Mary Bernard's Customization and Programming Notes

One of the delights of NB is that it can be endlessly customized. The first three DOS versions of the program had sections on programming and keyboard customizations in the manuals. They were left out of the version 4 manual, but a long-standing NB user, Tony Woozley, filled the gap by writing a lucid and elegant Customization and Programming Guide (the CPG). It covered every aspect of keyboard customization and programming in Nota Bene's native programming language, XPL.

That was in 1994. The next edition of Nota Bene was for Windows, not DOS. NB still retained, and retains, a great deal of its XPL core, but the CPG was not updated until April, 2006. As a result, few Notabenieri now write or even use XPL programs. This is a great pity. Few programs of Nota Bene's maturity and complexity can be extensively programmed by their users. Nota Bene can. This section is written in the hope that more people will start using this wonderful capacity, and download the revised Customization and Programming Guide.

Disclaimer

These notes are provided by me, not by Nota Bene Associates, Inc. They have kindly allowed me to include them in the Help file, but Nota Bene Technical support cannot help with user programs or keyboard definitions that aren't working. If you need help, ask on the NB user list. For details on how to join, see Resources.

If you intend to try any of the suggestions below (or on the linked websites), you should have enough experience with computers not to be too fazed by program and/or computer crashes. They will almost certainly happen as you write and test XPL programs—they happen to everyone who tinkers with programming.

Back Up Before Customizing!

Before you do any customization whatever, back up. Back up your data files before running programs on them; back up your keyboard file before editing it. This is of paramount importance. It is very easy to make a slip while customizing a keyboard. NB may then load an ancient default keyboard with important keys in bewildering places.

It is even more important to back up your data files before running a user program, whether you've written it yourself or downloaded it from another user or the users' website. Programs that work on one system don't always work on another. Programs you write yourself almost always have mistakes at first. Usually they just don't run. But some mistakes can swallow data: the file on which you want the user program to work, or possibly some other file or files. And mistakes often cause NB to lock up. So save and back up before you begin playing with programs.