The Business Master (4th Edition)

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Text File | 1993-10-08 | 12.5 KB | 264 lines

THE RUN-TIME PROGRAM There is a run-time program included in this kit to display multimedia pictures created with The Multimedia Workshop. In most cases, you will want to include it with your pictures on disks that you distribute, so that the end users will be able to use your pictures. This run-time program, called MSHOW.EXE, is yours to distribute royalty-free, as many copies as you like. MSHOW runs in either of two modes, "batch" or "presentation" mode. In batch mode, it displays one picture complete with sound effects, etc, then waits for the user to press any key before returning control to DOS. In presentation mode, it displays a series of picture files and presents the end user with a menu from which the user controls the presentation. When MSHOW starts, it looks to see if there is an accompanying picture file name typed at the DOS prompt or provided in the batch file from which you may have called MSHOW. If found, MSHOW displays that picture file, then returns to DOS. If there is no picture file listed with the call to MSHOW, it looks for a special file on disk called MSHOW.CFG, which is created with the BUILD option on the The Multimedia Workshop file menu. If it finds MSHOW.CFG then it runs in presentation mode, using the group of picture files listed in the MSHOW.CFG file. If you list a different file with a .CFG extension on the command line or within a batch file, MSHOW will look in that file for a list of the scripts to display in presentation mode. In presentation mode, a small menu appears allowing the user to take one of several actions. They are: HELP BACK NEXT MOVE RES AUTO MORE FIND QUIT These options can be selected with the mouse, arrow keys or number keys (with [Num Lock] on for faster movement) then a press of the [Enter] key, or a click of the left button. You can also press the first letter of any menu item. HELP displays a single screen of information about how to use the menu (although quite unnecessary!) BACK shows the previous picture viewed. NEXT shows the next picture in your presentation, MOVE moves the menu to another location so that it does not obscure the picture. RES (Resume) displays the last picture viewed during the last time MSHOW was used. It does this by writing a small file to disk containing the number of the picture currently displayed when the user quits the MSHOW program. The next time the program is started, if the user selects RESUME, it reads that file and finds the picture so the user can continue from where he left off. AUTOmate is to display your presentation over and over again automatically. When selected, MSHOW asks you to type a number of seconds. It will pause for that long between each picture. When it comes to the last picture in your presentation, it will start all over again. This is excellent for trade show displays, retailers can put a monitor in their store windows at night advertising their products, computer retailers can leave MSHOW running on computers in their stores. A student at a science fair can create a show about her project and display it at her table. MORE contains two choices: GOTO is an electronic Table of Contents. When selected, the end user is presented with a picture of a Table of Contents, and can type a number, and then be taken to that picture within your presentation. This is optional and requires that you make a special picture called GOTO. If MSHOW does not find a GOTO file, it merely ignores the GOTO request without harm. Making a GOTO picture is easy, and I'll tell you all about it in a couple of minutes. REPLAY simply replays the current script file from the beginning. FIND allows the end user to type a word or phrase. Then, starting at the beginning of your presentation and working to the end, MSHOW quickly searches each picture file for that word or phrase. If found, the picture is displayed on the screen and a small menu appears to allow the end user to continue searching for more occurrences, or return to the regular menu. In addition to selecting SEARCH with the mouse or menu bar, the user can press [S] or [F] to begin a search. As you might expect, it works rather slowly when a big presentation is on a floppy disk. QUIT This is the way out to DOS. NOTE: All runtime programs used by your presentation must be copied onto your final disk. If you use synthesized speech, PC-TALK.EXE and the speech files must be copied along with your script files. Also, if you use any fonts except DEFAULT then the corresponding .MMF files must be copied onto your finished disk. If you use Live Text, the corresponding ASCII files must also be available. If you use .PCX or .GIF images, these, too must be on the end users' disks. MAKING A GOTO FILE This is optional. The GOTO file is a special picture file which is used by GOTO as a 'live table of contents.' The user can type a number corresponding to any of the pictures in your presentation, and be taken to that picture. First complete all the pictures in your presentation and use TMW's BUILD option to make an MSHOW.CFG file. Make a note of the numbers to the left of the picture files that will be key points in your presentation. To make the GOTO file, start a new picture file by selecting CHOOSE FILE from the FILE menu and call it GOTO. No other name will do, and it cannot have any extension. In this file, list or illustrate the key pictures in your presentation and put a number next to them. These numbers are the number of the script file's position in the menu. The first script file is 1, and the second is 2, etc. In other words, if you have created a catalog of blacksmith's tools, and you have several pictures of anvils, you need to know the position of the first picture file of an anvil in your anvil section. This will be one of your goto points. You can have as many goto points as you can fit onto the GOTO picture. When your GOTO picture is done, include it along with your other picture files, MSHOW.CFG and MSHOW.EXE in a sub-directory or on a disk, then test it by running MSHOW, selecting GOTO, and typing the numbers for the various points, and make sure the pictures you expected come up as you planned. COMPLEX PRESENTATIONS You can now put 2, 3, 4 or actually an unlimited number of independent presentations on a single disk. Normally, MSHOW.EXE looks for a file called MSHOW.CFG, and if it finds it, a presentation begins. However, you can create more than one MSHOW.CFG file, and rename the second one. It can have any DOS-legal filename, as long as the extension is .CFG. Then, when starting MSHOW.EXE, whether from the command line, or from a batch file, if you don't want it to use MSHOW.CFG, but rather a different .CFG file, specify it as the first parameter after you type MSHOW. Furthermore, you might want to use separate GOTO files for each presentation. Therefore, if you specify a script file name as a second parameter, that will become the GOTO picture. Here is an example: MSHOW FIRST.CFG GOTO1 MSHOW SECOND.CFG GOTO2 MSHOW THIRD.CFG GOTO3 A batch file containing these lines will run three separate shows, all running from their own selections of files as specified first by FIRST.CFG, then by SECOND.CFG and finally by THIRD.CFG. Each presentation will have it's own GOTO picture. NOTE: If you use GOTO files at all, you should specify a goto file by name as a second parameter for each instance of MSHOW.EXE. Otherwise, if there is a file named "GOTO," that one will be used for each presentation, whether or not it would correspond to the correct show. RENAMING MSHOW.EXE Using the DOS command REN (Rename) you can change MSHOW.EXE to BEGIN.EXE or GO.EXE, or you can make a batch file called GO.BAT or START.BAT (etc) that starts MSHOW. This makes it easier for the end user to start your presentation. USING MSHOW IN BATCH MODE Batch mode is for displaying a single script file from the command line, or for use within batch files. MSHOW will simply show a picture, along with it's sound effects, hyper-links or animation, then wait for the user to press any key. When a key is pressed, control is returned to DOS. Using Batch mode to display a single picture which is a hyper-linked menu to all other pictures or series of pictures in your presentation is a very clean way to make a presentation which can entirely eliminate the top menu bar. To use batch mode from the DOS prompt, type MSHOW, a space, then the name of the picture file that you want to display. For example: MSHOW C:\PICTURES\SPIDER.3 or MSHOW SPIDER.4 if your picture file is in the same place as MSHOW.EXE. If you have a few pictures you want to display, and you want to use a batch file to line them up, you can do something like this: Make a batch file called BEGIN.BAT, and in it, include these lines: MSHOW SPIDER.1 MSHOW SPIDER.2 MSHOW SPIDER.3 MSHOW SPIDER.4 When this batch file is run (when the user types BEGIN) a picture of a spider, your picture called SPIDER.1 will appear. When the user is through studying the first spider and presses any key, your next spider picture, SPIDER.2, is shown, and so on until all four pictures have been shown. And of course you can also use the batch file to run other programs, for instance: MSHOW MY_INTRO.PIC MYPROG.EXE MSHOW END.PIC Hyper-links work from batch mode the same as from presentation mode. The more you learn about batch files, the more things you can do in the way of mixing and matching programs, picture files, more programs, etc. For instance, you could make a catalog disk which is mostly text, but in between displaying price lists with a text presentation program, you could display pictures of your more popular or interesting products. NOTE: If you have used any fonts except DEFAULT within TMW, their corresponding disk file(s), *.MMF, must be copied onto your presentation disks along with your picture files. _____________________________________________________________ end of chapter.