MBTA MBTA Evaluation Copy c 1994 by Peter Neuendorffer. . Table of Contents Mbta.exe: Forward (1) Installation (2) Getting Directions (3) Bus Information and Options (7) General Questions (10) Technical Notes (10) Database for Mbta.exe: (11) Easy.exe: (13) To Register this program: Send $30.00 to Peter Neuendorffer 1399 Commonwealth Ave Apt 11 Allston, MA 02134 Tel 617-254-2213 Internet petern@channel1.com MBTA is software for IBM and compatible personal computers. (PC, XT, AT, PS-2, 386, 486 etc.) You need 640K RAM of memory. A color monitor is optional, and a serial Mouse is optional. MBTA must be installed on your hard drive, requiring 700K of disk space for Mbta.exe , and 200K disk space for Easy.exe. MBTA Bus gives directions on the Boston Area T public transportation system, including bus routes, commuter rail, and subways. It accepts about 500 bus and subway stops as well as 250 points of interest. It was created using the Pascal language of Turbo Pascal, a product of Borland International, Scotts Valley, CA. To get directions in the main program, you type in where you are starting - for example - and press the Enter key. You then type in where you are going- for example, and press the Enter key. You then see the words "Searching" in the lower part of the screen. When your route is found, it is displayed at the main window of the screen. The subway portion of your route is displayed on the map at the right in dots (blinking on a color system). If for some reason your route is not found, a bright white box will appear saying "Route Not Found". The menus in MBTA offer information about buses, and listings of the stops so you can select starting and destination places without typing at the keyboard. MBTA is designed so that if you have a Serial mouse installed, you never need to use the keyboard to find routes. To get to the main menu, type Alt-M (the Alt key held down along with the "M" key), or the Page Up key. If you have any questions about MBTA, please feel free to phone 617-789-4516, 7PM to 10PM EST, and ask for Peter Neuendorffer. The enclosed copy of MBTA is licensed for use on one system only, unless otherwise arranged with the author. MBTA.EXE INSTALLATION (2) Installation for MBTA.EXE is straightforward. -------------------------------- To Copy the files: Move to your hard drive. Make a subdirectory Move to the hard drive and subdirectory. Insert MBTA.EXE program disk in floppy drive. Copy all files on MBTA.EXE disk to the new subdirectory. :::::::> Note: Always run the program MBTA from within this directory. :::::::> MBTA.EXE needs the MBTA.EXE file, and all files with "drv" extension. Example: -------------------------------- Setup program: Now run the program MBTASET Example Type Y for yes, N for no to the questions: Are you using a color monitor? Are you using a serial mouse? Do you want to enter place to call "here". If you answered Yes to last question, then type in a subway or bus stop you with MBTA to call "here". This is optional. You may set mouse sensitivity from 1 to 4. Left-Clicking the mouse is the same as Enter. Right-Clicking the mouse is the same as Escape. About this manual: The following conventions are used. To indicate what you type at the keyboard, words or letters are enclosed in brackets, like so: means to type the word copley and then to press the Enter key. Up-arrow, and Dn-arrow refer to the arrow keys on your key- board. They are at the bottom inbetween the numberkeypad and the letters on an AT style keyboard. PgUp, and PgDn refer to the PgUp and PgDn keys. Esc means the Escape key. Enter means the Enter key. Right mouse click, Left mouse click means to push the right or left mouse button respectively and release them. When a word is in quotations, it means a menu item as you see it on the screen; for Example: "Metro". Quotes are also used to talk about screen messages; for example "Your Route not Found". The ::::::::> sign means a point to especially note. GETTING DIRECTIONS MBTA.EXE (3) There are two ways to get directions in MBTA . Typing in where you are starting, and enter; then typing where you are going, and enter. Example: You also may get information on a stop after typing it in by pressing F2. The second way is to use the menu system, to wit, the Metro option. That way you can choose where you are starting and where you are going without typing in the name. You can use either the arrow and PgUp PgDn keys to do this, or you may use the mouse. Getting to the Main Menu is done by typing or Left-Click the Mouse. --------------------------------------------------------- Also, from the DOS command line, you may type where "here" and "there" are names of stops you wish to travel. So from DOS, you could type to get directions from Harvard to Park. THis is a quick method, which takes you out of the program after getting directions. MBTA recognizes all subway stop names, as well as key bus route stops for 100 bus routes. It also recognizes commuter rail stop names. The program will find the directions. All you have to do is give it the name of your start point and where you are going. Many stops do not need a city name. You may print your directions, if any, by pressing Alt-P when no menus are visible. ::::> In fact, you should not ask for, say . will do. If you wanted you could use that, of course. ::::> MBTA does not care whether you type capital or lowercase letters; it is therefore "not case sensitive". Under the Questions and Answers and Bus information and options portions of this manual, you may find out how to tailor your request. These sections will also explain why certain routes are "Not Found". ----------------------------------------------------------------- To get to the main menu in MBTA , you type . This means to hold down the key marked Alt and then also press the M letter key. To end Mbta , you can press the key. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Getting Directions Mbta.exe continued. (4) Using the Menus in MBTA can be fun. Get to the main menu by typing or Page Up or Left-Click the mouse. A menu should pop on the left hand top of the screen. Metro Go Reverse Info Go Options Bus Commuter Place Subway Telephone Database Help Quit GO and REVERSE will execute the route requested at the bottom of the screen. INFO GO will execute the route requestted at the bottom of the screen. However the difference from GO is that the directions have a highlighted bar. Move the bar up and down the screen and press Enter. (choose a line that has directions). Alternate buses or subway for that PORTION of the route will appear in the window at the right of the screen. When done, press Escape to exit INFO GO. TELEPHONE will give you a list of usefule telephone numbers. Database, if installed, will allow you to change the routes and add your own points of interest. Database is described in the database section of this manual. METRO When you have "Where starting:" and "Where going" filled in, you can get your route by moving the Up or Dn arrow keys to "Metro" and hitting . Or you may simply type the first letter of the menu item you desire. This 'first letter' bit works for this menu and any second level menu in the program. When you are done with this menu, you can 'pop it off' by pressing , or Right-Click the mouse. The Left-Click on the mouse, in fact is always a substitute for , and the Right-Click on the mouse is always a substitute for . ::::::::> Now back to the using the Main Menu to get directions: After Selecting Metro: , you will now get another menu ontop of the last. Remember, any time you want to go back, press the key. This menu offers you "Boston" "North" "West" and "South". Try selecting "Boston", . Now you have yet another menu, offering you parts of Boston, "Allston-Brighton" "Central"...etc. Central refers the part of Boston near Park Street station. You select again, and you get all the stops in that district. By using the PgDn and PgUp keys, or Selection "-up-" or "-down-" menu items on this 4th menu, you can page through the stops. Select the stop you want, press , and Voila! The stop name is fed down in to the highlighted bar below, just as if you had typed it in the first place. Getting Directions Mbta.exe continued (5) :::::::::> When using Metro to select stop names, make sure "Where starting" or "Where going" is highlighted. You can use the Up or Dwn arrow, or push the mouse away or towards you to select the one you wish. This is important, because the highlighted bar will be the one that Metro feeds to when you select a stop. :::::::::> So to summarize, to get directions: ------> Highlight "Where starting:" bar, using the Up and Dn arrow keys. ------> Then get to Main Menu with or Left-Click. ------> Select "Metro" ------> Select "Boston" or "North" or "West" or "South" ------> Select the City on the next menu. ------> Select the stop with Pg-up, Pg-Dn, "-up-" "-down-" and arrow keys. ------> Press when the stop is highlighted. ------> Highlight "Where going:" bar and repeat the process. ------> Go back to main menu ------> Select "Go" Your directions should appear. If they don't, your route may involve a 'daytime' bus. More on this under Bus Information and Options secion below. There are three other ways to select stops from the menus. That's the "Subway" option in the Main Menu; The "Points" option in the second menu (the one you get to by selecting "Metro"); and, lastly, the "All" option, also at the second menu. ----------------------------------------------------------------- By selecting "Subway", you can choose among the various subway lines, and page through a list of the stops on that :::::::::> subway line. Now's a good time to point out, that the stop names are in alphabetical order always off of metro, excepting the Subway option, where the stops are in order by the way they are on the subway line itself. By selecting "Points" you may see various (252 of them) points of interest in the Boston area listed. You can click or select on any of these just like the stops in the geographic listings described above. When you move the Up and Dn Arrow keys through this list, a description of the point appears above. By selecting "All" you can page through a list of all the stops that MBTA recognizes. This is useful if you know the name, but not where it is geographically . It functions just like the other stop selection options described above. ----------------------------------------------------------------- That's how you do it. Either type in "Where starting", and "Where going" and press enter, or select your route from the menus. :::::::::> The "Reverse" option allows you to get the route going the other way. Note the names are even switched at the bottom of the screen as well. BUS INFORMATION AND OPTIONS MBTA.EXE (6) This sections will talk about some services that MBTA offers besides giving directions. Then a discussion about Options you may use to tailor your route request. :::::::::> Before proceeding, one note on a stop selection not mentioned already. When you installed MBTA originally, you may have entered a "stop to call here". If you did, when you select the Main Menu "Metro" option, the second menu will have a "Here" option. Selecting this option feeds the 'here' stop name back to the command line below. Thus if you had specified when installing MBTA with the mbtaset.exe program, "here" would always refer to park street station. You can rerun mbtaset at any time from DOS without ill effect. Just run it from the MBTA sub directory. -------------------------------------------------------------- From the Main Menu: "Bus Info" allows you to find out information about a particular route. Selecting this option brings up a prompt in the box to the right of the screen where the map usually is. You type in a Bus Route No. Example: <10> Then you should get information about the Bus Route number 10, including last Saturday bus time, last Sunday Bus time (if any) and whether the Bus runs on Saturdays, Sundays, Holidays. Also the time in minutes between bus runs. Bear in mind that this information is averaged from the MBTA bus information on this route. Also, you will see the stops on this line listed in geographical order. After you get ther route information, press Enter to see a schedule for that route. -------------------------------------------------------------- "Commuter" will ask for a commuter rail number: the letter c followed by a number from the list to the left. Then you can get information about the commuter rail route. -------------------------------------------------------------- "Place" allows you to find out about a partular stop, namely what routes go from that place. Example: Select the Main Menu Select "Place"

Type in a stop name Bus information and options Mbta.exe continued. (7) With both the "Bus Info" and "Place" options, MBTA uses fuzzy logic to supply default values. If you had the "Where starting" highlighted, and a route had been found, the Bus number of the starting part of the route would be supplied. Thus, you could select this bus number by Left-Clicking the mouse, without typing in a route number. As well, the "Place" option would have the name supplied that is in the highlighted bar, "where starting:" or "where going". A Left Click would obtain information on this stop. -------------------------------------------------------------- :::::::::::> When your route is not found, it may be because of options that are set restricting MBTA's selection process. From the Main Menu , if you select the Options Menu , you are given a choice of what I call 'filters' on your route. By setting these various filters in the Options Menu, you effect what kind of stops and routes MBTA will be looking for in obtaining your directions. The more filters, the pickier MBTA (and you) become as to what routes are ok to use. The four filters found in the "Options" menu are: "Clear All" "Time of Day" "Wait Mins." "Ignore It" "Rail" These filters restrict the route MBTA can find. What do I mean by a 'filter'that restricts? An example of a restriction in everyday life might be the child who has $50.00 in their pocket earned mowing lawns. However Dad has put the restriction that they can't spend more than $2.00 on comic books. So when they go to the store, they cannot buy much in the way of comic books. MBTA , can be restricted, to better effect, as well. With the "Time of Day" filter set to Evening, it will be unable to use any route that stops running after 7 PM. Bus Information and Options Mbta.exe continued. (8) ::::::::::::> From the "Options" menu, "Clear All" resets all filters to off, and sets "Time of Day" to "Evening". Each time you select "Time of Day" by pressing in the options menu, or highlighting the words "time of day" with the mouse or arrow keys and pressing Enter or Left-Click, you toggle on and off the words "Day" or "Evening" in the box to the right. When set to "Evening" you are saying that you are travelling after 7 PM. Thus the route must take this into account. "Day" means you are traveling before 7PM and thus all bus routes are fair game. "Wait Mins." is also a toggle. By selecting it, you will see the words "Short Wait" in the small box to the right. When these words are seen, it means you are requesting that MBTA only look at bus routes that run every 20 minutes or less. If the toggle is off, and there is not the words "Short Wait" than any bus waiting time is ok for you, and for the MBTA driver. [joke] "Ignore It" allows you to give a Bus Route Number that you do NOT want to take. Thus Selecting "Ignore It" from the Options menu, and typing in <10> sets a filter on Bus No. 10. Any directions from then on will NOT involve bus 10. Make sure you don't leave this on by mistake. :::::::::::::> Typing the letter in the "Ignore It" option means to "ignore subway". Thus two bus routes will be found, but not subway routes. MBTA will not find a route involving three bus trips together. "Rail" allows you to tell MBTA to ignore all commuter rail routes. :::::::::::::> The most 'open' filter is certainly to select "Clear All" and the set "Time of Day" to Day. This means, find all bus routes, ignoring none, with any waiting time, that run in the daytime. And that subway routes are ok as well. =============================================================== =============================================================== GENERAL QUESTIONS MBTA.EXE (9) ::::::> What do I do with this? ----------------------------------------------------------- You get directions by running program. You type where you are starting, a place, not an address. They hit the Enter key. Then type where you are going, and Enter. So if you entered in: Harvard And then: Airport This software gives directions from Harvard to the airport. ----------------------------------------------------------- ::::::> How do I install this on my computer? 1, Copy all the files on your demonstration disk to a subdirectory on your hard drive. 2, Change to this directory and run MBTASET, answering several easy questions. 3, Run from there on. ---------------------------------------------------------- ::::::> What if I don't know my way around? Select the Main Menu with the key combo. Then Select "Metro" or Left-Click the mouse. Select an Area, and the a City and choose a stop from the list. ---------------------------------------------------------- ::::::> How do I get out of the menus? Just press Escape until the menus are all off, or Click on the Right Mouse button. ----------------------------------------------------------- ::::::> I notice one data file is gigantic:over 400k. Can I do without this to save space? Yes. This is the bus time tables schedule. You may safely remove the files Newyork.drv AND the file Kinko.drv to save disk space. But then the timetables will not be displayed. ---------------------------------------------------------- ::::::> Why won't it find my route? Try setting the "Time of Day" to "Day", instead of evening. You do this from The Main Menu By choosing the "Options" menu and selecting "Time of Day". ----------------------------------------------------------- ::::::> Do I have to use the mouse and menus? No! You can just type in your request for directions, or you can use the menus by using keyboard keys. gets you to main menu. You move the Up and Dn arrows to the item on any menu you wish, and then press key to select that menu. ----------------------------------------------------------- Questions Mbta.exe continued (10) ::::::::>I have a bus pass. How can MBTA give me directions not involving the subway? Go to the Main Menu and select Options. Type . Then Enter. then Escape out of the menus. You should see the words "Ignore Subway" in the box to the right. Now any routes found will not involve the subway. ------------------------------------------------------------ TECHNICAL NOTES Feel free to ignore this section, as it has nothing to do with your use of the program. I just included it in case anyone was interested in the process used by the program. This program uses a tree emulation. Every stop has a record in a main list. The Harvard stop for the No. 1 bus is a seperate stop from the Harvard stop for the No. 66 bus, by the way, as are all other distict stops. Stop names are obtained by number reference to a list on disk. Attached to the stop name is information about that stop. What route, the stop number on the route, etc. The list is integrated by "next" pointers. The program merely goes up and down this list, looking for the information it needs to find a route. A driver routine looks for the shortest route, trying out every reasonable route, and counting the number of stops, always selecting the best one. Filters restricting the route are localized in a test routine. When the Evening filter is on, the program checks the actual "last bus" time for each route to see that it is after 7:00 PM. Mbta does not write to disk, with the exception of the creation of the configuration file tdir.cfg by the MBTASET program. The source for the data is the MBTA bus cards for bus routes. For commuter rail, the book Car Free in Boston was used - an excellent T information guide. Association for Public Transportation. (ISBN 0-945990-01-4) The mention of this book in no way constitutes any type of endorsement of this software by the book's authors or publisher. The program was written using the Turbo Pascal 5.0 integrated language system, a product of Borland International, of Scotts Valley, CA. DATABASE for MBTA.EXE (11) Database for Mbta.exe data entry module for MBTA . [changing the bus time schedules is not supported at this time] --------------------------------------------------------------------- GENERAL NOTE: WHEN ENTERING IN PLACE NAMES, DO NOT START THE NAME WITH THE WORD "THE" AND DO NOT INCLUDE APOSTROPHES IN THE NAME. --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Mbta Database option allows you ato edit bus routes ; also add, change, and delete points of interest. It may not be enaabled due to the system manager's wish. To get to the Database option, press Alt-M or Page Up from the main MBTA.EXE screen. Then choose Database from the menu. Edit Route lets you change bus stops on a bus route, or add new routes. Time Edit allows you to enter Time information about a route. (If say you add a new route 12 under Edit route, you must also fill in the information in Time Edit. Points Edit allows you to add a point of interest, or change the stop it is assigned to. Delete Point allows you to remove a point of interest from the program. To edit a bus or commuter rail route: First you are asked a route (bus or commuter rail) number to edit. Commuter rail should be preceded by a c (ex. c10). After you enter in a new route, you must also complete Time Edit for this route. When entering in a new route, If it doesn't already know the route, you get a blank table with menu to right. If it already knows the route, a table listing the stops appears with a menu on the right. NOTE: the index number is on the left. The Place numbers are the order and seperation of the stops on the route. Please note that when mbtabase is exited (HALT from main menu) You must copy *.out to *.DRV. This only applies if you have edited bus routes. Point info is updated when you enter it. Add Stop: (a) if stop name is in middle then choose No. place adjust to make room on list (b) type in name of stop. (c) is it on subway (y) or (n)o (d) place on list of bus stops. That is, the places on route might be 1 2 3 4 5. To insert place on the stop you might choose 3 Increment,1. Thus the places would read 1 2 4 5 6, allowing you to type in a stop between 2 and 4 place on the table. (e) choose AREA and CITY for route stop. Other routes are not effected, so you may want to find the stop on another route before entering it here. Delete Stop: (a) enter INDEX of stop to delete No. place adjust: give it a Place number to start, whether to Increment or Decrement, and how much to increment, decrement. This will open up a "hole" on a prexisting bus route to insert new stop. Deleting an entire route is done by deleting every stop on the route. Exit: exit route edit when done. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Database for Mbta.exe continued. (12) Database Time Edit: This should be done for every new route. (a) enter bus route number (b) enter time for Last Bus (ex: 100) without punctuation (c) enter time of last Saturday bus (enter 0 if no service on Saturdays) (d) enter Y or N for Sat Sundays holidays. To indicate service on Saturdays, but no Sundays or holidays, you would enter (c) time, and then N for Sat, Sundays, Holidays. To indicate no service Saturday Sunday or Holidays, enter 0 und "last saturday bus" (c), and N for service Sat. Sundays, Holidays. (e) time between buses: enter in minutes, indicating an average time one waits for the next bus of current route. You are much more likely to use the POINT EDIT and DELETE point options, because they are independent of the stops. A point of interest could be anything from Al's Barber shop, to Boston Public Library. 250 are already supplied, and you may have a total of 500 points of interest. Point edit: To add a point of interest, choose point edit from the main menu, and enter in a name. The program will not allow you to use stop names. If accepted, (new prompt appears) type in stop for that point of interest. It must be a currently valid bus stop or subway stop. Then type in point of interest information- 200 characters maximum. That's it. Delete point: To delete a point of interest, type from Delete Point, a point of interest you no longer want in your mbta database. If it isn't there anyway, the program will inform you. _____________________________________________________________________ WHEN DONE EDITING BUS ROUTES, PRESS ESCAPE TO TO EXIT BACK TO THE MAIN PROGRAM. YOU WILL BE ASKED IF YOU WISH TO SAVE YOUR CHANGES. PRESS "Y" to make the changes effective, "N" to cancel all changes since you last entered the database option. _____________________________________________________________________ THE EASY.EXE PROGRAM (13) The Easy program is very simple. Copy Easy.exe onto your hard drive. You do not need any other files to run Easy..exe You may put it in a directory that is in your path,if you wish and run EASY from anywhere on the system. To set color and whether you are looking for a Day, Evening, or Saturday route, enter the word (without brackets) at Where starting. To get directions, enter Where starting and Where going. To also play a trivia game, enter at the Where starting prompt. PRess Escape to exit the trivia game.