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UPGRADE.DOC
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1994-01-02
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Upgrading to Weather Board 1.34
--------------------------------
This document is only for people that are currently running a version
of Weather Board prior to 1.33. New users should refer to the
installation section of the WB.DOC file.
Due to some rather extensive internal changes, upgrading to Weather
Board 1.33 is a little more involved than in past releases. Its not
difficult, however. If you want to switch to the OS/2 version from an
old Dos version, follow the Dos upgrade from your current version
first, then follow the OS/2 upgrade for 1.30.
The main change is to the WB.CFG file. There are two new lines
included. Line 16 is for the Edit Mode feature, and line 17 is for
the State Summary output file. Line 18 is for the program modem
control during the edit process. See the examples in the new docs for
information on this.
The other change is the inclusion of state summaries for people who
are running older versions of Weather Board, which did not include
this feature. If you are running a version prior to 1.10, and want to
display the state summary, you will need to modify your Z.BAT file.
The Changes Explained
----------------------
Four new features have been added to Weather Board 1.30. They are
1) A customizable output file for the State Summary forecasts,
2) Multiple city and state forecasts, 3) Jet Edit and 4) Modem Hook
Control.
State Summary File :
This is the easy one. Line 17 is for the full name of the output file
for State Summary forecasts. It works just like line 4, which is the
line for the Local Area forecast.
Multiple Forecasts :
This lets you do two local city forecasts and two state summary
forecasts with one run of the program. If you put CMH LAX in line 3 of
WB.CFG, you'll get the reports for Columbus and Los Angeles in the
local forecast output file. If you put OH CA in line 8, you'll get the
state summaries for Ohio and California in the state summary output
file.
Here's the neat part. If you put OH CA in line 3, you'll get a local
forecast output file that contains forecasts for most major cities in
both states. What cities you get will depend on where the National
Weather Service offices are in that state. Couple this with OH CA in
line 8, to get the state summaries, and you'll obtain a wealth of
weather information for a fairly wide area.
Unfortunately, a wealth of information brings its own set of problems
to the table. One of which is very large capture files, which need to
be edited. In doing tests on the multiple forecast routines, two
things became obvious. First, I had to add a TON of editing code to
make these "stacked" forecasts look presentable, and second, all this
new code was making the edit extremely slow on large files. Small
files (like just looking for CMH and OH) didn't seem to be a problem.
But putting in AZ CA for both local and state forecasts resulted in
editing sessions of over 10 minutes on my 386/25. I could imagine what
a 4.77 mhz PC would be like! So to cut down on this time, I added the
second feature, called Jet Edit.
Jet Edit :
This option is invoked with line 16 of WB.CFG. There are actually two
possible options for line 16, FULL and JET. FULL edit does what you
might expect. It does lower case translation, and capitalization all
over the place, as required. It doesn't get everything all the time,
but it handles about 98% of the situations it encounters. But this
takes time. JET bypasses the lower case phase of the editor. It also
will not add blank lines in quite as many places as FULL does.
However, the same file size that takes FULL 10 minutes can be done by
JET in about 25 seconds. I'd say that's worth putting up with upper
case.
So here's how I'd set things up. If you are getting forecasts for one
city and state, or at least not very many cities and one state, use
FULL. It doesn't take very long on small capture files, and it will
make your output files look the best. If you need reports for a large
area, or the reports you ask for tend to generate large capture files,
use JET. Your output files will be in upper case, and they might not
look quite as nice as with FULL, but your BBS will come back up a LOT
faster with JET. You'll just have to experiment and see which option
is right for you.
Modem Hook Control :
This option is invoked with line 18 of WB.CFG. There are two options
for line 18, YES and NO. YES instructs the program to take the phone
off the hook at the start of editing and to put it back on hook at edit
completion, just before the program ends. NO will bypass this part of
the program and leave the modem onhook while the editing is underway.
The Upgrade Procedure
----------------------
For version 1.30 - 1.33:
DOS Version:
1. Copy WBDOS.EXE into the \WB directory.
2. Change the .EXE name in Z.BAT.
3. Add an IF ERRORLEVEL statement for error level 1 in Z.BAT
See the example Z.BAT for what it should be.
OS/2 Version:
1. Copy WBOS2.EXE into the \WB directory.
2. Rename Z.BAT to Z.CMD.
3. Change the .EXE name in Z.CMD.
4. Add an IF ERRORLEVEL statement for error level 1 in Z.CMD
See the example Z.CMD for what it should be.
For versions 1.25 - 1.29:
1. Copy WBDOS.EXE into the \WB directory.
2. Change the .EXE name in Z.BAT.
3. Add line 18 to WB.CFG as described above.
4. Add an IF ERRORLEVEL statement for error level 1 in Z.BAT
See the example Z.BAT for what it should be.
For versions 1.10 - 1.24:
1. Copy WBDOS.EXE into the \WB directory.
2. Change the .EXE name in Z.BAT.
3. Add lines 16, 17 & 18 to WB.CFG as described above.
4. Add an IF ERRORLEVEL statement for error level 1 in Z.BAT
See the example Z.BAT for what it should be.
For versions prior to 1.10
1. Copy WBDOS.EXE into the \WB directory.
2. Change the .EXE name in Z.BAT.
3. Add lines 16, 17 & 18 to WB.CFG as described above.
4. If you want to display the State Summary file, either edit the
copy statements in your Z.BAT to include the summary output file, or
use the one provided in the archive. If you don't want the summary
file displayed, no change to Z.BAT is necessary.
5. Add an IF ERRORLEVEL statement for error level 1 in Z.BAT
See the example Z.BAT for what it should be.
That's it. I hope you enjoy this new version of Weather Board!