PC-Write

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(Control characters)
(Dot commands)
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These commands are intended to be on a line by themselves, beginning with the ^K (0B) control character (entered in PC-Write with Alt-G).
 
These commands are intended to be on a line by themselves, beginning with the ^K (0B) control character (entered in PC-Write with Alt-G).
  
:'''.E:n''' Print n blank lines (n is a number, e.g., .E:2 to print 2 blank lines)
 
 
:'''..''' Comment line (not printed)
 
:'''..''' Comment line (not printed)
 +
:'''.E:n''' Print n blank lines (n is a number, e.g., .E:2 to print 2 blank lines)
  
 
== References ==
 
== References ==
 
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC-Write PC-Write (Wikipedia)]
 
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC-Write PC-Write (Wikipedia)]
 
* [http://vetusware.com/manufacturer/Quicksoft/?author=865 PC-Write download]
 
* [http://vetusware.com/manufacturer/Quicksoft/?author=865 PC-Write download]

Revision as of 18:02, 11 November 2012

File Format
Name PC-Write
Ontology
Extension(s) .doc

PC-Write was a word processor originally released in 1983 by a company (now defunct) called Quicksoft. It was released on a shareware basis, with a paid version available.

The files were basically plain text, with optional special functions causing control characters to be inserted. However, the default filename suggested when you started the program was "WORK.DOC", suggesting .doc as the default file extension to be used, which could be confusing given MS-Word's more well-known use of this extension. You could create or edit files with any extension, including .txt, however.

If you stick to characters found in the ASCII character encoding, and don't use any special PC-Write features, the resulting files will be completely ASCII, using the standard PC-DOS carriage return + linefeed for line breaks. If you use accented characters (you could type them by typing a letter, then the backtick (`), then another character representing the diacritical mark such as an apostrophe or tilde), those will use the active MS-DOS code page. Other features (accessed within PC-Write through Alt key combinations) will cause various control characters to be inserted into the file, but the rest of the content will remain plain text. The control characters have meanings that are specific to PC-Write, not generally resembling their "official" meaning in the ASCII set; for instance, a variety of special commands are done as "dot commands" (on a line by themselves, with a dot followed by a special command) which are preceded by a control character that is entered as Alt-G in PC-Write but stored as Ctrl-K, which is officially the Vertical Tab character in ASCII.

Control characters

These are the control characters as stored in PC-Write documents, and their meanings. Mode toggles (for various font and color effects) are reset at line breaks, so they need to be set on each line of a multi-line enhanced passage.

Hex Dec ASCII Char Ctrl Key PC-Write Key PC-Write meaning
00 0 NUL ^@ Not used
01 1 SOH ^A Alt-S Toggles Second Strike mode
02 2 STX ^B Alt-B Toggles Bold mode
03 3 ETX ^C Alt-E Toggles Elite Fast mode
04 4 EOT ^D Alt-V Toggles Variable mode
05 5 ENQ ^E Alt-P Toggles Pica Quality mode
06 6 ACK ^F Alt-C Toggles Compressed mode
07 7 BEL ^G Alt-M Toggles Marine Blue mode
08 8 BS ^H Alt-J Toggles Jade Green mode
09 9 HT ^I Tab Move to next tab stop. In some configurations, gets replaced with proper number of space characters.
0A 10 LF ^J Enter Linefeed: follows Carriage Return for line break. (Enter inserts two-character sequence ^M^J)
0B 11 VT ^K Alt-G Signals that what follows is a dot command or guide line (commands should be on a line by themselves)
0C 12 FF ^L Shift-Alt-T Soft page break. (If followed by ^O (0F), it's a hard page break, entered in PC-Write with Alt-T.)
0D 13 CR ^M Enter Carriage Return: precedes Linefeed for line break. (Enter inserts two-character sequence ^M^J)
0E 14 SO ^N Not used
0F 15 SI ^O Alt-T Follows ^L (0C) to indicate hard page break (Alt-T inserts two-character sequence ^L^O)
10 16 DLE ^P Alt-D Toggles Double Wide mode
11 17 DC1 ^Q Not used
12 18 DC2 ^R Alt-W Toggles Double Underline mode
13 19 DC3 ^S Alt-O Toggles Overstrike mode
14 20 DC4 ^T Not used
15 21 NAK ^U Alt-I Toggles Italic mode
16 22 SYN ^V Alt-Q Toggles Quality Elite mode
17 23 ETB ^W Alt-U Toggles Underline mode
18 24 CAN ^X Alt-H Toggles Superscript mode
19 25 EM ^Y Alt-L Toggles Subscript mode
1A 26 SUB ^Z Not used (MS-DOS used it as end-of-file marker, but PC-Write didn't mark files this way)
1B 27 ESC ^[ Not used (Escape character)
1C 28 FS ^\ Alt-F Toggles Fast Pica mode
1D 29 GS ^] Shift-Ctrl-Hyphen Soft Hyphen
1E 30 RS ^^ Alt-R Toggles Red mode
1F 31 US ^_ Alt-Y Toggles Yellow mode
F6 246 Ctrl-Hyphen Hard Hyphen
FA 250 Ctrl-Space Hard Space
FF 255 Shift-Ctrl-Space Soft Space

Dot commands

These commands are intended to be on a line by themselves, beginning with the ^K (0B) control character (entered in PC-Write with Alt-G).

.. Comment line (not printed)
.E:n Print n blank lines (n is a number, e.g., .E:2 to print 2 blank lines)

References

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