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QBook Recipe Manager
Version 1.00
User's Guide
Copyright (C) 1989-1994 by
Robert J. Butler
All Rights Reserved
Robert J. Butler
2023 38th Street NW
Rochester, MN 55901
QBook Version 1.00 User's Guide Page:2
Table of Contents
WHAT IS QBOOK?..................................................3
QBook's Features:............................................3
LICENSE.........................................................4
STANDARD DISCLAIMER.............................................4
INSTALLATION....................................................5
GETTING HELP....................................................5
STARTING QBOOK..................................................6
USING QBOOK.....................................................7
Adding Recipes................................................7
QBook's Recipe Editor.......................................8
Entering Recipes............................................9
Display a Recipe.............................................10
Print an Index...............................................11
View all of the Titles.......................................11
Search for Recipes...........................................12
Import Recipes...............................................13
THE IMPORT SCREEN..............................................14
THE TITLE VIEW SCREEN..........................................15
CONFIGURING QBOOK..............................................17
Display Options..............................................17
Printer Configuration........................................17
Editor Options...............................................18
Recipe Storage Options.......................................19
Data File Directories........................................20
QBook Utilities..............................................20
Registration Information.....................................20
TECHNICAL INFORMATION..........................................21
REGISTRATION FORM..............................................22
QBook Version 1.00 User's Guide Page:3
What is QBook?
QBook is a program which helps you maintain a database of
recipes. It is designed to flexible, powerful and easy to use.
QBook's Features:
- Recipes can be typed in any format you want or no format at
all
- Stored recipes can optionally be automatically compressed to
save disk space.
- Recipes can be easily imported to the database from a
variety of sources including recipes captured from on-line
services and BBS's and recipes scanned and converted with
OCR.
- Recipes can be easily exported from QBook to a text file for
easy sharing with others.
- The database can be searched using AND/OR/NOT operations
- Recipes can be added and edited using either QBook's built-
in editor or your favorite ASCII editor or word processor.
QBook Version 1.00 User's Guide Page:4
License
QBook is Shareware. It is NOT Public Domain software and it is
NOT free software.
The program QBook, this document and the help screens displayed
within QBook are all Copyright (C) 1994 by Robert J. Butler. All
rights reserved. You may use, copy and distribute QBook only
under the following conditions:
Non-registered users have a limited license to use QBook on their
systems for an evaluation period of thirty days. Any use beyond
this period requires that QBook be registered with the author.
QBook may not be modified in any way for any reason. This
includes, but is not limited to, removal of the opening
"reminder" screen. The only legal way to remove this screen is
to register the program.
You may distribute QBook to others under the following
conditions:
1) You distribute only the Shareware version and do not
distribute the registration key or any programs or utilities
that are provided to registered users.
2) The program is distributed in its original form and with its
original files. You may, however, change from one
compressed format to another (i.e.: from ZIP to ARC)
provided all files are kept in the compressed file.
3) If you charge to distribute the program, you must CLEARLY
AND EXPLICITLY STATE to your customers that the fee you
charge does not register the program, and that they are
still required to register the program with the author if
they use it beyond the evaluation period.
Standard Disclaimer
QBook is provided AS IS with no expressed or implied warranties.
Use QBook at your own risk. The author will not be liable for
any damages or loss of data resulting either directly or
indirectly from the use of the program. The author will not be
responsible if the program fails to operate as desired by the
user or as described in this manual or the help screens.
The author intends to provide support for QBook and has every
intention of providing updates and bug fixes. There is, however,
no obligation on his part to do so.
Put simply, the program comes with absolutely no guarantees.
The program has been thoroughly tested, but it is always possible
to miss something. Always keep backups of your data.
QBook Version 1.00 User's Guide Page:5
Installation
To install QBook, copy the file QBOOK.EXE, MESSAGES.QBK,
MESSAGES.IDX and QBOOK.HLP to whatever disk and subdirectory you
desire (i.e.: C:\QBOOK)
The standard installation should work well for most users.
QBook's internal editor will be used for creating and editing
recipes, and recipes will be stored in compressed form using
QBook's internal compression routines. If you are running QBook
on a disk drive that uses a disk compression technology (such as
Stac Electronics' Stacker), you may want to turn off compression
(See "Configuring QBook").
Once you are comfortable with QBook, you may want to explore some
of the advanced configuration options (See "Configuring QBook").
Getting Help
QBook has two levels of help. "Help Mode", which can be turned on
and off using the F1 key, gives you a brief description of each
menu option on the main set of popup menus.
QBook also has a fairly extensive context-sensitive help system
which provides help for each of the functions QBook provides.
Much of the help information duplicates what is found in this
user's guide, but is much more accessible.
Unless QBook is busy printing or reading or writing to the disk,
the Alt-F1 key combination will almost always pop up a help
screen. Many help screens have more than one page, and you can
see additional information by pressing the Page Down (marked
PGDN) key. Each help screen is linked to related help topics,
you can select the topic you wish to view with the arrow keys and
then press ENTER.
Part of the help system is an Overview of QBook. This overview
gives you a brief description of each of QBook's features. It is
recommended that you read the overview before using QBook for the
first time.
The Help Index is selectable from all of the help screens except
the overview screens and lists all of the help topics that are
available.
Another key that is useful is the ESCAPE key. This key will get
you out of wherever you are and pressing it repeatedly will
eventually bring you to the main screen. Pressing escape from
the main screen will cause QBook to ask you if you are sure you
want to exit. If you do, press Y, if not, press N.
QBook Version 1.00 User's Guide Page:6
Starting QBook
Type QBOOK at the DOS prompt. The first time you run QBook, it
will ask you "Is this the first time you have run QBook?" It
does this because it was unable to find QBook's configuration
file (which contains information on how you want the program to
work). If you answer 'Y' to this question, QBook will initialize
itself by creating its configuration and index files. Once it
has initialized, QBook will automatically display a help window
which will allow you to walk through a brief overview/tutorial.
QBook accepts three command line parameters. If you have an
older color adapter and the screen flickers when QBook runs, you
can turn on CGA snow checking by typing "QBOOK /S+" at the DOS
prompt
QBook normally writes direct to video memory. This is a fast
method of displaying information on the screen, but occasionally
causes problems (for example in an older multitasking
environment). If you want QBook to use BIOS screen writes
instead of direct screen writes, type "QBOOK /B+" at the DOS
prompt.
Both snow checking and BIOS writes can be turned on permanently
(see Configuring QBook).
The final command line parameter tells QBook that you want to
make configuration changes before it tries to load its data
files. For example, if you move the data files to a different
directory in DOS instead of letting QBook move them for you,
QBook will not know where to find them. You can type "QBOOK
/CFG" at the DOS prompt and you will go directly to the
configuration menu where you can make your changes.
QBook Version 1.00 User's Guide Page:7
Using QBook
Adding Recipes
A "recipe" to QBook can be anything at all. It doesn't need to
be instructions for preparing a food item. For example, if you
have a lot of cookbooks with favorite recipes, rather than
typing them into QBook you can simply add a "recipe" that is a
reference to the page number in your cookbook. This way you
can utilize the searching capabilities of QBook without having
to type in recipes that you already have somewhere else.
Other ideas are to store conversion tables or titles of
cookbooks that you'd like to find someday. QBook makes them
easy to find when you need them.
To add a recipe, simply choose the option from the main menu.
When you add a recipe, QBook creates a temporary file called
RECIPE##.###, where ##,### is the number of the recipe being
created. If you create a file named TEMPLATE.QBK and place it
in your data directory, QBook will use that as a template
(everything in it will be copied to your new recipe prior to
loading the editor) when you create a new recipe. If it is not
found, QBook will put create a file with a "Title:" line and a
"Keyword:" line for you.
QBook Version 1.00 User's Guide Page:8
QBook's Recipe Editor
Unless you have configured an external editor, QBook will use its
internal editor for adding and editing recipes. This is a fairly
simple editor, but it should be sufficient for most users. The
editor will automatically wrap text at the column number you
specified when you chose the internal editor (column 75 if you
never changed it). The internal editor understands the following
keys:
Movement: : :
Arrow keys: Move the cursor one character up, down, left or
right
Ctrl-right
Ctrl-left: Move the cursor left or right one word
Home/End: Move the cursor to the beginning or end of the
current line
PgUp/PgDn: Move to the next/previous page of the recipe
Ctrl-PgUp
Ctrl-PgDn: Move to the beginning or end of the recipe
Deletion: : :
Backspace: Delete the character immediately to the left of
the cursor
Del: Delete the character under the cursor
Ctrl-End: Delete from the cursor to the end of the current
line
Ctrl-Y: Delete the current line
Ctrl-T: Delete the word to the right of the cursor
Ctrl-R: Delete the word to the left of the cursor
Ins: Toggle between overtype and insert modes
Other: : :
F7: Record a sequence of keystrokes (F7 again to stop
recording)
F8: Playback the recorded sequence of keystrokes
Alt-B: Reformat the current paragraph to the margins
specified in the configuration
Alt-S: Save the recipe
Alt-X/Esc: Quit the editor, prompt to save if the current
recipe is unsaved.
QBook Version 1.00 User's Guide Page:9
Entering Recipes
One of QBook's advantages is that recipes can be formatted any
way you desire. In order to index your recipes, however, QBook
requires that you type in a title and keywords for the recipe.
The first thing you should do is type in the title of the
recipe you are adding. If you want to take advantage of
QBook's indexing and searching capabilities, the next thing you
should do is add keywords, which are used by QBook to search
for a recipe. You do this by typing "Keywords: " (if it isn't
already there) on line two and then typing in your keywords
separated by commas. If you have too many keywords to fit on a
line (80 characters across), just add another line beginning
with "Keywords: ". Do not put a comma at the end of a
keywords line, even if there are more keywords on the next
line.
Choosing keywords carefully makes it much easier for you to
find the recipe you are looking for. QBook doesn't have the
capability to search ingredients or the text of the recipe, so
it is a good idea to list major ingredients as keywords. The
best way to choose keywords is to think in terms of an index in
a cookbook: What would you look under if you wanted to find
this recipe and couldn't remember the title? You can have as
many keywords as you want. Only the first 60 characters of a
keywords or title are indexed.
Once you have entered your title and keywords, all you need to
do is type in your recipe. Each line of your recipe should be
less than 80 characters. Once you are done, save the file and
exit the editor. QBook will add the recipe to the index and
move the temporary recipe file into a compressed data file and
then delete it.
QBook Version 1.00 User's Guide Page:10
Display a Recipe
To display a recipe, choose the option from the main menu, type
the recipe number and press Enter. You can also display
recipes from the title view screen by selecting the desired
title with the arrow keys and choosing Display from the menu
(see Viewing Titles and Searching for Recipes).
When a recipe is displayed, the title, recipe number and
keywords are displayed on top. This header information does
not scroll, the rest of the recipe can be scrolled with the Up,
Down, PGUP and PGDN, Home and End keys. The Up and Down arrow
keys scroll up or down one line at a time, PGUP and PGDN scroll
a whole page at a time. Home displays the first page of the
recipe, End displays the last.
A flashing '*' next to the title of the recipe indicates that
there are more than one recipe with the same title in the
database (see Locating Duplicate Recipes). A flashing '+' at
the end of the keywords line indicates that there are more
keywords than can be displayed on a single line.
The bottom two lines of the display screen are a menu listing
the display options. The options are as follows:
Edit: Edit the displayed recipe with the editor. This
option allows you to make changes to the displayed
recipe. When you exit the editor, QBook will update
its indexes and replace the old copy of the recipe in
the compressed data file.
Print: Print the displayed recipe. QBook will prompt you
for the printer setup to use and the output device or
file to send the recipe to. See Configuring QBook
for information on printer setups.
Export: Write the displayed recipe to a disk file with begin
and end markers so that it can be easily imported
into another QBook database and/or posted to an
electronic Bulletin Board.
Keywords: Display all of the keywords in the recipe and allow
you to add, delete or change them.
Title: Edit the title of the recipe.
Delete: Delete the displayed recipe from the database. You
will be asked to verify the deletion.
+ and -: These options only appear when you choose display
from the Title View screen. They allow you to step
through the list of titles without returning to the
Title View Screen between recipes.
QBook Version 1.00 User's Guide Page:11
Print an Index
There are three types of indexes that can be printed: titles,
keywords and combined. The title index lists all titles in
alphabetical order, along with the recipe numbers (which are
assigned in order as you add or import recipes).
The keyword index lists the titles alphabetically, but grouped
by keywords. For example: The keyword "Candies" would be
listed followed by an indented list of the titles of all
recipes containing that keyword. Recipe titles are ONLY listed
under the appropriate keywords, if a recipe does not contain
any keywords, it WILL NOT BE PRINTED in the keyword index.
The combined index, as the name suggests, is a combination of
the keyword index and the title index. The combined index
resembles a good cookbook index where you can look up either a
keyword or a title. Titles appear in boldface in the
alphabetical listing along with the keywords, they also appear
in the indented list of each keyword that the recipe is indexed
under.
View all of the Titles
View all of the Titles will display QBook's Title View screen
with all recipes displayed. This screen consists of a list of
recipe titles with a menu across the bottom. Choosing this
option is identical to choosing Search for Recipes and entering
a blank search string.
QBook Version 1.00 User's Guide Page:12
Search for Recipes
Search for Recipes will Display a popup window which allows you
to enter a search string and modify the search options. The
search string is a word or partial word that you want QBook to
locate in the index. A blank search string matches all of the
recipes and is identical to choosing View all of the Titles
from the main menu. You have three options when searching the
index:
Quick Search: Quick search uses a very fast search method
to find recipes. However, only those recipes
where the search string matches the beginning
of a title or keyword will be matched. For
example, if you search on "Chicken", "Chicken
Stir Fry" would match, but "Stir Fried
Chicken" would not. Careful use of keywords
can give you the speed advantage of Quick
Search and still give you flexible searches.
For example, if you gave "Stir Fried Chicken"
a keyword of "Chicken" it would have matched
in the above example.
If you turn Quick Search Off, QBook examines
each entry in the index and matches all
recipes where the search string appears
anywhere in the title or keyword. In the
above example, Full Search WOULD match "Stir
Fried Chicken, even if you didn't give it a
keyword of "Chicken". Full Search is much
slower than quick search, but gives you more
matches if the keywords are not detailed
enough.
Search Titles: This option tells QBook to include a recipe
when its title matches the search. This is
normally set to Yes.
Search Keywords: This option tells QBook to include a recipe
when one of its keywords matches the search.
This is normally set to yes.
QBook Version 1.00 User's Guide Page:13
Import Recipes
When you choose the Import Recipes option from the main menu,
you will be prompted for a file name to import. Once you have
entered a file name, the Import screen will be displayed.
Importing and exporting provide an easy way of exchanging
recipes. When you export a recipe, QBook writes the recipe,
its title and all its keywords into a file along with lines
that mark the beginning and end of the recipe. The markers are
necessary because one file can contain many exported recipes
and QBook needs to be able to tell where one recipe ends and
another begins. An exported recipe isn't formatted in any
special way, aside from the begin and end markers.
Exporting provides an easy way to exchange recipes. Just give
a file of exported recipes to someone, either on floppy disks
or by uploading to a computer bulletin board system (BBS), and
that person can quickly import all of the recipes into his or
her copy of QBook. Exported recipes can also be posted as
messages on a computer BBS and other users can save them and
import them.
Importing is the complement of exporting. When you import a
recipe, QBook reads a file that has been exported by someone
else and adds the recipe to your database without you having to
type the recipe in.
QBook understands the export format of several recipe
databases, but sometimes you will need to interactively import
recipes by telling QBook where a recipe begins and ends.
QBook allows you to either quickly import all delimited recipes
in a file, or to scan through a text file and interactively
mark and edit keywords and titles prior to importing a recipe.
QBook Version 1.00 User's Guide Page:14
The Import Screen
The import screen can be in several different modes, depending
on the previous options you have chosen you may be in Scan
mode, Clip mode, or Recipe Display mode.
The following options are common to all of the modes:
Find: Find the next recipe which is delimited with begin and
end markers.
Begin: Make the cursor line the first line of the recipe,
clipping out all lines above it.
End: Make the cursor line the last line of the recipe,
clipping out all lines below it.
Global: Import all delimited recipes in the import file
starting at the cursor location. If a recipe is
currently being displayed in recipe display mode, it
will be imported even if the cursor is not at the top
of the recipe.
Scan mode is the mode you are in when you fist see the Import
screen. The entire import file can be scrolled by using the
cursor keys. You have the following additional option when in
Scan Mode:
Remember: This is used if you want QBook to include a line
of text that is not included in the delimited part
of the recipe. For example, if you are importing
recipes captured from a BBS and want to remember
who posted the recipe, you could "Remember" the
From line of the message and QBook would append it
to the recipe when you import it. The remembered
line is displayed at the bottom of the screen,
just above the menu bar. To delete a remembered
line, simply "Remember" a blank line.
QBook enters Clip Mode when you have marked either the
beginning or end of a recipe, but not both. In addition to the
options listed above, you also have the following new option:
Unmark: This option will return you to scan mode, again
allowing you to view the entire import file.
Finally, Recipe View Mode is entered when you have either used
the "Find" function to locate a delimited recipe, or you have
marked both begin and end lines of a recipe. The "Remember"
option is not available, but the "Unmark" option is. You also
have the following new options:
Keywords: Display all of the keywords in the recipe and
allow you to add, delete or change them.
Title: Edit the title of the displayed recipe.
QBook Version 1.00 User's Guide Page:15
The Title View Screen
On the Title View screen, you can use the up and down arrow
keys, the PgUp, PgDn, Home and End keys to move through the
list. Home and End will move you to the top or bottom recipe
on the current screen. If pressed a second time, they will
move you to the first or last recipe respectively. You may
also move directly to a recipe by typing in its number.
Pressing the space bar will mark or unmark the currently
highlighted recipe so that you can perform a function on a
group of recipes at the same time.
Your menu choices are as follows:
Display: Display the currently highlighted recipe.
Print: Print all marked recipes. QBook will prompt you
for the printer setup to use and the output device
or file to send the recipes to. See Configuring
QBook for information on printer setups. If no
recipes are marked, the currently highlighted
recipe will be printed.
Export: Write all of the marked recipes to a disk file
with begin and end markers so that they can be
easily imported into another QBook database and/or
posted to an electronic Bulletin Board.. If no
recipes are marked, the currently highlighted
recipe will be exported.
Delete: Delete all of the marked recipes from the database
(you will have an opportunity to cancel). If no
recipes are marked, the currently highlighted
recipe will be deleted.
Mark: Mark all recipes in the list so they can be
printed, exported or deleted.
UnMark: Unmark all marked recipes.
QBook Version 1.00 User's Guide Page:16
Search: The search option allows you to narrow or broaden the
your list of recipes by searching on additional
keywords/titles. The search options will be the same
as those you used the last time you chose Search for
Recipes from the main menu. You have three search
methods:
AND: An AND search will narrow the list to all the recipes
in the current search group that also match the also
match the new search string.
OR: An OR search will expand the list by searching the
whole QBook index and adding all recipes that match the
new search string to the currently displayed list.
NOT: A NOT search will locate all recipes in the currently
displayed list that match the search string and remove
them from the currently displayed list.
Flag
UnFlag: This option is used to toggle marking of potential
duplicate recipes with a flashing '*'. You may then
use the '*' menu option to locate all recipes with the
same title and display them to determine if they are
indeed duplicates.
*: This option is only available when in duplicate
flagging mode. If you press it when a recipe marked
with a flashing '*' is highlighted, you will be shown a
list of all recipes that have that title.
0-9: Typing a number will pop up a prompt asking you for the
recipe number to jump to. If the recipe is in the
current list, the list will scroll immediately to that
recipe.
QBook Version 1.00 User's Guide Page:17
Configuring QBook
The first time you use QBook, it will set up the default
configuration and display the configuration menu so you can
make whatever customizations you desire. The configuration
menu has the following choices:
Display Options
The Display Options menu choice allows you to choose between
three built in color schemes (one monochrome and two color) or
to create your own. You may also set options to prevent "snow"
on a CGA display or to force video to be in BIOS mode, which
may solve compatibility problems with older multitaskers or
speech equipment.
Printer Configuration
The Printer Configuration menu choice allows you to set up
descriptions and formatting sequences for up to five
"printers". A printer is any output device, including files on
disk or the display. The default configuration has four pre-
configured printers - Epson on LPT1, HP laser on LPT2, disk
file and screen. You may need to change the printer ports if
your system differs. QBook also allows you to change the
output device each time you print something. This would allow
you to print an index with HP Laser escape sequences to a disk
file, for example, without requiring a separate printer setup
for both printer and disk.
QBook always expects to be able to print 80 columns across, if
you make any changes to the standard printer configuration,
make sure your paper width, margins and print pitch provide 80
columns for text.
The following configuration options are available:
Description: This is the name of the printer configuration you
are editing. All available printer setups will be
presented in a popup menu whenever you print a
recipe or index.
Output to: This tells QBook where to send the printout. It
may be a printer port (PRN, LPT1, LPT2, LPT3,
COM1, COM2...), a disk file (RECIPE.PRN,
INDEX.PRN) or it may be left blank. If left
blank, output will be displayed on the screen.
Page Length: This is the number of lines the printer is capable
of printing on a single sheet of paper. It tells
QBook where to put the page breaks. If you do not
want page breaks, set this to zero. If you are
printing to the screen, this option is ignored.
Margins
Top/Bottom: This tells QBook how many lines to leave at the
top and bottom of each page.
QBook Version 1.00 User's Guide Page:18
Init
DeInit: These are the printer codes QBook sends before
starting the printout and after printing is
complete. These might be used to switch a printer
into and out of compressed type mode to print on
recipe cards, for example. Printer codes must be
entered as ASCII values separated by spaces. For
example,. ESC-B would be entered as "27 66".
Bold On
Bold Off: These are the printer codes QBook sends to print
text in bold and to turn bold off. As with Init
and DeInit, they should be entered as ASCII values
separated by spaces.
Editor Options
This option allows you to specify the editor QBook will start
when you want to edit or add recipes. Unless you change this
option, QBook will use its own built in editor. Your other
choices are to use MS-DOS's EDIT or SemWare's Qedit. You can
also specify the editor of your choice by selecting "Customized
Editor".
To enter a customized editor, enter the command you normally
type to start your editor except replace the file name with a
"%F". For example, if your editor is called "B", you would
enter "B %F" and QBook would then start "B" when you want to
edit a recipe. If your editor is not in your system path, you
need to specify the fully qualified path so that QBook can find
it. For example, if B.EXE is in the directory c:\editor, you
would enter "C:\EDITOR\B.EXE %F" as your editor command.
QBook Version 1.00 User's Guide Page:19
Recipe Storage Options
These options tell QBook how to store your recipe files.
Unless you change things, QBook will store your recipes in
files of 100 recipes each, using its own internal compression
routines. The compression technique QBook uses is very fast
and does a fairly good job of compressing text files. Overall,
you should see a 25-30% reduction in size.
If you are using "disk doubling" technology such as Stacker or
DoubleSpace, you will probably gain better compression and
better performance by turning off compression completely. You
should see about a 50% compression ratio or better.
If you are not using a program like Stacker or DoubleSpace, and
you would like to save more disk space than you do with QBook's
internal compression, you can use an external data compression
program such as PKZIP, LHARC or ARJ. These programs can
achieve 30-50% data compression, but performance may suffer
significantly. QBook comes with options for each of the three
compression programs mentioned above, or you can use another by
choosing the Customized Compression option from the menu and
entering the appropriate commands.
You will need to enter the commands needed to get or extract a
file from the archive, put a file into an archive, move a file
into an archive (deleting the original) and delete a file from
an archive. You will also need to enter the default file
extension used by the archive program you are configuring.
For each command, replace the name of the archive file with a
%A and the name of the file being worked with with a %F. You
might want to choose one of the preconfigured commands and
modify it to use your program instead.
As with the editor command, if the program is not in your
system path, you need to enter the fully qualified path name.
You may also choose to change the number of recipes QBook
stores in each compressed file. Your choices are 20, 50, 100,
200 and 1000. Smaller files tend to be faster (especially with
external compression programs) but have more overhead, which
may reduce their compression ratio.
QBook Version 1.00 User's Guide Page:20
Data File Directories
Choosing this option allows you to tell QBook where to put its
data files. Usually, these directories would be subdirectories
below QBook's main directory. The three types of files QBook
needs to store are Datafiles, which are the main index files
and QBook's help files, the Work files, which are files created
during a QBook session but which are not permanent (a RAM disk
is a good choice for a Work Directory), and Archive files,
which are the files QBook uses to store recipes in compressed
form.
If you make changes, QBook will create the directories if
necessary, and ask if you'd like to move the existing files to
their new location. Normally you would choose Yes, unless you
have previously moved them yourself.
QBook Utilities
The QBook utilities are used to repair or rebuild an index if
you start having problems with your database. Normally, this
will not be necessary, but if you lose power during the middle
of a disk operation, or have a partial disk failure, you may
need to repair your index files.
The Repair option simply checks the index files for possible
problems and attempts to fix them. It does not compare the
index files to the actual recipe files.
The Rebuild option will completely re-create the index files by
looking at each recipe file and re-indexing it as if you had
just added it to your database.
The Keyword Maintenance option allows you to edit change all
occurrences of one keyword to another. For example, if you
have some recipes with the keyword "Chicken" and some with the
keyword "Poultry" and want to change them all to "Poultry",
this is where you would do so.
Registration Information
Once you have registered QBook, you can enter your name and
registration key here, and QBook will stop nagging you to
register every time you start the program. It will still
display a status screen each time you start it, but any key
will bypass the screen. You may also put anything on the
command line and the screen will not be displayed at all once
you have registered.
QBook Version 1.00 User's Guide Page:21
Technical Information
QBook was written in C++ using Borland C++ version 3.1.
The screen library used is Mike Smedley's Shareware function
library, CXL (version 5.2). Some of the database routines are
from Mix Software's C/Database Toolchest. The internal editor is
based on code from Dlugosz Software's C Editor Toolbox. The
internal compression routines are adapted from the book "The
Data Compression Book" by Mark Nelson.
QBook's data files
QBook creates three index files. ENTRIES.QBK is used by QBook to
track how many recipes are in the database and the recipe numbers
that are in use. TITLES.QBK is list of recipe titles used for
quick lookup. It contains as many 61 byte records as you have
recipes. KEYWORD.QBK and KEYWORD.IDX are the main index files
used by QBook.Their size depends on the number of recipe titles
and keywords. These files are stored in the DATA directory
defined in configuration. All of these can be recreated with the
Rebuild utility option if they become damaged.
The files MESSAGES.IDX and MESSAGES.QBK are used by QBook to
store informational messages. QBOOK.HLP is QBook's help file for
online documentation. The optional file, TEMPLATE.QBK contains
text that QBook will use as the base text for all new recipes
that are created. See Adding Recipes for additional information.
All of these files are in the DATA directory.
QBook expects to find the file QBOOK.CFG either in the current
working directory or in the same directory as QBOOK.EXE. This
file contains the configuration information for QBook.
Recipes are given a name of the form: RECIPE##.###, where ##,###
is the recipe number from 1 to 65,535. These files normally
won't be present except as temporary work files (they are kept in
the archive files), but if you reboot or lose power while using
QBook, they may be there. They will be moved to the proper
archive file the next time you run QBook. These files are stored
in the WORK directory.
Finally, the REC##### files contain the RECIPE##.### files. The
extension of these files depends on the compression tool you use
(internal compression and no compression both create two files
with extensions of .QBK and .IDX). These files are stored in the
ARCHIVE directory.
QBook maintains all these files for you, so all you need to do is
back them up regularly in case of disk failure or human error.
Make sure you get all the archive files AND the TITLES, KEYWORD
and ENTRIES files when you back up the data.
QBook Version 1.00 User's Guide Page:22
Registration Form
QBook is Shareware. If you use it beyond the thirty day
evaluation period, you must register it.
For $20 (US) you will receive a registration key which will
disable the opening nag screen. If you would like a diskette
containing the current version of QBook, please send a self-
addressed, stamped diskette mailer and a formatted diskette along
with your registration.
Please send your registration to:
Robert J. Butler
2023 38th St. NW
Rochester, MN 55901
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QBook 1.00 registration form
Name:__________________________________________
Address:____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
EMail address (if any):_______________________________
____ Copies of QBook @ $20 each: $__________
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