************************************** * * * Hot Saver Program 1.1 * * by John Eidsvoog * * Copyright 1990 John Eidsvoog * * * ************************************** Release date: Wednesday, April 25, 1990 What it is ---------- HotSaver is a screen saver specially designed to work in conjunction with CodeHead's HotWire program (although it will work perfectly well without HotWire). It communicates with HotWire to provide special features, some of which are not available from any other screen saver. A screen saver is a program which will help save your monitor display from developing "burn-in". Burn-in will leave an image permanently on the computer's monitor and is caused by leaving the same or similar screen displayed for long periods of time, usually when the computer is left unattended with no screen activity. A screen saver will shut down the screen after a certain length of time where there is no user input. When HotSaver kicks into screen saving mode, the HotWire logo will begin bouncing around on a black screen. HotSaver will also communicate with HotWire (if present) to tell it whether or not to show the HotWire clock or an elapsed inactivity timer, and whether to take this time into account when making ledger entries showing the time spent within a program. You can also manually kick the saver into effect, locking out the use of your computer until the correct code is entered. You can reconfigure HotSaver after it is installed to alter any of its options and optionally save the changes permanently. HotSaver may be configured to save memory (typically 32K) by not allocating a backup screen. You can also select whether you wish to watch RS-232 (modem) activity so that the screen saver will not kick in while uploading, downloading, or capturing text for long periods of time. Besides modem activity, the HotSaver can selectively monitor disk access, printer use, text output, and graphics output. How to set it up ---------------- HotSaver can be installed from your AUTO folder or from the desktop. To install it from the AUTO folder, simply copy the HOTSAVER.PRG file into a folder named AUTO on your bootup disk. It will then install itself any time that you boot your computer from that disk. You will see a small box appear during the bootup process showing that HotSaver is installing. You may also run HotSaver from the desktop, at which time a dialog box will appear allowing you to set the options. Clicking on the "Install" button or hitting return will install HotSaver just as if it were run from the AUTO folder. If HotSaver is run with a command line (any characters at all), it will immediately install as if it were run from the AUTO folder. This allows it to be installed in your HotWire menu as the auto-run program. Simply install HotSaver and select "Command Line" and "Auto-Run". Then click on the entry and type a tilda (~) character. This will tell HotWire not to bring up the command line box in the future. Make sure to save your HOT file before rebooting. If you have another program that you wish to auto-run, you can chain from HotSaver into it. Once HotSaver is installed, you can run it again from the desktop to change any of the options. HotSaver will "find" itself installed in memory and inform itself of the changes that you make. How it works -- Dialog Box Options ---------------------------------- The HotSaver dialog box contains many buttons and a few editable strings. A description of their functions is as follows: TIMEOUT VALUE - This shows the length of time that must pass with no activity before the screen saver kicks in. Inactivity is defined as lack of use of the mouse or keyboard (and optionally the RS-232 port, disk drives, printer, or screen display). You may use the editing keys (arrows, backspace, and delete) to change the value from 1 second up to over 99 minutes. (If you enter a number higher than 59 seconds, it will be converted to the appropriate number of minutes and seconds). RESERVE SCREEN - If this button is selected, HotSaver will allocate a memory block large enough to save a copy of the screen. This will normally be 32,000 bytes, but will be larger if you are using a larger screen device such as the Moniterm monitor. With "RESERVE SCREEN" selected, the HotWire logo will bounce around on a black background. At random times, the logo will spot a "Kilroy" drawing and quickly zoom across the screen to bump him off. (Hey, we gotta have _some_ fun). If "RESERVE SCREEN" is not selected and you are using a color monitor, the screen will simply turn to black, while if you are using a monochrome monitor the screen will toggle back and forth between a normal and inverse image every 2 seconds. These are the only alternatives available without using another block of memory equivalent to the size of the screen while still preventing screen burn-in. If HotSaver has been installed with "RESERVE SCREEN" and then configured (by "Set Config") without "RESERVE SCREEN", the memory block will be returned to the system and you will be notified. If you again reconfigure with "RESERVE SCREEN", a memory block will be allocated and you will again be informed. ANIMATION - If this button is selected and the "RESERVE SCREEN" option is selected, the HotWire logo will bounce around on the screen when the screen saver kicks in. If you would rather have a blank screen (to eliminate distractions), you can turn animation off with this button. HotWire must be present in order to disable animation. (Buy it...you won't be sorry). CYCLING - This button enables color cycling on a color monitor. The button will be disabled on a monochrome monitor. Animation must be enabled for color cycling to function. The HotWire logo and the clock (if showing) will slowly change through the color spectrum. HotSaver's color cycling also takes advantage of the STe's 4096-color pallette. MODEM WATCH - If this button is selected, then any RS-232 activity will also prevent the screen saver from kicking in. HotSaver senses both incoming and outgoing data. DISK WATCH - This will prevent the screen saver from kicking in while there is any disk access. Only floppy disk and hard disk access are sensed, not RAM disk to RAM disk operations. PRINTER WATCH - If this button is selected, printer operation will prevent HotSaver from entering screen-saving mode. Logo animation consumes a lot of processor time, which may noticably slow down printer operation if "PRINTER" is not selected. TEXT WATCH - Selecting this button will cause BIOS text output to prevent HotSaver from kicking in. Internally, this function is watching Bconout calls. GRAPHICS WATCH - If this button is selected, HotSaver will watch all graphics output calls, that is, VDI output. These calls include polylines, polymarkers, fill patterns, graphics text, circles, boxes, etc. HOTWIRE CLOCK - After selecting this button, the HotWire clock will continue to be displayed while in screen saver mode. HotWire must be present and the current display mode will be retained (time, date, seconds, etc.). INACTIVITY TIMER - If this button is selected, a timer will show the elapsed time since the last activity. This will be the same amount of time (for this segment) that is subtracted from the ledger file. If you are using a timeout value of 3 minutes, then the elapsed timer will show 3 minutes when the screen saver first kicks in. If you manually initiate the screen saver with the hot key, the timer will begin with zero. HotWire must be present. When the inactivity timer is used, HotWire's alarms will be postponed until you exit from screen-saver mode. We at first considered this to be a bug, but decided that it was more useful as a feature. :-) IGNORE ALARMS - When this button is selected and a HotWire alarm rings, instead of popping out of screen saver mode to display the alarm message, the animation will freeze while the alarm rings 5 times. It will then continue as if nothing had happened. You can use this feature if you don't want an alarm to continue to ring for hours, burning in your screen when you are away from your computer. If you have selected "DISK" watching and you've enabled the "Save Expired Alarms" feature of HotWire, the disk access will kick HotSaver out of screen-saving mode. Of course, this option will do nothing if HotWire is not present. There are two other alternatives to using "IGNORE ALARMS" if you have HotWire 2.1 or later. You can disable alarms completely from the Options drop-down menu or you can use the inactivity timer which will delay the ringing of alarms until you pop out of screen-saving mode. LEDGER ADJUST - If this button is selected, HotSaver will adjust your HotWire ledger to reflect the true amount of time spent actively using a program. That is, if you start using a program at 1:15PM and exit it at 1:25PM, but let 7 minutes go by with no activity, your ledger file would show an elapsed time of 3 minutes. If this button is not selected, ledgers will function normally. Of course, HotWire must be present for this feature to work. RATE - This allows you to set the approximate frequency at which "Kilroy" will appear. The rate may be set by tens from 0% to 90% where the higher the number, the more often he gets killed. A setting of 0% will prevent Kilroy from appearing at all. CODE - HotSaver allows you to manually kick the screen saver into operation by holding Control/Left-Shift/Alternate and hitting Tab. This can be done quickly and easily with one hand (especially if you're left-handed :-). After entering this mode, the screen saver will go into effect and all input will be disabled until the "Code" is typed in from the keyboard or the computer is rebooted. You may enter a string of one to six characters. This manual "freeze" is useful when you are about to get up from your computer and you don't want anyone else to mess with it. After entering the code, operation is returned to normal, just as you left it. SAVE - Clicking on "Save" will bring up an alert box to confirm that you want to save the current settings into HotSaver. All switches and strings will be saved directly into the program, which must be named HOTSAVER.PRG. Make sure that you have not "packed" or "squished" HotSaver or you will not be able to save your changes. A standard method for using HotSaver would be to install it in your AUTO folder for automatic installation. The same copy should be installed in your HotWire menu (or run from the desktop). You can then reconfigure any of the options and "Save" them so that they will be in effect the next time you reboot. SET CONFIG - This button will be disabled unless HotSaver has already been installed. When HotSaver runs and finds that it has already been installed, the current settings of the installed version will be shown in the dialog box, the "Set Config" button will be enabled, and it will become the default button (selectable by pressing Return). You may then make any changes that you wish and select "Set Config" to put them into effect. Selecting "Set Config" will exit the program (after an alert box confirms your actions). These changes will remain in effect until you make further changes or reboot. Remember that settings made with "Set Config" are only temporary; you must use "Save" to make them permanent. INSTALL - Clicking on "Install" (or pressing Return) will cause HotSaver to be immediately installed in memory without warning, followed by exiting the program. If HotSaver has already been installed, the "Install" button will be disabled. QUIT - The "QUIT" button will immediately exit the program without making any further changes. POINTS TO NOTE: --------------- 1. Be aware that extensive use of the HotWire Clock or the Inactivity Timer may themselves cause burn-in and are counter to the purpose of a screen saver. Also the bouncing logo will erase the clock when it reaches that corner, but the clock will be redrawn the next second. 2. Don't be paranoid about burn-in. Even if a stagnant display were left on your monitor for several days, there would probably not be a noticable burn-in of the image. It's just a wise precaution to use a screen saver if you use your computer a lot and especially if you leave it sit for hours at a time, every day, for weeks, months, or years on end. 3. The quickest, easiest, and safest way to exit from screen-saver mode is to just tap the "Alternate" key. Other keys may be acted upon, depending on the currently running application. 4. If Turbo ST is installed after HotSaver, it may handle some of the calls that HotSaver is looking for. HotSaver may not "see" them and may be unable to prevent the saver from kicking in. The best way to prevent this is to install HotSaver in your HotWire menu as the auto-run program. This will place HotSaver in a position to be the first installed program to intercept system calls. See "How to set it up" above for further instructions. 5. The clock in the Flash! terminal program uses VDI text to display on the screen. If you have the "GRAPHICS" button turned on, the screen saver will not kick in. 6. If you are using a color monitor with "RESERVE SCREEN" turned off and "HOTWIRE CLOCK" turned on, you will not see the clock. This is because all colors must be set to black in order to prevent burn-in. 7. If you use a Moniterm or other big screen monitor, a much larger block of memory will be allocated (like 152K) if you use "RESERVE SCREEN". You also may notice some flickering as the logo moves. This cannot be helped at the present time. While using the Moniterm, if you leave your monochrome monitor on, you'll notice that HotSaver will black out that screen when it kicks in. The monochrome screen will not be restored, but will be usable if some program calls upon it, such as the Templemon debugger. 8. If you have allocated a screen with "RESERVE SCREEN" and later free it up, it will be returned to the system. However, if another program has allocated memory above it, there will be a "hole" in memory (or memory fragmentation). A "free RAM" display may not show an increase in the available memory because it shows only the largest available memory block, but the released screen memory will still be there, available to any program which needs a block of memory that size or smaller. 9. If you have HOTSAVER.PRG in your AUTO folder, but use another copy to run from the desktop, any "Saved" changes that you make will be saved into the second copy of HotSaver. When you reboot, your original settings from the AUTO folder version will be used causing possible confusion. It's best to use only one copy of HotSaver. 10. HotSaver will only be able to communicate without HotWire 2.0 or later. Otherwise HotSaver will run as if HotWire were not present. 11. HotSaver communicates with HotWire such that if a HotWire alarm begins to ring while in screen-saver mode, it will pop out, whether it had entered by timeout or manual kick-in. 12. HotSaver has special code to communicate with MultiDesk (2.0 or later). If HotSaver is not installed until after MultiDesk is initialized, and you do a "Clear All" (or "Load Setup"), HotSaver will not be removed from operation (as would normally happen) but will re-install itself and continue with its normal operation. 13. If the screen size changes between installing HotSaver and entering saver mode, it will revert to non-RESERVE SCREEN mode. For instance if you install HotSaver and BigScreen from the AUTO folder, HotSaver will allocate a 32000-byte buffer. But when the desktop comes up, BigScreen changes the screen to a larger size. HotSaver will act like there is no screen reserved. To get around this, you can reconfigure with "RESERVE SCREEN" off to release the memory, then reconfigure again with "RESERVE SCREEN" on to allocate a screen of the correct size. Another way to correct the problem is to auto-run HotSaver from HotWire. At that time the screen is the correct size. Changes in HotSaver 1.1 ----------------------- There was a bug in HotSaver 1.0 that might cause a crash when entering screen saving mode with "RESERVE SCREEN" turned off. This has been fixed. The "IGNORE ALARMS" feature has been added. (See above). Copyright stuff --------------- HOTSAVER.PRG, and this document are Copyright 1990 John Eidsvoog. HotSaver is free to all HotWire owners. If you do not own HotWire, then HotSaver is a shareware program. The idea of shareware is that you may distribute HotSaver freely to anyone (please, as much as possible). This method of distribution saves money for you the user and me the developer by eliminating marketing, manufacturing, and production costs. If you make use of HotSaver and did not purchase HotWire, you are expected to register yourself as a HotSaver owner by sending a payment of $15 to: John Eidsvoog P.O. Box 74090 Los Angeles, CA 90004 This will register you as an owner of HotSaver. Please specify HotSaver in your correspondence, and if you would like to receive acknowledgment of your registration, include a self-addressed stamped envelope. Those who have registered HotSaver for $15 will be eligible for a $15 discount on a later purchase of HotWire. Please note that HotSaver is not a CodeHead Software product, although it is provided free with a CodeHead product, HotWire. All CodeHead Software products are commercial programs which must be purchased through normal commercial channels. CodeHead Software has never and will never release any shareware programs. Neither this document file (HOTSAVER.TXT) nor the program file (HOTSAVER.PRG) may be altered in any way. Copies of these files may not be sold, and this document may not be reprinted, without the express written permission of John Eidsvoog. I've tried to make HotSaver as bug-free as possible. Nevertheless, I cannot be responsible for any damages which may occur as a result of the use (or misuse) of HotSaver. Thank you for your support. John Eidsvoog _____________________________________________________________ | | | If you don't own HotWire, you're doing things the hard way! | | | -------------------------------------------------------------