ballerup@diku.dk (Per Goetterup) (03/08/91)
I was wondering about this. A lot of companies not associated with Peter Norton in any way has released databases (.NG files) for use with Norton Guides in support of their products. Recently I came across the QEDIT.NG package and started to wonder... Is the database compiler (decompiler?) part of the standard NG package or is it a stand alone product? - Maybe part of the NG program itself? Is the format of the .NG files in the public domain? Is there a PD or ShareWare product that also can create those .NG files? Any hints would be appreciated! Per. -- | Per Gotterup | "The most merciful thing in the | | Student, DIKU (Dept. of Comp. Sci.) | world, I think, is the inability | | University of Copenhagen, Denmark | of the human mind to correlate all | | Internet: ballerup@freja.diku.dk | its contents." - H.P. Lovecraft - |
jcmorris@mwunix.mitre.org (Joe Morris) (03/09/91)
ballerup@diku.dk (Per Goetterup) writes: >I was wondering about this. A lot of companies not associated with Peter >Norton in any way has released databases (.NG files) for use with Norton >Guides in support of their products. Recently I came across the QEDIT.NG >package and started to wonder... >Is the database compiler (decompiler?) part of the standard NG package or is >it a stand alone product? - Maybe part of the NG program itself? The original Norton Guides packages (C, Assembler, PASCAL) all came with the compiler and linker for the guide packages so anyone who wanted to could make their own guides. There have been two new commercial releases of the product (Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect), but I haven't bought them (and have no use for what they support anyway), so I don't know if the compiler is still bundled. There is a decompiler listed in the Programmer's Shop catalog ($40 or so), and one reader of this newsgroup was passing around copies of a decompiler he wrote. It isn't part of the Norton package. The status of the Guides themselves isn't clear, especially to the reps of the companies involved. The Symantec rep I talked to earlier this week sez that "Symantec owns the name, but that the product belongs to Simon & Schuster...but that doesn't explain why Brady's name is on the boxes I see on dealers' shelves.
evas@cs.eur.nl (Eelco van Asperen) (03/12/91)
jcmorris@mwunix.mitre.org (Joe Morris) writes: >ballerup@diku.dk (Per Goetterup) writes: >>Is the database compiler (decompiler?) part of the standard NG package or is >>it a stand alone product? - Maybe part of the NG program itself? ... >There is a decompiler listed in the Programmer's Shop catalog ($40 or so), >and one reader of this newsgroup was passing around copies of a decompiler >he wrote. It isn't part of the Norton package. The ngdump program I wrote was posted as volume 14, issue 44 in comp.sources.misc. Writing your own compiler/linker for this format should not be too hard since you can use the source of ngdump to find the .ng format. By the way, if you would like to reduce the amount of RAM needed for the NG program, check out <msdos.swap>swapdoc.arc and <msdos.swap>swpng152.arc on simtel; SWAPNG is a shell for NG that uses swapping to EMS or disk to reduce the size of the TSR to about 7Kb (!). -- Eelco van Asperen. || Erasmus University Rotterdam uucp: evas@cs.eur.nl || Department of Computer Science, room H5-1 no claims - no disclaimers || PObox 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands