旼컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴커 � This is the help file for use by Six Of The Best. It should not be � � added to or edited by the end user, as doing so may prevent Six Of The � � Best from finding the appropriate help reference point in this file. � 읕컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴켸 <> About Six Of The Best If you are reading this as a result of pressing F1 from the 'About Six Of The Best' screen, then selecting 'More Information' from that screen will let you browse the READ.ME file. If you came here from any other point in the help system. Quit help, then select 'About Six Of The Best' from the main menu. This will give you access to the READ.ME file browser. <> Base Menu Screen ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Navigating your way through the menus and options can be done in a number of ways: The first, and probably the easiest, is to use a mouse. You will probably be familiar with how a mouse works as a result of your experience with other software, but in case you are unsure; move the mouse pointer over any of the menu options or screen buttons, and 'click' the left mouse button to activate. Another method is to move the highlighted option, using the up, down, left and right cursor keys. When the required option has been highlighted, pressing the Enter key will action that option. Finally, many of the screen buttons have a 'hot-key' show in a contracting colour. If you press and hold the Alt key and then one of the hot-keys, the option associated with that hot-key will be actioned. To back-out of a part of the program, you will usually see an exit or quit screen button, but where there is no such button, pressing the Esc key will have the desired effect. ====================== Help is presented in sections, with the section appropriate to where help was called from being retrieved and presented on screen. A section may contain only one screen of information, in which case many of the options will be dimmed out (not made available). When there is more than one page (roughly 20 lines), you will be able to move through the section with the 'Next' and 'Previous' options. 'First' and 'Last' will also be operational. Within a section, there may be topic headings. These are reached simply by reading through the pages, or selection the 'Topics' option to see a table of topics available in this section. Selecting a topic of interest, allows you to jump to the part of the section containing the required topic, or print out the topic if you prefer. Word search may be helpful when a large section is encountered. Remember however that the search operates on this section (including all topics in the section). To perform a search, select the 'Word Search' option and press enter, or click on this option with the mouse. You will then be asked to enter a word or string of words to use as the search string. One you have entered something, all three options become operational. You would normally make use of the 'Top Of Section' option, but if more than one matching entry is found, the 'Current Position' becomes a useful option, as this will scan from the current page, so finding the next match. Finally we come to the 'Sections' option. When you press the F1 key from within Six Of The Best, a section title is passed to the help system, so as to hive you context-sensitive help. If you select the 'Sections' option, you will be presented with a table of all the section titles in the system. You can move the highlight to any title that interests you and by confirming your choice with the 'Select' option, have the help system change to your choice. By making use of this facility, you can access help on sections you might otherwise miss, and some of the sections might in fact only be accessed by this approach. If you do choose to change to a different section, all the help facilities will work in the new section. Once you leave the help system, Six Of The Best will carry on from where you left off. ================ The first three of these options, start off by asking you for the player's initials, the number of boards to play, and the number of weeks you would like enter. By entering the player's initials, you will be able to track entries and winnings against each player. This is a useful feature if you are managing a number of syndicates. Create New Entry ---------------- This option provides you with a method of generating entry number sets based on a random selection process. You have control of the precise moment when each number is picked, so you can influence the selection process to some degree. After the six numbers have been assembled, you can sort them in ascending order if you wish, abandon this set and go for a new selection of numbers, or accept the set and go on to see the representation of a board as it is filled in with the number set. If you have chosen to play more than one board, you will then be returned to the new entry screen for the next set of numbers to be assembled. This repeats until all the boards you have chosen to play have been filled in. Only then is the entry saved. Manual New Entry ---------------- If you already have a set of numbers you would like to enter in preference to having Six Of The Best generate a random set, you can enter them using this option. If you intend to play more than one board, the number entry process will repeat until all the boards you intend to play are complete. Only then will your entry be saved. Re-Use An Entry --------------- If you have a favourite set of numbers that you have already played, this option allows you to view all earlier entries to pick up those you would like to play again. After you have picked a board or number of boards, a new entry will be completed using your indicated selection. View Entries ------------ Is is often helpful to view earlier entries, and this option lets you do that. The entries are listed in tabular form, and you will also be able to see any winning entries. ================== Draw Results Entry ------------------ As soon as the results of the draw are known, you should enter the winning combination into Six Of The Best using this option. Once Six Of The Best knows the results, it will be able to find any winning entries for you. When you select this option, you will be presented with a table of results. It will initially be empty, but as the weeks go by, the table will build up. You can add, change or delete any entry in the results table. You will probably only want to use change and delete to correct mistakes you may have made during entry. Find Winners ------------ If you are running a syndicate or have many entries, this option will be a real boon. It picks up the most recent winning combination and scans all entries for any combination of matches that are winning entries. ======= New Draw Entries ---------------- This will report on all entries made for the coming draw. Earlier Entries --------------- This report lists entries for previous draws. It will report on any winning lines it finds, provided you have already entered the results for that week's draw. ========= Wipe Out Entries ---------------- This presents you with a table of entries, and a means of filtering out any that are not of interest. This is done by entering either a players initials and a date range, or just a date range. From here you can select to delete all the listed entries. Being able to delete entries is useful in the event of someone failing to register his or her entry in time for the draw. Under these circumstances, there is no point in leaving the entry in Six Of The Best. You might also find this option useful while trying out Six Of The Best, with trial entries you do not eventually decide to play. Password Control ---------------- The program can be password protected. By default, no password is used, so the program just starts up without prompting for a password. If you wish to apply a degree of security, make use of this option. You can have up to five separate passwords, although one is usually sufficient. Once one or more passwords have been established, Six Of The Best will prompt for the password each time it starts up. If you do establish a password, don't forget it! Default Settings ---------------- A few defaults, mostly concerned with printed reports, can be set using this option. About Six Of The Best --------------------- This option displays some information about how often the program has been used, as well as providing you with an option to read an in-depth description of the program and its objectives. You would use this option if you wanted details of who wrote Six Of The Best, or how to obtain updates and notification of changes. Quit Program ------------ This is the way out of Six Of The Best. <> Draw Entry Form This form lists the selection to be entered at the top, along with details of the player, number of boards being played, the number of weeks to play and the commencing week's date. Below this comes the columns of numbers as they appear on an entry form. Your selection should be highlighted. You will also see the board letter displayed at the top of the block. After your number selection has been highlighted, the 'Save' button will be selected, ready for you to confirm. If you select 'Quit' you will be taken back to the starting screen and the current entry will be abandoned. If you confirm your desire to save, and you are playing more than one board, you will be returned to the preceding procedure, to pick another set for the next board. This will be repeated until all the boards to said you wanted to play have been completed, then the entry will be saved, and you will be returned to the opening screen menu. <> Random Selection Creation Process When you first enter this process, you will see a 7 by 7 grid on the left of the screen, a line of six empty boxes at the bottom, and a number of options in the frame on the right. The options frame should announce that you are playing board A, and the 'Fill Grid' option should be highlighted. The only other option active at the outset is the 'Quit' option. If you press enter or click on 'Fill Grid', you will see the grid fill with numbers from 1 to 49. Once the grid is full, the 'Randomise' option in the frame on the right will be selected, ready for you to start the process off. Pressing enter or clicking the mouse will cause the numbers in the grid to bounce around in a random manner. This will continue for a few seconds to ensure the numbers are really scrambled, and then a prompt will appear to indicate you can press the enter key or the space bar to freeze the grid and allow a number at a randomly selected grid position to fall down to take its place in the first box at the bottom of the screen. As soon as the first number has been selected, the numbers in the grid all move up to fill the hole left by the chosen number, then they again commence to bounce around. You are again invited to press enter to freeze the grid long enough to allow a number to fall through. This repeats until six numbers have been extracted at random from the grid, and the entry set is complete. Once all six boxes have been filled, you are given the opportunity to sort the numbers into ascending order, so 'Sort Selection' is selected ready for you to press enter to action the sort. Once sorted, you have a choice of accepting the selection (which you would normally wish to do), 'Do Again' to start with a fresh grid and get a new set of six numbers, or 'Quit' to return directly to the opening menu. Assuming you accept the selection offered, you will be taken on to a board entry form, where your selection will drop into place on the board. <> System Default Settings ============================= If you have access to the manual that came with your printer, you should be able to find the control strings needed to perform printing control. These most often include, the font, left margin, letter quality or draft mode, and many others. If you leave this field empty, the normal power-up defaults of your printer will be used. Entering any of the appropriate codes in this field will alter the respective default setting of your printer (the codes are sent as the first line of the report). If you do make use of this facility, check carefully the codes you enter. Six Of The Best cannot check to make sure the codes you enter are valid printer control codes, so it's up to you to make sure that what you enter is valid. ====================== Many printers can make use of the IBM block graphics characters defined in the upper ASCII range (127-255). If your printer can handle these, tagging the 'Supports Block Graphics' box will cause Six Of The Best to make use of these extended characters, so a more attractive report results. If your printer fails to print the lines that should enclose sections in the reports (possibly producing italics characters or foreign accented characters in place of the line characters), you should look in your printer manual to see if a code string exists to change to the PC8 character set. If so, you might like to enter this string in the initialisation string field. If not, un-tag the 'Supports Block Graphics' box and reports will avoid using any extended characters. Even if your printer can support block graphics, if it is a dot-matrix type, you will probably find that printing block graphics is much slower than printing reports that do not make use of block graphics. You might therefore un-tag this box to produce reports more quickly. =============== You may need to experiment with the Lines Per Page setting, in order to get a hard-copy that nicely matches your paper length. The Top Margin setting is less important on dot-matrix printers, as you can manually position the paper before starting to print. On laser printer however, being able to define the space to allow at the top of the page can make the reports look much better. <> Entry Preliminary Information Screen Start off by entering the player's initials. You have to enter something here so the system can correctly file away entries. If only one person wishes to play more than just one set of boards for a given period, we recommend you use something like 'AD1', representing 'Andy Davis 1', then AD2, AD3 etc. You have a maximum of four digits you can use in any way you like, although try and follow some common rule. It will be easier when returning to earlier entries if the initials mean something to you. Boards to play will set how many sets of numbers Six Of The Best is going to collect before considering the entry complete. At the time of designing this program, five boards is the limit per entry. If this ever changes, you should contact Original Software Concepts for either an upgrade or suggestions as to how to accommodate the changes. If you enter more than 1 in the 'weeks to play' field, Six Of The Best will duplicate your entry, starting from the date of the next draw, for as many weeks as you requested (within the limits established by the lottery operator). Each will be assigned a draw date, as appropriate. The 'Starting On Saturday' field will default to next Saturday's date (assuming the clock in your PC is set correctly). You can enter any future date, if you want log an entry you will be entering in a future draw. More often than not, you will be interested in picking up the date if the next draw, rather than setting future dates. You can enter earlier dates, if you want to put into Six Of The Best some entries you made before getting this wonderful program. You would of course be using the 'Manual New Entry' option from the main menu to get these entries into the system. After you are happy with the information you have entered, you need to confirm this to be taken on to the next stage. Cancelling will take you back to the main menu. <> Viewing A Document The file viewer just allows you to move through a report that was sent to the screen. Any strange looking characters you see on the top line are most likely to be printer control codes, and can be ignored. You might also find that a line or two appears displaced to the right by a character or two. This is also do to the embedding of control codes, and cam be ignored. We thought about filtering these codes out, if you asked for a report to be sent to the screen, but decided not to filter them out, since it can be quite informative to have them in, in the case of control codes not performing as expected. <> This screen appears while the program has not been assigned to a user. It is only necessary to enter the user's name and then save the record. This records the install date and a few other starting parameters. Take a moment or two to ensure you enter a meaningful name, as it cannot be changed once the program starts to collect real data. <> Password Control Six Of The Best is supplied without any passwords. If you want to protect access to the program and the data, selecting this option from the main menu will reveal a small table, capable of holding up to five passwords. Enter anything you like as a password. They are not case sensitive since what you type is forced into capitals as you enter your passwords. If you do make one or more entries, make a not of them somewhere. Forgotten passwords could prevent you from getting back in again. More often than not, one password will be all you need, but the facility is there for more, should you need it. If you want to take off the password control, just edit out any entries in the password table. When an empty table is saved, Six Of The Best reverts to unrestricted program access. <> Password Entry Screen You only get this screen popping up if one or more passwords have been set. Access to the main menu will only be gained by entering a correct password. Any incorrect entry will result in the program terminating. As you enter the password, you will see an asterisk for each character you enter. If you know you have made a mistake, you delete back and then re-enter. The reason for not showing the characters you enter directly on the screen is to prevent any onlookers seeing and remembering your password. <> Manual Number Entry Form This screen provides you with six boxes into which you can directly enter the number set you wish to use. As you enter each number, it grows to fill the box, and then the next box in line becomes active. If you have made a mistake, you can re-enter any earlier box by selecting 'First', 'Second', 'Third' etc. 'Do Again' can be selected at any time to wipe out your entries and start you off again in the first box. You will not be permitted to accept the selection until you have entered six numbers, and if you duplicate a number, the duplicate will not be accepted. When all six boxes are completed, you may sort them into ascending order before going on to the next screen, if you wish, but it's not essential. 'Accept Selection' takes your entered numbers and completes the draw entry form. If you have chosen to play more than a single board, you will be returned to the manual entry form for the next set of numbers. If you inadvertently create two sets of numbers that are the same, the duplicate entry will be rejected and you will be asked to make another entry. <> Pick An Earlier Entry To Re-Use You will see a table of earlier entries in the left hand frame, with the top entry highlighted. The details of the highlighted entry are shown on the right. You will see the draw date, the player's initials and below this, the selection made for each of the boards. As you move the highlight down (assuming you have more than one earlier entry in the table), you will see the details on the right change to match those of the highlighted entry. When you find an entry you would like to re-use select the board or boards to re-play. as you select them a tick appears against each board to confirm that this selection will be used in your new entry. If you want to un-tick a ticked line, just select it again and its state will be reversed. As soon as one or more selections carry ticks, the 'Select' option becomes operational, and pressing enter or click with the mouse on 'Select' takes you on to another screen that asks you for the primary information. The new entry will contain the same number of board entries as the number of selections you ticked, so it does not have to ask you how many boards you wish to play. <> Prior To Printing New Entries This small screen simply identifies how many new entries there are in the system, and asks you to confirm your desire to print these, or abandon printing and return to the main menu. <> Earlier Entry Report Selector Since a different report is used for older entries, the process starts by presenting you with a table of entries from which to select those you would like to print. The table fills with older entries, with the most recent at the top. The column headed 'Tag To Print' shows ticks against any you have tagged, and you tag an entry by moving the highlight line over the entry to tag, then press the space bar. Pressing the space bar when the entry is already tagged causes the entry to be untagged. To help you identify any that containing winning entries, the fifth column will contain a star against any that are winners. Assuming you have tagged at least one entry, the 'Print Tagged' option becomes active. Just while on the subject of tagging, we have provided you with a means of un-tagging all the entries in one operation, as a time saver. Once you have chosen to print the tagged entries, you will be taken on to the print destination screen, before the report is actually produced. While on the topic of reports, you may like to know that provision has been made for you to place an initialisation string into the header of the reports. To set this up, select the 'Default Settings' option from the main menu. You will also be able to set whether or not to include block graphics in the report. This gives a better looking report, but may not be supported by your printer, in which case, turning this option off will force Six Of The Best to use reports that only use standard characters. <> Print Destination Selector Since you may not always want to send the report output to the standard parallel printer, this screen lets you divert the output. The first two options cater for parallel printer output, but don't select LPT2 unless your computer has a second parallel port, and you have a printer attached to LPT2. COM1 and COM2 might be used to send the output to a serially-driven printer, but if this is the case, you must have set DOS MODE to handle the communications settings. If you have not set either of these two ports up correctly, or you have some other kind of serial device attached, you may find that your computer hangs-up, if you try to make use of these ports. The 'FILE' option, if selected, will prompt you for a filename. Any name you enter here must conform to the DOS filename conventions. 'SCREEN' can be a useful destination while trying out the system (it saves paper). You should be aware of the fact that if the report is sent anywhere other than the printer, you may see strange characters appearing at the start of some of the lines. These are printer control codes, and have been put there since this is a report, and it is assumed that it is destined for a printer, at some point in the proceedings. <> Evaluation Elapsed Screen After about a month of use of the Shareware version, it is time to decide if you are going to register your intention to continue using the program in its commercial version, or wipe Six Of The Best from your computer. This screen never appears on the commercial version, but if it does appear on the Shareware version, you must decide to register for the commercial version, or stop using the program. It will not stop you completely, even after the evaluation period has elapsed, but the screen will stay on screen for a while before allowing you to continue. We could have easily had it wipe itself out after a month or so, but have decided not to do this, as most uses will in fact want to register, so we are being as fair as possible. <> Registration Reminder Screen Since this program appears in two versions; the shareware (try-before-you-buy) version, and the commercial version, the Shareware version reminds you that Six Of The Best is not free software. If you have the commercial version, you will never be bothered with the reminder screen. <> Entry Deletion Screen It is sometimes useful to be able to delete entries. You may have put entries into Six Of The Best just to see how it works, or perhaps entries made here were never officially entered into the lottery, for any number of reasons. The delete process commences by giving you a view of the entries in the system, but before this table is filled in, the cursor first goes to the 'From' date field for you to narrow the range. You can enter a pair of dates in the two fields, or leave them blank if you want to be able to list all entries. A further filter is provided by entering a player's initials. If you do so, the table will list only matching entries. Once the table contains entries, the bottom two options become active, and if you set a filter that excluded all records, you will be told that there are no matching entries, and the cursor will return to the first f the filter fields for you to make a less restrictive selection. By using the filter to collect together a number of entries, you can batch delete whole sections. This is obviously a really fast way of deleting. It is however quite easy to get carried away with this approach, and find you have deleted some that you wished to retain. So if you are using batch delete, check the entries carefully before confirming the delete. If you chose to delete a whole group of entries, after the deletion, you will be told there are no matching entries. This is a confirmation of the fact that they have really been removed. You might wish to make adjustments to the filter values to build another table of candidates for deletion, or cancel the operation, back to the main menu. If you only have one or two entries to delete, it is best to leave the filter fields blank, and then highlight and delete each separately. You are asked to confirm you deletion before it finally gets removed, so you are less likely to make mistakes. <> Draw Results Table This little table lists, in descending date order, the results of each week's draw. After calling up this table, you may select the insert option to introduce a winning entry. The first time you call this table up, it will go straight to the insert form, since it detected there were no existing entries to display. As the weeks go by, and the table fills up, you will be able to go back to the earlier entries by scrolling the table up. You can change any entry, should you discover a mistake, and you can delete entries if you don't wish to retain old records. <> Winning Combination Entry Form This little screen is used for adding, editing and confirming a delete. When adding, you will see that the Draw Date defaults to the date of the last draw. If you are catching up and wish to enter earlier entries, you will need to select the 'Prev.Week' option. This decrements the date, seven days at a time. The 'Next Week' option is used for coming back up to the present week, should you go back too far. When the required date is shown, proceed to enter the winning set of numbers. Take care to check that you have correctly entered the winning set, and bonus number, as mistakes could cause Six Of The Best to notify you of a win, that subsequently cannot be claimed. Conversely, it might fail to pick up a real win under these circumstances, so save yourself a lot of frustration and disappointment, check your entries carefully. If you wish to delete an entry, you will see that all fields in the form are dimmed out with the exception of 'OK' and 'Cancel'. You will also note that the top line is prompting you with 'Select OK to delete'. If this was a mistake, select 'Cancel' and the entry will be left in place. <> Making Use Of An Earlier Entry Having picked the board or boards you would like to play again, it is necessary to enter the initials of the new player, the number of weeks to play, and if you don't want to start with next Saturday's draw, the chance to change the date. Whatever date you enter here will be rolled-forward to the Saturday. There is no need for Six Of The Best to ask you how many boards you want to play, as this is known from the number ticked against earlier entries. Selecting the 'Save' option will make the necessary entries, if you cancel, you will be return to the main menu without crating a new entry. <> View Entries Screen This screen can be called up directly from the main menu, or called up automatically upon finding winners, through the 'Find Winners' option. The the former case, all entries will be listed for you to inspect, in the latter case, only winning entries will appear in the table. All the details shown in the main part of the screen relate to the currently highlighted entry shown in the table listing on the left. Moving the highlight using the cursor keys, allows you to inspect any entry. You will see that the table always lists the entries in descending order, so the most recent entries are at the top. If you are lucky enough to get a winning combination, the 'Match' column will show the number of correctly matched numbers you have, and the 'Win' column will contain 'A','B','C', or if you are really lucky 'D', to indicate the level of the win. <> This is a scrolling viewer for the 'READ.ME' text file supplied with Six Of The Best. Use the up and down cursor keys to move through the document. PgNd,PgUp can also be used for moving a page (20 lines) at a time. Selecting 'Exit' will return you to the 'About Six Of The Best' screen. <> Finding Winners Table With this screen you can have Six Of The Best search all entries for winning sets against any of the results listed in the table. This can be a great time-saver if you regularly make many entries. As with many other tables in Six Of The Best, the draw dates are listed in descending order, since you are bound to be more interested in the more recent draws then earlier ones. If you have called this option up, and last week's results are not listed, it just means you have selected this option before entering the results, and Six Of The Best can only list the results it knows about. After highlighting the draw week against which you would like to search for winning entries, use the 'Select' option to commence the search. Six Of The Best will tell you it is searching, and then if any winning entries are discovered, take you on to the screen used for displaying entries, but this time, only the winning entries will appear in the table on the left. This will usually be just a single entry, but if you operate a syndicate and get really lucky, you might see more listed. Make a note of the draw dates and the players initials, and then get a printout (under the reports option on the main menu) of these entries. Then dash along and claim your winnings.