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Text File | 1993-06-06 | 24KB | 485 lines

PICTURE MENU Version 2.0-S Copyright 1993, Jeff Napier Shareware, ok to distribute as long as all files remain intact and unchanged. What Picture Menu Does This is the ultimate graphical user interface (GUI) because it is totally free-form. Now you can be free of the restrictions of windows, icons, and lightbar menus. Your only limit is your imagination. Anything you can write, draw, draft or scan will work as your menu image, background or icons. Anything you want to execute will run. It is very simple. This requires very little disk space, or RAM, and can be learned within a few minutes. Beginning computer users can run applications with absolutely no training! Who Needs It? Writers, artists, programmers can use this program to organize and display collections of writing, art or programs in an attractive disk-based package, which end users do not have to learn to use. Parents can use this program to organize a computer so that the smallest children can start the computer and run their favorite games and programs. Computer sellers can employ this program to give buyers a way to use packaged software without having to read about DOS or Windows first. Retailers can use this program to run a customer-driven hands-on demonstration of assorted programs. Computer enthusiasts can use this program to make an entertaining main program menu. Managers can use this software to give employees an easy way to locate and run programs or files instantly. The Pieces There are two main parts to Picture Menu, MBUILD.EXE and M.EXE. MBUILD.EXE is used to create or modify menus, and M.EXE is the runtime program. Where? Because Picture Menu is going to be at the heart of your computer system, the best place to copy the picture menu files is into the root directory of your main hard disk. Create a Drawing To use Picture Menu, you first create a drawing, with your favorite paint, drawing, drafting, desk-top publishing or multimedia program. Save your drawing as a standard .GIF or .PCX file. PCX and GIF are the most common image file formats, and most programs support GIF and PCX. Many programs are also available which can convert other formats to GIF or PCX or which will capture any image you can display and then convert it to PCX. PCX and GIF are very flexible formats, and many programs do not strictly adhere to the rules of .PCX or .GIF file construction, but Picture Menu will display almost any .PCX file from CGA monochrome to Hercules to 256-color Super-VGA, and most GIFs from EGA through Super-VGA, depending on the capabilities of your computer. Your drawing should contain some sort of icon, text or element for every program you want to run or file you want to display. You can have up to 100 programs and files linked to a single picture. For instance, if you want to run CHESS.EXE, then you should have a picture of a chess set, or write "CHESS" in any font anywhere in your picture. If you also want to run DARTS.EXE, then you should write "DARTS" in your picture or draw a picture of the boss. Using Mbuild.Exe to Create A Menu Run MBUILD.EXE by typing MBUILD at the DOS prompt, followed by a space, then the name of the .PCX or .GIF file you want to use. A menu will appear in the upper left corner. For the first program or file you want to link to your picture, select NEW from the menu. You will be asked to "TYPE AN ACTION STRING." This normally means to type the name of the program you want to run, optionally preceded by drive and path designation. For an example, CHESS.EXE, you might type: C:\GAMES\CHESS.EXE if your chess game happens to be on C: drive, in the games sub-directory. You must include the file's extension. For instance, CHESS will not work, it must be CHESS.EXE. A rectangle will appear. You can move it with the arrow keys, or move it faster with the number keys, or move it with the mouse. To change the size/shape of the rectangle, hold down the right mouse button or press the spacebar. (Press the spacebar again to return to Move Mode.) When you have surrounded the area to be sensitized, press [Enter] or click the left mouse button. This sensitized area is the area in which a user can point and select to run a program, such as chess. So, if you have drawn a chess board, then move the rectangle to enclose the chess board in your drawing. Finally, you are asked if you want to start the program with a request for a parameter or filename. This means that when Picture Menu starts the chess program, it can ask the user to type a filename or information which would normally be typed at the DOS prompt. For instance, CHESS.EXE may be able to record an assortment of games in progress on disk, and when you want to resume the game you played with Jason last week, you could type CHESS JASON.CHS at the DOS prompt, to launch immediately into the old game. With Picture Menu, you can have it ask for a filename, and the user can type JASON.CHS when CHESS.EXE is selected. That's it. You have built a link to CHESS.EXE. You can now select NEW over and over again for each program or file you want to add to the menu. NOTE: If MBUILD.EXE or M.EXE have a problem with your .PCX or .GIF file because it is misspelled, is misplaced, or your computer does not support that picture file's video mode, the programs will harmlessly return to DOS. Non-Program Files M.EXE has a few tricks up its sleeves. In addition to running .EXE, .COM and .BAT files directly, it can also display text files and miscellaneous .GIF or .PCX files. Simply type the name of the file you want to display in the action string when editing a link or creating a new link. M.EXE assumes that any file ending in .DOC or .TXT or any file without .COM, .BAT, .EXE, .GIF or .PCX is a text file. The program DREAM.EXE, which is also used to present this electronic owner's manual in MBUILD.EXE must be available on disk in order to display text files. Other Items On the MBUILD.EXE Menu Help Selecting Help will show this document which you are now reading if M.DOC and DREAM.EXE are available on disk in the current sub-directory. New To add a new program link to the menu. Edit In case you want to make a change, EDIT is provided. You can edit the action string (filename), decide whether the current link is allowed to ask for a parameter or filename, or change position of the sensitized area. Run Select RUN to test the current link. NOTE: MBUILD.EXE requires quite a bit more RAM for its own usage, and therefore some RAM-hungry executable programs might not run here, but will usually work just fine when executed from M.EXE. Delete Select DELETE to remove the current link from the menu. Next Select NEXT to see the next program link. Previous Select PREVIOUS to see the preceding link. Move If the MBUILD.EXE menu is blocking your view of the screen, you can select move. If the menu is presently in the upper left corner of the screen, it will jump to the lower right, and visa versa. Quit Select Quit when you are done with MBUILD.EXE. To Run M.EXE To run your new menu, simply type M.EXE at the DOS prompt, followed by a space and the name of the .PCX or .GIF file. Your picture will appear, with an arrow in the middle. You can move the arrow with the arrow keys, [Page Up], [Page Down], [Home] or [End]. You can move it faster with the number keys if [Num Lock] is on. Or you can move it with the mouse. To run a program from the menu, simply point to it (anywhere within the sensitized area) and click the left mouse button or press [Enter]. The program will run, and when you are done within, the menu picture will return. If you want to quit Picture Menu, press [Esc]. To Simplify If you forget to specify a .PCX or .GIF filename when you start MBUILD.EXE or M.EXE, then Picture Menu will automatically try to use a picture file called MENU.PCX. You can take advantage of this by renaming your .PCX file to MENU.PCX, then simply typing M or MBUILD at the DOS prompt will start MBUILD.EXE or M.EXE. Using A Different .CFG File MENU.CFG is the file which holds your program link information. M.EXE and MBUILD.EXE assume that you want to use MENU.CFG, but you can override this filename by typing your own filename as a second parameter at the DOS prompt. Whatever name you choose must end in .CFG. For instance, to use GAMES.CFG instead of MENU.CFG, and assuming you want to use a .PCX image called GAMEMENU.PCX, you'd type: M GAMEMENU.PCX GAMES.CFG or MBUILD GAMEMENU.PCX GAMES.CFG Editing The .CFG File If you examine a .CFG file with any standard word processing or text editing program, you'll see that it contains ordinary text. As long as your text editing program uses standard ASCII text format, you can manually edit a .CFG file. Each line in the file contains five numbers, then the action string (filename). You must be careful that the first number starts at the very left edge, and that each subsequent number is separated by a space, and that there is a space between the fifth number and the action string. The first number represents the left edge of the sensitized area in pixels. If your rectangle starts ten pixels from the left edge of the screen, then the first number will be 10. The second number represents the top edge. The third number is the right-hand edge, and the fourth number is the bottom. The fifth number can only be a 0 or a 1. If it is 0, then M.EXE will not ask for a parameter or a filename when the program is launched. If it is 1, it will ask for a filename or parameter which will be passed to the program as it is begun, the same as if the filename or parameter were typed at the DOS prompt. The action string must be no more than 36 bytes long. USING BATCH FILES There are times when it is appropriate to launch a batch file, rather than a program. For instance, if you always start WordStar (WS.EXE) with the same text file, you might want to avoid having to type the text file name every time. Or, if you have several nested sub-directories, resulting in an action string which would be longer than 36 characters, then you'll need a batch file. Batch files are usually very simple, often containing a single line of text. In the example of starting WordStar with the same text file every time, your batch file might contain this line: WS MAINFILE.DOC where mainfile is the text file you use all the time. You can create a batch file with any text editing or word processing program which works in standard ASCII text mode. Most word processing programs do this, although with some, you may have to experiment a bit to find the proper option. You can name the batch file anything you like, as long as it ends in .BAT. Then to run WordStar with MAINFILE.DOC from M.EXE, you would type the name of your newly created batch file in the MBUILD.EXE action string when you make the WordStar link. Tricks You might like to make sure that users cannot accidentally end up at the DOS prompt by exiting Picture Menu. A great way to do this is to create a batch file to start M.EXE, then have the batch file call itself. Assuming your batch file is called GO.BAT, it would contain these two lines: M PICTURE.PCX BLAHBLAH.CFG GO Going a step further, put GO.BAT into your AUTOEXEC.BAT file, then you could then start the computer in the morning, and turn it off at night, and the users could never mess up your presentation by exiting M.EXE, or even by tripping over the power cord. Order of Precedence Whenever a user presses [Enter] or clicks the left mouse button, M.EXE looks through the .CFG file line by line. As soon as it finds a link, it quits looking. This means that the first link listing a sensitized area in which the arrow was located will be the one that runs if there are overlapping links. Overall Link You can take advantage of the Order Of Precedence to make a full-screen link. This might be useful if you want a specific action to occur even if the user clicks on a non-sensitized area. For instance, if you want to display a picture which says in big letters, "Pay Attention" every time a user clicks an area between icons, you'd create a link with a full-screen rectangle, which links in your "Pay Attention" file. This link would be the last one on the menu. Therefore, M.EXE will check every link after the left mouse button is clicked, and if nothing is found sensitized where the arrow is located, then the last link, which is the full screen, "Pay Attention" message will be run. STOP You may want to offer users a specific way to stop M.EXE besides pressing [Esc]. You can put STOP, in capital letters in an action string, then if the user clicks in the sensitized area, M.EXE will stop and return to DOS. DOS To make link a DOS window into your menu, type DOS, in capital letters as the action string. NOW If your action string is "NOW", in capital letters (without the quotation marks), then when that link is selected, the user will be asked to type a filename or parameters. You can view any standard ASCII text file, any .PCX file or run executable programs directly. This is like a DOS window which runs once, and does not require that you type EXIT to return to Picture Menu. NOTE: in order to display a .PCX or .GIF file, or run .BAT, .COM or .EXE files, you must provide the extension. For instance, to run PACMAN, you must type PACMAN.EXE rather than just PACMAN. Fade Outs M.EXE has a fadeout feature which will cause the .PCX image to fade to black when a program is run. To activate the fade feature, you must pass a third parameter, "/f", at the DOS prompt or from within a batch file when calling M.EXE. Even if you are using the default .PCX and .CFG filenames, you must list them so that the fadeout control is in the third parameter position. Make sure to use a lowercase f. Here's an example: M MENU.PCX MENU.CFG /f Command.Com Services Most services of COMMAND.COM can be executed from within Picture Menu. To see how it's done, look at GETIME.BAT and GETDATE.BAT, provided with Picture Menu. Example Files I have created a default MENU.PCX and MENU.CFG for use with Picture Menu which looks the cockpit of a spaceship. The included MENU.CFG and several executable programs are included to demonstrate Picture Menu, and show you how a typical menu is built. (Go ahead and look at the directory of files and then MENU.CFG with a text editing program, and see exactly how this systems works and how simple it is.) Disclaimer You must use Picture Menu (M.EXE & MBUILD.EXE) entirely at your own risk. Any and all results of your use of this software is your responsibility. Limitations You can have up to 100 links per .CFG file. If this is not enough, you can make a batch file calling M.EXE with a different .CFG file and call that from within Picture Menu. Because Picture Menu requires a small amount of RAM for it's own use, extremely RAM-hungry programs may not run. I have not yet seen such a program, however. If you run into such a monster, you might try to release some TSR's and quit any other shell programs you may be using. An action string cannot be more than 36 characters long, but if you have a complex series of nested sub-directories, you can run a batch file to handle directory management. It is possible to call M.EXE from within M.EXE. Furthermore, M.EXE works within shells and other menu programs, and they work within M.EXE. This is good, of course, but can also lead to some surprises. Every shell or menu program will hold some RAM for itself. Once you get several layers deep, you can run out of RAM. The exact number of layers depends on how much RAM each program requires, and finally, how much RAM must be available for your application program. In actual practice, this occurrence is seldom-seen. Windows Picture Menu runs just fine under Windows. Windows can even be launched from M.EXE. To install M.EXE or MBUILD.EXE under windows, highlight the program group in which you want these programs to live (or create a new group), then select NEW from the file menu. Type M or MBUILD for "program description" and M.EXE or MBUILD.EXE for "command line." We have also provided you with an icon called MENU.ICO which you can use with Windows. To install select CHANGE ICON, then type the drive and path, then MENU.ICO. For best results, the "directory" should be the root directory of your main hard disk. Shareware Picture Menu is provided as shareware. You may use it for a while, not to exceed 30 days, but if you continue to use Picture Menu, you must register by sending $29.95 to Another Company. Postage is included. We'll send you the latest, registered version, which does not contain the advertising screens. NOTE: The shareware version has advertising which has a one in 18 chance of popping up every time you make a selection. This does not exist in the registered version. Site & Multiple Unit License If you are a developer, reseller, author of disk-based products, or otherwise want to distribute copies of the runtime engine, M.EXE, with your products, without the Another Company advertising, then you must purchase a site/multiple product license. The cost is 30 cents per unit, with a 100-unit minimum ($30). For products distributed as shareware: $29.95 covers an unlimited number of copies of a single product. No Charge The complete shareware version with all files intact and unchanged may be distributed by anyone and everyone. Written permission is NOT required. However, if you are a shareware distributor or sysop of a large BBS, you are invited to contact Another Company, and we'll help keep you up to date with the latest versions of our products. Jeff Napier d.b.a. Another Company P.O. Box 3429 Ashland, OR 97520 USA voice phone 503-482-3611 CompuServe: 71022,175 America On Line: ANOTHER CO _____________________________________________________________ end of file.