MICROFILE "Possibly the best file viewer in the world." "Makes hex dumps a pleasure to work with." These are just two comments we have invented to get you interested in this program. It approaches the problem of displaying the contents of a file in a much more flexible and easy to use way than we have ever seen before. It is not fixed format, the screen presentation can be varied in width, font and combinations of character, hexadecimal and record formats. The character set can be chosen from the PC OEM set or one of three international character sets ANSI, ASCII and EBCDIC. It allows for extensions to the standard ASCII set as well as providing the facility to create any other conversion tables. For example, it is possible to :- change all alphabetic characters from EBCDIC upper case to ASCII lower case convert all tabs to commas replace all dollar signs by pound signs create an output file in DOS/UNIX/Apple MAC or other text file format - all in a single pass. It can extract text out of any file that can be read on a PC - data, text file, word processor document, spreadsheet or even executable files. For example, it could be used to "unformat" a word processor document by extracting only the text characters i.e. ignoring attributes such as bold, italic, font name etcetera. The output file could even be multiple spaced lines (if required). It can read and expand Microsoft compiled files. It has facilites to search, goto file position, address in hex or decimal, base 0 or 1, copy to printer, clipboard or file. It provides a calculator to translate signed/unsigned integers (byte, word, long and double) 32/64/80 bit floating point currency date and time navigable file pointers binary i.e. bit display It can encode/decode UU and MIME format files. There now follows a more detailed description :- Screen displays Address Hexadecimal and Character Hex only Char only Text records Text word-wrap Other features select a new file (obviously !!!) close/re-open file (shared access) file position in hex or decimal file position starting from 0 or 1 max file size - 2.1 Gb vary the number of characters per line goto a file position - hex or decimal search for hex or text string - forward or back, from start/end, case sensitive optional, not equal to change fonts (fixed pitch only) print current screen display page forward/back goto start/end copy screen or records to Clipboard extract text records to disc files with output in DOS, Unix, MAC, EBCDIC or other formats - read text from unsupported word processing documents, program error messages etc optional display of rejected text records word wrapping variable from 40 chars to full screen width separate character set/translation tables for both input and output files. view system/hidden files inform you of hidden directories (it cannot access these - you would have to change the directory's properties) monitors for any file changes to the file being examined calculator to translate - signed/unsigned integer arithmetic byte, word, long and double - currency format - 32/64/80 bit floating point numbers - date/time formats integer and floating point representations - bit display - file pointers and the ability to navigate the the file using them ( + return jumps) - byte order High/Low or Low/High The program automatically adapts itself to the PC it is running on, from the size of screen being used, through to the date formats that are in use. By varying the font, and depending on the resolution of the PC that the program is run on, a text-only display can show as little as a single character per line to over 132+ characters i.e. unreadable. Hexadecimal values are always grouped for readability e.g FF00 0011 FFOO 0011 0022 0033 In addition, to the facilities listed above, there are several areas that can be tailored :- (1) As above - with this option selected the program will display "nn Lines as above" whenever any lines are repeated. (2) Delimiters - by default, text displays are shown with plus signs indicating the start and end of text to highlight trailing spaces +a normal line followed by a dummy+ +line with trailing spaces + these can be changed to any other keyboard characters (including spaces). (3) Background - the main screen background colour can be changed as required (4) Foreground - the main screen foreground colour can also be varied (5) Char formats - ANSI, ASCII and EBCDIC are all supported (plus user defined tables). (6) ASCII+ - Any of the characters found in ANSI but not in ASCII e.g. "£" can be selected to be included in displays (7) Unprintables - not all the hex values 0-255 have a visual representation in the text formats available these control characters (for printers etc.) are often displayed as a solid block this can be changed to any required value e.g. copy tab delimited file to comma delimited (8) Records - the program can extract text from files where the text record is indicated by byte/word counts at start of the record or hex 0D0A at the end of the record 00 ditto , comma nn other values can be input or break characters can be used. byte/word counts are used by Pascal programs and many data and executable files. 0D0A most text/word processors, 0D Macintosh files 0A UNIX files 00 used by C and other executable programs , Comma Separated Variable (CSV) format This includes byte and word counts in either Low/High (Intel) or more often High/Low format. Various other tests are performed to discard garbage characters. Note - all tests are carried out on sentences, not only individual words. A high accuracy is achieved - even on executable files. (see the Help file for a full explanation) (9) Sideways scrolling available for text records (10) Text can be displayed word-wrapped if required. (11) Compressed files - files compressed using MS compress.exe can be displayed in actual or uncompressed form. Note "compressed", not "expanded" - some file formats can increase in size when "compressed" ! This often happens if a second compression is applied to files already compressed. ----------------- /// ------------------ As an example, with As_Above on, a 16 character hex and text display took 5 seconds to display "2800 lines as above" on an uncompressed bitmap file. Searching for non-existent strings on a 5 Mb file took about 40 seconds to report "no match found" - 100,000 + chars/sec. These were run on a 486/25 SX with 4Mb of memory - and seem to be consistent results regardless of how many other programs were loaded. ----------------- /// ------------------ The program is distributed in two compressed formats :- (1) SETUP.EXE - installs the program files and Visual Basic run-time files (2) MICROZIP..EXE - a self extracting ZIP file (program files only) Note - this program will NOT run from a floppy drive - it must be installed onto a local hard disk, nor will an unlicensed version run over a network. ----------------- /// ------------------ To install using SETUP, insert the disc into drive A or B and run SETUP.EXE This will install the following files :- MICROFIL.EXE 490,999 bytes - suggested directory C:\MICROFIL although this can be changed during installation (this does not affect the running of the program). MICROFIL.HLP 96,086 bytes - the help program README.TXT 11,474 bytes - this file ------- 598,559 - (Jun 1966 / Version 96.5) The remaining files are all standard Visual Basic files and are all "loaded" into the Windows system directory, which is usually C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM In fact, if you have ever installed any Visual Basic programs, then you will find that these probably exist on your system, and so will not need to be re-installed. VBRUN300.DLL 398,000 bytes - Dynamic Link Library used by all Visual Basic Version 3 users CMDIALOG.VBX 18,688 - Background/Foreground colours, COMMDLG.DLL 89,248 File dialogs PICCLIP.VBX 15,840 - used in toolbar displays THREED.VBX 64,544 - various control buttons VER.DLL 9,008 - version control ------- 595,328 Total space requirement may vary between 598,559 to 1,193,887 ----------------- /// ------------------ To install using MICROZIP.EXE Copy MICROZIP.EXE to an existing or new directory (suggested name MICROFIL) on your hard disc. Use PKZIP/WINZIP to extract the files. MICROZIP.EXE can be deleted after use. ----------------- /// ------------------ MICROFIL can be registered via Compuserve GO SWREG product ID 12112 ----------------- /// ------------------ When MICROFIL.EXE is run for the first time, it will create a data file MICROFIL.DAT (in the same directory as MICROFIL.EXE) This is about 1000 bytes long and is used to hold program settings between sessions and registration details (assumming you decide to register). This takes about 5 minutes and the progress of the file initialisation is shown on the screen. On unregistered versions, this initialisation process is repeated every 4 hours of actual use. ----------------- /// ------------------ Note - STOP PRESS - Feb 1996 On some machine there appears to be a problem when running the SETUP program. It fails with the message "Cannot find ver.dll" VER.DLL was first shipped with Windows 3.1 and should be on every Windows machine (in the window/system directory) at this version or later. The setup program relies on this library to check disk space availability and to unpack the files. However, the copy on the Setup disk is not in fact compressed (despite it having the compressed file extension .DL_). If you experience this problem, then you can get round it by using File Manager to copy A:\VER.DL_ to C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory then rename it C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\VER.DLL using the File/Rename menu Re-running the SETUP program should then work without any problems. ----------------- /// ------------------ Known Problems KP9601/001 Feb 1966 COPY_TO_DISK - network printers. On a system where the default printer is a network printer, an error message is generated when using this function. This occurs when the program attempts to set the printer font to match the screen fixed pitch font which appears not to work on a network printer. The screen is still copied and printed but using the existing settings of the printer. This is currently under investigation. KP9605/001 9 Jul 1966 COPY_TO_DISK/NORMAL - serial format When using COPY_TO_DISK/NORMAL options and screen display is none-TEXT format, only the first 100 bytes of the file are copied. Full file processed if screen display is text mode or extracting/encoding UU/MIME code. Error caused by UU/MIME de-bugging code not being removed. Problem cleared 9 Jul 1996