Program name: Soft-Touch P2.03
 
Author name:  Martin D. Flynn
Address:      c/o Software Alternatives Corp.
              1555  Burke Ave.  Bldg K
              San Francisco, Calif.  94124
Telephone:    (415) 641-1818
 
Suggested Donation: $23, Includes enhanced version, registration and limited
                     phone support.
 
Program Description:
 
Soft-Touch is a very complex, if not practical program. The essential use of of
the program is for programming keys with user keystrokes. Hence, the user could
assign his name to the control-N key and thereafter be able to key in his name
simply by typing control-N. Soft-Touch goes way beyond this simple example,
however and ends up being sort of an executive shell with many capabilities. The
major ones are:
 
The ability to nest programmed keys. Hence, if a person's name was programmed
into control-N and a person's address to control-M, the user could program a new
key with control-N and control-M to obtain his name and address. Nesting is
possible this way to 5 levels deep on the unenhanced version and 25 levels deep
on the enhanced version.
 
The use of a macro file to pre-define and save keystrokes. This file can be
specified on the enhanced version, it is "Mcro.key" on the unenhanced version.
This capability allows the user to save and recall his programmed keystrokes. It
also alows the keystroke buffer to be packed by first saving the keystrokes,
clearing the buffer and then recalling the keystrokes.
 
The existence of a time delay function for screen use as well as time and date
capabilities. The time delay function occurs in the form of a parameter option
to Soft-touch and will automatically blacken the screen after a certain interval
of idle time has elapsed at the keyboard. This is designed to prevent screen
burn-out. A full span of time and date functions are available to return the
year, month, day, hours, minutes or seconds.
 
The ability to have a work buffer record all the keystrokes entered into the
keyboard and the ability to play back these keystrokes. The purpose of this is
to view and execute keystrokes before programming them to keys, but ends up
being an extremely powerful device for placing your computer on automatic. If a
file is edited, changed and then saved, for example; while the record mode is
on, the exact same sequence of keystrokes and events can be re-done by playing
back the work buffer. I don't really know how useful this would be for
day-to-day programming, but for something like a demo, it would be great.
 
The existence of programming varialbles along with Pause and Wait commands
during playback. These alow the user to control the playback of the programmed
key as well as enter data during playback into the programming. Hence if a file
was to be renamed, Soft-touch may be programmed so that the file name will be
asked for before the renaming takes place.
 
The ability to re-program the escape sequence calling Soft-touch, so that
Soft-touch will not interfere with any other memory resident's escape code. This
ability is one of the parameter options of Soft-touch. Also, of course, there is
the ability to inactivate Soft-touch and re-activate it from the keyboard, once
it is installed
 
Soft-touch if a very complete and well designed program for what it does,
whether it is actually that much use to the average user cannot be said. It
limitations are: 90 possible programmed keys with 3000 maximum keystrokes and 5
levels of nesting in the unenhanced version. Some functions are also not
available in playback mode on the unenhanced version. Soft-touch requires DOS
2.0 to run.