The Original Shareware 1.1

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Copyright (c) 1988 by David Seidman September 5, 1988 ╔══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗ ║ ║ ║ WPTOOLS DOCUMENTATION ║ ║ ║ ╚══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝ I. INTRODUCTION This shareware archive should contain four programs and this documentation file. The programs are: FIXPRE2.EXE, WPSNOOP2.EXE, FONTLIST.EXE, and PRSFONTS.EXE. Each is a utility for use with WordPerfect Version 5.0 (WP5) files. They are not useful in connection with any earlier version of WordPerfect, and they may not work correctly with any versions of WordPerfect later than 5.0. Briefly, this is what the programs do: FIXPRE2: Removes deleted (and optionally other) data packets from WP5 document files; it also removes deleted data packets from WP5 WP{WP}.SET files. WordPerfect marks data packets as "deleted" as you edit or change the program's configuration, but may not necessarily physically delete them. Removing deleted data packets from a document file with FIXPRE2 often facilitates changing the printer driver used with the file and will cure the uncontrolled growth in file size that can result from using the FASTSAVE option. FIXPRE2 also shrinks setup files which have grown as you modify your setup. WPSNOOP2: Reveals the structure of WP5 document file and .SET file prefixes. In addition, WPSNOOP2 will identify the file type of numerous, although not all, files associated with recent WordPerfect Corporation (WPCorp) products. FONTLIST: Lists the fonts contained in a WP5 document. PRSFONTS: Lists the fonts available in a WP5 PRS file, along with the resources and groups associated with a particular PRS file. Page 2 More detail on each program is given below, along with a description of WP5 document file prefixes. WPCorp has no connection with these programs, except that it generously provided the technical information about file structures necessary to write them. II. FIXPRE2 A. WP5 Document Files WP5 document files have two sections: the document prefix (created by WP5), which contains document default settings and information about fonts, styles, and other aspects of the document; and the document itself (text and codes entered by the user). (More information about prefixes appears in a separate section below.) FIXPRE2 strips certain information out of the prefix of a WP5 file; much of the information concerns printers and fonts, while the balance of the information which gets deleted has become obsolete through editing. When you read the stripped file created by FIXPRE2 back into WP5, WP5 restores printer and font information by finding it in the appropriate PRS files. If you then save the file, it has all the proper information. This sounds like a pretty pointless exercise. Why would you want to do it? There are at least two reasons: (1) Some people have had difficulty printing files after changing printer drivers. If the information left in the prefix by the old printer driver is stripped out (by FIXPRE2), the file is likely to print when a new driver is used. So, if you got and installed new printer drivers and a doc created under a previous printer driver will not print or if you have a file created on another machine and with another setup and the file will not print, try cleaning out the old printer information with FIXPRE2. Then read the file into WP5 with the new drivers installed. You will probably be able to print the file. The Update function in the WPCorp July, 1988 maintenance release solves many printer driver problems of this kind, but it apparently does not solve all problems related to changes of printer drivers nor is it currently documented by WPCorp. Page 3 (2) As you edit a file and change fonts, WP5 updates the prefix with new information and marks old information as no longer valid. The FASTSAVE option in the WP5 configuration setup (which you can choose) speeds disk saves of documents because it does not delete from the prefix the old, invalid information. Therefore, files which have been edited and then saved with FASTSAVE tend to be larger than necessary, sometimes startlingly so. (If you SLOWSAVE a file, most (but not all) of the outdated information is deleted from the prefix.) FIXPRE2 physically deletes the information marked as deleted (and, depending on how you configure FIXPRE2, other information as well -- the valid printer and font information, as noted above). Some users find FASTSAVE impractical, because of the resulting substantial file sizes. FIXPRE2 may make it practical to rely on FASTSAVE. You could set your defaults to FASTSAVE and then use FIXPRE2 on the document from time to time to keep the file size under control. Because SLOWSAVE does more than delete information from the file prefix, FIXPRE2 may be substantially faster than SLOWSAVE on large files. Files which have been FASTSAVEd and then pared with FIXPRE2 will initially be significantly smaller than files which have been SLOWSAVEd (although this may not be true if you use the D option, described below). The files will get bigger when retrieved into WP5 and saved with a new printer driver. But the files will usually remain somewhat smaller than even SLOWSAVEd files. B. WP5 Setup Files A WP5 setup file (WP{WP}.SET) also contains a number of data packets. As you change WordPerfect's configuration (without making a new setup file), new data packets are added and old ones marked as deleted. It looks like WP5 never actually removes these deleted data packets from the setup file. FIXPRE2 will remove them. I have seen setup files shrink to 1/6th their size. More substantial shrinking is presumably possible. C. Using FIXPRE2 Syntax: FIXPRE2 [d:\path\]Infile [d:\path\]Outfile [Options] Infile is a WP5 file (FIXPRE2 can determine whether infile is a document or a SET file). Outfile (which is produced by FIXPRE2) is an identical file except that certain information has been eliminated. Page 4 Infile and Outfile must be different. If Outfile already exists, it will be overwritten without warning. Options: The options, which are ignored if the input file is a SET file, are indicated by letters. Zero to two letters may appear, and they should be adjacent to each other--no spaces should separate them. Two options (F and H) have no effect if option D is used. I know of no good reason for using options F and H, but they may be worth trying if you have trouble working with a FIXPREd file. F: Normally, FIXPRE2 substitutes different "document flags" for the "document flags" in Infile. The F option tells FIXPRE2 to copy the Infile document flags to Outfile. H: Normally, FIXPRE2 does not copy the Infile "formatter hash table" to Outfile. The H option tells FIXPRE2 to copy the formatter hash table to Outfile. D: Use this option if you are not having trouble printing a file, but simply want to remove deleted data packets. When the D option is used, everything in the Infile prefix that is not outdated is copied to Outfile. None of these options affect the processing of setup files, which are always process as if you had selected option D. Function: FIXPRE2 strips information out of Infile. By default, if Infile is a WP5 document file, everything related to printers, styles, the formatter hash table, and the deleted data packets is stripped; in addition, FIXPRE2 provides Outfile with a generally suitable document flags data packet (although this packet may not be suitable in all cases). As indicated above, some of the information that has been stripped will be replaced when Outfile is read into WP5. Command line options permit the user to retain more of the original information. If Infile is a SET file, deleted data packets are stripped. Page 5 III. WPSNOOP2 A. What It Does WPSNOOP2 displays information concerning its input file. If the input file is not recognizable (from information internal to the file) as a file related to a WPCorp product, WPSNOOP2 says so and provides no other information. If WPSNOOP2 recognizes the file, it at least identifies the WPCorp product to which the file is related. If the file is recognized as a WordPerfect file (and it is not for versions earlier than 5.0), WPSNOOP2 reports on the type of file. If the file is either a WP5 document file or a WP5 setup file, WPSNOOP2 reports a lot of other information. For a WP5 document file, WPSNOOP2 displays information about the file prefix--in particular what sort of data packets are contained within the prefix, where they are located and how large they are. (Data packets are part of the organizational structure of the file prefix; the term data packet comes directly from WPCorp.) Similar information is shown for a setup file. B. Using WPSNOOP2 Syntax: WPSNOOP2 [d:\path\]Infile Infile may contain standard DOS wildcards. Output is written to standard output -- normally the screen. It will usually be desirable to redirect the output to the printer (e.g., WPSNOOP2 Infile >prn) or a file (e.g., WPSNOOP2 Infile >fname), or to pipe it to a program such as MORE (e.g, WPSNOOP2 Infile | more) or, far better, Vernon Buerg's LIST (e.g., WPSNOOP2 Infile | LIST /s) Options: None Function: WPSNOOP2 displays at least very minimal information about any Infile. If Infile is a WP5 document file, WPSNOOP2 displays the offset of the beginning of the document area of Infile, the offsets within the file of the index blocks and the indexes, and the information contained in the indexes (type of data packet pointed to, length of data packet, and location of data packet). It can be used simply to indicate what data packets a file contains. It can also be used to ease the reading of hex dumps Page 6 of WP5 files. If Infile is a WP5 setup file, WPSNOOP2 displays similar information about the entire file, which has essentially the same structure as a WP5 document file prefix. Limitations: WPSNOOP2 may not provide information about a few indexes. The end of useful information is signalled (generally) by an index identifying a data packet of the "end of prefix" type. All data packets after the first such data packet are identical (or at least provide no useful information). WPSNOOP2 reports on only the first of these, even though others may exist. You can easily tell if any exist: if the index pointing to the "end of prefix" data packet has an index number less than 4, enough additional identical indexes exist so that the last of them is No. 4. There actually are no "end of prefix" data packets; indexes identifying data packets of type "end of prefix" are, in a sense, fakes, which merely indicate the end of the indexes. IV. FONTLIST FONTLIST displays a list of the fonts contained in a WP5 document file. This list is contained in the document's file prefix, which FONTLIST reads. This list may be particular useful if you are not sure whether the fonts used in a document are available. Syntax: FONTLIST [d:\path\]Infile Infile is a WP5 document file. Output is written to standard output -- normally the screen. If a document uses many fonts, it will be desirable to redirect the output to the printer or a file, or pipe it to another program. Limitation: FONTLIST will report on all fonts listed in the file prefix's "font name string pool." Some of these fonts may not actually be used in the document. For example, if you change base fonts and then immediately change base fonts again, without entering text, the first base font entered will be listed in the string pool but not actually used. V. PRSFONTS PRSFONTS lists the resources, groups, and fonts available in a WP5 PRS file. This is likely to be useful if you have a laser printer and create numerous PRS files. Page 7 Syntax: PRSFONTS [d:\path\]Infile Infile is a WP5 PRS file. Output is written to standard output -- normally the screen. If there are many fonts in the PRS file, it will be desirable to redirect the output to the printer or a file, or pipe it to another program. VI. WP5 FILE PREFIXES This section provides some basic information about WP5 file prefixes. The information will give you a better understanding of what FIXPRE2 and WPSNOOP2 do, and that understanding may help you understand the situations in which FIXPRE2 is likely to be useful. You do not need to read this section in order to use FIXPRE2, and the less technically inclined might wish to skip it. A WP5 file document file has two areas: the prefix area and the document area. The document area contains, roughly speaking, the keystrokes you put into the file; it corresponds to the entire file in earlier versions of WordPerfect, which did not use prefixes. The prefix area begins with a "file prefix," which identifies the file as a WP5 file, indicates where the document area begins (as an offset in the file), and does little more. The rest of the prefix area consists of "data packets," (which contain a wide variety of information about printers, defaults, fonts, graphics, styles, and other matters) and indexes which identify where in the prefix particular data packets are located. The indexes are organized in blocks. Each block consists of a "header index" and four other indexes. The header index identifies itself as such, provides some information which is the same for every WP5 document file header index and is therefore not interesting, and gives the offset in the file where the next index block begins. Each of the other four indexes in a block identifies the type of data packet to which it is an index, the length of that data packet in bytes, and the offset in the file where the data packet can be found. WP5 document files can have the following kinds of data packets: Page 8 Document summary Document default values Document flags Font name string pool Graphic image data Formatter hash table List of fonts used in document Document printer information Style PS tables for fonts In addition, there may be deleted packets. The structure of a WP5 setup file is identical to that of a WP5 document file prefix, except that it has a different set of data packets. Page 9 LICENSE INFORMATION WPTOOLS is not in the public domain. Both the collection and the individual programs are fully protected by copyright. You are granted without charge a license which permits (a) use of the programs for a period of 30 days for evaluation and testing; (b) making copies for distribution to others without charge, provided the programs and the accompanying documentation are distributed together and without modification; (c) posting the programs, together with the accompanying documentation, on electronic bulletin board systems. Use after the 30 day evaluation and testing period requires payment of a license fee. For a single copy (plus necessary archival copies), to be used on only one computer at a time, the fee is $15.00. For your convenience, an invoice form is included below. For large quantities, discounts and site licenses are available. Write for information. Any license for which payment is properly made is valid for this version of WPTOOLS and all subsequent versions. What do you get for your license fee? Aside from permission to use the programs and the warm feeling that you are not violating the copyright laws, not very much, but a little. If you pay the license fee to me and tell me the version you have (or if I can figure out what version you have), I will send you the next version (unless the next version involves a trivial change too small to worry you about). After that, I will send you further new versions if you send me a stamped, addressed mailer and disk). And if you let me know about any problems you have with the programs, I will try to solve them. Users groups and other not-for-profit organizations may distribute unmodified copies of WPTOOLS, together with its accompanying documentation, for a fee to cover duplication and related costs, but not to exceed $6.00. Your payment of such a fee does not eliminate the requirements concerning payment of a license fee. Certain organizations may have been granted permission to distribute the program for a fee larger than $6.00, the larger fee to include the license fee for a single copy. If the organization from which you received a copy of the program has been granted that permission, it should tell you so. The United States Department of Justice is granted a license, without payment of fee, for all official use of WPTOOLS. Page 10 WARRANTY INFORMATION These programs are distributed without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. No representation or other affirmation of fact, including but not limited to statements regarding suitability for use, or performance of the programs, shall be or be deemed a warranty by the licensor for any purpose, nor give rise to any liability or obligation of the licensor whatever. In particular, no statement in program documentation shall be deemed a representation or warranty that the programs will perform in any particular manner, or perform in any manner whatsoever, or that the programs are suitable for any particular use or any use at all. INVOICE David Seidman 2737 Devonshire Pl. NW Washington, DC 20008 DATE: SOLD TO: ┌──────────────────────────────────────┬────────────────────────┐ │ Description │ Price │ │ │ │ ├──────────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────┤ │ │ │ │ License for WPTOOLS │ $ 15.00 │ │ │ │ │ additional licenses @ $15.00 │ _____.__ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ └──────────────────────────────────────┴────────────────────────┘ Total: $_____.__ D.C. Residents add 6% D.C. Sales Tax: ___.__ Total Charge: $_____.__ Make checks payable to David Seidman. Please mark checks "WPTOOLS". ------------------------------------------------------------ WordPerfect is a trademark of the WordPerfect Corporation.