CHAPTER 1 THE WALMYR PEN PAL Hello Pen Pals! Would you like to have a neat way to communicate with your very special friends and acquaitances ... and make sure it is absolutely private! The WALMYR Pen Pal can help you do that. You can conduct private interviews, exchange letters, carry out queries, have dialogues, administer questionnaires, and share many kinds of neat correspondence and communication ... and make sure it is very confidential! ADMINISTERING INTERVIEWS AND QUESTIONNAIRES The WALMYR Pen Pal will administer any interview or questionnaire that you add to your copy of the system. When a friend, acquaintance, or other respondent has completed a questionnaire The WALMYR Pen Pal program saves the responses and presents reports for you. You may then examine any completed questionnaire or interview on screen with the flick of a few keys! HERE'S HOW IT ALL WORKS Prepare a letter or questionnaire on a separate "Pen Pal Letters" diskette. We'll tell you how to do that a bit later. Send your "Pen Pal Letters" diskette and a copy of this program diskette to a friend or acquaintance. Your friend can then read your letter by using this program ... and (if you've acquired a password from the publisher) NO ONE ELSE CAN READ IT. Your friend or acquaintance can respond to your letter, return the "Pen Pal Letters" diskette to you and then you can use your copy of the program to read your friend's reply. Again, if you have acquired a password from the publisher ... NO ONE ELSE CAN READ THE REPLY! A SIMPLE DEMONSTRATION In order for you to see how the program works, we've prepared three short "Pen Pal Letters" for you to use and examine with the program. In order to use them, format a blank floppy diskette and label it as your "Pen Pal Letters" diskette. Once you've done that, exit to DOS, put your "Pen Pal Letters" diskette in Drive B and then issue the command, TRYME . When the program appears on screen, choose the main menu option to "Complete A Pen Pal Letter". When you've finished one or more of the letters we've supplied, choose the main menu option to "Read a Returned Pen Pal Letter". COMPLETELY ENCRYPTED Now that you know how simple it is to try out the program, let us tell you a little more about it. What makes the program so secure as a means of exchanging information is the very powerful encryption technique that is used throughout. Even the FREEUSE Version of the program relies completely on the encryption devices of the program. However, it does it invisibly so that you need not worry about all that. If you want to see the results of the encryption effort, use the DOS "TYPE" command to examine the LETTER1.PPL file on this diskette. We doubt very seriously that anyone will ever break the code. They certainly won't do that once you've acquired your own password! NUMBER OF QUESTIONNAIRES AND ITEMS The WALMYR Pen Pal will also handle the biggest jobs you can give it in terms of the number of questionnaires or interviews that you might want to use. In fact, there is no limit to the number of questionnaires or interview guides that you may add to your copy of The WALMYR Pen Pal. This feature of the program is discussed in detail in a separate chapter. Also, there is no limit to the number of items you may employ within any questionnaire or interview guide. The menu system of the program will accept up to 1000 entries and if that's not enough ... copy and save your menu and then create a new one! No practical limits here either! QUESTIONNAIRE DESIGN The WALMYR Pen Pal program provides an incredible degree of flexibility in designing questionnaires and interview guides. The design of your letters, questionnaires and interview schedules is very simple and it's all explained in detail in a separate chapter. Moreover, it's very easy to do. You can create interviews and questionnaires with the program or you can do it with your own favorite word processor. Naturally, if you create a letter or questionnaire with your word processor you will then have to encrypt it. That's necessary for security and the program will not read or process unencrypted text. Oh yes, you can encrypt any text file by using the special encryption facilities of the program. SPEAKING OF COPIES Please read the "Preface" to this manual if you have not done so at this point. It provides important information about copy restrictions for the program. If you decide to obtain a personalized copy of the program by having the publisher install your password, you might then be concerned about giving a copy of the program to someone with whom you do not wish to share correspondence. After all, wouldn't they then be able to read your mail? Yes, but that problem is easily solved. Here's how. Copy your WALMYR Pen Pal diskette onto a formatted blank diskette. Put the copy in Drive A and then issue the command, FREEBIE . Voila! The copy is instantly a FREEUSE Version of the program and your password is nowhere to be found on the copy! MULTIPLE PASSWORDS Some find it very useful to have multiple passwords. That is, you may wish to correspond with one group of friends using PASSWORD # 1 but you may not want another group of associates to be able to read that correspondence. The solution, of course is to use PASSWORD # 2 with your second group of friends. You may have as many passwords as you wish and you may select from them at will. Just complete the order form to request as many passwords as you like. Just remember, you MUST begin the program by using your MASTER PASSWORD. If you are using multiple passwords, make your friend a copy of the program. Then use his or her copy and reset the master password. Your friend will then have only the Master Password that you choose. DO NOT RESET THE MASTER PASSWORD USING YOUR PERSONAL COPY OF THE PROGRAM. INSTALLING YOUR WORKING COPY OF THE PROGRAM Your copy of The WALMYR Pen Pal is shipped ready for you to use. If you are using a dual floppy system, there is nothing to do but make a working copy of the diskette. You should never use the distribution disk. Instead, copy the entire program onto another diskette and then use the copy. If you want to install your copy of The WALMYR Pen Pal on your hard disk system, just put the distribution diskette in Drive A and issue the command, A:HARDPP . The computer will do the rest! YOU'RE INSTALLED!! Once you've carried out the above procedures, you are ready to use your copy of The WALMYR Pen Pal. Run the program and choose the instructional option in the main menu of the program. You may read the instructions on screen and you may print a user's manual. The User's Manual will instruct you completely as to how to use the program. If you have installed your copy of the WALMYR Pen Pal on a dual floppy system, just log onto Drive A and then issue the command, PENPAL If you have installed your copy of the system on a hard disk, you may execute the program at any time by booting your computer and then issuing the command, PENPAL SETTING YOUR RECORD PATH When you call up the WALMYR Pen Pal and have the main menu on screen, it is very important to first understand the last entry in the menu; Set Record Path. This option allows you to store letters and questionnaires on your hard disk or on floppy diskettes. Here's how it works. If you have installed your WALMYR Pen Pal program on a dual floppy system, the default record path is set to be B: at the time you call up the program. If you have installed the program on a hard disk system, the default record path is set to be A: at the time you call up the program. This means that you may put all your letters on a floppy disk and never have to worry about setting the record path. The program takes care of that for you. On the other hand, suppose you have defined a directory on your hard disk that has the name \MYLETTERS and you wish to use that directory to store all your letters. In that case, when you call up the program you must choose the option to "Set Record Path" and then enter \MYLETTERS The program will then store your letters and your Pen Pal Menu on your \MYLETTERS directory. Thus, through this mechanism you may store your letters and questionnaires anywhere you wish. You could even store them on a separate hard disk, say Drive D, by choosing the Set Record Path option and then issuing the command, D:\MYLETTERS Similarly, you could store your files on diskette directories with a diskette in Drive A or B. If you defined a \MYLETTERS directory on a diskette in Drive B, choose the Set Record Path option and then issue the command, B:\MYLETTERS The Set Record Path option is not essential. It is there for you to use if you wish and it is easy to use. Just remember, if you've put your letters in a DOS directory and then forget to set your record path the program will not be able to find your records.