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The NIGHT Owl Publisher's Graphical CD-ROM File Retrieval System Copyright 1994 All Rights Reserved NIGHT Owl's Publisher, Inc. 1611 Falconer Stillwater Jamestown, NY 14701 Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2 The NIGHT Owl INSTALL Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 3 GNIGHT Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 4 The GNIGHT Owl Directory Structure . . . . . . . . . . . 3 5 Operating the GNIGHT Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 6 The Main GNIGHT Displays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 6.1 Main GNIGHT Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 6.2 The GNIGHT Help System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 6.3 GNIGHT List Boxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 7 Main GNIGHT Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 7.1 Viewing File Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 7.1.1 Tagging Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 7.1.2 Unpacking Compressed Files . . . . . . . . . . 5 7.1.3 Copying Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 7.1.4 Adding Files to the User List . . . . . . . . . 6 7.2 Formatting a Floppy Disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 7.3 Browsing the User List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 7.4 The GNIGHT Work Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 7.4.1 The Work Area Display . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 7.4.2 Printing Text Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 7.4.3 Executing an EXE or COM File . . . . . . . . . 7 7.4.4 Copy Work Area Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 7.4.5 Viewing Text Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 7.4.6 Unpacking Compressed Files . . . . . . . . . . 7 7.4.7 Clearing the Work Area . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 7.5 The GNIGHT Search Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 7.6 Deleting the User List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 7.7 Tag All/None Toggle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 8 GNIGHT Printing Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 9 Configuring a Graphics File Browser . . . . . . . . . . . 9 10 The GNIGHT Text File Browser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 11 Changing the CD-ROM Disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 12 Re-installing GNIGHT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 13 The GNIGHT Screen Saver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 i 1 Introduction Welcome to Night Owl's Publisher CD-ROM Graphics File Retrieval System. You have just purchased the most up-to-date single source of Shareware, Freeware and Public Domain software available on one CD-ROM. Many hours of work have gone into making the Night Owl CD-ROM as enjoyable and user friendly as possible. Your CD contains many hundreds of megabytes in thousands of compressed files. They are all Shareware, Freeware or Public Domain. Night Owl's Publisher takes great pains to insure that no commercial software appears on the ROM. Please tell us if you find any commercial software on this CD! The GNIGHT CD-ROM file retreival program and accompanying files allow you to easily search for, find, examine, and copy the desired file(s) from this cornucopia of software. On-line context sensitive help, mouse support and many other features are included to help you in this process. We believe (and have been told by others) that it is this is the best CD-ROM file retrieval system in the world today! We are interested in your suggestions to help keep it that way. Contact us at: Night Owl's Publisher Inc. Office 716/484-3066 1161 Falconer Stillwater Rd. FAX 716/483-3920 Jamestown, NY 14701 BBS 716/483-3925 2 The NIGHT Owl INSTALL Program Before you attempt to operate the GNIGHT program, you must run the Night Owl Publisher's INSTALL program. Be sure to run the RUN_ME program which is located on your Night Owl CD-ROM. After using the Night Owl DOS installation program INSTALL.EXE, you will be able to user either the text- based NIGHT.EXE or the Graphics User Interface (GUI) GNIGHT.EXE file retriever. 3 GNIGHT Requirements GNIGHT may only be executed in a system that has a 80286 processor, a VGA color video system and a minimum of 370K of memory available at the DOS prompt. - 2 - 4 The GNIGHT Owl Directory Structure The NIGHT Owl Install program creates the following directory structure on your hard disk (X denotes the drive you chose): X:\NIGHT X:\NIGHT\TEXTnn X:\NIGHT\WORK X:\NIGHT\EXEC Note the "nn" that is appended to the text directory name. This will be a two digit number that corresponds to the current CD-ROM. For example, if you are running from Night Owl release 12, the text directory will be named X:\NIGHT\TEXT12. The main directory, X:\NIGHT, contains the main GNIGHT system files. The two most important to you are GNIGHT.EXE, the main program, and NIGHT.INI, the initialization file. You normally won't need to access NIGHT.INI unless you wish to change the start-up CD-ROM drive or disk. The NIGHT TEXT directory will contain a number of text index files if you elected to copy these files from your NIGHT Owl CD-ROM in order to speed up GNIGHT operations, otherwise it will be empty. The WORK directory will only contain files if you elect to unpack or copy files to the GNIGHT work area when operating GNIGHT and the UNZIP only contains files temporarily when unpacking a compressed file for viewing. 5 Operating the GNIGHT Program GNIGHT.EXE can be found in the main NIGHT directory. You can execute the program simply by typing GNIGHT and pressing the <Enter> key. 6 The Main GNIGHT Displays GNIGHT has been designed to be intuitively easy to operate. Full mouse and keyboard support are integrated into all the displays and context sensitive help is always available via the <F1> key or the <Help> button. All of the GNIGHT functions are accessed from the one of the main displays. - 3 - 6.1 Main GNIGHT Controls All GNIGHT functions can be activated through the keyboard or the mouse. Each main display will have at least two labeled control buttons. One of which is labeled "Exit", and always returns to the main GNIGHT display. Use the <Exit> button or <Alt+X> to exit GNIGHT. To exit any display back to the previous display, press the <Exit> button or the <Esc> key. To use a button control without a mouse, press the <Tab> key until the desired control labeled is highlighted and then press the <Space Bar> or the <Return> key. The <Enter> key and mouse double-click actions are used in conjunction with GNIGHT list boxes to signal action on the currently selected list item. For example, to view files in a specific category in the main GNIGHT display list box, move the cursor bar to the desired category and press <Enter>. Or double-click on the category name with the left mouse button. 6.2 The GNIGHT Help System Context sensitive help is available via the <F1> key or the current display <Help> button. A help window will appear that contains text that corresponds to the display control that has the focus when help is called. You may re-size and move the help window and it will remain in the last location throughout your GNIGHT session. 6.3 GNIGHT List Boxes Most GNIGHT main displays have a box that contains a scrollable list of items. For example, the list box in the main GNIGHT display contains a list of file categories and the box in the "Show List" display contains a list of file names. Each list box contains a cursor bar which can be moved through the list with the keyboard keypad keys (Dn/Up/PgDn/PgUp/End/Home) or the mouse and which indicates the currently selected item. Note that each list box contains a scroll bar that indicates the current position of the cursor bar in the list and can by used with the mouse to move through the list. The <Enter> key acts upon the currently selected item. 7 Main GNIGHT Functions All GNIGHT functions are accessed through the main GNIGHT display. Functions like the "View File" and "Search" operations are dependent on the selected category while functions like "User List" and "Work Area" are not. You may use the Tab key to highlight the desired function button and - 4 - pressing the <Space Bar> or by clicking on the button with your mouse to activate that function. 7.1 Viewing File Lists GNIGHT CD-ROM files are divided into descriptive categories and you can view the list of files in any category by moving the cursor bar to the desired category and pressing Enter or clicking on the "Show List" button. The file list display that appears contains two main boxes. The left box contains a list of the file names in that category and the right box contains a textual file description that corresponds to the currently selected file. Moving the cursor bar through the file list allows you to browse the files and their descriptions. Most of the files on your NIGHT Owl CD-ROM are compressed files; usually ZIP files. You may view a list of files contained in any compressed files by pressing the <Enter> key with the cursor bar over the desire file. This will activate the GNIGHT compressed file viewer. 7.1.1 Tagging Files Files may be tagged (marked) for "Copy", "UnZip", or "User List" operations. Categories are tagged in the category list for searches and file names are tagged in the category file list for copying or unzipping. To tag a category or file, move the cursor bar to the desired name and press the <Space Bar>. The "Tags" button can be used to tag or untag all files. This command is a toggle and will untag all items if one or more items are tagged and will untag all items if no items are tagged. 7.1.2 Unpacking Compressed Files Any compressed file in the file last may be unpacked (decompressed) to the directory of your choice. Select a file to unpack with the cursor bar and press the <UnZip> button to commence the unpacking. A window will appear that prompts you to enter a valid DOS directory as the destination for the unpacked files. The default is the \NIGHT\UNZIP directory. If you wish to examine and/or operate on the unpacked files through GNIGHT, then you should accept the default and unpack to the unzip area. GNIGHT will automatically place activate the work area dialog immediately after you unpack a ZIP file. Multiple files may be unpacked by tagging files but this is not recommended since there may be files of the same name in different compressed files which will overwrite previously decompressed files. - 5 - 7.1.3 Copying Files You may copy file from the CD-ROM to any valid drive:\directory in your system. Tag the files you wish to copy and press the <Copy> button. You will be prompted to enter a valid destination directory. 7.1.4 Adding Files to the User List GNIGHT provides the powerful capability for you to build your own category-independent list of files. You can add files from any category to this list while viewing a category file list by tagging the desired file names and pressing the <User List> button. You will be informed as to how many of your tagged files were added to your list and the total number of files on the list. Since GNIGHT will not add any duplicate file names to the list, the "User List" function may not add all the files you tagged. You can access and browse your user list by exiting to the main display and pressing the <User List> button. 7.2 Formatting a Floppy Disk You may wish to format a fresh floppy disk on which to copy some of the CD-ROM files. Pressing the <Fmt Disk> button will cause a dialog box to appear in which you select the drive letter (A or B only) and the drive size (360K, 1.2M, 720K, 1.44M). GNIGHT will then call the DOS utility FORMAT.COM to format your disk. Please note that GNIGHT will inform you if it is unable to locate FORMAT.COM in your DOS directory or in the DOS path and abort the format request. 7.3 Browsing the User List The GNIGHT user-defined list of files is built in one of two ways. You may add tagged files to the user list while viewing a category file list or you may add files to the user list by searching for text. This function will be explained later. To view your user list, press the "User List" button. GNIGHT will inform you if no files are on the list. The display and controls for this function are exactly the same as when viewing a category file list. 7.4 The GNIGHT Work Area The GNIGHT work area is actually the subdirectory named \NIGHT\UNZIP. It is the default area for unpacking or copying files when in the file list viewing function. You may access the work area by pressing the <Work Area> button. This is a very useful feature in that it permits you to unpack a file from your Night Owl CD-ROM into the work area and then read text files and/or execute programs. - 6 - 7.4.1 The Work Area Display The work area display has a list box which contains a list of all the files currently in the work area. There are five functions in addition to the <Help> and <Exit> functions. The file list box operates exactly like other GNIGHT list boxes except that tagging of file names is not available. 7.4.2 Printing Text Files You may send any ASCII file to your printer by moving the cursor bar to the target file name and pressing the <Print> button. GNIGHT will ask you to confirm that your printer is ready and then print the file, informing you of the status as line-by-line printing progresses. Note that GNIGHT adds no formatting codes of any kind, including form feeds, as the file is printed. 7.4.3 Executing an EXE or COM File You may execute a COM or an EXE file in the GNIGHT work area by selecting the target file with the cursor bar and pressing the <Execute> button. A box will appear which permits you to enter any special command line parameters the program may require. If none are required, leave the input line empty and press <Enter> or the <Ok> button to run the program. GNIGHT will not execute a batch file because of the inadvertent consequences that might result. 7.4.4 Copy Work Area Files All of the files in the work area may be copied to a drive:\directory of your choice by pressing the <Copy> button. Note that ALL of the files are copied. There is no provision for copying individual files from the work area. 7.4.5 Viewing Text Files You may view text files in the work area by pressing the <View> button. Text files are passed to the internal GNIGHT file browser for viewing. Note that you may also view the contents of a compressed file in the work area. This function works exactly like viewing compressed file from a category or user file list. 7.4.6 Unpacking Compressed Files Sometimes authors will place a compressed file inside a compressed file. You can unpack this file into your work area by selecting the target file with the cursor bar and pressing the <UnZip> button. GNIGHT will then - 7 - automatically activate the work area dialog so that you may examine the unpacked files. 7.4.7 Clearing the Work Area It is a good idea to clear the work area after each use so that you don't mix files from two different ZIP archives. To do this, pull down the menu in the main GNIGHT category list display and select the "Clear Work Area" item. This action will cause GNIGHT to delete all files in the work area. 7.5 The GNIGHT Search Function The powerful GNIGHT search function allows you to search the textual file descriptions for a text string or DOS file name that you specify. And you can search the files in just one category or in all of the categories. To search just one category, start the search with no files tagged and the cursor bar on the target category. To search multiple categories, tag the desired categories. Start the search by pressing the <Search> button. A new display that is very similar to the main display will appear. You may tag any or all of the categories in the list as targets for the search. You will be prompted to enter a string of text up to 24 characters in length or, if searching for a file name, up to 12 characters in length. The search is not case sensitive so you may enter a upper or lower case search string. GNIGHT will display a window that informs you of the progress of the search and how many "finds" have been encountered. Each time a match of your text to text in a file description or a file name is found, GNIGHT will add that file name and description to your user file list as long as that file name is not already in your user list. That way, no duplicates are added to your list. You can then go into the user list and browse the files that your search produced. To search for a DOS file name, be sure to that the file search radio button is marked before starting the search. You may use DOS wild card characters ("?","*") in the search but "*.*" is not allowed. 7.6 Deleting the User List It is often useful to delete your user-defined file list and start fresh. To do this, pull down the menu in the main GNIGHT categroy list display and select the "Del User List" item. This will cause GNIGHT to erase the file that contains the current list so that you can start building a new list. - 8 - 7.7 Tag All/None Toggle You may wish to tag all the categories at once or to remove all tags at once. Pressing the <Tag +/-> button or <Ctrl+/> will tag all categories if none are currently tagged and remove all tags if one or more are currently tagged. 8 GNIGHT Printing Functions GNIGHT provides extensive support for the printing of lists and text files. The <Print> button is used to activate printing. A window prompting you to ensure that your printer is turned on and ready always precedes a printing operation. If you are in the main display, GNIGHT will print a list of categories. If you are in the file or user list viewer, GNIGHT will ask if you wish only file data lines or data lines with full text descriptions to be printed. 9 Configuring a Graphics File Browser You may configure GNIGHT to use a graphics file (GIF, PCX, etc.) browser of your choice. Select the "Graf View CFG" item from the main menu and enter the full DOS path name of your viewer. This path will automatically be entered into your NIGHT.INI file and you need not configure again except to change the name or location of your viewer. 10 The GNIGHT Text File Browser GNIGHT uses an internal text file browser to browse text files. This simple but powerful browser is a virtual browser that will handle text files up to one gigabyte in length. It also provides the capability to print the file that is being browsed and to search the file for specified text. 11 Changing the CD-ROM Disk If you wish to change from one Night Owl CD release to another, access the main menu and select the "Change CD-ROM" item. You will be prompted to change the disk. GNIGHT will read the new disk, determine the release number from the volume label, and read the new categories from the appropriate text directory. If the text directory cannot be found, you will - 9 - have the opportunity to have GNIGHT copy the text directory from the current CD-ROM to your hard disk (about 1 Meg of disk space will be required). When starting GNIGHT be certain that the disk that is in your CD-ROM drive matches the setting for the "Text=" item in NIGHT.INI. For example, to start with Night Owl release 11, place the NOVP11 disk in your CD-ROM drive and make sure that "Text=NIGHT11" appears in your NIGHT.INI file. 12 Re-installing GNIGHT The Night Owl retrieval system may be re-installed to another drive via the display menu. You will be prompted to enter a new main directory path name and this directory MUST reside on a drive that is different than the one that GNIGHT is currently installed on. You will have the option of deleting the original directory structure and files. Be sure to exit GNIGHT and restart it from its new location after using this feature. 13 The GNIGHT Screen Saver If the "ScreenSave" line in the NIGHT.INI file under the "[Screen]" category is set to 10 or greater, screen saver will be active. When active, the screen saver will activate after the amount of seconds set on the "ScreenSave=" line with no keyboard or mouse activity. Here are some examples: Screensave=0 Disables the screen saver. Screensave=30 Activates after 30 seconds of no activity. Screensave=120 Activates after 120 seconds(2 minutes) of no activity. - 10 -