BBS in a Box 7/BBS in a Box - Macintosh - Volume VII (BBS in a Box) (January 1993).iso/Files/Tele/U-V/VSPDPREL.cpt/Read Me First!

Text File | 1989-04-30 | 6KB | 105 lines

Vantage Software Quickies - Read Me First text file
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    Welcome, Sysop! You have just gotten your hands on a package of
three programs written by Vantage Software. We are a small company
comitted to creating powerful Mac software; in this case, the software
is a package of three external applications for the Red Ryder Host
telecommunications system. As this text file is the only documentation
for these programs (save for that which is in the resource forks), we
strongly urge you to read all of this file before you run the programs.

    THE QUITTER
    --- -------
    The simplest of the three programs, all The Quitter does is quit
to the finder. But, it leaves the LaunchRRH file intact, so that when
you return to host, you'll resume right where you left off. This is
useful for local logins when you're testing a newly installed program.
Instead of quitting (by use of the menus or logging out), you can just
run The Quitter, and after making a change with MenuEdit (or whatever
fix needs to be made), you can return to Host without having to log
back in. As The Quitter brings your mac back to the finder, it will
essentially shut down the BBS, so make sure not to let users run this
program. If you are at the computer and want to test out a new command,
you can let the user run this program, go into MenuEdit, make the
change, start the BBS up again, and the user will be right where he
left off. Just don't let users run this program if you're not home.

    SHOWTIME
    --------
    All ShowTime does is display the time and date to the user. All
you (the sysop) see is a flashy little dialog box with an ad for the
program. The two complicated parts of this program both have to do
with the "STR " resources. The first one is the initial message. This
is the text message that ShowTime prints prior to the date. One beta-
testing sysop used the text "Eastern Standard Time is:" (the quotes are
just to show you what the string was - they're not part of the actual
message. The only other tricky part is setting your paths. Make sure
that your "Path to Host" resource has the path to host from the root
directory, such as "Hard Disk:BBS:" (again, the quotes are only used
as delimiters). Please make sure that the last character is a full
colon! I'm pretty sure ShowTime will append one for you if you've
forgotten, but I'm not entirely sure, so please remember to have a full
colon as the last character of all your paths in all of the programs!
The only other thing about ShowTime that might confuse people is the
"Name of Host" string resource. Just make sure that this is the name of
the Red Ryder Host program as it appears under the little icon in the
finder. No special formatting is needed here.

    CHATTIMES
    ---------
    ChatTimes is a Tabby-related program that will set different chat
periods for different days of the week. For example, you might want to
be available for chat from 5pm to 9pm on weekdays, but to be available
from 11am to 10pm on weekends. No problem! Just open up the "STR#"
resource and change the times. Please keep in mind that the days start
at SUNDAY and go to Saturday, they do NOT start at Monday. You are
only allowed to use 3 characters for formatting (though they are
stripped out). You can use the full colon (":") the dash ("-") and the
space (" ") to format the times. For example, you might want the times
to be from 10:45am on Sunday to 9:15pm. The STR# resource for that day
would read: "10:45:00 - 21:15:00" (quotes used as delimiters only).
Remember, Host deals in military time, not on the standard 12 hour
system. Please be sure to run this on the day for which you wish the
date to be set for, as ChatTimes looks at the current time when it
decides what date to use (just make sure this is run after midnight).
If you don't have Tabby, well, don't use this program unless you plan
on waking up bright and early every morning to run it as an external
application.
    ChatTimes only has 2 "STR " resources. The first is the path to the
next application to be run (note that this is not necessarily host if
you are running this with tabby & associated other programs). This
path to next application path must be the path to the config program, as
this is where ChatTimes looks for the Config file (which it modifies
every night). Please append a full colon to this path. The name of next
application resource simply contains the file that you wish to run next.
    If ChatTimes beeps, look on the right side of the window, and ChatTimes
will tell you what's wrong. Usually it will say "Error #-43" which means that
your paths are messed up and it couldn't find the Config file. Remedy:
Fix your paths.

    **IMPORTANT NOTES**
      --------- -----
    Although The Quitter is exempt from this problem, ShowTime and
ChatTimes MUST be placed in the same folder as host or host will complain
that there is no config file, and that one can be created with the
ConfigEdit program. This only happens because Scott was being
particularly gunky when he wrote host 2.0 - host 2.0 doesn't reset the
default folder. People have told me of a new feature called "Host Home
Folder", but as I don't own Host 2.0 (or the most recent version, for
that matter), "I can't either confirm or deny that statement."
    Play it safe and just put the programs in the same folder as host.

    Hold down the mouse button to pause the displays if you would like a
longer time to read the text.

    Any questions you have will be answered by our competent PRODUCT
SUPPORT staff, which can be reached 24Hrs. a day at [phone]. This
is a *VOICE* number. Just call and say hi. Considering that all of these
programs are free, the least you could do is call and tell us what you
think about them. The phone call might be a whole $.50. And we *love*
getting calls.

    Good luck with these three programs - more to come!

[VSPDPREL02]