How-To
Basics (pt. 1)

How-To

Basic Procedures and General operation
(Part One)

WSWin Help for Strugglers

WordStar DOS users who migrate to WSWin are often stunned to find that the transition isn't as easy as they expected it to be. The programs operate in totally different ways and the only thing they have in common is a set of shared control-key combinations. Unprepared, the DOS WS people don't know where to start and decide to go back to the comfo rt of the "known."

Actually, WSWin is easy to use, once you get the hang of it. I'll try to help you get started in this message. First, two gentle reminders:

1. The easiest program is always the one you already know;

2. The things that frustrate you in WSWin (setting margins, changing fonts, putting in page numbering, headers, and footers, setting up tabs) do so mostly because of your inexperience with the program - which can be remedied!<g> Once you have a better idea of what to do, you'll find that your troubles go away.

So I'm going to take you step-by-step through the initial setup of a document. This will make everything easier from now on, and you won't have to struggle with the program and can just write your fingers off using the familiar WS keystrokes. It will be painless!

What to Do First

Before we do anything else, copy the file DEFAULT.WST from the WSWin\TEMPLATE subdirectory into another directory. Leave the name and extension the same, but put it somewhere where you won't erase it and can remember easily where it is. (I put it in the WSWin main directory.) Don't have WSWin loaded when you do this. First copy the file.

Now, start WSWin. Greeting you onscreen will be a blank, white screen with a dotted green line in the shape of a corner. This is actually the first page of your new document. To see this, put your mouse cursor on the 100% on the status line at the bottom of the screen and click the RIGHT mouse button. You will get a little list of view choices. Click on Full Page and the view will change to show the whole page. Now you see that it looks like a piece of paper. The dotted green lines indicate where the default margins are. The DEFAULT.WST template determines everything about this page: the paper size and orientation, the margins, the frame styles, the paragraph styles, the default font and point size, the tabs - everything. (This can all be changed, by the way - I'll tell you how in a bit.)

Setting Up the Page

The first thing you want to do is get the page set up the way YOU want it to be. So before you do anything else, go to File menu, Page Setup. Make sure the paper size you want to use is selected. Click on the little down arrow to the right of the Paper Size box and you'll see a list of available paper sizes, including one for Other that you can customize to whatever size page you want. Note: It says PAPER SIZES, but we're really talking about PAGE SIZES. For now, just pick the size of page and paper you are using, which will probably be Letter. You will see the orientation is Portrait and you can set whatever units of measurement you prefer: inches, centimeters, picas, or points. Your selection will determine the measurement units on the rules and on measurement readouts in the program. Print Notes At determines whether you get footnotes or endnotes. Double-Sided is used when you want facing pages to mirror each other's margins and page elements. You might use this if your document will be bound or printed on facing pages (as for a newsletter).

When you get the basics of your page set up, click on OK. If you want your document to be in landscape rather than portrait orientation, now is the time to set that up. Go to Frame menu, Make Page Landscape. Try it. You will see that the page now has the long edge on the bottom. If you make the page landscape while you are on the first page, all the following pages will be landscape. You can change this for individual pages, by the way. If you want the page to return to Portrait, click on Frame menu, Make Page Portrait and it will return.

You have been working with the PageText Frame, the basic, underlying frame of your entire document. By default, you'll get one column of text. If you want all document text to be in two columns, modify the PageText frame style. To do this, go to Frame menu, Modify Frame Style. The first screen shows you what kind of margins are set up for your whole document. Make sure Current Style says PageText Frame and Modify: has a bullet by Frame Style. Click on 4 - Columns and you'll get to the choices screen for columns. You can navigate those Modify Style screens with the keyboard, too, if you don't want to reach for the mouse. To get to a different tab on the screens, press the Alt+the number of the tab and hit the spacebar. Thus, to get from the Margins screen to the Columns screen, you'd press Alt+4, spacebar. There is much more we can say about the Modify Frame Style screens, but let's stick to basics here.

Setting Tabs, Spacing, Alignment, and Other Text Details

When your page is set up for margins and columns, paper size and orientation, you should get your BodyText paragraph style the way you want it. In Edit Mode (cursor is a blinking vertical line; Frame Mode cursor is a little square), select Style menu, Modify Paragraph Style. Even if you don't want to modify it, select this anyway so you can see how styles are set up. BodyText is the fundamental WSWin paragraph style. It's not that different from setting up your ruler line in WS DOS. You will be putting in indents, tabs, and alignment (left, right, centered, justify), as well as point size and line spacing. Don't let yourself get confused by the 25 paragraph styles WSWin templates contain by default. Just get BodyText the way you want it and that will take care of 90% of any formatting you'll be doing, probably.

BodyText paragraph style is set by default to the Times New Roman TrueType font, 12 pt. size, 14.4 Line Height. You can, of course, change that to any font that is active in Windows and you can change the point size and line height, also. Line height is also known as leading (pronounced ledd-ing) or line spacing. Under the Paragraph screen of the Modify Paragraph Style dialogues, you can set up your desired indents for the first line, left indent for the rest of the lines, right indent if you don't want the lines to reach all the way to the right margin of the page (a setting of 0 means the paragraph reaches to the left and right margins), Alignment (left, center, right, justify), Space Above and Space Below (which means an amount of space automatically added above each paragraph or below each paragraph), whether you want the paragraph text to break at the autohyphens, kerning (turned off by default, but you should usually check kerning ON and set 6 pt. as the desired size where kerning begins), Keep With Next if you want the paragraph style always on the same page as the following paragraph (you don't want this for BodyText), Allow Break Within if you want to let page breaks happen within paragraphs of this style (you should have this checked for BodyText), and Widow Control (prevents having just one line from a new paragraph left at the bottom of a page - there is an acknowledged display bug with this feature; you can check it ON after you are finished writing the text).

WSWin comes with a macro, WIDOWCTL.WMC, that toggles Widow Control off and on. This means you can set up your text styles with Widow Control selected, then run WIDOWCTL to toggle Widow Control off while you are entering text. When you finish, run WIDOWCTL again to turn Widow Control back on, as you want it to be in your final document. WIDOWCTL does not make any changes to the paragraph styles themselves.

Under the Tabs screen, you can set Left, Right, Center, and Decimal tabs wherever you want on the ruler. Remember the measurements begin at the document margin, not at the left edge of the paper. By default, the tabs are at half-inch intervals. You'll want to change this eventually (see page for an explanation). Pressing Clear All Tabs will remove all of them from BodyText. To change individual tabs, put your mouse cursor over one so it gets highlighted, then drag it to the desired position. Or highlight the tab, go up to the Position box (which will read out the present position of the tab), type in the desired measurement, then hit Tab; the selected tab will move to its new position. The Position box lets you enter very precise measurements. The Lines screen will let you put lines Above, Below, or Around every paragraph of the style. You don't want this for BodyText. Color lets you change the color of the text; this is handy if you want to reverse out text from a black or dark background or if you are going to print your document on a color printer. You'll probably want BodyText to be black. Black is 0,0,0 in the RGB model, 100,100,100 in the CMY model. Effects is powerful, but you won't be using that screen for BodyText. We can cover it another time. The Options screen has some high-end features. The most important is Word Spacing. This affects how WSWin adjusts the text when you want justified paragraphs (left and right margins are straight). You should ALMOST NEVER have Use Letter Spacing checked - NEVER for ordinary justified text. The defaults for Minimum and Maximum Word Spacing are much too generous. Change those to 80% for Minimum and 133% for Maximum; for some fonts you may want to adjust these settings, going as high as 150% Maximum. Super/Subscript Reduce Font Size lets you determine how small you want a superscript or subscript to be. I think 50% is much too small and would change that to 40% or 35% (judge by how it looks). Widow Lines determines how many beginning lines of a paragraph should appear at the bottom of a page; 2 is usually the minimum. Consecutive Hyphens means how many rows of hyphens can appear at the end of lines. You will probably want to Place Underline Below Descenders rather than At Baseline. The Position Style settings don't apply to BodyText ordinarily. We can cover those later.

In any of these screens, you can change the units you're working with by clicking on the Units box at the lower right until what you want shows up. When everything is as you want it, hit Enter or click on OK and the BodyText will be modified. If you make a mistake or change your mind, hitting Escape or clicking on Cancel will take you out of Modify Paragraph Style and leave things as they were. Revert will keep you in Modify Paragraph Style but will take you back to the settings as they were before you made unsaved changes. Save will save all the changes you made and keep you in Modify Paragraph Style, where you can select another style to work on by clicking on the down arrow at the right of the Current Style name.

If you're doing a simple document where you have paragraph after paragraph of text (in other words, the typical type of thing you'd be doing in WS DOS), BodyText may be the only style you'll need; just don't bother with any of the others WSWin offers and especially, DON'T DELETE THEM (seems to make WSWin unstable). If you want words to be in italics, bold, or bold italics within the paragraph, highlight the desired word or words and give a keyboard command for italic or whatever (Ctrl-I in the Windows keystrokes, Ctrl-PY in the WS keystrokes) or click on the Italic icon.

Again, if you're coming from WS DOS, think "ruler line" and that will help you a bit. Or think of the Paragraph Styles in WS 7 and the WSWin system is a lot like those.

Now the good part! If your modifications are ones you expect to use over and over, SAVE YOUR DOCUMENT AS A STYLE SHEET BEFORE YOU ENTER TEXT. You do this by going to File menu, Save As, click on Quick Path until you get WSWin Templates, List Files of Type: should say Templates, and in Filename give your template a name. If you want this setup to come up by default whenever you start WSWin, name it DEFAULT.WST. This will replace the all-important Default template in the WSWin\Template subdirectory - that's why I had you copy that template to another directory. If you want to go back to the "real" WSWin default template, you can just copy it back to the WSWin\TEMPLATE directory. If you want to use this setup just on occasion, give the template a name that you'll be able to identify in the future. When you want to use that template for a document, after you start WSWin go to File menu, New, and select your template from the list of templates that comes up. If you didn't do anything with the Untitled document that comes up automatically, it will close and be replaced by another Untitled document based on your chosen template.

So you see that by modifying your default template to your own desired margins and columns and with your own desired font, spacing, tabs, etc., you'll save yourself lots of time and will not have to do all this every time you're going to write something. It's like having a set of dot commands you ^KR to the beginning of a document! Only easier, because you're not trying to figure out page offsets and other nonintuitive settings.

WSWin Fundamentals

One big advantage of WSWin over other Windows programs is that it does use so many of the WS keystrokes and control-key combinations. Those are hardwired into my brain and I don't think a better interface has ever been invented for touch typists (which I am). To use the WS DOS keystrokes, you select Edit menu, Preferences, and WordStar under keystroke set.

WSWin is really not any harder to use for basic writing than Windows Write (in fact, it can be easier), but there is a lot of depth in WSWin and tons of features (also some very irritating bugs - see page ) and so there is a sizable learning curve before you'll be proficient. You can learn on a "need to know" basis. You don't have to know how to do everything in the program, just how to do what you need to do for that document. You'll pick up more as you go along. The online help is very good. Be sure to use it often.

There are some tutorial files you can download from the WordStar Users' Groups Web site (http://cuenet.com/cbabbage/wordstar). These all appeared in the Scroll newsletter.

But - to get you started:

Two things you MUST understand to use WSWin are the concepts of Frames and Paragraph Styles. The program is built on these and if you don't understand how to use them, WSWin will give you no end of grief.

Frames

WSWin is hard-core frame-based. A frame is simply a "container" to hold text, graphics, or a table. The most basic frame is the PageText frame, which is essentially the "piece of paper" on which your document will be written. The margins and number of columns you set up for the PageText frame style will apply to every page of the document and the text you type on the PageText frame will flow automatically to subsequent pages. So, if you are doing simple documents with nothing but one story line, you can do everything on the PageText frame. It's just like any other word processor so far.

If you want to interrupt the flow of text with either a graphic, a table, an object (linked or embedded through the Clipboard or Static) or some other text, you insert a frame on the PageText frame. Go to the Insert menu, Frame, and then pick the type of frame you want. Your cursor changes so that you can draw the frame from top left to bottom right. There are various ways to size a frame precisely, and you can modify the frame styles so that text wraps or does not wrap around the frame.

If you insert a graphics frame, you can not only import a graphic in a variety of formats, but you can also draw lines and shapes and modify some imported graphics or rotate text in a graphic frame. You can also add borders to frames through the Modify Frame Style dialogs.

Paragraph Styles

Because of the tremendous flexibility Windows offers for using scaleable TrueType and Type 1 fonts, the DOS way of formatting text is inadequate for WSWin. Instead, you use Paragraph Styles. A Paragraph Style includes formatting you set up and applies to all paragraphs using that style. When you make a global change in a paragraph style (not in the Current Paragraph), all the paragraphs in that style change to reflect the new formatting. This is a tremendously powerful and convenient way to format text.

BodyText is the basic paragraph style. All the styles automatically included with WSWin have default formatting, which you should change to suit your needs. In BodyText or any other paragraph style, you select the font, the attributes (plain, bold, italic, hidden, underline, strikeout, double underline), the point size, the line spacing or leading (pronounced ledd-ing), the alignment (left, center, right, justified), whether to use the font's designed pair kerning, whether to have a line over, under, or alongside the paragraph, whether to have hyphenation in the paragraph, where and what kind of tabs to have for the paragraph style, how to size subscripts and superscripts, how much spacing adjustment to allow if type is justified, special effects such as outline numbering or drop caps, and much more.

You can create and modify styles for such things as hanging indents, bulleted paragraphs, headlines, subheads, captions, and headers and footers (for page numbers).

Templates

All WSWin documents are based on a template, whether the user realizes this or not. That blank page you see when you start the program is actually a template, which opens as an untitled document. It's whatever you designate under Edit-Preferences as your default template - by program default, the file DEFAULT.WST. If you want to use some other template as the basis for a document, you select File-New and then click on the desired template. You should set up a default template that is suitable for the work you do, with the margins you generally use, the fonts and paragraph styles. When you have set such a document up, File-Save As a WSWin template (*.WST) in the usual WSWin Template subdirectory. In Edit-Preferences set that as your default template. Then you won't have to waste time changing margins and fonts and paragraph styles every time you want to write something new.

This is barely scratching the surface and I'm sure it probably seems overwhelming if it is all new to you! But as I said, you can learn one thing at a time, as you need it. There are good explanations in Online Help, but basically, the only way to learn is by doing it. So start with a simple document and work from there.

Nature of Draft Editor

There is nothing in WS DOS that compares with Draft Editor in WSWin.

What you get with Draft Editor is a word display that has no relationship with what you'll see when your document is printed. Margins, font, colors, hanging indents, formatting - none of it is displayed in Draft Editor. Draft Editor uses the system font and goes from one side of the screen to the other. You will never have to scroll horizontally to see all of a line. It doesn't matter what your screen resolution is, what font you're using, whether it's proportional or monospaced, what printer you'll be using, your words will always fill the screen and never go past the screen edges. Word wrap in Draft Editor has no relationship to word wrap in WYSIWYG.

In WS DOS, you can easily overflow the horizontal dimensions of your screen if you use a proportional font. Your word wrap on screen will match your word wrap in print. If you're using hanging indents, they'll show up on the DOS screen. It's not a draft view at all - it's just the DOS text view. What Page Preview gives you is a view of how your document will look with fonts (as long as you have WS screen fonts to match) and graphics, if you're using them.

One reason I stopped using WS DOS was I got sick of having to scroll horizontally when I used proportional fonts (which I nearly always did). The alternative would have been using one set of margins while I was writing and then changing to the margins I really wanted right before I printed. But then the text would reflow, of course, and I'd have to check to make sure I was happy with line breaks, didn't have last lines of one word, my dot commands didn't get sucked into the text stream, etc. It was just too annoying and time wasting to deal with.

So I'd usually set up my margins the way I wanted them and would switch to Page Preview when I wanted to read my document so that I could see an entire line on screen. But then, when I found a mistake or wanted to change something, I'd have to switch back to character mode, find the thing I wanted to change, and switch back to Page Preview again to continue reading.

This was supposed to be efficient and save me time? Forget it!

Using Draft Editor and Other Features of WSWin

>> Can you give me more details on working in draft editor? Do you type straight through, skipping special effects, formatting, etc. and then take care of all that in WYSIWYG? Do you go to paragraph styles then or do all your formatting locally? Do you use standard paragraph styles or special ones that you have written? I have been frustrated with WSWin because changes seem to get out of hand sometimes and fonts will revert without warning. <<

I use the draft editor for writing and for cleaning up text by finding stray tags and such. When I am going to write an article, say, I start WSWin and as soon as the blank page comes up, I do ^OP to go straight into Draft Editor. The first paragraph style will always be BodyText, unless you change it, and BodyText is what I want now - plain vanilla. I write just as I would in a DOS word processor. In other words, just get the words down and don't bother much with formatting. I do put in things like italics, boldface, superscripts and subscripts, things I know I want in the formatting and that are easily accessible with the keyboard. I don't often use the mouse when I'm in the writing phase. What I want is a clutter-free screen that doesn't constantly redraw and that shows an entire line onscreen without my having to do horizontal scrolling. I write until I'm finished and spellcheck the document. Then I switch into WYSIWYG. Now I do my formatting. I always set up styles for the kinds of paragraphs I'm going to use. This may mean something like subheads, hanging indents, headlines, paragraphs with different tab settings, paragraphs in a different typeface or type size. After my styles are set up, I just go along and put the cursor in a paragraph and select the style either from the drop down Styles list in the Style Bar or through the keyboard command ^OFS.

If I'm writing something short and simple that uses essentially one paragraph style (BodyText) like a letter I may just write it in WYSIWYG from the start. But for serious writing I prefer the Draft Editor for the reasons I explained.

Modifying Paragraph Styles

If by >> standard paragraph styles << you mean do I use the ones that come with WSWin unchanged, the answer is that I never have and never will use an unchanged WSWin-supplied paragraph style. They are set up for people who don't know anything about using type and are not meant to be eternal. What I do is modify the WSWin-supplied paragraph styles to meet my needs and I create new styles where needed or convenient. This doesn't mean I have to change every style included in a template. Most of them I won't be using, so I just leave them alone. But I change BodyText to meet my needs, HeaderFooter, whatever other styles I'll be using. By the way, NEVER, EVER delete a paragraph style that comes with a WSWin template. Change or modify it all you want, but don't delete it. For some reason I don't understand, if you delete supplied styles you may make your documents fragile and easily corrupted, and WSWin unstable.

Two things that are HORRIBLE about the styles as they come with WSWin are:

1) They use default line spacing, which should almost never be done. You should set up your line spacing (leading, pronounced ledd-ing) to suit the typeface, point size, and line width of your document. This requires developing an "eye" for type and some sense of what looks good, as well as learning a bit about how to use type. However, I feel that anyone who wants the privilege of using proportional typefaces should learn the fundamental rules of typography. If someone doesn't want to do that, stick to Courier or other typewriter-style faces. To learn the basics of using real typefaces, read The PC is not a typewriter by Robin Williams.

2) They use 1/2-inch tabs and indents, which are WAY, WAY too large for body text. If your body text is 12 pt., your indents should be 12 pt. or 1 pica - at most, 15 points. If you are using Courier, 1/2-inch indents are okay, but Courier is typewriter type, not "real" type.

Stray Tags

You say >> I have been frustrated with WSWin because changes seem to get out of hand sometimes and fonts will revert without warning <<. This is happening because you are inexperienced. Fonts in WSWin never revert without warning if you have set things up right. If this is happening, switch to Draft Editor and turn on View Tags (Alt+V,L) and ^OD to see spaces and returns. I can almost guarantee that there will be a stray tag in there that you didn't know about. Sometimes it's a paragraph style tag that creeps into the middle of a paragraph (not on its own - you did it but didn't realize it), and that will change the font on you. Delete those stray tags through the View Tags window and all will be well, your font changes will never revert. Sometimes when you import or convert text, there'll be a 12-pt. tag near the beginning of the document. Get rid of that! It will cause no end of problems.

Setting Up Styles Efficiently

As for changes getting out of hand, dealing with this comes with experience, too. Try not to make your styles too specific. For example, set your BodyText tabs carefully to meet your needs and you won't have to go around creating styles or making local tab changes just to get a tab in a certain spot for that paragraph. Put tabs in BodyText where you expect to need them in the document. Then you won't have to make a bunch of local changes or Modify Current Paragraph changes. Also, a paragraph with a left indent can serve as a bullet paragraph if you have your first line set to 0; put in a tab at the setting for the indent and at a place equal to the first indent space beyond that (e.g., tabs at 1 pica, 2 picas). Now that indented paragraph style can serve for a bulleted paragraph, for a paragraph with a block indent all along the left, or for a paragraph indented on the left with a typical paragraph indent at the top line. I hope you understand what I'm talking about here - I fear it's a bit difficult to make it clear.

The WSX (WSWin Text) Format

The WSWin WSD file format makes very large files for short documents. This is due to a large header that gets attached to every file, even one of just one page. As a WSD file gets longer, the difference between its size and the size of a comparable file in other word processors becomes less pronounced. However, a short WSD file generally takes much more disk space than a short file in other word processors. You can reduce the drive space needed to store WSWin files by exporting the text in simply formatted documents to the WSX format and deleting the WSD file. A WSX file is a text file with formatting tags added to store information about paragraph styles and character formatting. A WSX file is about the same size as an ASCII file, with the advantage that your formatting will be restored when you import the WSX file and have WSWin interpret the formatting tags. A WSX file will take on the styles of the document into which it is imported, so to maintain your original formatting, you must use the same template that you used when you created the WSX file. To export to WSX, just have your cursor in the story line with nothing highlighted. Then do File-Export and select WSWin Text as the desired format to export to. Give your export file a name and hit OK. That's all you have to do. If you have another story line in a text frame, you have to export that separately, but you use the same procedure.

If you look at the WSX file with an ASCII text editor or Windows Write (No Conversion), you will see plain text with formatting tags, such as <BodyText>, and other coded information. This is how your formatting gets preserved.

I do not wipe out the WSD until I'm completely finished with it. I use WSX as a method of archiving and saving disk space. I also use WSX as a safeguard against document corruption. If my WSD document goes south, at least I'll still have all my text, with formatting.

If I need to use that document again (unexpectedly), I File-New and select the template on which the exported document was based. Mostly these are letters and I use the same template for all my letters. Then, with the blank, untitled document on screen, I do File-Import and select WSWin Text as the file type. Have Interpret Format Tags bulleted. Select the file, hit OK, and the file will load. The tags <in brackets> will not appear, but the BodyText, etc., styles in your template will be applied to those paragraphs. Bold, italics, superscripts, etc., will also be applied. Not all local changes will be saved, so you will have to redo those. Also, if you created styles in the original document that aren't in the template, you won't get those either. But on the whole, most of the formatting in your original document will make it into the import without any effort on your part. After you try it a few times and examine the WSX documents in Windows Write, you'll understand it better.

Templates

>> Does anyone have any informative text on how to use Templates with WSWin. [snip]

>> From what I can gather (as a new user) the correct use of these templates can result in a very professional looking document with minimal hassle and fuss. I just fine 'em a bit confusing to get started with, though. <<

Every time you start a new WSWin document, you're using a template, whether you realize it or not.<g> What you see on screen in your Untitled document is what is in your default template. By default, WSWin loads the template called DEFAULT.WST (no kidding!). You can change this to whatever you want through the Edit menu, Preferences, Document screen.

AWSWin template is a pattern for the actual document you are creating. The template comes with a default printer selected, page size, portrait or landscape orientation, margins, headers and/or footers, paragraph styles containing certain fonts, indents, justification, tabs, and line spacing, maybe a graphic, maybe some text. A template can be one page or several pages long and can be basically whatever you want it to be.

The purpose of a template is to save you from having to do a complete setup every time you start a new document. Most users probably do a pretty standard document most of the time, that is, with margins we typically use, paragraph styles, header or footer, and so forth. If you write business letters on letterhead, you can have a letterhead template. If you select your letterhead template when you do a File-New command, you'll be all set to start writing the text and won't have to waste time setting up margins, fonts, tabs, indents, putting in a logo, etc. It will all be there on your template.

WSWin comes with about 15 predesigned templates, but there's nothing magical about them. You'll probably want to customize at least some of them to fit your needs and preferences. For example, I suggest you copy the DEFAULT.WST file from the WSWin\TEMPLATE directory and put the copy in a different directory where it will be safe and you'll know where to find it if you ever need it. Then modify the original DEFAULT.WST template (not your safe copy) to suit your needs. For example, maybe you don't want to use Arial and Times New Roman. So Modify Paragraph Styles with the fonts, indents, tabs, line spacing, and so forth that YOU prefer. Also change the document margins if you'd prefer something different, change the frame styles if you want, and make any other changes you'd like to have nearly every time you start a new document. Then do a File menu, Save As and save as a WSWin Template (*.WST) in the WSWin\TEMPLATE directory. Then do a File menu, Close so that you don't mess up the nice template you just set up for yourself. Now do a File menu, New and pick your modified DEFAULT.WST template. Your Untitled document will have all those nice things you put into the Default template.

Use the same procedure to modify any of the other templates to meet your needs. Any time you create a document whose style you are likely to use again, after you finish your *.WSD document and before you close it, delete any document-specific text, Save As a *.WST template and File-Close. This will save you lots of time the next time you need to create a similar document and will give your documents a consistent look, which is important if they are for a business or are otherwise public in character.

More on Formatting Tags and Paragraph Formatting

>> By the way, when I use Draft Editor it also comes up with a busload of commands on the screen, some of them indecipherable. I know how to get rid of them in WS DOS but not in WSWin. Stupid question, but how? <<

Do they look something like this? <St>This is a test. <St> <St><B>This is a test.<B><I> What do you mean?<I> <St> <St>And here is another style. <St>This is a bullet style.

Those are formatting tags. If by getting rid of them you mean making them invisible, go to the View menu in Draft Editor and select Hide Draft Editor Tags. Formatting in WSWin uses tags, so you can't and don't want to get rid of them but you might not want to look at them. It's good to have tags turned on if you are having a problem getting rid of something like funny interline spacing or unwanted font changes. Then you can find the stray tag and delete it. To find out what the tags mean, turn on Show Tag List in the View menu. When your cursor is to the left of a tag, the Tag List will tell you what the tag is for.

>> Also, I have had an incredible problem in WSWin centering data (names in plays, job listing in resumes, etc.) and then being unable to free the centering by realigning to the left for dialogue or a paragraph, through the appropriate command. I throw in a few returns to clear the centering command. I delete as much as I can around the centered name, etc. I tried using the Draft Editor to eliminate leftover centering commands but to no avail. Is this a question of paragraph style? <<

When you make a change in a paragraph's normal style, you add a so-called local style. The local style will persist after carriage returns until you either select another paragraph style or restore the normal style. The easiest way to return to the normal style is to have your cursor in the paragraph you want returned to normal with nothing highlighted and simply click on the name of the style in the Style dropdown list at the left of the Style Bar. Or if you don't want to reach for the mouse, with your cursor in the paragraph you want to be returned to normal Apply Paragraph Style with a keyboard command (^OFS with the WordStar keystroke set, ^Y with the Windows standard keystroke set). Your paragraph will now return to the normal formatting and those that follow will also have normal formatting, unless you apply local formatting again.

When you do things like change the alignment of a paragraph, ALWAYS do it by using a Center command or Left command or Justify, NEVER by adding spaces or tabs. When you want to get rid of the change and go back to the normal style, do what I just suggested above.

It's better to set up a separate paragraph style for any paragraph formatting you will be using frequently in a document. You might set up BodyCentered, for example. If plain BodyText always follows BodyCentered, modify your paragraph style for BodyCentered so Next Style will be BodyText. That way every time you need centered text you can get it by applying a style rather than local formatting. There is a limit on how many paragraph styles there can be in a WSWin document (something like 256) and that limit includes local paragraph styles. You can have thousands of paragraphs but not thousands of styles.

Once you get the hang of paragraph styles, it's a wonderfully quick and easy way to handle complex formatting. The main thing to keep in mind is you should always set up a separate style for paragraph formatting you'll be using more than a few times in a document. Don't do it by highlighting a paragraph and making changes. That wastes your time and forces you to do the same thing again and again. It also stresses WSWin by adding to that total number of paragraph styles. With a style you apply it once (and can do it with a keystroke) and that takes care of it.

Using Formatting Tags

WSWin shows formatting tags onscreen in Draft Editor. Switch to Draft Editor and have Show Draft Editor Tags in the View menu turned on. There they are! And handy as can be, too. I once spent about 45 minutes in AmiPro trying to get rid of boldface and I finally had to rewrite the paragraph. I couldn't find the sweet spot where whatever it was that turned on the boldface was and all my efforts to get rid of it were unsuccessful. So yaaaaay for formatting tags!

Simply deleting formatting tags in WSWin will usually get rid of unwanted or incorrect formatting. Besides the Draft Editor, you can get rid of tags in Page Editor view through the View menu, Show Tag List. Move the cursor to the spot where the formatting changes, highlight the tag in the Tag List, and click on Delete. Voilà - normal is restored.

If you modified the style for a certain paragraph by changing the Space Above or Space Below or turning hyphenation on or off or a few other local changes that don't come with tags, you can restore it to normal by simply putting the text cursor in the paragraph (with nothing highlighted) and clicking on the name of the paragraph style in the Style Bar. Or with the text cursor in the paragraph, do a Modify Paragraph Style, change the Modify bullet from Current Paragraph to Paragraph Style, and click on Apply. This doesn't get rid of local formatting such as font or point changes or words that are italicized or bolded.

So I don't see any drawback of WSWin in this respect. It's all in knowing how to use the tags and paragraph styles.

>> The bloated format can be seen as an asset. The bloating comes from the program's retention of the editing settings for that file in particular, e.g. how it is viewed. I think a setting in WSW.INI lets you turn this off. <<

There is no setting like this. WSWin files will always be large. If you export the text to WSWin Text (WSX) format, however, you'll retain most of your formatting but will have a very small file. You import the WSWin Text into a base document using the same style sheet.

WSWin file sizes are large because the program's roots are in desktop publishing, not word processing. The file format itself borders on the insane, however, and would have been changed if the program had had a 32-bit upgrade. One of WSWin's programmers explained the format to us once; he called it "a beast."

Download the complete WordStar for Windows How-To manual
WSWin Document Zipped (237Kb)	Adobe Acrobat Document Zipped (372Kb)	WinZip

© Copyright 1998 by Judith L. Miner. All rights reserved.
On-line version © Copyright 1999-2004 Michael Petrie, United Kingdom.