Making Your Own Distribution
Why would you want to do this?The first thing to say is that you shouldn't normally need to make your own zips. If you want, say, a number of users in your organisation/department to have a copy of the Plus Set of programs, you can simply download the zip file from this site and mail it to them or maybe put it on your network, intranet or closed access site.
You'll only need to make your own zips if you want to do something rather fancier such as issue: a single program; a cut-down package; a revised menu; or perhaps add your own stuff such as extra programs or documentation. You'll need to have read all the documentation and have quite an in-depth understanding of the package to do this.
Please remember if you want to do any of that, I would be grateful if you would make sure any changes you make to the package have been clearly identified (in fact this is a requirement of your licence). The reason for this is that I don't want to get enquiries about problems with set-ups I have never seen, or, if I do, I need some way of finding out that the user has something unusual, what's been changed, and who did it.
How to make your own zip files for distribution:
Obviously the first thing you need is a program to produce zip files such as WinZip. I use the PD program ZipCentral which you can download here. I'm not going to tell you how to use your zipper-upper, you'll have to read the instructions.
The next thing you're going to need is to have the Distribution Set of the Programs already installed on your PC - download and install it from the 'download' page if you haven't.
The !Distrib menu (accessible by keying F1 from the Credit Programs Link menu of a properly installed set) is designed for making copies into a floppy disc and, if you are going to modify the setup of a package, I suggest that, in the first instance, that's what you do - make the set you want to modify in a folder somehere . Then make your additions or modifications.
The reason for this is that !Distrib does some housekeeping when it makes a copy, picks the right versions/names of certain files to go with the set in question, and makes sure that the copy has a 'standard' FORMATS.INI file - apart from being set to whichever version of the Regulations your set is set to (see the info on FORMATS.INI in the file TECHNIC.DOC).
I suggest you also do this if you want to distribute individual programs, first making a set that contains the programs you want and then deleting the unnecessary ones and adding a batch file or modified !Link menu (see DISTRIB.DOC).
One final problem is that !Distrib makes sets which are set up to copy themselves back from a floppy to a hard disc with the INSTALL.BBC program. So either delete INSTALL.BBC or rename it - as a convention I rename it to INSTALL.NOT.
Then I suggest you make another copy of the revised package and try that out to see if it works okay. If there's anything needs changing, change the first copy and then copy that over again and test the copy. This is because the programs produce a certain amount of junk - data files, logs, temporary files and so on, that you won't want in your distribution. Once you've got it all working okay, just zip up the files in your original (sans junk) copy, and there you go.
I am, to a limited extent, prepared to consider requests for help with revisions to the setup of the package, eg cut-down sets or revised menus (since menu scripts are a bit of a pig to learn how to modify if you only want to do it once), but this will depend on:
- who's asking,
- what else I've got on and what sort of mood I'm in,
- how much work is involved (ie probably nothing requiring new programs),
