*I  Registration Ö  Help Index   Primary Functions R  Menu and Quick Entry modes   Adding Recipes ä  Printing an Index Ë  Importing Recipes ¥  Configuring QuikBook y Editing Recipes Ö Searching Û Printer Configuration Ò$ Video Configuration …) Miscellaneous Configuration á+  External Commands a-  Relinking the Index ”/  Rebuilding the Index 2  Displaying Recipes f4  Marking Recipes å9  Color Chart B=  Limiting Memory ª?  QuikBook files CB  Cleanup Mode pK  Exporting Recipes +M  Exporting Recipes ÿÿÿÿ QBHELP.ASC -> QBHELP.DAT QuikBook is Copyright 1989, 1990 by Robert J. Butler *B H_register,Registration QuikBook is SHAREWARE. If you use it you must register it. To register and receive the most recent registered version, send $20 U.S. to: Robert J. Butler 7432 Sheridan Ave S. Richfield, MN 55423 Thank you for supporting Shareware! *E *B H_indx,Help Index Help Index Select the category you want help on and press ENTER. ^Registration^ ^Primary functions^ ^Adding Recipes^ ^Displaying Recipes^ ^Editing Recipes^ ^Exporting Recipes^ ^Importing Recipes^ ^Printing an Index^ ^Marking Recipes^ ^Searching^ *P ^Configuring QuikBook^ ^External Commands^ ^Miscellaneous Configuration^ ^Menu and Quick Entry Modes^ ^Cleanup mode^ ^Searching^ ^Limiting Memory^ ^QuikBook FIles^ ^Printer Configuration^ ^Video Configuration^ ^Color Chart^ ^Relinking the Index^ ^Rebuilding the Index^ *E *B H_pri_func,Primary Functions Primary Functions F1 toggles between ^Menu and Quick Entry modes^. From the main screen you can: o Add recipes by selecting it from the menu or pressing Alt-A (or typing a title and pressing Alt-A) in Quick Entry Mode. For more information, see ^Adding Recipes^. o Display a recipe by selecting it from the menu, or by typing the recipe number and pressing Enter. For more information, see ^Displaying Recipes^. *P o Change the program configuration of the program (colors, file paths, etc) by selecting it from the menu or by pressing Alt-C in Quick Entry Mode. For more information see ^Configuring QuikBook^. o Print an index by selecting it from the main menu or pressing Alt-P in Quick Entry Mode. For more information, see ^Printing an Index^. o Search for recipes and/or work with selected recipes as a group by selecting "Mark recipes or View titles" from the menu or pressing Enter or Alt-M (or typing a search string and pressing Alt-M) in Quick Entry Mode. For more information see ^Searching^ or ^Marking Recipes^. *P o Quickly add recipes to the database by reading a formatted import file. Select "Import Recipes" from the menu or type an optional file name and press Alt-I in Quick Entry Mode. For more information see ^Importing Recipes^. Also see: ^Help Index^ *E *B H_m_vs_q,Menu and Quick Entry modes Menu and Quick Entry modes QuikBook comes with two different user interfaces. A popup menu system and an alt-key system. The menu system shows you the options that are available and prompts you for additional information as needed. The Quick Entry alt-key system is for the user who is familiar with the features of QuikBook and wants the ability to go directly from here to there without the extra keystrokes. *P If you wanted to display a recipe, for example: Using menus would choose Display, enter the number and it would be displayed. With Quick Entry, you just type the number and press ENTER. Also see: ^Primary Functions^, ^Help Index^ *E *B H_add,Adding Recipes Adding Recipes When you add a recipe, QuikBook creates a blank recipe "template". If the file TEMPLATE.QBK exists in the data directory, the contents will be used as a template. Otherwise the default template is used. A recipe should always contain a title, identified by the tag "Title: ", if there is no title, QBook will index the recipe as "". Recipe may also have one or more keywords. Keywords are identified by the tag "Keywords: " Multiple keywords on one line should be separated by commas. There can be more than one keyword line. Also see: ^Primary Functions^, ^Editing Recipes^, ^Importing Recipes^, ^Help Index^ *E *B H_index,Printing an Index Printing an Index QuikBook has excellent indexing capabilities. Recipes are indexed by title and any number of keywords. You have three options for printing indices. The title index is the simplest index and simply prints an alphabetical list of titles and recipe numbers. The keyword index prints the recipes grouped by keyword, with each title appearing under all the keywords in the recipe. *P The combined index is a cookbook style index, where a title appears by itself (in bold) and also under all the keywords in the recipe. Also see: ^Primary Functions^, ^Searching^, ^Printer Configuration^, ^Help Index^ *E *B H_import,Importing Recipes Importing Recipes One of QuikBook's most powerful features is the Import function. Using this function, you can make a few minor modifications to any text file and add it to QuikBook without retyping it. To modify a file for import, edit the file and put the lines: -Begin Recipe Export- Title: before the text you want to import (replacing "<title>" with the recipe title). You can also put one or more "Keywords: " lines after the "Title: " line. *P After the last line of the recipe text, put the line: -End Recipe Export- That's all there is to it, QuikBook will now be able to import the recipe into the database. You can have any number of recipes in an import file. Text not delimited by the begin and end markers will be ignored. Also see: ^Primary Functions^, ^Adding Recipes^, ^Editing Recipes^, ^Exporting Recipes^, ^Help Index^ *E *B H_cfg,Configuring QuikBook Configuring QuikBook QuikBook has many configuration options that you may change if you desire. You can select the archive tools that QuikBook calls when packing and extracting recipes. You can also select the external editor used to edit your recipes. There are a number of printer configuration options, both for printing recipes and for printing index reports. You can customize the colors used by QuikBook or select other video options. *P QuikBook allows you to specify the directories it uses to store its data files. You also have some control over the size of the archive files it uses. You can configure QuikBook to use less memory if your computer doesn't have enough to call the external programs. There are two options to fix the index files should they become damaged. Also see: ^External Commands^, ^Printer Configuration^, ^Video Configuration^, ^Relinking the index^, ^Miscellaneous Configuration^, ^Rebuilding the index^, ^Help Index^ *E *B H_edit,Editing Recipes Editing Recipes Pressing Alt-E from the recipe display screen causes QuikBook to load the external editor with the current recipe. You then make whatever changes you desire, save the recipe and exit the editor. QuikBook will automatically update the index if you have changed the keywords or title. Also see: ^Primary Functions^, ^Adding Recipes^, ^Displaying Recipes^, ^Importing Recipes^, ^Help Index^ *E *B H_search,Searching Searching QuikBook has two search modes: Quick and Full. Quick search is a very fast binary search, but the drawback is that it is an alphabetical search only. When you enter a search string, quick search will only match those keywords or titles where the first N letters match your search string (N being the length of the search string). For example, "Chicken" would NOT match "Fried Chicken", but would match "Chicken Pot Pie". However, if you had given "Fried Chicken" a keyword of "Chicken", it would have matched. Careful selection of keywords allows you to use quick searches and still find your recipes. *P If quick searching doesn't find your recipe, full search might. Full search searches EVERY title and EVERY keyword, and if the search string appears anywhere in the title or keyword, it matches. Full search is much, much slower than quick search, however. Also see: ^Help Index^ *E *B H_cfg_prnt,Printer Configuration Printer Configuration QuikBook allows you to configure both a recipe print configuration and an index print configuration (they can be the same if you want). You need to specify the following: device: This can be an actual device (prn, lpt1, com1, etc), or it can be a file to direct the printout to. Page length: The number of lines you want per page. This allows you to print an index on a full size sheet and a recipe on something smaller (such as an index card). *P Margins: Allows you to specify how many blank lines you want at the top and the bottom of each page. init/deinit: You can tell QBook what printer control codes to send to the printer to set it up however you want. You can set left margins, print size or whatever you want. bold on/off: This is only used in the index configuration. they are the printer control codes to turn bold printing on and off. Also see: ^Help Index^ *E *B H_cfg_vid,Video Configuration Video Configuration This option allows you to customize the colors and method of screen handling used by QuikBook. You can tell QuikBook to use the default monochrome colors by pressing Alt-M, or the default colors by using Alt-C. If you want QuikBook to do screen writes using BIOS calls, or if you have an older CGA card that needs snow checking you can specify it on the video configuration screen or by using the command line parameters "/B+" and "/S+". Also see: ^Color Chart^, ^Help Index^ *E *B H_cfg_misc,Miscellaneous Configuration Miscellaneous Configuration This option is a catch-all for the options that change the inner workings of QuikBook. Specific help is available for each option. Also see: ^Searching^, ^Menu and Quick Entry modes^, ^Cleanup mode^, ^QuikBook Files^, ^Limiting Memory^, ^Help Index^ *E *B H_cfg_ext,External Commands External Commands These commands are external programs that QuikBook calls to manipulate your recipes. The default programs are PKZip, PKUnzip and Qedit. They were chosen because they are widely available and work well. You are encouraged to use others if you prefer. For all external commands, "%F" is used to indicate where the recipe file name belongs in the parameter list, and "%A" is used to specify where the archive file name belongs. Also see: ^Help Index^ *E *B H_relink,Relinking the Index Relinking the Index No matter how many safety and error checks are built into a program, there is always the possibility that something can go wrong -- disk errors, power outages, etc -- and damage the data files. The relink option reads the index file and re-sorts it. If searches don't work, relinking will probably fix the problem. Relink does NOT compare the index to the actual recipe files, it assumes the information in the index is correct, but the record links are damaged. Also see: ^Rebuilding the index^, ^Help Index^ *E *B H_rebuild,Rebuilding the Index Rebuilding the Index Rebuild should be able to fix your database unless your recipe archives are damaged. It erases the current index files and rebuilds them by reading the information from each recipe. It is similar to re-importing all your recipes, but quite a bit faster. (although it is still pretty slow). You would normally only use rebuild if you somehow lost one or more your index files (QBOOK.DT0, QBOOK.DT1 and QBOOK.DT2). Also see: ^Relinking the index^, ^QuikBook files^, ^Help Index^ *E *B H_display,Displaying Recipes Displaying Recipes QuikBook displays a recipe in two parts, a non-scrollable header and the text of the recipe. The header consists of the title, and as many keywords as can fit on one line. A flashing '+' at the end of the keywords line indicates that there are more keywords than are displayed. A flashing '*' next to the title while importing indicates that there is already a recipe with the same title in the database. The recipe text can be scrolled using the PgUp, PgDn, Up, Dn, Home and End keys. *P There are several Quick Entry keys available while displaying a recipe: While displaying an existing recipe: AltE - edit the recipe AltT - change the title AltK - change the keywords AltO - output (export) the recipe AltP - print the recipe Esc - Return to the main menu *P While displaying a recipe prior to importing it: AltE - edit the recipe. If changes are made to the recipe, QuikBook will import it. AltI - import all remaining recipes in the import file without prompting Y - import the recipe N - don't import this recipe, skip to next Esc - Stop importing from this file. Also see: ^Editing Recipes^, ^Importing Recipes^, ^Exporting Recipes^, ^Help Index^ *E *B H_mark,Marking Recipes Marking Recipes QuikBook's recipe marking functions allow you to select a group of recipes to print, export or delete. You can limit the number of titles displayed by entering a search string, and mark some or all of the recipes displayed. To mark or unmark individual recipes press the space bar, to mark all displayed recipes press Alt-M or select it from the menu. To Unmark all marked recipes, press Alt-U or select it from the menu. *P You can Delete (Alt-D), Export (Alt-O) or Print (Alt-P) all marked recipes by pressing the Quick Entry key listed or by selecting the choice from the menu. You can display the currently hilighted recipe by pressing ENTER. Also see: ^Importing Recipes^, ^Exporting Recipes^, ^Printing^, ^Help Index^ *E *B H_cchart,Color Chart Color Chart Color Fgnd Bgnd ------ ---- ---- Black 0 0 Add the number of the foreground Blue 1 16 color to the number of the back- Green 2 32 ground color. To hilight the Cyan 3 48 foreground, add 8. To cause Red 4 64 text to blink, add 128. Magenta 5 80 Brown 6 96 ie: hilight blue on cyan = White 7 112 8 + 1 + 48 = 57 Also see: ^Video Configuration^, ^Help Index^ *E *B H_size,Limiting Memory Limiting Memory If your system doesn't have enough memory to allow QuikBook to load the external programs you wish to use, you can "fine tune" the amount of memory reserved for recipes. Normally the default configuration will work without problems, but if you have unusually large recipe files or if you have limited memory on your system you can increase or reduce the amount reserved. You will need to exit QuikBook in order for the changes to take effect since QuikBook allocates the memory when it is initialized. Also see: ^Miscellaneous Configuration^, ^Help Index^ *E *B H_qbfiles,QuikBook files QuikBook Files QBook creates three index files. QBOOK.DT0 is always 8K and simply tells QBook which recipes exist. Each bit in the file identifies a recipe, thus there can be 65,536 recipes maximum. (The zero recipe is used for maintenance purposes, so you really only get 65,535). QBOOK.DT1 is used for indexing and its size depends on the number of recipe titles and keywords. QBOOK.DT2 is a quick-lookup title index. It contains as many 61-byte records as you have recipes. These files are stored in the DATA directory defined in configuration. If QuikBook finds the optional TEMPLATE.QBK file in the DATA directory, it will use it as a template for creating new recipes. *P QBook expects to find the file QBOOK.CFG either in the current working directory or in the same directory as QBOOK.EXE. This file contains the configuration information for QBook. Recipes are given a name of the form: RECIPE##.###, where ##,### is the recipe number from 1 to 65,535. These files normally won't be physically present (they are kept in the archive files), but if you reboot or lose power while using QBook, they may be there. They will be moved to the proper archive file the next time you run QuikBook. These files are stored in the WORK directory. *P Finally, the REC##### files contain the RECIPE##.### files. The extension of these files depends on the compression tool you use (there is no extension for subdirectories). For the default configuration, the name is RECIP###.ZIP. These files are stored in the ARCHIVE directory. The ##,### portion of the archive file name identifies the number of the first recipe it contains. For example, REC00100.ZIP contains recipe00.100 through recipe00.199 (if using the default 100 recipes per archive file). If you desire, you can change the number of recipes QuikBook keeps in the archive for you and QuikBook can automatically move the recipe files for you. *P QuikBook maintains all these files for you, so all you need to do is back them up occasionally in case of disk failure. Make sure you get all the archive files AND the QBOOK.DT? files when you back up the data. Also see: ^Miscellaneous Configuration^, ^Help Index^ *E *B H_cleanup,Cleanup Mode Cleanup Mode You can tell QuikBook to clean up the recipe files either as a group or individually. Group clean up is faster, but takes more disk space. If you choose group clean up, QuikBook will only clean up work files when you switch archive files. This option will speed up importing dramatically. Also see: ^Miscellaneous Configuration^, ^Help Index^ *E *B H_export,Exporting Recipes Exporting Recipes QuikBook has the ability to write recipes to a file in a format that can be easily read by someone else's copy of QuikBook. This feature is provided to make it easy to exchange recipes electronically. You can export a single recipe from the display screen or multiple recipes from the Mark/View screen. Exports are always appended to the end of existing files. Also see: ^Displaying Recipes^, ^Marking Recipes^, ^Help Index^ *E