next meeting - kipcugthe first week of june used to be known as the start of summer. this year,...

June1997

Volume 16, No. 6

In this issue

KIP

Spring Comdex . . . . . . . . .2Delphi - Cutting Edge . . . .3Delphi - What’s New? . . . .4Borland Web Site . . . . . . . .9CompuLex . . . . . . . . . . . .10Baker’s Dozen . . . . . . . . .10Map to IUS . . . . . . . . . . . .11Calendars . . . . . . . . . . . . .12Directory . . . . . . . . . . . . .13Sig Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . .14May Meeting Review . . . .15CorelDRAW 7 Suite . . . .18VBasic 5 - 1st Look . . . . .19Backup to Hard Disk . . . .21Odds & Ends . . . . . . . . . .22Mentors . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23Membership application .23

Next meetingBORLAND ’S DELPHI 3.0

IU SOUTHEAST, OGLE CNTR.Tuesday, June 10, 6:30 p.m.

CUGC h e c k u s o u t a t h t t p : / / w w w . k i p c u g . o r g

Monthly PublicationOf The

Kentucky IndianaPC Users Group

The first weekof June used tobe known as

the start of Summer.This year, it’s knownas the tail-end ofSpring.

This will be the lastSpring Comdex inAtlanta for quite sometime. The next ten years areplanned for Chicago.

My wife, Sharon, and I havebeen going to this event for 11years. We’ve always enjoyed itand encourage everyone tocheck it out.

We have seen this event rangefrom April 20 to June 4. Thelate weeks of May are sixmonths after Fall Comdex inLas Vegas. And there is theproblem. Man-o-man it suregets hot in Atlanta during thistime of year. One year our hotel

had air conditioningproblems and it madefor quite an experi-ence. Perhaps Chicagois the way to go. It willbe easier for usKIPCUG-ers to attend.Chicago is closer andyou gain an hour bymoving to the Central

Time Zone.The Consumer Electronics

Show will be combined withComdex & Windows Worldfrom now on and they areexpecting to double the atten-dance to 200-k. Whew!

We plan to bring back plentyof information to share at thenext meeting. By the way, PCExpo in New York starts theweek after our June meeting.Anyone going? It would begreat to get a report for the Julyissue of this magazine.

I/0 June, 1997

From The Editor

MEMBER

I/0 is published monthly by theKentucky Indiana Personal ComputerUsers Group, Inc. and is intendedprincipally for its membership. Allarticles in this publication are copy-righted by KIPCUG unless otherwisestipulated.

Express permission is granted forqualified user groups to copy thematerials in this publication providedappropriate credit is given toKIPCUG, I/0 and the author.

Requests from individuals or organi-zations other than user groups for per-mission to reprint should be made tothe editor-in-chief.

Advertising materials must be sub-mitted four weeks prior to the date ofpublication to guarantee insertion.Editorial submissions must be submit-ted three weeks prior to publication.

All editorial materials submitted toI/0 become the property of KIPCUG,and may be used by the organizationin any way deemed appropriate by thenewsletter staff and the Board ofDirectors of KIPCUG.

The editors reserve the right to makeany changes deemed necessary to anyeditorial matter submitted or to refusepublication of any material submitted.

Direct all newsletter correspondenceto: I/0, P.O.Box 1567, Louisville, KY40201 or:

[email protected].

Michael Romeo

I 0KKeennttuucckkyy IInnddiiaannaa PPCC

UUsseerrss GGrroouupp((NNeewwsslleetttteerr bbuussiinneessss oonnllyy))

PP..OO.. BBooxx 11556677LLoouuiissvviillllee,, KKYY 4400220011

EEddiittoorr--IInn--CChhiieeffMichael Romeo

AAssssiissttaanntt EEddiittoorrssJohn L. Gilkey

Sharon Kinney-Romeo

RReevviieeww EEddiittoorrBonnie Zepka

Contributing staff writers

Judy Lococo, Fred Soward,Sharon Kinney-Romeo, John Gilkey,

Bob Streever, Martin Campion

June, 1997 I/0

by Michael Romeo of KIPCUG

Our June meeting is one for the pro-grammers in our group. And these days,doesn’t that mean just about everyone?Whether you are working with WordProcessors, Databases, Spreadsheets,the Internet or whatever, it seems thatyou’ve got to know how to get userinput using Dialog Boxes. Eventually,you need to display status messages. Allof a sudden - you’re programming!

We have arranged for one of the pre-mier creator’s of development tools toshow us the latest version of their awardwinning programming language,Delphi. We are on the cutting edge withthis presentation as version 3.0 was justreleased in the first part of May.

Do you remember the text-based pro-gramming languages of ten to thirtyyears ago? I suspect that most everyonedabbled in Basic at least once or twiceback in that period. Well, keep thosefond memories for your grandchildren.It’s a Windows world these days. AGraphical User Interface (GUI) envi-ronment has beset us and we must moveto Visual Programming if we plan tokeep our hands in the mix.

Does this mean a lot more work? Is itlike having to learn Japanese afteryou’ve already learned Spanish? Well,if you want to earn a living from pro-gramming, then yes it does. BesidesGUI, there are a few more concepts thatmust be mastered before developingapplications in today’s world. You mustcome to terms with event-based pro-gramming and object-oriented tech-niques. Internet and Client/Server con-cepts must also be mastered. Nothingseems to work without knowing how tomanage the properties of Objects.

Yes, it’s become more complicated inthe programming world. But wait! Howcan this be? Don’t they advertise theseVisual Programming Languages as easyenough for anybody to use? Yep, pard-ner, they do! So what do they mean?How do they make life easier?

Are you ready? Here it comes. Don’ttake your eye off the ball. What theyreally mean is that now, it is a whole loteasier than four years ago. Before theseVisual Programming languages hit thescene, you can’t imagine how compli-cated it was to write applications for theWindows environment. It was reallytough going.

You’ll have to take my word for it.Things have gotten better. Designingforms graphically and setting the prop-erties of objects both during develop-ment and during execution has madeprogramming much easier. And a funnything happened along the way. By tak-ing this tack, they have made it possiblefor the novice programmer to get wetfeet.

It is analogous to a different age. First,there was Assembler, then Fortran, thenCobol and many other languages. Then,the guys at Dartmouth came up with aneasier way to program - Basic. Thesame thing has happened in the last tenyears. Programmers were being forcedinto C++ and vast libraries of utilitycode before an easier way finallyappeared - Visual Programming lan-guages.

And nowadays there are quite a fewVisual Programming languages: VisualBasic, Visual C++, Visual Java,Clarion, PowerBuilder, Delphi, VisualdBase and many, many more.

Where should you start if you are anovice? Is Visual Basic the way to go?IS there something easier? What if youhave power programmer requirements?Can Visual Basic serve power-userneeds? Borland thinks that you shouldtake a look at Delphi and many in theindustry agree. Over the past two years,Delphi has been getting most of the ravereviews, surpassing Visual Basic.Version 5 of Visual Basic came outabout two months ago and version 3 ofDelphi is now on the shelves.

Our upcoming meeting should provideall sorts of insights into the latest pro-gramming techniques. Come see if

these visual concepts are your cup oftea. This will be a great opportunity foryou to get a bit more knowledge aboutthese current concepts.

Borland has been the world leader inmany areas of program development.Microsoft is probably the market leader,but over the years, this smaller compa-ny has been first (and best) with manyconcepts. The whole RAD conceptcame from Borland. Their history withPascal, Paradox, TSRs and C++ is out-standing. Their support of User Groupsis excellent.

This should be a must-see meeting.Come prepared to pick up some valu-able knowledge. Don’t miss out on thisopportunity to get close to one of thecompanies leading the industry for-ward.

I have been spending some time latelyworking on projects using MicrosoftAccess with its Visual Basic forApplications. It’s been interesting but ithas whetted my appetite to take a goodlook at the capabilities of Delphi. I havebeen wanting to find some time toexamine it ever since we saw a presen-tation of Delphi at our December ‘95meeting at the Kentucky Center for theArts.

I spoke with Ylonda Davis of Borlandlast week about forming a Delphi SIGfor our User Group and she was verysupportive. Be sure and come to themeeting so that you can get a sense ofwhat Delphi can do. Maybe you’ll beinterested in joining this new SIG.From talking with some others, I’ll betwe end up with quite a few members.

Right now, let’s pick up on info aboutDelphi 3. What follows in the next arti-cle are some excerpts from a reviewfound on the Borland web-site. It’s a bittechnical. I know some of you codejunkies will like it. You serious typesshould definitely read through it to pre-pare for the meeting. However, keep inmind it is mainly for those who arealready familiar with the product.

Delphi 3.0 - Cutting Edge

I/0 June, 1997

INTRODUCTIONDelphi 3 is Borland’s new incarnation

of the award-winning RAD tool we allknow and love. It has been well knownthat Borland C++ Builder and Delphi 3have been developed over the sameperiod of time for almost-simultaneousdelivery. It has also been fairly wellknown that the code names for thesetwo products were Ebony and Ivoryrespectively. Today we are going on anIvory hunt.

Borland has put an awful lot of effortinto adding new features and function-ality into what was already in place forDelphi 2. The general areas includeEXE generation, database and Internet-related things.

First this month, we will investigatethe new environment.

IDE UPDATESThe integrated development environ-

ment (IDE) has a face lift. The firstthing you notice when you launch theIDE is that all the speed buttons on thespeed bar and components on the com-ponent palette (which are implementedas speed buttons) have the new flat lookthat Microsoft has added to InternetExplorer 3. The TSpeedButton compo-nent has a new property called Flat toallow you to take on this look and feel.The TDBNavigator also has a Flat prop-erty to make its constituent speed but-tons merge in with the background (theTMediaPlayer, however, does not).

The next thing you spot when youcompile your first application is that theeditor has a visible left-hand gutter. Nomore will we all add breakpoints by

THE DELPHI 3 NOVELTY STOREfrom The Delphi Magazine - Issue 20, April 1997

mistakenly clicking on a very un-obvi-ous gutter in the first few millimeters ofthe editor. Whilst on the subject, a littletip for Delphi users is to set the editor’sright-hand margin to be at column 0.This makes the presence and position ofthe gutter much more evident.

This new gutter takes ideas fromTurbo Debugger. It shows you whichsource lines have machine instructionsgenerated for them, as well as showingwhere breakpoints have been set. It alsodisplays the editor bookmarks you’veset.

A few other obvious IDE things tonotice are some changed and some newmenus. Delphi 1 had an Options |Environment... menu item. Delphi 2changed this to Tools | Options... whichwas confusing since it wasn’t clear whatoptions it referred to. Delphi 3 address-es this by changing it to Tools |Environment Options...

This dialog’s Preferences page has anoption to configure the location of ashared Object Repository. TheRepository defaults to the ObjReposDelphi subdirectory but can be relocat-ed elsewhere. This was always possibleby adding a BaseDir string value intoDelphi 2’s Repository key in the reg-istry, but it is now all formalized into theIDE.

Borland has bowed down to Microsoftterminology and now all the “experts”in this product (and in C++ Builder) arecalled “wizards” (despite someMicrosoft’ employees wincing at theterm). Thus the Database menu has aForm Wizard... option.

The Run | Parameters... menu, whichpreviously allowed you to specify com-mand-line parameters for your applica-tion, now also allows you to specify ahost application. This is to enable DLLdebugging support, something thatDelphi has been sorely lacking since itsinception. Unlike Turbo Debugger, youdebug an EXE or a DLL. You can’t stepfrom a Delphi EXE project straight intoa Delphi DLL project, but it is muchbetter than nothing.

* Introduction* IDE Updates* Code Insight

* Code Completion* Code Parameters* Tooltip Expression Evaluation* Code Templates

* Project Options* New Components* Component/RTL Modifications* Component Templates* Packages* Package Collections* Business Insight

* New VCL Architecture* Database Explorer & BDE Administrator* New BDE* Distributed DataSets - N-Tier Computing* Decision Cube

* About Brian Long

June, 1997 I/0

Code Completion,

Code Parameters

and

Tooltip Expression

Evaluator

------

these neat

Editor T ime-Savers

are way too cool.

There is now a multi-

file search option on

the Search Menu.

You can search for

something throughout

all files in your project

or throughout all files

within a directory .

The next noteworthy item on theagenda is found on the Search menu.There is now a multi-file search optionlocated within Find in Files. This willplease many a developer. You are ableto search for something throughout allthe files in your project, or all the filesin a directory (with the option of includ-ing subdirectories).

Rather pleasantly, the search operatesin a background thread, so you can geton using the product whilst a largesearch takes place. The list of occur-rences of the search text are placed inthe editor message window indicatingthe file name and line number. Double-clicking on these brings the file into theeditor with the cursor on the appropriateline.

The undocumented registry stringvalue EnableCPU in the Delphi 3.0Debugging key still works. If you setthis to 1 a new CPU Window menu itemappears next time you launch Delphi.This looks much better than Delphi 2(in fact it looks the same as the docu-mented CPU window in C++ Builder)but the local menus generally don’t doanything. I seem to get a lot of debuggercrashes when it is active, which mightexplain why it is undocumented.

I’ll just briefly mention that theWin95 page of the component palettehas now been renamed the Win32 page,in honor of Windows NT 4 now offer-ing support for these controls. There isalso a new page called Decision Cubethat we will come back to, but whatshall we look at next? More editor fea-tures I think.

When you have a block of text high-lighted, the editor allows you to drag itto a new destination like in MicrosoftWord. Additionally, holding the Controlkey down before you start draggingallows text copying. It takes a while toget used to it and you may find youmove text blocks accidentally when justintending to highlight a block of code.If you find yourself in the throes ofmoving a block you did not intend to,simply drag the cursor back to the blockand you will drop it where it came from.

Another drag and drop feature allowsyou to drag a file from WindowsExplorer and drop it into the editor - theeditor duly opens it. Okay, I admit thatthis feature has been around since

Delphi 1 but I only found out about itthe other day, so it feels new to me.

CODE INSIGHTOne of the nattiest additions, in my

humble opinion, is referred to generi-cally as Code Insight. Code Insight is aset of editor time savers. Most of themoperate by the environment constantlyscanning editor source code and thecontents of accessible units in a back-ground thread. These features are simi-lar to the sort of things that Visual Basic5 offers in its development environ-ment.

Firstly, Code Completion. If you typein an object name (even one of yourown) and then type a period in prepara-tion for typing a method or propertyname, a listbox magically pops up withall possible values available (see Figure4). Select an entry and press Enter and itis typed in for you, with nice consistentcase usage and never a typo to be found.If you want it to come up at any time ondemand, press Ctrl-Space. The list canbe sorted either alphabetically or inscope order.

The next thing on the block is CodeParameters. Type a procedure, func-tion or method name (again, even one ofyour own) and the open parenthesis anda tooltip appears showing the parameterlist as it appears in the routine’s decla-ration - name, type and any modifier(see Figure 5). The parameter that needsto be entered is emboldened and as youenter more parameters, the boldnessmoves along to the relevant parameters.It’s way too cool! To get the tooltipupon demand, press Ctrl-Shift-Space (itwon’t show if it is not relevant).

Incidentally, one word of caution iswarranted here. Some Delphi 3 testershave encountered a problem whenslightly mis-keying this keystroke com-bination. It’s not a Delphi problem, butapparently Dell computers runningWindows 95 lock up when you pressCtrl-Alt-Space, so be warned.

The third Code Insight feature is theTooltip Expression Evaluator. Thisconcept was first introduced (as far as Iknow) in Microsoft Visual C++ andsaves you mucking about with theWatch window (which, incidentally, bypopular demand now has a stay on topoption on its local menu). When the

I/0 June, 1997

debugger is in control of the applicationyou just put your mouse over someexpression involving variables or prop-erties and the value appears in a tooltip

Just as an aside, I heard a tooltip-relat-ed story involving an example ofDanish humour. In the early days of thedevelopment of Delphi 1, while com-patibility for the upcoming Windows 95was being taken care of, AndersHejlsberg (the chief architect of theproduct) saw a tooltip for the first time.The Dane saw a yellow area appearbelow the mouse pointer and announcedto the closed R&D meeting that themouse had just urinated... Okay, let’smove along.

The last Code Insight feature is per-haps the one that has been most askedfor - Code Templates. These can be setup on the Code Insight page of the envi-ronment options. When editing, youpress Ctrl-J and get a list of code tem-plates to choose from. The editor thentypes the template in. The pre-definedtemplates include a full class declara-tion with constructor and destructor, andan if..then..else statement to name buttwo of the 22. If you have already start-ed typing in a keyword, the list offeredis reduced to those which will apply.These templates get stored in the DEL-PHI32.DCI text file in the BIN directo-ry (the extension stands for Delphi CodeInsight).

When you create your own templatesyou can insert a pipe sign, |, to indicatewhere the cursor should be left after thetemplate has been typed in.

PROJECT OPTIONSIn the Project Options dialog, as well

as package options (they will bedescribed later), there is a whole pagefor version information as used in manycommercial applications. This getsincluded into the project .RES file. Onthe Directories/Conditionals page youcan specify a directory where compiledunits are placed. Additionally for thoseof you writing screen savers, OCXs,ActiveXs and other binaries that requirea different file extension, you can setone up on the Application page. Thisadds a new compiler directive($Extension or $E) into the projectsource file.

On the Application page, we can seethat Delphi projects now get arevamped default project icon.

One extra option on the Compilerpage enables or disables assertions.This matches another new compilerdirective, $Assertions or $C. Assertionsare available in C and C++ and manypeople have tried to come up with asuitable implementation of them inDelphi. We now have an Assert proce-dure to test a Boolean expression - if itfails an EAssertionFailed exceptiongets generated (unless exceptions havebeen disabled, whereupon you will get arun-time error 227).

SysUtils replaces what would havebeen the normal dull assertion excep-tion with a more interesting one thatreports the source file and line numberof the failure. You can also customisethe assertion behavior (for example tostore the failure messages in an errorlog file) by assigning the address of acustom routine to the AssertErrorProcpointer. The procedure must be compat-ible with the following procedural type:

procedure (const Message,Filename: string; LineNumber:Integer; Err orAddr: Pointer);

When you’ve used assertions to helpthoroughly debug your application, youcan remove all the assertion code fromthe EXE with the compiler option.

COMPONENT TEMPLATESDelphi application developers often

find themselves setting groups of com-ponents in much the same way for manyapplications. Previously, you had nochoice but to set the components, prop-erties & code manually each time. NowDelphi helps automate this process.After painstakingly setting up yourgroup of components, select them all inthe Form Designer, choose Component| Create Component Template... and youcan add a compound componentstraight onto the component palette. Itwon’t be a true component, but whocares? It does the trick.

Whenever you want that group againjust pluck from the palette. The posi-tioning, the properties and all the eventhandlers are added instantaneously. Ifany of the event handlers previouslyreferred to components in the group,then the new event handlers’ code isgenerated bearing that in mind.References to the new components areused instead.

All the details of these componenttemplates are stored in the binary DEL-PHI32.DCT file in the BIN directory.

PACKAGESOne of the main gripes that Borland

Pascal and C/C++ programmers hadabout Delphi when it first came out wasthe size of the EXEs it generates. EachEXE has a large portion of the VCLcompiled into it and so had an initialfootprint of at least 180kb. Databaseapplications had a footprint of 330kb.This changes to slightly smaller sizes inDelphi 2, but they are not very different.Admittedly people worry rather lessthese days with the cost of disk storagedropping through the floor, but it is stillless than desirable having the VCLduplicated through all your DelphiEXEs.

Delphi 3 helps avert this problem byintroducing the concept of packages.These are DLLs with a DPL extension(for Delphi Package Library) that canhave the various VCL units (and anyothers you care to use) compiled intothem. You can compile your requiredunits into as many or as few packages asyou want. They can be marked as run-time only, design-time only or suitable

One of themain gripes

about earlierversions ofDelphi was thesize of the EXEfiles.

Packageshelp avert

this problem.

June, 1997 I/0

for both. The Delphi component libraryis no more: design-time compatiblepackages take its place. Also, Delphi 3itself is compiled using run-time pack-ages and so despite the mass of newdialogs and environment features in theIDE, Delphi32.Exe is only 500kb largerthan Delphi 2.

Delphi now comes with a whole hostof packages that contain all the compo-nents from the component palette. Thenames of those installed into the envi-ronment are mostly prefixed with DCLand implement the various property edi-tors and component editors required bythe components, and contain the com-ponent registrations. The others are run-time only (you cannot install them intothe environment) and implement all thecomponents. The main one that gets ref-erenced is VCL30.DPL and is just over1.1Mb in size. This includes the basicrun-time library code and basic VCLwith no database or Internet compo-nents. Most of the database componentsare compiled into VCLDB30.DPL(585kb).

The Project Options dialog has aPackages page that lists the design timepackages that are installed. You caninstall and remove design-time compat-ible packages here, as well as see whichpackages installed which components.This is also where you decide if youwish to compile with package supportor in the more traditional Delphi way.

If you do compile with packages, youcan specify which packages should beconsidered for linkage (and by implica-tion which units will be compileddirectly into the EXE). The packagerequirements of the project get storedinto a temporary Windows resource filewith a .DRF extension as a customresource type during compilation. Theythen get bound into the EXE during linktime.

Despite packages being implementedas DLLs, do not think of them as such -instead consider them as a linker optionthat distributes code across binary mod-ules but without changing the programsemantics or organization. You do nothave to concern yourself with callingfrom the EXE to the DLL - you just callsomething in a unit and Delphi sorts outappropriate code to cross moduleboundaries where necessary.

Now on to the important information.If you compile a simple one form pro-ject with a button that callsShowMessage it comes out at 195kbwithout package support and 9.5kb withpackages enabled. This clearly meansthat an application suite that featuresmany Delphi DLLs and EXEs canshrink in size markedly.

Packages are intended to help applica-tion maintenance and deployment. Ifyou need to modify a piece of yourapplication, you do not have to re-deploy the whole application - just theaffected package. You also don’t need torecompile the whole application.

However not everyone is over themoon at the thought of packages per-vading everyone’s hard disks. Theyforesee that there can be potential may-hem when Borland bring out incremen-tal releases of Delphi - the packages willall need new revisions. There may be apractical versioning issue to deal with,but hopefully Borland have consideredthis and know how to deal with the situ-ation in an adult fashion.

The consensus of many is that corpo-rate-wide distribution of Delphi applica-tions will be greatly helped by pack-ages, but smaller outfits, like sharewareauthors, will probably not take advan-tage of them.

PACKAGE COLLECTIONSThe Package Collection Editor

(PCE.EXE) takes multiple compiledpackages (.DPL files) and saves the listas a .PCE file - an .INI file. When youbuild the package collection you get abinary .DPC file (Delphi PackageCollection, as opposed to .DCP, DelphiCompiled Package).

When installing packages withComponent | Install Packages... (which,incidentally takes you to the equivalentof the project options Packages page)you can load a package (.DPL) or apackage collection .DPC. If you choosea package collection, then you are pre-sented with the Package CollectionInstallation Wizard which allows you tochoose which of the constituent pack-ages you want to install.

This facility allows component suitedevelopers to supply many design-timepackage libraries in the convenient formof a single file.

BUSINESS INSIGHTThis is the second use of the Insight

term and refers to all the new databaseand decision support component archi-tecture in the product. According to theslide in the slide-show I saw, it turnsyour data into actionable information.Well I don’t know much about market-ing, but I know what I like. And I dolike the work done to the database sup-port in the product. Without further ado,let’s press on.

NEW VCL ARCHITECTUREThere are several third-party libraries

that allow you to write applications thattalk to certain data formats without theuse of the BDE. This gives a smallerdistribution overhead, but was difficultto implement due to TDataSet havingvarious BDE dependencies. It typicallyrequired modifications to the DB VCLunit.

In order to help third party developers,these dependencies have been removedfrom TDataSet and put in a newTDataSet descendant, TBDEDataSet, orin TDBDataSet, which now inheritsfrom TBDEDataSet. This means thatthird parties can now simply derivefrom TDataSet. Additionally, all theBDE-related code has moved from DBto the DBTables unit to stop any appli-

Encapsulation,Polymorphism,Inheiratence....

You certainly needto be up on

Object Orientedconcepts to do

effective programmingin these newer

languages.

I/0 June, 1997

cation using DB from pulling in theBDE. Because of this overhaul, certaincode that refers to TDataSet may needto be changed to refer to TBDEDataSetor TDBDataSet.

It would be nice to see an in-deptharticle on writing a BDE replacementusing this new architecture that coversmore than the Borland-supplied infor-mation. Would anybody care to take upthe challenge?

There is default BLOb caching (whichcan be turned off using the TdataSetproperty CacheBlobs) to speed upscrolling through TDBCtrlGrids whichhave BLOb fields displayed. And yes,TDBImages and TDBMemos can nowbe placed on a control grid. In the ver-sion I am currently testing,TDBRichEdits cannot.

DATABASE EXPLORER &BDE ADMINISTRATOR

The Database Explorer (or SQLExplorer as it calls itself in theClient/Server Suite) is now up to ver-sion 2.0. It sports many new featuresincluding the ability to drag stored pro-cedures onto forms. It also allows you toedit various SQL objects. For example,you can edit any view or stored proce-dure, InterBase generators and excep-tions, Oracle packages and packagebodies.

There is now a menu option for get-

ting to the BDE Administrator (a muchmore user friendly application than theBDE Config app used to be). The BDEAdministrator is based on the look andfeel of the Database Explorer. In factthis is almost certainly a big code-shar-ing exercise since they both use thesame INI-style configuration file,DBX.DBI. You can also invoke theODBC Administrator from the Objectmenu.

One of the menus also allows you toset up transaction isolation level for thedatabase connections.

NEW BDEThe new Borland Database Engine is

up to version 4 and now natively sup-ports multi-byte character sets (MBCSsupport). Additionally, it has two newnative drivers for FoxPro and Accesstables. These drivers make use ofMicrosoft’s DAO connectivity butunfortunately rely on you already hav-ing a properly licensed product thatimplements DAO, such as MicrosoftOffice 95 or 97.

If you feel that you need a native BDEdriver that does not exist, and you alsofeel you can commit the time andpatience to writing one, Borland mayhave something for you. The long-promised IDAPI driver SDK is nowbeing made available by Borland. Thisis best obtained by speaking to BorlandDeveloper Relations.

DISTRIBUTED DATASETS -N-TIER COMPUTING?

Application partitioning is very fash-ionable nowadays. Delphi 2 made atoken gesture in the direction of split-ting UI code away from data manipula-tion code with the data module. Delphi3 allows full blown three-tier systems tobe implemented using a new VCL fea-ture called remote datasets.

What this means is that an applicationcan manipulate data in database tables,using a dedicated dataset-based compo-nent, but have no direct connection tothe data. It also has no need for links tothe BDE or any other database access-ing technology. It talks to some dataserver application (or data broker as it isoften referred to) using DCOM and theserver application worries about theactual communication with the data in

the database and applying appropriatebusiness logic and data validation thatmay be necessary.

DECISION CUBEIf you have a keen memory you may

remember Borland’s ex-productQuattro Pro for Windows had a nicedata pivot cross-tab facility. Some nicedevelopers in Borland were implement-ing similar functionality for anotherproject that seems to have fallenthrough, so it has been componentisedfor use in Delphi 3. However sourcecode is not supplied in any version asBorland feels they may wish to use it intheir own products in the future. Theydon’t want their algorithms to be knownby potential competitors.

Decision Cube refers to a set of deci-sion support components that allow youto generate cross-tab graphs and chartsto get views and summaries of your datafrom varying perspectives.

The TDecisionCube is a non-visualcomponent that acts as a multidimen-sional data store connected to a dataset.Typically the dataset is an SQL expres-sion in a TQuery descendant structuredin an appropriate way. The cube main-tains an image of the data in such a waythat it can perform various manipula-tions without having to re-query theoriginal dataset.

ABOUT BRIAN LONGBrian Long used to work at Borland

UK, performing a number of differentduties all involving the developmenttools. Since leaving Borland just beforeDelphi 1 was released in January 1995,Brian has been offering training andconsultancy services to the growingDelphi community and now hopes togrow into the Borland C++ Buildermarket.

In his spare time Brian writes articles.He is a columnist for The DelphiMagazine and also writes forComputing, EXE Magazine and TheDelphi Developers Journal. As well ashaving a well-reviewed Borland Pascalproblem-solving book published in1994, he contributed a few chapters tothe 1996 Wrox Press book TheRevolutionary Guide to Delphi 2 (someimportant errata for it can be found onDr. Bob’s Web site).

We couldn’tfit all of

the article intothis issue.

Check theBorland

web-site formore details.

www .borland.com

June, 1997 I/0

www.borland.comby Michael Romeo of KIPCUG

You find all sorts of interesting thingson this web-site. John Gilkey and Inoticed that we had spent hours lookingthrough this and that in preparing forthe magazine this month. There is lotsof in-depth info here.

Like many web-sites these days, youcan find financial information about thecompany’s previous fiscal quarters.This site even provides the latest stockquote (within 20-30 minutes).

There are plenty of press releasestodocument the history of the company.We find these helpful in keeping upwith product announcements and such.

One announcement informed us aboutthe inclusion of Microsoft’s web brows-er with Delphi 3. This makes sense. Alot of work went into Delphi to make ita platform for creating and managingActiveX controls.

We were surprised to see the effortthat has taken place to make Delphi aworkable product for IBM’s AS/400.The 400 just keeps going and going!

I liked the information aboutBorland’s upcoming events. A lot ofprogram developers are probably awarethat Borland’s annual DeveloperConference is known as the best in theland. The 8th one will be held this year

in Nashville over July 12-16. YlondaDavis told us last week that they wereexpecting about 3,000 attendees. This5-day event costs about $1,200.

Later in July, Borland will kick-off aworld tour of Delphi and C++ Builder(with Java). These 3-day seminars willtake place in many cities throughNovember and will cost about $850.

These events are really a great way toincrease your knowledge and networkwith other power users. The pricesinclude the cost of software and seem tobe a good value. We’d love to go.

We would like to get a report fromany member who attends the July 12thConference. You could share with thereaders your perceptions about the peo-ple you meet, the attitude of the ven-dors and the whole “feel” of the event.Get in touch & get published.

As you can tell, this web-site is a largeone and it’s appropriate that a SearchFacility has been implemented to finddocuments containing phrases that youenter. In addition, Borland maintains anIndex Pagethat describes the layout ofthe site. This is necessary and helpful.Both of these are nice touches.

We were impressed with the vastnumber of White Papers that could be

found. Technical sites should have plen-ty of these and Borland delivers.

Borland seems timely in respondingto questions within the newsgroupsthat they support.

1. General 5. Delphi2. Installation 6. IntraBuilder3. C++Builder 7. Visual dBase4. C++ 8. Pascal

Finally, here is the current product listfrom Borland:

1. C++ Builder2. Delphi3. Delphi/4004. IntraBuilder5. JBuilder6. InterBase 7. Visual dBASE 8. Borland C++ 9. Turbo Assembler 10. Paradox 11. Borland Database Engine 12. ReportSmith 13. SQL Links 14. Pascal

This is truly a site to see. Check it out.And give yourself plenty of time. Forthose who remember the money spenton CompuServe, you’ll love this site.

I/0 June, 1997

by Bob Streever of KIPCUG

KIPCUG had such a good response tothe Summer membership promotionlast year that we’ve decided to do itagain!

The Board has voted to offer thirteenmonths membership for the price oftwelve. All you have to do is sign up byJuly 31.

The price is still the same: $35 for sin-gle and $50 for family. A good deal hasgotten even better.

New members and current memberswhose renewal comes up this month arerolled into this promotion automatical-ly. The rest of us can participate byextending our membership.

KIPCUG provides monthly meetingswith presentations from national ven-dors. We have been in existence since1983 and enjoy a good reputation withthe leading companies in the computerindustry. We see the latest hardware andsoftware - sometimes before it is

released. Often these vendors rafflesamples to the attendees at the meet-ings. Our basic mission is educationalbut darn if it doesn’t turn out to be funalso.

The main benefit of membership hasgot to be the people you meet. Link upwith others who share your interests.KIPCUG provides a Bulletin BoardSystem (BBS)and a web-site to facili-tate communication among members.

Members get one hour/day on ourBBS plus an Internet e-mail account.Members share knowledge by writingarticles for our monthly publication.Special Interest Groups (SIGs) meetmonthly for those who have commoninterests.

So whether you are a novice or apower user; whether you are young inyears or long of tooth; come join us andjourney thru another fun-filled year offellowship and education.

Memberships can be great gifts forfriends and relatives. Spread the word!

CompuLexThe Lexington Computer Fair


Saturday, May 17th was the 8th occur-rence of this event. It is put on each yearby the PCUser Group (CKCS) inLexington. I haven’t been in six yearsand it seemed about the same size to me.However, a vendor told me that it wassmaller this year than last.

I’m not sure of the details but I wastold that the Lexington Herald-Leader isa co-sponsor of this event I was struckby the large number of User Group vol-unteers thru-out the Hall. About 300, Ithink. Impressive!

They had a series of free seminars inaddition to the vendor booths and Ienjoyed attending one from Micrografxthat lasted about 45 minutes.

There seemed to be about 50 vendors.Lexmark, Micrografx, Borland andKET are the ones I remember. I noticedsome Louisville natives also: ComputerTimes, Louisville Computer News,IgLou and InterSpace Computers.

Like the Computer Fairs we have herein town, there were vendors selling bothhardware and software.

The admission was $5 and there weremany prizes raffled out each hour by theUser Group.

I enjoyed meeting some of the mem-bers of the User Group. They have over1,200 members and they meet on the2nd Monday of the month. They have apot-luck dinner scheduled for next time.The User Group provides some of thefood. They also elect their officers at thenext meeting.

I really liked the pot-luck idea. Ourlast meeting at Indiana UniversitySouthEast enjoyed fantastic summerweather. I remember thinking then thatit would have been great to have a cook-out a few hours before the meeting. Thesetting on campus with the lake and out-doors pavilion is very nice.

CKCS has an affiliation with thenational SeniorNet organization andseem to have a lot of activities for theirsenior members.

This User Group has their own 2,000square-ft Resource Center that ismanned by volunteers six days a weekfrom 10 am to 4 pm. They have com-puter labs at the Center and hold all oftheir 12 SIGs there. Check out theirweb-site at: www.ckcs.org

Baker�s DozenKIPCUG Membership Drive

June, 1997 I/0

Getting to IUS from LouisvilleTake I-65 north to I-265

Turn west on I-265 (after passing under the overpass)Take the Grant Line Road exit from I-265.

Turn right at the intersection.IUS is a half mile from I-265 on the left.

The Ogle Center is at the back right of the campus.Park behind the building.

I/0 June, 1997

June, 1997 I/0

Directory ofDirectory ofKIPCUG LeadersKIPCUG Leaders

Name Position Home Phone Work Phone

Judy Lococo President 893-8710 893-8710Robert Myers Vice President 495-6744Sharon Kinney-Romeo Secretary 893-2672 568-5192Nancy Lorey Treasurer 280-0468Michael Romeo SIG Director 893-2672John Gilkey Newsletter Editor 282-6040 283-6636Jerry Wasserzug Distribution coordinator 452-1912Steve Goldberg Program Director 282-5186Paul Ward BBS SYSOP 231-9267David Puckett User to User Coordinator 451-8907Mike Shaikun Legal Advisor 425-3326 589-4200Bob Streever Membership Director 895-4180 459-2151Fred Soward Volunteer Coordinator 426-1829Marvin Livingood Director Emeritus 459-8888 459-8888Ric Manning WebmasterPaul Newman New Mbr. Orientation 459-2019Debbie Bulleit Membership AssistantLouis Gagel Program Setup

KIPCUG SupportersKIPCUG SupportersPlease support them with your business

The vendors listed below have contributed hardware or software to KIPCUG toassist in production of the organization’s monthly newsletter. We encourage youto support these vendors who are helping to support our organization.Lexmark Novell

4029 Laser printer with accelerator Netware 4.1Adobe Corel

Photoshop 3.0 WordPerfect Dos/WindowsIllustrator 4.0 Corel Ventura

IntuitQuicken 5.0

The FifthThe FifthDimensionDimension

O f f i c i a l B u l l e t i n B o a r d o f K I P C U GThe FifthDimension is available 24 hours a day at (502) 231-0053. Data trans-mission standards are: 1,200-28,800 bps, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit, no parity, v.42,v.42bis., v.32, v.32bis. Operating with three nodes.

Advertising Rates for I/0Advertising Rates for I/0Ad size RatePer 1 col. inch (2.25” wide) 8.00Half Page (3 col x 5”) 110.00Full Page 200.00

Ad sizes must be in full column widthand in one inch depth increments.

Discount RateThree consecutive insertions 10%Twelve consecutive insertions 20%Special discounts offered to KIPCUG members CallMembership discount 10%

All Advertising must be paid for at the time of submission or on approved PO.Rates are for electronic (JPG EPS TIF) copy. The deadline for submission ofadvertising materials is the first of the month for the next month’s publication.Send all advertising materials to:Nancy Lorey, I/0 Ad Manager, 5314 Hidden Lakes Blvd.,Jeffersonville, IN47130. For more information, call (812) 280-0468 evenings.

NOTE: I/O is published electroni-cally in addition to its printed edi-tion. Advertising materials not sup-plied in electronic form will not beincluded in the electronic edition.

I/O SubmissionsI/O SubmissionsArticles submitted to I/O should be in ASCII text format and submitted one

month in advance. If graphics are included, they should be submitted in TIF fileformat whenever possible.

I/0 June, 1997

I N V E S T I N GMeets 6:30 pm. on the 2nd Thursday of the month at theLouisville AeroClub, Bowman Field. Contact Doc Viele at452-6878 for details. Please note, we DO NOT discuss therelative merits of mutual funds.N E W U S E R SMeets 6:30 pm. on the 2nd Monday of the month at the NewHorizons Learning Center, 10001 Linn Station Road (near I-64 and Hurstbourne Ln.) Contact Fred Soward at 893-2800,extension 135, for details.O S / 2Meets 6:30 pm. on the 4th Tuesday of the month at theProvidian Building, 400 West Market Street. Use the MarketStreet entrance and proceed to IBM Suite 1400. Contact AlanMcCutcheon at 366-4092 for details.P A R A D O XThis SIGis planning to meet at the New Horizons LearningCenter at 10001 Linn Station Road (near I-64 andHurstbourne). If you are interested in attending regularly,please suggest a day and time for these meetings. ContactSteve Goldberg at 282-5186.

T E L E C O M M U N I C A T I O N SMeets 6:30 pm. on the 4th Wednesday of the month atAdWare Systems,Inc. located on the 10th floor of theWaterside Building, 101 East MainStreet.Contact SharonKinney-Romeo at 568-5192 (W) for details.V I S U A L B A S I CMeets 7 pm. on the 2nd Thursday of the month at the NewHorizons Learning Center, 10001 Linn Station Road (near I-64 and Hurstbourne Ln.) CallMartin Campion at 637-9878for details.W E B M A S T E RMeets 6 pm. on the 3rd Thursday of the month at 330-F,Distillery Commons. Contact DonFowler at 589-6800 fordetails.W I N D O W S , W O R D & E X C E LMeets 6:30 pm. on the 4th Monday of the month at 102Daventry Lane, Suites 7-8. Call JimTravelstead, 852-4761(W) or 375-4796 (H). Take Hurstbourne Ln. north towardsShelbyville Rd., turn right on Shelbyville Rd., turn at thePizza Hut about 1 block on the left. Go past the Pizza Hut tobrick building on the left.

The SIG Scene


VISUAL BASICIt looks like the Visual Basic SIGis

getting some new life breathed into it.And it seems that the location move hasbeen responsible for much of the lift.

Last month’s meeting was the first atthe new site on Linn Station Rd. ThisSIG is now meeting at the NewHorizon’s Learning Center.

The old location used to be at theCompuPro office located off I-65 closeto the RiverTree Mall exit. The folks atCompuPro were very supportive andgenerous. However, the SIG had beendwindling over the past year and mem-bers were saying that the location wastoo far away for them. Most of theattendees live around the SouthEast ofLouisville and the new site is muchcloser for them to reach.

Our Volunteer Coordinator, FredSoward, happens to work at NewHorizon’s and he really helped in get-ting things set up for us.

Fred arranged for a classroom of 30PCs to be made available and had VB4Professional Edition loaded onto 6 ofthe machines. We ended up with 9attendees and the folks at New

Horizon’s were gracious enough to loadup another 2 PCs with VB4 within 15minutes. Thanks a bunch guys.

Since we had some new attendees atthis meeting, we jumped right intoshowing how you could get things donein a relatively short time with VB.

We designed a Meeting Attendanceapplication with 1 form whose fieldstied into an Access database. SinceAccess was not loaded onto the PCs, wemade use of the Data Manager add-inthat comes with VB. It allows you tocreate a rudimentary Access table.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the meet-ing. However, we need to get a bit moreorganized for the next time. If you planto show up, please give the SIGleader,Martin Campion, a call so that he canarrange for a useful number of PCs tobe set up for us.

VISUAL FOXPROBob Streever and Chris McCandless

are wanting to start up a new SIG. Bobcurrently keeps our membership data-base on Dos FoxPro 2.6 and it lookslike Chris is going to take over this job.Chris has been using Visual FoxPro fora few months and he will probably beusing this for the database. If you are

interested in joining, let either of thesetwo know. Bob’s number is found with-in the I/O magazine. Both can bereached with messages on the BBS.

DELPHI

Come to the next meeting and sign upfor this new SIG. We will be announc-ing the dates and times then.

INVESTING

Doc Viele handles this SIG and he haspromised to come up with an article forthe next issue. I finally had a chance tomeet him and his round-table formatsounds pretty interesting.

NOTICEThe TeleCommunications SIGwill

not meet next month on June 24th TheSIG Leader will be out of town.

This brings up a point. I have noticedthat other User Groups have a sign-upsheet for SIGs on their BBS. Memberswho are planning to attend are request-ed to sign up each month so that the SIGleader can plan more effectively. TheBBS is also used as a check point by allin case the SIGLeader has to cancelunexpectedly. This sounds like a goodidea.

June, 1997 I/0

May marked our first meeting atthe Indiana University Southeast(IUS) location. There was a backlogof members checking in at the mem-bership table at 6:30 pm and wedelayed our meeting about 20 min-utes so that they could hear theentire program. We ended up with agood crowd of about 350 but nextmonth we will be making a concert-ed effort to start on time. Get thereearly, folks.

Judy Lococo, President, began theprogram with club announcements.

Martin Campion announced thatthe Visual Basic SIG has changedlocations. Beginning in May, theywill meet at the New HorizonsLearning Center. They will continueto meet on the 2nd Thursday of eachmonth.

Fred Soward, our VolunteerCoordinator, announced that we stillhave vacancies for Secretary,Membership Director, VolunteerCoordinator and SIG Coordinator.The nominations are closed at thispoint, but you can still get on board.Contact Fred so that you can beincluded in the vote in June.

These positions require you toattend monthly board meetings andmonthly general meetings. Thenadd about six hours more per month.That’s not too much time, eh? Comejoin with the current BoardMembers and enjoy the next yearnetworking with good people.

Fred announced that the UserHelpline has been discontinued.Members and visitors with ques-tions can post them on The FifthDimension BBS, call the directorslisted in I/O or join the discussiongroup on the web-site atwww.kipcug.org.

Fred thanked those who volun-teered their time and energy to manthe KIPCUG booth at the LouisvilleComputer Fair. We appreciate you!!

The New Users SIG will meet forthe last time at Pomeroy Computersin May. Thereafter, the meetingswill be held at the New HorizonsLearning Center. Fred will be takingon the leadership position for thisSIG.

Partition MagicSteve Goldberg, our Program

Director, introduced the first presen-ter. Dave Wittle of WebworkingServices showed up to presentPartitionMagic version 3 fromPowerQuest Corporation.

Dave has a long history with IBM.He was an author of IBM’s on-lineguide and a founder of OS/2. Therewas a problem with the PowerPointdemo, but Dave gave a good synop-sis of the product without the aid ofthe slides. He wings it with style.

The need for a product likePartitionMagic came about whenthe cost for disk capacity wentdown.

When DOS was developed, thedevelopers anticipated the desire tokeep different operating systems onthe same disk. This led to the inclu-sion of disk partition support. Eachpartition can have a different operat-ing system. However, the number ofclusters for a disk is constant despitethe size of the disk. Therefore, thebigger the disk, the larger the clus-ter.

The result is, when a small file issaved, it takes up the space of thesmallest cluster for the disk. As disksizes have increased, the smallestcluster size has also increased. Thewaste on a 400M drive could easilybe 40 percent!

Each disk partition is divided into65,000 clusters. This is 32K on a 1G

disk. When you partition a disk intosmaller logical disk drives, the clus-ter size is reduced. The cluster sizeon a 512M disk is reduced to 16K.The cluster size for a disk of 255-512M is 8K. Dave said you onlylose about 1K to overhead on eachdrive when you create smaller parti-tions.

FAT (File Allocation Table) camenext with the problems we have allcome to know. Filenames have astructure of 8 characters with anadditional 3 character extension.The root directory is limited to nomore than 512 entries. Disk frag-mentation can occur when files areeach split into a number of locationson disk.

The advantages of dividing a diskinto separate partitions include thefollowing:

1) If one partition crashes, anothermay be operable.

2) You can run different operatingsystems. You could have one parti-tion set up to run Windows 3.1 andanother set up to run Windows 95.

3) Your data and programs couldbe kept separate on different parti-tions. Backups can be easier withdata on one partition and programson another.

4) The best advantage is to reducewasted space due to large clustersize.

Asked how DoubleSpace fits intothe equation, Dave answered thatDoubleSpace does reduce wastedspace by using a different technique.Data is compressed and stored in a“big file” representing many files.Therefore, each file does not use upa minimum of one cluster.

Another person asked about HPFS(high performance file system) thatis part of OS/2. This is comparableto NTFS for NT. These two file sys-tems address a lot of the same prob-

M e e t i n gREVIEW

by Sharon Kinney-Romeo

I/0 June, 1997

lems but are not compatible withDOS. HPFS is not compatible withNT.

In order to realize the savings incluster size, be sure to size yourpartitions just below the cutoffs.Since 512 is the cutoff, size thepartition at 511. Another cutoff is256. Size the partition at 255.

PartitionMagic is the powerfuland easy-to-use solution Dave pre-sented. It received the ComdexBest of Show award two years agoand numerous other awards since.

Dave asked for a show of handsfrom the audience of people whohave used Partition Magic. Therewere many who have used theproduct. Then he asked for anyonewho was dissatisfied to raise theirhands. No one did. This appearedto be quite an endorsement of theproduct.

Here are some audience ques-tions on the presentation.

Q) How does PartitionMagicknow how to redistribute data ontothe new partitions?

A) It will not let you resize a par-tition to less than the used space onthat disk. You can use ApplicationMover to move applications andtheir subdirectories to one of thenew partitions.

Q) A user had a 2G drive that isalmost full. What can he do aboutit?

A) He could use Drive Copy,another product from PowerQuest.Install a new, larger drive as themaster drive and designate the olddrive as the slave. He can boot offdiskette from Drive Copy and itcopies all the data onto the newdrive expanding partitions propor-tionately to the space on the newdrive.

Q) Is PartitionMagic compatiblewith System Commander?

A) Yes. There are no knownproblems.

Dave highly recommended thedocumentation that comes with

PartitionMagic.Next, Dave gave a demo of the

use of PartitionMagic. It runs inMS-DOS mode so he rebootedWin95 to restart in MS-DOS mode.His disk was 810M. He clicked onCluster to check for wasted space.The disk had 16-K clusters with11% waste (about 55-meg). Theprogram recommended an 8K clus-ter size. It also reported 1 or morelost clusters. Dave ran ScanDisk tofix the lost clusters.

Be sure to disable virus checkingsoftware before you start to runPartitionMagic. Your boot recordwill be changed and the virus soft-ware will want to copy your oldboot sector over the new one. Thiswould cause serious problems, sobe sure not to do it!

Create the Windows 3.1 partitionand do a partition copy to the newspace. Then use Boot Manager toboot to the new partition. Theninstall Windows 95. Now you canuse one version of Windows with-out affecting the other version.

Dave pointed out that the 3 typesof partitions are primary, extendedand logical.

We saved 32 Meg of disk space.Install Boot Manager at the end.Make this your new primary parti-tion.

Make an extended partition withthe free space left on the drive.This is a placeholder for your logi-cal drives. Name the new partition“Programs”.

“Uninstaller” (this is the name ofthe company) is just a “mover”program.

Q) I have an older system with a380 Meg disk and a 1.2 Gig disk.The system cannot see the 1.2 Gigdisk. I use driver software. WillPartitionMagic work with thesedrivers?

A) Yes, with most. There is doc-umentation in the manual and anyexceptions are documented.

Dave brought a price sheet with

special User Group Pricing forboth PartitionMagic ($30) andDriveCopy ($20). This offerexpired May 13th. Here’s anothergood reason to attend the meetings.The vendors often have specialsthat only apply that night.

PartitionMagic also works underNT. It installs for the resident oper-ating system.

The last step is to useDriveMapper to tell the system thatthe CD-ROM drive is now E: (forinstance) when it was D: previous-ly.

IntermissionWe changed the program format

a bit to accommodate the two ven-dors and set-up time in-betweenthe presentations.

Judy asked the attendees whatthey thought about the projectionsystem for the meeting and got agood round of applause inresponse. The IUS TechnicalGroup had used a demo system forthe meeting consisting of a largescreen and a back-lit projector.They are evaluating this system forpurchase.

User-to-Userwith Dave Puckett & Jack Stearns

In this segment of the program,attendees respond with answers toquestions that are submitted ontoindex cards before the beginning ofthe meeting.

Dave began by telling us that hehad no winners at the KY Derby.Oh, well! Join the crowd!

Jim Martin is doing better thesedays and plans to attend the nextmeeting. That’s good news! It willbe good to see him back.

Dave asked how we like the newfacility at IUS and got a big roundof applause.

Question: How long will theSherman-Minton bridge (I-64 intoIndiana) be under construction?

Answer: Estimates are that con-struction will continue until at least

June, 1997 I/0

November.Question: I use the dial-up feature

of Windows 95. How can one keepthe password each time on boot-up?

Answer: Try setting up aWindows password and it should beused in clients of MS Windows.

Question: Will all Windows 95programs run on Windows NT?

Answer: No. Those that do notaccess the hardware directly willprobably work.

Question: How difficult is it for anovice to add an additional harddrive to a machine that has 3-1/2”and 5-1/4” diskette drives, a tapedrive and 1 hard drive? Can the newhard drive be put into the 5-1/4”diskette slot?

Answer: It should be a piece ofcake! And the drive will fit in the 5-1/4” bay. Many have done it.

Question: My laptop does a coldreboot when I shut down Win 95. Itdoes the same when I restart in MS-DOS mode. Using the DOS windowis OK. F8 to command prompt isalso OK. A DOS window will pre-vent apps from detecting Windowsand locks up. HELP!

Answer: There weren’t anyanswers on this one. You might posta question on The Fifth Dimension(TFD) or call one of the mentorslisted in the I/O.

Question: I’m looking for a con-nector or DOS driver to reroute out-put from the PC speaker to aSoundBlaster compatible soundcard. Any suggestions (other thangetting Windows)?

Answer: Many sound cards allowfor this. Many don’t. Check yourdocumentation. The motherboardhas pins from which a cable runs tothe speaker located somewhere inthe case. Disconnect from thespeaker end and plug into the soundcard. Many said this could be noisy(hiss). If you don’t get the groundright on a direct connect, you couldhurt the sound card. Be sure and fol-low documentation. Check the web-site for proper documentation.

Question: I use SLMR (SillyLittle Mail Reader) to read TFDmessages off-line. I can read mes-sages but there is not enough mem-ory if I create any replies. What canI do?

Answer: Many knew of this prob-lem. The key is to make sure thatyou have about 525-k of free CON-VENTIONAL memory before youstart SLMR.

Question: With 1-2-3 ver 5 andlater, is there a way to import a textfile containing page changes with-out the resulting spreadsheet occu-pying multiple worksheets?

Answer: No answers on this. Ifyou have an answer, post it on TFDand we’ll pass the answer along.

Question: I bought a $3 CD-Romof images at last month’s computerfair. When I began to load them, thefirst message I got was “Disableyour virus checker”. Should I obey?

Answer: Maybe not. Was the CDfrom a reputable source? Scan theCD with a virus checker. Someinstall programs lock up if you havethe virus checker on. Take a snap-shot of the drive and try it withoutdisabling the checker. If it locks up,turn it off, install it and turn it backon and run a check.

Steve Goldberg, Program Directorwas up next with our upcomingmeetings. In June we will be be oneof the cities on Borland’s DelphiTour. In July we will haveUSRobotics, Micrografx in Augustand Parson’s Technologies inOctober with Matt McCann.

Steve announced that the PigSigwould take place after the meetingat Sam’s on Charlestown Road. Wehad a large crowd of people come tobreak bread with the speakers.

Corel Word Perfect Suite 8Todd Whittaker of Corel had heard

that we were interested in seeingWord Perfect Suite 8 and he accom-modated even though it is still inpre-release. June 8th is the releasedate on this product. This is justafter Comdex and PC Expo in

Atlanta. The suggested retail price is$179 with a $20 rebate available.The suite includes:

1) WordPerfect2) Quattro Pro3) Presentations4) CorelCENTRAL5) Netscape Navigator6) PhotoHouse7) WebSite Builderand a huge library of clip art. The

professional edition adds Paradox 8.Todd’s presentation was created

using Presentations 8. The demowas run on a Toshiba Pentium/133with 32 Meg of ram.

CorelDRAW offers increasedspeed, easier interface, more toolsand a tutor. The property barchanges as you use different tools toshow the relevant properties for theselected item and the tool. A hintsdialog is available to help. There’s acolor blending tool and edge finish-es including beveled edges. It’s easyto drag images from the Scrapbookinto your document. There’s a texttool that helps you shape text aroundan object, such as an ellipse. Whenyou are through shaping the text,you can remove the object, ifdesired, but the shaping remains.Todd showed us a lot of powerfuland impressive results using thetools in Corel Draw.

WordPerfect has gotten a face liftin the new version. It is also tentimes as fast on start-up and dialogboxes. The view file is much faster.The property bar is context-sensitivehere as in Draw. You can right-clickon the property bar to customize it.

Todd showed us some table fea-tures that look very powerful. Theseinclude text rotation, quick-fill thatyou may have experienced fromspreadsheet use, sizing the columnsto fit the text and a speed-formattingfeature that allows you to quicklyapply shading and colors. These arefeatures that please!

continued on page 22

I/0 June, 1997

by John Gilkey of KIPCUG

If you or your company have need ofdrawing software to assist with the cre-ation of truly professional artwork,CorelDRAW 7 Graphics Suite is anexcellent product to consider.

The Suite includes CorelDRAW 7,CorelPHOTO-PAINT 7 and last but notleast, CorelDREAM 3D 7. These threeprograms give you the ability to createreally high-quality graphics drawings,optimize photographic images and cre-ate 3-dimensional artwork.

The main product, CorelDRAW, hasbeen around for quite a while. Manygraphic artists on the PCplatform con-sider it to be one of the finest drawingprograms to be found. Version 7 contin-ues to earn acclaim.

Vector-based software, such asCorelDRAW, has long been the choiceof professionals for non-photographicdrawings. Why? The ability to adjustthe size of the image and yet still retaindetail is the answer.

Simply put, a vector drawing is a setof points which exist in a relationship toone another. A system of distance andbearing calculations determine wherethe bounds of any given object arelocated. Attributes, such as color, linewidth, shading and the like, are associ-ated with each object. And all objectsare independent of one another.

Sizing an image, up or down, merelychanges the length of the “vectors” thatestablish the object. An object is recre-ated each time it is moved. This pro-gram’s vector heritage also allows youto stretch or compress text objects.

The product is capable of handlinggraphics from the simplest logo to themost complicated technical illustration.You can even include bitmap imageswithin a CorelDRAW object.

Two of the new features included inCorelDRAW 7 are interactive fill andtransparency & blending. Interactivityhas also been added to functions like fit-ting text to a path and wrapping textinside an object.

Toolbars have changed a lot. They arestreamlined, and consistent throughoutthe suite. The property bar is context

sensitive, and changes content basedupon the object you have selected.

The program has extensive drag-and-drop capabilities in version 7, andobject property menus are selectable byright clicking the mouse.

A new feature called the ObjectManager allows a user easier access toreorder, group, ungroup, or drag objectsbetween layers.

You are no longer limited to eitherwireframe or full detail when it comesto rendering quality. There are now fivelevels to choose from. This allows agood balance between on-screen detailand redraw speed.

New features like color styles allowfor a consistent look throughout a pro-ject and speed up the process of desig-nating the look and feel of objects.

One nice feature is that OLE automa-tion is supported in the product whenusing scripting. CorelDRAW offersCorelSCRIPT or you can use VisualBasic.

A nice enhancement in version 7 isthe expansion of file format capabili-ties. Updates have been added support-ing EPS, WPG 2.0, WMF, EMF, AI andAdobe Type I fonts. There is also a findand replace wizard available in thesuite.

The writing tools in CorelDRAW 7include an automatic spell checker, the-saurus and grammar checker. This givesit much the same power found in wordprocessors.

The system Scrapbook allows you tostore everything from CorelDRAW filesto clipart, bitmaps, textures... just aboutany object you work with in the pro-gram. You simply drag an object fromthe Scrapbook window onto your workspace.

A few other interesting featuresinclude within the Suite are:

- A natural pen tool that acts like acalligraphic pen with a pressure sensi-tive input device.

- A transparency tool for all objects,including bitmaps.

- Text beveling.- Accelerated blends or transitions

from one object to another.

The program also publishes to HTMLformat for the Internet. Two colorpalates are available for use withNetscape Browser or Internet Explorer.GIF files can be interlaced or transpar-ent, and the program can deal with pro-gressive JPEG files to provide anima-tion.

Bitmap effects include some of thefeatures found in plug-ins for majorprograms like Photoshop. They includeemboss, page curl, sharpness and more.

You can adjust characteristics likebrightness, contrast, intensity, color bal-ance, gamma , HSL (hue, saturation andluminescence,) inversion, posterizationand conversions to vector or bitmap.

You will find online hints helpful, aswell as the tutor supplied with the pro-gram.

CorelDRAW users in the past haveasked for improvements in file opensand saves. This was one of the draw-backs to this program in the old days. Itseemed to take forever. Version 7speeds the process up immensely. Theprogram can use Photoshop plug-insand comes with ready-made templates.Even Paper Direct, a leading manufac-turer of laser and inkjet printer supplies,supplies one.

CorelPHOTO-PAINT , a sister prod-uct to CorelDRAW, is a bitmap-basedimage editing and painting program.With this program, you can edit &retouch photographs, graphic images oreven computer video files. Similar innature to CorelDRAW, CorelPHOTO-PAINT allows you to generate yourown graphics images but in a bitmappedenvironment.

Bitmapped images have a fixed rela-tionship to one another, and are used inmany computer graphics applicationsranging from screen icons to digitizedphotographs.

CorelDREAM 3D should have afamiliar look to persons who have usedRayDream Designer by Fractal DesignCorp. Corel has licensed the rights tothe program and is now marketing itwith the Suite. The program can gener-ate 3 dimensional objects which may berendered into 2 dimensional graphics.

CorelDRAW 7 Graphics Suite

June, 1997 I/0

This Suite comes with a number ofutilities including:

- CorelOCR-TRACE , a program thatconverts bitmaps to vector graphics, andalso extracts machine readable text fromscanned documents.

- CorelDEPTH, a utility to create 3Dlogos using wizards to simplify theprocess.

- CorelMULTIMEDIA MANAGER ,a file management utility for graphicfiles.

- CorelCAPTURE, a utility to capturecomputer screens.

- CorelSCAN, a wizard-driven scan-ning utility.

- CorelMEMO , an OLE compliantutility that allows you to “paste” noteson your computer.

- CorelCOLOR MANAGER , to helpyou create device profiles for scanners,monitors and printers.

Corel then tops it off with 32,000 cli-part images, 1,000 photos, 1,000TrueType and Type 1 fonts, over 450CorelDRAW templates, 250 3D modelsand 750 floating objects. You can seewhy you’ve got to have a CD-Romdrive for this product.

SYSTEMREQUIREMENTSThe CorelDRAW 7 Graphics Suite

requires Windows 95 or NT 4.0, aPentium 60 (120 recommended), a min-imum of 16 MB of RAM (32 recom-mended), a minimum of 40 MB of harddisk space, a CD-ROM drive, a VGAvideo card (SVGA recommended) and amouse or graphics tablet.

Corel can be reached at:

Corel Corporation1600 Carlington Ave.Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, KIZ 8R7.

Their technical support phone number is613-728-7070 and their fax is 613-728-9790. They have a presence on theworld wide web at: www.corel.com

Just Out of the BoxA First Brush with Visual Basic 5.0

by Martin Campion of KIPCUG

The box my new Visual Basic 5.0came in says “Visual Studio 97,”because it also contains Visual C++,Visual J++, Visual FoxPro, and VisualInterDev. So the documentation I got isundoubtedly different than that in thededicated box. I noticed once again thatMicrosoft has gone out of the muscle-building business. My package con-tained four CD-ROMs, a few odd cata-logs and other papers, and a 263-pagepamphlet called “Getting Results withVisual Studio.”

The pamphlet has a few references toVisual Basic applications as a part of alarge multi-language multi-site applica-tion. All the real documentation is, ofcourse, on the CD-ROMs, which areindeed stuffed with information.Furthermore, the package includes acoupon allowing the purchase some ofthe Visual Basic or Visual FoxPro doc-umentation in paper form for $40.00 or$74.95. I probably will buy some of thispaper as soon as I get over my resent-ment at the whole process.

Back in the old days, I used to spend awhile just reading before actually tryingto do anything. These days, with read-ing confined to the screen, I usuallyplunge right in. So the first thing to dowas to see how some of my ongoingprojects look in the new environment.

And that is the first big news aboutVB5. It is a new environment, aMultiple-Document Interface (MDI)environment as opposed to the bare-backed interface of the past. In VB 3and 4, I would always have to spend afew moments minimizing other pro-grams so that I would not accidentallyreactivate them with casual mouseclicks.

In contrast, VB5 seems almost tootightly contained at first. The form win-dow is contained within a child windowand its position on the design screen nolonger has anything to do with its run-ning position. There is a separate win-dow to use a representation of thescreen and the form to position the lat-

ter. Other tightly packed windows con-tain the project window and the proper-ties window.

At first it seemed that the windowswere set in stone. Then I gradually dis-covered that windows could be resizedand that some could be liberated fromtheir positions with a double-click ontheir title bars. Shortly thereafter I dis-covered that they would jump back intoa position on the edge of the parent win-dow if they were moved near the edge.But holding down the shift key willdefeat this particular behavior. At first,it seems very hard to get all the win-dowed pieces of information where youwant them.

When the windows jump to the edgethey are demonstrating that they are“dockable.” The child windows alsodock up against each other-I supposethis part of their behavior should becalled “grappling” rather than docking.Whatever it is, the rules they are usingare very hard to grasp by observation.Their behavior is part of the newestWindows 95 look that I haven’t beenexposed to much yet. It takes some get-ting used to, but I have not been tempt-ed to go back to the old interface, whichcan be reached by accessing the menu at“Tools/Options/Advanced”, checkingthe SDI Development Interface box,and restarting Visual Basic.

When I went to a code window andstarted typing in some code, I got a sur-prise. I typed the name of a form I hadjust added, followed by a period,intending to type “show.” But at thatpoint I got a list box full of all the pos-sible things I could type after a periodfollowing a form name, from“ActiveControl” to “ZOrder.” It wasquite a long list and it would not havebeen worth it to scroll down the list tofind my command. But when I typed“sh” the list box zeroed in on the rightcommand and a flick of the spacebarfinished the word and put a little boxwith the possible arguments on thescreen for my further edification.

Of course, with all the “ooohing” and“ahhhing” it took me five minutes to

It is still true - It’s not what you know,It’s WHO YOU KNOW.Be resourceful, join organizations

And network.- Cheatnotes on Life

I/0 June, 1997

type two words, but I thought I can getused to this and that it will save muchtime formerly spent pushing F1 andwaiting for online help to come up.

In the past, the VB editor has sufferedfrom the inability to comment out morethan one line at a time. Temporarily get-ting rid of a large section involvedpushing down arrow, apostrophe, backarrow, down arrow, apostrophe, backarrow, down arrow.... you get the idea.It is much better now. You select a sec-tion of code and click on a button on theedit bar, after checking to see that theedit bar is showing. The editor respondsby putting apostrophes in front of all thelines you have selected. Later, anotherselection and click will uncomment asection of code.

The next step was to see how one ofmy major projects would compile andrun in this new environment. I loaded it,made a minor change that I had had inmind since the last time I had looked atit, and ran it. This was a project writtenoriginally in VB3, then later checked inVB4-16 and VB4-32. It ran perfectly.

Now VB5 has been loudly announcedas being capable of native code compil-ing, which would allow a program torun much faster. When I read this, I hadalso assumed that the number of filesthat would be required to install a pro-gram on another computer would belessened. That, it turned out, was not thecase at all. VB5 native code executablesstill need a run-time DLL and an OCXor DLL for each custom control orgroup of custom controls.

On the other question-that of speed-Imust confess that I do not care abouthow fast a computer is executinginstructions. What I care about is howfast the user feels it is going, that is,how long he has to wait before thingshappen in response to a button push ormenu choice. The bad news then is thatmy program did not feel any faster witha native code executable. The evenworse news is that it certainly tooklonger to compile than the older ver-sions. But I do not take this experienceas typical. This particular program hadnever had any bottlenecks where theprogram had felt particularly slow,except in loading. Therefore, it is not agood one to show an increase in speed.Loading speed is probably determined

more by disk access speed than pro-gram speed, and so little improvementcan be looked for by introducing a newprogram language.

Next I loaded a database project Ihave been working on in VB4, and triedthe accompanying Data Form WizardAdd-In to create a whole new set ofentry forms. The wizard not only creat-ed forms but a code interface, completewith a section of code with a “SelectCase” structure that had no functionali-ty but which could be filled in by theuser. Assorted comments indicate thisand other places where code might beadded by the user. This wizard is goodenough to buy alone. The database forthe project is minute still, so there is nolesson about speed to be learned hereeither. Again, VB5 demonstrated that itwas backward compatible - as it shouldbe. At this point also I took one of thetwo screen shots which demonstrate theMDI interface.

Finally, I turned my hand to writing anew program. I had to write a littlegraphics program which would allowme to design 7 x 14 pixel “pieces” foran equally little game I need. This pro-ject would not stretch the capabilities ofVB5-it could just as easily be done inVB3. Besides I only had about 2 hoursto work on it. So I did it (going over-budget by about 15 minutes) and in theprocess learned something about usingthe new editor capabilities. Sometimesthe list of possible ways of finishing acommand is so long that if I really donot remember the command, I still haveto invoke online help. And sometimes Ihave to wait a perceptible (and there-fore annoying) amount of time for the

little list of possible commands to popup at all.

Why is it that advances in computerart are never free? At one point, I evenconsidered the possibility of going onthe menu to “Tools/Options/Editor” andunchecking “Auto List Members,” thebox which controls those little listboxes. On reflection I decided that theirritating wait for list boxes was shorterin the long run than the irritating waitfor online help to come up.

As I write this, I have in front of me alist from Microsoft of “What’s New inVisual Basic version 5.0? Top 20 NewFeatures.” I haven’t mentioned verymany of them here, mostly because theywould involve extensive work, farbeyond this first brush. The list containsconsiderable food for thought, such as amention of “Global Objects.” When Ilooked that one up, I learned that theseobjects are Classes created in a certainway and then “in another project youcan set a reference to the component,and the names of the Global Object’sproperties and methods will be recog-nized globally, just as if they were partof Visual Basic.” Now doesn’t thatsound intriguing?

A journey of a thousand miles beginswith one step. I have given you a lot ofdetail here about my first step withVB5, so I need to say that the journey isgoing to be a long one and from allappearances, well worth making.

Martin C. Campion is an independentconsultant and part-time instructor atSullivan College. He can be reached [email protected] or 637-9878.

SSC GoldMine ad notsupplied in electronic format

June, 1997 I/0

by Bob Wilkinson of KIPCUG

Here is some information on what Ibelieve to be a solution to my backupand restore problems since purchasingmy first computer in 1975 (Altair).

This writer recently purchased whathe considers to be one of the greatestprograms that he has ever owned. I havefought the battle of backing up harddisks, first with floppies, then tape.Neither was satisfactory, due to theamount of time required to back up.These days, with the larger hard disksbecoming so prevelant, the situation isaggravated even more. My salvation isnamed CodeBlue/2.

This new program (released March1977) allows you to make a completemirror image of your hard disk ontoanother. In my opinion, this completely

eliminates the need for a tape backupsystem. CodeBlue/2 is advertised as aDos solution to a Windows 95 problem.What does that mean? It means that inthe event you have to recover from acorrupted disk situation under Windows95, you don’t have to first re-installWindows 95 before you go thru therestore process. CodeBlue/2 will createa bootable floppy that, under a Dosenvironment, will allow you to restoreany and all files from your backupmedia.

The backup can be an internal orexternal hard disk (SCSIor IDE), AnIomega ZIPor JAZZdrive, a SyQuestEZ-Drive, Magneto-Optical Drives orany other that looks like a FAT-16 disk.

The program works under WindowsNT - just as long as the drives used forthe backup and restore are FAT-16.

Now for some numbers. I am able tobackup my entire 1.2-gig drive toanother in 18 minutes. With the option-al compare, it takes 80 minutes. Thoseof you with tape drives will see that Iam saving hours of time.

The program sells for $69 butKIPCUG members have until July 1st topurchase it for $39. I heartily recom-mend it.

The company, TapeDisk Corporation,can be reached at:

Phone: 800-827-3362Fax: 715-235-3818Web-site: www.tapedisk.com

Tell them that you are from KIPCUGor that Bob Wilkinson sent you.

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CodeBlue/2 - from TapeDiskDos Backup/Restore for Win 95

I/0 June, 1997

continued from page 17

WordPerfect supports 300 levelsof undo. You can click in a cell andeasily apply attributes. First you geta sample to copy and then you canapply these attributes to any otherlocations with just one click. It iseasy to divide table cells either hor-izontally or vertically. Clearly, theyhave markedly improved the tablecapabilities of this product.

A “Shadow Cursor” feature isavailable that allows you to click inthe left margin to left-justify a para-graph, right-click to right-justify orcenter-click to center a paragraph.Pretty smooth!

The application bar allows you toclick among open documents. Youcan drag a picture from your currentdocument to another in the applica-tion bar and the other document willpop-up so that you can place thegraphic.

There is a drawing layer thatallows you to insert drawing ele-ments. You can then apply colorsand fills to those elements. You candraw lines and resize, change toarrows, color them...

Some of these features are not sup-ported in HTML for Web pages.There is a Web page authoring toolthat allows you to create forms tofill-in, radio buttons and drop-downlists.

WordPerfect also has a “Quick-word” option. You can set up abbre-viations for commonly used wordsor phrases. Then, if you type theabbreviation, the rest of the word orphrase will be filled in.

There is a PerfectExpert tutorialincluded that leads you through

common tasks. An example is “Howdo I create a letter?” The tutorbrings up a list of different types ofletters and, after you choose, showsyou how to create your letter.

The interface in the Suite is verysimilar between the included appli-cations.

Presentations 8 was briefly cov-ered. You can change slide back-grounds for one slide or all.Transitions between slides are easi-ly applied. The modes - slide edit,outline and sorter - help you in theediting process. You can changeproperties of charts that you haveimported for your presentation.

If you want to publish your pre-sentation to the WWW, you canpublish to Brista. This is Corel’sJava technology. You can also createa runtime version of your slide showthat you could send to someone whodoes not own Presentations. Theycan run the executable and view thepresentation.

When in the sorter mode, you havean indicator that shows which slideshave speaker notes, sound clips andtransition effects. You can run asound clip behind the whole presen-tation if you want.

Todd offered User Group mem-bers a $20 rebate in June. If youown Corel WordPerfect Suite 7, thenormal price is $179 for an upgrade.The User group offer was for $65.

CorelCentral, included in theSuite, offers a PIM (PersonalInformation Manager) includingcalendar and scheduling. This is nota MOM (Microsoft) or DAD(Novell) lookalike.

In response to some last-minutequestions, Todd gave the following

answers:

a) Old file formats are supported.

b) AutoCAD is supported byDraw.

c) WP 6.1 macros are supportedbut you may have problems withvery complex macros.

d) OS/2 is supported.

e) They are pioneers of Java tech-nology. The version of the productusing Java is somewhat scaleddown.

f) Briefly, the Web authoring inWebGallery is very sophisticated.

g) Suite 8 comes on one CD-ROM.

h) Additional fonts, clip art, WPGfiles from ages past are still support-ed.

i) A special education price of $39for the Suite is available.

It looked like we had worn Toddout with all of our questions and hedefinitely was ready to move on tothe Pig SIGafterwards. Little did heknow that the questions always con-tinue over the dinner table.

Thank you Todd for a very infor-mative presentation.

I want to take a moment to remarkon how impressed I am with thenew facility that we are using atIUS.

Remember, we are evaluating thislocation over the next two months,so be sure and attend the upcomingmeetings. We want to hear your twocents worth - just so long as it’s aninformed two cents. See you nextmonth.

Odds & EndsAgain, we have a bit more space and

time is running out. Here are a fewinteresting things we’ve heard aboutlately.

Win 98 supports many monitors

A few years back, I saw a Mac

System with 4 large 21” monitors. I wasshown how you could drag an Excelspreadsheet to the left of the screen (sothat part of the spreadsheet went off thescreen) and voila! - just as easy as youplease - the left part of the spreadsheetshowed up on the monitor to the left.This allowed you to see many morecolumns at once. Pretty Impressive.

And the new version of Windows issaid to have this capability. I wonder ifthey will be demonstrating at Comdex?

TV worth Watching

Check out this neat web-site:www.pctv.com

for listings on what’s upcoming forComputer Chronicles & Internet Cafe.

June, 1997 I/0

Name:_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Home address:______________________________________________________________________________________

City: ________________________________________________ State: ____ Zip Code: __________________________

Home phone: (____)__________________________________________________________________________________

Employer: _________________________________________________________________________________________

Your title: __________________________________________________________________________________________

Business address: ____________________________________________________________________________________

City: ________________________________________________ State: ____ Zip Code: __________________________

Business phone: (____)_______________________________________________________________________________

Mail newsletter to: Home __ Office __ Other ____________________________________________________________

Payment method: MasterCard __ Visa __ Check __ Cash __ Money order __

Creditcard only: Account No: _________________ Expires: ____/____ Signature: _____________________________

What activities interest you: General meetings __ Software library __ The Fifth Dimension BBS __ Newsletter __

What Special Interest Groups (SIGs) interest you: __________________________________________________________

How did you hear about KIPCUG? _____________________________________________________________________

What hardware do you use? ___________________________________________________________________________

What software do you use? ____________________________________________________________________________

Kentucky Indiana PC Users Group, Inc.Application forMembership Annual dues: $35-Single, $50-Family, Make checks payable to: KIPCUG

219 N. Hubbards Ln., Suite B-26-318, Louisville, KY 40207

Mentors aka members helping membersThe following KIPCUG membershave volunteered to provide assis-tance to any current KIPCUGmember on these topics:

Debbie Bulleit([email protected])

AskSam, ASAP, Excel

Danny Lee Catron([email protected] OR(502) 495-1874)

OS/2, Windows 95WordPerfect 4.0 thru 6.1Lotus 1-2-3, ver 5.0Hardware

T.Lee Harris([email protected])

Pagemaker

Steve Goldberg(Stevehgold#aol.com [email protected])

Paradox, Quattro Pro

Marvin Livingood(459-8888 [email protected])

WordPerfect ver 6 and earlier

Mike Shaikun([email protected])

HTML and WebPage Design

Bob Streever(895-4180 - Eve, 459-2151 - DayOR [email protected])

Pagemaker, FoxPro

Wakeley Purple(361-3945)

Dos, Unix, C, C++Informix 4gl,SQL ProgrammingProComm Aspect Script Lang.Borland Paradox for Windows

Jerry Wasserzug(452-1912 [email protected])

DOS, Windows 3.1Windows 95Lotus 1-2-3, Quicken

You can reach Fred Soward at [email protected] or (426-1829)if you are interested in helping outyour fellow KIPCUG members asa mentor.

K I P C U G291 N. Hubbards LaneSuite B-26-318Louisville, KY 40207

Forwarding and Return Postage Guaranteed

Bulk RateU.S. PostageLouisville, KY

Permit No. 1299

General MeetingTuesday, June 10, 1997 @ 6:30 pm

Indiana University Southeast, Ogle CenterBorland�s Delphi 3.0

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next meeting - kipcugthe first week of june used to be known as the start of summer. this year,...

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