DAMSEL SOFTWARE GROUP's SHAREWARE SCREEN SAVER SAMPLER Compatible with Windows 3.1, 3.11, and Windows 95. ******************************************************** * For Power Users who want to get right to the program * * the Screen Saver is now loaded. Exit this text file * * and go right to where Windows stores its own screen * * savers. This screen saver will be listed in that * * group as "SSS Share". Select it. That's it. * * ---> When you want to find out about the free * * software you get by registering this program, and * * getting rid of the opening screen, come back and * * read this readme.txt file in the SSSSHARE directory.* ******************************************************** To read this file now, click on your "expand window size" symbol. Thanks! This file contains information on the following subjects: 1. Product Registration 2. The Association of Shareware Professionals 3. Copyright Information 4. Minimum System Requirements 5. Setting Up Your Screen Saver 6. Screen Saver Function and Features 7. JPEG Image Compression 8. Monitor Display 9. Wallpaper 10. Uninstalling Your Screen Saver 11. Warranty Information 12. Registration Form In order to assist the reader, the older Windows 3.x instructions have been left intact. Windows 95 instructions, where different, are either given their own sentences or are indicated by the use of parentheses. This is the only time this README.TXT file will appear automatically. In the future you can read the file by coming back to your Windows 3.x Notepad, located under Accessories in your Program Manager menu, and opening the README.TXT file found in the SSSSHARE directory, or by two clicks on the filename directly from within File Manager. In Windows 95 the Notepad is reached from the Start button followed by Programs\Accessories\Notepad. You may also read the file from your C:\> DOS prompt by typing TYPE C:\SSSSHARE\README.TXT | MORE. You may exit this file at any time by clicking on the minus sign of Windows 3.x's Notepad window at the upper left-hand corner, or by clicking on the "X" Close button in Windows 95's Notepad upper right-hand corner. This README.TXT file can be printed in a variety of ways. In MS-DOS you can print it at any time from your C:\SSSSHARE> prompt by typing COPY README.TXT PRN and pressing Enter. Within Windows it can be printed from the Notepad or from any other word processing program that can open a .TXT file. In Windows' Notepad you should set File\Page Setup\Left Margin to as low a value as possible before printing to insure that each line will print in its entirety. This text file will not appear during the actual running of the screen saver. 1. PRODUCT REGISTRATION If you like the screen saver and intend to use it now or in the future, you should register your screen saver within 30 days by sending a check for $14.95 in U.S. currency drawn on a U.S. bank or by using MasterCard/Visa. Either method can make use of the Registration Form found at the end of this file. Send the completed form to: Damsel Software Group P.O. Box 713 Concord, NH 03302-0713 Call our phone/fax at 603 485-2677 if you desire verification. Use of the registration form found at the end of this README file will insure we receive your mailing address. Your $14.95 registration fee entitles you to a registered copy of the Screen Saver Sampler on 3.5" diskettes, a User's Guide, a Catalog of other Damsel Screen Savers and Bitmap Collections, and free lifetime tech- nical support. All catalog screen savers contain at least 24 640 x 480 images and are US$14.95 each, plus $4.00 shipping and handling for up to nine items. Registered versions do not contain opening promotional screens. An advertisement will be found in the Setup (Win3.x) or Settings (Win95) button at the Windows' screen saver selection location. As an additional inducement you will receive a second screen saver made up of the 48 tiles and eye-popping 640 x 480 images contained in Damsel's Bitmap Collection, Vol. I., arranged in an art gallery format of multi-tile salon walls. Send US$14.95 and get it all, PLUS free shipping and handling on this, your first Damsel order (3.5" virus-free diskettes only). FLASH !!! Here's part of what you will find in the catalog! If you like this screen saver you can order more great screen savers immediately by writing a check or money order in U.S. currency drawn on a U.S. bank, or by using the MasterCard/Visa section of the order form found at the end of this file. Send payment and form along with your order to the Damsel address above. Shipping charges on these orders are: add $4.00 shipping in the U.S. $6.00 Canada/Mexico All screen savers require 386 machines $8.00 South America minimum with a 256-color VGA display. $12.00 All other foreign for shipping the added order. And, here's another screen saver deal designed to save you money. If you order two additional screen savers, you will get a third one of your choice FREE! FREE! FREE! FREE! FREE! FREE! FREE! FREE! FREE! FREE! FREE! FREE! Here are your selections. Use your scroll bar if you want to move quickly to the rest of your shareware documentation. Screen Savers / Wallpaper Price ($US) ------------------------- ----------- New Hampsire Wilderness, Vol.I $14.95 24 640 x 480 scanned photos of mountains, waterfalls, forests and lakes in JPG format shipped on two 3.5" diskettes in a CD-case, with a User's Guide containing full documentation on features and functions, including a short description of each of the 24 scenes. All images are 256-colors. Several are in BMP format for use as wallpaper. New England Wildflowers, Vol.I $14.95 24 640 x 480 scanned photos of New England's wildflowers from early summer to late fall in an assortment of colors and shapes, shipped in a similar package as the NH Wilderness collection. Eastern Skies $14.95 24 640 x 480 scanned photos of sunrises, sunsets, clouds, storms and other meterological formations, shipped in a similar package as the NH Wilderness collection (two 3.5" diskettes in a CD-case with User's Guide). David Martsolf, Surrealist $14.95 27 640 x 480 scans of the surreal work of artist David Martsolf. Most are images of the entire work. Some are detail closeups of portions of complex canvases. The artist has been recognized in national juried competitions. Two 3.5" diskettes are shipped in JPG format with a User's Guide in a CD-case. All images are 256-colors, some in BMP format. Neoplastic Designs Collection $14.95 A collection of 640 x 480 images of original interpretive artworks based on the style of the early 1900's Dutch abstract painter Piet Mondrian. This collection is painted entirely in 16-color format suitable for all computers running Windows 3.1 or higher, especially early 386-type microprocessors whose graphics cards cannot display the richer 256-color format. Two screen savers are included in this collection. Damsel Bitmap Collection, Vol.I & II $14.95 each (sold separately) A collection of 640 x 480 images and tiled images of original artwork and scanned photos representative of the other Damsel collections shown above. Shipped on two 3.5" diskettes, but without a CD-case. All images are in BMP format for use also as wallpaper. Some are 16-color, some are 256- color. Volume I can be found elsewhere in the market as Shareware. 2. THE ASSOCIATION OF SHAREWARE PROFESSIONALS Damsel Software Group is a member of the Association of Shareware Professionals (ASP). ASP wants to make sure that the shareware principle works for you. If you are unable to resolve a shareware-related problem with an ASP member by contacting the member directly, ASP may be able to help. The ASP Ombudsman can help you resolve a dispute or problem with an ASP member, but does not provide technical support for members' products. Please write to the ASP Ombudsman at 545 Grover Road, Muskegon, MI USA 49442-9427, Fax 616-788-2765, or send a CompuServe message via CompuServe Mail to ASP Ombudsman 70007,3536. Shareware distribution gives users a chance to try software before buying it. If you try a Shareware program and continue using it, you are expected to register. Individual programs differ on details -- some request registration while others require it, some specify a maximum trial period. With registration, you get anything from the simple right to continue using the software to an updated program with printed material. Shareware differs from public domain software in that there is the under- standing of payment IF the user continues to actively employ the software. Shareware is also copyrighted where public domain software is not. Copyright restrictions vary from author to author. Damsel's Screen Savers and Bitmap Collections are copyrighted. The details of this copyright follow the loading and use section below. Shareware is a distribution method, not a type of software. You should find software that suits your needs and pocketbook, whether it's commercial or Shareware. The Shareware system makes fitting your needs easier, because you can try before you buy. Shareware has the ultimate money-back guarantee -- if you don't use the product, you don't pay for it. 3. COPYRIGHT INFORMATION Damsel Software Group's Shareware version of its Screen Saver Sampler can be shared freely with everyone. We do request that a copy of this README file accompany the program so that others may register the product if they so desire. For commercial disk vendors this request becomes an absolute requirement. This Shareware version cannot be used for commercial applications. Once registered, all Damsel products may be used as wallpaper or as baseline imagery for further private or commercial processing. Your only restriction as a registered purchaser, owner, or user, is that the Sampler or its individual images not be resold or distributed in their original unmodified form. Images may be used unmodified in commercial publications where they form an integral part of a larger work to be sold or marketed as such. The images cannot be resold as stand-alone graphics without the expressed written consent of Damsel Software Group. The screen saving functions cannot be redistributed except in Shareware or other Damsel-approved versions with their original associated Damsel images. 4. MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS The 640 x 480 images contained in this Damsel screen saver are best suited for 256-color display. A video display board with a minimum of 512K RAM and 256-color capability for display on a VGA or SVGA monitor is essential. You will need an IBM PC-compatible with a 386 or higher-type micro- processor, 4MB RAM, and a hard disk with 5MB free disk space. Damsel products run with MS-DOS 3.1 or higher using Windows 3.1 or higher. Damsel products are fully compatible with Windows 95. 5. SETTING UP YOUR SCREEN SAVER Exit this README file by clicking on the minus sign or the Close ("X") button of the Notepad window. Then, turn off any other screen savers you may be using unless they are the ones linked directly to your Desktop (Display) Accessories module, following the manufacturer's instructions. *** ACCESS IN WINDOWS 3.X *** To access your Damsel Screen Saver Sampler from Windows' Program Manager, 1. Double click on your Main icon. 2. Double click on the Control Panel icon. 3. Double click on the Desktop icon. 4. Once you are in the Desktop dialog box open the list in the Screen Saver area by clicking the button at the right of the box titled "Name:" (or by pressing TAB several times to go to the box, followed by ALT+DOWN ARROW). 5. Scroll on the slide bar until you find the screen saver "SSS Share". Click once on the title to select it. You may also select the "Delay" time (of inactivity) in minutes which will precede the initiation of any screen saver selected. Password protection is also available and is described in the next section. 6. After selecting the SSS Share screen saver choose OK in the upper right- hand corner of the dialog box and exit back to the opening screen. Damsel's Screen Saver Sampler will now appear after the initial chosen period of inactivity passes. The order of the images will be: 1. Six images from the New Hampshire Wilderness Collection. 2. Six images from the Eastern Skies Collection. 3. Six images from the Damsel Surreal Art Collection. 4. Six images from the New England Wildflower Collection. *** ACCESS IN WINDOWS 95 *** 1. Press or click your mouse on the Task Bar's Start button. 2. Highlight or click on Settings, from the first menu. 3. Click on Control Panel, from the second menu. 4. When the Control Panel window opens, double click on the Display icon. 5. Click on the tab titled Screen Saver. 6. Scroll down the list of screen savers and click on "SSS Share". At this point you can also set the screen saver's "Wait" time or enter a password. Password details are available in the next section. 6. SCREEN SAVER FUNCTION AND FEATURES All of Damsel's screen savers have preset display times and transition effects (the methods used to transition between one image and the next). The image files are stored in compressed JPEG format. In each screen saver except the Screen Saver Sampler several of the images are stored in the BMP graphics format which permits those images to be used as wallpaper. The length of time required to decompress each JPEG image and perform transition effects will depend directly on the size and speed of your microprocessor (386, 486, or Pentium class) and the power of your video graphics card. Damsel has set the display times to be approximately 30 seconds for each image using a 486-type machine running at 33 Megahertz. Faster 486 and Pentium machines will exhibit shorter display times. Users with 386- type machines will notice display times of approximately one minute and an initial blank screen lasting up to one minute as the microprocessor decompresses the first image. Some blank screen time will also appear between transition effects on slower machines. Your screen saver has been installed in the "Mouse Aware" mode, meaning that any movement of the mouse will disengage the screen saver. Disengagement may take several seconds if the program is interrupted during one of the image transitions. The screen saver may be put into a "Mouse Ignore" mode where only a depressed key on the keyboard will deactivate the screen saver (see next paragraph). The program will recommence using the next image in its sequence when the selected delay time reactivates the screen saver. To access the Mouse Aware \ Mouse Ignore setup choices click on the Setup (Settings) button of the Screen Saver section of the Desktop (Win95's Display) dialog box (accessed by the Program Manager\Main\Control Panel\ Desktop command sequence in Windows 3.x, or by Windows 95's Start\Settings\ Control Panel\Display\Screen Saver command sequence). Once there, the choices are found on the left side of the upper tool bar. The Mouse icon on the upper horizontal tool bar is a toggle switch. A box at the lower left of the screen will tell you which mode you have chosen. Click on the exit icon or the Windows' "X" at the upper right-hand corner to leave this box. Before leaving you may wish to set a password. Damsel screen savers have incorporated the same Password protection scheme offered by the original Windows screen savers. This feature is also found in the Setup (Settings) dialog box of the Screen Saver section of the Desktop (Display) dialog box. A click on the Password button brings up a screen with the "Enter New Password" entry line. As you type in your selected password, asterisks will appear for each letter. Clicking on the OK button will bring up a confirmation screen where you will be asked to reenter the same password. Clicking the OK button here will return you to the original Setup (Settings) screen. Note that if you have several Damsel products, they will all use the same password. A change to a password for one screen saver will affect them all. Exiting will activate your password protection. With the screen saver activated, any motion of the mouse in the Mouse Aware mode or keyboard entry in the Mouse Ignore mode will bring up an Enter Password dialog box. The password must be correctly entered in order to gain access back to the active Windows environment. If you forget your password your best option is to copy PGX.INI from your original Disk #1 directly to your WINDOWS directory and then enter a new password, if desired. If you wish to change or remove the password you must return to the Setup (Settings) screen of the Screen Saver section of the Desktop (Display) dialog box. To enter a new password follow the same procedure as described above. To remove the password simply click on the OK button of both the Enter New Password input screen and the Reenter New Password screen without filling in the input line. 7. JPEG IMAGE COMPRESSION In order to save space on your hard disk Damsel uses JPEG graphics file compression techniques on images used in the Screen Saver Sampler. JPEG, a standard developed by the Joint Photographic Experts Group, is a complex compression method that gives the developer control over the degree to which a file is reduced in size for storage. This method does result in loss of image fidelity since individual pixel data is not maintained. At high compression ratios , the mathematical algorithms average large groups of pixels resulting in a reduced number of colors and image blockiness when displayed. Any developer using this method must make judgment calls concerning image quality versus file size. A full 640 X 480 256-color image in Microsoft BMP format (used in Windows wallpaper) is over 308K bytes in size. By contrast, 640 x 480 JPG (JPEG) image files used in a screen saver such as Microsoft's Scenes average around 33K bytes per image. Damsel Software Group has elected to set the trade-off between disk space and image quality a bit more in the direction of high image quality. Damsel's JPG format results in file sizes averaging 78K bytes per image. Each image is manually optimized to meet image resolution requirements without sacrificing valuable hard disk space. All other Damsel screen savers store several of the images in the Windows-compatible BMP picture format so that they may also be used as Windows wallpaper. 8. MONITOR DISPLAY The program configures the image display to your screen by first reading your on-line graphics display format. If your monitor is not configured for 256 colors, the program will construct a 16-color standard VGA dithered image from the colors available in this format. Usually, the result of this mathematical process is visually grainy, looking much like a needlepoint design. If you find the Damsel images barely recognizable and you have a minimum of 512K RAM on your video display board, there is probably a driver you can load which will support 256-color display. Consult your machine and Windows documentation for more information regarding your specific situation. 9. WALLPAPER To use Damsel's images as wallpaper for Windows the picture file format for this screen saver must be changed from JPG to Microsoft BMP format. Your Windows program does not have this capability, it must be purchased from a third party vendor. Although the Screen Saver Sampler does not have any images readily available for use as Windows wallpaper, other Damsel screen savers contain at least several BMP-formatted images files which can be copied to the Windows directory for use as wallpaper. 10. UNINSTALLING YOUR SCREEN SAVER Your screen saver has been loaded to a directory named SSSSHARE unless you chose otherwise during the installation procedure. In order to enable you to access the screen saver Damsel has loaded two additional files into your Windows directory, SSSSxxxx.INI and SSSSxxxx.SCR, where 'x'is any number. If you have chosen a password, the program has also copied PGX.INI to the WINDOWS directory. To remove the screen saver from your hard disk simply delete all files in the SSSSHARE directory (or your own directory name chosen during installation) and the SSSSxxxx.INI and SSSSxxxx.SCR files located in your WINDOWS directory. This can be done quickly from your Windows 3.x File Manager, found in your Program Manager's Main menu, or from your Windows 95 My Computer or Explorer. Though not required for the continued functioning of Windows, popular uninstall application programs may be used to seek out and remove small lines of code that Windows adds to its own system files. Also, remove PGX.INI if present. If PGX.INI contains an active password and you do not remove the file, the next time you load any Damsel screen saver you will find that the old password has immediately been attached to it. If you have forgotten that old password, you will have to manually copy the new PGX.INI file into your WINDOWS directory in order to overwrite the old pass- word. You can find this screen saver PGX.INI file either in the SSSSHARE directory or on your original installation Disk #1. If you have other Damsel products on your hard disk you can leave this file intact. 11. WARRANTY Damsel Software Group specifically disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, including but not limited to implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose or application. In no event shall Damsel Software Group, its owner or employees be liable for any loss of profit, loss of savings, commercial damage, or other incidental or consequential damages arising out of the use or inability to use any Volume or Sampler of Damsel Screen Savers, even if Damsel Software Group has been advised of the possibility of such damages, or for any claim by any other party. Windows and MS-DOS are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corp. 12. REGISTRATION FORM - - Cut - - here - - for - - registration - - form - - - - - - - - - - - - DAMSEL SOFTWARE GROUP REGISTRATION FORM P.O. Box 713 Concord, NH 03302-0713 phone/fax 603 485-2677 SCREEN SAVER SAMPLER SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY OFFER Yes, I want to receive a registered version of Damsel's Screen Saver Sampler and take advantage of lifetime technical support, free catalog with updates, an additional screen saver based on Damsel's Bitmap Collection Vol. I, and free shipping, all for only $14.95 in U.S. currency either drawn from a U.S. bank or ordered by MasterCard or Visa. I understand the collection will be shipped only on 3.5" diskettes. Additional screen savers may also be ordered following the guidelines presented in Section 1. I have enclosed $ _________________ in U.S. funds as a check or money order. or, I have elected to order with ____ MasterCard or ____ Visa (check one). MasterCard/Visa orders require: Card Expiration Date: __________ Card Number: __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ Cardholder Signature: __________________________________________ Please ship my 3.5" diskettes and other documentation to: Name ___________________________________________________________ Address ________________________________________________________ City, State, ZIP _______________________________________________ DAMSEL SOFTWARE GROUP DAMSEL SOFTWARE GROUP ***************************** End of File ***************************