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///PreScan v.04á      (c) 2/94 WayForward Technologies, inc.
///



--Background

   Widely regarded as *the* best dialer on the market, ToneLoc has rapidly
become the scanning utility of choice among pro and amateur alike...

   Of course, like all exchange scanning programs, its only drawback is the
amount of time it actually takes to scan an exchange.  Given 30 seconds a scan,
it will take approximately 300,000 seconds (that's roughly 3.5 DAYS) to scan
a single exchange.  You're probably thinking, "But I scan 'intelligently', just
a few hours a day, and only in ranges I know will pay off."  But think about
it:  Even if you were to cut the numbers by 1/3, you would still have over
24 hours of scan time PER EXCHANGE, during which time you are vulnerable to
detection.  And, by skipping over "residential" areas of the exchange, you
potentially miss some (usually VERY interesting) opportunities for carriers,
VMB's, the occasional PBX, etc.

   Naturally, we need a way to try to eliminate the 97.4% of all residential
numbers in a given exchange without actually dialing them.  We think we can
help...


   Using PreScan can potentially cut your scan time by up to 85%.  PreScan
takes a text file list of phone numbers that you DON'T want to dial (such as
the ENTIRE white page listing for the prefix you are scanning) and insert that
data into a ToneLoc data file.  Now you may ask "How the hell do I get the
white pages into a text file without typing the whole damn thing in?"
Well, we thought of two ways:

                   1.  Use a good optical scanner and Optical Character
                       Recognition software (available publicly) and then
                       scan in pages of the white pages, convert to text,
                       and then run PreScan.

                      or

                   2.  Do what we did, and get the CD-ROM for the white pages
                       and there you have it at your finger tips.


   To use PreScan, you need an ascii datafile of four digit numbers.  They
should be padded with 0's to four digits each, and there should not be any
non-numeric characters in the file.  There can be as many four digit phone
numbers on a line as you like.  For example:

0003 4623 0593 0746 9164
0010 9766 1254 4912 5063 3145 6890
0042 4632 4067 0947 2525
0194 0142 4915
0486 0643 5762 8125
9914
6864

...would be a valid (albeit short) datafile.

** NOTE TO v.03 USERS: You no longer need to sort the numbers, nor do they need
to be kept one on a line... PreScan will figure out just about any kind of
spacing between numbers, and will sort the list internally.

These numbers should be in the same exchange, the exchange of the datafile
you want to put them into.  (duh)

Just type:

C:\TL> prescan numbers.txt voice

to flag all the numbers contained in "numbers.txt" to voice.  This will
effectively add all the numbers in your text file to a file called PRESCAN.DAT
as if you had already scanned them.  Later you can combine this file with the
already existing ToneLoc datafile of that prefix or if you haven't started on
that prefix, you can simply rename it to something like:  555-XXXX.DAT.

NOTE!  UNLESS YOU WANT TO COMPLETELY OVERWRITE "PRESCAN.DAT" YOU *MUST* USE
THE /a SWITCH ON THE COMMAND LINE.  THIS WILL NOT BE A PROBLEM IF YOU USE
COMBINE OR RENAME "PRESCAN.DAT" TO SOMETHING ELSE.

C:\TL> prescan numbers2.txt blacklisted /a

The above example with the /a command line parameter will add the numbers in
"numbers2.txt" to the already existing data file called PRESCAN.DAT.  They
will be stored as being "blacklisted."


  If you have questions, comments, ideas, etc., you can reach us at:

  apd@velcro.cis.temple.edu               elvis@velcro.cis.temple.edu
   <Arthur P. Dent, esq.>                      <a.k.a. SubEthan>

  Velcro is now an anonymous FTP site, so the current version (currently v.04á)
of the software will always be there.


.......         .......                        Coding: Arthur P. Dent
 .     .       .     .
 .      .  .  .      .               Additional Ideas: Elvis Presley
  .      .   .      .
   .               .
    .      .      .
     ...... ......  ayForward Technologies, inc. //
