Atari XL - Manual (Page 46)

The Last Word 3.0 Reference Manual
7-46
 or allows you to enter control codes into the
editor or into an input dialogue, as on its own normally does in
BASIC, etc. To get the escape code itself (which appears in LW as a curved
downward pointing arrow) in the text, press or
twice.
 You can also press to put the Escape character directly
into the text.
 pressed when text is marked will unmark the text,
as will or any text typed.
 The symbol in a macro duplicates typed
at the keyboard. To make a macro put the symbol into the editor,
include two consecutive symbols in the macro.
 pressed at the keyboard runs macros from the editor.
 pressed outside the editor aborts the current operation.
 In macros, special macro commands and commands are
entered as INVERSE COMMANDS.
The best way to consolidate our understanding of macros is with a couple of
examples. Studying the macros supplied on the distribution disk will also help you to
understand the LW macro language.
7.5 CREATING AND EDITING MACROS
Because macros tend to contain lots of control codes, it’s best to load in the special
macro editing font before you start. It substitutes special
alphabetic characters for
the control codes and makes macros much more readable. Load the macro font with:
then type MACRO and press
The above will work in either 80 or 40 column modes because there’s a macro font for
each mode: MACRO.F80 for 80 column mode and MACRO.FNT for 40 column mode.
You may find it much preferable to switch to 40 column mode when editing macros
simply because the 40 column font is easier to read and accuracy is important when
writing macros.
Switch to 40 column mode with:
You may need to go through the procedure to load the 40 column macro font if you
haven’t already done so.
All the examples here are illustrated by screen shots of the macros in 40 column mode
with the MACRO.FNT character set loaded.