The Tame program adds speed and display options for WPDOS| Using Tame: basic techniques | Fine-tuning Tame settings | Fine-tuning Tame display fonts | Tame and the Windows clipboard | Modify Tame's menu | Separate settings for separate shortcuts | Use Tame to display the euro symbol | What Tame looks like | Saving screen images to HTML | Troubleshooting | Help! My keyboard doesn't have a Windows key! | What do "text mode" and "graphics mode" mean? | Home page
Note: This page is an introduction to Tame 6.0, which was available in a slightly unfinished "release candidate" version at the time this page was written. This page discusses only a few of the hundreds of features in Tame 6.0, and I hope to add descriptions of other features in the future.
If you want information on earlier versions of Tame (5.0 or 4.5e), see a separate page on those older versions.
The Tame utility from Tamedos.com is a US$20 program that transforms WPDOS under Windows NT, 2000, and XP so that it runs at the fastest possible speed; displays italics, underline, superscripts, and bold in a DOS window; runs with sharp, clear Windows graphics fonts in full-screen mode; allows copy and paste directly to and from the Windows clipboard; and can change the number of lines and columns in a WPDOS window when you use the mouse to resize the window or choose preset sizes from a menu. It can also perform many other functions that enhance WordPerfect and and other DOS applications.
This is the only third-party software that I recommend without reservation to all users of WPDOS under Windows NT, 2000, or XP. A 30-day free trial version is available for download, and you may prefer to experiment with the program before buying it. After installing Tame 5.0 under Windows XP, I no longer have any reason to run WPDOS under Windows 98. (Tame 5.0 does not run under Windows 95, 98, or Me.)
Why Tame is necessary: WordPerfect and other DOS applications perform slowly when run under Windows NT, 2000, and XP because the DOS-emulation software built into these Windows versions (the VDM or "Virtual DOS Machine") is notoriously badly-written. Among the many problems that afflict DOS software under NT, 2000, and XP are sluggish response to keystrokes, slow scrolling, slow performance in general, and an internal clock that lags behind the clock in Windows, so that the time reported by DOS applications can fall hours behind the time correctly reported by Windows.
Very important installation note for Smartype users: The Tame installation program adds to your Autoexec.nt file a line that loads Tame. If you have followed the instructions for installing Smartype found on this site's medical transcriptionist survival guide, you may already have added a line that loads Smartype (with instructions that include "lh st"). If so, you must now edit your Autoexec.nt file, and move the line that loads Smartype below the line that loads Tame. (Help! I can't find or edit my Autoexec.nt file!) The line that loads Smartype must be at the very end of the Autoexec.nt file.
Note: The Virtual DOS Machine (VDM) in Windows NT, 2000, and XP did not have to be as badly-written as it is. The superb DOS emulator in the old OS/2 operating system (originally a joint project of Microsoft and IBM) was written by a Microsoft engineer, and that engineer was still working for Microsoft at the time when Windows NT was written (and is perhaps still working there now). Microsoft had the resources to make a VDM that would work well, but simply didn't use them.
After installing Tame, simply start your WordPerfect shortcut as you usually do (you may want to press Alt-Enter to make sure that WP is running in a window. Press Alt-Spacebar to open the Tame System menu (or click on the icon at the upper right of the window) and explore some of the options.
Screen font settings: Use View | Primary Font to change the screen font (Lucida Console is probably the best choice; choose a point size comfortable for reading; and see the separate section below for further details). Remember that the font you choose is the font used by Tame to display text; it has absolutely no effect on the font that WPDOS uses for printing! To change the printer font, use Ctrl-F8 in WPDOS.
Cursor settings: Use View | Cursor Options and select any settings you prefer; you can stop the cursor from blinking by removing the checkmark next to Blink Text Cursor. I recommend that you select (add a checkmark to) the two options that hide the text cursor while busy and that hide the mouse cursor while typing. Note that you cannot set the cursor color; the cursor will always be a color that contrasts with the window background color.
Resize the WPDOS window and add rows and columns to the display: Use the mouse to drag the bottom edge of the window to add more lines of type to the WP screen; you can also make the screen wider by dragging the left edge, or resize the screen by dragging a corner; or you can select Size from the Tame system menu and use the cursor to resize the window; press Enter when the window is the size that you prefer.
If you have a wheel mouse, use Ctrl-wheel to resize the window quickly. Shift-wheel changes the number of rows and columns without resizing the window.
Also, with WPDOS, you can use the list of screen sizes in the second column of the menu to select the screen size you prefer, or to switch to Tame's graphic-based full-screen mode. You can also use View | Full-Screen, or simply press the Windows key and Enter (Win+Enter). (Help! My keyboard doesn't have a Windows key!) Note that Alt-Spacebar opens the Tame System menu in full-screen mode just as it does in windowed mode.
Highly recommended technique: Use the System menu to switch to the VGA Portrait screen layout (80 columns by 50 rows) and then press Winkey+Enter to switch to full-screen layout. (If you prefer to work in full-screen by default, use Alt-Spacebar to open the System menu, then choose View | Options | Lock Full-Screen.)
If the WordPerfect screen ever gets "confused" with unwanted characters or other artifacts, press Shift-F3 twice to toggle to another WP window and then back again; this should clear up any problems.
Toggle the Tame status bar: You can turn the status bar on or off by using Alt-Spacebar to open the System menu, then View | Options, or simply press the Windows key and S (Winkey+S). (Help! My keyboard doesn't have a Windows key!)
See the remaining sections on this page for details on further customizations.
For the greatest flexibility with Tame and WPDOS, you must modify some settings files. After running WPDOS at least once with Tame, use Alt-Spacebar to open Tame's system menu; choose User Preference Files | Additional Preferences only for this Application. The file WordPerfect.app.v51.tam (if you are running WPDOS 5.1) or WordPerfect.app.v6.tam (if you are running WPDOS 6.x) opens in your default text editor (typically Notepad.exe), and you can adjust the way Tame works with WPDOS. If you ever want to restore the initial settings, you can find the original version of this file in the C:\Program Files\Tame 6.0\Settings\Templates directory (the original version of WordPefect.app.v6.tam in this folder is named WordPerfect.app.tam)
When editing this or any other Tame settings file you turn options on by removing the "comment" marker ( ;* ) at the beginning of the relevant line; to return to the program's default setting, add the comment marker (or any series of characters that begins with a semi-colon) at the start of the relevant line. Remember that if more than one line controlling the same feature is uncommented, Tame will use the lowest such line in the file.
Read this paragraph and be absolutely certain that you understand it! This section refers only to the fonts that Tame uses to display text on your screen. Font settings in Tame have no effect - I repeat, no effect - on the fonts that WPDOS uses for printing. I will say it yet again: Any change that you make according to these instructions will have absolutely no effect on the font that WPDOS uses for printing. The settings described in this section apply only to the fonts that you see on screen when WPDOS is in its ordinary text mode. Are you absolutely certain that you understand this? Are you really certain you understand it? If so, read on. If not, please study this paragraph until you are absolutely certain that you understand this essential point, and please study the section on "text mode" and "graphics mode" elsewhere on this page.
To change the font that Tame uses for displaying text, press Alt-Spacebar to bring up the Tame system menu (you can use this keystroke even if Tame is in its graphics-based full-screen mode). Choose View | Primary Font, and select the font and point size that you want Tame to display. By default, Tame uses Lucida Console, which works extremely well. If you want to see the same font that you are probably accustomed to seeing in DOS command windows, choose Terminal, and select the 9 point size.
To view bold, italic, underline, and some other font attributes on WPDOS text screens, close WPDOS, then reopen it, and then, before you do anything else, use Alt-Spacebar to bring up Tame's system menu, then choose View | Setup Text Style Colors. Then proceed as follows:
To modify the background pattern that WPDOS 6.x displays (for example) behind messages such as "Spell Check Completed", use Alt-Spacebar to bring up Tame's system menu, choose View | Fill Pattern Characters and choose the pattern that you prefer.
Tame makes it easy to copy and paste text between WPDOS and the Windows clipboard. You can, of course, copy and paste text between WPDOS and Windows applications in the same way that this is done when Tame is not running. With WPDOS open in a window, press Alt-Space, then Edit | Mark Screen Text, and move the cursor to select the text you want to copy; then press Alt-Space again, then Edit | Copy to Clipboard. The copied text can then be pasted into any Windows application. (Note: If, when running Tame, you use Alt-Spacebar, then Edit | Edit Options, and choose Quick Copy, your selected text will be copied to the clipboard as soon as you mark it, without requiring the Edit | Copy to Clipboard action.) To paste text from the Windows clipboard into WordPerfect, use Alt-Spacebar, then Edit | Paste; immediately after "Paste" on the menu will be displayed the first few words of the text that will be pasted.
For copying from WPDOS to the Windows clipboard, I suggest that you install Robert Holmgren's macros for copying, cutting and pasting to and from the Windows clipboard but use only the Copy (and perhaps the Cut) macros, which you can assign to Alt-C (and Alt-X) in your WPDOS keyboard layouts. The advantage of these macros over Tame's method is that the macros allow you to select text using WPDOS's standard blocking method, including text not currently visible on screen. If you use Tame's copying method, you can only copy text that is visible in the current window.
Work-in-progress note: Tame 6.0 includes a feature that lets you paste directly into WordPerfect by pressing a single keystroke. This feature does not work correctly with the current release-candidate version of Tame 6.0, so I have not described it here.
You can add items to the menu that Tame system menu that appears when you use Alt-Spacebar. Begin by using Alt-Spacebar to open the menu; choose User Preference Files | Additional Preferences Only for this Application . The preferences file opens in your default text editor (typically Notepad.exe),
You can modify the WPDOS system menu (Alt-Spacebar) by adding options for changing the size of the screen font. (Note that these changes only apply to the screen font, not to the printer fonts.) Find the section of the file that begins "; Add some screen layouts", and then move your cursor to the blank line after "/MacroDef id="_Configure W&P Colors for Font Display" Menu=1 ". Press Enter once or twice to add some blank lines, and insert the following text in the file (use Windows' copy and paste function):
; Add some standard text sizes to the context menu
/MacroDef id="_sep_scfont" Menu=#1
/MacroDef id= "Text Size 1&0 pt" Menu=#1 Options="/TameConsole TextHeight = 10
TextWidth = 0"
/MacroDef id= "Text Size 1&1 pt" Menu=#1 Options="/TameConsole TextHeight = 11
TextWidth = 0"
/MacroDef id= "Text Size 1&2 pt" Menu=#1 Options="/TameConsole TextHeight = 12
TextWidth = 0"
Note in the above that the character that follows an ampersand (&) will be underlined on the menu and used as an accelerator key. You can add a separator line above any menu item by adding an underscore character (_) immediately after the opening quotation mark immediately after id=.
Tame can save separate settings files for use with individual shortcuts. This means that you can create multiple shortcuts (or Start Menu items) for running WPDOS, each with different Tame settings. These files are stored in your "My Documents" folder, inside the Tame folder. You can create a shortcut options file as follows: copy your existing WPDOS shortcut, and give the new copy a distinctive name; then launch WPDOS from the shortcut, and use Alt-Spacebar to open the System menu, and choose User Preference Files | Options Specific to this Shortcut. The newly-created options file will open in Notepad (or whatever program is set up on your system to edit plain text files); you do not need to change it; simply close Notepad (or whatever program opens the file). You can make changes in the file at any time.
For example, if you want to run WPDOS in monochrome, add this line to the top of its shortcut options file:
/System SetVideoMode = 7
(note that this works well only if you run WPDOS in full-screen mode).
Tame can send keystrokes to a program when it opens. For example, if you use WPDOS 6.x with its top-line menu, you could have the current date inserted at the top of a file when you launch WP by adding this line to a Tame shortcut options file:
/SendInput alt="T" text="d" ENTER
Tame provides a much simpler method of displaying the euro symbol in WPDOS than those described on this site's euro page. To display the euro on screen in WPDOS, when using the graphics-based Tame console, do the following:
(1) Using the methods on this site's euro page, choose one or more methods of printing the euro symbol. Users of WPDOS 6.x should begin with method (1) on the euro page and perhaps also use method (2) or some other method; users of WPDOS 6.x whould consider methods (2) and (7) and perhaps others as appropriate. When you are absolutely certain that you can print the euro symbol from WPDOS, proceed with the following steps.
(2) Use Alt-Spacebar to open Tame's System menu and choose Tame Setting Files | Edit Application Settings. When the file C:\Program Files\Tame\Settings\WordPerfect.app.tam opens in your default text editor (typically Notepad.exe), search for the words "euro symbol"; find a line below it that begins like this:
;; /CharDisplay DisplayUnicode=#20AC Match=#80
Remove the semi-colors from the start of the line to "uncomment" the line and make it active, and change #80 to #FF, so that the line looks like this (remember: the semi-colons have been removed, and #80 has been changed to #FF):
/CharDisplay DisplayUnicode=#20AC Match=#FF
Save the file. Do not exit WPDOS.
(3) In WPDOS, create a file that you will save in your WP program directory (typically C:\WP51 or C:\WP61 or some similar name) with the name WP9999.WCP. The file should contain only the following line (the number 255 followed by a space followed by 4-comma-72):
255 4,72
Save the file. Exit WPDOS.
(4) Modify the desktop shortcut that runs WP so that the Cmd line field on the Program tab includes this command-line switch (which can be added to any other command-line switches that follow WP.COM or WP.EXE):
/cp=9999
This switch can also be added to a batch file that runs WPDOS, or to any other setting that applies when WPDOS is started.
(5) Launch WPDOS from the shortcut that you modified in the preceding step. When you type WP character 4,72 (using any keyboard shortcut to which 4,72 has been assigned), the euro should appear on screen, and, if you performed step (1) correctly, it should print when you print your document.
This is an example what WPDOS looks like under Tame. The screen font shown here is the Tame default font, Lucida Console, although this can be changed to any other Windows font; monospaced fonts produce the best results. Note that although Lucida Console is the screen font, the printer font (in this case, Times New Roman) is not the same as the screen font, and has no relation at all to the screen font.
Unlike standard screen-capture programs that save images of the screen in graphics formats, Tame can save "screen shots" (images of the current screen) in the form of HTML files. This provides many advantages. HTML files are much smaller than graphics images; text in the screen image can be searched with a browser's Find function; and spelling and other typographic errors in the text on screen can be corrected by editing the HTML code. Tame's HTML screen-captures can be used in training material, tutorials, and many other purposes.
Before capturing a screen image in Tame, first set HTML as the default format for saved files; use Alt-Spacebar to open Tame's System menu, then Edit | Screen Capture Options | Save File Options, and choose HTML. Then, to save a screen image as an HTML file, use Edit | Save to a File; you will be prompted for a filename and location.
If you experience a problem with Tame, you may write to support{-at-}tamedos{-dot-}com to report the problem. Be sure to include a "trace" file that records essential information about Tame's operation. To create a trace file with Tame 6.0, use Alt-Space (or the upper-left-hand icon), then Admin and Diagnostics, then Trace Diagnostic Information for This Session. After you close WPDOS, you can find the trace file in the folder C:\Program Files\Tame 6.0\LogFiles; the file will have a name that resembles WP-1111.TraceRing.tdt (with a different number and possibly different letters at the beginning of the name). Attach this file to the e-mail that you send to the support address; if you know how to compress a file into a ZIP archive, compress the trace file into a ZIP in order to save space, and send the ZIP file that contains the trace file.
Note: If an application will not even open with Tame installed, you will not be able to use the instructions above to create a trace file. Instead, go to C:\Program Files\Tame 6.0\Settings and use Notepad to edit the Tame.ini file. Find the section headed "Log files and diagnostics"; in that section, find the line that reads "; Trace Startup = T"; remove the opening semi-colon and space; save the file. (Be careful: do not change the similar line near the end of the file, in the section headed "shortcut-specific values"; change the line in the section headed "Log files and diagnostics"!!) Tame will now automatically save a trace file. When you have the trace file that you need, edit the Tame.ini file again and put back the semi-colon and space at the beginning of the "Trace Startup = T" line.
Some keyboards (and almost all the best ones) lack the "Win" (or Windows) key generally found between the left Ctrl and left Alt keys. When you press the Win key, the Start menu opens; if you do not have a Win key, you can press Ctrl-Esc to bring up the Start menu, but Ctrl-Esc cannot be used together with other Win key combinations such as Win+D to open the desktop, Win+E to open My Computer, Win+M to minimize all windows, and other combinations.
Fortunately, you can use a keyboard-remapping utility to make another key perform the function of the Win key; I use Scroll Lock for this purpose. To remap keys, I use TradeKeys from PC Magazine; this utility must be purchased, but freeware alternatives are available (for example, SharpKeys). To map Scroll Lock to the Win key in TradeKeys, choose Scroll Lock in the "Map from" list and Left Windows in the "Map to" list; click on Map, then OK, and either restart Windows or log out and log in again.
WordPerfect for DOS can appear in a number of different modes. If you do not understand what is meant by WordPerfect's "text mode" and "graphics mode," or by the "windowed" and "full-screen" modes that WP can use under Microsoft Windows, click on the following links for illustrations:
This is WordPerfect's Text Mode running in a window under Microsoft Windows.
This is WordPerfect's Text Mode running full-screen so that nothing else is visible on screen (as it appeared under MS-DOS).
This is an example WordPerfect's Graphics mode (in this instance, WPDOS 5.1 Print Preview).
