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P O W E R M E N U U S E R S' M A N U A L V E R S I O N 5 JUNE 1990 Copyright (C) Brown Bag Software 1990 2155 South Bascom Ave Campbell Ca 95008 U. S. A. Tel: (408) 559-4545 PowerMenu Users' Manual Copyright Brown Bag Software 1990 THE SHAREWARE CONCEPT Copyright (C) 1990 Brown Bag Software, Inc.. All rights re- served world wide. Both the PowerMenu program and documentation is copyrighted. It can not be disassembled or modified without our express written consent. PowerMenu is distributed on a ShareWare basis. You may use PowerMenu without charge for evaluation purposes. We suggest that this evaluation period be limited to 30 days of actual use. If you find that PowerMenu is worth continuing to use, then you are required to pay for it. Simply complete the registration form and mail it to us with your payment. A copy of this registration can be used as a pro forma invoice. When you register your copy of PowerMenu, you'll receive the latest version of the program, along with a comprehensive printed user manual and free unlimited technical support for one year. We aggressively develop our products, and as a registered user you'll be entitled to upgrades at a greatly reduced price. Most importantly though, by registering your copy of PowerMenu (or any ShareWare product), you'll ensure the survival of the convenient and risk free distribution method that brought you PowerMenu in the first place. If you have received this copy from a Users' Group, "Software Library" or "SIG", and have paid a small fee (usually $3 to $10), you have NOT acquired the registered rights or continued right to use PowerMenu. This fee was for the convenience of obtaining the diskette with PowerMenu on it. The fee does NOT apply to the registration fee. If you obtained this disk from Brown Bag Software, the fee IS applicable towards registration if you register your copy within 90 days. You may freely copy this version of PowerMenu for distribution under the ShareWare concept, without charge. You may NOT charge any fee for the PowerMenu program or docu- mentation without our WRITTEN APPROVAL (usually granted). You may NOT distribute PowerMenu or it's documentation in connection with ANY commercial venture, product, publication or service without our written approval. This includes, but is not limited to, the sale of computer systems or components. WHAT IS POWERMENU? PowerMenu is a DOS operating environment for your IBM PC or Compatible which provides easy access to any program on your hard disk. When you want to start a program, select it from the menu. After you install the program into PowerMenu, no interac- tion with DOS is required to run it. You press one or two keys and you are ready to use the program. When you're done, PowerMenu returns automatically, awaiting your next command. POWERMENU LAN There is also a LAN version available. The single user version is for a single users on a single CPU and should not be installed on a LAN where it will be accessed by multiple users. PowerMenu Users' Manual Copyright Brown Bag Software 1990 USING THIS MANUAL This manual is shorter than previous on-disk documentation because of disk space constraints. This version of PowerMenu is also more powerful than any previous. A comprehensive printed manual will accompany the registered version. Also, features may only be mentioned once in this documentation, so read it all. TYPE CONVENTIONS Whenever this manual tells you to press a key, that key will be enclosed in square brackets. For example, if you are instructed to press the Home key, you will be told to press [Home]. When you see two keys in the same set of brackets, such as [Alt-S], you should hold down the [Alt] key and hit the [S] key. INSTALLATION All of the PowerMenu files will reside in a subdirectory called \MENU. This allows PowerMenu to find the support files it needs from anywhere on your hard disk. For our purposes, we will assume you have a hard disk with drive letter C:. The PowerMenu files should be copied into a subdirectory called \MENU (this is where it will always look for its files if they do not exist in the default directory). Novice users can put the PowerMenu disk in the A: drive and issue the following commands: C:[Enter] (If your hard disk is D: or other, use that letter) MD \MENU[Enter] (This creates the MENU subdirectory) CD \MENU[Enter] (This moves you into the new directory) COPY A:*.* (This copies everything from the PowerMenu disk in A:) To begin PowerMenu change your default directory to \MENU. At the DOS prompt type MENU. The initial screen you see is the PowerMenu Shareware screen which briefly explains the Shareware concept. By pressing any key you will be prompted to hit the spacebar to run PowerMenu, "R" to register your copy, or "P" to print the PowerMenu documentation. After hitting the spacebar you will be presented with a login screen. You are prompted for your name, type "BROWNBAG"; for password type "MENU". The main menu will then be displayed. The will be 7 examples entries. To change or add new users to PowerMenu, hit F2 to bring up the utility menu. From this menu select "USER ACCOUNTS". To change the supervisor name from "BROWNBAG" to your own, hit key F7 to edit this information. Once it has been changed, hit key F7 again to save the changes. You can then hit [ESC] until you return to the main menu. You can exit from PowerMenu anytime by hitting [Esc]. THE POWERMENU SCREEN In the main PowerMenu screen you will probably want to change many, if not all, of our sample menu selections. We will tell you how to do this after we discuss the elements of the PowerMenu screen. PowerMenu Users' Manual Copyright Brown Bag Software 1990 The top box contains Brown Bag's copyright notice, the date on the far left and the system time on the far right. These can be set through PowerMenu at any time (Press [F2] to see the Utili- ty menu and select Time or Date). The middle of the second line contains the version and serial number of your PowerMenu pro- gram. If you have to call Brown Bag for technical support, you will need this information. SELECTING ITEMS FROM THE MENU Further down is the opening menu itself. Note the ten Descrip- tion Line selections under the word "PowerMenu." There are three ways to activate these description lines: 1. Highlight the selection by moving the cursor bar with the [up arrow] and [down arrow] keys, and then hit [Enter]. 2. Press a number key. This immediately activates the correspond- ing program or submenu on that description line. 3. Hit the first letter of the description line. The bottom line of your screen will be a Help Line as long as you remain in PowerMenu. The help line will give you quick hints as to what functions are available to you. Remember that you can get detailed help at any time by pressing [F1]. CUSTOMIZING MENUS When first installed on your system, PowerMenu may not yet know which application programs you have on your hard disk. You will have to give PowerMenu a little help in customizing your menu system. The edit window is opened by highlighting the description line and hitting the [Ins] key, and closed by hitting [Esc]. Press the [Ins] key now. Each white-on-black area is called an Input Field, because you are expected to input data into this field. [up arrow] and [down arrow] keys move you to the next field. TITLE FIELD The top line is the description that will appear on the menu. DIRECTORY FIELD Contains the name of the directory in which your applications program resides. CMND NAME FIELD The filename and extension (the Command Name) of the command you wish to run. PARAMETERS FIELD These are the arguments (a.k.a. Parameters) you send to the program. PASSWORD FIELD If this field is not blank, PowerMenu will ask you to type this password before allowing you to edit or run this selection. PAUSE FIELD If you put a Y in this field, PowerMenu will pause before returning to the Main Menu screen. PowerMenu Users' Manual Copyright Brown Bag Software 1990 PROMPT FOR PARAMETERS FIELD If you put a Y in this field, PowerMenu will prompt you for new parameters each time. COMMAND NAMES AND PARAMETERS Don't worry about these fancy DOS terms: a command name is just the name of the program you wish to run; a parameter is addi- tional information the program needs. Command names in PowerMenu all have one thing in common: they all end with either a .EXE, .COM, or .BAT. (The resident DOS commands COPY, DIR, ERASE, REN, and TYPE are exceptions). This is called the Extension of the command name. The extension .EXE tells DOS that the file is EXEcutable, .COM stands for a DOS COMmand, and .BAT means the file is a BATch of DOS commands. When you buy a word processor, spreadsheet, or any other program for your PC, you call it up by typing the command name. To run a program, PowerMenu must know both the file name and the extension. Some common programs and their command names are: Program filename/extension WordStar ws.com Microsoft Word .com PARAMETERS Parameters are information passed to a command name. Sometimes you need to tell the program what file to work on. you would do that with a parameter. For instance, if you wanted to edit a document on your computer, the DOS command might be: C>edlin letter.doc When you install a program in PowerMenu, that program's manual will probably explain what command to give DOS. Everything after the first word are parameters. If DOS Command is... Parameters are... -------------------- ----------------- C>word /c letter.doc /c /c letter.doc /c C>ws thesis.txt thesis thesis.txt thesis With PowerMenu, all you have to do is install this menu selec- tion once, and editing your report is one keystroke away. If your word processor is Microsoft Word, and the program is in the \WORD subdirectory: The description would be "Microsoft Word" or "Word Processing" The directory is C:\WORD The command is WORD.COM This is how you would input the information into your menu: Highlight description line 1 with the [down arrow] or [up arrow] keys. Delete the sample 1 selection by hitting the [Del] key and answer "Y". PowerMenu Users' Manual Copyright Brown Bag Software 1990 Next, hit [Ins] to open the Edit Window. All the fields should be blank. Fill in the fields and then hit [Esc] to close the edit window. You have just installed your first menu selection! Note that you won't be able to activate this selection unless you happen to have Microsoft Word on your hard disk in the \word directory. If you know which programs you have on your hard disk, you can now customize PowerMenu to your heart's content. AUTOINSTALL With the registered version of PowerMenu you have the option of running the Autoinstall. Autoinstall will search you hard drives for popular programs and set up your menu automatically. SUBMENUS It is possible to display as many as 4 menus on the PowerMenu screen at once. You can do this by setting up a selection to call a submenu. Submenus are set up by putting "[MENU]" in the directory field, and putting a 1-8 letter menu name in the Cmnd Name field. You will need to remember the names of your submenus in order to call them up. Your selection can call any existing submenu; if the submenu does not exist, it can be created. If you create a new submenu, it will contain blank selections until you fill them. Your initial PowerMenu screen shows you an example of a submenu call. If you open the Utilities for Computer edit window, you can see how it activates a submenu named UTILITY. ERROR MESSAGES It is possible that you will see some error messages if you make a mistake in setting up PowerMenu. These will appear on the second line from the bottom. Hit [F1] to see a detailed explanation of the error. USER ACCOUNTS Version 5 has the ability to maintain an almost unlimited number of separate user accounts. Each user having their own customized menus, colors, and security. The pre-installed supervisor is "BROWNBAG" and the password is "MENU". User accounts does NOT allow more than one person to use PowerMe- nu at the same time. A version of PowerMenu for use on a LAN is available for that purpose. NEW USERS From the Utility menu, select USER ACCOUNTS to create or maintain your users. The available commands are displayed across the bottom line of the screen. The function keys allow you to add or change the users at will. PowerMenu Users' Manual Copyright Brown Bag Software 1990 USAGE LOG When enabled, PowerMenu will keep a log of who did what, when and for how long. There is also a powerful feature that allows crea- tion of projects and the assigning of costs to the projects. This would allow the user to maintain billing information accurate to the minute based on projects or to analyze performance. MOVING MENU SELECTIONS (SWAP) Hitting [Alt-S] lets you drag a selection to any location on the menu. For example, dragging the 1 selection to the 5 posi- tion and then hitting [Enter] will exchange their contents. [Esc] will abort. LIST, DELETE, OR REINDEX THE DATA FILES In the unlikely event that something should damage a PowerMenu data file, you can attempt to repair it with the program MENUFUN.EXE. The program is run with parameters. To reindex the menu datafile, run MENUFUN -R To list the Submenus in your menu structure, run MENUFUN -L To delete a submenu from your menu datafile, run MENUFUN -D {submenu} If you are running with multiple user accounts, MENUFUN will prompt you to enter a user and supply the password. AUTOMATIC EXECUTION WITH AUTOEXEC.BAT You can have your system automatically invoke PowerMenu whenev- er you reboot on your computer. Just put the command menu as the last line in a file called AUTOEXEC.BAT in the root directory. The contents of a typical AUTOEXEC.BAT file might look like this: TIME DATE PATH=C:\DOS SK CD \MENU MENU BACKING UP YOUR POWERMENU FILES You should make it a practice to routinely copy your important files to a backup disk. This is true for all of your applica- tions, and not just PowerMenu. COLOR SETTINGS Selecting "Colors" from the [F2] Utilies menu allows you to change your PowerMenu colors. Use the arrow keys to move the pointer up and down. To change the text color, use the plus [+] and minus [-] keys. Change the background color by holding down the [shift] key while pressing the [+] and [-] keys. ([ESC] will exit) To save your changes, either exit the program and come back in, or run an application. PowerMenu Users' Manual Copyright Brown Bag Software 1990 DOS WINDOW You can directly access DOS by using the WINDOW TO DOS command. When you press [F4] you'll be given a blank screen with a DOS prompt. All DOS commands are valid, and you may remain in DOS for as long as you like. When you are finished, type 'EXIT' and hit [ENTER] and you'll be returned to PowerMenu. Remember, all DOS commands (and even some commands DOS DOESN'T support) are available from the Disk Manager. KEYBOARD ENHANCERS PowerMenu is compatible with keyboard enhancement products such as SuperKey, Prokey, and Keyworks. However, if you redefine one one of PowerMenu's reserved keys, you might disable some of PowerMenu's features. PowerMenu's "reserved" keys are: [F1] - [F5] [Shift-F1] - [Shift-F10] [Alt-F1] - [Alt-F10] [1]-[0] [Alt-S] [Alt-D] [Alt-T] [Home] [Ins] [Del] [down arrow] [up arrow] [Esc] Try to avoid redefining these keys while you are in PowerMenu. RAM-RESIDENT PROGRAMS PowerMenu is fully compatible with RAM-resident programs such as HomeBase, SuperKey, and Turbo Lighting; just follow one simple rule: Don't load RAM-resident programs through PowerMenu! In general, you should initialize all of your RAM-resident programs when you boot your machine. Never have a PowerMenu selection to "Load Sidekick." (Better yet never USE SideKick! Use our HomeBase instead!). If you load RAM-resident programs through PowerMenu, you will create a "hole" in memory when you exit, and you may have to reboot. SCREEN SAVE FUNCTION PowerMenu has a screen saver which turns the PowerMenu screen off after 1-9 minutes of non-use. This prevents "burn in," (permanent damaage to your screen from the same image being displayed for too long.) PowerMenu displays the message "Hit space bar to return . . ." at a random place on your screen and moves it from time to time. Screen save is only in effect in PowerMenu and will not blank the screen in your applications programs. PowerMenu Users' Manual Copyright Brown Bag Software 1990 SUBMENUS It is possible to display as many as 4 menus on the PowerMenu screen at once. You can do this by setting up a selection to call a submenu. Submenus are set up by putting [menu] in the directory field, and putting a 1-8 character menu name in the Cmnd Name field. You will need to remember the names of your submenus in order to call them up. Your selection can call any existing submenu; if the submenu does not exist, it can be created. If you create a new submenu, it will contain blank selections until you fill them. Each submenu requires about 1.8 Kb of disk space. To delete or list submenus, use MENUFUN.EXE. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS The minimum system requirements to run PowerMenu are: IBM PC, XT, AT or compatible computer A hard disk A floppy disk drive 256K Bytes of RAM (only 3Kb RAM impact when running programs.) PC- or MS-DOS Version 2.10 or greater Color monitor (optional) GLOSSARY [Alt] key The key labeled Alt at the left of your keyboard. This key is most often used by holding it down and hitting another key. AUTOEXEC.BAT The batch file run automatically by DOS whenever you reboot your computer. batch file A text file containing a list of commands to be carried out by DOS. clock/calendar card An accessory for your computer which keeps the correct time and date even when your computer is turned off. Some computers have these as standard equipment. [Ctrl] key The key labeled Ctrl at the left of your keyboard. This key is most often used by holding it down and hitting another key. cursor The flashing underscore on your screen that indicates where text will appear should you press a key. Also directs your attention to a particular area of the screen. cursor bar The line of reverse video text on your screen. The cursor bar is moved with the [down arrow] and [up arrow] keys. PowerMenu Users' Manual Copyright Brown Bag Software 1990 directory An imaginary "room" an your hard disk which contains files of similar types. There are DOS commands to allow you to create, change to, and delete directories. [Enter] key The large key to the right of your keyboard. On some computers, this is labeled [Return]. [Esc] key The key on your computer labeled Esc, meaning Escape. file Computer term for a group of data on your disk. The text of a report, the numbers in a spreadsheet, and instructions to a program are all examples of disk files. function keys The ten keys labeled F1 - F10 on your keyboard. highlight A PowerMenu selection is highlighted when the cursor bar is over that selection. \MENU directory The directory on your hard disk where all of your PowerMenu files reside. parameters Information sent to a DOS program at runtime. SITE LICENSES AND BUNDLING ARRANGEMENTS --------------------------------------- Corporate site licenses and bundling arrangements are available direct from Brown Bag Software. Site licenses can be used to distribute large quantities of PowerMenu and its documentation within a specific organization at very reasonable prices (hundreds of dollars less per copy than competing products). All users under a site license can become registered users at no extra fee and are automatically notified of updates. Bundling arrangements can be used to distribute copies of PowerMenu in order to promote some other product or service. Note that neither of these activities is permitted under the limited license granted to all users of PowerMenu without the expressed written consent of Brown Bag Software. A NetWork ("LAN") Version of PowerMenu. Contact Brown Bag Software, Inc in Campbell, CA USA via fax 408 559-7090 or voice 408 559-4545 for information on the PowerMenu LANPAK or see your Software Dealer. When you register your PowerMenu, please specify the disk media you use. We supply 5.25" and 3.5" PowerMenu Users' Manual Copyright Brown Bag Software 1990 REMEMBER, you get the latest version when you register. REGISTRATION IS NOT OPTIONAL. If you want to continue to use PowerMenu, you are required to register it. If you don't know if you're already using a registered copy, call Brown Bag Software. SPECIAL LIMITED-TIME OFFER: If you are a user of Direct Access, AutoMenu, TreeView or X- Tree, you may be able to obtain up to a $40 rebate. Contact Brown Bag Software (see registration information) by telephone for details, availability and terms. This offer is subject to change without notice, and will expire at Midnight, October 31, 1990.