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|Aº ^0Picture This |Aº            ^1Electronic Christmas Card |A          º ^0Picture This |Aº
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^Cby
^CJohn Allen, Jr.

 ^1Editor's note:  Electronic Christmas Card is republished from Issue #29 as 
 ^1part of our Fabulous Fifty Celebration.^0

    It's that time of year when you're probably getting ready to send holiday 
 greetings to your friends.  You could use ordinary paper cards, a form which 
 was popularized in the 19th century.  Or, you could head towards the 21st 
 century by sending your PC-owning acquaintances a computerized greeting, using 
 this program. 

    Just run it: it's fully menu-driven.  Use the menus to select the pictures, 
 sounds, and messages for your personal card. 

    When you pick the option to choose the scenes, Electronic Christmas Card 
 will give you a choice of several scenes you can place into your card.  Choose 
 one or all; whether you want a manger scene or some fully-secular winter fun, 
 there's a picture for you.  Now, use another menu item to choose the music to 
 go with your pictures: Away In A Manger, Deck The Halls, Winter Wonderland, 
 and others are available.  Pick one song to go with each picture you have 
 chosen for your card. 

    Several of these pictures provide room for a personal message of your own, 
 which you can input using the appropriate menu item.  The number of letters is 
 limited (and varies depending on which picture it is); if it starts beeping as 
 you're typing the message, that means you've added too many letters and should 
 backspace.  Some screens allow more than one line; try pressing ENTER and 
 typing some more.  Press ESC when you're done. 

    There's a menu item to look at the card you've created, and another to save 
 it when you're done.  When you use the SAVE option, insert a blank, formatted 
 disk (which you should have created previously by using the FORMAT command at 
 the DOS prompt), and your card will be written as an executable program which 
 can be run by itself even by users who don't have this issue of BIG BLUE DISK.  
 Note: you need to keep the program disk in your drive as well while the save 
 is taking place, since the program needs access to its files.  See below for 
 hints on how to accomplish this under several different system configurations. 

    The card disk you just created can be copied and sent to friends, who can 
 run the card by typing "AUTOEXEC" from the DOS prompt with the disk in their 
 drive.  You can make the disk self-booting by formatting it with the command: 

 ^C^1FORMAT A: /S 

 instead of just "FORMAT A:".  This causes DOS to be added to the disk so you 
 can just put it in your drive, power up, and the card will pop up 
 automatically. (Please note that distributing disks with DOS on them is 
 illegal; Microsoft owns copyright on MS-DOS and has not licensed its 
 distribution except by computer manufacturers.  They probably won't sue you if 
 you put DOS on a bootable Christmas card disk to give your friends, but any 
 such use is at your own risk; we don't advocate any violation of copyright 
 law.) 

    Dual-drive users should insert the blank disk in the drive other than the 
 one from which the program is being run (temporarily removing the DOS master 
 disk, if it's already in that drive, while the card saving is taking place).  
 Hard drive users are best off copying this program to their hard disk and 
 running it from there, which frees up the floppy drive to insert the blank 
 disk.  Single-drive users have it more difficult; your best bet there is to 
 copy this program to a blank disk of your own, run it from that disk, create 
 your saved card on the same disk, then copy the files AUTOEXEC.BAT, VIEW.COM, 
 and VIEW.TXT to a second blank disk which you can then copy and distribute as 
 your card. 

    In all cases, when prompted for the drive letter to write the card to, give 
 it the letter of the drive into which you have inserted the disk that the card 
 will be saved onto.  Hence, a dual-drive user who's running BIG BLUE DISK from 
 drive B will insert a blank, formatted disk in drive A, and type the letter A, 
 when prompted. 


 ^1LEADING EDGE COMPUTERS^0

    Note:  The programs CFGCARD.EXE and CFGVIEW.EXE are for use with Leading 
 Edge computers whose entire screen blanks out when the border is set to white. 
 CFGCARD will modify the Electronic Christmas Card program so that this does 
 not happen.  It is suggested that you do not run this on your original disk.  

    Run the "copyit" function to copy Electronic Christmas Card and these two
 additional programs to a blank disk.  Then, with this copied disk in your 
 drive, run CFGCARD from it.

    CFGVIEW similiarly modifies the program that Electronic Christmas Card 
 creates.  After you have created your card on the same disk as your program, 
 run CFGVIEW only if you are sending the card-disk to someone with a Leading 
 Edge computer.  Then copy the created files as explained above.



    To run this program outside the BIG BLUE DISK menu, type: ^1CARD^0. 

DISK FILES THIS PROGRAM USES:
^FCARD.COM
^FLETTERS.DAT
^FVIEW.TXT
^FSNOW.DRW
^FANGEL.DRW
^FMANGER.DRW
^FTREE.DRW
^FHOLLY.DRW
^FCFGCARD.EXE
^FCFGVIEW.EXE