                                                 157 Ringwood Road
                                                 Eastbourne
                                                 E Sussex
                                                 BN22 8UW

                                                 12 September 1989

                          V I E W S C R O L L
                           by Jeffrey Wright
                      for any Archimedes Computer

There are two main sections to ViewScroll. One dealing with viewdata 
frames saved to disc from the Beebug application Hearsay and the other 
for use with text saved from within Hearsay whilst on-line to a 
scrolling service.

The majority of the functions are self explanatory and require very 
little in the way of instruction from me. 

The only routines that perhaps do require some explanation are those 
connected with the conversion of text to viewdata size frames for 
sending to Prestel mailbox and Micronet gallery.

The text for either of these facilities can be imported from a Z88 or 
can be from the Archimedes 1st Word Plus wordprocessor.

You will see that the options for importing from the Z88 are available 
via the ViewScroll Main Menu, whilst the options for formatting text 
saved via 1st Word Plus are available via the ViewPrint Menu.

All documents related to Prestel Mailbox should be/are saved in the 
directory 'Mailbox' and Micronet Gallery documents should be/are saved 
in the 'Gallery' directory.

If you use 1st Word Plus for writing your mail or gallery you must set 
the line length to 38, the page length to 19 lines for mail and 12 
lines for gallery, all heading/bottom margins etc should be set to nil.

I have put in the 'Mailbox' directory a template 1st Word Plus document 
called '1WP_TEXT' which is set as above. There is also a 1st Word Plus 
document set up for gallery in the 'Gallery' directory, which is also 
called '1WP_TEXT'. Before saving your completed text you should cancel 
'word processor' mode. 

Text for ViewScroll mailbox formatting should be saved in the 'Mailbox' 
directory as 'Mbx_Text' and text for ViewScroll gallery formatting 
should be saved in the 'Gallery' directory as 'g_text'. It is important 
that you stick to these file names. This saving of text in the required 
directories is carried out automatically when importing from the Z88.

If you are using a Z88 and wish to transfer your text to the Arc, you 
should save your text on the Z88 as plain text after having set the 
line length to 39 (yes 39!), and as with 1WP set page length to 19 
lines for mail and 12 lines for gallery, and top/bottom margins to nil.

One problem when transfering is that due to this program being written 
in BASIC the highest baud rate at which a reliable transfer can take 
place is 2400. All other protocols should be as per the Z88 defaults. 

After conversion of mail text to viewdata frames you will be told the 
name of the file under which your viewdata frames have been saved, 
which will be in the 'Mailbox' directory. To enable several sets of 
mailbox frame files on one disc the file name under which same is saved 
is incremented as each conversion is effected.

Once I have a saved mailbox file on disc I find it a good idea to make 
a note on paper of the mailbox number and name of intended recipient 
together with the intended subject name to be used - this should avoid 
sending a malbox to the wrong destination!

When you come to convert text for gallery frames you will be prompted 
to give a few details, which you will find self-explantory. One point 
worth noting is that the date at the top of the gallery frame is the 
name used (in abbreviated form) for the viewdata file, which will be 
saved in the 'Gallery' directory.

I hope the above is clear, I find it much more easier to use software 
rather than try to explain it!!

There is a bug I discovered a short while ago, and have not yet fixed, 
connected to the printing of viewdata frames, if there are an abnormal 
number of hashes in any particular line. Should'nt normally be a 
problem but worth watching for.

Not a great piece of software I know, but it serves a purpose, I think. 
In fact it is not all my own work as certain parts, such as the 
prompting for a file name are taken from a Risc User routine and the 
date which you see on screen and on the print-outs is from a 
contributor to Acorn User. 

You will soon see that this disc is rather full, which may mean copying 
some files to another disc. The files required to run ViewScroll are as 
follows: !Boot and ViewScroll in root directory; Beeb, Beeb_rx, 
COLOURS, MbxProg, MbxRef and Z88_Arc in the Library directory; g_text 
in the Gallery directory and Mbx_Text in the Mailbox directory.

All the best,

Jeff.
