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1991-05-17
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This documentation is provided to aid in the use of both READCAT.EXE
and WRITECAT.EXE, included with BBSee. These two supplemental programs
will be of interest to present and future CATDISK (tm) users. CATDISK
is a high quality disk cataloging program written by another Canadian
author - Rick Hillier. It has evolved over the years into a widely used
shareware program. Those of you who have already cataloged xxx disks
with CATDISK may not wish to switch to BBSee; primarily because of not
wanting to have to re-type in all your file comments. Not to worry; the
combination of Read/WriteCat will take an ascii listing of your catalog,
generated by CATDISK, and import both the filenames and comments into
your database.
This document is not intended as a tutorial on the use of CATDISK. Mr.
Hillier has provided sufficient documentation for this. There are,
however, several points which bear mentioning. When saving your catalog
to disk, certain settings MUST exist.
(These can be toggled via option #2 from the main menu: "settings and toggles".
1. For sub-option #3 "set printer report type", choose STATS & COMMENTS.
2. For sub-option #6 "current report location", choose DISK
3. For sub-option #7 "archive extract setting", choose OFF.
Note also, in certain cases, files in the .DTA databases created by Catdisk
will have improper dates. (ex. Sun 0, 2022). In order for Read/WriteCat to
function properly, you MUST make sure no such dates exist in your Catdisk
ASCII output listing. An easy way to do this is to sort your catalog by DATE,
and send the output to a disk file for visual inspection. Any problem files
will likely be found at the start or end of your listing. If no "offending"
file dates are located, then this ascii listing can be used with Read/WriteCat.
If you DO find such "offending" dates, you MUST edit them; changing them to
an acceptable date; ex 01-01-90. Once you are finished editing, if necessary,
the next step is to run READCAT.
Quick-Start Instructions
------------------------
Once all the above conditions are met, only 3 steps remain:
1. READCAT [drive] \ [directory] CATDISK.LST [drive] \ [directory] TEMPFILE
2. Use BBSee; select Import Directory File option, and import TEMPFILE into
the unknown category.
3. WRITECAT [drive] \ [directory] CATDISK.LST
Once these are done, you can restart BBSee; choose the Make Catalog option,
and save to disk your new and much improved catalog listing. If you want
additional information about these steps, explanations of the benefits of
using these programs; as well as some cataloging hints; read the remainder
of this document.
More Detailed Information About These 3 Steps
---------------------------------------------
The syntax for READCAT is:
READCAT [drive] \ [directory] CATDISK.LST [drive] \ [directory] TEMPFILE
ex. READCAT c:\cat\catdisk.lst c:\log\tempfile
You run CATDISK out of c:\cat; CATDISK.LST is the name of your catalog
file listing; you wish to save the file TEMPFILE to c:\log (the directory
where you keep your bbs file lists.)
The next step is to add the information from TEMPFILE into your database
the same way you would add files from any bbs listing. (Using the Import
Directory File option from within BBSee; into the unknown category.)
Now your master database contains the file and comment information CATDISK
used to contain; only better! If any of the filenames contained in your
CATDISK.LST file were already in your master database, the file descriptions
will be compared. When using CATDISK, you were limited to 30 characters,
and now, descriptions can be several lines long. Even files that were
originally in your CATDISK.LST file that had NO description, will be given
the description contained in the master database if the same filename is
found.
Let me clarify the above powerful features with a simple example:
On one of your cataloged disks, you have a file called PKLTE103.ZIP. When
you originally cataloged this disk with CATDISK, you then entered the
following brief comment:
"compresses EXE and COM files".
You have already read several large bbs file listings into BBSee, and several
of them contained the file PKLTE103. The current description for PKLTE103,
contained in your master database is:
"Compressor program for EXE and COM files from
Phil Katz. Can ignore files with overlays,
uncompress files, operate on wildcards, and more.
Also contains CHK4LITE - which can tell you which
files have been compressed using PKLITE. The
EXE and COM files can be up to 50% smaller than
the originals, and still run perfectly. This
is a MUST-HAVE utility from the author of PKZIP!"
You now run READCAT and convert your CATDISK.LST file to a format readable
by BBSee. You import this new file (TEMPFILE), and BBSee detects the file
PKLTE103 in it's existing database (with the MUCH better, more informative
file description above.) This description is now associated with PKLTE103
on your disk, rather than the brief, uninformative comment you supplied.
This all may sound well and good, but you want to be able to print out a
NEW catalog of your files, showing these new-and-improved descriptions -
RIGHT? Well, that is where WRITECAT comes in. WRITECAT updates the
BBSee master floppy catalog library from the same CATDISK input file.
(This means, don't get rid of your CATDISK.LST file as soon as you run
READCAT on it.) WRITECAT should be run from the same directory that contains
your BBSEE.CFG file since it reads this file to get database information.
The format for WRITECAT is:
WRITECAT [drive] \ [directory] CATDISK.LST
ex. WRITECAT c:\cat\catdisk.lst
(and remember, you should be typing this from your c:\bbsee directory
or in whatever directory you installed BBSee)
Once this is completed, the master catalog file has been updated showing
not only the filenames and descriptions from your original CATDISK.LST
file, but the disk volume labels where the files came from are also known.
You can now start BBSee, and choose the Make Catalog option; selecting
output sorted by filename, or by volume. Try it!
Remember, longer file descriptions can only replace short ones if the
file in question is already in your master BBSee database. For this
reason, it is best to read in as many bbs file listings as you can
before running READCAT and WRITECAT.
One final tip, if you label your disks in numberical order (1,2,3...10,11,12)
if you sort your catalog by volume you will notice the following order:
1
10
2
3
.
.
This is happening because a "sort" is done from left to right, and therefore
the "1" in "10" is being shown before the "2". A simple and effective way
to eliminate this "problem" is to number your disks 001, 002, 003, ... 010...
--------------------
Once you have re-cataloged your existing disks via READCAT and WRITECAT,
it should not be necessary to do this in future. When you start using
BBSee, you will read in the bbs file listings from any bbs's you presently
download files from. The filenames and descriptions will already be in
the database, so all that you have to do now, is label your floppies
(which can conveniently be done from within BBSee), and catalog any future
disks from within BBSee. No more typing in 30 character descriptions
through CATDISK, longer descriptions are ready and waiting in your master
database file.
Thanks to Paul Loshuk for creating this document.