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Text File | 1996-12-10 | 23KB | 410 lines

           WaverlyStreet ShareCon (tm) version 2.1 - USER'S MANUAL

     Note: if you have not already done so, you might want to print this
manual on paper. If you are reading it on screen from the ShareCon
installation or help utility, press <P> to print it out (it is just a few
pages long).

     Also note: If you are upgrading from a previous version of ShareCon
(version 2 and prior), you must convert your old data files to the new format
- see the very last section of this manual.

                              GETTING STARTED

     When you start ShareCon for the very first time, the blank "reminder"
screen comes up, along with a note that no editor has been specified on the
command line. For now, press any key to clear this and get to the main screen.
The top line of the screen shows all the available command options. Keys that
"work" at a given screen are shown in brackets like so: <ESC>(the escape key),
<F1>(the F1 key), <INS>(the insert key), and so on. Just to the right of <ESC>
there are four tiny arrows. These indicate which of the keyboard "arrow" keys
work at a given screen. Press the right arrow key, and the Keywords box on the
right side of the screen shifts color to indicate that it is "on". Notice that
the right arrow is no longer shown on the top line of the screen. This is
because the right arrow does not do anything in the Keywords box. Press the
left arrow key to return to the main screen. Notice that <TAB> is an option at
the main screen. Press it, and more main screen command options will be shown.

     The best way to become familiar with ShareCon is to simply start playing
around with it. The remainder of this manual is broken into sections which
explain the various ShareCon operations. I have attempted to place the
sections in order, so that one can follow through and try each operation in
turn, and emerge at the end pretty much familiar with the program.

                              ADD NEW ENTRIES

     Press <INS> at the main screen. You must press either "i" or "o" to tag
the new entry as an individual or an organization. Next, you must press either
"r" or "p" to tag the entry as personal or public.

     Now, move the pointer to the first line item you wish to fill in and
press <ENTER>. Type in the information. Press <ENTER>, or <TAB>, or the up or
down arrow keys to move to another field. Press <ESC> when you are finished.
If you select KEYWORDS, you will need to tell the program which keyword you
want to work with (use the up and down arrows to point to 1, 2, or 3). Press
any key except "d", and the full keyword sub-system is activated. You may
enter new keywords, edit them, or delete them, just as if you selected the
keyword function at the main screen. But, to simply select an exiting keyword
from the list, use the arrow keys and the <PGUP> and <PGDN> keys to point to
the word you want, and press <ENTER>. The selected keyword will be displayed
on screen along with the rest of the record.

     When you are done making changes, press <F2> to save the new entry. The
new record will be placed in alphabetical order.

                            THE KEYWORDS SUB-SYSTEM

     The keywords sub-system may be activated from several different places
within the program. At the main screen, press the right arrow key. Think of
the keywords sub-system as an index to the main records.

     When activated, the keyword list on the right side of the screen changes
color to indicate that it is "on". Note the function key selection at the top
of the screen.

     To add a new keyword, press <INS>. Type it in and press <ENTER>. Now
indicate whether the new keyword is personal or public. If you select
personal, the keyword will have a tilde (~) appended to it. In either case,
the keywords file is re-sorted and re-displayed. Personal keywords will drift
to the bottom of the list.

     If you don't like one of your keywords, you may edit it or delete it.
Press <F3> to edit. The keyword list again shifts color. Use the arrows and
<PGUP> <PGDN> to point to the keyword in question, and press <ENTER>. Type in
a replacement for it, and indicate whether it is to be personal or public.
ShareCon will then change the keyword in the keyword file, and also in every
record containing it.

     To delete a keyword, press <DEL> while the keyword list in "on". The
keyword list will shift color. Use the up and down arrow keys and <PGUP>
<PGDN> to point to the keyword in question, and press <ENTER>. ShareCon will
remove the offending keyword, then offer you the option of either removing it
from all the entries too, or doing nothing further. The default is to do
nothing; that way, if you later change your mind and add the keyword back in,
your records will still have it. It won't hurt anything to have "orphan"
keywords in some of your records.

                                  PRINTING

     Press <F4> at the main screen, or while in a keyword search. Select which
type of record you wish to print; individuals, organizations, or both. Next,
you must decide whether or not to select by keyword. (See the keywords
section)

     Then, select a printer port (LPT1 through 3), or the screen, or a file.
If you select file, then you must provide a complete path and file spec.
Select screen to preview and/or edit before printing to paper.

     Next, indicate whether you want to print personal, public, or both
classes of records.

     Finally, select Phone list, Complete records, or Labels. The Phone list
option will print each record on a single line, with the phone number and fax
number. The phone list option skips over records that do not have phone
numbers. If you choose complete records, then ShareCon will offer to print all
non-empty fields in all selected records. The default is to print all fields,
but you may remove fields that you do not wish to print on this particular
list. Also, you may specify that the finished list have HTML code added, to
make the E-Mail and URL fields work as active World Wide Web links. If you
select labels, ShareCon will print mailing address labels. The program prints
to standard 1" high, two label wide (20 labels per sheet) self-adhesive
labels, which are available at office supply stores and the like. (Or if you
are a cheapskate like me, you may also print labels on plain paper, cut them
out and use clear tape to stick them to envelopes (hey, it works fine!))

     If you have printed to the screen, and then decide that you wish to
print to paper, press "p" while in the file browser. You will be prompted to
select a printer port, then the list will be printed. (Note: you can also
start your external text editor from the file browser, and use the editor's
print utility instead. See the section on external text editors below.)

     If there is some problem with printing, then ShareCon will advise you to
check your printer. It could be that you selected an invalid port, or that
your printer is off-line or out of paper. Just look for obvious problems and
try again.

                              ALPHABETICAL SEARCH

     At the main screen, within a keyword search, or in the keywords system,
press the space bar, and then the letter to which you would like to jump. The
contacts or keywords display will jump to the first item starting with that
letter.

                             SEARCHING FOR A WORD

     In addition to the keywords system, ShareCon will search your records
for any word you specify. (This utility searches all the fields in your
records EXCEPT the keywords.) Press <F6> at the main screen, or from within a
keyword search to begin. Type in either the entire word you need, or just the
first several characters in the word. (This works with numbers, too; For
example, to look at all your records for a certain telephone area code...)
Once you have entered in your search pattern, press <ENTER>. Each record in
the data file is searched in turn. When a match is found, the complete record
is displayed on screen. Press any key to continue the search. Press <ESC> to
terminate searching.

                        VIEWING & EDITING WHOLE RECORDS

     At the main screen, use the up and down arrow keys and the <PGUP> and
<PGDN> keys to point to the record you wish to view, and then press <ENTER>.
The entire contents of the record will be displayed on screen. Press <PGUP> to
see the previous record, <PGDN> the next. Press <ESC> at any time to return to
the main screen.

     To narrow your view to records containing a certain keyword, press the
right arrow key at the main screen to activate the keywords sub-system, then
use the arrow keys and the <PGUP> and <PGDN> keys to point to the desired
keyword. Press <ENTER>, and you will be presented with a "short list" that
consists only of records containing that keyword. You may now view the "short
list" just as you would the full list.

     To edit a record, press <F3> (while viewing the entire record). Move the
pointer to the line item you wish to change and press <ENTER>. Type in the new
information. Press ENTER, TAB, or the up or down arrow key to go to the next
or previous field. Press <ESC> to stop. When you are done making changes,
press <F2> to save the revised entry. If you want to abandon your changes,
press <ESC> instead. If you have changed the field that the program uses to
sort the file (lastname or organization name) then ShareCon will offer to
re-sort it right then. The default is not to re-sort. (Note - when editing
from within a keyword search, there will be no offer to re-sort).

     To delete a record, you must be viewing the full record from the main
screen (not from within a keyword search). Press <DEL> (while viewing the
entire record). You are given a chance to change your mind. To go through with
the deletion, you must press the "y" key.

                               SORT YOUR RECORDS

     Merging with other users and editing records will eventually cause your
records to become out of order. Press <F5> at the main menu to sort your
records alphabetically. ShareCon lists individuals and organizations
together. They are sorted as follows: individuals are evaluated by their last
names, and organizations are evaluated by the organization name. If you begin
sorting, and it is taking too long, press the <ESC> key to cancel the
operation. Save it for some other time when you aren't so busy, or let it run
when you are away from your desk. (Or, if running ShareCon under Windows, set
the background processing option "on" (see your Windows manual).)

                                     ***

                          BACKUP / MERGE FUNCTIONS

     At the main screen, press <F7> to bring up the ShareCon DISK UTILITIES
MENU. This is where you backup and restore your files, and create or read
merge files for or from other users of ShareCon. Press the number of your
selection to activate it.

                     BACKUP *ALL* FILES TO FLOPPY DRIVE

     This is just a common-sense periodic backup utility. It copies the files
CONTACTS.DAT and KEYWORDS.DAT to a floppy disk for safe-keeping. The files
are named CONTACTS.BAK and KEYWORDS.BAK on the floppy disk. You must specify
a target drive letter. This utility will OVERWRITE any previous CONTACTS.BAK
or KEYWORDS.BAK files on the target disk, without warning.

               CREATE PUBLIC MERGE FILES (No Personal Entries)

     This utility creates merge files that you can share with others. First,
a couple things to keep in mind:

      Only records and keywords that are tagged as PUBLIC will be
      written to the merge file.

      In the case of a PUBLIC record which contains PERSONAL
      keywords, the PERSONAL keywords are stripped out of the
      merge file record.

      Only PUBLIC keywords that are used in the selected records
      will be written to the merge file.

     To use the utility, press 2 at the disk utilities menu. Now indicate
whether or not you wish to select by keyword. If you chose to select by
keyword, the keyword box will shift colors and then you use the arrow keys
and the <PGUP> and <PGDN> keys to point to the desired keyword, and press
<ENTER>. In either case, you must then specify a target drive letter. The
appropriate records will then be processed and written to the files
CONTACT.MER and KEYWORD.MER on the target drive. This utility will OVERWRITE
any previous CONTACT.MER or KEYWORD.MER files on the target disk, without
warning.

                  MERGE CURRENT FILES WITH FLOPPY DISK FILES

     This is where you incorporate someone else's merge files into your
records, or restore backed up records. To run it, press 3 at the utility
menu. (It would be a good idea to go back to the utility menu and run the
backup item if you have not done so lately.)

     Once you indicate that you do want to continue, you must type in the
drive letter containing the merge files. Just press the letter of the drive.
(ShareCon will look for files in the root directory of the drive.)

     Now, press "p" or "b", to indicate whether the program is to look for
(P)ublic merge files or (B)ackup files.

     Next, you need to tell the program how to handle any apparent duplicate
records that it finds in the backup or merge files. (Records are considered
duplicates if the last name, first name, and organization name all match. The
comparison is NOT case-sensitive.) There are two options: The default is to
reject the duplicate from the merge file, and only keep your original record.
This way, you can rest assured that none of your existing records will be
modified. The other option is to have the program compare the apparent
duplicate's date/time stamps, and keep whichever of the two is newer. This is
convienent when you know that some of your records are out of date, and that
the the merge file contains more current records.

     ShareCon will now extract each new record in turn, compare them to your
existing records, and produce new data files which contain both sets, as you
have specified.

     Note: In all the DISK UTILITIES functions, keep in mind that you can use
hard drives and/or RAM drives instead of proper floppy drives. So for
instance, when you are merging network records into your local records,
you don't *have* to mess around with floppy disks.


                                      ***

                           EXTERNAL TEXT EDITORS

     When you have printed a list to the screen, you may call up an external
text editor and modify / "mark up" the list. (ShareCon does not have it's own
text editor; it uses whichever editor you specify.) The external editor is
specified on the DOS command line, or in a Windows program item command line
field, in this format: sc[version number] [complete path and file spec for
editor executable]. Note the space between the sharecon call and the editor
call. For example, to use the READ editor with ShareCon 2.1(E), type:

     sc21e read

on the command line. If no editor is specified on the command line, ShareCon
will attempt to use EDIT. (EDIT was furnished with MS-DOS version 5 and on (I
believe). EDIT is not particularly satisfying, but works OK as long as your
lists are not very long. Much better suited is a shareware editor called READ.
READ can be found on the internet at http://users.aol.com/wellscom/ , or at
any of the major shareware archives.

                              DATA DIRECTORIES

     By default, ShareCon places its data files in the same directory that
the program resides in. However, you may change this in one of two ways.

     First, you may specify a different directory in SETUP. (See SETUP)
Alternately, you may change data directories "on the fly" from within the
program. Press <F9> at the main screen to do this. Press "y", and type in a
new path. If the new path that you ask for cannot be found, you are prompted
to try again. Note - if you leave the new path entry blank, the program will
automatically select the directory in which the program resides.

     Network notes: The fact that ShareCon has the ability to access remote
drives and directories is not meant to imply that the program is completely
"network compatible". For one thing, to use "common" data exclusively would
sort of defeat one of the main ideas behind ShareCon; that being the
home/work, personal/business portability. Additionally, although steps were
taken to make ShareCon able to operate in a network environment, that was not
a main goal, and you might find the operation a little "clunky" and confusing
when several users are accessing the same files. It is also (remotely)
possible that records could be over-written, under certain circumstances,
where two users were editing at the very same time.

     The reason for the (rudimentary) network compatibility is so that one
person in an office can be given the task of maintaining an "official" list
(or lists). Other users may then change to the "official" list from time to
time (by pressing F9), and create merge files for themselves, without
bothering the person who maintains the "official" files. Constant use of
network data files in a group environment is NOT advised.

                                    SETUP

     There are a number of user-defined characteristics of ShareCon that you
may modify by using the SETUP utility. To start SETUP, press <F10> at the main
screen. Select a SETUP option with the arrow keys and <ENTER>. Press <ESC> to
leave setup and save all configuration information.

     PASSCODE: If the passcode is set to anything other than 0, then the
program will require that the correct passcode be entered upon start-up. The
passcode may be up to four characters long, and each character must be one of
the numbers 0 through 9.

     SCREEN COLORS: Select this item to run the color configuration utility.
To modify an item, move the pointer to it and press <ENTER>. The color will be
changed to the next highest color number. (0 through 7 for backgrounds, 0
through 15 for foregrounds.) Once you have the colors the way you want them,
select "Save these colors and EXIT". You may also return to the default
colors. (Note: you must "save" the default colors too.)

     DATA PATH: If you wish to have ShareCon access data files in some other
drive and/or directory on startup, specify that path here.

     SCRATCH FILE PATH: Certain ShareCon functions make extensive use of
temporary files. If you have a RAM drive set up on your computer, you may
experience some increased performance by directing ShareCon to use the RAM
drive for these "scratch" files. The RAM drive needs to be larger than your
largest CONTACTS.DAT file. See your DOS manual for information on
RAMDRIVE.SYS.

     REMINDER UTILITY: ShareCon incorporates a (completely un-related) little
utility to help make sure that you don't forget up to 10 "VERY IMPORTANT BITS
OF INFORMATION". You may toggle the reminder utility to run either every time
you start the program, not at all, or only every time you start the program
in a new month (my favorite). To toggle the operational mode, select Show
Reminders: and press <ENTER>. To enter a new, or edit an existing reminder,
point to it and press <ENTER>. Work on the date, press <ENTER>, and then do
the note (and press <ENTER>). To have a look at your reminders anytime, press
<F10> at the main screen.

                      GETTING THE MOST OUT OF SHARECON

*    Use it often. As with anything else, the more you use it, the quicker
     and easier it becomes.

*    Run it all the time in a DOS window from Windows, switching in and out
     with ALT-TAB. Place it in the Windows start-up group so it starts
     automatically when you start Windows.

*    Choose keywords carefully. If working in a group of people, it might be
     a good idea for the group to discuss what keywords to use, before you
     get too far into entering data. Don't make your keywords overly
     specific, and don't use so many of them that browsing the keywords list
     is confusing. Use a hierarchical system - in a large group of related
     records, make the first keyword a broad one, the second more specific,
     and the third even more specific.

*    If working in a group, have one person set up an initial data file with
     the agreed-upon keywords structure, then have the other users merge that
     in and go from there with their own personal records. The other users
     will be much more likely to stick with the group keyword structure if it
     is already set up for them, and subsequent merging of records will be
     much more efficient if everyone is using the same general structure.

*    Load up the NOTES fields with words that pertain to the record, and use
     the search by word feature (F6).

                                     ***

                      UPGRADING FROM A PREVIOUS VERSION

     ShareCon version 2.1 uses a slightly different data format than versions
2.0 and prior. The older version files were named CONTACTS.DAT and
KEYWORDS.DAT. The new files are named CONTACT.DAT and KEYWORD.DAT. To make
your pre-2.1 data files useable, you must run them through the included
conversion utility, SC21DATA.EXE. It will convert either .DAT, .MER, or .BAK
files.

     To convert files, SC21DATA.EXE must be in the same directory as your old
files. If you used the installation program to install ShareCon 2.1 in your
existing SHARECON directory (the default), then you should be all set. From
the C:\SHARECON\>_ prompt, type sc21data and press <ENTER>. Follow the
on-screen instructions from there. When you have sucessfully converted your
.DAT files, I'd suggest moving SC21DATA.EXE to the root directory of your hard
drive, and leaving it there to convert old version .MER and .BAK files that
you may run into in the future. However, If you do not expect to ever need to
convert again, you may safely delete SC21DATA.EXE.

                                    ***

          WaverlyStreet, P.O. Box 14249, Columbus, Ohio, 43214 (US)

Questions/comments to the address above, or via E-mail to [e-mail]

     ShareCon (tm) Copyright (C) WaverlyStreet, 1996. All Rights Reserved.