Loadstar 128 #40/q40.d81/t.trek searcher

Text File | 1993-01-01 | 9.4 KB | 230 lines

                         T R E K   S E A R C H E R

                     Program and Text by Knees Calhoon

                      Additional Data by David Elliott


    This program began as a series of geoWrite documents by Dave Elliott of
Cippenham England. Each contained lots of information about the episodes of
Star Trek, ST:The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. I planned on
publishing them as Geosware but never could find the space on LOADSTAR 64.
Part of the problem was that I am not a big Geos user and I felt that the
graphic quality of geoWrite was overkill for what is essentially pure
text.

    But then I remembered a program that I had done for LOADSTAR 128 a long
time ago about astronomy. It was a database of Messier objects and its data
was very similar to what Dave had in his geoWrite files. Maybe I could
revamp THE ASTRONOMER to fit the data. It was a crazy idea but it just
might be crazy enough to work!


 THE TREK SEARCHER PROGRAM
 -------------------------

    Dave also sent me information about Voyager but since that series is
still being made, I decided to limit this program to the classic, original
Star Trek, ST:The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. When run, the
program gives you a CRSR UP/DOWN and RETURN menu of your options:

 Classic Star Trek (database)
 Classic Timeline
 ST: The Next Generation (database)
 ST:TNG Timeline
 Deep Space Nine (database)
 DS9 Timeline
 Help Screen
 Quit to LS 128

    The three database options take you to a screen where information about
each episode is displayed. The timelines take you to a scrolling screen
with information about the future, as chronicled by the series. The HELP
screen describes the workings of the menus and QUIT returns you to LOADSTAR
128 if there is a LS 128 disk in the current drive.


 THE DATABASES
 -------------

    When you select one of these, you see a screen with seven "fields"
showing data about Episode 1. The NUMBER field is just for a numerical
reference -- it does not necessarily mean that the episode shown was the
"first episode" shown on TV. The episodes ARE displayed in the order they
were aired on U.S. TV but they may not be numbered as Star Trek officially
numbers them.

    The other fields are:

 EPISODE TITLE - The name as it appeared on the credits.

 WRITER(S) - If two people collaborated on a script, they are listed as
Author One AND Author Two. If the script was written by Author One from a
story or book by Author Two, then they are listed as Author One/Author
Two.

 LOCATION - This is the name of the planet or system where most of the
action takes place. If it is an unknown or uncharted planet, then I may
have called it by the name of the person or creature that lives there.

 NOTE: I had trouble coming up with details about the last season of Deep
Space Nine so LOCATION for the episodes is simply "DS9". Feel free to edit
the data files (see below) with better information.

 AIRDATE - The is the date that the episode was first aired on U. S.
television in MO-DA-YR format. Yes, I have introduced the Y2K bug in this
program. In the year 2066, users of Commodore 8-bit software may curse me
for confusing them, especially if Star Trek spinoffs are still being made.

 STARDATE - The dates of the episodes as given by Kirk, Picard and Sisko's
logs. In the world of Star Trek the first digit stands for the century; the
second for the season number; the third, fourth and fifth digits point to
the part of the season; and the decimal divides the day into ten periods.
Keep in mind that in the earlier episodes this system was not strictly
adhered to.

 NOTES - This is a field that the user can use to keep up to 32 characters
of notes about the episode.

    You can navigate through the episodes by pressing CRSR UP/DOWN or F1
and F2 to move one episode forward or backward. There are 80 Classic, 177
TNG, and 162 Deep Space Nine episodes. Use F3 and F4 to move ten episodes
at a time. You can go directly to a particular episode by simply typing the
number of the episode. You must enter three digits, using two leading
zeroes for episodes 1 through 9 and one zero for episodes 10 through 99.

    Press H for the Help screen and M to return to the first menu.


 SEARCHIN' THE DATABASES
 -----------------------

    Press S and you'll be prompted to select a field to search. Press the
SPACE BAR or CRSR DOWN to move the "highlight" to the field you want. Note
that the highlight is a simulation of the button being pressed IN. Press
RETURN when the desired field is highlighted and you're prompted to enter
an EXACT word or phrase to search for.

    The Search routine uses BASIC 7.0's INSTR$ command so you can search
for anything in the field, as long as it's an exact match. For instance,
searching for "the" will find "By Any Other Name" as well as "Dagger of the
Mind" and others. If the string is anywhere in the field, it will be found.
The search is case-sensitive so searching for "The" will not find episodes
with "the" in the title.

    When you search the STARDATE field, you can enter a range of numbers to
search for, separated by a dash (-). Enter 3405.5-3800.3 and all episodes
that take place between those two stardates will be found. To search for
any episode after stardate 4300, enter 4300-9999; to find episodes prior to
stardate 3000, enter 0-3000. Unknown stardates will show up in this range.

    The AIRDATE is also a numerical field but since the dates are not
numbered in a logical, numeric sequence, I felt that the INSTR$ search was
better suited. To find all episodes shown in 1967, search for -67.

    Before each search you are asked if you want the report sent to the
printer at the same time it's sent to the screen. If you answer Yes then
each match will be printed and the search will automatically continue until
the file is exhausted. If you answer No then you'll have to press a key
after each match is displayed to go to the next match.

    The print format is one that I felt was appropriate. It prints all the
fields for an episode on four lines of paper then skips a line before
printing the next match. If you want to change the format of the printout,
feel free. The print routine is at lines 500 to 580.


 EDITING FIELDS
 --------------

    The first version of this program only allowed editing the NOTES field,
but then I figured that it would be easy enough to allow all of the fields
to be edited. Of course, one way to edit would be to edit the data files
directly with TWS or any word processor that supports PETASCII PRG files.

    To edit a field, press E and then choose the field as you did with
Search. An input box just the size of the field opens up at the bottom of
the screen. Enter the new data and press RETURN.

 IMPORTANT: When you edit a field, it's registered only in memory, not on
disk. After each editing job you are asked if you want to save the data
file. You don't have to save every time, but be sure to save the file
before quitting the program or loading another data file. The edited data
is not sent to disk until you SAVE it.


 THE TIMELINES
 -------------

    When you select a timeline you get a scrolling window with information
compiled by Dave Elliott in it. Use the CRSR UP and DOWN keys to scroll the
info.

    You can search the timeline for any word or string by pressing S. Enter
the EXACT word or phrase and when a match is found, the line it's in will
appear at the top of the window. Press any key to go to the next match.


 THE DATA FILES
 --------------

    I created the data files from those given me by Dave Elliott by using
THE WRITE STUFF 128. For each episode the following format is used:

 episode name - (58 characters maximum)
 writer(s) - (41 maximum)
 location - (28 maximum)
 airdate - MO-DA-YR format (for best results always use the same date
           format for all data)
 stardate - xxxx.x-yyyy.y or xxxx.x
 notes - (32 maximum) most are left empty, for users to use as they wish

    Each episode uses six lines and each episode's data immediately follows
the last. The file was printed to disk as a PETASCII PRG file. Programmers
who want to use this data can easily parse it for their own use. TREK
SEARCHER uses QUICKTEXT, an ML routine that turns a BLOADed PETASCII text
file into subscripted strings at ML speed. Check out the routine at lines
150-160 to see how easy it is to turn a disk file into easy-to-work-with
subscripted strings. QUICKTEXT is BLOADed into Bank 1 memory in line 40.

 NOTE: The fact that the QUICKTEXT ML is in Bank 1 is problematic. It
worked fine for me for a while, then started crashing into the monitor. All
I could figure was that a big text file somehow corrupted the ML, so I
added code that would stash the ML for QUICKTEXT in Bank 0, then recall it
just before the ML was invoked. That seemed to solve the problem.


 BIBLIOGRAPHY
 ------------

 The Best of TREK #11
  Walter Irwin & G. B. Love, ed.
  Signet PB 1986
  NOTE: Has an episode guide in the book

 The Trekkers Guide to The Next Generation
  Hal Schuster
  Prima Publishing 1997
  NOTE: Episode guide plus a lot more

 The Nitpickers Guide for Classic Trekkers
  Phil Farrand
  Dell Trade PB 1994
  NOTE: Detailed plot synopses

 The Nitpickers Guide for Next Generation Trekkers
  Phil Farrand
  Dell Trade PB 1993
  NOTE: Detailed plot synapses

 The Nitpickers Guide for Next Generation Trekkers II
  Phil Farrand
  Dell Trade PB 1995
  NOTE: Besides the detailed plot synopses, this book has a nit on
        page 7 by Fender Tucker, noted ST Nitpicker

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