NAI Release 1.5 Notes Release 1.5 is a major upgrade from earlier versions, providing significant enhancements and improvements, including a re-designed user- interface for the end user program, NAI.EXE. Thanks from Aleph Systems to all those users and evaluators who suggested improvements. If you have developed a WINAPPS.LST file and application .DAT files with an earlier release of N.A.I., you will find that the release 1.5 programs will work perfectly with them as they are. At the same time, you will find that 1.5 offers additional capabilities and improved reliability. All differences from the last general release (1.1) are explained below. NAI improvements for release 1.5: ------------------------------------------------------- 1. NAI now supports up to three user-specific variables ($VAR1$, $VAR2$, and $VAR3$), which can be configured using the new SET USER-SPECIFIC VARIABLES button in NAIMAINT. If one or more variables are configured, then NAI will prompt the end user for them at the first installation or removal, and it will remember the responses the user provides until NAI terminates, substituting it whenever $VAR1$ is encountered in a .DAT file during installation or removal, either in a pathname or within the WIN.INI additions. For example, if you wanted to place a file in the F:\username directory, where "username" means the end user's network username, you could configure the first user-specific variable to call for "Network Username," and specify F:\$VAR1$ as the destination directory for the file you want to place in his directory. When running NAI, each network user will then be prompted to enter his Network Username. If a user provides NAI with "Ralph" as his Network Username, NAI will place the file in the F:\RALPH directory, creating the directory in the process, if necessary. 2. The adding of icons to an existing icon group is now fully supported. Actually, 1.1 already permitted this, through the creation of a "separate" icon group": if the "separate icon group" already exists, NAI will simply add the icons to it. However, on REMOVAL of that application, NAI will remove the entire group. Release 1.5 offers a choice of placing the icons in the current, active group, in an existing group (in either of these two cases, removal will not touch it), or in a new, separate group (in which case removal will delete the entire group). 3. Release 1.5 now permits modification of the SYSTEM.INI file, in the same fashion as it enables modification of WIN.INI. 4. N.A.I. now keeps its own initialization file, NAI.INI, in the end user's Windows directory. This file helps N.A.I. more accurately decide whether or not an application has been previously installed. This file will be integral to a feature currently planned for release 2.0 which will allow automatic upgrades with the same simplicity that NAI currently performs installations and removals. 5. The allowable size of WIN.INI Additions has been increased from 100 to 350 lines (per application .DAT file). The allowable size of the OLE and Embedding sections of WIN.INI have also been increased from 20 to 50 lines each (per application .DAT file). 6. The WIN.INI Additions Editor now supports the pasting of existing clipboard data into the WIN.INI Additions text. 7. NAIMAINT now uses a listbox of .DAT files when inserting an application into the list, rather than requiring the typing in of a filename. 8. NAI and NAIMAINT now provide meaningful error messages when they encounter an otherwise good WINAPPS.LST file with an empty application list. 9. NAI and NAIMAINT have been modified to remove the possibility of closing a parent window before the child window is closed. For example, it is no longer possible to close the Main NAI window while the Help window is open. 10. Certain problems with directory names in NAIMAINT have been corrected. On the Icons screen, in the Working Directory field, N.A.I. will now remove a trailing backslash, because Windows 3.1 will not accept it. Also, in the Add/Modify screen, in the Destination Directory field, N.A.I. will automatically add the required backslash at the end, if omitted by the user. This backslash was automatically added by the ADD button in 1.1, but not if the OK button was pressed while a Destination Directory was up in the edit field. 11. Files specified by wildcards in the "Files to Copy" section are now all always copied to the destination directory. A bug in version 1.1 prevented the last of a group of files specified by the use of a wildcard from being copied, under certain circumstances. This bug has been corrected: all files meeting the pattern specified by a filename including a wildcard will now always be copied. 12. N.A.I. will now automatically create directories and subdirectories as many levels deep as needed during a file copy operation. Prior to release 1.5, N.A.I. would only create one level of directory; now all specified directories and subdirectories are created as needed. 13. Directories and subdirectories are now removed during an N.A.I. application removal operation, if they are empty after the files have been removed. 14. Under release 1.5, NAIMAINT.EXE will now automatically rewrite the WINAPPS.LST file, if changes make it necessary, whenever the working directory is changed. 15. Running the program (and storing the WINAPPS.LST and application .DAT files) in a root directory is now fully supported. This could have caused problems under earlier releases, but is now fully supported. 16. The user interface in the end user program, NAI.EXE, has been extensively re-designed and updated to provide a more up-to-date, aesthetically pleasing appearance to the end user. The user interface in the maintenance module, NAIMAINT.EXE, has also undergone some modifications, but these changes are less radical.