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Text File | 1993-05-26 | 25.3 KB | 560 lines

CISREF Version 1.11 May 1993 Copyright 1991-1993 JNGoodale. All Rights reserved. _______ ____|__ | (R) This program is shareware. --| | |------------------- | ____|__ | Association of Please see Appendix B for | | |_| Shareware a description of sharware. |__| o | Professionals See REGISTER.DOC for -----| | |--------------------- registration form. |___|___| MEMBER TABLE OF CONTENTS ----------------- 1. General Description .......................... 1 2. Requirements ................................. 2 3. Files ........................................ 2 4. Getting Started .............................. 3 5. Operation .................................... 4 6. Search Criteria .............................. 4 7. Marking Files ................................ 5 8. End of Job ................................... 5 Appendicies: A, File Formats B. Shareware Definition/ASP Ombudsman C. Registration Information i Page 1 GENERAL DESCRIPTION ------------------- This program is a CompuServe forum library catalog viewing and searching utility. The catalog to be viewed must be on YOUR computer - it is not intended for online viewing. Online viewing is very easy using the facilities available on CompuServe. With CISREF, you can browse thru all the catalog entries, or search based on file name, keywords, etc. You can "Mark" all files which look interesting, and at the end get two listings: 1. A synopsis of all "Marked" items including estimated time and cost to download. This is sorted by catalog name (same as forum name), library, and file name to be your organized list when ready to download - very useful if you will be downloading quite a few files. 2. The full catalog entry information which appears on the screen when viewing. You can peruse these listings more carefully to make final decisions on whether or not to download a file. The listings are also sent to a file, and you have the option to print/not print either one or both. The first time you select a catalog for viewing, an index file is created for that specific catalog to make searching faster. This index will be used in all subsequent searches and sessions until a new downloaded catalog replaces the old one. The index file will have an extension of ".INX". *IMPORTANT NOTE* - The program uses dates and file sizes to check the validity of the index file for the catalog. Do not change the file dates of the catalogs, or manipulate them in any way which might change them. DOS COPY command is safe to use - it does not change file dates. Page 2 REQUIREMENTS ------------ IBM 100% Compatible DOS 3.0 or above Hard Drive 256 K Available Memory (minimum) Lots more is much better Color or Monocrome monitor Printer - optional Note: For monochrome monitors, start the program with: CISREF/m FILES ----- Included in all versions: CISREF.COM - executable program CISREF.DOC - this file CISREF.HLP - instructions used during program execution README.TXT - short documentation file WHATS.NEW - update history Included in Shareware version only: FILE_ID.DIZ - quick description REGISTER.DOC - registration form SAMP1.CAT - sample input file you may use to try CISREF SAMP2.CAT - a second input file to try Created CISREF.CNF - a short configuration file SAMP1.INX - index file for SAMP1.CAT (Shareware version) SAMP2.INX - index file for SAMP2.CAT (Shareware version) FORUMARK.TXT - header info for "marked" files FORUMARK.DES - full description info for "marked" files FORUMARK.CUR - not used by CISREF, but available for interfacing to your own programs. Contains basic data on "marked" files. Page 3 GETTING STARTED --------------- This catalog viewer is specifically for the LONG description catalogs, in the format current as of Jan. 1992, available in the CompuServe IBMNET. They are in library 0 of each IBMNET forum and are named as follows: Forum File Name Unzips to IBMAPP IBMAPP.ZIP IBMAPP.CAT IBMBBS IBMBBS.ZIP IBMBBS.CAT IBMCOM IBMCOM.ZIP IBMCOM.CAT IBMHW IBMHW.ZIP IBMHW.CAT IBMNEW IBMNEW.ZIP IBMNEW.CAT IBMPRO IBMPRO.ZIP IBMPRO.CAT IBMSYS IBMSYS.ZIP IBMSYS.CAT If other forums have catalogs with the same format, CISREF will work for them as well. One or more of these files must be downloaded and made available to CISREF before you can effectively use the program for anything except generating the message "No *.CAT files found on this directory". In order to retrieve a list of catalogs for viewing, CISREF expects the catalog files to have an extension of ".CAT" and be located in the current directory. There is a limit of 20 Catalogs per directory. The program itself can be located in the current directory, or any directory specified in your PATH. Once you are in the directory with the *.CAT files, start the program with: CISREF or CISREF/m for a monochrome monitor Limitations: 20 Catalog files per directory (that's a lot of stuff!) 10 Character FileNames are assumed within the Catalog File descriptions. This is currently the case on the IBMNET forums. That is, all file names are limited to a max of "xxxxxx.xxx" in the libraries. Page 4 OPERATION --------- The program is directed with menu selection and various keys. The applicable key definitions are displayed on the screen during program execution for reference. The Function Keys (and others) generally have the following effect: [F1] - Display Instructions [F2] - Mark this item (see "Marking", below) [F3] - Continue with the same search criteria [F8] - Go to Top Menu [F9] - Exit the program [ESC] - Back out of current activity/Interrupt search [HOME] - Restart same search at beginning of file [ENTER] - Select high-lighted menu item/Page forward One note on [F9] and [ESC] - The [F9] key will go immediately to the program exit. [ESC] will keep backing up, until finally you back out the door to the program exit. SEARCH CRITERIA --------------- The search criteria will find a hit on any occurrance of the search string you enter, within the field being searched. Therefore, if your search field is "File Name", and your search string is "ZIP", all of the following file names would be a "hit": CISREF.ZIP PKZIP.ARC UNZIP.EXE ZIP210.EXE If your search string is ".ZIP", then only CISREF.ZIP would be found. If you enter no search string, all records are displayed in turn. If there is room in memory, the program uses an index file for the search. If the index has not yet been created, it creates one. This greatly speeds up searching. If there is not room in memory, the search is sequential, and much slower. The index file (*.INX) is saved to disk to be available for future sessions. When you download a new Catalog description file to replace the old one, the program detects that this is a new catalog file and will generate a new associated index file. Page 5 MARKING FILES ------------- After finding something that looks interesting, you can "mark" the item for later viewing or printing. [F2] will mark it, and at the end of the program, all these items are gathered together into three files, described next. Any number of catalogs can be searched during one execution of the program. All marked items from every catalog visited during the session will be saved. If any items are marked, three files will be issued: FORUMARK.TXT - a text (ASCII) file of header information. FORUMARK.DES - a text file of the full description of the item marked. FORUMARK.CUR - a one record file containing an array of all the header information for use by other programs. See the documentation for a description of the layout. If no items are marked, only a zero length FORUMARK.DES file is issued. Time and cost estimates for downloading are based on values in the file CISREF.CNF, which is initialized to use 2400 Baud, 12.80/hour. One minute is added to all time estimates for overhead. You can change these by selecting the "Change Rates" option from the Main Menu. END OF THE JOB -------------- Before exiting, CISREF will give you the option to print the first two files if any items were marked. The files will remain intact but will be overwritten next run, whether or not you elect to print. See Appendix A for samples of expected input and the format of all files. _________________________________________________________________ If you have problems or questions, contact the author: JN Goodale CIS ID 71116,302 Phone (704)-537-0329 (Your nickel!) _________________________________________________________________ App A-1 FILE FORMATS and OTHER STUFF ---------------------------- INPUT FORMAT ------------ Sample taken from IBMCOM.CAT (right side is truncated to allow for margins) The *.CAT files look like this, and MUST be in this format: ______________________________________________________________________ [71141,1224] Lib: 1 ACL313.EXE/Bin Bytes: 42715, Count: 793, 07-Feb-91 Title : AUTOSIG Accounting Module, ACLS, Version 3.13 Keywords: ATO AUTOSIG ACLS ACCOUNTING MODULE RATES AUTOSIG Accounting Module, ACLS, Version 3.13. Update includes supp for CompuServe's new 9600 baud service, including a new RATES.ATO fi Place in your directory with ATO, and type "ACLS", or select F9 from main menu. Self-extracting archive. Documentation is file ATOADV.EX [70327,135] Lib: 1 ATO.PIF/Bin Bytes: 545, Count: 1352, 21-Jun-90 Title : PIF file for Autosig Keywords: WINDOWS AUTOSIG ATO PIF Windows 3.0 PIF file for Autosig. Created for 386eh mode, but shoul for all. Corrected to allow background operation, including upload/download. Use the PIF editor to set the path and command lin options to match your configuration. [76703,750] Lib: 1 ATO68A.EXE/Bin Bytes: 131323, Count: 1410, 11-Aug-91 Title : AUTOSIG Ver. 6.8a; CIS communications program Keywords: ATO AUTOSIG FORUM SIG AUTOMATIC MESSAGES FILES LIBRARIES LIBRARY AUTOSIG version 6.8A executable program file. See ATODOC.EXE for main documentation, and ATOADV.EXE for documentation on advanced scr PPN database functions. Please read ATO68A.REQ before downloading th file. See WHATS.NEW for a summary of changes since prior version. Se extracting file. Run from DOS prompt to extract. Free software. ______________________________________________________________________ App A-2 OUTPUT FORMAT ------------- FORUMARK.TXT is an ASCII text file that looks like this: ______________________________________________________________________ Forum Catalog Libraries: Marked 03-16-1992/16:43:31 Page 1 Forum Lib File UserID Date Bytes Acc Time Cost Seq IBMAPP 1 ADDCOL.COM [74025,514] 10-Jun-85 12544 232 1 22 1 IBMAPP 1 ADDLF.ARC [73300,517] 21-Dec-87 8260 145 1 22 2 IBMAPP 1 AMAC41.ZIP [76370,1073] 26-Aug-91 314765 23 24 528 3 IBMCOM 1 ATO68A.EXE [76703,750] 11-Aug-91 131323 1410 10 220 4 IBMCOM 1 ATOADV.EXE [70007,1212] 28-Mar-90 19760 3675 2 44 5 IBMSYS 1 BOOT13.ZIP [74365,1716] 18-Aug-90 3234 557 1 22 7 IBMSYS 9 DSKNDX.ZIP [71116,302] 29-Jul-91 34975 63 3 66 6 Total 7 42 924 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FORUMARK.DES is an ASCII text file that looks like this: ______________________________________________________________________ Forum Catalog Libraries: Marked 03-16-1992/16:43:31 Page 1 [74025,514] [ 1] ADDCOL.COM/Bin Bytes: 12544, Count: 232, 10-Jun-85 Title : Keywords: ADD COLUMN PROGRAM This program will concatenate two files in a line by line fashion. the uses could be to add columns of text from two files to make a single file containing the two columns. You could add a column of front of a second file to change the margin. Read ADDCOL.DOC for mo information. [73300,517] [ 2] ADDLF.ARC/Bin Bytes: 8260, Count: 145, 21-Dec-87 Title : Convert text file CRs to LF/CR Keywords: ASCII TEXT CR LF CONVERSION FILE LF-CR This program converts ASCII text files with only CRs to those with LF-CRs. It is written in Microsoft C and runs very quickly. Public Uploaded by the author. ------------------------- etc. ............. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- App A-3 FORUMARK.CUR is a one record array of all the items in FORUMARK.TXT. Each element of the array has the following format: ______________________________________________________________________ Position Data Type Description -------- --------- ----------- 1 - 8 ASCII Forum ID (Catalog base name) 9 - 10 " Library number 11 - 20 " File Name 21 - 22 " Reserved 23 - 35 " CIS User ID 36 - 44 " Date file was uploaded 45 - 50 " Reserved for download date 51 - 52 Integer Mark Sequence 53 - 56 Long integer File Size 57 - 58 Integer Number of accesses 59 - 60 Integer Estimated minutes to download 61 - 64 Long integer Estimated cost to download ---------------------------------------------------------------------- *.INX is an index file used to speed searching. It is a one record array, containing pointers to header information in the associated *.CAT file. Each element of the array has the following format: ______________________________________________________________________ Field Position Data Type Description ----- -------- --------- ----------- 1 1 - 13 ASCII CIS User ID 2 14 - 23 " File Name 3 24 - 25 " Reserved 4 26 - 27 " Library number 5 28 - 94 " First line of Keywords 6 95 - 96 Integer File age in Weeks 7 97 - 100 Long integer File size 8 101 - 102 Integer Number of File accesses 9 103 - 104 Integer Length of Catalog File description 10 105 - 108 Long integer Start position in Catalog File The first array element contains information on the associated *.CAT file and is used to validate the use of the *.INX file. Field Contents ----- -------- 1 Date/Time stamp of the *.CAT file creation (YYMMDDHHMMSS) 9 Number of items in the array 10 File size of the associated *.CAT file This element is used to check the validity of the associated *.INX and *.CAT files, and to reserve room in memory for the *.INX file. If the *.INX and *.CAT files don't match, a new *.INX is created. App A-4 When the *.INX is created, the program tells you how many elements can be stored in memory (Max Entries) for THAT PARTICULAR machine and boot configuration. 600K available memory will hold an array of about 5,000 elements, which handles the IBMSYS.CAT file (1,800,000 + bytes). 256K available memory will hold an array of about 1,000 elements. If there isn't room to create the index (or read it in), the program does a "sequential" search, which is much slower. It works, but if the item you're looking for doesn't find a match till deep into the file, it takes much longer than an "indexed" search. CISREF.CNF ---------- Contains baud rates and costs for estimating download costs. Can be updated within the program with the "Change Rates" option. The file contains one record which is a five element array. The format of each element is: Field Position Data Type Description ----- -------- --------- ----------- 1 1 ASCII Letter ID 2 2 - 12 " Label 3 13 - 16 Long integer Bytes/Min transfer rate 4 17 - 20 Long integer CIS Hourly charge These elements are initialized as follows: Element # ID Label Bytes/Min CIS $/Hour --------- -- --------- --------- ---------- 1 A Baud=300 1695 630 2 B Baud=1200 6780 1280 3 C Baud=2400 13560 1280 - default 4 D Baud=9600 54240 2280 5 E User Define 1695 0 App B SHAREWARE CONCEPT ----------------- Shareware distribution gives users a chance to try software before buying it. If you try a Shareware program and continue using it, you are expected to register. Shareware is a distribution method, not a type of software. You should find software that suits your needs and pocketbook, whether it's commercial or Shareware. The Shareware system makes fitting your needs easier, because you can try before you buy. And because the overhead is low, prices are low also. Shareware has the ultimate money-back guarantee -- if you don't use the product, you don't pay for it! OMBUDSMAN --------- Association Of Shareware Professionals Ombudsman This program is produced by a member of the Association of Shareware Professionals (ASP). ASP wants to make sure that the shareware principle works for you. If you are unable to resolve a shareware-related problem with an ASP member by contacting the member directly, ASP may be able to help. The ASP Ombudsman can help you resolve a dispute or problem with an ASP member, but does not provide technical support for members' products. Please write to the ASP Ombudsman at P.O. Box 5786, Bellevue, WA 98006 or send a Compuserve message via easyplex to ASP Ombudsman 70007,3536. App C REGISTRATION INFORMATION ------------------------ You can register within the program by selecting the "REGISTER" option, or you can print REGISTER.DOC to fill out manually. When you register CISREF you will recieve the following: A copy of the latest version of the Registered program. Notification of upgrades for 12 months. Upgrades (if requested) for only the cost of shipping and handling - around $3.00 Free support by mail, phone (your nickle), or CIS E-Mail for six months. Your choice of the complete IBMNET catalogs, up to as many as will fit on the diskette you select. The catalog(s) will be no more than 90 days old as of the day I send your disk. See list on the Registration Form, App D. If you find this program useful, please register and support the Shareware industry. Feel free to give copies to anyone, but assure that ALL distribution files are included. Registration is $15, plus $1 for 720K or 1.2M diskette, or $2 for 1.4M diskette. Send registration to: JN Goodale 7826 Littlejohn Court Charlotte, NC 28227