The PC-SIG Library 9/The PC-SIG Library on CD ROM - Ninth Edition.iso/801_900/DISK0829/DISK0829.ZIP/WP.DOC

Text File | 1988-10-11 | 10KB | 220 lines

                  THE "NEW YORK WORD" WORD PROCESSOR


BACKGROUND

   The  New  York  Word  (NYW) was created in 1984 to run on computers
which  use the UNIX(TM) operating system. In late 1985, NYW was ported
to run under MS-DOS, the standard operating system for  the  IBM  Per-
sonal  Computer.  NYW  is  a  state-of-the-art word processing package
available at a low cost to end-users and OEMs.  Source  code  is  also
available at a reasonable cost.


FLEXIBLE AND FAST

  NYW utilizes your system's main memory to the fullest. This way, you
can  have  complete random access to any part of your document. Opera-
tions like reformatting (global or paragraph) and  re-pagination  seem
to  happen  in  an  instant.  With the introduction of CPU's (like the
Intel 80386) which have built-in virtual memory hardware, you can edit
extremely large text files totally in memory.

   When a user starts an NYW editing session, the NYW program examines
several files. These files  contain  the  default  values  of  several
parameters  which  affect  the  editing session. These parameters deal
with items like margin settings, tab settings, printer  options,  ses-
sion modes, etc. By changing the values in these default files, a user
can customize an editing session to suit his particular needs.

GENERAL EDITING FEATURES

   NYW  has a full complement of editing features. The cursor movement
commands allow you to move up and down lines, paragraphs,  and  pages.
or can go directly to any line number, or any number of lines relative
from  where  the cursor currently is. You can place up to 26 bookmarks
at various points in the document, and return  to  any  point  at  any
time.  You  can  scroll  continuously  up or down the document, with a
user-selectable scrolling speed.

   There are ten buffers which you can use to store text  temporarily.
By  using these buffers, you can move or copy any portion of text from
one place to another. You can mark a region of text  and  then  delete
it,  save  it, write it out to a file, draw a box around it, or change
the case of the letters in it.

   To enhance your document, you can choose from special effects  like
boldfacing,  underlining,  overstriking, subscripts, and superscripts.
If your printer is capable of it, you can change fonts at any point in
the document. There are also several kinds of tabs  regular,  decimal,
center, and flush right.

   Pagination is extremely fast. You can re-paginate a document at any
point  and  NYW will renumber the pages for you automatically. You can
choose to handle widow and orphan lines to produce a  cleaner  looking
document.

   NYW  allows  you  to  have  multi-line  header  and footers in your
document. You can even put in "temporary" headers  and  footers  which
will  appear  on  the  printer,  but  will not be saved along with the
document.

   Other desireable features are an escape to the UNIX/DOS shell,  and
the ability to redirect the output of a command into your document.

FOOTNOTES

   NYW  has  full footnote capabilities, with the ability to automati-
cally renumber footnotes when you insert or  delete  a  footnote.  You
have  your choice of having the footnotes appear at the end of a page,
or the end of a document. You can  edit  footnotes  as  if  they  were
regular  text,  or  flash a listing of the currently defined footnotes
across the screen.

MACROS

   NYW  has  full  macro  capabilities.  You  can  intermix  text  and
keystroke  commands  in  a  macro and replay them at any time. You can
also have libraries of macros, which you can read  at  any  time  into
your  editing  session.  Any macros you define in a file will be saved
along with that file thus you can build up  an  entire  dictionary  of
macros which can be inserted in a file at any time. This is useful for
"skeleton"  documents,  where  you can take an outline of a letter and
paste text (ie macros) at various points in the letter.

   Another feature which greatly aids  the  user  is  the  ability  to
"capture" keystrokes. If the user must repeat a series of keystrokes a
few  times  in a row, then the user can type the series in once, watch
the effect the commands have, then replay the series an arbitrary num-
ber of times.

TABLE OF CONTENTS & INDEX GENERATION

   NYW comes with an automatic table of contents and index  generator.
The  user  has  a  choice  of  having  the  toc/index generated at the
beginning/end of the file, or written out to another document. The in-
dex  generator  will  also  take  consecutively  numbered  pages   (ie
4,5,6,8,9,10) and express those pages as a range (ie 4-6,8-10).

SPELLING CHECKER

   NYW  also interfaces with a UNIX-like spelling program, which is an
extremely powerful spelling checker. (See the Bell Labs memorandum  by
McIlroy). It also has a spelling corrector if you chose, you have have
suggested  correct spellings flash on the screen. The advantage of in-
terfacing to the UNIX-like spelling checker is that no extra space  is
required  for a massive English dictionary. The user can also maintain
his own private dictionary which is checked  along  with  the  regular
dictionary.
AUTOMATIC HYPHENATION

   NYW  has  automatic  hyphenation. It uses a cross between the Knuth
algorithm (incorporated in his TEX system), and the Gimpel  algorithm.
This  provides  a  fast,  accurate hyphenator. This algorithm has been
tested on a dictionary of 2000 common words, and it performs virtually
without error.

MAIL MERGE FACILITY

   The mail merge facility is extremely powerful, and gives the user a
small programming language to do run-time calculations. These calcula-
tions can be merged into a letter, and then recalculated for the  next
letter.  The  YACC compiler-generator was used to write this language,
which has a full complement of arithmetic and string operations, along
with block if-then-else statements.

   There are several utility programs which come with NYW to make  the
mail  merge  program  more powerful. These programs take the output of
the mail merge program, and "filter" it in different ways so the  user
can use the results in another process.

   One  is a label generating program, which gives the user parameters
for the number of columns in a row  of  labels,  the  height  of  each
label,  and  the width of each label. This program can intermix labels
which have a different  number  of  lines  this  was  traditionally  a
short-coming  of  many  mail  merge programs, as you had to maintain a
separate mailing list for addresses which had 3, 4 and 5 lines.

   We also can interface the mail  merge  program  with  popular  UNIX
packages like Supercomp or Unify. We can write a custom program so the
output of the mail merge facility can be interfaced with your favorite
program.


REGULAR EXPRESSIONS

     The  UNIX(TM)  operating  system pioneered the use of regular ex-
pressions in pattern matching. Regular expressions allow you to search
for a context, such as "all lines beginning with the  letter  a,b,  or
c",  or  "any  occurence of two numbers followed by a letter". NYW in-
corporates regular expressions into its search-and-substitute facility
to allow powerful pattern matching. You can also use  regular  expres-
sions in NYW's global substitution facility.


MULTI-WINDOW EDITING

   Many  times when you edit a document, you may wish that you can see
another document on the screen at the same time. NYW can edit up to 12
documents or different parts of the same document simultaneously, each
document in its own separate window on the screen.  You  can  move  or
copy  text from one window to the another. An "explode" feature allows
you to zoom any window to the full size of the PC screen.

    Multi-window editing is especially useful in conjunction with  the
Enhanced  Graphics  Adapter. NYWord will support 43-line displays when
used with the EGA.
MATH CALCULATIONS

   There are two kinds of calculators that come with  NYW.  One  is  a
desk   calculator  that  allows  fully  parenthesizes  arithmetic  ex-
pressions. You can enter this calculator from  the  middle  of  a  NYW
editing  session in order to do some quick calculations. The desk cal-
culator comes with memory that can be recalled at any instant.

   The second calculator operates on numbers that you have embedded in
the document you are editing. You can intermix numbers in the document
with numbers you enter at the keyboard, use parenthesized expressions,
and do automatic horizontal or vertical totals at the touch of a key.

GRAPHICS

   NYW allows you to intermix text and ASCII line-drawing graphics  in
the  same  document.  At  the  touch  of  a keystroke, you can go into
graphics mode, and use several keys to produce horizontal and vertical
lines, corners, and tees. This allows the user to create  charts,  and
integrate them into the document.

MULTI COLUMN EDITING

   In  addition  to  the  block cut-and-paste facilities, NYW supports
cutting and pasting of columns of text. There is also a  facility  for
taking  existing  text,  and  rearranging it in a multi-column format.
This feature is useful to magazine and newspaper publishers.

SAFETY FEATURES

   NYW gives the user an  automatic  checkpointing  facility  to  help
prevent  total  loss  of data in the event of system crashes. NYW will
also create a backup version of a file whenever you save your  current
editing session.


INFORMATION

     For more information on NYW, contact :

                              Marc Adler
                            MAGMA Systems
                          15 Bodwell Terrace
                       Millburn, New Jersey   07041
                            [phone]

PRICING

    New York Word sells for $45.00 in the US and  Canada,  plus  $3.00
shipping.  Overseas  orders please add $10.00 for postage and handling.
Quantity discounts are available, as are site licenses. Please contact
us for details.