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Text File | 1994-06-03 | 21.1 KB | 478 lines

------------------------------------------------------------------- Deze copie van Glance bevat ook een nederlands documentatiebestand ------------------------------------------------------------------- English documentation with the Shareware Program Glance Version 3.0 January 1992, May 1993, March 1994, by J. Schipperheijn Postbus 1494 5602 BL Eindhoven The Netherlands ------------------------------------------------------------------- RUNNING GLANCE Copy ALL five Glance files to one directory on your hard disk. Run by typing GLANCE [RETURN] ------------------------------------------------------------------- GOALS Glance is a program-starter. Glance can contain a maximum of 84 specifications of application programs. Each of these programs can be run by Glance. Running a program from Glance takes up only 5808 bytes of the memory available to your application program. The main goal of Glance is to provide an attractive graphic program-starter that people actually use. Therefore it had to be easy to work with, have a good-looking user interface and, most important, it had to be fast. That's why all graphics routines and most of the rest of the source code is written directly in assembler language, specifically to fit the needs of Glance. I didn't use any existing procedure libraries or standard BIOS functions. Glance is as fast as it can possibly get. ------------------------------------------------------------------- SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS Glance works on all IBMs and true compatibles with 256 Kb free memory, a VGA-card and DOS 3.0 or higher. DOS 3.0 or higher is only needed to provide the Glance start-up directory, which Glance needs to be able to (re)load the Glance overlay files and load/save your data. DOS versions with a lower version-number will cause Glance to report an error and exit to DOS, so watch your SETVER-setup. ------------------------------------------------------------------- VERSION INFO In version 2.0, some frequently used graphics routines have been replaced by faster ones. The text on the "Menu One" and "Menu Two" buttons has been replaced by "Go to Menu One" and "Go to Menu Two" respectively, and some (syntax) errors have been removed from the documentation files. In version 3.0, only the address of the author is different. ------------------------------------------------------------------- GLANCE GENERAL Glance can be controlled with both mouse and keyboard. The standard setting for the mouse cursor is a fly. This cursor may blink a bit on slower computers because it is quite a complex drawing. If the blinking bothers you, switch to the arrow cursor by pressing Alt+A. The hot spot of the fly is right between his eyes. It is IMPORTANT to know that within Glance the right mouse button is identical to a SHIFT key. By pressing a shift key you will be able to select from the lower half of one of the menus. The setting of the three main switches of Glance (check the task screen) are saved automatically to the EXE file when you quit Glance, so you don't have to do that yourself. The menu data will not be saved automatically, of course. When you save your data with F2, Glance will first back up your old data file. This means that the old DAT file will be renamed to GLANCE.BAK. So if you make a mistake and you want your old data back, go to DOS and rename GLANCE.BAK to GLANCE.DAT. Because Glance has to read the same files from disk quite often its performance will increase drastically if a disk-cache is installed. ------------------------------------------------------------------- OPTIONAL COMMAND LINE PARAMETER VGA : force Glance to "detect" a VGA card. Pass this parameter to Glance if you discover that Glance is not able to detect your VGA card automatically (which is very unlikely). ------------------------------------------------------------------- PROGRAM SETUP Glance can contain up to 84 program specifications. These specifications are divided into 2 menus. You can switch from one menu to the other by pressing TAB or SPACE. Each menu, containing 42 specifications, is split into an upper and a lower half. In between the upper and the lower half there are five function buttons on your screen. Normally, regardless of the setting of the CAPS LOCK key, only the upper half of a menu is visible on your screen. If you press a shift key -or the right mouse button- the lower half will become visible. The function buttons are always on the screen. Glance has a task screen, on which ten functions and their corres- ponding [function] keys are displayed. This screen is only programmed for mouse addicts. Keyboard users can call all functions directly from one of the menus by pressing the function key. ------------------------------------------------------------------- GLANCE FILES Glance consists of six files. As said before, ALL files have to be in ONE directory - the documentation file as well, so it can be read from within Glance [by pressing F8]. Glance is... ■ GLANCE.EXE Resident program starter. ■ GL0594.EXE Main executable file. ■ GLANCE.OVL Overay file with code and data. ■ GLANCE.DOC English documentation file. ■ GLA_NL.DOC Dutch documentation file. ■ GLANCE.DAT Data file. One way of deleting all program specifications at once is by deleting the file GLANCE.DAT. This is the file in which Glance stores its data. However, it is better to clear the menus from within Glance by using the Reset function [F7]. ------------------------------------------------------------------- MENU SCREENS After the introduction screen you will see the upper half of Menu One appear on your display. You can start up any program from this part of the menu structure by pressing the corresponding letter on your keyboard. With the mouse: click on the screen button that displays the name of the program you want to run. To run a program from the lower half of a menu, hold down a shift key or the right mouse button, then press the letter [a..u] or click on the screen button with your mouse. If you are in Menu One (for example immediately after start up) the lower left corner of the screen shows a button saying "Go to Menu Two". Similarly, Menu Two has a button saying "Go to Menu One". You can switch between the two menus by clicking on these buttons with the mouse, or by pressing TAB or SPACE on the keyboard. Before Glance runs a program it always switches the current DOS directory to the directory that contains the program, according to your specification. This way the program has a better chance of finding its data and/or setup files. ------------------------------------------------------------------- MAIN FUNCTIONS The menu screens contain four function buttons. You can press these buttons with the mouse, or by pressing ALT and the underlined letter in the function name. The state of any of the shift keys is not important. The available functions are... Alt+E │ EDIT │ Add or edit a program specification. This function will be explained in detail in the next section. Alt+H │ HELP │ This function can also be called with F1. It shows a screen with the most important information for a starting Glance user. TAB toggles between main help and help on the Task screen. Alt+T │ TASK │ Switches to the Task screen. Press Escape or Return to return to the Menu screen. Alt+X │ EXIT │ After Glance has made sure your data is saved it returns to DOS. ------------------------------------------------------------------- THE EDIT FUNCTION After you press the EDIT button you are supposed to select the button you want to edit. You can select any button from any menu, just like you do when you want to run a program. After you have selected a button, Glance asks for three things... MENU NAME │ The name you enter here will be displayed in the menu. It doesn't have to make sense to anyone but you (you have to know what program the name refers to). For example, type "Word Perfect 5.1" for WP. Maximum string length: 20 characters. FILE NAME │ Enter the exact location and name of the file you want Glance to run, In the usual format: [drive:] [\path\] filename [.extension]. Example: "C:\WORD\PERFECT\WP.EXE". You don't HAVE to enter anything in between square brackets, but it is highly recommendable to do so. For example, if you only enter "WP", Word Perfect will only run if c:\word\perfect is the current DOS directory. PARAMETER │ Enter the parameters you want Glance to pass to the program (for example the name of a document). When you are editing text, the following functions are available: (only functions with a button on the screen can also be called with the mouse. By the way: the cursor is white and does not blink) - ARROW UP : line up - ARROW DOWN : line down - ARROW LEFT : character left - ARROW RIGHT : character right - CTRL-Y : delete line - HOME : go to the first character of the line - END : go to the last character of the line - RETURN : confirm line, go to next line - INSERT : confirm line, stop editing, update menu - ESCAPE : stop editing, do not update the menu With Alt+C, the Check function, you can check if the filename you entered is correct. That is: if Glance can find the file! This function is very strict: when you run a program and the file name is not fully specified (for example, you did not enter the extension because you forgot whether it was EXE or COM), Glance will try to add all the missing information. Most of the time Glance will be able to track down which file you mean and run it. The Check function, however, does not accept incomplete file specifications. So when you do not enter the extension of a file, the Check function will say 'File not found'. ------------------------------------------------------------------- TASKS Pressing Alt+T opens the Task screen. As said before, all tasks can be called from the menu screen as well by pressing their function key. The following tasks are available... F1 │ Help │ Guess... Press TAB to toggle between the two available screens. F2 │ Save Entries │ Writes the Glance data to disk. First it renames the old data file to *.BAK F3 │ Load Entries │ (Re)loads the Glance data. Glance loads the data automatically at start up, but you may want to use this function to undo editing you regret. F4 │ Go to OS Shell │ Creates a DOS Shell by running COMMAND.COM. Type Exit [Enter] to return to Glance. F5 │ View OS Screen │ Shows the DOS screen. Press any key or mouse button to return to Glance. F6 │ Blank Screen │ Suppresses the display to prevent it from burning in. Press something to return to Glance. F7 │ Reset Part of Menu │ Removes all program specifications from one half of a menu. F8 │ Read Documentation │ Switches to a textmode to enable you to quickly check out this documentation file. Mouse available. F9 │ About Glance │ Displays information about Glance, its author and the registration procedure. F10 │ Park Hard-disks │ Parks all connected hard-disks. Do not forget to save your data before you turn off your computer. ------------------------------------------------------------------- SETTINGS On the Task screen you can set any of the three available switches. Whatever is on the button applies if the corresponding picture appears "deep". All changes to these settings will be saved to the EXE file automatically when you quit Glance. Toggle the settings with the keyboard by pressing Alt+I, Alt+A or Alt+P. The "Introducktion" switch gives you the possibility to disable the introduction screen. Doing that would bring you immediately to Menu One after start-up. "Arrow Mouse" disables the default fly cursor and turns it into an every-day, even more default, Microsoft mouse arrow look-a-like. The "Prevent Mistakes" switch enables you to have your actions verified by Glance. This mainly comes down to having to answer the question "Are you sure ?" when you run a program or quit Glance. ------------------------------------------------------------------- HISTORY Glance is the follow up of Glimpse, a Shareware program starter I wrote for text screens, that also works with the Shift-concept. The programs are called Glimpse and Glance because after you have worked with them for a while, you will be able to locate the keys of the most-used programs so fast that the menu screens will hardly become visible. The functionality of Glimpse is almost identical to that of Glance. The implementation of course, differs quite a bit. Glimpse only uses text screens. Therefore, it will work with all videocards and is very much faster than its handsome brother. If you still think Glance is too slow, or you just want to get to know the razor-sharp predecessor of Glance, then get Glimpse. Copy it from a friend, or order it. If you choose the latter, I will send you a copy of the latest version of Glimpse. ------------------------------------------------------------------- REGISTERING If you use Glance and enjoy working with it, you should register your copy. It encourages me to carry on. Of course, there is also something in it for you. As a registered user you are the first one to know about updates, which you can order for a small amount of money. I will also help you when you are facing problems with Glance (or anything else for that matter). TO REGISTER Send cash money (no cheques), US$ 20,- or foreign equivalent suggested, do not forget to mention "GLANCE", to J. Schipperheijn Postbus 1494 5602 BL Eindhoven The Netherlands If you live in The Netherlands, transfer Fl. 29,- to register, or Fl.34,- if you want to receive a copy of the latest version, to Giro 6266751. Please check the address with the About Glance screen before you send anything. THANK YOU VERY MUCH! ------------------------------------------------------------------- QUESTIONS If you have any questions, suggestions, remarks or problems: just send them to me. You will always get a reply. If you manage to find a bug in Glance, you will get a corrected version right away, whether you are a registered user or not. ------------------------------------------------------------------- CONDITIONS Glance is a Shareware program. You can freely copy it and pass it on to friends if you want to, but ONLY if you make sure Glance is complete and unchanged. Glance may not be distributed or sold by anyone for any amount of money higher than the duplication/dispatch costs. The author is not responsible for any damage claimed to be caused by Glance. ------------------------------------------------------------------- OTHER SHAREWARE PROGRAMS FROM THE AUTHOR * * * DAYWATCH * * * Daywatch is a sort of thinking calendar, to keep track of birthdays and other events. It consists of two separate parts; an extensive and professional editor for creating and modifying calendars, and a second program with which you can 1) check one or more calendars for events to come (you can set the number of days you want to be warned in advance) and 2) configure Daywatch. Daywatch is meant to be called from autoexec.bat, so that if something is about to happen, you will get a message when you turn on your system. All tools required to add or remove calls from autoexec.bat are internally provided by Daywatch. Daywatch is NOT a resident program; it is just started when you turn on your system, warns ONLY if there is an upcoming event and after that terminates like any other program (freeing all allocated memory). Daywatch comes with a demonstration calendar with the names, birthyears and birthdays of about three hundred pop-stars. To register Daywatch, transfer Fl 10,- to Giro 6266751 if you live in The Netherlands. Otherwise, send cash money, £5 Sterling or foreign equivalent suggested, to J.Schipperheijn, Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Do not forget to mention "Daywatch". If you want me to send you a copy of the latest version, please add some extra money. Daywatch is NOT the two pages of Basic listing you associate with £5, but a functional and complete application program of about 130 Kb. It will definitely be worth your money. If you register Gaze, you will get a copy of Daywatch for free. * * * GLIMPSE * * * Glimpse is the predecessor of Glance; a mouse-supporting menu program which is almost entirely written in assembler language. Glimpse can contain a maximum of 42 application programs and uses text modes only (it works with all videocards). Glimpse is, without doubt, the fastest menu program you will ever see. It is a razor-sharp no-nonsense tool that has proven to be particularly appreciated by experienced users, programmers and anyone who just wants to be able to switch between applications without being aware of it. Glimpse is written for users who like to be as close to the DOS prompt as possible. The whole concept points in this direction, including the visual part; Glimpse only uses the right half of the screen, leaving directory information and the prompt clearly visible. All programs can be started by pressing ONE key only. Registering Glimpse; if you live in The Netherlands, transfer Fl 19,- to Giro 6266751, addressed to J.Schipperheijn, Eindhoven. Abroad; send CASH money, £10 or equivalent suggested, to above address. Do not forget to mention "Glimpse". If you want me to send you a copy of the latest version, add some extra money and make sure I know what you want. If you register Gaze, you will get a copy of Glimpse for free. * * * GAZE * * * Gaze is the follow-up to Glance. Yes; again a graphical menu program, but with a forward leap that is hard to imagine. To start with, all useful suggestions from several hundreds of letters of Glance users have been incorporated in this program. This means that Gaze features a balanced selection of the most-wanted functionality, moulded in a graphical interface that leaves shareware and commercial competitors far behind. Still, Gaze works on all computers with a VGA card, DOS 3.2 or higher and 512 Kb free base memory. Application programs are divided into groups. Groups as well as programs can be protected with a password. Some password options make Gaze tailor-fit for use in classes or by little children. The differences with Glance are hard to grasp. To give you some idea: Gaze uses proportional fonts only (like MS Windows). Combined with an advanced "off-screen-cache" algorithm, this guarantees an attractive, but mainly fast, interface. You can order Gaze by transferring Fl 37,50 to Giro 6266751 if you live in The Netherlands. Otherwise, send CASH money (no cheques please) £15 Sterling or US$ 20 suggested, to the above address. If you register Gaze, you will receive a disk with copies of ALL my shareware programs, and of course a copy of the registered version of Gaze. This version features a database, with which you can let your modem dial phone numbers. In order for this function to work your telephone should be connected to the modem. ------------------------------------------------------------------- I want to thank Mr. Gary Trudeau from Polperro, Cornwall, England, for proof-reading this documentation file. ------------------------------------------------------------------- End of file -------------------------------------------------------------------