Nota Bene UtilitiesPrograms and Program Elements for NB5
Compiled by Mary Bernard, April 2000, Revised January 2003 (some subsequent updates)
This is a small package of user-written programs. Almost all of them were written for NB4. I have revised/checked them for NB5 and made sure that they work. Most of them are short and simple. I have added descriptions of how they work to most of them, to help beginning XPL programmers.
What will be far more useful than my piecemeal explanations is Tony Woozley’s Customization and Programming Guide (CPG). The package available through this link is is a set of NB4 files, formatted to print on A4 paper. (To print it on standard American paper, remove hard page breaks.) Anyone who wants to learn to program in NB5 should print it out, together with my draft lists of Codes that work in NB5. The CPG guide is written for NB4, but almost all of it is valid for NB5 - only the chapter on the OV command is irrelevant. A few NB5 codes are different from those we used in NB4, but almost all are the same. The Codelists are essential for anyone revising NB4 programs for NB5.
Most of these are programs I use every day. I run most of them from keyboard-table keys (##=bc,r,u,n, ,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,.,r,u,n,xc)
Inputs “’s” and expands the preceding abbreviation (if any).
Enters opening parenthesis in text, uppercases first letter you type. When you’ve finished typing text to be enclosed, strike # to enter the closing parenthesis.
Puts a Series 2 / Series 3 Footnote containing path/filename of on-screen file in file at cursor position.
Hardens line ends in a NB file for sending as email message.
Renumbers all records in an Ibidem data file (.#00, .#001, etc) so that the numbers are in sequence. Updated by Mary Bernard, June 2002.
Inputs an opening smart single quotation mark (or opening smart single quote followed by an opening smart double quote) and uppercases first letter typed after the quote/s.
This program searches for the next Annotation in a file and opens it. It searches for all types of Annotation.
Puts opening and closing quotes round previous word in text.
RENAME.RUN allows you to rename the on-screen file (and continue working with it under its new name).
Switches first and third of 3 words, e.g., ‘niece and aunt’ to ‘aunt and niece’.
(Replaces SOFTEN.DEF and SOFTEN.FIL, and before these, J-P Takala's CURE-SDF). Softens all hard CRs in an email file (or a file from another word processor), or in a defined area of the file.
Saves defined block to file with same name as on-screen file but extension UNU for UNUsed. Makes it easier to delete passages one thinks one might possibly need.
These are not stand-alone programs, but short sequences that can be incorporated in programs you write: programming components, if you like. Following a suggestion by Tony Woozley, I have called them program elements, and given them the extension .EL.
AOT-OFF.EL saves the current state of the autosave default and turns Autosave off. AOT-BACK.EL, inserted later in the program, will restore the autosave default.
AZ-OFF.EL saves the current state of the Auto-replace toggle, then turns auto-replace off. AZ-BACK.EL, placed later in the program, will restore the default.
Allows variable-length input from keyboard, ended by striking Alt J.
Allows variable-length input from keyboard, ended by striking F10.
Puts path and filename of on-screen file on command line, with a space before it, and cursor at start of line ready for typing command.
Puts path and filename of on-screen file in text at cursor.
Uppercases next character typed
Allows branching depending upon whether user presses Y or N.