High Voltage Shareware

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ High Voltage Shareware / high1.zip / high1 / DIR3 / FR20.ZIP / READ.ME < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1994-02-01 | 53KB | 1,140 lines

. FRANK's READER, Version 20 Copyright (c) 1994 Frank F. Yates Thank you for trying this Reader. I hope you find it useful. The Reader is released as Shareware. You may try it out free of charge. If you find that you are using it frequently, then please consider registering it. -Frank- . Short Description The FR20.ZIP file is the official shareware release of Frank's Reader, Version 20. You are encouraged to upload this file to any Bulletin Board System (BBS) which doesn't already have it. FR20.ZIP includes a short description of Frank's Reader (FILE_ID.DIZ) which is automatically picked up by a BBS when a ZIP archive is uploaded. This description becomes the package description in the BBS file directory. Consequently, you do not have to type in any lengthy description to upload the file. When the upload processor asks you for a description, just say "Frank's Reader, V20". The complete directory entry below will be taken from FILE_ID.DIZ. ___FRANK'S_READER___VERSION 20___2 Feb 94___ This is a new concept in the management of text files. It identifies and manipulates chunks (modules) of information instead of just lines. Useful for MESSAGES, DOCUMENTS, HELP, LOGS, DIARIES, FAQ's, GOPHER-MENUS, FILE-LISTS, ZIP-CONTENTS, SOFTWARE, and you name it!... FR uses the natural structure of a file to identify and list the modules in it, and creates a list from which you can make selections. Fully Functional Shareware . Long Description First I must say that "Frank's Reader" (FR) is not a "Reader" in the commonly understood sense. It is much more than that, or much less, depending upon your point of view. By "Reader" one usually means an "Offline Mail Reader", a device for processing batch messages in the form of QWK/REP packets. Such readers are very nice, and do a lot of things for you, but are limited by the data format and specialized design. Frank's Reader is a much more general tool. It can be used effectively as a Mail Reader, but is less automatic and more flexible than a regular Mail Reader. I use it for that myself, but FR is useful for a great number of other things concerning text data files. It is a simple tool with a tremendous amount of flexibility, but it will not lead you by the hand. You must have a concept of your application in mind, and remember the twenty or so commands that control FR. The command list however is almost always available by pressing the F1 Function Key. Frank's Reader (FR) is a command driven interactive device. It is controlled from the keyboard, mostly via "hot keys". A "hot key" is a key that does something immediately when you press it without needing an ENTER to activate it. FR does not support a mouse, and will not produce Icons on your Windows display. The keys are very convenient however, and quite sufficient. Most of the time you will not see a cursor on the display. This is because most often you do not type in long commands, but just touch single keys to produce the desired actions. Only occasionally will you see a cursor and echoes of the keys you press. This will be when you are entering a string such as a file name or a DOS command. When this happens, you _do_ need to press ENTER when you are finished entering whatever it is. The displays you will see running FR usually have to do with the data you are processing rather than the possible commands which you might issue. Your attention is directed to the task at hand rather than to the controls for the reader. You will find this very efficient once you have learned the commands. During the learning process, remember the F1 Function key. . How to get detailed HELP online If just the list of commands produced by F1 is not sufficient (as it often may not be until you become familiar with FR) you can easily refer to the detailed descriptions in the HELP file, again without losing the data you are working with or your place in it. The way to to this is to shell to a second copy of FR to search the HELP. When you exit this second FR, you will be back in the original FR with nothing changed. The exact command required to shell to HELP depends upon where you have placed the HELP file, and what you have called it. If you have it in a private directory for FR files, then you can leave the name unchanged. If it is moved elsewhere, name conflicts may require you to re-name it, perhaps to HELP.FR. How you arrange and name your files and programs is entirely up to you, and there are a thousand ways of doing it at least. To illustrate the process of obtaining help however, I will describe one possibility. Suppose that you have renamed FR.EXE to R.EXE. You might want to do this, as I have, because it is more convenient to type "R" than "FR" to start the program. It doesn't matter where R.EXE is located, as long as it is in your execution path. Mine is in the C:\UT library along with a bunch of other utilities. Suppose you have put the HELP file in a directory: C:\FR, and that you are operating with the reader in a directory: C:\NOTEBOOK\NOTES, on a file called DIARY. If you want to access HELP without losing your place in the Diary, the command is: .R \FR\HELP That's all there is to it. The leading "." tells FR that you are about to execute a DOS command. When you press the "." you will see a cursor pop up on line 23. Then you will see the command as you type it in, and when you press ENTER the second copy of FR will execute and show you the first module of the HELP file. When you leave that FR, you will be returned to the first FR working on your diary. . Data Management The operation of the Reader depends upon the use of a unique prefix (Mark) for each module, ie. a unique character or short string of characters which appear in the file only on the first line of each module. Any character or string may be used. FR compares the first line of each file with a list of possible marks obtained from the FR.PAR file. If one of these pre-defined marks is found, then FR uses that mark to identify modules in the file. If no match is found, then you are shown the first page of the file and asked to define the mark to be used. If you see something which can be used, entering that will cause FR to identify all modules beginning with that mark. If you enter a null line then FR will break the file into page-sized modules. The module list in this case will not be of much use, but you will be able to page thru the file in screen-sized steps anyway. You can define and re-define marks at any time from within the reader, according to what you find in the text files you are viewing. Modules are loaded into memory as they are read, and thus become independent of the file which they came from. It is possible to collect modules from various files and then distribute them to other files. This approach imposes a limit upon the number of modules which can be loaded at one time, but provides a flexible means of re-arranging modules between various files. Files of great length can be processed sequentially or can be scanned to locate modules containing any specified string. . .DISPLAY MODES FR has two primary display modes, called LIST and TEXT. You can toggle back and forth between these by pressing the ENTER key. The List mode displays one line from each loaded module. From this display you control the reading, writing, sorting, and discarding of modules, and selection of which module you will see in text mode. Text mode displays the contents of the module. . List Mode Modules are loaded into the reader by pressing the SPACE Bar. As long as that is held down, modules will read into the bottom of the list and scroll up the screen toward the top. If the "KM" (Keep Modules) switch is set, loading will be stopped when the list is full, so that no modules are lost. If KM is off, then modules will scroll off the top of the screen, and you can look thru an entire file, 19 modules at a time. The KM switch is a parameter which you can toggle with the F8 function key, and its status is indicated by a letter "K" in column 80 of the header while in list mode. The List display consists of one line from each module. It is the same relative line from each module, so what you get is a list of first lines, second lines, etc. The relative line number displayed in the list is selected by the number keys (1-9). In this way you can select from displays of various aspects of the modules. In the case of messages, typically you can see a list of dates, addressees, senders, subjects, conferences, or read status, according to which relative module line you select for display. There is a header line in List mode containing the line number selected for display, the names of the input and output files, and the status of the KM (Keep Modules) switch. The text mode does not have a header, so the presence or absence of this header line is one good way to tell which mode you are in. . Text Mode When text is first displayed for a module, you see the first 23 lines of it, if there are that many. If all text has been displayed, there will be an "--- end ---" marker at the end of data. If you do not see --- end ---, then there is more text to see. Pressing the SPACE bar will scroll the text upward so you may see the rest of it. You may also use the Up/Down arrows and Page-Up/Page-Down keys to look thru the text. Caution is advised regarding the HOME and END keys. These keys have unusual (but convenient) functions for FR. The HOME key rewinds the input file, so that the next module read will be the first in the file. The END key dumps all modules from memory. . HELP Screen The HELP screen may be called from either the List or the Data mode. When you press the F1 function key, the HELP Screen will be displayed. It contains almost every command which you can issue to run the reader. Commands are not accepted from this screen, and it cannot be scrolled. You see all there is. Pressing any key will return you to where you were. . Parameter Menu Pressing "P" will shift you to the Parameter menu, where you may change most of the parameters which control FR. Parameters are the only input accepted here, except for "C" which shifts you to a secondary menu from which you may choose display colors. There is a cursor on line 23 of the Parameter menu with the prompt "Parm: ". The current values of the parameters are displayed, and when you enter a new value for one, you can watch it change. Entering a null line returns you to where you were working before. . Input File List When you need to specify an input file name, you will be shown a list of the files in the current directory. This rolls up from the bottom of the screen, and is a little cluttered, but it serves. I may clean this up at some later time. This display is produced by the DOS command: dir /w , which may explain its meaning. You must type in the name of the file which you want. It does not have to be one of the ones shown however. You can jump directly to any file in your computer by entering the complete path/name for it. If you change your mind, and decide not to open an input file, just enter a null line. . Resource Report Pressing the "R" key produces the Resource Report, telling you how many of the available lines and nodes are in use at the present time. No commands are accepted from this display, and any key-press will return you to your original context. Pressing the "R" key is convenient, since your finger is already on it. . .APPLICATIONS There are a million applications for Frank's Reader, most of which haven't been thought of yet. I am finding new ones every day, as you will also. Following are some of them, and the methods which I am using this week. I am not sure that these are the best methods, but they are offered just to start your thinking process. . BBS Command Help The list of commands which a BBS system will accept is something which is very convenient to have as an FR modular file. You can use it to plan sessions, or even to look at while on-line because it is sometimes faster and easier than the BBS help itself. You can produce such a file by capturing help from the system, or by editing a reference document. I have one for each system that I use. With FR it is easy to find the command that you need for a particular purpose. Under FR, just do a (F)ind for some word or phrase which is related to what you want to do, and the command pops out at you. . BBS Messages, incoming I like to read BBS messages directly from the BBS rather than via a door. It is faster, and more flexible, and the header lines are full length rather than being truncated at 25 bytes. It is a tossup whether to compress the messages or not, since the modem has compression, but I usually do because ZMODEM is very tough and won't allow any mistakes. When the messages are extracted from the ZIP archive or from the log, they can be accessed directly by FR by defining an appropriate mark (usually "Date:"). With FR I usually make two passes thru a message set. The first time I search for my name, to find those messages which are addressed to me, echoes of messages I have sent, or ones where someone has cited something I said and has more to say about it. Then I rewind the file and make a second pass to pick up interesting subjects, setting the header line to create a list of subjects. In order to not miss anything, I lock the list (F8, or KM=YES). I might page thru the messages one at a time using the right arrow, but usually I scan the list of subjects and only look at some of the messages. When I have examined everything in the list, I dump the list with the END key and re-fill it with Page-Down. This technique is very fast and efficient. . FF's and EOF's There are two ASCII characters which cause problems for FR, and which are sometimes found in batches of messages from BBSs. They are the "FF" and EOF", described below. Possibly the next release of FR will be able to ignore them, but for now you must remove them from the data if they exist. Mostly these characters come from ANSI files, UUENCODED files in messaages, and fancy taglines. You may not see them often, but should not forget them. FF and EOF can be detected by LIST.COM and by some editors. They should be removed by an editor, by the enclosed STRIP.COM utility, or by other means at your disposal. Otherwise you may miss seeing some messages or parts of messages, and never know it. STRIP.COM is very quick, and is used as follows, where "dirty" is the file containing the raw messages, and "clean" is the file generated by STRIP with the FF's and EOF's removed. It may alter some of the more unusual characters, but preserves ordinary letters, numbers, and punctuation. I plan to write a better utility for this purpose in the near future. Meanwhile, STRIP.COM is freeware (By the Plain Vanilla Corp.) and should suffice. STRIP dirty > clean An "FF" is a "Form-Feed", also called a "Page-Eject". Its value is Decimal 12 = Hex $0C, and it is produced from the keyboard by CNTL-L. Its purpose is to eject a page from a printer when a file is being printed. When sent to a Console Display it will sometimes clear the screen, or otherwise will display as a little "female" symbol, depending upon the software which is driving the display. Unfortunately in FR it clears the screen. This is something which you don't want, because it will may cause you to miss what went before. An "EOF" is an "End-of-File" mark. Its value is Decimal 26 = Hex $1A, and it is produced from the keyboard by CNTL-Z. Its purpose is to mark the end of printable data in a file which is longer. Unfortunately the use of EOF is not standard. Some programs (such as FR) will treat it as End-of-File, and some will display it as a little right arrow. FR treats it as End-of-File, which is again something that you don't want, because if an EOF occurs in the middle of a batch of messages, you will not see the messages which follow it. . BBS Messages, outgoing If you are going to reply to an incoming message, I find that it is best to do it right away, when you first see the message, and then later, review all your replies before sending them. The procedure I am using today is: 1. Press "E" to load the incoming message into my editor. 2. Using that message as a reference, and as grist for quotes, I compose the reply, complete with a header line for REPUTIL, and return to FR. 3. Back in FR, the module is now my reply, which I append to my collection of unsent replies in a file I call "REPLY" 4. When I am finished reading all incoming messages, I generate a REP packet out of the REPLY file, using the REPGEN procedure. 5. Either right away, or later, I send the REP packet up to the BBS using the PCBoard "QWK U" command, if available, otherwise thru a mail door. This is not a fully automatic system, but it is simple and works well. For more information on creating your own REP packets from batches of text messages without a "Mail Reader", download the REPUTIL6.ZIP file. This file will most likely be anywhere that you find FR20.ZIP and a bunch where you don't. REPUTIL is freeware. . BBS Reference I like to keep samples of the various screens from a BBS as a reference file. I can access this REF before starting a session to remind myself of what I am going to see, and to plan my strategy. Such a REF file is easy to construct by editing your capture log. With FR you can flip thru the various menu's with great speed, or easily find the menu or the command you need for a particular operation. . Box List If you have a lot of things in boxes in a store-room somewhere, as I do, it can become a problem to find what you want. My solution is to number all the boxes and to keep an inventory of their contents in a disk file, with a header for each box. If I want to know where something is, I just do a find for the thing, and FR finds the box number for me. . Communication Log If you leave your capture log on all the time during sessions with a BBS or other information service, the capture log contains the complete record of what you did. I often like to review these logs to reinforce what I have learned, or to figure out what went wrong. I also extract sections from the log and save them in other files for various purposes. It is very easy to convert a capture log to an FR modular file. It may not take any editing at all. Usually there is a uniform prompt from the system. If you make that your mark, FR will pick out each command for you as a module, followed by what it did. . Connect Log If your modem writes a log of your calls, you can access that with FR by defining "CONNECT" or anything which is unique at the beginning of each log entry. By using the FR number keys to select a relative header line to display, you can see such things as a list of the dates and times, the connect speeds, the nodes, the service identifiers, etc. . Diary If you keep a diary on disk, FR is perfect for accessing and managing it. Just adopt some standard header format for each entry. . Idea Log Ideas are naturally modular. By recording each with a header of uniform format, you can use FR to sort thru them later. . Internet FAQ's On Internet there are a lot of files called "FAQ"s, which are collections of "Frequently Asked Questions" on various subjects. These FAQ files in a sense present the accumulated wisdom of the net. The structure of these files is not uniform, but many of them have a series of questions starting with "Q.", followed by the answers "A.". By defining "Q." as the mark, FR can create a list of the questions from which you may select the most interesting ones to look at. . Gopher Menus Internet has a great thing called "Gopher", which is menu driven, and which allows you to roam around the world looking at interesting things. The variety and extent of "Gopher Space" is more than one person can ever understand. It is very helpful to review the capture log of a Gopher session. Usually there is a unique mark that you can pick up on each menu as a mark. I have been using "Help ?" as a mark. This is actually on the bottom of the screen rather than the top, but since it repeats every time, that doesn't matter. Now I can page thru the sequence of Gopher Menus under FR with the right and left arrow keys and review what I did and where I went. . Letters FR is perfect for keeping letters on disk. You can put them all in a single file and compress it if you like when it is inactive. The List mode allows you to select letters of interest from the master file. . Modem Command List Modern modems are very complex, and there is a great variety in the commands that they use. It is helpful to have the command list for your modem on disk as a modular file for access by FR. As in the case of BBS commands, when you want to remember how to do something, such as force a speed, turn the compression on or off, or change the compression method, etc. Just access the command file with FR and search for a word or phrase related to the desired function. FR will find which module it is in, and display the command for you, with its description. . Shareware DOC files Shareware packages which you get from a BBS do not come with a printed reference manual. That is something which you can often get later, but not always. (FR is an example in point). The only description you get of the package is in the "READ.ME" or "DOC" file. While you are learning enough about the package to decide whether you want to use it or not, you need to access these disk text files. They can be printed, but there are many reasons for not doing that. What I like to do during this phase is to attack the original "DOC" file with my editor and put in a bunch of module marks on the parts that I think are important. I usually learn quite a lot about the software while doing this. Then I use FR on the edited result and then I begin to see how it all fits together. Often when I decide to register a program I do not order the optional hardcopy manual because my FR edited DOC file is more than adequate for my needs. . Writing Documents FR is very handy for writing documents, such as I am doing right now. A simple "." makes a fine mark to use because it never occurs at the beginning of a line in ordinary text. If you want to remove the marks at a later time though, it might be well to use something less common, such as ".+". That way when you are finished you can remove them by a change-all without wiping out all the periods at the same time. The best way to start with a document is to create a list of the section headings that you want, using your editor and save it as a file. Don't bother to put any contents in at this time. First call up the file under FR, go to List mode (Enter) and load the file by holding down the Space Bar. What you see is an instant Table of Contents. This is the same as you saw with your text editor in the first place, but the the difference is that under FR this T of C will look the same after you have filled in the paragraphs as it does now. You can now re-arrange the sections using the "G" and "H" commands, and save the revised list in a new file with the "A" command. Next, start filling in the sections. It is OK to leave the input file open while you shell to the editor, as long as you delete the list and rewind the file as soon as you return. If you want to play it safe, close the input file before you shell out to edit it. Using FR to study the structure and content of the document as I write it, and shelling out to the editor to do the actual writing, I find it goes very rapidly. I find myself shelling out very often and returning for an overview, rather than remaining in the editor for long stretches of time. Note that you can dump the FR list display by shelling to your screen dump utility. This a quick and dirty way to get a table of contents. . Writing Software It will vary with the language, but in Quick Basic, there are a lot of Subroutines, and each one starts with the line: SUB something in column 1. (You can put it in another column if you wish, as long as you are consistent). "SUB" therefore makes an excellent mark, and doesn't require you to change anything in your program to accommodate the reader. Since there is also a Main program which doesn't start that way, I copy the program source code to a new file "XREF", and edit in a "SUB MAIN" on line 1. This makes no sense to the BASIC compiler, but it makes perfect sense to FR, which picks up "SUB" as a mark (if you have it in your FR.PAR file). Now with FR on XREF you are in a perfect position to check the structure of the program and in particular the use of names and variables. If you want to find out exactly where and how you use a certain variable, you can do a "find" for that from FR, and see every instance. The name of the subroutine you are looking at will pop up as a message on line 23. If you want to revise a subroutine, use the "E"dit command from FR, and when you return, "S"ave it as a new file. Later you can pick up these separate subroutine revisions and put them into the master source file. If you are very confident and willing to take chances for the sake of speed, you can edit the master source file directly from FR. FR's main purpose in this application though is as a research tool to obtain information from the program as it develops. FR has been extremely useful in this way during the writing of its own code. . ZIP Archive Contents If you have a directory full of ZIP files, run PKUNZIP with the -V or -VB parameter and direct the output to a file (which I call "ZIPLIST"). In this file the list of contents of each archive begins with "Searching ZIP" Just make "Searching" your mark, and you will get a list of the archives under FR. You can then peek inside the ones you are interested in to see what files are there, or search for the archive which contains a particular file. . .INSTALLATION Installation consists of just a few easy steps, as described below. No file (except possibly FR.PAR) needs to be changed during installation. It is just a question of deciding where to put things, and probably adding one SET line to your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. . Step 1: Quick and Easy The easiest way to install FR, particularly during the evaluation phase, is to allocate a private directory for it, and unzip everything from FR20.ZIP into it. Most likely you have already done that, since you are reading this file now. Lets say you called the directory "FR". In this configuration, if FR is your active directory, and you have a color monitor, your installation is finished for now. You can run FR right away. Just enter "FR READ.ME" to see this file, or "FR HELP" to see the HELP file. I suggest starting with HELP, because that will teach you how to use the reader. Then you can come back to READ.ME when you are familiar with the reader commands and behavior. If your Monitor is Monochrome, then you need to go into FR.PAR and activate the monochrome color settings. You will use a text editor for this, and the instructions are in the FR.PAR file. You can scratch the FILE_ID.DIZ file, since that is only used from inside the ZIP archive for uploading, and is not needed on your computer. . Step 2: Using FR in other directories If you start FR while its directory is active, you can then change directories from within FR and use it in other directories or other drives. If you want to be able to start FR from elsewhere however, you need to do two things: 1. Add the directory where FR.EXE is located to your execution path, if it is not there already. Do this with the DOS "PATH" command. The easiest thing is to move FR.EXE to a directory which is already in your path, so you won't have to change the path. The \DOS\ directory would be fine, or perhaps a \UTIL\ directory. 2. Install an environment variable (FR) whose value is the location of the FR.PAR file. This ends with a backslash (\). For example: SET FR=C:\FR\ Suppose you move FR.PAR to the root directory, then: SET FR=C:\ The SET command can be issued from any DOS prompt, or added to your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. NOTE: You may not change the name of FR.PAR, because FR.EXE looks for it by that name. . Step 3: READ.ME and HELP It is recommended that you not abandon READ.ME until you are sure that you understand everything in it, but it really doesn't matter where you keep it. It is recommended that the HELP file be kept handy for as long as you use FR. It contains a great deal of detail which you are not likely to remember, and it is particularly convenient as a reference source when running FR. The best way to access it is from FR, because it is structured for that. If you are working on other files and don't want to disturb your loaded list of modules, just shell out to a second copy of FR to look at the help. eg: .FR HELP, .FR \FR\HELP, or .FR \UTIL\HELP.FR, depending upon where you are, where the HELP is, and what you have renamed it to. . Step 4: STRIP.COM STRIP.COM is a little utility for removing control characters from text files. It takes out everything except line-feed and carriage-return. It should go with your other utilities. STRIP.COM is freeware from the Plain Vanilla Corp. Its output goes to the screen unless you direct it to a file, as follows: STRIP infile > outfile The function of STRIP is particularly to remove embedded CNTL-Z from files containing batches of messages, if you are bothered by that problem. The effect of a CNTL-Z is to create a false end-of-file indication, so that you lose everything beyond that point. You can check for the existence of such characters using LIST.COM, or some editors, or you can just run STRIP as a precautionary measure. STRIP tacks a CNTL-Z on to the end of its output file, so if you ever concatenate two such files, you will then have an EOF in the middle of the combined file, which will have to be removed by running STRIP again. . Step 5: Your Text Editor FR has the capability to invoke an external editor to revise a loaded module, via the "E" command. Before this can work however, you have to specify the path\name of the editor and the path\name of the temporary work file which will be used. These are parameters in FR.PAR: EDITOR=editor and EDFILE=work.file Any text editor should work. If you are running DOS 6.0, the EDIT supplied with DOS should be fine. Personally I like the SLED editor, which is very old, but powerful. The EDFILE should be on a RAMDRIVE, if you have one. You don't need to do this part until you are ready to use the "E" command. . .FILE LIST The FR20.ZIP package contains 5 files: 1. FILE_ID.DIZ Short Description for a BBS File Directory You don't need this in your computer. 2. READ.ME Overview of the Reader, installation instructions, and examples of its use. 3. HELP Reference document and on-line Help file. Contains detailed description of commands and parameters. 4. FR.PAR The parameter file, controlling program options. This is the only file which must not be re-named. 5. FR.EXE The Frank's Reader program. Suggest you call it R.EXE 6. STRIP.COM A utility for removing control characters from text files. You may need this if you are processing message files containing ANSI and/or UUENCODED data. . .REGISTRATION This program package is Shareware. That means you can obtain it for nothing, and can examine it at your leisure to see what it is and how it works for you. If you discover that the program has merit and you would like to continue using it, then you are requested to register it by sending the registration fee of $20 to the author. In return for this you will receive instructions for removing the special features intended to assist new users and to remind them that the program is not registered. All commands and functions are fully enabled whether you register the program or not. The registered version starts and stops a little quicker, and the Welcome screen comes up with your name on it as the Registered Owner. Also you can bypass the Welcome altogether and go directly to a file, which the unregistered version will not do. I hope you like this reader. There are a million ways it can be used, limited only by your imagination. I am finding new uses for it every day. Frank F. Yates Author of FRANK's READER 21340 N. Charlene Place frank.yates@spacebbs.com California City, CA 93505 fyates@csn.org . Customer Service If you have any difficulty with the installation or operation of Frank's Reader or its use, please contact Frank Yates by Internet or by mail. Every effort will be made to assist you. Any comments or suggestions you care to make regarding the program will be welcome. . Warranty and Disclaimer Frank's Reader is not warranted to be fit for any particular purpose. It does what it does. Whether this is appropriate for your intended use is something which you must decide after examining the program. Every effort has been made to make the program safe, but you should always back up critical data until you are familiar with the program and its interaction with your computer, operating system, and other software. The author cannot be responsible for loss of data or any other misfortune occasioned by the use of this program. It is a powerful tool, and should be used with care. . Copyright and License Frank's Reader and everything in this package except STRIP.COM is copyright by Frank F. Yates, 1994. The package file (FR20.ZIP) may be copied and distributed freely in its original form. Any person may use the Reader and other contents of the file for a reasonable period of time for the purpose of examination or occasional use. If the program becomes one which you use frequently, then you are expected to Register it, as described in the next section. Any organization in the business of distributing shareware may include Frank's Reader in their collection without prior approval. They may not however add to or modify the file in any way without such approval. They must also make clear to their clients that any fee paid to said organization is for the distribution service only, and does not constitute purchase or registration of the software itself. . Development System This program was developed and tested on a 486SLC with VGA color, running under DOS 6.0. It has not been tested under Windows. It has also been tested on an AT using a hercules card and monochrome monitor running DOS 3.3. FR is written in Microsoft Quick Basic. The Operating System interface is all standard; nothing tricky is done, so it should work on a wide variety of systems. So far no problems have been reported. If you do experience problems, please advise. Thank you. . Names and Addresses This is a list of the people and Organizations who are mentioned in this package, or whose products or services I used while developing Frank's Reader. My thanks and appreciation to them all. You never realize how much we depend upon each other until you try to write down all the names in a list. ASSOCIATION OF SHAREWARE PROFESSIONALS (ASP) Professional Organization 545 Grover Road to promote Shareware and Muskegon MI 49442 to assist authors and users Voice: (616) 788-5131 Compuserve 72050,1433 + ASPFORUM Vernon D. Buerg Author of the well known "LIST" Text Viewers 139 White Oak Circle Petaluma, CA 94952 BBS: (415) 994-2944 CLARK DEVELOPMENT Co, Inc. Makers of the "PCBoard" BBS 6000 S. Fashion Blvd. Suite 101 Murray, UT 84107 U.S.A. Voice: (801) 261-1686 Fax: (801) 261-8987 BBS: (801) 261-8976 COMPUSERVE The leading Computer Information Service P.O. Box 20212 worldwide, and a pioneer in this business. Columbus Ohio 43220 Voice: (800) 848-8990 GALACTICOMM, Inc. Makers of the "Major" BBS 4101 SW 47th. Ave, Suite 101 Ft. Lauderdale, Florida 33314 BBS: (305) 583-7808 Greg Hewgill Author of the "Silly Little Mail Reader" Technique Computer Systems for PCBoard BBS systems. #110 - 1841 Oak Bay Avenue Victoria, BC, CANADA V8R 1C4 BBS: (604) 598-1546 International Business Machines (IBM) Makers of the Original AT computer P.O. Box 1328-W Boca Raton, Florida 33429-1328 MICROSOFT Corp. QUICK-BASIC 4.5: The compiler used. Excellent! One Microsoft Way DOS 3.3 and 6.0 Operating systems I use. Redmond, WA 98052-9953 Plain Vanilla Corporation Authors of the STRIP.COM utility P.O. Box 4493, San Diego CA 92104 (now in Public Domain) PKWARE Inc. Source of the "ZIP" Compression Utilities used 9025 North Deerwood Drive Brown Deer WI 53223 BBS: (414) 354-8670 SPACE BBS My "home" BBS. You may leave Stanford Palo Alto Computer Exchange messages for me in the MAIN P.O. Box X, Menlo Park, CA 94026 conference (0) there. 1 415 323-4198 SYMANTEC CORP. Source of NORTON UTILITIES and ANTIVIRUS 10201 Torre Ave. Cupertino, CA 95014 BBS: (408) 973-9598 Sam Wilmott The man who wrote the SLED text editor we use. (address unknown) May he live long and prosper. Frank F. Yates Author of FRANK's READER 21340 N. Charlene Place frank.yates@spacebbs.com California City, CA 93505 fyates@csn.org . .VERSION HISTORY Frank's Reader has been around since 1990, and has undergone numerous revisions, each one (hopefully) producing a better program with more features. The following list of the changes in each version is mostly for history buffs. You do not need to know any of this, since you have the latest and best version. .Version 8 --------- * First public release of Frank's Reader .Version 9 --------- * Added Error Recovery to the Open Output File function * Added a trap to prevent use of PageUp/PageDown if not in text mode * Added a model Short Description to READ.ME * Added names to the Acknowledgement and Reference section * Revised the Installation instructions for the Parameter File * Expanded the copyright notices .Version 10 ---------- * Parameter File renamed from "READER.CFG" to FR.PAR" * Feature to allow relocating the parameter file by environment variable (FR) * Split the PARMS Menu into two parts to allow more room * Added "Music" parm to allow silencing the sign-on/sign-off tunes * Added a Check-Prompt to delay program termination (ESC) * Added "Expert" parm to disable the DOS and ESC Check-Prompts * Revised the Welcome Menu for greater clarity about what to do next * Revised the input filename prompt * Added two new messages to the ASPFORUM.R sample data file * Reflected the above in READ.ME and HELP files * Made the Message (Header) list of variable length, controlled by parm (LL) .Version 11 ---------- * The package cut down to make it smaller and therefore easier and less costly to download. The programs which were omitted are all available separately if you want them. (See following section). * The READ.ME file entirely re-written * The Frank's Reader program file (FR.EXE) in this package is identical to the FR10FULL.EXE file in the previous release. .Version 12 ---------- * The capability to select any of the first nine header lines from a structured header using the number keys 1 - 9. This feature makes it feasible to directly process the captured messages from almost any service or BBS without re-formatting the data. * Automatic Mark (AM) Flag to permit manual or automatic definition of the Header Mark in use. Version 10 was always automatic when you opened a file. * Improved ability to handle unusual command sequences and DOS errors. * Documentation revised to reflect the above changes. Support of Re-formatting programs dropped. .Version 14 ---------- * Fixed the junk command trap, accidentally weakened in Version 12 * Expanded the documentation pertaining to BBS messages .Version 15 ---------- * The Find (F) and Repeat Find (G) instructions added * Max total lines (Nodes) increased from 1020 to 1400, and error recovery from out-of-nodes conditions improved. Explanation of nodes added to the HELP file. * The DELETE key made an alias for the delete (D) command * Parameter menus simplified .Version 16 ---------- * Fixed a bug which caused the last line of text to sometimes not display. This didn't cause any loss of data for copied modules, but if the last line was not blank, and if it was reached by scrolling (as opposed to a down-arrow or Page-Down) it didn't display. This has been fixed. * Revised parts of READ.ME .Version 17 ---------- * The "Expert" vs "Non-Expert" mode variation was eliminated. Having two different user interfaces was not really useful, but it _was_ confusing. In addition, some of the "non-expert" features didn't work well, but I wasn't aware of it because I never used them. * More complex MARK's are now permitted in the FR.PAR file. * Two ESC entries now required for termination to help avoid accidents. * A blank line entered as an input file name will not terminate the reader. Sometimes you just want to abort the read operation but not terminate the program. Now the only way out of the program is the ESCape key. * For (I)nput commands, the current directory is automatically displayed. * The code structure was revised for better speed and efficiency. .Version 18 ---------- * The user interface was made more friendly, especially for new users. An un-registered user always gets the Welcome screen, and if he/she does not specify an input file, will automatically get the HELP panel. * The F2 and F3 function keys are now used for FIND and Repeat FIND. This seems more logical, and easier to remember. "f" still works for FIND, but the non-standard "g" for Repeat FIND was dropped. * FIND now automatically switches to Text display, positioned with the found string at the top of the screen. The first line of the module is displayed at the bottom as a system message to identify the module. * FIND now ticks every time it searches a new module, so you know that it is working. If at end-of-file no more matches are made, the display is shifted to LIST mode. The input dataset will be at End-of-File. To access any except the last 19 modules, you will need to rewind the file (HOME, or END + HOME). * More explanatory text was added to the parameter file (FR.PAR). It is useful to have the explanation right where it is needed, as opposed to in a separate file. * The program was given more protection against bad command input. Everybody does it. I do it too. The program has to be tough. * For the text display, the limit on scrolling off the end was removed. This allows the last few lines of text to be moved up to the top of the screen if you so desire. * New commands were added, ">" and "<", to shift the text window right and left to permit viewing the ends of lines longer than 80 columns. * If the Show Mark flag is OFF, now the mark is eliminated from the module text display as well as from the header list. * The HELP panel called by F1 was revised to make it easier to understand. * The display of the input file directory which occurs when opening a new file was improved for easier readability and more information. * The reader will now split input modules which are longer than a limit specified by the new parameter "More". This provides a way to break up the very long modules which causes problems with string space in previous versions. This can also be used to break up any text file, modular or not, into page sized chunks for easy viewing and editing. * The Free Space message was changed to indicate the number of lines (of average length 80 characters) which can be added, rather than the number of bytes, and it is now only displayed when the free space drops below 300 lines. Thus it is displayed only when free space might become a problem. * The READ.ME and HELP files were extensively revised. .Version 19 ---------- * FIND logic revised to erase stored modules while searching so as to avoid running out of string space when loading new modules. If KM is set, it asks your permission first. * Display cleanup improved for mode changes. * If scrolling is started while the module list is not full, it stops when the list does become full. This is so that modules are not scrolled off the top of the list when you did not expect that. .Version 20 ---------- --- Maintenance --- * Fixed a bug which caused FIND to fail when modules are very large and string space gets short. * Fixed a bug which caused the background color to be wrong on the Welcome Screen. * A mod was made to permit closing music to play on high speed computers. It previously worked only on AT and slower. --- Improvements --- * The resource management section was completely re-written. There are two important resources to watch: string space, and free nodes. Both of these are checked before every major operation to insure that the operation will not be aborted by a shortage of either of these resources. If the KM switch (Keep Modules) is off, FR will scratch modules from the top of the list as necessary to free up needed resources and keep running. There is a new command "R", which displays the current state of resource utilization. The number of nodes allocated is now a variable controlled by parameter (NODES). * The Scrolling mechanism was completely re-written. Previously it required two keystrokes to scroll by a desired amount; one to start, and one to stop. In addition, the SPEED parameter had to be set to an appropriate value reflecting your preference and the speed of your computer. Now you just press the SPACE Bar to scroll, and release it to stop. The SPEED parameter was deleted. I think you will like this a lot better. I know _I_ do. :-) * The READ.ME and HELP files were was extensively rewritten (again!). Eventually I may get it right. * The Page-Up and Page-Down are now supported in List mode. In List mode the Page-Up key flushes the loaded modules and reloads the list from the beginning of the file. The Page-Down flushes the list and loads the list from the next modules in the file. These keys continue to perform the previous functions in Text mode, which is to display the previous or next page of text from the active module. * A new command (E) was added to edit a module. It writes the module to a temporary dataset, invokes a text editor of your choice, and then reads the revised module back into memory. * Added commands "G" and "H" to remove and replace a selected module, as a means of sorting the list. Using these commands you can move modules around in the list to create a new arrangement. * Added the "A" command to write the entire list at once to file. * When FR is called with a file name, it now displays the first module of that file instead of loading a list of modules. This is quicker, usually more useful, and provides more flexibility in operation. * The Find operation displays a "Searching for xxx" message while looking instead of ticking. The tics did not work well on faster computers because they occurred too rapidly to be heard. * The Right and Left shift increments (Commands < and >) were increased to 20 columns at a time. This makes large shifts quicker. * Function Key F8 was installed to toggle the KM (Keep Modules) switch, and the state of this switch is now indicated by a "K" or blank in column 80 of the List Header. Experience using FR revealed that this is something you want to turn on or off frequently, and a more convenient means was desired over going the parameter menu. * Modules which have been saved are tagged now, and indicated by an "S" in column 80 of the header list. * The capability to read plain text files without any marks was added. When you are asked to specify a Mark, just enter a null line, and you will then read the input file in screen-sized chunks. You can return to the normal modular mode by changing files, or by entering a mark via the parameter menu, or by toggling the new "UM" switch there.