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1989-02-10
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IMPORTANT: If you should create an error because of the drive door
open, be aware that choosing <A>bort as an option will
return you to DOS. The obvious choice is to close the
drive door and <R>etry. <F>ail will return you to PmCat
with things as they were before the error. ( <I>gnore
has never struck me as a viable option when DOS informs
of an error ... you may know better ... <grin>
Earlier versions of PmCat requested all available memory on a system
(up to 640K), when it was run. That approach left NO DOS MEMORY
available for the shell option which we have installed in this version.
We must decide at the time we compile PmCat just how much memory a user
will require ... and obviously that is quite impossible.
We regretfully had to restrict the memory available in this distribution
version of PmCat to 250K in order to ensure all of the features would
work on as many configurations of computers as possible and that the
above situation didn't occur without warning, causing the user to
suspect the integrity of PmCat.
The accompanying documentation details how we will handle this situation.
In spite of the necessary memory restrictions, PmCat is still capable
of extremely powerful cataloging functions. Even though the 250K
available in memory does limit the number of files to 1000 - 6000
(fully commented vs no comments at all ... approximately), it is
extremely easy to create multiple catalogs that are accessed from
withing PmCat, and the addition of the DOS SHELL function allows you
to look at files, delete, move, copy, etc. on the floppy disks and
immediately update without having to leave PmCat and reload it each
time you just want to "check-out something".
And in the case that you just want maximum memory for your catalog
and don't care about the DOS SHELL feature, you may obtain a custom
configured copy of PmCat for your own use as detailed in the documentation
that accompanies this package.
Work is proceding on making more aesthetically pleasing and useful hardcopy
formatting available in PmCat. The printing of diskette labels is also
very seriously under consideration. Both of these options will require a
great deal of time and effort however, and there is no way to accurately
predict when they might be ready. Rest assured we do consider these
features essential.
Don't forget to turn off your 'perf-skip' feature on your printer, if
you have it ... the docs contain formfeeds.
Also, to accomodate the longer names for the ASSIGN PATH as VOLUME
feature, it was necessary to increase the size of every record by
8 bytes. The result is that the path, if greater than 12 bytes will
not be displayed fully, but it will be read properly ... although
you will not be able to view it with PmCat. If you have a specific
need for a longer PATH, I can custom configure a copy for you ... but
bear in mind that for each 1 character increase (it is currently 12)
you will loose memory at the rate of the number of files in your
catalog. (E.g, if you increase it by 8, up to 20 characters, and
have a catalog with 2000 files, your memory will be decreased by
approximately 16,000 bytes.) That 2000 file catalog would take up
about 40 bytes per file + 80 bytes/file for comments without extending
the size of the filename to 20. Perhaps this is enough explanation
for you to visualize how much memory you may require and which
memory configuration would fit most closely.