From: WALSHJ@SJUVM.BITNET (Jerry Walsh)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.notabene
Subject: misc
Date: 16 Oct 92 00:30:37 GMT
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU

A warning, a discovery? and a couple of queries...
The warning:  RE: VIDEO MEMORY AND NB.
    A week or so ago I mentioned a shareware program, ADDMEM, that makes
use of idle memory on the EGA/VGA video card when you are in text mode,
and said that the program warned against trying to use it with programs
in graphics mode.  It has worked swimmingly with my NB3.1, but I did not
test it with SLS because I was told (2 or 3 years ago, when I ordered
NB) that Lingua would be out in 6 weeks, so don't bother learning SLS.
Now that I have NB4+Lingua, I have discovered that Lingua is not happy
with ADDMEM.  Not happy at all...  Red button time.  In short, unless
you stay in absolutely vanilla NB4, don't use ADDMEM.  Since it seems
to be easy to switch from Lingua to monolingual mode within NB4 itself,
the risk of forgetting that ADDMEM is loaded, switching, and crashing
is too great for me.

Which leads to the dubious discovery:  SWITCHING MULTI to MONO-LINGUAL.
I seem to remember someone asking a week or so ago if it was possible
to switch between Lingua and monolingual mode easily.  I think the
answer is yes:  F1 => Set => Symbol sets     offers you a menu of four
options.  The first is NBLingua, the second is ASCII (a vanilla form),
the third is ASCII with true italics, the fourth is ASCII with super-
scripts.  (These options refer to screen fonts.)  I've had fun playing
with these, because you can set up the color palettes and print mode,
window, and block colors differently for each option.  (If it's puce,
it must be Lingua|)

Now the queries.  When I installed NB4 and Lingua last night in my
late-night stupor, it worked find.  Hebrew inserted into English text
pushed the characters to the left, as it should.  Today, it doesn't.
Yes, I'm in Lingua (it's puce...), yes, the proper screen fonts seem
to be installed:  I get the Lingua-specific transliterated diacritics
(aleph and ayin, shin, underdots, etc.), I get Hebrew and Greek fonts
onscreen, including Hebrew vowels (though I didn't try vocalized con-
sonants).  Yes, I get the "H" indicator when I hit Ctrl-H.  But the
Hebrew text enters left-to-right.  What am I forgetting to do now
that it's daytime and I'm alert?

Second query.  Much has been said about having to "activate" a Lingua
printer independently of your "activated" NB4 printer.  Yet in the
copious documentation we have, the procedure is identical on the NB
QuickStart Card and on the NB Lingua QuickStart Card (F1 => Print =>
Printer => Activate).  How does one "activate" a Lingua printer?  The
question arises because I have followed the stated procedure in both
vanilla ASCII mode and in NB Lingua mode (under the Symbol sets
options) to activate a TIOmnilaser 2115.  When I check the "activate
printer" menu in Lingua, it tells me the TIOmnilaser 2115 is activa-
ted.  Then when I check the available Print Types (still in Lingua)
I'm given a list of all the typefaces in the TIOmnilaser (Palatino,
Zapf Chancery, etc.), yet it is my understanding that only Times
Roman is actually supported by Lingua.  I'm confused.  (But that's
nothing new...)                        Jerry Walsh