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The Arsenal Files 8
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The Arsenal Files Collection #8 (Arsenal Computer) (1996).ISO
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vend31sw.zip
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WHATS.NEW
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1996-08-21
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What's new, what has been changed, what bugs have been fixed:
-------------------------------------------------------------
Version 3.10
High ASCII code for the British pound symbol £ can be inserted
in a product description by using <156>. In other words, if
you wanted to write: "This product normally sells for £9 but
this month..." you should instead enter the text as follows:
"This product normally sells for <156>9 but this month..."
Version 3.10 (Shareware)
The shareware distributor's version of The Disk Vendor now
allows you to enter odd-ball prices for odd-ball products.
Normally you only have freedom to enter 4 different prices,
reflecting 360k, 720k, 1.2M and 1.4M disk sizes. However,
what if you wanted to sell a CDROM? Or if you wanted to sell
hard drives? In the past the solution was to buy the General
Business version in addition to the Shareware version. Not
any longer! To add, for example, a CDROM for sale, follow
this format:
#CD412
So Much Shareware ~14.95
A huge collection of shareware covering 200 topics...
On the product title line, simply insert a ~ tilde character
followed by the price (don't forget the decimal point as in
dollars...decimal point...then cents). That's it.
Version 3.05
Rather than maintaining dozens of .CAT files, you now can
maintain just one single ALLFILES.CAT text file containing
all your product items and categories. To implement this
feature, you must decide merge all your .CAT files together
into one file. Name that one file "ALLFILES.CAT", then
use the following token: [BREAK] to separate each category
of products within this ALLFILES.CAT file. The compiler will
pause, and create a new category each time it finds the
[BREAK] token left justified in the ALLFILES.CAT file. You
still are obligated to use the proper sequence of:
Category heading
#Part number
Title and price
Description
Description
#Part number
Title and price
Description
Description
[BREAK]--------------------------------------------------
Category heading
#Part number
etc....
Do NOT place the keyword [BREAK] at the very beginning, nor at
the very end of the ALLFILES.CAT file. Only place a [BREAK]
token BETWEEN each category of products. Also, make sure
that you delete/remove all former .CAT files AFTER you merge
them into the single ALLFILES.CAT file. The compiler will
duplicate your products otherwise, for the compiler will still
read all .CAT files in your working directory. Therefore make
sure that you prevent duplicates by deleting all .CAT files
except the ALLFILES.CAT file.
After the [BREAK], you are free to add hyphens or whatever
to create an easier to see divider between categories. This
is totally optional. The hyphens are NOT necessary, but the
left justified [BREAK] token IS necessary in an ALLFILES.CAT
file.
If you wish to continue maintaining dozens of individual .CAT
files, you may do so. The ALLFILES.CAT is an OPTION. It is
not mandatory. Choose the method which works for you.
Fixed a bug in the SW version which prevented any item
from having the sequences "360" and "720" anywhere in the
disk/catalog number. For instance "D-1360" would be
displayed as "D-1", where the "360" would be lost. This
bug has been corrected. This bug never affected the GB
versions.
Fixed a bug that failed to display a product desciption in its
entirety if the description consisted of between 14 and 19
lines of text.
Version 3.04
If a customer tried to remove a previous selected item,
an error 9 would often occur. This bug was introduced in
version 3.03 and has now been fixed.
Added the option to prompt for an Email address in the
order form.
Added the option to withhold the picklist/input field that
prompted the user to specify the quantity of items they
wanted to order. This option was necessary for those
vendors who were selling one of a kind, rare merchandise.
For example, if you were selling the original Mona Lisa,
or the Brooklyn Bridge, you surely would not want the
customer to be able to select "2" for a quantity amount.
The vendor can have the catalog calculate the shipping
charges automatically by creating a SHIPPING.TOT file.
This file is a comma-delimited ASCII file, and must
contain no more than five lines of text in the following
format:
0,50,5.00
50.01,75,8.50
75.01,100,10.00
100.01,200,12.50
200.01,99999,0
These values above are interpreted by the catalog in
the following manner. Orders with a subtotal of less
than $50.00 will cause the catalog to automatically add
$5.00 shipping to the order. Orders with a subtotal of
more than (or equal to) $50.01 but less than $75.00 will
cause the catalog to automatically add $8.50 to the order.
Each line must contain 3 values: a minimum subtotal, a
maximum subtotal, and the cost of shipping for orders that
subtotal between those minimum/maximum values. You can
define up to 5 different shipping ranges in this
SHIPPING.TOT file. Do NOT include the currency symbol.
Each value must be separated by a single comma. Two
commas per line therefore must exist.
Version 3.03
The CATALOG.EXE would fail to find the .DAT file if the
user was not currently logged to the drive where the files
resided. This problem has been fixed.
The graphic images would fail to be found by CATALOG.EXE if
the user ran A:CATALOG.EXE from the C:> prompt. This bug
has been fixed.
Australian, Canadian and U.K. compiled CATALOG.DAT files now
have the correct variant spelling of "cheque" instead of
the American "check".
Added horizontal menu keys in warning and message boxes
replacing "Y/N" and vertical menu prompts.
Version 3.02
Resolved a memory problem that occured when loading large
text files (greater than 100k) in the CATALOG.EXE and
later trying to display a closing GOODBYE.EXE image. The
memory was not being released, and often the GOODBYE image
would fail to display due to a shortage of memory.
Version 3.01
Fixed a bug that did not allow for shipping rates less than
$1.00 in the SHIPPING.TXT file.
A new option has been added in the compiler that allows the
customer to redirect their order form from a printer to an
ASCII text file.
The custom color configuration option has been enhanced and
fixed (see version 2.03).
Version 3.0 (General Business)
Added graphic support. Displays graphic images saved to
self-executing .EXEs, and then renamed to use one of the
three graphic file extensions: .4CE, .OPT or .CHO (see
documentation for details on how to use).
Fixed a bug related to sub-totals over $9999.99 rounding
off and losing a .01 or two. You can now have an order
totaling over $1,000,000 without worring about being
cheated out of a few cents! I doubt anyone would have
ever discovered this bug, and if they did, I guess they
would not have been too upset over losing a penny on a
$10,000 sale. <g>
Version 2.22 (General Business)
Catalog item descriptions can now be more than 18 lines in
length - no more limited to size of viewport.
Version 2.21 (GB)
Previous versions only supported item prices up to $9,999.99.
We have now increased the maximum item price to $999,999.99
for those of you who are selling houses or other high-dollar
items.
Version 2.21 (SW & GB)
When a customer now attempts to remove an already selected
item from their current order, an "Are you sure" dialog box
will be displayed, prompting them to confirm their deletion.
Version 2.2 (SW & GB)
You can now specify a different .DAT file name to be used
with the catalog module. In the past, CATALOG.DAT was always
used, and should CATALOG.DAT be missing, an error message
would be displayed. Since some folks would like to maintain
separate catalogs, for instance a catalog for Avon products,
and another catalog for Amway products, this made things
difficult since each catalog would end up with the file name
CATALOG.DAT. New with this version 2.2 is the ability to
manually rename your CATALOG.DAT file to whatever you wish,
and then pass that new .DAT file name to the catalog module
through a batch file or command line parameter. For example,
once you have compiled your Avon product .CAT files into a
CATALOG.DAT file, go to DOS and rename CATALOG.DAT to
AVON.DAT. Then you can compile a new catalog .DAT file
using your Amway product files. Once this CATALOG.DAT file
is created, rename it to AMWAY.DAT. With me so far? OK,
then to use the catalog module CATALOG.EXE with both .DAT
files, you can set up a batch file for each catalog. For
your Avon products, you can create an AVON.BAT file that
simply contains the words --> CATALOG AVON For your
Amway catalog, create another batch file, for instance
AMWAY.BAT, and place the words --> CATALOG AMWAY in it.
This way you can keep just one copy of the catalog module
on your distribution floppy disk, and still be able to
present two (or three, or more) different .DAT files to your
customers.
Modification to how vendor can setup his SHIPPING.TXT
file... If you leave a shipping method withOUT a price
and withOUT an equal symbol (=), then there will be no
shipping charges computed on your customer's order. This
feature has been added for those vendors who wish to
determine the shipping cost after they have received an
order from the customer (due to weight considerations).
When a selected item is removed from the "Review order"
listing, a short reminder message is displayed, stating,
"Avon Beauty Cream removed from order!"
The catalog run-time module (CATALOG.EXE) will now auto-
detect the disk and drive where the program was started
from and seek the .DAT file from the same path. In other
words, if your CATALOG.EXE & .DAT files are on drive A:
but your customer starts the catalog from the C:> prompt
with C:>A:CATALOG, the catalog program will also open
the .DAT file on drive A:, since that is where the
program resides. Earlier versions would have looked for
the .DAT file on the current drive/directory (C: in the
example above).
Version 2.2 (General Business)
An additional discount can be applied to the customer's
order based upon their subtotal of all items ordered.
Version 2.2 (Shareware)
Some foreign countries have large numbers associated with
the cost of their disks. For example, in Italy, a 360K
disk may sell for 1400 lira. Provision has now been made to
accomodate the large numbers, where this was not available
before.
Version 2.13 (SW & GB)
Due to the International response, the program now supports
currency symbols/characters greater than one. No longer are
you limited to $ and £, but three character currency units
can be used (e.g. Lra, DM...for Lira and Deutsche Marks).
Version 2.12 (SW & GB)
Australians do not use Discover credit cards, but rather a card
called "Bankcard". I have made this card available when the
Country format is set to Australia.
Version 2.11 (Shareware)
Fixed a bug that placed a price next to a "note file" when the
catalog is printed.
Version 2.11 (SW & GB)
Provided the option to have free shipping by simply indicating
the cost "=0.00" in the SHIPPING.TXT file next to the corresponding
free shipping method. Previous versions would not accept a
value of "0.00" causing the compiler to abort. Should the
SHIPPING.TXT be missing altogether, shipping will be free and
no prompt menu will ever appear for the customer to choose from.
The word "Check" will automatically be spelled "Cheque" if the
address format is specified as "United Kingdom" from within the
compiler.
Version 2.1 (SW & GB)
From the CATALOG.EXE, a customer's ordered items are now sorted
for easier reading whenever an order form is printed, and when
the customer reviews their order on the screen.
Version 2.1 (Shareware)
The total number of disks that the customer has selected is
now displayed at the bottom of the description window so that
the customer can keep track of his order easier. This is useful
as an incentive if you tell your customer in advance that a
quantity discount will "kick in" after a certain number of disks
have been purchased.
The ability to filter in and out certain disk size formats with
the use of the key words "360", "720", "1_2", "1_4" has been added.
These key word "flags" are placed on the title description line
inside your *.CAT files and override the selection you have made
from the compiler in respect to the disk sizes that you offer.
Example, let's say that you normally sell low density disks to
your customers, but in the case of a huge disk set (e.g. The
Online Bible) you wish to only offer this title in high-density
formats. By using the "1_2" and "1_4" key words, the 360K and
720K selections will be disabled when your customers attempt to
order this title. The only drawback to this use of key words
is that you must then specify explicitly in each program title
the normal sizes available such as "360" and "720". This means
more typing and eventually a larger final CATALOG.DAT file.
Key words (if used) are not displayed to the customer. Like the
multi-disk flags ("*"), key word flags are hidden from the
customer's view.
F7 function key has been added that will display the customer's
computer system information (DOS version, video card, RAM, etc.)
A warning message to the user that their order has not been saved
to disk prior to exiting the program...has been added.
Version 2.04 (Shareware)
The billing method would occasionally display "Bill to my
account" even though this was not a selection available in
the compiler. This bug has been fixed.
If a shareware vendor distributes only one size disk format,
the confirmation/disk format menu that lists the disk format
sizes has been replaced with a "Thank you" message. Since there
was no reason to have the customer confirm a selection box
containing only 1 choice, it was therefore replaced.
Version 2.04 (SW & GB)
When displaying ASCII ".TXT" files from CATALOG.EXE, the user is
now prompted to "Press any key" from the "Wait" screen. Previously,
as soon as the text file was read into memory, it was displayed.
Some users complained that this occurred too quickly and kept them
from finishing reading the "WAIT.TXT" file that displays during this
process.
Version 2.03 (SW & GB)
Added COMPILE.EXE command line parameter COLORS that will
allow access to color configuration prompts.
Added ability to customize customer order form address
prompts to correspond to USA, Australia, Canada and UK formats.
Fixed F1 search function with CATALOG where beginning search
category would sometimes be incorrect.
Version 2.02 (SW & GB)
Changed maximum number of categories from 256 to 512
Changed maximum number of items per category from 256 to 512
Version 2.02 (Shareware)
A funny bug would occur when the customer selects a disk
title was selected that would terminate the CATALOG.EXE
It only occurred when the fifth line of a description
field contained a numeral "1". Yes, I know this is odd
sounding, but that's what caused the error. (You would have
to see the "code" to understand why this happened.) It has
now been fixed.
Version 2.01 (SW & GB)
Added a (Y/N) confirmation menu before quitting the program
to prevent one too many [ESC]'s from quitting the program
before the user really intended to quit.
CATALOG.EXE will now load a VGA 640 x 480 16 color self-
executable graphic image if HELLO.EXE and/or GOODBYE.EXE
exists.
Version 2.00 (SW & GB)
The user now has the ability to select the quick list or
the single item full screen description as the primary
interface through the compiler.
Version 1.10 (SW & General Business)
First large scale release to BBS and shareware vendors.
Version 1.00 (Shareware)
Original release uploaded solely to ASP Forum on Compuserve