Magnum One

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

/ Magnum One / Magnum One (Mid-American Digital) (Disc Manufacturing).iso / d19 / pcbgif20.arc / PCBGIF.ARC / PCBGIF.DOC < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1991-08-03 | 34KB | 647 lines

┌───────────────────────┬────────────────────┬───────────────────────┐ ├───────────────────────┤ PCBGIF ├───────────────────────┤ ├───────────────────────┤ VERSION 2.00 ├───────────────────────┤ └──────────────────┬────┴────────────────────┴───┬───────────────────┘ │ │ │ (C) 1990 by Ramon Martinez │ │ All Rights Reserved. │ │ │ ├─────────────────────────────┤ │ │ │ written by │ │ Ramon Martinez │ │ │ ├─────────────────────────────┤ │ │ │ Sysop │ │ PC Treasure Chest │ │ Fullerton, Ca. │ │ (714) 738-0841 │ │ 1200/2400, 24 Hrs., PCBoard │ │ │ ├─────────────────────────────┤ │ │ │ Supporting │ │ PCBoard │ │ │ └─────────────────────────────┘ June 1, 1990 This is a copyrighted program. As the sole copyright holder, I retain all rights to the PCBGIF program. This program may not be modified in any way not intended. This program may not be sold by anyone other than the author, and my not be used to make any money by anyone other than the author without prior WRITTEN permission. I make ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY on this program. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. I will not assume ANY responsibility for any damage done to your system resulting from the use of this program. If you choose to use this program, you choose to accept responsibility for any and all damage that may occur. No warranty is expressed or implied. I hereby grant bulletin board system operators a license to use this program for their bulletin boards, without charge, as long as this program does not specifically generate any funds for the bulletin board, and as long as the system operator does not violate any of the provisions in the previous paragraphs. Commercial use of this program requires registration. This license may be terminated unilaterally at any time by the author, with or without cause. Upon termination, the system operator must completely erase all PCBGIF files and associated utilities. There is no specific fee for the use of this program in a non-commercial implementation. It is not Shareware as it does not require a payment for its use after a certain amount of time. However, if you would like to register the program, you may do so by filling out the form at the end of this documentation file. Think of this program as "Donation-Optional-Ware", unless it is used for commercial purposes. A whole page and you still do not know what this darn thing does! ─────────────────────── WHAT THIS PROGRAM DOES ─────────────────────── PCBGIF will allow you to automatically insert the true resolution of GIF files into your PCBoard DIR files. This will allow your users to immediately determine what resolution each GIF file is, and how many colors it contains. Previously, users could only try and guess by the byte size of the GIF files. This program will also eliminate the possibility of the user reporting an incorrect resolution in the file descriptions. PCBGIF is best suited for Sysops who care about their GIF files. PCBGIF will also create a report for you if you wish. The report may contain a summary, a list of GIF files with resolutions, or both. It will also alert you to duplicate GIFs, and will alert you to GIFs that may be corrupt. ─────────────────────── FILES IN THIS ARCHIVE ──────────────────────── Below is a list of the files included in this archive, and the use for the file: PCBGIF.EXE This is the main program. PCBGIF requires 1 other program to run, and those that program is supplied in this archive. PCBGIF.DOC You are looking at this file now. SAMPLE.CFG A sample configuration file. You must pass PCBGIF.EXE a configuration file from the DOS prompt. The configuration filename can be any valid filename, and the format of the configuration file is explained later. SAMPLE2.CFG A sample of the second configuration file. PCBGIF requires 2 of them. The format of the second configuration file is explained later. REGISTER.DOC A form to register PCBGIF. REM-RES.EXE A program to strip out the resolutions from your PCBoard DIR files created with previous versions of PCBGIF. Only use this program if your DIR files contain resolutions of GIF files inserted by PCBGIF Version 1.3 or before. UP-TO-20.DOC A documentation file for REM-RES.EXE. GIFDIR1.ZIP A ZIP file containing the required version of GIFDIR. PCBGIF Version 2.0 uses a DIFFERENT version of GIFDIR than previous versions. MAKE SURE THAT YOU REPLACE THE VERSION OF GIFDIR BY BOB BERRY WITH THIS ONE, WHICH IS FROM PAUL BOULAY! FAILURE TO DO THIS WILL RESULT IN UNKNOWN RESULTS. IF YOU DO NOT KEEP GIFDIR IN THE CURRENT DIRECTORY, BE SURE TO REPLACE IT IN YOUR PATH. (NOTE: none of the files should have a date later than the one listed at the top of this document. If it does, it means one of two things. One, someone has modified a file without authorization, or two, that I forgot to change the date at the top of the document.) ─────────────────── HOW TO CONFIGURE THIS PROGRAM ──────────────────── To use this program, you must create 2 valid configuration files. The first one is passed to PCBGIF.EXE via the DOS command line, and the second one is referenced in the first configuration file. I will refer to the configuration file passed to PCBGIF at the DOS prompt as the first configuration file, and the one referenced by the first configuration file as the second configuration file. The configuration files may be named anything you want to name them, but they must be valid DOS names. I suggest using an extension of .CFG. The format of the first configuration file (the one passed on the DOS command line) is as follows: Line 1: The path/file of second configuration file. PCBGIF will use this entry to access the second configuration file. Line 2: The Name of your board. This is used for inserting your BBS name in the reports. This is required even if you do not want to create reports. Line 3: This line should contain a number ranging from -31 to 31. There are 31 types of reports, which can be sorted ascending (1 to 31) or descending (-1 to -31). A value of 0 (zero) on this line will indicate that not report is desired. Please see the chart listed later in this DOC file for a listing of the reports. Line 4: Value indicating the position of the "|" character in your description lines. PCBoard normally places this character in position 32. I suggest you use this value for this line if you use the PCBoard default. This value must be greater than 1. Line 5: Text to be used for the title of the report. This line should be less than 80 characters. Line 6: This line must contain either "IBM" or "ASCII". If you specify IBM, then PCBGIF will write its reports using the extended IBM graphic character when drawing lines. If you specify ASCII, it will use ASCII characters to draw lines. Line 7: This line must contain either "PCB" or "ANSI". This will let PCBGIF know whether to use the new PCB color codes (@Xfb) or the ANSI color codes for coloring the report. You must specify a valid term here even if you specify no report (zero) in line 3. Line 8: These lines contain the paths to the directories containing to GIF files. PCBGIF will access these directories to search Line N: for all GIF files. DO NOT end the path with the character "\". An example of a valid first configuration file might look like the one below: c:\pcb\sample2.cfg PC Treasure Chest 1 32 Listing of All GIFs IBM PCB d:\ega d:\vga-lr d:\vga-hr The format of the second configuration file is as follows: Line 1: Each line in this configuration file should contain the to path/filename to each PCBoard DIR file that you want to Line N: insert GIF resolutions into. Normally, you would have in this file each DIR file that corresponds to each path specified in the first configuration file. In the above example, this means that you would have 3 lines here, the three DIR files that are used for the directories d:\ega, d:\vga-lr, and d:\vga-hr. PCBGIF will modify these files, if appropriate, by inserting resolutions into them for GIFS without recognized resolutions. An example of the second configuration file might look like the one below: c:\pcb\dir\dir7 c:\pcb\dir\dir8 c:\pcb\dir\dir9 Notice that the first configuration file references the actual directories where the GIFs are actually located, while the second configuration file references the PCBoard DIR files where the listing of those GIF files are kept. WARNING: AN INCORRECTLY CONFIGURED PCBGIF CONFIGURATION FILE COULD POSSIBLY WIPE OUT YOUR DIR FILE(S). IT IS >>>HIGHLY<<< RECOMMENDED THAT YOU BACK UP YOUR DIR FILES UNTIL YOU GET PCBGIF CORRECTLY CONFIGURED. FAILURE TO BACK UP YOUR DIR FILES MAY MEAN THAT YOU WOULD HAVE TO CREATE IT/THEM FROM SCRATCH AGAIN USING PCBFILER. PLEASE TAKE THIS WARNING SERIOUSLY, AS IT COULD SAVE YOU A LOT OF WORK. NOTICE: Although it has not happened to me, it is theoretically possible that a bug in this program could wipe out one or more DIR files since this program modifies them. USE THIS PROGRAM AT YOUR OWN RISK! I will fix any reported bugs, but if one should exist, I will obviously not know about it until it pops up. But, like I said, it has not happened once proper configuration files have been created. ─────────────────────── HOW TO RUN THE PROGRAM ─────────────────────── To run PCBGIF, BACK UP YOUR DIR FILES BEFORE YOU ATTEMPT TO CONFIGURE THIS PROGRAM. PLEASE SEE THE WARNING AND NOTICE ABOVE! PCBGIF assumes that your DIR files use standard PCBFiler conventions. PCBGIF will append a resolution to the last existing description line for each file, if there is room. If not, it will add a new line, complete with the "|" character inserted in the position specified in line 4 of the first configuration file. Resolutions will be enclosed in square brackets, and will be right justified. DO NOT alter the resolution or change the position of the reported resolution. If you do, you may cause PCBGIF to not be able to recognize the resolution string, resulting in a duplicate insertion of the resolution. When using PCBGIF, it is suggested that you tell your users not to insert any resolutions in the descriptions since then will be repeated if they do. PCBGIF searches for resolutions only at then end of the last description line for a file. It will not recognize user entered resolutions. To run PCBGIF, you need to make sure that you have a copy of GIFDIR.EXE in the current directory or in a directory in your path. MAKE SURE IT IS THE VERSION OF GIFDIR INCLUDED IN THE PCBGIF 2.0 ARCHIVE! The CFG files must be in the current directory. To run the program simply use the following format: PCBGIF PCBGIF.CFG PCBGIF will then run, and it will look for a configuration file named "PCBGIF.CFG". You may want to use PCBGIF a couple of times. An example of this is used on my board. I use PCBGIF to process GIF resolutions for all non-adult files, and then use it again to process GIF resolutions for all adult files. I do this so that the reports created by PCBGIF only reflect each group of files. Another possible reason for doing this might be to create reports for GIFs that are available for all, and to create reports for GIFs that are available only to subscribers. Another use might be to create reports for each group of GIFs broken down by resolutions. Anyway, if you have line 3 of the first configuration file set to 0 (no report), then there would be no reason to run PCBGIF more than once per session. If you specified a non-zero value on line 3 of the first configuration file, two report files will be created: PCBGIF and PCBGIFG. Both are text files, but PCBGIFG contains either ANSI or PCB color codes. You can rename, delete, or process these two files as you see fit. You will probably want to compress the text-only version (PCBGIF) and move the compressed file to a download directory, and then copy both the text-only version and the graphics version (PCBGIFG) to your bulletin directory. The report may contain a summary (if you specified a report value of 1 to 16), followed by a list of files. How the report is sorted is up to you. PCBGIF can sort the files many ways. Be aware that if you run PCBGIF more than once, that you MUST process the reports before running PCBGIF again as the existing reports will be overwritten. To give you an idea of all this, an example of my event.sys is shown below: . . . c: cd \pcb pcbgif pcbgif1.cfg 'run PCBGIF copy pcbgif? gifs-reg? 'rename copy gifs-reg? c:\pcb\blt 'put pasted report in 'bulletin directory pkzip gifs-reg gifs-reg 'archive the bulletin copy gifs-reg.zip d:\textinfo 'copy archive bulletin to 'a download directory erase pcbgif? 'erase no longer used erase gifs-reg? 'but just cleans house. erase gifs-reg.zip pcbgif pcbgifa.cfg 'repeat above process copy pcbgif? gifs-adl? 'for adult files so can copy gifs-adl? c:\pcb\blt 'create 2 different pkzip gifs-adl gifs-adl 'reports copy gifs-adl.zip d:\textinfo erase pcbgif? erase gifs-adl? erase gifs-adl.zip . . . In the above example, the text following the ' character does not exist in my event.sys file. It has been inserted to explain what and why I use the lines in the event.sys. Note that PCBGIF will only process the uncolorized versions of the DIR files. If you have colorized DIR files also, they will not reflect the new changes. If you use PCBFiler to colorize your directories, then the color versions of the DIR files are created on the fly, whether you like the way it does it or not (Version 14.5). If you use an external program to create colorized versions of your DIR files, you would probably want to follow the above lines with the commands necessary to colorize the updated DIR files. I use a program I wrote called COLORIZE to colorize my DIR files with ANSI codes. COLORIZE is also available to Sysops on my board. So, my event.sys would continue with a couple of lines following the above event.sys example: . . . erase gifs-adl 'from previous example erase gifs-adl.zip 'from previous example REM --- COLORIZE THE UPDATED DIR FILES colorize dir7.cfg 'colorize the new DIR file colorize dir8.cfg colorize dir9.cfg . . . ─────────────────── OTHER FILES PRODUCED BY PCBGIF ─────────────────── PCBGIF will now create a list of GIF files that do not correctly report their own resolution. The names of these gifs are output to a file called PCBGIF.BAD. The files flagged in this file are likely bad GIF files, and should be looked at. PCBGIF will create a new PCBGIF.DUP file every time it is run. You must either view the file between each run if it is run back-to-back, or simply arrange your back-to-back runs in the order that has the last run encompass all (or the most) file directories. PCBGIF will also create a file called PCBGIF.DUP that contains a list of duplicate GIF files. Unfortunately, it will not tell you where it found them, but using a file-find type utility should do the trick. Again, it will create this file each time, so back-to-back runs of PCBGIF should run in the same order consideration as above. ────────────────────── COLORIZATION STRATEGIES ─────────────────────── PCBGIF will product two report files, PCBGIF and PCBGIFG. PCBGIF is the same regardless of whether or not you are using ANSI or PCB colorization. PCBGIFG will contain either PCB @Xfb color codes or the ANSI escape sequences. If you select the PCB colorization, the colorized version will still have a "G" version. What you may wish to do if you choose to use PCB color codes is to use the non-G version for a file to be zipped and downloaded by users, and then rename/move the "G" version to your bulletin directory (PCBoard V14.5). This will allow your users to download a normal compressed ASCII version of the bulletin, while allowing you to keep only one copy of the bulletin on your system (assuming you are using PCBoard V14.5 or greater). If you are not using PCBoard 14.5 or greater, then you should not specify the PCB (as opposed to ANSI) colorization, and you will require both a "G" and a non-G copy of the report in your bulletin directory. Be sure to process the PCBGIF and PCBGIFG report files directly after a run of the PCBGIF program. Back-to-back runs of PCBGIF without processing the report files in-between will result in you only having the last version of the PCBGIF and PCBGIFG report files. ───────────────────────── REPORT INFORMATION ───────────────────────── A SUMMARY is a report listing the total GIFs, total GIF bytes, color breakdowns, resolution breakdowns, etc. A LISTING is a list of the GIF files with file size, and resolution. Sort order is in the order of primary/secondary/etc. The Primary sort will be the main order of sorting, and files within the same primary sort will be sorted by the secondary sort, and files within the same primary and secondary sort will be sorted by ... Report styles are as follows: # Summary Listing Sort Order 0 N N No Summary or Listing 1 Y Y name 2 Y Y date/name 3 Y Y date/size 4 Y Y date/vertical/name 5 Y Y date/vertical/size 6 Y Y date/horizontal/vertical/name 7 Y Y date/horizontal/vertical/size 8 Y Y vertical/name 9 Y Y vertical/size 10 Y Y vertical/date/name 11 Y Y by vertical/date/size 12 Y Y horizontal/vertical/name 13 Y Y horizontal/vertical/size 14 Y Y horizontal/vertical/date/name 15 Y Y horizontal/vertical/date/size 16 Y N Summary ONLY. No Listing. 17 N Y name 18 N Y date/name 19 N Y date/size 20 N Y date/vertical/name 21 N Y date/vertical/size 22 N Y date/horizontal/vertical/name 23 N Y date/horizontal/vertical/size 24 N Y vertical/name 25 N Y vertical/size 26 N Y vertical/date/name 27 N Y by vertical/date/size 28 N Y horizontal/vertical/name 29 N Y horizontal/vertical/size 30 N Y horizontal/vertical/date/name 31 N Y horizontal/vertical/date/size If you specify a negative (i.e. -4) value for a report, then the sorts will be descending instead of ascending. This works well with all reports except those that use filenames as a sort field. For example, if you use a report number of -13, your listing will have the files with the largest horizontal resolutions listed first, and files with the same horizontal resolutions would be listed by those with the largest vertical resolutions first, and those with the same horizontal and vertical resolutions would be listed by the ones with the biggest file size. Your report would look something like: BIGGIF1 GIF 200,000 01/01/90 [640x480x256] BIGGIF3 GIF 175,000 01/03/90 [640x480x256] BIGGIF2 GIF 150,000 01/02/90 [640x480x256] MEDGIF1 GIF 160,000 01/01/90 [640x400x256] MEDGIF3 GIF 120,000 01/03/90 [640x400x256] MEDGIF2 GIF 55,123 01/03/90 [640x400x256] AMIGA10 GIF 56,000 01/01/90 [320x400x256] AMIGA11 GIF 34,000 01/18/89 [320x400x256] LOWGIF2 GIF 59,000 01/23/88 [320x200x256] Select a report style and try it. If you don't like one, simply change the value in the first configuration file to another number and run it again. ───────────────────── PRODUCING MULTIPLE REPORTS ───────────────────── PCBGIF can be made to produce multiple reports by running under several different configuration files. This will be clumsy and time consuming. PCBGIF's primary purpose is to insert GIF resolutions into PCBoard DIR files. I realize that different people like to look at different file listings in different ways. Some are interested in the biggest files. Some are only interested in looking at certain resolutions. Others may be interested an alphabetical of all GIF files so that they can compare their list with the board's list. Recognizing this, I will be producing a program called GIFRPT (GIF Report). It will allow you to specify a series of directories where GIF files are located, and then produce the same reports available here, but in multiple versions. The advantage of doing this is that it only has to scan all directories once. PCBGIF must scan all directories once for each report, plus it must scan DIR files also. Using a combination of the two would be most useful. My suggestion is to use PCBGIF to scan ALL directories, creating a list sorted by filename (report #1). Then have GIFRPT create any other reports. This will allow you to have PCBGIF insert all resolutions into the DIR files, and create a master list, and then use GIFRPT to create multiple reports on the same sets of GIF directories. If you wish to create sets of reports for different file directories, the you would need to run GIFRPT for each set of directories. An example of this would be to produce a set of reports for adult files and another set of reports for non-adult files. If GIFRPT is not available where you downloaded PCBGIF, it will be soon. As of this writing, it is not available, but will be released soon after PCBGIF 2.0, as it will use much of the same code. It will, of course, be available on my board when it becomes available. I also usually upload to Salt Air. ───────────────────────────── NETWORKING ───────────────────────────── This program currently does not support networking. You must insure that no nodes are accessing the DIR files, or any GIF file in a download directory. I suggest that you only run this program when all nodes are at the DOS prompt. Since this program needs to directly overwrite DIR files, no attempt has been made at this time to share files. ─────────────────────────── AUTHOR SUPPORT ─────────────────────────── You may contact me at my BBS, The PC Treasure Chest. There you will always find the latest version of the PCBGIF and any other utilities and doors that I write. PC Treasure Chest Fullerton, California (714) 738-0841 1200/2400 24 Hrs. PCBoard Ramon Martinez - Sysop ────────────────────────── REVISION HISTORY ────────────────────────── Version 2.00: June 1, 1990 No longer requires BRUN45.EXE or SORTF. Since the program has been re-written in Microsoft Professional Basic, and since the Professional Basic 7.0 allows the programmer to make "custom" run-time modules (BRUN45.EXE was a run-time module), the only way to insure the proper run-time module is to compile the program to be a stand-alone program. SORTF is no longer required since PCBGIF now uses internal ISAM routines to do sorting. PCBGIF still requires GIFDIR, but it requires a DIFFERENT GIFDIR program!!! The correct version of GIFDIR is included with this archive. The GIFDIR by Bob Berry (the old one) tended to choke on corrupt GIFS. The GIFDIR by Paul Boulay (included) is a lot more stable. PCBGIF now has more sort options and report options. The new features require the Sysop to change the first configuration file if updating from a previous version. May also require the Sysop to run the REM-RES program to strip out all older resolutions. PCBGIF used to always create a new line just for the resolutions. Resolutions are now appended to the last description line, if possible. I personally liked the look of the older style better, but as GIF files build in a directory, adding a resolution only line nearly doubles the amount of directory lines, making PCBFiler very slow. PCBGIF can now be configured for your setup. You can now define where the bar character ("|") should be placed, whether to use ANSI or PCB color codes, and whether to use IBM or ASCII characters for line drawing. Version 1.30: September 23, 1989 Added a check for a situation where the total GIFs in all the directories specified could be as few as 0. Previously, if you specified something like only an upload directory to scan, and that directory contained no GIFs, PCBGIF would crash. That situation is now checked for. Changed name of program from "PCBoard GIF Resolution Reporter" to "GIF Resolution Reporter for PCBoard" to try and reduce the chance that someone would confuse this program with the work of Clark Development. Version 1.20: September 15, 1989 Added a check for directories that report no GIF files present. This might occur for some if they were to specify their upload directory as a GIF directory. Added a check for empty PCB DIR files. Minor adjustments. I think this version should be a little more stable for all. The first version worked on my board, but I guess that was because it was an "ideal" situation. Things should be settling down now. Version 1.10: September 13, 1989 PCBGIF now requires Vern Buerg's SORTF program rather than DOS' SORT program. Buerg's SORTF will sort faster and will handle bigger files. You should make sure you have at least version 2.32. Now checks for possible invalid GIF files. Will put the filenames of all suspected bad GIF files in a text file called PCBGIF.BAD. Added more checkpoints so if the program crashes for some odd reason, it will give you a message that will allow me to assess your problem. May be a bug, or it may be something to do with your system. Now I will have a better idea. Minor adjustments. Version 1.00: September 6, 1989 Initial release. ──────────────────────────── REGISTRATION ──────────────────────────── Registration of the PCBGIF is not mandatory in non-commercial use. If you like the program and are poor or if you like the program but don't feel it is worth giving up a couple of your hard earned bucks, then use the program anyway. But if you can spare $10, then print the file called REGISTER.DOC to your printer, fill it out, and mail it to the address below: Ramon Martinez PCBGIF Registration 1501 East Chapman Avenue, #338 Fullerton, Ca. 92631 Again, this program is not public domain, and it is not shareware, it is Donation-Optional-Ware. ───────────────────────────── TRADEMARKS ───────────────────────────── Trademarks referenced in this document file are for reference only, and belong to their respective owners. Also, PCBGIF is not in any way supported, written, or produced by Clark Development, the producers of PCBoard. ┌──────────────────────┬──────────────────────┬──────────────────────┐ ├──────────────────────┤ END OF DOCUMENT FILE ├──────────────────────┤ └──────────────────────┴──────────────────────┴──────────────────────┘