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Text File | 1991-12-06 | 12.4 KB | 339 lines

NED, the Newin file editor for TPBoard v7.0, v1.1 by: Plain Jayne Software November, 1991 All Rights Reserved How NED works ------------- Ned is a full-screen, browsing file editor for the Newin file. Ned is easy to navigate, simply execute NED from the DOS prompt and you will see the records of your NEWIN file listed, one record per line. The initial listing is in the alphabetical order of the filenames. Try pressing Alt-K (for KEY); the listing will change to an alphabetized listing by file area. The Alt-K command works as a toggle between the two available keys in the Newin file. The down-arrow key will scroll through the file to the next record. The up-arrow will scroll one record up. The other directional keys work similarly: PgDn, PgUp, Home, and End. In addition, the right and left arrow keys will scroll the display horizonally. Try it and you will find that there is much information off the screen to the right. You can see that NED navigates pretty much as you'd expect. Display formats --------------- NED offers 5 different display format. A display format is the information that displays on a given line for a given record. Display format #1 is the default and displays: Format #1 1) filename 2) area name 3) uploader's name 4) upload date 5) description Using the Alt-1..Alt-5 keys, you can toggle between the five formats. These are: Format #2 1) filename 2) area name 3) uploader 4) description Format #3 1) filename 2) area name 3) description Format #4 1) filename 2) description Format #4 1) description Alt-K Keys ---------- As mentioned above, the Alt-K command toggle between the two available keys into the Newin database file. When you press Alt-K, the key will change with the value being sought for that key being the currently highlighted record. For example, if you are keyed in filename order and the file highlighted is TEST.PAK in the GRAPHICS area and you press Alt-K, NED will change to the area key with the first record being the first entry for the GRAPHICS file area. File searching -------------- You can search for a particular value in the Newin file (a filename for file area) with the Alt-S command. You will be asked for the phrase to search for according to the currently selected key order. If you enter 'F' and press [ENTER], you will find either the first filename or file area that begins with an 'F'. If no match is found, you'll see the next closest record. Picking matching records by template ------------------------------------ Matching works something like searching except that you specify in more detail exactly which records you wish to see by editing a dummy newin record (a template) and asking for all matching records. Once you have edited this template record, you would instruct NED to pick all records that match that template and Filter on the picked status of the records. In other words, NED would display ONLY those records that match the template (are picked). Example: you want to edit only those records that have NO file descriptions on record. You could edit the template and search for all Newin records with the phrase "not available" ANYWHERE in the description. If any where found, NED would display only those records on the screen. Once you have selected to turn Filtering on, Alt-F will turn filtering off. The scenario would be: Alt-T Select or edit a template record Alt-P Pick all records that match template Alt-P Filter by picked records When matching, ned considers ANY field that isn't blank as a command to process when looking for a match to that template. Ned recognizes the following commands: 1) if you enter a phrase in a template field with no NED command letters, a match is any record that has the exact same data in the exact same field. If you enter 'TEST.ARC' in the filename field, a match must be named 'TEST.ARC'. 2) if you enter a phrase in a template field with a '@' character in the first space, that field is considered a NED command, and a match is determined by the second character. a) ^ in the second space means to search for and consider as a match any record that contains the following phrase ANYWHERE in the same field. If your command is @^TEST in the filename field, any Newin record with 'TEST' anywhere in the filename would be considered a match. b) > in the second space means to search for and consider as a match any record that is greater than the following phrase in the same field. If your command is @>TEST in the filename field, any Newin record with a filename greater than the entered phrase would be considered a match. c) < in the second space means to search for and consider as a match any record that is less than the following phrase in the same field. If your command is @<TEST in the filename field, any Newin record with a filename less than the entered phrase would be considered a match. d) a ' character (a single quote) considers a match any record which has a blank field. If you entered @' as a command in the description field, all records that match would have blank description fields. e) a ~ character (a tilde) considers a match any record which is not an EXACT match. For example, if you wanted to display all files NOT uploaded from the sysop, your'd enter @~SYSOP as a command in the uploader field. Notes on searching and ascii matching. When comparing two string phrases, strings are converted to upper case letters before comparing. This means that 'asp' is the same as 'ASP.' Also, to compare dates correctly, the dates must be compared in reverse order: year first. NED reverses the dates or records in reading them in; however, your template record must already be in YY-MM-DD format. Example with dates: the command @>91-09-00 would match any records with a filedate GREATER than Sep 00, 1991. Picking ------- A record is picked if there is an asterisk in the first display column. Some programs also call "picking" tagging or marking; the concept is still the same. The purpose in picking records is multifold. For one, you can use the pick status of records as a filter. Suppose you wanted to only view records that had a last download date of @<91-01-01 (records not downloaded since Jan 1, 1991). Fill out the current template with the appropriate command, select to pick all matching records, and then select to Filter on the picked status. Second, you can peform functions to picked records. For example, you can force the value of the template onto all picked records. And you can use picking to refine the filter. For example, having picked all records that haven't been downloaded since 01/01/91, you now want to keep those you've picked and exclude any with total downloads greater than 20. Edit a template to pick records with LESS THAN 20 downloads. Now, UnPIck all matching records. You can break the picking process at any time by pressing the ESC key. Forcing ======= If you don't understand template command terminology, you won't understand forcing. When forcing, a template record is processed as a series of commands (just like matching a record to a template) except that forcing intends to alter the contents of a record. A command in a template field during a force operation tells NED to change the record's value of that field in some way. For example, if the filename field were the only template field that contained a command and the command string was @^.PAK^.ZIP; Ned would substitutue ".ZIP" in every instance of ".PAK" in all records chosen for the force operation (either ALL records or all picked records). Or, if you wanted to substitute the description line: "Description not available" with "Sorry, Lazy sysop hasnt entered one yet." you could: a) pick all records with the command "@^ion not available" in the description field. b) process a Force on all picked records with the command "Sorry, Lazy sysop hasnt entered one yet." Remember, when forcing, you don't want ANYTHING in a template field unless you want to alter the contents of the field during the force! Ned recognizes the following commands during a force operation: 1) if you enter a phrase in a template field with no NED command letters, the contents of that field are forced verbatim on the record field. 2) if you enter a phrase in a template field with a '@' character in the first space, that field is considered a NED command, and the command to process is determined by the second character. a) ^phrase1^phrase2 means to swap any FOUND occurrence of phrase1 in that field with phrase2. For example, the earlier example to swap the filename extensions using the command string: @^.PAK^.ZIP; A trick to delete all occurrences of a field is to specify a phrase1 with a blank phrase2: @^SHIT^ would effectively remove the phrase "SHIT" from that field. b) > in the second space means to Append the contents of the template field TO the existing value of the field. The command "@>Not OnLIne" in the desciption field would append the phrase "Not Online" to all records processed. If the new field is too long, it will be chopped off. c) > in the second space means to Append the contents of the record's field TO the value of the template field. The command "@<Not OnLIne: " in the desciption field would append the original description to the phrase "Not Online: " to all records processed. If the new field is too long, it will be chopped off. d) a ' character (a single quote) deletes the contents of that field. You could use this to delete all descriptions. e) the math symbols '+', '-', '*', and '/' instruct NED to perform a math operation on the field. For example, you could pad the number of times downloaded with the command: @+20 This command would add 20 to the number of times downloaded for all records processed. The other math commands are: @-XX to subtract XX from the original value @*XX to multiply the original value by XX @/XX to divide the original value by XX That's it. Forcing is simple yet a very powerful tool when properly applied. You can break the forcing process at any time by pressing the ESC key. Editing ------- To edit a record, press ENTER with the desired record highlighted. To save a record you've edited, press PgDn or PgUp. Pressing ESC during editing aborts the changes to THAT record; records already saved with the PgUp or PgDn keys are still saved. Deleting records ---------------- You can delete the currently highlighted record by pressing [DEL]. You will be asked if you really want to delete before NED procceds with the process. You can also delete ALL picked records by pressing Alt-D. This brings up a menu that allows you to delete ALL picked records OR to Undelete any deleted records in the Newin database file. Deleting all picks is a dangerous operation -- make very sure that only records you really want to delete are picked before you delete all picks! ANY deleted records can be recovered using UNDelete before the next TPBoard purge cycle has run. Commandline Arguments --------------------- NED accepts the following command line arguments. /M to force mono mode (non-color mode) /V to select VGA/EGA mode (50/43 line modes) NODE ## to envoke network record locking. the ## is the workstation number. --- THE END ----- 1.1 o added full mouse support in the main screen o fixed template matching when more than one field is specified o added record deleting o added crt restore after running NED with /V 1.2 o removed the concept of a template filter. Pick matches and filter on the picked status. Filtering alone was far too slow a process o added a check for calling a filter when nothing to filter (pick filter when no picks)