STAT-USA/INTERNET APPENDIX Items in this section: * STAT-USA/Internet account types * STAT-USA/Internet file types * STAT-USA/Internet password prompt * Viewing/printing/downloading files in general * Samples and on-line help STAT-USA/Internet account types: Full access to the STAT-USA/Internet site requires a paid subscription. There are two types of subscribers: * Single designated users (SDU's): Only the person in whose name the account is registered is allowed to use the STAT-USA/Internet site. That user is authorized to use the site from anywhere (for example, both at work and at home). When they subscribe, SDU's are assigned a five-character userid and a five-digit password. For example, they may be given the userid 999xx and the password 12345. When they access a "protected" document, they may be prompted for that userid and password. * Site license users: These accounts provide access to everyone at a particular physical site based on their numeric Internet Protocol ("IP") address. For example, the account sponsor might have paid to have every machine with an IP address of 123.121.131.xxx activated. When any of these users access a "protected" document, the STAT-USA/Internet system notices that they have a given machine address and automatically passes that user through. While these accounts have userid's, these are for accounting purposes and are not actually used when logging on. STAT-USA/Internet file types: In general, most of the files on the STAT-USA/Internet site are ASCII text documents. They can be viewed on the screen in your Internet browser. They can typically be printed from your browser or cut and pasted into software applications. (All of this is somewhat dependent on your Internet browser.) Some files are in other formats, however. Here are the various file formats you may find on the STAT-USA/Internet site: * Text files: These are files that have just about any file extension not listed below. Frequently, the file extension will be TXT or a three-character acronym for the source agency (like CEN, FRB, BEA, TOP, etc). Text files may contain tables. If the text (especially tables) doesn't correctly line up when you import it into your word processor, you will want to change your default font to a non-proportional font. Most character fonts under Windows display "M" as a different width than "i". Our text files, however, were designed for universal display so they use fonts where all characters are the same width. Suggested fonts to use for these are Courier, Courier New, or Line Printer and select a font size that's small enough to view the text easily (try for "9" or something smaller). * Self-extracting files: These are files that have an .EXE file extension. Self-extracting files are usually provided when the regular files are very large and/or there a lot of individual files to be downloaded. For example, the quarterly NIPA tables consists of seven individual ASCII-delimited files totalling 1.2 million bytes but the self-extracting file (NIA.EXE) is a single file and is just 300,000 bytes. Self-extracting files should be downloaded to a temporary subdirectory on your hard drive. Afterward, shell to DOS, go to the specified subdirectory, and type the name of the file. For example, if you downloaded NIA.EXE to C:\TEMP, go to DOS, then: CD \TEMP NIA This will create the seven individual files for you. You can load the seven files into another program; do not do this with the self-extracting file itself (NIA.EXE) though. * Worksheet files: These typically have WKS, WK1, or WK3 file extensions and can be loaded into any current spreadsheet program like Lotus 1-2-3 or Microsoft Excel. * ASCII delimited files: These typically have PRN file extensions although this varies. These files usually have fielded data. Usually, there are quotes around labels and commas or spaces between fields. For example, this is the first few lines of a NIPA file: "T" "L" " C"" 1929"" 1930"" 1931"" 1932"" 1933"" 1934"" 1935"" 1936" "602A" " 1" "0" 51126 46875 39782 31096 29578 34337 37383 42956 "602A" " 2" "0" 51125 46874 39781 31095 29577 34336 37382 42955 "602A" " 3" "0" 46004 41528 34324 25913 24220 28030 30620 34805 "602A" " 4" "0" 1419 1291 1022 757 695 755 864 954 "602A" " 5" "0" 1304 1181 918 673 620 682 778 871 There are quotes around labels and one or more spaces between the values. These files can take some getting used to. You may want to experiment a bit with importing them into a spreadsheet program using different importing settings to see what works. * Adobe Acrobat files: These files have a PDF file extension and they must be viewed using the Adobe Acrobat reader. You can download the reader for free from Adobe's site at http://www.adobe.com * Word processor files: These typically have WP, WPD, or DOC file extensions although this varies. STAT-USA/Internet password prompt: Unless you have a site license to access the STAT-USA site, you will get a password prompt when you actually access a protected file on the system. You typically will see the password prompt once a day when you access the site. If you have not purchased an account at STAT-USA, you can click How to Subscribe to find out how to do so. You can also select the Newstand which allows you to purchase a single report on-line. If you have a paid STAT-USA account, do not select the Newstand or you will be charged separately for information that you've already paid to access. Viewing/printing/downloading files in general: Viewing, printing, and downloading files from the STAT-USA/Internet site completely depends on the Web browser you're using and what operating system it's running under. For these instructions, Microsoft's Internet Explorer 4.0 ("IE4") under Windows NT is used but the process is similar using Netscape, Mosaic, etc under Macintosh, Windows98, etc. Viewing: When an underlined document title appears, you will typically be able to view this file just by left-clicking on the underlined title. You may get a password prompt before you are actually able to view the document. Printing: Once the document is on your screen, you can typically print it by using the pull-down menus and selecting File | Print. Cutting and pasting: Once the document is displayed, you can typically using the "clipboard" to cut and paste the text of the document into another application (such as a word processor) by selecting the text you want copied, copying it, switching to another application, and pasting it in there. Selecting the text is done in a variety of ways: * Move the mouse cursor before the first character you want to copy. Press your left-mouse button down and drag your mouse over the entire block of text to be copied; the text will show up in reverse video as it is selected. Let go of the mouse button. Copy (see below). * If you want all of the text selected for copying, you can either use the keyboard and do Ctrl-A or, from the pull-down menus, select Edit | Select All. Copying: Once selected, copying the text into the clipboard can be done a number of ways: * From the pull-down menus, select Edit | Copy, or * From the keyboard, do Ctrl-C. Switching: To switch to another application, do one of the following: * If it's already opened in another window, just Alt-Tab to reach it. * If it's not already loaded, go to your desktop, or the Start button, or the Run prompt to load it. Pasting: Copying the text from the clipboard into an application is called "pasting". To do this, move the cursor to the location in your new application where you want the text to appear. Typically, you'll then do either: * From the pull-down menus, select Edit | Paste, or * From the keyboard, do Ctrl-V. Downloading: In some cases, you'll have requested one of the non-text file formats listed above (like Adobe Acrobat) and you'll be prompted for how to view the file. If the file type is EXE, PDF, WK1, WKS, WK3, or WPD, you will need to have another program handy on your system in order to see the file. (For example, the WK? files can only be viewed with the spreadsheet program.) Most of the files with funny file extensions (CEN, BEA, BLS, etc) are text files and you'll be able to see them using your regular Web browser. Note that when you ask to save the file to disk, your browser may come back with a file download prompt without a default file extension. For example, the above file (which is described in the listings as "Quarterly Selected NIPA Tables (ASCII format) (Self-extracting version of NIPA.BEA)" is a self-extracting or compressed file. It must be saved as an EXE file in order to use it correctly. Instead of left-clicking, you can right-click on the file title. Under IE4, this results in a pull-down menu which gives you a few choices like downloading the file to your hard drive instead of viewing it or printing the file (which we don't recommend until you verify by viewing it on your screen that it is the file you wanted). Under older versions of Netscape, you may have to press the Shift key and then right-click in order to get any of these choices. Samples and On-Line Help: As you go through the STAT-USA/Internet site, you will periodically see a link for [Samples] at the top of the page. Clicking this takes you to the "STAT-USA Knowledge Base" page and provides you with much of the on-line help available in the system. You can click on "[Search]" to search for particular help files or click on the various blue triangles to see what help information is provided.