CD ROM Paradise Collection 4

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Text File | 1994-11-19 | 18KB | 393 lines

IBID. List Maker 2.0 for Windows c1994 by Peter Neuendorffer 1 "Define words and the software asks you for more" Introduction Main Window (White) Define Window (Blue) Auto Window (Light Blue) New Features This is a Windows 3.0, or 3.1 program. In IBID, you define words and type in scraps of information or thoughts on any subject. As you enter the definitions, the software has a Window where you are asked to define other words, ones the software gets from your own words. This goes on like a game of cards, until your list gets quite large. New features include clickable definitions, printing, multiple lists, special small "floating windows," photo backdrops. Soon, you have a closely knit database of facts, thoughts, or ideas. I borrow the phrase "smart linking" for this. ------------------------------------------------------------- To Install Copy all files in this package to an empty subdirectory on your hard disk. RUN FILE/NEW FROM THE WINDOWS PROGRAM MANAGER, AND SPECIFY IBID.EXE AND IT'S DIRECTORY. You find it with "Browse." To upgrade from Ibid 1.0 (ibid10.zip) simply copy the files in this package to your previous Ibid hard drive directory. Previous bugs are fixed for Delete and minimizing the program. THE FILE VBRUN300.DLL MUST BE IN THE WINDOWS SYSTEM DIRECTORY -IN YOUR PATH. It is available on most Bulletin boards. Screen resolutions of of 640 X 480 and 800 X 600 are supported. ------------------------------------------------------------- To Register (this version is complete) send $20.00 to Peter Neuendorffer 1399 Commonwealth Ave Suite 11 Allston MA 02134 tel 617-254-2213 Internet petern@channel1.com Consultant and photographer: Gary Chase ------------------------------------------------------------- With Ibid. you create your own lists, smart dictionaries. Now, why would anyone want to create a dictionary when they already have one? Well many people have special words, scientific or otherwise not found in a standard dictionary. Also, the "Definitions" can actually be notes on subjects, such as "anniversaries Mom's wedding anniversary is July 1." You can have up to 4000 definitions in each of 5 lists. The Main Window is for displaying definitions. The Define Window is for entering and maintaining definitions. The Auto Window is for defining those words the software asks you. Starting on page 2. is a general description of each of the three windows and of the many new features in version 2. The Small menu choice provides two "floating" programs suitable for multi-tasking. The Main Window -Displaying your definitions. 2 DISPLAYING WORDS IN THE SCROLLABLE COMBO BOXES: Once you have made some entries in the Define Window, you can bring them up from the main window. Scroll through the current list of words with the right hand Combo box (List.) Click to select a word, or type in a word you wish to look up. To look up the word, click on Display. Once a definition is displayed, if you click the Also See button, another Combo box appears. This is a list of related words mentioned in the definition that the software also "knows". You can select a word, and click on Display to see one of those words defined as well. Find text in the definitions using the menu choice Find. You can double click on any of the words in the combo boxes, to display that word. List= all the words in the list. Also See= related words taken from the currently displayed definition. Depth is like Also See, only the words are one level deep again, and are less related to the currently displayed definition. When you use the Display button, the word that will be displayed is at the top of the combo box (only one box is visible at a time.) You can type in a word to display if you wish. Since you haven't entered in any definitions, this main window will be curiously empty at first. (See Define Window section below.) Clicking the Back button will return you to the last definition displayed. Clicking Parent To Word will find a word whose definition contains the currently displayed word. You may copy the current definition to the Windows clipboard with Copy. DOUBLE CLICKING CAPITAL WORDS IN THE DISPLAYED DEFINITION BOX: When words appear capitalized in the displayed definition, they can be double clicked. Double click on a capital word, and that word itself is displayed with it's definition. The capitalizing of the words is done automatically by the software, so you do not have to capitalize words when entering in definitions (see New Features below for an important explanation.) From the menu bar, you may select File. From there you can set your own title for the software (List Title). You can Remove the entire List (this obviously should be used with care). About brings up the opening screen telling you how to pay (AHEM!!!) for this software. $20.00 to Peter Neuendorffer, 1399 Commonwealth Ave., Suite 11, Allston MA 02134. To bring up the other two Windows (TO ENTER DEFINITIONS), click on Define or Auto from the top menu bar. I describe many more features in the New Features section further on in the manual. The Define Window: -making your definitions. 3 Click DEFINE on the main menu bar. Enter in new definitions here. Type the word to define in the first text box. Tab to the second text box, and type the definition. When you are ready, select OK to enter the definition. As you enter in definitions, the software is automatically building a list of questions in the third Auto Window. Remember any time you wish to enter in a definition with "OK", both white text boxes in the define window must have text in them, and you must click on OK. EDITING PREVIOUS DEFINITIONS: If the word is already defined, you will be notified. To find a previous definition- maybe to change it, type the word to look up in the first text box, and then select Search. Once the definition is found, you can change it, or type in a new word that will also have this definition, and select OK. To delete the definition, select Delete. Paste allows you to paste a sentence from the Windows clipboard into the Definition box (lower text box) if you wish. It is a good idea to only use hyphens when you mean a hyphenated word, and put the hyphen directly between two alphabet characters, as in "pre-show." To bring up a previous definition from the database, type in the word in the small white box, then click on Search. Or you can use "List" in the Define Window to see the current list. ----------------------------------------------------------------- USING A PHRASE AS THE WORD TO DEFINE: Smart linking is not supported. Obscure side note: When having more than one word in the "word" you wish to define, you can hyphenate two words together to ensure they will be treated as one word in Ibid's smart linking. This is not necessary though -you can have multiple words without hyphens in the small item at once. But, these words may not be picked up individually by the "Also See" and "Depth" linkers, and will NOT be picked up the linkers as a phrase. The definitions can be displayed however. The Auto Window -defining words that match up. 4 Click AUTO on the main menubar WHAT IS IT? First, an illustration: Imagine you go to the Land of Gnomes, where everyone speaks English, but doesn't know any of the same words. You say "A dog is an animal" The gnome says "What is an animal" You say an animal is alive. The gnome says "What is alive" and so on. This might seem awfully frustrating, but eventually a lot of things would be defined. When you enter in Definitions in the Define Window (or this Auto window for that matter), the software creates a list. When you select the Auto Window, you are asked to define these words. You don't have to do them all at once. If you don't ever wish to define a supplied word (like "a") then click Skip Always. You won't be asked again to define it. But if you select Skip, you will be asked after the next time the word comes up in the course of your entries. At first, you will be repeatedly selecting Skip Always to get rid of many common words, but as the software is trained the situation improves. When you enter definitions, remember that alphabetic (a through z or A through Z)letters are counted only when creating the auto lists. However you are free to use numbers and other characters in your definitions. The exception is the hyphen which is described at the end of the Define Window section above. You may clear the entire queue of words waiting (without affecting your definitions) by clicking on Clear Queue. Also, the program will let you know if a word's plural or singular form is already defined. New Features -multiple lists, printing, pictures, 5 small windows, find, edit Double Clicking on Definitions: Words in definitions are sometimes automatically capitalized in in the main window displays. When presented with such a definition in the main window, you can double click on the capital word itself, and that word will be displayed with it's definition. Don't capitalize whole words in your definitions. as the software takes care of this. When you copy and paste, you do so to and from the Windows clipboard. Definitions are formatted to have short lines. If an item on the clipboard has a ":" colon in the first 15 characters, the word before it will be pasted as the item, and the text after as the definition. Words being defined can be up to 15 characters long, and definitions up to 200. ----------------------------------------------------------------- The new additional Features are described in the rest of this manual. They are accessed from the menubar of the main program screen. File (A) Open (B) Title (C) Picture (D) Print (E) Small Window (F) Find (G) Edit (H) The Tool Bar ----------------------------------------------------------------- File: (A) Open - File/Open on the main menu Each time you load the software, the first list is brought up. You can have up to five separate lists (each with up to 4000 definitions.) Select File/Open, and Select a list. Open slots are originally named "The List 1", "The List 2" etc. Right after you open a new list, you should give it a name with Title, although you don't have to. Each list is totally separate, including skip word lists. The only thing they share is the print setup, and photograph information. (B) Title -File/Title on the main menu You can give any list a name by choosing File/Title (new features cont.) 6 (C) Picture You can choose a photo backdrop for this program. Outside the program, use a file manager such as the Windows file manager to copy one or more full screen .bmp picture or photograph files to the IBID disk directory. You cannot just rename a .gif file, -the .bmp format must be valid. This is the format that is used in Windows wallpaper files. Run Ibid, and choose File/Picture from the main menu. Choose a picture from the pop-up menu, and click OK. If you choose Full Picture, the program will disappear and the photo or picture will display full screen. If you choose "none," there will be no picture. From the File menu choice, click on Stretch Picture to stretch the picture. Most of the time you can leave this off. All of your current picture settings will remain for the next time you run the program. Please to not shell out of Ibid and copy the pictures around the directories while Ibid is still running. Of course you can change pictures from the menu, and switch pictures in and out of the directory while IBID is not running. Now this seems like a big production for a dictionary program! (D) Printing: All printing prints the items and their definitions. You may choose the number of lines to print on a page with Print Setup. You may choose to print the following groups of definitions: current item: the definition currently displayed in the main window also see: all items currently in the Also See List Box and their definitions depth: all items currently in the Depth List Box and their definitions. entire list: All items in the current list and their definitions. selected items: Click on those items in the pop up list box you wish to print and click on OK. (new features cont.) 7 (E) Small Window: You can reduce the program to a small stand alone Window. Click on Small on the main menu bar. You get a choice of Show: A small gray window that simply displays definitions with a Copy button. Define Alone: A small blue window that is just like the Define Window, except that the rest of the program is invisible. Choose exit to exit these windows. To go back to the main program, answer "No" to the question "Quit Ibid?". To exit the program entirely, answer "Yes" to this question. Note that the ibid program is not minimized when these small windows are active, just hidden. To minimize the program with an icon, choose the Control Box at the top left of the main (white) window. (F) Find: You can find any text in the database by choosing Find from the main menu. This applies to the current list. In the pop up (light green) window, type the word or text you wish to find, and click on Find. To find more occurrences, click on Next. The found text will be highlighted in dark blue. This is a regular display, so you can use any feature from there on, including double clicking on a capital word in the definition. When an item displays in green, the text has been found in the item itself. (G) Edit: Click on Edit in the Main menu. This simply transfers the current word that is displayed in the Main Window into the Define Window with it's definition. Then you can edit the definition if you wish, or assign the definition to another word as well. (H) The Tool Bar (the small pictures from left to right below the main menu) The Icon What it Does Like the menu Sunset: Brings up the Picture menu (File/Picture) Ink Bottle: Print selected items. (File/Print/Selected) Grey Box: Reduces to the "Show Window" (Small/Show) Blue with lines: Brings up the Define Window (Define) Balloons: Brings up the Auto Window (Auto)