The Night Owl Publisher's CD-ROM File Retrieval System Copyright 1993 All Rights Reserved Night Owl's Publisher, Inc. 1611 Falconer Stillwater Jamestown, NY 14701 Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2 The Night Owl INSTALL Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 3 The Night Owl Directory Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 4 Operating the NIGHT Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 5 The Main NIGHT Displays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 5.1 Main NIGHT Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 5.2 The NIGHT Help System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 5.3 NIGHT List Boxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 6 Main NIGHT Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 6.1 Viewing File Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 6.1.1 Unpacking Compressed Files . . . . . . . . . . 5 i 1 Introduction Welcome to the Nightowl CDROM File Retrieval System. You have just purchased the most up-to-date single source of Shareware, Freeware and Public Domain software available on one CDROM. Many hours of work have gone into making the Nightowl CDROM as enjoyable and user friendly as possible. Your CD contains many thousands of compressed files. Nearly 660 Mb to be more precise. They are all Shareware, Freeware or Public Domain. Night Owl's Publisher takes great pains to insure that no commercial software appears on the ROM. Please tell us if you find any commercial software on this CD! The NIGHT program and accompanying files allow you to easily search for, find, examine, and copy the desired file(s) from this cornucopia of software. On-line context sensitive help, mouse support and many other features are included to help you in this process. We believe (and have been told by others) that it is this is the best CD-ROM file retrieval system in the world today! We are interested in your suggestions to help keep it that way. Contact us at: Night Owl's Publisher Inc. Office 716/484-3066 1161 Falconer Stillwater Rd. FAX 716/483-3920 Jamestown, NY 14701 BBS 716/483-3925 2 The Night Owl INSTALL Program Before you attempt to operate the NIGHT program, you must run the Night Owl Publisher's INSTALL program first. And before you run INSTALL, we strongly advise you to read the INSTALL user's manual, which resides in the text file named INSTALL.DOC. If you have read INSTALL.DOC and have completed the installation of NIGHT, then please continue reading this manual prior to operating NIGHT. 3 The Night Owl Directory Structure The Night Owl Install program creates the following directory structure on your hard disk (X denotes the drive you chose): X:\NIGHT - 2 - X:\NIGHT\TEXT X:\NIGHT\WORK X:\NIGHT\EXEC The main directory, X:\NIGHT, contains the main night system files. The two most important to you are NIGHT.EXE, the main program, and NIGHT.INI, the initialization file. You normally won't need to access NIGHT.INI unless you wish to change one or more of the graphics file viewer paths you entered during the installation process. The night TEXT directory will contain a number of text index files if you elected to copy these files from your Night Owl CD-ROM in order to speed up NIGHT operations, otherwise it will be empty. The WORK directory will only contain files if you elect to unpack or copy files to the Night work area when operating NIGHT and the UNZIP only contains files temporarily when unpacking a compressed file for viewing. 4 Operating the NIGHT Program NIGHT.EXE can be found in the main NIGHT directory. To run NIGHT, simply change to that directory and execute NIGHT. If your NIGHT installation proceded properly, then NIGHT should load and present you with the main display. If NIGHT fails to load, it will issue an error message desribing the problem. 5 The Main NIGHT Displays NIGHT has been designed to be intuitively easy to operate. Full mouse and keyboard support are integrated into all the displays and context sensitive help is always available via the key. All of the NIGHT functions are accessed from the one of the main displays. The top line of a NIGHT display contains a helpful hint that corresponds to the control that currently has the focus. The key is used to change control focus. The hint line will change as the control focus is changed. The bottom line of the night display contains labeled mouse sensitive zones. The control focus can be changed by clicking on the zone. - 3 - 5.1 Main NIGHT Controls All night functions can be activated through the keyboard or the mouse. Each main display will have at least two labeled control buttons. One of which is labeled "Exit", and always returns to the main NIGHT display. Use the button, or to exit NIGHT to DOS. To exit any display back to the previous display, press the key. To use a button control without a mouse, press the key until the desired control labeled is highlighted and then press the . To activate a button with the keyboard, press the key simultaneously with key that corresponds to the highlighted button label letter. For example, to view a file list from the main NIGHT display, press . The key and mouse double-click actions are used in conjunction with NIGHT list boxes to signal action on the currently selected list item. For example, to view files in a specific category in the main NIGHT display list box, move the cursor bar to the desired category and press . Or double-click on the category name with the left mouse button. 5.2 The NIGHT Help System Context sensitive help is available via the key or the current display button. A sizeable, movable help window will appear that contains text that corresponds to the display control that has the focus when help is called. Help on using help can be accessed by pressing the when viewing the help window. You may resize and move the help window and it will remain in the last location throughout your NIGHT session. 5.3 NIGHT List Boxes Most NIGHT main displays have a box that contains a scrollable list of items. For example, the list box in the main NIGHT display contains a list of file categories and the box in the "View Files" display contains a list of file names. Each list box contains a cursor bar which can be moved through the list with the keyboard keypad keys (Dn/Up/PgDn/PgUp/End/Home) or the mouse and which indicates the currently selected item. Note that each list box contains a scroll bar that indicates the current position of the cursor bar in the list and can by used with the mouse to move through the list. The key acts upon the currently selected item. 6 Main NIGHT Functions All NIGHT functions are accessed through the main NIGHT display. Functions like the "View Files" and "Search" operations use the selected category while functions like "User List" and "Work Area" are independant of - 4 - the selected category5.0. Access a main function by using the key to highlight the desired functin button and pressing the . Or you can click on the button with your mouse or press plus the key that corresponds to the highlight character in the function button label. 6.1 Viewing File Lists NIGHT CD-ROM files are divided into descriptive categories and you can view the list of files in any category by moving the cursor bar to the desired category and pressing or clicking on the "View Files" button. The file list display that appears contains two main boxes. The left box contains a list of the file names in that category and the right box contains a textual file description that corresponds to the currently selected file. Moving the cursor bar through the file list allows you to browse the files and their descriptions. Most of the files on your Night Owl CD-ROM are compressed files; usually ZIP files. You may view a list of files contained in any compressed files by pressing the key with the cursor bar over the desire file. This will activate the NIGHT compressed file viewer. Files may be tagged (marked) for "Copy", "UnPk", or "List" operations. To tag/untag a file, move the cursor bar to the file name and press . Or you may tag/untag a file with the mouse by pointing at the file name and pressing the right mouse button. Tagging is a toggle operation which means if the file is tagged when is pressed then the file is untagged and vice versa. All files on the list may be tagged/untagged in one operation by pressing the the "Tag +/-" button. 6.1.1 Unpacking Compressed Files Any compressed file in the file last may be unpacked (decompressed) to the directory of your choice. Select a file to unpack with the cursor bar and press the button or to commence the unpacking. A window will appear that prompts you to enter a valid DOS directory as the destination for the unpaked files. The default is the NIGHT work area, the \NIGHT\UNZIP directory. If you wish to examine and/or operate on the unpacked files through NIGHT, then you should accept the default and unpack to the work area. Multiple files may be unpacked by tagging files but this is not recommended since there may be files of the same name in different compressed files which will overwrite previously decompressed files. - 5 -