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Telegard's TopUsers bulletins version 1.5. For use with Telegard version 2.7 Copyright (C) 1991 by Kevin Wolf. All rights reserved. Table Of Contents ----------------- Table Of Contents .......................... 2 Legal Stuff ................................ 3 Registering TopUsers ....................... 3 Distributing TopUsers ...................... 3 Converting From Previous Versions .......... 4 Quick Start ................................ 4 About TopUsers ............................. 4 List of Features ...................... 5 Command Line Parameters .................... 5 /? .................................... 6 /A(+/-) ............................... 6 /1-8(+/-) ............................. 6 /E(+/-) ............................... 6 /R .................................... 6 Report Names and Numbers ................... 6 Configuring TopUsers ....................... 7 General Options ....................... 7 Report Configurations ................. 8 Color Configurations .................. 10 Support for TopUsers ....................... 12 Legal Stuff ----------- TopUsers is provided as-is, without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied. In no event will the author be liable to anyone in the event that this program causes damages, including (but not limited to) any lost profits, lost savings or other incidental or consequential damages arising out of the use of, or inability to use, this program. Registering TopUsers -------------------- You are allowed to use this program for an evaluation period of thirty (30) days after you receive it. After this evaluation period is up, and if you choose to continue using TopUsers, you are required to send the author (Kevin Wolf) a check or money order (U.S. funds only, please) in the amount of $10.00. TopUsers is in no way "crippleware". In other words, if you are using the copy that came with this document, you have a fully functional version. But your registration would be greatly appreciated. This is only my second attempt at releasing any software to the public, and you have no idea how many hours of work this package represents. If you would like to register TopUsers, please send a $10.00 check or money order to: Kevin Wolf 544 Anna Avenue Bellevue, IL 61604 Please feel free to include any comments or suggestions you may have about TopUsers. Distributing TopUsers --------------------- You may freely distribute TopUsers, provided that the following conditions are met: 1. The archive MUST contain all of the files in the list to follow: TOPUSERS.EXE TPCONFIG.EXE TOPUSERS.DOC IDI.TXT 2. None of the files contained in the this archive may be modified in any way, shape or form. 3. This archive may not be modified except to change *Is there supposed to be a gap here? the archive format. For instance, you may have received it in ZIP form, and you want to distribute it in ARJ form. It is fine to convert it, as long as the previously stated conditions are met. Converting From Previous Versions --------------------------------- *, In version 1.5*,* I merged the two configuration files ("TOPUSERS.CF1" and "TOPUSERS.CF2") into one file *So, called "TOPUSERS.CFG". So old configuration files are incompatible with v1.5. Since I know that it can take a considerable amount of time to reconfigure Top Users from scratch, I decided that it was probably best to *previous include a conversion utility to convert the pervious configuration files into the one file required by v1.5. To do this, you need to run TCONVERT.EXE in the directory in which the old configuration files are *then, in a sense, located. It will then in a sense merge the files into one. After the conversion is done (if all went well...) you will be asked if you want to delete the old configuration files. If you answer "Y"es, then the two files will be deleted from your hard drive. After that, you will be asked if you want to delete TCONVERT.EXE (the program that you are running). The same applies here. Since you shouldn't need this program again, it should do no harm to delete it. Quick Start ----------- This section is for people that don't like to read doc files! If you just want to be able to run this program with all default values, then come back and "tweak" it later, all that you have to do is run TPCONFIG.EXE, then exit. It will have generated the files that TopUsers will be looking for. Then run TOPUSERS.EXE in the same directory that you just ran TPCONFIG.EXE in. ---------*******>> !!W A R N I N G!! <<*******--------- If you do this as an experiment, and you have any files in your AFILES directory named BULLET1.ANS or BULLET1.MSG through BULLET8.ANS or BULLET8.MSG, THEY WILL BE OVERWRITTEN!! So if you just want to play with it for a while, I suggest that you change your AFILES path in TPCONFIG under General Options (option B). ------------------------------------------------------- About TopUsers -------------- TopUsers was written to be one of the most powerful, configurable, easy to run user statistic bulletin generators for Telegard. Some of it's configurable features include: 1. Ability to display from five to fifty users in each of it's eight reports. 2. Complete color configurations for each report. 3. All reports are generated by one program (TOPUSERS.EXE). Doing this saved a great deal of space, and made the generation of the reports much quicker. 4. All you have to do is give TPCONFIG.EXE the path to your STATUS.DAT file and it will obtain most of the information it needs from within STATUS.DAT. 5. Exclusive "Top Users Report". When this report is generated, TopUsers will take everything into account. Kilobytes uploaded and downloaded, public posts and number of calls made to your BBS. 6. Ability to add a Telegard "pause" MCI code to the ANSI reports that are generated. 7. Ability to make each report NON-abortable by the user viewing the reports (both ANSI and non-ANSI reports). 8. Ability to clear the screen before the ANSI reports are displayed. 9. Ability to exclude users according to Telegard AR flags. 10. Ability to exclude the SysOp. 11. Ability to use handles or real names in all of the reports. 12. Reports can be disabled via command or TPCONFIG.EXE. This makes it easy to run TopUsers and only generate one report if need be. Command Line Parameters ----------------------- TopUsers has five command line parameters for even easier operation. Each command line parameter is discussed below: /? Displays a help screen listing report numbers and names, and brief help on command line parameters. /A(+/-) Enable (+) or disable (-) ALL eight reports. This option is handy if you just want update one report. /1-8(+/-) Enable (+) or disable (-) individual reports by report numbers. For example, if you want to run TopUsers, but don't want to update report 3, then you would type "TOPUSERS /3-". Or if you only want to update report 3, you would type "TOPUSERS /A- /3+", where the "/A-" would DISABLE all eight reports but the "/3+" would ENABLE report 3. /E(+/-) Enable (+) or disable (-) event mode. When you run TopUsers the default for event mode is Enabled. However, if you disable this feature, TopUsers will give you statistics on all eight reports when it is complete. HOWEVER, it will prompt you to press a key after each report's statistics have been displayed. Therefore, it wouldn't work well in a batch file. /R Displays a screen containing information about registering TopUsers. The command line parameters are NOT case sensitive, so "/a-" is the same as "/A-". Report Names and Numbers ------------------------ TopUsers is based on report names and report numbers. There are eight different reports numbered 1 through 8. The report names and numbers are listed below: 1) Top uploaders by number of file uploaded. 2) Top uploaders by number of kilobytes uploaded. 3) Top downloaders by number of files downloaded. 4) Top downloaders by number of kilobytes downloaded. 5) Top callers by number of calls to your BBS. 6) Top posters by number of public posts. 7) Top time users in minutes spent on your board. 8) Top users by user rating. Even though the report numbers are available in many places, it may still simplify things for you to write them down or print them out for future reference. Configuring Topusers -------------------- TopUsers has many, many configurable options. But all in all, it is pretty simple to deal with. When you want to configure TopUsers, always run TPCONFIG.EXE. DO *NOT* TRY TO EDIT THE CONFIGURATION FILES!!! TPCONFIG.EXE was created to make things a little easier than editing a text file for every report that you want to generate. I found that to be a major headache in other bulletin generators that I have used. All of the options offered in TopUsers are configured by selecting the number or letter to the left of the parentheses. General Options --------------- The following options are general options that pertain to all of the reports or to directories or to things that don't affect the individual reports at all. These options are accessed by pressing "G" from the main menu in TPCONFIG.EXE. A) Main BBS Directory. This is the directory to the main Telegard directory. The file that is going to be used in this directory is STATUS.DAT. STATUS.DAT will only be accessed when you first run TPCONFIG.EXE, or if you delete the configuration files (TOPUSERS.CF1 and TOPUSERS.CF2). B) AFILES Path. This is the directory where all of the output files generated by TOPUSERS.EXE will be placed. So if you have report 1 use the filename BULLET1, and your AFILES directory is C:\BBS\AFILES, your output files for report 1 will be called C:\BBS\AFILES\BULLET1.ANS (ANSI output file) and C:\BBS\AFILES\BULLET1.MSG (non-ANSI output file). C) GFILES Path. The only file that is used in this directory is your USER.LST file; which is Telegard's list of all of the users on your BBS. D) BBS Name. Quite simply, this the name of your BBS. E) SysOp Name. This is the SysOp's handle on your BBS. F) BBS Phone Number. This is your BBS's phone number. Once this is retrieved from STATUS.DAT, it will never again be checked to see if it is in the correct format. For example, if your BBS's phone number comes up the first time as 309-697-0020, and you change it to 3096970020, the '-'s will never be replaced (unless you replace them yourself). G) Use Direct Screen Writes. This option is primarily used for TPCONFIG.EXE, but is used a couple of times in TOPUSERS.EXE. When this option is enabled, Both TOPUSERS.EXE and TPCONFIG.EXE will place text directly into video memory. This greatly increases the speed of the pop-up windows in TPCONFIG.EXE. The only times that this should cause problems are if: 1) if you have a CGA monitor, you will get a bunch of snow on your screen, or 2) if your system is not 100% IBM compatible. If either of these conditions are true, you would be much better off to set this option to "Off". H) Set All Reports To Match Colors Of First Report. This option will set reports 2 through 8's colors equal to report 1's colors. If you answer Yes to the "Are sure" on this one, your old colors CANNOT be retrieved! I) Set All Reports To Match Options of First Report. This is similar to option "H", however, this option deals with the main options of the report, and does nothing to change the colors. The options that will be changed are: Active, Number of users to include, Clear screen, Is pausing active, Make report non-abortable, Use handles in report, Exclude SysOp from report, Exclusion flag. The rest of the options will remain unchanged. *should be a blank line here. All of the above options (except "A", "H" and "I") will be obtained from STATUS.DAT upon start of TPCONFIG.EXE, but can be changed anytime you wish. Report Configurations --------------------- When you select "R" from the main menu in TPCONFIG.EXE, you will be shown the eight reports and their report numbers. The reports will be displayed as follows: 1) Top uploaders by files uploaded. 2) Top uploaders by kilobytes uploaded. 3) Top downloaders by files downloaded. 4) Top downloaders by kilobytes downloaded. 5) Top callers by number of calls. 6) Top posters by number of public posts. 7) Top time users by minutes spent logged on. 8) Top users by user rating. To choose which report you wish to configure, just select the number to the left of the parentheses. Once you choose which report to configure, you will be shown the following options: A) Is report active. This option is used to disable the reports that you do not want to use. If a report is disabled when TOPUSERS.EXE is ran, no output will be generated for that report. B) Number of users to include. The number of users that TopUsers will allow in each report can range from 5 up to 50 users. C) Clear the screen before report. When this option is active, the screen will be cleared (using ANSI codes) before displaying the actual report. This does not affect the non-ANSI (.MSG) report. D) Is "Pausing" active. By using this option, you can have TopUsers insert a Telegard MCI code for a "pause" in the ANSI reports. If this is disabled, then the entire report will just scroll by the user viewing it unless they hit "P" in Telegard to force a "pause". E) Make report NON-abortable. If you have this option enabled, TopUsers will insert a Telegard MCI code which will make both reports (ANSI and non-ANSI) non-abortable to the user viewing the reports. F) Use handles in report. When this option is enabled, HANDLES will be used in the report that you are configuring. If you set it to "No", REAL NAMES will be used in the report. G) Exclude SysOp from report. This will allow you to exclude the SysOp from one or all of the reports that you wish to use. The report this is most useful for is Top Callers. That report is really not fair to a SysOp, since he HAS to call a lot. H) Exclusion flag (0 = none). If you wish to exclude certain users from any of the reports, then give them a Telegard AR flag that you are not already using and place it in this field. For instance, if you don't want long distance callers to be included in the Top Posters report, then give them the flag "E" and also tell TopUsers to use exclusion flag "E" in report number 6. If you don't want to exclude anyone, then use a "0" for this option. I) ANSI output filename. This is the name of the report's ANSI file. DO NOT TRY ADDING THE ".ANS"! TopUsers will automatically append this to the filename that you specify. So if you want the ANSI file for this report to be named BULLET1.ANS, just type "BULLET1" and the .ANS will be added for you. J) Non-ANSI output filename. This option is the same as option "I", except that it deals with the NON-ANSI output file instead of the ANSI file. K) Color configuration . . . This will take you in the color configuration menu for the report that you are configuring. This will be discussed in more detail in the next section. Remember that you can set each option different for all eight reports! For instance, if you wanted to use eight exclusion flags, one for each report, no problem! Or you can use real names in 5 reports and handles in the other 3 reports (even though your users may not be too happy). Color Configurations -------------------- When you get into the Color Configuration menu, by pressing "K" from the report configuration menu, you will be able to change almost every color in the report. The colors that you can change are listed below: A) Back Ground. This is the background of the report. This is the only color that the range can be only 0 through 7. All other colors range from 0 to 15. B) Border. This is the color of the border of the report, the lines separating each field, and the headings of the report. C) 1st Rank. The color that will be used to display the first place user's rank. D) 1st User Name. The color that will be used to display the first place user's handle (or real name depending on how the report is configured). E) 1st User Number. The color that will be used to display the first place user's user number. F) 1st Sort Field. The color that will be used to display the first place user's sort field. The contents of this field will vary depending on the report you are currently configuring. For example, in report number 1, it will be number of files uploaded. But for report number 5, it will be the number of calls that user has made to your board. G) 1st Ratio. The color used to display the first place user's ratio. Like option F, this field will vary with each report. Some reports don't even have a ratio. And for those that do, the ratio is different for each report. H) Rank. The color that will be used to display the users' rank; excluding the first place user. I) User Name. The color used to display the users' handle (or real name depending on how this report is configured); excluding the first place user. J) User Number. Color used to display the users' user number; excluding the first place user. K) Sort Field. Color used to display the users' sort field (excluding the first place user). This field will vary for each report. For instance, in report number 1 it will be the number of files uploaded. But in report number 5, it will be the number of calls made to your BBS. L) Ratio. Color used to display the users' ratio (excluding first place user). This will vary from report to report. Some reports don't even have a ratio. And for those that do, the ratio is different on each report. After you select a color that you want to configure, a window will pop up to the right of the color configuration menu. In this window will be a list of all of the available colors. To select a color, just enter that color's number. Remember that the colors range from 0 to 15 except on the background color, where it is only 0 - 7. The colors and their numbers are as follows: 0 - Black 1 - Blue 2 - Green 3 - Cyan 4 - Red 5 - Magenta 6 - Yellow 7 - Gray 8 - Light Gray 9 - Light Blue 10 - Light Green 11 - Light Cyan 12 - Light Red 13 - Light Magenta 14 - Light Yellow 15 - White Support for TopUsers -------------------- I can be reached at a number of BBS's in net 232, including 1:232/23, or 1:232/25. Just leave E-mail for "Wheels" (my handle). My board's address is 1:232/32 (FidoNet), 85:837/200 & 85:837/202 (USTGNet), and 2#:309/697 (SwashNet). The phone number is (309)697- 0020. If you have any questions, comments, suggestions or complaints about TopUsers, please do not hesitate to contact me via netmail, or however you see fit. I would like some feedback about ideas for new versions or anything that you would like to say about this program.