CompuServe Thread

#ProWrite

19 messages in this thread
#5359From: Jacquie SassoneNov 5, 1990 9:32 PM
Hi Bill, Hope you had a good weekend. The ProWrite came today. I've been enjoying it alot. It's very easy to learn, it is very similar to the LPD Writer that I had. More progessed, and definately impressive tho. I like it alot and feel that I made the right decision. You're advice was just what made the difference and I thank you. With any luck you'll probably be hearing what my aunt and cousin have done for our people in operation Desert Shield. Let me know if you hear about a surprize from any fellow operators on that side of the world. I'd tell you everything but have to respect my aunts wishes for now. Is 10/4 an accurate sign off for HAM? Jacquie
#5363From: Nelson IngersollNov 5, 1990 10:29 PM
>> Is 10/4 an accurate sign off for HAM? Depends. The proper Ham sign off for dimwits is 73. Which is fine when the S/N ratio isn't so good. The rest of the time I suggest the plain vanilla, "Good Bye!" – Nelson … (With a grin and a chortle, the old ham'ster rides off into the sunset.)
#5374From: Bill EastburnNov 5, 1990 11:06 PM
Jacquie, I'm glad you are so pleased with ProWrite. (Though I'm sure that Jim Bayless at New Horizons is even more pleased. 🙂 ) What are your aunt and cousin doing for the troops? I'm retired from the Army, and it makes me feel good to hear about folks helping our military. It wasn't so long ago that we were called "baby killers" and spat upon. <sigh> I live in an apartment, so long distance ham communications is somewhat difficult. One of these days I'll be rich and famous, and then I'll put up a big antenna farm. (Of course, here in Florida it will probably fall into a sink hole as soon as it is erected. 🙂 ) 10-4 is public service talk, and the CBers picked it up when they couldn't figure out how to say goodbye in English. 🙂 The normal ham signoff is 73, or best regards, or, in the case of ladies, 88, which means "love and kisses." These are both old telegrapher's codes. Bill, K3OZM
#5387From: Jacquie SassoneNov 6, 1990 5:44 AM
Bill, Thanks for filling me in, I've always been curious. The only person that I've known that has been in service was my dad and he never talked about it much. He lots of pictures and some kind of book that resembled a year book. I know he was in Germany and Italy. Thats it. WWII. In his pictures he looked great in uniform. I still have his hat, somewhere. When he passed away he did'nt have much. There are five of us girls and we each tried to find a little something. I got his wedding band and his army hat. My sisters all held kinda a grudge against him, but I lived with him for a year and got to know him as a person and not a father. It was great, we were really good friends. Well, to get to some "lighter" stuff. I can't say much right now about what my aunt and cousin have done. She has a son over there and will miss him at the holidays. So, she put this projuect together with him in mind. It snowballed into a production and what transpired in the process is really beautiful. I can't wait to tell you. I'm late for work now, but maybe later I'll mail you the info. Should I try writing it on ProWrite then uploading? I know it can be done, do you think I should give it a try? Jacquie um-73
#5394From: Bill EastburnNov 6, 1990 9:14 AM
Jacquie – Sure, write it in ProWrite and upload it. It will be good practice for you. There are a few things you need to do to make the upload work, however. Since we both have Amigas, you can save the text file any way you want to. If you were to upload a message to Pets, or other forums where folks use computers other than Amigas, you do have to watch a few things in your formatting. Margins should be set so the line does not exceed 80 characters. It's wasteful to have a left margin on CIS, so I use a setting of Left Margin = 0, Right Margin = 76. Save as a TEXT file, and set for LineFeeds after Every Line. There is a length restriction on messages in forums, so keep your file to 40 lines or so to make sure you don't exceed the limit when writing messages. E-mail also has a size limit, but it is big enough that you could almsot send "War and Peace" if you felt like typing it. Uploads to the libraries don't have a size limit. A long, long time ago (in a galaxy not so far away :)), someone did publish a yearbook for our Basic Training class. I'd guess your father's book was similar. The Army also takes official photographs of classes attending service schools, and gives a copy to each of the students. They also like to take pictures of things like promotions, awards ceremonies, etc. Bill, K3OZM
#5398From: Jacquie SassoneNov 6, 1990 12:53 PM
Bill, Be watching for my letter in EMail. I'm gonna type it and try sending it to you there. Jacquie
#5407From: Bill EastburnNov 6, 1990 4:01 PM
It arrived Jacquie. I think you saved it normally, rather than as a text (ASCII) file though. It is close enough to ASCII in it's default format that Whap!, just read it rather than downloading it, but there is a lot of formatting information along with the text. You might also want to experiment with the right margin a bit. It looks to be about 4 or 5 characters too wide so as not to cause the lines to wrap on my screen. It just takes a little practice combining a new wordprocessor with an alien (on-line ASCII) environment. I think that is a fantastic thing your aunt is doing! I'd like to clean it up and post it over on Veteran's Forum, if you would permit it. I know lots of military people, active and retired, who would love to hear about this effort. Bill, K3OZM
#5420From: Jacquie SassoneNov 6, 1990 5:56 PM
Glad everything at least got through, tho not quite right. I remember responding to an ASCII request somewhere, maybe I neglected to do something else I should have. I did try to find the margin sets, darned if I could. Although, I did save it to disk, so when my says "go" I can send it to you right away. Then I'd be delighted to have you pass it along. I don't know when they were mailed, how long it will be before they are received, and so on. Hopefully it won't be too much longer. I'm very excited for her. Will keep you posted. Can you tell me about what I need to use Whap!? I downloaded it, I think, last week. I was told to get something called ARC:EXE from the library to "unpack" it. I'm confused. Easily done. Now, where does the binary file part come in? Will I be able to print out the directions on my printer? I need to have something in my face that I can keep referring to. Okay, so the fact that I have the ProWrite manual and can't find margin settings contradicts that, NORMALLY, I do alright. My best friend lives in FL. Not too far from Orlando. I keep promising to come down, but too many others have dibbs on my time. Both my businesses involve live animals being cared for daily, plus I have lots of birds that I breed for sale and pet birds. Did I forget to mention my 7 (count 'em) dogs? Dad used to say I was an animal magnet! Anyway, I was wishing I was there this am. When I pulled into the driveway at the kennel there was a tree down across the parking area. Luckily, the only real damage was to a parimeter fence and an electrical line. Meanwhile, the wind was just ripping through town. The landlord (ham operator) came down with his son and a backhoe, moved the heavy part and left me to the rest. I'm 5'3 + 100lbs, I got blown from one side to the other. Good thing I like ammusement rides 'cause thats what it felt like! 73 – Jacquie
#5421From: Bill EastburnNov 6, 1990 6:52 PM
Jacquie – No problem for me on the message. All the information was there, and then some! <grin> If I get a chance later tonight or tomorrow, I'll reformat it and send it back to you so you can see how it was done. Incidentally, you can send messages to yourself through e-mail if you want to test what you've learned. Now for the biggie….. What to do about Whap! Whap! is compressed with the utility LHARC. The file extender .lzh gives this away. I have no idea what LZH stands for, if anything, but LHARC appends this extender to the filename during the archiving process. In any event, you will need the LHARC program, not ARC, to decompress Whap!. Luckily, you can find that in Library 5 here under the filename LHARC.EXE. (If you need to know how to find a specific file in a library when you know the filename, let me know, and I'll try to 'splain it.) I don't know what kind of system you have set up there, so you may have to fudge these instructions a bit to make it work. I'll assume you have at least 1 megabyte of memory, since ProWrite and Whap! both need that much. First, put LHARC.EXE onto a new disk with the filename LHARC, which you name Whap while formatting. CD to this disk. The shell prompt should now show 1.Whap> (or something similar) Place the disk containing the Whap.lzh archive into another disk drive. (You can copy the archive onto the new Whap disk if you do not have another drive.) From the shell prompt type the following line: LHARC X df1:WHAP LHARC calls the file to be run, the X means eXtract, df1: is the drive where the archive is located (just change this to the appropriate name if you don't have the disk in df1:), and WHAP tells LHARC it is going to work on the file named WHAP.LZH. The disks will now gronk, grind, flash lights, and do all manner of things to let you know they are working. Your screen will also show a whole bunch of information, letting you know that you are extracting, unsqueezing, uncrunching, or whatever, the files in the [ MORE ]
#5422From: Bill EastburnNov 6, 1990 6:53 PM
[ continuation ] archive. When the 1.WHAP> prompt comes back, the file will now be dearchived, and a whole bunch of files will be on the Whap: diskette. At this point, we are done with the disk containing the archive. Hold on to it just in case something goes wrong during the installation and you have to repeat the process, but you can remove that diskette, and replace it with a workbench, another blank, or whatever you normally keep there. Now, do a directory of the Whap: disk. One of the files on the disk is the manual. It used to be called Whap.PRT, though that may have changed. When I wrote it, it was a 50 page manual (including pictures), but it's been changed quite a bit since that time. Anyway, this is the file you need to print out. To print out the manual, there are lots of options. One of which is loading the beast into your new wordprocessor, and formatting it as you see fit. The quick and dirty method is to go to the shell and type the following line: COPY WHAP:WHAP.PRT PRT: (Please make sure your printer is turned on before typing that line.) The manual contains instructions for installing, and using the Whap! program. If you have any trouble getting it to work, just holler! I'm located in a suburb of Orlando called Maitland. We're just north of the city, and the only way you really know you're in a different town is when you see signs informing you of the fact. If you get down this way, give me a yell, and we'll get together for some coffee or something. Now….. it's about time to go off and see the Orlando Magic break the NBA record for the longest losing streak in their home arena. I'll be on later tonight if you have further questions. Bill, K3OZM
#5433From: Jacquie SassoneNov 6, 1990 9:10 PM
Bill, Hope you enjoyed the game! Good that you're a positive thinker, hope they did you proud. Well, I copied everything you gave me. I can't thank you enough! I have to hit the sack now unfortunately, that alarm will be going off too soon for me. I am looking forward to working on this tomorrow. I like the way you give directions, you have'nt steered me wrong yet. Thanks! Jacquie
#5437From: Bill EastburnNov 6, 1990 9:41 PM
Jacquie – The Magic are a second year expansion team who had lost 15 straight games at home. All indications pointed to their losing tonight as well, and setting a new NBA record for losing at home. They did lose, and now have a place in the record books. Tonight's game was rather sloppy on both sides, but the Magic are fun to watch anyway…… how many other teams have a mascot named "Stuff, the Magic Dragon?" They also have fantastic pre-game and half-time shows. Just holler if you have any problems, and I'm sure I've forgotten something. I check in several times a day. Bill, K3OZM
#5506From: Jacquie SassoneNov 7, 1990 2:28 PM
Bill, Well it sounds like win or lose, you have fun. That's the most important thing. Really, tho, 15 games straight ? That sounds hard to take! I like " Stuff the Magic Dragon " that's neat. Well they're in the record book, I guess thats something. Just stopped home and got your messages in E-Mail. Will be working on all the good stuff you gave me later when I slow down. Am looking forward to sitting down and working on the WHAP!. Will check out the settings in ProWrite too. You're really great to help me so much. I'll check in with you on my progress, you'll be proud! 73, Jacquie
#5585From: Steve AhlstromNov 8, 1990 5:38 PM
The Whap doc has been extensively rewritten and is now in ascii format and named Whap.DOC. -sja
#5591From: Bill EastburnNov 8, 1990 6:08 PM
I realize it has been almost completely changed, just couldn't recall if it had been renamed off the top of my head. Bill, K3OZM
#5375From: Don Curtis/SYSOPNov 5, 1990 11:07 PM
Jacquie, "10-4" means "OK" not "Bye" Don
#5413From: Steve PietrowiczNov 6, 1990 4:53 PM
Didn't "10-4" mean "goodbye" or "signing off" at one time (like back in the 50's or 60's)? Steve
#5457From: Don Curtis/SYSOPNov 7, 1990 12:26 AM
Steve, Nope…always meant "Ok/Will comply/Acknowledge" (all equivalent terms) but often was the last transmission so many folks thought it meant "out/done/bye". Don
#5496From: Tom CattrallNov 7, 1990 10:48 AM
I think 10-4 came into the national conciousness due to its use on the TV show "Highway Patrol" starring Broderick Crawford. They always used it to mean roughly OK and signing. This was in the 50's. Tom