Meet Manuscript. (Lotus' new document processor)

MEET MANUSCRIPT If you're involved in the preparation of long documents, such as reports, business plans, technical specifications, or manuals; if you need to include 1-2-3 or Symphony spreadsheets, graphs, or data in documents; or if the documents you write go through countless review and revision cycles, Manuscript may be able to ease your work load. While you can write memos and letters with Manuscript, what separates it from other word processors is the way it handles long documents divided into sections and subsections. This article describes some of the procedures for creating such a document in Manuscript.

WORKING WITH MANUSCRIPT

Manuscript's commands and menus will be familiar to 1-2-3 and Symphony veterans since the program incorporates Lotus-like menu structures and prompts. It also makes use of function keys, assigning two commands to each key. Once you select a Manuscript command, one of three things occurs: The procedure is completed automatically, a prompt appears, or a checklist panel or menu appears. Prompts provide information on commands and appear at the top of the screen. In some cases, a command checklist, a panel, or a menu may appear, indicating additional command options. Manuscript also has special commands that are preceded and followed by a backslash () character. These commands are used to embed information in a document (such as the current date) or to provide formatting control (for example, inserting a specific amount of white space on a page).

Manuscript has two operating modes. You use its unstructured mode for creating memos, letters, and other short documents. Its structured mode is used when composing outlines and long documents made up of sections and subsections. All of Manuscript's editing, formatting, and printing capabilities are available in each mode. In the unstructured mode, you work with text blocks. In the structured mode, you work with sections and subsections of text, each of which have headline blocks (with the section title or headline) and text blocks. Each section is assigned a level. A main topic is a level 1 section, a …