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Cream of the Crop 20 (Terry Blount) (1996).iso
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1996-06-30
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======================================================================
This file is part of the Blackout screen saver. v1.00 1996-06-29
Copyright (C) 1995, 1996 by Staffan Ulfberg.
======================================================================
--- IMPORTANT NOTICE! --- READ THIS FRIST! ---
This program controls the graphics hardware of your computer. Some
(but very few) graphics adapters are not supported, and serious bugs
may exist in this program. One implication of this is that there is a
theoretical possibility that the program CAUSES DAMAGE to your system
if used. If you don't want to take this risk, DO NOT RUN THE PROGRAM!
This program comes with absolutely NO WARRANTY.
Be sure to read the "Bugs / Future" and the "Copyright details"
sections of this document before installing, using, or distributing
this program.
----------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
========
1. What it is and what it is good for
2. Installation / Files in archive
3. Command line options
4. How it works
5. Bugs / Future
6. Credits
7. Copyright details
8. Author
9. Revision history
1. WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT IS GOOD FOR
=====================================
"Blackout" is a completely FREE screen saver for OS/2 versions 2.0 and
above. It is intended for use with monitors that have DPMS, or
"green," support. I wrote the program primarily because I needed it
myself, and was unable to locate a free one. At the same time I
thought this was a great time to learn about OS/2 programming.
The program blanks presentation manager and OS/2 full screen sessions;
DOS full screen sessions are not blanked. Of course, this holds for
WIN-OS/2 full screen sessions as well. I don't want my monitor to
switch back on only because I happen to shake the table; therefore,
the program is not sensitive to mouse moves by default. A command
line switch can change this behaviour.
You can forget about fancy graphics. This program has three levels of
screen saving: 1) after a user-programmable time, it dulls the screen.
This will save the monitor, but you will still be able to see that
it's turned on. 2) after some more time (possibly zero) the monitor
will be switched to suspend mode, and 3) the monitor is switched off
after some additional time. Actually, it is also possible to replace
2) and 3) above with a turned on, black screen instead: look at the
command line options section.
If you can't see a difference between suspend and off modes, it's
probably because your monitor doesn't support suspend mode; some
monitors just don't.
If the screen dulling doesn't seem to work properly---start the
program using the switch "-s 0" to disable it (see Section 3); this is
the most common graphics adapter incompatibility problem. The dull
(or grey) mode may work in some graphics modes but not in others. In
some cases, these problems are recognized by Blackout and which then
adds the switch "-s 0" automatically.
There is now a homepage for Blackout on the world wide web; the URL is
"http://www.nada.kth.se/~staffanu/blackout/blackout.html".
Staffan Ulfberg
e-mail: staffanu@nada.kth.se
2. INSTALLATION / FILES IN ARCHIVE
==================================
First of all, you need to have the emx runtime environment installed.
If you don't already have that, get the file "emxrt.zip" which is
available at all the major OS/2 ftp sites. Follow the installation
instructions that come with emxrt to install it. Blackout won't run
without it.
Create a directory for the screen saver (e.g., "c:\blackout"). Unzip
the archive in this directory. You will find the following files:
README This file
COPYING The GNU General Public Licence
blackout.exe The program to run to start Blackout.
black.exe Program to switch off VSYNC and HSYNC. This
program doesn't run alone without blackout
running.
blackdll.dll DLL used by Blackout.
source.zip The source code for the program files above.
(Maybe you did this already:) The program to run is "blackout.exe."
It can be started from an icon on the desktop, possibly put in the
desktop startup folder if you want to start the program automatically
every time you start up your system.
The program won't say anything when started. If you want to check if
the program is running you could 1) wait for the screen to be blanked,
2) use the -l option (see next section), or 3) try to start the
program again. It will complain if already started.
One more thing: I strongly recommend not to start the "black.exe"
program when Blackout is running already. (How many will try this
just because I told you not to???)
3. COMMAND LINE OPTIONS
=======================
On invocation, the following command line switches are available:
-t xx Sets timeout before screen is greyed (made dull) in
minutes. The default setting is 15 minutes.
-s yy Sets time after the screen becomes dull until it
becomes switched to suspend mode using the DPMS
function. Default for this parameter is 45 minutes.
-b zz Sets the time from that the screen is switched to
suspend mode until it is turned off. Default is 120
minutes. Think about that it is not good for your
monitor to be turned off and back on too often!
-p ww Some monitors and/or graphics adapters can't go
directly from suspend to off mode. With this option,
the monitor is turned back on after suspend mode, and
is switched off after ww seconds. Default is 0.
-l Add Blackout to the system window list, so it can be
switched to by pressing CTRL-ESC. The window
displayed contains no information. The only reason
that this switch is included is that some people feel
safer knowing how to end the program from the window
list.
-m Make the program sensible to mouse moves. By default
only keyboard activity and mouse clicks are sensed
for.
-o Like the -m switch, this also adds mouse move sensing,
but only when the screen is on or dulled, and not when
in suspend or off mode.
-n Don't use DPMS saving; instead, just turn the screen
black. This switch is for people without DPMS
monitors who still want a minimalistic screen saver.
-g Send an activity timeout to the Blackout process.
This option can be used to blank the screen at
startup, or at any other time. See discussion below.
-f Tells Blackout not to blank full screen OS/2
sessions. Some full screen programs are reported not
to work well with blackout; one of these is
Microsoft's Programmer's Workbench for OS/2.
-r Removes the program from memory if already loaded.
The diagram below illustrates the effect of the -t, -s, and -b
parameters. "xx", "yy", and "zz" refers to the numeric arguments of
the respective switches.
Screen Screen Screen DPMS DPMS Screen
is on still on greyed/dulled suspend mode off mode back on
-------+----------+---------------+--------------+----------+-------->
User User User
active inactive active
<--- xx ---><----- yy -----><---- zz ----->
If you don't want the grey mode of saving, use the option "-s 0".
This is useful if your graphics adapter is not supported by blackout's
greying function. However, in most such cases this option is
automatically added by Blackout.
The "-g" option can be used to blank the screen manually. What will
actually happen is that a WM_TIMER message will be sent to the running
Blackout program---to make it think that the user has been inactive
for a long time. This switch can be repeated several times on the
same command line: each occurence causes one WM_TIMER message to be
sent. Normally, the first message will cause the screen to become
dull; the second will invoke suspend mode and the third off mode. It
is possible to give this command line option when Blackout is first
started. If Blackout is already running when invoked again with the
-g option, all