Nascom News­let­ter

use on the Nascom microcomputer. It can be used on any Nascom 1, 2 or 3 (or the LX) with NAS-SYS and tape or NAS-DOS and discs. A minimum of 32K of user memory is required.

SPEX operates in two modes – command and edit. In command mode a range of instructions is available allowing text data to be loaded, saved, and printed. In the case of discs the directory can also be listed and files may be deleted. In edit mode text can be typed in and corrected. For initial use no specialist knowledge is required – the machine will perform like a normal typewriter. However, in addition to the normal backspace key there are keys to move left, right, up and down the screen, and by positioning the flashing cursor symbol at an appropriate position corrections can simply be typed in. These screen editing facilites are consistent with the normal Nascom screen editor. Further commands are available to allow fast scanning through the text, location of page boundaries, locating and optionally changing each occurrence of a word or phrase, etc.

Instructions can be included in a text file to fix paper and margin widths, and these may be changed at will during entry of the text. Text can be right justified or spread to fill the exact width of paper specified. Facilities are included to allow automatic centring of headings on a page and for making use of bold face printing on printers equipped with this facility.

Printing on paper can be initiated simply by typing PRINT in command mode. Text will be formatted as specified by the width, margin and other commands. Page boundaries are detected automatically, and there 1s an option for stopping at the end of each page (for sheet paper) or continuous printing (for continuous stationery). A new page can be specified if required by a command in the text file. In addition to printing the entire text the print operation can be started from any required point within the text file. Most types of printer can be used with the SPEX program via the interfaces fitted as standard to the Nascom computer

Many optional additional commands are provided to allow page numbering, titling of pages, deletion of blocks of text, moving or duplicating passages within the text, etc. A HELP command is provided to assist the user, and to give access to more specialised controls, such as setting double line spacing for draft documents.

SPEX is an extremely powerful and versatile word processing package, but one which it is also very easy to use. Although tape version is available SPEX will probably be primarily of interest to the disc user, who can load it very quickly. NAS-PEN will continue to be available in EPROM and on disc, and is of course supported by NAS-DOS.