                             My-Desk Tutorial

Welcome to My-Desk. This tutorial is quick and dirty, but it will walk you
through the features of the program. If you have not loaded My-Desk, load it,
then press Alt-N to load a New file, and select this file, MY-TUTOR.TXT.

This is not a substitute for reading the instructions in the MY-DESK.DOC file,
but it will let try most of the features in My-Desk without investing a lot of
time in reading the complete documentation. Computer novices should definitely
read the manual before running this tutorial.

CURSOR MOVEMENT: Right, left, up, down, PgUp and PgDn  work as expected.
Ctrl-left and right move a word at a time and wrap around the ends of lines.
   Put cursor here_ and press Home twice and End twice to see how they work.
Ctrl-Home moves to the top of the screen. Ctrl-PgUp moves to the start of the
file and Ctrl-PgDn moves to the end of the file as indicated by the EOF on the
status line below.  You can try these now if you wish.

DELETE/RESTORE: Delete a line by pressing Alt-D.  Restore deleted lines by
pressing Alt-V (up to the 10 most recently deleted/changed lines). Try it.
Ctrl-End deletes to the end of the line. Go ahead and try it, then press Alt-V
to restore the original line.  The Del key deletes a character, of course.
To clear all lines, press Alt-C. (If you should mess up this file, just reload
it from the disk again via Alt-N.)             <<Press PgDn for next screen.>>

THE STATUS LINE (bottom line on screen):  "EOF" indicates the last line in the
file. Save and Print functions continue up to the EOF line.   "ROW" and "COL"
indicate the cursor position in the file.   "MAR" shows the margin settings.
They should be 1 and 80 right now. Press ALT-J to adJust margins.   The drive,
path and file name is next, followed by toggle key status indicators, WIKCN:
     FEATURE       TOGGLE KEY           BRIEF DESCRIPTION
W   word wrap         Alt-W    Moves cursor to next line when end is reached.
I  Auto-Indent        Alt-I    Line following an indented line is indented.
K   Auto-Kap          Alt-T    Capitalizes the first letter of each word.
C   CapsLock        CapsLock   Distinctive tones sound when CapsLock or
N    NumLock         NumLock     NumLock are pressed. Try `em.

SPLIT/JOIN LINES:  To split a line, move the cursor to the split point, make
sure Insert is on and press Enter.  To join two lines, move to the end of the
first line and press Del. To reform a paragraph from the cursor line DOWN TO
THE NEXT BLANK LINE, press Alt-R. Try changing margins and reforming paragraphs
in this file.

ON-LINE HELP:  Press Alt-H for a help screen. This screen is stored in the file
MY-DESK.HLP.  You can revise it if you wish by loading the file in the editor.

ASCII TABLE:  Press Alt-Y for the display of an ASCII table.

CALENDAR:  The Help screen and ASCII table are displayed without erasing the
current file, but NOT the calendar.  The calendar function creates a large
block calendar, inserts entries from an appointment file, and puts the calen-
dar into the editor for you to customize, print or save. To try the calendar
function, first Alt-C(lear) this file then press Alt-Z. After trying it, you
can press F10 to auto-load this file (MY-TUTOR.TXT) again. My-Desk will also
search and display a TO-DO List file on start-up. (See MY-DESK.DOC.)

BLOCK FUNCTIONS: There are partial line blocks and full line blocks. Blocks of
text can be moved, copied, printed, saved, erased, centered, filled.  Move the
cursor to the first line of the CALENDAR paragraph above and press Alt-L for a
full-line block. Move down to the blank line before this paragraph and press
Alt-L again to mark the whole paragraph.  Now move the cursor down to the first
line of the next paragraph and press Alt-M and you will see the paragraph move.

   To try a partial-line block, move the cursor to column one of this line and
   press Alt-B, then move down to the last line of the paragraph to column 3
   and press Alt-B again and the margin to the left of this paragraph should be
   highlighted.  Press Alt-E to erase the block and the paragraph will move
   over.  Move the cursor to the first line of the paragraph again, column 78,
   and press Alt-B. Move down to the last line of the paragraph, column 80, and
   press Alt-B again.  Now move to column 1 of the first line of the paragraph
   and press Alt-M to Move the blank spaces over to the left margin.

To Fill a block, move the cursor here >_
and press Alt-B; then move it to column
80 of this line and press Alt-B again.                                        >_
Then press Alt-F and then press a key to fill the block with.  Press Alt-U to
un-mark the block OR press Alt-E to erase the block and its contents.

CALCULATOR FUNCTION:  You can add, subtract, multiply, divide at any time. Move
the cursor to the left side of the top of the column of numbers below and press
Alt-B, then move it to the right side of the bottom and press Alt-B again. Then
move the cursor down a line and press Alt-A to add the column up.
                                   100
                                   +50
                                   -25
                                   *6
                                   /20
                        ANSWER = _____
After seeing the answer, you can erase the whole column of numbers by pressing
End to move to the end of the answer, Alt-B to extend the block over the answer
and Alt-E to erase the whole column.  Try changing some of the numbers and
seeing the result.  Try putting in a new column to the left, above, and notice
how auto-indent makes it easy to enter a column of numbers.  When entering a
column of numbers, press Alt-B just prior to entering the first number, then
Alt-B after the last number and the column is highlighted and ready for Alt-A.

SCREEN DESIGN: Line drawing is toggled on using Alt-1 through Alt-4 (using the
numbers along the top row of the keyboard) for the four different line types.
The active line type is indicated in the middle of the status line when toggled
on.  Press Alt-1 to turn on single lines and, with NumLock ON, use the number
pad keys to draw lines at the end of this file. Insert, Indent and Wrap should
be turned off too. To move the cursor without drawing, use Shift plus the number
pad keys with NumLock ON or use a separate cursor pad, if available.
    Two other features useful for screen design are Box Fill, already discussed,
and Auto-Box.  To draw a box quickly, move the cursor to one corner and press
Alt-B, move to the other corner and press Alt-B again. Then toggle on one of
the line drawing styles, Alt-1 - Alt-4.  Try this at the end of this file too.

SORTING - Alt-& sorts a file, keying on the cursor position, but this file is
not suitable for sorting, so you will have to try that later.

SEARCH/REPLACE - Alt-S brings up the search function. The search will wrap
around the end of the file and stop at the cursor's line.  After entering the
word to find, you will be asked if you want to replace it, and if so, you will
be prompted for a word (or words) to use for replacement. Try searching and
replacing now. Notice that uppercase/lowercase letters must match.

AUTO-KAP - This is great when entering a lot of text that must all have the
first letters capitalized, such as names and addresses. Press Alt-T to toggle
auto-Kap on and try typing in some text at the end of this file.

FILE FEATURES: Load, Move, Delete, Rename are all done after pressing Alt-N to
load a New file.  You will see a sorted list of directory and file names. Move
the cursor with the cursor keys to select a file, or start typing in the name
and the cursor will move automatically.  Press enter to load the file on the
cursor line. Press Alt-E to load the directory list into the editor.

AUTO-FILE-LOAD: Press F1 to get the Auto-File-Load Function key menu (but do
not press it yet). The menu will show you which files can be loaded by simply
pressing a function key.  F10 is MY-TUTOR.TXT, so that means you can reload
this tutorial by pressing F10.

ALARM CLOCK: My-Desk can be set to pop up at a specified time and date. Press
Alt-0 (zero at the top of the keyboard) and follow the prompts. Try it now (if
you have My-Desk loaded as a TSR) to pop back up in a minute or two.  You can
still use My-Desk even after setting a pop-up alarm time. See docs for more.

UNATTENDED PROGRAM CONTROL: You can use the Alarm Clock Pop-Up feature to send
up to 16 keystrokes to the computer at a specified time and date. This can be
used to start, stop, or otherwise control a program. As above, press Alt-0 and
set the pop-up control time, but when prompted for a message, enter "stuff". To
test it, try entering DIR and pressing Enter (press ~ to quit entering). Exit
to DOS and wait (assuming you set the time only a couple of minutes ahead).

SCREEN BLANK, KEYBOARD LOCK: If you have to leave your machine and don't want
to exit the program you are in, but you want to protect your work from prying
eyes and fingers, press Alt-9 (top of the keyboard) and enter a password. To
resume work, press any key to be prompted for the password again to get the
machine back.  You can try this now if you wish.

INSERT CURRENT DATE: If you are typing a letter and want the current date
inserted, just press Alt-8 (top of the keyboard). You can try it now.

PASSING COMMANDS TO DOS: Move the cursor here (on the "D") ->DIR /W   and press
Alt-B, then move it to the "W" and press Alt-B again, then press Alt-% to pass
the highlighted command to DOS. Move to the cursor to the next line and press
Alt-B to mark the three lines with the DIR commands :      DIR A*.*
then press Alt-% and the three commands will be sent       DIR B*.*
to DOS via a batch file named MY-TEMP.BAT.                 DIR C*.*
THIS WORKS ONLY IF YOU POPPED UP MY-DESK FROM DOS.
If the command is the first text on a line, you do not have to block-mark it.
Move the cursor onto the next line and press Alt-%.
    DIR D*.*   (Leave at least 3 spaces between the command and other text.)

You can also execute a program when you are at the directory listing screen
after pressing Alt-N.  Move the cursor bar to the desired program and press
Alt-%.  Note that you cannot add program parameters this way.  Press Alt-E to
move the file list to the editor to add program parameters.

Note again that you can pass commands to DOS only if you popped up over DOS,
otherwise, you will be passing the keystrokes back to whatever programs you
were running when you popped up My-Desk.  You can use this feature to pass back
small amounts (up to 16 keystrokes) of text to your program.  You cannot pass
back multiple lines back to your program.  See the discussion in the MY-DOC
files about transferring data between files and programs.


CLOSING COMMENTS:

This was a rather terse tutorial, but it should have been quicker and easier
than reading the manual and you should have tried most of My-Desk's features.
Again, this tutorial is no substitute for reading the manual. In particular,
this tutorial contains no information about loading My-Desk and the command
line parameters.

We at Ford Software hope that you enjoy using My-Desk. Take your time in trying
it out to make sure you like it, but please remember that if you continue to use
it and you know you are no longer "evaluating" it, you must send in the $25
license fee. (This is an introductory price and subject to change. Call for
current price.) When you do so, we will send you the latest version without the
opening shareware information screen. To order, you can call now with MC/Visa.
Our toll-free order line is 1-800-242-4775. For information, call 713-665-7017.
