Part 1: Getting Started

What Softfile Does

With Softfile, you can enter notes to yourself, names and addresses, telephone numbers, reminders, lists -- whatever you want to remember.

The basic unit of storage in Softfile is the record, which corresponds to 20 screen lines of text. You may enter any information you wish, anywhere on those 20 lines. If you fill up a record and need more room, you can attach another record to it. That record can, in turn, be attached to another one, and so on. There is no limit to how many records can be chained together in this way.

When you enter new information, you can start with a blank screen, or Softfile can put a form on the screen with places for you to enter specific information. You may rearrange the form or its contents at any time, without affecting records which were entered previously. You can have many different forms, each for a different purpose: a calendar form, a customer or client form, a problem report form, a phone memo form, a name-and-address form, and so on.

A very useful feature of Softfile is the ability to link records together. Any Softfile record can be linked to as many as 9 other records. You can get a linked record on the screen in one keystroke. Links let you connect records which contain related information. You can also use links to make menu screens, with up to 9 choices per menu. Each menu can be linked to other menus, to any depth desired.

Softfile's links let you create hypertext: text which is not presented in a strictly linear sequence. A hypertext document lets you choose among alternate paths through the text, depending on your interests, rather than being forced to follow a single path from beginning to end.

Most hypertext systems separate the text into screen-size chunks, like Softfile's records. Unlike many hypertext systems, however, Softfile does not use graphics or a mouse. You can think of Softfile as a hypertext system optimized for a character-oriented display and a standard keyboard.

Also, many hypertext systems link words or phrases on a screen to other screens. Softfile's links are associated with the entire screen, not particular words on the screen. The screen's text must describe the links and when to use them. Of course, since Softfile automatically indexes each screen, you can find all occurrences of any word or phrase without the need for links.

Softfile allows both the standard, linear presentation of text and arbitrary hypertext links between screens. Records attached together in chains provide the linear organization. You press RETURN (the Enter key) to see the next screen or . (the period key) to go back to the previous screen. But you can also have links from any screen to any other screen. You need only press a number between 1 and 9 to follow a link and display the linked screen.

Keyboard Conventions

You should examine your keyboard and find these keys: RETURN, BACKSPACE, DEL, TAB, ESC, CTRL, and SHIFT. Most of these keys will have the name right on them, although BACKSPACE usually has an arrow pointing to the left, and RETURN usually says "Enter".

The space bar is not labeled, but we will refer to it as the SPACE BAR. You should have four arrow keys, which control the cursor. Although they are labeled with arrows, we will refer to them with words which describe the directions in which the arrows point: UP ARROW, DOWN ARROW, LEFT ARROW, and RIGHT ARROW.

Whenever you should press a single key on the keyboard, say the A key, this manual will say "press A". In other words, press means to use a single keystroke. If we say "press *", you must hold down SHIFT and then press 8 (because the symbol * is above the 8 on the keyboard).

We could also write * as SHIFT-8. The dash between the two key names means "hold down the first while you press the second". We consider the whole thing to be one keystroke, even though you must press two keys.

The control key, CTRL, usually labeled "CTRL" but sometimes "CTL" or "CNTL", works like SHIFT. If we say "press CTRL-X", you must hold down CTRL and press X. In other words, you always hold down CTRL while you press another key.

The CTRL key causes the other keys to send special control characters to the computer, and these control characters are frequently used as a convenient way to make the computer do something without a lot of typing on your part.

So press a key means to press just one key, possibly while you hold down SHIFT or CTRL.

When the instructions say to enter something, you type the information and then press RETURN. For example, "enter USER" means the following keystrokes:

or five keystrokes in all. When Softfile expects you to type a word or the name of a file, it expects you to press RETURN when you finish so it will know that you have no more characters to type.

The CAPS LOCK or ALPHA LOCK key is a useful feature which differs somewhat from the SHIFT LOCK key on a typewriter. On a typewriter, SHIFT LOCK is equivalent to holding down the SHIFT key while other keys are pressed. With SHIFT LOCK on, pressing the letter keys gives upper-case letters and pressing the number keys gives the symbols printed above the numbers on the keytops.

A computer's CAPS LOCK key, however, only shifts the letters. With CAPS LOCK on, pressing A sends "A" (not "a") but pressing 8 still sends "8" (not "*"). Because CAPS LOCK only shifts the letter keys, computers do not need the period and comma in both shifted and unshifted positions of their respective keys.

The escape key, ESC, sends a special code to the computer. It does not correspond to any character which is printed or displayed on the screen. Sometimes ESC is followed by another keystroke to tell the computer what to do. In Softfile, you will use the escape key to tell the program you are finished entering information on a screen. You press ESC twice to do this:

Do not confuse ESC with CTRL. Although neither displays anything on the screen, they work differently. You press ESC by itself, but you always hold down CTRL while you press another key.

The Softfile Programs and Database

The program sfutil.exe ("Softfile Utilities") creates both the required directory and an empty database during the installation of Softfile.

The only essential data file is "soft.dat". All the others can be recreated by the Softfile Utilities program, if necessary.

The main Softfile program is soft.exe.