BEX chapter structure of
directory and page files, you have insight into how to cope with problem
chapters. We don't want to alarm you about the safety of your
data. When you follow our suggestions for disk management, you probably
won't ever run into trouble. However, we provide this information for the
unfortunate few who encounter problems. When the page and directory files for a BEX chapter
don't match, you can have problems. To identify a chapter on disk, BEX
must be able to find a directory file. To access all the pages in a
chapter, all the page files must be referenced in the directory file. You
can encounter three types of problems: Option F - Fix chapters on the Second Menu
reconstructs the chapter directory file. When you are encountering any of
the When you use Fix chapters, you must have some free
space on your "problem" disk. First, use option C - Copy chapters to copy
all the good chapters from the problem disk to another disk. Then use
option K - Kill chapters to delete the good chapters from the problem
disk. Catalog the problem disk: you probably won't see any chapters
located, so press <space> when prompted. Make a note of the chapter
name as it appears in the DOS catalog. When you get the Second Menu prompt, press F for Fix
chapters. As BEX reminds you, you must type the exact chapter name. Once
you do, BEX goes about reconstructing the directory file. When it's
finished, BEX announces how many pages it has found for the fixed chapter.
Some of these pages may contain zero characters; this is normal. (We
explore exactly why this happens in User Level Section 13.) Once the
chapter is fixed, you should edit it and check to make sure that your page
files are in order. As we explained in Section 11, BEX starts out
lettering page files alphabetically. When you cut pages in the Editor or
move pages with the Page Menu, the page numbers can change, but the letter
extensions stay the same. When you cut pages in the Editor, BEX uses the
next available letter of the alphabet for the new page you create. When you first create a three-page chapter, page 1 has
an ● Name Change Follies Before you use option N - Name change for chapters,
you should always catalog the disk. You never want to change a chapter to
a name that's already used on that disk. If you change the name of a
chapter to a name that's already taken, your chapter seems to have
had a nervous breakdown. (The official term for this in computerese is
data salad.) It's possible to recover your data using
Fix chapters. Here's an example of what you shouldn't do: you
have a three-page chapter named If you find yourself in this situation, here's
how you recover. Copy the confused chapter, in this case HOMEWORK, to a
completely different name, like Part 7: Problems with Copying Disks In Section 2, Parts 5, 6, and 7, we lectured you about
using high-quality disks. We won't repeat that lecture here, but what we
said there is still true. Don't be surprised if you have trouble
initializing or copying on to a disk that you've notched. Don't
Many people are startled at the noise the Apple makes
the first time they copy or initialize a disk. This gronking
sound seems to be a symptom of total disaster, but it really is normal. If you encounter problems making a working backup of
your BEX Master disk, don't panic. Do save all the disks you
have created. Call our Technical Support hotline at 608-257-8833 for
advice on what to do next. ● Take advantage of DiversiCOPY Your BEX binder contains a When BEX refuses to initialize or copy any disk, this
can be a symptom of disk drive trouble. We use our disk drives all day
long here at RDC, so we take them in for preventive maintenance every six
months. Disk drives are the trickiest mechanism in your computer system,
and the part of your computer system that's most prone to wear and
tear. When BEX balks at all disk initializing and copying, and you're sure
that you have high-quality disks, try using DiversiCOPY. While DiversiCOPY
copies, it displays the speed of your disk drives; if your drives are too
fast or too slow, DiversiCOPY tells you. Take your entire computer
system in for repair when you have disk drive problems, as the
source of the trouble can be a combination of problems with the drive
itself and the disk controller card in the Apple. Every program has limits. Some BEX operations are
irreversible. The following are also discussed in detail in their
appropriate Sections. We compile them here to warn you! One Disk Drive Throughout the Exploratory
Trip, we provide details on how you use BEX with one disk drive. In the
rest of the Manual, however, we assume you have two disk drives. Further
details on BEX with a one-drive system are supplied in Appendix 3.
Starting Menu
Enter Option:
You have arrived at the Starting Menu
prompt. Whenever a computer asks you for information,
it's called a prompt. Some prompts are like English
questions, for example Do you want to continue? Other prompts
are much shorter. When BEX asks a yes or no
question, it prompts with just the first letter Y or N.
Which Drive? followed by
a number. This number is either 1 or 2. It shows
the disk drive where your data is usually read and written. This number is
an example of a default response. Many times BEX supplies you
with a possible choice. You can accept this value by pressing <CR>,
or you can change this default by typing a different number
and pressing <CR>. One Disk Drive When you press D, BEX prompts you
to swap disks with the Insert data disk prompt. Remove the
BEX program from your drive and replace it with the BEXtras disk.Press space for DOS catalog and pauses.
When you press any key except <space>, you return to
the menu prompt. When you press <space>, you see a list of every
file on the BEXtras disk. DOS displays 24 files at a time and pauses to
give you a chance to review the names. When there are more than 24 files,
you press <space> to see another group of 24 files. Once all the
files on disk are listed, BEX automatically brings you back to the
Starting Menu prompt. Caution! You should not press <space> at
the last screen of filenames. When you press <space> at the Starting
Menu, you move to the Main Menu. If you pressed <space> at the last
screen of filenames, then the Apple would hold on to that character and
pass it to BEX at the Starting Menu prompt. Because the Boot side of BEX
is still in drive 1, BEX would beep and complain that it can't find a
program it needs on disk. CATALOG <CR> at the BASIC prompt, and
that's why it's called a DOS catalog. An
introduction to the DOS commands is presented in User Level Section 13.
Warning Warning Warning! We want you to be
sure you want to erase all the information from the disk!
BEX then prompts Do you want to proceed? and supplies a
default yes response, the letter Y.N <CR> and you return to the menu prompt.
Copy disks and then
tells you how the copy function works. BEX assumes that your original disk
is in drive 1, and the duplicate disk you create is in drive 2. Once you
place the appropriate disks in these drives, you press <CR> to start
the copying process.
Starting Menu
Enter Option: C
Copy disks.
Copy entire contents of disk in drive 1
on to disk in drive 2.
Press RETURN to begin copy. <CR>
BEX starts out by initializing the disk in drive 2,
so you hear the same gronks as when you initialize. Then BEX reads some
data from drive 1 and writes it to drive 2. It takes around two minutes to
finish the copy; when it's complete BEX returns to the menu prompt. One Disk Drive BEX prompts you to alternate
between your original disk and the duplicate
disk you are creating. You must follow these prompts faithfully, or you
end up with a mess. Here's a hint: when you remove the original from
the drive, place it on the left side of your computer. When you remove the
duplicate, place it on the right side. It's easier to keep track of
which disk is which when you always reach left for the original and reach
right for the duplicate.
Y <CR> to start the copying process. Again, it requires
around two minutes to finish copying. For a one-drive system, BEX prompts
you to swap disks as needed.
Enter configuration: prompt,
type one of the six supplied configurations names, and you arrive at the
Starting Menu.
Main Menu
Enter Option:
and you've arrived at the Main Menu program.
QUANDARY on your BEXtras disk. We use this same chapter as a
sample throughout the Learner Level. To ensure that you have an original
version of this chapter, you make a copy of it first with option C - Copy
chapters on the Second Menu.MY
QUANDARY on the disk in drive 1. Here's how this dialogue
goes:
Enter Option: C
Copy chapters
Drive number or chapter name:
BEX allows you to specify chapters in two ways. You
can type in the complete chapter name, when you know it. Or, you can
scan a disk for chapters--we demonstrate this in the next
Part. You know the chapter name, so you proceed as follows:
Drive number or chapter name: QUANDARY <CR>
Target chapter name:
The target chapter is what BEX calls the
copy you are creating. Many BEX options allows you to create modified
copies of chapters, so you will become very familiar with the Target
chapter name: prompt.
Target chapter name: 1MY QUANDARY <CR>
After you provide BEX with the target chapter name,
it copies the text in the chapter from drive 2 to drive 1. When it's
finished, it announces Chapter QUANDARY done and returns to
the menu prompt. (Note that BEX uses the original, or source
chapter name to tell you when it's finished.)
Second Menu
Enter Option: C
Copy chapters
Insert data disk
Drive number or chapter name: QUANDARY <CR>
Target chapter name: MY QUANDARY <CR>
You don't have to precede the chapter name MY
QUANDARY with the digit 1, because BEX knows that you only have one disk
drive. All data is always read from and written to drive 1. The dialog
continues:
Copy to another disk? Y <CR>
Insert source disk
You then insert the BEXtras disk in your drive. When
ready, press any key. BEX continues:
Insert destination disk
Insert the initialized disk in the drive; when ready,
press any key.
Insert source disk
and so forth. It requires five disk swaps to copy the
QUANDARY chapter. BEX can't tell the difference between the source and
target disks. When BEX prompts to insert the source and destination disks,
you must faithfully insert the correct disk.
Main Menu
Enter Option: E
Editor
Drive number or chapter name: 2 <CR>
There are 1 chapters
1 MY QUANDARY
Chapter number:
When you enter a disk drive number followed by
<CR>, BEX reads the disk in that drive and presents a numbered list
of every chapter on the disk. In this case, there is only one chapter,
Chapter number: prompt, you return to the
Main Menu prompt. More details about scanning disks and selecting chapters
from numbered lists appear in Section 11. To start editing the MY QUANDARY
chapter, proceed like this:
Chapter number: 1 <CR>
There are 4 pages
Edit on page 1 <CR>Edit on page 1page 1 and you have arrived in the
Editor. At the upper left hand corner of the screen, there's the
little rectangular cursor. The character the cursor covers appears as a
dark shape within a light square.Page 4 and your cursor is at the
start of that text.
Enter configuration: prompt,
type one of the six supplied configurations names, and you arrive at the
Starting Menu. Remove the Boot side and insert the backup
Main side in drive 1, then press <space>.
Enter Option: P
Print
Drive number or chapter name: QUANDARY <CR>
Which printer:
For each configuration, BEX lets you define up to
four printers, assigning each one a number. Section 3 explains how you
define a printer when you establish a configuration. When BEX prompts
Which printer: you can always type ? <CR>
to see your choices. The supplied configurations all contain
two printers. Here's what you get:
Which printer: ? <CR>
1 - Printer in slot 1 (72 by 58)
2 - Printer in slot 3 (72 by 58)
S = Screen output
Add +V for voice output
Which printer:S <CR> at the
Which printer: prompt, BEX prints the chapter
silently to the screen. What size letters appear on the
screen depends on your configuration. For the supplied configurations S1,
S2, E1, and S+V <CR> at
the Which printer: prompt. Caution! If you press <ESC> twice, you
would stop the printing and return to the Main Menu. One <ESC> tells
the Echo to exit screen review; the next <ESC> tells BEX to cancel
printing. 1+V <CR> the Echo speaks each line as it's sent to
the inkprint printer. You hear a slight pause at the end of each line.
There's a longer pause for the blank line and five-space indent at
each paragraph. When you enter S+V <CR> the Echo speaks
each line as it's sent to the screen. Since the number of characters
that fit on the line is different for printer 1 and the screen, the pause
that signals the line's end appears at different places depending on
whether you add the Echo to the screen or printer 1.+V the text
is printed to the Echo alone. The Echo pauses slightly around every 120
characters to catch its breath. The Echo's pronunciation of
underlined text depends on the Echo's punctuation mode. The supplied
E1 and E2 configurations use Most punctuation, so you hear letter,
underline, letter, underline, letter, etc. You can change to Some
punctuation with the Echo command control-E S. Then underlined words are
spelled out letter for letter.
Drive number or chapter name: and
waits for you to type a name or scan the drive. Enter 2
<CR> and BEX presents a numbered list of all the chapters on
the BEXtras disk. Choose the QUANDARY chapter by entering its number and
pressing <CR>. BEX presents a list of the contents of each page
file. In Sections 11 and 12, we demonstrate other options on the Page
Menu. One Disk Drive Unlike the Second and Main Menus,
BEX can fit all the Page Menu programs into memory at once. As soon as you
arrive at the Page Menu, BEX prompts you to insert a data disk. Place your
BEXtras disk in the drive and press W for a Whole disk catalog. To obtain
a file list of the QUANDARY chapter, press F. When BEX prompts Drive
number or chapter name: enter 1 <CR> to scan the
disk for chapter names. 3 The Configuration Process
Enter
configuration: and beeps. (Section 2, Part 3 gives details on
this.) Then try out these two options.
Enter
configuration: is the first prompt you encounter. In Section 2, you
responded with the name of a supplied configuration. To establish up a new
configuration, you enter one of three punctuation marks that signal which
level you wish to configure at. For the Learner Level, the punctuation is
period, so enter . <CR> at the first prompt.Enter
configuration: prompt.. <CR> BEX asks you
a series of questions. The Caps Lock key must be depressed or the Apple
ignores your answers. You just type Y or N to respond to a
yes or no question. You must finish every
response by pressing <CR>. When you press <CR> alone to any of
the questions, BEX Enter configuration name:Enter configuration: prompt.Enter
configuration: prompt and you proceed directly to the Starting
Menu.. <CR> at
the Enter configuration: prompt.
Do you want the voice off now?Y <CR> then the
voice won't speak during the configuration process. If you're
a sighted person establishing a configuration for a blind person, you can
answer N <CR> to the first question and still configure
BEX with speech. However, you won't be able to hear some of the on-line
help voice samples.Do you want Echo (or Cricket or
SlotBuster) speech?N <CR> you jump to
the screen display questions. When you answer Y <CR>
BEX asks further questions. For the SlotBuster, BEX asks just one
question: Establish an automatic set-up sequence for your voice
device? Consult the SlotBuster manual for the commands you want to
send to the SlotBuster. After BEX asks this question, it temporarily
changes the SlotBuster's command character to control-Q. This allows
you to type in a set-up sequence with control-E. As soon as you press
<DEL> to end the set-up sequence, BEX changes the command character
back to control-E.Do you want fast speech? Press <CR> to get a sample of
fast and slow speech. The next prompt is Set the Echo
parameters? One of the reasons the Echo is useful is that it has
many parameters that you can change to personalize the voice. Your answers
to the next three questions establish the default values for the
Echo's pitch, punctuation mode, and volume. You can change these
values at all BEX menus and in the Editor if you want to. When you finish
setting the Echo parameters, you move to the next section.
40 column screen is the default. Do you need a
different screen display?Y
<CR> to this question. Then enter the number of columns you
wish to see. Unlike scrolling with the Apple's regular print--40 or
80 column--screen, you can control how fast letters appear with
Warning! The Large Print screen display,
especially 10- and 5-column, can generate a strobe-like effect when used
in conjunction with certain video display monitors, which may cause
seizures in person who are prone to them. Since the visually handicapped
population has a demonstrably higher incidence of neurological conditions
which may conceivably be adversely affected or aggravated by this strobe
effect, you may wish to carefully examine the manner in which the software
functions in conjunction with your particular monitor. Raised Dot
Computing, Inc. makes no representation and assumes no liability with the
above-mentioned condition. You may wish to consult a physician with regard
to your own particular situation. N
<CR> to accept the default response to the screen display
question. When you do, the next question is Do you want HI-RES
screen in the Editor? HI-RES screen displays 40 characters on a
line, and separates each line of text with open space to make it easier
for a person with no vision impairment to read the screen. HI-RES screen
display refreshes slightly more slowly, so if you are depending solely on
voice, answer this question with N <CR> By the way, you
don't have to use
Which printer: you
can enter ? <CR> to get a summary of the information
you provide here in your configuration.Enter printer slot:0 <CR> at this question.3 <CR> to this
question. (These printers use the 80-column card in your Apple; although
it is not actually plugged in to slot 3, the Apple thinks of the 80-column
card as being plugged in there. When you don't have an 80-column card, BEX
won't let you configure this way.)Enter printer class:3 <CR> to the previous Enter printer slot:
questions for a Review class printer. If you don't, BEX gives you another
chance to do it right.Enter printer (or brailler) code:Enter carriage width:Enter form length:Do you want pause after form feed?N <CR> If your printer uses single sheets of
paper instead of tractor feed paper, you do want pause on form feed, so
you answer Y <CR> to this question. When you tell BEX
to print to this printer number, BEX pauses after each page and waits for
you to insert a fresh piece of paper and press <space>.Do you want auto line feed?N <CR> because most
printers and printer interface cards take care of linefeed themselves.
When your printer prints all the text for a page on just one line, and the
only time you hear the paper advancing is at a new page, reconfigure. When
you answer Y <CR> BEX generates both a carriage return
and a linefeed command for each new line.
Enter number of disk drives1 <CR> BEX prompts you to
switch between program disk and data disk. Please consult Appendix 3 for
information on using a one-drive system.Enter a name for this configuration:Enter configuration: prompt when you first
boot BEX. If you can't remember the name, you can type ?
<CR> at BEX's first prompt, and BEX lists all the existing
configurations.
PRINTER SECTION
Printer ONE Description
Enter printer slot: 4 <CR>
Enter printer class: B <CR>
That means Personal Brailler.
Is that what you want? N <CR>
Enter Brailler code: 10 <CR>
That means T S I VersaPoint.
Is that what you want? Y <CR>
Enter carriage width: 41 <CR>
Enter form length: 225 <CR>
A typical value here is 25
Enter form length: 25 <CR>
Printer TWO Description
Enter printer slot: 1 <CR>
Enter printer class: L <CR>
Enter Large Print printer code: 1 <CR>
Enter font size: 14 <CR>
Enter line spacing: <CR>
Line spacing is measured from
baseline to baseline.
A typical value here is 21.
Enter line spacing: 18 <CR>
Enter extra spacing between characters: 0 <CR>
Enter carriage width: 53 <CR>
Enter form length: 37 <CR>
Do you want pause after form feed? N <CR>
Printer THREE Description
Enter printer slot: 1 <CR>
Enter printer class: G <CR>
Enter carriage width: 72 <CR>
Enter form length: 58 <CR>
Do you want pause after form feed? N <CR>
Do you want auto linefeed? N <CR>
Printer FOUR Description
Enter printer slot: 1 <CR>
Enter printer class: R <CR>
CANCELED
REQUIRES 80 COLUMN CARD, SPECIFY SLOT 3
Enter printer slot: 3 <CR>
Enter carriage width: 72 <CR>
Enter form length: 58 <CR>
REMOVE WRITE PROTECT TAB - Do not cover
the notch on the left side of the floppy disk. BEX must write the
configuration on your program disk.DISK FULL - You won't be able to save the
configuration until you delete some files. Boot with an existing
configuration and then use option K - Kill configurations on the Starting
Menu to make room to write a new configuration.NAME MUST START WITH A CAPITAL LETTER
- Make sure the Caps Lock key is down. A proper configuration name must
start with an uppercase letter.CONFIGURATION FILE IS LOCKED - Sometime in the
past you locked the configuration file. You are now trying to save a new
configuration under the same name. Try using a different configuration
name. Don't lock configuration files.BAD DISK, UNABLE TO WRITE - The drive door is
not closed, or the disk is not seated correctly in the drive, or something
is seriously wrong with your disk.BOOT DISK IS MISSING OR DAMAGED - The
configuration file has succesfully been saved, but now the Starting Menu
program cannot be loaded. You may have inserted the wrong disk, or you may
have a bad copy of the BEX disk. 4 The Editor
Main Menu
Enter Option: E <CR>
Editor
Drive number or chapter name:
Hint! You don't have to type a <CR> at the
end of every line in BEX. BEX automatically inserts <CR>s when
needed as it's printing.
"I<space>love<space>margarine!"
BEX considers this sentence to have three words.
Want to
start a new chapter? and then supplies a default Y
answer. Press <CR> to accept the default, and BEX pauses for a
moment to save the name to disk, then announces the first page. This means
you're in the Editor. In Section 2, Part 11 we described the cursor, which
marks your
fan then locate forward with control-A. When you hear the low
boop and the cursor position number, your cursor is on the letter
from. Press Tab, press the quote, then enter control-N. Now
enter control-G; your cursor moves to the space after the letter
It's a beautiful day and you want to add the words
bright and between a and
beautiful. Position your cursor at the <space>
boundary between a and beautiful, then press Tab
to begin inserting. Type <space>bright<space>and
then press control-N to exit the insert mode.
RUN 999 procedure
to recover your data. Details on RUN 999 are in Section 13.
Hint! You don't have to cancel a block marker
before you establish a new marker. Every time you press control-B S the
old marker is erased and the new marker is set.
marker followed by its current position.
RUN 999 <CR> and follow the prompts. See Section 13 for
details.
Z <space> zooms your cursor back to the start
of the page. Pressing a plain
Cannot write to disk.
Insert another data disk in drive 1 and press any key.Cannot write to disk error. Most are easy
to avoid. Check to see if you have a write-protect tab on your disk; if
so, remove it. Problems occur if the drive door is open, or if the disk is
seated incorrectly in its sleeve or in the drive. Even if the disk is in
the drive correctly, you can't write on it if it's full or if
it's not initialized. A disk can only contain 30 BEX chapters, so you
can get this message even if the disk has free sectors remaining.SAVE on drive 1. Merge this SAVE
chapter with your other text as soon as you clear room on your disk.RUN 999 <CR> at the BASIC prompt. More
details in Section 13.Quit the Editor message.RUN 999 routine described above. This may not work. The
absolute worst thing that can happen is that you lose the current page.
5 Printing Chapters
Warning! Do not use the platen knobs to roll out
your paper. If you do, your next printed page may end up being only half a
sheet long.
Caution! Experienced transcribers who are
familiar with the numbering of braille cells will recognize that BEX's
position zero is equal to braille cell number one.
V GRID chapter, the RP GRID chapter, the
LP GRID chapter, and the LONG GRID chapter can
assist you to establish the appropriate margins, carriage width and form
length for your particular printer. V GRID is a vertical grid chapter that
can be printed on any inkprint printer. With this chapter, you determine
the appropriate top margin, top-of-form, and form length for your printer.
RP GRID is a horizontal grid chapter, designed for regular print printers.
LP GRID is also a horizontal grid chapter, designed for large print
printers. LONG GRID is a horizontal grid chapter designed for condensed
printing on printers that can print more than 100 characters on a line.
Using these three chapters, you determine your left margin and carriage
width for your printer.
Do you want auto linefeed? question. When you print
the test grids, it will be obvious if your printer needs a Y response. You
need to answer Y to the auto linefeed question when you don't hear the
paper advance after each line is printed, and you end up with one black
line at the top of each page.
Hint! When you configure a large print printer,
BEX does some calculations for you. BEX uses a combination of point size
(the size of the letters) and extra spacing to calculate carriage width;
the answer for linespacing affects the calculation of form length. to get
these values while configuring, press <CR> at the prompt. See
Section 3, Part 7 for examples of this process.
Main Menu
Enter Option: P
Print Chapters
Drive number or chapter name: 2 <CR>
There are 2 chapters:
1 BLACK
2 WHITE
Use entire list? N <CR>
Select chapters by number
Chapter number: 1 <CR>
BLACK
Chapter number: <CR>
Which printer: ? <CR>
1 - Brailler in slot 4 (41 by 25)
2 - Printer in slot 1 (53 by 37)
3 - Printer in slot 1 (72 by 58)
S - Screen output
Add +V for Echo output
Which printer:1 <CR> or 2
<CR> gives you a numbered list of chapters:
Drive number or chapter name: 2 <CR>
There are 2 chapters:
1 BLACK
2 WHITE
Use entire list? N
When you don't want to print all the chapters listed,
or when you wish to use a different order, accept the default N answer at
Use entire list? N prompt by pressing <CR>.Chapter number: prompt, and BEX announces the cancellation:
Select chapters by number
Chapter number: 1 <CR>
BLACK
Chapter number: - <CR>
BLACK Canceled
Chapter number:Chapter number prompt.
BEX then asks Which printer: Typing a question mark at the
Which printer: prompt gives you a list of printers in your
configuration:
Which printer: ? <CR>
1 - Brailler in slot 4 (41 by 25)
2 - Printer in slot 1 (53 by 37)
3 - Printer in slot 1 (72 by 58)
S - Screen output
Add +V for Echo output
Which printer:
At this point you enter the number or letter of the
printer you wish to use. Hint! Do not type the slot number when prompted
for the number of the printer. You only respond with the slot number when
you are configuring. "Printer number" does not refer to the number of the
slot the printer is plugged into. Printer number refers to the order in
which you configured your printers; this is the number you respond with.
In the example above, you would respond with 3 for regular inkprint
printer. If you want the Review class printer in slot 3, you would type
the number 4. +V to the number or letter of the printer. The Echo speaks as
the text is sent to the printer, and the Echo speaks fairly slowly.
Printing to the screen plus your voice device by entering S+V
<CR> at the Which printer: prompt is one way to
proofread your text before you commit it to paper.+V <CR> at the Which printer: prompt.
R
<CR> at the Enter printer class prompt in your
configuration to configure a Review class printer. This printer class is
designed to work in conjunction with the Echo's line review feature.
? <CR> at the
Which printer: prompt, this printer appears as Printer
in slot 3 You don't add +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.
SlotBuster SlotBuster's SCAT software also
has line review. It uses the same strategy, but has different commands.
See Appendix 2 for further help. A,G after entering line review. When the Echo
finishes reading the lines, the audio cursor is placed on the line
following the last line read.
Do you want pause on form
feed? question.Which printer: prompt, I
specified a printer by number, pressed <CR> and nothing happened.RUN
<CR> Try printing again: when BEX prompts Which
printer: enter ? <CR> You'll get a list of the
printers you specified in your configuration. Remember that it is the
printer number you enter, and not the slot number, when you specify
printers.Which printer: prompt, BEX briefly reads the disk in drive 1
and then hangs. 6 Formatting Inkprint Documents
Caution! Format indicators must be typed
precisely as discussed here. Case is important for format indicators:
( $p ) signals a new paragraph. $P just prints
dollar sign uppercase P in your text. Always enter the format
indicators with four keystrokes; the initial and final spaces are integral
parts of the ( $p ) and ( $l ) indicators.
or you can type spaces between them:
$$p-1 $$s2 $$l2 $$i5 $p
Both have the same effect. However, for isolated
format commands, we advise you to put spaces before and after them. We
find that adding the spaces makes the commands easier to work with,
because each command becomes a BEX "word." Following each $$ command with
a space ensures that the Grade 2 translator correctly translates the word
following a format command.
to get: CBC emphasis indicators show underlining in
following sample
$$c Heading
The next line begins here. Caution! $$h does not initiate placement of
braille italics signs. Use the underline commands (explained below)
instead.
$$ve end of the line. Centering starts here
Place a ( $p ) before the $$c to solve this
problem:
the end of the line.
$l Year to date earnings: $$ 5,000.00
The first four words occupy positions 0 to 21. There
isn't a tab stop for BEX to place the $5,000.00 at, so
there's one space between the colon and the dollar sign:
Year to date earnings: $5,000.00
LETTERHEAD
and JOAN on your BEXtras disk. Together, they form a sample
letter that shows how to put some of these format commands to work. The
format commands and text in the LETTERHEAD chapter can be used over and
over again. Because the boundary between two BEX pages need not define any
boundary in your output, you can make one letter out of two chapters.
Insert your BEXtras disk in your data drive, and use the Editor to examine
these chapters.
Chapter number: for the third time, press <CR> alone.
When BEX prompts Which printer: enter S+V
<CR> and the text of these chapters is printed to both the
screen and the Echo.+V Large Print Screen: When you request 20-column or
larger screen display and print LETTERHEAD and JOAN to the screen, you run
into a problem with the default margins set for the screen mode and the
tab stops set in these chapters. Because the tabs are set to stops greater
than the screen SL margins, BEX has trouble coping. After BEX is finished
printing the two chapters, it pulls in random text from memory to print to
the screen. The result is much more text printed to the screen than are in
the LETTERHEAD and JOAN chapters. This does not harm your data or your BEX
disk. After you see the sentence Give all my love to the kids and
dog simply press <ESC> to cancel printing.
Which printer: enter the printer number for your
Review class printer. Enter ? <CR> when you are not
sure of the printer number. Remember that any Review class printer must be
configured in slot 3. Enter the printer number, and not the slot number to
get the printer to work correctly.
7 Translating from Print to Braille
Hint! The relationship between inkprint
characters and braille cells is standardized. The nitty-gritty details are
discussed in Appendix 1. We use the term screen braille to
describe viewing grade 2 braille through an inkprint medium, such as a
computer screen. Accept it on faith for now that the crazy-looking screen
braille that you encounter when you edit a braille chapter indeed make
wonderful braille when you send the text to a braille device.
Large Print Screen: The software that BEX uses in
braille translation occupies the same memory space as the software that
draws the large letters on the screen. When you use the Grade 2
translator, you temporarily lose large print screen display. This is
normal. As soon as the translation is finished, the letters on the screen
return to the size you defined in your configuration. QUANDARY chapter
from your BEXtras disk in drive 2 to a to a different data disk in drive
1. You need to have an initialized data disk. Start out with the BEX
program in drive 1 and the BEXtras disk in drive 2.
Enter Option: G
Grade 2 translator
Drive number or chapter name:
At this point, BEX has loaded the Grade 2 translator
software into the Apple's memory. You are now free to remove your BEX
disk from the program drive. Insert the data disk in drive 1. Now you
provide BEX with the name of the inkprint source chapter:
Drive number or chapter name: QUANDARY <CR>
Target chapter name:
Following the suggestion above, we name the grade 2
braille version by adding the digit 2 to the inkprint chapter
name. The BEXtras disk is quite full, so there wouldn't be room to write
the translated chapter on the BEXtras disk. Tell BEX to write the
translated chapter on drive 1 by preceding the target chapter name with
the digit 1.
Target chapter name: 1QUANDARY2 <CR>
Starting to translate.
That's all there is to it! Now you sit back and
wait. How long translation takes depends on how many characters are in
each page and the total number of pages in the chapter. BEX reads each
page of the print original into the page buffer, performs a large number
of computerized tricks on it, and then writes the translated text into the
corresponding page of the target QUANDARY2 chapter. The QUANDARY chapter
takes a little under three minutes to translate from print to grade 2
braille--around 70 characters per second. When BEX is finished
translating, it announces Chapter QUANDARY done and presents
the Main Menu prompt.
$$p-1 $$c Computer Literacy
There's one space between the centering command
and the first word, so it's correctly translated to:
$$p-1 $$c ,-put] ,lit]acy
As promised, screen braille (looking at
grade 2 text through a print medium) can be a little strange at first. The
comma at the beginning of both words is a cap sign, showing
that the initial C and L are uppercase. The
hyphen stands for the three letters com, and the right
bracket stands for the two letters er.
$$p-1 $$c Computer Literacy
the translator leaves the entire first word
untranslated. The inaccurate result is:
$$p-1 $$c Computer ,lit]acy
The moral is, make sure you put spaces after your BEX
$$ format commands.Drive number or chapter name: prompt, you
can ask BEX to scan the disk. You enter a drive number followed by
<CR>, and BEX presents a numbered list of chapters. BEX then prompts
Use entire list? N and gives you the opportunity to translate
every chapter on disk.Y
<CR> to change the default answer from no to
yes. When you only want to translate some of the chapters on the list,
press <CR> to accept the N default. BEX then prompts you to choose
chapters by entering their numbers.
8 Embossing Braille Documents
Main Menu
Enter Option: P
Print chapters
Drive number or chapter name: 2 <CR>
There are 1 chapters:
1 QUANDARY2
Use entire list? N Y <CR>
This sample demonstrates how you tell BEX to scan a
disk by entering the drive number at the Drive number or chapter
name: prompt. BEX presents a numbered list of chapters and allows
you to select chapters by entering their numbers instead of their names.
We're assuming that the QUANDARY2 chapter is the only chapter on the disk
in drive 2; the numbered list has only one chapter.Use entire
list? N - prompt. BEX then prompts you to enter chapter numbers.
You select the QUANDARY2 chapter by typing its number followed by
<CR>. BEX responds by parroting the name of the chapter you
selected, then prompts again for a chapter number. Entering <CR>
alone at this prompt signals BEX that you are finished choosing chapters.
Which printer:
BEX wants you to supply a printer destination. When
you are embossing braille, you must supply the printer number that
corresponds to your embosser. Enter ? <CR> to get a
list of choices. Which printer number is the right choice depends on the
configuration you have established. Here's what appears for the
sample configuration shown in Section 3:
Which printer: ? <CR>
1 - Brailler in slot 4 (41 by 25)
2 - Printer in slot 1 (53 by 37)
3 - Printer in slot 1 (72 by 58)
4 - Printer in slot 3 (72 by 58)
S - Screen output - Add +V for Echo output Caution! As mentioned earlier, some embossers
require that BEX tailor output in a particular way. This special handling
is called a "printer driver" in computer jargon. One common embosser, the
Cranmer Brailler, requires a printer driver. When you print chapters to
the Cranmer, BEX needs to load the printer driver from the program disk.
If you don't have your BEX disk in drive 1, then BEX briefly reads the
disk in drive 1, then "hangs." Press control-Reset, then type RUN
<CR> to get back to the Main Menu. Insert your BEX Main side
in drive 1 and try printing again. 9 Controlling Braille Format
QUANDARY2 to a device configured as a brailler, the formatter
does not execute the underlining for any $$ub or $$h commands.
Yesterday he purchasedThe Cat in the Hat
for his daughter, and she $$ub loved it. $$uf
When the chapter is translated, the result in screen
braille looks like:
,ye/]"d he pur*ased $$ub ..,! ,cat 9 ! .,hat = 8
dau<t]1 & %e $$ub .lov$ .x4 $$uf.lov$ is the grade 2
contraction for the letters ed. The single letter
x is the grade 2 contraction for the word it and
the final digit 4 is the grade 2 period. Hint! When transcribers talk about
braille format, they use the terms indent and runover. BEX's default
values for braille are: a transcriber would call this "indent to cell
three, runover to cell one." Keep in mind that the numbers for braille
cells are one higher than BEX's position numbers. That's because BEX
calls the first character on the line position zero, while
transcribers refer to the same spot as cell one.
QUANDARY chapter
to show how you translate inkprint to grade 2 braille. The QUANDARY
chapter doesn't contain any $$l#, $$s#, or $$i# commands, so BEX uses the
appropriate default values for braille line spacing, paragraph spacing,
and paragraph indent. There are two places where minor changes can improve
the format of the braille version. You can make these format command
changes in the inkprint version, before it's translated, or in the
final grade 2 version. If you want to make changes in the inkprint
version, you should make a copy of the QUANDARY chapter first--we use the
original version in several other samples.
$l $$d $$np <CR> $$h
The <CR> makes line one on the page blank,
which sets off the title in print. For braille, the blank line here is
inappropriate; delete it.<space>$p<space>-- to specify the start of the
outdented paragraph, then press control-A to move your cursor ahead to the
first of these paragraphs. Press control-I to start inserting. Type to
establish a 2-character outdent. Press control-N to finish the insert. 10 Making the Most of the Echo
TEXTALKER software. TEXTALKER is on the BEX Boot
disk and the Echo/Cricket Training Set. This combination of hardware and
software integrates the Echo into the Apple's operations. Apple II Plus: Your computer uses a different
version of TEXTALKER, numbered 1.3. This version lacks many of the
features described here. More details appear in Appendix 4.
Enter configuration: prompt. At this point,
you enter a configuration name. When your configuration includes Echo
voice, then the Echo continues to speak throughout the program. When your
configuration does not include Echo voice, the Echo is silent. However,
you can get BEX to speak even when you don't have Echo speech in your
configuration.
Automatic procedure
chapter:1VOICE ON <CR>1VOICE OFF
<CR>
+V to the printer destination
number or letter. The Review class printer is designed to work in
combination with the Echo's line review mode, which we discuss
further in Part 7 of this Section. Examples of using the Review class
printer appear in Section 2, Part 11 and Section 5, Part 5.
Apple II Plus: Your commands are different; see
Appendix 4. $ character to dollar because you
use many dollar signs for formatting your text.# $ % & = @ +> < / ]+V or
when you issue a talking Editor command; the repeat filter does not work
in line review. The repeat filter only filters punctuation and control
characters. When a line contains 80 8s or Ms,
you hear every one. The repeat filter command is:
Which printer: you enter
? <CR> for the list of printer numbers. Printer number
2 is the one you want; as soon as you hear that information, you can enter
2 <CR> and BEX starts printing. As soon as you press 2
that keystroke shuts up the Echo.
A,G then the Echo reads the first through seventh line
on the screen. After you have selected the first line to read, then
comma, letter selects the current line through the letter you
enter.
Do you want Echo
speech? question; or Use the automatic procedure chapter
VOICE ON described in Part 3.PR#0<CR>PR#0
<CR> a sighted person wanders by and asks why characters are
not displayed on the Apple screen.RUN <CR> Your Echo will probably
make some strange noises at this point--don't worry! Use the Editor to
edit any chapter. As soon as you enter the page, leave it
with control-Q. Now control-X and control-L are properly re-enabled by
BEX.
11 The Second, Page, and Starting Menus
Drive number or chapter name: When you
receive this prompt, BEX has loaded any program it needs from disk into
the Apple's memory. When you have a 2-drive system, you can now
insert a data disk in drive 1, if you wish.Drive number or chapter
name: prompt, you have two choices. When you know the name of the
chapter, just type it in and press <CR>. When you want to work with
more than one chapter, or when you're not sure of the chapter's name,
enter the drive number (1 or 2) where your data disk is located, followed
by <CR>. BEX presents a numbered list of the chapters on that disk.
We call this method of specifying chapters scanning the disk.
Y <CR> when you do
want the whole list of chapters in the order presented. Otherwise, accept
the default by pressing <CR>.Chapter number: prompt.
Target chapter naming method: For an online summary of target
chapter naming methods, press ? <CR> at the prompt.
Target chapter naming methods are explained in Part 3.Which printer: prompt. When you aren't sure of
the printer number, you can press ? <CR> at this prompt
for a list of printers you have in your configuration. A sample of this
dialogue appears in Section 5. For option D - Disk catalog, the next
questions is Which drive? Again, you can press ?
<CR> after this prompt for further help. With option K - Kill
chapters, the next question is OK to Proceed? N
Target chapter name: You must type in a new
name for the chapter that is created. If you use the name of a chapter
that's already on the disk, then the text in the new target chapter
overwrites the existing chapter, and you lose whatever text you had in the
existing chapter. Caution! When you use an option that creates a
target chapter, you must consider if there's enough room on your disk
for it. # to get the number of sectors free on the disk. If there
isn't enough room when BEX is creating a new chapter, BEX crashes with a
DISK FULL error. This is much less serious than it sounds.
Full details on how to recover are in Section 13.
? <CR> to receive a summary of your
options. In the following list, the letters X,
Y, and Z, stand for any characters of your
choosing.LETTERHEAD and JOAN chapters on the BEXtras disk
onto your data disk, so that you can experiment with format commands with
those chapters. You go to the Second Menu and proceed like this:
Second Menu
Enter Option: C
Copy chapters
Drive number or chapter name: 2 <CR>
BEX presents you with a numbered list of the
chapters, then asks:
Use entire list? N <CR>
Select chapters by number
Chapter number:
Enter the number of the LETTERHEAD chapter. BEX
confirms your choice by repeating the name of the chapter. Then BEX
prompts again:
Chapter number:
Enter the number for the JOAN chapter. Again, BEX
confirms your choice, and asks for a chapter number. Press <CR> when
you are finished specifying chapters:
(enter question mark for choices)
Target chapter naming method: ? <CR>
Naming methods are:
S = Same name as source chapters
I = Individually name target chapters
AX = Add letter X to make target names
LX = Last character changes to X
Precede naming method letters with 1 for drive 1
(enter question mark for choices)
Target chapter naming method:
You want to make the target chapter names slightly
different so you know which are the unaltered chapters and which are your
experimentation chapters. You use the A target chapter naming method, with
the letter B added to the end of the chapter names. You have
your BEXtras disk in drive 2, so you put your data disk into drive 1, and
add the digit 1 to the beginning of the target chapter naming
method, to write the chapters onto that drive:
(enter question mark for choices)
Target chapter naming method: 1AB <CR>
The disk drives whir as the copies are being made.
BEX tells you when the copies are finished:
Chapter LETTERHEAD done
Chapter JOAN done
CONTRACT and you use option G -
Grade 2 translator to translate it into braille. You use the A2 target
chapter naming method to make CONTRACT2 the target chapter.
If CONTRACT2 is already on the disk, the new data replaces the old. While
this feature saves a lot of time killing chapters, it's your
responsibility to use option D - Disk catalog periodically so you know
what chapter names are already used on a disk.
OK to proceed? N
prompt. You must enter Y <CR> to start the deletion.
Any other response cancels the option and returns you to the Second Menu
prompt.
Drive number or chapter name: to
specify which chapter you want to concentrate on. The Page Menu
"remembers" this chapter until you use option C - Change current chapter
or leave the Page Menu.Grab into
Drive number or chapter name: When you type a name that's not
on the disk, you can create a new chapter. Next you're asked for the name
of the chapter you're copying pages from. You can enter the drive number
for a numbered list of chapters, or type in the chapter name directly. BEX
gives you the number of pages in that chapter, then prompts for the range
of pages you wish to grab. When you only want to grab one page, you
specify a range of one. The grabbed pages are placed at the end of the
current chapter. The source chapter is not altered by the
grab. A detailed example appears in Section 12, Part 3.OK to Proceed?
N. You must enter Y <CR> for the deletion to
occur.Move a range of pages?
N is the first prompt. When you accept the N default by pressing
<CR>, you rearrange the pages by specifying the old page numbers in
the new order desired. This is appropriate for relatively short chapters.
When you change the default to You, you get to specify a range of pages
and then indicate where that range goes. Rearranging by range is faster
when the chapter has more than eight pages.
12 Manipulating Data One Disk Drive: While BEX has many features that
let you reformat information, they are pretty clumsy to use with just one
drive. The following discussion assumes you have two drives. You can still
do these things with one drive, but all the manipulations have to fit on
one disk. Only option C - Copy chapters on the Second Menu allows you to
swap between two data disks with a one-drive system.
Drive number or chapter
name: BEX simply prompts Textfile: Enter the drive
number followed by <CR>.
There are 0 textfiles
Textfile:
You can insert another disk and enter the drive
number here, or press <CR> to get back to the Second Menu prompt.
MENU and LESSONS that contain
what their names imply. Press <space>, and you are presented with a
very full disk. There are three type T (for Textfile) files
on the disk, but it's hard to pick them out from such a full catalog.
Second Menu
Enter Option R
Read textfile to chapter
Textfile: 2 <CR>
There are 3 textfiles:
1 HELP TEXT
2 ECHO COMMANDS
3 APPLE RESOURCES
Use entire list? N
Select textfiles by number
Textfile:
At this point, you can remove your BEX disk from
drive 1, and insert your initialized data disk in drive 1. Enter the
numbers of the textfiles you want. When you choose only one textfile, BEX
prompts: Target chapter name: and you must type in the target
chapter name.Use entire list? N change the default answer to Y
and press <CR>.Target chapter naming
method: enter 1A-C <CR> to add the characters
-C to the end of the target chapter names. Because you
precede the
Replace
Drive number or chapter name: 2 <CR>
There are 3 chapters:
1 HELP TEXT-C
2 ECHO COMMANDS-C
3 APPLE RESOURCES-C
Use entire list? N Y <CR>
Target chapter naming method: S <CR>
Enter transformation chapter name:FIX TEXT and
it's designed to reformat textfiles for print-oriented BEX chapters.
At the User Level, you learn how to write a transformation
Enter transformation chapter name: 1FIX TEXT <CR>
The last prompt allows you to load a transformation
chapter from disk, then remove that disk and insert a data disk:
Continue? Y <CR> Large Print Screen: When BEX uses a
transformation chapter from disk, you temporarily lose large print screen
display at this point. As soon as Replace chapters is finished, BEX
returns to large print display. The last prompt, Continue? Y
is shown in 40-column screen, so you will have to assume its there, and
respond accordingly.
Enter Option: D
Which drive? 2 <CR>
Chapters located:
BEX lists the chapters on the BEXtras disk, including
the QUANDARY chapter. BEX then prompts:
Press space for DOS catalog: <space>
There are many files on the disk, including the five
files that make up the QUANDARY chapter:
B 013 QUANDARY.A
B 014 QUANDARY.B
B 014 QUANDARY.C
B 010 QUANDARY.D
B 003 QUANDARY
Page Menu
Enter Option: F
File list
Drive number or chapter name: QUANDARY <CR>
Chapter QUANDARY
4 Pages
Page 1 Size 3064 A
Page 2 Size 3281 B
Page 3 Size 3307 C
Page 4 Size 2223 D
Total of 11875
There are three columns: page number, size, and the
letter in the extension. You can easily change the page number; the letter
extension stays the same.
WC
for Working Copy.page 2 and
your cursor is at character position 0 of new page 2.page 4 your cursor is at character
position 0 of that page.
Page Menu
Enter Option: F
File list
Drive number or chapter name: WC <CR>
Chapter WC
7 pages
Page 1 size 795 A
Page 2 size 2269 E
Page 3 size 908 B
Page 4 size 2373 F
Page 5 size 2316 C
Page 6 size 991 G
Page 7 size 2223 D
Total of 11875
Enter Option: M <CR>
Merge pages
Enter first Page: 2 <CR>
Enter second Page: 3 <CR>
BEX reads the contents of both pages into the page
buffer and then writes them to disk as one page. Next, press F for File
list:
Chapter WC
6 pages
Page 1 size 795 A
Page 2 size 3177 E
Page 3 size 2373 F
Page 4 size 2316 C
Page 5 size 991 G
Page 6 size 2223 D
Total of 11875
Chapter WC
5 pages
Page 1 size 795 A
Page 2 size 3177 E
Page 3 size 2373 F
Page 4 size 2316 C
Page 5 size 3214 G
Total of 11875
Page Menu
Enter Option: R
Rearrange pages
Move a range of pages? N <CR>
List the new order of the pages
For new page 1 use old Page: 1 <CR>
For new page 2 use old Page: 4 <CR>
For new page 3 use old Page: 3 <CR>
For new page 4 use old Page: 2 <CR>
For new page 5 use old Page: 5 <CR>
Chapter WC
5 pages
Page 1 size 795 A
Page 2 size 2316 C
Page 3 size 2373 F
Page 4 size 3177 E
Page 5 size 3214 G
Total of 11875
Enter Option: C
Change current chapter
Drive number or chapter name: <CR>
Pressing <CR> at this point clears the current
chapter. You cannot specify a new current chapter because the chapter you
want is not yet on disk. If you type the name of a chapter that's not
on disk, BEX gives an error message.
Page Menu
Enter Option: G
Grab pages from another chapter
Grab into Drive number or chapter name: FRIEND
<CR>
Want to start a new chapter? Y <CR>
Grab from Drive number or chapter name: WC <CR>
BEX now lets you specify which pages to copy from WC
into FRIEND:
There are 5 pages in chapter WC
Select pages from chapter WC
From page: 2 <CR>
Through page: 5 <CR> 13 Coping When Things Go Wrong
Drive number or chapter name: it's expecting a digit or
some letters. Enter just <CR>, and BEX returns you to the menu
prompt. When BEX prompts Which printer: it's expecting a
number or letters; enter <CR> alone and you cancel printing.Which drive? 2 so pressing
<CR> supplies BEX with enough information to continue. You get a
catalog of the disk in drive 2.
FILE NOT FOUND or DISK FULL Next, there's
another high beep and the Apple says BREAK IN LINE followed
by a four-digit number. Finally, the Apple displays the BASIC
prompt: the right bracket ] on the screen. (The Echo
says ready, because ] means the Apple is ready
to accept your commands.)RUN
<CR>BREAK and then the program line number where it stopped.
It's safe to ignore a message like BREAK IN LINE
followed by a four-digit number.BREAK IN LINE message is not
particularly informative, the first Apple error message can help you
pinpoint the problem. Here are some causes and solutions for common error
messages:DISK FULL in the middle of creating a
chapter in the Editor, BEX swings into action to rescue your current page
buffer--Part 5 explains what happens.I/O ERROR message when you try to
save to a totally blank disk, or to a disk that's formatted for
ProDOS. See Section 2, Part 5 for how to initialize disks.I/O
ERROR Apple error message, immediately make a copy of the disk.
Toss the disk that failed straight into the trash. Some people feel that
inexpensive disks are a good way to keep the FILE NOT FOUND message, then the
directory file claims a page file exists, but the page file is not on the
disk. Use option F - Fix chapters on the Second Menu to create a new
directory file--details in Part 7.
RUN
<CR> and you're back at the menu you crashed from. Warning! Never press Control-Reset when the Apple
is writing to disk. You can permanently damage your disk by
doing this. It's not harmful to enter Control-Reset when the Apple is
reading from disk.
There are
4 pages Edit on page 1 and pauses. You realize you must have
specified the wrong chapter, as the one you wanted RUN <CR> and you're back at
the Main Menu prompt. Echo: BEX temporarily disables two Echo commands
when you use the Editor: control-L and control-X. When you quit the Editor
normally with control-Q, BEX returns control-L and control-X to their
regular Echo functions. When you crash out of the Editor, control-L and
control-X are still disabled. This means you can't shut up the Echo and
you can't use screen review. The solution is to edit any chapter; then
quit normally with control-Q. Control-L and control-X are then back to
normal. RUN 999 discussed below.RUN 999 can't
recover them. BEX's pointers always start at 0, so the old text from 1000
to 2000 has overwritten the 0 to 1000 text. Warning! Control-Reset is a safe way to stop
BEX. Many other programs are not as resilient as BEX. When you enter
Control-Reset with other programs, you may lose data. Caution! Do not confuse Control-Reset with
Open-Apple-Control-Reset. Control-Reset crashes BEX.
Open-Apple-Control-Reset reboots the Apple.
RUN 999SAVE on the disk in drive 1. When you don't have a good data
disk handy, you can use your BEX disk in a pinch--there's usually
enough room for the SAVE chapter. Once BEX has created the SAVE chapter,
you are at the BASIC prompt. Here's exactly what happens with
RUN 999Cannot write to disk. Insert a data disk in drive 1 and
press any keyThe page buffer is now saved in a 1-page chapter named
SAVE on drive 1RUN <CR>1SAVE <CR> at
the Drive number or chapter name: prompt.Grab into Drive number or chapter
name: type the name of your problem chapter. When BEX prompts
Grab from Drive number or chapter name: type 1SAVE
<CR>RUN 999
any SAVE chapter already on the program disk is overwritten by the new
one. Don't put off salvaging the SAVE chapter until after it's too
late!
RUN
999 you can choose to use it yourself. RUN 999 lets
you recover the information in the most recent page buffer. As mentioned
in Part 4, you press Control-Reset to exit the Editor without saving your
changes. At this point, you can use RUN 999 to recover the
new text that is not yet on disk. Follow these two steps whenever you use
RUN 999PR#0 <CR>] prompt, type RUN 999
<CR>
FILE NOT FOUND error
message during any manipulation of a chapter. This means a page file that
is referenced in the directory is not on disk.DISK FULL error message before BEX has finished writing a
chapter to disk. BEX always saves the directory file last, so the full
disk contains some number of page files, but no directory file..A extension, page 2 has an .B extension, and
page 3 has an .C extension. When you have a three-page
chapter and enter control-C control-P on page 2, the new page 3 gets the
.D extension. After you Exchange pages 1 and 2 with the Page
Menu, page 1 ends with .B and page 2 has the .A
extension..A always becomes page 1. That's why you may need to use
the Page Menu to rearrange the pages after you Fix chapters.
HOMEWORK on a disk. You also
have a chapter named SCHOOLWORK on the same disk. You ask BEX
to change the name of chapter SCHOOLWORK to HOMEWORK. When you print the
HOMEWORK chapter, the first three pages contain the information from the
old HOMEWORK chapter; the last two pages contain the information from the
last two pages of SCHOOLWORK.RED for instance. Now, delete
HOMEWORK with option K - Kill chapters. Then, use option F - Fix chapters,
and specify HOMEWORK as your target chapter. Finally, copy the fixed
HOMEWORK to a totally different name, GREEN for instance. The
RED chapter now has the same data as the old SCHOOLWORK; the GREEN chapter
is just like the old HOMEWORK.
DiversiCOPY
program disk. This is a shareware utility that copies disks
faster than anything else. Shareware means that you can try the program
out for 45 days; if you like it, you send $30 to the program's
author. DiversiCOPY is fast because it uses every scrap of the
Apple's memory; it is not compatible with Echo speech or large print.
However, it does provide enough beeps and boops for a visually impaired
person to keep track of what's going on. There's a BEX chapter
on the DiversiCOPY disk that explains how to use it, and where to send the
shareware payment.