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The Last Word 3.0 Reference Manual
12-75
Although I’d always considered version 2.1 of LW the “final” version, people soon
came up with new things they’d like to see included in the program. Far and away top
of the list was support for 80 column displays (including devices such as XEP-80 and
VBXE). I was reluctant to try this, not least because I didn’t have access to the
necessary hardware and emulator support for XEP-80 and VBXE was limited at the
time. The only alternative was to attempt a software 80 column display driver, which is
was hesitant to do since I couldn’t see it being fast enough. However, after some
discussion with Claus Bucholz and having borrowed some ideas from his Ace-80
display driver, I figured out something that worked with similarly impressive speed. Key
to the efficiency of the 80 column display is the way in which it only redraws those
areas of the screen which have changed following edits. It also uses a dynamic display
list to handle scrolling.
The original intention was to have two separate versions of the program: one which
worked in 80 columns and another which worked in 40 columns. However, not only did
it soon become difficult to synchronise the development of two different versions of the
program, but an easy way became apparent to switch between the two display modes.
Thereafter, LW had a dual display and to my knowledge is the only Atari 8-bit word
processor capable of switching from a 40 to an 80 column display and back again at
any time, and without any hardware add-ons, and without changing the cursor position
in the current document.
A side-effect of the 80 column display was an increased memory footprint, which
necessitated the positioning of 14K of the program code under the Atari’s Operating
System ROM. This meant the program was no longer compatible with DOS XE and
disk-based versions of SpartaDOS. However, this change also allowed for extra
features to be added to the program, and during the first half of 2009 most of the
program was revamped and support was added for long SpartaDOS time/date
stamped filenames on the disk menu, and for splitting large files across text banks.
One of the most important enhancements to the program was the font collection
designed by Paul Fisher. This large selection of matching 80 and 40 column font pairs,
specially created for LW, together with the new title screen and product logo, lent the
program an even more professional edge and elevated the quality of the product
beyond all expectations. Paul’s contribution to the design side of The Last Word 3.0
cannot be overestimated, and I hope to make use of his considerable flair and skill in
future projects.
In June 2009, having up until then developed the program entirely using my own
XEDIT text editor and MA65 Macro Assembler – initially on real hardware and latterly
under emulation on the PC – I migrated to the ATASM cross-compiler and the newly
released WUDSN integrated development environment. Fond as I was of using my
own Atari-based development tools, there was no doubt that developing under
WUDSN more than doubled my productivity, and by mid October 2009 The Last Word
3.0 (now almost 32K in size) was at last ready for release.
The Last Word would never have seen the light of day If it wasn’t for the
encouragement and help I’ve received from members of the Atari community in
Europe and the United States. Special thanks must go to Paul Fisher and Konrad
Kokoszkiewicz, without whom the completion of the program as it stands would have
been impossible. I must also thank all the beta testers who spent time reporting bugs
and making suggestions on the AtariAge forums; thanks to Sebastian Bartkowicz and
Cabell Clarke for help with SpartaDOS, and to Claus Bucholz for the source code and
inspiration provided by Ace-80, Marcin Prusisz for SIO2SD and SIO2IDE, and to Mark
Grebe for his continued improvements to the Atari800MacX emulator.