View ARC - 2.00
Copyright (c) 1987: by Chris B. Smith
All rights, not expressly granted herein, are reserved.

June 27, 1987

View ARC is a supplemental program for GT PowerComm version 12.2x. View
ARC utilizes the DOS door capability of GT, in host mode, to allow
callers to:

1) View the contents of any archive file (PK compatible) online.
2) Type any text file from within an archive.
3) Calculate download times (Xmodem) for all files in a directory.
4) List available files, their sizes and descriptions.
5) Change to valid directories without leaving the DOS door.
6) Check for messages addressed to the caller and not yet read.
7) Find a file within any of the D/L directories (wildcards accepted).
8) List files which have been added or changed since a specified date.
9) A complete (full color) help facility has also been added.

View ARC is a tool for an operator of GT PowerComm in host mode. The
user of View ARC is hereby granted a license to use, copy and distribute
this program freely with the following constraints:

1) Chris B. Smith reserves the COPYRIGHT to View ARC as well as the
right to distribute it for profit. Anyone who distributes View
ARC may charge a maximum of $8.00 for distribution costs.
2) No one may modify View ARC in any manner without the written
consent of Chris B. Smith.
3) Chris B. Smith is not responsible for any losses which may occur
from its use either directly or indirectly.

If you find View ARC useful, payment of a $15 registration fee is
strongly suggested. View ARC represents many hours of development and
testing. If this author is to continue to develop View ARC and other GT
doors, your support is needed. A seperate registration fee for MSTouch
is not necessary.

Forward inquiries to:

Chris B. Smith The Private Sector CompuServe #
P. O. Box 696 (713) 664-7679 76120,41
Bellaire, TX 77401 300/1200/2400 baud N-8-1



Credits
-------
The following people have contributed to the evolution of View ARC in
one way or another.

Paul Meiners Jeffrey Wannamaker
James Davis Thad McCulloch
Mel Douglass Bob Elder
Robert Young

Help files were donated by Jeffrey Wannamaker of The Improbability Drive.
Jeff can be reached at - (713) 568-5740, 300/1200/2400 baud, 24hrs.



Changes
-------
05-21-87 v. 1.10
Several checks were added to increase the security and smoothness of
the operation of View ARC. Pathnames and wild cards are not
allowed. Checks were also added to insure that the arc file exists
prior to attempting to view it.

05-23-87 v. 1.20
The More prompt was brought internal to View ARC. The previous use
of the DOS MORE filter was totally unacceptable. Now a user may
abort out of any of the functions if View ARC is in Pause Mode.
This is done by typing N (or n) to the prompt 'More Y/n? '. If
anything other than N or n is entered, the display will continue.
This is facilitated by directing all output to a temporary file
first, so be sure you have sufficient disk space available. The
temporary file is automatically deleted as soon as it has been
viewed. The temporary file is called [email protected]@@ and is placed in the
root directory of the default drive. This strange name was chosen
as an attempt to protect the integrity of all existing files.

06-27-87 v. 2.00
The Where is and New files functions were added in this release. All
known bugs have been fixed (I think). If you find a bug, please
report it via the above address or BBS number. View ARC has been
totally rewritten in Turbo C (tm). This helped facilitate even
better error checking, a Ctrl-C interrupt service routine and DOS
functions previously not implemented. The Mail Check function was
also added with this release. When View ARC is first executed it
asks the user if he would like to check his mail. If the user
enters 'Y' or nothing, View ARC will then search all the control
files in each of the message areas a user has access to. If any
messages are found that are addressed to the user and are not
marked as received, that message number will then be listed. Any
message area the user can presently enter into or apply for entry
privileges to will be included in the search. A full help facility
was also added. Special thanks go to Jeffrey Wannamaker for these
files.

07-01-87 v. 2.01
Well, one day has passed and a serious bug cropped up in View ARC.
There was a problem with the GTMDIR processing. If you had a line
in GTMDIR longer than 64 characters View ARC simply got lost and
could not process anymore message directories. It seems that I had
too short of a file buffer. Sorry about that. Thanks go to Mel
Douglass for finding this one for me.

07-12-87 v. 2.02
Well, another bug has manifested itself in View ARC. There was a
problem with mutiple disk volumes. The chdir function in Turbo C
would not work across disk drives. This represents the only change
in this release.


Installation
------------
GT, PKXARC and TTIME must exist in the DOS path. To install View ARC,
place ViewARC.EXE and the VAHELP ('.BBS' & '.CBS') files in the GT
directory. View ARC no longer requires that the path to this directory
be passed as the first parameter on the command line. The following is
a complete batch file to invoke View ARC.

%1 COM%2
ViewArc
%1 CON

Please review the documentation supplied with GT PowerComm v. 12.2x. The
portions dedicated to the DOS DOORS will be helpful in gaining a better
understanding of how View ARC works.



MSTOUCH notes
-------------
MStouch is provided to insure that the date in the DOS directory entry
for each file can be set by the sysop to reflect the date the file was
made available for downloading. This may be necessary because some
protocols do not alter the file's date upon transfer. Please review the
included documentation on MSTouch for further details.



Help files
----------
Help files are made up of a series of panels. These panels may be
created in a text editor or an ANSI editor. After a series of panels has
been constructed, they must then be concatenated with the DOS copy
command. A single line record containing a colon in the first column is
placed between each panel. The following is a sample of the necessary
command.

COPY PANEL1+COLON+PANEL2+COLON+PANEL3 VAHELP.BBS

You may create your own customized help facility this way.



GT PowerComm is copyrighted by P & M Software Company.
PKXarc is copyrighted by PKWare, Inc.
TTime is copyrighted by MagicSoft.
Turbo C is copyrighted by Borland International.