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keepDOC
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1988-10-23
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G'day!
And welcome to...
c
Keep
v1.2
Copyright Notice:
Keep v1.2
is
copyright (c) 1987, 1988 by Tim Grantham.
It may not be sold for profit, nor altered in any way, without
the permission of the author.
Keep
is an example of the latest in freely
distributable programs:
Bonusware
. That means that you
can copy this software as much as you want -- no donation is
required or requested (I won't send them back if I get them,
though. ;-) ) However, should you wish to have a copy of the
source code, send me $10 and a blank disk and I will happily
oblige. It's ugly code but it's only about the 15th program I've
ever written, in any language on any computer, and I'm damn
proud of it.
I would appreciate any feedback users have about the
program. I can be reached at:
55 Sorauren Ave.
Toronto, Ontario
Canada. M6R 2C9
(416) 535-1721
or on:
PeopleLink:
AMTAG
BIX:
dispatcher
GEnie:
t.grantham
CIS:
71426,1646
Keep those cards and letters coming, folks!
What you are reading is the documentation for
version 1.2. Those of you who simply wish to see what has been
added to version 1.1 can jump to the end where the changes are
listed. I still recommend that you peruse the entire file:
some of the changes require a little explanation. The new
features are preceded by an asterisk (*).
Keep
is a utility program for BBS and network
junkies like myself who download messages in one large file and
then read them off-line. Using only the mouse, you can drive
through such files a message at a time, examine each at your
leisure and tag those you wish to
keep
. When the entire
file has been examined,
keep
goes through the file once
more and stores those messages that have been so tagged. The
original source file is left intact. *If a file with the same
name as the current output file is found,
Keep
will
give you the option of overwriting that file, appending to it
(useful when building a file from several source files) or
renaming the current output file. If no messages have been
tagged for saving, the source file will be closed and the program
will simply restart.
Once running,
Keep
is (or should be)
self-explanatory. A possible source of ambiguity is the gadgets
at the top of the window. Selection of the arrows pointing up and
down permit the user to page through the text of each message.
The
KEEP
and
DUMP
gadgets tag the message and advance to the next message. You can
select the left-pointing arrow to back up to the previous
message. Here you can change the fate of that message by
selecting the appropriate
KEEP
or
DUMP
gadget. However, you must return to the
current message by selecting the right-pointing arrow before you
can move on to the next message in the file. *The `ghosted'
slider indicates how far into the file you've gone. I call it the
file gauge
. :-)
You can invoke
Keep
in a number of ways. If you are
using the
Workbench
, you can simply click on the icon
provided. If you are using the CLI, the recommended command is as
follows:
run
keep
Charlie Heath's excellent file requester is put up as soon as the
program starts so that you can pick the file to be examined. In
this case, the output file containing the
kept
messages
will be stored by default in the current directory.
However, you can specify the source file from the CLI thusly:
run
keep message_file
This will examine the file
message_file
and store the
messages to be
kept
in the file
message_file.kpt
, in the current directory.
If you wish to cross directories, you can enter, for example
run
keep df1:message_file to
df0:file_name
The
.kpt
extension will be automatically
appended to the destination file name. You
should
specify
a destination file name. Simply entering, for example,
run
keep df1:message_file to df0:
will cause the
kept
file to appear simply as
.kpt
on df0:.
Keep
opens its own screen to the same size as the
front-most screen. This is almost always the
Workbench
screen. Thus, if you are using
morerows
or interlace to
get a larger display area,
Keep
will inherit it.
Keep
assumes that message files consist of lines
of no more than 120 characters, ending with a carriage return
(CR) and/or linefeed (LF). Any non-text character contained in
the line before the CR/LF will be displayed, usually as a
rectangle. CRs or LFs do not appear. They are, however, left
intact.
You can at any time change the directory and name of the
destination file by selecting
To...
under the
Project
menu.
Skip
terminates examination of the current file and
saves what messages had been tagged up to that point. *It then
saves all of the unread messages into another file in the same
directory with a
.splt
extension, e.g.
message_file.splt
. (I'm afraid there is no option
to change the name of this file.)
Skip
is useful if its
3:00 am and you can't plow through another 250 messages before
you have to go to work in the morning. You can use
Skip
to split the file into read and unread messages; later you can
pick up where you left off. You can even use the
To...
option to append the
kept
messages to the original
.kpt
file. A couple of caveats: the storing of the
unread messages is pretty slow in this version. Be patient.
Secondly,
make sure there is enough room for the .splt file,
or the program will terminate!
Abort
terminates examination of the current file
completely and restarts the program.
About
provides some speculation as to the
inspiration for the Guru's meditations...
*
Tiny
closes the
Keep
screen and puts up
a tiny window on the
Workbench
screen. This conserves
CHIP memory should you wish to switch to another program but
still leave
Keep
in memory.
Keep
also
provides support for users of the
Tiny Window Manager
created by Nick Sullivan of
The Transactor for the
Amiga. If
TWM
is running, it will `gather up', so
to speak,
Keep
's tiny window into itself, along with
any other tiny windows created by other programs that can make
themselves clients of
TWM
.
To bring the
Keep
screen back up, simply click the
mouse inside the tiny window. You will then find yourself exactly
where you were when you put up the tiny window. It's probably not
a good idea to select the
Tiny
option while the program
is storing the messages marked for saving.
Quit
exits the program.
Keep
does not have to be used exclusively for
information services. It can work with any text database that
uses a repeating header at the beginning of each record and
fields of no more than 120 characters delimited with CR and/or
LF. It looks for a
search string
of five characters or
less -- the shorter the string, the faster the search. You can
see which ones I have chosen: each time a network gadget is
selected in the service requester, the
First line search
word
string gadget is updated. You can click on this gadget
to customize the search string.
*
Special note to Usenet-ers:
Because the headers on
Usenet/Pnet/Bitnet vary widely, the search string I have provided
may not be suitable. Use the string gadget to make the program
look for a string unique to your particular message header.
If the program encounters a read error in the message file,
it will save those messages currently tagged and offer to restart
the program.
If the program encounters an error during the writing of the
destination file, it will close that file and save to ram:
instead -- very handy if you just spent four hours going through
700+ messages. In this case, however, the default destination
file name will be used.
Enhancements to future versions of
Keep
may include:
1.
Much
more attractive, Image-rendered
gadgets.
2.
Command line and menu support for interlace.
3.
More polished mutual exclude in the service
requester.
4.
Custom depth arrangement gadgets. The standard
ones are there, although only the top two rows of pixels are
visible. If you can grab those two rows, you can also slide the
screen down.
5.
Support for other BBSs and networks. Does
anybody know what. The Source uses for its message headers?
6.
Support for arbitrarily large files and
messages. *In this version,
Keep
is confined to
files containing up to 4000 messages or records. In addition, it
reads in no more than 1000 lines at a time. This latter aspect
does not compromise the operation of the program should the
message be larger than 1000 lines. It simply splits it into
smaller pieces. If you want to save a complete message, save all
the pieces.
7.
More elegant command line parsing.
8.
The ability to use the mouse to mark
portions
of messages for keeping.
9.
Word wrap for lines longer than 80 characters.
10.
Scrolling, rather than paging of text.
Keep v2.0
will make use of the
ARP
library, including the
ARP
file requester. It will also
most likely provide the ability to
keep
messages to
multiple files at once and the ability to use the Pipe: device
provided by some shell programs to permit a file to be
kept
even as it is being downloaded.
The shareware program
blitzfonts
works with
Keep
and is highly recommended.
I would like to thank Harvey Laser, Larry Pahlman and DARRYL
H for testing the various versions of this program. I especially
would like to thank the
real
Nick Sullivan, editor of
The Transactor for the Amiga
for his endlessly patient
assistance.
Keep
is a direct descendant, several
generations removed, of a program Nick wrote in CBM Basic
and 6502 ML for the C64 and PET 8032.
My greatest debt is to my wife Cate and my son Alex, for
their love.
Tim Grantham
April 26, 1988.
New features of
Keep
v1.2:
1. A proportional gadget `file gauge' that shows you how
far into the source file you are.
2. The
Skip
menu option now will save the
unexamined portion of the source file to a separate file, for
later perusal.
3.
Keep
now checks to see if a destination file
already exists and if so, it provides an opportunity to append to
it, to overwrite it or to change the name of the current output.
4.
Keep
is now runnable from the Workbench.
Check out the icon!
5. If no messages have been marked for
keep
ing,
no file will be opened --
Keep
will simply restart.
Before,
Keep
created an empty file.
6.
Keep
now can handle files containing up to
4000 messages. It will
not
recover nicely if this number
is exceeded but I find it hard to imagine a file of such a size.
You could always use the
Skip
option to gnaw on it a
piece at a time.
7.
Keep
now has a tiny window option, and
supports Nick Sullivan's
Tiny Window Manager
. This
helps conserve CHIP memory.