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From: tcs@mailer.jhuapl.edu (Carl Schelin)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.programmer
Subject: Re: Norton Guides
Message-ID: <1991Jan9.194723.23513@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu>
Date: 9 Jan 91 19:47:23 GMT
References: <40511@nigel.ee.udel.edu> <jcmorris.662917293@mwunix.mitre.org>
Sender: news@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu (USENET News System)
Organization: Johns Hopkins University - Applied Physics Lab
Lines: 46

In article <jcmorris.662917293@mwunix.mitre.org>, jcmorris@mwunix.mitre.org (Joe Morris) says:
>
>shearer@cis.udel.edu (Rob Shearer) writes:
>
>>A Guide on creating Guides would be the best...  But an example and/or a list
>>of commands would be sufficiant at this point (or better yet... is there such
>>a thing as a Norton Guide DE-Compiler?)
>
>Programmer's Shop (1-800-421-8006) offers "Decompiler for Norton Guides" 
>from SofSolutions for $49.  I've used it and it seems to work as advertised.
>
>Even if you don't order the decompiler it's useful to have their catalog if
>you expect to be ordering software.  They have the most complete product line
>I've seen in a mail-order house, and their prices are competitive, even for
>products with a thin customer base.  For example, they are the only mail-order
>house I've seen which carries the Windows DDK, and they priced it the same
>as the SDK ($365 vs. $500 list).
>                                                               New
>FYI I was in Crown Books yesterday and saw two boxes marked "The^Norton Guides"
>for 1-2-3 and WordPerfect.  I don't know if their engine uses the same data
>file structure as the original.
>
>Joe Morris


Gaaahh! $49 BUCKS!! If you want a Norton Guides decompiler that
works just fine, I will email it to you, gratis.

Norton Guides Database Decompiler (NGDD) - Decompiles all of the
      "official" Norton Guides databases and can't get some of the
      ones that I have written or retrieved.

Norton Guides Splitter v1.2 (NGS12) - Decompiles all of the guides
      I have ever found, but has a line limit of 256bytes. Since it
      takes all of the high end characters and makes them ^Cxx,
      a string of 79 single line characters exceeds the limit by 60 
      bytes. 

I recommend using NGDD over NGS because it doesn't convert
all non-ascii characters to ^Cxx. If it didn't work on the database
I was working on, I'd then use NGS.

Jeeze, the basic decrypter is so simple.

Carl Schelin
tcs@mailer.jhuapl.edu