1wxPoem 1.0
2----------
3
4by Julian Smart
5---------------
6
7Fancy a little intellectual stimulation after long hours spent staring
8at spreadsheets or reports?  Does your brain long for something a little
9more fulfilling than Tetris or fiddling with the WIN.INI file?  Then you
10could go out and buy a poetry book... or alternatively, if you just
11can't drag yourself away from the screen, click on the wxPoem icon.
12
13wxPoem is a simple Windows application which picks poems from a file at
14random, or finds poems according to a string criterion, and formats them
15nicely in a window.  A displayed poem can be copied to the Windows clipboard
16ready for inclusion in that more imaginative report...
17
18It's small, it's free and it's totally harmless, so far as I know.
19No responsibility accepted, though, for any problems it might cause with
20your setup.
21
22wxPoem was converted to use the wxWindows toolkit, from the original
23WinPoem which received a favourable review from Windows Shareware 500.
24
25Since it now uses wxWindows, wxPoem may be compiled on a variety
26of platforms such as X (XView or Motif), Windows and NT.
27
28Files
29-----
30
31The main data file is winpoem.dat, and an index file winpoem.idx is
32supplied or can be (re)built by deleting winpoem.idx and rerunning
33wxPoem. Source code is also provided in source.zip, but wxWindows is
34required to build it. The original WinPoem is much leaner (40K
35instead of 400K!) and can be compiled under Windows without wxWindows.
36
37Installation
38------------
39
40  Windows
41  =======
42
43    Copy ctl3dv2.dll to windows\system, and delete the original
44    ctl3dv2.dll or wxPoem will not run.
45
46    wxPoem can be put in the Startup folder in the Program Manager, so that
47    a random poem will pop up every time Windows is run.
48
49  UNIX
50  ====
51
52    wxPoem comes in Open Look and Motif versions for the Sun, and a
53    Linux Open Look version. For other platforms, you will need to
54    recompile the source.
55
56
57Use
58---
59
60Simply run the program, and a random poem will be displayed.
61You can optionally give a filename on the command line, without a suffix
62(e.g. winpoem).
63
64The simplest way of operating wxPoem is to keep pressing the space bar
65for new poems (or pages for multi-page poems).
66
67Clicking the right mouse button (or selecting the wxPoem Options menu
68item from the system menu) gives a choice of the following facilities:
69Next poem/page   (Page down)   Display next poem (or next page)
70Previous page    (Page up)     Display previous page (multi-line poems only)
71Search           (S)           Allows user to enter a search string
72Next match       (N)           Gives next search match
73Copy to clipboard              Allows poems to be pasted into other applications
74Bigger text                    Increases text size
75Smaller text                   Decreases text size
76About wxPoem                   About wxPoem
77Exit             (Esc)         Quit wxPoem
78
79When wxPoem is closed, the font, text height and window position are
80remembered (stored in WIN.INI) for next time. Under X, the values
81are not written (since they are stored in .Xdefaults), so you may
82want to edit the following resources by hand:
83
84wxPoem.X         ; X position
85wxPoem.Y         ; Y position
86wxPoem.FontSize  ; Font size in points (default 12)
87
88The data file
89-------------
90
91The winpoem.dat file contains poems separated by a #, with optional
92@ codes denoting title (@T) author (@A) and page break (@P).  Any
93unrecognized codes will cause the rest of the line to be ignored, so
94the user can add lines (e.g. @S for subject) which will be searched on but
95not displayed.
96
97The data file contains a mixture of 20th century and earlier poetry,
98subject to copyright constraints.  Apologies if any copyrights have
99inadvertently been infringed, though I have tried to avoid it.
100
101Implementation
102--------------
103
104The original WinPoem program was my `Windows learning application', i.e.
105a vehicle for getting stuck into Windows programming, whilst (possibly)
106affording others a modicum of amusement. Therefore the code is pretty
107ugly. So don't look if you're squeamish!
108
109License
110-------
111
112Copyright Julian Smart, released into the public domain, October 1994.
113
114Julian Smart
115Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute
116University of Edinburgh
11780 South Bridge
118Einburgh
119EH1 1HN
120
121J.Smart@ed.ac.uk
122