Magnum One

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ Magnum One / Magnum One (Mid-American Digital) (Disc Manufacturing).iso / d22 / help433.arc / READTHIS < prev

Wrap

Text File | 1989-05-01 | 15.9 KB | 397 lines

HELP! Version 4.30 Welcome to HELP! Version 4.3. If you are a previous user of HELP! you will notice some very big changes in this version. A lot of effort went in to making this program very reliable so it will not blow up. If you have never used HELP! before, sit back and feel the power as you command your system like you have never done before. HELP! is a program designed to get the most out of a HARD Disk based computer system. It was originally conceived as a way to help beginners use their systems. It soon became much more than that. As a professional engineer whose was in charge of many PC based systems in a large corporation, I found HELP! to be a valuable tool in maintaining these systems. One of my primary goals was to incorporate all of the valuable utilities I have used or felt I needed into one powerful package. This package is HELP! HELP! is not a memory hog when it executes other programs. In fact it takes up less than 4K of memory. HELP! is also not memory resident. This means that other memory resident utilities should work fine. The way it works is this. The file HELP!.COM is loaded into memory first. This program is small and stays in memory as long as HELP! is running. This then calls HELPRUN.EXE. This is the guts of the program. This program is large, but does not stay in memory when another program is run from within HELP!. Any Memory resident utilities should be loaded before HELP!.COM is started. If they are not, the system will probably not run correctly and will not release the memory used by HELP!.COM when you quit HELP!. Some of DOS's commands are memory resident and should be run before HELP!. These are PRINT, GRAPHICS, MODE and others. List of Features for Version 4.3 o Copy, Move, Erase, & Compare one or more files. o Locate a File or Files on your disk. This allows you to search for a file name in all of the directories of your disk. o Change the file Attributes of a file. This will allow you to protect and un-protect a file from change with the read only attribute. Or you can change the other attributes as well including the time & date Stamp. o Tree gives you a visual map of the directory structure of the disk. This is a quick way to change directories when cleaning up your disk. This also will have the directories marked which contained matches from the last Locate. Trees from one or more drives can be read during the loading of HELP!. These trees can be saved to disk files so the reading will not be necessary when HELP! is started the next time. o View allows you to view 1-4 text files. Their is also a scan & compare command so you can see where files differ. o A full screen editor capable of editing multiple files o Most data entry now has a line editor that will in most cases remember what was in this edit field last. Features Added or Changed in Version 4 A full screen editor has been added to version 4.1. This editor is capable of editing up to 6 files at a time or viewing one or more sections of a single file or any combination. It also has a macro capability. The help system has been totally redone and is now an indexed system. What this means for the user is that it is much faster retrieving screens. Also when using the Help command from the main menu you can randomly access the help screens. It is almost like having the HELP! manual online at all times! The view command has been totally redone. The screen layout and the command sequences have been changed and are much more logical now. Many commands have been added to help you navigate your file. Among these is the Search command and the Scan & Compare command. Scan & Compare allows you to compare two to four files from any point in the files (not necessarily the same point) and it will stop scanning at the first non-compare. The screen combinations have been enhanced also. You can now turn off the key status display and gain the file attributes display. This allows the viewing of far more files than the verbose file display of the older versions. Also you can turn off the status window and have just a file window that fills the whole screen. For EGA/VGA users I've added a 43 line mode for EGA/VGA and a 50 Line mode for the VGA. HELP! auto configures itself by default. What this means is that if you are running an EGA that is in a 120 col X 43 line mode, HELP! will use the whole screen and add columns and rows to the file display and view displays and so on to use all of screen. The only requirement is that the display adapter use the EGA/VGA conventions of storing the size in low RAM. This covers most EGA style adapters. If your EGA/VGA does not have these modes the 43 and 50 lines are available from within HELP! and can be automatically used at the programs start. Your color selections have also been enhanced and are selectable from the options menu as they have always been. DOS's Mode BW80 can be used to send HELP! into it's monochrome color set for color adapter users who run with monochrome displays. This can also be turned on from the options menu. The Erase Subdirectory command has been eliminated and is now included in the Erase Command. This, I am sure, will be more convenient. The Equipment command has been added to the Utilities menu. This will display the Display Adapters and Monitors in your system, the number of serial & Parallel ports you have and the Processor & Co-Processor Type. Any Extended & Expanded Memory amounts will - 2 - also be displayed. I've found this command to be an asset in maintaining multiple systems in a business. With two key strokes you can instantly inventory your system. The Print Command has been redone also. It is faster and now prints margins correctly. Also the ability to send output to other than LPT1 has been added. You can send output to any of your serial or parallel ports. You can also automatically program your serial ports on start-up. The Expert Level Can be set to get rid of some of the prompting such as Are You Sure? Are You Sure You Are Sure? and so on. In the Past error checking has been handled poorly by HELP!. This has all changed now. No more will the screens be messed up with Abort, Retry, Ignore? Trying to erase read only files will not blow up the system, copying them will be allowed. Try it! I'm sure you'll like it! If you are printing and you run out of paper or you jam or something else occurs, this is now handled eloquently. Format now truly recognizes if it is a HARD Disk you want to format and prompts you as such. The Attributes Command appears on both the Main Menu and the Utilities menu where it used to be. The Locate Command now reads the tree when it is running. Any matches found will be flagged in the TREE so you can remember which directories contained the matches. The TREE Command will not be reread when you make, erase or rename subdirectories. This is handled automatically now. You can flag directories with special attributes in the tree display. TREE & Locate will now operate to the maximum depth allowed by DOS. The TREE Display will automatically configure itself for the screen size and the maximum depth of the directories on your disk. This allows the entire disk structure to be seen without horizontal scrolling. You can also rename directories from within the TREE Command. This will only work on version 3.0 or later of DOS. The TREE also allows the reading of one or more drive TREEs when HELP! is started. These TREEs can either be abandon when HELP! is quit or saved on disk. If they are saved, you run the risk of not having current information in the TREE. Should this occur, the TREE can be re-read at any time. The Date & Time Commands now allow you to set an AT compatible battery clock. This is prompted after the internal clock is set. Edit fields are now present in most data entry positions. Most of these fields will retain their last value for later recall and editing. Should a previous value be present in an edit field, simply press <Enter> to use that value or <End>, <Home>, <Delete> or an arrow key to edit this old value. If you want to type a new value, just start typing and the old value will be erased. New Features of Version 4.30 Version 4.30 fixed some problems with the HELP! Editor. One of - 3 - these problems would cause the screen to go into random colors. Another would put the files into a merge mode if the last window was closed. Also some things were added to the HELP! Editor. The first is a useful block column mode. What this will allow you to do is Copy, Move or Delete a block made up of columns of information rather than whole lines. I also allow a line to be joined by pressing <Del> at the end of a line. Some more function key definitions were added as well. Version 4.30 added mouse support to HELP!. This should prove very useful to mouse users. I also fixed a problem that 4.2 had with the Print Command and under certain circumstances, the computer would hang up. Also, 4.2 did not work properly with older XT's. The cursor does not move when you invoke the View Command now. This should save a lot of key strokes. Also, to save you keystrokes when using the Multiple Selection Screens, I now automatically move the cursor after a selection is made. I also now allow the use of ``+'' to select a file and ``-'' to deselect a file. Of course the <spacebar> still works as a toggle in file selection. The Copy Command now has three overwrite options. The first is the default and will prompt you if you are about to overwrite a file of the same name in the destination. This is enhanced to show you the date, time and size of both the source and destination files. The second option available is new. This one will only overwrite older files in the destination. If the files are the same date and time but their size is different, the copy will proceed. Under all other circumstances, no copy will be performed and no warning will be given. This allows the rapid updating of files by time stamp. The last option will always overwrite the destination files. The TREE Command has been enhanced in the way it uses the screen. This will make it work more smoothly on slower machines and machines with CGA's. Also, the TREE can be used to select a directory from the destination screens of the Copy, Move and Compare screens. This is done by pressing <PageDn> or <PageUp> when the destination path edit field is on the screen. This works best if used with the Auto Tree Read Options. A couple of key stokes have been added to the Main Menu and Utilites Menu. These are listed below: <Alt> C Brings an edit field into the menu area for entring a new directory path. (For DOS lovers) <Alt> K Toggle key status (i.e. Caps, Number, Scroll Lock). <Alt> V Toggles between the verbose and normal file window styles. <Alt> W Toggles between wide window (no status window) and normal mode. There are many more changes that were made and there are many - 4 - more planned for the future. Please if you have any suggestions or things you would like to see, write me. Installation There are 6 files supplied with HELP!. These are HELP!.COM, HELPRUN.EXE, HELP!.HLP, HED.EXE, HED.HLP, and this READTHIS file. The first three are all that is needed to run HELP!. The next two are the HELP! Editor and are needed only if you want to use this editor. You can also define your own editor or word processor to be called with the new Words Command instead of the HELP! Editor. The simplest way to configure your system, is to copy these files into a directory and type HELP! to start. This is the easiest but not necessarily the best way to start HELP!. The recommended way, is to copy these files into a directory that the DOS Variable PATH points to. This will give the advantage of being able to start HELP! anywhere you might be on the disk. Of course if you are going to use HELP! all of the time this would not be an advantage, but it would not hurt either. If you do not need the on-line help system you can get rid of HELP!.HLP. Please note that on the HELP! Editor you need to go to the Options Menu and Load File Options and set the Home Directory to indicate where the help file is located. This should be the same directory in which you put all of the HELP! files. On some machines running under different versions of the mouse driver, the time for the Main Screen to be active can be a couple of seconds. This is the fault of the mouse driver/hardware combination. If this bothers you, disable the mouse in the options menu. You will not be able to use the mouse in HELP! under these circumstances. - 5 - Invoice (Ver 4.33S) Please Send: Qty Description Price Ea. Total ____ HELP! (Latest Version & Documentation) $ 30.00 $ _____ ____ HELP! Registration Only $ 20.00 $ _____ ____ HELP! Latest Disk Only $ 10.00 $ _____ Please Subtract Any Discounts (see chart below) $ _____ TOTAL $ _____ Discount Chart 10 - 24 15% Discount 25 - 49 20% Discount 50 - 99 25% Discount Site License and Limited Copy Agreements are also available Name ____________________________________________________________ Company _________________________________________________________ Address _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ Send To: Bruce A. Taylor Taylor Software Tools 1103 Mendoza Dr. St. Peters, Mo. 63376 - 6 -