Piper's Pit BBS/FTP: ibm 0330 - 0339/ibm0330-0339/ibm0333.tar/ibm0333/COMPRIT1.ZIP/README.TXT

Text File | 1994-12-15 | 15.1 KB | 406 lines

      CompareRite 5.03, maintenance release, December, 1994

                     **** RELEASE NOTES ****

TRADEMARK INFORMATION

Please note: The trademark and copyright information
contained in the CompareRite online help documentation and the
CompareRite User Manual is no longer accurate. The accurate
information is as follows: CompareRite is a trademark of Reed
Elsevier Properties Inc., used under license. Copyright (C) 1994
Reed Elsevier Properties Inc. and Jurisoft, a division of Reed
Elsevier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

DIRECTCONNECT DISCONTINUED:

Please note:  Jurisoft DirectConnect, referenced in the
CompareRite online help documentation and CompareRite
User Manual is no longer available.

CERTIFICATION:

In addition to the formats already supported,
CompareRite 5.03 compares standard text (not necessarily tables,
text boxes, etc.) created with Word 6.0 for Windows.

AESTHETICS ISSUES--THE WAY THE COMPARISON IS BUILT:

CompareRite 5.03 addresses two more aesthetics issues (in addition
to those changes documented in the CompareRite 5.02 release notes,
below):

The comparison engine now produces output that better represents
the comparison method you selected (i.e., pinpoint, normal or broad).
Previously, for example, a comparison of "The store will open
Tuesday" against changed text of "The baseball strike drags on" might
have shown the initial "The" as unchanged even when the broad comparison
method was chosen.

You also may notice that the percentage complete moves to decimal
points as it passes through 70-76 percent.  The counter is now more
sensitive while the engine moves through its more particular analysis.

Previously, if a document contained virtually identical paragraphs
nearby one another, the comparison engine occasionally mismatched the
paragraphs when comparing the original and revised documents. The
comparison engine now performs additional analysis in order to better
match the appropriate paragraphs.

@LIST SUPPORT FOR COMMAND LINE SWITCHES:

THE @List feature under Windows failed to support command line
switches such as /w or /d, helpful for integration with document
management systems.  This problem is now fixed.

UNSUPPORTED ITEMS:

Comparisons of Word 6.0 for Windows documents have the following
known problems:

Automatic Heading Numbering is not supported.  CompareRite doesn't
show changes in numbering included as part of the format of
heading text.

Word 6.0 for Windows list autonumbering is not supported.

Word 6.0 list numbering using field codes is supported (as
is the case in Word 2.0 with CompareRite).

The CompareRite 5.03 program has not changed table handling--
meaning that you will still see non-intuitive comparisons within
tables.  If you have difficulty with tables, try making the
original and revised tables of the same size by adding blank rows
or columns.  You might also choose to not show deleted text for
columns (it preserves the formatting) or you could skip the text
of the tables using skip text markers.

You may find undesirable formatting in your output document when
CompareRite shows changes in text that is situated next to
field codes.  CompareRite, as a rule, carries forward the font or
field formatting from the revised document.  The formatting
applied to unusual characters or fields may not come out as it
did in the original document (it may assume the formatting of the
revised document).  In this instance, you might try turning off
the surrounding characters option.

Microsoft's OLE 2.0 DLL's are necessary in order to read Word 6.0
files.  The CompareRite 5.03 installation program now installs
these files, but does not install the files to individual
workstations running from a single network location.  You must
make sure that each machine running the CompareRite 5.03 program
has the proper DLL's installed in its Windows System directory.
If necessary, you can use the CompareRite installation to perform
a "dummy" installation to each workstation.  The installation
process will update the workstation's OLE DLLs and will check for
the proper version of each DLL.


            CompareRite 5.02, maintenance release, August, 1994

                        ****   RELEASE NOTES   ****

CompareRite 5.02 offers the following improvements:

CERTIFICATION

In addition to the formats already supported,
CompareRite 5.02 compares standard text (not necessarily tables,
text boxes, etc.) created with the following word processors:

AmiPro 3.1
AmiPro 3.01
WordPerfect 6.1 for Windows
WordPerfect 6.0a for Windows
WordPerfect 6.0b for DOS
WordPerfect 5.1+ for DOS

AESTHETICS ISSUES--THE WAY THE COMPARISON IS BUILT:

Jurisoft occasionally receives document samples from CompareRite
users in which a particular comparison is "accurate" but not shown
the way the user would expect; in other cases the comparison
engine simply needs to be adjusted to handle unexpected
situations.  Jurisoft refers to these requests as "aesthetics"
issues.  CompareRite 5.02 addresses two very specific aesthetics
issues:

First, the comparison engine now avoids a rare instance in which
it finds too many changes when certain percentages of similarity
occur between paragraphs or other segments of text.  The engine
now focuses on the more similar text rather than the less similar
text.  The result is a cleaner comparison report which shows the
text as moved (deleted and added elsewhere) rather than "jumbled"
together as one or more change.

Second, the comparison engine until this release did not consider
certain relationships between some textual items.  Without
considering the relations, CompareRite sometimes caused whole
sections of text to appear as added and then deleted whereas a
human would have found more common text.  CompareRite now
recognizes these distinctions and produces a report showing the
common text as unchanged.

Note that these aesthetics issues tend to be very specific to the
text, down to the phrase or word level.  Sometimes the issues are
a matter of preference as to what looks best.  In any case, if you
encounter some instance in which you feel the comparison is still
lacking, please let us know.  We cannot promise to quickly change
aesthetics issues, but welcome your input!

Send the original, revised and output document samples to

CompareRite Technical Product Manager
Jurisoft
955 Cambridge, MA  02139
[phone]

Please send these as electronic documents and include a
description in a readme.txt file.  Attach your COMPDEF.SYS (or
your specific COMPDEF file with your user extension)  This
indicates your options set info which we use to duplicate your
operating environment.  Describe the exact nature of the
aesthetics issue.  All information you send should be public and
non-proprietary.

Call first if you have security concerns.

ENVIRONMENT SUPPORT

CompareRite 5.02 adds support for environment variables as part of
the document path and enhances support for Network IDs.

When launching CompareRite 5.02 from a directory on the network
other than the directory the program is in, the DOS program now
does not crash when attempting to access options sets and the
Windows program successfully writes an output file.

MONOCHROME SCREENS

Some users experienced a blank engine status screen when using
monochrome monitors.  The problem occurs on screens which
interpret a blue background as white.  CompareRite 5.02 now
accommodates this interpretation so that the status screen is not
blank.

COMPLEX DOCUMENTS

CompareRite 5.02 gracefully indicates when certain documents
contain too many changes for its memory allocation to handle with
the error "Document too complex.  Split and recompare."  This
change replaces some "Reversal in Changes List" error messages
with a more comprehensible message.



                             DOCUMENTATION CHANGES

Pages 5, 10: "Note that the CompareRite program creates a default
redline filename for you."

CORRECTION:   You must specify a redline filename; no default is
provided.

Page 21:     "To display list of settings associated with an
option, highlight the option and press F2 or ENTER."

CORRECTION:   You must press ENTER. Pressing F2 will not display
settings.

Pages 56-7:   "In the Windows version, the default text is
Jurisoft copyright information. In the DOS version, these two
lines of banner text provide information on navigating the Main
Menu.

CORRECTION:   The banner lines will remain blank unless the user
defines the lines BANNER1 and BANNER2 in the COMPARE.INI file. The
text can be defined only once for both DOS and Windows versions.


** Editing the Banner Lines in the COMPARE.INI **

In order to display the ampersand (&) symbol in a banner line in
your COMPARE.INI, you must include && in the BANNER = line. For
example, BANNER1 = Smith && Jones.


** Read, Write, Create & Share Requirements **

Except for the COMPDEF.xxx and COMPDIR.xxx files, all files must
be shareable.

If you want to modify, delete or create new option sets, the files
associated with option set libraries (such as GLOBAL.OSL and
PERSONAL.OSL) must be read/write.

In LANtastic, files are made shareable by setting them to
read-only. Note that if the COMPDIR files in a concurrent network
setup are set to read-only, the NETMGR program will fail with a
run-time error 103. In order to avoid this problem, make sure you
can write to the COMPARE.OWN file and the COMPDIR files.  Once you
have completed network set up, you can then set these files to
read-only and shareable.


**  Providing a Network ID **

The priority order for network ID values is as follows:

1.  Entering an ID from the command line (for ex., COMPARE -n XXX)
2.  Including an ID in the COMPARE.INI file (NETID = XXX)
3.  Providing an ID as part of an environment variable during
    NETMGR set up.
4.  Specifying that you will use a common ID as part of NETMGR set
    up.
5.  Responding to the prompt for an ID.


**  User Defined Surrounding Characters  **

The maximum number of characters accepted in the edit box is 7.
You should enter a string of three characters (to mark the
beginning of changed text), a space, and a string of three
additional characters (to mark the end of the changed text).

Use the space between the first and string of characters for
clarity. If you do not include a space between character strings,
the program acts on the string length as follows:

1, 2 or 3 characters:      String used to delineate both the
                           beginning and end of the changed text.

4, 5, 6 or 7 characters:   First three characters to mark
                           beginning of changed text, remaining
                           (up to three characters) used to mark
                           end of changed text.


**  Viewer Limitation  **

The Viewer (VIEWER.COM) will fail and exit with an error message
if the CompareRite program directory is either not the working
directory or not in the path.


**  Installing from DOS, Accessing from Windows  **

If you install CompareRite 5.02 from DOS and then wish to access
it from Windows, you will need to create a CompareRite icon.

Follow these steps:

1.  Click in the program group into which you wish to add
    CompareRite.

2.  Choose FILE from the Program Manager Menu. From the File menu,
    choose NEW.

3.  Choose PROGRAM ITEM  and fill in the fields as follows:

    Description:         CompareRite 5.02
    Command line:        <path>\compare
    Working directory:   <path>

    where <path> is the full path of the directory containing the
    CompareRite 5.02 program.

4.  Choose CHANGE ICON. The Change Icon box displays the icon
    associated with the CompareRite program. Click on OK.

5.  From the Program Item Properties box, click on OK to accept
    the new program item.

6.  You are now ready to run CompareRite 5.02 from Windows.


**  Word for Windows Documents Which Are "Too Complex To Create" **

If you are comparing Word for Windows documents, you may receive
the message WORD FOR WINDOWS FILE TOO COMPLEX TO CREATE. This can
occur even if the original documents themselves are not especially
lengthy.

The culprit in these instances is heavy formatting (such as
underlining) which has been added to the document without using a
style.

To try and remedy the situation, use styles to indicate extensive
underlining and other such formatting.

COMPARERITE 5.02 INCLUDES THE FOLLOWING 5.01 IMPROVEMENTS:


SUPPORTS WORD FOR WINDOWS AUTOMATIC PARAGRAPH NUMBERING FEATURE

CompareRite 5.01 shows changes to paragraph numbers in Word for
Windows 2.0 documents, even when these numbers were created using
the Word for Windows autoparagraph numbering feature.

INCREASES THE NUMBER OF TEXT ATTRIBUTE CHANGES ALLOWED IN WORD FOR
WINDOWS 2.0 DOCUMENTS

Earlier versions of CompareRite could not compare documents which
included large numbers of character attribute or paragraph style
changes. In such cases, the program generated the error message
WORD FOR WINDOWS FILE TOO COMPLEX TO CREATE. CompareRite can now
handle approximately twice the number of such changes, increasing
the range of heavily formatted documents you can compare using
the program.

RETURNS THE USER RUNNING FROM THE COMMAND LINE TO THE PROGRAM FROM
WHICH COMPARERITE WAS LAUNCHED

                  *** CompareRite 5.01 Release Notes***

Running CompareRite 5.0 from the command line returned the user to
the Program Manager. CompareRite 5.01 returns the user to the
program (such as SoftSolutions) from which CompareRite was
launched.

IMPROVES PERFORMANCE WHEN USING TEXT AT END COMPARISON OPTION

CompareRite 5.01 improves the speed with which these comparisons
are done.

ADDRESSES PROBLEMS IN SPECIFIC WORD FOR WINDOWS 2.0 FILES
RESULTING IN GENERAL PROTECTION FAULT ERROR MESSAGE.

Note that, since these problems are document specific, not all
error conditions which generate this error message were addressed.

ADDRESSES PROBLEMS IN SPECIFIC WORDPERFECT FOR WINDOWS 6.0 FILES
RESULTING IN GENERAL PROTECTION FAULT ERROR MESSAGE.

Note that, since these problems are document specific, not all
error conditions which generate this error message were addressed.

ADDRESSES PROBLEMS IN SPECIFIC WORDPERFECT FOR DOS 6.0 FILES
RESULTING IN UNABLE TO OPEN FILE ERROR MESSAGE.

Note that, since these problems are document specific, not all
error conditions which generate this error message were addressed.

ADDRESSES INTERFACE ISSUES: WINDOWS

- CLOSE and HELP buttons now work with document management
systems.

- ALT-X and TAB functions now work after running a comparison.

ADDRESSES INTERFACE ISSUES: DOS

- Addresses the problem working with file names containing special
  characters.

- CTRL-P feature now works in original file name field.

IMPROVED DIAGNOSTIC CAPABILITIES

- File error messages now include the missing file name

- BATCH MODE ENGINE FAILURE messages now contain specific error
  information