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CD ROM Paradise Collection 4
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CD ROM Paradise Collection 4 1995 Nov.iso
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dta20b.zip
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END_USER.EXE
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END_USER.DOC
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1993-12-04
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292 lines
INSTALLATION OF THE RUNTIME MODULE
Before installing DeskTop Advisor (R), make a working copy of the
distribution disk. Place the working disk in drive A: and enter A:
to make drive A the default drive.
A hard disk is recommended for quick and convenient operation
of this guide. If, however, you are installing for use on another
floppy drive, place a formatted disk in the target drive. Enter
the command INSTALLR <tgt drive:>. The system automates the rest
of the process.
The directory \DTA is created on the specified target disk and
the DeskTop Advisor program and knowledge base files are copied to
it.
BASIC OPERATION OF THE RUNTIME MODULE
To use the guide from a floppy disk drive, place your working
disk in the drive for which you installed it and make that drive
the default drive. To use it from a hard disk, select the hard
disk as the default drive. Remember: Running from a hard disk is
strongly recommended.
Enter CD \DTA to change your working directory to the
directory for DeskTop Advisor. Then, enter the command DA 'guide'
at the DOS prompt, where 'guide' is the path and file name of the
guide to be browsed.
This loads DeskTop Advisor as a standalone application. It
automatically configures itself for your primary video hardware. If
you are running it on a PC with a color display, but wish to run it
in black and white, pull down the menu by pressing F while holding
down the Alt key. Select the Change Screen Colors option. Then,
press ESCape to leave the menu and begin reviewing the guide.
When you are finished browsing the material in this guide,
exit the system: Pull down the menu by pressing F while holding
down the Alt key. Then, select RETURN TO DOS / PREVIOUS
APPLICATION. As a shortcut, press the End key while holding the
Ctrl key to exit.
MENU OPERATION
The top line of the screen is called the menu bar. It
provides access to menu, help, navigation, and other functions of
the DeskTop Advisor system.
An option can be selected from the menu bar by pressing the
key corresponding to its initial letter key while holding down the
Alt key. Alternatively, pressing the Alt key activates a highlight
bar over the leftmost option. Pressing the Alt key again will
toggle off the highlight bar.
When the highlight bar is active, you can press an initial
letter key to select an option. Alternatively, you can use the
left or right arrow keys to select an option and press the Enter
key or the down arrow key to 'pull down' the associated window.
There are two types of menu available. Function menus have a
letter highlighted in each option. To activate any option, press the
key corresponding to the highlighted letter. You can also use the up
and down arrow keys to move the selection bar to an option. When
the option you want is highlighted, press the Enter key to activate
it. ESCape will always cancel the current activity or menu.
Topic and graphic image menus allow selection in one of two ways:
* use paging and arrow keys to move the selection bar over the
desired item, then press the Enter key
* press the initial letter of the desired item, repeatedly if
necessary, to position the selection bar over the desired item,
then press the Enter key.
NAVIGATING THIS GUIDE
There are three basic methods of navigating this guide:
* menus
* hyperlinks
* keyword query
Only simple menu-based navigation is discussed here. See the
following topics for more advanced methods.
Wherever you are in the guide, a select list of other,
context-relevant topics is available. Press Alt-T to pull down this
linked topic menu. Position the selection bar to the desired topic
by using the arrow and page keys or pressing the key corresponding
to its initial letter, repeatedly if necessary. Then Press the Enter
key.
In the same way, wherever you are in the guide, if the 'G' in
the menu bar is visible, you can choose from a list of
context-relevant graphic images. Press Alt-G to pull down the
attached graphic image menu. On selecting an image, it will be
displayed if your video hardware supports it. Press the ESCape key
to exit the image.
HYPERLINKS
When you are familiar with the process of browsing this guide,
try the hyperlinks feature to explore a web of connections among
related topics. From any page of any topic, press the Tab key.
This causes the hyperlink keywords used on that page to be
highlighted.
You can Tab to the desired hyperlink keyword and press the Enter
key to select it. A menu of topics in which the selected word occurs
then appears. Select a topic which interests you.
The first page containing occurrence(s) of the hyperlink keyword
appears in a window. You may view other pages of this topic containing
occurrence(s) of the hyperlink keyword by pressing the up and down
arrow keys.
Press Ctrl-PgUp to return to the menu of topics in which the
hyperlink keyword occurs. The topics you have visited while exploring
the currently selected keyword are checkmarked. These topics will
continue to be checked off until you select another keyword or press
ESCape to terminate the hyperlink process.
On terminating the process you are returned to the text screen.
Select another highlighted hyperlink keyword by tabbing to it and
pressing the Enter key.
KEYWORD QUERY
In addition to menu-based navigation of this guide and hyperlink
exploration, you can also search the guide by keyword for all topics
relevant to a particular interest. From any text screen, press F2 or
press Alt-F to pull down the files menu and select Query to activate
the keyword dialog.
You may enter up to three keywords to search for. Use the Tab
and shift-Tab keys to jump from one keyword edit window to another.
If you enter one keyword, all topics in which that keyword occurs
will be retrieved, including the current topic.
If you previously executed a query, the previous set of keywords
appears in the edit windows. You can replace them by typing over them.
You may press ESCape and F2 to bring up the dialog with the edit
windows empty.
You can enhance your queries by using the wild card '*'. For
example, by entering the string ANIMAT*, the system will find any
topics which reference ANIMATE, ANIMATED, ANIMATING, ANIMATION, etc.
Like the DOS wild card, the '*' must be at the end of any such string.
If you enter more than one keyword, the retrieved lists of topics
are 'anded' together. Each additional keyword you enter serves to
narrow the search. The more keywords you enter, the smaller the
number of topics retrieved for you to explore.
The retrieved topics are presented in a menu. Select a topic
which interests you. The first page containing occurrence(s) of the
keyword(s) appears in a window. You may view other pages of this
topic by pressing the PgUp and PgDn keys.
MASTER TOPIC INDEX
Pressing the space bar causes a menu of all topics to pop up.
The topic previously selected in this way (initially, the first
topic) is highlighted.
You select a topic by using the arrow and page keys or
pressing the letter key corresponding to the topic of interest,
repeatedly if necessary, to highlight the desired topic. Then,
press Enter.
You don't need to press the space bar to pop up the master
topic index. If you know the name of the topic you wish to
retrieve, you can just press its initial letter. The master topic
index will pop up with the highlight bar on the first topic having
that initial letter.
MEMORY RESIDENT OPERATION OF THE RUNTIME MODULE
When you are accustomed to running the system in standalone
mode, try running it in memory resident mode. From the \DTA
directory, at the DOS prompt, enter the command DA_SHEL, followed by
the name of the knowledge base, with drive and path prefix, as needed
to locate it.
This will install the system in memory, in a dormant state
waiting for you to call on it for advice or reference as needed. You
can run other application programs as usual.
By pressing Z while holding down the Ctrl and Shift keys, you pop
up DeskTop Advisor for use. You can pop it up from the DOS prompt or
from most applications, including other memory resident programs,
while in either a text or graphics mode.
You can easily reconfigure the system whenever you pop it up.
Just press Alt-F to pull down the files menu. Then, you can change
the hot key to avoid conflict with another application program. Or
toggle color on / off. You can also toggle Sound Support (tm) on /
off or select the audio output device.
Press ESCape to leave the menu. You can pull it down when you
need it. Browse the knowledge base. To return to the context you
were in when you popped up DeskTop Advisor, press Ctrl-End. From
now on, whenever you pop up the system, the guide will be returned
to the screen, right where you left off.
You remove the resident shell from memory by entering the
command DA_SHEL/U at the DOS prompt. It unloads from memory if
possible. If it won't unload, try unloading other resident
programs first. Alternatively, load DA_SHEL after all other
resident programs.
When running in memory resident mode, some free disk space may be
needed for temporary files. FOR SAFETY, BE SURE 1 MEGABYTE OF FREE
SPACE IS AVAILABLE ON YOUR HARD DISK FOR THESE FILES.
If the system is being run in memory resident mode on a
machine running the QEMM memory manager in its 'stealth' mode or
other memory manager in a mode which remaps ROM addresses, or if
the system 'hangs' or exhibits other evidence of a memory conflict,
add /N to the DA_SHEL command line when installing it in memory.
This directs it to NOT use expanded memory. It will consume more
'low', conventional memory, but should work fine. If problems
persist, use the /D switch instead. This directs the system to
swap to disk, bypassing even extended memory. This will cause a
slight delay when popping up, as the suspended application is
swapped to a temporary file.
NETWORK OPERATION OF THE RUNTIME MODULE
DeskTop Advisor can be installed on a network drive as though
it were a hard disk drive. The runtime module is designed to
support multiple concurrent users across the network. Make sure,
first, that your organization has a network license.
It is necessary to ensure that each end user's personal (e.g.,
bookmark and configuration) files are protected from other DTA
runtime users. To accomplish this, DTA looks for an environment
variable DA_PATH. Be sure that the general login script or
individual login batch files establish this environment
variable for each user. It should be set to the user's home
directory or other personal directory not shared by other network
users. If DA_PATH is not set, the system defaults to the \DTA
directory on the drive from which the program was launched. It
creates the directory if needed.
DeskTop Advisor creates swap files for users with insufficient
extended or expanded memory, and those using the /D switch on the
DA_SHEL command line to coexist with aggressive memory management
software.
These swap files are assigned the system and read-only
attributes to prevent them from being inadvertently deleted or
renamed during operation.
Swap files are personal files. They reflect the suspended
state of a user's machine when the hot key was pressed. They are,
therefore, maintained in the directory assigned by the DA_PATH
variable. If DA_PATH is not set, the system defaults to the \DTA
directory on the drive from which the program was launched.
EXPORTING TEXT FROM THE RUNTIME MODULE
You can export any page or sequence of pages in any topics to
a file for printing or loading into a word processor. Go to the
page you wish to export and select Export from the files menu.
If this is the first time you selected Export in the current
session, you will be prompted to choose between two export styles
--- with or without a hard return at the end of each line.
A hard return at the end of each line is the standard ASCII
text format. If you intend to print the exported file, the hard
returns will direct the printer to format the text with the 70
character wide margins used by DeskTop Advisor. If, however, you
intend to load the exported file into a word processor, choose
not to place hard returns at the end of each line. This will allow
the word processor to wrap words and flow the text within margins
you set.
Next, you will be prompted to select Start New Export File or
Append Current Export File. If you elect to start a new export
file, you will again be prompted for the export style.
The export file is produced on the current knowledge base
drive / directory. The file has the same base name as the other
knowledge base files and the extension '.EXP'.