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README.1ST
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DEMO WORKSHOP V1.2 Beta 7
Demo Workshop is a tool for creating software demonstration and
tutorial programs. Demo Workshop uses actual screens recorded during
execution of the program being presented.
*********************************************************************
Version 1.2 Beta 7 is a pre-release containing the capability for
handling large presentations, VGA graphics, and execution of DOS
commands during playback.
Note that v1.2 Beta 7 cannot read or process presentations prepared
with v1.2 prereleases earlier than beta 2 or with DW v1.1.
BE SURE TO READ THE V1.2 B2 RELEASE NOTES BELOW FOR IMPORTANT
INFORMATION REGARDING VGA GRAPHICS FEATURES. THE DOCUMENTATION AND
HELP INFORMATION HAS NOT BEEN UPDATED FOR V1.2 B7.
*********************************************************************
INSTALLATION
Create a directory on your hard disk called DW and change directory
to it like this.
C:\> MKDIR DW
C:\> CD DW
C:\DW>
Copy the DWRK.ZIP or DWRK.EXE file into this directory. If you have
the .ZIP file, unzip it. If you have the .EXE file, execute it.
The following files are created:
SR.EXE The Demo Workshop screen recorder TSR
DW.EXE The Demo Workshop presentation editor
DW.HLP The presentation editor help file used by DW.EXE
DWGUIDE.TXT The Demo Workshop v1.1 Users Guide
DEMOWKSH.P2 File required by DW.EXE to create standalone
presentation programs
DWDEMO.EXE Demonstration DW presentation
ORDER.FRM The Demo Workshop registration and order form
FILE_ID.DIZ BBS description file
WAV.EXE A program to play .WAV sound files through the PC
speaker
README.1ST This file
To view the demo, execute DWDEMO.EXE.
You might want to create an environment variable called DWDIR and
equate it to the directory where you unpacked Demo Workshop. This
will allow you to use Demo Workshop from another disk/directory it
you wish. To do this, place a line like the following in your
AUTOEXEC.BAT file:
SET DWDIR=C:\DW
You will need to reboot for this change to take effect.
If you do not do this, and you execute DW from another directory,
you will not be able to access help information or create
.EXE output files.
PLEASE NOTE:
You must create a recording file before you can use DW, the
presentation editor. You can create an empty recording if you
wish by invoking SR twice. The first time, a file called SCREEN.REC
will be created, and the second time SR will remove itself from
memory.
Type SR /? to display a brief help screen for the screen recorder.
RELEASE NOTES
V1.2 Beta 7
This release fixes a problem where scene speed settings
were inadvertantly set to zero when a DOS command was
assigned to a scene. This would ultimately cause a Divide
error message to be displayed when the command completed
execution.
V1.2 Beta 6
This release fixes the following bugs present in beta 5:
Exe files produced for presentations containing scenes
produced with earlier 1.2 betas could fail to display
scenes properly. Scene speed settings were not reliably
saved with the presentation. No shortcut key for "Set
Scene Speed" was provided.
In addition, an optional command line parameter has been
added to the .EXE files produced by DW. If the word "test"
is provided as a command line argument, the presentation
plays in test mode. In test mode, all menus are set to
auto-increment, all text window and menu timeouts are
set to 1 second, all pauses are set to 0, and playback
occurs at high speed. This allows you to quickly test
a final presentation (except, of course, for timing
accuracy).
V1.2 Beta 5
This release adds the capability to assign a DOS command to a
scene. The command will be executed just after the scene is
displayed during playback of the presentation. The program
WAV.EXE is supplied to allow .WAV sound files to be played during
a presentation using this mechanism. Note that WAV.EXE plays the
sound through the PC speaker and does not take advantage of any
multimedia hardware which may be present. Thus, the sound
quality is somewhat poor.
WAV expects at least two command line arguments: the volume
level (1-64) and the name of the WAV file to play. Additional
files may be specified, in which case they will be played in
turn.
Example: D:\DW> WAV 30 TADA
DOS commands which may be specified for a scene include native
commands such as DIR as well as the name of .BAT, .COM, and
.EXE files. Arguments may be supplied as well.
V1.2 Beta 4
This release fixes a problem with adding scenes from another
file which was introduced in Beta 3.
V1.2 Beta 3 Changes
This release fixes a problem with saving files introduced in
Beta 2.
V1.2 Beta 2 Changes
Support for VGA graphics snapshots has been enabled in this
release. No Super-VGA modes are yet supported. A subsequent
release will support VESA-compliant SVGA graphic cards. We
do not intend to attempt to support the myriad different and
incompatible SVGA cards in the market. The following graphics
modes are supported (HORIZONTALxVERTICALxCOLORS):
320x200x16
640x200x16
640x350x2
640x350x16
640x480x2
640x480x16
320x200x256
CGA modes (300x200x4 and 640x200x2) are not supported. Snapshots
only are supported. No motion is recorded by SR when in graphics
mode.
When SR detects the transition into a graphics mode, if recording
is in progress, it is paused for the period of time that the
screen is in graphics mode. The pause is signalled by a series
of descending tones, and the return to recording is signalled by
a rising series of tones. If recording is not in progress when
graphics mode is entered, SR takes no actions.
While in graphics mode, if the mode is one of the supported
ones, pressing Alt-S (or whatever the snapshot key has been
set to in SR) will result in a snapshot of the screen contents.
As the snapshot can take some time (seconds), it is advisable
that there be no motion occurring on the screen when the snapshot
is taken. The process of taking the snapshot is started with a
high tone and ended with a low tone.
Two files are created by DW 1.2, a file with a .REC suffix,
containing the non-graphics recording, and a file with a
.GFX suffix containing the graphics snapshots. Both files must
be present for the DW presentation editor to process the
recording.
Pop-up windows and menus may be added to graphics screens with
horizontal resolutions other than 320.That is, pop-up windows
and menus may not be added to 320x200x16 and 320x200x256 snapshots.
When 320x200 screens are encountered in the DW presentation editor
they are displayed briefly and then erased to display the DW
menus. The image may be re-displayed using the Show Graphics
Scene menu option which replaces the Hide Workshop Windows option
for 320x200 graphics scenes.
When a graphics screen is cloned, the graphics information is not
duplicated and does not increase the size of the resulting
presentation significantly.
V1.2 Beta 1 Changes
Hundreds of scenes are now supported. DW uses a swap file to
store information on disk during processing. This file is
created in the directory designated by the TEMP or TMP
environment variable. If neither is defined, the current
working directory is used.
Beta 1 allows the playback speed of individual scenes to be
adjusted to a percentage of the recorded speed.
For other new features use the F1 key to obtain help when
the menu selection of interest is highlighted.
The following is a cronologically ordered list of changes between
DW versions. It is included here because the documentation does
not describe many of the features listed here.
V1.1 Changes
V1.1 fixes bugs which caused program and system crashes when
using the presentation editor DW.EXE. Our apologies to all who
endured these problems. The flaw in our release procedure which
allowed these bugs to be included in a released version has been
corrected.
V1.1A Changes
V1.1A adds the "Save as Default" menu item to the Text Window
Options and Menu Display options menus. This selection makes
the attributes (color, border style, position, size) of the
current text window or menu the initial defaults for new menus
or text windows created for the presentation. The defaults
are saved across DW sessions in the presentation file. Note
that DW V1.1A presentation files may *not* be processed with DW
V1.1 or V1.0.
V1.1B Changes
V1.1B allows entry of special characters using the ALT-keypad
method of entry supported by MS-DOS. Previously, entry of
special characters was not supported for titles, menu items,
or scene names.
V1.1C Changes
V1.1C fixes a bug which prevented pop-up windows from remaining
visible while the background recording was in motion.
V1.1D Changes
V1.1D incorporates changes which make playback timing more accurate
in instances where there is fast screen motion, such as rapid
movement of the mouse cursor.
V1.1e Changes
V1.1e fixes a bug introduced in 1.1D which the first playback after
startup to fail if Normal speed was selected.
V1.1f Changes
V1.1f fixes another bug introduced in 1.1D which caused the DOS
system clock to be modified during playback.
V1.1g Changes
V1.1g fixes yet another bug introduced in 1.1D which caused slow
and single-step playback to misbehave.
V1.1h Changes
V1.1h adds support for EGA/VGA extended colors (as used by
CA-Clipper) in recordings.
V1.1i Changes
V1.1i fixes a bug wherein query dialogs were not properly
refreshed after help displays.
V1.1j Changes
V1.1j fixes a bug which, under certain circumstances, caused
text windows to appear garbled after being saved.
V1.1k Changes
V1.1k adds the Custom border style to menus and windows. The
Custom border style allows you to specify the characters to
be used for the borders on menus and windows. In addition,
V1.1k adds support for the DWBORDER environment variable. If
DWBORDER is defined, the characters specified are used for the
borders of DW menus, dialog boxes, and display windows. The
format of the DWBORDER environment variable definition is:
SET DWBORDER="12345678"
where 1 = upper left corner
2 = upper right corner
3 = lower left corner
4 = lower right corner
5 = horizontal line
6 = vertical line
7 = left junction (tee)
8 = right junction (tee)
Here is an example DWBORDER definition which you might place in
your AUTOEXEC.BAT:
SET DWBORDER="++++-|++"
The custom border features are provided to facilite the use
of Demo Workshop in countries where character codes above 127
are used to represent special language characters.
V1.1m Changes
Executables created with v1.1m now accept the R parameter, which
inhibits the restoration of the screen which normally occurs when
the demo executable terminates. This leaves the last demo image
visible on the screen. When used with a sound-playback program
in a .BAT file, this allows the sound to play back while the
image is visible.
The CURSOR.EXE program is supplied to save the cursor before the
.BAT file initiates the first demo executable and restore the cursor
when the .BAT file is complete, since when the screen image is
not restored by the demo executable, the cursor remains invisible
as well.
Here is an example .BAT file assuming your demo executables are
mydemo1.exe and mydemo2.exe and the program sound.exe (not included
in this kit) plays sounds contained in the 1.wav and 2.wav files:
@echo off
cursor
mydemo1 r
sound 1.wav
mydemo2 r
sound 2.wav
cursor
CURSOR.EXE creates a 4-byte file in the default directory called
CURSOR.SAV which is deleted the second time the program is run.
V1.2X Changes
Maximum number of scenes greatly increased. Memory limitations
removed. Goto Scene Number item added to main menu. V1.2X may
create a swap file called DWSWAP.$$$ if memory runs low. This
file is created in the directory defined by the TEMP environment
variable if it exists, otherwise the TMP environment variable
is used. If neither is defined, the current directory is used.
The swap file is deleted on exit.
V1.2Y Changes
V1.2Y correctly processes presentation created with the later
releases of V1.1.
V1.2Z Changes
V1.2Z fixes a bug which caused presentation .EXEs to fail with a
memory allocation failure after a number of text windows or
menus had been displayed.
V1.2Za Changes
V1.2Za fixes a bug which caused memory corruption and unpredictable
failures when scenes were added to an existing presentation.
V1.2Zb Changes
V1.2Zb adds additional support for EGA extended colors. Extended mode
is now set/cleared on screen entry as well as when the recorded
program performed the set or clear. This allows recordings where
extended mode is turned on and off by the recorded program to be
edited without losing the extended colors.
V1.2Zb also provides support for .PRE files. .PRE (presentation)
files are created from the File menu just as are .EXE files. .PRE
files are much smaller than .EXEs because they contain no run-time
display code. .PRE files are displayed using the DWRUN program. This
allows a number of presentations to be provided without the overhead
of the run-time code in each .EXE file. DWRUN.EXE is created by
copying DEMOWKSH.P2 to DWRUN.EXE. The P parameter is required to
execute a .PRE file. For example, to display the presentation
contained in MYDEMO.PRE, the following command would be used:
DWRUN P MYDEMO.PRE. The DWRUN.EXE file may be distributed by
registered users together with .PRE files without restriction.
V1.2Zc Changes
V1.2Zc fixes problems with creating new scenes and cloning scenes
which could occur when memory is low and/or a large number of
scenes have been modified in a single DW session. This release also
fixes a problem in which the first scene was deleted from
presentations when an .EXE file was created.
V1.2Zd Changes
V1.2Zd corrects a problem where characters with ASCII codes
over 127 were not accepted for custom window border characters.
V1.2Ze Changes
V1.2Ze adds support for 8x8 VGA fonts. This allows recording
and editing of recordings of programs which display 50-line
screens. Note that if the actual entry into 50-line mode is not
recorded, it may be necessary to use the EGA/VGA Options
selection from the Scene Operations menu to manually set the
correct mode from within DW.
V1.2Zf Changes
V1.2Zf corrects a problem with stack size in output .EXE files
which caused hangs after the presentation was viewed on some
computers.
V1.2Zg Changes
V1.2Zg makes the 50-line support more robust, with more methods
of mode change supported. A problem with help menu displays
is also corrected.