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This program allows one to peruse the DECW$BOOKSHELF file tree and to
build a list of DECW$BOOK files to be copied. There is also a .COM file
to do the copying.
I should add a disclaimer that I wrote this code to get the job done, I
make no claims that it's anything more than sufficient for the purpose
and in particular if I were selling it I'd do several iterations on the
interface (exactly which keystrokes are best, what to display on the screen).
I leave this as an exercise for the recipient!
This software is supplied subject to the terms of the GNU General Public License
Version 2. See the file COPYING.TXT for details.
Building the program
--------------------
Execute the build procedure @BUILD from the directory with all the files in.
It's written in (VAX) C.
Using the program
-----------------
The present structure of the DEC CD doc set is that ALL the DECW$BOOKSHELF
files are on disc 1 (and duplicated on the other two disks, but that's
irrelevant). If they ever stop doing this you'll have to start by copying
all the shelf files off each CD into a common directory before you start.
At present, all you have to do is mount CD #1 on (say) CDROM: and then
$ ASSIGN CDROM:[DECW$BOOK] SOURCE:
$ RUN BOOKMAN
from a VT-something terminal or window. The commands are
cursor up/down select previous/next line. Selected line in reverse video.
CR or ENTER display the selected shelf (ie down a level)
Control/Z up a level; up from top level exits the program
KP. Mark selected file or shelf for copying. Shelf selection is
recursive. Selected files are marked with an asterisk.
KP0 Un-mark selected file or shelf (also recursive)
There is code in the program to display the sizes of files. It is commented
out because unless you have a very big scratch disk or as many CD-ROM drives
as disks, you can't make all the book files accessible while you run this
program. It also slowed the program down quite a bit, because seek on an RRD40
is so lousy.
When you exit it writes a file called BOOKLIST.DAT. This is a text file and
is fairly self-explanatory, you can edit it if you want, concatenate it
with other similar files, etc. (Duplicate lines don't matter). It is input to
the command procedure GETBOOKS.COM which you execute once for each CD in the
doc set. It copies all files in BOOKLIST.DAT to a directory TARGET: (logical
name). It doesn't copy if there is already an identical file in TARGET:
which is why duplicates in BOOKLIST.DAT don't matter.
Wish-list
---------
Handle updates. Re-loading the symbol table from the last run is quite
easy. However, there's a lot of other things to think about and the last
time I updated VMS I found it was fairly trivial just to start over. You
can easily add new selections at present; it's evicting obsolete manuals that's
not so trivial.
Better user interface?
Nigel Arnot
Dept. Physics, Kings College, London WC2R 2LS, UK.
NRA@UK.AC.KCL.PH.IPG (big-endian)
27-AUG-1993
Click on FTP to download from the FTP archives.