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- Notes on Shareware FmP Taskmaster 5th September 1991
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- Why Shareware?
-
- Shareware offers FmP the opportunity to enable potential users to
- evaluate Taskmaster for a limited period, free of charge. Having
- established that it does meet their needs and offers a clear
- upgrade path, they then have the choice to register the shareware
- or purchase the Professional version.
-
- The professional version is aimed at corporate clients operating
- networks, who need fast turn-around suppport and expect regular
- updates. Being the product of many years of full time
- development, Taskmaster is in an unassailable position as 'The
- INTELLIGENT Menuing Language'.
-
- "Oh no! Not another menuing product!"
-
- So what makes Taskmaster stand out from the crowd ?
-
- In a word: Flexibility.
-
- Flexibility to design your own menus and data-capture screens;
- not be tied to someone else's ideas. You can rapidly create
- imaginative screens to make your computer as friendly, helpful
- and consistent as possible when running your daily work.
-
- Available for MS-DOS, CDOS, XENIX and UNIX, Taskmaster is an
- Interpreter. That means it reads commands from an ordinary text
- file called a Task, created by your favourite Editor or Word
- processor. The commands are near-english and therefore easily
- learnt and maintained.
-
- It is not however mandatory for you to learn these commands in
- order to use Taskmaster. A number of tasks are supplied that
- support a sophisticated menuing system for many purposes.
-
- However, after using the supplied tasks, you might feel that they
- do not quite match your requirements in every detail. For any
- other menuing system, this would be the end of the story ...
-
- Taskmaster is however unique in providing an endless variety of
- interfaces because it uses a simple language and comes complete
- with its own sophisticated screen display manager. The commands
- also allow you to do many things beyond the scope of other menu
- products.
-
- Designing screens is again achieved by placing commands and text
- into a file, usually the same file as the task. The screens have
- to be processed in order to produce the necessary information
- your video needs to control things like colour, intensity etc.
-
- For example to use HELP.TSK you would first need to process the
- forms by entering :
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- SCR HELP<return>
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- and then interpret the task by typing:
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- TM HELP<return>
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- The OVERVIEW task provides access to the rest of the applications
- supplied in the Shareware issue.
-
- The Shareware edition of Taskmaster is fully functional and not
- crippled in any way. The documentation is brief of necessity due
- to the constraints of the issue media. When you register or
- purchase Professional Taskmaster (one of which which you are
- legally obligated to do if you continue to use the product after
- the 30 day trial period), you will receive the latest copy of the
- product and optionally full written documentation. You will
- also receive TIDY, a Utility to correctly indent Taskmaster Tasks
- and detect block structure errors and EUC the End User
- Computing option.
-
- Remember that in order to commercially distribute the product
- you must contact FmP to receive your master discs directly from
- FmP. LICENCE.FMP is the end-user agreement. Please read this
- before using the product.
-
- Under no circumstances must Registered or Professional Taskmaster
- be included on a Shareware issue disc. Purchasers of these
- products will be supplied with the latest Shareware issue disc
- which forms the basis of an evaluation system.
-