#ProWrite & ARexx
11 messages in this thread
What does one have to place in the ARexx command:
Xyz = GetClip("???")
to get the current paste clip into an ARexx variable? I've tried '0' and
'' and d2c(0), etc. None of these work. The ARexx command is case
sensitive, so what is the secret???
Thanks
Clark Williams
Clark -|-
Williams –O-o-O– Via George
The Arexx clip list and the Prowrite clipboard are two different things.
The Amiga clipboard is different from both. It's annoying and your
confusion is understandable. The way to suck up text from a Prowrite
document for use with Arexx is the Prowrite-Arexx 'EXTRACT' command.
Check out the 'Transpose' sample macro that came with Prowrite for an
example of how this works. — Art
— Art
Thanks Art for your quick reply…unfortunately the EXTRACT command is
only good to a paragraph. Here then is the challenge. Extract a page of
information. Just one page. Nothing more and nothing less! I do not
think it can be done in ProWrite with existing ARexx commands. I suspect
that this is the reason that you don't put FormFeed out when a ASCII only
file is requested from ProWrite and there is a PageBreak command. Anyway
that is my challenge. How do you extract a single page of text from
ProWrite?
Clark -|-
Williams –O-o-O– Via George
Yeah, that's a frustrating limitation. I guess the answer is to loop the
macro EXTRACTing one para. then moving down to the next one, etc.
Another, equally awkward, way is to select the text, copy it into a new
window, save it as a temp. file then read the temp file using Arexx's file
handling commands. — Art
— Art
Art,
You can't loop in a macro EXTRACTing one paragraph at a time, because when
you get the last paragraph, there is no way to know if you crossed a page
boundry. The EXTRACT will grab the entire paragraph. You have to test
the page and see if you have gone over and then back up 1 character at a
time and test the page, etc. Loop, then a loop. This is not just
frustrating, it is idiotic (also very slow!).
Clark -|-
Williams –O-o-O– Via George
Well, keeping track of line numbers within the macro is another way.
Granted, all this is very kludgy and annoying. In general, Prowrite's
approach of providing a lot of macro commands that pop up requesters
requiring manual invervention while skimping on real text control commands
is dissapointing.
That being said, Prowrite is a word processor, not a "text engine." Real
macro control is provided by modern editors like TurboText.
— Art
Art,
I should have left a smilie face on my last message.
It is an anoyance to not have the control of a document which is one of
the major ways which one refers to a document.
That is, a word processor needs to be able to refer to a Document, a
chapter, a page, a paragraph, a word and a character. While ProWrite has
great paragraph and character control, it is pretty lacking in the control
of pages, chapters and documents.
If you are using ProWrite for doing letters, this may not be a problem.
However if I am just doing letters, then Notepad would have been enough.
ProWrite is much more than 'just' a word processor. And macro control is
not a function of being a text engine or a word processor. macro control
is a function of features added to a program. But I guess all these
opinions are why (as Lt. Hunter once said on 'Hill Street Blues') they
make chocolate AND vanillia.
Clark -|-
Williams –O-o-O– Via George
Macros are one of the biggest reasons Word Perfect is so popular!
Paul
Now if it were only useable! What a combo! If it was only programmed
correctly and well! What a combo! If it only…:^)
Clark -|-
Williams –O-o-O– Via George
Art,
Actually with the new 3.3 version of ProWrite our clipboard and the Amiga
Clipboard are the same. We have even implemented an option to disable the full
concatonated form for use with programs that don't fully support the clipboard.
Any arexx program would have to read the clipboard parse our Iff format and
extract the data. If you were to disable full clipboard support the program
could avoid the step of disecting the concatonated form and just parse the FTXT
from the clipboard.
Randy Brooks
New Horizons Software, Inc.
There is an ARexx library written by one of the CA guys which allows cutting
and pasting to the clipboard if this helps.