Vprint Text Formatter
Vprint is a full featured text formatter. Proven for many years on 6809
and OS9/68000 systems, this powerful program is now available for Linux.
The complete list of features fills a 120 page manual, but here are a few
highlights:
- support of up to 36 printer fonts, including proportional, with multiple
width tables and full microspace justification if your printer supports
it,
- support of extended character sets (graphics and special characters),
- full printer support using initialization files for printer independence,
- built in mail-merge and repeat functions,
- input and output file switching and nesting allows long documents to
be printed from a master "book" file, output to a pipeline or
file, input from pipelines, etc.,
- full referencing facilities, including footnotes and endnotes, index
and table of contents, support for cross referencing, chapter and section
numbering, figure and table numbering, etc.,
- single or multiple column printouts,
- conditional tests using "if" and "when" commands,
along with arithmetic functions and variables, allow a high degree of programmability,
- full macro programming capability, combined with the other programming
features, allow the user to extend the Vprint command set almost without
limit,
- support of hanging indents, temporary indents, "wide" tabs,
different even and odd page formats, etc.,
- 28 numeric registers are available to the user, in addition to such
values as page number, line counter, margins, time and date, etc. Output
of registers can be in decimal, hex, Roman numerals, ASCII or month name
and registers can be set to auto-increment by any reasonable value,
- handles files with or without carriage returns at the end of each line,
- support of half and part line spacing,
- allows embedded OS-9 commands.
Vprint's power comes not only from an extensive command set, but also
from two significant features:
- Vprint knows your printer intimately through the init file (which you
can set up yourself). This means that special printer functions such as
font changes, superscripts, boldface, double width, etc. can be carried
out with no need for the user to calculate new margins, line lengths, page
lengths, etc. Not only that, but you can send the same identical text file
to several different printers with no need for editing since the commands
in the text file are printer independent.
- Vprint's macro capability allows you to extend the capabilities of
the formatter by adding new commands. These commands can include such things
as automatic captioning of figures, pre-formatted chapter and section headings,
automatic handling of numbered points (where the formatter takes care of
the numbering and indentation). Macros can be stored in one or more files,
and can be loaded either by a command in the text file, or automatically
by the init file. Several different macro files can include commands for
different types of formatting, such as correspondence, manuals, stories,
etc.