Documentation for Quick Label 1.0
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(C) 1989 by Ignac A. Kolenko
Quick Label runs on any ST, color or mono, with TOS in ROM.
(medium resolution recommended due to dialog box sizes!)
To use Quick Label, double click on the file QUIKLABL.PRG. A
dialog box will appear, and the screen colors will change to
white, black, red and green (on a color monitor only!).
A set of 10 button, labelled from 0 to 9 are the label editing
buffers. This program allows you to edit 10 labels simultaneously,
which is a great asset for the times you need more than one set of
labels done at one time. To choose a label buffer, simply click
on one of the numbered buttons.
Once a buffer has been selected, you can Edit that buffer, or
Load a previously edited label into that buffer. Click either Edit
or Load to perform these function. Editing is described later in
this documentation file.
Also, once a buffer has been selected, you can Save that label (the
standard extender used for labels generated by Quick Label is .LAB)
or clear the label (empty its contents). Clich either Save or Clear
to perform these functions.
The final option you have with the currently selected label is to
print it. If you do not load a configuration file, the text will
come out as normal, plain vanilla text (ie: no fancy formatting will
be performed.) So naturally, you will want to load a configuration
file. The configuration file supplied with this program is EPSON.CNF.
You can double click on this, or any other properly constructed .CNF file.
I will discuss how to set up your own .CNF file later in the documentation.
If you choose not to load a configuration file, all printer commands
will be ignored.
Editing is very easy. Clicking on 'Edit' will display a very large
dialog box (the reason this program will not work as well in low
resolution is that this box will be chopped off at the sides).
There are ten lines of forty characters each for label
text, which is plenty for most standard sized labels.
Also, there are three editable fields at the bottom of the screen
which allow the number of labels, the number of text lines per
label and the width of the label to be set. Note that the printing
routines will check the value of the label width field and if it
is set to zero, that label will not be printed. That is an easy
way to pick and choose which labels you don't want printed later
on.
The most obvious feature of this dialog box is the table of control codes
on the right side of the dialog box. This table shows the the control
character, the graphic symbol the Atari ST displays on the screen after
the control character is pressed, and the corresponding printer command
it issues. Thus, if you want to make the third line of the label compressed,
simply cursor down or up to the third line, press C
(a right arrow will appear), type in your text, and press N
to return to normal print (the left half of the Atari symbol will appear).
Thus, when the label is printed, the third line will be output in
the printer's compressed mode. It is just as easy to use any of
the printer's control codes in the same manner as above. Load in EXAMPLE.LAB
supplied in the arc'ed file to see most of the control codes in action.
When ready to print a label, simply go and click on 'Print One'. This will
output the specified number of labels with the specified number of lines per
label as typed in the edit dialog. If you wish to output all the labels
in memory at once, just click on 'Print All' under Label. As stated above,
a label with the label width set to zero will not be printed, which
insures that if you only have two labels in memory, only two
labels will be printed, since the rest of the labels are zeroed
out.
To clear out a label so that another may be started from scratch,
just click on 'Clear' under Label. The three numerical fields will
be reset to zero, and the label text will be reset to null. You do
not need to do this if you are loading a label, since loading will
obliterate what was there automatically.
HOW TO CREATE YOUR OWN CONFIGURATION FILE
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It is easiest to study a few lines from the EPSON.CNF file supplied with
this program to help create your own configuration file. The first two
lines appear as such:
27,69; A Emphasized print on
27,70; B Emphasized print off
The numbers on the left of each line are the printer control codes. For
instance, to turn emphasized print on on an Epson printer, you need to
send it an escape 'E' sequence. By checking the ASCII codes for escape and
'E' (published in almost all computer books and manuals), we see that escape
is 27 and 'E' is 69. Each separate control code must be separated by a
comma, and when the control sequence is done, a semicolon must be present if
you wish to make comments on the same line.
Still with the example above, after the semicolon, I have typed the letter
'A'. This is just a reminder to everyone that the first line corresponds
to A in the label edit menu choice (you can check there if you
want to verify). Finally, I typed in a description of what these
codes do for each control sequence, allowing you to easily locate the
code sequences you want to change.
A few other words of warning about this file: firstly, there must be no
carriage returns before the first line, since the program will read in only
the first twenty-six lines of the configuration file. Any additional
comments may be placed after the last control sequence, starting on line 27
of the configuration file, like I have. Also, only five control codes per
line are allowed. Finally, configuration files from other programs
will not work with this one, since most are printer drivers.
Pay for shareware and receive updates!
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At this time, we would like to receive some user feedback before we go
ahead and implement any new features. What else you you like to see in this
"super label editor"?
As a registered user of this program, you will receive the rest of the
Quick family of quality shareware:
Quick Find - fast file finder
Quick Inf - desktop information editor
Quick View - fast text viewer
Quick Print - text only screen dumper (significantly faster
than graphics dump)
Quick Index - the de-facto benchmark for the Atari ST
Quick ST - fast VT52 and GEM speedups
To become a registered user, send a $30 (if you wish only to receive
Quick ST, send $20) check or money order to:
Darek Mihocka
Box 2624, Station B
Kitchener, Ontario N2H 6N2
Canada
You can reach us by modem on the following networks:
Ignac Kolenko:
Usenet: watmath!watcgl!electro!ignac
Darek Mihocka:
Compuserve: 73657,2714
BIX, Delphi, GEnie: DAREKM
both:
Usenet: watmath!watcgl!oaee455s
We thank you for supporting shareware and encourage you to support other
shareware authors. You may distribute copies of Quick Label
under the condition that you also include this documentation file. You may
not charge a fee or in any way try to sell this software.