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P O W E R M E N U
U S E R S' M A N U A L
V E R S I O N 5
JUNE 1990
Copyright (C) Brown Bag Software 1990
2155 South Bascom Ave
Campbell Ca 95008
U. S. A.
Tel: (408) 559-4545
PowerMenu Users' Manual Copyright Brown Bag Software 1990
THE SHAREWARE CONCEPT
Copyright (C) 1990 Brown Bag Software, Inc.. All rights re-
served world wide. Both the PowerMenu program and documentation
is copyrighted. It can not be disassembled or modified without
our express written consent.
PowerMenu is distributed on a ShareWare basis. You may use
PowerMenu without charge for evaluation purposes. We suggest
that this evaluation period be limited to 30 days of actual use.
If you find that PowerMenu is worth continuing to use, then you
are required to pay for it. Simply complete the registration form
and mail it to us with your payment. A copy of this registration
can be used as a pro forma invoice. When you register your copy of
PowerMenu, you'll receive the latest version of the program,
along with a comprehensive printed user manual and free unlimited
technical support for one year. We aggressively develop our
products, and as a registered user you'll be entitled to upgrades
at a greatly reduced price. Most importantly though, by registering
your copy of PowerMenu (or any ShareWare product), you'll ensure
the survival of the convenient and risk free distribution method
that brought you PowerMenu in the first place.
If you have received this copy from a Users' Group, "Software
Library" or "SIG", and have paid a small fee (usually $3 to
$10), you have NOT acquired the registered rights or continued
right to use PowerMenu. This fee was for the convenience of
obtaining the diskette with PowerMenu on it. The fee does NOT
apply to the registration fee. If you obtained this disk from
Brown Bag Software, the fee IS applicable towards registration
if you register your copy within 90 days.
You may freely copy this version of PowerMenu for distribution
under the ShareWare concept, without charge.
You may NOT charge any fee for the PowerMenu program or docu-
mentation without our WRITTEN APPROVAL (usually granted).
You may NOT distribute PowerMenu or it's documentation in
connection with ANY commercial venture, product, publication or
service without our written approval. This includes, but is not
limited to, the sale of computer systems or components.
WHAT IS POWERMENU?
PowerMenu is a DOS operating environment for your IBM PC or
Compatible which provides easy access to any program on your
hard disk. When you want to start a program, select it from the
menu. After you install the program into PowerMenu, no interac-
tion with DOS is required to run it. You press one or two keys
and you are ready to use the program. When you're done,
PowerMenu returns automatically, awaiting your next command.
POWERMENU LAN
There is also a LAN version available. The single user version
is for a single users on a single CPU and should not be installed
on a LAN where it will be accessed by multiple users.
PowerMenu Users' Manual Copyright Brown Bag Software 1990
USING THIS MANUAL
This manual is shorter than previous on-disk documentation
because of disk space constraints. This version of PowerMenu is
also more powerful than any previous. A comprehensive printed
manual will accompany the registered version. Also, features may
only be mentioned once in this documentation, so read it all.
TYPE CONVENTIONS
Whenever this manual tells you to press a key, that key will be
enclosed in square brackets. For example, if you are instructed
to press the Home key, you will be told to press [Home]. When
you see two keys in the same set of brackets, such as [Alt-S],
you should hold down the [Alt] key and hit the [S] key.
INSTALLATION
All of the PowerMenu files will reside in a subdirectory called
\MENU. This allows PowerMenu to find the support files it needs
from anywhere on your hard disk. For our purposes, we will
assume you have a hard disk with drive letter C:.
The PowerMenu files should be copied into a subdirectory called
\MENU (this is where it will always look for its files if they
do not exist in the default directory).
Novice users can put the PowerMenu disk in the A: drive and
issue the following commands:
C:[Enter] (If your hard disk is D: or other, use that letter)
MD \MENU[Enter] (This creates the MENU subdirectory)
CD \MENU[Enter] (This moves you into the new directory)
COPY A:*.* (This copies everything from the PowerMenu disk in A:)
To begin PowerMenu change your default directory to \MENU. At the
DOS prompt type MENU. The initial screen you see is the PowerMenu
Shareware screen which briefly explains the Shareware concept. By
pressing any key you will be prompted to hit the spacebar to run
PowerMenu, "R" to register your copy, or "P" to print the PowerMenu
documentation.
After hitting the spacebar you will be presented with a login screen.
You are prompted for your name, type "BROWNBAG"; for password type
"MENU".
The main menu will then be displayed. The will be 7 examples entries.
To change or add new users to PowerMenu, hit F2 to bring up the
utility menu. From this menu select "USER ACCOUNTS". To change the
supervisor name from "BROWNBAG" to your own, hit key F7 to edit this
information. Once it has been changed, hit key F7 again to save the
changes. You can then hit [ESC] until you return to the main menu.
You can exit from PowerMenu anytime by hitting [Esc].
THE POWERMENU SCREEN
In the main PowerMenu screen you will probably want to change many,
if not all, of our sample menu selections. We will tell you how to
do this after we discuss the elements of the PowerMenu screen.
PowerMenu Users' Manual Copyright Brown Bag Software 1990
The top box contains Brown Bag's copyright notice, the date on
the far left and the system time on the far right. These can be
set through PowerMenu at any time (Press [F2] to see the Utili-
ty menu and select Time or Date). The middle of the second line
contains the version and serial number of your PowerMenu pro-
gram. If you have to call Brown Bag for technical support, you
will need this information.
SELECTING ITEMS FROM THE MENU
Further down is the opening menu itself. Note the ten Descrip-
tion Line selections under the word "PowerMenu." There are
three ways to activate these description lines:
1. Highlight the selection by moving the cursor bar with the
[up arrow] and [down arrow] keys, and then hit [Enter].
2. Press a number key. This immediately activates the correspond-
ing program or submenu on that description line.
3. Hit the first letter of the description line.
The bottom line of your screen will be a Help Line as long as
you remain in PowerMenu. The help line will give you quick
hints as to what functions are available to you. Remember that
you can get detailed help at any time by pressing [F1].
CUSTOMIZING MENUS
When first installed on your system, PowerMenu may not yet know
which application programs you have on your hard disk. You will have
to give PowerMenu a little help in customizing your menu system.
The edit window is opened by highlighting the description line
and hitting the [Ins] key, and closed by hitting [Esc]. Press
the [Ins] key now.
Each white-on-black area is called an Input Field, because you
are expected to input data into this field. [up arrow] and
[down arrow] keys move you to the next field.
TITLE FIELD
The top line is the description that will appear on the menu.
DIRECTORY FIELD
Contains the name of the directory in which your applications
program resides.
CMND NAME FIELD
The filename and extension (the Command Name) of the command
you wish to run.
PARAMETERS FIELD
These are the arguments (a.k.a. Parameters) you send to the program.
PASSWORD FIELD
If this field is not blank, PowerMenu will ask you to type this
password before allowing you to edit or run this selection.
PAUSE FIELD
If you put a Y in this field, PowerMenu will pause before
returning to the Main Menu screen.
PowerMenu Users' Manual Copyright Brown Bag Software 1990
PROMPT FOR PARAMETERS FIELD
If you put a Y in this field, PowerMenu will prompt you for
new parameters each time.
COMMAND NAMES AND PARAMETERS
Don't worry about these fancy DOS terms: a command name is just
the name of the program you wish to run; a parameter is addi-
tional information the program needs.
Command names in PowerMenu all have one thing in common: they
all end with either a .EXE, .COM, or .BAT. (The resident DOS
commands COPY, DIR, ERASE, REN, and TYPE are exceptions).
This is called the Extension of the command name.
The extension .EXE tells DOS that the file is EXEcutable, .COM
stands for a DOS COMmand, and .BAT means the file is a BATch of
DOS commands. When you buy a word processor, spreadsheet, or
any other program for your PC, you call it up by typing the
command name. To run a program, PowerMenu must know both the
file name and the extension.
Some common programs and their command names are:
Program filename/extension
WordStar ws.com
Microsoft Word .com
PARAMETERS
Parameters are information passed to a command name. Sometimes
you need to tell the program what file to work on. you would do
that with a parameter. For instance, if you wanted to edit a
document on your computer, the DOS command might be:
C>edlin letter.doc
When you install a program in PowerMenu, that program's manual
will probably explain what command to give DOS. Everything
after the first word are parameters.
If DOS Command is... Parameters are...
-------------------- -----------------
C>word /c letter.doc /c /c letter.doc /c
C>ws thesis.txt thesis thesis.txt thesis
With PowerMenu, all you have to do is install this menu selec-
tion once, and editing your report is one keystroke away.
If your word processor is Microsoft Word, and the program is in
the \WORD subdirectory:
The description would be "Microsoft Word" or "Word Processing"
The directory is C:\WORD
The command is WORD.COM
This is how you would input the information into your menu:
Highlight description line 1 with the [down arrow] or [up
arrow] keys.
Delete the sample 1 selection by hitting the [Del] key and answer "Y".
PowerMenu Users' Manual Copyright Brown Bag Software 1990
Next, hit [Ins] to open the Edit Window. All the fields should
be blank.
Fill in the fields and then hit [Esc] to close the edit window.
You have just installed your first menu selection!
Note that you won't be able to activate this selection unless
you happen to have Microsoft Word on your hard disk in the
\word directory. If you know which programs you have on your
hard disk, you can now customize PowerMenu to your heart's
content.
AUTOINSTALL
With the registered version of PowerMenu you have the option
of running the Autoinstall. Autoinstall will search you hard
drives for popular programs and set up your menu automatically.
SUBMENUS
It is possible to display as many as 4 menus on the PowerMenu
screen at once. You can do this by setting up a selection to
call a submenu.
Submenus are set up by putting "[MENU]" in the directory field,
and putting a 1-8 letter menu name in the Cmnd Name field.
You will need to remember the names of your submenus in order
to call them up. Your selection can call any existing submenu;
if the submenu does not exist, it can be created. If you create
a new submenu, it will contain blank selections until you fill
them. Your initial PowerMenu screen shows you an example of a
submenu call. If you open the Utilities for Computer edit window,
you can see how it activates a submenu named UTILITY.
ERROR MESSAGES
It is possible that you will see some error messages if you
make a mistake in setting up PowerMenu. These will appear on
the second line from the bottom. Hit [F1] to see a detailed
explanation of the error.
USER ACCOUNTS
Version 5 has the ability to maintain an almost unlimited
number of separate user accounts. Each user having their own
customized menus, colors, and security. The pre-installed
supervisor is "BrownBag" and the password is "MENU".
User accounts does NOT allow more than one person to use PowerMe-
nu at the same time. A version of PowerMenu for use on a LAN is
available for that purpose.
NEW USERS
From the Utility menu, select USER ACCOUNTS to create or maintain
your users. The available commands are displayed across the
bottom line of the screen. The function keys allow you to add or
change the users at will.
PowerMenu Users' Manual Copyright Brown Bag Software 1990
USAGE LOG
When enabled, PowerMenu will keep a log of who did what, when and
for how long. There is also a powerful feature that allows crea-
tion of projects and the assigning of costs to the projects. This
would allow the user to maintain billing information accurate to
the minute based on projects or to analyze performance.
MOVING MENU SELECTIONS (SWAP)
Hitting [Alt-S] lets you drag a selection to any location on
the menu. For example, dragging the 1 selection to the 5 posi-
tion and then hitting [Enter] will exchange their contents.
[Esc] will abort.
LIST, DELETE, OR REINDEX THE DATA FILES
In the unlikely event that something should damage a PowerMenu
data file, you can attempt to repair it with the program
MENUFUN.EXE. The program is run with parameters.
To reindex the menu datafile, run
MENUFUN -R
To list the Submenus in your menu structure, run
MENUFUN -L
To delete a submenu from your menu datafile, run
MENUFUN -D {submenu}
If you are running with multiple user accounts, MENUFUN will
prompt you to enter a user and supply the password.
AUTOMATIC EXECUTION WITH AUTOEXEC.BAT
You can have your system automatically invoke PowerMenu whenev-
er you reboot on your computer. Just put the command menu as
the last line in a file called AUTOEXEC.BAT in the root directory.
The contents of a typical AUTOEXEC.BAT file might look like
this:
TIME
DATE
PATH=C:\DOS
SK
CD \MENU
MENU
BACKING UP YOUR POWERMENU FILES
You should make it a practice to routinely copy your important
files to a backup disk. This is true for all of your applica-
tions, and not just PowerMenu.
COLOR SETTINGS
Selecting "Colors" from the [F2] Utilies menu allows you to
change your PowerMenu colors.
Use the arrow keys to move the pointer up and down. To change
the text color, use the plus [+] and minus [-] keys. Change
the background color by holding down the [shift] key while
pressing the [+] and [-] keys. ([ESC] will exit) To save your
changes, either exit the program and come back in, or run an
application.
PowerMenu Users' Manual Copyright Brown Bag Software 1990
DOS WINDOW
You can directly access DOS by using the WINDOW TO DOS command.
When you press [F4] you'll be given a blank screen with a DOS
prompt. All DOS commands are valid, and you may remain in DOS
for as long as you like. When you are finished, type 'EXIT' and
hit [ENTER] and you'll be returned to PowerMenu. Remember, all
DOS commands (and even some commands DOS DOESN'T support) are
available from the Disk Manager.
KEYBOARD ENHANCERS
PowerMenu is compatible with keyboard enhancement products such
as SuperKey, Prokey, and Keyworks. However, if you redefine one
one of PowerMenu's reserved keys, you might disable some of
PowerMenu's features.
PowerMenu's "reserved" keys are:
[F1] - [F5]
[Shift-F1] - [Shift-F10]
[Alt-F1] - [Alt-F10]
[1]-[0]
[Alt-S]
[Alt-D]
[Alt-T]
[Home]
[Ins]
[Del]
[down arrow]
[up arrow]
[Esc]
Try to avoid redefining these keys while you are in PowerMenu.
RAM-RESIDENT PROGRAMS
PowerMenu is fully compatible with RAM-resident programs such
as HomeBase, SuperKey, and Turbo Lighting; just follow one
simple rule: Don't load RAM-resident programs through PowerMenu!
In general, you should initialize all of your RAM-resident
programs when you boot your machine. Never have a PowerMenu
selection to "Load Sidekick." (Better yet never USE SideKick!
Use our HomeBase instead!).
If you load RAM-resident programs through PowerMenu, you will
create a "hole" in memory when you exit, and you may have to
reboot.
SCREEN SAVE FUNCTION
PowerMenu has a screen saver which turns the PowerMenu screen
off after 1-9 minutes of non-use. This prevents "burn in,"
(permanent damaage to your screen from the same image being
displayed for too long.) PowerMenu displays the message
"Hit space bar to return . . ." at a random place on your
screen and moves it from time to time.
Screen save is only in effect in PowerMenu and will not
blank the screen in your applications programs.
PowerMenu Users' Manual Copyright Brown Bag Software 1990
SUBMENUS
It is possible to display as many as 4 menus on the PowerMenu
screen at once. You can do this by setting up a selection to
call a submenu.
Submenus are set up by putting [menu] in the directory field,
and putting a 1-8 character menu name in the Cmnd Name field.
You will need to remember the names of your submenus in order
to call them up. Your selection can call any existing submenu;
if the submenu does not exist, it can be created. If you create
a new submenu, it will contain blank selections until you fill
them. Each submenu requires about 1.8 Kb of disk space. To
delete or list submenus, use MENUFUN.EXE.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
The minimum system requirements to run PowerMenu are:
IBM PC, XT, AT or compatible computer
A hard disk
A floppy disk drive
256K Bytes of RAM (only 3Kb RAM impact when running programs.)
PC- or MS-DOS Version 2.10 or greater
Color monitor (optional)
GLOSSARY
[Alt] key The key labeled Alt at the left of your
keyboard. This key is most often used by
holding it down and hitting another key.
AUTOEXEC.BAT The batch file run automatically by DOS
whenever you reboot your computer.
batch file A text file containing a list of commands to
be carried out by DOS.
clock/calendar card An accessory for your computer which keeps the
correct time and date even when your computer
is turned off. Some computers have these as
standard equipment.
[Ctrl] key The key labeled Ctrl at the left of your
keyboard. This key is most often used by
holding it down and hitting another key.
cursor The flashing underscore on your screen that
indicates where text will appear should you
press a key. Also directs your attention to a
particular area of the screen.
cursor bar The line of reverse video text on your
screen. The cursor bar is moved with
the [down arrow] and [up arrow] keys.
PowerMenu Users' Manual Copyright Brown Bag Software 1990
directory An imaginary "room" an your hard disk which
contains files of similar types. There are
DOS commands to allow you to create, change
to, and delete directories.
[Enter] key The large key to the right of your keyboard.
On some computers, this is labeled [Return].
[Esc] key The key on your computer labeled Esc, meaning
Escape.
file Computer term for a group of data on your
disk. The text of a report, the numbers in a
spreadsheet, and instructions to a program
are all examples of disk files.
function keys The ten keys labeled F1 - F10 on your
keyboard.
highlight A PowerMenu selection is highlighted when the
cursor bar is over that selection.
\MENU directory The directory on your hard disk where all of
your PowerMenu files reside.
parameters Information sent to a DOS program at runtime.
PowerMenu User's Manual Copyright Brown Bag Software 1990
SITE LICENSES AND BUNDLING ARRANGEMENTS
---------------------------------------
Corporate site licenses and bundling arrangements are
available direct from Brown Bag Software.
Site licenses can be used to distribute large quantities of
PowerMenu and its documentation within a specific
organization at very reasonable prices (hundreds of dollars
less per copy than competing products). All users under a
site license can become registered users at no extra fee and
are automatically notified of updates.
Bundling arrangements can be used to distribute copies of
PowerMenu in order to promote some other product or
service.
Note that neither of these activities is permitted under the
limited license granted to all users of PowerMenu without
the expressed written consent of Brown Bag Software.
A NetWork ("LAN") Version of PowerMenu. Contact Brown Bag
Software, Inc in Campbell, CA USA via fax 408 559-7090 or
voice 408 559-4545 for information on the PowerMenu LANPAK
or see your Software Dealer.
When you register your PowerMenu, please specify the disk
media you use. We supply 5.25" and 3.5"
REMEMBER, you get the latest version when you register.
REGISTRATION IS NOT OPTIONAL. If you want to continue to use
PowerMenu, you are required to register it. If you don't know
if you're already using a registered copy, call Brown Bag
Software.
SPECIAL LIMITED-TIME OFFER:
If you are a user of Direct Access, AutoMenu, TreeView or X-
Tree, you may be able to obtain up to a $40 rebate. Contact
Brown Bag Software (see registration information) by telephone
for details, availability and terms.
This offer is subject to change without notice, and will
expire at Midnight, October 31, 1990.