ECHO
                           Version 1.3

                          Gene Pizzetta
                        November 25, 1990


ECHO, based on Carson Wilson's Z34RCP, echoes a text string to 
console or printer.  Escape sequences allow sending any ASCII 
character.

The purpose of ECHO is two-fold:  First, ECHO provides a way of 
sending messages to the console during the execution of a command 
line, alias, or batch operation.  For example:

     echo assembling;
     m80 =$1;
     if input;
          echo linking;
          l80 /p:100,$1,a:syslib/s,$1/n,/e;
     fi

as an alias will print the informative messages of "ASSEMBLING" 
and "LINKING" during the respective phases of the commands.

Secondly, ECHO provides a convenient way of sending escape 
sequences to the CRT and printer.  ECHO does no character 
translation, except as noted below.  Virtually any ASCII 
character can be sent because direct BIOS calls are used and 
because several escape sequences allow sending characters that 
cannot ordinarily be entered on the command line.

USAGE:

     ECHO {text}

If no text is given, no characters are echoed.  (Except that when 
printer output is selected, a carriage return and line feed pair 
is sent at the end of the line.

Text may contain the following escape sequences:

     ^c   Send character c as a control character.  For example, 
          "^Z" sends a control-Z.
     %P   Send following characters to printer.
     %C   Send following characters to console.  (This is usually 
          the default, but ECHO can be configured to default to 
          printer output.)
     %>   Send following characters in lower-case.
     %<   Send following characters in upper-case.  (This is 
          usually the default, but ECHO can be configured to 
          default to lower-case.)
     %^   Send a caret character.
     %D   Send a delete (rubout) character.
     %S   Send a semi-colon character.
     %%   Send a percent character.

If two slashes are the first two non-space characters on the 
command line, a usage message will be displayed.  You can begin 
the text display with two slashes by merely preceding them with 
the per-cent sign escape character:
     ECHO %// THIS LINE BEGINS WITH TWO SLASHES

A semi-colon on the command line signals the end of a command to 
the command processor, so ECHO's text string cannot contain one.  
Use "%S" instead; it will be replaced with a semi-colon on 
output.

If the "%" escape character is followed by "C", "P", "D", "S", 
"<", or ">", the appropriate action will be taken, otherwise the 
following character will merely be echoed as is.

PRINTER OUTPUT:  Printer output varies slightly from console 
output.

If a form feed is sent during printer output ("^L"), ECHO will 
send a carriage return and line feed first, then the form feed 
character.

If a text string ends while ECHO is in printer output mode, a 
final carriage return and linefeed will be added to the string.  
(In console mode a carriage return and line feed is sent by the 
CPR instead.)  If you would rather not have a CR/LF pair sent to 
the printer, put the console output escape sequence ("%C") at the 
end of the string.  For instance, to reset an Epson printer 
without spacing the paper up a line:
     ECHO %P^[@^M%C
This sequence sends ESC and "@", followed by a carriage return 
("^M"), but not a final carriage return/line feed because output 
is redirected to the console.

CONFIGURATION:  Although no configuration is necessary, two 
defaults can be changed using ZCNFG and the ECHOnn.CFG 
configuration file.  If you do not change the name of the CFG 
file, ZCNFG will always be able to find it, even if you change 
the name of ECHO.

Normally ECHO defaults to sending upper-case characters, but 
ZCNFG can be used to set the default to lower-case.  Also, output 
normally defaults to the console, but ECHO can be configured to 
default to the printer.

HISTORY:

Version 1.3 -- November 25, 1990 -- Gene Pizzetta
     Fixed a bug reported by Biff Bueffel that could cause a 
     crash under certain circumstances if no text string was 
     given on the command line.  Added %D escape sequence that 
     sends a DEL (RUB) character, the only character ECHO could 
     not send.  Converted code to Zilog.

Version 1.2 -- October 21, 1990 -- Gene Pizzetta
     I got tired of my aliases not working whenever I got rid of 
     my RCP for more memory.  So I decided to make the transient 
     ECHO compatible with Carson Wilson's Z34RCP.  Most of the 
     code is his, modified as necessary.  The dollar sign ($) for 
     printer output no longer works.  One additional escape 
     sequence has been added: %S sends a semi-colon to printer or 
     screen; there was no other way to send one.  Now properly 
     requires *two* slashes for the help message.  Added type-3 
     safety header.  Added type-4 version.  Configurable with 
     ZCNFG.

RCPECHO for Z34RCP -- Version 1.0 -- June 15, 1988 -- Carson Wilson

Version 1.1 -- September 22, 1987 -- Comeron W. Cotrill

Version 1.0 -- March 22, 1984 -- Richard Conn