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EnigmA Amiga Run 1996 February
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EnigmA AMIGA RUN 04 (1996)(G.R. Edizioni)(IT)[!][issue 1996-02][Skylink CD III].iso
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util1
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smartssx.lha
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SmartAss
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1995-10-16
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SmartAss V1.3 AMIGA by Håvard "Howard" Pedersen
© 1994-95 Mental Diseases
A program for the handling of fortunes upon startup.
DISCLAIMER
I take no responsibility for what this program may to do you,
your belongings, your family, your hometown, your (beloved/not
beloved) pets or your mental state. Use entirely at your own
risk. You may copy this program to any schmuck wanting it.
Please note that most of the quotes used by SmartAss does not
include author information. It's hard to obtain this information
on everything, so I've mostly let it out.
The fortunes presented here may be offensive to some. If you feel
offended by any fortune, please notify me, and I will have it
removed from the next distribution of SmartAss if I find it
reasonable. Please keep in mind though, that no fortunes are ment
to offend anyone, but rather to amuse and entertain. Not all
fortunes herein represent my personal views. (Though most do! =)
INTRODUCTION
SmartAss was originally written in annoyment over another
fortune-program I found, WiseCrack. The program was written in C
and both its random-number generator and speed was terrible. It
wasn't meant to be the project it has become today. WiseCrack had
originally 2393 fortunes, and to tell you the truth it sort of
came out of control. SmartAss possessed me, and when my datafile
counted over 19000 fortunes I realised I had made a MONSTER!
(Spooky orchestral music here!) SmartAss offers you the following
features:
* The largest fortunecollection known to man. (19758!)
* Compatibility with SmartAss for Unix, DOS and Windows,
written by Sveinar Rasmussen.
* Really fast fortune-fetching due to hash-tables.
* Does NOT read entire datafile into memory.
* Has a continously updating fortunefile. (Available on
AmiNet!)
* Is able to print fortunes to standard output. Insert
SmartAss in your shell-startup or redirect to printer!
* Very random picking of fortunes!
HOW TO USE
Starting SmartAss from WB is a breeze. Put it in your
WBStartup-drawer or simply doubleclick on its icon. You should
immediately (well, nearly) get an intuition-requester with the
fortune selected. Unfortunately, current version does not support
any arguments from icon. If this is important to you, you have to
use IconX for now.
Starting it from CLI is as easy as from WB. Typing its name and
pressing return will bring up the earlier mentioned requester. To
make SmartAss type its output in the CLI window you need to write
"SmartAss STDIO" and voila! The keyword PATH may be used to
specify where to search for the datafiles. For example to fetch
datafiles from "Text:" and print out the fortune to a printer you
would type "SmartAss STDIO PATH Text: >PRT:" and consider it
done.
Normally, SmartAss searches for it's datafiles in the S:
directory. You must make sure that the file is a version 2
datafile. This should be mentioned a small textfile accompanying
the datafile.
PROGRAM HISTORY
V1.0 Initial release. Written in annoyment of the lousy
random-calculation of WiseCrack. 2,467 fortunes, whereof
2,393 origins from WiseCrack. Limitations: 4,294,967,295
fortunes.
- COUNT keyword cause output of total number of fortunes
in datafile.
- STDOUT keyword cause fortunes to be output to standard
output. (Console window or via redirection to
whatever...)
V1.1 Speed raise attempt. Limitations: 65,535 files with
maximum 65,535 fortunes each, resulting in a maximum of
4,294,836,225 fortunes. Distributed datafile consists of
2,612 fortunes.
- Multiple datafiles now supported. Gains MUCH speed!
- Changed FILE/FROM keyword to PATH to simplify loading
of multiple datafiles.
- Count keyword removed. Will be released in separate
command soon.
- Started using BSS hunk for smaller objects.
- Drew me a nice icon for MagicWB.
- Fixed bug causing last fortune in a file to be
displayed in requester with a empty line at the
bottom.
- If attempting to display fortunes larger than 4K with
intuition requester, SmartAss would most likely crash.
Will now report error.
V1.2 Still not random enough. Error reports sucked!
Distributed datafiles consists of 6,036 fortunes. At this
time, Sveinar Rasmussen Made MS-DOS, Windows and Unix
versions of SmartAss.
- DisplayBeep() when displaying error messages, to
distinguish error-requesters from fortunes.
- Made random-calculation even more random.
- Potential bug-fix: SmartAss _could_ crash if an error
occured and intuition-library V36 or higher couldn't be
opened.
- Removed some fortunes which actually told you that OS/2
was a good OS! 8)
- Changed fortune introducer from "@" to a "~" on a
separate line.
- Created compiled fileformat with index for a massive
speed gain.
- Several different errorreports upon memory shortage, to
make bughunting easier.
- Due to my incredible slow routine for selecting the
fortune, I've set the fortune-limit to 65535.
V1.3! Whoa! Major furtune update! Distributed datafiles
consists of 19,758 fortunes! And I'm announcing this
release as the exclamation-mark release! A
library-version is coming up!
- Encoded datafile to make it impossible to read from a
text-viewer! Version of file-format was set to 2 due to
this!
- Wrote documentation! (Finally!)
THINGS TO COME IN FUTURE RELEASES
* Make stdout-parser translating linefeeds into double linefeeds
(PC-style). This will cause SmartAss to work far better with
terminals in mind.
* Improve random-calculations even more.
* BUGFIX! After a lot of fortune-reading, a "datafile corrupt"
error appeared?
* Read WB tooltypes. (When I figure out how!) :(
* Environment variable to specify prefered settings.
* Write DOS-command to write statistics on the fortunefiles.
* Write AmigaGuide documentation.
* Public screen argument.
* Expand fortune-file.
* Build the friggin' window on my own, so I don't have to think
about proportional fonts anymore.
* Remove usage of utility-library for random seeding.
* Use fixed huffman for fortune storage. (Smaller datafile!)
* Don't read more than necessary of index file.
* Make smartass-library to improve versatility and make it
possible to write custom fortune-displayers. With this release I
will simultaneously release:
- MUI fortune display.
- Intuition fortune display.
- DOS fortune display.
- Bootscreen utility with fortune display.
* Check fileformat better when reading index file.
* Homepage! It's there, but I can't remember the address.
HOW TO GET THE NEWEST VERSION OF SMARTASS OR NEW DATAFILES
The newest Amiga version is always on AmiNet. The only server I
remember right now is ftp.netnet.net, but there are a lot of
mirrors. The executable and the datafiles are in separate
archives for poor sods who only want new version of the program.
:) New datafiles are continously uploaded here in LHA archives.
Another way to get a new version, read uninteresting stuff about
SmartAss or find out what's coming up is checking out the
SmartAss homepage! It's located at:
http://www.cs.uit.no/~sveinarr
The link doesn't take you all the way, but there should be a
SmartAss button somewhere. Click it! The SmartAss files on this
page is actually located in USA. Europeans should therefore use
AmiNet when possible, while Americans might find this quite a
relief.
CONTACTING THE AMIGA AUTHOR
I'm maintaining the Amiga version and does some work concerning
fileformat and new fortunes. There is an italian guy who's
working on a BIIIG expansion to the fortune file and checking the
file for double storage of fortunes. Unfortunately I don't know
his name nor any way to contact him. (Sveinar do!) Contact me if
you've got ANYTHING to say about SmartAss:
E-Mail: (Preferably)
havardp@mail.stud.ingok.hitos.no
IRC: (Nice alternative!)
Nick: Howard, Howard_, Howard__
Channels: #amiga, #amigascne, #norge
Snail-mail: (If all else fails)
Håvard Pedersen
Kvartsveien 175
N-9022 KROKELVDALEN
Norway
CONTACTING THE UNIX/MSDOS/WINDOWS AUTHOR
Sveinar Rasmussen has made SmartAss for Windows, DOS and Unix. If
you want this program you can either mail him or get it through
the SmartAss home page. I'm sure he would also appreciate
comments and other types of feedback on his efforts.
E-Mail:
sveinarr@stud.cs.uit.no
LAST WORDS
Thanks to Frank Simonsen, who collected the imense amount of 50
fortunes and insisted on getting credits for the work! Thanks
pal! ;)