| 1 | wxPoem 1.0 |
| 2 | ---------- |
| 3 | |
| 4 | by Julian Smart |
| 5 | --------------- |
| 6 | |
| 7 | Fancy a little intellectual stimulation after long hours spent staring |
| 8 | at spreadsheets or reports? Does your brain long for something a little |
| 9 | more fulfilling than Tetris or fiddling with the WIN.INI file? Then you |
| 10 | could go out and buy a poetry book... or alternatively, if you just |
| 11 | can't drag yourself away from the screen, click on the wxPoem icon. |
| 12 | |
| 13 | wxPoem is a simple Windows application which picks poems from a file at |
| 14 | random, or finds poems according to a string criterion, and formats them |
| 15 | nicely in a window. A displayed poem can be copied to the Windows clipboard |
| 16 | ready for inclusion in that more imaginative report... |
| 17 | |
| 18 | It's small, it's free and it's totally harmless, so far as I know. |
| 19 | No responsibility accepted, though, for any problems it might cause with |
| 20 | your setup. |
| 21 | |
| 22 | wxPoem was converted to use the wxWindows toolkit, from the original |
| 23 | WinPoem which received a favourable review from Windows Shareware 500. |
| 24 | |
| 25 | Since it now uses wxWindows, wxPoem may be compiled on a variety |
| 26 | of platforms such as X (XView or Motif), Windows and NT. |
| 27 | |
| 28 | Files |
| 29 | ----- |
| 30 | |
| 31 | The main data file is winpoem.dat, and an index file winpoem.idx is |
| 32 | supplied or can be (re)built by deleting winpoem.idx and rerunning |
| 33 | wxPoem. Source code is also provided in source.zip, but wxWindows is |
| 34 | required to build it. The original WinPoem is much leaner (40K |
| 35 | instead of 400K!) and can be compiled under Windows without wxWindows. |
| 36 | |
| 37 | Installation |
| 38 | ------------ |
| 39 | |
| 40 | Windows |
| 41 | ======= |
| 42 | |
| 43 | Copy ctl3dv2.dll to windows\system, and delete the original |
| 44 | ctl3dv2.dll or wxPoem will not run. |
| 45 | |
| 46 | wxPoem can be put in the Startup folder in the Program Manager, so that |
| 47 | a random poem will pop up every time Windows is run. |
| 48 | |
| 49 | UNIX |
| 50 | ==== |
| 51 | |
| 52 | wxPoem comes in Open Look and Motif versions for the Sun, and a |
| 53 | Linux Open Look version. For other platforms, you will need to |
| 54 | recompile the source. |
| 55 | |
| 56 | |
| 57 | Use |
| 58 | --- |
| 59 | |
| 60 | Simply run the program, and a random poem will be displayed. |
| 61 | You can optionally give a filename on the command line, without a suffix |
| 62 | (e.g. winpoem). |
| 63 | |
| 64 | The simplest way of operating wxPoem is to keep pressing the space bar |
| 65 | for new poems (or pages for multi-page poems). |
| 66 | |
| 67 | Clicking the right mouse button (or selecting the wxPoem Options menu |
| 68 | item from the system menu) gives a choice of the following facilities: |
| 69 | Next poem/page (Page down) Display next poem (or next page) |
| 70 | Previous page (Page up) Display previous page (multi-line poems only) |
| 71 | Search (S) Allows user to enter a search string |
| 72 | Next match (N) Gives next search match |
| 73 | Copy to clipboard Allows poems to be pasted into other applications |
| 74 | Bigger text Increases text size |
| 75 | Smaller text Decreases text size |
| 76 | About wxPoem About wxPoem |
| 77 | Exit (Esc) Quit wxPoem |
| 78 | |
| 79 | When wxPoem is closed, the font, text height and window position are |
| 80 | remembered (stored in WIN.INI) for next time. Under X, the values |
| 81 | are not written (since they are stored in .Xdefaults), so you may |
| 82 | want to edit the following resources by hand: |
| 83 | |
| 84 | wxPoem.X ; X position |
| 85 | wxPoem.Y ; Y position |
| 86 | wxPoem.FontSize ; Font size in points (default 12) |
| 87 | |
| 88 | The data file |
| 89 | ------------- |
| 90 | |
| 91 | The winpoem.dat file contains poems separated by a #, with optional |
| 92 | @ codes denoting title (@T) author (@A) and page break (@P). Any |
| 93 | unrecognized codes will cause the rest of the line to be ignored, so |
| 94 | the user can add lines (e.g. @S for subject) which will be searched on but |
| 95 | not displayed. |
| 96 | |
| 97 | The data file contains a mixture of 20th century and earlier poetry, |
| 98 | subject to copyright constraints. Apologies if any copyrights have |
| 99 | inadvertently been infringed, though I have tried to avoid it. |
| 100 | |
| 101 | Implementation |
| 102 | -------------- |
| 103 | |
| 104 | The original WinPoem program was my `Windows learning application', i.e. |
| 105 | a vehicle for getting stuck into Windows programming, whilst (possibly) |
| 106 | affording others a modicum of amusement. Therefore the code is pretty |
| 107 | ugly. So don't look if you're squeamish! |
| 108 | |
| 109 | License |
| 110 | ------- |
| 111 | |
| 112 | Copyright Julian Smart, released into the public domain, October 1994. |
| 113 | |
| 114 | Julian Smart |
| 115 | Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute |
| 116 | University of Edinburgh |
| 117 | 80 South Bridge |
| 118 | Einburgh |
| 119 | EH1 1HN |
| 120 | |
| 121 | J.Smart@ed.ac.uk |