Robert J. Sawyer
sawyer@sfwriter.com

On Wednesday, August 1, 2018, a WordStar user asked me how to 
select A4 paper.  Here's what I had to say:

The short answer for WordStar for DOS 7.0 is this: issue ^OY 
(which brings up WordStar's "Page Layout" dialog), then select 
the paper bin you want from the drop-down menu.  (WordStar 6.
0 and below do not have the ^OY menu; some of the same features 
can be found in those versions on the ^OR menu.)

In the absence of any dot commands in a file, WordStar get its 
page-sizing defaults from WSCHANGE menu D,A,A, the "Page Sizing 
and Margins" menu.

The long answer:

WordStar uses the "paper bin" dot command, .bn#, where # is an 
integer, to specify the paper source for the printer.  The actual 
printer-control selection screens are set (and modifiable) in the 
WordStar .pdf file:

From the PDFEDIT main menu, select "Additional modification," 
then "Sheet Feeder Tray Definitions."  

The order in which the sheet-feeder trays are listed is the order 
of their .bn numbers.  The first tray defined is selected 
with .bn1, the second with .bn2, and so on.  

  Cassette Ltr    .bn1
  Manual Ltr      .bn2
  Cassette Lgl    .bn3
  Manual Lgl      .bn4
  Cassette A4     .bn5
  Manual A4       .bn6
  Cassette Exec   .bn7
  Manual Exec     .bn8
  Manual Com-10   .bn9
  Manual Monarch  .bn10
  Manual DL       .bn11
  Manual C5       .bn12
  
You can get a simple point-and-shoot menu of all your paper bins 
on WordStar's "Page Layout" menu, ^OY -- choosing a bin by its 
name simply inserts the appropriate .bn command.

(The huge problem with this is that if "Manual A4" happens to 
be .bn6, as it is here, in one PDF but .bn5 in another, changing 
PDFs screws things up.)

Within the WordStar editor, on that same ^OY menu I mentioned 
above you can also select either portrait or landscape mode, 
which inserts WordStar's miscellaneous printer .pr command with 
the appropriate argument, either "or=p" for orientation is 
portrait or "or=l" for orientation is landscape:

  .pr or=p
  .pr or=l

But .bn only selects the source of the paper.  WS.EXE is still 
blissfully ignorant of the actual page dimensions.  So, you have 
to set page length within the file (if different from the 
default, which is 11" -- I'll tell you below how to change the 
default) with the page-length .pl command.  A4 paper measures 
8.27x11.69" or 211x297 mm, so you'd set:

  .pl 11.69"

You can also use the letter i (upper or lowercase) instead of the 
double quote to indicates inches; WordStar also recognizes c for 
centimeters, p for points, and r for "ruler units" which are 
1/10th of an inch (a column's width in Courier 10-pitch / 12-
point) when used for a horizontal measures or 1/6th of an inch 
(default six-lines-per-inch line height) when used for a vertical 
measures.

Any of these will do the trick for A4 paper:

  .pl 11.69"
  .pl 11.69i
  .pl 11.69I
  .pl 29.7c
  .pl 116.9r
  .pl 841.68p

(My own preference is to always use lowercase i for the in inches 
indicator; that way, I know when searching for the double 
quotation mark, I'm always finding dialog and not a dot command.)

On that same ^OY "Page Layout" screen, you can adjust all paper 
margins.  However, WordStar's printer technology predates laser 
printers, which have a dead zone at all four margins (areas where 
the printer simply can't print).  WordStar is blissfully ignorant 
of these, so if you want the first character on a laser printed 
sheet to be one inch from the edge, you have to mentally subtract 
the .3" deadzone on the left side, and use this "page offset" .po 
command:  .po .7"

You'll also want to set an appropriate right margin; the "Ruler 
Line" menu is accessed with either ^OR or ^OL.

For A4, which is 8.27" wide, rather than the 8.50" of letter-
sized paper, if I wanted one-inch left and right blank space, I'd 
use:

  .rm 6.27"

Actually, WordStar solves all dot commands as equations, so you 
can type the actual page width minus the blank space you want on 
the left minus the blank space you want on the right:

  .rm 8.27-1-1i 

which resolves to 6.27i.

Side note; WordStar assumes all logical statements in dot 
commands are true while editing; it doesn't evaluate logic until 
print time.  So you can use that to have one set of conditions 
while editing and another at print time.  The .if "IF" and .ei 
"END IF" dot commands let you do cool stuff like have a ragged-
right margin while editing but fully justified text when printed 
(.oj is the "output justification" dot command):


 .oj on   <-- condition you want at print time
 .if 1=0  
 .oj off  <-- condition you want onscreen while editing
 .ei


The one place where WordStar can automatically take into account 
the printing deadzone is Advanced Page Preview.  In your Advanced 
Page Preview folder there is a file called FONTID.CTL where you 
can set a TOP_OFFSET and a LEFT_OFFSET value.  For laser 
printers, I leave me TOP_OFFSET blank:

   TOP_OFFSET=

and set 0.3" as 216/720th of an inch thus:

   LEFT_OFFSET=216

LaserJet III and below had smaller offests.  Use a LEFT_OFFSET 
value of 144 for LaserJet II or a value of 180 for LaserJet III 
and IIP.

Good luck!