This documentation must be included with all copies of Coffee Break. Do not give out copies of this program without the documentation. This program is available for all non-commercial use, so please feel free to pass it along to your friends. It may not be sold for profit without the author's written permission.
SHAREWARE NOTICE:
This program is Shareware, and if you decide to keep it, you should send in a registration fee of $5, along with a brief note, which should include your e-mail address (if you have one). If you like it, please do! You'll help me put my wife through medical school! :-) You'll also ensure that I continue to write more programs. To register, send a check or cash (in U.S. dollars) to the snail mail address at the end of this file. Thanks, and I hope you like it!
However, the real purpose behind this program is to help all you hackers out there keep in good health! ;-) So, if it comes down to it and you decide you can't afford to register it, use it anyway. Health is the prime concern here, not making money! I'm trusting you to register it if you can.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
Coffee Break requires System 7.x. It uses strictly System 7 routines for it's background/foreground switches and other things. So, there's no need to even TRY it on a machine running Sys 6. It should run on ANY machine running System 7, however.
Some of the special features depend on certain screen saver options. Different screen savers support some, all, or none of these options. Listed below is a table of which screen savers I've tested with the program and what options (from the Set Options dialog) they support. (I know, the table may not wrap well on your computer, but I didn't want to use an editor other than TeachText.)
Saver: Pause when saver on: Built-in saver only:
AfterDark 2.0x yes yes
AfterDark (pre-2.0x) yes no
AutoIdle 1.0a18 no no
Basic Black 1.3.1 yes yes
BlackOut 1.1 (couldn't be tested, since it only works w/ mult. screens)
CleenSaver 1.3 (1.4?) (crashed my machine every time)
Clock Screen Saver 1.1.1 no no
Darkside of the Mac 4.1 yes no (will let you set this opt., though)
Eclipse 2.2.0 no no
Moire 4.01 no no
MUSISaver 1.1 no no
Selvia's DemonSaver 2 N/A N/A
Star Drive Lite 2.0 N/A N/A
TinySaver 3.1 no no
Twilight 7.1.4 no no
As you can tell, many screen savers DON'T support these options. However, I've found that the ones that do support some or all of these options are the most widely-used screen savers.
INTRODUCTION:
This program was inspired in me earlier last year (1993), when I became concerned about Repetetive Stress Injuries (RSI). Since I work with computers both at work and at home, I'm setting myself up for RSI. I didn't want that to happen. So, having heard of a shareware program that would force you to take breaks at certain intervals, I looked into it. It fell miserably short of my expectations, however. (Not to insult the person who wrote it -- they just had different expectations than I did.) It had a huge timer window, which I wanted to hide, but at the same time, I wanted to know how much time I had left. It didn't put itself in the background on startup, so if you put it in your startup items folder, you would have to do it manually every time you started up your computer. It didn't have a built in screen saver, and it was very unfriendly about "sleep time." It didn't make provisions for your being away from the computer when "sleep time" ended. So, I wrote my own, and fixed all those problems. (I hope! ;-)
THE PROGRAM:
There are several definitions I should give you before moving on, so you'll understand what I'm talking about.
Work time -- the amount of time you have between forced breaks
Sleep time -- the minimum amount of time for which the program "locks" your computer for a forced break. When sleep time is over, you must click the mouse to tell the computer to start work time again. This is so that if you're away from your computer, work time won't start without you, causing you to lose valuable time.
Forced break -- when work time is over, the program will bring itself to the front and lock you out. It will display a simple screen saver, and when sleep time is over, it will put the screen back to the way it left it and quietly move back to the back. Whatever program was in front before the break will still be in front after the break.
To use the program, you can just drop it in the Startup Items folder. That way, it will run on startup, and will keep going either until you quit or you turn off the computer. When the program begins, you will be given a certain amount of work time and a certain amount of sleep time. You can change these options two ways. You can run Coffee Break and use the Set Options menu item, in which case the options you set won't take effect until after the next break. (This is to keep you from increasing work time if you don't feel like taking a break. After all, this program is designed to replace your weak willpower! ;-) ) If you use the Set Options menu, you can never enter an incorrect value. Or, you can use ResEdit to edit the "pref" resource. I have provided a template to this resource, so it should be easily editable. Directly changing the resource (while Coffee Break is not running, of course) allows you to change your settings at the beginning, so you don't have to go through one cycle with my settings. Of course, if you enter an incorrect value in ResEdit, the program doesn't know, and you may end up with a sleep time of 238 minutes, or something like that! Valid entries for times must be integers greater than or equal to 1 and less than the maximum value an integer value can hold -- 32767.
A DEBATED OPTION:
One of the options in this program, the Restrict user option, was the source of much debate between my beta testers and myself. Some felt, as I did, that the program should be heavy-handed -- to protect against our weak willpower. However, others felt that there needed to be ways to quit and to exit sleep mode. In an attempt to satisfy both parties, this option was added. It is slightly difficult to turn off, but turning this option off gives the ability to quit and to exit sleep mode.
As a service to registered users who feel that this feature is too much of a temptation, I will provide a version of the program with this feature disabled. If you are a registered user and would like a copy of the disabled program, you may either send me an e-mail message requesting the program, or send a blank disk and a letter requesting the program.
KNOWN PROBLEMS:
This program doesn't work well when you're playing games such as Maelstrom, which take over completely during the game. (Note: Maelstrom doesn't have a monopoly on this problem, by a long shot. I just figured everyone would know what I was talking about if I used a common example.) I haven't actually tried it in some time, but I'm sure it probably will still not work well. Some games, I've been told, use the same method to tell a program they're running as the AfterDark-compatible screensavers listed above. I don't know if this is true, and if it is, I don't know which games this is true for.
It would be nice if I would write a fix for this, but it's not likely to happen. I don't think there's much I can do -- I have tried to make it work as cleanly as possible with such games.
CREDITS:
First of all, I'd like to thank Pete Gontier for his help in installing the AfterDark Gestalts. I made the screensaver portion of this program install the same Gestalts that it uses in conjunction with it's screensaver options. (See the table above.) Without Pete's help, I probably would have thrown my hands up in dispair trying to figure it out.
I'd also like to thank all my beta-testers. They not only helped me iron out many of the intermittent bugs, but they also gave me many invaluable suggestions, without which this program would not be what it is today. Thanks to Derek A. Borgford, Flint S. Hahn, Al Heynneman, Devon Hubbard, Chris Hwang, Ken Linger, Kathy Peck, Eric Thompson, Sean Vadras, and Harvey Wong. You guys were a HUGE help!
I'd like to thank the numerous people on the Internet who have, at some time or another, answered questions for me about technical problems. I'd also like to thank the people who convinced me this idea wasn't stupid. (Yes, at one point, I thought the idea of a program like this was stupid. I obviously think differently now.)
Thanks to Symantec for writing THINK C 5.0. Thanks to Hypercard clip art for providing the basis of some of the art in the screensaver portion of the program. Thanks to whoever at Apple wrote ResEdit. (And good luck on getting a newer version out! nudge, nudge...) Thanks to Apple for making the Macintosh, without which none of this would be here.
HOW TO CONTACT ME:
If you want to send me a message through e-mail, you can contact me at one of two addresses. Either will suffice. They are:
reed@telesphere.wustl.edu
reed@medicine.wustl.edu
For registration purposes, or if you don't have access to e-mail, here's my snail mail address:
Thomas Reed
4476 Greenwich Ct. #C-2
St. Louis, MO 63108
WHEN YOU REGISTER, PLEASE SEND A BRIEF NOTE TO TELL ME WHAT YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS IS, IF YOU HAVE ONE.
Hope you like Coffee Break!
Also look for my games! Try Valley of Peril, if you're into adventure games! It's freeware, so there's no charge! Also try The Solitaire of Champions if you like solitaire games.
