Monster Media 1994 #1

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Stats Clicker 1.1 README.TXT Contents: 1) Introduction New in version 1.1 2) Installation With INSTALL.EXE Upgrading from Version 1.0 Manual installation Uninstall 3) Registration How to register Registration form 4) Use on a Network 5) Command Line Parameters 6) Trouble Shooting 7) Legal Restrictions and Disclaimers 8) Files in the Stats Clicker Directory 1) INTRODUCTION Stats Clicker requires Microsoft Windows, version 3.0 or later. Stats Clicker is used to keep count of events or activities as they occur, by clicking on a button each time you want to add 1 to the count of a statistic category. It also uses the saved data to generate reports in formats which you can print as is, insert in a word processor, or use in a spreadsheet or database. The program can substitute for paper forms where you make check marks to keep count of events, and saves you the trouble of counting up those check marks. Detailed information on using Stats Clicker is in its online Help. Just clicking on a button instead of checking off on a paper form will save you a little time; but the real time savings come from not having to add and type the statistics at the end of the month (or whatever reporting period you use). Stats Clicker is copyrighted software, distributed as shareware, i.e., you are allowed to try it before making any payment. You are encouraged to distribute copies for others to try out. (Restrictions apply to those who charge fees for the distribution of Stats Clicker; see the Legal Restrictions and Disclaimers section below.) Stats Clicker is sold "as is", and it is the user's responsibility to determine its suitability for his/her purposes. New in Version 1.1 The main difference is the addition of optional command line parameters, described in Section 5 below. These will be useful mostly for network installations, but individual users who use more than one Statistics Series may find it convenient to set up separate program items with command line parameters for starting up Stats Clicker with each Statistics Series. The Options window now has a display at the bottom showing what Statistics Series is in use, and the Autosave frequency. Some minor clarifications and typo corrections have been made in the online Help. Fortunately, no bugs were found in the Version 1.0 program to fix. ________________________________________________________________ 2) INSTALLATION 2.1) Using INSTALL.EXE: To start the installation program, you must be in Windows. From the Program Manager menu bar, select "File" and then "Run". In the "Command Line" field of the dialog box that pops up, enter the drive and directory where the Stats Clicker files are, followed by INSTALL. EXAMPLES: If you are copying off a floppy disk in drive A, you would enter: A:INSTALL If you downloaded Stats Clicker into a directory named "DOWNLOAD" on drive C, you would enter: C:\DOWNLOAD\INSTALL An ALTERNATIVE WAY to run the installation program is to open the File Manager, display the drive/directory with the Stats Clicker files, and double-click on INSTALL.EXE. The installation program, INSTALL.EXE, will copy the files to the drive and directory you choose, create the directory if it doesn't already exist, and create a Stats Clicker program group. The installation program will also create a sample statistics series with data files for the previous 3 months, so you can experiment with the report creating functions without waiting to generate a month or two of statistics. The installation program DOES NOT make any changes to your Windows' WIN.INI or SYSTEM.INI files. The only changes to files in the Windows directory are creating a file for the Stats Clicker group, and adding that group to the PROGMAN.INI file. Windows will undo these changes if you delete the Stats Clicker program group. If you have installed a shell to substitute for Windows' standard Program Manager, the installation program might not be able to create a Stats Clicker program group. This should not stop it from copying the files to the directory you specify, and the sample series should be created. UPGRADING FROM VERSION 1.0 When the installation program asks what directory to install Stats Clicker 1.1 in, you should specify the same directory that you now have version 1.0 in. The installation program will move the existing Stats Clicker program files into a subdirectory named OLDCLICK. Your data files will remain in the original directory to be used by the new Stats Clicker program files. You can restore the old version simply by moving the contents of OLDCLICK back into the Stats Clicker directory. If you know you won't want to do that, you can delete OLDCLICK. If you install version 1.1 in a new directory, it won't be able to read the data files in the old directory. You should copy all *.DAT and *.INI file from the old Stats Clicker directory into the new Stats Clicker directory. If you are asked for registration information, the registration number you used for version 1.0 will be valid for this version. 2.2) MANUAL INSTALLATION Manual installation is fairly simple, but is not recommended because it doesn't create the sample data files for trying out the Create Report function. You will need to place the following files in one directory for Stats Clicker: BWCC.DLL CLICK.EXE CLICK.HLP CLICKREP.EXE It's a good idea to also have this file, README.TXT, in the same directory. If your PC has a Windows application from Borland International Corporation, you may have BWCC.DLL in your Windows System directory. If it is the same version, or later, as the one included with Stats Clicker, you can probably omit BWCC.DLL. If in doubt, go ahead and copy BWCC.DLL to the Stats Clicker directory. If you want a separate program group for Stats Clicker choose "New" from Program Manager's "File" menu, and select Program Group in the dialog box that appears. You will need to create a program item for CLICK.EXE, the main Stats Clicker program. You can do this with "File | New" from the Program Manager menu bar, or you can drag the CLICK.EXE program icon from the File Manager into a Program Group. You should also create a program item for CLICKREP.EXE, the Create Report program, but it isn't necessary because you can start it from within the Stats Clicker main program. 2.3) UNINSTALL To uninstall Stats Clicker, all you need to do is delete the directory containing the Stats Clicker files, and delete the Stats Clicker program items (and group if there is one) in Program Manager. There aren't any other files, or file alterations, outside the Stats Clicker directory. ________________________________________________________________ 3) REGISTRATION You may register by mail, or you can use your credit card to register by phone. REGISTRATION BY MAIL To register by mail, send a check or money order for $25.00 (U.S. funds only) for each registration to the author at: Matthew Ahmed P.O. Box 60068 Palo Alto, CA 94306 U.S.A. Registrations in blocks of 10 cost $200. Registrations to be mailed outside the United States add $5 (covers any number of registrations). A registration form you can copy and print is below, but it isn't required. If you don't use the form, send a note with your check stating that you are registering Stats Clicker, and include your name, company (if any), and address. If you really want to minimize your effort you can just send the check alone IF the name and address printed on your check are as you wish to register; BUT BE SURE TO WRITE "Stats Clicker Registration" on the check so I know what its for. TELEPHONE REGISTRATION WITH A CREDIT CARD You can use a Visa, MasterCard, American Express, or Discover card to register through the Public Software Library by calling 800-242-4775 (from overseas: 713-524-6394), or by FAX to 713-524- 6398, or by CompuServe to 71355,470. These numbers are for ordering only. The author, Matthew Ahmed, can NOT be reached at these numbers. To contact the author about dealer pricing, volume discounts, site licensing, network installation, the status of shipment, the latest version number, technical information, or to discuss returns, contact the author directly at the mail registration address above, or the email addresses below. Each registration licenses the use of Stats Clicker on one computer. A separate registration is required for each computer that it is installed on. Special conditions apply to the installation of Stats Clicker on a network; see the Network section below. The most obvious benefit of registering is not having to look at the friendly reminder screen when you start Stats Clicker. It's also the right thing to do, and makes you eligible for reduced fees on future versions (bug fixes or minor upgrades free). Stats Clicker offers an unusually long evaluation period (60 days) on the theory that after you've used it for a couple of months' reports, you won't be able to bear going back to manual tabulation. But if you're not convinced after 60 days, you should delete Stats Clicker from your computer and owe nothing. Any data and reports you have generated are, of course, your property. Before you delete Stats Clicker, you should use the Create Report function to convert saved data into a format that you can use without Stats Clicker. If you have questions, comments, suggestions or complaints, you can write the author at the registration address. In particular, if you find one bug in Stats Clicker, I would greatly appreciate hearing about it. You can also send email to: America Online: LakeSoft CompuServe: 72712,272 ____________________________________________________________ STATS CLICKER REGISTRATION FORM Name or Company_____________________________________________ Address_____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ City_______________________________ State/Province__________ Zip/Postal Code__________________ Country___________________ WILL YOU BE USING STATS CLICKER ON A NETWORK (YES/NO)? _____ Registration for use on a network must be accompanied by a letter stating how the number of Stats Clicker users was estimated. See the "Use on a Network" section of README.TXT Individual copies registered: _______ x $25 = $________ Blocks of 10 copies registered: _______ x $200 = $________ Registrations to be mailed outside of USA add $5: $________ ($5 for any number, NOT $5 each registration) ORDER TOTAL: $________ Please mail this form with a Check or Money Order for the ORDER TOTAL to: Matthew Ahmed P.O. Box 60068 Palo Alto, CA 94306 U.S.A. The Check or Money Order must be denominated and payable in United States funds. ____________________________________________________________ 4) USE ON A NETWORK Stats Clicker was designed for installation on individual personal computers, and that may be the most practical way to use it. However, version 1.1 includes some command line options to facilitate network use. They are described in Section 5 below. The most important consideration is that you shouldn't have more than one user running Stats Clicker with the same Statistics Series at the same time. As each user saves his statistics data, it won't take into account statistics added by the other user. Because of the hazards of simultaneous Stats Clicker sessions, Stats Clicker is programmed to terminate at start up if there is a previous instance of its window class. You will need to override this precaution with the command line if Stats Clicker sessions running on different PC's in the network are construed by Windows to be instances of the same window class. If you do decide to run Stats Clicker on your network, special conditions apply to the Registration fees. The registration fee is the same as it would be for individual installation on every computer that uses the network's copy of Stats Clicker. For purposes of calculating the number of licenses required it is INITIALLY assumed that network installation is equivalent to individual PC installation on the lesser of the following two figures: (1) 80% of the computers that will ever be able to use Stats Clicker at any time. This is not necessarily the same as 80% of computers on the network; it excludes those which don't have Windows, don't have access to the files, or are otherwise unable to ever use Stats Clicker (2) If you use software that limits the number of users who can run Stats Clicker at ANY ONE TIME, the equivalent installation will be considered to be 150% of the numerical limit that is in place. The idea is that the number of computers using Stats Clicker at any one time is much lower than the the number that ever use it. I will make exceptions to the above fee schedule for cases where it significantly overestimates the actual number of computers using Stats Clicker. The above are the "No questions asked" fees. There may be circumstances where a network is unable to bar access to those computers that would have no use for Stats Clicker; or where every computer that uses Stats Clicker has it running all day, so the numerical limit in (2) above is about the same as the number of computers that ever use Stats Clicker. If an official with authority to make binding commitments on behalf of his/her organization gives assurances on the actual number of computers on which Stats Clicker will be used, the registration fee for the network will be the same as would be required for installation on that number of computers. I don't expect you to make an exact count, just a good faith estimate. However you estimate the number of users, please include a letter with your registration briefly stating how you arrived at this estimate. NOTE: The bulk registration discount listed in the Registration section does apply to network installation. ________________________________________________________________ 5) COMMAND LINE PARAMETERS SYNTAX <drive>:\<directory>\click.exe /<number> /<letter> /<letter> ... Command line parameters follow the CLICK.EXE or CLICKREP.EXE command, and a space. Each parameter must be preceeded by a forward slash (/). The first parameter must always be the number of the Statistics Series that Stats Clicker will start with. All other parameters are single letters, and ARE case sensitive. Spaces between parameters are optional. CLICK.EXE PARAMETERS (Stats Clicker main program) /<number> The number of the Statistics Series that will be used when Stats Clicker starts up. To use any other parameters, this parameter must be used and be the first one /I Prevents changes to the CLICK.INI file. Otherwise, user selected changes in appearance or selected Series would be saved for the next session of Stats Clicker for other users. Also prevents changes to CLICKREP.INI, which saves report format options in the Create Report window. /P Allows Stats Clicker to start up even if a "Previous Instance" of Stats Clicker is already running. If this parameter is used and the Create Report function is called from within Stats Clicker, the Report window can start up even if a another session of the the Report is already running. /R Prevents the user from calling the Create Report function from within the Stats Clicker session. /r Allows the user to call the Create Report function, but only allows access to the Statistics Series being used in the Stats Clicker session /M Removes the "Customize" Menu from the Options window. (The menu related parameters listed below are redundant if /C is used.) /A Removes the "Appearance" item from the Customize menu. /S Removes "Autosave Frequency" from the Customize menu. /B Removes "Button Captions" from the Customize menu. This prevents the user from using another Statistics Series, or creating or modifying a Statistics Series. /C Removes the "Create or modify Series" option from the "Button Captions" menu item. This is redundant if /B is used. If /B is not used, the user can select another Statistics Series for his Stats Clicker session (or delete it if /D isn't used); but he/she can't create a new Series, or modify an existing one. /D Disables the option to delete a Statistics Series in the Series in the "Select Statistics Series" window. This is redundant if /B is used. CLICKREP.EXE PARAMETERS (Create Report) /<number> The number of the Statistics Series that will be used when Stats Clicker starts up. To use any other parameters, this parameter must be used and be the first one /I Prevents changes to the CLICKREP.INI file. Otherwise, user selected changes in report format options would be saved for the next Create Report session of other users. /P Allows the Create Report window to start up even if a "Previous Instance" of Create Report is already running. /r Starts the Create Report function with access only to the Statistics Series specified in the command line. COMMENTS If the working directory for all Stats Clicker users is the same directory on a network drive, you will need to insure that simultaneous sessions do not use the same Statistics Series. Each computer should have a different Series specified in the Stats Clicker program item's command line (unless you're sure that the same Series on two computers won't be used at the same time). The /B parameter should be used to prevent switching or altering Series. If there is a need for access to more than one Series on a single PC, you can create a separate program item for each. EXAMPLE A typical command line for say Series 12 on remote drive E would be: E:\CLICKER\CLICK.EXE /12 /B /S /I /r /B restricts the user to Series 12 and /S prevents changing the Autosave setting. The user is allowed to make changes in appearance to suit his/her preferences, but the /I paramater prevents these changes from being saved. Otherwise users would have different appearances each time they started up, depending on what the last user did. The /r parameter prevents the user from looking at other Statistics Series in the Create Report function Including /r might be wise even if there aren't privacy considerations, because there could be a file sharing violation if two users create reports on the same series within a few seconds of each other. If the user also has a Create Report program item, consistency would suggest it include the /I and /r parameters. ________________________________________________________________ 6) TROUBLE SHOOTING Question: I saved statistics in a Series, but when I tried to create a report, I was told there was no data. What happened to the data? The most likely explanation is that the data files were saved in a directory other than your Stats Clicker Report working directory. This could happen if you moved Stats Clicker to another directory, but didn't change the "Working Directory" when you updated the "Program Item Properties" in the Program Manager. Check the Program Item Properties of the Stats Clicker and Stats Clicker Report program items/icons. If the working directory of Report is not the same as the directory which the Stats Clicker files are in, correcting this should be all you have to do. If the Stats Clicker Report's working directory is correct, but Stats Clicker's directory is different, you should find the data files in that directory. The data file name begins with "S", followed by the three digit series number, the year and month, and a ".DAT" extension, e.g., "S0019306.DAT". Correct Stats Clicker's working directory and move the data files to the correct directory. The simplest way to avoid such complications is to have all the Stats Clicker files in one directory and set this as the working directory. Q: I can start the Create Report window from its icon in the Program Manager, but when I try to start it from the Stats Clicker Options window, I get a message that the file wasn't found. Why not? This is probably similar to the problem above. If Stats Clicker's working directory isn't the same as the one that CLICKREP.EXE is in, it won't be able to run Create Report. Presumably all the Stats Clicker files are in the same directory, so check the "Program Item Properties" for Stats Clicker. It's working directory should be changed to the directory that its files are in. Q: I have no use for the Default Statistics Series (Series 000), but the Delete option in the Select Statistics Series window won't get rid of it. How can I delete it? Sorry, you can't. It's built into Stats Clicker, whose internal logic goes haywire without a Statistics Series. The default series exists for cases where the selected Series' initialization file can't be found. The Delete option in the Select Statistics Series window WILL delete any data files that were saved for the default series. ________________________________________________________________ 7) LEGAL RESTRICTIONS AND DISCLAIMERS RESTRICTIONS ON DISTRIBUTION Users are encouraged to distribute copies of Stats Clicker to others. Anyone may distribute Stats Clicker without the author's permission if they do not receive any compensation. BBS/download services do not need permission if connect time charges are the only fee associated with distributing Stats Clicker, and there is no additional fee for the act of downloading Stats Clicker. Anyone distributing Stats Clicker must include the following files without alteration: CLICK.EXE CLICKREP.EXE CLICK.HLP BWCC.DLL README.TXT INSTALL.EXE Stats Clicker files may not be distributed as part of any other program. The files listed above may not be distributed with any other files that affect the way Stats Clicker operates, including datalink libraries or preconfigured *.INI files. Distributors may include their own standardized files that explain how to proceed, and/or use their preferred compression software. Anyone distributing Stats Clicker for any kind of remuneration must first contact the author, Matthew Ahmed, at the address below for authorization. This authorization will be automatically granted to distributors recognized by the Association of Shareware Professionals (ASP) as adhering to its guidelines for shareware distributors, and such distributors may begin offering Stats Clicker immediately. Distributors not recognized by the ASP may not distribute Stats Clicker until they have received written authorization to distribute it from the author. Unauthorized distribution is copyright infringement. The author's failure to respond to a request for permission to distribute shall not be construed as approval. Distributors seeking permission must include a copy of their order form with their request. Permission will not be granted to distributors who do not clearly inform the buyer that the software is shareware whose registration fee is not included in the distributor's price. Matthew Ahmed P.O. Box 60068 Palo Alto, CA 94306 U.S.A. DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY THIS SOFTWARE IS SOLD "AS IS" AND WITHOUT WARRANTIES AS TO PERFORMANCE OR MERCHANTABILITY OR ANY OTHER WARRANTIES WHETHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED. BECAUSE OF THE VARIOUS HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE ENVIRONMENTS INTO WHICH THIS PROGRAM MAY BE PUT, NO WARRANTY OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE IS OFFERED. GOOD DATA PROCESSING PROCEDURE DICTATES THAT ANY PROGRAM BE THOROUGHLY TESTED WITH NON-CRITICAL DATA BEFORE RELYING ON IT. THE USER MUST ASSUME THE ENTIRE RISK OF USING THE PROGRAM. ANY LIABILITY OF THE SELLER WILL BE LIMITED EXCLUSIVELY TO PRODUCT REPLACEMENT OR REFUND OF PURCHASE PRICE. The data link library file BWCC.DLL, distributed with Stats Clicker, is the property of Borland International Inc. Borland International's permission to distribute BWCC.DLL with Stats Clicker does not imply an endorsement of, or any responsibility for Stats Clicker. In this document and the online Help, the term "Windows" refers to Microsoft Windows, a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. ________________________________________________________________ 8) FILES IN THE STATS CLICKER DIRECTORY You probably will never need this information, but here it is if you're curious or have a special situation. The basic files needed to run Stats Clicker are: CLICK.EXE CLICKREP.EXE CLICK.HLP BWCC.DLL When you change the settings in Stats Clicker or the Create Report window, they are saved in, respectively, CLICK.INI and CLICKREP.INI. If these files don't exist, Stats Clicker uses it's default settings when it starts up. Unlike some other *.INI files, these aren't set up to be manually edited. When you create a new Statistics Series, the button captions are saved in file named "SERnnn.INI", where "nnn" is the three digit Series number; e.g., SER001.INI is the file for Series 001. When Stats Clicker saves data, it is saved into a file, whose name is based on the Series number and the date. It is in the form "Snnnyymm.DAT", where "nnn" is the Series number, "yy" is the year, and "mm" is the month; e.g., SOO29306.DAT is the data file for Series 002 in June, 1993.