ID:QW Quarterdeck White Papers Quarterdeck Technical Note by Daniel Travison Welcome aboard the Quarterdeck White Papers! The White Papers originated as separate documents prepared by our Technical Support Staff. Each one explores a single topic of importance to users of Quarterdeck products. They were originally written as independent items in response to inquires by our users. Previous versions have been distributed by mail and FAX as one avenue of supporting our customers. Over a period of time these papers tend to change; there are additions and deletions all the time as products evolve. Rather than distribute a paper version, we hope you will enjoy our diskette version, which respects the environment. The Quarterdeck White Papers program (QWHITE.COM) is a DESQview-specific program for viewing these technical notes within DESQview. QWHITE.COM is NOT designed to replace your favorite file viewing utilities. It is written specifically to provide quick access to Quarterdeck's technical notes or your own, using an interface similar to DESQview's Open Window menu. Using DESQview's Add A Program: > Place all of the technical notes and QWHITE programs in the same subdirectory. This is normally done by the install program. > Select Open Window from the DESQview menu > Select Add A Program from the Open Window Menu. > Select 'Other (Add Program Not in List)' by pressing the O key or by clicking on the selection with the mouse. > Type the drive and subdirectory where QWHITE.COM is located in the path field. For Example: If you have installed the Quarterdeck White Papers to the subdirectory QWHITE on the C drive, type in the following and press the enter key: C:\QWHITE > An entry, 'Quarterdeck White,' will be displayed. Move the cursor to this entry, press the space bar, then press enter. The Quarterdeck White Papers program is configured to use QW as the keys to use on the open window menu. If QW is already in use, you will be prompted to provide a different two-key combination. Change A Program: Conventional Memory: 95k System Memory: 20k QWHITE.COM requires 95k to run. If you have expanded memory available, QWHITE.COM will automatically load the technical note into expanded memory, reducing its conventional memory overhead to 31k. This allows you to set the Memory Size field in Change A Program to 31. QWHITE.COM will automatically notify you if it cannot allocate enough memory to run correctly. QWHITE.COM also requires about 20k of System Memory to function correctly. System memory is a block of memory DESQview allocates on behalf of a program that uses DESQview's Applications Programming Interface (API). This memory is used to store some of the program's DESQview-specific data. For example, when you select HELP for the program, the help screen is stored in system memory. The System Memory field is found on the Advanced Options screen of Change A Program. DESQview will notify you if it runs out of system memory for the program at any point. If you receive an error message from DESQview indicating there is insufficient system memory for the program, increase the System Memory field by 1 and run the program again. Maximum Height: QWHITE detects the value you specify for MAXIMUM HEIGHT Change A Program to determine the number of lines to use for the file view window. If you run DESQview in 43,50, or 60 line mode you can have QWHITE use the entire physical screen by specifing an appropriate starting HEIGHT. QWHITE also will adjust the number of lines it uses for PgDn or PgUp when you have used DESQview's resize option. The Main Menu: The main menu contains 5 selections: Open Technote: Displays a menu of technical notes in a format similar to DESQview's Open window menu. This menu can contain up to 256 entries. Search Technote: Allows searching all technotes for a character string. Create New Open Menu: Tells QWHITE.COM to scan all files in the current directory for files that contain a specific header record. Help: Displays a help screen describing each menu option. Quit: Allows quitting the Quarterdeck White Papers. Getting Help: QWHITE.COM has two methods for obtaining help. The first uses DESQview's help system. Normally, when you bring up the DESQview menu you see an option called 'Help for DESQview'. When you bring up the DESQview menu while QWHITE.COM is the foreground program, you will see an entry 'Help For Program'. You may press the ? key at this point to activate QWHITE.COM's help. Additionally, you can press the ? key from most screens to display help specific to the screen. Open Technote: The Open Technote menu option provides a menu of technical notes in a manner similar to DESQview's Open Window menu. However, instead of opening a window to run a program, this option allows you to open a window to read a technote. To read a technote, highlight the entry with the mouse and click either mouse button, -or- highlight the entry with the Up and Down cursor keys and press the spacebar, -or- type the two letters to the right of the entry. If two or more entries displayed have the same two-letter combination, you will need to select the second, third, etc. entry with the mouse or cursor keys. The PgDn and PgUp keys are used to display the entries on other screens. Two-key limitations: QWHITE.COM will only accept files that use the letters A through Z and the numbers 0 through 9 for the two-key combination when building the Open Technote list. QWHITE.COM will allow you to specify the same two-key sequences in more than one technical note. Although this allows some flexibility, it does provide certain limitations for the Open Technote menu. Here is a description of how QWHITE.COM decides which technote to view when you select a two-key combination that appears two or more times in the Open Technote list: a) When the first key is pressed, QWHITE.COM searches its internal list for any entries that start with the key. If none are found, you will hear a beep and the key will be ignored. b) When the second key is press QWHITE.COM starts with the first entry on the current Open Technote screen when searching for a matching two-key selection. c) If the two-key combination you type is on the screen, QWHITE.COM will open that technote. d) If the two-key combination is not on the current screen, QWHITE.COM will search to the end of the Open Technote list to find an entry that matches. If none is found, it will go back to the top of the list and search from there until if finds a valid entry and opens it. If none are found, you will here a beep when you press the second key. e) If two or more entries with the same two-key combination appear on the same screen, QWHITE.COM will ALWAYS open the first. You will need to select the second (third, fourth, etc) manually by using the cursor keys to highlight the entry and pressing enter -or- by clicking on it with the left mouse button. Search Technotes: The Search Technotes option allows scanning all technical notes on the Open Technote menu for the character string you specify. It is not case sensitive and it will also ignore trailing spaces when scanning the files. The START SEARCH option ALWAYS starts with the first entry in your Open Technote list. After a match has been found two additional options will be available: "Continue Current File F2" and "Continue Next File F3". The "Continue Current File" option continues searching from the point of the last successful match. The "Continue Next File" option skips the file where the last match occured and starts searching the next file. This option is useful when you have a search string that occurs more than one time in the same file and you want to go on to other files. If any of the above search options reach the last entry in the Open Technote list the Continue Search options will be disabled. If any of the search options find a match, the file will be loaded into the list window. The page that contains the match will be displayed and the line that contains the match will he highlighted. If you select either of the Continue Search options and no match is found, the last file containing a match will be reloaded and positioned to the line you had last viewed. Create new Open menu: Adding new technical notes to the Open Technote menu The Create new Open menu searches all files in its directory for files that have a specific ID line at the beginning of the file (NOTE: See Technical Note Header). The file should be normal ASCII files without special control codes in it. Your editor or word processor may refer to it as Non-Document, Text, or ASCII files. See the notes on Technical Note File Types. Your own technical notes may be added to the Open Technote menu by inserting an ID line at the beginning of the file. Your file should be copied to the directory where QWHITE.COM is located and the Create option should be selected from the menu. QWHITE.COM can only display 256 options on the Open Technote menu at a time. If you have more than 256 files you will need to create a second subdirectory and divide your technical notes between the two subdirectories and place a copy of QWHITE.COM in each. Run DESQview's Change a Program and modify the Directory field to point to the new subdirectory and change the 'Keys to Use on Open Menu' create a second entry for the new subdirectory. Technical Note Header: Example: See the first line of this file QWHITE.COM checks the first line of a file for a specific character sequence to identify the file as a technical note for including in the Open Technote menu. The first three characters should be 'ID:' (NOTE: the single quotes should not be not included). The next two characters are the two keys used on the Open Technote menu. This is similar to DESQview's own Open Window menu except QWHITE.COM allows duplicates. The next character MUST be a space. Finally, the next 35 characters will be used on the Open Technote menu to describe the file, much as the Program Name field of Change A Program is used to identify the entry on DESQview's Open Window Menu. Also, it is not necessary to provide all 35 characters, QWHITE.COM will automatically stop if it finds a linefeed character. Technical Note File Types: QWHITE.COM will attempt to display ANY file that contains a valid header. However, for best results you should use an editor or word processor that can create normal ASCII format files. Your editor/word processor may refer to this type of file as NON-DOCUMENT, ASCII, TEXT, or some similar name. QWHITE.COM processes the following control codes, all others are ignored and not displayed. LINEFEED - indicates the end of a line. If you experience trouble viewing your document, make sure your word processor is creating a TEXT file instead of its own DOCUMENT file format. TAB - moves the 'cursor' 8 positions before printing the next character. This is a non-standard method of displaying the TAB character. It is designed to allow you to compress a file that is 'slightly' larger than 64k by replacing sequences of 8 blanks with a tab character. END OF FILE - indicates the end of the file. If no END OF FILE marker is found, the physical file size will be used. OTHERS - All other control codes will be ignored and not displayed. Additionally, QWHITE.COM will display a maximum of 78 characters/line and drop any characters found after that position. Reading Technical Notes: The view mode of QWHITE.COM provides a simple interface for reading a technical note. The following keys are active when reading a technote: P Print Up Scroll up Down Scroll down PgUp Previous page PgDn Next page Home Top of the file End End of file Esc Exit window * F2 Continue Current File * F3 Continue Next File * The F2 and F3 keys are invisible options. These options are available only when the search option displays a file. It allows you to select either Continue Search option without having to return to the Search menu. File Size limits: 64k QWHITE.COM will not display files that are larger than 64k. Since the technical documents are written to answer specific questions or solve specific problems, by nature they should be concise and we have found they often fit on a single sheet of paper. The 64k limit we choose is merely a convenience from a programming standpoint. In actuality, 64k is generally too large for a technical note. See the note on TAB in the section discussing Control Codes above for a file that exceeds 64k. Printing: The List window provides the option for printing a technical note. This option is here for those times when you want to quickly print the technical note you are viewing. If you have need for extensive printing or printer specific options, you may want to open a separate window and perform your printing from there. When you select the Print field or press the letter P, a window will pop up indicating the name of the file that will be printed. You may press Esc at this time to cancel the request or Enter to start printing. A running total of lines printed will be displayed as the file prints. You may press Enter or Escape while the file is being printed to abort the print. QWHITE.COM will send a formfeed character at this point, or when it finishes printing the file to the printer and returns you to the list window. QWHITE.COM prints to the standard printer device. In other words, whatever printer is currently assigned to PRN will be used by QWHITE.COM. This will allow your print spooler loaded before DESQview to capture the output from the White Papers. Printer Setup: QWHITE.COM does not attempt to perform any printer setup commands. If you wish to have the printer set up a particular way, you have two options: 1: Many printers provide setup capabilities from a control panel on the printer. If you use this method, do so before selecting Print from the list screen. 2: There are numerous utilities available that allow the user to set up the printer from software. If you have DESQview configured to manage printer contention, you may need to run your utility prior to running the White Papers. If you do not have DESQview configured to manage printer contention, you can open another window and run the utility prior to selecting the Print option from QWHITE.COM's list screen. Using the Quarterdeck White Papers on a Network: QWHITE.COM does not make network specific calls. If multiple users will be running QWHITE.COM from a network drive, the network administrator will need to establish some constraints for file access: a: Generally, only ONE user should have create rights to the file QWHITE.WPO. All other users should have read-only access. QWHITE.COM checks the read-only file attribute on startup and will disable the Create New Open Menu option for users with this file attribute set. When a new technical note is added to the directory QWHITE.COM is run from, the user with create rights should choose the Create New Open Menu option to generate a new QWHITE.WPO file. Other users can then restart the program to see the new Open Technote entry. b: Users that do not have the read-only attribute set for QWHITE.WPO and also do NOT have create rights will be able to select the create option. QWHITE will scan the files and create the Open Technote menu in memory but will generate an error message when it attempts to write the file to disk. c: QWHITE.COM attempts to open technote files in read-only mode. If the file has been locked by a user then QWHITE.COM will not be able to display the file. Some word processors and file viewing utilities disable read access to files being edited. Technical notes are loaded completely into memory when selected and closed immediately. These files are not left open. d: QWHITE.COM loads QWHITE.WPO at startup and then closes the file. It does not leave the file open after it has been loaded. Copyright (C) 1991 by Quarterdeck Office Systems * * * E N D O F F I L E * * *