Get ready to plug in to the best features of BEX! Master Level BEX is only available when your Apple has at least 128K memory. All Apple IIc's and IIgs's qualify; no Apple II Plus can. If you have an Apple IIe without an extended 80 column card, you will have to install an extended 80 column card to make use of the Master Level. Appendix 4 discusses sneaky ways to take advantage of some Master Level features when your Apple has only 64K memory.
To use the Master Level, we assume that you have read, understood, and practiced the material in the User Level. We expect that you are familiar with chapter selection, editing, printing, and Replace characters. The User Level summarized much of the material that you learned at the Learner Level. But at the Master Level, we focus solely on the new features. A summary of all the features available at the Master Level is in the booklet we call the Thick Reference Card.
BEX's prompts are much shorter at the Master Level.
Instead of prompting Main Menu: BEX prompts
Main: Whenever BEX wants a chapter name or drive number, the
prompt is simply Chapter: If that's not brief enough for
you, read Section 9 to learn how to change BEX's prompts yourself. And if
you're feeling truly adventurous, Section 9 also explains how to change
the braille translation tables.
Section 2 introduces the Ready chapter. Up to now, the chapters you have worked have always been stored on disk. The Ready chapter is stored in the Apple's memory. You can copy its contents to disk when you want to. For the Apple IIe and IIc, the Ready chapter can be six BEX pages; for the Apple IIgs, the Ready chapter is 20 BEX pages. Because moving between pages in the Ready chapter happens totally in memory, it's a lot faster.
At the Master Level, you can turn any of BEX's four output channels off and on when you wish. You can also change screen size at the Menus as well as in the Editor. You can have a braille or print device capture a small part of the computer dialogue for future reference.
You can set up automatic procedure chapters that record your keystrokes as you use BEX. At a later point you can replay these auto chapters, similar to running a player piano.
As you configured at the Learner and User Level, you probably wondered what a class S - Specific printer was. Well, Master Level Section 5 tells all. There's a new group of format commands that send escape codes to a specific printer. Section 5 also explains how to embed format commands within words; how to insert discretionary hyphens in your text, and even how to write about BEX format commands.
The largest Section in the whole of BEX is Master Level Section 6. That's because it provides the ins and outs of Contextual Replace. You can turn replacing on and off within a chapter. You can specify whole classes of characters in one stroke. You can ask for much more restrictive conditions than are possible with regular Replace characters. Without a doubt, Contextual Replace is the most intricate and powerful part of BEX. Contexual Replace made it possible for us to produce this manual in both large print and braille from one set of data.
The way to tell BEX to unlock all these new features
is by creating a Master Level configuration. To set up a Master Level
configuration, answer the Enter configuration: prompt with
the & ampersand character. The configuration questions at
the Master Level are identical to the User Level questions with one
exception: the final question is Do you have an extended disk
system? You definitely want to answer Y when you have 3.5-inch
drives or an extra memory card in your Apple. See Section 3 for the
details.
Enjoy!
The Ready chapter is a special chapter which you can create and use only at the Master Level. We call it the Ready chapter because it is always ready to use, and because you specify it using the right bracket, which the Echo speaks as "ready." The Ready chapter does not exist on any disk drive; instead, it exists in the auxiliary memory created by your extended 80-column card. The size of the Ready chapter depends on your Apple model. BEX keeps up to six Ready chapter BEX pages in the auxiliary memory with Apple IIc and the Apple IIe; with the Apple IIgs, the Ready chapter is 20 pages long.
You create and manipulate the Ready chapter much as you would any other BEX chapter. Because manipulations on the Ready chapter do not involve floppy disk access, they happen in a flash. Moving from one Ready chapter page to another, for example, is just about instantaneous. Using the Ready chapter minimizes disk swapping when you have a one-drive system.
The Ready chapter also disappears in a flash when you
turn off computer power. However, it remains intact when you do a
warm boot; that is, when you reboot without interrupting
power. You can do a warm boot by depressing control and open-Apple, then
pressing the Reset key; or by entering PR#6 at the BASIC
prompt. Because a warm boot does not change the Ready chapter, you can
reboot with a different configuration or establish a new configuration
without erasing the Ready chapter. However, we recommend you save the
Ready chapter to disk, if possible, before doing a warm boot, in case of
loss.
The chapter name for the Ready chapter is just one
keystroke: ] known as the right bracket. To use the Ready
chapter with any BEX function, enter its single right bracket name at any
Chapter: prompt. The crucial difference between the Ready
chapter and a chapter on disk is permanence. When you want a lasting
version of the information in the Ready chapter, you must copy it to a
disk chapter with a different name.
There are as many uses for the Ready chapter as there are for any BEX chapter. When you are doing a lot of work on one chapter, it is very efficient to copy it into the Ready chapter and proceed to edit and operate on the Ready chapter. The Master Level requires the additional 64K memory from an extended 80-column card, so in addition to the Ready chapter, the routines for printing, the Editor and Replace characters are always loaded in RAM. These operations and some others, like Copy chapters, do not require disk access. When you use the Ready chapter, BEX glides along with barely a disk access.
The main hurdle in using the Ready chapter is remembering that it is there. Now that you are at the Master Level, you are encouraged to change your habits and use the Ready chapter.
Whenever BEX prompts for Chapter: you can
use the Ready chapter: in Print chapters or Multi-function print, as the
source or target for braille translation or Replace, in Input through
slot, or even as a transformation chapter or automatic procedure chapter.
If you have a one-drive system, you can use it as the target chapter when
reading a ProDOS textfile into BEX.
Suppose you want to produce a letter in both print and
braille. You write it in print form in the Ready chapter. You then copy it
to a chapter called ULTIMATUM on disk. Then you use the Ready
chapter as both source and target chapter for grade 2 translation and
replacing with a transformation chapter. You copy the Ready chapter, now
containing your final braille, to the ULTIMATUM2 chapter.
The Ready chapter is perfect for temporary
information. For
Editing with the Ready chapter is a treat. Moving between pages, and in and out of the Editor do not entail disk access time.
When you enter ] at the Editor
Chapter: prompt, you create a fresh Ready chapter if it is
not already occupied. To use the Ready chapter for editing something
already on disk, copy the disk chapter to the Ready chapter.
When you edit in the Ready chapter, you still have a regular-size clipboard of up to 4096 characters. As in any other chapter, the editing work on your current page is only in the page buffer until you save the page in memory. The current page is saved in memory when you change pages, enter control-P 0, or press control-Q.
When you leave the Editor with control-Q, your current
Ready page is saved, but not on disk. When you want to save it to disk,
use Copy chapters with ] as the source chapter.
You may have more pages in your Ready chapter than your computer's Ready chapter page limit. BEX automatically saves extra pages to disk. We discuss this further in Part 2: Ready Chapter File Structure below. Of course, you are making most efficient use of the Ready chapter when you keep to the page number limit, which is 20 for the Apple IIgs, and six for the Apple IIc or IIe.
When you want to clear the Ready chapter, so that it contains no text, you can use Kill chapters on the Second Menu. Kill chapters deletes any pages in the Ready chapter which happen to be saved on disk.
There is, however, one operation which does
not work with the Ready chapter. This is option N - Name
change for chapters on the Second Menu. You can't specify ]
as either the source or target chapter. The Ready chapter must be called
] and only the Ready chapter can. Therefore, you can't
specify ] as either source or target for option N - Name
change for chapters on the Second Menu.
The file structure for the Ready chapter resembles the
ordinary chapter file structure. Its page files are lettered
sequentially: ].A then ].B and so on. The
files ].A through ].F (or
].A through ].T on the Apple IIgs) are stored in
auxiliary memory instead of on disk. Each of these files is actually a
pocket of auxiliary memory which can hold up to 4096 characters. The
directory for the Ready chapter is also kept in memory. Files
].G (or ].U on the Apple IIgs) and beyond, are
disk files saved on your default data drive.
As with ordinary BEX chapters, the correspondence between page numbers and the one-letter file extensions can vary. When cutting pages and Page Menu manipulations are not part of a chapter's history, the page file extensions for pages 1, 2, and so on are in alphabetical order. As you may recall, page manipulations change the correspondence between the page number and its letter extension. When you kill pages or move them in the Edito, the new pages keep their old extensions. When you cut a page or use Grab pages, each newly created page file takes the next available extension for that chapter. When you copy a chapter, the copy uses the same extensions as the original.
These considerations are equally true for ordinary BEX
chapters and for the Ready chapter. They are just more crucial for the
Ready chapter, since you want to use extensions .A through
.F or .A through .T
wherever possible.
Suppose you have a seven page chapter called
MANIFESTO whose page file extensions are all in alphabetical
order. You see its pages listed as MANIFESTO.A through
MANIFESTO.G when you do a disk catalog. You then kill pages 3
and 4. When you do a file list, here is what you get:
MANIFESTO.A
MANIFESTO.B
MANIFESTO.E
MANIFESTO.F
MANIFESTO.G
MANIFESTO
Next, you copy chapter MANIFESTO to the Ready chapter.
Page 5, with its G letter extension, is written to disk, even
though you are not over the page limit. When you Copy chapters, the letter
extensions remain the same. Any page with extension .G is
always written to disk, no matter what page number it is in
your chapter. If for some reason the first page of your Ready chapter has
extension Go, that page is written on disk, and requires disk
access whenever you move onto it.
Three options on the Second and Page Menus solve this problem. Options M - Merge chapters and A - Adjust page sizes on the Second Menu, and option G - Grab pages from another chapter on the Page Menu create new chapter directories. These options use alphabetical order for extensions as they create new page files.
For example, suppose you copy the chapter MANIFESTO
using ] as your target chapter. When you do a file list of
] on the Page Menu, you see that page 1 has the letter
extension Go, and is written to disk. Next, you use Merge
chapters, specifying just MANIFESTO for the source chapter, and the Ready
chapter for the target chapter. When you do a file list of the Ready
chapter this time, you see that the page letter extensions are in
alphabetical order. When you use Merge chapters instead of Copy chapters
to move the chapter MANIFESTO into the Ready chapter, you solve your disk
access problem. No pages
Page manipulations on the Ready chapter itself, as
well as some Editor commands such as control-C control-P to cut pages,
also take its page extensions out of alphabetical order. When you have
unnecessary disk files, you may wish to straighten the page files. For
example, you can use Merge chapters with chapter ] together
with no chapter, or Grab pages from chapter ] into a disk
chapter, and then copy that disk chapter back into the Ready chapter. In
the process, you reletter your pages alphabetically, and you also back up
the Ready chapter on disk.
When you use Fix chapters on the Ready chapter, the
result is different from Fix chapter with a disk chapter. Because there is
no disk file for the file extensions A through
Go, or A through T on the Apple
IIgs, BEX can't know how many characters are in each page. Therefore,
every Ready chapter page in memory is restored to 4095 characters. It is
as if you did RUN 999 to all the pages in memory. When you
need to use Fix chapters on the Ready chapter, you must delete excess
material in the first six pages on the IIc or IIe, or the first 20 pages
on the IIgs. However, Fix chapters works normally with any Ready chapter
page written to disk.
One of our staff was editing a six page Ready chapter
without a disk in her default drive. When she cut a page, she created a
seventh disk page, which needed to be written to disk. Since there was no
disk in the drive, BEX could not save the page. She got the message
Cannot write to disk. Insert a data disk in drive 1 and press any
key. This created a one page chapter called SAVE on
drive 1. Instead of saving the page as a part of her Ready chapter, it was
saved into a separate chapter.
] and SAVE, with SALVATION as the target
chapter. Now she had the seventh page along with the rest of the text from
her Ready chapter. With that done, she deleted the SAVE chapter. As her
last step, she copied the text in SALVATION back into her Ready chapter,
only this time she had a disk in her data drive.
The moral of the tale is always have a disk in your default data drive when you work with the Ready chapter!
In this Section you learn how to use more than two 5.25-inch floppy disk drives with BEX. Part 1 provides the conceptual framework, explaining the virtual drive number system BEX uses to keep track of disk drives. Part 2 explains how you answer the configuration questions concerning extended disk drive systems. In Part 3 you learn the ins and outs of RAM drives, which can dramatically speed up your BEX use. Part 4 deals with 3.5-inch disks, sometimes called microfloppies, which are easy to slip in your pocket and can hold almost 800K of data. Part 5 deals with the Sider, the only hard disk system that BEX supports. Finally, Part 6 provides four sample combinations of extended disk systems.
At the Learner and User Levels of BEX, your disk drive options were simple: one or two. Either way, they had to be 5.25-inch floppy disk drives, connected to a single disk controller card. Now at the Master Level, you have many more options: You can have more than two 5.25-inch disk drives; you can have one or two 3.5-inch disks drives; you can set aside portions of memory to be used as RAM drives; and you can use a Sider hard disk drive. We use the term extended disk systems to include all these options.
When DOS 3.3, the Apple operating system, addresses a disk drive, it uses the combination of the slot where the disk controller card is plugged in and the number of the drive on that card. For the vast majority of Apple IIe systems, the first drive is slot 6, drive 1; the second drive is slot 6, drive 2. Even though the Apple IIc doesn't have slots, the same addresses are used: the internal disk drive is slot 6, drive 1; the external disk drive is slot 6, drive 2. Things are a little more complicated on the Apple IIgs because it often comes with 3.5-inch disk drives instead of or in addition to 5.25-inch disk drives--more on this in Part 4.
When you configure an extended disk system, BEX asks you to assign a slot and drive number to each virtual drive number. From then on, you access the disk in a particular slot and drive by the single virtual drive number you have assigned to that address.
Finally, before you configure an extended disk system, you need to know which drive the Apple boots from. Unless you have recently rearranged your disk drives or added new equipment, your Apple generally boots from the disk drive in slot 6, drive 1, which we refer to as the booting drive. You know this empirically, as you've been booting BEX successfully up to now.
For those with disk controllers in other slots, here's the nitty-gritty. The Apple IIe and IIc always attempt to boot from the first drive connected to the disk controller card in the highest numbered slot. When your disk drive controller is in slot 6, and slot 7 does not contain a disk controller card, the Apple boots from slot 6, drive 1. When you add another disk controller card with two drives in slot 5, the Apple still boots from slot 6, drive 1, because 6 is higher than 5. In short, the Apple IIe and IIc boot from the highest drive number.
On the Apple IIgs, booting is determined by one
Control Panel setting. When the Control Panel Startup Disk
function is set to Scan, then the IIgs searches for a bootable disk in any
slot. You can also specify any numbered slot or a RAM or ROM drive for
We'll demonstrate the general procedure with a
straightforward example. Other configuration dialogues are shown in later
Parts; Part 6 provides four sample combinations of various devices. Assume
you have two 5.25-inch disk controller cards, one in slot 6 and one in
slot 5. Each card has two disk drives plugged into it, for a total of four
drives. After you have answered all the printer questions in a
configuration, here's how the rest of the dialogue goes:
Do you have a extended disk system? Y <CR>
Virtual drive 1 is the Main program disk
For virtual drive 1
Enter slot: 6 <CR>
Enter drive: 1 <CR>
For virtual drive 2
Enter slot: 6 <CR>
Enter drive: 2 <CR>
For virtual drive 3
Enter slot: 5 <CR>
Enter drive: 1 <CR>
For virtual drive 4
Enter slot: 5 <CR>
Enter drive: 2 <CR>
For virtual drive 5
Enter slot: 0 <CR>
Enter a name for this configuration: FOURDISK
You may notice that this dialogue is similar to configuring printers. You assign a virtual drive number to the combination of slot and drive number. From then on, the virtual drive number is how you reference that disk drive. You end the naming process by entering zero for the slot number. BEX prompts you with the next virtual drive number in sequence until you supply eight addresses or enter zero.
A RAM drive is a portion of the Apple's memory that acts like a floppy disk. RAM is an acronym for Random Access Memory. You can read and write information between a RAM drive and a floppy disk. A RAM drive is very similar in function to BEX's Ready chapter. All "disk" access happens in a flash, because you don't have to wait for the mechanical head on the disk drive to move around over a physical disk.
At the Master Level, you can configure RAM drives to hold data, and you can also configure one RAM drive to hold the programs on BEX's Main side. Things speed up dramatically when BEX runs from a RAM drive--moving to the Page Menu, for example, takes just as long as loading the Editor or Print options.
In order to configure a RAM drive, your Apple must contain more than 128K of memory. You get this extra memory by plugging a memory card into your Apple IIe or IIgs. Although the Apple IIc does not have slots, it's possible for a computer dealer to install extra memory in a IIc, as well.
There are two distinct types of memory cards: the auxiliary slot cards and the regular slot cards. The difference between them is where you plug them in and how they are partitioned. BEX works with both kinds of memory cards.
The auxiliary slot cards are plugged in
to the auxiliary slot of the Apple IIe. They provide 80-column capability
as well as extra memory. As with any 80-column card, the Apple addresses
an auxiliary slot card as if it were in slot 3, even though it's not
The Apple IIgs does not have an auxiliary slot; instead, it has a memory expansion slot. As far as BEX is concerned, a memory card plugged into the Apple IIgs's memory expansion slot is treated as if it were an auxiliary slot card in an Apple IIe. Apple IIgs users should follow the instructions for auxiliary slot cards.
The regular slot cards can be installed in slot 1 through slot 7 in the Apple IIe or IIgs. Examples of regular slot cards are the Apple Memory Card made by Apple, and the RamFactor card made by Applied Engineering. You can't use a regular slot card for DOS 3.3 RAM drives in a system that also contains a Sider hard disk.
Plain old DOS 3.3 does not have the capacity to create and work with RAM drives. However, it's possible to make minor disk operating system modifications, commonly called patches, that enable DOS 3.3 to work with RAM drives. BEX takes advantage of three different RAM drive patches. For auxiliary slot cards in the Apple IIe and Apple IIc, BEX uses RAMDRIVE, a program written and distributed by Applied Engineering. For expansion slot memory in the Apple IIgs, BEX uses RAM 3.3, a special patch written by David Holladay. For the Apple Memory Card in the Apple IIe or Apple IIgs, BEX uses patches located in the card's firmware. At the end of this Part, we discuss some of the idiosyncrasies you can encounter when working with regular slot memory cards.
For instructions on installing RAM cards, check
Section 5, The Cookbook, in the Interface Guide. Turn off the power to
your
Once the card is installed, use option W - What is in
this computer at the Starting Menu. When BEX says # RAM drives
available through slot 3 then BEX has recognized an auxiliary slot
card. If BEX does not display this message, then it has not recognized
your memory card. Check to make sure the card is properly installed.
When you install a regular slot card, What is in this computer should list it as an Apple Memory Card in its appropriate slot. When you install a regular slot card in slot 5, yet BEX says it's an "unknown card," do not worry. Option R - Recognition of cards on the Starting Menu lets you teach BEX about cards it does not recognize. You use Recognition of cards to tell BEX that the "unknown card" in slot 5 is actually a "Regular Slot Memory Card." More details in Interface Guide Section 15.
The memory on a regular slot card is treated as a
single, large RAM drive. When you have a one megabyte Apple Memory Card in
slot 5, its address for configuring purposes is slot 5, drive 1. Once
configured, this RAM drive has a lot of room. You get
1480 sectors free when you press the number sign at any menu.
Both Apple Engineering's RAMDRIVE software and RDC'S RAM 3.3 program divide the memory into 192K RAM drives, holding more than 700 sectors. How many RAM drives you get depends on how much memory is in the card. To find out exactly how many sectors are in each of your RAM drives, press # at any BEX menu. The maximum amount of memory that RAMDRIVE or RAM 3.3 can manage is one megabyte--five full RAM drives. Any additional memory above one megabyte is ignored.
As you can see, most RAM drives hold significantly
more data than a 5.25-inch floppy disk, which starts out with 140K or 528
As with any extended disk system, you must establish a
BEX configuration that references the RAM drives. In the following sample,
all the RAM drives on an auxiliary slot card are used as
data drives.
Do you have a extended disk system? Y <CR>
Virtual drive 1 is for the program disk.
For virtual drive 1
Enter slot: 6 <CR>
Enter drive: 1 <CR>
For virtual drive 2
Enter slot: 6 <CR>
Enter drive: 2 <CR>
For virtual drive 3
Enter slot: 3 <CR>
Enter drive: 1 <CR>
For virtual drive 4
Enter slot: 3 <CR>
Enter drive: 1 <CR>
<beep> Error! Illegal duplication with virtual
drive
For virtual drive 4
Enter slot: 3 <CR>
Enter drive: 2 <CR>
For virtual drive 5
Enter slot: 3 <CR>
Enter drive: 8 <CR>
<beep> Error! Enter a number between 1 and 5; or
zero to cancel
For virtual drive 5
Enter drive: 3 <CR>
For virtual drive 6
Enter slot: 0 <CR>
Enter a name for this configuration: RAM <CR>
In this configuration, the booting drive and the program drive are both in slot 6, drive 1. The default data drive is drive number 5. Unless all the chapters you create are completely disposable, it is absolutely crucial that you copy your chapters from a RAM data drive to a floppy disk before you turn off the power!
Also shown in this example are two of the error messages BEX provides when you enter nonsensical values. Remember, you can press <CR> for a summary of RAM drives available when BEX prompts for the slot number.
You can establish a configuration where the Main side of BEX is loaded to a RAM drive. If you have enough memory, you can have RAM data drives as well. When BEX is loaded on a RAM drive, moving between menus takes less than one second. Since you already have a floppy disk copy of your BEX program, loading the BEX Main side to a RAM drive requires less concentration on your part. It's like using an extra backup of your BEX disk. If lightning strikes and your Apple's power is affected, you won't be losing crucial data.
As we said in Part 2, BEX always looks for the program disk in virtual drive 1. When you load the Main side of BEX on the RAM drive, virtual drive 1 is not the booting drive. You can still boot BEX, because the Apple takes care of booting. Once BEX is booted and you enter the name of the configuration, BEX knows to look in virtual drive 1 for the Main side of BEX. Here's one possible arrangement for a 512K auxiliary slot card:
In this particular configuration, the default data drive is one of the two larger RAM drives. Notice that the virtual drive numbers do not have to follow the order of the full addresses of the disk drives. The program drive is always virtual drive 1, in this case, slot 3, drive 1. The booting drive is virtual drive 2, which is physically slot 6, drive 1. You could rearrange the virtual drives to suit your tastes; but to load BEX onto the RAM drive, you must assign virtual drive 1 to a RAM drive.
Once you set up a configuration with virtual drive 1 as a RAM drive, you're ready to go. With the Boot side still in the disk drive, press <space>. BEX checks to see if the Main side software is loaded on virtual drive 1. When it is loaded, you quickly move to the Main Menu. But when it's not loaded, BEX automatically uses FID to load the Main side software onto the RAM disk. At the appropriate time, BEX prompts you to insert the Main BEX disk and to press any key. When you need to access the Starting Menu, first go to the Main Menu and insert the Boot side of BEX into the booting disk drive, then press <space>. To get back to the Main Menu, press <space> at the Starting Menu. You can't load the Starting Menu on a RAM drive; you must access the Starting Menu from disk.
Once you have loaded BEX onto the RAM drive, virtual
drive 1 contains all the BEX program chapters as well as any
data chapters you put there. When you have a regular slot memory card,
which is treated as one vast RAM drive, then you definitely will be
writing data chapters on your program drive. If you told BEX to perform an
operation on all the chapters in virtual drive 1, you would
change the BEX chapters ZQFOR and ZQREV which
contain the translator tables. BEX
To prevent BEX from messing with any chapters on your Main side, lock their directory files before you install them on your RAM drive. You can use FID'S option 5 - Lock Files to lock every file on your Main side.
UNLOCK FILENAME,S#,D#
<CR> using the appropriate slot and drive numbers. Then type
RUN <CR> and edit your chapter successfully. When you
edit a chapter and make any changes at all, BEX must change the
information in its directory file. When you quit or move between pages,
and the directory file is locked, BEX prompts: Cannot write to disk,
insert data disk in program drive and press any key and saves the
current page buffer in the SAVE chapter.BEX treats a RAM drive like any other data drive. When
virtual drive 3 is a RAM drive, then editing chapter 3LETTER
creates a chapter named LETTER on drive 3. One big difference
is that RAM drive access is totally silent. This can be a little
disconcerting. When you have an auxiliary slot or memory expansion card,
there is a visual indicator of disk drive access. You only
see this when you use a non-HI-RES screen; in the lower right-hand corner,
an inverse W shows writing and an inverse R
shows reading.
You can add an audible indicator as well. When you
boot BEX, hold down the open-Apple key until you hear a sound. For an
Apple IIe, it's a clicking sound; for the Apple IIgs it's a low
moan. When you do this, you add an audible indicator for RAM
The crucial thing to remember is you lose your data if you lose power. You must copy your chapters to disk before turning off your computer. In fact, we recommend that you routinely copy your chapters to disk at least every half-hour. In Section 4, Part 3, we explain how you can catalog more than one disk drive at the Page Menu. When you configure your RAM drives all in a row, use this feature to check to make sure you've saved all your RAM drive data.
You can use almost every BEX option with a RAM drive, with three exceptions:
INIT HELLO at the BASIC prompt, you would "crash" the RAM
drive, and you would have to reboot BEX. When you have an auxiliary slot
card or memory expansion slot card, you can erase all the contents of all
RAM drives. As BEX boots, it loads the RAMDRIVE or RAM 3.3 software. When
you depress the solid-Apple (or Option) key as BEX boots, the contents of
all RAM drives are wiped clean.There's one additional complication when you run
the Main side from a RAM drive. As we've stressed, virtual drive 1 is
always the program drive. On the Main side, the programs BEX needs are on
the RAM drive you've configured as virtual drive 1. But when you switch to
the Starting Menu, the programs BEX needs are on the floppy disk in the
booting drive. When you use the Starting Menu, virtual drive 1 is
temporarily redirected to the booting drive. When you <space> back
to the Main Menu, virtual drive 1 becomes the Main RAM drive again. As
mentioned in Part 2, there's an on-line reminder of which virtual
drive number references which physical disk drive. Press D at any BEX
menu; when BEX responds Which drive? # enter question mark
followed by <CR>. When you do this at the Starting Menu, you may
press M to catalog the Main side RAM drive.
Two factors limit how much data can fit on a DOS 3.3 disk of any sort: the free sector count, and the number of filenames. Clearly, the free sector count is not a problem here; a regular slot memory card gives you lots or room. However, plain DOS 3.3 can only manage 105 filenames per "disk." Because the auxiliary and memory expansion card RAM drives are subdivided into drives, you usually don't bump into this 105 filename barrier. But on a one megabyte regular slot card, you're bound to encounter it sooner or later.
When you attempt to save the 106th file, DOS reports
the DISK FULL error message, even if you have loads of
sectors free. Each BEX chapter is composed of several files: one binary
file
And this is where you can get into trouble. Suppose
you have five 20-page BEX chapters. They are stored as 105 files on disk.
Even if each of the pages of these five BEX chapters contained only one
character, you would get a DISK FULL error message if you
tried to save another BEX chapter to this disk. You must delete some files
from the RAM drive to free up filename slots for a new chapter.
The limit of 105 filenames is particularly problematic when you have a regular slot memory card, and you load BEX's Main side onto a RAM drive. The BEX Main programs are at least 35 files; this leaves just 70 possible filename slots for your BEX chapters.
Way back in Learner Level 5, we described how BEX
attempts to salvage the page buffer when something goes wrong when you
quit or move between pages. BEX uses the RUN 999 technique to
save the page buffer in a one-page BEX chapter named SAVE on your
program drive. Suppose you were editing one of the five 20-page
chapters mentioned above. You enter control-C control-P to cut pages. You
have just asked BEX to create another page file, but DOS 3.3 refuses to
accept this 106th filename. Because BEX has received a DOS error, it
swings into action, attempting to create a SAVE chapter--but DOS 3.3
refuses again. In this situation, BEX tells you Insert data disk in
program drive and press any key endlessly. But you
can't insert a different data disk, because it's a RAM drive.
Here's how you recover:
PR#0
<CR>CATALOG <CR>DELETE command. As a last resort, you can kill
off the translator chapters, ZQFOR and ZQREV, and then RUN 999 <CR> and
BEX can create the SAVE chapter.The designers of DOS 3.3 never anticipated a device like the 3.5 inch disk drive. This is a pity, because these little disks are delightful: they are compact, sturdy, and they can hold almost 800K of data. But DOS 3.3 can never cope with more than 400K on one disk. Fortunately, Gary Little wrote a modified disk operating system named AmDOS, which allow access to 3.5 inch disks. Even more fortunately, Mr. Little licensed us to include AmDOS on the BEX disk. The AmDOS on the BEX disk has been slightly modified to work smoothly within BEX.
Refer to the Interface Guide, Section 1 on the Apple IIgs for information on connecting 3.5 inch drives to your system. If you are going to do a lot of work with 3.5 inch disks, you may want to purchase a full featured version of AmDOS at $20 US--check Appendix 5 for the address.
AmDOS gets around the 400K limitation in DOS 3.3 by dividing each 800K disk drive into two 400K disks. (It's yet another virtual drive scheme!) Even though the two 400K disks are physically on the same magnetic medium, they are treated as if they were two totally separate disks. The tricky part is how these 400K disks are addressed: both drive numbers on the first disk drive are always odd, and on the second disk drive they're always even.
Suppose your 3.5 inch disk controller card is plugged
into slot 5. AmDOS treats the first 3.5 inch disk drive as if it were two
distinct 400K drives: one in slot
Let's say you have two disk drives in your system: one 5.25 inch floppy drive in slot 6, drive 1, and one 3.5 inch drive in slot 5, drive 1. You could configure this way:
Virtual drive 1: slot 6, drive 1
Virtual drive 2: slot 5, drive 1
Virtual drive 3: slot 5, drive 3
In this sample, your default data drive is virtual drive 3, one half of the disk in the 3.5 inch disk drive. And that information is always going to be on that half of the 3.5 inch disk. Suppose you established a different configuration that reversed the virtual drive numbers for the 3.5 inch disk, like this:
Virtual drive 1: slot 6, drive 1
Virtual drive 2: slot 5, drive 3
Virtual drive 3: slot 5, drive 1
You write a chapter on drive 3 in the first system. To print that same chapter with the second system, you look on drive 2.
Once the AmDOS software is loaded into the
Apple's memory, you can no longer initialize 5.25 inch floppy disks.
So, it's important to understand when BEX loads the
AmDOS software. There are two Starting Menu actions that make BEX load the
You initialize a 3.5 inch disk using option I -
Initialize disks. When you supply a virtual drive number corresponding to
the 3.5 inch controller card, BEX realizes that you need AmDOS, and loads
it. With the sample configuration above, after you start initializing,
entering 2 or 3 at the Which drive? prompt loads AmDOS.
Once you have initialized a 3.5 inch disk, you can no longer initialize 5.25 inch disks until you reboot. You can't copy 5.25 inch disks either, because the first step in BEX's Copy disks is to initialize the target disk.
The other action that loads AmDOS is when you move from the Starting to the Main Menu. When you have done either of these actions, you simply can't initialize 5.25 inch disks. Therefore, before you begin using a configuration that includes 3.5 inch disks, sit down and initialize a stack of floppy disks! If you must initialize a floppy disk after AmDOS is loaded, then save your data and reboot BEX.
Besides the initializing disks issue, there's just one limitation on BEX use with 3.5 inch drives. You can not use option C - Copy disks to make copies of 3.5 inch AmDOS disks. (You can only use Copy disks for 5.25 inch floppies before you load AmDOS.) To get material on or off a 3.5 inch disk you must use the normal machinery of BEX (copy chapters, translation, replacing, etc.) or use FID. To use FID, AmDOS must be already loaded. All you need to do is move to the Main Menu and then move back to the Starting Menu and press F.
Option R - Read textfiles to chapters on BEX's Second
Menu can read ProDOS textfiles stored on ProDOS 3.5 inch disks. With our
sample, you would insert the ProDOS disk in the 3.5 inch drive, then enter
either virtual drive number 2 or 3 when BEX prompts for the textfile to
read. You can Read the textfile to a RAM drive, to the Ready chapter, or
to a DOS 3.3 floppy disk. As mentioned in User Level 10, however, BEX can
only read ProDOS textfiles that are stored at the root level
of a ProDOS volume. If the 3.5 inch ProDOS disk was named
/LETTERS BEX can read the textfile named
/LETTERS/SANDY on that disk. But BEX cannot read the textfile
named /LETTERS/JUNE/SANDY because the file SANDY
is stored in the subdirectory named /LETTERS/JUNE/
The Sider hard disk, manufactured by First Class Peripherals, is the only hard disk system supported by BEX. You can only configure a single Sider with BEX; BEX won't be able to work with additional Siders daisy chained on to the first Sider. You can configure an extended disk system that includes both auxiliary card RAM drives and the Sider. However, you can not load the Main side of BEX onto the RAM drive when your configuration includes the Sider.
With DOS 3.3, you cannot install a regular slot memory card and a Sider in the same system. The Sider disk controller card contains special patching software to work well with DOS 3.3. The regular slot memory card also patches DOS 3.3. Unfortunately, the DOS 3.3 patches are different, yet they occur at the same point in DOS. Section 13 of the Interface Guide is devoted to extensive installation instructions for the Sider, including tips on partitioning the Sider into different operating systems.
The DOS 3.3 partition of the Sider is further
subdivided into numbered volumes. When you set up the Sider,
you establish some number of small volumes containing
approximately 140K
However, when you configure the Sider, you do not establish a distinct virtual drive number for each Sider volume. Instead, you enter one virtual drive number for the slot and drive of the Sider's disk controller card, and then provide the total number of DOS 3.3 volumes. You also provide the volume numbers for the Boot and Main sides of BEX.
Once BEX has the Sider volume numbers, it
automatically generates a list that pairs a virtual drive number with the
Sider's volume number. Since the BEX Main program is contained on the
Sider, you must make the Sider virtual drive 1. Since the Sider is usually
installed in slot 7, virtual drive 1 is slot 7, drive 1. Here's the
end of a sample configuration dialogue, after you've answered all the
printer questions:
Do you have an extended disk system? Y <CR>
Virtual drive 1 is for the Main disk program disk.
For virtual drive 1
Enter slot: 7 <CR>
Sider Hard Disk
How many volumes: 48 <CR>
Boot side volume: 2 <CR>
Main side volume: 3 <CR>
For virtual drive 49
Enter slot: 6 <CR>
Enter drive: 1 <CR>
For virtual drive 50
Enter slot: 6 <CR>
Enter drive: 2 <CR>
For virtual drive 51
Enter slot: 0 <CR>
For the question about how many volumes, use the number from the Sider initialization (the sum of the small and large DOS 3.3 volumes). For the questions about the boot side volume and the main side volume, give the volume numbers where you copied the program disks. From that point on, you answer the virtual drive number questions as always.
Whenever you boot from the Sider, you are presented
with the Sider's Master Menu, which has seven choices. The default
choice is number 3, Boot from DOS partition. Press <CR>, and you run
the DOS 3.3 HELLO program. Following the instructions from
the Interface Guide, you have modified this HELLO program to run BEX. So
after you press <CR> at the Sider's Master Menu, the next thing
you hear is your old friend BEX saying Enter configuration:
Moving between the Main and Starting Menus is the same as always: press <space>.
BEX treats each volume in the Sider as a separate disk drive. In the sample configuration, the default data drive is a floppy drive, virtual number 50. Virtual drives 2 through 48 are all Sider volumes, virtual drive 49 is also a floppy disk drive. As always, virtual drive 1 is the program disk. When you're at the Main, Second, or Page Menus, virtual drive 1 is redirected to the Sider volume containing the Main programs. When you're at the Starting Menu, virtual drive 1 is redirected to the Sider volume contains the Boot programs. See Part 3 of this Section, Redirecting Virtual Drive 1 at the Starting Menu for an explanation of what's going on.
Of course, it may take some time to get used to having many megabytes of storage on a hard disk at your disposal. Automatic procedure chapters, discussed in Section 8, are particularly handy tools when combined with the Sider. Section 4, Working with Chapters, discusses some Master Level features that help you keep track of all those Sider volumes.
BEX uses a patched DOS 3.3 that speeds up disk access. The Sider uses a more conventional version of DOS 3.3. You will notice that some accesses to floppy disks are slower on the Sider. On the Sider, you do not get the free sector count at the top of a catalog. But you can enter number sign at any BEX menu to obtain the free sector count on any of your virtual drives.
The following four samples are based on Apple systems we use here at Raised Dot Computing. You will notice that, where possible, we load the Main side software on a RAM drive. This maneuver so speeds up the system that it's irresistible.
Combining a regular slot memory card with two floppy disks, this set-up is excellent for massive data manipulation with Contextual Replace. With a one megabyte card, you can copy BEX to the RAM drive and have plenty of room left for your data.
Virtual Drive 1: slot 5, drive 1 (Apple Memory Card)
Virtual Drive 2: slot 6, drive 1 (floppy drive 1 and booting drive)
Virtual Drive 3: slot 6, drive 2 (floppy drive 2)
The one megabyte of memory in the IIgs' memory expansion slot is divided into five RAM drives, attached to slot 3. A single 3.5 inch disk drive becomes two virtual drives; the 5.25 inch drive is basically only used to boot the system. In this configuration, the booting drive and the default data drive are the same.
521K Apple IIe with hard disk
In this configuration the Sider comes first, then the RAM drives, and then the floppy drives. You cannot load the Main side software onto a RAM drive when you boot from a Sider.
Virtual Drive 1: slot 7, drive 1 (Sider Hard Disk, booting and program drive)
Number of volumes: 43
Boot side volume: 2
Main side volume: 3
Virtual Drive 44: slot 3, drive 1 (RAM drive 1)
Virtual Drive 45: slot 3, drive 2 (RAM drive 2)
Virtual Drive 46: slot 3, drive 3 (RAM drive 3)
Virtual Drive 47: slot 6, drive 1 (floppy drive 1)
Virtual Drive 48: slot 6, drive 2 (floppy drive 2)
512K Apple IIc with four virtual drives
The Z-RAM from Applied Engineering acts just like an auxiliary slot memory card. With the Main side loaded in RAM, you only need to use the internal disk drive. This makes the Apple IIc reasonably portable.
Virtual Drive 1: slot 3, drive 1 (RAM drive 1)
Virtual Drive 2: slot 3, drive 2 (RAM drive 2)
Virtual Drive 3: slot 3, drive 3 (RAM drive 3)
Virtual Drive 4: slot 6, drive 1 (internal floppy drive and booting drive)
With the many drives that are available at the Master Level, knowledge of how to specify chapters and alter chapter names becomes all the more important. In this Section we discuss the many ways of specifying chapters. In Part 1 we review methods of chapter selection introduced in User Level Section 4, Part 1. In Part 2 we introduce two new target chapter naming methods. In Part 3 we discuss two methods of managing your data.
Like most prompts at the Master Level, the prompts for
chapters are quite short. BEX simply asks for Chapter: or
Target chapter: or Naming method: For selecting
chapters, all the User Level possibilities are available, with several
features unique to the Master Level. We have already discussed how you can
answer the chapter prompt with the right bracket to indicate that you are
using the Ready chapter. You can have more than two disk drives at the
Master Level. This means that you can answer the chapter prompt with
7CHAPTER or 8CHAPTER assuming that you have that
many drives.
Whenever you type a chapter name or naming method, BEX assumes you're writing and reading on the default data drive. When you are using an extended disk system, the disk drive numbers you use at chapter prompts are the virtual drive numbers you established in your configuration. The highest virtual drive number is always your default data drive number. When you have configured with four drives, your default data drive number is 4.
You can indicate ] for the Ready chapter
at all but one chapter prompt: option N - Name change for chapters on the
Second Menu. When you specify the Ready chapter with Fix chapter
When you enter ] at many
Chapter: prompts, BEX recognizes the Ready chapter. But BEX
does not recognize ] as a chapter name after it has given a
numbered list for a particular drive. When you're choosing numbers from a
list, then ] at the Chapter: prompt is just like
pressing <CR> alone.
This chart summarizes the chapter selection features available at the Master Level:
NAME - chapter NAME on default data drive
(when you have an eight drive system, this is drive 8)5NAME - chapter NAME on drive 52 - scan drive 2 and present numbered list of
chapters/ - scan highest (default) data drive; when 8
is your highest numbered drive, then BEX scans drive 85/Q - scan drive 5 for chapters ending in
Q and present a numbered list+3 - scan drive 3, present numbered list, then
reprompt for more chapters+7/2 - scan drive 7 for chapters ending in
2 and reprompt for another chapter selection] - The Ready chapterAll the target chapter naming methods described in the User Level are available at the Master Level. In addition, you can always use the Ready chapter as a target chapter (except at option N - Name change for chapters). In fact, you can specify the Ready chapter when you use I to individually name the target chapters. At the Master Level, there are two additional naming method options: drive number 0 and the period prefix.
Using drive number 0 in a target chapter naming method directs each target chapter to its home drive, the same drive as the source chapter generating it. For example, suppose you specify source chapters on both drive 2 and drive 3 and use naming method 0S. Each source chapter generates a target chapter by the same name on the same drive and thus overwrites itself. Drive number 0 is always available when you are naming one or more target chapters. However, it is most useful when you have specified source chapters from more than one drive.
The period prefix enables you to use a target chapter
naming method even if you have given only one source chapter. When you
have more than one source chapter, the period has no effect, and BEX
operates as if you had specified a naming method without the period. The
period character goes after the drive number, if present, and before the
letter that specifies the naming method. It tells BEX, "This is a naming
method, not a chapter name." For example:
Chapter: MASTERPIECE
Chapter: <CR>
Target chapter: 6.S
The result is a chapter named MASTERPIECE on drive 6.
This means that you have to type a chapter's name only once in its life: when you create it. After that you can always specify it by number, and modify its name using a target chapter naming method.
You cannot use the period prefix to name
a target chapter in a list of individually named target chapters. When you
use target code I, you must type each target name. For example, suppose
you are copying chapters from drive 3, a RAM drive, to drive 8, on disk.
You have a list of three chapters, and use the I naming
Main: C
Copy chapters
Chapter: 3 <CR>
There are 3 chapters:
1 BIOPAPER
2 ESSAY2
3 CHEM NOTES
Use entire list? N Y <CR>
Naming method: I <CR>
For chapter BIOPAPER
Target chapter: 8.S <CR>
For chapter ESSAY2
Target chapter: 8.A-2 <CR>
For chapter CHEM NOTES
Target chapter: 8LAB NOTES <CR>
BEX begins to copy the chapters, then crashes with a
SYNTAX ERROR message. BEX tried to name the BIOPAPER chapter
.S and DOS 3.3 won't let a filename start with a period. At
this point you type RUN <CR> and copy the chapters
again, typing out the names.
Section 7 discusses using the period prefix in automatic procedure chapters. The period prefix enables the same procedure to work with a list containing one chapter or with a list containing many.
This chart summarizes the possibilities:
3AXYZ - add characters XYZ,
write chapters on drive 3LXYZ - remove the last character, then add the
characters XYZ, write on default data drive7.S - same name, write on drive 70D - delete last character, write target
chapters on "home" drives.I - individually name target chapters (and
specify drive numbers, if desired)Here's an example to show what you can do when you combine scanning methods and target codes: Suppose you have chapters on three separate drives, all of which you need to use Replace characters on, and you want to keep them on the same drives. Ordinarily, you would use Replace characters three separate times, once for each drive. But by using a combination of the plus sign when scanning for chapters, and drive number 0 when specifying the target chapter naming methods, you can do it in one step.
For this example, we use three drives: drives 1 and 2 are RAM drives, and drive 3 is a 5.25 inch disk drive. There are two chapters on each drive.
First, you scan each of the three drives for the chapters that need replacing, by using the plus sign before the drive number to tell BEX to select more chapters. You choose the chapters from the numbered list, then move onto the next drive, until you have specified all the chapters. Next, BEX asks for a target chapter naming method. You could use any naming method, but you use the S naming method, to make things simple.
Here's how the dialogue looks:
Main: R
Replace
Chapter: +1 <CR>
There are 2 chapters:
1 PURPLE
2 RED
Use entire list? N Y <CR>
Select more chapters
Chapter: +2 <CR>
There are 3 chapters:
1 GREEN
2 BLUE
3 BROWN
Use entire list? N <CR>
Select chapters by number
GREEN
Chapter: 2 <CR>
BLUE
Chapter: <CR>
Select more chapters
Chapter: 3 <CR>
There are 2 chapters:
1 YELLOW
2 BLACK
Use entire list? N Y <CR>
Naming method: 0S <CR>
Use transformation chapter: 1REPLACE <CR>
Continue? Y <CR>
Chapter PURPLE done
Chapter RED done
Chapter GREEN done
Chapter BLUE done
Chapter YELLOW done
Chapter BLACK done
Replaced 50 times
Since you can have many disk drives at the Master Level, you need more tools to help you manage data. Two features help you with option W - Whole disk catalog on the Page Menu.
When you press W for the Whole Disk Catalog on the Page Menu, you can obtain a catalog of a range of disk drives. This feature makes it easier to keep track of the many volumes in a Sider hard disk, or of chapters in RAM drives. This feature is available at all Levels, but is most useful when you have more than two disk drives.
As when you're specifying chapters on more than one
drive, you use the plus sign + to catalog more than one
drive. When Which drive? followed by your default data drive number.
Answer with a plus sign followed by a drive number followed by <CR>:
Page Menu: W
Whole disk catalog
Which drive? 8 +6 <CR>
through:
At this prompt, you enter the number of the highest
drive you wish to catalog:
through: 8 <CR>
Disk drive 6
501 free sectors
There are 2 chapters on this disk:
CHECKS 1 pages 322 size
ADDRESS 1 pages 86 size
Grand total 408 characters
Disk drive 7
398 free sectors
There are 2 chapters on this disk:
DIARY 2 pages 8122 size
PAPER 2 pages 4586 size
Grand total 12708 characters
Disk drive 8
456 free sectors
There are 1 chapters on this disk:
DATA 4 pages 11529 size
Grand total 11529 characters
You must enter the drive numbers in ascending order;
if you entered +3 <CR> through 1
<CR> you would receive a Bad range error
message.
Using ampersand & before the drive
number when specifying drives with option W - Whole disk catalog on the
Page Menu allows you to save the screen output of the Whole disk catalogs
in a BEX chapter. When you are prompted Which drive? enter an
ampersand & followed by a drive number, then press
<CR>. The ampersand, like the plus sign, allows you to scan multiple
drives. It invokes the through: prompt and you enter the
drive number of the highest drive you wish cataloged. When the catalogs
are complete, you are prompted for a chapter name. Here is an example:
Page Menu: W
Whole disk catalog
Which drive? &2 <CR>
through: 3 <CR>
Disk drive 2
87 free sectors
There are 3 chapters on this disk:
Q-SAVE 4 pages 7566 size
WW 2 pages 4956 size
LETTER 6 pages10745 size
Disk drive 3
502 free sectors
There are 1 chapters on this disk:
REPLACE 1 pages 54 size
Grand total 26227 characters
Save list as
Chapter: CAT <CR>
Chapter CAT now contains all the characters that
appeared on the screen between entering 2 <CR> and the
Chapter: prompt. This chapter cannot contain more than 2048
characters.
Master Level printing features focus on some of the finer distinctions in your output. In this Section, we describe embedding $$ commands in words, controlling how lines break, and touch on embedding printer control codes in your chapter.
BEX's formatter divides your text into output lines. Before this, the lines always broke at the <space> or <CR> that defines a BEX word. <Control-S>, the sticky space token, lets you define a space that is not a word boundary. <Control-T>, the touching token, can replace the initial and final space in BEX $$ format commands.
Some printers use <control-S> and <control-T> as control codes; you must tell BEX when to pay attention to these two characters in your text. To have BEX recognize them, you must first activate the commands with a special format command: $$ss activates the sticky space token and the touching token (see below) for the rest of the print stream. To disable special spacing, use $$d or reload the print program. If you have entered the sticky space token and the touching token into your text but you did not enter $$ss also, no space appears between the characters surrounding the tokens.
You may want to use <control-S> or <control-T> as printer control codes in your chapter. When you do, place the $$ss after where the codes are entered in your text. Before the $$ss, the formatter sends the <control-S> and <control-T> codes through to your printer.
The <control-T> touching token
allows you to omit the space before a $$ command, and still have that
command executed. When enabled by $$ss, a <control-T> in your text
allows you
For example, to underline War and Peace
inside of parentheses, type:
(<control-T>War and
Peace<control-T>)
Recall from User Level Section 7, Part 8, that suppressing underlining before a final period, comma, semicolon, or colon happens automatically when enabled by $$sp, and does not require any fussing with <control-T>.
The Grade 2 translator treats any control character as
a space. This is important to keep in mind when you are embedding BEX $$
commands within words and intend to translate this text. Suppose you want
to emphasize the third syllable in the word computerized:
comput<control-T>$$eb<control-T>er<control-T>$$ec<con
trol-T>ized
Since the <control-T> takes the place of the
spaces required before and after any $$ command, this word prints with the
third syllable in boldface. When you translate this word, the final
<control-T> separates the syllable er from the format
command $$eb. This separation turns the translator back on, so the
translated result is
-put]iz$
But if you don't end the $$eb with <control-T>
the translator is off for all the characters after the $$ until the next
space. When your print is:
comput<control-T>$$eber<control-T>$$ecized
then the translator creates:
-mputerized
The normal use of the <control-S> sticky space token is as a nonbreaking space. Enabled by $$ss, a <control-S> in your chapter is printed as a space in your output. However, the <control-S> is not treated as a word delimiter for printing. Text connected by sticky spaces is treated as one BEX word and is all printed on the same line. In other words, a <control-S> creates a space in your output that is not a space in your text.
For example, suppose a character in the story you're
writing has three middle initials. It would be confusing if his name was
broken between lines. when you type
General<space>Montgomery<control-S>
T.<control-S>M.<control-S>J.<control-S>
Hambone
then his full name is never broken between lines.
Using a program to write about itself is always a little tricky. When we write about BEX format commands, we use the sticky space token. A <control-S> sticky space before the dollar sign in a format command is not a real space. So the format command or indicator is not executed; it is appropriately spaced as an individual word in the text.
For example, when we wrote about the underline command in User Level, Section 7, we printed the command by typing: <control-S>
The sticky space token also makes it possible for us to write about the paragraph token with its parentheses: ( $p ) is typed in the text as eight keystrokes: ( <control-B> S $ p <control-B> S )
Remember that each <control-S> takes two keystrokes: control-C then S.
These control characters provide the formatter with ways to break a line in the middle of a word.
Use the discretionary hyphen to tell the formatter where to place a hyphen if it breaks that word between lines. If BEX doesn't break the word between lines, it won't print the hyphen.
To enter a discretionary hyphen in your text, hold down the control key and press the hyphen. In a HI-RES screen mode, a discretionary hyphen is represented in the Editor by a small, uppercase S with a vertical line down the right side and a horizontal line underneath: much like the <ESC> character in your text. When you arrow over a discretionary hyphen, the Echo says "ASCII 31," which sounds like "As-key three one."
You can enter a discretionary hyphen manually in extra-long words in the Editor, or you can write a transformation chapter to insert a discretionary hyphen at suitable syllable boundaries. If you write a transformation chapter, be cautious. If you asked to insert <ASCII 31> before ation for example, you'd get discretionary hyphens in n-ation and st-ation, as well as longer words. Also, this works best for print chapters.
know<ASCII 31>ledge
then you get "k<ASCII 31>l$ge instead of k
as you should get. Take out the discretionary hyphens before translating.You can created an auto chapter that replaces <ASCII 31> with nothing and then runs the translator. See Section 7 for instructions about creating Auto chapters.
The discretionary line break tells the printer that
it's okay to break a line at that particular spot. For print output,
this is a
Hold down the control key and press the number
6 to enter a discretionary line break in your text. In the
Editor, a discretionary linebreak is represented by a small uppercase
R with a vertical line down the right side, and a horizontal
line underneath: like the discretionary hyphen and the <ESC>
character. The Echo speaks a discretionary linebreak as "ASCII 30", which
sounds like "as-key three zero."
You only have to do this in chapters for print output. BEX's Grade 2 translator automatically places discretionary line breaks after hyphens and before and after dashes when it translates.
For either of these control characters to work, you have to activate them at the beginning of your chapter with a $$sd command. This is just like using $$ss to activate sticky spaces. However, you may want to use <ASCII 30> or <ASCII 31> as printer control codes in your chapter. When you do, place the $$sd after where the codes are entered in your text. Before the $$sd, the formatter sends the <ASCII 30> and <ASCII 31> codes through unmodified.
In braille chapters, you do not need to enter $$sd. All output devices configured as braillers automatically include $$sd when printing.
The format command $$vrX repeats the character
X to the end of the current line (as defined by whatever
margins are in effect). X may be an underline, dash, the
space character, or any other printable character. Only one $$vrX command
works
For example, a form requires the word
City at the left margin, the word State
two-thirds of the way across the line, and the word ZIP
almost at the right margin. Wherever words don't appear, you want
underlines. With a carriage width of 65, these commands would do the
trick:
City $$vr_ $$p40 State $$p53 ZIP <CR>
Kram one BEX word on the right margin:
$$vk is used in combination with $$vrX in tables of contets or menus. For
example:
Ham and Eggs: $$vr. $$vk $1.00 <CR>
You can use the sticky space token if you want more
than one word at the end of the line. For example:
Ham and Eggs: $$vr. $$vk
$1.00<control-S>(Fridays<control-S>Only)<CR>
The sticky space makes the three words into one BEX word. They appear as three separate words in the printed text. There is a limit, however. The word you have crammed to the right margin with $$vk cannot be more than 32 characters
Many printers allow you to print fun things like boldface fonts, superscripts, subscripts and foreign language letters; you can change line spacing, use fancy vertical tabs, and turn on headline mode. Diligent study of your printer manual will yield what characters you need to enter to print these wonders. Since you can type any ASCII character in a chapter, it's easy to embed the commands into your text: you just type them in like regular BEX words. BEX doesn't recognize them as commands, and sends them through to your printer. Once the printer gets them it starts doing the fancy stuff.
Another drawback is that some printers default to normal print after every <CR>, which is usually at the end of every line. Every time characters printed with the control command are broken between lines, the characters on the second line revert back to normal. Also in this case BEX cannot help you.
When your printer control commands include characters such as <ASCII 30>, <ASCII 31>, <control-S> or <control-T>, your printer will not receive them if $$ss or $$sd is active. When you need to deactivate the commands in order to send a control command to your printer, you must reset the formatter to default with $$d.
When you define a printer in your configuration, you
have seven printer classes to choose from. When you declare your printer
as a specific printer, you can make use of 11 more format
commands. These format commands control boldface, superscripts,
subscripts, and other tasks. The essential difference
In all, there are five possible tasks. The various tasks are listed below. Your printer may not support all five, so you still have to refer to your printer manual. For example, the original Apple ImageWriter does not support subscripts and superscripts. BEX ignores any request for subscripts or superscripts sent to an original ImageWriter.
How does BEX know what codes to send? When you define
a printer as specific in your configuration, BEX reads the
control code information for your specific printer from the
PRINTERS chapter on the Boot side into your configuration
chapter. This information is read into your computer's memory when
you boot BEX. Then, when the formatter encounters any of the 11 $$eX
commands in your text, it reads the specific control code from memory, and
executes it. It is possible to alter the PRINTERS chapter to suit your
taste. For example, while BEX defines $$e0 as 10 pitch for any specific
printer, you could modify the table to make $$e0 mean headline mode.
Altering the PRINTERS chapter is discussed in Part 6.
You enter $$eX format commands in your text; BEX transforms into the appropriate printer control codes. The commands control the following features:
Not every printer has the ability to execute every one of these features. When the printer is not capable of executing a format command, then BEX doesn't send out any codes to the printer.
Also, any $$eX command in your text gets appropriate handling no matter what kind of printing device you are using. They do nit affect printing to the screen, voice and video review mode, etc. The same $$eX command has the appropriate result with whichever specific printer you use (as long as the particular task works on that specific printer). So you get the advantages of exotic printer codes without having to change your text for different printing devices. What's more you do not even have to know the printer's escape codes, except for deciding how to declare your printer in your configuration.
The $$eX commands do not work in running headers or footers. When you need bold type in a running header or footer, you have to include the appropriate escape sequence in your text, and not a $$eX command.
For a list of printers supported by BEX, see Section 4 of the Interface Guide. Part 6 tells how to add a new printer to the list of specific printers by modifying the PRINTERS chapter.
There is room in a configuration for only one list of escape codes. This means that you cannot configure one printer to be an Apple ImageWriter and another printer to be a Diablo 630. You can set up two different configurations, one for the ImageWriter and a second configuration for the Diablo.
However, you can configure two different
printers in one configuration when one of the printers is configured as a
generic printer. For example, configuring a Diablo as a specific
When you want to configure a specific printer, answer
S when BEX prompts for a printer class. You are then asked Is this a
dot matrix printer? Answer N for a daisy wheel printer. When BEX
prompts Enter printer code: press <CR> for your
choices. In Part 6 we explain how you can add a specific printer in the
PRINTERS chapter. When you do, its number is automatically added to the
list of specific printer codes.
There are hundreds of printers on the market. Obviously, this list only covers a small number of printers. If your printer is not on this list, it is probably compatible with one of the listed printers. Check your printer manual. You may find an explicit statement of compatibility or printer emulation. When the manual says a printer emulates an FX-80, for example, then configure it as an FX-80.
When your printer manual is lacking any statement of compatibility, it still may be compatible. You will have to do some research in your printer manual. First, look up the control codes for underlining and bold face printing in your printer manual. Next, boot up BEX and use option P - Printer control code display. Choose the type of printer, dot matrix or letter quality. As BEX lists each printer and its control codes, compare the codes to those of your own printer. When you find one that has codes that match perfectly with those of your printer, make note of that printer. Configure your printer as a class S - Specific printer, using that name. Everything should work well. When no listed printer is completely compatible, see Part 6: Adding your Printer to the List.
Eleven BEX $$ commands begin with $$e. These commands
signal BEX to send out the printer control codes from the PRINTERS table.
The letter e is a mnemonic for the fact that
Only the following three values for the number of characters per inch (cpi) are supported:
These commands behave very differently from the conventionaland commands. The Grade 2 translator cannot use their appearance to place italics signs, and they are not affected by the $$sp special punctuation mode mentioned previously. In general, useand where ever possible.
However, two situations call for using the escape code
underlining: when your printer does not interpret control-H to mean "back
up one character" (some dot-matrix printers fall in
Many applications of subscript and superscript will
require using the touching token. Here's an example using subscripts:
H<control-T> $$el 2<control-T>
$$em<control-T>O
(in words, that's uppercase H,
subscript, the digit 2, stop subscript, uppercase O;
otherwise known as the formula for water).
Option P - Printer control code display on the Starting Menu prints the contents of the PRINTERS chapter to the HI-RES screen. For clearer voice output BEX spells each entry, using the arrowing vocabulary. BEX prints the table entries in order. Press <space> for the next printer; press <ESC> to return to the Starting Menu. When your printer does not match any of these combinations, do not panic. You can add to the table in BEX that contains the specific printer control codes.
The chapter called PRINTERS on the Boot side of your
BEX disk contains the escape codes for the specific printers. You can
inspect and add to these lists. To get a list of the escape commands for
supported printers, use option P - Printer control code display on the
Starting Menu. This prints the contents of chapter PRINTERS:
Starting: P
This option displays the control
sequences for different brand name
printers.
Display codes for Dot Matrix?
Answer Y to this prompt only when you have a dot
matrix printer. When you have a daisy wheel printer, answer N to this
prompt. For example, answer Y when you have an ImageWriter; you answer N
when you have a Diablo 630. Consult your printer manual if you are unsure
about your type of printer.
To add your printer to the PRINTERS chapter, first make a backup copy of PRINTERS. Treat chapter PRINTERS like any other BEX chapter. Use the Editor to change the PRINTERS chapter. Page one is for letter quality printers, page two is for dot matrix printers. Page three is for the Apple LaserWriter Postscript Driver. If you're interested in how this works, write us for details.
Each item in the table is separated by a delete character. The end of the table is indicated by two backslashes. Each printer name starts with a backslash. To add a new printer to the list, delete the last backslash, then type in the printer codes. Type the codes in the order listed below. After each item, enter <DEL>. When the printer does not support a feature, enter <DEL> alone for that item.
To make it easier, make a block copy of one
printer's list as an outline for your own, and clipboard it onto the
end of the list. When you do this, make sure you have altered each entry.
End the page with <DEL> for the last entry, then two backslashes to
signal the end of the list: <DEL>\\
Here are the fourteen items required for each printer:
There are 14 delete characters in each printer's entry. Don't forget to finish the page with <DEL> and double backslash. Once you are sure you have the right codes in the table formatted properly, set up a new configuration referencing your specific printer.
You have two tests to see if you've entered the codes correctly: The first is to see if option P - Printer control code display on the Starting Menu lists your printer. This means BEX can use the table, because you've entered the correct number of <DEL>s and backslashes. The second test is in using your printer. Only by using your printer will you know for sure that you have entered the right codes.
As we mentioned at the start, BEX uses the entries from this table when it executes all $$eX commands. For example, the third entry, 10 characters per inch, defines what BEX sends to your printer as it executes the $$e0 command. If you want to, you can enter the escape codes that start double wide printing in place of the codes for ten characters per inch. When you do, $$e0 turns on double wide printing for that printer.
By now you're familiar with option R - Replace characters on the Main Menu. You know that you can use Replace characters to dramatically modify text. Contextual Replace adds two more tools to the Replace characters workbench: pattern strings and on and off strings. A contextual transformation chapter can use either the pattern string tool, the on or off string tool, or both.
In basic Replace, each transformation rule pairs a find string with a change to string. In contextual Replace, each transformation rule has three parts: the find string, the pattern string, and the change to string. Pattern strings consist of special characters, (called pattern codes), that provide you with wild card functions. One pattern code means "find this letter whether it's upper- or lowercase." Another pattern code means "find any digit." We explore all thirty-four pattern codes in great detail in Parts 3 and 4. You can combine the various pattern codes to do some pretty nifty things.
Suppose you want to change lowercase letters to uppercase letters. With basic Replace, all your finding and changing must be explicit; you must write 26 transformation rules--like the LCUC transformation chapter on the BEXtras disk. Find a and change to A; find b and change to But, and so on through Zebra. Contextual Replace's pattern strings enable you to write a single transformation rule that finds every lowercase letter and changes it to its uppercase equivalent.
In contextual Replace, the find string alone does not specify what's found. It's the combination of the find string and the pattern string that defines what's found and where the change to string is placed in the target chapter.
On and off strings allow you
to selectively Replace material within a chapter. You decide on a group of
characters that serve as a "green light" or beginning point to start
replacing. Once the program encounters this on string, it
starts executing all the
As a quick example, you could define BEX's center-and-underline command, $$h as your on string, and BEX's paragraph ( $p ) indicator as your off string. Combining these on and off strings with the single case-changing transformation rule mentioned above, you can use Replace characters to make all your headings uppercase.
The transformation chapter that accomplishes the feat in the above example is just 22 characters long. But this brevity has its costs: Contextual Replace's pattern codes are quite cryptic. In fact, contextual Replace is almost a programming language. Like any language, you need to learn the vocabulary and the syntax to become a fluent user. And as with all language acquisition, learning about contextual Replace is not a linear process. You may find yourself reading and rereading this Section, and wondering if you will ever understand it. Then one day--whoosh!--it all makes sense.
Unlike some of the other material in the BEX Dox, you
must read this Section front to back to make the most of the information
provided here. Here's why: As you begin learning any language, you
only know a few words and a few ways to put the words together. It's
difficult to be eloquent until you have a range of vocabulary and syntax
under your belt. In the following pages, we provide many elementary
samples to assist you in understanding contextual Replace's
vocabulary
In User Level Section 8, we provided a sample of typing changes directly that illuminates how basic transformation chapters are structured. The same process should provide insight into how contextual transformation chapters are put together. But before you can start typing contextual changes directly, you need to learn a little bit about on and off strings and pattern codes.
As mentioned briefly in Part 1, on and off strings allow you to activate and deactivate the execution of transformation rules within a chapter. With basic Replace, you define a unique character to serve as a terminator. The terminator defines the end of the find and change to strings. This is also true in contextual Replace. Additionally, you may define two unique strings that serve as the signals to start and stop replacement. You don't have to define on and off strings: When you enter no characters as on or off strings, then all transformation rules are executed for the entire chapter.
The on and off strings may be any length, from 1 to 80 characters. Generally, the on and off strings are different from each other. In any one transformation chapter, the characters you define as on and off strings cannot be replaced. (When you're a real hotshot you can break these rules--details in Part 5.)
As mentioned in Part 1, contextual transformation
rules consist of three parts: find, pattern, and change to strings. Each
pattern string is made up of pattern codes; each code has a specific
meaning. Each character in the find string is paired with one pattern code
in the pattern string. The combination of the find string character and
the pattern code define what happens during replacement. An example of a
pattern code is the
The best way to learn about the elements of contextual
Replace is to just dive right in and try it. Here's the first task:
In the QUANDARY chapter, change almost every appearance of
the word blind to the words vision impaired.
Don't change blind to vision impaired when the word appears
in a heading. Here's how you type those change directly:
Main: R
Replace
Chapter: QUANDARY <CR>
Chapter: <CR>
Target chapter: QUANDARY-C <CR>
Use transformation chapter: <CR>
Enter terminator: #
So far, this dialog is familiar. Press R, supply
source and target chapter names, press <CR> at the Use
transformation chapter: prompt to type changes directly, and
establish which character serves as the terminator, in this case, the
number sign.
When you enter your single terminator character at the
first Find: prompt, you signal BEX to begin contextual
Replace. Here's how it looks:
Find: #
Contextual replace
On string: <space>$p <space>#
Off string: $$p-1 $$c#
BEX responds with Contextual Replace and
prompts you to define your on and off strings. We don't want to change the
word blind to vision impaired when it appears in a heading.
The headings in the QUANDARY chapter all begin with $$c and end with a
paragraph ( $p ) indicator. We want to turn
Find: blind#
Pattern: xxxxx#
Change to: vision impaired#
Find: #
Pattern: #
Continue? Y <CR>
Chapter QUANDARY done
Replaced 9 times
Save transformation chapter: QT <CR>
Once the on and off strings are defined, you begin to create transformation rules. The transformation rule begins with a find string. In this case, we're finding the word blind. Then comes the pattern string. Each character in the find string is paired with the pattern code character in the same relative position. The first find string character pairs with the first pattern code; the second find string character pairs with the second pattern code, and so forth. In this sample, each letter in the word blind is paired with the pattern code lowercase it. There are five letters in the word blind, so there are five lowercase x pattern codes.
The change to string functions exactly as it does in basic Replace. It defines what the find string is replaced by; in this case, the words vision impaired. The combination of the find character and the pattern code define what BEX finds and changes in your chapter.
As always, the change to string always ends with the
terminator. When you press your single terminator character at both the
Find: and Pattern: prompts, you signal the end
of the list of rules. Our sample has only one transformation rule, so we
press the number sign terminator at the Find: and
Pattern: prompts. As with basic Replace, BEX prompts
Continue? Y and gives you one last chance to chicken out or
As with basic Replace, you have an opportunity to save
the list of transformation rules in a transformation chapter. In the
sample, we save the rules in a chapter named QT. When you edit the QT
chapter, you find all the characters you typed between the Use
transformation chapter: and Continue? Y prompts. It
looks like this:
## $p #$$c#blind#xxxxx#vision impaired###
All contextual transformation chapters begin with two
terminators. Between the second and third terminator are the characters
that serve as the on string. The off string
consists of the characters between the third and fourth terminator. After
these four terminators, the list of transformation rules starts.
Each contextual transformation rule consists of the find string, a terminator, the pattern string, a terminator, the change to string, and one more terminator. The list of rules in a contextual transformation chapter always ends with three terminators in a row. The total number of terminators in a contextual transformation chapter is always divisible by three.
When your pattern string contains all lowercase x pattern codes, then Replace only finds characters that exactly match the find string, removes them from the target chapter, and replaces them with the change to string. (Exactly what basic Replace does.) With the QT sample, we have only taken advantage of one of contextual Replace's tools: the ability to switch replacement on and off within a chapter.
We now change gears and discuss pattern codes in greater detail. We return to the topic of on and off strings again in Part 5.
So far, the only pattern code we've discussed is lowercase it. If that were the only pattern code, then contextual Replace wouldn't be much of an improvement over basic Replace. But lowercase x is just one of 34 pattern codes that together provide you with a flexible, if cryptic, way of manipulating text.
Every pattern string must contain some number of pattern codes. The pattern codes divide into three groups: departing codes, boundary codes, and specials. How the four specials work is a little complicated--we defer a complete explanation until Part 4.
The fifteen departing pattern codes and fifteen boundary pattern codes are drawn from the same set of fifteen letters. When the letter is lowercase, it's a departing pattern code. When the letter is uppercase, it's a boundary pattern code. Some of the fifteen letters are mnemonic, but we ran out of clever names halfway through. Part 8 and the Thick Reference Card provide an alphabetical listing of all pattern codes, so don't try too hard to memorize them all.
In the sample in Part 2, the QT contextual transformation chapter pairs a departing pattern code with every character in the find string: the lowercase letter it. The find string characters are removed from the target chapter.
When you pair a find string character with a departing pattern code, then the character in the source chapter that satisfies the combination of find and pattern strings is removed from the target chapter. The departing pattern codes show BEX where to place the change to string in the target chapter. When you pair a find string character with a boundary pattern code, then the character in the source chapter that satisfies the combination of find and pattern strings remains in the target chapter. The boundary pattern codes allow you to specify a context for replacement--one of the reasons we call this option contextual Replace.
Here's a single transformation rule that
illustrates the difference between departing and boundary pattern codes.
The task is to change the Roman numeral II to the Arabic digit 2 whenever
the text discusses literary braille. The terminator is the number sign:
Find: Grade <space> II#
Pattern: XXXXXXxx#
Change to: 2#
The first six characters of the find string are
paired with uppercase X boundary codes in the pattern string. The only
time that Roman numeral II is replaced with Arabic digit 2 is when the six
characters preceding the Roman numeral are exactly uppercase
G, lowercase r, lowercase
a, lowercase d, lowercase e,
<space>. Clever readers will note that a basic Replace rule that
finds grade 2 and changes it to Grade II
accomplishes the same task. But stay tuned! We return to this issue again
shortly.
One rule governs where boundary pattern codes may appear in the pattern string. Boundary codes cannot interrupt a string of departing pattern codes. Boundary codes can appear as the initial characters in the pattern string, as the final characters in the pattern string, or both initial and final. But they cannot appear in the middle of a string of departing pattern codes. Departing pattern codes must be contiguous. That is, departing pattern codes must touch in unbroken sequence. The departing pattern codes define where BEX places the change to string in the target chapter. If the departing pattern codes were interrupted by boundary codes, BEX wouldn't know where the change to string should go. The "II to 2" rule above shows initial boundary codes; the other possibilities are shown in some of the many samples that lie ahead.
Each pattern code is paired with one character in the find string. Therefore, the find strings and the pattern strings must be the same number of characters. When you type contextual changes directly, BEX refuses to accept a pattern string that's shorter or longer than the find string.
With this basic information under your belt, you're ready for the guided tour through the pattern codes. In the rest of this Part, we examine each pattern code in detail. Some pattern codes are pretty obvious; we just describe what they do. Many other pattern codes are more subtle. To make their function clear, we provide samples of where you could use the pattern code under discussion. Some of the samples show a lowercase departing pattern code, others show an uppercase boundary pattern code. Remember, each of the fifteen pattern code letters can be used either way.
This pattern code stands for just one character, the space. (Think of the letter b in the word blank.) It's actually a redundant pattern code, since you can also specify the space by pairing a space in your find string with the exact pattern code X or it. We included this pattern code to help make your transformation rules a little more legible, as you see in subsequent samples.
The pattern code letter W means every possible character you can have in a BEX chapter. (Think of the letter w in the word wild.) Technically, this means every ASCII character from zero to 127; this includes all control characters, the space character, all the digits and letters, all punctuation and symbols. Because the W pattern code stands for every possible character, it really does not matter which find string character you pair it to.
Before you can write successful transformation rules, you must analyze the patterns inherent in the data you're changing. Both contextual and basic Replace execute your transformation rules in order, one BEX page at a time. The program compares the first rule with each and every character. When it finds a match, then the change to string characters are inserted in the text. Once all the characters are compared with the first transformation rule, BEX repeats the process with the second transformation rule. It's crucial to consider how the initial rules in a transformation chapter may change the patterns inherent in the data you're replacing. We return to this topic again after we provide a sample using the lowercase w wildcard.
Your BEXtras disk contains a chapter named
RESUME that's stuffed full of various $$ commands. The
task here is to delete every BEX $$ format command from this chapter. This
is possible because BEX format commands follow a pattern. They all begin
with two dollar signs. They all end with a space. (We assume here that the
text is formatted with BEX's new-line ( $l ) and paragraph
( $p ) indicators. Later on in this Part, we discuss how to cope
when you format text with hard <CR> s.)
BEX format commands can vary in length. In between the
two dollar signs and the space, there are some number of lowercase letters
and frequently some digits as well. Some format commands contain
punctuation symbols, like the plus sign, minus sign, or asterisk. We write
six transformation rules to find and delete format commands from three to
seven character long.
Main: R
Replace
Chapter: RESUME <CR>
Chapter: <CR>
Target Chapter: 1RESUME-NO$ <CR>
Use transformation chapter: <CR>
Find: #
Contextual replace
On string: #
Off string: #
Find: <space> $$<space>#
Pattern: BxxB#
Change to: -#
Find: $$#
Pattern: xx#
Change to: <space> $$#
Find: $$c <space>#
Pattern: xxwB#
Change to: #
Find: $$p5<space>#
Pattern: xxwwB#
Change to: #
Find: $$ml4<space>#
Pattern: xxwwwB#
Change to: #
Find:<space>#
Pattern: xxwwwwB#
Change to: #
Find: $$ml+24<space>#
Pattern: xxwwwwwB#
Change to: #
Find: #
Pattern: #
Continue? Y <CR>
Starting to replace
Replaced 119 times
Save transformation chapter: STRIP DOLLAR <CR>
This sample shows that a contextual transformation chapter may contain more than one pattern code. In fact, a contextual transformation chapter could contain many combinations of all 34 departing and boundary pattern codes.
The second rule ensures that all subsequent $$
commands follow a regular pattern, that is, they all start with two dollar
signs and end with a space. Although we urge you to precede and follow
every $$ command with a space, it's also possible to jam a series of
$$ commands together. All the other rules in this transformation chapter
depend on a boundary space after the $$ command. As it happens, the RESUME
chapter contains this text:
... long-range planning of the firm.<space>
$$mr-8<space> $p <space> NORTH FARM COOPERATIVE ...
If the second rule did not insert a space before
every $$, then the could not be changed, since it does not end with a
space.
The next five rules specify every possible format
command, starting with three-character-long commands and working up to
seven-character-long commands. The third rule's find string is one
possible format command that's three characters long: $$c. The
pattern string begins with two lowercase x pattern codes that define
exactly two dollar signs as departing characters. While the next departing
pattern code, lowercase w, is paired with the specific character
c, because it's a total wild card, this rule also
matches $$b, $$d, $$h, $$r, and $$z. The last pattern code is a boundary
uppercase B, standing for a space. (Uppercase X means the same thing; the
B code here improves readability.) Since we enter the number sign
terminator at the Change to: prompt, the change to string is
empty. Since the initial dollar signs and the next character are replaced
by nothing, they're deleted from the target chapter.
The fourth rule's find string shows the $$p5
format command. Since the p5 characters are paired with two
When you edit the RESUME-NO. chapter, you find many
extra spaces. These spaces separated $$ commands in the original RESUME
chapter, and were "thrown away" when BEX prints. You could use the
SP2 transformation chapter on your BEXtras disk to delete all
the extra spaces. (In Part 7, we explain how SP2 works.) Once you add more
pattern codes to your repertory, it's possible to rewrite these rules
to not create those extra spaces--we provide an example of this later on
in this Part.
The order of the transformation rules in the STRIP
DOLLAR chapter is crucial. If you reversed the order of the rules,
searching first for seven-character format commands, next for
six-character, and so on, you could delete portions of your text in
addition to the $$ commands. Suppose the RESUME chapter contained the
following characters:
...<space> $l <space> $$mr8 <space> A
<space> mail-order ...
If the third transformation rule was:
Find: $$ml+24<space>#
Pattern: xxwwwwwB#
Change to: #
then the line of text would get mangled to:
...<space>$l <space><space>
mail-order <space> firm ...
Here's why: The departing pattern code w matches every possible character. The transformation rule really says, delete two dollar signs and the next five characters, as long as the space boundary exists. It just so happens that $$mr8<space>A<space> satisfies this rule. These are five characters between the initial two dollar signs and for <space> after the article .A.
$$mr8 <space> A <space> text no longer exists.
You pair the pattern code I with a letter in your find
string. Pattern code I means: find exactly this letter in two situations,
when the find string letter is uppercase and when it's
lowercase. (Think of the letter i in the word
ignore.) When the pattern code is uppercase I, then its find
string partner is a boundary, and remains in the target chapter. When the
pattern code is lowercase i, then its find string partner departs.
Here's how we modify the "II to 2" rule from the QT transformation
chapter (shown in Part 2) to make it more general (the terminator is
number sign again):
Find: Grade <space> II#
Pattern: IIIIIBxx#
Change to: 2#
This rule finds and changes the Roman numeral II in a
variety of contexts. Because the boundary code I ignores capitalization,
Grade II, grade II, and GRADE II
all satisfy the combination of find and pattern strings.
These three pattern codes focus on the letters of the
alphabet. The pattern code S stands for any letter of the
alphabet, as long as it's lowercase. (Think of the letter
s in the word small.) The pattern code U is the
opposite of S; U stands for any letter of the alphabet that's
uppercase. (Think of the letter u in the word
The task here is one we actually faced while revising this edition of the BEX Dox. In the earlier edition, when we were discussing an individual letter, we would enclose that letter in double quotes. In this edition, we italicize a single letter. We didn't want to make all those changes manually! The following sample transformation rules delete the quotes from around a single letter, and insert BEX's underlining commands,and.
The number sign serves as the terminator once more.
The first rule changes the opening double quote:
Find: <space> "A" <space>#
Pattern: BxLXB#
Change to: $$p-1 <space>#
We're assuming that a quoted single letter, together
with any touching punctuation, is preceded and followed by a space. The
find string shows the letter A, but since it's paired
with the boundary code L, this rule actually applies to every possible
letter, regardless of capitalization. With basic Replace, we would have
had to write 52 rules to accomplish the same task. It's important to
include both the opening and closing quotes, because we only want to
change double quotes around single letters. Only one pattern
code is departing; the double quote is removed from the target chapter.
The change to string consists of the start underlining command.
This rule illustrates the contiguous departers
requirement. Because departing pattern codes must touch, a pattern string
of BxLxB is not allowed. When you want to modify text on both
sides of a given group of characters, you have to work on one side first,
and then the other.
Now that we've dealt with the opening double quote,
the second rule handles the closing double quote.
Pattern: XXXXBLxB#
Change to: <space>$$uf#
Replace characters always executes the transformation
rules in the order you enter them. Therefore, after the first rule, the
emphasized letters no longer have opening quotes--they have the begin
underlining format command, $$ub. The find string for the second rule
reflects this change. The pattern string again contains a single departing
code, paired to the closing double quote. The change to string does not
need to include a space after the $$uf, because the space
after the double quote is paired with a boundary pattern code, B, which is
not changed in the target chapter. This space is still present in the
target chapter, where it serves as the space required after every BEX
format command.
These two transformation rules accomplish the task at
hand for many occurrences of quoted letters. The only exceptions are when
punctuation touch the quoted letter. One could write a series of rules
like this:
Find: <space>"A,"<space>#
Pattern: BxLXXB#
Change to:<space>#
making one rule for every possible punctuation that
touches the quote marks. In addition to the comma shown, you would need
rules for the period, exclamation point, question mark, colon, left and
right parentheses, left and right brackets, semicolon, and several more.
But (as you're probably not surprised to discover at this point)
contextual Replace has one pattern code for this situation.
The pattern code P stands for punctuation and symbols.
(Think of the letter p in the word punctuation.)
Its definition is actually a process of elimination: P means anything
that's not a letter, not a digit, not a control character, and not a
space. Note that many of the symbols on this list are not what your
English teacher taught you as "punctuation." For the record, a complete
Returning to our underlining letters transformation
chapter, the P pattern code is used to match various combinations of
punctuation touching quotations. The next two rules place the begin and
finish underlining when a symbol of enclosure--parentheses, brackets,
etc.--precedes the opening quote:
Find: <space>("A"<space>#
Pattern: BPxLXB#
Change to: <control-T><space>#
Find:
(<control-T>$$ub<space>A"<space>#
Pattern: PXXXXXBLxB#
Change to: <space>$$uf#
The <control-T> touching token is
discussed fully in Section 5, Part 1; it can replace the initial or final
space in a BEX format command. Because we only want to underline the
letter, and not the punctuation that precedes it, we need to begin
underlining after the initial punctuation. But if we inserted
<space> $$ub <space> there would be one space between the
initial punctuation and the letter. We replace the initial space with
<control-T> so we can start underlining within a BEX word. BEX
throws away the final space in the underlining command when it's
executed.
The next two rules cope with punctuation that appears
to the right of the closing quote:
Find: <space>"A".<space>#
Pattern: BxLXPB#
Change to: $$p-1 $$ub <space>#
Find: <space>$$ub<space> A".<space>#
Pattern: BXXXXBLxPB#
Change to: <control-T>$$uf<control-T>#
The first <control-T> ensures that there's
no space between the letter and final punctuation. The second
<control-T> signals the end of the $$ command, so that the
translator turns on again
Two more rules cope with the remaining possibility,
when the punctuation appears between the quoted letter and the closing
quote:
Find: <space>"A,"<space>#
Pattern: BxLPXB#
Change to: $$ub<space>#
Find: <space>$$ub<space>A."<space>#
Pattern: BXXXXBLPxB#
Change to: <space>#
We don't bother with <control-T> s here, because we use the $$sp command so BEX suppresses underlining of final periods, commas, semicolons, and colons. A more elegant transformation chapter that accomplishes the same task with fewer rules is discussed in Part 6.
The D pattern code stands for two characters: either <CR> or <space>. (Think of the letter d in the word delimiter.) A <CR> or space is how BEX defines a "word" in the Editor. So far, our examples have assumed you format your text with BEX's new-line ( $l ) and paragraph ( $p ) indicators. When you use hard <CR> s to format your text, then the B blank pattern code does not sufficiently define a word. For example, the last word on a line begins with a space but ends with <CR>. To make the STRIP DOLLAR transformation chapter work correctly when your text contains hard <CR> s, substitute the D pattern code for the B pattern code.
The E pattern code is the opposite of the D pattern
code. E stands for every character except two: <space> and
<CR>.
When we introduced the wild card pattern code W, we
showed six rules that deleted BEX format commands. Now that we have the D
pattern code in our repertory, we can write transformation rules that find
BEX format commands ending with both <space> and <CR>. And now
that the E pattern code is at our disposal, we can delete all BEX format
commands with just four rules.
Find: <space> $$ <space>#
Pattern: BxxB#
Change to: #
Find: $$p-1 $$x#
Pattern: XXe#
Change to: #
Find: $$p-1 $$<space>#
Pattern: xxb#
Change to: #
Find: $$p-1 $$<CR>
Pattern: xxD
Change to: #
The first rule finds the move-to-the-next tab
command, inserting a hyphen to separate what was separated with tabs. The
second rule finds any character following two dollar signs
except a <space> or <CR>. BEX repeatedly
executes this rule, deleting one character at a time from all format
commands. Once all the characters between the two dollar signs and the
delimiter are gone, the third and fourth rules clean up what's left.
The third rule deletes what's left when the format command was
not at the end of a line. The fourth rule deletes the two
dollars signs left when the format command ended with <CR>, but
leaves the <CR> itself. Try these rules on the RESUME chapter and
see what happens!
The Q pattern code is a combination of the D and the P pattern codes. It stands for space, <CR>, or any punctuation or symbol. Although BEX treats the punctuation touching a word as part of the word for Editor cursor movement, many times you don't want that punctuation considered as part of the word when replacing.
As we promised in User Level Section 8, contextual
Replace makes it much easier to develop keyboard shortcuts for your data
entry. Suppose you type the three characters s-b to stand for
the word SlotBuster and the two letters vi to
stand for the two words visually impaired. The following
basic Replace rules would cause problems:
Find: s-b#
Change to: SlotBuster#
Find: vi#
Change to: visually <space> impaired#
When your original text has a sentence like The
villainous has-been twirled his mustache, then the above rules
create the nonsensical the visually impairedllainous haSlotBustereen
twirled his mustache.
Aha! you think, I'll just modify the rules to include
a space before and after the shortcuts, like this:
Find: <space> s-b <space>#
Change to: <space> SlotBuster <space>#
Find: <space> vi <space>#
Change to: <space> visually <space>
impaired <space>#
but then neither keyboard shortcut is matched in this
sentence: The "s-b" card is useful to people who are vi.
The contextual Replace pattern code Q comes to the
rescue, as follows:
Find: (Vi)#
Pattern: QIxQ#
Change to: ision impaired#
Find: (s-b)#
Change to: SlotBuster#
Although the find strings show left and right
parentheses, when paired with the Q pattern code, these rules find and
change vi and s-b in a host of different
contexts, whenever the shortcut letters appear as a word. By pairing the
initial letter v with the I boundary code, we match the
shortcut Vi at the start of a sentence. The first letter of
the shortcut remains in the target chapter, with the same case as it had
in the source chapter. Villainous and has-been
don't satisfy the Q pattern code, so you don't end up with nonsense.
However, if your text contains Roman numeral six, you're in trouble. As
always, it's important to know your data before you start writing
rules.
The N pattern code stands for the digits zero through nine. (Think of the n in the word numeral.) The A pattern code stands for 62 characters; the ten digits plus any letter, lowercase or uppercase. (Think of the letter a in the word alpha-numeric.) For those who like formulas, pattern code L plus pattern code N equals pattern code A.
The pattern code letter O is a very handy code indeed. It stands for every possible character except one--the find string character it's paired with. (Think of the letter o in the words other than.) When pattern code O is paired with the dollar sign, then it matches every character except the dollar sign.
The sample task here is again drawn from our
experience at RDC. For formatting our large print output, we use JustText,
an embedded command typesetting program for the Macintosh Plus. All its
commands begin with left brace and end with right brace. The JustText
commands vary greatly in length; some are five characters long, while
others are twenty characters long. We usually prepare our text totally
with BEX, using contextual Replace to put the JustText commands where they
should go. Occasionally, however, we do data entry directly in JustText.
The transformation chapter that strips out the
JustText commands begins with several rules that change the few meaningful
JustText commands back to their BEX equivalents--we won't bother to show
you those. It's the last two rules in the transformation chapter that
show off the power of the o pattern code:
Find: {}#
Pattern: Xo#
Change to: #
Find: {}#
Pattern: xx#
Change to: #
The first rule matches the beginning of a JustText
command. The initial left brace is paired with uppercase X, so it remains
in the target chapter. The right brace, when paired with departing o,
means: delete any character except the right brace. This rule
is executed repeatedly, so it deletes each character in the JustText
command until all that's left are the initial and final braces. The
second rule deletes this residue.
The C pattern code stands for any control character--technically speaking, the ASCII values zero to 31 plus ASCII 127. (Think of the letter c in the word control.) In terms of characters you are likely to enter in a BEX chapter, the C code includes <ESC>, <CR>, <control-T>, <control-S>, <ASCII 30> (the discretionary line-break), <ASCII 31> (the discretionary hyphen), and <DEL>.
The C code can be very useful when you are working
with files from other computers that arrive at your Apple full of printer
control commands. Suppose you have a file like this; the only control
character you want to preserve is <CR>. Assuming that all printer
control commands are two characters long, you can reformat the text with
these rules:
Pattern: x#
Change to: <space>$l <space>#
Find: <ESC> O#
Pattern: cw#
Change to: #
Find: <space>$l <space>#
Pattern: xxxx#
Change to: <CR>#
These rules demonstrate another important technique
for Replace characters, both basic and contextual: temporarily
protecting a character from being changed. The first rule
changes <CR> to the new-line ( $l ) indicator. The only
control characters that remain are ones you don't want, so the second rule
deletes them. The third rule reverses the action of the first rule,
changing the new-line indicators back to hard <CR> s.
We've now defined the fifteen departing and boundary pattern codes. We've also provided samples for most of them. Now it's time to dive into the mysterious world of the specials.
The four specials "break the rules" we've established so far. But in return for this inconsistency, you get the ability to do even niftier things. The special pattern codes are the caret, uppercase Z, uppercase Y, and the current terminator. Let's look at these in reverse order.
In the very first contextual Replace sample, the
pattern string consisted of all lowercase x pattern codes. Just to make
your life a little easier, there's a shorter way to indicate that you
want an exact, departing match for every character in your find string.
Instead of entering a lowercase x for every character in your find string,
enter your single terminator character at the
Pattern: prompt. The original rule looked like this:
Find: blind#
Pattern: xxxxx#
Change to: vision <space> impaired#
The next sample functions identically to this rule,
using the pattern string shortcut:
Find: blind#
Pattern: #
Change to: vision <space> impaired#
The uppercase letters Y and Z are like boundary pattern codes with one difference. All the boundary codes result in no change in your target chapter. Y and Z create a subtle change in your target chapters. When the combination of a find string character and the pattern code Y or Z is satisfied, the find string character changes its case. Uppercase Y stands for any letter, just like the letter code L; but when the find string partner is a lowercase letter, then that letter is uppercase in your target chapter. Uppercase Z stands for any letter; when the find string partner is an uppercase letter, it becomes lowercase in your target chapter.
Up until now, all the pattern strings we've shown
contain at least one departing character. Sometimes, however, you don't
want to remove any of the characters in your source chapter
that satisfy the combination of find string and pattern string. The caret
^ character means: insert the change to string
characters at this point. With this special pattern code, you can
Now that the full truth is out, we can state the full requirements for pattern strings. A pattern string cannot consist solely of boundary pattern codes. A pattern string can contain any number of boundary pattern codes, plus either exactly one caret, or at least one departing character. When a pattern string does not contain the caret, then the number of characters in the pattern string is exactly the same as in the find string. When a pattern string contains a caret, then the pattern string is one character longer than the find string.
You cannot have more than one caret in any one pattern string, because the caret shows BEX where to insert the change to string. If you had two carets, BEX would not know where to put the new characters. Any one pattern string can not contain both a caret and any departing pattern codes. When you find yourself wanting to mix and match this way, you need to write two separate rules.
You've written a report with many large dollar amounts
and other numbers in it, but you realize that you've left out all the
commas between the hundreds and the thousands places. You can insert the
comma using the caret code (the number sign is the terminator):
Find: 4321.#
Pattern: N^NNNQ#
Change to: ,#
This rule matches any four numbers, followed by
punctuation or a delimiter, and inserts a comma between the first and
second numbers. This takes care of a lot of cases. It doesn't matter
whether the numbers are whole or followed by two decimal places or whether
it's prec $$ by a dollar sign. However, this rule only works for
numbers in the thousands: when your data contains millions and billions,
you need to write more rules.
Find: -4321.#
Pattern: ON^NNNQ#
Change to: ,#
That's better! Now the rule matches four digits
followed by a space or delimiter, and inserts a comma between the first
and second digits, unless the first number is preceded by a
hyphen.
You can make great use of the caret when the change to
string is empty. The following single rule accomplishes the same task as
the 106-character UCLC basic transformation chapter on your BEXtras disk.
Find: A#
Pattern: ^Z#
Change to: #
The find string contains the letter A.
When paired with the boundary pattern code Z, this means find every letter
and make it lowercase. A pattern string can not consist totally of
boundary codes. We precede the Z with the caret, to mean insert the
change to characters here then pull the sneaky trick of creating an
empty change to string. No text is inserted; the target chapter contains
all lowercase letters.
With basic Replace characters, you can not selectively change material within a chapter. Instead, you have to break out your selections into separate chapters, Replace as required, then merge (or clipboard) the changed text back in to your original.
Contextual Replace's on and
off strings save you a lot of extra work. In Part 2, we
illustrated on and off strings by changing one word everywhere
except in a heading, which began with $$c
It's also possible to explicitly insert
characters whose only purpose is switching Replace off and on. You want
these characters to be very distinctive; three percent signs
%%% makes a good on string, and three ampersands
&&& makes a good off string. In part 7, we
discuss the FIX TEXT contextual transformation chapter, which
reformats textfiles into BEX chapters. When your textfile contains tabular
material, FIX TEXT would cause havoc. As supplied on your BEXtras disk,
FIX TEXT does not have on or off strings. When reformatting tabular
textfiles, insert explicit on and off strings in the data and in FIX TEXT.
BEX's Grade 2 translator recognizes BEX's own underlining commands. So $$ub both begins underlining in print, and marks the beginning of braille italics. Likewise, $$uf finishes underlining and ends braille italics. When the translator encounters $$ub, it begins placing braille italics signs (dot 4-6, the period in screen braille) before every word. When the translator encounters $$uf, it stops placing italics signs. When the underlined passage is greater than three words, then the first word gets a double italics sign (two dot 4-6's or two periods in screen braille) and the last underlined word has a single italics sign.
Braille italics are used to represent various typeface
changes in inkprint. But with some books, the braille reader must be able
to distinguish between three typefaces: plain, italic, and
bold. Placement of boldface indicators follows the same rule as italics
indicators. Three or less bold words each begin with the single boldface
indicator _. underbar, period. The first word in a passage
longer than three begins with the double boldface _.. underbar, two periods, and then the single boldface
indicator precedes the last bold word.
Two of BEX's specific printer commands control boldface in print: $$eb begins boldface and $$ec returns to regular print. But the Grade 2 translator can't use $$eb and $$ec to place boldface signs. When the book you're transcribing contains extensive text that requires boldface indicators, it's time-consuming to place them all by hand. Combining the Grade 2 translator plus off and on strings, contextual Replace can automatically place boldface indicators.
It's a three step process. Enter $$eb and $$ec in your inkprint text. Then use basic Replace to transform $$eb to $$ub $$eb and $$ec to $$uf $$ec. The translator ignores the $$eb and $$ec commands; but because the $$ub and $$uf commands are there, it places italics signs as always.
The last step is using a contextual Replace
transformation chapter with an on string of $$ub $$eb and an off string of
$$uf $$ec. This transformation chapter changes . the italics
indicator to a boldface indicator. The on and off strings prevent
every italic sign from changing to boldface. This means that
the only time italics signs are changed to boldface signs is when the
italics signs appear between $$ub $$eb and $$uf $$ec.
BEX's formatter knows that braillers can neither underline nor do boldface. When you print your final grade 2 chapters to the braille previewer or an actual brailler, BEX suppress the action of all $$ub, $$uf, $$eb, and $$ec format commands.
To get automatic braille boldface indicators, you must
transform your data twice. In your inkprint data entry, type $$eb before
boldface text and $$ec when you return to plain text. Before translation,
use this basic Replace transformation:
Find: <space> $$eb <space>#
Change to: <space>$$ub $$eb <space>#
Find: <space> $$ec <space># $$uf
Change to: <space> $$ec <space>#
Now you are ready to translate your inkprint into
grade 2 or grade 1 braille. The translator places italics signs
appropriately between all $$ub and $$uf underlining commands.
The following contextual transformation chapter
changes the italics signs to boldface signs.
Enter terminator: #
Find: #
Contextual replace
On string: $$p-1 $$ub $$eb# $$uf
Off string: $$p-1 $$ec#
Find: <space>.#
Pattern: B^X#
Change to: _#
Find: #
Pattern: #
Continue? Y <CR>
The first find string character, <space>, when
paired with a boundary B, defines the context at the beginning of a word.
The period, when paired with boundary pattern code X, defines the first
character of an italicized word in braille. There may be two italics signs
or only one, but we actually don't care: we just want to insert the
underbar that changes the italics sign to a boldface sign.
The pattern code meanings are for print data, which is important to keep in mind when writing contextual rules for braille data. For example, the P punctuation pattern code does not match braille punctuation, where a comma is represented with a screen braille digit 1 and the period is screen braille digit 4.
#stop and one rule contains three w departing
pattern codes in a row. When Replace characters encounters
<space># it satisfies the rule, and the first two
characters of your off string depart--and your replacement never turns
off! The solution is to avoid the w wildcard. In this situation, it's
safe to substitute the o departing pattern code paired with number sign.
That way the off string is not affected by the replacement.While we don't recommend you find and change your
exact on or off strings in the same replacement, you can modify text
that's partly the same as your off strings. As BEX replaces
characters, it works a character at a time. Suppose your off string is the
first five letters of the alphabet: ABCDE. You
can find and change <space> ABC because
BEX hasn't encountered the full off string yet. But if your change deletes
the A, B, or C, you can find
yourself in deep trouble, because the full off string no longer exists.
You have to be careful when pulling this trick; we only use this technique
to insert material.
BEX's center-and-underline command, $$h can underline
for quite a while if you forget to end the heading with a paragraph
( $p ) indicator. Using a transformation rule that partly
overlaps the off string, you can insert the command to end underlining.
Here's how:
Enter terminator: #
Find: #
Contextual replace
On string: $$p-1 $$h#
Off string: <space>$l <space>#
Find: d <space>$l#
Pattern: WbXX#
Find: #
Pattern: #
Continue? Y <CR>
Starting to replace ...
The first character in the find string, when paired
with the boundary pattern code W, stands in for last character of the
heading. The next three characters are three-fourths of the off string,
but the missing last fourth is enough of an overlap to make the
transformation possible.
The transformation chapter named MAKE CON
on your BEXtras disk helps you transform a basic Replace transformation
chapter into a contextual transformation chapter. It places its own on and
off strings, which are the same character, then removes them at the end.
MAKE CON clearly shows just how far you can push contextual Replace! We
won't attempt to explain how it works, but it does work.
Here's how you use it. Suppose you have a basic
Replace chapter named HARPO whose terminator is vertical bar.
As supplied on the BEXtras disk, MAKE CON assumes that the basic Replace
terminator is vertical bar. Edit HARPO and insert two characters at the
beginning: <control-A> <space>
Quit HARPO, and run Replace characters. HARPO is your
source chapter, the target chapter is named ZEPPO and the
transformation chapter is MAKE CON. Once the transformation is finished,
edit ZEPPO. Delete the <control-A> <space> at the
start, and insert three terminators there. Advance to the end and add two
terminators. Presto! ZEPPO is now a contextual transformation chapter.
When your basic Replace chapter uses a different terminator character, then modify MAKE CON. MAKE CON'S own terminator is slash. When your basic Replace terminator is any character except slash, simply use basic Replace to change vertical bar to your terminator.
Congratulations! You've plowed your way through some pretty heavy material. In this Part of Section 6, we discuss various techniques to help you make the most of contextual Replace. First, we discuss BEX's error checking of pattern strings. Then we provide guidelines for preventing data salad. We present some thoughts on "elegance" in transformation chapters: how to get the most done with the fewest rules. Finally, we offer some hints on creating contextual transformation chapters in the Editor, and making hard copy versions of contextual transformation chapters under development.
Here's a general hint to make contextual Replace more enjoyable: Obtain a memory expansion card, and configure an extended disk system with RAM drives. While RAM drives are always fun, they're especially useful when you're creating contextual transformation chapters. When BEX is reading and writing to a RAM drive, it only takes a minute or two to test the reliability of a transformation chapter. The less time required for you to test, the more likely that you actually perform the tests that guarantee smooth sailing.
When BEX encounters the three terminators that define the end of a contextual transformation chapter, BEX stops looking for more transformation rules. You can insert any text you wish after the three terminators. It's not always readily apparent what purpose a contextual transformation chapter serves, especially when it's been three months since you wrote it. We always add a sentence or two describing the function of the transformation chapter, as well as when it's best used, and the date it was last changed.
Even when you think you're a real
contextual hotshot, it's possible to do truly idiotic things. While
we were writing this
Enter terminator: #
Find: #
Contextual replace
On string: #
Off string: #
Find: <space>$p <space>#
Pattern: #
Change to: <control-P>#
Find: <space>$l <space>#
Pattern: #
Change to: <control-L>#
Find: <space> A <space>#
Pattern: Q^LQ#
Change to: $$p-1<space>#
Find: $$p-1<space> A <space>#
Pattern: XXXXBLQ^#
Change to: <space><space>#
Find: $$p-1<space>#
Pattern: #
Change to: $$p-1<space>#
Find: $$p-1<space>#
Pattern: #
Change to: $$p-1<space>#
Find: <control-L>#
Pattern: #
Change to: <space>$l <space>#
Find: <control-P>#
Pattern: #
Change to: <space>$p <space>#
Find: #
Pattern: #
The first two and last two rules work fine. The first
two temporarily change the new-line and paragraph indicators to control
characters, so the ( $l ) and ( $p ) are out of
harm's
But the rules in between the first and last two did
not work at all how we'd planned. Every time the letter a
appeared as an article, as in "this move was a mistake," the article was
underlined. Additionally, when a word ended with apostrophe
s or apostrophe t, the last letter was split
off and underlined. The third rule's pattern code of
Q^LQ# was the source of the problem. We thought one rule
could catch both single letters alone and single letters in quotes. But
the final two characters in a word like don't also satisfied
the pattern code. Fortunately, we used different source and target chapter
names, so we just sighed and laughed at ourselves. (In fact, we were so
embarrassed that we just made the changes manually. Everyone has a bad day
sometime.)
The moral is: Never underestimate the power of contextual Replace to change something you never considered. When you're developing a contextual transformation chapter, never use the same name for source and target. Only when you've tested your chapter with a broad variety of data is it safe to use the S naming method.
When you start out writing contextual transformation chapters, it's easiest to type changes directly. BEX prompts you for the find, pattern, and change to strings, so you're less likely to get lost. BEX also provides some rudimentary error-checking for your pattern codes. This error-checking happens both when you type changes directly and when BEX is executing rules from a transformation chapter on disk. How you recover from the error depends on when it occurs.
When you directly type a character that's not one
of the 34 valid pattern codes, then BEX beeps twice, prompts Illegal
and throws away both the find
and bogus pattern strings you've just entered. BEX reprompts
Find: to give you a chance to do it right.
When you directly type the wrong number of pattern
codes in your pattern string, then BEX beeps, prompts Character
counts are not equal and again discards the most recent find and
pattern strings. Then BEX reprompts Find: to give you another
chance. Finally, when your pattern string contains all boundary codes, but
it doesn't contain the caret, then BEX beeps twice, prompts Pattern
string needs caret or one departing code and ignores the most
recent find and pattern strings. Again, BEX reprompts Find:
and waits for your next attempt.
You can take advantage of these error-checking
routines when you realize that your find or pattern strings are simply
wrong. Suppose you enter the wrong characters in the find string; type
<space><terminator> as a pattern string and BEX
rebels, giving you an opportunity to try again.
Whenever BEX finds problems with a pattern string, it always issues these error messages--even when the problems occur with a transformation chapter loaded from disk. When you first begin to write contextual transformation chapters in the Editor, you're guaranteed to run into this situation at least once. When your pattern strings are too long, too short, or contain invalid characters, then BEX issues one of the error messages, right in the middle of the act of replacing. Any and all correct transformation rules are executed for each BEX page until BEX encounters the faulty pattern string. Then BEX saves the first page, and goes on to the next page, again reporting the error when it encounters the faulty pattern string. In short, BEX executes as many rules as it can, saves the target chapter, and reports the number of times replaced.
An example may make this clearer. Suppose you created
the DUMB TRANS transformation chapter:
#### #b#@#99#===# ###
The first rule changes every <space> to an
at-sign. The second rule's pattern string does not contain any of the
34 valid pattern codes. You ask BEX to use this DUMB TRANS chapter to
Replace characters in the RESUME chapter. Once you specify the different
target chapter, like RESUME-TEST, and commence replacing, you hear an
enormous number of clicks as BEX changes all the spaces to at-signs. Then
you hear two beeps and the Illegal character in pattern
string error message. Next, you hear and see a BEX program function
that's usually hidden from you; BEX saving the binary file of the
target chapter page. The last thing you hear is Replaced 408
times after BEX has saved the imperfectly replaced RESUME-TEST
chapter. If the RESUME chapter had two pages, you would hear the error
message twice.
BEX issues this error message at the exact point when it tries to execute the transformation rule with the faulty pattern string. It's instructive to take a look at these half-baked target chapters; you may be able to see exactly where you erred. Once you're comfortable with editing transformation chapters, you can edit a fault chapter and insert two extra terminators after a rule to end the transformation chapter prematurely. Run Replace again; if you don't get the error messages, then delete the extra terminators and insert them in the next rule.
Whenever you specify the Ready chapter by its right
bracket name, BEX assumes that the Ready chapter contains data, even if
it's empty. You can take advantage of this fact to quickly create a
contextual transformation chapter. Specify the Ready chapter as both
source and target chapter and type your changes directly. After you press
<CR> at the Continue? Y prompt, BEX almost instantly
tells you Replaced 0 times and allows you to save the
transformation chapter. You can save it to disk, or even in the Ready
chapter, and then edit the transformation chapter you've just created.
The time Replace characters requires to process your chapters depends on the number and nature of rules in your transformation chapter. You want to have as few rules as possible, but you also want to transform as many characters as possible with each rule.
When we introduced the L and P pattern codes in Part
3, we described transformation rules that changed single letters in quotes
to underlined single letters. The transformation rules there more-or-less
got the job done, but there's a more elegant solution. The following
set of rules is shorter and handles every combination of
punctuation touching the quoted letter, even when the source text contains
("a," "b," and "c").
Enter terminator: #
Contextual Replace
On string: #
Off string: #
Find: "a"<space>#
Pattern: xLXB#
Change to: <control-T><space>#
Find: "a".#
Pattern: xLXP#
Change to: <control-T><space>#
Find: "a."<space>#
Pattern: xLPXB#
Change to: <control-T><space>#
Find: <space><control-T>#
Pattern: xx#
Change to: <space>#
Find: $$ub<space>a"<space>#
Pattern: XXXXBLxB#
Change to: <space>#
Find: $$ub<space>a".#
Pattern: XXXXBLxP#
Change to: <control-T><control-T>#
Pattern: XXXXBLPxB#
Change to: <space>#
Find: #
Pattern: #
The first three rules change any initial
quote touching a single letter to <control-T>$$ub<space> even
though many situations won't require the initial touching token. The point
here is that when you don't need the touching token,
it's obvious. When underlining does not begin mid-word, the data
looks like <space><control-T> and the fourth rule
deletes this unnecesary <control-T>. The moral is: when a few rules
can insert more than you need, you can then delete the
"extra" later on in the transformation chapter.
The fifth, sixth, and seventh rules demonstrate find and pattern strings that search for the minimum required. It doesn't really matter whether the underlining begins mid-word or not, so the find string for these three rules begins with the initial dollar sign of $$ub.
Also in Part 3, we demonstrated the o pattern code with two rules that delete all JustText typesetting commands. These commands always begin with left brace and end with right brace. The two rules delete every character between a left brace and a right brace, then delete the left brace-right brace pair that's left. While this approach is remarkably economical, it's also quite slow. Replace characters ends up comparing every character in the source chapter against the transformation rule at least four times, so it requires quite a while to strip out the commands.
A much more efficient procedure would use a few more
rules:
Find: {}}}}}#
Pattern: Xooooo#
Change to: #
Find: {}}}#
Pattern: Xooo#
Change to: #
Pattern: Xo#
Change to: #
Find: {}#
Pattern: xx#
Change to: #
The first rule deletes a six-character JustText
command in one swipe; the second deletes a four-character command; the
third deletes any commands that are left, and the fourth rule again
deletes the residual braces. The second version accomplishes the same task
in around half the time as the first.
Whenever you type changes directly, make a habit of
saving the transformation chapter, then editing it. (It's a good time
to add the comments we mentioned above.) The more exposure you have to
these chapters, the easier it becomes to create them from scratch. As we
mentioned in Part 2, contextual transformation chapters contain every
keystroke entered between the Enter terminator: and
Continue? Y prompts. Whenever possible, use <CR> as
your terminator. It makes moving around in the Editor much simpler since
you can control-G and control-R between strings. To move to the next rule,
you enter control-A 3 control-L.
The one essential prerequisite is knowing how many terminators you need. Every transformation rule has three terminators. The total number of terminators in a contextual transformation chapter is three times the number of rules, plus six. Four of that extra six are at the start of the chapter, and the last two finish up the list of rules.
Here's a quick review of the structure of a
contextual transformation chapter. All contextual transformation chapters
begin with two terminators. The on string, if you have one, goes between
the second and third terminators. The off string, if you have one, goes
between the third and fourth terminator. After these four terminators, the
list of transformation rules
Every rule follows the pattern of find string, terminator, pattern string, terminator, change to string, terminator. Remember the pattern string shortcut: an empty pattern string specifies an exact departing match for all characters in the find string.
The list of rules always ends with at least three terminators in a row. When your last change to string is empty, then the chapter ends with four terminators in a row. When your last pattern string uses the single terminator shortcut, and your last change to string is empty, then your chapter ends with five terminators in a row.
Basic Replace characters can help you be sure that you
have the correct number of terminators. In this sample, we are creating a
WHITE contextual transformation chapter; its terminator is
the vertical bar:
Main: R
Replace
Chapter: WHITE <CR>
Chapter: <CR>
Target chapter: WHITE <CR>
Use transformation chapter: <CR>
Enter terminator: <CR>
Find: |<CR>
Change to: |<CR>
Find: <CR>
Continue? Y <CR>
Starting to replace ...
All this replacement does is change the vertical bar
terminator to itself. When it's finished, BEX announces
Replaced # times and lets you save the transformation
chapter. That # corresponds to the number of terminators in the
transformation chapter; when it is divisible by three, then you have
probably put terminators in all the right places.
Even if you need to use the <CR> character as data in your rules, you can write a "development" version of the transformation chapter that uses <CR> as terminator. In addition to making it easier to move around in the Editor, when your terminator is <CR> it's much easier to make a hard copy printout of your work-in-progress.
Here's how: in your development version, use a
different unique character to stand for <CR>. Suppose your
transformation chapter does not contain any tildes. You put tilde in the
development version wherever you want <CR> in your final
transformation chapter. Once all your development work is complete, you
use basic Replace characters on the development chapter to create the
final version. In this case, you change the <CR> terminator to
another character, like vertical bar, then change tilde to <CR>.
Suppose your development chapter is named DEV and
WHITE will be the name for the final transformation chapter.
Once the DEV chapter is ready, you go through this dialogue:
Main: R
Replace
Chapter: DEV <CR>
Chapter: <CR>
Target chapter: WHITE <CR>
Use transformation chapter: <CR>
Enter terminator: #
Find: <CR>#
Change to: |#
Find: ~#
Change to: <CR>#
Find: #
Continue? Y <CR>
Starting to replace ...
Don't get dizzy! Using Replace characters to help you
create contextual transformation chapters is so self-referential that you
Finally, the Clipboard can be very helpful while creating contextual transformation chapters in the Editor. You can type the find string, then copy and insert it as the basis of the pattern string. Overwrite each of the find string letters with the pattern code you've chosen. When you write a series of rules that address slightly different boundary contexts, copy one rule then use it as the template for the next rule.
Because the pattern codes are so cryptic, it's often difficult to hold all the interactions in your head. In our experience, it's a lot easier to do your design work in a hard copy medium. As we mentioned in the STRIP DOLLAR sample in Part 3, the order of the transformation rules is often crucial to their success. When you're working in hard copy, you can think up all the possible rules, then shuffle them around to get the optimal order.
To make useful hard copy print or braille editions of your transformation chapters, you must change your terminator into a two-character sequence; a unique character plus <CR>. The <CR> makes each string a new line. The unique character $$vt $$vp aM6:42 alerts you to an empty string, which
would otherwise be a blank line. When <CR> is used for data, then you must replace it with a different, printable character. For example, when your transformation chapter contains neither the vertical bar nor the lowercase letter z, change every appearance of <CR> as data to lowercase z. Then change your terminator character to vertical bar followed by <CR>.
You must also change any other control characters in your rules to printable characters, or you may find your printer doing some pretty strange things. When the spaces in your rules are important, change the space character to a printable character as well.
When your transformation chapters contain $$ commands,
you have to "defuse" them in order to make a useful hard copy.
Here's how you make a printable version of the
FIX TEXT contextual transformation chapter on your BEXtras
disk. It's a pretty stinky sample, since FIX TEXT contains <CR>
s as data, several other control characters, and BEX $$ commands. (We have
an ulterior motive for picking this sample; in Part 7 of this Section, we
analyze how FIX TEXT works.)
First, edit the chapter and see what's there. To make a printable version, you must replace non-printing characters with printing characters. But you must choose printing characters that are not already present in the transformation chapter. If you don't then you would not be able to make sense of the print out.
The terminator is slash. There are four control characters: <CR>, <control-J>, <control-H>, and <control-T>. The simplest system is to substitute the plain letter for the control letter. Locate for lowercase m, j, h, and t: you get four beeps because those letters aren't in FIX TEXT. Great! That means you can substitute m for <CR>, j for <control-J>, h for <control-H>, and t for <control-T>.
There are many meaningful spaces in FIX TEXT. A good
way to represent spaces is with the underbar. First, check to see if
it's already used. When you locate for the underbar you get several
hits, so that won't work. Try the asterisk character--none are present in
FIX TEXT, so you can use the asterisk to represent spaces. You're ready to
type these changes:
Replace
Chapter: FIX TEXT <CR>
Chapter: <CR>
Target chapter: PRINTABLE FT <CR>
Use transformation chapter: <CR>
Enter terminator: <control-H>
Warning! Arrow keys used as data!
Enter terminator: #
Find: <CR>#
Change to: m#
Find: <control-H>#
Change to: h#
Find: <control-T>#
Change to: t#
Find: <control-J>#
Change to: j#
Find: /#
Change to: /<CR>#
Find: <space>#
Change to: *#
Find: #
Continue? Y <CR>
Starting to replace
Replaced 155 times
Save transformation chapter: SHOW CODES <CR>
Remembering back to User Level Section 8, the left
and right arrow keys are generally used to correct your strings as you
type them directly. When you need to include <control-H> and
<control-U> in your strings, you press the left arrow at the
Enter terminator: prompt, as shown above. From that point,
you have to type your rules perfectly, since you can't use the left and
right arrow to fix mistakes.
Before you can actually print the PRINTABLE
FT chapter, you must edit it and insert the $$z command at the very
beginning.
FIX TEXT and SP2 are two
contextual transformation chapters on your BEXtras disk. In this Part, we
examine what they do and how they do it.
SP2 deletes all occurrences of two spaces, except when they appear at the end of a sentence. FIX TEXT reformats data that's been created by Input through slot and Read textfile. This data generally is formatted as if it's been printed to disk; more details on Input through slot are available in User Level Section 12. Textfiles are discussed in Learner Level Section 12 and User Level Section 10.
Copy the FIX TEXT transformation chapter before you edit it, so you don't have to worry if you change something by mistake. When you have a hard copy print or braille device, print out the PRINTABLE FT chapter you created by following the instructions in Part 6.
FIX TEXT changes a blank line plus many spaces to lines beginning with the BEX format command $$c; changes two <CR> s to a BEX paragraph indicator; changes a single <CR> to a space; changes two spaces to one; and attempts to place BEX's underline begin and finish commands where ne $$.
Most of its work could be accomplished with plain Replace characters. However, since the rules for placing underlining commands had to be Contextual, all of FIX TEXT had to be written in contextual form. As supplied on the BEXtras disk, FIX TEXT does not contain on or off strings. After we examine how the rules work in detail, we discuss when on and off strings would be appropriate.
The 16 rules in FIX TEXT are divided into two broad categories. The first six rules deal with <CR> s and spaces. In these rules, each find string is followed by two slashes; the pattern string shortcut that means an exact, departing match for every find string character.
The first rule deletes linefeeds, also known as <control-J> s. Many IBM programs end each line with two characters, <CR><control-J>, while most Apple programs end each line with just <CR>. By deleting the <control-J> s first, subsequent rules apply equally to both type of line endings.
The second rule changes two <CR> s followed by 11 spaces into two <CR> s followed by BEX's $$c centering command. We settled on 11 spaces as a good solution through trial and error. If the number of spaces is too small, then the rule would be satisfied by the beginning of every paragraph. When your source material contains deeply indented paragraphs then FIX TEXT would think every line should be centered. But if the number is too large, then only very short headings satisfy the rule, and you would need to place the $$c commands manually.
Rule three changes three <CR> s to two <CR> s, and the rule four turns two <CR> s into BEX's paragraph ( $p ) indicator. We assume here that the source text always has at least one blank line between paragraphs. Now that we've defined the paragraphs, all other <CR> s are superfluous; rule five changes any <CR> s that are left into a space.
The sixth rule changes two spaces to one space. When you want to have two spaces at the end of sentences, use the SP2 transformation chapter on the BEXtras disk after you've used FIX TEXT.
The remaining ten rules cope with underlining and are
fully contextual. To make sense of these rules, you must first analyze
what underlined text looks like. We assume that the source computer
accomplishes underlining in the same way BEX does:
There are three possible contexts: when underlining begins; when underlining ends, and underlining "midstream."
Understanding midstream underlining provides the key: <control-H>, underbar, character, <control-H>, underbar, character, over and over. We want to delete the <control-H> s and underlines in this context.
The pattern for the beginning of underlining is defined as not like midstream underlining. When underlining starts, the first four characters are a character that's not an underbar; then the underlined character; <control-H>; underbar. We want to place BEX's $$ub UNDERLINE begin command here.
When underlining ends, the final characters are: last underlined character; <control-H>; underbar; then a word delimiter, like <space>, <CR>, or punctuation. We want to place BEX's $$uf underline finish command here. If the word delimiter is not a <space>, then we want to place <control-T> s around the underline finish command. (The <control-T> touching token is explained in Section 5, Part 1. It can replace the initial and final spaces in BEX $$ format commands.)
Rule seven searches for the beginning of underlining: it inserts dollar, dollar, lowercase u, lowercase b, <space> when the data does not follow the midstream pattern. The combination of the find and pattern strings specifies any character except underbar, followed by three boundary characters: the total wildcard W, then exactly <control-H> and underbar. The caret appears after the boundary O, so the-mand is inserted before the first underlined character.
The seventh rule inserts the-mand right next to
punctuation. Suppose you underline the first syllable of the word
despair enclosed in parentheses; your source data looks like
this:
the first four characters match the seventh rule, so
your data is transformed to
(<space> d <control-H>_e
<control-H>_s <control-H>_pair)
The eighth rule changes the
$$ub<space> to
<control-T><control-T> The initial
<control-T> means BEX's formatter recognizes the underline begin
command; the final <control-T> means the Grade 2 translator
recognizes the end of the $$ command, so the following characters are
translated.
Rule nine deletes all <control-H>-underbar pairs that occur midstream. The initial <control-H> and underbar are paired with lowercase x, so they depart from the target chapter. Because the boundary patterns are total wildcard followed by exactly <control-H> underbar, this rule does not match the last underlined character in a word.
The tenth rule matches the last underlined character in a word, because the boundary character in the pattern string is D, standing for space or <CR>. The <control-H> and underbar are replaced with space, dollar, dollar, lowercase u, lowercase b. BEX's underline finish command requires a final space or <CR>; it's supplied by the character in the source chapter that matched boundary code D.
At this point, the only situation where <control-H>-underbar pairs remain in the source chapter is the pattern of last underlined character, <control-H>, underbar, punctuation. Rule 11 matches this situation. The question mark in the find string is paired with the E boundary code, meaning match everything except a <space> or <CR>. The <control-H> and underbar that depart are replaced with the underline finish command, preceded and followed by the <control-T> touching token.
Rule 12 gets rid of underline begin immediately followed by underline finish. This pattern appears when the formatter that did the underlining in the source chapter suppressed underlining for the space between words.
When your source text contains tables or columns, FIX TEXT'S rules would create a disaster. Suppose you have a table with 6 columns and 15 rows printed to an 80-character carriage width. If it's single-spaced, FIX TEXT changes the <CR> s that define the end of each line to a space--and presto, you lose the line-oriented structure of the data. FIX TEXT would also change the multiple spaces between each column into a single space. Since FIX TEXT is a contextual transformation chapter, you can simply switch off the execution of its rules for the line-oriented portions of the text.
Since FIX TEXT as supplied on the BEXtras disk does not contain on or off strings, you can insert whatever characters you prefer. The terminator in FIX TEXT is the slash. The first slash in the chapter announces "Slash is the terminator." The second slash announces, "This is a contextual rather than plain transformation chapter." The third and fourth slashes are place holders for on and off strings respectively.
For the sake of example, choose @@text
for the on string and @@lines for the off string. Edit a copy
of FIX TEXT. Place your cursor on the third slash; press control-I, type
the six characters @@text and press right arrow. Now press
control-I, type the seven characters @@lines and press right
arrow again.
Place these on and off strings where appropriate in
your source chapter before using FIX TEXT. Whenever a transformation
chapter contains on or off strings, Replace begins off. None
of the rules are executed until the program encounters the first on
string. So you must insert @@text at the first occurrence of
non-tabular material in your source chapter. When you @@lines immediately before it and
@@text immediately after it. Now you can use Replace
characters on the modified source chapter, with the modified FIX TEXT as
your transformation chapter; it won't destroy the format of tables.
To really automate the process, you write a
transformation chapter specifically designed to reformat tables; in this
chapter, make @@lines the on string and @@text
the off string. The last step is removing @@lines and
@@text from the transformed chapter. Naturally, you write a
transformation chapter that just deletes the on and off strings.
Correctly formatted braille and typeset print always contains just one space at the end of a sentence. On the other hand, typewritten print contains two spaces at the end of a sentence. When you enter text with two spaces, it's child's play to delete the extra space before you make braille or typeset text. But when your original text contains just one space after a sentence, it's massively boring to insert the extra space by hand to make correctly formatted print.
The contextual transformation chapter named
SP2 is on the BEXtras disk. (We originally thought of calling
it SPACE THE FINAL FRONTIER, but that's a lot to type.) Use SP2
whenever you want to create appropriately formatted typewriter-like print
output. The rules in this chapter delete all occurrences of two spaces,
then add two spaces after sentences, then delete two spaces after
abbreviations.
Before you examine SP2 in the Editor, make a copy. Its terminator is <CR>. To make a print or braille hard copy, follow the suggestions in Part 6; replace space with some printable character. The discussion that follows assumes you have hard copy in hand.
Before we analyze each of the 24 rules in this
chapter, let's sit back and think about how sentences appear in text.
Since we're going to be talking about sentences a lot, we use a shorthand:
The first character in S2 is either an uppercase letter or punctuation, like a single or double quote. It's unlikely that S2 begins with a digit, as most style books frown on this. (When a number comes first in a sentence, most style books recommend you spell out the number in words.) The last character in S1 is always punctuation.
However, we can't define that punctuation with the P pattern code, because that code includes a number of symbols that can appear within a sentence. The percent sign and the asterisk are just two samples of symbols frequently found in the middle of a sentence. Without the P code, we must develop a list of possible sentence-ending punctuation--and that's why SP2 contains so many rules.
The final analytical challenge concerns abbreviations. The period character does double duty. Most sentences end with period, but period often appears inside a sentence in abbreviations like Mrs. and Still. SP2 tries to define several patterns of letters that abbreviations can follow; SP2 attempts to delete two spaces when they follow these patterns and end with a period.
The next-to-last sentence in the previous paragraph is a sample of a situation where SP2 fails. The period serves as the end of the Still. abbreviation and as the end of the sentence. There are several other contexts where SP2 is overwhelmed: a computer program is no match for a human being when it comes to subtle tasks like deciding where a sentence ends. We point out these problems as we examine SP2 in detail.
The terminator in SP2 is <CR>, making it easy to move through the rules in the Editor. Although SP2 is contextual, it does not use on or off strings. The first rule changes two spaces to one: all subsequent rules insert an extra space where appropriate. The rules 2 through 15 parallel the rules 16 through 26. The first bunch define S2 as beginning with an uppercase letter; the second bunch define S2 as beginning with punctuation followed by uppercase letter.
Rule two defines the most common arrangement of characters between S1 and S2: period, space, uppercase letter. The single departing pattern code b is changed to two spaces. The character preceding the period could also be punctuation, for example, the British method of placing the period outside quoted material. Rule 16 is parallel to rule 2--S1 is the same and S2 changes. For rule 16 S2 begins with punctuation followed by uppercase letter.
Rule three defines S1 as ending with question mark instead of period; rule 17 shows S1 ending with period and S2 beginning with punctuation. Rules four and 18 show S1 ending with exclamation mark.
Rules five through 12 and 19 through 26 specify various sentences that end with two punctuation characters.
Rules 13 through 15 are the abbreviation-handlers. Thirteen deletes the extra space after the honorary Mrs. regardless of the case of the letters r and s. Rules 14 is more general: the pattern codes match any two-letter abbreviation where the first letter is uppercase. So in addition to Dr. these rules match MR., St., AV., Ln. and literally hundreds of others. Because the first pattern code is boundary Q, this rule matches an abbreviation with touching punctuation. Rule 15 matches a single uppercase letter, like those found in lettered outlines.
There are many possible abbreviations,
and these three rules don't come anywhere near matching all of them. But,
it's important to compare the benefits gained with the effort
The final rule matches S1's that end with BEX's underline finish command. The space before the first dollar sign is printed, but the space after the lowercase f is not. The final rule adds that extra space.
Enter terminator at first Find: prompt to
get into contextual Replace. Number of terminators in contextual Replace
transformation chapter must be divisible by three. Total number of
terminators is three times the number of transformation rules plus six.
First two characters are terminators, then (optionally) on string,
terminator, off string, terminator. When on string is present, then
contextual Replace begins off. End list of rules with three
terminators.
Pattern string shortcut - Entering terminator alone at
Pattern string: prompt means an exact match, equivalent to
pattern code of all lowercase x
When the Echo uses a different term from standard practice, that term is included in parentheses):
! - exclamation" - double quote# - number sign$ - dollar sign% - percent& - ampersand (or and)' - apostrophe( - left parenthesis) - right parenthesis* - asterisk (or star)+ - plus, - comma- - hyphen (or dash). - period/ - slash: - colon; - semicolon< - less-than= - equals> - greater-than? - question mark@ - at-sign[ - left bracket\ - backslash] - right bracket (or ready)^ - caret (or up-arrow)_ - underline` - grave accent{ - left brace| - vertical line (or vertical bar)} - right brace~ - tildeYou can tell BEX to save a session at the keyboard as an automatic procedure chapter for future use. To use an auto chapter, you press control-A at the Main, Second, or Page Menus. BEX asks for the auto chapter's name, and then interprets each character in the chapter as if it were typed on the keyboard.
Auto chapters are like a piano roll for a player piano. You can use auto chapters to perform standardized, multi-step operations. You can use an auto chapter to perform an operation you do frequently. Even at the Learner Level, you can enter control-A to use an Auto chapter. In Learner Level Section 10, we described the VOICE ON and VOICE OFF auto chapters. But you can only create auto chapters at the Master Level.
Auto chapters are particularly useful when you configure an extended disk system. When BEX is running from a RAM drive or the Sider, you can direct repeated processing for several disks of data.
As an example, we made heavy use of auto chapters when writing this manual. The inkprint text of this manual is stored on the Sider hard disk. Creating the braille version requires four steps: transforming generic format information to braille-specific format information with Replace characters; then translating the resulting target chapters, then replacing again to fix minor translator problems, and finally proofreading the grade 2 text. We get everything ready at night, tell BEX to use an auto chapter that performs the first three steps, and our data is waiting to proofread in the morning. You can only create or invoke an auto chapter at one of the three menu prompts on BEX's Main side. You can't invoke an auto chapter at the An auto chapter cannot in turn call another auto chapter; you can't nest your operations. Finally, an auto chapter cannot include use of option A - Auto print from VersaBraille on the Main Menu.
While creating an auto chapter, you can use the Editor, move to any Main side menu and use any option there, and leave BEX with a Q to use DOS or Applesoft commands.
To make an auto chapter reusable, avoid using specific chapter names at source and target chapter prompts. When you scan a drive for chapters, BEX always asks After you press control-R, BEX remembers almost every keystroke. When you type a chapter name, then use the left and arrow to correct it, all the letters you type plus the You want to automate killing the contents of the Ready chapter. As mentioned in Section 2, when you kill the Ready chapter, you are sure to delete any extra page files on disk. The first time through, you do this:
Now the next time you want to kill the Ready chapter, you do this:
and sit back and watch the fireworks. Notice that the first keystroke in the ZAP auto chapter is S. When you're already at the Second Menu, this has no effect. But because that S is there, you can invoke this auto chapter at the Main and Page Menus as well.
When you regret something you've done after you press control-R, you can cancel remember mode by pressing control-R a second time. BEX responds In addition to canceling remember mode when you press control-R a second time, BEX automatically cancels remember mode whenever it encounters a disk error. Suppose you don't have a disk in your default data drive, and you do this:
This is a merciful feature: you don't want BEX to run away wildly with your data if it can't write to disk!
You may find creating and using auto chapters trickier than you expect. Since auto chapters invite you to perform lengthy unattended operations, you must find a way to avoid changing disks midstream. This goes hand in hand with the flexible source and target naming methods, and especially the ability to As discussed in Learner Level Section 13, you can press You can create an auto chapter for a time-consuming operation by performing the operation on a disk containing a short dummy chapter. Use the period code when naming the target chapter. The auto chapter you save contains the same keystrokes you need to do a disk-full of chapters, provided you set things up to avoid disk full errors.
We recommend that your auto chapter begin with the command to get to the right menu. That way you can invoke the auto chapter from any Main side menu.
While you can only create an auto chapter at the Master Level, you can use one at any level. You could create an auto chapter that demonstrates using BEX for a beginner. At all Levels, you invoke an auto chapter by pressing control-A at any menu on the Main side. How BEX responds depends on your level--at the Master Level, it's simply There are two ways to suppress Echo speech during the execution of an auto chapter. The simplest is to press control-X When you want to stop an auto chapter in process, you have two choices. Pressing Control-Reset stops an auto chapter dead in its tracks. You should never press Control-Reset when BEX is writing to disk, however.
Because auto chapters always stop when BEX gets a disk access error, another way to stop an auto chapter is to pull the disk out of a drive. The next time BEX needs to read from disk, DOS returns an I/O ERROR that stops the execution of the auto chapter. Never do this when BEX is writing to disk. Whether you use Control-Reset or create a disk error, the auto chapter is stopped, not paused. Typing The final character in an auto chapter signals BEX to start paying attention to the keyboard again. When you edit an auto chapter, this final character seems to be a <Del> character, but it actually isn't. It's a high bit set character that you cannot type in the Editor. We use the highly scientific term magic <Del> to refer to the last character in an auto chapter.
When you edit an auto chapter, you must be very careful not to delete this last character. If you do delete it by mistake, then edit the VOICE ON chapter on the main side of BEX and copy its magic <Del> character to the clipboard. Then insert the magic <Del> character at the end of the auto chapter you're creating.
Once you're very familiar with BEX it's possible to create auto chapters from scratch in the Editor. However, it's very easy to forget just one <CR> that throws everything off. It's quicker to modify existing auto chapters. Every key you press at a BEX menu is interpreted as uppercase. This is also true when BEX is getting its keystrokes from an auto chapter, so don't worry about case when you type auto chapter information in the Editor.
In Section 8 we explore BEX's control-B commands that let you control all four BEX channels at any point. One pair of commands controls the voice channel: control-B V A activates the voice channel and control-B V D deactivates it. When you want to turn off Echo speech during the execution of an auto chapter, you place these commands in it. When you depend on Echo speech, you don't want to issue these commands as you're creating the auto chapter, because you won't know what the computer's up to. In this situation, you should edit the auto chapter after you save it. Insert the three characters As mentioned in Part 2, you can only press control-S to save the auto chapter at a menu prompt. When you want to have an auto chapter that stops at another point in BEX, you can edit the auto chapter and delete some of the final commands, taking care to preserve the last magic <Del> character.
Here's a wacky example. You want to generate a proofreading copy of the text in your Ready chapter, and then compare the printed copy with the text in the Editor. At the Main Menu, press control-R to start remembering. Edit the Ready chapter, press Tab to insert, then type
then press control-Q to finish the insert and quit the Editor.
Print the Ready chapter to printer 1, then immediately press Press control-S to save the auto chapter, and supply Here at Raised Dot Computing, we create braille editions of the registered customer list on a weekly basis. One auto chapter does most of the work; we need to make four minor changes in this auto chapter every time we use it.
This auto chapter kills all the chapters on the disk in drive 45 that end with a particular character. Then it reads the ProDOS textfiles in the disk in drive 44 to BEX chapters on the RAM drive 47, adding the Month and Date to the textfile names to make the source chapter names. Next, it jumps to the Main Menu, and translates all the chapters on drive 47 that end with the last digit in the date, writing the braille chapters on top of the inkprint. Next, it replaces all these chapters using the transformation rules in the In the Editor, the auto chapter looks like this:
We have to modify the asterisk and M-DD and D characters, so we start out by copying it to the Ready chapter. We locate for the asterisk and replace it with the last digit of the date of the previous braille edition. We locate for M-DD and replace it with As we introduced in User Level Section 2, BEX controls four output channels: screen, voice, braille, and printer. At the Master Level, you can issue commands to affect all four channels. You can change the screen size at menus as well as in the Editor. You can activate and deactivate output to any of the four channels. You accomplish these feats with control-B commands. These commands are not available at either the Learner or User Level.
You can issue control-B commands at any BEX menu, or, when you have Quit BEX, at the BASIC prompt. These commands are all three keystrokes long. The first character is control-B. The second character is one of four letters that signify which channel you're addressing: V for Voice channel; B for Braille channel; S for Screen channel; and P for Printer channel. The last character depends on which channel you're addressing; details below.
No matter how you configure, BEX always outputs on the screen channel. How many columns you request for the screen decides the default size. In the Editor, you can change the size with control-S S [letter] where [letter] is one of the ten screen size codes. (Check the Thick Reference Card for the codes to use.) At the Master Level you can also change screen size at menus with control-B S [letter]. Suppose you configure with Echo speech and 80-column screen. A partially sighted person wanders by and wants to know you're doing. At the Main Menu, you press control-S S L to set 20-column screen; now they can see what you're up to.
Generally, BEX only sends output to the printer channel when you tell BEX to print. Control-B commands let you send text to the printer channel while you're engaged in the computer dialogue. The command is control-B P #, where the number corresponds to the printer number. When you configure printer 1 as a VersaPoint embosser, then entering control-B P 1 sends all The voice channel comes in two flavors. When you have an Echo or SlotBuster, the voice channel is a cooperative effort between BEX and TEXTALKER or SCAT. Alternatively, you can output the voice channel through a serial voice device when you answer the configuration question appropriately. Whether integral or serial, you can turn off the voice channel at menus with control-B V D. Turn it back on again with control-B V A.
When BEX recognizes an Echo or SlotBuster in your Apple, then BEX loads TEXTALKER or SCAT into memory. Even if you don't configure with Echo or SlotBuster output, entering control-B V A turns on speech output. Because serial voice devices must be defined in your configuration, you can't turn them on with control-B V A if you haven't configured them.
Inside the Editor, you can toggle the voice channel off and on. When the voice is active, control-S V turns it off. After you've turned it off, control-S V turns it back on. You can't turn on an inactive voice channel in the Editor; in other words, the voice must be on to turn it off with control-S V in the Editor.
An early configuration question asks There are two parts of BEX you can change. You can alter many of the prompts and messages that BEX generates. The text is stored in chapter You can also change the braille translation tables. Both tables are stored as BEX chapters on your Main disk. Chapter Both the MESSAGES chapter and the translator tables use a rigid structure. If you alter this structure, BEX won't work correctly. Of course, you never want to change your Master BEX disk, but you always use a working backup anyway (don't you?) Before you even contemplate making any changes, copy the original chapters to a backup disk. You can then recover from errors by copying the originals back to your working copy of the BEX disk.
On the boot side of BEX is a three page chapter called MESSAGES. This chapter contains the text of many of the prompts and messages produced by BEX. BEX loads one of these pages into memory when you supply a configuration name. Which page it loads depends on the level of the configuration: Page 1 is for the Learner Level, page 2 is for the User Level, and page 3 is for the Master Level. Actually, BEX doesn't load the page based on the BEX page number; it uses the page filename. BEX loads The MESSAGES chapter is the mechanism by which the prompts get shorter as you advance through the levels of BEX. If you are familiar with BEX, you can shorten the prompts to the point of being absolutely cryptic. You are limited by your imagination and the size of the page. No page of the MESSAGES chapter may exceed 3840 characters. After we discuss how you change the MESSAGES chapter, we supply some reasons you might want to do it.
The delimiter between text sections is the <Del> character. When BEX uses text from the MESSAGES chapter, it locates it by counting <Del> characters. For example, when you press X at the Main Menu, BEX outputs the 23rd message. It counts 23 <Del> characters, then outputs all the text up to the 24th <Del> character. As shipped to you, the 23rd message is If you accidentally add or delete a <Del> character, you can make BEX unusable, because most of the time it would be giving you the wrong prompts. So do be very careful. Please make a backup copy of the original MESSAGES chapter before you even think about modifying it.
When you think you've correctly modified the MESSAGES chapter, copy the new text onto the boot side with the chapter name MESSAGES. Make sure that the page files are in alphabetical order. Any changes that you make show up after you boot BEX with the altered MESSAGES chapter.
The final characters in each BEX page are the vocabulary BEX uses when arrowing in the Editor. As a test of your success, after you reboot with a modified MESSAGES chapter, move to all four menus, and list the options. Then use the arrow keys in the Editor. When everything works correctly, then you know you've done it right. There are three characters in the messages chapter that control when a <CR> is sent to the voice and screen channels. Any <CR> in the MESSAGES chapter is executed for all channels. Any caret The tilde The remainder of items are the vocabulary used for voice output of arrowing in the Editor.
Here are some ideas for modifying the MESSAGES chapter. When you use 10-column screen mode, you can shorten all the prompts so they fit in one line. You could use Replace characters to change every appearance of the word chapter to uppercase C, saving you six characters per prompt. Our programmers prefer that prompts end with a colon or question mark, but if you generally set your Echo for most punctuation, you might find the colon intrusive. Again, use Replace characters to simply delete them.
If you feel that the computer should adopt a more servile attitude, you can change the menu prompts to be much more polite. You could replace A more practical example concerns the Page Menu. It's the only Master Level prompt that's two words long. We wanted to distinguish between the menu prompt and the frequent and then reboot. The high-pitched One last word of warning. All Levels of the BEX manual show many examples of user dialogue. When you change the MESSAGES chapter, then the program no longer matches what's in the manual. This could prove very confusing for beginners, so think before you edit.
The grade 2 braille translator works by applying the rules in the chapter The ZQFOR table is broken up into 29 sections. Each section is separated from the next section by two consecutive <CR>s. The first section of the table holds the translation rules for the space character. The second through 27th sections of the table hold the translation rules for the letters, a through z. The 28th section holds the translation rules for punctuation characters. The last section holds the rules for returning from a special translation mode. Numbers are translated internally to the program. Control characters pass through without modification. Each rule takes up a line of text which is broken into one, two, or three parts. The first part is the matching string. Each letter of the text is matched against the string of all of the rules for the letter until one string matches or the end of the table for the letter is reached. The matching string is terminated by one of three letters:
There are other letters with a more specialized function--contact us if you need an explanation. Capital letters in matching strings direct the translator to apply a special rule to the text rather than matching rule against text one for one. Some of the matching string rules are:
A capital letter at the beginning of a match string is not compared directly with the text. Rather it is matched with a one character buffer that holds the computer's version of what was the last character it dealt with. This buffer, which we will call The last detail of the rule application process is the setting of boundaries of the portion of the string that is replaced. The only part that is replaced is the portion of the text that matches the part of the rule before the first capital (other than the before matching capital). For example, the rule, The best guide to changing the table, after the above, is the translation table itself. It provides a wealth of instructive examples. The back translator turns a grade 2 braille chapter into a printable chapter. It performs the reverse function of the braille translator. As with the forwards translator, you should always make a backup copy of the The back translator driving table works in the same basic way that the translator table for the forward translator works. The back translator table is responsible for the entire translation process.
The back translator table has 65 different sections. Each section is marked by two <CR>s. The table sections are in the ASCII character order. The table starts with ten <CR>s. Then comes the section for space, followed by the section for ZQREV also has different capital letter special rules for the matching string. These rules are:
It is not trivial for the back translator program to determine what category a character is in.
For example, virtually every braille cell (every cell except space and dot 3)
can be turned into a letter in some circumstance. Part 2: Creating an Auto Chapter
Naming method: prompt or any other BEX prompt. You can't create or use an auto chapter at the Starting Menu.
Maximize flexibility
Use entire list? N even if there's only one chapter on the disk. In Section 4, we explain the period code for the target chapter naming method. When you place a period between the drive number and the naming method letter(s), BEX can correctly interpret a naming method even if it's prompting for Target chapter name: instead. These two features make it easier to write auto chapters that work the same way whether there are one or 10 source chapters.
Commands you use to create an auto chapter
()SlotBuster: Start remember mode and begins storing every key you press in a special buffer.
Auto chapter: BEX copies the buffer full of keystrokes to the chapter name you provide.
Sample: Creating and using an auto chapter
Main: control-R
Start remember mode
Main: S
Second: K
Kill chapters
Chapter: ] <CR>
Chapter: <CR>
O K to proceed? N Y <CR>
Chapter ] done
Second: J
Main: control-S Main: control-A
Auto chapter: 1ZAP <CR>Canceling remember mode
Cancel remember mode and abandons the keystrokes it was remembering.
Main: control-R
Start remember mode
Main: D
Which drive? 2 <CR>
Cannot read the disk
Disk error!
Cancelling remember mode
Main:Shortcuts for Creating Auto Chapters
Part 3: Using an Auto Chapter
Auto chapter: At all levels, you must type in the name. You can't scan the disk for an auto chapter. Once you have given the chapter name, your typing at the keyboard is ignored, because the Apple is getting its input from the auto chapter. The Apple speaker clicks each time the Apple accepts a character. You also hear all of the messages and prompts that you would hear if you were typing things in.
RUN does not restart it.
Part 4: Editing and Modifying an Auto Chapter
Auto chapters and the Echo
where you want the Echo to stop talking, and insert where you want speech to turn on again.
Stopping an auto chapter before a menu prompt
$$s3$$l2$$ml5$$vf$$rDraft -<Del>-
] as your name so you can edit it right away in the Ready chapter. Now, locate for DRAFT on your program disk. Whenever you want to create a proof copy, press control-A and type 1DRAFT <CR> When the printout's done, BEX is ready for you to edit the Ready chapter; your cursor is waiting at character position 0.
Auto chapters and extended disk systems
AW-TRANS chapter on the disk in drive 45. The replaced target chapters are written on drive 45, so we can take the disk downstairs for brailling. The final step is to print the ALERT chapter; this chapter just contains ten SK45/*<CR>Y<CR>Y<CR>R44<CR>Y<CR>46.A M-DD<CR>JR46/D<CR>Y<CR>46.S<CR>45AW-TRANS<CR><CR>G46/D<CR>Y<CR>45.S<CR>P45ALERT<CR><CR>SW<CR><Del>
Auto chapter: we respond with ] <CR> and wander away. In around 15 minutes, we hear ten beeps and we know the information is ready to braille. 8: Input/Output Commands
Control-B Command Syntax
Screen channel
Printer channel
Voice channel
Braille channel
Do you have a braille device for all the material going to the screen? When you answer Y then you have configured the braille channel. After you have, control-B B D deactivates the braille channel, and control-B B A turns it back on again. In the Editor, you can turn off output to the braille channel with control-S B. When you want braille channel output again, entering control-S B a second time does the trick. As with the voice channel, you can only turn the braille channel off in the Editor when it's on to begin with.9: Changing Your BEX Disk
MESSAGES on the Boot disk. As shipped to you, the messages are fairly formal. You can change Main Menu: to What now, hey: if you like, thereby giving your BEX a beatnik personality.
ZQFOR contains the forward translation table used in grade 2 translation. Chapter ZQREV contains the reverse translation table, used in Back translate from grade 2.
Part 1: The MESSAGES Chapter
MESSAGES.A for the Learner Level, MESSAGES.B for the User Level, and MESSAGES.C for the Master Level. When you edit this chapter, make sure that the page file extension letters follow this pattern.
The Structure of the MESSAGES Chapter
The Special characters in MESSAGES
^ instructs BEX to send a <CR> only to the voice channel. Some voice devices won't speak until they get a <CR>, so almost every prompt ends with caret. If you remove the caret, then you won't get immediate voice output with DECtalk or Votrax.
~ character marks a <CR> that only appears in 80-column or 40-column non-HI-RES screen modes. When you use any large print screen mode, the tilde in the MESSAGES chapter has no effect. In addition to the Start new? Y Order of Prompts in MESSAGES Chapter
RUN 999
Drive number or chapter name:
Main: with My wish is your command, Milady You could change Target chapter: to Phasers locked on target!
Page: prompts when you need to enter a BEX page number. You Page: if you added Echo commands. Replace the 17th entry in the MESSAGES chapter with:
Page: signals the menu prompt, while the low-pitched Page: means a page number.
Part 2: ZQFOR, The Braille Translation Table
ZQFOR to your text. The two page chapter ZQFOR is located on the Main side of your BEX program. ZQFOR rules are in a particular format that drives the translation process. Changing the table will change the way the translator works. You might want to change the table to improve the translator or to add your own, nonstandard rules to it. We would appreciate receiving information about any problems you find with the existing Grade 2 translator.
()Warning!
haddS - prevents the use of the dd contraction in favor of the had contraction in the word haddock.
N,NE1Z1 changes a comma in between numbers (like in 100,000) to the computer braille for comma, then changes the before character from a comma to a number to keep the translator from inserting an unneeded number sign before the 000. There are special meanings for certain characters after the Z. These are:
bVVX copies the b to the output, but not the two vowels afterward that matched. The rule QbeLLLE2 replaces the be with the computer braille 2 (dropped b).
Part 3: ZQREV, The Back Translation Table
ZQREV translation table chapter before making any changes. Failure to make a backup copy can cause frustrating circumstances.
! the the sign. After the table for @ comes the 26 letters, followed by the section for getting out of computer braille.