by Kei of Crn

It  makes  life a lot easier for us editors if there's not much to edit.
You  also  get your articles to look the way you want them.  However, we
don't  mind  editing  your text submissions but just in case you want to
cheer me up..

Use  a  text editor that doesn't use all those control codes.  Make sure
you  hit  RETURN a lot as well if you don't have word-wrap as lines that
are too long are hard to format.  We recommend Cygnus Editor Pro but any
editor like Ed that come with ADOS is ok.


The  width  of  the  articles  is  set  to 72 characters and the text is
indented  by  four  spaces.   This means that if you format your text so
that  it  is  72  characters  wide it will appear centred on the screen.
Lines  longer  than  72 chars WILL be displayed and will wrap around the
screen  on  a  graphical basis, so that text that comes in from the left
after  wrapping  will  be  one  pixel  lower  than  that  on the line it
originated from.

Either  set  CygnusEd  to a 72-character width (Shift+Amiga+"6") and set
word  wrap to ON (Amiga+"6") or tap the spacebar 71 times, followed by a
character  to  act as a marker, and don't go beyond this marker when you
type your text.

Big  Text  is  a  single  phrase  that  you  want to appear in the above
24-point  font.   Because  it is a 24-point font it takes three lines of
the  normal  text to display, so you should leave at least 2 empty lines
after  it.   To  display a string in Big Text you simply preface it with
the  control string "|1-" and ensure that the "|" character is the first
character on that line.  For example:  The string:

                       |1-This is Big Text

when placed up against the left-hand edge of the screen, will produce:

and two blank lines are left after it so that the big text doesn't over-
write any subsequent lines of ASCII.

Big  Big Text is another single phrase, as above, but it is displayed in
a  stonking 60-point font for super-emphasis.  As it's 60-point it needs
6 empty lines after it to ensure it doesn't overwrite anything else, and
if  you  want  to  display descender characters (g, j, p, q, y) then you
should leave 7 blank lined after it.

Again,  the  display code is similar to the Big Text, you simply preface
your  string  with "|2-" and it's all done automatically, so for example
the line:

                               |2-Blimey!

when placed up against the left-hand border of your file, will produce:

1-
2-
3-
4-
5-
6-
7-

and  in  this  case  7  extra lines are required as there's a "y" in the
string,  taking up another line.  In both of these bigger-text examples,
no  small  (normal?)  type can be on the same line that the bigger stuff
starts on, it'll be included in the big text string, however you CAN put
normal  ascii  on  the subsequent lines if you take care that they don't
overap the main text, illustrated by the numbers 1 to 7 above.

Since  we  were  not  sent  any clipart, there isn't any this issue.  We
should of created some ourselves but we were too busy booz..  working on
coding  stuff.   So send us some cool clipart for the next issue!  Don't
send  anything  over  4  colours though as Amida's not sure about how to
handle  more  than  4  colour  clipart,  but  he's  working on it.  

The  main  menu is seperated by what we call "headers".  These are small
IFF  files  containing a 2-colour image that we load in to the main code
as  data  and  specify  to the engine via the configuration file for the
main  menu.   These  can easily be changed each issue so we figured we'd
give  you  gfx guys out there a chance to see what you can come up with.
The  main  menu  is seperated into topics which you can get a list of by
looking  in  your BONUS drawer on disk 2.  There should be a file called
"---ArticleCodes---"  which lists these header names.  There should also
be  a  file  called "Template.IFF".  Load this into your favourite paint
package  and  using colour 1 and 0 in the top area, draw your design and
send it to us!

This is a new addition into the article text, every line in your article
can  have  it's own colour assigned to it.  By default your article text
will  be  displayed in white, but you can change the current line colour
at  any point by inserting a standard 2-Byte RGB value into the start of
the  line.   These values are used by all paint programs, such as Deluxe
Paint  and  Personal Paint, and so you can find nice colour combinations
beforehand by playing with these packages.

As  before with the large text codes, these sequences must appear at the
start  of  the line where you want the colour change to take effect, the
codes go in the format $RGB where R=Red, G=Green and B=Blue, all colours
having  standard  values  from  0  to F.  Note that full green *must* be
requested with $0F0 and *NOT* $F0, which would be logical.

Here's  how  you should produce your articles, this is the easiest order
for less-experienced people.


    1>  Main body of text, type your article, leave titles and subtitles
        as  normal  text for now, don't worry about spacing.  Format the
        text to 72 columns, and split it into paragraphs where required.

    2>  Go to each title or subtitle in turn, and insert either "|1-" or
        "|2-" (do not include quotes) at the left-hand border to use the
        larger  fonts.  If  you have used font 1 then ensure there are 2
        blank  lines AFTER the one starting "|1-", if you have used font
        2 then ensure there are 7 blank lines (8 if you have used either
        q,y,p or j in lower case) AFTER the  one starting "|2-".  Ensure
        there are no spaces between the "-" and the start of your title.

    3>  Change  the colour at the START of any line by inserting the hex
        value for it at the left border.  It DOES NOT MATTER if a colour
        code pushes the width of your text beyond 72 colums.


If  using  CygnusEd, load in your text file, press SHIFT+AMIGA+6 and set
the  right  border  to  72.   Insert your title size codes and go to the
author  name  line  and  press  AMIGA+\ this will centre the line.  Also
usefull  for  poems.   Then  move  down  to  the first character of your
article  text  and hold down AMIGA+f and your article will be formatted!
You can then add colour codes to suit the tone of your article!

The Word Article Tester (TWAT :) can be found on disk 2, you should copy
it  to  your  C:   directory  (on  your hard drive, non-HD owners should
SERIOUSLY  think  about  getting  one!) and run it from the CLI.  Simply
load any .txt article file via the gaudy green requester and you can see
what  the  file will look like in the magazine.  $aff The keypresses for
TWAT are as follows:

    C/Up    -   Scroll upwards through the text
    C/Down  -   Scroll downwards through the text
    Sh+C/Up -   Scroll quickly upwards through the text
    Sh+C/Up -   Scroll quickly downwards through the text
    Esc     -   load another file view the requester
    F1-F8   -   Speed set to 1-8 pixels per frame
    F10     -   Quit

TWAT  will search the Ram Disk for a file called "TWAT.loadme" which
should  contain  the  full name (including path) of the file you want to
pre-load, so you can use it via Directory Opus by creating a MENU entry:

            AmigaDOS    C:Echo >RAM:TWAT.loadme {f}
            AmigaDOS    C:TWAT

Carnage  are currently using a modified version of TWAT which allows you
to  edit  articles  and  test  them while TWAT is still running.  We are
considering  making  some more changes to it and releasing it as V4 in a
future edition of The WORD.

End