24 January, 1987
Hello, Navigators! Welcome, and thank you for purchasing
version 1.0 of The Navigator. There are lots of files on
your disk, so I felt some information might be welcomed.
Backups
Before saying anything else, I want to encourage you to make
a backup copy of your distribution disk and then store it in
a safe place. The Navigator is not copy protected in any
way. I hope you'll keep faith and help prevent any
unauthorized use of The Navigator. (See the SOFTWARE ETHICS
section at the back of the main manuals for a legal
definition of "authorized use.")
Manuals & Guides
I have placed all manuals and other documents in the NAVDOCS
folder. All of these documents have been stored in standard
text format, and can be printed from the desktop, or loaded
into any word processor. Be warned that MANUAL and GUIDE
are both quite long. (MANUAL is about thirty pages) By the
way, the document files all end in .TXT.
The first manual you'll want to print is "GUIDE.TXT", which
is the new user's guide to The Navigator. The new user's
guide is just that, a simple guide showing how The Navigator
works, and just what its capabilities are.
Later, you'll want to print "MANUAL.TXT", which is the
technical reference manual for The Navigator. The reference
manual contains a very thorough explanation of commands,
options, and other technical data. I'd like your opinion of
the manual, and have placed a response sheet within it.
Please let me encourage you to mail in any comments or
requests.
Folders
Folders make life easier for us all, so The Navigator fully
supports them with only one exception: You must keep all
resource files on the main disk directory - never in a
folder!
There are a few folders already included on your disk. The
"Routes" folder contains several sample routes that you can
load and examine. The "Navdata" folder contains some rather
large waypoint databases, again for your use. And lastly,
the "Navdocs" folder contains all manuals.
Programs
There are two programs on your distribution disk: The
Navigator (THENAV.PRG) and The Navigation Toolkit
(NAVTOOLS.PRG).
The Navigation Toolkit is a companion program to The
Navigator and performs sophisticated data management
operations on your waypoint databases. Future versions of The
Navigation Toolkit will try to incorporate your requests.
Ditto for The Navigator.
Remember that you need two files on your disk before you can
run either program. (.PRG and .RSC files) All other files
are optional and can be deleted if you wish to free some disk
space.
Navigate!
Several very early and primitive versions of The Navigator
may be on bulletin boards around the country. These
unauthorized and unsupported programs bear the name Navigate!
and are extremely "buggy". Route files and datafiles used
with Navigate! are not recognized by The Navigator and will
cause the program to crash. Remember, be sure not to attempt
using any datafiles or routes associated with Navigate!.
Databases
I'm in the process of expanding The Navigator's databases.
At present, the European database is very thorough, with over
1,100 waypoints. The US database, though, is quite
incomplete, and contains only a few hundred waypoints.
Future revisions of The Navigator will feature expanded
databases.
Translations
With luck (and good sales!), the Navigator may soon be
available for the Macintosh(tm) computer.