gbThreadsLite

OverView:

• Thread Count - the forum has about 50K threads. Threads are displayed in a list.
• View Threads Locally - select a thread to display it in the embedded browser.
• Fields - Forum, Author, Date, Post Count, Title, FileName and URL are shown in the thread list
• Thread Format - all posts within a thread are shown as one long html page in the browser
• View Threads Online - double-click on a thread to open it onilne in the PowerBASIC forum
• Layout Control - settings button toggles display of thread list, embedded browser, or both.
• Bookmarks - threads and show only bookmarked threads
• Search - enter search term and press Enter to find matching threads. Searches are not case sensitive.
• Search Settings - Can search specified section of a thread - Author/Title/Thread
• Browser Search - browser search dialog
• PowerBASIC - open the PowerBASIC IDE or Help file
• Column Sorting - Click column headers to sort thread list on that column. click again to reverse the sort.
• Command Line Search - search term may be entered on the command line

Toolbar:

• Search Term - enter search term and press Enter to start a case-insensitive search
  • Searches apply to all 50K threads (not just those currently shown)
  • Last 10 search terms available from a dropdown list
  • Boolean searches supported. user must place "and" or "or" in the search term
  • Boolean searches limited to one "and" or "or" (i.e., 2 search terms)
  • Ctrl-D gives focus to Search Term edit box
  • Can search Within previous search results
  • Edit Box Context Menu: Cut/Copy/Paste/Delete/Clear Search Term
• All - display all threads
• Author - limit search to Author column
• Title - limit search to Title column
• Thread - search entire thread
• Mark - toggle bookmark on currently selected thread
• Show - show all bookmarked threads
• Layout - toggle between display of thread list, browser or both
• Search - open browser search dialog
• Next - go to next post or code section in browser
• Copy - copy checked code sections
• PB_IDE - open PB IDE
• PB_Help - open PB Help
• Help - open local help document in browser

Thread List:

Embedded Browser:

• Select All - Select all text to the clipbord (Ctl-C will then copy selection to clipboard)
• View Source - Display the source text for the thread
• Print - Print the page

• Copy - Copy the Selection
• Select All - Select all text to the clipbord (Ctl-C will then copy selection to clipboard)
• Print - Print the page

Keyboard Shortcuts

• C-B - toggle bookmark
• C-D - give focus to the search term textbox
• C-E - open local, formatted thread in default browser
• C-F - open browser search dialog
• C-G - goto thread dialog
• C-H - scroll list to currently displayed thread
• C-I - show thread counts
• C-J - minimize
• C-K - colored lines
• C-L - hide PowerBASIC logo
• C-M - toggle Maximize/Normal window size
• C-N - next search place (author, title, thread)
• C-O - colored columns
• C-P - restore default colors
• C-Q - toggle using beep sound
• C-R - remove bookmarks
• C-S - toggle font size
• C-U - update EXE and Help file
• C-W - toggle WithIn search
• C-X - toggles hiding images
• C-Y - toggles return focus to SearchTerm after search
• C-Z - toggles between Search Term and Thread List focus on startup

Note: CS-R downloads the URLs it finds in the file _new_threads.txt, stopping at the first blank line in the file.

These shortcuts allow users to select the background color of lines and the text colors of each field, as well as to determine whether the colors are shown.

• C-K - colored lines
• C-O - colored columns
• F2 - select line background color
• F3 - select forum text color
• F4 - select author text color
• F5 - select date color
• F6 - select post count color
• F7 - select title color
• F8 - select file name color
• F9 - select url color

Update gbThreadsLite Yourself

On my request, Adam Drake updates the sitemap, which lists all URLs in the forum. gbThreadsLite can download a copy of that URL list and download the threads it finds. That's a lot of downloading time, so I do that for you and put it online as a single file that is about 1GB in size: http://www.garybeene.com/files/threads.zip. I refer to those as "Adam" threads. The list is kept in files\_adam_threads.txt.

The formatted-for-display version of those threads are part of the gbThreadsLite distribution file. Unzipped, they are found in the threads_formatted\ folder.

Newer thread URLs are added by the user to the file _new_threads.txt. Go to the "Latest Posts" section of the forum and find threads you want to add, or update. I open the thread and copy the URL from the browser, then paste it in _new_threads.txt\. Order does not matter. You can open the file manually or press Ctrl-Shift-Q to open the file in NotePad.

Once the list of new threads is updated, press Ctrl-Shift-R to download the list of threads. Once that is done, press Ctrl-Shift-S to format the downloadeed new threads.

At that point, you're ready to combine the Adam and New threads. To do that, press Ctrl-Shift-B to build the "bigthread.htm" file, which is used for doing searches. When the build is finished, gbThreadsLite will restart and you're ready to go!

Here's the full list of shortcuts for getting the list of available threads, downloading/formatting threads, and building bigthread.htm. The Ctrl-Shift-X/L/D/F handle getting Adam threads (already done for you) and the Ctrl-Shift-Q/R/S handle getting New threads.

• CS-X - stop download/formatting
• CS-L - get URL list from SiteMap
• CS-D - download threads
• CS-F - format threads
• CS-Q - manually edit new thread list
• CS-R - download new threads from list
• CS-S - format new threads
• CS-B - create bigthread.htm

Suggestions Welcome!