I hereby reject any liability or responsibility for these or any other consequences from the use of Homer whatsoever. This includes, but is not limited to, damage to your equipment, to your data, personal injuries, financial loss or any other kinds of side effects.

Although Homer has been tested thoroughly on several different machines, I cannot rule out the possibility that Homer

• is somehow incompatible to your equipment
• has bugs that show up on your equipment
• does not do what it is supposed to do on your equipment

The following are required for Homer to run, if they are not installed or available Homer will be unable to run.

• Kickstart V39 or higher
• matrix.library V26 or higher (included in standard distribution)
• swazconfig.library V3 or higher (included in standard distribution)
• sound.datatype to load samples
• picture.datatype to load iff images

Optional extras:

• SwazBlanker - Homer window can be blanked too!
• ScreenNotify.Library - Homer window will close when workbench needs to close. ScreenNotify Library is written by Stefan Becker stefanb@yello.ping.de.

The program may be freely distributed and copied, as long as the following conditions are fulfilled:

• The sales price must not be higher than the cost of an (empty) disk plus a nominal copying fee plus costs for shipping. The total price must not be higher than 5 US$.
• All parts of the program and the documentation must be complete. You may howerver add or remove samples as you see necessary.
• Homer or parts of it may not be sold in combination with or as part of commercial software.
• Program and documentation may not be changed in any way.
• Permission has been given for distribution through Aminet and Fred Fish.

Installation

To install just run the install script provided in the Homer distribution. This will install Homer in your "SYS:WBStartup" drawer by default. Documentation and support files are also installed.

You will be prompted for a Hot-Key to open the main interface window. Typically this would be something like "LALT a", ie. pressing the "LEFT ALT KEY" and the "a" key simultaneously would open the interface.

Usage

To run homer simply Double Click the icon.
Homer will pop up in a small window on your Workbench screen and his eyes will follow the mouse pointer as it moves. They also occasionally blink, and he also has the tendency to say things occasionally. Please feel free to add your own samples and configure Homer as you like it best!

[Homer]

This is where you can configure certain aspects of Homer

• WindowXPos - position of Homer window relative to the left edge of the display. (Default is 0)
• WindowYPos - position of Homer window relative to the top edge of the display. (Default is to place it just under the screens title bar)

• AudioDeviceName - name of audio device to use (Default is "audio.device")
• AudioDeviceUnit - audio device unit to use (Default is 0)
• AudioDevicePri - priority of audio channels (Default is 0)

• ScaleFactor - how big should the image of Homer be. Eg. If you specify 200% the image will be twice the size it normally is. (Default is 100%)

• DoBurp - weighted chance of Homer burping
• DoDoh - weighted chance of Homer saying Doh! (See also ManyDohChance)
• DoMood - weighted chance of Homer having a mood swing
• DoTalk - weighted chance of Homer saying something

• ManyDohChance - chance of Homer saying Doh! several times (See also ManyDohContChance)
• ManyDohContChance - chance of Homer continuing to say Doh!

[HappySamples], [SadSamples], [AngrySamples], [BurpSamples], [DohSamples]

These all define the sample filenames depending on Homers mood or current action, these files are located in the Samples directory. Please try to avoid putting spaces in the filenames. Please feel free to add your own samples

• Sample file names should not contain spaces
• Samples should be in a sound.datatype supported format

To add a sample, please follow these steps...

1. Locate the Samples directory (this is in the same directory as Homer), and copy your new samples into this directory.

2. Then edit the Homer.conf configuration file, this is in the same directory as Homer (Load it into any standard ASCII text editor).

3. Now decide what sort of sample you have, it can fall into one of the following categories:
   • HappySamples
   • SadSamples
   • AngrySamples
   • BurpSamples
   • DohSamples

4. Locate the relevent section in the configuration file. Eg. if we have decided that the sample being added is a Happy Sample then look for the line reading [HappySamples] and enter the name of the sample on one of the lines following.

5. Now save the configuration and re-load Homer.

Keys

The following keys do special things:

• ESCAPE - Quits
• TAB - Changes homers mood
• RETURN - Say something
• Any other key will show the definition of Homer from the dictionary

Homer Window Blanker

1. IMAGE ERROR requestor
   Homer was unable to load the image files correctly, Please check that you have a iff datatype and sufficient memory available.

2. The Homer Window Is Blank This indicates that Homer is sleeping, this situation arises under two situations:
   1. The SwazBlanker screen blanker has blanked the screen, also informing Homer to blank too!
   2. Or Homer is unable to open the audio device. Either another application has the audio device in use or the audio device has been misconfigured (see Configuration).
   To wake Homer up all you need to do is click in the Homer window.

3. Homer's mouth keeps animating after sample has stopped
   As far as i can tell this arises from the fact that the "sound.datatype" is not informing Homer when the sample has finished. This feature has only been available since version 40 of this datatype (Although implementation of this feature seems to vary between the different revisions).
   So all in all, please make sure you are running version 40.6 or higer of "sound.datatype".

• V1.5
  • No longer uses sound.datatype to play sounds (this was causing too many problems - the signal notification was causing problems). Although the sound.datatype class is still used to load the samples.
  • Audio.Device is configurable.
  • Initial Window Position can be configured.
  • ScreenNotify.Library support added.
• V1.4
  • Installation now includes Homer.conf file
  • Fixed a bug in natrix.library causing system to crash if does not have tabs.gadget class.
  • Now accepts V37 math libraries
  • Enforcer hit wile loading config file removed
• V1.1
  • Installer Script
  • Documentaion
  • Images are now stored as iffs
• V1.0
  • Initial beta release, no install scripts or documentation, hey I dont want to waste too much time writing this toy :)

My real name is David Swasbrook but pretty much well everyone calls me Swaz. I have lived my entire life in New Zeland and have been programming Amigas since sometime around 1991, and plan to keep programming them for some time to come!

Quite often I will be hanging out in Internet Relay Chat (Innernet mostly) in #Amiga channel under the nick of Swaz.

You can find me on the World Wide Web at http://www.ait.ac.nz/~swaz/ or if I have moved you might be able to get me via http://www.pobox.com/~swaz/.

Electronic Mail may be sent to me at swaz@ait.ac.nz, or if for some strange reason that fails you could try swaz@pobox.com.

If you would like to send me some mail the old fashioned way, my mailbox is:

David Swasbrook,
PO Box 54134,
Bucklands Beach,
Auckland,
New Zealand.

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