Scripta commands are usually written one-to-a-line and take
the general form

          <command_name> <parameters>

The two elements, <command_name> and <parameters> must be
separated by at least one space character. Depending on the
command, there may be from zero to ten parameters; each of
these should be separated from its neighbour by at least one
space character.

<command_name> may be preceded by zero or more space
characters. Lower case characters in a command name are always
converted to upper case before the name is evaluated.

Long commands may be continued over more than one line by
terminating all lines except the last with an underscore (_)
character.

e.g., the lines

              Message "This command _
                       is spread over _
                       three lines."

would display the message

              This command is spread over three lines.

Note that leading space characters are ignored on continuation
lines (as they are on all lines). Therefore, any significant
spaces required must precede the underscore on the previous
line.

Commands may be continued over as many lines as required but
the total number of significant characters in a command may
not exceed 199.

When the command includes a 'wait' element, the command name
may take the form <command_name/time_limit> where time_limit is
the maximum number of seconds duration to be permitted for the
'wait' element.

e.g., the command 

            SendWait/10 "a" "received"

will transmit the character "a" to the remote service and then
wait up to ten seconds for the remote service to send back the
string "received". During the waiting period, ALL data received
from the remote service are displayed on the local screen.

There is hardly ever any need to use the /time_limit facility.

An exception is the Dial command, described in section 4.3.2,
which should normally be made to time out if the remote
computer has not answered your call within a reasonable period
of time.

A parameter need only be enclosed by quote characters if it
either contains space characters or needs to be specifically
identified as a string for some purpose. So, the above command
could just as well have been written

            SendWait/10 a received

Note that only quote characters are permitted as string
delimiters, apostrophes and 'single quote' characters may not
be used. If a string needs to contain a quote character within
itself then two quote characters should be used.

e.g., "abcdef""ghi" represents the string value abcdef"ghi

In general, strings for transmission to your modem or to a
remote service or computer may contain any number of ~ (tilde)
characters. Each such character causes Scripta to pause for
half a second.

If you find that the remote computer is not responding to a
string that you send, it may well be that you are simply
sending the string to soon and it is getting 'lost'.

e.g., if your script contains the following

                    SendWait m "Messages"
                    SendWait r "Some string"

in English, this says

   "send the character 'm' and then start looking for the string
    'Messages' to be received from the remote service. When
    this string is received, send the character 'r' and start
    looking for 'Some string' from the remote service".

If, when you run this script, you see the character 'm' being
transmitted, followed by the string 'Messages' being received
from the remote service, followed by no further action, then
your script is almost certainly sending the 'r' before the
remote is ready to receive it. It has been 'lost'. Your script
is waiting to see 'Some string' but the remote is still waiting
for your 'r'.

The cure is to precede the 'r' by a tilde or two to cause a delay
in the transmission of the 'r':

              SendWait ~r "Some string"

Command parameters may include Scripta variable names. e.g.,

              %SendString := "m"
              %WaitString := "Messages"
              SendWait %SendString %WaitString

Scripta expects all % characters to be followed by variable
names so if you need to use a 'real' percentage character for
some purpose then you must use TWO.

e.g., the command

              Message "17 is 50% of 34."

would cause an error because no variable name follows the %
symbol whereas

              Message "17 is 50%% of 34."

would correctly display the message

              17 is 50% of 34.

Similarly, the syntax #n where n is a decimal number in the range
0 to 255 may be used in certain Scripta commands to represent
the Ascii character number n. e.g., #65 represents Ascii 65 which
is the character 'A' (upper case 'a').

# on its own is the same as #0.

To use a 'real' hash-mark in a message, or for any other purpose,
use TWO, as described above for % symbols.

The only 'taboo' character in the whole Scripta language is the
semi-colon (;). This ALWAYS signifies that the remainder of the
current line is to be ignored, unless it appears within a
quotes-delimited string literal.
