Magazyn Enter 2000 February/enter2_1.iso/ms office/general office/guideon/guideonv110.exe/readme.txt

Text File | 1999-03-15 | 9KB | 182 lines

Guideon v. 1.1 (c) 1999 Vector Development

ABOUT:
Guideon allows you, the user to take control back over your identity.
Microsoft Office applications include an identifier called a GUID
(Globally Unique Identifier).  This identifier is unique to each
machine.  As a result, any document could be traced back to its
original creator.  Guideon lets you remove these identifiers from
the files with no ill effects to the data files.

INSTALLATION:
If you're reading this you probably got it installed.  But really
all you have to do is run the installation program and follow the
prompts.

UNINSTALLATION:
Remove the directory you installed it into.  Guideon stores some
settings in the registry at:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Guideon
You probably will want to remove the program group (if you made it).
In a future update we'll probably include an uninstaller, but
we felt it was more important to get this available to you.

USING GUIDEON:
Now that you have Guideon installed it would be a great time to go
over some of the features and their use.  When you start Guideon
you see the core of all the options that you have.  Basically,
just fill out the options you want (which will be explained shortly)
and click Replace GUID(s).  When you do this you'll see a smaller
display showing the status of your operation.  When the animation
stops the operation is complete and you can close this status display.
If at anytime you want to stop the operation just hit the Stop button.

Now let's go over each option and what you can do with them.

* Directory: By selecting this radio button you're saying that you'd
like to remove the GUID's from all the Microsoft Office files in a
given directory.  Guideon does not detect Office files by their extensions.
Rather it looks for a header on each file.  This allows it to easily handle
some variations of the same files such as Document Templates.  You can
click the Browse button to graphically select the directory or you can
manually type in what you want.

* File: By selecting this radio button you're saying that you'd like to
remove the GUID's from one file or a group of files that match a specific
mask.      You can use the Browse button to select an individual file or, of
course type, the full path in.  If you'd like to use the masking options
you'll have to type it in by hand.  For example:
C:\My Documents\*.doc
This mask would work on all files ending in .doc in the My Documents folder.
Most of the time .doc files are Microsoft Word Documents.  Guideon will not
do anything if they aren't since it detects if they are Office Documents first.

* Replace With:  These radio buttons let you choose what you want Guideon to
replace the existing GUID's in the files with.  You can choose to fill
it with zeros, or you could optionally type in up to 72 characters of ASCII
text to replace it with.  If you're trying to be evil here and put someone else's
GUID in there, you might want to know that you want to leave the braces {} off,
since we always leave them there so that Microsoft Office applications will still
be able to read the files.

* Make Backup Copies:  WE STRONGLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU LEAVE THIS TURNED ON.  While
it is rare, we have seen a few Office documents that were already corrupted in such
a way as to cause slight corruption of the files.  This wasn't enough to prevent
the Office Applications from being able to open them, however it would be nice to
have that backup if something bad happens.  Guideon makes backups by appending the
text you enter in the following edit space to the filenames.  If the file already
exists you'll be asked what to do about it.  Note that the backups are made in
the same location as the original files.  If there is some problem writing the backup
file you will be prompted and given several choices.  It's important that you're aware
that if you choose ignore all that if there's some other problem making the backup file,
for example the file already exists and is set read-only, it will not backup the file.
The first time you run an operation with backups turned off, Guideon will prompt you
for confirmation, then you're on your own and it won't warn you.

* Write Log File: This is a really useful feature.  Sometimes it can be difficult
to tell what the program is doing.  This tells you rather explicitly what is going on.  If
Guideon hits a file that it can't open or write to for some reason it won't tell
you in the graphical interface, it just skips it.  So looking at this log file
can give you some idea what happened and why.

* Write original GUIDs to Log:  Unless you turn this on Guideon won't log what the
original GUID's were.  We figured that you may not want to keep these numbers around
if you're trying to protect your privacy.  So we let you decide if you want them
to be logged or not.

* Recurse Subdirectories: Normally the above directory option will only do those
files that are actually in that directory.  However, if you choose this option
Guideon will also do all the documents in subdirectories under your chosen directory.
You could choose an entire drive and check this option to have every Office Document
removed of it's GUID.


COMMAND LINE INTERFACE:
Guideon can be automated via command line options.  This could be extremely useful if
you wanted to write scripts that automatically periodically ran it against your harddrive.
It could also be useful if someone wanted to take and write a macro for Word or Excel
that automatically ran Guideon after ever save.  If you write some interesting thing like
this we'd like to hear about it.  Just give us an email at: [e-mail].

Here are the command line parameters:

guideon.exe <-d directory | -f filepath> [-z] [-u string] [-b backupextension]
    [-l logpath] [-g] [-r] [-q]
options:
    You must have one of the following two options otherwise it'll run the graphical
    version:
    -d    The directory to run Guideon against.  Matches up to the directory feature above.
    -f    The file or mask to run Guideon against.  Matches up to the file feature above.
    -z    Replace GUID with zeros, this is the default so you don't have to include it
        if you don't want to.
    -u    Replace GUID with user defined string.
    -b    Backup files by adding the user defined string to the end of the file name.
    -l    Turns on logging by writing the log file to the path that follows.
    -g    Turns on logging of GUIDs to the log file (only applicable when used with -l).
    -r    Turns on directory recursion (only applicable when used with -d).
    -q    Puts Guideon into quiet mode, without this parameter the status display is
        shown as normal but the main window isn't displayed.  Useful if you want
        it to run in the background.
    -o    Automatically overwrite existing backup files without prompting.  USE WITH CARE!
        When this is set you will see no errors if a backup file could not be written for
        other reasons.  For example if the backup file was marked as read-only you would
        not be prompted and the backup would just be skipped.

One thing to keep in mind if any of the strings that you need to include have a space in
them you need to quote them.  For example:
guideon.exe -d "c:\my documents"

DISTRIBUTION:
See the VENDINFO.DIZ file for "DISTRIBUTION" information.
This file contains the files sizes and CRC values for all the
files being distributed with Guideon.  Please do not remove the
VENDINFO.DIZ file or any other file from the Guideon Distribution.

TIPS:
We'll be updating more tips about Guideon as we become aware about them
and posting updates on our web site.  PLEASE look at this page
before sending an email.  The address for the web page is:
http://www.vecdev.com/guideon.html


TO CONTACT THE AUTHOR SEND:
Internet email to:    [e-mail]
U.S. Mail:            PO Box 1886
                    Issaquah, WA 98027
IRC:                ResDev on EFNet or Undernet
Voice:                [phone]
WWW:                http://www.vecdev.com

Look for updates on our WWW site periodically.
Please note we can't always respond to all your messages, we attempt to but
it doesn't always happen.  Please be patient.  Remember look at the web site
before sending email about something.

KNOWN BUGS:
Some people are still having problems with the following:
No known bugs yet.

Y2K Compliance:
This program could be considered as "Not Sensitive".  Not Sensitive means
that the software doesn't use date information in any way.  This software
will obviously not have a problem in the year 2000.  This statement does
not alter the warranty in anyway.

FUTURE PLANS:
*  Include macros to make Word and Excel (maybe Powerpoint too) to run Guideon
on every file that gets saved.
*  Possibly have foreign language versions available.

HISTORY:
1.0        3/10/1999    Initial Release.
1.1        3/15/1999    A few minor bug fixes.
                    * Fixed a bug that caused drive paths to not work in some cases.  Thanks to
                      Elena and Dave deBronkart for noticing this.
                    * Added a View Log Feature at the end of the scan. This was Dave deBronkart's idea.
                    * Made it more clear that the scan was complete.

SPECIAL THANKS:
To Elena for putting up with me while I developed this and for doing the graphics
on such short notice.
To Kerby for saying his usual "Cool!"