Software of the Month Club 1996 May

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Text File | 1995-10-28 | 15.0 KB | 315 lines

CHAPTER 17 ADVANCED TECHNIQUES This chapter describes some tips and techniques which will optimize GIM's performance. They are presented in no particular order. EMS MEMORY... GIM is designed to operate in a minimal memory configuration. That is, it is designed to run on the earliest PC with 512KB of memory available. However, it runs better and faster if EMS memory is available. EMS memory is memory above the 1MB boundary, primarily available on 386 and higher machines, although 286's can be configured to provide EMS services. If your PC comes with more than 1MB of memory, check to be sure that some Expanded Memory Manager (such as Microsoft's EMM386.SYS) is installed in your CONFIG.SYS file. If you are running GIM under Windows, edit your PIF file to make sure that EMS memory is made available. See your DOS or Windows manual for more details. The more EMS memory you can make available, the better. For one thing, GIM loads a large portion of itself into EMS memory, if available, for faster execution. (For DOS experts: GIM3.OVR is the GIM overlay; this overlay is loaded into EMS memory if available.) If EMS memory is not available, this overlay is read from disk. For another thing, GIM provides its own internal disk cache, as a complement to any disk caching your system may already provide. Some of this disk cache is in conventional memory, and is therefore available to all systems, with or without EMS. However, a much larger disk cache is available if EMS is present, and this disk cache substantially speeds up GIM's disk operations. (If you already have some other disk cache in operation, this speed difference is less remarkable.) DISPLAY ADAPTERS... GIM uses text mode for most of its operations, and so for the most part, GIM doesn't care what kind of a display adapter you use. However, when previewing printed forms, GIM uses graphics mode, and so some comments are appropriate about the display adapter on your system. GIM is designed to recognize most of the common display adapters, such as MDA (monochrome), CGA, EGA, and VGA. GIM also recognizes the Hercules graphics adapter and VESA Super-VGA, but special arrangements need to be made to accommodate these situations. In the case of the Hercules graphics card, you will need to run GIM with the word "HERC" on the command line. That is, instead of starting GIM by typing "GIM", you need to start GIM by typing "GIM HERC". For VESA Super-VGA, a couple of items are required. First of all, the file VESA16.BGI, which should have been included with your GIM software, must be in the directory from which you run GIM. Additionally, your graphics card must be configured to recognize VESA modes. Some graphics hardware recognizes these by default; others require that you load a VESA graphics device driver in memory. If your monitor supports Super-VGA, chances are that it supports the VESA extensions; check the documentation that came with your monitor for details. And finally, it is necessary to include the keyword "VESA" on the GIM command line. That is, instead of starting GIM by typing "GIM", you need to start GIM by typing "GIM VESA". Either the "HERC" or "VESA" keyword can be included in the value of the "GIM" environment variable. You may want to set this value in your autoexec.bat file. As a side note, depending on the display adapter you're using, GIM can support 43 or 50 line mode. See Chapter 6, entitled "The Setup Area", for details. NOVICE/EXPERT MODE... GIM provides experienced GIM users with a feature that makes a little more screen space available, if desired, by sacrificing most of the space devoted to the menu bars. This feature is called the "Novice Mode / Expert Mode Toggle", and it is activated by pressing control-F10 from anywhere. When you do so, GIM will ask you to enter an "N" for "novice" or an "E" for "expert" and will then shift into the requested mode. What do you gain in expert mode? In expert mode, the menu bar is confined to the very top row, freeing up two rows for the rest of the display. All Areas use this extra room to expand their displays. For example, the Family Area makes room to show two extra children in expert mode than in normal mode. What do you sacrifice in expert mode? Among other things, you lose the title information at the very top left of the screen, and you lose the "For help, press F9" message at the bottom of the screen at startup. But above all, the principal thing you sacrifice is the longer descriptions for the function keys that are available on the menu bar in normal mode, because the menu bar is highly condensed. For example, "View/Edit Person" becomes "Persn", and "Utilities" becomes "Utils". Of course, that's why this mode is designed for experts -- we assume that you already know what the function keys do when you're in this mode, and so the abbreviations are just meant to be gentle reminders. Note: like 43/50 line mode, expert mode has no effect in the Folder Area. COMMAND LINE PARAMETERS... There are a number of options that can be specified from the command line. These are not necessary under most conditions, but are provided for certain out of the ordinary situations. They are: BIOS -- Use BIOS rather than direct video for writing to the display. BIOS calls are slower, but sometimes necessary, such as in the case where DESQview requires them to prevent bleeding. DEBUG -- Creates a GIMDEBUG.OUT file in the current directory. Generally this is an uninteresting file, but is used in certain situations to help the GIM Authors resolve problem reports. See Addendum J of chapter 11 of this documentation for an example. GIM= -- Specify where program overlay (*.OVR) and auxiliary (*.AUX) files are located. We don't use this very often, if at all. We find it easier just to leave the *.OVR and *.AUX files together with the *.EXE files, and run the program from there. HERC -- Specify use with a Hercules display adapter. See "Display Adapters" above for details about this option. NOEMS -- Disable automatic EMS use. There's no simpler way to do this, but we're not sure why you would want to. NOMOUSE -- Disable automatic mouse detection and use. Should you wish to do this, it's easier to disable the mouse from the Setup Area than to use this command line switch; see chapter 6 of this documentation for details. STARTUP -- Fool GIM into believing that you haven't set your colors yet, and have it ask you to specify them when the program starts up. An easier way to do this is to press shift-F7 from the Setup Area; see chapter 6 of this documentation for details. An even easier way to do the same thing is to erase the GIMCOL.AUX file from your GIM directory. VESA -- Enable automatic VESA graphics use. As described above, you will need to have the VESA16.BGI file in your GIM directory, and your graphics adapter must handle VESA graphics properly, in order for this switch to work. Earlier versions of this program assumed VESA, and required the NOVESA switch to turn VESA detection off; this has changed, because the other method resulted in too many cases of people with non-standard graphics adapters calling us to report that GIM wouldn't work on their computer. ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES... GIM looks at the presence of a number of environment variables. (See your DOS manual for more information about environment variables.) In general, these serve the same purpose as the command line switches described above. They are: BIOS DEBUG HERC NOEMS NOMOUSE STARTUP VESA If any of these is present in the environment, it does the same thing that the corresponding command line switch does, as described above. The value of these environment variables is irrelevant; they can be set to anything at all and have the same effect. GIM If this is present in the environment, it should contain a space-separated list of the options above -- BIOS, DEBUG, and so on. Those values, when present here, have the same effect as if they are specified elsewhere. GIMPATH If this is present in the environment, its value is interpreted as the location of program overlay and auxiliary files, as described above. GIMTINY GIMSMALL If either if these is present, they reduce the amount of memory available to the heap, making more memory available to the conventional memory cache and the overlay. (See "Reading the Setup Area Display" in chapter 6 of this documentation for more information.) GIMTINY is reduces the heap more than GIMSMALL does. Neither of these is recommended, except as a last resort. MULTITASKING... If you are using a multitasking system, such as Quarterdeck's DESQview, Microsoft Windows, or OS/2, you may be tempted to run two or more instances of GIM simultaneously. If you do so, you do so at your own risk. We do not recommend it, although we mention cautiously that we do this ourselves. However, we can get away with it because we wrote the program and we know what pitfalls to avoid. Below are some suggested pitfalls to avoid, but we make no guarantees about this being an exhaustive list, and we DO NOT accept any liability for damage to your data that results from running multiple instances of GIM. Like we say, do this at your own risk. Do NOT open the same folder in two different windows. (If you load SHARE.EXE in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file, GIM won't let you do this, even if you try. See your DOS manual for details on SHARE.EXE.) Do NOT do the same kinds of things in two different windows. For example, don't try to do a GFE import from two windows at once. In particular, GFE, forms printing, grafting, and GIM LISTS should all be avoided in two windows at once. Avoid closing two folders at the same time. Avoid exiting GIM in both windows at the same time. (Oh, and a word about local area networks (LANs): we don't know for sure how GIM will perform when multitasked in a LAN. Be extremely careful and proceed at your own risk.) MICROSOFT WINDOWS... We have had no problems running GIM from a DOS window from within Microsoft Windows. If you have any difficulty with this, please bring any problems to our attention. As noted above, be sure to edit your PIF file to make sure that EMS memory is made available. QUARTERDECK'S DESQVIEW... Here also, we have had no difficulty running GIM in a DESQview window, and if you encounter any difficulties, please bring them to our attention. If GIM bleeds through your DESQview window with DESQview 386, set "Virtualize text/graphics" to T and "Writes text directly to screen" to Y. If this occurs with DESQview, that is, not DESQview 386, add the word "BIOS" to the program's parameters. Recommended DESQview DVP settings: If you are using GIM in 43/50 line mode, remember to set the "Window Position Maximum Height" to 43 or 50 with DESQview's "Change a Program" option. However, if you're NOT using 43/50 line mode, be sure that the "Window Position Maximum Height" is set to 25, otherwise strange things will happen to most of GIM's displays! Memory size (in K): 512 Maximum Program Memory Size (in K): 800 Maximum Expanded Memory Size (in K): (leave blank) Uses its own colors: Y. 4DOS... GIM is perfectly compatible with 4DOS. GIM has been thoroughly tested with both the DOS and 4DOS command processors, and no problems have been encountered. INSIDE THE SOFTWARE DESIGN OF GIM... GIM was written in, and compiled by, Borland Pascal 7.0. If you're a programmer and would like to write applications that interact with GIM's folder and auxiliary data files, please contact us for technical notes about the file formats and data structures involved. Upon request, we will provide (only to registered GIM users) an example program with source code, which demonstrates how to retrieve data from GIM folder files. This example program shows how to retrieve persons, familes, notes, places, and dates from any version 3.x GIM folder. This should (hopefully) be enough to allow you to write any applications of your own you may wish to write -- and if the example program isn't sufficient, we'll be glad to work with you to give you whatever other information you may need.