Shorten

                                by Doug Johnson

    As I've noticed recently, the owners of MOTerm Elite have been
producing more and more graphics files.  The more of the files, the more
the size goes up trying to make the graphics fancier.  But these long
files are starting to take a rediculous amount of time to transfer so I
wrote Shorten, a utility that removes extraneous commands from the MOTerm
Pro graphics files.

                                 Using Shorten

    First of all, double-click on SHORTEN.PRG to load it into the
computer's memory.  When the program has loaded, a file selector will
appear asking for the file to shorten.  After a file has been selected,
the program starts by creating a file with the name of the old file except
that the last letter has  been changed to a 2 (JUNK.DAT would become
JUNK.DA2) to show that the file has been shortened.  If you wish to exit
Shorten, select Cancel in the file selector.

    After a few minutes or seconds as the case may be, an alert box will
appear showing how much the file was shortened, expressed in a percentage,
the new file length as well as the old file length.  

                                Technical Info

The typical percentage removed from a file is 20%, with it being more or
less depending on the program used to generate the graphics.  If the
script files of MOTerm Elite are used, the average percentage drops to 5%.
If MOTerm Elite's graphics utilities are used, the average percentage is
10%.  If ST Artist is used, the average percentage is usually in the range
of 30-35%.  

The speed increase is usually the same as the size decrease, as less
information has to be transferred over the modem. 

Text within a MOTerm Elite graphics file is preserved so a capture buffer
can be Shortened with no apparent change other than size and time required
to view the file.  Typical capture buffer size decrease is 15%, again
depending on the utilities used to create the original graphics files. 

This program is a freeware product, and may be freely distrubuted as long
as this text file, uneditted, accompanies the file.  Contributions,
however, will be accepted as donations to Maximum Output Software and may
be mailed to Doug Johnson, 5510 Spanish Oak, Houston, TX 77066.   Please
make checks pay able to Doug Johnson. Any donations received will go
toward development of other programs and the drop of 'Shareware'
classification from other titles available from Maximum Output
Software....  

                                                           ----Thanks,
                                                         Doug Johnson,
                                     President Maximum Output Software

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