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Grateful T.E.D.(tm) (Version 2.0) (Shareware) a Taper's Electronic Database is a China Cat Software Production Copyright (c) 1990-1993 Michael E. Carver All rights reserved Introduction I hope you like this program and decide to register it. I will only be able provide support to registered owners. Registration also will allow you to update to any future DOS versions free. (However, if you order updates by mail there will be a small shipping fee + the cost of a blank disk.) Registration of this software also will allow me to write further enhancements and possibly a Windows version. Providing this software as Shareware ain't gonna make me rich. But, hopefully it will allow me make enhancements and keep me inspired while I work on a possible Windows version. Registration This version of the Grateful T.E.D. is released as Shareware. It is not a crippled or stripped down version of the software. It is not free and is not in the public domain. Users are requested to register and support its continued development and customer support. To regis- ter, please send your name, address and phone number (include any e- mail addresses) with the registration fee of U.S. $20.00 (check or money order only) to: Michael E. Carver 1416 N Jarrett Portland, OR 97217 USA My e-mail address (InterNet) is mcarver@techbook.com Distribution You may make copies of the program files for Grateful T.E.D.(tm) and documentation files and distribute them to others, upload to bulletin boards, Internet archives, etc.. The program must be distributed complete, including all documentation and supporting files. None of the files should be modified in any way. If you distribute this to anyone, you cannot charge a fee beyond disk duplicating and handling. Treat this program, just as you would trading Grateful Dead tapes. It is up to the receiver to honor the Shareware provisions of this soft- ware and pay the author. Notice This program and documentation are provided "as is" without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. In no event will Michael E. Carver (the author) be liable for any damages arising out of the use of inability to use this pro- gram and/or its documents. Sorry about the above paragraph, but one does have to protect oneself in this crazy world. Grateful T.E.D. Theory I designed the record format of Grateful T.E.D. for data based on an individual audio tape. There is room for 22 songs in each record. Each song can contain up to 67 characters. However, if every song entry contains 67 characters the display will be very hard to read. The program will not crash, just an "ugly" display for that one re- cord. In normal practice this problem should not arise. In most cases (except for early shows & acoustic sets where songs are short) it may be possible to fill in one record with the data for a complete show. INSTALLATION Hard Disk Place the distribution disk into your floppy drive. Log onto your floppy drive. For example: If you are using Drive A, type A: Now run the installation program, INSTALL, by typing INSTALL. The Install program will prompt for the letter of the Hard Drive and for a direc- tory Path where you wish to install Grateful T.E.D. The following 11 files should be transferred to your Hard Drive: G_TED.EXE Main program file TED.DB Main database file TED.IDX Main index file for database MASTER.TRE Master Song index SONG_INP.DB Database containing song titles for automatic input SONG_INP.IDX Index file for song titles database TEDPRN.FIG Printer configuration file CON_TED.EXE Program to edit Printer configuration (used by G_TED.EXE) G_TED.PCX Introduction picture file G_TED.ICO Icon for use in Windows3.1 G_TED.PIF For use in Windows3.1 It should be possible to install Grateful T.E.D. onto a high density floppy disk. Since database programs are disk intensive (i.e., they do a lot of reading and writing to disk), Grateful T.E.D. will work much faster and efficiently when installed on a Hard Disk. STARTING THE PROGRAM There is no configuration or switch available for Grateful T.E.D. to find its data files. Therefore, it is necessary to log onto the drive and/or directory that contains the data. It is possible to have different data files stored in various directories (or drives) and run Grateful T.E.D. out of another drive or directory. If your program and data files are on the same drive and in the same directory, log onto that drive and directory. If you installed Grate- ful T.E.D. in the directory TED on your Hard Disk issue the following DOS commands to execute Grateful T.E.D.: C: (or your Hard Disk's drive letter) CD\TED G_TED If you wish access data in a different directory than the directory G_TED.EXE resides, log onto the directory containing the data. C: CD\TED\DATA1 (or the drive and directory containing the data) Execute TED by specifying the drive and directory that G_TED.EXE re- sides. C:\TED\G_TED If you are using two floppies for Grateful T.E.D., place the program disk in drive A and your data disk in Drive B. To execute Grateful T.E.D., log onto Drive B and launch Grateful T.E.D. by using the following DOS commands. B: (log onto data drive) A:G_TED (run the program) IMPORTANT: Grateful T.E.D. needs to find the following files in the Data directory of on the Data disk: CON_TED.EXE MASTER.TRE SONG_INP.DB SONG_INP.IDX TED.DB TED.IDX TEDPRN.FIG USING Grateful T.E.D. Grateful T.E.D. features pull-down menus and simple one-key commands. In almost all cases, one can return to the previous level by pressing the ESC key. MENUS If you are using Grateful T.E.D. for the first time, or with an empty database, you will be presented with a blank screen and a menu bar across the top border. Options Goto Locator Toolbox To access the pull-down menu associated with each command listed on the menu bar, simply press the highlighted key. Pressing ESC will close the pull-down menu. Selection of a command from within the opened menu box is accomplished by pressing the key corresponding to the highlighted letter. One also can scroll the cursor bar up or down with the arrow keys, or the Page Up and Page Down keys. Pressing ENTER will execute the command within the cursor bar. OPTIONS -- Input Update Index Print Delete Create Quit Input / Update Select Input to enter a new record into the database and Update to edit the record currently displayed. If you are entering a new re- cord, a 2-page template will appear on the screen. When editing an existing record this template will be filled with data from the current record. Movement between fields is accomplished by the up and down arrow keys or by pressing enter. To flip between the two pages of the editing template, use Page Up and Page Down. To erase a field, press F7. To accept all data as entered press F10. If you wish to abort or abandon the data as typed press ESC. If you were editing an existing record, the original record will be restored if you press ESC. F10 will replace the original data with the newly entered information. If you chose F10 while Inputting a new record, a new blank template will appear. To quit entering new records press ESC. If you were Updating a record, F10 will automatically exit the edit mode and display the current record (i.e., the record just edited). After accepting the data (F10), there may be a small delay before the pro- gram proceeds to the next entry screen or before displaying the cur- rent record. All indexes are constantly being updated as the data changes, causing any delays. The cursor can be controlled within an input field by the right and left arrow keys. If the control key is held down while pressing a right or left arrow key, the cursor will move to the next word right or left. The Home and End key will move to the start or end of the text in the input field. The insert and overwrite mode are toggled by the Insert key. In the overwrite mode the cursor will be a flashing line at the bottom of the text. A box will indicate insert mode. In some fields only certain characters are permitted as input. For example, the first character of the month can only be a space or the numbers 0 or 1. The second character can only be a number from 0-9. Similar restrictions apply to the day field. The first character can only be a space or the numbers 1-3. In order for the Date index to work properly, the date must be entered in MM-DD-YY order (Month-Day- Year). For recording and performance qualities only combinations from 0 to 5.0 are allowed. The number 4.5 is valid, but 6.2 is not. While we are on the subject of Quality ratings... When a record is entered into the database a calculation is made by adding the ratings for recording and performance. This rating is displayed as the Over- all Quality and can range from 0 to 10.0. As the date index for Grateful T.E.D. is ordered by Year; Month; Day; and then Comment, it is possible to use the input in the comment field to place 1st Sets before 2nd Sets. By being choosy and consistent with the first few words in the comment field, an "Early Show" will appear before a "Late Show". "1st Set" will appear before "2nd Set" and "Part I" will appear before "Part II". ...F2 -- Song Input For the song index to work efficiently, songs must be entered with consistent titles. To aid in this task a master song list is avail- able. Whenever the flashing cursor is in the input fields numbered 1 through 22, a song prompt/input window can be accessed by pressing F2. One can select a song title for automatic input by scrolling or paging through the song list. To automatically insert a title into the field with the flashing cursor, position the cursor bar over the title and press Enter. Use the Up and Down arrow keys, or the Home and End keys to move the cursor bar within the song window. Depending on the position within the song list there may be two pages of song titles available. Page Up and Page Down will flip between these pages. To select a different range of titles press F4. A prompt window will appear advising you of your options. For example to move the song title list to Terrapin Station, press F4 and then the "T" key. To advance the song list 20 titles, press F4 and Page Down. If you want to quit or close the song prompt/input window, press ESC. Grateful T.E.D. will alphabetize the songs character by character. I have chosen the option of leaving off the leading "The" in song titles. This avoids having 3 separate collections of alphabetized songs "A - Te...", "The A... - The Z.." and "Ti.. - ZZ". If you want your "The's" back, you should edit the songs in the master Song Input database using Tailor from the Toolbox menu. One method of entering song titles is to type only enough characters in each field to indicate a close match to the title. For example, "case" for Casey Jones or "bir" for Bird Song. Fill in each song field with abbreviations for each song. Then position the cursor at the first song input field and press F2. The song input window will open with the cursor bar positioned at the closest match to the char- acters present in the field. If the cursor bar in the song input menu is over the correct title, press Enter. The complete song title will be filled into the field and the cursor will advance to the next field. Continue this process until all songs have been entered. You may wish to "tailor" the song title database. Please refer to the section under Toolbox for instructions on customizing the song titles. Index Selecting this option from the pull-down menu will present a menu with the various indexes available. To order the data by a different index choose an index from the new menu. The index menu works like all other menu boxes, "hot-key" (i.e., the highlighted letter), scroll and Enter, or ESC to quit the menu. The index selected will stay active until another index is chosen or searches are made via the Locator menu. The current record (the record displayed on the screen) is marked as current for the current index. In other words, if you select a second index and move to a different record (either by using Goto or Locator) you can return to the previously selected record by choosing the previous index. This provides an easy way to flip between different records spread through- out the database. NOTE: Inputting and editing also will change the marked record in the indexes. Print This portion of the program is rather primitive. It is possible to direct the printing to either a printer or an ASCII file. There are 4 possible print styles available; Short, Brief, Full, and Whole. The Short and Brief styles are similar in output, as are the Full and Whole. Short will print out the Date, City, Day of the Week, Venue, Comment, Source, Time, and Quality. Brief will print out the Date, City & Venue, and Comment. Full and Whole will print out the complete record. The only difference between the two is where the Date and Day of the Week are displayed. Full places this information at the upper right. Whole will place this information at the upper left. When Print is selected from the menu a window will open showing the present setting. This includes, Style, Destination, Range, and Index. If the Destination is a file and the Style is either Full or Whole, one other setting is displayed -- Format. You will be prompted to accept this setting. If you answer No, another window will open allowing the settings to be changed. Pressing ESC will abort the Print process. ...Style While the Style menu is displayed samples of each Style can be dis- played by pressing F1. Move the cursor bar with the arrow keys to a style and press F1 to see a sample output. Pressing either the Hot- Key or Enter will select the style. ...Destination The 2 options available are printer or a file. If Printer is selected for Destination an attempt is made to "talk" to the printer. If the program is unable to get a response from the printer, you will be asked whether you really want the printer to be your destination. If your printer is turned on and is on-line when you receive this mes- sage, it is safe to accept the printer. In its present version Grate- ful T.E.D. only uses the printer connected to DOS's default PRN de- vice. If you experience problems printing to you particular printer use the file Destination. This will produce an ASCII file that can be loaded into almost any wordprocessor or desktop publisher program. NOTE: The Toolbox menu has a Configure selection that will allow set up of the page format and printer set-up strings. If you choose a File for your destination, the setting box will dis- play a default filename including complete Drive and Directory infor- mation. The program will default to filename edit mode. If you wish to use a different file than the default, edit the filename. Be sure to include any drive and/or directory information. Choosing a file for your print destination is an excellent way of sending a list of your tapes (or selected tapes) via e-mail or by disk. There are 2 additional options available when printing if the Styles are either Full or Whole. This option is the Mode of the output. This can either be Formatted (which is the same format as displayed by the F1 = Sample) or Raw. The Raw format is designed to aid in print- ing up specially formatted text files via a wordprocessor and should only be used when the Destination is a file. The difference between Raw and Formatted is the form of the song list. In the Raw format the songs are printed as on complete line. In the Formatted mode the songs are formatted with margins that indent the list (both left and right). ...Range There are Ranges available, All or Selected. All will print every record in the database. Selected will only print the records that have been flagged as selected. These files are indicated by a "check-mark" in the upper-left of the screen. Records can be toggled from Selected to Not-Selected by pressing the Insert key. The Toolbox also has an option that will set all Selected records to Un-Select. ...Index This option will print the records in the order of the indicated Index. Delete To delete the currently displayed record from the database, choose this option. You will be prompted to answer "Yes", do delete this record; or "No", don't delete this record. ESC also will abort this command. Create This option will destroy the current database and indexes and make new and empty database and index files. Use this option carefully! The only data and index not destroyed by this command is the Song Input database and it's accompanying index. However, the program will ask for conformation before proceeding. In fact, you will have to answer "Yes" two different times before the program will actually carry out this command. To change your mind just answer "No" or press ESC when prompted by the pop-up menu. Quit This command will close all open files and exit the program. You will be prompted for conformation before the program quits. F10 also will Quit the program. GOTO -- First Last Next Previous These commands can be used to page or flip through the database. You can page through the individual records in order represented by the last index chosen through the Option/Index command or through the last index used by the Locator. It is not necessary to use this menu to page through the database. Anytime there is a record displayed on the screen and no menu boxes open, the following hot-keys will flip through the database: Page Up, Page Down, Home, End. NOTE: There is one exception to the above. It is impossible to move to the End (Last) of the Sequential Index. You also cannot page backwards with Page Up (Previous) while the Sequential Index is the selected index. LOCATOR -- Songs Date City Source Recording Performance Overall Quality Selected Songs To locate tapes that have a particular song, select this option from the Locator menu. A pop-up menu will appear containing only the song titles that exist in your database. The Song Locator menu works just like the Song Input menu. F4 will provide you with options to select the starting range, move forward or backward 20 songs or Quit the Song Locator. After you have selected the title, a message window will open display- ing the number of "hits" found in your database. Every song entered into the database is indexed by a separate index (the file MASTER.TRE). This index is constructed in a manner allowing duplicate song entries for an individual record, but only one index key per record. In other words, if you entered "Playing In the Band" 3 different times during the 2nd set, the song index will only count it once for that record. If you have been using stock databases for your tape collection, this feature may not have been available. If only one tape was found with the selected song title, pressing any key will immediately display this record. If more than one record was found, pressing any key will display the first occurrence. Along the bottom border of the screen are options available to page through the records containing this song. The song title you selected for the search is displayed along the top border of the screen. F10 or ESC will quit the Song Locator. Date / City / Source / Recording / Performance / Overall Quality Selecting one of these options from the Locator menu will present a pop-up menu to type in the data to locate. The same valid keys are required as during data input. If an exact match is found, the first record appearing in the index related to the field being searched for will be displayed. If an exact match isn't found, the next nearest record will be displayed. The exception to this rule is if the next nearest record doesn't exist. In this case, the first record in the index will be displayed. These options work like the "thumbed index tabs" in dictionaries. They will get you to the point where a match begins. From this point you can page or flip through the database using the regular Goto keys. TOOLBOX -- Tailor Rebuild Unselect Configure Stats Tailor -- Add Delete Edit Return This option is used to customize the Song Input database to suit your needs and tastes. The options related to this tool are listed along the top of the half window displayed. ...Add To add a new title to the Song Input database, select this option. You are now on you own and must type in the song title you wish in- serted into the Song Input list. The same keys apply as did during the Input/Edit stage of main database. Return or F10 will accept the new song title. Pressing the ESC key will abort adding a title to the song list. ...Delete Choosing this option will display the Song Input pop-up menu. Refer to Input/Edit for use of the Song Input window. Select the title to be deleted from the list. You will be prompted to confirm this dele- tion before it is removed from the list. Answer "No" or press ESC if you do not want to delete the song title displayed in the edit box. ...Edit To edit a song already in the Song Input database, choose the title from the pop-up Song List window. The title will be displayed in the edit window. The same keys apply to editing a song title as do to adding one. ...Return This option will exit the Tailor portion of the Toolbox and return you to the regular section of the database. Rebuild Rebuild will restructure or reorder the main database and the song index. It is highly recommended to make a backup of your data files before Rebuilding T.E.D. The files that should be backed-up are: TED.DB, TED.IDX, SONG_INP.DB, SONG_INP.IDX, AND MASTER.TRE. As data is removed or edited, holes may begin to appear in the database and the data will become fragmented. Restructuring the database will repack the data and allow placing the data in a selected index order. This should greatly enhance access of data by certain indexes, espe- cially with large tape collections. You will be prompted for the order you wish to Rebuild the database. These are the standard index- es available. UnSelect This option will toggle off any records that were flagged as Selected. Configure This option will configure printing parameters. These include: Port, Lines Per Page, Top Margin, Bottom Margin, Printer Setup String, Header, Footer, Lines After Header, Lines Before Footer, and Song Separator Symbol. T.E.D.'s standard editing keys apply when editing these options. This version of Grateful T.E.D. will only print out to DOS's default PRN device. The option of selecting a Port does not effect anything in this version of TED. Future versions of the program should imple- ment port selection. All print formats print 79 characters across. You can set up the page length along with top and bottom margins. The Header will be typed after the Top Margin. You can specify the number of lines to be printed after the Header. The Footer is printed before the Bottom Margin. You can specify the number of blank lines to be printed before the Footer. The data from your database will be printed be- tween the Lines After Header and the Lines Before Footer. The printer string is a series of decimal numbers that correspond to the special characters recognized by your particular printer. Please refer to your printer manual for specific commands. The Setup String should be entered as a series of decimal number separated by commas (i.e., 27,64). The Song Separator Symbol is entered as a decimal number. Again refer to your printer manual for special characters that can be printed beyond the standard ASCII characters. When you press Enter or the Up or Down Arrow, the IBM ASCII character will be displayed. This may or may not correspond to the extended character set supported by your printer. If you change any of the options, you must Save them to make them apply to any future printing. Stats This option will read through your database and calculate the total amount of time as recorded in the Time field of each record. It also will display the average quality of your collection based on the data entered the corresponding fields in each record. When calculating the quality data entries of 0 are not included in the average. SELECT / UNSELECT This is a "hot-key" option and does not appear on any menu (except for the global UnSelect found within the Toolbox list). It is possible to mark individual records as Selected. Selected files can be accessed by the Locator menu. Also, Selected files can be used to limit the number of records printed to only those that are marked as Selected. The insert key will Select/UnSelect the currently displayed record. If the record is Selected and a check-mark will appear in the upper- right hand corner of the screen. If there is no check mark, the record is UnSelected. You can make all records UnSelected by choosing the UnSelect option from the Toolbox menu. NOTES If you would like to share your data file with other T.E.D. users, they must receive copies of the following files: MASTER.TRE TED.DB TED.IDX Please refer to the section on starting the program for proper file distribution. If you are experiencing difficulty printing the database to your printer, use the print to File option. It is possible to use the DOS COPY command to send files to a printer connected to your printer port or the serial port. Use the following format: COPY FILENAME DEVICE /B The filename should be the name of the file made by T.E.D. The device can be LPT1, LPT2, LPT3, LPT4, COM1, COM2, COM3, or COM4. The /B sets the copy to binary mode. One last nag... Remember, this program was provided as Shareware and is not free. If you find the program useful and plan to use it, please register it with the author. If you have any questions or suggestions feel free to contact me. If you haven't registered the program, be sure to include a S.A.S.E. if you wish a reply. Thanks, and enjoy! To register, please send your name, address and phone number (include any e-mail addresses) with the registration fee of U.S. $20.00 (check or money order only) to: Michael E. Carver 1416 N Jarrett Portland, OR 97217 USA My e-mail address (InterNet) is mcarver@techbook.com