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PsL Monthly 1993 December
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PSL Monthly Shareware CD-ROM (December 1993).iso
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prgmming
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dos
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pbclone.exe
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PBCLONE.NEW
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1993-01-12
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PBClone 2.1, 01/12/93:
*** WARNING ***
Note that the Num2Phone and Phone2Num functions rely on the
current format of phone numbers, which is apparently going
to change in a year or so. You are advised not to use these
functions, as they will not be reliable with the new setup.
The registration fee for PBClone has been raised to $35.
New releases will be coming out less often-- perhaps once or
twice per year-- since the library has become too large for
casual updates.
My thanks, this edition, to Bruce Guthrie and Raymond T.
Schwarz for bug reports and wise suggestions. They have
been awarded free upgrades.
The order form has been renamed from REGISTER.TXT to
ORDER.FRM, since that seems to be a more common convention.
Also, CREATE.BAT has been renamed to MAKEDEMO.BAT.
Some of the DECLAREs were not compatible with VB-DOS due to
use of VB-DOS reserved words. Thanks to Douglas E. Carr for
bringing this to my attention-- it has been fixed.
In the interest of keeping the size of the PBClone archive
manageable, the .EXE versions of the demo files have been
removed. Use MAKEDEMO.BAT to make them after installing the
PBClone library as explained in PBCLONE.DOC.
Fixes:
Any2Dec, FileCopy, ForceMatch, GrafPrint docs, HiByte
DECLARE, LoByte DECLARE, Month0 far string version,
PSortSt, SInput, SSrch, StripSpaces for trim left,
WindowMan4 top line.
Improvements:
Any2Dec converted to asm.
CenterSt converted to asm.
FindFirstA now supports the new PKZIP 2.0 "deflated"
format, and can read ZIP2EXE self-extracting files.
IdentifyFile covers more file types.
Additions:
BoxMenu, BoxMenu1, CheckSum2, Command2, DataSeg2,
DReadAbs, DReadAbsBig, DWriteAbs, DWriteAbsBig, FileMenu,
FLock, FUnlock, FromPostal, GetMemBox, GetPrtSc, GetPSP,
IStrNB, MMCheck2, PrintBox, ReadScreen, RotateL,
RotateLL, RotateR, RotateRL, SCrunchSS, SetLogiDrive,
ShowIcon, ToPostal, TVIdle, UnSCrunchSS
PBClone 2.0, 10/19/92:
From AdvBas to PBClone, I've kept a registration price of
$25 for the last seven years. What was a good deal for a
library of some 100 routines turned into a ludicrously low
price for the 525+ routines in PBClone, however. In order
to scale the price back to a mere outrageous bargain, I am
raising the registration fee to $35 as of January 1, 1993.
Special thanks to Bruce Guthrie for his many suggestions and
attentive bug reporting, which have been of great benefit to
PBClone on a continuing basis. Kudos! (AND a free update!)
My BasWiz and PBClone libraries had a name conflict: both
contained FOpen and FClose routines. To resolve this, I've
renamed the PBClone versions to FOpen1 and FClose1.
Instructions are now included for creating a PBClone library
for use with the Visual Basic for DOS compiler.
Among the new additions are file routines for numeric I/O,
get/set individual palette values, convert a numeric ASCII
code to uppercase, read 4DOS-style file descriptions, get
mouse info, center a string, get CPU speed, and others.
A number of routines have been converted from BASIC to ASM.
This has caused changes in the DECLAREs for the following
routines:
GetScreen, InitPtr, PutScreen
A mistaken assumption about far string handling caused
problems with many far string routines. These have been
fixed. Note that since far string support was added to the
shareware version of PBClone as of v1.9, these routines have
not been tested in use as much as the near string routines,
and I expect more bugs will probably settle out within the
next few releases. If you run into any problems, tell me!
The ArcView demo program now works smoothly with archives
containing filenames that include path specifications.
Fixes and improvements:
DriveSpace& and DrvSpaceL recognize invalid drives.
IdentifyFile recognizes many more file types.
ObjScan now screens out VB-DOS internal symbols.
SubExist and SubExist2% now screen out wildcards.
Upcase1 now uses National Language Support if it can.
Additions:
BRead, BWrite, CenterSt, CPUSpeed, FDescRead, FReadLn,
GetMouseVer, GetTick, GetVGAColor, IRead, IWrite, LIRead,
LIWrite, LRead, LWrite, SetVGAColor, UpcaseI, UpcaseI1
PBClone 1.9, 07/27/92:
The source code for the PBClone routines which are written
in BASIC is now included in the shareware version. A set of
near and far string libraries for the assembly language part
of PBClone is also included. This allows you to create a
PBClone library for QuickBasic 4.x and PDS 6.0-7.1, rather
than just for QuickBasic 4.5 as in previous versions.
Fixes and improvements:
Elapsed & ElapsedTime$ allow times that cross midnight.
FileCRC is much smaller and faster.
FindFirstA can now scan self-extracting LHARC archives.
PCDat$ works properly with far strings.
Processor & Processor2% can now identify 80486 CPUs.
StrUsqu2 and StrUsqu3 now support far strings.
SubExist & SubExist2% now check drives as well as dirs.
WeekDay1 now works.
Many routines have been converted from BASIC to assembly
language. In the case of the following routines, this
caused the DECLARE to change as well:
CheckDate, DateA2R, StripBlanks, StripRange, StripSpaces
As Microsoft adds time and date functions to BASIC, the
names of certain PBClone routines become a problem. I've
renamed Month to Month0 and WeekDay to WeekDay0 in order to
resolve the conflicts. In addition, the variables Hour%,
Minute%, Second%, Month%, Day%, and Year% have been replaced
by HourNr%, MinuteNr%, SecondNr%, MonthNr%, DayNr%, and
YearNr%. Sorry for any inconvenience. Such is progress.
Added LIB_BI.DOC, a tutorial which explains how to use
libraries and include files. This is included with PBClone
by the kind permission of Daniel M. Smith, Jr., the author.
Additions:
AscM, DupeVar, HiByte, HiLite, HiWord, LoByte, LoWord,
StrSqu, StrSqu3, StrUnsq, StrUnSqu3
PBClone 1.8, 05/08/92:
A bug was fixed in SetComm, which was setting the baud rate
incorrectly. More importantly, however, I ran into a serious
Microsoft bug which I'd thought had long since been fixed.
It appears that QuickBASIC 4.0-4.5 and BASCOM/PDS 6.0-7.1
destroy vital comm port information in the BIOS data area,
making it impossible for any of the PBClone comm routines to
function. I have enclosed patch information for QB 4.5 in
QBPATCH.TXT. If you have a different compiler or do not
wish to modify your BASIC libraries, use the following
work-around:
SaveComm$ = SPACE$(8)
DGetSt &H40, 0, 0&, SaveComm$ ' save comm info
' OPEN the comm port as desired
DPutSt &H40, 0, 0&, SaveComm$ ' restore comm info
' now you can use PBClone comm routines
In the new QBPATCH.TXT file, there is information about how
to permanently eradicate that comm-killer bug, among other
things. It's been many years since Microsoft upgraded QB.
Maybe it's time for us to start fixing the bugs ourselves.
Speaking of bugs... a lot of 'em have settled out in the
last few months. Bugs were fixed in the MaxL and MinL
functions, which would return the wrong results if both
parameters were negative. A bug was fixed in FCreate, which
would lock the computer. A bug was fixed in the near-string
version of Xlate. A bug was fixed in the far-string version
of GetExecPath. Bugs were fixed in SubExist and SubExist2,
which changed the path. They were also made insensitive to
a DR-DOS flaky. The PSortSt and SortSt routines were
incorrectly documented. The Date2Int and Int2Date routines
had a problem and return different values now.
The various sort routines would not