Versions and bug report

Added/modified functionality in WSformat 0.99k:

In the settings notebook, there is a new setting "preview in separate thread". Windows Vista does not tolerate running preview in an own thead, while all other operating systems work better when having an own thread.

0.99i and 0.99j were not published.

Fixed Bugs in WSformat 0.99k:

• 0.99k.1: Preview did not work properly with Windows Vista
• 0.99k.2: Malfunction when bold printing within indentions
• 0.99k.3: Preview wrong page enumeration in title bar
  

and other minor bugfixes.

Added/modified functionality in WSformat 0.99h:

• right-orientated columns with .tb 10,#25 while #25 marks column of the the rightmost character of the text column (also implemented in WSedit)
• GIF graphic file format implemented also in OS/2 version
• negative page numbers allowed; header and footer lines with negative page numbers are not printed
• (OS/2 only) improved font size calculation in Preview
• (Windows only) Help format MS HTML-Help (required for Vista). If you rename the CHM file, old help is shown on Windows Versions before Vista. The archive contains both help formats.
• more sophisticated conditional statements with parenthesis and nested if conditions allowed
• new dot command .GH graphic height allows dimensioning bitmap text graphics related to the line height; Metafiles did not work within the .BT command because of missing size values
  

WSformat 0.99g and f have not been published.

Fixed Bugs in WSformat 0.99h:

• 0.99h.1: Settings notebook, page 'Format': Crash if font character input not OK
• 0.99h.2: Creating index dot commands .HH .SH .EH were not interpretated
• 0.99h.3: wrong page number in header/footer line on first page in preview
• 0.99h.4: Preview redraw casually not complete
• 0.99h.5: .GH 'Graphic Height' did not work correctly
• 0.99h.6: Formatting with 'auto save' option blocked WSformat for 5 seconds
• 0.99h.7: Incorrect indention with dot and square characters (.DT)
• 0.99h.8: .OC on/off failed in combination with other printer characters (e.g. ^PB)
  

Added functionality in WSformat 0.99 e:

• If you press the right mouse button in the dropdown field, you'll get a file history list.
  

Fixed Bugs in WSformat 0.99 e:

• 0.99e.1: When creating a table of contents, strange characters appeared and forced several error messages.
  

Fixed Bugs in WSformat 0.99 d:

• 0.99d.1: Wrong directories in graphics dialog, loading graphics sometimes failed
• 0.99d.2: Wrong formatting of table of content; Now the process of generating the TOC file runs twice
• 0.99d.3: Malfunction when printing lines with bold/italic font together with flush-right printer character
• 0.99d.4: .fi *.fun / .pe (embedding endnotes) did not work properly
• 0.99d.5: missing interpreter in dot command window for commands .DT, .BT, .IC when double-clicking in WSedit
  

0.99c has not been published. 0.99d has no additional functionality.

Added/modified functionality in WSformat 0.99b:

• Template Dialog (File - New)
• a new checkbox (Settings notebook, page program) let you accept arbitrary file extensions as WS files makes it no more necessary to rename your old Wordstar files into *.WS; this is intersting when migrating from Wordstar (DOS) with lots of Wordstar files on your harddisks with arbitrary filenames
  

Fixed Bugs in WSformat 0.99 b:

• 0.99b.1: the very first text line was not shown in preview, but printed to the printer
  

Fixed Bugs in WSformat 0.99 a:

• 0.99a.1: defective fonts.ini generation (double usage of one font character) forces harmful font problems
• 0.99a.2: some malfunctions in the command window
• 0.99a.3: in german documentation, jumping to wrong pages of context-sensitive help
• 0.99a.4: in preview, header line of the first page is not shown
• 0.99a.5: cannot open font test file (Settings - font test file)
• 0.99a.6: wrong default settings in the PDF page of the settings notebook
• 0.99a.7: malfunctions when inserting dot commands via command window into WSedit
• 0.99a.8: (OS/2) if preview Window overlaps with a program which floats to top, closing the preview window exists WSformat
• 0.99a.9: (OS/2) changing size of WSformat command window forces problems
  

Added/modified functionality in WSformat 0.99:

• improved preview for two-sided printouts (a document is two-sided, if you use .HEL .HER or .FOL .FOR or .LR (left-right mode, affects the header/footer line orientation)).
• PgDn in preview on top of a page scrolls a page down, otherwise shows the next page
• new dot command .RF (Right Formatting) is like .RM (Right Margin), but does not affect ^P@ (WSedit ^PZ) right-orientated lines.
• .FG on/off (format graphics) let you omit inserting empty lines for graphics while formatting
• Creating Contents: you can turn off the automatic contents line recognition in the settings notebook, so only the lines with prefixed ".CT" (content) gets part of the table of contents
• Three new dot commands .HH Hard Line Height, .SH Soft Line Height and .EH Empty Line Height let you specify line height more acccurate than .LH. (.LH sets all three values simultaneously.) This extension enables you to define different line heights within paragraphs and between paragraphs. Of course, you won't see correct page breaks anymore when using original Wordstar instead of WSedit.
• PDF creation support: If you select Make - PDF file, WSformat prints the document to a virtual printer which you have selected in the settings notebook, page PDF. The output goes to a Postscript (PS) file instead of a printer port.
• PDF creation support: After finishing "printing" to the PS file, WSformat appends PDFmarks to the PS file. These marks contain document information holding in dot commands: .TI (Title) .KY (Keywords), .AU (Author) and .SU (Subject).
• PDF creation support: full-featured PDF content window with chapter headings where the reader can navigate.
• PDF creation support: Step-by-step instruction for using WSformat together with the free Ghostscript package
• in addition to the WS file format, ASCII text file support for unformatted files: "Write&Set TXT format"
• Colored fonts (via font definition file).
• running WSformat via commandline arguments (formatting, printing, conditional defines)
• Shareware limitation set down to formatting 10 pages.
  

Added/modified functionality in WSformat 0.98:

• More graphic formats: Besides BMP, for Windows are also GIF, JPEG and the Metafile formats EMF and WMF supported. For OS/2, in addition to BMP, the OS/2 Metafile format MET is supported.
• Graphics dialog enables you easy embedding of graphic files into WS text files. If the clipboard contains a graphic, pressing Shift-Ins in WSedit opens the WSformat graphics dialog.
• Improved preview: a menu bar offers you a lot of new functionality, e.g. previewing several pages simultaneously, up to 50 pages. If a single page is viewed very small, lines are shown instead of font text lines. Preview speed is now faster.
• Dot command macros enables you defining your own dot commands concatenating several known dot commands.
  

Added/modified functionality in WSformat 0.97:

• WSformat is now Freeware up to a document length of 40 printed pages
• with the new dot command .DT you can draw small circles and squares for paragraph lists for other purpose by defining arbitrary characters which are not used otherwise in your text
• a "PDF" page was added in the settings notebook and a new command "Make - PDF" let you comfortably embed PDF creation software. PDFmarks are supported via BMK files (for use with ePDF to get a PDF contents page), and in the next version of WSformat PDFmarks are directly supported for all PDF creation programs
• you can change the orientation of .BM bitmaps from center to left and right
• .CT (contents text) enables you grabbing arbitrary text paragraphs for the contents
• File - Select remembers the last directory
• Doubleclick-jumping between editors for WS and FMT file can be turned off in the settings notebook, page "program"
  

Fixed Bugs in WSformat 0.98a:

• 0.98a.1: (OS/2) Metafiles were not printed correctly to physical printers; virtual printers were not envolved.
• 0.98a.2: .PN (changing a page number) did not work properly in preview window
• 0.98a.3: preview window redraw problems
• 0.98a.4: (Win) wrong calculation of character width (-> formatting and printing malfunction) if a printer is used with a non-default resolution
  

Fixed Bugs in WSformat 0.98:

• 0.98.01: Registration was only valid after restarting WSformat
• 0.98.02: If the format thread was interrupted by the user, WSformat couldn't be closed correctly
• 0.98.03: .LH default value could be zero -> corrupted preview and printing
• 0.98.04: "unform edit" was enabled if the file was not created yet
• 0.98.05: if a toggle like ^PS was opened, but not closed, an error message was missing
  

Fixed Bugs in WSformat 0.97:

• 0.97.01: Minor bugs concerning navigation in preview window
• 0.97.02: ".PO" had no effect for the directly following text line
• 0.97.03: malfunctions when making content (TOC file remained sometimes empty, wrong font)
• 0.97.04: Doubleclick-jumping between WS and FMT file opened wrong document files
• 0.97.05: Settings notebook, page Format: Program crashed when Font edit field empty
• 0.97.06: Problems with registration code
• 0.97.07: Footnote/endnote file last words did not appear
• 0.97.08: (OS/2) Command window: "Scale" Radiobuttons did not appear
  

New in WSformat 0.96

Translation to german language is complete now.

Fixed Bugs in WSformat 0.96

• 0.96.01: Bold/Italic font default was not defined -> wrong formatting
• 0.96.02: .BTX Bitmap width in running text was not calculated -> wrong formatting
• 0.96.03: Help file was not activated from the "insert dot commdands" window
• 0.96.04: Conflicts between Hypermake/WSformat dot command syntax solved
  

New functionality in WSformat 0.95:

• Tutorial
• RTF to WS conversion (with headings and footnotes)
• WS to RTF conversion (WSformat executes Hypermake commandline program which is part of the Write&Set archive)
• WS to HTML conversion (also by Hypermake)
• "Par" counter does not count dot commands and empty lines anymore. .EP off/on turns paragraph enumeration on and off.
• if WSformat is running, doubleclicking into the WSedit WS file jumps into the FMT file to the same paragraph.
  

Fixed Bugs in WSformat 0.95

• 0.95.01: "command" window, selecting items does not show help text, context-sensitive help often does not work
• 0.95.02: sending messages from WSedit to WSformat and reverse does not work in many cases
• 0.95.03: Preview window redraw problems fixed
  

0.95 fixes also a lot of smaller bugs, not worth to mention.

Fixed Bugs in former versions of WSformat

• 0.94.01: several Preview window redraw problems fixed
• 0.94.02: Fonts names with " characters, e.g. .SFA" did not work
• 0.94.03: wrong page break when using comment lines
• 0.94.04: WSformat crashes while closing when the "registering fonts" window was active
  

0.94 fixes also a lot of smaller bugs, not worth to mention.

0.92, 0.93: smaller bugfixes

• 0.85.01: Preview in Landscape format was not programmed yet
• 0.85.02: running WSedit from WSformat with long filenames containing spaces did not work
• 0.85.03: Underlining several words in running text was not continous

• 0.84.01: redraw problems of the preview window
  

0.83 fixes also a handful other minor bugs, not worth to mention.

• 0.82.01: malfunction using .PM and .LM
• 0.82.02: malfunction when creating Fonts.ini if a large number of fonts is installed

• 0.81.01: (Win95-98-ME) Registering printer fonts fails, program hangs
• 0.81.02: (all) WSformat.dta user settings were not written
  

In the late 80's, I published a Wordstar DOS extension program 'StarExtender' in Germany which had hyphenation, footnote, Line drawing, index and proportional printing support. WSformat is based on this program which is very-well tested for a lot of years. This is the reason that the basic format functionality works very well even WSformat is 0.9X beta state software. (It could also be StarExtender 3.9X). But it took one year hard work for publishing WSformat. Because the formatting and printing kernel is optimized for old computers from the late 80's, today WSformat is extremely fast.