Chip 1996 January/Chip_Special_Best_Web_Sites_01-96.iso/pc/share/sonstig/uudeview/manual.txt

Text File | 1995-10-18 | 17KB | 341 lines

                          UUDEVIEW FOR WINDOWS MANUAL

   Let me at this point repeat a paragraph from the Installation Manual.
   Some of you have probably managed to installl the program without
   reading that text, but this section is essential to understand the
   relationship between the Launcher and the Decoder.

Understanding Launcher and Decoder

   The decoder was trivially ported from the DOS version, and it still
   awaits its options on the command line. If you run the Decoder in
   Windows, it will simply display a help text, because it has not found
   any command line options or files to decode. This is why the Decoder
   cannot run stand-alone. So the Launcher was designed to provide the
   user with a simple-to-use Windows interface on the front end, and feed
   the Decoder on the back end. This is why you will always start up the
   Launcher if you want to decode something, and therefore we will
   install only the Launcher within the Program Manager.

   However, there is an exception, a single case in which the Decoder can
   be started directly; this will be explained later in this text.

Before you can begin Decoding

   Before you can begin decoding, you must save the newsfiles from your
   newsreader into one or many files. If you don't know how to do this,
   read my article on saving from newsreaders. In the following part, we
   will assume that you have stored the news articles somewhere on disk,
   either in a single file or in multiple files.

Starting the Decoder

   You have now two possibilities to start the decoding process. Only,
   the first possibility assumes that you have all the articles saved in
   a single file.

  DECODING A SINGLE FILE

   Remember that we have installed an association of files with the uu
   file extension, back then from within the File Manager? So, if you
   have a single file with this extension (this file may of course
   consist of several independent postings), you can simply enter the
   file manager and double-click on your article file. This automatically
   brings up UUDeview (the Decoder), and you can then enter commands like
   explained below.
   This possibility has the slight disadvantage that you cannot pass
   command line parameters to the program. If that bothers you, read on,
   since the process of decoding multiple article files also works with a
   single file.

  DECODING MULTIPLE FILES

   This possibility makes use of the Launcher application to present you
   with a menu interface to the Decoder. Simply double-click on the
   Launcher's icon inside the Program Manager (remember? we installed it
   before). It looks like nothing special, with a menu bar and some text
   inside its main window.

   The launcher application just sits there in silence, until you begin
   to drop files from the File Manager onto it, because it is a recepient
   of Drag&Drop. To do this, start up the File Manager, and arrange the
   windows so that both applications are visible at the same time (to
   free up the desktop, you can iconify the Launcher for the moment). Now
   browse the directory tree (within the File Manager, of course) until
   you find your saved articles.

   If you have a single article file, press down the left mouse button
   while pointing at it. Without releasing the button, move ("Drag") the
   file (you will see that a ghosted icon of the file moves with the
   mouse pointer) until it is somewhere inside the Launcher's window (or
   upon its icon). Now, release the mouse button ("Drop").

   If you have several article files within the same directory, hold down
   the CTRL key, and click on each article file. Each file will be
   marked. After all files have been marked, you can release the CTRL
   key, press down the left mouse button on one of the marked files and
   repeat the Drag&Drop procedure of above.

   Immediately after you have dropped the file(s) onto the Launcher, it
   starts up the Decoder, UUDeview, decoding everything that was inside
   the dropped files. This was (in the Author's opinion) already a
   convenient method of decoding.

   But the Launcher can do much more than that.

The Launcher Application

   This chapter explains the usage of the Launcher application, the
   interface between the File Manager and UUDeview for Windows. Here, the
   menu structure is explained.
     * _File_ This menu offers four choices. The Cancel item is here
       presented after the Freeze item; don't be bothered by that.
          + _Decode_ opens a file selector box, where you can select one or
            many articles (from a single directory). As soon as you click
            on OK, the decoder is started (unless the Launcher is frozen,
            see below). Read the below chapter about the Decoder for more
            information on the actual decoding process.
          + _Encode_ lets you select a file, encodes it and eventually
            splits up the encoded data into multiple parts. Please look
            below for the explanation of the Encoding Options, since this
            command only makes sense after appropriately setting them.
            There, you can set the encoding method, the number of encoded
            lines per file, and the directory where encoded files will
            appear.
            The encoding engine isn't very talkative. It will simply grab
            the CPU for a little while and then finish without printing
            anything. If you don't get any error messages, the encoding
            went OK.
            The encoded file(s) will have the same basename as the binary
            file, with an extension of .001, .002 etc. So if you'd select
            uulaunch.exe for encoding, you'd get uulaunch.001 etc.
          + _Freeze_ If you have several article files that you would like
            to decode, it is not always possible to mark them all at once
            inside the file manager or with the above Decode command (if
            they are in separate directories, for example). If you select
            Freeze, the Launcher delays the starting of UUDeview. This
            state is reported in the main window. Now you can drop and
            select as many files as you want. You can freeze and unfreeze
            by pressing CTRL-F.
            Once you disable Freeze, UUDeview is started with all files
            you have previously dropped and selected.
            Note: You may NOT delete the article files after you have
            dropped them. They must exist until UUDeview is finished with
            them.
          + _Cancel_ If the Launcher is frozen, and you have by mistake
            dropped the wrong files onto the Launcher, this menu choice
            empties the Launcher's memory. You can then continue by
            dropping other files.
          + _Exit_ quits the application. If the Launcher was frozen,
            UUDeview will NOT be started, and all input files will be
            forgotten. If you quit the Launcher by this means, it will
            also remember its screen position and size the next time you
            start it up.


     * _Edit_ offers the single menu item Paste, which is active whenever
       there is text within the clipboard. If you choose this item, the
       text from the clipboard is loaded and fed to the decoder. If the
       Launcher is frozen, you can paste as often as you want and decode
       them in a single step.
       This is handy if your Windows newsreader offers the possibility to
       copy articles to the clipboard.

     * _UUDeview_ can be used to configure the command line parameters and
       other aspects of UUDeview.
          + _Command_ Tells the Launcher where the decoder (uudv-win.exe)
            resides. You might remember that we have chosen this command
            during installation. Since the Launcher remembers the path,
            you will only need to choose it again if your installation
            changes.
          + _Options_ Opens up a dialog box where you can automatically
            configure the behaviour of UUDeview for Windows. You can
            enter the path where decoded binaries shall be saved to,
            choose if the program shall run interactively (if not, it
            will not prompt you for anything), if it shall ignore replies
            while scanning articles, and finally you can select which
            files should be decoded. The Everything selection overrides
            all other selections and instructs the program to decode
            everything. If you disable Everything, click on the file
            types that you wish to have decoded. These boxes are
            extremely helpful, if you want to run the program
            non-interactively, since they allow you to selectively decode
            programs.
          + _Additional Options_ allows you to enter more command line
            options to UUDeview manually.
          + _Encoding Options_ prompts you for the encoding method to be
            used (UU encoding, XX encoding or Base 64 encoding), the
            number of lines per file (0 means infinite for not splitting
            up the encoded file), and the directory where the encoded
            files will appear. You must enter a directory here, or the
            encoding engine won't be able to create the encoded files (at
            least not in the directory where you'd expect them).


     * _Help_ Display a short About box.

   If the Launcher encounters an error while trying to start up UUDeview,
   it automatically enters freeze mode. If you figure out what the error
   is, you can correct it and unfreeze again.

The Decoder

   After choosing a file or a number of files with the launcher, or after
   double-clicking an encoded file in the File Manager, the Decoder
   starts. It will pop up a window. This is the part which is almost
   identical to the Unix version, so don't go looking for fancy buttons.
   Everything is text-oriented here. But it's really simple to operate.

   The Decoder will immediately start scanning the input files for
   decodable data. During this time, it prints a line of information for
   every part found. This information may look a little weird, but as
   long as everything works well, you can safely ignore these messages.
   One reason why they're in is that you know the program's working. But
   if decoding fails, the messages are a great help in locating the
   problem.

   This scanning phase may take a while, especially with large input
   files. Then, a short summary is printed with the files found and their
   parts.

   If you disabled the interactivity in the Launcher's options menu, the
   Decoder will automatically decode everything it can find. Otherwise,
   it presents you with all the files that look like they could be
   decoded, one at a time. You can choose individually for each file
   whether to decode it or not. You have to give these commands by
   keyboard (as I said, no buttons here ...). There are several more
   commands than just to decode, here's a list of them:

  DECODER COMMANDS

   (?)
          gives a short list of all available commands.

   (d)
          decodes the file and writes it to disk. Files are always
          written to the directory where you have started uudeview.
          Therefore, you should always start up uudeview from your
          binaries directory (I always change to /tmp). If the file
          already exists on your hard disk, you will be prompted wheter
          you want to overwrite the existing file, or rename the new one.

   (y)
          'yes', does exactly the same as (d)

   (n)
          Do not decode this file and go to the next file.

   (i)
          Show file Info. Prints out the zeroeth part of the file if
          available, or the first part up to the beginning of encoded
          data. Some of the most annoying headers are stripped.

   (l)
          will list a text file. You'll get a lot of junk if you try this
          command on anything other than text files.

   (r)
          prompts you for an alternate filename. If you later (d)ecode
          the file, it will be written under this new filename. Any
          directory will be stripped from this filename.

   (p)
          allows you to change the save path, that is, the directory
          where decoded binaries will be saved to. You can see the
          present path in the command description (which you get with the
          (?) command).

   (q)
          quits the program without prompting for all the other files.

   (c)
          displays the copyright notice and some other blah.



   After all files have been decoded or skipped, you will see a message,
   "No more files to decode". You can then close the Decoder window, or
   simply hit CTRL-C, which is the same.

Troubleshooting

   I drop files onto the Launcher, but UUDeview does not start.
          This may have several reasons. If you have iconified the
          launcher, please restore its window first to find out more. In
          the last line of the Launcher's window, you will see a message
          regarding the status of the Decoder's last invocation.

          + The usual reason is that the Launcher hasn't found the
            Decoder. In this case, the message will report something like
            UUDEVIEW NOT FOUND. Either you have by mistake deleted it, or
            you have incorrectly specified its path to the Launcher. If
            you are sure it's not deleted, use the File Manager to locate
            the executable (uudv-win.exe). Next, choose Command from the
            Launcher's UUDeview menu and see if the pathname, including
            the program's name, is correct. If it is not, correct the
            path. Because the Launcher has frozen itself upon the error,
            unfreeze to try again.
          + If the status of the last invocation is 0, or (OK), the
            Launcher is frozen. Click on Freeze from the File menu to
            unfreeze. This should start the decoder, or at least produce
            an error code.
          + If a numerical error code is mentioned in the invocation
            message, report it to the author.
          + If the message says [internal error], you haven't set the
            TEMP and TMP environment variables. Edit your autoexec.bat
            and set these variables to a suitable, existing directory.



   UUDeview starts up and scans the files, but then it quits without
          decoding anything, or never prompts me but says it ignores all
          files.

          + Make sure the Everything option from the Launcher's Options
            dialog box inside the UUDeview menu is selected.
          + If you want to be prompted before anything is decoded, make
            sure the Interactivity option within the same dialog box is
            checked.
          + In rare cases, some of the postings have been sent as a reply
            or followup to another post; and replies are normally
            ignored. Uncheck the Ignore Replies option, again from within
            the same dialog box.



   I want to save the Options settings.
          The Launcher automatically partially saves its configuration.
          The following options are saved:

          + The path to the Decoder as chosen from the Command menu item.
          + The save path where the decoder shall write its decoded files
            to.
          + The Ignore Replies and Interactivity settings.
          + All of the Encoding Options: The encoding method, the number
            of lines per file, and the directory for the encoded files.



   I double-clicked the Launcher, and the system reports it's started but
          I can't see it anywhere
          It looks like something went wrong with the Launcher
          desperately trying to remember its prior screen position. Edit
          the file uulaunch.ini in your Windows directory and delete the
          like that reads Size=....

   Sometimes the Launcher remembers its screen position, sometimes it
          doesn't
          The screen position is only saved if you leave the program
          explicitely with the Exit command from the File.




     _________________________________________________________________


    Frank Pilhofer <[e-mail]> Back to the Homepage

   Last modified: Wed Oct 18 15:46:56 1995