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C U T & P A S T E v 2.01 Copyright 1994 Vincent Penquerc'h All Rights Reserved DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY THE AUTHOR WILL REFER TO VINCENT PENQUERC'H. THE PROGRAM WILL REFER TO CUT & PASTE, INCLUDING THE PROGRAM ITSELF, ITS DOCUMENTATION, AND ANY FILE IN THE ORIGINAL CUT & PASTE PACKAGE. THE AUTHOR HEREBY DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES RELATING TO THIS PROGRAM, WHENEVER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT ANY LIMITATION ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE AUTHOR WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, INDIRECT OR SIMILAR DAMAGES DUE TO LOSS OF DATA, DAMAGE OF HARDWARE OR ANY OTHER REASON, EVEN IF THE AUTHOR WAS ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH LOSS OR DAMAGE. THIS PROGRAM AND DOCUMENTATION ARE RELEASED "AS IS" AS SHAREWARE. IT IS COPYRIGHTED BY THE AUTHOR, AND ALL RIGHTS AND OWNERSHIP ARE KEPT WITH THE AUTHOR. YOU MAY USE IT, COPY IT, AND GIVE IT TO ANYBODY AS LONG AS NO MODIFICATIONS ARE MADE. PROGRAM AND DOCUMENTATION COPYRIGHT 1994 VINCENT 'INDY' PENQUERC'H, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ALL QUOTED PRODUCT AND COMPANY NAMES ARE TRADEMARKS OF THEIR RESPECTIVE OWNERS. TABLE OF CONTENTS 0. Files in this package 1. What is Cut & Paste ? 2. System requirements 3. Using Cut & Paste 4. Command line options 5. Troubleshooting 6. Contacting the author 7. Revision history 0. Files in this package --------------------- These are the files you should find in this package. They are the original distribution files. If one file is missing, ask the person or the organism you got it from or download the complete package from an InterNet site if you have access. The complete package should be found on the net. File Description CUTPASTE.EXE The executable file CUTPASTE.DOC The documentation file, in straight ASCII. PROGRAMS.TXT A list of all available programs from me 1. What is Cut & Paste ? --------------------- Cut & Paste is a professional product which was developed to get rid of one of the most boring problems one may face when working on a computer. How many people are to enter data they see on the screen without any possibility to tell the computer to enter itself the data ? Every once in a while, one has to reenter data seen on the screen by hand. With Cut & Paste, you tell the computer to automatically enter the data you want to be typed ! To do this, you only need a mouse, and Cut & Paste. You import data from an application to feed another application with, as you would do using Windows. More, you can choose to paste data to your printer or to a file. Cut & Paste features: - Word selection by double clicking. - Line selection by triple clicking. - Automatically adds ENTER character after each full line if asked to. - Auto detection of BIOS standard video modes even while running. - Auto detection of mono or color display, to adapt video address. - Auto detection of active video page. - Easy handling of selected text with no keyboard interaction needed. - Very low amount of memory used. - Buffer size adjustment to save memory. - Upper memory blocks (UMB) support to save low memory. - Very low CPU time requirements. - Unloading capability. - Scrolling detecting to avoid garbage on the screen and update marks. - Works in a Windows DOS session. - Hotkey to signal to take mouse control. - Mouse and printer information screen. - Possibility to paste to a selectable printer. - Selectable time out delay for printer output. - Foreign language support. - Possibility to paste to a file. - Double and triple clicking speed adjustment. - Options can be specified in an environment string. Cut & Paste brings you: - A less boring job. - Increased productivity. - A Windows-like way of working. Cut & Paste is definitely the product you needed. 2. System requirements ------------------- In order to run Cut & Paste, you will need: - A 8088 based PC - DOS 2.0 or later - 2 KB of memory - A mouse - A Microsoft compatible mouse driver - An enhanced keyboard You will need as more memory as you want to allocate for the buffer. Cut & Paste works with all text modes, including all specific super VGA hi resolution modes from which the BIOS can obtain number of columns and number of rows. 3. Using Cut & Paste ----------------- For a quick start, drag the mouse with the left button pressed to select text, and click with the right button to paste it. The mouse cursor is displayed on the screen, you move it wherever you want with the mouse. When you press the left button of the mouse, you drag the mouse to select the data you want, then you release the button. The selected text is shown in inverse video during selection and after. At any moment, you can decide to select another piece of data, you just move the mouse and press the left button again, the portion of screen that was previously selected will automatically be deselected, allowing you to choose another part of the screen. You can select up to the entire screen if you want. When your choice is made, you only have to press the right button of the mouse to tell the program to enter the selected data as if you would have lightning fast typed it. How easy ! No matter if the screen scrolls, the selected text scrolls too. Once a portion of text is selected, it is stored in a buffer and can be called at any time to be pasted, even if it has completely disappeared from the screen. You can even press the left button when the screen scrolls to select the text as it is displayed, allowing you to select an entire file as it is displayed, for example. You just have to set a sufficient buffer size when running Cut & Paste. You want to select a word or en entire line ? Just double click on the word, or triple click on the line to have the entire word or the entire line selected. You don't have to drag the mouse to fit the word or line and it's already selected. After that, pasting is as easy as seen, just click the right button. If another program uses the mouse and replaces Cut & Paste's handler with its own, you can signal Cut & Paste when to take mouse control back when this program is finished. Thanks to it, you can use mouse user programs without disturbing Cut & Paste's work. When the program uses the mouse, Cut & Paste sleeps and wakes up when you press this hotkey. By default, this hotkey is Ctrl-Alt Esc, but it can be changed at command line. By pressing this hotkey, you can even use Cut & Paste while a mouse oriented program is running, and copy data from it, then press the hotkey again to get back to the program handler, exit it, then wake up Cut & Paste and get the data back into another application. 4. Command line options -------------------- Cut & Paste has several possible command line options. These are commands entered after the name of the program. The case of the letters has no importance, as Cut & Paste checks for both upper and lower cases. All those options may be browsed by entering one of the following commands: CUTPASTE -? CUTPASTE -H To unload Cut & Paste from memory, the following command may be used: CUTPASTE -U 'U' stands for 'Unload' You may want to change the buffer size, to save a little memory. You may do this by entering the following command: CUTPASTE -B n 'B' stands for 'Buffer'. The number represented by n is a decimal number, and can range from 1 to 65535. It is the size of the buffer used by Cut & Paste in bytes. This size will be rounded up to the closest superior multiple of 16. The default value is 2000 bytes so you can select up to the entire screen. Note that the space between the 'B' and the size specification can be omitted. If you are running a 40-column mode, you might want to set the buffer size to 1000 bytes, as the entire 40-column screen takes only 1000 bytes. To do this, you may enter the following command: CUTPASTE -B 1000 This will install Cut & Paste in memory using a 1000 byte buffer (in fact that will be a 1008-byte buffer). If you need the largest memory available for your programs, you may set the buffer size to a smaller value, but if you do so, you will be a little restricted in selection size. For example, if you are working with a 80-column display and you select a 500-byte buffer, you will be able to copy only a quarter of the screen at a time. That means you can select the entire screen in four passes, each time selecting a different part of the screen. If you have DOS 3.0 or higher, you may want to store the buffer in the upper memory blocks, to save conventional memory. To do this, enter the command: CUTPASTE -M 'M' stands for 'upper Memory'. If you don't know if you are using a prior version, type 'VER' at the DOS prompt, or directly try the 'M' option, as Cut & Paste tests itself the DOS version you are running. If the buffer can't be allocated in upper memory, a message will notice it to you and the buffer will be loaded in conventional memory. If you want your data directly entered and processed by any program without having to press the 'ENTER' key after each line, you may type the following command: CUTPASTE -E 'E' stands for 'Enter'. This is a useful option when having to reenter amounts of lines without any data to add by hand. This can speed your work in a incredible factor. Note that when this option is set, all trailing spaces are removed from the copied text, as if you entered it by hand. Note that this option will generally allow you to enter more lines in the buffer because of the spaces that are not stored in memory. But in certain cases, if the lines are full, the addition of the 'ENTER' character could increase the space needed to fit all the text, but that will almost never happen, as it would happen only with 80-character in each line, but that nearly never happens. If you want to change the default hotkey for enabling and disabling Cut & Paste, you may use the 'K' option, as shown below: CUTPASTE -K CONTROL ALT SPACEBAR 'K' stands for 'hotKey'. This command line will trigger the enabling and disabling command whenever you press the given key combination. This is the template for using this switch. You first give the mask for the hotkey you want, after the letter 'K'. This mask can be any combination of the following key names: control, alt, leftshift, rightshift. You may specify any of them in any order, even none of them. But beware not being in conflict with another program that would use the same key combination. If you choose a null mask, that is if you don't give any of these four symbols, Cut & Paste will trigger any time you press this key, so it is likely to trigger even when you don't want it, if you are to use this key for another purpose. Giving one or more mask keys is wise. Once the mask is specified, give the key you want to trigger Cut & Paste. You may give any of the keyboard keys but the special keys, as the shifts, the scroll lock and num lock keys, the system request key, the break key, the caps lock key, the control key or the alt key. If the key you choose does not have an associated character to be displayed, such as the page up key, or the escape key, use the following table that gives you the word to use to designate this key: Function keys: F1, F2, F3, F4, F5, F6, F7, F8, F9, F10, F11, F12 Arrow keys: up, down, left, right Keypad special keys: Keypad/, Keypad*, Keypad-, Keypad+, Keypad5 Other Keys: backspace, del, end, enter, esc, home, ins, pgdn, pgup, prtsc, spacebar, tab Know that some key combinations won't trigger Cut & Paste's keyboard handler, as no scan code is sent from the keyboard, especially when all status keys are pressed at the same time. Case is not significant. You may enter these symbols in upper or lower case, Cut & Paste will accept both. To get information on your mouse, you may enter: CUTPASTE -I 'I' stands for 'Information'. Using this option will display the mouse driver compatibility version, the mouse type, the number of buttons of your mouse, its IRQ and the language used for the driver's messages. It will also show you the available printers and their time out values in brackets if you want to paste to your printer. If you want to send the copied data to your printer instead of pasting it to the screen, you may use the following command: CUTPASTE -P[n] 'P' stands for 'Printer'. This switch selects a printer output to the 'n'th printer port. this printer port number can range from 0 to 2, depending on the number of printers you have connected. If an error occurs while pasting to the printer, a beep will be heard after a lag, as Cut & Paste retries, in case of communication errors. If you use this switch, think printer output is quite slow, and pasting long texts could take some time. If you want the pasted text to be ejected from your printer after being printed, add the 'J' switch: CUTPASTE -P0 -J 'J' stands for 'eJect'. This switch has no action if the 'P' switch is not specified. The above command will eject the pasted text after it is printed to printer 0. To change the time out value for the printer you specified using the 'P' switch, use the 'T' switch, followed by the value you want to set. For example, if you want to set it to 1 (a very fast delay), using the printer 0, use the following command: CUTPASTE -P0 -T 1 You can only change the time out value for the printer you use. Time out values can range from 1 to 255. This option has no effect when not used with the 'P' switch. To select the messages language, use the 'L' switch, followed by the language name you want to use. 'L' stands for 'Language'. The currently supported languages are English (default), French, Spanish and Polish. This is an example on how to use the 'L' switch: CUTPASTE -L FRENCH To paste to a file, use the 'F' option, followed by the filename you want to use. 'F' stands for 'File'. CUTPASTE -F FILE.TXT CUTPASTE -F C:\THISDIR\AFILE.TXT CUTPASTE -F ..\..\THISFILE.TXT The file can be on any existing drive, and its path can be relative, as in the first example, or absolute, as in the second one. If the file does not exist, it will be created, but if you erase it while Cut & Paste is resident, no data will be pasted to it. If the file already exists, it will be erased. You can choose to paste to the screen (this is not the same as the normal usage of Cut & Paste, as the pasted characters will only be displayed on the screen, they will not be entered on DOS' command line and will not be taken into account by the command processor). To do so, use the 'CON' filename. You can paste to the DOS default printer too by using the 'PRN' filename, or LPT1, LPT2, and others as shown below: CUTPASTE -F CON CUTPASTE -F PRN CUTPASTE -F LPT1 CUTPASTE -F LPT2 The advantage of using the 'P' switch in Cut & Paste's command line is that you can choose the printer you want to paste to, without being disturbed by DOS' printer redirections, and DOS can be very annoying with its 'Retry, Ignore, Fail, Abort' messages, repeated one hundred times before the problem is solved. Moreover, you wouldn't have access to the 'J' option, allowing you to eject the page after pasting. Remember that LPT1 corresponds to P0, LPT2 to P1 and so on, as Cut & Paste uses BIOS' conventions and functions. Note that Cut & Paste checks many flags before attempting a disk write, and is likely to deny access to the disk when not under plain DOS prompt. This will be fixed as soon as I find a way to access disk with DOS functions without any risks to lock up the machine. If all flags are not favorable to a disk write then Cut & Paste will wait until all flags permit it, then the data will be pasted to the file. Meanwhile, selecting another portion of the screen will be forbidden. This will allow you to paste only one piece of text at a time, but will keep your computer safe from lock up. To change the double and triple clicking speed, use the 'S' switch, followed by the wanted speed, as shown below: CUTPASTE -S 10 The lower the value, the faster the clicks will be. The legal values for this speed are 1 to 15. The default is 15, to allow slow clicking people to use Cut & Paste easily. Speeds below 4 will make the double and triple clicks almost impossible. All these options can be used in the same command line, except the 'U' 'I' and '?' (or 'H') options, as they perform specific actions, and not modify Cut & Paste's behavior when as a resident program. For example, if you are French and you want Cut & Paste to be loaded with a high buffer of 500 bytes and to select Control Space as its hotkey, to paste to your second printer with a carriage return/line feed after each full line and to eject the page after printing, with a short time out delay, with a slow click speed, you might use the following command line: CUTPASTE -L FRENCH -B500 -M -K CONTROL SPACEBAR -P1 -J -E -T1 -S15 Nice command line, eh ? :) You should put it in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file to save some time typing it every boot time. If you don't want to have it ran every boot time, you can set the CUTPASTE environment variable with all the options you want to be present when you run Cut & Paste. Both command line and environment are parsed. For example, if you are spanish and you like the hotkey Control Alt F12, you can set this: SET CUTPASTE=-L SPANISH -K CONTROL ALT F12 Once this is done, you will have the choice to run Cut & Paste with the 'F' or 'P' switch, to select keyboard, file or printer output. Every time Cut & Paste will be ran, messages will be displayed in Spanish, and the hotkey will be set to Control Alt F12. This can be very useful, as these options are quite long to type. This brings no problem at unloading time, as the 'U' switch overrides all others. The environment string won't interfere if the 'U' or 'H' (or '?') switches are present in the command line. All you have to do is to not include one of these switches in the environment string. 5. Troubleshooting --------------- These are some problems you may encounter running Cut & Paste, with explanations and/or ways to prevent these problems. If you have any problems, read thoroughly this section, you may find the solution. Q: The computer seems to lag or lock up. A: If you select a printer output, and an error occurs during printer transmission, Cut & Paste tries many times to transmit data again. If too many unsuccessful attempts occur, Cut & Paste will emit a beep and you will be given control back. Check for your printer connections and check if you selected the right printer port using the 'P' switch. The mouse will usually work meanwhile. If your printer generates many errors, you can specify a shorter time out value, using the 'T' switch. Q: I hear beeps. A: Since Cut & Paste is a resident program, it can't display error messages on the screen, or else it would be likely to interfere with other programs' output. These are the possible meanings of the beeps you may hear: One beep when releasing the left mouse button: You selected too many characters for the current buffer size. One beep when pressing the right mouse button: You did not release the left button, and pasting is forbidden while selecting text. One beep after a lag, when pasting text: You chose to paste to a printer, and an error occurred during pasting. The lag is due to many unsuccessful attempts. After those attempts, Cut & Paste will emit a beep to notice you the error. This can be because no printer is connected to the port you selected using the 'P' switch. Check for your printer connections. All selected text is canceled and will not be pasted to avoid other lags. Once the problem is solved, try again. If it persists, unload Cut & Paste and run it again with another printer port number. One beep when pressing the left button: This can have two reasons. If you paste to a file, maybe the write operation failed. If the write operation succeded, maybe you tried to select text, but some text you selected before is being pasted, so the buffer is in use. Wait for the text to be entirely pasted. This usually occurs when pasting to a printer, because it is far slower than pasting the console, or when pasting a large text to a slow drive. A big amount of beeps: When the DOS command line reaches 255 characters, DOS will accept characters but will not take them into account, and will not display them. Instead of this, it will emit a beep. So it may emit a lot of those boring beeps if you asked Cut & Paste to copy more characters than DOS will accept. Some programs other than DOS may behave similarly. Try selecting shorter amounts of text or use the 'E' switch to add an 'Enter' character at each end of line. Q: I get the message 'Mouse not found or no mouse driver running'. A: If you do have such hardware and software, check your installation and run the test programs you may have with your mouse package. If Th. problem persists, you should try to get another mouse driver, it might not be a standard one. Q: I get the message 'Could not allocate memory for buffer'. A: You may have not enough memory to install Cut & Paste, even if it only requires a few kilobytes. Try to remove any memory greedy program or reduce the buffer size by using the 'B' option. Q: I get the message 'Not enough upper memory found'. A: Upper memory is saturated or available blocks are too small to fit to the buffer size you have requested. There are four choices you can make: try to unload some resident programs from upper memory if you have any, or load them in a different order, or reduce the size of the buffer, or load it in low memory. Q: I get the message 'Error in option: x'. A: You made an error using this option. Check for the correct use of the different options entering CUTPASTE -? at DOS prompt. If you get the extra message '(Illegal buffer size)', it means you gave a buffer size not in range 1 to 65535. Try another size. Q: I get the message 'Cut & Paste is already installed in memory'. A: You tried to load Cut & Paste more than once, and it sensed there was another copy of it in memory, so there is no need to have two copies of Cut & Paste in memory. If Cut & Paste is not installed, it might be a multiplexer conflict, as some resident program might use the same multiplexer identification. This is very unlikely, but it can happen. Try to remove some of your resident programs to determine which one causes the conflict. Q: I get the message 'Cut & Paste is not installed in memory'. A: You requested Cut & Paste to unload itself from memory, but it did not detect any copy of it in memory. If there is one, it might be because a program hooked the multiplexer interrupt and did weird things with it, so Cut & Paste doesn't receive requests any more. Another possibility is a multiplexer conflict, if another program is using the same multiplexer identification. This is very unlikely but it can happen. Try to remove some of your resident programs to determine which one causes the conflict. Q: I get the message 'Error creating output file' A: DOS failed creating the output file needed using the 'F' switch. Maybe the disk you specified is full, or you specified a wrong path. Check the command line. Q: I selected a portion of the screen, but only a piece of it can be pasted by pressing the right button. A: The selected text size can not be larger than the buffer size. For example, if you have a 200 byte wide buffer and you want to select a large portion of the screen, this portion will be cut to fit in the buffer. In this case, only the 200 first will be pasted. Another possibility is that the DOS command line can't exceed 255 characters, so as these are DOS limitations, Cut & Paste will not be able to enter more than 255 characters on a DOS command line. So if you are at the DOS prompt, you will have to paste the text you want in two steps or more. DOS will warn you the command line size is reached by beeping for every character Cut & Paste tries to enter the keyboard buffer. You may press Control Break to tell DOS to ignore skip that line and generate a clean one. Q: The mouse cursor disappears when I run another program and does not come back when it stops. A: Try to press the Ctr-Alt-Esc hotkey. This should solve the problem by noticing Cut & Paste to get control back. If this doesn't work, the program you ran did weird things, so the only solution is to unload Cut & Paste and to run it again. Q: The selection marks don't follow the mouse cursor, so the selected text is not the one I wanted to select. A: You might are in a video mode that is unsupported or you have a mouse driver that doesn't cope well with this mode. The supported video modes are all text modes from which the BIOS can obtain the number of columns and the number of rows. Try to change the current video mode. Cut & Paste automatically detects the new video mode and adapts itself to its resolution, even while it is running. Also, some mouse drivers don't send Cut & Paste the right cursor location when in hi resolution text modes, such as 132x44. If this is the case, you should phone the mouse driver company to get a new release of your driver. Q: Inverse video characters sometimes stay on the screen outside the selected portion of the screen. A: This can have several reasons. Some programs write data directly to video memory and disturb Cut & Paste's work. Another possible reason is that pasted text is displayed in the middle of the selected text. Since DOS doesn't care of the attributes when it displays text, the colors get messed up, but in no case the text will be altered. Q: Nothing is pasted to the printer but no error is reported by beeps. A: Maybe you selected a wrong printer number. Try another number using the 'P' switch. Cut & Paste might be sending data to the wrong port. Q: Nothing is pasted to the file I specified in the command line. A: Maybe you gave a wrong path. Non-existing files will be created, but non-existing directories won't. Check the file specification. If the specified file can't be created, Cut & Paste will warn you before leaving as resident. 6. Contacting the author --------------------- If you have any bug reports, comments, flames or if you want to register, feel free to write me at the following EMail address: penquerc@merlin.enssat.fr or via snail mail: Vincent Penquerc'h 3, rue d'Ecosse 35200 Rennes France The registration fee for this program is $10 (60 francs for France). Please note that Cut & Paste is shareware and is not free software nor public domain software. If you use this program after a two week free evaluation period, please register, so I can continue enhancing Cut & Paste and release other neat programs to meet your needs. Please send cash, do not send checks from outside France. If you are willing to send another currency than francs, send cash for an amount of $10 + $2 (exchange). 7. Revision history ---------------- v2.02 June 18th 1995 - Added cursor color selection. v2.01 April 29nd 1995 - Added Polish to supported languages list. - Fixed a bug that would leave garbage on the screen if the screen would scroll up. v2.0 September 19th 1994 (not released) - Added possibility to paste to a file. - Added command line fetching from an environment string. - Reduced resident code size. - Added selectable time out delay for printer output. - Added printer detection for information switch. - Allowed selection of double and triple click speed. - Added spanish to supported languages list. - Enhanced parsing error reports. - Fixed a small bug in byte display routine. v1.52 September 4th 1994 (not released) - Fixed a bug in printer output. v1.51 August 30th 1994 (not released) - Fixed a bug in F11 and F12 scanning. v1.5 August 21st 1994 (not released) - Installed permanent multiplex interrupt handler. - Added language support, with English and French. - Fixed a small bug in command line parsing. - Enhanced inverse video handling with scrolling screens and screen clearing to avoid garbage being left on the screen. v1.4 August 5th 1994 (not released) - Allowed pasting to a selectable printer. - Added possibility of ejecting the page after printing. - Fixed a bug thus some keys couldn't be selected as hotkeys. v1.3 August 1st 1994 (not released) - Allowed selection of enabling/disabling hotkey. - Enhanced command line parsing. - Suppressed upper bound of 2000 bytes for the buffer size, to allow easy selection of scrolling screens. v1.2 July 25th 1994 (not released) - Added scrolling screen selection. - Changed hotkey behavior to enable and disable handler when wanted, and to allow the user to use Cut & Paste when a mouse user program is running. - Enhanced cursor visibility handling. - Added mouse information switch. - Enhanced double and triple click detecting, ignoring them if mouse cursor moves between clicks. v1.11 July 21st 1994 (not released) - Added hotkey to signal to take mouse control when another program grabbed the mouse. - Enhanced video interrupt routine. - Added the slash (/) switch to act like the dash (-). - Fixed a bug thus Cut & Paste did not work with some drivers. - Fixed a bug that sometimes caused flicker on the screen. v1.1 July 3rd 1994 (not released) - Fixed a few bugs about cursor visibility and text hilighting. - Added double and triple clicking word and line selection. - Added generic video mode support, virtually providing support to any video mode including specific high resolution super VGA text modes. - Added UMB support to load text buffer high. v1.0 June 25th 1994 (not released) - First version of Cut & Paste.