Vectronix 2/VECTRONIX2.iso/FILES_01/DACA122C.LZH/DACAPO/DACAPO.HLP

Text File | 1995-09-10 | 24KB | 511 lines

·0
Global Help
Welcome to Da Capo - THE address program for all TOS-compatible
computers. Da Capo formerly was sold by Shift┐, but now it is
distributed as shareware. All windows can be used in the background
with the right mouse button. All dialogs can be used either with the
keyboard or the mouse.

   The File-Menu

Open...        Opens an existing Da Capo address- (*.ADR), ASCII-
               (*.TXT, *.ASC...) or (X)-image bitmap file (*.IMG). If
               an non-existent address-file is selected in the file
               selector, a new one will be created (if the current
               file had been changed, you will be warned).
Close          Closes the topmost window (including accessories,
               if they communicate via AV-protocol like TreeView).
Save           Saves the address-file.
Save as...     Like "Save", but you are prompted for a new file name.
Information... Displays some information about the actual
               address-file, like number of records and memory usage.
Help...        Displays context-sensitive help, either built-in (the
               file your reading), or by invoking ST-Guide. At the
               current date (September 1995), the ST-Guide hypertext
               (including the whole manual which is round 90 KBytes)
               hadn't been translated. You can accelerate this work
               by registering soon (see "About Da Capo...")!!
TOS-Shell...   Prompts for a TOS-commandline, if GEMINI had been
               installed. Ouput is redirected to the clipboard and
               shown in a window.
Import...      Imports an ASCII-file into the database. Only those
               fields are imported, which are visible in the table
               window, the order of fields must be the same in the
               import-file as in the table. Records and fields are
               delimited as defined by "Options: Import/Export...".
               1st-Address databases (1ST_ADDR.DAT) can be imported
               directly, if their definition hadn't been changed.
Export...      Exports all marked records as defined by "Options:
               Import/Export...".
Print...       Prints content of the table (as list) or mask,
               including header and footer as defined by "Options:
               Page Layout...".
Output...      The same as "Print...", but the output is redirected
               into a file instead of the printer and the page layout
               is ignored.
Cancel         Quits program without saving parameters or changes. A
               warning will be prompted, if addresses had been
               changed.
Quit           Quits program after saving the settings and all
               changes (database and lists).

   The Edit-Menu

Undo           Cancels the last edit-action (cut, copy or paste). If
               the mask is the topmost window, all changes of the
               actual address will be reverted. Dialogs will be
               cancelled (same as pressing the Cancel-Button).
Cut            Writes all marked addresses using the actual report
               definition (dialog "Databse: Report...") and deletes
               them afterwards. A file called SCRAP.TXT is created in
               the GEM-clipboard (usually C:\CLIPBRD) for data
               exchange with other application. The records are also
               copied in an intern file format. In Dialogs (or the
               mask) the actual textedit field ist cut.
Copy           Same as "Cut", without removing selection.
Paste          Pastes cut or copied selection from the clipboard.
Clear          Deletes selection.
Select all     Selects all records.
Find...        Lets you search for one ore more terms in all fields
               of all records.
Find next      Continues searching. If no record could be found that
               matches, a sound is played and the search direction
               will be reverted for the next time.

   The Database-Menu

Sort...        Sorts your addresses by up to three criteria.
Report...      Lets you output the marked records in a "styled" way,
               e.g. as a table, letters...
Delete doubles... Lets you eliminate double records.
Field labels... Renames most of the field tables in the table and the
               mask (some labels, like town, country or phone-numbers
               are fixed and cannot be renamed).
Show selected  Each record can be marked and/or selected. To mark a
               record, simply click on it (use shift-click to expand
               the selection). A record will be selected, if it was
               found during a "selection" (invoked by "Option:
               Selction..." in the mask window), or by marking it and
               explicitely selecting it with "Table: Select" (see
               below). If this item is checked, only such selected
               records will be shown, otherwise all records are shown
               in the address- and table window.

   The Table-Menu

(De)Select     Selects or deselects the marked records.
Town... ...    Allows you to change town, country ... for all marked
               records at once.
All Colums     If some columns were hidden, this command shows them
               again.

   The Windows-Menu

Show Addresses Opens a window, were all your addresses are displayed
               as a table.
Edit address   Opens first marked address for editing as a mask.
Open all       Opens both, the table and the mask window.
Close all      Closes all windows, including modeless dialog windows.
Redraw         Redraws the topmost window.
Cycle          Brings the last window to the front.

   The Options-Menu

Preferences... Allows you to set your preferred preferences.
Database Settings... Settings concerning your database like memory
               allocation, number of addresses, towns...
Load fonts     If GDOS has been installed (like Speedo or NVDI), you
               can load additional fonts.
Select font... Lets you select the font for the table or mask window
               (incl. proportional Speedo-Fonts).
Import/Export... Defines the settings for importing or exporting data.
Page Layout... Lets you define the printer and the page layout for
               printing like left or right margin, header, footer...
·1
A global View on your Addresses
The table shows your addresses organized in columns, with each line
representing a record and each column a field of the record. To mark
a record, click it with the left mouse button. If you hold down a
shift key during clicking, further records will be marked, expanding
your selection.

By clicking into the left part of the window and holding down the
mouse button you can create a rubber box to mark more than one record
at once (just like the desktop).

A double click into a record opens it for editing in a separate
window.

If you want to hide a column, just click with the right mouse button
into header of the column. Alternatively, you can drag the column out
of the window, with a left click into a title, holding down the mouse
button and releasing somewhere outside of the window.

If you release the mouse button inside the window, the columns will
be rearranged accordingly to the new position. To change the size of
a column, drag the line between two columns left or right.

If you want to see all columns again, use "Table: All columns".

Some keys have a special meaning, when pressed with the table window
on top:

Cursor        scrolls window to left, right, up or down
Shift+Cursor  scrolls one page up, down...
Tab           marks the next record (or the first, if none marked)
Shift+Tab     marks the previous record
Control+Tab   marks first record on the next page
Return        opens first marked record for editing

Marked records are drawn inverted. All menus (like cut, copy,
clear, export) are executed on the marked records of the set
displayed (either all records or only the selected ones).
·2
Editing Data
This window lets you view your data in detail and modify them. Also,
you can create new records or delete them. All this can be done using
the local menu bar of this window, by clicking on one the icons or by
editing the text fields.

 The right arrow shows you the next record, depending on the sorting
  order which is shown in the info-bar of the window ("Sorted by:
  ...", "+" is ascending, "-" descending). A double click on this
  icon moves you directly to the last record.

 The left arrow show you the previous record or - by double clicking
  - the first one.

Since the window is too small to fit all fields of an address, only
the important data (name, street, town, ...) are shown permanently in
the upper part of the window. Therefore, the next four icons define,
what is shown alternatively in the lower part.

 Notepad: additional information and bank (the same as the menu
  "View: Info/Bank")

 Phone: private and official phonenumbers and country code ("View:
  Phone"). If the cursor is in an phonenumber entry, you can dial
  that number using the button "Dial...", if a modem is connected to
  your computer. You will then be promted to hang up the modem after
  the connection has been established. Da Capo needs to know, which
  port is connected to your modem (Seriell 1-4) and what is the
  command for dialing (See "Options: Preferences...")..

 Calendar: you can define for every record up to three dates. The
  first date is the birthday and you can decide, whether Da Capo
  shall remind you about this date (one week before, the day before
  or on the actual birthday). In addition, Da Capo shows you, when
  the record was created and when modified the last time.

 Trash: Deletes the actual address (same as "Record: Delete"). If
  the button "Confirm deleting" is checked in your preferences
  dialog, you will be asked, before this is done.

The local Menu

"Record: Update" Confirms all changes to the actual address. If a
                 record had benn changed the window title, which
                 contains the name of the opened address file, is
                 marked by an star ('*').
"Redord: Insert" Inserts the actual address as a new record. The old
                 one will not be changed. This may be useful, if you
                 want to insert many similar addresses.
"Record: New"    Clears all items, so you can edit a new record.
"Record: Delete" The same as a click on the trash icon.

"Navigation: Find" Looks for the next record which matches with the
                 current edit field. Unix-wildcards like '*', '?' and
                 '[^]' are allowed, '*' will automatically be
                 appended, before the case-insensitive search starts.

"View"           Switches the view between dates, phone numbers...
                 Also you can edit the two free lists (by default
                 Title and Group) and the three info-fields for
                 extended entries.

"Options: Selection..." Calls a dialog, from where you can select
                 records depending on the actual entries in the mask.

"Options: Auto Zipcodes..." Calls a dialog, where you can modify the
                 automatical recognition of towns and zip-codes.
·3
Configuring your preferred Preferences
 "Grow-/Shrinkboxes" Draws growing rectangles, when opening windows.

 "Beep on Errors"    If an error occurs, the system beep will be
                      played before opening an alert box.

 "3-D-Buttons"       If you have at least 16 colours, buttons will
                      be drawn three dimensional. You have to restart
                      Da Capo to change this feature.

 "Window Menu"       If on, Da Capo will draw its global menu in the
                      table window instead of using the system's
                      menu. If you are not using multi-tasking,
                      accessories will be no more available.

 "Empty Keybuffer"   If on, the table only scrolls while an arrow
                      key is pressed independent of how many times a
                      key was pressed. This will slow down scrolling
                      speed a little bit.

 "Keep Backups"      If on, a backup of your address file will be
                      kept on saving (named *.BAK).

 "Blinkrate"         A value between 0 (= off) and 9 which defines
                      the number of times a menu item blinks before
                      the action is performed.

 "Empty mask after insertion" If on, the menu item "Record: New"
                      will be invoked after "Record: Insert".

 "Invert table competely" If on, the whole cell containing a record
                      in the table will be inverted, otherwise only
                      the text is drawn white on black.

 "Draw Grid"         Draws the grid in the table window. Redrawing
                      the table will be accelerated if the option is
                      off.

 "Black Grid"        If on, the grid will be drawn black, otherwise
                      blue.

 "Confirm Deletion"  If on, Da Capo will ask the user before
                      deleting a record.

 "Modem Init"        String, which is used to initialize the modem.
                      Usually "ATDP" for a Hayes compatible mdem.

 "AUX"               Serial device, where the modem is connected to.

 "Use Da Capo Help"  If on Da Capo will use only its builtin help.
                      Otherwise, Da Capo will first try to launch
                      ST-Guide.

 "ST-Guide"          Full name (including path), where ST-GUIDE.APP
                      can be found. On multi-tasking, Da Capo will
                      start ST-Guide if its not running already.
·4
Selecting Fonts
·5
Printing
The first line shows you the actual printer. Using the button
"Printer..." you can select a new one (printer definitions are
compatible to Script or Signum3). The driver is used for
initialization of the printer and contains code-translation tables.

"Head-/Footline" lets you define one head- and one footline. You can
use the following symbols:

 $P pagenumber
 $D date (DD.MM.YYYY)
 $T time (HH.MM)

"Margins" lets you define margins and page size (in lines
and characters).

For example: You have 64 lines per page with 80 columns, defined a
head- and a footline, 2 lines top and 1 line bottom margin, 1 line
head- and footmargin and 10 characters left:

    2 lines at the top
    1 line headline
    1 line headline margin
   57 lines printing area 64 - 4 (top) - 3 (bottom) with 70 columns
    1 line footline margin
    1 line fooline
    1 line at the bottom

You can print your records on a parallel (default) or serial device,
you can send them to a file (to print them later with the desktop) or
you can print using the default operating system driver (usually 21)
if GDOS (or NVDI, Speedo-GDOS...) is installed on your system).
·6
Sorting Addresses
You can sort your addresses using up to three criteria. If two
records have the same first criterium (e.g. the same company), they
will be compared using the second one and so on.

"Direction" lets you sort your records in ascending or descending
order.

You can also use the creation date or last date of change for sorting
your addresses. If you sort by birthdays, you can define whether the
year of birth is ignored or not.
·7
Importing and exporting Data
"Separator" Lets you define how your fields and records are
            separated. You can use strings (in "", e.g. "xyz" or
            'xyz') or the decimal ASCII-Codes of single non-printable
            characters, separated by ",;:", e.g. 13,10 (=
            Carriage-Return plus Line Feed, TOS and MS-DOS separate
            lines by these two bytes). Strings and decimal codes may
            be mixed. If you want to use ';', ',', or ':' as a
            separator you have to type in the decimal code (59, 44 or
            58).
            If "Separator = End of Record" is checked, Da Capo
            expects the record separator at the beginning of a field
            and interprets this as a finished record. Otherwise, Da
            Capo expects for every field visible in the table window
            a corresponding field in the import file to be imported,
            separated by the text given in "Field Separator". At the
            end of the record, there has to be the "Record
            Separator". When exporting, all visible fields of all
            marked records in the table are exported. After each
            field, the field separator is written, and after the
            whole record the record separator.

"Date"      Here you can define, how dates are expected to be
            imported or how they are exported (Day-Month-Year...)

"Export Labels" If checked, the field labels are exported as the
            first record. You need this for example if you want to
            use the export file as a database definition in Script.

"Truncate blanks" Some databases export their fields with a constant
            lenght filling up the end of short fields with blanks. If
            this option is on, spaces at the end of a field are
            truncated.

"ASCII-delimited" If on, fields are put in "" and separated by ',',
            while records are separated by new lines. E.g. 1st-Base
            uses this format.
·8
Using Listboxes
You can select an item of the listbox using the mouse or the
keyboard. Shift + Cursor scrolls one page, ClrHome goes to first
item, Shift + ClrHome to the last.

If you type in a string, the first item, which matches the text
case-insensitive is selected. The string is shown in the info-line of
the window. Backspace, Delete or Escape clears the text and selects
the first item of the list. Some lists can be sorted by an
appropriate radio button. If so, typing a text selects the first item
which matches the sorting criterium.

Because the keyboard is used to select records, you have to click on
the "Edit"-button to edit the list (changing, adding and deliting
items of the list). If you add a new item in the mask window, it is
added to the list automatically. You can't delete items, which are
used by any record.

A double-click on a item selects it and closes the dialog
immediately.
·9
Finding - and deleting - doubly defined Redords
With this dialog you can find and delete doubly defined redords.
First you have to decide, which fields (company, name, first name,
town and street) have to be similar, and how many characters (up to
80) have to match.

"Ignore Vowels" Vowels can be written "ae" or "ä" and so on, so that
                "Müller" und "Mueller" are the same.

"Ignore Case"   The fields are not compared case-sensitive, so that
                "Atari" und "ATARI" are the same.

"Length of shorter Field" If two fields don't have the same size,
                they are only compared with the length of the shorter
                one, so that "Müller" and "Müller-Westernhagen" are
                the same. If one field is completely empty, the
                fields are assumed to be identical.

"Don't query"   If this button is checked, Da Capo compares the
                records without any feedback. Instead, all doubles
                are internally selected and can be edited afterwards
                manually. Otherwise, Da Capo brings for each match a
                dialog, which shows you the two "identical" records.
                In this dialog you can decide, whether to delete one
                of the two records, show it in the mask or finish
                the whole action.
·10
Finding Addresses
With this dialog you can search for an address if you know one or
several words (or parts of them). Da Capo looks for the next
appearance in any field in the search direction starting with the
actual address (shown in the mask). If a record is found, it is
marked in the table and displayed in the mask. At the end of the list
a Da Capo will beep and revert the search direction.

You can look for one term or for several. In the latter case, the
terms have to be separated by ',', ';' or ':'. The terms can be
combined with AND or OR. In the first case only records will be
found, which contain all of the search term, in the second case, only
one term has to match.

"Ignore Case"   The fields are not compared case-sensitive, so that
                "Atari" und "ATARI" are the same.

"Use Wildcards" You can look for a record using grep-like patterns:
                *         any string
                ?         any character
                [a,d,F]   'a', 'd' or 'F'
                [a-d,g-k] any character from 'a' to 'd' or 'g' to 'k'
                [^a,d]    any character except 'a' or 'd'

The menu item "Edit: Find next" looks for the next matching record
without presenting the dialog again.
·11
Selecting Addresses of special Interest
You can use this dialog to select addresses. Da Capo will read out
all defined fields of the actual record and will compare your
addresses with the given entries.

 "Find in all records" Da Capo looks in all records for matches and
                        selects (or deselects) the matches.

 "Keep Selection"      Da Capo will expand your last selection.

 "Find in Selection"   Da Capo will look only for those records,
                        which are already selected.

 "Deselect Hits"       Records which match will be deselected
                        instead of selected.

For example: You are looking for all persons from Munich or
Stuttgart, which are not "private".

First you look for all records where the town is "Munich" with the
option "Find in all records". Then you look for all records where
town is "Stuttgart" with "Keep Selection". At last you look for all
records where group is "private" with "Find in Selection" and
"Deselect Matches" on.
·12
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Editing extended Information
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TOS-Shell
·16
Getting Information
·17
Printing Reports
You can print marked records as a report (e.g. as a list). For this
purpose, Da Capo needs a report file called "DACAPO.RPT" in its
system folder. In this ASCII-file, you can define up to 50 reports.
Each report definition starts with '#' and a text, which is displayed
in the listbox.

The next lines define the report. For example:

#Birthday
{Birthday:5}{$8}{First_name} {Last_name}{$50:Dial_code:5} {Tel_priv}

leeds to:

03.02  Birgit Musterfrau           0049 0461-12345
05.06  Mortitz Muster              0049 01345-678
06.12  Heinrich Mustermann         001  408-7452082

{Birthday:5}      Print the field birthday using 5 characters
{$8}              Go to column 8
{First_name}      Print the whole first name
 {Last_name}      Print a space and then the last name
{$50:Dial_code:5} At column 50 print the dial code using 5 characters
·18
Using automatic postal zip-codes
·19
Database Settings
·20
Labelling your Addresses