STAR4WIN CONFIGURATION

Rather than keeping configuration parameters in the Windows registry, Star4Win keeps them in a special initialization file called config.str. This file may contain both information needed for StarLing (most of which is ignored by Star4Win) and for Star4Win (most of which is ignored by StarLing). config.str is an ASCII file which can be edited by any text editor, including STAR4WIN itself. However, since the file contains many special and control characters, different text editors may handle them in different ways. A general recommendation for those who wish to modify their config.str file is: use the DOS version of STARLING (starling.exe or realstar.exe) to do that. This guarantees the safest processing of various control codes.

config.str consists of lines with the general structure:

Every time Star4Win is initialized it reads the configuration parameters from config.str. Different configuration files may be stored in different folders (directories), and Star4Win first loads its inner default parameters, next corrects them according to the config.str which is stored in its home folder (the folder where the program star32.exe is located), and finally corrects them according to the config.str which it may find in the current directory.

By now the following parameters are valid:

AUTOSAVE

Specifies the time (in seconds) before making a backup copy of the text file edited, e.g.: AUTOSAVE = 300 (the default setting). So far the backup copy is stored in the same folder with the same name as the edited file but preceded and followed by #.

CJK_FONT

Specifies the name and parameters of a Unicode CJK (Chinese/Japanese/Korean) font. The format of this line is like this: CJK_FONT = 1, big5.tbl, UWCXMF (Big5), BIG524.dbf, Big5 Here 1 is the number of the font (from 1 to 7), corresponding to the respective number of the StarLing font (in this case big524.chr); big5.tbl is the name of the encoding file translating Big5 codes to Unicode and vice versa; UWCXMF (Big5) is the name of the Unicode font containing Chinese characters; BIG524.dbf is the database file containing Chinese readings; Big5 is the encoding parameter.
You may use up to 7 CJK fonts with STAR4WIN. The standard CJK package (starcjk.exe) contains fonts for Big5 (Traditional non-simplified Chinese characters), GB (the Beijing simplified Chinese characters) and JIS (Japanese characters).

CONSULTn

E.g.: CONSULT1 = database1
CONSULT2 = database2, field1
CONSULT3 = database2, field3 Lines like this will enable you to search for the word under cursor by pressing Shift F1 - in the database1, by pressing Shift F2 - in the field field1 of the database database2, etc. Note that if you specify a particular field it requires that the database should be sorted on this field - otherwise search results will be incorrect. If you do not specify any field the search will be performed on the whole database, and may be continued by pressing, as usual, F4.

DICTIONARY

Specifies the location of Russian and English dictionary files (Z_... and M_...).
Example: DICTIONARY = C:\STAR\DICT

EXTRACT

Specifies the sequence of comma-delimited characters (or sequences of characters) that will be ignored during search, sort and index procedures, as well as within the ALIKE() function.
Example: EXTRACT = ´,°,¯

FONTSIZEMAX

Specifies the standard font size in points.
Example: FONTSIZEMAX = 12 If this parameter is not specified, the default font size is 10 points.

FONTSIZEMIN

Specifies the condensed (small) font size in points.
Example: FONTSIZEMIN = 10 If this parameter is not specified, the default condensed font size is 8 points.

KEYBOARD

Specifies the name of the file containing current keyboard settings. Provided with the system is a file called keyboard.dbf. It is in fact a database file, containing the following fields: LEFTSHIFT, RIGHTSHIFT, ALT, CTRL, ALT1LS, ALT1RS, ALT1ALT, ALT1CT etc. (up to ALT5CT). This means that you can configure as many as six keyboard registers, and within each of them you can switch between four subregisters by pressing left Shift, right Shift, Alt or Ctrl keys. Switching between 6 main registers is done by simultaneously pressing Alt and figure keys (Alt 1, Alt 2... etc.); returning to the default register is done by pressing Alt 0.
Note that it is possible to program any single key for a string of any length (not just a single letter). The length of a string is confined only by the length of fields in keyboard.dbf (by default - 6 letters maximum). If you are experienced enough in database handling, you may modify the structure of keyboard.dbf so as to meet your requirements.
You may devise your own alternative keyboard definition files and enter their names in the config.str as follows: KEYBOARD = MYNAME.KBD
Example: KEYBOARD = C:\STAR\KEYBOARD.STR

NUMERIC

NUMERIC = ON lets the system show all numeric fields. NUMERIC = OFF hides them all.

ORDER

Specifies the string of letters regulating alphabetic order for the ORDER() function.
If you want, e.g., to make the letter b immediately follow the letter c, just place b immediately after c in this string and delete b in its original place. After that, when you will sort or index your database files using the ORDER() function, your data will be automatically positioned in the specified alphabetic order.
See the description of the ORDER() function to learn more about sorting in Star4Win.
Example: ORDER = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ€�aƒ„…bcˆ‰Š...."

RATE

Specifies the t replacement rate for glottochronological calculations (the default value is 0.05).

SYSCOLORS

SYSCOLORS = ON (default setting) lets the program use the current system color set. The setting SYSCOLORS = OFF allows the user to choose his own color set.

TOOLBAR

TOOLBAR = ON (default setting) makes the toolbar visible. TOOLBAR = OFF turns it off.

VARWIDTH

Specifies the width of variable fields used in INDEXing, SORTing and LISTing procedures. Increasing this figure will increase the precision of indexing but will also increase the size of index (.ntx) files.
Example: VARWIDTH = 10

WINFONT

Specifies the name of a TrueType Windows font used in Star4Win.
Star4Win is constantly converting the default StarLing encoding into the encoding used in Windows fonts and vice versa. Therefore for every TrueType font a special file with the extension LST (which can be edited like any text file) is used.
The main font is introduced by the line: WINFONT = c:/star/convert/standard.lst, Times New Roman Star, Lucida Console Star
Here standard.lst is the name of an auxiliary file with a recoding table from DOS STARLING format into STAR4WIN and vice versa; Times New Roman Star is the basic font file (used in the default "graphic" mode), Lucida Console Star is the font used in "text" mode.
Other fonts may be also introduced on separate lines as follows:
WINFONT = c:/star/convert/arab.lst, PersianNaskh Star
WINFONT = c:/star/convert/greek.lst, GreekMousa Star Note that the main font can be a Unicode font. You may, for example, use the file arial.lst (provided in the setup package), specially shaped for the Arial Unicode MS font. Additional fonts (for the time being) are symbol fonts containing a maximum of 256 characters each - although we plan to adjust them for Unicode as well in the nearest future.

The FUNCTION and MACRO parameters of StarLing are not yet included into Star4Win, due to certain Windows keyboard restrictions, but may become available later.

The following parameters are obsolete, because of a complete change in the output system of Star4Win: COLOR, GRFILE, GRFILE2, GRFONT, HIGHDIA, HYPHENATE, LOWDIA, MEMOWIDTH, OFFSET, PRFILE, RESIZE, SCROLL, STARKEYS, TABULATION, TEXTMODE, TEXTROWS, TFONT, VIDEOMODE.