AFTER READING THIS FILE, CLICK THE "FILE" MENU (IN THE WINDOWS PROGRAM) AND CLICK "PSL-NEWS". IN THE DOS PROGRAM, PRESS ENTER. Welcome to the PsL May 1995 CD. This month's CD contains over 1300 new programs received by PsL in the last 30 days. In addition, this month's CD includes the programs from the Words & Graphics sections of our DOS and Windows libraries. =====New Search Feature in Windows Access Program OVERVIEW: The DOS-based CD-ROM access program is limited to browsing through the descriptions of programs on the current CD-ROM. It cannot do much more because of the limitations of DOS and the large size of the full library database. The Windows access program allows you to search by program name, file name, author/publisher name, program type, and key word(s). Starting with this (May) CD, you can also search in the Windows access program for text anywhere in the database. Because this search works by loading one program entry after another to search, it can be especially slow when run from the CD. The trade-off to this being slow is that it is the most thorough way to search the database. If you have sufficient hard disk space, you can make a PSL_NEWS directory on your hard disk and copy the contents of the PSL_NEWS directory on the CD to it, then run PSL_SHRW.EXE from your hard disk. HOW TO SEARCH: The type and order of entries to be searched is based on the most recent search you have done, so follow these steps: 1. Click on the Browse-By method you want to use. Searches cover the entire PsL library, not just the programs on the current/specified CD, except for the "Current CD & Type" option. - CD Date & Type [of program] - Program Type - Program Name - File Name - Author/Company Name - Key Word 2. Hold down the Ctrl key and press K to clear the screen. 3. Enter the criteria which will bring up the entry from which you you want the search to start. For example, - to search by type of program, select the Operating System and Section using the drop-down list boxes. - to search by program name, enter the first letter(s) for the search to start with, etc. Enter as little text as possible which will still narrow the search. For example, if you enter "hobby", you could miss entries with "hobbies", so you should enter "hobb". 4. Click on the "Get Program" button to get the first entry. 5. You are now ready to start the search, so click on the Edit Menu and Search option in that menu or press Ctrl-S. 6. When prompted, enter the text to search for. The search is NOT case-sensitive, so capitalization doesn't matter. Text can be any keyboard characters, not just alpha. You will see program entries flashing by on the screen. They will stop either when an entry with the specified text has been found or when there are no more entries in the "selected search area". For searches by program type, the selected search area is the specifed Operating System + Section (e.g.: Windows-Games, DOS-Graphics). For searches by name, the selected search area is all entries starting with the same first letter. You can continue the search using the ending point as the next starting point by pressing F3 or clicking on the Edit menu and "Get Next Match". You can cancel a search at any time by pressing Ctrl-S again. =====Words & Graphics Files Left Behind Every month we are faced with the problem of the Section of the Month not fitting on the CD-ROM any more. For example, this month's section used to be "Words, Graphics, and Sounds". Last November when this section overflowed the CD, we moved Sounds off to the Games CD. Yet we were again faced with too many programs to fit on the CD. Moving whole sections from the CD causes grief to people who were looking forward to that section, so we hate to split "Words & Graphics" into two different CDs. What we did instead (both this month and with Utilities last month) was to cull out some of the older (which may be less than a year - it's all relative), larger programs whose functions are duplicated in newer programs. We have also culled out large demos (crippled programs), even those from more recent CDs. This is not to say that these programs being culled out are not useful and of high quality, but given that no solution is going to please everyone, we felt like this one would be the most acceptable to the most people. Words & Graphics programs which were culled out are still written up in the database, but their entries will show a CD date of "11/94". We tried never to cull out a program for which there were not numerous equivalent programs on the current CD, so if a particular program has caught your eye but was culled out, either look in the same category for a similar program or, if you have the past CD, simply get it from that CD. (Don't throw out those "old" CDs!) If you do not have the past CD, you can order it for just $6 plus $4 shipping. (NOTE: This offer only applies to CDs dated 11/94 or earlier. You must specify which program you are looking for.) Because the library continues to grow at the rate of about 300MB new programs a month, there is a good chance that when it is time to feature Words & Graphics again (in about 8-9 months, given the current cycle), we will have no choice but to split these into two different CDs. One problem with the Graphics sections is that things like clip art and fonts never really get outdated or duplicated, so that section will just keep getting bigger and bigger.