mspl13

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page	Microsoft Programmer's Library 1.3	/pubs/pc/reference/microsoft/mspl13/

Microsoft Programmer's Library 1.3

The following reference collections, including a large number of KB Articles, are part of the Microsoft Programmer's Library 1.3 CD-ROM.

• BASIC References
  • Learning to Use MS QuickBASIC 4.5
  • MS BASIC 7.1 Getting Started
  • MS BASIC 7.1 Language Reference
  • MS BASIC 7.1 Programming Guide
  • MS KnowledgeBase - BASIC
  • MS QB 4.5 Language Reference
  • MS QB 4.5 Programming in BASIC
  • MS QB Programmer's Toolbox
• C References
  • Installing and Using MS C 6.0
  • MS C 6.0 Advanced Programming Techniques
  • MS C 6.0 Developer's Toolkit Reference
  • MS C 6.0 Reference
  • MS C 6.0 Run-Time Library Reference
  • MS KnowledgeBase - C
  • MS Professional Advisor - Library Reference
  • MS QuickC Programming
  • Proficient C
  • QuickC 2.5 C for Yourself
  • QuickC 2.5 Tool Kit
  • QuickC 2.5 Up and Running
  • QuickC 2.5 Update
• Common References
• FORTRAN References
• Hardware References
• MASM References
  • Installing and Using MS MASM 6.0
  • MS KnowledgeBase - MASM
  • MS MASM 6.0 Programmer's Guide
  • MS MASM 6.0 Reference
  • MS MASM 6.0 White Paper
  • QuickAssembler 2.01 Programmer's Guide
• MS-DOS References
  • Advanced MS-DOS Programming
  • MS-DOS 3.3 Programmer's Reference
  • MS-DOS 4.0 Programmer's Reference
  • The MS-DOS Encyclopedia
  • The New Peter Norton Programmer's Guide
• MS Systems Journal
• Network References
• OS/2 References
• Pascal References
• Windows References

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Notes

Excerpt from msdos/dos33ref.txt:

 1^?   System Calls

      1.1^?   Introduction
      1.2^?   Standard Character Device I/O
      1.3^?   Memory Management
      1.4^?   Process Management
      1.5^?   File and Directory Management
      1.6^?   Microsoft Networks
      1.7^?   National Language Support
      1.8^?   Miscellaneous System-Management Functions
      1.9^?   Old System Calls
      1.10^?  Using the System Calls
      1.11^?  Interupts
      1.12^?  Function Requests

Taking a closer look at a chunk of the original DOSREF33.TTR:

0x7F5A9: Table 1.9 describes the file attributes and how they are represented in <LF>
0x7F5F2: The VolumeID (08H) and Subdirectory (10H) attributes cannot be changed with <LF>
0x7F63F: Microsoft Networks consists of a server and one or more workstations. <LF> 

These are all the first lines from three successive paragraphs. The remaining lines of the paragraphs do not appear to be stored in the same way, so they must be constructed from a list of individual words.

Why is the first line of every paragraph given special "as-is" treatment? Perhaps that line is used to provide context for search results.

The top of the file appears to contain a dictionary of words. I didn't see a likely entry for the (perhaps the handful of very common short words is dealt with differently), so let's take a quick look at the entries near text:

72 6D 69 6E 61 74 6F 72 F3 04 E7 05 00 01 00 74 65 72 6D F3 0B E7 05 00 06 00 74 65 72 72 6F F2  rminator.......term.......terro.
35 E7 05 00 02 00 74 65 73 F4 43 E7 05 00 13 00 74 65 78 F4 C8 E7 05 00 0C 00 74 65 78 74 66 69  ......tes.......tex.......textfi

The last letter of every word has bit 7 set, making it unprintable. There appear to be 6 bytes between words, so the next question is: do those 6 bytes relate to the word that precedes them or follows them?

NOTE: the largest of the TTR files (O2ALL.TTR) is 7,096,320 (0x6C4800) bytes, so it is possible for these 6-byte values to be file offsets.

Let's look at the 6-byte values for the words in the dump above:

'terror'    00 02 00 05 E7 35
'test'      00 13 00 05 E7 43
'text'      00 0C 00 05 E7 C8

Interestingly, terror only appears as upper-case label in a piece of sample code, so the case of the letter(s) in a word must be encoded elsewhere.

Here's the top of the "word table":

0x01800: 79 01 00 00 30 30 30 B0 00 00 00 00 08 00 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 31 E2 38 00 00 00 03 00 30 30 30

suggesting that the 6-byte values refer to the preceding word.

Given that common short words like "the" are handled differently, let's focus on a unique phrase containing only long words:

... remaining system calls manage other system functions ...

Here are the entries for those words:

0x09617: remaining   15 16 05 00 05 00
0x0AC26: system      3B D4 05 00 C0 00
0x031A6: calls       34 0B 01 00 67 00
0x0761D: manage      71 E7 03 00 04 00
0x08346: other       39 96 04 00 52 00
0x0AC26: system      3B D4 05 00 C0 00
0x05CF8: functions   47 00 03 00 35 00

Here's the list of offsets:

0x09617 0x0AC26 0x031A6 0x0761D 0x08346 0x0AC26 0x05CF8

However, since all words are stored in alphabetical order, alongside their associated 6-byte value without any alignment padding, there must almost certainly be a separate table (index) containing nothing but offsets of all the words. And since that table would almost certainly be used to perform binary searches of the word table, that index table should be easy to detect.

So, here's a list of the first ten word offsets:

0x1804 0x180E 0x181D 0x182C 0x183B 0x184A 0x1859 0x1864 0x186E 0x187D

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