


                      FrontDoor History Utility 1.00

                                User Guide

                     Colin Turner - Piglet Productions




       1. INTRODUCTION

       1.1 LEGAL NOTICE

         FrontDoor is a registered trademark of Joaquim Homrighausen.
         Other brands and product names are trademarks or registered
         trademarks of their respective holders.

         This publication is protected by international copyright laws
         and treaty provisions. It may only be distributed and used in
         accordance with those laws and treaty provisions.

         FDHis is provided to you "as is", without warranties of
         any kind. In no event shall Piglet Productions be liable to you or
         anyone else for any damages or costs arising from the use or
         inability to use this program.

         FDHis is protected by copyright laws, and may not be
         modified, reversed engineered, sold or distributed in any way that
         would involve some sort of trade, without written permission from
         Piglet Productions.

         FDHis may be used without charge by anyone that is running
         a registered copy of the shareware version of FrontDoor, or the
         commercial version of FrontDoor.

         FDHis may also be used during the 30-day trial/evaluation
         period of the shareware version of FrontDoor. After this period,
         FrontDoor must be registered if you want to continue using this
         program (or FrontDoor).


       1.2 USING THIS DOCUMENT

         This document is intended to be a reference guide for FDHis.
         It makes the assumption that the reader understands the basics of
         the FrontDoor Mailer (FD).


       1.3 WHAT THIS PROGRAM DOES

         The FrontDoor History Utility (FDHis) has two main functions, to
         provide a standalone interactive history file viewer, and to allow
         automated export of history information.


       1.4 SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

         FDHis does not require any special components to be
         installed on your system. The program has been tested under DOS 3.x
         and above, Windows 9x, Windows NT 4.x with good results.                                             


       1.5 INSTALLATION

         Copy the files contained in the distribution archive into any
         directory on your system.

         FDHis will need to be able to find SETUP.FD, either in the
         path pointed to by the "FD" environment variable, or in the current
         directory (that is, the same directory as FDHIS.EXE).



       2. CONFIGURATION & USAGE

         The FrontDoor History Utility does not require configuration as
         such, taking most of the required information from the FrontDoor
         configuration.

         The interactive history file viewer behaves in a highly similar
         was to the built in viewer in FrontDoor 2.25/2.30. It's operation
         will not be detailed here.

         All relevant information is passed via the command line.



       3. COMMAND LINE PARAMETERS

         The FrontDoor History Utility supports the following parameters:


         /HIS:<History File>

         The FrontDoor History file to process. This is a special binary
         file produced by FrontDoor, with the extension .HIS.

         Sometimes the history file is passed implicitly (see /INB
         and /OUTB).

         If no path to the file is specified, FDHis will first look for the
         specified file in the current directory, and if it does not find it
         there, it will then look for it in the FrontDoor system directory.


         /OUT:<Output File>

         If this parameter is specified it tells FDHis to run in batch mode,
         exporting information from the specified file to the specified
         text file. The output resembles that produced by FrontDoor itself
         when the Export option is used interactively.


         /DAYS:<Number of Days>

         Only valid in batch mode. This parameter forces FDHis to only
         process the entries for the last specified number of days, excluding
         the current day. Thus /DAYS:1 signifies yesterday's history items.


         /STARTDATE:<Number of Days>

         Only valid in batch mode. This parameter allows a date to be
         specified such that FDHis will ignore entries dated from before
         it. The format of the date depends on your geographical location,
         and/or any FDSetup overrides. It should be the date format which
         you use the most.

         For instance, in European countries the date takes the format
         DD/MM/YY unless this has been overridden in
         FDSetup->General->DateFormat.

         This parameter is often useful when calculating the cost over a
         specified time period.


         /ENDDATE:<Number of Days>

         Only valid in batch mode. Analogous to /STARTDATE:, this specifies
         a date such that FDHis will ignore entries dated after it. See
         /STARTDATE: for details on the paramater form.


         /EXTRA

         Only valid in batch mode. This causes more information to be
         written about the systems, on a two-line-per-system basis.


         /APPEND

         Only valid in batch mode. This causes FDHis to append to the output
         file, whereas by default it will overwrite it.


         /SINGLE

         This replaces the System Address with the System Name in both
         the interactive and batch mode, giving a more FrontDoor 2.20 look
         and feel. By default FDHis will use system names read from the
         Nodelist, using the History system name if no match is found (or
         if the /NONL paramater is used below).


         /NONL

         This parameter causes FDHis to use system names from the history
         file in preference to looking them up in the Nodelist. It does NOT
         prevent nodelist lookup (Verbose) in the interactive viewer.


         /LINE:<line number>

         This restricts FDHis to examining history entries for a specified
         line (TASK) only.


         /INB

         Used in place of /HIS:, this causes FDHis to open the appropriate
         Inbound history file. The exact filename will depend upon the value
         of the FDOPT environment variables. (That is, whether a shared
         inbound file has been disabled).


         /OUTB

         Similar to /INB above, except that the Outbound history file will
         be selected.



       4. NODELIST LOOKUP

         The FrontDoor History Utility uses the FrontDoor Nodelist Database
         in the interactive mode, and sometimes also in batch mode.

         It achieves this using the FrontDoor Nodelist C++ code produced by
         Colin Turner, which should hopefully be released soon.

         When in batch mode, the nodelist is opened and closed so quickly
         (if it is needed at all) that few issues arise. The rest of this
         section considers the problems of freezing and thawing FDHis in
         its interactive mode.

         This program uses different semaphores to the FrontDoor Mail Editor
         (FM) and the FrontDoor Mailer (FD). These are detailed more fully
         in the FrontDoor Development Toolkit. (FDDEV230 or above).

         When running, the program will create a semaphore of the form

         FDNODE<Instance>.<Task>

         if the task is known, or possibly

         FDNODE<Instance>.BSY

         otherwise.

         The semaphore will be removed either when the program terminates,
         or when the program is in a Frozen state. The significance of the
         Instance is beyond the scope of this document.


         To cause FDHis to freeze, you should create either the semaphore

         FDNLFREZ.<Task>

         to freeze third party applications on a specified task, or

         FDNLFREZ.ALL

         to freeze all third party applications.


         Please note that no FDNLFROZ or similar semaphore is created to
         signal success, the FDNODE*.* semaphores will simply be removed.

         YInf, produced by Mark Kerr, and available for download from
         Definite Solutions or Piglet Productions fully supports and handles
         the Freezing and Thawing of both native Definite Solutions products
         and third party programs which honour the new semaphores.

         FDHis will check whether is should freeze or thaw when it is
         idling (waiting for user input). The frequency of checking is as
         defined in FDSetup -> General -> Semaphore Timer.

         No visual indicator will occur to show Freezing and Thawing, and
         the only visible consequence is whether it is possible to use the
         Verbose function or not.



       5. ERRORLEVELS

         FDHis uses the following errorlevels when it exits.

         0       Nothing to do
  
         2       Parameter error
         3       Memory Allocation Error
         4       Error opening FrontDoor Nodelist Database
         5       Error handling output file
         10      Error handling SETUP.FD
         12      Incorrect version of FrontDoor
         15      Error opening history file



       6. OTHER INFORMATION

         FDHis in it's interactive mode should detect and timeslice
         under DESQview, MicroSoft Windows, and OS/2.

         Thanks to Joaquim Homrighausen for providing both FrontDoor and the
         development toolkit. FrontDoor is a registered trademark of Joaquim
         Homrighausen.

         This program supports and requires FrontDoor 2.25 or above.

         FDHis uses the Piglet Productions C++ library produced by Colin
         Turner and Chris McCandless.

         FDHis, like all relevant Piglet Productions programs, attempts to
         use exactly the form of date format, time format, time separators
         that you should expect to see in your country, allowing for any
         override in FDSetup. (See FDSetup->General).

         Thanks to Stephen Glasgow, Chris McCandless, Scott Myles,
         Darren Parker, Craig Young, Mats Wallin, for testing, suggestions
         etc.



       7. DISTRIBUTION

         This is a Piglet Productions program, developed and distributed
         from

         The Heart Of Gold BBS

         +44-1247-274919         2:443/13.0
         +44-1247-273172         2:443/14.0

         Both lines also support FAX.

         WWW: http://www.piglets.com

         For support, NetMail Colin Turner at 2:443/13.0 or,
         email support@piglets.com.

-=-

The product was brought to you by the letter "D" and the number 4.

// End of file FDHIS.TXT


