--------------------- B l i n e x v 1 . 4 --------------------- ------------------------------------------------- Written by Christoph Bartholme, Ettlinger Str. 37 D-76137 Karlsruhe Germany EMail: Christoph_Bartholme@ka2.maus.de Developed using ST Pascal Plus (CCD) and assembler (Devpac) A German version is also available, both as a PRG and an older TTP. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Blinex is public domain (Remember: IdeaList is Shareware!). It may be copied and used by everyone. The condition is to copy the COMPLETE and UNCHANGED contents of the folder BLINEX. These are the files in the folder: BLINEX.PRG The program BLINEX.RSC The resource file for it BLINEX.TXT This file, containing instructions. Blinex ("Blank LINes EX") is a tiny tool for ASCII files. What does it do? 1) Blinex removes unnecessary blank lines. 2) Blinex changes 'exotic' line-end markers to the usual format (CR LF) or to other markers. 3) If desired Blinex removes surplus blank characters and tabs at line-ends. 4) Blinex converts between four common ASCII character set font tables. There is also an option of writing a seven-bit table (ASCII-128 to -255 are converted as well as is possible) or creating LaTeX output for the German 'umlauts' (Ž -> "A). The characters 1 - 31 may be filtered too. An example re point 1): Many instructions and similar texts are padded out with blank lines so that a standard printout (60 lines per page) divides up the pages as the author intended. If however one prints out such a text with a smaller font, and so with smaller line spacing, then these empty spaces are superfluous, even a nuisance. And sometimes one needs an extra page for printing out the last line(s) of a text, which can be prevented by sacrificing a few blank lines. **************************************************************************** * Remember: Instructions and README text files of PD or shareware programs * * may only be distributed U N C H A N G E D! Modifications are only * * permitted for your personal purposes! Do not distribute modified files! * **************************************************************************** System requirements ------------------- BLINEX will run in all resolutions on the ST(E), Mega-ST(E), TT and Falcon. In the lowest resolutions (ST-low and TT-low) windows and dialogs cannot be displayed complete. Start ----- The BLINEX.RSC file must be in the same directory (folder) as BLINEX.PRG. BLINEX can also be installed as an application for given file types. With older TOS versions (1.0x) the use of the PD tool ALIBI is recommended for this. From TOS 2.0x onwards, under Gemini or similar alternative desktops, one just has to drag the corresponding file onto the BLINEX icon. Operation --------- BLINEX contains a menu bar from which desk accessories, program information and a menu entry for quitting the program are accessible. All the control elements of the program are contained in a single window, which can be moved around freely. The button 'Text file...' selects the file to be worked on. A file selector appears in which you can choose the desired file. 'Help' brings up a brief explanation for the available options. 'Save INF' creates a file BLINEX.INF in which all settings and the access path of the file being worked on are stored. The next time the program is started these parameters will be read from BLINEX.INF and set automatically. After clicking on 'Start' BLINEX loads the selected file, and saves it again after performing the chosen transformation(s). The text formatting proceeds completely in the background, so you can meanwhile use a desk accessory or (under MultiTOS, MagiC etc.) use a program in parallel. 'Statistics' shows some information about the processed file, namely the number of lines before and after transformation as well as the number of blank lines removed and line-ends cleared (or altered). Once the work is done you can click on '-> IdeaList' to pass the processed text file directly to the IdeaList printing program as long as ILIST.ACC has been installed or IDEALIST.PRG has been started in parallel. Options ------- 'Clear line-ends': BLINEX removes spaces and tab characters (ASCII-9) at the end of all lines, resulting in a few bytes being saved. Note that spaces at line-ends are sometimes quite sensible (for further processing with a text editor where line breaks may be changed) or even absolutely necessary (never clear line-ends in DESKTOP.INF or NEWDESK.INF!). 'Create backup': The file being worked on will be saved before processing as a backup with an extension .BAK. 'Filter characters 1-31': The characters below Space (ASCII-32) are defined differently from system to system and serve primarily as printer control codes, so really don't belong in true ASCII files. With this option switched on such characters will be simply ignored. Exceptions: - 'CR' and 'LF' will of course be interpreted as end of line markers. - 'Tab' will be converted to a single space. - 'Esc' will be ignored together with the following character. - 'Backspace' will be removed together with either the following or the preceding character, depending on what this is. In this way 'nroff'-type formatting will be converted to normal ASCII. Examples ('/' represents Backspace (= ASCII-8)): 'B/Bo/ol/ld/d' will become 'Bold', 'U/_n/_d/_e_/r_' or '_/U/_n/_d/_e/_r' will become 'Under'; naturally bold or underline effects will be lost when printing out the converted file. BLINEX has four modes for the removal of blank lines: - Leave no blank lines in place: The most radical mode, which rather destroys the layout of the text. - Leave single blank lines in place: All but one of multiple blank lines will be deleted. - Leave single and double blank lines in place: Larger blank regions will be deleted, leaving two blank lines. With this mode the layout of the text will be retained to a large extent. - Leave all blank lines in place: Provided in case you only wish to alter the line-end markers or clean up line-ends... Line-ends --------- BLINEX recognises various types of line-end markers automatically: (CR = ASCII-13, LF = ASCII-10) - CR LF (Standard for Atari and DOS) - LF CR - CR (Mac-format) - LF (Unix-format) - CR CR LF (Paragraph marker in Tempus body copy mode) - NULL-byte (e.g. text strings taken from binary files). For output you have a choice of: - CR LF - CR - LF - NULL-byte. What counts as a blank line? ---------------------------- A blank line either contains no characters, or only the characters ASCII-32 (Space), ASCII-9 (Tabulator) or ASCII-12 (Form feed). Font table conversion --------------------- ASCII doesn't equal ASCII! More than just the line-end marker can vary from system to system; the font table (or character set) too isn't uniform on all computer platforms! While the characters ASCII-32 to ASCII-127 are standard for the Western alphabets (characters below ASCII-32, except for those for line and are page control, are completely computer-specific and in any case have no place in ASCII texts), major differences exist in the upper 128 characters. BLINEX can convert between four common font tables (read as well as write): - Atari - ANSI (including Amiga, Archimedes, Windows) - Macintosh - PC (DOS) As a fifth option BLINEX can also write 7-bit code. Characters higher than ASCII-127 (i.e. in binary form with the eighth bit set) will be replaced by characters from the 7-bit region as far as possible. Examples: Ž -> Ae, ” -> oe, ž -> ss, a with any accent -> a... Finally there is also the possibility to convert the umlauts, eszet and the French double quote marks so that the text can be read subsequently by LaTeX using GERMAN.STY (this is really only useful for German texts). Examples: Ž -> "A, ” -> "o, ž -> "s, ® -> "< If you don't want any of these conversions, simply set the READ and WRITE font tables to be of the same type. Characters that simply cannot be displayed by a system are shown as '*'. The PC block graphic characters will be converted to '+'. '-' and '|'. Not very pretty, but readable... Incidentally the conversion doesn't detour via the Atari font table; BLINEX uses its own table for every combination of two character sets. Changes ------- V1.42: - Removal of 'Backspace' in the 'Filter characters 1-31' option. V1.40: - Option: Write 7-bit code - Option: Write LaTeX code - Option: Filter characters 1-31 - Statistics display. V1.33 - Bugfix for background operation under MagiC or MultiTOS. V1.32: - Progress-bar display during conversion - Bugfix in Atari-Mac conversion table. V1.30: - Font table conversion between Atari, ANSI, Mac and PC systems. V1.20 - Option: Clear line-ends - Option: Remove none of the blank lines - Text formatting in background - Selection of line-end markers to be written - NULL-bytes (ASCII-0) also recognised as line-end markers - Resource-file management altered - Command line handling altered. V1.14: - Reading error removed - Adaptation for MutlitTOS and TOS 4.0x. V1.10: - First GEMmed version. A question of price ------------------- Why has this line slipped down so far? Have fun! :-) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------