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CATCHME.ZIP
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MANUAL.TXT
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1993-10-04
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Program written by Jeff Nagle. Manual written by Tony Magnusson.
CATCH⌐me does two things:
1. It lets you know the time and date without getting in your way.
2. It will ring an alarm, alerting you of anything from corporate
commitments to what day Saturday Night Live comes on.
The Task:
How does one write a program that tells you the time regardless of
the application you are using?
The Answer:
Make the program "stay on top".
A good example of this is the Microsoft clock which has the ability to
"stay on top". The only drawback to this approach is when it is covering
up something you want to access. You know how annoying it is when you are
always having to drag the clock around. Now, imagine a little square,
without a program name or a title or even buttons. A square that only
tells you the time and date. If it is covering up something all you have to
do is touch it with your pointing device (mouse, etc.) and it "flies" away
to some other location on your screen. You can never "catch" CATCH⌐me.
The bottom line is this: suppose CATCH⌐me is located over something you'd
like to use, in whatever program you're working on. Move your mouse as you
normally would toward the intended area. As soon as the mouse pointer is
over the CATCH⌐me display it will move away allowing you to use whatever it
was covering up.
In addition to this, you can set an alarm and note. But how does one tell a
program what to do when you can't "catch it"? What you do is hold down
either the right mouse button or the Shift key and drag the mouse pointer
over the time display. CATCH⌐me will stay in place and pop up the SetAlarm
screen for you to set the alarm and note. Click Okay when you're done.
CATCH⌐me supports the date and time formats available in the International
dialog box time located in the Control Panel. For instance, you can control
whether the time is displayed in a 12 or 24 hour format using this dialog
box. The time is displayed in hours and minutes. There are a couple of
reasons why the seconds are not shown. First, one of the design goals is to
display only what absolutely must be shown. Most people don't work by the
second, except maybe lawyers. I have yet to hear someone say "I'll call you
at ten seconds past eight thirty." The second reason is to reduce CATCH⌐me's
impact on system performance as it is constantly running in the background.
Since just the hours and minutes are shown the system clock needs to be
checked only every 30 seconds in order to update the time display and check
the alarm(s). If seconds were displayed the system clock would have to be
checked at least once every second. This change from checking 2 times per
minute to checking 60 times per minute represents an increase in required
processor time of 3000%. If you would like to have the seconds displayed
please let me know. If enough people request it I will make it an option
in the next version.
INSTALLATION
Installation is the very easy. The files VBRUN300.DLL and COMMDLG.DLL are
needed for CATCH⌐me to start. Both these files should be located in the
Windows\System directory. During installation about 150K worth of files
will be copied to your Windows directory. This will be reduced to 0K after
installation. The CATCH⌐me directory will take about 215K of disk space.
No modifications are made to either the WIN.INI or SYSTEM.INI files unless
you choose to have the WIN.INI file modified as described below in the
section dealing with how to add CATCH⌐me to the "run=" line. If, after
installation, any of the support files in the CATCH⌐me program directory
are also in the Windows\System directory then you should put the latest
version in the Windows\System directory and delete the version in the
CATCH⌐me program directory.
CATCHME.EXE Program file that gets copied to the program directory
CATCHME.INI Support file that gets copied to the program directory
CMCONFIG.EXE Program file that gets copied to the program directory
CMDIALOG.VBX Support file that gets copied to the program directory
INSTSCRL.VBX Support file that gets copied to the program directory
THREED.VBX Support file that gets copied to the program directory
SETUPKIT.DL_ A file that's used for setup that stays on the floppy
SETUP.EXE A file that's used for setup that stays on the floppy
CMSETUP.EX_ A file that's used for setup that stays on the floppy
VER.DL_ A file that's used for setup that stays on the floppy
STARTUP.INI A file that's used for setup that stays on the floppy
SETUP.LST A file that's used for setup that stays on the floppy
MANUAL.TXT This file, gets copied to the program directory
Experienced computer users --
CATCH⌐me follows standard Windows Setup procedure. Run the
Setup.Exe program and follow instructions. Some of the files are
compressed so you must run SetUp in order to decompress these files.
To just copy them to the desired directories will not work. Setup
will copy the new files into a specified directory. You can then
delete or move the original files as desired.
The less experienced user --
I'm assuming that you've just got done extracting the "holding
file" (the ZIP file) for all the CATCH⌐me files. You must run
SETUP.EXE because some of the files you unzipped are still in a
compressed form. Before you run SETUP you need to decide where you want the program files located. Most of the
files CATCH⌐me requires will be installed in it's own directory. I
have a directory called C:\UTIL where I keep all my handy little
programs like CATCH⌐me. Each program has its own subdirectory. My
"path" would look like "C:\UTIL\CATCHME".
There are two ways to run Setup, here's how:
1. From the File Manager select the directory the CATCH⌐me
files in. Double click on the Setup.Exe file.
2. Click the File Menu item either in File Manager OR in
Program Manager. Choose the "run" command and type
in the path to where Setup.Exe is located, i.e.,
C:\DOWNLOAD\Setup.Exe. Click "Okay".
By default, CATCH⌐me will set itself up in a directory called
C:\CATCHME. You can modify this simply by changing the dialog box
to say whatever you like. As I mentioned earlier, I changed mine
to say C:\UTIL\CATCHME. If you have not already created this
directory it will be created for you. Next, Setup will want to know
how you plan to start CATCH⌐me. There are three ways that all work
equally well.
From an icon in a Program Group --
This means that CATCH⌐me appears like every other program
in Windows, as in icon in a Program Group. To run
CATCH⌐me, you double click on the icon and the program runs.
Setup will give you the option to have CATCH⌐me installed in
a new Program Group for itself, or to be part of an existing
group. Setup will present you with a list of all the
Program Manager Groups that you have on your Desktop.
Choose the "New Group" selection or any other group you wish
from the list box. Don't select either of the check boxes
in the lower left.
From the Startup Group(requires Windows 3.1 or above) --
This group is like any other Program Manager group in that
it appears on the Desktop like all the others but it has a
special purpose. Every time that you start Windows any
programs whose icons are located in this group will start
automatically without you having to do anything. It is
common to run utility programs such as CATCH⌐me from the
Startup Group. W