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1993-08-31
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Document Quip, The Fortune Cookie Program From Hell
+-------------------------------+
| |
| Quip |
| |
| The Fortune Cookie Program |
| From Hell |
| |
+===============================+
| Joseph Edwards Van Riper III |
+===============================+
| |
| A Cheese Olfactory Workshop |
| Production |
| |
+-------------------------------+
0. Legal Stuff
==============
+-------------------------------+
| |
| LEGAL STUFF |
| |
+-------------------------------+
As is the way of man, sometimes, you just have to spell stuff out to
people.
0.1. Terms of Use
-----------------
You are free to execute this program in any way you want. You may put it
on a disk and fire live rounds from your favorite rifle into it, lick the
diskette you may have picked this up from.. heck, you can even use your
favorite sector editor and write little <00>'s into it.
Of course, you may also use this for your BBS or your home system.
You owe me nothing except perhaps gratitude.. maybe not even that after
you read some of the supplied quips.
Most people call this "Freeware", except I add on other special bonus to
the whole thing... I have included the Source Code! With THIS in mind,
the program should probably be more properly called "Public Domain". I
only ask that you do not claim this work as your own, unless you modify it
significantly, and even then, I ask that you include my name SOMEWHERE in
the credits, by way of respect for the work that went into this frivolous
project.
Otherwise, feel free to enjoy this program in any way that you feel you
can find enjoyment.
0.2. Distribution
-----------------
If you dare to charge people anything more than what Fred Fish charges for
a disk from his definitive PD/Shareware collection, you will be in
violation of my right to have this product distributed freely to all
peoples who wanted a product like this. That is to say, You Should Be
Ashamed Of Yourself, Where Is Your Mother To Discipline You?
If you are a user, and you happen to come across this work, and you've
paid for it, you've been ripped off. Please try to get in contact
with some kind of authority in your respective country, to get your
money back, and maybe eat the evil bastard for lunch. At the very least,
you should feel insulted that he thought so little of you as to allow this
remark to remain in the documentation.
If you have written a very nice program.. perhaps a BBS or a database or
something, and you wish to include my program with the distribution,
regardless of ShareWare or Commercial fees, you are welcome to include
this program in your distribution, as long as it is made clear that I
(Joseph Van Riper) am the author of Quip. I do not even require a copy of
the registered version of the program be sent to me (although that would
be exceptionally nice <grin>). It should also be made clear that Quip is
a Public Domain program, freely available, and that the user is paying
only for your own product.
0.3. Disclaimer
---------------
I, Joseph Edwards Van Riper III, and all peoples working for the Cheese
Olfactory Workshop (in whatever guise), do hereby accept no responsibility
for the results of this program. Since you haven't paid for it, you
accept full risks for what this program might do. We will not be held
responsible for anything lacking in the documentation, either... you, the
user, are to accept the full risks of running this program.
While we've taken great pains to insure that nothing terribly serious
could happen as a result of running this program, we cannot accept
responsibility for this program's actions, or the documentation's wording
which may lead you to whatever actions. Enjoy this program, but don't try
to pin anything on us <grin>.
So, if by some weird fluke, you read something in the documentation that
suggests you try some parameter, and you find yourself in Alpha-Centari,
sipping Methane in a plastic container, wearing naught but a joystick and
several rubber skid-stops, we cannot be held responsible for it. Find
your own way home.
I strongly recommend, however, that the user read the instructions for the
use of this program before running it, in order to minimalize any
potential damage. Please keep in mind, Quip modifies certain files under
certain conditions that are easily predictable. Quip also creates/deletes
certain files according to another file/string's text... eg:
".profile"
Might become:
".profile.tab" (or) ".profile.0"
while
"RAM:garn.dat"
Could become:
"RAM:garn.0" (or) "RAM:garn.tab"
And
"RAM:blooie"
might become
"RAM:blooie.tab" (or) "RAM:blooie.0"
Also, all reported rumours about Quip stealing girlfriends away from men are
completely without base. Even more untrue is the unusual rumour that Quip
will make you impotent, or will reduce your IQ by 5 points with each
invocation. The one about Quip making calls to the serial device is a total
fabrication, and anything about Quip having Artificial Intelligence is
truly overblown.
Read the docs.
1. History Lessons
==================
+-------------------------------+
| |
| History Lessons |
| |
+-------------------------------+
A Gilgamesh was the King of Uruk.. no, wait.. you can't be interested in THAT
subject right now!
But you might be interested in `Quips History' or perhaps `COWs History'.
1.1. Quips History
------------------
+-------------------------------+
| |
| Quip's History |
| |
+-------------------------------+
Quip has gone through a lot of changes over its time, and I didn't really
keep a very good handle on all the various changes from version to
version, but I can try to give somewhat of an idea, if you REALLY care
about it.
1.1.1. Quip One
---------------
Quip 0.01 (perhaps July 1991, Lattice C++)
The very first version of Quip was written because I wanted to see if I
could program a fortune-like program for the Amiga (because I hadn't seen
any up to that time). I wanted to do it so one wouldn't have to have an
extra table file hanging around the system. Of course, this meant that
the program would run rather slowly. However, Quip 0.01 was SO incredibly
slow because I hadn't figured out that Level 1 I/O meant non-buffered, and
thus, I had to wait for disk-movement. Boy was *I* an idiot!
1.1.2. Quip Two
---------------
Quip 0.02
I had discovered that Level 2 I/O would speed things up considerably
<grin>.
1.1.3. Quip Three
-----------------
Quip 0.03
I implemented the tablefile, as an option, because I was quite tired of
how slow quip retrieval was. It was pretty cool, suddenly seeing my
little quips pop up almost instantly!
1.1.4. Quip Four
----------------
Quip 0.04 (sometime in 1992)
I think I fixed some bugs in this version. I can't remember what they
were, though. I DO remember that they were SO bothersome that I
completely re-wrote the code, trying to take better advantage of C++'s
object oriented features. This also started the MS-DOS series of Quip
programs, distributed almost exclusively in Charlotte, NC, and Minneapolis.
Prefix and suffix files support started to appear in this version.
1.1.5. Quip Five
----------------
Quip 0.05
More bug-fixes. There were a couple of 'sub-versions' (like this wasn't
already a sub-version) that were meant to fix minor problems (such as
reading the filename from the arguments correctly in both Amiga and MS-DOS
versions).
1.1.6. Quip Six and Others
--------------------------
Quip 0.06 (and incarnations)
Again, more bug-fixes, and some more features (better argument parsing, and
all kinds of nifties). Included with the archive for the Amiga version was
a program that helped Citadel sysops convert archived messages into Quip
datafiles in a nifty little format (handled anonymous messages, networked
messages [although there was a stupid bug I put in it that will make it
generate messages that look pretty dumb.. maybe I fixed this before I sent
it out.. I dunno], time and date stamps, etc). Pretty cool, really. I
also had assembled a ra