RCARD 01-001
                              Hunter Goatley
                         goathunter@WKUVX1.BITNET
                             October 22, 1991

RCARD is a program that will read a DECwindows CardFiler card file and
display it on non-DECwindows terminals using the SMG$ routines.  It works
with the files produced by DECwindows v5.4 and Motif v1.0 (yes, the files
are different).

RCARD can be compiled with either VAX C or GNU C.  The file MAKE.COM can
be used to compile it.

To use it, just define a symbol and give the name of the card file:

	$ rcard :== $dev:[dir]rcard.exe
	$ rcard phone			!Defaults to SYS$DISK:[].CARD

Once the file has been read into memory, a window will appear containing a
menu of card subjects.  You can scroll through the menu using up-arrow,
down-arrow, NextScreen, and PrevScreen.  When the cursor is positioned
on the subject for the card you want to see, press RETURN.  A new window
will pop up containing the text of the card.  You can scroll through the
card's contents and press either "Q" or ^Z to exit the card and go back
to the subject menu.  You can also press "N" or "P" to move to the next
or previous card, respectively without closing the card window.

Please note the following limitations:

  o  The file format was based on observation only; I didn't have access to
     the DECW$CARDFILER sources.  RCARD could break in the future.
  o  Card files containing DDIF images *cannot* be viewed using RCARD.  I
     never could figure out how the images were stored so that RCARD could
     skip over them.  Instead, the program bombs with a horrible access
     violation and stack dump.  So much for error checking.
  o  Card files cannot be created or modified by RCARD (the "R" stands for
     "read").  Since I couldn't identify all of the information in the
     files, I didn't want to claim to be able to write them.
  o  Really large files could crash the program.  The entire file is read
     into memory, so it is limited by whatever process limits are in
     effect.

I wrote the program because I was using the DECwindows CardFiler while at
work and didn't have any easy way to look at the information while I was
dialed in from home.  The program isn't very robust; I never store images
in the files, so it works well for me.

The distribution contains the following files:

	AAAREADME.TXT		This file
	MAKE.COM		Command procedure to build RCARD
	RCARD.C			The C source for RCARD
	LIBDEF.H		Header for LIB$ symbols (needed for GNU C)
	SMGDEF.H		Header for SMG$ symbols (needed for GNU C)

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome.

Hunter Goatley, VAX Systems Programmer	    E-mail: goathunter@WKUVX1.BITNET
Academic Computing, STH 226		    Voice:  (502) 745-5251
Western Kentucky University
Bowling Green, KY 42101