ROMaterial

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Text File | 1993-06-04 | 15.1 KB | 357 lines

ROMaterial Icon Hear-It Version 1.00 June 1, 1993 Welcome to ROMaterial! Please read through this Readme.txt file. It contains important information about installation and other information not available when the help files were created. ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! BEFORE INSTALLING: ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! If you are using an anti-virus program, such as the one that comes with DOS 6.0, you may have to temporarily disable it before installing ROMaterial. If you receive error messages during install, please check and make sure that your anti-virus is not active. After installation is complete, you can re-enable your anti-virus. The actual functioning of Icon Hear-It will not be affected, only the installation. If your are using DOS 6.0 Double Space, Stacker, SuperStor or any other hard disk compression software, you may need to have more disk space available then the installation asks for. This is because many of the files included with ROMaterial are already in compressed file format and will not compress further. If you receive error messages during installation regarding decompressing, copying or reading files, you may have to free up additional hard drive space and try again. If you are using a screen saver, you should disable it before installing. If the screen saver turns on during the installation it could slow down the process considerably. Installation Hard disk space requirements: 2 MB of free hard disk space in your Windows directory 2 MB of free hard disk space for program files 3 MB of free hard disk space for sound files 2 MB of free hard disk space for video files To install ROMaterial, from Microsoft Program Manager or Norton's Desktop for Windows 2.0 or above: 1. click on File... 2. then click on Run... 3. type X:\INSTALL on the Command Line, type X:\INSTALL (where X is the drive letter for your CD-ROM drive) 4. follow the on-line prompts. Towards the end of the install you will be asked if you have Video for Windows. Certain files for Video for Windows are necesarry to run the video screen savers. If you don't have these files, the install program will provide them. Icon Do-It Users Icon Hear-It replaces Icon Do-It during installation. Since Icon Hear-It contains all the functions of Icon Do-It plus more, you can simply erase Icon Do-It from your hard drive. To do this simply erase all the files under the Icon Do-It directory, then erase the Icon Do-It directory. Finally, delete the Icon Do-It icon from the program manager. Icon Hear-It Users Please Remove Icon Hear-It from memory (by clicking on the Remove Icon Hear-It menu item) before installing ROMaterial to avoid any possible conflicts. Don't forget to remove the Icon Hear-It icon from the Startup group or from the load line if you have Icon Hear-It automatically starting. If you are upgrading from a previous release of Icon Hear-It, your old sound and icon assignments are stored in a file called IHEARIT.BAK in your Windows directory. To restore these assignments, from File Manager or DOS, erase the IHEARIT.INI file and rename the IHEARIT.BAK file to IHEARIT.INI. You may have to exit Windows and come back in to load the renamed file. DOS 6.0 Users Please be aware that Memmaker, DOS 6.0's upper memory manager is not meant to be run with Windows. If you are loading Memmaker in your autoexec.bat or config.sys, you may wish to consult your DOS 6.0 manual about using Memmaker with Windows or switch back to the EMM386.EXE located in your Windows directory. Shell Programs Icon Hear-It is designed to run with Norton Desktop for Windows, versin 2.0 and Windows Program Manager only. Under other shell programs Icon Hear-It may not function properly. Under the Icon Hear-It Options menu choice, a new item has been added that tells you which shell Icon Hear-It is currently running under. If this shell is incorrect, reinstall Icon Hear-It through the correct shell. Norton Desktop Users Icon Hear-It is fully compatable with Norton Desktop for Windows 2.0 with the exception of customized menu bars. If you are running a customized menu bar Icon Hear-It should not be run from the menu bar, but should be run in the button window. Have Icon Hear-It Start Up Automatically To have Icon Hear-It start up automatically each time you start Windows, you can drag the Icon Hear-It icon to the StartUp Group or place the Icon Hear-It command line in your win.ini file. The command line should look something like this: load=C:\ICONHEAR\IHEARIT.EXE The drive letter or directory name may be different depending on where you installed Icon Hear-It, but the EXE file name should be the same. BMP Files There are three different levels of bitmaps included with ROMaterial: 4-bit 16-color bitmaps; 8-bit 256-color bitmaps; and 24-bit 16-million color bitmaps. If your monitor, graphics card and video driver only support 16 colors, the other .bmp files will not look good. Most SVGA cards come with a floppy disk containing a 256 color driver. You can install this driver by going into Windows Setup and following the on-line prompts. The 16 million color bitmaps are only supported on "True-Color" monitors and cards. You should only notice the difference in these bitmaps when you try to use them as wallpaper. ROMaterial automatically adjusts the display of the bitmaps in the other areas. For more information on video driver installation, please refer to your Windows manual. Video Screen Savers If you do not have very much RAM or are running on a slower machine, the video screen savers and their accompanying sounds may sound "jerky". Unfortunately, there is no way to compensate for this other than disabling the sound. Slower and less powerful machines simply can't keep up with the demand on hardware when runnning such intensive videos. Animated Icons The number of animated icons currently being played, the animation speed and the number of frames can greatly affect the operation of Windows and Windows applications. Other than the maximum animations discussed below, there is no "rule" for the number of animations you can have running concurrently. 5 animated icons may stress a 286-12 computer with a 256K video card, but 25 may not stress a 486-33 with a 1MB card! Icon Hear-It should not "crash" or lock up your computer even if you do reach your hardware limits. Maximum Animations Possible --------------------------- The number of currently running animations is limited to the number of available timers. Each icon animation uses one Windows' "timer". Windows 3.0 has 16 timers and Windows 3.1 currently has 32. Be aware, however, that many other programs also use timers. Screen savers, calendars, clocks and anything else that moves on the screen without human intervention probably uses a timer. The cursor animations (Curtoons) supplied with Icon Hear-It, for example, uses a Windows timer. If you decide to use one of the cursor animations this will reduce by one (1) the number of icon animations that you will be able to run at once. Icon Animation Speed -------------------- Basically, the faster you have an animation running, the more system resources and display memory are being used and the slower Windows may run. The higher the animation percentage, the faster the animation will play. As you add more animations this slowing may become more obvious. As mentioned, the amount of RAM and video display memory available as well as processor speed will determine how many icon animations are able to run before you notice system degradation. Not Hearing Any Sound If you do not hear any sound please try assigning the sound again. If that doesn't work, check and make sure that the TASOUNDS directory exists beneath ICONHEAR. The TASOUNDS directory CANNOT be moved, nor can the files beneath it be deleted. You will lose your talking applications if Icon Hear-It cannot find these sound files. Some of the sounds included with Icon Hear-It require a 16-bit or stereo sound card. Check and be sure you are not trying to play a 16-bit or stereo sound on an 8-bit or non-stereo card. An 8-bit or mono sound should play on most sound boards. The 16-bit sounds are located under directories with "16" in them, the stereo sounds are located under directories that end in "s" - for example, \16BST22K contains 16-Bit, 22 KHz, STereo sound files. Check your SYSTEM.INI file and make sure the following lines are included under the [boot] section: sound.drv=mmsound.drv drivers=mmsystem.dll. You can erase all or move any of the files in HEARITFX without damaging Icon Hear-It. But, you will lose any of the preattached sounds whose file you have deleted or moved. However, after relocating this directory you can reattach these sounds. If you are running Windows on a network and are not getting any sound: 1. Go into Main, Control Panel, then Drivers. 2. Check to see if Sound Driver for PC-Speaker is listed. 3. Add the Sound Driver for PC Speaker by clicking on Add 4. Click on Unlisted or Updated Driver (the first choice) 5. Click OK 6. You will be prompted for a drive and directory name, type in the drive letter and path you installed Icon Hear-It to. (Eg. C:\ICONHEAR) If you can't remember the drive and path, click on Browse to help refresh your memory. 7. You will be given a choice of two drivers, click on Icon Hear-It Wave Driver #1 for PC Speaker. 8. Click OK. You will then be asked if you want to restart Windows, Click Yes. Icon Hear-It supports all .wav files. You can use other .wav files with Icon Hear-It by clicking through the directory list boxes to the directory that contains your .wav files. Sound Board Not Being Used Sound boards are supported in Windows 3.1 and above ONLY. If you are using Windows 3.0 the sounds will not play through your sound board. Make sure you are not trying to play 16-bit or stereo sound on a card that will only play 8-bit or mono sounds. If you have a sound board installed (i.e. Sound Blaster, Pro Audio Spectrum, Thunder Board, etc) and are using Windows 3.1 and the sounds are still being played through the PC Speaker: 1. Go into Main, Control Panel, then Drivers. 2. Check to make sure your sound board drivers are installed. You will see the name or the manufacturer's name of your sound board and some reference to "wav" if your drivers are properly installed. (If you do not see your sound board listed, refer to your sound board documentation for instructions on installing the sound driver into Windows 3.1. then continue to step 3). 3. Remove the Sound Driver for PC-Speaker. You will be prompted that this sound driver is required by your system, do you really want to remove it. Click Yes. You will then be asked if you want to restart Windows, also Click Yes. Icons Not Sticking from One Windows Session to the Next 1. Do you have Icon Hear-It automatically loading? Icon Hear-It must be in memory for the animations to play. See the section titled Have Icon Hear-It Start Up Automatically earlier in this file 2. The problem you are experiencing with non-sticking program icons probably has to do with the icon Description in Properties. Windows 3.1 reads spaces as part of the description, so _Word_Perfect (where _ is a space) is not read the same as Word_Perfect. The problem with this is you can't see trailing spaces, so Word_Perfect would not match Word_Perfect_ _ _! The fix for this is to go into File from Program Manager, click Properties and retype the Description and hit ENTER.. DO NOT click OK or move the mouse cursor from the last letter in the description. This will eliminate any trailing blank spaces. 3. Non standard characters in path or command lines may also cause icons not to stick from one session to the next. If you have " or ( or any other "strange" character in either the command line or path, try changing to a strictly letters and numbers command line. ERROR #105 or #305 during Installation Sometimes anti-virus programs will think that the installation program is a virus. This is not true. To enable the installation to run properly you may have to temporarily disable your anti-virus program, then run the install program, the re-enable it. Just to be safe, you may want to virus scan our installation diskette and your hard drive before disabling your virus checker. Adding Push Buttons If you add a push button and give it a sound, you will see it in the Track All Icon Hear-It Sounds window. But, if you unattach the sound, the push button will be removed from this list. The preattached push buttons will always remain in the list whether you unassign their sounds or not. Speaker Driver Setup The Speaker Driver Setup button in the Options Window works ONLY with the speaker driver installed with Icon Hear-It. When loading, if Icon Hear-It detects a sound board or speaker driver already on your system, it will not allow you to use its Speaker Setup. DOS Applications that Use Sound If you have attached a sound to an icon for a DOS based application that uses sound, you may get an error message saying your sound card is in use by another program. This is happening because the DOS application accesses the sound board directly and if it is in use by Windows, (which it would be if it was playing the sound attached to the icon) it cannot be accessed again by DOS. If you unassign the sound attached to the icon, you should be able to use sound in your DOS program. You may also have to experiment with unassigning the CLOSE sound or any other Window Event that might be invoked when you run the DOS program. Interface Problems If the drop down menu is not refreshing or you are getting other "goofiness" on your monitor, try switching video drivers to the ones that come bundled with Windows. If that solves the problem, contact the manufacturer of your video driver and ask for an update. The video driver can be changed from within Windows from the Windows Setup. Be warned, you will probably be asked for certain Windows install disks during this process and may want to have your original set of Windows disks handy.