The Last Word 3.11 Public Beta

[Mr.Amiga500]

I was already considering donating. (...money, not organs. If you want my spleen, you can forget it!) I'll slip you some "chump change" after my PayPal transfer. (I can't believe it takes 12 days to do a frigging bank transfer!)

 

As for print preview, if it uses border colours, that's good enough for me. (I won't be using brown & beige, though... that sucks. )

 

I've noticed PAL screenshots of the blue Atari background always looks greenish. Compare your screenshot with dwhyte's avatar.

[flashjazzcat]

I was already considering donating. (...money, not organs. If you want my spleen, you can forget it!) I'll slip you some "chump change" after my PayPal transfer. (I can't believe it takes 12 days to do a frigging bank transfer!)

 

As for print preview, if it uses border colours, that's good enough for me. (I won't be using brown & beige, though... that sucks. )

 

I've noticed PAL screenshots of the blue Atari background always looks greenish. Compare your screenshot with dwhyte's avatar.

Consider no more - I can guarantee that donating is an excellent idea. Until illegal organ traffic market picks up again, currency is definitely preferred.

 

Good point about the greenish screens. That's my custom palette in the emulator tweaked to my preference, but I may have overdone it a bit.

 

...Just checked - and no, it's not my custom palette: it's the laoo palette.

Edited March 1, 2010 by flashjazzcat

[dwhyte]

To all users of The Last Word: Dontations are always welcome: I don't charge a penny for this software and "crippling" the free versions is something I would not do, but if you use it regularly, please consider a donation.

 

Your wife giving you ideas again? LOL

 

I'll see what I can do...

[flashjazzcat]

Your wife giving you ideas again? LOL

 

I'll see what I can do...

While my wife expresses many opinions regarding my Atari hobby, this is the only one I heartily agree with.

 

Please note, there's already a PayPal donation page here. Thanks!

 

About eight bytes of code space left in version 3.11, so it'll be signed off imminently.

Edited March 1, 2010 by flashjazzcat

[flashjazzcat]

Well, this week panned out badly since I've had about an hour of free time since Monday. However, the word processor is finalised now: I just need to amend the manual.

 

Please note that since LW 3.11 won't work with SpartaDOS 3.x (because of the shadow RAM conflict), it won't work with RealDOS either. The cart version of LW coming later in the year will work with every available DOS for the Atari.

 

Re: donations. To those as strapped for cash as I am (can't even afford the MyIDE I was going to get for the XEGS), hardware donations are also accepted. Which is just a roundabout way of saying I'm after a mylar for a MITSUMI keyboard. It doesn't have to be free, but I have a perfectly good sprung keyboard here with a mylar sheet which is disintegrating before my eyes and no amount of conductive paint will save it. I can't afford either a new keyboard (which anyway I don't need) from Best, nor the terrifying import duty that might incur (it did the last time).

 

I should add big thanks again for the two very generous PayPal donations I received within hours of my gentle reminder on Monday.

Edited March 5, 2010 by flashjazzcat

[Mr.Amiga500]

Oh, crap! I forgot about the donation and I just bought a TAC-2 joystick with the money.

 

OK, it's back to the bank for another transfer... Please wait another 12 days. (damn PayPal!)

[flashjazzcat]

No worries! I spent the donations I've received so far on a second-hand desk, quite deep and over a metre wide, with drawers down one side and shelves on the other. This will provide much needed space for a couple of A8s and my smaller LCD display, as well as providing working space and a writing surface. Even my wife can see the sense of this. Desk arrives tomorrow and I can't wait to get organized.

[flashjazzcat]

Phew. Just finished going through the manual and implementing Sleepy's numerous editorial corrections. Looks much better. Shame I got hit by a heavy cold today - and yet I battle on! Still not happy with the revised <CTRL+O> for Exit to DOS from the editor. Need to have one last look at these new shortcuts. They're a sort of half-assed attempt at following the Windows convention at the moment.

[Mr.Amiga500]

What is Control+E being used for? That would make more sense to me for "Exit to DOS" than Control+O.

 

Is there a feature like "convert text to inverse"? (sorry, I don't have the manual to read at the moment) A few times I wanted to make some text inverse to use as titles, and thought maybe it was possible to mark text, then convert to inverse characters.

Edited March 7, 2010 by Mr.Amiga500

[flashjazzcat]

What is Control+E being used for? That would make more sense to me for "Exit to DOS" than Control+O.

 

Is there a feature like "convert text to inverse"? (sorry, I don't have the manual to read at the moment) A few times I wanted to make some text inverse to use as titles, and thought maybe it was possible to mark text, then convert to inverse characters.

CTRL+E is already used for "End of Text" (CTRL+H being "Cursor Home"). CTRL+Q would make sense to me (as in "Quit"), but it's already used. I could change things around further, but I don't really want the new mappings to be dramatically removed from those in previous versions. I suppose we could have CTRL+O for "Load Config" and CTRL+Q for "Quit". We could even put "Save Config" SHIFT+CTRL+O (since it's unused), and make SHIFT+CTRL+Q a spare command. Hmmm... I like that.

 

To make selected text inverse, just press SHIFT+CTRL+full stop. To change it back, press SHIFT+CTRL+comma.

Edited March 8, 2010 by flashjazzcat

[Rybags]

How about CTRL-4 to exit.

 

CTRL-5 could be repeat find, 6 for repeat change.

[flashjazzcat]

How about CTRL-4 to exit.

 

CTRL-5 could be repeat find, 6 for repeat change.

Sounds a cool idea. Sadly all the codes need to be representable by ATASCII characters for the macro processor. I'd have to think up new characters to map to CTRL+3 - CTRL+0. Could get messy. What I can do is "double up" exisiting commands on the CTRL+number keys, but always access them from their "main" keystroke in macros.

 

...hmmm. I've figured this out. At the moment, SHIFT+CTRL+number combinations generate INVERSE+SHIFT+number ATASCII codes, which are passed to the editor loop which then jumps to the bank swap routine and uses the index into the command lookup table to decide which bank was selected. What I could do, is make all CTRL+SHIFT+number keystrokes produce the same code (say, inverse exclamation mark), and let the bank swap routine have access to the original scan code in order to decide which bank was chosen (we don't need to access these combinations from macros anyway, since the macro language has a special command for bank switching). This would allow the INVERSE+SHIFT+number codes to be assigned to CTRL+number keystrokes, have unique commands assigned to them, and be accessible from macros. We could have CTRL+3 for "End of File" and other such trickery...

Edited March 8, 2010 by flashjazzcat

[flashjazzcat]

Well, thanks to last week's donations, my workspace no longer resembles a corner of Fox-1's basement:

 

 

 

I have managed to accomplish this transformation without getting divorced. In fact, I think the desk may have arrived just in time to preserve marital harmony.

[spookt]

That's a sweet setup but I want to know how you got Windows 7 running on that XE? And more importantly why ??? :D

[flashjazzcat]

That's a sweet setup but I want to know how you got Windows 7 running on that XE? And more importantly why ???

Win 7 installs OK as long as you have 1088K (it's optimized for Netbooks, after all). It's a real bitch on a 320XE.

 

However, that's NOT Windows 7 running on the XE, of course. It's an alpha version of my new GUI!

[+Philsan]

Nice setup!

 

However, that's NOT Windows 7 running on the XE, of course. It's an alpha version of my new GUI!

 

Looking at the pictures, I have to repeat that I really like Atari ST GUI's minimalistic design and I hope you'll use it (and not W7 design ).

[flashjazzcat]

Looking at the pictures, I have to repeat that I really like Atari ST GUI's minimalistic design and I hope you'll use it (and not W7 design ).

That's just the login screen. The actual desktop is mono and pretty spartan at the moment (i.e. a mouse pointer and nothing else).

 

Here's the 3.1 manual (i.e. the last "official" release prior to the forthcoming version 3.11) with Sleepy's (numerous) corrections (thanks Sleepy). I'll put this on my website with an updated 3.1 package as soon as I can find the energy.

 

The Last Word 3.1 Manual.pdf

[flashjazzcat]

Looking at new keyboard mappings last night made me realize there's another bit of misinformation in the manual. It states that remapping the keyboard using the "KEY [scancode]=[ASCII code]" command in LW.SYS will mess up macros if you assign control codes to different keys. This simply isn't the case: in The Last Word, key reassignment is done purely at the keyboard scan code table level, so if you assign "Load File" to <CTRL+O>, macros will still access the Load command with <CTRL+L>. Not sure what I was thinking when I wrote that chapter (although I was probably very tired at the time ).

 

I've made CTRL+3 through CTRL+0 produce new, unique tokens. This means some new commands and more scope for remapping the keyboard. We now have "Next/prev Window" commands, as well as "Go to Window #", which will effectively replace the internal macro command which does the same job (but which will be kept for compatibility).

[flashjazzcat]

Hopefully I'll get v3.11 signed off this week (might actually end up being 3.2). I'm trying to fit in a couple of other projects at the same time.

 

I found out the hard way that LW 3.1 didn't carry the time stamps across when copying files on Sparta disks (only after copying half a dozen floppies' worth). That's fixed now. I also reaffirmed to myself that LW's "disk menu" is a nice file manager which might work well as a stand-alone utility.

 

The executable is now approaching 35K, which makes it one of the larger Atari applications. Hence the need to make future versions cartridge based. Bearing in mind what I'd like to add to the program, I can see a 1MB Flash Cart being easily half-filled.

[phaeron]

Hopefully I'll get v3.11 signed off this week (might actually end up being 3.2). I'm trying to fit in a couple of other projects at the same time.

 

With that version number, there can only be one name: The Last Word for Workgroups.

[flashjazzcat]

Hopefully I'll get v3.11 signed off this week (might actually end up being 3.2). I'm trying to fit in a couple of other projects at the same time.

 

With that version number, there can only be one name: The Last Word for Workgroups.

LOL. The thought had crossed my mind.

 

I'm struggling with a bug in the file copy routine, and trying to make headway with a SpeedDrive test program for Candle... plus a million other things.

[flashjazzcat]

Thanks for the latest donation. I'll be sure to re-invest the money in another hardware upgrade (possibly stereo Pokey: all I lack is a plain PCB).

 

Finally cracked this copy bug. I've had so much to do this week, coding has literally been progressing in half-hour stints. Still, it's deadsville on the forum at the moment so I can hardly be accused of slacking. Unless of course there are hardly any forum posts because everyone's busy working flat out on software and hardware projects!

Edited March 17, 2010 by flashjazzcat

[flashjazzcat]

Had teething problems with this video clip last night...

 

Anyway, I'm thinking of making the icon menu bar a permanent fixture. The drawback is that it brings the main text buffer size down by 1K:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYH0GDg_qks

 

This used to be available as an extension, but given that the extensions are quite tricky to set up, it rather defeated the object when the aim is to make the program easier for beginners.

 

Opinions welcome.

[Mr.Amiga500]

Had teething problems with this video clip last night...

 

Anyway, I'm thinking of making the icon menu bar a permanent fixture. The drawback is that it brings the main text buffer size down by 1K:

 

This used to be available as an extension, but given that the extensions are quite tricky to set up, it rather defeated the object when the aim is to make the program easier for beginners.

 

Opinions welcome.

 

I can't see embedded flash. I had to reply to extract the link.

 

That icon bar looks great! I think the 1K loss is worth it.

[pepax]

Hopefully I'll get v3.11 signed off this week (might actually end up being 3.2). I'm trying to fit in a couple of other projects at the same time.

 

With that version number, there can only be one name: The Last Word for Workgroups.

LOL. The thought had crossed my mind.

 

I'm struggling with a bug in the file copy routine, and trying to make headway with a SpeedDrive test program for Candle... plus a million other things.

It would go along with e.g. RealDOS 6.22 very well....