My-Desk Tutorial Welcome to My-Desk. This tutorial is quick and dirty, but it will walk you through the features of the program. If you have not loaded My-Desk, load it, then press Alt-N to load a New file, and select this file, MY-TUTOR.TXT. This is not a substitute for reading the instructions in the MY-DESK.DOC file, but it will let try most of the features in My-Desk without investing a lot of time in reading the complete documentation. Computer novices should definitely read the manual before running this tutorial. CURSOR MOVEMENT: Right, left, up, down, PgUp and PgDn work as expected. Ctrl-left and right move a word at a time and wrap around the ends of lines. Put cursor here_ and press Home twice and End twice to see how they work. Ctrl-Home moves to the top of the screen. Ctrl-PgUp moves to the start of the file and Ctrl-PgDn moves to the end of the file as indicated by the EOF on the status line below. You can try these now if you wish. DELETE/RESTORE: Delete a line by pressing Alt-D. Restore deleted lines by pressing Alt-V (up to the 10 most recently deleted/changed lines). Try it. Ctrl-End deletes to the end of the line. Go ahead and try it, then press Alt-V to restore the original line. The Del key deletes a character, of course. To clear all lines, press Alt-C. (If you should mess up this file, just reload it from the disk again via Alt-N.) <> THE STATUS LINE (bottom line on screen): "EOF" indicates the last line in the file. Save and Print functions continue up to the EOF line. "ROW" and "COL" indicate the cursor position in the file. "MAR" shows the margin settings. They should be 1 and 80 right now. Press ALT-J to adJust margins. The drive, path and file name is next, followed by toggle key status indicators, WIKCN: FEATURE TOGGLE KEY BRIEF DESCRIPTION W word wrap Alt-W Moves cursor to next line when end is reached. I Auto-Indent Alt-I Line following an indented line is indented. K Auto-Kap Alt-T Capitalizes the first letter of each word. C CapsLock CapsLock Distinctive tones sound when CapsLock or N NumLock NumLock NumLock are pressed. Try `em. SPLIT/JOIN LINES: To split a line, move the cursor to the split point, make sure Insert is on and press Enter. To join two lines, move to the end of the first line and press Del. To reform a paragraph from the cursor line DOWN TO THE NEXT BLANK LINE, press Alt-R. Try changing margins and reforming paragraphs in this file. ON-LINE HELP: Press Alt-H for a help screen. This screen is stored in the file MY-DESK.HLP. You can revise it if you wish by loading the file in the editor. ASCII TABLE: Press Alt-Y for the display of an ASCII table. CALENDAR: The Help screen and ASCII table are displayed without erasing the current file, but NOT the calendar. The calendar function creates a large block calendar, inserts entries from an appointment file, and puts the calen- dar into the editor for you to customize, print or save. To try the calendar function, first Alt-C(lear) this file then press Alt-Z. After trying it, you can press F10 to auto-load this file (MY-TUTOR.TXT) again. My-Desk will also search and display a TO-DO List file on start-up. (See MY-DESK.DOC.) BLOCK FUNCTIONS: There are partial line blocks and full line blocks. Blocks of text can be moved, copied, printed, saved, erased, centered, filled. Move the cursor to the first line of the CALENDAR paragraph above and press Alt-L for a full-line block. Move down to the blank line before this paragraph and press Alt-L again to mark the whole paragraph. Now move the cursor down to the first line of the next paragraph and press Alt-M and you will see the paragraph move. To try a partial-line block, move the cursor to column one of this line and press Alt-B, then move down to the last line of the paragraph to column 3 and press Alt-B again and the margin to the left of this paragraph should be highlighted. Press Alt-E to erase the block and the paragraph will move over. Move the cursor to the first line of the paragraph again, column 78, and press Alt-B. Move down to the last line of the paragraph, column 80, and press Alt-B again. Now move to column 1 of the first line of the paragraph and press Alt-M to Move the blank spaces over to the left margin. To Fill a block, move the cursor here >_ and press Alt-B; then move it to column 80 of this line and press Alt-B again. >_ Then press Alt-F and then press a key to fill the block with. Press Alt-U to un-mark the block OR press Alt-E to erase the block and its contents. CALCULATOR FUNCTION: You can add, subtract, multiply, divide at any time. Move the cursor to the left side of the top of the column of numbers below and press Alt-B, then move it to the right side of the bottom and press Alt-B again. Then move the cursor down a line and press Alt-A to add the column up. 100 +50 -25 *6 /20 ANSWER = _____ After seeing the answer, you can erase the whole column of numbers by pressing End to move to the end of the answer, Alt-B to extend the block over the answer and Alt-E to erase the whole column. Try changing some of the numbers and seeing the result. Try putting in a new column to the left, above, and notice how auto-indent makes it easy to enter a column of numbers. When entering a column of numbers, press Alt-B just prior to entering the first number, then Alt-B after the last number and the column is highlighted and ready for Alt-A. SCREEN DESIGN: Line drawing is toggled on using Alt-1 through Alt-4 (using the numbers along the top row of the keyboard) for the four different line types. The active line type is indicated in the middle of the status line when toggled on. Press Alt-1 to turn on single lines and, with NumLock ON, use the number pad keys to draw lines at the end of this file. Insert, Indent and Wrap should be turned off too. To move the cursor without drawing, use Shift plus the number pad keys with NumLock ON or use a separate cursor pad, if available. Two other features useful for screen design are Box Fill, already discussed, and Auto-Box. To draw a box quickly, move the cursor to one corner and press Alt-B, move to the other corner and press Alt-B again. Then toggle on one of the line drawing styles, Alt-1 - Alt-4. Try this at the end of this file too. SORTING - Alt-& sorts a file, keying on the cursor position, but this file is not suitable for sorting, so you will have to try that later. SEARCH/REPLACE - Alt-S brings up the search function. The search will wrap around the end of the file and stop at the cursor's line. After entering the word to find, you will be asked if you want to replace it, and if so, you will be prompted for a word (or words) to use for replacement. Try searching and replacing now. Notice that uppercase/lowercase letters must match. AUTO-KAP - This is great when entering a lot of text that must all have the first letters capitalized, such as names and addresses. Press Alt-T to toggle auto-Kap on and try typing in some text at the end of this file. FILE FEATURES: Load, Move, Delete, Rename are all done after pressing Alt-N to load a New file. You will see a sorted list of directory and file names. Move the cursor with the cursor keys to select a file, or start typing in the name and the cursor will move automatically. Press enter to load the file on the cursor line. Press Alt-E to load the directory list into the editor. AUTO-FILE-LOAD: Press F1 to get the Auto-File-Load Function key menu (but do not press it yet). The menu will show you which files can be loaded by simply pressing a function key. F10 is MY-TUTOR.TXT, so that means you can reload this tutorial by pressing F10. ALARM CLOCK: My-Desk can be set to pop up at a specified time and date. Press Alt-0 (zero at the top of the keyboard) and follow the prompts. Try it now (if you have My-Desk loaded as a TSR) to pop back up in a minute or two. You can still use My-Desk even after setting a pop-up alarm time. See docs for more. UNATTENDED PROGRAM CONTROL: You can use the Alarm Clock Pop-Up feature to send up to 16 keystrokes to the computer at a specified time and date. This can be used to start, stop, or otherwise control a program. As above, press Alt-0 and set the pop-up control time, but when prompted for a message, enter "stuff". To test it, try entering DIR and pressing Enter (press ~ to quit entering). Exit to DOS and wait (assuming you set the time only a couple of minutes ahead). SCREEN BLANK, KEYBOARD LOCK: If you have to leave your machine and don't want to exit the program you are in, but you want to protect your work from prying eyes and fingers, press Alt-9 (top of the keyboard) and enter a password. To resume work, press any key to be prompted for the password again to get the machine back. You can try this now if you wish. INSERT CURRENT DATE: If you are typing a letter and want the current date inserted, just press Alt-8 (top of the keyboard). You can try it now. PASSING COMMANDS TO DOS: Move the cursor here (on the "D") ->DIR /W and press Alt-B, then move it to the "W" and press Alt-B again, then press Alt-% to pass the highlighted command to DOS. Move to the cursor to the next line and press Alt-B to mark the three lines with the DIR commands : DIR A*.* then press Alt-% and the three commands will be sent DIR B*.* to DOS via a batch file named MY-TEMP.BAT. DIR C*.* THIS WORKS ONLY IF YOU POPPED UP MY-DESK FROM DOS. If the command is the first text on a line, you do not have to block-mark it. Move the cursor onto the next line and press Alt-%. DIR D*.* (Leave at least 3 spaces between the command and other text.) You can also execute a program when you are at the directory listing screen after pressing Alt-N. Move the cursor bar to the desired program and press Alt-%. Note that you cannot add program parameters this way. Press Alt-E to move the file list to the editor to add program parameters. Note again that you can pass commands to DOS only if you popped up over DOS, otherwise, you will be passing the keystrokes back to whatever programs you were running when you popped up My-Desk. You can use this feature to pass back small amounts (up to 16 keystrokes) of text to your program. You cannot pass back multiple lines back to your program. See the discussion in the MY-DOC files about transferring data between files and programs. CLOSING COMMENTS: This was a rather terse tutorial, but it should have been quicker and easier than reading the manual and you should have tried most of My-Desk's features. Again, this tutorial is no substitute for reading the manual. In particular, this tutorial contains no information about loading My-Desk and the command line parameters. We at Ford Software hope that you enjoy using My-Desk. Take your time in trying it out to make sure you like it, but please remember that if you continue to use it and you know you are no longer "evaluating" it, you must send in the $25 license fee. (This is an introductory price and subject to change. Call for current price.) When you do so, we will send you the latest version without the opening shareware information screen. To order, you can call now with MC/Visa. Our toll-free order line is 1-800-242-4775. For information, call 713-665-7017.