“TRANSLATE” UTILITY PROGRAM DOCUMENTATION | PAGE 2 |
"insert dos disk in drive2” and then to “press (spacebar) to continue” or “press (esc) to cancel.” First insert your disks as indicated and then press the space bar. TRANSLATE will let you know if either disk is formatted incorrectly or in the wrong drive.
Next, TRANSLATE asks you to enter the name of the file to be converted. First enter the file name and then press (return). TRANSLATE will let you know if it can’t find the file. NOTE: Pascal file names may not exceed 15 characters. (That’s INCLUDING the suffix “.text” which the program will add if you don’t.) Also note that DOS 3.3 will truncate a file name of over 30 characters, and TRANSLATE will convert a DOS file name entered in lower case to upper case.
Finally, TRANSLATE prompts you for the name of the (new) file to be created. First enter the file name and then press (return). TRANSLATE will let you know if it can’t create the new file; otherwise, the process begins. WARNING: TRANSLATE does not check to see if another file with the same name is already on the disk. If it is, in Pascal the directory listing of the previous file with the same name is removed; in DOS a second (or third) file with the same name is created.
Pressing (esc) after this point will cancel the program and return you to the “dos conversion” menu. However, the new file will exist; its name will appear on the directory; and it will contain everything processed until you pressed the (esc) key.
Notes and Suggestions
(1)The four “disk manager” options may be used in any order and as often as you like, with one exception: DO NOT SELECT THE TRANSLATE OPTION AFTER YOU HAVE USED THE FORMAT OPTION. To use TRANSLATE again after formatting a disk, you must first turn off the power to your Apple and then
(2)ThinkTank’s STRUCTURED style uses embedded commands such as “.HEAD” which may be misinterpreted by a DOS application program when it prints your file. This can easily be avoided by removing them before printing with the DOS program. Even better, use PLAIN instead of STRUCTURED
style for this purpose.
(3)Lines from ThinkTank paragraphs that you ended with hyphens or “forced” carriage returns may be missing a blank space after being TRANSLATEd into DOS. This, too, can easily be avoided. If you know you will be converting ThinkTank text into DOS, do not add hyphens or your own carriage returns when creating ThinkTank paragraphs.
New Error Messages
“can’t create dos (pascal) file” “can’t open dos (pascal) file”
“disk in drivel (drive2) is not a pascal (dos 3.3) disk” “ reading from dos (pascal) file”
“error writing to dos (pascal) file” or “can’t write to dos file”