Apple IIe - Manual (Page 24)

Page 24 of 74 IIe
Printed: Tuesday, March 4, 2003 10:40:15 AM
The application program you're using will tell you how to save a file onto a disk usually it
will simply be a matter of selecting the Save option from a menu, or typing a special key
combination like OPEN-APPLE-S (for Save).
Revising an Existing File
You won't always be starting a document from scratch. Sometimes you'll be working with data
that you entered on a previous occasion and saved on a data disk data like students' grades,
personnel records, and so on.
Here's how you get at that data:
You start up the application program you used to create the data in the first place.
You load the file, by its filename, according to the instructions that came with the
application program.
(Load a File will either be an option on the program's menu, or you'll
use a special key combination like OPEN-APPLE-L, for Load.)
You revise the data.
And you save the data, usually on the same disk you loaded it from.
Decisions, Decisions:
When you save a revised file, you have the option of saving it with the same name you used
before, or with a new name.
If you save the revised file with the original filename, you write
over (and lose) the original data. If you save the revised information with a new filename,
both the original and the revised version are preserved on the disk.
If you forget what you named a file, most programs offer you some means of examining the
contents of a disk.
If you're lucky, there will be an option on the program's menu like List
Files on Disk. If there isn't such an option, you can use the List program on the ProDOS
User's Disk that came with your disk drive.
In a Nutshell
That's the general idea of what happens every time you use an application program. Here it is
in a nutshell:
You turn on the power, and a program in ROM tells the microprocessor to look for an operating
system on the disk in drive 1.
The operating system is loaded into RAM.
The application program is loaded into RAM.
You start a document from scratch or you load something you created earlier and revise it.
You save your work on a disk (and print it).
You switch to a different program, you start creating a different document with the same
program, or you turn off the power and quit for the day.
Program Disks and Data Disks