PC-OUTLINE ORGANIZATION AT YOUR FINGERTIPS Disk Based Documentation This document contains the "Getting Started" sections from the actual PC-OUTLINE manual. It is designed, in combination with the PC-OUTLINE user interface, to get you up and running and doing useful things with PC-OUTLINE in a very short time. It does not, however, contain a detailed description of all the PC-OUTLINE commands nor pretend to be a comprehensive tutorial or user's reference. Registered users can receive the actual PC-OUTLINE manual which does contain a complete description of all commands. Details on registering are in the last section titled registration form. (C) Copyright SoftWorks Development, 1985, 1986 All Rights Reserved 1 YOUR PC-OUTLINE LICENSE ----------------------- PC-OUTLINE is copyrighted. Even though the program is shareware, and can be freely copied, there are still some limitations to protect the quality of the distribution of the program and to support future development. Users of PC-OUTLINE may make copies of this program for trial use by others on a PRIVATE NON-COMMERCIAL BASIS. By accepting and using this software, you acknowledge that this software may not suit your particular requirements or be completely trouble-free. With proper application, this s€€ˆO€Ο‡ˆˆ€€OŽppΟΟΟΟΟ‰ˆ ‚ ˆ ΐΟΟ“€ˆΑΟ„€€O™ˆˆ€€Ο‚O€€πpΟΟΟΟΟ„ˆ€„ ˆOˆ€Ο‚Ο„ˆ ‚ OŽ‡‚ ‚Ο€ώ‚O‡„€ s. For example, using the hide/unhide feature, you can view just down to any level of detail in the outline that you want. With a single keystroke, you can go from viewing the lowest level of detail to a view that shows you only the highest, most important topics. With another few keystrokes, you can print the outline, send it to a file compatible with your word processor, copy it into another outline, or paste it directly into your word processor. PC-OUTLINE is particularly appropriate for list making. Tasks like making todo lists or planning a project are ideally suited for PC-OUTLINE. For an example of how the hierarchical structure works and how you can hide and unhide parts of the outline, start PC-OUTLINE and load the outline titled TUTOR1. The text in the outline will help show you what PC-OUTLINE can do. 5 PC-OUTLINE FACTS ---------------- For those of your who like statistics or lists, here are a few about PC-OUTLINE. Standard PC-OUTLINE outlining features include: - hierarchical outline structure - structured indenting - hide/unhide (collapse/expand) any portion of the outline - powerful outline rearrangement functions Advanced PC-OUTLINE features include: - automatic numbering, including choice of numbering style (alphabetic, numeric, roman, bullets, or none) - easy, pull-down menus - multi-line outline entries - automatic paragraph reformatting - margin control - centering, left and right justification - hanging indents - search and replace - on screen page break display - conditional and hard page breaks - block copies, moves, and deletes - tab stop settings - send printer control strings - printer formatting: underline, boldface, italics, sub/superscript, double strike - windowing: up to 9 outlines open/on screen at once in user-defined windows - zoom any window to full screen with a single keystroke - copy or move outline or text directly between windows - customizable printer drivers - sorting - user defined macros/key redifinition - live date and time stamps - full support for dos 2.0 and above - read/write other file formats including: ascii, Wordstar, ThinkTank/Ready! - data transfer with other programs including cut and paste to other active programs while memory resident - configuration file to set startup defaults - compatible with other memory resident programs (like SideKick, ProKey, etc.) - freely mix outlines and text: titles, skip numbering, start new numbering, move placement right and left - return to dos without leaving PC-OUTLINE PC-OUTLINE requires dos 2.0 or greater, one floppy disk drive, 128k RAM, and an IBM PC/XT/AT or compatible, and can be configured to occupy as little as 80k when memory resident. 6 GETTING STARTED --------------- MAKING A BACKUP --------------- Before using PC-OUTLINE, make a backup copy of the program and all of its documentation files. Put this backup away in a safe place for emergency use only if something were to happen to your original. FOR FLOPPY USE -------------- Insert the PC-OUTLINE disk into the default drive and type PCO to the dos prompt. FOR HARD DISK USE ----------------- Create a directory where you would like to keep all of your outline files. Copy the file PCO.EXE from the floppy program disk to this directory. Set the current logged directory to your outline directory and type PCO to the dos prompt. To be able to use PC-OUTLINE from any directory on your hard disk see the appendix on USING PC-OUTLINE ON A HARD DISK. FOR USE AS A MEMORY RESIDENT PROGRAM ------------------------------------ To use PC-OUTLINE as a memory resident program (where it is always instantly available at the touch of a key), start the program with PCO/r instead of just PCO. This tells PC-OUTLINE that you want to load the memory resident version instead. You will get a brief copyright message and PC-OUTLINE will be permanently resident in memory. To start PC-OUTLINE just press ^\ (control backslash). The invoke key can be changed to anything you like using the separate program KEYSET.COM. You may want to place the command PCO/r in your autoexec.bat file so that PC-OUTLINE is automatically loaded each time you boot your computer. See the following section on other command parameter startup options to adjust the amount of memory that PC-OUTLINE will use. The default is about 128k but can be adjusted as low as 90k. 7 If you are using PC-OUTLINE in the memory resident mode, you should regularly save your work. If one of the other programs that you are running should hang or cause your computer to crash, you will lose any un-saved outlines. It is a good practice to save your outlines before returning to your main application (the single keystroke ^S will accomplish this). PC-OUTLINE is designed to be compatible with as many other memory-resident programs as possible. Because all memory resident programs have their own way of being memory resident, some conflicts are bound to exist. When you have problems, experiment with the order the programs are loaded. Although we cannot tell you how PC-OUTLINE will interact with all other memory-resident programs, we do know that PC-OUTLINE itself will be the most reliable when it is loaded last. If another program also says that it wants to be loaded last, then you may need to experiment with the correct loading order for the two programs to work with one another. In general, you should load PC-OUTLINE after keyboard enhancers like Prokey. If you load PC-OUTLINE after SideKick, both programs will function fine except that you will not be able to invoke PC-OUTLINE from within SideKick. THE FIRST SCREEN ---------------- Once the program starts, the first screen is a message explaining the shareware distribution concept, how it works, how you can most benefit from it, and how you can help support it. To continue past this screen, press any key. In the future, you may start the program by typing PCO /q to the dos prompt instead of just PCO and you will bypass the opening screen. It may be helpful to create a batch file that types the PCO /q for you each time. We do ask, however, that if you copy the program for someone, please do not supply them with the batch file that bypasses the shareware screen. It is to both our and your advantage to help as many users as possible both learn about and support the shareware concept. THE OPENING MENU ---------------- The opening menu offers you four choices. To choose one of the four options, either use the up and down arrow keys to select the option you want and press RET or just press the first letter of the desired option (i.e. press "o" to choose Open a New Outline). Pressing the ESC key will always abort the current operation. 8 OPEN A NEW OUTLINE ------------------ Enter any legal dos path or path and filename except do not use an extension on the eight character name. PC-OUTLINE will automatically add the extension .PCO. If you do not type a filename, then the file will be created in the directory listed on the bottom line of the screen (known as the current directory). If you type the name of an outline that already exists, then it will be loaded rather than creating a new one with the same name. LOAD AN EXISTING OUTLINE ------------------------ Choose one of the existing outlines to load by pointing to it with the arrows and pressing RET. If no outlines exist in the current directory, then PC-OUTLINE will assume that you must want to create a new outline and will prompt you accordingly. If you realize that you are logged into the wrong directory or you change your mind for some other reason, you can always press ESC to back up a step. CHANGE DRIVE/DIRECTORY ---------------------- Enter the new current directory. This command obeys most of the same rules as dos. If you enter a full path name, then that becomes your new current directory. If you enter just a sub-directory name, then that is appended onto the existing directory path. To just change logged drives, just type "d:" where d is the desired drive. QUIT ---- Choose this option to exit PC-OUTLINE and return to dos. OTHER COMMAND PARAMETER STARTUP OPTIONS --------------------------------------- A command parameter option is a sequence of special characters typed after the program name when starting a program from dos. In the sections above we already introduced the command parameters "/r" and "/q". There are a number of other command parameters: /b - forces the display to black and white /s - makes screen activity faster on most non-IBM screens /m = xxx specifies how much memory to reserve for outline data in the memory resident version. For example /m=22 would reserve 22k for outline data. Since the program itself will occupy about 60k, this would be a 9 grand total of 82k. The default is /m=64. /d - causes PC-OUTLINE to ignore the starting directory that you may have entered in the ADVANCED CONFIGURATION menu and instead use the current directory when PC-OUTLINE was started. This is useful if you keep most of your outlines in one directory (so you set the starting directory), but sometimes you want to start out with the current directory. 10 THE WORKING SCREEN ------------------ There are a number of parts to the normal working screen. The bottom line usually contains a message indicating some of your current options. The end of the bottom row tells you how much free memory you have. The 2nd line from the bottom show the current ruler with left and right margins, tab stops and the current cursor position. The next to last column is a status column that tells you information about the current line. A blank means this line ends in wordwrap. A period means this line is past the end of the outline. A dash means this line is the last line in an outline entry and there are no sub-entries. A down arrow means this line is the last line in an outline entry and there are sub-entries. A chevron means that this line ends in a hard carriage return. Reverse video means that this outline entry has either its children or its text hidden. The second column is a page break indication column. The last line of each page will show a square block. The second row is a status line that lists the following: - The current path/filename (only the last 20 characters are show here). The full filename can always be seen with the WINDOW LIST command. - The amount of memory the outline occupies so far in K-bytes. - The status of Insert/Overwrite for editing. - Page, line, and column information. - The current system time. - The window number. The top line shows the top level menu options. HOW TO USE THE MENUS -------------------- The menu system is designed to be both easy to learn for the novice and quick to use for the experienced user. Because of this, there are several ways to invoke and use the menus - each method varies in speed and ease of use. 11 THE EASY WAY The easiest way to use the menus is to press the INS key. This will start up the FILE menu. To choose one of the other menus, use the right and left arrow keys to position the menu along the menu bar. Within any one of the menus you may make a selection by either pointing to the desired option and pressing RET or by pressing the first letter of the desired option. Pressing the ESC key will always exit the current menu. THE QUICK WAY #1 To start directly in one of the menus, press the "/" key (forward slash) and then the first letter of the desired menu. Thus, to go immediately to the DISPLAY menu you would type /d or immediately to the OUTLINE menu would be /o. In order to actually use the / key in your text, just type it twice. Note that this key can be changed to whatever you like using the setup program called KEYSET.COM. THE QUICK WAY #2 An alternate way to start directly in one of the menus is to press Alt and the first letter of the desired menu. For example Alt-d would start the DISPLAY menu and Alt-o would start the OUTLINE menu. SHORTCUT KEYSTROKES In addition to choosing items through menus, many of the more common functions have single key shortcuts. If a menu item can also be accomplished with a shortcut keystroke, then that keystroke will be listed in parentheses in the menu. For example, in the OUTLINE menu, the option CREATE NEW OUTLINE ENTRY can also be done by just typing a control-N. In addition to the pre-defined shortcut keystrokes, you can create your own by using keyboard macros. See the section on macros in the description of the ADVANCED menu for more information. HOW TO USE OPTION BOXES ----------------------- Some menu selections will lead you to an option box where you will be presented with a number of different options to choose from. For example, selecting PARAGRAPH STYLE from the display menu, brings up an option box with the choices left margin, right margin, paragraph alignment, and first line alignment. To change one of the options, use the up and down arrow keys to position the cursor in 12 the desired option. The bottom line of the screen should indicate what to do next depending upon what type of option it is. When you have correctly specified one of the options, you can press RET to enter that new option and leave the option box or you/ŒΟ€OƒˆO€ώ‰Ο‰€ΟŽ„€O€O€ppΟΟΟΟΟ„ώ€ƒˆΟ€‚ΐΟΟ’Ο‚O€OƒˆO€Ο€Ο‰€ΟŽ„€O€ppΟΟΟΟρ€O€ˆO€OŽ€ƒˆΟ€‚ΑρƒˆO€‚Ο‚O€€όŽˆ πpΟΟΟΟΟ€ΟŒˆO€‰Žˆ ώ‰Ο„ώ‰ΟŽO€€O€Ο‚‰‚ ˆO‚OƒŽˆppΟΟΟΟόŽˆ ρƒŽΟ‚ˆ—*424Ί2Ά4Ή0Ά92°²<1΄0·3²²892ΉΉ΄·3†…"©‘;΄Ά69Ί4Ά662°»2:40Ί4Ί2Ά1΄0·3²²ΰx8gηηηηψ8gηηηηΙgme of an outline that already exists, then it will be loaded rather than creating a new one with the same name. LOAD AN EXISTING OUTLINE ------------------------ Choose one of the existing outlines to load by pointing to it with the arrows and pressing RET. If no outlines exist in the current directory, then PC-OUTLINE will assume that you must want to create a new outline and will prompt you accordingly. If you realize that you are logged into the wrong directory or you change your mind for some other reason, you can always press ESC to back up a step. CHANGE DRIVE/DIRECTORY ---------------------- Enter the new current directory. This command obeys most of the same rules as dos. If you enter a full path name, then that becomes your new current directory. If you enter just a sub-directory name, then that is appended onto the existing directory path. To just change logged drives, just type "d:" where d is the desired drive. QUIT ---- Choose this option to exit PC-OUTLINE and return to dos. OTHER COMMAND PARAMETER STARTUP OPTIONS --------------------------------------- A command parameter option is a sequence of special characters typed after the program name when starting a program from dos. In the sections above we already introduced the command parameters "/r" and "/q". There are a number of other command parameters: /b - forces the display to black and white /s - makes screen activity faster on most non-IBM screens /m = xxx specifies how much memory to reserve for outline data in the memory resident version. For example /m=22 would reserve 22k for outline data. Since the program itself will occupy about 60k, this would be a 9 grand total of 82k. The default is /m=64. /d - causes PC-OUTLINE to ignore the starting directory that you may have entered in the ADVANCED CONFIGURATION menu and instead use the current directory when PC-OUTLINE was started. This is useful if you keep most of your outlines in one directory (so you set the starting directory), but sometimes you want to start out with the current directory. 10 THE WORKING SCREEN ------------------ There are a number of parts to the normal working screen. The bottom line usually contains a message indicating some of your current options. The end of the bottom row tells you how much free memory you have. The 2nd line from the bottom show the current ruler with left and right margins, tab stops and the current cursor position. The next to last column is a status column that tells you information about the current line. A blank means this line ends in wordwrap. A period means this line is past the end of the outline. A dash means this line is the last line in an outline entry and there are no sub-entries. A down arrow means this line is the last line in an outline entry and there are sub-entries. A chevron means that this line ends in a hard carriage return. Reverse video means that this outline entry has either its children or its text hidden. The second column is a page break indication column. The last line of each page will show a square block. The second row is a status line that lists the following: - The current path/filename (only the last 20 characters are show here). The full filename can always be seen with the WINDOW LIST command. - The amount of memory the outline occupies so far in K-bytes. - The status of Insert/Overwrite for editing. - Page, line, and column information. - The current system time. - The window number. The top line shows the top level menu options. HOW TO USE THE MENUS -------------------- The menu system is designed to be both easy to learn for the novice and quick to use for the experienced user. Because of this, there are several ways to invoke and use the menus - each method varies in speed and ease of use. 11 THE EASY WAY The easiest way to use the menus is to press the INS key. This will start up the FILE menu. To choose one of the other menus, use the right and left arrow keys to position the menu along the menu bar. Within any one of the menus you may make a selection by either pointing to the desired option and pressing RET or by pressing the first letter of the desired option. Pressing the ESC key will always exit the current menu. THE QUICK WAY #1 To start directly in one of the menus, press the "/" key (forward slash) and then the first letter of the desired menu. Thus, to go immediately to the DISPLAY menu you would type /d or immediately to the OUTLINE menu would be /o. In order to actually use the / key in your text, just type it twice. Note that this key can be changed to whatever you like using the setup program called KEYSET.COM. THE QUICK WAY #2 An alternate way to start directly in one of the menus is to press Alt and the first letter of the desired menu. For example Alt-d would start the DISPLAY menu and Alt-o would start the OUTLINE menu. SHORTCUT KEYSTROKES In addition to choosing items through menus, many of the more common functions have single key shortcuts. If a menu item can also be accomplished with a shortcut keystroke, then that keystroke will be listed in parentheses in the menu. For example, in the OUTLINE menu, the option CREATE NEW OUTLINE ENTRY can also be done by just typing a control-N. In addition to the pre-defined shortcut keystrokes, you can create your own by using keyboard macros. See the section on macros in the description of the ADVANCED menu for more information. HOW TO USE OPTION BOXES ----------------------- Some menu selections will lead you to an option box where you will be presented with a number of different options that typing any character (including a right arrow) in an entry automatically shows the multiple lines. 16 Before hiding the text of B. A. --- B. --- --- --- ---- ---- ------- ---- ---- - ----- --- ---- ---- --- --- ---- --- --- --- -- --- --- --- -- -- - - - -- - ---- ----- --- - - - --- ----- 1. --- 2. --- 3. --- C. --- After hiding the text of B. A. --- B. --- --- --- ---- ---- ------- ---- ---- - ----- --- 1. --- 2. --- 3. --- C. --- HELP SCREEN ----------- While in the main editing mode (not in any menus), pressing the F1 key will bring up a help screen that will list many of the keystrokes for outline editing. 17 QUICK KEY REFERENCE ------------------- ^A - Find String Again ^B - Move Block ^C - Copy Block ^D - Delete Outline Family ^E - Delete Block ^F - Find String ^G - Insert/Overwrite Toggle ^H - Hide Children ^I - Indent Paragraph ^J - Join Outline Elements ^K - Key Define ^L - Hide Level Children ^M - Move Outline Elements ^N - New Outline Element ^O - Indent and Hang ^P - Print ^Q - Copy Family ^R - Find and Replace ^S - Save Outline ^T - Paragraph Style ^U - Divide Outline Element ^V - Center a paragraph ^W - Move Family ^X - Unindent a paragraph ^Y - Delete Line ^Z - List Windows F1 - Help Screen F2 - Mark/Unmark F3 - User Defined with macros F4 - User Defined with macros F5 - Promote current entry F6 - Indent current entry F7 - Promote marks F8 - Indent marks F9 - Copy marks to current location F10- Move marks to current location ^F1 - Begin Underline ^F2 - End Underline ^F3 - Begin Boldface ^F4 - End Boldface ^F5 - Begin Italics ^F6 - End Italics ^F7 - Superscript ^F8 - Subscript ^F9 - End Both Scripts ^F10- Insert Non-Break Space 18 Alt F1 - Toggle Code Display Alt F2 - Clear all marks Alt F3 - Alt F4 - Alt F5 - Alt F6 - Alt F7 - Alt F8 - Alt F9 - Copy all marks to be children of the current entry Alt F10- Move all marks to be children of the current entry Shift F1 - Insert Static Date Shift F2 - Insert Live Date Shift F3 - Insert Static Time Shift F4 - Insert Live Time Shift F5 - Begin Doublestrike Shift F6 - End Doublestrike Shift F7 - Shift F8 - Shift F9 - Shift F10- Shift Right - Word right Shift Left - Word left Shift Up - Up one outline entry on same level Shift Down - Down one outline entry on same level Shift Home - Top File Shift End - End File Shift PgUp - Paragraph Up Shift PgDn - Paragraph Down Shift DEL - Delete too end of line Shift INS - Ins/Overwrite toggle ^Right - Delete word right ^Left - Delete word left ^Home - Top File ^End - End File ^PgUp - Jump to parent ^PgDn - Text hide toggle Gray Plus - Children Hide/Unhide Toggle Gray Minus - Zoom Alt 1-9 - Switch directly to Window # 19 ABOUT PRINTERS -------------- PC-OUTLINE uses a printer driver in order to have the capability of supporting a number of different printers. Each printer driver is a special file format containing the printer codes for the desired printer for the print features that PC-OUTLINE uses. The disk that PC-OUTLINE comes on has as many printer drivers as we currently have available. To find out if your printer is supported, run the program on the disk called PCPRINT.COM by typing PCPRINT to the dos prompt. If your printer is not specified in the list, then you have two choices: 1) You may choose to not use any special print features. Normal printing will most likely work even if your printer is not specifically supported. 2) You may create your own printer driver by entering the codes yourself in the PRINT CONFIGURATION menu in PC-OUTLINE and saving them to a new printer driver file. Note you should change the printer driver name also to avoid conflicts with the already existing drivers. USING PC-OUTLINE ON A HARD DISK ------------------------------- It is possible to set up PC-OUTLINE so that you can start it from anywhere on your hard disk by just typing a simple three letter name. You will never again need to worry about which directory you are in when you want to run PC-OUTLINE. Dos will automatically find the program, run it, and PC-OUTLINE will set the starting directory as desired. To accomplish this, follow these steps: 1) Set up a directory on your hard disk where you wish to keep your PC-OUTLINE files. For purposes of explanation, I will refer to a directory called C:\OUTLINE (you can use any name you want). 2) Copy the files PCO.EXE, PCO.CFG, and the appropriate printer driver to the C:\OUTLINE directory. 3) Add the following command to your autoexec.bat file: SET PCO=C:\OUTLINE\PCO.CFG. 4) Set a path to the outline directory (preferably in your autoexec.bat file so it is always set). For example, use the command "PATH C:\OUTLINE". 5) Now, from anywhere on your hard disk, you can type PCO. The DOS path will find the batch file PCO.EXE 20 and run it. PC-OUTLINE will look in the dos environment (where the SET PCO= command is stored) and find out where to look for the configuration file. The configuration file will tell PC-OUTLINE what directory to start off with for outline files (set in the CONFIGURATION option box in the ADVANCED menu. It sounds complicated, but once you have set it up, all you have to type is "PCO" and your path, the SET command, and the configuration file will do all the rest. 21 SITE LICENSES AND BUNDLING ARRANGEMENTS --------------------------------------- Corporate site licenses and bundling arrangements are available direct from SoftWorks Development. Site licenses can be used to distribute large quantities of PC-OUTLINE and its documentation within a specific organization at very reasonable prices (hundreds of dollars less per copy than competing products). All users under a site license can become registered users at no extra fee and are automatically notified of updates. Bundling arrangements can be used to distribute copies of PC-OUTLINE in order to promote some other product or service. Note that neither of these activities is permitted under the limited license granted to all users of PC-OUTLINE without the expressed written consent of SoftWorks Development. 22 REGISTRATION FORM ----------------- If you purchased PC-OUTLINE directly from SoftWorks Development in your own name, then your copy is already registered and you will recieve all the benefits of registration. You do not need to send in a registration form. If you received PC-OUTLINE some other way, you may register your copy by filling out the following form and mailing it to the listed address along with $54.95 (shipping and handling included). You will promptly receive a printed manual and the latest version of PC-OUTLINE. We will also place you on our update list so that you will automatically be notified of any PC-OUTLINE updates. In addition, you will be supporting software distributed under the shareware concept and will be contributing to the further development of PC-OUTLINE and other shareware products. Mail To: SOFTWORKS DEVELOPMENT Product Registration 750 Stierlin Road, Suite 142 Mountain View, CA 94043 NAME _________________________________________ COMPANY ______________________________________ ADDRESS ______________________________________ CITY/STATE ___________________________________ ZIP __________________ How did you first learn about PC-OUTLINE or where did you first obtain a copy of PC-OUTLINE? _________________________________________________ _________________________________________________ _________________________________________________ 23