Cream of the Crop II
distributed by:
Terry Blount
Voice - 205-824-2552
BBS - 205-824-2611
Fidonet - 1:3625/441
P.O. Box 36,
Bayou La Batre
Alabama, 36509
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IMPORTANT NOTICE
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"Shareware" is a concept where you have an opportunity to try a software
program before you buy it. Shareware is comparable to commercial
software in quality, but not usually in price. Shareware is normally
much less expensive because the author has not spent the many thousands,
even millions, of dollars on advertising that commercial software
companies do. Thus, the overhead is much less and your cost reflects
this. If you use a shareware program for a reasonable period of time you
are required to register it. Please honor the author's registration fee
and register the programs you use. Many shareware programs on this cd
required hundred's of hours to develop. Many of the programs you will be
using were written by authors who fully depend on the support of honest
users to continue making software affordable. Your registration does
count! ...not only to the author and his/her family, but also when you
register there are usually many benefits that become available to you.
Thank you for purchasing Cream of the Crop II.
There are two major differences between this disc and the first Cream of
the Crop. This cd was made with a strong effort to include ONLY new
files. Only a few files older than April 93 were included on this disc.
The dates of files inside the archives were checked and if there were
any files older than January 1, 1993 the entire archive was deleted.
There were a few exceptions because some programs still use the original
setup program from an earlier release and some stand alone data bases
need Brun45 to run.
The second major change and probably the change you will notice first is
the use of extended file descriptions. Everyone likes more information
about the files but the programming challenges and memory requirements
to include more information and maintain reasonable speed are
significant. The view and retrieval program "Cream.exe" has undergone
major upgrades and a dozen or so new features have been added.
CREAM.exe
This is a view and retrieval program that will assist you in viewing
and retrieving the files on this disk, along with their size, date, and
description. To run this program, simply type "Cream" and press enter.
There is no setup required. Cream.exe is in the directory with this file
you are reading now. You can exit Cream.exe at any time by pressing your
escape key. Cream.exe is NOT for use for any purpose outside this cd.
Please do not place it on a BBS.
Features and notes on Cream.exe:
a. This version is mouse aware. Most commands and features can be used
with a mouse. You can make selections from any menu and when you are
viewing a file listing you can place the cursor on the left scroll bar
and click once to jump to that position in the listing.
b. You can mark up to 13 files to copy or uncompress at once from a
single area to a specific target directory on your hard drive. You can
mark the files with the space bar or + key or click your mouse twice.
When you press enter you will be prompted to type the target directory
to copy or uncompress the tagged files.
c. When you are viewing an area you can press the first letter of the
name of the files you want to view and jump to that position in the
listing immediately. This feature also works as a file search utility.
After you press the first letter the next letter you press will go to
the second character of the file name... etc. If there is no match or
you press your tab key you will clear the buffer and begin a new search.
d. If you press enter when there are no files tagged you will have
additional options available. One of these options is a key word search
in the file description field. This function is intuitive. Just enter
the word(s) you want to locate in the descriptions and each line with
the occurrence of the word will be marked with an asterisk (*) in column
#23. You may repeat this process several time or clear your markers and
start over. This search is not case sensitive.
e. While you are viewing the opening index of the file categories you
will have the option to load the entire listing and browse an
alphabetized listing of all files or search for a specific file name.
This feature will also load as much of the file description as the
memory available on your system will allow. Because this option
loads the entire listing of every file on the cd and a large
portion of the description into memory this option may take a few
moments on slower rom drives. However, when the list is loaded
the search features are almost instant. While the list is being
loaded you can see the progress each time 100 more files listings
are loaded into memory.
Notes on File Compression
The programs on this cd are compressed with Pkzip from Pkware Inc. If
you use Pkware for any purpose other than the one provided to extract
files from this cd from within Cream.exe you are required to register
your own copy.
The programs on this and other shareware cd discs are compressed in
order to save space and keep all the necessary support files together
with the program that needs them to run. Compression also makes it
possible to include the same amount of data that would require 3 or 4
cds in an uncompressed format.
Many authors do not allow their programs to be distributed under the
shareware concept if they are not compressed - without the distributor
paying a fee for each disc distributed. This is because they know that
it is unlikely they will ever receive any registration from programs
that are distributed in a format that is already set up and ready to
run. Please support the shareware concept and register the programs that
you use.
An Extra Feature!
The files on this cd include the description inside the ZIP comment. You
can simply run Pkunzip -v <filename> to read the description of any file.
A Word of Caution
All risks involved with using the programs on this cd are assumed by you
alone. Some programs on this cd, especially those that manipulate the
data on your hard drive, (ie. optimizers and low level disk management)
can potentially cause loss of data. Be careful! Reading the docs and
taking serious the warnings is the only reasonable thing to do.
The following groups of files were not included on this disc:
Commercial programs that are not released under the shareware concept,
files that were older than April 93, sexually explicit (adult) programs
and text, newsletters (except for a few that contained programming
code), magazines, pictures (gifs, fli, animation, fracturals, graphics,
clipart, fonts, images, cartoons, ext), music (Cmf, Mid, Mod, Mus, Rol,
Voc, Wav, etc.), bbs door games, windows games, windows icons, Macintosh
& Unix operating system support programs, demos, ham radio,
BBS Support Programs
If you run a Maximus, Proboard, Remote Access, Quick BBS, PcBoard, or
Spitfire BBS one of the following programs will automatically set up
this disk for your bbs file database structure in only a few minutes.
ALL of these programs will AUTOMATICALLY copy (and correctly format) the
Files.bbs from this cd to suit the structure of your bbs and increment
the file names, placing the "Files.<x>" ( or File<XX>.bbs in some cases)
into the directory you specify. Please backup your file data base before
you run any of these programs. For an extra precaution, you can copy
your file databases to a temporary directory and use your temporary
directory to set up this disk. If the setup is satisfactory when you
view it with your BBS management program (or text editor) then you can
copy it to your BBS home directory. These programs are NOT to be used
outside the scope of this cd rom disk. Please do not place them for
download on a bbs.
MX_Cream.exe
This is the program to set up Maximus BBS. Actually it builds your
"Filearea.ctl" control file then you can run FB to compile the changes.
It is important that your Filearea.ctl be correctly formatted so that
the last area can be located to provide accurate file naming when the
Files.bbs are reformatted and copied to your fixed media path. "Area
<X>" MUST begin on column #1 at least for the last record in your
Filearea.ctl control file. Sorry only numeric incrimination is
supported. (ie. The format: Area A, Area B, Area C, etc is NOT
supported.) This program has several added options that will be obvious
to you when you run it. You may want to read the section of your docs
that explains the advantages and disadvantages of including the file
size and date column before you execute this program and have to make
that decision.
SF_Cream.exe
This is the program to set up Spitfire BBS. You will need to know the
path to your Sffarea.dat file and your display directory where
"Sffiles.<x>" will be placed, before you run this program. The extended
descriptions will be automatically formatted with the #2 control
character for Spitfire when the Sffiles.<x> are being created in your
display directory.
QB_Cream.exe
This is the program to set up Quick BBS. You will need to know the path
to your Filecfg.dat and your "File list" path directory before you run
this program. When you use this program you will be given an option to
override the default and select a different record number to begin
setting up this disc. This option is dangerous if you do not understand
its purpose. If you have a empty record in your file data base (the
area name description field is keyed on to determine an empty record)
QB_Cream will will find it first and assume that it has reached the end
of your file settings. This record number will be the default setting
used to begin setting up this cd. You should know the record number that
is your highest file area setting to verify (and correct if necessary)
the default setting. This option to use your own default setting to
begin the setup of this cd is also useful if you wish to _insert_ this
cd in place of one you are removing. The cd you are removing _MUST_
have used at least 27 file areas in order that sufficient space be
available to insert the 27 file areas on this disc without overwriting
the next cd's file directory records. If all this is unclear to you it
would be a good idea to call 205-824-2552 for support.
RA_Cream.exe
This is the program to set up Remote Access version 2.0 or later. You
will need to know the path to your Files.ra and your "Alternative file
list path for read-only media" path before you run this program. When
you use this program you will be given an option to override the default
and select a different record number to begin setting up this disc. This
option is dangerous if you do not understand its purpose. If you have a
empty record in your file data base (the area name description field is
keyed on to determine an empty record) RA_Cream will will find it first
and assume that it has reached the end of your file settings. This
record number will be the default setting used to begin setting up this
cd. You should know the record number that is your highest file area
setting to verify (and correct if necessary) the default setting. This
option to use your own default setting to begin the setup of this cd is
also useful if you wish to _insert_ this cd in place of one you are
removing. The cd you are removing _MUST_ have used at least 27 file
areas in order that sufficient space be available to insert the 27 file
areas on this disc without overwriting the next cd's file directory
records. If all this is unclear to you it would be a good idea to call
205-824-2552 for support.
PC_Cream.exe
This is a simple program to _assist_ the setup of Pcboard BBS. PC_Cream
will copy the Files.bbs file listings to the directory of your choice on
your hard drive * AND * increment the file listing names, ie. Dir1,
Dir2, Dir3 etc. The extended description portion of the file
descriptions will be correctly formatted for Pcboard format. The listing
of the file area descriptions is included (under the name DIR) in this
directory.
PB_Cream.exe
This is the program to set up a Proboard BBS. You will need to know the
path to your FileCfg.pro and the path to your "listing file" directory.
Since Proboard (and the structure for FileCfg.pro) is written C and this
program is written in Pascal it is not easy to determine how many file
areas you currently have setup. If you are currently incrementing your
file listings in the File<x>.bbs naming format you should set up a
separate directory for this program to place the file listings for Cream
of the Crop II. The file listings will be named File1.bbs, File2.bbs,
File3.bbs etc. and the corresponding path and names of these files will
be written to your FileCfg.pro. Remember to run "Pbutil FI" when you
finish to reindex your file base.
Notes on File Category Classifications:
Files were cataloged under the following 27 categories:
BATCH C_LANG KEYBOARD SCIENCE
BBS DATABASE LAN SCREEN
BUSINESS DIAG OS2 SOUND
CAD DISK PASCAL UTILITY
CLIPPER EDITOR PRINTER VIRUS
COMM EDUCATE PROGRAM WINDOWS
COMPRESS GAMES RELIGION
For the most part these directory names explain the kinds of files that
would be cataloged in them. Here are a few additional notes about some
of the areas:
BBS - ONLY a few utilities that are specific for a single bbs
program were included. Programs that support network mail
transfer and programs that manage cd rom drives were included.
BUSINESS - Spread sheets, Lotus, Quattro support programs, tax
calculation, payroll... anything dealing with money.
DATABASE - Genealogy, zipcode, phone numbers, and other databases, Dbase
III & IV and Foxpro support, collector's databases, etc.
DISK - Menu programs for disk management, including tape backup.
EDITOR - Text editors, support for WordPerfect, spelling, tips and
templates.
EDUCATE - Educational programs including some text information files.
KEYBOARD - Keyboard, mouse and other input device support programs.
LAN - Every thing dealing with networking. Novel, Lantastic etc.
SCIENCE - Science, math, measurement conversion, and engineering.
UTILITY - DOS replacement utilities and security encryption programs.
For Shareware Authors
If you are a programmer who would like to have your programs included on
future releases of Cream of the Crop you can mail them to the address
below on a floppy disk or upload them to the bbs number listed at the
beginning of this doc. This will insure that the latest versions of
your unmodified programs are distributed.
Final Notes
The files on this cd have been scanned for known viruses. All possible
efforts were made to prevent commercial software from accidentally
getting included on this disc. If you detect a virus or a program that
is not released under the shareware concept, please report your finding
to Terry Blount at 205-824-255 or P.O. Box 36, Bayou La Batre, Al. 36509
Thank You.