More lines!

[TBaehr@xxxxxxxx]

I've tried several tricks to get Xy4DOS to show spacing on-screen, to no avail
(including messing with the printer file). There are, however, a couple of
ways to show more lines on screen.

1. Kill the ruler. I find it kinda useless anyway. Don't substitute the ruled
line; use the no-ruler setting. The function call for this 3-way toggle is NR;
I start out in no-ruler mode by putting a pair of NRs at the beginning of
STARTUP.INT. (There's no "ruler" command or default that I know of, just the
pesky toggle.)

You can color the ruler with the L2 default (see SETTINGS.DFL), or just create
an auxiliary settings file containing just this:

;PR1;
L0=113,79,116,121
L1=71,31,78,29
L2=113,113,121,116,78
L3=19,33,27,26
L4=113,79,116,120,71

Load this file in STARTUP.INT *after* you load SETTINGS.DFL. I find these
colors work very well; they're a little brighter than the out-of-the-box
colors for menus, etc. (we know real XyWriters don't use menus, but...). This
color scheme gives a status line of gray with blue or red lettering (depending
on the message), and it neatly divides the command line from the text.

Gain: one line.

2. In full-screen mode (this doesn't work in a window), open a dummy document
(even an empty one) and switch to Graphic (WYSIWYG) mode. Then switch back
(usually Alt+F6) to the file you're editing. You'll now see 27 lines instead
of 22 (or 28 instead of 23 if you did the stuff in part 1). The type is a bit
squished (everything has its price), and you may not like the type style (it's
a graphic mode imitation of the DOS character set), but everything's a trade-
off ain't it? On my system at least, editing and keyboard response is just as
good as in the DOS world.

Gain: 5 lines.

These two tricks work in Win 3.1x, too.

There do seem to be ways to get 37 or 50 lines in a DOS box in Win 95, but I
haven't been able to get XyWrite to play along reliably.

Tim Baehr
tbaehr@xxxxxxxx