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(C)Copyright 1995 by Dvorak Development. All rights reserved. NavCIS is a registered trademark of Dvorak Development. CompuServe is a registered trademark of CompuServe, Inc. ----------------------------------------------------------- N A V C I S B E G I N N E R L E V E L P R I M E R April, 1995 ----------------------------------------------------------- This primer assumes that you have already downloaded and installed NavCIS SE or TE from the Dvorak forum, library 1. If you read through before downloading and installing NavCIS, that's fine... but you may find that the text assumes that you are looking at the NavCIS software while reading through this short tutorial. What is NavCIS SE? ------------------ SE stands for Special Edition... NavCIS SE is a fully functional OLR (Off Line Reader) for CompuServe. However, it does NOT contain all the features found in NavCIS TE and NavCIS Pro. It allows you to do most of your CompuServe chores while disconnected from CompuServe. And that means you'll save money on your CompuServe connect time charges while still getting the same information you did before you began using NavCIS. NavCIS SE does not have all the features that NavCIS TE and NavCIS Pro share. To learn the differences between SE and TE/Pro, you may want to look at the file DIFF.TXT in Lib 1 of the DVORAK forum. What is NavCIS TE? ------------------ NavCIS TE is our "Timed Edition" of NavCIS Pro. It has all the Pro features including a built in spell checker, weather, stocks, graphical thread viewing, and much more. However, it is limited to 30 days... meaning it will work for 30 days from the first day you log into CompuServe using it. After 30 days it will stop working (though it will not destroy any messages or other data you have collected). NavCIS TE has been designed to allow you to try NavCIS and make sure it is the right OLR (Off Line Reader) for you. Installing NavCIS: ------------------ NavCIS SE and TE can be downloaded from LIB 1, and you have probably already done so. If not, here's what you need: To download NavCIS SE: ---------------------- Download the files WNAVSE.TXT and WNAVSE.EXE from LIB 1. To download NavCIS TE: ---------------------- Download the files WPROTE.TXT and WPROTE.EXE from LIB 1. Installation instructions ------------------------- The complete install instructions are detailed in the TXT (text) file you just downloaded. Please read through the short text file and you'll have everything you need to successfully install NavCIS to your hard disk. Then read the rest of this primer so you know how to use NavCIS. Setting up NavCIS ----------------- Start NavCIS by clicking on the NavCIS SE or TE icon in the group which you installed it into... usually the NavCIS group. When NavCIS starts the very first time, it will ask you to configure it for your modem and your CompuServe account information. Please fill out the Hardware Configuration and Global Settings dialog boxes. If you get stuck, just click on the prominent Help buttons in each dialog box. Resetting the CompuServe parameters: ------------------------------------ Once you've set up the hardware and account information, NavCIS require you to run the "Reset CIS Parameters" choice... it's the bottom choice on the "Online" menu from the main NavCIS screen. NavCIS will use your modem to call up your local CompuServe access point. If you have not fully configured your modem, now is when the problem will show up. One of the most common problems is an incorrectly defined comm port... this usually is reported as an error #131 by NavCIS. Just click on the modem icon on the toolbar (5th from the left), and select another comm port. You may also need to change your modem's initialization string, commonly called and "init" string. Choosing a different "init" string ---------------------------------- Click on the modem icon and then click on the drop down arrow to the right of the Init #1 field. This will call up a pick- list with many different modems listed. Choose your modem, or the modem that most closely resembles your brand and model. The reset script that NavCIS will run takes anywhere from 2 minutes to 5 minutes to run... while its running, do not touch your keyboard. NavCIS is an auto-navigator, and as such, it does the driving. Once the Reset has run successfully, you are ready to do your first NEW session... Your FIRST time: ---------------- Once you've run Reset CIS Parameters successfully (see above), your are ready to go on-line. To do so is very easy: click on the New button on the left side of the toolbar. NavCIS will go out and check your e-mail for waiting messages, and it will "join" the DVORAK forum. What's "joining"? ----------------- This is a term that means NavCIS will join you as a member of a forum (even if you already belong to that forum), and it will retrieve the most current section and library lists for that forum. OK, Now what? ------------- OK, NavCIS checked your e-mail, and joined you to the DVORAK forum... now what should you do? 1. If there are some envelopes sticking out of your Mail forum icon, it means you have waiting mail. To read it, just double- click on the Mail icon (if you single click on it, you'll turn it off). 2. Once you've successfully double-clicked on Mail, the Actions dialog box will appear. the top-most button, labeled "New" will have a number to the right, such as "New: 4", this means you have 4 new messages to read... 3. Click on the New button and you'll be shown the new messages waiting for you. This concept of double-clicking on a forum icon is standard to NavCIS... now, let's go configure your Dvorak forum icon... Configuring the DVORAK forum: ----------------------------- 1. Double-click on the Dvorak forum icon. When the Actions dialog box appears, 2. Click on the Settings button. The DVORAK Settings dialog box will appear. 3. Now, click on the Sections button. This will bring up the Section Settings dialog box. A list of the sections will appear in the upper left, while a list of the libraries will appear in the lower left side of this dialog. What is a Section? ------------------ A section is where "conversations" take place on a forum. Each forum has anywhere from 1 to 24 sections. Typically, a forum will have somewhere between 5 and 20 sections. OK, then what's a "conversation"? --------------------------------- Imagine I post a message to "ALL" in section zero of the Dvorak forum... and the subject is, "Message spell checking?" OK, someone on the forum reads the message (since its addressed to "ALL", everyone can read it) and replies to it... here's an example of the "thread" so far: Message spell checking? | --- Reply from Bob Now, here comes someone else, and they read Bob's reply and they reply to Bob: Message spell checking? | --- Reply from Bob | --- Reply from Tim And someone else and comes along and replies to the original message that was posted... now the conversational thread looks like this: Message spell checking? | --- Reply from Bob | | | --- Reply from Tim | --- Reply from Sara In essence, a conversation is nothing but an original message (often called a "parent" for obvious reasons) with lots of replies. The neat thing is, replies can be to the original author of the message (like the one from Bob and Sara), or they can be to a replier (like Tim's reply to Bob). NavCIS can retrieve these conversations, so you can read them from the parent onwards... OK, then what's a Library? -------------------------- A library is a part of the forum that holds files... each CompuServe forum has libraries (like sections, they vary a lot in how many), and each library holds files... some- times just a few, sometimes hundreds. OK, back to configuring the DVORAK forum: ----------------------------------------- If a section looks interesting, you should make it "active" by placing a check mark in the LEFT-hand checkbox. Do NOT click on the right hand checkbox... this is an advanced feature and should be ignored for now. For instance, as a NavCIS beginner, you might find Section 0 "NavCIS Beginners" interesting, along with section 7 "Modems and Hardware" and Section 10 "Ten Forward". So you'd place a check mark to the left of sections 0, 7 and 10. Please do so. Now, let's configure the Libraries... place a check mark next to the libraries that interest you... since most libs are partnered with a section, we'll simply check the left-hand check boxes for libs 0, 7 and 10... wait! Lib 1 looks interesting too... so let's put a check mark to the left of that one too. Intelligent header scanning: ---------------------------- A very useful feature that NavCIS offers is it's ability to look for keywords in the conversation thread titles (called headers for short). If it spots a keyword that you've entered, it will highlight that thread by placing a pair of eyeglasses to the left of the header title. For instance, using the example above about spell checking, if we had defined the word "spell" as a keyword, then that header would have a pair of eyeglasses next to it. Defining keywords: ------------------ The top - left field is called "Msg Header Keys:" and this is where you can define the keywords you'd like to watch for. You can enter up to 10 words, and each should be separated with a space... example: dvorak navcis modem OS/2 95 wincim Next, check the check diamond labeled "Highlight Keyed Hdrs"... this tells NavCIS to turn on the feature and actually check for the keywords defined in the Msg Header Keys field. Rules: each word MUST be separated by 1 space. Upper or lower case characters can be entered. Searches are somewhat "fuzzy", this means "95" would find headers with "Windows 95" as well as "1995" in them, but not a header with "189579". The reason... "95" appears as either a separate "chunk" as in Windows "95", or as a discrete prepend or append as in 19"95". Finished... time to go on-line! ------------------------------- Now that you've done the basic configuration for the DVORAK forum, press "OK" until you are back at the main NavCIS screen. Make sure that both Mail and Dvorak forum icons are active, that is, that the do not say "off". (If an icon, does say "off" that means it will be ignored during an on-line session -- just click on it once to turn it back "on".) Next, press the New button on the left side of the toolbar. NavCIS will go on-line and check the Dvorak forum for messages and will scan for conversational titles in the sections that you marked with a check mark. If any new e-mail has come in, it will pick that up for you too, as well as post any replies you may have written to previous e-mail. Once NavCIS is finished scanning the Dvorak forum, and has disconnected from CompuServe, you can review the information easily... just double-click on the DVORAK forum icon to call up the Actions dialog box. Headers! -------- Underneath the New button is the "Headers" button. This button will display a number such as "354"... this means there are 354 new headers (conversation titles) for you to look at. To see these titles, just click on the Headers button once. How to retrieve a conversation ----------------------------- The headers have this format: 193709 [8] What is CD-ROM forum? 0/NavCIS Beginners The number on the left is the CompuServe message number of the parent message. CompuServe assigns message numbers to all messages. The "[8]" is the number of replies currently in the thread... so if you downloaded this thread, you would receive a total of 9 messages: the original parent plus 8 replies. The next part is the title of the conversation, commonly referred to as a header title. It is the title of the original message posted by the first author who started the conversation. Finally, the section number and name is given, in this case, section 0 and its name, NavCIS Beginners. To mark the header for retrieval, just click on it. You can click on as many headers as you desire. If you change your mind and decide you do not want to download a header that you've marked, just click on it once, and it will be unmarked. Action ------ Once you've marked the headers you want to retrieve, press OK and return to the main NavCIS screen. Then press the Action button on the toolbar (it's the second from the left) and NavCIS will go on-line and "grab" the messages in the headers you've marked. Reading the messages -------------------- Once finished, NavCIS will disconnect and the messages that it retrieved can be accessed by double-clicking on the Dvorak icon and then pressing the New button. Replying to a message --------------------- OK, you've downloaded some messages and now you are ready to post a reply... to do this is very, very simple. Just click on the Reply button on the toolbar... it the 5th from the right. Type in your reply and then press the Send button. If you want cite some of the text from the original message in your reply, simply... Quoting original text --------------------- Using your mouse, click on the original message window to make it active. Highlight the text you want to quote by clicking and dragging... use the same method you would as in a Windows word processor such as Write or Word. Next, click on the Reply button. The highlighted text will be copied into your reply window and will even have ">>" and "<<" brackets added to each end to indicate that it is a quote from the original message. You can do this as many time as you want. You can also use the keystrokes, Alt+O, M to return to the original message when the Reply window is active. This will make the original message active. To set up a new forum --------------------- Use the drag 'n drop icon on the right side of the main NavCIS screen called "New Forum". Pick it up and drop it onto the gray workspace area of the NavCIS screen. The Add a Forum dialog box will appear. Choosing a forum ---------------- Click on the Browse button in the upper right side of the dialog box. This will bring up a list of CompuServe services. Search through the list and choose a forum that looks interesting to you. Click on one that you wish to install. The name of that forum and its long description will be automatically inserted in the proper fields in the Add a Forum dialog box. Next, press the OK button. The new forum now appears on the main NavCIS work area. You must join the forum, and repeat the steps outlined above that were used to setup and configure the DVORAK forum. Learning more about NavCIS ------------------------- If you are new to NavCIS, please browse through the extensive, context-sensitive help provided with NavCIS SE. You may find many of your most frequently asked questions answered there. There's is much more to learn about, far more than can be covered in a simple primer such as this. Use the on-line help and read conversation threads on the DVORAK forum to learn about features like automatic signature lines, downloading files, file catalogs, and more. Posting a new message --------------------- If you need help on NavCIS, please post a message to the DVORAK forum. It is considered customary to address your request for tech support to "ALL"... in other words, type the word ALL into the To: field in NavCIS. This way, it is a public messages and can be read by anyone. Often, you'll find your question answered by another helpful NavCIS user who has recently experienced the same problem you are now having. But don't worry, even if your message is not answered by another user, it will be answered by Dvorak Development tech support personnel. Creating the subject -------------------- The subject is very critical! First it is limited... CompuServe holds titles to only 24 characters and this includes the spaces! So, be sure to choose your words carefully. Next, it's important to create a title that others will find intriguing... titles like "need help" or "Arrrgh!" are very non-descriptive and likely will be ignored by other users (though Dvorak tech support personnel will read them, since they read all messages posted to the forum). Titles such as "Keep modem quiet?" and "Help w/SmartMail" are much more indicative... and far more likely to be read by other forum visitors. Posting your message -------------------- Once you've typed out your message, just press the Send button. Your message will be placed in the Outgoing Actions queue, and will be posted to CompuServe the next time you do a New or Action session. Note: Do NOT press <return> at the end of each line when composing your message... NavCIS will auto-wrap the line for you. The only time you should add a hard carriage return is when you wish to break between paragraphs. More about version 1.62 ----------------------- NavCIS 1.62 was designed to accommodate two major changes in your computing environment: 1) Support for the new CompuServe forum software. On March 28th, 1995, CompuServe began changing all of its forums over to new software that includes expanded catalog information and 8.3 filenames. NavCIS 1.62 is designed to work with this new forum software. 2) Windows '95 Compatibility: Although Windows 95 aims to be 100% backward compatible with Windows 3.11 applications, we have decided that some interface operations make more sense in Windows '95 than in 3.11. Thus, you will find a 'Windows 95' compatibility check box in the Configur- ation | Options | Environment box. Its primary purpose is to be more friendly to the Windows '95 taskbar while NavCIS is minimized. In version 1.62, keeping with previous releases, we have "snuck" in quite a few features and fixes to make sure that NavCIS remains your favorite off-line reader. Please see the help for 'What's New in 1.6' for full information on what's new. Upgrading from an older version of NavCIS? ------------------------------------------ If you are upgrading from a previous version of NavCIS, please note that the first time you run NavCIS 1.62, NavCIS will reindex your databases. This can be a time-consuming process, so be sure that you have time to wait before running version 1.62 for the first time. Legal stuff ----------- (C)Copyright 1995 by Dvorak Development. All rights reserved. NavCIS is a registered trademark of Dvorak Development. CompuServe is a registered trademark of CompuServe, Inc. - end of file.