*** Welcome to Swift (ver 1.02) *** Swift is a simple MS-DOS word processor. It looks similar to Microsoft's Edit.com. ( If you are using Windows 95/98 you will find edit.com in the path C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\ , otherwise if you are using Windows 3.1 you will find it in the DOS directory.) Swift features a full pull-down menu system. It works with plain text files. You can customise the colours to suit your preference. Swift has a clipboard so you can cut, copy and paste text. Swift also features automatic word-wrap, and has other featurs such as find and replace. Shelling out to DOS ------------------- If you wish to save the text, but need to format a floppy disk first, you can shell out to DOS from the file menu, format the disk, then when you are finished the DOS session type "exit" to return to Swift and then save the text to the newly formatted disk. Because of the size of the Swift program there is about 75k of the 640k available for a DOS session. Printing -------- You can use either a dot matrix or an ink-jet printer. If you are using an ink jet printer and you want to print on both sides of the page Swift will print out the first side and wait for you to take the page out, and turn it over. While the printer is preparing to print a page a dialog box pops up asking if you want to print the next page. If you wish to print the next page you should wait until the printer has done with the current page, then click on the "ok" button. The dialog box acts to halt the stream of data to the printer in order not to send data faster than the printer can handle it, otherwise the printer's buffer fills to overflowing and a printer error results. Requirements: ------------- 640k internal memory. A mouse driver must be installed. Space on hard drive C (at least 1MB) to write two files: 'clipbrd.txt' and 'swift2.var'. 'Clipbrd.txt' hold the contents of the clipboard, and 'Swift2.var' holds the contents of the internal setting of the colours and other variables. So when you start up Swift it will remember your preferences and restore them. The text file you were working on in a previous session will also be automatically loaded in so you can continue where you left off. Swift is not intended as a replacement for Edit.com. Swift should not be used for editing program source files; use Edit.com instead. Swift is really intended for writing simple text documents such as memos and drafts of letters. Swift is 'freeware'. All the source code is included in the file 'source.zip'. You are welcome to enhance the program or customise it further, but in order to so this you will need Borland's C++ compiler and assembler. You need to decompress all the source files to a folder on drive D. Call the folder swift. Then using Turbo C++3.0 or Borland C++ 4.52 open the project Swift.prj. Then you should be able to make any changes and then recompile all the files in the project. If you are using Swift on a DOS only computer you should have the Smartdrive driver installed. The driver uses memory as a cache to speed up disk data access. The maximum amount of lines the editor can handle is about 2,000. This is roughly 33 A-4 pages. ================================================================== Swift Version History --------------------- Slight improvements have been made to Swift since version 1. These are very slight and basically, the latest version, version 1.02, contains the same set of features as the first version. The minor changes in the latest version are: (1) The default colours are much the same as the default colours of Microsot's Edit.com. (2) The tab key has been added. (3) The screen is less flickery when scrolling through text. (4) The mouse cursor switches off as soon as you starting typing or editing text, and comes back on again when you move the mouse. (5) The mouse cursor switches off when you shell to DOS, and returns when you type exit to terminate the DOS session. (6) An extra colour item has been added to the colours option. Swift version 1.00 -- 12 July 1999 was the first public release. Swift version 1.01 -- 1 August 1999 Swift version 1.02 -- 11 August 1999 Either clicking on the menubar or pressing F10 accesses the menu system. Most of the keyboard shortcuts have not been incorporated into this release. ------------------------------------------------------------ Michael Finnegan Dingle, Kerry Ireland finnegam@xoommail.com http://members.xoom.com/finnegam/free.htm Friday 10 September 1999