LOGTIME 2.0a for Windows 95 and 3.1 Copyright (c) 1998 by Christopher S L Heng. All rights reserved. ---------------------------------------------------------------- $Id: readme.txt 2.11 1998/06/03 16:31:45 chris Exp $ **UPGRADERS** Please read one of the following sections of this file before installing (depending on which version you currently use): - UPGRADING LOGTIME FROM VERSION 2.0 - UPGRADING LOGTIME FROM VERSION 1.21 OR BELOW. CONTENTS 1. WHAT IS LOGTIME? 2. WHAT'S NEW IN VERSION 2.0a? 3. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS 4. PACKING LIST 5. INSTALLING LOGTIME FOR THE FIRST TIME 6. UPGRADING LOGTIME FROM VERSION 2.0 7. UPGRADING LOGTIME FROM VERSION 1.21 OR BELOW 8. UNINSTALLING LOGTIME 9. GETTING MORE INFORMATION ABOUT LOGTIME 10. LICENSING AND COPYRIGHT 11. CONTACTING THE AUTHOR 12. BUG REPORT CHECKLIST 1. WHAT IS LOGTIME? LOGTIME is a utility that assists users in tracking the amount of time they spend and cost they incur while connected to their Internet Service Providers ("ISP"). It is useful for people who use ISPs that charge according to the amount of time you spend connected to them. LOGTIME supports a plethora of charging schemes used by ISPs and phone companies all over the world. It has support for ISPs that charge different rates depending on the period of the day you connect. It has support for ISPs that give you a certain amount of "free" connection time each month or day. It has support for users who connect to more than one ISP. For users who connect to their ISPs using multiple operating systems on their PCs, the same log and configuration files that are used by LOGTIME for Linux can be used by LOGTIME for Windows 95, and LOGTIME for Windows 3.1. Now you can connect in any system you happen to be working in, and not have to worry that you have forgotten to keep track of your connection time. 2. WHAT'S NEW IN VERSION 2.0a? Please see the file whatsnew.txt for more information on this. A copy of this file was installed into the same directory as the LOGTIME program when you ran SETUP.EXE. 3. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS LOGTIME for Windows 95 has the following minimum system requirements: Windows 95 and above A dialer like the Dial-Up Networking that comes with Windows 95 LOGTIME for Windows 3.1 has the following minimum system requirements: Windows 3.1, 3.11, Windows for Workgroups 3.11 A Winsock package and dialer If you do not have the above, you probably will not need Logtime anyway! 4. PACKING LIST For a list of items in this package, please see filelist.txt. A copy of this file was installed into the same directory as the LOGTIME program when you ran SETUP.EXE. 5. INSTALLING LOGTIME FOR THE FIRST TIME If you are upgrading from a previous version of LOGTIME, please see the appropriate section on upgrading in this file. This section is applicable only to new users of LOGTIME. a. Run SETUP.EXE and follow the instructions given to install LOGTIME on your computer. b. Configuring LOGTIME. Start up LOGTIME and hit the Help button. Read through the Getting Started and Configuring Logtime sections of the online manual (just press the "Getting Started" button on the button bar at the top of the window). Then configure Logtime for your system and ISP as indicated in the manual. e. Testing LOGTIME. You should not test until you have read the online help. If you did not properly configure the program, do not expect the program to yield any meaningful results. You also need to know how to get LOGTIME to log your calls. So read the online help! Then test run your setup of LOGTIME by making a call into your ISP, running LOGTIME accordingly, and then checking the results by clicking the "Current" button on the main dialog window. NOTE: If you want to install both the Windows 95 *and* the Windows 3.1 versions, repeat the SETUP procedure for both versions in their respective operating system/environment. That is, install the Windows 95 version from Windows 95, and the Windows 3.1 version from Windows 3.1. You may install both versions into the same directory. The version numbers of LOGTIME for both platforms should be identical. 6. UPGRADING LOGTIME FROM VERSION 2.0 If you are upgrading LOGTIME from version 2.0 (or one of the version 2.0 BETAs), please uninstall the older version first. Uninstalling LOGTIME will not remove the log and configuration files you originally installed, so if you install this new version into that same directory, the new version of LOGTIME will continue to use those log and configuration files. To uninstall, see the instructions on UNINSTALLING LOGTIME below. Then proceed to install LOGTIME by running the SETUP program. NOTE: If you installed both the Windows 95 *and* the Windows 3.1 versions, please uninstall *both* versions before continuing. You should run the uninstaller from the respective operating system/environment for each version. If you want to install both the Windows 95 *and* the Windows 3.1 versions, repeat the SETUP procedure for both versions in their respective operating system/environment. That is, install the Windows 95 version from Windows 95, and the Windows 3.1 version from Windows 3.1. You may install both versions into the same directory. The version numbers of LOGTIME for both platforms should be identical. 7. UPGRADING LOGTIME FROM VERSION 1.21 OR BELOW This section applies only to users who are upgrading from LOGTIME 1.21 or earlier. If you are a new user, you need to read the section on INSTALLING LOGTIME FOR THE FIRST TIME instead. a. Before upgrading, make sure that no version of LOGTIME is currently running. If a LOGTIME window is open, close it before upgrading. This is important because the version of SETUP.EXE used to install LOGTIME at this time is not able to correctly update a program that is currently running. b. Run SETUP.EXE and follow the instructions to install LOGTIME on your computer. You may, if you choose, install the new version of LOGTIME over your existing version. The instructions that follow assume that you have installed over your existing version. Your configuration and data files will not be overwritten, and can be converted for use by the new version of LOGTIME. c. LOGTIME 2.0 and above does not use the same log (or data) file as version 1.21 and below. Likewise, although the same configuration file (logtime.ini) is used, the various options in that file have been re-organised and renamed. This is to support the host of new features introduced in version 2.0. To ease the pain of upgrading, LOGTIME comes with an upgrade utility called LTCONV.EXE for the Windows 95 version of LOGTIME and LTCONVD.EXE for the Windows 3.1 version of LOGTIME. LTCONV.EXE (or LTCONVD.EXE) will convert the old log files and the old configuration files to the new format. In the paragraphs that follow, substitute ltconvd (LTCONVD.EXE) for ltconv (LTCONV.EXE) if you are using Windows 3.1. Reference to ltconv only applies to the Windows 95 version of LOGTIME. To upgrade your old configuration files, open a MS-DOS Prompt window (Start Menu | Programs | MS-DOS Prompt). Change to the directory where LOGTIME was installed, where your old data and configuration files are kept as well. Then run the ltconv utility to upgrade the files. For example, if you installed LOGTIME to C:\LOGTIME over your old LOGTIME files, you might do the following: c: cd \logtime ltconv The upgrading utility will create two new files: logtime.log and logtime.ini. The old log (data) file, logtime.dat, will not be removed. The old configuration file will be saved as logtime.bki. Both logtime.dat and logtime.bki may be removed if you do not envisage going back to version 1.21 of LOGTIME. They are not used by version 2.0 and upwards. If you did not previously set the time zone in your logtime.ini file, you should use the -t option on the ltconv command line to add the TZ option.If you are unsure whether your old logtime.ini file had a TZ option, assume it does not, and follow the instructions below. Setting the time zone will ensure that the log and ini files have the same time zone in their entries. Otherwise your results will be inaccurate. Find out what your time zone is, then use the following command lines instead of the above: c: cd \logtime ltconv -t where should be replaced by your time zone. For example, if your time zone is SST-8, your ltconv command line would be ltconv -t SST-8 The log file entries would then be configured according to a time zone of SST-8 and your new logtime.ini will have an entry TZ=SST-8 as well. The two must be in sync, or your results will be inaccurate. If you have no idea what a time zone is, and you never have to adjust your clock for different seasons of the year, and you do not have a time zone setting in your old logtime.ini, you might be able to get away with the following command line: ltconv -t GMT0 The above command line makes LOGTIME think that your local time zone is identical with the Greenwich Mean Time. d. Read the online help and try out the new LOGTIME. You might want to take advantage of some of the new features available with LOGTIME. It is now able to automatically detect modem connections. It can track your telephone charges as well as the usual tracking of ISP charges. It supports more ISP methods of calculating cost. And so on. NOTE: If you want to install both the Windows 95 *and* the Windows 3.1 versions, run SETUP for both versions in their respective operating system/environment. That is, install the Windows 95 version from Windows 95, and the Windows 3.1 version from Windows 3.1. You may install both versions into the same directory. The version numbers of LOGTIME for both platforms should be identical. 8. UNINSTALLING LOGTIME a. If you configured LOGTIME to automatically start up everytime Windows 95 or 3.1 runs, simply go to the Monitor options and uncheck the box that says "Automatically run LOGTIME everytime Windows starts up". b. Next, run the Uninstall program which can be found in the Logtime group. In Windows 95, if you followed the default installation procedure, the Uninstall option is in Start | Programs | Logtime | Uninstall. Or you can go to the Control Panel's Add/Remove Programs and select the Logtime entry to uninstall. In Windows 3.1, the Uninstall icon can be found in the Logtime program group. c. The Uninstall program will not delete the logtime.log and the logtime.ini files. To completely uninstall LOGTIME, remove those files and the directory in which they reside. Remember not to delete the log and configuration files if you are still using LOGTIME on other platforms. 9. GETTING MORE INFORMATION ABOUT LOGTIME For information on how to configure and use LOGTIME, install the package, run LOGTIME, and click the Help button. 10. LICENSING AND COPYRIGHT Please see the file licence.txt for more information on this. A copy of this file was installed into the same directory as the LOGTIME program when you ran SETUP.EXE. 11. CONTACTING THE AUTHOR If you wish to contact me about LOGTIME, you may email me on the Internet via one of the addresses given below (please use only one and not all or I'll wind up with three copies of your email). Internet email addresses: cyfheng@singnet.com.sg chrisheng@bigfoot.com Home page: http://www.singnet.com.sg/~cyfheng/ http://www.bigfoot.com/~chrisheng/ DISCLAIMER: Please note that while I generally would like to hear from you if you are using the program, and I certainly would like to know if you discover any bugs in the program, I am under no obligation to fix any bugs. In fact, I make no promises about even replying. NOTE: There are a couple of LOGTIME mailing lists which you may like to join. Check out my web page above for more information about this. 12. BUG REPORT CHECKLIST Please furnish me the following information when emailing me about bugs. In fact, it would be good if you provide the information even if you are simply requesting new features. This will enable me to answer your questions/problems/requests more relevantly. 1. The version of LOGTIME you are using, eg Version 2.0. 2. A copy of your logtime.ini file, and if relevant a copy of your logtime.log. 3. The platform (or platforms) on which you are running LOGTIME: ie whether Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 3.1 or Linux or all of the above. 4. The dialer (Windows 95) or winsock package (Windows 3.1) or type of protocol (PPP or SLIP, etc) (Linux) that you are using, and the version number (if available). 5. A description of the problem. Please do not email me a screen dump without stating what the problem is. 6. Any other information that might be relevant. Or you can simply complete the bug report form at my home page listed in the section above (CONTACTING THE AUTHOR).