Personal VDS Copyright © 1995 - 1997 J M Technical Services Freeware Edition =========================================================================== Welcome to Visual DialogScript! ------------------------------- Thank you for downloading Personal VDS, a version of Visual DialogScript designed for home computer users. Visual DialogScript is a simple programming language. It can be used to create batch files that are more sophisticated than those which can be created using MS-DOS batch language. VDS batch files can display a user designed dialog box, which can be used as an interface to the batch file to control it, get information or display progress. They can also display standard Windows message boxes. You can use VDS batch files to automate regularly performed tasks, create your own simple utilities, and generally make your use of your PC more productive. All the information you need to use Personal VDS is contained in the online help. There is a tutorial which takes you through creating three very simple examples. There are many more examples in the main help file which you can copy and paste into the script editor to try out. Before you start, please read the remainder of this file, which contains information about installing Personal VDS, and explains how you can upgrade this freeware edition to a more advanced, fully supported version. System Requirements ------------------- Personal VDS Freeware Edition requires the following minimum system specification: - a 386SX PC with 4Mb RAM, VGA display and mouse; - any version of Windows from 3.1 up. Installation ------------ Since you are reading this file you must already have extracted the contents of the ZIP file in which Personal VDS is distributed to a directory on your hard disk. If this is not the directory in which you want Personal VDS to reside when you begin using it, rename the directory or move the files to the desired location. The next step is to run the program SETUP.EXE. This sets up Personal VDS for use by: - creating a Program Manager group for the program and its help files; - creating a file association so the script files you create will be automatically run when you open them. Once SETUP.EXE has finished it will offer to restart Windows so that the file association set up in WIN.INI comes into effect. You can if you wish put this off to a later time. Removing Visual DialogScript from your system --------------------------------------------- Personal VDS adds files to no other directories than its own. To remove it, simply delete all the files in the directory you installed it into and then remove the directory. Why do we give away Personal VDS? --------------------------------- Personal VDS Freeware Edition is yours to use for as long as you like for no charge, so long as you are using it for personal, non-commercial purposes only. Our motives in giving this software away are not entirely altruistic, however, because we hope you will find the product useful enough to want to upgrade to one of the supported shareware editions. Your upgrade options are: * Personal VDS/32 This is equivalent to Personal VDS Freeware Edition, but it is a 32-bit program. This means it supports long file names under Windows 95. It can access the Windows Registry, create icons on the Task Bar system tray and respond when they are clicked, and it has superior string and list handling that is not subject to the 255 character line and 64Kb total limits that apply to this 16-bit version. * Visual DialogScript 2.x Standard Edition This version has all the functionality of Personal VDS/32, but has the ability to create executable files which can be distributed free of any royalties. An icon editor is included so that you can create custom icons for your programs. The commands and functions available to script programs can be augmented by up to four add-ins, many of which can be downloaded free of charge from our Web site. Details of all these products, including prices and availability, can be found on our World Wide Web site at http://www.jm-tech.com/. We hope you like Personal VDS and find it useful. Please feel free to give this freeware edition to friends, colleagues and anyone else whom you think might find it useful. Only by spreading the word about Visual DialogScript can we increase the sales of the paid-for versions and generate the revenue to continue developing and supporting this product. Although you are welcome to give scripts that you write to friends and other non-commercial users, please note that you must not distribute the program DS16P.EXE on its own. You must distribute the complete package in the ZIP file in which you received it. If you want to use scripts in a commercial context you must purchase either the Standard or the Professional Edition. Technical support ----------------- We regret that we cannot provide support for this free product, although we will endeavour to answer quick questions when time permits. Please note particularly that we cannot write scripts free of charge (though we will do this on a commercial, fee-paying basis) nor can we teach script programming by email. 16-bit limitations ------------------ Because Personal VDS is a 16-bit program, some limitations may be found which are not present in the 32-bit versions: * Long filenames are not supported. * Registry support is limited, and does not allow named values to be used. * You cannot obtain the exit code of DOS programs run from within a script. * The maximum length of a variable or string list item, is 255 characters. * Internal string handling buffers are also restricted to 255 characters in length. Complex expressions may be truncated. Where this occurs, it may be possible to avoid the problem by breaking the operation down into smaller steps. * The maximum length of most command parameters is 127 characters. In some cases, to reduce memory usage, it may be less, where a parameter would not be expected to be very long. This should not normally be a problem. * Task bar icons are not supported. The Dialog Editor allows you to define them, because its code is common to the 32-bit versions of the product. However, they will result in an error if used. Known problems -------------- * When clicking and dragging dialog controls in the Dialog Editor the control may lag behind the position of the mouse. The solution is to click once on the dialog control, then pause briefly before clicking and holding the mouse button to drag or re-size the control. * The presence of tab characters in a script can cause problems for the interpreter. The IDE editor does not allow tab characters to be entered. If a different editor is used to edit scripts then care should be taken to avoid entering tab characters. * There is a limit on the maximum size of a script of 32K characters. * When copying example code from the online help, blank lines may appear between some of the lines which were not present in the listing. These blank lines can cause an error if they appear in the middle of a dialog definition or embedded text so they should be deleted after pasting the text into the script editor. * The options to connect to our Web site will only work if your system is set up to automatically associate your Web browser with an Internet URL. =========================================================================== J M Technical Services, 11a Cedar Lane, Cockermouth, Cumbria, CA13 9HN, UK. Find us on the World Wide Web at: http://www.jm-tech.com/