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1993-04-04
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Door Usage Tracker
Version 1.6
Release Date: Nov 11, 1992
A Door Usage Bulletin Generator for Spitfire
(c) WidowWare, 1992
Written By Gary Goldstein
Disclaimer: Every effort has been made to debug this utility. However,
should one of those little critters be found, please contact
the author so that it may be exterminated.
This program is considered Shareware. That is, try it before
you buy it. If you like it and want to contribute to the
author's starving family, then please send the $5.00
registration fee to the address on the registration form.
More on the registration later.
Program Description:
-------------------
This program will generate a bulletin for you letting you and your callers
know how many times your doors are played. It will allow you to define up
to 32 doors to report on. It will even allow you to select doors which are
run from the SFEXTMNU.BAT extension in your doors section.
Set Up:
------
You can place the program anywhere you like on your hard drive.The command
line will direct the program to the files it needs. There are two files,
which must be in the same directory as the main program. These are the
files called DOORS.DAT and DOORSTAT.DAT. More on these later.
Command Line usage is:
---------------------
DOORTRAK <Callers.log file location> <Name of bulletin to be generated
(without extension name)>
Thus, as an example...
DOORTRAK c:\sf\work\callers.log bullet6
will tell the program to use the Callers.log file found in the c:\sf\work
subdirectory and generate the files BULLET6.CLR and BULLET6.BBS. You can
then move the bulletin files wherever you want or you can even specify
where to generate the bulletins directly. Do not specify file extensions
for the bulletin names as this utility will generate an ANSI bulletin with
the extension of .CLR and an ASCII bulletin with an extension of .BBS.
This will keep in line with the file extensions used by Spitfire for the
display of bulletins.
So,
DOORTRAK c:\sf\work\callers.log c:\sf\display\bullet6
will also work just fine (notice the bulletin path).
You MUST, however, specify the 2 required parameters otherwise the program
will not even attempt to run.
If you want to build the bulletin for the past month... simple. Specify a
file such as JAN92.LOG as your CALLERS.LOG file and DOORTRAK will do the
rest. You may run the program daily as the program will keep track of the
last date it read and pick up only information from subsequent dates.
Important Note!! Once you have run the program, do not attempt to run the
program using a prior month's backup file as, if you will remember, the
program keeps track of the last date it read. If you try to use a file
containing only records for dates earlier than the date it has saved, it
will return "No records found".
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Required Files:
--------------
DOORSTAT.DAT - This file will be created by the program as in it are stored
the cumulative totals for each door. If you delete this file
then the program will start to accumulate the totals from
scratch.
If you get a 'Corrupt Summary file' error, you can always go
into this file using any good ASCII editor and edit the file
to your liking. The program will convert these numbers into
a form that it can use.
DOORS.DAT - This is a file YOU must create. In it you define the doors
you want reported on. Follow the example shown below. This
file can be created with any text editor / processor.
Each line of this file must contain the following information
in the exact order and format displayed here. You may only
enter 32 lines. Any more will simply be ignored by the
program.
(I have provided a sample DOORS.DAT file for you to examine
or just tailor it for your own BBS).
A,B,Trade Wars 2002
^ ^ ^
| | |______ The Name of the door (22 character maximum)
| |___________ The letter of the door
|_____________ The letter of the door extension
Now, for the explanation. The first letter represents the door
extension menu letter if you use it. So, if you are running
an SFMNUEXT.BAT from Door A, you would place the 'A' here. The
next letter represents the door letter the game will be run
under IF run under the 'A' door extension. Thus, if your Trade
Wars game is run from Door 'B' under Extension 'A', your first
line would look like the above example. I hope this is clear.
If not, feel free to log on to my board to get an idea of what
I'm talking about as I run an extension under Door A.
{ Spitfire is generally thought to be limited to using only 22
doors. However, with the door extension menus, you can run 22
doors under each extension. Thus, your doors are virtually
unlimited. (I dont think there are that many door games in
existence - are there?).}
What do I do if I am not running door extensions?
Simple. Put a '0' where you see the 'A' in the example and the
program will simply ignore the extension and treat the door
you describe as being from the main door menu.
Important! The positions of the letters and the commas are critical to
proper operation of the program. You will have 'unpredictable'
results otherwise.
However, you may place your door definition lines in any order
you wish within DOORS.DAT. If you'd like to alphabetize them,
then feel free to.
Important! You must remember, however, that once you start the program
you cannot change the order of the door names within
DOORS.DAT. You can only do this if you delete your
DOORSTAT.DAT file and start over.
I am not too sure if the program will report properly using
3rd party programs like Wildfire as I do not know what kind
of information they write to the callers log.
Multiple Log Files (Registered version only):
---------------------------------------------
Ah, here is where the beauty of the program becomes apparent. You may use
as many previous log files as you wish to accumulate data with. HOWEVER,
you must also remember that the log files must be read into the program in
chronological order otherwise the program will return "No new records
found." Remember, it keeps track of the date it last read. Of course, if
you know what you are doing, you could always edit the DOORSTAT.DAT file
but I've found that it's more trouble than it's worth.
Limitations:
-----------
The only limits here are the lengths of the parameters. As of now, the input
parms are set to a 30 character maximum. However, when (and if) you register,
I can modify that to whatever you need. Also, you must limit the name of the
door within the DOORS.DAT file to 22 characters. You can use more but the
program will only read the first 22.
That's all there is to it. If you have any questions about the program,
feel free to leave me a note on my board.
Registration:
------------
Oh, yes. One more thing. The registration. It's only $5 to register the
program and this will get a 'customized' version for use strictly on
your BBS. It will also allow you to input as many log files as you wish.
In the unregistered version, the totals will be zeroed out whenever the
month changes.
(Well, I had to do SOMETHING to entice you to part with $5.00 didn't I??).
You may send in your reg form to the address on the reg form.
Feel free to contact me with any problems you are having at my BBS,
Thanks for trying it. Gary.
The Spider's Web
702-647-5989
USR HST Dual standard, 24hrs / 7 days