Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10 UW 5/3/83; site uw-beaver
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!houxm!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!info-mac
From: info-mac@uw-beaver (info-mac)
Newsgroups: fa.info-mac
Subject: Re: File usage in MacPascal
Message-ID: <1602@uw-beaver>
Date: Wed, 29-Aug-84 05:41:52 EDT
Article-I.D.: uw-beaver>.1602
Posted: Wed Aug 29 05:41:52 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Sep-84 09:43:37 EDT
Sender: daemon@uw-beave
Organization: U of Washington Computer Science
Lines: 51

From: singer@harvard.ARPA (Andrew Singer)
   Stuart Reges' responses concerning file usage and printing from
Macintosh Pascal are quite correct. Some points, however:

   1. Having to close INPUT and/or OUTPUT before reopening them to
       disk files or devices is not a "kludge". These files are
       implicitly opened at program startup time to the keyboard
       and TEXT window respectively, and must be closed before
       they can be reopened. The following, however, is a kludge:
       If you close OUTPUT, say, reopen it on a file or device
       and subsequently close it again, OUTPUT (or INPUT) will
       implicitly be reopened to the TEXT window (or the keyboard).
       Unfortunately, once you've gotten this far you cannot
       subsequently close and reopen it again.

   2. No variation on PRINT, PRINTING, or PRINTER will appear in the
       index for the reference manual. The documentation had to be
       prepared last March and, while it was possible to patch in
       "extra features" at the last minute, making changes to the
       index would have been more difficult than you could imagine.
       I don't know who at Think told Stuart Reges otherwise, but
       that's the way it is.

   3. The final release copy of Macintosh Pascal will include two
       utility propgrams (written in Macintosh Pascal, of course):
       a text file printing utility and a mini text file editor.

       The print utility is essentially the same as Stuart's program,
       except that it additionally sets up the printer to print in a
       proportionally spaced font and to use vertical forms that
       result in a "perf skip" of about 6 lines. Those who would
       prefer to print with a monospaced font can, with the aid
       of an ImageWriter manual, modify the program appropriately.

       The text editor is fairly simple and straightforward to use
       and, as a program, probably impossible to understand or modify.
       It can be used not only to examine text files created by
       Macintosh Pascal, but also to create data files to be used as
       program input. Be warned, however, that it was written in some
       haste. Certain safeguards that should have been taken, to keep
       the Macintosh Memory Manager from blowing you away, were not in
       fact taken. If you have a substantial amount of data to edit, I
       recommend that you back up the file first. If you have a copy of
       MacWrite, I recommend using that even more strongly. You can
       make a MacWrite file readable by Macintosh Pascal by using the
       "Save As..." menu item and checking the "Text Only" indicator
       in the dialog box that it will present to you.


     Jon F. Hueras, Think Technologies, Inc.
     <singer@harvard>