PEEK 1.1 Readme

PEEK Version 1.1 for Windows95 and WindowsNT 4.0

Contextmenu Extension providing simple text extraction for any file.


CHANGES to Version 1.1 :

- now supports unicode string extraction
- can display file offset of extracted text
- configurable helpstring for peek menu commands
- installation according to the guidelines for shell extensions
- fix for deinstallation bug under Windows NT

WELCOME TO PEEK:
================
PEEK is a Shell contextmenu extension which allows you to extract only the text
portion of files.
Peek uses setups which hold specifics of how the text extraction should take place.
After installation you are provided with 3 different setups called:
- Standard
- Unicode
- Binary Files

'Standard' can be used for any files especially where significant amount of text 
is suspected.
'Unicode' is essentially the same as 'Standard', but it will only scan for unicode
text strings.
'Binary Files'is the combination of the above two methods. It will scan frist the
ANSI and then the unicode portion of the specified file.

( See 'HOW TO MODIFY/CREATE PEEK SETUPS' for details on setups )

The output is written to a text file 'PEEK.TXT' in the system tempory folder. Each portion
of text is written to this file and terminated with a cr/lf. After scanning the source
file the program associated with TXT files is invoked to show PEEK.TXT.



INSTALLATION / DEINSTALLATION:
==============================
Copy the files PEEK.INF and PEEK.DLL to a temporary folder and right click on the
PEEK.INF file. Choose the 'Install' command and the system will install PEEK on your
computer.
To deinstall PEEK go to the control panel and use the 'Add/Remove Programs' applet to
remove PEEK from your computer.


HOW TO MODIFY/CREATE PEEK SETUPS:
=================================
The three provided setups are only thought as examples on how you can create
specific setups by yourself.

5 parameters control ths behaviour of the text extraction:

- Character Set  : defines a string of characters which composes words.
                   Default value is 0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
- Character Count: defines the minimum count of consecutive characters out of the character
		   set before a text is accepted as text.
                   Default value is 4.
- Delimiter Set  : defines a string of characters which act as delimiters between words.
                   Default value is  ,.-;:_!\"$%/()=#+*'
- Delimiter Count: defines the maximum count of delimiter characters which are treated as
                   text.
                   Default value is 1.
- Unicode        : valid values are 0,1 and 2. If set to '0' PEEK will only scan for
                   ANSI text portions. Setting this value to '1' will lookonly for unicode
                   text. A value of '2' is a combination of ANSI and unicode in such a
                   manner that the output text file ( PEEK.TXT ) will first have the ANSI
                   section and then the unicode section displayed.
                   Default value is 0.

2 additional paramters can be used:

- Display Offset : If set to '1' for each extracted text string the file offset is
                   written to the output text file.
                   Default value is 0.
- Help String    : This value is the help text which is displayed in the explorer window's
                   status bar if the menu command is selected.
                   Default value is ''.

These 7 parameters are entered into the registry in the following way:

The main key for PEEK is HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Aries\Peek.
Each subkey represents a individual setup. The name of the subkey is also the name which
will appear in the context menu.
To add an additional setup insert a subkey to the main PEEK key and name it appropriately.
For this subkey you have to create the 4 items as mentioned above.

To specify nonprintable characters use the following table:

\a	Alert (bell)
\b	Backspace
\f	Formfeed
\n	Newline
\r	Carriage return
\t	Horizontal tab
\v	Vertical tab
\?	Literal quotation mark
\'	Single quotation mark
\"	Double quotation mark
\\	Backslash
\ddd	ASCII character in octal notation
\xdd	ASCII character in hex notation
\0	Null character

A silly example would be to extract only words which consists of any of the first 5 characters in
the alphabet and that are at minimum 6 characters long, search is done on ANSI strings only.
We want to have each word in a single line:
Character Set : "ABCDEabcde"
Character Count: "6"
Delimiter Set : ""
Delimiter Count : 0
Unicode : 0

A maybe more usful example could be the splitting of a text file into lines at special characters
Lets split at a ~
Character Set : 
"@ 1234567890ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz,.-;:_<>|^!$%&/()=?+#{}[]\"\'\\\t\n\r"
Character Count : "1"
Delimiter Set : ""
Delimiter Count : "0"


!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I would ask you for only one favour when using this program.
I am interested in the efficiency of distributing software through the
internet and therefore it would be good to know where , from where and when 
this software reaches the various users.
So if you could just send me an e-mail stating that you are using PEEK and
from where you got it.
This is not to be misinterpreted as registration, call it curiosity :-)

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



HOW TO CONTACT THE AUTHOR:
==========================
If you have any suggestions, interesting setups or bug reports you can contact me at:

internet   : 	mlubich@ping.at
compuserve : 	100534.1150
snail mail : 	Martin Lubich
		Pradlerplatz 5
		A-6020 Innsbruck
		AUSTRIA




This software is Copyright 1996 by Martin Lubich.
Allthough it is distributed as FREEWARE it is NOT Public Domain.
