Welcome to Chris Encode Standard version 1.0!

This is a freeware program and may be distributed freely. All I ask is that you distribute all of the contents of this ZIP package together, and add a link to my web page if you are uploading it to your web page.
If you got this copy from a friend or a site other than mine, or this copy is incomplete, simply download it from my web site at:
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Crater/7404/encode.htm
You can also find the fully loaded version of Chris Encode Professional there, complete with hexidecimal capabilities and a code cracker! (Don't worry about somebody cracking your files with the code cracker, they would need to know exactly what is in the file to pull it off.)
To report a bug or send me your comments or suggestions, please contact me at:
chrisk999@geocities.com

Chris Encode is an all-purpose file encoder for keeping prying eyes away from sensitive documents. Chris Encode is unique in its ability to use a variable-length key of over 200000 bits! Naturally, a key length this long would not be necessary or convienient, but smaller key lengths still provide adequate protection.

Chris Encode is simple to use. Here are the three basic steps to encoding a file:

1.  If you are using Chris Encode directly from the DOS command prompt, type ENCODE [filename], where [filename] is the name of the file you want to encode. More conveintly, you can simply drag-and-drop in Windows. To those unfamiliar with computer terminology, this simply means that you can click on a picture of a file and drag it over the picture of Encode.exe. [NOTE: Chris Encode does NOT have file-selection capabilities.]

2.  After you have completed step 1, you will be shown Chris Encode's main and only screen. [NOTE: If you are using Windows, the text may be hard to read. Press the Full Screen button (it has a picture of four joined arrows) to enlarge the text, or change the font size.] The screen should say "Chris Encode" at the top followed by "Enter Output File Extension: ". At this prompt, enter the extension you want the final, encoded file to have. My suggestion is something like "enc" so you can tell it apart from normal, unencoded files. Press [Enter] to continue to the next step. If you wish to overwrite the old file, press [Enter] without typing anything. DO NOT enter a period before the extension; one is already there.

3.  The next prompt will read "Enter Keyword: ". It is here that you type in the password that you want to be required to read your file. Choose an unlikely password, something that only you would think of. Picking an obvious password like "Top Secret" would obviously be stupid. Typing in more than one word also helps deter crackers from opening your file. WARNING! Chris Encode will NOT draw asterisks in place of your password characters, as many popular Windows programs do, so other people will be able to read your password if they are nearby! When you complete this, press [Enter] to begin the encoding process. A counter will appear and show the progress of the encoder in percentage. When Chris Encode is done encoding your file, it will tell you how long it took to encode it. (This I had originally included for development purposes, but I thought it was neat and decided to leave it in.)

Once you have encoded your file, you may want to delete the original if you did not use the overwrite option and if you are keeping the file on your computer.

Of course, when you want to read your document, you will have to decode it. To do this, simply follow the same basic steps for encoding it:

1.  Start Decode.exe using one of the methods listed above.
2.  Enter the extension you want the output file to have. This should usually be what the extension was before you encoded the file. For example, if you encoded "secret.txt" with the extension "enc", decode it with the extension "txt".
3.  Enter the password you used to encode your file. IMPORTANT NOTE!!! Chris Encode is CASE-SENSITIVE, which means it discriminates between upper- and lowercase letters. Therefore, the password "Hello" is NOT the same as the password "hello". (Note the capital "H" in the former.) Decode will show a counter just like Encode does.

Included in this ZIP package is a file called "test.txt" with which you can practice encoding and decoding. "test.txt" has been encoded with the password "Hello, this is a test." Practice decoding it and encoding it ALTERNATELY - if you decode it twice in a row, you will end up with gobedleygook that can only be fixed by encoding it twice in a row.

TECHNICAL STUFF

Chris Encode encodes at a speedy 75 kilobytes per second. There are, however, slightly faster encoders that you can get. However, these don't give you as long a key length, they are large, and they actually cost money. (Chris Encode is freeware. If you paid somebody for it, you got ripped off.) Anyways, since you probably won't be encode huge files that have to be measure in megabytes, it doesn't really matter. Chris Encode works more or less instantaneously on more conventional-sized files.

Chris Encode was written in QuickBASIC, and compiled in Microsoft's QuickBASIC compiler. Although I could have gotten it to be much faster and smaller in C++ or something like that, I don't know any of those fancy languages and don't have a compiler for them anyways. I originally made it in Visual Basic, but it was incredibly slow - a test file that I had took 20 minutes (!) to encode in my VB version, it takes 16 seconds (!) to encode in my QB version!!!) The source code can be downloaded from my Chris Encode web site, whose address is at the top of this document. If you make a neat version of Chris Encode, send the source code to me and I'll stick a compiled version on my site if I think it's pretty good.

Encode and Decode can be swapped around if you want to have a tiny bit of extra protection. Decode does the exact same thing that Encode does, only backwards. So if you encode something using Decode, you can decode it using Encode(!).