IMPORT v1.1
                              Short Text File
                        Written by Michael MacDonald
                                 01/01/91
                               rev 02/26/91
                         (see addendum for changes)

IMPORT is a compiled Clipper PRG program. It is 'freeware'. No fee is expected
or will be accepted.(Well, maybe that's going a little too far. Let's call it
'You Be the Judge Ware' By this I mean, it's free, do whatever you like with
it. You're under no obligation, legally or morally to pay me anything for it.
But, hey, I'm human. If you feel so inclined, I'm not going to tear up the
check.) It's purpose is to import a list of files into RoboComm's UPLOADS.DBF
(the database that keeps track of downloaded files on the BBS's you call). It
works exactly the same as the Import function in the NEWFILES database.
However it should be run from the DOS prompt and not from within RoboComm.
When you type 'import' from the DOS command line, the program will prompt you
first for a filename, and then for a BBS ID. At the filename prompt type the
complete path and filename of the text file you want to IMPORT. At the BBS ID
prompt, type the name you want displayed under the 'Downloaded From' field.
Next IMPORT will ask you if the files are 'Offline?'. Answering yes to this
will cause another prompt to appear asking for the location of the files. This
information is displayed by Robo when viewing the downloads directory.
Pressing anything but 'y' at the 'Offline' prompt will cause the 'OFFLINE' and
'LOCATION' displays to be blank. The 'LOCATION' box is where Robo puts the
volume name of the floppy when you move a downloaded file offline. If the
'OFFLINE' field is blank, Robo assumes the file is in your downloads
directory. I would recommend marking all files 'Offline', unless they reside
in your Downloads directory. The Location field is optional.

IMPORT will put the system date in the date field, and the filename, length,
BBS date, and description will be supplied by the text file. If files are
marked as offline, you can have Robo move them to your uploads directory, if
you wish.

The text file that IMPORT reads from must be in standard PCBoard format. Here
is an example of that:

PCB145UM.ZIP    26354  12-01-90  User manual for PCBoard 14.5. This is a great
                                 help to those users new to PCBoard.
                                 Uploaded by: Jim Rooney

ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÙ  ÀÄÄÄÄÄÙ  ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÙ  ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÙ
   1-12        15-21     24-31                   34-78
 filename      length   filedate            file description

Notice that there are two spaces between each field, the length has room for
seven digits and is right justified, and the description can be on more than
one line. IMPORT has no limit to the number of lines of description it will
read, but RoboComm version 2.x will only display five. Future versions will
probably display more than that, and IMPORT should work fine with them. I
realize that some BBS's have their file lists in non-PCBoard standard formats.
For those lists, you'll have to reformat them, just as you would to 'Import'
them into the NEWFILES database. Some lists also have the pipe '|' character
marking the beginning of each line of the 'extended' description. IMPORT will
handle those fine, there is no need to remove them.

IMPORT.EXE can reside anywhere, but you AND the file IMPORT.DBF must be in the
directory where you keep your RoboComm files when you invoke it. IMPORT.DBF is
a 258 byte empty database. It contains just the structure when you first
invoke IMPORT and when you're done. IMPORT uses it as a temporary place to put
the data, and removes it as soon as it is put in UPLOADS.DBF. It primary
purpose is to 'eat' up the spaces between the fields, and more importantly, to
determine if a file has more than one line of description. IMPORT won't work
without it, so don't lose it. The source code has been included for any
Clipper users that wish to play with it.


ADDENDUM:

The initial release of IMPORT would not import the last record in the file. So
if you tried to import one file, you got nothing. This has been fixed.

There was a problem with the 'percent done' counter under certain
circumstances. It usually surfaced on small files. This now works properly.

If your text file didn't have an extension on it's name, IMPORT would accept
it as a valid filename, (naturally) but could not open it. Unless you added a
period (FILE. for FILE) nothing would get added to the database. This is more
a problem with Clipper than with my code. I added a routine to see if the
filename contained a period, and if not added one so Clipper wouldn't choke on
it.

The most important change in the program is the addition of some code to
bypass extraneous text. If the text file you are importing from has text in it
other than filenames, IMPORT will now bypass it. This means, for instance, if
you had your Robo log set to verbose, and did a scan for newfiles, you could
run IMPORT directly on ROBOCOMM.LOG and it would pick out the list of
filenames. I realize you probably wouldn't want to do that, but I gave the
example to show what is possible. It uses several criteria to determine if a
line of text is a filename or not. It must have a period somewhere in the
first 12 characters. The characters that occupy the file length field must be
numbers, and the date field must have dashes in exactly the right place, ie
(xx-xx-xx). If all these are true, then IMPORT assumes it is a valid filename
and imports it. The chances of something slipping through this are pretty
slim.

1/6/91 Added the Offline and Location prompts. If you answer YES to the
OFFLINE? prompt, IMPORT will prompt you for a location. What you input here
will be put in those fields. IE, under status you will see 'Offline', and
under location you will see whatever you typed in. If you answer NO to the
OFFLINE? prompt, it and the location field will be blank.

If you find any little bugs, drop me a line on one of the Robocomm conferences
on GROUPONE BBS, or any of the PCBoard 'netmail' networks. Meantime, enjoy.

Ver 1.1

With the advent of Robocomm ver 3.0, which has an Import function built into
it's Downloads directory, this program has become more or less obsolete. It
will still operate, however, with one exception. Only the first line of the
file description will appear when you view the file list. This is due to a new
method of handling the extended description in ver 3.x. IMPORT will detect
which version of Robo you're running and use the correct DBF.

                           Michael MacDonald
                         15509 183rd  Place NE
                         Woodinville, WA 98072