The Pier Shareware 9

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ThePier Select Version 2.0 Copyright (c) 1993-1995 RoboSoft Systems All rights reserved. ThePier Select will work with a Pier Exchange Shareware CD-ROM to allow you to randomly add a specific number of files from the CD to your filebase. New Pier Exchange CDs are released every three to four months. Since each CD contains about 4000 files, you should be able to add about 40 files a day to your BBS on a continuous basis. (This assumes you'll be purchasing future editions of the Pier Exchange CDs when they become available.) The point of this, of course, is to make your BBS look like it's getting a _lot_ of uploads. If you've been a sysop long, you know there is a bit of a catch-22 when it comes to uploads. Callers tend not to upload if you don't have a lot of new files each time they call. Unless you're already getting a lot of uploads, few callers will take the time to contribute. ThePier Select will allow you to add a specific number of files to your filebase. You tell ThePier Select how many files to add and it randomly selects that many files from the CD and adds them directly to the filebase (if you're running GAP) or to a PCB-style file list. ThePier Select maintains a small database of its own so it can keep track of the files it has already selected. This eliminates duplicate uploads. Note for GAP sysops: There are two versions of ThePier Select. One is multi-node compatible, the other is not. Be sure you use the correct version for your system. Non-GAP sysops needn't be concerned; either version will work fine. IMPORTANT: This version of ThePier Select is compatible _only_ with the databases included with The Pier Shareware #4 and above. The Pier Shareware #4 includes databases for all previous Pier Shareware CD-ROMs, so this shouldn't be a problem. Disclaimer ---------- ThePier Select is provided AS IS without any warranty, expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, fitness for any purpose. Use of ThePier Select, and the consequences thereof, are entirely your risk. In no event will RoboSoft Systems be liable for any damages whatsoever resulting from the use of ThePier Select. Registration ------------ ThePier Select is being distributed as a freeware bonus to any sysop who owns a Pier Exchange CD-ROM. ThePier Select is copyrighted software and RoboSoft Systems reserves all rights pertaining to that copyright, but you may use this software without payment of any fee. If you are a GAP sysop, please consider registering one or more of the GAP-specific utilities from RoboSoft Systems. You'll find a description of these programs in the file GAP-PRO.TXT. Distribution ------------ ThePier Select may be freely distributed on any Bulletin Board System (BBS), including commercial systems such as CompuServe (CIS), Genie, and BIX. ThePier Select may be distributed by diskette by any organization or disk distributor as long as the fee for this distribution is no greater than $5. Feel free to pass around copies of ThePier Select, however, please distribute all of the original files and do not modify any of the files. Instructions for Use -------------------- Using ThePier Select is a two-part process. You must first build ThePier Select database using PRESELCT.EXE. PRESELCT uses ThePier database included on the CD to build a local database. (There are two separate databases involved here. What is referred to here as ThePier Select database is the local database built by PRESELCT. It resides in the directory with the rest of ThePier Select files. It's fairly small, about 35k, and contains just enough information to locate the files in the large database. ThePier database is the large database included with ThePier CD and used by ThePier CD-ROM Access Program. It contains complete information about all the files on the CD and will normally reside on the CD.) Before running PRESELCT, you need to find ThePier database on the CD and write down the directory path. (It should be in the directory THEPIER off the root, but you should check to be sure.) PRESELCT will ask for this directory path and will then quickly run through the files in ThePier database. ThePier Select database is in the file PIERSLCT.DAT. If you want to use ThePier Select on more than one CD at a time, you'll have to set up one directory for each CD and keep copies of ThePier Select files in each directory. Once you've built ThePier Select database, you can use SELECT.EXE to randomly select files from the database. SELECT uses the local database to select the random file and then retrieves the detailed information about that file from ThePier database on the CD. So both the local database and the large database on the CD must be available when running SELECT. If you run a GAP BBS, SELECT can add the selected files directly to your filebase. If you don't run GAP, SELECT will add the selected files to a PCBoard-style file listing. It's up to you to figure out how to get the files in that listing into your filebase. SELECT is controlled via command line parameters. Each parameter should be preceded by a slash (/) or a dash (-). The parameters may be in either upper or lower case. The general parameters applicable to both GAP and non-GAP environments are as follows. /S# - Optional parameter indicating that files should be selected only from the specified CD-ROM subject. Example: "SELECT /S5" indicates that files should be selected only from CD-ROM subject 5. By default, files are selected from all subjects on the CD-ROM. /D - Optional parameter indicating the selected files should be marked with today's date instead of the actual file date. This will ensure that the selected files show up in your filebase as new files. /N# - Optional parameter indicating the number of files to select. Example: "SELECT /N25" indicates that 25 files should be selected. By default, ten files are selected during each run of SELECT. /P<path> - Optional parameter indicating the directory containing ThePier database (usually on the CD-ROM). The environment variable THEPIER can also be used to specify the path to the CD-ROM database. If no path is specified, the current directory is used. (The default action here is almost certainly not what you want.) Example: "SELECT /Px:\thepier" indicates ThePier database is in the directory 'X:\THEPIER'. /R<root> - Required parameter that specifies the root filename used for ThePier database (the one on the CD). If the database is in the directory X:\THEPIER and that directory contains files such as PIER3.D01, PIER3.D02, PIER3.D03, etc, the root would be PIER3. This parameter _must_ be specified or SELECT will not be able to open the database. Example: "SELECT /Rpier3". If you are running a GAP BBS, the following parameters can be used. /G - Indicates the selected files should be added directly to a GAP filebase. The environment variable GAPCNF should contain the path to the GAP default directory (where GAPBBS.CNF resides). /Vx - Required (if /G is specified) parameter that indicates the drive letter of the CD-ROM containing the files being added. ThePier database does not contain drive information, so this parameter is necessary in order to let GAP know the full path to the selected files. Example: "SELECT /G /VF" indicates that the CD-ROM is drive F:. /L - Optional parameter indicating that existing files which are duplicated on the CD-ROM should be physically deleted. SELECT assumes you want to use the files on the CD in preference to existing files which duplicate those on the CD. This parameter causes SELECT to automatically delete the actual files when duplicates occur. All duplicate files, deleted or not, will be logged to PIERSLCT.LOG. If you don't use this parameter, you can review the log and manually delete the duplicate files. Also of interest if you're running GAP are two other text-based files. KEYWORDS.XCL is a list of words, one word per line, that will not be indexed as keywords. A standard KEYWORDS.XCL is included with ThePier Select. You can add or delete words using any normal ASCII editor. PIERSLCT.XLT is used to automatically translate CD-ROM subjects to specific area/subjects in your filebase. This allows you to add CD-ROM files to your existing filebase structure without creating new subjects specifically for the CD-ROM. Each line of PIERSLCT.XLT should contain three numbers separated by spaces. The first number is the CD-ROM subject number, the second number is the GAP filebase area, and the third number is the GAP filebase subject within that area. So, if you want subject 1 from the CD to map to Area 0, Subject 13 in your GAP filebase, add the line "1 0 13" to PIERSLCT.XLT. Each CD-ROM subject should appear in PIERSLCT.XLT only once. A default PIERSLCT.XLT is included with ThePier Select, but it is not designed with a particular CD or system in mind, so you should edit it to fit your system and the CD you're using prior to running SELECT. A GAP filebase subject of 0 will cause files in the associated CD-ROM subject to be completely skipped. (This may be of use if you want to exclude one or more subjects on the CD-ROM.) A good way to do the mapping is to automatically map those subjects on the CD that obviously correspond directly to subjects you've already established and to map the rest of the CD-ROM subjects to your upload directory. You can then review the uploads individually and place them in the appropriate subject in your GAP filebase. For instance, if you already have a Communications subject in your filebase and the CD contains a Communications subject, you'll want to map the CD subject directly to your filebase subject. But if the CD contains a single Windows subject and you have multiple Windows subjects in your filebase, you'll probably want to review the files individually to decide in which of your Windows subjects they belong. In this case, you can map the CD Windows subject to your upload subject and then review the files along with the rest of your normal uploads. If you import directly into a GAP filebase, SELECT will maintain a log (PIERSLCT.LOG) detailing its operation. The log will list the files imported by SELECT and will identify any collisions with existing files. ThePier Select can also randomly select an uploader name from a list of names in the file PIERSLCT.NAM. Uploader names should be entered one per line in this file. You can create a list of completely fake names or use some of your real users' names if you like. (It is recommended you use fake names since you may need to determine the source of a file and it will lead to confusion if you use real user names.) The "uploader" will not receive any real credit for the file other than getting his/her name listed as uploader. There is no switch to control this feature. If PIERSLCT.NAM exists, the names contained therein will be used. If the file doesn't exist, all uploads will be credited to SYSOP. You can put an asterisk in front of the names in PIERSLCT.NAM if you don't want to deal with updating the uploaders credits when the file is eventually deleted. If you are running any system other than GAP, the following parameters can be used. (These parameters can be used on GAP boards too, but they have no effect if the /G parameter is specified.) /A - Optional paramater indicating the selected files should be appended to an existing file list. The default behavior is to create a new listing file with each run of SELECT. /F<file> - Optional parameter specifying the name of the output file. By default, the file list is output to PIERSLCT.LST. Example: "SELECT /Fmy_list.out" will write the data for the selected files to the file MY_LIST.OUT. /Cc - Optional parameter specifying a character used to mark continuation lines within the generated listing. If this parameter is not specified, no continuation line marker will be used. Example: "SELECT /C#" causes SELECT to use '#' as the continuation line marker. Since the vertical bar commonly used to mark continuation lines can not be properly specified on the command line, the /C parameter without a following character can be used to specify the use of a vertical bar as the continuation line marker. Example: "SELECT /C" causes SELECT to use '|' as the continuation line marker. Limitations ----------- ThePier Select will only work with CD-ROMs from The Pier Exchange that contain the RoboROM database used by ThePier CD-ROM Access Program version 3.x. This database is available on ThePier CD-ROM #4 and above. Databases for previous Pier Shareware CD-ROMs are included on CD-ROM #4. They may also be obtained from The Pier Exchange. The databases are fairly large so a nominal disk and handling charge may apply. If you have several Pier Exchange CD-ROMs and want to use ThePier Select on more than one of them you will need to create a separate directory for each and copy all ThePier Select files into each directory. ThePier Select database names are hardcoded and can not be shared between CD-ROMs, so the files have to be segregated.