================================================================= TAPCIS 5.3 CHANGES FROM 5.2a ================================================================= This document covers the changes from TAPCIS version 5.2a to the current version 5.3. You will find that the changes are evolutionary, and users of 5.2a should have little problem installing and operating 5.3. If you do hit any problems, FIRST READ THIS ENTIRE DOCUMENT. You will probably find that a small change has been made that affects your setup (for example, your modem no longer hangs up, or your command line options no longer work right). But if you do get stuck, stop by the TAPCIS Forum and leave a message to Sysop asking for help. ORDERING You can get TAPCIS 5.3 from the TAPCIS Forum Library 1 (TAP.EXE and TAPDOC.EXE) where it can be downloaded for connect charges. Or drop a Mail message to 74020,10 or call Support Group at 800-USA-GROUP and get TAPCIS 5.3 with a revised and expanded manual and the program on disk for only $20. THANKS! We'd like to thank all of you that have supported TAPCIS over the years. Your registrations and referrals keep the program moving forward. We have many exciting plans for TAPCIS, and we invite all of our registered users to stay tuned to Section 9 of the TAPCIS Forum for discussion of future versions. Richard Wilkes 76701,23 President Support Group, Inc. ------------------------------ Backup Please take a moment and backup your TAPCIS directories before installing 5.3. In particular the PARAMS.CIS file will be modified by 5.3 and become unusable with 5.2a in the unlikely event that you must return to that version. ------------------------------ Temporary Registrations If the registration number on your main menu ends with a T, that is a temporary registration number. TAPCIS 5.3 will tell you that fact each time you start the program. Be sure to enter your permanent registration number following the directions in the manual under Recording Your Registration. Drop a note to 74020,10 if you never got your permanent registration number from Support Group. ------------------------------ CompuServe Mail TAPCIS 5.3 uses CompuServe Mail, the replacement for Easyplex. The ;OLDM you added to your userid for 5.2a will be automatically removed by 5.3. Mail operates identically to Easyplex except for changes in prompts. The name of the files TAPCIS uses have been changed from EASYPLEX.* to MAIL.* (e.g., MAIL.MSG). Binary mail messages are stored in MAILn.BIN files rather than EPLEXn.BIN (the maximum size of binary files has been increased to 512,000 bytes). And, outbox messages show Fm: MAIL. You will need to get new versions of any third party programs you use (e.g., TAPLEX) that are coded for EASYPLEX or that are codes for the 5.2a PARAMS.CIS format. >POSTAL support has also been added, and 5.3 accepts INTERNET addresses up to 78 characters. See >POSTAL below for more details. You can use the command line option ! (e.g., TAPCIS !) to have TAPCIS upload your mail messages using the error-free B+ protocol. This is somewhat slower than the normal message uploading but guarantees that no line noise will be introduced into your mail messages. (Only applies to CompuServe mail, not forum messages). ------------------------------ Address Book & User Names When searching for an address in your USERID.CIS file, TAPCIS will now stop the search as soon as you make your selection by letter or cancel the search by pressing space. The format of the USERID.CIS file has changed. In order to support comments for >FAX and >INTERNET addresses, we've added a delimiter between the address and the comments: Richard Wilkes >FAX: 301-3877322 |(RWFAX) Richard's fax number The | is the delimiter. The space is required. If TAPCIS has trouble with any of your existing addresses in USERID.CIS, edit that file (E>dit F>ile USERID.CIS) and add the delimiter. For example, you will need to change any FAX or INTERNET addresses you added in 5.2a that included a comment. Edit the address and put | before the old comment. Note the (RWFAX) in parens in the comment. If you were to enter \rwfax as the address book search, TAPCIS 5.3 will pull up this entry without a confirming letter choice. So, if you have an address book entry like: Joan Friedman 76701,145 |(Joan)(JoanF) TAPCIS Forum Sysop you could select this address using \joan or \joanf. Case is not important but the match must be exact. You can set up a user name when prompted for the comments after the A>ddress command when reading a message or when editing the USERID.CIS file. If you have user name but need to search for that name anyway, put a space after the name (e.g., \joan) and the user name will be ignored. ------------------------------ >POSTAL Postal offers you the option of sending a letter printed on a laser printer in one of five locations around the country. The charges start at $1.50 for U.S. addresses and $2.50 for international ones. Messages are limited to 60 characters per line and 279 lines (5 pages) per message. Before you can use postal, you must go online I>nteractive. GO MAIL and at the Mail! prompt type the "ADDRESS NAME" command: Mail! ADDRESS NAME Enter your name and say Yes to entering your return address. Supply that information (which is needed for the printed letters). Then logoff. In TAPCIS address your message To: >POSTAL and press return. You cannot send postal messages to multiple addresses at this time. TAPCIS will ask you for the full address of your recipient. When prompted for the state, you must enter the 2-letter state abbreviation (i.e., if you enter Calif instead of CA, the message will not be sent). If sending to an address outside the United States, press at the state prompt and answer the country and postal code prompts. Note for Canadian Addresses: you must press at the state prompt for this to work, even though the CompuServe online prompt is State or Province code. If you want to put in the province code, include it in the City line (e.g., Montreal, PQ). TAPCIS automatically sets the editor width to 60 columns. If you load any text using Shift-F10 be sure to reformat the individual paragraphs with ^B (control B) before sending or it will not work. ------------------------------ NAMES.BAT A small DOS batch file has been included that renames your EASYPLEX and PC Magnet files to the new names supported by 5.3. You can run NAMES in your TAPCIS storage disk path. It can be deleted afterwards. ------------------------------ Multiple Parameter Files TAPCIS 5.3 supports multiple PARAMS files. You use the Alt-F command from the main menu or forums selection screen. TAPCIS will show you information about your current PARAMS file and let you switch files or create a clone of the current one by pressing X. The name of the new file can be 1-3 letters or numbers. Each PARAMS.* file contains not only the list of forums but also your user ID, password, and all other settings from the P>arameters screen. Be sure to set up the main PARAMS.CIS first with your registration number, user ID, and password and then use Alt-F and the X> copy option to create new ones. You can use an alternate PARAMS files to change forum sets, support more than 20 selected forums, or switch COM ports and modem for laptop use. For example, I have a PARAMS.WP that has the two WPSG forums selected and that uses a different storage and download path than my "normal" PARAMS.CIS (the default name). You can select the PARAMS file directly from the command line by enclosing it in parentheses. If you use any other command line options, separate those from the PARAMS extension with a space: TAPCIS (WP) GNX The above would start TAPCIS using the PARAMS.WP file, globally capture everything that happens online to the file ONLINE.LOG, execute the N>ew command as soon as TAPCIS is loaded, and exit TAPCIS as soon as N>ew completes. TAPCIS now stores the status indicators in the PARAMS file. So, if you have mail to read indicated by the ! mark, exit TAPCIS, and return, the ! mark will reappear. If you create or delete any of the TAPCIS files from DOS (for example, running one of the add-on utilities available in Library 2 of the TAPCIS Forum which create TAPCIS compatible .SND and .DOW files), the status marks may need to be refreshed by pressing Alt-R from the main menu. Some Parameter Screen options are no longer toggles (e.g., Append/ Overwrite). This makes it less likely that you will accidentally change one of their values. ------------------------------ Macros TAPCIS 5.3 supports 40 macros, 20 when online interactive and 20 when editing in the message editor. You can define those macros by pressing Alt-M from the main menu and selecting either E>ditor or O>nline macros. Then press the letter you want to assign to your macros (A through T only) and enter the text for the macro. Use the vertical bar (|) for carriage returns. NO other special control codes are supported (e.g., no tabs). Then when in the editor or online, press Alt-M. A list of the macros will appear. Press the corresponding letter and your macro will be passed to the editor or to CompuServe. Note that when online, two macros have been programmed specifically to help you use CompuServe interactively. Alt-M X sets CompuServe to verbose menu mode with a screen size of 23 lines. Alt-M Y sets an individual forum to menu mode and pausing after each message. Both these macros affect only the current session. Macros are not available offline except in the editor. This is a planned enhancement for a future version of the program. Macros are stored in the file MACROS.CIS. ------------------------------ Gateways Services such as PC MagNet and PC Week must be accessed through a "gateway" before you can GO to the forums found there. TAPCIS 5.3 supports gateway designators on forum names. For example, to access the PC MagNet Editorial Forum, you would use PCM: as the gateway and EDITOR as the forum name. TAPCIS will use EDITOR.MSG as the message file. The PC Week Forums use the PCW: gateway. Normal CompuServe forums such as the TAPCIS Forum use CIS: as the gateway. This replaces the previous names of PCM_EDIT, PCM_UTIL, etc., and will work as more gateway are added. You will have to rename the .SEC files (using NAMES.BAT if you like) or re-join the forums using Alt-J. Note: some of these gateways require that you answer a brief questionnaire the first time you enter. You must answer this by going online I>nteractive and typing GO PCM: or GO PCW:. ------------------------------ Reading Messages TAPCIS 5.3 has changed the command issued to CompuServe to read new threads in R Forums. This new command downloads new threads in order by section, meaning that you'll be reading all of the threads in section 1, followed by section 2, etc. Most people find this a lot easier than ordering the threads from oldest to newest. However, if you prefer the old method you can use the # command line option to use that method. To save a message, you press F10 just like in 5.2a. Version 5.3, however, saves the name of the file you enter and will default to that file the next time you press F10. This makes it a lot easier to save a series of messages to a file other than .SAV. You can search for text using F2 text F2 (to imitate WordPerfect). ------------------------------ Forums Selection In addition to the support of multiple PARAMS files, the F>orums screen has an enhanced option, F8-Edit. Press F8, select the forum, and TAPCIS will ask whether you want to change the method (Q/R/M) or the section selection. If you choose S>ecs, TAP shows you the section list for the whole forum and what you've selected. If you do not want to change you choice simply press enter. ------------------------------ Online (Terminal) The screen no longer clears when TAPCIS enters terminal mode. When you press ESC to stay online, a message will appear on the top line. You can press ESC at any time. ESC is a toggle, and if you press it twice, the "Remaining online" message will disappear. Alt-Q (logoff after download) is new toggle that lets you tell TAPCIS that you want to logoff after the in-progress file transfer. If ON, a "Q" appears next to the elapsed/remaining times in the status box. Note: it can take several seconds for this to update. Alt-Q when not doing a protocol transfer will send an immediate BYE. Alt-L scrollback now uses the normal attribute rather than the hilite attribute. This makes it easier to view. A reminder that you are viewing the scrollback buffer remains at the top of the screen. You can use the up/down arrows and PgUp/PgDn to review up to the last 350 lines of text. Alt-B in interactive mode will send a . The B command in a script will also send a . ------------------------------ Logoff TAPCIS 5.3 issues the LOG command to disconnect from CompuServe. TAP then waits until it sees the "User ID:" response from CompuServe before attempting to hang-up the phone. This was done so that users of MNP modems would see the full CompuServe logoff including the time online. (Note: in terminal mode, you should still use BYE or OFF to logoff. If you use LOG, you will get a User ID: prompt. At that prompt you can press Alt-Q to hangup). This works fine provided that your modem hangs up the phone when DTR is dropped. If you have set your modem to do this, you should refer to the modem manual for the proper command. On many Hayes compatible modems, using AT&C1&D2 at the start of your initialization string will get this to work. Alternately, you should change your R>eset modem string to: ?2+++?2ATH0^M although this is slower than using DTR to hang up the phone and leaving your reset modem string blank. The R>eset string in TAPCIS 5.3 is really a "hang up" string. You should not use a reset string of ATZ^M for example since that command would be ignored by your modem when still connected to CompuServe. If neither of these work, you can try using the D command line option (TAPCIS D) which uses the OFF command. ------------------------------ Login & Scripts There have been a number of additions to scripts. User login scripts are no longer limited to TAPCIS.SCR. If you follow the user script character "_" with a script name, that script will be used instead of TAPCIS.SCR. For example: <1> 555-1212_DPC would use DPC.SCR for the login script. You can now put a comment after the phone number using a semicolon. Keep your comments short so that it fits within the field length limits (if you enter one too long you'll have to re-enter the number and comment). Also, do not include apostrophes in your comments. For example: <1> 1-301-555-1212;Baltimore MD Do not precede the comment semicolon with any spaces, and if using any login script codes like _ be sure to put your comments after those codes. For example: <1> 1-412-555-1212_MYSCR;My login script If you use an O>nline report of NONE (in CAPS!) then TAPCIS will not look for any connect response from the modem and proceed directly to the login script. You could use this along with a blank modem initialization string to move directly to a login script. We've also added a script called PHONES.SCR. Set it up on your params screen on a telephone number at 300, 1200, or 2400 baud: <6> 1-800-346-3247_PHONES Then go I>nteractive and follow the screen prompts. This toll free number lets you get CompuServe access numbers or report node problems. Any output will be captured to ONLINE.LOG if you started TAPCIS with TAPCIS G. Otherwise, you will need to write down the numbers. The I script command is used by PHONES.SCR to pause the script for user input. You can use the I command in any script, both login and online scripts. This can allow you to manually login through an unfamiliar type of connection, or pause for input in a script so you can select menu choices from the screen. See MANUAL.SCR for an example of the manual login capability. The E script command echoes instructions to the screen. In version 5.2a there was no way to tell the user what was going on or what to expect. The E command echoes the instructions highlighted. GTE/Sprint has renamed Telenet to SprintNet. To recognize the change we have changed the Telenet scripts from TELE1200.SCR and TELE2400.SCR to SPRINT12.SCR and SPRINT24.SCR. You should delete the old TELE*.SCR's. ------------------------------ Marking Headers TAPCIS has a limit of 350 headers that can be marked at one time in a Q Forum. To get around this limitation when M>arking headers for a very busy forum, TAPCIS will break the headers into groups of 350. Pressing N>ext will move to the next group. We've also added a marker to tell you when your reached the end of the headers. ------------------------------ View & Edit The V>iew, E>dit, and K>ill commands have been enhanced to allow you to specify a file as well as the appropriate file for a given forum. For example, pressing V>iew 1>MAIL will view the MAIL.SAV file as did 5.2. But let's say that you have used F10/Save to put a bunch of messages in a file called "2DO" in the current directory. Pressing V>iew F>ile 2DO will view that file and allow you to reply, forward, save, and print messages in that file. This greatly expands the flexibility of V>iew. I use this to save messages that I need to act on later, and then view that file when I have time. Note: even though you may be V>iewing a file of messages created from the TAPCIS Forum, using the R>eply command will send the reply via CompuServe Mail. If you want to post a reply somewhere other than MAIL, use the C>hange command. The E>dit command has been similarly enhanced. You can select a file for editing, such as a script, your CONFIG.SYS, a file captured by a script, etc. I use this to create and edit scripts rather than shelling out to another editor. If the file is too big to fit into memory, TAPCIS will tell you. Also, be sure not to edit files other than ASCII files. The editor was changed to show the name of the file being edited in the top window, and the cursor is now positioned to the top of the file rather than the end. To go to the end of the file, press Ctrl- PgDn. You can now use the K>ill command to delete an individual file from disk. Note: wildcards are not supported. If you wanted to delete *.BK! files, use Sh-F1 and the DOS command DEL *.BK! instead. ------------------------------ Command Line Options There have been some important changes to the command line options. If you use command line options, you may need to change some in order to use TAPCIS 5.3 (e.g., adding a T in front of a delay time). You can get a list of the new options by typing: TAPCIS ? from DOS. Commands can now be separated by spaces: TAPCIS G NX T07:30 (TAP) OPTION DESCRIPTION Thh:mm Delayed start time must now have a T in front of the time with no intervening space. This time can be specified anywhere on the command line. (EXT) Use PARAMS.EXT file rather than PARAMS.CIS. F Use bioswrites (no fastwrites). This command line option replaced Alt-B that was used in some test versions. Hnn Between each character in the initialization string, delay nn tenths of a second (e.g., H10 for one second delay between characters). Inn Change the normal 30 second delay between busy redials to nn seconds (e.g., I05). P Suppress the sending of ^P characters that might disrupt transmission on some foreign PADs. U Suppress the sending of the line clearing character (default is ^U). Some foreign PADs cannot handle this character. Vnn Change the PAD clearing character from V21 (^U) to Vnn (enter a two digit number in decimal). ! Use B+ protocol to upload CompuServe Mail messages. S1 Suppress the READ WAITING command on Q forums when the N>ew command is running. S2 Suppress the SCAN WAITING command on R forums when the N>ew command is running. S3 Suppress both # Read threads in chronological order rather than in order by section. K Disables the S>ave and D>elete keys when reading messages (you would use F10/Save and the Del key). It also disables the F9/F10 keys from the main menu which set or reset all forums. ------------------------------ Other Changes Library Search: When setting up a library search, TAPCIS will use the age of any existing .CAT file as the default at the Age: prompt. Dialing Delay: A one and a half second delay has been added when TAPCIS dials the phone. TAPCIS 5.3 raises DTR and then waits for the modem to get ready. Some modems such as the Hayes V Series 9600 used to require ^M?1ATZ^M?1 or something similar as part of the initialization string. Now such modems will probably work with just ATV1E1DT as the init string. Mail Send: Private Unformatted has been added as a send option. This is used to send a private message (in forums that support private messages) without having CompuServe reformat the line breaks. Initialization string: Fractional seconds are now supported. A two and a half second delay would be entered as: ?2?.5 FRONTEND.SCR: You can now use the "C d:\path\filename.ext" command to capture to a specific file rather than just to MAIL.MSG. The K script command to kill a file now works in FRONTEND.SCR, and X is now a synonym for "C N" in all scripts. Skipping Messages You Write: This is a forum OPTION that is not supported by TAPCIS 5.3. Because CIS changes responses when you have this option selected, it can confuse the autopilot. If you have this option set in any forums, you must turn it off. You can do so using an A>dvanced U>ser command: OPT;SKI N;P CompuServe Nodes: When TAPCIS sends a control-C to the CompuServe node, it now echoes to the screen "^C Sent". If you see this multiple times then your node is not responding. A normal login will show the node echo the ^C as in: ^C Sent ^C Send: Any lines in a message that begin with a slash will now be prefixed with an extra slash so that CIS will treat the line as text. Carrier Monitoring: If TAPCIS detects a carrier loss during transmission it will now give you a message indicating that carrier was lost and will reset the modem. XFER.LOG: If you are logging transfers, the XFER.LOG file will include the forum and library where the file was found. Note: this information will only be accurate for downloads started interactively if you do not change forums using the GO command. If you are going to be downloading interactively, use I>nteractive Forum#> from the main menu to record the forum name in the XFER.LOG. Forum Prompting: TAPCIS will always prompt for a forum number in 5.3 even if there is only one forum selected. This change was made so that TAPCIS would always have consistent keystrokes to select various actions, whether the active forum set has only a single forum or fifteen. Accounting (STATS.EXE): the $>accounting function in TAPCIS has been moved to an external program in 5.3. The file STATS.EXE can be run from TAPCIS with the $ command or from DOS directly. American Express: Support Group, Inc., now accepts American Express for online registration and toll free ordering of TAPCIS at (800) USA-GROUP.