[Coco] Re: OS-9 word processors

[Frederick D Provoncha]

>Fred,   I would like to know the exact syntax you used for the T/S Spell

>macro.  Many years ago I put together a menu operated word processor 
>with the VED, VPrint, T/S Spell combo patterned after a Delphi upload by

>James Pottage called VWord, but with many improvements.  Pottage had 
>used Spell in his setup and the command line was much shorter than for 
>T/S Spell.  When I tried to use the longer command line in the macro, it

>wouldn't accept it (too long).  I tried various methods of nesting 
>shorter macros, but none worked.  As a result, I always had to use T/S 
>Spell from the command line in the menu.

Hey Griz,

Sorry it took so long to get back to you. Life has been very crazy lately
and I'm behind on reading my email. Anyway, here is the text of the macro
I use from within Ved to run T/S Spell:

T=\ALT-9tsspell \CTRL-O*\ENTER

You can create this macro from within Ved by hitting ALT-: that is, hold
down the ALT key and press the colon key. The system will then prompt you
to choose a letter to associate with the macro. I chose 'T', since it's
easy to associate in my mind with 'T/S Spell' and thus easy to remember.
After you select the letter, Ved will start 'recording' the macro. Every
keystroke thereafter will become part of the macro until you hit
CTRL-BREAK:

First, hit ALT-9. This executes an OS-9 shell from within Ved.

Type in 'tsspell '. Make sure you include the space after 'tsspell'.

Next, hit CTRL-O, then select the * key. CTRL-O-* is a macro within a
macro. It causes Ved to display the last filename used by the system.
Under most circumstances, this would be the file that you are working on
in memory.

Next, hit the ENTER key.

Next hit CTRL-BREAK to finish recording the macro.

So, what this macro does is execute an OS-9 shell, which then
automatically executes tsspell using the last filename used by the system
as a parameter. You can then use tsspell to correct the spelling and then
save the file.

When you are done with tsspell and you close it out, system control will
return back to Ved. The uncorrected version of the document will still be
in memory. Hit ALT-Q to exit Ved and DO NOT SAVE when prompted. Then
re-run Ved using the same filename and then you'll be back in Ved with
the spellchecked file in memory.

So, tsspell doesn't actually correct the text in memory. But it does the
next best thing, it corrects the file on disk that was loaded into
memory. So make sure you save the file you're working on to disk before
you run tsspell.

Sorry my instructions here are so long. I tend to over-explain things
sometimes.

Fred