PMUUE

PMUUE 1.21 Presentation Manager Unix-to-Unix Encoder/Decoder February 15, 1995 What is PMUUE? ============== PMUUE stands for Presentation Manager Unix-to-Unix Encoder/Decoder. It is used to encode and decode Unix-to-Unix encoded files (commonly known as uuencoded files.) Normally, it is not possible to send binary files through E-mail because of the possibility of non-ASCII charaters being lost or converted to other characters. A utility, such as PMUUE, will convert a binary file into a set of ASCII characters (uuencoded format) which can be send through E-mail and converted back into binary format once the destination is reached. The Disclaimer ============== There is no warranty, expressed or implied, with this program. THE AUTHOR IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGES INCURRED BY USING THIS PROGRAM. Use at your own risk! Distribution ============ This program may distribute this program as long as a) The archived file from which the program came from is distributed and not altered in any way. b) This program is not distributed with any commercial program. Parts of the PMUUE display ========================== Besides the normal OS/2 system windows such as the title bar, the minimize and maximize buttons and the menu bar, there are two windows controlled by PMUUE and they are the log window and the status bar. The log window is where any significant event has occured with regards to encoding or decoding a binary file. Specifically, an entry is placed into the log window when: - A file is opened - The process of encoding or decoding a file is started or finished The log window keeps the last 500 events (by default) that has occured and deletes any log entries, starting from the oldest entry, that exceed the maximum number of entries allowed. The log window automatically scrolls down to always show the latest event. The status bar shows the last message sent to the log window but this might change in future versions to include a progress indicator. A dialog box appears whenever an encoding or decoding process is complete, if desired. The Menu Options ================ The File Menu ------------- The file menu allows the user to encode a file, decode a file, or exit the program. When the user selects the "Encode..." menu option or presses Ctrl-E on the keyboard, the user is presented with a dialog box. This dialog box allows the user to select the binary file that he or she wants to encode into uuencoded format. The user can only select one or many files. If the user selects "Cancel", the operation is aborted. If the user selects "OK", then the encoding process is started. A dialog box might appear when the encoding process is over. Select "OK" to dismiss the dialog box. The way the program encodes file can be determined by the Settings notebook. When the user selects the "Decode..." menu option or presses Ctrl-D on the keyboard, the user is presented with a dialog box. This dialog box allows the user to select the encoded file that he or she wants to decode back into a binary file. The user can select as many files as he or she wants. If the user select "Cancel", the operation is aborted. If the user selects "OK", then the operation is started. Once the decoding process is finished, a dialog box will appear. Select "OK" to dismiss the dialog box. An encoded file does NOT have to be stripped of extraneous text in order for PMUUE to decode it. Also, the encoded file also does NOT have to be split up if it contains more than one uuencoded file. Even if the binary file is split into many uuencoded files, these uuencoded files do NOT have to be joined together into one file. PMUUE will (hopefully) be smart enough to determine which lines are encoded and which are not and when an encoded file starts and ends. When the user select "Exit" or double-clicks on the system menu icon or selects "Close" from the system menu, the program will terminate. The Preferences Menu -------------------- The preferences has only one option, "Settings..." which will tell the program how to act in particular situations. For a full explanation of the "Settings..." option, see "The Settings Notebook" elsewhere in this file. The Help Menu ------------- When the user selects "Help index...", the user is presented with all the major topics in the help file. When the user selects "General Help...", the user sees the definitions of the major functions of this program. When the user selects "Using Help...", a window with instructions on how to use help is presented. When ther user select "Keys Help...", a window with valid keystrokes for the main window appears. When the user select the "Product Information..." menu option, PMUUE will show a dialog showing the program name and version as well as other pertinent information about itself. The Settings Notebook ===================== The settings notebook is divided into five pages: Notification, End of Line, Directories, Multi-part, and Miscellaneous. The "Notification" page allows the user to select which output methods are used by the program. The "Log" option specifies if the log window should be active. The "Status Line" option specifies if the status line window should be used. The "Message Box" option specifies if message windows should be used by the program for notification purposes. The "End of Line" page specifies how an end-of-line marker should be like in a uuencoded file. The "OS/2" option says that lines should end with a carriage return followed by a linefeed. The "Unix" options says that lines should end with only a linefeed. The "Directories" page specifies where the binary and uuencoded files should be and be placed. The "Default Binary Directory" indicates where the binary files should be placed after decoding a uuencoded file. The program will also look at that directory, by default, when starting up the "Encode..." menu option for the first time in the current session. The "Default UUENCODE Directory" indicated where the uuencoded files should be placed after encoding a binary file. The program will also look at that directory, by default, when starting up the "Decode..." menu option for the first in the currect session. This page also has a "Default File Extension" file. This field is used to add an extension to a uuencoded file when creating a uuencoded file except when the "Create multiple part encoding" option is used. The "Multi-part" page specifies if multi-part uuencoded files should be created or not. The "Create multiple part encoding" option indicates if PMUUE should split binary files into multiple uuencoded parts. If this option is checked, then the rest of the options on the page are enabled. The "Max. part size in KB" option specifies that the maximum size of each part should be limited by its size in kilobytes. The maximum size should be entered to the field immediately to the right of this option. The "Max. part size in lines" options specifies that the maximum size of each part should be limited by its size in the number of lines it has. The maximum size should be entered to the field to the right of this option. The maximum number of parts for either method of partitioning the file is 99 parts. Each part of the encoded file will have an extension of ".u##" where ## is a number between 01 and 99. The "Allow Multiple Part Decoding" checkbox specifies if PMUUE should assume that a binary file will be spread across multiple UUENCODED files. If this checkbox is not on, then one UUENCODED file should contain at least one complete binary file. The "Miscellaneous" page has two fields and a checkbox on it. The "INI File" field indicates the name of the INI file that PMUUE should create and use to hold its settings in. The "Max Log Length" field is the maximum number of lines that should be allowed in the log window. The "Allow Lowercase Characters" option specifies if PMUUE should allow lowercase characters as valid UUENCODED characters. Normally, lowercase characters are not part of the code but some encoders allow lowercase characters as part of the encoding. This could be troublesome if PMUUE decodes an ordinary line of text into the binary file. If garbage appears in the binary file and this option is on, try turning this option off if no lowercase letters show up in the code or delete all the non-encoded lines of text in the source file. Happy encoding Colin Vernon