RBBS in a Box Volume 1 #2

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PMCAT A Disk File Cataloging Program by Patrick Michaud Version 3.7 14 September, 1988 Copyright 1987 by William C. Scott PmCat A Disk File Catalog by Patrick Michaud Copyright 1987 by William C. Scott PmCat is designed to make it easy for you to keep track of the files and programs on your floppy disks and hard drive(s). Some of the features of PmCat: * Read entire disk or diskette, including subdirectories and labels * Each file may be commented with up to 79 characters * `Rubber-stamp' comments for duplicate files * Sort on filename, ext, size, path or date...ascending or descending * Supports "*" and "?" wildcard searches of filename or comments * User configurable printer formatting * Automatic update of catalog when disks are reread. * Allows user customizing of color, catalog name, and more * Writes volume label to diskette (now recognizes embedded spaces) * Shows label of last disk read * Allows creation of ASCII disk file for "spooling" or editing Minimum System Requirements: IBM PC/XT/AT or compatible, 256K RAM, one floppy disk drive. 640K is recommended. Hard drive and subirectories are supported. DISCLAIMER: By using this product, the user agrees that neither William C. Scott nor Patrick R. Michaud may be held liable for any damages, direct or consequential, that might arise from the use or misuse of PmCat. INSTALLING PMCAT (see page 9 about blinking boxes and text) No special steps need be taken. PmCat contains defaults that may be altered by the user once within the program. The data files will default to the directory from which PmCat is run, as will the Pmcat.def file, containing the user specified defaults. (The defaults will be explained in detail under the appropriate heading later in the docs) USING PMCAT The following pages will explain first, how to get going from the standpoint of "How do I ....?" and later from an explanation of each of the various menu commands. We intentionally wrote the docs in the manner we have in the hopes that they could be really "useful". (I personally hate searching documentation for the *only* spot a particular item is mentioned). If our feedback indicates a majority of users dislike the repetition it will be changed to a more 'standard' sort of format in the next release. Please, do let us know. PAGE 2 How Do I ... ? Start PmCat - Enter 'pmcat' at the DOS prompt. There will be a title screen displayed. Follow those instructions. Specify a filename for my data - after the title screen, you will see a small window. If you want to use the filename of catalog.cat, press <ENTER>. If you want to enter a filename of your own, just type it in, and press <ENTER>. Put my catalog data on a different drive or in a different directory- When you enter your filename, enter the full pathname. If you want a file called "disk.dat" on drive C in a subdirectory called "junk"...enter "C:\junk\disk.dat" Make my filename the `automatic' (default) one - When the catalog has been read (or not, according to what you do), go to the <S>et Defaults option of the menu on the first screen you see with a menu area at the bottom. Select <F> from the next one and enter the full path (if you want it that way) and press enter. Immediately press <W>rite Defaults to save the setting to disk. Press <ESC> to return to the first menu. Read the files from a diskette or hard drive - At the first menu, press pdate. You must then enter the source drive. CAUTION! If you are going to read diskettes in drive A, enter See Note on "A", likewise for B,C or others. If you enter a drive page 8 about letter for a non-existent drive, it will cause an error errors. When you are finished adding files to the catalog, press <ESC> to return to the first menu. Label a diskette - when you pdate by adding a volume PmCat will NOTE: PmCat now read the disk and determine if a label exists on the recognizes spaces diskette. You may enter your own or PmCat will label in volume labels! it automatically as DISK% where % is the next number not already used...DISK1, DISK2, etc. Save my catalog to disk - at the first menu, or the second (which we haven't reached yet), select <W>rite catalog. It is recommended you do this immediately after adding files. Change catalogs - by using the <R>ead catalog option of the first menu, you can load or create a different file from the one you have been working with. Look at files I want to know about - select <V>iew from the first menu and it will move you to the second menu and open a window containing the filenames and extensions. If you have the Auto-Sort option set to 'ON' a sort will take place when you move from the first to second menu. This sort does files in alphabetic order of filenames. Auto-Sort may be turned off in the <S>et defaults area. Use the PgUp/PgDn, up/down arrows and Home/End keys to move through the displayed files. Find a specific file - from the second menu, select <F>ind, then <F> or <C>... search <F>ilenames or <C>omments. Then enter the keyword or string you wish. Wildcards searches are allowed for filename searches. (See note on searching) PAGE 3 Find another file matching the same search pattern - select <N> from the second menu and it will take you to the next one. Find the file size, date and other particulars - select from the second menu. This will open an Info Window with the statistics about the file, as well as a Comments window Enter comments about a particular file - select <C> from the second menu. If the windows are not open, this option will open both the Info Window and Comments Window and place the cursor in the Comments Window. Type in your infor- mation and press <ENTER>. Once you have made changes such as adding or deleting comments, use the <W>rite catalog option to save it to disk. Nothing is on disk until you do this, or exit PmCat. Delete a volume from a catalog file - chose <D> from the FIRST menu. A window displaying all volumes will be opened. Move the bar selector to the one you wish to delete and press <D>. You will have to confirm that decision with a 'Y' or 'N' before going on. (<ESC> will allow you to abort the process) Find out what volumes are contained in my catalog file - from the SECOND menu, chose <V> and an overlay window will open with the list of volume names. Press <ESC> to back up one level. See the files in a specific directory or volume - place the bar cursor on the Volume or directory name, press <D> from the SECOND menu. The Info Window will tell you if the name under the bar is a file or directory. Volumes and directory entries both show <DIR> as their size. See what directories are in my file - first perform a sort on size by selecting <S> from the SECOND menu and <A> for ascend- ing order. This will get the volumes and directories in alphabetical order at the head of the listing which is being displayed in the filename display window. Get a printed listing of my catalog - select from the SECOND menu. Make sure your printer is ready and press `Y' to continue. Print only the files from a particular disk (volume) - from the SECOND menu, select <V> then place the selector bar on the volume you want, press <D> and then press . The rest of the printing is the same as above. Change the default settings for my formatted printing - select <S> from the FIRST menu, then select . This will open a window showing the current settings. Printing for a particular field will begin at Start Column and continue for `Size' spaces. If fields overlap, a warning occurs. If you ignore it, printing will follow your entry. The default field widths may be decreased but attempts to make them wider will cause them to be truncated at the default width. Normal and condensed modes on 10" and 15" printers can be used (width up to 255 characters). PAGE 4 FIRST MENU S - set defaults: Change colors, default catalog name/path, titlescreen on/off, Auto-Sort on/off, etc. Titlescreen - the title screen may be toggled on and off by pressing "T". This causes you to bypass the opening messages with Serial # display. Auto-Sort - the automatic sorting feature may be toggled on and off by pressing "S". "OFF" disables sorting when passing from the first screen to the second. Default Filename - the location and name of the default data file may be set by pressing "F" and entering your default path and filename.ext. NOTE: If you are using Drive B for a data file, then here is an example... B:\MYDATA.CAT ...this will cause PmCat to look in the root directory of the disk in Drive B, for a data file named "MYDATA.CAT", and use it for information. Colors - the colors of the display may be customized according to your taste by choosing "C". Notice that as you press the UP and DOWN arrows, the label to the left of the color bar changes, showing what item will be changed. The line pointer, which is moved by using the LEFT and RIGHT arrow keys, points to the present color, which you can change. The small window shows how your colors will look. Print settings - this is where you format your output to the printer. Place the selector bar on the item you wish to alter and press <ENTER>. The item will be marked with an asterisk (*) to indicate it will be an active part of your printing process. Clear an item by placing the bar on the item and pressing <C>. When you are satisfied with your settings, press "W" to write the new default settings to disk. These will be read in each time you run PmCat or when you select the "R" option of this sub-menu. YOUR SETTINGS WILL BE ONLY FOR THAT SESSION UNLESS YOU <W>RITE THEM TO DISK! U - Update catalog: Read diskettes into catalog. Respond to the prompt with the appropriate drive letter. W - Write catalog: Writes catalog, which is held in memory, to disk. NOTHING IS PERMANENT UNTIL YOU DO THIS. R - Read catalog: Read an existing catalog from disk. This doesn't have to be the same one you read upon startup. V - View catalog: Takes you to the section of PmCat where you can browse through the files, enter comments and print hardcopy. D - Delete volume: Allows you to delete a volume from PmCat. This change is not permanent till you WRITE the altered catalog to disk. PAGE 5 SECOND MENU <ESC> - always moves you back to the previous step, eventually to the exit prompt. Home - takes you to the top of the files in the window (#1) End - takes you to the bottom of the files in the window (#??) PgUp - brings up the next 12 files to the window PgDn - brings up the previous 12 files to the window Up/Dn Arrows - move the selector bar up or down. Going past the first or last entry takes you to the previous or next page. W - write catalog: Performs same function as the <W> in the FIRST MENU D - Display Directory: If the item under the selector bar is a <DIR> a listing of those files in that directory is made available through the window. I - Info Window: Opens the Info Window and Comments Window. The Info Window shows the path, size, date, and filename of the file under the selector bar. Pressing "I" again will close both the Info and Comments windows. C - Comments Window: Pressing "C" will place the cursor in the comment window and enable commenting of the file under the selector bar. If the Comments Window was not open when "C" was pressed, the Info Window AND the Comment Window will be opened. After entering your comments, press <ENTER> and they will be saved. THEY ARE NOT PERMANENTLY SAVED TILL YOU "WRITE" THE CATALOG TO DISK. Press <ESC> to abort. F - Find: You will be prompted in the Menu Area at the bottom of the screen about whether you wish to search through filenames or comments. Choose `F' or `C', whichever is appropriate. Then enter your key (word, phrase, or character sequence) to find. PmCat will find and display the first one in the file...to go to the next match, press `N'. (see note on searching) N - Next Find: finds the next occurrence of the specified search string S - Sort: sorts files on filename, extension, date, size or path, in ascending or descending order. P - Print: If you include comments, it will require two lines per file , otherwise, one. The files that will be printed depend on where you are in your browsing. If you are at the "Top" window, all files in PmCat will be printed. If you have selected a particular volume, then only that volume will be printed. Likewise, if you have selected a subdirectory, the files in that subdirectory will be printed. I.e., whatever can be viewed with PgUp/PgDN or Up/Dn arrow will be printed. The output will be sent to an ASCII disk file by selecting <D> to confirm print start. V - Volume List: gives a display through the window of the volumes that are registered in the current catalog. PAGE 6 Buffer <- comment : Buffer -> comment : These two menu items make up a simple cut and paste function for the comments portion of the display. You can type the comments for a file once and then copy it to other occurrences of that file that might be found in the current catalog. Using the left arrow will copy comments to a buffer(scratchpad). Place the bar cursor on the file you want the information copied to and press the right arrow. The information remains in the buffer until you replace it with something else or leave the program. This feature enables "rubber-stamping" of a file's comments. TIPS: print formatting Each data field will begin at the row "Start-Column" on your printer and continue for "Size" spaces. Make sure a field does not overlap the next field's "Start-column" location. If you pick a size for COMMENTS which is less than the actual NUMBER OF CHARACTERS in the COMMENTS field, it will be continued on the next line WITH NO OTHER DATA. Other fields, if too short for the data to fit on one line, will be truncated (chopped off). You may specify up to 255 lines/page for page length (60 is the default). Allow 3 lines for the header (page number, column titles, separator bar). By setting up your printer for condensed print, 8 lines/inch (instead of 6) and judiciously selecting and formatting the items to print, you can make disk sleeve inserts convieniently. WARNING!! If you exceed the memory limits of your machine while using PmCat, it will cause an unrecoverable error! You will lose any changes that have not been saved to disk, but disk files should not be affected. Without any memory resident software in place, PmCat will handle about 7000-8000 filenames without comments in a 640K machine. For fully commented files (using all 80 characters of the comments field) the number drops to about 3000 files. There is a display of the approximate amount of free memory available printed in the upper right corner of the screen. Till you get used to how much memory a given operation might take, just keep the free memory above 50K and all will be well. Copyright Notice - PmCat, copyright 1987 by William C. Scott PmCat is NOT public domain software. You may use, copy and distribute it freely, but you MAY NOT RESELL PmCat. A modest fee for copying may be charged, not to exceed $3.00 exclusive of the cost of disk, mailer and postage. Distribution under the "Shareware" concept is encouraged. Unless you have the written permission of William C. Scott, please do not upload any version of PmCat to Compuserve (IMBSW sig), GEnie, or The Source. These are our primary distribution points. We ask your cooperation in keeping them a place to obtain the latest PUBLIC release of PmCat. (Registrants always receive the latest WORKING version ... sometimes the changes are not significant enough to warrant another public release) PAGE 7 NOTE: searching The search acts only on those items focused on by the present window. If you are at the first level window, a search will cover all volumes, directories, subdirectories and filenames if you search <F>ilenames, or comments associated with any of the filenames, directories, subdirectories and volumes if you select <C>omments (after selecting <F>ind ). A quirk in the program is that you can do an "instring search" (for example, look for "asi" in the word Basic) by simply typing in "asi" at the keyword prompt, IF you are searching Comments. If you are searching <F>ilenames, you must use "*asi*" ... note the leading and trailing asterisks, in order to accomplish the same thing. The double quotes I used here are not to be used in entering the keyword or character string , of course...simply type in the characters you want to look for, and augment them with the `*' or `?' wildcards...but wildcards are valid ONLY when searching filenames. Just in case you aren't familiar with "wildcards", an entry of a phrase string to look for, like, " ?asic " will look for all five letter file- names beginning with any valid character and having "asic" as the last four characters. An entry of " ?asi* " will look for any occurrence of filenames containing "asi" as the second, third and fourth characters. The decision not to incorporate wildcards in the comments searches was one of those arbitrary decisions any programmer makes. It slowed the search to an unacceptable speed...so it was decided to compromise with the "instring" type of search only. NOTE: sorting The sorted display is TEMPORARY! It is retained only as long as you remain in the area of the PmCat where you view the files. The sorted display is created as an index which is held in memory. It cannot be be saved to disk at this time. This is another of those "compromises" we had make ... hope it isn't too much of a problem for you. NOTE: drive error If you pick a non-existent drive to read from, PmCat will handle it gracefully. But if you fail to close the drive door or place a disk in the selected drive, you will see the familiar DOS message asking Abort, Retry, Ignore? ... simply place a disk in the drive and close the drive door and press [R] ... PmCat will recover and the screen will be restored when you change menus. Otherwise, you will end up in DOS with no cursor ... no harm done, but you will lose any new information that hasn't been saved to disk. Type "PMCAT" and press <ENTER> to restart the program...it will reset itself properly. NOTE: blinking text and boxes If you find the boxes and text on the main screen, windows or menu are blinking, and you don't want them to, go to the Set Defaults option and set the pointer to the corresponding BACKGROUND color ON THE LEFT HALF OF THE COLOR BAR. Any of the 16 colors may be chosen for text, but the background allows only the 8 base colors. The other 8 blocks (the right half) will produce the same color background, but the text and box borders will blink. Some like to use this option to make the Select Text (in the selector bar) blink. PAGE 8 TITLESCREEN (Optional) | | Read Catalog | | __________________________________| | [First Menu] - <R>ead catalog: read/change catalogs | | <V>iew catalog: moves to second menu | | <W>rite catalog: saves catalog in memory to disk | | <D>elete volumes: allows deletion of individual volumes | | pdate catalog: add to catalog in memory or update existing | volumes. Auto-sort (if on) <S>et defaults: displays a sub-menu for default settings | | <T>itlescreen: toggles titlescreen display on/off | | <A>uto-sort: toggles auto-sort function on/off | | <F>iles: sets the default filename | | <C>olors: allows changing default screen colors | | <W>rite defaults: saves default settings to disk | | <R>ead defaults: reads defaults from disk and resets | to them. | [Second Menu] - nfo window: displays file statistics, opens Comments window <C>omments window: opens Info Window and Comments window, puts you ready to enter comments <W>rite catalog: saves catalog to disk. <F>ind: finds first occurrence of search string <N>ext find: finds next occurrence of search string rint: prints hardcopy of catalog file or creates ASCII file on disk under name of "PMCAT.LST" <V>olumes: displays list of volumes contained in catalog <D>irectory: displays listing of files in selected dir or vol. buffer <- comments: the LEFT ARROW copies the comments to a "holding area" buffer -> comments: the RIGHT ARROW copies the comments held in the buffer to the comments field on which the bar cursor rests. Pressing <ESC> is always your `panic' button. It will take you back one step, from wherever you are. It also returns you to the FIRST menu from the SECOND menu and eventually back to DOS. PAGE 9 ...About our marketing process... We chose this method of distribution simply out of financial necessity. There are many disk cataloging programs already in the public domain and shareware system. If we had elected to charge $30, $40 or $50 dollars for PmCat and spent thousands of dollars in advertising, the chances are that most would never get a chance to even look at PmCat, let alone consider purchasing it. By our distributing PmCat under the shareware concept, you can obtain a copy of it for free or at minimal cost through BBS's, user groups, etc. We, the end users, will ultimately be responsible for keeping open this channel for obtaining quality software at reasonable prices. (Yes even the authors of PmCat have software purchased through these channels) Based on the assumption you have a fair quantity of diskettes containing programs/files you would like to keep track of, you have a need for and have to this point not found *quite* what you want in a disk cataloger. I sincerely hope PmCat can fill this need for you. If it does, please take the time to sit back and consider whether or not it is worth the $10 or $15 we ask you to send for registration. If there is something about it you perceive as a flaw, please let us know. That is the only way we can improve our products to your satisfaction. Many compromises have to be made in any software. The ones we have made were considered in light of our own experiences. Your opinions will be of immense help in any case. If you wish to register PmCat and receive the benefits of doing so; a clear conscience, commission privileges and be entered on our mailing list, please send check or Money Order to the address below: William C. Scott P.O. Box 168 Lehigh, OK 74556 There are two levels of registration for PmCat. The only difference in the services offered by us involve a $5.00 commission for the registered owner when a new registrant sends us the serial number of his or her present copy and requests registration. We pay this commission monthly by company check to the accounts which have acquired credits during the month. A list of the registered owners may be obtained from Audio Enterprises at any time for a $3.00 charge. If however, a person registers with us and asks that their name NOT be included on such ' statements, it will not be. The street addresses or any other personal data will NOT be sent...only the name, city and state of registered owners. We keep a customer file with the registered owner and his/her serial number. That serial number stays with that owner through any and all updates and revisions of PmCat. The only exception is when someone wants to upgrade their registration status from non-commission to commission. If done after an initial registration for $10.00, the fee for that process is $7.50. Then a copy of the latest version of PmCat will be sent with a new registration/serial number. (The $10 registration causes a copy of the latest version to be sent and it contains Audio Enterprises' registration number.) Please be sure to include the serial number from the copy you have when registering, so that we may credit the correct person with the registration commission. PAGE 10 PmCat REGISTRATION Form Version 3.7 Check or money order payable to: William C. Scott P.O. Box 168 Lehigh, OK 74556 DATE:______________ NAME:______________________________________________ ADDR:______________________________________________ CITY:_______________________________________ STATE:____ZIP:_________ Version # of PmCat you currently have:__________ (or month\yr on titlescreen) ID# of current copy of PmCat you have: __________________ Where did you obtain PmCat?______________________________________________ (This helps us to know where to place future versions, first) Full registration: w/commissions ___ @ ($15.00) __________ Simple registration: w/o commissions ___ @ ($10.00) __________ Update of simple to full registration ___ @ ($7.50) __________ (you must have previously registered) Request for list of registered users ___ @ ($3.00) __________ (Name, city/state, date, #Issued, Ref #) Update to latest version (Previously registered users only- ___ @ ($3.00) __________ new copy with same ID#) SUB-TOTAL __________ _________________________________________________________ TOTAL __________