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Text File | 1990-08-16 | 31KB | 737 lines

Register EASYDIAL 3.0 Order Form ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── VISA/Mastercard orders are only accepted through telephone orders. Call the Public (Software) Library at 800-242-4775 to order TODAY! ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── _____ EASYDIAL -- Good basic telephone dialer..............$15.00 _____ PCOPY -- File Copy, Move, Backup, Update, more!...$20.00 _____ PSEARCH -- Locate files on your disk. Outstanding!..$20.00 _____ PALERT -- Warns you of low disk space..............$15.00 _____ PATTR -- Manage attributes of DOS files...........$10.00 _____ PDAILY -- Automatically execute commands once/day..$10.00 _____ PDELETE -- Save space with automatic disk cleanup...$15.00 _____ PPRINT -- Advanced file print w/special formats....$15.00 California Residents add sales tax....................@ 6% $______ Total amount of my order is: $________ Disk Size (circle one)? 5 1/4 3 1/2 Name: __________________________________________________ Company: _______________________________________________ Address: _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________ City: ________________________ State: ________ Zip: __________ I received EASYDIAL from (Optional):_____________________________ Send order to: Patri-Soft P.O. Box 8263 San Bernardino, CA 92412 E A S Y D I A L ┌─────────────────────────┐ │Users Guide and Reference│ └─────────────────────────┘ Version 3.0 August 1990 ┌─────────┐ ┌─────┴───┐ │ (tm) │ │o │────────────────── │ ┌─────┴╨──┐ │ Association of │ │ │─┘ Shareware └───│ o │ Professionals ────│ ║ │──────────────────── └────╨────┘ * Member * Patriquin's BBS 714-369-9766 Copyright 1990 by Patri-Soft Portions Copyright 1987, 1988, Information Technology, Ltd i EASYDIAL Users Guide/Reference Copyright 1990 Patri-Soft Page 1 ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── General Information ─────────────────── EASYDIAL is a program to allow you to easily use your computer's modem to dial your telephone for normal voice communication. I originally developed EASYDIAL when I purchased a hands-free type headset for my office telephone. To dial a call, it required me to lift the handset of my phone, dial the call, turn on the headset, and then hang up the handset. Seemed like a lot of needless effort and I went looking for a solution. The computer phone dialer was my answer. The computer dialer lets me dial the number without touching the phone. Another benefit of the dialer is to allow me to dial people by name instead of by number. Before writing EASYDIAL I searched several major BBS systems to locate one already developed that would suit my needs. I found several available but none were what I wanted. They were usually either too simple and limited in function, or too complex and cumbersome for casual use. I decided to write a simple dialer that was easy learn and use. EASYDIAL is not the Cadillac of Dialers, it is just a good basic dialer. EASYDIAL automatically creates a dialing directory the first time it is executed. This directory file is named EASYDIAL.DIR and is placed in the directory the EASYDIAL.EXE file is being executed from. The dialing directory is a normal DOS text file that may be edited and modified with any text editor or word processor. Since EASYDIAL can add or remove entries based on your input, a text editor is not necessary to use it. The EASYDIAL.DIR file contains one line per phone number in the dialer. The line contains name information and phone number information for the person to be dialed. No special format is required for the lines. The phone number is assumed to be the only numeric field on the line. Following is an example: DANIEL DOE OF ACME WIDGET CORP 1-312-555-1212 EASYDIAL scans the phone directory to locate the number for the person you want to call. EASYDIAL is easy to use. Following is a Quick Start section to get you going in a hurry. EASYDIAL Users Guide/Reference Copyright 1990 Patri-Soft Page 2 ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── QUICK START ─────────── 1. Place the ED file in any directory on your system. Remember the EASYDIAL.DIR dialing directory will also be created in this same directory unless the environment variable EASYDIALP is set. EASYDIAL should be put in the DOS PATH so DOS may locate it when EASYDIAL is executed. 2. That's it. The first time you run EASYDIAL, you need to configure EASYDIAL to your specific needs. EASYDIAL was written for ease and speed. Simply enter ED and you are ready to begin. If this is the first time you have used EasyDial, a sample entry has been provided in the dialing directory. Available commands in the directory listing are ALT + A)dd, D)elete, M)anual dial, and R)evise. To use these commands, follow these instructions. ALT + C)onfig. EASYDIAL now contains an internal configuration file which allows you to permantly set the defaults. After pressing ALT+C, review the information presented to determine if the defaults require modification. If so, press F1 and make the necessary changes. Press F10 to save the changes (ESC aborts) If at any time you need to restore the original defaults, press ALT+R and then F10 to save. The fields are as follows: Modem Initalization: This string can be custom made to fit your modem. However, it must be set so that the modem responds with verbose response and busy detect must be enabled. The default string will work with all Hayes compatable modems, so that if you are unfamiliar with modem commands, you need not change them. Active COM port: Set the number of the COM port that EASYDIAL will use. Valid COM ports number from 1 to 4. Redial pause length: Set the number of seconds to wait between redial attempts. If EASYDIAL detects a busy signal, it will automatically redial the number after waiting a specified number of seconds. Time/Log calls: EASYDIAL will time and log calls if you desire. Set this flag to Y and all calls will be timed and logged. (Log name is EASYDIAL.LOG) (Cont' on next page) Log only: If you prefer, EASYDIAL can log calls only. This is needed if you want your machine free for use during a phone call. Pulse/Tone: EASYDIAL supports pulse dialing as well as tone dialing. If you do not have touch- tone dialing, EASYDIAL will still work if you set this flag to P. Modem speed. Enter the speed of your modem here. When EASYDIAL uses the COM port, it will communicate at this speed. Alt + A)dd. Add an entry. Using this selection will scroll all entries down and create a new entry directly below the highlight bar. Press ENTER to accept the entry or ESC to abort. Alt + D)elete Delete an entry. Position the hightlight bar on the entry that you wish to delete. Press ALT+D to delete. Alt + M)anual Manual Dial. Press Alt+M. When the Manual Dial window appears, enter the number you wish to call. ESC aborts. Alt + R)evise Change an entry. On the entry you wish to change, press ALT+R. Make the necessary changes and press ENTER to accept. ESC aborts revision. Alt + F)ind Find an entry. EASYDIAL will prompt you for a search string and look FROM THE HIGHLIGHT BAR DOWN for the entry. EASYDIAL will position the cursor on the found entry. ENTER dials. ENTER Positioning the highlight bar on a name and number and pressing ENTER will dial the number and return you to the directory listing. ESC To exit EASYDIAL, press ESC EASYDIAL Users Guide/Reference Copyright 1990 Patri-Soft Page 3 ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── That's all there is to it. For flexibility, EASYDIAL can also be controlled from the DOS commnand line. For example: Add a name to the dialer... ─────────────────────────── ED -A John A. Jones 1-312-555-1212 or ED -A (EASYDIAL will prompt for name and number) Dial the number... ────────────────── ED john Remove a number from the directory... ───────────────────────────────────── ED -d John Using EASYDIAL... ───────────────── Once a name/number has been selected to dial, EASYDIAL will search the EASYDIAL.DIR file to locate the first entry matching the name entered. EASYDIAL dials the number and issues the following message: Calling DANIEL DOE 1-312-555-1212 Dialed...pick up handset...press any key when ringing Upon receiving this message, pick up your handset, or turn on your headset, and press any key to disconnect the modem from the line. Your call has now been dialed. If you want to cancel the call, press any key without activating the handset. EASYDIAL Users Guide/Reference Copyright 1990 Patri-Soft Page 4 ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── You will receive a message when EASYDIAL has disconnected the modem. Modem Disconnected... If the line is busy at the time of your call, you will see the message: Busy (attempt 1) Press any key to redial Redial pause: x seconds. (Any key cycles, ESC quits) Press ESC during any part of this process will cause EASYDIAL to abort the redial attempt. Telephone dialing modifiers... ────────────────────────────── EASYDIAL telephone numbers may contain special characters to modify how the number is dialed. These characters are placed in the telephone number to be dialed at the location where they are to take effect. The following special dialing modifiers are supported: , -- Two second pause (9,1-312-555-1212) Causes a 2 second pause to occur during the dialing process Often used in office systems where you need to dial a number and wait for an outside line before continuing to dial. Consecutive , may be used for long pauses. ; -- Wait between numbers (0-312-555-1212;714-555-5555-1234) Sometimes you may need to control the wait between numbers dialed. For example, when making credit card calls, you dial a number and wait for the tone before dialing the credit number. Inserting the ; causes the first number to be dialed, then waits for a keypress to dial the remainder of the number. EASYDIAL Users Guide/Reference Copyright 1990 Patri-Soft Page 5 ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ? -- Manual dialing with your keyboard (555-1212;*,9999?) When I want to call my voice mail system which uses the touch tone pad to control listening to my mail, I use the manual dialing of EASYDIAL. As an example, the above number is dialed along with the * key and my access code. Then the ? causes EASYDIAL to let me manual dial listening instructions using my PC's keyboard. Using this technique, you may dial either letter or number codes as with dialing with your phone. To exit manual dialing, press the <Escape> key. Note, manual dialing is slow due to the process of issueing the modem commands desired. Wait for each number to sound before pressing the next number to be dialed. EASYDIAL Users Guide/Reference Copyright 1990 Patri-Soft Page 6 ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ┌──────────────────────────────────────┐ │USING EASYDIAL FROM THE COMMAND LINE: │ └──────────────────────────────────────┘ EASYDIAL Syntax ─────────────── ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Enter <ED name> or <ED number> To dial a number ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── To dial a number, enter the EASYDIAL command followed by one or more search words to be used to locate the proper name and number in the EASYDIAL dialing directory. NOTE!!! The command line options override the options set in EASYDIALS internal configuration! ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ED -L <optional name/number> ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Log the call to EASYDIAL.LOG ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ED -T <optional name/number> ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Log and time the call. Time will be updated on display until a key is pressed to terminate. ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ED -R:xx <optional name/number> (xx = number) ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Specify the number of seconds between redial attempts after a busy signal has been detected. Default pause is 5 seconds ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ED -M:x <optional name/number> (x = number) ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Specify a COM port to use. Default is COM1. EASYDIAL Users Guide/Reference Copyright 1990 Patri-Soft Page 7 ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ED -U <optional name/number> ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Pulse dial the number. NOTE!! The next few commands are available from the command line but can be better accomplished from withiin EASYDIALS directory listing. (Enter ED without parameters) ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ED -A name/number to add new entry to directory ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Add a new entry to the dialing directory. The name may consist of one or more words. If you enter the -a option without any name or number, EASYDIAL will prompt you for the name and number to be added. Following are examples. ED -a (be prompted) ED -a John Jones 1-312-555-1212 ED -a John Jones 9,0-312-555-1212;714-555-1212-1111 An alternative to adding names with ED -a is to use any DOS text editor to build or modify your dialing directory. The dialing directory has no specific format. One line per entry. The name followed by the phone number to be dialed. They must be seperated by at lease one space. ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ED -D word word../nbr delete one or more matchine entries ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── EASYDIAL will search for entries containing the word or words specified and remove them from the dialing directory. Search words do not need to be exact. They will each individually be searched for in the directory. All words must match for the entry to be processed. To remove John Jones all the following examples will find and remove the directory entry: ED -d John ED -d John Jones ED -d Joh Jon ED -d Jo ED -d ones If you have used the -l option to list the dialing directory, each entry in the directory will be numbered. You may use this number to remove an entry. The following command will remove the 4th entry in the dialing directory. ED -d 4 EASYDIAL Users Guide/Reference Copyright 1990 Patri-Soft Page 8 ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ED -F word word... to list one or more matchine entries ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Use -f to locate and display a name and number for a word or words entered. Use this to confirm an entry exists or to locate a specific name from a partial name. Search words do not need to be exact. They will each individually be searched for in the directory. All words must match for the entry to be processed. To list all Jones in the directory ED -f Jones To list John Jones ED -f John Jones Timing the calls ──────────────── By default, EASYDIAL returns to DOS immediately after dialing the number and allows you to use your computer during the call. However, at times it is desirable to know the exact duration of a call or when a call was made. There are two ways to get EASYDIAL to time calls. The first is to set the flag in the configuration file for "Time/Log calls?" to Yes. This is time all calls unless the flag is changed to No. However, if you want EASYDIAL to return to DOS as the default after completing a call, you can use the -T parameter to time calls for that session only. A file EASYDIAL.LOG will be created in the directory from which EASYDIAL is executing from. If it already exists, it will be appended to. EASYDIAL Users Guide/Reference Copyright 1990 Patri-Soft Page 8 ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Logging the calls ───────────────── If you would like to log the fact that a call was made without timing it, set the flag in the configuration, to Yes. (Log calls?) EASYDIAL will write the name and number of the call to EASYDIAL.LOG. If use EASYDIAL with the -L parameter, it will log for that session only. EASYDIAL Users Guide/Reference Copyright 1990 Patri-Soft Page 9 ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Specifying a different dialing directory path ───────────────────────────────────────────── EASYDIAL stores the dialing directory in the same drive and directory the ED.EXE file is stored in. You may specify a different directory by specifying a DOS environment variable with the new pathname. Set environment variable EDIALP as follows: SET EDIALP=C:\DIALDIR\ Getting HELP ──────────── EASYDIAL's help panels show much if the information documented in this manual. To access help information, enter ED without parameters and press F1. EASYDIAL Users Guide/Reference Copyright 1990 Patri-Soft Page 10 ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Program Maintenance: ──────────────────── Version 1.0 April 1990 Version 1.1 May 1990 -Enabled EASYDIAL to log and/or time calls Version 1.5 -Fixed manual dial mode -Added windows -Added -C and -O option enabling EASYDIAL to append a credit card or optional number to a dialing number. Version 2.0 --Removed -C & -O. --Added a scrollable directory enabling full EASYDIAL.DIR maintainance from within listing. Version 2.0A --Fixed time-call problem Verion 2.2 --Various fixes of cursor problems --Fix command-line dialing problems. Dialed first match of first word intead of first match of entire string --Added a Find option for the directory listing. Version 2.5 --Enabled all parameters to be used either in the directory listing or the command line --Enabled all eviroment commands to be able to be set from the commannd line --Changed all modem routines to more reliable and smart routines --Added busy detect and automatic redial --Total Parameters added: -M:x Specify comport -R:x Specify redial pause -U Pulse dialing -C Credit card call -P Append a prefix number to call -T Time the call -L Log the call Version 3.0 --Added an internal configuration file to control all options internally. EASYDIAL Users Guide/Reference Copyright 1990 Patri-Soft Page 11 ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Registering EASYDIAL ──────────────────── EASYDIAL is distributed under the Shareware concept. This allows users to evaluate software for a short time to determine if it is useful to them. If you decide the software is of value to you, you are required to register it. This concept allows for quality software to be distributed at a reasonable cost. Many of hours of my time has been invested in EASYDIAL. Continued registration will justify the continued upgrading of this utility to insure it remains up to date with current technology. In any case, I do greatly appreciate all users that care enough to register. I try to provide the best possible software for all you faithful supporting users. Send registration requests to: Patri-Soft P.O. Box 8263 San Bernardino, CA 92412 The registration charge is a one time fee that entitles you to all future versions of the product. These may either be obtained from normal Shareware sources or from me. I do not automatically send product updates to registered users. It is impossible to provide automatic upgrades at the low costs of these utilities. EASYDIAL Users Guide/Reference Copyright 1990 Patri-Soft Page 12 ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Register EASYDIAL 2.5 Order Form ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── VISA/Mastercard orders are only accepted through telephone orders. Call the Public (Software) Library at 800-242-4775 to order TODAY! ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── _____ EASYDIAL -- Good basic telephone dialer..............$15.00 _____ PCOPY -- File Copy, Move, Backup, Update, more!...$20.00 _____ PSEARCH -- Locate files on your disk. Outstanding!..$20.00 _____ PALERT -- Warns you of low disk space..............$15.00 _____ PATTR -- Manage attributes of DOS files...........$10.00 _____ PDAILY -- Automatically execute commands once/day..$10.00 _____ PDELETE -- Save space with automatic disk cleanup...$15.00 _____ PPRINT -- Advanced file print w/special formats....$15.00 California Residents add sales tax....................@ 6% $______ _______ Purchase Orders OK (under $100 add $6) $______ _______ Invoice me (Orders over $100 only) _______ Check or money Order (US FUNDS) included Total amount of my order is: $________ Disk Size (circle one)? 5 1/4 3 1/2 Name: __________________________________________________ Company: _______________________________________________ Address: _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________ City: ________________________ State: ________ Zip: __________ Please register the software under the following name: ____________________________________________________________ I received EASYDIAL from (Optional):_____________________________ Send order to: Patri-Soft P.O. Box 8263 San Bernardino, CA 92412 EASYDIAL Users Guide/Reference Copyright 1990 Patri-Soft Page 12 ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Reporting Problems (EASYDIAL 3.0) I welcome all comments or enhancement suggestions. Please document each item clearly and provide printed examples, if possible. Please be sure to include this form with all requests. It will help to make sure we can provide you with the best possible service. Name: __________________________________________________________ Company: _______________________________________________________ Address: _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ City: __________________________________ State: _______________ Zip: ______________________________ Telephone: _______ / ________________________ (Home / Work) Date: _________________________ Machine Type:_______________ Name of Utility: _______________________ DOS Level: ____________ Description of problem or enhancement: ________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________ Suggested solution: ________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________