Dec 162017
 
A great little TSR memo-pad program. Jot down notes, search through previous notes, etc.
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A great little TSR memo-pad program. Jot down notes, search through previous notes, etc.
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Contents of the MEMO_PAD.DOC file























Memo Pad Version 2.0
CopyRight (C) Craig Morrison, 1989
Version Date: Aug 7, 1989


















































LIABILITY AND WARRANTY INFORMATION

I have made every effort on my part to make sure the
software represented in this documentation performs as
stated herein. I, Craig Morrison, said author, provide this
software on an as is basis, making no claims to any warranty
of any kind whether expressed or implied. I, as the author
will not be held liable for any damages whether incidential,
consequential, directly, or indirectly caused or alleged to
be caused from the use of said software.


CopyRight (C) 1989, Craig Morrison.
All Rights Reserved. No part or parts of this software to
include this documentation, may be used for any purpose
other than its orignal intention without prior written
permission from the author.












































Memo Pad V2.0, CopyRight (C) Craig Morrison, 1989 Page 1



First Things First

Memo Pad is being marketed under the SHAREWARE concept. For
those of you who are new to computing, the concept is quite
simple. The easiest explanation is you get to try the
software of your choosing before you buy it. As simple as it
sounds, there is one problem with this scheme of marketing,
and that problem is honesty. I will not linger on this
point, but I do wish to ask one favor from you. If you like
this program after you have used it for a short period of
time, register the program. Then both of us will get some
satisfaction, you for getting a program that works for you
at a moderate cost, and I, because I am being rewarded for
my efforts and the abuse I have put my computer through to
make this program come into being.

The registration fee for Memo Pad is $35.00, which is quite
a bit less than similar products of this nature. What this
fee entitles you to is as follows. Full support for the
program, I.E., fixes to any bugs, answers to common
questions, upgrades to the software at reduced prices, and
above all peace of mind. You will also receive from time to
time previews of products that I will be marketing in the
future, along with some enhancement utilities for your PC.
These utilities will be sent to you free of charge.

You may pass this program along to others as long as you
follow one simple instruction, this documentation file must
accompany the program. Neither, the Memo Pad program file
nor the documentation may be modified or altered in anyway.
I encourage you to pass the program along, Memo Pad is a
fine editor which I am sure will come in handy on more than
one ocassion.

Last but not least, Memo Pad is NOT free software, it is
just being distributed to you in a way that keeps production
costs to a bare minimum.

Enough with the gory details of business, let's get on with
the program, and just how good it really is.

















User Documentation




Memo Pad V2.0, CopyRight (C) Craig Morrison, 1989 Page 2



Memory Resident Programs

Memo Pad falls into the category of Terminate and Stay
Resident (TSR) utilities, or as some prefer to call them,
Memory Resident Programs. In short all this means is that
Memo Pad, once called upon, will be loaded into memory, some
initialization will take place then control will be passed
back to DOS. Memo Pad will then wait in memory until you
bring it to life by pressing its 'HotKeys'. HotKeys are the
keystroke(s) that must be pressed to trigger the program.
Most all memory resident programs are started from their
dormant states in this manner. TSR's are used for a wide
variety of different tasks, NotePads, alarms, calculators,
ASCII tables, thesaurus's, etc.. They generally are a way
for programmers to sneak around DOS's lack of multitasking
and make life for everyone a bit easier. This brings us to
the point where I will tell you a bit about Memo Pad.

What Memo Pad is All About

Memo Pad is a text editor with a wide variety of features,
most of which can be found on any good word processor. The
ability for Memo Pad to be called upon at any time is its
best asset, once loaded from the command line into memory,
you have instant word processing at your fingertips. Just a
small portion of the features available are, three different
file formats for saving your notes, the ability to read
ASCII based files, as well as those of its own format,
Global searches, Search and Replace, Block functions, plus
many, many more. You may also call Memo Pad from the command
line as a stand alone utility, just as like any other
program. If memory is at a premium on your computer, you may
specify the size of the buffer that is used for your text
via a command line switch.

At this point you are probably asking yourself, "What
another text edxitor??". Memo Pad is not just another text
editor, it is a full featured editor with most if not all of
the capabilities of any word processor you may use at home
or at work. Just load it up once and try it, I am sure you
will like it.

Since I have baited the hook for you, next we'll learn how
to use Memo Pad, just turn the page.













User Documentation




Memo Pad V2.0, CopyRight (C) Craig Morrison, 1989 Page 3



Getting Started With Memo Pad

There is one requirement to be able to use Memo Pad with
your system, you must be using DOS Version 3.1 or higher.
Extended error is checking is used with the disk handling,
that is not available on lesser versions.

First you will need to learn how to load the program into
memory. This is accomplished in one of three methods.

From the DOS prompt type one of the following:

MEMO_PAD [Enter]

- This will load Memo Pad into memory with the default
buffer size of 35k, and instruct the program to make itself
resident. You will also see a message on the screen upon
successful installation.

MEMO_PAD /m:xx [Enter]

- This is basically the same as the above, except for the
use of the '/m:xx' switch. Here you may specify the size of
the buffer for use with Memo Pad. 'xx' must be a number from
1 to 45, this is how many kilobytes of memory you wish to
reserve. Again upon successful installation you will see a
message from the program.

MEMO_PAD /c [Enter]

- This will instruct Memo Pad to run in stand alone mode,
with the default buffer size of 35k. Once you complete your
session with Memo Pad, the program terminates, but does NOT
stay resident in memory, use either the first or second
command if you wish for Memo Pad to stay in memory. This
switch must be the first specified. Placing either of the
other switches on the command line first will override this
one, and Memo Pad will become resident in memory.

If you specify a buffer size over 45k the program will
allocate all of the available memory upto a 64k limit minus
the size of the program itself. When this occurs, the
resizing will be signaled by a single beep. If any invalid
character combinations are used with the '/m:' switch, Memo
Pad will use its default buffer size.












User Documentation




Memo Pad V2.0, CopyRight (C) Craig Morrison, 1989 Page 4



You may also use another switch, /g, either by itself of in
conjunction with the memory switch. What '/g' will do is
specify whether or not you want a 16k graphics buffer
installed also. To cause the graphics buffer to be added,
append a '+' sign onto the switch like so,'/g+'. The use of

the graphics switch is to override a prompt that the program
will issue if the program is to stay resident, thus keeping
you from having to stay in front of your computer should you
decide to put Memo Pad in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. The memory
and graphics buffer switches may be in any order on the
command line.

When being loaded in its resident mode, if you didn't use
the graphics switch Memo Pad will prompt you and ask if you
wish for a graphics buffer to be allocated. Answering yes to
this prompt will allocate a 16k buffer so that the program
can save the current graphics screen when called upon. If
you answer no, then you will only be able to call upon Memo
Pad when a text screen is active. In non-resident mode, Memo
Pad will only work with text screens. Please see 'Wrapping
Things Up' for more on this.

During the initialization of the program, Memo Pad tries to
install an ID string in low memory where it won't be
bothered by or cause any problems with other utilities, in
some cases this ID won't be able to imprinted. Should this
be the case when you load Memo Pad, you will see a warning
appear on the screen and be asked if you wish to proceed
with the installation, a single letter answer is all that is
required, just type a 'Y' or an 'N'. If you press N the
installation will be terminated, and control passed back to
DOS. Answering yes to the prompt will install Memo Pad into
memory, but relinquishes the safeguard of Memo Pad being
able to find itself in memory should you forget and try to
load it again.

As stated above, if you should try to load Memo Pad again
after the initial loading, Memo Pad will look for this ID
and if found, notify you of its presence in memory and abort
the installation.

There are no differences in the operation of Memo Pad
regardless of the mode of operation you decide to use it in,
other than when memory resident you may call it at anytime
by pressing its hotkey combination. When resident, pressing
and holding down both SHIFT keys will activate the program.
There is one circumstance that will stop the program from
'popping up' and interrupting the current task, and that is
if there is any disk activity ocurring at the time you
decide to call on Memo Pad. This is due to the sensitivity
of disk operations, it is dangerous and down right foolish
to interrupt data being read from or written to your disk,
or hard drive. So I have chosen to make the program ignore
any requests for it when a disk operation is occuring.



User Documentation




Memo Pad V2.0, CopyRight (C) Craig Morrison, 1989 Page 5



When called on, a window will over write the screen, and
you may begin your session with Memo Pad as soon as the
cursor appears. The colors of the window will be taken from
whatever color combination was being used at the current
cursor position when Memo Pad was called. The window will be
61 characters wide by 22 lines high, across the top of the
window you will see an indicator that tells you the total
buffer size in Kilobytes, a copyright message, and the
letters 'INS'. 'INS' is an indicator as to whether you are
in Insert or Overstrike mode when entering text. On Row 2,
Column 4 of the window you will see 'To: ' with the cursor
positioned right after this. There is some signifigance to
this line, but more about that later. Anytime the program
prompts for a filename or has a message for you it will
appear on the center line of the window, Row 11 of the
screen itself.

Along with having both Insert and Overstrike modes, Memo
Pad also supports full word wrap, so unless you want to
start a new paragraph or format the text in a special way,
you need not press Enter at the end of every line, Memo Pad
will take care of wrapping the text for you. All of the
edit\move keys one the PC keyboard are functional, and along
with the ALT-[key] combinations (Holding down the ALT key,
and pressing another key) I have added will allow you to get
around the window with a minimum of effort. The majority of
the documentation will be on these keys.

When requested for a filename if you do not specify a drive
letter, A: for example, Memo Pad will use the current or
default drive. Full path names are supported, but much to my
embarassment wildcards (?, *) are not allowed, only valid
filenames may be entered.

Entering Text and Editing Your Documents

Entering text is as easy as pressing keys on the keyboard,
if you have used any word processor at all, you shouldn't
have any difficulty getting used to Memo Pad and its
functions. The following is a rather lenghtly list of the
editing and movement keys available with Memo Pad. Pressing
the key will activate the function or perform the action of
the key.

When keys are noted as CTRL-key or ALT-key, that means
pressing and holding the key listed in all caps then
pressing the key immediately following.

Enter - Begins a new line or paragraph

Tab - Inserts enough spaces in the text to move the cursor
to the next tab column





User Documentation




Memo Pad V2.0, CopyRight (C) Craig Morrison, 1989 Page 6



Home - Move the cursor to the beginning of the current line

End - Move the cursor to the end of the current line

PgUp - Moves the window up 22 lines

PgDn - Moves the window down 22 lines

Del - Deletes the character at the cursor, and moves all
characters to the right of the cursor one position
left

Ins - Toggles Insert mode, the indicator in the top of
right corner of the window indicates whether you are
in Insert 'INS' or Overstrike 'OVS' mode

Up Arrow - Moves the cursor up one screen line

Down Arrow - moves the cursor down one screen line

Left Arrow - Moves the cursor one character left

Right Arrow - Moves the cursor one character right

CTRL-Home - Moves the window to the beginning of the
document

CTRL-End - Moves the window to the end of the document

CTRL-Left Arrow - Moves the cursor to the start of the word
proceeding the current word

CTRL-Right Arrow - Moves the cursor to the start of the
word following the current word

CTRL-PgUp - Moves the cursor to the beginning of the
paragraph before the current paragraph

CTRL-PgDn - Moves the cursor to the start of the paragraph
following the current paragraph

ALT-U - Moves the cursor to the upper left corner of the
window

ALT-D - Moves the cursor the lower left corner of the
window

ALT-X - Swaps the character under the cursor for the one to
its immediate right, if neither of the characters
is a space, sometimes called transposition

ALT-L - Deletes the current line





User Documentation




Memo Pad V2.0, CopyRight (C) Craig Morrison, 1989 Page 7



ALT-E - Deletes to the end of the current line

ALT-B - Deletes to the beginning of the current line

ALT-W - Deletes the current word

That covers the meat and bones editing keys, the following
keys are additional editing functions, that really don't
fall into the above category.

ALT-S - Search for specified string

- You will be prompted for a search phrase, type it in and
press Enter. This starts the search, when found the cursor
will be positioned on the first character of the string that
was searched for. This search function as well as the search
and replace function are case sensitive. So if you enter
'look for me', it will not match with 'Look For Me'.

ALT-N - Search for next occurance

- This function looks for the next occurance of the phrase
specified with ALT-S.

ALT-R - Search with replace

- Performs a search for the specified phrase and replaces it
with the phrase you provided. As with ALT-S you will be
prompted for search phrase, after pressing Enter you will be
prompted for a replacement phrase. There is no confirmation
with this function, so make sure you want to replace the
phrase before invoking it.

ALT-G - Search with replace of next occurance

- Performs the same operation as ALT-R with the phrase
specified by that function.

F5 - Read from file

- Reads in text from the specified file and inserts it at
the current cursor postion. You will be prompted for a
filename, just type it in and press Enter.

F7 - Block delete

- Activates block marking, using the Up, Down, Left and
Right Arrow keys, mark the block of text you wish to delete.
The block of text will show up as flashing characters on
your display. When you have finished marking the block,
press the End key and it will be deleted.






User Documentation




Memo Pad V2.0, CopyRight (C) Craig Morrison, 1989 Page 8



F8 - Copy block

- As with Block delete, block marking is activated, first
mark the block of text. When the End key is pressed a
message will appear on the screen telling you to select an
insert point, again use the Up, Down, Left and Right Arrow
keys to select the insert point. When you press the End key
the text will be copied, and the cursor will be placed at
the beginning of the area where the text was inserted. At
present when you choose to insert your text before the
marked block you have a limitation of 1000 characters that
can be marked and copied with this function, the reasoning
behind this was to allow as much room as possible for text
space. There are no restrictions on block size if you insert
the text after the marked block. If you try to insert the
block of text in the middle of the marked text the function
will abort and the cursor will be returned to the position
it was in when you started marking text.

ESC - Exit Memo Pad

- First you will be asked for confirmation, a single letter
'Y' or 'N' is all that is needed, or you can press the ESC
key again and you will exit the program.

That takes care of all the editing and movement functions,
as you can see there are quite a few of them. Some of which
will save a lot of time and effort on your part once you
learn how to use them. One point I forgot to mention is that
all the Search functions begin their search from the cursor
position plus one, forward. If the search phrase isn't found
you will be notified by a single beep.

Now that you know the basics of entering your text let's
move on to how to store and retrieve your text from disk.

Disk Related Functions

Three different formats are supported for saving your work,
as an ASCII Note, as a plain ASCII file, or in the format
Memo Pad uses for managing the text when it is in memory.
Since you can save the text naturally there must be some way
of retrieving it, and this function can read any of the
above formats. These functions are accessed via the
functions keys and are as follows.












User Documentation




Memo Pad V2.0, CopyRight (C) Craig Morrison, 1989 Page 9



F1 - Save text as an ASCII note

- Saves the text to disk as an ASCII file with a left margin
of eight (8) spaces added, so that the text will centered on
the page when printed, or centered on the screen when TYPEd
from DOS. All the control characters used by Memo Pad are
also stripped from the text. As I mentioned earlier, the
'To: ' line which appears in the window when Memo Pad is
called does serve a purpose, but only if you plan to use
this function to save your text to disk. If you use this
function, this line must be the first line in the document,
it must be preceded by three spaces, and followed by one
space. What follows must be a valid directory name of up to
eight characters in length. What this function does is use
this line to specify the directory this file will be saved
to, the name of the file that will be placed in that
directory will be 'NOTE.xxx' where 'xxx' will be an
extension of 000 to 999. Memo Pad will search the directory
specified on the 'To: ' line for any other note files and
adjust the extension as necessary. When the extension
reaches 999 Memo Pad will no longer write any files to that
directory, but it should be very rare for that many files to
ever accumulate in one directory. Upon successful completion
of the save you will hear one beep, telling you that all
went well.

F2 - Read file from disk

- This function will prompt you for a filename, and proceed
to read that file into memory if it exists. Don't worry if
the text isn't formatted on the screen correctly when you
first see it, the word wrap in Memo Pad works on a paragraph
by paragraph basis, as soon as the cursor moves into the
paragraph(s) the lines will be formatted correctly.

F3 - Save file in Memo Pad format

- First you will be prompted for a filename, then a simple
block save will occur, none of the control characters used
by Memo Pad will be stripped from the file, so when it is
loaded the next time it will be exactly as it was when saved
to disk.

F4 - Save text as a plain ASCII file

- Again you will be prompted for a filename, the text will
written to disk as an ordinary ASCII file. All control
characters are stripped so that the file may be used by
another word processor, or sent to the printer as is.








User Documentation




Memo Pad V2.0, CopyRight (C) Craig Morrison, 1989 Page 10



There is one other feature that I couldn't quite figure out
where to put and that is ALT-O. This will toggle on or off,
the sound that is heard when the Memo Pad window comes on or
goes off the screen. (Just wait till your family hears it at
3:00 AM, you'll see why I added this.) The beeps associated
with the disk handling are not affected as they are the
indicators to the success or failure of the operation.

Wrapping Things Up

That takes care of the disk functions and wraps up all the
features available with Memo Pad. The keys to most of the
functions can be remembered by their first letter, except
where duplications are involved. All in all it shouldn't
take long too learn what they are and their specific uses.
When saving text to disk, successful completion is always
signaled by a single beep, as is with most of the other
functions. Anytime you hear two successive beeps, there was
an error, and you need to look into what caused the problem,
this holds true for all the functions. In most cases if you
call upon a function by accident, the ESC key will get you
out of it. There is one exception to this rule, when you are
copying text once you get to the Select Insert Point prompt,
you are beyond the point of no return. When entering text in
Insert mode, if the text would be pushed beyond the end of
the buffer or if you reach the end of the text buffer you
will be notified by three successive beeps and a message in
the window.

I have tried Memo Pad in conjunction with a few other
memory resident utilities, for the most part they all
co-exist well. About the only trouble makers I have found
are those that tamper with the DOS dispatch Interrupt
vector, INT 21H. This is an ill mannered behavior for
resident utilities so it isn't likely to occur in too many
programs. As with all memory resident programs, try loading
them in a different sequence before you give up, sometimes
this eliminates the incompatibility problems.

As I mentioned before you are given the choice upon
installation whether or not you wish to have a graphics
buffer installed. If memory is a problem for you anwser no
to this prompt, answering yes will add another 16k of
overhead to the resident portion of Memo Pad. There is a
trade off for this though, without the graphics buffer, Memo
Pad will not allow itself to be called upon if a graphics
screen is active, only text modes 0-3, and 7 can be active.
For those of you who don't know, on CGA adaptors text mode 3
is the default, and on Monochrome adaptors the only mode
available is text mode 7. If there is no buffer for graphics
you will be notified by a cursor flash and two beeps from
the console. If the buffer is present, the current screen
will be saved, the display will switch to text mode 3, then
Memo Pad will proceed as stated above.



User Documentation




Memo Pad V2.0, CopyRight (C) Craig Morrison, 1989 Page 11



Memo Pad should function correctly on any machine with a
CGA or Monochrome Adaptor installed, as for any other video
types I can only speculate as to how they will work. I would
be interested in hearing the comments of users with other
graphics cards.

Fully adorned with the maximum buffer size of 45k and the
16k graphics buffer installed Memo Pad will take up about
81k of memory. I have tried my best to allow for the utmost
in flexibility with the memory management, if you should see
something you would like changed, I am more than open to
suggestions.

From a programmers point of view, this was not an easy
program to write, at least for me anyway, but it was well
worth the effort. I dug deep down into what I have taught
myself over the past three years to write this program. Many
late nights, and gallons of coffee were the only things that
got me through it. This was a good learning experience for
me and I sincerely hope the effort was for good reason. With
this thought in mind, I will say farewell.

Good luck with the program,

Craig Morrison
































User Documentation




Memo Pad V2.0, CopyRight (C) Craig Morrison, 1989 Page 12




REGISTRATION FORM

Please send me ___ Memo Pad disks at $35.00 each (US funds,
or checks drawn on U.S. Banks only, made payable to: Craig
Morrison, please.) .............................. $____.__

Sales Tax (If applicable) ....................... $____.__
Indiana residents please add 5%

Postage and Handling Charges
$2.00 per disk ordered ......................... $____.__

Total ..... $____.__

Disk Size
Please check the proper box [] 3.5" [] 5.25"


Name ______________________________________
Street Address ______________________________________
City, State ______________________________________
Zip Code __________
Phone Number (___) ___-____
If a business number what company:
______________________________________


Signature ____________________________

All disks are mailed within 3-5 days from receipt of order.

Comments or Suggestions

__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________


















User Documentation




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