Pen Pal for Windows Easy to Use Text Editor Shareware Information ===================== Pen Pal is Shareware. The Demo version may be freely distributed as long as all original unmodified files are included. Demo Limitations: The Demo is fully operational, but the SAVE and print operations are limited to 60 lines in the demo version. Registration Fee: $20 ($15 + $5 Shipping/Handling) Check or Money Order: Mountain Software (US Funds ONLY) 6911 NE Livingston Road Camas, Washington 98607 USA Questions/Comments: awatson@pacifier.com Bear Cavern BBS (360) 573-2054 Demo/Upgrade Versions: http://www.pacifier.com/~awatson ftp.pacifier.com:pub/users/awatson/WINDOWS Bear Cavern BBS (360) 573-2054 Pen Pal is Copyright 1995 by Anthony Watson, all rights reserved. Any unauthorized duplication or modification of the programs or documentation is a violation of federal copyright laws! System Recommendations ====================== - Windows 3.1, Windows for Workgroups, or Windows 95. - 486 with 8 Meg of RAM - VGA Graphics Mode (640x480x256 color) Introduction ============ Pen Pal is an easy to use text editor for editing simple text files. Most text can be stored more efficiently without the fonts and graphics of most word processors. Pen Pal makes writing or editing simple text files an easy operation. Pen Pal will work with files of any size, and from any source (DOS, Mac, UNIX, etc.). Automatic word-wrapping, variable margins, clipboard support, search and replace, and more... Basic Text Entry ================ Entering text into Pen Pal couldn't be simpler, just start typing! You'll find that the text will automatically wrap at the end of each line, and carriage returns are signified by a "c/r" symbol. At first this may seem a bit unusual, but in practice you will find it aids in viewing the actual length of each line (including any trailing space characters). Pen Pal offers a few "special" commands as well. The first is a text centering command. Just type out the text you want centered on a line, then hold the Control key down while you press the space bar. Pen Pal can also strip carriage returns from a document if you hold down the Control key and press the Return/Enter key. This can be very useful if you are trying to reformat text that was previously formatted for a different page width. Pen Pal will NOT strip carriage returns between paragraphs, or from lines that begin with a space character. This is useful for removing carriage returns, but maintaining the format of specially formatted tables. (You can use the REPLACE function to remove ALL carriage returns). Special Keyboard Operations =========================== Control/F - Call the FIND dialog Control/N - Jump to the Next match of the FIND operation Control/X - "Cut" (Move text to clipboard) Control/C - "Copy" (Copy text to clipboard) Control/V - "Paste" (Move text from clipboard to current cursor position) Control/Return - Remove carriage returns from document Control/Space - Center text on the current line Control/Up - Page Up Control/Down - Page Down Control/Left - Jump to beginning of line Control/Right - Jump to end of line F1 - Displays version/contact information F2 - Starts/Ends marking of text blocks Delete - Delete a character, or a marked block of text Control/Delete - Delete the current line of text Marking Text ============ Often you will want to mark a portion of the text for saving, printing, or for moving to/from the clipboard. This operation can be accomplished using the keyboard or the mouse. To mark a block of text with the keyboard, move the cursor to the character you wish to start the block with. Then press F2 to begin the blocking operation. Next, move the cursor to the character you wish to end the block with, and press F2 again to end the blocking operation. To mark a block of text with the mouse, simply click and "drag" a block of text using the mouse, moving from the upper left down to the lower right. Loading Text ============ Many times you will want to use Pen Pal to edit an existing document. To load a text file, click on the LOAD button and then locate and select the file you wish to load. You may also merge another document with the current document by clicking the MERGE button instead of the LOAD button. The new text will be merged at the current cursor position. Saving Text =========== Once you have entered your text, you will most likely want to save it to disk. This is easily accomplished by clicking the SAVE button. When the file selector appears, locate the path where you want to store the file, and enter a filename for the file. If you have marked a block of text you can save just that block of text if you wish. Just click SAVE as usual, and then select BLOCK when asked. Pen Pal defaults to the standard MSDOS/Windows style of line termination (a CR/LF combination at the end of each line). You may select from a variety of other line terminations by clicking the SAVE button with the RIGHT mouse key. This is often useful if you need to edit text for other systems, such as creating HTML documents for UNIX. Clearing the Text Buffer ======================== The text buffer is automatically cleared when Pen Pal is first run, or if you modify the size of the text buffer. However, you can clear the buffer manually by clicking the CLEAR button. Jump to Top or Bottom ===================== Click on the TOP button to jump to the start of your document, or click on the BOTTOM button to jump to the bottom of your document. Finding Text ============ To find any text string in your document, click the FIND button or press Control/F on the keyboard. When the find dialog appears, enter the text you wish to look for and press Return (or click OK). The Find function will locate any string regardless of the case of the individual letters. The Find operation always locates the "first" occurance of a string in a document, although all matches are highlighted. You can find the next occurance of the string by pressing Control/N on the keyboard, or by clicking FIND again, and clicking NEXT. Another alternative is to simply scroll up/down through your document with the cursor keys to find the exact match you are looking for. You can search for a few special characters as well by pressing the following key combinations in the FIND dialog: Shift/Return - The "c/r" carriage return character Shift/Escape - The "e/s" escape key character Shift/Backspace - The checkmark backspace character Replacing Text ============== To replace all occurances of a string in your document, click the REPLACE button to bring up the Replace dialog. Enter the string you wish to replace, and the string you wish to use in its place. Note that you can replace special characters like the carriage return, just as with the FIND operation. Normally, the REPLACE function will replace all occurances of the desired string, regardless of the case of the individual letters. However, by clicking the MATCH CASE button in the Replace dialog, you can replace only those strings that Exactly match your desired string. Configuring Pen Pal =================== A few parameters in Pen Pal may be changed to suit your individual needs by clicking the SETUP button. The number of lines is the maximum number of text lines that may be entered in Pen Pal. This setting defaults to 10,000 lines which will allow you to edit most text files. If you have limited memory and only plan on editing short files, you may wish to decrease this number. Or, if you plan on editing large documents, you may wish to increase this number. Keep in mind that the bigger the number, the more memory you will need! The margin setting is the number of characters allowed in each line of text. The default setting of 80 characters is the most common setting. However, if you are editing a document for online services or other purposes, you may wish to decrease this number. The tab setting is the number of characters between tabs. This defaults to five characters, but you may change this to suit your needs. Appreciation ============ I would like to thank my beta testers, Don Schmidt and Kelly Bruhn. Your feedback is invaluable in tracking down those illusive little buggers! As always, my deepest appreciation goes to my wife Peggy. Her love and support keeps me going when all this programming stuff gets me down. She's a heck of a lady, and the love of my life! Finally, I owe everything to my Lord Jesus Christ. He is my savior, my source of peace and contentment, and my ultimate role model. I could do nothing without his saving grace. History ======= Pen Pal was originally written for the Atari ST (version 1.2 was released October 23, 1994). The Windows version of Pen Pal was started in late November 1995. It was written using GFA BASIC for Windows, under Windows 95. Version 1.0 - First "Official" Release Jan 5, 1996