STENO DEMONSTRATION VERSION =========================== This is a demonstration version of the STeno text editor program/accessory from Strata Software. The demo version is copyright (C) 1989 by Strata Software but may be copied freely as long as this text file accompanies it and remains unaltered [translation to another language is fine however]. STeno is a commercial product that will be included free of charge in release 2.0 of STalker - the ST terminal emulator accessory from Strata Software. At this time there are no plans to make it available as a separate product, so if you want it, you'll have to buy STalker too. Even still, the price for both is less than you might pay just for STeno: $30 US ($35 CAN). Release 2.0 of STalker is expected to be ready for shipping by the end of August (1989 that is). Advance orders will be accepted - cheques will not be cashed until the product is shipped. At this time Strata Software does not take credit card orders, but you can try Chiang Computers @ (613) 230-4101. If they have stock on hand they'll usually oblige. NOTE: Ontario residents must add 8% provincial sales tax to the $35 price. Please address questions or orders to: Strata Software 94 Rowe Drive Kanata Ontario Canada K2L 3Y9 (613) 591-1922 If you call and get our answering machine, please make sure to leave your name and number, as well as the best time to call back (make sure to mention the time zone too!). Questions can also be sent via E-Mail to: Bix: e_rosenquist CompuServe: 72711,2503 STALKER 2.0 =========== So what's new with STalker 2.0? I'm glad you asked. If you've never seen STalker before, look for the demo version that preceded the 1.00 release. STalker 2.0 is a significant upgrade to 1.01, including the following items: - Capture mode with an editable text buffer. This is where STeno fits in. STalker and STeno are separate accessories, but they communicate using GEM's message passing mechanism to form a powerful capture facility. When capture mode is on, STalker sends a message to STeno for each line of text it receives, and STeno appends the line to it's buffer. Since they're separate DA's, you could actually be downloading something [in the background] with STalker while you're composing a message or editing a text file for your DTP program in STeno. You can even be editing in STeno while STalker is appending text to its buffer in capture mode! If STeno isn't loaded, STalker recognizes that fact and simply disables capture mode. - Mac-like cut/copy/paste using the mouse. Both STalker and STeno support selection of text on the screen using the mouse. If you've used the Mac or Microsoft Write on the ST, you already know how to do this. Once an area is selected, you can copy it to the clipboard, save it to disk, or send it to the printer. - A new 'display controls' mode has been added. When this mode is enabled, STalker will show control characters using the ST's system font rather than obeying them. - Significant enhancements to the autodialer. You can now profile a logon sequence for each entry and STalker will carry it out once connected. - Even better modem handling to allow full functionality with modems that don't control DTR or DCD properly. Now you can use either DTR or a 'hang-up string' to drop a connection, and DCD or 'success/fail' strings to determine dialing status. - Access to Shadow if present. STalker does everything in the background anyway, but some users wanted to be able to use Shadow via STalker rather than Flash or the Shadow accessory; now they can. - Support for Double Click's DC-Port hardware enhancement. STalker will detect and allow the use of the extra RS232 ports provided by the DC-Port. Since STalker is an accessory, you can actually load multiple copies of it and have each one talking to a different RS232 port, with each session running in its own GEM window. I've actually had 3 sessions on the go at once: one doing an ASCII upload at 2400 baud and two reading messages on a BBS - one at 2400 and one at 1200 [I've only got 2 2400 baud modems!]. - Several other small and medium scale changes and improvements, such as saving the STalker window size and location along with the rest of the configuration. The 50-page version 1.00 manual is being completely revised to incorporate all of the version 2 changes plus a new chapter for STeno - it won't just be a README file on the disk along with the V1.0 manual. Once again, STalker 2.0 should be ready for shipping by the end of August 1989. Feel free to send your cheque or money order before then, but don't expect to see a package at your door before late August / early September. Orders will be filled in the order they were received, so send now if you want it as soon as possible. STENO Mini-Manual ================= I have included a slightly abridged version of the manual that I gave the STeno beta testers. The commercial version has a complete manual as a chapter in the STalker User's Manual. Mini User's Manual for STeno ============================ This is by no means a definitive user's manual for STeno, but will point out some of the features that may not be intuitively obvious to most people. Note: ----- STeno is a simple TEXT EDITOR, not a WORD PROCESSOR. There's a big difference, so don't expect the latter and you won't be disappointed. That having been said, I think you'll find that STeno has a lot to offer for your basic day-to-day needs. I'll start by describing the STeno features that are common to most text editors and then go into the things that are unique to STeno. Basic Capabilities ------------------ STeno lets you edit text. Gosh, I never would have guessed. It is permanently in "insert" mode, meaning that characters that you type are always inserted into the text at the flashing "insertion point" rather than overwriting text that is already there. It has Search & Replace, including the option to ignore upper/lower case differences. It has word-wrap at a configurable column. It loads/saves/prints files. It allows you to expand tabs to blanks during a save if you wish. Hitting ^J or ^Return gives you a newline & indent. Not-so-Basic Capabilities ------------------------- I'd say "Unique Capabilities" but that would imply that no one else has such features, which may be true now but most likely won't be forever. STeno has a menu bar inside its window. I even gave the drop-downs a shadow to make them look a little nicer. If you know how to use a GEM drop-down, you know how to get at the STeno commands; the only difference is that you have to click on a title to get the menu going [like the Mac's pop-down menus, or more precisely, MS-Window's since you can let go of the mouse button if you like]. I can easily have them drop-down, but that gets to be a pain since they're quite often in the middle of the screen, making it hard to avoid moving the mouse near them [trust me on this one - after trying it that way for 2 minutes you'd agree]. STeno can run as a program or an accessory - just rename it from .ACC to .PRG [or .APP]. When you run it as a program, the menu bar appears in the normal place. If something evil possesses you, you can get STeno to put the menu in the window by holding down any shift key while STeno loads [this is a testing feature I left in just for kicks]. You can even install STeno using the Desktop's "Install Application" feature. I like having it installed for file types .TXT and .DOC. I just double-click on the .TXT file and STeno gets invoked and loads the file [note - for some reason, when you invoke STeno this way on the 88/8/8 TOS 1.4, all of the mouse-window clicks are doubled. For example, if you click on the down arrow, STeno gets two WM_ARROWED messages??? If you call up the file selector via ALT-O and then choose CANCEL, the problem goes away. If you invoke STeno normally and then load the file, everything is fine??? Odd. If this still happens with the "real" TOS 1.4 I'll have to look into it more closely]. STeno supports cut & paste through the standard GEM scrap manager. Why other programs don't use it is beyond me. I needed it, it's there, and it works [quite nicely too], so I used it. This means that when you do a Cut or Copy operation with STeno, it creates a file with the "scrap" and then tells GEM where that file is. Any other application or accessory can ask GEM if there is a scrap and where it resides, giving GEM a clipboard facility which is easily as good as the Mac's. If you run multiple copies of STeno [one acc. and one program, multiple accs., etc.] you can cut & paste between them. STeno lets you deteriorate your eyesight at a rate of your own choosing by allowing you to edit in any of the 3 sizes of the ST's system font. All of STeno is implemented using standard GEM calls, meaning that it runs on any ST with any screen. Those of you lucky enough to own big-screen monitors will be happy to know that STeno runs unmodified on them. When future generations of the ST come out, STeno should not have one bit of trouble. STeno is smart enough to know when you have and haven't changed the contents of the file. It's such a simple thing to code, and I get so annoyed by word processor's that don't do it. I hate choosing Quit and having the program warn me to save my file when I know I've just saved it. Yuccch. STeno uses the mouse to let you select a region of text for cut/copy/delete commands. Those of you who've seen a Mac in action have probably wished that some ST applications would use such a scheme - the wait is over [Microsoft Write does too, and quite nicely I might add. How come hardly anyone else does???]. STeno knows about and can enhance the use of STalker. The two applications will recognize each other's presence and will let you "hot-key" between them using an ALT-Tab keystroke. You can also use STeno as an editable capture buffer for STalker. Using the cut/copy/paste facility, you can select a paragraph in STeno, Copy it, invoke STalker, and do a Paste which will cause STalker to automatically do an ASCII upload of the text. ----------------------------------------------------------------- The only features disabled for this demo version are "Save" and "Save As...". Everything else is fully functional. If time permits, I plan to add the following to STeno (if these don't make it for the August release they'll be available in the next upgrade): - Enhanced printing options, including settable margins & # lines / page. - A re-format paragraph/document command similar to Word Writer and 1ST Word Plus. - More editing and cursor movement commands, such as delete line, forward word, etc. - Any reasonable suggestions from users. The commercial release will also include a configuration utility to allow the edit buffer size to be changed. As an accessory, STeno currently allocates 32K from TOS at startup time. When you run it as a program, it allocates as much as it needs in chunks of 32K. Eric Rosenquist Strata Software July 31 1989