Date   : Fri, 05 May 1989 13:49:04 GMT
From   : bsu-cs!neubauer@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (Paul Neubauer)
Subject: CP/M WordStar?

In article <1887@amelia.nas.nasa.gov> samlb@pioneer.arc.nasa.gov.UUCP 
(Sam Bassett RCD), in reply to a question on macro recording and playback
ability in CP/M wordprocessors/editors, writes:
>
>   The answer is: Yes, sort of.
>
>   Wordstar 4.0 has a sort of macro-recording and replaying facility
>connected to the <ESC> key -- You can record up to about 256 characters
>(I think) which will be associated with a letter, and stored on disk.

I more or less decided that it was not really worth upgrading to WS 4.0, and
the macro capability of WS4 certainly did not strongly provide me with any
such reason to upgrade.  For macros, it seems to me that WS4 provides no
more, and probably less, than some of the TSR-type keyboard enhancers.
Qwikkey and Magickey (I think I have the spelling of both correct) are PD.
I have used Qwikkey.  It does have some limitations, but works well and the
price is right.  I currently use a commercial product XtraKey, which not
only has far less restrictive limits (i.e. as much as you can stand to spare
the RAM for, though, of course, you can also make it read a disk file), but
in addition allows a certain amount of conditional application and branching
and allows waits for user input.  For example, I have a Turbo Pascal XtraKey
macro where I type one key and it types: "PROCEDURE " then waits for me to
input a name, after which it types "()<cr>BEGIN<cr>%%<cr>END; {duplicate of
the name i typed in}" and then moves the cursor back up between the
parentheses for me to type in the formal parameters.  I use the "%%" as a
placeholder and have another key bound to find %% and delete them, leaving
me at the place where they were.  All in all, this is less impressive than
what you could do with a real programmable editor like GnuEmacs or VAX/TPU,
but is more than you could do with WordStar 4's fairly primitive macros or
with Qwikkey.  Xtrakey also comes with some decent documentation and some
examples, including a "go to page: " macro where you can enter a page # in
response to a prompt (for WS 3.3).  I recommend it.  

XtraKey is a trademark of Xpert Software.  If anyone wants their address, I
can look it up.  Sorry I don't have it at hand at the moment.  Oh, BTW,
Xtrakey costs about $20-25.

Disclaimer:  I have NO CONNECTION at all with Xpert Software except as a
satisfied user.

-- 
Paul Neubauer         neubauer@bsu-cs.bsu.edu        neubauer@bsu-cs.UUCP
                      <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!neubauer