Azile simulates a gripe session with a real jerk. Keep a copy in your Apple menu and use it as a text editor DA (under System 7). It is fast, easy-to-use and requires very little memory. I would greatly appreciate any bug reports or suggestions.
Azile requires System version 6.0.3 or newer. If you wish to hear Azile speak, you should place the latest Macintalk driver in your System folder. (The program runs perfectly well without Macintalk.) It has been tested on an SE/30 and an LC.
Select ‘Start Interview’ when you are ready to match wits with a superior intelligence. Azile will make a statement and then wait for your reply. Type your response (preferably a single sentence) followed by a carriage return. Be sure to enter your reply at the end of the text.
The ‘Demo’ command will initiate a thoroughly pointless conversation between the Mac and itself. I used this feature to help debug Azile’s grammar (which is even worse than mine). It was left in the final release, since it occasionally produces some humorous results.
The ‘Turn Speech On’ command activates Macintalk (if it is installed). Once speech has been activated, you may use the ‘Speech Settings…’ menu choice to modify the Macintalk speech characteristics.
Select ‘Speak Selection’ to have Macintalk verbalize the current text selection.
Standard ‘Find…’ and ‘Replace…’ commands are supported. You can limit the search to whole words and also specify whether case is significant.
The ‘Strip LF’s’ command will remove all the linefeed characters from text. (Linefeeds show up as little boxes at the beginning of each line.) This allows you to easily edit text which was created on a non-Mac computer.
The ‘Modify…’ command allows you to make alterations to a selection (or the entire document if no text is selected). Multiple modifications may be selected simultaneously. The first checkbox allows you to remove non-Mac control characters (which usually show up as useless little boxes in the text). The second checkbox lets you replace each tab character with a specified number of spaces. It is also easy to convert typographer (‘smart’) quotes to standard quotes and vica versa.
There are several options for dealing with line endings. Mac word processors use ‘paragraph format’ text. (Line endings are determined by ‘word wrap’ and paragraphs are terminated by a CR.) Most BBS and non-Mac systems prefer pre-set line lengths (e.g. 60 characters per line) with each line terminated by a CR or CR/LF. These extra line-ending characters can be stripped from downloaded text or added to text in preparation for upload.
The ‘Preferences…’ command will present a list of (hopefully obvious) selections. Please experiment if you are not sure what each choice does. Your preferences are automatically saved in the Azile program file.
Features will be added as the author’s study of Inside Macintosh proceeds… (Whew!) Azile is limited to 32K text files and does not support true tab functions or embedded pictures. Extended keyboard functions (‘Home’, ‘End’, etc.) and ‘Undo’ are now supported.
••• Warning! •••
Macintalk may conflict with the Sound Manager. This means that once Macintalk has been activated, any other sounds may cause the system to hang. If this happens, Command-Option-Escape allows you to close Azile and return to the desktop (in System 7). For some reason, I was unable to produce a crash on the LC.
I used the wonderful THINK Pascal‚Ñ¢ compiler and would recommend it highly to any other novice programmer. The source debugger is excellent. I have scrounged up a THINK-compatible Macintalk library file and will be glad to share it with you.
If you would like copies of the Pascal source codes (heavily commented), just send a disk (preferably NOT blank) and a self addressed stamped (remember the stamp) disk mailer envelope to:
Tom Bender
5313 Beverly Drive
San Angelo, Texas 76904
Azile 2.2 (as well as the source code) is freely released to the public domain. This is not shareware.
Also try Re-Pete and Eliza, hopefully available on a BBS near you!
