The World of Computer Software/The World of Computer Software.iso/netbday5.zip/NETBDAY.DOC

Text File | 1992-10-30 | 8KB | 184 lines

                              NetBday

                    A VERY silly netware utility.

"This is probably the stupidest programme my son (the doctor) has ever
written" (authentic apocryphal misquote from the author's mother)

-1) This release (#5)

Minor change - the one day warning now randomly selects from a range of
suggestions like "Bake a cake" etc.

0) This release (#4)

This release incorporates a user suggestion from the owner of a large
birthday list - variable warning period. This of course mean lots of
other changes, so probably new bugs.

#3 was a major upgrade - I finally got around to getting rid
of a whole lot of baggage code which caused all sorts of minor
complications for some users of earlier versions.

Windowing code is simpler and cleaner and in general the package should
cause fewer problems. Keep those cards and letters coming folks...

1) Licencing and legal stuff

This software and associated documentation is copyright software and
may only be distributed and used under the terms described herein. The
documentation and software provided in this package may be freely
copied and distributed in unaltered form only. No fee may be charged
for distribution or use of this package except by prior arrangement
with the copyright holder whose contact details are provided at the
end of this text.

This software and documentation are guaranteed to take up room on your
disk until they are deleted. In addition, if this software breaks
anything of yours, you get to keep all the pieces. Other than that,
there are no guarantees or warranties of any kind including
merchantability or fitness for purpose provided with this package. Use
it at your own peril. Remember, you usually get what you pay for.

If you install this package, you may use it for a trial period of up
to one calendar month with no obligation. If you like the package and
wish to continue using it, you must send the author a postcard or
email (details below) preferably describing the setting and number of
users on your network(s). Other than that, go for it.

2) Description

NetBday is a network login utility (specific to Novell networks) which
is extremely popular with the users on my network (they made me write
it when a clinical package I wrote started playing happy birthday
whenever it was the birthday of a patient whose records were being
accessed). It is quintessentially silly. This stupid program announces
your user's birthdays to the world by playing "Happy Birthday"
(complete with words for those who don't know them) whenever they
login. Amazingly enough, that's all it does !.

3) Installation

Create a text file (details below) containing your network's user
login names, the text you want displayed as the users name (for
example, a full name or nickname) and their birthdate. Call it
BDLIST.DAT (or whatever you prefer). Put both the netbday.exe file and
the birthday list file in your sys:public directory (or some other
directory available to all users during the execution of the system
login script. Make BOTH files readonly and sharable (use the netware
"flag" utility - eg - "flag netbday.exe ro s") and add the following
lines somewhere near the end of your system login script :-

#sys:public\netbday sys:public\bdlist.dat [U|A|N] [warning period (days)]

The first parameter on this login script command line is REQUIRED ! It must
be a file containing birthday dates and user names (see below) and the
user MUST HAVE READ and FIND ACCESS TO THAT DIRECTORY !!. SYS:PUBLIC is a
reasonable place for such a file. Note that you can have multiple bdlist.dat
files containing subsets of your users if you want to restrict notifications
to workgroups (eg a single office). Make a set of birthday lists - one for
each workgroup, make all members of each workgroup a member of a special
Netware group (eg wg1, wg2 etc), test for membership of each workgroup and
run Netbday using that particular workgroups birthday list - eg in your
login script have a series of lines like

if member of "WG1" then #sys:\public\netbday #sys:\public\wg1.bd a 5

and so on.

The optional 2nd parameter a or n or u controls the behaviour of the
program. The default is U.
For music to be played to ALL users on any other user's birthday use a.
For music NEVER to be played use n.
For music to be played ONLY when a user logs in on his/her birthday, use u.

The optional 3rd parameter controls the advance notice period for future
birthdays. The default is 5 days but any number you put here will override
this. Try 365 to get ALL your users listed.

To recapitulate, the optional second parameter controls whether happy
birthday is played to All users, (ie whenever it's someones birthday),
No users (not even the user whose birthday it is) or the user (when it's
his/her birthday) only.

The first parameter is the name of a birthday file - eg

netbday \public\bdlist.dat a

where the file, a plain ASCII text file, contains lines like

Joe , Jumpin joe flash, 22/11/1982
jane,Plain old jane , 10/03/1923
etc

The first name is the users NETWARE username.
The second is what you'd like to see on the advance warning notification
for that username.

Comments lines have * as the first character and are ignored

Remember, there can be multiple birthday list files selected by membership of
a Netware group (see above) if you need to subset your users.

When a user logs in, the netbday executable reads the birthday list
file (the path is passed as a command line parameter as shown above).
It looks to see if anyone has a birthday today, and if so, plays
"happy birthday" depending on the second parameter.

If not, it clears the screen, prints the programme name and version
followed by a line saying whose birthday is next and in how many days if
less than the advance warning duration.
During the playing of "happy birthday", pressing any key will stop the
silliness.

Note that some users may be insulted by this bizarre piece of social
engineering, in which case the following strategem is recommended.
Create a new user group (called BD for example). Make all users who
want this program executed during login members of this group. Then
change the system login script to something like this :-

if member of "BD" then begin
#sys:public/netbday /public/bdlist.dat
end

4) Birthday list file structure

The BDLIST.DAT file must be a plain ascii file (NOT a nerdperfect file
for example - although you can ask most wordprocessors to make a plain
dos text file). Each line starting with an asterix (*) is ignored as a
comment. Lines of data must have a netware user name, a comma, a
name to display for that user name, another comma and a birthdate as
dd/mm (eg 03/06 for the third of June) for example :-

* this comment line will not be used as data
jim,Sir James PonceNeuf,03/02
judy,Judy Surname,04/05
* this is the end of the file


5) Contacting the Author

NetBday was written in Turbo Pascal and uses a call from the tp5_api
unit of Mark Bramwell ([e-mail]) for finding the
user's name. It uses the music unit of JC Kessels (J.C. Kessels,Philips de
Goedelaan 7, 5615 PN Eindhoven,Netherlands).

Source code will be made available for large amounts of money or other
good reason.

Email may be sent via the Internet to :-
[e-mail]

Postcards may be sent to :-
Dr. Ross Lazarus
29 Francis St.
Bondi  NSW 2026
Australia.

Please provide details of the equipment in use and problem(s)
encountered if 'misfeatures' are detected in using this software, to the
above address.

rml
July 3, 1992.