Word Processing

With PipeDream, you enter text simply by typing onto the screen as if it were a piece of paper in a typewriter, using PipeDream’s comprehensive range of word processing facilities to ensure that your text is just as you want it before you print it out.

The best way to learn about PipeDream’s word processing facilities is to use them yourself to create a PipeDream document. The document you are going to create is a letter, as shown below, between the two horizontal lines:


Tunstall School,

School Lane,

Tunstall,

TU1 4SB.

 

23 September 1991

 

Martin Beattie,

Marketing Manager,

Beattie Blackboards,

Manchester Road,

Anytown,

AN2 5GB.

 

Dear Martin,

 

Re: Education '91

 

I am writing to tell you how much I enjoyed the course Blackboards for Beginners at the Education '91 conference on Friday. The Beattie SuperBlack is certainly more versatile than I expected it to be and the course enabled me to get to grips with it very well.

 

I look forward to receiving my new blackboards very soon.

 

M J Chalk

Headmaster


PipeDream has a template file which sets up your document for word processing. A template file is a file which has been prepared with options set for a particular purpose.

  1. Click the PipeDream icon on the icon bar;
  2. Select the Text option in the New document dialogue box.
  3. Click the Create button (or press Return↵).

A new empty PipeDream document window will appear, ready for you to type in the letter.

Click the toggle size icon to make the window fill the screen.

If you look at the window, you will see that the caret (caret) is already positioned in cell A1. The borders of the current column and row are shown in a different colour.

If you press the Tab key, the caret moves into column B. Note that the border of column B is now shown in a different colour.

Press Return↵. The caret is now positioned on the second row, row 2. Similarly, the border of row 2 is shown in a different colour.

Typing the Letter

Move the pointer into cell A1 and click there to position the caret in cell A1 again, ready to type in the letter.

To start, you are going to type the school address on the left-hand side of the window. Later, you will see how to tell PipeDream to place it automatically at the right-hand side of the letter.

Type in the first line of the address, remembering that you need to hold down the Shift key to get upper-case letters and to press the Space Bar to enter a space:

Tunstall School,

The letters you type appear at the caret position. If you make a mistake as you type, use the Backspace key to delete the character to the left of the caret. To type in a missing character, position the caret where you want the missing character to go by moving the pointer to that position and clicking. Then type in the missing character. It is inserted into the existing text.

To start a new line, press Return↵. Type the second line of the address:

School Lane,

Continue in this way to type the whole address, pressing Return↵ each time you need to start a new line. When you have completed the address, press Return↵ twice (to leave an empty row) before typing @D@:

Tunstall School,
School Lane,
Tunstall,
TU1 45B.

@D@

@D@ is used to represent the date. This ‘text @-field’ inserts today’s date into the document, as you will see if you press Return↵.

If you look at the finished copy of the letter shown above, you will see that the address and date are aligned with the right margin of your document. The position of the right margin is shown by the down arrow symbol at the right hand side of the column border.

As all the lines of the address and the date are to be right aligned, it is best to apply the Right Align command to them all at the same time. To do this, you first of all need to mark them as a block. A block is a group of cells upon which some commands can operate.

  1. Position the pointer at the start of cell A1.
  2. Press and hold Select, then drag the pointer to the end of the text in cell A6, then release Select.
  3. Press Return↵ repeatedly to position the caret on row 7.

The whole address and the date are now ‘marked as a block’ and shown with a black background.

Now give the Right Align command:

Menu Command Tool Key Cmd-sequence
Layout Right align Right align icon LAR

As you can see, the address and date are now aligned with the right margin.

Try moving onto one of the lines of the address. When you move onto the line, it is displayed with left alignment. When you move off it, it is displayed with right alignment again.

PipeDream always displays the current text cell with left alignment so that you can edit it easily.

Move onto the date line. When you move onto it, you can see that you actually typed in @D@ and not the date shown. Moving off the line displays today’s date again.

PipeDream always displays the current text cell without expanded text @-fields so that you can edit it easily.

Now you need to clear the marked block. Do this by clicking the mark block box.

Now you can type in the address to which the letter is to be sent. This time, simply type in each line of the address and then press Return↵ to move to the next line. If you make any mistakes as you type, you may find the following commands useful:

Delete Character:

Menu Command Tool Key Cmd-sequence
Edit Delete character Shift-Backspace G

This deletes the character to the right of the caret.

Delete Word:

Menu Command Tool Key Cmd-sequence
Edit Delete word F10 T

This deletes from the caret position to the start of the next word.

Swap Case:

Menu Command Tool Key Cmd-sequence
Edit Swap case SS

This changes the case of the character at the caret position, from upper-case to lower-case and vice versa.

If you want to change the case of a lot of letters, you can use the Repeat Command command:

Menu Command Tool Key Cmd-sequence
Files Repeat command F5 J

This repeats the command just given. It is easier to press F5 or Cmd-J repeatedly than Cmd-SS.

When you have finished typing the address, press Return↵ twice to position the caret on row 15 and type:

Dear Martin,

Again, press Return↵ twice before typing:

Re: Education '91

If you look at the finished version of the letter above, you will see that the text on this line of the letter is centred and printed in bold type.

To centre the text, position the caret in cell A17.

Drag Select across the cell to mark it.

Give the Centre Align command:

Menu Command Tool Key Cmd-sequence
Layout Centre align Centre icon LAC

To apply a bold effect to the text, position the caret at the start of cell A16 and give the Bold command:

Menu Command Tool Key Cmd-sequence
Print Bold Ctrl-B PB

Now press Return↵. The text will appear centred and displayed in bold type.

Press Return↵ again and you are ready to type the main body of the letter. As you do so, notice that you do not need to press Return↵ at the end of each line as the text automatically ‘wraps’ onto the next line at the right margin position. You only need to press Return↵ when you want to force a new line.

At the end of the first paragraph, you will need to press Return↵ twice to create a blank line before starting to type the next paragraph.

Continue to type until you have completed the letter.

Checking Your Spelling

Once the letter is complete, it is a good idea to check that you have not made any spelling or typing mistakes. Making mistakes is very easy if you are not a trained typist. It is also amazingly easy not to notice spelling mistakes when checking over your own document. You seem to see what you expect to see rather than what is really there! To check that your document is correctly spelt, give the Check Document command:

Menu Command Tool Key Cmd-sequence
Spell Check document Spelling icon SC

When the dialogue box appears, click the Check button (or press Return↵).

PipeDream starts at the top of the document and checking proceeds word by word through the document until it comes across a word which is not in its dictionary. As far as PipeDream is concerned, a word which does not appear in its dictionary is not correct. Obviously, the PipeDream dictionary cannot include all proper names such as Tunstall, so checking will stop almost immediately and the Checking dialogue box will be displayed. In this instance, the word shown in the dialogue box (Tunstall) is fine so click the OK button to accept the word as it is. PipeDream will now remember this word so it will not stop at the next occurrence of it.

If PipeDream stops at a word which is incorrectly spelt, you can edit the word and then click the Change word button in the Checking dialogue box. The word in the document will be changed.

Now that you have completed your letter and checked that you have not made any spelling mistakes, you will want to save it so that you have a permanent copy of it.

Saving Your Letter

To save the letter:

  1. Shrink the PipeDream document window so that you can see the icon bar.
  2. Click the hard disc icon, network server icon or other media icon depending on where you want to save the PipeDream file.
  3. If you want to save your file into a sub-directory on the disc, double-click on the sub-directory.
  4. The directory display will appear on the screen. This is a window displaying the contents of the directory.
  5. Move or resize the PipeDream document window so that you can see both the directory display and the PipeDream document window.
  6. With the pointer in the PipeDream document window, give the Save command:
Menu Command Tool Key Cmd-sequence
Files Save Save icon F3 FS

The pointer may change to an hourglass to show you that the file is being saved.

If you look at the directory display, you will see that there is a PipeDream file icon in it with the name that you gave the file.

You now have a permanent copy of the letter stored on your disc or network server.

Click the close icon of the PipeDream document window.

Loading and Editing the Letter

Double-click the PipeDream file icon called Beattie.

A PipeDream document window will appear on the screen containing the letter you have just typed and saved. It has the name directory.Beattie, directory being the pathname of the directory into which you saved it.

Now that you have the letter on the screen again, you can make any further changes to it you require. Suppose that you decide the letter would be better with just one paragraph of text instead of two.

  1. Position the caret in the blank line between the two paragraphs.
  2. Give the Delete Row command:
Menu Command Tool Key Cmd-sequence
Edit Delete row Ctrl-F8 Y

The blank line between the two paragraphs disappears.

Give the Format Paragraph command:

Menu Command Tool Key Cmd-sequence
Edit Format paragraph Format icon R

Your letter would probably look neater with justification switched on. This gives it an even right-hand margin. Give the Options command.

Switch on justification by clicking the option icon next to Justify.

Click the Set button (or press Return↵).

Position the caret at the beginning of the main part of the letter, just before I am writing.

Give the Format Paragraph command.

The paragraph will now have an even right-hand margin.

Having made these final changes, you can save the document again to ensure that the permanent copy is up-to-date.

This time you do not need to use the Save dialogue box. Instead, you can simply click the Save option in the Files menu.

PipeDream will automatically save the file in the directory into which you dragged its file icon earlier.

Printing the Letter

The final thing to do is to print out the letter which you have now completed.

Ensure that a RISC OS printer driver is loaded — the desired printer driver icon should be present on the icon bar. If you do not know how to load a RISC OS printer driver, consult your RISC OS User Guide.

Menu Command Tool Key Cmd-sequence
Print Print Print icon Print PO

As long as your computer is correctly connected to your printer and the printer is on-line, your letter will now be printed.

You have produced your first PipeDream document!