WWPlus 2.62 ©1992-1996 All rights reserved _______ By Don Bradner ____|__ | (R) Arcata Pet --| | |------------------- 600 F Street | ____|__ | Association of Arcata, CA 95521 | | |_| Shareware |__| o | Professionals -----| | |--------------------- |___|___| MEMBER Compuserve: 76130,1007 America OnLine: DBirdMan Internet: dbirdman@redshift.com http://www.redshift.com/~arcatpet The online help file is the primary documentation for WWPlus. This text document is meant primarily to get you started. Contents of this file: I. Program Description II. Program Requirements III. Installing WWPlus IV. Getting Started V. Files and Uninstalling VI. Troubleshooting VII. Obtaining wallpaper images VIII. Getting future upgrades IX. Registration and distribution X. ASP Ombudsman Statement I. PROGRAM DESCRIPTION. WWPlus is a program for organizing and displaying Windows wallpaper files. With this program you can easily maintain a collection of wallpapers, automatically change them at an interval you select, and use image formats (GIF, PCX, TGA, TIF, .ICO and .JPG) that would otherwise be unusable by Windows as wallpaper. GIF and PCX provide compression of 256-color images, and .JPG provides compression for 16-million color images, thus saving disk space. There is a screen saver module that will turn your wallpaper files into a screen saver after a period of inactivity. Extensive setup options, including password protection, are available both from the Windows Control Panel Desktop icon and from the main WWPlus screen. Sixteen transition effects are available. Users may select a single effect or a menu of effects that will occur randomly. WWPlus has editing features and file conversion routines built in, which allow you to change images to suit your wallpaper needs. You can crop, resize, stretch, rotate, mirror, flip, sharpen, soften, and adjust brightness, contrast and gamma. Wallpapers may be tiled (small images displayed in multiples to fill the entire screen) or not, individually determined. Each non-tiled wallpaper may be precisely positioned anywhere on the screen, not just centered (the Windows default). Non-tiled images may be resized on-the-fly to full screen or a user-set dimension. A universal gamma correction option allows for display-time lightening or darkening of images. Multiple sets of wallpapers called "queues" may be built, with easy changing of queues. A wallpaper may appear in more than one queue. Some program configuration items are maintained with the queue, others are "Global." Queues may be specified as command line options, and the .QUE extension may be associated with WWPlus to allow the program to start by running the queue from File Manager or Program Manager icons. Full documentation is included in the form of a Windows Help file. When you desire help, press your F1 function key for context-sensitive help, or press the help key if you are in a file dialog box. An uninstall program and log are created when the program is installed, making removal of the program easy. WWPlus contains functions which can read and right the .GIF format, which contains compression technology covered by U.S. Patent No. 4,558,302, owned by the Unisys corporation. The author of WWPlus has obtained a license from Unisys, and pays a royalty on each registration, to use this technology. The following statement is required by that license: "Use of this software is permitted only to the extent reasonably required to determine whether to purchase the software. "After payment is made, use of this software is limited to use on only a single personal computer or workstation which is not used as a server. An additional payment is required for each use on another personal computer or workstation. "Only a single copy may be made of this software solely for backup or archival purposes. The software may also be transferred to a single hard disk. "Any use of this software in violation of the above is not licensed. "For information concerning licensing the LZW compression and/or decompression capability, please contact: Unisys Corporation Welch Licensing Department - CISW19 Township Line & Union Meeting Roads P.O. Box 500 Blue Bell, Pennsylvania 19424" II. Program requirements. WWPlus requires an IBM compatible 386 or better, running Windows 3.1x, Windows 95, or Windows NT, with at least 8 megs of RAM and VGA or better graphics. Recommended: 486DX with 12 or more megs of RAM and accelerated graphics adapter. Some operations require a mouse. Graphics files can be quite large, particularly with true-color, so a large hard disk is recommended. WWPlus will require under 2 megs for program installation. III. Installing WWPlus If you obtained WWPlus by downloading it from a computer Bulletin Board (BBS) or another online source, one necessary file may not have been included. The file is called VBRUN300.DLL. Since it is widely used (and included with Windows 95, for example), you may already have it. Check your Windows\System directory before hunting for the file. If you do not have it, you may almost always get it from any source that would have WWPlus. On BBS systems the file will usually be called VBRUN300.ZIP or VBRUN3.ZIP. If you obtained the program on disk, the file should be included. If it is missing, contact the supplier of the program. Registered versions obtained from the author will always include VBRUN300. If you are installing VBRUN300 separately, it MUST be put in the \Windows\System directory. To install WWPlus, run the included setup program WWPSETUP.EXE. If the program is on a floppy disk, you can use File/Run in the Program Manager and type a:wwpsetup or b:wwpsetup, whichever drive is involved. You can use the same technique to run wwpsetup from a directory on your hard drive by supplying the full path, such as c:\temp\wwpsetup. Alternatively you can use File manager to find the files and double-click on WWPSETUP.EXE. Windows 95 users can use the "Add/Remove Programs" item in the Control Panel to find and start WWPSETUP. At the end of the setup operation you will be given the option of adding WWPlus to your Startup Group. Doing so will cause the program to start whenever you start a Windows session. This is the recommended procedure; you can always delete the icon from the group at a later time if you wish. IV. Getting Started. Double-click the WWPlus icon to start the program. The first time that the program starts it will be a full program window. Click the "folder" icon at the left end of the icon bar, and then browse for image files to add to the wallpaper queue. There will be normally be images in your Windows directory, and you may have others which you have obtained. If the images are small ones which you would like to have "tiled," check that option in the dialog. After you have selected OK in the dialog, you will see the files listed in the queue. Double-Click one and see it become your wallpaper. In later sessions, once images have been added, the program will start as an icon which you may double-click at any time to show the main window. If you have chosen the hidden icon option, the program will not be visible when started. Simply start it a second time; the first instance will become visible and the second will end itself. Take a moment to familiarize yourself with the program elements on screen. If you press the F1 key, a help file will be displayed, and you may graphically choose different program elements to see an explanation of their function. When you move your mouse pointer across the toolbar icons and some other screen elements a small "Tool Tip" will appear to give you a better idea about what the icon does. You may turn these captions off when you no longer need them, via the Preferences menu. There are a number of options for how an image may be displayed. Look for these topics in the help file: Tiling. Resizing Wallpaper to fit Screen. Adjusting Wallapaper Placement. Gamma Adjustments. You may perform a variety of editing functions on an image by selecting it in the Wallpaper Queue and then clicking the "Edit" button. The first time you do this, press the F1 key when the editor is visible and browse through the help file for explanations of the editing functions. You may set up a screen saver to use your wallpaper images. Choose "Screen Saver Setup" in the Screen Saver menu, or click the setup icon. There will be three tabbed pages of entry, exit, and effect choices, with a test button to see what it is like. Click the help button in this dialog for more information. There are a number of items in the Wallpaper, Screen Saver, and Preferences menus that affect the way the program operates. V. FILES AND UNINSTALLING. When WWPlus is installed, a program (UNINSTAL.EXE) and a data file (INSTALL.LOG) are placed in the WWPlus directory. The following information is provided to aid in removing the program in case those files are lost or damaged. Files distributed with WWPlus: WWPSETUP.EXE This file contains all of the program files. Running it will install of the files where they belong, and will also produce a record and program that can be used to uninstall this package. README.TXT A text file that explains the program. It is placed outside the main install program so that it is readable before the program is installed. VENDINFO.DIZ, FILEID.DIZ, VENDINFO.DOC Information files for shareware distributors and online services. These explain distribution rights and allowable methods. Files installed by WWPlus: Main Program directory files WWPLUS.EXE, WWPLUS.HLP, GAMMA.PCX, README.TXT, HISTORY.TXT, UNINSTAL.EXE, INSTALL.LOG. Windows directory file WWPSAVR.SCR Windows\System directory files IKENG16.DLL, IKJPG16.DLL, IKCOL16.DLL, IKDSP16.VBX, WWPLIBR.VBX, CALL32.DLL. Registered users will have one additional file: WWP_REG.KEY. This file must be in your WWPLUS directory, and will keep the startup shareware screen from appearing. If you upgrade to a new version of WWPlus, do not delete this file - it will work with all future versions. Files required by WWPlus: VBRUN300.DLL A "runtime" library for programs written in Visual Basic 3.0. This file is almost always available from any source for WWPlus. From on-line sources, look for VBRUN3.ZIP or VBRUN300.ZIP. It must be placed in your Windows\System directory. Files created by WWPlus: WWPLUS.BMP This is a "temporary" file that WWPlus uses to translate non-standard images so that they can be used by Windows. It is destroyed and recreated each time the wallpaper changes and the new image is not a .BMP file. It is located in your WWPLUS directory. *.QUE These are queue files used to store information about images in a queue. They do not have to be in any particular directory, but the default is your WWPLUS directory. WWPlus also creates some other temporary files with .TMP extensions. Under normal use, the program will clean these up when it exits. If the program crashes, it will clean them up the next time it is run and then exited normally. Files Altered by WWPlus: CONTROL.INI WWPlus will add a section called [ScreenSaver.WWPSaver]. Global parameters for both the program and the screen saver module are stored here. Uninstalling WWPlus: If the UNINSTAL.EXE program and INSTALL.LOG file have been left intact in the WWPlus directory, running the program will remove all files that were installed with WWPlus. The uninstaller does not know anything about the .QUE files and others created by the program, so those require manual deletion. If the program is manually added to the Startup group rather than via the installer, you must remove it manually. Likewise, if WWPlus is set to be your screen saver you will need to change that setting in the control panel. If the UNINSTAL program has been removed, use the file list above to determine which files to remove. You may also wish to remove the CONTROL.INI section described above. VI. Troubleshooting. If WWPlus has been working fine, but suddenly will not load, the queue file may have become corrupted. Try starting WWPlus from the command line with a new queue selected (one that doesn't already exist). Choose Run from the Program Manager file menu, and type C:\WWPLUS\WWPLUS.EXE C:\WWPLUS\TEST1.QUE (if your wwplus directory has a different name, use that instead, and if the test1.que exists, use a different name). If the program starts, try changing the queue to the one you were using before. If it crashes at that point, the best solution is to delete that queue completely. This will not remove the image files, just the index which you can manually rebuild. A related problem can occur if a file has become corrupted and the Change Wallpaper at Startup preference is selected. If that is the next file to be used, WWPlus may crash when trying to load a corrupt wallpaper. The cure would be the same as shown above. If you have an image that WWPlus will not display, it may be in a format that cannot be used. There are some variations of .GIF and .PCX that are known to make problems for WWPlus. There are many non-standard versions of JPEG that will cause problems. If you can load them into another image editing program you may be able to save it in a usable format. WWPlus expects image file names to match their formats. If you have a .BMP image but give it a .GIF name, the program will not be able to read it. VII. Obtaining wallpaper images. Any image that can be displayed on your computer may be used as wallpaper. If you regularly use Computer BBS systems or online sources such as Compuserve, America Online, or the internet, you will find a wealth of images that can be downloaded. These images are usually in the .GIF or .JPG formats to reduce download time. If you obtained this program on disk, there may be images included, usually in an \images directory. A RIGHTS.TXT file may be included in this directory describing the user's rights to the images included. VIII. Getting future Upgrades. When you register WWPlus with the author, you will receive a copy of the latest version and a registration key that removes the startup screen. That key file will work with future versions of the program, so no upgrade fee will be required. Current versions of WWPlus can always be found on Compuserve in several forums, including WINAV, GRAPHSUP, PHOTOFORUM and EDRIVE. Current versions are also posted to America OnLine. Use the keyword "Windows" and search the software library for "WWPlus." The author maintains a current copy available for internet FTP. ftp://redshift.com/arcatpet/wwplus/wwplsxxx.zip where xxx is the version number. If you find this address to be inaccurate in the future, E-Mail the author dbirdman@redshift.com or dbirdman@aol.com for a current address. There is also a jump available from http://www.redshift.com/~arcatpet Current versions are also uploaded to two internet archival sites, CICA and SimTel. Addresses respectively are ftp://ftp.cica.indiana.edu/pub/pc/win3/desktop and ftp://oak.oakland.edu/SimTel/win3/desktop. These two sites have many mirror sites worldwide as well. Registered users who do not have online access may get a disk copy from the author for a fee of $5 ($7 non-US). Send a short note indicating your registered status and requesting the latest copy. Please use the same name under which you are registered. IX. Registration and Distribution. WWPlus is shareware. Free use is extended to any user for a reasonable evaluation period; this is typically 30 days. If use is continued, the program should be registered with the author. Registration fee is $20. California registrants please add $1.45 sales tax, and foreign registrants should include $1.00 for airmail shipping. All funds should be drawn on a US Dollar account. A convenient form for registration is included in the Help file (and may be printed from there). Until you register, there will be a startup screen asking you to register which you will have to respond to. When you register, this annoyance will go away. Otherwise, this version is complete and un-crippled in any way. As a registration incentive, the author will provide on request two free scanned images from your original prints or slides, when sent with the registration. Commercial use: WWPlus may be used commercially, as long as there is a registered copy for each computer/terminal that is using it. Bulk licensing is available. You may freely distribute WWPlus as long as no fees are charged for the program, and all necessary files are included. If you are a registered user, do not distribute the file WWP_REG.KEY, which identifies you as the user (This identification shows up in the "About" box). X. ASP Ombudman Statement This program is produced by 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 49442-9427 USA, FAX 616-788-2765 or send a CompuServe message via CompuServe Mail to ASP Ombudsman 70007,3536