Michigan State University Extension
Ag Experiment Station Special Reports - SR031494
07/28/98
Michigan State University
Cooperative Extension Service
Version 5.1
August 1993
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
This software product and instruction manual are
copyrighted and all rights are reserved by the College of
Agriculture and Natural Resources, Michigan State
University, East Lansing, Michigan. These products are
intended for the use of the original purchaser. This
license does not extend any permission, implicit or
otherwise, for any modification of this or manual. Copying
duplicating this manual for commercial purposes, or
selling these products, is a violation of law.
IMP was produced with dBMAN1 Version 4.0, a product of
VersaSoft Corp., copyright (c) 1984, 1985, 1986, all rights
reserved.
Program design and development Randall C. Heatley Electronic Application Transfer Specialist Cooperative Extension Service ANR Computer Services 221 Agriculture Hall Michigan State University East Lansing, Michigan 48824-1039
1 VersaSoft and dBMAN are trademarks of Versasoft Corporation
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCING IMP
A Note To CEENet Users
Getting Started
Moving the Cursor
Getting Help
Quitting IMP
THE MAIN MENU
THE RETRIEVAL SYSTEM
Selecting a Data Base
Entering And Listing Keywords
Listing Keywords
Selecting Titles
ENTER
NEXT
FIRST
RETRV
RET-ALL
LIST
THE TEXT SCREEN MENU
FORWARD
BACKWARD
NEXT ITEM
PREV ITEM
NEW KEYWORD
SAVE SCN
END
HELP
SAVE ALL
APPENDIX B
IMP ON A PHONE PORT
Saving Information
Capturing Information
APPENDIX E
USING IMP ON CEENet
Saving Text From CEENet IMP
Index
INTRODUCING IMP
Moving the Cursor
To select menu items, move the cursor to your choice
and then press . There are two ways to move the
cursor, use the arrow keys, or type the letter or number
that precedes the item you want to select. When items are
preceded by a letter or number, type the first letter
of the word (e.g. for END). Press when the
cursor is on the item you want to select.
Getting Help
Help is available as an option at all menus. Move the
to Help, then press .
Quitting IMP
There are two ways to leave IMP. Select the END or
Quit option at each menu. The Quit option on the data base
screen will return you to your original prompt.
A faster way to return to the operating system is to
press the Escape ()key at a menu. Program execution
will end and you will immediately return to the operating
system or DOS prompt.
1 MS-DOS is a trademark of Microsoft Corp.
THE MAIN MENU
The Main Menu gives a listing of current databases
available to the general public. This list represents
various programs developed through MSUE for educational
purposes.
Selecting a Data Base
A listing of data bases available will be presented
from the Main Menu. The number of data bases listed can
vary.
Select a data base by moving the cursor to your
choice. Press to tell IMP you have made the
choice OR Press the number next to your choice and it will
automatically bring up the database.
Entering And Listing Keywords
After you select a data base, IMP will ask you to
enter a keyword. Acceptable keywords are nouns or verbs
that you might expect to be associated with the data base
content. When using a data base for the first time, you
may find it useful to first list the keywords (see Listing
Keywords below). Once you have entered a keyword, the
program will try to find it in the data base. If it finds
the keyword, the program will list titles of related text.
If you press without entering a keyword, the
program returns to the data base listing. The key
will also return the program to the data base listing.
If the program does not find the keyword, a message
stating the keyword was not found will appear and the
program will allow you to enter another keyword.
Listing Keywords
You may want to find out what keywords are available
for your use. Type KEYWORDS and then press .
A window will open on the right side of the screen and
prompt asking for a starting letter or string will
appear. You can use a single letter, such as A, or you can
string of letters, such as ACE. After you enter the
starting string, the program will ask you to confirm your
entry. If the entry is correct, type Y. If it's
incorrect, type N -- then you can re-enter.
Any letter or string may be used. Enter A and Z, as
starting and ending strings, respectively, to view the
whole list. Strings may also be any you wish to enter but
should be ones likely to be found. This is particularly
true of the starting string. For instance, entering DDD
as the starting string will result in an error message
because no words begin with DDD. IMP forgives the use of
unusual ending strings.
After finding the starting string, the program will
begin listing keywords in the window. Select a keyword by
moving the cursor so that it is in front of the keyword.
Press and the keyword will be automatically loaded
the keyword entry box at the left of the screen.
Press again to begin the listing of titles .
Two options appear at the top of the window at each
list.
"Continue the listing" will bring up successive
screens of keywords during long listings.
"Abort the listing" will end the listing and return
to the keyword entry box on the left side of the screen.
Selecting Titles
After a keyword has been found a list of titles will
appear on the screen. The list may consist of only one or
two entries, or it may go on for two or more screens. The
numbers that precede each title will be used in the
selection process
Six options will appear at the bottom of the screen.
These options are; ENTER, NEXT, FIRST, RETRV, RET-ALL, and
LIST. To select one of these options, move the cursor to
the option and then press . Move the cursor with
the arrow keys or by typing the first letter of the option.
Use the ENTER option to select titles. After
selecting ENTER, you will see a prompt at the bottom of the
asking you to enter a title number. Type the number that pr
the title you are interested in. IMP will
ask if the entry is correct. If so, press , if not,
press to re-enter the number. You may make as many
entries as you wish.
The NEXT option causes IMP to present the next screen
of a multiple screen listing. If there is another screen,
the "More Entries On Next Screen" message will flash at the
the screen.
FIRST allows you to go back to the first screen of
titles so that you may view the entire list again.
RETRV is selected after you have entered title numbers
ready to retrieve the text.
RET-ALL will tell IMP to retrieve all the text for all
titles listed on the screen.
Use LIST to list the titles you have already selected.
titles will be listed on the right side of the screen.
Selecting either retrieve option will bring up the
first screen of text after a short delay. If you selected
ALL," IMP will ask if the DBF files are on read/write media
they are, press . Then a "sorting for"
message will be displayed before the first screen of text
appears. If the DBF drive\path assignment is not
read/write -- such as CD-ROM -- then you must enter a
drive where IMP can create a temporary file. Once you
have done so, the sorting prompt will appear. The top four
of the text screen display consists of menu items.
An explanation of these items is in the section The Text
Screen Menu.
Press the key to return to the keyword entry
box without viewing text. Any titles selected will be
ignored.
THE TEXT SCREEN MENU
IMP is used primarily to retrieve information or text.
a block of text is presented, the text takes up the
lower lines of the screen and a menu uses the top four
lines. The text uses a 60- space or column line. Text
from an IMP data base can be used in most word processing
software without difficulty.
The menu at the top of a screen of text offers
options for dealing with the text. The options are
FORWARD, BACKWARD, NEXT ITEM, PREV ITEM, NEW KEYWORD, SAVE
END, HELP, and SAVE ALL .
FORWARD
The FORWARD option is used when you desire neither a
printed nor a disk copy of the text. Putting the cursor on
FORWARD will cause IMP to present the next screen of text.
last screen of text is being displayed, FORWARD
causes IMP to go back and display the first screen.
FORWARD is used after the other options -- except END and
NEW KEYWORD -- to continue text displays.
BACKWARD
BACKWARD moves the text display back one screen. When
first screen of text is displayed, this option will not appe
the menu.
NEXT ITEM
NEXT ITEM appears only when you have selected more
than one title for text retrieval. Select this option to
the first screen of text for the next title. This
option is not in the menu when the last item is being
displayed.
PREV ITEM
PREV ITEM also appears only when you select more than
one title. This option will not appear when text from the
title is displayed but appears when text from the
second or later title is displayed. Select this option to
move to the first screen of text of the title that had been
previously displayed.
NEW KEYWORD
NEW KEYWORD ends the text display and returns to the
keyword entry box so that you can select from titles for
a different keyword.
SAVE SCN
The SAVE SCN option will create a file. The text
displayed on the screen will be copied to this file after
you move the cursor to SAVE SCN and press the
key. Any number of blocks of text can be put in the file,
if there is disk space. This option is useful for saving
information that will be edited by a word processor for use
news release, newsletter item, radio script or
handout. The file is saved in the subdirectory of your
login on MSUECIS. To download the file press (E) to End.
From the main menu press (Q) to Quit, and a prompt will
appear. Activate your capture now. Depending on the
system you are using turn on your capture, or use the print
function to save the information.
END
END will end a text display by returning you to the
data base listing.
HELP
The HELP option will provide information about the
choices on the screen.
SAVE ALL
SAVE ALL will save all text from all selected titles
in the SAVE file. The file is saved in the subdirectory of
your login on MSUECIS. To download the file press (E) to
End. From the main menu press (Q) to Quit, and a prompt
will appear. Activate your capture now. Depending on the
system you are using turn on your capture, or use the print
function to save the information.
ERRORS AND PROBLEMS
IMP will display two types of error messages; system
and input errors. The most common of the two will be
system errors.
**** INPUT ERROR ****
The input error message is displayed whenever you
enter a letter or number that was not one of the choices.
For instance, if IMP asks for "Y" or "N" for "yes" or
"no," and you enter any other letter, the input error
message will appear. Simply enter one of the correct
choices.
The input error message will also be displayed if IMP
was expecting input and you entered none before pressing
. In most cases, IMP will explain the cause for
the error message. Do not worry about upper and lower case
-- IMP will convert all input to upper case.
**** SYSTEM ERROR ****
Several system errors are possible.
"Press RETURN to go back and try again."
IMP will rarely present this message. It occurs when
a selection is made for which there is no information in
the data base. If you request the same information again,
the error message will be presented. Typographical errors
may also cause this message to be presented.
"Sorry, I did not find the starting entry."
This message may appear when you request a listing of
some sort that falls within an alphabetic range. The
starting entry must occur within the list of
possibilities. For instance, asking IMP to start the list
will cause the error message to be presented
because no words start with QWZX.
"ERROR - There are no more titles, press Enter."
If you are selecting titles and press NEXT when there
is no next screen of titles, you will see this error
message.
"ERROR - No titles selected to retrieve, press Enter."
This message is displayed when you select RETRV on the
display screen but you have not yet entered any title number
Unless title numbers are entered, no text can be
retrieved unless you use the RET-ALL option.
"ERROR - No titles selected to list, press Enter."
Titles can only be listed after title numbers have
been entered. This messages lets you know that no titles
have been selected.
APPENDIX E -
Saving Text From the MSUECIS IMP program
As you view text, you can save it to a file. You
will not be able to name the file. The file is activated
when you signon to IMP. After you end a session -- by
entering on the data base listing screen -- IMP will
check the contents of the file. If there is nothing in the
will be deleted. If IMP finds text in the file,
you will be asked if you want to capture it.
When IMP finds text in the file, it tells you to turn
on the capture feature of you communications software.
Review the documentation for you communications software
for instructions on how to enable screen capture. Normally
must provide the software with a file name into which
the text can be saved. After enabling the screen capture,
return to IMP and press any key. The information will then
across the screen.
After scrolling the text, you will be asked if the
capture was successful. If so, press for yes. If not,
for no and the text will be scrolled across the
screen again.
Please note the reminder on the screen about turning
off your capture capability. If you fail to turn capture
off, the rest of your CEENet session will be saved to the
file along with your text.
Once you have captured the text and answered
regarding the capture you will be automatically logged off
the MSUECIS system.