PMATE Question

[fred_...@hotmail.com]

I am looking for the meaning of these PSA PMATE editor commands:

XY QG QJ QN QU QV

and the following variables:

@D @U @/

Any guesses? XY is a file command, but other than that, I don't know.

These are not PMATE 2, just PMATE 3 (and
possibly higher).

Thanks in advance

FredW

[Tony Nicholson]

Fred,

There's no mention of the XY command in the later PMATE-PC V4.0
command summary, but it does have the following -

nQG Turn off garbage stacking if n is zero "0qg", otherwise it is on.

nQJ Shift text display n lines up (or down for negative n)

nQNstring Direct console I/O, send string to console and get character
from keyboard unless n=0

nQU Set automatic disk buffering unless n=0

nQV Enable tab fill else if n is zero fill with spaces only

For variables -

@D is the number of lines scrolled by a ctrl-U and ctrl-J (used by QL)

@U is -1 if auto-buffering is enabled, 0 otherwise

@/ is the current auto-indent level

My PMATE-PC manual is a copy made with spiral binding (it's in small
A5-size double-sided pages) - and looks like I only made copies of
selected pages - not a full manual.

I'll try to make a scan of it later this week - unless someone else can
point me to a PDF copy of it on the Internet somewhere.

Tony

[fred_...@hotmail.com]

Tony

Thanks! Yes -- that fills in my knowledge of PMATE!
XY is a command in PMATE 3 -- try

PMATE
then XY ESC ESC
The error is "NO INPUT-OUTPUT FILE SPECIFIED" -- so it is being scanned,
Contrast with XZ ESC ESC which yields "SYNTAX ERROR".

I guess I am going to experiment now!

and that confirms my other "guesses" @J yields number of screen lines,
@Q yields previous tab stop, @B yields current buffer. QQ is QJ but
horizontal, nQT sends to list device

Now I am going to prepare an addendum page to the PMATE 2 manual --

FredW

[Tony Nicholson]

On Thursday, May 13, 2021 at 8:55:31 AM UTC+10, Tony Nicholson wrote:
[snip]

> My PMATE-PC manual is a copy made with spiral binding (it's in small
> A5-size double-sided pages) - and looks like I only made copies of
> selected pages - not a full manual.
>
> I'll try to make a scan of it later this week - unless someone else can
> point me to a PDF copy of it on the Internet somewhere.

I did a quick flat-bed scan of the extracts from the PMATE-PC V4
Users Guide.

This contains only the Appendices A to E

App A: Command Summary
App B: PMATE Version 3.3 Enhancements
App C: New Features in PMATE Version 4.0
App D: MPMATE (the menu version of PMATE)
App E: CPMATE (the C language specificPMATE)

If I remember correctly, there were two additional PMATE versions
for the PC - a FORTRAN version and multitasking MS-DOS version.

The raw scan (with no OCR) is on my Google Drive as a PDF (48MB in size)
at -

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XqtkFLKM6dWBjChK0Lwv34ZAnn-Z-DU8/view?usp=sharing

Tony

[fred_...@hotmail.com]

Tony

Many thanks! Looks perfect! PMATE, being (mostly) TECO is unbelievably powerful, but requires
documentation.

FredW

[Roger Hanscom]

> Now I am going to prepare an addendum page to the PMATE 2 manual --

Anybody interested in a text version of the PMATE 2 manual?? I converted it because of the size of the .pdf version (~60 MB vs. ~180k for the text version). It isn't perfect, and may contain errors (typical OCR problems), but I tried to edit them out. I also ignored lots of the fancy format stuff.

Roger

[fred_...@hotmail.com]

Roger

Definitely interested. I have limited time, but that gets us on the way to a "unified PMATE manual".
Merging with the PMATE 4 stuff -- and some judicious pruning should get us to a PMATE 3.21 and PMATE 3.02 manual(s).

My current "hobby" obessions are: PMATE for CP/M, DSD-80 for CP/M and AM9511 emulations.

FredW

[Tony Nicholson]

Definitely interested Roger.

I don't seem to worry too much about file size in these days of terabyte
storage. Blame me for the PDF sizes (I prefer lossless image scans at
a fairly high resolution - since it helps resolve any OCR issues when I get
a round tuit). I still have archive storage boxes full of paper that I need
to digitize before the silverfish find them! In a similar vein I have all my
8-inch, 5-1/4" and 3-1/2" floppies imaged as either raw bit-for-bit or in
IMD format files. Probably I should start thinking of making images of
my CD-ROM software collection too.

I've zipped up the files from my floppy images for PMATE-PC V4.0 dated
14-Aug-1985 and put it on my Google Drive too. You'll find it here -

https://drive.google.com/file/d/13Oi0dHwZHcAVpQm4BBhtbJlfn9xpNxBH/view?usp=sharing

A couple of the interesting files I rediscovered from this are the OLR.TXT
and OLR.PMA online reference card and macro. The macro can be bound
to a key to provide online help (like the CP/M version KBD.HLP and KBD.PMA
keyboard help files).

Comments in the PCCONFIG.CNF file mention a version 3.3. I suspect
this was the first version ported from 8080 to 8086. Some of the
other PMATE macro sourcefiles may be able to be back-ported to CP/M too.

Tony

PS: I'll probably scan the rest of my extracts of PMATE-PC V4 manual
(the appendices F and G dealing with the FORTRAN version and the
multitasking for PC) sometime this weekend.

[Roger Hanscom]

On Thursday, May 13, 2021 at 9:04:32 AM UTC-7, fred_...@hotmail.com wrote:
......<snip>......

> Definitely interested. I have limited time, but that gets us on the way to a "unified PMATE manual".
> Merging with the PMATE 4 stuff -- and some judicious pruning should get us to a PMATE 3.21 and PMATE 3.02 manual(s).

Yes, unified documentation would be *great*!! As I said, my text version of the manual probably contains lots of typo's (from the OCR), but it would be a good start, I think. So, how should I do this? Is it OK to post the manual here? Otherwise, if you guys (Tony and Fred) go to my Web site (www.hanscom.us), you'll find contact information (aol.com). Shoot me an email, and I'll send the text file back to you as an attachment? Seems like the easiest way (at least to me anyway.).

Roger

[Tony Nicholson]

Here's the final part of the PMATE-PC Appendices.

App F: PMATE FORTRAN-specific version
App G: XAPMATE Multitasker

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bLJEjkw43oH3G7k3rHtPyZHvAji4Y5N4/view?usp=sharing


On Saturday, May 15, 2021 at 2:52:47 AM UTC+10, Roger wrote:

[snip]

> Yes, unified documentation would be *great*!! As I said, my text version of the manual probably contains lots of typo's (from the OCR), but it would be a good start, I think. So, how should I do this? Is it OK to post the manual here? Otherwise, if you guys (Tony and Fred) go to my Web site (www.hanscom.us), you'll find contact information (aol.com). Shoot me an email, and I'll send the text file back to you as an attachment? Seems like the easiest way (at least to me anyway.).
>
> Roger

I'll e-mail you in a moment - but since you're using gmail to send messages to
this newsgroup, why not give Google Drive a try. You can upload documents
and files using the web-version - you don't need the Google Drive (also known
as Backup and Sync) client. You'll need to share the files for collaboration -
and the people you share it with can have edit permission to specific files to
fix-up typos etc.

https://drive.google.com/

Tony

[Tony Nicholson]

Just to make your collection complete, here's a copy of PMATE V2.06 for CP/M-80.

Hard to believe that I obtained this almost 40 years ago!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rr_CQBaORmyzek8hBEPm9SVE7kURbt_Q/view?usp=sharing

According to the notes scribbled on the 8" floppy disk label, I renamed the
distribution file PMATE.COM to PMATEDIS.COM (I think it was preconfigured
to work on an ADM3A terminal). The scanned "PMATE rev 2 User Manual and
Interface Guide" that I posted recently came with this version.

Tony