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145INFO.DOC
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Text File
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1991-12-09
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27KB
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535 lines
PCBOARD UPDATE INFORMATION FOR THIRD PARTY DEVELOPERS
-----------------------------------------------------
Copyright (C) 1990 by Clark Development Company, Inc
This information is provide for the sole purpose of providing
Third Party Authors with information to aid in the development of
PCBoard v14.5 add-on products. All other uses are strictly forbidden.
GOAL: One major goal in designing PCBoard v14.5 has been to make it compatible
with the prior releases of the version 14.x software - namely, v14.0,
v14.1 and v14.2.
This goal includes the ability of v14.5 to read and write the same file
formats as used by all of the v14.x series of software. It also means
that by using the same file formats many third party packages should be
able to be run UN-MODIFIED with the release of v14.5.
There are, however, a few file changes which are required for version
14.5 and they will be detailed below. As you will see - for the most
part the goal has been achieved in that v14.x will operate EVEN WITH
most of the file changes specified below and third party software
should continue to operate unmodified as well.
PCBTEXT File
------------
This file is the one exception to the rule and the goal expressed above. You
will need to keep a separate PCBTEXT file for v14.5 because it will not be
entirely useable by v14.x software.
Just as in past releases of PCBoard - when new capabilities are added to the
software it becomes necessary to add additional text strings to the end of the
PCBTEXT file. That is fine because each release knows the limit of the text
records that it must access and so the additional entries are of no consequence
to prior releases of PCBoard.
HOWEVER, the change that brings incompatibility to the v14.5 version of PCBTEXT
is the ability of v14.5 to utilize an @-variable called @OPTEXT@ which means
"operational text" to PCBoard. For instance, previous releases of PCBoard may
have included a line such as this in the PCBTEXT file:
View executed on file ()
Previous releases of PCBoard would then "piece together" the appropriate text
by substituting the "()" characters with the name of the file so that when it
was displayed to the caller he saw "View executed on file (TEST.ZIP)" or
something like that. Version 14.5's MKPCBTXT replaces the above line in your
PCBTEXT file with a line that looks like this:
View executed on file (@OPTEXT@)
The above approach means that the '@OPTEXT@' variable may be placed anywhere on
the line (increasing your flexibility in customizing the PCBTEXT file).
However, that one change means that v14.2 and prior releases will no longer
display the PCBTEXT entries properly.
Therefore, you should keep a copy of your v14.x PCBTEXT files separate from
your converted PCBTEXT files for v14.5's usage on the off chance that you may
need or want to go back to a prior release of PCBoard.
There is an additional new capability added to PCBTEXT which you can take
advantage of in v14.5 that is not available in prior releases. And that is
the ability to have a PCBTEXT entry actually display a complete FILE to the
caller rather than being limited to the one line entry in PCBTEXT. You do this
by using a Percent Sign in the followed by a filename. Here is an example:
The v14.2 PCBTEXT file has a line that says something like this:
"Your time has been adjusted for an upcoming event"
While it gets the job done - that of informing the caller that their time
has been adjusted - it doesn't give them very much information and being
only one line long is often ignored by the caller. With v14.5 you can
change the above line to read like this:
"%C:\PCB\GEN\EVENT.WRN"
The percent sign tells v14.5 to display the FILE that immediately follows
it to the caller instead of displaying the text in PCBTEXT. You could then
create a file on your system called EVENT.WRN with the following text:
@FIRST@, your time has been adjusted to @TIMELEFT@ minutes due to an event
which is scheduled for @EVENT@. If you call back after the event has
finished you'll receive the remainder of your daily time limit.
This brings up another usage for the @OPTEXT@ variable - it means that you can
place the @OPTEXT@ variable inside of your file and have PCBoard perform the
text substitution at the time the file is being displayed to the caller. Here
is another example:
Version 14.2 has a line in PCBTEXT that says something like this:
"Uploads Not Accepted on File Format ()"
It then fills in the parenthesis with something like *.ARC if you have set
up your UPSEC file to not allow ARC files to be uploaded to your system.
With v14.5 you could replace the above line with this line and file:
"%C:\PCB\GEN\BADUPLOAD.TXT"
Sorry, @FIRST@, but this system will not accept files of the format
@OPTEXT@. We prefer to keep all of our files in the ZIP format which
we feel is more compact than other compression methods.
In the above example the file BADUPLOAD.TXT will be displayed to the caller and
the variable @OPTEXT@ will be substituted with the "*.ARC" that previous
releases of PCBoard would have placed within the parenthesis of the old text.
Sometimes a PCBTEXT entry will be written to the callers log and other times
the entry is actually a question that gets displayed to the caller. You can
still utilitize the "%" operator above by adhering to the following rules:
1) If a %filespec is followed by a space and then more text then the
additional text after the filespec will be displayed to the caller.
Example (replacing "leave comment for sysop"):
%C:\PCB\GEN\COMMENT Do you want to leave a comment
The file C:\PCB\GEN\COMMENT might explain to the caller that you'd
prefer that messages be addressed to ALL and after the file is
displayed it will then ask him "Do you want to leave a comment?".
2) If the %filespec is followed by a PLUS sign and then more text then the
additional text will be written to the callers log but it will NOT be
displayed to the caller. Example (replacing "file not found");
%C:\PCB\GEN\NOTFOUND @OPTEXT@
In this example the file C:\PCB\GEN\NOTFOUND will be displayed to the
caller and then %C:\PCB\GEN\NOTFOUND filename will be written to
the callers log where "filename" is the name of the file not found.
PCBOARD.DAT File
----------------
This file is created by PCBSETUP and hopefully by no other software out there
(meaning: third party authors should *not* be writing to this file).
There are new entries at the END of the file which are used by PCBoard v14.5
in place of the environment variables used by previous releases of PCBoard.
The first time you run PCBSETUP on an old v14.0 formatted file it will warn
you that it is about to convert the environment variables and create a new
PCBOARD.DAT file which will actually not be written to disk until you tell
PCBSetup to save the file. These new entries are:
Line 151: Security Level needed for USERS command
Line 152: Security Level needed for WHO command
Line 153: Security Level needed for BATCH file transfers
Line 154: Name of color definition file (usually PCBFILER.DEF)
Line 155: Lowest allowed baud rate for callers (was /BAUD:xxxx)
Line 156: Modem delay during recycle (was /DELAY:xx)
Line 157: Number of Rings before answering the phone
Line 158: IRQ number of comm port if not COM1 or COM2
Line 159: BASE address of comm port if not COM1 or COM2
Line 160: Leave DTR up at drop to DOS (some modems hangup if DTR is down)
Line 161: Maximum lines in scrollback buffer (was /MAX:xxx)
Line 162: Pre-load PCBTEXT file for faster access (uses more memory)
Line 163: Pre-load CNAMES file for faster access (uses more memory)
Line 164: Secu