home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
Night Owl 6
/
Night Owl's Shareware - PDSI-006 - Night Owl Corp (1990).iso
/
007a
/
lcpanl24.zip
/
LCPANEL.DOC
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1991-10-15
|
11KB
|
223 lines
OPERATION AND INSTALLATION OF
LCPANEL
A CONTROL PROGRAM FOR THE LOGICAL CONNECTION
PERIPHERAL SHARING SYSTEM
(Logical Connection is a registered trademark of Fifth
Generation Systems)
LCPANEL is offered as is, with no warranty as to fitness or
purpose. Any user assumes all risk for its use.
********************** LICENSE ****************************
LCPANEL is copyright (C) 1988,1989,1991 by A. J. McPhate Jr.
All persons or organizations, other than employees of Fifth
Generation Systems or Fifth Generation Systems itself, are
granted a license to use LCPANEL in any manner they wish, so
long as they understand that this software is offered
without any warranty whatsoever, that no consideration or
fee may be charged for this software, and this software may
not be distributed in conjunction with any product for which
a fee is charged.
Employees of Fifth Generation Systems and computers owned by
Fifth Generations Systems may not use this product at all.
They may provide it at no charge to customers who request
it, but it cannot be distributed with the Logical Connection
product.
Operators of electronic bulletin board systems are encouraged to
post LCPANEL for downloading by their users, subject to the above
conditions.
*****************************************************************
DESCRIPTION
=================================================================
Now that that's out of the way, we can get down to business. If
you have used the Logical Connection peripheral sharing system,
you know that it is generally a good system. However, one of its
weak links is its control software. LCPANEL is a replacement for
POPLC, the program that comes with the Logical Connection.
(POPLC is also a registered trademark of Fifth Generation
Systems).
If you want a quick rundown of the shortcomings of POPLC and what
LCPANEL does to solve them, here it is:
POPLC is FAT: it occupies 20192 bytes of precious ram when
loaded. LCPANEL only takes up 5648 bytes;
POPLC is RUDE: if you forget where you are and pop-up POPLC while
in graphics mode, you will have your RAM scrambled. LCPANEL will
not pop-up in graphics mode;
POPLC has a limited vocabulary: you can only store four control
sequences of 44 characters in POPLC. LCPANEL lets you store up
to ten control sequences of up to 60 characters each. You can
even give each user his or her own special control sequences;
POPLC requires more keystrokes: it forces you to send one control
string per pop-up session. LCPANEL lets you send multiple
control strings in a single pop-up session;
POPLC is dirty: its screen contains a bunch of garbage you don't
need to see, like eight peripherals when you only have two.
LCPANEL will limit the number of devices to whatever you say. If
you only have two, then two is what you will see;
POPLC has limited hot-keys: LCPANEL will let you assign any
keycode and scan mask as the hot-key;
POPLC won't let you use all your ports: if you want to send data
out your parallel port thru a parallel/serial converter to a
serial port on the Logical Connection, POPLC assumes you goofed
up and won't let you. LCPANEL lets you use any port to talk to
any port. After all, we know we only get two COM ports, but we
get three LPT ports. How many of you have three parallel devices
on your PC?
INSTALLATION
===============================================================
LCPANEL is installed similar to the way POPLC is installed. The
CONFIG.LC file must reside in the same subdirectory as LCPANEL,
as does the new user command file, COMMANDS.LC. The command line
parameters are not case sensitive and may be entered in any
order. The quick summary of usage is:
lcpanel pc=aaad lc=a [kc=ddd sm=dd od=d]
The parameters are described in detail below. The first two
parameters are REQUIRED! The remaining parameters are optional,
but I recommend you specify od, as it sure makes things look
cleaner.
In detail, the parameters are:
pc=aaad
which represents the port on the PC used to communicate with the
Logical Connection. The 'aaa' is 'lpt' or 'com' and 'd' is '1',
'2', or '3', as the case may be. There is no default.
lc=d
where 'd' is the port number on the Logical Connection that the
PC is plugged into, 0 thru 7. There is no default.
kc=ddd
representing the hot-key that pop-ups LCPANEL. The 'ddd' is a key
scancode in decimal. ALL THREE DIGITS MUST BE USED! (so 99 is 099)
The default is 038, for L. The scan codes are:
001 esc 011 0 021 y 031 s 041 `
002 1 012 - 022 u 032 d 042 lshft
003 2 013 = 023 i 033 f 043 \
004 3 014 bs 024 o 034 g 044 z
005 4 015 tab 025 p 035 h 045 x
006 5 016 q 026 [ 036 j 046 c
007 6 017 w 027 ] 037 k 047 v
008 7 018 e 028 cr 038 l 048 b
009 8 019 r 029 ctl 037 ; 049 n
010 9 020 t 030 a 040 ' 050 m
051 , 061 f3 071 home 081 pgdn 091
052 . 062 f4 072 up 082 ins 092
053 / 063 f5 073 pgup 083 del 093
054 rshft 064 f6 074 g- 084 094
055 g* 065 f7 075 left 085 095
056 alt 066 f8 076 g5 086 096
057 spc 067 f9 077 right 087 097
058 caps 068 f10 078 g+ 088 098
059 f1 069 numlk 079 end 089 099
060 f2 070 scrlk 080 down 090 100
sm=dd
representing the shift key status of the hot-key. The 'dd' is a
shift mask representing the status of modifier keys such as alt,
ctrl, or both.
The shift mask is equal to the sum of each keys value:
right shift 1
left shift 2
ctrl 4
alt 8
so for a hot key of ctrl-alt-L, you would set kc=038 and sm=12
(24 = 4 + 8). The default hot-key is Alt L.
od=d
which represents the number of output devices you have on the
system. If you want to switch between the first three devices,
set od=3. Default is 8.
USER COMMANDS
===============================================================
LCPANEL does not use the control sequences imbedded in the
CONFIG.LC file. This lets the user configure different commands
or add commands without reconfiguring the Logical Connection.
Control sequences for user commands are stored in a file called
COMMANDS.LC located in the same directory as LCPANEL.COM and
CONFIG.LC. It contains up to ten lines of up to 80 characters
each. The first twenty characters of each line are that
command's name and the remaining 60 characters are the command
string itself. Escape sequences and other unprintable characters
are represented by \ddd where the ddd is the decimal value of the
character. Escape is \027. An example file is included for your
use and study. You must use a straight text processor that does
not expand or compress tabs when building this file.
USING LCPANEL
=================================================================
LCPANEL is very intuitive and easy to use. You can probably
figure out LCPANEL just by looking at it and playing with it, but
for those of you who want to know what to expect:
Del immediately clears the buffer.
? puts the configuration data in the message window.
Space scrolls the output device window.
Esc exits without doing anything.
Enter exits and executes whatever you have indicated you want
done.
F1-F10 toggle a user command.
You may have more than one command toggled when you exit. They
will be sent in sequence. They will be sent *after* the device is
switched, if you have indicated a new device, so you can switch
devices and configure them all at one session. Commands toggle off
as well as on. The window at the bottom of the pop-up reports any
errors that might occur with the communications.
VERSION HISTORY
=================================================================
1.00- Original shareware release.
1.01- Increased intra-message time delay for better performance
with plotters.
2.00- Fixed a bug in the time delay technique and removed redundant
bidirectional switch string that was causing problems with
plotters. Corrected a bug with the command file parser that
made it incompatible with some editors. Removed port
configuration data from the screen and allowed it to be
accessed via the "?" key. Corrected errors in documentation.
2.10- Fixed a bug with the CGA compatibility. Now works on CGA
systems. Changed default hot key to same as POPLC, Alt L.
Fixed documentation errors about shift masks.
2.20- Restored the redundant bidirectional switch string to maintain
compatibility with old version of POPLC.
2.40- Removed the section of code that tests for port 0 of the
configuration file, allowing users to set the lc=0 value.
Removed the requirement for licensing and license fee.
The final version of LCPANEL.