AApex BookMaster Reference

AApex Software Corporation publishes several other electronic reference products, including upwards of 70,000 quotations, an electronic bible, jokes, almanacs and more.  Call (800) 728-7650 for a catalog.

The Poor Mans College was compiled by Sidney Madwed, aka The Natural Poet and Certified Observer of the Human Condition.  This software may be distributed freely, as long as no part of the software is altered or deleted in any way, including the README.TXT file.

Contents:

Overview

Main Menu

Button Bar

Finding Text by Words

Searching using an Index

The Topic List Box

Setting the Search Scope

Copying an item into other software

Changing the Display Font

Changing the List Box Fonts

Moving Around

Marking Items

Arranging The Display

Exiting


Overview

Welcome to the AApex BookMaster.  This powerful software puts you in control of every electronic reference book that AApex Software Corporation publishes.  The AApex BookMaster organizes each book you own, and makes it easy to find information in ways that paper books can't.  You can add books to your electronic bookshelf, and access each book in the same way.  So, congratulations!  You are now a participant in the future of reference book publishing.

This software lets you load a collection of books.  Each book consists of a series of items, or pages.  An item could be a quotation, a joke, a story, a definition, a bible verse, or any number of things depending upon the book you're using.  Only one item at a time is seen on the main screen.  You can search through all books by specifying words contained in each item (a text search), or by using an index.  For example, some books may contain names of the author of each item; browsing through the author index will let you view a list of authors.

Every function available is accessible from the menu.  Some of these functions can also be accessed via keystrokes, or by the buttons at the top of the screen.  To see what a particular button does, just position the cursor over the button, and hold down the left mouse button.  The status line at the bottom of the screen will explain what the button does.  If you then move the cursor away from the button, that button function will not take effect.


Main Menu

File

Print: Prints the currently displayed item.

Printer Setup: Changes the default printer.

Exit: Closes the active window and exits the software.

Edit

Copy Highlighted Area: Copies the highlighted area into the clipboard to paste into another program.  To highlight an area, simply hold down the left mouse button, and drag the mouse over the area to highlight.

Copy All: Copies the entire display window's text to the clipboard.

Copy All Marks: Copies all marked items into the clipboard.

Search

Text: Lets you search through all books for a word, phrase, or combinations of words.

(Indexes): Lets you view various indexes for search.

Mark

Mark: Adds the current item displayed to the list of marks.

Previous Mark: Displays the previously marked item.

Next Mark: Displays the next marked item in the list of marked items.

Copy All Marks: Copies all marked items to the clipboard.

Clear Marks: Erases all marks; this lets you start a new set of items to mark.

Scope:

Lets you include or exclude a particular book from your searches.

Options

Text Font: Lets you customize the font used to view each item

List Font: Lets you customize the font used in each index or topic list box.

Hilight Colors: You can change the foreground and background colors used when highlighting an item with the mouse.

Word Match Colors: Whenever you do a text search, the matching words are displayed in a different color.  This selection lets you customize the foreground and background color of these matching words.

Item

Last Viewed: Moves the display to the previously viewed item.

Previous: Moves up one page.

Next: Moves down one page.

Random: Moves to a random item in the currently displayed book.

History: Lets you view a history of all items you have previously viewed.

Help

Help: Brings up the help system.

About: Gives the version number and other information about this software.


Button Bar

You can perform some common functions by clicking on various buttons underneath the main menu.

Button Descriptions:

   Help

  Text Search

 Subject Search

 Author Search

  Mark Item

  Copy Selected Text to the Clipboard.

  History: backtrack through all the items you have seen.

  Exit AApex BookMaster.


Finding Text by Words

You can find words, phrases, and use AND, OR, or NOT logic and wild card characters to find various items in this reference text.

IMPORTANT: All search words must be entered in lowercase!

1) Select Search, Text from the menu, or click on the [image] button.

2) Type the search text to find, and press ENTER.

3) Next, you will be presented with a list of items containing the desired text.  You can scroll through this list to view any items of interest.

Examples of search text:

milk -- finds all items with the word "milk".

cow milk -- finds all items with the phrase "cow milk".

cow AND milk -- finds all items with the words "cow" and "milk".

cow OR milk -- finds all items with either "cow" or "milk".

milk NOT cow -- finds all items with the word "milk", but not the word "cow".

milk* -- finds all items with words that start with "milk", like "milk", "milkman", "milked", etc.

*man -- finds all items with words that end in "man", like "man", "milkman", etc.

*man* -- finds all items with words that contain "man", including "man", "management", "batman", "beatlemania", etc.

(milk AND man) OR cow -- finds items with both "milk" and "man", in addition to all items with the word "cow".

Notes:

- The operators AND, OR and NOT must be typed in all capital letters.  You can also use the "(", ")", "AND", "OR", and "NOT" buttons.

- Other words should be entered in lowercase, but will match words that are capitalized, too.  For example, "shakespeare" will match "Shakespeare".

- The asterisk character (*) acts as a wild card character (see the examples above).

- You can use parentheses to make complicated searches (see the last example above).


Searching using an Index

You can find items that contain different, subjects, authors, or other various categories.

1) From the menu, select Search, and then select the index you wish to search upon.

2) Select the particular index (subject, author, etc.) from the list.

3) Select the entry from the index list.

4) Once you select an entry from the index list, you will be presented with a topic list.  This list shows all items in each book that the index you selected refers to.

Hint: You can get a quick index by right mouse clicking on a part of the displayed item.  For example, if you right click on an author name, you will see a topic list of every item that contains that author name.


The Topic List Box

When you initiate a text search or index search, or if you select the History function, you are presented with the Topic List Box.  This is an abbreviated list of all the items that match your search request.

To navigate through the Topic List Box, press the up and down arrow keys, or use the mouse to click on the selection you wish to view.  The main display screen will change according to the line in the box you have selected.


Setting the Search Scope

The search scope refers to which books are included in your searches.  You can include and exclude books easily:

1) Select Scope from the main menu.

2) Click on the book name you want to include or exclude.  If the book is highlighted,  then it will be included in all searches.

Note: If you want to include all books, simply choose Select All.


Copying an item into other software

To transfer an item into another piece of software such as a word processor:

1) Hold down the left mouse button, and drag the mouse over the text you wish to copy.  If you drag down the left margin, you will highlight entire lines at once.  The highlighted text will appear with a colored background.

2) From the menu, select Edit, Copy, or click on the [image] button.

3) From your word processor or other program, select Edit, Paste from the menu.

Helpful Hint:

If you wish to transfer the entire item, you can select Edit, Copy All from the menu.  You can also copy all your marked items by selecting Edit, Copy Marks.


Changing the Display Font

You can customize the type font used to display each data item:

1) From the menu, select Options, Text Font.

2) Choose the type font you wish to use to display every data item.

Notes:

This font will remain in effect until you change it again.


Changing the List Box Fonts

You can change the font used in the index and topic list boxes:

1) From the menu, select Options, List Font.

2) Select the font you wish to have used in the index and topic list boxes.

Notes:

This font will remain in effect until you change it again.


Moving Around

You can move easily through every data item, using keystrokes, buttons, or menu items.

To move down a page to the next item, select Item, Next from the menu, or press the PgDn key.

To move up a page to the previous item, select Item, Previous from the menu, or press the PgUp key.

To move to a random item, select Item, Random from the menu, or press the F9 key.

To return to the item you saw previous to the item now showing, select Item, Last from the menu.

To return to an item you have previously visited, select Item, History from the menu.


Marking Items

To collect a series of items, you can mark them.  You can think of this as an electronic paper clip to help you collect different scraps of items.  These marked items can then be found quickly, and then copied all at once into other software, such as your word processor.

To mark an item, do the following:

Select Mark, Mark from the menu, click on the [image] button, or press F10.  The status line at the bottom of the screen will read "MARKED" if the item is marked.

To remove a mark, just mark the item again (see above).

To copy all marks to the clipboard, select Mark, Copy All Marks.

To remove all marks, select Mark, Clear Marks.

To move between marked items, select Mark, Previous Mark or Mark, Next Mark.

NOTE: You can have up to 200 items marked at any one time.


Arranging The Display

You can customize the size, position, and font of the different windows that AApex BookMaster presents to you.  Once you reposition or resize a window, that particular window will remain in that size and shape forever until you change it again.

To resize a window:

1) Move the mouse onto the border until the cursor changes into a bi-directional arrow.

2) Hold down the left mouse button and drag the window to the size you wish.

To move a window:

1) Move the mouse over the title bar of the window.

2) Hold down the left mouse button, and drag the window into the position where you want it to be.

To change the font of a window:

You can customize the text font for the main screen, or the list font for all of the list boxes.  Select Options from the main menu, and then choose either Text Font or List Font.


Exiting

To exit and close this software, do the following:

Select File, Exit from the menu, or click on the [image] button.