



                    DCT Voting Door v0.11, eta Release
                             By Dan Traczynski
                               April 17, 1996

            Copyright (C) 1996 Dan Traczynski.  All rights reserved.





   DCT-Vote is a deluxe voting door for any BBS software which supports the
DORINFO1.DEF or DOOR.SYS drop file.  Setup is amazingly fast and easy, and
the voting door will be FreeWare until v1.0, after which I'll decide whether
it should continue as freeware or make it shareware.

   This will also most likely be the last eta release before the "official"
public release (I just have to be sure that it is as bug-free as possible).




                           
                              Table of Contents
                           

               Features ................................... o1
               Installation ............................... o2
               SysOp Hotkeys .............................. o3
               Distribution & Disclaimer .................. o4
               Credits/Acknowledgments .................... o5
               Things to look for in upcoming releases .... o6
               History - Notes from the Past .............. o7



                                                                          o1
                    
                       Features of the DCT Voting Door
                    

 Supports both DORINFOx.DEF and DOOR.SYS.
 User time-out after 120 seconds.
 Auto-Deletion of old booths.
 Lightbar selector for you eLiTe d00ds.
 Problem users can be locked out.
 Optional profanity filter (allowing you to censor swearing).
 Bar graphs/percentages when displaying results.
 Users may leave their comments on each booth.
 Colour configuration (sort of, it'll be improved soon).
 DCT-Vote can be set to have users vote for all new booths when they login.
 Multi-tasker capability.
 Internal SysOp-User chat mode.



                                                                          o2
                          
                             Installation Guide
                          

   Installation is extremely simple; all you must do is create a directory
for DCT-Vote, then run CONFIG.EXE to configure DCT-Vote to your system.  You
may also wish to edit DCTVOTE.FLT if you will be using the profanity filter,
as no words have been pre-defined to filter out.  DCT-Vote does not have to
be run from the directory it resides in, since it automatically looks for all
of its files in the directory it exists in.  Have your BBS call DCT-Vote via
a command-line similar to "C:\BBS\DOORS\DCTVOTE\DCTVOTE.EXE /PC:\BBS".  The
"/P" parameter specifies the path for DCT-Vote to read the drop file from and
is only required if the drop file will not be in the current directory.  If
your BBS supports memory swapping, please activate this option.

   If you would like to have your users presented with any new voting booths
when they login, have DCT-Vote executed at login with the "/A" parameter for
a command-line similar to "C:\BBS\DOORS\DCTVOTE\DCTVOTE.EXE /PC:\BBS /A".
DCT-Vote will have users vote for all new booths that they have not yet voted
for, then return to the BBS automatically.  If no new booths exist, DCT-Vote
will terminate without even letting the user know that it has been run.


 Command-Line Parameters


 /A     Invoke Auto-Vote.
 /Bxxx  Specify locked baud rate (i.e. /B38400).
 /L     Local mode.
 /Nx    Specify node number (not really needed unless you want it to read
           DORINFO2.DEF for node 2 etc).
 /Pxxx  Specify path to drop file (i.e. /PC:\BBS).
 /V     Turn local video off.
 /W     A DOS only Network is present.



                                                                          o3
                             
                                SysOp Hotkeys
                             

   SysOp hotkeys allow you to do an number of things while the user is in the
door.  Hotkeys supported in this release are as follows.

        F1    Shows the SysOp hotkeys on the status bar.
        AltC Invokes the internal chat mode.
        AltT Twits User.  Returns user back to the BBS.
        PgUp  Adds 5 minutes to the user's alloted time in the door.
        PgDn  Removes 5 minutes of the user's time in the door.



                                                                          o4
                       
                          Distribution & Disclaimer
                       

   DCT-Vote is copyright (C) 1996 by Dan Traczynski.  All Rights Reserved.  I
encourage you to distribute it, but DO NOT by any means alter any of the
files within the original archive.  The archive should be named DCTVD011.ZIP,
preferably kept in its ZIP format.

   The author, Daniel Traczynski, will take no responsibility to anything
that this program may or may not do to your system.  Although the program has
been tested thoroughly by the support team, no guarantee can be given that it
will do what it was made to do.  Nevertheless, if anything should happen, the
user is totally responsible and the author will be under no obligations what-
soever.  By using this program you agree to this disclaimer.



                                                                          o5
                      
                         Credits and Acknowlegments
                      

I'd like to thank the following people in my making of this program.

-Alan Ianson of Al's Place BBS (604)251-1817 for his support of my programs
 and for allowing users to FREQ all DCT Productions from his BBS.
-Justin Bourne for testing DCT-Vote remotely for me and finding some of the
 bugs in the first eta.
-Steve Lorenz for DDPlus.
-Chronos on Rogue's Inn BBS for eta testing the program for me.  Too bad his
 board went down.
-Neural Meltdown BBS (604-255-5198) for being my new eta tester.
-Hidden Realm BBS (604-708-0304) for being another new eta tester.
-Mark McLeod for re-writing parts of the docs.  It does look a little better
 now.



                                                                          o6
                     
                        Things to look forward to :)
                     

   I will add in a booth editor once I get around to changing the file
structure so DCT-Vote can handle an (almost) unlimited number of booths and
answers per booth.  I'll also consider anything anyone suggests.



                                                                          o7
                            
                               Release Notes
                            

v0.11 - April 17, 1996.

This version is mainly just a bug fix from v0.10 and also contains a few new
things that I forgot to add in the previous version or never got around to
adding.

-Aaarrgh!  The day it's released and already I find a bug!  The user timeout
 wouldn't activate if a user was at one of those spinning stick prompts; the
 stick would just spin endlessly until he hit a key. :(  Well it's fixed now.
-If no booths exist (ie. a new copy was just installed), DCT-Vote now creates
 a default booth.  I just felt like doing this. :)
-Fixed a bug in the voting results screen where the title would sometimes not
 be displayed properly.  This bug's been around since the first eta, I just
 found it out now.
-DCT-Vote now shows the user which answer he voted for when displaying the
 voting results.
-DCT-Vote now shows the user when the booth was created in the voting results.
-If the SysOp had the Auto-Vote feature in use and a user whose terminal
 didn't support ANSI entered, DCT-Vote would display to them the message
 telling them they didn't have ANSI.  It now simply exits without bothering
 the user about it every time he logs in.
-DCT-Vote will now allow users to create a new voting booth when they login
 using the auto-vote feature.
-Fixed a bug in the string entry prompts.
-If the user left a comment on a booth whose question was two lines, the
 "Press any key to continue" prompt would be displayed on the bottom border
 line and mess up the display.  Fixed.
-Users can't just hit [Enter] on the first answer in auto-vote any more (it
 forces them to think about which answer to choose now >;).
-It takes less time to save the voting results now (the program used to be
 re-writing the whole vote file before - now it just saves the booth voted
 on).
-Added colour configuration.
-Fixed a bug where DCT-Vote would sometimes crash if you tried deleting a
 booth and comments had been written on it.  I think it had to do with SHARE
 being loaded (it worked great until I loaded SHARE on my computer).
-Booths being deleted during maintenance were destroying the data files,
 making the whole voting door have to be reset.  This has thankfully been
 fixed. :)
-Added an error handler.  If a runtime error occurs, it will be logged in the
 log file.
-If a user left a comment that was 5 lines long, DCT-Vote would not save the
 last line.  Fixed.


v0.10 - February 17, 1996.

Well there have been MANY changes in this version from the previous one,
though many of them won't even be seen by the users.  Setup and installation
for the SysOp should be much easier now.

-If a booth was deleted and the comment file was empty, the program would
 terminate with a runtime error.  Fixed.
-If there are booths which the user hasn't voted for yet, DCT-Vote now tells
 them that in the main menu.
-Added the user time-out.  If the user doesn't press anything for 120 seconds,
 he is returned to the BBS.
-Added the auto-vote feature.
-The docs look a *LOT* better now. :)
-Oooh.  Bad bug.  On one BBS, when you hit a cursor key on the remote end,
 DCT-Vote would act as if the user hit [ESC] because it didn't wait long
 enough to see if more characters had been sent.  (When the user hits a
 cursor key, the terminal program sends ASCII character #27 followed by "[A"
 or whatever the code is, and DCT-Vote didn't wait long enough for the "[A"
 part.)
-Fixed a bug where if you hit backspace when selecting a booth, it wouldn't
 write the "" character remotely like it should have.
-You may now hit the first letter of the option in the sysop menu as well as
 the number.  I did this to the main menu a few versions back but somehow
 missed doing it in the SysOp menu.
-Finally!  I made a configuration program, so you won't have to worry about
 the messy text configuration file any more.  Not all of the features within
 it have been implemented yet.
-Users may now post booths anonymously if the SysOp allows it.  Please keep
 in mind that if you have SysOp access, DCT-Vote will show you who created
 the booth when voting, but to regular users it simply says "Posted By:
 Anonymous".
-I made a little change to the voting results screen regarding the percentage
 bar.
-Fixed up the string entry prompts a bit.
-Made a few subtle changes to the Yes/No prompt.
-Improved the program info screen.


v0.06 - January 25, 1996.

After releasing v.05 to be eta tested, I found a few bugs.  This version has
all of the bug fixes.

-OOPPS!!  There was a little bug where DCT-Vote wouldn't let users move the
 lightbar onto the "create new booth" if they didn't have sysop access.  They
 could still create booths by hitting "3" though.  Thanks to Hidden Realm
 for finding this bug.
-If you had the status bar turned off and hit F1 to display the help, it
 would go back on.  Fixed.
-If the user's name was only one word, DCT-Vote would add a trailing space
 character to it.  Fixed.


v0.05 - January 23, 1996.

Hmm...  Some nice new features in this version, and a few bug fixes as well.
I still have to add file-locking though, and eventually when I get around to
it, I'll rearrange the file structure so that DCT-Vote can support an
unlimited amount of booths and answers per booth.

-Fixed the spinning stick in the "Press any key" prompts.  It worked fine
 locally, but remotely it screwed up with some terminal programs.
-Added the "user comments".
-Added the "@" random filter character macro.
-Added a minimum security level to create a booth.
-You may now hit the first letter of the option in the main menu as well as
 the number.
-If the user enters an invalid booth number, it now informs him of that
 instead of returning to the main menu.
-If a user whose terminal program doesn't support ANSI enters the door, it
 will now display a message to him informing him that he must have ANSI.


v0.01 - January 7, 1996.

My initial creation of DCT-Vote.  I'll be playing around with the data file
formats in the next few versions until I find something that I like and that
is easy to work with.




{EOF}
