Entisoft Tools v1.5 Fact Sheet

Review the Entisoft Tools Reference Documentation

Executive Summary

Entisoft Tools is a function library of over 1000 string manipulation, text processing, data storage, mathematical, and other functions.
Entisoft Tools includes a 32-bit OLE Automation Server which can be called from Visual Basic and Microsoft programs that support Visual Basic for Applications (VBA).
See the API Overview section for more information about the types of functions in the Entisoft Tools library.
See the Entisoft Tools Documentation for definitive information about the routines available.
Entisoft Tools costs $99.95 for a single-developer license of the Registered Edition.
The Professional Edition, which includes the complete source code, costs $299.95.
For more information, contact Entisoft by calling 1-310-472-3736 or sending E-mail to Sales@Entisoft.com
Call 1-310-472-3736 to place orders.
Call 1-310-472-3736 or E-mail Info@entisoft.com to receive (technical) support.

General Information

Entisoft Tools can be used with Microsoft Visual Basic (versions 6.0, 5.0, 4.0 32-bit), Microsoft Access (versions 9X and 2K), Microsoft Excel (versions 9X and 2K), Microsoft Project (versions 98 and 95), and any other 32-bit VBA or OLE automation programs like Microsoft J++ and Microsoft Web Server's Active Server Pages.
The include file contains "wrapper" functions which allow many of the library functions to be called from contexts other than Visual Basic. For example, functions can be called from within Access Query expressions and Excel Worksheet formulas.
Click here to view examples of some of the functions contained in the Entisoft Tools library.
The functions have been completely re-written to take advantage of many of the new features of Visual Basic 4.0 & 5.0. These features include support for optional arguments, boolean and byte datatypes, and variable numbers of arguments.
The functions have been documented to fully support Visual Basic and Microsoft Office VBA's context sensitive help, allowing you to see the what functions and parameters are available as you write your programs, without having to continually refer to the help files or written documentation.
The functions that deal with filenames support Universal Naming Convention (UNC) filenames like "\\SJS4\Entisoft\Web\Index.HTM". It supports long filenames which are new to Windows 95 and Windows NT.
All editions of Entisoft Tools are distributed in self-extracting EXEcutable WinZip (PKZip-compatible) format files. These distribution files can be executed under Microsoft Windows 95 or above, or they can be uncompressed using WinZip, PKZIP, etc.

Shareware Edition

The Shareware Edition lets you try the Entisoft Tools library without first having to buy it!
The Shareware Edition is similar to the Registered Edition, except that it displays a couple of "nag" screens when the program first begins executing.
The distribution files each contain a setup program that will install Entisoft Tools and the other support files.
Click here to Download Entisoft Tools now!

Registered Edition

The Registered Package allows you to distribute the runtime version of Entisoft Tools with any of your programs that Reference it.
The development version contains the browsable help information and other functions which are not appropriate within a runtime environment.
The runtime version does not allow users direct access to the Entisoft Tools help file (since it is only needed during development), but it contains no title ("nag") screens (unlike the Shareware version).

Professional Edition

The Professional Edition of Entisoft Tools includes the completely-documented Visual Basic source code to the library.
Acceptable Use Policies: If everyone follows these simple rules, then we can continue to release source code versions of our products. You can include parts of our Visual Basic source code within your Visual Basic projects. You must not disclose our source code to others unless they also have an Entisoft Tools Pro license that was issued by Entisoft. You must not distribute any of our documentation. You must not make documented versions of our functions available in the form of a Windows DLL or OLE Server, no matter who wrote the documentation. You can include parts of our source code within your Excel Add-ins, as long as you distribute only the compiled version (the XLA file), and provided that you remove all program comments before inserting our functions into Excel VBA.
The Professional Edition costs $299.95 per license (per developer).

Developer Considerations

The functions, their arguments, and basic help information can be displayed through the Object Browser, which is built-into most Microsoft applications that support Visual Basic.
The Entisoft Tools DLL runs as an In-process OLE Server, meaning that the functions perform with the same speed as if they were resident within the host program itself. (We have not found any reason to distribute the 32-bit Out-of-process OLE Server version of Entisoft Tools.)
Many of the functions whose primary purpose is to return a value will accept variant arguments that are fixed-up to the appropriate type. This means that those functions support three-valued logic (true, false, and missing/unknown) so that they can be used within Access Query expressions and other contexts where Null values are possible.
Many of the functions employ error detection and correction so that you are not required to safeguard your use of them with error trapping. Other functions can generate and return errors to your program when they are called with inconsistent or invalid arguments.
Various functions perform on-demand initializations to improve performance, as well as caching some of their operations to improve the performance of subsequent calls.
Most functions whose primary purpose is NOT to return a value WILL return True upon success or False upon failure.

API Overview

The routines are organized by subject into approximately 60 different Classes that the OLE Automation Server makes available. Here is a summary of the types of Classes provided by Entisoft Tools:

Arrays: Functions that primarily operate upon arrays of values.
Basics: Enhancements to the built-in Visual Basic functions and statements, file-related functions, file name functions, etc.
DataStructures: The Deque (and Queue and Stack), Stack, List, Hash Table, Symbol Table, and other data structures are available within their own classes which must be defined ("DIMensioned") when required.
Mathematics: Mathematical functions, including ones from algebra, geometry, trigonometry, probability, statistics, and other fields.
Numbers: Numerical functions related to dates/times, finance,
Others: Functions that operate mostly upon strings of characters, including bitwise manipulation and conversion functions.
Programs: Functions that operate upon one or more files for some high-level purpose such as you might find in a stand-alone program.
Strings: String search, replacement, manipulation, conversion, translation, etc., functions.
Texts: Text processing functions which generally operate upon strings containing words.
Tests: Contains sample, test, benchmark, and validation functions.
Units: Measurement conversion function library also available separately as part of Entisoft Units.
Variants: Functions which apply to a different types of values, including comparison, conversion, fix-up, classification, of values, etc.
Visual Basic Utilities: Functions for Visual Basic and VBA software developers.
Windows: Functions that wrap around various Windows API functions, making them easier to access.

In some cases, there are different versions of the same frequently-used functions:

There are "fast" versions of some frequently-used functions which have restrictive argument types and thus provide better performance because they avoid having to fix up their arguments to the appropriate type. Unfortunately, they cannot support "optional" nor "variant" types of arguments.
The "recursive" versions of some functions support variant values which contains arrays (which may also contain other arrays, etc.)
There are two types of Classes within the Entisoft Tools library--ones whose primary purpose is to make functions available, and ones whose primary purpose is support some kind of data structure. The Strings class is an example of a "function provider" class, while the Deque class is an example of a data structure class.

Pricing

$99.95 for a single-developer Registered Edition license.
$299.95.for the Professional Edition which includes the complete source code to Entisoft Tools. There are some restrictions on the use of this source code--see the Professional Edition section for details.
Contact Entisoft by browsing http://www.Entisoft.com or calling 1-310-472-3736 for more information, to place orders, and to receive technical support.

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