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1994-09-01
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T-Pack v1.0
Copyright 1994, Sergey Polak
DISCLAIMER
This program and other files associated with it are NOT
guaranteed to be bug free or virus free. I am not responsible for
damages of any kind, including profit losses and data losses, that
relate directly or indirectly to these programs and files.
DISTRIBUTION OF THE PROGRAM
You are free to distribute the program as long as you include
all the files in the archive in their original format.
WHAT IS T-PACK?
T-Pack is a handy-dandy little program that'll pack your
Telegard 2.7 message bases. It is intended as a replacement for
both the internal Telegard packer (which is said to be unreliable)
and for the MSGPACK program from the Telegard Sysop Utilities
package.
REQUIREMENTS
In order for T-Pack to run you must have:
- DOS 3.3 or above or a compatible operating system
- Telegard 2.7
- At least 100k of conventional (under 640K) memory free (the
more, the better)
FEATURES
Powerful message base selection commands allow you to select
all message bases for packing, select bases by giving the
program a list of message base numbers, a range or a
combination of the above.
T-Pack can be significantly faster than MSGPACK on certain
systems.
T-Pack has the ability to fix damaged message bases,
preventing Telegard from aborting with a run-time error.
If you want to know which bases were packed, which were not,
and whether there were any problems, T-Pack can keep a log for
you.
T-Pack has a colorful screen that keeps you informed of the
current status of the program. All colors are user-
configurable.
HOW TO USE T-PACK
There is one configuration file associated with T-Pack --
T-PACK.CLR If that file is present in the CURRENT DIRECTORY,
T-Pack will load its color configuration from the file. Use it
only if you wish to change the default colors.
T-PACK.CLR should be a simple ASCII file containing one number
per line. The number specifies the new value for the color, and
the line number is the color number (the part of the screen it
applies to). Any line beginning with a semicolon ; is ignored and
not included in the count. Valid values for the colors are 0 to
31. A value of 99 tells T-Pack to use the default color. Any
other value will be treated as an error. See T-PACK.SAM for the
list of color numbers, their default values and the meanings of the
color values.
To run T-Pack, simply call the program in the following
format:
T-PACK =|# [/F] [/A] [/T] [/L:filespec] [/S:kb]
# This is the only required parameter, and it specifies the
message bases to pack. An equal sign = indicates that you
want ALL message bases to be packed. If you only want certain
message bases to be packed, you must specify them by their
number. You can use either a list of numbers (separated by a
space), a range in the #-# format, or a combination of the
above. Please keep in mind that Telegard starts numbering
message base with 0, not 1!
/F This switch engages the FORCED-FIX mode, which forces T-Pack
to check each message base for bad messages before it is
packed. If a bad message is found, it is marked as DELETED
and is removed during packing. If T-Pack is unable to read
the index file or the message file at all, the message base
will be skipped (unless /T is specified; see below for more
information). Because every selected message base is checked
before packing, the program will take significantly longer to
finish.
/A This switch engages the AUTO-FIX mode, which is an alternative
to the FORCED-FIX mode. Instead of checking each message base
for bad messages before packing, T-Pack will go right on and
pack them. If it encounters an error while packing a message
base, it will attempt to fix it. If it was able to fix the
error, the program is going to restart packing the base from
the beginning. If a second error is encountered at any time,
the message base is skipped. The AUTO-FIX mode will not
always catch all errors that the FORCED-FIX mode will. If the
message base requires packing, then AUTO-FIX will give the
same result as FORCED-FIX should the message base be damaged.
If, on the other hand, the message base is already packed,
AUTO-FIX will only detect a damaged (physically unreadable)
index file. So, if the message base is already packed and the
index file is corrupt (contains invalid entries), AUTO-FIX
will not notice the problem.
/T This parameter turns the TRUNCATE feature on. If T-Pack is
unable to read the message base files while fixing them and
TRUNCATE is turned ON, the program will attempt to cut off the
file just before the damaged entry. This will save all
messages up to the damaged entry, but all messages after it
will be lost. Use this switch with caution, because you may
loose many messages to a problem that may have easily been
fixed by a disk repair program, such as Norton Disk Doctor or
DOS 6.2 ScanDisk.
/L: This switch enables log file generation. After the colon you
must specify the full name and path of the log file (for
example, /L:C:\TEL\T-PACK.LOG). If this switch is not
present, no log file will be made.
/S: This switch tells T-Pack to keep its log size under the
kilobyte size specified with this switch. A value of 5, for
example, will cause T-Pack to shrink the log to under 5120
bytes. Valid values for this switch are 1 to 255. If you do
not include this switch, T-Pack completely ignores the log
size. This switch has no effect unless the /L: switch was
also specified.
NOTE: T-PACK shrinks the log file BEFORE it starts the
packing process. This means that after it
finishes, the log may be larger than the size you
specified here.
When T-PACK shrinks the log, it looks for the first
log entry separator (a line containing exactly 79
dashes) that would make the log size smaller than
the specified kilobyte amount. That means that a
log file can potentially shrink to a size
significantly smaller than the amount you
specified, or even to a zero size.
Parameters in square brackets are OPTIONAL. Case and order of
the parameters are irrelevant. All parameters must be separated by
a space. No spaces allowed inside of parameters.
NOTE: Since Telegard allows each user to select different
colors under the same number, T-Pack has no way of
interpreting MCI color codes. All Telegard color codes
will be stripped from message base names both in the log
and when they are displayed on the screen.
NOTE 2: A "bad" message for T-Pack is one that would cause a run-
time error if Telegard tried to read it. A "corrupt"
message is one that contains garbled text. T-Pack has no
way of determining if the message is corrupt or not. If
you see any messages which contain obviously garbled
text, simply mark them as deleted and they'll be removed
by T-Pack.
THE T-PACK SCREEN
Upon starting T-Pack you will see a copyright notice, and any
error messages associated with the color configuration file. If
you specified the /S: switch on the command line, T-Pack will say
that is processing the log file. It'll then check the log file
size, and, if necessary, shrink it. Next you'll see any error
messages associated with your STATUS.DAT, BOARDS.DAT, the log file
(if any) and command-line parameters. Once you get past that
(hopefully without any error messages), you'll see a full screen-
worth of information that will be separated into two windows.
The first line of the screen will show the program name,
version and copyright notice.
The last line of the screen will either say "Press ESC to
abort program" or "Wait. . ." Depending on the message you can
either press ESC to abort the program or wait until it finishes
whatever it is doing. You can NOT abort the program if it is
either fixing the message base or processing the index.
The first window is the PROGRAM CONFIGURATION window. It will
list all message bases that you specified are to be packed. After
running some tests I found that the list could take up as many as
11 lines. Since I couldn't allocate that much space on the screen,
up to 6 lines worth of message base numbers will be displayed. If
there is more information, the last line will end with three
periods (. . .). The next line of information will tell you of the
current fix setup. This will either be NONE, FORCED or AUTO. The
last line will give you the full name and path of the log file, or
NONE if you didn't enable the log. The information in this window
does not change when the program is running.
The second window is the PROGRAM STATUS window. Here you will
see a number of lines of information:
Working This will show a graph, percentage and the
number of message bases processed (including
the one being worked on now) out of the number
specified.
Message Base Name This will list the full description of the
message currently being worked on.
Currently Here you will see a brief text description of
what the program is currently doing.
Fixing This line will only be "illuminated" if you
have selected a FIX mode. It will show a
graph, percentage and the number of messages
processed out of the number of total messages
in the current message base. Upon completion
it will list the number of bad messages found.
Reading This line will display a graph, percentage and
the number of messages read in out of the
total number of messages in the current
message base. Upon completion it will list
the number of messages read.
Packing This line will display a graph, percentage and
the number of messages processed out of the
total number of messages in the current
message base. Upon completion it will list
the number of messages that were removed.
Writing This line will display a graph, percentage and
the number of messages written to the new
message base out of the total number of
messages in the current message base. Upon
completion it will list the number of messages
written.
Last Error This line will list any errors that occurred
while the CURRENT message base was being
processed.
ERRORLEVELS
Since you will most likely use T-Pack in batch files, you will
be able to determine the reason for T-Pack's termination by the
errorlevel it returns. The following is the summary of errorlelevs
returned by the program:
0 - Everything is just fine.
1 - Help was requested.
2 - Can't find STATUS.DAT
STATUS.DAT must be in the same directory as the program!
3 - Can't read STATUS.DAT
4 - Can't open log
Either you specified an invalid name for the log or there
was a problem opening it.
5 - Can't read BOARDS.DAT
6 - User abort
You pressed ESC while the program was working
7 - T-Pack couldn't find a file for at least one of the message
bases it was supposed to pack
8 - There was not enough room on the disk to pack at least one of
the message bases T-Pack was supposed to pack
9 - There was not enough memory to process the index of at least
one of the message bases T-Pack was supposed to pack
10 - There was some kind of error in at least one message T-Pack
was supposed to pack. This errorlevel will be returned
whether the error was fixed or not.
11 - T-Pack couldn't make the necessary temporary files for at
least one message base it was supposed to pack.
12 - Invalid log size specified
The log size you specified with the /S: switch is
invalid. Valid entries are 1 to 255, which represent
KILOBYTES.
13 - Error shrinking log file
T-Pack was unable to shrink the log to the specified
size. This error should only happen if T-Pack couldn't
read the log.
14 - Invalid color codes
One of the values in the T-PACK.CLR file is invalid.
Refer to T-PACK.SAM for information on the format of this
file.
NOTE: The errorlevel returned will only tell about the first
problem encountered. Any subsequent problems are not
reflected in the errorlevel.
When the program ends, it will display the errorlevel with
which it is exiting.
CONTACTING THE AUTHOR
If you have any suggestions or bugs to report (hopefully you
will only have suggestions), then do not hesitate to contact me.
If you have a financial contribution to make, feel free to do so.
You can reach me at the following address:
Sergey Polak
212 Spring St.
Monroe, NY 10950
Of course you can get the same result by sending your message via
electronic mail, and it'll reach me faster!
You can reach me electronically on the OFFICIAL T-Pack BBS:
Hometown's Glass Manazure 1:272/107 (914) 496-4115 300-14.4K
(v32/v42) baud, send mail to Sergey Polak #2,
or via FidoNet at 1:272/94 or 1:272/107 (preferred)
or via InterNet at
wp931085@pacevm.dac.pace.edu or
sergey_polak@f94.n272.z1.fidonet.org or
sergey_polak@f107.n272.z1.fidonet.org
or via BitNet at WP931085@PACEVM
I can also be found on the FidoNet Telegard support echo
(TG_SUPPORT).