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Text File | 1995-12-02 | 29.1 KB | 575 lines

Documentation for 'Revision Master V1.0' (Shareware Version) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Released December 1995. © 1995 Richard Thompson ------------------------------------------------ Welcome to this documentation file containing everything you will need to know in order to use 'Revision Master V1.0'. Although Revision Master V1.0 is very easy and powerful to use, you should read through this documentation file carefully to ensure that you get the most out of using 'Revision Master'. If you have a printer, it may be best to print it out to study at your leisure and whilst working with the program. By the way, from now on in this documentation, I'll shorten 'Revision Master' to 'RM', Okay! Warning! -------- Although every effort has been made to ensure RM is reliable and bug free, the author can't be responsible for anything going wrong. You use RM at your own risk! RM has gone under many, many hours of bug finding and tweaking to ensure RM is an excellent and reliable program. I would also like to thank my brother (John) for testing, my Grandad (Proving that RM can be used by all ages!) and everyone else who has helped out testing RM allowing me to make RM the excellent program it is today. What hardware do I need to use RM!? ----------------------------------- RM should work on ANY Amiga with 1MB of memory or more. It has been developed on my A600 and everything works fine on it. If you have any compatibility problems please let me know. If you only have 1MB of memory, don't run any other additional packages with it because RM uses a lot of memory and you'll probably run out. If you have a hard drive you may copy the program onto it without any problems. Distributing RM: ---------------- This shareware save disabled version of RM may be freely distributed providing all files are present and are not altered in any way or sold for profit (A minimal fee is allowed to cover handling costs). If you own a PD library or know someone who has, feel free to include it in your/their catalogue. Spread it to all your friends, enemies etc. Just spread it, okay! When distributing the program, all the following files (Including .info files) MUST be present in the hierarchy below and keep all the filenames exactly the same. You may archive these files providing that when the file is unarchived, all files are present and in the form of the hierarchy below. I'm not trying to be awkward or anything, but it helps other users when they come to use RM and avoids unnecessary confusion. How many times have you come across a shareware or PD package and have found example files or important documentation missing?, it's extremely annoying! Here is the list of the files which must be distributed with RM... Revision_Master - The program itself. Revision_Master.info - The icon for the program. Revision_Master.Doc - This file you are reading now. Revision_Master.Doc.info - The icon for the file you are reading now. Examples.info - Draw icon which contains example files. In the example draw are some example files which are... German_Voc_Weather.RM - An example RM file containing RM vocabulary for German words with English meanings which are useful for describing the weather. German_Voc_Weather.RM.info - The icon file for the above file. German_Voc_Education.RM - An example RM file containing RM vocabulary for German words with English meanings which are useful for describing education such as the different school subjects. German_Voc_Education.RM.info - The icon file for the above file. Science_Questions.RM - An example RM file containing RM questions about science. Science_Questions.RM.info - The icon file for the above file. Wave.IFF - An IFF graphic file which is used with the science questions. Maths_Questions.RM - An example RM file containing RM questions about maths. Maths_Questions.RM.info - The icon file for the above file. Computer_Questions.RM - An example RM file containing RM questions about computers. Computer_Questions.RM.info - The icon file for the above file. Please also distribute PPMORE or some other text viewer program in the C directory of your disk because it's used to display this document file. By the way PLEASE DO NOT distribute the full registered version of RM! You may copy the full registered version though for your own personal use or transfer it onto your hard drive. This way I can keep prices down. Thanks for your participation. How do I Register RM or contact the author!? -------------------------------------------- The full registered version of RM is only available for the very low price of 5 English Pounds direct from the author at the address below. This version is save enabled allowing you to save your vocabulary and questions to disk. You can then keep these files on disk and test yourself at a later date to ensure that the material you are revising really sticks in your head. Registering is simple, simply send a cheque for 5 English pounds along with your FULL name and address to the address below and in return you'll get a disk with the full registered version on it, it's simple. No need to send return postage or anything, just slam that cheque in the post and I'll dispatch your order normally within around 48 hours of receipt but please allow up to 28 days for delivery just in case of problems. If you have any questions etc. about RM and would like them answering before you register, feel free to write. However, if you require a personal reply please send a SAE or IRC (International Reply Coupon) to help cover costs. I'm also interested in bug reports, comments, improvements for future versions, etc. Anyway, here is my address: Richard Thompson 50 Chesterfield Road Shirland Alfreton Derbyshire DE55 6BN England Okay, So just what is RM and what does it do!? ---------------------------------------------- RM is a cheap but extremely powerful tool to help people revise for exams. If your a student with an Amiga and are not using RM, you are missing out on this excellent program, whether you are doing GCSE's, A-Levels, at university or whatever. However, the program has many other uses too. How about if your going on holiday abroad and want to brush up on your language skills?, RM will help you. If your taking your driving test why not let RM test you on the highway code? If your an Amiga coder, you could even use RM to help you become familiar with commands, the uses of RM are unlimited. In fact just about anything in life which requires a good sound knowledge of something, RM can be used! With RM, YOU enter the questions and answers into the program to suit your own knowledge. It's important that you balance the questions at the correct level, ie. don't make them too easy or too hard. You could even get a friend to produce the questions and answers for you if you like to make it more difficult. Entering questions yourself then being tested on them when you've already entered the answer yourself may seem pretty ridiculous at first, but it isn't. By the time you build up libraries of questions over several weeks and start testing yourself on them later, you'll have to perform well to get them all correct and will find it challenging. Entering questions and answers is dealt with later in this document. Don't get the idea that RM is just a simple question and answer type program, this isn't so! RM also has a system for dealing with foreign languages. This enables lists of words to be entered with their meaning(s). Up to 6 meanings can be entered for a word which is useful for words which have more than one meaning. RM allows you to be tested on the vocabulary in the form of a quiz, a word search, anagrams and a special memory game. Not bad eh? Lists of words (known in RM as 'Vocabulary') can be especially useful to make lists of terms and their meanings, especially in subjects such as science and psychology. Entering vocabulary is dealt with later on in this document. An important point to remember is that if you are revising a foreign language, you may need to copy the required keymap onto a copy of your WorkBench disk for that language so you can enter all the various letters and symbols used in that language. Refer to your WorkBench manual if you are unsure about how to do this. I have not used any special symbols in the example files to get around this problem. Here is a list of just some of the features of RM V1.0! ------------------------------------------------------- * Extremely user friendly and good looking user interface. (No dull 4 colour WB screens!) * Up to 300 questions can be entered per project (Memory permitting of course!) * Up to 12 answers may be entered per question when designing questions, good for questions which have more than one answer. * Lots of question features enabling yes/no questions to be built up. * IFF Graphics may be assigned to questions, useful for topics such as science where diagrams are needed quite often. * Up to 300 words can be entered per project (Memory permitting of course!). These make up the vocabulary used mostly for foreign languages. * Up to 6 meanings may be entered per word in the vocabulary, useful for words that have more than one meaning. * Different ways of testing the user which are: A Quiz, Word Search, Anagrams or a Memory Game. * Example questions, graphics and vocabulary files to get you started using RM. * Preferences to allow you to set up the RM environment how YOU like it. * Amusing sampled sound FX. * Friendly free advice with RM, should you need it. Plus many, many additional features and all for just the price of 5 English pounds! General information: -------------------- Although you can operate just about all of the user interface with the mouse, there are keyboard shortcuts for most features to speed things up a little. If a letter is underlined on a button, pressing any Amiga key plus that letter will be equivalent to clicking on it with the mouse. Also, buttons which have red text on them such as 'OKAY' and 'CANCEL' can be selected by pressing '<RETURN>' for 'OKAY' and '<ESCAPE>' for 'CANCEL'. Likewise, in the print requesters, '<RETURN>' is equivalent to clicking on 'PRINT' and '<ESCAPE>' is equivalent to clicking on 'CANCEL'. Easy Eh? Multitasking the program is easy. Simply pressing the left Amiga key and 'M' will flick between the RM environment and WorkBench environment. Getting Started: ---------------- Upon loading RM by double clicking on it's program icon, you'll be presented with a screen consisting of 7 buttons down the left-hand side and a window at the right-hand side which displays information about the program and information to encourage you to register. This window is also used for testing purposes, hence the long button under it. Clicking on this will test you on the vocabulary or/and questions entered. Located at the top left-hand corner of the screen, there is the 'Quit' button. Click on this to quit out of the program, however you'll be asked to confirm first. You may also quit out of the program by pressing the 'Escape' key. Also located at the top of the screen is the current path and filename of the current project. Here is a list of the 7 buttons that are located down the left-hand side of the screen, most of them are quite self explanatory... NEW - Starts a new project. All vocabulary, questions, etc. are cleared out of memory, allowing you to start a new project on a clean slate. Note that the preferences are not altered in any way including the screen colours. LOAD - Loads a RM project from disk. Simply choose the name of the file you want to load using the excellent file requester. All RM files end with '.RM' so they don't get confused with other types of file hanging around in your collection. Don't forget to load in the example files which come with RM and play around with them to get a feel of how RM works. SAVE AS - Saves a RM project to disk. Simply pick the required path and filename using the file requester and your file will be saved to the specified destination. Don't forget to ensure that your filename ends with '.RM'. Note that all preferences are saved along with the data, including screen colours. This enables you to give all your projects different preferences and screen colours to make your projects just that bit more interesting. This option is NOT available in the shareware version, only the registered version! SAVE - Does the same as 'SAVE AS' except that it saves the file under the same path and filename what it was saved under last time (Which is displayed at the top of the screen). If the project name is '<Untitled>', you'll be prompted with the file requester to choose a path and filename. This option is NOT available in the shareware version, only the registered version! PREFS - Allows you to configure just about everything you could imagine in the program including the screen colours, test options etc. and is discussed in more detail later. VOCABULARY - Allows the user to enter vocabulary into RM. This is useful for learning foreign languages and learning terminology in a subject. Entering vocabulary is discussed below. QUESTIONS - Allows the user to enter questions and answers. This topic is discussed later on in this documentation. So how do I enter vocabulary!? ------------------------------ Entering vocabulary is very straight forward. Simply click on the 'VOCABULARY' button and you'll be presented with a list of words (if you have no words in memory, no words will be present) and some buttons. Normally, if you were revising a foreign language you would enter the foreign words here and the English equivalent(s) as the meaning(s) (see below). Here are the buttons (going from left to right) underneath the words followed by a description of what they do... CUT - Cuts the highlighted word and associated meaning(s) from the list and stores it in the CUT/COPY buffer. COPY - Does the same as CUT except that the highlighted word and meaning(s) are not removed from the list, they are just stored in the CUT/COPY buffer. PASTE - Pastes the contents of the CUT/COPY buffer over the currently highlighted word. PRINT - Enables you to print out all the vocabulary you have entered. Clicking on 'PRINT' opens a further requester. RM uses the standard printer driver on your WorkBench disk. In this requester you must enter how many characters/line. To find this out simply look at your WorkBench printer preferences and take your right margin value away from your left margin value. This gives you the number of characters/line. The 'Print Meaning(s)' tick box does just that. If this is not ticked, just the words are printed out without their meaning(s). When your happy with the preferences simply click 'PRINT' to start printing or 'CANCEL' to exit the requester. CLEAR ALL - Does just that! All words in the vocabulary with their associated meanings are cleared from memory, however other data entered into the program such as questions remain untouched. OKAY - Exits the requester. ADD - The most important button, it lets you add a word with up to 6 meanings. Clicking on this button brings up a further requester. Simply type in the word and you may type up to 6 meanings for that word. Most of the time the word will have only one meaning, therefore the other 5 meaning slots will be left blank. Click on 'OKAY' to add the word and meaning(s) to the vocabulary list or click on 'CANCEL' to abort the operation. DELETE - This deletes the currently selected word along with it's meaning(s). SWAP - A very useful feature of RM. It swaps all the words in the vocabulary with their first meaning. If a word has more than one meaning, then additional meanings will be lost which is why you will be asked to confirm that you really want to go ahead with this operation. So what use is this? Suppose you are testing yourself on German and you enter the word 'Tag' as the word and 'Day' for the meaning ('Tag' is German for 'Day' by the way). When you are in the quiz section of RM, RM will show you the German word (Tag) and ask you to name the English equivalent (Day). After using this option, this is reversed. You are now shown the English word and asked to give the German equivalent. Smart eh? EDIT - Allows you to edit the currently selected word along with it's meaning(s). The word along with it's meaning(s) will be displayed. You are now free to edit these. When you've done, click on 'OKAY' to store the edited data or click 'CANCEL' to leave the requester, ignoring any modifications you have made. So how do I enter questions!? ------------------------------ Entering questions is very similar to entering vocabulary, if fact most of the buttons for entering questions are virtually the same as the ones for entering vocabulary. Simply click on the 'QUESTIONS' button and you'll be presented with a list of questions (if you have no questions in memory, no questions will be present) and some buttons. Each question can have up to 6 possible correct answers and 6 possible incorrect answers. Also, each question may be assigned to an IFF graphic which can be created in any good paint package such as DPAINT. This implies that you can relate your questions to diagrams etc. Don't get confused by all this! It's all described below in an easy to understand format! Here are the buttons (going from left to right) underneath the questions followed by a description of what they do... CUT - Cuts the highlighted question, associated answer(s) and IFF pathname from the list and stores it in the CUT/COPY buffer. COPY - Does the same as CUT except that the question, associated answer(s) and IFF pathname are not removed from the list, they are just stored in the CUT/COPY buffer. PASTE - Pastes the contents of the CUT/COPY buffer over the currently highlighted question. PRINT - Enables you to print out all the questions and correct answers you have entered. Clicking on 'PRINT' opens a further requester. RM uses the standard printer driver on your WorkBench disk. In this requester you must enter how many characters/line. To find this out simply look at your WorkBench printer preferences and take your right margin value away from your left margin value. This gives you the number of characters/line. The 'Print Answer(s)' tick box does just that. If this is not ticked, just the questions are printed without the correct answer(s). Note that only correct answers are printed out, not incorrect answers. See the 'ADD' command below for a discussion on entering correct and incorrect answers. When your happy with the preferences simply click 'PRINT' to start printing or 'CANCEL' to exit the requester. CLEAR ALL - Does just that! All questions, associated answer(s) and IFF pathnames are cleared from memory, however other data entered into the program such as vocabulary remain untouched. OKAY - Exits the requester. ADD - The most important button, it lets you add a question with up to 6 correct answers and 6 incorrect answers. Clicking on this button brings up a further requester. Simply type in the question and enter up to 6 possible correct answers to the question and up to 6 possible incorrect answers. But hold on a minute, just what exactly are possible correct and incorrect answers!? Possible correct answers are, as the name implies, possible correct answers! You may add up to 6 of these because a question may have more than one answer. Possible incorrect answers are only entered for 'Is this correct?' type questions. So, if possible incorrect answers are entered, in the quiz, the question will be displayed followed by a possible answer (This will be a correct or incorrect answer) picked at random. The user is then asked to state if it's correct or incorrect by clicking on one of two buttons. If no possible incorrect answers are entered then the question is simply displayed on screen and the user must key the correct answer in. Don't worry about all the above too much, take a look at the example programs and you'll soon see how easy it is to enter different types of question. After you've entered the data click 'OKAY' to add the question and associated answer(s) to the list or click 'CANCEL' to abort the operation. DELETE - This deletes the currently selected question along with it's answer(s) and graphic pathname (See below). GRAPHIC - This feature of RM allows you to base your questions around a graphic. Before using graphics you must first create them. You can create them in any graphics package such as DPAINT. All screen modes are supported (Lowres/Hires/Interlace etc.). Screens can be any size and have as many colours as you require, you can even draw your graphics in HAM if you really want to! The only restriction is that graphics must be saved out in IFF format and AGA graphics can't be used (Sorry!). RM doesn't store all the graphics in memory. Each question can be given a path and filename. When the picture is required to be displayed on screen, the picture is loaded from disk using the given path and filename. To enter a path and filename of a graphic you can simply key it into the requester and press <RETURN> or click on SELECT and you may enter the path and filename of the desired IFF graphic by means of a file requester. In either way, the graphic will be loaded and displayed on screen so you can see the chosen graphic. Click on 'OKAY' to exit the requester with the modifications made to the path and filename or click on 'CANCEL' to leave the requester, discarding any changes made. Easy Eh? EDIT - Allows you to edit the currently selected question along with it's associated answer(s). The question along with it's correct and incorrect answer(s) will be displayed. You are now free to edit these. When you've done, click on 'OKAY' to store the edited data or click 'CANCEL' to leave the requester, ignoring any modifications you have made. How do I change the program preferences!? ----------------------------------------- RM gives you full control over it's preferences. Click on PREFS and you will be presented with a large requester full of options. Here is what all of them mean... METHOD OF TESTING - Here you can click on any one of the four boxes determining how you'll be tested. The options are 1) Quiz, 2) Word Search, 3) Anagrams and 4) Memory Test. ALPHABETICAL SORTING - When editing words in the vocabulary or questions, they are normally sorted into alphabetical order. However, with lots of data this can take time, especially on Amigas with slower processors. To avoid this in the preferences you have the choice of setting the levels of sorting which are 1) None, 2) Medium (Sort when you have clicked on the 'OKAY' button in either the 'Edit Words And Meanings' or 'Edit Questions and Answers' requesters.) or 3) High, which will sort the data when any data is added or any modification is made. TESTING PARAMETERS - These are concerned with testing yourself. Testing is discussed in more detail later in this documentation. The parameters that you can alter are... # Questions, # Words, # Anagrams, # Word Lists depending on what method of testing has been selected. The default value is 20. If quiz has been selected this value refers to how many questions you will be asked. If word search has been selected this value refers to how many words will be put into the word search. Similarly, if anagrams has been selected, this value refers to how many anagrams you will be asked. If the memory test has been selected, this value refers to how many word lists you will be asked. Time/question, word, anagram or word list. The default value is 20. This value determines how many seconds you have to answer each question, find a word in a word search, solve each anagram or declare your answer in the memory test. % Pass. This determines how many % you must get right to pass. The default value is 75%. Test Vocabulary. This option is useful when the quiz method of testing is chosen. Setting this will test you on the vocabulary entered. Test Questions. This option is useful when the quiz method of testing is chosen. Setting this will test you on the questions entered. View Graphics. This option is useful when the quiz method of testing is chosen. If this isn't set, RM won't load any graphics for a question when in the quiz. This can save loading time when being tested, especially if you really know the diagrams off by heart. MISC OPTIONS - Two useful options here which are... Sound FX - Allows sound effects to be turned on/off. Save Icon - Saves a '.info' file with RM files if selected. Turning this option off saves a little disk space. RM also has a powerful palette editor so you can choose different screen colours to suit your tastes. The palette and current preferences are also saved along with the rest of the project, so you can give all of your projects different preferences and screen colours to make things that little bit more interesting. The palette requester is accessed by clicking on EDIT PALETTE in the preference requester. This will bring up the palette editor. Most people should feel at home here but just for beginners here is what to do. Click on any one of the 8 colours and use the RGB sliders to adjust the colour until your happy. There are 6 buttons at the bottom of the requester... SWAP - Swaps two colours in the palette. COPY - Copies the currently selected colour over another colour. SPREAD - Allows you to create a spread of colours. Try it and see. OKAY - Leaves the palette requester with the changes made. DEFAULT - Restores the palette to like it was when you first loaded RM. CANCEL - Leaves the palette requester discarding the changes made. When you are happy with the preferences chosen, click on 'OKAY' to store them or 'CANCEL' to ignore any changes made (including the screen colours). How do I test myself with RM!? ------------------------------ After you have entered the questions, vocabulary etc, click on the 'TEST' button to be tested. You'll be tested by the method which you have selected in the preference requester. You'll be presented with some text reminding you of the pass rate your aiming for and what you have to do. If you want to quit out of testing when your being tested, simply click on the 'EXIT' button at the bottom of the test window. THE QUIZ - Questions are chosen at random out of the question list if TEST QUESTIONS is set in the preferences requester. If TEST VOCABULARY is set then the question will be based on a word taken randomly out of the vocabulary eg. 'What does 'Tag' mean?'. If both are set then you'll receive a mixture of questions on both the vocabulary and questions entered. Note that if you are using vocabulary in the quiz, ALL words must have one or more meanings entered. Likewise, if your using the questions you have entered in your quiz, ALL questions must have answers. If your data doesn't conform to these two criteria, you'll get a nice friendly requester telling you so. There are two types of question. With one type you will be presented with the question and simply asked to key in the answer. With the other type you are given a question with an answer and asked to state whether it is correct or incorrect by clicking on one of two buttons. The keyboard equivalents for these two buttons are '<RETURN>' for correct and '<ESCAPE>' for incorrect. THE WORD SEARCH - After you have clicked on 'TEST', RM will create the word search. If all your words won't fit in, you'll be warned and the operation will be aborted. Note that the number of words in the word search is set in the preference requester and words are taken at random from the vocabulary. You'll then be presented with the word search. Note that if any words contain spaces, the spaces won't appear in the word search because it would be too easy! Simply click on the start of the word in the word search with the mouse pointer. If a word is there it will become highlighted. Carry on until you've found all the words. There are also 3 buttons underneath, 'VIEW WORDS', 'PRINT' & 'EXIT'. 'VIEW WORDS' displays all the words on screen which haven't been found yet. 'PRINT' displays a print requester which enables you to print the word search. As usual, the WorkBench printer driver is used. There is also the option to print the words to find at the bottom of the word search. Select 'PRINT' to go ahead and print the word search or 'CANCEL' to abort. 'EXIT' enables you to leave the word search, highlighting any unfound words. ANAGRAMS - In the anagram test, a word is picked at random from the vocabulary and the letters are scattered on the screen. You simply have to unscramble the letters to make a word in the vocabulary and key in the answer. MEMORY TEST - A sequence of 5 words chosen at random out of the vocabulary are displayed one after the other on the screen. You will then be asked to key in an item in the list. A word out of the vocabulary may appear more than once. At the end of the test you will be told what % you got right and whether you have passed or failed. Good luck!? ----------- Well thanks for using RM, it's a very useful program. Use it and enjoy it!