demos/poem/wxpoem.txt

   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