Procon is a configuration program (like Config or Menuconfig) that allows you to configure all files that have standard configuration blocks, whether they are 'level 1' or 'level 2'. These configuration blocks contain the configuration information: the descriptive texts, some other information, and, of course, the configured values - all of these make up the configuration items.
Some programs/files have several configuration blocks (e.g. FiFi), others have only one. Each configuration block has a name, which is supposed to say something about the configuration items it contains.
For programs that have a "level 2" configuration block, the configuration values are also stored in a separate file, called 'INF file' (e.g. menuconf_inf). This allows you to configure a program once, and, if you get a new version of the program, you can UPDATE the configuration values of the new version with the values already used in the older version, so that you don't have to go through the entire configuration proccess again.
Procon can also LEARN the current configuration settings of all your programs already configured (if they are level 2 programs), so that it will know them the next time round.
Procon, should be able to handle most, if not all, standard configuration items. It is executed with a simple EXEC command.
Once you EXEC'd the program in the normal way, it will draw its windows: you can see several items, and two menus, which are empty at first. Procon needs the QLiberator runtimes to be loaded.
At the top, you have the menu bar, containing the "Save", "Back" and 'Help' items, the name of the program and the "Quit", "Sleep" and "About" items. The use of the latter three is obvious and will not be mentioned further.
Further down comes a line where you can indicate the name of the INF file, and the "Write" item to write the INF file back if it has changed.
Underneath is a row with the four main items, which are are "Update", "Learn", "Config" and "Files". What they do exactly often depends on the context.
Finally, there are two menus. We shall call the menu to the left the left menu and the menu to the right, the right menu. Yes, I know, this is quite a feat of imagination.
You should first of all load the "INF" file, i.e. the file that contains the configuration information. Generally, this will be called "MenuConf_inf" or "Procon_inf" in the Prowess_prg_ directory.
You can work without loading this file since it isn't useful for level 1 programs. Unless you do load it, however, you can't use the Update and Learn items: they stay unavailable until a valid INF file was loaded or created.
To load this file, indicate the "Inf file" item (selection key: 'I'). This pulls down the fileselect window where you can select the file.
If you do not have an INF file yet, and wish to create one, just type in the file name of the future INF file in the fileselect object. If the file doesn't exist, you will be asked whether you want to create this file. OK will create it, ESC abandons this.
Do not give the name of an existing file that is not an INF file - there is no way to check whether a file is really an INF file or not. If you give the name of an existing file, it is presumed that this is the name of an INF file in the correct format! The program may crash if this assumption turns out to be incorrect.
The program can also automatically load the INF file that you have configured (see below - Configuration).
Normally, once you have loaded an INF file, you will attempt to configure one or several files. One of the advantages of Procon is that it allows you to act on several files automatically at the same time.
Thus, once the INF file is loaded, you must indicate on which file(s) you wish to operate. This is done, not surprisingly, with the "Files" item, which lets you select one or several files. The names of the files chosen will be displayed in the left menu. As you can see, all of these files are already selected.
You can now do several things with these files: you can update all or
some of them, you can learn the settings of all or some of them, or you can
configure only one of them.
Learning the settings of all or some of the selected files
You might now want to learn the configuration values of some or all of the files. This is done simply by indicating some or all of the files in the left menu, and then hitting the learn item. Procon then learns all the configuration values as they are currently set in these files. The INF file is then automatically written out, so that these values are preserved for future use.
As mentioned above, updating means taking the configuration values as they are already configured in the INF file, and setting these values in the file. This is useful for new versions of older programs, where you want to be sure that the new version is configured exactly like the older version.
Indicating Update will update all of the selected files. This is why all of the files are already selected. If you do not wish to update one of these files, please deselect it before you Update.
If you update some or all files, the updated files are automatically saved (i.e. overwritten) with the new, updated version. This is done according to the rules for saving files.
Sometimes, when updating a file, Procon will notice that the program being updated contains some new configuration items, which are not yet in the INF file (and which it thus can't update, of course). It will then tell you that there are some new configuration items, and ask you whether it should learn them. If yes, it learns these values as they currently are set. This also warns you that you might want to configure this file explicitly, to search for the unknown configuration items and set values which suit you (don't forget to learn them afterwards!).
There is also a possibility to update all files contained in a directory:
If you start Procon and pass it a directory name in the command line (eg.
EX ) Procon will automatically
update all updatable files in that directory. Please note that the INF file
must be found in the file that is preconfigured within Procon. You can
configure Procon itself so that it automatically quits once it has
configured all (configurable) files in the directory (see below, Configuration).
When doing this, Procon will NOT warn you if some files have new configuration items, which are not yet in the INF file, but it doesn't Learn these new values, either.
If you just EXEC Procon and pass it the string "/a", it will automatically update all programs/files found in the preconfigured directory.
Procon does NOT recurse into subdirectories.
Once you have selected several files to work on, you can also choose to configure one single file of these. Indicating the Config item will let you configure the first file selected in the left menu. Procon will then change the content of the left menu and use it to display "FILE INFORMATION", i.e. the name(s) of the configuration block(s) of this file. If you want to go back to the list of files, hit the "Back" item (selection key: 'B'). (When going back, the file that you just configured will be deselected, so that you can hit Config again for the first file selected etc...)
The configuration information of the first configuration block will also be displayed in the right menu.
You can now choose any configuration block simply by indicating it. The configuration items of this block will then be displayed in the right menu, and indicating any of these items will bring up a further window which allows you to set the configuration value for this item.
The UPDATE and LEARN items become available if the file contains level 2 configuration blocks - if it contains level 1 blocks, you cannot update or learn. The updating and learning here are done according to the following rules:
The Update item has the following functions, which depend on where exactly you are when you try to update:
It may happen that, when updating, there are some new configuration options. You will be told when this happens - in this case you should later configure the program again, to configure (and learn) the new configuration items.
Learning is when the software takes the configuration settings in the program from which it learns, and incorporates them in the INF file, so that they may later be used for updating. Learning must ALWAYS be done explicitly. Simply configuring a program is not enough. The learn item has the following functions, which depend on where exactly you are when you try to update:
For compatibility reasons, Procon uses the same type of INF file as MenuConfig. One small pitfall of this is that an INF file can only hold the configuration information of a determined and finite number of configuration items. It can thus happen that, whilst learning, the program comes up with an error, telling you that you have reached the upper limit of items in the INF file. If that happens, you should write the INF file out, choose a new INF file and relearn all of the items of the program that was being learned whilst this happened.
The save item works as follows: if you are configuring a determined file, it saves only that file. If not and you have selected some filenames in the left menu, indicating the Save item saves all the files that are selected.
Some files are a bit special: they contain a special marker within them, which tells a configuration program such as Procon that they may be saved without the configuration blocks. After all, once you configured the program you shouldn't need the configuration blocks (and the description texts etc) any more, you only need the configured values themselves. Saving the files without the configuration details means that the files will be smaller, but they cannot be configured again later (consequently, never use this option on an original, ALWAYS on a copy)!
Procon notices this special marker, and, where applicable, it will ask before saving whether you wish to save the file without the configuration details. If you say 'no', the file will be saved normlly. If you say yes, you will be given the chance to give a new name to the file, to make sure that you don't overwrite a valuable orginal!
This feature is disabled when Procon updates all files in a directory since you probably don't want it to pop up a window and aks you questions during such an automatic update.
EX
Procon;'win1_whatever_'), Procon will automatically UPDATE all
programs in that directory and then quit - unless you configure it to stay.
last modified on 20.6.97
Procon is copyright (c) W. Lenerz 1996