Dr. Windows 3/dr win3.zip/dr win3/UTILITY1/EHI10.ZIP/MANUAL.DOC

Text File | 1993-08-30 | 21KB | 500 lines

                       Essential Home Inventory

                        Version 1.0 Test Drive

                              User Guide



Essential Home Inventory is the ideal companion for keeping track of all
the items in your house or running a small business in your home. You can
never tell when disaster will strike and you NEED this information, and
this program is designed to be as painless and simple as possible to aid
you in cataloguing your belongings or small business inventory. We've also
added some features to make EHI flexible enough to do other tasks as well,
such as cataloguing your coin collections and so on. Careful use of this
program will also allow you to perform basic financial analyses and get a
grip on what you own. You can also reconfigure it to keep other data as
well such as phone/address books. See the supplied examples. In short,
EHI is a very simple program that not only does it's primary task (keeping
track of your belongings) but also can be used for a wide (and surprising)
variety of purposes.

This short manual will give you the basics of what buttons and menu items
do what, but the better learning experience is to run the program and look
at the supplied example data files. Enjoy!

                     --- G.L. Alston / Summer 1993


I. TEST DRIVE INSTALLATION

Unpack the archive file in a separate directory. Take the *.VBX files
and any *.DLL files and place them in your WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory.
Most of you have this on drive C:. An example? Sure? Let's say that you
have put a copy of the ZIP file in D:\EHI:

D:\EHI> copy *.vbx c:\windows\system
D:\EHI> copy *.dll c:\windows\system

(Start Windows)

D:\EHI> win

Once Windows is started, open the FILE menu in the PROGRAM MANAGER.
Select NEW. Select PROGRAM ITEM, choose OK. Enter the following:

Description:   Essential Home Inventory
Command Line:  EHI.EXE
Directory:     D:\EHI  <----- in keeping with our example!
Shortcut Key:  (none)

Select OK. The program will now be installed, and you can double-click the
icon to start as you would any other program.

A short aside:

What a pain, huh? Sorry, but Windows installers take up too much room, and
the name of the game in shareware distribution is DISTRIBUTION. The bottom
line is that the blasted installer takes up too much room for easy and fast
distribution. It's no sweat to add 150k to a floppy, but who wants to
download that? If you buy this program you'll get a real installer. We know
how to do it. Honest. No, seriously...


II. GETTING STARTED

Two important concepts to master here, and that's it. This is a very
simple, no nonsense program.

DATABASES:

A database uses the concept that information will always follow a given
format.  This format breaks down the individual pieces of information
into blocks called "fields." Each group of FIELDS is called a "Record."
As a 'for instance', take the case of a mailing list:


                   /       Name         <--- One Field
                  |        Street
      1 RECORD   <         City
                  |        Zip
                   \       Phone


The above constitutes a RECORD. Each line of information is a FIELD. In
the case of a mailing list, the database uses the same format for each
and every RECORD, although the information in each FIELD will change
depending on the RECORD viewed. A Rolodex (tm) is a database.


TEMPLATES:

A template is little more than a how a series of fields fit together
for a particular collection. In this program there is a series of 10
fields that you can define the name, purpose, and data type. Is this text,
or is this a number? There is also a pick list that you can use. The pick
list is a very powerful item in a data management tool. Rather than type
in redundant information record after record, a pick list simplifies
common data entry and keeps spelling error minimised. Take a look at a
sample file or two (provided on the distributon disk) to see how pick
lists are implemented. Essentially, the pick list is the definitive
categorization for any inventory or listing.

It's not required to use all available fields, either. The important
thing to know is that the template can be set up easily by YOU to work
with the type of data you need.


III. MORE THEORY AND OTHER NOTES

Print Mask:

EHI uses a PRINT MASK at any time data is printed. Simply put, the
print mask allows you to select what does and what does not get printed.
This is useful for a variety of purposes, such as printing a catalogue
but omitting the PRICE PAID field so that prying eyes don't know what
was paid for an item. Also, since EHI stores pictures as well, you
may not want a catalogue full of pictures. Manipulating the print mask
is very simple: when you get the print mask setup window, just click the
check box next to fields whose information is NOT to be printed. Think of
a print mask as being like like masking tape.

Addendum Files:

EHI allows you to append pictures and text to EACH record. This is
information that is too big to try to put ALL of the possible pictures in
memory at once. Addendum files are simply filenames that you specify that
hold any information about a given item. You can see the use of these in
some of the example files. Each record stores the addendum filename that
is germane to that record, and each one actually used should be unique.

In actual practice, the use of these make EHI more flexible than you may
realise. A description can only go so far, and a picture may be what is
needed to show an insurance agent just how good the condition of an item
really was.

Each text addendum can hold up to 30k of data, and it can be imported
from other applications. The data itself can be letters, instructions,
lists, and so on.


RAM Based Data:

EHI is RAM based, meaning that most all operations are carried out
in the fastest possible manner. Most data management products use the
disk as the file source and read data from the file as needed. This can
be slow. This is how EHI can search for many items at the same time (i.e.
a complex search) and still do it quicker than anything else out there.

The offset to this is a record per file limit of 5000 records. While on
the surface this sounds like a low amount, in practice it is more than
enough to work with the average household collection. Since EHI can work
with an unlimited number of files, we've put a lot of emphasis on the
ability to manage these properly.

File Management:

Above we talked about the speed of EHI searches. These can be quite
complex, using matching, inequality (i.e. less than or more than), or
range. Once you find your data, what do you do with it? For starters,
you can remove it from the present file and place it into another, or
you can append a copy to another file. Kids move away from home, accidents
happen, and so on; a program ought to be able to reflect real life.


IV. OPERATING

The Scroll Bar (on screen left) is used to move the view from record to
record. The Add and Delete buttons are used to Add and Delete complete
records.

The four pushbuttons with icons:

Graphics -- this will show any picture file associated with the record
that is on screen at the time. There MUST be a valid DOS filename in the
RED "Addendum Name" field.

Text -- this will show any text file associated with the record that is
on screen at the time. There MUST be a valid DOS fielname in the RED
"Addendum Name" field.

Statistics --  this is used to access and view statistical information.

Clipboard -- this is used to temporarily hold information from a record
(by copying) so that you can do less typing by duplicating it (pasting)
into an empty record.

The following is the instructions for the main menu. The convention used
here is the menu item, a separator, and the subitem. An asterisk (*) will
alert you to any notes. The menu follows standard Windows conventions,
including the use of accelerator (shortcut) keys. Items that include an
ellipses (...) will bring up another win