Congratulations on your purchase/upgrade to dBFast for Windows 3.0!
The entire genSoft staff and the dBFast development team hope that you enjoy and profit using our product.
Everything you need to know to use this product effectively is included in the new manual and the online Help system within the dBFast executive.
Note that the manual has been completely redone since the 1.4/1.47 release. We have attempted to supply a manual that you can depend on. You may notice an occasional discrepancy; if you do, please take a moment and put a note on the bulletin board or send your observations to genSoft c/o Technical Support.
Even if you are a current user of dBFast for Windows, it would be worth your time to go through MAIN.PRG and the tutorial in the manual. Version 1.5 has changed significantly from 1.47!
We have found that we are depending more and more on our bulletin board for information flow ( both incoming and outgoing ). The number is (206) 562-9407. This is a closed board for our registered users only. Once you have logged into the board, please leave a note in SYSOP's email for live access so that you may upload/download files.
The board is currently running up to 9600 baud on a Hayes 9600 (v42), parameters 8, none, 1.
A few significant functions/commands have been added since the printing of the manual. They are included in the New Features portion of the Help file. By the way, you'll note that the help file loads everytime you load dBFast. If you take the NEWUSER command out of CONFIG.DAT in your \SYSTEM directory, "Help" will go away until you specifically call it.
A few manual changes that will immediately effect you:
1) The editor commands have been changed from those supplied in the past. These changes were made so that the dBFast editor is consistent with other Windows 3.0 products:
Undo Alt+BkSp
Cut Shift+Del
Copy Ctrl+Ins
Paste Shift+Ins
Delete Del
2) Function missing but needed, CHKEVENT(). This function returns the top value in the event stack or -1 if there is no event in the stack. It differs from EVENT() in that EVENT() will pop the top value from the stack after reading it, CHKEVENT() takes a copy of the value but leaves the stack intact. See EVENT() for the syntax.
3) APPENDIX C: In order to use the color setting for video commands, choose a background and text color. Multiply the background by 16, then add the text number to it, i.e. background blue ( 1 ), text white ( 7 ). SET GET VIDEO TO 1 * 16 + 7 or else say SET GET VIDEO TO 23. Note that the colors that work for a VGA probably will not work for EGA and may not even look correct for Hercules or standard monochrome type 7 monitors. Your safest bet may be to either stick to defaults, or make colors a user option.
