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The Night Owl Publisher's CD-ROM File Retrieval System for Windows
Copyright 1993,94
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 . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4 Operating the WNIGHT Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
5 The Main WNIGHT Displays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
5.1 Main WNIGHT Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
5.2 The WNIGHT Help System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
5.3 WNIGHT List Boxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
6 Main WNIGHT Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
6.1 Viewing File Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
6.1.1 Tagging Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
6.1.2 UnZIPping Compressed Files . . . . . . . . . . 6
6.1.3 Copying Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
6.1.4 Adding Files to the User List . . . . . . . . . 6
6.2 Formatting a Floppy Disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
6.3 Browsing the User List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
6.4 The WNIGHT Work Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
6.4.1 The Work Area Display . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
6.4.2 Printing Text Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
6.4.3 Executing an EXE or COM File . . . . . . . . . 7
6.4.4 Copy Work Area Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
6.4.5 Viewing Text Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
6.4.6 Unzipping Compressed Files . . . . . . . . . . 8
6.4.7 Exiting the Work Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
6.5 The WNIGHT Search Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
6.6 Deleting the User List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
6.7 Tag All/None Toggle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
7 WNIGHT Printing Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
8 Configuring for a Graphics File Viewer . . . . . . . . . 9
9 The WNIGHT Text File Browser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
10 Re-installation of WNIGHT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
11 Changing the CD-ROM Disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
i
1 Introduction
Welcome to the Night Owl CD-ROM File Retrieval System for Windows. You
have just purchased the most up-to-date single source of Shareware, Freeware
and Public Domain software available on one CD-ROM. Many hours of work have
gone into making the Night Owl CD-ROM as enjoyable and user friendly as
possible.
Your CD contains many hundreds of megabytes in thousands of compressed
files. 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 WNIGHT 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 WNIGHT program, you must run the
Night Owl Publisher's WINSTALL program from Windows. Follow these steps to
install WNIGHT into Windows:
1. Run Windows (3.1 or later).
2. Make the Program Manager active.
3. Select the "File" item from the top menu.
4. Select the "Run..." item from the "File" menu.
5. Type "X:\NIGHT\WINSTALL.EXE" into the "Command Line:" entry
box and click on the "Ok" button. "X" should be the actual
DOS drive letter for the CD-ROM drive where the Night Owl CD
resides.
The main display of WINSTALL will appear. Enter up to three valid DOS
path names of the graphcis file viewers you wish to use later when running
WNIGHT. If you don't enter any names now, you can add them to the
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WNIGHT.INI file later. Press the <Continue> button to continue with the
installation.
The next display requires that you enter the DOS drive letter for the
CD-ROM where the Night Owl CD resides and the drive letter for the hard
drive on which you wish to install WNIGHT. It is recommended that you
select a drive with 1.4M or greater free space. Press the <Continue>
button.
WINSTALL will now show you the directory structure that it is about to
create on the designated hard drive. If you continue from here, WINSTALL
will create the following directories on your hard drive and then copy the
WNIGHT files from the CD to the main directory:
X:\NIGHT
X:\NIGHT\WORK
X:\NIGHT\UNZIP
X:\NIGHT\TEXT
where "X" denontes the letter for your hard drive.
After copying the main WNIGHT files, WINSTALL will give you the
opportunity to copy the text index files to your hard disk. This is
explained in the next section.
Finally, you may elect to have WINSTALL create a Program Manager group
named "Night Owl" and place a program icon for WNIGHT.EXE into this group.
3 The Night Owl Directory Structure
The WNIGHT Owl Install program creates the following directory
structure on your hard disk (X denotes the drive you chose):
X:\NIGHT
X:\NIGHT\TEXT
X:\NIGHT\WORK
X:\NIGHT\EXEC
The main directory, X:\NIGHT, contains the main WNIGHT system files.
The two most important to you are WNIGHT.EXE, the main program, and
WNIGHT.INI, the initialization file. You normally won't need to access
WNIGHT.INI unless you wish to change the start-up CD-ROM drive or disk.
The WNIGHT 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 WNIGHT operations, otherwise it will be empty.
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The WORK directory will only contain files if you elect to unZIP or
copy files to the WNIGHT work area when operating WNIGHT and the UNZIP only
contains files temporarily when unZIPing a compressed file for viewing.
4 Operating the WNIGHT Program
WNIGHT.EXE can be found in the main WNIGHT directory. If you elected
to have WINSTALL create a group for you, make that group active and double
click on the WNIGHT icon to execute WNIGHT. Or, if you did not have the
group created, you may elect to add WNIGHT to an existing group or to run it
directly from the Program Manager's "File" & "Run..." commands.
5 The Main WNIGHT Displays
WNIGHT 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 <F1> key or the <Help> button.
All of the WNIGHT functions are accessed from the one of the main displays.
5.1 Main WNIGHT Controls
All WNIGHT 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 WNIGHT
display. Use the <Exit> button or <Alt+X> to exit WNIGHT. To exit any
display back to the previous display, press the <Exit> button or the <Esc>
key.
To use a button control without a mouse, press the <Tab> key until the
desired control labeled is highlighted and then press the <Space Bar>.
The <Enter> key and mouse double-click actions are used in conjunction
with WNIGHT list boxes to signal action on the currently selected list item.
For example, to view files in a specific category in the main WNIGHT display
list box, move the cursor bar to the desired category and press <Enter>. Or
double-click on the category name with the left mouse button.
5.2 The WNIGHT Help System
Standard Windows 3.1 context sensitive help is available via the <F1>
key or the current display <Help> button. A Windows help window will appear
that contains text that corresponds to the display control that has the
focus when help is called. You may re-size and move the help window and it
will remain in the last location throughout your WNIGHT session.
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5.3 WNIGHT List Boxes
Most WNIGHT main displays have a box that contains a scrollable list of
items. For example, the list box in the main WNIGHT display contains a list
of file categories and the box in the "Show List" 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 <Enter> key acts upon the currently selected item.
6 Main WNIGHT Functions
All WNIGHT functions are accessed through the main WNIGHT display.
Functions like the "View File" and "Search" operations are dependent on the
selected category while functions like "User List" and "Work Area" are not.
You may use the Tab key to highlight the desired function button and
pressing the <Space Bar> or by clicking on the button with your mouse to
activate that function.
6.1 Viewing File Lists
WNIGHT 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 Enter or clicking on the "Show
List" 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 WNIGHT Owl CD-ROM are compressed files;
usually ZIP files. You may view a list of files contained in any compressed
files by pressing the <Enter> key with the cursor bar over the desire file.
This will activate the WNIGHT compressed file viewer.
6.1.1 Tagging Files
Files may be tagged (marked) for "Copy", "UnZip", or "User List"
operations. The list boxes in WNIGHT use the "extended select" style for
marking items in the list. To mark single items, place the cursor over the
file name and press <Ctrl> and the left mouse button. You
also hold down the left button and drag the mouse up or down the list and
tag files as the mouse is moved. The <Tag +/-> button will toggle between
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tagging all files and untagging all files. You may also use <Ctrl+ /> to
tag all files and <Ctrl+ \> to untag all files.
6.1.2 UnZIPping Compressed Files
Any compressed file in the file last may be unzipped (decompressed) to
the directory of your choice. Select a file to unzip with the cursor bar
and press the <UnZip> button to commence the unzipping. A window will
appear that prompts you to enter a valid DOS directory as the destination
for the unzipped files. The default is the \NIGHT\UNZIP directory. If you
wish to examine and/or operate on the unzipped files through WNIGHT, then
you should accept the default and unpack to the work area. WNIGHT will
automatically place activate the work area dialog immediately after you
unzip a file.
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.
6.1.3 Copying Files
You may copy file from the CD-ROM to any valid drive:\directory in your
system. Tag the files you wish to copy and press the <Copy> button. You
will be prompted to enter a valid destination directory.
6.1.4 Adding Files to the User List
WNIGHT provides the powerful capability for you to build your own
category-independent list of files. You can add files from any category to
this list while viewing a category file list by tagging the desired file
names and pressing the <User List> button. You will be informed as to how
many of your tagged files were added to your list and the total number of
files on the list. Since WNIGHT will not add any duplicate file names to
the list, the "User List" function may not add all the files you tagged.
You can access and browse your user list by exiting to the main display and
pressing the <User List> button.
6.2 Formatting a Floppy Disk
You may wish to format a fresh floppy disk on which to copy some of the
CD-ROM files. Pressing the <Fmt Disk> button will cause a dialog box to
appear in which you select the drive letter (A or B only) and the drive size
(360K, 1.2M, 720K, 1.44M). WNIGHT will then call the DOS utility FORMAT.COM
to format your disk. Please note that WNIGHT will inform you if it is
unable to locate FORMAT.COM in your DOS directory or in the DOS path and
abort the format request.
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6.3 Browsing the User List
The WNIGHT user-defined list of files is built in one of two ways. You
may add tagged files to the user list while viewing a category file list or
you may add files to the user list by searching for text. This function
will be explained later.
To view your user list, press the "User List" button. WNIGHT will
inform you if no files are on the list. The display and controls for this
function are exactly the same as when viewing a category file list.
6.4 The WNIGHT Work Area
The WNIGHT work area is actually the subdirectory named \NIGHT\WORK.
It is the default area for unziping or copying files when in the file list
viewing function. You may access the work area by pressing the <Work Area>
button. This is a very useful feature in that it permits you to unzip a
file from your Night Owl CD-ROM into the work area and then read text files
and/or execute programs.
6.4.1 The Work Area Display
The work area display has a list box which contains a list of all the
files currently in the work area. There are five functions in addition to
the <Help> and <Exit> functions. The file list box operates exactly like
other WNIGHT list boxes except that tagging of file names is not available.
6.4.2 Printing Text Files
You may send any ASCII file to your printer by moving the cursor bar to
the target file name and pressing the <Print> button. WNIGHT will ask you
to confirm that your printer is ready and then print the file, informing you
of the status as line-by-line printing progresses. Note that WNIGHT adds no
formatting codes of any kind, including form feeds, as the file is printed.
6.4.3 Executing an EXE or COM File
You may execute a COM or an EXE file in the WNIGHT work area by
selecting the target file with the cursor bar and pressing the <Execute>
button. A box will appear which permits you to enter any special command
line parameters the program may require. If none are required, leave the
input line empty and press <Enter> or the <Ok> button to run the program.
WNIGHT will not execute a batch file because of the inadvertent consequences
that might result.
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6.4.4 Copy Work Area Files
All of the files in the work area may be copied to a drive:\directory
of your choice by pressing the <Copy> button. Note that ALL of the files
are copied. There is no provision for copying individual files from the
work area.
6.4.5 Viewing Text Files
You may view text files in the work area by pressing the <View> button.
Text files are passed to the internal WNIGHT file browser for viewing.
Note that you may also view the contents of a compressed file in the
work area. This function works exactly like viewing compressed file from a
category or user file list.
6.4.6 Unzipping Compressed Files
Sometimes authors will place a compressed file inside a compressed
file. You can unzip this file into your work area by selecting the target
file with the cursor bar and pressing the <UnZip> button. WNIGHT will then
automatically activate the work area dialog so that you may examine the
unzipped files.
6.4.7 Exiting the Work Area
Each time you exit the work area you will be asked if you wish to
delete the files in the area. We recommend that you do this unless you plan
to return to manipulate the current set of files in the work area during the
current session.
6.5 The WNIGHT Search Function
The powerful WNIGHT search function allows you to search the textual
file descriptions for a text string that you specify. And you can search
the files in just one category or in all of the categories. To search just
one category, start the search with no files tagged and the cursor bar on
the target category. To search multiple categories, tag the desired
categories. Start the search by pressing the <Search> button. A new
display that is very similar to the main display will appear. You may tag
any or all of the categories in the list as targets for the search.
You will be prompted to enter a string of text up to 24 characters in
length. The search is not case sensitive so you may enter a upper or lower
case search string. WNIGHT will display a window that informs you of the
progress of the search and how many "finds" have been encountered. Each
time a match of your text to text in a file description is found, WNIGHT
will add that file name and description to your user file list as long as
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that file name is not already in your user list. That way, no duplicates
are added to your list. You can then go into the user list and browse the
files that your search produced.
6.6 Deleting the User List
It is often useful to delete your user-defined file list and start
fresh. To do this, select the WNIGHT main display top menu item named
"File". The first item on the drop-down menu is "Erase User File".
Selecting this item will delete your user-defined list so that you can
create a brand new one.
6.7 Tag All/None Toggle
You may wish to tag all the categories at once or to remove all tags at
once. Pressing the <Tag +/-> button or <Ctrl+/> will tag all categories if
none are currently tagged and remove all tags if one or more are currently
tagged.
7 WNIGHT Printing Functions
WNIGHT provides extensive support for the printing of lists and text
files. The <Print> button is used to activate Windows style printing. If
you are in the main display, WNIGHT will print a list of categories. If you
are in the file or user list viewer, WNIGHT will ask if you wish only file
data lines or data lines with full text descriptions to be printed.
8 Configuring for a Graphics File Viewer
WNIGHT may be configured to view graphics (GIF, PCX, BMP, etc.) files.
Select the "Graphics Viewer Cfg" item from the WNIGHT menu and enter the
full DOS path name of your graphics viewer to accomplish this. This path
will be added to your WNIGHT.INI file automatically so that once you have
configured for a viewer you need not do so again unless you wish to change
the name or location of the viewer.
9 The WNIGHT Text File Browser
WNIGHT uses an internal text file browser to browse text files. This
simple but powerful browser is a virtual browser that will handle text files
up to one gigabyte in length. It also provides the capability to print the
file that is being browsed and to search the file for specified text.
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10 Re-installation of WNIGHT
WNIGHT may be re-installed by selecting the Re-install item from the
Files menu. WNIGHT will prompt you to enter a new main directory path name,
which MUST be on a drive other than the current main directory drive. You
will have the option to delete the old files and directories. WNIGHT will
then create a new directory structure and copy all the WNIGHT files to the
appropriate directories.
11 Changing the CD-ROM Disk
If you wish to change from one Night Owl CD release to another, access
the main menu and select the "Change CD-ROM" item. You will be prompted to
change the disk. WNIGHT will read the new disk, determine the release
number from the volume label, and read the new categories from the
appropriate text directory. If the text directory cannot be found, you will
have the opportunity to have WNIGHT copy the text directory from the current
CD-ROM to your hard disk (about 1 Meg of disk space will be required).
When starting WNIGHT be certain that the disk that is in your CD-ROM
drive matches the setting for the "Text=" item in WNIGHT.INI. For example,
to start with Night Owl release 11, place the NOVP11 disk in your CD-ROM
drive and make sure that "Text=NIGHT11" appears in your WNIGHT.INI file.
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