ALPHA MENU AND NETWORKS

ALPHA MENU has been enhanced to operate more smoothly with local area
networks, and has been tested under Novell Netware(R) and Artisoft
LANtastic(R).

The benefit in using ALPHA MENU (or any program) on a network is the
fact that a SINGLE COPY of the program and associated data files can be
SHARED by all users.

*Environmental Variables

For NETWORKING of ALPHA MENU to work properly, we must be able to
somehow differentiate between users on a network system.
This is typically done by specifying something called an Environmental
Variable.

You will need to specify the value for it by placing a 
"SET USER=USERNAME" statement within the network login or AUTOEXEC.BAT 
procedure. You cannot exceed eight (8) characters.  For example, if
user Susan logs onto the network, part of her login script should be
DOS SET USER="SUSAN" or in the Autoexec.Bat, the statement should be
SET USER=SUSAN, so that the variable "USER" will be placed in the DOS
environment and set to a value of "SUSAN".  ALPHA MENU will automatically
reference this variable and substitute the default ALPHA MENU data and batch
files with Susan's name.

*The DOS Environment

In the above example, each time we use the "USER" variable,
ALPHA MENU will look in the DOS environment for a variable of the same name
and use its value instead. The "environment" is really just a common area of
memory that programs can write to and read from - kind of a "general store" of
program information. Some programs are geared to look specifically at the
environment to find particular data important to their operation. If we were to
look at the DOS environment (by typing the SET command), we might see a
listing similar to the one below:

                         COMSPEC=C:\COMMAND.COM
                         PATH=C:\;C:\DOS;C:\UTIL
                         USER=SUSAN

Other values might be present, like PROMPT=$P$G, and more depending on the
types and kinds of software you are running. Some programs ask you to place a
variable into the environment equal to a certain value so that they can find
support files which could not be found otherwise.


*If Your Computer Displays an "Out of Environment Space" error

   -INCREASE THE ENVIRONMENT SIZE
 
   Depending on the DOS version, the environment's size may be up to 32 kbytes
   (i.e. 32,768 decimal bytes) long.  The default environment size of COMMAND.
   COM, however, is of 160 bytes in versions 2.2x through 3.3x, and in DOS 5
   it is 256 bytes; this space can fill up quickly, in which case DOS displays
   the message 'Out of environment space' when attempting to add a new 
   variable or increasing an existing one.
 
   In DOS versions 3.10 and later, the size of the environment can be modified
   by including the following statement in the CONFIG.SYS file:
 
                      SHELL=[d:][\path]COMMAND.COM /P /E:nn
 
   in which [d:] and [\path] are the drive and path specification, P indicates
   that this is to be considered the initial loading of the command processor,
   and /E:nn specifies the size of the environment in <nn> bytes (versions 3.2
   and higher) or <nn> paragraphs (1 paragraph=16 bytes, version 3.1).  Notice
   that version 3.1 allows a maximum environment of 992 bytes (62 paragraphs).


*Mark the ALPHA.EXE and ALPHA.HLP files as shareable read-only.
   
   If you are a Novell user change directory to the Alpha Menu directory and
   type FLAG ALPHA.* SRO <enter>.

   If you are a LANtastic user, set the attributes to READ-ONLY by changing
   to the Alpha Menu directory and type ATTRIB ALPHA.* +R <enter>.

   Remember to remove the read-only settings when updating Alpha Menu.