----------------------------------------------------------------------------- File: geninfo.txt Name: General Information Text File For OmniMedia Electronic Books Rev.: 1.0 Date: 20 March 1996 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------- 1. Table of Contents --------------------- This information text file is divided into the following sections: 1. Table of Contents (this section) 2. Introduction 3. System Requirements 4. Files That Must Be Included in the Distribution Package 5. How to Obtain This Electronic Book 6. Viewing/Installation Instructions 7. How to Use This Electronic Book and Some Useful Features 8. Copyright Notice and Other Terms 9. What If the Password Becomes Invalid? 10. Refund/Warranty Policy 11. Known Bugs 12. How to Contact OmniMedia 13. Thank You! ---------------- 2. Introduction ---------------- OmniMedia is a leading publisher of electronic books for Windows. This text file will hopefully provide you with answers to most of the questions you may have, and problems you may encounter, with our electronic books. Currently, our electronic books are formatted using the Windows 3.1 Help compiler ("WinHelp"), with added enhancements not normally seen in most WinHelp files. Although developed under Windows 3.1, feedback from many of our customers indicates that our electronic books are upward compatible and functional under Windows 95. It is not yet known how well our electronic books work under Windows NT. Most of our electronic books employ SoftLock technology. SoftLock gives us the ability to read-lock certain portions of any electronic book, requiring the end-user to purchase a machine-unique password to unlock and read. However, it is OmniMedia's policy to always keep a substantial portion of our e-books unlocked so you can adequately try them out before buying, which our customers find to be a very nice feature -- sort of like browsing in a bookstore! And there is *never* any obligation or requirement to purchase a password when you download and try out any of our SoftLocked electronic books! (Further information about SoftLock, including several convenient options to purchase a SoftLock password, many of them right over the Internet, is given in the password registration window which "pops-up" whenever you attempt to read a read-locked section.) ----------------------- 3. System Requirements ----------------------- To read all of our electronic books, you must have an IBM-compatible PC (386 or higher is recommended), with color VGA (or better) video resolution. It must have Microsoft Windows 3.1 installed (see note in section 2 above about Windows 95 and Windows NT.) In addition, 256 color illustrations are included with many, but not all, of our electronic books. To properly view these illustrations, your system must have 256 color capability. All of our electronic books have been tested using the common color video resolutions of VGA, 640x480x256, 800x600x256, and 1024x768x256. For maximum clarity and readability, it is recommended that you use as high of a video resolution as your system allows, up to 1024x768x256, or even higher (however, resolutions higher than 1024x768x256 have not been tested.) For the very high video resolutions, you should consider using large size fonts if that option is available to you. Consult your Windows documentation for how to increase your resolution if that is possible for your particular video card and monitor combination. (If you feel the font size is too large on your system, read the paragraphs about font size in section 7.) Most, but not all, of our electronic books are primarily typeset using the Arial TrueType font (a sans serif font), which is part of the default installation for all Windows 3.1 systems. If you have removed this font from your system, for whatever reason, the file will not appear as it was authored (though it may look similar, or at least readable.) It is recommended that you reinstall the Arial TrueType font if you *know for a fact* that it has been removed from your system (if you are not sure, then it probably is there -- refer to your Windows documentation for further information.) All further technical details mentioned in this general information file are specific to Windows 3.1 installations, though many may be applicable to Windows 95 and possibly Windows NT. ----------------------------------------------------------- 4. Files That Must Be Included in the Distribution Package ----------------------------------------------------------- Each of our electronic books is comprised of several files. The number and type of files depend on the features included with the particular title. If one or more of these files are missing or corrupted, you will probably have problems, some of which could cause the electronic book not to work at all. The solution to one or more missing or corrupted files is to download a fresh copy of the electronic book title from OmniMedia's electronic archive and extract the needed file(s). All of our electronic books will include the following files (note: '*' refers to a file name prefix given to a specific electronic book title, for example, the hypothetical electronic book, "Lust in the Dust", may have '*' = 'lustdust'): *.hlp -- The electronic book title in WinHelp 3.1 format geninfo.txt -- This file read1st.txt -- How to get started book.ico -- A book icon that can be used for permanent installation file_id.diz -- A short description file used by most BBS file archives Most, but not all, of our electronic books employ OshTools to add several enhancements not found in "vanilla" WinHelp 3.1, for example 256 color bitmap and in-text button capability. If so, the following file will be included: oshtools.dll -- Dynamic Link Library for OSHTools -- adds many features Most, but not all, of our electronic books employ SoftLock password protection. If so, the following files will be included: slregist.exe -- SoftLock registration executable sl16-20.dll -- A required SoftLock Dynamic Link Library *.sla -- A text file for the SoftLock registration executable Some of our electronic books use a Full Text Search engine. If so, the following files will be included: *.ind -- Full Text Search index ftengine.dll -- A Dynamic Link Library for Full Text Search ftui.dll -- (same) mvapi.dll -- (same) -------------------------------------- 5. How to Obtain This Electronic Book -------------------------------------- There are, at present, three ways by which you can download our electronic books. Each of our titles is compressed and archived into a single ZIP file, the current "standard" on the Internet for distributing shareware and freeware. (Note: To extract the electronic book from the the ZIP archive file, you will need to use an "unzipper." If you don't have one already, we recommend that you use the authentic DOS shareware utility called PKZIP (version 2.04g), by PKWARE, Inc. There also exist several other "clone" unzip utilities (shareware and freeware) for both DOS and Windows, obtainable from many BBS and Internet sites. 1) Via the World Wide Web http://www.awa.com/library/omnimedia/ Follow the links to OmniMedia's "Bookstore". 2) From the Internet Via Anonymous FTP. For those who do not have Web access, OmniMedia maintains an anonymous FTP archive at ftp.awa.com /pub/softlock/pc/products/OmniMedia In order to directly download the files from this archive, you need to have access to an Internet site with FTP capability. If you do not know how to use anonymous FTP, consult with someone who does or study the helpfile or manual at your site. Be sure to type "binary" before issuing the "get" or "mget" command. 3) From Your Local BBS. Our electronic books are now distributed through several BBS and online services around the globe. No list is currently available. Of course, we encourage you to upload our e-books to your favorite BBS, as long as you upload the most current ZIP version downloaded from our archive. ------------------------------------- 6. Viewing/Installation Instructions ------------------------------------- There are several ways to view, and if desired, install our WinHelp formatted electronic books on your Windows 3.1 system. Two will be given below. If you are not very familiar with Windows, it is recommended that you print out this section for step-by-step instructions. Of course, it is also recommended that you consult your Windows manual should any questions arise or these instructions not work for you. No matter what approach you use to view our electronic books, you must NOT change the name of the *.hlp file as you received it. If you do inadvertently change the filename, you will not be able to unlock the SoftLocked topics, even with a valid password (error messages will be generated warning you something is wrong). ***************************************************************************** 1) The Quick and Easy Way -- If you simply want to view one of our electronic books without permanent installation (e.g., for evaluation purposes), place ALL the files of that electronic book (the list of files is given in section 4 above), into a directory anywhere on your hard disk (it is recommended you put the files into an empty directory to later make it easy to delete them). Then, from File Manager within Windows, locate the *.hlp file and click on it. The Windows Help file viewer will be executed and the electronic book will be displayed. Enjoy! ***************************************************************************** 2) For a more permanent installation with a convenient icon, it is advisable to first create a special directory on your hard disk and copy all the files into that directory. If you acquire more books from OmniMedia in the future and copy their files into the same special directory, you will save on disk space since some of the files are shared in common by all of OmniMedia's electronic books. As an example, which will be used for the explanation below, this directory path will be named C:\BOOKS , but you can place it wherever you want. The next step is to either select or create the program group into which you will place the electronic book. If you don't already have a special program group for OmniMedia's electronic books, you need to create one. To create a new program group which could be called, for example, OMNIMEDIA BOOKS (it need not be all in caps -- from here on caps are only used for clarity depending on the context), simply go to the FILE menu of your Program Manager, select NEW , PROGRAM GROUP , OK , and then in the box labeled DESCRIPTION, enter the string OMNIMEDIA BOOKS (or whatever else you want to call the program group), then press OK (leave the GROUP FILE box empty.) Once the program group, whether old or new, is selected, then from Program Manager select FILE , NEW , PROGRAM ITEM , OK . At this point, you have three text boxes to fill. For the DESCRIPTION box enter the name of the electronic book you want to use; for the COMMAND LINE box enter C:\WINDOWS\WINHELP.EXE LUSTDUST.HLP (the actual *.hlp file name entered here will NOT be 'lustdust.hlp' but something else -- 'lustdust.hlp' is used for illustrative purposes only in order to avoid any confusion); for the WORKING DIRECTORY box enter C:\BOOKS . Then to select the icon, click on CHANGE ICON and attach the file BOOK.ICO from the directory C:\BOOKS to this application using BROWSE to locate it. Then, click OK twice to finish. Now, your selected program group should contain an icon of a book with the name of the electronic book you entered underneath it. Just click on the book icon whenever you want to read it! Enjoy! Carefully note that when you purchase and enter a SoftLock password for any of our electronic books, the file called 'softlock.ini' will be created and placed into your Windows' home directory (and not the directory where you keep your electronic books.) This file includes the password for each electronic book you register, as well as related information. Do NOT delete this file (in fact, back it up!) unless you decide to delete all of OmniMedia's electronic books from your system, as well as any other SoftLock software that will be using the same file (note that SoftLock is now being used more and more in various types of commercial software and shareware, and not only for electronic books.) ------------------------------------------------------------- 7. How to Use This Electronic Book and Some Useful Features ------------------------------------------------------------- Using the WinHelp viewer is intuitive and very easy. Once you are viewing any of our electronic books on your computer, you can learn much of what you need to know by simply experimenting with the toolbar buttons, menu commands, etc. If you do need more help in reading and using this electronic book, refer to "How to Use Help" which can be selected from the "Help" menu item found near the top of the viewing window. Some useful features of our electronic books include: 1) Bookmark -- You can place one or more bookmarks at any location so you can later return to that location, even after exiting this book. The Bookmark feature is found in the menu section. 2) Annotate -- You can add notes and comments to any topic displayed in a window (excepting temporary pop-up windows.) The Annotate feature is found in the menu section under 'Edit'. 3) Topic Copy -- You can copy the entire text of a topic (including the portion not visible in the window) to the Windows Clipboard, and from there it can be pasted into most Windows-based word or text processors. This feature is done by holding down the 'Ctrl' button and pushing the 'Insert' button, i.e., 'ctrl-Insert'. Do keep in mind copyright restrictions regarding redistributing what you copy with this feature (see section 8.) 4) Hypertext -- Hypertext is nothing mystical. It is simply text (or a button) which has been linked to text elsewhere in the electronic book -- clicking on hypertext will move you to the text the hypertext is linked with. In our electronic books, much effort has been made to make it clear which text is hypertext. To verify if a word or phrase is hypertext, the mouse pointer will switch from an arrow to a small hand with a pointing finger when placed on top of hypertext. 5) Full Text Search -- (This feature is not implemented in all of our electronic books!) You can do a word/string search of the entire electronic book. Very powerful at locating that hard-to-find text or subject. This feature is found in the toolbar as the button named 'WordSrch' or 'FTSearch'. (Our version of FTS will be "turned off" under Windows 95, which instead will use its own version.) One note about scrolling should be mentioned for those newcomers to Windows who are totally unfamiliar with the purpose and use of scroll bars. You may notice in our electronic books that for most windows (i.e., topics), there is a scrollbar at the right-hand-side (and sometimes at the bottom) of the viewing window. The scroll bar is there because the text of the topic is too long or too big to fit completely within the visible window. By clicking your mouse on various parts of the scroll bar, you can move ("scroll") either up or down in the text. Specifically, clicking on either the up or down arrows (which are found at the top and bottom respectively of the scroll bar), will move you either one line up or one line down in the text. You can also scroll a full window or page if you click anywhere in the scroll bar between the up or down arrows and the slider (the slider is the plain rectangular "button" that slides in the scroll bar, and indicates where the viewing window is positioned with respect to the topic text.) Another note concerns the aspect of font size. If you are using VGA (or 640x480) resolution, you may find the font size to be quite large, especially on bigger monitors. One solution is to make sure the window is maximized, done by clicking on the upper right-hand button, and read the window from further away -- maximizing the window size (to fill the whole screen) will also make the electronic book look better at the 640x480 resolution with respect to the number of characters per line being similar to a typical book. (One of the reasons why this larger font was selected was to insure that our electronic books would be easily readable on laptop/notebook-sized screens as well at very high resolution -- WinHelp 3.1 unfortunately does not allow variable font sizes depending on the video parameters, though OmniMedia is working hard with programmers to be able to do this. Windows 95 does allow you to change the font size by plus or minus 2 points, which is enough in most instances to please just about everybody.) If you still feel the characters are too large for your taste, consider going to a higher screen resolution if you can (since that will decrease the font size.) You might even want to consider testing the large/small font options for the higher resolutions if available to you for your particular video card. Higher resolutions will also make our electronic books look cleaner and sharper and thus will be easier to read. ------------------------------------ 8. Copyright Notice and Other Terms ------------------------------------ The full copyright notice to each of our electronic books is given in the electronic book itself. By reading any portion of our electronic books, as well as reading this text file, you are agreeing to abide by that electronic book's copyright and other terms. The most important commonality among all our electronic books is that they are copyrighted either by OmniMedia or by the author. They are NOT Public Domain. We do give you permission to redistribute any of our electronic books as long as you use the full, unaltered and most current ZIP version found at OmniMedia's archive. Except for the allowance given in the previous paragraph, it is a violation of U.S. Copyright Law to redistribute to anybody else, any portion of our electronic books, in any format or media, in excess of Fair Use. In addition, it is a violation of our rights to bypass or disable the SoftLock protection software. ------------------------------------------ 9. What If the Password Becomes Invalid? ------------------------------------------ If you reformat or replace your hard disk, the SoftLock password you purchase will probably become invalid. Should this occur, contact either OmniMedia or SoftLock Services, Inc. --------------------------- 10. Refund/Warranty Policy --------------------------- Sorry, all sales are final. The "try before you buy" feature of SoftLock should help you decide whether or not to purchase the password necessary to read the SoftLocked portions of our electronic books. Contact OmniMedia if you have any difficulties either before or after purchasing a password. We want you to be satisfied! --------------- 11. Known Bugs --------------- We'd like to say that our electronic books are completely bug-free, but like everything in life, Murphy's Law seems to hold sway over the affairs of the human race. Listed below are the known bugs. OmniMedia would appreciate any feedback if you encounter any error conditions when reading our electronic books. 1. A very small percentage of readers have noticed that special characters are not being reproduced properly. These characters include left and right single and double quotes ("curly quotes"), copyright and trademark symbols, bullets and em/en-dashes, etc. The source of this problem is not completely understood, though the evidence, and the rarity of this problem, points to bugs in a very early release, maybe even pre-release, of Windows 3.1. If you observe this error condition, consider upgrading your Windows to the most current version. 2. A General Protection Fault (the infamous 'GPF') may occur when you click, in the main window, on a hypertext jump to a SoftLocked topic while the password registration window is being displayed. Since doing this is not a necessary action, and undoubtedly rare (it is virtually impossible to read our electronic books anyway when the password registration window is covering most of the window), this error condition will occur for only a very small percentage of users, and mostly by accident (an errant click of the mouse at just the wrong place.) The source of this error may be an incompatibility between OshTools (which we use to enhance our electronic books) and SoftLock. OmniMedia and SoftLock are working on a fix around this problem. --------------------------------- 12. How to Contact the OmniMedia --------------------------------- OmniMedia c/o Jon E. Noring 9671 South 1600 West Street South Jordan, UT 84095 (801) 253-4037 (801) 253-4036 (fax -- not always online) Internet: omnimedia@netcom.com OmniMedia's electronic books are available both via the Web and by anonymous FTP: WEB: http://www.awa.com/library/omnimedia/ FTP: ftp.awa.com /pub/softlock/pc/products/OmniMedia --------------- 13. Thank You! --------------- OmniMedia thanks you for downloading and reading our electronic books, and we hope that you will sooon drop by and visit our Web site again! New titles are continually being added. And we welcome your feedback, even critical feedback, on our electronic books and service. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Windows, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, and Windows NT are registered trademarks of the Microsoft Corporation SoftLock is a trademark of SoftLock Services, Inc. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------