D&Do v. 1.0 Prev Next Top
This sub-section illustrates the "efficient way" of generating a valid file name based on a statement taken from a Web page textual content.
- Start D&Do by double clicking the dragdo.jar file icon. You can also use the DOS/Shell box, set the working directory to the D&Do home directory and type the following command:
java -jar dragdo.jar
- You will see a splash dialog box (it is an "About" dialog box with the message "Please wait" message added in bold.

- You will see then the following main form initial display

- Right click on the red area (the target area) to display its popup menu


- Select the Load Metascript menu item; an "Open MetaScript File" dialog box will be displayed at the "scripts" subdirectory
- Open the FNamerDrag.ms file. Note: Metascript files have the .ms file extension.
- D&Do target area changes its color as illustrated below

Note: The green color means that D&Do can accept only one drop. The fact that there is no "DO" nor "BY1" message in this area means that: the program will be executed immediately after a drop. D&Do is wider but less tall simply because its window has been manually resized. Adjusting its position and size may help you to reduce the mouse operation strain.
- Select a Web page that you plan to save locally
- Highlight a text fragment that identifies the content of that page (usually the title); here, are the details:
- position the mouse cursor at the beginning of the text,
- press the mouse button,
- while keeping the button pressed, drag the cursor toward the end of the text fragment,
- then release the mouse button; the text fragment is then highlighted.
- Drag the highlighted text then drop it into the target area of D&Do; here, are the details:
- position the cursor on the highlighted text
- press the mouse button,
- while keeping pressed, drag the cursor toward the target area
- reach the target area; the mouse cursor should display a small "+" icon (in Windows)
- then release the mouse button there; you should see that the status line is now displaying the following message: "INF: Exit = 0", which means that the program has successfully completed its task.
Note: The above explanation for highlighting, dragging and dropping a text fragment is quite detailed, you certainly have realized that it takes less that a second to highlight a text fragment and drop it into the target area.
- Return to your Web page, do a File > Save As to display the "File Web Page" dialog box.
- Simply do Ctrl-V; this will paste the corrected and valid file name into the File Name text field.
- Select the directory that will contain the file
- Click Save.
This is it. If you plan to save many Web pages like that, you will save a lot of time. If the default name displayed inside the File Name field of the "Save As" dialog box is exactly what you want, there is no need of using D&Do. However, you will encounter many Web pages where the default name is either irrelevant (it contains only the company name) or too long or it may even contain invalid characters.
While D&Do is still loaded with the metascript, try the menu command Help; you will see the documentation about that loaded metascript. You can switch between the loaded metascript documentation and the D&Do (this) documentation.
Example Conclusions
We learned how to:
- Start D&Do
- Load a metascript
- Use the D&Do GUI
- Bridge between two Windows applications
- Access the documentation about the loaded metascript
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Copyright(c) 2003-2004 Marcel St-Amant