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                      PUBLIC DOMAIN & SHAREWARE SOFTWARE

                          COPY & DISTRIBUTION SERVICE

                                     from


                          B R I G H T   F U T U R E S

                            I N C O R P O R A T E D

                                 P.O. Box 1030
                            East Windsor, CT  06088
                                 (203)745-5322


                  Copyright 1990 Bright Futures Incorporated.


                          (Press <PgDn> to continue)
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........THANK YOU FOR YOUR ORDER!


Thank you for buying your Public Domain/ShareWare (PD/SW) disks from BRIGHT
FUTURES INCORPORATED!

The following information is included with your order to help you get the PD/SW
programs up and running quickly and easily.











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........DOS:

A little knowledge of DOS (disk operating system) is necessary in order to
properly use the PD/SW software.  A highly recommended book on the subject is
"Peter Norton's DOS Guide: Revised and Expanded".  Also, we have some excellent
tutor/help disks on DOS which are very helpful for quickly getting better
acquainted with DOS: #47 PC-DOS HELP, #48 PC-PROMPT, #49 HELPDOS, #359 TUTOR,
#360 DOS 3.3 HELP and #362 TUTOR.COM.

In order to use our PD/SW disks you must have the DOS A> prompt on your screen.
If it is not there, consult your computer manuals to find out how to get it.

The DOS commands you should be familiar with to use the PD/SW disks are just a
few.  They are:

                DISKCOPY                TYPE
                DIR                     MORE
                CD                      COPY


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........Backup Copy:

The very first thing you should do is to make backup copies for all of the PD/SW
disks you have bought.  Note: making backups cannot be emphasized enough!  It
can save you a lot of grief later on.  Please take the time to do it now.

Consult your DOS manual for instructions to make the backups.  The simplest way
to make a backup is as follows.  Put a write protect tab on the original disk
to preserve the disk as you received it.  Put the original disk in drive A.
Then enter the command:

                        DISKCOPY A: A:

You will be prompted to remove the source (i.e., the original) disk from the
drive and to insert the target (i.e., the blank unformatted backup) disk into
the drive.  This procedure will make an exact replica of the original disk onto
the backup disk.



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........EXPLORING PD/SW DISKS

Take the backup copy of any PD/SW disk you are interested in and put it in drive
A.  Then enter the command:

                        CD A:\
                        DIR A:

This will display on the screen all of the files and any subdirectories in the
root directory of the disk.


To print a copy of the directory for easy reference enter the following command:

                        DIR > PRN

This will route the directory to your printer instead of your screen.



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........FILE TYPES

In general there are many different files on a disk.  Often there are several
different (but usually related) programs on a single disk.  It is important to
be able to determine what the various files are for.  (The general file
specification has the format FFFFFFFF.EEE where FFFFFFFF is the filename and EEE
is the file extension.  Any letter or digit and a few special characters can be
used for the filename and extension.)  As you will see shortly, the extension
and name of the files is very helpful for determining what the various files on
the disk are for.  All of the files fall into three categories:

                (1) Information files
                (2) Program execution files
                (3) Auxiliary program files

When you look at a disk for the first time you are most interested in the
information files.



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(1) INFORMATION FILES

Information files have names and extensions like the following:

                MANUAL.DOC
                MANUAL.TXT
                MANUAL
                README
                READ_ME
                READ.ME
                README.1ST
                FILES.TXT

Information files are always ASCII text files although sometimes they will have
strange characters which control the printer to print the document in a nice
format (paging, top/bottom/left/right margins, etc.).




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........Viewing Information Files:

The best way to view files is using a browse program.  One of the best browse
programs is LIST.COM - provided on this disk.  To view MANUAL.DOC with LIST.COM
enter:

                LIST MANUAL.DOC

Now you can easily peruse the file MANUAL.DOC forwards and backwards at will.











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........Printing Information Files:

To print a text file such as MANUAL.DOC enter the following command:

                TYPE MANUAL.DOC > PRN

This will route the file to your printer instead of your screen.

You should read all of the information files on the disk to learn about the
particular PD/SW program and how to run it before attempting to run it.










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(2) PROGRAM EXECUTION FILES

Program execution files always have a filename extension of either

                .BAT
                .COM
                .EXE
            or  .BAS

The first three extensions indicate a program file which can be run directly
simply by entering the filename, with or without its extension.  For instance,
if the file PROGRAM1.COM were on the disk, it could be run by entering

                PROGRAM1.COM
or, simply
                PROGRAM1

at the A> prompt.  The .EXE and .BAT program files can be run the same way by
just entering their name at the A> prompt.

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........BASIC PROGRAMS:

The .BAS program files are a different story to run.  They are the source code
for the BASIC programs which can be run by first loading the BASIC interpreter
which came with your computer.  You should have either GWBASIC or BASICA (also
BASIC) depending on your computer.  If you have BASICA and BASIC note that most
graphics, sound and game programs usually require BASICA to run and in fact will
not run with BASIC.  On the other hand, any program which will run with BASIC
will also run with BASICA, but not the reverse.  Therefore, it is generally best
to try BASICA first.  The simplest way to run a BASIC program, say PROGRAM2.BAS,
is to put the disk with your BASIC interpreter (GWBASIC or BASICA) in drive A
and enter

                GWBASIC  or  BASICA

depending on which you have.  When the OK prompt is on the screen, remove
the disk from drive A and insert the disk with PROGRAM2.BAS on it in drive A.
Then enter
                RUN "PROGRAM2.BAS"

and the program will run.
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(3) AUXILIARY PROGRAM FILES

Besides information files and executable program files, there can be a variety
of auxiliary program files on a PD/SW disk.  Examples of these are files for
spreadsheets, database programs, word processor, graphics, desktop publishing
programs and source code for various programming languages.  They can be
recognized by filename extensions such as the following:

                .WKS    Lotus 1-2-3 worksheets
                .WRK    Symphony worksheets
                .VC     Visicalc templates
                .NDX    dBase index files
                .DBF    dBase data files
                .PRG    dBase program files
                .WS     Wordstar  files
                .PIC    Graphics files
                .ASM    Assembly source code
                .C      C source code
                .FOR    Fortran source code
                .PAS    Pascal source code
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                .OBJ    Object files used by Linker
                .DAT    General data files
                .ARC    Archive files
                .ZIP    Archive files

Note also that this list of auxiliary program file extensions is not all
inclusive.  In fact, more file extensions are being added constantly as new
programs (PD/SW and commercial) are introduced.  However, if a file does not
fall into the information or executable categories, you can be sure that it is
an auxiliary program file.










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........Archived Files

Some disks have files on them which have been compressed (also called archived),
alone or together with other files, into a single archive file to take up less
disk space.

Our philosophy is to avoid using archived files as much as possible.  Other
companies take pride in offering more programs per disk by archiving them -
sometimes even archiving archived files!  However, when you get the disk with
archived programs on it you have to (1) use additional formatted disks to expand
them onto, (2) often waste time and become frustrated trying to figure out the
unarchiving instructions, and (3) take more of your precious time to unarchive
them.  We prefer to keep life as simple as possible for you.  The value of your
frustration, time, and blank disks far outweigh the small additional cost of
buying program disks in unarchived form - especially from Bright Futures at our
very low prices.

Nevertheless, it is sometimes appropriate to archive some programs - e.g., large
data bases - so that the following general unarchiving instructions are provided
to help you.
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These archive files usually have the extension .ARC or .ZIP.  In order to expand
these files back to their original size, you should use the unarchive program
(such as ARC.EXE, PKXARC.COM or PKUNZIP.EXE) which is also provided on the disk.

As an example, let's say you have a BFI floppy disk with just the files
SQUEEZED.ARC and ARC.EXE on it and you want to expand all of the files archived
in SQUEEZED.ARC.  Let's say that the files archived in SQUEEZED.ARC are GO.BAT,
READ.ME and PROG1.EXE.

If you have a two floppy system, the simplest way to do this is to put the BFI
disk in drive A:, a blank formatted disk in drive B, and enter the commands:

                A>B:
                B>A:ARC x A:SQUEEZED.ARC






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If you have a one floppy system, these same commands will work except that you
will be prompted when to change disks and put the blank formatted disk in the
A drive.

If you have a hard disk, and want the files to be expanded into the subdirectory
C:\BFI say, then enter the following commands instead:

                A>C:
                C>CD \BFI
                C>A:ARC x A:SQUEEZED.ARC

Then, all of the files GO.BAT, READ.ME and PROG1.EXE will be present in their
full original expanded size on the disk in drive B or in the subdirectory
C:\BFI.  You can now proceed to use the expanded programs and files.






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........Help For New Users:

If you have trouble with some of the above instructions and commands it is
highly recommended that you obtain the instructional DOS disks #47 PC-DOS HELP,
#48 PC-PROMPT, #49 HELPDOS, #359 TUTOR, #360 DOS 3.3 HELP and #362 TUTOR.COM.

........Contact Author For Help:

If you encounter problems running a program on this disk you should contact the
author for help.  Since he is most intimately familiar with his own program he
can provide the best help.  Consult the information files for the author's
name and address or phone number.

........Support ShareWare:

The idea behind ShareWare is to "try before you buy".  ShareWare authors have
invested much time and effort to develop their programs for you.  If you find a
ShareWare program useful, you should register with the author.  You will obtain
such benefits as printed documentation, program updates, technical support,
etc., depending on the author.  Please support ShareWare!
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........HAPPY COMPUTING!


       We hope you get many hours of enjoyment from the PD/SW programs.

             Please send us any comments you have - good or bad!



                          B R I G H T   F U T U R E S

                            I N C O R P O R A T E D

                                 P.O. Box 1030
                            East Windsor, CT  06088
                                 (203)745-5322




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