FUNCTION-KEY MODE

by Jeffrey Sweeting

from Your Sinclair, April 1990



[The program crashes if the EDIT key is used ]

[after a function key has been selected. JimG]



Have you ever looked at that mysterious row of keys marked F1 to F10

on flashy, expensive computers and wondered what they do? Have you

ever wished you had some, whatever they are? Well, pine no longer.

Jeffrey Sweeting, a veteran YS reader (two years no less), has come up

with a solution.



Function keys are what it's all about. They're a rather useful breed

of key which can be pre-programmed to do what you want, rather than

being restricted to printing up boring single letters and numbers.

Obviously the Speccy's a bit lacking in this department, so Jeff's had

to make its normal keys double up as function keys too.



Once the program's been typed in and run, pressing Symbol Shift and

Space together will give you a new 'F' mode, with its own cursor. Once

you've done this, prodding a letter or number key will call up one of

your pre-programmed definitions. These are strings of characters - up

to 7,000 each, if you've got a couple of days to spare.



The program has a built-in key programmer, and is well documented, so

you should be able to see what's what. Just type it in and off you go.