JP Software Inc.
                             P.O. Box 328
                      Chestertown, MD  21620, USA

                             410-810-8818
                           fax 410-810-0026
                         Email sales@jpsoft.com
                       Web http://www.jpsoft.com/

Technical Note -- Using DESCRIPT.ION
------------------------------------

4NT and Take Command use the file DESCRIPT.ION to store file descriptions.  
This file is created as a hidden file in each subdirectory which has 
descriptions, and deleted when all descriptions are removed or when all 
files with descriptions are deleted.  If you remove the hidden attribute 
from the file, it will not be hidden again.

Your programs can access DESCRIPT.ION to create, retrieve, or modify
file descriptions, and to store other information.  DESCRIPT.ION has one
line per file, and is unsorted.  Each line is in the following format:

     filename.ext Description[*<ID>Other program info]...<CR><LF>

There is normally one space between the description and filename but
additional spaces may be used in future versions.  The characters 
after the description allow extension of the description format 
for use by other programs.  They are as follows:

     * is an ASCII Ctrl-D (04), and marks the end of the description
     text and the beginning of information for a program other than
     4NT or Take Command.  This symbol can appear multiple times on each 
	 line; each occurrence marks the beginning of information for another 
	 program.

     <ID> is an identification byte for the program which is using this
     area of the particular line.  If you are writing a program which
     will store information in DESCRIPT.ION, test it using an ID byte of
     your own choosing.  When you are ready to release the program,
     contact JP Software and we will provide you with an ID byte value
     that is not in use by others to the best of our knowledge.

     Other program info is any text the program wishes to store in its
     area of the line.  The text should relate specifically to the file
     named on the line.  It may not contain the Ctrl-D character,
     carriage returns, line feeds, or nulls (ASCII 0s).

4NT and Take Command will copy, delete, or move all the information on a 
line in DESCRIPT.ION, including information owned by other programs, when
performing the same action on the corresponding file.  They will also
change the name if a file is renamed.  To support DESCRIPT.ION properly,
your program must do the same if it copies, deletes, moves, or renames
files.  Take care not to remove information which does not belong to
your program, or delete lines which contain information for other
programs.  Your program should be able to handle a line terminated by a
CR or LF alone, a CR/LF pair, an EOF (ASCII 26), or the physical end of
the file.  The lines it creates should be terminated with CR / LF.  The
line length limit is 4096 bytes; exceeding this limit will cause
unpredictable results.

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JP Software Inc.               P.O. Box 328, Chestertown, MD 21620, USA
phone: 410-810-8818                                   fax: 410-810-0026
WWW: http://jpsoft.com                          email: sales@jpsoft.com