Butler Lampson, ed - Alto User's Handbook

Table of Contents

Preface

Alto Non-programmer's Guide 1

Bravo Manual 27

Markup User's Manual 59

Draw Manual 73

DDS Reference Manual 103

FTP Reference Manual 115

Preface

This handbook contains documentation for all the standard Alto services intended for use by non-programmers. It is divided into six sections, separated by heavy black dividers:

The Alto Non-programmer's Guide, which has most of the general information a non-programmer needs.

The Bravo manual, which tells you how to deal with documents containing text on the Alto.

The Markup and Draw manuals, which tell you how to add illustrations to documents. Section 10 of the Non-programmer's Guide is an overview on illustrations.

Finally, two reference manuals, one for the DDS filing service, and one for the FTP service which transports files between machines. These manuals supplement the introductory information on these two services in the Non-programmer's Guide.

If you are new to the Alto, start at the beginning of the Non-programmer's Guide. Read the first four sections there, and then the first two sections of the Bravo manual. After that, you should be able to find what you need by looking at the tables of contents, and browsing through the rest of the material. If you have trouble, don't hesitate to ask an expert for help.

Alto Non-programmer's Guide

Table of Contents

1. Introduction 2

2. Getting started 2

3. The Executive 5

3.1 Correcting typing errors 5

3.2 Starting a service 5

3.3 Aborting 5

4. Files 6

4.1 Naming conventions 6

4.2 File name patterns 6

5. Recovering from disasters 8

5.1 Reporting problems 9

6. Keeping up to date 10

7. More about files 11

7.1 Version numbers 11

7.2 DDS 11

7.3 Copy 13

7.4 Dump and Load 13

7.5 CopyDisk 14

8. Communicating with Maxc 15

8.1 Chat 15

8.2 About Maxc 16

8.3 Maxc files 16

8.4 Hardcopy on Maxc 17

8.5 Archiving 18

8.6 Messages 18

9. File transfers 21

10. Pictures 23

11. Documentation and software distribution 25

1. Introduction

This document is intended to tell you what you need to know to create, edit and print text and pictures on the Alto. It doesn't assume that you know anything about Altos, Maxc or any of the other facilities at Parc.

You will find that things are a lot clearer (I hope) if you try to learn by doing. This is especially true when you are learning to use any of the services which use the display. Try out the things described here as you read.

Material in small type, like this paragraph, deals with fine points which can be skipped on first reading (and perhaps on subsequent readings as well).

I would appreciate comments on this guide. In particular, I would like to know what you found to be confusing or unclear, as well as anything which you found to be simply wrong.

2. Getting started

To do anything with an Alto, you must have a disk pack. This is a circular, yellow or white object about 15 inches in diameter and 2 inches high. Your secretary can tell you how to obtain a new one from the stock kept by your organization. The most common source is the yellow cabinet in the Maxc room (room 1153 on the first floor). Go straight throu^gh the first room, and you will find the cabinet in the second room, in the far left corner. When you take a disk, be sure to write your name on the logging form provided for the purpose, together with the serial number of the disk pack, which you will find on its bottom.

INITIALIZE YOUR DISK

The next step is to get the disk initialized with copies of all the programs you will need to use. Here is how to do this:

Go to the first Maxc room (room 1153 on the first floor; this is the room you just went through to get your disk pack). There you will find a rack containing (among other things) a disk pack labeled BASIC NON-PROGRAMMER'S DISK, and an Alto which has two disk drives, each with four square li^ghts, a white switch and a slanted plastic window. Take this BASIC NON-PROGRAMMER'S DISK and load it into the drive labeled 0. You do this as follows:

The drive should have the white switch in the LOAD position, and the white LOAD li^ght should be lit. Open the door by pulling down on the handle. Put in the disk by holding it flat, with the label facing you, and pushing it ^gently into the drive until it stops. Then gently close the door and push the white switch to RUN. The white LOAD light will go out, and after about a minute the yellow RUN light will go on. The disk is now loaded and ready to go. If anything else happens, you need help.

Now start the Alto. This is done by pushing the small button on the back side of the keyboard, near the thick black cable. Pushing this button is called booting the Alto. It resets the machine completely, and starts it up working on the disk you have just loaded. After you boot the machine, it will tell you at the top of the screen what it thinks the state of its world is, and then it will print a ">" about halfway down the screen. When the screen looks like that, anything you type will be read by the Executive, whose basic job is

to start up the service you want to run. There is a section on the Executive later in this document. For now, you will find everything you need to know right here.

You are going to use a service called CopyDisk, which copies everything on the main disk (which you just loaded) onto another disk which you will load into the disk drive labeled 1. This copying erases anything which is already on the disk in disk drive 1, so you should be very careful not to copy onto a disk which has anything you want to keep. Load your new disk into the disk drive labeled 1, doing just what you did to load the BASIC

NON-PROGRAMMER'S DISK into drive 0.

Now type

>Co^py Disk^C3.

The ^CRstands for the carriage RETURN key on the keyboard. In this and later examples, what you type is underlined in the example, and what the Alto types is not.. On the screen, of course, there won't be any underlining. It doesn't matter whether you capitalize letters or not; the capitalization in this manual is chosen to make reading easier.

The CopyDisk service will start up and ask you some questions, which you answer as follows:

Copy from: DP0^a the digit zero, not the letter 0

Copy to: DP1^CL

Check after copying: Yes

Copy from DPO to DP1 with checking on [ confirm ] Yes

Now CopyDisk will copy the contents of the BASIC NON-PROGRAMMER'S DISK onto your new disk pack. This takes about two minutes. While it is running, it records its progress in the two numbers near the top of the screen: they have to count up to 406 twice. When it is done, it will ask you "Do you want to make another copy of the original disk?" Answer No, and CopyDisk will return to the Executive, which will type its ">" character, meaning that it is waiting for further instructions.

Now you can take both disks out of the machine. Before you do, you should tell the Executive that you are finished, by typing

>0_u4CR

You will see that after a couple of seconds the screen goes blank and starts to display a white square that jumps around. This is an indication that the memory test program is running properly; an Alto should always be left in this state when it is not being used.

Now take out both disks, by pushing the white switch on each drive to LOAD. The yellow READY light should go out, and about 25 seconds later the white LOAD light should go on. Now you can open the door (aeainst a slight resistance) and remove the disk. Put the

BASIC NON-PROGRAMMER'S DISK back in the rack where you found it.

If the Alto in room 1153 is broken or unavailable, you can do a CopyDisk from one standard Alto to another; the procedure for doin^g this is described in section 7.5. Since it is a little more complicated than the method just given, a novice should use it only as a last resort.

LABEL YOUR DISK

Before doin^g anything else, put a label on the new disk with your name, and any other identifying information you like. Now you can take the new disk to any Alto, load it in, boot the machine by pushing the button on the back of the keyboard, and start working.

NAME YOUR DISK

When you do this, if you look at the information printed at the top of the screen just after you do the boot, you will see that it says

--- OS Version x/x --- Alto #xxx --- NoName --- Basic Non-programmer's Disk --‑

This is because your new disk is an exact copy of the BASIC NON-PROGRAMMER'S DISK, which has no owner, and owner and disk name information got copied along with everything else. To give the disk your own name as owner, you should type

>Install^a

to the Executive. It will ask you whether you want the "long installation dialogue"; answer No. When it asks you for your name, type in your Maxc account name, followed by a CR. When it asks you for a disk name, choose a suitable one and type that in, again followed by a CR. Next it will ask you whether you want to give your disk a password. If you do this, the Alto will ask you for the password every time you boot it, and won't let you do anything until you provide

it correctly. This provides a modest level of security for the information on your disk. If you do give your disk a password, it is best to use your Maxc password, since the Alto will then know it and use it automatically whenever you communicate with Maxc. Don't forget the password, since there Js no simple way to find out what it is, and you will need an expert to get access to anything on your disk.

There will be a pause for a few seconds, and then the Executive will come back (If you assigned a password to your disk, you will be asked for it first). Now your name is installed on the disk, and the system will display it near the top of the screen whenever the Executive is in control, and will put it on the cover page of anything you print.

3. The Executive

This is the service to which you are typing right after a boot, and whenever any other service finishes its job. It has two display areas on the screen, a small one of six lines at the top, and a large one of about 20 lines in the middle. When you are talking to it, your typing and its responses appear in the large area. Whenever you call another service, the large area is erased, and the command you gave to call the other service appears at the bottom of the small area. In between the two areas, the Executive displays a clock and some other useful status information: the versions of the Executive and the operating system, the owner name and disk name installed on the disk, and the serial number of the Alto you are using.

3.1 Correcting typing errors

When you are typing at the Executive and you make a mistake, there are a few special keys you can type to correct the mistake. The BS (backspace) key erases the last character you typed. The DEL key cancels the command you were typing completely; it prints "XXX", and then starts a new line with a fresh ">" character.

3.2 Starting a service

As we said before, the Executive is for starting up other services which do the work you want done. To start a service called Alpha, you just type

>Al pha^gi

It doesn't matter whether you type in capitals, lower case, or a mixture of the two. If the service needs some other information about what to do, you type that after the name of the service. For example, there is a service to type out a document on the screen. Suppose you want to type out the document called "Notes". You just say

>Type Notes

The Executive won't ever do anything until you type the final CR; if you change your mind, just type DEL to cancel the command any time before you type the CR.

3.3 Aborting

You can usually stop what is going on and get back to the Executive by holding down the left-hand SHIFT key and striking the blank key in the lower right corner of the keyboard (called the SW AT key; on an Alto 2 it's in the upper right corner). If this doesn't work, you can push the boot button.

If you push the SWAT key while holding down both CTRL and SHIFT, you will find yourself talking to a service called Swat which is of no interest to non-programmers. Usually no harm is done if this happens; you can get back to what you were doing before by typing P^C (control-P; hold down the CTRL key and type P).

4. Files

The Alto stores on your disk all of the material you are working on (text and pictures), as well as all the programs which provide the various services described here. The named unit of storage on the disk is called a file. Each different document you handle will be stored on its own file. The facilities for identifying files are not ideal, but you will get used to them after a while. Better facilities are the subject of current research.

A file is identified by its name, which is a string of letters (upper and lower case can be used interchangeably), digits, and any of the punctuation characters "+-.!$". A file name can have two parts, which are called the main name and the extension^., they are separated by a period. For example, "Alto.Manual" is a file name, with main name "Alto" and extension "Manual". File names cannot have blanks in them, or any punctuation characters except the ones just mentioned. A file name must not have more than 39 characters; most people don't notice this restriction.

A file name can also have a version number, which is a number that comes at the end of the name, preceded by an exclamation point: for example, "Alto.Manual!4" is version 4 of the file Alto.Manual. Version numbers are discussed in detail in section 7.

4.1 Naming conventions

It is important to name your files in some systematic way, using the extension to tell what kind of file it is, and the main name to identify it. For instance, useful extensions might be Memo, Letter, Note, Fi^gure, Calendar. If you are a secretary keeping material for several people on one disk, you can stick the person's initials in front of the extension, e.g. BWLmemo, JGMmemo etc. If you don't have anything specific in mind, it is customary to make the extension the same as the name of the service which creates the file, e.g.

Report.bravo for a document which doesn't have any special properties, and is written
using Bravo.

The Alto doesn't care whether you capitalize letters in file names or not (i.e. ALPHA and alpha and aLpHa refer to the same file), but it is a good idea to use capitalization to make names more readable. This is especially useful when a name consists of more than one

word, since blanks are not allowed in file names: e.g., TripReport or MasterList.

4.2 File name patterns

The Executive provides some simple facilities for handling files. First of all, it allows you to name a group of files by using file name patterns containing the ma^gic characters "*" and "#". The "*" character stands for any string of characters. For example, the pattern

"*.memo*" stands for all the files which have the extension "memo", and the pattern "*.BWL*" stands for all the files which have BWL as the first three characters of the extension. The "#" stands for any single character; for instance, "###.memo" stands for all the files which have a three character main name and the extension "memo". If you are

curious to see what a pattern expands into, you can type X^cto get it expanded.

If you type a file name or a pattern to the Executive, and then type a TAB, it will give you a list of all the files whose names start with that name. So, for example, typing
>*.BwiTAB

will get you a list of all files which have an extension starting with the characters BWL. You can get other kinds of lists of file names using the DDS service described later, but this is a useful quick and dirty facility.

Another useful thing to know is this: if you are in the process of typing a file name to the Executive, and you type ESC, it will add as many characters as it can to complete a file name. If you type "T', it will give you a list of all the files which start with what you have already typed; you can then go on and finish the file name.

Here is a summary of magic characters for getting file names expanded:

ESC completes the file name if possible; if not, completes as much as it can, and flashes the
screen.

TAB shows you all the file names which match what you have typed since the last blank, and
erases what you typed.

like TAB, but doesn't erase anything.

X^c retypes the command line with all file name patterns replaced by the list of file names they
expand to.

There are two mme simple commands for dealing with files. To delete a file, or a group of files, type

>Delete Fl F2 ..^CR

Warning: once you have deleted a file, you cannot get it back. Proceed with caution. If there is more than one version of a file, the one with the lowest version number gets deleted.

To get the contents of a text file printed on the screen, type

>Tvpe

If the contents won't fit on the display, the Alto will show you as much as will fit, then ask if you want to see more. If you do, just type a space; if you want to stop, type "n" for no.

When the Executive is running, it displays two lines of status information near the top of the screen. Included in this information is the amount of space which is left for storing files. This space is measured in disk pages; it takes about 5 disk pages to store one page of text. It is prudent to keep at least 150 disk pages available; if your disk has fewer, you should delete some files, perhaps after sending them to Maxc for archiving (see sections 8.5 and 9).

At this point you know enough to use Bravo to begin creating and editing text. Bravo is described in its own manual. You should start reading the Bravo manual, and not try to continue with this guide until you have become familiar with the material in the first two sections of the Bravo manual. The remainder of this guide contains more information about the Alto which you won't need on the first day, but will probably want in the first week.

5. Recovering from disasters

There are various ways in which your Alto disk can become damaged. If this does happen, the procedures described in this section will almost always allow you to recover the disk, or at worst will let you copy files from the sick disk to a healthy one. It is probably a good idea to get some help with this if you are not experienced.

Here are the symptoms of trouble:

You can't boot the disk and get to the Executive.

You are out of disk space, but you think you should have plenty; in other words, some disk space has apparently gotten lost.

You get an error message from some service which says something about disk errors or file errors, and perhaps recommends that you should run the Scavenger.

You hear a funny buzzing noise from the disk for a couple of seconds, after which the service you are using breaks in some way.

It may be that the problem is caused by an incompatibility between the disk drive on which your disk pack was written, and the disk drive on which you are trying to use it. This is a likely cause of your problems only if you have been movin^g the pack from one machine to another, and if you notice that it works properly on some machines, but not on others. If your problem is caused by disk incompatibility, the procedures described below won't do you much eood. Instead, you should report the problem to the hardware maintenance staff, so that the offending disk drive can be realigned, and make yourself a new disk pack on a machine known to be in alignment_ You can transfer files from the old pack to the new one using the procedure described in section 6.

The first step is to run a service called Scavenger. If your disk is healthy enough to let you
boot and use the Executive, you can just invoke the Scavenger by typing

>Scavenger^a

If it isn't, you can hold down the BS key and the top two blank keys, and press the boot button (keep the keys down until you see a fuzzy cursor in the center of the screen; this can take up to 5 seconds). This will get you a copy of the Scaven^ger over the Ethernet; after the cursor appears, it takes about 15 seconds more for the procedure to complete. If this doesn't work, hold down just the BS key and press the boot button; this should give you the dancing white square of the memory diagnostic. If it doesn't, either your Alto's Ethernet connection is broken, or your Alto has not been updated with the latest microcode (the latter is unlikely after 1/1/77). Either find another Alto without these problems, or load in a disk which is still in good shape, invoke the Scavenger, and then unload the good disk and load your sick one. The Scavenger will ask you whether you want to change disks, and give you a chance to do so if you say yes. Then it will ask you if it can alter your disk to correct errors; say yes.

The Scavenger will now work for about a minute. As it runs, it may ask you whether it is OK to correct "read errors". If they are "transient" errors, answer Yes fearlessly; if they are "permanent" errors, it is best to ask for advice from an expert. When the Scavenger is done, it will tell you what it found. If it has succeeded in making your disk healthy, you can go about your work. If it has deleted some files whose contents you value, read the description of Extract below. After you have retrieved anything which interests you from the debris, delete the file Garbage.$ which the Scavenger leaves around. It is a good idea to go through this scavenging procedure once a month or so, just to keep your disk in good shape.

If things are still in bad shape (i.e., you can't boot and run the Executive), the next step is to boot again, this time with the BS key and the top blank key held down. This should get you a fresh copy of the operating system, which will ask you whether you want to Install. You should say Yes, and go through the Install procedure described in section 2. If all goes well, you will then find yourself talking to the Executive and can proceed normally.

If this doesn't work, there is one more step to try. Boot again, this time with BS and the middle blank key held down. This should get you the FTP service described in section 9; use it to transfer the files <Alto>Executive.run and <Alto>SysFontal from Maxc. Then boot the Scavenger as described above and run it again. If this fails, you should consult an expert. If no expert is available, you can boot FTP again, and use it to transfer files from your broken disk to Maxc or to a clean disk on another Alto (made using the procedure described in section 2).

The Scavenger leaves all the stuff which it wasn't able to put into a recognizable file on a file called Garba^ge.$, and it leaves a readable record of ever^ything it did on another file called ScavengerLog (unless it tells you that you have a beautiful disk). There are two kinds of entries in ScavengerLog: names of files removed from the directory or otherwise modified, and names of file paees which were put into Garbage.$. Such pages are identified by the serial number of the file, the page number of the pa^ge, and the number of the page in the Garbage.$ file. The other ScavengerLog entries allow you to find the serial number of a file which was smashed; the serial number is printed as two or three numbers separated by semi-colons.

To retrieve some pages from a smashed file called Alpha, first look in ScavengerLog to find Alpha's serial number. Then look for a group of pages with that serial number which were moved to Garbage.$. Make a note of the pa^ge number p in Garbage.$ of the first such page, and the number of pages a. Then type:

>Extract Alpha p n--

and the desired pages will show up on Alpha. If it was a text file, you can now start Bravo, Get it in, and see what you can make of it.

5.1 Reporting problems

If your Alto itself is broken, obtain a trouble report form, fill it out, and leave it in the proper place; procedures for doing this depend on your location.

If you have trouble with Bravo, report it using the procedure in section 4.3 of the Bravo manual.

For other problems, consult your local expert.

lO ALTO NON-PROGRAMMER'S GUIDE

6. Keeping up to date

When new versions of the various services are released, they are normally announced by Maxc messages to all registered Alto users (see section 8.6). You can obtain a new version of a service called Alpha as follows:

Using FTP, attempt to retrieve <Alto>Alpha.cm. If this succeeds, leave FTP and type to the Executive

>@Alpha.cm@^fik

This will cause FTP to be invoked again, some files to be transferred from Maxc, and perhaps some other activity. When everything settles down, you will-have the new version.

If there is no <Alto>Alpha.cm, retrieve <Alto>Alpha.run. This will be the new

version of the service. You don't have to do anything else.

The best way to obtain a complete set of new software, and clean up your disk at the same time, is to obtain a fresh disk, initialize it from the BASIC NON-PROGRAMMER'S DISK as described in section 2, and then copy the files you want to keep from your old disk to the new one. To do this, put the new disk in an Alto and start the FTP service (section 9.).

Note the Alto's serial number, in the top right corner of the screen. Then put the old disk in another Alto, and use DDS (section 5.1) to mark all the files you want to keep. When you have done this, use the DDS Send to command, giving it the number of the Alto with the new disk in it, followed by a #: e.g., 236# (you can use the name instead, if you know it). This will call in FTP and start it sending over all the marked files to the new Alto.

An alternative way to make a BASIC NON-PROGRAMMER'S DISK is to put the disk you want to initialize into an Alto, hold down the BS key and the top blank key, and push to boot button, as described in section 5. YOu will get a fresh version of the operating system, which will ask you if you want to Install. Say yes, ask for the "long installation dialogue", and say that you want to erase a disk. After a minute or so, you will have a clean disk with nothing on it except the Executive and FTP. Use FTP to retrieve the files

<Alto>NewNpDisk.cm. Then type

>@,NewNoDisk.cm@

This will automatically transfer all the needed files from Maxc, and do any other necessary initialization. It takes about 20 minutes, and puts a significant load on Maxc, so use this procedure only when you can't find the BASIC NON-PROGRAMMER'S DISK. During the operation, there will be an automatic Install of the operating system; answer its questions appropriately. There will also be an automatic initialization of Bravo, and you should do a Quit when it is finished.

7. More about files

This section describes various things you will need to know about the Alto filing system.

7.1 Version numbers

A file name normally has a version number, which is a number that comes at the end of the name, preceded by an exclamation point: for example, "Alto.Manual!4" is version 4 of the file Alto.Manual. The basic rule for version numbers is this:

When you read a file, you get the one with the largest version number (the current version), unless you include the version number you want in the file name.

When you write onto a file for which the current version is n, a new version n+1 is created, and becomes the current version, unless you include the version number in the file name. Furthermore, if version n-1 was around, it gets deleted, so that just two versions of the file are kept, the current one (with the largest version number)
and the next earlier version.

For example, if version 4 is the current version of the file Alto.Manual, there will probably be "Alto.Manuall4" and "Alto.Manual!3" around. If you write onto ''Alto.Manual" (e.g. by doin^g a Put from Bravo), "AltoManual!3" will disappear, and "Alto.Manuall5" will appear with the new information on it. "Alto.Manual!4" will still be around unchanged, so you can get the old version back from there if you need it. On the other hand, if you write onto "Alto.Manual!4", that file will be changed, and no new versions will be created.

If a file name doesn't have a version number, most services will not make any new versions, but will just write on the single version. Bravo is an exception; it always makes new versions, unless you have turned off versions at Install time, If you don't like the version feature, you can turn it off when you Install, by asking for the "long installation dialogue" and answering the questions appropriately. You can also change the number of versions which are kept in this way.

7.2 DDS

There is a service called DDS which allows you to keep track of your files and do various useful thin^gs with them. It is very easy to use, since most of the commands are self-explanatory. Be sure to start it up before going on with this section, and try out the various facilities as they are described.

Like Bravo, DDS needs to be initialized whenever you run the Scavenger, change your user profile, or find that it isn't behavin^g well. You do this just as for Bravo, by typing

>DDS/i^cR

to the Executive when you call it. DDS takes about 12 seconds to start up normally, and about 30 seconds if you are initializing it. Unlike Bravo, Dos remembers its state, and restores the previous state whenever you start it. You can also use initialization to force it back to the original initial state. To get out of DDs, point at the word Quit in the upper left corner of the screen and click YELLOW. Or you can just type SHIFT-SWAT.

Whenever Dos is doing something, and not listening to the keyboard, it displays an hourglass in the cursor. When you see the hourglass, you shouldn't expect any response to
your actions: wait until it goes away.

The DDS screen is divided into four windows. From top to bottom, they are: a command window, a control window, a filter window and a file window, which are separated by horizontal lines across the screen. The file window, at the bottom of the screen, is a Bravo-style window in which DDS will tell you various things about your files. The control and command windows contain menus: if you point to a menu word and click a mouse button, something suggested by that word will be done.

The bottom window starts out with a list of your files, which are initially sorted by the time they were written. This window has a scroll bar exactly like Bravo's. When the cursor isn't in the scroll bar, you can use it to select or mark files; commands like delete work on the marked files. The RED (left or top) mouse button marks a file, and BLUE (right or bottom) unmarks it. Marked files are displayed with an arrow in the left margin. If you hold down the button and move the cursor around (not too fast), all the files it passes over will be marked (or unmarked). You can also mark or unmark all the files which are displayed by moving the cursor to the right until it turns into a box containing the word ALL, and then using RED or BLUE.

Just above the files is the filter window. The two lines labeled Selspec and Context contain filters which decide which file names to display. A simple filter is just like a file name pattern in the Executive; it can include *'s and #'s, and it allows only file names which match the pattern to be displayed. To see all the files, you can just use * as the filter: note that the Selspec is initialized that way. You can also type more complicated filters, using and, or, not and parentheses: the Context is initialized to one such complex filter.

The two filters act together, and a file name must pass both of them to be displayed. The idea is that the Context can be used to filter out a lot of things you almost never want to see, and the Selspec can provide fine control. Note that the Context is initialized to suppress all the standard system files.

To change a filter, point at the text of the filter with RED. It will turn black. Now type the new filter, which will replace the old one as soon as you type the first character. End your typing with CR or ESC; the latter appends a * to the filter. DDS will immediately update the file window to reflect the new filter. If you type DEL instead, the old filter will be restored.

Above the filter window is the control window, which contains a list of sort words and a list of show words. If you select sort words (with RED) they turn black and move to the left; you can unselect them with BLUE. Moving the cursor down into the file window will get the list of files sorted according to the sort words which are selected. Usually, you only want to select one sort word. The YELLOW button reverses the direction of sorting (indicated by the arrow next to the word) when it is clicked with the cursor over a sort word. DDS is initialized to sort on time written; that is why the sort word written is black. Try turning written off (with BLUE) and sorting on name. Now reverse the direction and sort again. Now turn off name and sort on extension.

The show words say what properties of the file will be shown along with the name. You can turn options on with RED and off with BLUE, just like sort words. The file display won't be updated until you move the cursor down into the file window. The marked show word limits the display to marked files. Note that DDS is initialized with written and size (the number of disk pages in the file) turned on. Try some other show words.

Finally. at the top is the command window. Commands act on marked and filtered files only, and should be self-explanatory. A command must be confirmed with ESC or CR before it takes effect. Some commands take other parameters, which you should type before the ESC or CR. The typing appears in a black region just above the commands;

sometimes DDS will supply a default value, which you can override by typing something else.

You can mark some files, and then change the filters so that the marked files are no longer displayed; they will still be marked. They will not, however, participate in a command. If you later change the filters so that they are again displayed, they will still be marked, and now they will participate in a command.

Here is an example which illustrates several features: it deletes all the files whose names end in $ (these are usually the files on which Bravo leaves old versions of files you have edited, if you have file version numbers turned off). Point at the Selspec filter and click

RED; it will turn black. Now type j* ^Ca;this will display all the files whose names end with S. Now put the cursor in the file window, and use RED in the ALL bar on the right to mark all the files. Finally, select the delete command and type ESC.

There are many options for initializing DDS. They are all set up in a standard way in the user profile on the BASIC NON-PROGRAMMER'S DISK, but you can change them by editing the [DDS] section of the file User.cm. Detailed instructions on how to do this can be found in the DDS reference manual, together with a lot of additional information about DDS itself. This manual appears as DDS.ears on the Maxc <AltoDocs> directory (see section 11), and can also be found at the back of the Alto User's Handbook.

7.3 Copy

To copy one file to another, e.g., Old to New, say

>Copy New ⁴-Old don't leave out the spaces

The "4-" is to remind you of the direction the copying is done.

7.4 Dump and Load

These services give you a way to package up a number of files into a single, so-called dump file. You can then transport the dump file around as a unit, and later recover one, a few, or all of the files from it. This is especially useful when you want to send a group of files to Maxc for storage or archiving.

To make a dump file, type

>Dump alpha.dm fl f2

Here "alpha.dm" is the name of the dump file: by convention it has the extension "dm." You can list as many files as you want to be dumped. Often the * feature of the Executive is useful here.

To get files back from a dump file, type

>Load/v

You will get a list of the files in alpha.dm. and after each one you will be asked whether you want it loaded or not. If you leave out the /v all the files which don't already exist will be loaded; if you say /c instead, all the files will be loaded whether or not they are already on your disk.

7.5 CopyDisk

The simplest use of the CopyDisk service is copying the contents of one disk pack to another on an Alto equipped with two disk drives; it is described in section 2. CopyDisk can also copy the contents of a disk pack from one Alto to another over the Ethernet. To use it in this mode, you need two Altos; in the example below they are called Banjo and Flash. Put the disk you want to write onto into one Alto (Flash), and start CopyDisk. If you want to copy onto a blank disk, which won't have an Executive and therefore cannot be booted from, you can start CopyDisk by holding down the BS and ] keys, and pushing the boot button. After some delays, as described in section 5. the CopyDisk service will be running.

The first thing it does is to ask you "Copy from: ". Here you type the name of the Alto from which you want to copy, followed by a CR. If you don't know the name, you can type the serial number (displayed in the Executive"s status lines), followed by a #. The dialogue then proceeds as follows:

Copy from: Banjo

Copy to: DP0^a- the digit zero, not the letter 0.

Check after copying: Yes

Copy from Banjo to DPO with checking on [ confirm ] Yes

Waiting on Ether ...

Next, go to the other Alto (Banjo), put in the disk you want to copy, start CopyDisk and proceed as follows:

Copy from: DPO—

Copy to: Flash

Check after copying: Yes

Copy from DPO to Flash with checking on [ confirm Yes

Now the copy should proceed. When it is done, the source Alto will ask "Do you want to make another copy of the original disk?". You can answer No, and it will return to the Executive. The target Alto will say "Waiting on Ether ...". and you can boot it and say Quit to the Executive.

8. Communicating with Maxc

Many uses of the Alto require you to communicate with Parc's large shared computer, which is called Maxc. To make any use of Maxc, you must first obtain a Maxc account and password; to do this, see the CSL laboratory manager's secretary.

Before trying to use Maxc from your Alto, you should first tell the Alto your Maxc account name and password. If you have given your Maxc account name to Install as the owner name for your disk, however, the Alto already knows it, and if you gave your Maxc password as your disk password, it knows that too and you can skip to section 8.1. Otherwise, you can give the necessary information by typing to the Executive:

>Logina^l

The Login service will now ask you for your Maxc name and password. Type in each one in turn, ending each with a CR or space. Note that it assumes your Maxc acount name is the same as your disk owner name; if this is the case, you can just type CR to confirm it, and go on to give your password. If it isn't, type DEL, and then give the Maxc name you want to use. Once you have done this Login, your Alto will automatically identify you to Maxc whenever necessary. If you boot your Alto, it will forget this information, and you must Login again.

Note that the Lo^gin service only records your Maxc name and password; it does not connect you to Maxc. If you don't do a Login, both Chat and FTP will automatically ask you for the Login information when they first run, and will record it just as Login does.

If you wish, you can supply a password for your disk when you Install (see section 2). If you do this, you will have to type the password whenever you boot the Alto. but it will automatically be used as your Maxc password, unless you override it with a Login command. The password is stored on your disk in encrypted form, so that your Maxc password cannot readily by compromised to someone who paws around on your Alto disk.

8.1 Chat

You can use your Alto as a Maxc terminal through the Chat service. Just type >Chat^fa

If all goes well, you will see the messa^ge "Connected to :", followed by some numbers, at the top of the screen, and a messa^ge from Maxe at the bottom of the screen. If Chat has trouble gettin^g connected to Maxc, it will tell you its problem after trying for a few seconds. This usually means that Maxc is broken; you might try again in a few minutes.

If you have forgotten to Lo^gin to your Alto, Chat will ask you for your Maxc name and password. It will then record this information, just as though you had given it to Login, so that you won't have to supply it again unless you boot the Alto.

When Maxc types more than a screenful at you, it will pause after every screenful and "ring the bell", which causes Chat to display a large DING at the top of the screen. After you have had a chance to read the screen, striking any key on the keyboard will get Maxc

to produce the next screenful. If you type ahead to Maxc, this feature is suppressed.

Maxc has its own Executive, and a large array of services called subsystems. The next few subsections contain enough information about how to use Maxc to satisfy your routine needs.

Chat keeps a record of your conversation with Maxc on a file called Chat.scratchScript. You can read it with Bravo after a Chat session, just to see what happened, or perhaps to copy things out of it into other files, print it, or whatever. There are two funny things about this file which you need to know about

The file is not erased when you start a new conversation. Instead, the typescript of the new conversation starts at the beginning of the file and continues for as long as the conversation lasted. The end of the conversation is marked by the characters <_> after which you will see the remnants of the previous conversation.

The typescript file is only 20,000 characters long. If your conversation is longer than that, the
typescript will wrap around to the beginning. It is possible to make the file larger by editing the

[CHAT] section of the user profile (the file User.cm) in the obvious way.

8.2 About Maxc

Maxc has its own Executive and file system, which are thoroughly documented in the Tenex Exec Manual. That manual was written primarily for programmers, and contains a large amount of information not needed by casual users of Maxc. In the hope of keeping you from having to read the Tenex Exec Manual, the next few paragraphs contain a summary of basic procedures for dealing with Maxc.

In order to do anything useful on Maxc, you must be logged in. The details of this procedure will normally not concern you, since Chat will take care of them automatically. When you are finished with your Maxc session, however, you should log out by giving the command

@Lo^gout^ak

to the Executive. (Note that Maxc types an "@" when it is listening for commands, just as the Alto types a ''>".) After a few seconds, you will ^get a farewell messa^ge from Maxc. Then you can exit from Chat and get back to the Alto Executive by typing SHIFT-SWAT (hold down the left-hand shift key and hit the blank key in the lower right corner of the keyboard).

If you expect to use Maxc again within a few minutes, you can save a little time and some Maxc resources by not loggin^g out. This notifies Maxc that you expect to be back soon. If you don't return within a few minutes, Maxc will log you out automatically. If you don't expect to be back soon, it is considerate to log out, since you use up space on Maxc while you are logged in.

8.3 Maxc files

Maxc has a file system somewhat like the Alto's, but the procedures for finding out about your Maxc files are rather cumbersome. You will want to store files on Maxc for several reasons (all of which are explained in more detail below)

so that other people can copy them easily, using the File Transfer service (see 9.);

so that others can obtain hardcopy easily, using the Ears subsystem on Maxc (see 8.4);

so that they can be archived on magnetic tape (see 8.5).

Maxc file names look very much like Alto file names, but they have one more part: a directory. Also, the version number is always present, and is preceded by a semi-colon rather than an exclamation point. The format is

<directory>name.extension;version

Each Maxc user has a directory, named by his Maxc user name, and you can reference files in some other directory simply by prefixing the directory name to the file name, as illustrated. There is a protection system, not described here, which allows a user to control which other users can read or write his files. The usual settin^g of the protection, and the one you will get automatically if you don't say anything special, allows all Xerox users to read the file, but prevents anyone except the owner from writing it.

When you put a file onto Maxc, if there is already a file with the same name, the new file is added, with a version number one big^ger than the old one, just as on the Alto when the file version number feature is enabled. However, old versions are never deleted automatically. When you reference a file, you get the one with the largest version number

if you don't specify the version explicitly, just as on the Alto.

The ESC feature for completing a file name works on Maxc more or less as it does on the Alto.

You can list the names of your Maxc files with

@Dir^fa

If you want just the files with a particular main name or extension, you can say
@Dir activitv.*^gi or @Dir *.report^CR

but these are the only uses of * which will work. To list another user's directory, say @Dir <user>^fl

You can get more detailed information about your files (length, date written, etc.) with

@Dir²¹ note the comma
@@vCR

@@CE

If you want to print or otherwise manipulate this list, read the Chat typescript into Bravo and treat it like any other piece of text.

You can delete one or several Maxc files, just as on the Alto, with

@Del fl f2

and *s will also work here, just as in the Dir subsystem described above. To delete all the old versions of your files, say

@Delver^gi

answer the two questions Yes, and type a CR when you are asked for the "file group." It is a good idea to do this once a week or so, since old versions can pile up and waste a lot of space.

To find out how much space you are using on Maxc, type @Dsk^al

One Maxc page is equivalent to about five Alto pages.

8.4 Hardcopy on Maxc

If you have a file, say TripReport.ears, in "Ears" or "Press" format (see section 10 for an explanation of these formats), i.e., ready for printing, you can get it printed by typing @Ears TripReport^a

If you want 6 copies, say

@Ears TrinRenort,^a note the comma

@@Copies 6^CL@@cji

This is mainly useful for printing files on other directories, which other people have left there to make it convenient for you to print them. If the extension isn't "ears", you have to type it as part of the filename.

You can get Bravo to produce an Ears file by using the E option in the Hardcopy command. You should give the file the extension "ears." Then you can send it over to Maxc using the File Transfer procedure described in section 9.

8.5 Archiving

Maxc provides facilities for archiving files onto magnetic tape, where the cost of storing them is negligible. You can get an archived file back within a day with no effort, and within a few minutes at the cost of some inconvenience.

To archive one or several files, type

@Arch f filel file2 ...--^CR

The files will be archived onto tape within a day or two. After this has been done, they will be deleted from the disk automatically, and you will get a message notifying you that the archiving has been done.

Maxc keeps track of your archived files in an archive directory which you can list exactly like your regular Maxc directory, using the Interro^gate command rather than the Directory command. If the listin^g is of just one file, Maxc will ask you whether or not you want it retrieved from the tape. If you say yes, the file will appear on your disk within a day, and you will get a message to that effect. If you need the file ri^ght away, see Ed Taft or Ron Weaver.

8.6 Messages

You can send and receive messages on Maxc using two subsystems called Sndmsg and Msg. To send a message, type

@Sndms^c,C2

and fill in the To:, Cc:, Subject: and Message: as they are requested. You can edit the message with the following control characters; this editing is rather clumsy, however, so you should type the message as carefully as you can.

A^c to backspace one character (not BS, unfortunately)

_Qc to delete a whole line

R^c to retype the current line

S^c to retype the whole item

DEL to abort the whole thing

CR to terminate everything except the Message

Z^c to terminate the Message.

After Z^c type a CR. Maxc will report success as it sends the message to each destination. You can make a list of people on a file, say Csl.msg, and send a message to all of them by

typing B^C CSI.MS2^C-- as part of the To: or Cc: lists. There is a set of useful destination lists on the <Secretary> directory; they all have the extension "msg", so you can get a list of them with

@Dir <secretar^y>*.msg^a

To get on a distribution list, send a message to Jeanette Jenkins.

You can copy a file, say Meeting.notes (perhaps prepared with Bravo, but don't use any formatting, and put in carriage returns yourself, rather than relying on Bravo's automatic

ones), into the message by typing B^c F Meeting.notes-^C1-¹.

To read your mail, type @m_sgCR

Soon Maxc will type a summary of your newly arrived mail, and then a <- symbol. Notice that the messages are numbered. You are now talking to Ivlsg; it has a rather complicated command langua^ge which you can learn about by typing "?" after the <- symbol. Here is enough information to get by on.

To see message n, type

<-Type message

To see the next message, type LF; to see the previous message, type BS. To see the current message a^gain, type T ESC. If you want to save the message, after it has been typed, Get the Chat typescript into Bravo.

You can delete a message by typing

_ll_R

>Delete message

The current message can be deleted with >Delete message ESC

It is a good idea to delete messages after reading them, unless they reflect pending business. By keeping your message file short, you will find that Maxc responds much faster, and also you will be able to get a quick summary of pending business by listing the message headers (From:, Date:, Subject:). To do this, type

<-Headers of messages M^CR

where for M you can say

All messages

Not examined messages

From name^C-¹

Subject text^a CR

m-n‑

9. File transfers

You can transfer files from one Alto to another, or from an Alto to Maxc, using the File Transfer Program, or FTP for short. Like DDS, this program has a fairly elaborate set of features, which are described in its manual. You can print this manual from <AltoDocs>Ftp.ears, and you will also find it at the end of the Alto User's Handbook. This section tells you enough about FTP to take care of all ordinary needs.

After starting FTP, you will see three windows on the screen; from top to bottom, they are the server window, the user window, and the Chat window. Most interactions with FTP involve only the middle window; note the blinking vertical bar there, which shows where you can type. The first step is to type the name of the machine you want to talk to. Usually this is Maxc, and you should just type

*Maxc^a

In a second or two you should get back a response like

Maxc Pup Ftp Server 1.06 30-Jun-76

When Maxc is broken, there will be delay of about a minute, before FTP gives up; you can give up sooner by striking the middle blank key (opposite CR). If you want to talk to another Alto, you can type its name, if you know it, or its number followed by a #:

*Banio^ak

*326#^C-^a

A similar message should come back. Before doing this, you should make sure that the other Alto is running FTP, since your Alto will only wait one minute for it. You can get a list of all the Alto 'owners, names and numbers from the Maxc file <System>Pup-Network.txt.

Now you can retrieve a file from the remote machine (Maxc, or the other Alto), or store a file into it. To retrieve, you type

*R etrieve remote file Example as local file Exampie_^cR

As in the Executive, you can just type enough of the command to identify it uniquely, and then a space; unlike the executive, FTP supplies the rest of the command name automatically. You then type the Maxc (or remote Alto) file name, folowed by a space. FTP will then suggest a local name for the file. If you like it, you can just type CR. Otherwise, you can type some other name, as in the following example:

*R etrieve remote file Example as local file Dummy-^C1-

During the transfer, the cursor will flip its two black squares back and forth every time it transfers a block of the file, so you can tell how it is progressing from the frequency of flips.

To store a file on your local Alto into the remote machine, you type

*S tore local file Example as remote file Example-CB‑

*S tore local file Example as remote file Dummy—

again depending on whether or not you want to use a different name.

You can do as many Retrieve and Store commands as you want. When you are done, type *p_uit

and you will be back talking to the Executive.

If you are not logged in, and are talking to Maxc rather than another Alto, FTP will ask you for your Maxc user name and password when you do the first Retrieve or Store. Like Chat, it will save the information so that you won't have to provide it again until you boot the Alto.

If you intend to do a lot of transfers to a Maxc directory other than your own, you can give the command

*Dir ectory OtherDir^a

to make <OtherDir> the default directory for Maxc names; this saves typing <OtherDir> in front of each name. You can also do

*Con nect to directory OtherDir Password xxxxx²-

which works just like the Maxc Connect command. The password is not displayed when you type it, of course.

You can get a list of the Maxc files which match a file name pattern with the command *List

which works just like the Maxc Directory command. It is quite slow, however, and there is no way to interrupt it except to SHIFT-SWAT out of FTP.

At the bottom of the screen is the Chat window, in which you can talk to Maxc exactly as you do with Chat. You can move the cursor down into the Chat window by striking the bottom unmarked key (the SWAT key); to get back to the middle window, strike the middle unmarked key (on an Alto 2, the highest and lowest

unmarked keys on the right, respectively). In the Chat window, after typin^g Maxc^a, you can Lo^gin to Maxc and do whatever you want. This window doesn't offer all the conveniences of Chat itself, but at times it is nice to be able to switch very quickly between transferring files and giving commands to Maxc.

When you start FTP on an Alto, it is normally ready to act as a remote machine or server, in addition to accepting commands as described above. If you don't say anything special, it will allow any other machine to retrieve files, and to store new files, but not to overwrite an existing file. You can change these defaults by starting FTP with

Ftp/X

where X can be: Nothing to prevent any such transfers; Protected to allow retrieving only, but no writing; Overwrite to allow an existing file to be overwritten. Any server activity is reported in the server windown at the top of the screen.

10. Pictures

There are currently three major services for drawing pictures on the Alto:

Markup: good for pictures involving images, free-hand drawing or painting. Markup is also useful for adding pictures to a text document produced by Bravo; these pictures can come from Draw or Sil, or they can be drawn by Markup itself.

Draw: good for pictures which just contain lines, curves and text;

Sil: good for forms and pictures with only horizontal and vertical lines.

At the moment only the first two are suitable for general use. Each has its own manual, copies of which can be obtained by printing <AltoDocs>Markup.ears and Draw.ears (see section 8.4). You will also find these manuals in the Alto User's Handbook.

You can compose the various parts of a document with Bravo, or with any of these picture-drawing services, and then put to^gether the complete document with a service called PressEdit. This service can combine two kinds of files which describe pages of a document: Press files and Ears files. Markup, Draw and Sil can all produce Press files, and Bravo can produce Ears files. You will find an explanation of how to use PressEdit in

the next section. Warning. the resulting Press file will be about as big as all the input files;
be sure you have enough disk space.

The input to PressEdit must be a Press or Ears file. Markup automatically produces Press files, but the other services require extra steps to make the right kind of file for PressEdit.

For Bravo, use the Ears option on the Hardcopy command to get an Ears file. This file will be on your Alto disk, like any other file. If the Bravo file was named "Example.bravo", the Ears file should be named "Example.ears".

For Draw, use the Press command to get a Press file.

For Sil, use the Nppr service to ^get a Press file, which is always named "Sil.press". You should rename it to something reasonable.

In all these cases, the resultin^g Press or Ears file cannot be converted back into Bravo, Draw or Sil form. You should therefore do all the work you can in these systems before making a Press or Ears file.

The output of PressEdit is a Press file, and you can do the following things with it:

1) Print it on the Ears printer from your Alto, by typing to the Executive >Print Example.press^CE

Currently this is done through Maxc, and takes a while. if you type /s immediately after a file name, the file will be saved on your Maxc directory in Ears format. if you type n/c before a file name, n copies will be printed. Thus

>Print 5/c Example.press/.s

2) Send it to Maxc with FTP, and then print it on the Ears printer by typing
@Ears Example.press^al

When doing this, you can make several copies if you wish, as described in section 8.4. In addition, you will be asked if you "want to save the Press conversion?" You should do this if you expect that a number of other people will want to print the file later, since it requires quite a lot of Maxc resources to print a Press file. If you do save the Press conversion, you will be asked for a file name; choose the name Example.ears if the Press file was Example.press. The resulting Ears file can then be printed by typing

@Ears Example.ears^at

with much less Maxc computing. If you save the Ears file, you should delete or archive the Press file, so as not to consume too much Maxc file space. Note: you can also save the Ears file with the Print service, as described earlier.

3) Send it to the 3100 Alto in room 2064 and print it on the 3100 there. The advantage of doing this is that pictures made by Draw will be much prettier; the drawback is that the 3100 is slower, and the procedure for printing is only semi-automatic. To print on the 3100, you should start FTP on your Alto, go to the 3100 Alto, run FTP there, and retrieve the Press file from your Alto. Then follow the instructions in the notebook labeled Press to get your file printed.

4) Look at it with Markup, and possibly make changes. Read the Markup manual to find out how to do this. You can make substantial changes to the document with Markup, but the procedure is rather laborious, and you cannot transfer any of the changes back to the Bravo, Draw or Sil files you started with. Therefore, it is best to get all the pieces of the document into final form before assembling it and marking it up.

The use of PressEdit for assemblin^g documents has one major advantage: the resulting complete document can be left of Maxc for printing by anyone who needs a copy. If you are producing a document for lar^ge-scale printing outside, on the other hand, it is probably easier to assemble it by hand than to go through all this ritual.

10.1 PressEdit

To convert an Ears file foo.ears to a Press file foo.press:

>PressEdit foo.press ^Ffoo.ears^a

To extract pages 3 and 17 from a Press file long.press, and put them in short.press:

>PressEdit short.press ^Flon^g.press 3 17^Cg

To extract pages 5 through 12 from foo.ears, and put them in short.press:
>PressEdit short.press ⁴-foo.ears 5 to 12^CR

To add fonts Logo24 and Helvetical4 to a.press:

>PressEdit a.press a.press Logo24/f Helvetical4/f^LE

Here the arguments on the right hand side of the arrow may be given in any order.

To make a blank, one-page Press file containing all three faces of TiniesRontan10: >PressEdit Bla nkTimes.press F Ti mesR oman 10/f TimesRomanl0i/f

TimesRoman 1 Ob/f^gl

To append to the end of chap3.press all the Press files with names fig3-1.press, fig3-2.press, fig3-3.press etc:

>PressEdit chap3.press ^fchap3.press fie3-*.press^es

Cautiorr. when you combine files with PressEdit, try not to use different sets of fonts, or the same fonts in different orders. This will result in proliferation of font sets, making the file more bulky and creating other minor sources of inefficiency.

Bravo Manual

Table of Contents

Preface 28

1. Introduction 29

2. Basic features 31

2.1 Moving around 31

2.2 Changing the text 32

2.3 Filing and Hardcopy 34

2.4 Miscellaneous 36

3. Formatting 37

3.1 Making pretty characters 37
Looks during typing

3.2 Paragraphs 38
Hints

3.3 Formatting style 41
Emphasis

Section Headings

Leading Indenting Offsets

3.4 Forms 44

3.5 White space and tabs 44

3.6 Page formatting 45
Page numbers

Margins

Multiple-column printing

Line numbers Headings

4. Other things 50

4.1 Some useful features 50

4.2 Windows 51

4.3 If Bravo breaks 52

4.4 Arithmetic 53

4.5 Other useful features 54
Buffers

Partial Substitution

Magnification

Control characters

4.6 The user profile 56

4.7 Startup and quit macros 57

4.8 Diablo and Ears hardcopy 57
Samples of standard fonts

Preface

This manual describes the Bravo system for creating, reading and changing text documents on the Alto. It is supposed to be readable by people who do not have previous experience with computers. You should read the first four sections of the Non-Programmers Guide to the Alto before starting to read this manual.

You will find that things are a lot clearer (I hope) if you try to learn by doing. Try out the things described here as you read.

Material in small type, like this, deals with fine points and may be skipped on first, or even second, reading.

I would appreciate any comments which occur to you while trying to use the manual. In particular, I would like to know what you found to be confusing or unclear, as well as anything which you found to be simply wrong.

This manual is written on the assumption that you have the user profile, fonts and other Bravo-related material from the BASIC NON-PROGRAMMER'S DISK. If this is not the case, some of the things which depend on that stuff will not work the same way.

There is a one-page summary of Bravo at the end of this manual. It is intended as a memory-jog^ger, not as a complete specification of how all the commands work.

Bravo was designed by Butler Lampson and Charles Simonyi, and implemented mainly by Tom Malloy, with substantial contributions from Carol Hankins, Greg Kusnick, Kate Rosenbloom and Bob Shur.

1. Introduction

Bravo is the standard Alto system for creating, editing and printing documents containing text. It can handle formatted text, but it doesn't know how to handle pictures or drawings; for these you should use Draw, Markup or Sil.

When you start up Bravo (do it now, by saying Bravo/e^a- to the Executive), you will see two windows on the screen, separated by a heavy horizontal bar. The top one contains three lines with some useful introductory information; it is called the system window. The bottom one contains a copy of the material you are reading, which was put there because of the "/e" you typed to the Executive. If you had omitted the "/e", as you do when using Bravo normally, the bottom window would be empty, except for a single triangular endmark which indicates the end of a document. In the bar separating the two windows is the name of the document in the lower window.

As you do things in Bravo, the first two lines of the system window will give you various useful pieces of information which may help you to understand what is going on and to decide what you should do next. Usually, the top line tells you what you can do next, and the second line tells you what you just did, and whether anythin^g went wrong in doing it. Make a habit of looking at these two lines while you are learning Bravo, and whenever you are unsure of what is happening.

No matter what is going on in Bravo, you can stop it and get back to a neutral state by hitting the DEL key. You can leave Bravo and get back to the Executive by typing Quit^CR

The characters which you type (Q and CR) are underlined in this example; the characters which are not underlined are typed by Bravo. This convention is used throughout the manual. Notice that you only type the first character of the Quit command; this is true for all the Bravo commands.

Each Bravo window (except the top one) contains a document which you can read and change. Usually you read the document from a file when you start Bravo, and write it back onto a file after you have finished changing it. Later, you will find out how to do this (see section 2.3). It is possible to have several windows, each containing a document; this too is explained later on (see section 4.2).

Bravo is controlled partly from the keyboard and partly from the mouse, the small white object with three black buttons which sits to the right of the keyboard. As you push the mouse around on your working surface, a cursor moves around on the screen. Pushing the mouse to the left moves the cursor to the left, pushin^g the mouse up (away from you) moves the cursor up; and so forth. You should practice moving the mouse around so that the cursor moves to various parts of the screen.

The three buttons on the mouse are called RED (the top or left-most one, depending on what kind of mouse you have), YELLOW (the middle one) and BLUE (the bottom or ri^ght-most one). They have different functions dependin^g on where the cursor is on the

screen and what shape it has. Don't push any buttons yet.

Mouse lore:

You will find that the mouse works better if you hold it so that it bears some of the weight of your hand.

If the cursor doesn't move smoothly when the mouse is moving, try turning the mouse upside down and spinning the ball in the middle with your finger until the cursor does move smoothly as the ball moves. If this doesn't help, your mouse is

2. Basic features

This section describes the minimum set of things you have to know in order to do any useful work with Bravo. When you have finished this section, you can read the other parts of the manual as you need the information.

2.1 Moving around

Move the cursor to the left edge of the screen and a little bit below the heavy black bar. Notice that it appears as a double-headed arrow. It will keep this shape as long as you stay near the left edge, in a region called the scroll bar. if you move it too far right, the shape will change. Keep the cursor in the scroll bar for the moment.

Now push down the RED (top or left) button and hold it down. Notice that the cursor changes to a heavy upward arrow. This indicates that when you let the button go, the line opposite the cursor will be moved to the top of the window. Try it. This is called scrolling the document up.

Next push down the BLUE (bottom or right) button and hold it down. Now the arrow points down, indicating that when you let the button go, the top line on the screen will be moved down to where the cursor is. Try it. This operation takes a few seconds, so don't get impatient. Practice scrolling the document up and down until you feel comfortable with it. It is useful to know that if you don't move the mouse, scrolling with RED and BLUE are symmetrical operations: one reverses the effect of the other.

You may have noticed that the text on the screen doesn't fill up the window, but that more text appears when you scroll up. The reason for this is that in addition to space on the screen, Bravo needs space inside itself (in the Alto's memory) to display lines of text on the screen. When a line has only a few characters, it doesn't take up much internal space, but when it runs all the way across the page, like the lines in this document, it takes a lot of internal space. When Bravo runs out of internal space, it stops displaying text and leaves the rest of the window blank. You can tell that there is more text in the document (i.e., that you aren't seein^g the end), because when Bravo gets to the end it displays a triangular endmark as the very last thin^g to mark the end. If you don't see the endmark at the bottom of the displayed text, you can be sure that there is more text in the document which isn't being displayed.

If you keep the cursor in the scroll bar, near the left edge, and hold down YELLOW (the middle mouse button), you will see the cursor change into a striped right-pointing arrowhead. Think of it as a thumb, and the entire left edge of the window as the pages of a closed book, correspondin^g to your whole document (not just to what is displayed). If you stick the thumbnail into the book and flip it open, you will find yourself someplace in the book. If the thumb is near the middle, you will be about in the middle. If it is all the way at the top, you will be at the beginning; if all the way at the bottom, you will be at the end.

The tip of the arrowhead acts like the thumbnail, and letting go of YELLOW is like flipping open the book. You will also see another striped arrow, enclosed in a box. This one is called the bookmark; it points to your current location in the document. After you let up YELLOW, if you hold it down again without moving the mouse, the thumbnail and the bookmark should coincide exactly, making a solid arrowhead; this happens because the thumbing operation moved the document exactly to the place indicated by the thumbnail. To move forward a little, push the thumbnail down a little below the bookmark and thumb again; to move back, push the thumbnail up a little above the bookmark. To get to the beginning, push the thumbnail up until the arrowhead overlaps slightly the horizontal bar

at the top of the window. Try thumbing your way through the document until you feel comfortable with it. Also try thumbing and then scrolling up and down.

2.2 Changing the text

In order to make a change in the text of your document, you have to: say where you want the change made, by making a selection;

say what you want done, by giving a command.

You always make the selection first, then give the command. If you change your mind about where you want the change made, you can always make another selection. Making a selection is just like pointing with a pencil: it doesn't have any effect on the document. Only commands can change the document. You never have to worry about getting rid of a selection, since it never does any harm. If you make a selection, and then give a command that doesn't require any selection, that is perfectly all right; the needless selection will be ignored.

You make selections by pointing with the mouse and pushing one of the buttons. To try this out, move the cursor into the region of the screen where the text of the document is displayed. Notice that the cursor is displayed as an arrow which points up and slightly to the left. Point the arrow at a character (any character) in the document, and click RED. The character you pointed at should be underlined; if it is, you have just selected it. If it

isn't, look nearby and see if some other character is underlined. if you find one, then that is the one Bravo

thou^ght you were pointing at Experiment until you feel confident that you can point easily at characters.

You should note that each selection erases the previous one: there is only one selection at a time, and it is the most recent one. Also, you can make a selection at any time, except when you are in the middle of a command. Once you have started a command, you must either finish it normally, or abort it by striking DEL, before you can make another selection.

Something useful to know: if you hold RED down, you can move the cursor around and the selection will follow it. The selection won't freeze until you release RED (or move the cursor out of the text area). Try this too.