TextHelper Introduction

General information about TextHelper

TextHelper is simple editor based on the MultiLineEditor class from the IBM Open Class Library. The programmer has added some text manipulation functions and special support for printing on HP Deskjet and Laserjet printers. If you do not have a compatible printer, there is also a generic printer option.

Note: TextHelper should not be used on large files. It should be limited to files less than 100K bytes or less than 4000 lines. TextHelper can load larger text files, but the overhead of handling the text becomes excessive and some functions are disabled.

TextHelper is not intended to replace any full functioned editor. Its value is in printing and its text manipulation.

If you have a HP DeskJet or compatible printer it has the ability to print in Landscape or Portrait mode; on US letter, US legal, and Euro A4 sized paper and envelope sizes; in 5, 10,12, 16, or 20 characters per inch or proportional; in 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10 ,12 lines per inch; 6, 12, or 24 character point size; in bold or letter quality mode; with or without line numbers; with or without a 3 hole punch margin; and in combinations of those options.

One useful feature of TextHelper is the pseudo-wysiwyg printing. The following is an example of how it works.

Remove the hard coded cr-lf pairs with the De-wrap text in editor selection. The function may be selected from the menu or by pressing the F8 key.

The turn the display line wrap back on by using the Word Wrap selection from the menu or by pressing the Ctrl+W combination. Adjust the longest line displayed by changing the Font and the editor window width until the desired line length is obtained. This can be checked by the Get lines information selection from the menu or by pressing the F6 key.

The Font changes only effect the displayed text, they are not sent to the printer. The font is changed only to change the number of characters in the displayed line.

Now print using the Print On Selected Printer selection.

Note: The longest line sent to the printer still needs to be short enough to fit on the paper. Printing in Landscape mode with a smaller printer font will allow you to print longer lines. To change the font selection sent to the printer you must use the HP DeskJet Compatible Printer Options menu selection.
Unless the option to Hard code word wrap is used, the word wrap is not saved when or if you save the file.

Getting Started

The INSTALL.CMD file will install TextHelper and create a desktop program icon and a desktop icon for this help file.

TextHelper has the option to create backups if you Enable Making Backups and Enter The Backup Path

I suggest that you enable making backups and enter a backup path. The making of backups does not take much CPU time, and can save the user a lot of effort.

TextHelper does not save any of the configuration options or the window size and position unless the Save Settings menu selection is used.

TextHelper support files

TextHelper will search the current or working directory for its support files, then check the environment setting, then the directory where the executable was located.

If you wish to have multiple configurations of TextHelper on your desktop, you will need to select a different working directory for each instance and copy a TEXTHELP.INI file to that directory.

If you intend to launch TextHelper from the command line, you may wish to set an envioronment variable so that TextHelper can find its help file and INI file. Add the following line to your CONFIG.SYS file.

SET TEXTHELPER=(DRIVE):\(DIRECTORY)

Note: There must be no space before the equal sign.

Replacing (DRIVE) with the drive letter and (DIRECTORY) with the directory where you installed TextHelper .

File

This menu selection opens a pull-down menu that contains selections to load, save, or print the contents of the edit window.

Open File

The Open File selection opens a file dialog box that allows the user to select or enter a file name to load into the editor.

Recall File

The Recall File selection loads the file that was in the editor when the Save Settings selection was used. This allows the user to quickly load a frequently accessed file into the editor.

Load Files Opened History

The Load Files Opened History selection loads the file named "recall.th" that contains a history of the files loaded in the editor. By marking the name of a file that you want to load and double clicking the Right Mouse Button ,the file will be loaded into the editor. The file "recall.th" may be edited to remove or add file names.

Close File

This menu selection closes the file without saving it and clears the editor. If changes have been made to the file, the user is not warned that the file has not been saved.

Append File

This menu selection opens a File Dialog Box and allows the user to select a file that will be appended to the contents of the editor.

View ZIP File Contents

This menu selection opens a File Dialog Box and allows the user to select a ZIP file. Then an external command will run UnZip -v and redirect the output to the file th_file_list. Then the file will be loaded into the editor.

Note: UnZip is an Info-ZIP program is not part of TextHelper and must be in the search path.

Reload Source File

This menu selection reloads the file currently loaded in the editor without opening a File Dialog Box.

Reload Source File with MIME stripping

Reload the file that is currently loaded in the editor and translates windows smart quotes and MIME encoding.

Save - No Dialog Box Prompt

Save the file loaded in the editor without displaying a File Dialog Box. If the file exists, a warning will be displayed. If the user elects to overwrite the file and the backup option is enabled, a backup will be made. A backup count number will be appended to the file name for each backup of the file.

If the file name is "file.name" and the backup file will be named "file.name.000" unless that file already exits. If it does then the backup count number will increment until the file name does not exist in the backup directory.

If the file "file.name" has been edited and saved five times with the backup option enabled, the following files will exist in the backup directory.
file.name.000
file.name.001
file.name.002
file.name.003
file.name.004

Note: The backup option will not work if the backup directory is on a FAT formatted drive.

Save As

Save the file loaded in the editor, displaying a File Dialog Box and allowing the user to enter a file name.

Save As Marked

If you highlight or mark a descriptive phrase and then select Save As Marked under the file menu, the marked text will be used as the file name. This function is only available in the registered version.

Under "Options"/"Filename Settings" there are two settings that control how spaces in the marked text are handled. If you select "Replace Spaces with Underscore Characters", spaces in the text will be replaced with underscore characters. If you select "Leave Spaces in Filename", the spaces will not be replaced. If there are any characters that should not be used in a filename, they will be replaced with spaces or underscores.

Print On Selected Printer

The Print On Selected Printer selection sends the contents of the editor to the selected printer. TextHelper offers pseudo-wysiwyg printing. How the text wrapped in the edit window is how it will be printed. By changing the size and typeface of the font used in the edit window and the width of the edit window, the user can control how the text will be printed.

This is best done by first using the "De-wrap text in editor" menu selection. This removes the cr-lf pairs unless there are two sequential cr-lf pairs. There are two cr-lf pairs at the end of each paragraph. This menu selection turns off word wrap, so the user must reselect word wrap - the Control+W key combination is a shortcut to restore word wrap. Then press the F6 key to get the width of the longest line. Then by selecting the size of the font used in the editor window and the width of the edit window the user can determine the longest line of the text sent to the printer. The user can then select the desired printer options to allow the text to be printed correctly.

Note: The longest line sent to the printer still needs to be short enough to fit on the paper.

Print Marked Text On Selected Printer

The Print Marked Text On Selected Printer selection sends the text marked in editor to the selected printer. TextHelper offers pseudo-wysiwyg printing. How the text wrapped in the edit window is how it will be printed. By changing the size and typeface of the font used in the edit window and the width of the edit window, the user can control how the text will be printed.

This is best done by first using the "De-wrap text in editor" menu selection. This removes the cr-lf pairs unless there are two sequential cr-lf pairs. There are two cr-lf pairs at the end of each paragraph. This menu selection turns off word wrap, so the user must reselect word wrap - the ControlW+W key combination is a shortcut to restore word wrap. Then press the F6 key to get the width of the longest line. The by selecting the size of the font used in the editor window and the width of the edit window the user can determine the longest line of the text sent to the printer. The user can then select the desired printer options to allow the text to be printed correctly.

Note: The longest line sent to the printer still needs to be short enough to fit on the paper.

Print Envelope on selected printer

This menu selection (when the paper size is set to one of the envelope selections) causes the text in the editor to be used to address an envelope. The format of the text is the "From" information, a blank line, and then the "To" information. An example address is shown below.

John Q. Public
1234 Anywhere Street
Neptune, Ca. 91209

Donald Hawkinson
2633 8th Avenue
Lindsborg, Kansas 67456-5111
USA

All the user needs to do is set the paper size to one of the envelope selections and have the addressing information in the editor window.

The "To" information will be printed in small print in the left hand corner of the envelope. The blank line will cause the program to skip down several lines, set the left hand margin, and set the font size. The font size depends on how many characters are in the longest line of the address.

The "From" information will then be printed with any further blank lines being treated as blank lines. If there are more than four lines after the blank line and the font is set to 5 characters per inch, the address may flow over to a new page. To resove this problem pad one of the "To" address lines with spaces to make it longer than 30 charaters.

It is not necessary to load an envelope in the printer to use this menu selection. A regular page may be used to test the output or make a label for a package. If you are making a mailing label for a package, you can select the A5 page option and the Print Envelope option will still be available.

Send reset to selected printer

This menu selection should only be available if you do not have the "Generic printer, not HP DeskJet compatible" option selected.

This command will put a HP Deskjet compatible printer into the default state so that any programming from the last job sent to the printer will not included in further printing.

Delete Source File

This menu selection will delete the file loaded into the editor.

This includes the contents of the editor and the source file on the hard drive.

Exit

This menu selection closes or exits TextHelper unless the contents of the editor have not been changed and not saved. If that is the case, the user is warned that the changes have not been saved and asked to confirm the exit.

Edit

This menu selection opens a pull-down menu that contains selections for editing and editor functions.

Cut

This selection deletes the text marked in the edit window and puts it in the OS/2 or eCS clipboard.

Copy

This selection copies the text marked in the edit window and puts it in the OS/2 or eCS clipboard.

Paste

This selection copies the text from the OS/2 or eCS clipboard inserts it at the cursor in the edit window.

Select All

This selection marks all the text in the edit window.

Clear All

This menu selection closes the file without saving it and clears the editor. If changes have been made to the file, the user is not warned that the file has not been saved.

Undo

This menu selection will undo some of the changes made in the edit window. The UNDO function is controlled by the IBM Open Class Library and I do not have any control over what it will undo. Do not rely on being able to undo any action.

None of the whole file actions can be undone by the Undo function.

Search

This menu selection prompts the user for a search string and then starts the search when the string has been entered.

The search method used is line oriented and only the first instance of the search string in each line will be marked. If the Search Again function is selected, the search will begin on the next line.

If the wildcard option is checked, only the first character of the line where the match was found will be marked.

Case sensitivity in the search

The menu selection toggles the case sensitivity for the search.

Wildcard(s) in the search pattern

The menu selection toggles the use of wildcard(s) in the search pattern. There are two wildcard characters that are valid when this option is turned on - '?' and '*'. The '?' represents a single character and the '*' represents multiple characters.

When the the wildcard options is enabled, the search pattern is not marked when a match is found. Only the first character of the line where the pattern was found is marked.

Search Again

This menu selection repeats the search. The F5 key is a shortcut to this menu selection.

Search Again From Top

This menu selection moves the cursor to the top of the file and repeats the search. The F7 key is a shortcut to this menu selection.

Search and Replace

This menu selection prompts the user for a search string and a replacement string then performs the action on the whole file in the editor. This action will not be undone by the UNDO menu selection.

The search and replace function uses a different algorithm and will change all occurrences of the search string.

The text in the editor is treated as one large string for the search and replace function, and the overhead increases significantly as the file size increases.

Whole File Operations

This submenu exists to reduce the length of the "Edit" menu. The selections in this submenu are all actions that operate on the contents of the editor by writing the changed lines to a temporary file and then loading the temporary file back into the editor.

Strip leading

This selections in this submenu contain the various options for removing spaces, numbers, punctuation, and single characters from the start of lines in the editor.
Strip leading blanks from text in editor
This menu selection strips the leading blanks and tabs from the lines of text in the editor.
Strip leading numbers from text in editor
This menu selection strips the leading numbers from the lines of text in the editor. It also strips the any leading spaces in front of the numbers. It also strips any punctuation after the numbers.
Strip leading punctuation from text in editor
This menu selection strips the leading punctuation from the lines of text in the editor.
Strip leading character from text in editor
This menu selection strips the leading character from the lines of text in the editor.

Strip trailing blanks from text in editor

This menu selection strips the trailing blanks and tabs from the text in the editor.

Strip blank lines from text in editor

This menu selection strips blank lines from the text in the editor.

Remove multiple spaces from text in editor

This menu selection removes multiple spaces from the text in the editor. This also converts tab charactersand form feeds to single spaces.

Translate windows smart quotes & mime encoding from text in editor

This menu selection translate windows smart quotes and mime encoding from text in editor Click on the following URL for an explanation of "smart quotes"

http://www.fourmilab.ch/webtools/demoroniser/

The URL is for a windows program, but the text does a good job of describing "smart quotes". The following text was "borrowed from that web page.

You see, "state of the art" Microsoft Office applications sport a nifty feature called "smart quotes." (Rule of thumb--every time Microsoft use the word "smart," be on the lookout for something dumb). This feature is on by default in both Word and PowerPoint, and can be disabled only by finding the little box buried among the dozens of bewildering option panels these products contain. If enabled, and you type the string,

"Halt," he cried, "this is the police!"

"smart quotes" transforms the ASCII quote characters automatically into the incompatible Microsoft opening and closing quotes. ASCII single and double quotes are similarly transformed (even though ASCII already contains apostrophe and single open quote characters), and double hyphens are replaced by the incompatible em dash symbol. What other horrors occur, I know not. If the user notices this happening at all, their reaction might be "Thank you Billy-boy--that looks ever so much nicer," not knowing they've been set up to look like a moron to folks all over the world. You see, when you export a document as text for hand-editing into HTML, or avail yourself of the "Save as HTML" features in newer versions of Office applications, these incompatible, Microsoft-specific characters remain in place. When viewed by a user on a non-Microsoft platform, they will not be displayed properly--most browsers seem to just drop them, as opposed to including a symbol indicating an undisplayable character. Hence, the apparently ungrammatical text, which the author of the page, editing on a Microsoft platform, will never be aware of.

The following is a explanation of the MIME encoding that this menu selection removes from the text in the editor. The text was borrowed from the following URL.

http://www.mhonarc.org/~ehood/MIME/2045/rfc2045.html

MIME Quoted-Printable Content-Transfer-Encoding

The Quoted-Printable encoding is intended to represent data that largely consists of octets that correspond to printable characters in the US-ASCII character set. It encodes the data in such a way that the resulting octets are unlikely to be modified by mail transport. If the data being encoded are mostly US-ASCII text, the encoded form of the data remains largely recognizable by humans. A body which is entirely US-ASCII may also be encoded in Quoted-Printable to ensure the integrity of the data should the message pass through a character-translating, and/or line-wrapping gateway.

In this encoding, octets are to be represented as determined by the following rules:

1. (General 8bit representation) Any octet, except a CR or LF that is part of a CRLF line break of the canonical (standard) form of the data being encoded, may be represented by an "=" followed by a two digit hexadecimal representation of the octet's value. The digits of the hexadecimal alphabet, for this purpose, are "0123456789ABCDEF". Uppercase letters must be used; lowercase letters are not allowed. Thus, for example, the decimal value 12 (US-ASCII form feed) can be represented by "=0C", and the decimal value 61 (US-ASCII EQUAL SIGN) can be represented by "=3D". This rule must be followed except when the following rules allow an alternative encoding.

2. (Literal representation) Octets with decimal values of 33 through 60 inclusive, and 62 through 126, inclusive, MAY be represented as the US-ASCII characters which correspond to those octets (EXCLAMATION POINT through LESS THAN, and GREATER THAN through TILDE, respectively).

3. (White Space) Octets with values of 9 and 32 MAY be represented as US-ASCII TAB (HT) and SPACE characters, respectively, but MUST NOT be so represented at the end of an encoded line. Any TAB (HT) or SPACE characters on an encoded line MUST thus be followed on that line by a printable character. In particular, an "=" at the end of an encoded line, indicating a soft line break (see rule #5) may follow one or more TAB (HT) or SPACE characters. It follows that an octet with decimal value 9 or 32 appearing at the end of an encoded line must be represented according to Rule #1. This rule is necessary because some MTAs (Message Transport Agents, programs which transport messages from one user to another, or perform a portion of such transfers) are known to pad lines of text with SPACEs, and others are known to remove "white space" characters from the end of a line. Therefore, when decoding a Quoted-Printable body, any trailing white space on a line must be deleted, as it will necessarily have been added by intermediate transport agents.

4. (Line Breaks) A line break in a text body, represented as a CRLF sequence in the text canonical form, must be represented by a (RFC 822) line break, which is also a CRLF sequence, in the Quoted-Printable encoding. Since the canonical representation of media types other than text do not generally include the representation of line breaks as CRLF sequences, no hard line breaks (i.e. line breaks that are intended to be meaningful and to be displayed to the user) can occur in the quoted-printable encoding of such types. Sequences like "=0D", "=0A", "=0A=0D" and "=0D=0A" will routinely appear in non-text data represented in quoted-printable, of course.

Note that many implementations may elect to encode the local representation of various content types directly rather than converting to canonical form first, encoding, and then converting back to local representation. In particular, this may apply to plain text material on systems that use newline conventions other than a CRLF terminator sequence. Such an implementation optimization is permissible, but only when the combined canonicalization-encoding step is equivalent to performing the three steps separately.

5. (Soft Line Breaks) The Quoted-Printable encoding REQUIRES that encoded lines be no more than 76 characters long. If longer lines are to be encoded with the Quoted-Printable encoding, "soft" line breaks must be used. An equal sign as the last character on a encoded line indicates such a non-significant ("soft") line break in the encoded text.

Thus if the "raw" form of the line is a single unencoded line that says:

Now's the time for all folk to come to the aid of their country.

This can be represented, in the Quoted-Printable encoding, as:

Now's the time =
for all folk to come=
to the aid of their country.

This provides a mechanism with which long lines are encoded in such a way as to be restored by the user agent. The 76 character limit does not count the trailing CRLF, but counts all other characters, including any equal signs.

Since the hyphen character ("-") may be represented as itself in the Quoted-Printable encoding, care must be taken, when encapsulating a quoted-printable encoded body inside one or more multipart entities, to ensure that the boundary delimiter does not appear anywhere in the encoded body. (A good strategy is to choose a boundary that includes a character sequence such as "=_" which can never appear in a quoted-printable body.

De-wrap text in editor

This option removes all cr-lf pairs except when there are two pairs together. This operation also turns off the word wrap funtion of the displayed text. The word wrap of the displayed text may be turned back on with the Control+W key combination. The word wrapping may be adjusted by changing the font and the width of the editor window. Unless the option to Hard code word wrap is used, the displayed word wrap is not saved.

Note: The longest line that can be loaded into TextHelper is 32768 characters. If the de-wrapped text contains lines that are 32768 characters or longer, the text will not be loaded into the editor.

Hard code word wrap

This option adds CR-LF pairs to each line in the display window to make the current word wrap permanent.

Strip Forwarding marks

This menu selection removes the forwarding marks '>' from the text in the editor. This is useful when you get an email that has been forwarded multiple times, but has some text that you want to save.

The program starts at the 15th character and moves toward the start of the line looking for a forwarding mark. When a forwarding mark is found, the front of the line is truncated including the forwarding mark.

Reverse text in editor

This menu selection reverses the text in the editor.

It has no valid use, but is there because the function was part of the IBM Open Class Library IString class and the programmer found it entertaining.

ROT13 text in editor

This option performs a ROT13 on the text in the editor. The characters "abcdefghihjklm" and "ABCDEFGHIHJKLM" are shifted up by 13 to become "nopqrstuvwxyz" and "NOPQRSTUVWXYZ". The characters "nopqrstuvwxyz" and "NOPQRSTUVWXYZ" are shifted down by 13 to become "abcdefghihjklm" and "ABCDEFGHIHJKLM". Performing a ROT13 on the text twice will result in the orginal text.

/rot ther'teen/ [Usenet: from "rotate alphabet 13 places"], v. The simple Caesar-cypher encryption that replaces each English letter with the one 13 places forward or back along the alphabet, so that "The butler did it!" becomes "Gur ohgyre qvq vg!" Most Usenet news reading and posting programs include a rot13 feature. It is used to enclose the text in a sealed wrapper that the reader must choose to open - e.g. for posting things that might offend some readers, or spoilers. A major advantage of rot13 over rot(N) for other N is that it is self-inverse, so the same code can be used for encoding and decoding.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

ROT13 replaces each letter by its partner 13 characters further along the alphabet. For example, HELLO becomes URYYB (or, decrypting, URYYB becomes HELLO again).

ROT13 ("rotate by 13 places", sometimes hyphenated ROT-13) is a simple Substitution cipher used in online forums as a means of hiding spoilers, punchlines, puzzle solutions, and offensive materials from the casual glance. ROT13 has been described as the "Usenet equivalent of a magazine printing the answer to a quiz upside down". ROT13 is a variation of the Caesar cipher, developed in ancient Rome.

ROT13 is its own inverse; that is, to undo ROT13, the same algorithm is applied, so the same action can be used for encoding and decoding. The algorithm provides no real cryptographic security and is not normally used for such. It is often cited as a canonical example of weak encryption. ROT13 has inspired a variety of letter and word games on-line, and is frequently mentioned in newsgroup conversations.

The cipher is also sometimes known as EBG13 or EBG-13 because "EBG13" is "ROT13" in ROT13.

Center lines in editor on the longest line

This option centers all lines of text in the editor. The function looks for the longest line an then pads the shorter lines with leading spaces.

Miscellaneous

This submenu contains functions that do not fit well in other submenus.

Get lines information

This menu selection counts the number of lines and words in the editor and finds the longest line, and moves the cursor to the start of that line. The F6 key is a shortcut to this menu selection.

The information reported is affected by the Word Wrap option.

The online information for Print On Selected Printer has more on how to use the information reported by this menu selection.

Launch Browser with marked URL

This menu selection launches a browser with a URL that has been marked in the editor. The URL must start with "http". The default browser is FIREFOX.

Go to first line

This selection will move the cursor to the first line in the editor.

Go to last line

This selection will move the cursor to the last line in the editor.

Go to line number

This selection will open a dialog box to prompt the user for a line number and then the cursor to the line number entered in the dialog.

Note: If the number entered is greater than the number of lines in the editor, no error message will be displayed and the cursor will be moved to the last line.

Display current line number

This selection will display the current location of the cursor in the Information Area at the bottom of the edit window. The cursor position displayed will not be updated as the cursor is moved in the edit window.

Insert Timestamp at cursor

This menu selection puts a timestamp at the cursor, but has the unfortunate habit of sometimes truncating the rest of the text in the line.

The timestamp is in 24 hour format.

Use marked text to generate password string

This menu selection uses the marked text to generate a password string. The generated password and the original text are appended as the last lines in the editor. The marked text is reversed and XORed with an internal string that is 68 characters long. It is then converted into a string of hex characters. The resulting string is two times the length of the marked text plus two characters.

Uppercase marked text in editor

This menu selection converts the marked text to upper case letters.

It may not be that useful, but the function was part of the IBM Open Class Library IString class and the programmer found it entertaining.

Note: This function is limited to the text in a single line and must not include the new line characters (which appear as spaces at the end of the line). The function will not execute if a carriage return or line feed is included in the marked text.

Lowercase marked text in editor

This menu selection converts the marked text to lower case letters.

It may not be that useful, but the function was part of the IBM Open Class Library IString class and the programmer found it entertaining.

Note: This function is limited to the text in a single line and must not include the new line characters (which appear as spaces at the end of the line). The function will not execute if a carriage return or line feed is included in the marked text.

Center line in editor

This menu selection centers the line where the cursor is located based on the longest displayed line within the first 60 lines. If word wrap is enabled, the centering is based on the length of the wrapped line.

It is intended to center a title, but will work on any line.

Options

This menu selection opens a pull-down menu that contains selections to configure the editor, display and printer parameters.

Display Options

This menu selection opens a pull-down menu that contains selections to select the font used, reset the colors and set word wrap on and off.

Colors must set by drag and drop from one of the color palettes. To set the text colors, hold down the cntrl key while doing the drag and drop.

Font

The Font selection opens a standard OS/2 Font dialog box that lets the user select a new font or change the font size for the displayed results. This will allow the selection of any of the installed fonts. This option only changes the font in the main window. To change the font selection sent to the printer you must use the HP DeskJet Compatible Printer Options menu selection.

To change the font for the menubar or the information area below the main window, use the OS/2 font palette and drag and drop a new font on either area. The font colors may also be changed be drag and drop if the control key is held down and the color dropped on the text.

Note: The font selections are only saved when Save Settings is selected.

Reset to default colors

The 'Reset to default colors' option restores TextHelper to the system default background and foreground colors.

To change the colors on the menubar, main window, or the information area use the OS/2 color palette and drag and drop a color selection. When Save Settings is selected , the current color selections are saved.

Note: The font colors are reset by this selection.

Word Wrap

The Word Wrap selection enables or disables the word wrap feature of the editor window.

Note: The Word Wrap is a software word wrap and it does not insert hard carriage return - line feed pairs.

Filename Settings

This menu selection opens a pull-down menu that contains selections to configure the filename, backup, and default load path options.

Replace Spaces with Underscore Characters

This menu selection enables the replacing of spaces with underscore characters when the user has text marked for use as a save filename.

See Save As Marked for more on how this option is used.

Leave Spaces in Filename

This menu selection enables the use of spaces when the user has text marked for use as a save filename.

See Save As Marked for more on how this option is used.

Enter Backup Path

This menu selection opens a dialog box for entering the path for backups.

If the file name is "file.name" and the backup file will be named "file.name.000" unless that file already exits. If it does then the backup count number will increment until the file name does not exist in the backup directory.

If the file "file.name" has been edited and saved five times with the backup option enabled, the following files will exist in the backup directory.
file.name.000
file.name.001
file.name.002
file.name.003
file.name.004

Note: The backup option will not work if the backup directory is on a FAT formatted drive.

Enable Making Backups

This menu selection enables the backup option. Enter The Backup Path option does not enable making backups.

Enter Default Load Path

This menu selection opens a dialog box for entering the default load path. This is the location that is loaded into the file dialog box when "Open File" is selected. This is useful when most of the files loaded into TextHelper come from the same location.

Enable Use of Default Load Path

This menu selection enables the use of the Default Load Path.

Enter Browser Name

This menu selection enables the user to enter name of the prefered browser. The browser must be in the search path so that the browser may be started from the OS/2 or eCS command line. The default is the Firefox browser.

Printer Selection

This menu selection opens a pull-down menu that contains the options for the destination of the print jobs.

PRN default printer

This menu selection selects the PRN device as the destination for print jobs. This is the default printer set in the WPS.

LPT1

This menu selection selects the LPT1 device as the destination for print jobs.

LPT2

This menu selection selects the LPT2 device as the destination for print jobs.

LPT3

This menu selection selects the LPT3 device as the destination for print jobs.

testPRN

This menu selection selects the file testPRN as the destination for print jobs. This allows the user to see just what would be sent to the printer and may save paper if the output is not what was wanted.

The file is created in the working directory and may be opened by any file viewer such as List or any editor including TextHelper.

Generic printer, not HP DeskJet compatible

This menu selection disables the HP DeskJet Options and special programming.

HP DeskJet Compatible Printer Options

This menu selection opens a pull-down menu that contains selections to select the HP DeskJet Compatible Printer Options.

Character Set

This menu selection opens a pull-down menu that contains a list of supported character or symbol sets.

Note: The list is the one supported by the HP DeskJet 632c. If you need a character set that is not listed, contact the author.

Supported Character Sets
One of the supported character or symbol sets.

Note: The list is the one supported by the HP DeskJet 632c. If you need a character set that is not listed, contact the author.

Printer Font Settings

This menu selection opens a pull-down menu that contains a list of supported font options.
Lines per inch
This menu selection opens a pull-down menu that contains a list of supported lines per inch options. Lines per inch option

One of the supported lines per inch options

Characters per inch
This menu selection opens a pull-down menu that contains a list of supported Characters per inch options and attributes. Characters per inch option

One of the supported character per inch options in a courier font Bold option

Adds a bold attribute to the printed characters Proportional Font

Selects a proportional font that is approximately 14 characters per inch. Letter Quality Mode

Adds a Letter Quality mode to the printed characters. Italic Proportional font

Selects an italic proportional font that is approximately 14 characters per inch.

Character Point Size
This menu selection opens a pull-down menu that contains a list of supported character Point Size options. Default for font

Do not change point size, leave at default size. Character Point Size Option

One of the supported character point size options.
6 point is the smallest and used with the 10 or 12 lines per inch option
12 point is nornal on my printer, but it may not be on other printers
24 point is the largest and should be used with the 3 or 4 lines per inch option.

Double space lines

This menu selection selects the double space line option which adds a blank line between source lines when printed.

Add line numbers

This menu selection selects the line number option which adds line number before source lines when printed.

3 hole punch margin

This menu selection selects the 3 hole punch margin option which adds a margin before source lines when printed.

Paper Size

This menu selection opens a pull-down menu that contains a list of supported paper size options.
A4 Paper Size
This menu selection selects the Euro A4 (210 x 297 mm) paper size option.
A5 Paper Size
This menu selection selects the Euro A5 paper (148 x 210 mm) size option.
US Letter Paper Size
This menu selection selects the US letter paper (8.5 x 11 in) size option.
US Legal Paper Size
This menu selection selects the US legal paper size (8.5 x 14 in) option.
Envelope - US #10
This menu selection selects the Envelope - US #10 (4.12 x 9.5 in) option.
Envelope - Euro DL
This menu selection selects the Envelope - Euro DL (110 x 220 mm) option.

Print Orientation

This menu selection opens a pull-down menu for selecting Portrait or Landscape print orientation
Portrait mode
This menu selection selects Portrait mode printing.
Landscape mode
This menu selection selects Landscape mode printing.

Duplex

This menu selection opens a pull-down menu for selecting duplex options
No Duplex
This menu selection selects no duplex mode printing.
LaserJet Duplex
This menu selection selects LaserJet Duplex mode printing.

This option may work for other HP printers or HP PCL compatible printers that have internal duplex functions.

Note: The HP DeskJet 632c printer does not have a duplex function, so this function is untested.

Save Settings

This menu selection saves the selected options and the search text if it exists.

Note: The settings are saved in a file named texthelp.ini that is located in the same directory as the executable unless an environment varaible is set by a line added to the CONFIG.SYS file.

SET TEXTHELPER = <drive>: \ <path>

This line would allow TextHelper to be started from any directory and the settings file to be found.

New Editor

This menu selection opens new copy of TextHelper.

Note: The editor is opened with the saved settings, not the settings of the currently opened copy of TextHelper.

Grab Clipboard

This menu selection opens new copy of TextHelper and pastes the contents of the clipboard into the editor. The new copy of TextHelper is opened minimized to reduce desktop clutter.

Note: If the OS/2 or eCS clipboard is empty or does not contain text, a new copy of TextHelper is not opened.

Note: The editor is opened with the saved settings, not the settings of the currently opened copy of TextHelper.

Title

This menu selection opens a text dialog for entering a title for easy identification of the edit window. This title will appear in the OS/2 or eCS window list. This does not change the file name if a file has been opened in the editor.

File List

This menu selection opens a submenu for working with a file list.

Select files for file list

This menu selection opens a File Dialog for selecting a single file name or multiple file names to be inserted as text in the edit window. The file names will include the drive letter and the complete directory structure.

Use editor contents as template

This menu selection copies the current contents of the editor for use as a command template. When files are selected via the File List menu option, each instance of "%s" in the command template will be replaced by a file name. The command template may be multiple lines.

If the following text is used as the command template.

copy %s

Then the files selected will be applied to the command template and the following will be inserted in the edit window.

copy L:\IBMCPP\SAMPLES\IOC\TH\ADIALOG4.CPP
copy L:\IBMCPP\SAMPLES\IOC\TH\ADIALOG4.DLG
copy L:\IBMCPP\SAMPLES\IOC\TH\ADIALOG4.HPP
copy L:\IBMCPP\SAMPLES\IOC\TH\adialog4.lst
copy L:\IBMCPP\SAMPLES\IOC\TH\aextent.cpp

Build ZIP file using file list in editor

This menu selection checks the current contents of the editor to verify that each line contains a valid filename. Then a File Dialog Box will open to allow selection of a drive, directry, and file name for the ZIP file. Then an external command will be ran to create the ZIP file.

Note: Zip is an Info-ZIP program is not part of TextHelper and must be in the search path.