Quikscript is a PostScript program that allows you to prepare a document for printing, containing visible layout marks. These layout marks are interpreted by the Qs PostScript program within the printer during printing. This allows precise control over document form; it also allows PostScript instructions to be embedded within the document, which can be very powerful if you understand a little PostScript. Quikscript is remarkably small, about the same size as a font; it is even possible to include Quikscript within an EPS file.
Documents can be prepared in any text editor for output with Quikscript; Quikscript is the engine that determines layout. The Qse editor is designed to simplify use of Quikscript. It allows a document to be previewed or printed; it allows external files to be pulled into a document when it is to be previewed or printed; it allows mail-lists to be used for bulk mailing of a letter.
Qse Executable Jar iconor by typing a command such as
which locates and executes the Qse.class file in Qse.jar and runs it with a Java virtual machine. (If this fails, see the installation instructions.)qse
Other command-line parameters are recognized, which are described at the bottom of this document.
"Direct" should work if you have a PostScript printer attached to your computer or on the local network. When you attempt to print, the dialog will display a printer name and possibly a pop-up menu for selecting other printers. If this area is blank, direct selection is not available on your machine.
"By command" will be required if some external program is needed to cause a document to be printed. This is necessary with early versions of Java, or where only non-PostScript printers are available.
Under a Linux operating system, the command to run an external program to cause a document to be printed might be "lpr" or "lp", which may in turn use ghostscript to convert the PostScript into a form suitable for printing on a non-PostScript printer.
Under a MS Windows operating system, the command might be "gsview". You may need to download gsview first to do this. This program can be used both for previewing a document and for printing it.
Under MS Windows,
it will probably be gsview.
This program must be installed on your machine, and the command to access the
program, setting the page-size, must be recorded in the Defaults. You may need to specify this program as
c:\Program Files\Ghostgum\gsview\gsview32
c:\Qse;c:\qsjava\Qse;c:\gs
c:\gs\gs8.13\bin\gswin32
| New | Open a new empty window. |
| Open | Allow a file name to be selected. Put this file in the current window if it has not been modified; otherwise put it in a new window. |
| Save | Write the window contents to a file whose name can be selected. |
| Close | Discard the window if it has not been modified; otherwise, give the option of saving first. |
| Clear | Empty the current window. |
| Preview | Run the PostScript previewer on the file in the current window to show its layout. See also Edit/Defaults. |
| Dispatch the current window to a printer for output.
The panel will request from you the page range to be printed, and will seek confirmation on the command on your system to print the file. Within this command, the text string "(Qs+file)" indicates what is to be printed; this should not be modified. See also Edit/Defaults for setting up the printer command. | |
| Mail merge | Create multiple copies of the current file by acting on embedded
<name> fields, obtaining values for these fields from a file.
The letters can be previewed, printed, or written to a file. File names indicating the names or values of fields are assumed to be in the same directory as the letter, unless the file-path indicates otherwise. |
| Expand | Act on embedded %include...%, %DM,...%, %M,...% and %DATE% instructions
to generate a new file. You have the choice where this file is to be
placed, such as a new window or a file.
"With other files..." - Use this tool to expand and concatenate a group of files, that is, to join several files into a single one, which again may be written to the disk, to a window, to the printer, or previewed. In this case, the contents of the current window is referred to as "(this)" in the list of files. If the output is to go to the printer or to preview, "Qs" will be automatically included in the list of files; it can be explicitly named if it is to be preceded by other files or if the expanded files are to be saved to a file. |
| Quit | Close all windows, checking first on whether they have been modified. |
| Find/Replace | This allows text to be searched for, either up or down. It also
allows for single replacement, or replacement of all occurrences within
the file, or replacement of all occurrences within a selected region
of the document.
Clicking on Find will search for the next occurrence of the "find text" in the document. The direction of search, forwards or backwards, can be separately selected. If the end (or beginning) of document is reached, a beep will sound indicating failure. Recent versions of Java support "regular expressions", which allows a text pattern to be searched for. If this is activated by "Pattern" being ticked, some characters in the "find text" take on a special meaning:
|
| Undo / Redo | A history of changes to the current document since the last save is maintained. It is possible to work back through the list of changes undoing their effect, and if this has been done, to work forwards through the changes redoing them. |
| Insert character | When a special character or symbol needs to be inserted into a document,
this can help in selecting the character. The character can be selected
from an image showing what they look like, or from a list of character
names.
The fonts used in PostScript come with two different sets of special characters (the "encoding vector"). The standard PostScript will be displayed unless the "European set" has been selected for this document from the Font menu. In Quikscript, any special character is identified by its code number, so selecting a special character will cause that code number to be placed into the document. A third encoding vector for Celtic characters is also provided. Other special characters are available in the Dingbats or Symbol fonts. To insert these characters into a document, it is necessary to switch to the appropriate font within the document using the %FN,name% layout mark before the character code is inserted, and then to revert to the normal font. Qse will include the swap font instructions for you. The Euro currency symbol was invented after the encoding vectors were designed in PostScript. To insert a euro symbol into a document, it is necessary to swap to a special font which includes this symbol, and then revert to the normal font. |
| Go to line | Line number can be used to move to a position in the file. |
| Select all | The entire contents of the window will be selected. It may then be copied to another window using the features of your window system. |
| Defaults | Qse relies on some external programs and files for its operation, and it
is possible to modify the names of these files and other operational
defaults dynamically.
If any of these options in the panel are modified, you can choose whether to apply them to the current Qse session, ie. all Qse windows, or whether to also save them for all future Qse usage. Saving will write the options to the .Qse file. The options that are available are as follows: |
| Short-cuts | It is possible to set up special keys on the keyboard to perform some internal operations. The operation may be some standard item available in one of the menus (and thus avoid use of the mouse to access it), or it may be some new operation. See use of short-cuts for more detail. |
| Page layout | Can be set to landscape, Draft watermark written, Page border requested, and two pages side-by-side per sheet. These PostScript files replace the standard "showpage" instruction to perform the extra processing. |
| Page numbering | Options include left-right alternating, and centred with text at the top and number at the bottom of the page. |
| Leaflet format | If the document is to be a leaflet, the formats include two or three
column. Portrait is also provided, though this is hardly a leaflet.
You need to be careful that you provide the content in the correct order, since the front of the leaflet will be the right-hand side of the last page! |
| Layout macros | Includes a file of macros that simplify achieving consistent layout. |
This menu allows you to select which of the special fonts you wish to use within your document. There are two sets of fonts available: ones derived from the standard fonts, and separate font families. Fonts derived from standard ones include:
With the European characters, the standard fonts will be re-encoded to use a European encoding. There is no need to use any special font-name to refer to the font; all standard fonts will be re-encoded to use these characters. However, any special fonts will be unaffected by this re-encoding.
The Celtic font was kindly provided by Derek McKay. Its use is similar to the European characters, with all standard fonts re-encoded, and all other fonts unmodified.
Font Selector...
Other special fonts can be included within a document by selecting from the font selector. Many freely available fonts are provided with Qse, and the font selector will show you
There is also a facility, "New font", to add to the menu any fonts that you may have bought or obtained from other sites, and to associate a Quikscript name with them. This allows for the names of the separate files containing normal, bold, italic and bold-italic versions of the font to be given if they are available. A file will be created based on the Quikscript name that you give, in which the fonts are identified. This file will be needed within any document that uses your font. In addition, information about the font will be placed in a file "userfont.tab" so that the font may be used on other occasions. If you have a GIF image showing what the font will look like, it can be displayed in the font selector window when the font is clicked upon. It should be given a name based on the Quikscript name such as "Tim.gif" and placed in the directory where Quikscript has been loaded from or in the directory where "qsuserfont.tab" lives, such as your home directory.
[Note: some of the fonts supplied with Qse are copyright, as noted in comments within them. They may be freely used and transmitted as long as the copyright notice within or in an associated file is not modified and is transmitted with the font.]
| Build table of contents | Run Quikscript on the current window contents and capture the contents text defined in %SC%...%EC% strings within the document, along with page number. |
| Build index | Run Quikscript on the current window contents and capture the index text defined in %SI%...%EI% strings within the document, along with page number. |
| Index sort | Treat the current window as a list of index items, with three spaces between the index string and the page number. Sort the window alphabetically, ignoring differences between upper and lower case. Discard any lines that do not contain three spaces. If succeeding lines have the same text before the three spaces, consolidate them into a single index entry with a list of page number references after the three spaces. |
| Convert to HTML | Attempt to convert the file to HTML, reporting problem lines in a window. |
| Convert to PDF | Run Quikscript on the current window contents with a program that will convert the PostScript to Portable Document Format (PDF). Such a file requires a PDF viewer such as Acrobat to view it. It can be converted back to PostScript by Acrobat, and the pages within that file will be independent of each other. The program that does the conversion to PDF should be indicated in Edit/Defaults. |
| Convert to DSC PS | Generate a non-Quikscript PostScript file which complies with the
Document Structuring Conventions. This includes a set of comments within
the document marking where each page starts, allowing display or output
of pages in a random order.
There are two techniques for this conversion. Ghostscript or its variants support conversion to PDF and from PDF back to PostScript. In doing so, the pages generated are independent of one another and comply with DSC. The main advantage of this approach is that it is robust, working with all PostScript files. The disadvantage is that the PostScript file generated can be much larger than the original. It also displays poorly on a screen using a previewer and is slow. The alternative is to use the PostScript distillery which is distributed within Qse. This attempts to generate a new set of PostScript instructions for more simply representing the pages, each one independent of the others. This is not as robust as using PDF as the intermediary, having difficulty dealing with fonts which are embedded within the document (ie. any font not usually supplied in a PostScript printer). The file displays well on the screen, is usually smaller than the original, and runs quickly. |
The Qs user manual is a PDF file (qsuser.pdf), and it will be extracted from Qse.jar into the current directory when you wish to read it. It will not be removed automatically.
-d dir | This gives the name of the directory
in which will be found the Qs program and other associated files.
By default, Qse will use files from the Qse.jar archive file. If a file
is not found there, it will search in the current directory, the parent directory,
the "ps" subdirectory of the parent directory, and By providing a -d option, this directs Qse to look first in the directory specified. |
-t file-name | This gives the name of the file containing instructions
tailoring Qse for the current machine.
The default name for this file is " This file can be created by Qse if you wish. It identifies the name of the PostScript previewer, the command to print a file, the browser to view this and other documentation, and the command to generate an index or table of contents, among other things. |