PHone.Exe - Copyright (c) 1991 by W. H. Jaunsen. All rights reserved. This is a full featured product, lacking only my import facility, which is a separate program. If you like what you get, please send me $22 (cash or check), and I'll send you the latest version plus the importer (on either 3.5 or 5.25 inch disks). My Address: W. H. Jaunsen 120 Greenbriar Ln Oak Ridge, TN 37830 Notes: I really liked my old DOS dialer, but it was awkward to use under windows, and I couldn't find a windows product that was as good. So I wrote this one, and it solved my problems - with telephone calls, anyway. PHone will: dial internal, local, local long distance and long distance calls from a directory list. You can use it at home or at work, and all you need to do to change the definition of internal or local is two change the identifier. That is: there are fields which contains the dialing prefixes for each category of call. You have to add them once and only once, and not every time you enter a new phone number in that category. For instance, at work we need to dial "3" to get an outside line. At home, we don't need to dial anything. In PHone, one changes the "3" to a blank (in the outside line field), and they're in business. As another example, calls within my organization have only 5 digits, so if I'm home and want to call one of those numbers I have to append two additional numbers. Since they're always the same adding those digits to the internal field corrects all those numbers. PHone stores names in alphabetic order, in an ASCII file. When you are adding a new name and associated stuff, PHone will automatically capitalize the first letters of the name, street and city, as well as both characters for the state. It punctuates phone numbers, adding a dash before the final four digits and parenthesizing the first three of a long distance number. We hope that using PHone is easy (intuitively obvious is one of my favorite expressions). When I started I had intended to skip writing a user's guide entirely. But it usually makes us feel better to have a few words about a product, and I doubt many would stumble across the dialing definitions form (reached by double clicking on any blank portion of the dialer form) without a little help. Anyway, where else could I brag about it? How else could I get anyone to read a disclaimer? Installing PHone: PHone is a Visual Basic product that can only run under windows. It uses VBRUN100.DLL, which is available in Microsoft's Windows forums, and should be copied into your path (like inside your windows directory). PHone uses two ancillary files: "NUMBERS," which contains the ASCII list of names, telephone numbers and addresses, and "PHNPRMTR," which contains general parameters, such as the access codes and modem control codes. These files must be in the same directory in which PHone is. Small example files are included; you should use them to build your phone number and parameter list. Once the files are in their proper places, PHone can be installed like any other windows program: click on "File" under the program manager. This drops down a menu. Click on "New" to open the "New Program Object" dialog box, where you can select "Program Item." Clicking on "Okay" opens another box where you can add a description, such as "Phone" and the path to PHone, together with the program itself. (For Example, C:\WIN\TOOLS\PHONE.EXE). The little telephone icon should appear in whatever group you had active when you started; if you don't want it there you can drag the icon to another group. That's it. Double click on the icon and the program starts. Add it to your WIN.INI file with a "Load=dirpath\phone.exe" and it will be available when you start windows. Setup The first screen which pops up is always the dialer. In order to reach the setup screen (Dialing Definitions), you must double click with the cursor anywhere on the blank portion of the dialer form. The left hand side of "Dialing Definitions" is where you add your particular telephone configuration: what you have to dial to get an outside line, for example. Internal would usually be blank, unless like me, you want to use these numbers at home, where they need some sort of prefix. PHone can handle two types of long distance numbers; to use the LD2 prefix a number must have a trailing equal sign. That is, when you enter the number, enter an equal (=) sign after it ((987) 654 3210=). When you call, the LD2 prefix will be added to the beginning of the number and the entire string will be dialed. The modem controls used by PHone are at the bottom of the screen. The defaults, in "PHNPRMTR" and displayed when you activate the program, are for the Hayes modem. (Dial = "ATDT" Hangup = "ATH" Escape = "+++") If your phone uses pulse dialing, change "ATDT" to "ATDP" (this note is to get the period out of the quotation and hence avoid confusion). Communications parameters are in the lower right hand corner of the form. In all likelihood, all you need concern yourself with is the port to which your modem is connected and the baud rate of your modem. Baud is a drop down list box: click on the arrow and a list of choices will appear. Local prefixes: the list in the top middle of the form, are those prefixes which you can dial within your area code which are not long distance numbers. Got that? Your neighbor's phone number starts with one of the local prefixes. Your number has a local prefix. Probably every one in your community has a local prefix and likely most of the neighboring communities as well. Non local prefixes are those you have to dial a "1" to reach. Every time you enter a local number, PHone checks to see if the prefix is in its local set. If not, it asks if you want to add it to that set. You can also add local prefixes here, on the Dialing definitions form. Or you can use a text editor directly on the "PHNPRMTR" file. Local prefixes are stored in the order in which they are entered. Using PHone: If the number is on your list, highlight it with a click and click again on the appropriate dial button. If your phone list fills the box, you can scroll to it by moving the cursor to the scroll arrows and holding down the click (left) button on your mouse. You can jump to the first name beginning with a particular letter by hitting that letter on your keyboard. When the phone starts ringing, pick it up and click on the "Switch to Phone" button. If the number is busy or you change your mind, click on "Hang Up." Then talk, sing, or whatever suits your fancy. PHone is ready for the next call. You can exit the program by hitting the quit button or iconize the program by hitting the triangle in the upper right hand corner of the form. New names and numbers are added through the "Add" button; existing ones can be reviewed or edited through the "Address" button, or deleted with the "Delete" button. Clicking on the "Add" or "Address" buttons brings up the "Individual Data Form." Just type in the information you want to keep about each individual or organization. The tab key moves the cursor from field to field, or you can skip directly to a particular field by clicking on it. Note that the first characters of each word in names and addresses are capitalized, and that phone numbers are punctuated, by adding a dash and parenthesizing the area code should there be one. Data are stored alphabetically by name in the "Numbers" file. There are no limits to field sizes other than the sizes of the viewing areas. Each "name" must have at least one phone number associated with it (Phone 1). The other fields may be left blank. Existing records may be edited by moving the cursor to the fields to be changed and typing in the new information. Importing We have an import program which can take either fixed length records or variable length ASCII files (comma or something delimited) and produces a data file in "Numbers" file format. Since many data base systems store parametric information at the front of a file, the fixed length converter skips an arbitrary number of bytes at the front of the source file. ImPort asks the user the name and kind of file to be translated. For fixed length files, the user then must note the length of each field, including any header and excluding any special characters (which are stripped). For variable length ASCII fields, the user need only note field and file separators (and change the defaults if they are not a comma and carriage return). Since it can be hard to establish the exact number of characters in each field, especially the header, ImPort has a trial and error capability: guess, see the results, then modify the guess. The user can cycle through guesses as many times as necessary. Once the fields have been correctly read into ImPort's arrays, the user then must map each field to its appropriate destination in "Numbers" format. For instance, if the name was stored in fields 4, 5 and 6, one would enter 6, 4 and 5 in the name boxes. (This example assumes import as first name, middle name and last name, in different fields. Mapped to last name, first name, middle name - in the same field. A properly formatted ASCII file is produced.) Again users are given an opportunity to view their results before they create the "Numbers" file. Warranty: For breech of any implied warranty on this product, liability is limited to the replacement of the defective diskette sent to registered users. Neither myself, nor anyone involved in the creation, production or delivery of PHone shall be liable for any direct, indirect, consequential or incidental damages arising out of the use, the results of use, or the inability to use this product.