PAD : Java Glossary

PAD Editors	Hassle Free Sites	Automated PAD Submitters
PAD Creating Tips	Minor Hassle Sites	X.25
PAD file Format	Selling Sites	Links
Manual PAD Submission	PAD Submission Services
Important Sites	Mini PAD Submitter

PAD Editors

•  PADGen: this is the program I use myself. For details, see the separate entry.
• PadCreator: Simple fill in the blanks. Lets you maintain many different companies. Has ability to submit your PADs with a click of a button to the commercial affiliate sites of your choice and also the shareware sites. There were minor problems with layout on my machine. Some windows were too big and partially obscured the row of tabs that control which section. It has extra fields for MS, Regnow, Trialware etc. And it is FREE!, however it is also adware with a top banner. It stores all the data that you key in proprietary format files. It generates XML and a summary HTML file on demand. The program drove me nuts for weeks because every time I generated an XML file it was empty, without any error message. I eventually figured out why. It quietly refuses to generate the XML until you have filled in all the fields. In other words you must pass verification before it will generate any XML for you to look at. It also freezes the ability to select a different program to edit. You must to a save-program to unfreeze it. To discard changes, you must exit the program. You must do all your edits with the program. Don’t edit the generated xml or htm files. When you create the pad files, check the directory they are being created in. It forgets each time where you keep them.

  Every time you make a change, e.g. a new version, you must do five things to make the change take:

  1. Click Save Program.
  2. Click Create PAD.
  3. Copy the generated *.xml file to where it will be uploaded to your website.
  4. Upload the PAD xml to your website.
  5. Submit the pad to various distribution websites. In theory, once you have submitted a PAD once to a website, it will poll your PAD from time to time to see if it has changed, so resubmitting is optional.
  There are no facilities to make bulk changes to many program descriptions at once. The closest I came to a clone ability was to create a pad, copy it, modify the program name in the XML and import it back. When you edit a program name, it looks as if it did not take, but if you exit and restart, you will see that it did. PAD Creator stores its company master data in F:\Program Files\PAD Creator\data\company.dta using a fixed proprietary fixed length field format where fields are padded out with spaces to the maximum length. It stores its program information in F:\Program Files\PAD Creator\data\* and F:\Program Files\PAD Creator\pad\*. The program has not been updated since  Last revised: 2004-07-19 Verified: 2007-05-03 and it is showing its age with 8.3 filenames and no mention of Vista.
• PADKit: written in PHP. Comes as a zip without installer. You are supposed to customise the code and run it on a webserver with SQL.

PAD Creating Tips

About the only thing missing is a clear place to describe prices for multiple purchases, site licenses, source licences etc. or even to mention such things exist. I suppose you could tuck that away in the long description.

The original PADs were invented in the days of DOS, when they were called DIZ files. That is why they sometimes use 8.3 filenames.

When you change the version number there are seven places you must update it on both the Program Info and Web Info sections: Filename_Versioned, Filename_Previous, Filename_Long, Primary_Download_URL, Secondary_Download_URL, Additional_Download_URL_1 and Additional_Download_URL_2,

PAD file Format

Tricky PAD Fields
Field	Notes
Keywords	Separate with commas with no trailing comma or period.
Program_Cost_Dollars	In US dollars
Filename_Versioned	Name of download file for current version. PADs insist on old short DOS 8.3 names.
Filename_Previous	Name of download for the previous version. name of download file for current version. PADs insist on old short DOS 8.3 names.
Filename_Generic	Name of the download with the version number removed.
Filename_Long	Long filename. Usually same as Filename_Versioned. Having two different names only made sense in DOS.
File_Size_Bytes	Size of the entire distributable zip in bytes. Bare number.
File_Size_K	Size of the entire distributable zip in K, i.e. bytes/1024. Bare number.
File_Size_MB	Size of the entire distributable zip in MB, i.e. bytes/(1024*1024). Accurate to two decimal places. Bare number.
Program_Specific_Category	Despite its name, this is the broad category for the program. The definitive list is posted as part of the PAD Specifications. Here is the list in a somewhat more readable form that it appears in the XML-based PAD specification.
Program_Category_Class	The definitive list is posted as part of the PAD Specifications. However submission sites usually leave out some of the categories and add their own. Here is the list in a somewhat more readable form that it appears in the XML-based PAD specification.
Keywords	Make sure this field has no trailing punctuation. PADGen does not enforce this but some submission sites do.
Char_Desc_450	PADGen insists this field contain no newline characters, (embedded, leading or trailing). Unfortunately you can’t see them in the PADGen editor. To get rid of them, I often resort to editing the *.pml file with SlickEdit. PADGen is just being futzy trying to protect you from counting on alignment. XML permits newlines whereever you would have a space. If PADGen wants unusually tidy files, it should automatically convert newlines to spaces then trim lead and trailing spaces. I wrote the author to get this corrected. He said he has little time, since PADGen is a volunteer effort. It is such a frustration since all it would take is: // convert newlines to blanks and trim lead/trail blanks desc450 = desc450.replace('\n',' ').trim();
Char_Desc_2000	This long description should be complete in itself. The end user will see only one of the descriptions. It is not a continuation of Char_Desc_250. There is no point is carefully aligning your description. This is XML. It may be reflowed. Avoid any high ASCII characters or entities. You can’t count on those displaying the file rendering it properly. Avoid any &, < or > even if they are not being used as HTML.
Application_Screenshot_URL	*.png, *.jpg or *.gif, not *.bmp. Should be 200 × 200 or larger.
Application_Icon_URL	*.png, *.jpg or *.gif, not *.ico. Should be 32x32. Some sites accept *.ico, but that is not kosher.
Permissions	Free form text to describe licensing, restrictions and purchase options.
PADRING	This is an extension that lets you insert a list of all your other pad URLs or a related set. You can also list other people’ URLs. This will help propagate knowledge of these PADs around the web.
PADMap	This is an extension that lets you insert a reference to a list of all your other pad URLs or a related set. This is an improvement on the PADRING idea. For details see padmap.org. The advantage of this scheme is you don’t need to keep changing your pads when you add new programs. All your PADs, including obsolete ones, automatically point to the latest list, in my case at http://mindprod.com/pad/allpads.txt.

X.25