casa@charon.unm.edu (Jim Pittman) (07/17/87)
Thanks to Sean Kamath for illuminating some Apple EOF questions. The word processor I most often use, Super-Text Professional, writes standard DOS 3.3 text files. If you save a long file, then later edit the file so it's short and save it again with the same name, it only will only save up to the HEX-00 end-of-file marker, but the rest of the file remains on the disk, tied to that file name. This disk space is not available for Super-Text to use to save other files. It is available, however, if you edit the file to be longer than it originally was and then save it with the same name. Write-Away (a fairly weird and extremely powerful word processor) reads the entire text file including HEX-00s. When you edit a long file and make it shorter and then save the short file with the original name, Write-Away will reclaim the unused disk space. Not only that, if you have data diskettes with tracks 1 and 2 blank (that is, no DOS on the disk) Write-Away can save files onto these tracks. Super-Text can't do that, but if you put the files there, Super-Text is able to read, edit, and re-save them! Super-Text, Write-Away, Softerm-2 and Copy II Plus together make up a pretty impressive file-manipulation system on a 64-K Apple II Plus. For those who can stand to use it, Apple Writer 2.0 (DOS 3.3 version, with a Videx pre-boot for 80-column use) could replace Super-Text in the above list. Still using a II Plus - Jim Pittman - University of New Mexico - 505-277-8131