LogiCat v1.78 Copyright (c)1990 By Curtis Little All Rights Reserved Support BBS: (209) 521-2143 Welcome to LogiCat! LogiCat was designed to allow you to easily catalog your disks. LogiCat is the first step in bringing you a set of disk tracking utilities that go beyond anything published to date. I'm sure you'll enjoy the power that LogiCat brings you; finally an advance in disk cataloging technology is available! [------------- N O T I C E ! ! ! --------------] There have been significant changes in the reports since the documentation was created. Please take the time to read this file and the history file for important notes on the new features added to LogiCat. [-------- CHANGES IN THE DOCUMENTATION --------] Since LogiCat was introduced there have been several changes in LogiCat that aren't yet included in the documentation. The following summarizes additions to the manual: 1) On the Add menu and the Delete/replace menu a new item has been added that provides "multi-drive" support. By choosing the multi-drive item you're allowed to log/replace files from any number of different drives in any order you specify. The disadvantage to logging files in this manner is that you must type the drive letter and press return for each disk you log/replace. This feature is mainly useful for Sysops who desire to log multiple hard drives. Note that the other menu options that are documented in the manual still work as specified. 2) A hard disk is REQUIRED, not just recommended as the documentation indicates. 3) When you replace a disk, LogiCat has to keep both disks in memory temporarily so it can copy the comments for existing files to the new disk. If you don't have enough files configured (and LogiCat can't automatically increase them), the disk will not be able to be replaced properly. LogiCat will keep the files that it can, but once it runs out of memory, it will not pick up the rest of the files from the disk. Note that a warning message is displayed if this happens. 4) Several new options have been added. The options for expanding an archive, and extracting ARCHIVE comments have been modified to go from the previous Yes/No toggle to have a third option: ASK. If you set the associated option to ASK, LogiCat will prompt before expanding an archive allowing you to selectively expand archives. An option has been added that allows you to have LogiCat prompt if the report output should go to the screen or the configured report destination at report time. When set to YES LogiCat will prompt you whether you want the report to go to the screen or not. If you say 'N' LogiCat will send the file to the report destination regardless of the printer name used. An option has been added to the 'Report Options' that allows you to specify whether or not double spacing is to be used. An option has been added to the import utility that allows you to specify whether or not LogiCat should ignore extensions when importing comments. When set to 'NO' LogiCat will ignore the extension of files that are configured as libraries when it imports the comments. 5) When LogiCat prompts for a disk name (other than the selection criteria prompts) you can leave the field empty (press return without typing anything) to cause LogiCat to present you with a popup list of the disk names that are currently in memory. Using the cursor keys, typing the name you desire, using home/end, etc. you can highlight the name you desire to work with and press return to select the highlighted name. 6) You are now allowed to specify the max width of fields on the report. In addition PCB Sysops can create PCB file lists using LogiCat! See the history file for details. 7) Several hotkeys have been provided for the menus. They are described in the history file. 8) The comment import utility had some major enhancements. The following describes two new fields added to the import settings screen that allow LogiCat to directly handle many new comment listing formats: ------------------------------- Does FIRST space end filename: ------------------------------- The first option listed above allows you to specify LogiCat should consider the filename to be complete when it encounters the first white space. This is needed to read files in a format similar to CIS, however, for most BBS listings you should leave this value set to 'No'. To illustrate let's assume the following is some file name lines in a file you wish to import comments from: BEST.ARC 76,276 Binary 12/01/90 This is the best file around! BETTER.ARC 126,777 Ascii 1/01/91 This is even better! LC178.ARC 113,103 Binary 1/18/91 There's no beating LogiCat! You'll note in the lines listed above that each file name is not in the columnar format that LogiCat's import utility previously required. If you set the option 'Does FIRST space end filename' LogiCat will be able to properly determine the filename in a list like the one presented above. (Note that leading space is still ignored!). Be sure your ending column for the filename is beyond the end of the largest file that will be encountered when using this option. ------------------------------- Comment line offset from file line: ------------------------------- This option allows you to specify the offset line from a file line that LogiCat looks for the comment to start in. For example, if you were importing from a file that looked like the following: FILENAME.EXT DATE TIME COMMENTS........................ COMMENTS........................ The offset would be 0 because the comments start on the same line the file name is listed on (This was previously the only kind of comment file LogiCat would properly import). If your file had the following layout: FILENAME.EXT DATE TIME COMMENTS......................................................... COMMENTS......................................................... The offset would be 2 because the comments start 2 lines below the line containing the file name. Note that LogiCat ignores any lines between the comments and the file line. Lastly, you should note that when the comment overlays part of the filename LogiCat will only consider a line to contain a valid filename if the first character position contains something other than white space. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ If you have any questions or comments about LogiCat feel free to let me know. You can reach me via any of the following: Support BBS: (209) 521-2143 Voice: (209) 522-9269 CIS: 76276,3004 US Mail: Curtis Little 2413 San Felipe Way Modesto, CA 95355 Thanks for giving LogiCat a try!