Shades of WordStar Some WordStar Interfile Techniques by Dick Ezzard [KAY*FOG RBBS] Okay, many of the newer, more elaborate word processing programs boast a "windows" feature. Windowing allows you look at two (or more) files simultaneously, work in either or both, yet maintain separate identities for filing on the disk. While WordStar does not have a specific windowing capability, ingenuity lets you achieve the same logical effects with an "almost windows" facility I'll call "Window Shades". Shades technique has the metaphorical effect of (while working in a main file) pulling down a shade with a message written on it (such as your outline). You can look at the outline, then snap the shade back up out of the way and go back to working in your regular window. Shades starts with WordStar's regular ^Kr command which will bring any other file into the file you are working in. The simple ^Kr file read command, however, once executed does not differentiate between the stuff that belongs to the file you are working in and the material you have brought over from the other file. It may be bothersome to have extraneous bits and pieces of the outline "welded" into your text where it is hard to strip out again. The technique part involves thinking ahead, to be prepared for what you will want to do later, which is erase! The solution is to bring the extraneous matter in as a marked block. Then you can easily see on the screen what is the out line you are referring to and what is your text file. And as soon as you have glanced at the outline, you can erase it with a ^Ky and go back to what you were doing. So you want to pull your shade down as a segregated marked block. To do that, you pre-mark a tiny block into which you read the reference file. Use ^Kb, , ^Kk, ^Qb (puts cursor into the currently marked block) and then do ^Kr to bring in your reference material. It comes in already marked as a block. When you are done looking at it, ^Ky snaps the shade back up by erasing it in the file in which you are currently working. (It still exists for repeated reference in its own file and you can glance at it again anytime by just repeating the operation.) The technique involved is first to always keep the outline of your current project in a file called O. And secondly, because you will just want to glance at it momentarily, you bring the shade down prepared for easy erasure by pre-marking the block. You can also, of course, write notes out to another file. Let's say that your application requires that you keep a separate set of footnotes or endnotes to each chapter. As you are writing along, you write a note or a citation which has to be sent to the endnote file. In this case, you write some thing to be included in the "shade" which gets pulled down and snapped up automatically. The technique: 1) Write your note wherever you happen to be in the current text file. 2) Do ^Kb to mark the beginning of the note, then immediately hit to push the note down one line. Go to the end of your note, hit and mark ^Kk (block end). Your note is now con figured as a block with a blank line at the top, and a line ending included at the bottom. 3) ^Qb puts the cursor at the top of the note on that blank line. 4) Read in your note file, ^Kr (it comes "into" the block) and immediately write it back out again. That's Kw back to the same filename, and Y for yes to overwrite that file. 5) ^Ky to erase the block in your text file, away goes the note. In conclusion, although WordStar has no separate windows, ingenuity will allow most people to get along with pull down "shades" to glance at other files. Perhaps the most important thing to be learned from this is that when working with WordStar you should AVOID FILE FOCUS. Don't get stuck in the habit of working on the tail end of only one file at a time. There are many techniques that allow you to work in several files simultaneously, and if you break typewriter tunnel vision habits, you can work all over your system, writing to several files on any disk in any one session.