Big Blue Disk 23/bbd23.zip/SOFTWARE.TXT

Text File | 1988-06-24 | 13KB | 243 lines

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^C^1Software Indexer
^Cby
^CDaniel Tobias and Richard Wong


   If you've accumulated a large amount of software (whether commercial,
shareware, public domain, or from diskmagazines like BIG BLUE DISK), you may
start forgetting what you have.  You remember the programs you use regularly,
but if you haven't used any Pascal compilers lately you might start to forget
which ones you've got, and where they're sitting right now (at home?  at work?
lent to a friend?)  You might even find yourself spending good money on a new
database program when in fact you've got an excellent public-domain one that
you've forgotten all about.  The situation's even worse if you're in charge of
buying or stocking software for an entire organization instead of just for
yourself; then, you might have to keep track of whole heaps of programs of all
sorts, and deal with requests like "Have we got a spreadsheet program that runs
under OS/2?"

   Software Indexer solves these problems.  Use it to enter all the programs
you've got, specifying their category (spreadsheet, database, game, etc.), and
other information.  You can do searches to retrieve information for display on
screen or printer.  "AND" and "OR" groupings of search expressions are
supported, so you can find all databases that you have on 3 1/2" disks, or all
adventure games with "Space" in their names.

   Got an Apple at school, a Commodore in the kids' playroom, and a UNIX box at
work?  No problem.  Software Indexer lets you make entries for programs for all
machines, and you can easily retrieve only the listings for a particular machine
type through search criteria, or let them all lump together when you just want
to know if you've got a spreadsheet around, regardless of which machine it runs
on.  We had a ball entering every machine we've ever heard of into the listing
for the "System" field, including some really obscure ones. See if you can find
anything we missed.

   If you do happen to have a machine that we failed to include, or otherwise
dislike our system of categorization (for instance, if you feel that relational
databases should be a whole different category from other kinds of databases,
while games shouldn't be included at all since they're not "serious software"),
then you can take advantage of the highly flexible category modification
feature, that lets you insert, delete, and rename the various categories we have
set up for the different fields.  (These changes are made permanently on disk,
so I would suggest you copy this program to your own disk first, and make any
changes on your copy, leaving the original intact.)


^C^1INSTRUCTIONS

   Software Indexer is fully menu-driven, with "help" boxes on each screen.
Hence, it shouldn't be difficult for you to figure out what to do at any point
in the program.  However, here are some directions to help get you started.

   The main menu has the following choices, which you can select by moving the
cursor up and down with the arrow keys and pressing ENTER to pick (or pressing
the first letter of the desired choice, then ENTER):

^CAdd Entries

   This is used to enter new data.  Use it to create records for all your
present software, and to enter new acquisitions in the future.  When you select
this, you will get a screen showing the names of the fields you must enter;
enter them one at a time.  Some fields are strings which you should type,
terminated by ENTER; others bring up a series of sub-menus to let you pick which
multiple-choice items you want.  Above the fields you must enter,
there is an additional, fixed field named "Entry #."  This is a number that
uniquely refers to the record you are entering.  Normally, entry numbers will
start at 1 and be added in ascending sequence, but if earlier entries are
deleted, their numbers will be reused for later entries.  The entry number of a
record never changes unlessthe entry is deleted.

   The fields are as follows:

   1. Name:  Enter the name of the program here (e.g. "Lotus 1-2-3.")

   2. Publisher:  Enter the publisher (e.g. "Lotus Development Corp.")

   3. Distribution:  This brings up a menu of choices relating to what sort of
software it is: commercial, shareware, public domain, etc.  Move up and down
with the arrows and select with ENTER, as with the main menu.  Some of these
choices have sub-menus associated with them to let you narrow down the exact
nature of a program.  These are indicated by an arrow in the rightmost column of
the menu line.  When you select such a choice (or press the right arrow key to
enter the sub-menu), you are given the sub-choices, and should pick one in the
same manner as you picked a choice on the other menus.  For instance, the
"shareware" category has sub-categories "Registered" and "Unregistered" to
indicate whether you've paid the requested registration fee for the program.
If you decide to back up to the main menu to reconsider your original choice,
use the left arrow to get back out of a submenu.  The choice at the top of a
submenu will always be "<No subcategory>"; use this when none of the
subcategories particularly applies, or you simply don't wish to select one
because the main choice adequately describes the program.

   4. Category:  This is another field using menus and submenus.  Here, you're
indicating the general category of the software, e.g. "Entertainment,"
"Education," "Operating Systems," etc.  Sub-menus within these categories
pinpoint various specific kinds of program such as "spreadsheets" and "war
games."  If you don't like our system of categorization, remember you can change
it; see the "Edit Categories" option described below.

   5. System:  Another field with menus and submenus, this one describes what
machine or operating system the program runs under.  For most of you, this will
always be MS-DOS, but some might have programs for other computers as well, or
you may wish to keep OS/2 programs separate in your listing.  At any rate, the
main menu choices here represent different machine families, while the submenus
narrow down the specific operating system.

   6. Medium:  This specifies the disk format the program is on.  The main
menu choices specify the disk size (5 1/4" or 3 1/2"), while submenus
distinguish between different formats.  (The usual IBM PC disks are double-
sided, double-density, but other formats exist.  Use the "<No subcategory>" item
if you're not sure what disk format a program is in.)

   7. Description:  Enter a brief description of the program.  It must be very
brief; only 40 characters are available.  It was a tradeoff between allowing
verbose descriptions and saving disk space.  You'll have to confine yourself to
a quick note about what the program is, like "Relational database" or "World War
III Simulation."

   8. Location:  Use this field to keep track of where you're keeping the
program, like "In shelf over computer" or "Lent to Uncle Bob."  You can use the
"edit" feature in lookup mode (described below) to keep this updated as to the
current whereabouts of any program.

   9. Entry Date:  This can hold the date you acquired the software, or the date
you indexed it.  Enter month, day, and year as prompted.  The default is the
current day, but you can enter any date.  Two-digit years will be converted to
1900 + the year if 50 or higher, or 2000 + the year if below 50.  In 2050 or
afterward, you'll have to enter all four digits.

   When you're done entering a record, you will be prompted with a set of blank
fields for the next record.  Keep entering new records until you're finished, at
which time you can press ESC (or press ENTER with no input while in the "Name"
field) to return to the main menu.

^CSearch Entries

   This main menu option lets you retrieve selected records.  You can do some
pretty sophisticated searches here.  Searching takes place using boolean
expressions.  These are logical expressions making use of connectors like equal
signs, ANDs, and ORs.  For instance, you may wish to find programs with entry
dates on or after Jan. 1, 1988; this is done with the expression "Entry Date >=
01/01/1988."

   Enter the search expression by selecting the field you're searching from the
given menu, then pick a logical operator (less than, greater than, etc.), and
finally, enter the value you're comparing it to.  If the field you're searching
is one of the multiple choice fields, you'll select the value from menus just
like when entering these fields in a new entry.  There's a new item in the
submenus called "<All Subcategories>"; if used, it matches records under the
given major category regardless of which subcategory (if any) is selected.
Conversely, picking "<No Subcategory>" matches only records for which the "<No
Subcategory>" entry was picked.

   After this, you have one more menu.  It has the choice "<END>", which you use
if you're done entering the search expression.  The other choices are "AND" and
"OR", which can be used to add more conditions to the expression.  For instance,
if you want to see all spreadsheets and databases, you can enter a compound
condition to search for "Category = Applications:Spreadsheets OR Category =
Applications:Databases."  If you want only adventure games from Infocom, use
"Category = Recreational:Adventure Games AND Publisher = Infocom."  You may link
several expressions like this.  Expressions are evaluated from left to right
with no operator precedence; no "parentheses" are available to group ANDs and
ORs.

   Once you've selected the expression and terminated it with "<END>," you'll be
given an option to sort the selected records.  You can sort by any field.  Then,
if you choose to view the records on your screen, the records selected will be
displayed one at a time.  Go back and forth between them with the PgUp and PgDn
keys.  If you decide you want to edit data, press the TAB key when you're
viewing the record you want to edit; then, use the arrow keys to move to the
field you want to change, and press TAB again to edit the data in that field.
F10 saves your changes and gets back to viewing mode.  You can delete the entire
record with the Del key.

   Alternatively, you can output the selected records to your printer, either in
an abbreviated form to save paper (with some detail left out), or in its full
form as shown on the screen.

^CFast Search

   This option is similar to the Search Entries option above, but it lets you do
certain simple searches much faster due to built-in indexing.  Fast Search only
works with the record number and the multiple-choice fields, and you can only
search for entries equal to a given value, with no ANDs or ORs.

^CList All Entries

   This will display all of your data entries.  The display is in the same
format as the results of the search options, and the same commands to browse
and edit records apply.

^CEdit Categories

   Here's where you can change the category menus to suit your needs.  You'll be
given a menu of the fields that have changeable choices; pick one, and the
choice menu for it will pop up.  Use TAB to edit the choice menu; the right
arrow gets you into the sub-menu for a given choice, which can be edited by
pressing TAB when you're in it; and the Ins key will create a new submenu
beneath the current option if it doesn't already have one.  While you're editing
a menu, you can move up and down in it, slide the current item to the right
using the right arrow key, then move it up or down to a different part of the
menu and place it back to the left to reorder the items.  Del will delete an
item, and Ins adds a new one.  Note that, on main menus (as opposed to
submenus), you can't delete the last item, which is named "Other," and provides
a choice for items that don't fit into any other category.

   If you delete a category, you can choose whether all data entries falling
into that category should themselves be deleted, or just reset to "Other."

^CZap All Entries

   This choice causes all your data to be deleted, so you can start over again
from scratch.  Note that changes in categories are unaffected; they're done
permanently when you make them.

^CQuit

   This is how you exit back to BIG BLUE DISK.  There's no need to use a "Save"
option to store your data before exiting, since changes are made to disk
automatically as you go along.  By the same token, you don't need to "Load" data
when you start up the program; all your data is still there.


   To run this program from outside the BIG BLUE DISK menu, type ^1SOFTWARE^0.

   Note:  Since this program can create rather massive data files as you enter
lots of information, we suggest you copy it to your own disk before entering
information on your software.


DISK FILES THIS PROGRAM USES:
^FSOFTWARE.COM
^FMAIN.MNU
^FCATS.MNU
^FFORMATS.MNU
^FKINDS.MNU
^FSYSTEMS.MNU
^FSOFTWARE.DAT
^FSOFTWARE.HLP