I know that there are some people out there that do know a lot about the Folio Views software, and want to be a "Power User". This page will give more detailed information about how the Views software works and how to work with it better.
Single-click Links
Stan Winchester offered this tip: There is a way to have Bviews 3.1 use a single click for all links. If you have Folio Web Retriever 2.1 and copy the "RtrvExt.dll" to your directory ...\addons\, and then add "Retrieve= More Files Listed in History Christoffer Dahlseide passed along this tip: He uses only 7 infobases, and he wanted all 7 listed in the File menu's history list. So, he added lines numbered 5, 6, and 7 (pointing to the desired infobases) to his views.ini file in the [File List] section, and then made the file read-only. That way, folio can't modify it and delete the newly added lines. It worked! It now shows 7 items in the file history list. Thanks Chirstoffer.
Running Multiple Copies of Views One alert user reported this command line option: -multiinstance. Just add this to a shortcut (or on the Run command line) and it will open another copy of bviews (independent of another instance) with whatever else you specified on the command line. Thanks!
Folio Menu Items Explained Bruce Forbes, in his effort to better understand the Folio software, has created a document that gives explanations of every menu item in the CL '97. You can read it here. It gives a lot of good information about how the program works, as well as explaining it all in very simple terms. (Which I've been accused of not using sometimes :) Copying & Pasting The copy & paste feature is really nice, but one thing that is even nicer is the fact that when you do a cut/copy & paste operation from one infobase to another infobase, most of the Folio codes come along with it! Jump links, levels, paragraph styles, highlighters, images, etc. (yes, even from the Collectors Library!) The only thing that doesn't come across are jump destinations. Just in case you hadn't tried it already, I though you might like to know this.
Spell Checking Spell checking isn't available by default with the CL '95. I was looking at the files on the CL95 CD, and realized that the file needed to enable the spell checking feature of the Folio software was sitting right there! All you have to do is copy the folioenu.lex file from the CD to the directory you installed Bviews.exe. (for some reason, the CL install program doesn't copy that file over) That's it! Now, when you open an infobase, the Spelling on the Edit menu works! That's all you have to do!
Shadow Files Shadow files serve 3 main reasons: Remember, to create a shadow file, just open the infobase that you want to shadow, and go File | New and choose Shadow File in the File type box. Then name the file to what you want. That will create the shadow file. Then hit Save to save the file to your hard drive. Inter-infobase Links Links between infobases is actually pretty easy. There is only one more step to it than a regular link. First off, both the infobase you are making the link in, and the infobase you are linking to have to be open. Also, I'm assuming that there is a jump destination already existing that you want to link to. Then, when you highlight the text and go Customize|Jump Link (ctrl-j), click on the button "Infobase". It will bring up a box with a list of .nfo files that are currently open. Double-click on the infobase that has the destination and then find and double click on the destination itself. That's it!
One word of caution: If you give these two infobases to someone, the first time they follow one of the inter-infobase links, it will bring up the "open" box. Just find the infobase that you are jumping to, and Folio will remember from then on which infobase it will jump to.
This is controlled by one of 3 .ini files in the windows directory. Folio keeps a list of which infobases (by their titles) you have opened, and where they are on the hard drive. The .ini files are called lname.ini or gname.ini and another one I forgot. One is for locations on a network, one is for locations of infobases on your local hard drive, and I forgot what the other one was. So, even if you move those two files on your hard drive, then it will ask you to "open" the destination file again to readjust the link in the lname.ini. (this happens with the conference infobase and the index infobase)
.ini Files—How They Work There are several neat features that can be utilized with the .ini files. First off, since you can specify which .ini file you want to load, you can have an .ini file for viewing, for example, while having another .ini file for editing. That lets you have completely different button bars, menu options, and files open on startup. You can even specify multiple .nfo or .sdw files to be opened upon startup. You can specify which menu style you want from the preferences box. In the top right corner, there are 3 radio buttons. Just click on the one you want. Different menu styles won't show the edit menu or the layout menu. If you want to just double click on the files in Explorer, copy the .ini file (editing or views or whatever you are using) that you want as "default" to the windows directory as views.ini. If an .ini file is not specified, Views will look for one in the windows directory. Then, whenever you double click on a .nfo/.sdw file, it will run Bviews with the .ini file you want, not the default one. Performance Issues I've been tinkering with my systems a lot lately, and here's some interesting observations.
The first system is an Intel Pentium MMX 166MHz (normally overclocked to 200 or 225MHz) that had 64MB SDRAM or 24MB DRAM (not even EDO) in it. The new system is a Pentium II 300A Celeron system, with the processor/system bus overclocked to 450/100 MHz. It had 64MB of SDRAM as well. The reference infobase I used for this test was the conference index. This was using Folio's FFF import filter to input the index from FFF into a blank, bound 3.1 infobase:
Well, as far as conclusions from this, I definitely felt the 225/SDRAM setup was importing a lot faster than any of its other configuration. You could just tell the records were counting faster. With the 200MHz setup, it's interesting to see that the same CPU speed, but with a very different RAM setup yielded the same import time. With the Celeron system, what can I say? Almost twice as fast as the 200MHz system.
From this, I'd conclude that the Folio indexing engine is dependent on the CPU almost exclusively, without RAM effecting the performance very much at all. If you import and export infobases very much, and are considering upgrading your system, a faster CPU should be the first item on the list.
Popup Notes Popup notes are great, but they don't offer formatting options – or do they? Inside of a popup box, you can still right-click and get to the formatting options through the right-click options, which let's you do everything except highlighters and other, more advanced stuff.
Other Stuff If you are going to be doing a lot of importing/exporting, and you don't want to pay $1,000 for the filters in the infobase production kit, you might want to consider buying one of Bookcraft's programs (under the "Gospel Works" title) ($25-40) that are built around the Folio engine. They include many import/export filters, such as Word, Wordperfect and Folio Flat File (fff). It took me a while to figure out the tabs in views. If you want to set one, enter its position in inches, click any other options, and then click "Set". I hope that helps. New discovery! If you want to put a tab that is dynamic to the right side of the Views window (so as you move the edge of the window left or right and the text moves with it) put the Tab set: as RIGHT and click on the "Right" radio button for alignment. Then click the set button and its done. If you have any questions, please don't ask me. If you aren't willing to play around and learn it for yourself, then don't. If you have other questions, check the other .nfo files on your CD. It has some good help infobases that explains many times more than this page ever will. If you know about something that I haven't covered here, I'd love to hear about it. For official documentation on how to do stuff with the views software, look for the file called foliohlp.nfo. It has a lot of information in it about using the software.
Ryan Henrie
CPU Speed RAM Time % faster 200MHz (66x3) 24MB DRAM 11:00 0 % 200MHz (66x3) 64MB SDRAM 11:00 0 % 210MHz (83x2.5) 64MB SDRAM 10:30 4.5 % 225MHz (75x3) 24MB DRAM 10:26 5.2 % 225MHz (75x3) 64MB SDRAM 9:42 11.8 %
300MHz (4.5x66) 64MB SDRAM 9:13 16.2 % 450MHz (4.5x100) 64MB SDRAM 6:30 40.9 %
ryan@ldsinfobase.net
