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The Last Word 3.0 Reference Manual

Although I’d always considered version 2.1 of LW the “final” version, people soon came up with new things they’d like to see included in the program. Far and away top of the list was support for 80 column displays (including devices such as XEP-80 and VBXE). I was reluctant to try this, not least because I didn’t have access to the necessary hardware and emulator support for XEP-80 and VBXE was limited at the time. The only alternative was to attempt a software 80 column display driver, which is was hesitant to do since I couldn’t see it being fast enough. However, after some discussion with Claus Bucholz and having borrowed some ideas from his Ace-80 display driver, I figured out something that worked with similarly impressive speed. Key to the efficiency of the 80 column display is the way in which it only redraws those areas of the screen which have changed following edits. It also uses a dynamic display list to handle scrolling.

The original intention was to have two separate versions of the program: one which worked in 80 columns and another which worked in 40 columns. However, not only did it soon become difficult to synchronise the development of two different versions of the program, but an easy way became apparent to switch between the two display modes. Thereafter, LW had a dual display and to my knowledge is the only Atari 8-bit word processor capable of switching from a 40 to an 80 column display and back again at any time, and without any hardware add-ons, and without changing the cursor position in the current document.

A side-effect of the 80 column display was an increased memory footprint, which necessitated the positioning of 14K of the program code under the Atari’s Operating System ROM. This meant the program was no longer compatible with DOS XE and disk-based versions of SpartaDOS. However, this change also allowed for extra features to be added to the program, and during the first half of 2009 most of the program was revamped and support was added for long SpartaDOS time/date stamped filenames on the disk menu, and for splitting large files across text banks.

One of the most important enhancements to the program was the font collection designed by Paul Fisher. This large selection of matching 80 and 40 column font pairs, specially created for LW, together with the new title screen and product logo, lent the program an even more professional edge and elevated the quality of the product beyond all expectations. Paul’s contribution to the design side of The Last Word 3.0 cannot be overestimated, and I hope to make use of his considerable flair and skill in future projects.

In June 2009, having up until then developed the program entirely using my own XEDIT text editor and MA65 Macro Assembler – initially on real hardware and latterly under emulation on the PC – I migrated to the ATASM cross-compiler and the newly released WUDSN integrated development environment. Fond as I was of using my own Atari-based development tools, there was no doubt that developing under WUDSN more than doubled my productivity, and by mid October 2009 The Last Word 3.0 (now almost 32K in size) was at last ready for release.

The Last Word would never have seen the light of day If it wasn’t for the encouragement and help I’ve received from members of the Atari community in Europe and the United States. Special thanks must go to Paul Fisher and Konrad Kokoszkiewicz, without whom the completion of the program as it stands would have been impossible. I must also thank all the beta testers who spent time reporting bugs and making suggestions on the AtariAge forums; thanks to Sebastian Bartkowicz and Cabell Clarke for help with SpartaDOS, and to Claus Bucholz for the source code and inspiration provided by Ace-80, Marcin Prusisz for SIO2SD and SIO2IDE, and to Mark Grebe for his continued improvements to the Atari800MacX emulator.

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