Psion Knowhow

Installed applications

Agenda

• Information on this wiki

Word

• Reflowing text

Q:

Is there a way to reflow the text in PsionWord doc or in a text
file? I frequently get large texts via email in this format:

"Government statistics released Thursday showed
that applications for unemployment benefits declined
last week, further evidence that the labor market
remains strong. The Labor Department said claims
declined by 1,000, to 309,000."

I would, however, prefer to get rid of the excess carriage returns and
have the text flow freely like this:

"Government statistics released Thursday showed that applications for
unemployment benefits declined last week, further evidence that the labor
market remains strong. The Labor Department said claims declined by
1,000, to 309,000."

WordSmith for Palm has a "reflow" command that does this automatically
- any idea how I could do it on a Psion, without having to manually
delete all the carriage returns (except the ones signifying the end of
a paragraph)? This problem has really got me stumped.

»»

A:

There is a macro that can help with the reflow problem. It's to be used
with Macro5, a very valuable macro utility.

The macro's .opo is called TildeChangeToReturn.opo - source unknown. Chris
Cooper can email it to you - alternatively, the corresponding .opl procedure
is listed below.

You use it like this:

1) To make things clearer, display the carriage-return control characters in
your text by pressing Control-K and selecting "Show paragraph ends". (This
step is not essential.) You'll see single carriage-return characters at the
end of each line, and multiple carriage-return characters between one
paragraph and the next.

2) Search your text and replace the multiple carriage returns with a tilde
("~"). Do it like this:
- Go to the beginning of the second paragraph, hold down Shift and press
Left-arrow repeatedly, until you've highlighted the two or more
carriage-return control characters between the first and second paragraphs.
- Press Control-H. The carriage-return control characters are In the "Search
for" field - only they're invisible!
- Enter a tilde in the "Replace with" field. Then Replace-all in the usual
way. You now have single tildes separating the paragraphs.

3) Search your text and replace the carriage returns at the ends of lines
with spaces. Do it like this:
- Go to the beginning of the second line, hold down Shift and press
Left-arrow once, so that you highlight the single carriage-return control
character at the end of the first line.
- Press Control-H. The carriage-return control character is now In the
"Search for" field - invisible again.
- Enter a space in the "Replace with" field. Then Replace-all in the usual
way. All carriage returns have now disappeared - you have to restore the
ones that have been replaced by tildes.

4) Using Macro5, run TildeChangeToReturn.opo. The tildes should disappear
and each should be replaced by two or more carriage returns to break the text into
paragraphs.

5) You may have some surplus spaces at the former line ends. If so, remove
them by search-and-replace.

Here is the TildeChangeToReturn.opl procedure below corresponding to the .opo. It's easy
to replace the tilde by some other character if you want to for any reason.

- - -

PROC Macro:
LOCAL S$(1)
WHILE 1
SendKey:("Ctrl+f")
SendKey:("~")
SendKey:("Enter")
S$=""
S$=Copy$:
IF S$<>"~"
BREAK
ENDIF
SendKey:("Enter")
SendKey:("Enter")
ENDWH
ENDP

- - -

Third-party software

* CronTab
* TimeLog

Storage Issues

CompactFlash

Question: when removing a CompactFlash card from the Psion, the following error is displayed. What is going on?

Program: AppArcServerThread
Reason code: E32USER-CBase
Reason number: 21

Answer: This is a nuisance rather than a menace. No data is lost in this particular case. It is related to the \System\Recogs folder. For one reason or another, EPOC gets upset if a CompactFlash card is removed that has files in this folder. The solution is to move any files in D:\System\Recogs or E:\System\Recogs to C:\System\Recogs instead.

Repairs and supplies

• Connectivity
  • 5mx and Internet

• A good way to connect a 5mx to the internet is an infra-red to ethernet device; we have a clarinet ethir-lan machine we got off ebay; there are others. It plugs into your router or wireless base station with an ethernet cable, and then has an IR eye that the psion can use to connect to the network.

• • 5mx and Mac

* For connecting to a mac, you can use a USB-serial adapter (not all work) and the programme 'Java Psion Link', or just have a dedicated CF card that swaps between the psion and mac. (it might cause problems if you load your usual CF, full of hidden system files, onto the mac)