OS/2 Shareware BBS: InfoMgt/InfoMgt.zip/wanda104.zip/wanda.inf

OS/2 Help File | 1999-09-20 | 79KB | 547 lines

ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 1. About Wanda ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ

Wow, a flying fish!

Wanda is a program that allows you to create lots of little "sticky notes" on
your OS/2 desktop, in which you can write down all kinds of valuable (or not so
...) information, thus saving you lots of space on your "non-virtual desktop"
(the thing where probably your computer is standing on ;-)

Notes may be printed or written to a textfile. You may search and replace words
or strings in notes. All notes will automatically be saved when you end the
program or at system shutdown (and also n seconds after you last changed
something).

What's new?

You may want to check out the version history to see what features have been
added in the various releases.

If there are more things that would fit into the program, send me your comments
about what you would like to have ... (though I do not promise anything ;-).

"Registering"

Wanda is mailware, so please write me a short mail (or a postcard or something
if you like) if you use Wanda! (see also "The Top 10 reasons why not to
register Wanda" ;-)


ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 2. The windows ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ

This section informs you about the various windows of Wanda, what functions
they offer and how to use them.


ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 2.1. The notelist window ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ

This window offers a nice overview of all notes that do currently exist (not in
the world perhaps, but at least for this instance of Wanda ;-).

A single click with mousebutton 1 will select/deselect a note. A double click
will also activate this note (and show it, if it was hidden before).

Note: You can change the font and colors of the list by simply dragging and
dropping the font/color from the appropriate palette (to change the text color
you have to hold CTRL when dropping).

A click with mousebutton 2 will pop up a menu, that allows all kinds of
interesting actions:

 New note
      Here you may create a new note; this menu offers three sub-choices:

          Blank - The new note will contain no text (aka "blank", "empty",
           "clean", "pure as the drifting snow" etc. ;-)

          From clipboard - If there is some text currently resting idly in the
           clipboard, a copy of this text will be mercylessly kidnapped
           therefrom and forced to serve as the newly created note's text.

          From file - A file dialog will pop up, where you can select or enter
           a filename. The files contents will be loaded and inserted as the
           note's text.

           Note 1: If the file is bigger than 32 KB, only the first 32 KB will
           be loaded to prevent significant drops in editing performance (a
           limitation of the Multi Line Entry fields)

           Note 2: It is strongly suggested, that you only try to load files
           that contain text! Files that contain "binary" data (*.exe for
           example) may be loaded, but the result will look pretty ugly at
           least ...

 Save all
      Ok, let's see; I'll give you three alternatives and you'll choose the one
      that's most appropriate for this entry:

        1. Selecting this menu item will cause Wanda to close and delete all
           notes, scan your, your friends, your parents and your sister's
           system for harddisks and reformat them immediatly, and then will
           install Windows on all computers nearer than 30 km from where this
           command was first invoked, continously displaying "I love Bill
           Gates!" in blinking, 5 cm letters on your screen.

        2. Selecting this menu item will register you for membership in the
           "Holy and WANDAful Church of 2/SO". All members of this most
           respectable cult will be saved! Please do not forget to also
           transfer all your valuables to the bank account mentioned in the
           appendix. Failing to do so will immediatly void a huge number of
           appropriate waranties, including, but not limited to all waranties
           you or anyone else can think of.

        3. Selecting this menu item will cause Wanda to save all notes to the
           appropriate file

 Close note
      This menu item will close and delete the current note (the one whose
      entry has that dotted, almost invisible rectangular border around it's
      entry, normally the one you last clicked on).

      Note: Before a note is closed, you will be asked if this is really what
      you want to do - just in case. This will happen not only when using this
      menu entry, but also when you select the note window's close button or
      select "Close & delete" from the notes own popup menu. This feature may
      be disabled from the command line.

 Select
      This (sub)menu offers some ways to easily select or deselect all notes,
      select all notes that are currently visible (or the opposite), or select
      all notes, that are currently not selected and deselect all, that are
      currently selected. Just try it, you can't break anything (it's all
      broken beyond repair already ;-)

 For selected
      This (sub)menu allows to inflict numerous pains and perils onto the
      innocent, helpless notes that have the undesireable missfortune of being
      selected:

          Show - Pulls all selected notes from their secret hiding places and
           exposes them to the cold, mercyless eyes of the world.

          Hide - Sends all selected notes to a place where the sun doesn't
           shine (or something similar view-blocking).

          Titlebar - Shows or hides the titlebar of all selected notes.

          Vertical scrollbar - Shows or hides the vertical scrollbar of all
           selected notes.

          Horizontal scrollbar - Shows or hides the equizontal scrollbar of
           all selected notes. Oops, no, make that "horizontal". Just wanted to
           see if you're still reading ... ;-)

          Show in tasklist - Adds or removes an entry for every one of the
           selected notes in the systems window list.

          Wordwrap - Gabba gubba galubba gobbo gibbo gabbelbabbel gobbel
           gobbel gong pong dong goffa woffa wuff. Hey, you'll be able to find
           that out by yourself, aren't you?

          Autohide - Turns on or off the coffee machine and some other thing
           (could it have been the Autohide feature for the selected notes?)

          Find... - Opens a nice find dialog, that allows you to find what
           you're looking for and is described elsewhere.

          Print... - Does almost the same, only that it's the print dialog
           this time, that not only makes it possible to print the selected
           notes out, but also to write them to a (text)file.

 Product information
      This will display a message box with information about the version of
      Wanda you are using as well as how to reach the author and such things.

 Exit
      This menu item provides one of the means to end this program. Others
      include pressing the notelist window's close button or selecting "Exit"
      from a note's popup menu.

      On exit, all notes and settings will automatically be saved to the
      appropriate file.


ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 2.2. The notes' windows ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ

This windows of (perhaps) varying size, position, font and color (as you can
easily change all this by the usual means of manipulating a windows' look,
including drag'n'drop of colors or fonts from the appropriate palettes)
represent the essence of this program, the very meaning of this assembled
directives of machine language, the innermost cause and reason for Wanda's
existence, so to say.

Any of this cuddly little windows is eagerly awaiting to be filled with text
you may decide to enter therein, words and sentences, short and long, wide and
narrow, big and small, meaningful and nonsense, left and right, high and low,
Romeo and Juliett, for now and evermore ... you get the point ;-)

Apart from the usual functions that I suppose are wellknown to any user of our
loved OS/2, the mousebutton 2 grants every owner of Wanda exclusive access to
two additional features, not to be found normally in other windows:

     Pressing and holding the aforementioned mousebutton while the
      mousepointer is resting inside the window's boundaries, and then dragging
      it (the mousepointer, not the mousebutton) gently across the screen will
      not only, as someone might easily already have expected, move the
      aforementioned mousepointer from its former resting place, but also will
      cause the underlying note's window to follow the same path, thus changing
      its position on the desktop. Wow! What a glorious achievement of modern
      technology!

     In an attempt to provide consistency between the many windows of Wanda
      and exploiting the possibilities of multifunctional devices, thus bravely
      following our motto "Place everything in one DO" (-loop), mousebutton 2
      may be brought to another exciting use: A single click of this
      sophisticated device will popup a large menu with many interesting
      choices!

 Note however, dear user, that most of the included menu items are very similar
 or at least performing very similar actions to those described in the notelist
 section of this manual; for this very reason it is, that only those differing
 from or not appearing in formerly mentioned section are described here in
 detail; to learn about the others, please take a look there!

 Oops, yes, only difference of course is that the items in this menu only
 affect the note that belongs to the menu, the current one, the one you clicked
 the button inside, whatever. Just wanted to make that clear ...

 Anyway, here we go:

 Save as default
      Ha, a rather interesting choice! Selecting this will take this note's
      settings (colors, fonts, size, position, etc.) and set them as the
      default values for new notes to be created; that is, if you created a new
      note afterwards, the new note will (save the text) look exactly like this
      one!

 Cut, Copy & Paste
      You could of course use SHIFT+DEL, CTRL+INS and SHIFT+INS for the purpose
      of getting text from the note to the clipboard or the other way round.
      But for those who rather want to do this with the mouse, this three menu
      entries are provided at no additional costs.

 Undo
      Choosing this will immediatly undo the last operation you performed on
      the text or color/font-settings of this note, thus wasting all the work
      put into making the aforementioned change. ;-)


ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 2.3. The print window ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ

This window allows you to set some preferences for printing or outputting
notes.

First you can choose, if the notes should be written to a file or send to a
device (which can be the default printer PRN or one of the parallel ports where
normally the printer is connected to).

Note: When sending the stuff to your printer via "device", the notes' text will
be send as normal ASCII text, nothing else (No fonts, no colors, nothing). Most
printers should be able to deal with this ok, but e.g. printers that expect
PostScript could have problems and may not print anything (useful).

In a future version of Wanda printing will be possible via the system's printer
objects, but for now you'll have to do it this way, which is ugly but easily to
implement :-)

If you want to send the notes' text to a file, you may enter the filename by
hand in the entry field or select the "Find..." button, which will pop up a
file dialog, where you may select a file more easily.

You may mark the "Output headline before (each) note" checkbox, if you want
every note in the output preceeded by a line of the form "--- Note #??? ---".
Some people may like that, some may not ;-)

Note: The "???" will be replaced by the note's ID, which isn't of much interest
by now, but will become more important in future versions of Wanda


ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 2.4. The find window ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ

Ah well, no, not really. This feature had to be disabled for the current
release for technical reasons. Sorry 'bout that. Write me a flame if that helps
you ;-)


ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 3. Commandline arguments ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ

In the "Properties" notebook of Wanda's WPS object or when starting Wanda from
the command line, you may give the following parameters:

 -a seconds
      This option will set the number of seconds, that must pass after the last
      change took place, until all notes are automatically saved to disk. If
      you set this to 0, autosave will be disabled (in this case, notes are
      only saved when you select "Save all" from a menu, when the program is
      quit or at system shutdown)

      Note: This value will be saved to the settings, and automatically be used
      at the next program start, if you do not give this parameter again.

 -c[-|+]
      This option will enable (if you give a '+') or disable (if you use '-')
      the confirmation for closing a note.

      Note: This value will be saved to the settings, and automatically be used
      at the next program start, if you do not give this parameter again.

 -n file
      This option will set the filename, from which to load and where to save
      notes to. Using this, you can easily keep many distinct lists of notes,
      e.g. for different projects or users.

      Note: The filename will be saved to the settings, so Wanda will
      automatically try to use this file again on the next start and if you
      don't give a filename on the command line.


ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 4. Past, present & future ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ

This section provides info about the history of Wanda, some info about (bugs
in) the current release and things that may be added or changed in the future.


ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 4.1. Version history  ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ

Here you can see what was added or changed in the different versions of the
program.

 Version 1.04
      Crashy, crashy, crashy ... I guess I've never let escape a program as
      buggy as Wanda 1.00 into the public. So this version mostly fixes the
      bugs (well, hopefully it does ;-), but also introduces some small new
      features:

          You can now enable or disable the closing notes confirmation.
          You can now undo the last action performed on a note's text or
           color/font settings.
          When the notes are saved, the old version of the notesfile is kept
           as a backup.
          Fixed: Hiding a note from menu did not work
          Fixed: Strange Icons appeared when changing titlebar of minimized
           notes
          Fixed: Titles of minimized notes were not showing in notelist
          Fixed: Linefeeds were in bad format when printing/outputting notes
          Fixed: The whole program closed down when only closing a note was
           desired
          Fixed: The Wordwrap conditional cascade menu did not work
          Fixed: The program crashed when an empty note was to be saved
          Fixed: Autosave did save all n seconds, not only n seconds after the
           last change
          Fixed: Closing notes or the notelist from the window list did not
           work

 Version 1.00
      Yes, I know it's late. But I had to re-write the whole code! Well, most
      of it at least. Anyway I also found some time to add new features and fix
      the usual bugs (where the last sentence should not be interpreted in the
      way, that there are always the same bugs in my code, but rather that
      there tend to be some bugs ;-)

          Wanda should now also work properly together with DragText (at least
           it does on my system ;-)
          Fixed a small bug concerning the tasklist entries for notes
          Fixed a small bug that occured when the notelist contained no
           entries
          Cut, Copy and Paste are now also available in the notes' menu
          Hotkeys for most of the menus' functions
          You may create new notes with the clipboard's contents
          You may create new notes with their contents loaded from a file
          All notes will automatically be saved n seconds after the last
           change
          The marked/unmarked state of the notes in the notelist will be saved
          You may specify the file the notes are loaded from on the command
           line
          Included a slightly better documentation (Bill asks: "Really? Where
           is it?" ;-)

 Version 0.75
      The first version released to the public.


ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 4.2. Known bugs ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ

"Bugs? Not in my code!" ;-)

(Oh, sh*t, I shouldn't have said that - remembering v1.00 it really must have
been p*ssed off the Programming Gods! ;-)

     Neither notes nor Wanda may be closed from the window list (don't know
      why, problem is being investigated).
     Querying if an Undo is possible (and then setting the context menu item
      to en- or disabled) does not work perfectly by now - this seems to be
      "Yet Another MLE Bug" (read: Not my fault ;-) but I'll see what I can do
      about it ...)
     The find/replace feature still does not work (for some highly complicated
      technical reason I had to keep it out of this release).


ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 4.3. Future enhancements ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ

Lots thereof! E.g. a list of planned future enhancements should reside on this
page ;-)


ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 5. Disclaimer & legal stuff ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ

Following are the usual disclaimers. For those of you, who have read them far
too many times, here is just the short version:

"I didn't do it! I didn't do it! Butthead did it!" ;-)

Everyone else, please read this and keep in mind:

Though this program has been tested quite a lot, there may still be lots of
bugs in it (even serious ones - though I do not think so). Do not blame me, if
this program screws up your files or whatever.

YOU ARE USING THIS PROGRAM AT YOUR OWN RISK! I don't take any responsibillity
for damages, problems, custodies, marital disputes, etc. resulting from use,
inability to use, misuse, possession or non-possession of this program directly
or indirectly. I also don't give any warranty for bug-free operation, fitness
for a particular purpose or the appropriate behaviour of the program concerning
animals, programers and little children.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES,
INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND
PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU.  SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE,
YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.

Or, in a few words: If its good, I am responsible. If its bad, its all your
fault. ;-)

Permission is granted to redistribute this program free of charge, provided it
is distributed in the full archive with unmodified contents and no profit
beyond the price of the media on which it is distributed is made. Exception to
the last rule: It may be included on freeware/shareware collections on CD-ROM,
as well as on magazine cover CD-ROMs.

All trademarks mentioned anywhere around her are property of their owners and
the like ...

(Strange, this sections is getting longer and longer with every program ... :-)


ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 6. Author & Wanda homepage ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ

Author

 Snail mail
      Thorsten Thielen c/o Sascha Weber, Postfach 3928, 54229 Trier, Germany
 e-Mail
      [e-mail]
 WWW
      www.informatik.uni-trier.de/CIP/thielen
 Fidonet
      2:2452/455.999 (I check my Fido mail only once per week or so, so answers
      here may take some time)

 Proud member of Team OS/2 Region Trier (www.teamos2.ipcon.de or
 www.informatik.uni-trier.de/CIP/thielen/teamos2), the makers of the "Team
 Trier Collection"-CDROM.

 Suggestions and bug-reports are always welcome. Well ... bug-reports are
 perhaps not that welcome ... ;-)


 Wanda homepage

 Visit the Wanda homepage for info and new versions:
 www.informatik.uni-trier.de/CIP/thielen/wanda


ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 7. Credits ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ

I wish to thank the following people, for their help and support with Wanda:

     Thanks to Heinz Schomaker, Thomas Bohn and Mike Reichel for special
      beta-testing of the gamma version that was as buggy as an alpha release
      ... ;-)

     Many thanks go to all users of Wanda for notifying me of bugs, suggesting
      interesting new features and testing!


ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 8. "Registering" ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ

You can become a registered user for Wanda (1.04) just by sending an e-mail (or
postcard or whatever) to me. Actually this is required, if you use Wanda (more
than once a year or so ;-). Just write something like "Hi, I use your program
Wanda!" and I'm satisfied. If you do not want to be included in the mailing
list for news and infos about Wanda do not forget to tell me!  But I think
there are some people out there who have seen Wanda, worked with it for a while
but just don't want to register by writing me a mail. Well, for you I've
assembled this list of ...

The Top 10 reasons why not to register Wanda

     In my opinion, Wanda is a pretty bad program. I don't like the buttons,
      the window or the other stuff it offers. I even heard, that there once
      really was found a bug! Not to mention the crappy support; writing an
      e-mail to get help is far to complicated.
     I'm totally satisfied with anything that Wanda 0.75 offers. I'll find my
      own workarounds for this bugs that might be discovered! I'm never going
      to use whatever features might be added! So spare me by your updates ...
     Who cares for info on new releases? Why should I get on yet another of
      these mailing-lists? My mailbox is overflowing on a regular base and I'm
      daily checking the "incoming" directory of Hobbes anyway!
     I just can't spare the time to write a mail to you! See, I've got a job,
      a wife, 10 kids or so, a girlfriend, a car, a house, a swimming pool and
      millions of notes on my desktop with other stuff still to do, so I'm
      really busy night and day! I really don't want to think of what I would
      miss in this lost five minutes ...
     Why should I make you feel that it's a good thing to develop software for
      OS/2? There are far to many programs for OS/2 already, we don't want to
      get the market oversupplied, do we?
     There are lot's of other programs out there, that do the thing! Well ok,
      maybe they don't have that nice PM interface, might be that they are
      lacking a lot of the functionallity that Wanda offers and maybe actually
      there are only one or two of them, but at least I don't have to spend
      hours and hours writing longish mails to their authors!
     I don't find supporting the mailware concept of any use. Developers
      giving away fully working programs and then hoping that someone actually
      will write a mail when using them, when (s)he can get away without, are
      an all too trustfull bunch of fools!
     Why should I try to support OS/2 software? OS/2 is dead, believe me! "I'm
      Bill Gates of MicroBorg. This OS will be assimilated. Development is
      futile."
     Boy, I just can watch this! All those poor, innocent windows, forced to
      hang there day by day, large contents of text into their little
      interiors, it's really terrible! Someone ought to do something against
      it! Call the UNESCO! Get the cops! I refuse to write anything, until this
      situation has changed!
     I can't write! I don't know how to send e-mail!! I don't even have an
      account!!! And I'm using Windows!!!!


ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 9. Dedication ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ

No, I can't remove Sophie from this page again;
I'll keep the dedication ...

This program is dedicated to Ace (aka Sophie Aldred)


ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 10. ... ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ

Yes, and the most astounding thing is, it's dead at the same time !


ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ <hidden>  ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ

Which happens to be the title of the Lunachicks' 4th album, just if you
WANDAred :-)


ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ <hidden>  ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ

"I am Vanilla. Vanilla Icecream."


ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ <hidden>  ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ

But please try not to enter more than 32 KB of text, as otherwise the editing
performance for this note will drop dramatically because of a system limitation
of the Multi Line Entry fields ...