Summary:  An improved version of ENDUSER is available in PDF form at http://www.cypressinc.com/techsupp.htm.  ENDUSER is the reference manual for the basic core portion of the macro language facility furnished with Capture, excluding the application extensions that tailor the language to the Capture environment.  The version of ENDUSER that comes with the Capture installation appears to be a rough, preliminary draft of the documentation that has never been supplanted by OrCAD, even though the language publisher has since edited it with extensive corrections and refinements.  In addition, I have converted this later version to PDF, a much more useable form than the original Word DOC format and I have enhanced the PDF with bookmarks and table-of-contents links into the text.  Finally, I have persuaded the language publisher to post this PDF form on its Web site for access by all Capture users.

Background:  Capture provides a macro facility that is faintly like Microsoft VBA.  The language is called Enable by the publisher, Cypress Software (http://www.cypressinc.com).  It appears to have been purchased and incorporated into Capture at version 7.01, perhaps about 1996 or 1997, and carried forward substantially unchanged through all subsequent releases up to the present time.

The macro language consists essentially of two parts; the language core as supplied by the publisher Cypress, and the user extensions that adapt the language to the specific Capture working environment.  The tailoring extensions would have been implemented by OrCAD and embedded within the Capture application code itself.  At the same time, the documentation for the Enable core was provided to OrCAD by the vendor and passed on to the user unchanged, consisting of the file ENDUSER.DOC, located in the installation directory.  On the other hand, the documentation for the application extensions is embedded by OrCAD into the Capture online Help.

 It appears that the version of ENDUSER.DOC that has been distributed with every Capture release since at least 7.2, and possibly earlier, has been an initial draft on the part of Cypress, dating to sometime in the 1998 time frame.  On the other hand, Cypress features on its Web site a newer version, dating to January 1999, and bearing extensive revisions, corrections and updates.  (The file appears as enduser.zip.)

Over the years whenever I consulted my furnished ENDUSER.DOC, I found the Word format awkward to use as a reference work.  Not only that, it seemed to have numerous errors, missing text, garbled text and puzzling lapses.  So it was that I was encouraged when I learned of the later, cleaned up version available on the Cypress site.  The Cypress people were very cordial and accommodating when I contacted them to propose that I convert it to PDF, enhance it with bookmarks and navigation links from the table of contents into the document body and supply the result to them for posting.

So here it is for the convenience of all you macro mavens, the new, improved enduser.pdf.  Download from:
http://www.cypressinc.com/techsupp.htm. 

-Richard Mann