The Business Master (3rd Edition)

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Text File | 1992-02-12 | 29.2 KB | 616 lines

┬─┬─────┐ │ │ │ │ ├───┬─┘ ┌┬──┐ ┬┬─┐ ┌┬──┐ ┌┬──┐ ┌┬──┐ ┌┬─┬─┐ ┌┬─┬─┐ (tm) │ │ │ ││ │ │├─┴┐ ││ │ ││ ││ │ ││ │ │ ││ │ │ ┴─┴ ┴── └┴──┘ ┴┴──┘ └┴──┘ └┴──┘ └┴──┘ ┴┴ ┴ ┴ ┴┴ ┴ ┴ The ultimate tool for unattended ┬ ┌┐ ┌─┬┐ BBS communications. └──┤│ │ ││ └┘o└─┴┘ ---------------------------------------------------------------- This document is designed to assist experienced Robocomm users in coming up to speed with the new version quickly. The following is a list of changes and enhancements implemented since Robocomm version 3.1 ---------------------------------------------------------------- o Full Support for Wildcat! BBS systems added. When you add a new new system, Robocomm will ask you to specify the BBS type. Choose "Wildcat 3.0 or 3.1" or "Wildcat 3.02 (or later)" to set up a system compatible with Wildcat BBS and the TomCat mail door. o Implemented the Robocomm script language. When you select the new "E"xecute script agenda item, a pop-up box may appear asking you to fill in "Parameters" for the script run. Simply use the arrow keys to select the option to change, press enter to edit and save it. Then, press [Esc] to return when all parameters are set up the way you like. For an example of this, try the PCB_SET.RS script file supplied with Robocomm. ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ See SCRIPT.DOC for details on developing your own scripts. │ └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ After script parameters have been entered, you may edit them at any time by hilighting the agenda item and pressing Alt-P. o Added support for login script type BBS systems. If you set the BBS type to "Login script only" then the 3rd phone number slot on the BBS screen will change to "Login Script 3:" If you fill in the name of a valid Robocomm script, that script will be executed immediately after connecting with the system. If the login script rertuns an errorlevel, Robocomm will hang up and remove the BBS from the dialing queue. You may add as many "Execute script" agenda items for this BBS as you like and they will be run 1 after another. Don't forget that the script should handle logging off the system. o Implemented all-new quasi-hypertext online help system. Press F1 twice for help on help. o Implemented super-fast keyword searches in both file listings. The "F"ind command now pops up a larger box, into which you may type a series of search keywords, separated by spaces. Complex multi-keyword searches on thousands of files usually complete in a couple of seconds, instantly showing you a subset of your file list with just matching records shown. o Added mouse support throughout the program. On any scrolling picklist, you can now: ┌─ Select ────┐ ───── Click on top line to scroll up. │ ........... │ │ ........... │ │ .....──────┼─────── Click on any individual item to select it │ ........... │ │ ........... │ └─────────────┘ ───── Click on bottom line to scroll down If a scroll bar is displayed, you can click on the arrows at the top and bottom as well to scroll The main pull doen menu is now fully mouseable. ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ Clicking the right mouse button is equivalent to pressing │ │ ESCape. This will back you out of most displays, saving your │ │ changes. │ └───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ If a field has a pop-up box available by pressing F10, you can pop-up the list by clicking on the field with the left mouse button. o Revised terminal mode with the following changes: o DOORWAY mode added to the internal terminal. Toggle this mode on and off with Alt-= (Alt Equal). NOTE: while doorway mode is active, the bottom status bar is removed and the only keystroke which is not sent out the port is Alt-=, which will toggle you back into standard terminal mode. o Added demon-dialing routines. Alt-D will now pop-up a window of all non-PC Pursuit systems in your BBS-Directory and allow you to tag the ones you want it to dial. Dialing commences when you press ENTER. NOTE: the "Maxium dial attempts per system" config option is not honored by these dialing routines. It just dials forever. o The contents of terminal screen are not disturbed when switching between agenda and interactive modes. o Added the ability to append terminal text to a specified capture file. Use Alt-C to toggle the capture file on and off. NOTES: o Capture files are always appended to. o Capture files are automatically closed when exiting the terminal. o You cannot capture to a file that is already open in Robocomm. i.e. Robocomm.log if you jumped to the terminal mode. o Send a BREAK to the modem with Alt-R o Added the ability to log terminal contents to the printer. use Alt-L to toggle this function on and off. o Alt-P will send the configured password for the current BBS. o Added the ability to limit agenda item execution to certain days of the week. On the agenda editing screen you will now see a display on the right side of each agenda item row that shows the days the item is scheduled to execute. Examples: (SMTWTFS) <--- Execute every day. (·M···F·) <--- Execute Monday and Friday only. (·······) <--- Never execute this item. The letters represent, from left to right the days of the week, starting with Sunday and ending with Saturday. New agenda items default to being executed every day. Three new keyboard command have been added to the agenda screen to control this process: Alt-D - Pop up display to set the "D"ay(s) the agenda item should execute on. The bottom line of the screen displays the available options while in this box. Alt-N - "N"ever execute it the agenda item. Agenda items cleared in this way will not execute until at least one day is assigned to them. Alt-E - Execute the agenda item "E"very day. NOTE: Robocomm uses the day that is in effect when the agenda starts for date comparisons while the agenda is in progress. This means that if it's 23:59 on Tuesday and you start an agenda with items to execute on Tuesday, they will execute, even if it's not until some time early Wednesday when their turn comes up. Similarly, items scheduled for Wednesday will never execute if the agenda is started on Tuesday. NOTE: "Temporary" agenda items do not disappear until they have been successfully executed. So, you can now schedule agenda items up to a week in advance. o Added a text file log of file uploads and downloads completed during agendas. The file is created in the Robocomm directory and is called TRANSFER.LOG -- Each "record" is contained on a single line of the file. The file is "Comma-Delimited" and should be able to be imported by just about any database management system. From left to right, the fields are: 1) A single character: "U" for Uploads or "D" for downloads 2) The BBS ID, max of 8 characters 3) The date of the transfer, in MM/DD/YY format. 4) The time of the transfer in HH:MM:SS format. 5) The file transferred. The path is not included. 6) Total size of the file in bytes. 7) Transfer time in HH:MM:SS format. 8) Transfer throughput in characters-per-second (CPS). 9) Number of errors encountered during the transfer. 10) Name of the protocol used, up to 8 characters. o Implemented a new editor routine with automatic reformatting and more intelligent cursor operation. o Added support for the new Bonus Utility REXCLUDE. Rexclude can be used by Registered users to build a quick index file of files that are already on their system. When Robocomm is importing file lists, it will read this index and bypass any files that lalready exist on your system. SYSOPS: Add Rexclude to your nightly event and you'll never see another file in Robocomm's Available Files directory that's also on your BBS. o Added F5 hot key from the BBS Directory and File Directory screens. Pressing this key will cause Robocomm to shell to DOS and run the batch file ANALYZE.BAT -- NOTE, Robo does not check to see if the file exists before shelling out. This allows the batch file and analysis tool to be in another directory. Robocomm will call this batch file with 1 parameter, either the currently highlighted file, or the currently highlighted BBS ID, depending on the screen. o Added NOEMSSWAP and NOXMSSWAP keywords to the ROBO environment variable. NOEMSSWAP disables the use of EMS for swapping when running outside programs. NOXMSSWAP does the same for HIMEM.SYS XMS memory. o Added detection of two batch files, PREAGEN.BAT and POSTAGEN.BAT which will be called before and after agendas if detected. This would be a good place to disable your disk cache's DELAYED WRITES if necessary. Or, you might want to run some sort of download/robocomm log analyzer or Wildcat file list importer. o Added an OUTPUT command to the prompt screen that wiill output the current prompt definition to a text file. o Added configuration option allow the specification of a Wildcat! format file list to be updated after all file downloads. The file format is: filename.ext xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx<cr><lf> o Fixed /I import from command line switch to allow importation of Wildcat and PCBoard format files into the downloads database. The new syntax is: /IP<file> to import PCBoard format files. /IW<file> to import Wildcat format files. o Added a tagged file summary to the file lists. Use Alt-T to pop-up the summary display. o Added the ability to Re-Set an agenda from the agenda editing screen via the Alt-R key conbination. After a confirmation, this routine will change all items marked as Done or Error to To-Do status. o Robocomm is now supplied with a special VGA font which is automatically loaded at start-up if the "Load Robocomm's VGA Font" option is set to YES on the general configuration menu. This font contains several re-defined characters which are used in various places in the user interface. For example, on VGA systems with the font loaded, the and ■ characters on the agenda editing screen are replaced by square markers with a little "P" (for permanent) or "T" (for temporary). o Created the EXITFONT utility, which will grab whatever font is currently installed in a VGA monitor and save it to a file called EXITFONT.VGA. If you have a special font loaded and don't want Robocomm to kill it when it quits or shells out to external programs, then copy EXITFONT.EXE into your Robocomm directory and run it one time to save the font file to disk. o Added the ability to RENAME agendas and BBS systems. o Added the ability to control the number of dial attempts Robo will make per system via a command line switch. Use /Lnnn where nnn will set the number of dial attempts per system. This setting is effective for the current run only, it does not change your default setting. o Moved color definition routines to the Configure menu. RCOLOR is now obsolete and may be removed from your system. Old COLOR.DEF files are not compatible with the new routines. If you had a customized color set previously, it will be removed automatically. o Tamed the behavior of the "Agenda was not completed the last time it was run" question. It will only pop-up if an agenda has been run since its last editing session and was not completed during the run. o Added an "Agenda item timeout" configuration option to the communications configuration menu that controls the maximum amount of time (in minutes) that Robocomm will spend attempting to execute an agenda item. The default is 60 minutes. This option is designed to control the potential ill effects of a bizarre prompt change (on the BBS or Robocomm end) or rogue script file that sends Robocomm into a loop. It is extremely unlikely that Robocomm will ever get into an endless loop on its own accord, but this option is provided as an extra measure of safety. The maximum value is 999 and the minimum value is 5. NOTE: The "clock" which tracks the amount of time spent in a specific agenda item is suspended during file transfers. Jumping to terminal mode also re-sets the timer. o Agenda items aborted due to an unexpected loss of carrier or the F3 (Abort Agenda) key are now marked with an exclamation point, rather than with a "To Do" status indicator. o Added a "Renumbering style" option to the "Data and Logs" configuration menu. Pressing Enter on the option will toggle between: #???????.??? Robocomm 3.1 and lower style. EZ-Reader 1.3x users _must_ select this option. ????????.??# Optional method preferred by many users. Select this option if it appeals to you. This method has been selected for Robocomm's default. The pound sign indicates the location of the archive file number in the renamed files. NOTE: This configuration option applies to both Qmail downloads and the RENUMBER command in the script language. o Added an option to control the number of REP packet archives that will be kept. This option is also on the "Data and Logs" configuration menu. REP Packets will no longer be renamed with an .OLD extension. The default value for this option is 1, meaning that only te most recently sent REP will be maintained as <bbsid>.RE1 or 1<bbsid>.REP o Added the ability to tag multiple BBS systems when creating "Jump to Terminal" agenda items. o Added an alternative downward scrolling technique in the file directories, which is active when ALT-Down Arrow is used. With this method, the cursor bar will be moved back to the top row of the display after an attempt is made to scroll off the bottom of the window. YOU MUST HAVE DOS 5 FOR THIS TO WORK o Added code to flush data buffers to disk before and after agendas, and before shelling to DOS to run utility programs. o Added the ability to edit the filters and preference lists from within the file directories. Alt-P to edit preferences, Alt-F to edit filters. o SSS - "Spiffy Sliding Screens" added. They can be shut off (but who'd want to?) via the "Exploding Windows" option. o File lengths in PCBoard format listings are now output right justified and all trailing blanks on description lines have been removed, to enhance compatibility with PCBFiler and other PCBoard DIR utilities. o Added a fourth parameter to all external batch download requests which is the target directory for downloaded files. For example, the recommended download batch file for the new hs-link protocol is: HSLINK -P%1 -B%2 -U%4 o Added HS/Link Auto-Download support to terminal mode. If the file HS-AUTO.BAT is located in your Robocomm directory and the HS/Link header is seen, Robocomm will go into auto-download mode. o Changed the name of the file ROBOAUTO.BAT to Z-AUTO.BAT to maintain uniformity with the HS protocol batch file name. If you have a ROBOAUTO.BAT, the upgrade procedures will now rename it to Z-AUTO.BAT. (This file is used to call DSZ instead of Robocomm's internal Zmodem when in terminal mode.) o Added a configuration option to the communications configuration screen to control the number of seconds that the program will spend "Clearing" the receive buffers after a response from the modem. o Implemented support for front end prompts on PCBoard systems. Robo will now send two ESCapes when the defined "Front End Prompt" is seen during logon. o Totally replaced the dialing prefix and suffix concepts with "Dialing Macros." You may now place the letters A-J anywhere within a phone number and Robocomm will replace the character with the corresponding string that you set up on the dialing macro table before dialing. The dialing macro table can be viewed/edited by pressing F10 while editing any phone number. For instance to disable call waiting, you might define dialing macro "C" as "*70" and input your phone numbers as: C1-312-752-1258 CUSTOMIZED DIALING COMMANDS are made possible by prefixing any defined macro letter with a ` (backwards tick mark). Doing so causes the contents of the macro letter to be used to dial the number instead of the configured default dialing command. This enables you to send customized commands to the modem on a BBS by BBS basis. For example, to turn on the modem speaker ON when dialing Group One BBS, you could input this as the phone number: `A1-312-752-1258 Then you would set up the "A" dialing macro as: ATM1DT The most common use for this feature will probably be to turn of MNP negotiation if you are calling a system with a non-MNP modem from a MNP-capable modem. Doing this keeps the first prompt sent by the BBS from being eaten by your modems attempts to negotiate an MNP connect. To do this, you might set up a dialing macro letter as: AT&M0DT and then include the macro letter, along with a preceding ` character in the phone number (technically, it could be anywhere in the number, but it's probably simplest to put it at the front). GIVE ME A BREAK: By defining a dialing macro as BREAK, you can cause a 1 second break to be generated before the dial attempt. o Added an option to the Communications configuration screen to toggle whether or not a BREAK signal is sent before attempting to initialize the modem. o Added an "Average Download CPS" configuration option to the General configuration screen. The number you enter here will be used to estimate the download times shown on the Available files screen. o Robocomm now does all FIXFILE.BAT processing _after_ disconnecting from the BBS. How Robo behaves depends on the existence of 2 files, FIXFILE.BAT and COMMENT.FRM: - If FIXFILE.BAT exists in the Robocomm start-up directory, then Robo will process all files downloaded via "Download" agenda items after logging off. If it doesn't exist, then all ZIP file processing is disabled. - If COMMENT.FRM exists, then Robocomm will merge the appropriate values, as before, and shell out 1 time for each file downloaded. This is fast if you have EMS/XMS free and pretty slow if we are swapping out to disk. All available memory is freed up for each swap. - If COMMENT.FRM does not exist, then Robocomm will create a temporary batch file called FIX_ALL.BAT and then swap out to run the file. This approach is faster because it requires only 1 shell/swap for all files downloaded. As an example, FIX_ALL.BAT might look like this if you downloaded 4 files during the entire session with the BBS: REM FIX_ALL.BAT REM ----------- CALL FIXFILE.BAT ROBO40-A.ZIP ZIP CALL FIXFILE.BAT ROBO40-B.ZIP ZIP CALL FIXFILE.BAT SLMR201A.ZIP ZIP Note that in either case FIXFILE.BAT will receive the file's name as the %1 parameter and the file's extension as the %2 parameter. FIX_ALL.BAT is deleted immediately after it is run. o When creating download agenda items from tagged files, Robocomm will now use the configured "File U/D" conference if no conference number/name is associated with the file. o Added a configuration option to the "General" configuration screen that allows you to specify how the "Date" sort type will be done on the available files list. The two options are "Date of Scan" and "Date on BBS." o Added the ability to resume an aborted download using internal Zmodem. Zmodem-resume only works from within the terminal. Remember: the BBS must be set up to allow resumed downloads. Frequently, this requires the use of a different protocol letter. Usually, it's "R." So, typing: D;R;<file name> from Robocomm's terminal when connected with a PCBoard system will frequently allow you to resume the aborted transfer. o The "O"ffline routines no longer modify the file's time stamp. o Added a "D"irectory import command to the "Downloaded Files" directory. This command will ask for a directory and filespec. All matching files will be added to the downloads list. If a file description matching the file can be found in the newfiles list, it will be brought over to the downloads directory. This command makes it easy to bring files downloaded with other comm programs into Robocomm's databases. o Revised filter and preference word interface and made them open-ended. You may now add as many as you desire. o Added "File Search Directory" configuration list. Robocomm will now search all the directories you list here when creating upload agenda items, and when viewing, testing or deleting files from the downloads list. Sysops: add all your file directories to this list, import your allfiles list and upload any file from your BBS system easily! o After a download, when looking for a suitable file description, Robocomm will now scan the available files directory for a file with the same name from a different BBS if a listing is not found for the current BBS. o Improved keystroke handling during the dialing process. Pressing DEL, SPACE or ESC during dialing, pausing or clearing should no meet with much speedier response. o Added "Already Downloaded" message in the log when processing new file lists. o Added the ability to toggle the "Remaining Online" status with F10 during file transfers. o Added the ability to cancel the extraction of NEWFILES.DAT from downloaded QWK packets by specifying NONE as the ZIP extraction utility. o Added support for Wildcat! 3.0 systems. To set up a Wildcat! BBS, select "Wildcat! 3.x" at the system type prompt on the Directory-BBS screen. All non-PCBoard specific agenda items should work similarly to the way they did in the past. o Conference numbers are now stored with all entries in the downloads directory. If you would like conference numbers/names to appear in file listings you "I"mport into the available files directory, you need to edit the files to include the following marker: CONF │ └──── ASCII 16 For example, to edit a file listing to show that all subsequently listed files can be found in the ROBOBETA conference, you would include the following label in the text file, starting in column 1 CONFROBOBETA A directory listing may include any number of these markers. All files found subsequent to a marker will have the indicated conference included in their conference field, which is automatically supplied when the file is selected for downloading. The conference name may be up to 13 characters in length. o This version is compiled using Clipper 5.0, and has significantly enhanced memory management capabilities and performance characteristics. If you were using a ROBO environment variable with version 3.1, make sure you remove it for use with this version! New ROBO environment variable switches have been implemented in this version. It may be set up as follows: /OOnnn Overlay pool size in KB Minimum=30K Default=40K /OU0 Disable use of XMS UMBs for overlays /OU1 Enable use of XMS UMBs for overlays *Default* /OP0 Disable EMS pageframe for overlays *Default* /OP1 Enable EMS pageframe for overlays Example: SET ROBOOVL=/OO50 /OU0 This example tells Robocomm to reserve a fixed 50K of memory (conventional, EMS pageframe or UMB as defined by the other parameters) for its overlays and disables the UMB option. NOTE: A contiguous UMB block at least as large as the configured overlay area must be available for this option to be used. Use of the EMS pageframe for overlays should only be used by knowledgeable users who are sure that they will not be running any program which uses the EMS pageframe area simultaneously with Robocomm. (This includes any utilities called from within Robocomm) By default, Robocomm will attempt to eat all the EMS it can find (up to 16 megs) for index buffering and virtual memory space. You _may_ use the ROBO=Ennnn environment variable to specify the amount of EMS (in KB) that it is allowed to use. Robocomm will make a VMS swap file in your current directory if it runs out of EMS and needs more VMS space (either physically, or by reaching the limit you set with the E environment variable). You can add the following parameters to your ROBO environment variable to control this process: SWAPPATH:"<path>" Example: SET ROBO=E2048;SWAPPATH:"C:\ROBOCOMM\SWAP" This environment setting will tell Robocomm that it may use up to 2 Megabytes of EMS (3.2 or above) and that it must swap to the C:\ROBOCOMM\SWAP directory if it needs to create a swap file. (Note that it is highly unlikely that it would with this much EMS available. Also, the specified SWAPPATH directory must exist or you will get a fatal error). o New INTERNAL file viewer. Viewing a log in with the internal viewer results in Robocomm log entries showing in a different text color from captured VERBOSE text. o Added a .GIF file viewer configuration option. If a file in the downloads list has a .GIF extension, pressing "V" while the file is highlighted will result in the configured program being called with the full file and path name passed as the %1 parameter. # # #