Monster Media 1996 #14

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Text File | 1995-12-04 | 30KB | 739 lines

================================================================================ GUILTWARE /▒▒▒▒▒ /▒▒ /▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ /▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ /▒▒▒▒▒▒ /▒▒▒ /▒▒ /▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ /▒▒__/▒▒│ ▒▒ │ ▒▒__/▒▒│ ▒▒__/▒▒│/_/▒▒_/│ ▒▒▒▒ ▒▒│/__/▒▒__/ │ ▒▒ │ ▒▒│ ▒▒ │ ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒│ ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ │ ▒▒ │ ▒▒/▒▒▒▒ │ ▒▒ │ ▒▒ │ ▒▒│ ▒▒ │ ▒▒____/│ ▒▒/▒▒_/ │ ▒▒ │ ▒▒//▒▒▒ │ ▒▒ │/ ▒▒▒▒▒/│ ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒│ ▒▒ │ ▒▒/ ▒▒▒ /▒▒▒▒▒▒│ ▒▒│/ ▒▒ │ ▒▒ │/____/ │/______/│/_/ │/_/│/__/│/_____/│/_/ │/_/ │/_/ THE OFF-LINE MESSAGE PRINTER ^ and saved message database. / \ VER 3.01-H For MS/DOS based Pc's DOS mode only. December 4th, 1995 Copyright (C) Warren Douglas Brown, 1993-1996 Written by Warren D. Brown. Based on an idea by Helen Sillasen. Designed by Warren Brown and Helen Sillasen. Tested to the hilt by Helen Sillasen and Warren D. Brown Late night phone calls complaining to Warren by Helen Sillasen. :) Yelling at Helen for complaining and making me work harder than I wanted to.. by Warren D. Brown. :) Much thanks to the Tree man. Thanks to Jim Sillasen for his input and his 486 to do testing on. And special Thanks to God through Christ Jesus. Some portions of these programs are (C) 1987- Thomas Hanlin III. Other portions are (C) 1987 Microsoft. REQUIREMENTS: * Runs on PC/XT or better. * MS/DOS 3.1 or higher. * A PRINTER is not needed for viewing and what not. * MONITOR TYPE: CGA or better. * MEMORY NEEDED: 256k + The more the better. * PKZIP 2.04g or better is needed for certain aspects that do not effect normal operations of OLPRINT. * ANSI.SYS must be loaded on your computer to view Ansi messages. =============================================================================== USE THIS SOFTWARE AT YOUR OWN RISK. ____________________________________________________________________________ So here you are with a "SAVE.TXT" file a mile long and no efficient way to access it! You know it is a major pain in the backside to view them individuly let alone find what you want and save it or print it without going through some big time mumbo jumbo. But yet you keep saving those messages with hopes that someday someone will come up with something that will allow you to use your file in a more efficient and advantages way. Well guess what; somebody did. :) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- SHORT BREAKDOWN OF OLPRINT ----------------------------- 1- OLPRINT will allow you to view the file one message at a time forwards and backwards or move to any message quickly. 2-OLPRINT will allow you to print only certain messages or all messages to your printer with page breaks in between each message. 3- Or... all *BUT* certain messages to be printed. 4-OLPRINT will allow you to WRITE a certain message or messages to a DISK FILE to remail to someone else. 5-OLPRINT will allow you to WRITE ALL *BUT* a certain message or messages to a disk file to remail to someone else. 6-OLPRINT takes your "SAVE.TXT file that has messages from 9999 different conferences, and allows you to PARSE the file into separate messages in their very own conferences and then you are able to access any one of them in a couple of seconds. 7-OLPRINT will allow you to be able to SEARCH all or some messages for certain key words or phrases and then view those messages only. 8-OLPRINT allows you to be able to MARK messages for VIEWING,PRINTING,WRITING and PARSING. 9-OLPRINT enables you to view "ANSI" screens without having to also view any none ANSI code. In 3 speeds! 10-OLPRINT can easily be plugged directly into your mail reader which eliminates the need to move or copy any saved files from your mail reader. When I say easily I mean easily. read(SETMAIL.DOC) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Helen's Comments ----------------- "OLPRINT is a companion to off-line Network mail readers. Computer communications has expanded on a large scale these past few years and OLPRINT is designed to integrate the use of Network E-mail and your own printer. OLPRINT will allow you to have your own hard copy of an E-mail message that can then be faxed to anywhere in the world,if needed. Hard copies of Network mail are increasingly in demand and with OLPRINT you can meet this demand quickly and efficiently". -- Helen Sillasen Editors note: Not only that! but you can now access any and all messages in a couple of seconds. You see, OLPRINT does not have to re-count the messages in each conference every time you run the program. OLPRINT knows how many messages you have and where they are all the time! If you are a mail junkie like me then you can keep your saved messages organized and that's why Olprint was written. It keeps you organized and informed. It also allows you to quote someone verbatim when you respond to them at a later date. Those who don't use Olprint will be asking *YOU* for copies of messages. There is so much that can be done with this program! _______________________________________________________________________________ * OLPRINT was written to assist you in printing messages saved by your off-line mail reader i.e.. SLMR (Silly Little Mail Reader) or OLX (Offline Express). * OLPRINT has been tested with the above mail readers and works perfectly. * All mail readers offer you a chance to save any and all Marked messages to an Ascii text file such as "SAVE.TXT" * OLPRINT will work with any text file created by your mail reader. !!HERE IS THE BEST PART!! * You can plug it into your mail reader and it will handle everything for you! That's right, nothing to copy,move or erase. No commands to learn. Please read SETMAIL.DOC for details. Below is an example of a typical message header from an off-line mail reader: =========================================================================== BBS: CESBBS Date: 11-01-99 (22:17) Number: 146 From: ALL Refer#: 78 To: Warren Brown Recvd: NO Subj: Olprint is Great! Conf: (9998) OLPRINT --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If your message headers look like this then you can use OLPRINT. Note: OLPRINT has not been tested with all mail readers but works perfectly on Silly Little Mail Reader (SLMR) and Off Line Express (OLX). ____________________________________________________________________________ INSTALLATION & COMMANDS It is advised that you create a separate directory called `OLPRINT' or what ever. OLPRINT * must * be isolated from any other files. Copy the `OLP-H301.ZIP' file to that directory and un-zip it. Run the SETUPOLP.EXE program. Now.... Copy your favorite `SAVE.TXT' file from your reader to that directory. It doesn't matter what the name of the file is as long as the extension is .TXT or you can play with the file called MYOLP.TXT which is included. From the DOS command line type... OLP and then press enter. ----------------------------------------------------- OLPRINT then creates a sub-directory called `OLPDAT'. WARNING... <words in parenthesis by Helen from the school of hard knocks> DO NOT FOR *ANY* REASON GO INTO THIS DIRECTORY AND ERASE/ADD ANY FILES OR ALTER ANY FILES IN THIS DIRECTORY. <you will then be altering the numerical sequences of the program and it will not run correctly and may lock up your computer.> ONCE INSTALLED, OLPRINT CAN ONLY BE RUN IN THE DIRECTORY IT IS LOCATED IN! ALSO..... DO NOT RUN OLPRINT IN A RAM DISK! DO NOT RUN OLPRINT IN A 'ROOT' DIRECTORY! DO NOT RUN OLPRINT ON A FLOPPY DISK! OLPRINT MUST BE RUN FROM A SUB-DIRECTORY! _______________________________________________________________________________ Note: When all else fails... hit the ESC key to get out of most anything including searches. The first time you run OLPRINT you will be asked for your name. You need only to type in your first name. Olprint is friendly and would like to call you by your favorite name. (Note: Please use the name you want as you will not be able to change it.) _______________________________________________________________________________ When OLPRINT first boots up it will display a file for you to use. <MYOLP.TXT .. > (This text file is a test file so you can view the features in Olprint right away.) Olprint will not parse this file or write it to disk so have fun. The directory will only show filenames that end with the extension of 'TXT' NAVIGATIONAL KEYS ARE LOCATED ON THE NUMERIC KEYPAD: * Press the PGUP or PGDN keys to do just that. * Pressing HOME will take you to the top of the message. * Pressing END will take you to the end of the message. * Pressing the UP or DOWN keys will scroll the message one line at a time in either direction. * Pressing the Right arrow key will move you to the next message. * Pressing the Left arrow key will move back one message. * Pressing the INSert key will take you to the first message. * Pressing the DELete key will take you to the last message. ______________________________________________________________________________ OTHER KEYS THAT WILL DO THE SAME THING: * Pressing the + key will move you to the next message. * Pressing the - key will move you back one message. * Pressing the ENTER key will move you to next message. * Pressing the SPACE bar will do the same as PAGEDOWN. ______________________________________________________________________________ OTHER KEYS AND THEIR FUNCTIONS- PART ONE: * Pressing `A' will display ANSI messages. * Pressing `D' will allow you to Drop To Dos. * Pressing `F' will put you in the file menu. * Pressing `G' will allow you to GOTO a certain message or return back. * Pressing `H' will bring up the HELP screen. * Pressing `L' will show you the last or current search phrase. * Pressing `M' will MARK or UN-MARK a message. * Pressing 'O' will print out a list of your conferences by name and number. * Pressing `P' will put you in the PRINT menu. * Pressing `S' will put you in the SEARCH menu. * Pressing `W' will put you in the WRITE menu. * Pressing `X' will put you in the MERGE message mode. _______________________________________________________________________________ OTHER KEYS AND THEIR FUNCTIONS - PART TWO: ~ Means ALT ^ Means CONTROL * Pressing ~M will allow you to view or not view only MARKED messages. * Pressing ~S will allow you to view or not view SEARCHed messages. * Pressing ~X will print all Merged messages to your printer. _______________________________________________________________________________ Now for a breakdown of what actually happens when you press those keys above. `A' Displays ANSI messages. There are 3 speeds at which you can view. Slow,Normal,Fast The first time you press 'A' to view an ANSI message will put you in NORMAL speed. If you press `A' again (while viewing) it will go to FAST speed. If you press `A' again it will put you in slow speed. After viewing an ANSI message all speeds are set back to NORMAL. You can at this point press any key to return to the message proper. NOTE: OLPRINT will display any and all ANSI messages however any text that is not ANSI will not be displayed. This makes for nicer looking screens for sure. _______________________________________________________________________________ `D' Allows you to drop to DOS. Here you can do what you need to do in DOS and then simply type EXIT to return to where you were in OLPRINT. NOTE: In far too many programs a drop to DOS can end up being a disaster. The reason is that you must return to the original directory you dropped into in order to exit. If you don't do this then the program will continue to run but will be in the wrong directory and you could loose all kinds of data. However... In OLPRINT it doesn't matter what drive or directory you type Exit in. OLPRINT will automatically restore to the right drive and directory for you. So... No lost data. _______________________________________________________________________________ `F' Will put you in the FILES menu. Here you can do a number of things. | Load a new file | | Load a conference | | Parse current file | | Zip up Conferences | Pick from the list by using the Up and Down arrow keys on your numeric keypad. LOAD A NEW FILE: Does just that. LOAD A CONFERENCE: Does just that. Assuming there are any. PARSE CURRENT FILE: Takes the current file and breaks it down into conferences. Here's how this works.... Your saved.txt file is loaded with messages from more than one conference I'm sure. OLPRINT creates conferences for storing your messages based on the conference number the message originally came from. When Parsing is completed you have a selection of conferences to read or print from. This organizes your txt messages into something useful. Example being... You download messages from the Cooking conference. You have got a ton of recipes in your SAVED.TXT file mixed in with some messages from Groaners and Improv and a few more from Debate. Well.. That's what the PARSE command is for. To put everything in its place so you don't have to wade through even your saved.txt file. The best part is that it is ALL AUTOMATIC and you don't have to do a thing. NOTE: Once a conference has been Parsed, OLPRINT will not allow you to re-Parse the conference. Instead it will notify you that the file has already been parsed. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ZIP UP CONFERENCES: First and foremost...You MUST have a copy of PKZIP v2.04g in your path. This allows you to archive your conferences for storage. OLPRINT will call up PKZIP v2.04g and use maximum compression to save the conferences/folders contained in the subdirectory called `OLPDAT'. When zipping is complete OLPRINT will store your zipped file in your OLPRINT directory. The name of the file is (OLPCON).ZIP Over time your saved conferences will become quite large. After you have zipped up your conferences, Olprint will ask you if you want them erased. You decide yes or no. If you accidently said yes then don't panic! Simply un-zip your (OLPCON).ZIP file back into the OLPDAT sub-directory. Now you can save this file to disk or tape or whatever for future reference. REMEMBER: YOU MUST HAVE A COPY OF PKZIP v2.04g IN YOUR PATH. NOTE: You probably won't use this option but maybe once or twice a year. ;) Please read FINAL THOUGHTS at the end of this document for further details. _______________________________________________________________________________ `G' will allow you to go to *any* message in the file forwards or backwards. When asked for the message number to go to just type it in and press return and bingo, your there! Let's say you are viewing a conference that has well over 300 messages in it. You are currently viewing message #42 and accidentally press the Delete key which takes you all the way down to the last message in the conference. Now let's also say that you don't remember what message number you were reading. Opps! What are ya gonna do? Glad you asked. :) You simply press `G' again and when it asks you for a message number simply type in a `+' instead of a number and OLPRINT will take you right back to where you were. VIOLA! _______________________________________________________________________________ `H' Will bring up the HELP screen. The help screen only reminds you of the options available and the keystrokes needed to access them. The help screen assumes you have read this document. _______________________________________________________________________________ `L' will show you that last or current search phrase you used. When ever you do a SEARCH you of course use some kind of word or phrase. Pressing `L' will simply remind you of the word(s) you were looking for. _______________________________________________________________________________ `M' will allow you to MARK or UN-MARK any and all messages. There are numerous reasons why you might want to MARK a message. The first one being..... You are reading through your favorite conference in order to print out some messages to send to a friend. As you go through them simply press `M' to Mark the ones you want. ...Then when you are done, simply press `P' to access the Print menu and pick the PRINT ALL MARKED MESSAGES option. Now there are other things you can do with the MARK command. The MARK command works in conjunction with the PRINT, WRITE, and PARSE menus. The PRINT and WRITE menus are identical as far as commands but PRINT prints to your printer while WRITE writes to your disk. Now let's say that you have a small conference loaded and most every message is related to a particular subject except a few. You have a friend who could use these messages but you don't want to include some of those other messages in the printing... Simply MARK them and then go to the PRINT menu and pick the PRINT ALL *BUT* MARKED MESSAGES command and there ya go. Sometimes it is easier to weed out the ones you don't want as opposed to the ones you do. This works the same for the WRITE menu as well. One more example concerning MARK. Now let's say you have just loaded your save.txt file into OLPRINT and you want to PARSE it into separate conferences. First you read through it and you notice that some messages are saved more than once and other messages are no longer of any value to you or anybody else and you don't want them to be included in the PARSE. No problem.... MARK them and they will not be included. NOTE: Be sure to read about ~M which compliments MARK. _______________________________________________________________________________ 'O' Will print to your Printer/Screen a listing of all conference names and their associated numbers. NOTE: You must have performed a PARSE first in order to use this option. I use this option after the end of every session if I have parsed any new files. This keeps me updated as to what I have. Simple rule would be... If you have parsed a file then run this option at the end of session. _______________________________________________________________________________ `P' Will put you in PRINT message(s) mode. | (THIS) message | | All (MARKED) messages | | All (BUT) Marked messages| | (ALL) messages | Pick from the list using the UP and Down arrow keys on your numeric keypad. * (THIS) MESSAGE: prints the current message to your printer. * All (MARKED) MESSAGES: prints all and only Marked messages to your printer. * All (BUT) MARKED: prints all messages but the Marked ones. * (ALL) MESSAGES: prints all messages whether they are Marked or not. _______________________________________________________________________________ `W' Will put you in the WRITE message(s) mode. This functionally is identical to the PRINT menu except it writes the message(s) to a disk file named `MYOLP.TXT' You of course can load it for viewing but OLPRINT will not parse it. OLPRINT will append any message(s) to the file. So, once you have created this file and have added what message(s) you want to it then please delete it when it is no longer needed, because the next time you go to use this function you will simply be adding your new message(s) to the old and you may not want that. _______________________________________________________________________________ `S' Will put you in SEARCH mode. You can search for any word, number or phrase. There are 4 ways in which to do this. #1: Search complete file to end for any occurance and then display results when completed. #2: Search complete file to end searching only the Header. #3: Search entire file until first occurance of phrase is found and then display message. #4: Search entire file using only Header as search field until phrase is found and then display message. Note: After OLPRINT has done its search you will be put into the VIEW SEARCHED mode at the last message found with search word. Press the left arrow key to start at the beginning of file. Then you can cruise the messages that were found containing what you were looking for. Simply use the left and right arrow keys to view the messages. In this mode the + and - keys on your keypad will move you through the other messages that do not contain the ones with the search-words in them. Press Alt S to go back to normal viewing. You can at any time press ALT S to view the searched messages. When ever you have done a search; the search phrase that you typed will appear again on the input field when you do your next search. You can change it by simply backspacing it out and then typing a new search-word. _______________________________________________________________________________ `X' Marks messages to be MERGED. Many times we have one message from someone which actually spans across more than one message....<i.e... "continued next message"> With OLPRINT you can merge them into one single message and then print it. After you have marked each message you want combined , simply press Alt X to dump the message to your printer. This is a handy feature. It is so much nicer to print the entire thread without the extra headers and taglines. Note: During Merge mode, only the navigational and the X keys work. If you want to unmark a message for merge simply press 'X' again. _______________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ _______________________________ _____________ ______ ___ _ Final thoughts... If you pull mail from more than one board don't worry.. OLPRINT can handle it. Olprint will parse your .txt file no matter how many boards you pull from but it is recommended that you pull from no more than 99 different boards or 10 boards if you Conference numbers exceed 9999. NOTE (9999 means any conference that has 4 numbers or less.) Let's say that you pull mail from several different boards. Let's also assume that no two boards use the same conference number setup. So in board #1 your favorite conference is #34(Cooking) and board #2 uses conference #34 for Ansi-Art and you happen to save messages from both conferences. You would assume that when Olprint parses your file that it's going to add messages from both conferences to the same file right? NOPE! Olprint is smart enough to know the difference between the 2 conferences and will adjust your files for you as so... The conference #34 from board #1 will be saved to Olprint conference #34 as (34)0.TXT The conference #34 from board #2 will be saved to Olprint Conference #34 as (34)1.TXT and so on...... This section may be hard to understand but don't worry you don't have to. :) Just know that Olprint can handle all your messages from all your message packets no matter how many different boards you call and none of the messages will be placed in the wrong folders/conferences. Now let's talk about the ZIP function. When you decide to Zip up your files just do as you were instructed earlier in this document. However....... Over a period of time you are going to have quite a collection of messages and conferences in the sub-directory named 'OLPDAT' I advised you to not go in there and do anything to any file for any reason as it will most certainly screw up everything and this is TRUE! But if you decide that you would like to do some house cleaning and start over then Zip up your files as advised and when Olprint asks you if you want to erase the files type "Y" for yes and Olprint will delete those conference files from your OLPDAT directory. You will not have to do anything else. Just run Olprint as usual. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you are planning on plugging OLPRINT into your mail reader then skip this next section. If I were your friend and knowing what I know about OLPRINT, I would suggest strongly that you quit here and go read SETMAIL.DOC and plug Olprint into your mail reader. It saves you from having to do all kinds of things manualy. *IMPORTANT!!!!!* After you have loaded your save.txt file into Olprint and have parsed it then erase it before beginning your next session. EXPLANATION: Ok... the optimum way to run Olprint is to have it installed in its own directory NOT in your mail reader directory. Olprint should be isolated. Now..... you run your mail reader and save some messages. When you exit your mail reader copy the save.txt type of file over to the Olprint home directory. Erase your save.txt type of file from your mail reader directory. The reason is that Olprint can detect whether a file has been changed and if it has, it see's the file as a new file and reloads it. So.... If you did not erase your original save.txt type of file and go ahead and add new messages to it then Olprint will think the whole file is new. Which means that when you parse the file it will have added those messages to the conferences again which means you've got them in there twice. The actual procedure: Copy your save.txt type of file over to the Olprint home directory. Delete the file from your mail reader directory. Run Olprint and parse the file. You do not need to erase the file from the Olprint home directory as it will be over written the next time you copy the file from your mail reader. Repeat this procedure every time and you will have no problems. This is the only real work you have to do at all. :) It is better to plug OLPRINT into your mail reader. In the future... I have already started writing the next version of OLPRINT. There will be marked improvements to the program. I will also be writing new bolt on routines for this version as well. Here are some things that will be available in the next versions. 1: Big time speed increase for loading and searching files. Even on an XT it will scream! 2: Ability to search all conferences for a given key word without having to load them separately. 3: Better merging capabilities. 4: Won't matter if save.txt type of file is new or not. Olprint will be able to recognize only the new messages and act accordingly. (Only affects an un-plugged session) 5: Will add ability to take any text file and make it into a customisable conference. 6: Will offer better Zipping by offering different types such as Lha,Arj and what not. 7: More diverse writing capabilities. 8: More diverse printing capabilities. 9: User defined screen colors. 10: Better dummy proofing. :) (I should know!) 11: -=Put your wish here=- 12: A Partidge in a Pear tree. :) As you can see there will be a few improvements but don't think that the current version is some how lacking. The current version of Olprint is just what the doctor ordered. It is as of this day the *only* program that I am aware of that does what it does. I use OLX (Off Line Express) to do my mail and just for grins uploaded the latest mail readers that are supposed to be the latest and greatest but I have found them to be too slow and big time disk memory hogs. One of them (after installation) took up 3 meg of disk space and I hadn't even loaded a Qwk pak yet! Of course some of you like these new fangled mail readers and that's ok. But it wouldn't surprise me if after plugging OLPRINT into your SLMR or OLX that you may end up going back to them. Bolting OLPRINT on to your Olx or Slmr will give you added abilities and save you tons of disk space *and* you won't have to learn commands for a new mail reader. Some have suggested that I just go ahead and write a mail reader which incorporates the ideas in Olprint. I plan to. :) But in the mean time..... OLPRINT is the best thing you could do for your mail reader. I support this program in a big way. If you have any questions or comments then please E-mail me on the Internet address below. warren.brown@f132.n103.z1.fidonet.org Fidonet address is 1:103/1 When you send me a message please include your entire Net address as it should be typed by me as I don't have time to figure it out. Thanks! If you think your copy of OLPRINT has been tampered with then feel free to call my Home site for OLPRINT and download the latest and un-hacked version. You will have immediate access to the system with out having to register if you do what is typed below. AMBOSIA BBS 714-771-6597 1200-28.8 baud. When asked for first and last name type Brown Software Password is USER If you find that you are going to use OLPRINT then please send $20.00 or if you are broke like me then send what you can. All who actually send money will be registered to get the next complete version upgrade for free. Those who don't, won't. Please make check or money order out to Warren Brown and send it to... Warren Brown 1070 North Batavia, Suite #115 Orange, California 92667 Thank you very much for trying OLPRINT! Warren Douglas Brown ^ / \