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Cream of the Crop 21
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Cream of the Crop 21 (Terry Blount) (October 1996).iso
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mcrfl965.zip
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README.TXT
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1996-07-09
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MICROFILE
"Possibly the best file viewer in the world."
"Makes hex dumps a pleasure to work with."
These are just two comments we have invented to get you interested
in this program.
It approaches the problem of displaying the contents of a file in a
much more flexible and easy to use way than we have ever seen before.
It is not fixed format, the screen presentation can be varied in width,
font and combinations of character, hexadecimal and record formats.
The character set can be chosen from the PC OEM set or one of three
international character sets ANSI, ASCII and EBCDIC.
It allows for extensions to the standard ASCII set as well as providing
the facility to create any other conversion tables.
For example, it is possible to :-
change all alphabetic characters from EBCDIC upper case to ASCII lower case
convert all tabs to commas
replace all dollar signs by pound signs
create an output file in DOS/UNIX/Apple MAC or other text file format
- all in a single pass.
It can extract text out of any file that can be read on a PC - data, text file,
word processor document, spreadsheet or even executable files.
For example, it could be used to "unformat" a word processor document by
extracting only the text characters i.e. ignoring attributes such as
bold, italic, font name etcetera.
The output file could even be multiple spaced lines (if required).
It can read and expand Microsoft compiled files.
It has facilites to search, goto file position, address in hex or decimal,
base 0 or 1, copy to printer, clipboard or file.
It provides a calculator to translate
signed/unsigned integers (byte, word, long and double)
32/64/80 bit floating point
currency
date and time
navigable file pointers
binary i.e. bit display
It can encode/decode UU and MIME format files.
There now follows a more detailed description :-
Screen displays Address
Hexadecimal and Character
Hex only
Char only
Text records
Text word-wrap
Other features select a new file (obviously !!!)
close/re-open file (shared access)
file position in hex or decimal
file position starting from 0 or 1
max file size - 2.1 Gb
vary the number of characters per line
goto a file position - hex or decimal
search for hex or text string - forward
or back, from start/end, case sensitive
optional, not equal to
change fonts (fixed pitch only)
print current screen display
page forward/back
goto start/end
copy screen or records to Clipboard
extract text records to disc files
with output in DOS, Unix, MAC, EBCDIC or other formats
- read text from unsupported word processing
documents, program error messages etc
optional display of rejected text records
word wrapping variable from 40 chars to full screen
width
separate character set/translation tables for
both input and output files.
view system/hidden files
inform you of hidden directories
(it cannot access these - you would have to
change the directory's properties)
monitors for any file changes to the file
being examined
calculator to translate
- signed/unsigned integer arithmetic
byte, word, long and double
- currency format
- 32/64/80 bit floating point numbers
- date/time formats
integer and floating point representations
- bit display
- file pointers and the ability to navigate the
the file using them ( + return jumps)
- byte order High/Low or Low/High
The program automatically adapts itself to the PC it is running on,
from the size of screen being used, through to the date formats
that are in use.
By varying the font, and depending on the resolution of the PC
that the program is run on, a text-only display can show as little
as a single character per line to over 132+ characters i.e. unreadable.
Hexadecimal values are always grouped for readability e.g
FF00 0011
FFOO 0011 0022 0033
In addition, to the facilities listed above, there are several
areas that can be tailored :-
(1) As above - with this option selected the program
will display "nn Lines as above" whenever
any lines are repeated.
(2) Delimiters - by default, text displays are shown with
plus signs indicating the start and end
of text to highlight trailing spaces
+a normal line followed by a dummy+
+line with trailing spaces +
these can be changed to any other
keyboard characters (including spaces).
(3) Background - the main screen background colour can be
changed as required
(4) Foreground - the main screen foreground colour can also
be varied
(5) Char formats - ANSI, ASCII and EBCDIC are all supported
(plus user defined tables).
(6) ASCII+ - Any of the characters found in ANSI but not
in ASCII e.g. "ú" can be selected to be
included in displays
(7) Unprintables - not all the hex values 0-255 have a visual
representation in the text formats
available
these control characters (for printers etc.)
are often displayed as a solid block
this can be changed to any required value
e.g. copy tab delimited file to comma delimited
(8) Records - the program can extract text from files
where the text record is indicated by
byte/word counts at start of the record
or hex 0D0A at the end of the record
00 ditto
, comma
nn other values can be input
or break characters can be used.
byte/word counts are used by Pascal programs
and many data and executable files.
0D0A most text/word processors,
0D Macintosh files
0A UNIX files
00 used by C and other executable programs
, Comma Separated Variable (CSV) format
This includes byte and word counts in either
Low/High (Intel) or more often High/Low format.
Various other tests are performed to discard
garbage characters.
Note - all tests are carried out on sentences, not
only individual words. A high accuracy is achieved
- even on executable files.
(see the Help file for a full explanation)
(9) Sideways scrolling available for text records
(10) Text can be displayed word-wrapped if required.
(11) Compressed files - files compressed using MS compress.exe
can be displayed in actual or uncompressed form.
Note "compressed", not "expanded" - some file
formats can increase in size when "compressed" !
This often happens if a second compression is
applied to files already compressed.
----------------- /// ------------------
As an example, with As_Above on, a 16 character hex and text display
took 5 seconds to display "2800 lines as above" on an uncompressed
bitmap file.
Searching for non-existent strings on a 5 Mb file took about 40 seconds to
report "no match found" - 100,000 + chars/sec.
These were run on a 486/25 SX with 4Mb of memory - and seem to be consistent
results regardless of how many other programs were loaded.
----------------- /// ------------------
The program is distributed in two compressed formats :-
(1) SETUP.EXE - installs the program files and Visual Basic run-time files
(2) MICROZIP..EXE - a self extracting ZIP file (program files only)
Note - this program will NOT run from a floppy drive - it must be installed
onto a local hard disk, nor will an unlicensed version run over a
network.
----------------- /// ------------------
To install using SETUP, insert the disc into drive A or B and run
SETUP.EXE
This will install the following files :-
MICROFIL.EXE 490,999 bytes - suggested directory C:\MICROFIL
although this can be changed
during installation (this does
not affect the running of the
program).
MICROFIL.HLP 96,086 bytes - the