Club Amiga de Montreal - CAM/CAM_CD_1.iso/files/083.lha/keep.type_me

Text File | 1986-11-20 | 8KB | 218 lines

                               G'day!








                            And welcome to...













c





                               Keep v1.1





     Copyright Notice: Keep v1.1 is copyright (c) 1987 by Tim Grantham. It
may not be sold for profit, nor altered in any way, without the
permission of the author. This version may be freely distributed. The author
would appreciate any feedback users have about the program: bugs,
compliments or money. Said author may be reached at:

     55 Sorauren Ave.
     Toronto, Ontario
     Canada. M6R 2C9

     [phone]

     or on:

     PeopleLink: AMTAG
     BIX: dispatcher
     GEnie: t.grantham
     CIS: 71426,1646



     Keep is a utility program for BBS and network junkies
like myself who download messages in one large file and then read them
off-line. Using only the mouse, you can drive through such files a message
at a time, examine each at your leisure and tag those you wish to keep.
When the entire file has been examined, keep goes through the file
once more and stores those messages that have been so tagged. The original
file is left intact.


     The program is currently runnable only from the CLI. You can invoke it
in a number of ways. The recommended one is as follows:

              run keep

This program uses Charlie Heath's excellent file requester to pick the file
to be examined. Believe me, it's a lot faster than typing it in.

However, you can specify the source file from the CLI thusly:

              run keep message_file

This will examine the file message_file and store the messages to be
kept in the file message_file.kpt, in the directory where the
source file resides.

If you wish to cross directories, you can enter, for example

              run keep df1:message_file to df0:file_name

The .kpt extension will be automatically appended to the
destination file name. However, you must specify a destination file
name! Simply entering, for example,

              run keep df1:message_file to df0:

will not work.


     Keep opens its own screen to the same size as the Workbench
screen (640 x 200 or larger). This is handy if you are using morerows
or interlace to get a larger display area.

     Keep assumes that message files consist of lines of no more
than 120 characters, ending with CR and/or LF. Any non-text character
contained in the line before the CR/LF will be displayed -- usually as a
rectangle; the CR/LF do not appear. They are, however, left intact.

     Once running, keep is (or should be) self-explanatory. A
possible source of ambiguity is the gadgets at the top of the window.
Selection of the arrows pointing up and down permit the user to page through
the text of the message. The KEEP and DUMP
gadgets tag the message and advance to the next message. You can
select the left-pointing arrow to back up to the previous message. Here you
can change the fate of the message by selecting the appropriate KEEP
or DUMP gadget. However, you must return to the current
message by selecting the right-pointing arrow before you can move on to the
next message in the file.


     You can at any time change the name of the destination file by selecting
To... under the Project menu. However, this version of
keep will not check to see if the output file already exists, nor will it let
you append tagged messages to an existing file.

     Skip terminates examination of the current file and saves what
messages had been tagged up to that point.

     Abort terminates examination of the current file completely and
restarts the program.

     About provides some speculation as to the inspiration of the Guru's
meditations...

     And Quit exits the program.


     Keep does not have to be used exclusively for information
services. It can work with any text database that uses a repeating header at
the beginning of each record and fields of no more than 120 characters
delimited with CR and/or LF. It looks for a key string of five
characters or less -- the shorter the string, the faster the search. You can
see which ones I have chosen: each time a network gadget is selected in the
service requester, the Key string string gadget is updated. You can
click on this gadget to customize the key string.


     If the program encounters a read error in the message file, it will save
those  messages currently tagged and offer to restart the program -- in
other words, it will behave as if you had selected the Skip
option.

     If the program encounters an error during the writing of the destination
file, it will close that file and save to ram: instead -- very handy if you
just spent four hours going through 700+ messages. In this case, however, the
default destination file name will be used.


Enhancements to future versions of Keep may include:

     1. Much more attractive, Image-rendered gadgets.

     2. Workbench support.

     3. Command line and menu support for interlace.

     4. More polished mutual exclude in the service requester.

     5. Support for other fonts.

     6. Depth arrangement gadgets. The screen can be pulled down
        in this version -- two pixels of the screen behind are there to grab.

     7. Support for other BBSs and networks.

     8. Support for arbitrarily large files and messages. In this
        version, Keep is confined to files containing up to 2000
        messages or records. In addition, it reads in no more than 1000 lines
        at a time. This latter aspect does not compromise the operation of
        the program should the message be larger than 1000 lines. It simply
        splits it into smaller pieces. If you want to save a complete
        message, save all the pieces.

     9. More elegant command line parsing.

     10. The ability to use the mouse to mark portions of
         messages for keeping.

     11. Word wrap for lines longer than 80 characters.

     12. Scrolling, rather than paging of text.

     13. A proportional gadget to indicate the current position in
         the source file.


     The shareware program blitzfonts works with Keep and is highly
recommended.


     I would like to thank Charlie Heath, William Volk, and Chris Zamara for
their help. I especially would like to thank the real Nick Sullivan, for his
endlessly patient assistance. Keep is a direct descendant,
several generations removed, of a program Nick wrote in CBM Basic and
6502 ML for the C64 and PET 8032.


     My greatest debt is to my wife Cate and my son Alex, for their love.


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