ScreenWriter II

ScreenWriter II (formerly SuperScribe II) was a word processor for the Apple II series, first published in 1981 by On-Line Systems (later Sierra On-Line). The description here is based on a version released in May 1982.

Files were saved to Apple DOS disks as text files (type T). Apple didn't formally use file extensions to identify file types, but sample files mentioned in the manual used a .text extension as part of their names.

The file format was plain ASCII text, with some embedded commands. Line breaks were stored in the usual Apple II fashion, with the CR character (#13 decimal).

Commands consisted of lines starting with a period (.), meaning that regular text lines couldn't begin with periods.

Embedded commands
These commands affected how the document was to be printed (those were the days before WYSIWYG editing).


 * .lm n Set left margin to n (e.g., .lm 3 to set margin to character position 3)
 * .rm n Set right margin to n (as character position from the left; must be greater than left margin)
 * .tm n Set top margin to n (as line number from top of page)
 * .bm n Set bottom margin to n (as line number from top of page; must be greater than top margin)

The left and right margin commands could be set separately for each line of the page by giving multiple numbers separated by commas:


 * .lm 10,5,6 sets the left margin to 10 characters for line 1, 5 for line 2, and 6 for line 3. You then have to specify a margin for each and every line of the page. Or you can just insert multiple .lm command lines at each point where you want to change the margin.


 * .fl n Set form length to n (total number of lines in a page)