Software of the Month Club 1996 November

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@ 01 THE INTERSTATE TRAVELER Version 3.0 Copyright 1991-1995 by David E. Jacobson All Rights Reserved ..... DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY ..... USERS OF THE INTERSTATE TRAVELER MUST ACCEPT THIS DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY: THE INTERSTATE TRAVELER IS SUPPLIED AS IS. THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND OF FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. THE AUTHOR ASSUMES NO LIABILITY FOR DAMAGES, DIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL, WHICH MAY RESULT FROM THE USE OF THE INTERSTATE TRAVELER. ..... Ombudsman Statement ..... David Jacobson is a member of the Association of Shareware Professionals (ASP). ASP wants to make sure that the shareware principle works for you. If you are unable to resolve a share- ware-related problem with an ASP member by contacting the member directly, ASP may be able to help. The ASP Ombudsman can help you resolve a dispute or problem with an ASP member, but does not provide technical support for members' products. Please write to the ASP Ombudsman at 545 Grover Road, Muskegon, MI 49442 or send a CompuServe message via CompuServe Mail to ASP Ombudsman 70007,3536. @ 02 Table of Contents _________________ Section Page ------- ---- 1.0 INTRODUCTION ........................................ 3 2.0 SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS ................................. 4 3.0 INSTALLING AND RUNNING THE PROGRAM .................. 4 4.0 GENERAL INFORMATION ................................. 5 5.0 SETUP ............................................... 6 6.0 MAIN SCREEN BUTTONS ................................. 6 7.0 PLANNING THE ROUTE OF A NEW TRIP .................... 7 8.0 LOADING AND CONTINUING A SAVED TRIP ................. 9 9.0 PREPARING AN ITINERARY .............................. 10 10.0 DISPLAYING CITY MAPS ................................ 11 11.0 DELETING AND COPYING TRIP FILES ..................... 12 @ 03 * * * THE INTERSTATE TRAVELER - V3.0 * * * 1.0 INTRODUCTION The INTERSTATE TRAVELER is a graphical travel planner, designed to create itineraries, expense estimates, and maps for road trips throughout the contiguous United States. The program displays a map of the United States and provides the user with multiple zoom-in capabilities for viewing areas in greater detail. Trips are planned in two stages. First, a route is planned by clicking the mouse on a sequence of map locations in a point- to-point manner. The view of the map can be changed as the route progresses. Cities and highways can be easily added along the way. The route can be backed-up to any marker on the route and continued in any direction from there. The second stage of trip planning involves preparing an itin- erary for the selected route. The itinerary includes arrival and departure times, driving distances and times, stop times, expenses, and notes important to the trip. The program also displays maps of selected individual U.S. cities. These maps show the locations of major highways; features, such as rivers and lakes; and the locations of points- of-interest. This screen also provides brief descriptions of the points-of-interest, as well as population and weather information. With these maps you can find routes around the larger cities or locate places to visit. The maps displayed on the screen are intended primarily for planning purposes. In order to keep them readable, the amount of information shown on them must be limited. On an actual trip, you should take along more detailed maps. @ 04 2.0 SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS + IBM or IBM-compatible PC + 640K RAM + VGA graphics card and monitor + Hard disk with 2 MB free space + Microsoft-compatible mouse + Dot matrix printer (Epson/IBM compatible) + DOS 3.3 or greater 3.0 INSTALLING AND RUNNING THE PROGRAM 3.1 Installing the program on a hard disk + Place the first (or only) program diskette into the appropriate drive (A: or B:). + Make that drive the default drive. + Key-in 'INSTALL' and press ENTER. + Follow the instructions that appear on the screen. 3.2 Running the program from the hard drive + Make your hard drive the default drive. + Make the directory containing the program files the default directory (cd\ist30, for example). + Key-in IST and press ENTER. @ 05 4.0 GENERAL INFORMATION 4.1 The message field at the bottom of the main screen displays instructions, prompts, statistics, and error messages for the user. 4.2 City locations are indicated on the map by dark red markers in zoom-level 1 and by dark and light red markers in zoom-level 2. Highway junctions are shown as light blue markers in zoom-level 2. 4.3 Junctions are points where highways intersect and no city exists. 4.4 City markers circled in white mark those cities which have individual city maps. 4.5 Interstate highways are shown as white lines on the map. Federal and state highways are indicated by yellow lines. 4.6 Time zone boundaries are indicated by black dashed lines. 4.7 The boundaries of national parks and monuments are shown as light green dotted lines. 4.8 Trips can be saved as trip files and continued at a later time. 4.9 Adding new features to the screen maps may require reference to a road atlas or printed map. 4.10 A number of turnpikes, parkways, and expressways appear on the map. These are identified with the following three letter codes. INT - Indian Nations Turnpike, OK MUT - Muskogee Turnpike, OK AUP - Audubon Parkway, KY BGP - Blue Grass Parkway, KY GRP - Green River Parkway, KY PEP - Pennyrile Parkway, KY PUP - Purchase Parkway, KY WKP - Western Kentucky Parkway, KY BLE - Bee Line Expressway, FL FLT - Florida's Turnpike, FL ACE - Atlantic City Expressway, NJ GST - Garden State Turnpike, NJ NJT - New Jersey Turnpike, NJ 4.11 The number of locations included in a single route is limited to 50. A warning message will appear after selecting the 45th location in a route. Trips requiring more that 50 locations in the route should be planned as two or more smaller trips. @ 06 4.12 The quality of the screen prints may vary with the mode setting (Epson, IBM, etc.) of the dot matrix printer. The IBM mode appears to produce the best map prints, while the Epson mode produces a more readable itinerary. 5.0 SETUP Setup is entered from the title screen. Move the cursor to the 'Setup' button and click the LEFT mouse button once. For on-line help, select the 'Help' button on the 'Setup' screen. The options available in setup are described below. 5.1 U.S. Map On the U.S. map, two-character (postal) state codes and/or the Interstate Highway System can be displayed. Move the cursor to the appropriate box or boxes and click the LEFT mouse button once. 5.2 Driving Speed In this field, enter the percent of the speed limit (55 or 65) you expect to drive during your trips. Move the cursor to any point within the field and click the LEFT mouse button once. This will locate the blicking under- line cursor in the first character position of the field. Move the mouse cursor to any character position in the field and click the LEFT mouse button once to move the underline cursor to that character position (or use the space bar). Then, key-in the desired value (for example, enter '95' to indicate that you will drive at 95% of the speed limits). The driving times between locations will be adjusted by this factor. 6.0 MAIN SCREEN BUTTONS Exit - Use the 'Exit' button to return to the operating system. If you have created a new trip file, you will be allowed to name and save it. File - Use the 'File' (Files) button to delete or copy (and re- name) saved trip files. See section 11.0 for details. Prnt - Use the 'Prnt' (Print) button to make prints of any of the maps shown on the screen. See comment at 4.12. @ 07 Zin - Use the 'Zin' (Zoom-In) button to display a smaller, more detailed view of the map. See section 7.1 for details. Zout - Use the 'Zout' (Zoom-Out) button to return to a previous zoom level or to the map of the United States. See section 7.6 for details. Pan - Use the 'Pan' button to re-center the map on the screen. See section 7.5 for details. Map - Use the 'Map' (US Map) button to return to the full map of the United States from either zoom level. Plan - Use the 'Plan' button to start a new trip or to continue a saved trip. See sections 7.0 and 8.0 for details. Back - Use the 'Back' (Back-up) button to back-up to any marker on the route. The route will be deleted back to this point and can be continued from there. See section 7.4 for details. Itin - Use the 'Itin' (Itinerary) button to prepare an itinerary and an estimate of expenses for the route specified earlier. See section 9.0 for details. City - Use the 'City' button to display maps of the major cities in the United States. See section 10.0 for details. Help - Use the 'Help' button to display on-line information about these buttons. 7.0 PLANNING THE ROUTE OF A NEW TRIP 7.1 Zooming-in New routes must begin in zoom-levels 1 or 2. To zoom-in, move the cursor to the 'Zin' button and click the LEFT mouse button once. The zoom frame will appear at the center of the screen. Move the cursor to the center of the area of interest and click the LEFT mouse button once to move the frame to that new center. When satisfied with the position of the frame, double-click the LEFT mouse button to perform the zoom-in. Use this procedure to move from the U.S. map to zoom-level 1 and again to move to zoom-level 2. Only major cities and highways are displayed in zoom-level 1. As a result, routes can be planned more quickly and over larger distances. Different routes can be more easily com- pared for distance and driving time. Zoom-level 2 displays a smaller, more detailed area and includes many more cities and highways. @ 08 7.2 Starting the Trip Once at the zoom level of choice, select the 'Plan' button. The 'Plan a Trip' panel will appear. To start a new trip, select the 'New Trip' button. If a route was created prior to selecting the 'New Trip' button, the 'Save Trip File?' panel will appear and allow that trip to be saved before starting the new one. To save it, select the 'Yes' button, enter a trip name of eight char- acters or less, and press ENTER. Click on the 'No' button to continue without saving the trip file. 7.3 Selecting the Route To select the starting location of the route, move the cursor to any point on the map and click the LEFT mouse button once. If this location is on one of the city or junction markers, the name of the city or junction will appear in the message field at the bottom of the screen. Otherwise, a new city marker will be drawn to mark the starting location of the trip. It will be identified in the message field as a 'User City'. If the second location on the route is a city or junction marker, move the cursor to that location and click the LEFT mouse button once. The route will be drawn as a black dashed line. If the second location is to be a point on a highway or in open space, move the cursor to that location. Click the LEFT mouse button to draw the route to that point and NOT place a new city marker there. Click the RIGHT mouse button to draw the route to that point and to place a new city marker there. All new city markers will have to be identified when preparing the itinerary. The unmarked loca- tions are usually points where the route will change direc- tion. Continue to click on the sequence of locations which mark the route until it reaches the final destination. The message field at the bottom of the screen will show the driving distance and time from the start of the route to each selected location. If a highway or a portion of a highway connects two selected locations, the route will follow the highway from the first location to the second. At any point along the route, the itinerary up to that point can be displayed by selecting the 'Itin' button. See section 9.0 for information about the itinerary. Also, a print of any map shown on the screen can be made at any time. Simply select the 'Prnt' button. See comment at 4.12. @ 09 See the file 'SAMPLE.RUN' for a detailed example of planning a route. 7.4 Backing-up While selecting the route of the trip, it is possible to back- up to any marker on the route and erase the route back to that location. Select the 'Back' button, then move the cursor to the marker of choice, and click the LEFT mouse button once. The map will be redrawn with the route shown up to the point selected. Continue the route from that location. 7.5 Panning The map on the screen can be re-centered by first selecting the 'Pan' button. Then, move the cursor to any point on the map and click the LEFT mouse button once. The map will be redrawn with the selected point at the center of the screen. 7.6 Zooming-out Select the 'Zout' button to return to zoom-level 1 from zoom- level 2 or to the U.S. map from zoom-level 1. Select the 'Map' button to return directly to the U.S. map from either zoom-level 1 or 2. IMPORTANT: If you are planning a route in zoom-level 2 and wish to zoom out to zoom-level 1, move to a dark red marker before doing so. This is required since only dark red markers are displayed and can be connected in zoom-level 1. 8.0 LOADING AND CONTINUING A SAVED TRIP To load a previously saved trip (route and itinerary) and continue work on it, first select the 'Plan' button. On the 'Plan a Trip' panel which appears, select the 'Load Trip' button. Select the trip file to load by clicking anywhere in the 'File Name' field. A list of trip file names will appear. Double- click on the name of the trip to load and then select the 'OK' button (or the 'Quit' button to return to the main screen without loading a trip file). The trip will be displayed on the screen and can be continued from the last location on the route. The itinerary for the trip will also be loaded and can viewed by selecting the 'Itin' button. @ 10 9.0 PREPARING AN ITINERARY After planning the trip route, the itinerary and estimate of expenses can be prepared. Move the cursor to the 'Itin' button and click the LEFT mouse button. The itinerary screen will appear, listing the locations selected for the route along with departure and arrival times for each loca- tion. Many fields on this screen can and will be changed in preparing the itinerary. The following describes each column of the 'Itinerary' screen. 9.1 Location column This column lists the locations that were selected for the route of the trip. The locations are entered such that arrival and departure times can be displayed for each. The distance and driving time between locations is also displayed in this column. Fields that correspond to locations that were added to the map, will be blank. These must be filled-in with the names of the added locations. First, move the mouse cursor to the field and click the LEFT mouse button once. The blinking underline cursor will appear in the field. If needed, move the underline cursor to the first character position of the field (use the mouse or backspace key). Key-in the name of the added location. Do this for each blank location field. Move to a field by moving the mouse cursor to that field and clicking the LEFT mouse button once (or use the tab or arrow keys). The space bar, delete key, or backspace key can also be used to edit a field. 9.2 D/A Times column This column contains the departure and arrival times for each location along the route. The initial departure time is set to 12:00p and should be changed to the expected start time of the trip. Move the underline cursor to that field by clicking anywhere in the field, then change the time as needed (from 12:00p to 09:30a, for example). Next, select the 'Recalc' button to recalculate the sub- sequent arrival and departure times based on the new starting time. Do not change any other arrival or depart- ure times, except as noted in the discussion of the 'Stop Time' column below. 9.3 Stop Time column This column contains the times for stops made along the route of the trip. These stops can be for food, gas, rest, visits, etc. Move the mouse cursor to the appropriate field and click the LEFT mouse button once to move the underline cursor to that field. Key-in the time of the stop. @ 11 To plan an overnight stop at a location, enter the word 'stop' (rather than a time) in the 'Stop Time' field on the arrival line of that location . On the departure line and in the 'D/A Times' field for this location, enter the time that the trip will be resumed (09:00a the next day, for example). Select the 'Recalc' button to update the arrival and departure times that follow. 9.4 Expense column Use this column to record the expected expenses for each leg of the trip. Use the 'Notes' column to itemize the expenses, if needed. 9.5 Notes column Use this column for recording information important to the trip. The program will place the highway numbers between locations in these fields. You can add dates, a breakdown of expenses, information about motels, hotels, or places you expect to stay or visit. Use the 'Recalc' button to recalculate arrival and depart- ure times after each change to a time field. Select the 'Print' button to print the itinerary. Select the 'Quit' button to return to the main screen. The itinerary will be saved as shown on the screen. The tab and arrow keys can be used to move between the fields on the 'Itinerary' screen. See the 'SAMPLE.RUN' file for a detailed example of preparing an itinerary. 10.0 DISPLAYING CITY MAPS To display maps of the major cities in the United States, select the 'City' button while in the first or second zoom- levels. Then, move the cursor to any of the city markers circled in white and click the LEFT mouse button once. Once the city map screen appears, only the buttons in the lower left corner of the screen will be active. @ 12 10.1 OK button Select this button to display information about the points- of-interest in the city. Move the cursor to any line on the list of POIs and click the LEFT mouse button once. Then, select the 'OK' button. Click the mouse again to remove this information display from the screen. 10.2 Info button Select this button to display weather, population, and alti- tude information about the city. Click the LEFT mouse button again to return to the city map. 10.3 Print button Select this button to make a print of the city map shown on the screen. 10.4 Quit button Select this button to return to the main screen. 11.0 DELETING AND COPYING TRIP FILES To delete or copy a trip file, select the 'File' button. 11.1 Deleting Trip Files On the 'Trip Files' panel which appears, select the 'Delete' button. Then, click anywhere in the 'File Name' field to produce a list of saved trip file names. Double-click on the name of the trip file to delete, then select the 'OK' button to perform the delete. Select the 'Quit' button to return to the main screen without deleting a trip file. 11.2 Copying a Trip File On the 'Trip Files' panel, select the 'Copy' button. Then, click anywhere in the 'File Name' field to produce a list of saved trip file names. Double-click on the name of the file to copy. Next, enter a trip file name of eight characters or less in the 'New Name' field. Finally, select the 'OK' button to perform the copy. Or, select the 'Quit' button to return to the main screen without making a copy of the file.