English & XPL

[Morris Krok essence@xxxxxxxx]

from Morris

 At one time I was told how to load a new program into a U2 file (Xy4) but
have forgotten. I wonder if someone can remind me.

 Tom Robertson talks about short forms he uses in the Shorthand 8 program
for windows. I know that method which is fine if you have unlimited memory
to include all the most used words, but if you have limited memory, then the
method that PRD+ use is superior. In XyWrite you cannot have a file larger
than 64k, but even so to be able to do it in XPL is good programming
adventure.

 Recently I wrote this small little program that helped to convert a PRD+
file for use in Shorthand 8. I had to do this because the Ascii or text
format of a PRD+ file can take this format.

rcv receive  b, d, g, s,

 By doing it this way space is conserved and a small program in PRD+ enables
one to achieve the following. When you press rcvb = receiveable, rcv =
received rcvg = receiving, rcvs = receives.

 The program I wrote, commencing at the end of the file, searches for the
comma which it deletes plus the letter in front of it and of course because
it loops terminates when it does not come across anymore commas. Once I
changed the file in this manner Shorthand 8 had no problem converting it so
that it could be used under its control. It did not of course have the
flexibility to use it the way PRD+ does.

 This is the program.
BF BC seb /,/XC>
RC BD 
CH 

 I have found that when one can write short looping programs, one never goes
back to writing macros or recording keystrokes.

 Now the English language is a vast, glorious, colorful, ever changing,
tapestry. It is reputed to have the largest number of words of any language.
This one can well understand for as England spread its colonial power it
borrowed from every conceivable tongue. When the Oxford Dictionary was in
the process of being compiled, the man in charge ( I think his name is
Murray), died on the job without completing it. He was quite old when he
died and worked on it for almost his entire working lifetime. There was a
book out a few years ago that dealt with him and a correspondent who for
years gave him valuable information regarding the compiling of words. This
man was an inmate of a lunatic asylum. The full Oxford Dictionary was
finally completed more than twenty years latter. Of course it is always
being updated with all the techno words now being used.

 To achieve what I feel can easily be accomplished in XPL, one would have to
write a program that ignores the AR function and loads a file of
abbreviations in one window that no longer needs the ;SP; tag. Possibly a
second window can be loaded whereby it contains all the relevant suffixes
that can be added on and what letter or letters should be deleted from the
root word.

 This idea came to me in a dream one night and though I should have dreamt
of exotic romantic places, I hope this fleeting, phantom nightly thought
gives some clue to how it can be done.

 I read it often how there is something tangible and real substance in
building castles in the air or should we rather say having conversations
with our mind.

 English can be a very expressive and graphic language. I read many years
thoughts such as these.

 "Outwardly you will be silent but within your master will speak in a voice
of a roaring rapid and resounding waterfall."

 "We shall forever chant so that we shall never forget that we are sons of
the morning, children of the light."

 And then we must not forget what Julius Caesar said when he landed in
England.

   I came. I saw. I conquered.

A good word processor should at least put us in control of that aspect of
our life of how we think and write.