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OS/2 Help File
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ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 1. Introduction ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
OS/2 Tagline Manager
Users' Guide.
Copyright (c) 1999 Jonathan de Boyne Pollard. All rights reserved worldwide.
This is the users' guide for the OS/2 Tagline Manager version 1.0, a utility
for creating the taglines at the end of electronic mail messages.
Software licence
This software is copyright in order to protect the good name of the author and
in order to prevent other people from passing it off as their own and making
money from it. The author wants this software to enjoy as wide an audience as
possible, and also wants you to receive this software as it was originally
released. Therefore:
You may archive, store, copy, and distribute this software (which means the
programs, and any accompanying electronic documentation, helptext, and message
or data files) in its entire original, unmodified, form for any purpose,
commercial or otherwise. In fact you are encouraged to give copies of this
software to your friends so that they can enjoy it too.
You may make limited modifications to the original distribution archive before
passing it on to others, to convert it to another archive format (extended
attributes and long filenames must be preserved, however), or to add archive
comments in order to advertise BBSes and the like (a FILE_ID.DIZ description
file is already supplied in the distribution archive, however).
You may not pass this software off as your own, attempt to modify it, or
obscure or remove the copyright notices or this software licence in any way.
Nor may you attempt to make money from distributing it to others apart from
media costs.
You may not (and this part is especially true for those madly litigious
Americans) sue the author or anybody else in respect of any supposed guarantee.
You receive this software exactly "as is". There's no guarantee whatsoever.
The author takes pride in his work, and naturally wants the software to behave
well and do its job; but he isn't prepared (certainly not for software that you
are getting entirely for free) to make any sort of guarantee of merchantability
or fitness for any purpose.
Bug fixes and enhancements to the software will occur entirely at the whim of
the author, as and when he has spare time to write them. If you want a
specific modification to the software, please remember that the author is a
professional programmer. You can always pay him to write it!
The source code for the software is the product of a lot of time, skill, and
effort. It is not given away for free. If you need to have access to the
source code, approach the author about paying for a source code licence.
Technical support for the installation or use of the software consumes time and
effort. If you need such support, approach the author about paying for a
support contract.
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 2. Command-line usage ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
Synopsis
TAGMGR [/?] [/AUTO] [/JH3] [/WORDWRAP[-|+]] [/LENGTHn] [/PREFIXstr] [Tagfile]
Options
/? Display this help panel.
This option must be the first option on the command line, and cannot
be combined with other options. All other options and arguments
will be ignored.
/AUTO Automatically select a random tagline and exit.
Use this option to choose and return a random tagline automatically.
/JH3 Operate in John Hancock compatibility mode. (default:OFF)
/WORDWRAP Perform word-wrap on the tagline when returning it.
(Default:OFF)
/LENGTH Set the line length to use for the centre and right justification
effects, and for word-wrap. (Default:76)
/PREFIX Specify a prefix to write before every line of the returned
tagline. (Default:no prefix)
The tagfile argument is the name of a file from which the taglines will be
read.
If wordsrap is on, then the tagline will be word-wrapped to the given line
length when it is returned. Lines are only broken at the start of a word, so
some lines may end up exceeding the given length if a single word is longer
than the line length or if there is a lot of trailing whitespace after a word.
If a prefix is specified, then it will be prepended to the start of every line
of the returned tagline. The length of the prefix is not taken into account
when performing word-wrap.
Examples
To automatically select a random tagline from the file TAGLINES.TXT and exit:
[c:\]tagmgr /auto Taglines.TXT
( Of course, the tagline being returned will be lost if you don't redirect the
output of TAGMGR to a pipe or to a file. )
To automatically select a random tagline from the file TAGLINES.TXT and exit,
using John Hancock compatibility mode:
[c:\]tagmgr /auto /jh3 Taglines.TXT
To automatically select a random tagline from the file TAGLINES.TXT and exit,
prefixing each line with an ellipsis:
[c:\]tagmgr /auto /prefix"..." Taglines.TXT
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 3. Keys ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
The tagline manager is a PM program, and all of the conventional CUA keystrokes
can be used for controlling the program from the keyboard. For a full list,
consult the "Keys Help" section of the on-line help for the Workplace Shell
desktop. Only a few keys are listed here.
F1 Obtain context-sensitive on-line help for the control that has the
keyboard focus.
ALT-DOWN (When the tag list has the keyboard focus.) Display the drop-down
list of taglines.
UP and DOWN (When the tag list has the keyboard focus.) Select the previous
or next tagline in the list.
ALT-F4 Close the tagline manager window.
ALT-E Show the effects menu
ALT-T Select another tagline at random.
ALT-R Apply a special effect at random.
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 4. John Hancock Compatibility mode ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
In "John Hancock compatible" mode, when the "Write and Exit" button is pressed
the current tagline is written to a file in the current directory of the
tagline manager with the name JHx.REP, where x is a digit from 0 to 9.
Note: If all of the JHx.REP files already exist, they will not be overwritten
by the tagline manager, but an error message will be displayed instead.
You will need to delete the unused JHx.REP files. Mail readers that use
the JHx.REP convention should delete the files automatically.
This mode is available for poorly written offline mail readers that use the
old DOS-based reader conventions. Such readers are very likely to be
brain-dead ports of DOS readers. (DOS does not support pipes, so another
mechanism had to be devised for sending a text string from one process to
another. But since OS/2 does support pipes, there is no need to carry this
mechanism over into an OS/2 offline reader.)
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 5. How to use from MR/2 ICE ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
Note: These instructions were contributed by Gord Hannah and Andy Roberts.
To use TagMgr to append taglines to the Internet Cruiser Edition of Nick
Knight's MR/2 mail reader for OS/2:
1. Create the following REXX command script as a file (for this example, the
filename "mr2tags.cmd" has been chosen):
/* mr2tags.cmd */
parse arg messagefilename
tagfilename = "taglines.txt"
"@tagmgr "||tagfilename||" >> "||messagefilename
2. In the MR/2 ICE menus, select "Utilities\Filter Maintenance\New".
3. Configure the following criteria:
ΓöîΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓö¼ΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÉ
ΓöéDescription ΓöéMR2Tags Γöé
Γö£ΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓö╝ΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöñ
ΓöéTag ΓöéMR2Tags Γöé
Γö£ΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓö╝ΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöñ
ΓöéSearch type ΓöéSimple, Enabled, Mail (defaults) Γöé
Γö£ΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓö╝ΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöñ
ΓöéSearch areas for ΓöéAll areas (default) Γöé
Γö£ΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓö╝ΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöñ
ΓöéProcess when messageΓöéAlways Γöé
Γö£ΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓö╝ΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöñ
ΓöéOn Event ΓöéPreSend Γöé
ΓööΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓö┤ΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÿ
4. Configure the following actions
ΓöîΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓö¼ΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÉ
ΓöéLink to REXX ΓöéC:\TagMgr\mr2tags.cmd Γöé
ΓööΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓö┤ΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÿ
Note: Use FIND to locate the full pathname of the REXX script.
5. Configure the disposition "Show this message in the inbox and/or outbox"
(which happens to be the default).
6. Press "OK".
7. Press "Done".
Note: MR/2 will not call TagMgr until you are connected to your ISP and each
message, one at a time, is ready to be sent. Then you will see the popup
window of TagMgr.
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 6. How to use from MultiMail ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
Note: These instructions were contributed by Scott Jones.
All versions of MultiMail from 0.26 onward allow one to disable the internal
tagline facility. To use TagMgr to append taglines to MultiMail instead:
1. Create the following CMD command script as a file (for this example, the
filename "Q-Tag.CMD" has been chosen) that calls your editor (SemWare's
TSE JR/2 in this example) and TagMgr:
REM ** Q-Tag.CMD **
@echo off
q %1
tagmgr /AUTO /WORDWRAP+ /LENGTH:75 /PREFIX"... " f:\home\mmail\taglines.txt >> %1
Change the filename "f:\home\mmail\taglines.txt" to whatever tagline file
you want to use, of course.
2. Edit the lines in your mmail.rc file that define the editor, to say:
# Editor for replies = $EDITOR; or if not defined, tedit editor:
Q-Tag.CMD
3. Edit the lines in your mmail.rc file that say
# Prompt to add taglines to replies?
UseTaglines: Yes
changing the default Yes to No.
MultiMail is now ready to go.
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 7. The main window ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
The main window contains a tag list, a menu of special effects, buttons for
random selections of taglines and special effects, and the "Write and Exit"
button.
To return the current tagline, as it is displayed in the tagline list, to the
offline reader, click on the "Write and Exit" button. The tagline will be
returned to the offline reader in accordance with the settings of the stdout
and JH?.REP buttons.
To exit the tagline manager without returning a tagline, simply close the
window via its system menu or close gadget.
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 7.1. The tag list ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
The tag list displays the available taglines, read from the tagline file, as a
drop down combobox. You can choose from one of the available taglines, or
enter your own text by typing it into the entry field.
Typing in your own text, or applying a special effect from the effects menu,
modifies the contents ot the entry field. It is these contents that will be
sent to the offline reader if you choose the "Write and Exit" button.
If you choose a new tagline by selecting an entry in the drop down list, all
modifications to the tagline currently being displayed will be lost.
Modifications to the tagline do not modify the contents of the tagline file.
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 7.2. The random tag button ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
The random tag button chooses a new tagline at random from the tag list. All
modifications to the current tagline are lost.
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 7.3. The random effect button ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
The random effect button applies a randomly chosen special effect from the
effects menu to the currently displayed tagline.
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 7.4. The standard output button ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
This radio button directs the tagline manager, when the "Write and Exit" button
is pressed, to write the chosen tagline to its standard output, wherever that
may point to.
How the tagline is added to the message depends from the offline reader. There
are two general methods that readers can employ:
The reader invokes the tagline manager directly, and captures its output
via a pipe.
The tagline manager is invoked by a command script whenever the reader
invokes the text editor to edit a message, and the command script
redirects the standard output of the tagline manager so that it is
appended to the end of the file containing the message text.
Example:
@echo off
tagmgr >> %1
epm %1
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 7.5. The "hancock" button ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
This button makes the tagline manager operate in "John Hancock compatible"
mode.
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 8. Opening a tagline file ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
Use the "Open" item on the menu to open a new tagline file.
A tagline file is a simple text file. The tagline manager treats each
non-empty line of the file as one tagline.
You don't need any special tools to create a tagline file. Just use a text
editor, such as the OS/2 System Editor, TEDIT, the OS/2 Enhanced Editor, or
whatever.
Tip: An easy way to scroll a combobox to a line beginning with a given letter
is to press ALT-DOWN and then type the letter in the entry field. This works
best when the tagline file is sorted into alphabetical order. You can use the
16-bit SORT command provided with OS/2 to do this, if the tagline file is less
than 63kB. If the tagline file is over that size, use the replacement 32-bit
SORT command that is supplied with the OS/2 Command Line Utilities, which has
no 64kB limitations.
Note: Some other programs use "simple text files" with a slight modification:
the first line of the file must contain a count of the total number of lines in
the file. The tagline manager has no need to know in advance how many lines
are in the file. It will discover this by the simple expedient of reading the
file! So it will treat the first line of such files as a just another tagline
(albeit a particularly boring one).
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 9. The effects menu ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
The effects menu provides a range of special effects that will modify the
current tagline:
reversing
jumbling
changing case
justification
translation
miscellaneous
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 9.1. Reverse ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
The Reverse sub-menu provides the following transformations:
All Reverse the entire tagline, including spaces and punctuation. This
is the closest transformation to "mirror writing".
Alpha Only Reverse all of the alphabetic characters in the tagline, but retain
the original disitrbution of case and white space, and the original
punctuation.
Letters Reverse the order of characters in each word.
Words Reverse the order of the words.
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 9.2. Jumble ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
The Jumble sub-menu provides the following transformations:
All Jumble the entire tagline randomly.
Letters Jumble the characters in each word, but maintain the order of the
words themselves and the whitespace between them. i.e. each word is
replaced by an anagram of itself.
Words Jumble the words.
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 9.3. Change case ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
The Case sub-menu provides the following transformations:
Upper Convert the tagline to all upper case. This, by convention, is
interpreted as "loud" or "shouting".
Lower Convert the tagline to all lower case. k.d.lang and g.b.shaw fans
will appreciate this.
Swap Swap the case of all letters, so that upper case letters become
lower case ones and vice versa.
Capitalise Capitalise the first letter of every word, making the rest of the
word lower case.
BiFF Use a random mixture of upper and lower case, with the bias being
towards a high proportion of upper case, to mimic the style of
newbies, people with no social skills, and the fictional "BiFF"
character of Usenet fame.
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 9.4. Justify ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
The Justify sub-menu provides the following transformations:
Left Left-justify the tagline, by trimming leading whitespace from it.
Centre Centre the tagline.
Right Right-justify the tagline, by prepending whitespace to it.
Right justificiation and Centre justificiation assume a maximum field width of
76 characters (which will be correct for an 80 column display when the
conventional ellipsis is prepended to the tagline). Taglines longer than this
will not be correctly justified.
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 9.5. Translate ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
The Translate sub-menu provides the following transformations:
Greek Convert Roman letters to equivalent Greek letters.
K00l Dud3 Convert letters to numbers and other letters, in the style of the
"k00l dud3s" who peddle "warez".
Letter Art Convert letters to symbols which approximate the original shapes of
the letters.
Spell It Convert letters to phonetic spellings.
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 9.6. Miscellany ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
The Effects menu also includes several miscellaneous transformations:
No Whitespace Delete all white space characters from the tagline. This makes
the tagline look "compressed".
No Vowels Delete all vowels (including the letter "y") from the tagline.
!*Ь$%^! Replace a randomly chosen word with an "expletive".
WideScreen Insert a space after every character, making the tagline twice as
wide.
Local echo Repeat every character twice, just as if local echo had been left
turned on in a terminal emulator program.
Line Noise Flip random bits in roughly 12% of the characters in the text, as
if the text is being transmitted over a noisy modem line.
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 10. Acknowledgements ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
The following people helped with the pre-release testing of the tagline
manager:
Andy Roberts, FIDONET#1:109/921.1
Gord Hannah, FIDONET#1:109/921.23
Scott Jones, FIDONET#1:106/2000.0
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ <hidden> ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
John Hancock is a tagline manager program for MS/PC-DOS from The Silicon Frog,
Inc..
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ <hidden> ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
The OS/2 Command Line Utilities is a set of 32-bit command-line driven
utilities for 32-bit OS/2. It comprises, amongst other things, 32-bit
replacements for the 16-bit SORT, TREE, and ATTRIB commands supplied with OS/2.
You can obtain the OS/2 Command Line Utilities from any good files site.