POISONOUS PLANTS AND FUNGI IN BRITAIN AND IRELAND Interactive Identification Systems on CD-ROM Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Medical Toxicology Unit, Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital NHS Trust Editor: E. A. Dauncey Botany: T. G. J. Rayner Mycology: D. A. Shah-Smith Toxicity Monographs: N. S. Bates and others from the Poisons Information Service of the Medical Toxicology Unit Contents of the readme.txt file: 1. Introduction 2. Computer configurations 3. Getting started 4. Technical problems 5. Copyright 1. Introduction The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Medical Toxicology Unit of Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital NHS Trust have combined their expertise in plant and fungus identification, toxicology and treatment advice to produce a fast, easy-to-use CD-ROM identifying 229 plants and 125 fungi, complete with up-to-date toxicity and treatment information. The Poisonous Plants and Fungi in Britain and Ireland CD-ROM includes two interactive, image-based identification systems, one for poisonous plants and the other for poisonous fungi. They have been designed to enable people with little or no botanical or mycological experience to identify potentially harmful plants and fungi. To get the most out of your Poisonous Plants and Fungi in Britain and Ireland CD-ROM, we recommend that you first read the user guide. 2. Computer configurations Windows® 95, 98, 2000 or NT 4.0 A screen set to display small fonts and at least 256 colours At least 16 Mb RAM 4x speed, or faster, CD-ROM drive Your Screen: Poisonous Plants... and Poisonous Fungi... have been designed for a screen which is displaying small fonts and at least 256 colours at a resolution of 640 x 480 pixels or greater. Before using Poisonous Plants... or Poisonous Fungi... please ensure that your screen settings are correct. To check and alter your screen settings please refer to your computer manual. * If your screen is displaying large, rather than small, fonts when you start Poisonous Plants... or Poisonous Fungi... you will see the title screen, but there will be no obvious way of progressing with an identification. It is recommended that you Exit from Poisonous Plants... or Poisonous Fungi... by pressing the Tab key followed by the Return key on your keyboard. If you only press Return you will continue onto the second screen of Poisonous Plants... or Poisonous Fungi... where you will see Continue and Exit buttons. It is again recommended that you exit, this time by clicking on the Exit button. If you continue you will find that the interface is completely unusable and you will have to reboot your computer to exit from the program. * If your screen can only display 16 colours you will notice some peculiarities with the interfaces, the most noticeable of which will be the very poor colour quality of the photographic images. It is recommended that you ensure your screen can display at least 256 colours. * Poisonous Plants... and Poisonous Fungi... will operate correctly at screen resolutions higher than 640 x 480. If your screen resolution is set higher than 640 x 480, the Poisonous Plants... and Poisonous Fungi... interfaces will be positioned in the centre of the screen. Although you will be able to resize the interface, we recommend that you use the default size. 3. Getting started Please read the configuration requirements to check that your computer is suitable for running the CD-ROM. If you are installing the CD-ROM on a computer running Windows 2000 please read the section "Notes for Windows 2000 Users" below before proceeding. Place the Poisonous Plants and Fungi... CD-ROM in the CD drive, with the labelled side uppermost. Choose Run from the Start menu, type "D:\setup" in the Open box (where D is the letter of the CD drive), and click on OK. The setup program will install all the necessary files for you to run the Poisonous Plants and Fungi... CD-ROM. They take up very little disc space (about 9 Mb). The setup will add entries for the Poisonous Plants... and Poisonous Fungi... programs to a program folder under Programs in the Start menu; the default name for the program folder is Poisons. Once the setup has been completed, you can run the Poisonous Plants... or Poisonous Fungi... program by selecting it from the Poisons folder under Programs on the Start menu. Alternatively, you may wish to set up shortcut icons for Poisonous Plants... and Poisonous Fungi... directly onto your desktop. The Poisonous Plants... shortcut should point to the PPBI.EXE file in the \PLANTS subdirectory, while the Poisonous Fungi... shortcut should point to the PPBI.EXE file in the \FUNGI subdirectory, of the directory into which you installed the software (default = C:\POISONS). Please refer to your computer manual for instructions on how to set up shortcuts. NOTES for Windows 2000 Users * When installing Poisonous Plants and Fungi... on Windows 2000 systems, you may find that the folder containing the application icons obscures the final dialog box of the installation. If you close the folder containing these icons then the final dialog box of the installation will be revealed and the installation can then be completed. * When you uninstall Poisonous Plants and Fungi... you may find that the folder that contained the program files and the item on the Start Menu still exist. These may then safely be deleted. 4. Technical problems If you experience any technical problems, please read the configuration requirements to check that your computer is suitable for running the CD-ROM. In particular, ensure that your screen is set to display small fonts and at least 256 colours. To check and alter your screen settings please refer to your computer manual. Other technical support problems may be fixed by cleaning the CD-ROM. Use a soft cloth and CD cleaning fluid or ethyl alcohol, and work from the centre to the edge; other types of solvent may damage the surface of the CD-ROM. Never touch the readable (unlabelled) side of the CD, never place the readable side of the CD on a hard surface, and never expose the CD to direct sunlight, high temperatures or high humidity. Problems may occur during installation if you have any applications running in the background, for example, screen savers or anti-virus programs. Ensure that all other applications are disabled, exit Windows®, reboot your computer and try the installation again. If after following the above advice you still have difficulties with installing or running the Poisonous Plants and Fungi... CD-ROM please contact CD-ROM Technical Support in one of the following ways. Please give your name, details of where you can be contacted, and as much information as possible about the problem: answerphone: 020 8332 5753 fax: 020 8332 5646 email: poisons.cdrom@rbgkew.org.uk mail: CD-ROM Technical Support (Poisons) Information Services Department Royal Botanic Gardens Kew Richmond Surrey TW9 3AB 5. Copyright Data, text, images, interfaces and packaging © Medical Toxicology Unit of Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital NHS Trust and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, 1995-2000 Identification Engine Software © System Simulation Limited, 1995 Microsoft Visual Basic Version 4.0 © Microsoft Corp., 1987-1995 InstallShield® Express Version 2.12 © InstallShield® Software Corporation, 1999 Windows® is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation.