INSTALLATION:

PatchCSV does not require any "installation". You should simply copy the program to the folder where you want to store it. Then right-click it and create a shortcut. You can put that shortcut on the Desktop, or on the Start | Programs menu. You can also just navigate to the program and double-click on it when you want to run it. The program will refuse to run from a floppy diskette, because the output file must be written to the same place where the program is running.

UN-INSTALLATION:

If you don't find this freeware (please read the license agreement) program useful, you can delete it, and your computer will be just as if you had never used the program. No changes are made to the Registry, and no other files are created.

RE-DISTRIBUTION:

As freeware, you are welcome to re-distribute this program, unchanged, to anyone, anywhere, at any time. Be sure to tell them that it is freeware, and that they should read the License Agreement and the ReadMe screens.

OPERATING INSTRUCTIONS:

Double-click, or otherwise start the program. When you have inserted an Obsession© I console diskette in floppy drive A:, press the screen button marked "Look for Show on Drive A:". The program will report what show it found on the screen, and offer you the chance to press the "Read Patch" button. Because Obsession© II shows are compressed to save space, PatchCSV cannot read them. The program will offer only the "Quit" button if it finds an Obsession© II show. You can open the "Write Protect" tab if you feel safer, because the diskette will not be written to.

Because it is freeware, some of the options you normally expect of a Windows® program are not available. This program always writes a file of the same name, "ptchlist.csv", and only writes it in the same folder where the program itself is stored. If a file of that name already exists, it is copied to the file "ptchlist.bak" before the new file is written. The old "ptchlist.bak" is lost forever. It is not sent to the Recycle Bin. This is comparable to the backup schemes of the major word processors in use today.

After you press "Read Patch", the patch data on the console diskette are read, and written to the file in the form of one comma-delimited line for each channel in the Obsession© show. The first two lines have the number of channels and dimmers in the show, and the Showname and file date from the show. This produces a spreadsheet or a database which has the channel numbers in the first column, and the patches for that channel in the second column. Note that the data in the first two rows could be said to be a "different type" from the channels and dimmers. This doesn't matter if your displaying program treats everything as "text".

When more than one dimmer is in a channel, their numbers will be separated by plus signs [Note 1]. If a dimmer has a Profile or a Percentage, this will appear in brackets right after the dimmer number: "153+155+354[P3]+223[85%]".

If you have "registered" the ".csv" extension with the program you want to use to view the file with Windows® (see Start|Help|"file extensions"|"associating with programs"), you can keep a shortcut on your desktop to the file. (That doesn't prevent you from deleting the file itself when you finish a theater engagement.) If you double-click on the shortcut, and your program can recognize .csv files, it should read in the latest version of the file.

Note that the pushbuttons that are preselected for you (i.e. "have focus") allow you to run the program by repeatedly pressing the <Enter> key, asssuming that you are satisfied with what you read on the screen.

USING A SPREADSHEET TO VIEW PATCHES:

If you're a database user, you may not care about this. But a spreadsheet is ideally suited for looking at patch tracks. This discussion will use a certain popular spreadsheet program from Redmond, Washington. But you should be able to do most of this with any modern spreadsheet. A spreadsheet is especially useful for reading these data because you can move around with the arrow keys, and you can freeze the title rows and column so that they don't scroll out of sight. When you use the "Thumb Tab" on the scroll bar, you may get a "hint" which shows (it's off by 2, of course) approximately what channel you're on.

Run your spreadsheet program and then File|Open the .csv file. Or double-click on the file, or drag-and-drop the .csv file on to the spreadsheet program's icon. You'll see the patch information, crammed into two narrow columns. The .csv files are written with quote marks around all the data. I had hoped that this would force spreadsheets to treat a single dimmer number as "Text", but it doesn't always work. Until you reformat the cells, single dimmers may be right-justified, while multiple dimmers are left justified. [Note 1] If you have an idea how many show patches you'll be reading, select that many columns, plus the first, "title" column. Now pull down Format|Row|Width. Find a width number that seems suitable, and click "OK". Leave the columns selected. Now pull down Format|Cells. In the dialog box that comes up, select the Number tab, and choose "Text". Select the Alignment tab and check the box marked "Word Wrap". Press "OK". Now, no matter how many dimmers have been patched, the row will get high enough to show them all.

Select all of the cells you need in row 2 except for the first one, which has the number of dimmers in the show. Pull down Format|Cells and chose "Date" under the Number tab. You have to do this because the spreadsheet has probably recognized the file dates, and converted them to "date numbers." If the dates were displayed correctly, you can leave the cells formatted as "text." Now click above column 1, and use Format|Cells|Font (or the Font size pulldown list on the spreadsheet's toolbar) to enlarge the channel number titles. You can also select the top two rows and make the Shownames and dates larger and bold.

Use File|Save As to save the file as an ordinary spreadsheet file. DO NOT save it over the file you just read in. You'll probably have to use a drop-down list box to chose the native format for the spreadsheet, since it will try to save over the original .csv file. Make sure the extension of the new file changes correctly. You're saving the file so that you never have to do all this formatting again.

The next time you read in a patch and double-click on "ptchlist.csv", a new spreadsheet will open, showing the new data in the same crammed columns. Click on the top of the second column to select it, and press the "Copy" icon, or pull down Edit|Copy. Close the new file, or just switch to the formatted spreadsheet where you're assembling all the patches. Select the next empty column. DON'T press the Paste icon. Instead, pull down Edit|Paste Special. In the special dialog box, chose the radio button next to "Values". Now when you press "OK", the new information will get pasted into the old formats, the ones you want. Save the spreadsheet again.

SUGGESTED ENHANCEMENTS:

Create a spreadsheet template you can call up with the formatting ready for use. Write or record a spreadsheet macro to find patches that do not match the column 2 entry and make the cell's background a color other than white.

CUSTOMIZED USER OPTIONS:

There are no user customizations available for the Freeware version of this program.

LIMITATIONS AND WARNINGS:

There are many versions of Obsession© and Obsession Off-Line© in use. This program has been tested with console diskettes from 2.4.3, 3.0cf, and 3.1.2. It may work with other versions, but this cannot be guaranteed. Remember that this program is not approved, supported, or endorsed by Electronic Theater Controls. Do not contact them with support questions about this program.

The term ".csv file" is used here in the generic database sense of carriage-return separated lines which have each line's fields separated by commas. This should not be confused with the Strand Lighting concept of using multiple .csv files to describe an entire show from a console. In any case different programs may parse the same .csv file differently. This can be particularly true for data with embedded blanks or commas.

YEAR 2000 INFORMATION:

This program does not perform any calculations with dates or time of day. It does report the file system date that it finds in the directory for the files it reports on. If the information in the directory is inaccurate, the same inaccurate information will be reported by this program.

SUPPORT AND ADVERTISING:

The registered version will support accumulation of multiple patches, filename choice, and output options. Check this website to see when it becomes available.

CONSTRUCTION:

This program was written with Borland C++Builder 3 Pro. It has been tested with Windows 95® and Windows 98®. It will not work with Windows 3.1®.

Note 1: I would have preferred to separate multiple dimmer numbers with hyphens. But that popular spreadsheet took it upon itself to convert patches like "10-11" into a date number for "October 11", with no year. That meant that even if you changed the cell format to "General", the dimmer number information was irretrieveably lost! Alas, some other spreadsheet program may think "10+11" is a calculation.